Tantra scribbles on a piece of paper, marking all the significant geographical locations over an outline of Rikidan. All the major cities and all the foci containing Godbeasts. She does the capital last, as a kind of seal to her illustrious work. Kiki hawks over her shoulder, watching her with the stern gaze of a veteran mother.

  Eventually, Tantra finishes, writing down Goroka with a smile and presents it to Kiki.

  She doesn’t even bother to look at it.

  “You forgot the Garamar,” she says accusatively.

  Tantra puffs her cheeks, “Garamar is stupid, it shouldn’t even be alowed to exist.”

  “But it does,” Kiki says, “so you will write it, or I’ll drop you in the middle of a forest.”

  Tantra grumbles, “I already know directions Kiki, that’ll just be annoying”

  “That’s the point”

  -

  A lot of things come out of traveling with the same fools for the better part of the year. You learn their habits, and more than a few secrets. You learn which ones thrash in their sleep (Etra), and which ones snore like a Godbeast (Rakan). The intimacy is almost familial, after so much time. Tantra feels as though she’s known these people for decades, despite it being only two years.

  Which means, of course, that tomfoolery is fair game.

  Etra carefully places a baby boa on Yorins sleeping form, letting out a slight snicker as Tantra sighs. Rakan and Kisrin aren’t paying attention, focused on their discussion of what to look out for on the way to Kisrin’s village.

  Mostly the topic revolves around goblins.

  Aola is one of the closer villages to the Dead God, so they have to deal with goblins like they were pests. Which they are, they’re just much stronger than a pest should be, and mutate at a rate that far surpasses the average spirit beast, so long as there’s something to eat. Curiously, they aren’t known to eat each other, despite the abundance of easy meat that would provide, almost acting like a tribe rather than the monsters they are.

  Tantra hears a yelp and she turns to find Yorin scampering away from the slithering snake, the thing just stares at him and takes out its tongue to taste the air.

  “Hah!” Etra barks, “take that you sissy!”

  Yorin grumbles a few curses under his breath, which Tantra does not appreciate, she’ll need to teach him the consequences of using such foul language so freely again. It simply isn’t proper!

  “Guys?” Erick says, “what do we do with the snake?”

  “We could eat it,” Yorin says darkly.

  Etra tilts her head, “never had snake before.”

  Tantra looks at her with a brow raised, “really?

  “Not all of us can have such delicacies delivered on a silver platter.”

  “It’s not really a delicacy, isn’t even all that good, kind of like chicken but blander. Needs a good amount of seasoning which we don’t have to make it worth anything.”

  “Since when were you a chef?”

  “Since never, I’ve just had a few conversations with the staff back at the mansion.”

  “Oooh, you graced them with your majesty did you, they must have been ever so grateful.”

  “They were,” Tantra says, turning up her nose, “as they should be.”

  Etra snickers, “you're pretty good at acting like a pompous prick.”

  “Comes with having to spend so long dealing with them”

  “Fair”

  -

  Walking the roads have actually become quite a pleasant exercise for Tantra, both physically and metaphysically. She’s still maintaining her brand of forceful gathering, which is doing something to her will besides making it stronger, which is interesting. How can she even tell? Well, normal gatherings getting harder, while this new method’s getting easier, and considering this one has a high ratio for a ridiculous speed, she just keeps maintaining it. The strain on her soul has lessened, although not disappeared, she’s still toeing the line, the compression taking much longer to reverse than to enact, but each breath is making it compress less. She can tell because she can take more without needing to stop for the day. Which is great! Means her will’s actually getting stronger, although slowly.

  Now that she thinks about it, she doesn’t really know what will is.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Teacher Rakan.”

  “What?”

  “What is ‘will’?”

  He turns to give her an incredulous look, “will is will,” he says simply, as though she were stupid.

  Tantra ignores the look.

  “Yes, but how does it work, is it guided by my soul? Does it originate from my mind? Those kinds of questions.”

  He shrugs, “no idea, will’s just the metaphysical muscle that lets you do the cool shit of cultivation, don’t think anyones dissected its intricacies.”

  “Because cultivators aren’t researchers?”

  “Exactly,”

  “That still feels strange, is there no one curious about the workings of reality?”

  “If there is, they're keeping it a secret, and my dumbass isn’t gonna find it anytime soon. So all i’ve got to give is that no, to my knowledge, no one is curious. They just want to get stronger.”

  “Feels like a waste,” Tantra muses.

  “Waste my ass,” Etra interrupts, “why would we need to know the shit when the shit works just fine in ignorance.”

  “What if there was another path hiding away that just needed an inquisitive mind to find?”

  Rakan snorts, “I can guarantee that if such a thing exists, whoever has the knowledge will keep it far, far away from the general public's grasp. There’s also shit like condensation, which is just generally useless.”

  “It’s been helping with my will”

  “Yeah, barely”

  Tantra scrunches her brow, “how would you know?”

  Rakan taps his nose, “I can smell how many breaths you take.”

  “You count that?” Erick says, “That's weird.”

  “I’m sure your opinion’ll change once we get to the nights training kid”

  Erick pales.

  “C’mon,” Yorin says, “no need to be mean”

  “‘No need to be mean’? What are you, five?” Etra asks.

  “Fuck off,”

  “Yorin!”

  “Hey, she deserved it!”

  “Such foul language will not be coming from your tongue young man, no matter the reason.”

  Kisrin chuckles as they continue to move forward, they’ve gotten pretty close to his village, should get there by nightfall even at their pace. Kisrin has been quieter as they’ve gotten closer, she doesn’t know why but it doesn’t seem like a bad thing, maybe reminiscing? Tantra’s happy for him, another one of them gets to see their family!

  Then it’s a straight shot to Ralth.

  She’s so close.

  -

  Villages are things of persistence.

  Despite all the dangers that living past the walls brings, these non-cultivators manage to thrive and feed all the empire with their exports. All of them have experiences with spirit beasts, and a few with beast tides. Kisrins village in particular is a veteran to goblins, as shown by the multitude of the green bastards they meet on the road to Aola.

  Point being, a village that’s been fending off such dangers constantly doesn’t suddenly just fall, not unless something extraordinary happened.

  As Kisrin stands in front of his home, he contemplates what could have caused so much destruction. The smell of rotting corpses has been invading his sinuses for a while now, long before they even got to the village.

  That was his first sign that something was wrong.

  Foot traffic between villages really depends on where you live, in places close to The Var Expanse, there really isn’t much to be found except for the greater caravans. Safety in numbers is how mortals survive in a world of divine beasts and immortals after all. So it wasn’t strange when they found no one on the road, not strange at all.

  What was strange was that they found nothing else.

  No birds, no critters, not even a single goblin.

  Those things infest the Therak plains so he’s not sure why he didn’t find it strange that there were none. Perhaps it was his excitement in seeing his family again.

  Well now he’s seen them, or at least some of them, pops must have been in the market ‘cause only ma and his two brothers are here.

  Charred black, flesh and bone exposed in all their glory.

  He recognizes them from their sizes, not their features, they don't really have those anymore. Ma is obviously the tallest, the other two were younger than him after all, it would be kind of ridiculous if they reached her height.

  It’s kind of a running joke in his corner of the village how he looks like the youngest of the three of them despite the contrary being true. He always got teased by Yalek and Morath about it, irritated him to no end.

  He wouldn’t mind being the butt end of a joke or two right now.

  It’s strange, he doesn’t really feel anything, because none of this feels real.

  Like a bad dream, and he’s just waiting to wake up.

  Someone puts a hand on his shoulder.

  He doesn’t turn around, doesn’t want to, he can tell from the texture and size that it’s Rakan, and turning around would serve no other purpose than to take his eyes away from his family.

  “We’ll bury them,” Rakan whispers.

  “What about pops?” Kisrin says absently, “he’s not here.”

  Rakan squeezes his shoulder but doesn’t answer.

  Kisrin doesn’t really need an answer, all the bodies can only be distinguished through their proportions. Even if he could recognize him, does he expect his friends to dig through tens of thousands of corpses?

  Maybe he should just bury all of them.

  A tempting thought, but unrealistic.

  “An immortal did this,” Kisrin says suddenly,

  “It could have been a beast,” Tantra replies weakly

  Kisrin shakes his head “the divine beasts are too far, there are cities between Aola and The Expanse, they would have been driven away before they could’ve caused damage like this.”

  “But…but a person couldn’t have done this.”

  “Plenty of people would if they had the power to,” Rakan says, “most of them are dealt with before they reach immortality though.”

  Erick vomits, he’s been doing that a lot since they got to the village.

  Should he be vomiting too? He doesn’t feel nauseous.

  He doesn’t really feel anything.

  was planned, check out ch.27 at the end, same village!