Unintended Cultivator

Misty Peak’s head tilted to one side like Sen had started leaning and she was trying to keep him in sight properly.

“What do you mean we’re stuck in a mandala?”

Sen considered a couple of approaches to explaining, but their effectiveness depended a lot on her knowing something about mandalas. She didn’t need to know a lot, because he didn’t know a lot, but she did need to know something. Instead of trying to talk her through it, Sen decided to simply show her what he meant. He cycled for ice and leaned on his increasingly sharp memory to bring up a mental image of what he’d seen from above. It took him a minute to craft a crude replica on the ground, but it was good enough for his purposes. It had the buildings and roads in all of the right places at least. He gestured at it.

“This is the ruins we’re in,” he said.

“That can’t be. That’s way too many buildings and roads,” objected the fox woman.

“You’d think so, but it’s what we’re dealing with. Just take my word for it, or fly up and take a look for yourself.”

Misty Peak gave him an annoyed look. “I can’t fly. Not like you did, just floating there in the sky like some kind of rock that got confused about gravity.”

“That’s a very strange way to put it but okay. Then, you’ll just have to take my word for it. This,” he said, gesturing at the hasty ice sculpture, “is the place we’re stuck in right now.”

“Fine. Let’s say that’s true. I still don’t see the connection.”

He cycled for fire and sent a small wisp of fire along the trail he’d observed. It moved along the icy streets in the sculpture, leaving a melted trail where his earth qi had left a trail in the real world. When seen from this angle, the path was incredibly complicated. It never crossed itself, but it did form a pattern. Sen didn’t understand the pattern, or what it meant, but it was far too orderly to be anything other than intentional. Given that he and Misty Peak were both blessed with perception well beyond that of a mortal, it was a statement about the power at play that neither of them had so much as felt a thing as they were directed along that path. Where she had been giving him skeptical side glances before, the fox was wholly fixated on the sculpture now. She frowned when the wisp of flame abruptly winked out. She shot him a questioning look.

“Is that where we are now?” she asked.

“It is.”

The fox circled the sculpture a few times but still looked unconvinced. Sen considered the problem before he cycled for wind and made a slashing gesture. A wind blade passed through the sculpture just above the surface. He swept his hand in the other direction and wind scooped up the ice buildings and flung them away. It left a largely flat image on the ground with just the barest impression of where the buildings had once been. Sen squatted down by what was left of the sculpture.

“If we continue on as we are, I think that we’ll end up circling the city, probably several times, constantly working closer to the temple at the center.”

“Why, though?” asked the fox.

“Some kind of defensive measure, maybe? I honestly don’t know. I do know that mandalas have symbolic and even ceremonial significance to some groups of monks. But my teachers never explained any of it to me beyond those basic facts. Uncle Kho had a couple that he’d picked up somewhere that he showed to me. I thought they looked interesting, pretty even, but cultivators don’t use them. So, I didn’t ask a lot of questions.”

“I wish you had,” said Misty Peak.

“So do I,” agreed Sen. “In my defense, I was learning at the limits of my abilities at the time. I didn’t have any spare mental energy to spend on things like information I didn’t absolutely need.”

Misty Peak made a noncommittal noise, and Sen could see that she was only half-listening to him. She was still studying the ice sculpture. She’d crouched down next to him and was tracing the route they’d taken with a fingertip.

“How sure are you about this?” she asked.

“It could go either way,” admitted Sen. “My intuition is telling me I’m right about it, but my intuitions have led me down dead-end trails before.”

“True of everyone, I would think,” said the fox. “Ideally, we’d just cut straight to the temple, but it seems like that isn’t an option. Going the other way, though, could take months. Of course, that’s only a problem for us. It’s less of a problem for my grandfather, I think.”

Sen gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean by that?”

“You were just flying up there. Did you not bother to look at the sky? It isn’t just the environment that’s strange here. Time isn’t moving the same. I don’t think that the sun has changed position since we came in here.”

Sen hadn’t been paying attention to the sun. It wasn’t like he got tired the way mortals did, at least not most of the time. After the healing elixir he drank right after they entered the ruins had really kicked in, he felt more or less fine. He probably could use an hour or two of sleep to let the healing consolidate, but he didn’t feel like he needed it. All other things being equal, he suspected he could go a ridiculously long time without caving to the need for sleep. A couple of weeks, probably, Sen thought. Maybe more. With the steady decrease of that need had come a sharp decline in how acutely he sensed the passage of time. As long as it was light out, it was daytime. If Misty Peak hadn’t brought it up, he might have gone a few days before he even noticed how long the sun had simply been hanging motionless in the sky.

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“I suppose we could try to go back. I mean, I know we’re supposed to get that spatial treasure, but it’s pretty clear that none of us expected this situation. I don’t even know if the relic that lets me stay in this place will last long enough for us to cover the whole city like that,” she said with a gesture at the path they had followed so far.

“We could try,” said Sen in an unconvinced voice.

“You don’t think the ruins will let us leave?”

“Well, if it is a trap, why would it let us leave? If it’s not a trap, then it’s probably some kind of test. I expect the only way out of that is to either complete it or fail it. Unfortunately, I have no idea what either of those things looks like. We might fail if we fall asleep. We might fail if we get to the temple without achieving some specific goal. There’s no way to know.”

“We might complete it simply by reaching the temple too.”

“True,” Sen conceded. “Well, if we’re going to test if we can leave, we should get on with it. The sooner we know, the sooner we can make a plan.”

After twenty minutes of pure frustration, it was clear to Sen that just walking out wasn’t going to work for them. It was as if the city simply realigned itself around them to ensure that they never went anywhere except forward on the intended path. Misty Peak was a bit more determined, so they spent another half hour failing to get anywhere near to the barrier. Sen was calm about the situation. If they couldn’t go back, that only left going forward. The fox was far less enthusiastic about being trapped in the city. Sen supposed that she had more on the line than he did. He wasn’t sure what kind of measures the monks who once lived in the city had used to keep foxes out, but he suspected that being inside the city when they activated wouldn’t be good for Misty Peak. Sen took a step back when the fox whirled and pointed at him.

“You can fly,” she said, her eyes bright. “You can fly us there. Skip all that walking entirely.”

Sen had his doubts that it would work. If the city could mess with space or their perceptions of it so smoothly that they didn’t notice, it followed that the same would apply in the air above the city. However, he decided it made sense to try everything before they committed to traversing the mandala by foot. He left another sword in the street to mark where they left off and formed a qi platform big enough for him, Misty Peak, and the spider. The fox seemed deeply uncomfortable with having the spider so close. The spider seemed deeply uncomfortable with getting onto the qi platform and even less comfortable with flying. It crouched low as soon as they took off. The fox looked inordinately pleased with herself as they cut through the air, her gleaming eyes fixed on the temple. The glimmer of triumph soon winked out when she realized that the temple wasn’t getting any closer. Eventually, Sen got tired of the exercise in futility and dropped them back down to ground level. When they landed next to the sword he’d just driven into the street, even Sen couldn’t help but give the blade a sour look.

“Well, I guess that answers that question,” muttered Sen.

The spider scuttled off the qi platform immediately. Misty Peak started hurling profanities at the nearby buildings and occasionally kicking loose objects she found. Sen glanced at the sun and saw that it still hadn’t moved. How long had they been in the city? He wasn’t sure how long they had actually spent walking. It hadn’t felt like that long, but they had covered a lot of ground. It just hadn’t all been in a straight line, unfortunately. He decided that it was time for food. He might be able to go without and the same might hold true for the fox, but he doubted the spider could. Sen considered going into one of the nearby buildings and looking for a kitchen, but the idea left him feeling oddly ill at ease. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew that it was a bad idea.

Instead, he set up a campfire right in the middle of the street and set about making some food. The spider got one of the many slain spirit beasts that Sen had dropped into his storage rings over the years. He always meant to take them out and harvest parts that might be useful for alchemy but almost never seemed to get around to it. He added it to a growing list of things he should make an effort to do more often. It was useful in this situation because it meant the spider had a steady food supply, but Sen couldn’t picture being in similar circumstances very often. Although, that might just be a lack of imagination on my part, thought Sen. When he was done cooking up a basic meal, he called Misty Peak over.

“Come and eat something,” he said.

“Why?” she asked in a waspish tone.

“Because things never look quite as bad after a meal. Plus,” Sen gave the sky a look, “I’m not sure how long we’ve actually been in here. It seems like it’s just been part of a day, but I’m feeling pretty doubtful about everything at the moment.”

The trio ate in silence. Misty Peak seemed lost in her own thoughts, while the spider was wholly invested in eating the spirit beast Sen had donated. It was a sight that neither Sen nor the fox looked at too closely. Sen spent the meal wishing he knew more about how time and space qi worked. He’d gotten a bit of insight about it from studying all the storage rings he’d looted over the years, but that wasn’t anything like real training. He also didn’t have affinities for those kinds of qi. He thought that shadow qi might have a distant relationship to space qi, but that was something else he lacked the knowledge or experience to leverage. Even if the monks hadn’t used time and space qi specifically, Sen suspected that having affinities for them would have made navigating inside the city easier. Eventually, he glanced over at the fox woman. She looked defeated.

“We should get some sleep,” said Sen. “It’s not like night is ever going to arrive to break up the days.”

“I don’t have time to waste,” said Misty Peak.

“We aren’t going to walk non-stop for months. Even I can’t do that with all of my body cultivation, and tired minds make bad decisions. We’ll have to sleep eventually. So, it may as well be now.”

Sen was both surprised and relieved when the fox didn’t suggest they sleep in one of the buildings. He hadn’t wanted to fight about it because he didn’t have any facts, just intuitions. Being in the city meant that there wasn’t anywhere he could anchor a tent. He satisfied himself by pulling out some blankets and piling them up on the ground. He’s slept in more uncomfortable places. While he hadn’t felt like he was lagging during the day, he felt himself start to drift off almost immediately. His last thoughts as he slipped into unconsciousness were about mandalas.

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