On Cosmic Tides

Laurel was ready to go into the valley before the rest of her team was awake the next morning. The ambient mana was so heavy it smothered the range of her spiritual senses and it was making her antsy. She stalked the campsite in the pre-dawn light until Colin, on last watch, begged her to stop. Instead she sat by the remains of their campfire and listened to the rustling of small mammals and early birdsong. A few of the floating stones of the old city had crashed to earth near their campsite. Laurel sidled up to one with a chisel and flaked off a few pieces. Once there was a handful of stone dust and chips accumulated, she tossed the whole thing into the air.

The flakes drifted down, some being carried further away on a stray breeze. She repeated the process twice more. On the fourth attempt, she jumped to the top of the rock and dropped the stone chips from there. As much as she tried, none of them ever floated, or even fell slower than normal. The valley was still a mana well, anchoring the influx of cosmic mana to the world, but they would not be seeing the return of the floating city. It was a melancholy thought. Her new novices would never know this place, its legacy only in the memories of the few still alive that had visited. With effort she shook off the gloom. There would be other wonders, new ones, that her sect members would get to explore. In another decade Leander and Rebecca would be coming home with stories every bit as exciting as her tales from Caer’Listar. When the others woke up and finished their morning routine, it was time to head out.

They trekked into the valley in the same groups as the day before. For the first hour or so they called out playfully across the river as they went. A few spirit beasts or normal animals were startled out of hiding, but they didn’t find anything worth harvesting. Laurel had taken a moment to explain to everyone that the mana concentration differential meant both the more useful items and more dangerous animals would be further along. Leander had a frown pasted on after realizing they might spend the night out and he was expected to cart around his pack, which would only get heavier as they found what they were after.

Further in, the river was widened and forced the two groups apart. They would need to shout to be heard by the others. Another couple of hours in and their team decided to stop for lunch.

“I expect we’ll start running into things that pose a threat soon. Keep an eye out. Leander, do your best to spread your senses around as well.” Laurel said.

Leander looked up from where he was picking feathers and hair out of his clothes. Not many spirit beasts had decided to test their group, but Laurel felt those that did were good training for the boy. He gave her a distracted thumbs up as he continued to alternate cleaning himself and wolfing down his sandwich.

They picked back up and continued. The further they got into the valley the more Laurel was sure there was some sort of stone locus up ahead. A natural treasure with a stone affinity would be fantastic for defense. For the Core or any of her sect members. With enough time and mana, certain buildings in the city would be practically indestructible. Cautious but optimistic, they continued, with a more and more accurate pinpoint of where they were headed.

One of the largest groupings of shattered stones they had yet seen was waiting for them. This one was big enough that ruins of a small palace were crumbling on top. The long years meant moss and grass had creeped up the sides, until it resembled a natural hill.

“We’re going in?” Maria said.

“We are,” Laurel confirmed. She then leapt onto the top and turned to watch the others scramble up.

Pillars of stone had once held up some of the soaring architecture the city was known for. Now they were obstacles the troop worked their way past as they explored the ruins. They found the remains of a staircase, spiraling down into the stone. Probably storage when the city was a floating paradise, now it was the perfect place for an earth-based natural treasure to form. A cellar, now merged with the earth itself, surrounded by more stone above, and steeped in mana.

Before they went down Laurel motioned them all closer to whisper without being overheard. “There’s something in there. The distortion of the treasure makes it hard to tell exactly what, and but enough mana for it to be something with some kick. Stronger than Leander, but not by too much.”

The soldiers pulled out handguns and Leander grabbed his now well-used dagger. Laurel pulled out a blade of her own. More subtly, she began pulling the air around her into a rough shield. It was a technique she had used for ages. After being shot in the backwoods of Laskar, she had spent some time working on it to be able to deflect bullets instead of mana-infused projectiles or arrows from other cultivators. It wouldn’t be enough to completely stop bullets or shards of rock being shot out at her, but it should deflect small projectiles slightly off course, making her that much harder to hit. Holding the technique with her mind and a short sword with her right hand, Laurel stepped down the stairs. She turned the corner just in time to see a nondescript man rip what looked like a small marble carving off of the floor.

“You fucking idiot!” Laurel shouted. She was already launching herself across the room. The man’s mana stirred but Laurel had correctly pegged him as only slightly stronger than Leander. She was next to him before he could react. At the last moment she stored the sword and simply tackled the man to the ground. He had no mental shields in place so she reached out with her own mana and applied pressure until he fell unconscious.

Ignoring the now limp body, she dove for the Miner’s Fortune where it had rolled into a corner. It had the appearance of white marble streaked through with veins of gold and absolutely gushing power. Her mana senses ran through the internal structure. There was no saving it. Definitely still useful as a cultivation aid but the potency had been destroyed.

The others had rushed into the room after her shout and were looking at the scene wide-eyed.

“He ruined it.” She then turned a gimlet eye on Leander, making the boy take an involuntary step back. “We’ll start working on mental shielding. You shouldn’t be that easy to put to sleep.”

Maria stepped between them and bent to examine the body. “Well he still has a pulse. Can you wake him up so we can see if he has any friends?”

“Yes. These will be enough to hold him.” She produced a pair of manacles engraved in silver.

Colin hurried over and clamped the suppression bands around the man’s wrist. When he was effectively locked down Laurel prodded the man’s mana to speed until he jolted awake. His head whipped around, first towards the door, blocked by Maria, then to Colin holding a handgun and ready to use it. Then Laurel stepped into view.

“Who are you? Why are you here? Who taught you?” Laurel’s questions came rapid-fire.

The man answered in sneering Laskarian, answering at least some of her questions. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Who is here with you, you aren’t strong enough to be here alone.”

“Why don’t you go out and find him? Get this done sooner when he crushes you.”

Leander prodded Laurel and shrugged. She looked around and realized from expressions only Maria spoke the language of the expansionist empire.

“He’s here with someone strong.” The captain realized what she hadn’t said. “Go, we’ll drag this guy outside and start going back to camp.”

She sprinted back up the stairs and launched herself into the air. A strong cultivator she couldn’t sense meant he was on the other side of the river and holding a respectable veil. That kind of competence in an enemy was not something the others could handle. Her mana senses keyed in to Rebecca’s locator stone and she flew across the valley. Borin’s face flashed into her mind. She still thought of the boy regularly, but now all she could feel was the same horror that had gripped her that day. Her students were in trouble and she wasn’t there.

*******

Rebecca examined the strangers who had appeared out of nowhere. She’d learned the hard way how to take someone in at a glance. The leader was standing on a pillar of stone that had burst out of the earth when they had arrived. An orange robe in the style Laurel sometimes wore was the only notable thing about him. Otherwise he was average height, brown hair, dull eyes, nothing to pick him out of a crowd. The men behind him all wore the same kind of clothes she was in. Hardy, and good for traveling. He looked down at them while his thugs fanned out behind him with a collection of cruel smiles. She knew a bully when she saw one.

“....” He said something in a language Rebecca didn’t recognize. She tried to glance at Trip and the others as subtly as she could, and saw either confusion or grim frowns on the officer’s faces. The man realized they weren’t responding and impatiently gestured to one of his cronies.

“Master Corvin says some of you have great potential. Any cultivators among you will be shown profound mercy, being offered the opportunity to return to Laskar with us to further your training. The rest of you will be eliminated.”

“Yeah,” Major Kat drawled, “You can tell your master to shove it.”

The woman who had spoken looked at the leader askance, asking for assistance. Bullies liked to blame the messenger, she was probably afraid to translate what Major Kat had said. Eventually she muttered something and the leader frowned and said something back.

“Very well. None of you will be any great loss.”

Palm raised, his smile turned cruel. Just in time for a black blur to slam into him from the side. The man went flying towards the edge of the valley. Everyone in both groups was now staring at Laurel where she hovered above the pillar. Everyone, except Major Kat. A shot thundered out and the spokeswoman for the Laskarians slumped to the ground.

A scramble began as everyone started flinging attacks. Rebecca had been given a staff to protect herself. Luckily only two of the other group had guns. The rest pulled out an assortment of old-fashioned weapons like what Laurel and Martin preferred, with a few swords, a mace, and something else she didn’t recognize. The soldiers were keeping the enemies at bay. Major Kat had dropped at least one more.

Rebecca eased a bit further from the fight. Martin had given her some training with the staff but she was no expert. Despite growing up in the Flats, she’d never even been in a fight. That didn’t matter to the man who approached her. He was smaller than average, only a bit bigger than her, and carried a knife in each hand.

Her feet set, she recited Martin’s advice in her mind to keep from crying. Keep the distance, hit the soft bits. It was working until the man’s knives caught on fire. Tears dripped down the corners of her eyes but she stayed focused on the man. She could do this. Cultivators had to fight sometimes.

********

Laurel dashed through the air towards the earth cultivator she had flung towards a mountain. Not her best decision but there wasn’t time to stop her momentum and anything except physically moving him had a chance of letting his technique land on her team. They should be able to handle the lackeys, but a technique from a master cultivator would have left nothing but paste.

Dust rose from the impact site, and Laurel pulled together another shield technique. Wind whipped around her at high speeds. Her will infused the ambient mana around her as she waited for the enemy cultivator to strike. It didn’t take long. A rock the size of a carriage shot towards her. It would have been easy to dodge, but she didn’t want to let it go closer to the other fight. Lightning built between her hands. She held the wild energy back and poured more and more mana into it. When the boulder got close enough she released the condensed plasma. The stone exploded into a million smaller fragments.

The man that appeared behind the stone was dressed in a burnt orange robe. She could make out an insignia on the breast but not enough to identify a sect. This man was like her, and Martin. There was no other way he would be this powerful before the world’s mana fully returned to equilibrium. Her first instinct was to attack the man with prejudice. He had been about to smite some of her own students, after all. She pushed that instinct down. If there was a chance for some allies she should take it, that’s what her old sectmaster would have done.

“What are you doing here?” She took a chance and spoke in Alrasian. If he was as old as she thought, he probably knew at least a bit.

“I’m Corvin Arash, formerly of the Burning Sands sect. And with that much lightning you are either Stasia Alambra, the White Spider, or the Stormblade. I thought I was here simply visiting an area that used to have resources for earth cultivators. Now I find instead I have an unparalleled recruiting opportunity.”

Behind the faked affability, Laurel didn’t miss that he was still infusing mana into the rocks around him. Just as she was sure he could tell she hadn’t dropped her shield and was pulling more and more air under her control.

“Laurel Stormblade. And what exactly are you recruiting for? I have my own sect and I’m not looking to jump ship.”

“Adorable. A sect full of children you’ve cobbled together isn’t something to be causing a fuss over. Your chamber must have broken early if no one was there to explain, but we were saved for a reason. You’ll need to come with us to meet Lawrence.”

“You’re actually working with the people who did this?” Laurel gestured around at the world at large, still hovering in the air. Her agitation caused wind to whip the ends of her hair around in a crazed halo. “You are a master-level cultivator. If you found out who did this you should have put them in the ground, or left to find more help if that was beyond you.” The last line she spat at the coward in front of her.

Corvin snorted and brushed some dirt off his robe. “I guess I can’t be too surprised.I knew the Eternal Archive were childish idealists, but I’ll give you one more chance to be practical. There’s no point seeking revenge for people that have been dead for a thousand years.”

Instead of answering, a lightning bolt as thick as a person streaked down towards Corvin. She had no patience to argue with traitors. It slammed into a dome of earth. The barrier was destroyed but enough energy had been redirected that Corvin emerged with a burned arm and no other injuries.

Dropping the banter, a hail of sharpened spikes arced towards Laurel. She dodged and they followed behind like a pack of starlings. Whipping the wind into a frenzy, she directed a gust into the flock, breaking Corvin’s technique and blasting the shards back down to the ground.

Air forged into thin blades swiped down at the enemy master. A flurry of different angles and timings made it impossible to dodge them all. Each left deep divots in the earth, throwing up clouds of soil. A few managed to land on the man, but did little damage with all the stone the man was throwing around. Earth cultivators were fucking hard to kill. She had a brief moment to regret not absorbing the Tension Vesicle but she couldn’t pause the fight for a few days to do it now.

More exchanges. Laurel would rain destruction from above while Corvin defended and sent rocks of various sizes and shapes into the air at Laurel. There, her air attunement meant they were easily dealt with. They were at a stalemate and Laurel was getting concerned for the others. Her students weren’t combat-trained yet and most of the soldiers didn’t have enough cultivation to make a difference in the fight. If there was any luck on their side, Corvin would be traditional enough that his lackeys weren’t carrying guns.

Laurel was too strong in the air for Corvin to do real damage. He was stronger on the earth and she was loath to get close and lose her advantage. But to break the stalemate it was going to be necessary. A sword appeared in her hands. Deceptively simple in appearance, a straight double-edged blade tapering to a point, with an unadorned crossguard and leather-wrapped hilt. It was the best blade she owned. A king's ransom had traded hands when she found a smith able to create a blade to her specifications. Sharp enough to cut through any monster hide, strong enough to smash through rocks. It was one of her prized possessions, though she hadn’t needed it since waking up.

A conjured tailwind increased her speed as she hurtled towards Corvin, blade-first. Lightning crackled in the air and down the blade as she blasted through stone barriers. Getting so close meant dodging the projectiles he was still flinging was impossible. Many were pushed away by her shield or missed her entirely, but others hit true. One bit deeply into the side of her torso before pushing out through her back. Others gouged gashes along her arms and legs.

Laurel ignored the blood and pain. Lunging forward, she scored a hit on Corvin’s shoulder, opening a wound immediately cauterized by lightning transferred from her blade. The man used the earth to carry him a few feet away while the muscles in his arm spasmed. Closing again, Laurel’s swing was intercepted by a stone staff he had produced from a spatial ring. She didn’t let the distance between them open back up. A rapid fire series of blows were traded, stone parrying metal.

Another hit, this time through his ribs. A mortal would have died quickly and a weaker cultivator would have given up. The master in front of her grunted and kept going, answering with a blow to her own ribs she could feel cracked at least two of them. Through the melee she had to divert half her attention to exert control on the ambient mana to keep him from entombing her in an avalanche of earth.

“Give up, I’m a bad match for you and we both know it.” Crimson blood sprayed from his mouth as Corvin taunted her. “You know why they kept you around right? It’s because you were a good little follower, doing what you were told by your elders and never pushing. Time to stop playing at sectmaster when you obviously aren’t suited for it and fall in line.”

Laurel funneled all her rage and all her willpower into her blade. The lightning no longer looked like blue-white veins running up and down the metal, but a glowing sheath around the blade. One thought burned through her mind, she was the sectmaster of the Eternal Archive. And this fool was nothing. Swings that had slowed slightly, from the blood loss and fatigue sped back up. With a crack that could be heard throughout the valley her sword met Corvin’s staff and the stone shattered. The opening was just enough for the backswing to rip through his neck. No blood fountained out of the severed stump. His head fell to the ground with a dull thud. The look of surprise would be memorialized on his face until the local beasts tore his mana-rich flesh to pieces.

With the dregs of her focus, Laurel had the presence of mind to grab his spatial ring and anything else she could feel mana in and shove it into her pockets before staggering back towards the others. She was so drained of power she didn’t want to spare any for storing things in her tattoo. Flying was definitely out. Sounds of battle had ceased and she limped forward in silence. Her mana senses were too sensitive to scan the area after that fight so she simply hoped her friends and students had survived. Anyone still standing from Corvin’s team could share his fate for all she cared.

*******

Leander watched Laurel come back into view. Not flying or using some cool cultivator gadget but trudging through the mud of their battlefield. A dull sword in one hand was supporting her like a cane. When she was closer he realized she was absolutely covered in a thick coating of blood and dirt, turned into a kind of thick sludge. He gagged and barely kept from vomiting as the scent of the whole area hit him at once. Blood and gunpowder mixed with the aftereffects of magic. Bent over he tried to breathe through his mouth while Laurel reached where their side was resting with two prisoners.

He and Captain Varska had managed to get the original guy to follow them after Laurel sped off. Or Captain Varska had, with a well-placed blow to the head and tossing him over her shoulders. When they joined their friends it was enough to tip the battle and they had captured another of the bad guys to keep for questioning. The rest of the bodies were piled off to the side. Rebecca kept glancing over at them and making weird faces but Laurel had warned them they would have to fight eventually. And they hadn’t started this one. Cultivators were strong enough to protect each other.

“Need. Rinse. Meditate. Food.” A few disjointed words and Laurel was swaying alarmingly.

Varska caught her under the shoulder that looked the least injured. “Yeah, that smells about right. Let’s rinse you off in the river then you can sit around until it's safe to move. Laurel gave a jerky nod and they went off towards the river, Varska half dragging Laurel.

“Everyone else, we’ll get these two a-ways upriver and make a temporary camp. Reina, you start heading back to the main camp doubletime and talk to the rest. I want to warn them to be on the lookout, though if they aren’t already after that noise they might need a refresher course on basic training when we get back. Let them know we’re okay.” Major Kat was using her no-nonsense voice that had everyone jumping to obey.

A smart salute and Reina ran off, while the rest of them followed orders and stripped the bodies of valuables or dragged the unconscious cultivators towards the river.