On Cosmic Tides

Laurel’s eyes opened. The light said it was around midday, and she could smell lunch simmering over a nearby fire. Leander, who had been staring at her from his seat a couple meters away, fell off his chair.

“How long was I out?”

A shaking hand held up 2 fingers.

“Two days?”

A nod.

“Yeah, that was a good fight. Had to get close to do enough damage but it let him do a real number on me. How did the rest of the fight go?”

A series of hand gestures, along with the communication stone when he wanted particular details to get across, gave her the scene. A pitched battle, with good eventually triumphing over evil, with one particularly brave young cultivator showing up at an opportune moment when all seemed lost.

She made all the right noises to go along with the narration. It was a proud moment, hearing how her students had stepped in to fight off cultivators more powerful than them. Even if it was embellished. Her own performance had been okay, though she would need to make sparring with Martin a more regular occurrence when they returned to the city. If other high level cultivators were around, and working for whatever group had destroyed her sect in the first place, it would not do to lose her own edge. She was confident against anyone else of her level. But a grandmaster, or if Corvin had shown up with a few powerful friends? She would probably be able to escape such a fight, but anyone with her would die, and it was unlikely she would get close to winning. Unacceptable.

Leander’s rendition of their fight with the enemy cultivators only ended when Trip called over that lunch was ready. He hesitantly offered Laurel a hand up and was shocked she could walk unassisted, his arm falling limply back by his side. Two days of focused meditation could heal even the grievous wounds she had received during the fight. There would be some twinges and aches for another week or so, and no big techniques, but the damage was mostly gone. On the bright side, this would be good motivation for the rest of her students. In her experience, watching someone heal from a fatal wound was excellent inspiration for cultivation practice, only beat out by healing from a wound yourself.

“Has anyone new shown up in the last couple of days?” Laurel gratefully accepted the bowl from Trip and began to eat. Healing – even for a master – took from the body, and she was ravenous.

“Nope. Though we haven’t gotten to the farthest end of the valley yet. No one wanted to camp out there overnight while you were, uh, recovering.”

“Good idea. What about – oh, thank you Rebecca.” The young woman had appeared with a mug of warm liquid. A sniff told Laurel it was steeped spiritual mint, which was touching. She wasn’t aware they had reached a harvestable amount back at the sect yet but their groundskeeper, Nicholas, had been hard at work on the solarium so she shouldn’t have been surprised. She tossed the whole cup back immediately. The strain from the fight hadn’t been entirely physical, and she could use the soothing in her spirit as well. The mint didn’t do much but knowing her students both paid attention and wanted her to recover helped in its own way.

“Oh that’s fantastic, is there more? Have we found anything useful in the part you’ve explored?”

“Not much. A few more spirit beasts, and some mana-infused plants. Nothing that seemed like a natural treasure. I was going to see what happened if we took some of them but the Major strongly suggested we leave them for now. We did find one of those jade boxes on the hostiles we eliminated. Thought it might be useful but we didn’t want to open it and ruin something.”

“Good instincts, and that reminds me.” Laurel fished around in her pockets until she pulled out a dull black ring. A scan with her spiritual senses showed about what she’d expect a master cultivator to be carrying around. A drop of her own mana and piles of cultivation resources and creature comforts appeared behind her.

“This is a spatial ring. It’s inferior to my tattoo in every way, except that it can be used by anyone with established meridians. I’ll put it in the contribution store when we get back to the sect. So use that as an incentive to work hard. More importantly, were any of the others wearing anything similar?”

She began sorting through the new pile of stuff behind her. Most of it went into her own storage. The high level earth-cultivator resources would go to Martin, the rest to the communal pool of sect resources for their new members to earn. There was even a Mountain Vein. The branching object looked like the circulatory system of some strange animal, and it could be absorbed by earth cultivators to strengthen their internal mana system’s infusion of the heart and blood. The result was a magical mineral that made the body naturally resist damage, patching veins and arteries when pierced. Laurel was sure there were a host of other uses as well but most of her research in the past was on things that let you win fights.

“No rings. There were a few objects containing mana but they seemed more like your glow stones or fire starter than the ring. More quality of life items than anything truly powerful. At least, from what we could tell.”

“I’ll take a look this evening.” Before she went back to sorting, she had another thought. “Wait, what about the guy we found ruining the Miner’s Fortune? Did you kill him too or is he stashed somewhere?”

It was Rebecca who answered. “He’s alive. There’s one more. We didn’t have another set of the bracelets you had so we’ve been dosing them with sleeping powder.”

“You know how to make a sleeping powder? You thought to bring the ingredients for that but not a fire starter?”

The younger woman looked off to the side. “Sometimes it’s good to be able to put someone to sleep.”

Every time Laurel got more insight into the young woman’s past she became enraged, but now was not the time to push for more details. “Well if they’re sleeping, now’s as good a time as any to see what they know.” The four of them made their way over to where two men were lying on makeshift pallets.

“Okay, first let me say, invading someone’s thoughts is an extreme violation of personal autonomy. We only do something like this to people who have tried to kill us. Also remind me to teach you how mental shields work. The only reason I can do this is because these two are terribly trained. As cultivators of the Eternal Archive, your thoughts should be secure even while unconscious.”

With that, she knelt between the sleeping cultivators and touched a hand to either forehead. A strand of her own mana pushed into both of them and she was awash in memories. She let her mind relax. That was the real key to any technique like this. Absorbing all the information was impossible, but the mind was a powerful tool. It would sort the important information out and ignore the rest. Imperfect, maybe, but better than crawling through the entire lives of these two, moment by moment.

She resurfaced and walked back to the fire pit before discussing what she’d learned.

“They’re definitely from Laskar. The emperor there forces anyone found to have a gift for magic into working for the government. I think we sort of knew that but it’s good to confirm. These two were part of a group of cultivators that hunted down and ‘recruited’ others until Corvin – the guy in the robe – collected them for this mission. That explains why their cultivation is all over the place. They don’t really know why they were doing anything and they didn’t like Corvin.”

They spent a pleasant afternoon at the camp, waiting for the others to return. Laurel slowly stretched her spirit as she would a muscle that had been cramping, getting her mana flows back up to speed. An hour was spent walking the others through some cultivation exercises. The rest was cataloging what Corvin had in his storage ring and debating what to do with their prisoners. Leander was advocating for dropping them somewhere in the ocean, but she wasn’t sure such a direct death sentence was the right way forward. Killing in battle was acceptable. Killing weak prisoners in cold blood while they slept was something else.

********

The others returned empty handed as the sun was setting. They were all pleased to see Laurel up and about, and the revelations of the last few days were shared around.

“Corvin was working for whoever sealed the world off from mana originally, at least that was what he taunted me with. Something about a new world order, and we need to get in line. I’m not sure what’s going on in Laskar but we should be concerned.”

“Concerned enough to abort the mission?” Kat’s sharp eyes had cut to the heart of the matter. “If it’s that big a deal, should we get word back as quickly as possible?”

“We shouldn’t abort the mission. If we can turn Verilia into a World Capital in the cultivation sense, they won’t be able to seal off the cosmic mana flows, they’ll be too deeply anchored. To do that we’ll need a robust mana matrix bolstered by natural treasures. If we stop now, we’re giving them time to stop us.”

They all thought to themselves for a few moments until Maria came out with her opinion. “Look, we all knew war with Laskar was on the horizon. The king knows the magic situation, and the council is smart enough to realize there will be more magic users in other countries to account for. I say we continue the mission.”

No one had a better argument so it was decided they would continue on their original plan, though the next time they were near a city with a Meristan base they would try to get word back.

“We have a plan then,” Laurel said. “We spend the next couple of days clearing out the valley and finishing up here, and then we move on. I have two further suggestions. First, for the prisoners, I say take them somewhere in the wilderness and let them off. It's up to them what they do from there, but I don’t think they have any information that is too terrible to spread if they do survive and make it back to Laskar.” This sparked some back and forth but was ultimately agreed upon. No one wanted to be an executioner.

Leander held up two fingers in the obvious follow up question. Laurel patted his shoulder and continued. “The second is that I think it's time you all,” she pointed to the cultivators, “burn in your mana pathways. You’ve reached a level of sufficient control, and the mana here is dense enough to make the process easier. And as much as I hate rushing a cultivation journey, if we run into more Laskarians, I don’t want you all fighting at a disadvantage.”