Savage Divinity

Being a Chi-blessed Martial Warrior means I’m pretty resilient to the elements, but it’s still unpleasant going out when it’s cold enough to freeze your balls off. Though I still trained every day, Baatar gave me strict orders to not overdo it which meant I’ve had plenty of time to sit around indoors and read over the past few months. Aside from his notes on Runic crafting, hidden inside volumes of his insipid, uninspiring poetry, Yo Ling’s library doesn’t have much I find interesting, but boredom is a powerful motivator. Even the driest, dullest historical records become riveting after hours of practice in my Natal Palace.

I don’t know how Baledagh can stand staying there for weeks at a time. I get all neurotic once I notice the flaws, like how I’m not breathing or never blink. Super weird stuff.

According to the history books, the Northern Bridge was originally defended only by a single barrier, the now crumbling Outer Wall. Initially, the city wasn’t a real city, merely a gathering of tents and temporary shelters where soldiers went to satisfy two important needs: sex and gambling. The higher-ups of the time looked the other way, which is understandable since soldiers were likely to riot if the closest prostitutes or bookmakers were hours away. Seeing this as tacit permission to ply her trade, one enterprising Madam/Pimp grew sick of living in a tent and decided to do something about it.

Thus, the first building in what would later be known merely as ‘the City’, was a whorehouse.

Sensing money to be made, merchants and entrepreneurs arrived in droves to offer their wares and services to the brave men and women serving at the Wall. Once criminal elements moved in and started fighting over territory and profits, all hell broke loose, an easily anticipated outcome according to every historian who has ever written anything on the subject. In mere months, the City grew out of control and devolved into a sprawling mess of shoddy buildings and ramshackle huts, a lawless land of sex, drugs, and booze which persisted for decades.

The fun times came to an end when one unfortunate Commander of the Wall met his demise inside the City. The now unnamed hero often went out in disguise to mingle with his soldiers and get a feel for their overall mood, but it wasn’t long before the great warrior developed a myriad of crippling addictions to various illicit substances. Out of coin and unwilling to delay gratification by returning to his room for more, this brilliant, capable general resorted to murdering and robbing a street vendor in order to feed his habit. Still standing over the corpse as he packed his pipe, the Commander of the Wall died to a mob of untrained drug vendors looking out for their own, a peerless expert stabbed in the neck while taking a hit.

Drugs are bad, mkay?

The succeeding Commander got shit done. Despite owing his promotion to their efforts, he had the responsible parties publicly tortured and executed before embarking on a mission to drive the criminal elements out of the City through sheer violence. Patting himself on the back for a job well done, the new Commander went back to defending the Wall and ignoring the City’s existence. Within a week, a wave of new criminals arrived to fill the void, but with so many of his soldiers dependent on their wares, there was little he could do but turn a blind eye to these newcomers.

Throughout history, the City has been torn down and rebuilt countless times. Most recently, Baatar ordered the City torn down to deny the Defiled cover and create kill zones for his archers. Usually, a new City is rebuilt on the ruins of the old but former Marshal Shing Du Yi was a fan of neat, orderly lines. Before sacrificing his life to ensure his daughter’s safety, the old man drew up a plan for a new city with help from Major General Han BoHai, BoShui’s uncle and BoLao’s father, which Yuzhen carried out against all protests.

After months of laying groundwork in harsh, freezing conditions, the newest iteration of the City looks nothing like the chaotic affairs of the past. Modeled after the Society Headquarters, a grid of straight, unobstructed pathways delineate the City into a series of districts, with each district serving a specific purpose whether it be residential, commercial, manufacturing, or military. On the premise of making the City and Walls safer, Yuzhen’s first act as Marshal was to seize all lands between the Walls for the province and renting it to civilians who wish to use them, an unpopular but brilliant move. Anyone who wants to open a business or build a home or store must apply for permission and adhere to strict guidelines which means Yuzhen has the authority to evict tenants or seize merchandise for failing to meet standards, not to mention all the information she's getting for free when people apply. Considering she also writes the standards, it’s safe to say she has near absolute power over the City. Good or bad, who can say? Maybe a thousand years from now, historians will all write about how Yuzhen’s actions were all obvious signs of doom and destruction.

Despite our differences, I have to admit, she's going to leave a mark in the history books.

Either way, it pays to have friends in high places. Since my gers weren’t permanent structures and in a district designated for the People, there wasn't any need to secure permits, but my school and Mila’s forge were a whole different matter. Skipping all the red tape, I received my permits with minimal fuss for the low cost of cooking one romantic dinner for Gerel and Yuzhen, along with one night of babysitting the twins to pay for Charok's assistance. 

Straddling the border between a calm residential area and bustling market, the brown-brick building has the best of both worlds. Three stories tall and eighty meters wide, the drab appearance is at odds with its purpose, the building teeming with life as people enter and exit through the extravagant double doors. Carved by Charok out of solid oak, the doors depict a grinning bear on the left and a smiling wildcat on the right, though at the moment they’re obstructed by throngs of people orderly waiting beneath the temporary awnings put up to keep them out of the wind.

Despite devoting the entire first floor to the kitchen and cafeteria, there isn’t enough room to feed everyone at once, so the staff works non-stop making sure everyone gets a meal. While simple, the food here is a cut above what the majority have at home, since most people can’t afford to use spices, salts, and meat for every meal. Once word spread, the number of visitors coming for meals rose exponentially and I’ve been struggling to find a solution ever since. Stressing the place was for people unable to feed themselves didn’t work and I refuse to lower my standards and provide worse meals. Why should the needy suffer because of a bunch of parasites?

Wanting to believe people are inherently good, I had my staff ask for donations and stress it was voluntary and only if they could spare the coin, but what usually happens is those who can’t afford to eat donate their last coppers while those who can pretend they have no coin. Being taken advantage of puts a real damper on my charitable aspirations but I’m reluctant to request proof of poverty or do background checks for a meal, nor am I willing to have visitors shamed for accepting a handout.

This is why I hate people, they’re the worst. Empathy sucks.

Whatever, the good still outweighs the bad. Long as I help one family in need for every hundred, greedy, duplicitous misers looking for a free meal, it’s worth it. Besides, feeding everyone is a drop in the bucket compared to my other expenses, and my earnings from my merchant enterprises can cover it indefinitely.

Plus, it’s great cover for what’s really happening inside.

Leaving Mafu and my pets in the adjoining stables, I enter through the back to avoid the hubbub of the dining area and load a tray with food before heading straight to the second floor. Peeking in on the classrooms as I pass by, the sight of so many children sitting and learning puts a smile on my face, the main reason I opened this school. Here, these kids spend their mornings practising the Forms, learning to read, do math, and generally being kids with full bellies and warm beds if they need them. The pessimist in me set down rules to avoid my teachers abusing their power, but there haven’t been any incidents aside from Taduk literally scaring the piss out of one group of children with a lecture on battle-field first aid, complete with detailed, life-like drawings of the most common injuries.

I love him like a father, but Taduk is sorely lacking in common sense. I don’t know how Lin turned out so well adjusted.

Entering the supply closet, I close the door behind me before fumbling for the hidden dial behind the second shelf with my uninjured hand. It’s hard to get to with my left hand and my right one is currently in no shape to be turning dials. Imagining all sorts of unseen, creepy crawlies back there, I finally find the dial and turn it, two clicks left, three right, then five left. Once I’m finished, the bookshelf rumbles as I pull my hand back, then pivots aside to reveal a secret, spiral staircase stretching down into the dark bowels of the earth.

So awesome.

I can’t help but grin like an idiot every time I do this, pretending I’m on my way to handle some super secret spy stuff. Chakha handled most of the construction personally with help from Dastan and his enslaved retinue, which means no one knows about this place unless I want them to know. It’s so secret Mila doesn’t even know about it, because telling Mila is as good as telling Song who will immediately blab everything to Akanai, which I can’t have.

The temperature drops with each step as clouds of white mist form with every breath I take. At the end of the staircase stands an ominous, heavily reinforced steel door set into solid, frozen bedrock, an impenetrable barrier to all but the strongest of foes. Ten meters of stone and dirt separate this room from the cafeteria above, a feat of construction and engineering which boggles my mind, especially since it was all done in a single night by one of Taduk’s secretive associates. All I know about him is his gender and only because Taduk accidentally let it slip, which means it isn’t Guard Leader or her cronies. Or it was and Taduk was being crafty by making me think it wasn’t by intentionally using a masculine pronoun...

Nah, it’s totally a dude. Not to disparage my Teacher, but he’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

Since the hidden dial on the second floor triggered a bell inside the room, I’m not left waiting in the cold for long. With a metallic groan, the locks disengage and the door swings open to reveal a sinister-looking hooded figure standing at the door. “Rain my boy,” the shadow exclaims, gesturing for me to enter. “Come in before the heat escapes.” Pulling me in, Taduk shuts the door and glares in mock reproach while feigning a shiver. “This damned freezing workroom will be the death of me.”

With his round, friendly face and hare ears poking out the front of his hood, Taduk looks too lovable to be intimidating. “Sorry Teacher, but we couldn’t put in ventilation since sound would travel through it.” Giving him a hearty hug, I point at his coat hanging on a peg by the door. “It’d probably be warmer if you wore that.”

“Nonsense my boy, even a child knows coats are for wearing outdoors.” Frowning, Taduk takes my injured hand and studies the makeshift splint before raising both eyebrows in question. Incapable of raising only one eyebrow, he still tries without success and I don’t have the heart to tell him to stop, mostly because it makes him look adorably surprised.

“Small accident at Mila’s forge.” Whilst in the throes of passion, she clamped her legs so tight she broke my hand. At least it was just a hand and now that we know she’s a convulser, we can take appropriate steps in the future, like not letting her wrap her legs around... well any part of me. Gorgeous as they are, Mila’s thighs are scary strong.

If I'd gone down on her, she might've broken my neck.

What a way to reroll...

“I see.” Releasing my hand, Taduk asks, “Why don’t you heal it?”

“I figured I should let it heal normally, you know, toughen up my bones.” I’m not giving up, that was the closest I’ve come to sex in years. Injury aside, I’m happy with how things went. Could’ve gone better, but knowing I can bring her to orgasm with only my fingers is a huge boost to my ego. Plus, she was so horrified and remorseful, it was totally worth the broken bones. While I didn’t get to have fun, I’m mostly satisfied with how things went.

Lefty, I’ll be counting on you later tonight. Thank the Mother it was Righty who got clamped. Your sacrifice will not be forgotten.

Dropping the matter, Taduk devours his meal in record time before bringing me to his solid stone worktable. “You’ve come at the perfect time, I was just about to start when you rang the bell.” The table is as immaculate as the rest of the room, my muddle headed Teacher dependable when it counts. A circular shield sits in the centre of the table, with a thick, metal dome suspended over it. Neatly arranged around the shield are five sealed jars of different coloured liquids. A multitude of tools sit along side the jars and shield, a small hammer, carving chisels in various shapes and sizes, glass pipettes as thin as a needle, and much more.

Though the jars of liquid don’t look like much, they would have cost me almost half my wealth to buy, a mind boggling sum considering how rich I am. Or was, before spending so much on training, infrastructure, gear and whatnot. Four of the jars contain rare, but mundane liquids, mercury, jade scorpion venom, oil of shimmer root, and acid distilled from the bile of a half-dozen rare animals. They were hard to find, but it was a cakewalk compared to what’s in the last jar, a blue liquid called Dragon’s Blood. To my supreme disappointment, it’s not actually blood, only a mixture of volatile and hazardous materials, most of which neither I nor Taduk had ever heard of.

Thankfully, everything we needed was back on Yo Ling’s island (hooray for looting), making our first venture into Runic Inscriptions cost next to nothing, aside from building a secret lab and other miscellaneous stuff. Shuffling to the side, I watch in silence as Taduk closes his eyes and mentally prepares for the task ahead, his months of secretive failure weighing heavily upon him. I wish we didn’t have to do things like this, but Inscribing Runes requires external Chi manipulation and I’m still a ways from my first success. What’s more, I’m 100% certain the whole bit about Yo Ling trapping Spirits to enhance his Runic creations will have Akanai raring to burn the book, after which she’ll forbid me from looking into it. Baatar does everything Akanai tells him to and Charok tells Alsantset everything who tells Baatar everything, which means Lin and Taduk are the only ones I can trust with this.

Well... Initially I only wanted to tell Taduk, but he can’t keep secrets from Lin. If he holed up and disappeared without telling her, I’m sure she’d curl up in a ball and cry for days without end. As much as she loves me, Lin is and always will be a daddy’s girl. If she didn’t love sleeping in and hate small, enclosed spaces, she’d probably be down here helping him.

Thankfully, Taduk agreed with my point of view on how Energy is all the same and was willing to put in the effort to learn. Eager in fact, so eager he made the trip to Yo Ling’s island without me, making it there and back in three short days. He didn’t even bring Wang Bao with him, just spent an hour taking notes before zipping off in his rickshaw. I don’t know how he did it so quickly and he won’t say, but I’m guessing he had help from his secret expert friends.

Unfortunately, my Teacher has yet to succeed. I still don’t fully understand how runes work but Taduk seems to have a firm grasp on the situation. According to his explanation, Inscribing a rune isn’t as simple as drawing a symbol on an object. Though they’re called runes and Yo Ling describes it as the language of Energy, they aren’t static characters or a translatable system of words, because energy doesn’t think like a living creature would, it just... is. Runes are more of a concept, one which tries to bridge the gap between human intentions and natural law, persuading the Energy of the Heavens to act in a certain way against its nature.

Essentially, it’s magic. Even after months of trying to wrap my head around it, my grasp on the mechanics of Runic Inscription is virtually nonexistent.

What’s more, the rune changes based on the shape, size, and material of the object being inscribed. As I understand it, the bigger the object, the bigger the rune. It’s why the OuYang Patriarch made five rings from different coloured jade, to show off his skill. While the shape remained constant and it’s hard to get smaller than a ring, black jade and green jade are just different enough to matter when it comes to inscribing runes. Since then, rumours say he’s moved on to bigger and better runes, inscribing iron helmets and bracers, though still unable to work with steel or larger breastplates.

Meanwhile, my Teacher is starting with full-sized steel-shields since he doesn’t want to waste the effort Inscribing a ‘defensive hat’.

Silly, kindhearted, and egotistical. That’s my teacher, but I wouldn’t change a thing about him.

Without warning, Taduk opens his eyes and sets to work, his hammer and chisel dancing in his hands as he carves out an intricate pattern across the steel shield’s surface. While visually impressive, it’s nothing compared to the unseen work carried out using his expert control of Chi, weaving it into and around the shield as he works. A chip here, a scrape there, switching chisels on the fly as he engraves an increasingly complicated design onto the shield free hand. One wrong move and the inscription is ruined, but Taduk continues his work without pause, focused but unchallenged by this mundane work.

This, oddly enough, is the easy part.

After thirty minutes of engraving, Taduk puts down his hammer and chisels and moves on to the next step without rest as required by the process. His hands blur through the air as he uses the needle-thin glass pipettes to bring single drops of liquid to the shield, painstakingly going over his carved design with each fluid, bit by bit. He doesn’t merely coat the shield in it, each liquid can only go over certain areas which somehow forms the channels through which Chi will flow.

Only a miniscule amount is used during each try, but the jars only came with enough liquid for around sixty odd tries. Now half as full as they once were, Taduk only has two to three dozen more shots at this before we’ll have to find more and who knows how long that will take. Doing so without attracting unwanted attention will be difficult, especially since we need to keep Akanai and Baatar in the dark before we have a successful model made. This means we can’t use Yuzhen or Fung’s dad, our only real options. I could ask Magistrate Tongzu for help, but without an Oath, I’m not sure if he can be trusted, which probably means I shouldn’t.

Hissing sharply, Taduk slams a button next to him which drops the suspended metal dome onto the shield and nothing else. Clamping the dome in place, Taduk crosses his arms and huffs as a muted explosion rings out, emanating from the shield he was just engraving.

And that’s why I had to build a secret underground lab.

“Difficult, truly difficult,” Taduk says, already lost in thought. “It’s the right move switching from chest armor to shields. Shields are uniform in size, weight, and materials whereas breastplates would need to vary in height, width, depth, and by extension weight, but the Rune changes too much in the process. The notes are next to useless now...” Mulling over his notes as smoke wafts out from the dome, he starts muttering a string of unintelligible syllables, somehow using rhythm and cadence to determine how the rune should be carved.

Like I said... Magic.

My consoling words go ignored as Taduk shoos me out of the room with a wave of his hand and a promise to figure it out ‘soon’. Giving him a hug farewell, I make my way up the stairs a little sadder than I arrived, but warmed by my Teacher’s efforts to help. While part of his drive is pure curiosity and a thirst for knowledge, I also know he’d study the Runic rings if given a choice. Since many miraculous medical plants require decades, if not centuries or millennia to gather enough Heavenly Energy, a runic item which could speed things along would be highly desirable to someone who seeks to improve lives through basic medicine. Instead of working on his own dream or convincing me to share his, he’s studying how to make shields because he wants to keep me safe.

Although I love him like a father, I know it pales compared to how much he loves me.

It makes sense. There’s no love greater than the love a parent has for their child.

Chapter Meme