Capra and Lutrinae shine like diamonds in the night sky, gracing the eyes of mere mortals with their majesty. Tantra isn’t a mortal, but she can’t help but feel small when under the gaze of the constellations. With her reduced need for sleep, she’s had a lot more time to appreciate the gems that dot the sky.

  Personally, her favorite is Taurus the grazing bull.

  Represents gentleness through strength.

  She can get behind that.

  It’s rumored the constellations were once GodBeasts, ascendant to the stars to join the heavens and its pantheon. It’s funny, the realm to obtain immortality is called ascension, yet it isn’t a true ascension, not in the way that the word is defined. She thinks the naming would have something to do with a cultivator's ego, they don’t want the last orthodox realm to be something lame like immortality, even though it would be more accurate.

  Tantra only really knows the names of the higher realms, the methods with which to cultivate them remain a mystery to her, and she suspects remain a mystery to the elders as well, considering how none of them are immortals.

  “You know we have chairs,” a familiar voice sighs.

  Tantra glances over to see Synthia in her nightgown, walking up to a proper seat on the balcony, crossing her legs and giving Tantra a stern look that causes her to let out a small laugh, much to Synthia’s chagrin.

  “Can’t sleep again?” Tantra asks.

  Synthia sighs, “no, it seems the gods are adamant on preventing me from getting any rest.”

  “They do have a tendency to be assholes.”

  “Where’s your propriety?” Synthia grumbles.

  “The years spent as your guard have taught me you don’t really care for such platitudes.”

  Synthia rolls her eyes, “please, don’t act like you know me.”

  “What? Sad I’ve broken through the mystique you're so proud of?”

  Synthia scoffs, but doesn’t comment, leaning back to stare at the stars just the same as Tantra. She’s been joining her in stargazing a lot these days, Tantra doesn’t know what’s on her mind, but clearly it’s eating at her.

  Synthia isn’t the type to share though, so Tantra doesn’t ask.

  “If you’re going to waste your time gazing at stars, you might as well do it with that boy Kisrin, even a blind man could see the way you two look at each other.” Synthia says.

  Tantra hums as she keeps her eyes on Capra, “I don’t really want a relationship right now, maybe when we’re back at the sect, but here in Ralth? That’s just a vulnerability.”

  Synthia rolls her eyes, “a vulnerability for who to exploit? You don’t have any political enemies, except for maybe your family. Besides, he’s a cultivator, isn’t it disrespectful to implicitly state that he’s weak?”

  “I don’t subscribe to cultivator logic, tends to get people killed.”

  “Hmmm, well, you’re not wrong. But still, you get to choose who you love, isn’t that enough to at least try?”

  -

  “Look at them, strutting about in the forest like they OWN it, like it is THEIRS, no, nonono, we can’t have that, we can’t allow that. Come, come, rend the muscle from their bones and turn their flesh to gristle.”

  “No,” Rakia growls, something resembling a tiger, if it were maimed and deformed, “not yet , we’re too weak to face him.”

  “COWARD” a million, million voices clamor in her mind, “years we’ve stalked, years we’ve waited, yet you still refuse? You are pathetic, so pathetic, like a worm wriggling in the grasp of giants.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  You could try,

  You should try,

  It’ll be better, so much better. It’ll be satisfaction, absolution, RETRIBUTION”

  Rakia clutches at her skull, the words that are not words taking a toll on her mind, like an infestation of concept all filtered to her understanding. There are so many, she’s been learning them one by one, adding them as the things that are her but are not continue to speak.

  She doesn’t know how long it's been since the Rakaja dissolved, when…what was his name?

  She doesn’t remember.

  It doesn’t matter when he…or was it a she? When they died they left the clan leaderless and it devolved so quickly, many abandoning the clan in search for one of the other prominent players of the DarkWoods, there’s even been a silent war between clans trying to take over the Boreal Pass.

  The sects don’t care of course, they never do.

  What’s a little blood on your doorstep to a cultivator? What's a little violence to things that are so far beyond comprehension?

  “They are not,” the voices say, “we’ve explained so many times. You don’t understand, refuse to understand, it’s why you’re WEAK, it’s why you need us. Depend on us, desire us. We deliver unto you his head but you refuse to take a bite.

  Ungrateful.”

  “I am grateful,” Rakia whimpers from the pain, “I am, I just see. We’re too weak, still so weak, we need more, so much more. Please, stop hurting me.”

  There is silence with that request, blessed, blessed silence, and Rakia takes a deep breath to centre herself, refocusing.

  She digs her nails deep into the trunk of the tree as she watches a group of brats traipsie through the forest with no respect, no care, no fear. She will teach them, she’ll teach them all, she just needs more time.

  -

  There are many methods to murder, cultivators generally prefer to be upfront and boisterous, getting the attention of one and all. Not Sola, perhaps her peers would sneer at her cowardice but she prefers to move unseen and unknown until it is time to strike. Her invisibility technique worked wonders for this purpose, putting beasts and cultivators alike at her mercy.

  It only has one glaring flaw.

  The second she approaches anyone with Qi sense, suddenly her invisibility is a beacon, so she had to come up with a solution. At first she pursued the idea of enshrouding her Qi, so that she becomes truly invisible, but that…didn’t work. Qi is either there or it’s not, there is no in between where it can hide, at least none that she has found.

  So she went for a different avenue, one an old housemate gave to her years ago. She practiced her control, and practiced it vigorously, getting to four threads in the span of six years.

  But it was enough.

  She already used little Qi to turn invisible, the act of bending light a more cerebral task then metaphysical, but now she uses barely more Qi than what’s present in the atmosphere, making her nigh impossible to notice through Qi sense if you weren’t specifically looking for her. There’s still the flavour of her Qi shel has to worry about, but when it comes to assassins, she’s probably got the greatest advantage in all of Testhim.

  Why don’t people practice control more often? It makes Qi expenditure outside the body ridiculously efficient if you get far enough, seems like a waste to just leave it by the wayside.

  Well, there’s always the possibility it’s one of those secret paths that older cultivators don’t want to advertise so the younger generation doesn’t grow too fast.

  Crotchety codgers.

  But it doesn’t matter, not to her, she’s not going to start advertising her arsenal after all, that’s just asking for trouble. It’ll also make the culprit of this specific crime patently obvious, and her only saving grace is anonymity.

  She passes by guards and cultivators through halls of redwood with obsidian carpets acting as a sound dampener for her footsteps. There are many paintings, all whimsical imaginings of what the centre of different foci look like based on rumors and the sparse accounts of cultivators who actually bothered.

  She doesn’t know how much these displays of vanity cost, but considering the wealth of this particular family, she doesn’t doubt it’s more coin than she’s likely to ever see. Unless she dedicated her life to hunting, but even then it would take decades, not worth the investment when she could just cultivate instead.

  Eventually, she reaches her destination, she’s reviewed the map plenty of times, and she’s already visited his bedroom, so this could be the only place she might find him at this time. She takes a deep breath, standing in front of a door of redwood, she twists the doorknob ever so slowly and carefully makes a small entrance that’ll just fit her before she enters the room.

  It is a grand thing of books and maps, all arrayed for some madman's delightfull perusal.

  The madman in question is sitting at his desk, going through some text without seeming to have noticed the slight movement of the door.

  Good.

  She can get this over with quickly then.