Storm's Eye Hill
Two sorcerer-engineers of The Xuan Wu Academy stood at the bottom of a hill in the misty morning. The night had seen three mortals killed, adding to the toll of eight from the two days before. The road they'd been building was a ruin, as well, and the same was true of their raw materials. Inam Niu, the elder of the pair, sighed. "We'd better alert Master Rivers."
Hatsu Shi folded his arms across his chest. "Hardly necessary. We can deal with this ourselves. If we just summon a few more jokun..."
"We can't. With the construction we're doing all across Marukan, the local courts are tapped to their limit. Any more elementals taken from their given tasks and Master Storm says we might disrupt the balance of Heaven."
"How does this not disrupt the balance of Heaven?" Hatsu Shi gestured to the chaos; the tightly-packed earth that had been thrown apart, the timbers splintered, the paving stones crushed to dust. The bodies of the men were worse; their throats had been torn savagely open, and rancid green poison dripped from the wounds and foamed in their mouths.
"The balance of Heaven..." Inam Niu bent down and touched a jade-bound hand to the poisoned flesh of one of the men. "They walk through our fortifications like they're not there, they hate the works of men..."
The elder sorcerer-engineer stood. "Dogs of the Unbroken Earth."
Hatsu Shi twisted his lip. "Nature spirits."
"In abundance. But..." Inam Niu walked to the top of the hill. "The wind falls away here. It blows on every other side of the hill, in from each direction, but the top of the hill is like the eye of a storm - calm.
"I'm not sure yet," Inam Niu said as she took a crystal from her pouch, "but I'd wager that this is a demesne."
"Surely we would have noticed before now," said Hatsu Shi.
The other shook her head as she peered through the crystal. "Not if the Dogs have been hiding the Essence flows from us."
Hatsu Shi cast his eye behind him, down the half-built road destined for Celeren and leading back to the Eye of Hiparkes. He sighed. "We'd better alert Master Rivers."
In the Dragon's Wake
The Eponan road, from God Crossing to Celeren, ended with the blunted finality of an avalanche. One step, there was pavestone and quicklime underfoot; the next, there was blasted sand. Inam Niu stood on the last of the road, her bare toes curling around the edge, and she wept. She squinted across a mile and tried, through her tears, to see the shape of the house that once stood in the center.
The horizon held nothing but desolation.
"It was the first thing I'd ever built," she said. "It was like my child. I knew, as soon as it was gone. How could I not? I felt my heart break."
Hatsu Shi came and put a hand on his elder's shoulder. She turned and buried her head in his chest. The pair stood together, wordlessly, as the sun scratched shadows into the evening. Finally, Inam Niu gave one last sob and pulled away. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She steeled herself and, at last, turned back to the broken earth beyond the road. "How did this happen? How did we lose?"
"We didn't lost, Niu. This is a setback. We didn't lose any men, we can rebuild the house..."
"Rebuild?" Inam Niu gave a short, humorless laugh. She held her hand, palm out, in the air before her. "How? Can't you feel it, Shi? The dry stillness in the air? There's no Essence in there, nothing to harness. How do you build a manse on nothing?"
"A regular fortress, then. It won't be as grand, but we can still -"
"It's not about the manse!" Inam Niu spun around. "Not about... You're right, Shi. We didn't lose. They did, our masters. How did that happen? We thought they could do anything. We believed in them."
Hatsu Shi blinked. "'Believed?'"
"I don't know what to think, anymore." Inam Niu shook her head. "I'm still loyal; I'd do whatever Rivers asks. But since... this... I've started to wonder. Did you know that Three Hills is in a shadowland, now? And I've heard rumors that the southern team's gone missing.
"What if we can't win, Shi? What if the Solars aren't strong enough?"
"They're not invincible, Niu. They seem it, sometimes; like after Breaking Iron. But they've set themselves up against one of the strongest, most terrible forces in Creation, and it's war. We knew there would be casualties. But that doesn't mean we just give in; it means we have to fight that much harder.
"The Solars can do a lot, but they can't be everywhere. That's why they made us; because they need help. The Mask is stronger than they are, but not stronger than they can be. Not with us behind them."
Inam Niu smiled wanly. "You sounded a lot like him, just then."
Hatsu Shi scratched the back of his head and looked away. "I said what he said to me yesterday, when I came to the Pagoda with the same doubts you're having."
"Had. Let's rebuild, Shi. A wing of mercury ants and damn the strain on the Heavenly bureaucracy. Let's show the bastard that he can't beat our masters. Not while they still have us!"
