Tantra is standing in a field of coarse sand, staring at the individual grains between her toes. Tactile sensation is the hardest input to manage with her technique, threatening to overwhelm her concentration and control. The second most is auditory information, she can hear the falling of feet like roaring thunder from inside the mansion, and while she can’t distinguish the words of those speaking, she can tell that they’re there.

  Smell is, ironically, the easiest if you don’t include taste.

  That’s the only sense she’s paired with her Qi senses, so it therefore should provide significantly more information. Instead it’s like the Qi weaves seamlessly with the other smells, making it easier to manage.

  So it does not escape her notice when the subtle smell of spring alongside the sound of a flying blade invades her senses. She sidesteps, preventing the coming blade from decapitating her, and in the same instant she brings down her kanabō at the offending man of navy blue robes

  He blocks with his arm, and is unfazed, as is expected. Tantra goes to strike again but she’s too slow, in that time the man has cut open her stomach, invading her senses with pain. She almost loses control of the thread connected to her heart from the sheer overwhelming sharpness radiating with every pulse of her heart. She can feel the blood leaving her body, and the air mingling with her guts, she can-

  Focus

  She brings her attention back to the fight, just in time for the intense smell of rain to invade her senses, she turns to find a slash of water speeding towards her. Tantra strikes it with her club, causing it to dissipate.

  She recognizes the sound of a blade cutting through air too late as it draws another line of crimson across her back.

  She pushes through the pain with a grunt, a wound to the back being much easier to handle than one to the stomach, despite the heightened senses. She pushes more Qi into her heart, expanding the world further as she arcs her club towards the man in a spin. Stupefied by the sudden increase in speed, he ends up taking the blow head on, digging a furrow into the ground as he tries to solidify his stance.

  The next blow is a grand overhead, too telegraphed to truly be expected to hit the man, instead she uses it as bait, and he bites wonderfully

  Tantra smiles as blood spurts from her neck, and with all the Qi her heart can handle, she retaliates, hitting the man directly on the head.

  Stunned, Tantra takes her opening, boosting her leg and kicking him as hard as she can in the groin.

  The woman watching lets out a hiss of sympathy as poor Ezra crumples to the ground

  Tantra would laugh, or just generally gloat, but she’s writhing on the ground, facing the backlash of pushing her technique too far. She can feel her heart struggle to beat, and her lungs can barely take in air, there’s a fog settling over her mind as she gets progressively more tired.

  She can feel her stomach clenching as she vomits out the days lunch, she-

  A wave of relief washes over her as a hand places itself on her shoulder.

  “That,” Ezra says, “was extremely rude.”

  “It worked didn’t it?” Tantra gives him a cocky grin.

  “I’m the one standing in the end, so no”

  Tantra rolls her eyes, “you're just mad I actually managed to hurt you.”

  “If you learned infusion then you’d be capable of that without stooping to the lows we witnessed today.”

  “I’m trying,” Tantra sighs, “It just makes no sense, making reality acknowledge my kanabō as part of my body is just so foreign.”

  “If you actually trained your skill, rather than brute force, perhaps it would be easier to synchronize with your weapon.”

  “I’m sure you two could go on and on with your cultivation talks,” Synthia interrupts, “but we should really bandage those wounds, I will not tolerate you tracking blood in my mansion.”

  “Yes my lady,” Tantra drawls.

  “Honestly, what happened to your manners? I know you still have them, you're always so proper when we go on our outings.”

  “It gets exhausting putting up a fa?ade, especially when the little nobles can’t even bother to hide their fear.”

  “Isn’t that the whole point of your employment?” Ezra raises a brow.

  “It’s annoying,” Tantra grumbles, “it’s been years and they still treat me like a rabid dog ready to tear out their throats”

  “All for the better,” Synthia says, “the more they fear you, the more they fear me, and fear is its own kind of respect.”

  “You're not very scary though,” Ezra prods.

  Synthia scowls, “that’s why I have you two mindless brutes.”

  “That’s not fair,” Tantra says, “I have a perfectly functioning mind.”

  “Then perhaps it would behoove you to use it.”

  Ezra snorts, “damn, you need a healing technique for that massive burn?”

  “I have my own, thanks.” Tantra says dryly.

  Their banter is interrupted by a deafening scream, now, there are many things you could hear in a mansion of this size. Tantra has run into servants being…intimate more than once, and Roth Farlagh has a rather booming voice when he’s particularly angry. Often at Dimis, considering the trouble the boy usually finds himself in.

  But never, ever, should there be screaming.

  Three heads whip towards its source, an open window on the fifth floor and Synthia’s breath catches in her throat.

  “That’s father’s study,” Synthia says sharply.

  “Indeed,” Ezra replies.

  Synthia stares at the window, where the commotion clamours.

  “Come,” she says, “We should see what’s going on.”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  -

  The Farlagh mansion and the Sol estate cannot be compared in terms of scale, both were designed with completely different purposes in mind. While the Sol estate is meant to signify prodigious wealth to any and all who witness its splendor, the Farlagh mansion is meant for a simpler purpose.

  To house the marquis’s family.

  That’s not to say it isn’t large, just in comparison to her old home it would perhaps measure to about a quarter of its size, which is a perk more than a detriment. Means it needs significantly less cultivators and guards to prowl the halls in search of potential intruders. Tantra has seen more than a few thieves lose a hand because they were too foolish or too desperate to see the folly in trying to steal from the marqui’s coffers. She…never really liked that form of punishment, considering that most who attempt are inhabitants of the slums.

  But the marquis can’t be expected to donate to every charity case he finds, well he could, he just won't, no one does. It’s the same reason the Sols prefer to exploit the slums rather than help rebuild them, at the end of the day coin talks louder than empathy.

  Tantra’s never been to the slums, she’s heard rumors of gangs and violence and decided it would be in everyone’s best interest if a cultivator didn’t get involved.

  Worlds just unfair like that, the rich will exploit the poor and the poor will chew through each other to get just an ounce of sustenance. Tantra made her peace with that when Rakan died, funny how that works, it was so glaringly obvious before then

  Her whole rise as a cultivator was unfair, she shouldn’t have even been considered as a candidate for fucks sake, she was physically weak and spiritually crippled, a combination that should have placed her as far from a cultivators life as humanly possible. Yet here she stands, strongest amongst her friends, acting as a guard to the daughter of the most affluent person in northern Rikidan.

  A person who now lays drowned in a pool of his own blood

  Tantra stares in disbelief at the body of what was once Roth Farlagh, his wife Irina staining her robes with blood as she kneels next to him, choking on tears as she clutches at his toga.

  Her personal guard is squeezing her shoulder in what Tantra presumes to be a gesture of consolation, while the marquis’s personal guard just looks stunned at the corpse in front of him.

  “Everyone!” Ezra yells with Qi infused lungs, “out!”

  A mass of servants scramble their way out of the hall, no doubt ready to spread the word of the dukes passing, as proper servants are wont to do

  Tantra turns to Synthia and finds her with a look that…isn’t exactly appropriate for the scene in front of them. She looks like a mathematician trying to solve some grand equation, one where the variables don’t make any sense.

  No one should have been capable of entering this deep into the mansion without being intercepted by the patrols, whether they were mortal or not. It simply…isn’t possible. Unless someone could simply appear in the dukes study, the prospects of an external intruder are laughable at best.

  Maybe someone from inside the mansion? That is also unlikely, but not to the same extent as an intruder, they’d just be tremendously stupid to pull a stunt like that considering the Sentinel will be more than willing to burn through her Qi using the polygraphos in interrogating each and every suspect, and fleeing would be tantamount to admitting guilt.

  So who could’ve done this?

  “Galar,” Ezra shakes the marquis’s guard out of his stupor, “I need you to go report to the Sentinel, she has to know what has happened before whoever did this can obfuscate their tracks.”

  A hint of irritation crosses Galar’s features, “who are you to order me boy.”

  “He speaks with my authority,” Synthia says, “and right now you are lucky I don’t demand for your head, considering how you have failed your duty, do as he says before I reconsider.”

  Both of Tantra’s brows shoot to the sky, did Synthia just threaten the strongest cultivator in the manors employ? Maybe that calculating look was just a mask after all.

  Though that’s not to say it was the smartest thing to do.

  Tantra prepares herself to protect Synthia as Galar growls at her…and stomps out of the room.

  Huh, he had a brain behind all that machismo afterall, go figure.

  Tantra breathes a sigh of relief, “I’m pretty sure you almost got me killed there.”

  “Then you would have done a better job than him.”

  -

  Tantra has never seen the Sentinel before, there are only three in all of Rikidan, each stationed at one of the major cities besides Goroka. Rumors surround these beings like maggots surround a corpse, infesting the imagination with things of grandeur and horror alike. Erin, Ralth’s sentinel, has almost survived for a millenia, spending centuries as this city's prime authority. There are stories of her violence, how she threw herself into a dragons maw, only to emerge from the gore victorious. Her brutality in quelling rebellions is a thing whispered only in trusted company and behind thick walls, how she has a propensity to tear off limbs and scramble guts before her opponents experience the mercy of death. The scrutiny of her judgement is something no sane person would invoke.

  It’s why Tantra let a second assassin come for her before dealing with Tikor, so that there would be solid proof for the Sentinel that her actions were justified. Even then it was a risk, but she wasn’t going to let the man live because of the shroud of an immortal.

  Still, despite all the horrors Erin has inflicted, she is also the reason for the peace permeating Ralth. No cultivator dares to break any of the laws under her purview, for fear of being her next victim.

  Tantra, in all her wildest dreams, never imagined she’d be graced with the sight of two immortals in her lifetime, yet here she is, standing in a line as the woman interrogates each and every resident of the mansion using a polygraphos.

  Tantra can smell the raw meat and tang of iron emanating from the woman each time she infuses the dial with Qi, each person going through an intense barrage of questions before she is satisfied. Which confuses Tantra, shouldn’t it just be a yes or no question? Maybe she isn’t looking deep enough into it.

  Slowly the line moves forward, a consistent cadence of dread as each resident is inundated with questions by the most powerful entity of northern Rikidan. As she gets closer the smell permeating from the woman gets more intense, and Tantra can see the flashes of Qi as reality warps and bends. It’s only a faint cloud, but it’s there.

  She’d be happy of the indication that her Qi sight is actually existent if it weren’t for the current situation in front of her, it’s something she’s been trying to pair with her Qi senses for a while, being able to actually see a technique being more useful than smelling it.

  But that’s besides the point.

  Her friends aren’t that far back in the line, each being in foundation as they are means they get to be among the first to face the barrage. Tantra doesn’t know if that’s a good thing, on the one hand, getting this over with as quickly as possible does a lot to quell the rising tension in her heart, on the other, she doesn’t want to face Erin without being mentally prepared.

  That takes time she doesn’t have, as Ezra answers her questions and moves on to the mansion with a bow of respect to the immortal, then, once he is out of the way, it is her turn.

  Erin is a short woman, about Tantra’s height, with skin tinged a crackling crimson as she cries a constant stream of blood. She wears a black Toga rather than robes, but the Sentinel’s badge sits proudly on her bosom, wrapped around her neck like a necklace

  “Come,” says shredded meat and dribbling blood as she waves Tantra over.

  Tantra complies.

  Two fractured ruby’s scrutinize her form, Tantra doesn’t know how the woman can even see, but she isn’t one to question the capacity of immortals, so she keeps her mouth shut and waits.

  “Kin-killer,” Erin says, and Tantra’s heart just about bursts from her chest, “what a coincidence that we’d meet so soon after your little stunt.”

  Tantra bows deep to the woman decidedly not commenting that it’s been five years since she killed her brother, “It is an honour that you know my name honoured Erin.”

  “I don’t know your name,” she scoffs, “I only know you by your title, rare is it for one to so brazenly break my laws yet stand unscathed. I’m genuinely impressed, but I do hope you weren’t the one who did this, that would mar my opinion of you quite dramatically.”

  Reality bends as the polygraphos glows, indicating the need for an answer.

  “I had nothing to do with the marquis’s death,” Tantra says carefully.

  The marker on the dial shifts a little to the right and Tantra has to hold in her sigh of relief. It’s true, she had nothing to do with it, but she can’t help the anxiety associated with being questioned like a common criminal.

  “Good,” says the viscous liquid filling cracks.