Tantra stares at the ceiling.

  She got one of the manors rooms to herself with little protest, the peasants practically worshiping the ground she walks. She doesn’t like that, she just wanted to find her friends, but she doesn’t have the courage to tell them that. Well, she’s found them, all the ones that are alive at least, Etra made it just a day ago, alongside all the kids.

  Tantra’s surprised considering the chaos taking place outside.

  The manor has become a kind of…safe area?

  The disciples and immortals seemingly agreeing not to take their fighting here, letting the slow trickle of peasants from the ruined city make their way to safety. It’s a small mercy, considering everywhere else is fair game, but it’s a mercy nonetheless.

  Half the city’s on fire, so there’s that.

  Apparently one of the sects is a little obsessed with the dao of flame, or one of its counterparts, so there’s been a lot of smoke going around lately. A lot of corpses too surely but who’s counting?

  There’s little under fifty million people living in Ralth’s walls, plenty of which she assumes fled once the first four immortals started their battle, but plenty also stayed, each for their own reasons that she hasn’t bothered to ask for. Though she knows there’s no exiting the city through the slums except through smuggling, so they at least have that excuse. Tantra isn’t really being fair but neither is life so she doesn’t particularly care.

  Uai Ta isn’t around, probably busy with saving people in the city or hunting down immortals with Banzan. When Tantra asked why she doesn’t do it herself she simply scoffed and proclaimed with unusual pride that she would surely die, apparently her daos don’t really lend themselves to combat, but she is a magnificent healer, probably the best in all of Rikidan, rumored to be capable of bringing the dead back to life.

  If they found Kisrin’s corpse, could she bring him back?

  Maybe, maybe not.

  That of course works under the assumption that he wasn’t cremated by the fire, and wouldn’t that just be unfortunate? Wouldn’t surprise her though, this whole thing’s a mess on top of another mess. Immortals brought here to help instead burning this city to the ground. Is this what life would be like if the sects had their way? Just rampant chaos?

  Yeah probably.

  The door to her room opens, and Tantra looks down to find a man of matte gray eyes and off-white robes. Tantra assumes that the robe covers a myriad of injuries as the man limps to her bedside and takes a seat. Some cultivators are like that, refusing to be healed with Qi so that they may gain even that miniscule amount of strength.

  “Glad to see that you’re alive,” says the musical note of a swishing blade as the man smiles at her.

  “You too Zon,” Tantra says back.

  They lapse into a moment of silence after that, Tantra not really being in the mood for conversation. It is nice to see that he’s alive though, that lightens her spirits just a bit, not enough, but a bit. She keeps staring at the roof as Zon gives her a kind of sympathetic expression.

  “You know,” he starts, “I had a lover once, came from the same sect, went on the same journeys, her name was Ray, and I loved her so very much.”

  Tantra looks down at Zon again, so he talked with the others?

  Great.

  “Me and Kisrin weren’t that close,” Tantra says.

  “Yeah, but you were getting there, so the comparison still works.”

  Tantra huffs, she doubts they would have actually gotten together, Tantra’s too scared of proper relationships.

  “Anyway, back to the story, you probably know how it ends but let me just embellish a bit.

  Ray was better with the Katana than I was, a lot better, but I excelled in Qi techniques, so we helped each other out while traveling the Many Isles. Met a few monsters disguised as people, killed a few monsters disguised as people. Fed a village or two with our catches, and even trained up some munchkins who’re probably still roaming the Isles if they aren’t dead. Spent a lot of time together, so we thought we’d try for a kid when we hit our mid twenties.”

  Zon lapses into silence and looks at the wall with a sad smile.

  “How did she die?” Tantra says softly.

  “Spirit beast, we overestimated our abilities, or underestimated its, who knows.” Zon shrugs “When she was gone I was…lost, just wandering the isles looking for a fight that could kill me, it’s when I got my second dao funnily enough. That was just over fifty four years ago now, still hurts to think about.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tantra says, “but I don’t get how this is supposed to make me feel better,”

  “It’s not,” Zon says bluntly, “It’ll hurt, it’ll keep hurting to the end of your days, but the pain gets easier to bear as time passes, and eventually you’ll find yourself able to think beyond the grief.”

  “That feels so far away.”

  “That’s because it is,” Zon says, “that’s because it is.”

  -

  A heart beats.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Muscle contracts at the behest of electrical impulse, sending a stream of haemoglobin through an intricate ensemble of vessels. Then…a moment of relaxation, to blood both used and fresh to pool in their respective chambers before the cycle repeats, over and over again.

  This is what a heart is, at its most fundamental, and she can feel every inch as she dives deeper into the strange awareness her dao has given her. She modifies the speed and sees the difference, how powerful it beats when it is slow, how rushed it stutters when it is fast. What can she do with this beyond what she already has?

  Every dao is broad in application, and this is a dao focused on the body, so surely there is something for her to work with. She tried using soul Qi with her other techniques and got…interesting results.

  Scales has a pulsating aura that follows her heart beat, stronger when it is beating and weaker when it is resting. She still has to test if it’s stronger than her normal use of the technique before she determines if that’s a useful application or not.

  Regeneration is simpler, she just heals, and she heals faster according to her measurements with the bone jian, but it’s also…strange. What takes the place of the site of injury is what looks like cardiac muscle, before eventually morphing back to its original composure. Strange indeed, but it does close the wounds, and it reverts eventually so she just has to be careful when healing things like her lungs or brain.

  She’s still incapable of rejuvenation, unable to connect to her soul with the strand of Qi required, but there is a fourth technique she’s taken an interest in, if only because it seems to harmonize with her dao.

  Drum is a technique that seemed useless at first, and indeed, without infusion it still is (unless she wants to convert to pugilism) but it follows the philosophy of her dao almost exactly. It’s charged strikes rather than a constant boost in power, repeating at a cadence of the users choosing, the slower the harder, and, conveniently, stronger. When she put the technique to task with her dao her fist was capable of punching straight through the thick stone of the manner like it were paper.

  It’s just about timing, which is difficult because a fight won’t wait for her rhythm, and hitting at the wrong time would be like hitting with no Qi at all.

  She could harmonize it with her heart, but she’d have to slow it down to…twenty beats per minute? That’s about the time it takes to gather the Qi needed for her more devastating strike, but it also seems like that’s not really the point of the technique, hence the name. It’s better with consistent rhythmic blows, but…that would make Tantra predictable, and besides the part that her dao resonates with is making it stronger when it’s slower, so she’s just going to co-opt it into that instead.

  That means she’d need to fight for three full seconds, and if she misses the window the Qi is just gone, but if she can infuse her weapon then…well she’d be capable of beating opponents a lot stronger than the ones in her grasp now.

  She’s perused her technique manuals but found nothing else that could match with her dao at first glance, so she’s just working on the second control exercise now. She needs more control if she wants to use more than just serpent’s circulation at once, she only has a hundred and five minor meridians, not nearly enough to easily transport her Qi across her body.

  So she needs more control to get stronger.

  And she needs to be stronger.

  So she gets to work, humming a sad tune as she pushes Qi through her core.

  -

  He stands, staring down at his own corpse.

  It’s so mangled it doesn’t really resemble anything human anymore, more like a collection of muscle and bone all pulped into a pile. His organs have burst, so there’s that interesting tidbit, he didn’t know intestines could do that, but even in death there is knowledge to glean it seems. The honourable cultivator responsible didn’t seem to care all that much about giving a clean death, more focused on his battle to worry for the presentation of the collateral. Though his death was quite dramatic, bursting internally from some supersonic sound technique, his screaming overpowered by the cursed noise. Funny, that actually brings some measure of comfort to his chest, is it an honor to be killed by a cultivator? Not really, but at least he wasn’t cut down like chaff.

  He didn’t think he was that vain, but there’s nobody here to critique him.

  Nobody but the phantoms.

  They’re gathered here, all staring down at their respective corpses, probably with their own unique internal monologues to keep them company. He can’t communicate, he’s just a wisp of what was, all he can do is watch and think. He gets the feeling the others aren’t very conversational anyway, which is fair, it’s hard to strike up a conversation when you’re floating atop your own corpse. So it’s just him and this makeshift graveyard that was once a street, all lamenting something they couldn’t have possibly controlled.

  Some of them turn into something else, something malevolent, going to add unto the disaster in what he assumes is some impotent bid at revenge. It’s a sad thing to witness, that many in the end would choose that path, but he doesn’t really care to blame them. After all, they’re all just the victims of titans, unfortunate enough to be in the crossfire of their rampage. It’s a shame really, he didn’t want to die, but he was only mortal, and do they really get to choose when the end comes?

  No, no they don’t.

  He’s learned something important in death, some fundamental truth that shines like a beacon in the chaos of this city. Their lives aren’t theirs to control, resting in the palm of beings unfathomable, it’s only through their mercy that mortals get to experience life. Only through the Emperor's laws and the Sentinel’s vigil were they given the peace required to live. But when that mercy is taken away? Well, look around, the city burns as corpses pile the streets, the weeping and the screaming overtaken only by the clashing of blades and burning of buildings. You get things like what his corpse has become, and isn’t that just a shame? A whole life reduced to impotent biology, blown out like a fragile flame, memories made obsolete in the face of the end.

  Who still lives that would remember him? His family perhaps, last he saw they were still alive, but once they return to the cycle anything that marked his existence would be…gone. He’s lucky really, one of the few who gets to contemplate all this philosophical bullshit before being wiped from existence, a little send off before returning to the cycle. He’ll reenter it soon, just a few more days and the sorrow that sustains him will smolder like dying embers, and like a bad stain, everything that he was will be washed away.

  Should he be sad about that? Probably.

  Instead he’s just resigned, there’s nothing he could have done differently that would have changed the outcome. How is a mortal expected to survive the rampage done by things so far above them? One like him could only have survived through the workings of fate, which clearly wasn’t on his side, and isn’t that just a crying shame? He hopes his daughters survive, it would be a cruelty if they weren’t given the chance at a full life.

  Aaah…

  if only he could see their faces one last time.