Sen so very badly wanted to ask the monk a mountain of questions, but he realized that it was ultimately a distraction. As interested as he was, and as much as he might want to come back and visit once those long-lost inhabitants came back, talking about it with the monk now would simply delay their return. Given that he had no idea how long it had been since they entered the ruins, he realized there was a question that should have been asked long since.

“Brother Khu, how long has it been for everyone outside of the barrier since we came into the ruins?”

The old monk frowned and offered a helpless shrug. “I cannot say with any certainty.”

“You don’t know?” asked Misty Peak, sounding wholly unconvinced.

“I did not construct the barrier. I know what it does, in general terms, but I cannot explain it in detail,” said the monk, before he weighed the look on Misty Peak’s face and continued. “You use a storage treasure, correct?”

“Yes,” said Misty Peak.

“How much do you know about how it functions? Can you explain it in detail?”

A look of grudging acceptance appeared on the fox woman’s face. “I think I see your point. But I want to go back to the whole people are coming back here thing.”

“No,” said Sen, earning a dirty look from the fox. “I’m just as curious as you are but that sounds like the kind of conversation that could take days. Given that we don’t know how long it’s been outside, how much longer do you want to stay in here? We could walk out there and discover it’s been decades. Was there anyone you care about that you left in not great circumstances? People who might think you abandoned them? Even if you don’t have anyone like that, I do. So, you can stay and ask all the questions you like, but I’m leaving as soon as Brother Khu points me toward the best way to leave.”

Sen could see the frustration on Misty Peak’s face. He understood it and even shared it, but he wasn’t willing to stay in the ruins with the passage of time so uncertain. It might have only been a few days or weeks outside. If he found out that was the case, he might feel bad that he rushed everyone out but not nearly as bad as he would feel if he found out they’d been stuck inside for years. He cringed to imagine what kind of disaster it would have caused if he simply vanished for that long. His teachers might literally be picking up pieces of the kingdom and shaking them to see if he fell out. Or, they might think that he met his end in some deserted corner of the kingdom and mourned his loss. They would be happy to discover that he wasn’t dead and might even just write the whole thing off as a cultivator misadventure with a happy ending.

He didn’t think Falling Leaf would respond with nearly so much calm. Given everything that she’d done for him over the years, he expected that she would take it personally. She’d understand that he got caught in a place where time moved differently. She might even forgive him for it, eventually, maybe. When he tried to imagine what that first conversation would be like, though, Sen shuddered. It would be ugly. When he realized it might be an unavoidable conversation no matter what he did, that prompted another shiver of anticipatory dread. The transformed spider moved a little in Sen’s peripheral vision. Sen felt like an ass. He’d left the transformed spider out of the conversation entirely. He turned away from the baleful stare of Misty Peak to address Glimmer of Night.

“You’ll have to decide for yourself whether you want to leave now or stay and ask questions.”

The spider took a long moment to respond. “These are human concerns. I’ll warn my kind that humans will return here. Beyond that, I have no interest.”

That was easier than expected, thought Sen. He turned back to Brother Khu, doing everything in his power to not actually look at Misty Peak as he did.

“Is there a trick to leaving? Some special path we need to follow to avoid the mandala?”

The monk shook his head. “You have already tread the mandala and gleaned whatever insights you will from it. For you, this place is just an empty city now.”

Sen thought it might work that way, but he was so inexperienced with such things that he had wanted confirmation from a more knowledgeable source. He was a little disappointed that he couldn’t use the mandala again under better circumstances. On the other hand, that’s often how it was with unexpected boons. He couldn’t be too unhappy that it was a one-time thing. It was like finding a particularly potent natural treasure in the wilds. You didn’t get angry because you only found one. You were just thankful that luck or fate smiled on you that day. Plus, his own thoughts on the matter aside, it was entirely possible that he had gotten everything he could from the mandala.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

It was something from a tradition and belief system entirely outside of cultivation. While some ideas and insights might cross over between those systems, it stood to reason that many would or even could not. He’d just have to be happy with what he had learned. After all, he hadn’t been stuck with a transformation he didn’t want or get set on fire by his ancestors. He’d just come to terms with some things that had been troubling him for a long time. Of the three people who walked that mandala, he thought it was entirely possible that he had the easiest time of it. Of course, that almost certainly meant he hadn’t gotten the most from it. However, he was so used to every advancement and insight coming hand-in-hand with a world of pain that he was willing to trade a lesser experience for less agony this one time. He briefly wondered if that made him a bad cultivator, but it wasn’t like he’d made a knowing decision to take the easy road. Things just played out that way. Shaking his head, he set those concerns aside and offered the old monk a bow.

“Brother Khu, it was very nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” said the old monk. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll see each other again if our fates and karmas dictate it.”

Misty Peak looked ready to mutiny against the unfairness of Sen’s unilateral decision. He thought she might decide to stay and satisfy her curiosity. Part of him hoped that she might. Then, he could go and do the things he needed to do and pick her brain about what she learned down the road. And he was quite certain that there would be a time down the road. Regardless of what happened with Laughing River, she seemed to enjoy vexing him a little too much to give up something that fun forever. No, even if they parted ways here, Sen was confident she would turn up again at some profoundly inconvenient time, throwing around innuendo and wildly inappropriate suggestions. Shi Ping would love her, thought Sen. After a bit of hemming and hawing, the fox woman exchanged goodbyes with the old monk. Glimmer of Night, who had looked increasingly bored, simply exchanged nods with Brother Khu before turning expectant eyes on Sen.

Sen led them out into the city. He half expected to once more find them being turned this way and that by whatever power fueled the mandala, but nothing happened. They simply moved through empty streets back toward the spot where they had entered the city. Sen had given a lot of thought to where the best place to depart the ruins would be. It had been something of a toss-up for him. Where they entered came with the advantage of being the closest spot to the galehouse. The stone structure wasn’t a proper fortress, but it was supported and reinforced by a number of formations. That made it a place they could retreat to that would provide them with at least some protection. The other option was to simply exit the ruins at a randomly selected spot. Sen had given that option a lot of thought. He worried that the spot where they entered would be guarded. If they just left somewhere at random, they’d only need to deal with whatever part of the horde happened to be there. In the end, though, he’d settled on leaving the ruins near to where they’d come in. If nothing else, it was on the opposite side from where the second formation he’d set up would be hurling fire and lightning.

“We could have stayed and asked a few questions,” complained Misty Peak, breaking the silence for the first time.

“You can always go back,” said Sen. “I have good reasons to leave now. Glimmer of Night doesn’t want to ask anything. Nobody is making you leave now.”

“You know full well that I can’t get past that horde by myself. If it was just devilish beasts, maybe I could do it. Not with all those spirits out there.”

To Sen’s surprise, Glimmer of Night asked the question that popped into Sen’s mind. “Why would the spirits matter?”

“Too many kinds of spirits just see right through illusions, and I can’t just shake off a possession attempt.”

Sen stopped walking to look at the fox woman. “How in the world would I have known any of that?”

Misty Peak stared at him with her mouth half open before she shook her head. “I keep forgetting that you’re not really a fox. Fine. I guess you wouldn’t know full well that I can’t get out of here by myself. Still, how can you just ignore that people who have been gone for thousands of years are just going to come back? Where did they go? Why did they go?”

Sen started walking again. “I want to know all of those things too. Just not badly enough to stay when years could be flashing by outside.”

“Who could possibly be so important that you’d give up finding out about all of that to get back to them?”

“A madwoman,” said Sen. “The kind would very likely hold it against me until the end of time if I took any longer than absolutely necessary to get back.”

“You’re rushing out of here because you’ve got some overly sensitive lover waiting for you?”

Sen snorted. “Careful now. Your envy is showing, but I didn’t mean a lover. I also wasn’t exaggerating. I meant an actual madwoman. She just happens to be my teacher at the moment. I’m already expecting to mountain of misery for taking as long as I have.”

Misty Peak didn’t seem to know quite what to do with that information and fell silent. As they drew near to where Sen planned to exit the ruins, he pulled the beast core he’d linked to the second formation out of his storage ring. He stared down at it and felt their odds of survival drop precipitously. Misty Peak seemed to pick up on his sudden change in mood.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I can’t trigger the other formation,” he said, showing them the beast core. “I was going to use this but the link is broken.”

Misty Peak and Glimmer of Night both eyed the beast core.

“How was it broken?” asked the fox woman.

“It’s not like it was made by the gods. It probably happened when the mandala took me wherever it took me. I didn’t design it to work across different planes of existence. It was iffy just taking across the barrier.”

“So, what do we do?” asked Misty Peak.

“Well, given that we’re probably going to have to fight that horde on the way out, I suggest we eat a meal.”

The fox gave him an incredulous look. “Eat? You want to eat? At a time like this?”

Glimmer of Night came to Sen’s rescue.

“No reason to die hungry,” observed the spider.