by Wight,Will
It wasn't entirely a surprise when they crested a hill and ran straight into a slaughter.
Lindon had long expected to catch up to the host of twisted beasts, and he’d smelled the heavy scent of blood even before they’d reached this hill. But he still wasn’t prepared for the field of torn, dismembered, and disassembled creatures strewn over the ground.
For what must have been a mile across and many miles wide, the black forest had been cleared. Stumpy logs dotted the ground here and there, and the grass must have been lush before some battle mulched the soil. The people camped at the base of the pyramid would have wanted a clear perimeter, so they cleared the trees so that anything advancing on them would be visible. They posted guards, obviously waiting for any Remnants and sacred beasts to attack.
And when that horde of creatures had rushed at them, the guards had turned this field into a butcher’s shed.
Half of a corrupted bear-sized beast hung from a slowly dissipating Forged spear. A pack of six rotten dogs had been blown apart, bodies strewn in pieces around a fresh crater. A pile of glowing green debris marked the death-place of one of those insectoid snakes that had been stalking Lindon and Yerin; one centipede leg was still scratching at the bloody mud even as motes of green essence drifted away from it. Similar scenes of destruction marred every step for a mile.
Across the clearing, a line of sacred artists stood in front of a low wall of spiked wooden logs. Even at a distance, Lindon could tell they were powerful.
There was a unique confidence, almost arrogance, in highly advanced sacred artists. The Patriarch of the Wei clan had carried himself like a lion among cats, and Yerin spoke as though she was destined to win and her enemies had already lost.
The warriors against the wall moved with the same awareness of their own superiority. One figure, carrying a huge hammer on its back, knelt to rifle through corpses as though sacred beasts may have held something valuable. A group of people carrying hook-curved sickles took turns kicking a rotten dog to each other. It was the size of a full-grown wolf, but the sacred artists kept it in the air as though it weighed no more than a leather ball. The twisted hound turned in midair, trying to bite each new human, but a foot always caught it in the side and sent it sailing away.
Someone in blue-and-white robes hung tucked between the wooden spikes, lounging at his ease, with something that appeared to be a bottle clutched in one hand. Yellow hair—possibly a wig—hung down over the wall. A figure in darker blue casually spun a spear in elaborate loops, the spearhead catching the light more brightly than steel should account for.
Lindon almost missed the movement, as it appeared just as relaxed and natural as the ones that preceded it. One second the blue-clad sacred artist was spinning the spear, and the next second he whipped the spear in Lindon’s direction.
The spear didn’t actually go flying through the air, but the light did. A Striker technique, Lindon realized instantly, but too late for him to do anything about it. Silver-white light the width of a finger screamed through the air, blasting for their Thousand-Mile Cloud.
Even Yerin was caught off-guard, judging by the way she jerked backward, but she still responded as befit a Gold. The bladed arm that hung over her shoulder flickered forward, catching the light. It slammed into the flat of her sword, deflecting slightly to the side as he’d seen her do with beams of Heaven’s Glory madra.
With Heaven’s Glory, though, there had been heat as a byproduct. It would have scorched him. This time, he felt no warmth from the light passing nearby…but a slit appeared in the sleeve of his outer robe, as though someone had sliced a razor across his arm and narrowly missed skin.
“Die and rot!” Yerin shouted, and driven by her Iron lungs, the sheer volume of it pounded Lindon’s skull. He winced and stuck fingers in his ears before the next words. “You got a grudge with me, you come out and draw swords like a sacred artist.”
The spear-spinning figure froze, then vanished. When it reappeared, it had moved close enough that Lindon could make out some detail: the spear artist in blue robes was a tall man with an even taller spear. His hair stood straight up as though he’d frozen it in sharp waves, and he rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand.
“You have my apologies, new friend. We’ve seen no one but monsters come from the west.” He paused, then added. “From a distance, anyone would mistake your cloud for a Remnant. Take that into consideration and forgive me, would you?”
He clapped his hands together in what Lindon took as an apology, though he was still holding his spear between his palms.
Yerin hopped off the cloud, gesturing to Lindon. “I’m hauling a Copper,” she said. Her voice was still hoarse from thirst, but anger lent her words strength. “You nick me with your spear and I’ll survive, but how’d you apologize if you gutted a junior?”
The spearman had walked closer, and now Lindon could make out the evident surprise on his face. “Never seen a Copper so big.” The stranger surveyed Lindon frankly, then turned back to Yerin. “Is he, eh…” He tapped the side of his skull.
Yerin stood absolutely straight, steel arm poised over her head like a scorpion’s tail, one hand on her sword and her tattered robe blowing in the gentle wind. “What do they call you?” she asked.
The man in blue tucked his spear under one arm in a practiced motion, bending at the waist. “I am Jai Sen, of the Jai clan whose honor echoes in every corner of the Blackflame Empire. To repay the insult I have caused you and your junior, I would take responsibility for guiding you through the camp of our Five Factions Alliance.”
“Five Factions?” Yerin asked, but Lindon had joined her by then, with pack on his back and Thousand-Mile Cloud drifting behind him.
“Water,” he said, and Yerin pointed to him.
“He’s right,” she said. “Water.”
Jai Sen patted at the cloth wrap that belted his waist. “Ah, forgive me. There’s no drinkable water for a dozen miles outside the Purelake. I should have considered that you’d be thirsty.” He pulled a stoppered waterskin out of his wrap and laughed. “Half a minute into our acquaintance, and I’m already a bad host. Forgive—”
Yerin had already snatched the skin from his hand. She guzzled it down, spilling water over her chin, and Lindon suddenly had the crazed, suicidal idea to jump for her and try to wrestle the water away.
But she tossed the half-full skin to him, breathing heavily, and he had scarcely caught it before squeezing it into his mouth. It tasted stale and musty, as though the water had been wrung from the fur of a wet dog, but he didn’t care. The relief as water cut through the desert of his throat was like shade on a hot day.
He had only taken one swallow before he choked, doubled over coughing, and had to wait until he recovered his breath to continue drinking. He finished the contents in seconds and bowed, presenting the empty skin back to Jai Sen. He would have thanked the man, but he didn’t trust his own speech.
Jai Sen eyed him with interest. “Clearly, you have been away a long time. Where did you come from, I wonder?”
“Our home lies to the west,” Lindon began, his voice still rough, but Yerin cut him off.
“We’re from beyond the Wilds,” she said. “We have no blood with you or your enemies.”
Jai Sen waved that away as though it hadn’t been what he meant at all, but he also looked relieved. “There’s no concern of that, none at all. The only enemies of the Jai clan are monsters and tyrants, and even the blind can see that you are an innocent and intrepid adventurer.” His smile included both of them, but Lindon noticed that his words did not.
“Gratitude, honored Jai Sen, for your generosity,” Lindon said, to improve his image in the eyes of this stranger. “The Jai clan must be great indeed, to defend their home from such an army of beasts.”
Sen smiled proudly, straightening up and planting his spear in the ground. “You have a good eye, little brother. The Jai clan is not the only faction in the Alliance camp, but we have defended this land as t
hough it was our own for hundreds of years. Since the Ruins rose and the dreadbeasts crash every day like the waves of the sea, the Jai clan has slain more than any other.”
Yerin shifted her blood-red belt. “We’re fresh across the border, Sen. Heard no whispers or mentions of these Ruins, though I think we’ve met your dreadbeasts.” She kicked the severed head of a dog so far that it arced through the air and over a hill. Lindon winced and looked away, though Sen didn’t seem to notice.
“Jai Sen, if you please,” he said. “I’m a blood member of the clan. It would be my honor to explain the history of the Transcendent Ruins to you, sister.”
“Yerin,” she said simply.
“And you, little brother?”
“This one is Wei Shi Lindon,” he said, bowing with both fists pressed together. “Jai Sen’s kindness to humble strangers is an honor to his family and a credit to his clan.”
The blue-clad spearman laughed out loud and clapped Lindon on the back. “If you keep talking like that, Wei Shi Lindon, I’ll have to keep you around.”
“If it pleases you, you may call this one Lindon, as his family does.”
Jai Sen looked surprised for a moment, then sympathetic. He squeezed Lindon’s shoulder with one hand. “They’ll take you back someday, little brother.”
It seemed the older man had come to some awkward conclusion, but before Lindon could clarify, a hand on his back shoved him forward.
“Trot,” Yerin said, including Jai Sen with a glance. “This isn't where we want to rest.”
The smell of blood and worse was beginning to choke Lindon, underscored by the stranger scents of decaying Remnants. He turned to give her a grateful look, but she wasn't watching him. Her eyes had landed on the other sacred artists.
Most of the strangers were looking in their direction with interest, and a few began to drift toward them.
Remembering how powerful they were, a chill rippled down Lindon's spine, but he reminded himself not to be a coward. He couldn't let people of this level intimidate him; his goal was much farther away. These shouldn't be frightening enough to discourage him.
But judging by Yerin's gaze, she wanted to avoid a meeting even more than he did.
Jai Sen strode forward, oblivious to her wariness or pretending to be so. “Please don't be offended if I assume you know nothing about the Desolate Ruins.”
The blocky pyramid loomed over them, blocking out light, and it looked even more ominous in his Copper sight.
“That would not offend us,” Lindon said.
“Only a week ago, this was nothing but a minor outpost of the Purelake Temple. Don't trust your eyes,” he said, sweeping an arm out to include the wooden walls and the crowds of people Lindon could see inside. “All that you see before you was constructed on the spot by valiant sacred artists of the Wilds. It's amazing what we can accomplish when we unite, as the Grand Patriarch of our clan once believed.”
Yerin stabbed a finger at the pyramid. “You built that?”
Jai Sen gave a sheepish laugh. “No, naturally not. Those are the Transcendent Ruins, built by masters ancient beyond memory. No living sacred artists could construct something like that these days. But as impressive as it is to the naked eye, the truth will set your minds ablaze.”
He turned to walk backwards, bending over so that he was on an eye level with Yerin. Lindon had to skip a step so the man's spiked hair didn't take him in the eye, and that close he could see that the hair actually seemed metallic; it must be the physical change that came upon artists as they rose to Gold, like Yerin's extra limb.
“Seven or eight days ago, a team of Fishers were working the Purelake in the gray light of early morning. As dawn broke, the lake began to tremble like a bowl in unsteady hands. The waves grew until they tossed the Fisher boat about, and it took all the strength of a Lowgold and a Highgold working together to bring the craft ashore.
“Only, when their feet touched the ground, they learned that their troubles were not over. The earth shook and the land pitched more violently than the water! They ran for help, as Fishers tend to do, when the trees split apart and the Ruins burst into the sky!” He spun and presented the top of the structure as proudly as if he were personally responsible for its appearance. “Last week, the horizon was clear. Now, the power and reputation of the Transcendent Ruins calls sacred artists from all over the Wilds.”
Now that Lindon looked for it, he could make out chunks of soil clinging to the tiered pyramid. Many of them still had grass attached, and he thought he saw the base of an uprooted tree.
If he could tell what they were at this distance, those patches must be enormous. Either someone had driven carts full of earth up to deceive gullible newcomers, or Jai Sen might be telling the truth.
Their guide was still watching Yerin for signs of a reaction, and his smile widened as she skipped a step, her eyes locked on the Ruins. Lindon was impressed by her resistance; he was afraid his own eyes had grown wider than teacups.
Before he could say something admiring the tale, Yerin spoke. “Seven days before now, did you say?”
He laughed and turned back around to face forward as he walked, holding his spear casually across his shoulders. “Some say seven, some say eight. I myself only arrived three dawns ago, so I can't stake my honor on the time. But I've heard the story from enough trustworthy sources that it must be true.”
By this time, they had reached the wall of sharpened wooden logs. This close, Lindon could appreciate how large each trunk really was; it would take two men his size linking hands to wrap arms around one log. And these had been cut, measured, sharpened, and placed in the last week.
He couldn't help but admire what an army of Golds could accomplish. If Sacred Valley had such a force of workers, what might they have built?
In the front of the wall was a wide opening with wagon-tracks worn in the dirt. Lindon supposed it must function as the main gate, as the loose group of young sacred artists clustered around it must serve as guards.
The youngest looked around Lindon's age, about fifteen or sixteen, while the oldest must have been a peer with Jai Sen in his second decade. There were six in total, three men and three women, and they looked like the types of rough brawlers Lindon imagined just might attack complete strangers.
They each wore a hide cloak with the head still on, and from the diseased-looking skins, Lindon recognized more of those rotting creatures that Jai Sen had called dreadbeasts. Each man and woman had the same disturbing sign of their Gold status: a miniature green snake-insect, like a lesser copy of the ones that had chased Lindon and Yerin here, clung to one arm on each of them.
The serpents varied in size, but they all gripped their host’s arm with their centipede legs and coiled serpentine tails around the human’s flesh. They were Forged from acid-green madra, and Lindon would have taken them for constructs except for the way their legs and tails sunk into flesh. They were bonded to the bodies of these men and women, but the snake heads were alive and curious, surveying Lindon with alien gazes.
The guards gripped long and gleaming weapons, and they eyed Lindon and Yerin like hungry dogs.
Lindon tried to stop his breathing from quickening, because he knew they would hear it. These sacred artists were the same as the ones who had attacked them in the wilderness, the ones whose Remnants had chased them here. If these six knew somehow that he and Yerin had been responsible for the death of their comrades...
Jai Sen slapped the shortest woman on the shoulder, and Lindon noted that her serpent was the largest, stretching from the back of her right hand halfway to the elbow. “Wei Shi Lindon, Yerin, it is my honor to introduce the best of the young generation among the honored Sandvipers. They have a long history of friendship with our Jai clan, and are our allies in exploration of the Ruins.”
The young woman looked Lindon up and down as though she couldn't believe her eyes, the Forged insectoid arms of her serpent parasite clacking as its tiny claws opened and closed. “I am Sandviper
Resh,” she said. “Are you as weak as you seem?”
The question pricked him like a needle, but he was the weakest one present by miles. He readied an ingratiating smile, prepared to humble himself as far as needed.
Yerin drew her sword and slapped the woman across the face with the flat of its blade.
Among the Wei clan, there would have been a moment of stunned silence before people erupted into action. Here, in the midst of such highly trained sacred artists, everyone but Lindon and the wounded Resh had drawn weapons and shifted into a combat stance in an instant. The parasites on the Sandvipers’ arms raised their heads and let out tiny whistles like teakettles. Spearheads, halberds, and tridents pointed at Yerin. Many of the weapons had venomous green madra rolling around their shafts.
Yerin was matted with dirt, wearing a tattered robe, and half-wrapped in dirty bandages. But she still managed to look even more dangerous than the Sandvipers, as she stood with back straight and icy mist rolling from her master's sword. “This is a new spot on the map for me, Lindon,” she said, rolling her shoulders. “But I’ve laid eyes on dogs like this a thousand times. They’ll bark and bark, they’ll push us around, and then they’ll make us fight so they can prove they’re above us. Forgive me if I cut ahead a bit.”
Resh was doubled over on her knees, one hand raised to her head. When she moved it, Lindon saw an angry red welt on her cheek in the shape of Yerin's white blade. It looked as though it had been burned into the skin.
She gripped a long-hafted axe in the ground and unfolded. “You—” she began, but before she got halfway to her feet, Yerin's sword had already met her on the other cheek. Resh doubled over again.
“Heard this song before,” Yerin said to the woman on the ground. “There’s eyes all around, so the only way you get out of this is by beating me face to face, but it’s too late for that.” Nearby, the group with the hook-weapons had dropped the dreadbeast they’d been tormenting, looking to the Sandvipers with interest. The young man draped over the wall blinked bleary eyes and focused on them. A lone, distant figure with a black cloud over its head actually rose a few feet in the air to get a better look.