Min stared at Noren. He had met them as soon as the tower’s portal had spat them out. She knelt, clutching Chang-li’s body. She could hear his breathing, feel his core still cycling, but he didn’t stir. Before she could beg Noren to do something Joshi shouted a warning. “They come!”

  She looked up. The tower loomed over them, its bulk dark against the starry night.

  A pair of gleaming thunderbolts came streaking toward the tower. She had just an instant to catch a glimpse. Each of the bolts was a person, surrounded by a halo of power. General Li landed first. His streak touched the top of the tower, and he disappeared. An instant later, Prism Eri’s golden blur reached the tower and vanished.

  “We don't have much time,” Noren said urgently. “Those two will be engaged in a battle, and it won't be healthy to be here. But we can't leave until Chang-li has been stabilized.” He bit his lip. “Unfortunately, that means we're going to have interference from the Inquisitor very soon. I trapped her in a stasis field, but it wasn't powerful enough to leave her for long. I had been planning to make her reveal herself as the traitor she is. But now—”

  “I don't care about that,” Min snapped. “What happened to Chang-li, and how can we fix it?”

  “I can fix it, or rather he can, if he has enough in him.” He held up the Temporal Crystal. “It's charged again.”

  “Chang-li always fills that with violet lux as soon as he's able,” Min said, her mind distant, racing.

  What had happened? Sun Wukong was gone. Whether still inside the tower, ascended to the heavens, or somewhere else, she didn't care. Her focus right now was on her husband.

  “How will the Crystal help him?”

  “He's received a massive dose of Lumos injected directly into his core. That shouldn’t be survivable at his stage.”

  She looked down and gasped in horror.

  A pale white light was rising off of Chang-li's body, his flesh sparkling and beginning to dissolve. He seemed less substantial than he had a few moments ago.

  “What's happening?”

  “The Lumos is destroying his physical body. At this point the only think that can save him is advancing. If he doesn't remake himself with lux, he will die,” Noren said grimly. He looked her straight in the eye. “I can help him.

  He pointed. “The rest of our sect is down there waiting at the abandoned war camp. I also left a trapped inquisitor She has violated her oaths and there is no telling what she might do. She will come looking for me, and when she can't find me, she may come for them. I need you to do what you can for them. Stall her.”

  “What are you going to do?” Min asked, clutching onto Chang-li's shoulders. She could feel his body dissolving away under them.

  “There’s no time. You have to trust me.”

  He met her gaze.

  Min stared at him. She opened her mouth to ask the many questions racing through her mind, then she closed it. He said this was Chang-li's only chance. “Do what you must.”.

  Noren touched the Temporal Crystal to Chang-li's chest, and without a sound or any kind of show, they were gone.

  Min stared down at where they had just been. Her heart ached but she steeled herself. She longed to aid Chang-li, but there was nothing she could do for him, and Noren had given them a charge. She picked up Chang-li's satchel that lay next to where his body had been and pulled out the box containing their Flying Cloud.

  Joshi and Hiroko turned to her.

  “You heard the man,” she said, as she pulled out the cloud and fed lux into it. “We have a job to do.”

  The Flying Cloud was not meant to actually fly. It did best when only a few dozen paces above the ground. Propelling it along the glacier under starlight was absolutely terrifying.

  The cloud bobbed crazily as it skimmed over ridges in the ice, occasionally flashing over deep crevasse, as Min's heart choked her throat. After the first few she realized it could skim safely across even the deepest crack, as long as it was narrow. Then she relaxed, very slightly.

  Hiroko and Joshi clutched onto the cloud behind her. “The Inquisitor is a Lux Dominator at the peak of her powers,” Joshi shouted. “Expect her to be even stronger than the last sect member. She may target our weaker members.”

  “The bitch can try,” Min ground out through gritted teeth, “but I'm not letting her lay a finger on anyone from our sect.”

  They came down off the ice and raced into the mostly empty encampment. People spilled out of tents, shivering in the night air and pointing excitedly.

  Min dismounted from the cloud. To her relief, Brother Stone hurried forward, smiling, his arms outstretched. She ignored the proffered embrace. “Brother Stone, report.”

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  The sect spread out behind Brother Stone, four dozen of them. Min looked from face to face in the light of the watch fires, and her heart warmed. She knew all these people. Most of them had been Brotherhood from birth, while a few were the recruits they had added in Varden City from amongst the family connected to the Oaken Brotherhood. Nevertheless, she could put names to all of them.

  She stretched out her will, reveling in how it answered, and sensed their strengths.

  Brother Stone was, like her, on the verge of reaching the Peak of Spiritual Refinement. Half a dozen disciples were at the Peak of Mental Refinement, and dozens more had already reached the Peak of Bodily Refinement. They would be no match for the Inquisitor, but they had come so far in so little time.

  Joshi lowered his voice. “How do you want to do this?” he asked. “If you want to evacuate the sect, I can cover your retreat for as long as possible.”

  She shook her head. “Grandmaster Noren has entrusted us with a task,” she called, and the sect stood a little straighter at her invoking his name.

  “He and Senior Disciple Wu are engaged in an important task. They will return to us as soon as they are able, but in the meantime they have left us to face a terrible threat. A cultivator more powerful than any of us, who believes our sect to be traitors and has the power of the Emperor to punish us.”

  Looks of horror crossed all of the faces. “The Inquisitor?” Brother Stone asked. “She is turned against us?”

  Min nodded. “She has. She is coming. Senior Disciple Joshi will fight her as best he can, but we must all aid him.”

  “She is a tiger, and we are gnats,” Brother Stone said flatly. “And if we attack, then are we not confirming that we truly are enemies?”

  Min took a deep breath. “Grandmaster Noren believes we can do this,” she said softly. “And we are not merely cultivators. We have been Brotherhood since before we ever set foot on a cultivation path. What is the Brotherhood, except the belief that the weak, when joined together with strong bonds and loyalty, can stand up to the strong?”

  “It's one thing when you're talking about magistrates and corrupt officials,” the disciples muttered, “but a Lux Dominator and Inquisitor? What can we possibly do?”

  Min felt her will harden as she spoke. “We can unite,” she said.

  And her core resonated. Her eyes widened. Her Intent was there and solid. This was what she wanted to do. She would use her will not to force, she didn't want to force her will on anyone, but to guide them into working together. She would unite them. Something in her chimed and she felt a shudder run through her body, strengthening and steadying her. It couldn’t be the Peak of Spiritual Refinement already, could it?

  No matter. Min pushed aside worries about her own cultivation and focused on the current problem. Here were her people, waiting for her to tell them what to do. All she needed was a way of letting her words and her will speak to each of them.

  There was a way! She opened Chang-li's sack, found the battered notebooks he had brought along for her with the techniques he had thought might serve her well. Flipped through to one they had spent some time looking over during their climb in this tower.

  It was something she had initially dismissed as being useless, a blue and indigo lux technique that would affect minds and senses, but only weakly. Anyone who had made it to the Peak of Bodily Refinement could easily shake off the technique. Its strength was that it could be split into hundreds of different strands: the Thousand Whispers.

  Now she smiled.

  “I will be with you,” she told them. “Listen to my voice and trust me as your elder sister, as the head spouse of Morning Mist, and as a fellow cultivator.”

  They gave off a ragged cheer as Min began to weave the technique.

  “What are you doing?” Hiroko whispered.

  “I need your help,” Min said. “I need you to cover us with as many illusions as possible. Has the Inquisitor entered the tower while you were there?” Min asked Brother Stone.

  He shook his head. “Not that I’m aware. We spoke a few times with Grandmaster Noren, who said he and Inquisitor Yoonji were watching for Prism Eri’s arrival.” The Inquisitor had stayed at the general’s main encampment a few miles to the east of the Morning mist camp.

  Min turned to her friends, a glimmer of a desperate plan in her mind.

  “If the Inquisitor hasn’t been inside the tower, she’s been draining her lux all this time. No doubt, she has access to the lux batteries from the imperial stores, but the density and purity of lux inside a battery isn’t nearly what you get from a tower.”

  Here she was merely parroting facts she had heard in the court of her other grandfather, Provincial Governor Gao. He had, as part of his duties, been in charge of sending their required quota of lux batteries to the Empire, siphoning off the excess strength from Riceflower Tower to be used wherever it was needed.

  “We are many, though weak. We will force her to use costly techniques against us. And when she is out of lux, she’ll have few options. To flee, to enter the tower and gain more lux, or to find a way to destroy us without any lux of her own.”

  Joshi crossed his arms, looking concerned. “To run a Lux Dominator out of lux seems a dangerous bargain,” he said. “How many of your people and mine will die to achieve it?”

  She met his eyes with a challenge. “Will any warrior of the Darwur refuse to give his life for this?”

  Joshi shook his head. “No. My people will not run from a fight. And if they have learned the value of cultivation, then—”

  “They have,” Brother Stone broke in. He bowed apologetically. “Forgive me, Elder Brother Joshi, for speaking out of turn. But I have watched your people in these past weeks. They are at least as eager to learn, to cultivate, as any of my own, I mean the Brotherhood people who have become Morning Mist disciples. They have made great strides in advancement. I think every single one has reached Bodily Refinement, and several are nearing the Peak of Mental Refinement as well.”

  “Ants to go up against a wolf,” Joshi said. But he looked thoughtful.

  Hiroko said, “My divine ancestor understands the power of those ants. I see now his design, why he has taken such care to ensure the loyalty of lesser cultivators. Think how he has the Gem Court marrying even cultivators at the Peak of Bodily Refinement. Why? Not because he expects them all to become Lux Dominators, but because a few dozen Bodily Refinement cultivators can be a threat. Ants that bite and sting may take down a wolf,” she added, “especially one that’s crippled.”

  “We take her seriously,” Min said, “but we do not treat her as though she cannot be beaten. But we must have a plan .”

  Quickly, she sketched out her ideas for Joshi and Hiroko. Each nodded, Hiroko suggesting a few adaptations of her own.

  Joshi jerked his head up, and Min felt it at the same moment: a flare of Intent backed with anger, and the sense of a powerful cultivator.

  “She’s coming,” Min said.

  She flung out the Thousand Whispers, attaching a strand to each of her people, then spoke, her words echoing in their ears.

  “Spread out. Conceal yourselves. The Inquisitor comes. She will overlook you. Your cultivation is so far beneath her, she will seek to destroy the powerful threats first. And while she's doing that, we will overwhelm her.”

  “I will hold her for as long as I can,” Joshi said. “My people are gathering to the north. I’ll speak with them.” He leapt onto the Flying Cloud and was gone.

  Hiroko turned to Min. “I think this would help if we were a little higher up,” she said. She pointed to one of the camp’s watchtowers, just beyond the line of tents.

  Min nodded. “Spread out. Conceal yourselves and listen for my orders.”