Winning vote:
[] You're delving even deeper into what Field's Strength can do to enhance your coordination and sense-processing.
[] You'd heard about Lord Cheng's assistants from Cheng himself...
8 days before you meet the Riyusai genius
9 days before Venkata's advancement completes
It takes you a few hours to get where you're going. As you pick your axe back up and get ready, you get given directions, specifically probably half a dozen unique sets of directions, as everyone tries to give you their family's secret back-roads route to where you're going. You only commit Jyothi's directions to memory, and then carry your precious cargo into the confusing, seeming-endless streets of Great Crevasse.
You find yourself at the center of an unnervingly empty bubble as you walk. People who see the black crescent moon go out of their way to not be anywhere near you. People who didn't notice get their elbows jogged by friends who did. When a cart drawn by a Remnant horse presses up against the opposite wall so as not to crowd you, and loses a wheel because of it, you grow concerned. When the driver hops off her seat to bow to you, as if in apology, you... just really have no idea how to react. It's not too bad a problem for her, at least, as she's Gold and has a strong enough Iron body that she just lifts up the cart by the axle and puts the wooden wheel back on. Her load of bolts of cloth didn't spill, so you just... keep going. Trying to help seems likely to only make things worse.
You consider hiding the pendant to avoid drawing any attention, but you have a mental image of some thief knocking you down and stealing the sword if you do. It's probably not likely, but... it
could happen, and more than that, you are apparently expected to wear this to show that you're on the Lady's business.
By far the neatest part of the journey is the elevator. The Luxe clan's fortress or compound or castle or whatever it officially should be called is on the southern mesa, but a lot of the city is in the titular Great Crevasse between the two mesas, including Lord Cheng's estate. This means you have to take one of the public elevators down. Other riders state that they're happy to wait even when you say you don't mind, so a platform that could hold a hundred people only carries you and one Lowgold operator as it drops towards the bottom of the canyon, not stopping at any of the platforms along the way. There's everything from old apartment blocks to tanneries to elegant restaurants that you pass, sometimes with people waiting to join the elevator, but it doesn't slow.
You definitely feel guilty about that. They didn't even get the chance to decide they could wait or ride with you. You try your best to avoid disrupting traffic once you're down on the canyon floor.
It's mid-afternoon by the time you get to Cheng's estate, which is a block all unto itself, with a metal fence to keep people out, then a line of trees to make it hard to see in, then what looks from the outside like some sort of mansion, like what Miss Luxe has back in Thorpton. Every so often, just inside the outer wall, there's a guard construct: they look like articulated statues of knights, with glowing eyes. Your spiritual sense confirms easily enough that, yes, they
are more than decorations. You suspect they could chase after intruders.
Luckily, that's not you. You find the front entrance and pull on the rope to request entrance. A clear bell sounds in the middle distance, and a couple minutes later, the door opens.
A tall woman opens the door, then looks to both sides before her gaze, half-hidden by greasy, matted black hair, falls to find you. "Yes?" she asks.
"Delivery," you say. "From the Lady of the Night Sky, for..." you twist your head to read off the label again. "'For Risshon, assistant to Lord Cheng, residing in Lord Cheng's estate'. Er, is this the right entrance? There's not a servant's entrance I was expected to use or anything, right?"
Your host stares at you with an eerily still face for a moment. Then, she turns on her heel and sweeps away in a swirl of drab skirts and lace. "Come along, then. I will take you to him. Close the door behind you!" The last is almost a carol.
You close the door with your sandaled foot, then follow her, half-feeling like she should be leaving an oil trail behind her. Everything about her just
feels greasy in your spiritual sense, and also your eyes and nose. But she seems to work here and she's taking you where you need to go.
Unlike the Luxe houses you've been in, this place is dominated by books. Bookcases and single bookshelves and just... stacks of books are all over the place, some of them in ancient and yellowed bindings, and others looking much more recent. What isn't dominated by books is dominated by workshops: doors left carelessly half-ajar open onto rooms filled with cauldrons, little gardens, what looks like a small kennel for show dogs with only a single dog in it, and various complicated contraptions of glass and tubes and script-circles. These dozen or so doors you pass each have a random, pungent smell, while the spaces between them just smell like... old books.
The greasy woman stops in front of one of the doors. This one was closed when you got close, but she opens it. It creaks with the weight of some significant reinforcement, like it's there to keep something either in or out. From the light that spills into the hall, it's some sort of two-story indoor atrium, stuffed with greenery. She gestures for you to go in. "He's right in here," she says, and you can sense... something. Although she
still hasn't had a facial expression, you feel like she's trying to suppress a laugh. "Go on in."
You hesitate. "You're not going to lock me in or anything, right? Is there a dangerous creature kept in there or something?"
"Absolutely not, and I promise there is no animal in there that is of any danger to you. Apart from Risshon, I don't think there's any animals larger than an insect, and they're just there to be pollinators." She's absolutely ready to laugh.
You give her a suspicious look, touch your belt loop to check your axe is still where it should be, then go in, pushing ferns and vines out of the way while you try to keep your sword-box from getting stained.
It's practically a jungle in here, with all the plants growing more densely than even a milpa allows, and the atrium seems to be the size of a sensible house for people who aren't rich. "Hello?" Your voice seems to vanish into the plants only inches from your face. "Expert Risshon? The Lady sent me with your order?"
Nothing responds to your call, so you keep going.
Your Jade spiritual sense only gives you a warning at the same moment that a knot on a tree ahead of you suddenly splits open, revealing a wooden but
very functional eye. It focuses on you, and you instinctively shift your package to just your left hand so your right can grab your axe.
This proves a wise decision, as all around you various vines and branches animate, trying to snatch you up, and a crack in the tree opens in a horrible imitation of a mouth.
You fall automatically into your Enforcer technique, and into its new upgrade, the one you've been working for some weeks with Etaja's help.
Base Coordination improves from C to C+!
Your Field's Strength evolves to an Advanced technique. You can maintain the state only briefly, but focusing it on your mind lets you slow your perception of time, as if everything is moving at half speed.
As the technique flares to life, the world around you slows. It feels, suddenly, as if your body is moving through thick molasses, but that's okay, since so is everything else.
Your eyes flicker here and there, taking in your surroundings. This tree lured you too close: it's all around you. You can't just duck away. A pulse of your spiritual sense tells you that it's strong. Non-human creatures don't advance quite like humans, but it feels something like a strong Lowgold or a second-rate Highgold in the weight of its madra.
Vines try to weave a net around you. You select a nexus as far up the plant as possible, and find a branch behind them. Vines don't like to cut easily, even normal vines. They get pushed out of the way, first.
So slowly, so desperately slowly, your axe oozes forward, and the vines try to twist to avoid it. You chose your target well, though, as you had the time to do that. Before they can squirm away, your axe pins them to the more-solid branch behind them, using it like a chopping board. Some of the vines around you start to fall to the dirt below, even their fall eeriely slow in this state.
You're riding the endless moments between the ticks of a clock. Even before your axe hit, you were already shifting, trying to pull it back. You have no need to overswing, and the axe's blade is needed everywhere else. As you pull it back, the back of the haft hits a solid branch that's trying to reach for your throat, pushing you out of the way.
You throw yourself headlong, into the potential opening that the cut vines opened, trying to tuck and roll, but it's taking too long—
"Awp!" Another vine seizes you from below, grabbing hold of your ankle with a mighty grasp.
Your enhanced Enforcer technique cracks with your concentration, leaving you with just Field's Strength's normal benefits, and also a splitting headache and sweat on your brow.
For an instant, you hang there, upside down, dangling from your ankle. Then the tree pulls you a little closer, and you get an impression that it's... sniffing you? You drop the sword box to swing your axe with both hands, and it holds you far enough away that the axe bites only air.
"Bad tree!" A man's voice, an unfamiliar voice, speaks up. "We do not eat Jades." He comes from 'behind' the tree. He wasn't hiding; he only just now got here. There's something funny about him in your Jade senses, but you have no chance to think about what. The tree gives him an insolent look, and he backhands its trunk, making a weird hollow
thunkt noise. "Bad tree," he repeats.
It drops you, then, to your greater surprise, it picks up its roots and
walks off, retreating to the far side of the atrium.
Sweating, covered in mud now, and more than a little disoriented, you still pick yourself up from the ground. "Um. Thank you? Risshon, right? I have a package for you. Oh, sorry, I dropped it and it's dirty now." You panic as you see the Underlady's delivery
also fell into the mud, as you pick it up and try to wipe it off.
The man doesn't respond verbally. Instead, he picks you up by the back of your collar and carries you to the door, your axe dangling from one hand and the box from the other. The greasy woman is leaning against the doorframe and silently snickering, her shoulders heaving in quiet laughter, though her face is still completely still. "Seriously, Remelyn?" Your rescuer holds you out in an accusatory manner. "What if she'd gotten hurt?" ("They!" You manage to interject.) "What if they'd gotten hurt?" he corrects himself.
"What, while you were right there? We both know Beti doesn't like the taste of human. She'd just have let them go after gnawing a bit. Besides, it was funny."
You do not think much of the Seishen Kingdom humor you've seen.
Your rescuer sighs and sets you down. You wipe your forehead again as you turn to look at him. He's a man of ordinary height, but dressed finely: his outfit is elegantly tailored silk, picked out in a variety of muted colors, apparently scripted somehow to not get dirty, and his hair is styled in elaborate, if short, braids, the sort of thing that you know takes a long time to put together. Jewels glint from his ears and from rings. Pushing aside a nascent headache as best you can, you try to bow. "I have a delivery," you say again.
"Yes, thank you," he says, distractedly, picking up the soil-smeared box and ripping the twine and wax seal off, then flipping open the box. This, at least, gets a smile out of him. After a moment of concentration, the sword levitates out of the box and takes station behind his right shoulder, point down, just floating there out of the way.
It almost looks like part of his outfit.
"Really?" Remelyn stares at him. "That's what you've been dropping hints about for the last two weeks? A sword? What, are you planning to fight the Hollowfather or go scavenging in the Wasteland?"
"Of course not, Lyn," he says, looking proud. "But it
is a Luxe masterpiece. It will go well with—oh, stars below, kid."
He cut himself off because you're in the process of fainting.
You wake up on a couch, on an uncomfortable angular pillow that turns out to be books. Several other books fall to the ground as you swing yourself up to a sitting position.
You're not alone in the room. Cheng and Risshon are also in the room, facing away from you. Their bodies are blocking your line of vision to whatever's on the table, but it seems to involve some heat and light. "Ah!" Cheng is saying. "I've got it. Let's just wind this down, and try again with a—"
"No," Risshon tells him, in a long-suffering tone. "There's no time to start over. You stated this would be ready for Tamjid before he's bound to travel south, remember?"
"Boo." Cheng doesn't seem too put out. "Couldn't we send a flying serpent courier to catch up to him when it was ready?"
"No. He's part of the flying serpent couriers. Another one wouldn't be able to catch up."
"A waste, really. We could get maybe as much as another eighth-percentage point of improvement if we reworked the outer shell's topology."
Risshon crosses his arms. "And how much would it cost us to make a new mold, not to mention the new raw materials?"
"Ehhh." Cheng doesn't seem worried about that. "What, two hundred mid-grade scales? At least let me write the thought down."
"At least fifty times that. As you know." Risshon doesn't stop Cheng from writing his thought down, by the sound of a pen on paper.
When the pen stops, Cheng perks up. "Ah! What if we arrange a stronger temperature differential across the cauldron during—"
"No." At that point, you attract both men's attention with a cough. You weren't trying to, it's just that the smell of pork and salt, which seems to pervade the room, is getting to you. "Ah, you're awake, kid."
Cheng glances at you without seeming to see you. "Why did you bring a child into one of my workshops, Risshon? I thought you didn't have children."
"It's not
my kid! It's the Grand Duchess' courier. They fainted after fighting with Beti."
"Why would you put a child in with Beti? That's irresponsible of you, Risshon! You should pay more attention to your surroundings."
"Um, Cheng?" You raise your hand, like you're in school, cutting off another annoyed response from Risshon.
Risshon gives you a withering glare and his flying sword levitates just slightly higher, flashing bare steel at you. "You should address the Underlord as
Lord Cheng and show him due respect," he growls.
You wilt, but still defend yourself. "He asked me to just call him Cheng, though!"
"That's no excuse for poor manners."
Cheng gives you another look, stroking his wispy beard. This time, he takes you in more. "Ah, right, the twelve-year-old who brought the voidberry bush to little Venkata! With Venkata? Whatever. Would you like to see it now?"
"No," Risshon says, one more time. "Finish this."
"Ehhhhh." Cheng turns back to the table.
All the madra and aura in the room shifts with him. Cheng doesn't seem to be doing anything but standing there, but the entire world tilts and twists in your spiritual perception, bent impossibly by a spiritual power whose weight feels like a mountain is sitting on you.
You're in the room with an
Underlord. He's not withholding his power, the way the Lady of the Night Sky was. He's not thinking about you at all, and the bare strength of his soul almost threatens to knock you out again, though Risshon does not seem bothered. Grimly, you hold yourself awake, watching. A wisp of
something appears above his head. It's like the ghost of fire, a wisp of flickering, colorless flame. It drifts out of your sight, to whatever it is that he was working on. It's soulfire; he's working soulfire into whatever he's doing.
Seconds later, the pressure lets up. Cheng abruptly turns away, and there's a twinkle in his eye when he looks for you, now. "Come on! Let's see the bush together." Behind him, the cauldron on the table hisses and smokes, rattling aggressively, and eventually it tips over. As it falls, a single pill of scintillating colors rolls out. It would have fallen on the floor if Risshon weren't right there, catching it in an elegant little pill box and snapping that shut. Ignoring that, Cheng calls to Risshon, "Where did Lyn put the voidberry? Ah, garden three, right. Come along, child!"
He prances off, into the halls, and you have to hurry to keep up. Everywhere looks much the same to you, just with... different bookcases. "So what did you think of Beti?" Cheng asks as he goes. "Lovely, isn't she? Such a disappointment, though!"
"I've never seen a tree that could walk. Or that had a mouth."
"Yes, she's a sample from the northern jungles. I understand some of the ancestral trees there are truly mighty, in addition to being impressive synthesizers of ingredients. Sadly, capturing a Truegold tree and getting it down here seems to be 'too expensive'." The Underlord makes overly enthusiastic air quotes. "Beti's fine, but she's not advanced enough to make all the things I'd like. Did you know that in the wild jungles they have symbiotic relationships with clans of sacred beast birds? Hang on." He pauses to scribble something on a notepad. This one he brought with him. Once his thought is written down, he keeps going like nothing happened. "But I still keep her, just in case she has her own breakthrough equivalent. Sadly, we don't have the right birds, and it doesn't seem like I'll see them any time soon. Why did you faint?"
It takes a silent two seconds before you realize that the question was aimed at you. "I, uh... I was using an Enforcer technique to try to keep up with Beti. It's a plant-derived, life-aspect technique that takes inspiration from plant roots twining together to help me process everything my senses and body tell me, but it overheats me badly."
This time, when Cheng pauses to look at you, you feel your hopes rise. Is an Underlord about to give you some nugget of wisdom to help you refine your technique? Your hopes are dashed when he just shrugs. "I hope you at least enjoyed your tussle."
"What?"
"Enjoyed it. You're not so old you've forgotten about fun, have you? That's the thing everyone forgets. Everyone wants to gather power and wealth and overcome foes, but then they hate everything about their lives when they do. Power is a tool to help us enjoy ourselves; if you lose track of that, everything else will be hollow."
"I was a little scared at the time," you confess, but Cheng isn't listening.
He instead throws open a different door, showing a more restrained garden than Beti's atrium. Here, among saplings set to help shade and support the bush, is the berry bush you were caring for before. Cheng beams, stroking his beard. "The Bronze Serpents commissioned me to make a gift for the First Prince of the kingdom, you know. He's already close to Truegold, they say, and they would like for their gift to make the difference. This bush's berries make a paste that is almost three percent more efficient than my next-best substitute. Now, since fate has crossed our path twice now, I have a question for you, before you go on your way."
He strokes his wispy beard one more time, then spoils the effect when one long beard-hair turns out to be loose and sticks to his fingers, causing him to flail the hand to shake it off. "That tickles! Well, anyway: turns out I didn't have any small-denomination scales on me that first day. Given that, tell me: what do you think of our deal now that you've had a chance to think about it?"
You weren't really ready for him to give you a serious look, but that's what he's doing. He didn't give you any punishment, not even a harsh word, for not giving him the answer he wanted before. But how
do you see the overly large payment?
[] "It was a fair exchange. We both got what we agreed out of it."
[] "It didn't cost either of us anything we cared to give up, did it?"
[] "I didn't expect a scale that was that valuable when I agreed."
