Unintended Cultivator

“As pets go, it’s really creepy,” said Misty Peak.

Sen gave her a level look. “It’s not a pet.”

“It acts like a pet. It follows you around all the time.”

“By that logic, you’re my pet. Should I be scratching you behind the ears?”

The look of blind outrage on Misty Peak’s face was too much for Sen. He burst into laughter, which didn’t help things at all. She stalked toward him with bloody vengeance in her eyes. It was a challenge to duck and dodge all of the punches and kicks she threw his way while he was still laughing, but Sen wasn’t one to let small things like debilitating laughter get in the way of saving his own life. By the time the fox woman got tired of not landing any blows, Sen had his amusement mostly under control. Mostly.

“Stop smirking at me,” said Misty Peak with barely restrained fury.

“My other pet isn’t nearly so demanding. Did you see how it just quietly waits for me?”

“I will cut your throat in your sleep.”

“Alright. Alright. I’ll stop poking fun,” said Sen taking up position by the door leading back outside.

“You’re in a terrible mood. Did I forget to feed you today?” asked Sen before darting out the door.

Sen crouched in a shadowy corner behind a building while Misty Peak hunted for him, shouting his name, and issuing very graphic death threats. He decided then and there to leave out the part of the story where he ran away and hid in any future telling of the tale. He glanced up at a soft chittering noise. The spider was clinging to the wall above him. While Sen couldn’t be entirely sure, he felt like the spider was giving him a reproachful look. He eyed the spirit beast.

“What?” asked Sen in a quiet voice. “She had it coming.”

When Misty Peak’s anger seemed to have subsided, Sen and the spider cautiously emerged from hiding. They tracked the fox woman down, who was leaning against a wall, arms folded across her chest, and staring at Sen with eyes narrowed so much they were barely slits. As Misty Peak looked like she was about to say something, the spider abruptly moved sideways to put some distance between itself and Sen.

“Traitor,” muttered Sen before he announced in a loud voice, “well, important business to be about. Spatial treasures to find.”

The fox stalked right up until she was standing nearly nose-to-chin with Sen, glaring up at him.

“Don’t imagine for one second that we’re anywhere near done with the whole pet discussion. We are not.”

Sen formed a mental fist and seized all of the comments that sprang to mind which he was certain would lead to instant bloodshed. He promptly crushed those thoughts and looked for anything less inflammatory to say.

“Yeah. I figured.”

With one last glare, Misty Peak spun on a heel and started walking away. Sen gave her back a curious look.

“Where are you going?”

“To find that spatial treasure.”

“Do you know where it is?”

She stopped and turned around to look at him like he must be stupid. “Really? A powerful cultivator treasure tucked away in a sacred city. I thought I might start with that huge building at the center of the city that looks like a giant temple.”

Sen looked past the fox and toward the inner part of the city. There was, in fact, a large structure rising above all of the other buildings. It did seem to fit with what Sen had seen from other temples. He gave the building an unhappy look. For some reason, it hadn’t been visible from outside the barrier, which made Sen nervous. Having dealt with illusions just recently, he wasn’t certain how much he should trust what he could see inside the city. But she had a point. It probably was the best place to start the search.

“Oh. Well, yes, that would make sense.”

“You hid from me for nearly two hours,” said Misty Peak while rubbing at her forehead. “What were you thinking about if not where to find the treasure?”

“I was thinking about hiding!”

Misty Peak threw her hands into the air, made a noise that did an unreasonably good job of telling Sen how unimpressed she was with him right then, and stalked away. Sen looked over at the spider, which had been steadily putting more and more distance between them. Sen rolled his eyes.

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“She wasn’t mad at you,” he said and started off after the fox.

The city wasn’t massive, but the trip took longer than Sen expected. Part of it was that Misty Peak couldn’t seem to let go of the mystery he’d discovered. She kept stopping and walking into buildings she seemed to pick at random. Sen opted to wait outside while she did those things. No reason to provoke her, he thought. Every time she came back outside, she looked less happy.

“That one too,” she said, breaking the silence for the first time in a while.

“I sort of thought it might be like that,” said Sen.

“Any ideas?”

“Nothing I’d be confident about saying out loud,” said Sen before he stopped and gave their surroundings an angry look.

“What?” asked Misty Peak.

“This is taking too long.”

“I wasn’t taking that long in those buildings.”

Sen shook his head. “Not that. This trip to the center of the city is taking too long. We saw this whole place from the outside. It can’t be more than a few miles across, but that temple is barely any closer. I haven’t sensed any kind of qi techniques at work. What about you? Are you sensing any illusions?”

The fox looked from Sen to the still-distant temple. Her eyes went briefly out of focus before she shook her head.

“There’s nothing nearby that I can sense. This is all real as near as I can tell.”

Sen took a moment to saturate the ground around them with earth qi. He focused on everything it was touching, and all he got back were normal impressions of stone and, much deeper, soil. He repeated the process with air qi in the surrounding area and didn’t find anything out of place. Not sure what else to try, but convinced that something was wrong, Sen summoned a cheap dao he’d taken off of someone he’d killed along the way. He walked to the nearest intersection and drove the sword down, burying the tip of the sword in the stone below. Misty Peak came over and tapped the sword with her foot.

“What’s this supposed to do?” she asked.

“We need some kind of visual landmark that isn’t part of this city. Something out of place that can serve as a reference point. If we are actually moving in a line toward that temple, the sword should remain behind us at all times.”

“You think we aren’t?”

Sen rocked his head back and forth a little. “I think that something is going on here that we’re not seeing. Probably something we’re not meant to see. Something designed to keep us away from that temple. At least, that’s my good theory.”

“Is there a bad theory?”

“The bad theory is that this city is bigger than it looks and that spatial treasure your grandfather wants so badly has warped it somehow.”

Misty Peak considered those options. “Okay. I see your point. I’m hoping for the first choice.”

Sen took the lead in their walk and kept glancing back to see if the sword was still there. For a short time, it was there. Then, it was gone from behind them and Sen could see it down a street to his left. He came to a stop and simply pointed to it. Misty Peak gave the sword an unsettled look before she finally asked a question.

“Did you even feel the environment change?” she asked.

“I didn’t. You know more about manipulating what people see than me. What do you think we should do?”

Sen waited while the fox paced back and forth a few times with her brows furrowed. Whatever was happening to them was well beyond his experience, and he knew it.

“We keep going, at least for a while. Maybe we can piece together enough information to understand how this works. Right now, this feels like a trap, and I know I don’t want to be stuck in here forever.”

“No kidding,” offered Sen. “I’ve got a few years’ worth of food, but I’m not feeling good about what happens after that. I haven’t seen anything like food in here so far. Have you?”

“A few years’ worth of food. What kind of disaster were you planning for?”

“All of them, I guess. You can’t ever really have too much food.”

Sen decided not to mention that he could get by without food if he had to do it. He’d done it before. He just didn’t want to subsist entirely on qi, even if it would probably prove easier and easier to do so over time. That was just a step too far removed from humanity for Sen’s tastes. He knew that, if he ascended, there was a good chance that such things would be commonplace. It didn’t mean he felt a rush to embrace it. His teachers hadn’t, after all. Pushing away the distracting thoughts, Sen eyed the sword and then their ultimate destination. He gestured to Misty Peak.

“Lead the way. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.”

For the next hour, Sen paid very close attention to his surroundings. Despite the temple always appearing as though it was directly ahead, the sword exposed that lie. It would appear and increasingly disappear from their sight, sometimes to their left or right, sometimes behind them, but slowly growing more distant. Sen picked an intersection and drove another sword he knew he’d never use into the street. As they set out, Sen decided to take a different tack. He cycled for earth qi and used it to displace part of the road as they traveled over it. From time to time, he’d give the spider a look, but it was just walking after them seemingly unconcerned about their current situation. Either thator it wasn’t able to follow the conversation enough to understand what's happening, thought Sen. This might all just look like human madness to it. After another hour of watching the new sword appear and disappear seemingly at random, Sen figured that it was probably time.

“Let’s stop here for a minute. I want to check something,” said Sen.

“What is there to check?”

“Our trail.”

Without bothering to explain himself beyond that, Sen formed a qi platform and rose up over the city. He kept expecting to find the barrier above, but he didn’t. He wasn’t sure if he just didn’t get high enough or if it was somehow open at the top. He assumed it was the former, otherwise that barrier would just extend up into the sky forever. Sen understood the qi consumption of formations rather well, so he knew that an open barrier like that wasn’t realistic just in terms of what it would cost in energy. He was able to get high enough to get a better sense of the city, which was perfectly circular. Yet, looking down on it, the city did look bigger than it had from outside the barrier. That started a sense of unease, but it was looking at the visual trail he’d left behind that truly gave Sen pause. They had been weaving a complicated path through the outer edges of the city. When seen from above, though, that path in combination with the circular design of the city looked vaguely familiar. He stood on that platform for quite a while as he tried to dredge up whatever memory was associated with that pattern. When it finally clicked, he lowered himself to the ground.

“You took your time,” said Misty Peak. “You also don’t look very happy. What did you figure out?”

“What do you know about mandalas?”

“That they exist. That’s about as far as it goes. Why?”

“Because I’m pretty sure we’re stuck in one.”

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