I sighed, having forgotten that particular political fiction of the Divine King’s. He’d been able to use the idea that they’d betrayed and defected from Shen Long to excuse the fact that they’d carried out a handful of smaller attacks, but this was too big. I was sure Henry, Olivine, and the High King would squeeze him for quite a bit. Before I could continue along that line of thinking, the voice of Yushin’s mother rang out, cutting through the quieting battlefield like a knife.

  “Yushin! Are you harmed?” she asked

  “I am fine,” Yushin said in annoyance. “I dare say I am in better condition than you all are.”

  “Hmph,” the leader of the clan said, nodding. “It is good your school’s patriarch is powerful enough to clear minor threats like this. We should be able to proceed with the ritual.”

  She snapped her fingers, barking orders in Hua Long as she did. She likely didn’t expect me to be able to understand her, but that was her error.

  “Healing elixirs and chi restoration pills suitable for relative advancement stages! Also a seven-star spirit pill, heaven-born windstorm pill, infinite blue formations pill, spinning wheel of light and dark elixir, sable serpent’s blood powder, the root of the accused’s tears, the divine glass goblet, and mountain-star metal.”

  “Matriarch,” Shé Ying, Yushin’s mother, said, her face wrinkling. “That’s nearly a full two thirds of all we have left!”

  “That is of no concern to me,” the eldest woman snapped. “When the Avatar of the Traitor Wyrm arrives, the riches of the entire court will be ours.”

  Shé Ying bowed her head, then strained her hand. Chi rushed from her hand, and a moment later, there was a ripple as treasures began to spill out onto the ground. Martha idly sent a few bolts of force through a pack of hellhounds rushing us, and they dissolved into light. The matriarch began barking orders to Ying, directing the strange items to each of us. To my surprise, each member of our little posse was handed something as well.

  “How do you hand out magic items so casually?” Salem asked Yushin, turning over the root he’d been handed. It vaguely resembled a potato, but as he took a bite, his eyes widened and he nodded appreciatively.

  “First, it is not casual,” Yushin said calmly. “This is an exceptional circumstance, as the clan leader said. Second, there are a significantly higher number of crafters within the ranks of cultivators than there are artificers.”

  “How’s that?” Jackson asked, holding the glass goblet to his forehead, where it seemed to be slowly melting into his brain. It had to be more spiritual than physical, if it was acting like that.

  “The use of Paths is somewhat different to affinities or spells. There is more self-determinism in them, though not total,” Yushin explained. “A significant number of people with middling or higher compatibility with a crafting path – formations, alchemy, smithing, and so on – choose to pursue it, even if they have higher compatibility with a different kind of chi or Path. There is safety and money in crafting, after all.”

  “Hmm. And what’s this?” I asked, holding up the rather plain looking pill that I had been handed. It was white, with a couple of tiny black specks in it, like the flecks of a vanilla bean within frosting.

  “I don’t know that pill specifically, but it is a spiritual healing pill,” Yushin explained. “Cultivators damage their spirit with far more regularity than mages. This is meant for a cultivator, not a mage, so it will likely only be about a tenth as effective–”

  “Closer to a twentieth,” cut in the matriarch. “But you are going to be needed in this ritual as a supplemental caster, as you are capable of acting as both mage and bloodline power.”

  I nodded slowly. The original agreement hadn’t been for us to help, only to watch and fight the dark sects. But given my contracts, and the fact that I had been the one to place the seal, it likely was best that I was close to Yushin and the center of the action. Still, before I took the pill, I held it up to my nose and sniffed. There was only a mediocre chance I’d be able to tell if it was poisoned, given I wasn’t familiar with what the normal pill, or what the poisons of powerful cultivators, smelled like. Still, better a medium chance than none at all.

  The pill’s smell was fresh and clean, and it certainly didn’t smell like it had been poisoned. Of course that was just what they’d want me to think, if they had poisoned it. Unless–

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  I shook my head and ate the pill. I knew divine magic had methods of healing most poisons and diseases. I was already putting my trust in the divine, so what was one more leap off a cliff? The magic of the pill set to work inside of me, and almost immediately, I could feel what Yushin and the matriarch had meant by the fact that it wasn’t meant to repair damage to wizards. Within my heart, my blood seemed to grow warmer, hotter, and more fluid. My pool felt slightly… gooey… for lack of a better word. Like the stone around the pool had turned to clay, and was filling in the cracks, before slowly starting to harden once again. A few shreds of the damage had been vanquished, and I thought by the time it was finished it would probably be safe to cast two or three more spells today, but I was nowhere near actually being healed – that was still going to take up most of the summer.

  The area around my bloodline, however, was far more restored. It had been much less damaged than my ether pool, given it had only provided a bit of extra power, more a supplemental power than an integral one. Well, it had done that and the whole divinity thing, but that was for another time. But while it had been strained, it hadn’t been nearly as severely damaged as my pool, and had barely grown at all from the experience. That, in addition to the fact that bloodlines and cultivation tended to go together quite well, was enough that I felt a spark of power bloom within my pelvis as my flames stoked back to life, then rose up into a cheery blaze.

  I immediately took hold of half my fire and disjointed it, then reached for the ether coming in, and forcibly lifted it into the sky, disjointing the ether. I’d never actually had cause to do that, but between the long years of doing it with my fire and my skill with ether shaping, I was able to lift a few drops up into the sky. I would provide the matriarch with half of my power. If I had the power to cast two spells, then she’d get one, and half my fire. If it turned out her god wasn’t about to eat her, then I’d feel bad about holding back, but it was far better to have the power in reserve than to not.

  Once everyone had finished absorbing their items, the matriarch snapped to gather everyone’s attention to her.

  “Good. Now that things are calming down, and their pathetic attempts to kill dear Yushin have failed, we can get on with our ritual preparations.”

  I eyed her. I wasn’t sure that those attempts were nearly as pathetic as she had claimed. If the Shé clan hadn’t already been here for her ritual, then there was an excellent chance they would have succeeded in forcing Yushin to use her bloodline in public. That would have brought them down like bloodhounds on a trail, and there was no way that we could face down the entire group. It was just that they’d needed to wait until a group of aberrants formed or slipped past the wall, which hadn’t let them be exact enough with timing. The matriarch either ignored my look, misunderstood it, or didn’t notice it, as she continued speaking smoothly.

  “Yushin, continue cycling the power we gave you. You must be in perfect condition for your breakthrough to core formation in the ritual. Do not cast so much as a cantrip, or use so much as a drop of chi. Everyone form ranks around her, and we will bring her to the killing field.”

  “The what?” Salem demanded, and the matriarch gave him an annoyed look.

  “The killing field. It is a type of ward that kills anyone who attempts to cross who is not travelling with the creator. I am no formation master, but I set one up in the demon wastes. Obviously. Now, form up. Unless you want to be caught by the field.”

  I mentally cursed, but kept my face neutral, and reached through the contract to saint Hykym, as well as Amos and his friends. During the aberrant attack, they’d been near the school, fighting hard, but now they’d need to find a way out to the wastes.

  The spell didn’t directly allow me telepathy, so I looked at Salem and tapped my head. A moment later, he formed a psychic communication channel with me, even as he grumbled, and we all grew into a tight group around Yushin.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I need you to get a message to saint Hykym, the saint I’m currently bound to with magic. Tell him where we’re going, and tell him that if he can’t follow us, then he should get Henry to send him.”

  “Got it,” Salem said, his mental voice serious. He began rapidly casting a spell under his breath, while Martha raised her hand and began to cast a teleportation spell. Half a minute of chanting later, we were absorbed in a ripple of blue light, and emerged in a hot, blasted land. It had been flattened and compacted, like someone had dragged a heavy weight across it, and there were multiple large shipping crates stacked around in assorted spots.

  A dome around us rippled with the brown-gray light of the matriarch’s chi, similar to the wall she had erected to stop the explosion, though on a much greater scale. As soon as we appeared, a tall, vulture-like demon dove at us, only to dissolve into ash as it crossed over the boundary. I bit my lip and hoped that if things went poorly, the dome would dissolve after the matriarch died. Or… maybe not? If Martha survived, she’d be able to just teleport us out.

  “He’s getting the Erudite,” Salem said, while we broke apart, and the clan leader began barking more orders at people, opening boxes and laying out components. I followed orders as well, working to pour things out. I attempted some minor sabotage by mishaping a single rune in a chain, only for the matriarch to immediately point it out. As we worked, I finally got another message, this time from a gruff old man.

  “We’re here,” he said into my mind. “Bending the light so we’re not seen, and doing our best to lay low, but we’re inside the dome.”

  I let out a breath of relief, then went back to working on the ritual.

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