Problems

Anrosh sat in her office looking at her daughter from across her desk, trying not to show her real thoughts. She was… saddened. She blinked, and her daughter had turned from this small thing that she used to cradle into a young woman, already in her twenties. A warrior of her sect. A very frustrated warrior at that.

“There is no point in it!” Kri said angrily.

“There is a big point, and you know it,” Anrosh responded, trying to keep her voice calm.

“You keep telling me that, but I don’t see it,” Kri waved her hands around. “All I see is everybody else passing me by, while I stay where I am.”

“That will not last, they are only ahead for now.”

Anrosh did understand how she was feeling. Kri had been in the Early Lord Realm for a long time now. And she had to be feeling like she should be advancing.

“I am weaker than the people that started on their Paths years after me!” Kri said, venting. And Anrosh let her.

“You are training with someone who is far above anyone else in the sect. You know that this is not where you will stop. Those others, they will not rise high. Some might reach Monarch, less than a handful might reach Heavenly, Immortal? I doubt that any of them will reach that high,” Anrosh said softly. “You are not being kept where you are for no reason Kri, they want you to reach as high as they are. You understand what that means?”

“I…” Kri looked away. “I could advance right now,” she added in a whisper. “I’ve cycled more than enough.”

“It was never about that Kri,” Anrosh said.

“All I do is practice the spear and my techniques,” Kri whispered. “I am better than everyone else my age, and older. But it doesn’t matter, not when I am lower Realm.”

“You are building your foundations, this is what everything you achieve in the future will be built on,” Anrosh told her.

“I know,” Kri sighed, the anger leaving her. “It’s just that they all keep looking at me like… I don’t know. Like they expect something.”

“Ryun gave you his Path. He might not have said anything, but for all intents and purposes, you are the heir to his Path. And you are being taught by Anatalien. They have high expectations for you.”

“And I hadn’t advanced in years.”

“Be patient, it will happen soon. Anatalien is waiting for Ryun to return. They are watching over your growth together, she will not overstep without him here. No matter what she says,” Anrosh told her.

Kri turned her head back to face her. “How long must I wait?”

“There is no need to rush, daughter,” Anrosh smiled. “You will have decades, centuries. A day will come when you will turn back to this conversation and wonder how you could’ve ever been so impatient.”

Kri sighed. “I hope so.”

A knock on the door interrupted them, then one of her assistants peeked through.

“Sect Leader, we have a problem.”

*  *  *

Anrosh sat in the saddle of her mount, a large boar, the main animal that the sect used for such purposes. They had been traveling for days without rest, across their territory to their Eastern Border. Sometimes, Anrosh cursed herself for not having any ways of moving with haste.

When they arrived, the camp had already been raised by the advance team. The scouts that had gone on ahead, and… Tali.

Anorsh dismounted and headed straight for the big tent, but a warrior intercepted her.

“Sect Leader, I’ve been told to show you to the town,” he said.

“Where is Anatalien?” She asked.

“At the town, Lady Far Solla bid me escort you to her.”

Anrosh nodded and let him lead her away. They walked out of the camp, then into the dark forest that surrounded it. The sky was cloudy and weak rain was falling from the sky. The trees were black and leaves the color of soot. Everything in this territory was the same, depressing.

They left the forest and reached the edge of a cliff, in the distance she could see a town. They made their way down the cliff, a path carved into it led them into the valley below. They followed the road until they got closer to the hill where the town was built. The closer they got, the more she could see.

The blackened walls, and the crumbled stone.

They walked into the ruins of the town. The stone buildings had fallen, collapsed roof on one, broken wall on another. The roads were filled with rubble, but she immediately saw that the entire scene was strange. She didn’t comment though. Instead, she followed as the warrior led her to the center of the town, the large square where Tali was standing with her wings folded on her back and two of their scouts standing near her.

Anrosh approached the woman and saw what she was looking at.

“What happened?” Anrosh asked as soon as she arrived.

Tali glanced at her, then back at the thing in front of her. “We don’t know yet.”

Anrosh frowned, then looked around. “Did you clean up the bodies?”

Tali turned her head and raised an eyebrow. “Noticed that, did you? No, we didn’t.”

Which meant that what she had noticed was indeed strange. “No blood, anywhere.”

“No bodies either,” Tali added.

“Why? How?” Anrosh asked.

“We don’t know yet. Six towns are in the same state, ruins, but no blood, no bodies, no people.”

“Where?” Anrosh asked and Tali told her.

“Wait… those towns, that is all on the border. All territories that used to belong to the Kiming Sect.”

“Yes,” Tali said.

The Kiming Sect was a small one. They had joined Twilight Melody Sect years ago, when the wars in the core cutoff access to easily available food. Their sect owned territories that were rich in ore, not so much suitable for food production. They had been forced to import, but the war raised prices and they couldn’t meet them. Then the refugees started coming, increasing the burden on them and their people. They had no choice but to seek a way to survive.

 Twilight Melody had accepted them, but like with most sects that they had accepted this way, they didn’t have much… oversight. Kiming Sect was a mining sect, so they just got a portion of what they mined and in return sent food. Had open trade and borders. Protected them if they needed protection.

“The mines?”

“Empty too,” Tali said. “Though we did find something in them.”

“What?”

“Openings to the Under, not new ones either,” Tali added.

Anrosh blinked. That was… beyond dangerous. The Under was filled with dangers, often far more powerful than what was above ground. The Kiming Sect… they couldn’t have been stupid enough to open the ways into the Under.

“Not new ones?” Anrosh asked for a clarification. Tali obviously knew more.

“They were mining the Under, beyond their own territory borders.”

Anrosh closed her eyes. A territory stretched above and below its borders, not fully into the Under, but sometimes territories did include portions of it.

“So this banner then,” Anrosh gestured at the rod and the piece of cloth hung on it.

“Yes,” Tali said. “Scouts found one in every town, and at the entrance of every mine.”

“This crest, I know it from somewhere,” Anrosh said as she looked at the cloth. A black field with a black circle in the center surrounded by orange ring. “That’s the Midnight Reign Sect?”

“Yes,” Tali confirmed. “Their territories border ours, Kiming Sect.”

“But why? This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Why indeed,” Tali added.

This was… war. But… they hadn’t done anything to the Midnight Reign Sect. They had… good relations. They traded with them. The Midnight Sect was small, they held only four territories. They, just like Kiming Sect, relied on mining to survive. Only they were lucky enough to have some very high tiered metals available to them. They were rich.

Their territories, though were lands of eternal night. The sun didn’t rise on their territories, the moon remained in the sky always. The sect people themselves have adapted, they had true bodies that made them at home in the territories of eternal night. She tried to remember what more she knew about them, but… there were so many sects on their borders now that she barely remembered this much.

She knew that they were extremely isolationist. That they very rarely left their territories.

“You said that the Kiming Sect made their way into the Under,” Anrosh said as she remembered something more. “Into the Midnight Reign Sect’s territory. They went for their nodes, didn’t they.”

Tali nodded. “We assume. I didn’t send our scouts beyond the borders of our territories.”

“But why this? They could’ve sent someone, talked with us, told us—Oh… fuck.”

Tali tilted her head. “You remembered something?”

“I… they sent emissaries to us, years ago. I remember because they didn’t want to talk with me, they wanted to speak directly to the Sect Head, to Ryun. And Ryun… well, he avoids such meetings like the plague. At the time he would rather spend time in the smithies or cycling.”

“So,” Tali said. “People that were part of our sect stealing from them. Emissaries sent and ignored, yes, that would be enough for someone to feel… insulted. For them to take action.”

“Not our people, these were—”

“—No Anrosh,” Tali interrupted. “We took them in, we made them part of our sect. They are our responsibility. We gave our word to protect them, but we are also responsible for what they do.”

“But this… war?”

“Sects try to avoid conflicts like these, but… sometimes honor demands actions. If the course of events is what we currently believe, and it very well could be something else, then… I can see how they would react like this.”

“What do we do?” Anrosh asked.

“I don’t know,” Tali said and Anrosh turned too look at her. She saw her calm expression. “You are the Sect Leader Anrosh, you rule here. It is your decision.”

Anrosh grimaced, opened her mouth then closed it quickly. Finally, she just nodded.

“I guess it is.”

“There is no guessing,” Tali added.

Anrosh took a deep breath. Then she turned to the two scouts near them. “Send parties to patrol the border, call for reinforcements, I want the entrances in the Under sealed, watched closely before that is accomplished. Send a few parties to scour the territories for any signs of people who escaped whatever happened here. And I want word sent to Consequence, I want… I need Lesamitrius here as soon as he is able.”

He was the only one that she trusted to send as an emissary. He knew how to be respectful and how to talk with leaders that might hold a grudge. And he was also Peak Heavenly Realm, the highest of the core Twilight Melody Sect. “Go,” she told them.

They rushed away and Anrosh glanced back at the banner. It was a message, she just wasn’t sure what kind. Did they declare war? No, the interface hadn’t received any messages from them, and they hadn’t sent any emissaries in a… She didn’t know how long. She would need to send someone to check the records. Had so much really slipped through her fingers? It was bound to happen. For now, she just had to hope that they were open to talking. There was no blood on the ground, no dead. That could mean several different things, and she hoped that they had just taken them all and not… Necromancers and blood cultivators could do some terrifying things.

“We need Ryun back,” Anrosh said.

“Ha,” Tali chuckled, making Anrosh glare at her. “You think that anything would change with him here? He will be the same. The burden of leading the sect is always on Sect Leaders. We Sect Heads are… we are far more content just focusing on our power. A Sect Head’s role is to project power, not to deal with everything that happens in the sect. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have the time to grow.”

Anrosh sighed. She knew that, she just wished that Ryun would help, at least a little bit. They needed more Sect Leaders, they needed more Essence in their vaults, they needed more administrators, more food, more everything. The Sect was buckling under the weight of everything around them. And she was scrambling to hold it together. She needed to deal with this as fast as possible.