It had been seven days since Tsem had found shelter in the basilisk’s burrow, and in that time, he’d learned to hate mornings. If he wasn’t awake by sunrise, he was awoken by the alarming experience of being dragged out of the divine beast’s lair in the midst of one of its coils. Of course, the metal ground was so uncomfortable that no matter how exhausted he was each night, it always took him too long to drift off. So, every day started with a terrifying ride.
His morning woes didn’t end with his sudden, indignant exits from the lair, no, because breakfast in the frontier was a bracing experience. The only food he had was jerky made from the demonic beasts he’d hunted with Da Kanuk. Each portion he ate threatened to infect his inner self with the will of the beast it had come from, some small, stubborn aspect of the creature’s path in life clinging to existence, each bite a unique battle. It was, at least, an effective means of banishing any remaining drowsiness.
The morning of his seventh day was a little different though. He was out of jerky. If that wasn’t a sign of how poorly his hunting efforts were going, he didn’t know what was. The problem wasn’t a lack of effort on his part, or a lack of demonic beasts either. He’d spent every minute of the last week stalking through the underbrush and he’d spotted plenty of demonic beasts—too many for any moment to be comfortable. The issue was that he never found them when or where he wanted to.
Any demonic beast was a serious threat to his life. Of those detailed in the Da family hunting manual, precious few could be taken down with just the kinds of tools he could make on his own. Of those that were, they generally required him to reach his target while it was distracted and in a location of his choosing with significant preparations already in place.
He’d come to realize that Da Kanuk must have very specifically chosen the Ghalri raptor to be his first hunt. It was very close to the perfect prey for him. With its poor senses, he’d been able to set up his preparations while it was nearby, and its feast of blue sap had kept it distracted, making it predictable enough for him to catch with a net. Tsem had certainly tried replicating that hunt. He’d spent an entire day near a tree dripping with sap, but no raptor had come along. Even if he did find another of the elusive creatures, the bird would do little to increase his supply of meat. No, he had a different target in mind.
The Uvarian Bladebear was the kind of demonic beast that was populous enough, even on the northern continent, that depictions of it were what the average peasant’s thoughts turned to whenever demonic beasts were brought up. Tsem wasn’t pursuing the bladebear on the advice of the hunting manual. In fact, the manual had recommended anyone with low cultivation to stay away from it. This beast, unlike the Ghalri raptor, had no glaring weakness that would allow a mundane like himself to hunt it.
It was strong, fast, smart all in almost equal measure. In short, the perfect foil to Tsem’s brand of hunt. There was one detail buried in the manual though that gave Tsem hope: it was highly territorial, particularly to its own kind. The conclusion he’d drawn was that while he had no chance of killing a bladebear himself, if he could lead one into the territory of another, his work would be done for him.
The plan had some major flaws. First, he couldn’t simply lead this kind of beast to another territory on account of it being able to outpace him in seconds and tear him limb from limb. Second, the bladebears, while territorial, weren’t exactly perfect at defending their territory. The odds of two beasts running into each other while one was in the other’s territory was quite low. That meant Tsem needed to lead a bladebear not just into the territory of another, but directly to a second of its kind. Which meant tracking two demonic beasts at the same time…with just one of him.
He’d failed to solve either problem which was why he was currently navigating around the perimeter of a bladebear territory, searching for something he could use to his advantage. Every dozen yards or so, he’d look for distinctive markings on the trees. The markings weren’t always obvious, and he was far from an expert at spotting them, but getting an accurate map of the beast’s territory was crucial enough that he kept at it.
Tsem estimated himself to be some two-thirds of the way around the territory, almost the furthest he’d been away from the stream, when he felt something unusual. At first it looked like just another one of the markings he’d been following, but the oddity of its being on a boulder and not a tree was enough for him to take a closer look. The boulder itself had been worn, by wind and storm, into a shape that resembled a large, clenched fist. On closer inspection, it was no simple marking, resembling something far more deliberate, a glyph perhaps.
The design had complex lines, each interwoven in a pattern that Tsem felt had meaning but couldn’t understand. He placed a finger in one of those lines, tracing it slowly, collecting fine bits of ground rock the carver had left behind. He felt a strong sense coming from it. It felt vaguely like qi, but far weaker than anything he’d sensed before. Intrigued, Tsem honed his senses, focusing deeply on following that weak trace of qi. He felt it moving off in several lines, like tethers, away from the initial carving.
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Tsem tried to follow one of the tethers, but after a few steps, his perception slipped off it. He growled in frustration, returning to the glyph once again, catching the line again, and walking off. Again, he eventually lost his grasp on it and had to return. He repeated the process over and over until he began to realize that where he always seemed to lose the tether, it was actually curving, just a little bit.
Spurred on by the realization, he continued his efforts, getting further each time. Sometimes, he could make it dozens of paces before losing the path, others much fewer. He kept at it, making note of each curve or dip in the tether, finding frustration in the way they seemed to subtly shift with each attempt. He kept getting further and further along, but he would, eventually, always lose his place and be forced to return to the fist-shaped boulder. He began closing his eyes, realizing that it was far easier to sense his way without extra sensory input getting in the way.
With his eyes closed tight, Tsem stumbled his way along the forest floor, tracking one of the tethers. It led him away from the bladebear’s territory, away from the stream, and further into the mountain. He didn’t stop though. He started to feel the tether more clearly and anticipate its changes in direction. When he did lose track of it, he found that a few moments of searching, where he knew the line to be, would let him pick up on its trail again. His returns to the boulder were a thing of the past.
Eventually, Tsem came to the end of his tether, and what seemed to be another confluence of faint qi lines. Realization came over him, a sudden insight, and he understood why the tethers weren’t straight, why they’d seemed to move ever so slightly with each attempt he’d made to follow them. He felt no longer just the qi tethers he had been following, but something far weaker, an ocean of the same qi. He could feel how the tethers were forced to follow the contours of waves. Unlike a real body of water, these waves went in every direction, cresting downwards and to the right as often as they did straight. The chaos, viewed all at once, was too much for him, and Tsem fell to his knees, retching into the nearby bushes.
“You…found your…enlightenment.” A familiar weighty voice called out from above. “How…unusual.”
Tsem gave a start, stumbling back to his feet, then falling fully backwards as he tried to look straight up. He needn’t have bothered. The enormous basilisk could be seen from virtually any angle. In fact, it was quite embarrassing that he hadn’t noticed it before—just how focused had he been on following that tether?
He hastily gave a bow. “Honored elder, I am surprised to find you out in the day. Did you…need me for something?” Tsem dearly hoped he wasn’t about to be kicked out of the divine beast’s lair. He wasn’t comfortable sleeping in the woods, not with so many demonic beasts around.
“Business…perhaps.” The snake’s head rotated around, moving a notch further than a human’s head would have been able to. “But it is not…day.”
Tsem looked around, confused. Sure enough, the darkness he’d taken to be from a particularly thick cloud was far too dark. “That’s, how, I….”
“You were…held in trance…for several…days.” The basilisk slipped part of its body down a tree trunk, extending its head close, eyes, like usual, firmly shut. “It is…rare for your kind. It requires great…personal affinity or endless study…and even then…human’s rarely reach the sort of enlightenment you have.”
Days!? That didn’t seem right. Tsem was hungry, true, but not any more than he had been when he’d found the boulder. And enlightenment? Such things were for great sages and scholars, not peasants like himself.
“That you would find a measure of…enlightenment through…my formation.” The basilisk scratched its chin against the bark of a tree, causing leaves to fall from the sudden shaking. “Curious…a human…with an affinity for divine qi…curious.”
“Could I cultivate divine qi?” A sudden strong craving wracked Tsem’s body. This was, of course, why he had stayed in the wilderness alone. He wanted to be a cultivator like those from the stories. It was an embarrassing admission. How childish was he? He was a peasant. Such things were not for him, but just perhaps…
“Have you no…brain?”
It wasn’t a rhetorical question or intended as an insult. The snake was genuinely intrigued, putting its nostrils near his head and inhaling as if to smell whether it was there. “No.” The snake shook its head. “Just…foolish. No human can…cultivate divine qi. It is not…in your…physiology.”
Tsem felt his face glowing red. He should not have bothered the great elder with such a childish hope. He tried to do better, to honor the basilisk’s continued presence with a more insightful question. Perhaps he could find something more fitting for someone who had just reached a measure of enlightenment. He thought back on its—his words, Tsem was fairly certain it was male. “These tethers I can sense, you called them your formation. Did you make these glyphs? What is their purpose?”
Tsem followed his senses towards the confluence of lines. With his new enlightenment, each line felt clear and crisp, nothing like the faint wisps from earlier. Just as he expected, where they met, he could see another glyph, nearly identical to the first. This one was also carved into a boulder, shaped not like a fist, but rather like half a gigantic wheel. It looked nearly identical with only one set of carved lines differing from the first.
The basilisk gave out a low hiss, not angry—Tsem could tell after his few interactions with the creature. “You…ask for knowledge. What do you offer to…pay.”
Tsem thought about that for a second. He doubted he had anything of value to the divine beast. Even if he managed to hunt something, the basilisk would put far less value in demonic beast parts. After all, it could easily kill any demonic beast that Tsem could hope to hunt. He thought back to their first arrangement and smiled. He might have already offered all his relevant knowledge of humanity to the beast, but he hadn’t been able to offer information about the nearby city, and it had seemed quite interested in that. It would be much easier for him to approach without causing a panic. He explained his thoughts.
“Interesting…that would be of…value. Very well…we have ourselves a second accord.” The spine blades on the basilisk suddenly popped up, and Tsem flinched backwards. “If I am to be your…teacher…you should know my name. Listen to the divine qi of the world…and understand.”
The waves he had sensed before started moving chaotically. It wasn’t at all equivalent to sound, but Tsem found he could somewhat understand. “Valesin.”
“A sufficient…approximation.”
