They couldn’t know, but she still trembled at the thought that they would figure it out.
“We came from the west,” Jai Chen called, and she didn’t like how her voice shook. “We’re fleeing the Dreadgod. We just want a place to stay for a while. I…we have friends in the Sandvipers. Or the Purelakes. Are they still here?”
Jai Hara’s face was as stiff as her hair. “We have barely enough for ourselves, but if you will tell us which experts you represent, we will know where to send our apologies.”
Jai Chen’s sense of danger spiked. They wanted to know if she was backed by anyone to know if she could be pushed around or not. If she said they were here on their own, they might even attack.
At first, she thought to say the Arelius family, since she could prove that relatively easily. But that would only ensure they attacked; it had been the Arelius family that had pushed the Jai clan out of the Empire.
Next, she considered the Akura clan, but she really had no idea who they were. Important, she gathered, but what if they were even worse enemies to the Jai clan?
Other than an outright, outrageous lie, she only had one idea left.
“We were sent here by the Sage of Twin Stars,” Jai Chen said.
There were enough gasps and mutters from the dozens of sacred artists behind Jai Hara that she knew she’d said the right thing.
“A Sage?” Jai Hara repeated in astonishment. “So you’re the…honorable Twin Star sect?”
“Yes,” Jai Chen said immediately. “That’s us.”
She had spent enough years in the Desolate Wilds to know that Sages were only legends here, but they were legends widely told. She herself didn’t understand how Lindon could possibly be a Sage—he had felt like an Underlord to her, and he hadn’t acted with the aloof air of an expert she had always imagined from Sages—but as long as he could technically claim the title, she could use it.
Jai Hara had started conferring with someone behind her, so Jai Chen kept talking. “The Sage himself is close by. He was fighting the Dreadgod, but the valley to the west was destroyed. So we needed to find shelter for ourselves. Before the Sage comes to get us.”
She was explaining too much, so she clapped her mouth shut before she dug herself a hole she couldn’t dig out of.
Jai Chen really wished her brother was awake.
Jai Hara straightened herself up. “We have, of course, heard tales of the Twin Star Sage’s heroism.”
No, they hadn’t. Jai Chen would have been shocked if Hara had heard the name before now.
But this was the kind of harmless lie that might soothe the ego of an expert and prevent enmity. Jai Chen understood.
“It is no surprise to us that the honorable Sage has come to defend us from the Dreadgod,” Jai Hara continued, “but who is that?”
She pointed behind Jai Chen’s shoulder.
With a jolt, Jai Chen realized that she hadn’t paid attention to her spiritual sense. She was exhausted, but that was no excuse for a lack of vigilance.
Eithan Arelius drifted up, looking like he’d floated straight out of a healer’s tent. He was sprawled belly-down on a white Thousand-Mile Cloud, wrapped entirely in bandages. His limbs all looked completely stiff, and his hair had been cut short and swept back.
He reached into a hole in the air, from which he pulled a long gray length of cloth. “I am here as another representative of the Twin Star sect. Let our banner stream behind us!”
Eithan let the cloth catch the wind, where it billowed out to display an unbroken stretch of gray. The banner was blank.
Jai Chen didn’t want to say anything, but Eithan saw the look on her face and sighed. “You didn’t give me time to get it sewn yet, but imagine how amazed you would have been if I did have a banner ready. Pretend that’s what happened.”
A cry had gone up from those of the Jai clan who had extended their spiritual senses. “Underlord!”
Ten or fifteen went down to their knees immediately.
But not most of them.
Eithan responded to their calls with a cheery smile. “Close enough!”
“They’re going to recognize you,” Jai Chen said, her voice low.
Most of the Jai remained standing, and they were not happy. Jai Hara herself spat at the foot of Eithan’s cloud. “We know who you are. There’s only one Arelius Underlord.”
“That is not actually correct, but I do not represent my family. They make their own decisions.” Some of the standing Jai clan glanced to one another.
“I embrace my true identity,” Eithan continued. “Personal acolyte to the Sage of Twin Stars himself, and one of the founding members of the Twin Star sect.”
He strained himself to hold the banner higher, despite the thick wrapping around his hands.
There was some fierce debate among the dozens of Jai artists in the back, but after a moment of struggle, Jai Hara begrudgingly lowered her head. “We don’t have food to share, but you can rest behind our lines until the Sage comes.”
As their crowd from Sacred Valley was ushered into the Wilds, Jai Chen whispered to Eithan. “Thank you. We just need a place to recover for a while, and then we won’t impose on your hospitality anymore.”
Eithan was lying face-down, his banner missing. Either the effort of holding it up had exhausted him, or he hadn’t wanted to stay in such a strange position for any longer.
Now, however, the Archlord spoke straight into his cushion of dense cloud madra. “Impose? No, I simply ask that you give me a few days to prepare better accommodations than this. I couldn’t let our new sect die out in the cold.”
Jai Chen didn’t know how to respond. On the one hand, having a sect backing them would solve most of their problems. She yearned to stop running and hiding, to settle down somewhere.
On the other hand, there was no Twin Star sect.
“I’m sorry, Archlord, but the sect…I was just—”
“Making it up? Every organization in history has been made up by someone.”
“We don’t have—”
“A headquarters? There has been quite a bit of real estate around here leveled in a recent disaster. You may have heard about it.”
“My brother—”
“I’m not just looking for your brother.” His head lolled to one side, and he looked at her with a single blue eye. “From you, Jai Chen, with no pressure from me, I would like to know: if we could provide you with a home, would you want one?”
She hesitated.
“No commitment,” he assured her, “and pending your brother’s approval. You could both walk away if and when you wanted.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But it’s hard for me to believe it isn’t a trap.”
She flinched as she said it. He was an Archlord, and she was doubting his given word.
He let out a breath of relief. “Fantastic! It actually isn’t a trap this time; I just need someone who knows real sacred arts to sort through all these Irons to find some who might actually be worth teaching. It so happens that I have recently come into possession of a plot of flying farmland with plenty of sacred herbs and spirit-fruits to support the development of a small sect. So I appreciate you founding one.”
Eithan dipped his head in what was probably supposed to be a bow. It was really just him pushing his face deeper into the cloud.
Despite her misgivings, Jai Chen giggled.
Northstrider crossed his legs and closed his eyes in midair, catching his breath and slowly recovering his spirit.
The clouds below him were torn apart, the landscape devastated for miles. An abandoned fortress had been reduced to rubble, there was now a bay where once had been uninterrupted coastline, and one small mountain had been leveled while another one had burst into its place.
“I’ll have to have my maps re-drawn,” Malice said with a sigh.
She drifted up next to him out of a cloud of violet essence. Her dissolving armor lit up the sky, but it was nothing compared to the red light that retreated north.