Jon remembered having an appreciation for tattoos in his past life. As an art form but also by their permanence. If well taken care of they would hold up fine for years and years. But all the ones he had were done with ink and needles rather than slicing open the skin.

“The ideal Yao cultivator overwhelms their enemies with both sword and spells,” Dene lectured as she wiped the knife clean. “So we follow the example of Warrior Ogun and Hunter Oxossi. On a deeper level, they represent the qualities we must strive to display. The Warrior’s strength and the Hunter’s intelligence. Courage and craftiness.”

“Brawn and brain,” Jon said with a nod. “Got it.” His shoulder stung, a four-petal flower oozing blood down his arm. He watched as his mother carefully placed the clean knife in front of the Warrior statuette as a tribute of sorts. “When do we get back to training?”

Back on Earth and since becoming an adult, there were very few things he ever felt excited about. The more of the world he experienced, the less it surprised him until most things failed to elicit a reaction. 

He could remember in vivid detail the first time he shot a rifle. The smell of gunpowder, the stock kicking against his shoulder, the rifle almost escaping his grip; all of it was imprinted on his brain. After repeating the same action tens of thousands of times, he could do it with barely a thought.

First time with a woman. Jon met her at a bar while he and his fellow marines celebrated their graduation from boot camp. She was pretty, with long black hair and a tank top from a metal band. They went back to her place, and he left in the morning, a dumb grin on his face after the best night of his life. 

On the other hand, he couldn’t remember a single thing about the last one.

In his final years on Earth, Jon felt disenchanted about everything in life, and for a while, he wondered if there was something broken in him. Then his brother died and Jon realized he could still care enough to feel anger, to do something completely reckless to avenge the only family he had left.

He took a deep breath. That life was only in his memories now. This was Cerisia rather than Earth, and he once again felt like a happy child with stars in his eyes. 

No, not just felt. He was a child, wide-eyed and amazed at seemingly banal things. Cultivation, for instance, which was part of everyday life in Cerisia. It allowed his mother, a fifty years old woman, to carry a fully grown boar on her back for miles with barely a sweat. She was faster and stronger than he ever managed to be back on Earth. And that’s before counting the spells which raised her from a super soldier into a one-woman army.

Jon couldn’t wait to become as powerful as her.

“Training is a waste without proper rest, so that’s what you will do today. Tomorrow I’ll teach more about spells. And when the cuts get fully healed we resume training in full.”

Jon’s shoulders slumped. “So I’m supposed to sit around doing nothing?”

“You can sleep to pass the time.”

“It’s barely noon.”

“Lots of time to sleep then.”

Jon groaned. He wanted to be learning more about this world, about cultivation, about… “Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Could you tell me about my father?”

Dene raised an eyebrow at him, saying nothing.

“When I got the markings for the first time you told me I would be considered a full member of the tribe. Shouldn’t that entail some trust?”

His mother eyed him for painfully long seconds. Her gaze flicked to and fro his hair, eyes, and fresh markings. Finally, she drew a long breath and then exhaled. “He is a northerner. You’ve probably figured out as much.”

Jon nodded. The kid had already started to suspect it after seeing all the white-skinned people in the village nearby. Being called a “half-breed” by the blacksmith only solidified the boy’s suspicions. “Is he from Greenflower?”

“No. He is from The Great Plains, a neighboring duchy to the east. It’s where I was taken to after the tribe fell. We tried to escape together.” She turned her head to the side as if searching for someone. “It obviously didn’t go as planned.”

“That’s it?” Jon asked after it became clear she was done talking. “What is he like? How did you meet? Where is he now? Why did the tribe fall in the first place? When–”

She raised an open palm to interrupt him. “If I’m going to answer all these questions then I might as well start from the beginning, and that’s too long a story.”

“We have a lot of time, you said so yourself.”

“...fine then.” Without another word, Dene stood up and strode into her bedroom. Jon heard rummaging, and then she returned with a rough scroll and a closed box. “Did I ever tell you about the other desert tribes?”

“Only that there’s a lot of them.”

“As many as there are towns and villages here in the north, each with their own customs and beliefs.” She placed both elbows on the table, joined her hands, and looked at the statuettes. “Some worship the same Orishas as us, though they might have more regard for Blacksmith Ogun than the Warrior, or they might believe Hunter Oxossi uses a bow and arrow rather than spells. There are those who worship only a single Orisha while others revere an entire pantheon instead.

“But no matter how far you look, from the driest desert to the most plentiful oasis, you won’t find another Benefactor. Why?” Jon shrugged at the question, and she went on. “The faith in the Orishas can be traced back to long ago, to when the desert once stood united and strong. Except for the Benefactor. She appeared much later than that. And I do mean appeared.

“Mansa Djata Yao, an ancestor of you and I, wrote that She simply materialized one day at the village center. With a wave of the hand, She opened up a giant hole in the ground, deeper than any Geomancer could ever hope to dig. At the bottom was an ancient city, the air so thick with mana that one could feel it on their skin. So much mana that one could cultivate twice as fast with half the effort.”

“Really?” Jon asked, somewhat incredulous. If they had such a thing, then he couldn’t understand how the tribe was destroyed in the first place.

“Yes. If you had been born in the tribe then I wager you would be halfway to Crusader and Archmage by now. And that’s only the beginning. The city is layered, with the hole dropping into the Outskirts, a circular flatland in between the solid underground rocks and the gated walls that surround the rest of the city.

“Deeper inside is the Monolith Garden. Mana is even more concentrated there, but that’s not even the best part. Throughout the area are thousands upon thousands of monoliths, each inscribed with runes that seem to shift and flow the more you study them. Those fortunate enough might gain insights into new ways to cultivate or cast spells.

“Lastly, there’s the central area.”

Jon looked expectantly toward his mother. “...and? What’s it like?”

“We don’t know. The three areas are separated by two circular walls. One must survive a test to pass through the gates. The first test is simple enough, requiring one to be either a Crusader or an Archmage. To pass the second test though, one must be both a Paladin and a Warlock and also be at most thirty years old.”

“Is it that hard?”

“Let me put it this way. In the almost a thousand years since then, no one ever managed to pass the second test. They either lacked the cultivation and perished or they were too old and the gates remained closed. If we had a few more years then maybe…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now. No secret lasts forever, no matter how much we try.

“Nearby tribes noticed the change as the Yao became stronger. Suspicions turned into rumors that turned into tall stories, growing more absurd with each retelling until eventually resembling the truth. By the time it reached the ears of someone willing to believe it and with the power to investigate, the stories told of an ancient city in the heart of the desert full of cultivation secrets. Louis Dufeu, heir to the Lisbleus Crown, raised banners and marched south, subjugating every tribe on his path until reaching our doorstep.

“Our warriors fought valiantly, paying back twofold for each one who fell. But the northerners had the numbers advantage, and every loss cost us dearly. In the end, we had no more Paladins nor Warlocks able to keep fighting, all dead or disabled.”