Ki'el bare­ly no­ticed the time pass­ing, and was sur­prised when one of the times she woke up from her rest, Broth­er Du was there to lead her away. She was not en­tire­ly healed, al­though she felt bet­ter; more than any­thing, it was her poud­ing head, al­though she had also done no small dam­age to her left el­bow and shoul­der, and her back, and while heal­ing had been done to her, the wounds had not sim­ply been un­done like when she had been am­bushed be­fore.

When Broth­er Du showed up and sim­ply com­mand­ed her to fol­low, Ki'el took a few mo­ments to stand and stretch, find­ing her­self more than sim­ply achy; her el­bow, es­pe­cial­ly, was still swollen enough that she had trou­ble mov­ing it freely, but she could fol­low, and she did. Al­though she asked, once or twice, where they were go­ing, Broth­er Du said noth­ing, and she could tell from the grim at­mos­phere around him that mat­ters were se­ri­ous.

The path they took, as of­ten in the Moon­stone Is­land Sect, was not di­rect, but nei­ther was it long. They passed up sev­er­al bridges, though the last had to be un­furled by an In­ner Dis­ci­ple who stood wait­ing--the path formed in midair as sev­er­al stone blocks, and al­though Ki'el knew that Du, like many oth­ers, could sim­ply have flown up, she her­self could not fly.

Well. Most­ly.

The stones un­der her feet were as sol­id as is­lands them­selves as she moved up af­ter Du, and al­though he had said noth­ing, she had al­ready come to un­der­stand what must be hap­pen­ing, and so while she was up­set and ner­vous to find her­self on an is­land where many se­nior Sect dis­ci­ples and El­ders sat in a ring, all clear­ly await­ing her. But Ki'el formed her re­solve and, when they reached a point where Broth­er Du stepped aside and all heads turned to meet her, Ki'el sim­ply formed a mar­tial salute as best she could with her wound­ed el­bow and shoul­der and wait­ed.

"You are Xoi Doua Ki'el, tri­al mem­ber of the Less­er House." The voice was a woman, and Ki'el glanced over, find­ing her posed in a style she would call in­for­mal, her legs out in front of her, and her weight for­ward on her el­bows as she rest­ed them on her knees. "I would ad­vise you to take this se­ri­ous­ly, young sis­ter. Mur­ders are not com­mon on the Moon­stone Isles, and we are not flip­pant in our in­ves­ti­ga­tion when one oc­curs. Step for­ward."

Ki'el, ner­vous­ly, moved for­ward into the cen­ter of the cir­cle, aware that none of the ob­servers seemed to have much of a re­ac­tion to her pres­ence. Nor should they, Ki'el rea­soned with her­self. They are mas­ters, and I am noth­ing. She was be­gin­ning to feel a hol­low­ness in her heart, as she con­sid­ered that even this place was re­ject­ing her, choos­ing to blame her for de­fend­ing her­self. If they throw me out... can I even sur­vive be­ing thrown off of the is­land? If I can, what then?

"Young Sis­ter Ki'el, we have so far to­day heard sev­er­al at­tempts to ex­plain the events, recre­at­ed from the ev­i­dence of the is­land it­self--the spir­its of the trees, the rocks, the wind and soil. You will tell us, in all hon­esty, whether you dis­agree with this ver­sion of events, and un­der­stand that we will be aware if there is a lie."

Ki'el tried to flush her spir­it with aether, but found that there was some bind­ing on her, and she could not ma­nip­u­late her spir­it. She swal­lowed, and sim­ply nod­ded.

"You ar­rived un­aware of the ex­is­tence of Sect Broth­er Kem Jee Sai, who had placed sev­er­al con­ceal­ment wards and med­i­tat­ed in the trees near a spot that you fre­quent. You per­formed cer­tain acts that the spir­its them­selves could not dis­cern, your own spir­it dis­tract­ed and per­haps con­fused, un­til the mo­ment when you were at­tacked by Sect Broth­er Sai."

"By all ac­counts, you were thrown en­tire­ly off of the is­land."

Ki'el swal­lowed, and since there was a long si­lence, which seemed to be filled with in­tent, she spoke. "That is all cor­rect. I was ex­am­in­ing the con­tents of my space ring, which El­der Gol had filled with items tak­en from Xan Bu."

"That was a while ago," some­one said to her left, but Ki'el re­sist­ed the urge to turn her head, and glanc­ing with­out turn­ing showed her noth­ing.

"I have only vis­it­ed El­der Gol twice since I ar­rived," Ki'el said. "The first time, the items tak­en from Xan Bu were still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed. I have not had rea­son to re­turn."

"Not had rea­son?" A scorn­ful voice over her right shoul­der. "He con­trols the sect points. There's hard­ly a mem­ber of the Less­er House who isn't con­stant­ly ha­rass­ing him about buy­ing pills."

Ki'el again re­sist­ed the urge to turn, but felt com­pelled to speak. "I am not fa­mil­iar with the sect's pills; they are not some­thing my mas­ter taught me. I have been fo­cus­ing on my own mat­ters."

There were more mut­ter­ings at that, which Ki'el did not un­der­stand, and she felt... strange, about it. Was she sup­posed to have been beg­ging for pills of some kind? Spir­it crys­tals? Did peo­ple think that was how one gained strength? If she hadn't had her aether cy­cles and qi turn­ing cy­cle, would she have been the same?

When Ki'el of­fered no fur­ther de­fense, though, the El­der who was speak­ing con­tin­ued. "Once you were far enough from the is­land, we could find no ev­i­dence of what specif­i­cal­ly hap­pened, but it is known that you used a tech­nique that should be far above your lev­el to re­turn to the is­lands. It was far enough above your sta­tion that the de­fen­sive wards of the Is­lands picked it up as a plau­si­ble at­tack, if not one wor­thy of con­cern. It was suf­fi­cient to bring you back to where you had fall­en, and here mat­ters be­come con­fused."

"The stones and the trees, the grass and the dirt, even the ephemer­al wind spir­its that bore wit­ness, all agree that what re­turned was not a girl, but a blade, a blade that spoke the de­sire to move to­wards its op­po­nent." The woman's voice was mat­ter of fact, but it felt heavy, laden with sig­nif­i­cance. Ki'el swal­lowed, but the woman did not yet pause for her to com­ment. "This blade moved through the Sect Broth­er Sai, who had moved for­ward to where you had been sit­ting be­fore. It cut, un­til it could cut no more, and when it could not cut, its own mo­men­tum dam­aged it, and all that re­mained be­hind was a girl." The woman's head tilt­ed to one side. "That is what the nat­ur­al spir­its of the Is­lands record, and they are all that sur­vives to tell of the events--ex­cept you."

Ki'el looked down, but nod­ded. "I... do not know why they would all see me as a blade, ex­cept that I had that in­ten­tion, and spoke it to my sword." She paused. "The sword... is an ar­ti­fact left to me by my mas­ter. I am aware that it con­tains mys­ter­ies that I have not yet un­der­stood, but it is... only a sword."

"You spoke your in­tent to your sword?" An­oth­er El­der spoke up, his voice not doubt­ing, but... nei­ther con­tent with her de­scrip­tion.

Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed, but nod­ded. "I do not un­der­stand it yet. But twice when I have need­ed to use it to de­fend my­self, I have felt it wait­ing to hear my in­tent. The first time, I be­lieve I mis­un­der­stood and wast­ed it. This time, my in­tent was sim­ply that I am a blade. A blade, in the sense that those who strike at me..." she hes­i­tat­ed, los­ing her steam. What did she re­al­ly want to say? What had she in­tend­ed in the mo­ment?

"Those who strike at a blade must be sharp­er and hard­er than it," some­one sug­gest­ed. "When two blades col­lide, one or the oth­er is cut, or both, whether it is the small­est nick or a deep gouge."

Ki'el turned and nod­ded, grate­ful­ly, though in truth, she was still un­cer­tain.

"And how did you re­turn to the is­land?" An­oth­er voice, from the oth­er side. "I want to know how you could pos­si­bly have done that at Gold Qi."

Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed, but spoke. "My mas­ter also left me a... spir­i­tu­al as­sis­tant. It has helped me in small ways, and this time, she spoke to me the in­tent I need­ed to move my­self. I ex­pressed that in­tent in my qi, and spoke my will to the world."

"Thrust," sev­er­al peo­ple echoed, not quite in synch with each oth­er, and Ki'el felt a strange mix­ture of em­bar­rass­ment and con­fu­sion come over her, but nod­ded quick­ly.

"It beg­gars the mind," a sharp voice came from be­hind her, "to think that a child at Gold Qi could make such ef­fi­cient use of the qi you have to use such a pow­er­ful in­tent twice and still have enough pow­er left to do so much dam­age. Even if we were to sup­pose that Broth­er Sai raised no de­fens­es, it takes sub­stan­tial pow­er to cut through hu­man flesh and bone, let alone..." there was a pause, though Ki'el did not turn to look. "...the rest."

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Ki'el paused, frown­ing, and looked up at the El­der who had been speak­ing so far. "...The rest?"

"Are you not aware of what you did, young Sis­ter Ki'el?"

But Ki'el sim­ply shook her head. "From the mo­ment I launched my­self at the man who at­tacked me, it was all a blur, and then I was knocked un­con­scious. In truth, my mem­o­ries from the mo­ment I was first at­tacked are con­fused. I do not have any un­der­stand­ing of what hap­pened."

There were sev­er­al scoffs at that, and some mum­bling, but an­oth­er voice piped up. "In all hon­esty, that's one of the few be­liev­able things," he said. "If she held shields while also do­ing two oth­er things, both of which she claims are new to her, I'd sus­pect her of ei­ther be­ing a ge­nius or a liar, and more heav­i­ly fa­vor­ing the lat­ter, even here."

There were more mum­bles and some laugh­ter at that, but Ki'el kept her eyes on the El­der who seemed to be in charge.

The woman tilt­ed her head, but turned to look down at one of the few fa­mil­iar fig­ures. "El­der Gol, if you would."

The man in charge of the Sect's fi­nances stood, as al­ways in no hur­ry, and moved down to the cen­ter of the cir­cle near Ki'el, in the un­hur­ried way he had--al­though, now, his eyes were closed, his at­ten­tion with­in rather than drift­ing to all of the de­tails around him. When he reached the bot­tom, he be­gan pac­ing in a cir­cle around Ki'el, as his voice sud­den­ly reached them all, car­ried pure­ly by his in­tent. [I ar­rived at the scene late,] Gol's in­tent spoke, and Ki'el could vivid­ly see the scene in her mind, her own at­ten­tion dragged over the var­i­ous de­tails of the near­by trees and stones, grass and dirt, as each caught the El­der's eye one af­ter the oth­er. [Late enough that more than six oth­ers had been there be­fore me, and four had gone, along with the girl.] His at­ten­tion swept over foot­prints, spir­i­tu­al signs, marks of in­tent left be­hind, briefly not­ing the two who re­mained, ob­serv­ing the scene.

But Ki'el, al­though her at­ten­tion was be­ing pulled in var­i­ous di­rec­tions, only had eyes for the one de­tail that she knew had cap­ti­vat­ed the oth­ers, but of which the El­der had not yet spo­ken, nor had his wan­der­ing eyes drift­ed to.

[I found, as de­scribed, sev­er­al items pre­vi­ous­ly owned by Xan Bu left dis­card­ed by a rock where Xoi Doua Ki'el had been sit­ting. There were traces of Gale Qi, orig­i­nat­ing not far from a cir­cle of con­ceal­ment marks, al­ready re­vealed by an­oth­er. The stones along the edge of the is­land were not touched by the girl's move­ment tech­n­qi­ue. I found that odd at first, be­liev­ing it to have been a mat­ter of con­trol.] The El­der's at­ten­tion fix­at­ed for too long away from the scene it­self, on the rocks at the edge, be­fore turn­ing. [But it be­came clear that the in­tent was sim­ply only ever on the girl her­self. She moved as she di­rect­ed her­self, rather than pulling on things or push­ing on things. It was an im­pec­ca­bly clear in­tent to [Thrust], with nu­ances I have not seen be­fore.]

Fi­nal­ly, the El­der's own at­ten­tion on the scene that his in­tent spoke of came to the lead­ing edge of a deep cut, one that sheared ef­fort­less­ly through the large stone boul­der that Ki'el had been sit­ting on, con­tin­u­ing far deep­er than the length of Ki'el's own Aether Sword, but no wider at any point than her sword, and in many places al­ready col­lapsed. Al­though she could not be­gin to guess at the depth... she did not have to, be­cause El­der Gol's at­ten­tion was drawn to it.

[There was a sin­gle cut from a sin­gle swing of a blade,] the El­der mused. [The pow­er used was strange, a form of qi am­pli­fied in strange ways, which spoke un­de­ni­ably about con­se­quence, but not so clear­ly that it could be un­der­stood as in­tent. In­deed, [in­tent] is the wrong word for it. The cut ex­ists as a con­se­quence, not be­cause it was in­tend­ed, and not as a mat­ter of some­thing else's na­ture. Qi was still in­volved, but that qi was re­shaped by a pow­er I do not un­der­stand.]

[The cut ex­ceed­ed eight feet in depth at its peak, fif­teen feet in length, but only a fin­ger's width wide. The edges showed no signs of qi trans­form­ing into heat, and in­deed the qi leak­age and cor­rup­tion around the cut were min­i­mal. Only at the very end was there any sign of re­sis­tance, and here the blade's path be­came shal­low­er. At the end of the path, there was a sign of im­pact, a sin­gle body strik­ing shrubs and a tree. By that time, the girl had been re­moved for heal­ing.]

"That's more con­cise than usu­al, El­der," some­one re­marked, and there was a smat­ter­ing of laughs around the cir­cle.

"Do you be­lieve that the pow­er be­hind that strike was be­yond the girl's con­trol?" The voice that spoke up, much to Ki'el's sur­prise, was that of Broth­er Du, and al­though she had done her best to keep fo­cused on the peo­ple in charge of the pro­ceed­ing, she did turn to look at him, sur­prised.

But El­der Gol hummed for a long mo­ment, and as he hummed, the sound car­ried his con­cept of the scene, though not locked in a mo­ment of time. [The length of the blade cut seems to be a mis­es­ti­ma­tion,] he said af­ter a while. [A novice fight­er's over­reach, per­haps even a case where she was un­aware her will de­ter­mined the blade's length. Giv­en the amount of cut­ting pow­er the blade had, it doubt­less could have ex­tend­ed fur­ther, but it did not. If the ar­ti­fact were sim­ply vent­ing pow­er in the form of blade qi, it would reach as far as it could. The ar­ti­fact seemed to re­main func­tion­al, per­form­ing ex­act­ly what its novice user in­tend­ed.]

"Then it is your es­ti­ma­tion that young Ki'el can con­trol that much pow­er? At Gold Qi?"

El­der Gol sighed, and the scene was scrubbed from Ki'el's thoughts. Then, with care and rev­er­ence, El­der Gol spoke, and in Ki'el's mind, a fa­mil­iar ob­ject ap­peared. [The item in ques­tion un­der­stands it­self as the Aether Sword. Its in­tent is for­eign to us, and speaks of a pow­er that is not qi. Con­cealed with­in it is a tech­nique from its cre­ator, which re­sist­ed my scruti­ny.] Ki'el saw it, in the men­tal im­age, and al­though its shape was un­fa­mil­iar, she felt cer­tain that what she saw was a Thorn... and there­fore, a Cy­cle, though one whose aether flow was un­fa­mil­iar to her. [Aside from that, the ar­ti­fact ap­pears to be an ex­act­ing ex­er­cise in sim­plic­i­ty. The blade it­self is formed of pow­er ac­cord­ing to sim­ple rules of geom­e­try, with chan­nels cre­at­ed to al­low qi re­in­force­ment. Its sharp­ness is as sim­ple and as bru­tal as math­e­mat­ics it­self, with no ma­te­r­i­al to bend or chip. There are ad­di­tion­al meth­ods and fea­tures, but... for all pur­pos­es, it can be un­der­stood as ex­act­ly two things: a sword, and a ves­sel for one tech­n­qi­ue of the girl's mas­ter.]

[The ques­tion as you un­der­stand it, Sect Broth­er Mai Han Du, is whether this tech­nique of the girl's mas­ter is too pow­er­ful for her to con­trol. As it seems to be the source of the am­pli­fi­ca­tion, it is not im­plau­si­ble. How­ev­er, this cir­cum­stance seems to be one more plau­si­ble than most to have caused a sit­u­a­tion be­yond the girl's con­trol. Am­bushed alone, she was pan­icked, ter­ri­fied, wrath­ful. She was un­aware of her mas­ter's tech­nique and seemed to ac­ti­vate it un­know­ing­ly or by in­stinct. She had yet done noth­ing with it to dis­charge the en­er­gy it con­tained. Un­der these cir­cum­stances, most would in­stinc­tive­ly use as much pow­er as they can ob­tain. Ei­ther this is the full ex­tent of the tech­nique's pow­er, or there are ad­di­tion­al re­stric­tions, meth­ods that she must learn to use the pow­er to its fullest. In ei­ther case, I do not be­lieve that it is un­safe to re­turn the ar­ti­fact to the girl.]

Ever since the sword was pre­sent­ed to those here, there was much mut­ter­ing and mum­bling, Ki'el saw that even the el­ders and mas­ters were dis­cussing qui­et­ly with each oth­er, some trad­ing looks and in­tent silent­ly rather than speak­ing aloud.

"And what about the oth­er? The spir­i­tu­al guide?" Broth­er Du's voice was still on edge.

El­der Gol coughed aloud, and the vi­sion van­ished. "Ac­cord­ing to the Sect by-laws, I will not be pre­sent­ing the form of any spir­i­tu­al en­ti­ty to those un­aware of it, even un­der these cir­cum­stances. I would have the ac­cused speak on the mat­ter, but in my es­ti­ma­tion, its bond­ing was a mat­ter of con­sent."

Ki'el un­der­stood that Kuli was on tri­al here, and sud­den­ly, the harsh re­stric­tion on her abil­i­ty to use her spir­it made more sense, but she nod­ded. "The spir­it... was not giv­en to me di­rect­ly by my mas­ter, but I was told I would re­ceive it, and it has since passed mes­sages to and from my mas­ter. I was asked my con­sent, and gave it freely. To date, Kuli--the spir­it has not done any­thing against my will, and has of­ten re­fused to act so that I must learn things for my­self."

"But it was able to con­vey to you an in­cred­i­bly pow­er­ful in­tent," Broth­er Du's voice was still sharp, "in a mat­ter of mo­ments, when fail­ure meant death. This is no sim­ple en­ti­ty."

Ki'el turned to look at him, and saw that Broth­er Du's face was as se­ri­ous as his voice. She hes­i­tat­ed. "It is... not sim­ple. It is..." she paused. "I am un­cer­tain what I am al­lowed to say."

"Why?" The voice of an­oth­er El­der broke in. "You want to pro­tect the se­crets of your mas­ter even if it might cost you your life, or your chance to re­main at the Sect?"

Ki'el turned to look at that El­der, some­one for­eign to her, and frowned at him. "Did you not all agree that I was at­tacked first?"

"The ques­tion now, young Ki'el," the woman in charge said, "is whether or not you are taint­ed by an in­flu­ence too pow­er­ful for you to re­sist, too clever for you to de­tect malfeasence in, too deep in your mind for you to even per­ceive the work­ings of. Per­haps even a be­ing too pow­er­ful, too mas­ter­ful, for those col­lect­ed here to safe­ly re­move." She ges­tured. "By all means, con­vince us. At this mo­ment, it should have no in­flu­ence over you, and if it tried, we would no­tice. But be care­ful what ar­gu­ments you make, be­cause we have good rea­son to be sus­pi­cious, and if you are too naive... we may need to act in your best in­ter­ests, what­ev­er your own de­sires may be."

Ki'el stared at the woman for a long time, then looked away. "I would still need per­mis­sion to speak on some mat­ters."

"Why?" the oth­er El­der asked, again.

"Be­cause there are larg­er mat­ters in this world," she said. "I am aware of se­crets I do not have a right to share."

"I ask again, why?" The El­der's voice be­came sharp. "It goes be­yond not trust­ing us. We are not ask­ing for in­tri­cate de­tails of some­one else's tech­nique. We're ask­ing you whether the en­ti­ty that is con­cealed in­side of you is an en­e­my. If you are un­will­ing to speak on that mat­ter in par­tic­u­lar, it cer­tain­ly sounds like an en­e­my to me."

Ki'el sighed. She looked around at the gath­ered mas­ters and el­ders, and bowed her head.

"I would at least like this mat­ter to re­main with only a few," she said, and af­ter a beat, she heard a clap.

"Very well," the el­der in charge said. "In­ner and Core sect dis­ci­ples are dis­missed."

Ki'el took sev­er­al deep breaths, hop­ing that what she was do­ing was okay, as the Sect dis­ci­ples be­gan to fil­ter out of the area.