Tragedy, for all its horrors, binds people together.

  There’s solace to be found in shared suffering, it is painful, but it can be painful together. To lean on a shoulder, if only for a brief moment, is such a blessing. The gods may not care for the plights of humanity, but always we have each other, ready to stand a sentinel to our tears.

  Tantra doesn’t think she’s suffered overmuch over the course of her life, sure she knows grief, and understands the cruelty of the world, but beauty blooms in the strangest of places. Here, as she sits among mortals, sharing a drink over a broken table, she understands the beauty in community.

  “Fuck cultivators!” one of the mortals exclaims with fervent joy, and is met with cheers from little over half a dozen others as they drain a barrel of its wine. Tantra joins in the reverie, raising her mug high and cursing a culture she’s been embedded in for the later part of her childhood. It feels good to get it out there, good to let her feelings free with the flow of wine.

  She doesn’t normally drink, but the occasion felt appropriate. The kind of gathering where the survivors celebrate the fact they are alive, and mourn the ones who aren’t. There’s a strange kind of reverence here for the dead, almost a wish, that their next cycle might be one filled with bounty.

  Synthia’s sleeping off in a corner, reduced to a drunken mess as she tried to keep pace with Tantra’s enhanced biology. She’s pretty sure she's the only one present who’s still sound of mind, all the others inundated with their slurring and laughing and crying.

  The moment is almost transcendent, and Tantra does her best to sear it deep into her mind, so that she may never forget these faces. Taking another grand swig of her mug, it doesn’t escape Tantra’s ears when the door to the dilapidated bar creaks open.

  “Well damn, really are taking advantage of the chaos are we?” A cultivator with brown robes alongside a red sash says, “what would the poor owner think if he saw his bar being ransacked?”

  A deep silence overtakes the small gathering as they each turn to look at the man, he brushes off some dried blood and walks towards them. He’s of a leaner persuasion than most walkers of the path, with a sharp chin and soft eyes.

  Those eyes hold nothing resembling kindness in them as he looks them over, jian tapping on his shoulder, a casual gesture of implicit violence.

  “Well?” he says, “you all were celebrating quite loudly just a moment earlier, what happened? Is my presence really such a bitter thing to taste? Truly, I’m insulted.”

  “We mean no offence honoured one,” Tantra says carefully, “these ones were simply draining our sorrows in wine, and considering the circumstances, is it really a surprise that we might be afraid?”

  The table shifts slightly at her words, distancing themselves from the one who dared to speak, but silence would lead to nowhere but death.

  And this way he’s focusing on her, rather than the vulnerable mortals.

  She doesn’t know his cultivation, she isn’t so far with her senses that she could casually discern such a thing, but the slight smell that graces her nose is the distinct flavour of mint.

  So, no dao.

  But the fact her lacking senses could pick up his ambient Qi means he’s likely anchored, she watches every motion with the precision of a viper as the man sits next to her by the table as a mortal scurries from his seat.

  “Fetch me a drink won’t you?” the man says, “this one is tired, and could use some well deserved wine, wouldn’t you say?”

  Tantra bows, “of course honoured one.”

  She gets up, and carefully walks to the counter, sourcing a mug and filling it with wine from one of the barrels, letting the liquid slosh in her grasp as she shuts off the spigot. She walks back to the table and hands the bemused cultivator his wine, sitting back down with careful precision as he eyes her.

  He takes a sip of his drink and lets out a contented sigh.

  “So,” he says, “what’s a cultivator doing dressed like and fraternizing amongst mortals? I expected to see much during this war but this is certainly a novelty.”

  Tantra freezes as her own drink touches her lips, she sets it down and stares at the man, reevaluating.

  “I want nothing to do with this war,” she says simply, “all this death serves no purpose beyond chaos.”

  “A cultivator who doesn’t want to fight?” he raises a brow, “you can’t be a coward, you’ve gotten a dao too early for that, just an idealist then?”

  “Perhaps some would describe me that way, depending on how loosely they stretch the definition.”

  The cultivator hums as he taps his jian against his shoulder, a simple sword with no scripts to mark its steel.

  He must be very confident in his swordsmanship.

  “Well, you’re still young, plenty of time to correct that,” he finally says taking another swig of his drink, “but I don’t think I’ll be the one to disabuse you of the notion that you have a choice, too much fighting today you see, it’s become a little bitter in my mouth. Help me wash it out with some wine?”

  Tantra nods slowly and takes a sip from her mug.

  -

  Navigating an active battlefield while carrying an unconscious drunk isn’t Tantra’s idea of a good time.

  Ideally she’d just go straight north to the slums, but too many streets are filled with cultivators fighting pointless battles, meaning she has to settle for minimal progress over the course of hours. She'd be half way there if she could just walk in a straight godsdamned line, instead she’s barely made any progress at all, weaving between groups of peasantry trying to escape the violence.

  There’s a lot of that, the disciples may not be as devastatingly powerful as the immortals but there are hundreds of thousands to mark each of the great sects, a fraction of which have decided to descend upon the city in wanton slaughter.

  It isn’t anything coordinated, not yet, just small groups hunting one another dead. Tantra hopes it stays that way, but she has a feeling the elders of each respective sect don’t simply wish for a light slaughter to descend upon their rivals, so she has no doubt a more coordinated effort will be organized.

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  It’s funny, she’s witnessing the descent of her home and she honestly can’t muster anything other than sheer bafflement, like the whole worlds gone mad over the course of just a few days, filling once bustling streets with the corpses of peasants and cultivators alike.

  Shouldn’t she be horrified? This is a break of the status quo in the most violent of fashions, and she’s been a witness to more than a few gruesome deaths, so why doesn’t she feel anything?

  This is all just so…hard to internalize.

  So she just keeps walking, finding whatever paths she can while the sound of clashing blades and pained screams fill the air with the melody of pointless violence, carrying a shitfaced noblewoman in her arms all the while.

  Who knows, maybe she could get a minstrel to make a comedy out of this disaster. It’s an errant thought, one that makes her chuckle a little despite herself, a few of the fleeing heads turned to her with a kind of bafflement that’s mixed between indignation and confusion.

  There are a few who give her looks of sympathy.

  She appreciates those with a slight nod as she keeps with the flow of the fleeing, walking over cold cobble and warm bodies, it’s so surreal that Tantra almost missed the cultivator that comes crashing down towards her.

  Tantra takes a quick step back as the body indents the floor, it’s a woman, with long white hair to match the trim of her teal robes. She gets on a knee and growls, and it sounds like the howl of winter before dashing back into the battle, pushing aside multiple commoners in her pursuit.

  Tantra, on the verge of summoning her weapon, lets out a sigh of relief as she looks down at the unconscious Synthia. Her face is scrunched in a kind of incredulous expression, like she’s contemplating some grand equation, and Tantra gives the noblewoman a soft smile. Lucky she hasn’t been forced into combat, she’s not sure how effective she’d be as a protector without Ezra.

  Ezra…she hopes he’s still alive, but those hopes are not high.

  Shame, he was a pretty cool dude, got into more than a few conversations on cultivation theory with him. He’s the reason she could even put together the proper intent to get her scales technique to work-

  Wait, her scales technique, did she forget to use her only defensive technique when a hail of arrows blotted out the sun?

  Yes, yes she did.

  Fuck that’s embarrassing.

  She literally can’t hold back the heat that travels to her face at the thought of such a stupid mistake and promptly tries to divert her thinking elsewhere. Like her heart, that’s an interesting topic to explore, especially with how it’s been changing as she forces it to beat faster.

  It’s been adapting, each beat marginally stronger while still maintaining speed, which…shouldn’t be possible. It’s minute, she can only sense it because of her new awareness of the organ; it's less than even a tenth of a percentile. But she knows from her extensive studies on biology that such a thing shouldn’t be possible. The heart can’t beat powerfully and fast at the same time, it simply doesn’t have time to collect blood to be the former when it is the latter

  It’s like there’s a suction, instead of blood pooling into her atriums it’s being pulled. Which makes no sense, there are no muscles in the entire vasculature system that are capable of such a feat, yet it is happening. Not even by her own volition, like it simply knows, it’s almost like a new path.

  This, of course, is a good thing; the more blood she can collect she can shunt it off safely, increasing the rate of her heartbeat just a little. It really is small though, perhaps at this rate she’d be able to run her heart at double its maximum without going into shock within a year or two. That unfortunately doesn’t help in the short term, but it's something to look forward to once they escape.

  Silver linings.

  -

  Kisrin blinks.

  He does it again.

  What a novelty, to close one's eyes for just a moment, he doesn’t think anyone truly appreciates the blink. It moisturizes the eyes apparently, he doesn’t remember when he learned that tidbit, doesn’t remember a lot actually. You’ll have to forgive him, his brain’s a little bit of a mess at the moment, little skull-shards poking at his lobes.

  Not the funnest of times, but he didn’t exactly have a say in the matter when a pair of nunchucks crashed into his head. Still, it’s made him appreciate the little things in life, like silence. Silence is such a sweet noise, absence condensed into a sound, or more accurately the lack of a sound.

  Ah, well, who’s here to correct him anyway.

  Kisrin blinks.

  Ah, he’s alone, isn’t that sad? Where did his friends go he wonders? he hopes they’re still alive, that would be nice. Hard to find them underneath all this wood, but hey, he’ll get out eventually.

  Once he can muster the strength.

  Fuck he’s hungry, and thirsty, sustaining oneself on Qi is possible, but that’s a thing beyond Kisrin’s meager understanding. He doesn’t know how long it’s been, so he measures time by how parched his throat is, probably about eight days? Maybe? Depends on how long he’s spent sleeping honestly, he’s been doing a lot of that to pass the time.

  Well, that and threading, he kinda slacked on it once he got to three threads. Which might have been a mistake considering how strong Tantra is, but he preferred to spend his time training with Roa, the master Synthia provided was no slouch.

  Besides, if Tantra doesn’t use her fancy new dao, he’s plenty strong enough to be her equal.

  Kisrin blinks.

  Damn he misses Tantra, a lot nicer company than the buried corpses that surround him, that’s for sure. He should really ask her out, it’s been years of him pussyfooting around the subject. Not very cultivatory, not at all.

  Pretty cowardly honestly.

  Maybe severe brain damage will actually get him to say his feelings, wouldn’t that be a thought? Nah, she’s busy training Erick and cultivating, might as well wait till they get back to the sect.

  It’s all about timing you see.

  Not that Kisrin knows shit about that.

  He lets out a slight chuckle as his eyes droop, ah fuck, he’s laughing.

  That’s not a good sign, laughing while in horrendous circumstances is a great way to measure insanity, and Kisrin doesn’t want to be insane. He’s much too comfortable in contemporary society to start acting like a lunatic, is that what happens to older cultivators? They go through enough that eventually they break in their own special little ways, and all those surrounding them get to suffer as a result.

  Seems like a bad deal to him, but he’s not a merchant so who knows.

  Kisrin blinks.

  He can hear something, people talking, debris shuffling.

  Is he about to be saved?

  That would be nice, he’d like that.

  It’s lonely down here, and dark, and so very quiet.

  So he holds unto the voices like a precious jewel as wood is lifted and light slowly pours into his humble abode, the weight of buildings lifted off his shoulders. Kisrin looks up at his saviour(s) and is…confused.

  There’s no one there.

  Kisrin blinks.

  He can still hear the talking, but now that he notices, he can’t really hear what they’re saying. Not from lack of understanding but…like they’re too far away, despite being right there. Kisrin looks up and finds that all the debris that buried him is floating.

  “Hello?” Kisrin says to the empty air.

  The chatter stops, and suddenly Kisrin can feel the burning weight of so many eyes.

  “Hello Kisrin”

  again, I'll be posting on a M-W-F schedule until...idk, until my backlogs big enough where I can comfortably do daily chaps? If it can maintain quality of course.