On Cosmic Tides

It was past midday when Laurel finally woke up and forced down some of the dried trail rations she had in storage. She stared blankly at the wall while she ate as slowly as possible. Once she finished it would be time to act. For the first time in ages, she was dreading the next adventure. Laurel had grown up hoping that one day she would become an elder of the sect, helping to guide newer members and cultivating the City Core before eventually leaving to explore the cosmos. When she became an adept, that future transitioned from a vague idea into a true goal. However she was supposed to have centuries more experience before it became even a possibility. Lifetimes in which to forge her path and develop the necessary perspective. Now she was the de facto sectmaster, albeit for a sect of one. Frightening as it may be, her duty was clear. She would find somewhere to re-establish the sect and rise from these ashes. And she would make sure nothing like this could ever happen again.

Grand declarations aside, she had no idea what that would actually entail. She began aimlessly wandering around the sect house while attempting to build a preliminary list. In preparation she pulled out the handwritten book containing her copy of the founding of the sect. Reading while wandering empty halls, she reacquainted herself with the story and turned it into a set of instructions.

Somewhere she could grow a City Core from its creation, so there would need to be some mortals but not too many. Plenty of room to grow, with land for both the sect and the mortals as she carefully brought up the population. Not under control by cultivators already, or having heavy government presence. She was just one person, she couldn’t eliminate an entire sect and stave off retribution on her own. A compound with enough room for cultivating, martial practice, crafting and any other services. One that was highly defensible for a sect that was going to consist of her and any initiates she could convince to join. Cultivation resources to strengthen and stabilize the city core and the sect members. All of this ignoring the largest problem, sects need people. Somehow, Laurel would need to find a way to recruit students, from a population that seemed at best distrustful of cultivation, and at worst outright hostile. Feeling more confident having specific goals to work towards, as vague as they were, she looked up to find herself staring at another blank stone wall.

Glancing around she found she had instinctively wandered to the heart of the sect. Where now there was an expanse of blank stone, had in the past been the deceptively modest entrance to the Grand Library. Some sects were built around crafting or martial talent. Others around artistic endeavors or a particular state of mind. The Eternal Archive had been founded on the principles of collecting knowledge. Even Laurel and her team, despite being trained for combat, spent most of their time seeking out new ideas or hidden secrets and bringing it back to the sect. As such, the Library was the beating heart of the sect, containing the combined effort of a thousand years of cultivators. Once more, Laurel reached out and pressed her own mana into the wall, guiding it to the unlocking mechanism that would recognize a ranking member of the sect. The subtle weave of space-attuned mana pulsed in recognition. The blank wall slid open and the room behind was re-anchored to the physical world.

As she stepped inside, some of the tension released from her shoulders. At least the heart of the sect had survived. Walking into the library was like stepping back in time. The devastation of the city above had not been able to touch this place. Glow stones came to life in recessed sconces, cleverly placed mirrors reflecting light throughout the stacks. The center of the room was a mass of shadows where the suspension enchantments had broken when the room was sealed, no longer anchored in local space. Laurel trailed her fingers along the spines of the books as she moved deeper. Past the public collections, the legends, treatises on crafting, philosophy, poetry, she moved on until she reached the true heart of the sect’s power. The spirit tablets containing cultivation methods and techniques, meditations on the nature of mana, alchemical processes, and martial arts were none the worse for being suspended in an extra-planar space for some undetermined number of years. And in its scripted case, the Legacy Stone glowed as it always had, waiting for the next sect member to earn the right to examine its stored wisdom.

Laurel reached out and placed her hand on the faceted sapphire of crystalized mana. It winked out of existence as she placed it in her own spatial tattoo. She spun in a circle and grimaced at the sea of shelves. The collections had been the pride of the Eternal Archive. It would take her ages to tap each item and send it into storage. But this was no longer the home of her sect and she would not leave anything to be lost to time.

She went to work. Methodically tapping each tablet, book, scroll, enchanted object, woven knotwork, or preserved plant, she would empty a shelf. Then the shelf itself went into storage as well. There was hardly any point in abandoning it when she could bring it with her just as easily, and she would need some storage when she found a location to set up a new library. She spent hours in a feverish intensity. When she was unable to stomach any more, she collapsed onto one of the couches, holding an old tome of fairy tales. She lost herself for a few hours in the stories she’d grown up with.

When every single piece of the collection was in storage she took another look around the now empty library. The side rooms with more specialized collections had taken another few hours to work through but she cleared those as well, along with the storage stacks below the main floor. She next started on the glow stones, the furniture placed for relaxing reading or study, the mirrors used to spread out light, wall hangings, everything that was not fixed in place. Another full day and most of the night had passed while Laurel was busy looting her own sect.

She emerged from the now empty warren of rooms and nooks into the damp ruins of the compound. Heaving a sigh she walked towards the first of the spatial vaults. Sealed away when the sect was under threat, they should still be accessible. Spatial attunements had been popular among the masters of the sect and a major source of pride. It allowed them to craft defensive measures like the ones that sealed off the library, or enchantments like her storage tattoo. But it made gathering up stored treasures tedious.

*******

“Son of a whore!” Laurel jumped away from the fire blasting out of the aperture she’d attempted to open. Trapping spatial vaults was strictly against sect policy. “Miserly bastard.” Cromwen apparently thought if he couldn’t use his treasures, no one could.

The first vault she successfully opened was filled with cultivation resources. The one after that had alchemical potions. Laurel collected dried herbs, raw ore, crafted items, jewels, gold, all the wealth of a once-thriving sect. Financing a new sect compound would be well within her means. It was a small source of solace but she would take what she could get at this point. Hours of searching later, she had found a few of the sect elders’ personal vaults, which she cleaned out after a silent thanks for their contribution. More days slid by as she searched out all the hidden secrets of her sectmates. Focusing on preserving as much of the legacy as possible made it easier to ignore the crushing loneliness. Some of the vaults were harder to access than others, requiring meticulous control to undo the locks, or with entrances hidden in collapsed underground chambers. Only a few more of the sealed areas destroyed themselves when she tried to gain access. Walking the paths of the compound in order to strip it down felt like the deepest violation, picking over a corpse that had already been ravaged by attackers and time.

When there was nothing of value left to pick up Laurel started on the buildings themselves. Mana reinforced stone would always be worth something, and she didn’t want to leave anything behind for other scavengers. Another few days were spent breaking the stones into pieces and storing them. She drew the line at digging out the foundations. If she was an earth attuned cultivator she would have been able to do it easily. If Martin was here he likely would have ripped everything out without breaking a sweat, and then start tossing it around to show off.

Laurel surveyed the area from the nearby mountainside for the final time. The city looked much the same as it had when she arrived. She had spent a couple of days fruitlessly searching for anything worth salvaging, but without mana reinforced materials, anything useful had been worn down by the elements or rotted away long ago. The sect compound itself was entirely unrecognizable. Stripped to the bones, it was just a collection of holes in the ground. Seeing it flared the pain of loss, but it was necessary. She silently swore that the legacy of this place and these people would not be forgotten.

In between breaking down the sect buildings for parts, she had studied the books stolen from the violent merchant in Gorton. According to the atlas, Laskar’s population was concentrated to the south and east. She would head that way, stopping in the first area that would support a sect to get started. She had centuries of lost time to make up for.

The sun rose high enough above the mountains to shine down on the remains of the city. Laurel looked at the crude runes she had carved into the boulder and nodded in satisfaction. She took a deep breath, the words should always be said aloud, even if there was no one else to hear them.

“For the people of the Eternal Archive and the mortals they were sworn to protect, may your souls go in peace to the next realm.”

She bowed in the direction of the city and then released the working she spent the morning crafting. The ambient mana was pitifully weak, but it was just enough to maintain the basic boundary field she had carved into a ring of stones around the valley. Any mortals that approached would have the urge to bypass the area or turn back. Minimal protection, but she hoped to leave her sect mates’ resting place in relative peace.

**********

As a surprising side effect of all the running she’d been forced into without movement techniques, Laurel was finding it easier and easier to cultivate while moving. In the past she had been more inclined to traditional meditation, but the repetitive nature of trekking through the countryside helped her slip into enough of a semi-focused state to circulate her mana while performing other actions. She was even able to spread her spiritual senses out while doing so. Spending so much time attuned to both her internal mana and the ambient mana of the world lead to a startling realization on her way to the more populated areas of the Empire. The ambient mana level was increasing. It was slow, like a bucket filling up one drip at a time. But the change was there. Laurel dared to hope.