Artorian's Archives Omnibus

by Dennis Vanderkerken

  “Sorry, kitty. Thought you were hurting a buddy of mine.” Artorian sighed deeply. He missed the forest. It was just so convenient. Rubbing his forehead, he tiptoed off his kill and grumbled at his own wastefulness. Well… dinner? He’d not planned this landfall, and replenishing his stock after hopping through the sky for a few weeks might be necessary.

  He’d been practicing hard-light platforms to balance on while high in the sky. It was such a bother to have to come down all the way after each jump. The technique extended his airtime and counted as practice for a trick-set of his while he was at it. Hard-light was one of those off-the-wall oddball ideas that didn’t make sense on paper.

  A section of space was ‘hardened’ by filling Essence with the idea of ‘solidity’. The amount of Essence it required made an insanely fragile ‘brick’ of glowing energy from the gathered intensity. Once he’d stepped on it, the Essence keeping it together shattered from the downwards force. It was good for one launch, but he really only needed one. With a wide enough presence, he didn’t lose the majority of the energy. Still… was it necessary to do all this work?

  He was so close to the base of Skyspear that he could see it from here. Well, if ‘here’ was bouncing around near the cloud layer. That was significantly easier than the hard-light technique, but he had found that he couldn't always count on having clouds available. That was similar to walking on water, except you used more air Essence in the formula.

  Water was a staple, and somehow altered the amount of ‘bounce’ you got out of a vapor cloud. The angry lightning-filled ones… they could kiss his keister. He’d rather hard-light around those or drop to the ground for a fresh launch.

  Picking the dead cat up, he threw it over his shoulder. There! Nice and supported. The thing wasn’t going to fit in his bag unless he carved it up, and he wasn’t in the mood to chop up a dead Beast. Perhaps he would take it slow and walk the rest of the way to the City of Walls? Actually, that might be favorable to dropping in unannounced from above, which could reflect poorly if he fell on a house.

  He’d forgotten about that. Yes. Enter through the front door, see if there’s any delicious paperwork that needs doing… huh. It was a strange thing to miss paperwork. Maybe they’d recognize him from his younger days? One could only hope!

  With the animal hoisted over his shoulder, Artorian broke out a military whistle from his Socorro days and marched to the Oldwalls with his Starlight Aura activated only on the minimum. He didn’t want to stand out in the grassland, but didn’t want to get tired before he got there either! It occurred to him that while in the middle of a town, he may want to turn off his Aura effects. They may not be the best thing to have active, as his Auras were indiscriminate…

  Ah, who was he kidding? Starlight Aura, maximum blast! No glow, let’s go!

  His expected half-hour tromp turned into a multi-hour trek, and he was booking it! Things looked much smaller when you had a bird’s eye view, as it turned out. Artorian just about bowled over a few people on the way by as he hustled along, hollering ‘sorry’ over his shoulder as he didn’t have the time to see who or what he had passed. Unless you saw him coming, Artorian was a blur of bright colors to a non-cultivator.

  If you did see him coming, the Moro was seen first. Since he was on an upward incline, the onlooker view tended to be from above. Now, Artorian didn’t realize how feared this beast was in the area, and he also didn’t pay much mind to screaming people. Mainly he thought that he had simply surprised them in passing. He’d needed to flip the creature over, since the soft stomach was far more forgiving on his shoulders than the spine was.

  So, to the half-awake guards in a two-tier pavilion on the outskirts of the Oldwalls, a sprinting apex predator was coming their way, only to neatly… wait at the end of the line? They quickly flagged down a Captain, who went to investigate.

  Trouble at the entry station was a constant, and a platoon at minimum remained stationed nearby so they could handle any threats. People in queue gave Artorian and his cargo a wide berth. It made him wonder what was wrong since they kept glancing at him.

  By the scribes! His beard! It had become long over the years; borderline unkempt, really. All that air travel had undone some of the binding keeping it neatly together, so he must not be up to snuff with social norms when it came to beard-maintenance. He smiled at the people staring and gave a small wave. “Yes, yes. Sorry, sorry. Please don’t mind the beard.”

  The refugees in front of him huddled their children close, but the younglings stared between him and the burdensome beast on his shoulder. They wanted the story. The children were hushed and made to look away. “Don’t bother the strange man.”

  Ah. That was a good—if hurtful—point. Artorian didn’t know anyone here. He’d best be on good behavior. He’d been in almost no situation other than socially favorable ones for at least… oh, the last few decades. Looking ahead, a good three dozen small groups of people were ahead of him in the queue. That was fine. He was finally here; he could snack on berries from his pouch while taking the occasional step forwards. What was a few more minutes of waiting?

  A crowd had gathered on the wall to check out the oddly polite and non-aggressive Moro. Seeing it was being carried, the majority decided they wanted nothing to do with whomever was able to bring down a big cat like that. They made themselves scarce. This was not the right town to be popular in. It painted a nasty target on your back, and affiliations were no better.

  Captain Marquis had decided not to take unnecessary action. He sat next to scribe Timmy, a new recruit added to the fold of the guard. Then again, that was the fate of most who got kicked out of the Academy. Staying here was the only way to still gain some trickle of knowledge that came down from Skyspear. Or… knowing someone that was going up. That eccentric with the Moro? Yeah.

  The Captain was a man of meager action and great sloth. If he could avoid doing work, he most certainly would. His muddy boots rested on the table, and he leaned back in his chair while chewing on a sugar reed as he watched the refugees come and filter through.

  Always filtering through. That’s what those Abyssal raiders were here for; the lost and the desperate. Recruits for their precious Golden Hand. Sod ‘em.

  When the old eccentric was finally up at the entrance table, Timmy didn’t flinch. He recited a speech rehearsed several times a day; so often that his voice hurt. Or… at least it had until the old man showed up. Timmy actually felt pretty good at the moment. The old man looked down at the scribe and didn’t interrupt.

  “Welcome to Xi’an, a city of endless walls and wonder. Please sign your name if able, or describe it as best as you can. State your reason for coming, and your expected duration of stay. We apologize for the smell and-”

  “Timmy.” The Captain stopped leaning back, falling forwards in the chair as he took his boots off the table. The scribe perked up from his mechanical speech, startled by the interruption.

  “S...sir?”

  Artorian leaned down, took a quill, and effortlessly scribed the details in. “Look at what kind of person you’re speaking with.”

  The scribe blinked, and his mouth fell agape. Artorian just waved it off, “I know, I know. Apologies for my beard. I’ll get it sorted, lad. Am I all set to enter?”

  The scribe drowned in a fit of mumbles as he checked over the paperwork for missing fields, but everything was written with a stylish flourish. The scribe had rarely seen such fine penmanship, and his respect for the elderly man was immediate. He knew how hard proper calligraphy was. “O...of course sir. Are you here for the Academy?”

  The scribe’s eyes sparkled; the old man might be a way back in! Unfortunately for Timmy, the person he was talking to had seen through the ploy from the expression plastered on his dubiously scheming face.

  “Hmm? Oh. No, I’m just here to deliver something.” He smiled wide, an absolute lie of a statement. Not that the scribe could tell.

  “Oh. Yes. I can… see that.”

  “I�
�ll be off then. Have a jolly good day!” The elder was far too enthusiastic for anyone’s liking. The crowd in the vicinity was entirely put off by the… colorfully dressed man’s mirth. It sent discomfort through them, even though they hadn’t felt so lacking in aches and pains in ages. It was downright unsettling. “Xi’an huh? They renamed it again? I wonder why the name keeps dying and getting replaced.”

  Artorian entered the gate and turned to begin climbing the stairs. He also didn’t understand what the ‘smell’ comment had been about. Everything was fine? Oh! Right! His Aura was always cleaning, especially his immediate vicinity. He got up on the wall after a few minutes while thinking his interactions over.

  Maneuvering his Beastie on his shoulders through narrow halls wasn’t easy. Once atop the wall, he saw lanterns lining the lee side of all the highest-tier walls, and found that everything was so… bleak and brown. Where were the blues of the ponds, the reds of flags and lamplights, the vivacious yellows of merchant stalls? He looked over the wall and… oh. Hmmm. Latrine problems.

  He suppressed the Aura for just a moment… a critical mistake. The smells and awful attrition assaulted his senses. He clamped his nose shut, eyes watering as he felt the supreme need to hurl. He held it in for now, but the awful fugue wafting about was everywhere. Not even the torch fires were burning off the methane hanging in the air fast enough for the smell to dissipate.

  He cycled his eyes: another mistake. There were a lot of people on the walls. That was where everyone lived, since the initial site had been built in a bog. The walls didn’t sink, so people lived and worked within and atop their layers. The deeper into the walls you were, the less savory your company. If you were atop the walls, you could see the tiered Pagoda’s with lanterns hanging from every corner. The red lights were familiar enough, but the smell… ugh.

  He needed to get out of here. His enhanced eyes caught glimpses of people’s corruption; filth that had settled and remained impure. He sank to a knee, but people didn’t look twice. After all, what they saw was an old man carrying a heavy burden. Artorian wished he had taken the option not to look.

  The horrors he now saw struck him right in the stomach. Advanced cultivator senses were not being helpful here. Nobody wanted to be aware of a cesspool like this, and he had to concentrate and physically force himself to stop cycling to his eyes. Just to stop seeing the garbage that had accumulated inside of all these people around him. There were so many of them, and they were all… ugh.

  He’d been spoiled by immaculate Wood Elves. This was the human world; the filthy reality. It needed… cleansing. Then, he saw the raiders. Yes. He could make time for some cleansing.

  Chapter Thirty

  “This must be a joke.” Even in his war days, society hadn’t been this downtrodden. Abyss, the warzones had better living conditions than what he was currently looking at. There were refugees as far as the eye could see; coughing and illness ran rampant. Raiders openly walked the walls, and the guards were preventing nothing. What was the academy doing?

  “Yoo hoo! Are you looking for a nice warm night?” A feminine voice called over, and he saw the Pagodas had been repurposed. Oh, not this, too! It hadn’t been him that had been called, and for that he was thankful.

  He stalked off, hopping onto the edge of the wall to bounce along the crenellations. Nobody used those, and it kept him out of the crowd’s way. Sure, it was odd for the common folk to see a colorfully dressed grandfather bouncing along carrying a Moro, but he didn’t give them the option to interfere.

  “Magic techniques! Buy your magic techniques here!” Artorian stopped on a copper and looked down to the lower wall. A merchant street? Yes, based on the shoddy carts. “Two coppers for a manual of insight and power! One copper for mighty strength! Half a copper for impenetrable health; never get sick again!”

  Essence sight was risked. It did the job, and he read the rough pamphlets that had the gall to be termed manuals. Those scraps of vellum were barely fit to be called scratch notes. The pamphlets contained herbal mixtures that, as far as he knew, did nothing. These were all swindlers and thieves.

  “Learn the power of the earth from a Master cultivator right here folks! Master Quan can teach you anything for the low, low price of a silver!” The academic glanced over to this ‘Master Quan’. An F-rank two with less corruption than the surrounding awfulness, but the man didn’t even possess a Chi spiral. It looked like the corruption had been stripped from him, and that in turn had made him comparatively healthy. Otherwise… this was a nobody playing pretend with lots of pomp and fancy beads.

  Several more of these so-called Masters hung around the area. Artorian looked at one of the training areas; a repurposed square where the general public had been kicked out by ‘students’. Unsavory.

  The ‘master’ there was at best doing warm-up exercises and selling it as ‘Chi channel improvement courses’. Such malarkey! That was it. Patience gone. Fury active. The academy needed to answer him for far more than the information he was here to collect… if they even had it. This was where he had been sending writs? Surely not. It hadn’t been like this nearly forty-ish years ago. What had happened to this place?

  He hurried up his parapet hopping and made his way to the base of the million steps. Nope. Artorian would have, had a new-looking gate not been in the way. He was irritated now, and the line was so long. He steadied himself, reminding his old soldier self that he needed to try and make a positive impact. Try. He got in the queue, and the same pattern from before emerged.

  People avoided him, and a higher up was once again present at the table by the time he got there. Another mindless droning speech spewing from another overworked scribe. “Welcome to the Skyspear, we are sorry and cannot accept applicants that cannot pay the tithe to register.”

  The academy scribe got slapped on the back of the head by the robed figure. “Xi, you fool! Look at this man. He’s brought more than adequate payment for tuition!”

  Tithes, payment, and tuition? At the Skyspear? How… new. He was starting to dislike this place’s idea of ‘new’. The academy ‘instructor’ rubbed his grubby, fat hands together. “Welcome, welcome, prospective student. I am low-grade instructor Justice Heron. I would be delighted to accept your tuition and allow you passage. Please leave the tithe with me, and you’ll be given a writ of proof when you get to the top and arrive at the main gates.”

  Several things had been said that Artorian didn’t care for. Forget trying to make a good impression, there was nothing here to impress. He was going to kick that door down and start demanding explanations. “I think not.”

  Heron placed a hand to his chest, acting insulted and accosted. “Oh, that won’t do, that won’t do at all! It is necessary that one receives permission from one such as I, low-grade instructor Justice Heron, to be allowed enrollment into…”

  “Why would I need permission for something I already am? You can’t make me a student any more than you could make yourself a bird! I already belong here. Explain yourself, or step aside.”

  The scribe snorted and got slapped on the head again by the instructor. Well… ‘Instructor’. The man was F-rank eight at best. His cultivation was a mess, if you called that a cultivation technique. Artorian had seen larger Chi strands on shrimp!

  “Now, I really must insist…”

  “Right then, farewell.”

  Heron had begun to sputter, but was cut off as Artorian skipped the formalities, and the gate entirely. He jumped over both and landed on the other side, starting the climb on utterly filthy stairs. “When was the last time these were cleaned? I’m thinking that I may need to burn this place to the ground and start over.”

  Not even a hundred steps in, and he was furious about what he was seeing. Lies? Swindling for admittance? Bureaucracy? No. This was not the academy he had left. This was an insult. An atrocity. He’d get to the bottom of this, or rather, the top of it.

  “Did he just jump over…”

  *Whap*!

  �
�Shut up and write it down!” The scribe was hit a third time, and it only fueled Xi’s ire as he begrudgingly got to scribbling in this awful, oppressive work environment.

  Someone was going to have a very bad day. Artorian remembered the climb to be more… arduous than it was. Then again, he’d been in his earliest of teens when he did this the first time. The steps spiraled around the mountain, going up and up until the air turned thin. He already knew it wouldn’t remain thin long, and now knew why.

  An abundance of air Essence hung about the Skyspear, and once you went past the third-lowest threshold, breathing wasn’t difficult. It was just a scare for first-time climbers, something he’d expected and hoped to see more of.

  This was a place where you rose on merit and ability. Yet none climbed the stairs with him now, and the contrast of the past and the present made him ache. He remembered the dozens of people attempting the daily struggle. Artorian missed the camaraderie at the bottom, and the fellowships one made in the rest spots.

  Those same rest spots were now overgrown with scraggly weeds and abandoned. Artorian stopped at an old favorite of his, and he could only recognize it by old familiarity. The seats had been trashed, the great statue of Woah the Wise was toppled and befouled, and the pond… that was brown.

  Artorian was absolutely livid. He was going to start throwing people off the mountain. In particular, the head administrator that had allowed this descent into dereliction to occur. Starlight poured off the furious philosopher. He glared a challenge up the mountain with unabashed resentment. Essence was aggressively drawn in from the vicinity as the air around the old man rumbled.

  Tradition had been tarnished. The good name of one of his favorite places had been besmirched. The people he’d seen and met were foul and casually abusive. Artorian launched into the sky like a Dwarven firework. Branches snapped and water gushed from the resting spot. Small rocks and broken benches took flight as the back blast of his ascent sent the loose debris spiraling outwards. The head of Woah the Wise spun in place like a top before bouncing down the mountain stairs.