Ki'el spent longer than she would like think­ing about Chi­an's of­fer through the next few days. She was at the peak of Gold Qi long be­fore she had an an­swer, thanks to her pu­ri­fied qi cy­cle, and had even pressed her qi into sev­er­al parts of her hand and arm un­til they seemed ful­ly ac­cli­mat­ed to the pres­sure.

She found her­self star­ing at her wrist as she, as del­i­cate­ly as she could, pres­sured qi into the tis­sues around it, and won­dered if in a way, the Less­er House was the same--a way to force peo­ple to adapt to the pres­sures of the sect. Is this the en­vi­ron­ment I need to pre­pare to live in for the next few years? Am I re­al­ly okay liv­ing like this, with­out... mu­tat­ing? And... wasn't it the case that peo­ple like Xan Bu and Otoma Mon­shu had mu­tat­ed, af­ter hav­ing been giv­en more pow­er than they were pre­pared for? They turn against the pur­pose of the sect, will­ful­ly, be­cause they be­lieved it would ben­e­fit them. Even if it end­ed up de­stroy­ing the sect--even if it forced the sect to de­stroy them--they pur­sued that course, and all be­cause... why? Be­cause they had been of­fered pow­er?

Al­though the log­ic made no sense to Ki'el, nei­ther did it make sense that sim­ply giv­ing her body too much aether, or qi, might cause her to self de­struct. And yet, the one was hap­pen­ing around her, and the oth­er was told in many cau­tion­ary tales. Giv­en what Sobon had said, and what Ki'el had said to Chi­an--that aether was a force and con­cept that ex­ist­ed be­fore life it­self--was it sim­ply the case that on a fun­da­men­tal lev­el, some­thing could break, and there was noth­ing that mere willpow­er, mere in­sight, could do? That peo­ple re­al­ly must ac­cli­mate to pow­er slow­ly, no mat­ter how wise or men­tal­ly pre­pared?

But if that weren't the case, wouldn't Sobon have sim­ply re­turned to his full pow­er as soon as he could?

But it made Ki'el think, as she wait­ed for the pres­sure in her wrist to even out be­fore let­ting it re­lax. Is it tru­ly as sim­ple as hold­ing pow­er, in or­der to ac­cli­mate to it, or do you need to have a pur­pose for that pow­er? Should I be find­ing some­thing wor­thy to do with my pow­er while I'm here in the Less­er House? Be­yond sim­ply hav­ing pow­er, should I be­come used to hav­ing it and us­ing it to ac­com­plish things?

{ Most peo­ple at your lev­el can­not even use the pow­er that they have, } Kuli re­mind­ed her. { The sect, and the world, are ex­pect­ing you to be­gin us­ing your pow­er un­der the tute­lage of some­one more ex­pe­ri­enced. }

Am I not? Ki'el's thought was point­ed at Kuli, but her aug­ment did not re­spond. So Ki'el thought about it, but... her mind sim­ply kept go­ing back, over and over, to the floor in the room that she shared with Mian and Xam. If... if she want­ed to re­pair that floor, she would need ex­per­tise that she did not have. Sim­ply know­ing aether and a lit­tle bit of qi did noth­ing for her. Wouldn't most tasks be the same? If she want­ed to help oth­er peo­ple, she need­ed to learn how to help peo­ple, how to teach them, how to heal them--what­ev­er spe­cif­ic task they need­ed as­sis­tance with.

Was it the same with the bones, mus­cles, and nerves in her wrist? If they were un­pre­pared for pow­er, would they strive to right some wrong that she was not even aware of, and do harm in­stead?

Ki'el let her­self med­i­tate on that for a long time, though in the end, the med­i­ta­tion was as much as any­thing about Chi­an, and the girl of­fer­ing Ki'el yet an­oth­er ad­van­tage--a spir­i­tu­al com­pan­ion that she had not earned, and did not know what to do with. If Chi­an said that it was wise and help­ful, Ki'el would trust that, but... was it go­ing to guide her to the right path, or en­cour­age her to stray off of it?

Was there a thing as too much pow­er, even for some­one like her who had no in­ter­est or use for pow­er?

When at last Ki'el had her fill of qui­et in­tro­spec­tion, but had time to her­self, she found her­self fi­nal­ly head­ed back to the Hall of Earth­en Recita­tion, where El­der Gol resided and kept the Sect Point ledgers. In truth, she could well have gone back soon­er--she had no idea how much Broth­er Du had paid her for im­press­ing the In­ner Sect dis­ci­ples. With­out doubt, it would be sub­stan­tial, but... what re­sources did she even need to pay for, now?

The Hall was not so qui­et this time as last, ow­ing to the day or time per­haps; the many small work­sta­tions that filled the Hall were both more filled with crafts­men and far more filled with clients, or so she imag­ined from the many stand­ing or wait­ing near the booths as oth­ers la­bored with­in. Even many of the store rooms in the in­ner re­gion had peo­ple in them, whether sort­ing through the var­i­ous stored con­tain­ers or per­form­ing some form of work on the con­tents that she was, usu­al­ly, in no po­si­tion to ob­serve.

It was no sur­prise, then, that the El­der him­self was busy, as was an as­sis­tant who looked less busy but far more har­ried than the old man him­self. When Ki'el ap­proached, she felt a gen­tle qi wave that pressed on her the im­pres­sion of a num­ber--not the amount of sect points that she had, but how many peo­ple were ahead of her in line. Ki'el ac­cept­ed it with a nod, look­ing around at those wait­ing, but they had large­ly formed groups that spoke qui­et­ly, or silent­ly and with in­tent alone. Of her own ac­quain­tances, she found none, and no one that stood wait­ing seemed to no­tice or take any in­ter­est in her.

Ki'el, see­ing that many oth­ers al­lowed them­selves to be­come dis­tract­ed, also sat against a wall and med­i­tat­ed on pow­er and ac­clima­ti­za­tion, feed­ing her qi cy­cle but not tak­ing any oth­er sig­nif­i­cant ac­tion. In the end... a place like this left her feel­ing out of her depth. In truth, she was un­cer­tain what she would do with the two hun­dred Sect Points she al­ready knew that she had--much less what­ev­er else she had gained in the mean­time.

A flick­er of qi caught Ki'el's at­ten­tion, but the ar­gu­ment that might have sparked it was si­lenced im­me­di­ate­ly by a sin­gle glance from the El­der, and all she saw was two cowed Out­er Sect dis­ci­ples bow­ing and then re­treat­ing. She con­sid­ered that for a few mo­ments, but then re­turned to her pre­vi­ous thoughts.

When at last she felt El­der Gol's at­ten­tion shift to her, and re­ceived an im­pres­sion that she was next, Ki'el sprung up rest­less­ly, al­ready un­sure what she would do here aside from find out what mon­ey she had and re­lease the reser­va­tions for things she did not need or want.

"Xoi Doua Ki'el," the El­der said qui­et­ly as she ap­proached. "You have not been back re­cent­ly. Your Sect Point bal­ance has been ad­just­ed as fol­lows." [ For com­mon tasks, twen­ty-sev­en points. From In­ner Sect Dis­ci­ple Du, for an in­sight­ful dis­cus­sion, five hun­dred points. From Out­er Sect dis­ci­ple Abi, rep­re­sent­ing your share of a for­fei­ture, fifty points. In to­tal, sev­en hun­dred and six­ty-eight sec points. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the con­tents of the space ring for­feit­ed by Xan Bu which have not been con­fis­cat­ed have been placed in es­crow and may be ob­tained at your dis­cre­tion. At your dis­cre­tion, you may trade your space ring for the one for­feit­ed by Xan Bu, or keep the one you have. They are of sim­i­lar qual­i­ty. ]

Ki'el swal­lowed at the quan­ti­ty, and be­fore she for­got it, spoke fum­bled only slight­ly with her in­tent. [ I would like re­lease reser­va­tion for pills and herbs, and for spir­it gems. ]

The El­der raised an eye­brow, slight­ly, but what­ev­er need­ed to be done to achieve that seemed to ex­ist pure­ly with­in his head. [ Done. The to­tal cost of those reser­va­tions was 182 sect points. With a 10% penal­ty for re­turn­ing your reser­va­tions, that is 164 points. You cur­rent­ly have nine hun­dred and thir­ty two points. ]

Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed. [ Will take for­feit­ed items. Will keep my ring. ]

The el­der nod­ded. "One mo­ment." He turned and once more en­tered through the seal in the floor, dis­ap­pear­ing from sight. Ki'el thought she heard a sigh from be­hind her, but when she turned and re­gard­ed the sev­er­al peo­ple wait­ing for the El­der's time, there were far too many peo­ple giv­ing her looks for her to have any guess who had been more vo­cal about the ex­tra time.

Had she even no­ticed more peo­ple ar­riv­ing be­hind her? She had been dim­ly aware, but was not keep­ing care­ful track.

When the El­der re­turned, it was with a space ring on a tray, a tray that seemed to be en­graved. "Place your own ring on the oth­er cir­cle," he said as he ap­proached, and Ki'el re­moved her ring, plac­ing it down. Al­though she sensed a fluc­tu­at­ing qi for a mo­ment, when El­der Gol said, "You may take your ring," she felt that noth­ing had changed.

Though when she put the space ring on and felt its con­tents, she could tell that was not the case. She swal­lowed, but forced her eyes to re­fo­cus on the El­der who stood wait­ing. She bowed. "Thank you, El­der. That will be all." She des­per­ate­ly want­ed to ask him more ques­tions--but they were not ques­tions fit for an el­der, es­pe­cial­ly not with so many peo­ple wait­ing for his time.

El­der Gol sim­ply nod­ded and turned back to­wards the seal in the floor, as Ki'el re­treat­ed, con­sid­er­ing the con­tents of her space ring. This was, she re­al­ized, a time when her less­er space ring showed its weak­ness--she was aware that it con­tained a num­ber of items, but could only bare­ly count them, let alone iden­ti­fy them. I need a qui­et place to re­move every­thing and dis­cov­er what I now have, she re­al­ized, but her mind drift­ed, as well. I also need to dis­cov­er what can be done with the Sect Points that I have. Most like­ly, get­ting in­struc­tion from those in the Out­er Sect re­lat­ed to things that I wish to do.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

In the end, she wait­ed un­til she was able to get back to the is­land of the Less­er House, al­though she found her way to an un­used area near the cliff over­look­ing the edge of the is­land, where she still liked to med­i­tate when she felt safe about it. There, she dumped out the whole con­tents of her space ring, ex­am­in­ing the re­sults. Tak­ing away her bar­ri­er stones and sword, which she re­turned to her space ring, there were sev­er­al herbs--most­ly of one type, but to­talling three dif­fer­ent types, as far as she could tell--some crys­tals that might have been ei­ther Spir­it Crys­tals or Spir­it Gems, and a va­ri­ety of what she most­ly as­sumed to be per­son­al ef­fects.

Among those per­son­al ef­fects were let­ters and clothes--but, al­though Ki'el couldn't say she un­der­stood, the clothes in­clud­ed... the per­son­al ef­fects of women. She not­ed them with some dis­be­lief, un­sure of what that said about Xan Bu's lifestyle, and ul­ti­mate­ly dis­missed them, set­ting all of the cloth­ing re­lat­ed items aside and plan­ning to burn or dis­card them lat­er. But... also among the clothes were a few items with qi wo­ven through them. Most­ly, a bracelet, and a pair of rings.

Her mind slipped back to the bracelet with pro­tec­tion scripts that Sobon had bought her at Lai Shi Po's shop, but that bracelet had been de­stroyed when the Mofu fam­i­ly had at­tacked--part­ly, if she were hon­est, shield­ing her from the back­lash of Sobon's own can­non tech­nique, though most of the dam­age had been done stop­ping a blow from the Ti­ta­ni­um qi war­rior. Sobon, she thought, had not even no­ticed; she was hes­i­tant to say any­thing, and had sim­ply been grate­ful that she'd had the bracelet at all. Now... she won­dered, giv­en how things were go­ing at the sect, if she would be miss­ing that ex­tra pro­tec­tion.

That said noth­ing about what the bracelet, and the rings, ac­tu­al­ly were, but sim­ply ex­am­in­ing them would gain her noth­ing, and so she put them and the herbs back in the space ring. The crys­tals she stud­ied, pick­ing one up and clos­ing her eyes as she felt at the qi it con­tained. If... if there was sup­posed to be any in­tent in the crys­tals, she couldn't de­tect it; and yet, if it was sup­posed to be pu­ri­fied qi with­out any in­tent, it wasn't that pure. It also wasn't such a sig­nif­i­cant amount of qi that she felt it was in­her­ent­ly valu­able; she could re­fine a sim­i­lar quan­ti­ty of pu­ri­fied qi in a day or so, and while it might have been nice to have that qi with­out the ef­fort, she would only think of ab­sorb­ing it af­ter pu­ri­fy­ing it first.

Ki'el was sit­ting on a stone, with that crys­tal in her hand, when she heard a noise.

Look­ing back, Ki'el did have a mo­ment of pan­ic, but it was in­suf­fi­cient. She had turned in place, spot­ting a fig­ure only a mo­ment be­fore a force of wind plucked her up from the stone and flung her away. Her mind ac­cel­er­at­ed, Kuli link­ing with her even be­fore it ful­ly reg­is­tered to Ki'el that she would not land on the edge of the is­land.

Aether flowed through her spir­it in­stinc­tu­al­ly, but that aether was not suf­fi­cient to halt or re­verse her mo­men­tum, and one mo­ment af­ter the next, she no­ticed the edge of the is­land com­ing up from be­hind and be­neath her... and then slip­ping away.

{ Give me qi. } The thought from Kuli was not an or­der, nor a sug­ges­tion. It was not a com­mand, or a guess. It was an of­fer, and Ki'el didn't even need to con­sid­er it for a mo­ment be­fore ac­cept­ing. Her dant­ian and her qi cy­cle both opened, and her qi flood­ed her whole spir­it in a mo­ment.

Kuli, in only a mo­ment, con­veyed a sin­gle con­cept, one that Ki'el had even heard be­fore. As she watched the edge of the is­land come lev­el with her eyes, and then slow­ly sink up­wards, some part of her re­called sit­ting with Sobon in the auc­tion house, as rich peo­ple bid on a Star­beast Core as­so­ci­at­ed with a con­cept called [Thrust Qi], a qi ded­i­cat­ed to mov­ing an en­tire body with­out ap­ply­ing strain.

It had seemed fas­ci­nat­ing. In this mo­ment, she did not find it so.

Ki'el fo­cused her qi, charg­ing it with the in­tent of [Thrust], and drew her sword from her space ring, trig­ger­ing the blade with­out con­scious ef­fort. Al­though it felt strange--un­nat­ur­al, even--she didn't even feel a need to swing her sword in the direction she wished to go, as she fell, instead sim­ply gath­er­ing the Thrust Qi into and around her, and in­tend­ing to go just be­yond that cliff edge, just once more.

"[Thrust]," Ki'el said, and some­how, she thought that the world heard her.

The snap change in her move­ment was so un­nat­ur­al that it near­ly dis­tract­ed her. She could also feel a tin­gling in her blade, as she had when she faced Otoma Mon­shu. But this time, she did not con­vey to her sword some ab­stract con­cept, like fire. She did not con­vey to the sword the con­cept of thrust. In­stinc­tive­ly, when she felt the sword ques­tion­ing her, Ki'el had only one an­swer.

[ I am a blade. ]

As Ki'el's mo­men­tum brought her up to the edge of the is­land, she saw someone ex­am­in­ing the cloth­ing she had dis­card­ed. She saw him turn­ing to her in sur­prise. And she un­der­stood that she had not spent all the qi that she had on her first use of Thrust Qi. And when she un­der­stood that, and re­al­ized that her mo­men­tum was still car­ry­ing her up, many things fell into line, one af­ter the oth­er.

"[Thrust]," Ki'el re­peat­ed, as she swung her Aether Sword at the man who had tried to kill her. And her Aether Sword seemed to con­sid­er, in the strange mo­ments that fol­lowed, in be­tween her throw­ing her­self at her foe and ac­tu­al­ly land­ing a blow, whether or not her in­tent was cor­rect.

Was she a blade?

Ki'el was blind­ed a mo­ment lat­er by blood and dirt, as her mo­men­tum car­ried her en­tire­ly through the name­less man who had at­tacked her. Whether there was re­sis­tance to her blade or not, Ki'el would only dis­cov­er lat­er, as her feet failed to catch her and she tum­bled to the ground, rolling and near­ly los­ing her grip on her sword. But some­how, un­til the mo­ment when she slammed her head into a tree, the blade re­mained in her hand.

And then she knew only dark­ness.

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

Ki'el woke with a start in the heal­er's build­ing, and this time, she did not feel whole. Her body shiv­ered and her head ached, her eyes swam and her breath tore. She was mo­men­tar­i­ly un­sure what was go­ing on, or where she was, but--

But there was a fig­ure there, stand­ing calm­ly be­fore her. She had to blink sev­er­al times to be sure of it, but it was Broth­er Du. And he stood there, look­ing at her, with­out re­act­ing to her awak­en­ing or con­fu­sion. She stared at him as her breath start­ed to catch up with her. What was go­ing on? What was the last thing that had hap­pened? Even with­out the help of Kuli, her mind caught up a mo­ment lat­er. The cliff­side. Be­ing pushed off of the cliff. Falling.

"Thrust," Ki'el whis­pered, but al­though she had in­tent when she spoke it, she didn't put even a shred of qi into it, and the word didn't res­onate at all.

"I had won­dered if that was you," Broth­er Du said. "It seemed like it could have been no oth­er, and yet, for all the strange things that have oc­curred around you, Sis­ter Ki'el, this seemed too much."

Ki'el felt her body shiv­er­ing again, and she wasn't sure why. Was she sick? Was it some for­eign in­tent? She all but begged Kuli to tell her--and at the same time, she didn't ask Kuli any­thing. It was only a burn­ing need, not a ques­tion.

She knew Kuli could hear it, and yet, the aug­ment did not re­spond.

"We are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances, Sis­ter Ki'el," said Broth­er Du, and Ki'el looked at him, un­sure of what ex­act­ly he meant. "I trust that you un­der­stand."

Ki'el, with some ef­fort, shook her head.

"No?" Broth­er Du tilt­ed his head slight­ly. "Strange. You are aware you just slew a mem­ber of the Out­er Sect, are you not?"

Ki'el shiv­ered, but shook her head. It had been her in­tent. Did she know that she had ac­com­plished it? No. And... what was a mem­ber of the Out­er Sect do­ing there? Why would a mem­ber of the Out­er Sect at­tempt to kill her? Had it been Otoma Mon­shu... or some­one else? But she could bare­ly think, and she could not speak.

"I see." Broth­er Du stepped one step clos­er, and Ki'el felt the chill that was over­rid­ing her en­tire be­ing in­ten­si­fy. He stepped for­ward again, and she felt only cold­er. "I have nev­er known you to lie, Ki'el, so I will ask this plain­ly. Did you mur­der Sect Broth­er Kem Jee Sai?"

Ki'el looked up at him, feel­ing like she was fi­nal­ly per­mit­ted to speak, and she found her words with dif­fi­cul­ty. "I... have no idea... who that is. Was... pushed off the is­land. Re­turned... blade." Her throughts were be­com­ing con­fused. "I... was a blade. I struck at the one who struck me. That is... the con­se­quence of strik­ing a blade."

The ab­solute chill that must have some­how been ra­di­at­ing from Se­nior Broth­er Du did not stop for a long time. Ki'el could only close her eyes and fo­cus on try­ing to steady her­self in spite of the spir­i­tu­al pres­sure, not even able to breathe with­out ex­ert­ing ef­fort to push through the op­pres­sion.

Un­til at last, the pres­sure eased.

"You have been told that while you re­main in the Less­er House, you do not have rights to harm oth­ers. If this was an un­pro­voked at­tack on you, killing some­one in re­tal­i­a­tion is... un­der­stand­able. Not ac­cept­able, but a for­giv­able of­fense. How­ev­er, Sis­ter Ki'el... was that tru­ly nec­es­sary?"

Ki'el looked at him, suck­ing in greedy lung­fuls of air now that it no longer hurt to do so. "Was killing him nec­es­sary? I don't know," she said, be­tween breaths. "I was an­gry. I don't know."

"I don't mean killing him," Broth­er Du said, and Ki'el felt her face pinch in ir­ri­ta­tion.

"I do not un­der­stand," she said, and Broth­er Du's head turned slight­ly, as the man changed the way he looked at her, in a way that she could not fath­om.

There was more si­lence be­tween them for a long mo­ment.

"I am be­gin­ning to think that you re­al­ly do not un­der­stand, Sis­ter Ki'el," Broth­er Du said. "And that will be a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem for you go­ing for­ward."

She looked at him, but Broth­er Du stepped away from her, his op­pres­sive aura dim­ming un­til she could no longer de­tect it, though with how numb and con­fused she was, it might have been ei­ther com­plete­ly gone or still sim­mer­ing--so long as it was not cur­rent­ly crush­ing her, she didn't care which. But for whichev­er rea­son, Broth­er Du did not pro­vide more an­swers, and turned and walked away, not show­ing con­cern for her well-be­ing nor even telling her what to ex­pect in the fu­ture.

As the last shiv­ers from the chill passed through her, Ki'el felt the voice of Kuli, now dimmed, in­side of her. { They took the sword, and your ring. You... may have done more dam­age than you meant to. }

Ki'el didn't have the en­er­gy to tru­ly un­der­stand those thoughts be­fore she fell back­wards into her bed again and passed out.