Chapter 23

“Still no level 50.” Dale said, folding up his arms. “I really thought he’d do it for me.”

Dale leaned precariously over the edge, staring down into the dark. Him and his companion remained standing at the edge of the entrance for several minutes.

“He’s definitely dead, right?” Dale asked.

“Worthless. Not worth anything.” Dale’s co-conspirator spoke from behind him. “Killing too many. They’re going to catch on.”

“It’ll be fine.” Dale said with a wave. “Even if I don’t hit 50 here, we can still find the core.”

“Racing the Black Fist… victory unlikely.”

“Dungeon’s still open, isn’t it?” Dale said. He wasn’t smiling anymore. His eyes stretched wide. “It’s gotta be a puzzle with one of the rooms. This chamber is obviously about the stupid bird’s first flight.” Dale turned and looked back to the entrance. An old, wiry tree had a bird nest in it full of broken eggs. “To be honest, I thought sending someone off the cliff might have been what was needed.”

Each of the rooms were made of fragments of the Titan’s memories, pieces of their life and the events that earned them their skills and power contained in a monolith.

“Missing something in the storm-chamber. Must be.”

“Then lets head back there. We have to find it this time.”

FENG SAI, FOURTEEN

I panted as I waited for my body to calm. There was fire shot through me. My meridians were alight with pain and power. Tears stained my face.

I was out of tears.

Four circlets of engraved metal were cold against my skin, one resting on each limb. Dry blood itched beneath them. I shook from the pain and exhaustion. My palms were bleeding from my nails cutting into them.

“Again.” I said. I couldn’t meet my fathers gaze. I still remembered the tile in this room. It was a bright blue, like the sky, with patterns of clouds naturally occuring in the granite. The entire room carried sky-qi. It was comfortable and familiar, like a calmer form of storm-qi.

I didn’t have to look up to know that he was smiling.

The Patriarch approved.

I screamed again as the foreign qi flooded my meridians, warring inside of my body with incompatible aspects. Each time, it reinforced my meridians. It allowed me to hold more qi. More powerful qi. To push farther, faster. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

I was behind schedule.

The pain cut off abruptly. I collapsed to my knees, panting.

“Why did it stop? I’m not done!” I shouted. “I can take it!”

“Pardon, Patriach.” Feng Wen said. He stood near the low realm cultivators who had been powering the formation, a hand on one of their shoulders. The man was pale as a ghost.

My father’s smile disappeared.

“No! I can take it!” I shouted.

“That’s enough for today.” Feng Wen said.

“You are not the Patriarch!” I shouted at him.

“Neither are you, boy.” Dad looked even angrier. I screwed my mouth closed. “We can start again tomorrow.”

Feng Wen opened his mouth. Then he closed it. He screwed his eyes shut and sighed.

“I can take it.” I said. My voice broke.

The Patriarch turned and walked away.

FENG SAI, TODAY

[HP: 70%]

I grunted as I popped my arm back into place.

[New Skill: Pain Resistance 1(Willpower +1)]

I laughed at the absurdity of it. I had been on my best guard from Dale from the start. To think that the threat would come from behind.

“Fucking bastard!” I shouted up the massive rift I stood at the bottom of.

From here, I couldn’t even see over the edge. But the world seemed real and solid, not like the false mud walls of the cliff during my descent. I grunted and took a look around.

There was ambient light seemingly coming from no where. The trickle of a creek sounded in my ear like it was next to me, but everything was dry.

The green crack remained in the sky above me. I found my eyes drifting to it naturally. It seemed to spread ever so slightly. But it only grew when I wasn’t looking. I shook my head and looked away. I needed to find a way out — there had to be another door.

I could probably scale the walls if they didn’t turn into non-real mud so far above me.

“Why do they turn into unreal mud above me…” I said, staring up.

Flynt had said that the dungeon’s rooms were made of memories. So the edges were easily explained as things the Titan hadn’t remembered. As were the sections of the cliff between the top and bottom. But that meant that the Titan had been here, at the bottom of the valley between the two plateaus. It seemed even more real than the plateau across from the entrance had been.

With a grunt, I started walking forward, poking and prodding the stone wall of the valley. It didn’t turn to mud again. Instead, it circled far around the plateau. I spent almost an hour marching through the dark, wondering why the bird had seen all of this.

Then I found my answer.

The world turned into paste again at the end of a long ravine, fading away into black. I saw green spots in my vision when I stared into the dark until I blinked them away.

In the center of the empty space was a tiny bird, like a baby version of the Roc. It let out a soft cry. A tiny creek trickled behind it.

I leaned down on reflex.

“Poor thing… are you alright?” I asked, reaching out. Then I stopped. Was this the Titan itself? A memory of itself?

I inspected it closely. It’s wing was broken. It hadn’t made it to the plateau across the sky. This was the Titan’s memory — of trying to push itself too early and falling down into the abyss. I reached down, cupping the bird in my hands and lifting it up before setting it down gently near the water.

“You were all alone here, weren’t you? You fell when you tried to fly. Pushed out of the nest too early?” I smiled cynically at it. Then I frowned. “But you’re just a memory.”

The bird softly lapped up the water. I thought about stomping it. It was a monster, after all. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it yet. Instead, I sat down beside the bird and waited.

“I pushed myself too far when I was young too. I guess Wen is the one that took me to the creek. Metaphorically, I mean. I’ve never been much of a cultivator… poet. Well, I wasn’t much of a cultivator for a long time either. My dad, though, he was big on the poetry. He said it helped with his breakthrough. He made some — ”

The bird exploded into light, a beam of pure power shooting upwards and then outwards. A door in reality opened.

“Oh.” I said. “I… didn’t want to talk about dad’s poetry anyway.”

My body was sore, but I pushed myself to my feet anyway. This gateway was wholly unlike any of the previous I had seen; it was an archway of golden light. I couldn’t see what the other side held in store for me.

“Really laying into the whole taking a leap of faith thing here, aren’t we?” I said.

Then I stepped through the gate.

[Felling Progress has increased to 1%]

There was a noise like a hundred panes of glass shattering behind me, along with the roar of wind and storms. Before me stretched an entire city of brutalist stone, rising from a sandy desert. The sun burned in the sky above me.

“What?” I asked. My breath hitched in my throat. The Titan soared above me before dropping down and landing next to me. It was bigger now; too large to cup in my hands, but it could easily fit between them comfortably.

I looked to the Titan. It looked back up at me before quirking its head to the side. Then it flew up and away toward the city. My heart beat calmed as I realized that the massive precursor ruin sprawling before me was ancient. Craters displaced huge chunks of the city. Buildings sat half sunk into the desert sand; glossy stone edifices crumbled away.

My hand rested on my sword.

“What is this?” I asked. “Is this some kind of joke?”

The juvenile form of the Titan dove toward me again. I tensed, ready to swing, but it flew back, circling around me before hovering in front of me. It flapped up and down with effort, staring at me, then dove to the ruins.

It stopped again a few feet away and looked back at me.

“You want me to follow you?”

The bird zipped away over the sand.