Avyr woke to a contented sort of stillness. The sort of stillness that was only felt at the tail end of a storm, or at the beginning of it; the whisper of fell becoming, settled heavily over the quiet of his room. A winter stillness, frozen and sleepy, and caught— in the sunlight, wrought— a shaft of liquid, crystal light harsh and bright and spilt, from his window sared across his room until the whole place seed to glow. Part of it fell over his tail, and in that half-awake state, blinking still tired, he flicked it back and forth— watching the silver edge of fur-glow caught, on the very fringe, shimring…
Here.
There.
Here again.
Almost pendular, almost ticking with whatever strange machinery… a soulful machine, him… for a long while, that was all he did, even as the urge within him rose to get up, do, beco— it was cold. It was cold, and he didn’t want to get up and do work and go to classes and everything else that was, at last, returned to them…
The sester was starting. It’d felt like it’d been years since the start of winter break, but in reality, it’d only been… what, just over a month? Everything had been so busy, so caught up and tumultuously chaotic, that he’d almost lost track of ti.
Rr’an…
It felt so strange, to have so vague echo of connection in his cruel world; perhaps not a favorable connection, but a connection nonetheless. Soone who’d known him when he was just a kitten— soone who’d known his parents, and not as the idolized heroes they were…
He sighed, rolling off his bed and landing lightly on his feet, stepping— once more— into the center of the sun-beam. One paw quested out for his bag, fumbling with it for a long mont before he positioned it well enough for him to slip into, at last. From there, he slipped over to the washroom— his personal washroom, which was still designed for humans and thus not very easy to use, grabbing his brush and touching up— at least— the ssiest parts of his fur. He didn’t have the ti— or the inclination, given how much of an annoying annoyance it could be to straighten it out in its entirety— to make himself perfectly presentable, but it was the first day of classes. He didn’t want to go looking like a scraggly kitten.
A part of him simred up from the back of his mind, reminding him that nobody would care. That nobody, no human, would even notice…
It had been the conversation from the day prior, he couldn't help but think as he packed his bags and got ready for a long day of work. All the professors were holding their classes— good, given that it was the first week back, but annoying, as most of them had no doubt gotten used to having plenty of free ti in the classes that weren’t being held for whatever reason. It would certainly be… stressful.
Stressful. That was a good way to put it…
He felt for his friend— he really did. It was not a cat-like feeling, but neither was it a human feeling… he would consider himself a philosopher in only the very loosest of terms, but he would think it was sothing more universal than that. Compassion, perhaps. Sorrow, brought out, evoked from a stone-hearted spring… he sighed as he slunk down through the house, crossing through sunbeam after sunbeam and waiting, listening, carefully watching for any hint of her. Seeing, nothing. In so ways, it made him glad that he had no acquaintances in the way that Lily was wont to. Svvh was still estranged from him, and he was confident that he, at least, had enough misguided pride to hold himself at enmity even if his position was good enough to rit that sort of sycophancy.
He’d liked Aomao. It was just such a sha, what’d beco of it. Part of him, he thought, could recognize the benefit in being transparent about the difference in position between the two of them— but it was not rely a difference in position. To know that a friendship, even a nascent one, was built on a foundation of lies, of greed— for it was a matter of greed, he realized— would burn.
Even the largest burning trees turned to ash eventually.
He stepped out into the courtyard, and saw her at last— sitting in ditative pose in the center of the snow, surrounded, almost haloed in gleaming light that burst off of the crystal snow; a winter-graceful sort of halo, ashimr with the very essence of cold. “Are you feeling alright?”
Lily half leapt, half startled backwards, before relaxing as she saw her. “Oh.” It was always unusual to have a human see him and relax. “It’s just you. You startled …” she stretched, yawning— Avyr’s cultivation-enchanced hearing picking up on the little pop-popping of her joints. “I was just catching the sunlight. It’s nice outside, is it not?” It was not. In fact, he’d have called it miserable, even with his particular gift and yang-essence cultivation. So early in the morning, the bitter, pelagic cold hung harshly around every aspect of the courtyard— icicles, hung up on eaves by so secret sculptor, snow crackling harshly under Lily’s shifting form, even the sunlight, so wan. “How are you so quiet?” Lily complained, a sole spot of warmth in it all— “I swear, nothing so big should be so quiet.”
He smirked— a cat’s smirk, but Lily knew him well enough to interpret the gesture. “I’m a hunter. It is in my nature to be quiet, no?” His friend grumbled a bit, but he could tell it was all in good fun. It was just… part of him, as her formations were part of her— perhaps moreso, even. It was part of the transformations of his Self. To be both cat, and stealth, and friend, and cultivator…
It was all a very esoteric and philosophical thing; he did not greatly understand it. It was not… it was not like formations, or cultivation; it was not real. Still, he’d been doing it for… what, nigh on two years, now? It was almost strange— to realize how long it’d been, how short it’d been. He couldn’t help but think of it when he had the ti.
Lily snorted, breath pluming out into the frigid air. “Well, I made lunch for you. It’s in the fridge inside, if you want.”
“Thank you.” He dipped his head, grateful. It really was a thoughtful gesture— even compared to the others, who could at least count on stopping by one of the University’s restaurants or local shops, he had to be… pickier, with his diet. Unless he just wanted to eat raw at, but sotis— especially now, with the cold of winter wrapped around the land like the claw of so terrible beast, it was good to have sothing more hearty.
He slipped back inside, rummaging through the fridge for the packed lunch— she’d even put a nice little preservation formation onto the container, how cute! Then poked around the drawers for a mont until he found…
It was on one of the kitchen counter drawers that he saw it, in the sa little jade bottle he’d put in after he’d first gotten it, before promptly forgetting about it. For a long mont he just stared at it— what a useless, transformative little thing— before, struck by so curious urge, he pulled it out and set it onto the table with a clink of stone on stone. It was a pure jade, not quite a spiritual jade but close enough that it blurred the lines between the two. Jade always tended to do that…
He could see, now that he looked carefully at it, the formation script wound in careful filigree around the lip of the bottle. It was actually rather amateurish work now that he looked at it— Lily would’ve been able to do better by far, though that was perhaps unfair given the tools that she had to work with…
The formation itself was rather… anemic, for such an important little thing. It was curious, that they’d give him sothing so… poor quality. Driven by that, hoping that its contents hadn’t degraded in the months since he’d interred it into its jade prison, he popped off the cork with an extended claw— and relaxed, as he slled that dicinal aroma, saw the qi that boiled off its form, dense and scarlet.
The ascension pill sat there the sa as it always had, perfectly unchanged by the passage of ti, as though immune to those vicissitudes. Such power… it was a fate-changing pill, a pill that could in one single dosage utterly usurp the course of one’s life… his right, as a student of the University of East Saffron.
It was useless to him.
Carefully, he picked the cork back up and replaced it, tapping it down tightly— until the dicinal aroma was unnoticeable but for the echo of its fragrance in the room. He considered, for a mont— then slipped it into his bag as he made his way out the door.
He’d think of what to do with it as he made his way to class…
………
Introductory Cultivator conflict was different from what it’d been, back in the Academy. More scheduled, for one. Each and every aspect of the class was strictly defined, delineated, and set to an exacting standard— carefully made, he was sure, to ensure the maximum breadth of learning possible. The amount of resources their professor had access to, as well, was vastly higher than the Academy had ever had.
The amount of random things they just had lying around boggled the mind. Dummies inlaid with impressive formations, made to progressively increase the speed of their relentless assaults until dodging beca impossible even to him, much less the weak Shedding cultivators he shared the class with. Swords of every type and asure, spears, halberds, hamrs, knives, bows… even more esoteric weapons and guns had their representation, though it was clear that the professor held a distaste for firearms. There were, though, inescapable— and so, by the very nature of the class, there was nothing they could do but learn about them.
Luckily, they weren’t actually required to master any of the weapons present. They weren’t even required to pick them up, if they didn’t want to— sothing that had to do with the various paths of everyone present, he couldn’t help but imagine. Lily, for example, probably would have found all the swordwork stuff tediously slow.
No, they got to choose their own weapons, largely earning their grade based on how they placed in the class against their peers and how they did in the sparse examinations against the professor or his various assistants— all of which did not want to be there, if the expression on their face was any asure.
Fighting any of them was always a brutal beatdown. A reminder, in turn, of how far they had still to go…
He slipped into the open-air classroom, taking his usual seat up and to the side, waiting for everyone else to join them. It looked like it was going to be a lecture, today, which… well, they were always informative, which was about the only positive thing he could say about them. The professor for their class was… eccentric.
Monts after the last of them had arrived— none late, no, those few inclined to tardiness had had that beaten out of them after the first few tis… mories Avyr still shivered at the thought of— their instructor appeared in a clap of thunder. Given that he just walked out from backstage, it was… remarkably unimpressive an entrance.
He took the podium, tracing his gaze over each and every one of them, evenly, steadily— waiting, watching still with that piercing gaze of his that seed to be able to cut through anything and everything and see straight to the heart of things. “Good morning, class.” Utterly unbothered by the cold, he wore… not much; Avyr had only just begun to understand the implications of human dress convention with Lily’s help, and the shirtless cultivator in front of him had already challenged him on that rather fiercely. He could only imagine that would be a whole ordeal in the future. “I hope you all had a good break. Excepting, of course, you two. I know you didn’t.” He nodded towards the conspicuously empty twin seats at the front of the class, and everyone present stiffened awkwardly. It was just such a tactless way of bringing it up…
It was strange, in more ways than one, that the Song brothers would never be coming back to class. That they were dead. They’d mostly kept away from him, and him from them— at least until his stunt at the end of the last sester, when their passive animosity had turned to hatred… but that was beside the point. They had been… good, if sowhat uninspired, at what they did. They certainly had a plethora of interesting techniques to their nas, even if they didn’t seem like anything they’d worked on… their qi control was sloppy, but then again, he tended to think everyone’s qi control was sloppy. Most didn’t have quite the sa incentive as he had to learn such a difficult art as Shedding cultivators.
Yet, for all that he’d disliked them, and them, him, the fact that they were just… gone…
It was a piercing feeling.
“I would propose the question to you. When faced with a more powerful cultivator, a vastly more powerful cultivator— I don’t an soone like —” a high Foundation Establishnt cultivator himself, which wasn’t anything to scoff at— “but rather, soone like the Outer Elder, or the Sect Master… faced with them and told to fight or die, what would you do?” For a long second, nobody responded. It was, after all, a sowhat awkward question; how to find a good response for such an impossible situation?
Two rows in front of him, at the very front of the class, one of his fellow students spoke up suddenly, voice breaking the silence. “Die. You’d die.” It was… well, it was the truth, but it wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear.
The professor stared her down for a second, the student wilting into her own robes— before, suddenly, he burst into uproarious laughter, a wide smile falling across his face. “Right! Right, you’re right… when faced with such domineering power, what can one do but die? A mortal cannot fight against a cultivator, and compared to the sort of cultivator that destroyed the Twin Pines Clan… we are all just mortals. It’s good that you understand that now. Now, not to beco Dong Rukeng and bore you all with the philosophy of it all, but it deserves to be said. I have been teaching you how to fight. Yet, perhaps even more important than that— sothing I hope you co out of this class with the slightest inclination of… is when not to fight. When to look at an opponent and either run, or draw on the resources of your seniors, who are burdened with the obligation of protecting you from predators who might take advantage of your relative weakness to strike at you.” Didn’t that sound familiar. “Today’s activity is…”
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Rather anemic lecture finished, he leapt into a rather long-winded explanation of an equally complex ga involving two different ‘sects,’ split up equally among the class by rank, with cultivators semi-randomly assigned duels and… the whole thing was rather complex. Ultimately, it ca down to when each team should bother to get its higher-level players involved; too little action from the powerful cultivators, and the enemy team would be able to stomp their weak cultivators with their stronger ones, but too much and the the powerful cultivators would be exhausted when it ca to battles against more equal opponents…
In his team, almost laughably, Avyr got the honorary position of ‘Sect Master.’ With how their professor seed to take great glee in making them all act out all the proper rites and rituals of a sect, the whole thing was made rather awkward. Too much bowing and scraping… almost, he supposed, as if he were one of the Great Ones, which was roughly equivalent to the advancent of high-level cultivators within the Bloody Saffron Sect.
Hm. Interesting…
It was not a difficult fight, really, except for his own battles against the enemy sect master. Which was the point of the exercise, he imagined. There weren’t any other students— at least not in his class— that had advanced to Opening, so one of the professor's assistants had taken that role. And given that all of his assistants were disciples of the Bloody Saffron Sect, however junior… those battles were hard fought indeed.
They won more by strategy than anything else, which was ironic given that the class was supposed to be a combat class, not a strategy class like Lily’s. The outer sect disciple had been more than happy to lead from the back and let his team fight its own battles, which might have worked, were it not for two factors; the very calculus of it was different, when all that was present was Shedding and Opening cultivators— so very different than the true heights of the sect, and Avyr was just better. The thod he cultivated gave him access to a truly prodigious amount of qi for his step.
He’d even gotten so contribution for winning— more than his ‘sect mbers’, who weren’t at all displeased with their haul, either.
Clearly, the professor had been impressed…
Then class was over, and they were dismissed, and Avyr was once more left— a leaf in the breeze, a curl of smoke, caught up on a light breath of wind, sent fluttering and swirling through the cold winter snow. At least in class, he didn’t have to worry about anything outside. The many problems of their world, reduced for a mont into re gas and lectures…
Yet, the city really had been attacked. People he’d known really had been killed…
The weight of the pill bottle in his pocket seed, for a mont, the weight of the world itself.
Sighing, he continued on.
………
The mania was wide-reaching in its scope. He wasn’t sure why he’d thought it might be otherwise— that it was rely them, the students and the people, the non-cultivators, the ones that were sheltered beneath the aegis of the Sect’s defense and only sheltered beneath that aegis, who had been disquieted by the recent conflict over the city. Even the professors were shaken— even Core Formation cultivators, when faced with such utter and overwhelming power, when faced with the echo of what might very well have been the start of the next great war…
His second— and thankfully, given how exhausted he was from the first— class of the day was Post-Imperial Sect Ideology, which… well, Dong Rukeng was an eccentric professor, that was for sure. Almost as eccentric as his Introductory Cultivator Combat professor, though thankfully she, at least, seed content to wear all her clothes.
It was a smaller class than the massive Introductory Cultivator Combat class from earlier, largely as— unlike the combat elective— the Sect had ensured that there were multiple professors for the required course. It the past, that made it one of his favorite courses— the other cats were there with him, and the Song brothers were not, though if only Lily could have been there too…
Now, it was just a little awkward.
He settled in the back corner, trying his best not to bring any particular attention to himself. Or rather, trying not to bring a particular group of his fellow student’s attention to him. It mostly worked. Svvh glanced up on his entrance, but by the ti he’d gotten to scanning the entrance-way, Avyr had already taken his seat out of sight of any direct confrontation. Good enough for him— he’d rather not have to deal with that at the mont…
Slowly, the room filled up. It was a small room, tucked away as it was at the very top of that building, suffused, still, with the sunlight of a bright sky— past hazy clouds still falling, casting the whole space in sharp relief.
Professor Rukeng stepped demurely up to the podium, tapping on the microphone twice before giving everyone a smile. It was not a particularly nice smile. “I’m glad everyone’s been able to join us here. I trust you had a good break?” Unlike the Introductory Cultivator Combat class, there were no penalties for truancy. In fact, the professor had gone so far as to assure them of such at the start of the sester.
The penalties were far simpler, and more insidious than anything deliberate. To miss one of her classes was to miss one of her lectures, and to miss one of her lectures ant that you’d have no idea about what they were talking about.
She glanced at all of them— counterpoint, yet so utterly different from, their combat instructor’s piercing gaze; hers, a settling, knowledgeable thing, as though by the very act of glancing at them she knew everything there was to know. That she had known everything there was to know, and her observation was rely a rote confirmation of their otherwise unnotable existence. Avyr always found it even more unsettling than the other professor’s. “Good.” She tilted her head back slightly, looking pleased. “I’m glad. Now, attacks by powerful cultivators. Why? Good question!” Nobody had asked the question.
She continued anyways.
“There’s always powerful cultivators going around. Take myself, for example. I am more powerful than you. This is a fact. If all of you together were to band together and try to kill , it would be child’s play to kill you. Easy, in fact. I would detonate the explosive formation I put on the main support of this building and fly out of the window as you all fell to your deaths. Easy.” As far as Avyr knew, she’d done nothing to the building’s main support. He wouldn’t put it past her, though… “now, the question is, how to deal with them? The answer is— not fighting. Counterintuitive, I am aware, but fights between cultivators are large.
“You likely are not aware of the average amount of collateral damage between cultivators of significant rank. This is understandable. You have never really seen it, beyond images in your textbooks and small bits scattered around various networks. Not including the incident with Egress IIb, as that is beyond the usual even for Immortal Ascension cultivators. Or so I am led to believe.”
She clicked sothing on the podium, and the view shifted; an aerial image ca up, taken from what was clearly the edge of a vast crater. A terrible wound had been gouged into the land, earth and rock sloughed inwards in a mad jumble, an unnatural remnant of a terrible battle. High above around it, lofty and hazy, hung the peaks of mountains— rugged and snow-capped, and jagged, the spine of so great beast coiled lazily across infinite distance…
The Dragonspine Mountains, he realized with a blink of surprise. He recognized those peaks.
“This image was taken so ti ago. By . I went there and took it. To those of you who weren’t aware, there was a recent conflict between Sect Master Bleeding Horizons and the Shancun Sect Master.” She paused for a second. “Don’t spread that around.” Then, as though she hadn’t just grabbed their attention— “this is the aftermath of their fight. None of you would have survived standing in the way of the strike that did that. I would not have survived standing in the way of the strike that did that. That is the sort of strike that splits heaven and breaks earth. It is beyond us.
“There is a good reason why sects don’t simply vanish because so random powerful cultivator decided to blow them all up. It would be easy— imagine the sort of devastation that an Immortal Ascension cultivator could do if roused truly to ire. No. Don’t imagine that. Imagine Bexian.” The entire room all but flinched back at the blunt asure of that tragedy. “That is the impact of such a being. To them, we are ants. Yet, in turn, they are also our guardians.
“Pre-imperial ideology held powerful cultivators as almost god-like beings, according to the records that remain from those tis. They would essentially be cut off completely from the working of the actual realm, focusing almost entirely on their cultivation and developing new thods and thodologies for their sects. Good for the progress of cultivation. Not good for law and order. Most modern historians consider this to be part of the reason for societal stagnation prior to the Empire of Twelve Constellations. Many other historians dispute this claim. Either way, it is largely irrelevant to the actual course of the matter.
“Can anyone tell what the current interpretation of the tyranny of ascension problem is? No. Don’t bother. All your answers will be stupid anyways.” Usually, this was the point that Avyr would’ve joked quietly with Svvh over Rukeng’s brusque mannerism. The silence evoked an unexpected pang of loss within him. “From mortality rises cultivation. Therefore, from cultivation, should co forth mortality. The famous humanist sage…” and so on, on the various important figures in the history of the current sect philosophy. A more normal lecture…
Yet still, the essence of it remained, wrought straight from that sunlight—
A tinge of fear.
An echo of what could have happened.
An echo of ancient war.
………
Avyr scampered off— pathetically— the mont class ended, not trusting himself to make his way out of an interaction with Svvh without getting into so stupid conflict or another. He consoled himself with the fact that it was Svvh, at least, who’d be the one starting things…
It was not much consolation.
There was little he could do but continue on, made knew in the flesh of that mont— refreshed, by the cold that swept over him the mont he swept outside with the turning of the door, back once more onto the University’s streets. A barren street, still— not utterly abandoned, and yet, in the silence of the crowds that hurried from building to building, from eave to shadowed eave, and in the trees whose denuded branches stretched up high into the atmosphere overhead, clawing at the stormy gray above…
It felt barren.
His breath plud in front of him, part of it catching on the fur around his muzzle, on his whiskers, threatening to turn into crusted ice were it not for the constant cycle of qi that thrumd through his body. It was only a matter of seconds to take it, and wring it into shape, and push it over his face, blunting the worst of the cold…
Yet, even, still… it did nothing to blunt the cold of heart, the winter chill, the echoing freeze of shattered peace that still hung heavy over the city. He didn’t stop to talk to anyone, though he certainly got a few curious, or nervous, or sotis even downright angry stares as he walked— more than he had before the incident, certainly— heading instead straight ho.
It was only when he was securely within their house that he let out an exhausted breath, topping over onto the couch and just… letting the exhaustion overtake him. How was it that one of the less intense days of the week had already tired him so?
He knew why.
With half a motion, more of a roll of his paws than anything, he pushed the little jade container out of his pocket and onto the couch. Such an inconspicuous thing, for all its importance…
To do, to do…
There were, ultimately, two choices really. To send it to Rr’an, to help his people, to achieve, in so small way, the goal which he had spent so very long working towards, and even know, even still continued in pursuit of…
Or to send it to Mingtain the librarian of no renown.
It was stupid to do anything but send it to Rr’an. His parents’ master was powerful, powerful in a way that few in the city could truly match. Even the Bloody Saffron Sect had to be respectful to him, if only just. The Great One was just as dedicated to the cause as he was. Perhaps even more than he was, in the ways that truly counted, in the soul-deep center of things, in the dominion of their great goal, great effort… Even, still, it was insurance. If he sohow wasn’t admitted to the Bloody Saffron Sect, then providing such a valuable resource would certainly make Rr’an look favorably upon him. On the other paw, not giving such a valuable resource to him when he could have… it did not paint him in a good light.
Yet. Despite it all… he tapped on the jade bottle with a claw, hearing the faint tink of keratin against rock, and the light susurration and tap of the pill as it bounced off the side. It was his pill. He knew— a confident, certainty— if he were to give the pill to Rr’an he’d forever regret it. Mingtain simply… cared more.
It was a strange thing to admit, even to himself. It was sothing he’d already admitted, ti and ti again, until it beca so natural, to be made simply normal. Mingtain was what Rr’an was not.
Mingtian had fought Rr’an for him. Mingtian had fought a Sundering cultivator and won. For him… it was not really a choice, was it? Beyond all logic, beyond every depth of rational calculus…
He trusted Mingtain more than he trusted Rr’an. When the opportunity ca, whenever that might be…
There was sothing important about that thought, he knew, a single, amber eye heavy against the swirling green and stone—
He tapped the jade bottle again, and listened to its tinkling laughter.
………
When Lily ca ho later that night, after her own— considerably busier— day of classes, she found Avyr sprawled out on the couch, fast asleep. Beside him, a single and rather unnoticeable jade bottle lay on the couch, nestled into the depression between him and the cushion, glinting in the faint light of the lamp above.
She smiled, and left him to his rest.
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