Inner Disciple Yunejo of the Sect of Sacred Tears was not having a good time. So far during his illustrious military career, he had accepted some questionable orders as long as things proceeded smoothly. He liked to think that he was fulfilling his responsibilities to the sect. They had granted him his life and his status as a Peak Foundation Stage cultivator, and so he had to make sacrifices to repay that debt.

It was easy not to question the truth as long as their mission proceeded according to plan. Better for others to be the ones being sacrificed, not him.

His venerable elders had failed, for the first time, to properly deliver on that front. They hadn’t told him about the oppressive aura throughout the entire enemy territory, for one. Dealing with a fire domain was manageable for any competent Water cultivator, but this qi was…different. It burned away all talismans, barriers, techniques, formations--no magic or sorcery was sufficient to deter its gradual annihilation.

That had only been the first omen of what had turned into an unmitigated disaster.

Yunejo was sweating. He hated sweating. The other four members of his cohort should have been cooling him with soothing treasures and abilities, but they were conserving their resources for now. All of them had seen how the tides were turning in this battle.

Their group kept close to the ground, sneaking across the desert like wayward insects as birds of prey swooped overhead. After all, they had seen proof of what had so far only been hushed rumors among his sect--a glimpse of the Vessel of the Phoenix herself flying overhead like a meteor, wreathed in ethereal wings. She had obliterated their squadron in passing. Hadn't even bothered to glance down at them. Yunejo and his cohort had only survived because they had been on the outskirts of that cataclysmic wrath.

This was supposed to be the stepping stone for his ascension. The other members of his cohort were in the peak of the Foundation Stage, while he was on the very cusp of a breakthrough. His force would have been considered elite in old times, before outsiders like Leviathan turned their eyes toward the desert. Now, their level was the bare minimum to survive in this battle.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“Hostiles ahead,” said Yora.

Yunejo acknowledged their farseer’s comment without glancing at her. The sight of her was...unpleasant. She was one of those who had survived Leviathan’s cruel alchemy, only to be irreparably transfigured by the process. The image of her popped up in his mind, unbidden---most of her upper head dominated by one large, unblinking eye, the iris seafoam blue, framed by a shock of stringy hair like overgrown eyelashes. Beneath the bulging ocular mass was a sultry mouth, always curled in a sneer. All this atop a slender, alluring figure, made almost grotesque by the contrast.

She was useful, however. Yunejo scanned the horizon for a while and, despite his superior soul, couldn’t detect whatever their farseer had noticed.

Hopefully nothing serious was in this area. On most sides, the Wandering Phoenix Tribe had driven back the invading forces with an unexpected offensive rush. Yunejo’s cohort had been forced to slip behind the fighting, making their way closer to the heart of the enemy. They were deep behind enemy lines, surviving in the gaps.

Yunejo evaporated the sweat across his body with a brief flex of his will. Now that a true threat had emerged, all of his complaints had died off, replaced with cold determination. He manipulated a bit of his precious Water qi to form a magnifying lens in front of his right eye. Just barely, he could make out four distinct shapes in the distance: two figures charging across the ground, one swooping above them with draconic wings, and what looked like a floating building made out of a vibrant yellow-orange metal trailing behind. He'd seen stranger sights before, but this one managed to make his mouth feel even drier.

“Have they spotted us?” he asked Yora, attempting to ignore her figure in his periphery.

“Yes,” she said, her tone neutral. “Their auras are tightly controlled, but I would estimate that the airborne one and the white metallic figure are both well into Nascent Soul. The third is difficult to guess at. They are leaking an exorbitant amount of Earth-aspected qi, but it’s very unrefined. I’d estimate Peak Foundation Stage, but possibly bonded to a marid? I recommend we surrender.”

“You recommend we surrender,” Yunejo echoed back, sneering. “We all know how traitors and deserters are punished. This battle is too important to give up. The Waterfall Palace will be sending reinforcements soon. Until then, we hold on.”

Disappointingly, none of the others responded. They knew what his words signified.

Yunejo wiped his nose with the back of his hand, then gestured toward the youngest and weakest member of their cohort. “Our apologies, Outer Disciple Polar. Your sacrifice will be remembered.”

Polar was a short, non-descript man with moist eyes. Given his mundane appearance despite being a cultivator, he must have been quite the hideous sight before he progressed along the path of ascension. As their healer, Polar had managed to avoid his fate until now; two lesser members of their cohort had been selected ahead of him to buy the rest of them a chance.

It was always interesting to see how some people responded to being sacrificed. Many of them raged against the heavens, as befitted a cultivator. Polar merely stepped forward, eyes downcast, breathing in quick, panicked bursts like a cornered animal. That always made things easier. Though Yunejo couldn’t help but notice the looks being shared between the others. They knew their numbers were dwindling, that the chance they would be sacrificed next had become astronomical. If Polar had protested, they may have actually joined forces and mutinied.

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A problem for another time. For now, survival was paramount.

Yunejo grasped Polar’s face in one hand and circulated his Fourth Sphere of Sacrifice technique. Skin shriveled, pulled tight against gaunt cheekbones; teary eyes lost their luster, drifted closed, never to open again. Within moments, all of the vitality had been drained from Polar’s body, leaving an emaciated corpse that teetered to the side before collapsing.

Face locked in a savage, defiant grin, Yunejo condensed all of his former companion’s stolen qi into a rotating orb no larger than a marble. Amplified by his technique, the sacrificial energy vibrated with barely-contained potency. He pointed at the incoming figures, honing in on the only worthwhile target. They were closing in at a tremendous speed, though not fast enough to avoid this deathblow.

Through his magnifying lens, Yunejo could make out the victim: a gigantic desert native, the ground seeming to tremble beneath his feet. Even from a distance, the young man was a striking figure--handsome in a rough, jagged way, his tanned skin almost glowing with inner radiance. There was a certain metaphysical weight behind the man that made Yunejo agree with Yora's estimation that he may be bonded with a marid-class spirit.

Who was this? Some heaven's chosen and his Spirit Guardians? A seed of doubt popped up in Yunejo's mind, but he quickly dismissed it.

The poor bastard couldn’t have much longer than a couple decades. No doubt he had lived a life blessed by the heavens until this very moment.

He won’t see another five seconds.

A series of magnifying foci appeared in ten-foot intervals, meant to guide and expand Yunejo’s devastating strike. Overkill, but the Nascent Soul cultivators may have had some defensive trinkets that would activate, possibly weakening the deathblow.

“Die,” Yunejo cursed, pouring all of his core into the attack, along with Polar’s sacrificed essence.

He fired.

* * *

Frowning, Cyril slapped a random technique aside with his augmented arm. Force reverberated throughout the limb, forcing him to grit his teeth, but he otherwise didn’t break his stride. The deflected beam of turquoise-and-crimson light tore a deep fissure across the sand dunes. If he had taken the technique head-on, no doubt it would have left a nasty burn, but his newfound constitution had reacted unconsciously, sheathing his arm in layers of darksteel. At the moment of impact, he had also channeled a quick Pressure to clash with the incoming technique, throwing it off course.

For what felt like the hundredth time, Cyril reviewed his list of Resistances and sighed. Deflecting that technique had improved his Water and Blood defenses by a measly 0.1%. He also suspected that the scaling was non-linear, based on the noticeable slowing of progress from external energy sources. Wind, for instance, had completely stagnated now that the paltry amount of air resistance he experienced while running no longer provided enough stimulation.

Cyril and his companions wasted a few precious minutes capturing his attackers. Loras forced them to expel their remaining qi into the air harmlessly, then shoved the four of them into their mobile prison. One of them, a gorgeous woman with an unfortunate cyclopean affliction, stared at Cyril the entire time before stepping through the entrance. He winked at her, trying his best to project a sense of false cheer.

Behind her trudged a young master, his arrogant face pale and sullen, as if he had just seen the revenant of a disappointed ancestor. The others had been watching that one with a curious sort of malice. If Cyril was a betting man--which he was-- he would have wagered the contents of his storage ring that the young master was not going to survive long locked up with his companions. Loras gave that one a particularly rough shove, sending him flying into the obsidian-lined prison.

Once the last of them had been herded inside and the entrance sealed shut, Loras turned to Cyril and crossed his arms.

“You pull it this time."

Since they had left the central compound, Loras had floated the prison overhead with delicate threads of Gravity qi, a display of his effortless manipulation and casual might. In contrast, Cyril’s willshaping abilities extended mostly to crushing things at different angles and twirling up spirals.

Cyril eyed the reconstructed pagoda, trying his best to estimate how much it weighed. After a couple of hopeless moments, he concluded that it was a meaningless number. Instead, he channeled Mass qi for the first time in what felt like forever. He circulated it in the rhythm for lightening and rested his hand against the wall. The pagoda resisted the intrusion of his qi more than he expected. While there may have been a more elegant solution, he simply poured more energy into the technique until it suffused the building.

If Loras noticed such blatant cheating, he didn’t deign to comment. While his instructions had been vague, his tone had implied he expected his pupil to attempt to replicate his feat. That would have meant failure--the perfect excuse for a patronizing lesson.

Next, Cyril lashed out with pillars of Gravity qi in roughly the shape of a hand, seizing the building in a crushing grip. The construct was unstable and ugly as a troll’s paw, but he was able to maintain it through sheer concentration. He was beginning to notice that shaping hands and fingers had become easier since he had absorbed the Fragment of Behemoth into his alloy arm; it was as if his qi longed to once more assume the Titan of Earth’s form.

With a grunt, Cyril hauled the building off the ground. It rose into the air, buoyed upward in what was more of a continuous exertion of Pressure than anything. It certainly required some effort and looked ridiculous, but he was able to keep it levitating more or less indefinitely.

"You could have done worse," Loras admitted. "Though I suspect you will encounter some difficulty maintaining this spectacle once we start moving."

As if responding to his words, a soft voice drifted into the back of Cyril's mind---a distress call sent through Elys' Knowledge network. He still hadn't adjusted to the bizarre web of interconnected minds, but he could make out vague impressions of danger and helplessness, as well as an approximate direction. That signal was exactly what Cyril and his companions had been searching for until their prisoners had rudely interrupted them. The frontier of the battle was still far away, but isolated pockets of violence raged on throughout the perimeter. While he didn't feel quite ready to leap into the heart of the conflict, their trio could serve as reinforcements in strategic locations. Hopefully that would be enough to seal off some of the leaks in their defenses.

From their attentive looks, Cyril's companions must have had similar thoughts.

"Let's go," said Cyril. A small smile crept across his face as he stared off in the distance.

"What's with that look on your face?" Tyrin said.

Cyril glanced back at the building. "How far do you think I can throw this thing?"