Jin was a boy, high up in a spruce tree, with a tiger at the bottom of it.

Beneath him, in the vast forest clearing that he'd called home for almost 18 years, his master was engaged in what would be the last battle of her life.

Men had come, using the secret passage under the forest known only to the Shi clan, and Master Xinya would not be able to hold them off. This much was clear to everybody, including the attackers, and Xinya herself.

Jin could offer no assistance (due to his predicament of being high up in a spruce tree, with a tiger at the bottom of it), however it had been Master Xinya who had sent him up here, flinging him high and binding him to the rough bark with invisible strands of her own life energy. The tiger, well, that was still a mystery to Jin, although he had seen the great beast before, and could reasonably assert that it, too, was here because Master Xinya had compelled it somehow.

He tried to remain calm, to draw upon the strength of his inner self as he had practiced so many times, and yet, his bewilderment and frustration were heavy distractions. He had to accept that he couldn't move, that he couldn't help, that he couldn't fight, and that what was happening was going to unfold however fate decided. He would be playing no role. Only by that acceptance would he even be able to focus hard enough to awaken his senses and hear and see the scene below better, to perhaps gain some understanding of what these men wanted, and why Master Xinya had hidden him. Yet, powerlessness was a truth that his nature would not acknowledge easily.

"Search her house for the weapon!" one of the attackers yelled, giving an order to one of his well organized pack of forty or more men on horseback, while Master Xinya strained to keep the barrier of pale blue life energy she had created between herself and their forces strong. She ignored the men who jumped from their mounts, and broke away from the group to race towards the home she had shared with Jin.

Jin couldn't see his house from here - it was behind him, and he still wasn't calm enough to explore the area with his mind - but he felt the colossal shockwave as it exploded, presumably with the men inside. It was at this moment that he realized that Master Xinya had planned for this kind of attack, though he knew of no reason why she would have been expecting such a thing. She'd enchanted the house to self destruct.

He looked down at the ring she'd rammed onto his little finger before rushing him into the tree, just moments before the first men on their horses had emerged from the tunnel. He knew what it was - he'd seen her use it almost every day, though this was the first time he'd ever seen her take it off, or been allowed to touch it. It was her Interspatial Ring - a magical device that kept a unique dimension within the gem set in its band, where all of Master Xinya's precious belongings were stored. Whatever the men were looking for, this weapon they screamed about, it must be inside. This was not the time to check, though.

"The weapon belongs to Bao Shi now, Xinya. All of the treasures of the Shi clan belong to its new leader. You may have been asked to take care of it by Wuying Shi, but Wuying is dead. Keeping the weapon is theft. We will find it, even if we have to tear this forest apart after your death, so why not just make it easier on yourself and hand it over? We can take you as a prisoner, and a slave with your skills will not be treated poorly," the man who had ordered the others to search the house said calmly, as though he was not shaken at all by the explosion, or by the attacks flying from the men on either side of him at Xinya's barrier. Arrows and flying knives, birds, dragons and beasts made of his soldiers' life energy sailed past him to batter her wall, yet he spoke to the straining woman as if they were at a negotiating table.

"I know nothing of any special weapon of the Shi clan. Whoever you tortured to get that information lied to you," Master Xinya said through gritted teeth, her pretty, pale face now contorted and flushed with the effort of maintaining both her barrier, and the binding on the boy in the tree.

Jin couldn't be sure if she was telling the truth. The Shi clan did own the land he and Master Xinya lived on, and did send people to trade with her, as well as offering certain favors, such as prisoners for Jin to train his martial arts against. He'd always assumed she must have had some long standing relationship with the head of the clan, but Jin had never seen him come here personally. It seemed unlikely that such a person would entrust something important to her. She was just a martial arts master who lived in seclusion, training her one disciple.

He knew very little of the clan and its politics, and it angered him that something as irrelevant as a new leader ruling over a load of people he'd never met was causing this. His home was already gone, and there was nothing that suggested his master would survive this, either. Why? What were these people to him? Nothing. And yet, they had the power to destroy everything he'd ever known, what felt like randomly.

"We didn't need to torture anybody to find out about the weapon, Master Xinya," the man said, sounding almost bored, as though his patience with her was wearing thin, "Wuying gloated about it as the life ebbed out of him. Bao Shi is a man of his own honor, and he looked Wuying in the eye as the poison took its effect, and asked him for his last words. He vowed that one would come with a weapon of great power to strike down Bao and lead the clan to greatness in his name, or somesuch similar brave nonsense. These words sealed your fate."

Master Xinya sounded unfazed by this revelation, whether she was lying or telling the truth about the weapon.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. If Wuying Shi had a secret like that, I was not party to it."

The man was about to reply, when she continued.

"But I wish that it were true. I wish that he had had this great weapon to defend himself when your foul leader murdered him. And with poison no less, like a common rat! Bao is a snake and a craven, and your clan will suffer Wuying's loss in ways the likes of you are not fit to foresee."

Even Jin, who knew barely anything about politics and etiquette, having been raised as an outsider, knew that speaking that way about the clan's new leader would cause great offense. He could feel the intensity of the men on the battlefield rise, as anger flooded their auras and their attacks became sharper. But then, Xinya no longer had anything to lose. Perhaps it brought her some satisfaction to be able to say what she really thought of whoever this Bao Shi was in her final moments, regardless of his social standing.

If the man had any more to say, now, she was not listening for it. Master Xinya's decision had been made and the time had come. Those last words were as good as any.

She had promised the beasts of the forest her body should she die while she was living here, because the flesh of a powerful cultivator was, to a magical beast, a delicacy imbibed with power. Well, they would come to collect, soon, and they would find a feast.

The barrier around her drew in closer, the attacks of the soldiers following it, but never penetrating it, although her strength was clearly fading. Just a matter of time now, they thought, each eager to be the one whose weapon landed the killing blow on this troublesome woman. Now she was simply standing, encased in her blue light, with the enemy growing closer. She had dropped her fighting stance and stood with her eyes closed, and her hands by her sides. Her long, loose black hair and the white silken dress she wore billowed with the energy inside her barrier, but other than that, everything about her was still, such was the slowness of her breath and the control she had over her body. She did not tremble or gasp, as she used all of her remaining strength to perform the one technique she had learned, but never practiced. Hands of energy moved inside her chest, grasped her slow-beating heart, and crushed it to dust. Jin's own heart thumped harder as he watched, his throat tight.

"Suicide? How unsatisfying," the leader of the men said, as she collapsed to the green floor of the clearing.

There was no need to check whether she was really dead; every man there could feel her aura dissipating.

"Search her body - she may have the weapon on her, or at least some clues about it," he ordered his disappointed men.

But he hadn't noticed the rumbling in the earth, at least, not until his horse bucked wildly, crying out, and threw him off. From the ground, he saw the other men's horses behaving in the same desperate, frightened way. The men who were thrown off were perhaps luckier, though some were trampled underfoot as the horses dashed into the forest. These were bolthoof horses - the pride of the Dragon Valley region - and ran at speeds almost invisible to the naked eye when they were moving at full strength. The men who dangled from their mounts as they raced into the trees were dragged across the ground with enough ferocity to tear not only their robes, but their skin and even their muscle tissue from their bodies, despite the fact that they were all cultivators with impressively resilient physical forms.

In the chaos, the surviving men, including the leader, got to their feet, and looked around wildly in terror as it became clear what had happened. When Master Xinya had died, all of the wards and enchantments she had placed to protect this clearing, and the passage that lead to it, had been undone. The rumbling that had caused the horses to make their escape was the sound of a thousand curious, hungry magical beasts making their way to that annoying bit of land that had been denied to them for so long. And there was no escape.