XVIII

  Valley of the Shadow of Death

  The Allied Forces, as Garen was coming to call our company of more than a hundred, packed their bags and took off early the next morning.

  Our vanguard were the melee cultivators, spread out in a V-formation. Ranged disciples like Judith or myself (though I wasn’t really ranged) stayed behind the tip of the V. That meant, to both my and Judith’s chagrin, Duke was marching right beside us.

  The boy smiled and idly chatted while we did our best to ignore him.

  Though the weather was dry, there was no sun. Yet the angles of the sloping mountainside sharpened with every step, further convincing me a higher realm had a vendetta against the pass some time in the past.

  A cry roiled overhead. Saber, my new companion, glanced upwards and growled.

  “Sounds avian,” I whispered.

  “White Stalkers,” David said, who was also with us. “Group hunters which live near the peaks. They’re all over the valley.”

  I hummed. Smudges of white moved against the sky. I tried peering through Saber’s eyes, but my connection with him was a far cry from what it was with the cinderwings. I had to spend more time with him, especially in combat.

  ‘Shame I cannot summon them both.’

  Though more energy had gone into Saber’s creation than that of Ashwing, it hadn’t resulted in him costing more shard points. His cost was the same as that of a chick.

  I switched to the chick’s sight and received a clearer picture of what was up there.

  ‘Yeah, I’m not bothering those.’

  There were dozens and they all looked perfectly capable of ripping out my throat. The smallest was also a full factor of two bigger than Ashwing.

  Back on the ground, shadows shut behind us like a maw, cut off our retreat, and boxed us into the valley. Scattered conversation died. Beads of sweat dripped down the side of peoples’s necks and lumps went down their throats. We had power in numbers, true. But there was no covert movement with a group of this size.

  Two hours of marching went by when our formation made a sudden stop. My hand already rested on my blade, but Aurille’s shout disarmed me. I peeked from behind the tip of the V and found we had reached a gap in the sparse number of trees which a frozen brook cut through.

  “Take some time to rest and refill your tankards!” one of the disciples at the front relayed.

  Judith dropped to the floor. “Thank the heavens. I’ve walked enough this week for the rest of my life.”

  I chuckled and dropped my pack. “Should I get you a refill?”

  She all but threw me her tankard. Under her breath, she muttered: ‘damned horse legs.’

  Leila and the other girls approached from the front of the formation. One of them, whose name I didn’t bother to remember, hollered. “Lord Duke, can I refill your tankard for you?!”

  Duke had already fallen in step behind me. “Don’t worry about it, Mei! It won’t take that long.”

  Since I couldn’t exactly tell him not to take care of his supplies, I wordlessly strode the river. Some other disciples had already dug holes, but I circumvented those.

  ‘Let’s see what he can do.’

  The snow cushioned Saber’s steps. He stalked across the brook, picked his spot, then slammed his paw into the surface. Heat smouldered underneath his nails, which melt through the frost with ease, and broken shards of ice flew everywhere.

  ‘He’s strong,’ I thought as I crouched to refill my tankard.

  His raw strength surpassed that of Ashwing, though the bird could generate more force through diving. Saber had his own trick up his sleeve though.

  Fury (Common): The instincts of the ashenblood are one of battle. Fire courses through their veins. Speed and power increase the longer the ashenblood stays in battle.

  “Your summons are interesting,” Duke commented.

  I sighed. “I am not interested in your courtship, Lord Duke.”

  He gave me a disarming wave. “Duke is fine. Also, contrary to what some like to imply, I’m not a dog. It’s not the purpose of my conversation.”

  “Then what is?”

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  “Not one for sweet-talking are you?” He huffed and shrugged. “I thought to offer some cautionary advice. Given your closeness with Judith, you’ll no doubt receive an offer from the Vires. You should think twice of accepting.”

  I faced him fully. From my still crouching position, the ambient light lend his face an air of divine.

  “And why is that?” I asked.

  “You’ve heard the rumour regarding the second trial?”

  “The Maze? I am aware.”

  He nodded, satisfied that his job had just gotten easier. “Then you must also be aware this is only the second opening of the Maze.” He paused with a smug smile on his face.

  If only I could punch that smirk off. I considered his words though. Everwinter had stood for more than a thousand years…

  “Only once?”

  “Just once.”

  He crouched and filled his tankard. “My cousin and current Matriarch of our clan, Sell Dawnflame, participated in the realm that time—six hundred years ago. I’m not aware of the specifics, but I once pestered her for information. She let slip that it wasn’t just the Maze; the entire realm was more difficult. So I did some digging.”

  By now, the playboy fully had my attention, and he knew it. He leaned closer. “Sell wasn’t the only heir present. Pyke the Black Death, Veyran Bloodhowl, and Lady Jiang are but to name a few.”

  The names didn’t mean anything to me. “Were they heirs to the Pillars?”

  “Not at the time. Some were 2nd, fifth or lower in line. Yet every single one became the respective leader of their clan at some point.”

  “That’s…quite coincidental,” I said.

  “So one would think.” He drew a heart in the layer of snow over the brook. “But I believe the universe is like love. Mysterious, yet never without reasoning.”

  Saber pawed Duke’s drawing, cutting the figure in two.

  I hummed. “Are you an Expressionist?”

  They were those that believed the System was conscious in some capacity.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “But I do think it’s pulled to places where fate converges as if by gravity.”

  ‘Fate…’ I leaned back.

  There was a common belief amongst cultivators that certain events were destined to happen. That some individuals were meant for unreachable heights from birth. It was an easy theory to subscribe to. How else could I explain me finding evidence of my heritage so soon? That was too unlikely to be just chance.

  But what if the universe had drawn me to that place on purpose?

  “You mean fate is like a weight,” I frowned. “The more people with enough fate gather, the greater their mass.”

  “The greater the pull,” Duke nodded. “There are big players in the realm this year: Vyke the Vile and Aedan Bloodletter from the Fallen Immortals. Gaje the Accursed—Caelia Vire and Aurille Everfrost, who are not the least of them. High court calls them ‘Omens’.”

  “They think,” he said, “whichever one of them wins inside this realm will sway the balance of the Pillars into their favour.”

  He stood.

  “An interesting theory,” I said. “But what does it have to do with me?”

  “I was getting to it.” He strode off, making me hurry to follow him. “You can enter the Maze under the guidance of the Vires, and they will not treat you badly. But with the potential balance of the Pillars on the line, the Vires will not hand you the best rewards from the realm. Worse, I suspect they will force you to share whatever you do find if the reward exceeds a certain grade.”

  My forehead creased up. “They can do that?”

  “A cultivator without backing is an easy target. Especially one that is an outsider.”

  I glanced down. This talk of receiving and accepting offers was enticing. But he was right. The Pillars were split for a reason, and leaving one to join the other was the same as entering a different culture all together. At least in the Vermilion Pavilion, we were all mostly fire cultivators.

  Duke half-turned to me. “One Pillar this year has no easily identifiable heir in the game.”

  He didn’t spell out the obvious.

  We reached Judith, who noticed our approach and glared at Duke.

  “Some time remains until the second trial,” he said. “Think on it.” Then he veered off towards his companions.

  “He didn’t threaten you, did he?” Judith said, following Duke’s retreating figure.

  “No. He was…quite helpful, actually.”

  “Helpful? Duke? I doubt it.”

  I didn’t respond.

  Our march continued shortly after. Packs of lesser monsters ambushed us, but they were taken care of quickly without casualties. Spirits were high. The tension in the disciples’s shoulders relaxed. They pushed forward less like they were marching to their potential death but as if they were on their way to a picnic.

  “I don’t like this,” I said.

  “Me neither,” Judith agreed.

  But two voices couldn’t draw an entire army into order.

  Cries sounded overhead. The White Stalkers were strokes of a paint brush against the sky, barely indecipherable. But my chick saw true.

  ‘There are more of them.’

  And they circled like vultures.

  Fate is like a weight. Converging where the mass is high.

  Aurille was the sole true heir in this company. But Duke was a second cousin and Judith the niece of Caelia. How much would their fates impact the scale…how much would I impact it?

  That same sense of calm I’d had the day before reappeared.

  ‘Enough to not make it easy.’

  It’s why I wasn’t surprised when another call sounded to halt. The Eastern bridge walked over a ravine and connected the southern part of the range to the east. Its columns disappeared into the darkness below, so colossal that their base wasn’t visible.

  “Is that even possible…” one of the disciples near us whispered.

  A chunk had been ripped out of the centre of the bridge. There was no way to cross.

  “The destruction is recent,” Duke commented.

  And he was right, for pieces of rubble still tumbled into the valley below.

  “What could’ve done such a thing?” Judith mouthed.

  For Duke, the answer was easy, I supposed.

  “Fate,” the boy whispered.

  The previous mirth which had suffused the army dampened. There was another bridge that’d get us to our destination. It’d see us pass through the western side of the range before making our way back east.

  West was the domain of cultists. If the rumours were to be believed, the Black Earth cult numbered in the hundreds.

  Not an attractive prospect. But no other road remained, so we made our way.

  Clouds overhead darkened, making the white stalkers in the sky easier to discern. A bright, blue flash arced through the sky. The explosion reached me moments later.

  Our company shivered at the dark omen.

  Instead of frost elders, trees that grew this far into the valley were reminiscent of a pike. Bare things clinging onto life. A pungent smell entered the air, which intensified the closer we got to the western bridge.

  Saber growled. This was…

  The first body was a surprise. A person in robes was strung up against one of the trees, which was when I realised the trees weren’t trees at all but masts jabbed into the earth. Before my mind realised this, more corpses had already joined.

  Somewhere, I heard a pained moan. Carrion assaulted one of the victims. They floated between a conscious and unconscious state, and too much blood streamed from the holes in their face to make them out clearly.

  One of our own put them out of their misery.

  Not even fifteen minutes after seeing our first corpse, we again came to a stop.

  Dead smack in the middle of the road, at a table drinking black tea and dragging from a burning roll of spirit herbs, sat a lone boy in dark armour.

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