Elder Cultivator

It was unclear to Alva what she was supposed to say in the situation she found herself in. ‘Don’t worry about my blood-covered wolf he’s friendly’? ‘Sorry about the poison in your river we screwed up a battle and accidentally caused that’?

Those were both too complicated and basically unhelpful. She just yelled something succinct. “Poison in the river! Get out of the river!” She also added things like “Don’t drink any of the water!”

Fuzz ran up and down the streets of Ship’s Haven until she was fairly certain she’d covered everything. Then Fuzz collapsed onto his side. Alva worriedly started to tend to his wounds, but she found that the two large gashes on his chest had already begun to heal. He was still losing some blood and she stitched him up, but it was only partly the loss of blood that wiped him out, and more the fact that he’d been sprinting at full speed for an hour. But Alva managed to cover the whole city.

By the time the battle was over and Alva’s allies returned victorious- though not without casualties- Fuzz was stable and the whole city was on alert. Nobody doubted Alva’s words. It was impossible, actually. The river was running black, and likewise the sea.

“Was there any point to this?” Alva asked her grandfather.

“I imagine it cost them relatively little,” Anton said. “And it restricted our actions. They likely didn’t expect us to be so prepared, but they were ready for a battle.”

“That’s stupid,” Alva said. “They just hurt all these people because they could?”

“And to hurt us,” Anton said. “But you know what they’re like.”

Alva grumbled, but didn’t disagree.

-----

If a normal sort of poison had been dumped in the river, it could have killed things for the few kilometers it ran. It would certainly ruin the harbor, but more fish would eventually move in. This particular thing was not nearly so pleasant to deal with as a deadly poison. It clung to everything it passed, the shores of the river and rocks that diverted the flow. It clung to the boats and piers in the river and the harbor. The sands were coated with the stuff.

The harbor was full of dead fish, floating on the surface. Some adventurous birds had tried to eat them, but they found themselves reaching the same fate.

The blackness spread as far as could be seen from Ship’s Haven, lingering in the water. Anyone or anything that touched it would get violently ill, dying in a matter of moments. Cultivators were the exception. As long as they avoided touching the blackness with their skin, they could avoid the effects. Even if they touched it, those with tempered bodies could resist the effects to some extent. Enough to survive, at least, even if some were bedridden.

Only a small portion of the inhabitants of Ship’s Haven were affected, thanks to Alva’s warning. A few who were incautious or who didn’t get the message were killed, and a number of people died to well water they thought was safe because it had no blackness in it. But it seemed to have seeped through the ground, and even if it wasn’t visible it was still deadly.

The only drinkable water in the city was what people had stored for various reasons. Other than that, the closest was several kilometers upstream. Though it lingered and clung to everything, it at least didn’t spread upstream of the battle. Not much, at least. Nobody wanted to test the water within a few hundred meters of the black trails. The liquid had turned into a goopy slime upon contact with water, and it was difficult to remove.

Any of the townsfolk who wanted to try to clear the river had to be extremely careful to not get a drop on them. The cultivators could handle it, but it wasn’t so easy to clean up. There were kilometers of river and shoreline. The biggest problem was how to remove it. Incinerating it released it into the air, seemingly less potent but not safe by any means.

Normally after winning a battle, there would be a celebration of some sort. At the very least there would be a time of rest and recovery. However, that simply wasn’t possible.

Nobody in the alliance could claim to be fighting for people if they just let things be as they were. Even if it hadn’t been their responsibility, they couldn’t reasonably just leave the common folk to fend for themselves. And they were responsible, in part. Uncontrolled attacks could cause damage, and while they hadn’t anticipated this they still failed to stop it. Of course, the vast majority of the blame was in the hands of their enemies who intended for such a thing to happen- or to slip by and continue with their nefarious deeds elsewhere. But the ones immediately present were already dead, and that justice didn’t help anything.

Anton stretched his energy into the river like a large scoop. The best method they had found so far was using the very barrels that had stored the liquid to slop the gooey result back into. They were sealed, and when the resulting material dried out it became somewhat harmless flaky chunks.

Others were working next to Anton, plucking the majority of the toxic substance from the river. They were working their way through the city, now, down towards the harbor. Formations had been put in place to keep it from spreading further into the ocean, and hopefully whatever amounts were out there quickly became too minimal in amount to cause serious harm.

Anton was no stranger to hard work. He wouldn’t mind staying for a few weeks- or months if that was what it took- to clean up this mess. That part wasn’t weighing him down, but instead it was the people of Ship’s Haven. Seeing their distress was bad enough. Much of their industry was fishing- transportation was secondary, but also momentarily unavailable. No ships wanted to come close and get contaminated, and only what was already too far down the river to turn around still came through.

“Why didn’t you stop it?” a small voice said from near Anton. He turned to see a thin child- obviously malnourished even before the recent troubles. The little boy looked up at him with soulful eyes.

“We couldn’t,” Anton said. He would have liked to say something comforting or diplomatic, but those were beyond him at the moment. He reached out once more, scooping a pile of slop into a barrel- while making sure none of it got on anything around him.

“Aren’t you a cultivator?” the little boy asked.

“I am,” Anton acknowledged.

“Cultivators can do anything. Why did you let this happen?”

He well knew that this child was simply hurt. Unable to handle the situation, and looking for someone to blame. He knew that, and he knew that the other townsfolk still harbored similar resentments. But the worst part was that, while Anton was aware that cultivators weren’t able to do anything, the actual limits were far beyond what a normal person could comprehend. It hurt to hear it said, not because of the pain in the child’s voice but because Anton knew that it was possible to prevent it. Even if every barrel had been dumped, they could have prevented it from flowing downstream.

He still thought it was the right choice to fight instead of trying to deal with it immediately. Anton simply thought about his weakness. If Grand Elder Vandale had been present, he could have easily cleared the river as the goop began to flow through it. Or anyone on his level of power. But he wasn’t strong enough.

“Even cultivators have limits,” Anton said sadly. He knew that to be true, even if the back of his mind told him that they didn’t. He understood that he couldn’t have been stronger for this. Not in any measurable way. He couldn’t blame himself or the others. The number of deaths here was actually rather small overall, and while it was a tough job he knew they would clear the area and make it so people could live properly.

He just couldn’t help but think about things that would be worse. How many years would it be, until the invasion? A few decades. Things would be much worse then, and he would need to be stronger for it. Much stronger, as would everyone else. And here they were, bogged down in troubles relating to how the weakest in the world should be treated.

Anton’s answer was the same as always. They might be weak now, but that could change. And with an incident like this, he knew many people would be very interested in starting down the path of cultivation. He didn’t care what the people of Ofrurg thought about so many people practicing the first part of the Ninety-Nine Stars. Everyone who was going to cause trouble would do it anyway, so he might as well give the common folk a fighting chance.

-----

With highs in determination also came the lows. Anton sighed. “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. He was drinking with Elder Tshering and Marsen, the disciple of the Frostmirror Sect. It wasn’t something he did often, since he liked having a clear head and he’d seen what too much alcohol did to people and their families. As a cultivator he could negate most of the effects on himself, or purge the alcohol from his system, but he was letting it hit him as much as he could. His body still fought back, but that just meant he had to drink more. “I don’t think this was what I wanted.” His determination to change the world was great, but sometimes it wavered.

“Things are rarely what we envision them,” Elder Tshering agreed. “But in a way, this conflict was inevitable. You are not responsible, but just one part.”

“I know how much pain was caused to me, and I do believe something needed to be done,” Anton explained. “But the side effects are too much. I don’t know if it’s worth it. So many people hurt, losing their lives or families or homes.” The conflict had been going for half of a year now, and showed no clear signs of stopping. Though what Anton considered ‘his side’ was certainly winning.

“It would depend on what value you place on things,” Marsen said.

“Can you place value on a human life?” Anton said, taking a swig.

“Yes,” the younger man answered immediately. “People do it all the time, subconsciously. But if you take a calculated approach, I believe you will find that this has been ‘worth it’. As a starting point, we can value all human life equally. Killing people or enslaving them detracts from that value, taking away what they should have.” Marsen spoke without emotion. He was, in fact, able to feel things despite his position in the Frostmirror Sect. He could, but he often chose not to. That was just the sort of person he was.

“In that case,” Anton said sadly, “We’re deep in the negatives.”

“If the only goal would be to have people alive, an argument could be made,” Marsen said. “That swings wildly depending on how much you feel slavery detracts from a human life. It also depends on whether we intend to maximize for human life at this very moment, or overall.” Marsen took a small sip of his beer, though he seemed uninterested in that part of the social setting. “A battle breaks out. Ten cultivators die. The overall impact on the world?”

“Negative,” Anton said.

“What if one of them was Maximillian Van Hassel? What if all of them were an equivalent person?” Marsen looked seriously at the two older men. “How would that change the calculations?”

“It would be good,” Elder Tshering said helpfully. “Removing that sort of evil from the world is good. That man in particular damaged hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives.”

“It’s not just people like that that die,” Anton said. “I’m lucky that… I haven’t lost anyone I cared about lately. But other people have. Good people.”

“It’s easier to destroy lives than to improve them,” Marsen commented. “If good and ill die in equal numbers, the balance shifts in the favor of those who do good. A thousand more people don’t die for five hundred more who don’t get saved. But even if you don’t want to calculate each person’s individual impact on the future, a societal shift against those who are tumors on society changes the lives of hundreds of thousands or millions, within the next century. Compare that to the deaths in this conflict, and you can see it is overall good.”

“And yet,” Anton said. “Thousands of cultivators- those who deserve to live- and ten times that many of those who don’t yet cultivate, they’ll have lost their lives by the time this thing is over. And we still have to think about coming troubles. Some sort of invasion, just a few decades away. All this death…” he shook his head. “What does it accomplish?”

“Exactly what you want. A better world,” Marsen said. “Besides, you know that some of these people would be on the invader’s side, right? Dealing with some of this conflict now makes things better for later.”

“It’s still awful,” Anton said, staring at the bottom of an empty mug. “Do you know how many grandchildren I have?”

“Quite a few,” Marsen said. “And others who could be said to occupy that position despite lacking ties of blood.”

“Exactly,” Anton said. “Each and every one of them relying on me to not be an awful person, and to make things better.”

“Seems like you’ve been highly successful thus far,” Tshering commented. “What’s the problem?”

Anton shrugged. “I guess I just don’t enough old folk like myself. Sure, there are a lot of elders older than me, but they’re not the same. Young at heart and all that.” Anton looked at Marsen, who was young by pretty much any standard. “You’re almost an old man yourself.”

Marsen shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Sounds like you just needed a chance to vent,” Elder Tshering commented. “I’m glad to help with that, if you need it.” His age wasn’t all that different from Anton’s, but he was hardly an old soul like him. The one who fit the most had obviously been Grand Elder Vandale. For cultivators, a couple years could feel like almost nothing- so anything more recent than that was etched into memory. Everyone in the Order was still feeling the loss, but most didn’t have any connection to the man but respect for his power.

Anton eventually shook his head back and forth to clear it. “I’ll get over it, I suppose. Still got lots of crap to do. It’s just hard to believe things could get this bad, and know that it will get worse.” He reached out onto the table, plucking up an ant with a fat abdomen who was crawling towards one of the empty cups. “No alcohol for you, queenie. At least one of us needs to stay sober here.” He smiled slightly, wondering if ants might actually make a difference in an upcoming cultivator war. He sure hoped so, if only so he could see the face of some ancient master as he died to a bunch of vermin. He still had the ‘memories’ of the attack on the Luminous Ocean Society that Everheart had thrust upon people. Those ascenders were a bunch of arrogant pricks. He would show them. They were going to be covered in ants. And if he could get some low level cultivators to cause them trouble with some anti-ascension techniques, all the better.