Deadtired

A market which we'd set, of course. How many outsiders did the dwarves trade with? It couldn't be many, not when they were sequestered to their caves and had the Mantis Queen atop them. The Mantis Queen whose organisation was being helped by the Jade Throne.

Did the throne want to keep the dwarves down? That would make a fair amount of sense. The Jade Throne struck me as somewhat... xenophobic. The average cultivator seemed to be able to get away with some strangeness, but they were very much an exception.

I escorted the two dwarves to the entrance we used to enter the Mantis Queen's sanctum, then I sent them off with an escort of undead mantises. I figured that their testimony combined with the presence of the undead should be enough to convince the dwarves that I was quite serious.

Which only left me with a few more challenges.

"Bringing all of these people back will be... hard hard," Cinder said as I approached.

The cultivators still didn't look pleased to be tied up against their will. How unfortunate for them. "Yes, I suppose that dragging them all the way back will be a pain."

"They will try to escape," she said with certainty. "It's in their nature to see honour as something others owe to them and not something they must suffer for themselves."

Well, that was a little biting, wasn't it? "How about I propose an alternative, then?" I asked. "I can open a portal from here to Shitake City. In fact, I can open it right into the sect headquarter's lobby."

Cinder blinked. "Because you have been there before?"

"That does make it easier, yes," I replied.

She eyed me with some suspicion. "There will be some outer disciples and a few inner disciples guarding the location already. And there are cells for miscreants. Not this many, however. It will be... tight tight."

"They'll live," I assured her.

Cinder glanced over to the mantises. Mem, with Alex's and Rem's help, had corralled all of her sisters and a few smaller brothers into the far end of the throne room. There were perhaps sixty or seventy mantises there, and not one of them looked happy. Some seemed fearful and nervous, but when fear was the most positive emotion going around, that usually meant that things weren't ideal.

At the same time, Mem was explaining things. Or... telling a story about a dog she'd met? I suspect that it had started as an analogy and Mem lost the plot along the way at some point.

Cinder nodded. "I trust you have a plan for them that isn't leaving them all in Shitake?"

"I imagine the city wouldn't appreciate the sudden influx of imbecilic carnivorous mantis-people?" I asked. "No, I won't be sending them that way. I'll create a second portal, to Yu Xiang. The Limpet needs to learn how to handle some amount of... difficulty."

"I thought you were doing this in part to help her? The Ashen Forest will likely be very amenable moving forwards."

"Why, of course. But the best help a mentor can provide sometimes is an impossibly difficult challenge. Giving her too much without sticking some sticks in her wheels is just no good for her growth."

Cinder chuckled dryly. "I see, I see. I think I had some teachers with the same attitude. Learn or burn."

"Exactly. No one becomes powerful without some adversity!"

Actually, that was a bald-faced lie. Plenty of people gained power through circumstance and nepotism. It was just how the world worked. Fortunately, my face was bald by default.

"Alex, could you assist me for a moment. I believe I'll open the portal to Shitake first. I'd like a cleared, well-lit area to open it within."

"I can do that, Bone Daddy," Alex agreed. The broom was given to Rem, who clutched it awkwardly close to her body. Then Alex helped by moving a few lamps around, clearing out some room on the ground by the throne, and ensuring that no one was too close. "Do you need help with anything else?"

"Ah, yes," I said. I fished in my pocket for an empty bag. It was a small pouch with a wide mouth. "Do loot the place, please? Keep an eye open for anything cursed."

Alex grinned, and it seemed that even a maid wasn't immune to the fun of looting.

* * *

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Chapter Thirty-Three — Frosty Friends

Chapter Thirty-Three — Frosty Friends

Elder Frost had been poised and standing tall since... well, she couldn't quite remember. A couple of decades, at least. When was the last time she'd bowed her back and allowed herself a moment of indignity?

Her role was as one of the Elders of the Ashen Forest sect. It was a role she'd earned through sweat and blood some thirty years ago, and it was one she clung onto. She wasn't the eldest of the elders, quite the opposite. She wasn't the strongest, or the most experienced.

What she was, she found, was the elder of the sect with the greatest connection to the mortal world.

Perhaps in a century that would change, but for now, her links to the... 'real' world were as solid as anything.

She knew what the people of Shiitake needed, what they faced, the enemy that they fought and the troubles they suffered. She'd been one of them.

A century ago, when the city was much smaller than it was now, less successful and secure, she'd been a young woman with no prospects, doing her best to find her place in this world.

The Ashen Forest had taken her in, given her a home. She'd trained, been hurt, trained harder, had discovered that the home, the people she'd fallen in love with, were the mistreated runts of the cultivation world, under constant siege and uncared for by the greater empire of man. She'd trained more.

Now she was in a position to do something.

Even if that something was so dangerous it made her core flinch at the mere thought of it.

Allying herself, her sect, with an enemy of the Jade Throne? It wasn't mere treason, it was heresy. It was spitting in the face of the emperor and hoping to get away with it.

Then again, the emperor had spat in the face of the Ashen Forest plenty of times and had consistently gotten away with it. Maybe this was imperial karma at work.

She landed on the roof of the Ashen Forest sect headquarters in Shiitake and allowed herself a faint sigh, one swallowed by the mask covering her face. It stung, sometimes, when she exhaled too hard.

Her face, her true face under the layers of skin-tight wraps and masks, was a mess of burns and scars and the long-lingering side-effects of a life spent cultivating with poisons and vile things. She was one of the least disfigured of the elders. She still had all of her limbs and could walk without stooping if she chose.

Sacrifices were a thing she knew well.

An outer disciple was waiting for her, and she knew the moment she saw his eyes through the lenses of his goggles that something was wrong. "What is it, child?" she asked.

"Elder Frost," he said, voice made hollow by his mask. The newer generation didn't know how good they had it with more modern equipment. Rebreathers, air-tanks, filtration units. All fit into small pouches and backpacks.

In her day, if a cultivator wanted to be safe in the most dangerous parts of the Ashen Forest, they needed to carry a veritable chest of safety gear on their backs. It weighed three times more than a man and clanked with every motion.

It was no wonder they'd been the laughing stock of other, more refined sects. Now their disciples were... still overly equipped compared to others, but it was more demure, more subtle.

But no less dangerous.

Elder Frost herself could poison a small town with so little poison that it would fit neatly in the eyehole of a needle. Their methods might have been considered uncivilised, but a lack of civility didn't make one any less dangerous.

Ah, to go back to her youth and the days where she was the reviled and hated underdog of so many tournaments.

Not to mention all of those handsome cultivators very eager to find out what was under all that gear.

She refocused on the moment. "There is something amiss," she said. It was declaration and question, both.

"Cultivator Cinder has returned," the outer disciple said.

Elder Frost felt her back stiffen. Had they been betrayed? "With or without her... guest?" she asked.

"Guest? Ma'am, she's returned with twenty-seven cultivators from the west," the disciple said.

Had Cinder betrayed them? No. No, her Cinder was many things, and most of all, she was loyal to the Ashen Forest. "Cultivators?" she asked, pushing the disciple to answer. He was beating around the bush. Back in her day a young cultivator knew to get to the heart of the matter!

"Who are these cultivators?" she snapped.

The outer disciple jumped a little, her ire clearly whipping him into action. "Two from the Cloud Gate sect, one from Wind Gate sect, three from the various Jade sects. One from the Jade Golem, four from Flowing Path sect, three from Flame's Heart sect-"

She raised a hand, pausing him mid-recital. "You've named at least one sect in every province. Where are they from?"

"Lady Cultivator Cinder and her... companions captured them in the mantis nests. They were... helping the mantises? She wishes to speak with you."

He could have led with that! With a huff, Elder Frost stomped past the outer disciple... but not before giving him a little piece of candy.

It was poisoned, of course, but the poison was weak and it would help him purify his meridians if he meditated on its effects and worked to cleanse it out of himself.

She made her way down a floor, then another, then yet another. It didn't surprise her overly much to find that all of the disciples here, few as they were, were in a bit of a tizzy. There were now more cultivators in their dungeon than they had stationed here at even the busiest time of the year.

Fortunately, she discovered Soot and Cinder in the lobby, both of them conspicuously close to the corridor entrance leading into the dungeons. "Sect Elder Frost," Cinder said as she stood to bow.

The Elder paused, then bowed slightly herself. "Cinder. It's good to see you well."

Cinder did seem fine. A few scuffs, some new scrapes on her gear. Her clothes had been changed, of course, but she couldn't hide the faint signs that she'd been in combat from the Elder's eyes. "I am well well well," Cinder replied easily. "I've brought... a gift? Though perhaps it's more work than anything."

"I've heard," the Elder replied. "Prisoners?"

"Hostages," Cinder confirmed. "I don't think we can keep them. They've been stripped of their treasures and valuables and changed into... whatever the outer disciples could find on such short notice that would preserve their dignity."

Oh, she'd pay to see this. A bunch of little sect darlings dressed in commoner garb. How their pride must sting. "How did it go?" she asked. It was a loaded question, she supposed, but also, she had to know.

Cinder smiled. It wasn't visible in her mouth, but in the slight upturn in the corner of her eyes. "He's powerful. Dangerously so. But our old foe is... gone. Some dead, others recruited into his cause."

"His cause?" Soot asked.

Cinder nodded. "The child he is training, his apprentice, the Limpet?"

Elder Frost nodded. She'd read the reports. Being the elder who listened to the people didn't only mean sympathizing. It meant listening to merchants prattle, to the talk in bars, to concerns and the underlying message beneath.

A whole city in the clutches of a young lady who was no more than twenty. A child. Not a cultivator, but a powerful witch, a strong necromancer, a goddess made flesh.

Just because Elder Frost listened didn't mean what she heard was unbiased and not exaggerated. She knew to ignore most of it and to try and discern fact from patterns. The undead lord, Harold, had an apprentice of sorts, the Limpet, a young lady that was now in charge of an entire city, albeit a smaller one.

"The mantises are being moved there?" Elder Frost asked. "By the same means you've snuck into the city?"

She would have known about twenty-odd cultivators moving through the city, especially loud, imprisoned cultivators.

"Lord Harold created a... portal. A hole in the world leading into the lobby," Cinder replied.

"Scared the lot of us here," Soot replied.

"I can imagine," Elder Frost replied. That was the kind of magic reserved for only the most powerful members of the Jade Throne and perhaps the Elder cultivators of some of the larger, more powerful sects. "How are our hostages doing, at the moment?"

"They're whining," Cinder said. "Prison is unbecoming of them, and they have much to complain about. In their opinion our every gesture of compassion and kindness is a slight. Not prostrating ourselves to them and giving them all we have is a grave insult."

"So the usual for young hotheads, then," Elder Frost said.

Cinder nodded. "Yes. It's those who are being quiet and watchful that worry me most. It might be that some of them were with the mantises for more than just punishment."

"I see," she said.

My, this Lord Harold of theirs was turning out to be quite the ally, giving her such headaches already.

* * *

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Chapter Thirty-Four — Motherly Mem

Chapter Thirty-Four — Motherly Mem

Mem was having what she suspected was a very bad day. She wasn't entirely sure yet, though. She had had many days that weren't nice, and while today was certainly not a fun day, she wasn't sure if it was the worst of the days she'd ever had.

But it wasn't a very good day.

"Come on, let's go, let's go!" Pep said. She was the smallest of Mem's siblings here, no taller than a human's hip, and she was bouncing up and down next to the swirling portal ahead.

Mem's other sisters weren't nearly so nice. All she got from the rest were snide comments, mean remarks, lots of threats, and they were generally not very helpful.

Mem had never been a leader before, let alone an officer, she wasn't used to giving orders and her sisters weren't used to following them either.

Mister Harold wanted them through the portal in 'good order' which meant without stabbing each other on the way through or without any panicking because someone forgot something.

So Mem had had everyone of her sisters gather their things into little bags that Alex had rustled up for them. Once everyone had finished fighting everyone else for the choicest things, they were told to gather in the big throne-room like hall.

Only about half of them showed up, so Mem had to go searching for the rest. Some were just not very fast about things, like her sister Slo who moved as if she was always waiting in ambush, others couldn't remember where their stuff was.

Mem had spent an hour with For who couldn't remember where she had put things.