Tweyn Silverbeard watched the fiend-blend kill Lady Windblade, then nodded. It was done, then.

  His floating shield bobbed beneath him. It acted on the same principle as a flying sword, except it was far more versatile. And best of all, the round wooden plate was perfect for keeping his boots clean of this horrid mist-mud.

  As he watched the boy help shear the spines off the spiker’s back and cut the venom glands out of the Veiled Spider, Tweyn turned away. This boy was truly as full of potential as his master believed.

  He would report to the Fallen One immediately. He wanted to take revenge for his son and slay the boy. He wanted to protect his position as an apprentice to the Fallen One—the Fallen One couldn’t have two apprentices, could he?

  But disobeying his master’s orders was a death sentence, and he’d agree to a soul oath long ago.

  His fate was in the hands of the Fallen One now.

  ~ ~ ~

  Once Blake finished gathering the spikes for Winterbeard, the man turned to him and said, “I do not carry much hacksilver on me for a tip, but I would like to reward you both. For the boy”—he motioned to Jared—“take three spikes. They will sell for a large sum of hacksilver. And for you, Mr. Blake…”

  He walked over to the Veiled spider and plunged his hand into its skull, shattering the carapace, and retrieved a small, wobbly membrane surrounding a cell of cloudy black liquid. “I saved the best for last. A veiling organ, where the spider’s invisibility originates from.”

  Blake carefully took the cell in his hands. It felt immensely fragile, and the liquid inside was cold to the touch. It was leaking enough Vir energies to make frost gather on his hands.

  “It is very valuable, and you can sell it to any alchemist for a vast sum. But be very careful with it. The energies it holds are corrosive to the soul.”

  “Thank you,” Blake said, dipping his head.

  “With that, I hope our parting is pleasant,” Winterbeard said. “Unless, of course, you would like a ride back to the manaship.”

  “Not for me, thank you,” Blake said. “But I won’t speak for Jared.”

  “I’d appreciate a ride, sir, if you’d be willing,” Jared said.

  “With me, then. And to you, Mr. Blake, I wish you the best of health.”

  After Blake escorted them back to the longboat, and after they took off and raced up into the sky, he turned and aimed for the city. At first, he considered getting rid of Lady Windblade’s old swords. She’d been an assassin, hadn’t she? But then she’d married the Green Bear sect head or whatever Mingel had explained to him.

  At least now, her sect had been disbanded. Blake was pretty sure he wouldn’t get in trouble for killing her, especially not when it was in self defense.

  But the better question was: why did she try to come after him in the first place? Was she paid?

  He needed to ask Mingel, but he had to be quick about it. He also needed to be getting up to the manaship soon for his first tournament fight.

  But for the moment, he’d talk with Mingel and tell her what happened. She deserved to know.

  The problem was, he didn’t know how to find her. It wasn’t one of their scheduled sparring days, but he still travelled to the same meeting place they’d planned: an old gym from before the Integration, which had survived mostly intact. Sure, it had changed hands a few times, but it kept its old purpose. A lot of the old equipment was there, even. Most importantly, there was a sparring arena now, for especially ambitious cultivators to train.

  Even as Blake entered the old building, walking down a mold-tinged hallway, he caught glimpses of the sparring arena behind the front counter—two cultivators fought each other with wooden weapons, and mana barriers blocked any techniques from leaving the arena.

  Blake approached the front desk. This was his first time actually entering the building, and they wouldn’t recognize him. He faced a young clerk, a Blended part-racoon boy at Condensation stage one. The boy had probably been an offworlder who found himself merged with a creature of Earth.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Have you seen a Blended girl?” Blake asked. “Part tiger. Orange hair.” He put his hands on his head and made round shapes with his fingers. “Tiger ears?”

  The boy looked Blake up and down before swallowed and saying, “She was just here a few—”

  “No giving information on our customers, Skiod,” an older woman said, marching up behind the desk. She held a pair of boxing gloves and a few slips of paper, and by all metrics, she was a regular human. “You, lad.” She motioned to Blake. “You here for something? Or are you just—”

  “It’s fine,” came Mingel’s voice from the side of the room. She was walking out of a changeroom, and she pulled her cloak on over her shoulders. “I know him.”

  “Very good, miss,” the human clerk said.

  “Wanna talk outside?” Blake asked. He didn’t need anyone overhearing, and in here, it smelled like rubber and sweat.

  “Is something wrong?” Mingel asked, following Blake out the door.

  Once he made it back out into the street, he turned. There were still a few people around, so he navigated into an alleyway. It was still late afternoon, and still the winter, so judging by the sun wasn’t a great metric. But it was bright out, and in this part of the city, the shadow of the manaship didn’t cover too much.

  Blake leaned against the wall of the alley, then, dodging River, pulled Lady Windblade’s swords out of his bag.

  Shutting her eyes, Mingel turned away. She shook her head, then leaned back against the wall behind her. “Of course. Of course she did. I take it that she is dead?”

  “Yeah.” Blake swallowed. “I’m sorry. If I didn’t—”

  “I know.” Mingel chewed her lip. “We were never close, not after I got Blended. Even when she did agree to train me, because the Steerman demanded it, it was never…never what I had hoped for.”

  “What you were hoping for?”

  “A mother.”

  Blake winced. “Still, I’m sorry. I did what I had to, but she didn’t suffer.”

  “I wish you had made her suffer,” Mingel mumbled. “She would’ve deserved it.”

  “I got the impression she wasn’t very nice. But, Mingel…”

  Mingel opened her mouth, then shut it again, then turned away, eyes glistening. “I don’t know, Blake.” After a shaky breath, she turned back to him and said, “I’ll need to be getting back to the sect soon. But our first…training session is tomorrow, right?”

  He nodded. “I think that’s what we agreed on.”

  She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Blake stepped closer, then said, “I know you didn’t like her very much. But I still hate to be responsible for orphaning someone.” He reached up and touched his horns. The very same fiend had killed his own mother. He swallowed, trying to push the feelings down. He’d had to kill Lady Windblade. There was no other choice, and he couldn’t blame himself.

  “If you need to talk…” Blake began.

  “Tomorrow,” Mingel said. She winced. “Be ready to receive some pent-up anger when we spar.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  With a quick nod, she triggered her Augmentation technique and faded away into the wind, whisking away in the blink of an eye. It didn’t have the same effect, not when Blake saw her appear on the opposite side of the street, standing on a lattice walkway.

  “Right…” he muttered.

  “Blake shouldn’t get distracted,” came River’s voice from inside his backpack. “He has a fight to win tonight.”

  “You’re right,” Blake replied. “But first…” He held up the ‘veiling organ,’ whatever it actually was. “According to Winterbeard, this thing will literally corrode my soul. What are the chances I can use it to reforge my senses?”

  He looked down at his rank seal. With his practice using his spiritual senses, shouldn’t he have advanced a stage?

  But that wasn’t how it worked, apparently. It might have been good enough for a normal cultivator, but he’d probably given himself another bottleneck and locked his progress behind another self-assigned task.

  For the moment, it favoured him, because it let him improve his senses far beyond what a regular cultivator could achieve, and it would help him advance more quickly.

  “Blake shouldn’t use it until he gets back to the manaship,” River said. “Reforging his soul in a dirty alleyway seems like a bad idea.”

  He nodded, then walked back to the longboat yard. It wasn’t too far away, which was why he and Mingel had picked this location in the first place. When he arrived, he crouched down, then sprang up, launching himself between the ascending longboats with the Serpent’s Cloak.

  When he made it back to the Silk Fans’ compound, he raced to his room, sealed the door, and placed the veiling organ down on the floor. It was still a little dirty, and it had been somewhere inside a spider. He didn’t need the residue of spider guts on his sheets.

  For a few seconds, he contemplated using it. It had the same artificial stink as fiendsmoke—the smell of a car starting on a cold morning. And the soul wasn’t the same as the rest of his physical body. Could he literally burn it away without consequence?

  “Let’s give it a test, then,” he said to River, finishing his thought out loud. “I’ll use a small amount. An incredibly small amount. Just enough to touch the surface of the soul. And we’ll see how your healing affects it.”

  “The old man in Blake’s ring would be telling him not to.”

  “That’s exactly why we’re going to try this right now. And hopefully, we’ll advance before he even wakes up.”