The silvery grey light that illuminated Guan Fa Lian’s hand couldn’t even be called a candlelight. It was only if you were looking that you would see it. As it connected with the tree she was being flung past, the tree decayed like it had experienced hundreds of years at once. The blackened bark of the trunk fell away, leaving a space for her to grab. It worked perfectly.

The massive tree was ancient. A few hundred years of decay around her hand wasn’t enough to topple the mighty camphor, and her hand found solid purchase amongst its gnarly, root-like trunk. Her hip screamed as the lacerating ropes around it bit into her ankle and pulled. She held on though. Enough was enough. She would give up the foot rather than deal with this shame.

Her own scream was mirrored on the ground. For a moment, Lian thought that it was the puppetmaster howling, it was such an animalistic yell. When she looked though, she saw that it was Empty, or whatever his name was. He must have been caught by a lashing whip of energy or something. He was surprisingly close to the monster, but as she would expect, had fallen short of the mark.

The pain in her foot intensified, the creature gnashing with effort, half of its arms moving in conjunction to try and yank her away from the tree and continue battering her. It hurt. She needed a way to cut the threads. If she could get her hand down there, she could have slashed it with her own mana, she was sure. As it was, she was being stretched as though on a torturous rack.

The bough began to creak, crack and fracture. Right as Lian was sure the inertia was about to start again, a flash of light occurred. A shape sped past her and into a tree beside the huge camphor. The pressure on her leg stopped, and Lian regained her footing as quickly as possible. A quick glance, the small one that she’d called ugly. She wasn’t ugly, though Lian hated twin buns. Right now, Lian would have even hugged her.

Well, probably not, but they exchanged a nod and began the final assault upon the puppetmaster.

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Dan’s core was rotting. He had no other way to describe it. He had no way of knowing what had caused the flare, but the pain eliminated all thought. He screamed, but couldn’t hear it himself, so tried to scream louder. His feet scrambled, churning the mud beneath his feet. He slipped into the mud and only realised that he was still screaming because his mouth was filled with dirt.

The puppetmaster must have done something to him. Grasping hands checked for the bloody wound that had surely been torn through himself. He couldn't find it, but the agony remained. He finally managed to stop screaming, a destroyed throat a stark reminder alongside the tattered core inside himself. His hand also spiked with pain, the hilt of his dagger was partially embedded into his palm. The combat swarmed still, though the tide of battle was clear at this point. Guan Fa Lian had, surprisingly, began to coordinate with Xiaomei. The two girls tumbled around each other as though they had worked together for years.

Hyun Soon gathered Dan to his feet. “Move!” His voice cut through Dan’s fugue. His core wasn’t still burning, it was the aftershocks of pain that Dan was reeling from. Just knowing it was possible made him terrified to move, but he did as he was told. One foot in front of the other, away from the monster and the place where he had been inexplicably tortured. By the time he reached the trees making up the circular grove, Dan had returned to some semblance of sanity.

“What happened to me?” Dan hoped that Hyun Soon had seen whatever had caused his pain. To his dismay, the boy just shook his head and, once Dan was at an area of safety, he jumped back into the fight against the puppetmaster. The tides had changed. Guan Fa Lian had managed to free herself from the threads with Xiaomei’s help and it was now a matter of remaining mobile.

Something everyone but Dan was capable of, right now. He could have at least kept up without this empty weight in his core. It was holding him down even now, not allowing his mana into his channels like a dam wall. Like there was something in the way. Like there was a void in the way. It was just like Guan Fa Lian’s core, when Dan thought about it. Was this what she had felt like, writhing in pain?

Dan looked at her, just in time to see her channel her mana. Not how he might have done before, but the telltale signs of someone enforcing their will upon their core was clear. Perhaps the first blast of pain had been more severe because of its novelty, or maybe it was because Dan could identify the source now that all the pieces fell together.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A piercing blade of timeworn anguish pressed against Dan’s core once more. It caused him to gasp, vision to dim and eyes to swim, but he held onto a nearby low-hanging branch and kept watching. He could feel the pressure in his core that he had seen in her’s before, the vicious clawed hand trying to press through to the other side of his core. Did she feel this when she used her power? Why was Dan feeling her mana?

Was it that simple?

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Why couldn’t she feel her mana? It was the strangest sensation, like having a dead arm and trying to pick something up. It was almost uncomfortable as she braced for a pain that wasn’t arriving, a pain she had dealt with for years gone in a moment. Lian wished she had time to inspect the feeling, but the puppetmaster was feeling trapped now and getting desperate. Possibly dangerous.

Well, Lian thought, if it’s not going to burn me like usual, then I can go wild.

She landed hard on a tree, enjoying the firmness of her muscles and the slight burn in them as the leafy alder tree protested, bent slightly and then threw her back at the puppetmaster. She had gathered her mana, ready to drive it into any part of the creature that she could lay her hands on. It didn’t matter how much she touched, the creature would be crippled in an instant. The mash of arms and flabby body in the middle fought a war of attrition. Unfortunately, Guan Fa Lian was an unstoppable force, and this thing was by no means an immovable object.

She heard another scream from Guan Ah Dan, but he could be helped when the fight was over. Whatever he had done, however it had happened, Lian had to admit that she was about as close to her peak as she had ever been. It was as though she had never taken a fierce blow in her life, her limbs and muscles felt loose and limber. She would at least tell him that he had played a part in the victory, though it had been all her really.

Flipping partially in the air, Lian was forced to plant her feet into the tree currently being wielded like a flail. Its skeletons finally destroyed, the puppetmaster had ripped up three trees to use as clubs. They were fast, but the creature had no guiding intelligence to allow it tricks. The incoming logs were simple to dodge, and none of the three students facing the creature would have any issue. A point proven when the fat boy punched one of the trees to smithereens. It reminded Lian of Shen, and she felt jealous for a moment.

“Please STOP.” Guan Fa Lian’s concentration broke, and the gathering energy in her hand dissipated. It actually felt like the words were coming from within her core, so there was no ignoring them. It was strange. Like being controlled. She looked at Guan Ah Dan in fury before tensing her legs and springing away from the ground. A dodged tree flying beneath her, she kept glaring and launched herself at the boy. She grabbed him and brought them further away. “What are you doing,” he moaned pathetically, trying to struggle.

“Why are you stopping me? How did you stop me?”

“I don’t know! Please stop using your mana. Please.” The boy was nearly in tears, but he was smiling. A wave of relief seemed to pass over him. He was so weird. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Thank you for your tactical advice, idiot, but I can handle this.” She threw the boy backwards, aiming him into a puddle for her own amusement. “Just stay back.” She wouldn’t be so nice next time, she thought, turning back to the monster. She was saving the fool’s life, for whatever the value was. If nothing else, Lian wanted to know more about the effect that had removed the acidic burn of her mana. Which is why she was stunned when her chance of answer, rear end dripping with muddy water, sprinted past her. Towards certain death. “What are you doing?!”

“It’s going to work! I know what happened now!” The boy with the empty soul badge ran forward with purpose. Guan Fa Lian was too stunned to react. Her base nature was one of solidarity, she didn’t know how to tell him that he had no weapons. He was nearly limping. One of the trees would smash him to pieces, for certain.

Yet with each stride the limp lessened. His jaw set in a way that was surprisingly pleasant, his thuggish features would now be described as nearly roguish. A happy smile landed on his face and made it almost handsome. Like a switch had been flicked - like a mask had dropped - the boy began to saunter. Within the space of a minute he’d gone from a flimsy sprawl on the floor to this. Where the other boy had reminded her of Shen for a moment, she had to blink away the image of her father as she saw Guan Ah Dan’s posture become like his.

She had to fight absolute incredulity as he rolled over one of the logs. He hadn’t jumped, he had simply spun as the tree carommed from the floor. As though it were the most casual thing in the world, he dispersed the impact entirely and flowed through the momentum. When his feet landed, it was as though he hadn’t stopped walking at all. A laugh came from him, and for some reason Lian laughed as well. The twin bunned girl and the fat boy didn’t falter when Dan stepped forward, but voiced concern even as Guan Ah Dan raised a hand to quiet them.

Then, from her spot near the treeline, Lian gasped. She would never have thought what Dan had just done would be possible for an empty soul like himself, even at triangle stage skill. However she could convince herself that miracles could occur, so even a strange orphan from a nameless family could break the mould sometimes. What they couldn’t do, was spontaneously become more powerful. The colour of the soul can’t just change. That was impossible.

So, why then, could she see a shine in Guan Ah Dan’s soul badge? He couldn’t see it, having turned it around on his wrist. As he walked away, it had been both impossible not to notice, and impossible to accept too.

Why did his empty soul badge now look like her’s?