Prologue (Patreon)

The first realm came into focus around Zen Hei’s carriage and his guards.

The defenses around the totem showed signs of fighting, the gates that would admit one into the city were half sealed to slow the progress of people.

Fighters all wearing the same open faced helmets, fatigues, weapons and slimmed down armor stood ready on the walls, weapons pointing at the totem, ready for use.

They all wore hardened expressions, among them there were several with the face piece of their helmet sealing them away from the world.

“Keep moving, those travelling by foot or with a mounted beast on the right, carriages on the left! Prepare your beast storage crates for inspection!”

The carriage and guards gained attention as they rolled over the pitted ground, following the procession of carts that were entering the city. Every beast storage crate was checked and contracts descended in golden light.

“Everyone that enters the Alvan Empire must adhere to the safety contract. If you do not, then please exit back through the totem!” Another guard said.

The carriage reached the inspection station.

“I’m going to have to see anyone that is inside the carriage.” A guard said.

“Sir?” Captain Khasar  moved to the door.

Hei Zen opened the door, seeing the soldier, the signs of fighting all over his features and clothes.

“Hei Zen, from the alchemist association. I have been sent here to talk to Lord West.”

The guard turned his head to the side communicating through his sound transmission device.

“Identification?” He held out a hand.

“Who do you think you are to ask Master Hei for his identification?” One of the guards nearby sneered, placing his hand on his sword.

The man’s expression didn’t twitch as he put his hand on his rifle, looking at the guard with an expression of one that had seen and dealt death so closely he had seen the reaper on the other side.

“Shut the fuck up or I will tear you down from that goddamn horse.” It wasn’t a boast it was a flat iron truth.

The mana in the area became sluggish and the man’s skin hardened, showing faint red lines.

Earth and Fire tempering.

“Here we are,” Hei Zen smiled and held out a medallion.

The man looked away from the guard, as if nothing had happened.

Khasar shot the guard a look, quieting him.

The soldier took out a formation and pressed the medallion to it. It showed some light projected words.

“Welcome to Shida, you will all need to complete a contract and your beast storage devices will be checked. A representative will meet you outside the totem processing facility.” The solider returned the medallion and waved to his people, they started moving among the guards, doing as he said.

They went through with detached professionalism.

“I promise on my life I will not attack anyone within the Alvan Empire or attempt to harm anyone in any act other than self defense. I swear this on the ten realms.” Zen Hei completed the contract, the golden light suffusing his body as he lost some experience.

HE boarded his carriage again and they left the totem, passing through the gates he got a greater sense of what had happened.

Buildings had been smashed apart where barriers had failed, people were clearing the rubble and trying to rebuild their homes. Mages worked together, repairing water and waste lines. People were stunned, huddling together and looking around with wide eyes.

Military units moved through the streets, everyone moving out of their way. Some wore the more traditional armor of the ten realms, gambisons, leather and plate in some places with swords on their hips, shields on their backs and repeaters in their hands. Others, like the guards at the totem wore the thinned down armor and updated helmets with weapons that Hei Zen had never seen before.

Undead were working for the mages, each a juggernaut in their own right clearing roads and moving materials through the city.

A woman waved them down to the side. She had three others with her.

Khasar went up to her and talked with her before returning to the carriage.

“That’s Roska, she’s one of the people that has led Erik’s guards in the past, she will take us to go and see him. She says that he’s hidden from prying eyes and she will need us to agree to not share information.”

“Are you expecting me to have a conversation through my carriage window,” Zen Hei said.

“Sir,” Khasar sighed.

Zen Hei opened his door, feeling Khasar’s defeat in the air as he stepped down and closed the door. Khasar walked behind him towards the trio.

Roska and the two others bowed their head.

“I’m told that you can take me to see Erik but there are stipulations?”

“Yes, your grand-student Delilah herself made them, she wants to see you as soon as possible to assist if possible.”

If Delilah needed his help for something then it must be bad. An Expert alchemist was capable of making some extremely powerful concoctions.

Roska offered a piece of paper, Khasar read it and then handed it to Hei Zen.

He skimmed it once.

“The association is not going to like my report, going to have a few holes.” He chuckled. “I agree on the ten realms to adhere to this contract.”

He completed the second contract of the day.

“Okay, now that’s done.”

“Guards as well,” Roska said.

They all completed the contract, before Roska and her people guided them towards a pillar rising up into the sky, its peak covered in mist.

“We will travel by Kestrel, it will be the fastest way,” Roska said.

As they rode in the lift to the top of the pillar Old Hei broke the silence.

“So, what is all this mist?”

“That’s mana, aggravated by the fighting and released by it. We’ll have it cleared in a few days, right now its just a pain in the air.

“We tried to teleport to Chonglu city but we couldn’t find it as a location.”

“The city was called Zahir- it was bombarded by the United Sect Alliance in the fighting and leveled.” Roska said as they reached the top of the pillar.

They walked onto the flight deck, a Kestrel with its wooden cabin on its back.

Once mounted the rear ramp grew back together.

The Kestrel jumped off of the pillar, Old Hei grabbed onto the wall and chair other guards yelling as the Alvans glanced over and sat back, relaxing before the Kestrel’s wing’s caught the air, sending them cruising over the countryside-towards King’s Hill.

Old Hei settled his beard and clothes, grinning a bit at the excitement, his smile failed as he looked out of the cabin’s windows.

The ground had been torn asunder in the fighting, one could see where barriers had blunted the blast, unnatural lines in the midst of destruction.

Fields had been torn up in the fighting, stone platforms grouped together, showing signs of damage. White undead were piling up hills of black.

“What are those?” He yelled to Roska nearby.

She used the hand grips on the ceiling to move over with ease, despite the drops and rises of the Kestrel.

“Those stone pads are bunkers, some of the towers have returned, others will need new ones to be built.”

“No those piles.”

“Bodies.”

Old Hei swallowed as they reached the outposts standing outside the forests. The fighting had been fiercer here.

Smoke carried away from the outposts. People moved through the destruction, clearing and rebuilding their lives. The walls had been repaired, showing fresh stone.

“They hit the cities, pinned our forces in there, then smashed against the outposts, where they could open up a route they pushed through and used teleportation pads to shift their forces. We turned the forest into a death trap but leap frogging their forces with their teleportation pads we’d be fighting against ten of them and ten it would be a hundred in a few minutes.”

More bunkers rested around the outposts. The roads past the outposts were being repaired by different crews.

“We pressed them into work repairing what they broke.”

“Wait, all of those,” Hei Zen looked at the lines moving up the roads, reshaping them.

“Yeah, prisoners, a few hundred thousand. Look you can see one of their corvettes.” Roska pointed in the distance.

They broke through the mana fog trees had been blown apart either randomly or in pockets. A dark line like a jagged scar ran from one outpost and deep into the forest.

Among the trees behemoths lay. Corvettes as long as the pillar they had set off form was tall lay broken upon that patch of destruction.

People could be seen moving across the corvettes in a hive of activity, and through the scar.

“That’s what we call the bunker-line,” Roska pointed to the line of squat stone buildings that the scar stabbed into, thinning into a spearhead and then breaking through.

“It,” Hei Zen had been trained in conversations, had talked to leaders of nations and sects, but now, seeing the destruction before him he wondered just how anyone could make it through all of this. His eyes were drawn across the glassed destruction around a small hill, a hole bored through dirt and stone.

Already the hole was being filled in, bunkers and towers had been built around the hole and the surrounding high points.

He looked at the broken frigate and corvettes again, trying to just imagine what it had been like.

The Kestrel rose in altitude.

“From now on you are not to report on anything,” Roska said, making sure that all of the guards heard her as well.

Carved into the mountain there was a light hangar. The Kestrel came in, flapping her wings before settling down halfway into the hangar.

Roska balanced with one grab rope, walking towards the rear as the ramp lowered.

They followed her out, heading to a set of lifts that dropped down into the depths of the mountain.

“All maps here please.”

They turned over their maps to a soldier before stepping on the lift. At the bottom they passed through several other lifts and down through corridors.

They came out into a medical area, there were rooms filled with pods containing people.

“Old Hei!” Delilah saw them as they turned a corridor.

She ran towards him and he waved his guards away as she hugged him.

She looked like she had not slept in several weeks.

“Please, come with me.”

She rushed him down the hall and into a room. Inside there were several healers and alchemists tending to ten pods lined up on either side of the room. Guards at the door rose before letting them through.

She stopped at the bottom of two pods, inside lay Rugrat and Erik. They had been stripped to their underwear.

Their bodies were covered in angry scars, it looked as if crystals were peeking through their skin.

“You must be Master Hei,” A woman approached. “I am Julie, the one in charge of this ward.”

“What happened?”

Julie looked at Delilah who nodded.

“A dungeon core blew apart, shards are embedded into their skin, muscle even bones. They also drew so much power through their bodies that they pretty much broke down. Right now we’re trying to get them to heal, but the dungeon core shards are working against us, they draw in the power of the concoction,s purify it into semi-purified mana that then starts to poison their bodies with the elements. Can’t remove the shards because the strain on their bodies.” Julie sighed and rubbed her dry eyes.

“Their cultivation has been effectively crippled.”