Book 10: Chapter 6: Report
Sua Xing Xing had not been trained to panic. Like all cultivators, she understood well the supreme necessity of control. All was chaos and swift death without the steadying hand of control. Yet, as she had stood in that strange room with the spider-kin, a room filled with beast cores modified in ways she did not understand, she had felt her control slipping away from her grasp like a fistful of water. She had listened with mounting shock and dread to the reports that had come in, the tallies of the dead, and the pleading for assistance. She had known it was coming. She had been warned it would be terrible. She had not grasped the full weight of it. Nor was she as immune to the horror of it as she might once have been.
Her connection with humanity had grown dim over the long years. It was largely seen as a blessing by sects. An insulation from the losses of mortal family and friends. Lu Sen had changed all of that. He had handed her work that forced her to work with the mortals, to interact with them, to see them in their daily lives. She had watched him shower love on his adopted daughter and her mortal friend. The ice that held her heart in its cold grip had, almost without her noticing, melted away. She wished that it hadn’t because this war was a truth from which she could not turn her gaze. It was coming for them all, and she could have used that cold heart to shield herself from the pain of it.
As the day wore on, she knew that she would have to call for him. This was news that the Patriarch needed to be made aware of. The sheer scale of it made it impossible to delay for long. It was a necessity that he would not thank her for. The premium he placed on his time with his daughter was beyond measure. Cutting that short for any reason was something that she wouldn’t have risked for anything less than what had happened, lest she find herself on the receiving end of a fury she could not weather. So, she had sent people to find him and summoned the leadership of the sect. They had, for once, gathered swiftly. No doubt sensing the urgency that she herself had passed on to the messengers. They had bombarded her with questions that she brushed aside. They would not receive word before the Patriarch, regardless of how entitled they felt to it.
She had still braced herself for a storm to enter when Lu Sen did. Instead, the man was that calm control that she had felt draining away from her all day. The swell of relief she felt at being able to hand this disaster over to someone else, anyone else, was nearly enough to make her lose her balance. She didn’t think Lu Sen could bring this madness to heel. Not really. Sua Xing Xing didn’t believe that any person alive could single-handedly accomplish that feat. But maybe, just maybe, he could give them direction in this nightmare. A place to start, and a place to focus their efforts.
“Tell me what’s happened,” he said.
His voice was steady, a stable rock to cling to in the maelstrom. She felt his eyes on her, patient, waiting, and expectant.
“Patriarch,” she said and then faltered.
How can I explain this? Has there ever been war on this scale before? She supposed that it didn’t matter. She would have to find the words because he needed to know. She took a deep breath and tried to quell the qi roiling inside of her.
“Patriarch,” she repeated, her voice steadier. “The spirit beasts have begun their war. We have reports that dozens of small villages and towns to the south have been utterly destroyed. Assaults on larger towns and cities continue as we speak. Thousands are dead. Maybe more.”