Chapter 2

  Yin thought to himself that in his previous life the kind of injuries he was currently walking off would have left him debilitated for weeks. The cuts on his side and the one across his nose were the worst, the latter bleeding again because he’d wiped his face without thinking.

  Marunil and Jakka walked in front, the teacher scanning the woods for anything. Jakka absorbed with trying to use a ruler technique Marunil had suggested. Trying to make the earth under them do something, Yin hadn’t heard the whole conversation.

  Ten walked behind him, and he could feel as her madra sharpened into forged blades that trailed near him. His senses had sharpened just a little bit as he’d advanced, only enough that he was aware of the concentrated energy that could kill him at any time.

  These people were so childish and stupid, that mushroom wasn’t that valuable to any of them, or anyone else for that matter. They were common in the area, enough so that they were sometimes brought out during festivals in the slightly richer villages so any child could eat one and improve themselves. But here these three were, bullying a child because they couldn’t make up enough value among themselves to pay for a fresh one.

  To pass the time as they trekked, Yin practiced looking at the world with new eyes. He’d had it described to him several times so it didn’t take him long to relax his eyes in the right way. Soon the world bloomed into colors, ethereal shapes overlapping everything.

  Marunil had a deep blue haze around him, it felt like the water in a placid lake, but the water hid a beast. Jakka was brown and felt like soft soil, much different from the unyielding stone his path was meant to produce.

  He wanted to inspect Ten but turning would probably net him another cut, and losing more blood would make the walk even harder. Instead he looked to the sides of their trail, at the life all around. There, under a bush, he could see traces that spoke of a life attuned root. In a tree, hidden behind foliage there might have been some sort of air or wind attuned fruit.

  And in front of them.. A wall of life, overpowering everything more and more with every step closer they took. ‘’Where are we going?’’ Yin asked, and was awarded with three pairs of glaring eyes.

  Marunil answered after a few seconds to let his disapproval sink in. ‘’We are approaching the sacred wall, made by the benevolent Monarch.’’ He said with great respect. Leading on.

  Yin swore internally, fighting to stay with the group against the overwhelming urge to run. This man who was supposed to teach them was bringing them right up to the fence keeping the Silent King from killing them all with its mere presence. What the hell was this moron doing bringing them so close to a Dreadgod?

  The wall came into sight, and it was grand. Vines thicker than even the biggest trees they had passed wound around each other in a titanic tangle. Yin had to let go of his copper sight just to keep his mind from being broken, and still it did little because the sheer energy contained in the wall made his skin crawl.

  Marunil launched into a lecture about ‘The Benevolent Monarch’, about her great deeds and generosity to all her subjects. How ‘She’ worked tirelessly day in and out for hundreds of years to keep ‘The Beast’ contained.

  Yin didn’t know why he refused to say their names. Religious fervor? Some people had been like that on earth.

  ‘’And the lesson I want you to take away from this is: We live, because She has gifted us with life. We will die if we take too much from Her.’’ He glared at Yin, who looked back in confusion. ‘’To rush in these lives we live, to take from nature or each other more than we need. That is the path of The Beast.’’

  Yin reeled as he realized that Marunil, his favorite teacher in this life, was a complete moron. Just a bumbling damned idiot.

  ‘’Yin, that mushroom you wasted, do you know what it would have meant for Ten’s sister to receive it? Did you take even a moment to consider that people exist beyond you?’’ The man didn’t even remember Ti Li’s name and he had the audacity to use her on a guilt trip?

  ‘’From here the plan was that we would hunt a sublime beast in the jade level. We would have shared the meat and together cultivated its power. But Yin you have proven you deserve no such thing. We will return home, and Jakka, Ten? The three of us will venture out again, to do this properly.’’

  He walked past Yin, leading them on the way back. ‘’I hope you will meditate on this Yin, and be better, so that you may honor Her.’’

  Jakka followed him, but Yin stayed and so did Ten. Yin simply wanted to see something.

  He poked Ten’s leg and when he had her attention pointed to the ground by the wall. Just barely poking past fallen leaves that had gathered down there was the cap of a mushroom. With a pattern that suggested it was poisonous.

  Ten glared at him, but a forged madra blade appeared from her hand and shot out, cutting the stem and bringing it back to her. She produced a cloth with scripts woven into it and wrapped the mushroom and stuck it in her pack without a word.

  Marunil and Jakka didn’t notice, or if they did they acted as if they hadn’t. Yin didn’t care much for Jakka and Ten, they’d shown their hands long ago. But Marunil? His favorite person in Cradle? He actually felt betrayed, it was horrible.

  Ten pushed him, forcing him to walk. Back to the shitty village, that was almost neighbor with a dreadgods cage. Marunil really had to update his curriculum, lead with the fact that they lived in range to be killed if the Silent King rolled over in its sleep.

  —

  Something was wrong, Yin could feel it long before they came close to the village. Marunil seemed to feel it as well, his goldsign tentacles grew increasingly more erratic. Soon enough they found the outlying houses with broken walls.

  ‘’Children, stay together, don’t move too close to me.’’ He said and in moments water started to gather around him, drawn from the ground and air. Madra bound the water into long serpentine tendrils, glowing with power. He walked slowly past ruined homes, the water serpents around him questing for something to hit.

  Soon they heard sounds of violence, moments later they saw it.

  Fire flashed out in an arc that Marunil was forced to block with a tendril, the opposing elements ate each other up.

  Yeng burst out of the mist that the attacks had created, hands blazing, ready to reduce anything to cinders at a moment's notice. He stopped his momentum with bursts of flame, looking at them with bloodshot eyes.

  ‘’Dreadbeasts.’’ He gasped, gulping down air as if he were drowning. Failing to explain more because of his exhaustion.

  The beasts in question revealed themselves moments later. Something like a cross between a hyena and a giraffe swung a much too long limb through the smoke catching Yeng, throwing the man away through a building.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Marunil sent two serpentine tendrils at the beast, one missed, the second punched into its neck. The snake of water burrowed into the creature and made its flesh burst in a gory blast. It didn’t seem all that phased by it until Yeng burst back out like a comet wreathed in flame and drove a fist through its skull.

  When he landed and pulled his hand out of the dreadbeast Yin saw his biological fathers other arm was broken. The man took ragged breaths and wildly looked around for more enemies. Completely missing the one coming up behind him.

  Marunil sent another pair of serpents at it but it was too late, it swiped Yengs head off before the attacks could reach it. When they did it was brought down in another disgusting explosion.

  Marunil was saying something but Yin was more focused on the remnant rising out of his fathers body. An orange wireframe creature with purple speckled through it. It looked around, seemingly confused, and it spoke in the dozens of voices of a crowd of people. Senseless noise, fitting for the senseless man. It began to wander off into the mist.

  ‘’Yin!’’ Jakka tugged on his injured shoulder, pulling him out of his thoughts. ‘’Focus, and take this.’’ He handed over another remnant weapon. Obviously self made again, a pale blue crab claw. ‘’You might be able to use it once before it breaks, better than nothing.’’

  Ten pushed past them and sprinted in the direction Yin thought her house was in, bad move. Marunil had moved to one side and engaged another dreadbeast that had wandered over, too far to stop the girl. She disappeared in a whorl of mist.

  Yin found himself hoping she wouldn’t be dead by the end of this. Surprising himself that he cared at all for the mildly sociopathic girl. He looked up at Jakka who seemed completely stunned by that development.

  Tugging on his pant leg Yin pointed towards the center of the village, where the actual defenses were. ‘’If we can make it to the bunker we should be fine, right?’’ The older boy didn’t seem to comprehend for a moment, then snapped back.

  ‘’Ye- Yeah! Yeah we’re going to the bunker! Marunil! Bunker!’’ Jakka started moving, his earthy claw weapon gripped hard enough it threatened to crush the remnant hilt.

  Trailing behind him Yin asked a quiet question. ‘’Jakka you know how to do enhancement right?’’ The older boy didn’t answer, but Yin knew he’d heard the question. Unfortunate. The boy's earth aspect would have made him durable enough to tank a hit or two. Now Yin had one less thing to hide behind.

  Marunil joined them after a second, looking wretched, a glance with copper sight told Yin the man had used a lot of his madra. No surprise considering the man used a ruler and forger mix for his technique. A lot of extra effort just to send a bolt of water into something.

  Another remnant stumbled by, singing a lullaby in bird-like chirps, its aspect was a mix of life and something else. Not earth so it wasn’t Chen’en, though Yin doubted the woman wouldn’t have beelined for the bunker before anyone else when the attack began.

  They passed through a ruined house, Marunil destroying a dreadbeast that lurked past the wall. Then they were there, at the earthy mound in the center of their village, a glowing script circle around it. Yin and Jakka passed through it, Marunil stopped outside and stood guard, ready to kill more of the monsters.

  Up on top of the mound was the entrance, a single ladder down into a lit up room filled with crying children. Jakka pushed past Yin and climbed down first.

  When he came down Chen’en called his name, as expected she was in there. ‘’Yin! Where is Yeng? Where is..’’ She trailed off when she saw his expression. Dramatically slumping to the floor she started wailing and kicking like a child. Making the actual children in the shelter freak out even more. For a while the bunker was a cacophonous mix of screaming and crying. Yin picked a spot and sat down, beginning to cycle. It was a long day and night before the attacking beasts were finally all killed.

  —

  Like a millstone rotating, grinding against the borders of his soul, forever going around and down, slowly, slowly.

  Chen’en grabbed Yin, forcing him out of his cycling and put him over her shoulder, carrying him up the ladder. Outside was a mix of ruined wrecks and houses somehow untouched by the battles.

  Marunil sat, seemingly sleeping, leaning against an intact building. A sound like a babbling creek flowing sounded out and a blue remnant with tentacles for arms wandered around the side of the building. Chen’en put him down and made a sign with her hands.

  Yin didn’t like her pretending to care for people like that.

  She pulled him along, moving around the village, seeing corpses of the twisted dreadbeasts all over. A pale purple remnant attacked them and Chen’en destroyed it by calling up a spike of wriggling earth into it. Making a disgusted noise as it dissolved. Yin wondered who that had been.

  They wandered around in a circle, finally finding the remnant they were looking for. Yeng held a cylindrical rock in his vaguely hand shaped appendage, senseless noise emanating from him. Chen’en was quick to start writing scripts, some sort of binding, wrapping one circle around him and then making another around her wrist.

  ‘’Yin.’’ She turned to him and her face was as emotive as ever, rage distorting her features. ‘’Even though you have managed to cripple yourself you must be the man of the house now. You will take on your fathers path and when you are ready, you will take his remnant and advance to gold.’’

  ‘’Okay.’’

  ‘’Tomorrow morning we’ll make a campfire and you will cycle fire and dreams. Even broken, those cores of yours should be able to do it.’’

  Chen’en kept talking, making plans for the future that Yin agreed to. When she was finally done she allowed him to do as he pleased until nightfall, she wandered back to the bunker with his fathers remnant in tow.

  Yin quickly looted a ruined house for a knife and a good box, then found a dreadbeast to carve into. Its flesh split easily and digging its physical organs out was easy, it only took him minutes to find the pale spiritual knot inside it. It’s corrupted madra binding. Hunger.

  He cut it out and placed it in the box, then spent a minute slowly drawing a preservation script with the small reserves of madra he could spare. Then he went looting again for a backpack and some preserved foods.

  Next he needed a few more things, he sought out the houses of the few golds in the village, skipping the ones where people were still alive. Ignoring dirty looks he scavenged some coins of forged madra, scales, and then finally made his way back to his own house.

  Carefully going through his room he took his journal, script books, some manuals Yeng had given him on martial arts forms and then he went to his parents room. Messy as always, just the way Yin liked it because it meant he knew where everything in there was. In his fathers drawers he found a soulcrafted armament, too powerful by far for Yin to use but worth plenty to trade. And in his mothers drawers he found the secret compartment, sealed by inexpert scripts that Yin had spent more than a year figuring out how to undo.

  Inside was a bag of gold level scales of a few different elements, most notable to Yin were the dream scales. Her nest egg for advancement if she finally decided to take the next step and come back to her family. The dream scales would be great for Yin in the future, and the life ones would be traded for other resources.

  He took the time to repack his bag and add some clothes for the road. It was earlier than he’d planned to leave but he couldn’t stay another minute in the hellhole he’d grown up in.

  Stepping out of his house he was greeted by Ten and Ti Li. The older girl had advanced to gold, the sign a row of finger length ethereal blades that framed her face. ‘’Where you going?’’ She asked roughly, holding her little sister's hand.

  Yin thought for a moment before grinning at her painfully, ripping the wound over his nose again. ‘’I’m gonna go give thanks to the monarch.’’

  Ten grunted and picked her sister up, hitching a pained breath as she bent. Yin was almost certain that the girl had murdered her father to get his remnant. His own family was far from the only one that was severely messed up out here.

  She followed Yin as he left on the road towards the larger, more prosperous town a day's walk downhill. He looked her over as she sometimes staggered beside him. ‘’You didn’t bring anything with you?’’

  She glared at him and her free hand brushed over her chest, or rather the necklace hanging there.

  A void key. Out here of all places? And Ten of all people was the one who had it? Unfair. Unreasonable even, that thing should belong to Yin. How could he possibly be so unlucky that none of the houses he’d checked had one either?

  He couldn’t remember how rare they were, the larger factions seemed to have plenty of the things in supply. Some of them had to trickle down to the masses. But whatever, Yin would have plenty of time to get his own later.

  As soon as he could get his hands on a clever little dream spirit he’d take the first steps on his paths.

  The Devouring Mind would be fun to find the limits of.