“This is the outer layer of formations,” Vari explained. “If we wait here, then-” Intersecting lines cut a myriad of shapes out of the outer barrier, and Vari found herself dragged through by both Chikere and the entrapping forces of the system’s formations. “-then we won’t have to deal with the entrapments and death fields…” Vari sighed.
“Rahayu! Fight me!” Even with her upper energy spreading as far as it could, there was no way Chikere’s voice could reach all corners of the system. That was without considering all of the formations in place that made things more difficult.
“He’s not going to-”
“Found him,” Chikere said. “He pulled out his sword,” she gestured, her network of blades all pointing in the same direction. With her other free hand, she held onto Vari’s shirt and dragged her along.
“You really shouldn’t go directly towards things because of the-” Vari found herself suddenly yanked to the side as Chikere rapidly turned. “... Maze formations.”
“I’ve passed through mazes before,” Chikere said.
“Yeah but you can’t just follow what you’re sensing. It’s intentionally scattered,” Vari said. “If we had just waited…”
“Then we would be wasting time and avoiding conflicts that could make us stronger,” Chikere folded her arms and nodded. “The solution here is simple. How many branching paths could there possibly be?”
“Well, it’s three dimensional so it’s probably… she’s not actually listening,” Vari shook her head. But surprisingly, Chikere wasn’t running in random directions either.
The formations created invisible but tangible barriers. The problem was that going down a path didn’t necessarily mean making progress in any particular direction. Chikere’s swords began to fly down a path, but they soon seemed to scatter in all directions. Within these formations space wasn’t necessarily linear. Vari didn’t even know if there was a consistent layout to the maze, or if it shifted constantly. She wouldn’t be surprised if it closed off any exits. Attempting to break one’s way out would be worse than wandering endlessly, however. There was a vast amount of energy spent to maintain the solidity of the structure as well as to counterattack to protect it.
Chikere had her eyes closed and her arms crossed. Then she nodded. “I see.”
“You found a way out…?” Vari asked.
“No. I need more swords.”
It was a relatively new phenomenon for Chikere to create swords out of her blood, so Vari hadn’t yet gotten used to the blood squeezing out of her and spreading everywhere. At least she didn’t have to cut herself open or something, but it certainly didn’t seem healthy. Vari supposed she should probably be contributing to the maze, but figuring out its structure was going to take some time.
Even so, the cloud of blood slowly turned into hundreds of tiny blades, scattering in all directions. She could see them everywhere, going every which way. Maybe Chikere was onto something? On the other hand, Everheart was never one to skimp on excess, so she could easily see him creating millions or billions of branches. Depending on which maze this was. Their relative positions to the planets changed, because that was another way to throw off invaders. Actually, Vari couldn’t be certain they weren’t all connected- even if their view of the outside seemed locked in a vague area of space, that might be an illusion.
Vari didn’t want to get separated from Chikere, so she watched the blades swirling in the distance. Instead of making things easier, it only became more confusing as they didn’t even seem to go in straight lines, disappearing and reappearing randomly. Still, she might pick out a pattern. Though of course, letting people peacefully wander through a maze wasn’t Everheart’s way.
“Take care of those incoming monsters, would you?” Chikere asked, though it was more like a demand. Vari was surprised, as she was expecting the swordmaster to immediately jump into battle. But perhaps she couldn’t, with her focus split so many directions.
Either way, since she was here Vari figured she should contribute. She was cautious with her movements because she didn’t want to split from Chikere, and returning along her path wouldn’t necessarily result in finding her way back to her previous position.
She fell into a stance ready to dodge, deflect, or block with a temporary barrier as necessary. Of course, she was ready to counter with her arms and legs as well. The monsters coming directly were something like a winged gorilla, a snake with spikes along its length, and some sort of whale. Except for the latter, the creatures easily fit through the confines of the maze, but the whale showed off its odd properties by squeezing into the form of the corridor.
It was unlikely that any of these were flesh and blood creatures. Not in this place. Everheart preferred to create violent ecosystems where the beasts would be self-sustaining for such a thing. These were part of the formations, most likely. But they should be able to be damaged much like their regular counterparts.
The wings seemed excessive in this place without gravity where there was also no atmosphere to push against, but Vari soon found that they were less flight implements and more arsenals of weapons, as the gorilla yelled and flapped those very wings, sending hundreds of razor-sharp feathers at her. She blocked, feeling her hardened energy tremble. She would have avoided them, but she was uncertain if they would track her- or if Chikere was in any state to dodge. She could see the feathers growing back immediately… but as with everything, that would take energy. At least she could hope the creature would exhaust itself.
The other two continued to approach, and Vari soon found herself grappling with the creature that was more spike than snake. Placing her arms and legs was quite difficult, and keeping her torso unimpaled took a lot of bending things that shouldn’t be bent. Doing so while staying on the safe side of the creature so she didn’t get sliced apart by feathers was even more tricky. But ultimately she managed to entangle the thing just in time for the whale to approach.
Vari could feel its power, and given that it took up all of the space around it she knew it would be difficult to dodge. It didn’t seem to have trouble passing by the gorilla, squeezing around it in a truly uncomfortable manner. But the fact that it was made less of flesh and was more of an amorphous mass didn’t make her more confident in fighting it. So as it approached, mouth open wide, she gave it something to eat. Freshly rolled spike snake, kicked straight down its gullet.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The whale closed its mouth, made a weird sound, and then rapidly expanded, crushing the gorilla against the formations. Then the creatures energy shattered, fading away into motes of light.
Oh good. She had been a little worried that they could be real. She did not want to know what the innards of a space-filling whale would be like.
Vari turned back to Chikere- fortunately they were still in the same ‘zone’ and hadn’t gotten separated. “Any progress?”
“I’m going to need a few…” Chikere waved her hands vaguely.
“Hours?”
“Minutes or days,” Chikere said. “But maybe those.”
Honestly, being entrapped in this formation for just a ‘few days’ seemed merciful. So Vari settled down and waited, wondering if they should move so that the maze couldn’t take advantage of their stationary positions.
Time passed quickly, from the perspective of a cultivator… and eventually Chikere made her final declaration. “I’ve got it!”
“A way out?”
Chikere waved her over, then grabbed Vari’s wrist. “On my count, I want you to kick this spot. As hard as you can.”
“The empty space?” Vari confirmed. As far as she was aware, that wasn’t a relevant bit of formation, and she didn’t think Chikere had a better understanding of such things.
“Yes, the empty space,” Chikere nodded. “Here, this tiny sword will mark it.”
Less than a single droplet of blood made up the ‘weapon’, but it gave Vari something to aim for. She looked around, watching Chikere’s hundreds of blades as they continued to roam. Then the countdown came, and she did her best to match her timing. Chikere swung a blade in her own free hand, while at the same time every other blade made some sort of motion. And then, with a burst of energy, they were… nowhere. Which also meant not trapped in a formation.
“Aha,” Chikere nodded, as suddenly her myriad swords flowed back towards and into her. “I thought so.”
“You knew this would happen?”
“Well, there were only really three options I could think of. A massive space shattering shock to a large part of the formation could result in the formation shattering, us being tossed into a disconnected subspace, or another thing. Two of the options were good, so it was basically guaranteed to resolve our problems.”
“... Was the other thing our complete annihilation as all of the formation’s counterdefenses activated? Because I would have bet on that as the more probable option,” Vari said.
“Nah, it’s two out of three so it was in our favor.”
“But that was only the possibilities you thought about.”
“Yeah, but I was right so…” Chikere shrugged. “Obviously that’s how it works.”
“I thought you were supposed to be less suicidal now.”
“I brought you, didn’t I?” Chikere tilted her head. “I was betting on that helping. Now let’s cut our way back to somewhere less boring. Just wait, Rahayu~”
Chikere cut them back from whatever weird place they ended up in to ‘real’ space. They happened to come out on a planet, which wasn’t necessarily safer. For one thing, there were entirely different formations and-
“Who are you?” Right, tomb raiders. Though this wasn’t really a tomb, was it? Just the Everheart System now, because Everheart wasn’t dead or pretending to be dead. “We won’t let you snatch our prize.”
Chikere looked at the group of swordsmen, then at a sword stabbed into a pedestal, then back at them. She reached out and grabbed the blade, yanking it free with no regards for traps or sense. “You have the best sword,” Chikere pointed the blade. “Come. Match me.”
Obviously they weren’t going to fight her one on one… but from Vari’s perspective it was almost like that. The one she’d pointed to was the strongest, and thus the fastest to get within striking range. The indicated man’s weapon crossed with Chikere’s and… the sword she picked up was sliced in two. But her arm was already reaching out for his wrist, catching his blade with its edge against her throat. An instant later his sword was cutting off his own head, and then Chikere rushed towards the second best.
It wasn’t an anomaly that her first sword had broken. Each and every time, she forced her own weapon to be destroyed as she snatched the blade from her next attacker. And no matter how quickly they came, over a dozen of them, she moved fast enough to defeat them individually as if they were nearly standing still. When the final and potentially weakest blade of the bunch pierced through its owner, a twist of her arm shattered that too.
“... I thought you hated breaking swords.”
“I got over it,” Chikere said. “Also most of those would be garbage even by my old standards.”
Vari nodded. At least she was fairly certain the others had been from the Trigold Cluster and not the Scarlet Alliance somewhere. It really wouldn’t do to have Chikere killing their own allies… though for some certain portion of sword cultivators they might not care. There were other obsessed warriors, but they were less likely to end up in instant conflict with Chikere.
“This way,” Chikere declared.
“Are you sure? Because that doesn’t feel like Rahayu but-” of course, it was too late. And they’d already been spotted. “Luksa.”
The large woman grinned as she came into view, hefting her large morningstar. Luksa was a proper Augmentation cultivator, and had been one of the few Harmonious Citadel experts to survive the war. Mostly because she had turned tail or been kidnapped by Everheart. It sure seemed like the first one, based on her current expression.
“Oh, you’re the one,” Luksa grinned. “You caused us a lot of trouble, with your reverse cultivation technique… Everheart also said that if you’re stupid enough to show up, the consequences are your fault.”
“You must have always been a terrible saint,” Vari grimaced.
“Not at all, I was just as good at it as the rest of us,” Luksa laughed. “And now I’m here.”
“Okay,” Chikere said. “Bring me Rayahu.”
“You think you can just waltz in here and ask for whoever you want?”
“I can,” Chikere nodded.
“Yeah that’s what he said you’d be like. Well, since he does want to see you I suppose I can allow it.”
“Good.”
Vari grimaced, “I don’t know if this is a good idea. Rahayu is with Everheart now. He might have changed what if…?”
Chikere shook his head. “Don’t worry. He’s just going to try to kill me. Nothing serious.”
Was this Chikere really more cognizant of her own life? Vari wasn’t certain about that. And she was a little concerned about the fact it seemed she would be fighting Luksa alone. Everheart probably knew what was happening and probably wouldn’t actually let her die. But she could also believe he said those things. And if she didn’t give it her best, she would regret the outcome regardless of her life or death.