Two weeks lat­er, Ki'el was stand­ing in an of­fice cham­ber in the re­mote city of Red­fang Wall. Al­though her cul­ti­va­tion had re­cov­ered much in those two weeks, her headache re­mained, and had even grown over time--for a dif­fer­ent rea­son.

The civil­ian mag­is­trate of the city had re­fused to con­sid­er the prop­er­ty writ with­out the ap­proval of the lo­cal mil­i­tary com­man­der--but the lo­cal mil­i­tary com­man­der was out fight­ing Star­beasts, and by rep­u­ta­tion alone, he would not re­turn for months. In the­o­ry, his sub­com­man­der held enough au­thor­i­ty to val­i­date the writ, but she had been en­tire­ly ob­sti­nate about meet­ing any­one non-no­ble, to the point where they all knew noth­ing else about her. And al­though Xam was tech­ni­cal­ly of a no­ble fam­i­ly, the sub­com­man­der's aide laughed off the idea that the Xoi, be­ing mer­chants, were wor­thy of be­ing called such. If any­one else in their mot­ley crew was of no­ble birth, none had spo­ken up when Xam ex­plained the sit­u­a­tion.

Tech­ni­cal­ly, Mian was sup­posed to be pre­tend­ing to be a dis­graced mem­ber of no­bil­i­ty--but he and Xam had ex­pect­ed more time to put to­geth­er a con­vinc­ing act. Xam was con­vinced that, for now, his na­ture was far too gen­tle and frag­ile to play at be­ing a no­ble, es­pe­cial­ly the kind of no­ble who could force a small mil­i­tary func­tionary to yield to him.

Xam had a cer­tain... en­er­gy, when she talked about train­ing Mian to be­have dif­fer­ent­ly, but Ki'el did not un­der­stand why, ex­cept to as­sume it had some­thing to do with her sense of style. Ki'el was not, gen­er­al­ly, a fan of her sis­ter's style and pre­sen­ta­tion, which was much more in line with the few lo­cal no­bles they had man­aged to cor­ner for more in­for­ma­tion about the lo­cal cir­cum­stances.

It was one of those lo­cal no­bles who was re­spon­si­ble for Ki'el be­ing here, now.

Zhu Dan Long was an ob­nox­ious, over­weight bul­ly of a boy of about Ki'el's age, and be­ing no­ble, he was wait­ing at the cusp of Gold Qi in or­der to en­ter a sect. De­spite that, he had ap­par­ent­ly been taught quite a bit about the qi of bat­tleax­es--a spe­cial­ty of their fam­i­ly--in or­der to ex­cel when he fi­nal­ly was ready. But he was quite ar­ro­gant about it, and swore that he could de­feat Ki'el in sin­gle com­bat, with him­self still in Gold and Ki'el now two stages above him, in Bis­muth Qi. If he should fail, all he had to do was vouch for them, al­low­ing the sub­com­man­der to val­i­date the prop­er­ty writ.

If he suc­ceed­ed... he said some­thing about mar­riage? Ki'el didn't see a rea­son to care what the boy thought.

And so Ki'el was wait­ing in a side of­fice when Zhu Dan Long ap­peared, his chub­by fin­gers adorned with far more rings and his arms and legs fes­tooned with bracelets. With much help from Kuli, Ki'el scanned over the var­i­ous adorn­ments, find­ing (with no sur­prise) that each was a script­ed tal­is­man of one kind or an­oth­er. Some were mere en­hance­ments to the boy's strength or qi, while oth­ers were trig­gered ef­fects.

It made Ki'el slight­ly ner­vous to con­sid­er what might come next, but she had not been en­tire­ly idle the last two weeks

In truth, Ki'el was... still ex­treme­ly de­pressed. And the fact that the two weeks had both dragged on and slipped by in­di­cat­ed even to Ki'el's young mind that she was not well. Kuli had tried to help, but... in gen­er­al, the aug­ment had told her to sim­ply grieve.

And that was com­pli­cat­ed.

But she had also tak­en to med­i­tat­ing on space aether. It was a part of her qi now, but Ki'el felt a stub­born pride in fol­low­ing her mas­ter's foot­steps, and Sobon had used raw aether. Al­though she had no idea how his weapons worked--in­deed, she was able to re­call some of the aether scripts he had made, and even the ones that were for seem­ing­ly sim­ple weapons had been com­plex--but the foun­da­tion had been aether with­in Ki'el's grasp.

With­in two nights of med­i­ta­tion, she had done some­thing dan­ger­ous enough that Kuli had to in­ter­vene, but that was slight­ly dif­fer­ent.

"Al­right, girl," Zhu Dan Long's voice broke into Ki'el's ir­ri­tat­ed thoughts. "This is the great Zhu Moumu Fengxi, and he will vouch for the le­git­i­ma­cy of our duel."

Ki'el eyed the man, and even she could see that he was an un­trust­wor­thy sort. It was there in the oili­ness of his qi, the bit­ter stink sur­round­ing his body, the silk robes that must not have been cleaned in months, and the pos­ture that re­mind­ed her­self more of sulk­ing is­land chil­dren than any­one she had met since.

Some­thing about the way she looked at him clear­ly ir­ri­tat­ed the man, be­cause he ges­tured at her wild­ly while his oth­er hand went to a sword on his belt. "What the hell are you look­ing at? I am great! And I'm not go­ing to let you es­cape from this no­ble and hon­or­able duel that we've got set up for you."

Be­side her, Ki'el felt Xam stir­ring, prob­a­bly in anger, but she just glanced past the man to the boy stand­ing slight­ly be­hind. "This is re­al­ly the best you could find?"

For what­ev­er rea­son, that up­set Fengxi enough that his qi start­ed to shake--and un­like most of the qi Ki'el had en­coun­tered so far, it did shake, its cir­cu­la­tion un­sta­ble and its... its tone off, too sharp and flat at once. The man's qi was at Ti­ta­ni­um, but noth­ing that the man did could con­vince Ki'el that he ac­tu­al­ly knew how to use it.

"Hon­or­able Un--the great Zhu Moumu Fengxi only needs to vouch for the re­sults of the duel," Zhu Dan Long said. "He is un­ques­tion­ably a mem­ber of the no­bil­i­ty, and we have al­ready told the hon­ored Sub­com­man­der that we will be hav­ing our duel. To­day."

"Ki'el..." Xam's qui­et voice was full of cau­tion, but Ki'el had quite enough.

"Fine. A duel." She itched to pull out her aether sword, but she had giv­en it--and her space ring--to Xam for now. Xam, and most every­one else she'd talked to, had all agreed that the duel was go­ing to be stu­pid, and un­fair, and some were still against Ki'el try­ing it. They wor­ried that the boy's script­ed items would give him a sig­nif­i­cant enough edge to over­come the dif­fer­ence be­tween their cul­ti­va­tion. In the­o­ry, he wasn't sup­posed to have any--any duel in­volv­ing a no­ble be­low the age of adult­hood should have re­quired both sides to pre­sent any ar­ti­facts they in­tend­ed to use, be­fore the duel was agreed upon. Since they had al­ready agreed, it should have been noth­ing more than the boy had on him at the time.

In prac­tice, every­one had ex­pect­ed this, but Ki'el had every rea­son to ig­nore those wor­ries.

The back door to the of­fice opened into a small­ish cleared space es­pe­cial­ly for du­els, and there were sev­er­al spec­ta­tors--all but one in gar­ish fin­ery that matched the boy's. The last was the mil­i­tary aide who... who in Ki'el's eyes seemed un­ac­count­ably se­ri­ous.

She had ex­pect­ed the aide to be like the boy and his fam­i­ly--so full of her­self that she could not imag­ine Ki'el win­ning a duel against a no­ble child. But some­thing in the woman's bear­ing sug­gest­ed that she thought the out­come was in doubt. It was in the in­tense scruti­ny, the cal­cu­lat­ing glances around the are­na and at the spec­ta­tors.

"Fine then, this stu­pid--eh." Fengxi caught his words, glanc­ing up at the boy's fam­i­ly, then looked away. He didn't seem at all in­ter­est­ed in the oth­er woman. When he start­ed again, his tone was so bland and even that it felt life­less. "The no­ble art of bat­tle is one in which the tal­ents of the younger gen­er­a­tion are on dis­play. Let none in­ter­fere in this most an­cient and no­ble of tra­di­tions. For no­bil­i­ty is the true spir­it of the war­rior, and the true spir­it of the no­bil­i­ty is the spir­it of the war­rior. Fight not to kill or maim, but to prove that you bear a vic­to­ri­ous char­ac­ter." There was a mo­ment in which Ki'el had the strangest im­pres­sion the man want­ed to col­lapse, but he re­cov­ered with­out any vis­i­ble mo­tion. "Be­gin."

Ki'el could tell the mo­ment that Long threw his qi into the var­i­ous baubles on him, but that didn't take any ef­fort on her part--all of the rings glowed and made var­i­ous nois­es, and the bracelets twist­ed the qi in the air around him. She had to re­vise some of what she had thought when Kuli had ex­plained the func­tions on the items--she had thought the light and sound glyphs were for at­tack­ing, dis­tract­ing.

When the boy charged at Ki'el, though, she could at last ad­mit he was faster, if still not as fast as pi­rates, or the mur­der­ous Mofu thugs. More im­por­tant­ly, she watched the boy's qi, as he tried to swing his fist and ac­ti­vate one of his at­tack rings at the same time.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

He... well, one could say that he suc­ceed­ed.

Al­though Ki'el dodged the at­tack, it seemed to ex­plore in midair. Ki'el might have been con­vinced that was on pur­pose, if she flinched away from watch­ing the at­tack take place. But she saw the boy pro­ject a volatile pack­et of qi... and then pro­ceed to punch it. And she saw the red­ness on his hand, the gri­mace on his face.

"Thun­der punch!" Long yelled, per­haps be­liev­ing that she would mis­take the sound of his voice for a tech­nique name echo­ing via qi. Ki'el paused, won­der­ing ex­act­ly how stu­pid the boy had to be, to think such a thing, but he took the mo­ment of her dis­dain to move in again and at­tempt a high kick.

It was not dif­fi­cult for Ki'el to step back, and with a men­tal nod to Kuli, she be­gan to take the fight some­what more se­ri­ous­ly, gath­er­ing her in­tent. Al­though she had to split her at­ten­tion to do it, the boy's strikes and 'qi tech­niques' were ridicu­lous­ly daft and easy to avoid.

Ki'el's tech­nique... was, ad­mit­ted­ly, an­oth­er cheat. Sort of.

She had want­ed to recre­ate Sobon's tele­ki­net­ic aether pat­tern us­ing her qi, but ap­par­ent­ly, the wide dif­fer­ence be­tween qi and aether meant that aether scripts could not sim­ply be fed qi--but be­yond that, Ki'el's mem­o­ry might have been some­what faulty. Be­tween the two, Kuli had been will­ing to pro­vide a very ba­sic tele­ki­net­ic script for Ki'el to prac­tice with, one that com­bined her ex­ist­ing un­der­stand­ing of Thrust Qi with a ba­sic abil­i­ty to tar­get points in space.

In short, she could push things around, but not hold them. Yet.

Even so, Ki'el felt no rea­son to hide this much, and when she had dodged an­oth­er kick, and the boy seemed more or less off bal­ance any­way, Ki'el sim­ply ges­tured, and her qi spoke. [ Re­mote Thrust. ]

Zhu Dan Long might have im­pressed Ki'el if he had man­aged to land on his feet, af­ter he was flipped head over heels, but he start­ed com­i­cal­ly flail­ing while in the air, and al­though some­one com­pe­tent might have got­ten their feet un­der them, Long did not. In fact, as Ki'el watched the mo­ment where he might have got­ten his legs into po­si­tion, she mar­veled at how he man­aged to pull his legs fur­ther from un­der­neath him­self, and even pulled his over­weight butt out of po­si­tion, so that he land­ed square on his low­er back, and im­me­di­ate­ly flopped back­wards onto his head.

He yelled, twitched like he want­ed to grab at his back, and then start­ed to cry.

"Ah..." Fengxi glanced at Ki'el, then at the boy. What­ev­er re­ac­tion he was sup­posed to have, Ki'el guessed that what fol­lowed wasn't it. "That's... not right. That's a vi­o­la­tion of the rules. You for­feit."

Ki'el glanced up at the mil­i­tary aide, whose face went from star­tled to ex­haust­ed in only a mo­ment.

"She vi­o­lat­ed no rules," Xam said from Ki'el's cor­ner, but Fengxi wan­dered over to­wards the boy, haul­ing him to his feet, de­spite the boy al­most scream­ing from the move­ment. "And as I re­call the orig­i­nal rules, Long was not sup­posed to use ar­ti­facts in the first place. Ki'el did not."

"I saw no ar­ti­facts," Feix­an said cool­ly, ig­nor­ing the glow­ing and hum­ming baubles even when Long stuck a meaty, blow­ing hand right in his face. "I think you're mis­tak­ing the hon­or­able marks of sta­tion--"

"If you feel that this duel is un­fair, then fight me," Ki'el in­ter­rupt­ed, cut­ting off both Feix­an and Xam's re­tort. She point­ed straight at him, eyes un­wa­ver­ing. The words didn't come nat­u­ral­ly, but Xam had been in­sis­tent; in the world of the no­bil­i­ty, wrongs could be made right with vi­o­lence, and since they both ex­pect­ed the boy to try to cheat, Xam had in­sist­ed Ki'el be pre­pared.

The script, such as it was, was for Ki'el to of­fer a duel 'with what­ev­er ar­ti­facts', and Ki'el would re­trieve her aether sword. But Feix­an did not stick to the script.

The words, "I ac­cept," bare­ly passed his lips be­fore the man was a blur of mo­tion straight at Ki'el, and she only sur­vived be­cause she still had her Re­mote Thrust pat­tern ac­tive. Ki'el threw her­self safe­ly back and away from the man, but by now, his sword was clear of its sheath, and the man's eyes were track­ing her, his foot­steps sur­pris­ing­ly un­err­ing.

Ki'el [ Re­mote Thrust ] again, throw­ing her­self well over Feix­an's head, then [ Thrust ] her­self an­oth­er time to make sure she was out of his range when he turned alarm­ing­ly quick­ly and swung. What­ev­er Feix­an's flaws might have been, he seemed to be at least com­pe­tent at this.

But when he be­gan mov­ing af­ter Ki'el again, she sensed no qi in his mo­tions, none in his sword. Al­though she was be­gin­ning to feel some­thing like in­tent, it was more.... in­tent to kill, not qi in­tent.

Ki'el tar­get­ed his legs and [Re­mote Thrust] them out from un­der­neath him, and he went down in­stant­ly, land­ing on his own sword in such a way that when he got up, there was a slash across his chest, but he was still star­ing at her, with a dead-eyed stare that would cer­tain­ly have ter­ri­fied her a few years ago.

Ki'el thrust the man's whole body away the next time, hard enough that he slammed into the wall a good six feet away, but he got up again with­out any sem­blance of fear or any real show of pain. In­deed, his eyes and face only seemed to be­come more twist­ed.

Why? Ki'el kept back from the man, but spoke clear­ly. "You refuse to yield?"

"You'll have to kill me," Feix­an said, an edge to his voice that sound­ed... en­tire­ly too much like it had al­ways been there, if Ki'el was hon­est. And she felt his qi stir­ring slug­gish­ly again, er­rat­i­cal­ly, but she couldn't sense him ac­tu­al­ly do­ing any­thing with it.

Ki'el glanced up, at the mil­i­tary aide, know­ing that in the mo­ment she looked away, Feix­an was al­ready charg­ing at her again. But she did not see any sign in the aide's face or be­hav­ior that she dis­agreed.

Ki'el [Thrust] her­self away one last time, but then fo­cused. "One last chance," she said, but her mind was chang­ing gears, and Kuli, with some re­gret, of­fered her what she asked for.

"[Fuck you!]" Feix­an's voice, un­ac­count­ably, screamed some­thing ter­ri­ble at Ki'el with dis­gust­ing, oily black in­tent, but she just blinked, Kuli shel­ter­ing her mind from the er­rat­ic thought, even as Ki'el brought her qi and in­tent to bear again.

[ Less­er True Fire Qi: De­stroy. ]

It was not a tru­ly pow­er­ful qi. Ki'el had no ac­cess to time aether, and her space aethers were weak and in­com­plete. But she had un­der­stood one or two things about nat­ur­al fire, and it was not dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand how they chan­neled into True Fire Qi.

Fire gen­er­at­ed heat and light. Light could make more heat--she took Kuli's word for it--and heat and fuel made fire. If her fire qi could re­cap­ture the heat and light giv­en off, a small spark could be­come a much greater fire very quick­ly.

It was... not sup­posed to hap­pen that quick­ly.

Ki'el would re­mem­ber for a long time that the first thing to catch was a stain on his silk cloth­ing. Oil, she thought. The hole that ate through his cloth­ing gave off no light, no burst of heat, and for a mo­ment, noth­ing else hap­pened. But her in­tent had been bru­tal--gath­er­ing pow­er to de­stroy what­ev­er it touched. And the pow­er that it stole from his van­ish­ing cloth­ing col­lid­ed a mo­ment lat­er with skin.

Ki'el had nev­er wit­nessed any­thing as grue­some as watch­ing the man's guts burst into light­less, heat­less fire, leav­ing be­hind all that which did not burn--all that which was not fuel. Gore and wa­ter poured out of the hole, even as the hole grew, and the man fi­nal­ly screamed.

Ki'el re­mem­bered the mo­ment when the fire con­sumed enough of his tor­so that it split apart. She could see his spine, re­sist­ing only slight­ly bet­ter. And she re­al­ized fi­nal­ly, once and for all, that prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tions of qi were so much more dan­ger­ous than she had ever un­der­stood. Yes, Sobon had blown peo­ple apart, and she had killed with a sword. Yes, she had... yes, but...

Ki'el turned around and threw up on the ground. By the time she dared turn back around, noth­ing was left of Zhu Moumu Fengxi ex­cept a dis­turbing­ly wet pile--of what, she hoped nev­er to learn.

A sound drew her at­ten­tion, and she turned to see the mil­i­tary aide look­ing down at her.

"Points for ef­fi­cien­cy, mi­nus points for the weak stom­ach. But at least you aren't just an­oth­er non­sense pre­tender." She scowled. "I will tell the sub-com­man­der that you are at least a halfway de­cent fight­er. For your age, and ad­vance­ment. And I will pass on the Zhu's..." she glanced at the fam­i­ly across the way, though Ki'el did not turn to see their re­ac­tion. "...rec­om­men­da­tion that the sub-com­man­der hear your case. Come by to­mor­row." Her gaze flick­ered over to Xam, but then she turned and walked away.

{ Test­ing un­known qi like that is dan­ger­ous. } Kuli's voice broke into her thoughts, dis­ap­proval stark in the aug­ment's tone. { I made sev­er­al changes to your qi and in­tent for safe­ty. We will re­view it lat­er. }

Xam, when she came up to Ki'el, also had a dan­ger­ous look, but at least her sis­ter kept her­self on task. "We should go," she said, and then straight­ened and bowed to the view­ing Zhu. "Hon­or­able spec­ta­tors, thank you for your time."

Ki'el ig­nored most of what she heard be­hind her as she fol­lowed Xam. It wasn't hard, be­cause the Zhu were not loud in their whis­pers, but nei­ther were they silent. Ki'el def­i­nite­ly heard "Ruth­less," "Mon­ster", "Witch", and some oth­er un­pleas­antries, but she spent no ef­fort to un­der­stand the sen­tences they were a part of, and Kuli did not in­flict them on her.

When they passed out of the du­el­ing space and into the of­fice be­hind, there were three men with clean­ing sup­plies and a stretch­er. Ki'el con­sid­ered warn­ing them what they would face, but couldn't quite stom­ach it.

What are we even do­ing here? Ki'el wasn't sure where the ques­tion came from, ex­act­ly, but nei­ther could she re­al­ly an­swer the ques­tion. If it came down to this or go­ing back to the Sect... well, hope­ful­ly, this hur­dle was now be­hind them. But what would come next? Was this even the right path to take? Was this even a place they want­ed to be in, in the long term? Was their new no­ble house re­al­ly go­ing to take root in the same soil as fam­i­lies like this?

She did her best to ap­pear calm as she fol­lowed Xam, but in­ter­nal­ly, she want­ed to just go hide some­where and sulk, again. When had she gone from Sobon's ap­pren­tice, a ris­ing star in the Moon­stone Is­land Sect... to some witch brat who killed a man in a duel? Just to get some­one to look at pa­per­work?

Was this re­al­ly who Ki'el was? Who she would be?