Dead Tired - Volume Four - The Competitors Four - The Poison Flower 

The Competitors Four - The Poison Flower 

It was strange how little time had passed for her home to change so much. 

In her youth, Shitake had been... not cold, exactly, but definitely strained. It was a city that had only ever known the brink. It was only ever one bad harvest, one monster attack, one punishing new tax, away from destruction.

The sect had done what it could to help. 

The fine people of Shitake may not have realized it, but they were drowning in the grasp of the Jade Throne. It wasn’t literal. There had been few outside sects here, no royal guards, few people from the Jade Throne had ever even visited the city in its long history. 

Instead, the choking came from the long arm of bureaucracy. Rules and regulations passed down and across the empire to come in and grasp the throats of the fine people of Shitake. What could be sold to whom, and which forms had to be signed in triplicate.

The Ashen Forest sect had, in the last couple of weeks, burned through the city like a torch put against a cobweb. They had marched into the buildings of laws and into the cold palaces of the bureaucrats and had torn the places down. Without filling out a single Form 27-B (Notice of Improper Office Infrastructure Alteration Through Fire, Change of Governance, Rebellion, and/or Enthusiastic Revolutionary Activity) being filed.

Cinder was a happy woman. She felt like she should be a happy woman.

She... was pretty sure she was happy?

Continuing on her walk, she found herself idly twirling the stem of her parasol between forefinger and thumb, scattering light through the thin material above her even as she scanned the roads.

The people of Shitake were happy--minus the recently jobless people who had been removed from their positions in various governmental agencies. 

Rumours were running rampant, but also good news. The first shipments from across the new empire were arriving. Food and bricks and construction materials, bolts of cloth, new tools and raw ores. Nothing too unusual, but without the grip that the Jade Throne had had on the market and without their heavy taxation, things were being sold at prices that were downright friendly. 

The selling was going the other way as well. Shitake’s great mushroom farms were being told by the new government to grow and expand to meet the demands of an entire--small-empire. Wood was being lumbered from the Ashen Forest and there was a massive influx of news from across the world. Even the dour dwarves that lived just across the nearest lake were poking their heads out and 

People wanted to know about this new empress of theirs, about the terrifying undead, about the army that the Jade Throne had sent and which had been routed at the gates of Yu Xiang. 

More than the influx of coin and the growth of markets and even the fast trade of gossip, what really made Cinder feel like things had changed was the feeling in the air. She could literally taste it. Sure, there was the ash that constantly clung to everything, but under that? Hope!

She should be happy.

She had escorted the Herald here. The undead lord had followed her into this city and had liberated it in her wake. People, on occasion, recognized her on her walk, and the way they bowed to her was as to a local hero, instead of merely towards a member of a dangerous sect. 

The sect had more applicants now than they had had in the last ten years. And more people asking for loans as well. 

Things were, basically, looking up. 

That didn’t mean that she could sit on their laurels, of course. All told, the situation may have been hopeful, but anyone with something between their ears knew that there would be a response from the Jade Throne, beyond sending an army of unwanted outer disciples and conscripted farmers to quell their little rebellion.

The people of Shitake knew that when things were good, then they were good, and one ought to enjoy that as much as possible while it lasted.

She stepped to the side, allowing a small caravan of carts to rumble by. It was trailed by some children who were being surprisingly loud and exuberant. She smiled, lips tugging up beneath the mask that covered much of her lower face. It was nice to see. 

And yet... it didn’t quell that unease in her heart. That ongoing impression that something wasn’t quite right, that something would inevitably go wrong.

She continued to walk. There had already been a discussion or two at the Untravelled Cove, the true headquarters of the sect, about what would come next. For now, growth was what they were aiming for, but also stability.

Some correspondence with Seventeen of the undead army had revealed plans to send out undead guards and soldiers to every city. With those, it was very much possible that they’d no longer had to worry so much about the monsters and creatures living just outside of the walls of Shitake. 

There would still be room for their sect, of course. The undead didn’t know the Ashen Forest all that well, nor the people here. They were strong, certainly, and replaceable, but not necessarily flexible. Besides, the sect had centuries of traditions to rely on when it came to handling the local pests.

So, given that, they decided that now was as good a time as any to pull in new members. The Ashen Forest sect was going to enter a time of prosperity, maybe. If it did, then training new disciples would be the best thing to do. They wouldn’t have to hurry. They wouldn’t need to push them to extremes. 

These new members of their sect wouldn’t face the same dangers and risks she had. They wouldn’t lose as much of themselves, and they’d be able to learn from her and her brothers and sisters in the sect. 

Strength. Growth. Hope. It felt like wherever she looked, that’s all she saw.

Maybe that was her issue? She’d seen the heights of power. The casual ease in which one of if not the most powerful individual in the world carried themselves. How could she ever reach that same height if all she did was wander the streets in a bored daze.

Then her eye was caught by something pressed into the window of a shop across the street. It was a small stew place. Shitake didn’t have so many tea shops and places for workers on pause to gather in anything approaching the level of class and dignity that greater cities had. Instead, they had stew shops. Little holes in the wall shops, usually run by one old granny and maybe a few grandkids. They had perpetual stews on a fire and sold a warm bowl and a seat to eat it on for pennies. 

They were good places for gossip and a quick bite. 

The window of this one across the street had a poster.

Gently, with steps as light as a windborne feather, she crossed the pitted road and alighted before the window.

The Grand Tournament. 

She’d read this already. The announcement, the prize, the location, even. 

Had she stayed in Yu Xiang for longer, perhaps she may have been able to assist in some way, but her duties had called her back here, to home and sect. 

She was about to walk on when she sensed someone approach. A disturbance in the air and ambient energy that had her tensing up and tightening the grip on her parasol. Only the person that landed behind her wore the colours of the Ashen Forest and immediately bowed at the waist. “Senior Sister Cinder,” they said.

“Yes yes yes?” she replied.

“There is a disturbance by the gates. The undead have gathered and are acting strangely.”

She frowned, but a moment later was racing across the rooftops of the city on course for the front gates, only vaguely aware of the others doing the same. 

By the time she reached the gates, the noise had thinned into a tense hush.

Undead lined the approach in orderly ranks, not with weapons raised, but with open hands. They moved with surprising care, guiding citizens back, palms hovering inches from shoulders, steering rather than shoving. People complied, fear mixing with curiosity. Cinder dropped from the roof and strode forward, ash crunching beneath her boots.

“What’s this about?” she demanded.

No one answered her. The undead rarely did.

Instead, two zombies stepped into the cleared space. They were tall, old soldiers by the look of their armour, rusted plates polished clean. Each held a staff of dark wood capped with pale crystal. They planted their staffs into the stone, opposite one another.

The air between them thickened.

Cinder felt it before she saw it. Pressure. A wrongness that made the hairs on her arms rise beneath her sleeves. Energy twisted, folded in on itself, then tore.

With a sound like silk being ripped apart, a vertical seam split the world. Light spilled out, cold and colourless, the edges of the tear writhing as if alive. The portal widened, stabilizing between the staffs until it snapped into place and stayed fixed.

On the other side was an unfamiliar city behind a very familiar man in a tweed suit.

***