Chapter 567: Ninety-Nine Problems in Krysal

Two weeks until the Krysali deadline. Six weeks until the incursion, hopefully. The elite deadline wouldn't change, but the incursion very well could.

Kai couldn't always wait until the elites had a teleporter ready, so he sometimes flew between cities using Thunderbird's Wings. It felt good to push himself, though in the long stretches he wondered if he was just running from his problems. As glad as he was that Omilaena had come to him instead of unilaterally wiping out a faction, it meant he had even more to deal with.

The first and most obvious problem was still the eastern cities, those unprepared for the incursion, and Kai was sympathetic to most of them. He wished he could spend all his time moving between them, solving as many problems as he could and at least raising morale. Given how all the city states needed to hold together, morale wasn't nothing.

Unfortunately, even as he solved problems, Kai knew that the factions underneath the surface were building up more. Omilaena really had discovered a plot to try to retake Krysal, which was no doubt antagonized by the radical factions that wanted blood in the streets. This long after the revolution, he didn't see what "justice" was here, or what it meant.

Alleged illegitimate children continued to needle him, even if he suspected that they were mostly opportunists. Some might simply be desperate and he wished he could do something about it, something that wouldn't just make the problem worse.

It was while flying on an unscheduled path between cities - in response to rumors of a mining problem - that Kai sensed the surge of qi. Not a strong individual source, many people in concert. That could easily be a riot or worse, so he changed course and sprinted toward the nearest city - Wontiir, which he didn't know well.

From the air, he could see former slaves swarming over part of the city like ants. They weren't attacking people, or at least the neighborhood didn't seem to have native occupants, but they were damaging the infrastructure. Kai hovered overhead, trying to figure out the cause and potential solution before it boiled over entirely. Wontiir needed to be in good shape if the incursion made it this far, so he had to stop the violence, but how?

Then Kai saw something that swept away all the rest of his problems: Yuinafal stood atop a tower, watching the riot with a gleam in his eyes.

No longer caring about stealth or collateral damage, Kai burst down, Behemoth's Wings arching from his back and triggering a shockwave over the city. He saw Yuinafal taken off guard for a second before he grabbed the man's robes and slammed him up against the wall of the nearest tower.

"What the hell are you doing?" Kai growled.

"Same question," Yuinafal responded, not giving an inch. "Do you believe you're actually making Krysal a better place?"

"What d-" Kai was interrupted by an explosion of wind. It didn't harm him, but as the shockwave struck, Yuinafal vanished, leaving him holding a scrap of the man's robes.

Exactly what he needed: yet another problem, a much worse one. Kai decided he was in no mood to have careful conversations about motives, so he leapt from the tower, quelling the riots via a combination of Famished World and Void Gaze.

Soon he'd ended the violence, though not the underlying problem. Talking to chastened city leaders, Kai learned that lack of food had led to riots, which had spiraled out of control into an assault on the wealthier district of the city. Except that district was no longer controlled by nobles, it was largely ex-slave businesses, so the community leaders were baffled about how the demonstrations they'd hoped would be peaceful had become so violent so quickly.

Kai was fairly certain he knew: the most radical groups were lurking in the shadows, trying to trigger another bloody conflict. When he'd confronted Yuinafal, he'd showed himself and they'd vanished. That was assuming that Yuinafal himself wasn't responsible.

Did this mean that Kai was in direct conflict with the elites? He considered that grim possibility for a moment before discarding it. They worked too independently for him to invoke conspiracies, especially in a controversial nation like Krysal. The worst scenario would be that Yuinafal was supporting the radical factions, and Kai had no actual evidence of that.

The bitter irony was that the initial lack of food wasn't due to any famine or even political pressure, it was just a supply chain issue brought on by issues in other city-states. Kai visited the nearest ones and shamed the leaders into helping Wontiir, then carried a massive first shipment of food himself, just to stave off hunger and give the people hope for the administrative solution.

Which burnished his reputation further, but did it actually solve any underlying problems? Kai's arrival set off a city-wide celebration, and as soon as he realized that some of the women were making passes at him, he left.

He'd had more than enough of that problem.

The incident led him to realize that there were other supply chain issues across the eastern cities, including militarily serious ones like qi crystals and acid. With his spatial ring and speeds far in excess of Krysali vessels, Kai was actually the fastest method of transportation, so he spent a couple days bursting between Frontier cities, sternly commanding them to prepare. Given how he dramatically solved their problems himself, he hoped they'd listen, at least long enough to survive the incursion.

Of course this wasn't part of the plan, but he could maintain his training if he just skipped sleep. Kai relied on Behemoth's Heart to keep him going and he felt the inside of his chest slowly twisting into a monstrous form. So long as it didn't affect his appearance, and thus morale, it was fine.

That work - so simple and obviously beneficial - might have distracted him for longer if he hadn't received a message. Cragrila was waiting for him back in Yulthens after months underground with the radical factions, so she might have key information. Kai finished his current trip while negotiating with the elites to teleport back, meaning that he was stepping onto the streets of Yulthens just hours later.

The past few days were a blur: he remembered what he had been doing, but names and faces were just a vague haze. He hated living life this way, but with so little time remaining, how could he justify not pushing himself even harder?

When he met Cragrila in a shady half-abandoned bar, he forced himself to focus on a specific time and place. Her clothes were much more ragged than before, and she had a hard look in her eyes, but he realized that actually meant she had been successful.

"I joined one of the most radical nativist factions," Cragrila reported, then let out a snort. "Practically stumbled into it, and might have even if you hadn't asked. There are still a lot of angry people left, and they remember me as a key player in the revolution. They have ideas and they want the power to enforce them."

"Depends on what those ideas are," Kai said. "If they're going to argue with other factions in public, more power to them, but I don't like all these factions working in the shadows."

"Then you won't like what I have to say. There are a lot of people angry, many with the elites and our allies, some even with you. They somehow got word of a rumor that there was a plan to abandon parts of Krysal in the incursion. Their plan is to do the opposite: abandon our obligations on the borders and pull back to Krysal instead of helping our allies. Krysal will handle its own, they say."

Kai groaned as he considered just how real that possibility was. It wouldn't take any genius schemes, because the incursion relied on coordination and trust, so they'd just need to have control of a few specific city-states and militias. And it would sort of protect Krysal during this incursion, but it would betray their allies and ruin trust in the future.

"I thought you'd want to know," Cragrila said with a shrug. "There are more factions, though, and some of them are too radical to even talk to me. If you come down on these groups directly, they'll suspect it was me, and other factions will burrow even deeper."

"I'm not going to punish people for a bunch of worried talk." Kai rubbed his face, more tired than he'd realized despite Behemoth's Heart keeping his body going, and considered his options. "We don't do anything for now. Give me all the information you have and keep meeting with them. Ideally, we don't manipulate things and hope people come together naturally after the incursion."

Judging from Cragrila's expression, she wasn't confident in that, but she gave him everything she'd learned about the nativist faction and its leaders. It sounded like they were more wide-spread than he had hoped, because they fed off entirely understandable feelings across Krysal. Even Kai understood a little, though he was too beset by problems to join them.

There were a lot of things he needed to do, especially back at the Frontier, but Kai didn't have an arrangement to teleport back just yet. So he headed to their shared rooms, even though it was technically wasting time. It would be good just to see Zae Zin Nim or Omilaena again, and if they trained together he could justify spending some hours with them.

When he arrived, he found Zae Zin Nim cultivating in her usual room. Unlike usual, however, though she smiled at first, she then frowned.

"Kai, you have been away too long."

"I know, I know," he said, "I'm just pushing so hard-"

"You're being inefficient." Omilaena pressed up against his back, a needle against his neck, though it was basically just teasing at this point in their relationship. "Come on, relax a bit. Don't make me poison you and force it."

"Look, I appreciate it, but time is running out for Krysal and-"

"No." Zae Zin Nim broke off her cultivation and rose to approach. "We have too little time to rush around like this. If you want to help, you need to step back and think."

Accepting defeat, Kai raised his hands and let his wives take over. Maybe they were right, or maybe the exhaustion just caught up to him once he stopped moving. As soon as he acceded, Zae Zin Nim gave him a small smile.

"Good, please come with us. We've discovered something that I think you will enjoy."

They headed out in one of Zae Zin Nim's common crystal ships, moving toward the former wealthier districts of Yulthens. There was a large complex that was oddly familiar, and he couldn't place it until he realized that it was the grounds where Orillia used to live. He hadn't thought about her in some time and it still hurt to remember her severed head...

"It seems Orillia has acquired a legend," Zae Zin Nim said with another smile. "They're telling stories about how she stood up to Suortril and defied all the other merchants, right up until the moment they killed her for it. I doubt the veracity of these stories, but at least her legacy is respected."

"She's become known as the 'good crystallier'," Omilaena explained as she leaned into him from the other side. "Even radicals who hate all merchants have to be respectful. Dead symbols are much easier to mythologize than living ones who have, you know, opinions."

"So this is her Crystallier Cooperative." They began circling over the complex, which Kai saw was active even as Zae Zin Nim continued to explain. "It's trained many former slaves in crystal cultivation, across many factions. I think it really is honoring her legacy."

"I suggest we keep our hands off, since this is one of the few widely-respected neutral parties. But I thought you should know that Krysal has some... and Zin Nim has an idea of her own."

"The baths are still there," Zae Zin Nim said, and now he understood her pleased smile. "We never got to use them properly last time, but they're open to all. You really need to rest, Kai, surely you wouldn't refuse us this?"

"And if you need more incentive," Omilaena murmured into his other ear, "our visiting it will raise the profile of the Crystallier Cooperative."

"Alright, alright." Kai chuckled and accepted that taking a break wouldn't be so horrible. "We can visit the baths. Maybe you're right, I need to take a step back and think about the underlying problems."

They landed and were accepted in the courtyard, where Kai noticed a wide mix of Krysali, from city-dwellers to former miners to acid pit workers. Many crowded in to welcome them, threatening to delay their progress until Zae Zin Nim insisted on visiting the baths. Apparently she had even planned a reservation for them, so the chambers were empty except for the heated water that had already filled the air with steam.

It was surreal to walk back into a space he had last visited years ago. So much had been different back then, he had actually been on the other side of the Krysali revolution. Yet the bathing chamber itself was mostly unchanged, maintained but otherwise what he remembered.

One other thing was different: Zae Zin Nim and Omilaena stepped up beside him and began disrobing. Back then, Zae Zin Nim had been self-conscious and shocked by the idea of his nudity, while Omilaena was a dangerous predator using sex as a weapon. Now as they stripped and began bathing together, it wasn't even really sexual, it was just intimate and comfortable.

Kai washed off his dirt in a cooler basin, then sank into the heated pool. He'd barely leaned back against the marble before Zae Zin Nim was on one side and Omilaena got comfortable on the other. They had been right, he needed this.

Kai felt like he had almost a hundred problems, but Zae Zin Nim and Omilaena weren't one of them.

(Cognosticon here. There is a B version of this chapter, but the timing didn't work out to post it on Wednesday. I guess I'll post it Saturday so it's still vaguely timely.