Ferenike 10 - Mother Scorpion
First Tessarian Rongnu was a svelte woman of Third Sea features, mixed interestingly with the white-yellow hair of the Golden Devil Clan. She also didn't look a day older than Ferenike, a youthful face in its early twenties, even after a century of life. Sitting across from her in her office Ferenike could feel her cultivation sitting comfortably at the Ninth Heavenstage, only a half-step above her own that was scraping at the peak of the Eighth Heavenstage.
On her desk were stacks of reports from the War. Three days ago the first wall of the Night Fortress had fallen, and the War was all anyone could talk about, as it looked like the second would as well. Her Trainees were babbling about it constantly.
The Grand Elder was attending to other matters and while things were terrifying in a sheer numbers sense, the reports she'd seen and the general tenor of the atmosphere in the Dawn Fortress spoke to a quiet confidence. In a few years her Trainees would probably be called to war. A part of her mind changed direction, shifting and clinking like a great river of glass as her plans for them altered. The mosaic crunched and ideas sank beneath consideration as others rose.
Nan Fuxi shifting as she sat in a chair besides her brought the three of them out of their momentary reverie and Mellissa Rongnu chuckled as she rolled her neck, humming in thought as she considered Ferenike's report on her Trainees.
She looked to her left and nodded at Ferenike.
"You've done good work Legionnaire, I'm happy, the boss is gonna be happy. Everyone's happy with your little babies progress." She said brightly, then her eyes gained a slightly shrewd glint. "In fact the sir has said he's considering you for promotion to Second Tessarian. Augustan is getting ready to attempt his Tribulation and Fourth Legion are eyeing him to replace Centurion Pherenikos."
Ferenike blinked, then rubbed her chin in thought. "Not entirely... unexpected." She said quietly. It kinda was
Thwap! "Ow!" Ferenike yelped as a hand smacked the back of her head.
"I can tell you're surprised, Ms. Terrifier of Hapless Juniors. I'm happy for you." Fuxi said with a snort as her hand returned to her sleeves in her lap.
Rongnu snorted. "Yeah well don't get too excited little lady.
You're going to be behind this desk in the not too distant future if I don't miss my guess and you'll have to deal with
all.
My.
Work." She said with a very ominous chuckle.
Fuxi paled while Ferenike snorted and giggled.
Rongnu waited to continue until they calmed down. "Anyhoo," She pulled out a pipe of her own and took a puff as she stared at the two of them. "I hear you're saddled with some Salviati kids, Ferenike?" She asked idly.
Ferenike smiled as she pulled out her own pipe. And a second for Fuxi, which was declined politely, as it always was. "I have yes," she said as she took a pull and her sweet smoke joined the pungent black cloud Rongu was letting free. "I'm expecting something interesting at least. Markus always had funny stories about his family."
Fuxi nodded with a smile. "I remember the Great Cake Explosion."
Ferenike winced. "God not that story, that one was
horrific and we got it second hand
." She grumbled.
Fuxi just giggled.
"Yes that, I just wanted to be sure I had you sorted out properly. Diao Xi will handle your trainees Spirit Beast ID and Deep Desert Manuever training on the days you need to handle the kid to confirm?" Rongnu asked as she pulled out a schedule scroll and made some notes on it.
Ferenike nodded. "Yep." She said, popping the p as she took another pull on her pipe. Their clouds were mixing, doing battle as it were above their heads. Her smoke was losing.
"Right then, before you go, is Gallius available for dinner in three days." Rongnu asked blithely.
There was dead silence for a solid thirty seconds as Fuxi and Ferenike glared at Rongnu. Then Fuxi sighed deeply. "Really?" She asked rhetorically as she rested her head in her hand.
Rongnu burst into laughter. "I'm
kidding, he's in my chain of command and Dragoumis would chew my face off for it... mostly." she said, trailing off at the end with a considering expression.
"NO." They said in unison.
"Awww. Shame." The older woman sighed, smirking at their expressions. Then she waved her hands. "Out, the both of you. I have things to do."
Ferenike was already out and moving through the door before she finished speaking, waving over her shoulder.
"Yes ma'am." She said brightly.
The Salviati compound was much the same as it had been a year or so ago, when she'd met Magnus and delivered to them the corpses of Zu Jing and his erstwhile followers. He'd accepted it with a heartfelt thanks and a pat on her shoulder, and then invited her to drink with him and his father Gaius.
Those had been good times. She'd popped out the Ice Peach Wine, freezing part of the table with its chill, for that. The sharp and sweet taste as it tingled on her lips had gone down wonderfully with the cactus and meat skewers they had made. Things had been better with the Salviati since.
Now she looked around seeing what they might have put to use from the results of her vengeance. Here and there on the circle of buildings she could see new skulls, covered in bronze and with etched gems in the sockets. Arrays glimmered on them in the star light. A quick assessment was done of how they sounded to her Qi senses and what she could see of the symbols.
Hmmmm...
As she walked up to one of the training buildings for the Salviati, a dojo to the natives of the Third Sea, and walked through its wide double doors with a nod to the guards on either side, both in Qi Condensation and beneath her she thought the new arrays might be a clever little trick of illusion that settled into the blood and marrow of a person and caused delusions of being burned alive. Fun stuff for Blood Cultivators. Powerful stuff too.
She walked into the training house and found within it a long and wide room with mats of padding laid down and then linen anchored on top of it to provide a slightly squishy and rough surface that mimicked packed dune-sand. Her golden robes swished over it gently in near silence. Pillars of marble stood to either side and held up a thin balcony that went around the entire room. The floor above would be a rectangle of storage rooms reached by one of the two stairs at the very back of the first floor.
The walls below the balcony were also padded, and patterned with sand dunes, such that it was rather like standing in the middle of the Desert to stand in the middle of this room.
At the far end was a looming four armed statue made of Spirit Bronze. The Imperator, a symbol that reappeared in Clan imagery again and again and again. In his upper left hand he carried an aspis shield, in his upper right a hoplon spear. In his lower right he carried a ledger and in his lower left a sprig of grain. Symbols of the Legions. On his head he wore a Legion helm with its signature crest of horse hair, something only seen on the supreme commander of the Legions in times of true war.
The Clan's records, once great, were now fragmentary and spoke little on who the Imperator actually
was but going by the title and the symbols and what fragments of lore described the Imperator, he was a being the Imperial
Optimatoi's own Earl of Bronze had once served with distinction. Ferenike slowly walked across the mats to stand before the twenty foot tall figure, in arms reach of the rectangular marble base on which he stood.
She bowed her head and clasped her hands. In the Legion tongue she recited.
"Father of Legions, gird us in good bronze, give unto us stout and hearty bread, let not sand nor mountain nor swamp stay our march. One day, this land will be conquered, in your name. Blessed be the Golden Fist of the Imperator."
An old Legion prayer. There were others, for speaking over the dead, but most of the prayers she had been taught were decrees of defiance against the Heavens. Little enough of the old ideas persisted, in their diminished state.
She hummed as she raised her head and turned her back on the old figure, and settled into a comfortable seiza, legs folded underneath her. In one hand she took her pipe and in the other she removed the hat on her head and examined it. Golden, with four quadrants of white upon its top, it was a simple and sinfully comfortable thing. She hoped Old Hat Pelops had a strong family that maintained the skill, she'd miss it if it faded away. She blinked... maybe she could do something about that at some point. Hmmph, something for later.
Time to wait for her student.
The time was arranged for a bit before dawn, presumably with the young mistress being awoken and sent to her care before the sun rose. And if she didn't? Well, it was their time. Her role was very clearly set out.
She could wait.
And she did, for an hour. Long enough for her to brew a pot of tea and serve herself, a small table of lacquered wood set before her with a porcelain tea set she had received as a gift in the City of Golden Bells. The cups she had replaced with crimson crystal glass versions of her own. Not up to her satisfaction quite yet, but they worked for now.
The sun was shining into the room from windows up on the second floor and the birds were chirping sweetly when the young mistress finally arrived with a
bang as she threw open the double doors at the front of the training room.
"So your my trainer then, peasant?" The short, blonde haired girl with bright green eyes said grumpily. Her hair was bound up in a ponytail which highlighted her bronze skin, and slightly upturned nose. Katerina Salviati. First Heavenstage and going no where fast from what they had told her. Violent and full of irrepressible energy.
Ferenike didn't react, her brown eyes sedate and calm as she drank her tea. "I am your Legionnaire trainer." She said, mild challenge in her phrasing.
The girl scowled and stomped forward, then stopped, seeming torn. She stood before Ferenike and crossed her arms with a huff.
"Well then, what are we going to do first? You gonna spar with me or something? You're strong right? Well I'm strong and strong people fight!" She grumbled out in breathless rush, rubbing an arm as she bounced in place. She looked like she hadn't fought in weeks and
needed to fight.
Energetic this young miss. Probably not more than... 17? If that? She took a puff on her pipe. She could see why the Salviati had sent this girl her way. Her eyes narrowed.
"If you want to fight, why haven't you struck at me at the first opportunity? That's what the strong do right?" She asked lightly, tea raised halfway to her lips.
Katerina huffed, shaking her head as she rubbed her face in frustration. "No! No, no... that's... they do that but it isn't
right..." She trailed off, hands gesturing angrily.
"... it isn't right... I need permission first for a spar..." It seems to
pain her to say that.
Ferenike nods. "Then you have permission, come at me!" She said, wave a hand with a snap of her sleeve.
"RAAAAAAAGH!" The Salviati girl explodes into a blur of motion, a cry of stress and anger let loose from her guts, feet slamming against the mats before she leaps off them and soars towards Ferenike where she sat serenely. The girl's foot was aimed squarely at her head.
All of this pent up energy in her junior. They really did need a trainer for this girl. She could understand the burning
need for a fight, in her own way.
She raised her teacup and caught the girl's leading foot on its edge. With a flick of her wrist the girl's course was redirected, up and over her head, tumbling through the air to bounce off of the Imperator's bronze chest with a meaty thunk. A corner of her mind was glad that the Clan built their monuments to stand up to their rambunctious activities.
The girl recovered and twisted above her to try and punch her in the skull.
Ferenike's pipe hooked her elbow and with a twirl flung her right back out the front doors with a surprised scream.
A swipe of her hand cleared away her tea, to be continued later.
This was easy... relaxing.
She walked out with a smile on her face, descending the short step leading up to the front doors casually as her student picked herself up out of the dirt.
Katerina was smiling,
grinning.
Hah! How fun!
The girl's next blow was preceded by a handful of sand tossed towards Ferenike's face and then a knee flying for her gut. Ferenike slapped it down with an open palm and then smashed that same hand into her gut.
Thud, Katerina fell to her back again, her forward momentum completely redirected into the ground. And her spine when she hit it.
"Guh..." She said, attempting for articulate eloquence and failing terribly.
"Yes quite so student. I think we shall start with your ability to
dodge." Ferenike said with a grin.
The girl paled slightly and then leapt up and
away from Ferenike.
"Attack!" She shouted and the girl blitzed into motion. A flurry of blows flying at Ferenike, which she defended with one hand and one foot.
"Good good! Fire is what tempers our bronze!
Use it! Dodge!" She barked as a hammer fist slammed towards the Salviati's guts.
There was a massive pained
whumpf of air as Ferenike's knuckles smashed into her sternum and sent her flying again. But this time Ferenike could tell she'd started
trying to react properly and lighten the blow.
Ferenike skipped over the sands, dancing over handfuls of grains like she weighed nothing. "Use your Qi! Lightening yourself is the essence of
Qigong, the Soft Movements of the Clan!" She lectured as she raced for the girl.
Katerina popped up like she was made of springs and met Ferenike furiously.
Their training went long into the day, breaks throughout for cultivation, before finally the girl ran out of steam. Ferenike herself was fine, even disregarding her enhanced stamina. Boons of legion training.
They spoke little, only exchanging words on form and how to properly dodge a much higher ranked cultivator briefly.
Eventually, Ferenike ran the girl down and found her contemplative. Thoughtful.
They were sitting in the training room now, separated by her tea set, this time with the fine porcelain cups.
Katerina Salviati was staring down into her tea now, something obviously weighing on her mind as Ferenike smoked contentedly.
"... M... Hmm... ah, Master?" She began.
"Yes?" Ferenike idly responded.
"Why is fighting something cultivators are so... good at... no that's not it. Why does cultivation seem to inherently bring
violence?" She asked.
Hmm. Ferenike paused, letting her pipe rest in her lap as she looked at the girl before her. Green eyes met older brown eyes.
"A good question that has cursed Clan scholars for generations. I do not know the reason, and anyone who tells you they do know is either a fool or deluded. But I can speculate." She said quietly.
Katerina looked at her raptly, tea forgotten in her hands.
"I would speculate that one of the causes comes from three reasons: First, people do not like to be hurt or to have things taken from them. Second, if people are hurt and have things taken from them, they want to take them back. Third, Cultivation involves the concentration of resources, in this case Qi, and taking the resources necessary for it from other people is easy."
"Greed then?" She asked.
Ferenike nodded. "Greed is certainly a part of it. The higher you rise, the greedier you have to be to stay there, and to protect what you care about."
"Seems... could it be better?" She asked sadly.
"Perhaps, my student... perhaps. In our own way, we're trying, for what it is worth." Ferenike said quietly.
A contemplative end to their first day. Ferenike expected many others to go similarly.
She returned to her quarters in one of the many Legionnaires barracks dotted around the Fortress to steal a quick nap. An hour or so after midnight she returned to her Trainees in the Third Training Barrack and slipped into the building easily.
They'd set up a sentry like they were supposed to, running it in shifts, but it looks like Diao Xi had paid off and the sentry was asleep from a sleeping draught, the girl's chin resting on her collar as she snored quietly. Sloppy. With the war kicking up they'd have to learn how to watch for poisons and treachery. She walked past the trainee into the main room, a kitchen and lounging space with a few shelves for shared scrolls and ledgers and manuals. Those were well cared for, as was the garden. They'd done remarkably well in that respect.
She was proud of them for that. They'd progressed well in the year or so gap between when she started training them and when she started training the Salviati kid.
Carefully, using sparing amounts of Qi to make her steps soundless and light as a feather, she snuck up to the top floor of the Barrack and went to the room at the far end of the hall. Each floor was arranged as one long hall, one open space at the end closest to the front side of the building used as a small relaxation area and for equipment storage, then rooms on each side, and at the back of the building the stairs.
Sneaking towards the furthest bedroom she looked around and noted the small lamp, the shutter just slightly open, hanging in just the right position to let a beam of light into the rooms if the doors were opened incautiously. A moment of fiddling with the anti-tamper arrays on it and it was shut off.
Then she approached the door of her first target and after a moment of careful examination and silent work jimmied the lock open. The door eased open silently and she slipped in like a shadow. The sleeping form of Agha Kleikos, the gangly redhead starting to gain muscle under the Legion regimen, and starting ask more intelligent questions than she used to.
She carefully ducked the gourd full of noisemaking metal beads, holding it carefully as it tried to fall, wove her way through the trip wires to other noisemakers and traps in the room. The she paused, precariously balanced as she adjusted her foot to carefully not step on the pressure plate the girl had set out and hidden by a rug.
Then she was in and looming at the foot of the sleeping girl's cot. Gripping the ends she burst into bright red light, face changing into a horrific visage of glass and fire and
flipped her out of it.
"WAKE UP TRAINEES!" She roared at the top of her lungs, rattling the entire building.
Agha screamed like a banshee as she was catapulted to the floor, babbling uncontrollably as she tried to straighten up.
"Uniforms
on! Sandals
on! Get to the training field!" Ferenike barked at her as the girl flailed about for the light cord.
But Ferenike was already gone, a spectre of horror moving through each room, banging on the door and knocking trainees out of their cots if they were too groggy. "UP! UNIFORMS ON! SANDALS ON! GET TO THE TRAINING FIELD!" She yelled, repeating it like a mantra as she started herding sleepy kids out of their rooms and down into the common room.
Some of the ones quicker on the uptake were partially in their uniforms, which got them a scolding about proper uniform care, and others were getting ready as she popped in and yelled her message at them.
It wasn't more than a minute or two before they were all gathered in front of her. In neat ranks, and mostly sorted uniforms, with their Spirit Stones stored and tucked away somewhere on their person.
Today she had them doing katas for hours in the morning which then progressed into sparring. This wasn't the first time they'd had a sparring day, and like the previous times she'd done it she watched how they moved in formation. Not Formations, but the precursors for it, the katas encouraging them to develop their control of Qi to suit such endeavors.
How did her juniors who knew nothing, shape their Qi? What would she have to correct for when teaching the weak how to use the Oasis?
As they progressed into sparring she watched their intensity, how well they fought as they grew tired. Again and again and again she watched them fight and fall, rest and recover to go again. Her mind churned as she pulled on the Spirit Stone dust in her pipe and felt the ever reliable pins and needles pain in her skin from cultivation. What was the limit of their stamina, what range of ability was present in these juniors? What was the least amount of stamina, what was the most? She asked these questions, trying to quantify or at least qualify how much stamina she really had to work with when sharing things out.
It wasn't a lot, she concluded by the end of the day. Not enough. It would be a pretty thin margin between improving stamina overall for a standard amount of Spirit Stones, and consuming more Spirit Stones in order to make up for costs. The Oasis was meant to allow them to spend less Spirit Stones in the long run as Qi was more efficiently used and shared, and cultivators healed quicker for less effort. Would be pretty pointless if it ate more Spirit Stones than it saved.
A bit of a dilemma. She was stuck for now. Nothing for it but patience and hard work and some luck. She looked out to the walls of the Dawn Fortress, the towering shapes obscuring the southern horizon and she worried. Things would get much worse, soon.
A few days later as the sun rose, red light swept across the desert outside the Dawn Fortress, bloody dawn. Ferenike rested, smoking her pipe fitfully as she sat atop a chair like rock and the sun glinted off her yellow hair. The Fortress was abuzz with news of the happenings at the Night Devil Fortress. The second wall had fallen. Elder of War Aikaterine was holding the Devil Bees off but rumors in the Taktika and dripping down from the Centurions spoke of Aikaterine considering plans to bring in more cultivators.
Her trainees would be amongst that number as the Ninth Century deployed.
And she wondered at the weight of responsibility she felt for her juniors, magnified a hundredfold. It hunched her shoulders and made her feel melancholy. Different than her squad did.
Why did this fit so well with her, teaching these juniors?
Why did she feel like this?
Why was she so... patient with them?
A strange question to ask maybe, for her Dao? It didn't feel like it to her, it just came, bubbling out of the vaults of her glass infused mind.
She didn't know what possessed her to put up with them and their stupidity, or why her pride in their progress grew out of all sense and proportion. She didn't know why she put up with teaching such a violent girl as Katerina Salviati, and why she enjoyed discussing philosophy with her so much.
She felt like her heart would burst, exploding with passion, and she felt like an endless sea of willingness to give. Her head pounded like drums when she worried about them, imagining the horrible fates they could endure, bodies lying still in the sand. Heads torn off and chests opened.
She got up, huffing. She was going to have to watch these kids die out there. Their lives literally getting
sucked out or gruesomely poisoned by the Devil Bees. She knew she was going to have to, and many more beyond them. There were some school of thoughts which said she shouldn't get attached but she intrinsically rejected them. She just couldn't name
why.
She paced through the sands, sandals slapping it as she paced near her rock.
She couldn't put words to why they weighed on her so much. And that wasn't the only thing, this training had started to make her question her Dao. What
was patience, really?
Clunk!
A rock skipped away under her feet, kicked away without a care. She looked down and stopped as movement skittered away from her foot. A scorpion, just a small thing, red and bronze moving in the sand near her.
It skittered in a circle as it wiggled out of its little broken burrow and she saw on its back tiny white scorplings. A mother.
Ferenike remembered the weight on her back from her trainees. She thought about her conversation with Rongnu, calling them her babies, and she thought about watching them grow.
Further back, she remembered Agrippa ruffling her hair as they sat around a fire and watched the stars.
Even further back, she remembered the creak of her family's cart and her mother moving in the lamplight as she wove cloth.
She was speaking. "...burdens can be uplifting, daughter. Like you." She said with a smile.
Ferenike's eyes burned, her breath caught in her throat, her hand rising to cover her mouth as she shivered. Wetness touched her fingers.
It really was that simple wasn't it?
She'd been an idiot. Of course she knew what these kids meant to her, it'd been starting at her in the face all this time.
She breathed deep, settling her racing heart. Inside, her mind bubbled and frothed, plans falling into place as she saw what she had to do.
Soon war would come and take her children away from her. But it would
not find them easy prey.
@occipitallobe another Omake for you! I'd like this to become a Cultivation bonus for Ferenike as she passes through an important milestone of self understanding. There is probably one more Omake for the Training Arc as it transitions into the War Arc I have planned, where I hope to explore the horrors of fighting the Devil Bees from a Qi Condensation Cultivator's perspective. Accounts will be settled, loose ends cleared, and then its off to War.
