Cassandra Pendragon
Watching Reia and Lamia fool around with Baihe and Mei put a smile on my face. The four girls had quickly become bored listening to an almost unending sermon of explanations and introductions. They had decided to become friends on the spot and sneak out the door the first chance they had gotten. Now they were frolicking in an icy tributary of the valley's river I could see through a window, a few hundred paces away, entirely oblivious to the sheets of frozen snow the rushing waters carried down from the summit. Reia was about as sensitive to cold as I was to magic, Lamia was a phoenix and Baihe a spiritual dragon with scales of the finest jade. For the three of them it probably felt like a refreshing bath and Mei was powerful enough to keep herself from freezing through sheer willpower alone. While I listened enviously to their carefree, distant laughter, I couldn't quite prevent my ears from drooping. Truth be told, I'd have joined them in an instant, if I had had the choice.
Unfortunately I couldn't simply walk out the door, considering I was the main reason behind this little gathering. Against all customs I was even seated at the head of the table in the main hall of the Ice Jade Sect. Usually the honour would have been Lin's, but the blue haired sect master had insisted and was now leisurely sipping on a cup of herbal tea to my right, her dragon safely hidden in her soul. I wrinkled my nose when she blew on the steaming liquid and a taste, that reminded me strongly of coca leafs, entered my mouth. With a smirk she winked and pushed the cup in my direction, but I could only shake my head. Even in my last life I hadn't liked the bitter taste and the effect would have been wasted on me either way.
On her other side, her brother, father and a… no nice way of putting it, unbelievably fat, flabby mountain of a bald woman with rosy cheeks, who had introduced herself as the third elder, tasked with keeping an eye on the unbound spirit beasts, sat silently, their eyes glued to Constantine who was about halfway through his explanation of how we had met. A few days ago, mind you, not in the distant past.
On my other side, Viyara, Lamia's mom and Constantine's four… damn it, I still didn't know what those girls were to him. On first glance I had thought they were his harem, but I had never caught them in anything resembling tenderness. Never mind a kiss, as far as I knew they hadn't even held hands. I knew how conservative eastern cultures were in that regard, and the Immortal Lands reminded me of China more than anything else, but that was just a tad too much to take their relationship for a romantic one. Maybe they were his students?
The adult phoenix looked just like she had, when I had crashed her party in Shanghai. A beautiful woman with delicate, asian features and fiery red hair. Only her demeanour had changed slightly. She still held her head up high, but the spark of superiority she had displayed on Earth was gone, replaced by something I couldn't quite discern. Oh well, considering it had been my immortal siblings who had used her blood to fix Lamia, a lesson in humility had probably been included, free of charge. It still didn't explain why I had wanted her here, though.
Her relationship with her daughter was, by no stretch of the imagination, my business and I had always expected to be done with her, once Lamia had been cured. What she had done on Earth was also not for me to judge. She'd have to hush it out with Anna and her coven at one point, but I wasn't planning on getting involved there, either. So why… the threadbare connections I had cobbled together in the bath were maybe enough to explain why I felt like I'd have to enter the seed, sooner or later, but it definitely wasn't a reason to have a plain old phoenix, who had done nothing, but piss me off, around. Damn it, once done here, I'd have to have a chat with her, even though I really didn't feel like it. With a quiet sigh I tore my gaze away from the mesmerising patterns the sinking sun painted on Lin's hair and focused on Constantine's smooth, but still irritating voice. I'd have been a bit nicer in my judgement, if he hadn't used his rhetorics to brand me the archenemy of humanity in the past.
"It's the tenth of the pomegranate month (author's remark: I didn't make up the name. Should be around the 31st of May or the first of June, which doesn't translate to the seasons on Gaya, we're somewhere in fall over there) in the year 665? We've been gone for fifty years… to me it seems like the blink of an eye. Still… so much has changed. Who's leading my family now?"
"If you are indeed Yichen, you won't recognise their names," Li Hong, Mei's grandfather, replied gravely. "Shortly after your disappearance… your father lost his standing. It is rumoured that he promised Her Imperial Highness a remedy, but never delivered. Five years later he was overthrown." He coughed awkwardly. "A distant branch of the family rose up and disposed of him. I'm sorry, but all of your close blood relatives are dead. They… they died in disgrace. I can't even point you to their graves." The old men lowered his head in sympathy when Constantine's face paled. The blow probably wasn't as hard on him, considering he was much too old to believe in superstitions, but in most eastern cultures an unmarked grave, or even worse no burial at all, was tantamount to condemning the spirts of the deceased to return as ghosts.
"If you want revenge, we will do everything we can to help you," Lin suddenly stated. Her fingers were drumming nervously on the carved rosewood table when she added: "we have our own grievances and we don't fear them. They've killed Mei's mother. We will remind them, that our memory hasn't suffered." Constantine inclined his head with a forlorn smile and I already heard his hot blooded reply. Solving problems with a sword or the jaws of one wild animal or the other had always been his favourite way of dealing with people, but to my surprise he declined:
"Maybe one day. For now I have to focus on making good on a promise that's over five decades old. Cassandra… do you still have my fruits?" I had already wondered when he'd get to that.
"Three of them," I replied honestly, "but I think I can get you as many as you need. Four to cure her, right?" He nodded.
"Six would be better, at that. Four would have cured her as an infant. Now she's grown up."
"You realise I won't be around to hold your hand, right?" I really didn't have the time to visit the Imperial Court.
"I didn't ask you to, did I?" Touchy. Maybe I had to cut him some slack, considering he had just found out that his family had been killed. Sympathy from the devil, wasn't it?
"Alright. Here." I flicked my wrist and conjured the three shimmering fruits onto the table. "If you want my advice, take two to her now and hand one over to Greta. That should secure her Highness' goodwill and give the dryad enough time to make the third one sprout into a tree."
"Are you sure she can mange," he asked with a frown. "It took us ages and more resources than you can imagine. I've seen her tree, but still..."
"She'll be fine. I take it you'll be staying for a while?"
"Unless the realm is going to collapse. Is it?" I shrugged and leaned back in my chair:
"And now we've finally gotten to the point. I don't know. But I intend to find out. Today. Any objections?" The following silence was broken by Baihe's joyous cries from outside as she dove, head first, into the icy waters, Mei on her back. I chuckled. "At least they have some fun." I looked from one to the other, but only Constantine, Viyara and Lin met my gaze. The others were suddenly very interested in the cleanliness of the polished, wooden floor.
"Do you have a map," I said after a few drawn out seconds. The solid, oaken chair of the overweight woman creaked ominously when she fiddled with one of her many, ostentatious rings. A moment later a folded and worn out parchment appeared in her hand. She rose and spread it across half the table, huffing like an ox. A whiff of her overwhelming sweet perfume reached me when she said:
"You can see most of the Bronze Empire. As far as we know there's nothing across the eastern ocean and the mountains stretch further north than anyone has ever ventured. We do have a neighbour in the South, even though the border regions aren't show here. In the West the Great Swamp marks the end of the Empire's lands. For reference, it'd take a horse carriage several months to reach the capital from where we are." She pointed to a painted crown at the centre of the map and then to a stylised, verdant valley in the northern mountains.
"That's where the gates to the spirit realm are," I mused out loud. The corresponding rifts to the realm of nightmares had to have closed the very moment I had annihilated their world. "Is there a connection between the capital and this sect? As far as I can tell it should've started here. In case I'm right, can you come up with a reason why the second gate might have formed there?"
"The strongest artefacts are and most of the truly powerful cultivators live in the capital. Maybe their strength attracted the magic like gravity," Constantine pondered. "Which reminds me… I've mentioned before, that there are about ten of my people, who can travel between realms on a whim." His eyes shot to Lin. "What about the ancient masters? Are you one of them?" She chuckled.
"Yes and no. Yueji's strength has elevated me and I can travel to her home world, as well as other places, but I'm barely 100. I'm no match for the Imperial Court. None outside the capital are, except for…," her gaze darted to me, but when she saw me staring at her with clenched jaws, my eyes aglow, a worried frown appeared on her brow.
"Constantine has told me one of your ancient masters is obsessed with beauty. He claims she has kept kitsune, my people, prisoner and bled them dry for their essence," I stated quietly. "Is it true? Is she still alive?" Her uncomfortable expression was all the affirmation I needed. "Who," I hissed. "Tell me." I hadn't yet issued a command, but it had been close. Maybe I'd pay a visit to the Imperial Capital and its illustrious, venerable lords and ladies after all.
"It's true," Lin admitted equally quietly. "She's an elder of the Mo family. She… the existence of different worlds isn't widely known and those with the means to travel there aren't usually interested in the lower realms." I wasn't sure, but she was most likely referring to the density of energy in each realm. From that particular point of view the Fey Wilds were probably a realm of equal standing, while the ones containing an abundance of life or soul forces constituted a higher order. Probably. Which in turn meant Lin had known Viyara was lying the very second someone had told her about the entire "we're emissaries from heaven" baloney. Oh well, that ship had sailed and sunk to the bottom of the ocean, anyways, like so many others.
"I don't know how old she is," she continued, "but she's been a pillar of the Empire for much longer than I've been alive. Which means some of her more… distasteful proclivities have been ignored on purpose." She sighed and tilted her head to cast me a worried, sideways glance. "It's been years since I've seen her parade around a fox on a leash, but chances are she still has a few of your people tucked away safely somewhere. She can get to them anytime she wants, after all."
"A perverse nest egg, I take it," I hissed. "I…"
"Will stay the hell out of it," Constantine interrupted tiredly. Every head in the hall turned to him, but the former Emperor wasn't fazed. He was solely focused on me. "You brought me here to clean up, didn't you? I can do it and I will, but not if I have to fight your lunacy at the same time." Somewhere along the line the raucous Roman had apparently lost his fear of the devil. "Unless you've changed much more than it seems, you're still mostly thinking with your heart and not your head." Bullshit. If he had been right, I'd have smacked him six ways to Sunday by now.
"That makes you one hell of a good friend," he continued, his voice rising with every word, "but honestly, Cassandra, you're an utter failure when it comes to making decisions. If you run there now, granted, you'll return with your kin, provided they are still around, but you'll also cause more problems than it's worth. Just look at you now. When it comes down to it, you wanted to inspect a bloody artefact, and now we're sitting here, debating the future of the Bronze Empire! Honestly, if you had been the Devil, you'd have still been stuck in Garden Eden, saving mice from cats! Or you'd have eaten the entire goddamned apple tree by yourself out of pure spite." He had talked himself into a fury and was now huffing and puffing into an anxious silence.
"Sorry," he added after a moment, "but do you have any idea how infuriating it is to watch someone with your power bumble around aimlessly? And now you're about to do something stupid, again! Let me deal with my people. Focus on what nobody, but you can accomplish. You've given me all the tools I need, now take a step back for crying out loud… sorry. Like I said, it's infuriating." I blinked slowly, more amused than angered, if I was being honest. That little tirade had to have been stewing for a while. Plus, I couldn't really fault him, could I?
I pursed my lips, which caused almost everyone at the table, except for Viyara, Lin and Constantine, to flinch and subtly lean away from me, but if they were expecting an outburst, they'd be sorely disappointed: "fine," I simply said. "You'll prioritise the wellbeing of my kin, won't you?"
"If anything happens to them while I'm close by, you'll roast my toes over an open fire, anyways, won't you? So… no, it's actually my hide I'll prioritise, but the outcome will be the same."
"And if one of the… ancient masters decides you're too nosy? You do have a knack of pissing off powerful beings, I can attest to that. You'll be on your own, Constantine, and you've said it yourself: you're no match for a truly powerful cultivator."
"Not yet," he shot back, "and if everything works as planned, I'll have the Empress on my side. I'll be safe enough. Unless your dryad can't provided the missing fruits."
"She will," I insisted confidently. "In that case you don't need me to listen in, either, do you?"
"It'd be nice to know which cult you've sent to hell," he admitted. "If they're important enough…"
"They are," Lin interjected calmly. She emptied her cup, before she explained: "Baihe has told Yueji who took her away. They have no name… they don't need one, but the ritual site she described must be where one of the dark gates had been located before you burned the realm."
I peeked at the map and asked: "you've never tried to root them out? Why?" She shook her head sadly.
"Nightmares you called them, but to us they are demons. Believe me, we tried, but even though demons have never shown much interested in our realm, the gate was still an option. One the few, who managed to cross over before the end, were immensely grateful for, I'm sure. Every time we entered the Western Swamp, we were driven back by much stronger foes than we had ever encountered in the Empire. I was still a child when the last Emperor marched on their stronghold and died in battle. We've kept well away from there ever since." I frowned and pensively twiddle the fur on my ear around a finger.
"But there were two gates, you said," I finally replied. "History aside, where was the second one?"