Xam had not meant to cry out, when she saw the Elder get stabbed. And she only felt worse, when Elder Sang took that as an excuse to turn his attention away from the enemy, producing a large rock slab that he flung their way. The slab was not enormous... but it did crash through Ki'el's small cottage, and several trees, on its way to them, making Xam sure that it would trap them all and crash them into the forest.
Somehow, though, the slab touched the ground and bounced up and over them, just barely high enough to clear them, the sound of snapping trees almost deafening as it went. She noted, with the absurd focus that danger brought her, several runic formations on the slab, but it was well out of her reach.
The same, apparently, could not be said of Brother Bon.
The man leapt from a standing start and twisted, landing on his feet and clinging to the platform with his hand on the runic controls. Whether by his qi or the platform's, he remained stuck there, and Ki'el's new fox spirit seemed to have the same idea, dragging Ki'el out of Xam's hands with a seemingly effortless leap, and clinging to the platform even before Brother Bon was able to get it to steady, and level out. [ This way, children! ]
Xam wanted to scoff, and settled for an ugly snarl, but before she could move, she felt something odd, and turned, feeling like she was moving in slow motion. She didn't have to look far--the source of the feeling was Chian, who was standing up from the ground, an odd look on her face, her fingers flexing experimentally around the haft of Ki'el's weapon. Xam had not processed the idea that Ki'el had dropped it--she had noticed, she now realized--and she was glad, in a way, that Chian had noticed it before they got taken away. But... there was something off, something wrong.
She realized only afterwards that Chian's qi--no, her spirit beast qi in particular, had been swirling around the sword.
In only a few moments after that, Chian had pulled everyone still on the ground into the air, with an intensity and strange weight to her qi that didn't belong. Xam flinched back from it; the motion was absurd and violent, and when Chian pushed them all towards the platform, it was jarring, and Xam landed hard enough that she felt her knee twist the wrong way, though not enough to harm her. Xam took a long moment, at first to grab at her knee, and then to confirm that the others were on the strange stone platform, and that it was moving away, before she turned back to look.
Chian still hovered there, even as the stone moved away from her. She looked down at the sword, confused, but Xam's eyes flickered down, to the battle that they were leaving behind.
"Chian!" she shouted, at the same time as the fox spirit's qi seemed to lance out with intent. [ Hurry, inheritor! ]
Their words interrupted Chian's thoughts, and she seemed to push herself towards them, but Xam's eyes remained locked behind her--at the figure who had stabbed Elder Sang, and at Sang himself, who was now unveiling his qi, its intensity churning around him.
A moment later, two figures rose into view from behind a nearby island, but Brother Bon was swift, pushing their own island away. Xam only had a moment to watch Elder Sang's reaction, and then the platform ducked down behind the edge of their own island, descending rapidly, Chian chasing after them in erratic bursts.
A moment later, they felt the qi of the entire Moonstone Island Sect shift, and Xam realized that what she had taken as background was one person's aura. But they only had a moment of peace to reflect on it, because behind Chian, another figure dove off the edge of the island, chasing after them, his qi already unveiled. It was a Gem Qi, red with asterisms--Star Ruby, two full phases ahead of them. At least... ahead of her, and Ki'el, and Mian, and...
"Chian!" Xam was sure that the girl should have been able to sense the aura approaching, but Chian was still wrestling with the blade, and its effect on her spirit energy.
The man above--Tan Fong Menshi, his qi screamed at them--was already marshalling fire qi around his sword, and Chian wasted time turning to look. Xam feared the worst--for a moment.
[ Silver Tortoise Aegis ]
The effect that closed around Chian was so vivid that Xam would have thought, for a moment, that it was an actual silver tortoise--even though it had appeared in fragments, like a painting torn to shreds was repaired through some spell. But when it formed--no, even before then, each of the scraps of qi that gathered to create it were unbelievably thick with more than just power. They bore weight unlike anything Xam had ever seen.
From her perspective, there wasn't even anything to notice when Menshi's blade struck the barrier. Rather, after a moment, Chian turned back and flung herself after them, and the tortoise shaped barrier moved, as though it were a living things, repositioning itself in open air to glare at its target.
But Menshi was in no way deterred. He ducked and tried to dodge past the tortoise, but wasn't stupid enough to not pay it any attention; when its head snapped towards him, he accelerated away, swinging his sword at its face, which...
Xam, internally, reasoned that a tortoise-shaped defensive formation would have no reason be weak to strikes in the face, though perhaps it was a spirit as well?
Whatever the reason, the [Inferno Blade] technique splashed away from the [Silver Tortois Aegis] without any hint of penetration, but Menshi was flying, now, after them, through some technique that was not obvious. Although the tortoise moved again to try to block the way, the possibility that he would sneak by was real.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Of course, Xam only had to look over at Bai Benai, and the unstressed look on her face, to know that he would have no more luck even if he got all the way to them. Even so...
Chian crashed down next to her a moment later, and with what seemed like great effort, she found a way to deactivate Ki'el's aether sword. What she said a moment later didn't quite... enter Xam's brain properly, but she thought it was, "Ancestor's rotting asscheeks".
She... was probably wrong.
"Xam," the girl said after a moment, though she didn't move her hands. "Take this sword from me. Please."
Xam reached out and pried the hilt away from her, realizing that there was something different from the last time she had held Ki'el's weapon, as though a veil which should have been over it had been dropped. She knew that she should have simply put it in her storage ring, but she couldn't help the moment of reflection, the moment of wondering what the sword could do in her hands.
Her eyes caught a flicker of light, and she ducked as though to dodge, but Benai simply waved a hand, and the spike of flame--of [Inferno Blade]--splashed away like nothing. Xam scowled anyway, and stored the blade, before she did anything stupid like drop it. "Thank you, Sister Benai."
Xam felt a strange tension, and the woman half turned to look at her, but the tension vanished. "It feels strange to be addressed like that when in battle," she said after a moment. "In the Sect, it's rare for--" she blocked another [Inferno Blade] spike, "--disputes to get serious, especially once someone understands who they are dealing with."
"I do wonder why he's still attacking," mused Brother Bon, from behind them both. "With you, and me, and Du..."
Xam blinked. Brother Du was still here? She glanced around, but didn't see him. "Brother Du?"
"Not here," Benai said, coldly. "At the edge of the island, looking down from above."
Xam felt a moment of irritation, but why? She looked up, but was no longer in a place to see Brother Du's figure even if he was exactly where Benai had said. For certain, she trusted Du to act as he believed he should... and Benai enough would be able to protect Ki'el. But... had he not let Menshi by? Why? And why was the man still attacking?
A few moments later, Xam felt another shift in the qi around them, and turned to see another person approaching--but it had a strange threadlike sense to its qi, and she scowled, already certain that she knew why.
"The Ren are troublesome," Benai sighed. "It would be better if the one who fought was not a spirit beast, but..."
But the only other person here who could use qi offensively was Brother Bon, and he was stabilizing the Foundation as it flew down and away from the Sect. It was him, her, Ki'el and Mian, Jito and Taru, Benai... and...
Xam turned to look at Ki'el, and the spirit animal that was perched atop her. Somehow, that spirit animal's calm struck her as too deep, almost like Benai's. Xam half wished she had a fan or prop to hide her face, but now was not the time for posturing. "Meixu," she said, struggling to pronounce the spirit's name. "You are... strong, are you not?"
[ I'm not eager to fight a family famous for its binding techniques, either, ] the fox said. [ If my contractor ordered it, I would, but... ]
"I'm not going to order you." She withdrew Ki'el's sword again, and held it out before her. "But I wonder if you would be willing to borrow Ki'el's weapon and defend her with it?"
Even before she felt the wind shift, Xam knew that she had hit the fox in its weak point. The tremble that she felt, the shift in the whole world's qi... it was not the kind of phenomenon that occurred with weak qi. It hadn't even occurred when Benai created her [Silver Tortois Aegis].
A person--a whole human being, as far as Xam could tell--plucked the sword from her grasp, and Xam noticed only a moment later that he had very strange, foreign clothes, and very sharp talons at the end of his fingers. Only when she looked up, and then back at Ki'el, and then back at the foreign-looking man, was she certain that this was Meixu, the fox spirit. But what level of qi he had was impossible for her to tell, even before he flicked out the sword, closed his eyes, and released something into the world.
What was clear was that a moment later, storm clouds had rolled in from every horizon, and where those clouds surrounded the two figures--Menshi, and the other from the Ren--there were black beasts ducking in and out of the cloud banks, almost too quick to see.
Menshi flared his qi and struck out at the clouds, but Xam had no reason to think that he would be a match for this spirit beast's technique. The Ren elder--or perhaps less than that?--also unleashed a qi technique, one that stabbed at the clouds around her, weaving back and forth until it created a zone around her.
[ Crystal Blood Thread: Cat's Cradle ]
"A false domain," scoffed Meixu. "The wasted efforts of a qi cultivator trying to achieve something qi simply cannot."
Something qi cannot do? Xam filed that thought away, but in spite of that, Meixu did not attack, either. After a moment, the Ren's blood threads lashed out to surround Menshi as well, scattering the stormclouds as they went. A moment later, both charged after them, but they were far behind, and Benai's tortoise barrier was still in between them.
"I thought perhaps they understood, and were simply brazen," Benai said into the silence, and Xam heard Meixu chuckle. "It seems they have never learned the character for 'death.'"
"I am enjoying this source of power too much," Meixu returned, looking down at the sword in his hands. "I am too tempted to delay things and continue tasting it. But, it is also not the right energy for one such as me." He looked back over his shoulder, meeting Xam's eyes easily. "Girl. Friend my contractor. Discover for yourself whether or not I am strong."
A single swing of the sword ended it. It was too quick. The sword in Meixu's hands was fast enough, but the mass of air that it commanded had to travel thousands of times faster--and it did, smashing the two pursuers out of the sky in less than an instant, and transforming the overcast sky into a strange double-cyclone, one that quickly scattered into dozens, then perhaps hundreds of smaller tornadoes, all of which carved paths across the landscape below them.
By the time Xam understood what she was even looking at, the sword had been pressed into her hand, and Meixu, that fox, was laying down on top of Ki'el's chest, as peaceful as any housecat she had ever seen.
Xam did not know what to say, or do, or think after that. Chian and Sister Benai were one thing--assuming the woman was willing to work with them at all--but if someone like this was going to follow Ki'el, to be part of the family that Xam had to somehow manage?
Perhaps... perhaps the structure of their Noble house was going to have to be somewhat more complicated than she had thought.