On Wings of Qi: Chapters 28-36 (Patreon)

Chapter 28

After an hour of cultivating, the three of us lay down on the large bedroll that I’d purchased back in the Inheritance of the Lovers. It was slightly better than a regular bedroll, being mildly magical. It always kept itself clean and was slightly warmer when it was cold and colder when it was warm, but it was nothing compared to sleeping on the Centering Lotus, which was always the exact right temperature and was super soft inside despite its appearance.

As we relaxed, Sensei spoke cheerfully, “It appears that Ellie has figured out how to join you two in your Dragon Dancing, it’s most curious.”

Ellie perked up, despite being mostly exhausted, her eyes flickered open and shut quickly as she nearly fell asleep.

She was groggy, “It just felt right. I wanted to dance with mommy and daddy and that’s what I did. I’m tired.”

With a sigh, she curled up above our heads on a small perch we’d brought with us, it was barely big enough for her now, if she grew anymore, we would have to make her another one, or find one, but that seemed less likely.

I smiled before speaking quietly, “Something about the feeling when she joined us cultivating was just… right. It’s almost like we were supposed to have some sort of soul beast as part of our Dragon Dance, but I can’t find any mention of that in the sections I can read of the manuals we were given. I’ll have to check again once we break through to become Sages, but there’s something exceptional going on, that was just as effective a session as if we’d been out in the open, where we could fly through the air like we usually do. I can’t wait to see what it’s like when Ellie joins us out there, I’m willing to bet it’s going to be amazing.”

I turned to check on Keiko and saw that she had fallen asleep with one hand on the tip of Ellie’s tail. She snored loudly, but it wasn’t enough to wake up Ellie.

Sensei spoke to me mentally, “I think you’re correct. Though if I had to guess, I’d assume that it was probably meant to be a dragon, not a Coatl, that joined you as a soul beast or familiar. Before you object, as far as cultivation goes, dragons and Coatls are very similar. The only thing is, Coatls take a lot longer to get strong, but their peak of power is actually significantly higher. A full-strength, Emperor ranked, Rainbow Coatl would be able to demolish two or three full-strength, Emperor ranked, dragons. Their qi control is just so much more fine than dragons that once they become fully grown, there’s not much that can hurt them besides cultivators like those that hunted them nearly to extinction all those years ago. They were specialists in taking down exotic beasts like Rainbow Coatls.”

As I gazed at my wife and daughter, I spoke mentally to Sensei, “I’m not saying no to having a dragon join our family, but I don’t think we need one. Ellie’s everything we need until we have a biological child of our own and even then, she’ll always be our firstborn.”

My heart melted as Ellie let loose a little mew, probably because of some kind of nightmare. Keiko subconsciously rubbed her tail tip to calm her down, which worked immediately.

“She’s special and you know I’d do anything for her.”

Sensei’s tone was warm, “Some days I think we’re very different, Steven, and others it’s like you sprang forth from my mind like an ideal successor and descendant. Today is the second of those. You are sure you’re not one of my descendants, correct? You don’t really talk much about your parentage besides your grandfather, whom I wish I had gotten to know as he appears to have been worldlier than his cultivation would lead anyone to suspect.”

I rolled my neck to crack it before lying flat on my back with Sensei’s pot to my right and Keiko and Ellie on my left, “I don’t know a whole lot about my parentage, to be totally honest. I know that my grandfather wasn’t from Roh City originally, he ended up there as part of a contract. When he arrived, he went to a local brothel and met my grandmother. Despite her profession, my grandfather was taken with her and she bore him a daughter, not that she let him know that until much later, she skipped town with the money she stole from him and it wasn’t until twenty years later that he found out that he not only had a daughter, but a grandson who needed him.

“He left Roh city to find me at some tiny inn between Roh City and the Duke’s seat. My mother had left me with the innkeeper there, telling them to reach out to my grandfather for payment for watching me for so long. My grandfather didn’t know he was supposed to bring money, so he paid them the only way he could, with the sword he’d been given by the Lord of Roh city years before. It was his most prized possession, but he gave it up to take me in.

“He never told me anything about himself, bits and pieces about his travels maybe, but most of those were stories about fights he’d gotten into and how he should have avoided them. I know he grew up poor and that he was from a family of farmers. He happened to be halfway decent with cultivation, so he left to become a guard with some mercenary caravan. I don’t know.” I wiped a tear from my eye, “I wish I knew where I came from, but there’s no one left alive that I can talk to about it, not with my grandfather having passed away.”

Sensei’s voice enveloped me like a hug, calming me down as I fought back tears at the thought of what I’d never known about myself, “My boy, if you were farmstock, I wouldn’t think any less of you. I’m willing to bet that you probably had it harder growing up in the city than you would have out in the fields. With your talent for cultivation and martial arts, there was no way that farmer’s children would’ve been able to harm you, as long as you had anyone teach you anything about defending yourself in even the most basic manner.

“In Roh city, it sounds like you were abused because of your background. I’m sorry for that, but because of it you’re the man you are today. Once you reach Sage, the scars on your body will disappear, but the scars on your soul won’t and I wouldn’t want them to.”

I looked over at his pot confused, “Why wouldn’t you want the scars to leave? It isn’t the physical ones that hurt, it’s all the jeers and jabs throughout my life that hurt the most. I can deal with physical pain, but the rudeness that people showed my grandfather burns me to this day.”

“You’re not thinking straight, those scars on your psyche, on your soul, are why you’re so kind and generous to all those around you. I grew up in a farming village, one of a dozen children, I know everything about growing up with nothing. There were times when I’d go hungry as the youngest son. I remember once when I went four days without even a crust of bread when the harvest was particularly poor. That’s why I was the way I was in life, I always strove for more, so as to make sure I’d always have enough to fall back on if something went wrong, like those bad harvests back when I was young.

“You’re the same way, your grandfather was ridiculed for being a servant, albeit a trusted one, and you suffered the slingstones and arrows of those taunts more than he did. Because of that, you’re very careful to be kind to everyone, but to those who aren’t too kind to you, that’s where you show your edge. Those who threaten you or Keiko are very unlucky, because they don’t know who or what you’ve been through that would garner the reaction you always have. To be clear, I have no problem with how you react or interact with others, far from it.

“I’m going to ask you a question and I hope you answer me honestly, though I know it will be hard. Can you do that for me?”

I wordlessly nodded, doing my best to reign in the emotions that were running wild within me. Unbidden, Keiko’s hand that wasn’t on Ellie’s tail snaked out and grabbed my own, even as she snored. The touch of her hand was enough to give me the bravery to answer any question Sensei might ask, though I didn’t know how hard it was going to be at that moment.

Sensei’s voice was soft, like the touch of a gentle breeze on a summer evening, “Do you really want to know where your family comes from? Do you really want to know where your grandfather grew up and if you have any other family from that line? Do you want to know if your mother and father are still alive, one or both of them? Do you want to know those things? Because if you do, that’s where we should go next, once we help Melody and Roderigo, you need to help yourself.

“You helped Keiko work her way through the loss of her mother. That’s something horrific that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but because of you she came out of it stronger, not weaker. You have to let someone else help you that way… let it be me. Let me help you figure out who you are so that you can figure out who you really want to be with all the information in hand to help educate that decision. Does that sound like a plan to you?”

He sounded scared, like he was afraid I was going to reject him, he was wrong.

My mental voice shook, I was so wracked with emotion that I couldn’t keep it steady, “I’ve always wanted to know who I was, but no one ever had the ability and the will to help me with that. Keiko always wanted to help, but she didn’t have the ability. My grandfather never told me anything about the time before he turned twenty, not one thing besides him being from a farm. He wouldn’t even tell me my own mother’s name, though when he was drunk once, I learned that my grandmother was named Henrietta and that she was a tall full-figured woman with a luxurious head of long black hair.”

I took a moment to calm myself down before continuing, my mental voice was still shaking, but not nearly as badly, “When I asked him later about why he never chased down Henrietta, he left the house without saying anything and I heard later from Keiko that he had left to hunt monsters for her father for the next two weeks. He left me alone for two weeks because I asked about my grandmother, just one time. I didn’t have the courage to ever ask again.”

Sensei’s warm voice blew over me like a warm blanket once again and this time what he said was simple, “Steven, I’m never going to leave you alone and neither is Keiko. I don’t think you’d be able to get Ellie to leave you alone if you tried. The four of us are family and together, we’re going to find out who you are.”

I fell asleep that night with happy tears streaming down my face as I held Keiko tight. I placed one hand on her hand where she was touching Ellie and my other hand on Sensei’s pot.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I do remember the sound of Sensei singing, it was some kind of lullaby which I have to assume put me to sleep. I only remember a little bit of it, but it was beautiful.

“…no matter what happens, I’ll always be there for you. Don’t you cry, I’ll always be there for you. Rest your head, I’ll stay with you till morning. Dry your eyes, I’ll be with you forever.”

Chapter 29

I found out the next morning that Melody and Roderigo had actually stayed in another room to give Keiko and I some privacy. They never told me why, but I have to assume that they opened the door, saw the state I was in, and then closed it again before going to take one of the other, smaller, unoccupied rooms for themselves. I hoped it didn’t cost them much more, but they probably didn’t even pay, so I wasn’t that worried about it. We were the only visitors in the village, so the place was empty besides us anyway.

Breakfast was atrocious, I almost went back into the kitchen and demanded to see who the hell had cooked such an awful meal. I refrained when Roderigo told me that being a cook was probably one of the least desirable jobs in town and that only on special occasions did the chief actually allow them to use any kinds of spices, seeing as they were so expensive to get with how far north they were.

I shook my head, “I have a mind to go back in there and give them bags of spices, just so that they can enjoy some food that actually tastes like something. Even unseasoned food should have more flavor than that, they also cook the living hell out of everything and that is a true travesty.”

Roderigo laughed before shrugging, “If you do that, the chief will take the spices away and sell them, even a small bag of spices here would sell for more than what this village makes in a year quarrying stone or selling hides.”

I opened my mouth to object, but eventually shut it and kept my thoughts to myself, I just couldn’t abide by terrible tasting food, so I ended up breaking out one of my emergency soups I’d prepared that I had stuffed into my spatial ring from back in the Inheritance of the Lovers. The four of us ate that soup as we walked along the path leaving Brookvale. We nodded to a guard who I only then realized was probably there the night before as well, or at least someone like him, they’d hidden their presence very well despite only being a Meridian cultivator. I nodded to him respectfully and he returned the nod with a small smile.

As we walked, I thought about the conversation I’d had with Sensei the night before and was filled with renewed hope. I never thought of myself, I was always worried about what everyone around me needed. I thought that I never needed anything, I had everything I’d ever wanted, or so I thought. Now, what I wanted most of all besides the safety of my family, was to know who I was.

I steeled myself for the task at hand, doing our best to free Roderigo and Melody’s hometown from the tyranny of the Azure Vein Clan, but after that, I wanted to go back, back to Roh City. From there, I planned on traveling the region, looking for anyone who’d met Henrietta. From there, I was going to track down my mother, maybe even my father, but I didn’t hold out much hope for that. No matter what, I was going to get the answers I needed.

Leaving Brookvale, we headed down the path to the next village at a pretty good clip, eating up thirty miles in an hour or so, despite the rolling hills, our Saint level speed was more than up to the task of carrying us that quickly.

We blew past three more villages, stopping at one of them for lunch, despite it being terrible again, and then cultivating outside of it before moving on. We eventually reached a larger encampment, this one not hidden behind a formation in a rock wall, rather it was a wide spot in the road that had been hollowed out to make it into a distinct town.

There had to be at least a thousand people living there, but we couldn’t find any trace of the town’s name. We made our way to the administration building in the middle of town and even there, we never saw something that had the name of the town written on it, something in that town was off, but we didn’t know then what it was.

It wasn’t just eerie that a town in the middle of the road that had grown so large didn’t have its name posted anywhere, it felt wrong. Yes, there were kids out playing and people doing their business, but there also wasn’t much of a market. It consisted of just two or three stalls and even those were just to sell necessities like food and clothing, the nicest one was selling basic cultivation supplies like beast cores or qi stones.

As it was after dusk, I also thought it was odd that there were still kids out playing, it was almost completely dark. As if summoned by my thought, half a dozen women came out of individual doors throughout town to call for children to come in for dinner. It was so strange, the way they moved in unison. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume they were some kind of automatons or something else, but when I brought up that idea with my companions, all of them thought I was just reading too much into things.

Roderigo actually laughed at me, “Just because this village has a very structured time for their children to come in from playing, you think something is wrong with them. You’re just used to how loosey-goosey it was in Roh City, where people could make decisions for themselves and do whatever they want throughout the day. Here in the North, structure is safe, structure keeps you and your family alive.”

Sensei was the only one of my companions who agreed with me, “Steven is right, something is wrong in this town. I’ve spent time in this region and, while people are more regimented here than in most regions, this is excessive. Also, this town appears to have been set up as a place for merchants to gather and their marketplace is pitiful. There are places for over thirty stalls to be set up and less than ten percent of them look to have seen use in the past month at least. To reiterate, I would tread carefully in this town, something is very wrong here.”

I looked at my companions as if to say ‘I told you so’, but I refrained because the looks on their faces told me that they knew what I was thinking. It was almost better that I didn’t have to say it, but I’d never tell them that.

Melody scratched her head, “If that’s what Sensei thinks, maybe Steven’s not crazy. No matter what, we still have to find a place to sleep for the night and I really don’t want to sleep on the trail if we can avoid it. The roads are pretty safe during the day, but there are quite a few monsters that could pose a threat to even us up here, including Great Crag Cats, like the ones you told us you saw on Sunset Island. Those are bad, but there are even more powerful beasts around that go bump in the night, or rather they don’t go bump in the night, they’re incredibly stealthy and will kill you before you have a chance to respond.”

Keiko cracked her knuckles, even as Ellie poked her head up off my shoulders and hissed softly, though she probably intended to be fierce, instead it was cute.

Keiko grinned, “I am totally okay with leaving this village now and walking a bit longer before sleeping on the trail. With the illusion formation plates I have, after rebuilding them, it’d take a Duke equivalent monster, or one with very strong perception, to pierce it.”

Sensei echoed her statement, “Keiko’s right, the illusion formation plates she has in her possession should be more than enough to trick all but the most powerful monsters in this area. As long as you set up a watch, you may actually be safer on the road than you are in an inn, especially in this town.”

We didn’t really talk it out much after that, we just put it to a vote. In the end, it was five against one for leaving, Melody being the sole adult who didn’t vote to leave. She explained that she just really wanted to use a bed and she was confident that we could deal with whatever happened to the group in an inn, as long as I always cooked the food. Not only would my food be better than anything found in that region, it was also guaranteed to be safe to eat.

While I agreed with her statement about my food being better, the rest of us were pretty sure something was wrong with the town and didn’t want to risk getting caught up in local politics if we could avoid it. To that end, we headed toward the opposite end of town.

Chapter 30

All those plans changed as we passed the final house in town, just before the small guard barracks set by the entrance. Over the path into town, someone had erected a small wooden wall covered in sheets of metal to block off the entrance for the night.

A small voice hissed out from the final house, “Please, don’t leave. If you do, I don’t know if my brother and I will be safe tomorrow. Be careful…”

The young girl’s voice was cut off by the sound of a loud slap, before a large man exited the house. He had to be at least six and a half feet tall, but all that wasn’t much taller than me. He probably had me by a hundred pounds in weight and his muscles were incredibly well defined. His dark brown hair was twirled up into a topknot and he had scars all over his face. We were looking at a fighter of some sort.

He swaggered out into the road, slamming the heavy wooden door behind him, eliciting a scream from inside.

He looked at the four of us and sneered, “Ignore the girl, you want no part of what’s going on here. Run along like the babies you are and leave our town to take care of things the only way we know how.” He spat toward our feet and actually landed a thick green globule on Keiko shoe.

It wasn’t a smart thing for him to do, but he didn’t know that. Even if he hadn’t spat on Keiko, the odds were good that she wouldn’t have let him walk away as she tried to go and save the girl and her brother. But to be disrespected like that, to be shown so little face, he didn’t know how badly he had messed up. He learned quickly.

Like a bolt of lightning, Keiko sprang forward and buried a fist in the arrogant man’s belly, he actually coughed up blood and a second later she jumped up, delivering a ferocious uppercut to the underside of his jaw. If it weren’t for the fact that he was a Brain cultivator, that probably would’ve snapped his neck, which might’ve been kinder than what she did next.

As she reached the apex of her jump, she controlled her descent as she came down, bringing a massive ax kick down on the back of the man’s head. The audible cracking sound of his skull fracturing was so loud that the sound of his body slamming into the ground seemed nearly inaudible by comparison.

She didn’t even look back at me as she sent me a message, “He’s very lucky I didn’t kill him. I hope you understand that I was showing restraint there. I wanted to kill him, but I’ll save that for after I see how badly he hurt the girl and her sibling.”

The malice she felt toward that man rolled off of her in waves and her fighting intent peaked so high that even Melody and Roderigo took a step back.

From around my shoulders, Ellie tried to fly forward, but I kept a hand on her, “Let your mom take care of this, no one here should be strong enough to hurt her. If she needs us, she knows how to get our attention.”

I was surprised that the guard barracks behind us hadn’t produced anyone after what Keiko had done, but when I walked over to check on it, it was empty. That didn’t make any sense. What good was a wall if there was no one to watch it?

As I was pondering that, Keiko messaged me, her mental tone was frantic, “Get in here, now. I think he hurt her worse than he thought he did, because she just stopped breathing.”

That was all I had to hear, put a child in danger and I was on my way there, on the double. I blurred forward, pushing myself with wind qi to take the hundred-foot trip in less than a second. I threw open the large oaken door and saw Keiko sitting on what appeared to be the only bed in the building, which dominated one corner of the house, which only consisted of a single room. Keiko was sitting on the bed with a young boy and the girl who had to have been the one who called out to us as we were leaving. I quickly moved over to help Keiko, even as she was starting to do chest compressions. Ellie slid off of my shoulders and down to the girl. She lightly bit on the girl’s ankle and started pumping her full of Arctic qi, but something was wrong, her body was resisting the Arctic qi in a way I’d never seen before.

I stepped forward and tried my hand at using Arctic qi as well, but I got no more results than Ellie did. Something was blocking our efforts and I was going to do my best to find out what it was. Even as I grabbed a potion from my bag that might heal whatever was broken inside her, I pushed my qi into her body as gently as I could to see what was wrong with her.

What I found was horrific.

Deep inside her, where her lower core should’ve been, was a roiling mass of dark energy, it almost felt like dark qi, but there was something wrong with it that made me think something else was going on besides a dark qi infection.

“Ellie, stop now. It’s not helping and it might even be hurting. Sensei, there’s something roiling inside her where her lower core should be, I didn’t even think that space developed in children this young, she can’t be any older than five or six.”

Sensei stretched out his spiritual sense in a thin tendril before sending it into the girl.

A moment later he retracted it as if repulsed, “I’ve never seen anything like that, but something inside this girl is very wrong.”

Without another word, he shot out the same spiritual sense tendril into the boy, who I learned later had passed out when he saw the man strike his sister.

A moment later Sensei reeled in the tendril again, in just the same way, “The boy is the same. Something is wrong here and we may have stumbled onto something that’s a bit more than we can chew. We should leave immediately, if I don’t know what’s going on, I can’t help you find a good solution.” He was pleading to us, which we’d seldom heard him do.

A second later, the girl gasped and Keiko sat back, she wasn’t physically exhausted, but having to physically save the girl’s life must have taken a lot out of her, at least emotionally. No matter what we did, the girl wouldn’t wake up, but her brother was another story.

All it took to wake him up was me taking out a sandwich I had prepared the other day for his eyes to snap open as he sniffed hungrily at me, “Where… where did you get that food?” His voice was so timid, he sounded like a wounded animal whimpering more than a young boy.

I offered him the sandwich, “Would you like it? I have more.” As if to demonstrate, I pulled out another sandwich, just like the other one before handing him the one that I had taken a bite out of to prove it wasn’t bad.

He took the sandwich, but instead of eating it, he looked to his sister and then back at me, “Is she going to be okay? Mommy and daddy told me I had to take care of my little sister.”

Melody stepped forward and knelt beside the bed, “That man outside wasn’t your daddy? Who was he?” Her voice was calm, but I knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t happy with the situation. To be clear, none of us were, but for some reason it bothered Melody even more than it did the rest of us.

The boy shook his head before taking a small bite of the sandwich I had given him. After chewing, he responded, “He used to be one of the guards, but since the new chief said we didn’t need them anymore, he took over our house. He…” The boy started crying, his tears rolling down his face as he gripped his sister’s hand tightly before releasing it and crushing the sandwich in his tiny grip, “he said that mommy and daddy left, but they wouldn’t do that! They love me and Sarah. Something must’ve happened to them, or they would’ve come back by now.” He looked at the sandwich longingly again before setting it down in his lap and taking his sister’s hand again.

Melody kept her tone very cool, “Before we talk about your parents, what’s your name? My name is Melody and the rest of us are Roderigo, he’s my husband, Keiko is the woman who saved your sister’s life, and Steven is the one who gave you the sandwich. The winged snake around Steven’s shoulders is named Ellie.” Ellie waved a wing at the boy.

The boy waved back halfheartedly, “my name is Bruce, but all Gregor calls me is boy, he says I’m not worth anything, let alone a good name like Bruce.” He cast his eyes down, where he saw the sandwich again, but he quickly looked to the side to avoid staring at it.

I spoke gently, “Feel free to eat the sandwich, there’s plenty more that came from. I’ve got more than enough food for you and your sister to eat, along with the rest of my group, don’t be shy.” I proved that true by handing everyone else in the room a sandwich, being sure to give everyone their favorites. It was the principle of the thing.

I gave the boy another sandwich, “For your sister.”

The boy eagerly gobbled up the first sandwich I’d given him. It was like he hadn’t eaten in days, because as soon as he finished it, he started choking, but eventually managed to catch himself before puking.

He sounded a bit queasy, “Thank you for the food. It’s been three days since we ate, Gregor said we don’t need food anymore.”

Keiko was standing as far from the bed as she could while remaining inside the house, clenching and unclenching her fists as she paced. Roderigo was doing his best to distract her, but no number of interesting runes he showed her were enough to keep her in one spot for more than a moment or two, despite him being an enterprising runemaster.

Melody’s voice grew even more soothing, “What’s going on in this town? There’re no signs with the name of the town up and everyone is acting very strangely. Bruce, what’s going on? It would be very helpful if you could tell us anything you know.”

Bruce nodded as he held his stomach, “We got a new mayor a while ago, the old one got sick and died even though he was really strong. The new mayor put a bunch of rules in place and mommy and daddy didn’t like him. They were part of what they called ‘the resistance’ and one day they didn’t come home. Gregor moved in the next day and told us that he was in charge now. The first day he let us go out and play and from what we heard, almost all the daddies in town went away and some of the mommies too. All the guards moved into the places where the daddies used to live and, at least that’s what all the kids said in the square when we were running around that day.

“When we got home, Gregor said he knew we’d been talking to people and that we weren’t allowed to leave the house anymore. That was two weeks ago and three days ago he stopped feeding us. A week ago, he gave us some black pills and made us eat them, he said it would help us grow big and strong.” He started crying again, “I think he was lying. I think they’re going to kill us.”

The boy was remarkably self-aware, he could tell that something was wrong inside him, even though none of us had told him that we knew about what it was.

Sensei spoke to me mentally, “Leaving is still an option, but I know you two too well to think you’d actually do so. As it is, I don’t know what you’re going to do. All I know is that whatever you need me for, I’ll do it.”

It was nice to hear that Sensei knew the way I was leaning, it is also nice to know he had our backs.

I patted Bruce’s head, “It’s OK for you to relax, Roderigo and Melody will stay here with you to keep you safe while Keiko and I go and look for answers.” He looked like he wanted to argue, but I quickly slipped him a sleeping potion, which put him out like a snuffed candle in moments.

Melody had a problem with horrible nightmares sometimes and that potion was one I prepared for her that would help her rest, but not put her out directly. For a normal child, it was a strong sedative, but wouldn’t hurt him long term as long as I didn’t keep dosing him with it.

I turned to Melody, “I meant what I said, I’m trusting you and Roderigo to protect them while Keiko and I head into the building in the center of town to see what is going on here.”

Melody started to argue, but Roderigo stepped up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder before looking me straight in the eye, “I understand, if we’re here protecting the kids, you and Keiko can go all out in an attempt to get answers.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

I turned to Melody, “I know that you have more experience with people in this region than we do, but we have a lot more experience with weirdness than you. If we need advice, we’ll come get you, but you’re not strong enough for us to take with you, something tells me that this isn’t going to be a simple meet and greet.

Melody started to argue, but then thought better of it before sighing, “You’re not wrong, but you two need to be careful out there. You aren’t invincible, the stories you told us told us at least that much.”

I straightened up and patted her on the shoulder, “Keep those two safe. Keiko, let’s get to the bottom of this.”

I strode out the door without looking back and Keiko followed me without hesitation.

Chapter 31

The first thing I did was stomp on Gregor’s neck and, with a savage crunching noise, he died like a rat. I looked down at his corpse and spat on his body, “No one hurts children with me around, no one.” With that, I strode toward the center of town and Keiko paced beside me.

A few moments later I realized Ellie was flying behind us by a few yards, in my haste to leave the house I hadn’t noticed.

I stopped dead in my tracks, “Ellie, go back to the house.”

She bumped into me, “I’m going with you, Mommy and Daddy. You might need me.” She sounded very sure of herself, but I had a better idea.

“I know that you would be very helpful if you were going, Sweetie, but I need you to take care of Bruce, Sarah, Melody, and Roderigo. They’re gonna need someone who can heal and you’re even better at it than Melody is.”

Ellie flew up in my face, “I want to go with you! You promised, I go with you from now on…”

She sounded so hurt, it broke my heart, “Ellie, my darling girl, I’m not leaving you behind because you’d be in danger if you came with us. I’m leaving you back because you’re best suited to keeping everyone safe and healthy. With you there, no matter how badly wounded someone is, you can keep them alive, until I return or until you can fix them. Plus, you’ll know more coming back because we can talk to you from a long way away. Doesn’t that sound fair?” I reached up to stroke the frill on her head, but she darted back.

I didn’t relish manipulating my daughter, but it did have its uses because after hemming and hawing for a few moments she bumped her head into my forehead before flying back toward the house we’d just left.

Just before entering, she spun back to look at us, “Kick some butt for me!” Without another sound, she spun in the air and passed through the doorway, which she slammed shut with her tail.

Keiko took my hand and I found that hers was shaking, not with fear, but with rage.

She hissed on her breath, “They’re experimenting on children, or they’re hurting children, either way something is wrong here.”

I nodded in agreement even as I squeezed her hand to show my support, “Darling Keiko, we’ll get to the bottom of this or burn everything down in the attempt.”

She hopped up and gave me a kiss on the cheek, “That’s one of the things I love about you. You’re not afraid to burn it down if the need arises.”

As Keiko and I stalked down the main street of the tiny waystation of a town, it was unsurprising that no one came out to arrest our progress. Those that would have had obviously seen what Keiko did to Gregor and wanted to avoid that fate for themselves.

As we walked, I did my best to keep Keiko calm, to keep her from blasting forward toward the central building of the town, but it was a losing battle. Every few moments she’d skip forward ten feet or so and I’d have to hurry to keep up. Long gone were the days when my long legs made Keiko struggle to keep up, now I was dealing with King level strength and speed as a Saint.

Our roles were reversed for the first time and I understood at that point why Keiko was so frustrated all the time. It was a pain in the butt having to run to keep up with someone who was supposedly just walking, though I was relatively sure she was interspersing little jogs to throw me off, or least she would’ve been if she hadn’t been chomping at the bit to make some noise in town.

We reached the end of the houses and entered the market square surrounding the central administrative building in town, which also doubled as the inn. A baker’s dozen armed guards flooded out of the central building. From their cultivations’, I could tell that they were all weaker than Gregor had been, with the notable exception of the short man in the center who was easily Gregor’s equal, if not his superior.

That short man had close-cropped black hair and a face covered in scars, he was wearing a gleaming breastplate with seemingly intricate runes carved into it, but even with my limited experience with formations I could tell that they were purely decorative, if not bestowing a very minor effect. In contrast, Keiko and my Robes of the Sun and Moon appeared mundane, but they were actually covered in a bunch of tiny formations that helped absorb qi attacks.

Breastplate man strode forward until he was three steps ahead of his compatriots and held out a hand toward us while his other hand held a long, curved, saber to the side, “Stop there, peasants. If you…”

He didn’t get to finish that sentence as Keiko pulled her fist out of the gaping hole in the person, I assumed had been the guard captain of that town’s breastplate. I heard a cracking noise and he crumpled to the ground, no longer supported by Keiko’s arm.

She glared at the rest of the guards menacingly, “Who’s in charge here?” She kicked the dead guard captain savagely, when he didn’t wince it was evident that he was no longer among the living. “Obviously he isn’t anymore and I need answers.” She cracked her knuckles, “Tick-tock, you’re on the clock. I’m going to count down from ten. Ten, nine…”

The smallest of the remaining dozen guards hurried forward before kneeling, “My lady, the man in charge is the mayor of this town. When he heard of what you did to Gregor, he requested that we slow you down as much as possible so he could make a getaway. We assumed he was…”

This time it was me who hauled the small man up by the edge of his leather armor. I bared my teeth at him, “Do you know where he went?”

The man shook violently, he hadn’t expected me to be so fast, to make my way from behind Keiko all the way to him in the blink of an eye. I debated shaking him for a moment, but then smelled the unfortunate odor of urine leaking from him, so I assumed I had him plenty afraid to answer my question.

The tawny headed man shook his head violently, “Only the captain knew where the mayor was going! You might be able to find something in his quarters if you can get into them, but he had a lot of formations on the door though. I’m sorry, that’s all I know.” His voice was shaking, but he remained, I couldn’t call it eloquent, but he was understandable and I had no small modicum of respect for that. He was lucky I had grabbed him, if Keiko had done it, he would probably have passed out just from being next to her with the waves of killing intent rolling off of her.

I hoisted him even closer to my chest, our faces were separated by mere inches, “Where was his room?”

His eyes darted behind him and toward the inn/administrative building, “In there, sir. He had the biggest room on the first floor and the mayor had the entirety of the top floor to himself.”

Seeing as he was being so cooperative, I decided to push my luck, “One more question, if you answer correctly, I’ll let you go right now and won’t kill you, or any of your comrades who lay down their arms. You interested?”

The man nodded vigorously, coming dangerously close to knocking his enormous forehead into my own. I pushed him away slightly to avoid that, “What did the new mayor do to all the children and the people in the resistance?” Despite my attempt at reining it in, my killing intent leaked out and I smelled that unpleasant scent again coming from the tiny man I was holding.

All around us, the guards dropped their weapons with a clatter and raised their hands. They knew they were outmatched and didn’t want to go down fighting. It was smart of them, as long as everything kept going the way it was at least.

The tiny man croaked, “You see,” he cleared his throat, “the new mayor killed the old mayor and took his job. Once he took over, he put a bunch of new restrictions, most of which were nonsense, in place and people didn’t like it. They especially didn’t like that the market had to get shut down and that they weren’t allowed to trade with the outside world anymore. When the resistance attacked the inn, he had the guards, beg pardon Lord, gather them up and lock them in the basement. As for the kids, he gave the few guards he trusted something to give them, but I don’t know what it was, I promise!”

At that point, the stress of the situation was too much for the scrawny man and he passed out.

I dropped him in the puddle of his own piss and looked around at the rest of the surrounding guards. At some point, Keiko had stepped forward and pulled the largest of the remaining guards down toward her by his ear. He was bent almost in half as she whispered to him, but I couldn’t hear what she said to him.

A few moments later I heard her say one thing, “are you sure?” The large man nodded emphatically before falling on his chest and covering his head with both arms, doing his best to protect it.

Keiko quickly messaged me, “These are the guards the mayor didn’t trust, not one of them knows what we’re looking for, but the mayor is just a Saint and he hasn’t been gone long, so if we hurry… we can probably catch him.” I could hear her grin in her mental voice, “I’ll have to carry you though, if we want to catch them at least.”

I sighed audibly and the guards all jerked their heads to stare at me, but I waved them away, “Sit against the wall there and leave your weapons where they are. Those of you with families, you can call them to come sit with you.”

As the large man scurried back away from Keiko, he looked at me with hope in his eyes, “None of us have families, Sir. It was the old mayor’s rule that none of the guards in town be allowed to have wives or children. It never made much sense to us, but it was good work so we followed his decree. The new mayor got rid of that rule, one of the few good things he did, but he’s only been in charge for six months, so very few of us found anybody in that time and they’re the ones he trusted for some reason. Doesn’t make much sense, but that’s the way it is, Sir.” He settled in with his back against the building and looked much more secure when I nodded to him thankfully.

I took out a poison sachet from my spatial ring and looked to Keiko, “It seems a waste to use this, but I don’t want them to be able to mess with our companions. I already made better stuff to replace this old gas, so it should be fine to use one of these here, right?” I hefted the gas bladder and looked at the guards huddled up against the entrance to the administration building.

Keiko took a moment and placed her hand on the hilt of the Dawnblade for a few seconds before shaking her head and nodding, “You’re right. There’s no good to be had in killing all the guards in town, they’re too afraid to be any trouble at this point, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

I looked at the men gathered around the building, “This is a batch of poison gas, it’ll knock you out for six to eight hours and afterward, you’re going to have raging headaches. The good news is, because of this we don’t have to kill you. Sound good to everyone?” All of the guards looked at each other quickly before nodding vigorously toward me.

“Good.”

Chapter 32

With a quick jerk of my hand, I tossed the poison pouch at the entranceway of the inn, where it burst, and watched as the gas contained within it spread out to fill the entire building and the surrounding ten feet in a matter of moments. The tiny fragments of wind cores inside aiding the gas’ dispersion. That was a trick Sensei taught me after my last batch of poison didn’t exactly spread as far as I wanted it to. It would slightly dilute potency of the mixture, but it would increase the dispersion pattern by double so it was well worth the minor reduction in effect.

We waited until all the guards were asleep, Keiko went so far as to kick the piss-soaked guard over to the pile before checking the rest of them to make sure none of them were faking it, which they weren’t.

After that, Keiko and I ran inside the building, where we made our way to the top floor, where the mayor supposedly lived. The formation wards on the door weren’t phenomenal, but rather than waste time in cracking them, Keiko simply cut us a hole through the wall to the left of the door and we made our way into the apartment.

She destroyed a coat tree when she slashed our entrance, but that was the least of our concerns. The inside of the mayor’s apartment was as nondescript as the rest of the inn, and the town itself, was. It consisted of a simple sitting area with a small table between a couch and a couple of chairs. There was a small dining area that didn’t appear to ever have been used, the plates were coated in a thick layer of dust. Next, we went to the only bedroom and found it as spotless as the rest of the apartment, it was almost like the mayor hadn’t ever moved into the apartment after cleaning out the old mayor’s personal effects. This was despite the fact that this was the only room on the fourth floor and that was supposedly where the new mayor lived.

Keiko and I got together with Sensei to chat.

“This doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t look like anyone’s ever lived here, let alone someone actively living and working out of this place. There’s even a desk that’s totally empty of paperwork in the bedroom. There’s something up, I can feel it.” I scratched my head as I looked at Keiko and then down at Sensei’s pot. “Any ideas? We have to figure this out quickly, he’s already got a lead on us. We have to get going soon if we want to catch up to him, even with your speed advantage.”

Keiko shook her head, “I don’t know, I even ran my hands over all the walls, just in case there was some kind of illusion formation blocking what was actually there, but even that didn’t find anything. Sensei? Do you have any ideas?”

There was silence for a few moments, but then Sensei began, “Is it just me, or does it feel like this apartment is too small for the entire fourth floor? I will admit it looks like it should be the entire fourth floor, but it feels like there’s missing space, also I haven’t seen an entrance to the attic anywhere and with the roof like this there’s bound to be an attic, what with them needing to shed snow, the steep roof leaves quite a bit of space underneath. It would be enough for a small apartment or at least an office.”

Before I could stop her, Keiko leapt off the ground, leaving a huge dent in the wood she launched off of before crashing into the ceiling with a surprisingly solid thumping noise. Despite her incredible strength, Keiko was bounced back like a mace crashing into an iron wall. I only had a second to catch her before she slammed back to the damaged floor, potentially crashing all the way down to the ground with the force redirected from her punch.

I threw out a cushion of wind qi as quickly as I could, infusing it with a bit of water qi for density before she slammed into it. When she emerged from the cloud I had produced, she wasn’t dry, but she also hadn’t burst through the floor, so I took it as a win. I quickly dried her off with the same method we used after every shower or bath before getting back on task.

“If the ceiling can rebuff you, there must be something to hide up there. Let’s take a look around and see if we can find any kind of hidden catches or handles that might open up the door to the hidden space. The faster we do it, the better, so let’s get to it.”

She didn’t even argue, merely looking at me before running around the edge of the room and taking down paintings and turning over candlesticks and other mundane tchotchkes.

I made my way to the unused bedroom and looked for anything that looked out of place. Eventually, I noticed the bookshelf, which had a few different ledgers and other administrative objects, also had a single pleasure reading book on it. By the spine, I could tell that its name was The Harlot and The Knave. Intrigued and mildly interested, I pulled the book out to look at it. At first, there was a soft click when I just barely released the book from its fellows, but there was a much louder clicking noise when I attempted to remove the book from the shelf. After that loud click, the room filled with a bluish gas.

Before I could run out of the room, Sensei stopped me, “Don’t run, this is expensive poison and you should be gathering it. Make a funnel of wind qi and store it in one of your gas bladders, quickly!”

I hurried to do as he asked, it took me a few moments to pull out a gas bladder, but after that, it took mere moments for me to summon up a funnel of wind qi and start sucking up the blue poison from the air. After I gathered all the gas, I also took a bit of water qi and ran it over all the surfaces in the room to gather up the particulates before adding them to the mixture inside the gas bladder, which I stored away carefully in my spatial ring.

“What kind of poison was it, Sensei? Also, why would a mayor have something trapped with poison that even you called expensive? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Sensei laughed, “I think I know who we’re dealing with. That poison was their signature, so unless something has changed, which is extremely possible, I know exactly who we’re dealing with. This has all the hallmarks of a plot put together by the Order of the Sapphire Rose. They are a guild of assassins who liked to use poison and, or, dark qi to take out their targets.”

He hesitated for a moment before continuing, “I’m not going to lie, I hired them a few times in my very long life, mostly to deal with people who were attacking my disciples as they were gathering ingredients for me. They didn’t work cheap, so there must be something more going on in this little village than meets the eye.”

As I considered what Sensei had said, I looked around the room and saw that the bookshelf had moved slightly. Knowing that I was dealing with assassins, I quickly hopped on top of the bookcase and used my feet to widen the gap between it and the wall.

I was immediately glad that I had, because as soon as the door opened three quarters of the way, two formations flared to life and blasted a pair of twelve-inch-wide beams of fire qi out the door, through the rest of the building, and out into the town through the wall of the exterior of the inn. I opened the secret door the rest of the way to make sure all the traps had been triggered before hopping down.

I turned around to go and get Keiko so we could open up the metallic door I’d revealed together. But when I turned around, I saw that she was already standing in the doorway and she did not look happy.

“What were you thinking? Why didn’t you ask me to deal with the formations? You could’ve died!”

She rushed up to me and squeezed me tightly, she actually squeezed me so tightly that it hurt, but I suffered through it.

I waited a few moments before softly patting her back, “I was up on top of the bookcase. I figured that any trap on it would probably point toward where the person would be opening the bookcase, so I didn’t worry about getting hit. Sorry about that. Next time, I’ll make sure to ask you to come over and help, like with this door.” I slowly steered her toward the newly revealed door of what appeared to be very tough metal. “I’d love it if you could pick the lock on this door or, you could use the Dawnblade and simply cut us a new entrance. I know which one would be faster, but it’s up to you.”

She snarled, “Yeah, yeah.” Whipping out the Dawnblade she made two quick vertical slashes followed by two horizontal slashes. After that, she punched one hand directly into the metal before ripping it out and throwing it behind her. She narrowly avoided hitting me with the four-inch-thick rectangle of metal when it flew past me.

“Oy! Watch it there. You almost hit me!”

She turned and shrugged before batting her eyelashes innocently at me, “Oh, I’m sorry. I just didn’t think about what was happening… my bad.” Without another word, she jumped through the hole in the door she’d made.

I realized that the hole was much smaller than I would’ve liked when I had to squeeze my way through it. I had to bend nearly in half to squeeze my lanky frame through. I made a mental note not to sass Keiko when we were in stressful situations, she did not react well to it. In private, that was a different story…

Chapter 33

A few moments after I made my way through the hole in the door, I heard a soft popping sound followed by Keiko swearing.

I ran up the staircase, which was set parallel to the wall containing the door we’d just entered. When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw that Keiko was suspended in a web of red metal and immediately knew what the problem was. She was wrapped in a web of red chains that were likely made of orichalcum. Because of that, she couldn’t produce any qi to strengthen her body. I didn’t have that problem, but when I started to move in to cut the chains, Sensei stopped me.

“Don’t waste good orichalcum, boy. Detach those chains from the wall safely and then gather them up carefully. Be careful not to touch it directly, this isn’t like the alloy your spiked chain is made up of. This is pure and as soon as you touch it, it’ll draw all the qi out of you. Use the finesse I taught you and figure it out. I believe in you. You can handle these chains.”

I didn’t do it the way Sensei wanted, I merely took out the Duskguard and smashed the housings holding the spools of orichalcum chains on the walls, floor, and ceiling. Once I gathered everything, I quickly summoned it into my backup spatial ring, being careful not to touch it directly when I did so.

Sensei grumbled, “That wasn’t what I meant, but I can’t fault you for effectiveness. B-, you could have done better.”

I shrugged, “I just took a web of orichalcum without damaging it. I’m pretty happy with that. Is orichalcum another thing the Order of the Sapphire Rose were known for?”

“Yes, they were known for injecting people with liquefied orichalcum to destroy their cultivation bases. I heard it was a very nasty way to go if the person injected was a Sage or higher and were more than a hundred years old, which is most Sages. The person injected has their body rot from the inside out, the power source maintaining it removed forcibly. It’s not a nice way to go. They were also said to use chains like this to bind their interrogation victims, though that’s only hearsay, seeing as none of those victims ever got free.”

Keiko stood rubbing where the orichalcum chains had torn open her skin when they deployed. I walked over and touched her on the shoulder, infusing her with Arctic qi and healing those small abrasions easily.

I gave her a hug, “It’s going to be okay, we’re almost there.” She clung tightly to me for a moment before turning around and starting her search of the attic.

The attic was a treasure trove of information, though most of the journals and notes we found were damaged beyond repair. The small bed appeared to have been slept in recently and there were signs of hurried packing. The few bits and pieces we found were enough that Keiko, Sensei, and I were able to piece together that the mayor had been tasked with destroying Hightower any way he could think of by some unnamed entity, or least it wasn’t named in any of the papers we found where they had fallen behind the desk.

We also found a decent alchemical cauldron, it was Expert-crafted and had gems for flame jets, though only four compared to the twenty on Sensei’s pot. It was a huge step up from what I’d been using whenever Sensei’s pot wasn’t available, so I stashed it away for future use.

The last thing we found was a half-burned fragment of a map that had fallen out of the brazier the mayor had been using to burn the evidence of his transgressions. It showed the section of the north we were in. There was a star to represent Hightower, which was circled. There was also a dot that didn’t have a name halfway between the small circle that I assumed represented where we were and the star that represented Hightower.

Sensei explained what we were looking at, “That looks like the map they had me write up for my contracts with the Order of the Sapphire Rose. That extra dot is probably some sort of rally point for the agent. I’d guess it’s a safe house. Though it could be a number of other things, that’s what I’d bet on.”

I looked at Keiko with a grin, “We have our target, let’s get going. Getting to that safe house would probably take six hours for a Saint like the mayor. For you, it’d take at least three hours, while I’d take five or so hours… I know my limitations. It’s already been two hours since we came into town and killed Gregor, so we’d better get a move on if we want to catch him before he makes it to his rally point.”

Keiko walked around and swept up everything in the room, and I mean everything, including the bed which hadn’t been nailed down. There were a couple of other miscellaneous notes underneath it, but nothing that was immediately relevant. We headed downstairs after that and prepared to leave.

I sighed as I looked over at Keiko, who was smiling with a wolfish grin, “If you make this embarrassing, I will cook nothing but Blazing Elk for the next two weeks. That’s not a threat, it’s a promise.”

Keiko’s grin deflated as she shook with revulsion, “Totally fair, no embarrassment at all, just speed.” She didn’t waste a second before scooping me up in a princess carry before taking off like a Lightning Hare down the western path toward where we thought the mayor was heading.

As I was being carried, I took a moment to shield myself from the wind and check the map from Old Ironbellows. Just as I’d hoped, the map had updated itself with the contents of the map scrap we’d found, but it had labeled all of the things that hadn’t been labeled.

Hightower was still listed, but there was a much more detailed picture of it. The town we had been in apparently used to be called Trader’s Hollow, which seemed a bit on the nose, but I couldn’t fault the inhabitants for it. The most interesting thing, however, was the final dot, the one Sensei said was a rally point for the mayor. It was labeled Order of the Sapphire Rose Northeastern Headquarters.

I quickly relayed that information to Keiko and Sensei.

After a bit of discussion, Sensei implored us to speed up, “If the mayor makes it to that headquarters, there is no way you’ll ever get ahold of him or figure out what he was doing to those kids. It will become completely impossible. You’re going to have to speed up, Keiko. I know it’s not going to be comfortable for Steven, but he’s a big strong boy and he can take it. Take advantage of that monstrous strength of yours, run!”

I could feel the grin on Keiko’s face, even as I stashed our map and curled up as tightly as I could in her arms to reduce the force on my body as the wind accelerated around us.

She roared, “You don’t have to tell me twice!”

The hour that followed was one of the worst of my entire life up to that point, I was a sack of flour being dragged around by a child. At least that’s what it felt like. I banged my feet and elbows on numerous rocks as Keiko jumped over chasms and valleys in an attempt to catch up to the mayor. She saved half an hour by launching herself across a half mile wide gap. As she had no means to produce attributed qi, she quickly yelled at me to blast out wind qi down as hard as I could. I wasn’t prepared for her request. So, when I finally got around to doing as she asked, we ended up slamming the wall five feet below where we needed to be. Which hurt, a lot.

Keiko quickly jabbed her fingers into the rock with brute force and pulled us up, but I was winded at that point and I’m not too proud to tell you that I was bitching up a storm.

“You could’ve just told me you were about to launch us over a chasm that big! How was I supposed to know? I can’t look forward at this speed without making a wind qi shield for my eyes, or my eyeballs dry out. I miss the snow sled, it was so fast, but it didn’t try to hurt me like you do when you run fast.”

I may have been laying it on a little thick, but could feel the warmth rolling off Keiko as she laughed, “Be quiet, you big baby. You asked for speed and this is speed. We’ve shaved an hour and a half off our original estimate. If my math is correct, which Sensei tells me it is, we’ll be coming up on where the mayor should be in the next few minutes, assuming he took the path, like a normal person.” She leaked disdain at the mention of a ‘normal person’.

She had my attention. I quickly situated myself in her arms and did my best to prepare for a fight, as much as I could while being carried. She ran forward a bit farther until we reached a point where Sensei thought would be a bit ahead of where the mayor would be, assuming he was a peak Saint. Though there was no guarantee that was the case, we had to assume he would be as powerful as a Saint could be, otherwise we could get blindsided.

We laid in wait in a small cave off the path. Inside there was a well-developed circle of stones around a nicely dug stone pit for the campfire. The ceiling was smoke-stained and it smelled faintly of roast boar.

Chapter 34

We didn’t have long to wait, because less than two minutes after we arrived a man in black leather armor sped down the pathway toward our location. At that point, we put into play the plan we’d come up with on the way after realizing how close we were.

Keiko waited until the mayor was only ten feet down the path from where the entrance to our cave was before springing out and tackling him into the wall across the way. Well, that’s what she would have done if he hadn’t nimbly dodged by sliding under her petite form and continuing to run. He didn’t even react beyond pushing himself to run a bit faster. I saw that his boots were glowing faintly at that point and had an inkling that we had very little time to waste.

I trusted my instincts and stepped out of the cave before lowering myself down and blasting myself forward with Inferno qi trailing behind me from my heel and foot meridians. I was a human arrow as I blasted myself into the back of the former mayor of Trader’s Hollow. He hadn’t expected a second attack so quickly, so he didn’t have time to dodge before I ground his chest on the path as we skidded a hundred feet to burn off the momentum of my capture attempt.

Keiko quickly caught up to us and turned him over before putting a foot on his neck, “What did you do to those children!? What did you do?!”

The man looked up at her before grinning and started to focus. I quickly used my backup spatial ring to dump the orichalcum chains on the section of his chest that was exposed from the roadway eating away at his armor. The grin faded from his face as I quickly gave up on using qi myself to tie him up with the orichalcum chains I’d stolen from him, in a sort of karmic irony.

Sensei spoke to Keiko and I mentally, “He was trying to detonate his cultivation base just now, quick thinking there, Steven. Wrapped in orichalcum like that, there’s no way he can do anything like that, though you’ll want to be careful to check his mouth for any false teeth, Keiko. One or more of them may be used to store poison that could kill him, especially considering he can’t use qi to heal himself, or reinforce his body, right now.”

Keiko was thorough when inspecting his teeth and found no fewer than three false teeth. One of those false teeth contained a common wood core which I thought was strange until Sensei explained that eating something like that could technically heal you, though it wasn’t very efficient. He explained that only those unskilled with wood qi would ever do that, considering it was more efficient to just use wood qi to regenerate yourself.

We pulled the former mayor into the little cave we’d found and pinned him against the back wall. He looked at us and sneered before Keiko punched the rock beside him, creating a ripple effect that blasted out into the cave.

“What! Did! You! Do! To! Those! Children!?” She punctuated each of those words with another punch that sent ripples of dust and gravel throughout the cave.

He just kept smiling, before finally speaking, “Oh, don’t worry about them. They’ll live out their purpose just fine. Hightower loves to come out and check on that little town every three months and they’ll be there tomorrow. They always gather up the orphans and take them into the city.” He craned his neck around to look up outside the cave and grinned, “Looks like the airship is already passing by. If you want to get there before it does, you’d better hurry or you’ll never see any of them again.”

Keiko didn’t hesitate, she buried a fist through the former mayor’s skull with a loud cracking noise before turning to look at me with fear in her eyes, “We have to get as close as we can and tell Ellie what’s going on. Our connection isn’t strong enough to speak from this distance, but if we make it halfway… it might be. We have to go!”

As Keiko and I raced after the airship, I took a few moments to take in as many details about it as I could and relayed them to Sensei. He didn’t exactly see things. Rather, he perceived everything within a certain range using his spiritual sense, not that I actually understood how that worked. To this day, I’m still not one hundred percent sure how he was able to see and interact with the world, but it was too useful to question it, so I never asked. The ship was outside of Sensei’s range and he asked me a rapid-fire series of questions, using me as his eyes.

“How long is the ship?”

“It looks to be about one hundred and fifty feet long.”

“How many wings does it have? Beating and stationary separately, please.”

“There are four beating and six stationary wings that I can see”

“Is it leaving any kind of trail behind it?”

“There is a faint trail of water vapor flowing behind it.”

Sensei didn’t like what I’d told him, “There is no possible way for you to catch up with that ship. With that many wings, on a ship that large, it must be controlled by a peak Duke, if not a King cultivator. With the Celestial cores it takes to power that thing, it’s only going to take that ship half an hour to travel the distance you two just made in almost two hours. Unless…”

I swung around Keiko so that we were chest to chest and tucked my head against the side of her neck, looking behind her as she easily bore my weight, “Keiko, I’m going to pour as much Inferno qi out behind you as I can do at once while maintaining it. It’s your job to make sure that we’re pointed in a direction that’s not going to kill us. Do you understand?”

Keiko cracked her neck, bumping her head against mine in ascent, “Ready to go. Give me a countdown from five and we’ll take off. If I need to let up, send me a message, because at the speed we’ll be moving, there’s no way I’ll be able to hear you out loud.”

I smiled, “Can-do, love you, let’s get back to our little girl.”

Sensei sputtered, “That is just reckless! If you would just…”

I ignored him completely, “Five, four, three, two… one!”

As soon as I hit one, Keiko sprang forward like an arrow from a bowstring. With my arms holding my legs out straight behind Keiko, her legs were free to move like normal, unlike our chase to catch the mayor, and she took full advantage of that fact. As soon as she started running, I released a little bit of Inferno qi from the meridians on my feet to speed us along until I figured out how much I could release at one time and maintain it for an hour. Or at least until we could actually speak to Ellie.

It turned out that holding myself around my wife was significantly more comfortable than being princess carried, who knew? If it weren’t for the dire situation, I might’ve enjoyed that position a bit more, but those thoughts couldn’t have been farther from my mind as I thought about what might happen to those kids, or Ellie. Without us there to protect her, she was far more vulnerable than she would have been if we were there. It’s not that I was discounting Melody and Roderigo, but they were newly minted Saints, barely out of the vapor stage. There was no way they’d be able to stop anyone with real power from taking Ellie and killing them.

As if she heard my panicked thoughts, Keiko put on even more speed as she launched us across that same half-mile chasm from earlier. This time, she let me know about it, so we were able to sail over it by almost two hundred feet before continuing our mad dash toward Trader’s Hollow.

We ran like that for half an hour before we were finally able to somewhat hear Ellie and she was frantic, “…hope you can hear this, people are trying to break down the door to get to us. Melody made a wall, but it isn’t strong enough. Please help! I will try again in two minutes. I love you, Mommy and Daddy.”

Keiko almost missed a step, which would’ve sent us caterwauling into a small ravine that we were just about to jump into. But instead of that, she dug deep and launched off even more powerfully than usual, sending us well over the small ravine and past the next one as well.

I looked up and saw that the airship was already over where I knew Trader’s Hollow was. We were still at least forty-five minutes away, even given Keiko’s Inferno qi boosted speed.

I frantically messaged Ellie, “You have to take Melody, Rodrigo, and those kids and get them out of there. An airship is there to pick up those kids and if it does so, there’s a big problem. If you can hide with the kids, maybe Melody and Roderigo can delay them long enough for us to get there. We’re still about forty-five minutes away. Please be safe!” I pushed that message with every ounce of my soul and, by some miracle, she heard me.

She sounded scared, like maybe she knew what I was talking about already and was dealing with it, “I see that airship, it stopped over the big building in the middle of town.” A moment later, she continued, “They’re lowering a gold circle from the bottom of the airship and there’s someone standing on it. Daddy, I’m scared. He feels stronger than you and Mommy together.” Her mental voice shook with fear and I knew then what I had to do.

I held on tighter to Keiko before messaging her quickly, “When I say jump, throw us as high in the air as you can and try to steer us. I’m going to do my best to get us as close to the city as possible. Jumping up and down each of these ravines isn’t going to get us there fast enough. Do you understand?”

She nodded and I felt the movement against the side of my neck. With a grimace, I quickly spun up as much Inferno qi in my lower core as I could, converting all the fire qi and wind qi in the area into pure Inferno qi. There was far more wind qi than fire qi around, so it took a bit longer than I would’ve liked, but eventually I was filled to bursting and knew I was ready.

“Three, two, one, jump!” I roared.

Chapter 35

Keiko’s powerful muscles contracted and released to launch us high into the air. I waited until I felt our ascent start to slow before unleashing a truly hellacious amount of Inferno qi behind us in a comet trail of green flames. We streaked toward Trader’s Hollow, moving even faster than we had on the snow sled. I could feel my back heating up as the force of the wind, pushing against us as it resisted the speed we were attempting to travel.

Something Taka told me about dragons back in the Inheritance of the Eclipse came to mind and I immediately released a bit of fire qi from the meridian on my neck to heat up the air in front of us to make it easier for us to fly. It was the same thing dragons did, which was why they were so fast in the air, because they just did that naturally. It left almost no resistance in the air for them to push through for some reason. I knew Sensei would have explained it to me if I asked, but at that time I didn’t care. All I cared about was making it to my daughter as quickly as possible and making sure she was safe.

I pushed Inferno qi out of my heel and foot meridians as long as I could without burning them out entirely. I left them with a dull ache before opening up the meridians on my elbows and hands to do the same thing, with slightly reduced results, but it was still a tremendous amount of Inferno qi. I could feel Keiko pouring universal qi into me from her reforged lower core and it was like breathing for me to give it an aspect and to convert it into Inferno qi directly. Without her, we wouldn’t have been able to fly like that for more than a minute, but with her help, we soared like that for almost ten minutes.

When we eventually crashed into the ground, we were only a five-minute walk from the town, but Keiko didn’t walk. She ran forward as quickly as she had at the beginning of our return trip. Her arms and legs had been saved because of the strain I was willing to put on my own body. I was totally spent, at least mentally, from the strain of releasing that much qi at once, but I knew that I’d be able to push through if it came down to it. I focused on circulating Arctic qi through all of my qi channels and meridians, despite the pain in the meridians on my extremities. I knew that Arctic qi was good at repairing the damage that I had caused myself, as long as the damage wasn’t irreparable, as long as there was something left to save. Otherwise, I would have had to use one of the Meridian Salvation pills I had squirreled away.

I only had two of those and didn’t have the materials left to make any more. There were a number of medicinal products that Sensei had me create that I couldn’t replace or replicate, but he said it was better to have them and not be able to make them again than to not have them and need them.

I could feel Keiko vibrate in anger and fear as we stormed into town.

The scene we arrived at was not our worst nightmare, but it wasn’t good. All of the children, not just the orphans, had been gathered in the center of town while the adults were all being herded off to one of the walls of stone that formed the walls. They were being led away from the large golden circle that had been lowered down to gather up the children.

They were screaming and yelling at their captors. “How dare you take my child?” and “What are you here for?” Were both common, but those entreaties fell on deaf ears. The Saint level guards escorted all of the adults in town along the wall and over into a corner before standing guard over them as the children were being gathered into the large golden circle before being carried up into the airship.

When I did a quick survey, I didn’t see Ellie, Melody, Rodrigo, Bruce, or Sarah. When I looked for the house they had been hiding in, there was nothing left but a stone box.

I messaged Ellie in a panic as I felt Keiko start to hyperventilate, “Ellie? Can you hear me?”

Her voice came back to me weak, like something was wrong, “I’m very sleepy, the people found us in the house and now we’re on the big ship! They gave me some tasty-looking food, so I ate it. I’m going to sleep now.”

No matter how many times I reached out to her after that, nothing worked. I couldn’t get through to her.

Keiko hurried over toward the block that used to be Sarah and Bruce’s house before setting me down. I stumbled a bit before catching myself on the wall.

She looked at me with pain in her eyes, “She didn’t answer, did she?” Tears were forming in her eyes and there was nothing I could do to help them.

That wasn’t technically true, that was one thing I could do and it was probably the most stupid thing I had available to me. But for our daughter, there wasn’t a lot I wouldn’t do.

I patted her on the shoulder, “There’s only one thing we can do to get Ellie out of this and you and I both know it. Let’s get it done.” Despite how wobbly I felt from being held for four plus hours that day, I did my best to seem strong as I took Keiko’s hand.

We stepped out from around the house and walked hand-in-hand down the main thoroughfare of Trader’s Hollow. We made it almost halfway to the center of town before a trio of guards found us and, when they approached, they drew weapons, but didn’t immediately attack.

The man in the middle, whom I could tell was probably a peak Saint, or at least very close, spoke, “Who are you and why are you not gathered up with the others? Your lives may be forfeit if we don’t agree with your answers.”

I could sense Keiko’s barely contained rage behind all her invisible fear and outward bravado, which was a weird combination, but it made sense when I thought about it.

I spoke calmly to the lead guard, “I am an Expert alchemist and my wife is a peak Journeyman formation master. Our bound soul beast is on your ship and we would like to offer our services to ensure her safe return into our care.”

The lead guard stared at us with thinly veiled derision, “You expect me to believe that the pair of you are an Expert alchemist and a Journeyman formation master? Your cultivations are relatively strong for your age, I’m assuming you’re fifty years old or so, but there’s no way you reached those levels in those crafts at that age. That’s impossible.”

His toadies sneered and started to laugh, but a glare from the leader shut them both up.

I smiled as warmly as I could, which wasn’t very warm, but I did my best, “You’re wrong on all accounts. Yes, we are at the ranks in our crafts that I told you we were. We are also not fifty years old.” I chuckled, “We aren’t even twenty-five yet. We’re paired cultivators and that has allowed us to gain strength quite rapidly.”

My smile sharpened when I saw the look of recognition on his face. I pressed the advantage, “Take us to your captain, we have every ability to prove we are what we say we are and there is no way that he would trust someone like you to decide if Hightower should have access to a pair of talents like us. Lead the way.”

Keiko and I stood, staring at the trio expectantly, before the central figure snapped to attention, “Of course, I’ll make sure to get you to the captain and he will determine if what you say is true and if you are worth what you’re requesting. Please, follow me.” With that, he turned to the side and started to walk away slowly, his two toadies figured out what was happening and moved to lead slightly as Keiko and I moved to follow.

We walked like that for a few moments before he couldn’t resist asking one more question, “What soul beast are you talking about? We didn’t find any typical soul beasts here.”

Keiko almost jumped forward and punched him in the base of the neck, but a firm hand from me stopped her before she could get us killed.

I was sickly sweet when I replied, “There’s nothing typical about us.”

Interlude

Dark light coalesced around the tattered form of Kabis as he appeared from the shadows. What scraps remained of his original form were now held together by horrific stretches of dark black flesh that seemed to crawl away at the touch of light. A few moments later, he swung a cloak over from one shoulder to cover the rest of his body.

He looked around impatiently, “I hope that old braggart gets here quickly, I’ve never been a fan of cold places like this.”

Kabis was standing in the middle of the clearing full of waist high snow, but around where he stood was a ten-foot diameter hole or blackened grass surrounded by a short wall of snow. The circular wall of snow was coated in dark qi that slowly rolled back toward its master a few moments after he arrived. The clearing was surrounded by dozens of enormous trees, but Kabis doesn’t pay them any mind.

Instead, he quickly conjured up a throne identical to the one he had back on Sunset Island, but in fact, it was entirely new, formed in the moment he decided he wanted to sit down. He sat with a crunch as some of the few remaining flesh scraps of Kabis’ original body ground against the overly angular throne.

He adjusted himself slightly before throwing one leg over his knee and muttering to himself, “If he doesn’t get here soon…”

A high-pitched voice started from behind Kabis, “You’ll do nothing.”

When the speaker walks around Kabis’ throne, he is greeted by a tall, lithe, and gorgeous woman with luxurious black hair. She was wearing an off-white gown that trailed all the way down one leg, but had an exaggerated cut running nearly up to the top of her thigh on the other leg.

She struck an imposing stance as she glared at Kabis’ ruined form, “You’re worse off than I thought you’d be, brother. What happened to you? Did an Emperor monster make short work of you in that weak body? Do I need to call that crazy scientist to have them take control of the beast?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

Kabis threw a spike of metal qi through where the woman had been standing, but by the time he managed to form the qi construct and throw it, she had moved a few feet from her original position, completely avoiding his attack.

He grumbled, “Couldn’t find a male body you liked, Trinator? You had to make do with that… inferior vessel?”

Despite Kabis’ voice, dripping with derision, the female laughed, “I managed to grab a King cultivator as my host. She had near total mastery over water qi and a body that’s been tempered with qi for over six hundred years. I am completely fine with where I ended up. She even gave in to me without any contest when I told her I could make her stronger than an Emperor.” She shimmied seductively for a moment before striking a provocative pose and waving at Kabis’ ruined body. “If you’d found something as nice as I did, that wouldn’t have happened.”

Kabis snarled, “A peak Saint paired cultivator detonated his cultivation base next to me in a blast full of earth qi, after a group of his companions wore down my defenses. I fought them a dozen on one after slaughtering thousands. I’d like to see you try that and walk away untouched. Anyway, this host has nearly served its purpose, the last thing I plan on using it to do before finding something to replace it with is hunt down that worm’s companions and make them wish they were dead. Forcing each of them to serve as host for our brethren, one by one, as the rest of them watch in horror as they change before their very eyes.” He laughed darkly before coughing and spitting out a bit of dark qi tinged blood.

He stood up in a flash of movement. Along his back, the dark qi coating him burst out in the shape of two massive black wings that looked to be dripping with dark qi.

He glared at his female counterpart, “Tell me what I came here for and I’ll leave, I won’t do anything to throw off your plans, Nox’s honor.”

She laughed, but rather than mirth, it sounded like it was full of derision and hatred, “My debt is paid.” She tossed a folded-up piece of paper over to Kabis, who hurriedly unfolds it before grinning.

She sneered and turned to walk away, “I can’t believe how far you’ve fallen, wait, yes I can. Good luck with your little vendetta, I’ll be serving our God in a much greater capacity, converting an entire nation to worshiping the Nox, to worshiping our God.”

Before Kabis can respond, the woman blurts forward through the air, like a meteor shooting through the night sky. Kabis grumbled as he released the lance of metal and dark qi from his closed hand.

As he looked down at the piece of paper his counterpart had given him, he grinned maliciously before cackling maniacally. He took one last look at it before crumpling it up and setting it ablaze with a tiny spark of fire qi. He looked to the south before jumping into the air and launching himself even higher upward with his ebony wings.

“Don’t get too comfortable, you little worms. I’ll be there soon and I’ll make sure you get what’s coming to you.”

Chapter 36

Sensei spoke quietly to Keiko and I in our heads, like he was afraid someone would be able to listen in on our mental conversation, “Young ones, you are stepping onto a path unlike any that we had considered, at least long-term. They aren’t going to want to give your little girl back. You’ll need to show them something truly extraordinary if you ever want to see her again. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

Keiko messaged back, her mental voice not nearly as quiet, “We’ll hold the information we have for ransom. They’ll have to…”

I cut in quickly, “Keep your voice down. If Sensei was quiet in our heads, you need to be quiet as well. We’re all thinking the same thing, or at least you and I are. Sensei, consider the information we have to give and maybe we can leverage whatever you think is best to get her back.”

Sensei was quiet for a moment before he suddenly let loose a minute noise, before he went silent. I just hoped he had a plan for us to get Ellie back. That was what was most important. He didn’t speak again, but I knew he was considering what we could safely tell someone.

When we arrived at the inn/administration building, we were greeted by what appeared to be an additional hundred guards, only one of which was a Duke, but at least three more were Saints. The rest of them were Brain cultivators and all of them were wearing the same black leather armor with a silver tower stitched into the left breast. Their weapons were more disparate, but almost all of them were of similar quality. The Saints were wearing blades that might have been Journeyman-made, maybe. As for the Brains, they were wearing weapons that couldn’t have been any better than Advanced-made, more likely, they were made by Novice smiths with an Advanced smith watching over them.

Keiko and I had a bunch of Journeyman-made swords in one of our spatial rings. They were head and shoulders better than what those guards were using and we hadn’t even considered touching them again after finding them there. We had planned on selling them once we made it to civilization.

We were led wordlessly over toward a smaller golden circle that the Duke was standing upon. Rather than being concerned at seeing Keiko and I, he merely seemed intrigued. When our trio of guards approached him, each of them saluted before speaking in unison, “Greetings, Captain.”

The captain looked at Keiko and I curiously. He cut an imposing figure despite his short stature. He was no more than 5’8” tall and he almost looked that wide, though that was obviously ridiculous, it felt like he filled that much space. His hair was long and black and was bound up in what was known as a wolf tail behind his head. He wore similar black leather armor to his subordinates, but his was obviously of at least Journeyman quality, if not Expert, and the tower on his left breast was gold, rather than silver.

He radiated out killing intent toward us, but neither Keiko nor I even slowed down. We merely stared him straight in the eye and, at that, the captain smiled.

He looked at the trio of guards before waving his arm toward the other gaggle of guards surrounding the population of Traders’ Hollow, “You three, go over and guard the fine citizens of this town. They don’t like that we’re taking their children away, and rightfully so. The fact remains that we have our orders and we will follow them to the letter. Let them know that they can put in a formal request with my uncle if they want to try and overturn his ruling. Please take down any names they give you and make sure to assist them in filling out the proper forms.”

His voice was gentle, almost soothing, but was backed by a ferocious strength that sent our trio of nameless guards scurrying over toward where the captain had indicated after they hurriedly saluted once more.

The captain waved for Keiko and I to join him on the circle, “Please, join me on this platform and I’ll take you up to somewhere more hospitable.” He looked around at the town before glancing back at us, “The two of you don’t strike me as being from this little town. I think you’ll find the accommodations on my ship to be far more hospitable.”

He looked at us expectantly, but neither of us moved. We smiled at him warmly before Keiko spoke, “my dear Captain, our names are Keiko and Steven Roh, how might we address you besides calling you Captain?” She gave a deep curtsy and I gave the bow that I knew matched the curtsy she gave. I hadn’t had much formal training in etiquette, but Keiko did teach me how to match what she was doing. It served as a decent halfway point between fully learning all the different situations and forms and not knowing anything.

The captain stroked his finally shaped goatee and handlebar mustache before replying with a smile, “Of course my dear Keiko. My name is Edgar Brighton. As you may have heard, my Uncle is the current Duke in charge of Hightower. It is a pleasure to meet your acquaintance.” With that, he gave us a very small bow, but from the way Keiko reacted, I assumed it was the appropriate level of deference.

I was useless at political posturing back then, and I still am. Get me talking to people and I’m good, but ask me to go into a court and try to get something done and I’ll flounder like a fish out of water. Keiko on the other hand, had trouble speaking in informal settings, but put her in a proper situation and she was like a shark, stalking her prey as she swam through all the hoops and rigmarole required. For us, that worked.

Keiko beamed, “It is a pleasure to meet you, Captain Edgar. We would be delighted to join you on your fantastic airship.” She turned to look at me, “Steven, dear, would you please assist me in stepping up onto the platform?”

I figured out what she was doing and rolled with it. She was trying to make it appear that she was far weaker than she was. If she appeared to be a wallflower, Edgar wouldn’t see her as the threat she truly was.

Unhurriedly, I stepped up next to Captain Edgar on the platform and held out my hand for Keiko to grasp, “Of course, Dear, please take my hand.”

Edgar smiled wide as we joined him on the platform, “It is wonderful to meet a pair of friendly faces so far outside the norm.” As he spoke, the platform we were standing on started to rise slowly toward the airship above. “It’s even more surprising to run into a pair of Saints as young as you two are. I assume you have quite the story to tell and I would love to hear it. If you two wouldn’t mind?”

His voice was so smooth, it almost felt like there was some sort of technique at play that was making him seem more reasonable, but Sensei dissuaded me from the notion when I asked him about it.

“He isn’t using any sort of technique on you that uses qi, I’d be able to tell. He is just that charming and he doesn’t appear to be at all hostile. Then again, he’s a Duke and you two are Saints. You don’t rate hostility from him, unless he wants to kill you. Please be careful.” His voice was so quiet when he spoke that it took me a few moments to figure out exactly what he had said.

Keiko smoothly replied to Edgar’s request, “We have a few things we would like to attend to first, but would be more than happy to regale you with our tale.” She paused for a moment as the platform slowly settled inside the base of the ship. “My word, your ship is truly lovely!” She laughed daintily behind a fan that she had produced from a spatial ring, or at least I assumed she had.

She wasn’t wrong, the room we appeared in was at least thirty foot lengthwise and twenty widthwise. There were four small chests lined up against the wall toward the back of the ship and there was a door set into that same wall in the opposite corner from where we entered. The platform we had ridden up on was in the rear port corner and the door was in the rear starboard corner. I didn’t know those terms at the time, but I learned them quickly afterward from Sensei. In addition to the small chests, the room was arrayed with what appeared to be a decent sized sitting area with a water feature tucked up against the nose of the ship.

Despite all of that, Edgar merely led us toward the door after banishing his armor to some sort of spatial storage device. That action revealed a set of finely crafted leisure clothing made up of a black shirt with a golden tower embroidered over the left breast and a pair of silver and green slacks.

He grinned as he turned to look at Keiko and I, “I do so hate when I have to appear all formal in front of the guards. You see, my uncle has them spy on me and it wouldn’t do for them to see me as casual as I usually am out of his demesne. If you would please follow me, I’ll take you to my personal quarters and we can discuss whatever you’d like there. Does that agree with you?”

Keiko curtsied even deeper than before, “Of course, Captain Edgar, that sounds truly splendid.” I merely nodded my assent, letting Keiko do the lion’s share of the talking at that point.

Edgar frowned slightly, “I’d appreciate it if you'd just call me Edgar, there are hundreds of men and women aboard the ship to call me Captain, but none of them call me Edgar. I’d appreciate if you would be the first to refer to me as I request, rather than as my uncle tells them to”

For some reason, I liked him, despite the fact that he had kidnapped my daughter. I didn’t think he would do something like that, capturing and drugging a sapient being. I thought it must’ve been some flunky trying to gain clout, so I spoke up.

“Of course, Edgar, though if we get any closer, I do reserve the right to call you Ed, or Eddie if you’d prefer.” I grinned and it took everything I had not to wince as Keiko nearly broke my hand when she squeezed it so hard.

She screamed at me mentally about how I was wrecking what she was doing, but what Edgar said after that blew away everything she had been saying.

Edgar gave us his first real smile. It pushed all the way to his eyes as he looked at me like I was made of gold, “I hope we become familiar enough that you can call me Eddie, but you can call me Edgar for now. I’ll have an assortment of refreshments prepared and delivered to my quarters. If the pair of you would please head down the hallway toward the back of the ship, you’ll find a stout door there with a golden tower embossed upon it.”

He held out a tile toward me with a golden tower with an ornate E inlaid on it, “Just tap this tile to the door and it should open and allow you entry. I’ll be along shortly. Please make yourselves at home.” He sounded so happy, it even quelled Keiko’s rage for a moment, though it was only for a moment.

I nonchalantly took the tile from the captain, “Thanks for that, Edgar. We’ll be waiting for you when you get there.” I gently flexed the hand that Keiko had nearly broken, “My dear, we should let Edgar take care of what he needs to and go rest in his state room. He said he would be along shortly, so we shouldn’t have long to wait.”

Edgar grinned as he led us out into the lavish hallway that I assumed would only be for the crew’s living quarters, not for anyone else onboard the ship. The walls were covered in paintings of people who looked a lot like Edgar, as well as beautifully carved stone and wooden figures of different flying beasts. The floor was made of some sort of finely crafted wooden tile that was laid out in an intricate pattern that it took me a few moments to realize was probably designed to represent the flow of the northern wind through the mountains. The craftsmanship was incredible and when I looked up to complement Edgar on it, I saw that he had disappeared down the hallway.

Keiko demurely led me along the hallway, even as she spoke as calmly as she could mentally, “Steven, I love you dearly, so please take this with that in mind. What you just did was incredibly stupid. If he had not reacted the way he did, there’s every chance he would’ve taken affront and killed us. There is nothing I could’ve done to save us and with you hurt as you are, there’s nothing you could’ve done to save us. Do you understand that? I need to understand what you were thinking if you do.”

Her voice was cold, she was more pissed off than I ever remembered to that point, but it wasn’t just anger, it was mixed with so much fear that it came across as icy as the Arctic qi she could no longer produce.

As I spoke inanely out loud about how wonderful the decorations were, I replied to her mentally in a calm and cool fashion, “I hope Sensei backs me up on this, but somehow, I knew he was looking for a friend, not another toady. He has hundreds of toadies, but finding a pair of young people, even younger than he is, who might one day be his peers… He was desperate for us to like him. He should’ve interrogated us down on the ground, that would have been safest for him, but instead he invited us into his personal quarters. The more familiar I get with Edgar, the better.

“Stars, if we become friendly enough, I might be able to just ask him to give Ellie back and the same thing with Melody and Roderigo. Otherwise, we’ll have to sell ourselves into the service of his uncle to get them back and neither of us want to do that. It’s not that we wouldn’t do it, but I’d really rather not have to. Sensei, do you see where I’m coming from?”

As Keiko seethed, Sensei gave his two coppers, “I didn’t get that sense from him, but from the captain’s reaction, I think Steven is entirely correct. I think that Edgar has been put on a pedestal for his entire life and he finally found someone willing to treat him like a person, rather than a figure. With the way he reacted, there is every opportunity that he might be willing to help you get back your little girl and your friends. I’d say that you let Steven take the lead when you aren’t in public with him, because he’s obviously taken with him. Friendship solves more problems than fighting. Trust me on that, I was terrible at friendship and great at fighting, but I wished every day that it was the other way, but I never found the knack for making friends. Steven has the knack, so you should take advantage of it.”

Keiko was stunned into silence when Sensei backed me up. Despite her many misgivings, she decided to let things go the way they were already going and to just be on her guard if things went south. As we looked around the room, I took time to gently massage her back with my free hand in an attempt to calm her down. It didn’t work, but it was worth a try.

Edgar’s stateroom was massive, especially considering the ship was only one hundred and fifty feet long. The fifty-foot by thirty-foot area, that butted right up against the rear of the ship, was lavishly appointed. The thing is, from what we could tell, only two areas appeared to actually have been lived in. They were a single seating area, which could generously seat six but was obviously intended for four, and his bedroom, the door of which hung slightly ajar. Inside, an opulent four poster bed was adorned with more gold and filigree than any other bed I’d ever seen. Everything else in the stateroom appeared gorgeous, but entirely unused.

She punched me in the arm, much harder than necessary, but not hard enough to deal any real damage, “I knew something about this room felt familiar. This is just like the room I had back in my father’s compound. I know you weren’t allowed in there much, but I’m willing to bet you remember how my little sparring area and my bed were obviously well-used, but all the other parts of the room were completely untouched.” She grumbled under her breath, “Maybe you were right, maybe he is just looking for someone to call a friend.”

Before I could respond, the door we entered through closed with a soft click. Concerned, I whirled around, I’d closed the door myself. Standing by the door was a grinning Edgar. He beamed at Keiko and it didn’t take long for it to become obvious as to why.

His smile lit up the room, “My dear Keiko, you have it exactly. I’ve lived the life that most would desire, but all I ever really wanted was a group of people to call friends, not retainers or servants. You two are the first chance I’ve had at that, so I’m willing to take this slow if need be.” He walked over to the sitting area and took the most well-worn seat. He kicked his feet up on the table and waved for us to join him.

After we all got settled, he looked from Keiko over to me before wringing his hands nervously, “So, I went and took the reports of Lieutenant Smithers, the leader of the trio who brought you over to see me. He had a few very – I’m going to say colorful - things to say about the pair of you. The first of which is that you’re not even thirty years old yet and you’re both Saints. He also said that you advanced so quickly through a method called paired cultivation.

“I had the archivist on board take a look in our records for any mention of paired cultivation and only found the smallest mention of it in a report twenty years ago from a small village in the highest northern reaches of my uncle’s territory. It doesn’t explain why it would accelerate your cultivation, but I hope you’d be willing to explain how that works, if you wouldn’t mind.

“Secondarily,” he looked at me directly, “he said that you claimed to be an Expert alchemist,” he looked over to Keiko, “and that you claimed to be a Journeyman formation master.” When the pair of us just nodded along, he continued, “As much as I’d love to take your nods as confirmation, I’m going to need you both to answer those questions verbally.”

He took a deep breath, “But, before that, I have two things I need to do. One, I need to prepare tea for you two, it was rude of me to forget the refreshments when I joined you. I’m very sorry about that, Lieutenant Smithers stopped me along the way and distracted me with his report.”

When he looked over toward the door with a glare, I quickly waved my hand over the table between the chairs were sitting on and summoned up a full tea service, the nice one I got as a gift from Miriam for saving her and her husband’s lives, in addition to pulling Sensei’s pot out and placing it in the center of the small table.

When Edgar turned back to look at the source of the noise, he found me preparing tea in a very traditional method Sensei taught me about from back in his time. It was intricate and, frankly speaking, needlessly elaborate but it was very impressive to those who hadn’t seen it before. It also showed a bit of worldliness that I didn’t naturally possess, so I played it up.

“Edgar, please let me introduce you to a fabulous ancient tea service that I learned of on my travels. I’ll be making Ancient’s Brew, which I’m assuming you’ve probably never heard of. Am I wrong there?”

Edgar did his best to appear nonchalant as he settled back in his seat, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it and I know I’ve definitely never drank it before. Are you sure it’s alright for you to be preparing tea for me? You’re my guests, I should prepare the refreshments. It’s only right.”

I smiled as I set Inferno qi swirling in Sensei’s pot to heat up the tea mixture as quickly as possible to avoid the ingredients losing their potency, “Among friends, you don’t worry about who’s providing the food or drink, you just enjoy their company while you’re spending time with them. Now, if you’d give me a few minutes, I’ll have some delicious tea ready as well as a few snack cakes I prepared for travel. They’re quite delicious, I promise.”

Without even waiting for an answer, I set about making the Ancient’s Brew while Keiko and Edgar started talking.