"Lord Shi­da."

Shi­da Ken had felt for­tu­nate enough to have sur­vived his en­counter with Lord Mofu Gin, and luck­i­er still to have been most­ly be­hind one of his sol­diers when the Gold­en Sun Shot ex­plod­ed, far too close for him to have es­caped with­out in­jury. The man's aura had soaked most of the dam­age, al­though the in­tense pres­sure wave dam­aged his ears and lungs, leav­ing him with no hear­ing and hard­ly any abil­i­ty to stand up­right. Lord Shi­da was not en­tire­ly fa­mil­iar with the hows or the whys of any of that--but he knew that he was alive, and for­tu­nate.

What he'd seen and felt from the ground, even just through the gates to Lady Alas­si's home, was breath­tak­ing. Lady Alas­si's script­ed weapons were ruth­less, their over­bear­ing den­si­ty and in­ten­si­ty be­yond any­thing he could have con­ceived of or used. Even just bear­ing wit­ness, he could feel him­self flinch at the ab­solute will of de­struc­tion em­bod­ied in the beams of qi that flashed into and through the Ti­ta­ni­um Qi war­riors. Yet Lady Alas­si her­self re­mained poised, cal­cu­lat­ing.

He had rec­og­nized the blade that she pulled next, of course, as one that had be­longed to her com­pan­ion. But where the oth­er man had wield­ed the sword as a piece of met­al, Lady Alas­si had trans­formed it into a script­ed weapon, one that con­tained that same im­pos­si­ble will of de­struc­tion, but bound to the cut­ting edge of the blade. And when she wield­ed the sword, al­though it was clear­ly not meant for her, an­oth­er war­rior above her sta­tion fell all too quick­ly.

"Lord Shi­da."

Even now, though, he was still bare­ly able to see or feel any­thing, af­ter her fi­nal at­tack, one which had tak­en out an El­der of a no­ble house--for by now, Mofu Gin should have been ex­act­ly that--with a sin­gle shot. Shi­da Ken would have nev­er be­lieved it even pos­si­ble--not un­til he felt just how much qi Lady Alas­si was gath­er­ing, or how dense­ly, or how she had so flaw­less­ly trans­formed it into qi of ab­solute de­struc­tion.

His eyes, his ears, even his arms and legs, still tin­gled with the feel­ing of ab­solute de­struc­tion--and not be­cause the qi it­self still lin­gered. It had passed, but the ex­pe­ri­ence of it lin­gered. Where be­fore, Lady Alas­si had formed qi into un­par­al­leled bar­ri­ers, enough to both de­fend against and cut the flesh of Mofu Suno, who was at mid-Gold Qi, now she was han­dling a man an en­tire phase of qi high­er.

No one else in the city of Emer­ald Val­ley could have stood against Mofu Gin. If Alas­si had failed, he was pre­pared to be­lieve that the man would have left none alive. It had been his hope that the re­port he had sent to the Em­pire would reach in­ter­est­ed ears be­fore the Mofu fam­i­ly could in­ter­cept it--but it must not have. No one in the Em­pire at Mofu Gin's lev­el would have moved with­out some as­sur­ance that the High Court of the Djang would turn a blind eye. That was an easy enough as­sur­ance to get--as long as one is not al­ready em­broiled in a scan­dal.

House Mofu was al­ready out of fa­vor, but they could still move to pro­tect their fam­i­ly hon­or--as long as they had the pow­er to back it up.

"I know you can hear me, Lord Shi­da." Shi­da Ken felt him­self be­ing lift­ed off the ground. In truth... he had, in­deed, heard and felt Alas­si's words in his mind, al­though the touch was un­fa­mil­iar. Alas­si's qi had no skin to be cal­loused or rough, but still, Ken felt that the qi struc­ture that plucked him up from the ground had... how could he say it? It had the same sense as a hand long fa­mil­iar with the sword. It had once been sen­si­tive; it had once flinched. It did not flinch any­more.

So Ken shook him­self slight­ly, his ears protest­ing at the mo­tion, and some­how, Alas­si flick­ered a bit of qi over him, and his ears healed, and his breath­ing eased. He put off his dis­be­lief that one woman could be so many things, and clasped his hands be­fore him, bow­ing. "I... apol­o­gize, Lady Alas­si. That last blast..."

"I know. I've felt the same, be­fore. The trau­ma pass­es." Lady Alas­si's face was stern, as she con­sid­ered him. "You have much to deal with, I'm sure, but I am cer­tain that if I don't ex­plain some things now, you may... mis­un­der­stand."

Ex­plain? The city lord wasn't even sure what the Lady thought did or didn't need to be said, now, so he held his tongue and re­mained bowed.

"I have spoke of my pa­tron be­fore. I have a mis­sion, and as such, I can­not stay here for­ev­er to keep this city safe."

The words threat­ened to squeeze Ken's heart un­til it stopped beat­ing.

But she con­tin­ued. "But I must keep my peo­ple, the fol­low­ers of Sobon, safe. I would have you ex­plain what I need to do to end this quick­ly. I trust that you un­der­stand."

Ah. The qi gath­ered around Shi­da Ken's heart near­ly froze, and it was all he could do to keep it cir­cu­lat­ing, just a bit, so that his chest didn't ex­plode, and he could con­tin­ue breath­ing. It was dif­fi­cult, and not be­cause of the blast in­jury. "Ah... you mean, the House Mofu."

"You will need to tell me what my op­tions are."

How do I give bad news to such a pow­er­ful woman? He fum­bled with his words for a long mo­ment. "Lady... the House of Mofu will not stand for this. Lord Mofu Gin was the heir ap­par­ent to the clan Pa­tri­arch, and al­though there were none in the House of Mofu that were stronger than him, there were three of pow­er sim­i­lar to his, and oth­ers bought or bound to serve the fam­i­ly. The Pa­tri­arch should also be in the Mithril Qi stage, though he was crip­pled and can­not ad­vance fur­ther. Gin's broth­er and wife should both be at the peak of Dam­as­cus Qi, un­less ei­ther of them has bro­ken through. There are few in his clan high­er than Ti­ta­ni­um, al­though you met Mofu Suno's body­guard."

"But Lady Alas­si..." He hes­i­tat­ed. "You spoke to me when we first met of wish­ing to keep se­crets. But the Djang Court will in­ves­ti­gate the de­struc­tion of a no­ble clan. There is no love for the House of Mofu, but they will wish for a re­place­ment, both to rep­re­sent the Djang Court and to sat­is­fy the Court's need for war­riors. They will... they will doubt­less find you. And you... are not Djang."

There was an icy si­lence, or else Shi­da Ken, ever in­ter­est­ed in sub­tleties was still too shocked to no­tice some nu­ance--but no, he was sure that Lady Alas­si was ex­act­ly as up­set as he had feared.

"My Lady--"

"No." Some­how, her voice was strange, not match­ing the tone that Ken ex­pect­ed, and he risked look­ing up at her. She was cold, yes, but thought­ful, dis­tant. "There are many flaws in my plans, Lord Shi­da, and they are not your fault. But you shouldn't wor­ry that the Djang Courts will at­tack me or force me to serve. In­stead, you need to wor­ry about the oath you swore--to pro­tect my peo­ple, the fol­low­ers of Sobon. I can walk away from all of this, but they can­not."

Shi­da Ken's eyes were torn away from Lady Alas­si, and to the fig­ures in the court­yard be­hind her--where a young, for­eign girl was hold­ing a blade of shin­ing qi to the neck of the last re­main­ing war­rior of Mofu Gin's ret­inue. Both she and the man seemed to also be shak­ing off the... the trau­ma, of Alas­si's weapon. Ken had nev­er seen her, al­though the girl had been men­tioned.

"Yes, Lady." He looked down, ashamed. That much he could do, for now. "And the Djang Courts--"

"We will have time. But Lord Shi­da, I said that I must ex­plain things." Alas­si seemed to fo­cus, and then some­how, al­though it made no sense to Shi­da Ken at all, he felt...

He felt his as­ton­ish­ment at her works fade, just a touch.

"There are forces of fate at play, Lord Shi­da. Forces that would en­tan­gle us, if we let them. Forces greater than the Djang Court, and in­deed, greater than the Djang Em­pire it­self. Forces that have us--have me take too long to get to my mis­sion. I am one placed on this world to defy fate, and as such, I do not need or want you to be noth­ing more than a side char­ac­ter in my sto­ry."

A side char­ac­ter? Shi­da Ken looked again at Alas­si, and where be­fore, his every analy­sis of the woman was some­thing near­ly su­per­nat­ur­al, some­thing... born of myth, now when he looked at her, he be­gan to see some­thing more real. Some­thing that was still dan­ger­ous, more dan­ger­ous than he would ever be, most like­ly. But hu­man.

"You can­not help me, and you can­not go where I am go­ing. And I do still need you to ful­fill your oath. How­ev­er, Lord Shi­da, be­ing blind­ed by fate is not good. You have cow­ered here in fear, be­liev­ing in a sys­tem that would stand by and watch you be de­stroyed. There is enough dis­tance be­tween where you are and the great heights in the world; you do not need to add more dis­tance your­self."

Shi­da Ken stared, un­sure of what he was feel­ing, or why. "How did you--?"

"One does not defy fate by be­ing ig­no­rant of it, Lord Shi­da." Lady Alas­si shook her head. "You must go and take care of your city. There are greater chal­lenges fac­ing you and your peo­ple than I can pos­si­bly save you from. I must at­tend to my own peo­ple and my own tasks, but--Lord Shi­da--we will speak again. Tonight, or to­mor­row, and many more times un­til I must leave."

Shi­da Ken had lived for a long time in the world of pol­i­tics--Djang and Ijian, most­ly--be­liev­ing that he had un­der­stood the rules, and that he un­der­stood his place be­neath the great mas­ters of the world. And even now, he sup­posed, he still knew that he would for­ev­er be be­neath the great pow­ers of the world. But some­thing had changed, and if he were to put words to it, he would say that some­thing broke. A hold that some­one, or some­thing, had over him.

He straight­ened, con­fused, but the peo­ple gath­er­ing be­hind him even now--his ad­vi­sors and guards, he found when he looked--were able to force their way to the fore­front of his at­ten­tion. Al­though the mo­ment of mag­ic that the Blood Witch had cast over him nev­er left, he found he was able to slip into the old pat­terns well enough.

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It was strange, be­ing un­sure of his fate. But no mat­ter what he did, he could not make that cer­tain­ty he had once felt, the cer­tain­ty that told him what his place in the uni­verse was, come back.

----------------------------------------

Sobon was an­gry about a lot of things. The fact that the id­iot fa­ther of the man who'd at­tacked them at the inn... well, his in­volve­ment was per­haps in­evitable. Sobon had no il­lu­sions about that.

The first flash­es of his qi from out­side the city were a wake-up call, be­cause Sobon had no ex­ist­ing weapons to han­dle some­one with that much per­son­al aether. The abil­i­ty to cre­ate those weapons, yes; that took time, and re­sources. She'd or­dered the oth­er two into the base­ment, and man­aged to forge a one-shot aether can­non, and six more ri­fle rods, out of scrap with hard­ly a mo­ment to spare. As ex­pect­ed, even ex­perts had trou­ble deal­ing with true weaponized aether, es­pe­cial­ly at high enough den­si­ties. Math was a dif­fi­cult op­po­nent to beat.

And then, of all things, the Ri'lef had barged in the mo­ment she had man­aged to se­cure even a mo­ment of safe­ty.

[ We are mon­i­tor­ing sub­stan­tial mytho­log­i­cal (shear) at your lo­ca­tion. At least one sub­ject near you is near­ing a mytho­log­i­cal fault. ]

[ A sub­ject near me? You said it be­fore like it hap­pened to me. ] Sobon, still half-blind­ed by the in­ten­si­ty of the can­non shot, let her men­tal pack­ets get slop­py, im­pa­tient. The Ri'lef didn't seem to care.

[ Mytho­log­i­cal faults are con­ta­gious. Sub­jects sep­a­rate from con­sen­sus, and can be stuck (above) and (be­low) norms. We don't have a lot of data on the ini­tial con­di­tions, but we be­lieve that the ini­tial con­di­tion re­quires two faults, one (sink­ing) and one (ris­ing). If the sub­ject (sinks), both you and they will spread the mytho­log­i­cal fault. ]

[ Give me a ba­sic de­tec­tion schema. It doesn't have to give me more than a di­rec­tion­al point­er. ]

There was a pause, and then a re­turn burst trans­mis­sion, which Sobon was able to at­tach to a mote of qi. But even just re­view­ing the pack­et, in which Sobon got a first im­pres­sion of the aether spins in­volved--most heavily involving Superior, or Sacred, aether, of course--she was able to get a gen­er­al bear­ing on the only thing in the neigh­bor­hood that seemed to be re­spond­ing the way the Ri'lef talked about.

Not the re­main­ing en­e­my. Not Ki'el or Mian. No, it was the City Lord, who was shell-shocked in the shat­tered re­mains of an al­ley­way be­tween two ru­ined build­ings.

"Lord Shi­da." Sobon start­ed to­wards the man, then stopped. Al­though the in­side of her de­fens­es seemed un­touched, the ground and city near the ex­plo­sion was ru­ined, in­clud­ing a near­by town­house's own de­fens­es falling, de­spite be­ing much fur­ther away. She looked past the city lord, see­ing ter­ri­fied faces peek­ing in at the dev­as­ta­tion, and then flee­ing as soon as they caught sight of her stand­ing tall in the rub­ble.

Steel­ing her­self, Sobon stepped out into the rub­ble, us­ing lev­i­ta­tion to pass over the shat­tered ground, which was still hot in places. The ex­plo­sion wasn't re­al­ly high heat, al­though there were foot­prints lead­ing up to her gate that were sunk into the ground, which were still molten around the edges. Clear­ly, the qi that the man chan­neled had in­tense fire as­pects to it, al­though Sobon couldn't re­al­ly bring her­self to care, not any more.

"Lord Shi­da." Sobon stepped to­wards him, but let her­self be dis­tract­ed once more as she felt some­one in a near­by shat­tered build­ing pass away. If Sobon had been able to de­tect them in time... it would still have been a strug­gle even to get to the body, much less heal it. She pulsed her aether, but the few peo­ple in­jured but not dead with­in her range were sta­ble. Even Lord Shi­da him­self, al­though he had rup­tured eardrums and a half-burst lung. At Gold Qi, and with the ad­van­tage of some cov­er, he had sur­vived.

Be­hind her, she heard swords clash, and turned to find Ki'el sav­age­ly at­tack­ing the last of the at­tack­ers, who was far less re­cov­ered from the blast. Ki'el's dy­namos were hum­ming, and Sobon knew her aether was al­ready purged from the flash. It had been a risk, us­ing the can­non that close to un­shield­ed peo­ple; she sus­pect­ed Mian had been watch­ing, and was much more shocked by it than Ki'el was, since he had no way to pu­ri­fy his aether. Or, no good way. Per­haps his heart-cen­tered in­ter­nal qi would clear it on its own.

Sobon had no doubt the girl could pin down the last man, and turned back once more to the City Lord, who had yet to move. Of course, with burst eardrums, that was no great sur­prise. Even a war­rior that knew that their prob­lem was due to that spe­cif­ic in­jury would take some ef­fort to neu­tral­ize the dam­age. So Sobon spun up heal­ing pat­terns as well as telekine­sis, and picked the man up as she tend­ed to his ears and lungs.

"I know you can hear me, Lord Shi­da." As she healed him, she could sense that twist in the qi that the Ri'lef were talk­ing about grow­ing. Al­though she lacked any un­der­stand­ing of the aether dy­nam­ics in­volved... she stud­ied the man as he forced him­self to stay on his feet. He looked... bro­ken.

"I... apol­o­gize, Lady Alas­si. That last blast..."

"I know. I've felt the same, be­fore. The trau­ma pass­es." What did she even say to try to deal with the man's shat­tered... what, emo­tion­al state? Mytho­log­i­cal aether-body? [ If you have any kind of pat­tern for ap­ply­ing first aid to pre­vent this... fault state, now would be the time, ] she sent back to the Ri'lef. Then, out loud, "You have much to deal with, I'm sure, but I am cer­tain that if I don't ex­plain some things now, you may... mis­un­der­stand. I have spoke of my pa­tron be­fore. I have a mis­sion, and as such, I can­not stay here for­ev­er to keep this city safe."

That was the wrong way to ap­proach the top­ic, and she got a re­ply ping from the en­gi­neer--a sum­ma­ry of a sum­ma­ry, stat­ing that the mytho­log­i­cal shear was some­thing like a pres­sure dif­fer­en­tial. You had to equal­ize that pres­sure, in or­der to pre­vent a break, but pro­vid­ing no tech­ni­cal de­tails.

Sobon found her­self bal­anc­ing act­ing on that in­ter­pre­ta­tion, while also try­ing to men­tal­ly re­view the myth-shear de­tec­tion script to fig­ure out how she could pos­si­bly act on the aether it­self. Equalize the myth, by giving him something to do. Fortunately, she already had need of him. "But I must keep my peo­ple, the fol­low­ers of Sobon, safe. I would have you ex­plain what I need to do to end this quick­ly. I trust that you un­der­stand."

Lord Shi­da's sens­es came back to him, just a lit­tle, when Sobon gave him some­thing to fo­cus on, al­though it didn't seem enough. "Ah... you mean, the House Mofu."

"You will need to tell me what my op­tions are." Stay fo­cused on a task. Sobon al­most put that thought into an aether wave to com­pel the man, but kept her fin­ger off that par­tic­u­lar trig­ger. With the man in such a mess, that might only make things worse.

The man bab­bled for a mo­ment about use­less de­tails--how strong the oth­ers in House Mofu were--be­fore hes­i­tat­ing to say more. Af­ter only a mo­ment's in­de­ci­sion, though, he spoke. "But Lady Alas­si... You spoke to me when we first met of wish­ing to keep se­crets. But the Djang Court will in­ves­ti­gate the de­struc­tion of a no­ble clan. There is no love for the House of Mofu, but they will wish for a re­place­ment, both to rep­re­sent the Djang Court and to sat­is­fy the Court's need for war­riors. They will... they will doubt­less find you. And you... are not Djang."

Damnit. Sobon paused her ef­forts to men­tal­ly white-board a... myth-pres­sure-equal­ize-thing. It was ugly, un­cer­tain script, and she wasn't hap­py with it, but she was far less hap­py to hear that all of her plans to pro­tect her found fam­i­ly were go­ing to be shat­tered. Be­ing forced to re­veal her­self was one thing--she had some hopes that the oth­ers could slip un­der the radar as long as it was just about a con­flict be­tween pow­ers.

But this was fast be­com­ing a mat­ter of Im­pe­r­i­al Pol­i­tics, and there were no clean an­swers in that.

As though fear­ing that this was his fault, or that she was up­set at him, Lord Shi­da be­gan to stam­mer out an apol­o­gy, or an ex­cuse, or some­thing.

"No." She met his eyes, sur­prised that the man was able to meet hers in spite of his shock. In truth, she was fast com­ing to the re­al­iza­tion that this... this life­time, this ex­er­cise, might be com­ing to a close, and with her nowhere near close to a so­lu­tion to her prob­lems, or even prop­er in­tel­li­gence on what was go­ing on. The last thing she need­ed, now, was any of­fi­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion into her, or any­one try­ing to tie her down or bind her to ser­vice, which meant dis­ap­pear­ing and hope­ful­ly switch­ing bod­ies, whether that meant sav­ing Alas­si's life or sac­ri­fic­ing it. "There are many flaws in my plans, Lord Shi­da, and they are not your fault. But you shouldn't wor­ry that the Djang Courts will at­tack me or force me to serve. In­stead, you need to wor­ry about the oath you swore--to pro­tect my peo­ple, the fol­low­ers of Sobon. I can walk away from all of this, but they can­not."

Shi­da, as Sobon had come to ex­pect from the spine­less man, im­me­di­ate­ly ca­pit­u­lat­ed, and Sobon thought he was slip­ping back clos­er to the... fault state, or wh­taev­er. "Yes, Lady. And the Djang Courts--"

If I can't get him on my side, the oth­ers will have no sanc­tu­ary. This is an ugly, ter­ri­ble gam­ble.

"We will have time. But Lord Shi­da, I said that I must ex­plain things." Alas­si dou­ble checked her aether white­board, then arranged an aether pat­tern to re­duce the pres­sure of the myth qi on the man. It... it worked a bit too well, or else she tru­ly didn't un­der­stand the dy­nam­ics. Some­thing trans­ferred from her to him, what should have been just an in­signif­i­cant speck of fate-as­pect aether, but it bal­looned in­side the man's spir­it, com­plete­ly al­ter­ing all of his pat­terns. Sobon could sense, with hard­ly any ef­fort, that every­thing in­side of him was thrown into con­fu­sion.

She blinked, but oth­er­wise suc­cess­ful­ly held a mask over her face. Al­though she wasn't sure what had hap­pened, she had to at least pre­tend at be­ing in con­trol, so she threw to­geth­er what she con­sid­ered a lame ex­cuse. "There are forces of fate at play, Lord Shi­da. Forces that would en­tan­gle us, if we let them. Forces greater than the Djang Court, and in­deed, greater than the Djang Em­pire it­self. Forces that have us--have me take too long to get to my mis­sion. I am one placed on this world to defy fate, and as such, I do not need or want you to be noth­ing more than a side char­ac­ter in my sto­ry."

The look on his face said he didn't un­der­stand what she was say­ing, or worse, he mis­un­der­stood. Sobon with­held a sigh, re­mind­ing her­self that she was a ma­rine, not a spy or politi­cian, and con­tin­ued try­ing lame­ly to ex­plain. "You can­not help me, and you can­not go where I am go­ing. And I do still need you to ful­fill your oath. How­ev­er, Lord Shi­da, be­ing... blind­ed by fate is not good. You have cow­ered here in fear, be­liev­ing in a sys­tem that would stand by and watch you be de­stroyed. There is enough dis­tance be­tween where you are and the great heights in the world; you do not need to add more dis­tance your­self." By the end of her speech, she was get­ting an­gry again. At him, and the world that cre­at­ed him. Why and how had he just al­lowed this to hap­pen? Why had the em­pire? Sure­ly, the sys­tem had to be func­tion­al for some­one, but she was miss­ing an­swers that made it make sense.

Sobon was dis­tract­ed as sev­er­al peo­ple burst into the oth­er end of the al­ley­way, show­ing clear re­lief when they saw the City Lord. But Shi­da Ken, still in shock, just stared at her. "How did you--?"

Of course I can't an­swer the 'how' ques­tion, you id­iot. Just stay fo­cused on your own prob­lems. Sobon just shook her head. "One does not defy fate by be­ing ig­no­rant of it, Lord Shi­da." She paused, then nod­ded to the Lord's peo­ple, who took it as per­mis­sion to ap­proach. "You must go and take care of your city. There are greater chal­lenges fac­ing you and your peo­ple than I can pos­si­bly save you from. I must at­tend to my own peo­ple and my own tasks, but--Lord Shi­da--we will speak again. Tonight, or to­mor­row, and many more times un­til I must leave."

She turned away, curs­ing her­self. What a mess. Then, to the Ri'lef, she sent the aether rou­tine she had used, and a brusque sum­ma­ry of its ef­fects.

[ You have some flaws in your un­der­stand­ing, but it isn't a bad first ef­fort. Fate aethers are too tied to­geth­er, so the amount you tried to use is de­cep­tive. Most like­ly, fate will try to make him an­oth­er ma­jor ac­tor, but even fate as­pect aether can only do so much. We will mon­i­tor it for now. ]

What a mess.