by Dante King
Hazel grit her teeth. “I am not a cow!”
Eliezer laughed harshly. “Obviously! Even the cow is smart enough to realize what it gains by giving the farmer milk—”
He stepped to the side as Hazel did the unthinkable. Provoked in her rage by Eliezer’s taunts, the warrior squared up and took a fucking swing at the Peak Supreme God. From the look on Eliezer’s face, he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to annihilate her for her disrespect or praise her for her sheer balls.
“That was unwise,” Eliezer said, turning away. “Whatever. You are not worth my time. I’ll let Eric deal with you.”
Eliezer left Hazel fuming and turned to me. The Peak Supreme God’s face lit up, the aura surrounding him burning like a bonfire as he revealed the barest fraction of his power to all and sundry. I had to throw a hand up to shield my eyes as waves of color surrounded the cultivator, shredding the fabric of reality as he delivered his final missive.
“You have infinite power at your fingertips!” Eliezer roared, his voice distorting and seeming to come from everywhere at once. “All you need is to cast aside your inhibitions and grab hold of the potential! Infinite potential! Infinite power!”
I could barely hold on. It felt like standing on the surface of the sun.
“IT IS YOURS, ERIC! YOURS!”
The wash of colors faded away, and the Peak Supreme God was gone as quickly as he came. For long moments, we all stood in the garden, as silent and immovable as statues, while reality reconstituted itself. After images of the man’s silhouette remained in my vision, as if I’d been staring directly at the sun for too long.
Lyra recovered first. “So that’s the guy you told me so much about,” she said, woozily making her way to the table. “I was expecting him to be a little less… you know…”
“Crazy?” Anna picked up Lyra’s robe and threw it over her body, shielding her nudity from prying eyes. I had to hand it to her—that wouldn’t have been the first thing I thought of after a shock like that.
“Don’t call him that!” To everyone’s shock, it was Hazel who stood up for Eliezer. The person who’d tried to punch him only moments ago. “He is the Peak Supreme God! You must not speak of him this way.”
Anna and Lyra stared at Hazel as if she’d grown a second head. “You tried to take a swing at him a few minutes ago,” Lyra said, wrapping her robe around her curvy frame. The corner of the redhead’s mouth curled upward in a smirk, as if even her storied patience had finally given out where Hazel was concerned. “Besides, you’re not a cultivator anymore, so what do you care? Unless your conversation with Eliezer is what’s convinced you to finally take Eric up on his offer?”
Hazel froze in place. At the same time, every other pair of eyes in the garden went right to her as her cheeks colored deeply with shame. They think she’s an idiot, I realized, the knowledge startling me. That she’s a fool for not having sex with me.
It made a certain kind of sense. Each of these cultivators admired me greatly, and they admired the magic of cultivation almost as much. Like me, they wanted to get stronger as quickly as they possibly could. Which meant that holding back from that power, the way Hazel had been doing, was as foreign to them as walking on your hands everywhere you went.
To top it off, I was pretty sure more than a few of the female students would have thrown themselves into my bed even without the promise of gaining cultivation power. I’d been far too busy of late to even entertain the notion that there were potential harem girls under the same roof with me, but now I realized Soojin’s little jibes obviously masked her desire to join Lyra and Anna in the bedroom. Gods, the girl was barely old enough to drink…
Hazel couldn’t take the stares any longer. She left the garden in a huff, slamming the sliding door as hard as she could behind her.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Lyra said into the silence. “But this is a good thing.”
“Good?” I cocked an eyebrow. “How could it possibly be good?”
Lyra turned her gaze on me. “She’s close,” the redhead told me. “Very close. She clearly wants this, Eric —but at the same time, she feels like it’s shameful. That little remark of hers was very telling: it’s cheating.”
I stared at the door where Hazel had just gone, frowning. “You think after that, she’s going to come back to me?”
“I think she’s closer than you know,” Lyra said. To my surprise, Anna nodded along. Maybe they were right. Maybe Hazel was going to join us tonight, or the next night.
Either way, she needed to get along with it. Eliezer the Peak Supreme God had just given me a deadline, and I didn’t intend to miss it. Whatever ‘significant strides’ we needed to be making in order to satisfy his whims, I planned to exceed them.
When the sliding door opened a few moments later, I thought it was Hazel come to apologize. To my surprise, Kij stood in the doorway, her pretty young face lined with worry. One look at her and Lyra gave a start, then rushed over in her half-tied robe, clearly seeing something serious was the matter.
“What’s going on?” I asked Kij. After everything that’s happened, this is just what we need. Another crisis.
The girl had a very uncharacteristic stammer as she spoke. “The… the Governor! The Governor has come to the town—he’s at the Hungry Herb Tavern! And he wants to speak with you, Mistress,” she added, bowing before Lyra. “And Eric…”
Lyra’s face hardened. “We should have known this was coming,” she said, turning back to me. “It’s about the group, Eric. The Guild.”
Damn it! It made too much sense. To Governor Shingu, it didn’t matter whether my group of cultivators called themselves a gang or a social circle or whatever else—we were an unlicensed guild practicing in one of the towns under his control. Of course he’d come to snuff it out.
“He’s probably been spying on us since the Silent Auction,” I said, my hands balling into fists at my side. “Ever since we got on Guildmaster Ji’s bad side. They’ve been waiting for a moment to strike…”
Lyra’s nod was grave. “Everyone besides you, me, and Anna should get out of here,” the proprietress pronounced, gesturing at the wall surrounding the garden. “If you scatter to the four winds, the Governor and his men won’t be able to find you. Meanwhile, Eric and I will smooth-talk the man and try to delay him as much as possible. Shingu is a man who stands on ceremony—I should be able to keep him busy with tea and gossip long enough for everyone else to get clear—”
“No,” I said, in a voice that surprised even me.
As every eye in the garden turned to me, I realized something important. The Governor’s arrival and Eliezer’s visit weren’t random occurrences. They’d happened on the same day for a reason.
The Peak Supreme God was trying to tell me something. I needed to start making my way up in the world.
And he’d just given me the opportunity I was looking for.
“Kij,” I said, bypassing Lyra completely. “Tell the girls to send the Governor and whatever entourage he has right into the garden. Bring a couple tables with them, too.”
Lyra’s eyebrows shot to her hairline. “Eric! They’ll see what we’ve been doing!”
I laughed. “Exactly. Tell them I’d love to speak to the Governor myself. Man to man. Eliezer told me we needed to make progress before I see him again, girls. This is how we take the first step.”
Kij glanced at Lyra, as if waiting for the woman to contradict my order. She shrugged and ducked behind the sliding door, closing it behind her.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Lyra said, still looking shocked.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” I told her. “Be ready. I might need you to turn into a spear on very short notice. The rest of you—get comfy. We’re about to have a meeting.”
In front of everyone, I took a seat and waited for the Governor.
Chapter 3
Almost as soon as I seated myself, the sliding door opened to admit a liveried servant. This man’s purpose
appeared to be solely for ornamentation. He cupped a hand around his mouth and proclaimed in a loud voice, “Make way for Governor Shingu!” The man disappeared as quickly as he came.
No one bowed or knelt on the floor. Anna, Lyra and I remained sitting at our little table, the cultivators behind us returned to their sparring sessions as the door opened wider to admit Governor Shingu and his entourage. I recognized the rotund, officious form of the man as his silhouette filled the doorway, but the two figures flanking him as he entered were unknown to me. One looked to be around the Governor’s own age, though much more solidly built, while the second was at least a few years younger than me—barely older than Soojin, who was sparring with her partner only moments before.
The servant from earlier scooted into the room carrying a table. He hustled along two of Lyra’s barmaids, one of whom held the other side of the table and the other who carried a high-backed chair. They set each down across from where I sat and bade the Governor recline himself. Apparently his friends will stand, I thought wryly.
Shingu lowered himself into the chair, leering at the barmaid’s behind all the while. Once she and the other servants retreated, the man’s gaze lingered long on the cultivators in the garden before turning to me. “Eric Hyde,” the Governor said, his tone that of a school principal who’s had a student called into his office so many times that the two become almost friendly. “I’ve been hearing rumors about you since your arrival in my province, young man. I was willing to cut you some slack after the Silent Auction, but this is far too much to overlook.”
“What is?” I asked, the picture of innocence. I glanced at Anna and Lyra, as if looking for them for support. “This is merely a dojo, Governor. Certainly nothing to bother two cultivators about.” I gestured at Shingu’s entourage. “You haven’t introduced your friends, by the way.”
“That’s because we have nothing to say to you,” the younger of the two cultivators snapped. His elder heaved a pained sigh, and I realized this was far from the first time this hothead had gone flying off the handle. “You’re nothing but swine, Hyde!”
“There’s no need for that,” Governor Shingu said with a politician’s smile. “Eric, these men are two of the envoys sent to me by the Hollow Frog Guild. The older man is Master Prini, and his young pupil who spoke so impertinently to you a moment ago is named Seth.”
It was Prini to whom I directed my attention first. He was a big man, with a barrel chest and a full beard. His hair receded across his balding pate, yet from the way he styled it he seemed in no hurry to shave it completely off. Both the hair on his face and head lay shot through with more gray than black. One look at the man filled me with certainty that he’d done something else before becoming a cultivator: perhaps he’d had a career as a soldier or a wrestler. He reminded me of a varsity athlete back on Earth, past his glory days but still formidable.
His ‘pupil’, as Governor Shingu had referred to the blonde-headed young man who’d just spoken to me, was anything but. His face resembled that of a weasel, though he had the high cheekbones and fair skin tone that spoke of nobility in this world. A bastard from a noble bloodline, perhaps. He thinks a lot of himself, I thought, meeting his gaze. Far more so than his mentor—although his mentor looks like the one who might have done things worth caring about.
“We are honored by your presence,” Lyra said with a deep bow. The proprietress of the Hungry Herb Tavern seemed convinced that she could still talk our way out of this one, if only she could utilize all of her decorum skills. “May we bring you some tea, Governor? Or perhaps you and your cultivators would like to rest after a long journey?”
“None of that will be necessary,” Governor Shingu said with a harrumph. “This visit was not for pleasure, but for business. My illustrious friends requested to accompany me on this visit as we’d all heard rumors surrounding an ‘unlicensed guild’ practicing out of your town, Lyra. A guild with the very odd nickname of ‘Clan Hyde’. Now, I see those rumors were not unfounded.”
Next to the Governor, both of the Guild Representatives nodded. “This gathering is an affront to the laws of cultivation,” the older one—Prini—said. The man had a deep, gruff voice, adding to my no-nonsense appraisal of him. “Those who have participated will be removed, and banned from any nearby guilds.”
“And those who led will be thrown in prison!” The young man Seth added. Unlike his mentor, he took a personal glee and interest in causing as much hurt to me and my people as possible. He reminded me of Gentry, Governor Shingu’s son. The youth had harassed Hazel until she’d snapped and beaten him in a public street, and it looked like this young man was walking down the same path. “Meaning you, Eric Hyde! That is, if we let you see the inside of a cell!”
Hearing words like that from a pipsqueak like Seth made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. “I’d love to see you try,” I growled, staring the youth down.
The blonde-haired boy stepped forward—only to be held back by Prini. “Enough,” the gruff cultivator said, stroking his long beard with his free hand. “Gloating is not the way of the cultivator, Seth. We’ll take Eric and the other leaders and bring them before Guildmaster Ji.”
“Oh, so gloating is beneath cultivators?” I was really getting steamed now. Lyra reached out in a last-ditch effort to stop me, but I shrugged off her touch. I’d need that anger to do what I needed to do in a few minutes. “What about murder, prostitution and slavery? Are those things beneath cultivators, or just the ones who aren’t members of the Hollow Frog Guild!?”
The words detonated in the room like an atomic bomb. Governor Shingu flushed beet red beneath his robes, as if he’d never been so embarrassed in public before.
“Slander!” The Governor’s jowls shook with the force of his denial. “The Hollow Frog Guild is an honorable group of cultivators! Guildmaster Ji handles his affairs with dignity and grace, which is more than I can say for a man who collects women the way children collect playing cards…”
I couldn’t help myself—I laughed. How dare he think he could use my harem to shame me? They were the greatest thing that had ever happened to me, and I’d be damned if I’d let anyone make me feel bad for sharing my bed with some of the most beautiful women I’d ever met.
“Guildmaster Ji was at the Silent Auction,” I said, speaking the truth into the room. “The whole damn Hollow Frog Guild was running the Auction! They’ve profited off the slave trade for years. If anyone deserves to be thrown in jail, it’s not me—it’s them. Starting with Guildmaster Ji!”
Governor Shingu glowered, and Seth looked like he wanted to leap across the table and take a knife to my face. Only Prini managed to keep his temper amidst the fray, drawing on the deep reserves of patience he must have cultivated with a pupil like the stuck-up pretty boy at his side. “You have some interesting ideas, Eric Hyde. I’m hearing a lot of crackpot theories from you and your friends… but no evidence. Do you have any proof that my Guild was at the Silent Auction?”
I hadn’t thought to hold onto any. Had I been blessed with the forethought, I could have snatched uniforms or medallions from the cultivators as tokens of the battle. Lacking those, the only option available was to shrug.
“I know what I saw,” I shot back, fully aware of how feeble it sounded.
Prini shrugged. “That’s as good as admitting you have none,” the big man said. “Very well. Governor, we’ll want to take Eric Hyde away, as well as his two women, Anna and Lyra. Guildmaster Ji wants them for himself. The rest can be subject to whatever punishment you deem fit.”
Suddenly I was no longer alone. A dozen cultivators crowded around me—everyone who’d been practicing their sparring only a few moments before. I caught a glimpse of Soojin, a wicked grin stretching across her face as she stared down a shocked Seth. At my other hand, Lyra and Anna waited, ready to transform into weapons at the drop of a hat.
“We’re not letting you take Eric,” Anna said, realizing how much support we had. “And you’re a fool if you
think there’s a soul inside the Hungry Herb Tavern who wouldn’t spill blood to protect Lyra Bramble.”
Anna was right. The group surrounding me constituted a small army. Prini and Seth had come to arrest me and break up my group’s gatherings—but they clearly hadn’t reckoned on how large my gang of makeshift cultivators had become. I had no doubt Prini and Seth were both powerful in their own right, but inside Lyra’s garden their duo lay outnumbered by more than five to one. That was a tough climb for any man, much less one who clearly detested his pupil.
The atmosphere in the room shifted. As my group gathered around me, I swore I could hear Eliezer’s voice on the wind. This is my moment, I thought, reaching for my cultivation. To start making the kind of big moves that will please the Peak Supreme God.
“Enough!” I roared, thrusting an arm out toward the Governor. Both Seth and Prini stiffened, anticipating an attack, but what happened wasn’t the offensive spell they might have anticipated. Instead, words flashed in the air:
Eric Casts Blossom!
Twisted, leafy vines erupted from the boards beneath Governor Shingu’s feet. In the blink of an eye they’d worked their way up to his waist, binding his legs in thick cords. The Governor cried out, his bulbous face contorting in shock as the vines lifted him bodily from the ground and slammed him into a nearby chair. He hit with such force that one leg cracked, tilting the whole thing against the table Lyra’s barmaids had brought so the men could enjoy refreshments.
By the time the two cultivators at his side had time to absorb what was happening, the Governor was completely bound in thick veins of plant matter. Only his face remained free, and he immediately began using it.
“Kill them all!” Governor Shingu howled, sounding like a frightened animal. “Free me! Now! What are you waiting for!”
What was Prini waiting for? The man seemed to be in no hurry. His gaze slowly traveled from the prone form of the governor to the knot of cultivators surrounding me. Surely he could feel the energy crackling through the room as my pupils prepared to defend me with their lives. Was that enough to give him second thoughts about striking?
