Chang-li and Joshi leaned over the edge of the cloud, staring at the items that they soared over a vast landscape of treasures.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Joshi asked.

From here, Chang-li could see they were heading up a slope of golden coins toward a black pillar rising out of the hoard. "I think so," he said.

As they approached, a black pillar rose a little more than man-high from the top of a mountain of treasure. Chang-li urged the cloud higher and soon they reached the base of the column. A figure stood atop it, looking down at them. Mist swirled about, and it took him a moment to make out the form of a woman. The fog clung to her body, obscuring her, shifting now and then to reveal a flash of shoulder, a hint of ankle. Her head and arms were free of the cloud, which draped around her like a length of cloth. Her hair was as white as the mist and streamed down her head to join with it, dissolving into her surrounding cloud. She extended a hand and beckoned to them while they were still some ways off.

"I hope that's the guide Noren mentioned," Joshi said. Chang-li could feel him tensing as he prepared to fight.

Chang-li drove his cloud straight up to the pillar. There it stopped, refusing to rise any higher than the base of the pillar itself. He brought the cloud against the base and they hooked their elbows over it and hauled themselves up to stand on top.

The woman towered over them; she was eight feet tall. There were tiny lights glimmering in her hair, shifting, fading in and out. Her eyes were strange, perfect green emeralds without pupil or iris. But she stared straight at them as though staring into their souls.

Chang-li bowed low.

"I am Cultivator Chang-li of the Morning Mist Sect. Greetings."

"Welcome, Cultivator Chang-li," the woman said.

Joshi bent his head over his hands and introduced himself as well. The woman repeated her greetings. "You claim the name of Morning Mist. I am the guardian of the Vault of Morning Mist. Prove to me that you are members of the sect."

Joshi held up his hand, showing the ring.

"Anyone can wear a ring," the woman dismissed.

Chang-li began Swirling Mists, the cycling pattern that he had learned from Wulan's notes.

She nodded. "You have been taught by someone from Morning Mist, no doubt."

"The Guardian at the Gate recognized me," Chang-li said.

"The Guardian at the Gate is a child," the woman dismissed, "easily fooled. I have been guarding this vault for ten thousand years."

Chang-li boggled. "Morning Mist is that old?"

"Not in the form you know it," the woman said, smiling at him. "Nor, it seems, have you been taught your own sect's history."

Chang-li kicked himself for revealing that he didn't know as much about the sect as he should. The guardian woman continued. "But come, why are you here? And answer quickly. I can feel your attempts to veil yourself. You have been taught well, but it's crude. Sooner or later, my other half will notice, and then there will be a price to pay."

"You mean the dragon," Joshi said, looking uneasily overhead. "Magen, keep watch." There was no sign of the beast.

"I do," the woman said, and sighed. "And I must confess to you, until we are reunited and restored, I am not what I once was. I can help you, but... not as I should. Why are you here?"

Chang-li felt suddenly ridiculous. He laced his hands behind his back so he'd have something to keep them occupied. "The Grandmaster of Morning Mist has sent us in seeking an object. He couldn't tell us what it was or what it did, and he couldn't enter himself because of the guardian." He nodded skyward. "But he said you would help us."

"Did he?" the woman said. "Sending in juniors rather than seeking to restore what was broken. That was ill done, perhaps. You must be prepared to flee as soon as you have what you've come for. So, you are here on an errand for your master. What do you seek for yourselves?"

Her words hung in the air. Chang-li considered them, wondering if they were a trap, but Joshi was already speaking.

"The power to aid my people. They are far from here, and their freedom is threatened by invaders. I need to return with the ability to protect them, to make them strong enough to stand up against the might of the Emperor."

"And you," the woman said, turning to Chang-li. "What is it you want?"

Chang-li hesitated. His first inclination was to say knowledge, but there was so much knowledge already at his fingertips here, thanks to the libraries of the sect. "I want..." He paused, seeking the right words, grasping at them, his hands making a seizing motion as he thought. "I want to be able to focus on cultivation," he said at last, letting his exasperation boil up to the surface. "I keep getting involved in outside matters that get in the way of me just focusing on advancement and on my own cycling."

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"Then you misunderstand the purpose of advancement," the woman told him. "It was not to progress for the sake of progression. You progress in order to attain a goal. What is your goal? Mere knowledge is never enough. Sooner or later, the one who seeks after mere knowledge finds he has drawn away from the world, or the world has drawn away from him. He ends his days in a tower with a sack of manuscripts and no disciples to learn from him. Is that what you desire?"

Part of Chang-li thought that yes, that sounded very peaceful, but the greater part of him recoiled. He shook his head. "No. No, you're right. But I want the freedom to teach my disciples without being so concerned about politics and the Emperor and which Prism is attacking who. I don't want to have to spend time worrying about if we're going to have the funds to buy into the next tower, and if we've got the right stamps and our licenses to do it. I want the freedom to progress." He felt foolish. "But I'm sure there's nothing in this vault that will help me with that."

"You might be surprised," the woman said. " Much of what you want would be answered with a bag full of the coins and jewels that we have scattered around this place."

She was smiling at him, and something clicked into place. The lecture from Nai Hong, the feel of this place, the way Noren had opened a passage in.

"This place is like soulspace, isn't it? The way I can open my soulspace and store something in it. Prisms and such can actually go inside their own soulspace, but they can't reach anyone else's. That's what Nai Hong said." It also made him think of how towers were bigger on the inside than the out, but he wasn't sure those worked on the same principle. There was a feel to this vault that was different from a tower.

"You are correct," the woman said.

"So how are we able to enter this place? It's not our own soulspace."

"It is much easier to do if you are at the temporal location already attuned to this space," the Morning Mist guardian told him. "

"If only there was a way for me to bring myself here again and connect it to my own soulspace," Chang-li said, thinking of how that would put all these riches at his disposal. He didn't know anything about the theory of void space. Nai Hong had said that it was made of lumos, or that lumos held back the void to allow entry into these small pockets, something like that. The Morning Mist woman looked at him, her solid green eyes revealing nothing of what she was thinking. "You suppose you were the only cultivator in all of history to have wanted such a thing?"

Chang-li felt foolish. Of course the vault of a sect like this would be protected. No doubt the wards around it prevented him from doing exactly what he was trying to do, if void space even allowed such a thing in the first place.

"However," the woman said, "there is a way to do exactly what you are suggesting. Unfortunately, you would have to defeat the guardian of the vault."

Well, so much for that idea. Chang-li sighed. "Right, then. Let's just get what we came for and get out of here."

The guardian woman gestured. "A cultivator does not ask. A cultivator takes."

From nowhere appeared a rack of weapons. There were blades of every shape and size: dirks, daggers, short swords, long swords, broadswords, katanas, rapiers, weapons he didn't have a name for. There were spears, bows, axes, whips.

"You ask for power," she told Joshi. "These have power. I cannot give you weapons to equip others. My charge is to allow members of Morning Mist who have been vouched for by their sect leader to take what they need for themselves only. But you two may choose as you like."

"Sect leaders would just let people enter and take anything they liked?" Chang-li asked.

The woman spread her arms wide. "This vault represents the treasures that Morning Mist has brought here for as long as it has existed, thousands and thousands of years. Things that look valuable to you are worthless dross to a cultivator at the Lux Dominator stage. They can bring a thousand swords that they've taken from a sect of defeated enemies and leave them here for underlings to take."

That made sense. Chang-li studied the rack. He picked up a sword which had a slim blade with a double fuller down the middle. It didn't feel quite right good in his hands, though he could tell it had great potential, so he set it aside. Next, he picked up a sword similar in design to the one he used now, a thin blade easily wielded with one hand. He cycled and felt how his lux slid up through the blade easily. This was a cultivator's sword forged by someone who understood how lux should be used, doubtless able to handle countless patterns. He liked its feel.

The guide nodded to him. "The Liar's Blade," she said. "Interesting choice. It has called to you, I see."

"Why is it called that?"

She smiled. "Not my tale to tell. Perhaps you will learn."

A little disconcerted, Chang-li debated returning it to the rack and taking another, but it felt good in his hand.

Meanwhile, Joshi was examining the rack. He shook his head. "I do not feel right with a blade in my hand on the battlefield. I prefer my fists."

"And to these people that you seek to lead and defend, they will respect you if you fight in such a manner?" the woman challenged.

Joshi hesitated. Then he pulled a trio of short spears from the rack. They looked to Chang-li as if they went together, the three heads gleaming and carved with characters he couldn't read.

"These are javelins," he told Chang-li, seeing him looking. "When fighting from horseback, they are a most effective weapon." But he gestured. "I had something else in mind. I was hoping for… I don't know." He made to put the javelins back, but she raised a hand to stop him.

"What you need is not weapons, but allies and plans. Those, I cannot give you," the woman said. "But don't dismiss these javelins so easily. They are the Three Tongues of the Hydra and they have many interesting abilities."

There was a keening noise overhead. They froze and looked. The dragon circled. It came lower.

"It's found us," the woman said. "You must prepare to flee."

Chang-li looked up as the dragon dived in. The woman backed away. Chang-li grabbed her hands in his, looked straight into her emerald eyes. He concentrated hard.

"You're here to help us get what we need? Then help me! What I want most in the world is a way past that dragon. And the thing we came for," he added quickly aloud.

The woman laughed. Her fingers left his. She began to dissolve into mist. "This is both," she said.

Something clattered onto the middle of the platform. An enormous crystal, disc-shaped, larger than Chang-li's head, on a golden chain. He picked it up, just as the dragon raced toward them.

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