It took sur­pris­ing­ly long for the El­ders to fi­nal­ly speak on the mat­ter.

The next morn­ing, Ki'el re­ceived her In­ner Sect to­ken, and not long af­ter­wards, she and Chi­an went back to the Hall of Heav­en­ly Recita­tion to meet with an in­scrip­tion­ist. The crafts­man was sur­pris­ing­ly an­drog­y­nous, and their spir­it seemed mut­ed, dull, which was un­usu­al for what Ki'el had seen of the In­ner Sect so far. But when she met their eyes, there was an in­ten­si­ty there, shin­ing up from deep be­neath oth­er things.

Ki'el was sur­prised to find that the 'in­scrip­tion­ist' also need­ed to do met­al­work­ing, lay­er­ing the Gold­en Crux Wisp Ore onto a base they forged out of Danc­ing Sun Cupric Steel, only af­ter al­loy­ing por­tions of each with oth­er ma­te­ri­als, some of which Ki'el would not have ex­pect­ed to sur­vive a cru­cible of molten met­al. She had half ex­pect­ed that the non-struc­tur­al ma­te­ri­als would have had their essence ex­tract­ed some­how, but each seemed to be ac­tu­al­ly com­bined into the met­als, some­how--with the por­tions of met­al af­fect­ed by each kept sep­a­rate from one an­oth­er, at least un­til one had cooled and been shaped, and the next was be­ing ap­plied.

Ki'el was con­cerned, but not en­tire­ly sur­prised, when the crafts­man asked Chi­an for blood to com­plete one part of the tal­is­man, and both of them watched care­ful­ly, but no amount of blood was wast­ed or stolen away. The met­al into which Chi­an's blood was in­fused be­came only a small piece, con­cealed deep with­in what would end up be­ing a most­ly sol­id tal­is­man, with lay­ers of met­al placed di­rect­ly on top of one an­oth­er with no room to spare. Many of the in­ner lay­ers were also etched with script, only to then have molten met­al poured over­top the etch­ing, and Ki'el had no idea whether or how the etch­ings were kept dis­tinct from the met­al atop them.

In all, it hum­bled Ki'el, who had thought that her mas­ter's un­der­stand­ing of aether script was the pin­na­cle of crafts­man­ship. As she stud­ied the in­scrip­tion­ist care­ful­ly lay­er­ing in­tent through the de­cep­tive­ly thin met­al tal­is­man, com­bin­ing the prop­er­ties of ma­te­ri­als, script, and lay­ered in­tent with no flaws that she could de­tect, she un­der­stood that script­ed items were an art­form far be­yond what she had so far un­der­stood.

She felt, though, as the process was wrap­ping up, that the ex­pe­ri­ence firmed her re­solve to study script and in­scrip­tion, rather than weak­en­ing it. She al­ready knew that Sobon's scripts had in­cred­i­ble abil­i­ties--the blade, the base­ment, the fly­ing frame that he had cre­at­ed to save her, heal­ing scripts, weapons--and she was sure that they rep­re­sent­ed only a frac­tion of his knowl­edge.

If Ki'el could ex­plore all the knowl­edge of the world--even sim­ply the knowl­edge avail­able in this sect--she could forge things that would do what she wished. If she need­ed a sword, she would have a sword; if she need­ed a room, she would have a room. If she need­ed to heal, she would; if she need­ed to kill, she would.

By the time the tal­is­man was fin­ished, more than two hours had gone by, the time eat­en up most­ly by de­tail work, as the in­scrip­tion­ist was jus­ti­fi­ably care­ful not to make any mis­take with the ex­treme­ly fine done to the in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal lay­ers. The last of the scripts to be done was on the out­side, on the rear face that had so far been left plain, and as far as Ki'el could tell, that script was left in­com­plete when they turned and pre­sent­ed it to Chi­an for in­spec­tion.

The oth­er girl looked it over, as though a vi­su­al in­spec­tion of the out­side would have of­fered any in­sight that watch­ing it be con­struct­ed had not, be­fore nod­ding. "Thank you."

"That was the job," the in­scrip­tion­ist said, mild­ly, and again Ki'el was un­able to tell for sure their gen­der, though her guess was more fe­male than male. In the end, she mere­ly thanked them as well and let them go, watch­ing them move away with a grace­ful walk that still, to Ki'el's look, seemed some­how ex­haust­ed.

"It it not in­com­plete?" Ki'el asked, when the in­scrip­tion­ist had walked away. "That script on the back--"

"Is filled in when you make a con­tract," Chi­an an­swered, turn­ing and of­fer­ing the tal­is­man to her. "The en­tire form of it will shift slight­ly when that hap­pens. For all the work that our Sect Broth­er did, an­ces­tral qi will over­write many of the scripts he laid in it."

Ki'el con­sid­ered the tal­is­man in her hands, the met­al al­ready cool in her hands, de­spite be­ing con­stant­ly held by the crafter ever since it was forged. Even­tu­al­ly, she looked at Chi­an. "And you think--"

"If you want to be able to im­press a mem­ber of the fam­i­ly, you will need a fair amount of qi," she said. "I don't quite know how the tal­is­man ver­sion is sup­posed to work--but I was told that us­ing high­er qual­i­ty qi is nec­es­sary to even at­tract a greater spir­it, much less bind them to serve."

Ki'el gri­maced. "Bind­ing..."

Chi­an didn't look at or away from her, but sim­ply kept star­ing ahead for sev­er­al sec­onds, but nod­ded. "You are kind, Ki'el, and they will have the op­tion to refuse. But spir­its are also taught to de­fend them­selves, taught that the world at large is hos­tile, and that they must choose a place and re­main there, be­cause it will be safer than be­ing un­bound. Be­ing cho­sen is a sign of adult­hood, and they seek it, as long as they are giv­en good terms."

Ki'el looked at Chi­an. "Terms?"

But the girl be­gan walk­ing with­out an­swer­ing, and Ki'el let her lead, con­sid­er­ing as she went that there would nat­u­ral­ly be terms, if the spir­it has a right to refuse. What that in­volved--safe­ty, qi, knowl­edge, pow­er, food... she was un­sure--she would doubt­less find out. But for now, she was once again wait­ing to be able to use her qi...

"We should stop by the Heal­ing House," she said, be­fore they got too far, and Chi­an nod­ded, choos­ing an­oth­er path only when it branched a while lat­er. When they ar­rived, a Se­nior Broth­er--it was Broth­er Yong this time, who had treat­ed her the first time she came to the House--was stand­ing at the door­way, for now idle, and his eyes locked on to her as she moved clos­er, study­ing her be­fore she got close.

"Your merid­i­ans are heal­ing well," he said as they drew clos­er. "Is there a fur­ther prob­lem, or are you just check­ing in?"

"Only check­ing," Ki'el said, and the broth­er nod­ded, let­ting them in. They stepped into a side room and Ki'el let the heal­er study her body briefly, his hands usu­al­ly not touch­ing her body, ex­cept in a few places along her arm and neck and near her core, places where even Ki'el could feel her en­er­gy flow was still ab­nor­mal.

"Be­cause your qi is pure, you could use a [small amount] with­out do­ing dam­age," Broth­er Yong pro­claimed af­ter a few mo­ments, phras­ing his in­tent so that Ki'el un­der­stood what he be­lieved safe. "If you feel rest­less, I would en­cour­age you to [very slow­ly] emp­ty your en­tire core and then [very slow­ly] re­fill it. Main­tain­ing an ef­fect with [min­i­mal draw] is ac­cept­able, but it will lim­it the amount you can use for oth­er things, and slow your heal­ing."

Ki'el held those in­tents in mind, let­ting Kuli file them away, and nod­ded. "How soon do you ex­pect I could do more?"

"Emp­ty and re­fill your core at those rates, and you should feel the max­i­mum strain that you should ex­pect your spir­it to han­dle. As your spir­it heals, you will feel less strain do­ing com­mon tasks. Any more strain than that will in­ter­fere with heal­ing." He paused only a mo­ment. "I would ex­pect weeks more be­fore you are com­fort­able us­ing qi in any real quan­ti­ty, with­out dam­ag­ing your­self fur­ther. Be cau­tious with your us­age, but ex­er­cise your spir­it, and it may only be that long."

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Ki'el nod­ded, and af­ter speak­ing with him a lit­tle while longer and re­ceiv­ing some med­i­cines in case she strained her spir­it, they re­sumed the walk back to their home in the In­ner Sect. She looked at Chi­an. "I as­sume that is not enough--"

"How much strain does it take you to cre­ate one of your cy­cles? To main­tain it?" Chi­an stepped on her ques­tion with the im­pa­tience of some­one who had want­ed to speak, but not to be the first one.

Ki'el con­sid­ered, and with the help of Kuli, an­swered. "It varies by the size of the cy­cle. The small­est have al­most no draw. The ones I used in my tribu­la­tion... ob­vi­ous­ly not. I would think that I could... per­haps sus­tain one that con­tained a fifth of my core? If I drew it out slow­ly, as Broth­er Yong in­sist­ed."

"Can you con­trol the qi in your cy­cle's... thorn?" Chi­an seemed un­sure about how Ki'el thought of the tech­nique, though she was sure she had ex­plained it. "At least well enough to of­fer it to a spir­it?"

Ki'el con­sid­ered that, and spun up a very small qi cy­cle as they walked, feed­ing it slow­ly from her core, then ma­nip­u­lat­ing the thorn. It was not so much a ques­tion as to whether or not she could--in­stead, she paid very care­ful at­ten­tion to how the qi flowed through her, from her core, through her spir­it and body, touch­ing on her mind and arms.

"If I use less," she de­cid­ed. "...I nev­er paid at­ten­tion to how ma­nip­u­lat­ing qi used my spir­it be­fore."

"I guess in­jury does that," Chi­an said, then looked at her. "If you can hold a fair part of your qi out of your core, you should be able to make a con­tract. But prac­tice first. Signs of weak­ness won't im­press."

Ki'el con­sid­ered more as they moved. Be­yond the qi in her core, of course, there was the qi stored in her sword, any aether she could cre­ate... and also, her mas­ter's aether, which she didn't ex­pect she would be us­ing. Even if she could cre­ate a strong bond with some­one be­cause of it, it would be... fool­ish. More, now that Sobon had said that it was dan­ger­ous to let oth­ers know about the sword.

Some in the sect, per­haps many in the sect, al­ready knew of it. Who be­yond here, though? If she showed such a thing to a spir­it of Chi­an's fam­i­ly, would knowl­edge spread be­yond them? Should she al­low it to?

They re­turned to their house, and Ki'el chose to rest while Chi­an oc­cu­pied her­self oth­er­wise. It was some hours af­ter that they fi­nal­ly re­ceived in­tent puls­es from their Sect badges, ones that en­cour­aged them to gath­er at their Is­land's Hall.

Ki'el had so far not known any of her neigh­bors on the is­land, but when she and Chi­an met with the few oth­ers gath­ered there, she found that their spir­its, at least, seemed fa­mil­iar to her. She could iden­ti­fy peo­ple who had tak­en and sealed some of the rooms in the Hall, or whose hous­es she had passsed when en­ter­ing the res­i­den­tial is­land, even if their names and faces were en­tire­ly new.

They wait­ed un­til some­one--or per­haps every­one--had ar­rived, and then their badges all pulsed in uni­son, and El­der Sang ap­peared be­fore them, the man's pro­jec­tion not trans­mit­ting any of his pow­er, even though its fla­vor seemed cor­rect.

"Dis­ci­ples," he said, his voice sound­ing a lit­tle cold. "We apol­o­gize for tak­ing a while be­fore ad­dress­ing your con­cerns. We are cer­tain, now, of two things, and can only spec­u­late on oth­ers. The first is that the [Djang Ren Im­pe­r­i­al Fam­i­ly] has re­belled, open­ly. They are fight­ing for con­trol over the East Cen­tral and North­east re­gions of the Em­pire, in ad­di­tion to the area they al­ready con­trol in the North. They make claims that the oth­er news... seems to sup­port."

"That news is that the Di­a­mond Lord has an­nounced a se­ries of events in­tend­ed to find a suit­able re­place­ment, an heir. A be­ing known only as [An­gel] is cre­at­ing sev­er­al ar­ti­facts, and mas­tery over those ar­ti­facts will de­ter­mine the over­all out­come. Those ar­ti­facts will be dis­trib­uted at a se­ries of twelve, non­lethal tour­na­ments, the first of which will be in two months, and con­tin­u­ing for sev­er­al years."

"The four ar­ti­fact kinds are these: The [Di­a­mond Throne], the [Crestan Crown], the [Fairy Orb], and the [Aether Sword]. There will be many of each, though how many and how they will be dis­trib­uted is un­known."

When Ki'el heard the words, heard the in­tent, she knew that her group was the first told about this, and she looked at Chi­an, who looked back at her. Mere mo­ments lat­er, she felt an aether echo, as though some­one else had heard of the [Aether Sword] and knew what it meant, and mo­ments lat­er, from an­oth­er place in the Sect, an­oth­er echo, and then an­oth­er.

Ki'el swal­lowed, hard.

"The Djang Ren in­sist that the Di­a­mond Lord is no longer fit to rule, that the Djang Ban are fall­en and un­wor­thy, and that the Ren shall be­come the new mas­ters of the Djang Em­pire. De­spite this, the pro­claima­tion from the Di­a­mond Lord also per­mits the Ren into the tour­na­ments, as well as oth­er fac­tions the Em­pire has in the past for­sak­en." El­der Sang's voice was un­pleas­ant, but clear. "Keep that in mind if you de­cide to par­tic­i­pate. It may be the Em­pire's in­ten­tion to keep the tour­na­ments non­lethal, but that is no guar­an­tee."

"For the Sect, we will find par­tic­i­pants wor­thy of send­ing to the Tour­na­ments, and as­sist those here with prepar­ing. Only cur­rent mem­bers of the Out­er, In­ner, and Core sects will be con­sid­ered. We be­lieve cur­rent­ly that the Sect will re­main safe from the re­bel­lion of the Ren, but will un­der­stand if any­one choos­es to leave the Sect to pro­tect, or seek pro­tec­tion from, their fam­i­lies. A leave of ab­sence may be re­quest­ed for mem­bers of the In­ner and Core Sects, such that you may re­join with­out cost at a lat­er date, how­ev­er you will not be spon­sored by the Sect for any tour­na­ment if you do not re­main here."

"We will share fu­ture news as we can. We en­cour­age every­one to con­tact their Fam­i­lies and en­sure that your wills and theirs are aligned. We will not in­ter­fere with any Fam­i­ly who wish­es the re­turn of their scions, and will de­fend all res­i­dents of the Sect from all oth­ers who tar­get them." Ki'el was un­sure why that was phrased in such a way, but filed it away. "Be­yond that, I have noth­ing to share for the mo­ment."

A cou­ple peo­ple tried to ask El­der Sang's pro­jec­tion a ques­tion, but it dis­ap­peared with­out any re­sponse. Ki'el felt Chi­an pulling her away, and the two of them hur­ried away, back to their home, Ki'el sens­ing the eyes of Sis­ter Wun on them as they went.

"We need Be­nai," was the first thing that Chi­an said, af­ter they were a ways away. "She can pro­tect us."

"Can she?" Ki'el was un­sure. "Against peo­ple in this sect, and any­one who would chal­lenge it?"

"She is far stronger than she gives any sign of," Chi­an said. "I don't know how strong. But she was an ac­quain­tance of the An­ces­tor--the orig­i­nal an­ces­tor, founder of my fam­i­ly." She glanced around, but seemed not to sense any ob­servers. "Her blood­line is known as the Half-di­vine sil­ver tor­toise. She ex­cels in de­fens­es, wards, and do­mains. I imag­ine that if she de­sired to pro­tect the en­tire Sect against a threat, she could--but she is here for the sake of my fam­i­ly, and those with spir­i­tu­al beast blood in gen­er­al, not for the rest."

Ki'el raised an eye­brow, but giv­en all the hy­per­bole she'd heard, she wasn't sure how se­ri­ous­ly to take that blood­line name. "Half-di­vine?"

"Ac­cord­ing to the sto­ry, An­ces­tor found Be­nai as a young woman de­fend­ing against a cul­ti­va­tor with Flame Qi, when she was not yet even in Gem­stone Qi." Chi­an looked back at her, the look on her face un­read­able. "How true that is I have no idea. But I don't know any­one who could take a strike from such pow­er­ful qi. For cer­tain, her de­fens­es are greater than any­one else's by far."

They ar­rived at the edge of their prop­er­ty, at last, but Chi­an paused with­out en­ter­ing. "You should gath­er your qi and pre­pare to use the tal­is­man. I will see if Be­nai is will­ing to come. And I will ask if Mian and Xam can live here, even if they re­main in the Out­er Sect."

Ki'el felt a chill. "Are you sure--"

"You are far more of a tar­get than I am, and it's best if you stay with­in the wards," Chi­an said, her voice firm. "The rest, we will fig­ure out soon enough."

Ki'el bit her lip as her guts twist­ed anx­ious­ly. When at last, she said, "Al­right," and stepped through the bar­ri­er, she still felt like she was mak­ing a mis­take, leav­ing Chi­an alone, but she could not deny that her Sword was sud­den­ly a far more dan­ger­ous thing to car­ry, and that oth­ers might well find rea­son to chal­lenge her for it, in one way or an­oth­er.

All she could re­al­ly do, though was watch Chi­an hur­ry away, and then re­turn to the house to med­i­tate. She de­stroyed the small­er cy­cle she had made ear­li­er, and formed one some­what small­er than the largest she thought she could rea­son­ably use--then be­gan to fill it with en­er­gy from her core. As she sat and fo­cused on slow­ly mov­ing the qi out, let­ting it join the Cy­cle, Ki'el pulled free her aether sword and ac­ti­vat­ed it, set­ting it in her lap, plac­ing her hand on the blade, feel­ing it.

She was not fo­cused on her mas­ter's aether, but she knew that it was there, could feel it. In­stead, she fo­cused on the blade it­self, the con­fi­dent strength of the aether that was so straight­for­ward, so clean. At a mo­ment like this, when her spir­it was burned and her merid­i­ans ached, she could wish that her body was so clean, rather than the com­plex mess that it was.

Some­how, she found the act of mov­ing her qi med­i­ta­tive, and to­geth­er with the tired­ness from her in­jured spir­it, with­out re­al­iz­ing it, Ki'el soon dozed off, snap­ping back to re­al­i­ty once or twice, each time think­ing only of how tired she was, be­fore doz­ing off again.