The air itself was heavy around Tenjo as she came face to face with a handful of opponents, her approach clearly having been seen by the way they had already leveled their weapons at her. As she tried to issue her challenge, the words froze in her throat, refuse to move past her lips.
Thankfully, or perhaps unfortunately, it would seem that they weren't needed, the sight of her own raised blade enough to paint her as an attacker. Even if she had been able to speak, there wouldn't have been enough time for her sentence to get out before the blow had been thrown towards her.
There were four of them to start, others hanging back, perhaps thinking they weren't needed, or perhaps waiting for the opportune moment to strike. All of them wielded spears, stabbing at various parts of her as they spread into a loose formation.
Spears were the common man’s weapon, ideal for group combat or dealing with cavalry, but not for holding any real for duels against a lone opponent. Amongst Disciples or Masters with an aura, they were almost non-existent, for one simple reason.
An aura reinforced everything about a weapon, durability, and sharpness of the edge prime among them. However, those things cancelled one another out when they clash against another aura clad weapon, turning the weapons back to their original state.
Between two swords, that meant they clashed as normal, but between a sword with an enhanced ability to cut, and a spears shaft without it, that meant even a blow lacking in full power would easily sheer through the wood.
And so it did as Tenjo cut for the offending weapon, or at least, it would have, if not for the fact that the blow was a feint, and the spear drew back out of range while the one on the far side darted out at her instead.
By the time she had avoided it, another had aimed for a different part of her body. She was twice as fast as any one of them, even faster when taking into account the shorter gap between her blows. But the group she faced consisted of more than enough opponents to overcome the difference in speed.
That wasn't all though. Each one covered the other one's gaps, aiming for her exposed areas, whether her feet, her head, or her hands. It was the exact same style that she used to overwhelm her enemies, slowly withering away their stance while coming ever closer to a finishing blow.
Feint and normal attacks mixed, the four weapons from different angles impossible to defend against without giving ground. Tenjo was forced to dance to their tune, unable to get past the longer range, or even to strike solidly against the vulnerable shafts without taking another spearhead in her flesh while she did so.
Any attempt to circle to the side only made them adjust slightly, the one drawing back moving to the new positioning while three other attacks kept her from taking advantage of those changes. Then as she dodged a thrust which came close enough the sharp edge of the spear left a cut in the loose fabric of her robe, her back hit the wall.
This was what they had been aiming for, the moment when her feet stopped moving. For the first time, all four attacks came at once, no longer aiming to save their weapons and instead trapping her in a half-circle where death came from every direction.
Right, left, forward, or backwards, every movement she could make had been sealed. No matter how much faster she was, Tenjo would only be able to take out a single spear before the other three were too close with her lone weapon.
Everything slowed down as her mind frantically tried to come up with a solution. What combination of cutting and stepping could free her? Should she try to duck under as she swung up, or should she try to move forwards, out of the expected area of attack?
No matter what she thought of, there was no way for it to work against all of them. It was one against four, and no matter how hard she tried, her sword couldn't cut enough of the incoming attacks down.
When she moved, it wasn't based on any of the plans that had flashed through her head, but rather a single, simple idea. The katana turned in her hand, and as it struck against an oncoming spear, instead of cutting through it, the blunt backside pushed against it, sending it into the path of the other shaft next to it.
Only one hand had gripped the hilt, and the other reached out, seeking to catch another spear by the wood below the gleaming steel. With one hand, Tenjo didn't have enough power to stop the thrust, or even completely redirect it.
But it was enough, to guide it to the side, and with all three weapons moved, there was an slight opening, a faint chance for her to step forward.
It was only by taking those two actions at the same time that she gained enough of a delay to move forward at all, but that delay wasn't enough to prevent the fourth and final spear from slicing her side under her right armpit, the cut just barely shallow enough to avoid cutting into the ribcage that it scraped across.
As she stepped out, she spun the sword back around in her hand and slashed it across the arm of the man whose polearm she had first struck. She was vaguely aware of how he fell, his spear clattering on the stones, but by the point she had already long since moved past.
In the same motion as the first attack, Tenjo had used her grip on the other haft to spin with her momentum, and bring her blade back down towards the man who held it. He lifted that shaft up in a defense, slow enough for her to easily avoid with only a single motion.
She didn't need to, the extra fraction of a second too valuable to waste with two opponents still behind her. Instead, she cleaved the wood as though it were a fresh shoot of green bamboo, and her katana dipped down to slash horizontally across his gut as she stepped past.
By the time the blood from either of them had finished its arc in the air, she had already taken her next stance, blade held low and ready to counter the oncoming stab of either opponent now in front of her. Her heartbeat throbbed in her eyes, her mouth open as she sucked in air, every muscle tensed and ready to react to the slightest movement.
Neither of them had moved though, instead holding steady to their positions as they readied the points of their weapons at her once more. This time though, they were joined by a group of various other men and weapons, falling into a loose circle around her and the two fresh corpses.
She was about to throw herself forwards, disrupting them before they could form up and taking advantage of their confusion, when an arrow zipped by her head to shatter a chunk of the wall behind her, followed by another two that passed through where she used to be, a measured step to the side causing them to miss.
It snapped her out of the surge of excitement that had come over her, the almost trancelike state from the initial exchanges fading away as Tenjo was forced to focus on the multi-ranged threats now before her.
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As she took stock of the new challenge, an aura that she recognized from before formed on the other end of the courtyard, the power of a mage blooming stronger than any other as it sucked in energy from all around it.
Well, at least she had succeeded in getting their attention.
Magic was inferior to aura, as far as confrontation between equals went. It offered plenty of destructive power, but just about nothing that a masterful mage could conjure could stop a disciples sword strike, and it offered no boost to speed or reaction time, meaning most of the time the mage would lose before they even saw their opponent move.
That all hinged on one assumption though, that being that the swordsman in question was able to directly attack the mage, rather than being occupied with a gang of warriors with their minds set on killing them.
At the back of the crowd, Tenjo could see another nocked arrow raised in her direction, the steady hum of magical energy continued to grow, a spell nearing completion. The group in front of her was now several dozen, shining blades menacing every angle from which she could approach.
She engaged the first of them, a sword wielding woman with only a shred of an aura. Her counter knocked the blow aside and bent the weapon where her own blade made contact. The tip of her sword grazed her opponents face, but her attempt to step into the blow was countered by one of the spears, flicking out at her exposed side below.
Tenjo was forced to step back, trying to maneuver to the side. If she could put the swords in front of the spears, she would be able to use their length against them, making them unable to turn in time to target her.
Another half step in, striking at a lone target from among the mass and backing up before any of them could surge in around her and trap her. Then another, this time her blade cutting a swordsman's arm and making his weapon fall, her retreat taking her around to the far side.
By only attacking the furthermost enemies, and circling around she could lead them to be stretched out, only ever engaging with one or two at a time and using the bodies of their allies as a shield, and obstacle to prevent them from swarming around her.
But as she stepped back out, Tenjo felt a burning pain erupt in her upper thigh. Her circle had put her in directly in line of the archers, the distance making sure that they had a clear path to shoot without endangering their melee fighters.
The arrow had pierced the muscle on the front of her leg, making it throb and threaten to give way with each time it straightened. When she placed her weight on it, the fiery sensation intensified, and the muscles all around it tightened, locking her knee into place as another projectile hissed through the air just behind her head, perfectly poised to pierce her skull had she continued moving backwards.
With no real options left, focusing everything on her sword, Tenjo stopped moving away, and let the wave of violence wash over her.
When they approached, the only thing that kept her from being overwhelmed instantly was her ferocity. She leveraged her full speed and power into each blow, smashing through guards and slicing whatever lay behind them.
Anything that came into range was cut; every single strike intended to pass through whatever it hit, regardless of any resistance. She didn't aim for gaps, or follow up on openings. Any attempt to fence her opponents would only let another one take her from another angle.
It was brutish and crude, something that would net her nothing but an instant loss against anyone even close to her level. It lacked skill, it lacked elegance, and it lacked just about everything she had put her life into learning for wielding a sword. But it worked.
The telegraphed blows were easy to see coming, but no one before her was strong enough to stop a single one, or fast and skilled enough to defend against them. None of them could move back, pressed in on by their comrades, and every time a strike failed to take someone directly, it only meant it would strike into the ones beside them.
No matter how powerful her swings though, they couldn't cover everything, and as the number of people at the front grew, they began to spill out to the side, attacks slipping past the intervals in her swing by sheer number.
A slash opened the skin on her forearm, and a thrust scored her uninjured leg. One by one small wounds started to appear, none on their own deep enough to do anything more than annoy. But as the numbers grew, they started to become more and more bold, and the injuries became deeper and deeper.
Then her determination broke, one blow to many landing a little bit too close. By instinct she took a step backwards, and Tenjo knew she had made a mistake in the rational part of her mind before she had completed the movement.
She had acted entirely on instinct, the fear of being overwhelmed and whittled down overriding everything else, and because of that, her footwork fell outside the timing of her blows, and her cut thrown at the same time was completely lacking in sync.
Her strike missed, and a dozen weapons were at once completely free to strike at her in the same moment, each one aiming for a different target, none of which she could defend against in time.
Tenjo felt each one as though it had been delivered slowly and carefully on it's own, every bit aware but unable to do anything other than shrink back to make the wounds slightly more shallow.
Her already injured leg was cut again, this time by a hacking blow from a man who had crouched down low, his sword's tip cleanly parting the flesh on the time of her calf. The edge of another sword swept down her left side as well, giving her a cut to match the one under her arm on the right, only this one not quite as deep.
Her forearm again, then a thrust that barely reached her gut, and another that sunk an inch into the muscle in the center of her chest, threatening to reach past and into her heart beneath. One of the spears, the only one now remaining, hit her just above her eyes.
The smooth steel was pressed against her skull, the slightest forward movement more capable of ending her life in that moment. Then it slid off to the right, and tore open a straight line that left a faint imprint in the bone itself.
Then strikes blessedly came to an end, and she was able to fall into her second step back, this time pushing off with her unhampered leg and putting herself well out of reach for a single precious moment.
Blood poured down from the cut, blinding her right eye and turning half of her world into a curtain of red. Her left arm had been left in front by her swing, and just tightening her grip with it was enough to display every single marking in her flesh in a transcendent map of pain that appeared only in her mind.
Tenjo adjusted her stance, changing her grip and putting her weakened left side back to compensate for the lack of strength in it. Her remaining eye focused on the looming threat, tracking as many of them as she could see as her vision frantically flickered back and forth between whomever took the lead.
Then a bolt of magical energy took her directly in the chest from her blind spot, and her feet left the ground entirely as she was hurled into the air.
The spell had no lethality to it, not on its own. It wasn't a forbidden way to melt someone alive or a masterful shaping of energy into a blade or spear as potent as any aura charged weapon. Instead, it was a simple movement spell, more fit to aid with lifting heavy objects than combat.
But as it threw her into the air and pushed her back over the edge of the walls, it became quite lethal indeed.
As the stone passed quickly under her, Tenjo jammed her katana into it, arresting her sideways descent. Her right hand was the only one still gripping the blade, and forearm begun to scream in protest.
One second passed after another, her grip slowly loosing as the silk threatened to slip from between her fingers. Then, to her horror, the blade slowly started to bend, the force it was now under applied in a way far different from the intention of how it had been forged.
Her teeth gritted together, and she forced her hand to contract harder, every bit of will she could muster poured into that single movement. One second passed after another, and then at last the force of the spell gave out, and the spectral energy that was pulling her vanished.
As Tenjo sized the ledge beneath her with both hands, leaving the sword sticking out of the stone, and slowly pulled herself up, she could barely see at the end of her blurring vision the sight of the guards on their floating raft appearing over the wall.
They poured over the far side into the courtyard, and the gang members were taken unawares, the smaller but more disciplined force taking the upper hand and forcing them to turn and face the new threat.
Then she tumbled back over the wall, struck the ground, and forgot all about the pitched battle taking place as for the second time in two days, her entire world became nothing but a bright, desperate flare of throbbing and pulsing white hot pain.