Boulder’s Shadow stood beneath an enormous pine tree, its great boughs reaching outward and sheltering him from the bright sun. His eyes were fixed on the building far below. It was nestled in the heart of a very secluded valley that was itself buried deep inside the wilds. It was ant to be so manner of palace for the Beast King. In this, at least, the humans far eclipsed their kind. It was a crude structure made of roughly hewn stone that rose only a few stories. Earlier attempts to build sothing taller had t with colossal failure. Boulder’s Shadow knew that so spirit beasts understood these matters and could have advised on ways to build sothing more stable. They had remained silent. Perhaps it had been a silence born of fear, but it was more likely born of resentnt.
So, rather than growing in height, the palace had spread outward. It was haphazard, inelegant, and almost painful to observe. Like an animal that had gorged and gorged until it could barely sustain its own bulk. It was ugly and brutal. Then again, so was the Beast King. Boulder’s Shadow had wandered far and wide in this vast and often terrible world. He had seen true palaces in mortal cities that were enough that even his eyes could appreciate their beauty. This monunt to the Beast King’s pride struck him as a sad, pale, pointless imitation of those human edifices. He was once again seized by a desire to simply leave.
He bore no loyalty to the Beast King or his goals. A fact that was widely known. He’d made no effort to hide his disdain or indifference. He’d often considered challenging the Beast King. It wasn’t as though Boulder’s Shadow had anything left to lose, or so he had believed for centuries. His people’s defiance had led to their slaughter. They had never been many, focusing more on building a tight community than expanding their territory and population. He could see that for the mistake it had been. Their warriors had been fierce and brave, but even those powerful figures had never stood a chance against the numbers sent against them.
If they had been greater in number, they might have scattered and hidden as the foxes had done. Although the foxes were far better able to hide themselves among the humans. He knew that he could have completed his transformation and looked like them, but he had never wanted to look like the humans. They were, on the whole, a weak, fractured people. They warred on each other in acts of utter madness. He understood the overt reasons. Resources were finite. If one group controlled a crucial resource, others would want it. Wars were fought among the spirit beasts for those reasons. Yet, his people had never warred on themselves. It was a betrayal of family and of the community. It was, to borrow an odd human term he’d learned, blasphemy.
He had believed himself the lone survivor of his kind, at least the lone remaining mber on this world. There were legends and tales of those who had ascended, but he’d never known whether to believe those stories. He thought that every group of spirit beasts had such stories, but he’d never t any who had ever known a spirit beast that ascended. Or, if they had, none spoke of it. He believed that it was at least possible. He’d gotten closer to it than most, and his journey wasn’t over yet. The day might still co. It was that tenuous hope that kept him from making the challenge. That quiet whisper in the back of his mind that told him to wait, to persevere, and he might once again et another ghost panther. He wanted to believe those whispers.
It was those sa whispers that also led him to contemplate the option of leaving. He had no interest in the war. He’d lost interest in the fate of the spirit beasts in this world the mont his people had been wiped away in a single night of savagery. Or so he had believed. His interest in this world and the possibility of challenging the Beast King had been stoked again when he learned about Falling Leaf. One of his people still lived. One of the kits who must have run and run in the darkness, fire, and blood. Just one who had escaped that terrible massacre.
How that knowledge burned. She had been alone. Her family gone. The community gone. He couldn’t even imagine the terror of being left to fend for herself in a world that was so unkind. He, at least, had enjoyed the protection of so personal power. Power that had been subverted to another’s will, but power all the sa. Yet, sohow, so way, she had done it. She had carved a way and a place for herself. And she had done it alone. He, who should have been there to teach, to guide, and to protect, had failed her. Utterly. That stark truth had been shown to him when she refused to co with him.
There was the boy, of course. His presence had stiffened her resolve in that mont, but the will to resist had been there all along. Boulder’s Shadow reconsidered that word. Boy. By most ways of thinking among both spirit beasts and cultivators, he would be considered young. No, he thought, not just young but extrely young. Yet, he wielded the strength of an ancient. That was to say nothing of the support he received from true elder cultivators. If there had ever been an opportunity to wrest Falling Leaf away from them, that ti was long past. Yet, her very existence gave him pause.
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She would follow wherever Lu Sen led. She would be in danger during this war. Regardless of how she felt about Boulder’s Shadow, he still had a duty to her. So, he contemplated the challenge. It was by no ans a certainty. The Beast King might be a coward at heart, but he was still very old and powerful. Boulder’s Shadow believed that there was a chance of victory, but it was likely a poor chance. Still, if he could win, he could bring this misguided war to an end today. Unfortunately, there was no guarantee that the creature wouldn’t simply have his sowhat more loyal servants intervene.
A challenge now was a risk that could yield enormous benefits, but also ran the risk of complete failure. If he died now, he could do nothing to protect Falling Leaf later. If he remained, it was entirely possible that he would be called on again to kill humans by the hundreds or thousands. He didn’t particularly care about the fate of the humans, but that indifference was not the sa as a desire to kill them indiscriminately. However, remaining involved was the only clear path to protecting Falling Leaf. He couldn’t protect her directly. Even if Judgnt’s Gale was willing to tolerate his presence, a prospect he found unlikely, the rest of the humans would not.
The best he could hope for was indirectly protecting her. With that sad truth in mind, he began the walk down to the Beast King’s palace. He was known in this place, so his arrival was t with little interest from most. It was only as he approached what served as a throne room that he was challenged by two guards outside the doors. They also knew who he was and that he wasn’t to be delayed. He considered the two leopards and sighed. This kind of action had grown weariso, and he didn’t have the patience for it today. He lashed out at the one on the right in a move so fast that the guard likely didn’t have ti to even realize his head had been removed. He kicked the one on the left so hard that it crashed into the door and ripped it free. The door and the dead leopard crashed to the floor inside the room.
Boulder’s Shadow walked into the throne room, casually stepped over the corpse, and approached the throne. The Beast King glared at him the entire way. The ghost panther stopped far enough away not to pose an imdiate physical threat. He was aware of the spirit beasts in the room. So of them remained in their beast forms, while others had taken on varying degrees of human forms. Only the Beast King looked entirely human, save for his yellow eyes. Eyes that continued in their pointless attempt to bore into Boulder’s Shadow and elicit so kind of fear. The shadow panther had left that emotion behind long ago. A fact that the Beast King seed to recognize.
“Give your report. Is the human city gone?” demanded the ruler of the spirit beasts.
“No. The attack failed,” said Boulder’s Shadow.
“Failed!” roared the Beast King, his eyes flashing with anger. “Where are the commanders of those forces. They will account to for this failure.”
“They’re dead.”
“Fine then. Where are their subordinates?”
“They’re dead.”
That seed to give the Beast King pause, and Boulder’s Shadow felt the attention of every other spirit beast focus on him. The Beast King’s eyes narrowed.
“And the rest of their forces? Where did they retreat to?”
“The afterlife.”
“What?”
“They’re dead,” repeated Boulder’s Shadow. “All of them. Every commander. Every subordinate. Every spirit beast sent against the human city was killed. None were spared.”
The Beast King shot up from his throne and took a threatening step toward Boulder’s Shadow. The ghost panther looked back with an expression of benign indifference.
“Explain,” ordered the Beast King.
“A cultivator intervened,” said Boulder’s Shadow.
“A sect intervened?”
Boulder’s Shadow spoke again, emphasizing the words like he might for a particularly stupid companion.
“A. Cultivator.”
“One cultivator? Do you think I’m stupid!”
“Yes,” said the ghost panther. “Because you chose your enemies poorly.”
The silence that followed that pronouncent was absolute. The Beast King stared at Boulder’s Shadow like he couldn’t believe the ghost panther had dared to utter such words.
Boulder’s Shadow continued, “One cultivator wiped out the entirety of our forces at the city. One. Man.”
“You lie,” said the Beast King. “How could one man do such a thing?”
“He is the student of Fate’s Razor.”
The Beast King hissed and took a step back. All of the spirit beasts had heard the story of the disastrous trap and Feng Ming’s answer to it. Few had escaped that slaughter. The elder cultivator had taken on mythic proportions in the eyes of most spirit beasts. He was less a man to them than an avatar of destruction.
“Even so,” said the Beast King. “You stand here.”
“Because he willed it to be so.”
“Or you ran away,” whispered soone in the room.
“Many tried to run,” said the ghost panther. “They ran for their lives. It didn’t matter. There was nowhere to run. He took command of the skies for as far as the eye could see. He called down tribulation lightning. He called down fire. He called down oblivion.”
“You’re just making excuses,” said the Beast King.
“You did not feel his wrath!” roared Boulder’s Shadow. “You did not see his eyes! You did not hear his words.”
He hid it quickly, but Boulder’s Shadow saw the flicker of terror in the Beast King’s eyes.
“What were his words?”
Those words were seared into the ghost panther’s mory, but he could simplify the ssage.
“He ans to burn the wilds to ash and hunt us all into extinction,” said Boulder’s Shadow. “And he can do it.”
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