Chapter 2 – Godchaser
I don't consciously remember landing. When I awoke, I was lying on my back somewhere high in the mountains. I scrambled to my feet and immediately tripped over my toolbox. Composing myself, I considered my position. The last twenty-four hours were not a nightmare. I'd fixed the device, jumped out a window, and flown away from the Abbey of Mela. As wretched as I felt, I also sensed that the new Essence in my body was already mending the injuries I'd sustained falling from the sky. Apparently, being possessed by a demon had some benefits.
Still, I did not know where I was. It was bitterly cold and I was hardly dressed for the weather, but my precious notes would serve me for tinder and I had a flint that I could use start a fire. Although most of my tools were not meant for heavy work, having something which could be used for cutting wood or skinning an animal greatly improved my chances of survival. For what it was worth, there was also the device that I'd fixed.
I walked for a few hours before I found a cave. A pair of fallen columns near its entrance suggested that it had been part of a building once. The walls inside were covered in Old Realm inscriptions. I recognized a few characters, but not enough to read much. If I hadn't been so cold, I might have spent more time studying the ruin, but as it was, I was rather fixated on obtaining as much dry tinder as possible.
I used some dry moss to catch the sparks from my flint. It smelled awful as it burned, but it helped the bigger logs to catch fire. As soon as I could feel my hands, I decided to take off the device that I was still wearing. At first, I couldn't figure out how to remove it from my neck, but then my fingertips brushed a familiar, elegantly concealed switch.
I held the device in front of me and examined it. It no longer appeared to be alive. If I'd thought it was a beautiful, alien object before... I knew it much more intimately then. I could picture what it had once looked like when its internal components were concealed beneath folds of fine white silk.
But what was it? A kind of armor, or something more?
I set it down and it suddenly rose up into a sitting position. "Translator calibration complete." It quipped in Rivertongue, speaking with a young woman's voice.
"You can speak?" I stared in shock. I'd almost fallen flat on my back seeing it move under its own power.
"Maker?" The device wondered. Apparently she could also wrinkle her nose and raise her eyebrows at me.
"You were expecting someone else?" I laughed slightly. After the trouble I'd gone through, and all the trouble that was still to come for me... I'd repaired a machine capable of thanking me for my efforts and it had no idea who I was! For that matter, did I know myself?
It was a little difficult to ignore that my shelter was very well-lit, and not by the fire that I'd started. In my efforts to scrounge for more tinder, I'd discovered that if I needed light, all I had to do was concentrate and the brand on my head would spark like a fresh struck match. The light it made was a soft, rosy golden color unlike any torch or candle.
"Maker!" The device exclaimed gleefully. "Oh, I knew you would find me! I should have expected that you would wear a different face by now."
"I know you?" I wondered uneasily, a little disturbed by how comfortable I felt having a conversation with something that looked like an enormous spider with a human face.
"Of course! You're my Maker!" She replied.
"But I didn't make you!" I argued. "I don't even know what you are!"
"I'm the 9HE2TD, third prototype!" The device informed me.
"And that means what, exactly?" I wondered.
"Ninefold Harmonic Essence Tracking Teleportation Device, of course! But you can call me "Godchaser"." She replied.
Godchaser. I considered the nickname. When I'd first seen the device activate, I'd become convinced that it was a terrible weapon. But now that it was speaking to me, I was beginning to think that "toy" actually was a more apt description.
"What do you do?" I wondered.
"What would you like for me to do?" Godchaser replied innocently.
"You'll do whatever I tell you to?" I hesitated.
"You're my Maker."
"But I didn't make you! I'm sure I would remember constructing something that started talking to me! I'm sorry, but I'm not your Maker." I protested.
"No, you are! I've never worked for anyone else! You're the only one who can fix me!" Godchaser protested. Obviously there was no use in reasoning with her.
"Alright, so... why did I make you? What's your primary function?" I asked, not knowing what possessed me to string those two words together. It seemed like a very arrogant way of saying "What do you do?" but Godchaser had already misunderstood that question when I'd previously asked it.
"I... chase Gods. Well, I help you chase Gods. Not just Gods though. Fae. Demons. Anything with Essence. Particularly, you built me to..." Godchaser paused. "Uhoh. Some of my data has been corrupted." She hesitated for a moment. "Maker, I am afraid that I have not been keeping up with the maintenance you requested."
"Data?" I echoed. The word seemed both foreign and familiar. Apparently the device had some sort of library inside of it that allowed it to think and behave like a human being. More surprisingly still, it could also conduct some of its own repairs.
"The maintenance you requested." She repeated. " "I keep forgetting. There is something wrong with my data. Uhoh. Some of my data has been corrupted. I have not been keeping up with my maintenance you requested. Oh no, I can't find the file, I can't find it at all! Oh, this is terrible! Oh, I'm very sorry, Maker... but I can't answer your question!"
"That's all right. It wasn't important." I reassured her.
"You're not angry?" Godchaser seemed surprised. "I thought you'd be furious."
"Furious?" I laughed. "How could I be furious? You're brilliant!"
"Aww, don't make me blush!" Godchaser giggled. It was not the sound that one might expect from a machine. Whatever she was, Godchaser was most definitely alive.
"You're very dashing, you know." Godchaser informed me. "This new face you have. I like it. You'll look better when your hair grows back, of course."
As she flattered me, Godchaser's own face vanished. I stared at my own reflection in a haze of golden light. I didn't look much like a monk. My glasses were bent and I'd neglected to shave my head or my face for the past week as I worked on repairing Godchaser. I had a straight razor in my tools, but nothing to make a lather with, so I supposed I'd have to ignore it. Of course, the demon brand still flickering between my eyes was another matter entirely.
I very slowly reached out to touch Godchaser, noticing a black mark on her chest plate where a connection had come loose and burned. When my fingertips brushed it, I realized that I could heal the torn metal with my will.
"Hee!" Godchaser exclaimed. "That tickles!"
I stumbled away from her as I realized that I'd just instinctively worked a Charm like a Dragonblood would. Though using Crack Mending Technique was far less dramatic than what I'd done to escape the Abbey of Mela, it shocked me more than turning into a flock of birds had. The difference was, I hadn't known when I'd leapt out my window that I would fly to safety. But when I'd put my hands on Godchaser, I'd known what I was doing. I'd chosen to do it, and that difference made everything suddenly real to me.
"Something wrong, Maker?" Godchaster wondered.
"Isn't it obvious?" I demanded, shaken. "I'm Anathema! I'm a gods-be-damned Unclean monster!" I buried my face in my hands. "I wonder... should I kill myself now, while I still have my wits about me?"
"No, Maker!" Godchaser was absolutely aghast. "Don't say that!"
"Well, it's the truth!" I replied. "I'm a demon now, and if I don't want to do something unspeakably horrible, I'll have to either kill myself or stay far, far away from civilization for the rest of my days! If I was braver, I would have let Dragonlord Chiron cut me down! What would you have me say?" I demanded.
"I would have you say that you are my Maker, who used to be called Perfect Mechanical Soul and is now called Veritas Ilumio - and that you are now as you have ever been, Chosen of the Unconquered Sun and Exalted of the Twilight Caste." I noticed that Godchaser had specifically used the word "Exalted". That was something I understood. The Dragonblooded were Chosen by the Immaculate Dragons, it was how they gained their powers over the five elements. I'd never imagined that someone could be Exalted by any of the other Gods, least of all the sun. It seemed outrageously far-fetched... and whether I wanted to admit it or not, rather spectacular.
"I heard those nosy Dragonbloods who were spying on you. That business about the Perfected Hierarchy and whatnot? Nonsense, that's what it is! All of those monks are broken and they are going to need lots of fixing!" She informed me. "Maker, you are not a demon! You're one of the rightful Lords of Creation! You're my Solar!"
Hearing that broke me, as it might have broken anyone. Becoming a demon was terrifying enough, but actually ruling Creation? Why had my heart jumped in my chest when Godchaser spoke those words? Why did I believe her? Clearly, I was losing my mind!
"I can't believe I'm listening to this! Oh, Mela, I am getting dragged into the pit of Malfeas! Stop, stop it you crazy machine!" I sputtered.
Godchaser was not amused. "How very callous of you, calling me a machine! You ought to know by now that I'm not an ordinary machine, any more than you, Maker... are an ordinary man!" She replied. "And if I am crazy, it's only because you made me that way!"
That ended our conversation for the night. I began to wonder if I'd stolen a great ancient weapon only to discover that it was actually a wife in disguise.
The next day I went out in search of foot, taking Godchaser with me. If anyone had seen me, they might have fled in terror, thinking I was being devoured by some Fae-tainted spider or something else too unspeakable to consider. I didn't know much about high mountain plants, but I picked some berries that the deer were eating and succeeded in scaring a mangy wolf off of a freshly killed snow hare. As it turned out, glowing like a demon with Godchaser around my neck and shouting obscenities in Rivertongue was far more effective than hunting with only a stick and a selection of pliers.
I prayed my meager meal wouldn't make me ill, but I doubted that Mela looked after Anathema and I'd never felt very strongly connected to any of the other Dragons, who were all more martial and ruthless. The whole time I ate, Godchaser said nothing. Because you see, while we had been out hunting for food... I'd lost my wits and told her to shut up or I'd dismantle her.
It took some hours to coax Godchaser out of her sulk and convince her to explain more of how she worked. A fair amount of snow was coming down and I didn't want to make an attempt down the mountain until I was certain that the storm had blown over. More importantly, I needed to know everything about my companion if I planned on surviving. As it turned out, she had no recollection of what I had done to escape the monastery either, though when I explained it carefully she realized that it matched descriptions of a spell of Emerald Circle Sorcery called "Flight of Separation".
"But I'm not a sorcerer!" I protested.
"Of course you're a sorcerer!" Godchaser replied with her usual persistence. "A great old Devonian sorcerer of the Adamant Circle, no less! You should be very proud of that! Why aren't you?"
I said nothing but only pointed to my forehead. The mark on my brow made far better light for working than my silly mirror ever had, but just knowing that it was there where anyone in the world could have seen it made my skin crawl.
"Oh, I can see you don't want to talk about it." Godchaser replied. The way her tone changed when she was annoyed with me was one of the many things that made her seem very much like a person and not a machine at all.
As I'd foraged for food, I'd explained to her in meticulous detail just what kind of reception awaited me at home if anyone ever discovered what I'd become. She still twitched whenever I spoke the word Anathema, so we'd come to a compromise. Godchaser would stop spouting off soliloquies on glorious and wonderful I was... if I would stop saying the word "Anathema" and start using the plethora of Charms I'd spontaneously "remembered" to speed along the repairs she still needed.
"Well then, why don't you try to fix me again? Working cheers you up, doesn't it?" Godchaser pressed. I gave her a condescending look, embarrassed to admit that she knew me far too well.
"I'll starve to death if we don't leave this place soon." I grumbled.
"I'll be far more useful to you, Maker... if you would repair me!" Godchaser said.
"I'd work quicker if you'd shut up!" I retorted.
"You wanted me to talk to you before." She remarked, no longer deterred by my harsh words. She'd learned that I didn't really mean them. I did like hearing her voice. It reassured me that even if I had gone mad, at least I wasn't alone. "When you were working on me before, you must have said a dozen times how beautiful I was!"
"That was before I knew what you were really like." I replied, smiling slightly at Godchaser's scowl. There was something familiar about how she watched over my shoulder as I worked on her internal components, curious, and never content to stay still. Of course, she couldn't do more than hover in one place, and she could only do that when she was completely filled with Essence. In a way, her inability to move under her own power was the only thing that made her controllable. I could only imagine how much trouble she might become if she had arms or legs of her own. She certainly had enough attitude to make up for the lack of them.
It did come as a bit of a shock to learn that I'd only just scratched the surface of her true complexity. In all the days that I'd spent trying to repair Godchaser, I'd only succeeded in solving the problem of her inability to hold Essence. Her ability to record and play back everything that she heard or saw seemed to be in working order, but Godchaser still could not access her "data" and her other "functions" which included "track Essence", "hover" and "teleport" were all completely useless. To be honest, I was completely overwhelmed by the prospect of being able to jump from one end of Creation to the other.
But what worried me more was how little I really knew about Dragonlord Chiron. Was it true that he didn't know what Godchaser could do? If any Dragonblood possessed enough Essence to keep her running and enough technical skill to dismantle her independent personality, she was essentially the ultimate Anathema-hunting machine.
"Ouch!" Godchaser complained as I accidentally touched two moonsilver connectors together. I found that I had much less trouble moving around the orichalcum pieces since I'd become Anathema, but some of the moonsilver parts were capricious to the point of insanity and now that they were alive again with Essence, they twitched enough to make a surgeon squirm.
"It's no use!" I sighed in defeat and put down my pliers. "I don't know what I'm doing!"
"I wish I could help you more, but I think your manse is failing." Godchaser sighed heavily. "Oh, if only I could teleport us home!"
I stared at her hearthstone. It flickered. She was right. It did look somewhat duller than before.
"Where is your manse?" I asked, before I realized I'd just made a tremendously silly slip.
"My manse!" Godchaser giggled. "As if I were an Exalt, and not just a silly little AI?"
"AI", I had learned, stood for "Artificial Intelligence" and was one of the odd terms that Godchaser sometimes used to refer to herself. She explained that the difference between what she was and a "construct" was that constructs were for fighting and doing physical work. They obeyed certain commands and behaved in predictable ways. Constructs were simple things that "even Dragonbloods" could build.
Godchaser was an AI... a machine actually capable of thinking independently and making its own decisions. More terrifyingly still, she displayed emotions and clearly possessed the capacity to learn. Nothing nearly as sophisticated as she was had existed anywhere in Creation in a very long time... and many people believed that such things were mythical, existing only in children's stories.
"All right, where is my manse?" I sighed in defeat.
"Above your city, of course!" Godchaser replied.
"My city?" I demanded. "I don't have a city, Godchaser. Right now, I don't even have a tent! Could you be more specific than that? The city you're talking about might not even exist anymore."
"Oh, I'm certain it does! I heard the Sidereal who was following that Dragonblood mention it! Hm now, Nexus! Nexus, that's it!" Godchaser exclaimed. "I remembered!"
"Oh, wonderful. Of all the cities in the world, I get Nexus! The Harlot's Legs!" I groaned. "At least they speak Rivertongue!" I sighed heavily. At first I didn't even notice that Godchaser had said anything strange, but then one of the words she had spoken started twisting uncomfortably in the back of my mind, like something I should remember.
"Maker." Godchaser looked extremely disturbed. "I have just had the most uncomfortable thought. Some of my very important data is missing. Can you tell me... what is a Sidereal?"
"I don't know." I admitted. "You said there was one with Dragonlord Chiron?"
"Yes! He was disguised as a monk, but he used Essence outside your door and that's how I caught him. This is what he really looks like!" Her mask changed, revealing the unmistakable countenance of my old enemy. I decided that I would continue to call him "Himitsu" because that was the name of his that I'd heard first. I knew it meant "Secret" in an Eastern dialect of Low Realm and that seemed particularly appropriate.
"A Sidereal is very bad news." I replied.
I was more than a little disappointed to find that Godchaser knew nothing about Himitsu at all, except that she had encountered his Essence before. I asked her to tag him as "trouble" and alert me immediately if she sensed him nearby. Though I had never heard of a Sidereal Exalt before, if Himitsu did have Essence of his own, that certainly explained how he was able to so effortlessly thwart everyone who'd ever tried to get a straight answer out of him. He obviously did not want anyone to know what he was.
As much as I hated the man on principle, his desire to conceal his true nature from the world was one that I understood. I had no way to hide Godchaser but the thought of leaving her behind as I ventured into civilization for food and warm clothing made me very nervous. Though no one had discovered the cave where I had been hiding, some of Lady Tsubushima's men had skirted very near to it and I didn't want to risk them discovering Godchaser.
But counting the days that I had starved myself in my workshop, I'd been nearly a week without substantial food and the weather was steadily growing colder. I knew I'd certainly be recognized in any of the villages that were loyal to Lady Tsubushima so I decided to look for one not affiliated with the Snow Owl Clan.
Carrying Godchaser on my back, I crept within sight of a little town on the river and then buried her in the snow underneath an odd-looking tree. I had no money and nothing to trade, but I did have my tools and in places so far from civilization, the kind of skills I possessed were always worth something.
I'd made myself look as un-monklike as possible, making the most of my six days worth of beard and cutting my undershirt into a cap like the locals wore. I'd crushed some of the berries I'd been subsisting on and cooked my clothing inside of my toolbox until it became a shade of purple-brown. The lacquer I'd painstakingly applied so many years ago was ruined, of course, but that also helped me to look less conspicuous. Better that the locals should think I had angered my daimyo and been thrown out of my village... than for them to suspect that I was the Anathema currently on the run from Dragonlord Chiron and the entire Abbey of Mela.
The only thing I couldn't do anything about were my slippers. I hoped that people would ignore them... or maybe suspect that I had simply robbed a monk for his good shoes.
"Excuse me." I said in Low Realm to the first peasant I passed. "I desperately need food. I have no money, but I'm willing to work."
"Work for food?" He gave me a critical look. "Phew! You stink like deer berries!" He observed.
"I've been living on them." I admitted. "I was robbed on the road and this is the first village I've come to. The only thing I have is my tool chest. I guess it didn't look very valuable."
The excuse sounded pathetic when I heard it out loud, but bandits were common enough on the borders of Snow Owl lands, so the peasant seemed to believe my story.
"I can fix things." I added. That was such an understatement that it almost made me laugh. If I knew nothing at all about what I'd become, I distinctly remembered that the Unclean, despite being horrific monsters... were indisputably recognized as the greatest craftsmen that Creation had ever produced. If I could repair an intelligent construct, I could certainly sort out a broken door lock or a clogging-up water pump.
"What kind of things?" The peasant wondered.
"All kinds of things." I replied. "If you've got a watch or a... well, I suppose you wouldn't have anything like that. I could um..."
"I've got a watch." The peasant replied. "And if you can fix it, I'll give you as much food as you can carry."
"I could use a blanket too. Is there anyone around here who might be able to spare one?" I paused, thinking for a moment that I was asking too much.
"Might be. Let's see how you do with my watch." The peasant replied.
I followed him to his house, and his wife made a great show of gasping and sobbing over how blue my fingers were. She fed me a bowl of thick broth and a crust of black bread before she'd even allow her husband to go looking for the watch that I'd promised to fix. It took him more than two hours to unearth it, which was good because that was about the same time I needed to warm up before my hands felt steady enough to work.
The watch, when he placed it on the table in front of me, was clearly more than a hundred years old... a ship captain's watch probably from somewhere in the far West. The silver was frosted with salt and the glass that should have shown the device's face was impossible to see through.
"This watch belonged to my grandmother, Hawk. She was from Coral, the daughter of a Sealord." The peasant explained with a proud, innocent grin that left me convinced that his story was at least partially true. "She ran away from home and became a Tya. But then on one of the ships she raided, she met a poor prisoner who said he was the son of a daimyo. A prince, he told her. She fell in love with him and gave up being a Tya so that they could come here together. And then..."
"The sailor lied?" I guessed.
"No, my grandfather was a prince! His name was Sun Yu, and he was the seventh son of the warlord Kamakura, the same daimyo who was overthrown by the Snow Owl Clan in the year of the great flood. My grandparents fought together at the gates of Kamakura's fortress until the warlord surrendered. They were heroes... but no one knows their names these days. I have been the headman of this little village since my father died many winters ago. It is not a very good position. My illustrious ancestors left me nothing at all except for this land which can only grow potatoes and ill-tempered sheep. And this watch, of course, which does not run, and the sword over the mantle that has not been drawn in forty years." He explained. "All worthless. It would be nice if... something I had was made good again."
I nodded, my attention somewhat divided between my hosts and the salt-encrusted watch in my hands.
"I'm named for my grandfather, Sun Yu. I am the third one to carry that name, and the only one that was never a warrior." He explained. "And this is my wife, everyone calls "Mother Hen". Because as you have seen, that's what she acts like. What's your name?"
"Recluse. Like the spider. Because I'm always hiding away somewhere, working on something." I replied before I could think better of myself. All things considered, it was very unlikely that the Snow Owls or the Smoke Clan would be asking for a "Recluse". They were probably riding as fast as they could, shouting "Anathema" when they thundered through a village, and expecting signs of horrible devastation.
Sun Yu didn't seem to think anything of my name. Truthfully, I suspect that I was more impressed by him than he was by me. Of all the places I might have found myself! Pirates and princes in a village that wasn't even marked on any maps? It was a bit like being a character in one of The Tales of the Wandering Monk, the stories I had loved best as a child.
All of "The Wandering Monk" stories begin the same way. The wandering monk arrives in a village and helps someone seemingly insignificant. Over the course of the story he learns that the person he helped is secretly a princess or something similarly impossible. In the end, he saves the day in dramatic fashion and then walks off into the sunset, never to be seen again. There was a kind of magic to Sun Yu's tale, and I decided that it didn't matter if it was true or not. It made me feel good, and I genuinely wanted to help him. I opened my toolbox. The peasant and his wife both looked very surprised.
"Those are some very fine tools you have." Sun Yu observed.
"I used to be wealthy. I suppose I've been moving down in the world for some time." I admitted. "Bur I don't think that I could ever give these up." I admitted, holding my favorite pair of little pliers up to the light of the lamp that my hosts had sent in front of me. "Without them, I don't know what I would do."
"Oh, you poor dear!" Mother Hen clucked. "Things will look up soon! It can't rain every day!"
"Well, there is one nice thing about hitting the bottom of the heap." I admitted. "At least things can't get any worse."
"You could always be dead." Sun Yu informed me.
"Yu!" His wife gasped, hammering at him with her bunched-up fists. "What a terrible thing to say to our guest!"
"No, he's right." I sighed heavily. I should be thankful. I could be dead. I almost was."
Finding the right size of screwdriver, I carefully removed the back plate of the watch.
"When you were robbed, you mean?" Sun Yu pressed.
"Robbed? Oh, yes! Of course." I blinked in surprise, a little ashamed that I'd almost forgotten one of the most essential parts of my own fictional story.
As I had suspected, the watch did not come apart easily. I was forced to remove the face as well as the back and clean the salt out of both sides. When the gears still stubbornly refused to turn, I put on my glasses and took them out one by one, placing them carefully on a piece of paper – a page from my notes which I had carefully set face-down so that neither Yu nor his wife would have reason to ask about it.
As I believe I've already mentioned, I've never been a liar or a thief. So when a large diamond suddenly fell out of the watch and landed on my lap, I did not quickly cover it up and pray that neither Sun Yu nor his wife had noticed it. Instead, I held it up to the light and voiced my surprise almost loud enough to draw the neighbors.
"Merciful Dragons! Had you any idea this was in there?" I demanded, holding the diamond up for Sun Yu's examination.
"A crystal?" He wondered.
"A crystal? Sir, this is an uncut diamond! A diamond you could sell for the price of a fine horse! As it is now, it's worth at least a thousand gold pieces. And if you had it cut perfectly, losing as little of the weight as possible... it could be worth three times that."
"A diamond! Did you hear that? Yu, we're rich!" Mother Hen exclaimed.
"Could you cut it? Perfectly, like you said?" Yu wondered.
I didn't bother to conceal my grin. "Absolutely!" I replied.
It had been some time since I'd had cause to touch my precision tools and I'd always loved diamonds best of any stone. They were brutally hard to work, but they rewarded you like nothing else did, with such a lovely chromatic display of reds and blues and golds.
And that stone... it was a beauty!
When I had repaired the watch and almost finished polishing the diamond, Yu came to sit beside me. Mother Hen had long since retired for the evening, but my host watched my work, awed by everything that I did.
"Could you make a setting for that stone?" He wondered.
"I don't have any gold. And anything less would be shameful." I replied.
"What's this then?" Sun Yu wondered, producing a very thin piece of orichalcum from the bottom of my toolbox. I'd sheared it from Godchaser's hearthstone setting in an effort to help her retain Essence.
"Oh! A little bit of gold! How lucky!" Not wanting to show how terribly embarrassed I actually was, I took the metal and began to carefully work it into a shape that could cradle the diamond. Of course, orichalcum wasn't soft like gold was and certainly wouldn't melt in Sun Yu's little household forge, but I discreetly gave it some Essence. If it glittered more than it should have or felt unusually heavy, Sun Yu said nothing at all.
"Not bad." I said, trying to downplay what I was actually thinking.
It was some of the best work that I'd ever done. I was supposed to be Anathema... a damned monster! How was it that I found myself doing the exact same things I had always done, but more ease and grace than ever before?
Was my new found skill a side-effect of becoming one of the Unclean? I did not want to be a demon, of course... but I was a perfectionist, and I always wanted to be a better artist.
A mad thought occurred to me. What if no one knew that I was Anathema? What if I never did anything so obvious as turning into a flock of birds... a thing that still sent my mind whirling, and instead used my new skill to do ordinary work? Could I embrace the sense of clarity I felt without exposing myself to the obvious danger, the bloodiness, or the horrible stigma of being one of the Unclean?
How would I feel about what had happened to me if my own perspective was not clouded by the perceptions of others? Would I be less afraid? Indifferent? Or worse still, would I be so morally weak as to rejoice in my own damnation? Only one thing was certain. I'd never been so uncomfortable inside of my own skin.
Smiling slightly, Sun Yu took the diamond I had set and strung it carefully on a piece of red ribbon. Inspecting it in the firelight, he smiled. "I wish I could give you something more." He admitted. "The kind of skill you have warrants something more than a blanket and some old potatoes."
"It's the least I can do. Without your help, I might have starved to death." I sighed.
"We'll sell it, of course." Sun Yu continued, his eyes still on his grandmother's secret treasure. "It'd be mad not to. But I think Mother Hen ought to have the opportunity to wear it first. A real jewel, for the princess she should have been!"
"Of course." I nodded.
"Well, my friend Recluse! You're well named, I think... skilled as a spider. And so now that the wife's in bed, let's see what's inside my grandfather's sword!" Yu suggested, cracking open a dusty bottle of plum wine. He poured me most of it and went to take the blade down from the mantle.
I left the next morning.
As it turned out, there was nothing at all inside of Sun Yu's sword, though I did check both the scabbard and the hilt meticulously. I put a fine edge on the blade and warned the old farmer to be very careful with it. Sun Yu and Mother Hen were very sorry to see me go and promised that if I ever needed anything again, I could simply come and ask for it. Seeing my host listening to the merry ticking of his grandmother's watch and his wife wearing the diamond I had cut around her neck brought a smile to my face. The fact that I also had a pack full of food, a blanket, and a good winter cloak was a mercy almost too great to be dreamt of.
I found myself almost skipping down the road. Now that I wasn't in fear of starving or freezing to death, I was beginning to see a certain appeal to the profession of a traveling tinker. Maybe I couldn't risk staying in one place long enough to be detected, but that didn't mean I had to live like an animal!
Whatever it was that made Anathema act like rabid beasts... it obviously hadn't affected me. Perhaps it still would, but then again... I had spent most of the night dwelling on my own unanswerable questions as well as everything Godchaser had said. The strength of her conviction left me wondering if I was the ignorant one, thinking that Dragonbloods were infallible simply because they usually got their way. Dragonlord Chiron himself had thought orichalcum was gold!
"Oh Godchaser?" I called out as I returned to the place where I had hidden her. I couldn't wait to tell her how wonderfully my plan had worked. Finding a diamond inside of a pocketwatch! Really, it was a perfect tale for The Wandering Monk! Truthfully, If I'd any talent for singing, I might have changed my profession to "bard" that very morning.
"Godchaser?" I repeated. There was no response, and as I saw that the snow had been disturbed, a sick feeling came over me. She was gone.
I racked my brain. I'd no idea what to do first. Part of me screamed that I had to find her immediately before she fell into the wrong hands, and part of me even considered running back to Sun Yu and his wife and telling them that my friend was missing.
But I couldn't justify putting Sun Yu and Mother Hen in any kind of danger, not with the sort of people who were undoubtedly hunting me. And if I did ask for help rescuing a "friend" who turned out to be a completely self-aware First Age construct... that would be even more difficult to explain.
There were some tracks in the fresh snow, and though I knew less than nothing about navigating in the wilderness, I decided to stumble down them for as far as I could. It turned out to be far enough. In a small clearing near the edge of the river, six Snow Owl warriors stood. They obviously hadn't laid camp very long ago, maybe just the previous night and they were all gathered around their fire, shooting suspicious glances in the direction of Godchaser, who wisely chose to act like an inanimate object.
Of course, she couldn't move physically, but she might have been raising a verbal fit. While I did not doubt how smart she was, patience was not her greatest virtue, and she absolutely seethed when I said the word "Anathema" or any number of other words that she considered "horrible". I was glad to see that she was quiet... that would make it far easier to get her back. I'd given her enough Essence on the night that I'd awakened her that she had informed me that she would require no more to perform her "basic" functions. Part of the genius in her construction was her innate ability to reuse the Essence she already had, at least to a certain extent.
Although, once she could "teleport" again... Godchaser had coyly informed me that I would "need to get used to glowing"... as if being publicly recognized as an Anathema was only a small emotional hang-up on my part, rather than a serious, life-threatening condition.
I didn't have time to make up a very good plan, because as I believe I've mentioned before... I am not particularly wilderness savvy. I probably made more noise trying to get a good look at Godchaser than all six of Snow Owl warriors made sneaking up behind me.
I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender and slowly turned around. As the Snow Owls seized my pack and roughly searched me for weapons, I realized I probably shouldn't have used the story of being robbed on Sun Yu and his wife. Karma was evidentially catching up with me quicker than I'd expected.
"He's not armed." One of the warriors announced, apparently satisfied by the search his clansmen had made.
"Not armed? What kind of idiot wanders around these mountains without a weapon?" Another demanded. He had the look of a leader... that is to say, considerably more scars and facial hair that his four companions, who were just boys. I doubted that any of them were more than eighteen years old. Of course, from the perspective of a monk, a walking stick was a better weapon than an axe or a sword, but I wasn't about to admit that.
"Looks like he's a tinker." The warrior who'd spoken first observed, opening my tool box the wrong way about and dumping all of its contents into the snow.
"A tinker? Didn't Lady Tsubushima say that the Anathema might be pretending to fix things?" The one who'd spoken looked a bit a girl and was probably the youngest of the lot. But clearly, he was the smart one.
"Anathema?" I gasped. Hearing that word, I didn't have to feign shock and horror. I was definitely scared out of my wits. "No, I'm not a demon!" I protested. "I'm just a tinker!"
"Then why were you sneaking around our camp?" The leader demanded, poking me very hard in the chest.
"I was curious! I wanted to see what that was!" I admitted, more or less truthfully, gesturing to Godchaser.
"It's demon armor." The leader snorted, tossing me aside. "Now take your junk, "tinker", and get lost!"
"You're just going to let him go?" The smart one protested.
"He's not the Anathema. He was pissing himself when Keto grabbed him." The leader scoffed.
I picked up my tools carefully and locked them back inside their box. Though it was more than a little reckless of me to attempt what I was consciously considering at that moment, I knew that if I didn't seize the opportunity to take Godchaser back, she'd be brought back to Lady Tsubushima's fortress and from there turned over to Dragonlord Chiron... which would make retrieving her virtually impossible.
Better still, the Snow Owls were off guard. There were six of them, but they only had swords that I could see, and I'd committed a good amount of time to studying Snake Style. I'd never tested my skills against armed opponents that might actually kill me before, but I didn't see how I had any choice. It was time to make my move.
I eased into Snake Form and expended just the tiniest amount of Essence, as Abbot Manu had explained to me was proper from the time I'd begun my training. But even that familiar stance felt very different. In light of everything that had happened to me, I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that the Enlightened martial art I had always struggled with was suddenly as easy as the Tai Chi I'd been practicing since childhood.
I swept the leader's feet out from beneath him with my stick, struck him in the throat and kept moving. Borrowing the momentum of the big man's fall, I slid myself under the awkward lunge of one of his companions and finished off another with a forceful palm strike. The one I'd dodged went for me again, foolishly... only to find himself on the receiving end of a crisp, swift hook kick. I saw the smart one sneaking up behind me. He was just slightly faster than I was and managed to seize a wooden shield reinforced with iron before I hit him. I did not react fast enough to pull my strike, but it didn't matter. The force that I brought down on the shield was enough to split it down the center, completely shatter my stick, and knock the boy unconscious. I was a little upset that I'd destroyed the walking stick I'd only had for a short time, but more shocked by how I'd done so. Just how strong was I?
That was when I heard the distinctive hiss of a sword shearing clear of its sheath. The last two remaining warriors drew their blades. I disarmed the first by dodging his attempt to pin me to a tree and then the second with a tiger's mouth and a swift knee to the chest. I looked down at the leader of the boys who blinked up at me dazedly, still stunned by the strength I had used to drop him.
"I'm taking my junk back." I informed him, walking over to pick up Godchaser. With her stowed safely under my new cloak, I put on my pack and picked up my toolbox.
Not one of the Snow Owls moved until I was almost out of earshot. Unlike the Realm's elites and members of the Immaculate Order, they did not consider themselves holy warriors on a mission to purge evil from the world. They were practical men. From their perspective, it made far more sense to lie down and accept defeat when the alternative seemed like suicide.
That attitude was part of the reason that the Realm generally left the mountain daimyos alone to do whatever they wanted. Most of them had been quiet for the better part of five-hundred years, but anyone who'd set foot in their territory knew that if the Realm ever pushed for higher taxes or greater concessions of land, they would find themselves in the middle of a guerrilla war that would never end. The Snow Owls in particular knew how to pretend to quit. But apparently my quick and dirty martial arts tricks had been more than sufficient to convince the boys that they really didn't want to fight with me.
"Hey!" The leader shouted. He'd obviously just regained his breath. "Hey, demon! What the hell was that thing you did to me?"
"Snake Style." I replied, ignoring the fact that he'd called me out. "Look into it."
I paused by the road, just on the edge of the trees. I couldn't see or hear the Snow Owls, and I was just out of sight of Sun Yu's village. When I felt for sure that no one was following me, I whispered tentatively to my silent companion.
"Godchaser? Are you with me?"
"Best. Rescue. Ever!" She giggled maniacally. It was strange to hear her cheerful voice just behind my ear, as accustomed as I'd become to sitting her directly in front of me and talking to her like a person.
"I didn't come to rescue you, you stupid machine!" I lied. "I came to retrieve my hearthstone."
"You horrible..." It took Godchaser a moment to sort out what I'd actually said. I couldn't see the expression on her face, particularly since I was currently looking through the eyes of the mask that she used to project her emotions on. It kept my face out of the wind, and I'd learned that if I was wearing it, Godchaser couldn't see me any better than I could see her. Which was good, because even though I was trying very hard to sound serious, I couldn't stop myself from smiling.
"Your hearthstone? Does this mean that we're going home?" Godchaser wondered.
"As soon as we reach civilization, I'm looking for a ship headed East." I replied.
"We're going home!" Godchaser exclaimed.
"What's this "we" business? I'm going to Nexus. I need my hearthstone, remember? I'm going to take you apart and sell you for passage!" I informed her.
"No, Maker!" Godchaser protested. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Whatever I did wrong, I'll never-never-ever do it again!"
"Calm down!" I sighed heavily. "You didn't do anything wrong! It scared me when you disappeared, that's all."
"Scared you?" Godchaser sounded absolutely incredulous. "I was defenseless! Just laying there like a..."
"Cloak?" I suggested. "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but..."
"I'm not a cloak! I'm a very sophisticated AI, and personal teleportation device!" She reminded me.
"You're a teleportation device that doesn't teleport. Or even hover! And you can't access most of your supposively vast data!" I retorted. "Face it, Godchaser. You're a cloak. A cloak filled with attitude!"
"Maybe you could design me hands?"She suggested.
"I think that's a very bad idea." I admitted.
"But you're thinking about it?" She pressed.
"I am thinking about it!" I laughed. "And I am thinking that it is a very bad idea!"