by Rick Scott
“I hope you can understand now why I need to go,” he said. “Why I need to keep those people away from you and everyone else. I need to understand why Olja came for me. She’s the only link I have to my past. And perhaps my future.”
Shinoto still didn’t say anything. He thought she might be crying but he wasn’t sure. Eventually she spoke. “So you’ll head north then… beyond the wall?”
“Well… eventually I suppose.”
“Eventually?”
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
Kenji then told her about the sapphire soul stone, sheathed around his doma and how Mei Ling had helped him crack it. “But now it’s leaking Qi,” he said and explained what that meant. “She gave me the name of a gem smith in Kurogane. She said he might be able to remove it completely.”
Shinoto’s eyes suddenly grew wide. “She said he can remove it?”
“She thinks he might be able to …”
She grabbed hold of his forearm. “Kenji, if that thing is killing you, then getting to Kurogane is more important than going north or anything else!”
He knew that was true, but he hadn’t really thought that far ahead yet. “There’s no way for me to get there without Olja’s help, though. I’m still a dullard with a broken doma, who has a demon and three Tsu warriors out to kill him.”
“Then we’ll free her like you said.” Shinoto nodded and her eyes filled with a sudden resolve. “What is it you need me to do?”
“So you’ll help me?”
“Of course I will!” she said.
“But do you realize the risk? If you get caught with me, it could ruin your future here at the school.”
She looked at him incredulously. “The school?”
“You have a future here, Shinoto. Once I leave with Olja you’ll be safe. You can still follow your dream.”
Shinoto shook her head at him. “You think that after telling me a story like that, that there’s any way you’re getting rid of me?”
He sighed. Curse my fate. “Well…to be honest. I was kind of fearing you’d say something like that.”
She gave him a scowl, but a playful one. “You’re a real scoundrel, you know that?”
Kenji chuckled. “Seriously though, Shinoto. I want you to think about this. I have to run, but you don’t. You could be throwing away your chances at joining a mystic school for good.”
“By the heavens, Kenji…” Shinoto shook her head at him. “You truly are a dullard, aren’t you?”
“Huh?”
“You think joining a mystic school and becoming a warrior is my dream?”
He shrugged. “Isn’t it? It’s all you ever spoke about.”
“I wanted to see the world, Kenji. That’s my dream.”
Thinking back, he supposed her words did ring true.
“Becoming a mystic warrior was always my best chance of making that happen,” she continued. “But even that wouldn’t have mattered, if I couldn’t see the world with you.”
His insides grew warm as his stomach fluttered. He looked into the eyes of the little girl staring at him, and saw the gaze of the young woman he’d fallen in love with staring back. He wished she’d never donned that yellow rope now. That he had been bold and perhaps selfish enough to let her know his true intentions beforehand, just like Waru had said.
But it was too late now.
“Everything has changed, Kenji. Our families are gone. The only thing that matters to me is that we stay together. No matter where we go.”
“You really mean that?”
She grinned. “With you being some 80th-Dan legendary warrior? Are you kidding? How could I pass up on that?”
She burst into a laugh and he did as well. He knew she’d say yes, but never did he think she’d do so in a way that would bring him no guilt at all. She wanted to come with him, to be with him. And if she did, it would be up to him to grow strong enough to protect her.
But there was one further complication to consider.
“What about your brother?”
“Chet Fai?” She made an irritated face. “Don’t get me wrong. I do love my brother, but he’s an arrogant, selfish pig who acts like a child younger than the age he looks. If there is anyone that needs to stay in Amatsu Village, it’s him.”
Kenji laughed. He couldn’t agree with that more.
“Come on then, Kenji,” Shinoto said, standing. “Let’s figure out this plan of yours. Now exactly what do you need me to do?”
Chapter 34 – Rope Tricks
They decided to wait until after midnight to meet up and set their plan into motion. As the moon rose high into the night sky, Kenji waited at the entrance to the great hall, peering through the cracked doorway. He kept check of both the girls’ dormitory and the small dwelling to the side of the great hall where Master Hu Dong made his home. The lanterns had been snuffed out hours ago and the entire complex lay still. Only the sound of the wind blowing across the cliff top filled the night air with a gentle whistle. Kenji was thankful for it. It would hopefully mask any sound that they would make.
He glanced over his shoulder behind him and kept watch for the imperial lieutenant still on guard. While they were positioned next to Olja’s cage and rarely moved from there, he did note they had a rotation of sorts. Thus far the four lieutenants seemed to share the responsibility of guarding both Olja and the village itself. But as for when that shift would change he wasn’t sure, and he constantly feared a lieutenant perhaps sneaking up behind him at any moment.
Come on, Shinoto, he urged as he adjusted the shade on his lamp, swinging it between the open doorway as was the signal they had agreed to beforehand. He waited for perhaps a few minutes more and then saw the girl’s tiny form emerge from the dormitory. She headed for the outhouse as was the plan and then moments later she came running from it towards the hall.
She looked flustered as she arrived at the door. “I’m here.”
He smiled at her as he nudged the door open, allowing her to slip through. “Any problems?”
“I was worried about the older sempais awakening, but they’re all kids. They pretty much sleep like rocks.”
He suppressed a chuckle. “So odd to hear you say something like that.”
“What? They do?”
“I mean being one yourself.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on, you. Let’s get to it. Show me this rope.”
They tiptoed across the great hall and traveled down the corridor to Hu Dong’s office. Once inside Kenji partially lowered the shade, keeping most of the doorway hidden while leaving the bottom open for them to peer out and keep watch on the hallway. As they sat cross-legged on the floor, Kenji opened the sacred tome of the Han arts and selected a specific page for Shinoto to read.
He handed her the book and she studied it while he kept watch.
After a few minutes she nodded. “Okay I understand the meridian patterns. Where’s the rope?”
Kenji laid it in front of her and instructed which of the seven glyphs to imbue first. “These are all close to sixth tier, but with your reborn Qi density you should be able to do it.”
“Alright, here goes.”
Shinoto took hold of the glyph and closed her eyes. She exhaled rhythmically as she summoned Qi and Kenji could feel the slight pressure exuding from her doma. He wasn’t certain how long it would take, but after nearly half an hour, without the glyph flashing even once, Shinoto dropped the sliver of red parchment, frustrated and exhausted.
“I don’t think it’s working,” she said, her skin now covered in a light film of sweat.
Kenji frowned. “You had the third, ninth, and twelfth meridians open, correct?”
“The entire time. It felt like I was trying to channel into a wall.”
“A wall?”
“Yes, like my Qi was going nowhere.”
Kenji frowned again. That wasn’t good.
“What?” she asked.
He sighed, feeling like they
were on the brink of yet another failed attempt. “Perhaps your Qi isn’t strong enough still.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve never experienced it myself, but I’ve read that the sensation you felt is akin to the threshold of the glyph not being met. Like a tide unable to crest a wall. Are you still an Off White?”
“Yes.”
“Did you eat the fruits?”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps you should channel them. If you were to raise perhaps a tier or two, you could perhaps do it.”
“I have been channeling them, Kenji.” She then released a sigh. “Do you forget that of the two of us, I’m the true dullard now?”
He blinked. “What?”
“Your doma was sealed because you’re a crazy legendary warrior. Meanwhile I’m still the idiot who only just reached 8th tier at seventeen years old.” He’d never considered it quite like that. Shinoto released a defeated sigh and looked down at the floor glumly. “Those fruits have done nothing for me yet. Probably wasted on me.”
Kenji’s heart broke for her. “Shinoto…don’t say such a thing.”
He rested a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, but she shrugged it off.
“Don’t mind me… I shouldn’t be one to complain. I at least wasn’t treated badly for my ineptitude. You were. And it wasn’t even your fault.”
“But you’re not a dullard,” he said. “We’ll get this to work.”
She shook her head. “It’s just as you described. My Qi is dense but not powerful enough. I can’t get over the threshold.”
Long moments passed as all hope drained from the room. This was the subtle price of rebirthing. A denser Qi, but literally starting all over again at first tier. In some cases the density alone was enough to achieve the same effect of a higher tier, but perhaps only one or two higher, not six or seven as was required now.
“You know what the really frustrating thing is?” she said. “If I was seventeen again and still a Jade tier, I’d be able to do this with ease.”
Another silence fell as her words caused him to pause.
It was true. Shinoto’s Qi would have been less dense and it perhaps would have taken more time to fully imbue the glyph, but she would have been able to break the threshold easily. And that threshold of the glyph needed was determined by the age of the rope. If he used a lesser rope, she should be able to imbue. He considered trying a ten-year instead of the twenty, but he had no idea if that would rust the bars enough to remove the warding glyph and allow Olja to break free of that cage. The iron looked thick and they would have only one chance at it. If it wasn’t enough…
No, I have to stick with the twenty-year rope, he thought. He had to be certain it would work…or have the best chance at least. Even twenty years he was unsure of, but it would be a better bet than ten.
Kenji’s mind began to stir as he struggled to find some other way. He studied the glyphs on the ‘acceleration rope’, as he’d decided to dub it, and Shinoto’s words came back to him. If she was seventeen and Jade tier again… she’d be able to do it with ease.
Stronger before…
A thought sparked and he reached for his father’s journal, flipping through the pages.
“What are you doing?”
“I might have an idea,” Kenji said, his heart beating with a sudden excitement. He found the passage he’d read before and read it aloud for her.
“Listen to this,” he said. “The varying degrees of the ropes can be thought of like a doma. Its years in length, like stored Qi. It can be expended minutely or all at once and in many forms.”
“Huh?”
“Expended minutely or all at once…” he said. “I think that’s the key.”
“I don’t get it.”
“If a rope is like a doma, then perhaps a doma can also be thought of like a rope. If I accelerated your age, while the tier of your doma remained the same, the density would rapidly expand, becoming a sudden pressure. Just like raising a tier!”
She shook her head. “Accelerate my age?”
“Not by much,” he said. He would need to perform calculations. “Your Qi right now has the power of an 8th tier compressed by ten years. Releasing even just a bit of that, but in a rapid burst, would make it as strong as 8th tier again, perhaps even stronger. But only for a moment.”
Yes…it made sense. It was as his father had described. The Han arts were about shifting nature and storing energies to be released at a later time. Like the drawn bow being held fast until it assumed a permanent shape, if that shape was suddenly reversed, then that stored energy had to go somewhere.
“It’s perhaps the same as what I experienced when I tried to imbue,” he said. “My Qi is even denser than yours, and when it expanded through that small crack in the gem, it was so powerful it burned the glyph instantly.”
He left out the part about it nearly killing him as well.
“So what do we do?” Shinoto asked.
“I need to prepare another rope.”
* * *
For the next hour Kenji studied his father’s notes while Shinoto kept watch. He wrote the common glyph scripts for the acceleration properties and then attached them to a length of yellow rope.
Ten years for ten years, Kenji thought, the same as had been used for her rebirth. Thinking back to the ceremony, it seemed like ages ago now even though it had been just a few days. So much had happened since then. So much had been lost…and yet some things gained.
The tiers of the glyph were of much lower difficulty and after giving them to Shinoto, she was thankfully able to imbue them with ease, taking perhaps only ten minutes each time.
“Halfway there,” he said. “Are you doing okay?”
She yawned. “Besides nearly falling asleep?”
He chuckled. “Almost done now.”
Save for the particular tiers of the glyph, the rope was nearly identical to the one he had made before to rust the iron. But now came the perhaps most critical part. He needed a timer—a glyph that would stop the process at precisely the right time and allow for only the desired amount of age to be converted into expanded Qi.
Kenji took a sheet of parchment and began scribing numbers. Arithmetic wasn’t his strongest subject, but he would have to make keen use of it now. 8 tiers compressed by 10 years. If a single year was then released in a second, what strength of Tier would that then give?
Kenji calculated the sum, and squinted his eyes at the result.
80 tiers? No, that couldn’t be right. A year was not equal to a second, after all. He would need to make the times equal to form the proper ratio. He recalculated again, converting the years into seconds. His eyes bulged. The number was even bigger, humongous even. He wasn’t able to even calculate it all.
Was this the true ratio?
But perhaps it made sense. A year’s worth of 8th-tier cultivation, released in but a second? That would equal. He could not fathom it. His numbers had to be wrong, but he was at least grateful he hadn’t just tried the rope around Shinoto and activated it without considering some kind of control device.
If all that energy was released at once… He didn’t even want to think about it. No doma could survive that.
He trimmed the numbers down, starting instead with the amount he would need, rather than the maximum amount possible. It took another few minutes but he finally came to an answer.
“I think this is it,” he said. “A week, released in 15 seconds.”
“So I’ll age by a week in 15 seconds?”
“Ah…yes,” he said as he began writing the glyphs. “If I get this right.”
Her eyes then shot open, hopeful. “So you could return me to my true age again?”
True age?
“Oh no…” He shook his head emphatically, recalling the numbers he’d seen. “I performed the calculations for that. The energy release is astronomical. If I tried it, it would perhaps burst your doma.”
She frowned then, looking disappointed
. “Oh…I see.”
Then the look of disappointment shifted to worry. “Is this safe, Kenji?”
He smiled and then showed her the two glyphs. “It will be with these. One week. Fifteen seconds.”
He held them up in turn.
“Once you imbue them we can give it a try,” he said.
She did so and after tying the yellow ten-year-rope about her waist, Kenji gave her a nod. “Channel into the yellow rope first to activate it and then try to imbue the red rope again.”
His nerves stood on end, yet he felt strangely confident in what he had created. Unlike the uncertainty of his doma and channeling in general, the Han arts were based upon precision of measurement and known quantities. Things he could discern with great detail given enough tools and time. And if his father had taught him anything, it was to be meticulous.
Shinoto closed her eyes and the glyphs on the yellow rope glowed. She then took hold of one of the higher-tiered glyphs of the orange rope and channeled into it. A few strands of the yellow rope dissolved into smoke as Shinoto aged by a week. At the same time, the red-rope glyph glowed within her hand and then flashed to completion.
“It worked!” he said triumphantly. Thank the heavens!
Shinoto opened her eyes. “It did?”
Kenji smiled. “It did!”
They then finished the other glyphs, a bit of the yellow rope dissolving each time. By the time they had finished, Shinoto didn’t look much older. He supposed even at such a young age the difference of just a few weeks would not be noticeably different.
“I think I might be taller,” she said with a laugh. “Now what?”
Kenji could not guess the time. It had been a few hours at least. “This took much longer than I had first imagined. It will be morning soon.”
“Should we wait then before using it?”
“I still haven’t figured out a way to use it, to be honest,” he said. “We need to distract the lieutenant on guard somehow before we can get to Olja’s cage.”
“What kind of distraction?”
“I’m not sure, yet.”
Shinoto yawned again. “Perhaps it’s best if we wait until tomorrow. I don’t think I’m prepared to do anything but sleep right now.”