What? Where?
“To the southeast. They looped around behind you, I believe,” Locke said.
I want to try something different this time.
“Let me guess, you’re going to do something fairly idiotic and heroic. Possibly getting us killed long before we’ve achieved our goal,” Locke grumbled.
You still haven’t told me what our goal is.
And I find my trust in you is slipping.
“Dokkalfar. Southeast,” Ash said, pulling at his reins and moving away from the column. “Chunhua, with me. Mei, please take my place at the lead and have them hold up not too far away.”
Both women responded, Chunhua riding over to Ash’s side and Mei moving to the head of the group.
I want you to show me where I need to fire my arrow to hit my target, given how much I’m pulling on the bowstring.
“As you like. That’s not very hard,” Locke offered. “Done. Merely draw an arrow and you’ll receive the proper positioning. It’ll turn green when correct.”
Ash felt odd that it was almost too easy for him to kill others at times, but in this moment, he was glad for it.
Drawing out his Qi, he created a heavy bow and then an arrow.
Looking in the direction he was expecting them, Ash wondered where they were.
A series of bright red circles flashed across his view. They were grouped in threes and there seemed to be approximately thirty of them.
They were hiding on the other side of a low rise, likely waiting for an opportunity to attack the rear of Ash’s group.
“There they are. Select, aim, shoot. They’re out of range, however,” Locke said. “Such a blessed life, Chosen One. To have to tell you very obvious things.”
Can I break my bow?
Ash was curious if there was a limit to how hard he could pull back.
“No. It’s Qi. It isn’t truly a physical thing.”
Great. I want to use Spring Step to draw to the maximum pull weight and then fire.
“That’s… fine but I can’t imagine you’ll be able to aim in time.”
That’s simple. Going to dip into my Dao for the single fraction of a second it takes to draw the string, aim, and fire.
Concerns?
The silence from Locke was curious. Ash assumed he was just calculating if it was possible and likely how much it would cost them to do it.
“None. You’ll be able to make around fifty shots if you do it correctly. That’ll leave you with less than a single percent of Qi, but it’s more than enough to get back to the base camp. Or you can take a pill, Chosen One,” Locke said.
Concentrating, Ash held up the bow and arrow. Sighting as best he could at targets he couldn’t actually see, he waited for several seconds.
He’d never used his Dao like this and he wasn’t sure how it’d go.
Taking in a slow breath, he held it at the halfway point.
Pushing into himself with his senses, Ash embraced the golden pillar that was his Dao. In the same instant, he activated Spring Step on his right arm.
Pulling back at what almost felt like a normal speed, his arm drew the arrow until the head almost passed his left hand. At the same time, a bright yellow X appeared in the air.
Pointing the tip of the arrow at that marker, Ash was surprised when it flashed green.
Letting go of the arrow, Spring Step, and his Dao simultaneously, Ash exhaled.
Snapping away through the air, the arrow flew with speed more akin to a rifle round. It was nearly too fast to see and it vanished out of view almost immediately.
The red circle furthest to the left turned black.
“Headshot,” Locke supplied.
Pulling another arrow from his Qi Sea, Ash lined it up, activated his Dao, Spring Step, and let loose again after finding the next X.
Not waiting for the reply from Locke, Ash drew another arrow. And another. And another.
Soon enough, he’d gone from left to right, firing an arrow at each and every red circle.
Letting out the breath he’d held for the entire duration, Ash absorbed the energy of his bow back into himself.
The red circles began to rapidly turn black one by one.
“Ahem. Uh… M-m-monster kill? To be fair, they were only Dokkalfar scouts,” Locke said. “Still. Well done. Adding their gains to our processing, and if you recover and absorb your arrows, we should be back up to about eighty-percent of our Qi Sea. Just a minor pill away from being right as rain.”
Ash picked up his reins and started moving forward.
“Ah… Ash… what’d you do?” Chunhua asked, keeping her mount next to him.
“I killed some Dokkalfar,” Ash answered. “Now we’re going to go look at them and make sure we take anything useful.”
“You killed them?” Chunhua asked. Her tone clearly indicated she didn’t quite believe him.
Nodding his head, Ash didn’t elaborate. The fact of the matter was, he needed to see what’d happened as well.
He only had Locke’s word and that didn’t carry much weight at all for him right now.
Cresting the hill, Ash found lizards running away with corpses still in their saddles. Sprawled about the ground were unmoving Dokkalfar scouts.
“It… seems you did kill Dokkalfar,” Chunhua murmured as they drew up on the closest body.
“Indeed,” Ash said, looking from corpse to corpse.
“Look. I know how you’re feeling. I can read your thoughts. I can’t even blame you for it,” Locke said. “But the simple reality is that if I told you everything, I can guarantee for a fact that you wouldn’t be able to handle it. It’s simply not in your nature.
“For now… for now, you’ll be a Fated One working to protect those he cares about and his veil, Chosen One.”
I don’t believe that. And there’s going to be a time real soon where I need to know more. Or I’m not going to help. At all. And you might as well just go find another Chosen One.
“I’ll… keep that in mind,” Locke murmured.
Coming over to one of the downed Dokkalfar, Ash found the arrow had literally pierced through their helmet. It had passed right through the eyehole and exited out the back of the helmet.
Which… pill do I take so I don’t have to retrieve the arrows?
“Ah… yes. Green Qi box, top left drawer.”
Pulling the corresponding pill out, Ash popped it into his mouth and turned his horse back around.
“Time to go. Another scouting party down,” Ash said.
“Ash! Quick! Turn around! Be ready!” Locke practically shouted at him.
Spinning his mount around quickly, Ash was just in time to see a black tear appear in the very air. It looked a lot like someone had torn a hole in a canvas.
“What is… going on?” Chunhua asked, staring at the hole.
A black shadow slid out of the tear and waddled over to the Dokkalfar corpse. Shifting from side to side, it looked almost like a warped and mutated possum.
Except without any color whatsoever.
“It’s a Wraith! We need to leave. This is neither the time nor place to engage a Wraith. Not at all. We should leave the overlap. Immediately!” Locke said, panic rising in his voice.
Snuffling as it got closer to the dead Dokkalfar, the shadowy Wraith didn’t stop until it was at the corpse.
“Chunhua, get ready to hit that thing with something,” Ash said. He didn’t feel confident that he could summon a bow and arrow and then fire it before the creature could act.
“What… is it?” she asked, holding her left hand up. A small ball of fire collected itself there.
“I have no idea,” Ash said honestly. Locke had called it a Wraith, but that might as well have been calling it a magenta faloody. The term had no meaning to him at all.
The head of the creature hovered over the helmet of the dead Dokkalfar and seemed to be inspecting the corpse.
Then the shadowed head split apart like it was on a hinge. Shifting to one side, it sn
apped the two halves of its head down onto the helmet of the Dokkalfar.
A disgusting, wet squelch and a spray of blood out one side of the creature’s head were followed by the sounds of crunching and tearing.
“It just… ate part of the Dokkalfar’s head and helmet,” Chunhua muttered.
“Kill it! Kill it before it goes back! We can’t let it return! KILL IT!” shrieked Locke.
“Kill it,” Ash murmured as the shadow moved, chomping down on what remained of the Dokkalfar’s head.
Chunhua held her hand out and the ball of fire shot forward.
Smashing into the Wraith, the whole thing went up in a ball of screaming fire. Running around in a weird lopsided circle, the Wraith stumbled over itself, over the Dokkalfar corpse, and then bounced off a rock.
It finally came to a stop not far away, twitching and burning.
The black acrid smoke wafting off of it burned Ash’s nostrils and it made him want to vomit.
“It reeks of putrid death,” Chunhua grumbled, waving a hand back and forth in front of her face. “It’s almost as if it—”
The sorceress stopped speaking, her eyes glued to the tear once more.
Ash followed her gaze and felt her shock as clearly as his own.
A number of small dark Wraiths were waddling, rolling, and bumping their way out of the tear. No two looked the same, but they were all heading straight for the dead Dokkalfar.
“Time to go,” Ash said, pulling on his reins and guiding the horses back the way they’d come.
“The portals can’t be predicted. You can’t tell where they’ll open. It’s almost random! Their world is fluid and without substance and that is only half the problem,” explained Locke. “We need to get out of here!”
Riding hard back to Mei, Ash was determined to head straight back to the base camp.
Reaching her side, he found Moira had rejoined them.
“Good timing, Ashley. Moira was just telling me that she found the ruins,” Mei said with some clear joy in her voice.
“It’s a shame then that we’re leaving the plains. Now. We’re getting out of the overlap,” Ash said. “We just saw a monster that bit through Dokkalfar armor.”
“It… it came out of a hole. A hole in reality,” said Chunhua. “Then more came out.”
“Yeah, and that. Time to go. We’re leaving and I don’t care what the Realm Lord’s master thinks of it,” Ash said.
“We can’t,” Locke said before Ash had even turned the head of his mount. “It’s too late. Portals are appearing all over to the south of us. They’re everywhere down that way.”
Can’t we just run past them? They’re rather small.
“Those are just the Feeder-Wraiths you saw,” Locke said. “The portals I can feel are much larger. More like Soldier-Wraiths. They’re strong enough to stop a charging horse in its tracks.
“It’s… it’s over. Again. The Wraiths are coming. Food has come back to this veil. We’re going to die here.”
What? Damnit, Locke! You should have told me more!
This is all your fault!
“Fine! It’s my fault, okay? It’s my fault. Let’s go to the ruins. We can probably defend ourselves there. They can’t open a portal on worked stone. Anything handled and shaped doesn’t let a portal form,” Locke said. “The ruins. Quickly now.”
We’re talking more about this later. I deeply dislike what you’ve done. Deeply.
“FINE! GO!” screamed Locke.
“Never mind,” Ash said, then he stood up in his stirrups and looked back at his people. “We’re going to the ruins! As fast as we can manage as a group!”
Sitting back down in his saddle, he looked at Moira.
“Lead us to the ruins. We’ll be right behind you, as best as we can. If you see dark… tears… guide us around them. Go,” Ash commanded.
Moira was listening intently to him. The moment he said go, she knelt down, then leapt upward, her wings propelling her rapidly up into the sky.
“Ashley, what’s going on?” Mei asked, pulling her horse around to be beside his.
“Bad things, Mei. Bad things,” Ash said, really not able to explain it right now. “But for the moment, we ride. We ride hard and fast. When I get a chance, I’ll tell you everything.”
Flicking the reins, Ash began chasing after Moira as she started heading towards the north.
***
“Don’t stop, keep going!” Ash commanded over the thrum and drum of hooves.
Up ahead, he could see the “ruins” that everyone had been discussing so far.
To him, it looked like something out of a history book. A medieval wall rose incredibly high. He could just see—deeper inside the ruins—what was likely a castle with an attached tower.
“Ride through the gate!” yelled Ash.
For the last five minutes, they’d been dodging humanoid-sized Wraiths. What Locke had likely called Soldier-Wraiths.
They had converged on Ash and his people from every direction, but even though they were relentless and didn’t seem to lack in stamina, they simply didn’t have the same speed as a horse.
“I’ll seal it when we’re through!” Mei shouted back.
“Her Qi would be ideal for it, if we had—”
“I’ll assist you!” Chunhua added.
“Exactly,” Locke agreed.
Getting ever closer to the ruins, the party kept on until they were zipping through the large stone gate. They raced through it for a handful of seconds, then exited to the other side into the ruins themselves.
Mei and Chunhua broke away from the front of the column and circled around to the back.
Ash kept leading everyone else, moving them deeper into the ruins. He knew his people would trail a bit behind getting through that tunnel and he wanted to give everyone the room they’d need to get in safely.
Especially before the Soldier-Wraiths caught up to them.
Yanking on the reins, he dragged his mount off to one side until he could see the gate exit.
Mei and Chunhua were already working in concert to seal the entire opening with molten metal and earth.
The heat coming off the whole thing was both impressive and terrifying, all at the same time.
“Everyone up on the walls,” Ash commanded. “Work in pairs and spread out. Cover as much of the wall as you can.”
Looking over his shoulder, he eyed the standing remains of the castle and the tower.
It looked mostly intact and seemed to be somewhere that they could hold out if the worst came to pass.
We likely won’t be coming back out, but we can stall for time.
Stall for time and maybe wait for reinforcements or someone to come get us.
And that’d—
A magnificently loud detonation stole Ash’s thoughts away completely.
The rumble and quake of unleashed power pulled his attention from the castle to the distant horizon in the East.
There, in the sky, was a cultivator. Waves of power were radiating out of the individual even from this distance. To the point that Ash felt like he could cultivate and absorb Qi just from the aura the person was putting out.
“At least an Enlightened Mortal. They’re able to fly and the amount of power they’re putting out… it’s… it’s dreadful and inspiring,” Locke murmured.
“An Enlightened Mortal,” Ash mumbled. The individual was such a force of power that they might as well have been a minor god or goddess made manifest.
Opposing them was someone else who was flying in the air, but the power coming off that person was as different to cultivators as fire was to water.
“That’s someone from Tala’s veil,” Moira said, landing next to Ash and shaking out her wings. “I got close enough that I could see them clearly. I dared not get any closer, though. It was starting to heat my feathers up.”
“Yeah… this whole excursion is a bad idea,” Ash said, then sighed.
Reaching into the Hall, he withdrew Tala and started to
fill her in.
He figured he’d need every blade he had at his disposal for this fight.
Twenty-Four
Wraiths continued to arrive by the minute.
Pooling together and then slowly spreading out across the outside of the wall. Almost as if there was some type of leveling effect. Distributing them from high density to lower density.
Peering out over the wall a bit more, Ash looked in both directions.
There were Wraiths, two or three thick, wedged up to the base of the wall as far as he could see in either direction.
“They're not limitless, there’s just a very large number of them. More than you’d ever want to reasonably consider fighting,” Locke offered.
Anything more to add? Something more useful?
Ash was the very definition of angry right now. It’d felt like this entire time Locke had been holding back from him and still was.
“Not really. This… all of this… it really isn’t your fight. Or our fight. Not most of it, at least,” Locke said in a thoughtful tone. “Our goal is the Veil-Wraiths at best, our own veil by itself at worst. Anything beyond that is the purview of another.”
Another?
“Yes. Another. One that I think we might actually encounter. I have the vague feeling they’re here as well.”
Right.
But no information… you’re so damn awful.
“Honestly… honestly, you’re probably better off not knowing everything I’m keeping from you. It’s not just because you’re not ready for it, which you aren’t, but because it’s unlikely the information will ever be that useful.”
You said the same thing about the Wraiths and they seem to be here, right now.
“That was… okay, yeah, that was a mistake. I admit it. I’m not wrong about the rest of it, though. It isn’t information you need or would even want.”
I think I’d rather be the judge of what I want or don’t want, rather than you.
Sighing, Ash stood up and looked at the people around him.
Moira and Tala were on either side of him.
Mei and Chunhua had gone off along the wall a while ago to make sure there were no breaches in it.
Tala gave him a smile and raised an eyebrow when he looked at her.
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