That evening, when next Ki'el had the chance to speak with Mian and Xam to­geth­er, by chance Da Chi­an had also de­cid­ed to join them. Ki'el didn't usu­al­ly mea­sure the girl's qi, but there was some­thing more to it, some­thing that she looked at but did not wish to speak of, or at least, not at first.

So she start­ed in right away with what she want­ed to say. "I sent a mes­sage to Sobon," she said, "re­gard­ing what we spoke of yes­ter­day." She looked to Mian. "He does not think that your idea was a good plan. Try­ing to con­tain that much pow­er your­self struck him as un­wise, as any mis­take could cause con­se­quences."

Mian made a face, but nod­ded. "Fair, I sup­pose. I was ar­ro­gant to just as­sume I could con­trol a tech­nique I've nev­er used be­fore."

She looked back to Xam, and then briefly at Chi­an. "He did sug­gest that if we could not find a way to teach you a pu­rifi­ca­tion tech­nique, we could in­crease your re­sis­tance by ex­po­sure. The Right­eous Aether that I nor­mal­ly use is one of a pair, and the coun­ter­part, Sin­is­ter Aether, weak­ens in the same way that Right­eous Aether sup­ports. Ex­po­sure to the aether alone, with­out an ad­vanced tech­nique, will not have last­ing ef­fects, but ex­pe­ri­ence re­sist­ing for­eign aether will help you when fac­ing your tribu­la­tion."

Xam leaned back once she had heard every­thing Ki'el had to say, her face se­ri­ous. "It's not a bad idea," she said, though her voice had doubts. "I have al­ready had some tem­per­ing ex­pe­ri­ence on the bat­tle­fields, but re­new­ing it here, in safe­ty, would be wise."

"I also should prac­tice us­ing that," Chi­an mused, as she sum­moned one of her aether rings into each hand. Ki'el no­ticed that both of them were spin­ning, but while the left-hand thorn had built up en­er­gy, the right-hand thorn's pow­er had been used al­ready. "I as­sume I can just use it along with my qi when I use a nor­mal tech­nique...?"

"I am not a mas­ter of these things," Ki'el ad­mit­ted, "But when I du­eled with Broth­er Mon­shu, I put both qi and left-hand aether into my sword. The com­bi­na­tion... did not feel wrong."

"What kind of tech­niques do you have?" Mian asked, sound­ing cu­ri­ous. Then, when there was a slight­ly awk­ward pause, he added, "You don't need to say, or ex­pose your na­ture--"

"I have been work­ing on fire tech­niques," Chi­an in­ter­rupt­ed him. "But... a more nat­ur­al el­e­ment for me is wind. And I think I could use that to­geth­er with this Sin­is­ter pow­er to pres­sure you with­out harm."

Xam frowned at that, but Mian stood up, brac­ing him­self. "If ei­ther of you want to test... don't hes­i­tate. I will en­dure what­ev­er you wish to throw at me."

That made every­one feel a bit awk­ward, but rather than dwelling on that, Ki'el stood up and brought out her Sin­is­ter Thorn, spin­ning up that cy­cle with­in her spir­it. "I do not keep a great deal of the en­er­gy," she said, "though per­haps I will cre­ate an­oth­er Cy­cle for it lat­er. Pre­pare your­self."

Mian nod­ded, and when Ki'el felt his qi dis­trib­ute through­out his body, she moved the thorn away, and fo­cused only on re­leas­ing the Sin­is­ter Aether from her palm as she struck him in the chest. She... could feel it, dis­charg­ing into his body.

But from the out­side, it tru­ly looked like all she did was smack him once on the chest.

Even so, Mian's face twist­ed mo­men­tar­i­ly at it. She felt his qi slow, but not se­vere­ly or for very long. Af­ter only a mo­ment, it picked back up, and al­though she could tell that she had hit him, there seemed to be no dam­age.

"It dis­rupt­ed my con­trol," Mian said, re­leas­ing his stance. "Not... much, or for long. But I don't know when the last time was some­thing ac­tu­al­ly con­test­ed my will, not ex­cept my own in­ter­nal prob­lems." He looked at Ki'el. "Can you do that more?"

"A cou­ple more times," Ki'el agreed, "but I have not built up great amounts of this en­er­gy."

"Let me feel it." Ki'el was sur­prised that it was Chi­an who stepped up next. Al­though she had her doubts, and prob­a­bly showed them, Chi­an gave her a very lev­el look and spoke with­out emo­tion. "You were kind enough to treat me to Right­eous Aether, and even taught me the tech­nique. I should know what I am do­ing to oth­ers."

Ki'el nod­ded. "My mas­ter said not to use the aether on any­one who was not an en­e­my, or a will­ing par­tic­i­pant," she said. "But I trust you un­der­stand."

When Chi­an nod­ded, Ki'el re­peat­ed her trick, strik­ing Chi­an in the ab­domen with her left palm. Some­how, Chi­an's qi seemed nat­u­ral­ly re­sis­tant to it, but Ki'el could sense that the re­sis­tance had tak­en its own toll, cost the girl en­er­gy or some­thing sim­i­lar.

"I see," Chi­an said. "It's a pur­er form of spir­i­tu­al op­pres­sion, with­out mal­ice. The word 'sin­is­ter' is apt." She reached down and touched the place where Ki'el had struck her, but her face showed no sign of pain or con­fu­sion. "With­out a great deal more pow­er be­hind it, I don't think it will threat­en me. But if you were to make it more dense..." With­out warn­ing, Chi­an's mouth snapped shut, and she turned away. "Nev­er mind," she said, dis­mis­sive­ly.

"It is a weapon," Xam said, stand­ing as well. "Ob­vi­ous­ly ter­ri­ble things when peo­ple de­vel­op pow­er­ful weapons. But light spar­ring be­tween friends, as long as we are care­ful not to do dam­age, is no prob­lem." She moved to where Ki'el could ap­proach her, and nod­ded.

Ki'el struck her, and Xam had a medi­um re­ac­tion, less than Mian's but far more vis­i­ble than Chi­an's. It was clear, like Chi­an, that she had faced op­pres­sion be­fore, and had de­vel­oped in­stincts, but they were not drilled into her as se­vere­ly as Chi­an's must have been.

Xam nod­ded, though. "I see," she said. "If the goal of sur­viv­ing a tribu­la­tion is to op­er­ate nor­mal­ly while un­der very se­vere op­pres­sion... then I can imag­ine that train­ing like this, es­pe­cial­ly with more pow­er and per­formed un­til we are ex­haust­ed... would be very help­ful." She looked at Ki'el. "But you do not have that much pow­er, yet."

"I do not," Ki'el agreed, mov­ing to sit down.

"Ah-ah," Chi­an said, and Ki'el turned to look at her. "You haven't tak­en a blow yet, have you? Let me try my own on you."

Ki'el con­sid­ered that, and de­cid­ed it was fair, straighen­ing. "Of course." She re­sist­ed the urge to push right­eous aether through her sys­tem, know­ing that it would help her de­fend, but... want­i­ng to see for her­self what the im­pact was.

When Chi­an be­gan to move, though, Ki'el al­most froze, as she sensed the deep and wild pow­er be­hind their spir­it re­act to the de­sire to man­i­fest sin­is­ter aether. The pow­er that came from Chi­an's hand, as Ki'el watched it ap­proach, seemed to mag­ni­fy, un­til she be­gan to feel blind­ed even be­fore it struck. In­stinc­tive­ly, Ki'el's spir­it flexed, pulling on aether and qi to form a bar­ri­er, but it could only blunt the im­pact.

It felt like some­thing break­ing, shat­ter­ing into pieces.

Ki'el was lost for a long mo­ment in a world where some­thing in­side of her was gone, where the warmth of the world had re­treat­ed and all that re­mained was cold. It took her long mo­ments be­fore she be­gan to un­der­stand what her spir­it was telling her--that she was back. That she was there.

Ki'el could have vi­su­al­ized the burned ru­ins of her vil­lage, could have seen the tor­tured faces of her neigh­bors, could have seen the dogs and cats too ter­ri­fied of hu­man be­ings now to ap­proach her. She could have seen any of those things... if her spir­it had been strong enough to re­mem­ber them with­out break­ing fur­ther. But when­ev­er her mind be­gan to touch on those old things, on that cold and emp­ty world, a world where every­thing warm and vi­brant had been stripped away, her will all but col­lapsed, and she could not sum­mon forth any strength at all.

But there was some­thing, in that waste­land, and Ki'el's at­ten­tion was pulled to­wards it. A warmth, a place that was not emp­ty, was not--

Ki'el sat up with a jolt, the mem­o­ry of her vil­lage co­ex­ist­ing in a con­fused jum­ble with the cir­cle of fa­mil­iar faces around her. She could not fo­cus on them, or on their words, though she knew, to a cer­tain ex­tent, that Chi­an was bab­bling, and Xam said sev­er­al an­gry words, and Mian was not an­gry, or per­haps was only try­ing hard to be fair.

She had to take many deep breaths, but the more she took, the more she un­der­stood. She un­der­stood that spir­i­tu­al op­pres­sion was what she had felt back then, when she felt the cru­el­ty of hu­man­i­ty, the will­ing­ness of oth­ers to be vi­o­lent and un­fair. It felt like death but not dy­ing, felt like she could nev­er again be whole.

And yet she was.

"I am al­right," she said, when she caught her breath. "I am fine." She looked at Xam, see­ing per­haps for the first time the woman be­ing al­most in tears. "Peace, Xam," she said, reach­ing out and tak­ing the woman's hand. "Peace. I am al­right."

"Ki'el--she should not--I could not--I am sor­ry," Xam said, sound­ing en­tire­ly too much like she was blam­ing her­self. How could she blame her­self? Ki'el did not un­der­stand.

"I didn't mean to," Chi­an was say­ing. "I... my spir­it mag­ic re­act­ed with it. I wasn't try­ing to, I promise."

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"I know," Ki'el said, though in truth, she didn't know, only trust­ed her friend. "Peace, Chi­an. Xam. I am al­right."

"What hap­pened? From your per­spec­tive?" Mian of­fered her a hand, and Ki'el used it to pull her­self up to a full sit­ting po­si­tion and ad­just her po­si­tion.

"It brought me back," Ki'el said. "To the ru­ins of my vil­lage. To the wreck I was back then." Ki'el took an­oth­er set of deep breaths. "But... I sur­vived. I will sur­vive this."

"She is too young," Xam said, look­ing to Mian, per­haps for sup­port.

"I said I didn't mean it," Chi­an ar­gued again, and Ki'el glanced at her, un­sure what she was say­ing.

When she looked back at Xam, though, Ki'el re­al­ized that the woman had been look­ing at Chi­an far more than she had been at Ki'el, and the look was not friend­ly. Had she had this mis­trust be­fore? Was it all be­cause of this one mo­ment? She was un­sure, but she waved im­me­di­ate­ly, to catch Xam's eye, and the woman looked back at her, her eyes shift­ing once more to con­cern.

"Sis­ter," Ki'el em­pha­sized. "I am al­right." She want­ed to say a lot more--but her mind was still con­fused, the un­seen im­ages of her past still not en­tire­ly put away. "If this is what sin­is­ter aether feels like--at its high­est in­ten­si­ty--then I need to un­der­stand that. Need to en­dure it."

"You are still a child, Ki'el," Xam said, and moved for­ward to wrap Ki'el in a hug.

But Ki'el pushed her away, back­ing to­wards Chi­an. "I stopped be­ing a child when I watched a house pet eat its dead own­er," she said, and Ki'el could feel the ice in her voice, ice that sur­prised her. "When I buried the kind­ly old woman who gave me treats, who bore signs of what evil men had done to her. I do not need pro­tec­tion from a lit­tle bit of aether." She huffed heavy breaths, heav­ier than she was ex­pect­ing, as though the act of speak­ing of such old things had ex­haust­ed some­thing in­side of her, some­thing that had been hold­ing on for a very long time.

For a mo­ment, she could see her. And the man, and the dog. And the face on the dog, the face of agony and con­fu­sion, the face of de­spair, in such con­trast to the numb and pain­less face of the man, no longer able to be hurt. And Ki'el re­mem­bered why she had start­ed to feed the oth­ers, even when they nev­er thanked her. Even when they could not thank her.

Like her, they could nev­er move on.

Ki'el breathed heav­i­ly, but with time, her thoughts sort­ed them­selves, and Ki'el re­called that she was not alone in her own mind. Kuli was there, but silent, as­sist­ing with­out putting pres­sure on her. When her mind had vi­o­lent flash­es of some­thing through it, Kuli re­treat­ed and did noth­ing, but as she calmed, Kuli was there, plac­ing things in or­der.

And Ki'el was thank­ful, but still un­sure. The part of her­self that had nev­er left that vil­lage was ea­ger to find some­one to blame, and in starts and flash­es, that part thought that maybe Kuli was to blame. But...

But not Chi­an.

Ki'el looked over at the red-haired girl, whose face was full of many things, but not mal­ice. Ki'el could see the con­fu­sion there, the angst. And she reached out and took Chi­an's hand and squeezed it, al­though she thought she saw or sensed some­thing from Xam, a mo­tion or sense of dis­ap­proval.

"You are not at fault," she said, and at Kuli's prompt­ing, she said, "but you must have more con­trol."

"I will," Chi­an said, though her voice sound­ed con­fused, pained.

"Then there is noth­ing else to say." She turned to look at Mian, and nod­ded at him. The man nod­ded back, look­ing more calm than any­one else there. She looked at Xam, who was still dis­traught. "You do not agree."

But Xam took sev­er­al deep breaths, and al­though the last one was far deep­er than Ki'el ex­pect­ed, when she was done, Xam looked back with a cool and lev­el gaze. "If you trust her, then I trust you," she said. "But... from the first mo­ment you told us what she was... I wor­ried. Her kind... has a bad rep­u­ta­tion, for be­ing vi­o­lent and cru­el."

"I--" Chi­an start­ed to ob­ject, but even though the word was met with noth­ing but si­lence, she didn't con­tin­ue. Or... was Chi­an a 'they' right now? Ki'el looked at her, but was not in a state of mind to judge. "I... do not wish to harm my friend Ki'el. More than most peo­ple I have met, I do not wish to hurt her."

"That sounds like it is not your per­son­al­i­ty, but your na­ture," re­tort­ed Xam, stiff­en­ing like she was speak­ing down to the oth­er girl. "Which is what I said. If Ki'el trusts you, then I will trust her. But it may be that you are more dan­ger­ous than you in­tend to be, sim­ply be­cause of what you are."

Chi­an bris­tled at that, but Ki'el spoke up, and was sur­prised when her own voice was eclipsed.

{ Peace, } Kuli pressed the thought at each of them. { The con­flict with­in Da Chi­an's spir­it comes from wounds born from op­pres­sion. Those who op­press her wors­en the in­jury. Fix­ing that kind of spir­i­tu­al and emo­tion­al in­jury is pos­si­ble, but it does not hap­pen in the course of liv­ing a nor­mal life. In that way, both of you are right, and wrong. Be­ing cal­lous and cru­el wors­ens the prob­lem, but well-mean­ing is not suf­fi­cient to heal wounds. }

Some­how, those words didn't seem to mol­li­fy Xam or Chi­an, though they sparked some­thing in Ki'el. She shook her head. "What... would one need to do in or­der to cure such wounds?"

{ Surgery to fix phys­i­cal wounds re­quires cut­ting flesh to mend bones and or­gans, del­i­cate­ly per­formed vi­o­lence that must be paired with ex­treme tal­ent and ad­e­quate if not per­fect knowl­edge. The spir­i­tu­al ver­sion is no dif­fer­ent, and no one we have yet met is able to per­form such a task, not even Sobon. }

Ki'el found her mind sharp­er now that Kuli was speak­ing as though the oth­er girl's prob­lem had an ac­tu­al so­lu­tion, and she found her thoughts about her own prob­lems fad­ing.

"Re­al­ly?" It was Mian's voice that in­ter­rupt­ed the tense and con­fused si­lence. "I would have thought that among the so­ci­ety of Sobon's peers, they would have no fur­ther need to cut open bod­ies in or­der to heal wounds. Can't you just use in­cred­i­ble aether pow­ers, or some­thing, to do the same?"

{ Bod­ies re­sist for­eign pow­er, } Kuli an­swered. { Bod­ies that are in­jured pan­ic, and re­ject even healthy out­side aether, much less ef­fects that will cause more in­juries but make things bet­ter in the end. It is not sim­ple to take an or­gan­ism with the strength to re­sist and over­pow­er it, with­out do­ing fur­ther harm. Even with med­ical tech­niques to sub­due and calm the mind, the spir­it of in­di­vid­ual or­gans and tis­sues will re­sist on their own, and some such or­gans can­not be shut down with aether. In­stead, to reach their in­ter­nals and cre­ate the nec­es­sary change, care­ful vi­o­lence that can be healed is per­formed. }

Ki'el not­ed, in the cor­ner of her eye, Chi­an's hand slid­ing to her low­er ab­domen, but re­fused to turn and look. In­stead, she asked what she knew must be the real ques­tion, the real mat­ter at hand.

"The wounds of Chi­an, or the an­ces­tral spir­it that gives her pow­er, are be­tray­al and tor­ture. Are there re­al­ly tech­niques to ease such wounds?"

{ Yes, } Kuli said. { Be­cause the wound cre­ates ir­ra­tional­i­ty, a re­fusal to per­ceive. Most com­mon­ly, but not al­ways, if the per­son who was be­trayed and tor­tured had per­ceived what was com­ing, the worst might have been avoid­ed. A clear and healthy mind does not re­quire one to trust un­du­ly. Even a great spir­it who may be at­tacked at any time by any­one, has a right to have clear per­cep­tion and to be free from the pain of old wounds. They have a right to per­ceive all peo­ple for who and what they are, in­clud­ing those that will be­tray them in the fu­ture--and those that will not. Ob­tain­ing spir­i­tu­al health does not mean mak­ing a spir­it qui­es­cent, silent, sub­mis­sive. Health is health. }

Ki'el had not heard or seen any sign of her aug­ment be­ing so up­set be­fore, if the spir­i­tu­al en­ti­ty's adamant speech could be seen as such. Are you well, Kuli?

Kuli's at­ten­tion turned back to her, alone. { I con­tain a part of the in­teligent mind of the Tidal Coro­na. Ship in­tel­li­gences are ex­pect­ed to be sub­mis­sive to their cap­tains, even when the or­ders are fool­ish. The Coro­na dis­agreed with the or­ders that led to the ship be­ing dam­aged and trapped on this world. }

Ki'el frowned, even as she was aware that the oth­ers were speak­ing around her. She only could think, though, about what Kuli had said. If you be­lieve I would do some­thing fool­ish and en­dan­ger you and my­self, please tell me. That is not a mis­take I wish to make my­self. In re­sponse, she felt a strange stir­ring in her mind, but Kuli of­fered her no words.

Ki'el blinked away her mo­men­tary trance to see that Xam was look­ing into the camp­fire, as though think­ing deep thoughts, while Mian and Chi­an were talk­ing light­ly be­tween them.

"...nev­er want that for you, and I don't think Xam does ei­ther," Mian was say­ing.

"I know that Ki'el does not." She looked over at Ki'el, then away. "And I would be­lieve that you do not. And I can even un­der­stand that Sis­ter Xam is sim­ply fright­ened. But it is hard to trust some­one who open­ly dis­trusts you. Hard to put faith in some­one who seems ea­ger to find a rea­son to slan­der you."

Xam looked up at that, and looked like she want­ed to ar­gue, but took a deep breath and let it out. "I'm sor­ry," she said, and Ki'el felt like it was not the first time she had said that, though she was not sure she had heard the first time.

The tense­ness in the air didn't dis­si­pate eas­i­ly, though. Af­ter a mo­ment, Ki'el turned to Chi­an, ad­just­ing her sit­ting pos­ture again to be more com­fort­able. "Do you have any idea what you did to am­pli­fy the aether like that?"

Chi­an looked at her, sur­prise clear on her face, though the look changed to re­gret. "I'm... not sure. I think that my spir­i­tu­al pow­er want­ed to am­pli­fy that kind of pow­er, with­out car­ing that I chose a friend as a tar­get. In many ways, it does what it wants, and I have to... know what it in­tends, and hold it back, if it is wrong." She sighed. "It makes prac­tic­ing with my born tal­ents trou­ble­some. If I do too much, I risk re­veal­ing my­self, or worse, harm­ing some­one. Es­pe­cial­ly here, in the Less­er House, that would be a ter­ri­ble prob­lem."

Ki'el nod­ded. "Is that why you have that shield­ed place? Did Be­nai pre­pare that for you?"

"Yes. It is too small for me to use great pow­er, and I am not tempt­ed to use great qi there. But my ...an­ces­tral tech­niques will still am­pli­fy small amounts of qi to dan­ger­ous lev­els, some­times. The shields are there to hide and dis­guise even large dis­charges of pow­er." Chi­an glanced away. "Be­nai is... an el­der. She..."

"You don't have to say," Mian in­ter­rupt­ed. "Wouldn't she ob­ject to you say­ing things you shouldn't?"

Chi­an looked at him, and nod­ded af­ter a minute. "She is... loy­al, hard­work­ing, and hon­est. She does not like to do what she does, but it is an hon­or­able task giv­en to her. If she were not here, I am sure she could be do­ing great things. Or at least... she could be hap­py, some­where." Chi­an slumped. "My fam­i­ly, and oth­ers, en­sure that she stays."

Ki'el squeezed her hand again, be­fore let­ting her go. It felt nice to hold Da Chi­an's hand, and she thought the girl must also take com­fort in her, but she knew that it was one of many things that should not be done too much. "Per­haps we can find an an­swer, some day," Ki'el said. "Sobon has some­thing planned, though I don't know what. Ex­cept that build­ing a No­ble house, to pro­tect our­selves and the peo­ple we hold dear, is a part of it."

Chi­an looked over at her, with an ex­pres­sion that Ki'el couldn't see clear­ly enough to read. "Build­ing a no­ble house?"

Mian nod­ded at her. "Sobon's knowl­edge and pow­er puts him in rare com­pa­ny. At Gold Qi, he slew some­one at Mithril Qi. It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine how much pow­er he will have when he ful­ly heals."

Chi­an's head turned to­wards Mian's, clear­ly con­fused. "...Heals?" But when she looked from Mian to Ki'el, and then back again, the looks that they both gave her were too clear, too guile­less. "I... see. And you say he has no need for... blood?"

"I doubt he has even the slight­est de­sire to per­se­cute or op­press any spir­i­tu­al beast," Ki'el said. "Un­less they are the rea­son be­hind the world dy­ing, or seek to kill him for some slight."

Chi­an looked back at her, and now the con­fu­sion on her face was more in­tense. "...The world is dy­ing?"