Chapter 4 | Safe Places

Calid and the group of students moved through the forest, dodging the traces of demonic qi, fires, and worse things in the area until they finally found a place to hide for the time being.

A base of operations that could be well defended.

That came in the form of a cave.

Calid and group walked in and immediately frowned. The place smelled of bat droppings and severe disappointment.

It sat in the base of a limestone ridge half a league south of the burning tree line, hidden behind a curtain of hanging moss that had clearly been growing undisturbed for decades, centuries, or possibly since the dawn of whatever geological epoch had decided this particular fold of rock deserved a damp interior and no ventilation. The entrance was narrow enough that two people couldn’t pass through it side by side, which was either a defensive advantage or a fire hazard, depending on your priorities.

Calid’s priorities were very clear. “Inside. All of you and don’t touch the walls until I’ve checked them.”

The students filed in with a shuffling, hollow-eyed compliance.

Lin Mei went first, sword still in hand, because she had picked it back up at some point during the march south and appeared to have no intention of putting it down again for the foreseeable future, or possibly ever. The boy with the bleeding ear, whose name Shao Wen’s memories eventually coughed up as Feng Jun, went last, walking backward for the final twenty paces and watching the tree line with intensity.

The cave opened into a space roughly the size of a modest lecture hall, which Calid found oddly comforting.

The entrance was low enough that he had to duck, and the floor was uneven limestone covered in a thin layer of sediment that had never been walked on by anything with fewer than six legs.

It would do.

It would have to.

“Sit and drink if you have water and eat if you have food. Do not cultivate, do not circulate Qi, do not do anything that produces a spiritual signature larger than a sleeping mouse. Which means no spiritual signatures at all.”

Seven of the nine sat immediately.

The remaining two, Lin Mei and a broad-shouldered boy whose name was Chen Bao and whose primary contribution to the evening so far had been carrying an unconscious companion across his shoulders for the entire march without complaint, remained standing.

Lin Mei because she was watching Calid with an expression that suggested she had questions and the questions had questions.

Chen Bao because the unconscious companion was still on his shoulders and he was waiting for someone to tell him where to put her.

Calid pointed to a flat section of floor near the back wall. “Put her there, gently.”

Chen Bao laid the girl down with a care that spoke well of his character and poorly of his knees, which cracked. He winced, straightened, and then sat down next to her with the finality of a man whose legs had just submitted their resignation.

Calid stood at the cave entrance and looked out through the moss curtain.

The northern sky was still burning. The orange glow had spread east and west now, painting a band of false dawn across the horizon that would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been made of someone’s home. The Qi in the air tasted of ash, char, and the lingering signature of demonic cultivation methods that corrupted ambient energy the way oil corrupted water.

He could feel movement out there. Distant and scattered hunting parties that were sweeping the forest in patterns that Shao Wen’s tactical memories recognised as standard pursuit formations. They were being thorough. They were being patient. They had time, because the sect was destroyed and the Patriarch was dead and there was nobody left to stop them from taking as long as they liked.

At least until the other sects finally considered the Heavenly Demon far enough to come out of hiding.

Shao Wen’s memories did not paint the political nature of the sects in a good light.

He shook his head and turned back to the cave.

Nine faces looked up at him from the dim interior, lit by the faintest ambient glow of residual Qi that clung to their robes and skin like phosphorescence. Nine students of a dead sect, ranging in age from perhaps fifteen to twenty, battered, bloodied injured, and running on fumes and fear.

He needed more than just nine if he was going to rebuild his academy.

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Nine was a start, and nine was better than zero, but Shao Wen’s memories contained a roster of the White Clover Flame Sect’s disciples that numbered in the hundreds. Even accounting for the catastrophic losses of the evening, there had to be more survivors out there in the burning dark, hiding in hollows, ditches, and behind fallen trees and boulders, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

The White Clover Flame Sect was not a large sect.

It focused on quality over quantity, not that its quality helped it in the end against an army that was ten times its size and lead by the strongest being alive currently.

That meant the disciples were still out there getting hunted down by monsters in human skin.

The problem was that Calid couldn’t go get them.

His body had made its position on further exertion abundantly clear during the march south, through a series of increasingly urgent internal memoranda involving chest pain, greying vision, wobbly legs, arms too heavy to carry, and the taste of blood that kept coming in bucket fulls. He had perhaps one more fight in him before something important gave way, and ‘something important’ in this context meant the structural integrity of his torso.’

At least until he built himself proper crutches to carry his weight.

Now thought? He needed scouts and runners.

He needed to give them a way to call him if they found trouble too though.

Calid knelt on the cave floor and picked up a pebble. It was roughly the size of his fist, smooth limestone and unremarkable in every way. He turned it over in his fingers, feeling the Qi in the air around it, the slow, ambient current that flowed through everything in this world.