[ Sobon, ] Ki'el's mes­sage be­gan, [ all of us have ad­vanced to Ti­ta­ni­um Qi and fi­nal­ly en­tered the Sect. A friend I made here, Da Chi­an, were giv­en the dis­tinc­tion of join­ing the In­ner Sect im­me­di­ate­ly, while Mian and Xam re­main in the Out­er Sect for now. There was an in­ci­dent, which I will speak of lat­er, but all is well for now. We have be­gun speak­ing of what must hap­pen for us to come to­geth­er as a House--my­self, Mian and Xam, and also my friend Chi­an. Our plan, or our un­der­stand­ing of your plan, is for Xam to be the leader of the house, with you above her as the fam­i­ly Ma­tri­arch, or Pa­tri­arch, in what­ev­er form you are cur­rent­ly. I, when I am speak­ing as your voice, will be above her, but oth­er­wise, Xam is the leader of us. Do you have any ob­jec­tions to this? ]

Ki'el bare­ly had time to breathe be­fore she re­ceived a re­turn, [ No. ] thought from Sobon, the in­tent read­ing as 'no ob­jec­tion' rather than 'that is in­cor­rect.' A hand­ful of heart­beats lat­er, it was joined by oth­er mes­sages, strung out over mo­ments. [ I am sor­ry for be­ing short, I am busy. I have put you in some dan­ger, be­cause of the sword I left you. Be care­ful who knows you have it, or who knows what it is. Some pow­er­ful peo­ple in this world will know me as [An­gel], and know that my ap­pren­tice holds an [Aether Sword]. Oth­ers will ap­pear in oth­er places, lat­er. News of this and more is spread­ing soon, but there are larg­er is­sues. You prob­a­bly feel it. Civ­il war is hap­pen­ing soon­er than I pre­dict­ed, soon­er than we hoped. Your Sect should know more. I must fo­cus for now. ]

Ki'el blinked, tak­ing far more time to sort through the mes­sages than it had tak­en Sobon to write them. She turned to the oth­ers, hes­i­tat­ing, be­fore speak­ing. "I have sent ...the Ma­tri­arch a mes­sage. She has no ob­jec­tions. She says... that civ­il war is com­ing to the Em­pire."

Some­how, Ki'el felt that speak­ing those words seemed al­most to re­lease an aether all its own, for all that she put none be­hind it, aether that seemed to echo in the ward­ed area around her house. The echo, though it died down quick­ly, left a lin­ger­ing feel­ing of its own, as Mian and Xam looked at each oth­er, and Chi­an looked at Ki'el. All of them were as ner­vous as Ki'el felt, and Ki'el had not told them every­thing.

Not that she was sure she should.

"The sect will be fine un­less it is targeted by an en­e­my," Xam said af­ter a mo­ment, her voice clear­ly dis­tressed. "As one of the Ten Great Sects... there must be some no­ble scions here. At min­i­mum, they will re­call their own be­fore any­thing hap­pens."

"If we need to flee, we're go­ing to need to learn how to fly," point­ed out Mian. "Most of the Dis­ci­ples learn some kind of tech­nique or oth­er, but..." He looked to Ki'el.

"I... used Thrust Qi to re­cov­er from be­ing thrown off the is­land," Ki'el said, her voice un­cer­tain. "But it would not al­low flight. I will re­quest in­struc­tion on the flight stones--"

"You can't even use your qi yet," snapped Chi­an, and Ki'el looked to her, sur­prised. "My Rag­ing Storm qi could hold all of us in the air, but I can't con­trol it well enough yet to be use­ful, or not..." she hes­i­tat­ed. "The spir­i­tu­al space where the Tribu­la­tion hap­pened am­pli­fies my abil­i­ties. I know I could do it there, but not out here."

Ki'el con­sid­ered. "If we could cre­ate a tal­is­man for sum­mon­ing one of your fam­i­ly..."

Chi­an gave Ki'el a mea­sured look. "I... sup­pose you could just af­ford the right ma­te­ri­als now, couldn't you? In the end, mon­ey solves so much." She paused. "You... should also find out what you re­tain from your for­fei­ture. There may be many ma­te­ri­als there, de­pend­ing on what ...Sis­ter Ai, re­claimed. And the rest, of course."

Ki'el looked at her, but looked away. It was... dif­fi­cult, for her thoughts not to drift back in time. "I hate to think of stolen things as mine," she said, think­ing of shat­tered homes, of graves. "But if some­one comes late to re­claim ma­te­ri­als, or any­thing that we must use now... we can find some way to com­pen­sate them."

"Don't be too trust­ing, Ki'el," warned Xam. "Even the El­ders of the sect are wor­ried about peo­ple claim­ing to be owed things from the for­fei­ture that were nev­er theirs. Those who have a le­git­i­mate claim have been giv­en time, and you may give them more. But af­ter a cer­tain time, that must be all." The woman--re­al­ly, she was not that much old­er, Ki'el re­al­ized--tried to be force­ful, and Ki'el was will­ing to al­low that she was right.

But she also knew it would not come eas­i­ly.

"For now, if we need ma­te­ri­als or points, I do not ob­ject," Ki'el said af­ter a mo­ment. "If the for­fei­ture con­tains ar­ti­facts, weapons, tools..." she shrugged. "We can al­low them to re­main with the Sect for a while longer."

"And re­served time with an In­scrip­tion­ist," in­ter­rupt­ed Chi­an. "You re­ceived some from... from the last time," she said, giv­ing Ki'el a look that she felt was judg­men­tal, though she wasn't sure why. "...but that was a Less­er In­scrip­tion­ist. I asked around about the grades af­ter that. I think the great­est of the tal­is­mans I'd ex­pect you could use right now... would be akin to what the Sect calls Com­mon grade. Time with an in­scrip­tion­ist of that lev­el... it might take more than an hour or two, de­pend­ing on what kind of work the ma­te­ri­als need. I don't know."

Ki'el imag­ined she knew some­one, or one of her In­ner Sect ac­quain­tances knew some­one, who could do the work, but she also had no rea­son to play fa­vorites. She shook her head and stood. "We should talk to El­der Gol."

"Do you still use the Earth­en Recita­tion Hall?" Mian's voice sound­ed a bit amused. "It's only the less­er craft hall, af­ter all."

Ki'el paused, and looked at Chi­an, who shrugged. "We haven't found out, yet."

"You should ask the head of the Hall you're in," Xam said, sound­ing de­fin­i­tive. "She was also dis­pleased that you haven't asked her about work yet."

Ki'el frowned at Xam, won­der­ing if the Sect re­al­ly ex­pect­ed her to find some­thing to do be­fore she could even use her qi... but then, Chi­an had most­ly stayed by her side as well. Per­haps it was more about her? She shook her head. "We will go," she said, and start­ed walk­ing, stum­bling only slight­ly and only oc­ca­sion­al­ly.

It was an im­prove­ment, but she still sensed all the oth­ers watch­ing her ner­vous­ly as she moved.

Ki'el took in the in­te­ri­or of the Bil­low­ing Woods hall with some won­der. Al­though she couldn't sense any­thing in­side the many locked rooms, she did note that the meth­ods of ward­ing and seal­ing each was dif­fer­ent, she as­sumed be­cause each was sealed by the per­son work­ing in­side, and not by some­one else on their be­half. Some of the seals, when she looked at them, seemed... strange­ly flim­sy. She was not an in­scrip­tion­ist, cer­tain­ly not yet, but when she stud­ied them, she thought that many of the door seals had im­por­tant pieces, and pow­er­ful pieces... and some­times, the im­por­tant parts were not the pow­er­ful ones, as though care­ful in­tent could shat­ter them with al­most no ef­fort.

She had nei­ther rea­son to try, nor did she trust her in­stincts. She imag­ined she was mis­read­ing the lay­ered in­tent of the seals, or else there was some­thing she did not sense, but even if she were right, she could only imag­ine she would be caught some­how any­way. But she did won­der if she was cor­rect, did won­der if she were sens­ing things clear­ly. So she con­tin­ued to ex­am­ine the doors, paus­ing when some­thing caught her at­ten­tion, un­til she found the room where Sis­ter Wun was wait­ing.

"Ki'el. And Chi­an." Sis­ter Wun was short­er than any of them, Ki'el not­ed, and seemed to be in a bad mood, but some­thing about the woman still seemed com­fort­ing to her. "Some­how I don't think you're here to find work."

"We apol­o­gize, Sis­ter," Chi­an said, bow­ing slight­ly. "First... do you--"

"The El­ders have learned about the sit­u­a­tion be­yond the isles. News will be spread when we are cer­tain that what we have heard is true. It would not be the first time some­one re­port­ing too soon." Sis­ter Wun's voice was force­ful, but not sharp. "Next?"

"We need to ask about--"

"You will also find El­der Gol in the Hall of Heav­en­ly Recita­tion. Nei­ther of those pro­jec­tions is his true body. You will need to fly to reach that Hall, so you should still use the Earth­en Hall." She glanced at Ki'el, and be­fore the girl could speak, an­swered. "I do not read minds. I an­swer the in­tent to speak that you have, be­fore you speak. Or fin­ish speak­ing." She glanced at Xam. "Yes, it is. Yes, it is. No."

"That sounds ex­haust­ing," Mian said.

"What's ex­haust­ing is wait­ing for every­one else to do what they should. Like tak­ing jobs, or get­ting out of my of­fice." Sis­ter Wun turned away, and Ki'el couldn't help but smile as she turned away.

"What a con­fus­ing woman," Xam said, when they had stepped away.

"I like her," Ki'el said, and when the oth­ers gave her looks, just turned away from them, still smil­ing. The woman's in­tent... she knew how she looked. Un­der­stood it. And if it had mat­tered, she would have done things dif­fer­ent­ly. Per­haps she was not as straight as a blade, like Ki'el like to think of her­self, but there was some­thing to her, a pow­er that she re­spect­ed.

On their trip down to the Hall of Earth­en Recita­tion, they all saw many oth­ers, in the In­ner and Out­er sects, stand­ing around and sens­ing the still-un­veiled qi in the dis­tance. There were some who were talk­ing pub­licly, oth­ers who were talk­ing pri­vate­ly, but from what Ki'el could hear and sense, they all were con­cerned and con­fused. It struck Ki'el only about halfway there that she was tru­ly one of only a few peo­ple who would have heard any­thing yet. But then... per­haps oth­ers also had ways of re­ceiv­ing mes­sages from their fam­i­lies?

At the Hall it­self, of course, every­thing was at it had been. The crafters who were at work couldn't spare the time to wor­ry about any­thing else, and the peo­ple await­ing work watched over what they had re­quest­ed or paced ner­vous­ly. Those peo­ple await­ing time with the El­der did so qui­et­ly, some med­i­tat­ing, oth­ers look­ing around or star­ing out the door, but for now, they were all silent.

For his part, El­der Gol went about his busi­ness as he al­ways had, and Ki'el re­ceived her place in line silent­ly and wait­ed pa­tient­ly with the oth­ers.

"Do you know whether the flight stones the Sect mem­bers use are bought from the Hall?" Xam asked the ques­tion qui­et­ly to Chi­an, as they wait­ed, and Chi­an frowned.

"I re­call ...Sis­ter Be­nai telling me that I would 're­ceive' one," she said.

"In­struc­tion into the use of Flight Stones is a manda­to­ry class, and you will re­ceive a Stone when the Sect deems you ready to be­gin tak­ing it," one of the near­by dis­ci­ples an­swered, in a sim­i­lar­ly low voice. "Ex­cep­tions are made for those whose Path al­lows for flight with­out an ar­ti­fact, but oth­er­wise, you will def­i­nite­ly be ex­pect­ed to use one at some time."

An­oth­er near­by dis­ci­ple, lean­ing against the wall, turned to­wards them as well. "I don't blame you for be­ing ner­vous," she said. "When­ev­er there's any dis­tur­bance in the out­side world, I can't help think­ing of an Is­land falling, or even be­ing shak­en, and need­ing to catch my­self be­fore I fall. If you have such thoughts, there are ar­ti­facts cheap­ly bought, though in truth, the Sect is quite safe."

Ki'el nod­ded. Of course, many peo­ple would be ner­vous. "Thank you."

But the woman pulled out a stone from her pock­et with­out seem­ing to re­al­ly rec­og­nize the thanks, and sim­ply stared at it. Ki'el won­dered if she would speak again... but nei­ther she, nor the Sect Broth­er who had an­swered first, seemed to find a way to stretch the con­ver­sa­tion, or per­haps, not the will.

In time, Ki'el got her turn be­fore the El­der, and al­lowed Chi­an to pre­sent him with the re­quired items for the tal­is­man. El­der Gol need­ed lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion over it. [ The only ma­te­r­i­al not al­ready avail­able to you would be the Gold­en Crux Wisp Ore. The Sect pos­sesses enough, but it is cur­rent­ly re­served by oth­ers. Gen­er­al­ly, it is a ma­te­r­i­al that must be pur­chased in a near­by city, and it may not be im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able. ]

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Rats," Chi­an said, qui­et­ly.

But Ki'el frowned. "Can you tell us who has the reser­va­tions?"

"I will not," El­der Gol said, stern­ly, though his ex­pres­sion was only dark for a mo­ment. "The reser­va­tions are with­in the In­ner Sect. With your re­sources, you should be able to find some­one will­ing to trade the nec­es­sary amount."

Ki'el frowned. [ Ig­nor­ing ar­ti­facts and per­son­al items... what re­sources and reser­va­tions re­main from my for­fei­ture? And my points? ]

El­der Gol sent her the list with in­tent, and Ki'el frowned, lean­ing en­tire­ly on Kuli to catch and fil­ter the in­for­ma­tion. It was... a sig­nif­i­cant list, and she had well over 100,000 Points. She bowed, and un­der­stand­ing the El­der's time was pre­cious, left it at that.

But as she walked away, she was men­tal­ly go­ing through it. As be­fore, the El­der gave her no in­di­ca­tion of what was ac­tu­al­ly pre­cious, and what was sim­ply giv­en an ex­trav­a­gant name. But she was sure that she could find some­thing worth trad­ing to some­one... per­haps.

"Who do we ask?" Mian's words brought her out of her thoughts. "Aside from Broth­er Du, there are the Se­nior Broth­ers and Sis­ter who caught us be­fore..."

"I know a few oth­ers," Ki'el said, but turned to Xam. "Do you two need to do work for the Sect? I would not wish to get you in trou­ble."

Xam huffed. "Sure­ly if we were help­ing an In­ner Sect dis­ci­ple to re­solve an is­sue, we would be com­pen­sat­ed? Or does it not count as a job sim­ply be­cause we know each oth­er?"

Ki'el paused, only re­al­iz­ing what her sis­ter meant af­ter think­ing about it for a mo­ment. "Ah," she said. "I sup­pose I un­der­stand. And... I do ap­pre­ci­ate your pres­ence, but..." she left the word hang­ing for a mo­ment.

"...but we're not re­al­ly help­ing," Mian fin­ished for her, and looked to Xam. "We should look into in­struc­tion. Maybe find out more about the Fly­ing Stones?"

Xam made a face, but nod­ded. "You're right. Though..." she glanced at Ki'el. "Now, or in the fu­ture, if you could trans­fer some of your points..."

"Oh." Ki'el hadn't con­sid­ered it, and looked back at the Hall be­hind them. An­oth­er line had formed for the El­der, and she didn't wish to wait.

"You might not have been told yet," Xam said, drag­ging Ki'el's at­ten­tion back. "Once we en­ter the Sect, we can pay peo­ple us­ing their Sect To­kens. Usu­al­ly, for fair­ness, the Sect is­sues spe­cif­ic pay-only to­kens for jobs, but..." she with­drew a to­ken, one that was dif­fer­ent from the ones they had been giv­en for the Less­er House. "It is not dif­fi­cult to trans­fer points to an­oth­er."

Ki'el glanced at Chi­an, who shrugged. "I have my own To­ken, but they didn't give me a new one for you. I sup­pose Sis­ter Wun will have it, or one of the El­ders."

Af­ter a few mo­ments' hes­i­ta­tion, Ki'el reached out to Xam's to­ken, and pushed in­tent at it. [ I will trans­fer 5000 Points. ] She felt a re­turn pulse con­firm­ing the trans­ac­tion af­ter a mo­ment. "I do not know what the ap­pro­pri­ate amount is, or what we may need the points for in the fu­ture, but..."

"We'll come to you if we need to use more than a few," Xam said, putting her to­ken away and mak­ing a con­cil­ia­to­ry ges­ture. "Even with me lead­ing the House... they are points that you had to fight to win. I know that you will use what you have to help us all, when and how you can."

Ki'el nod­ded, feel­ing re­lieved with­out know­ing why. Or... no, it wasn't even that long ago that she was ir­ri­tat­ed by every­one else spend­ing 'her' Points with­out ask­ing, and it calmed her to know that Xam did not take such a high-hand­ed view. Every­thing that had been cho­sen had been cor­rect, but... Ki'el did not feel like she need­ed to be cut out of these mat­ters, es­pe­cial­ly when the points had been giv­en to her in the first place.

They split af­ter that, but find­ing some­one in the In­ner Sect that she knew took longer than she ex­pect­ed. In the end, she found Broth­er Yang prac­tic­ing with a gold­en, drag­on-etched spear against a Sect Sis­ter that Ki'el thought had been with him be­fore, a red­head who fought with her bare hands. Ki'el shiv­ered, though, at the heav­i­ness of the woman's move­ments, both in her mus­cu­lar body and her qi.

"Ah!" Broth­er Yang smiled and waved when he no­ticed her. "Sis­ter Ki'el!" When his spar­ring com­pan­ion turned to look, he play­ful­ly swat­ted at her with the butt of his spear, but she blocked it. Both pre­tend­ed not to no­tice. "You have a look, Sis­ter. Do you need some­thing?"

"I am look­ing for a par­tic­u­lar ma­te­r­i­al, Gold­en Crux Wisp Ore. The sect says all its sup­ply is re­served."

"Ah." Broth­er Yang's look de­flat­ed. "I... am one of those who has re­served some of the ma­te­r­i­al, but re­gret­tably, I can­not trade for it, Sis­ter." He tapped the spear­head, which was forged into the shape of a drag­on's head. "The ar­ray with­in my spear needs to be main­tained and im­proved, and that ore is crit­i­cal to my needs." He paused, con­sid­er­ing. "I be­lieve I may know an­oth­er Sis­ter who has re­served it, and may be more eas­i­ly swayed..."

Ki'el and Chi­an spent the next few hours bounc­ing around the In­ner Sect, try­ing to find first one Sect Sis­ter, then an­oth­er Sect Broth­er, and then a third, all of whom ei­ther did not have a reser­va­tion or were un­will­ing to con­sid­er trad­ing it. When at last they found some­one will­ing to con­sid­er it, Ki'el found her­self quite sur­prised.

"I would be will­ing," said the girl, and Ki'el was cer­tain that the oth­er Sect Sis­ter was no old­er than she was--no, per­haps younger. It seemed not to be a case where some­one had sim­ply cho­sen to look young, ei­ther; she had a certain at­mos­phere to her, and the ser­vant who fol­lowed her around looked har­ried. "If you can trade me ei­ther Val­hal­lan Mithril, or suf­fi­cient­ly pure choco­late."

Ki'el was cer­tain, for a mo­ment, that she had mis­heard. "Choco­late?"

"Please, mis­tress," the ser­vant begged, but the girl didn't lis­ten.

"It has to be ex­ceed­ing­ly pure," the girl said, cross­ing her arms over her chest, clos­ing her eyes, and stick­ing her nose in the air, which didn't help her avoid her ser­vant's gaze at all. "Most of the choco­late avail­able in the Sect is the in­fe­ri­or hu­man-farmed cacao. There is a species of Ni­hatl Spi­der­folk who pre­pare cacao for ex­port us­ing an­cient meth­ods, and when prop­er­ly shipped, it re­tains an­ces­tral cacao spir­it en­er­gy. There are sev­er­al cooks in this Sect who are ca­pa­ble of cook­ing with the choco­late, but only one who won't ruin the fla­vor." The girl paused, then gave Ki'el a weird­ly per­verse look and grin, one that Ki'el felt un­com­fort­able see­ing on one younger than her. "He's also su­per cute."

"Mis­tress..."

Ki'el con­sult­ed with her list, and while she didn't see any­thing like ...cacao, or choco­late, or what­ev­er, she did have a fair amount of the met­al. "I can trade the Mithril."

"Great!" In­stant­ly, and with flash­es of qi that were al­most blind­ing to Ki'el, the girl lift­ed her­self up on piles of rock that shot up out of the ground, and leaped off of them over Ki'el's head, the rock scat­ter­ing into cubes the mo­ment her feet left them. Ki'el, sur­prised, turned, but the girl was al­ready run­ning along, look­ing back over her shoul­der. "Come on, come on! Let's go to the Heav­en­ly Hall and trade al­ready!"

Ki'el glanced only briefly at Chi­an be­fore the two of them chased af­ter the girl and her at­ten­dant.

"How pow­er­ful is she?" mused Chi­an to her, qui­et­ly, as they hur­ried along, not quite run­ning to keep up with the girl, who was tak­ing oc­ca­sion­al breaks to look at things or talk to peo­ple.

"Stronger than us," was all Ki'el could say, though she had to imag­ine that the girl had a form of Stone na­ture to her qi, one which am­pli­fied her abil­i­ties. Even so... the ease with which she used it, and the ef­fort­less con­trol...

"A real prodi­gy, then," Chi­an said. "It's just... strange, to see in some­one so young."

Do the old­er peo­ple with low­er cul­ti­va­tion look at me and see a girl like this? The ques­tion seemed sil­ly to Ki'el, since her per­son­al­i­ty was noth­ing like the girl's, but much of her re­ac­tion was sim­ply from the girl's age. If Ki'el had been as pow­er­ful as this girl was, be­fore the vil­lage was de­stroyed...

For a mo­ment, she felt very strange, al­most to the point where she had to stop, but she con­tin­ued, dogged­ly. For that mo­ment, she could en­vi­sion her vil­lage still whole, the peo­ple in it hap­py and healthy, fish­ing and liv­ing life in­no­cent­ly. She could en­vi­sion some­one--her­self, an­oth­er, it didn't mat­ter--sim­ply oblit­er­at­ing the damned pi­rate ship that had ru­ined every­thing. Be­cause of a lit­tle strength, a lit­tle knowl­edge... and if she had the abil­i­ty to make use of it...

Every­thing could have been dif­fer­ent.

But the im­age didn't last, and it couldn't. There was no turn­ing back time, and there were greater dan­gers in the world than a pi­rate with Gold Qi. But more than that... things would have been dif­fer­ent, wouldn't they? If she could con­trol stone... would the vil­lage still have been what it was, with the of­ten hand­made wood and stone huts? The thatched roof? There had been some­thing vi­tal in that vil­lage, or she re­mem­bered it as such. And when she en­vi­sioned that prodi­gy-her im­prov­ing it af­ter sav­ing every­one...

It felt less vi­tal. It only felt like her imag­i­na­tion, and noth­ing else. Per­haps that was the lim­it of her try­ing to imag­ine, to spec­u­late. But she won­dered if there was sim­ply some­thing about the sim­ple life that this life, of qi tech­niques and ad­vanced aethers, was some­how dis­tant from. She... didn't know, and put it out of mind af­ter a few mo­ments, but the feel­ing lin­gered.

When they got near to the is­land where the Heav­en­ly Hall resided, Ki'el re­called that it would have no bridge, and she looked at Chi­an. "Can you get us up there?"

Chi­an hes­i­tat­ed, but the girl's ser­vant turned and glanced at them. "If you need a lift--"

"No, I can do it," Chi­an said, firm­ing her re­solve. "But... you'll have to hold on to me, Ki'el."

Ki'el did, when they got to the edge, and as she gripped her friend tight­ly, she could feel the swirl of aether, qi, and some­thing else--spir­it en­er­gy, she knew--around Chi­an, and es­pe­cial­ly, around her tail. Ki'el al­most want­ed to touch the girl's tail, to feel the en­er­gy flow­ing through it, but re­sist­ed, know­ing--or, well, not know­ing. But the dogs she had known in the vil­lage, even be­fore they were bro­ken by the death, had not liked hav­ing their tails played with, and she was also loathe to touch any part of a per­son with­out per­mis­sion. The two to­geth­er sug­gest­ed it would be more in­ap­pro­pri­ate than most things.

When Chi­an at last sum­moned enough Storm Qi to lift them off the ground, un­steadi­ly at first, Ki'el had to re­sist the in­stinct to chan­nel qi with the Thrust in­tent, to sim­ply move them the dis­tance. But she had nev­er ex­per­i­ment­ed with it prop­er­ly, and her chan­nels were still burned out. All she could do, un­less it were ur­gent, was trust Chi­an.

But Chi­an stead­ied her use of qi, and then with a strong push, the two of them crossed the dis­tance to the oth­er is­land. Her con­trol left some­thing to be de­sired, and Ki'el was close enough to hear the girl's heart pound­ing, but she held on and closed her eyes, let­ting her anx­i­ety flow away. When she opened her eyes again, it was be­cause they were stand­ing on sol­id ground, and she stepped away from Chi­an, nod­ding at her. "Thank you."

Chi­an looked em­bar­rassed, but smiled at her. "I still need prac­tice, but that went well."

"It did." Ki'el re­turned the smile, and then the two turned to­wards the hall, where the girl was al­ready scam­per­ing in­side. "We should go."

The Heav­en­ly Hall was some­thing more than sim­ply a mir­ror of the Earth­en Hall. Not only was the build­ing built of fin­er ma­te­ri­als, but there were nu­mer­ous and high qual­i­ty ar­rays across and around it, and the many craft rooms all had some­thing that the Earth­en Hall's craft rooms had not--walls and doors, block­ing out dis­trac­tions and hid­ing the crafts­men's se­crets. Ki'el looked around at the many closed doors, won­der­ing just what was go­ing on in each, what tools were in them... but no. She looked back to where the girl's at­ten­dant now stood wait­ing, even as the girl her­self had scam­pered off, putting her ear to closed doors and glanc­ing and sniff­ing around the open ones.

The line was longer here, but some­how moved more swift­ly, and soon enough, Ki'el made the trade, and the El­der Gol who was here--who in­deed, looked no dif­fer­ent from the El­der Gol that she had seen in the Earth­en Hall, and who she could not find any ev­i­dence was not real--promised that all of the re­quired items would be avail­able.

[ Can you rec­om­mend an In­scrip­tion­ist for this task? ] Ki'el fo­cused that in­tent on the El­der, whose gaze in re­turn was quite even.

[ I can per­form that ser­vice, but we ask that you ask the head of your Hall. They have the tools to know who has the time and skills. ]

Ki'el con­sid­ered that, but nod­ded, and they set off. Sis­ter Wun arranged every­thing for them, and said that she ex­pect­ed the job to com­mence to­mor­row morn­ing.

As Ki'el hes­i­tat­ed to ask about her own Sect to­ken, the woman frowned, then glanced around the room. "I will put in a re­quest for your up­grad­ed To­ken," she said af­ter a mo­ment. "The is­sue was de­layed while you were in the Heal­ing House, when it was un­clear whether you would be­come an Out­er, In­ner, or Core dis­ci­ple. It was de­cid­ed, but nev­er quite fi­nal­ized. I will have it for you to­mor­row."

Ki'el frowned. "Am I not con­sid­ered part of the In­ner Sect?"

"If you were not, you could not have trans­ferred the funds to your sis­ter," Sis­ter Wun said, and Ki'el felt a cer­tain dis­com­fort at the fact that the woman knew that much. Or... per­haps, dis­com­fort at know­ing that there was still so much go­ing wrong in the Sect, if the heads of each House could know so much about what was go­ing on? "There are sim­ply cer­tain mat­ters that take time. Please be­lieve that I, more than most, am ir­ri­tat­ed by this. You only need to come back to­mor­row. I will make the arrange­ments."

So they did, Ki'el and Chi­an step­ping out­side as late af­ter­noon turned to­wards dusk. "I'm glad it's worked out," Chi­an said, look­ing at the sun peek­ing through a near­by is­land's trees. Ki'el fol­lowed her gaze, watch­ing the light flick­er as the small gaps in the branch­es shift­ed. She took a deep breath, think­ing of the many times she had tak­en the morn­ing breath with oth­ers, though... she hadn't quite done it so con­sis­tent­ly as she did at first. She looked at Chi­an, see­ing the girl stare un­wa­ver­ing­ly at the light, and felt some­thing stir with­in her.

I just want this peace­ful life to con­tin­ue, a part of her in­sist­ed, and Ki'el dwelled on that feel­ing, but ul­ti­mate­ly, let it go. She would not be stay­ing in this sect for­ev­er, and... she would not wish to. There was more be­yond, and more good days, she hoped, would fol­low. Days with her friends, and... per­haps days with new friends.

"What are you think­ing?" Chi­an's voice in­ter­rupt­ed her, and Ki'el re­al­ized that Chi­an was look­ing at her, and she looked away, her thoughts scat­ter­ing in em­bar­rass­ment.

"I..." it took her a mo­ment to trace her think­ing. "I was think­ing that, af­ter a long time, I can be­lieve that I will have friends in the fu­ture. And it is a good feel­ing." She took a ner­vous breath, and tried to ex­hale the anx­i­ety. It didn't quite work. "I hope that it is true. That things will work, and that we will be fine. That we will make more friends, and have more suc­cess."

She left the rest un­said, and was sur­prised when Chi­an did not. "But you're afraid," the girl said, the words lead­ing some­where, but she didn't con­tin­ue.

"I am," Ki'el said, but she also didn't con­tin­ue, and Chi­an did not press her fur­ther.

The two watched the set­ting sun a lit­tle while longer, then went to get food.