Sensing the traces of an aura was not an easy task. Even when close to the corpse of the sect bronze-ranker, Kite could still barely make it out if he strained his senses to the maximum, and that was only because of his relative familiarity with the aura in question. Had he not encountered Dancer on the Broken River several times before, having sensed the distinct harshness of her spirit like a tempered knife, Kite would not have been able to pick it out among the other ever-faint spiritual traces.
“Our spirit does indeed leave a mark on the world,” he thought, one of auntie Crow’s teachings coming to mind. “But once more, Serene’s senses are astonishing. Now the question is; where did this particular wraith of pain let her steps lead her?”
Without special senses or tools to aid him, Kite could not sense anything else from the corpse, which in itself only carried enough aura-traces to be noticeable due to the powers having been used, probably while also being thoroughly suppressed. But looking around the empty streets, there were not too many options present, with the general directions available leading either closer to the heart of the sect or further away from it.
Fortunately, other traces were left by what Kite assumed to have been a short and brutal conflict. Along the cobblestones, he could find small traces of blood having been spilled and smeared; the trail ending at where the corpse lay sprawled and indicating that it had been dragged along for a short distance.
“Then to the heart we go,” Kite thought to himself, easily imagining the swift disciple of Pain as a dark shadow, not even stopping as her chains latched on to her prey, dragging the man along for a bit while dealing their gruesome damage. Before his mind’s eye, the flickering phantom dropped the man where he lay only to continue onward without breaking stride. “Fortune, please make this be the right direction.”
A few meters further along, there was another small cluster of blood on the stones, as if having dripped from a weapon. “Or a pair of sharpened gauntlets,” Kite thought with a smile as he now had a trail to follow. It was sparse and got even more faint as he went, but it was something.
As Kite crept along the streets, the sound of battle continued to echo around him, mostly from the buildings off in the distance and the battle in the skies. He halted briefly and pressed himself to a nearby wall when he noticed the bright flash from above as the former grand elder Meridian unleashed a torrent of exploding stars, silvery destruction driving the sect leader further back in the skies. Some of the projectiles were deflected, landing on the buildings beneath and shattering tile and wood whenever the defensive formations failed.
It did not take long for the trail to become so faint that Kite had trouble making it out, sometimes needing to double back a bit to find the few smudges that remained. He had come a lot closer to the more heavily contested areas as he went, the streets and beautiful buildings around him all but deserted as whatever combatants in the vicinity were quite busy a few blocks over. This was, in the end, also what allowed him to pick up something else just as the trail started growing faint enough to have him question if it was even there.
The conflict in the sky and that near the heart of the sect compound sent out ripples of unleashed aura faintly detectable even at this distance, but when a pair of clashing auras bloomed into being a lot closer and removed from the rest of the fighting, Kite knew that Fortune had indeed smiled upon him once more. One was hard and sharp; a cloud of spikes shredding and tearing even while remaining perfectly controlled. Dancer on the Broken River was weaving her bloody art. The other was different; nebulous and surprisingly nondescript. It gave Kite an odd feeling which he couldn’t quite place, as if something within it strained against its confines as it swelled in conflict.
He picked up speed, his careful stride now all but a dash as Glint floated out of her bottle and Sage manifested to float just behind him as usual.
“Ready yourselves,” Kite said to his familiars as he vaulted a small decorative wall to cross a well kept little garden, making a shortcut to the building he saw on the other side. It was a low and rather sizable wooden building, the dark blue tiles of its roof yet unblemished by the ravages of the short siege. From the outside it looked peaceful, the wooden sliding doors closed. But judging from the auras clashing within, the peace was only a facade.
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River did not recognize the lone celestine man, clad in the robes of blue and silver of the Descending Star sect, but from his words before turning to face her and the still glowing tracking stone, there was no doubt in her mind that she stood before her target.
“Found you.”
Her expression must have given away her intent, because the man did not even try to go for any kind of act, his smile only widening slightly, his shimmering bismuth eyes locked to hers as their auras started clashing.
“This… this is a most unexpected turn of events,” he said, his thin and expressive features quite the contrast to the mask of steel that was River’s. “Whatever could the sole little child of the late grand elder White suddenly be doing here? If it is some kind of vengeance that you are after, your efforts are quite misdirected, I’m afraid.”
Something in his smile grated on River, something she wasn’t quite able to put her finger upon. But she would have plenty of time to find out. “You have things to tell me. A conversation we will have at length.”
River had already started forward, chains starting to trail after her.
“The only thing I will tell you is ‘farewell’, as I will soon have left this place,” the man retorted, still smiling as he threw what River assumed to be the token linked to the tracking stone into one corner of the room, the device having served its purpose. “Answers will not be forthcoming at any time or place down the path you are currently walking. Only pain and death.”
As he finished, River had already activated her dashing power, the world seeming to slow down as she was suddenly in front of the man in the blink of an eye, a pair of extended fingers already aiming for his throat as her chains closed in from all directions, crackling with the power bestowed upon her by Pain.
However, she was forced to abort the attack as her expanded vision revealed another form winking into existence at her side, a barely visible sword already arcing down in a downward slice aimed at her outstretched arms. River’s chains shot forwards even faster, their trajectory changed to strike the wall behind her foe and push, sending her flying backwards to avoid the strike even as another length of chain was conjured into her hands and swung in a sweeping arc towards both copies of her target currently visible. It had been obvious that one of them was an illusion, but there had not been enough time for River to determine which. And with essence powers, what was real and what was not tended to not always be a relevant question.
The image which River had originally targeted was shattered as her chain passed through, but the swung length of jagged links was deflected by a swipe from the second. She tried to redirect her chains to wrap itself around the weapon, but it was as if contact with the strange weapon made her conjured chain behave odd and less responsive.
As she got a better look at the weapon of her foe, River realized that ‘better’ was a very relative term. She thought it to be a sword or blade of some kind, but it had some kind of quality or enchantment that made her attention want to slide off the object, making the outline vague at best while also seeming to mask the man’s attacks and intent. But River’s father had taught her well, and she quickly shifted her focus to the stance and aura of the man.
“The weapon is of less consequence than one’s body and intent. Know them, and dominate your foe through that knowledge.”
Even as she sent more attacks flying towards her foe, beginning the dance of his inevitable demise, her focus on his spirit sharpened. The sessions spent with her father ever since she could absorb her essences had honed River’s spirit beyond comparison of any peer she had met, and she used every bit of it to try and scour her target’s aura. It was a shifting, nebulous thing with a quality of something unseen. To River’s senses, it was surprisingly bland and did not quite match up to the smiling celestine before her.
“Your aura mask is impressive, having held so far. But in the end, it is inadequate. ” she said, springing off a nearby pillar as she twirled through the air, her chains dancing around her. A pair of swords, one from each side, swept in to meet her but were tangled by even more of the conjured links, before she suddenly felt a sharp pain across one of her arms. A third copy of the man had appeared, his blade grazing a gap in River’s armor before she could twist entirely out of the way.
While the pain itself was inconsequential, she could feel something more be left behind; an affliction of some kind latching onto the boons accumulating within River and causing them to build some kind of resonance; River’s own magic starting to damage her. It was nothing spectacular at the moment, but given time and more application, and things could start escalating fast.
“You noticed? Then you could be considered an impressive talent. Or are you just one who actually survived those little rites to scar your soul, as opposed to what must have been dozens of failures?”
“I am the one who will force your submission,” was River’s only retort, voice holding steady as nine of the chains trailing River’s path through the room suddenly jerked and veered inward, crackling with reddish-purple energies. Two of the images vanished under their onslaught and what was revealed to be the original only manage to block two of the three, the smile on the man becoming just a bit more strained as he countered with more illusory strikes.
A few more exchanges followed, the pair beginning a weird kind of dance with chains and flickering forms appearing and disappearing in blistering, staccato choreography which left the interior of the building surprisingly intact for there to be two bronze-ranked essence-users fighting inside. And River also had to reach a grudging conclusion.
“He is skilled. Very skilled,” she thought, feeling the dissonance from within herself as the man’s affliction had started accumulating with every strike and grazing blow. But River’s dance was not completely outmatched either. A swift flurry of strikes culminated in River stomping down and striking out with two fingers fast enough to make the air crack, only the smiling man’s interposed sword protecting him to some extent as the blow still had him sliding back over three meters on the polished wooden floor.
“You have been trained very well, I will admit,” River’s foe said, breaking the tense silence of the duel. “Was it your father? I was told about him, you know.” The pair stood perfectly still as he talked, both seeming to wait for their opportunity to re-engage on favorable terms. She had noticed him trying to edge the fight closer to the different exits of the building, but controlling the area around her was definitely an aspect in which River was proficient. And as for another such area…
“And your spirit is weak, especially while hidden behind your frail disguise,” River retorted, using her aura to further push against his, the smiling man’s already being ground down to almost nothing by the sharpness that was River’s. “If you start talking now, the time of suffering afterwards will at least be short.”
“A most classical sentiment, but an offer I will still decline. Because…
Let the disparity grow!”
The sudden spell chant caused a fresh wave of pain to wash through River as her afflicted boons started to further tear into her life force. While she welcomed the sensation, it still left the timer put on this fight a lot shorter than she had previously thought.
Said chant was also the start of a new series of exchanges, the smiling man revealing more of his tricks. The illusions he conjured started to detonate at odd and often unexpected times, sending out waves of disruptive force damage instead of delivering their attacks, even throwing illusory swords to create the detonation at odd angles or multiple places at once. River also had to step up, bringing out more of her martial prowess and combined special attacks where fist and chain worked their way towards a devastating, pain-inducing crescendo.
The next time it was River who was thrown back by a clever series of detonating illusions and sudden repositions, but the layers of chains floating around the room like streamers hindered any immediate pursuit.
This time there were no words exchanged, both seeming to have resolved themselves to finish this before accomplishing their goals. And River had another reason to want a little more time even as the afflictions ate away at her.
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“One more bout, and then-” she thought, the pair starting to move forwards again. And then there was a sudden crash, but not from an unleashed power or mighty strike. Instead, it was the nearby sliding door slamming open. Had she not been so focused in wearing down the last of the smiling man’s spiritual defenses, she might have noticed the retracted aura approaching, its owner now suddenly occupying the door and taking in the scene before him, eyes of blue and gold thinned in suspicion.
“Annoying one?” River couldn’t help herself as the questioning murmur escaped her, not having expected this particular encounter in the slightest.
The smiling man, on the other side, seized the opportunity in a different matter. “You there! Outcast! I have discovered servants of Pain in the sect. They- I think they are behind this. All of this! Quick, help me subdue her and we should be able to clear up this mess! It is just a misunderstanding!” Gone was the smile, replaced by a face showing a haughtiness with clear cracks of desperation in the facade. A most impressive show of theatrics, River had to give him that.
River kept her focus on the man as she spoke, her goal so frustratingly close. “His presence does not matter. You will tell me everything. I will not be moved by the likes of you any more.”
The annoying outcast considered the situation in a moment of tense contemplation, eyes not quite focused on any of them. As River suspected them to have the same perception power, she knew it not to be necessary. Then he spoke a single word, which in turn would trigger a chain of events beyond River’s imagination.
“Glint?”
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“Gah! I still can’t believe he went off on his own like that!” Dragonfly half-growled as she helped to drag the injured away from the plaza where their battle had taken place, the sect students having left their injured behind and fallen back to what defensive positions remained.
The skirmish in the plaza had been fun, she had to admit, with her getting all fired up by tearing through those summoned sand-soldiers. Them having had small areas of blistering sand around them which dealt continuous damage had been the best thing Dragonfly had ever encountered in making sure that her inner fire got all stoked nice and fast, which in turn had meant bad news for their summoner. Once she had stormed out the other side of the summoned minions, aglow like a bonfire, the real fun had begun.
However, said fun had also been interrupted when the silver-rankers in the sky had intervened in passing. The grand elder of the sect had been fighting Will’s sister nearby when he had suddenly turned and flung a roiling sphere of lightning down towards the adventurer side, risking a lot of friendly damage in the process before Calm of the Indomitable Beyond had seized the opportunity, appearing behind him as ashen limbs sprung from the very air around her to grasp the grand elder before he could make his escape. While this spelled trouble for the caught silver-ranker, the fulminating orb crashing down towards them did too.
Having seen it while also noting Kite’s absence, Dragonfly had decided to take matters into her own hands.
“Serene! Up!”
Not waiting for confirmation, Dragonfly had sprung up onto the fountain and activated her leaping power, the stone top cracking slightly as she pushed off.
“Carried by the heavenly wind!”
Ever precognizant of her friend’s needs, the magic of Serene’s spell gave her an even bigger boost upwards as Dragonfly went straight towards the incoming projectile.
“I don’t know where Kite disappeared to, but I guess that this is my time to show the worth of my path,” she thought, even as what came out of her mouth was something quite different.
“Kyyyyaaahhh!”
With a roar, Dragonfly flung her conjured, flaming axe which headed straight for the crackling sphere while carrying the power of one of her more potent special attacks. The weapon had barely left her hands when her inner glow intensified for a brief moment, the radiance almost a physical thing as Dragonfly’s most potent defense activated a mere heartbeat before burning axe met fulminating doom.
The onlookers below were shaken as the projectile detonated well over twenty meters above them, many still harmed by chaotic tendrils of lightning which rained down and some even flung off their feet. The flash of the detonation had barely winked out before a figure collided with the cobbled ground beneath, bouncing and rolling before crashing into the wooden veranda of a nearby building. For a second, the figure only looked like a smoldering corpse, but then the light within rekindled and rose to even higher levels than before as the ash fell away to reveal unblemished skin and hair beneath.
Dragonfly’s armor was left in all but tatters as the poor self-repair enchantments worked overtime to do what they could to preserve her modesty as she flung herself into battle once more, her path now powered to its fullest as she helped to quickly route the opposition alongside Will, Serene and the other assaulting adventurers. The latter gave her a great deal of appreciating looks, and not just for her relative state of undress as the armor still worked hard to restore itself. They knew what she had done in intercepting that attack, and Dragonfly had to admit that it felt really good.
“I suppose I can understand Kite a bit better. Intercepting stuff and defending does have merit,” she said as she moved to gather with her two companions. “But where is Kite?”
Serene answering that question was what had led to her current grumbling, using her great strength to easily drag wounded off to the priestess and another man with healing abilities who were hard at work.
“I must admit that I share Dragonfly’s sentiment,” Will grumbled, looking around as if trying to spot their missing friend. Which was, coincidentally, anywhere other than at Dragonfly and her still regenerating armor. “We should go find him at once, especially if that woman is involved.”
“I agree, but you were also needed here. And Kite knew that he was too; I could feel his indecision,” Serene said from where she stood channeling her healing hymn. “But he deemed it important and trusted me to take care of you two.”
“Hey, we made it just fine without him! Didn’t you see what I protected us all from?” Dragonfly protested, a bit indignant.
“Yes, and while you were most impressive-”
“You’re damn right, I was!”
“-it was still quite a risk. A risk you were correct in taking, but I know that Kite will feel a bit guilty for not being here,” Serene added. “Which should tell you a lot about how important his instincts probably told him that following the disciple of Pain was. Because you know how much he treasures us.”
“That is quite hard to miss,” Dragonfly admitted. “I still can’t always handle that earnestness of his.”
“Then we better get to following him,” Will said, looking restless as he kept watch. “You know that he seems to have a tendency to get into a bit of trouble. And this time, I really don’t want to miss it!”
As if the capricious fates heard him, Will’s words had barely left his mouth when there was suddenly a ripple passing through the mana of the compound, carrying a sense that something was off.
“Wha-” a nearby adventurer began before they were all but blinded as the defensive formations on every house, street and building came alive. Normally, the parts of the array only glowed when under stress. And the way their blue glow was growing in intensity, its colors marred by something else which seemed to lurk just beneath the surface, the magical defenses were definitely under stress.
The adventurer’s confused words were cut off as the chaotic wrath of the heavens seemed to descend on the compound. Individual sigils of the compound’s defenses started detonating, fizzling or just vanishing, causing cascades of failures. Some were violent and destructive while others were mostly harmless lights and sparkles. But all of them meant that chaos and disarray suddenly reigned across the compound.
“Well, now we definitely need to find Kite!” Will called, dodging a cascade of sparks which suddenly emanated from a nearby window. “Because I get the feeling that said opportunity for excitement is already well underway!”
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Kite did not break stride as he jumped another wall at the end of the garden, crossing the narrow street as debris from a nearby stray spell from above rained down over the open area. Clearing the steps to the house with the clashing aura, he looked down at the glimmering head of Glint poking out of her bottle.
“Ready?” he mouthed, getting an affirmative through their bond. Without further delay, he flung the sliding door aside to reveal the pair of dueling essence-users inside.
Dancer on the Broken River looked much like Kite remembered her, her slate-gray armor slightly marred and pale heir a bit disheveled. Her chains were already spread around the room from what Kite assumed was earlier clashes, and he could also see traces of afflictions along the boons in the magic suffusing her.
Her opponent was a celestine man clad in the robes of the Descending Star sect, long hair and eyes carrying the metallic shimmer of bismuth. His thin face clearly conveyed a mix of outrage and desperation from the conflict.
Kite heard the disciple of Pain mutter something at his arrival, but his focus remained more on the man. He had felt the aura on his way towards the building, and up close and under strain his feeling that it was somehow off intensified.
“You there! Outcast! I have discovered servants of Pain in the sect. They- I think they are behind this. All of this! Quick, help me subdue her and we should be able to clear up this mess! It is just a misunderstanding!
His words carried all the expected emotion of a beleaguered sect elder seeking an uncomfortable alliance, but Kite’s uneasiness only grew as Dancer on the Broken River retorted. Especially her choice of words at the end.
“His presence does not matter. You will tell me everything. I will not be moved by the likes of you any more.”
It took but a second for Kite to make a decision of how to act, mentally preparing himself even as he spoke.
“Glint.”
The sect elder had apparently managed to glean Kite’s intent, and was just about to spring into motion when a sphere of water suddenly manifested around him, trapping him. Even as he flinched, a pair of illusions winked into being near Kite, both swinging their swords toward him at different angles.
“Ward!”
Even while Kite deflected one on a barrier and the other on Immutable Echo as the staff appeared in his hand, that was not the most important move made during that moment. Kite could faintly feel the spiritual heave as River made one last push to finally smother the celestine’s aura, the elder’s eyes going wide as another sensation followed. Kite only felt the wrongness of it all, but the trapped man apparently felt it all the more as he shuddered and howled in pain for a moment before the water trapping him seemed to freeze and then detonate.
Kite’s magical perception revealed it to be something more complex, as it was as if the man’s magic made the magic animating the water react violently to itself, dissolving into a burst of disruptive force which exploded outwards. Whatever River had done to him, he seemed to have shaken it off quickly, but not without consequence. Because whatever she had done, it was as if the surface layer of his aura tore. Beneath, it was much the same, but the nuances were different and a lot more complicated. But most of all, it carried the distinct touch of divinity like that of a priest carrying an essence gifted from the gods.
However, the feeling emanating from the man’s aura was not something Kite had sensed before; the divine echo being one of discrepancy, dissonance and restlessness; as if even a smidge of calm and harmony were its antithesis. But from the sharp intake of breath and widened eyes of Dancer on the Broken River, she seemed to know more.
“So it was you. And she- yes, she has to have-” River began, her facade cracking a bit as anger mixed with a weird shade of relief crossed her features. “It- it all makes sense now. The sect, the war, my father… My father told me about you and your patron. I was even with him once when he met one of your clergy. We- we were just pieces in a game after all. I knew it. I knew it!”
The celestine man, his allegiance to the Descending Star sect now dubious at best, looked as if he wanted to force River into silence then and there, the revelation seeming to have distressed him a lot more than their battle before. But he also seemed to know that Kite’s presence would be a hindrance to such an easy conclusion.
“A soul attack. And they call us vile…” he muttered a bit shakily, looking between them to regard them both before hissing in dissatisfaction. He did not speak more, instead reaching into a dimensional storage in the shape of an illusory hole in the world and retrieving an object; a crystal with many layers of intricate carvings along its uneven shape. It looked almost unstable, as if ready to crack in upon itself at any moment. Kite was already mid swing when this happened, sensing the trouble about to be unleashed, but too late.
The crystal cracked in the man’s hand even easier than Kite might have expected, and before the shards had even reached the ground, several things happened. Kite felt the world shift and disorientation hit him as he was forcefully teleported to another place in the room. A room now full of different images of the celestine moving in different directions.
At the same time, all of the defensive arrays of the building they were in and all buildings seen through the open set of doors had become visible, their glow intensifying as they started malfunctioning and overloading.
“Dissolve the patterns of power!”
Kite did not hesitate, dispelling wave washing over the room, the illusions winking out as it passed them. A moment later, he could just make out the man turning a corner and vanishing down a nearby street outside, with River having set off in the wrong direction as she went after an illusion which looked to have been fleeing sentiently in way of a ruse.
As the illusions cleared, she seemed to come to her senses and lock onto the man’s aura. Kite did not wait for her to get her bearings, activating his boots and rushing out the door and after the fleeing man even as the world around them started cracking with discharging powers of the sect defenses going haywire.
It was not long before River appeared at his side, on the verge of overtaking him as she looked at Kite through the corner of her eye. His gaze met hers for but a scant moment, but there was understanding to be found there. A truce, however temporary it may be. Because while Kite did not know exactly what had just transpired here, he knew that he now wanted answers as well. And that both the fleeing man and disciple of Pain running just ahead of him had their parts to share.