With Com­man­der Rai's in­sis­tence that Sobon was free to go, Sobon would have im­me­di­ate­ly set off, but there were a cou­ple ex­tra tasks that she and Ki'el saw to in the morn­ing. One was get­ting a set of pa­pers for Alas­si and Ki'el, which of­fi­cials in the town out­side the base saw to on a timescale only a bu­reau­crat would call fast. Then, Sobon met one last time with Com­man­der Rai to speak on the mat­ter of that 'fa­vor' the woman sug­gest­ed she owed.

Sobon knew well that she could have any num­ber of dif­fer­ent re­quests, but giv­en that she didn't have over­whelm­ing trust for the woman, she lim­it­ed her­self to two spe­cif­ic things.

"Of­fi­cial mil­i­tary per­mis­sion to fly across the coun­try," Sobon said, "And as­sis­tance with buy­ing a small piece of prop­er­ty some­where in Djang, any­where near a ma­jor city. Not im­me­di­ate­ly, but when I am ready to do so."

The woman had giv­en Sobon an inscrutable look. Sobon knew that both re­quests were very rea­son­able--cur­rent­ly, al­though Alas­si had a cer­tain lev­el of cit­i­zen­ship for her mil­i­tary ser­vice, she had been told by Alas­si that it was the low­est lev­el, be­low non-Djang res­i­dents, com­mon Djang res­i­dents, and Djang no­bles. While the mil­i­tary it­self would some­times hold the rights of a war­rior over the rights of a com­mon res­i­dent, few oth­ers would, and very few in­deed would ever hold the rights of a non-Djang over those of a full-blood cit­i­zen. And the per­mis­sion to fly would do lit­tle to pre­vent Sobon from get­ting in trou­ble if, or rather when, she end­ed up do­ing any­thing more than trav­el­ling.

"The first is easy," Base Com­man­der Rai said af­ter a few mo­ments, "at least in this sec­tion of the coun­try. How­ev­er, any bear­er to­ken I give you will only af­fect sol­diers with­in my purview. When you trav­el over any oth­er sec­tion of the coun­try, you may be chal­lenged, and the to­ken will only en­sure you are seen by the near­est mil­i­tary com­man­der. As for the sec­ond..." she shrugged. "I can give you a bear­er to­ken or a writ, and sug­gest some peo­ple who would re­spect it. I trust that you un­der­stand, how­ev­er, that land own­er­ship is very com­pli­cat­ed. The pol­i­tics of it, es­pe­cial­ly for a non-Djang, will be ex­haust­ing. And es­pe­cial­ly for a non-Djang still in the Com­mon Met­al phase of Qi. It will im­prove slight­ly when you are pro­mot­ed to Ti­ta­ni­um Qi, but..." she shrugged. "Not a lot."

"I have need of it, so I will sim­ply need to make do," was all Sobon was will­ing to say to the woman.

The last task, which Sobon un­der­took in pri­vate while oth­er things were be­ing done, was ad­just­ing the way that her flight frame op­er­at­ed, adding a wind shield and sep­a­rate sup­ports for Ki'el, and ad­just­ing the an­gle of the thruster. Sobon had got­ten the hang of fly­ing with Ki'el's added weight on the flight from the ship, but ad­just­ing the an­gle of the thruster slight­ly let her use more of the wings' lift ca­pac­i­ty for ma­neu­ver­ing if nec­es­sary. Sobon was not ex­pect­ing to get into any aer­i­al dog­fights--she sus­pect­ed that if any of the lo­cals de­cid­ed to fight her while she was fly­ing, they would be most­ly ex­pect­ing her to stand and fight, in one lit­er­al way or an­oth­er.

Sobon's flight to­ken and prop­er­ty writ were de­liv­ered at the same time, along with a map of ma­jor mil­i­tary bases in the Em­pire, each with a cir­cle that sug­gest­ed ei­ther the size of the base or the size of their con­trol ar­eas; which ex­act­ly was un­stat­ed. It also, of course, showed the mil­i­tary cor­don area around the Coro­na, al­though it was sim­ply marked as "dan­ger", and it marked a rel­a­tive­ly large sec­tor of the Em­pire as be­ing, Sobon as­sumed, un­der Base Com­man­der Rai's ju­ris­dic­tion, with a few unlabeled points that Sobon as­sumed were cities. Sobon com­mit­ted the map to mem­o­ry, and with the Coro­na as a guide­point, found her own lo­ca­tion. She didn't know where home was on this map, not yet, but it wouldn't take much ef­fort to find out.

Sobon took off with­out any fan­fare or fur­ther good­byes, Ki'el sto­ical­ly pressed against her. Her first task was to get clear of the mil­i­tary base's in­flu­ence, to a place where she could get a rel­a­tive­ly clear trans­mis­sion path to the Coro­na, and ping it with a cou­ple re­quests.

[ Re­quest cur­rent co­or­di­nates for my­self and the Coro­na, and a ter­rain map if you have one. ] was the first, and when the Coro­na pinged her back, she sent along a cou­ple packed que­si­tons to the Ri'lef en­gi­neer. With the co­or­di­nate pack­ets, and a slight­ly more de­pend­able ver­sion of the map she was able to place her­self, the Coro­na, Emer­ald Val­ley, and the mil­i­tary bases along the way into a sin­gle men­tal map.

Then, go­ing some­what slow­er just as a mat­ter of low­er ur­gency, she fi­nal­ly turned in the di­rec­tion of what was tem­porar­i­ly, at least, home.

Ki'el was in a bet­ter mood, no sur­prise, with her knee very near­ly com­plete­ly healed. She spent much of her time look­ing down and around, for a good long while, al­though she seemed a bit un­com­fort­able with the height. Be­fore long, though, she switched to practicing speak­ing with aether puls­es with Sobon.

[ You speak to (Will of the World)? ]

Her first at­tempt caught Sobon off guard, but Sobon's sub­con­scious would have cap­tured any halfway valid aether pack­et un­der al­most any con­di­tion. That was less a mat­ter of Sobon's own will, and more of a pro­grammed re­flex giv­en to him by the Crestan Mixed Marines. [ Yes. That is not what it is. ]

[ It friend. ]

[ To us. The Djang war with it. It came with the Star­beasts. ] Sobon wasn't sure ex­act­ly how to phrase that with­out sound­ing like she was in­crim­i­nat­ing her­self, but she thought she did well enough.

[ Star­beasts friend? ]

Sobon looked down at Ki'el, who was look­ing back up at her, still an in­tense look on her face. [ No/maybe. (Will of the World) is (Tidal Coro­na), an­oth­er war­rior from be­yond the world like Sobon. Sobon is work­ing with those war­riors. But Star­beasts are beasts. ]

Ki'el was qui­et for a mo­ment. [ Thought com­pli­cat­ed. Lost part. ]

[ (Will of the World) Coro­na al­lies with Sobon. Star­beasts ally with Coro­na. Star­beasts may not ally with Sobon. ]

[ Ah. ] Ki'el was qui­et. The next pack­et was con­fused, as though Ki'el didn't quite know how to put it to­geth­er. [ Coro­na Sobon im­mor­tal-type? ]

Sobon men­tal­ly picked that a part, just to try to get an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for what Ki'el was think­ing, but re­lied. [ Coro­na makes Sobon im­mor­tal. If Sobon dies again, the Coro­na will help. ]

[ Would... Coro­na im­mor­tal Ki'el? ]

Sobon was qui­et for a long time, think­ing about that. In truth, she had no idea what re­sources the Coro­na had, or didn't have, but she didn't want to com­mit to any­thing. And also... as much as she liked Ki'el, and Lui, and prob­a­bly would like oth­ers, she couldn't ex­pect to be able to ask those kind of fa­vors, not when it had no bear­ing on her mis­sion. [ Un­sure/no. Ex­pen­sive. ]

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

They were qui­et for a while, as Ki'el con­sid­ered that. In truth, Sobon didn't think the girl would re­ally want to live again, es­pe­cial­ly not the way Sobon had. She was prob­a­bly tough enough, but get­ting thrown into some­one else's whole life, liv­ing along­side their spir­it, and pulling them out of their suf­fer­ing and mis­ery by force of will...

[ Lat­er. Sobon said, in­sight. Djang mil­i­tary. ]

Sobon mo­men­tar­i­ly lost her train of thought, but reshuf­fled things in her mind and picked up the thread. [ She want­ed fa­vors. She showed me a prob­lem, a war­ship not work­ing the way it should. I chose a small part of the prob­lem and showed a way around it. The wouldn't have un­der­stood it oth­er­wise. ]

[ War­ship work now? ]

[ No. Maybe make new war­ships in many years. Not stronger, work bet­ter. ] That was slight­ly de­cep­tive, but not an out­right lie. If the Djang did every­thing right, they would make a war­ship with sep­a­rate com­mand and pow­er lines as a proof of con­cept, and only af­ter prov­ing that con­cept, mas­sive­ly ex­pand how much pow­er they could put into their weapons and de­fens­es as a sec­ond or third ver­sion. But the en­gi­neer­ing ex­per­tise it would take to de­sign the ship around the con­cept of Com­mand Qi with­out flaws, in a sin­gle it­er­a­tion, was more than Sobon ex­pect­ed from them--es­pe­cial­ly since Com­mand Qi it­self had to be cre­at­ed from scratch, and then for­mal­ized into a con­cept that the Djang could use in a de­sign. Sobon could imag­ine that fifty years might pass with­out any fin­ished, func­tion­al war­ship de­sign based on Com­mand Qi, but for an im­mor­tal like Com­man­der Rai, she might over­see the whole pro­ject and still be in a po­si­tion to take cred­it, or even com­mand, when it's fin­ished.

[ No im­prove­ments now? ]

Sobon hes­i­tat­ed be­fore mak­ing a promise about that, and Ki'el seemed to no­tice. In truth... even if they didn't re-ar­chi­tec­ture their ships, if they prac­ticed split­ting their qi into com­mand and pow­er, they might be able to im­prove their ship's func­tions, at least a lit­tle. [ No im­prove­ments now. If they are smart, small im­prove­ments in a few years, more lat­er. I don't think they're smart. ]

[ Nev­er ex­pect a dumb en­e­my. ]

Sobon laughed a lit­tle at that. Her thought was bet­ter formed than most, or per­haps Sobon just trans­lat­ed it very eas­i­ly. [ I know. Nev­er (un­der­es­ti­mate) the en­e­my. ]

Ki'el was qui­et, then ques­tioned her again on the med­ical qi, which she'd also promised to talk to her about. So she re­layed her ear­li­er thoughts, about how it was healthy heal­ing qi from plant ex­tracts that was slight­ly dam­aged by be­ing am­pli­fied, leav­ing be­hind im­pu­ri­ties. And af­ter a time, she asked an­oth­er ques­tion, and an­oth­er.

All the while, Sobon kept their flight as sta­ble as she could, and ma­neu­vered around mil­i­tary bases and cities. Above, the sun crawled through the sky a lit­tle too slow­ly, as they trav­elled west fast enough to change the ap­par­ent time of day. Sobon also not­ed, as they flew, the pow­er­ful qi to the north that she as­sumed was the Di­a­mond Lord, try­ing to get a rough es­ti­mate on ex­act­ly how in­tense it was. It wasn't re­al­ly nec­es­sary to lo­cate it; Com­man­der Rai had said that he lived on the 'Great Moun­tain', and the ter­rain map from the Coro­na left no ques­tions about that. The only fea­ture in the mid­dle of the na­tion that was worth of such a name was also un­am­bigu­ous­ly ar­ti­fi­cial, a mas­sive moun­tain in the mid­dle of a wide plain with its top cut per­fect­ly flat.

Sobon wasn't able to tell much about the Di­a­mond Lord from his qi alone, and nev­er ex­pect­ed to. But as she flew, she stud­ied, us­ing only pas­sive tech­niques. Even that was dan­ger­ous--aether, as a gen­er­al rule, con­nect­ed things, and it was very easy for pow­er­ful users of aether to no­tice some­one else look­ing at them. De­pend­ing on their pow­er, and who was do­ing the look­ing, some would be very para­noid about any­one pay­ing at­ten­tion to them. All Sobon re­al­ly got from it was a vague sense that she re­al­ly was sens­ing the aura of a sin­gle per­son, which broad­cast qi with cer­tain, spe­cif­ic prop­er­ties. Prop­er­ties that, Sobon thought, were af­fect­ing the qi of all oth­ers in the coun­try, and per­haps the world.

When there was even a slight stir in re­sponse to Sobon's analy­sis, she sim­ply let her mind slip aside, us­ing prac­ticed aether tech­niques to de­flect any re­turn at­ten­tion. For what­ev­er rea­son, Sobon didn't imag­ine that her stealth was suc­cess­ful... but also thought that the Di­a­mond Lord didn't ob­ject to Sobon, or even her analy­sis. For whichev­er rea­son, the gaze that passed mo­men­tar­i­ly over her seemed... un­sur­prised.

Still, Sobon had to force her­self not to hold her breath as the Di­a­mond Lord's at­ten­tion came and went. She was sure that so far, she had done noth­ing to be on the Em­per­or's radar, not un­less he had sensed her ar­rival, or rein­car­na­tions, or if Sobon were par­tic­u­lar­ly un­lucky, her com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the Coro­na. More wor­ry­ing, though, was that idea he had some un­der­stand­ing of Fate-ma­nip­u­lat­ing aether spins--that he had some im­pres­sion about what was com­ing, and per­haps, that he had al­ready de­tect­ed, and per­haps even pre­pared for, an en­counter to come.

The Ri'lef had talked about aether struc­tures that could ma­nip­u­late fate, for­wards and back­wards in time, but--

[ You think­ing, ] Ki'el not­ed, break­ing into Sobon's thoughts.

Sobon shook her head to clear it, putting those thoughts aside for now. [ Think­ing about my duty. About try­ing to do the im­pos­si­ble. ]

[ Duty? ] Ki'el's men­tal voice was a lit­tle wor­ried, and Sobon rec­og­nized that all of her un­der­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion had come since leav­ing the girl. But com­mu­ni­cat­ing via aether puls­es, about this in par­tic­u­lar...

[ Lat­er, ] She replied, and Ki'el left it at that.

It was late af­ter­noon when Sobon and Ki'el made their way back to Emer­ald Val­ley. They were prob­a­bly lucky not to have been in­ter­cept­ed by any­one at all--or per­haps, there sim­ply were too few de­fend­ers of the na­tion to go pry­ing into a pow­er­ful qi user who was sim­ply pass­ing through. Ei­ther way, with a lit­tle help from the Coro­na, Sobon was able to di­rect her­self straight at the city, and once she was close, it wasn't dif­fi­cult to find her way back to her own small bit of prop­er­ty. She could--prob­a­bly should--have stopped at the gates like a nor­mal per­son do­ing busi­ness, but Sobon was tired, hav­ing dealt with sev­er­al dif­fer­ent kinds of frus­tra­tion and dan­ger. In a city where she was one of the few real pow­er­hous­es, Sobon cared lit­tle for what the guards would think about her very ob­vi­ous­ly go­ing home.

When she ar­rived, Lui was still at work, but Mian was there to greet her, im­me­di­ate­ly of­fer­ing a lo­cal ver­sion of a salute when she came in through the front gate. "Alas­si!" He hur­ried over, and his eyes fell on Ki'el. "And you must be Ki'el, the friend she went to save."

Ki'el, for what­ev­er rea­son, pos­i­tive­ly blushed at that, or maybe at Mian's at­ten­tion. "Y-yes," she said, look­ing away from the man. "I am Doua Ki'el, and I... I am a friend of Sobon."

For what­ev­er rea­son, it took Mian a mo­ment to straight­en his thoughts out, though it shouldn't have sur­prised him that Ki'el thought of him as Sobon and not as Alas­si. It was only a mo­ment, though, and he nod­ded. "Of course, I wel­come you, Ki'el. Though, I sup­pose that is for Alas­si to do, since it is re­al­ly her home?"

Sobon just rolled her eyes, re­mov­ing her flight pack and set­ting it down. "I don't re­al­ly care about be­ing for­mal, Mian."

"Of course." He smiled, look­ing at Ki'el. "Well... I am Dat­ta Mian. I was a fol­low­er of Alas­si, not Sobon, but Sobon has been kind to us all. The oth­er one who lives here--"

He was in­ter­rupt­ed by Lui open­ing and rush­ing through the gates. Sobon turned, hap­py to see her but a lit­tle sur­prised that she seemed so ex­cit­ed by her re­turn, af­ter only a cou­ple days.

"Grand­ma Alas­si!" The girl leaped at Sobon, and Sobon caught her in a hug. "I'm re­al­ly glad you're safe." She squeezed once at let go, turn­ing to the girl and bow­ing. "I am Kalai Lui, grand­daugh­ter of Alas­si."

"Doua Ki'el. I am a friend of Sobon's." She paused, look­ing tense, and in the si­lence, asked, "You do know... that Sobon..."

"I know what hap­pened to my grand­moth­er. I have spo­ken with her." Lui looked down, clear­ly still a lit­tle con­fused or overwhelmed, but con­tin­ued eas­i­ly. "Sobon... brought her back, in a way. It was painful watch­ing her, be­fore. Since then, she has said more to me than in many re­cent years. I'm not hap­py that... but..." She shook her head. "I know what hap­pened."

Ki'el re­laxed at that, and Mian clapped his hands to­geth­er. "Now... per­haps a meal to cel­e­brate? In town?"

"Oh! I'm get­ting paid by Lady Mide. A sil­vra a day when there is no busi­ness, and a share more than that when busi­ness is good. And I have been think­ing about my hands, since we were talk­ing about it be­fore you left..."

Sobon kept a smile on her face, one that she tru­ly did feel, even as she couldn't help wor­ry­ing about the prob­lems still to come.