Sobon had pre­pared the fol­low­ing morn­ing for things to go one of two ways; ei­ther she snuck off with­out hav­ing to face Ki'el and Lui, or some­one stopped her be­fore she could. As it turned out, she was able to get away, and with every­thing else more or less pre­pared, she moved as far from the city as fast as she could. It wasn't so much that Sobon couldn't stand good­byes... and more that she want­ed des­per­ate­ly to pre­tend that it wouldn't be one, and that every­thing would, some­day, be fine.

Only when she was well away did she send sev­er­al pings to the Coro­na, giv­ing an up­date, pro­vid­ing in­struc­tions, and mak­ing sure, one last time, that the Ri'lef en­gi­neer, or even the Cap­tain, hadn't left any oth­er di­rec­tions, in­for­ma­tion, or in­sight. It was... min­i­mal­ly sur­pris­ing that she did get one brief mes­sage back, from the Ri'lef cap­tain, say­ing [We re­gret in­volv­ing you in this mat­ter. I have asked the Coro­na to ap­prove your re­quest.] But only that, and with­out ad­mit­ting, even on one of the most se­cure chan­nels on the plan­et, what Sobon had sur­mised.

So she turned to the mat­ter at hand, and lo­cat­ed the Mofu army, trav­el­ling the dis­tance to meet them at more than the speed of sound. They had found a suit­ably dra­mat­ic re­gion of the moun­tain road lead­ing from Emer­ald Val­ley into the Djang em­pire; it was a pret­ty val­ley, for the mo­ment, with a moun­tain over­look where a few non-com­bat­ants had set up, and be­neath that, a widen­ing of the val­ley where more sol­diers than Sobon would have ex­pect­ed them to bring were sud­den­ly surg­ing into po­si­tion, as they all de­tect­ed her ar­rival. Among the watch­er on the cliff, Sobon though, must have been the ob­serv­er from the Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly, but she was dis­tract­ed from them in the first mo­ments by the enor­mi­ty of the army be­fore her.

Sobon had though that House Mofu had per­haps a few hun­dred ex­perts to bring to bear. Per­haps they were mak­ing use of their wealth to pur­chase as­sis­tance, be­cause there were thou­sands of qi war­riors there, though most of them were garbage--un­less the house had some kind of de­fens­es, Sobon ex­pect­ed many would die just from the amount of qi that would be thrown around, with­out ac­com­plish­ing any­thing. With­out ques­tion, a full-fledged bomb pat­tern would clear all but the high­est lev­el ex­perts here, but that... would leave Sobon's lega­cy in much greater jeop­ardy.

As the army moved, though, Sobon was eas­i­ly able to de­tect that there was a hid­den method be­hind it all, as they be­gan to surge into cir­cu­lar for­ma­tions, ones with cir­cles with­in cir­cles and lines con­nect­ing larg­er pieces to­geth­er. From above, it was ob­vi­ous­ly a mas­sive mul­ti-user ar­ray; al­though Sobon was by no means an ex­pert in their back­wards meth­ods, she es­ti­mat­ed the whole less­er half of the army might pre­tend, briefly, to be an­oth­er two Ti­ta­ni­um-lev­el ex­perts.

There was an enor­mous gap be­tween that and any of the play­ers in the fight that ac­tu­al­ly mat­tered.

Al­though Sobon had found it dif­fi­cult to judge the "star lev­el" of her op­po­nents us­ing the de­tec­tion ar­ray from a dis­tance, she had known the rough num­bers, and now was able to place them as two op­po­nents with Mithril qi--what was that met­al sup­posed to be, any­way? Sobon had no idea, ex­cept that it had light band­ing pat­terns--and three more at Dam­as­cus, which was a much more ob­vi­ous black and white band­ed pat­tern, and five at Bis­muth, which had all the col­or­ful ox­ide splash­es of the crys­talline met­al. For Ti­ta­ni­um war­riors, there were per­haps a dozen, not count­ing what­ev­er ef­fect the rest band­ed to­geth­er were sup­posed to have.

"For­eign de­mon witch!" The Mithril el­der leaped into the air, al­though what­ev­er qi pat­terns he was us­ing to at­tempt to fly flick­ered and fum­bled, fi­nal­ly pro­duc­ing a gold­en, burn­ing, hand-like plat­form for him to stand on. Two oth­ers, one a Mithril and one Dam­as­cus, joined him, and Sobon thought they must have been the first Mofu's broth­er and wife, who Lord Shi­da had said would be around that pow­er lev­el. "You may have come to plead for your life, or the lives of those you got in­volved in our dis­pute, but it is fu­tile! We have al­ready de­clared a blood feud with the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly, and we will wipe out all those who have ever sup­port­ed you, to the five de­grees al­lowed for in Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Law!"

Sobon didn't even both­er ask­ing Alas­si about those de­tails, and in­stead glanced over, fi­nal­ly, at the cliff. There were two things, there, which set her teeth on edge; the least of them was that Mofu Suno him­self, his cul­ti­va­tion crip­pled and one arm am­pu­tat­ed, was there, and Sobon could all but feel in­tense swirls of fate aether wrapped around him, the ed­dies of which curled back to­wards her. In truth, she wasn't ex­act­ly sure what the sen­sa­tion was, but it was an aether above her abil­i­ty to per­ceive, and every­thing about the sit­u­a­tion, and what she had al­ready seen, sug­gest­ed it was ex­act­ly what the K'val had warned her might hap­pen. A myth­ic shear fault? She con­sid­ered that only for an in­stant, though, be­cause her eyes drift­ed to the oth­er pow­er­ful man stand­ing be­side him, and her heart clenched.

The man was for­eign to Sobon, his qi core a sol­id red crys­tal--Ruby, she as­sumed, and there was no oth­er any­where near his lev­el around. His face was frozen in a mask of ar­ro­gance, and he was, for the mo­ment, pay­ing no at­ten­tion to her or the bat­tle, in­stead ar­gu­ing with a ser­vant about the bot­tle of... some al­co­hol, she as­sumed, that had been of­fered him. With a flick of his fin­ger, one of the ser­vant's arms was ripped off, spi­ralling off the moun­tain­side, but the ser­vant bore it with an as­ton­ish­ing willpow­er, only bow­ing and re­treat­ing as though she had only been light­ly punched or smacked. The man, de­spite his protes­ta­tions, clean­ly cut off the top of the bot­tle and be­gan to drink straight from it, re­lax­ing in a large padded couch that he had ap­peared from a space ring.

What­ev­er had hap­pened, the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly ob­serv­er was not the swords­man she had met with the Prince and Princess.

"With us is the es­teemed majesty, Djang Ren Sui, who shall en­sure that the Em­pire for­ev­er re­mem­bers what hap­pens here to­day!"

The name meant noth­ing to Sobon at all, ex­cept that the man low­ered his bot­tle enough to get a look at Sobon, his eyes burn­ing only for a mo­ment as he as­sessed her. And then... with­out con­cern, he raised the bot­tle again, turn­ing his head away, and be­gan to re­al­ly dig into the cush­ions on his couch, end­ing up with his head propped up on one hand as he lay slouched there. Sobon was half ready for the ar­ro­gant man to snap his fin­gers and sum­mon half-naked women, or men, to at­tend to him, but per­haps that was the rea­son why he was so in­sis­tent on drink­ing heav­i­ly.

Sobon glanced back at the army be­low, not­ing that the mul­ti-man ar­rays were now linked up. In­stead of do­ing any­thing in par­tic­u­lar about it, Sobon turned and bowed to the ob­serv­er, speak­ing with sim­ple in­tent.

"Greet­ings, Djang Ren Sui. You seem in a worse mood than your cousins were when I spoke to them a few days ago." That was a to­tal shot in the dark, but when Sobon felt the aether in the en­tire re­gion crack, as though an earth­quake had placed enough shear force on a sin­gle piv­ot to cleave mile-thick stone into sev­er­al pieces at once.

At the same mo­ment, the bot­tle of wine in the man's hand shat­tered into dust, though for a long mo­ment, he didn't move. "Cousins?" he asked, af­ter a mo­ment, his voice only in­ex­pert­ly mod­u­lat­ed with qi.

"If you would pass on to Djang Ban Dai and Djang Ban Fen that I would be hap­py to have din­ner with them again some­time, I would be in your debt." It took more of Sobon's cy­borg self con­trol than she would ever ad­mit to keep the wry smug­ness from her voice and in­tent, leav­ing the words seem­ing­ly in­no­cent.

The ef­fect that they had on the man was not to be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed, but per­haps to his cred­it, the Mofu el­der--or rather, pa­tri­arch, Sobon sup­posed--didn't let Sobon com­plete­ly dis­tract from their pur­pose.

"Your bluff will not fore­stall this any fur­ther! In hon­or to the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly, I com­mand the Mofu fam­i­ly. At­tack!"

Al­though it had been said that the Pa­tri­arch was crip­pled, and al­though Sobon could see that fact plain­ly her­self--as there was a ma­jor crack run­ning through his spir­it, which bled qi even as she watched--his mas­tery of qi tech­niques far sur­passed Mofu Gin. He ges­tured with both hands, and sev­en nee­dles of pure flame en­er­gy ma­te­ri­al­ized above him, every one of them denser and pur­er than the tech­niques Gin had used, and when they lanced for­wards, they were a match for bul­lets in speed. As they left his con­trol, Sobon could clear­ly hear the man's tech­nique name screamed by his qi: [Sev­en Gold­en Sun Spears]

But Sobon was not un­pre­pared for com­bat this time.

She bent time com­pres­sion to her ad­van­tage, speed­ing up her aether and qi use, and cast an qi gath­er­ing net­work through her cap­tive por­tal to the oth­er side of the moon, us­ing the hauled in pow­er and di­rect­ing it into ar­rays hang­ing in midair. She com­plet­ed them in in­stants, lay­er­ing three large shield walls be­fore her, com­bin­ing qi and aether into a de­fense she her­self would hate to have to pen­e­trate.

Un­like Gin's [Gold­en Sun Shot], these nee­dles did not bounce. In ac­cel­er­at­ed time, Sobon thought they were in­tend­ed to be like pen­e­trat­ing ex­plo­sives, ex­plod­ing into what­ev­er sub­stance they struck, but her first aether de­fense dis­trib­uted the load across their sur­face, cre­at­ing a shock­wave out­ward that screamed [burn­ing] into the aether in the way Sobon's own at­tacks screamed [de­struc­tion]. That shock­wave caught every im­pu­ri­ty in the air on fire, and where it met ground, an in­fer­no sprung into be­ing... but the shield held.

Sobon spared the mo­ment to cal­cu­late how close the at­tack had been, but de­cid­ed the first shield had room to spare, even as she ad­just­ed her sec­ond and third lines of de­fense. But one of the oth­er two high­est-rank­ing Mofu flew, at what Sobon sup­posed was a nice high speed for the lo­cals, to flank Sobon, piec­ing to­geth­er his own tech­nique. Sobon men­tal­ly tracked the boy, who must have been Mofu Gin's broth­er, and de­cid­ed the man had only just re­cent­ly reached Mithril Qi.

If Sobon had any sym­pa­thy for the Mofu fam­i­ly, she would have ad­vised the man not to fight. He seemed younger, and gen­uine­ly hurt by the loss of his broth­er. But for whichev­er rea­son, whether he was emo­tion­al­ly dis­turbed, or get­ting used to new qi, new im­plants, some­thing, his head wasn't on straight, and his tech­niques fum­bled in the de­tails. Sobon knew the boy was aim­ing to get around the shield that Sobon had set up, and could have ad­just­ed the shield be­fore he got into po­si­tion, but with­drew from her space ring a set of rings of Core ma­te­r­i­al.

These weren't even from a Star­beast core; aether beasts on this plan­et all cre­at­ed cores of one kind or an­oth­er, and Sobon had got­ten sev­er­al cheap­er sim­ply be­cause they were lo­cal. But the Ri'lef hadn't in­vent­ed the con­cept of beast aether cores, nor had this plan­et been the first one the Founders used the pat­tern on. So Sobon sim­ply formed one core into sev­er­al matched rings, sup­ple­ment­ing them with di­a­mond around the edges, to recre­ate the can­non pat­tern she'd used on Mofu Gin in a much more com­pact, much more ef­fi­cient, and much more durable form.

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It took more care­ful work than any­one watch­ing the bat­tle knew, for Sobon to draw the in­tense en­er­gy from be­yond the moon through the can­non pat­tern with­out ex­pos­ing her­self too much or burn­ing out her own aether path­ways. It was in­stinct, most­ly, and she had to flick tem­po­rary bar­ri­ers into ex­is­tence briefly when the coil­ing en­er­gy got too close. She could also sense that the oth­er army forces were not wait­ing for her to fin­ish, and once she was con­vinced the can­non was charg­ing cor­rect­ly, she spared a glance at oth­er forces.

They were most­ly try­ing to scat­ter and ap­proach her from many an­gles, al­though sev­er­al were mov­ing to­wards her and forg­ing large tech­niques, ei­ther to dis­tract her or to at­tempt some oth­er so­lu­tion to... well, any of the mas­sive­ly dan­ger­ous abil­i­ties Sobon was show­ing.

Sobon found her­self sur­prised, though, when one of those tech­niques ac­tu­al­ly worked.

It was from the only real wild­card Sobon had ex­pect­ed--Gin's wife, who was only half a step be­hind her broth­er-in-law in pow­er, but was not of the Mofu clan, and had an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent type of tech­nique. It was, in fact, some form of ice tech­nique, but one which also in­volved time and space ma­nip­u­la­tion; just as Sobon was about to fire the can­non at Gin's broth­er, a bar­ri­er of frozen space and time snapped in place be­tween Sobon and her tar­get, its qi scream­ing, [Ab­solute Freez­ing Do­main].

Sobon's can­non shot, which was pure essence of de­struc­tion with­out any ad­di­tions, had no way to pierce a de­fense meant to stop space and time.

What she did have, how­ev­er, was a small sup­ply of much small­er ri­fle pat­terns on lit­tle di­a­mond-and-core rods, and she scat­tered them at the oth­ers tak­ing places around her bar­ri­er, all of the ex­tra time she gained form her time ac­cel­er­a­tion go­ing into charg­ing and aim­ing those ri­fle shots. With much low­er en­er­gy re­quire­ments, she was able to lance dozens of beams at them, each shot send­ing a tar­get reel­ing, but with so many tar­gets, she knew she would need to fo­cus fire on any one in or­der to take them down. The Ti­ta­ni­um war­riors she'd faced off against at her home had tak­en sev­en or eight shots apiece, and that was with­out any time to re­cov­er.

Most­ly, these shots were a de­ter­rant. She was con­trol­ling six­teen now, and feed­ing aether into them and her main can­non script. With the six­teen less­er guns, she could dis­suade the ones around the edges, but that was all just buy­ing time.

A block of frozen time and space ap­peared at the edge of Sobon's de­fens­es, stop­ping some of the in­com­ing fire. She could have con­grat­u­lat­ed her­self--she had the mo­ment to spare--but her in­stincts were rapid­ly falling back into old pat­terns. Cy­borg Ma­rine pat­terns. She'd as­sumed the woman's freez­ing field couldn't pass through her own de­fens­es, be­cause she used space in her de­fense, and so even do­main-type at­tacks like a freez­ing field would have to ap­proach from an­oth­er di­rec­tion. Giv­en how long Sobon ex­pect­ed those fields took to cast, it was a dan­ger­ous les­son to learn, but one the en­e­my woman would need to know if she planned to win.

And doubt­less, that was what all the en­e­my planned to do here. Sobon wasn't un­der­es­ti­mat­ing any­one--not the Pa­tri­arch, the broth­er, the wife, the oth­er ex­perts, and not the le­gion of less­er war­riors pow­er­ing a pair of mas­sive ar­rays.

Now that Sobon stud­ied them, they were rapid­ly con­vert­ing the lo­cal qi to some kind of So­lar qi, and col­lect­ing it in a pair of mas­sive balls of fire. They lacked the fi­nesse and pow­er even of Gin's [Gold­en Sun Shot], but that as­sumed that they were meant to be an at­tack. Sobon could eas­i­ly imag­ine the pa­tri­arch snag­ging the en­er­gy and com­press­ing each down into a much denser weapon, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter they grew some more.

As Sobon's can­non reached full charge again, she sensed every­one on the bat­tle­field lock­ing their sens­es on it, an­tic­i­pat­ing an­oth­er shot, per­haps half ex­pect­ing it to be wast­ed on the Freez­ing Do­main. But in­stead, Sobon gripped all of her de­ployed items with her wings, and ac­ti­vat­ed her move­ment core.

They were pre­cise move­ments, and only one per­son on the bat­tle­field was able to fol­low it with his eyes from above, but Sobon didn't care ei­ther way. She sim­ply flicked for­ward through space four times, ap­pear­ing on the ground at an an­gle no one could have pre­dict­ed, even with a war­ship's pre­dic­tive AI. That was no guess; she'd iden­ti­fied al­most a dozen ad­e­quate lines of ef­fect, and with a small, fate-shield­ed al­go­rithm, picked ran­dom­ly be­tween them three times, then among the re­sults twice.

She ap­peared on the ground and re­leased the can­non shot seem­ing­ly at ran­dom, the shot tear­ing straight through a hill­side be­fore it hit the first of her tar­gets--the cen­ter of one of the ground ar­rays. The man lead­ing it, a mere ti­ta­ni­um, of­fered no re­sis­tance, and the beam lanced through to hit an­oth­er four ground tar­gets across both ar­rays, but pass­ing close enough to hun­dreds more that the can­non's de­struc­tive aether ef­fects washed over their sens­es, throw­ing their con­cen­tra­tion and co­or­di­na­tion com­plete­ly off, and in some cas­es, forc­ing that de­struc­tive aether into the pat­terns them­selves.

Three of the ex­perts hold­ing the mas­sive ar­rays to­geth­er suf­fered se­ri­ous back­lash, but Sobon sim­ply moved again, tar­get­ting the war­riors at and be­low Gold Qi with one or two shots apiece, and sim­ply flick­er­ing through the en­tire army in a scant mo­ment, leav­ing al­most noth­ing be­hind but bod­ies.

At a mo­ment when she deemed it un­like­ly to be pre­dict­ed, she tele­port­ed up be­hind the Mofu Pa­tri­arch, and un­leashed all six­teen ri­fle rods in a sin­gle wave, then tele­port­ed away with­out wait­ing to see what hap­pened. She wasn't ex­pect­ing him to die from that much, and he did not dis­ap­point.

Sobon was dim­ly aware that peo­ple were speak­ing, and a part of her cy­borg in­stincts tried to col­lect the words while re­main­ing large­ly in com­bat time ac­cel­er­a­tion. It was an in­ex­act art, and she was dis­tract­ed, but Sobon could tell that the Djang Fam­i­ly ob­serv­er was speak­ing, and when she checked, she found him slow­ly stand­ing up from his couch, a firm­ly dis­pleased look on his face.

In­stead of wor­ry­ing too much about it, Sobon flick­ered close enough to Gin's broth­er to use her Thrust Aether ar­ti­fact of­fen­sive­ly, throw­ing the man at the ground, then leaped back be­hind her shield, ma­neu­ver­ing slight­ly so that she could be­gin fo­cus fir­ing her ri­fle rods on ex­perts. By now, sev­er­al of them had forced up per­ma­nent or semi-per­ma­nent de­fens­es, and Sobon could see they were all wild­ly dis­tract­ed and con­fused by her move­ment dis­play.

She could keep that up, but made the cal­cu­lat­ed de­ci­sion to seem wind­ed, slow­ing down her charg­ing and fire rates as she dou­ble checked the aether on the oth­er side of the por­tal. In truth... she was us­ing more en­er­gy than she was hap­py with, but she repo­si­tioned that far end of the pick­up with a sud­den thrust, putting it on a course into open space where she could col­lect more aether.

Two Ti­ta­ni­um War­riors fell, and a Bis­muth bare­ly raised an ef­fec­tive bar­ri­er of some kind of Met­al na­ture qi in time to avoid to­tal de­struc­tion; Sobon moved on to un­de­fend­ed tar­gets rather than waste her time cut­ting through. As she did, she paused briefly, catch­ing up to what Djang Ren Sui was speak­ing into the bat­tle space.

"What kind of mon­sters have those de­mon-damned fools...?" Sobon didn't take the time to try to trace the sen­tence to a log­i­cal con­clu­sion, in­stead let­ting her sub­con­scious con­tin­ue as the bat­tle con­tin­ued on, one long sec­ond af­ter an­oth­er.

Her can­non charged again, and Sobon flicked at un­pre­dictable an­gles to a spot where she was sure she had a clean shot at the Mofu Pa­tri­arch, as well as Gin's wife, and once more feigned ex­haus­tion, spend­ing a mo­ment too long aim­ing.

As she hoped, Gin's wife snapped a bar­ri­er in place--not mas­sive, and in­deed, if she'd fired the can­non from any re­spectable dis­tance, the can­non blast would have been at least di­min­ished by the shield by the time it ar­rived, if not en­tire­ly stopped.

But Sobon didn't fire, in­stead leap­ing again to Gin's broth­er, who was gath­er­ing in­tense so­lar en­er­gy into some kind of bat­tle suit, with wings, clawed feet, and a mas­sive beaked hel­met, but Sobon sim­ply moved be­hind him, lin­ing up a shot that would strike the Pa­tri­arch from an an­gle he would nev­er ex­pect--straight through Gin's son.

To be fair to him, the man re­act­ed al­most in­stant­ly, and used the dense en­er­gy he was rais­ing to de­flect as much of the can­non shot as he could, but still the shot tore through his shields and body and con­tin­ued on to his sis­ter-in-law and the pa­tri­arch. With so much of the en­er­gy de­flect­ed or used up, though, the pa­tri­arch had a long mo­ment to set up a prop­er de­fense, an an­gled one which took lit­tle dam­age.

Sobon was al­ready mov­ing, though, scyth­ing through an en­e­my that had no con­cept for the tac­tics she was us­ing, tac­tics she would nev­er have in­vent­ed her­self. Al­though the Mixed Ma­rine hand­book didn't ex­act­ly have sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to this kind of fight, they cer­tain­ly had laid out sev­er­al tac­tics to sur­vive against su­pe­ri­or num­bers us­ing high mo­bil­i­ty, ad­vanced aether, and psy­cho­log­i­cal ma­nip­u­la­tion. Al­though there were still hun­dreds of ad­vanced fight­ers left, and al­though Sobon's own qi, and re­mote­ly sourced aether, were not tech­ni­cal­ly lim­it­less... to Sobon, this still felt more like a drill than a war.

A par­tic­u­lar­ly screwed up drill, one in­vent­ed by a sadis­tic Ma­rine Com­man­der, most like­ly as an at­tempt to prove that he was wor­thy of every­one else's re­spect... but still a drill. Sobon could imag­ine get­ting out of a sim­u­la­tor pod at the end, when the Com­man­der had pulled rank and some­how cheat­ed her side out of vic­to­ry, and Sobon would sim­ply con­tent her­self in know­ing ex­act­ly how hard the man had need­ed to cheat.

Sobon wasn't ex­act­ly think­ing about that anal­o­gy as she moved, but a part of her sub­con­scious con­sid­ered it, and con­sid­ered who in this sce­nario would be that ar­ro­gant Ma­rine Com­man­der, set­tling on Djang Ren Sui. And that sub­con­scious piece not­ed the flows of fate qi around him, and around the crip­pled Mofu Suno. And al­though Sobon wasn't quite aware of it, the sub­con­scious piece flagged those flows as con­se­quen­tial.

Sobon trust­ed her in­stincts, when things like that came up, but when she glanced over and not­ed the fate flows, she in­stant­ly saw a prob­lem: the mytho­log­i­cal fault that was de­vel­op­ing ei­ther fell on a war­rior too pow­er­ful for her to kill... or on Mofu Suno, who she would still have to of­fend the Djang Im­pe­r­i­al in or­der to at­tack.

It wasn't a prob­lem for her to deal with in the mid­dle of com­bat, though, and so Sobon flicked away, ded­i­cat­ing a part of her mind to it even as she went back to at­tack­ing the Mofu army and tak­ing oc­ca­sion­al shots at the Pa­tri­arch, or more com­mon­ly, spook­ing them into think­ing she was at­tack­ing and then pick­ing a dif­fer­ent tar­get. She saved her can­non for tak­ing out ma­jor tar­gets, but used the splash to harm oth­ers; one more Dam­as­cus Qi ex­pert fell, along with all but one of the Bis­muth.

With­out a word, fo­cus­ing only on her, Sobon con­tin­ued through the bat­tle sec­ond af­ter sec­ond, though she saw di­min­ish­ing re­turns as the en­e­my be­gan to adapt. Even­tu­al­ly, a quar­ter of an hour af­ter the bat­tle be­gan, Sobon had cut the num­bers of the Mofu by more than half--not count­ing the droves of near­ly help­less less­er war­riors--and their ef­fec­tive pow­er by per­haps eighty per­cent. The Pa­tri­arch and Gin's wife had worked to­geth­er to guard each oth­er's backs, along with the last re­main­ing Dam­as­cus ex­pert, who was some kind of ar­ray or pat­tern ex­pert who had im­proved their de­fens­es, and giv­en the two the oc­ca­sion­al win­dow to shoot back.

For Sobon, though, more than ten times that amount of time had passed, and her aether chan­nels and spir­it bones were aching, the en­grav­ings in her spir­it and her bones get­ting clos­er to fray­ing--some­thing far more dan­ger­ous with­in her body and spir­it than it was when she lost tools.

And she was be­gin­ning to lose tools.

At no time had the en­e­my de­clined to try to shoot her with var­i­ous qi blasts, burst, beams, fields, whips, claws, blades, or oth­er col­or­ful metaphors for an­tique weapons. Some had got­ten close; a few had come from odd an­gles and only been de­tect­ed in time for Sobon to de­flect them with per­son­al aether de­fens­es. One had de­stroyed two ri­fle rods as it passed, and Sobon had made the per­son who per­formed that at­tack pay dear­ly for it. Oth­er ri­fle rods, not quite per­fect in their ma­te­ri­als and con­struc­tion, were be­gin­ning to fray, and the can­non it­self had tak­en a beat­ing from be­ing used too of­ten and too much. It would con­tin­ue to fire for a while yet, but each shot was less pow­er­ful and less ef­fi­cient than the last.

Her thrust qi core and wing pat­terns were the most abused, though, even though Sobon was us­ing both to­geth­er to min­i­mize the strain on each. That was al­ways the true dan­ger--los­ing weapons of­fered few­er chances to win, but shields and en­gines on the verge of fail­ing were in­vi­ta­tions for in­stant de­feat and death.

Sobon kept her eyes on the two on the cliff--and their at­ten­dants, al­though she had some doubt any of them were in­volved in the fate aethers swirling around them--but still wasn't sure ex­act­ly what she was see­ing meant, or why.

In the end, that ig­no­rance cost her great­ly.