378 - Phantom Winds of Fate [Sturmblitz]

Ikesia, the country, was new.

Ikesia, the culture, was ancient.

But the land, the land was even more ancient still.

And upon it, countless battles had been fought. Within its soil, a greater number of warriors rested than could be said for any other land upon the central continent, second only to Ankhezia.

And through this land, this unconquerable graveyard of empires, a woman travelled.

From one battlefield to the next, from the recent to the ancient, she made her way, gathering the vestiges left behind by warriors who fell yet harboring the will to fight.

And, in the span of only a few weeks, rumor already grew — for how could it not? As numerous and as devastating as the battles of the War of Fog had been, a great many of them had been over villages and towns and cities, or else over places valuable to people.

Where she ventured through a dense forest to reach the site of a long forgotten battle one day, another, she spent on gaining access to a site where the fallen of another battle were actively being honored. And thus, it quickly became known that the Reaper’s Bride, the Second Elder of the Newman Sect, was venturing throughout the land, seemingly banishing the restless spirits of the fallen. She, of course, saw no reason to contradict such rumor — it wasn’t harmful, if anything, if helped her while harming none.

Gradually, bit by bit, new Phantoms joined her ghost contingent — but it was not for lack of Remnants. She refined only those most suited for this purpose. All the rest… She devoured.

Hundreds and thousands, all purified through the Sword Phantom Scripture’s mantras and added onto her own Inner Phantom, for that was the greatest limiting factor of her strength. Whenever she turned inward, to that place where it resided, she also saw every single Phantom she had created.

And with each Remnant, the Inner Phantom grew.

That scarred, wrecked possibility of herself, the conglomerate manifestation of every consideration she had ever given to her own death, of every close brush with that old friend which had accompanied her for all these years. It was, at the same time, also her. The Inner Phantom was a reflection, not some separate entity — it was even more closely tied with her own soul than the Thundergods, Blazegods, or Galegods harnessed by traditional daemon cultivation methods. With each Remnant she joined to it, a hazy aura of something developed at its back, in accordance with the Sword Phantom Scripture. The Inner Phantom was complete, as it was — it would be the foundation. Now, she had to build upon it, so that, through it, she might better serve as the metaphorical commander for her army of phantoms. And with each dozen, it gained a vague shape. Every hundred, it became more of a skeletal arm. Eventually, its fingers closed around the handle of a spectral sparklock, and then, it stopped, not yet quite concrete, still wavering. The first of many bottlenecks. Until now, any Remnant of sufficient quality had sufficed. In order to complete it, to truly grow the Inner Phantom to the next stage, she would need to find a truly exceptional Remnant. Until then, she had to hold the First Armament in shape through her own aura, reducing her ability to call forth the power of Phantoms. She still, nonetheless, maintained the Nameless Phantom at all times — he rode alongside her, on the blitzgandr’s back. Even if it was much smaller, the bike was still plenty for two, and the phantom wasn’t exactly heavy.

Unfortunately, there was no such convenience afforded to her as the sudden appearance of a powerful cultivator who had heard of her travels and decided to make an ill-fated attempt on her life. But that is not to say none tried at all.

Indeed, when she arrived at the gates of a misty town at the south-western base of the Artat Mountains, she immediately noticed something was off. Zefaris had come here not for the town itself, but because it happened to be on the way to a forgotten and unused mountain pass that had once been a path to the north side of the mountain range. There was no reason to stop here, but she found herself halted, not by the presence of figures in the road blocking her path, but by a feeling. A sense of off-ness, a disturbance in the town’s eponymous stillness.

The town, Stillwind, was aptly named, as thanks to its unique location, it felt as still as the grave, and almost no wind blew here all year. It had also been roughly the same size for its entire centuries-long existence — neither having the resources to grow, nor being unimportant enough to shrivel up and die. In these two manners, the town itself embodied “Stillness”. Or at least… It should have. But she saw new buildings here and there, signs of expansion. Where was that money coming from? Stillwind had no trading connections to speak of, the records clearly showed it to be a borderline subsistence-economy, so someone was bringing in new money. That was not the problem. The problem was that Willowdale didn’t know, meaning someone was also suppressing the information of this new growth. The new source of money couldn’t be that new, looking at the wear on the new buildings and the number of them.

As she rode down the main thoroughfare, Zefaris couldn’t help but notice a quietening of everything. Doors and windows slammed shut, and what few people were outside hurried along to get out of her way. The people of this town knew who she was, and feared her.

“But why?”

This question lingered on her mind for some time, until the sight of a new structure, one that stood out like a sore thumb, answered it for her. Not one building, but an entire compound, by making up a full one-sixth of Stillwind. Tall, stone walls surrounded it, and a barrier shimmered from them. Within, a multi-tiered spire reached skyward, built in a style that closely echoed the style of the sect compound back in Willowdale. From inside the walls, she could hear sounds of exertion — at least two dozen people, going through martial katas in unison.

The gate sign above the gate made things as plain as they could be.

BLACK HORSE SECT

STILLWIND BRANCH