'Longstep' Beryl stepped out of a car into an unfortunately familiar parking lot; in his hand, he held a map.

He closed the door and consulted the map, rotating his body to face a single direction and hobbled that way. As usual, his every step took him slightly farther than it should have, turning what should have been the speed of an old, injured man limping forward into what would be a jogging speed for a much younger, much fitter man.

He didn't spend that much time canvassing the lot. He had done so already, after all, and he stopped as soon as the map led him to the back wall of a building, where a poorly-placed drainage pipe sent the foul Capital City rainwater to puddle in the cracks of the asphalt.

He turned around and stepped once more. The Aether twisted before his foot landed, and another two steps brought him to the door of the car; he opened it and stepped inside.

"Nothing," he said to the driver. "Bring us to the next location. Any updates from the Aquamarine's force?"

"Yes, sir," the driver said, shifting gears. "I'm afraid there's been no recent updates, sir."

----------------------------------------

Working his way down the other side of the path outlined on their shared map, Lyncis Aquamarine was in discussion with a thrift shop owner for the description of any men Nash's age who had recently entered the shop.

The owner was rather unhelpful, and after a few minutes of meandering conversation, Lyncis left without a word.

His face furrowed, he stepped back into his own team's van, his hand resting on the hilt of the sword at his belt.

----------------------------------------

The Boss sat in a luxury vehicle parked outside of an opium den, his anger dissipated. He sat there once more unusually calm, no smoke escaping from beneath his skin even though he sat there in pain.

A back-alley doctor worked frantically at his shirtless form, applying disinfecting wipes as gently as he could to the dozens of scratches that dripped blood down the Boss's back. Once he was done with one, he set an adhesive medical pad on it before wrapping it with more bandages; to the bruises he applied an odd-smelling ointment that shifted in color depending on where you looked at the scintillating goop.

Eventually, he was done with the back, and moved onto one arm. That didn't take as long as the back, though only due to it having less surface area to cover; the wounds were denser there, if anything.

Through the ministrations, the Boss sat silently. In one hand he held a bottle of brandy, and in the other a lit cigarette. He brought each up to his mouth, calming the near imperceptible shake of his hands.

"I finally killed him," he muttered under his breath.

The doctor (who did not deserve an upper-case title, as he was only licensed to perform chiropracty,) paused. "Sorry sir," he said, his voice wavering, "Did you say something?"

The Boss's head turned, and his face held nothing but anger.

"Understood, sir, I'll be quiet," the doctor said. He returned to his work, doing his best to stay out of the Boss's field of vision and refraining from making any further noise.

He took a long swig that drained the remainder of the bottle and tossed the empty glass out the window to shatter on the parking lot asphalt.

The doctor flinched at the noise, accidentally pressing his ointment-covered fingers too deeply on one of the Boss's bruises, and froze in realization of what he had just done.

"Do your job, you hack," the Boss said, putting the cigarette into his mouth.

Through the obstruction, he chastised the doctor again. "You're supposed to fix it, not make it worse. Do that again and you'll be treating yourself, if you're even able."

"Understood, sir," the doctor barely managed to squeak out.

"Heh," the Boss chuckled to himself. "You're dead now, martial brother. You can't call me worthless trash anymore, you corpse," he mumbled, a small smile appearing on his face as he looked at the limp body in the passenger seat of the car.

"Now, should I burn you or crush you or feed you to rats? Or maybe I'll keep you - you and the other trash together, buried where I can always find you and laugh."

He tossed the cigarette butt away, grinding it into the floor of the car with his boot.

"If I'm really nothing, what are you? What can you do that I can't anymore, worm food? Soon, the Emerald will join you and it'll all be alright again."

"It'll all make sense again soon."

----------------------------------------

Nash Emerald had just finished his shopping at a rather sparsely stocked grocery store, having managed to navigate the aisles dotted with listless employees and get the single self-checkout machine to accept his cash payment with minimal finagling.

He collected the cheap staple food in the provided plastic bags, the somehow 'chalky' fluorescent lights making everything appear washed-out and powdery in the way that made no sense to anyone or anything except for the unconscious associations built up in Nash's head. All of the bags slid onto one arm, he left the store, then the lot, then the block, walking through the maze of poorly-maintained sidewalk and crossing several many-laned stroads on the way back to his apartment.

Across the street from the apartment building, he halted; a van he did not recognize had parked outside.

Unmarked, so not a repair or moving van, he thought, his hand reaching into his jacket, brushing against where his knife was strapped to the clothing. Could be a personal vehicle, but pretty big for that. Plus, it's in much too good repair to be used frequently - no scratches, a fresh coat of paint, no rust on the exposed metal. Plus -

He squinted, and his cultivation-enhanced eyes picked out a few more details.

At the near-peak of the Second Calcification realm, his eyes were well above mortal limits; from here, he could just barely see the tread of the tires, made more difficult by the angle. Perfectly new tires, barely used. Is it even parked? I know the engine's still on - there's exhaust coming out the pipe.

Instead of crossing the street, he walked along the sidewalk and sat within the glass walls of a well-graffitied bus stop and sat down on the uncomfortable bench.

He sat his groceries next to him on the empty seat and pulled out his phone, slumping down to look at it; instead of any normal form of time-killing, he had his camera opened and heavily zoomed, in the hope that it would conceal his face while still allowing him to see the van.

Nothing happened for a few minutes, other than the bench becoming progressively more uncomfortable. The bus came and went, and a few people came off; for a moment, a few of them looked at him oddly as he made no move to get on, but they quickly lost interest.

Then, the door to the apartment swung open. Out walked a man dressed like a cultivator, who continued until he was in front of the van. He opened the car door and said something to the people inside, and the engine turned off, those waiting inside stepping out of the van in an orderly fashion. Every one wore formal clothing suitable for a security detail, and most had a sword at their waist.

Nash recognized the small patch sewed to their suit jackets as belonging to the Aquamarines, a branch family of the Emerald clan.

Ah. I'm screwed, aren't I?

Nash, now absolutely certain that they had found where he was staying, did his best to naturally poke at his phone and take subtle glances at his pursuers as they filtered into the small entrance of the cheap apartment building.

He kept waiting, in fact, until all of them had entered the building and more, stepping onto the next bus that came past (it was later than scheduled, of course,) without checking where it was heading.

Silently, he stood in the cramped public transport, one arm still holding onto his groceries and the other hanging off of the rail running along the top of the bus.

The intercom called off what stop was next and it simply passed beyond Nash, his concerns elsewhere.

I don't know how much they know, he considered, his fingers trying to tap but instead only managing to shift the wrinkles of the plastic bag. They could know what room I'm staying in, or are just finding it out, or only know the building. They might have a key or they might not - did I remember to jam the door with the phasing trick before I left?

The bus rolled to a stop with an alarming creaking sound. Nash shifted the plastic bags in his hand.

Even if they don't, it probably doesn't matter. They'll just break the door down if they can't get in; they're here on the orders of the Emerald clan, they can do what they want and everyone just has to suck it up.

The doors in the front closed as the last person got on the bus and sat down on the faded chair. Music blared from their phone, and several people sent frustrated glances their way. Nash, of course, ignored it. What do I do? That location's compromised now, and no doubt they'll be looking for whether I return to it.

Perhaps I need to stop reacting. Perhaps I need to finalize that one last channel and step into the Third... Then I can give them quite a surprise.

----------------------------------------

It was in a public 'park' that Nash planned to make his ascent to the Third Calcification.

The park itself barely deserved the name; it was little more than a looping asphalt track through a field of grass, dotted with a few sickly trees and rotting picnic tables. Nash was sitting on one of those picnic tables, on top of it rather than on the actual bench; it was cleaner, somehow, and sitting in the lotus position was a superstition for many when going through a breakthrough.

Due to his current inability to access his apartment, he lacked some of the supplies he would have preferred to make a breakthrough; namely, his large stack of encoded reference papers on everything from a basic outline of what to expect from the calcification process to the eccentricities of how lums moved through the channels while the Emerald family's cultivation technique was in use.

But beggars couldn't be choosers, after all. He chose to proceed anyway; he was confident enough in his abilities, and the only thing he could actually do to definitively increase his chances would be by doing it in one of the specialized cultivation chambers of the Emerald estate. Unfortunately, he was unable to use those, for obvious reasons.

His physical eyes closed. Lums entered his optic nerve and activated his Greater Luminiferous Vision.

He could see nothing except for the Aether; the endless expanse empty except for where light vibrated the ever-present medium of Aether and the channels of cultivators walking through the endless, floorless abyss.

He turned his gaze down to look inward and beheld his channels the best he could - pity he had no Aether-mirror with him, as they were rather useful for this process despite their expense - and saw the softly glowing runes of his Sternum Etching as he agitated his channels.

Hanging off of the runes, etched both onto his bones and their position in the Aether, was a bubble of Densified Aether the size of both of his fists, drooping down like a water balloon superglued to a wall.

He breathed, slowly and surely. With his inhalation, he drew lums from his Sternum Etching and sent them first to his newest channel, the one he had took to calling the Emerald Flail (rather tentatively,) and began to bring it up to the standard of his other channels.

He had already been working on it, every day since it had been created; each minute tweak of the channel eliminated inefficiencies and reduced the cost in lums when used, as well as making it more responsive to his control.

His previous efforts with the channel soon paid off, and it had reached the peak of the Second Calcification, on par with his other channels.

It would only grow more difficult from here; as of now, the process was only so easy because of the relative simplicity of the channel, his high-grade cultivation technique, and how much experience he had with it. Even so, with it raised to the Second Calcification - and hopefully soon the Third - it would become much more difficult to adjust it if any problems arose.

Not impossible. But the closer he got to the soft limit of the Fourth (at least for his family,) even the simple act of adding new channels would become a feat unto itself.

That had been the reason he had been delaying his advancement, but he clamped down on the growing anxiety.

They'll be expecting a Second Calcification cultivator, with maybe a few extra trash channels to catch them off guard. I can still adjust it, even in the Third, if I had to.

He exhaled, and forced his lums to still for a moment. Within those few seconds after the exhale, nothing was moving within his channels except for the thin trickle going towards his Greater Luminiferous Vision channel.

Reluctantly, he shut that off too - he needed to upgrade it as well, of course, and couldn't do it while it was being used.

From here, he had to work blind, only that strange cousin of proprioception to help him guide the techniques working through his entire Aether-body.

He focused on the Emerald cultivation technique and began to calcify all of his channels simultaneously.

----------------------------------------

'Longstep' Beryl paced around the cramped apartment that the Young Master had apparently been staying at. All around him were members of the Aquamarine family; trackers, technology experts, and swordsmen.

So many swordsmen - apparently the Aquamarines styled themselves as sword cultivators. What a joke* Beryl thought.

Beryl brushed aside the curtain dividing the one room in two and looked beyond it, looking at two of the few (and very cheap) furnishings that decorated the small abode.

His nose wrinkled. It was kept clean enough, he supposed, for a single cultivator Nash's age living without any servants, though such a lifestyle was unsuitable for the heir to the prestigious Emerald family.

"Sir?" one of the Aquamarine family cultivators said, their hands clasped behind their back. Beryl turned around and nodded to them, and they continued. "Senior Beryl, there is a cache of what seems to be technique descriptions in this plastic tub. I cannot read them myself, but -"

"Good, good," Beryl said, interrupting the younger man.

He looked to the place that had been indicated and twisted the Aether, contracting the distance between his grasping hand and the papers, grabbing them. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but the Young Master may have described some of the private techniques of the Emerald family."

"No offense was taken, Senior," the Aquamarine said, giving a martial salute. "I shall check with the others, see if they have found anything useful."

"Hm," Beryl said, leafing through the stack of paper. He spoke, to nobody in particular. "It is a shame that we came here too late - if we had been here earlier, the Young Master may have been back in the clan by now."

"Tsk, tsk," he clicked, looking at the notes. "He was always a messy note-taker, but did he really learn this from me? It looks like the scrawlings of a madman."

Beryl turned towards the technology expert of the team. "Contact young Lyncis," he said, folding up the papers and sticking them in a pocket. "Tell him to not spend too long on the other sites of interest unless something useful pops up - we're going to wait here for him."

The Aquamarine nodded and pulled a phone out of their pocket. They stepped to the side and made the call.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

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Rivers of lums flowed through Nash's channels in a cyclical motion; as they did, little flakes of the Densified Aether solidified and were imparted with another twist of their own as they attached to the side of the channel, shoring up the leaks and inefficiencies of the system. While the material was deposited, the channels were forced open wider by the sheer pressure of the lums coursing through them.

As it did, most of the Calcification built up was positioned correctly or ductile enough to deform plasticly, simply sliding along itself to account for the stretching. Other bits of the Calcification, usually at points of particular stress, ruptured; those spots were quickly replaced by more rapidly solidifying Densified Aether.

No thoughts passed through Nash's brain. There was simply his channels and his observance of them, automatically moving to correct any problems caused by the rapid expansion. His eyes were closed, both his physical ones and his vision of the Aether, and he could feel an intense tingling, like the static of a body part that has fallen asleep, emanating from every one of his channels.

The first channel to reach the Third Calcification was the Dimensional Phasing Art. The last was the Emerald Flail.

His Sternum Etching was tapped enough that he could barely feel a thin film of lums still clinging to the runes.

His muscles shook with a phantom effort, and his heart was beating quickly and unevenly; his deep breaths did little to sate his lungs, which drank in so much of the air's oxygen that each breath actually left him light-headed, but he could not stand to breathe shallowly for too long, as his body, not having calibrated its oxygen requirements yet, played it safe and demanded all that he could give it.

He leaned back on the splintered, rotten table-top, staring at the clouds.

It took a few minutes, but eventually his cells acclimated to their new abilities. As they did, his breathing calmed along with the rest of him.

It was surreal, as always, to increase in realm; he was barely breathing, and everything told him that he should need to ventilate faster, deeper, but every shallow inhale and exhale nourished his lungs as much as a full, deep breath would less than an hour ago.

It wasn't like he'd never need to breathe again - while his lungs were massively more powerful, his muscles would be just as massively oxygen-hungry when they were really working - but it sure felt like it.

He sat up. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the time; it had been four and a half hours since he had started the breakthrough, and he could see even now the sun beginning to dip in the sky.

Moving to stand up, he paused when he felt the sudden emptiness in his stomach.

Even now, his body was furiously deconstructing 'faulty' parts and reconstructing them to a Third Calcification standard, and that process consumed many calories. He moved to grab the plastic bag where his groceries were contained, and they were conspicuously absent.

Well, that's the capital for you, he thought as he rummaged around in his pockets to confirm he still had everything stored there. Finding nothing missing, he jumped off of the table and walked towards the nearest store selling something that approximately counted as food.

"Eat first," he said to himself under his breath, "Then wait a bit to recover my lums. Then... they won't know what hit 'em."

----------------------------------------

Lyncis Aquamarine stood in a cramped apartment with far too many of his retainers (and the surviving representative of the Beryl family) for comfort.

His foot tapped against the ground in boredom and his hand rested on the sword dangling by his waist, but there was nothing else to relieve the sheer monotony of his current task; again and again, he was to pace through the apartment, checking in with each of the guards stationed inside, stepping momentarily outside onto the thin, musty carpet to check in with the two guards posted outside the door, and being on the radio constantly for any updates from the guards stationed by the elevator and by the building's entrance.

For a moment he was convinced that any interruption to the tedium would be a welcome one.

As he was passing through the cramped apartment once again, he passed by his 'superior' for this mission, that being Beryl, and gave him a polite nod.

Beryl returned the nod, and then crumpled to the ground.

"What -" he managed before falling, the old man using his still-formidable cultivation to roll out of the apparent attack and spring back up to his feet.

Just barely, Lyncis managed to see a pair of arms pull back through the wall that Beryl had just been standing at.

Drawing his sword, he backed away from every wall and barked an order to his men. "Away from the walls!" he screamed. "He's here; he attacks through solid objects! Draw your swords, blunt the edges!"

He drew a bubble of Densified Aether from his Sternum Etching and pushed it into the runes carved onto his sword, partially dematerializing it, the edge disappearing into the Aether while the rest of the sword remained in his hands. Similarly, he tapped the scabbard at his waist, and it too disappeared.

"He can phase himself selectively!" he yelled at his men once more, directing them to prepare themselves faster than they currently were.

He took out the radio and ranted into that too. "Target's here!" he said, not bothering with the proper radio etiquette. "Cut him off, now!"

Feeling something grasp at his leg, he reflexively swung his sword. Before the weapon - now little more than a poorly-balanced club - could travel to the hand, he saw the whole thing simply blink out for a moment, reappearing as soon as his sword was out of the way.

It yanked, and though he managed to stay standing, he stumbled forward, off balance.

A Second Calcification cultivator shouldn't be that strong. Are the main family's techniques really that heaven-defying?

The hand disappeared into the floor. Cautiously, Lyncis widened his stance to provide better balance, and watched the floor carefully, listening for the footsteps below. He heard them stop for a moment, and his hands tensed around the hilt of his sword; he slipped out of the way and swung for where his feet once were.

It hit true, but instead of crushing the hand against the ground, it simply passed through air once again. Frustrated, he tried to withdraw it, and failed.

Did he grab onto the edge somehow? It's in the Aether, and sharp! He channeled another trickle of lums into his sword, activating another rune.

His senses expanded as if he had a new limb; he could not only interpret the position of the sword through his experience of holding it but also truly feel everything on it, like it was a true extension of his body. He felt the eddies of air current against the flat, the sensation of his own hands gripping the hilt, and, in the Aether, something somehow wrapped around the edge. Is that rope?

Suddenly, the sword was yanked down.

It couldn't have been rope, since it hadn't been cut at all from all of the force required to pull such a thin, sharp edge so hard that a Third Calcification cultivator nearly lost his grip on his sword.

In return, Lyncis pulled against it, hoping to cut it or force it out of the coil of rope, struggling against the force. Nash was below him, so he had that advantage, but even then he shouldn't have been this strong.

All at once, the force Lyncis pulled against was released, and he could feel through the edge of his sword the rope disappearing into nothing.

Even a Third Calcification cultivator took some time to adjust to such a sudden change in forces, and his balance suffered.

It suffered just enough that the jumping uppercut from the floor caught him off guard.

The only warning he had was the entire body of the Young Master suddenly rocketing up out of the floor, his fist in the middle of extending; as soon as one of Nash's feet had passed through the ground, it started pushing him even further up, as if he was climbing up massive steps in alternating leaps.

All of that momentum slammed straight into his chin.

He fell backward, his muscles all simply shutting off for a second, his sword clattering to the floor. As soon as he returned to consciousness, only fractions of a second later, he saw the follow-up punch just as it hooked into his liver.

Barely, he managed to roll with the blow, avoiding being knocked out completely, but his breath was still forced out of his body and bile rose in his throat.

He jumped to the side into a roll, grabbing his sword along the way and avoiding a kick that could've shattered his knee. He raised the sword in front of him and took his stance, facing off against the Young Master.

Only for him to smile and jump backward without even a look, phasing through the wall.

A piece of paper was left in his wake, folded up. Lyncis turned towards one of his subordinates and spoke. "Separate! Different parts of the room; spread out, stay close enough to assist! Be ready for an attack from any direction!"

Beryl reached out his hand and, with a twisting of the Aether, grabbed it. He opened it up and read it, his face furrowing in confusion. "There's nothing on it," he managed before he was forced to duck out of the way of an attack.

Over his head soared an odd rope that moved like it was much heavier than its appearance implied. As soon as it missed, it disappeared into the Aether.

The old man slowly made his way to the middle of the small, cramped room, next to Lyncis. "It's an ambush," he said, his reedy voice even raspier than normal. "He knows the location, he can attack from anywhere, and it's forced us all into one place."

"I KNOW!" Lyncis snapped, his eyes darting all around, looking for any trace of the hand or the rope. "What am I supposed to do, Senior? he said, the words coming out much more harshly than he intended.

"Limit his mobility, limit how much damage can be done. We need to box him in so that every possible direction he could go has someone powerful enough to tie him down, but he's stronger than any of our men are individually. We'll need to -"

Those words were interrupted by Nash once again jumping into the apartment, this time putting one foot on the floor and immediately starting to bring his other up for a devastating kick.

Instead, Beryl flexed his channels, creating enough distance between the two that the kick missed.

He reached out to grab for Nash's collar, and once again Nash moved to get away, this time bringing some of his kicking momentum up into a jump and trying to haul himself through the ceiling. The distance between the two, once extended by Beryl's cultivation, was now collapsed. Beryl grabbed on just as Nash's head began to poke through the ceiling.

Nash dropped of his own volition, falling onto the floor backwards. He pulled Beryl in closer, balancing the old man on his knee, and pushed out just as his roll was near its finish; Beryl's grip failed, and he was thrown over Nash's head into another roll.

By the time Beryl had finished getting back on his feet, Lyncis was already lunging in to grab Nash once more. He failed, still at quite a distance when the Young Master, still on the floor, simply phased through the ground once again.

Lyncis stomped in anger and drew the edge of his sword back into the physical world, dropping to one knee as he stabbed blindly into the ground.

His sword, enhanced by both his cultivation and its construction, easily cleaved through the cheap linoleum and the structural elements supporting it and was pushed straight to the hilt. Lyncis drew it out, requiring him to stand up and engage the force of his legs, and the enchanted edge sheared through even more of the plastic flooring, sending a cloud of dust from the location of the cut. Once more, he brought his sword up to stab and open up the hole he was opening in the ground.

As soon as the tip of his sword had pierced into the floor, he felt a push on his back. This time, he stood strong and let go of the sword, quickly whipping around, his leg already raised into a blind spinning whip kick.

Nash, having emerged near-silently from the ground behind Lyncis, rose his arm up to block the kick, and managed it. His own leg shot up and out, the heel snapping out into the Aquamarine's sternum.

Lyncis was forced back with that kick, bringing his arms in for a block of his own. When the foot connected, so did the facts in his head. He slipped backwards, blocking a flurry of kicks and punches that came from every angle.

"The Third?" he managed to say during the flood of attacks.

He ducked under a particularly high hook and leaned back, grabbing his sword, still embedded in the ground. He pulled it out and brought the sharp edge back into the Aether, bringing it to bear.

Nash was forced to move out of the way and back off, and Lyncis glanced towards one of his men. The one indicated nodded, and Lyncis brought his attention back to Nash, who had been furiously blocking Beryl's long-distance punches in the meantime.

"Since when have you been a Third Calcification cultivator?" Lyncis asked, thrusting the sword at Nash in a lunge, the Young Master barely dodging it. "Always thought main family kids couldn't do that without artifacts worth as much as my whole family," he continued, resentment clear in his breathless voice, both him and 'Longstep' keeping the pressure up.

The Young Master's lips formed, inexplicably, into a smile; despite the assault of two cultivators further along than him, he still managed to block most of the attacks. Every so often, a punch from Beryl slammed into his ribs or a thrust from Lyncis's sword tore his clothes.

Staying silent, Nash suddenly jumped forward, trying to slam his shoulder into Beryl.

The old man instinctively increased the distance between them; a humored exhale came from Nash's nose as he once again fell through the floor. He dodged one last stab from Lyncis, and then he was gone.

Through the ground, Lyncis's enhanced ears could make out the words in Nash's muffled voice. "Dunno what you think've me, Aquamarine, but I'm not as spoiled as you thought. Spent more time on politics than cultivating and -"

Nash's voice was interrupted by Beryl's sudden change in position, moving through the small puncture in the ground.

"Ah, come to join me, Senior?" Nash's muffled voice said. "Well, then. Let me show you what I've learned."

----------------------------------------

Nash's ribs hurt, his arms were bruised, his newly enhanced lungs were struggling to force more and more oxygen out of the air and into his bloodstream. Across from him was Beryl, whose cultivation still outshone Nash's despite his advanced age.

But it was the Young Master smiling, not the old retainer.

The latter began to speak, his tone impatient and scolding, unusual for him. "You are going back to the estate," he said, his face wrinkled in anger, "You are speaking to your father. You will be accepting whatever punishment he sees fit. Your retinue will increase, and you will never be out of sight until you can once more be trusted."

"A tempting offer, Senior," Nash replied, still smiling.

He advanced, still in a fighting stance, and in the Aether he began manipulating the Emerald Flail. "But I'm afraid I'll have to reject it. You see, I'll be much more useful to the family as an actual cultivator instead of a prestigious decoration for whoever's gotten enough gold stickers from the Patriarch."

"You have duties, Young Master," Beryl said, curt. "You cannot go around, gallivanting whenever and wherever you want to."

"Fifteen hours."

"What?"

"Fifteen hours; that's the average amount of time I spent in the Emerald estate in the cultivation rooms or the training building. That includes all of the martial arts practice, mundane exercise, actual cultivation, or sparring I did over the week."

"The rest of the time, I was in a political event, or sleeping, or being quizzed on the latest insignificant changes in inter-sect politics I was expected to keep up on on my own time, or traveling to one or being trained in etiquette for the millionth time, since you obviously believe I still have the memory of a three year old."

Beryl grimaced. "Your father -"

Nash gingerly took a single step towards Beryl. Beryl's eyes widened, and the distance between them expanded, lengthening into a hallway. At the very end, straining even with his Third Calcification enhanced eyes, Nash could barely see the form of the old man, one hand held out as if to ward him off.

"Very well, Young Master," the voice echoed down the hall, Beryl forced to shout to be heard. "I'll treat you like the adversary you want me to."

"Perfect," Nash said. "I thank you for your respectful nature, Senior."

An arm appeared in front of Nash's face, crossing the hundreds of feet as if it was but an inch. Barely, he flinched back and interposed his hands; even with that block, however, he was forced to step back from the blow's strength.

Nash laughed, his elbow dropping to block a hook to his liver. It rose up again, batting away a cross to his head, and he stepped forward. The hallway yawned open once again, expanding to the length of a tunnel through a mountain, Beryl no longer visible. The attacks still came, but fewer between and weaker.

Even with Beryl's obviously flagging stamina, the old man's technique was perfect, and his cultivation was still much more profound than Nash's.

So, Nash let the attacks come. He planted in one spot and simply rolled with the blows, absorbing what he could, letting Beryl get comfortable. Even with his knowledge of how Beryl fought, the blows were unpredictable, coming from impossible angles that Nash barely managed to block.

But they couldn't be forever, not with Beryl maintaining both his attacks and the distance between them.

In the Aether, where there was no gravity, the Emerald Flail tied itself into a knot, ready to cinch.

And then, when the old man threw a cross that was just a little too slow...

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Beryl felt something wrap around his right arm and pull him in.

Rope glided across his wrist, a loop contracting until the cordage slid no more. At first, the pull was gentle, but then it came in a single, rough yank.

He could feel his bad knee give out under the force of the pull, and he was forced to kneel to avoid collapsing.

He reached for his channels to increase the distance between his wrist and the rope, making preparations to escape. It only got tighter.

Reflexively, Beryl diverted more and more of the Densified Aether stream coursing through his channels to aid in escaping the rope.

He had nearly managed it when his control over the distance between him and Nash snapped, the space between them wobbling back-and-forth like a weight hung on a rubber band.

They each realized it at the same time.

Beryl stopped pulling on the rope, letting go of all of his Aether-twisting and throwing a punch.

Each of them punched, and each of them blocked the other's punch.

They stayed there for a moment, simply breathing. Both of them chose to re-engage at the same time, attempting to get the other into an armbar, and neither of them succeeding in anything but getting farther from each other.

It was all still, silent except for the deep breaths and stationary except for the trembling, exhausted muscles of both.

Nash laughed. "Good fight, Senior. Glad you're finally taking me seriously."

He disappeared into the Aether, the rope staying around Beryl's wrist. He inspected it for a moment, and his brow furrowed; he mumbled to himself for a moment, what little lums he had left directed into his Aetheric vision channels, searching for Nash. "It's not mundane... What is it made -"

A strangled croak came out of Beryl's mouth as Nash appeared behind him, his arms already locked into a choke around Beryl's neck. The rope around Beryl's wrist began to swing erratically, the weight distribution somehow pulsing back and forth along its length in order to throw off Beryl's attempts to pry the arm off his neck.

Beryl's channels grabbed onto the Aether and twisted it once again, changing the distance between Nash's arms and his throat to be just large enough for him to slip out and spin to face Nash; his arm lashed out in a backfist, moving to strike with the heavy, shifting rope, which simply disappeared into the Aether just as it was about to hit Nash.

"Like my little weapon here?" Nash asked, both him and most of the rope disappearing into the Aether, leaving only that which was directly contacting Beryl's skin.

Beryl got ready for another attack to his back and bent his knees, wincing as his bad leg creaked in protest.

Then, the knot began to close in. The pressure built and built, and Beryl was forced to increase the distance before his bones shattered altogether, slipping out of the rope.

Nash reappeared, this time farther away from Beryl. He knelt on the ground and reached out, the rope straightening out and flinging itself into his hand. He picked it up and it went still before disappearing. "Made it myself. Took quite a bit of tweaking, but I'd say it was worth it. Do you agree, Senior?" he said, standing up and looking at Beryl.

Beryl's Sternum Etching was tapped nearly to the bone. His breathing was shallow, but he still managed to scold the Young Master. "So impetuous, in more ways than one. The techniques that were given to you were done so for a reason. I have no idea who you learned such a pitiful trick from, but -"

"I made it from scratch," Nash said, getting back into fighting stance. "Do you wish to test it out?"

Beryl's face furrowed and his breathing steadied. He brought himself into his own stance and faced off against Nash. "I suppose it is the place of the old to teach the young of their follies."

The door behind Nash was kicked open. From the hallway came a flood of cultivators; in front, Lyncis Aquamarine, anger on his bruised, bleeding face and sword clutched in hand.

Nash sighed.

"I surrender," he said. "Guess I should've disengaged earlier, huh?"

Roughly, several cultivators grabbed the Young Master.

One of them forced his arms behind his back, and he didn't resist as the cuffs were put around his wrists.

All the while, an oddly satisfied smile was upon his face.

When asked, all he said was “I’ve made my point.”

----------------------------------------

"Hello, Father."