37. Threats

  “Hien Ro is back,” Atla informed me during an evening’s meditation.

  “I know,” I said, having seen in the threads that he would be.

  “He got into a fight already, and he was so angry and hateful, but then suddenly he was just...I don’t know. I’ve never seen a person like that before,” Atla said. He seemed nervous. “It was like he pulled a plug and suddenly all of the anger and rage and hatred drained out of him like water from a basin. He’s coming here now with the man that he fought.”

  “Okay. Thank you for telling me that, Atla,” I said. “You said he’s coming here?”

  “Yes. The man who met him at the arrival platform brought him to the waygate, and he’s almost here.”

  “Yes, I sense him,” I agreed, feeling Hien Ro arrive and then take off flying in my direction. I frowned, sensing something wrong with his aura. If something had happened between him and Beailor...I didn’t know what to do about it except help him heal, I supposed. I couldn’t stand against both the Emerald Court and the Divine Fates. I needed the court on my side. Or at least, not actively opposing me.

  I sighed and gently flared my Qi, signaling my presence to my guest as I walked out of my new mansion to greet him. He arrived moments later, with a familiar face whose name I couldn’t recall.

  “Welcome home, Hien Ro. Your family has missed you,” I informed him.

  “I missed them more,” he said. He sighed, and then looked at the stranger with him. “We must speak in private, unless you know this man and that he can be trusted.”

  “I think I faced him in the tower,” I admitted. “I can’t remember his name.”

  “Piotr,” Hien Ro informed me, as a look of profound shock registered on Piotr’s face. Whether it was that I remembered him at all, or that I forgot his name, I wasn’t certain. “Wait for us here. I need to speak with my master in private. We’ll discuss whether or not I accept you as a disciple after that.”

  I led Hien Ro through my mansion to my study, where we sat. I offered him a drink, something stiff since I sensed that he needed it, and we sat for a few moments in silence.

  “Remember when we were young, and you said it was your fate to kill the empress of the Divine Fates Empire?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, they’re getting impatient,” he informed me. “They’re sending one thousand platinum ranked cultivators into this dimension, who seem to be determined to claim as many worlds as they can at the moment. Duke Loshi, the lord of this realm, is holding them off at the moment, but he won’t last. Even he has his limits, and soon they’ll begin taking his worlds from him and weakening his powerbase while improving their own. He’s appealed to the Emerald Court for help.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I sensed that something was happening, but I didn’t know the shape of it.”

  “You don’t seem too worried,” Hien Ro said. “Thousands of people are dying because of this invasion.”

  “Is their blood on my hands, Hien Ro?” I asked. “Do you blame me for it?”

  “Of course not!” he said. “But what happens when one of those cultivators comes to Atla?”

  “I’ll crush them,” I said simply. “It’s not these invaders that I’m worried about. It’s what comes after them. As you said, they’ve only been sent to distract and weaken Lord Loshi. The true thrust of the invasion is yet to come.”

  “You think so?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said with conviction. “Will you help me in preparing the world to face it?”

  “How can we stand against such a force, Little Bug?”

  “As we stood against the Necromancer, Ant. United,” I answered.

  He shook his head. “I fear it won’t be enough.”

  “Then use that device in your pocket to take away your fear,” I suggested.

  He frowned, then grinned. “Excellent idea,” he agreed, and he pressed the button to do so.

  When he was once more drained, I embraced him. “Hien Ro, you are my brother. Your daughters are my nieces, your wife my sister and disciple. I will not permit the world you stand on to fall to pieces. You have my word, your family will be safe.”

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  He seemed shocked, and slowly, I felt his resolve fill him. He sighed in defeat.

  “I secured an arrangement with Count Beailor,” he informed me. “In exchange for sending him my emotions, he has agreed to help Loshi fight off these invaders. But if I hold anything back, he will also hold back. I … don’t know what to do.”

  “Remember who you are, and what you fight for, and who you fight for,” I suggested. “And if you forget, ask your family to remind you.”

  He nodded.

  Then we began to speak of the specifics of the invasion of our dimension for some time. Eventually, the conversation turned back to Piotr, and I offered my advice.

  “Inform him of the arrangement with Count Beailor, and task him with watching out for signs of the listlessness,” I suggested. “In exchange, I think you would do well with a disciple, Hien Ro. He will keep you grounded, and you will help him to fly.”

  Hien Ro sighed. “Since you say so, I’ll accept him,” he said. “But honestly, his cultivation is higher than mine. If he had fought me with his full strength he would have beaten me in a heartbeat. I should be his disciple, not the other way around.”

  I shook my head. “No, I think not. His cultivation is cracked and withering. What do you think, Atla?”

  The world’s Eidolon appeared and danced on the ceiling. “I don’t know him that well, but yeah, he’s definitely shaken,” the world-boy announced. “He radiates uncertainty and unsteadiness. It’s like something broke his identity core and showed him that it was all built on lies, and now instead of reforming his core he’s trying to put the old one back together. That’s a thing that happens to cultivators, right?”

  “Yes, it is,” I said. I sighed, and decided that I would do this Piotr a favor. “Hien Ro, I believe that it would be beneficial for your disciple to see the Sea of Memories. But as you’re his master, I will leave the decision in your—”

  “If you think so, then as my master I defer to your wisdom,” he said.

  I nodded, and we went outside, where Piotr was speaking with Mai Mai about the tea that she had served him.

  “Piotr, I accept you as my student, but am not ready to commit to you being a permanent disciple,” Hien Ro announced. “Also, get ready, because Master Little Bug has decided—”

  I didn’t let Hien Ro finish warning him.

  There are no exact words to describe what I did to Piotr next. It was a metaphysical attack upon his soul, but yet it wasn’t an attack at all. It is an act of incredible malice and incredible intimacy, for our souls touch and for a moment the bond between us was closer than that of lovers. He was completely exposed to me, and I to him, but I knew how to exploit this openness and he did not.

  In one analogy, it is like his soul was a world-ocean, with his past lives beneath the surface and his current life treading water. The attack was just to gently press him down into the ocean for a moment.

  I was sucked in with him, and I watched as he lived his life as a caterpillar, slowly developing into a butterfly. I watched as he lived as a dog, loyal and faithful to the family whose house he protected. I watched as he lived as a young orphan struggling to fill his belly by theft, only to die in a tragedy. The species he had been as the orphan was not human, but something with green skin and large ears and tusks in its mouth, though as a child those tusks were small and his nickname had been toothless.

  When I had sensed that he had had enough, I pulled him back out of the ocean. He gasped, wild-eyed and astonished on a fundamental level.

  “What was that?” he demanded.

  “A glimpse of the past lives of your soul,” I informed him.

  “You did that to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “To give you perspective,” I explained simply. “I sense that you were lacking in that department during our duel. Now that you have seen your past selves, pathetic and weak though they might have been, I encourage you to look to the future. Shatter your identity to rebuild a stronger structure from the shards, Piotr. Even if it seems that you are crippling your cultivation, you will emerge on the other side stronger than you were.”

  He considered my words carefully, then bowed, Fist pressed into his other palm. “I shall consider the great master’s advice,” he vowed carefully.

  “Mai Mai, I would love to stay for tea, but I miss my girls and need to tell them that their daddy is home,” Hien Ro said, bowing to my lover before me, then flying off. Piotr flew after him, leaving me alone with Mai Mai.

  “What was that you did to him,” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Will it help me the same way you think it will help him?”

  I was silent for a moment. “Yes,” I admitted. “But I do not have the heart to do that to someone that I love. Not again, not after what it cost me to do it to my disciples.”

  “And if I said please?” she persisted.

  “Speak with Yara and the other disciples and ask them how they stepped onto the golden path,” I suggested. “If they tell you that it was worth it, or that it would have been worth it for any other reason than to save Atla from the Necromancer Ant, then ask me again and I will show you the depths within your soul.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s a threat.”

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