Sobon was em­bar­rassed, and chas­tened, to dis­cov­er that her own im­me­di­ate and tran­scen­den­tal as­cen­sion had been wit­nessed by the City Lord, who had him­self im­me­di­ate­ly bro­ken through to First Star Gold Qi. It's not as though it wasn't her fault; she was just... frus­trat­ed, as she had been con­stant­ly from her first ar­rival on this plan­et. Be­ing able to get out of the ir­ri­tat­ing and me­an­der­ing kitchen line that was pow­er ad­vance­ment and be­gin step­ping for­wards felt like a sig­nif­i­cant re­lease, even if this one step meant lit­tle to her.

Of course, now there was this to deal with, and im­me­di­ate­ly on the heels of be­ing told not to do ex­act­ly this. Sobon gen­tly pushed Alas­si out of the way and frowned at the man as he stared at his own hands, which had lost some of the signs of age they had. Sobon didn't re­al­ly con­sid­er un­til she looked, but he showed signs of be­ing of sim­i­lar age to Alas­si--per­haps a bit old­er, but his body con­tained enough qi to look and be­have like a man decades younger.

Sobon reg­is­tered her body's at­trac­tion to the man, aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, and set it aside. Alas­si... was not quite so aca­d­e­m­ic, but Sobon ig­nored her.

"Lord Shi­da." She let au­thor­i­ty fill her voice, au­thor­i­ty that rang true de­spite their match­ing qi lev­els. "I trust you un­der­stand me when I say that this must re­main se­cret."

Im­me­di­ate­ly, the city lord was on the floor, bow­ing in what was a tru­ly pa­thet­ic at­tempt at be­ing gra­cious. "Of course, my Lady Alas­si. Of course. You--and this great pow­er that you serve--I swear my feal­ty, an that of the City of Emer­ald Val­ley, to you, and will nev­er cross you. What­ev­er you need from me, it would be a small an­swer to this grand gift."

Sobon looked down at him, an­noyed. It was an un­der­stand­able tra­di­tion on such a bru­tal plan­et, of ab­solute sub­mis­sion, es­pe­cial­ly when giv­en a gift by a greater pow­er. But it was also dis­taste­ful. It had the stink of in­her­ent cor­rup­tion all over it--the trust that a man, or woman, could do no wrong, or could not be ques­tioned, sim­ply be­cause they were pow­er­ful. It was the same dis­gust­ing, back­wards think­ing that made that no­ble brat think he could prove some­thing false with a duel.

"I do not in­tend to in­trude too much on your hos­pi­tal­i­ty." Even as she spoke, though, Sobon con­sid­ered. There was a very real chance that her mis­sion would last be­yond this life once again, and she had a very real de­sire to see Lui, and Ki'el, again. "I will ask one thing of you, how­ev­er. That any­one else who is con­nect­ed with... my pa­tron be tak­en care of, as long as they are in this city."

"Of course, my Lady Alas­si."

Again, that left Sobon feel­ing un­com­fort­able. "The name you will need to rec­og­nize, but should not speak to oth­ers, is 'Sobon'. That is the name of the high­er pa­tron. Cur­rent­ly, there are few who know that name, but if any­one, es­pe­cial­ly a younger per­son, comes to the city look­ing for 'Sobon', I want you to make sure they are safe, and if fea­si­ble, let me know."

"Of course, my Lady Alas­si."

"It is also pos­si­ble that... that my mis­sion will fail, and an­oth­er... Cho­sen of Sobon will come here. They will be able to prove their iden­ti­ty. They will know you, and they should know any­one else who came here look­ing for Sobon."

"Of course, my Lady Alas­si." There was a pause. "Ah, my lady... how is this 'Sobon' spelled? It would help if you would cre­ate a Mark for me."

Sobon bare­ly thought about it, tear­ing off a piece of near­by wood with aether and en­grav­ing a copy of her cy­borg au­then­ti­ca­tion to­ken onto it. When de­pict­ed graph­i­cal­ly, it was usu­al­ly a square grid filled with a num­ber of high­ly spe­cif­ic hash marks, with one line through the cen­ter that in­di­cat­ed the start­ing and end­ing place, and a few ticks along the out­side that could be used to de­ci­pher the en­cod­ing. Af­ter star­ing at it for a long mo­ment, though, Sobon erased it with a flash of pow­er and then sim­pli­fied the mark fur­ther.

A sim­ple cy­cle and thorn, with a starfield around the thorn that Sobon gen­er­at­ed from the to­ken, but which didn't ac­tu­al­ly con­tain all of the data. If the lo­cals want­ed to re­pro­duce or rec­og­nize the to­ken, the starfield would be sim­pler, but she would still be able to gen­er­ate one iden­ti­cal to the orig­i­nal. At the bot­tom of the to­ken, Sobon al­lowed Alas­si to spell his name in the lo­cal writ­ten script, dou­ble check­ing and mem­o­riz­ing it her­self af­ter­wards. Alas­si warned, how­ev­er, that most writ­ing in the lo­cal tongue was more nu­anced, us­ing ad­vanced char­ac­ters with mean­ing, and that a true lo­cal name would have at least a sec­ond mean­ing be­yond its pro­nun­ci­a­tion. That didn't help, be­cause while Sobon's name meant some­thing like 'Wa­verid­er' in Crestan, it would not eas­i­ly trans­late.

"This will do," she said, and Lord Shi­da looked up with some­thing like awe on his face, ac­cept­ing the to­ken and study­ing it. Af­ter a mo­ment, he put the to­ken into his robe, and bowed again, as though await­ing any more in­struc­tions.

"As for now," Sobon said, when the si­lence made it ob­vi­ous he was still wait­ing for or­ders, "I will need to get go­ing soon. What­ev­er else hap­pens here... please make sure that Lui, my grand daugh­ter, is looked af­ter. She is one of the peo­ple that Sobon is look­ing to pro­tect."

"Of course, my Lady Alas­si. I will pre­pare a res­i­dence for her, and you, and oth­ers of this... Or­der of Sobon."

"That will be all." Sobon was al­ready sick of be­ing bowed and scraped to, and only felt more dis­gust­ed when the city lord got up and backed away, only to bow again at the en­trance to the room. Sobon sat in the room alone for sev­er­al min­utes, be­fore us­ing one of her dy­namos to blow out the stench of fear-soaked loy­al­ty out of the air.

Af­ter a minute of fresh­er air, Sobon threw to­geth­er an aether pat­tern to send a brief mes­sage to the AI. [ Re­lay to (Ki'el). If you trav­el to the city of Emer­ald Vale, Sobon will be able to find you there. ] She wait­ed for the AI's con­fir­ma­tion ping, then stepped out of the inn.

Pre­dictably, many peo­ple were fuss­ing over many things. The res­cued civil­ians were wary around the city guard, and Mian was star­ing dag­gers at Lord Shi­da. Shi­da, him­self, had re­duced the ap­pear­ance of his core, a trick that Sobon was sure was in­clud­ed in the data pack­et K'val had pre­pared, but she had no time to study it at the mo­ment. Al­though she un­der­stood that there was a lot of pol­i­tics in­volved, both from the Ri'lef and the lo­cal no­bil­i­ty, in all hon­esty, she just didn't care.

"I do apol­o­gize," Lord Shi­da was say­ing, both to­wards Mian and to the rest. "If Young Mas­ter Mofu was not al­ready in the city, this all would have gone much more eas­i­ly. As it is... I can­not op­posse House Mofu di­rect­ly, and Young Mas­ter Mofu chose to hang the rep­u­ta­tion of his House on this." He frowned, look­ing se­vere. "Be­cause of this, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of reprisal is high. We will seek to re­turn you to where you be­long, but if we can­not..."

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Sobon was sure she could have pres­sured the Lord here, but in truth, she had no un­der­stand­ing at all of the lo­cal pol­i­tics, or where these peo­ple would have come from. She was also dim­ly aware that there were var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal tru­isms that ba­si­cal­ly boil down to, if you de­mand the im­pos­si­ble, you weak­en your own po­si­tion. So she turned her at­ten­tion in­stead to Mian, who looked up­set and unim­pressed.

With a sub­tle pulse of aether, she turned his at­ten­tion to her, and he only glanced back at Lord Shi­da for a mo­ment be­fore turn­ing and walk­ing to­wards her. Al­though he stepped close, and kept his voice low, he re­fused to meet her eyes.

"All this is bull­shit," Mian grum­bled. "I was jailed and beat­en. If he hopes that words alone will--"

"Enough," Sobon said, tired­ly, keep­ing her own voice low. "If you want re­venge, it isn't on him, and you know it."

Mian paused, but set­tled and gave her a strange look. "Do you have a plan?"

Sobon re­al­ized that he meant to take care of the no­bles, and frowned, con­sid­er­ing. "What do you know of House Mofu?"

"Not much. They rule this part of Ijia, but it is a nar­row re­gion through the moun­tains. They have hun­dreds of war­riors and thou­sands of ser­vants, but I don't know what the great­est of them are. Sap­phire, per­haps." He fi­nal­ly met Sobon's eyes, and Sobon not­ed that the man was scared, what­ev­er else he may be think­ing or feel­ing. "I don't be­lieve the cur­rent fam­i­ly head is even Amethyst ranked. Mithril was the last I re­mem­ber hear­ing, but that was long ago. I don't fol­low those things."

Alas­si sort­ed the lev­els men­tal­ly for him, al­though she didn't know much. Mithril had to be the high­est rank of the next Met­al tier, and Amethyst the low­est of the less­er Gem rank. Sobon's Gold rank was a full tier be­hind Mithril, with... what, four? Four dif­fi­cult break­throughs that she was sup­posed to need to clear, plus time to adapt to her new lev­el of pow­er, and (Alas­si as­sumed) time to find teach­ers who would pro­vide her with new ranks of abil­i­ties that took full ad­van­tage of her new strength.

It wasn't a bad as­sump­tion, though Sobon con­sid­ered it an un­der­whelm­ing ques­tion. Al­though her ba­sic can­non and grenade scripts could not, in fact, scale up to star­ship-grade pow­er, and while Qi as a con­cept was tan­gled enough that it was dif­fi­cult to in­tu­itive­ly scale the use of it up to high­er lev­els, Sobon was a Ma­rine, not a war­rior. On Crest, his pri­ma­ry train­ing was in cre­at­ing and us­ing aether-tech weapons that would ac­cept any amount of aether you could pos­si­bly in­ject into them. Grant­ed, it looked like the raw ma­te­ri­als to cre­ate those struc­tures were rel­a­tive­ly scarce--but they did ex­ist, and Sobon had just been told where to find them. In­deed, that the lo­cals were har­vest­ing them in large quan­ti­ties, for sale to the high­est bid­der.

Still, Sobon shook her head. "Not in time to stop them if they re­turn for re­venge. I might be able..." she paused, al­low­ing Alas­si time to find an ad­e­quate phrase. "...As I am now, I doubt that a Ti­ta­ni­um-qi war­rior would be my match."

Mian's head raised slight­ly, as in sur­prise. "Your trick with the blade was im­pres­sive, but even so..."

Sobon scoffed. "A weapon made in an evening with an old broom han­dle." Left un­said was that the ma­te­ri­als them­selves didn't mat­ter much--Sobon could han­dle a bit more aether with­out prop­er ma­te­r­i­al, per­haps twice as much, but it wasn't so sim­ple. Sobon didn't need to do sim­ple... not un­less she was low on time.

It would also help if Sobon had the time to com­pare qi in­scrip­tions to aether pat­terns, since the world aether was hos­tile to his own pat­terns, but none of that was a mat­ter for here and now.

Mian gave her a strange look, seem­ing to mea­sure her words. "If you had prop­er spir­i­tu­al ma­te­ri­als..."

"There is still much to do, and I can­not stay here." She not­ed his sur­prise, and frowned, re­al­iz­ing that she had hard­ly spo­ken with the tac­i­turn cook. "My des­tiny lies else­where, Mian."

"Is that so." Mian stretched slight­ly, and lost some of the stiff­ness in his pos­ture. "When you lost your­self, I was be­gin­ning to think that there tru­ly was no hope in the world." He straight­ened, and looked at her. "Al­though you nev­er put me in your eyes, Alas­si, as long as you have any need of me, I will be at your side."

Sobon held in her sur­prise, al­though Alas­si had a hard­er time of it. She stud­ied the slim Djang man, in body and in spir­it, and not­ed, again that he had been hold­ing back his own qi lev­els. Sud­den­ly, it sprung for­ward from the top of Cop­per Qi to four Iron stars--near­ly enough for him to pro­mote again to Sil­ver. Sobon raised an eye­brow at that, but the ear­ly tiers were much sim­pler, com­par­a­tive­ly. Still... did you even know he was chas­ing you, Alas­si?

[ No, ] the old­er woman's spir­it said, tired­ly. [ He was young when he showed up here. I know that he said he saw our unit com­ing through, and he was chas­ing the war­rior he thought he'd seen, but... ]

Sobon let the thoughts pass her by and just looked at Mian. He was no longer young, though Sobon knew that he would get younger as he pro­gressed, as every­one seemed to. To have chased af­ter a woman, a war­rior, that he only saw pass­ing by... Sobon shook her head. "I can­not promise you any­thing."

"Promise?" Mian took the large sheath that held his blade and con­sid­ered it in his hand. "That is not how war works. The world broke you, and I thought that even that woman could be bro­ken by this world. But now, you stand tall, again. The world is one where you re­main as a war­rior. And that is enough for me."

Some­thing in his voice sparked some­thing in Alas­si's spir­it, and Sobon, in­ter­nal­ly, just sighed. "Good. Be­cause my pur­pose is not so light that I can put it aside. It may be a fight that con­sumes my life."

The oth­ers in the clear­ing shift­ed, and Sobon not­ed the shift­ing sub­tle notes in the aether, where the oth­ers watch­ing didn't want to get in the way. But Mian just nod­ded, his face mask­ing the dis­ap­point­ment that he felt. "Of course."

"Then do as you wish." She turned to look at Tuli and Lui, who were stand­ing near the front of the inn, stand­ing back from all the rest. "Tuli."

"Lui and I will be fine here," he said, stiffly. What­ev­er he thought about his cook leav­ing... well.

"No."

The man's face got in­tense, and quick­ly. "We had an agree­ment, Alas­si. The inn--"

"The inn is yours. But I will not al­low you to harm my grand­daugh­ter any fur­ther."

The man's face cleared, then con­fu­sion fell over him, and the ex­pres­sion gave way to shock. "What? But she--"

"Is just a girl? You seem to val­ue her very lit­tle, my son-in-law. I will not make the same mis­takes with her as I did my own daugh­ter." That was a giv­en.

For some rea­son that Sobon couldn't pin down, but which seemed in­tu­itive to Alas­si, the man didn't have any of the same fu­ri­ous in­dig­na­tion that he showed when he thought Alas­si was tak­ing the inn. Al­though now... he had no fam­i­ly and no friends to run the inn with, and al­though Sobon had ac­cused him di­rect­ly of be­ing a ter­ri­ble fa­ther, what he felt now seemed to be a be­lea­guered ac­cep­tance.

[ It is a mat­ter of fam­i­ly, ] Alas­si in­ter­pret­ed for her. [ Es­pe­cial­ly un­der Djiang law. As the head of the fam­i­ly, I must hold to my agree­ments, but I have pow­er, es­pe­cial­ly to de­ter­mine the fam­i­ly's fu­ture. Lui is my heir, so the Djiang would say I have every right to take her. ]

Lui her­self looked con­flict­ed, but hope­ful. Sobon raised a hand to her, and she looked first to her fa­ther, who did not meet the girl's eyes. Then she looked back at Alas­si, and Sobon knew that she was look­ing deep into her grand­moth­er's eyes, search­ing for an­swers. Sobon wasn't sure what the girl thought, but sim­ply al­lowed her aether to ex­press it­self on her be­half, pro­ject­ing an un­com­pli­cat­ed tan­gle of feel­ings, un­fil­tered.

Lui swal­lowed, nod­ded, and moved to her side.

Sobon looked next to Lord Shi­da, who met her eyes cau­tious­ly, and then bowed. "If you would like to stay in the city, Lady Alas­si, then we will pre­pare a place for you. It will not be much--"

"We will speak on this lat­er," Sobon in­ter­rupt­ed, and the Lord qui­et­ed, and gave a def­er­en­tial half-bow. And soon, the group of war­riors and refugees left, leav­ing one man and a build­ing alone on the moun­tain­side.