The Grey Ghost: Book Two of the Archaic Ring Series

by Reed R. Stevens

  Arik left to get them some blankets, returning a short while later. “My mother and the boys have switched over to the wagon—more room for the four of us. You two are free to spend the night in the carriage.”

  They accepted a bundle of soft blankets from Arik and thanked him for his hospitality. As soon as he left, Nolan passed the blankets over to Nyla.

  “You get some rest. I’ll keep an eye out for any trouble.”

  “You go. I’ll stay up.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll wake you in a few hours, and then you can keep watch. Sound good?”

  She nodded and then made her way over to the carriage, pausing once she’d tugged open the rickety door with a hiss of its rusty hinges. “Goodnight Nolan.”

  “Night, Nyla.”

  She remained in place, her back to him as she stood at the door to the carriage. She cast a glance over her shoulder, a look of melancholy in her intelligent dark eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it quickly.

  Nyla? Her expression wasn’t a bashful one, but grave, her body still as rock as she focused on something. Before he could ask her what was up, dozens of powerful auras swarmed into the range of his spiritual sense. They had a strange weight to them, one that his sixth sense perceived with disgust.

  Eyes narrowing, Nolan appeared at Nyla’s side like the ghost of a shadow. “We need to leave.”

  “If we leave now, they’ll notice us,” she said quietly. “The leader, he’s…”

  “He’s not somebody we want to fight.”

  “Can you sense his cultivation?”

  Among the fifty or so life signals that had just stirred his heart into a crazed rhythm, one boasted a terrifyingly dense aura that drew his attention like a burning building on the darkest of nights. “I can.”

  “Can you beat him?”

  “I doubt it.”

  She stared into his eyes, angst and worry in every line on her face. “They’re surrounding surround the camp. What do we do?”

  Nolan took a deep breath. “A battle is inevitable.” He glanced at the wagon where Karan and her family were sleeping, his hands clenching into fists. “That’ll be the best time to flee.”

  They weren’t heroes. If they stuck around, they’d die. If everyone was going to die anyway, was there really a point in taking up the moral standard and dying along with them?

  He climbed into the carriage and unfastened the rope on his primary spatial bag, and then emptied a pile of leather bags and small casks all over the scuffed up floor and padded seats. Last but not least, he placed three large barrels on top of the mess, taking up the last of the carriage’s limited amount of space.

  I say that, but here I am doing something unnecessary.

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “We’ll wait until the battle breaks out. As soon as that happens, I’ll set these off and then we’ll flee during the confusion. They won’t be expecting a large explosion. At that point I’m sure everyone else will make a break for it too, so we can use that as a chance to get out of here.”

  Nyla swept her gaze across the relatively quiet camp. Most people had yet to leave their fires, completely unaware of the impending crisis as they washed down the last of their meals with water and wine. “Will the powder hurt any of them?”

  “I really hope not. If it does, it shouldn’t kill them.”

  “But they’ll still die, probably.”

  The relative silence that filled the camp had a foreboding peacefulness to it that sent shivers down Nolan’s spine. If a calming rush of energy didn’t trickle out of the ring in his chest and spread all throughout his body, he was certain that his hands would have started to shake.

  “Just be ready to use your movement skill.”

  At that moment a powerful voice reverberated throughout the camp and completely flipped its complacent atmosphere on its head.

  “People of Verdure, be warned. There are those among you who are destined to die tonight, though not everyone here needs to share the same fate. Step aside and allow us to retrieve these individuals, and the rest of you shall be spared.”

  The air was still ringing with powerful echoes when the carriages and wagons began emptying at a rapid pace. At the Red Captain’s command all of the mercenaries immediately withdrew to the centre of the camp and formed a protective circle around the travellers, who were looking around with frightened expressions and calling out in confusion. A frightened Karan and a panicky Arik were among them, each holding a frightened boy’s hand.

  Nolan and Nyla didn’t move. The mob of mercenaries and travellers currently stood between them and whoever had just spoken.

  “We’re looking for a young man at the first level of the Profound Entry stage, and a girl at the sixth.” The eloquent voice carried a hint of inner essence that made it hard on the ears of ordinary people. “Hand them over and we’ll let the rest of you continue on your way.”

  A few dozen paces away from the wall of heavily-armoured, tensed up mercenaries, the speaker took a casual step forward. The sudden movement alarmed travellers and mercenaries alike, as not even the Red Captain seemed to have sensed his presence.

  Once the young man’s robes came into view, people began to shout with fear.

  You can infuse inner essence into your voice? Nolan was shocked for a moment, and then became anxious. My spiritual sense could barely track him. And why does he still think I’m at the fourth level of Body Nourishment? At least for him, it’s barely been a week since I went to save Nyla and Quin.

  Nolan knew of two stages after Profound Entry, but only in name. The Integration stage, followed by the Genesis stage.

  As far as Integration went, it was the stage after Profound Entry. Cultivators that reached this stage would be able to expel inner essence from their body and control it, something that he was currently capable of on a small scale. That he could manage this despite being an entire stage beneath than the apparent norm was yet another testament to the superiority of the Ancestral Body Technique.

  According to Uncle Grey, body enhancement martial skills were the only ones that could be practiced beneath this realm. With the exception of some movement skills, the majority of martial techniques relied on external energy manipulation. Using martial skills as a medium, a cultivator at this stage could use inner essence to directly attack their opponents. Nolan felt the cold sweat break out across his back as he remembered the old ghost’s lesson.

  The young man that’d just appeared in the midst of everyone present had wavy golden hair that flowed down to his shoulders, bright blue eyes and a strong jawline, all perfectly utilized in an infinitely confident demeanour. Unlike the disciples Nolan had recently run into, this man took no effort to hide the colours of his sect. His robes were a darker scarlet than the ones that Nolan had taken from that boy back in Redfox Village, the trimming a deeper black. Including the bloody handprint embroidered over his chest, every aspect of the outfit was made from far finer materials.

  Nolan remained completely still, fully aware that this young man was an agent of a frightening organization, and that he’d come here for the sole purpose of killing him and Nyla. If it weren’t for the ring in his chest then he would have probably frozen up in the face of such intimidating pressure, for the man before him was at the first level of the Integration stage. The stressful thing was that his appearance was strikingly similar to the guy that Nolan had killed in the village.

  “The boy is about up to my nose in height, with brown hair and a lean build. The girl has black hair, black eyes, and her skin is slightly tan.”

  Nolan and Nyla weren’t far from Karan’s carriage, neither of them daring to move a muscle as hundreds of eyes gradually began to settle on them.

  Why hasn’t he attacked yet? He can see us clearly and his men have already closed in on the camp. Nolan was ready to move at a moment’s notice. There’s no doubt that he knows our cultivation levels. I’m a whole stage below him, at least on the surface. He probab
ly thinks that killing me would be as easy as swatting a fly.

  What purpose was there in telling the people here that they would live if he and Nyla were handed over, when the young man was fully confident that he could capture them? Nolan recalled the destruction of Redfox Village, how countless dozens of people had been butchered by a single disciple, and also the recent news about Remus and his family.

  “Well? Have you thought it over?”

  Red’s voice came from the frontline of mercenaries, though it lacked the commanding tone from earlier. “Even a fool’s child knows what you lot do to the people you meet. We’re just cultivation resources in your eyes!”

  “Captain,” one of the mercenaries said in a heavy, panicked voice. “You know who he’s talking about! Why not hand them over? It can’t hurt our chances of getting out of here.” The speaker’s large frame and scarred face revealed him to be one of the men who’d accosted Karan and her family just a short while ago.

  Because he was one of the bigger people at the front of the group, Nolan was able to pick him out from the crowd of frightened faces. Oh, you motherfucker.

  “Did you grow up in a dark cave?” Red hissed from beneath his crimson helmet. “Do you really think they’re not planning to refine us?”

  “But sir, even if there’s only a small chance that he’s telling the truth, isn’t that a gamble we should take? Everyone here might live, if only those two…” The man turned around and fixed a poisonous glare on Nolan, but one of his leader’s rough hands took him across the face with a heavy slapping sound that blotted out the idle cackling of abandoned campfires.

  “Out of all the people on our side, that girl has the highest cultivation! If we turn her over, what do you think will happen when they immediately go back on their word?”

  “S-she has the…” he said. “Wait, they?”

  “Everyone, listen up!” Red hollered over his shoulder. “Most of you aren’t aware of it but we’ve just been surrounded by at least fifty disciples, and it seems that about half of them are from their inner court! If they’re close enough for me to detect them then that means they aren’t trying to hide. I’m sure you understand what I’m getting at!”

  Aside from the dim glow of a few dozen campfires, everything was completely black. Wavering glows painted the terrified travellers in haunting shades, the warm summer night now silent save for a handful of horrified whispers and soft-spoken utterings. Nolan could see that every single face had gone white after Red’s dire exclamations.

  Recalling Arik’s words, it seemed that this was the first time that the Bloodhand Sect had entered Verdure in such numbers, not to mention that more than half of their group were from their inner court. To reach such a level within their sect one had to refine countless thousands of hapless victims. It was rumoured that the amount of lives they required in order to make a breakthrough was enough to fill a small village with withered corpses.

  After hearing that so many disciples had gathered in one place, it was clear to all people present that the chances of them surviving this encounter were next to none.

  Chapter Twenty-nine: The Spark Catches

  It’s nearly sundown. Soon they’ll stop to set up camp.

  Out in Flora’s scenic wilderness, a large group of uniformed men were maintaining a fair distance from the caravan of traders that they had only just caught sight of. At the head of the pack, a young man stood out from the rest, his calm and noble demeanour paired with a devious glint that lingered in his eyes like flames around the embers of a dying fire.

  Over the past several days, Brecht’s junior brothers had kept an eye on the people passing in and out of Greenwall. Just an hour ago, one of his weaker grunts, a needle-eyed scamp named Brud, had reported to him that he’d seen their targets leaving the eastern gate of the city. They had immediately set off in full force, coming upon the merchant caravan after less than an hour of fast running. Not only was he about to capture his long sought-after target, there were plenty of people to refine and an entire train of stocked wagons to plunder.

  He would have preferred them to have covered a bit more distance, but he couldn’t afford to let this drag out for any longer. It was time that he tackled his grandfather’s assignment in earnest. Damn those elders, if they would have just told me what was going on…

  The distant travellers made camp a short while later, forming their carriages into a ring and starting a few dozen fires within the perimeter.

  Since meeting with Elder Kanis several days back, Brecht had been visited by three more of his grandfather’s subordinates. As with Kanis, they had each left behind a good deal of powerful disciples, though they refused to fill him in on the purpose of their presence and instead urged him to return to the sect as quickly as possible. Judging by the amount of followers that all three had brought with them, it was clear that something big had been set into motion in the time that he’d been away.

  There were only a few thousand elders amongst their ranks, and it had been countless decades since someone of such stature had stepped foot into Verdure’s lands. He suspected that more than just the four he’d encountered had been sent out to this kingdom, for the ones he’d spoken with had all been subordinate to his grandfather, and it was unlikely that the sect master would mobilize so many people from a single faction.

  Amongst the kingdoms, Verdure is our most dangerous adversary. The sect master wouldn’t trust anyone but a great elder with a large-scale mission within its territory. He had no doubt that there were elders from the various factions roaming about, an added danger for him to keep in mind. His grandfather had a lot of enemies within the sect and this would be a perfect opportunity for them to strike out against him, to kill his favourite grandson. It was no wonder that Kanis and the others had buffed up his forces.

  Once the sun had set and twilight was rapidly darkening, Brecht decided that it was time to act. As things were, his followers consisted of thirty low-ranking disciples and twenty-two from the inner court. Among them was another elder’s grandson, Braxis, a quiet youth a few years younger than him who had a decent reputation among the disciples of the sect. He’d been challenged to forty-seven resource duels since he’d entered the inner court eight years ago, and had won all but two.

  “Move in to surround them, but don’t enter the camp until I take out their leader. Try not to kill the guards, since they’ll have the most energy.” He strengthened his body with inner essence and then jumped forward in a blur. It was time to reap the rewards of his assignment.

  He stopped a short distance away from the camp, far enough to go undetected by the mercenaries that guarded its outer circumference. A greedy smile broke out across his face as he took in the quality of the hired arms. If he refined them all himself, then not only would his cultivation base stabilize at the initial phase of his current level, he could potentially shoot all the way up to the second level of Integration.

  “People of Verdure, be warned.” Though he spoke with a calm and casual cadence, the inner essence that he’d infused into his voice allowed it to carry all throughout the field in a resounding manner. “There are those among you who are destined to die tonight, though not everyone here needs to share the same fate. Step aside and allow us to retrieve these individuals, and the rest of you shall be spared.”

  He half-expected them to scatter in all directions the moment that they heard his overwhelming voice, like so many had done before them. Instead, they had congregated at the camp’s centre, the large company of mercenaries now gathered around their pitiful employers with weapons raised.

  The armour that the mercenaries wore would make it difficult for his junior disciples to take out their opponents, at least that would have been the case if they didn’t know any offensive martial skills.

  His forces had positioned themselves in a wide circle about a fifty paces away from the long ring of wagons and carriages, which obscured most of the anxious mob from view. Standing a bit closer than the others, he spotted
a gap in the makeshift wall and kicked off the ground without hesitation, landing close to the centre of the encampment just a few moments later.

  Almost immediately after he arrived in front of the distressed crowd, he sensed two people standing apart from the rest near the fringes of the circle, which had a diameter of just over sixty paces. A brief gap in the mass of people afforded him a momentary glimpse of the two, an older boy and girl that appeared a bit more composed than those around of them. Although their cultivation levels didn’t match up with his information, their appearances were glaringly identical to junior brother Brud’s description.

  Useless as his younger brother was, it didn’t make sense that someone at the fourth level of Body Nourishment would have been able to kill him. With such a disparity in their cultivations, the brown-haired boy shouldn’t have been able to get close enough to use whatever poison had supposedly taken his younger brother’s life.

  The girl’s cultivation is high, but the boy is hardly impressive.

  He glanced toward where Brud was hiding off in the meadows, the youth waiting for his signal to jump into battle. What reason would he have to lie about the strength of Zaern’s killer? Unless things regarding his brother’s death hadn’t gone down exactly as the boy claimed, something Brecht had suspected since the onset of this assignment.

  For now, I’ll treat it as if those two are the ones we’re looking for. If it turns out they’re not, then I’ll simply refine them along with the rest and then return to the sect as planned. As for Brud, it seems he’s destined to fall in this battle.

  “We are looking for a young man at the first level of the Profound Entry stage, and a girl at the sixth. Hand them over and no harm shall come to you.”

  He took a step forward, now the centre of attention.

  “A disciple of the Bloodhand Sect!”

  “Bloodhand Sect!”

  He ignored the frantic cries of despair. “The boy is about up to my nose, with brown hair and a lean build. The girl has black hair, black eyes, and her skin is slightly tan.” He waited a full minute. “Well? Have you thought it over?”