Chidi was dead.

Or he would be. A blade with the force sufficient to bisect a mountain sliced towards Chidi. Instead of doing something sensible like dodging- not that he had time to do so- Chidi thought about how true that thought was. Could that blade cut a mountain? Perhaps not. But if he were to compare himself, the attack coming for him, and the one that had cut a concerningly large slice of the nearby province, the latter two were closer together in magnitude than he was to what was about to kill him.

Yet somehow, his brain managed to finish that thought. “Hey,” said an unfamiliar but distinctly feminine voice. “You seem like the sort that should have noticed my challenge.”

Ah. There was a woman standing in front of him. And… a hundred swords? He couldn’t quite count, but it was a field of death. One he didn’t belong anywhere near, nor did he have any intent of listening in on their conversation.

“You’ve finally shown yourself!” That was Rakiya’s voice. “You’ve been hiding for two decades, and you finally returned for our rematch!”

“Hey, who is that?” the strange woman’s head turned towards Chidi as he was just backing away. “Do you know her? Also wouldn’t you have been a baby two decades ago?”

Chidi froze. He didn’t want this attention on him. “That’s Rakiya.”

“Who?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t remember me!”

Strangely, Chidi was unable to feel the incoming sword swipes. It was not that they were concealed, and he heard the sound of blades whistling through the air. But it was like there was an impassable barrier where danger ended, just in front of him. There was no longer a sword moving with great speed towards him- it was just a device made of metal, incapable of attacking.

“No really,” said the strange woman. “Who is she?”

Chidi felt like he should answer. “As I said, she is Rakiya. Most notably, she cut off the arm of Grandmaster Chikere.”

“Oh. Oh!” Two sword-wielding arms pointed towards Rakiya, changing their stance. Except… one of them felt wrong, somehow. “That was you?”

“As if you could ever forget!”

The perfect counters for the incoming strikes flashed in Chidi’s mind, ingrained there from years of practicing Citadel’s Downfall. And the swordmaster blocking the way… did none of them. One of her swords just floated out, touching the tip of the incoming blade and just… completely negating its momentum.

“Yeah I totally forgot about that,” the odd woman said. “Whatever. I can beat you with one arm.”

“You can try, but-”

The odd woman turned around and looked directly at Chidi. But her right arm… stayed in place? “Seriously, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I don’t get what her problem is.”

“Sorry, um, grandmaster… do you happen to be Chikere?”

“Obviously. Don’t you recognize me?”

“I’ve never encountered you before in my life,” Chidi said. “You went away before I was even conceived.”

“You’ve got a good point there,” Chikere nodded. Her floating arm was deflecting all of Rakiya’s attacks.

“Your, um… your arm came off.”

“Yeah, it does that,” Chikere agreed. “I mean, technically I’m not supposed to disconnect it. But it’s my arm, you know?”

Chidi literally had no words.

“Anyway, you’re uh… Chidi, right?”

He nodded. “My parents named me after you. If you are Chikere.”

“I am. And I can prove it! But since you can’t, I guess I can’t have you compare to a picture of me. Oh, I know.” The sound of clashing steel. A blade whirled through the air, landing in the ground twenty meters behind a stunned Rakiya. “I’ll teach you to defeat her. Then you’ll know I am who I say I am.”

“What?” Chidi asked.

“Yeah, what?” Rakiya had no weapon, but Chidi could feel her glare settling on them.

“I said,” Chikere waved her hand. “I’ll teach this kid to defeat you. Just give me… I dunno, thirty years.”

“... I just entered Essence Collection,” Chidi said.

“Twenty-five, then.”

“That’s not better!” Chidi choked out. “She’s an Integration cultivator!”

“So?”

“I don’t even know if I can reach Life Transformation by then!”

“Hmmn.”

Suddenly, the entire world was blades. Chidi couldn’t do anything but pull his arms in and rotate his body slightly, as if that could somehow save him from the surrounding field of death. But it did. Sure, he knew the blades were heading towards their current positions, but why would they stop?

“What, did you think I’d actually stab you? We haven’t even started training yet!” Chikere said. “Your sword is fine, by the way,” she said, almost touching it with her face as she leaned towards it. “And yours sucks!” she yelled over her shoulder toward Rakiya. “What did you even do to it?”

“My blade is attuned to the essence of the Sword Saint,” Rakiya said with teeth gritted. Every time she tried to move to retrieve her blade, or pull out another one, the floating arm poked the sword it held slightly further into her neck.

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“Ruined. Utter garbage. Can’t even perform a small percentage of the best techniques.”

“It is optimized for the perfection of the Harmonious Citadel’s style.”

“See, little guy, this is why you can beat her. Anyway, we’re going now.”

She started walking, indirectly herding Chidi with her field of blades. Aconite stood slightly further along the path, confused.

“Oh hey, Spikes! You’re uh… smaller?”

“This is Aconite,” Chidi introduced her.

“Cool. Wanna learn how to use a sword?”

“I don’t think that would… work.”

Chikere seemed to understand wolfspeak… enough. “Don’t wanna? Well, your loss.”

Chidi made sure to grab the messenger’s bag as they walked along the road, the rest of the squad joining them. He wasn’t sure if it would have anything useful- especially if it was actually intended as a trap- but he didn’t want to just leave it.

As for Rakiya, she made one more move to follow- and ended up with her foot impaled to the ground. Chidi felt it probably wouldn’t have long-term effects, but it seemed enough of a deterrent. He kept his senses focused behind them just in case she chose to follow, though.

“Don’t worry,” said the odd woman who was the source of his name. “She’s not coming.”

“How can you tell?”

“Her sword is still back there. Obviously.” A moment of silence. “Hey my communication thing seems to be busted, can you fix it? Your mom made it.”

Chidi took it in his hands. “It seems to be in working order. There is, however, a planetary formation limiting them.”

“Oh. Maybe I could…” Another silence.

“Maybe you could… what?”

“I was thinking about cutting it apart, but we’re going to be busy with training so I’m not gonna.”

“We could really use that formation being taken out…” Chidi frowned.

“Eh, I’ll think about it. First, did you feel me challenge?”

“Was that the mountain you cut apart?”

“Yeah! I knew you’d feel it, little me. I considered trying to cut apart the whole planet…” Chidi shivered, recalling the dream, “But I stopped with that. I wasn’t that confident and I didn’t want to get most of the way and look like a doofus.”

“... Also people live here.”

“Eh, it wasn’t going to fall apart. Not that way.”

“... Could you really have cut Yaitis most of the way in half?”

“Yaitis? Oh, this planet? Yeah probably. Maybe even the whole way but… well, I have some insights to digest still.”

Chidi was not dead. But he was still wondering if he was going to be okay.

-----

Catarina’s gums were bleeding from how hard she was clenching her teeth. Each swing from Abhilash was a tremendous echoing of power as his axe nearly cut through space itself to slice apart her, her husband, and many others. But her manual control of the formation had the area on lockdown, and she was manually tuning it to his energy and style. At the current moment, the power of formation was based in ice- but the sun was coming out. Bad timing, but that was how it was.

She was almost knocked off her feet, but held steady. Timothy stood with her, a comforting hand placed on her shoulder as she focused her energy on the formation. Years of work had gone into the formation’s creation, though it wasn’t as powerful as it might have been with access to greater resources on a planet that was properly populated. Months of work had gone into the plan, and it took weeks to actually lure Abhilash in- while at the same time keeping the others split up.

If all was going well, Tauno was in combat with Luksa. That would leave only the shield cultivator, Eterna. Her offensive capabilities were least concerning of the group- though she would still need to be pinned down by a dozen or so Integration cultivators.

From here, they had several paths to success. First, Tauno defeating Luksa. That was unlikely, even if he was the stronger of the two. Preventing her retreat wouldn’t be simple, and she would not be without her own forces. However, if he did manage to kill or seriously injure her, that could snowball into killing Abhilash as well.

Though Catarina would have preferred to make a directional formation through which to continuously assault their captured enemy, it would have lost some efficiency. And considering that it was barely putting up with the strain as it was, that would have meant it falling apart almost immediately. At some point, raw power overtook planning. Unless they could counter with their own raw power, but keeping a formation like this secret but effective was the most important. If Abhilash had been able to sense it, he would never have stepped into the area. That came with restrictions in power- or another decade of construction they simply did not have time for.

“A message for councilor Catarina!” a messenger appeared sometime during the wrestling match- though Catarina felt she was winning. The formation was not going to easily run out of power, but Abhilash would fatigue himself attacking like that. If he weakened himself too much, they could just kill him. Potentially.

“It better be an emergency,” Catarina said with clenched teeth.

“You were instructed to receive the information even in a combat scenario.”

“What is it? News about Chidi?”

“Y- uh, you’d better read it. Or…”

“Have Timothy read it.”

Timothy looked it over himself. “Chikere is back.”

“And she’s coming here?”

“She showed up, asked questions, and then commandeered a ship. But it does not appear she was heading towards Torthunes, but rather Yaitis.”

“... She’d better take care of our son.”

“I’m certain she… won’t let him die.”

Catarina focused on the frozen red pillars around the formation, now dripping a substance that was conclusively proven to be at most a small percentage blood. Too bad it had no power there. Instead, it was melting. That meant switching over to the heat based power.

“Timothy.”

Catarina said only that, with no other instructions. But he nodded, standing ready.

Three formation plate were in front of Catarina, carved with various runes connected in different ways to the formation as a whole. The first she flipped over, a momentary fluctuation letting Abhilash shake the surroundings. No doubt he would have noticed the change. Otherwise he would have never become an Augmentation cultivator.

She skipped the one in the middle, flipping the one on the right. Flames began to pour into the chamber, as the sun rose into the sky to melt and boil. Abhilash swung with his great might, cutting into the melting icy pillars. The formation was not quite down, but it was not at maximum solidity.

The next step had to be perfect, or the whole thing would fall apart within the hour. Catarina pushed a surge of energy through the system, but Abhilash didn’t fall for her feint. Then she placed her fingers on the third formation plate… twisting it, rotating it within its confines instead of lifting it out. The fluctuations would be different, which was why she saved it for last.

Outside of the formation, a great axe rose into the sky. It chopped downward like a guillotine, aiming for Catarina and the formation plates and everything else. It cut through the sky until it stopped, quavering.

Timothy held his shield high, prepared for this possibility. He strained against the power. Even though it was transmitted out of a half effective formation, he couldn’t fully withstand it. But his style was meant to counter a stronger offense. Some of the power vibrated back along its course… and Catarina’s transition finished the job, snapping the gap closed.

Flames covered Abhilash, who seemed to find it to be optimal to conserve his energy for the moment, forming a protective bubble around himself… and waiting.

Timothy looked at his left hand, fingers and wrist swelling already. Whether anything technically broke he was not sure, but he also felt the strain in his elbow and shoulder. But he wasn’t dead- and Catarina was uninjured. His body would heal… and he would be one step closer to Augmentation himself. Though that had never been the intent, surviving an attack like that was useful for anyone’s growth.