"And then there's you." Sobon turned back to face the last re­main­ing at­tack­er. Ki'el had a wild look in her eyes, al­though she stayed cool; Sobon could ad­mit that af­ter all of this, she was also sick of House Mofu and all of its ilk. It wouldn't take much--re­al­ly, any­thing--to kill the man, not with Ki'el there to re­strain him un­til Sobon could form an­oth­er ri­fle rod or a sim­i­lar com­bat pat­tern.

Old in­stincts, though, re­strained him. It wasn't be­cause Sobon had been a cy­borg; it was be­cause he had spent years try­ing to reach the spir­i­tu­al de­tach­ment nec­es­sary. He had fought, and lost friends, and hat­ed, but if that ha­tred had soaked into his bones and into his heart, he would nev­er have been able to sep­a­rate those heart and bones. His old teacher came to mind, the seem­ing­ly age­less woman as­sess­ing him with cold eyes.

Are you a war­rior, or a jilt­ed lover? A spurned friend? You think this is un­fair? Get over your­self.

So Sobon just took a breath, not even a deep one, and let it the in­tense, bind­ing parts of the ha­tred blow away, leav­ing just the ugly warmth of anger, which she held dis­tant, where she could re­move it lat­er. Al­though she tried to dis­tract her mind with thoughts of aether spins and fates, and was even most­ly suc­cess­ful, it was dif­fi­cult to look at the en­e­my be­fore her and not just want to kill him.

Be­cause it was un­fair, every­thing that had hap­pened--de­lib­er­ate­ly un­fair, with the in­tent of break­ing the wills of healthy peo­ple, and killing Sobon and his... her peo­ple to prove that their house meant busi­ness. Even so, Sobon couldn't af­ford to war with the en­tire coun­try. She had to pick her bat­tles, and while killing him would be ex­pe­di­ent, it would be a waste of a tool, even if she wasn't quite sure what she would use him for, ex­cept per­haps bait.

So Sobon strode up to the man, who re­turned her look of ha­tred. A part of Sobon tried to an­a­lyze that face ob­jec­tive­ly, de­cid­ing that hate made the man look dull-eyed and stu­pid. Was he ex­pect­ing Sobon to hate him back? Be over­come with rage? Be just like him? That was tempt­ing, but it was how peo­ple fell, and she knew that.

"Tell me," she said, as she stared into the war­rior's eyes. "What are you to House Mofu?"

The man sneered with de­fi­ance, al­though some­thing about his face shift­ed at Sobon's voice, or ques­tion. "I am third son of the Mofu Kai Branch fam­i­ly, Mofu Kai Shin, and I will watch you from hell with plea­sure when the Clan Pa­tri­arch comes to shat­ter your soul and grind your bones into soil. Va­pid, for­eign witch, you and your whore chil­dren--"

Sobon would like to say that she felt noth­ing, or that it was pure­ly from Alas­si's body, but when she fo­cused her aether into a nee­dle and stabbed the man in a bit of at­tuned flesh near his heart, caus­ing him to stop speak­ing and scream, she had to ad­mit it felt good. It was the wrong kind of good feel­ing--prob­a­bly In­verse Aether, which the Ri'lef called Cor­rupt. The word cer­tain­ly fit; it liked to dri­ve it­self deep into peo­ple and twist. So Sobon took an­oth­er breath, ad­just­ing her body spir­it to com­pen­sate, push­ing back the pres­sure.

That kind of ha­tred was just an­oth­er en­e­my weapon, and she knew how to re­sist it.

"I know you think I'm no bet­ter," she said. "That I'll be bro­ken by ha­tred as long as you twist the knife enough. And you def­i­nite­ly de­serve death for what your... clan el­der, or what­ev­er, did. Mofu Gin, was it?"

The man, in­censed, pulled free from Ki'el's blade, al­though she sliced his neck in the process. But Sobon had her dy­namos spun up, and a set of three dif­fer­ent telekine­sis pat­terns sprung into ex­is­tence in time to pick the man up by his head and slam him back­wards into the ground. He thrashed around on the ground, but Sobon held him, pinned, let­ting him strain him­self try­ing to break out of it with force.

Af­ter three in­creas­ing­ly weary at­tempts to force his way out of Sobon's tight, un­yield­ing grip, the man's strug­gles stopped.

"Are you re­al­ly try­ing to im­press the per­son who killed your boss in a sin­gle shot, with that kind of dis­play?" Sobon let hu­mor fla­vor her voice, in­ward­ly keep­ing a bal­ance be­tween be­ing vig­i­lant to the en­e­my's move­ments, and loose and calm enough to avoid the in­tense anger that threat­ened to boil up again. She just shook her head. "Per­haps if you tell me what you know about House Mofu, I would be will­ing to keep you alive as bait."

The man, al­though his face was dis­tort­ed by Sobon's tele­ki­net­ic grip, sneered. "All you need to know is that you stand no chance. Who­ev­er you bought your toys from, how­ev­er much they cost you, they are all bro­ken now, and your pa­thet­ic hov­el's de­fens­es are shat­tered. The Pa­tri­arch, when he comes, will lev­el this en­tire city in his fury. Per­haps if you piss your­self, crawl on the ground, and beg, he will--"

Sobon shift­ed the tele­ki­net­ic pat­tern to lodge a spiky ball in­side the man's mouth, forc­ing her­self not to do any worse. When she fi­nal­ly looked away, she no­ticed that Mian was fi­nal­ly up and about, if still look­ing like had stared di­rect­ly into the sun un­til he went half-blind.

So she an­chored the pat­tern and moved over to him. "Mian. I'm sor­ry about the flash."

He turned to look at her, blink­ing mul­ti­ple times like that would do any­thing to clear his sens­es. "I've... nev­er felt any­thing like that. Not even close. I didn't think I was even sen­si­tive to those kinds of qi im­pres­sions."

"It hap­pens when the pow­er is in­tense enough. The trau­ma should fade in time, as long as you cy­cle in fresh qi. Pu­ri­fied aether would be bet­ter, but any clear, fresh qi is good for you." She glanced at the gate. "Maybe go see if you can find Lui."

"Yeah. I imag­ine she and Lady Fau are near­by, now." He shook him­self, and start­ed to move for­ward, but Sobon held out a hand to stop him.

"Here." She re­turned the man's large blade to him, now re­paired. "This cir­cle on the back of the hilt--if you vent your qi while press­ing on it, it should force your qi into the blade. Not very strong­ly, be­cause the qi you vent is too dif­fuse. But, it will help."

Mian had to fo­cus to test it, and Sobon saw his face fall as he saw the stark dif­fer­ence be­tween the blade in his hands and how it had looked and be­haved in Alas­si's. But he cov­ered it im­me­di­ate­ly, and nod­ded at her. "Thank you. I'll prac­tice, but... maybe not now."

"Go." She turned to look at the... at Mofu Kaishin or what­ev­er. Af­ter a mo­ment of con­sid­er­a­tion, she be­gan to form an­oth­er aether pat­tern, this one to turn more sand into quartz. "Just watch him for an­oth­er few min­utes, Ki'el. I'll put to­geth­er an im­pris­on­ing script set."

So Ki'el placed her blade back on his neck, and Sobon man­u­fac­tured a set of three--no, six sim­ple quartz cal­trops, then be­gan script­ing them to cre­ate a cylin­der of force be­tween them, one that would stop al­most every­thing but sound, light, and air. A sim­pler ver­sion of the script would have tak­en only mo­ments, but Sobon dragged through her mem­o­ries to cre­ate some­thing much more like stan­dard Crestan re­straint fields, which were ide­al for keep­ing dan­ger­ous peo­ple in­ca­pac­i­tat­ed with min­i­mal en­er­gy use.

By the time she was done with all six, all it took to com­mand the six points to sur­round and bind the man was a flick­er of her will. The cal­trops hummed qui­et­ly--a re­minder to those out­side the field that they were pro­duc­ing flux waves in­side the con­tain­er, enough to make it al­most im­pos­si­ble to fo­cus. They caused the part of Ki'el's blade that was still near the man to fuzz out of ex­is­tence.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Ki'el with­drew the blade with a look of alarm, but the ef­fect van­ished once she got it away from the field.

"That's enough. You can rest." Sobon looked at the girl, see­ing signs that she was near­ing the end of her adren­a­line high. "Thank you, Ki'el. I asked a lot of you, even to hold him off."

The girl nod­ded at that, but when her blade van­ished back into its hilt, she let her­self smirk where the cap­tured man could see it. "Even be­fore he was blind­ed by your at­tack, he wasn't much. He had strength, but no idea how to use it."

Sobon tsked at the girl, shak­ing her head. "Don't gloat. He was also hit by the ex­plo­sion be­fore he got in­side. But... I wouldn't have asked you to han­dle it if I didn't be­lieve you could." She ap­praised the girl again. "In time... I think you can be­come tru­ly strong, if that's what you want."

Ki'el surged with pride, but also de­flat­ed as her adren­a­line wore out. "Thank you, ...Alas­si." Sobon could tell that she al­most used the wrong name, and caught her­self. "I will keep an eye on the pris­on­er, if you want to go look for Lui."

"In a mo­ment." Sobon used a tele­ki­net­ic pat­tern to pick up the re­mains of the gate, bend them back more or less into shape, and then place them near the en­trance. Then, she moved over to the aether bar­ri­er sur­round­ing Mofu Kai Shin. The man, one hand on his bleed­ing neck, glared back at her. "One thing, war­rior of House Mofu. You said that Mofu Gin shat­tered the de­fens­es around my house, but you ought to know bet­ter."

"When my de­struc­tion beams tore through your fel­lows and oblit­er­at­ed Mofu Gin, their shields ex­plod­ed into pieces, be­cause they were over­whelmed. When Mofu Gin over­pow­ered my bar­ri­er, it dis­abled it­self to pre­vent harm. This is only pos­si­ble if the one who cre­at­ed the ar­ray knows ex­act­ly how much it can safe­ly take. Now that the ar­ray has cooled and recharged," Sobon snapped her fin­gers the­atri­cal­ly, as she sent the de­fense ar­ray an aether pulse to re­ac­ti­vate it, caus­ing the fields to re­turn and the gate to snap into the air and cov­er the en­trance, "My home is in no more dan­ger now than it was be­fore."

That, nat­u­ral­ly, was a bluff, but it served to cut through the man's in­sane faith that he and his fel­lows would be avenged. Sobon watched him grind his teeth to­geth­er, his jaw mus­cles clench­ing, and the man even tried to slam his fist into the bar­ri­er--then re­coiled strong­ly when the bar­ri­er re­spond­ed to the force with a small aether dis­charge.

Dis­ci­plined, he is not, Sobon as­sessed bland­ly, then gave Ki'el a smile and nod, and turned to leave the com­pound.

Out­side, things were nat­u­ral­ly still a mess, with city guard and a few oth­ers try­ing to break or lift pieces of rub­ble. Sobon could eas­i­ly spot Mian, Lui, and the woman who must be Lady Fau Mide, the al­chemist, as Mian was keep­ing sev­er­al in­jured peo­ple or­ga­nized as the Lady tend­ed to them, and Lui as­sist­ed. Also near­by was Lord Shi­da--sur­round­ed, seem­ing­ly against his will, by sev­er­al no­ble-look­ing types, among them Kibar, and the man he'd seen at the City Lord's man­sion and pre­sumed was from House Xoi. Per­haps be­cause of the com­pa­ny, none of the poor­er folks at the scene were will­ing to get close to the City Lord. Or was Sobon wrong, and the man him­self dis­dained the poor­er folk? He had cer­tain­ly not tak­en him for the type.

"Ah, our mys­te­ri­ous de­fend­er at last shows her­self." A man, who had only a mo­ment be­fore been glar­ing dag­gers at Lord Shi­da, stepped to­wards her. "I am Xoi Mon, pa­tri­arch of the Emer­ald Val­ley Xoi fam­i­ly. You, I be­live, are the Lady Shi­va Alas­si?"

Sobon gave Lord Shi­da a dis­pleased glance, but only in pass­ing. "I am."

Xoi Mon and his ridicu­lous­ly wide, thin mous­tache spread into a seem­ing­ly gen­uine smile that seemed en­tire­ly out of place in such a dis­as­ter. "Oh, don't blame poor Lord Shi­da. Many peo­ple were in­ter­est­ed in you from the very start. Lady Alas­si--if I may call you such? You are with­out a doubt an anom­aly, but per­haps a wel­come one. I for one would have been quite dis­pleased if our dear City Lord was re­placed by some stooge of House Mofu, to say noth­ing of the dam­ages that might have been done to our own busi­ness­es."

Your busi­ness­es and in­ter­ests, and not a word about in­no­cents. Sobon gave the man a flat look that she doubt­ed con­veyed any­thing to him, then stepped past. "Lord Shi­da. What are the dam­ages?"

"I doubt we've found all the dead yet," he said, tired­ly. "though we've found a dozen al­ready. The best of my guard are all ei­ther dead, or en­tire­ly qi de­prived--how­ev­er, your swords did work as ad­ver­tised. I don't be­lieve any of the blades was so much as nicked, de­spite be­ing wield­ed by those of Sil­ver Qi against those of Ti­ta­ni­um."

"What?" A voice from a ways away turned out to be... ac­tu­al­ly, Sobon didn't know his name. The in­scrip­tion­ist whose shop she'd vis­it­ed be­fore, who'd been a bit bog­gled with the idea of just mak­ing swords with qi chan­nels and vents. "This... woman dares make and sell swords in my city? And af­ter hav­ing the gall to come in and study my de­signs?"

Is he... sug­gest­ing that I stole his de­signs? Sobon blinked at the man, find­ing the con­cept al­most ab­surd enough to laugh at.

"Her weapons are... not com­pa­ra­ble to your own, Lord Pan," Lord Shi­da said, try­ing to fill his words with a pa­tron­iz­ing calm.

"Of course not," the man said, straight­en­ing like he'd just been paid a com­pli­ment. "Any of my de­signs would out­class some­thing a woman could do. I'd stake my name on it."

A cold set­tled over those peo­ple near­by who, un­like this man, had ac­tu­al­ly been pay­ing at­ten­tion. Sobon could feel eyes flick­ing be­tween her and Lord Pan, won­der­ing just how she was go­ing to re­solve this.

"You stand be­hind your weapon de­signs, then? You'd con­sent to, say, a friend­ly duel, each of us with a weapon of our own de­sign?" Sobon had no heat in her voice, though she heard in it a very dry amuse­ment.

"Of... of course!" The man nod­ded, try­ing to keep a sales­man's look on his face, still ob­vi­ous­ly un­aware who he was speak­ing to.

"You with your best sword, and me with, say, the weapon that I de­signed just this morn­ing." She paused, then just as the man would have replied, added, "The one that killed Lord Mofu Gin, at the peak of Mithril Qi, in a sin­gle blow."

The rip­ple of amuse­ment--mixed with shock and as­ton­ish­ment--that spread through every­one else in the crowd was mild­ly cathar­tic, eas­ing Sobon's stress, but she let that, too, pass her by. There are nice emo­tions that come with flesh, some­times, she re­flect­ed. But they're too bind­ing, re­stric­tive. I'd rather be work­ing right now. Fix­ing some­thing, de­sign­ing some­thing, build­ing some­thing.

[ Just en­joy this, you've earned it, ] Alas­si tried to urge, but Sobon ig­nored her.

"Any­time you'd like to test your weapons against that, by all means let me know. Un­til then, I have oth­er busi­ness." She let her eyes pass to Lord Shi­da, then Kibar, then Lord Xoi. "Lord Shi­da. We will still need to talk some­time when you are free, but per­haps not now. I will need to pre­pare to face what re­mains of House Mofu, if there is ever to be peace for every­one else."

Sobon was just start­ing to turn away when Lord Xoi spoke up. "You're that con­fi­dent? You say you took out Lord Mofu Gin with a sin­gle blow, but he was also weak­ened, was he not?"

"Lord Xoi." Sobon half-turned and gave the man a glare. "I will ask you to re­call that I said I de­signed that weapon this morn­ing. De­signed. If a week ago, Lord Mofu Gin had all of his arms and legs ripped off, but to­day he was here to kill you, could you de­sign, con­struct, fuel, and wield a weapon ca­pa­ble of killing him in the space of even one full day?"

Al­though Sobon couldn't have said why, her words seemed to ac­tu­al­ly tear at the aether. She paused, run­ning the Ri'lef pat­tern to de­tect myth shear--but no, what­ev­er vi­o­lence she had done to the peo­ple lis­ten­ing, it wasn't that spe­cif­ic sort of ef­fect.

When fi­nal­ly he spoke, Lord Xoi's voice was de­feat­ed, with no sign of the crisp amuse­ment he'd had be­fore. "Ah... no, Lady Alas­si."

"Then trust me when I say that if giv­en more than a morn­ing to pre­pare, I am a match for sev­er­al peo­ple of Lord Mofu Gin's stature."

"Yes, Lady Alas­si."

Be­fore Sobon could turn away again, this time Kibar spoke up. "Lady Alas­si...?"

She sighed, and turned back to him. "What, Lord Kibar?"

Her choice of phrase there seemed to con­fuse or up­set oth­ers. Con­sid­er­ing that she knew Kibar lived in a slum, she could un­der­stand that--but giv­en how the oth­er Lords were be­hav­ing, she saw no rea­son not to raise him up to at least their lev­el.

"What should a man do, if he want­ed ...just per­haps, to be put to use, and not be sim­ply an­oth­er piece of crys­tal buried in this... small jew­el of a city?" The man seemed to be pick­ing his words, if not quite ex­pert­ly.

She gave him a side-eye, con­sid­er­ing, but in the end, just shook her head. "Right now, I have much to do, Lord Kibar. If I find an an­swer to your ques­tion, I'll be sure to bring it to you."

She glanced away, catch­ing Lui and Mian look­ing at her, and even Lady Fau, whose mouth was turned into a smirk, even as the rest of her face had the grim set of a doc­tor in a war­zone. Sobon nod­ded to them, but turned away.

Much to do, and less time than she had been hop­ing to do it.