Chapter 37: Bonds of Rivalry – Goblin Riders, Part 3
Kaela made her decision before the sun was fully up.
The village was still smoking. Tharia was standing at the eastern breach, still, with a cracked fan and an arm with an interesting color, and Kaela walked out of the pre-dawn grey like she'd never left, read the damage in one look, and started giving orders.
"Yan Qishen. You hold the palisade. Rotating patrols. If they return before I do, you keep the villagers alive."
Yan straightened, his jaw was tight from the night, his pride still raw. "And the pursuit?"
"I handle that."
A beat. "As you command, Senior Sister."
Kaela turned to Mei Rulan. "You guard the supplies, the wounded, and the villagers. Your fire qi is better as a deterrent than a spearhead."
Mei's eyes narrowed at deterrent, but her smile held. "I'll ensure nothing else is lost."
Kaela didn't acknowledge the edge underneath it. She scanned the outer disciples still rough from the night, and her gaze stopped on Tharia.
"You," Kaela said. "Come with me."
The square went quiet.
Tharia blinked. 'Me?' Kaela’s eyes dropped to her arm, then back up.
"You still didn't get it checked."
"It’s fine."
"It is not."
"Fine enough."
A pause. Kaela studied her the way she studied things she'd already decided about. "You have been working on concealment and you operate under pressure without falling apart. That is what this requires." She was already turning toward the treeline. "Come."
A murmur moved through the outer disciples.
Mei Rulan clicked her tongue softly. "Interesting choice. I'd have thought you wanted someone more reliable."
Kaela didn't break stride. "I do."
Tharia's tail flicked once, sharp and satisfied, before she could stop it. She followed, heels finding purchase on the wet forest floor with the stubborn reliability of something that had survived worse than mud.
The forest swallowed them quickly.
Kaela tracked at a pace Tharia had to work to match, reading signs in the ground that Tharia was only starting to learn how to see; hoofprints pressed deep on the left side, broken ferns bent wrong, the faint sour-rot tang of poison qi clinging to wet bark.
Her arm throbbed with every stride, she ignored it and focused her attention.
"They coated the hooves," Kaela said, crouching over a patch of disturbed soil. "Slows pursuit, masks the trail for anyone without qi-sense. It means they expected to be followed."
"So they planned for this."
"The second wave was a raid. Calculated." Kaela stood. "They have a camp nearby, I saw it last night."
Tharia looked at the trail ahead. Looked at her fan, cracked along one rib. Looked at her hands — steadier than they had any right to be. "I can go ahead. See what they left behind."
Kaela’s eyes flicked to her arm again, but said nothing.
"I can hold the shimmer," Tharia said. "Long enough."
Another beat. "Don't overextend."
Tharia let the Transparent Illusion build from her core outward, the familiar qi-path smooth now in the way it was only smooth after several hundred repetitions. Her outline blurred, then went.
She moved.
The camp was tucked into a shallow ravine, fires burning low, riders moving between crude lean-tos, unhurried. They felt safe. She counted fifteen visible, estimated more inside the larger tent at the center.
Two outer disciples bound near a central fire pit. Three villagers with them — wrists tied with rope soaked in something dark. Poison qi residue, the rope itself corroded. They were alive. Sitting up. Eyes moving.
Exits. Sight lines. Guard positions. Two sentries on the camp's eastern edge, sharing something from a clay jug. Shadow-qi users near the tent — two, maybe three. One she recognized from last night.
She moved to the supply tent.
Inside: gourds, jars, stolen casks from the village. One gourd cracked, leaking into the earth, poison underneath, the kind that stung the back of the throat.
Tharia looked at the stolen alcohol casks. Looked at the cracked gourd.
'Oh,' she thought. 'That's convenient.'
She retreated silently back to the treeline. Kaela was exactly where she'd left her, which was somehow not surprising.
"Fifteen visible," Tharia said, keeping her voice low. "Two shadow-qi users near the central tent. The captives are bound by the fire pit — alive, eyes open. Eastern sentries are sharing a jug and not paying attention."
Kaela absorbed this without expression. "Entry point?"
"That's the thing." Tharia glanced back toward the camp, her ears stood in full attention. "They have the village alcohol casks in the supply tent. And a cracked poison gourd." A beat. "If someone delivered a laced cask, it would be less troublesome."
Kaela looked at her. "Someone."
"I can look like a goblin. Roughly. There's a tail issue I'm working on."
Kaela's ears moved once. "How long do you need?"
"Ten minutes for the outer ring. Maybe fifteen."
Another pause, shorter this time. "Do it. I signal on your fan flick"
Tharia turned back toward the camp.
"Tharia."
She looked back.
"Don't get seen," Kaela said, which was the closest thing to be careful that Kaela would ever say to anyone.
Tharia used Transparent Illusion again, and headed back to the supply tent.
The tail was the real problem. Goblins did not have fox tails. 'Behave.'
This was a fundamental incompatibility. She’d spent the entire walk over here trying to solve it and had arrived at: jacket around the waist, tail tucked in, ears pinned with a strip torn from her sleeve.
'This is fine. Completely reasonable.'
Her tail twitched in protest.
'Noted, she told it. Overruled.'
She activated the Phantom Guise, felt the qi fold inward; shorter, heavier, tusked jaw, scarred cheekbone. Ears covered. Tail tucked. She picked up a stolen cask, hefted it to her shoulder, and walked into camp.
The two sentries barely looked up. She grunted in what she hoped was the correct register of goblin camaraderie and held the cask out.
One grabbed it and drank, and the other followed.
She stood there, in a goblin's face and a fox's tucked tail, watching them drink, and thought: 'Thankfully none of them have a foot fetish, else they would've found a tail hem.'
Nobody looked at her feet.
Her tail held still under the jacket, registering its opinion in silence.
'Thank you.'
The first sentry's eyes went glassy after about a minute. He sat down, which became lying down, then became very still. The second lasted slightly longer; looked at her, looked at his companion, started to say something.
She held out the cask again.
He took it.
Two minutes later she was already moving toward the next patrol.
System:
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
Chaos Essence: +1 (Improvised Infiltration. Goblin Costume Optional.)
Chaos Essence: 61 → 62
Note: The tail was a problem.
You solved the tail problem.
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By the time she'd worked through the outer ring, half their sentries had sat down for a nap they wouldn't wake from. She found Kaela at the treeline and flicked the fan once.
Kaela entered the camp like a door opening.
On the training terrace Kaela was controlled. Here she was fast — held-back fast, finally let go. Her qi flared, lightning-tinged, a faint pressure pushing outward that Tharia felt on her skin and couldn't quite name.
The first rider dropped before he turned around, Kaela's fist driving through his chest with a crack that echoed in the ravine. The second lunged, blade coming in, and Kaela stepped into it, elbow to jaw, the body going down wrong.
Tharia moved from the opposite side, as Phantom Guise was dropped, and using Shimmer instead.
Her phantoms split outward, five copies scattering across the camp, drawing eyes and weapons toward nothing. She moved through the real space between them, fan working where the shadow-qi users couldn't read her through the noise. One goblin struck a phantom, realized, started to turn — and she was already past him, the cracked fan edge across the back of his knee.
She let a second shadow-qi user lock onto her. Felt the qi-sense clamp.
Dropped the shimmer, reactivated the Phantom Guise — different face, wrong build, the sensory confusion buying her half a second where the rider's locked qi-sense and his eyes sent different information and his body couldn't decide which to trust.
Half a second was enough.
Fan edge. Base of the skull. He dropped.
She cut the ropes on the captives with three quick strokes. "Run when I say."
The goblin who'd found her last night came from her left, blade angled for her throat, and she was a half-step too slow turning and knew it.
Her arm chose that moment to remind her it existed.
Kaela crossed the distance in an instant, and her fist went through the goblin's back. Lightning burst from the exit point in a white flash. The body dropped, smoking, and Kaela was already turning, already reading the next threat.
For a moment there was nothing.
Tharia stood with her back against Kaela's back, both of them breathing hard, the camp's remaining fighters still processing what had just happened to their companions.
Kaela's qi was very close. Lightning-tinged, warm, pressing against her own Chaos qi like two different weather systems meeting at a front.
Something shifted under her rib — faster than the second vein, less patient. Days of grinding and one very long night and Kaela’s qi right there against her own, both of them pressing at the same wall.
The wall gave.
Not a crack.
Heat poured through a channel she hadn’t known existed, and the shimmer that had been fading suddenly blazed back stronger, cleaner. Phantom copies erupted in every direction with a solidity they’d never had before.
'Oh', she thought. 'Hello.'
"Now," she said.
The captives ran.
Kaela handled the last riders. Clean. Done. Tharia's phantoms kept the retreat covered until the captives were clear of the ravine. Then she let them drop and stood in the sudden quiet of a camp with nobody standing in it.
The fires crackled. Somewhere a mount complained about its situation.
Her new vein pulsed, warm and present, settling into her cultivation like it had been waiting for an invitation.
'Three,' she thought. 'That's three.'
System:
[SYSTEM NOTICE]
Third Vein: Opened.
Stage: Foundation Veins — Three Veins.
Quest Completed: Open Third Vein
Chaos Essence: +3 (Opened Under Genuine Threat. Injured. Running Low. Did It Anyway.)
Illusion Proficiency: 49.2% (+0.1%)
Chaos Essence: 62 → 65
Note: The vein opened because the situation required it.
Secondary Note: Sustained pressure. Genuine threat to someone other than yourself. Arm that should have been rested.
Tertiary Note: The fat squirrel remains unimpressed.
[collapse]
'Three veins,' she thought. 'Hell yes...'
The walk back was slow.
The captives couldn't move fast. Two of them leaned on outer disciples who'd come from the village to meet them at the treeline. The recovered villagers were crying. Tharia walked beside them and let them.
Her arm had stopped throbbing, and that was either good or bad. "Probably good."
When they emerged from the forest, a sound went up from the village that Tharia had never heard directed at her before.
Not applause. Something rawer. Hands reaching for her arms to confirm she was solid, an old man bowing until she had to ask him to stop, a child pressing a dried flower into her palm with the absolute seriousness of a very young person making a very serious gift.
She looked at the flower, then at the child.
"Thank you," she said, and meant it in a way she didn't have words for yet.
Yan Qishen watched from near the palisade, jaw set, something in his expression that wasn't quite any single thing. He'd held the village as ordered. He knew what that meant about where he'd been while they were in the forest.
Mei Rulan had turned away, her whip was still.
That night, after the captives were settled and the wounds were dressed, Tharia found Kaela at a small fire near the forest edge.
She sat down without asking. Kaela didn't tell her to leave.
'That's basically an invitation,' Tharia decided.
They ate in silence — thin porridge, which she had opinions about, but it was hot and she was hungry and that was enough. The third vein pulsed warm under her rib. She kept finding it, not because it hurt, just because it was new and hers and she couldn't stop checking.
Someone had finally looked at her arm. It was bandaged now, the discoloration fading at the edges. Fine enough had turned out to be accurate.
"You adapted," Kaela said finally, eyes on the fire.
"The tail was a problem."
Kaela's ears moved. "I noticed the jacket."
"Did it work?"
"You didn't die."
Tharia leaned back on her hands. The fire popped, throwing light across Kaela's face — the stillness she carried even when she was just sitting by a fire being a person.
"Do you think they have elders? The goblins. Someone who decided this raid was worth the cost."
Kaela looks at the fire. "Yes."
"Does that make it better or worse?"
A long pause. Long enough that Tharia thinks she's not going to answer.
"My clan was nearly gone by the time I was twelve." Still looking at the fire. "Someone decided that was worth the cost too."
Tharia didn't fill the silence. She reached over without thinking and touched the back of Kaela’s hand. Just that.
The white fur was warmer than she’d expected. Kaela went very still, her ears moved through something Tharia couldn’t read.
Tharia’s own ears went flat. “Sorry. I didn’t—”
“It is acceptable,” Kaela said. Precise. A little too careful.
Tharia smiled at the fire, and didn't push it.
They sat there while the fire burned lower, the village behind them settling into the uneven quiet of a place that had survived something and wasn't sure yet what that meant.
"I'm curious about goblins," Tharia said eventually.
Kaela's ears flattened. Not fully. Just enough. "That is not reassuring."
"Their qi technique was actually interesting. The poison and shadow combination — I want to know if that's a known cultivation path or something they—"
"No," Kaela said.
"I'm just saying, academically—"
"No."
Tharia grinned. The fire popped. Somewhere in the village a child laughed at something, short and bright, then was hushed.
Kaela's ears unflattened, very slightly, when she thought Tharia wasn't watching.
Tharia was watching. She decided not to say anything about it.
She walked back to her bedroll alone some time later.
The village had gone quiet except for the watch rotation; footsteps on the palisade, the occasional murmur, someone coughing near the eastern breach where they'd hammered new stakes into cold ground. The fires had burned low, and the smoke still hung.
She lay down on her back and looked at the underside of the borrowed roof above her.
Her third vein pulsed. Warm. Present. Still new enough that she noticed it every time her qi moved through that channel, which it did constantly now, restless.
Chen Bai had joked about Elder Maren's lectures many times.
She didn't know what he'd sounded like when he wasn't joking, and she'd never had the chance to find out.
Tharia closed her eyes.
Pei Sou had been on her scout rotation. She'd learned his name from the assignment list, not from him. Tao Lin she'd only known after. Lin Wu she'd known only by name.
Four names. There should be more weight to that. She felt like there should be more weight to that, and there was, but she didn't know where to put it, and she was too tired to hold it properly and too wired to sleep.
Her arm ached under the bandage.
She was alive.
That was supposed to feel simpler than this.
Her tail curled around her legs, slow and heavy, and she lay there in the borrowed quiet of a village that had survived something, listening to the watch footsteps go back and forth, and thought about nothing in particular for a long time.
She didn't sleep until very late.
System Status:
System Status:
Host: Tharia | Age: 18
Status: Healthy (Bruised. Mental health slightly concerning).
[TECHNIQUE ANALYSIS]
Illusion Proficiency: 49.2%
Chaos Stability: Fragile (Holding).
Stage: Foundation Veins: Third Vein Opened.
Achievement: {Style Over Substance: Passed evaluation wearing absolutely nothing. Technically.} - {Fought in Public Naked and Won Anyway (Advanced): Illusion failed. Dignity failed. Victory did not. Again} - {Naked Field Researcher: Turned a failure into very thorough, extremely hands-on field research. Technically.}
Traits: 'The Reluctant Royal' (Passive). ‘Willing Exposure’ (Passive)
Passive Techniques: 'Shame-Guard' (Passive)
Module: 'Path of the Unseen'
Art: Transparent Illusion (Rank: F), Hold: 14 breaths (record) | Phantom Guise (Rank F)
Active Techniques: Illusory Raiment (Rank: C), Shimmer (Rank: F).
Weapon Affinity: Illusory Fan (Cracked).
Chaos Essence: 65.
Wardrobe: Lucky Charm Hakama (Shelf.) Winter Sprite Dress (Worn.) Mesh Set (Backup.)
Status: Duskwind Sect - Outer Disciple.
Active Quests: Open the Forth Vein.
SHOP.
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