NOVEL NEXT Bk 5 Ch 24: Boons
They raced along the edge of the mesa, Chang-li and Joshi at the front, the more exuberant warriors and hunt leaders right behind them, while the rest escorted the archers forward. They skirted the tall black pavilion and its occupant. The Floor Guardian was standing like a statue beside the pavilion, watching them. He made no move to call out or approach.
Joshi told Magen off to keep an eye on the Guardian as they approached the larger fight. The same three sort of adversaries had fallen on the larger group of Darwur. Men and stone creatures mixed in combat. The Darwur were managing well against the giants, but it was time for this to end.
Chang-li glanced at Joshi. "Ready for this?"
His friend nodded.
Chang-li pulled his flying cloud out and quickly deployed it. The two jumped on, and Joshi channeled vast quantities of red lux into the cloud, sending it racing forward ahead of the pack. They soon outstripped the others, closing the gap between them and the melee.
A couple of the nightmare horsewomen wheeled and raced for them. Chang-li was prepared. He activated a pair of Firepot scrolls and hurled the resulting charges at them, detonating them at their hooves. The creatures reared back, screaming in fear and dismay. A moment later, Chang-li and Joshi were past.
"I'm going for that one!" Joshi shouted, pointing. "And I will, Binding Chains on that one, " he shifted his finger.
Chang-li shouted, "All right!"
Joshi leapt. His Meteor Punch carried him toward the nearest giant. He came down, his fist smashing the creature to the ground. He immediately followed up by throwing his Binding Chains on another giant, fifteen feet to his right. The chains wrapped around the creature's midsection. It took unwanted, ponderous steps toward him. Darwur warriors scattered out of the way. In a moment, Joshi was standing on top of one giant and exchanging blows with another.
That was when Chang-li arrived, sword in hand. He opened with stabbing the legs of the standing giant. Then, dismissing his cloud and dropping to the earth, he turned and drove his sword deep into the gaping mouth of the fallen giant. It had been making feeble attempts to get up, despite Joshi having broken both of its legs.
Chang-li pulled his sword free and turned back to the other giant. In seconds, he and Joshi had it down, its head sliced from its shoulders. Chang-li pointed. "There!" They raced for their next target.
They swapped off, identifying the nearest easy kill, falling into a solid rhythm. Joshi would make an opening and Chang-li would stab with his sword, getting Bloodflame Venom into the creature's system. Or Chang-li's swings would force the giant to defend, leaving it vulnerable to furious punches from Joshi.
Once they found themselves in a knot of the creatures, they set themselves back to back and Joshi used his Thousand Fists technique to strike them all.
Then, a giant landed a punch on Chang-li's shoulder, knocking him off balance. He stumbled backward, a throbbing ache echoing down his arm. But as he recovered, he grinned and drove his sword into the creature's abdomen. His body would shake off that injury quickly enough.
This was what it meant to be a cultivator. He reminded himself to watch the progress of the larger battle as they went. He or Joshi would shout instructions to the hunt leaders, sending men to relieve hard-pressed fighters, shifting them from one side of the battlefield to another. Once, he even spotted in time to yell for a hunt leader to unleash an Earth Shaker against a cluster of particularly well-clumped jackal creatures.
They were winning. They were taking losses, as he had known they would, but they were winning. Arrows fell around them, peppering the bodies of the enemies.
All at once, a rumble rolled out across the battlefield like a peal of thunder. Not thunder, like mountains falling on themselves.
"Enough! You have shown your worth, generals, in how you command your army. Come forward now."
The enemies all froze in place. As the rumbling continued, they began to shake, vibrating faster and faster until, all at once, they fell into piles of pebbles all around.
The Darwur warriors began whooping, raising their swords in exultation.
Chang-li looked around and spotted Min hurrying across the battlefield toward him, her face alight. He took a couple steps toward her, but Joshi grabbed his arm.
"The Floor Guardian wants to speak with us."
"He can wait for half a minute," Chang-li said, shaking his friend's hand off.
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He strode across and met Min as she came, taking her in his arms and embracing her. She looked up at him, smiling.
"That was incredible. Every time I saw you, I lost track of what I was doing. I had no idea you could fight like that."
Her words warmed him. "You did good work," he assured her. "The archers really helped out today." He disengaged, caught her hand, and rejoined Joshi. Hiroko had arrived when he had been talking to Min and she trailed along behind.
Khan Temaj dispatched a couple of his men to fetch the packs they had prepared. "We'll bring them up to you," he said. "Good luck with your climb."
Chang-li felt a bit of nervousness. He moved forward with Joshi, Min and Hiroko. Khan Temaj was only a step behind as they approached the great Guardian. Up close, he was like an even taller version of one of the giants. His body was black stone shot through with veins of white and silver.
As they approached, the Guardian unstiffened. He was clutching an enormous axe across his chest. Now, his arms moving slowly, his joints creaking with every inch, he set the head of the axe against the ground and leaned ponderously on it.
"So, challengers, you have met my demand and proved your men's worth against mine. Well done. Tell me, why are you here?"
While it was speaking the Darwur warriors arrived with their packs. Chang-li grabbed up his while the others slung theirs over backs and shoulders. He took a deep breath.
"Guardian, we are here to climb. We ask your permission to ascend to the next floor of this tower."
The Guardian looked at each of them. "How many of you wish to ascend?"
Chang-li gestured. "Us four."
The Guardian nodded ponderously. "I shall permit this. But first, the boons." He focused on Khan Temaj. "You, you are one of the leaders, but you do not climb?"
Temaj shook his head with an almost sheepish glance at his brother.
"I know now that I am not ready. I'm going to continue my cultivation down here. And I hope when my brother returns, he will share more of what he has learned."
"Without a doubt," Joshi promised.
"Then to you, I grant this boon," the Floor Guardian said. "You may use my lair as a place to seek training. I shall deploy a suitable number and strength of opponents to face you. Victory will not ever be certain, but you may test yourself against me as often as you like. Now that my minions have been bested once, they will seek only to disable, not to destroy your own."
Temaj bowed, raising his hands in a circular position, fingers splayed out toward the Guardian. "This is a very great boon, exalted Guardian, and I thank you."
"Return to your men now. I will have word with these," the Guardian said.
The Khan looked more comfortable with his dismissal than Chang-li had expected. He started back to his men, gesturing them toward him, and they approached, all beaming with satisfaction at their victory.
Chang-li, Joshi, Min, and Hiroko approached the Guardian closer. The Guardian looked down at them. "I will permit you to pass and to find the entrance to the next floor," he said quietly. "But first, a boon for you two." He turned to Hiroko and Min. "As you have seen, true strength does not necessarily lie in your own body but in collective strength of those who fight with you and for you. Many cultivators forget that their will is as powerful a weapon as anything else. For you two, I grant knowledge and understanding of how to unfurl your will and begin to use it to impact the world around you."
Chang-li's eyes widened. If that meant what he thought it did, then Min and Hiroko's path to Peak of Spiritual Refinement had just been smoothed considerably. True, they still had a great deal of cultivation to do to prepare their bodies, since neither was even at the Peak of Mental Refinement yet. But understanding how to use one's will had taken him and Joshi considerable effort.
He was vaguely jealous until the Guardian turned to him and Joshi.
"And to you two," he said. "First, Darwur man, your will is strong and you have the instinct to use it on people, but you have not stretched it out from yourself as far as you should. You have been thinking of it as something connected to you, like your shadow that you must stretch and grow. It is that, but it is more. Here, then, I grant you an insight that will show you how the will of a Khan extends from everything he can see and everyone who heeds his voice."
Joshi's eyes went wide. He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again before bowing, much as his brother had. "My thanks, revered Guardian."
"And you," the Guardian turned on Chang-li, "you, I think, have an understanding of how your will ought to function, but deep down, you do not truly believe it is your right to impose your will on others. This is, in some ways, a commendable sort of attitude, one I have rarely seen in a cultivator. Be careful of it. It might get you killed. However, you do not need to change this attitude completely, only to better understand how to use your will on others without simply crushing their own will."
Chang-li opened his mouth to ask what the Guardian meant by that when a blossom of light flowered in his head, as though someone had just lit a lantern inside his skull. It was painfully, breathtakingly bright. A wash of light flowed through his lux channels, cleansing and strengthening them into his core. The lens tried to echo the pulse, but feebly and more out of key than ever.
Then the feeling was gone. Chang-li opened his eyes and took a deep breath. He could feel the knowledge the Tower Guardian had granted him in his mind.
Yes. Of course. Why had he never seen this before? It was going to take a great deal of meditation and practice during his cycling to truly unpack, but this, this was the key. Better yet, he needed hardly any lux at all to do this. He ought to be able to practice even with the Lens in his soul.
"Thank you," he said, echoing the others.
The Guardian chuckled. "Go ahead and ascend," he said. "Good luck on the next floor. It is different than this one. You will all have need of what I have just given you."
He turned and extended one arm toward the pavilion. Chang-li and Joshi glanced at each other, took deep breaths, and started forward, the women trailing in their wake.
The pavilion seemed to grow larger and darker as they approached it. It was open-sided, with pillars supporting the roof, but inside was all darkness.
Chang-li couldn't see anything. Min came up beside him, her hand seeking his.
"Is this how it usually is?"
He remembered she had never gone from one floor of a tower to another. "It's fine," he assured her. "We beat the Guardian fair and square. There won't be any trouble with this." He hoped he was speaking the truth.
Taking a deep breath, Chang-li stepped into the pavilion.