Da Kanuk pulled a linen cover from the entrance of one of the caravan’s ruined wagons. The linen was a little too nice for its purpose, a little too ostentatious, covered in designs. It was how Tsem recognized this particular wagon. It had been used by those few cultivators of the Meiryu clan who had joined the caravan as its protection. If they had finished their journey, those same cultivators would have been in charge of the town the settlers were tasked with building.

  Oddly, this wagon was raked with claw marks. Some of the others had been burnt, and otherwise destroyed, but none looked quite like this. It almost seemed like a score of demonic beasts had climbed all over it, digging their claws into its wood. He had no idea why they might do that though. It certainly didn’t match the sort of single-minded, bloodthirsty behavior he’d come to expect from demonic beasts.

  Da Waska was crouching inside the wagon, peering at something. It wasn’t the map they had been looking for, although Tsem did see that lying on top of a chest, shoved into a corner.

  “Do you recognize this bottle?” Da Waska moved aside, letting Tsem take a look at an oddly shaped clear container. It seemed ornate, more so even than anything else left behind by the Meiryu cultivators.

  “No.” Tsem admitted. “I’ve never seen that. What is it?”

  Da Waska shrugged. “I’m not sure. It was the last bottle like it left though. They came packaged in an alchemist case. I’m surprised anyone would willingly leave something like this behind.”

  Da Kanuk moved the alchemist case out from a shadow. “You saw the markings on the wagon, right. Well…”

  Tsem nodded. He could see claw marks on the case, matching some of those on the outside. “What does it mean.”

  Da Waska hopped out of the wagon, shaking his head. “I’ve never known a demonic beast to be interested in an alchemical concoction before.” He did a walk around, his eyes attempting to track patterns in the ground. “I’d like to find those bottles that were taken, but the earth here is far too confused and jumbled to track anything specific. This might be a mystery we have to leave unsolved.”

  Tsem shook his head slowly, looking at the bottle in his hand. “If a demonic beast took one of these bottles, I might have a way to find it.”

  “Oh?” Da Waska looked at Tsem in surprise.

  “I had a fortuitous encounter with an honored elder near Mount Ghalri.”

  Da Kanuk slapped Tsem on the back. “You met a divine beast didn’t you! I’ve heard rumors of a few, and I know my father has met a few, but that’s awesome!” He grinned at Tsem widely.

  “Yeah.” Tsem nodded his head gravely. He really had been lucky to meet Valesin when he had. “Anyway, they taught me how to make a divine formation, one of basic divination. If we set up something like that around here, we could use the bottle as a sample and find anything resembling it in the area.”

  Da Kanuk whistled. “That sounds useful. You’ll have to show us how you do it.”

  Tsem nodded, happy to help. He wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery. He could feel the beginnings of anger bubbling up inside himself. If the missing bottles had been what had drawn the demonic beasts, and the marks on the case certainly indicated that, then…it was hard to believe that the educated Meiryu cultivators wouldn’t have known it was a risk. Tsem didn’t know much about alchemy, but he knew from stories and hearsay that an alchemist’s recipes were very specific, very controlled, and very expensive. Those who purchased an alchemist’s products would know exactly what they were paying for.

  Da Waska looked grimly around, wincing a little, hesitating slightly. “Divine formations are considered illegal. In a case like this though…”

  That was news to Tsem, but a look from Kanuk kept him from saying as much. The cultivator’s eyes spoke a warning. Don’t push him. A moment later, they spoke a reassurance. Kanuk would explain, later. For now, Tsem held his tongue. He didn’t want to give Da Waska a reason not to use the formation.

  “Alright.” The senior cultivator looked around. “We should do all we can.”

  Tsem nodded, leading the group out of the burnt clearing, searching for places where he could inscribe his glyphs. As he did, he explained to the others what he was doing. While they were somewhat unsure, they quickly spread out, helping him look for ideal locations. Several times, one of them would call out a potential spot only for Tsem to shake his head.

  Eventually though, Tsem found the perfect location. He was surprised to find it here though. It was another spot where a blue sap tree sat by itself in a circle cleared of all other trees. He’d found a few of the same near Valesin’s lair. Perhaps it was the work of a type of demonic beast he hadn’t seen yet.

  “It’s the work of a ghalri raptor.” Kanuk responded to Tsem’s unasked question.

  “What?” Tsem had pictured the perpetrator as something much larger, perhaps some cousin to the bladebear.

  “Well, an ascended one. You know that demonic beasts can cultivate like us, right?”

  Tsem nodded his head. It only made sense. If they could burn qi, there was no reason why they shouldn’t be able to cultivate. Still though…he hadn’t really considered the possibility, or its implications.

  Kanuk continued. “If they reach far enough in their cultivation, demonic beasts might ascend. When they do, they become much stronger, their body undergoes a number of changes too. In the case of the ghalri raptor, they get much bigger.”

  Da Waska approached, joining them. “They’re some of the nastiest grade 2 demonic beasts you’ll find. Harder to deal with than even most grade 3 demonic beasts. Their speed is even more ridiculous than a normal raptor.”

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  Tsem grimaced at that. If he kept using these spots to lay his formations, he would need to be even more careful. The last thing he wanted to do was meet an ascended ghalri raptor face-to-face.

  The rest of the glyphs were easy to set up as they found plenty more areas left behind by an ascended ghalri raptor. The part Tsem was always most careful with, the activation, went smoothly, and right away, he felt a tether reaching into the formation. He clenched his fist. “Found it.” Then he looked to the others who were staring in the wrong directions. “Can you sense it.”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure it activated properly?”

  Tsem paused, confused. “You can’t sense anything? Even right next to the glyph?”

  Both of the cultivators shrugged and shook their heads. Tsem looked at them closely, but they didn’t seem to be lying. It didn’t make sense though. The first time he’d come across a divine formation, he’d been able to sense the tethers near a glyph, even if faintly. He shrugged. That wasn’t important right now. He had a match to the bottle.

  It felt odd leading the two much stronger cultivators through the forest. Tsem made sure to slouch a little, made sure not to look like he thought of himself as important. Really, he knew there was no need. Neither cultivator was anything like those he’d known from the great clans. It was hard to kick a lesson that had been imprinted on him over years though. Still, Tsem did stand up a little straighter, only a little though.

  The underbrush was getting extremely dense. Tsem was forced to push through bushes that came up to his waist in parts, in others, his chest. He took scratches along his arms and burs clung to the cloth portions of his hunting leathers. He pushed on though. They were reaching the end of the tether. “It’s close.” Tsem whispered. “Very close.”

  The trio began moving carefully, adopting a hunting gait. Da Waska could probably deal with anything they came across, but there were no guarantees on the frontier.

  A few moments passed. Tsem felt a little less natural at this than his companions looked, and he moved slower to keep from making noise. Still, each step was a delicate affair in vegetation so dense. Every time he put his foot down, he had to watch and brush gently past all impediments. Every time he raised it, he had to avoid all the leaves, particularly the dried and dead ones. A few minutes passed with them slowly sneaking forward. They were right on top of the tether now.

  Tsem tensed from the stress, his foot sliding just a little farther than he wanted, stepping on the limb of the bush he’d been walking through. A loud crack broke the air, and he winced. A moment later, a hiss broke through from in front and below.

  All three of them leapt backward, expecting an attack. Sure enough, a great snake, as thick around as Tsem’s waist lunged out, clearing the brush and doing its best to plunge its fangs into Kanuk. He moved, faster than Tsem thought it possible for him to move. He ducked beneath the demonic beast’s head, striking out with his hand and grabbing, crushing.

  A powerful tang filled the air and Tsem found himself grabbing his nose. It was demonic qi or something like it, but it wasn’t coming from the snake. No, after a moment, Tsem realized it was coming from Kanuk’s hide jacket, permeating through his skin. In that moment, Kanuk’s strength fractured some of the snake’s scales, crushing with immense force. A moment later, it stopped, and Kanuk was forced to release his grip.

  The snake exuded power in a way that Tsem hadn’t seen from any demonic beast so far. It was even stronger than the bladebears which meant it was at least grade two and likely not at the low end. Which meant it should be able to use external qi.

  Sure enough, versions of the demonic beast, made from ice qi, peeled off it one by one, almost like it was shedding its skin. Da Waska intercepted the beast itself, the flats of his blades ringing against its head with two mighty blows. The snake took them, but the ice clones stopped peeling off and it looked a little stunned.

  While Waska dealt with the snake itself, and Kanuk held a trio of its copies to a standstill, Tsem was forced to contend with his own ice copy. It drove at him headfirst, and Tsem barely lurched to the side. It wasn’t unlike dodging a spear thrust. The head was small and angular enough that it was hard to see. Fortunately, the ice copy moved slower and more predictably than the real thing had.

  Tsem pulled his spear out, but his net was in his pack, too far to reach now. Even if he could have, it wouldn’t have been easy to use here. It would almost certainly get snagged on a bush and…

  Tsem’s legs were swept from underneath him. Lost in the dense brush, he couldn’t even see what had done it. He could guess though. It had to have been the ice snake’s tail, nothing else made sense.

  As he fell to the ground, he managed to awkwardly thrust out with his spear. The aim wasn’t very good, but the ice qi seemed to have a will of its own as it pulled backward, just like the real beast might have.

  The pair exchanged a series of thrusts, Tsem rolling around on the ground, feeling the cold of the qi with each crash of its head. His own attacks did little more than ward the living technique off. Still, it was enough.

  The main demonic beast, while strong, was not so advanced in its cultivation that it could maintain these techniques while taking a beating from Da Waska. And it was taking a beating. His feet lashed into its head, breaking its attacks and his blades tore into it. Before Tsem’s eyes, the beast’s techniques died, withering and melting into nothingness, the qi joining the world around it.

  Without its techniques to distract Da Kanuk, he assisted against the snake, his spear plunging against its throat. The attack skittered off, drawing some blood, but mostly just serving as a distraction. It was enough. Da Waska took full advantage, plunging his blades into what must have been fatal areas. The beast gave one last hiss to the sky before collapsing.

  Tsem, not wasting any time, moved towards where he could still feel the tether. He thrust his hand down a hole, no doubt where the snake they’d just fought had once made its home. He groped around for a minute before his fingers connected with something unnatural. He gripped it carefully, pulling it up. Sure enough, he pulled out a bottle, a duplicate to the one they’d found earlier. Only this one was filled with a red gelatinous substance. He held it up for the others to see, and they gathered around.

  Da Waska shared a meaningful glance with Kanuk who shrugged his shoulders. “You were right.”

  “Right?” Tsem asked.

  Kanuk nodded. “Our clan doesn’t have any true alchemists, but we’ve been working to remedy that. Senior Waska and a few others have been studying what few papers we’ve managed to gather or purchase.”

  Da Waska. “One of those papers described a substance called prey’s hearth. The paper itself is quite old and the recipe is somewhat rarely used, which is how the clan could afford purchasing the document.” He cracked one of his knuckles, looking like he wanted to punch something, though his face just looked sick. “The substance is used to attract demonic beasts, usually to hunt them down on the northern continent where they’re uncommon. Its smell acts as a benefit to their cultivation to my understanding.”

  Tsem clenched his fist, his heart beat red, feeling like venom was eating at him from the inside. Just like he’d thought, the Meiryu cultivators had intentionally drawn demonic beasts to the caravan. “Why?”

  Da Kanuk looked at the ground. “The thought crossed my mind when you told me where you’d come from. You mentioned the Meiryu clan while we were hunting together, and I started looking into things.” He put a hand on Tsem’s shoulder. “The great clans are against any exploration of the frontier. I found out through the Sono clan and the sect they’re affiliated with that the emperor ordered them to start contributing to the effort.” Da Kanuk glared at the bottle of prey’s hearth. “They must have needed a plausible reason for the expedition’s failure.”

  Tsem clenched his teeth. He wasn’t exactly surprised. Cultivators, at least the cultivators from back home, had always looked down on those around them. Still, this hurt him, it cut him deep. His family had upended their lives to pursue an opportunity only to be left for dead by those who had offered it. None of it had ever been real. A lie, an illusion.

  He pulled his head up to the sky, taking in nothing for fifteen seconds, then slowly, he took a breath and began cycling his qi. No, it hadn’t been a lie. The opportunity had been real. The frontier, the southern continent, there was opportunity here. Tsem had already proven that. He was already a cultivator, even if barely. His parents had been right about that. Even if the messengers they’d been given their information from had been worse snakes than the one Waska had just slain, they couldn’t take away from the truth.

  “We need to know something, Tsem.” Waska approached, his wavy hair seeming to cast his face in a more severe shadow than usual. “Do you want revenge.”

  Tsem shook his head. “That’s not my path.” He paused. “I don’t want something like this to happen again though. I want it to end here. I want the frontier to be a place of opportunity, not senseless death.”

  Da Waska weighed the words, eventually offering a hand. “That much we can agree on. We’ll take this bottle, the whole case we found, to the representative of the twin sects in the city. With hard evidence like this, they should be able to put a stop to these senseless killings. I doubt the perpetrators will get much more than a slap on the wrist though.”

  Tsem shook his head again. “That will have to be enough.” Honestly, it felt like a hollow victory, poor justice for everyone who had died here. There was nothing to be done about it though. Revenge against the great clans wasn’t a path that would end well for him, he wanted nothing to do with that.

  Da Kanuk grimly clapped his hands. “I told you Tsem was a good fit for the Da clan.”

  Da Waska smiled slightly, sharing a look with Tsem. “The frontier as a place of opportunity. I think most everyone in the Da clan can agree with that. I’ll look forward to having you as a brother in arms in that fight.”

  Tsem nodded at that, standing a little taller. He would leave the past settled with this. His eyes needed to be on the future, and he knew without a doubt, his future was in the Da clan. It was time to get back to grabbing that future, taking it in his own talons…his hands. Hands. Tsem blinked his eyes. What was his mind doing?