Rare are the occasions that Tantra can indulge herself, most days filled with either guard duty or training, giving life a rather dull cadence.

  But…It’s a tune she’s danced enough to become familiar. Synthia’s little puppet, a small piece in a grand game she’ll never understand. But she doesn’t care, all that matters are her friends, and Tantra’s position grants them benefits that can’t be found easily elsewhere. What does it matter if she has to suffer through some politics?

  What does it matter if she suffers at all?

  Tantra raises her chopsticks to her mouth and blows on her ramen, beginning her meal as she watches the crowd below going about their own journeys, ones that Tantra will likely never understand. She often wonders what life would be like as a peasant, would she be happy with the simplicity of it all?

  Maybe, maybe not.

  To many the eternal path is seen as a privilege, to Tantra it is a yoke, dragging her down as she pushes forward all the same, bringing the burdens of the past into the present like some sort of temporal mule.

  Technically that isn’t even an impossibility, just highly unlikely, considering that kind of enlightenment requires deep contemplation not present in the mind of simple beasts.

  But that’s besides the point

  She often muses on what her life would look like if things were just different. Many are the possibilities that define us, but only one set of circumstances, choices, and actions can encompass who we are. What would life look like If Yorin never reached out to her? Would she still be a part of her family if Rakan hadn’t died? Could she have pursued her dream uninterrupted if her father never sent her to the sect?

  All pointless speculation in the end, the past remains set in stone, uncompromising in its scripture, and all those who walk in the present can only build on what already was, despite the cracked foundations.

  Tantra does her best, but she’s afraid, truly afraid. Five years have passed and nothing, just…routine and training. Now the marquis’s dead, and yet it’s all so peaceful, the eldest preparing for the funeral as the rest take their time to grieve and/or plot under the changing political climate.

  For some reason she feels like an ant, watching as the boot of a giant slowly crashes atop her, in spite of all the silence. Tantra doesn’t believe in fate, but something is coming, she can feel it in her bones as it rattles through her ribcage.

  Slowly, she finishes her ramen and sets down her chopsticks, turning away from the crowds below to face the man in front of her.

  “You’ve been silent for quite a while,” Zon says, “mind sharing your thoughts with your venerated senior?”

  “We’re not from the same sect,” Tantra points out.

  “Yet still you seek my wisdom,” Zon says, “I’d say that qualifies me.”

  Tantra stares at Zon’s eyes of matte grey, and she…sighs.

  “It’s stupid,”

  “Plenty of things are stupid, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be said.”

  Tantra chews on that for a moment, looking back at the crowds below.

  “Do you think we’ll ever manage to relate to them?” She asks, “to their jubilation and tribulations? Or are we so far gone that such things are incomprehensible to us.”

  “The peasants?”

  “Mhm”

  Zon shrugs and gives her a so-so gesture.

  “There will be things we can’t understand, by nature of being cultivators, but there are things we can relate to. Emotions are a universal language, and so long as you keep an open mind, you might find plenty of common ground with common folk, despite the vast gulf between us.”

  “Twelve years I’ve spent as a spoiled scion,” Tantra says, “another seven I’ve spent as a cultivator, what common ground can I find with them?”

  “You’re still human Tantra, no matter how much our peers claim otherwise, that’s where you can start.”

  Tantra lets out an unsatisfied sigh, “okay.”

  “What brought this on? I never took you for the time who cared much for the trifles of servants or peasants,”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well,” Zon says, “you’re pretty brusque when interacting with them, which doesn’t exactly scream a desire for connection or empathy.”

  Tantra blinks, “am I really?”

  Zon shrugs, “from the few times we’ve enjoyed each other's company I’ve got to see glimpses. That’s not a bad thing mind you, you’re still kind, which is more than can be said for many cultivators.”

  “Well, thanks, I guess.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Zon says, “but I have a feeling that’s not everything that mind of yours has been churning up.”

  Tantra sighs, “no…I get this feeling like something’s going to happen, something bad.”

  “Because of the marquis’s death?” Zon ventures.

  Tantra nods,

  “How delightfully ominous,” Zon says, “you know I have a friend who’s rather close to fate, likes to venture around Testhim, see the sights as it were. Generally the advice I’d get from him is to not ignore those feelings.”

  “I don’t believe in fate,”

  “Well you should, it’s rather real and doesn’t quite care for your belief.”

  Tantra huffs, “what could even happen in Ralth? We’ve got a Sentinel!”

  “Who knows,” Zon shrugs, “you're the one with fate knocking on your door.”

  “I was hoping you’d say my worries were baseless.”

  Zon chuckles, “then you came to the wrong cultivator honourable junior, I’ve seen too much to dismiss possibilities”

  “Great,” Tantra groans, “that does so much to ease my troubled mind.”

  “To be fair, I never said I would do that, I’m just an ear to listen and a mouth to give wisdom.”

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  “And what incredible wisdom you’ve given,” Tantra grumbles

  Zon chuckles the light note of a flying blade.

  “Well perhaps I could lighten the load on your other worries?”

  -

  It may come as a surprise, but Etra isn’t really a fan of chaos.

  She came to this conclusion the first time she walked Ralth’s streets, not long after Tantra killed her brother. There’s so much space, but it’s not enough for the cavalcade of humanity that marches these streets of cobblestone and hawking vendors. She’s not even in the market square, yet there are so many touting their wares that it’s becoming nauseating.

  She misses the serenity of her village, sure, she didn’t have the luxuries that she does now, but there she could’ve walked the streets as a form of stress relief. If she tried to do that here she’d be touched in the head, making her appreciate meditation since it became her only avenue for peace.

  So why then does she walk through Ralth, if the mere act is so cumbersome?

  Simple, she has someone she wants to see.

  But that can wait for when she gets there, walking down to the northern road as the crowds become more…not dirty, rough maybe? The people here are on the bottom of the food chain, and considering how long that chain is, that’s a massive drop. Wearing what could charitably called robes, along with a few that possess sandals, but not all.

  Many are barefoot, calloused feet slapping stone as children run and play.

  Or steal, they also do a lot of stealing.

  But it’s for the ultimate purpose of filling bellies, so they can keep their hands. Besides, it’s not like they can steal from her artifact. A small ruby necklace sitting on her bosom as she walks through the progressively deteriorating streets. She can hear the sound of a beating not far away, and decidedly chooses to ignore it, she learned long ago that interference only tends to make things worse.

  Can’t stay in this place to police things all the time, and those she helps just get a target painted all over their backs, ready for whichever gang she beat the shit out of to get their retribution.

  She wonders what’s the point of this place, is it where the forgotten are gathered? Or is it where they’re abandoned? Could be both, probably both.

  Isn’t that just sad? Not a few hours away lies the mansion she’s called home for the past five years, with all its decadence and pointless grandeur, and yet here there are those who struggle to find something to protect them from the rain, where children roam the streets like stray dogs looking for an easy kill.

  Oh, and there’s the actual dogs.

  They’re pretty cute, not when they bite, but she’s a cultivator, their bites don’t really do shit to her.

  As she walks through RendingClaws territory, she starts to get a few gestures of acknowledgement, but no greetings, no one would dare to inundate her with their words. Not after what she did to that upstart and his groupies not so long ago. It was an accident, she forgot how much stronger she was than a mortal, and ended up crippling each of them, cursing them to a life of begging forevermore.

  She drops a coin into their bowls every now and then, but the scowls she gets tells her she hasn't exactly been forgiven. To be fair, they did try to shake down a cultivator, not the smartest move of all time, though she hadn’t completed her foundations yet, she was further along than they were.

  Add proper training and a scared girl to that combination and you get a right beating.

  Shame that, real shame.

  She stops in front of an unassuming shack, takes a deep breath and knocks on the door. There’s scurried shuffling as Etra assumes a few of them find their little hiding spots for an ambush in case it were someone…unwelcome.

  “Who is it,” Says voice making a pathetic attempt at sounding intimidating.

  “Open up you little shit,” Etra says, “I’ve got gifts to give the local street rats.”

  There are a few gasps from the shack, and the boy on the other side hurriedly opens the door to reveal a dark mop of unruly hair to match a gaunt face scuffed with dirt.

  “Etra!” He says with a wide smile, “we thought you forgot about us, you were gone so long!”

  “Got busy,” Etra says.

  “With what?”

  “Idiot,” another boy says as he walks in line of the doorway, “the marquis’s fucking gone to the grave, she’s probably dealing with all the stupid shit that comes with that.”

  “The marquis’s dead?!?”

  “You’re a godsdamned dumbass.”

  Etra chuckles at their antics, “gonna let me inside.”

  Two pairs of arms grab the boys and drag them out of the way.

  “Of course Etra!” The twins chirp.

  Etra shakes her head with mirth and enters their little shack, taking a seat in the centre where half a dozen children sit in front of her in a half circle, eye’s sparkling at their own personal folk hero.

  Etra never liked that, but when she told them to tone it down it only seemed like they became more…fanatical?

  Tantra’s better with words than she is but that sounds about right.

  “So?” Etra says in the quiet, “you gonna keep a girl waiting?”

  The second boy seems to shake off his bedazzlement and is the first to provide an answer.

  “The RendingClaws and BlackWolves aren’t fighting anymore, claws’s fucked em up good, sent ‘em back to their den.”

  “Good gods Milo,” one of the twins says, “‘sent ‘em back to their den’, really? How long you practice that?”

  “I didn’t practice shit” Milo grumbles.

  “Suuure.”

  Etra clears out her throat and they stop their banter.

  “While it’s good to know it’ll be safer here, I was more curious about your progress cultivating.”

  The entire room groans.

  Etra snickers, “I take it you haven’t made it to three threads yet?”

  “It’s too hard,” a girl complains, “It’s like trying to do three things at once!”

  “Yeah!,” the boy who opened the door for her says, “can’t you teach us something easier? Like some grand cultivation technique or something?”

  “Sure,” Etra says, and they all perk up, “once you get to three threads.”

  Etra can’t hold back the chuckle when they all glower at her expert social parry.

  “C’mon ya brats, you really expect me to just hand you something that’ll breeze you through foundations for free? What I’m going to give you is dangerous, and you need to be able to make a decently sized rope out of three threads before I can even consider telling you.”

  “We know,” they all groan.

  “The fact you keep asking tells me you don’t”

  “No, we get it, it’s just…hard,” the second twin says, “we can leave this place once we become strong, like you.”

  “Might be leaving sooner than you think,” Etra says, “Tantra looks like she’s planning to head back to the sect, when we go I’ll bring you all along.”

  “I assume that means you’ve told Tantra about us?” Milo stares at her accusatory

  Etra scratches her cheek, “I’m working on it?”

  They all give her flat looks.

  -

  Yorin can feel Qi,

  Only a little bit, but whenever his mentor uses a technique there’s a slight pressure on his skin, telling him both direction and intensity. It’s…not very useful frankly, at least not for those on his level, who can barely match Quo in output.

  Otherwise it’s decent at giving him information when he’s holding onto something or someone. He can actually measure Qi stones! At least in relation to each other, not that it matters, he’s not traveling to the Barbarian lands anytime soon, and otherwise it’s kinda useless in combat.

  But you’ve gotta look at the positives!

  His Qi senses actually paired with one of his mundane senses, that right there is a milestone worth celebrating. Sure he has four others to go-but he’s not worried, cultivators live a long time after all, and Qi sense is one of those things that just comes with time.

  What he is worried about, as has become standard, is Tantra.

  Specifically how she’s writhing on the ground.

  “Tantra,” Yorin whines, “not again, you said you’d wait!”

  She responds in a series of choked coughs that tell Yorin little to nothing, but to be fair he didn’t expect her to actually talk back to him, that circulation technique of hers is scary. Which is weird because it doesn’t actually have anything to do with circulation, you know, the process of filling the body with Qi?

  Apparently Tantra gave it the name serpent’s circulation because of the circulatory system or some such nonsense. Circulation is circulation! Not…whatever it is the heart does. But the word does make sense in both contexts…hmmm.

  Later, he’ll think about it later

  Right now he has to stop Tantra from choking on her own vomit.