Iskander Pallikari & Cerina Polya - Curses and Endeavors, Part 1
"Come on, you've got this. You're stronger than this."
Iskander's left bicep twitched, veins bulging out as it screamed for release. His fingers, with a grip like an iron vice, held onto the dumbbell in his hand as he brought it up again and again. While one hand held the weight, his other hand held only a pair of chopsticks, lifting bits of rice and chicken to his mouth again and again.
"Fifty-five, fifty six..."
Six hundred pounds of iron was hard to compress into a shape small enough for a human hand to fit around it, but Cultivators, as expected, had their ways. Not ways Iskander could wrap his head around, but ways that were long since solved nonetheless. Before attaining the Tenth Heavenstage, he'd have struggled to curl something like this more than thirty times. It wasn't just that he was stronger than before; his body, free of most imperfections, had greater potential to become stronger. In that sense, the first Olympian Keystone was an even greater advantage than it was on paper.
"Fifty nine... sixty!"
Finally, he finished the set, and quickly transferred the dumbbell to his right hand and the chopsticks to his left. Without pausing, Iskander continued to exercise and eat his breakfast at the same time. To eat while not doing anything else would be a waste of valuable time, and if he scarfed his food down, his digestion might suffer. And so, he ate and trained at the same time for most of his meals.
Iskander had hoped that his training might become a little bit easier after breaking the limits of orthodox cultivation, but if anything his teacher had gotten stricter than ever. His meals were rarely lavish or even particularly delicious, being designed for nutrition above all else, with the occasional allowance for something nicer. Such rare indulgences, like his two weeks of vacation per year, were not mercy but another thing intended to aid in his development. If training was too stringent, after all, it would affect his mental health, and a warrior's mind was as important as his body.
The weight went up and the chopsticks went down. The weight went down and the chopsticks went up. When the set was finished, so was the bowl, and with breakfast eaten, it was time to move on.
----
Thunk, thunk, thunk went the wooden sword as it struck the dummy's vitals again and again. Throat, heart, belly, knees, elbows, armpits. Iskander hit them with sharp, smooth motions, keeping his breathing steady and always being mindful of his grip. After his return from the Green Scale Plains, he'd had to switch from using a straw dummy to using an iron one wrapped in leather; the straw simply came apart too fast under his new strength, even when the sword was wooden.
These rote motions would never elevate Iskander's instincts to the level of a trueborn prodigy. It was an ever-distant threshold that he could approach but not cross, the distance halving, quartering, eighthing but never quite reaching zero. Even so, as a swordsman, it was his duty to reduce the distance anyway. And even if his instincts had limits, the movements themselves could be endlessly refined.
"Woah, he really does train out here!" a voice called out. It was followed soon by a few other murmuring voices and the sounds of several approaching feet.
Iskander paused, carefully setting down his practice sword and wiping the sweat from his blistered palms on his pants. He turned around, beholding a small group of young Aspirants. He knew in a moment that they were such - having a full Dantian made it easy to feel when another's was hardly filled at all. None of them looked older than their early twenties, bodies still held in a slow-motion adolescence from when they had begun their journey of cultivation as teenagers.
"Senior Brother, how are you today?"
"Senior, are you really only thirty-eight? How did you do it?"
"Yeah, how do you cultivate so fast? How can we do that?"
"I can't believe my neighbor is a genius!"
"W-woah, guys!" Iskander stammered, holding up both hands, palms out, as if he were warding off a pack of wolves. "Hey now, come on, I'm no genius. Who told you that?"
"But you're at the Tenth Heavenstage before forty." Remarked one of the Aspirants, a lanky girl with elaborately braided hair. "You must be incredibly strong."
"I really wouldn't go that far, honestly. I just worked hard and muddled through." Iskander chuckled, rubbing the back of his head bashfully. The girl's eyes none-too-subtly followed the hard lines of his muscles as he moved, which only made him blush more.
"Do you really not have any secrets?" Asked another, a diminutive boy with several bead bracelets on each wrist.
"It's like you said, I'm not even forty. I'm not qualified to teach anyone anything." Iskander shrugged. "I really think I've been amazingly lucky. I studied the right things and went to the right places to succeed at the right times."
After a few more minutes of platitudes, the curious Juniors were driven away, and Iskander returned to his training. That happened from time to time nowadays, and he still wasn't used to it - he wasn't sure if he ever would be. Promising up-and-comers became minor celebrities, as everyone tried to attach themselves to what could become a major hero in the coming decades. Most rising stars burned out, of course, but it was still a gamble that many wished to take.
The swordsman's statements to those kids had only been half true, of course. He was no genius, and was simply working hard, but his training was not his own. An ancient Old Monster who lived in Iskander's drawer had designed it meticulously to bring out the greatest possible amount of his potential; he was probably the only person in the Clan who had that. Naturally though, he couldn't tell anyone about that. If it were up to him, that information would come out when Lai Bohai's resurrection was already complete, and not a second before.
----
Iskander fiddled with the straps of his gauntlets, tightening and loosening them until they neither shifted around nor restricted his bloodflow. It was said that the familiar weight of lamellar became almost like a comforting blanket after one had seen enough battles, but to Iskander it still just felt like armor.
A Decanus' lamellar was mostly the same as that of a Legionnaire, with the exception of a differently colored shoulder and a small crest on the helmet, both the same color. This normally varied by the legion, but as Iskander was not currently working with one, he had chosen to default to red. Small customizations were also allowed, within certain guidelines and with approval from one's commanding officer. Iskander had, after some pondering, chosen to embellish his armor with a miniature bull horn which protruded from his red left shoulder - a sentimental reminder of the hardest battle of his life thus far.
Iskander looked himself over in the mirror, checking for any problems, but found none - he was in top form, and looked the part too. Hell, he looked good, if he would allow himself a small moment of vanity. He was broader in the shoulders and trimmer in the waist, closer to the ideal athlete depicted in statuary and medical textbooks. The Tenth Heavenstage was the purification of the body, literally bringing one closer to one's optimum physical shape, and that was a little different for each person. Yeah, this was nice.
One straight sword found its way to Iskander's right hip, and two curved swords to his left hip. Compression Pouches were strapped to his belt. He loaded himself up with odds and ends, all sorts of objects with which he might take control of a battle. In not much time at all, Iskander was ready to go. Time to go find a mission.
----
Apparently, about 3% of all Cultivators used to reach the Tenth Heavenstage, though as of the Great Era's start, that statistic had been slowly increasing. In Lai Bohai's day the number had been 5%, so Iskander figured it would probably end up as something like that eventually. What mattered, though, was that Iskander had grown beyond what the vast majority of Cultivators would ever achieve, which felt very strange to consider.
Iskander scrolled through the Contribution Board, dismissing countless missions which were now below what was worth his time. With his current material needs, Qi Condensation-level missions simply didn't pay enough in proportion to how long they would take to complete. On the flipside, Foundation-level missions were still far too spicy; Iskander didn't have any abilities that could challenge the Great Realm gap, even against a weak beast or Expert. Even missions which did not directly involve combat involved an amount of labor that he simply was not able to perform, and so he had to discount that deeply tempting category.
"You've gotta have something good for me. Everybody always needs something done." Iskander muttered, leaning over the panel. The effort of maintaining a mental link with the Board was starting to give him a headache, so he sped up his scrolling in the hopes of finishing up his search quickly.
When the Decanus first came across it, he scrolled past it without stopping. Several seconds later, his brain caught up with his eyes, and he frantically scrolled back up. It felt as if liquid gold would pour out from his mouth, so perfect was this job, and Iskander could scarcely believe it hadn't already been snatched up. Perhaps it had just been posted?
An unknown tomb of Golden Devil design which was previously contained within the Qi-Draining Desert has recently been uncovered after the death field receded earlier this year. Whomever accepts this mission is tasked with traveling to the tomb and searching it for useful or valuable items. The Legionnaire shall be paid the listed amount upon completion of the mission after returning to the Dawn Fortress, and shall receive additional pay based upon the valuation of whatever they bring back. By accepting this mission, the Legionnaire agrees to forfeit any and all items found within the tomb to the Department of Missions. Those items will then be given to the commissioner of this mission, who has chosen to remain anonymous.
Incredible. Iskander squinted, wondering if perhaps he had hallucinated one zero too many, but no, that was the actual number. That, plus more points if he brought back something good? Sure, it would probably be a ripoff - he would receive a fraction of the true value of whatever he brought back. But when added together with the guaranteed payout, it became tempting nonetheless.
His thumb struck the button to accept the mission with all the inevitability, certainty and finality of an executioner's axe.
----
The thing about the desert was that, while it was indeed very, very big, it was a sort of big that was easy to traverse. Short of being caught in a sandstorm, one could pick a destination and go there in a straight line with no obstructions or detours, which meant one could cover distance much faster in the desert. And so, what would have been a truly daunting distance in another climate was rendered only somewhat troublesome.
Iskander took the weeks of isolation in the saddle as time to practice cultivating while riding, which he needed more practice at. Though not quite as difficult as cultivating while walking, it remained a struggle to take in the qi with any degree of efficiency, and he almost wanted to cry at the sensation of energy he had paid for with his own contribution points dissipating into the air. Still, Lai Bohai said that developing this still would improve not only Iskander's skill at manipulating qi, but his comprehension of qi itself, and who was he to argue?
The swordsman wished he still had the company of poor Cinis, whose luck had finally run out at the hands of the Bloody Tusks. This new horse was, to put it frankly, a real jerk. Fast and strong, to be sure, but she knew exactly how difficult she could be without being disciplined, and toed that line with the precision of a surgeon's tools. A big mare, black as night and with a sleek, glossy coat, she carried herself with the pride of an animal that had yet to be fully broken. Still, carry him she did, and Iskander did indeed reach his destination.
The tomb itself was unmistakable against the dreary backdrop of the wasteland around it. A towering edifice of bone-white stone, still mostly in one piece despite the endless weathering of time and the elements, the building itself almost looked like a corpse in its own right. Only the upper portions of the building poked out from the sand under which it was partially buried. A flat roof, tilted ever so slightly, supported by great, thick columns, many of which had broken at some point in time. A statue rose out from the ground, though whomever it was built to commemorate had ironically been rendered featureless by erosion.
This far south, nothing at all lived, even if it no longer fell within the death field itself. There was simply not enough moisture or qi to sustain anything at all, not even the toughest of cacti or shrub grass. The tomb alone stood separate from the sheer emptiness it inhabited, and Iskander could not help but wonder why people would build anything at all in such a horrible place. To grace it with the work of human hands was more than it deserved.
Finding a usable entrance was harder than anticipated. He knew the tombs and mausoleums of Golden Devils were sealed tightly, their insides fastened against outside incursion to prevent the encroachment of sandstorms, so if he could just get inside the darned place, it would probably still be traversable. Eventually, after walking around the tomb several times, Iskander came upon a small, half-buried door, sealed tight as he had expected. Given its size and location, it was most like some sort of macabre servants' entrance, a door through which menial workers would enter to perform maintenance on the inside when needed. That would work just fine for him.
----
The building's innards were about what he expected. Unlit sconces, some empty and some holding the rotten remains of what were once torches, lined the ten-man-wide hallways every twenty feet. Between the torches there were evenly-spaced doors, most of which led into a room with a coffin. The whole thing was put together with a sort of geometrical precision, designed to hold the highest possible number of bodies without putting them too close together and compromising their dignity. On either side of each door, two statues of almost-human skeletons could be seen, constructed from iron and bearing all types of beastly faces; symbolic guardians of the dead, perhaps.
Not that there was much left to guard. Iskander searched each room by the light of his torch, one by one, combing through sand and dust for anything at all of value, but each room seemed to have already been picked clean, even of the bodies themselves. It was remarkably clean work for graverobbing, all things considered, because the lack of moisture meant there was no mold and few insects, which was certainly a small mercy.
After the first dozen or so rooms, Iskander turned a corner, then found himself in a hallway with a dozen more and searched those too. When he was nearly done with that dozen, he had resigned himself to the fact that this tomb had clearly been robbed with psychotic precision in the long distant past, on another occasion when the death field receded. It was disappointing, but the minimum pay was already enough to make the venture worth his time.
Still, the swordsman was not one to risk making less money than he could have, and so wanted to search the entire place just in case. That thoroughness paid off a whopping thirty rooms into the search, when something in the corner gleamed under the light of Iskander's torch. He approached, kneeling down to behold a piece of jewelry. It was a silver amulet in the shape of a starburst with an impressively large ruby embedded in the center, surrounded by eight smaller rubies. Even covered in sand and observed by a rube who knew nothing of jewelry, its luster was obvious; this was the work of a master craftsman.
With utmost gentleness, Iskander fished out a handkerchief, wiped off the sand as best he could, and stared into the amulet. It was a gorgeous thing, the inner jewel especially. Looking directly into it, observing the endless convolutions of its outer and inner facets, Iskander felt like he was drowning, like something horrible was looking back at him, looking
into him. Then, the feeling passed as soon as it had come.
"You, my friend, are worth at least one mid-grade stone by yourself. Probably a few," Iskander said giddily, wrapping the amulet in the handkerchief before delicately putting it back into his compression pouch. With a newfound spring in his step, he moved onto the next room, eager to see what else had been missed by previous graverobbers.
The danger that came next was, in a way, both more and less frightening than he'd been worried about. More frightening because it was loud; groaning, creaking, loud booming footsteps, starting all out of nowhere, cacophonous enough that Iskander felt like his heart would explode. Less frightening because it was something that could never, ever sneak up on him.
Turning to the source of the noise, Iskander beheld one of the statues, a skeleton with the skull of an ox, barrelling toward him. It either had never held weapons or such weapons had long since been taken, but the speed at which it moved despite its weight spoke well enough of the danger it posed. It leapt at Iskander as it came closer, hands outstretched to seize him.
Drawing one of his swords, Iskander struck the skeleton with a slash to the head, cracking it down the middle and sending it stumbling back, but that only stunned it for a moment before it continued the assault. He frantically retreated to avoid its barrage of strikes, juking back to avoid a kick which embedded its leg in a stone wall. Focusing all of his will into his blade, Iskander enhanced the next slash to a greater extent than the last, bringing it down on the statue's knee.
The limb, to his shock, was not severed cleanly. The bade went most of the way through, then held fast, allowing one of the skeleton's strikes to finally reach him. An iron fist cracked across the Devil's jaw, snapping his head back and sending him skidding backwards. The skeleton attempted to wrench its foot out of the wall, only to detach its lower leg entirely due to the wound it had previously received.
If that bothered the construct, it didn't show it, simply crouching down and leaping with its remaining leg, horns-first, aiming to gore Iskander. The swordsman, for his part, leapt higher, backflipping over the attack and landing on the skeleton's back. He kicked out its remaining leg, driving it to the ground, and drew his remaining saber. Carefully holding it by the blade with his other hand, he pressed it down onto the back of his opponent's neck.
The construct bucked and thrashed about, but Iskander was undeterred, pressing down with consistent force until the head detached and the skeleton went slack. Breathing hard, Iskander got to his feet and wiped the sweat from his brow... only to see a dozen more animal skulls emptily staring at him, and the loud footsteps of more approaching.
With utmost gentleness, Iskander returned his swords to their scabbards, looking around at the constructs, who were still not moving. He weighed his odds, after the performance of just one.
"Ah, dangit."
As one, they lunged at the Devil. But while they were rather fast, they lacked finesse, and so he was able to narrowly dodge them all, before bolting down the hall at top speed. This was not a tactical retreat; this was just plain running away.
Iskander tore through the tomb pursued by the mob of metal beasts, his head whipping around in search of a way out. Eventually, he came across a larger door, different from the ones which led into the rooms of individual coffins. With no other options, he turned and ran through it, the horde of constructs just a few steps behind. If they caught him, they would rip him to pieces in seconds, but first they had to catch him.
The door led into a wider hallway, the walls decorated with reliefs that he simply had no time to properly appreciate, before opening up into a huge central room with a tall ceiling. It was the size of a great hall in a noble house's manor - not that Iskander had ever been in one, but he'd heard about them. The columns that had not yet broken were massive, intricately detailed, and flanked by much larger statues which, thankfully, did not come to life. In the center were four coffins, presumably all very important people once upon a time.
Of course, all of this is what Iskander pieced together after the fact from what he had seen. At the time, the light of his torch revealed a radius of less than thirty feet, making it all a smear of muted colors and deep shadows.
High ceiling, buried building, dumb enemies, flying sword, rope. It flew together in an instant, like magnetized rocks being pulled toward one another. Whilst dodging skeletons one after another, Iskander pulled a length of rope from his belt and tied it to one of his swords. Flinging the Flying Sword upwards, he commanded it to embed itself into the ceiling up above, then began climbing the rope at a furious pace.
Multiple skeletons immediately followed, the one at the top reaching up to grab at Iskander's ankle, so he stopped moving and began stomping on its head. After several stomps, it fell, knocking off the four or five skeletons below it as well, giving Iskander a bit more room. He continued climbing, soon reaching the ceiling and looking around for weak spots. Finding a sizable crack, Iskander clung to the rope with his feet and one hand and drove a sword in with the other, detonating his qi. The crack deepened and widened, but no more, so he did it several more times, until finally the ceiling partially collapsed.
Huge, heavy blocks of stone rained down into that great chamber, followed by a colossal deluge of sand. It was less like solid matter when it moved in such a great mass and more like a liquid. He let his sword detach from the collapsing ceiling and embedded it into a column instead, clinging on for dear life until it felt as if his arms might fall off. After about a minute, the rain of sand finally ended, and he looked down.
The bright sunlight outside poured into the tomb now. Whatever majesty that room was meant to have was ruined permanently, but at least the skeletons were buried. One by one, half-broken constructs dug themselves out, sluggishly looking around for a way to climb up toward the intruder. Whipping out another sword, Iskander began using them as improvised climbing stakes, hauling himself up and out through the hole he had made.
The transition from the darkness of the tomb to the brightness of the noontime desert sun was one more irritant among many, serving to discombobulate the Devil's senses as he hauled himself out, squinting in the light. After a few moments, it passed, and he found his horse without much difficulty. She'd gone running after that collapse, but hadn't gone too far. With quick, sure strides, Iskander ran after the horse, gaining ground bit by bit until he was close enough to leap right into the saddle.
Taking hold of the reins, Iskander turned himself away from that terrible place and toward the Dawn Fortress, resolving to never again return to the Qi-Draining Desert.
----
"Excuse me, sorry, are you sure you're not mistaken?" Iskander asked yet again, leaning his forearm onto the counter. In response, several groans or shouts of protest could be heard from the long line of Clansmen behind him.
The Department of Missions was never not crowded. The Contribution Board handled most missions without a hitch, but any sufficiently large system would have problems, no matter how sophisticated its design. And so, the Department existed to deal with any such issues, as well as handling special missions that the Board could not facilitate on its own.
The man who sat across the counter from Iskander, a bookkeeper with dark circles under his eyes and a truly despondent expression, sighed. "Sir, we have checked four times already. We have checked both versions of the records. The mission you speak of was never issued."
"Except it was, you see." Iskander replied, undeterred. This man was clearly just doing his job, and yet he couldn't help but let annoyance seep into his voice. "It was there, on the Contribution Board. Do you think I went to the far south for no reason?"
"Sir, I don't know what you did or why you did it. All I or anyone else knows is that there was no mission to visit a tomb to the far south!" The bureaucrat shot back, eyes bloodshot and voice shaking with stress. "The line is getting so long, can you please-"
"I almost died!" Iskander shouted, slapping the table. "I almost died, because I was told there would be a big payment. I wasted a month of my life going there and back! The mission was real, I
saw it!"
"No one gives a fuck what you saw!" A woman yelled from somewhere in the line. "Quit holding everybody up!"
"A contract is a promise! You don't break a promise!" Iskander yelled at the woman before turning back to the bookkeeper. "Look, I'm really tight on money, can you please let me talk to somebody? A higher up or someone who works on the Contribution Board,
somebody!"
At this point, the small man seemed to be on the verge of tears, holding his head in his hands. "They'll all tell you the same thing; no mission like what you describe was ever posted to the board. Not this year at least. Now please, it's been two hours-"
"So what happened then? Am I crazy?" Iskander asked, planting both hands on the desk. "Did I see a mission that wasn't there, telling me to go to a place I would never think to go?"
"Yes, yes you did." The bookkeeper sighed, making a hand sign and then pressing two fingers to an array on his desk. "Please escort the Senior Brother off the premises."
On cue, two large, burly men walked in from outside the office, seizing Iskander by the arms. His struggles and protests fell on deaf ears as they dragged him away, to the cheers of many in the line.
——
"Somebody scammed me, that's gotta be it…" Iskander muttered to himself as he disrobed and got ready for bed.
This was all part of some kind of elaborate trick. A fake mission that the bookies somehow couldn't see, placed on the Board for reasons Iskander couldn't fathom. Whatever the reason all that had happened, it was rather upsetting - his faith in the institutions of the Clan's economy had been forever damaged today. Never again would he be so naive as to believe it infallible.
Still, there was one small upside - the pendant was indeed very pretty. Maybe a little bit girly, but honestly, he'd wear it anyway. It was nicer than any other clothes or accessories he owned, after all. He carefully laid it down atop his nightstand, then settled himself under the covers.
He slept and hours slid by in frustrated sleep. Slowly the air of the room began to thicken like oil, filled with a tongue coating foulness. The handle on the door turned and it opened silently to reveal a slash of dim starlight cast across Iskander's legs. The door stood open for a breath and then with a hypnic jerk of reality a figure appeared beside his bed, the light blocked by its form. It loomed inhumanly tall over the sleeping junior, nearly scraping the ceiling with its hooded head and its entire body was covered in a deep verdigris green cloak. The weight of its veiled attention pressed down onto the sleeping man's brain.
Iskander, for a moment, wasn't sure if he was awake or not. He blinked a few times, and the silhouette remained, eerily still. Slowly, quietly, so as not to give anything away, Iskander bunched up his blanket in one hand - then threw it, where it fell over the intruder's upper body.
There was no time to consider the circumstances here, and Iskander's brain wasn't awake enough to do that anyway. Instincts taking over, he reached under his pillow and drew forth a dagger, driving it into the figure—
The blanket gently fell to the floor in a heap, a hole in it where Iskander had stabbed it. He frantically cast his gaze about, reaching down to the large, bulging pack at the foot of his bed.
This was an odd exercise Lai Bohai had been putting him through ever since he first came into enough wealth to own anything of real value. 'Always sleep with everything precious to you ready to go. Nothing is ever really safe; you could be driven from your home at any moment.' He had said. It seemed insane then, but now, Iskander understood perfectly.
Laying the dagger across the top of his wardrobe, he reached into the pack and drew forth one of his sabers. "I'm not crazy." He declared firmly. "There was a mission on that board; why? Who put it there, and who are you!?"
Long and strangely jointed fingers slid past the edges of his vision, poised to slam around his head just as he noticed them. It was behind him!
Iskander let his body go limp and fall. This sort of movement hadn't been possible for him to do on the fly before, but after learning the secrets of 'the zone', new tactics unveiled themselves before him all the time. He seemed to half-collapse, falling bonelessly out of the way of the entity's hands, then stopped his descent halfway and slashed up at it.
The limbs jerked away, and he turned to see it perched on his desk like a cat, or perhaps a roosting bird; proportions all wrong, movements all wrong. He flung the saber at it, aiming for center-mass, and then it simply wasn't there. The saber embedded itself in the wall most of the way to the hilt.
Nah, this sucked.
Grabbing the large pack off the floor and calling his saber back into his hand, Iskander leapt out of his window without a second thought. He didn't even stop to open it, letting the glass rake and puncture his flesh on the way out - that would all heal in an hour or two anyway.
Tearing through the night at a breakneck pace, Iskander could not escape the feeling of something watching him flee.
——
He had tried to knock politely. Really, he had. But considering the circumstances, could Iskander really be blamed for sounding like he was trying to bust down his friend's door?
A large man, eyes hazy with half-sleep, his fingertips still stained in various colors from his constant work, wrenched open the door. "Stop it, stop! What are you-"
Alexios froze in place, his brain resetting as he took in the man before him. "Iskander?"
"Yo." He waved, trying to look friendly despite the circumstances.
"You look like shit."
"Yeah, I figured."
Alexios sighed, rubbing at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, then stepped aside. "Alright, come in. What is it this time?" He muttered.
The alchemist trundled back into his house, cracking his neck and heading to the kitchen, where he would invariably make a pot of tea. A war could come to Alexios' doorstep in the middle of the night, and he would still make tea after waking up,
then fight the war. "You eat something toxic? You sick? It's the regeneration, isn't it?" He snapped his fingers at that last one, as if he had solved a mystery.
Iskander, for his part, sank into the nearest chair he could find, too tired to say much at the moment. It was comfy - the whole house was comfy. Alexios, who had finally hit the Ninth Heavenstage a few years ago, had put down a mortgage on his 'forever house', reasoning that this was the end of the line for him, and he could now splurge on a bit of luxury.
The two-story house was well-furnished in a fairly tasteful way. Portraits and calligraphy hung on the walls, the furniture was made of rich, valuable woods, and he had the place cleaned every two weeks. And, of course, there was the extensively-stocked laboratory in the basement.
"'Oh, I'm built different Alexios, I won't get tumors like other regenerators do'." Alexios said in a mocking tone. "And now you're here so I can cut them out of you at a discount price, you cheapskate."
"Uh, I'm being haunted actually." Iskander finally said after gathering his thoughts for a moment. He shifted, realizing his pack was still on his back, and finally took it off, letting it flop onto the floor beside him.
"Haunted." The voice that came from the kitchen was flatter than the workbench of the Turtle World's greatest craftsman. "Yeah, you would be, wouldn't you?"
The large man emerged from the kitchen, balancing a fancy ceramic teapot and two cups on a tray, and laid it out on his sitting room table. He poured himself a cup, another for Iskander, then immediately took his and drank the entirety in one gulp. From the smell, Iskander could tell that this was Alexios' special, ultra-caffeinated recipe.
Alexios poured a second cup, drank half of that, set his cup down, and took a deep breath. "Haunted."
"Yeah man, I'm haunted real bad. Serves me right, poking around in a tomb near the Qi-Draining Desert." Iskander mumbled, more to himself than to his friend. He picked up the cup and took a sip, nearly gagging from the intolerable bitterness of the brew. "Took a mission, came back, they tell me the mission isn't real, then I go to bed and there's a ghost or a spirit or something there. Long hands, long fingers, trying to grab me. I try to hit it, but then it's not there. Teleporting maybe, I dunno…"
"Shut up. You're not making any sense." Alexios commanded, then downed the rest of his cup. He stood up, crossing his arms and looking pointedly down as Iskander. "What do you mean 'the mission isn't real'?"
"The mission wasn't real, man! Those jerks at the department, I have them check over and over but they tell me it was never in the Board, but I
saw it on the Board, it was right there, as real as the other ones. Guy told me I was crazy, and then I'm seeing ghosts so maybe I am crazy, but I'm
not crazy, I've never had any brain problems before, I'd have told you if I did, and-"
"
Shut!" Alexios raised his finger and shouted over Iskander's babbling. "The fuck. Up. You're delirious. I'll ask you about the details later. What happened after the spirit showed up?"
"Grabbed my stuff and ran here." Iskander said plainly.
"Ran here."
"Yeah."
"We live eighty miles apart from one another."
"I ran pretty much straight here without stopping."
Alexios slapped his own face, slowly dragging his hand downward, deforming his features as he stretched them before they snapped back to normal. "Okay. Why would you come to me about a ghost?"
Iskander shrugged. "I didn't really think too hard about it. I ran away and needed somewhere to stay."
"Wouldn't the ghost just follow you here, if you're being haunted? Running wouldn't do much." Alexios remarked with a raised eyebrow.
"Nah, I don't think so. I mean, I was worried about it at first, but I realized something a little while later." Iskander explained. He paused to take another sip of the tea, but found it no less appetizing warm than it had been hot. "I found an amulet in the tomb and took it back with me. When I ran, I left it behind. I think the ghost is in there. It's probably cursed me a little bit already, but getting away from that thing probably helped a lot."
"That does make sense…" Alexios muttered, sinking into a chair opposite Iskander's. "So, I suppose you need to stay here for a week or two while you find someone to deal with your haunting problem?"
"Pretty much. And I'll make it up to you too." Iskander smirked, reaching down into his pack and fishing around. "I picked up a really weird beast core recently. I was gonna sell it but didn't find a good enough offer yet. I'm sure you can do something with it though, and you can have it for free, as thanks for…"
"Hm?" Alexios tilted his head quizzically as Iskander trailed off. The alchemist's expression turned to one of concern when he noticed his friend's horrified look.
With a trembling hand, Iskander lifted an unmistakable silver amulet from his pack. "No… no, this can't be here!" He shouted. "I left it behind! It wasn't in here, I know it wasn't!"
The dangling amulet spun beneath his hand and in a flickering reflection from the central ruby, Iskander saw a green cloaked figure standing in a doorway to his left. It was in Alexios' blind spot. He leapt to his feet, saber in hand to face the thing and found it wasn't there.
Alexios jumped to his own feet, concern morphing to shock and confusion. "Iskander,
what the fu-" He started to say.
The hairs prickled on Iskander's neck and raw instinct made him jump up onto the table as long fingered, verdigrised hands lashed out to crush his ankles to powder. Then it rushed out from beneath the table and swung at his head with a hammer-like right hook. Its violent Intent was nearly choking in intensity, a force that wanted to crush his brain with horror and fear.
Iskander's guard went up, but the resulting hit almost felt like he hadn't been guarding at all. He careened into the wall and bounced off, leaving a small crater with his back, the forearm he'd used to block already beginning to go numb. Alexios lashed out at the spirit with several punches in a tight, efficient combination, but it weaved back and forth around them easily.
From a distance, and with more light, the way it moved just didn't seem correct. It defied the physical logic of a human body, moving as if it didn't need its legs to keep standing, as if losing its balance was an impossibility.
The spirit socked Alexios across the jaw, sending him spinning sideways across the room. Now no longer worried about hitting his friend, Iskander threw his saber, only for the spirit to effortlessly catch it by the hilt and throw it right back. He threw himself to the side, and immediately it was on him.
It was relentless, repeatedly trying to crush Iskander's skull with the viciously brutal kicks of a master fighter. Kicks that were twisted and hideously distorted by its unnatural body, snapping at angles that were more like lashing talons than any human movements. He was driven back into the kitchen doorway and then saw Alexios rising, his friend still reeling from the hit that rattled the man's brain. The big alchemist shouted wordlessly at the entity and the spirit snapped to face him, flinging a countertop knife at the man before either cultivator could blink. Alexios' hand rose up at the last moment, taking the blade in place of his face. Cursing and growling, he wrenched it out, then turned to pick up an entire bookshelf and fling it at the spirit.
It jumped over, arcing in a way that could almost be called graceful if not for its jittery movements, and Iskander followed, slashing at it several times but finding all of his blows deflected. The feedback upon making contact was odd, unlike anything he'd hit before. It was almost like hitting the surface of a puddle with a stick; you could make it ripple and distort, but you could never permanently change its shape.
Somewhere in that flurry, the spirit managed to grab Iskander's wrist. It spun in mid-air, slamming Iskander into the ground and knocking the weapon from his hand. Flinging him aside and grabbing the sword, it ran toward Alexios with fast, long strides.
Alexios picked up the table beside him and used it to block, one strike after another. The piece of furniture was gradually chopped into smaller and smaller pieces as he did so, until the alchemist was left holding only one table leg in each hand.
Suddenly, the spirit bent backwards to dodge another Flying Sword which passed through where it was, missing Alexios by just a foot. The sword then turned around on a dime, striking again to drive the spirit back. Meanwhile, Iskander pulled out his third sword and tied the pendant's chain around the hilt.
Another one. He was going to replace
another Flying Sword, for the second time this year. He felt a bit nauseous, and not because of the strikes from that ghost (those didn't help though). Whatever, he could pick up a new one once the danger was gone.
He really wanted to say something cool, despite the terrifying situation. But frankly, Iskander's nerves were too frayed to think of something, so he just wordlessly shouted as he kicked down Alexios' door and threw the sword as hard as he could, propelling it away as far as his control could manage and sending the amulet with it.
The spirit snapped away from both cultivators in a flicker of green cloth and sped away at incredible speed after the amulet. Both men found themselves panting heavily from the exertion. Alexios was the first to collect himself and leaned against his wall with fatigue. "I… yeah, good thinking. You need to run though, cause that damned thing will be back," he said in a strained huff. His sitting room looked like a storm had blown through it, and his hand still dripped blood.
"I don't know how it snuck that onto me." Iskander sighed, shaking his head as he walked outside. A small crowd of onlookers was already assembling, drawn in by the commotion. "I'll just keep moving then, I'll figure out something else."
"Stay in crowds, the bigger the better." Alexios advised. "Especially if there are strong Cultivators there. Either it won't manifest around them, or if it does they'll all gang up and kill it."
"Yeah, that makes sense." Iskander remarked, rolling his wrist where the spirit had grabbed him and wincing - if that was a ghost, how strong were they when they died? "I'm sure I can find someone to help, just gotta stay on my toes..."
"Don't bother." Alexios interrupted, stumbling toward his door and clutching his head. "I know exactly who can help, I'll call in some favors. But in return, promise me something."
"Hm? Yeah, sure, what?" Iskander asked.
"Never bring trouble to my house again." Said Alexios, shutting the door in Iskander's face.
——
The Silverine Bracers maintained a series of office spaces in the Dawn Fortress, much like many other legions. Given their budgetary frugality and mobile nature their official domain was small and organized to be immediately navigable by anyone with a request, complaint, or important information. What decoration was present was given over to tapestries. Some held the motto of the Legion, "For Justice and Honor, we fight", while several others depicted some of their recent victories in the Green Scale Plains against the Poison Maze and in the east against the Jingshen.
However, a much older piece spanned one side of the yellow-stone hall that led to the office Iskander was looking for. Upon the tapestry was depicted a stylized rendition of the Miracle and the Thirteen Heroes, Rina Callista at their head. It lent an almost museum-like air to the otherwise simple side hall. Iskander stood before the bronze door of the office, two yellow Qi lights illuminating the otherwise dim space.
Upon the door was inscribed a name and job titles:
Cerina Polya Paratiritis
Curse Arts Expert
Legion Trainer
Iskander stroked his chin; he was sent to speak with a Curse Artist? He had expected a Soul Artist, given those types were the best at destroying ghosts, but he supposed a Curse Artist made sense too. Lai Bohai hadn't spoken much to him of curses
or ghosts, but he had once said that the two were similar in how they latched onto a target. Someone knowledgeable about one would presumably know quite a bit about the other.
And yet, he found it difficult to open the door. Not physically, but because there was an overwhelming presence in there, one that even the ever-so-ordinary Iskander could sense. He'd heard, vaguely, of Cerina Polya; one of a band of three who wished to explore some new path. Something about 'perfect' cultivation that had gone way over his head. So then, the one who would be helping him was a humongous weirdo who left an incredibly strong imprint on the world?
Eh. Could be worse.
Pushing his way inside, he found himself within a comfortably sized antechamber. Spanning the wall across from the door was a curving desk manned by two pale and white haired twins. Taking up most of the wall behind the twin receptionists was a black banner and a quote written upon it in gold thread in both the Clan's language and the language of the Turtle World.
'The Perfect Moment will come again.'
The room had no chairs for waiting visitors, instead having what looked like an emergency cot tucked away on the left. Several arrays were carved into the walls, their purposes unknown as they glowed with a soft golden light. Set into the back left corner was a door that led deeper inside, and from behind it emanated that immense presence.
The man and woman looked up at him with sharp green eyes. The woman on his right, her white bangs obscuring one half of her face, stood and asked, "Your name?" In an intense, almost blunt, tone. Standing up it was clear to see that she wasn't fully human, a large and powerful looking scorpion's tail wrapped around her waist, the marker of some kind of unusual heritage. Bulges around her stomach implied she might have extra limbs as well.
Iskander gulped, centering himself. "Iskander Palikari. I, uh, had an appointment? Or, well, my friend said he'd made an appointment for me. Is this not the right time?"
Wow, he really was not in top form lately. He supposed not sleeping for five days would do that to anyone, and hoped he didn't look too badly frazzled at the moment. "I got a ghost problem? Think it's a ghost at least, maybe it's just a spirit, but it seems ghosty."
The woman looked down at her still seated, spiky haired twin. The man met her gaze and then stood up and walked to the door without a word. When he opened it the smell of grilled meat wafted out. "Ma'am, Alexios's friend is here," he said, voice low and melodious.
A bright, almost chipper voice answered. "Thank you Shui, let him in!" And with that command the man pushed the door open and stepped aside, gesturing Iskander inside perfunctorily. His sister was already back in her seat and looking down at a stack of paperwork on the desk, her gaze intense enough it felt like the paper might catch fire as she moved through it with meticulous precision.
Through the door, Iskander could glimpse a softly lit circular room and faintly hear the sounds of birds. Iskander took a deep breath, then stepped through, and though it was only a distance of a few feet, it felt like he'd entered an entirely different sort of world, with a different atmosphere and different natural laws. It wasn't something he'd be able to put into words if one were to ask him, but it was something Iskander understood innately: this was a person whom the world revolved around. Not by some inherent quality of who they were, but because they made it do so through overwhelming force.
The room was perfectly circular and the walls were stacked with wooden shelves that held dozens of strange knicknacks, pieces of bone and preserved Spirit Beast parts, and bird cages. Several dozen cages in fact, all housing various kinds of cuckoo bird. Where there were no shelves, there were honeycombed holes in the walls filled with scrolls. And all of it bent around the desk in the center of the room like the nest of a giant bird. And seated behind that desk was a very tall woman, tall enough to meet Iskander's eyes while seated, smoking on a pipe.
Her most striking features were the firmly closed cyclopean eye that dominated her face and the pale white sunflower growing out of her left temple, its roots tangled in her bright white and braided hair. In her right hand she casually held her smoking pipe, from which the grilled meat smell emanated, and she was wearing a Centurion's lamellar armor without the helmet. Her expression was open and full of interest.
All of this left a strong impression already, but it got worse when Iskander realized she was waiting for him to speak first as he heard the door close behind him. What was a person like him even supposed to say to a person like
that? What he felt was not inadequacy (though there was a bit of that) so much as the daunting thought of having a conversation with a different species, who could neither understand his language nor speak it.
…well, maybe it wouldn't be so bad? Maybe Iskander was just projecting his own idea of a monstrous, completely unrelatable Senior onto a perfectly nice and reasonable woman? Lai Bohai was almost eight thousand years old, and he could hold a normal conversation with that geezer just fine. He was just being nervous.
"Hello there Senior." Iskander began, trying to find whatever scraps of confidence he could. "I've been haunted by some sort of spirit lately. I was told you could help me. Would you please be so kind as to hear me out?"
Speaking so fancy-like felt kind of like rolling a clump of dirt around in his mouth - not strictly harmful, but it gave him an instinctive desire to spit. But considering the circumstances, he really did need to be as polite as he could. After all, his life might literally depend on it.
"I have no issue with that," Cerina said as she tapped out the pipe and left it in the ashtray on her desk, her tone casual as she tried to deescalate the social stakes. Her hidden gaze flicked to a point over Iskander's right shoulder. Then she frowned. "Ew. That's a pretty nasty tracking curse, actually. Wait." Here her expression slipped, and he caught a glimpse of her intense curiosity fighting with some concern.
She got up, showing her height to be well over seven feet tall and reached over to a cabinet set into the wall. Pulling open a drawer she reached in and threw a low-grade Spirit Stone at Iskander. "Spiritual first aid. Cycle that, replenish your Qi," her tone was firm, but kind as she returned to her desk.
"Replenish?" Iskander parroted back, confused. "But I've already…"
Sending his senses inward, Iskander realized that no, his reserves were not in fact topped off, even though he had last cycled just one hour prior. "W- how? I didn't cast anything, how did I use up that much already?"
"That'd be the curse, eating at your Qi," Cerina explained as she watched him carefully. Her expression filled with realization as she caught his expression. "Oh, okay. Some Curse basics," she said, leaning over her desk and propping her elbows on it and holding her hands a bit apart.
"General rule of thumb: If your Qi is low the curse is more free to do bad stuff and most curses eat Qi. Having your Qi topped up helps you passively resist a number of them."
She got up and walked around the desk, leaning down with her hands on her hips to look him in the face with her blind gaze, a careful and almost clinical examination. "Basic easy curse theory - a Curse is a technique that turns your own Qi against you. You follow?" She asked with a tilt of the head.
"Makes sense." Iskander replied with a nod. "Has to keep itself going; guess I just never thought about how."
"Yup," her 'p' popped, a hint of sharp teeth in her mouth. "Anyway, get to cycling!" she reminded him. "So, how do you think you got cursed?" She asked, tone encouraging, once he started cycling.
Iskander idly funneled the qi into his system, though it felt a bit icky to cycle outside of meditation - so wasteful! "Took a mission to clear out a tomb to the Far South, right by the Qi-Draining Desert. I had to get out of dodge pretty fast though." He sighed and shook his head. He couldn't help but feel guilty about desecrating the resting place of Clansmen - even if it had already been desecrated before he got there.
Thinking back on recent events, Iskander scratched the back of his head and continued his explanation. "The defenses were too strong; it should have been a Foundation-level mission. Anyway, before I was chased out I found an amulet. That's what got me. I got rid of it, but it still… wait," suddenly, he trailed off.
Backing up a few steps, Iskander checked his pockets. Breast first, then hips, then the back pockets, where he felt something he really wished he hadn't. Pulling out the amulet, Iskander groaned in frustration. "I, uh, guess I
didn't get rid of it. Maybe I can't." He muttered, massaging his temples.
"Nope, that's probably hopeless. That thing is
attached," she opined, with a faint frown. She raised a hand and after a check for his permission tapped a finger against his cheek right below his right eye. Iskander could feel a strange thrumming in her doll-jointed finger, like an idling Qi engine rather than a heartbeat. This close, her skin had a noticeable and uncanny silver sheen.
"Seems I was right. Entered through your eye meridians," she hummed and then backed up out of his space and crossed her arms as she looked at him. She flicked her fingers. "Not super important though."
"Describe to me exactly what you have observed about this entity haunting you," she commanded, a finger tapping thoughtfully on her elbow.
"Haven't gotten that good a look at it, since it never stands still, but…" Iskander crossed his arms and furrowed his brow. "Big; bigger than you. Wore a big green cloak with a hood, so I couldn't see its body. Moved… weird. Joints in the wrong places or something. More like a big bug than a human."
He paused for a moment, then held up a finger. "Oh, and hitting it felt extra weird. I always thought ghosts just passed through solid stuff, but it was solid. Except, whenever my sword hit the thing, it… wiggled?" Iskander paced back and forth, turning his back on his Senior for the first time since entering. That was probably rude, but the swordsman was too absorbed in thought to dwell on that. "Like hitting a drum maybe? It gives a little, and it shakes, but then it's normal. I probably ain't making any sense, but my point's that it wasn't like hitting a person or an animal at all."
Cerina nodded along, taking in what he said attentively. "It wouldn't be," she waved her hands a little bit. "The corpus, the… existence of a ghost or specter is not physical matter. Physical harm does nothing to fully immaterial grudges and wraiths. An entity that manifests a physical form is still very resistant, 'cause it only takes a fraction of the actual damage."
"Regardless," she said, eliding over how deeply Iskander was fucked if he was stuck to just hacking at it with a sword. "How did it
act? Ghosts do not grow or change as thinking beings do - they follow strict rules of behavior," she told him, a quirk to her posture as she left him a chance to fill in the blanks.
"Um…" Iskander looked around the room, wondering if something in here might jog his memory. Instead, the beady eyes of the cuckoo birds seemed to judge him harshly, which only left him feeling more out of place. "It didn't do anything fancy or ghostly, really; just tried to beat on me and anyone around me, both times. It was a little different the second time though. More aggressive, and it wasn't disappearing like it was the first time."
He held up the amulet, looking into the large ruby in its center in the hope that might give him some kind of insight. Unfortunately, it appeared, as far as Iskander could tell, completely inert. "It appeared in my house. I tried to fight it, but it was blinking in and out, so I, uh, retreated?"
Iskander took a moment to collect his thoughts further before continuing. "Yeah, I
tactically retreated for a few hours to Alexios' house. I left the amulet behind, but when I was there I found it in my bag. When I pulled it out, it appeared again. Then I threw it away as far as I could, and the ghost followed it. Now here it is again."
Iskander considered pocketing the amulet again, since it would follow him anyway if he tried to throw it away. But, if the damage really was already done… oh, why not. He slipped the chain around his neck and tucked it into his tunic. "I don't think it can go too far from the amulet, and I know it's too smart to come out if it's too dangerous, because I've been staying in crowds and stalking Experts for the last two days."
He paused, waiting for a reply - only to suddenly hold up his hand in a silent interruption to words that hadn't even been spoken. It was a gesture done out of sheer instinct, and a very rude one at that, but Cerina thankfully didn't seem to care. "No. No, that's not all of it, because while I was running, I was alone sometimes and it didn't come out. I dunno when the amulet got back in my pocket, but it probably had a chance to get me at some point. Why didn't it?"
Why? What had made it so willing to emerge when he was in Alexios' house? He'd heard some curses were based on the victim's fear. Was it about his own knowledge - did it need him to know he had the cursed object to emerge? That didn't sound right, because he hadn't known about the curse the first time it manifested.
Did the amulet have to be out in the open? That couldn't be it, because the ghost hadn't come
out of the amulet; just appeared nearby. The amulet didn't have anything inside of it, but simply allowed the ghost to exist. So what else could it have been? What did those manifestations have in common that excluded any other time recently. Not the time of day, that was for sure.
"I was alone, but also… something else, I know there must have been another rule." Suddenly he gasped, clenching the fist he'd been holding up and smacking the underside into his open palm as he made his declaration. "I was inside. I think that was it: it came out when I was indoors and no one stronger than it was around!"
Cerina's amused half-smirk showed off several of her needle teeth. "You'd make an okay exorcist, with some training.
Anyway, you've figured out at least some of its manifestation rules." She sat back on her desk's edge.
She ran a hand through her hair and then shrugged. "My assessment junior? You're in some shit up to your eyeballs. This thing is draining your Qi actively to feed itself and slowly growing stronger, until it hollows you out. I think you can imagine where that leads," she huffed a little, spreading her arms. "So how are you going to stop it, when your sword can only do minimal harm to its shell?"
For the first time since he had entered this room, perhaps the first time since that spirit had appeared, Iskander spoke with confidence. "Anything can be beaten if you know the enemy, know yourself and know the conditions of the battle. And if you still can't win, then you have to either change the battlefield, change the enemy, or change yourself. That's my belief at least." He declared, surprisingly calm despite Cerina's proclamation.
He took a deep breath, tilting his head up to the ceiling. He closed his eyes, feeling the world around him. "If it won't appear when I'm outside, then I don't need to be paranoid anymore; the battlefield is under my control now. If I know why I couldn't cut it, then I know what I need to change about myself. All that's left is the enemy - and if I have time to prepare, I think I'm pretty good at controlling my enemies.
Iskander held up three fingers, smirking. "If I know all three things, and I can control all three things, then I can do anything."
Cerina laughed brightly, immensely entertained, standing up and clapping him on the shoulder enthusiastically. "Good! Well, before you get on all that, you should probably
sleep. Zexian, Shui, and I will keep an eye out."
"I'll give it a shot. But uh…" Iskander paused in thought for a moment, then shrugged his pack off of his shoulders. "Can I leave my things with you? If I sleep outside I might get robbed, but nothing I own is worth anything to an Expert. So since it's all junk, I know you won't steal it."
Cerina's giggle tinkled like bells. "I meant on the cot out that door kid, but if you want to sleep in the sand I won't stop you." She pointed past him.
Iskander blinked in surprise a few times, pointing at himself and looking around. "Me, Senior? You're inviting me to sleep here, in
your office?" He stammered wordlessly for a moment before answering with a smile. "Well if you're offering, I really should accept. Thanks, Senior Sister!"
Cerina smiled indulgently. "You're welcome, Junior Brother…, goodnight for now," she said. Iskander turned away and walked to the door. As he gripped the handle, he felt the almost crushing weight of her mysterious Intent press into his shoulders. "You have caught my
interest, Junior. Don't die on me, will you?"
The hairs on Iskander's nape prickled, and her words followed him into sleep, as heavy as lead.
—-
no.: This is the first part of my collab with @BungieONI. There's a lot that I want to say, but I can't say it until the end of the second part.
Most of this is setup, a series of events where everything is put into place for the coming confrontation. Iskander's new status quo is immediately broken down by a different sort of threat than he's used to, and one that he needs to improve his skills to take down. It's a pretty standard shonen-style plot beat, throwing in an outside-context problem that the hero must grow and change in order to deal with.
But as I said, I can't really say anything more without spoilers. One fun detail though: because of certain circumstances at my workplace, I was forced to write the majority of my part of the collab on my phone, which makes Iskander's desperation and exhaustion in this arc very relatable.
