Al­though Ki'el was able to spend some time with her friends over the next sev­er­al days, it be­came clear that life in the Sect, es­pe­cial­ly with­in the Less­er House, was full of mo­not­o­nous la­bor. Al­though her first days at the sect had been... no­table, time nev­er ceased, and a sur­pris­ing num­ber of things be­gan to sim­ply be­come com­mon.

Among those was sim­ply not be­ing able to see her fam­i­ly and friends of­ten.

Oh, they still had their evenings, though all or most of them were usu­al­ly tired, more in­ter­est­ed in train­ing to es­cape their sit­u­a­tion than any­thing else. For Mian, that meant work­ing to im­prove him­self to the peak of Sil­ver Qi first, a task that seemed with­in grasp if he could just fig­ure out the trick to his new qi turn­ing tech­nique. While Ki'el tried to get him in­ter­est­ed in a dis­cus­sion of her Sect Points and the med­i­cines of the Sect, he seemed not to take her se­ri­ous­ly, or oth­er­wise had no in­ter­est. He also didn't ex­act­ly spurn Ki'el's help with his tech­nique, but... he seemed more alive and ac­tive when work­ing at it him­self than when he was re­ceiv­ing Ki'el's ad­mit­ted­ly novice ad­vice.

In con­trast, Xam all but lost in­ter­est in the turn­ing tech­nique in the days that fol­lowed; she seemed to be fo­cus­ing on the new foot-cen­ter dis­ci­pline, and what­ev­er in­sights she gained or strug­gled with she kept to her­self. She also seemed to be prac­tic­ing some­thing else, which Ki'el didn't im­me­di­ate­ly press her about, though it made her qi move strange­ly, so Ki'el as­sumed it must be a tech­nique from her fam­i­ly, or pos­si­bly the Sect.

Da Chi­an, for her part, only vis­it­ed them one evening out of the next three, and Ki'el used that day's time to ask her about the ma­te­ri­als from the Sect. Da Chi­an, pre­dictably, had not heard much about most of them, though she had some gen­er­al in­sights.

"Spir­it crys­tals and spir­it gems are very dif­fer­ent," she said, "though they can be dif­fi­cult for a novice to tell apart. Mere crys­tals are spir­it en­er­gy locked into a form, and would be a very good way to pass en­er­gy from one per­son to an­oth­er--but they are usu­al­ly weak and im­pure, with most of the qi lost in the process." The red­head­ed woman was lean­ing against a tree trunk, and didn't quite meet Ki'el's eyes as they talked, al­though there seemed not to be any re­sent­ment there. Some con­fu­sion, per­haps, at most. "I'm not sure there's any way to im­prove the process, but maybe you'll find one. Your tech­nique is pret­ty odd."

"Gems on the oth­er hand are made while med­i­tat­ing on a tech­nique or an in­sight, or they are ex­tract­ed from a source that has some par­tic­u­lar qi na­ture or prop­er­ty. In the­o­ry, every gem should pro­vide some chance at in­sight into some prop­er­ty or na­ture, but if all the dispensary says is that it is a gem, with­out pro­vid­ing de­tails, it's not go­ing to be any­thing valu­able, or the chances of un­der­stand­ing it are not high. A real spir­it gem con­tains a deep and fun­da­men­tal spir­i­tu­al truth. It's worth a lot more, and you have to ask for a spe­cif­ic kind. I've nev­er been in­volved with that, but the Broth­er from the out­er sect who told me about it says that they usu­al­ly just post boun­ties when peo­ple ask for things, and see if any­one can pro­vide one."

Ki'el frowned, con­sid­er­ing. "They can­not sim­ply con­vey a con­cept with in­tent?"

"Mas­ters could," chuck­led Chi­an. "And mas­ters could read in­tent that some­one else mere­ly spoke. But if you are go­ing to spend a day, or many days, med­i­tat­ing on in­tent that you only just heard once..." She shrugged. "No. Bet­ter to buy a gem. Or if you ever re­al­ly get rich, hire some­one to cre­ate an In­tent Plate. At least, I think that's what they call it."

Ki'el re­called hear­ing that term from the Appraiser at the Auc­tion House, and nod­ded. She... might have brought up hav­ing heard it, if not for the fact that the Ap­prais­er want­ed to cre­ate an In­tent Plate for some­thing Sobon him­self had cre­at­ed, ap­par­ent­ly out of noth­ing, or worse, out of the in­for­ma­tion that he had left to Ki'el, buried with­in Kuli. She... was well aware, that be­tween her and Kuli, the two could with­out ques­tion at least speak the prop­er In­tent for Pri­mor­dial Qi, at least to copy what Sobon had said.

What­ev­er re­sources she might gain from that, Ki'el was sure, she would gain far more at­ten­tion, and es­pe­cial­ly, at­ten­tion that she did not want. Not now. And... it was not im­pos­si­ble, that Sobon, or the ones that helped him, would dis­ap­prove of her us­ing their knowl­edge for such small things. It would be bet­ter to at least en­sure she knew who was go­ing to ben­e­fit, and if pos­si­ble to ask Sobon his opin­ion be­fore even sug­gest­ing that she had such things.

Of course, Broth­er Du and Chi­an both un­der­stood that she had some­thing from Sobon. She doubt­ed ei­ther of them un­der­stood what Kuli rep­re­sent­ed--but then, Ki'el her­self could only guess. Or rather... she had no in­tent to force Kuli to try to re­veal the depths that Sobon had left her, es­pe­cial­ly not now. Not with so much yet to learn.

"What kind of in­tent can one gath­er from an... un­spec­i­fied spir­it gem, then?" Ki'el forced her­self to ask the ques­tion, al­though in truth, she was al­ready cer­tain that what­ev­er was to be found in these spir­it gems, un­less they were nat­ur­al aether phe­nom­e­na, she would not like them.

"I can't say I know," Chi­an said, sound­ing like she had no deep in­ter­est in the con­ver­sa­tion. "I've only had my hands on one, and it gained me noth­ing be­fore it de­cayed. Es­pe­cial­ly some­thing like a less­er or low gem would at best be the work of some­one in the Out­er Sect med­i­tat­ing on vague con­cepts of qi, and what­ev­er got im­print­ed in the stone. They are prob­a­bly use­ful, es­pe­cial­ly for peo­ple claw­ing for every last ben­e­fit, but I do not un­der­stand them."

Ki'el nod­ded at that, and af­ter a mo­ment of si­lence, asked, "Which is bet­ter--less­er, or low?"

"Ah, the great ques­tions in life at last," Chi­an teased, and Ki'el was sur­prised to hear the lev­i­ty in the girl's voice again. "They don't al­ways use both terms to de­scribe the same thing, and so of­ten the two mean about the same thing. But there is Least, and then Low, and then Less­er, Com­mon, Un­com­mon, Greater, Great, and some oth­er things I doubt we'll ever see." Chi­an pushed out an­oth­er small qi orb, as she had done a few times that night, and Ki'el thought she sensed the girl try­ing to pres­sure the qi of the orb with her spir­it tail. Ki'el... found her­self watch­ing the oth­er girl's eyes as Chi­an fo­cused on the orb. The look on Da Chi­an's face as she fo­cused was...

She lost the thought as the orb zipped away, this time into a fall­en leaf, which smoldered, but did not catch fire or have any­thing else in par­tic­u­lar hap­pen. Still, it was more of a re­sult than most of the oth­ers. Ki'el frowned at the leaf. "You in­tend­ed to burn it?"

"Fire isn't a part of my blood­line's na­ture," Chi­an replied. "I... can al­ready tell that if I used my blood na­ture, it would be far more pow­er­ful. I'm not ready for that, not yet. I'll al­ways need to prac­tice qi na­tures that dif­fer from my own, so that I can dis­guise my­self. Fire is... com­mon."

{ Her un­der­stand­ing of fire is worth­less, } Kuli com­ment­ed to Ki'el alone, and Ki'el blinked, sur­prised at the bit­ter­ness im­plied by the aug­ment's tone. { Fire--the true el­e­ment, with­out con­sid­er­ing qi--is fair­ly sim­ple. In­tent must al­ways re­flect the truth be­hind a phe­nom­e­non. Ig­no­rance pro­duces ter­ri­ble spir­i­tu­al tech­niques. }

Teach me, Ki'el pushed at Kuli, who paused as though sur­prised, or un­pre­pared for the com­ment. Teach me enough about nat­ur­al fire that I could speak it with in­tent.

Kuli con­sid­ered the re­quest, and then sud­den­ly Ki'el un­der­stood.

She all but leaped to her feet at the strange thoughts that Kuli sim­ply merged into her mind, of phys­i­cal struc­tures--too small to see--that might break if struck with too much en­er­gy, and which might re­lease more en­er­gy when they break than it took to break them. Of the rem­nants, which might trap the heat, help it flow away, or might them­selves burn. Of gasses--the one in par­tic­u­lar need­ed for most fire, and oth­ers--and of things re­leas­ing light be­cause they are hot.

It wasn't sim­ple, as Kuli had said--not to know every­thing. And Ki'el, as she sat there, her back straight and her eyes un­see­ing, knew enough about fire now to know that she had known al­most noth­ing. She had known that wood burns, that wa­ter puts it out. She had known that it took fuel and pow­er. Un­der­stand­ing the why of fire should not have been this pro­found. She should not have need­ed to un­der­stand pow­er and gasses and what makes up things in or­der to un­der­stand fire.

Learn­ing all of that in an in­stant might have been more im­por­tant than learn­ing how they all com­bined to cre­ate fire... if any of that knowl­edge had been in the sligh­test way use­ful to her ex­cept in un­der­stand­ing fire, but now, it was all dis­con­nect­ed, un­cer­tain. Dis­tant.

"Ki'el?"

Ki'el blinked and looked to Chi­an, and the woman looked back, her eyes guard­ed and un­cer­tain. Only in that mo­ment did Ki'el re­call how Chi­an had re­act­ed when she of­fered a gift, and she hes­i­tat­ed.

"I asked Kuli a ques­tion," Ki'el said. "About fire. Be­cause I want­ed to help you. But I am not cer­tain whether you will want the... the knowl­edge that I gained."

"You gained in­sight just from the an­swer to a ques­tion?" Da Chi­an's voice sound­ed strange­ly... amused? Did she think Ki'el was jok­ing?

"It is what I asked for," Ki'el ad­mit­ted. "I thought... that I could sim­ply speak with in­tent, what I learned, in or­der to help you."

"Like I said," Chi­an said, her voice still amused. "It's dif­fi­cult to speak with in­tent, and dif­fi­cult to mem­o­rize some­one else's. Even if your Kuli could pro­vide in­sight, how would that help me?"

But Ki'el just looked back at Chi­an, un­sure. "If I could... would you want me to try? To teach you what I learned?"

Chi­an's hu­mor seemed to qui­et, and then van­ish. And the girl, or maybe not quite a girl, sat up straighter. "Maybe," she said. "I... sup­pose I appreciate you ask­ing. Try. See if you can even speak with in­tent."

Ki'el, of course, had pushed in­tent out with her spir­it alone... but she wasn't good at it. And now, when she tried to sum up all that she knew about fire, she found it even more dif­fi­cult to com­press a whole con­cept into a word, as she knew mas­ters did. But more than that... Ki'el found it dif­fi­cult to speak the word 'Fire' while also speak­ing the in­tent, [Fire], at the same time, es­pe­cial­ly link­ing both to­geth­er.

For whichev­er rea­son, Kuli did not help her with this, and for whichev­er rea­son, Ki'el did not re­sent that. This... seemed like a thing worth try­ing hard to learn and mas­ter. Per­haps... per­haps now was not ex­act­ly the right time, but it was a wor­thy task.

Chi­an did not seem sur­prised when Ki'el failed to speak the con­cept, and didn't press her or at­tack her, but she didn't come back the next day, ei­ther. At the very least... the knowl­edge that Kuli in­stilled in her also didn't fade, though Kuli had to walk Ki'el through the thoughts and how to or­der them in her own mind, be­cause the thoughts--al­though they had be­come her own--were still for­eign. Even try­ing to sum­ma­rize the knowl­edge in words was strange, and try­ing to con­vey more than the words with the words was a mad­den­ing chal­lenge.

Over the course of the next cou­ple days, Ki'el worked on the phras­ing of the sen­tence it­self whenev­er her work al­lowed her time to think. When at last she de­cid­ed on words--"Nor­mal fire is the re­ac­tion of fuel and oxy­gen with heat, releasing heat and light"--she be­gan to try to med­i­tate on each of the con­cepts in part. Fuel, be­ing some­thing that ei­ther can re­act with oxy­gen and heat, or re­leas­es some­thing when heat­ed that will re­act. Oxy­gen, be­ing the gas that most things re­act with. Heat, be­ing not only en­er­gy, but a prop­er­ty of all things, which can be stored, trans­fer on touch, or ra­di­ate out. Re­ac­tion, be­ing a part of na­ture, some­thing that will hap­pen even with­out qi, sim­ply be­cause of how the world works. And... "nor­mal" fire, be­cause she need­ed to con­vey that this was one of many pos­si­ble cas­es, and had noth­ing to do with how things worked once qi was in­volved.

Al­though Kuli did not help with this di­rect­ly, she did teach Ki'el to store whole thoughts in the part of Ki'el's mind that Kuli her­self oc­cu­pied--that Kuli aug­ment­ed, made bet­ter, stronger. And this quick­ly be­came a thing that Ki'el found strange­ly thrilling--the idea of set­ting aside a whole and com­plex thought, but then pick­ing the thought up again as though it were sim­ply a stone she placed down and picked up again. She could work on her phras­ing of Nor­mal Fire, and when some­one in­ter­rupt­ed, put it all away with­out los­ing her place or her way. When she picked it up again, there was no track­ing down the thoughts she'd had, and no fum­bling with pieces no longer in con­text.

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Is this how Sobon felt? Ki'el asked Kuli as they re­turned from a job, this time re­plant­i­ng a flower bed that had been messed up by an­oth­er Out­er Dis­ci­ple duel. It had been med­i­ta­tive work, un­til the last mo­ments when an Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple walked by and made all her hard work feel mean­ing­less, as they used their qi to bet­ter dis­trib­ute the dirt, the wa­ter, and the flower's roots, and the many flow­ers Ki'el had plant­ed over hours sat up brighter and more healthy in re­sponse. Be­ing able to hold con­cepts in his mind, and sim­ply bring them out when he need­ed?

{ Yes, } Kuli an­swered. { Many ad­vanced cul­tures have tools like that. I am not the tool Sobon was most fa­mil­iar with--I was cre­at­ed by the Ri'lef, and for their peo­ple, but adapt­ed for you. But I know that Sobon was used to aug­ments like me, and most like­ly, far more pow­er­ful ones. Ones meant for aether war­riors, so that they could draw upon cen­turies of knowl­edge in an in­stant. }

Ki'el could be­lieve it, af­ter hav­ing seen Sobon sim­ply cre­ate spells of dev­as­tat­ing pow­er from noth­ing. Now that she, her­self, was stum­bling to make even the most triv­ial qi cir­cuits and do sim­ple things like speak­ing the true na­ture of fire... she un­der­stood that wield­ing that much pow­er re­quired a tech­nique en­tire­ly with­out flaw. The pow­er that Sobon had wield­ed, if he had a frac­tion as many flaws as Ki'el had now, would have de­stroyed him the first time he used it. And he had used it over and over and over, with­out show­ing even a mo­ment's hes­i­ta­tion or fear.

Sobon had cre­at­ed a bomb out of an en­graved rock, a crude one, while still trapped in the body of a squir­rel. Even now, Ki'el shiv­ered to think of that ex­plo­sion, to think of the ter­ror she felt in the pi­rate cap­tain with the in­sid­i­ous black, Gold-tier qi. The ex­plo­sion that had near­ly cap­sized a mas­sive ship, de­spite go­ing off dozens, per­haps hun­dreds of feet away. Ki'el could re­mem­ber Sobon be­gin­ning to charge that stone, as he held it there, inch­es from his own body, mere feet from Ki'el. If there had been a sin­gle flaw...

{ We are cre­at­ed to help with things like that, } Kuli con­firmed. { To hold ideas in mind, cre­ate them out of pieces. To go over them again, com­pare them to oth­er thoughts and mem­o­ries, con­firm they are cor­rect. To com­mu­ni­cate them to oth­ers, pre­cise­ly and with­out er­ror. To copy them ex­act­ly into re­al­i­ty, con­firm the copy is per­fect, and only then em­pow­er them. To Sobon, and oth­ers who have ac­cess to these meth­ods, this world in which in­tent is a per­son­al jour­ney is prim­i­tive. It is a nec­es­sary jour­ney with­out these tools, but to those who have them... }

Ki'el un­der­stood, even with­out Kuli ex­plain­ing, but the ex­pla­na­tion did feel right, as well. It only un­der­scored, once again, that Kuli was a trea­sure--some­thing Ki'el had no right to, and which she dared not un­der­es­ti­mate. And... the ex­pla­na­tion also pro­vid­ed one oth­er in­sight for Ki'el. A pos­si­bil­i­ty she had not quite con­sid­ered.

When she was con­tent that she was close to speak­ing the con­cept of Fire with in­tent, she be­gan to do the same for her qi turn­ing tech­nique. It was not ex­act­ly a triv­ial con­cept; she had only crude­ly ex­plained to the oth­ers that aether, and qi, were in­di­vid­ual specks that could join to­geth­er into a whole as a nat­ur­al con­se­quence of their form. Like bub­bles, they were essence that also had an in­side, and the sur­faces could join to cre­ate a larg­er with­in.

She spoke on this to Mian, and it seemed to help him with his tech­nique, though still he seemed to be miss­ing parts and pieces of it. With the in­sight, though, he fi­nal­ly com­plet­ed sev­er­al turns of qi, pro­duc­ing pu­ri­fied qi in his Thorn, and he was able to grasp the pu­ri­fied qi and re­ab­sorb it. The next day, he awoke at Sil­ver 4, and he felt cer­tain he would get to Sil­ver 5 with­in an­oth­er day's ef­fort, if that.

That day, by chance, Ki'el met Chi­an while on a task, the red-haired girl pulling a cart some­what larg­er than her­self, with large wood­en wheels, with rel­a­tive ease. Ki'el, mean­while, had been asked to help car­ry a num­ber of al­chem­i­cal vials very care­ful­ly across a mod­er­ate dis­tance, as the Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple who most like­ly should have been do­ing it went off to do some­thing else.

"Chi­an," she said as she passed, and she re­al­ized the girl had been en­tire­ly with­in her own thoughts and not no­ticed her un­til she spoke. The red­head looked at her, and nod­ded, but her gaze was wary. "We should talk again, if you don't mind."

"I have been busy, but..." she looked away. "I wouldn't mind."

They part­ed ways, nei­ther will­ing to in­ter­rupt their task. Ki'el was dis­ap­point­ed that Chi­an didn't show up that night, but fo­cused her ef­forts on pol­ish­ing her in­tent for the con­cept of Fire any­way.

The next day, Ki'el felt strange­ly dis­qui­et, al­though for a long time she couldn't find any source for the feel­ing. It wasn't un­til she was on her way back to the Less­er House, and saw the woman who re­mained across the hall from them--Bai Be­nai--mov­ing with un­nat­ur­al speed up the path and away, that she felt cer­tain it was more than her imag­i­na­tion. She could only watch Sis­ter Be­nai leave, but shift­ed her at­ten­tion to Kuli. Do you feel some­thing?

{ An un­cer­tain in­tent, } Kuli agreed. { A reck­less ac­tion. Da Chi­an may be in trou­ble. }

So Ki'el, hav­ing ac­com­plished her own deeds, turned and fol­lowed Sis­ter Be­nai--or, most­ly, fol­lowed Kuli's di­rec­tion. By the time she caught up, the sit­u­a­tion had long since re­solved--Sis­ter Be­nai was stand­ing pro­tec­tive­ly over Chi­an, who seemed to have been struck, but an­oth­er, an Out­er Dis­ci­ple, was look­ing far more in­censed than any­one else.

Ki'el had to check her­self a mo­ment be­fore speak­ing. "Sis­ter Chi­an! Sis­ter Be­nai."

Both glanced over at her, and Ki'el saw great dark­ness in the eyes of Bai Be­nai, but the Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple gave Ki'el a dirty look. "A third mem­ber of the Less­er House? What is with you id­iots to­day?" He moved to­wards Chi­an, but Be­nai repo­si­tioned her­self in­stant­ly to be in his way. He start­ed to raise one hand to her, but stopped. "You won't stop me from get­ting com­pen­sa­tion, Less­er House. My rather ex­pen­sive set of to­kens is ru­ined now."

When Bai Be­nai spoke, Ki'el could feel a deep­er and more dangerous spir­i­tu­al pres­sure than she had ex­pect­ed to sense from any­one in the Less­er House. "You get what you pay for, Out­er Dis­ci­ple. Com­pen­sa­tion for loss­es when re­quest­ing aid from the Less­er House is lim­it­ed to three times the re­quest fee."

"That is NON­SENSE, and I will hear noth­ing of it," the Out­er Dis­ci­ple snapped. "Each of those to­kens was worth at least twen­ty Sect Points, and they are all ru­ined!"

"Then you should have paid more to have an Out­er Dis­ci­ple clean them."

"I will not be talked back to by a less­er be­ing." The man's qi flared, and Ki'el re­al­ized that he was past Ti­ta­ni­um Qi--his qi took on a va­ri­ety of col­ors, but it was only about as dense as Sobon's had been. See­ing it now, and try­ing to un­der­stand it, she un­der­stood it to be Bis­muth Qi, the sec­ond tier in the Bright Met­al Phase. "You will step aside, or..."

"Or you will what? As­sault me?" Bai Be­nai's sneer of con­tempt was con­veyed by her qi, al­though Ki'el could not see her face.

"I..." he eased off the pres­sure but his words only con­tained more ven­om. "I will have my sat­is­fac­tion, on my po­si­tion as heir to House Otoma."

"We have no rea­son to ac­cept such a duel."

"The girl struck me," the Out­er Dis­ci­ple said. "I have done no vi­o­lence in re­turn. My words are sim­ple and true. Ei­ther com­pen­sate me for the lost to­kens, or take... let's say, three moves from me. If you think you could sur­vive that."

Ki'el swal­lowed, star­ing at the scene for a mo­ment in con­fu­sion, then frowned. In the bat­tle at Sobon's home... she had fought a man with Ti­ta­ni­um Qi to a stand­still with her aether blade. He had not been a mas­ter, but he had been over­con­fi­dent that his qi alone made all the dif­fer­ence. But this is also a Sect. Doubt­less this man has learned more--

"I will place my hon­or on the line to de­fend my friend," Bai Be­nai said. "I will take your three moves." But Ki'el could sense the raw fear that em­anat­ed from her, and imag­ined she un­der­stood. Bai Be­nai also did not wish to re­veal her blood na­tures.

"No," Ki'el said, step­ping for­ward with­out think­ing too hard about it, and with­draw­ing her Aether Blade from her stor­age ring. "I will take them."

All three of them looked over at Ki'el, at that, and the Out­er Dis­ci­ple looked strange. "You? What do you have to do with this?"

"She is also my friend," Ki'el said. "And..." And what? What right did she have to in­ter­fere? Ki'el glanced over at Chi­an, see­ing that she--no, they were strug­gling to sup­press their blood. "And... I be­lieve that Sis­ter Be­nai would do bet­ter see­ing to Sis­ter Chi­an. I be­lieve that I can han­dle you alone."

"Han­dle me? Ridicu­lous." The Out­er Dis­ci­ple raised his hands in a strange fash­ion, one cross­ing over the oth­er be­fore him, and a phan­tom like a snake ap­peared in the air around him. Ki'el froze up, wor­ried that she had of­fend­ed yet an­oth­er spir­it beast, but the qi so­lid­i­fied into some­thing more like a pup­pet or chain weapon in­stead. "I have reached the third chap­ter of the Book of the Earth­en Pup­pet Drag­on. I can man­i­fest my qi na­ture. Can you even use ex­ter­nal qi?"

Ki'el took a deep breath, and pressed her in­tent into the Aether Blade, awak­en­ing it in its staff form. When she did... she could feel some­thing, deep­er with­in the blade, some­thing she knew was there, but it struck her dif­fer­ent­ly this time.

It de­sired in­tent.

"If I can­not take your three strikes, you can take one hun­dred Sect points from me," Ki'el said, un­sure where her con­fi­dence came from, but she raised the Aether Sword be­fore her, and for rea­sons she could not put into words, she con­veyed to the Aether Sword the in­tent for [nor­mal fire]. Noth­ing hap­pened. "If I can... then con­sid­er it your loss, and Sis­ter Chi­an owes you noth­ing."

"Pa­thet­ic. This won't even take a sin­gle strike." The man waved his hands, and Ki'el could feel the strings of qi con­nect­ing him to the con­struct. Ki'el pres­sured her Right­eous Aether cy­cle, flood­ing her body, and when the con­struct be­gan to move, she po­si­tioned the Aether Sword be­tween it and her.

When the con­struct hit her blade, Ki'el shiv­ered.

It wasn't the qi drain, al­though that was sub­stan­tial. No, Ki'el felt some­thing, as though the aether sword was mea­sur­ing the pup­pet snake for how well it matched the in­tent of Nor­mal Fire. It was... not a match, and more than that, Ki'el sud­den­ly felt cer­tain that the pup­pet con­struct was ac­tu­al­ly fair­ly weak. It was a qi con­struct, and it would con­tin­ue to func­tion un­til de­stroyed or its pow­er was used up, but... the core be­hind the con­struct was flim­sy.

Ki'el was sure that she un­der­stood [nor­mal fire] bet­ter than that man un­der­stood his pup­pet, and all of that passed through her in the mo­ment that the qi smashed into her blade and bounced off.

But the man at­tack­ing her felt no hal­lu­ci­na­tion dur­ing the blow and gained no in­sight. His fin­gers twitched, and Ki'el could al­most see the com­mand pass through the strings. By the time it reached the pup­pet, and the Earth Pup­pet Drag­on leaped at her again, she al­most felt in­sult­ed at the slow, de­lib­er­ate mo­tions of it, flick­ing the aether sword to knock it away.

There was a cold si­lence bro­ken only by Ki'el's breath­ing af­ter that blow. Ki'el knew that the blade con­tained its own qi, but for now, she pressed her own aether and qi into the blade, al­though it near­ly drained what she had in her dant­ian and her sin­is­ter aether cy­cles. The Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple stud­ied her, and Ki'el silent­ly in­struct­ed Kuli to record that mo­ment of clash­ing in­tent for lat­er, try­ing to keep her breath­ing even.

"I see," he said at last. "I mis­took you for some­one who'd nev­er du­eled in your life. I sup­pose it's your..." his eyes flicked up and down Ki'el, and he changed his mind about what­ev­er he was go­ing to say. "Nev­er mind. This one is for real, then."

This time, the man's qi surged through his core, not his fin­gers, and the pup­pet drag­on res­onat­ed with him. Ki'el brought her sword up, but she could feel that some­thing was wrong--that the at­tack that was com­ing was more than those that came be­fore.

With­out re­al­ly con­sid­er­ing it, Ki'el flipped the Aether Sword into its nat­ur­al, sharp state.

The change that came over the pup­pet was, Ki'el would re­al­ize lat­er, im­mense. It in­creased in size by a good four times, and it went from be­ing a fair­ly ba­sic seg­ment­ed pup­pet snake to some­thing more re­fined, with teeth and claws. Even in the in­stant where it be­gan to trans­form, it was leap­ing at Ki'el, who re­act­ed as though she were hold­ing her old staff--back­ing off a step and swing­ing de­fen­sive­ly. But the aether blade in her hands was no staff, and the pup­pet drag­on that came fly­ing at her was al­most too fast for her de­fen­sive ma­neu­ver.

Al­most.

Ki'el was struck by a part of the pup­pet in the hip, but its in­tent was al­ready spent--the pup­pet it­self was split in half by Ki'el's blade, far more than she could pos­si­bly have cut with the length of the sword be­fore her. It still hurt--bad­ly, and Ki'el stum­bled and fell, grasp­ing her mid­sec­tion, try­ing to force her­self to stand, un­sure what count­ed as a loss or a vic­to­ry in such a sit­u­a­tion.

But the Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple was star­ing at her, baf­fled.

Ki'el re­al­ized af­ter a mo­ment that her sword was re­vealed, and she shift­ed it back to its staff-like blunt form, but did her best not to show con­fu­sion or pan­ic. "I be­lieve that is three strikes," she said af­ter a mo­ment. "Or have I mis­count­ed?"

The Out­er Dis­ci­ple glanced down at his hands, as though there was some an­swer to the ques­tion in the qi threads that still em­anat­ed from his fin­gers, but shook his hands and took a deep breath. "No," he said, sound­ing grudg­ing, and he straight­ened and bowed. "It seems... Ju­nior Sis­ter, that I had mis­tak­en you for a novice. You have giv­en me much to think about. Per­haps the val­ue of this in­sight is not quite as much as I lost, but..." he rose from his bow, show­ing a de­cid­ed­ly ir­ri­tat­ed face, as though he had bit­ten into some­thing very bit­ter. "...I will of course hon­or the terms of the duel. Per­haps when I re­fine my tech­nique we can spar again."

"Per­haps," Ki'el said in re­turn, but the man was al­ready turn­ing and march­ing away.

Ki'el almost jumped out of her skin when a hand gripped her arm, and Bai Be­nai's face ap­peared next to hers. "I don't know what the hell that was about," the woman hissed at her, "but do not chal­lenge Out­er Dis­ci­ples in the fu­ture. You have no idea what peo­ple like him are re­al­ly ca­pa­ble of." She start­ed to pull Ki'el away, and she no­ticed that the woman was also drag­ging Da Chi­an to her feet. "Come on. Let's get out of here be­fore any­one else de­cides to get in­volved."

Ki'el trad­ed glances with Da Chi­an, not­ing that their ears and tail were just bare­ly vis­i­ble, but she made no ef­fort to say any­thing or re­sist Bai Be­nai's pull.