The cellar beneath the temple of Serenity featured a hefty abundance of old geisha robes from its prior residents, plus a whole bunch of other outfits reserved for visiting cultivators, dignitaries, Magistrates and other important, pompous guests. The Serenity temple was basically a place where the rich and powerful met and discussed how to move the world, pretending to be in charge as if the space-gods that ruled them didn’t guide their decisions.

I had strapped Mr. Murr’s lantern to my chest with a series of belts salvaged from the clothing shelves carved out of the vast shell of Lord Boundless. As I did so, I talked to the phantom, figuring out his new limits and any potential issues. I planned ahead for whatever we might run into in the future in our joint effort to free ourselves from authority shaped like a well-aged, gold lantern and irrational cultivator society.

I’ve chosen the gaudiest high-cultivator robe, jewelry and shoes that I could find and put them on myself.

“Soooo...?” I wiggled my eyebrows at Celes, who had also ‘dressed her best’ at my demands.

Maybe it was just her serenity radiance, but she looked breathtakingly sublime in her gemstone-encrusted robe, topaz necklace and long, elegant boots. I felt a pang of jealousness at how well everything sat on her. I was far too skinny for the things I was wearing, feeling like a pigeon that was wearing a burger king hat.

I would have to make do somehow. “...do I look intimidatingly dashing?”

“You look ridiculous,” was the kitsune’s reply. “That robe is at least a century old, if not more.”

“Fashion is cyclical!” I shot back, as I tightened the garish outfit with an ornate belt. “I will be the one who is resetting the trend, just you wait!”

I completed the outfit with a fanciful tiger paper-mache, gold-foil mask. It seemed like a good idea to stay anonymous - I wouldn't want to encounter the same guard that had let us in, as I was now wearing robes that weren’t made for geishas in mind.

The West gate guard didn’t even pay much attention to us as we left the compound. He quickly glanced at our feet and respectfully bowed his head, looking half asleep and slouching in his alcove. Maybe his job was mostly about keeping unauthorised persons out of the compound - the people leaving weren’t to be bothered. The guard muttered something under his breath and a servitor with far too many limbs and eyes materialised into existence and swung the gate open in front of us.

“I don’t see anyone… aren’t your friends supposed to meet us here?” Celes asked, looking at the empty space outside the gate.

“Firstly, they’re not my friends,” I confided. “They’re street kids who turned to crime and in the process embroiled themselves into debt to far more dangerous criminals of the Gold city underworld. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing that unites me with them.”

“Right, sorry. So, where are we supposed to meet them?”

I pointed at a ruin of a decade-old mansion that stood about a hundred meters away from the gate. “When a thief says ‘Meet by the gate’ to another, what it actually means is meet in the nearest abandoned place. Meeting in the open is a big no-no for obvious reasons.”

“I see,” Celes muttered as we walked closer to the decrepit ruin.

“The merchant who owned this place and his family all died in the last Deathstorm Convergence,” I remarked to my companion.

The Stormweavers left thousands of scars on the Gold city just like this place that still haven’t healed, since there was no immediate family left to renovate the place. The Gold city was built by untiring hands of the servitors - there were far too many houses here for the amount of citizens living in it. People perished not from lack of housing, but from the fact that Convergences were fatal by their very nature. I vaguely knew that each one presented a variety of danger to humanity from both of the Gods that were meeting up.

As I combed through my memories, I realised that I actually had no clue what Convergences were really about. I knew that they ended up with hundreds if not thousands of people missing or dead. Basically, whenever the warning gongs resounded from the cult compound towers, I ran as fast as my legs could take me, slid down the pipes and ropes and hid myself in the safest place I knew - the dead city beneath Lord Boundless.

The nature of Convergences was yet another dangerous but tantalizing mystery to solve.

We climbed over the rubble of fallen bricks overgrown with moss and entered into the interior of the decimated mansion. The roof had caved in long ago, presenting a view of the starry sky and the shattered, silver moon overhead. About twenty teenagers were here tonight. Each stood or sat in the shadowy corners. There were no younger kids present. Anathema didn’t bring everyone like I had asked.

The midnight gong resounded from the cult compound behind us.

“Sparks,” Anathema uttered, her voice filled with ringing tension. She stood right in the center of the derelict living room, spilling moonlight highlighting her red hair. A beautiful, faded and cracked spiral pattern of once expensive but now broken and cracked tiles framed her feet as she walked towards me.

As I looked at my former boss and our eyes met I realised that this was a trap.

Anathema didn’t submit to me, she merely temporarily retreated and returned with far greater forces to make my defeat all the more crushing and final. She was going to make an example out of me!

“That’s Mistress Sparks to you, girl,” I bravely proclaimed at the advancing girl. “Bow. You stand in the presence of a high-cultivator!”

“You… you are not a high-cultivator Sparksss,” Anathema hissed the last letter of my name, sounding like a viper that was ready to strike. “You might be dressed like one, but you do not smell like those assholes.”

Celes was about to say something in my defence, but Anathema continued before she even opened her mouth. “Do you two think I’m some kind of an idiot?

It took me a few hundred heartbeats, but I had figured you out.” The gang leader shot a glare filled with malice at Celes. “You are an OLD geisha, about to exit your prime. Compound geishas do not live past twenty. Let me guess - you and Sparky made an agreement to cooperate. One between two desperate fools. I don’t know where or how you two stole that beast core you had shown me earlier, but I want it.”

Two teenagers armed with bone-knives stepped behind us, sealing off our escape. It was indeed a trap.

A quiet “tsk” echoed from one of the shadows.

“Uh,” Anathema stuttered for a brief second. Her eyes refocused on me. “You know the rules, pinkie. All items of high value are to be brought to the Guild for ‘evaluation’. We can’t have kids messing with dangerous tools and getting themselves or others killed.”

I looked at the shadow that made the noise. A Reaper from the Thieves Guild. Of course. The two idiots Anathema had with her had spilled the beans, telling everyone about the beast core. The word had reached the Guild and Lady Lillian sent a Reaper to collect the artifact from me.

Just as I had expected. I poured Qi into my eyes and looked into the shadow.

[Niels Barberman - Level 79 Reaper of the Thieves Guild]

[Primary weapon - Servitor Phantom Yumz]

An information window flashed above the dark figure. Well, well, well. So much for trying to stay anonymous, Reaper Niels.

“Barberman? What are you doing out so late in such... disreputable company?” I shot at the shadow.

Reaper Niels sputtered. He didn’t expect to be called out like that. He had recollected himself pretty quickly.

“I’m merely making sure nobody gets too badly hurt tonight,” a smooth reply returned my way. I knew that this was a lie. If I did have a core on me and resisted, the Reaper would hurt me himself. Except, I didn’t have just one core on me. I had THREE cores.

Anathema took another step forward. Her hand moved quicker than I could track it and now held a black, shimmering knife sprinkled with little yellow stars. Celesteel. How in the ninety-nine hells did she get a celesteel knife? Knives like these were absurdly expensive because they were so hard to break.

“Nice and easy, Sparky. Give me the core,” she said darkly, leaving no room for compromise.

“Annie,” I scoffed. “Do you remember what I told you earlier? Your minions Borg and Jorg surely remember, they were there too! I killed a beast in the deep so that I could bind it to myself as a servitor. My initiation into the circle of high-cultivators is complete.”

“You are a Qi-vexing liar! Quit screwing with me,” the redhead seethed. “Where’s that core? Did you hide it somewhere… no…” She sniffed me and her eyes suddenly took on an appearance of extreme greed.

“More than one… you have more than one core,” her eyes spoke not with words but with a hungry gaze.

I recalled what Celes told me about nose-superpowers. I worked under Anathema my entire life but only today I noticed how she sniffed the air before determining something! She must have trained her nose to detect the nearby Qi emanations - a good skill for a thief such as herself.

Her next move wasn’t hard to deduce. She had decided then and there to execute me and to take the pouch from my dead body. She was going to give one of the cores over to the Guild and keep the rest to herself!

“No resisting!” She yelled as she grabbed at me with one arm and swung her celesteel knife. It looked like a maneuver to trick the Reaper, to make it look like I died while struggling against her.

It was simple, heartless logic - if Ash was dead, she wouldn't be able to tell anyone else about the other cores.

How predictable. I saw her coming a second before she necked me, giving me all I needed to back away and dodge the first attempt. However, I knew her second attempt would strike with more gusto. I had a plan prepared for that.

“Murrz, stop her!” I announced for all to hear just as Anathema’s knife swung at my face once again.

Nobody in the room, except perhaps for Celes, expected what happened next. A long, glowing arm emerged from my chest, fingers with too many knuckles snapping around the hand that was about to execute me.

“Whaaa…?!” Anathema squeaked. The fingers of the servitor phantom tightened around her wrist. She cried out in pain and the knife fell from her hand. It didn’t reach the ground. The rest of Ludjfurkvv-Murr emerged from my chest and a head that featured far too many teeth for reasonability snapped at the knife.

Celesteel emitted a loud groan when Ludj bit the knife with all of his strength. The supposedly indestructible, overpriced knife shattered in twain in the phantom's mouth, sparks flying everywhere.

Level 205 Gardener: 1. Expensive magic knife: 0

The small pack of teenagers around us went wild. Something dripped down my face. I noticed a bit of blood splattering the broken knife below my feet. Damn it, she managed to cut me.

I resisted letting out a groan as the rest of the servitor spirit blossomed, formed himself right around me, blue lightning dancing all over my body. I rose into the air, standing within the chest of an alien aberration. Forty two seconds. More than enough time to put on a show for the gathered crowd.

“You have made a mistake by disrespecting me, foolish girl,” I said, lifting a hand. “...and now you shall die.”

A large, ghostly limb replicated my hand-motion and grabbed Anathema by her chest, lifting her into the air. The redhead thief knew then and there that her goose was cooked. The absolute dismay painted on her face was satisfying. The brilliant glow emanating from Ludj chased away the shadows, revealing skinny, raggedy teenagers featuring a variety of expressions from deep bewilderment to utter horror.

“Deathstorm… she IS a high-cultivator,” I heard one of them utter.

“Ninety nine hells! I’m sorry! Forgive my sins, Master!” Another one yelled, falling onto his knees with a bow. “Spare my worthless life and I will serve you for eternity!”

One by one the rest followed, prostrating themselves in front of me.

Ludj grabbed Anathema’s hair with one hand, still holding her chest with another, bending her head back to expose her neck. His ghastly mouth opened wide, about to chomp Anathema’s neck in half. She cried out in sheer terror, knowing that she was about to die. She tried to free herself, tried to grab at the ghostly hands that held her but it was in vain - her fingers simply slid through Ludj as if he wasn’t even there. Her legs kicked one last time and she wet herself.

Twenty five seconds. That’s all it took. I had the room’s absolute submission and attention now. The tables have turned and the hunters have become mere frightened rabbits.

The only adult in the room - Reaper Niels froze, mouth open in shock.

“Stop! Please! Do not hurt her! I believe you!!!” He moved faster than my eyes could track him and now stood in front of me. In front of him materialized a servitor spirit looking like the mixture of a hawk and a jellyfish, dangerous-looking tentacle-wings pointed at me.

“Murrz return,” I said.

Ludj let go of Anathema, folding back into the lantern, and she slumped into a puddle of her own making. She instantly curled up into a ball, shaking and weeping.

I landed back on the ground, dancing sparks slowly fading from the tips of my fingernails and hair.

“I believe there’s someone in the room who isn’t bowing to a high-cultivator,” I raised an eyebrow at the Reaper.

“U… pppf… rgh….” Reaper Niels sputtered, biting his chapped, thin lips. His black hood had come off and underneath it he looked like a lime-skinned, balding, thin man. I had been terrified of the authority of the Reapers all my life as a thief, but now I saw that he was just a tired, old man.

I could guess approximately what was going on in his head. She’s too young. The Guild had scanned her yearly and found her to be a talentless waif. Cultivation takes years, high-cultivation takes decades, centuries even to master a spirit that can bite right through celesteel. This is impossible.

“One bow please,” I pressed my authority. “Unless... You want to show me what your servitor can do? Shall we duke it out in front of these children to see who’s superior in terms of phantom firepower? Mine is really good at nipping things off! Once he gets going there’s going to be a lot of hands and feet missing.”

The Reaper winced.

“Maybe I’ll start with this pretty ginger kitten,” I pointed at Anathema. “She seems to be of value to you for some reason.”