Sky Pride

Liren was back in forty five minutes. The doctor was wearing a blindfold and curled up on the bottom of the cart. Liren had picked up the cart and carried it over her head to make travel quicker, but it didn’t make the journey a pleasant one. Neither she, nor Tian, cared. Tian had already lost four more villagers in the time she was gone. He needed all the help he could get.

“The group on the left should live for at least two more hours, the group on the right needs urgent care.” Tian pointed at his “wards” laid out on the dirt. There were no homes big enough to treat all of them in. “Before you ask, no, any medicine I have would kill them, not help them. I’m currently steeping a tea that should help fight infection, but I am guessing on how far down it needs to be diluted. I have experience as a hospital orderly and battlefield medic. I will follow your instructions.” Tian bowed to the dizzy doctor, and pointed him at the patients.

Fewer patients now. They were down to just twenty five surviving villagers. Out of hundreds. And the only child they found, alive or dead, was the single burned boy.

The doctor looked blankly at the scene in front of him, then bolted for a bush. He threw up. Violently threw up. Shoulders shaking, knees trembling, watery bile coming after whatever solid food he had managed to eat before being ‘recruited’ by Liren.

Tian walked over and slowly rubbed the old doctor’s back. “First time at a massacre?”

The doctor couldn’t answer. His stomach was convulsing. His hands, normally so steady, trembled like a hummingbird’s wing.

“Wash your mouth out with some cold tea. Then drink a little. Just a little, though. The qi should be more than enough to replace what you have lost.” Tian kept his voice soft and handed over his calabash. The doctor managed to hang on to the gourd, but drinking was beyond him for the moment.

“It’s simpler than you think. I am keeping very close track of who’s in what condition. I will tell you who needs your help first.” And Tian just prayed he was right about that, but it’s what the doctor needed to hear. If he guessed wrong, he was willing to accept the blame. “So from your perspective, there is really only one patient. The one in front of you. Where you are doesn’t matter. How they got that way doesn’t matter. All that matters is the problem in front of you. And you have spent a lifetime healing mortal ailments. This is just one more day on the job. And you will be paid well for your work.”

“A lifetime of births, fevers, broken bones and farming accidents. This? This?” The doctor finally managed to rinse and spit. His eyes went wide and he took a cautious sip of the cold tea. Tian could feel the qi rushing through the old man. This much would be fine, but more would be dangerous. He gently took back the gourd.

“I have never attended a birth, Doctor. Never had the opportunity to learn about maternal care at all, actually. I would learn all you are willing to teach. Afterward. For now, a patient needs your help. That good mother right there.” Tian gently turned the doctor to his first patient.

Liren hovered outside the orderly rows of the wounded. She shifted from side to side, her hands making little clenching moments as she swept her eyes around. Tian had seen her like this before. Feeling useless and hating it. But the medicine dao was not within her. She could tie a bandage and give someone their medicine, but it wasn’t her path. She had done all she could here, now. All that she could do at this point would be -

“I’ll cremate the dead.” Her voice was bitter.

“Creamate? We bury-” The doctor looked up. Tian cut him off with a hand on his shoulder.

“Not today. Thank you, Sister.”

“But if they are cremated-”

“Then heretics cannot defile their corpses or use them for evil magics. Eyes down, Doctor. Tend to the living.” Tian kept his voice kind but firm.

They lost another five before the remainder were out of immediate danger. Just twenty survivors out of a village of roughly four hundred souls.

“The Yellow Banner Bandits.” The doctor had pulled himself together by the end, but Tian knew that look. The outside was composed. The inside would never be quite right again. He saw that look in his reflection. He saw it in Liren too.

“Yes. We had already killed off two thirds of them, and were coming to finish the job. I had thought we were traveling more than fast enough.” Tian sighed. “No more time for subtly, I think.”

The doctor snorted. Then took a deep breath and firmly exhaled. “I suppose I should be thankful that Immortals condescended to intervene here at all. On behalf of the survivors, I thank the ancients.” The doctor clasped his hands together and bowed deeply. Tian straightened him up.

“I’m fifteen, Doctor. No need to bow so deeply. It is I who am grateful to you.” The words were rote politeness, of course. A mortal who didn’t bow to an immortal would be ignored at best, with death a very normal outcome. The Monastery had strict rules about that sort of thing, but Tian had never heard of them actually being enforced. Largely because nobody ever seemed to have anything to do with mortals in the first place.

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“Fifteen. You are fifteen.”

“Yes. I know I look young for my age-”

“I thought you were some ancient monster practicing some kind of age reversion art! Fifteen?”

“Is that a thing? Age reversion, I mean?”

“You tell me, you are the immortal!” The doctor’s confusion and irritation momentarily overtook his survival instinct.

“Never heard of it if it is. Most of the seniors I know look like seniors.” Tian shrugged.

“Fifteen.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Fifteen, and a hospital orderly and combat medic. You didn’t turn a hair at any of this. You have seen this often.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“What…” The doctor’s voice trailed off.

“I was trying to make sure this exact thing doesn’t happen, Doctor. My brothers and sisters and I have been trying very, very hard.” Tian looked over at Liren. She had gone the kind of still that promised death. “We should only be a couple of hours from the Water Fortress if we run flat out.”

Liren nodded.

“We might find the kids.”

She nodded again. They both knew that they wouldn’t find the kids in any kind of good state. Liren pointed up the river, and turned. Tian sighed. “I guess you will be here for a while by yourself Doctor. Take care.” Tian pulled on his sky blue robe, proclaiming his identity as a member of the Outer Court of Ancient Crane Mountain. He briefly rubbed the rosary beads hanging at his waist.

Liren made sure he was ready, then set her feet and ran. Tian activated Light Body Heavy Hands and ran behind her. Both moving fast as a summer storm.

It was a beautiful day on the river. Tian couldn’t help but think it was unfair. The skies should have been gray, heavy with clouds to hide immortal sin from Heaven’s eyes. It was beautiful, warm and sunny, with white cotton clouds drifting on comfortable breezes, carrying the fresh scent of growing grass and sweet riverwater.

The smell of blood, of vomit, of excrement, burned homes and bodies, quickly vanished behind them.

They ran. They hid from the perception of mortals when they needed to, avoiding settlements entirely if necessary. It was easier than it seemed when Tian first left the temple. After a while, your perception got sharp enough and your reactions quick enough that simply being outside someone’s field of view was not difficult at all. And if they were looking at you across a field or something? Nowhere was completely flat. There was always some way to keep moving.

That, and they weren’t trying too hard to hide. The burned village was behind them, but the smell was still on their clothes. It was a few hours until sunset. Tian expected the bandits to be dead well before then.

The water fortress was set deep in a marsh. Twisting paths through the wetlands acted as maze and wall alike, with drifting clumps of plants that looked solid until you stepped on them. Filled with stinging insects, vicious fish and no few alligators too. Some of which were likely to have some degree of spirituality to them.

The crane thought it looked delicious. Tian and Hong were just glad it would be hard for the bandits to run away. The crane went up, circled a few lazy loops and then dropped down again.

Tian pointed. Hong nodded. They went.

The fortress was a palisade lining an island, with a dock extending from it. Three boats were tied up to the dock, making the whole thing look emptier because of their presence. Tian could make out roofs over the palisade wall. It looked like the wall was more intended as a statement than a true fortification. Anyone making it this far would be unlikely to be deterred by mere wood, after all.

Two colors of smoke rose from the fortress- the pale blue-grey of woodsmoke and the thick black smoke that came from burning something with entirely too much water in it. It was quiet. Even the birds and insects had stopped their riot.

Tian was about to offer to seal off the dock while Hong took the front gate, but he never got the chance. She didn’t even slow down when they got close. She drew her spear and with a spiraling thrust, smashed straight through the wall.

He shifted direction slightly. Everyone would have their eyes on Liren, so he ran to the gate down by the dock. There were two guards, both mortals, just starting to turn and see what the noise was. A quick sweep of his rope dart, and they wondered no longer. Tian didn’t even break stride as he plowed into the gate. It wasn’t how he liked to do things, but that didn’t make it a dumb idea. Now was the time for fast, not cunning.

The gate was secured by a leg-thick piece of timber and iron hasps. That’s what it looked like as it flew into the interior of the fort, anyway. Nobody was standing around. Nobody was around at all.

His eyes swept from side to side. Empty, empty. A warehouse, a boathouse, what looked like a barracks and what was clearly the main hall. Woodsmoke came from the barracks, black smoke from the main hall. His perception art flared. No breath of immortality in the barracks, but there were cultivators in the main hall. Mortals couldn’t run far enough to matter in the little time they would have. If there were any bandits in the barracks, he wouldn’t grudge them the extra few minutes of life.

Liren smashed through the wall of the main hall. She was a few seconds ahead of him now. The screams started just before he reached the front door. He added to them when he sent a shower of long splinters into the room as he came in. Two bandits on either side of the door- cultivators, barely. Two palms touched two heads, two corpses fell, not a single moment’s pause needed.

The room was dim, lit with little oil lamps. Long benches and tables had been shoved up against bare wooden walls. In the middle of the hall was an iron cage sitting in the middle of twisting lines of some indecipherable script. There were burned bodies in the cage. Not very large ones. Some still smouldering. A second cage was nailed to the wall. Nine kids in it, their pale faces and dead eyes looking at the room from the numb caves of despair.

The bandits wore their yellow bandanas proudly, each bearing the black lily of the gang’s elite members. They had some cultivation, and they were used to a killing life. They were turning to face Hong. Weapons out.

One bandit was holding a calligraphy brush almost as long as he was tall - they were writing something. There was something being written in black ink on an enormous piece of paper hanging from the ceiling. The lines writhed on the page, as though they didn’t want to be there. As though they wanted to escape and hurt someone.

He looked like a good first person to kill.