Congrats on catching up it's a wonderful quest and I hope you've hade a great time reading it.
Rock the Cradle: A cultivation story
- Thread starter VagueZ
- Start date
- Fantasy Action
Another precursor
New
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Winning vote:
[] A technical style
As the new two Forged enemies come up behind you, you drop a Dandelion Rain at your feet and turn to face them. One has a round center-grip shield to match its sword, and the other has a larger, heavier curved blade.
You slip towards them, a Goldsign fist swinging at the shield-user. It raises its shield to block, but you arrest the motion and kick at its shin, instead. It's not a hard blow, but it's enough to unbalance the enemy.
The big sword user slashes at you before you can physically shift, given the half-speed limitation. You deflect it with the blade of your axe, but your other Goldsign holds a palm out and blasts the enemy with your Striker move.
Even as that is firing, the seed you'd dropped first fires, distracting and injuring the Striker enemy, leaving its madra attack to sear through the air just above your ear.
Goldsigns take your axe, and your physical hands—still better for Forger techniques—throw a pair of Clinging Vines, sticking these two melee enemies together as awkwardly as possible.
With them tied up, you turn back to the Striker you've been harrying, and leap towards it. You cleave it in the base of the neck, and it evaporates.
Two more foes Forge into existence, leaving you more outnumbered than ever. One of them has an axe of its own, which it uses to cut apart the two you'd stuck to each other. The other spreads its arms, working to call forth a powerful Ruler/Striker attack of some sort.
You dive into the middle of the three melee fighters, trusting to your size and great Enforcer technique to keep you safe. If they separate, they cease supporting each other. If they stay close, they're in each other's way. Still, they outnumber you, but with the guidance of the dream aspect in your Enforcer technique, you strike and strike again, landing distracting and frustrating blows that don't hurt much but keep disrupting their stance, their poise, and throw them off balance as they try to strike back.
The best moment is when the big attacker, the one hanging back, tries to shoot you in the back of the head and you duck, the technique shredding one of your foes.
The worst moment is just a couple breaths later, when you hesitate just too long and find a Forged axe at your neck.
The dojo's controls won't let it hurt you, but that's a loss.
As they evaporate, you rub your unharmed neck and work to catch your breath. You're pretty worn out, but you still look at Prachi. As normal, he doesn't give much away with his face. "Three targets defeated, two badly injured, even if the simulation would still end with your death in reality. Still, good for a start."
He comes closer to you as you get something to drink after that exertion, and he gives you an unusually close scrutiny once he's there. "This will not be easy to master," he warns you.
"I know," you say. "But... I think it suits. What Cheng has me doing is very focused on precision and accuracy, and... that's something I think I can lean on." It's not just Cheng's work. Being very precise and intentional with your techniques, like your sister, has some efficiencies of its own. The more you can take that mentality in, along with the more that you can make your body move exactly the way you envision, the better you'll be at not just fighting, but also refining, or even just passively sensing your surroundings. "I want to make this work, if I can."
A small smile crease's Prachi's face for a few seconds, longer than normal for him. "Good. For most students I have had, I would tell them to give it up. For you? Prepare to undertake the most annoying physical conditioning of your life."
Prachi is as good as his word. Over the next few weeks, in addition to a significant array of new movements to practice, which like always require you to just repeat it perfectly for the hundreds upon hundreds of repetitions required to carve it into your body, he provides a dozen new exercises for you, pushing your body in new ways.
He has you carry a pair of chopsticks with you. When you're out and about and you see a fly, you are supposed to catch it with the chopsticks, be sure it can't wiggle free, then release it unharmed. This is incredibly frustrating. The chopsticks aren't meant to pluck something out of the air to begin with, and there's not much daylight between 'touching a fly at all' and 'squashing it'.
He has you run a hundred-yard-dash, then adds a wrinkle where you must land precisely on a cut-out of your sandals. Exactly the size and shape of them, having been copied from them. You have to complete the dash just as quickly as you did when you were just running, then stop instantly on the spot that he marked, no matter their orientation or spacing. Even an inch misplacement for either foot is a failure. When he starts putting obstacles so you can't see the landing position until you're almost on top of it, the difficulty doubles further.
Using some cheap rubber bags, not much larger than his fists, he makes targets for you to strike at. They're doubled, however: a more fragile bag inside a tougher one. Sometimes it's filled with loose sawdust and sometimes it's packed tight with sand. With just a glance and a strike with hand or axe, you need to tear open the outer bag without damaging the inner one. When that starts to be something you can reliably do, he adds a third, and demands you only tear the first two.
The exercises are weird, but they all clearly are moving in the same direction: to fight like you are picturing, your body has to be able to respond immediately and with perfectly controlled force. Different exercises focus on different parts or combinations of parts of your body: from Goldsigns to toes, you force yourself to push past the infuriatingly precise requirements, repeating and repeating both in front of Prachi and on your own, until they finally become achievable.
Beti seems to think it's cute and thinks that you've found a new game, or possibly that you're working on a sort of mating dance or something. She's not totally clear what the differences between humans and birds are, sometimes.
When you're not training under Prachi's eye, you're working with Risshon and Cheng. Gradually, ever-more of your work is going to the Heaven's Facade, which is ready for its next stages.
The Underlord had assigned Risshon to hunt down a handful of powerful Remnants, far from Great Crevasse, that would be rendered down into it. That had resulted in him coming back with one Truegold Remnant and one Highgold one, along with a nasty limp and some stiches in his side. You'd healed the injuries for him, which had taken a couple of hours: injuries from more powerful beings seem a little harder to heal, even if the hurt is the same. The Highgold Remnant wasn't strong enough for what Cheng needed, however, which had resulted in a need to raise it further artificially. You and Beti had been assigned to that task, creating a series of pills that were force-fed to the Remnant until it blazed with power like a Truegold.
There's a part of you, and not a small part, that desperately wished you could be the one getting those resources, instead.
Once the Remnants were sufficiently powerful, they had to be taken apart, reduced to their constituent pieces so that they could meld with a soup of other powerful Remnants that Cheng had been collecting over the decades. The 'soup' had been left at a rare point of balance, where it could safely sit without losing power (or forming a new spirit that would need to be fought), but with your efforts on the earlier step, now was the time for them to be combined.
This involved a lot of painstaking work, using extremely fine cuts with your halfsilver knife to dissect them. Not even Cheng could know what each Remnant would look like at every step, though, which had required him to oversee things and bark instructions at you and Risshon and even Remelyn as you all worked. Lyn, you've gradually realized, isn't much of a refiner, but her icy madra still is helpful in slowing down or stopping a lot of reactions. Risshon, on the other hand, is not only a talented refiner in his own right, but he also uses force and sword aspected madra in his path. The force side is especially helpful in this case, allowing him to pressurize various tanks and keep other very energetic reactions safely contained as you all work. All of your different madra aspects mesh usefully in your shared work.
From there, you reach the parts Beti is required for. Nothing requires the same level of multi-day focus that you'd needed before, but the delicacy and complexity of her tasks strain even her: her roots can absorb, filter, and extrude all sorts of complicated concotions, but even she's not a miracle worker. Some steps tax her incredibly far.
And yet, gradually, progress is made. The Underlord has not seen fit to share his full plans or recipe with you, but based on his energy and reactions, you must have crossed some peak of challenge in all this. Eventually, the amount of time you are required to dedicate to his goals begins to fall again.
Heaven's Facade grows closer.
Great Crevasse has a curfew, these days. There's not been any further wide outbreaks of violence, not like that one event that got you termed 'miracle tree kid', but tensions have been ratcheting higher, in a way you aren't really equipped to either fully engage with or totally ignore. You aren't really plugged into most of the concerns of the average man in the street, but you aren't a blood Luxe nor a clear direct servant, and Cheng's weird neutrality has mostly kept him from being too much bothered.
A strange side-effect of this is that the Exhibition Day matches are canceled. You have to talk that over with Etaja to figure out why.
{The Exhibition Day fights serve a few purposes, yeah? It's experience for your own budding talents. It's a chance to keep an eye on the other guys. It's showing off to the rest of the city, advertising the power and skill you command.}
<But if they're afraid of some sort of... I don't know, a violent thing, wouldn't they still want to show off to everyone?>
Etaja sighs. {Unfortunately, there's a simpler answer if they want to achieve that. It's called 'we have Truegolds and you don't'. If the Luxe and Brightflare want to impress people with a show of power, well, that's an escalation, but it's one that's harder for the average person to gainsay.}
You wince. <And so the main reason they're not showing their young talents off to the other big group... is because they're worried enough that something could kick off that they'd rather have a surprise up their sleeve than show someone off as a warning?>
{Yup.}
You really have to hope things calm down soon. Fortunately, like you'd heard before, any tensions are pretty far above your level. When Damir comes to you with a request, you make a few awkward inquiries and find that the Luxe officers you check in with are mostly surprised that you're asking.
The Brightflare Lowgold has taken a posted mission to thin out the numbers of those sacred bats you'd run into during your expedition underground for Cheng's lichen. Their numbers have increased and they have been making more of a nuisance of themselves. This is exactly the right sort of task for some skilled Lowgolds to handle as a group: the bats wouldn't normally challenge a Highgold or Truegold. Beti had been an unusual thing: your working theory is that they categorized her as "a tree" above "a dangerous Truegold". It's not like the bats are going to submit to an interview, though, so that's likely to stay as speculation. Still, she's sleepy today and having her around might dissuade them, so you leave her behind.
Damir had promised some scales for your help, and had suggested he'd offer the same if you could provide one or two other comparably-skilled Lowgolds to join the hunt.
Naturally, your thoughts had turned to Gardenia. She had been more than willing to sign on: this was exactly what her family normally did, and Damir's rate was better than what she'd normally expect to find. This led to the group gathering for a late breakfast before heading underground.
Damir shows up with a big kid, probably sixteen years old, but looking weirdly... passive. Your spiritual sense suggests a cooling ember when you sweep it over him. Damir takes care of introductions once he sees you and Gardenia in the street near some of the food vendors: he puts his fists together in front of him and bows—only slightly—to you two. "Forrester Keras. Zhaki Gardenia. Thank you for joining me. This is Smith Emil."
Emil gives a deeper bow to you. "Please, just call me Emil. I follow the Path of Choking Smoke, and I look for your aid as we support the young sir in his task."
You match Emil's bow. "Forrester Keras, Path of the Evergrowing Field. Please use 'they' or 'them' for me." He dips his head once in acknowledgement. "I look forward to working together."
Gardenia gives no bow at all, just a grunt. "Why are you paying us to help on this?"
Damir gives her a smile. "Why, my family can provide me a few scales for competent help, but Brightflare contribution points are at a premium right now. All of us benefit from this arrangement."
"Can't you buy contribution points directly with scales?"
"The exchange rate falls sharply past a certain point."
"Why?"
"Because that is how our elders have best determined this will stoke the flames of our growth."
Gardenia isn't quite ready to give this thought up, however. "So you buy the contribution points secondhand by paying us to help, instead? What's the point?"
Luckily, this is something you've recently come across in your studies, so you can explain. "Oh, the contribution point model is patterned on an old arrangement sometimes called 'company scrip'. By paying out precise amounts, and demanding contribution points exclusively for vital goods and services sold by the owner's own shop, they effectively command a miniature economy that they can exert great control over. Part of the reason the Brightflare school has been so powerful for so long is this arrangement allowing for its elders and top talents to gain a lot of rewards, which encourages people to want to sign up and dream of becoming such an elder and benefiting the same way once they've paid their dues. Hold on." You pull your chopsticks out and lunge for a fly maybe six paces from you, missing slightly. You take a second and third swipe for it, sweeping your chopsticks in the air ahead of you, before your fourth finally safely restrains the insect for a couple seconds. You're too busy focusing on that to really note the mute stares at your back.
The actual hunt is the sort of safely boring effort it should be. You don't give the sacred beasts any sort of sporting chance. The bats are at their least lively time of day. When your more trained spiritual sense finds a clump of them, Emil pour smoke into the space. His path is well-named: the fire and cloud aspects do combine to generate a thick, obscuring smoke. When bats try to escape the smoke, Gardenia's poison and Damir's fire harrow them, with you and Emil playing back-up to those two. You generally have to put down the bats twice: once when they're alive, and then again as a Remnant peels away.
Some of the bats are still somewhat covered in human blood when you find them. The whole reason that the Brightflares put out this suppression mission is because they've become more aggressive, and unfortunately it's easy to see the evidence of that.
The other thing you notice is that Damir's Forged sword of fire has gotten much more powerful since the last time you've seen it. When you comment on that, he spends a good five minutes explaining the glove he wears on his right hand. It's a product of Brightflare Soulsmiths, who created it specifically to enhace Forged flames.
Behind his explanation, you sense a purpose. This tool of his isn't a cheap or easy one. He's only able to afford it because he's been doing well enough to have the contribution points to put to it, which means that he's making good connections.
There's probably a whole chronicle of successes and challenges behind that. You don't have a good look at the details; while Damir openly made use of you to help him set up some foundation, you haven't ever been part of the Brightflare School, nor have you continued to be a headliner for him. You're on slightly divergent tracks, in many ways, though you still have many points of congruence, like today's task. It's... kind of a strange thing for you to think about, gradually shifting away from each other for no specific cause.
Still, you can't help but notice Emil's greed when Damir explains his glove. He knows that this isn't for him, but the other side of it being something Damir has afforded thanks to whatever faction he's been building up is that it's also an advertisement in another way: be useful to me, and maybe I'll invest something like this for you, too. Emil doesn't seem unhappy with his current situation, nor with hanging around with three younger kids who all are probably stronger than him. He just hopes for loyalty to be rewarded.
You understand both loyalty and that greedy feeling. It makes you feel a little sorry for Emil. He probably will get a decent job when he grows up, but that's the best he can really hope for: decent.
There's not that much time to think about Emil and Damir, though, honestly. Between the bats and ensuring the four of you don't get turned around underground, you're also trying to keep your senses open for any raw materials you'd be able to make use of. There's not much. People come through here too often, and thus pick up any treasures that form, but you find a couple of poisonous mushrooms that Gardenia will benefit from once you process them.
Once you've winnowed the bats sufficiently, and the day's worn on, Damir calls a halt, thanks you and Gardenia, provides the promised scales without complaint, and makes his farewells, taking Emil with him.
You hadn't put much thought into it until it's just the two of you again, but now you sense something in Gardenia. Something balancing. "I've gathered a few things again," she says, by way of introducing it. "Can we go to your office?"
You nod.
Gardenia is visibly wrestling with herself by the time her newest pills-to-be are merrily bubbling in a sturdy metal jug. There's a whole complicated procedure you need to constantly maintain for this specific recipe, where you have to adjust a series of valves atop the whole contraption, modifying the pressure as it boils to remove different sets of impurities. It's complicated, but not difficult: you mostly use your Goldsigns to control it, as one more bit of practice for getting them tame enough to fully obey you.
You let Gardenia get to it on her own time. She'd snap at you if you didn't, and you trust her enough to let her work it out. "Keras?" she finally asks.
"Yes?" You turn to give her a small, encouraging smile, before turning back to adjust the aura in the jug.
She's silent again for a moment. "Risshon asked me for a lot of Black Burrowing Toxin, several liters. What's that for?"
You tug at your collar. It's suddenly a little hard to breathe. "It's... used in traps for certain armored rhino sacred beasts, I think. There's some recipe I don't know where it can counteract a different neurotoxin if introduced to a body quickly enough. And it's a precursor to Nightworm Venom."
Gardenia is silent. You don't look at her, bending every last bit of your attention to the refining work, even though it doesn't need it for a couple minutes. Eventually, you have to press on. "I don't think those sacred rhinos live anywhere near here. Not even in the Seishen Kingdom at all. The neurotoxin is a very niche case. The only use I can think of for that much Black Burrowing Toxin is to combine it with the other three precursor ingredients and condense and strengthen it, until you have Nightworm Venom."
"Ingredients including Night's Grand Flowering." Which Gardenia has made before.
"Yes." Your hands are shaking. You take your attention off the refining equipment in front of you and press both sets of hands together, like you're praying. You take a deep breath, hold, release, hold, repeat.
You stop shaking in time to turn the heat down when you should, tweaking the life aura with in the concoction with your madra. Gardenia doesn't know. Gardenia doesn't have any reason to suspect. What Gardenia knows, the only thing that she knows, is that she's maybe being asked to make Nightworm Venom, like what hurt your dad. She knows that he's mostly doing okay now, but has no reason to think that she's maybe being part of making an assassination tool. Nightworm Venom could be part of a fine security construct, after all, or any other legitimate use. She has no reason to suspect anything is amiss with Risshon. He's just a rich man who has given her a good job. Or... does she know anything else?
"Oh, stars below," you murmur, loud enough to be easily audible, as you make a meaningless adjustment on a valve that isn't currently even closed.
Gardenia doesn't give any indication that the phrase means anything to her. She doesn't give the next part of the code. There's not a single, momentary flicker of body language or spirit. The code phrase means nothing. The code phrase means nothing. You let out a long breath, but sit up more confidently. Somehow, that helps. What helps even more is that the thing you had been sensing in her finally does tilt. "My path is terrible for making Soul-Dissolving Shade, but it's possible Risshon might ask for Devil's Acid Spit." That's the other two precursors for the weapon that hurt Dad. Working for Risshon is the big break that's giving her real opportunities to grow beyond the trapped little pond her family has been living in for decades, so it means she is putting a lot on the line, that she's genuinely trying to pay you back when she says, "If you need, I'll tell him that I can't make it."
You understand. Risshon pays her, but you didn't ask for anything. You just helped when she asked, so she has to offer favors back, even if that would get her in trouble at work and she has no reason to think that there's any benefit apart from sparing your feelings.
Gardenia is on your side, come what may.
But now you have one more weird thing about Risshon, and it's one too many. You'd hoped to find something, anything, that would make things make sense, and just make it so the weird little things were excused. Instead, it's now just a little worse.
You're pretty sure now that it's only going to tilt worse from here.
It doesn't matter if it's a wise decision or not. You can't totally disengage from this. Pick one of the following.
[] Accept Gardenia's offer
When and if Risshon asks for a third precursor for a Nightworm Venom weapon, Gardenia will claim to be unable to make it. That won't necessarily stop Risshon from getting the material somewhere else, but it will make it more difficult, and may make a tight schedule slip.
[] Just ask her to tell you
If asked to make it, Gardenia will do good work. She will appreciate this: that's money she doesn't have to leave on the table, and she doesn't mind telling you what she's working on. Whatever plans Risshon has will go ahead smoothly, but you'll gain a useful new insight as it does.
[] Ask Risshon to explain
He's never been anything but helpful and friendly, in his own way. Instead of stewing over suspicions and concerns, you'll get it straight from the source, directly checking in. The good news is you'll learn something. The bad news is exactly the same as the good news.
[] You accidentally spill to Lyn
Remelyn, Cheng's other assistant, mostly ignores you and you've never gotten along with her that well. Still, she's very familiar, and when she notices you're not your usual self, she manages to pull information from you. You have no control over what she does with it.
[] A technical style
As the new two Forged enemies come up behind you, you drop a Dandelion Rain at your feet and turn to face them. One has a round center-grip shield to match its sword, and the other has a larger, heavier curved blade.
You slip towards them, a Goldsign fist swinging at the shield-user. It raises its shield to block, but you arrest the motion and kick at its shin, instead. It's not a hard blow, but it's enough to unbalance the enemy.
The big sword user slashes at you before you can physically shift, given the half-speed limitation. You deflect it with the blade of your axe, but your other Goldsign holds a palm out and blasts the enemy with your Striker move.
Even as that is firing, the seed you'd dropped first fires, distracting and injuring the Striker enemy, leaving its madra attack to sear through the air just above your ear.
Goldsigns take your axe, and your physical hands—still better for Forger techniques—throw a pair of Clinging Vines, sticking these two melee enemies together as awkwardly as possible.
With them tied up, you turn back to the Striker you've been harrying, and leap towards it. You cleave it in the base of the neck, and it evaporates.
Two more foes Forge into existence, leaving you more outnumbered than ever. One of them has an axe of its own, which it uses to cut apart the two you'd stuck to each other. The other spreads its arms, working to call forth a powerful Ruler/Striker attack of some sort.
You dive into the middle of the three melee fighters, trusting to your size and great Enforcer technique to keep you safe. If they separate, they cease supporting each other. If they stay close, they're in each other's way. Still, they outnumber you, but with the guidance of the dream aspect in your Enforcer technique, you strike and strike again, landing distracting and frustrating blows that don't hurt much but keep disrupting their stance, their poise, and throw them off balance as they try to strike back.
The best moment is when the big attacker, the one hanging back, tries to shoot you in the back of the head and you duck, the technique shredding one of your foes.
The worst moment is just a couple breaths later, when you hesitate just too long and find a Forged axe at your neck.
The dojo's controls won't let it hurt you, but that's a loss.
As they evaporate, you rub your unharmed neck and work to catch your breath. You're pretty worn out, but you still look at Prachi. As normal, he doesn't give much away with his face. "Three targets defeated, two badly injured, even if the simulation would still end with your death in reality. Still, good for a start."
He comes closer to you as you get something to drink after that exertion, and he gives you an unusually close scrutiny once he's there. "This will not be easy to master," he warns you.
"I know," you say. "But... I think it suits. What Cheng has me doing is very focused on precision and accuracy, and... that's something I think I can lean on." It's not just Cheng's work. Being very precise and intentional with your techniques, like your sister, has some efficiencies of its own. The more you can take that mentality in, along with the more that you can make your body move exactly the way you envision, the better you'll be at not just fighting, but also refining, or even just passively sensing your surroundings. "I want to make this work, if I can."
A small smile crease's Prachi's face for a few seconds, longer than normal for him. "Good. For most students I have had, I would tell them to give it up. For you? Prepare to undertake the most annoying physical conditioning of your life."
Prachi is as good as his word. Over the next few weeks, in addition to a significant array of new movements to practice, which like always require you to just repeat it perfectly for the hundreds upon hundreds of repetitions required to carve it into your body, he provides a dozen new exercises for you, pushing your body in new ways.
He has you carry a pair of chopsticks with you. When you're out and about and you see a fly, you are supposed to catch it with the chopsticks, be sure it can't wiggle free, then release it unharmed. This is incredibly frustrating. The chopsticks aren't meant to pluck something out of the air to begin with, and there's not much daylight between 'touching a fly at all' and 'squashing it'.
He has you run a hundred-yard-dash, then adds a wrinkle where you must land precisely on a cut-out of your sandals. Exactly the size and shape of them, having been copied from them. You have to complete the dash just as quickly as you did when you were just running, then stop instantly on the spot that he marked, no matter their orientation or spacing. Even an inch misplacement for either foot is a failure. When he starts putting obstacles so you can't see the landing position until you're almost on top of it, the difficulty doubles further.
Using some cheap rubber bags, not much larger than his fists, he makes targets for you to strike at. They're doubled, however: a more fragile bag inside a tougher one. Sometimes it's filled with loose sawdust and sometimes it's packed tight with sand. With just a glance and a strike with hand or axe, you need to tear open the outer bag without damaging the inner one. When that starts to be something you can reliably do, he adds a third, and demands you only tear the first two.
The exercises are weird, but they all clearly are moving in the same direction: to fight like you are picturing, your body has to be able to respond immediately and with perfectly controlled force. Different exercises focus on different parts or combinations of parts of your body: from Goldsigns to toes, you force yourself to push past the infuriatingly precise requirements, repeating and repeating both in front of Prachi and on your own, until they finally become achievable.
Beti seems to think it's cute and thinks that you've found a new game, or possibly that you're working on a sort of mating dance or something. She's not totally clear what the differences between humans and birds are, sometimes.
When you're not training under Prachi's eye, you're working with Risshon and Cheng. Gradually, ever-more of your work is going to the Heaven's Facade, which is ready for its next stages.
The Underlord had assigned Risshon to hunt down a handful of powerful Remnants, far from Great Crevasse, that would be rendered down into it. That had resulted in him coming back with one Truegold Remnant and one Highgold one, along with a nasty limp and some stiches in his side. You'd healed the injuries for him, which had taken a couple of hours: injuries from more powerful beings seem a little harder to heal, even if the hurt is the same. The Highgold Remnant wasn't strong enough for what Cheng needed, however, which had resulted in a need to raise it further artificially. You and Beti had been assigned to that task, creating a series of pills that were force-fed to the Remnant until it blazed with power like a Truegold.
There's a part of you, and not a small part, that desperately wished you could be the one getting those resources, instead.
Once the Remnants were sufficiently powerful, they had to be taken apart, reduced to their constituent pieces so that they could meld with a soup of other powerful Remnants that Cheng had been collecting over the decades. The 'soup' had been left at a rare point of balance, where it could safely sit without losing power (or forming a new spirit that would need to be fought), but with your efforts on the earlier step, now was the time for them to be combined.
This involved a lot of painstaking work, using extremely fine cuts with your halfsilver knife to dissect them. Not even Cheng could know what each Remnant would look like at every step, though, which had required him to oversee things and bark instructions at you and Risshon and even Remelyn as you all worked. Lyn, you've gradually realized, isn't much of a refiner, but her icy madra still is helpful in slowing down or stopping a lot of reactions. Risshon, on the other hand, is not only a talented refiner in his own right, but he also uses force and sword aspected madra in his path. The force side is especially helpful in this case, allowing him to pressurize various tanks and keep other very energetic reactions safely contained as you all work. All of your different madra aspects mesh usefully in your shared work.
From there, you reach the parts Beti is required for. Nothing requires the same level of multi-day focus that you'd needed before, but the delicacy and complexity of her tasks strain even her: her roots can absorb, filter, and extrude all sorts of complicated concotions, but even she's not a miracle worker. Some steps tax her incredibly far.
And yet, gradually, progress is made. The Underlord has not seen fit to share his full plans or recipe with you, but based on his energy and reactions, you must have crossed some peak of challenge in all this. Eventually, the amount of time you are required to dedicate to his goals begins to fall again.
Heaven's Facade grows closer.
Four months before the attempt on the Prince's life
Two years before the Dreadgod's arrival
Two years before the Dreadgod's arrival
Great Crevasse has a curfew, these days. There's not been any further wide outbreaks of violence, not like that one event that got you termed 'miracle tree kid', but tensions have been ratcheting higher, in a way you aren't really equipped to either fully engage with or totally ignore. You aren't really plugged into most of the concerns of the average man in the street, but you aren't a blood Luxe nor a clear direct servant, and Cheng's weird neutrality has mostly kept him from being too much bothered.
A strange side-effect of this is that the Exhibition Day matches are canceled. You have to talk that over with Etaja to figure out why.
{The Exhibition Day fights serve a few purposes, yeah? It's experience for your own budding talents. It's a chance to keep an eye on the other guys. It's showing off to the rest of the city, advertising the power and skill you command.}
<But if they're afraid of some sort of... I don't know, a violent thing, wouldn't they still want to show off to everyone?>
Etaja sighs. {Unfortunately, there's a simpler answer if they want to achieve that. It's called 'we have Truegolds and you don't'. If the Luxe and Brightflare want to impress people with a show of power, well, that's an escalation, but it's one that's harder for the average person to gainsay.}
You wince. <And so the main reason they're not showing their young talents off to the other big group... is because they're worried enough that something could kick off that they'd rather have a surprise up their sleeve than show someone off as a warning?>
{Yup.}
You really have to hope things calm down soon. Fortunately, like you'd heard before, any tensions are pretty far above your level. When Damir comes to you with a request, you make a few awkward inquiries and find that the Luxe officers you check in with are mostly surprised that you're asking.
The Brightflare Lowgold has taken a posted mission to thin out the numbers of those sacred bats you'd run into during your expedition underground for Cheng's lichen. Their numbers have increased and they have been making more of a nuisance of themselves. This is exactly the right sort of task for some skilled Lowgolds to handle as a group: the bats wouldn't normally challenge a Highgold or Truegold. Beti had been an unusual thing: your working theory is that they categorized her as "a tree" above "a dangerous Truegold". It's not like the bats are going to submit to an interview, though, so that's likely to stay as speculation. Still, she's sleepy today and having her around might dissuade them, so you leave her behind.
Damir had promised some scales for your help, and had suggested he'd offer the same if you could provide one or two other comparably-skilled Lowgolds to join the hunt.
Naturally, your thoughts had turned to Gardenia. She had been more than willing to sign on: this was exactly what her family normally did, and Damir's rate was better than what she'd normally expect to find. This led to the group gathering for a late breakfast before heading underground.
Damir shows up with a big kid, probably sixteen years old, but looking weirdly... passive. Your spiritual sense suggests a cooling ember when you sweep it over him. Damir takes care of introductions once he sees you and Gardenia in the street near some of the food vendors: he puts his fists together in front of him and bows—only slightly—to you two. "Forrester Keras. Zhaki Gardenia. Thank you for joining me. This is Smith Emil."
Emil gives a deeper bow to you. "Please, just call me Emil. I follow the Path of Choking Smoke, and I look for your aid as we support the young sir in his task."
You match Emil's bow. "Forrester Keras, Path of the Evergrowing Field. Please use 'they' or 'them' for me." He dips his head once in acknowledgement. "I look forward to working together."
Gardenia gives no bow at all, just a grunt. "Why are you paying us to help on this?"
Damir gives her a smile. "Why, my family can provide me a few scales for competent help, but Brightflare contribution points are at a premium right now. All of us benefit from this arrangement."
"Can't you buy contribution points directly with scales?"
"The exchange rate falls sharply past a certain point."
"Why?"
"Because that is how our elders have best determined this will stoke the flames of our growth."
Gardenia isn't quite ready to give this thought up, however. "So you buy the contribution points secondhand by paying us to help, instead? What's the point?"
Luckily, this is something you've recently come across in your studies, so you can explain. "Oh, the contribution point model is patterned on an old arrangement sometimes called 'company scrip'. By paying out precise amounts, and demanding contribution points exclusively for vital goods and services sold by the owner's own shop, they effectively command a miniature economy that they can exert great control over. Part of the reason the Brightflare school has been so powerful for so long is this arrangement allowing for its elders and top talents to gain a lot of rewards, which encourages people to want to sign up and dream of becoming such an elder and benefiting the same way once they've paid their dues. Hold on." You pull your chopsticks out and lunge for a fly maybe six paces from you, missing slightly. You take a second and third swipe for it, sweeping your chopsticks in the air ahead of you, before your fourth finally safely restrains the insect for a couple seconds. You're too busy focusing on that to really note the mute stares at your back.
The actual hunt is the sort of safely boring effort it should be. You don't give the sacred beasts any sort of sporting chance. The bats are at their least lively time of day. When your more trained spiritual sense finds a clump of them, Emil pour smoke into the space. His path is well-named: the fire and cloud aspects do combine to generate a thick, obscuring smoke. When bats try to escape the smoke, Gardenia's poison and Damir's fire harrow them, with you and Emil playing back-up to those two. You generally have to put down the bats twice: once when they're alive, and then again as a Remnant peels away.
Some of the bats are still somewhat covered in human blood when you find them. The whole reason that the Brightflares put out this suppression mission is because they've become more aggressive, and unfortunately it's easy to see the evidence of that.
The other thing you notice is that Damir's Forged sword of fire has gotten much more powerful since the last time you've seen it. When you comment on that, he spends a good five minutes explaining the glove he wears on his right hand. It's a product of Brightflare Soulsmiths, who created it specifically to enhace Forged flames.
Behind his explanation, you sense a purpose. This tool of his isn't a cheap or easy one. He's only able to afford it because he's been doing well enough to have the contribution points to put to it, which means that he's making good connections.
There's probably a whole chronicle of successes and challenges behind that. You don't have a good look at the details; while Damir openly made use of you to help him set up some foundation, you haven't ever been part of the Brightflare School, nor have you continued to be a headliner for him. You're on slightly divergent tracks, in many ways, though you still have many points of congruence, like today's task. It's... kind of a strange thing for you to think about, gradually shifting away from each other for no specific cause.
Still, you can't help but notice Emil's greed when Damir explains his glove. He knows that this isn't for him, but the other side of it being something Damir has afforded thanks to whatever faction he's been building up is that it's also an advertisement in another way: be useful to me, and maybe I'll invest something like this for you, too. Emil doesn't seem unhappy with his current situation, nor with hanging around with three younger kids who all are probably stronger than him. He just hopes for loyalty to be rewarded.
You understand both loyalty and that greedy feeling. It makes you feel a little sorry for Emil. He probably will get a decent job when he grows up, but that's the best he can really hope for: decent.
There's not that much time to think about Emil and Damir, though, honestly. Between the bats and ensuring the four of you don't get turned around underground, you're also trying to keep your senses open for any raw materials you'd be able to make use of. There's not much. People come through here too often, and thus pick up any treasures that form, but you find a couple of poisonous mushrooms that Gardenia will benefit from once you process them.
Once you've winnowed the bats sufficiently, and the day's worn on, Damir calls a halt, thanks you and Gardenia, provides the promised scales without complaint, and makes his farewells, taking Emil with him.
You hadn't put much thought into it until it's just the two of you again, but now you sense something in Gardenia. Something balancing. "I've gathered a few things again," she says, by way of introducing it. "Can we go to your office?"
You nod.
Gardenia is visibly wrestling with herself by the time her newest pills-to-be are merrily bubbling in a sturdy metal jug. There's a whole complicated procedure you need to constantly maintain for this specific recipe, where you have to adjust a series of valves atop the whole contraption, modifying the pressure as it boils to remove different sets of impurities. It's complicated, but not difficult: you mostly use your Goldsigns to control it, as one more bit of practice for getting them tame enough to fully obey you.
You let Gardenia get to it on her own time. She'd snap at you if you didn't, and you trust her enough to let her work it out. "Keras?" she finally asks.
"Yes?" You turn to give her a small, encouraging smile, before turning back to adjust the aura in the jug.
She's silent again for a moment. "Risshon asked me for a lot of Black Burrowing Toxin, several liters. What's that for?"
You tug at your collar. It's suddenly a little hard to breathe. "It's... used in traps for certain armored rhino sacred beasts, I think. There's some recipe I don't know where it can counteract a different neurotoxin if introduced to a body quickly enough. And it's a precursor to Nightworm Venom."
Gardenia is silent. You don't look at her, bending every last bit of your attention to the refining work, even though it doesn't need it for a couple minutes. Eventually, you have to press on. "I don't think those sacred rhinos live anywhere near here. Not even in the Seishen Kingdom at all. The neurotoxin is a very niche case. The only use I can think of for that much Black Burrowing Toxin is to combine it with the other three precursor ingredients and condense and strengthen it, until you have Nightworm Venom."
"Ingredients including Night's Grand Flowering." Which Gardenia has made before.
"Yes." Your hands are shaking. You take your attention off the refining equipment in front of you and press both sets of hands together, like you're praying. You take a deep breath, hold, release, hold, repeat.
You stop shaking in time to turn the heat down when you should, tweaking the life aura with in the concoction with your madra. Gardenia doesn't know. Gardenia doesn't have any reason to suspect. What Gardenia knows, the only thing that she knows, is that she's maybe being asked to make Nightworm Venom, like what hurt your dad. She knows that he's mostly doing okay now, but has no reason to think that she's maybe being part of making an assassination tool. Nightworm Venom could be part of a fine security construct, after all, or any other legitimate use. She has no reason to suspect anything is amiss with Risshon. He's just a rich man who has given her a good job. Or... does she know anything else?
"Oh, stars below," you murmur, loud enough to be easily audible, as you make a meaningless adjustment on a valve that isn't currently even closed.
Gardenia doesn't give any indication that the phrase means anything to her. She doesn't give the next part of the code. There's not a single, momentary flicker of body language or spirit. The code phrase means nothing. The code phrase means nothing. You let out a long breath, but sit up more confidently. Somehow, that helps. What helps even more is that the thing you had been sensing in her finally does tilt. "My path is terrible for making Soul-Dissolving Shade, but it's possible Risshon might ask for Devil's Acid Spit." That's the other two precursors for the weapon that hurt Dad. Working for Risshon is the big break that's giving her real opportunities to grow beyond the trapped little pond her family has been living in for decades, so it means she is putting a lot on the line, that she's genuinely trying to pay you back when she says, "If you need, I'll tell him that I can't make it."
You understand. Risshon pays her, but you didn't ask for anything. You just helped when she asked, so she has to offer favors back, even if that would get her in trouble at work and she has no reason to think that there's any benefit apart from sparing your feelings.
Gardenia is on your side, come what may.
But now you have one more weird thing about Risshon, and it's one too many. You'd hoped to find something, anything, that would make things make sense, and just make it so the weird little things were excused. Instead, it's now just a little worse.
You're pretty sure now that it's only going to tilt worse from here.
It doesn't matter if it's a wise decision or not. You can't totally disengage from this. Pick one of the following.
[] Accept Gardenia's offer
When and if Risshon asks for a third precursor for a Nightworm Venom weapon, Gardenia will claim to be unable to make it. That won't necessarily stop Risshon from getting the material somewhere else, but it will make it more difficult, and may make a tight schedule slip.
[] Just ask her to tell you
If asked to make it, Gardenia will do good work. She will appreciate this: that's money she doesn't have to leave on the table, and she doesn't mind telling you what she's working on. Whatever plans Risshon has will go ahead smoothly, but you'll gain a useful new insight as it does.
[] Ask Risshon to explain
He's never been anything but helpful and friendly, in his own way. Instead of stewing over suspicions and concerns, you'll get it straight from the source, directly checking in. The good news is you'll learn something. The bad news is exactly the same as the good news.
[] You accidentally spill to Lyn
Remelyn, Cheng's other assistant, mostly ignores you and you've never gotten along with her that well. Still, she's very familiar, and when she notices you're not your usual self, she manages to pull information from you. You have no control over what she does with it.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Ask Risshon to explain
I think this is the most interesting for Keres. Currently, their world has been divided between reasonable and unreasonable people. What happens when one transitions to the other?
I think this is the most interesting for Keres. Currently, their world has been divided between reasonable and unreasonable people. What happens when one transitions to the other?
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Huh, I wonder if that's the first faint traces of Authority showing up at gold, having to overcome that other creature's desire for someone to be injured?
As for Risshon, yikes. Didn't expect that to come to a head so fast. A bit disappointed we can't just, tell the Luxe underlady the sketchy stuff we've seen of him and wash our hands of it. Man, Risshon got sloppy with his tradecraft, getting multiple precursors from the same source.
[X] Ask Risshon to explain
If we knew Lyn better I might confide in her but we just don't know her well enough. And a direct confrontation is dramatic and fun. We *probably* won't die.
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- Location
- Florida
[X] Just ask her to tell you
I like a wait and see approach.
I like a wait and see approach.
[X] Ask Risshon to explain
- Location
- United Kingdom
[X] You accidentally spill to Lyn
Technically this and asking Risshon isn't incompatible with the first two options, but I guess if we pick them we'll just turn down Gardenia's offer @VagueZ?
Voting for Lyn because I want to know what her deal is, though meta-wise I don't like it being the most passive of the four options.
Might switch to asking Risshon.
Technically this and asking Risshon isn't incompatible with the first two options, but I guess if we pick them we'll just turn down Gardenia's offer @VagueZ?
Voting for Lyn because I want to know what her deal is, though meta-wise I don't like it being the most passive of the four options.
Might switch to asking Risshon.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Ask Risshon to explain
CedeTheBees
Probably high right now
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] You accidentally spill to Lyn
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Ferb_Ancos
The one under the table
- Pronouns
- He
Any idea who Risshon is targeting?
Is it a Lux?
Chen?
Is the First Prince Seishen Kiro still in town or nearby?
Either way, he must have someone to protect him from reprisal.
Is it a Lux?
Chen?
Is the First Prince Seishen Kiro still in town or nearby?
Either way, he must have someone to protect him from reprisal.
- Location
- Massachusetts
[X] You accidentally spill to Lyn
Remelyn, Cheng's other assistant, mostly ignores you and you've never gotten along with her that well. Still, she's very familiar, and when she notices you're not your usual self, she manages to pull information from you. You have no control over what she does with it.
Remelyn, Cheng's other assistant, mostly ignores you and you've never gotten along with her that well. Still, she's very familiar, and when she notices you're not your usual self, she manages to pull information from you. You have no control over what she does with it.
- Pronouns
- He
[X] Ask Risshon to explain
- Location
- parker colorado
[X] You accidentally spill to Lyn
- Location
- Somewhere in the Uk
[X] Ask Risshon to explain
unObservant
Just drifting along, really
- Location
- USA
So, this is almost certainly a sign that the Underground's 'secret path' that we had an opportunity to discover during the lichen mission is in use. Could just be the bats getting agitated from people too powerful to attack that keep invading their territory, but given the increase in numbers and evidence of gore I wouldn't bet against them getting deliberately fed for use as a convenient tunnel deterrent and body disposal method.
As for the vote, I'm leaning towards:
[X] You accidentally spill to Lyn
We haven't had much opportunity to interact with Lyn given our prior voting choices, and I can't help but feel like that's pretty regrettable given how long we've worked together by now. I really do like the scene that the option implies, with the usually-distant ice user paying enough attention to Keras's troubles that she decides to finally be the first one to reach out; and we've got reason to suspect that she's suspicious of Risshon already rather than being in on the secret.
Plus, I'm... pretty wary about asking Gardenia to flatly refuse to make that precursor, for her own sake. The Nightworm that injured Dad was made using the Remnant of someone on a Poison path - if the schedule slips far enough and the Nightworm comes out weaker than it needs to be... well, there's a compatible madra-user right here that he's got exclusive access to for last-minute amplification, and we literally got introduced to the practice of forcefeeding a Remnant resources so that it reaches a required level of power for Refining in this chapter.
In Risshon's defense, he would probably have some reservations about doing that - the personality we've seen from him isn't totally a mask. But it's entirely possible that the asshole of an assassin he's hitched his star to will force the issue, and when it comes down to it what's one more spot of blood on his hands when he's been supplying an assassination organization for years?
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- Location
- France
[X] Just ask her to tell you
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] You accidentally spill to Lyn
- Location
- USA
Based on the conspiracy meeting from a few chapters ago, it's almost certainly planned for use against Kiro.
As for a sponsor, I don't think so. The Brightflare elder who is in on it mentions setting things up so he can be disavowed. I think the conspiracy is planning to "go down with the ship", so to speak.