Paulus 4 - Strong to Weak
There's a recurring dream I have. It doesn't show up every night, it shows up in small batches here and there. Sometimes I can go for months without having it until I almost forget about it, and other times I have it three or four times a week. Waking up it slips through my fingers like dust, it's almost completely forgotten by the time I blink the grit out of my eyes save for the firm knowledge that I'd had the dream again. But going in it's like a crystal clear vision of the present and I instantly know where I am and what I'm doing; That I'm having the dream.
It always starts with traveling across the desert at high speeds. The wind of my passage is hot on my face, and so powerful that I have to squint to protect my eyes. The regular but rapid beat of footsteps running across the dunes reaches my ears, but I can't feel myself digging my toes into the grit and launching forward to the next sandy peak. I'm not the one running, I'm being carried.
I'm younger in the dream, younger than the twins even. I'm bound up in a cloth harness on the back of a man who dashes and leaps across the sands, covering hundreds of meters in a single bound. I can tell that he's trying to be gentle in his movements, only leaping when he can guarantee a soft landing skidding down the far side of a dune, but I'm still left clinging desperately to his neck to keep myself from being jostled out of the harness. I can't change what happens, but I can see and feel everything happening as if I was there in full wakefulness. I lick my cracked lips with an equally dry tongue and wait for the brief moment when he's in the air between sandy peaks to ask the question I always do.
"Dad, why are we running?" The sound is lost in the wind and the impact of his landing, but somehow he still hears me and answers.
"We run because we are weak, child." He doesn't pause his steps as he replies and I hear him just as much as a vibration through his back as a voice from his lips. He takes great ground eating steps as he charges down the side of a dune, picking up speed for a new leap. It gives me just enough time to put some real indignation in my voice.
"No way! You're the strongest!"
He rumbles vaguely by way of response, focusing on his footing for the landing before opening his mouth to continue.
"Your mother has been lax in your teaching. Weakness is not the opposite of strength, nor its absence." His voice takes on a familiar commanding lilt, and I'm lost for a moment trying to remember other times I've heard it before he continues. "Take the desert for example. Though I scatter countless grains with my every step I would be hard pressed to defeat a single dune. I may rage at the ground beneath me for days only to find the sands perfectly fine after my rampage and by the day after any sign of my existence might well be forgotten."
"I don't get it." I eventually admit.
"You will, in time." He rumbled with such certainty that I felt myself believing him. "A city isn't raised up all at once; It is built brick by brick over the course of a lifetime. Now hop down and make some room. This is going to be messy." He slides to a halt on the leeward side of a dune and slings my harness off with gentle but firm motions. I stumble as I am suddenly standing on my own feet again but instead of trying to get my footing I scamper away from him as quickly as I can, falling to my hands and knees and even resorting to rolling down the side in my haste.
I'm not a second too soon. A whistling in the air and a muffled impact heralds the arrival of another. I can't see who it is since I never turn around in the dream but I can hear his voice just barely over the sound of my own rough breathing as I skitter around a nearby rocky outcrop. It's a rough and masculine voice filled with malice and dark excitement.
"Leaving so soon?" The unknown man speaks. The words tumble out almost on top of each other in between wet wheezing breaths.
"I have no quarrel with you, leave me be."
"Ohhho~ but I have a quarrel with you... I've got a real beef to take out of your hide, and I'm not leaving until I findouthowittastes-!"
The last rushed words prelude twin explosions of sand and dozens of impacts as flesh meets flesh. I've never quite been able to tell how many blows they exchanged over the next six seconds, and I'd forget the count by the time I woke up anyway so it's meaningless. It ends with the sound of breaking bone and a sickening thud and in the next second I feel myself being swept up by powerful arms. I see my father, stern face splashed with blood and several bite sized chunks missing from his right arm. It's the most wounded I've ever seen him and the grimace of pain he makes as he swings me behind his back drives a nail through my throat. I scramble into the harness as quickly as I can and I catch the smallest glimpse of a headless corpse sliding down the dune behind us before the world blurs and dad leaps; We're on the move again.
We encounter more people as we travel, some from ahead, most from behind. They arrive in ones and twos and I spend brief minutes on my own two feet as they clash with my father. He wins every time, and every time I see him again is the worst he's ever looked. Eventually the one who comes to pick me up isn't my father but a man in strange robes with foreign features.
He sneers at me and taps a jade token on my head, throwing me roughly to the ground when nothing happens.
"Just some snot nosed brat." He calls out.
"No reaction from the token?"
"Nothing. Either he's not one of them or it's too weak to matter."
"Mmmh, cut his throat just in case. I don't want some cliche story where he shows up in thirty years for revenge."
The man scoffs and leaps away from me vanishing out of sight of my hiding place as he replies.
"My karma is shakey enough as it is. If you want to risk killing some unrelated brat then go right ahead."
"Pass. If I have to visit old man Gong again I'll lose my mind."
"Just sea-"
The remainder of their conversation is drowned out by twin explosions as the two leap away, and try as I might I can never figure out any more of what they said as they leapt away. I stay there for the rest of the night, curled up in a hollow in a stone. The dream ends before I get the courage to venture out.
"Paulus!"
I snap awake instantly, the knowledge that I had the dream again the only thing remaining as I turn to look at Leto. I'm in my 'personal residence' by the fortress, really just a big tent that can sleep a bunch of people and store all my stuff. While most cultivators tend to use rings for storage as soon as they can afford it, It's just not in my reach yet.
Leto looks at me with arms crossed, tapping her foot impatiently as she waits for me to wake up properly. Normally she's pretty patient with me, so I guess she's been trying for a while.
"What is it Leto?"
"You promised you'd help me today?"
I racked my brains trying to remember what she was talking about and came up short. There was a reason why I'd slept here instead of with the squad last night but my mind was still spinning and grasping for the dream.
"Remind me what we're doing?"
Without missing a beat Leto pointed at my side table where I had 'Library Raid Today' written down on a slate in bold script, circled and with several arrows pointing to it. Ah, yes of course. We were going to the library.
--
The clan maintained several areas for members of the Legions to hone their skills. From forests full of spirit beasts and finicky herbs to great storehouses of knowledge and techniques passed down by prior generations. Assets that could benefit anyone from a heavenstage cultivator to a core formation elder preparing to make another big leap were carefully gathered, catalogued, and prepared for use at any time across a number of disciplines. One of those places was a core formation array library, but it wasn't just any library. This was located in the heartlands of Golden Devil territory, past the Indomitable Peaks, across leagues and leagues of security arrays and the full might of the clan ready to fall on any interlopers. It was built in the shadow of the Dawn Fortress itself, a place so laughably secure that the thought of anyone breaking into it was probably the furthest thing from anyone's minds.
So we were going to break into it.
With primary training done, we were allowed to move about and do what we needed to cultivate again and I, like all aspirants, had spent the last few years all but locked into the Dawn Fortress getting whipped into shape. Nobody would bat an eye at an aspirant stepping out to explore the area or making a trip to the city as soon as we got the chance. I'm sure many of my own squad members were doing just that and I would be doing the same had Leto not stumbled on some interesting information the other servants were whispering about
The situation as it was explained to me was such. The clan had lost a bunch of core formation cultivators several years ago and hadn't had time to replace them all yet. The remaining core formation elders had been spread thin across areas that desperately needed their attention and that had thrown a lot of normal procedure into disarray. Foundation did the work of core, heavenstage did the work of foundation, and some places left largely unmanaged if they could help it, the elders preferring to make use of able cultivators out in the field. That meant that places as otherwise secure as the library we meant to visit barely got a look by a guard every now and again, and the arrays required to access it had been simplified quite a bit to allow elders not specialized in the field to access it without having to find said overworked guard every time they wanted to get inside.
None of this would have made a difference if one of the elders hadn't replaced said simplified array with one that was juuuust complicated enough that it wouldn't be broken by a curious trainee, but simple enough for them to get in with a wave. One that was apparently simple enough for a determined servant girl to get her hands on with some work. Leto was sure that the formulas she'd gotten her hands on would be enough for her to slip in and take a look at something good to share with the family. I wasn't quite so optimistic but she was going to try it with or without me and I figured that if I went along I could at least play it off as a wrong turn or a prank when we got stonewalled.
Getting to the library was as simple as I expected. Nobody spared us a glance as we walked the halls and slipped out into the fields. In the hour of walking from the fortress we never saw so much as another person, and to my massive surprise when we got to the grey stone building that was our target, Leto slipped in through the first set of doors after only a few feverish minutes of waving a stick around and muttering under her breath. She still had several inner doors to get past, but maybe this would all go smoothly after all.
"Captain Paulus."
I should not have thought that.
I turned to face Singing Fang Nabu, already snapping to attention as the man leisurely strolled across the golden fields. He ran a hand through the towering stalks of wheat, smiling as his hands struck a solid core that refused to bend.
"Instructor Nabu. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
He quirked an eyebrow at me and flashed me a smile full of gleaming bronze teeth as he crossed the last few meters to stand before the doors.
"I could ask you the same thing, young Captain. I am merely doing my rounds to ensure this array library remains intact. It is far away from the others, you see, and care must be taken to ensure its contents are not damaged by foolish hands."
"Ha ha, yea of course."
He studied me for a moment, lips curled up in a genial smile. "I know you must be itching to get away and join your friends after all that training, but If you are free for the moment you wouldn't mind accompanying an old man for a game?"
A game was the last thing on my mind at the moment, but if I could get Nabu out of here without him asking questions I'd call it a win for the cause.
"That sounds great, Instructor. Where are we going?"
He smiled in response, waving a hand and producing a squat table from an aperture. The table was made of polished brown stone and was covered in thin black lines that formed an orderly grid.
"Oh, nowhere at all young captain. While my task is a simple one it does require me to remain on site for- oh maybe an hour or so. Without proper entertainment sometimes I get bored and browse the shelves but I find this a much preferable pastime. Don't you agree?" A gesture slid open two drawers in the side full of small round stones, one set black and the other white. He sat crossed legged on one side and beckoned for me to do the same.
My lips twitched as I fought against the frown threatening to overtake them. Instead of answering verbally I nodded brusquely and took a seat on the opposite side of the board.
"Do you
Ludus?"
"Can't say I have, Instructor." I said with a shake of my head. I'd seen a lot of games while growing up, some even played on a board, but this one had way too many lines compared to anything else I'd played.
"No matter.
Ludus is simple to learn, though difficult to master. There are many variations but in its most basic form each side controls fifteen pieces total, ten heavenstage, four foundation, one core." He dug around in the drawer full of black stones and pulled out three with slightly different sizes, pointing to each in turn from smallest to largest as he named their categories, "The goal is to defeat your enemy's pieces before they do the same to your own."
He went on to explain the way the pieces could move, what they could do, and where they were placed to start the game. Then, he destroyed me. He approached every game by ruthlessly taking advantage of my lack of understanding, repeatedly defeating me until I could figure out a way to at least survive the strategy. Then he seamlessly switched over to something that defeated my counter strategy and beat me over the head with it until I could figure out another route. Sometimes he ended up going back to previous strategies when whatever I was currently doing "did not properly respect the opponent" in his words and I had to figure out how to protect from whatever new stuff he'd pulled out without making myself vulnerable.
Needless to say I didn't end up taking more than one piece a game from him, much less winning, and even that was because it was nigh on impossible to stop a core piece from sacrificing itself to take a heavenstage in a fit of spite. After almost two dozen (very short) games he chuckled and swept up the
Ludus set with a wave of his hand.
"I think that's enough for now, young Captain. While it is always interesting to see new players, I do have guard duties to return to." He glanced at the door to the Library meaningfully and stood up to walk away. "Besides, I'm sure we'll be meeting again soon."
I tried to puzzle that out as he disappeared into the distance, but before I could decide whether or not I was in real trouble I heard the door creak open and Leto tiptoed out with a frustrated look on her face.
"Breaking into a core formation library wasn't as easy as you thought?" I ventured
"I almost had it!" She huffed back indignantly. "Just when I drew the last line it changed on me and now it's all-" she raised her hands and gestured vaguely in a way I guessed was supposed to be about the door array "different! Ugh."
She stomped away back in the direction of the fortress and I leapt to my feet to keep up with her. She grumbled all the way back about the way the array had changed just before she finished opening the seal and how they weren't supposed to do that. By the time we got back to the fortress however she was looking more thoughtful than upset.
"...Give me a week to figure this out. I think I have an idea."
We parted ways at the servant's quarters and I made a beeline towards the contribution boards. There were vanishingly few tasks someone at my level could even qualify to take, especially since all but the most out of the way were being swept up before I could even get there for some reason, but I had to do what I could. Everyone was working hard to get ready to join up properly, I had to do my part to pave the way.
I grabbed a task for cleaning some out of the way tomb and dashed back out the side gate. If I worked fast I could make it back in time for the next round of training. I'd be cutting into my cultivation time but this should only take a few months. I could make it up on the back end.
-----------------
That was ten years ago.
The missions never got any better paying the entire time. More often than not all I could find were dregs of dregs, and a look at stuff above my strict power level told me the pickings were equally slim all the way up to the end of my clearance to view at foundation. Because of that a task I expected to knock out in a few years was still unfinished. We'd accumulated enough between us to get Filia and Spiros into training, even with no guarantees about them ending up in the same place, but Leto and Korina were still on the outside.
That made her trips to the Library even more important. At first we'd come back every week, then every month, and after a while we ended up only stopping by once or twice a year. By this point both of us figured there was something fishy with the information, but she
was making progress and learning from the attempts besides. Since nobody had shown up to stop us there was pretty much no reason to stop ourselves. In fact I never saw the place in use or anyone coming or going from this place on our trips. Except Nabu of course.
Singing Fang Nabu showed up for our every attempt, arriving shortly after Leto slipped inside and suddenly remembering some business he had to attend to minutes before she came back out. And always, always he had his
Ludus board.
I was starting to survive almost half an hour now, though that was more due to the amount of time I had to think between moves than an appreciable improvement in how many turns it took me to lose. I could and did blow countless turns on empty maneuvering back and forth to make it more tedious for Nabu to defeat me, but the man never showed a crack.
"You are hardly the first to attempt such a delaying tactic, young Captain. It is in fact a valid strategy at higher levels of
Ludus and indeed combat in general. I've had a game going with Elder Xu for about 43 years now and we put in a few hours every week. Though to be fair that board is quite a bit bigger than this one." He'd said with a smile, shortly before throwing his Core piece into a trio of heavenstage I'd let drift a bit too close together.
It usually went like that, Nabu laughing and joking and dispensing tidbits of wisdom while I wracked my brain for any tiny advantage. This time however Nabu watched the board with silent consideration. It was our longest match yet and I was on top of my game. My fingers drummed a rapid beat on my kickass new spear Filia had forced me to buy as I waited for his next move. The board was finally in my favor for once after Nabu lost one of his foundation pieces to a trap. Of course it put some of my own pieces out of position so this victory was definitely going to be short lived, but I had a few more ways lined up to shave his momentum after he went after them.
"You are weak." Nabu snorted and grabbed his core piece, sliding it into my back lines instead of making an attempt at my over extended foundation pieces. I noted absently that he'd put me in an even worse situation than I would have been if he'd gone for the quick advantage. It wasn't going to mean much for me in the short term, I could withdraw and form a solid core of defense, but even the slimmest chance of outmaneuvering him to let some heavenstage fritter out into the rest of the board and eat time had been lost utterly. But that wasn't what was taking up the bulk of my attention. He'd called me weak.
"Excuse me?" I wasn't offended exactly. I was weak, I knew I was weak, and he was hardly the first person to say it. What it was however was the first time Nabu had said it, to me or anybody to my knowledge.
He quirked an eyebrow at my tone and seemed to catch my meaning after a second, waving me off with an annoyed gesture.
"Take no offense young Captain, I do not mean it as an insult. When I say you are weak, I mean that you are skilled in weakness. While your
Ludus game is truly atrocious your dabbling with these less powerful pieces are at the level of one, ohh maybe twice your age."
He snorted at my attempt to consolidate my position and simply drove his core piece in deeper, cutting half of my formation pieces away from the others. I could take it down with only two turns of maneuvering from that position, but if I tried his own foundation pieces would fall on my group like a storm.
"An understanding of weakness is an important element for any commander to have and most never really grasp it in a way I would call acceptable." he continued, systematically breaking apart my every attempt to rally simply by diving in with his big piece and daring me to waste time attacking it. Even without being able to take my pieces he was throwing my army into disarray while they attempted to move around him.
"But you have no respect for strength."
The game moved quickly after that. There was no move I could make that wouldn't result in the moved piece being destroyed thereafter, and there was no chance of me taking any of his other pieces with how he'd shattered my offensive paths. I was tempted to give it up there, but I played it out anyway for the experience. And his words.
"It has been ten years since you came here, no? And yet you are still first heavenstage."
"It has been enough." I grumbled in reply.
"For now, yes. There are many enough places to be polished that simply rubbing a dirty rag haphazardly over your group would result in some improvement. And while there has been improvement amongst your fellows, you dear captain are lagging behind."
"I've been busy. I'll catch up." I was down to heavenstage pieces in the corner. His time to victory was only hampered by the amount of units he could fit in the space to fight.
"That my boy is the problem. You seek to 'catch up' instead of excel. Surpass!" He slammed his fist into the board and the pieces jumped, sending his core piece flipping into my remaining knot of heavenstage groupies and scattering them to the five winds. We both looked down at the resulting carnage for a second before silently agreeing to let it pass unremarked.
"It may sound trite, boy, but strength is a strength all its own. You must learn to appreciate it lest you end up the King of Mediocrity, a terrible waste of a throne." he continued, voice taking on a bit more of that odd ringing tone from his resonating...teeth. "And besides, you are running out of excuses."
He gestured and the board vanished and was replaced by a hand sized bit of parchment covered in flourishing, glowing script.
"Congratulations are in order, young Captain. It seems your
servant has at long last passed the array engineer trials. Should she accept she will be accepted as an aspirant immediately with all associated costs paid for by the Legions with a focus on developing her talents for its benefit."
Leto. He was talking about Leto. She'd spent the last ten years picking away at this door to get at the juicy manuals inside so she could prepare for her own trials only to find out at the end that this
was some kind of special hiding skullduggery trial. Remembering my own such encounter I began to wonder what kind of person invented these entry procedures.
He raised a hand and patted me on the shoulder twice, raising himself and shaking his head as he walked off, ostensibly to do the rest of his 'patrol'.
"Don't get left behind."
-------
And that's it for Paulus 4 ladies and gents. With how busy I've been I didn't think I'd get it done till later in the week, but here we are!
Originally I'd planned to do a bunch of fights for this one but it morphed at least twice into something else. I figure there's enough time for fights some other time anyway.
My boy Paulus had a rough time the last 20 years, not advancing a single step while he was running around trying to get his family and squad up to snuff. Somehow he'd forgotten to deal with himself...or perhaps he believed he didn't need to? I wonder where he got that idea.
I don't really know what to ask for for rewards. Do whatever you think is the most interesting, Occi and I'll work with it.
Will update base sheet with character list and his Turn 6 rewards momentarily.
