On Cosmic Tides

Laurel shot a mass of uncontrolled lightning through the cave opening as she dove to the side, hastily pulling together a basic shield technique. The attack had enough power to make even her ears ring with the thunder that followed. She crouched low on the side of the cave, panting from the sudden outpouring of power. No counterattack followed. Struggling to see through the dust and dirt her strike had thrown into the air, she reached out with her spiritual sense. A pulse of mana sent air whipping through the opening, clearing the haze.

Nothing. She felt nothing, she saw nothing. There should have been a team of cultivators waiting. Even if those thrice-cursed bastards had started running the moment she was past the threshold, she should still be able to feel them. The sound of her breathing echoed through the cave as she stood and took stock of her surroundings. It was an easy prospect. The room appeared entirely empty except for a small light crystal in the corner, some rocks and debris that had fallen from the ceiling, and her. What had been described to her as a natural cave system, she could now see was man-made. Crudely shaped, for certain, but someone had taken the time to carve this hollow into the earth. They must have used mortal methods as well, as no earth-attuned cultivator with a scrap of pride would have left the walls so rough. A quick lap of the room revealed nothing else, no hidden doors or extra supplies. With no further reason to delay, she made her way to the exit.

Kneeling for a closer look, Laurel made out the faded remains of the script across the opening of her cave. Clean, elegant. It must have been the work of a master, there was no way she would have missed it the first time otherwise. Ego soothed, she held out her palm in time for a small chisel to appear and drop into it. She carefully chipped away at the runes, one at a time. A brief pause between each ensured no cascading failure or traps for the unwary. She stood and brushed away the dirt from the knees of her robe, cursing the need to maintain an image in front of lesser sects. The team she had entered with was gone and not returning, not with the amount of noise she made and the time it took to search the cell. The need for caution was gone.

She took a deep breath. Then another. Then let out a scream of frustration. They were gone! She’d traveled here to help them, at their own request, and they thought to push her into some filthy pit and run off through a pre-set portal? Small sparks of lightning arced between her fingers as squalls of wind carved thin furrows into the hard-packed dirt floor. Hunting those cowards down and exacting retribution moved to the top of her priorities. She had scraped and clawed her way up for a hundred years to be recognized as a master cultivator. Now these cowards had made a fool of her and that simply could not stand.

One more sweep of the area revealed a small patch of the wall was a different texture to the rest. To the left of the entryway a small bronze plaque was embedded flush with the wall, covered in a patina of brown and green. Grimacing, she reached out and brushed her fingers across the grubby surface, noting the ridge of some sort of etching. This time a rag popped into existence in Laurel’s hands, followed by parchment and charcoal as she made a careful rubbing. She held the parchment up in front of the light crystal, moving her hands until the angle was right to shine through and reveal the original text.

Laurel Stormblade

Master - Eternal Archive

Air, Lightning, Metal

She stopped cold. Trapping her here had not been some spur of the moment decision. They had planned the entire thing, with the absolute gall to create some sort of memorial label. The whole sect must have been involved in luring her here in order to…keep her in some twisted menagerie? Her temper roared back to the forefront. She would dismantle their entire sect, starting with the sectmaster and elders, working her way down through the masters and experts, then to the adepts. The initiates might be spared if they were appropriately contrite, but the Tranquil Mountain Sect would be erased from history by the time she was through.

Seizing the light crystal and ripping it off the wall, Laurel strode back towards the surface. Ten steps later she stopped and returned to the cave, what would have been her cell. Shadows danced along the walls as light filtered through her clenched fist. The plaque hadn’t changed, still smugly affixed outside of the cell. Laurel once more trailed her fingers across the thin metal while staring down the rough-hewn hallway towards the surface. Her thoughts swirled. Something about this was important, more than she had first realized. She relaxed her focus and let her mind find whatever it was that plucked at her instincts.

It struck her. The cultivators she had arrived with had escaped impossibly fast, and this bronze plaque was tarnished. It takes years for metal to gain that kind of coating. Either this small sect had been planning to trap her, specifically, for ages before they reached out to her sect for assistance – and had somehow gained the resources and expertise to set up a ruinously expensive and finicky, undetectable teleport circle – or they had succeeded in their capture attempt. A pit began to form in her stomach. This was so much worse than she had thought. It would be centuries before she outlasted the indignity. Some piddling sect from the middle of nowhere, with no reputation to speak of, had trapped her in a box for years. Had the sect come by to gawk at the captured master? And where were they now? They must have had a plan for when she woke up.

She couldn’t fathom what the purposes had been. Frozen in time, she would have been defenseless if they wanted to kill her. Possible scenarios were dismissed almost as soon as she thought of them. She paced ten strides up the corridor, spun precisely and paced the ten steps back. Even knowing she was now free, she acted like a trapped predator, ready to lash out at the first thing she saw that wasn’t a fucking rock.

Maybe one of her friends had gotten concerned and slaughtered their way through the sect after realizing Laurel had disappeared after visiting. Any of them were powerful enough to scythe through the Tranquil Mountain like so much wheat. There was a grim satisfaction in that imagery. Laurel might have a temper, but some of her friends were downright bloodthirsty when someone they cared for was threatened.

The path back to the surface was a winding two or three kilometers, with other tunnels branching off at a few junctures. One of Laurel’s original reasons for being here was to help the crafting-focused Tranquil Mountain Sect secure the tunnels from some spirit beasts that had taken up residence in the warren-like structure. More lies. As Laurel’s senses extended throughout the cave system there was nothing larger than a few rodents and some insects. More disturbing, she was limited to the tunnels themselves. Pushing out at full strength, she should have been able to feel any mana or life signatures within a rough sphere around her body for several kilometers. But she was currently blind to anything above ground. The sect must have added lead or powdered void flowers into the walls when they carved out the tunnels. The light crystal still in Laurel’s hand was in danger of cracking as her fists clenched. Each new piece of evidence of premeditation kept the fires of her temper burning right beneath the surface. Blue light seeped out in broken beams between her fingers, adding to the eeriness of the empty halls she was stalking through.

Within a few minutes she arrived at the sealed entrance. A thorough inspection convinced Laurel that any protections from the initial construction were long gone. It was shameful, really. Any organization calling itself a crafting sect should be able to seal a door for more than a few years. Even more any sect with the rank arrogance to try and imprison a master.

She felt around the stone sealing the entrance, letting her hands trace the contours of the barrier. It was a single piece of dark granite, flecked with metallic chips that gleamed in the light of the glow stone. The thickness was impossible to determine. Her fingertips detected a slight curve to the stone, bowing outward into the space beyond. Setting her feet in a side stance, she positioned her shoulder in the apex of the curve and began to push. At first nothing happened. But she didn’t let up. She heaved, thighs quivering and arms straining. Finally the stone began to shift. Just a hair at first. Then the gap slowly widened until a few centimeters was open, then half a meter, and with one last push the stone crashed to the floor, sending up a cloud of dust.

Laurel’s hand arced in a slash from shoulder to hip, and a bolt of lightning shimmered into existence and slammed through the open doorway and into the next room. Wind followed to clear the debris from the air as she slipped through the door and stepped to the side while dropping into a defensive stance. She summoned a short sword into her left hand, expanding her senses as rapidly as she could without ignoring her immediate surroundings.

Once more, nothing. Plants, small animals, insects were all present, but it felt like a wilderness more than the heart of a sect-controlled territory. There were no mortals around, and no cultivators, unless they had a grandmaster-level veil. She edged around the perimeter of the room, pushing her mortal senses to pick up anything her spiritual scan had missed. Puffs of dust answered each footfall as she made her way through the building. The stone was worn, the mortar crumbling noticeably. Tattered remains of what might have once been tapestries hung from walls by bare threads. She passed by windows that had long since lost any glass or shutters. Moss and lichen grew below, where water had seeped inside.

This building had been a modest administrative center at the heart of the Tranquil Mountain Sect. Built to control access to the tunnels below, it had been entirely functional, if unimpressive. Now it was a ruin. Each sign of age left Laurel more and more concerned. Just how long had she been trapped underground? She sped up, abandoning any attempts at stealth. Holes that had rotted out of the ceiling revealed upper floors in a similar state. Droppings and animal tracks in the detritus on the ground all confirmed this building had belonged to the wilds for quite some time. She hit the front door at a sprint and burst out into the fresh air.

The mountainside was in shambles. It was the kind of remote ruin Laurel’s sectmaster would send her to investigate for some lost cultivation art. The sect house that had been a bustling hub of earth cultivators was now a nondescript pile of rocks, tumbled together into a low hill. If she hadn’t seen the original with her own eyes, she might not have realized a building had even stood there at all. The carefully planned gardens were now just part of the same scrubland that covered the rest of the mountain’s lower slopes. Looking further towards the foothills, there was absolutely no sign that a road or mortal village had ever existed in this area. The pit of dread that had been growing in Laurel’s stomach threatened to spill over into panic. The compound had been abandoned for decades, if not longer. Absences of that length weren’t without precedence, but the elders running her sect would never have allowed such a thing with no explanation. Her friends should have scoured this sect after she disappeared. All the revelations of the last hour crashed into her at once. She felt very, very alone.

The situation was overwhelming, but Laurel had been trained by the world’s best grandmasters and faced down crises on her own for decades. Reacting to a high-risk situation in hostile territory was second-nature at this point. She made a loop of the compound at a jog, noting anything that might be useful for discovering what had happened here. Precious little stuck out. The absence of anything useful was itself the only interesting aspect of the area. No spirit beasts had made their lair in the area, mana flows hadn’t built up any natural treasures. Nothing made sense and the rising frustration was making her sloppy. It was time to take a break.

She trudged back up to the pile of rocks that had been the sect house and leapt onto the top. The Tranquil Mountain compound had been built in a different tradition than her own. Instead of a central sect house with supporting buildings surrounding it like a web, the main building here had been the highest up the mountain, so anyone looking out could see the entire sect arrayed below.

Sitting atop the ruins, she settled into a cultivation posture. Eyes closed, back straight, legs crossed, hands loosely placed over knees. Laurel had always been rather orthodox in her cultivation methods. Settling into a slow breathing rhythm, she eased her mind into that state of simultaneous inward focus and wider awareness. The pathways in her own body were a complicated tapestry, refined over decades. Her mana speed was still sluggish from her imprisonment, but she gently encouraged the languidly flowing trickles of mana to speed back up into her usual carefully-controlled torrents. When she felt ready, she reached out with her mind to the ambient mana of the world.

Her meditation shattered as she staggered to her feet. Stumbling around she took deep gasping breaths, trying to restore her equilibrium without being sick.

The worst day of her life was apparently not done with surprises. The mana of the world was so thin, calling to it had been like trying to breathe through a stuffed reed. It was impossible. She had never even heard of such a thing! Of course, mana flows were fastest closer to large population centers. But even the most remote wilderness should have something. Laurel had trekked through mana deserts before, areas of the world that felt devoid of that all-encompassing energy. This was worse. And it didn’t make any sense. The Tranquil Mountain had chosen this location to specifically take advantage of the strong mana currents running through the mountains. They had deemed it worth the cost to establish a village from scratch in order to anchor those flows and leverage them to strengthen their sect. As far as Laurel was aware, such things could not change, at least not on time scales that humans had recorded. Maybe the same length of time that saw a mountain range ground to pebbles would see the mana currents of a region shift, but civilization had not yet recorded the process. Had the world ended while she was locked away underground?

Shaking off the melodrama, Laurel tried to think through what could cause such a thing. Her mind came up blank. She began pacing around her small ledge. A calamity that changed mana currents would account for why the region had been abandoned, and why she awakened alone. But nothing in her realm of experience could cause such a calamity. Grudging respect for whomever had sealed her in the caves below started to rise in her mind. The scripts must have been remarkably efficient to operate in such low ambient mana, but nothing lasts forever without maintenance.

She was stalling. Trying to cultivate again had about the same appeal as going back into her prison cell below, but it would have to be done. If nothing else, she needed to find the best direction to go in search of people. And some explanations.

Settling back in, she braced her spirit before letting her senses expand. Instead of connecting her own mana to that of the world, she simply observed. Slowly, the picture of mana in the region was revealed to her. It was like a portrait that had been bleached by sunlight for decades. If she looked very closely, she could make out the features she expected. Wide currents moved through the area at a snail's pace. Some small eddies were present around plants or animals that might one day develop cores. But it was looking at a dry riverbed and trying to infer an ocean. Attempting to sense the cosmic flows beyond this world only resulted in a splitting headache. She took a final note of the directions mana was flowing fastest before easing out of her meditation, gently this time.

The sun had set by the time Laurel opened her eyes, and the moonlight bleached the landscape until everything appeared dead and withered. The mana flows gave her a direction, and it was time to find out what had happened to the world, and if any vestiges of humanity remained.

But first, she concentrated on the rock she was standing on and sent it into her spatial tattoo. Jumping to the next block she repeated the process until the hill was gone. She proceeded to loot the sect compound as thoroughly as she could without examining each artifact. A few stones still had some visible script or a trace of mana. Most of it was trash but it would be easy enough to get rid of later. Even if the cultivators that had imprisoned her were dead and gone, she was not above some petty revenge. Besides, her sect prized knowledge and clearly some of the masters here had been more talented than anyone realized, if they had kept her in stasis through the end of the world.