The splinter was ahead. Waves of force scattered all around, careening through the area wildly.
Dodging them was not hard, with his spiritual senses and physical enhancements; it was obvious that the Grandmaster was barely functional. He couldn’t appear to tell were Lu was, beyond the broadest possible sense of ‘somewhere inside,’ and so he was throwing telekinetic blasts in seemingly random directions. Can he even perceive direction as he is?
Not important, except in the sense that knowing would help him predict the enemy more accurately. His extended sense perceived Dreamfever scattering a powder over Tai Sho’s unconscious body, but it was behind him and not relevant, so he stopped paying attention. Two metres. One metre.
He was within arm’s reach of the splinter. He could not perceive it with his sense, or his eyes, but the connection between the splinters told him it was there. He narrowed his focus down to just the area in front of him, going over the small section of space like he was looking for an out-of-place hair.
…There. A fold in space, barely visible even when I know where to look. One Anchoring Distortion canceled the Grandmaster’s own use of the technique, then a second unfolded space forcefully. The splinter unfurled into reality as though coming out from behind a curtain, where it dropped into his waiting hand.
[no]
[i]
[i refuse]
Space attempted to re-freeze around Lu’s body, but he simply let loose another Anchoring Distortion and moved through the incoming telekinetic attacks with Space Ripper. The lesser objective is complete.
Which left only the greater one; locating and retrieving Bull. A Weight Reduction assisted leap took him over a round of blasts, and he landed back where he had started, near Tai Sho and Dreamfever.
Telepathic Bond. “[Hello, Sir Dreamfever.] Hello, Tai Sho.” His senior was awake, but his eyes were unfocused. “[Are you capable of moving?]”
Tai Sho blinked, and his expression hardened slightly as he nodded – a small part of Lu noted that his beauty spells had unravelled at some point, though he was still very handsome without them. “I think so. You have it?”
Lu held up the splinter.
[why can I not]
[why]
Another nod, more decisive. Almost faster than Lu could perceive, Tai Sho gathered him in his arms and dashed away from the next round of blasts. Dreamfever followed at a comparatively sluggish pace, taking some hits that tore up his skin and exposed muscle tissue.
The warrior turned back for a moment, seemingly to taunt the Grandmaster. “[Yar. Your doubloons be a salve to me hearty, me hearty.]” He made a rude gesture to the whirling sandstorm, taking another round of telekinetic damage in the process, and then they were all outside the dome.
Tai Sho’s boots impacted the sand, followed shortly by the Warboss’s much larger ones. Sounds of battle filtered into Lu’s awareness; the rest of the group seemed to be fighting a giant tree. They’re well away from the speeder. Very little chance it gets destroyed in the fighting – no need to intervene right away. “Excellent.” Space Ripper placed the splinter into his purse, though it took a much larger amount of ki to move than he would have assumed. “Thank you, Tai Sho. You can put me down, now.”
The disciple eyed him. “Of course. But I must ask, what exactly is that art you are using? I’m not familiar with it.”
Lu was placed delicately on the ground. “A spell of my own creation. I have named it ‘Lu’s Numbing Illusion.’ If you have additional questions, please ask them later.” He took a step back towards the dome, but his path was blocked by Tai Sho’s raised arm.
“Lu, wait. You’re not considering going back in, are you?”
“I am. The Grandmaster is almost certainly involved in Bull’s kidnapping; I will ask him what part of the Junk Pit he is being kept in.”
Tai Sho’s expression shifted rapidly before he mastered himself. “Are you certain that’s wise? He broke my Mental Fortress somehow, altered the forms in my consciousness directly to pervert the spell. There’s no reason to believe he can’t do the same to you.”
But if he could do that, wouldn’t he have done so as soon as I cast it? Most likely you weren’t as concealed as you thought you were, and he set the trap up while you were waiting for the simultaneous strike. “That is a risk I am willing to take, so please stand aside. This should not take long; unfortunately, I have no means of coercing him. I will have to simply hope that he reveals something in his addled state.” A pause. “Also, you should go help the others. Dreamfever has already gone.”
Tai Sho glanced to the side at the Warboss’s receding back. He was drinking something from an uncorked vial, and the next moment he turned translucent. Then he was transparent like glass, then the Warboss was gone. “Yes, well…” Tai Sho’s eyes darted between Lu and the vaguely anthropomorphic giant tree-thing. He sighed. “Be careful.”
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He whooshed away with a movement art, and Lu nodded to himself. It seems he values retrieving Bull above protecting my person. Good; our goals are aligned, for now.
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Two Worlds Gestalt was not well. Whatever that warrior – Tai Sho; I will remember that name – had done, it had fractured his consciousness into multiple barely-connected chunks. If he hadn’t shed his body minutes before, it might have actually destroyed him permanently.
But as he was, it would only be the work of a few hours to recover. His regeneration, altered by his Comprehension to affect his ephemeral nature, was doing the bulk of the work; the rest was a steady stream of power, flowing like neural connections from one grain of sand to the next, to the air, to the underlying stone and the energy that tied it all together.
But even though he would recover, he was out of the fight. Beyond the zone he occupied, the world was non-existent, not even the usual flashes of thought illuminating the void. He was simply too fractured to communicate properly, even to a fellow telepath like Tanglebud.
Or perhaps Tanglebud is dead..? No, I refuse to believe that without evidence. All he could do now was slowly move himself through the desert, untethering from the matter on one side – the side further from the Pit, assuming his recollections were accurate – and reconnecting to matter on the opposite side. The sand was easy, the air trivial; it was the deeper stone that was slowing his progress. But it was also the stone that anchored him enough to endure the transition – if he was naught but sand and air, he would risk being scattered with every stray wind.
And then a bundle of foreign thought entered him yet again. If he had eyes, he would have blinked incredulously.
[lu]
“I am Lu, yes.”
Though the man had some sort of curse placed on his thoughts – such a restrictive thing could be nothing else – Gestalt could still read his mind easily enough. It was less than useful; Lu was barely thinking at all, moving almost entirely on blind instinct.
[why are you here]
All of the power that he had been putting towards reconstituting himself was bent towards the man on the edge of his self. Gestalt could barely tell his location, damaged as he was, but it would have to do.
“I want to know where Bull is. Tell me where he’s being kept, and I won’t have Tai Sho pull you apart.”
He wasn’t bluffing. Or… was he? There was no emotion, no memory, no threads he could trace that would lead him deeper in. What an abominable curse. There is no person left; he’s a metal creature of bone and muscle.
[no]
The man thought, and Gestalt skimmed meaning off like fat from a broth – but it was so shallow.
“Very well.” The bundle went nearer his edge – which edge he couldn’t say exactly, only that it was away from his centre.
He’s bluffing. Bluffing. He’s resolute, single-minded, I can tell that much; he won’t give up so easily.
And exactly as predicted, Lu halted before exiting. He directed his attention back towards Gestalt, but the grandmaster was still too fragmented to look through his eyes.
“Are you certain? If one attack did this much to you, then I can’t imagine you’ll survive another.”
[i am harder to kill than you think]
[that attack will not catch me a second time]
The man was silent for a moment. “Are you willing to risk that? I’ll be going to the Junk Pit either way; surely, this information is worth less than the chance Tai Sho could kill you?”
Your friend is likely dead by now. By your hand, debatably; without an obviously real message, he would have been too guarded for me to insert anything into his mind. He debated revealing the information.
…No, I think I’m owed a bit of pettiness after today.
[my answer will not change]
[send your collared tiger]
[if you are prepared to lose it]
Another long pause. “Is he dead?”
[find out yourself]
Stone flung itself up around the edge of his zone, sharp edges turned in, forming an unbroken perimeter. Then it rushed inwards as he strained to hold space in place. You can’t counter my anti-teleportation technique before the stones crush you. Show me something new. At this point he didn’t think he would actually be able to injure the man, but he could at least force him to reveal another technique.
He wasn’t disappointed. Somehow, Lu sent out a cone of destabilising energy at the same time he attempted to fold his body out of the zone. It was uncanny to observe; flows of energy that should have merged instead held themselves separate, one stream breaking his technique while the other manipulated the newly-freed fabric of space.
And then the grandmaster was alone again.
But that technique..! Was it a product of his hybrid consumption? Gestalt could use multiple techniques by splitting his mind, but not in that exact way; two streams of like energy travelling together would always homogenise, leading to one technique consuming the other. Perhaps there was some qi between them that I failed to notice?
----------------------------------------
Time passed, the exact amount indistinct as he worked to mend his fractured consciousness, and eventually another bundle of thought dragged itself into his awareness. This one he had seen coming, just a little.
[tanglebud]
[Grandmaster. You are injured?]
[yes]
[we lost]
He phrased it almost like a question, but it was obviously not one. Tanglebud was too healthy; grinding down opponents of that calibre should have brought him to the edge.
[They noticed our reinforcements coming, and I was unable to stop them.] His mental voice was odd, almost like he had suffered a bad knock to the head, but he was too coherent to be concussed. [Their Warboss was some sort of witch, I think. He dosed me with something, and I lost track of what was happening.] He was ashamed. [I did not manage to kill a single one.]
[but you lived]
[we both lived]
Tanglebud raised his head. […Yes.]
Complex threads of emotion wafted off from his brother. There was the shame and disappointment of loss, but also the triumph of overcoming a limit. Tangebud was a mangled head with a bit of torso, held together by living wood – but in some ways he was stronger than he had been before the fight.
[we will heal]
[and more than that]
[we have their measure]
Frustration. [That is true for them as well, grandmaster. I showed almost all of my techniques.]
[techniques developed while speared to a tree]
[tortured]
[forced to constantly endure]
Thoughtfulness; a speck of hope, pride. […I suppose that is also true.] Already he was thinking, adapting the crude techniques he had pulled out for the next battle.
[good]
[now]
[it is time for you to return to the pit]
While he couldn’t imagine that Junk Dog was ignorant of what had occurred, it would still be necessary to distribute the information. And beyond that…
[inform the clan of the enemys capabilities]
[and begin preparation for a new generation]
Iteration was always the most reliable path forward. He had gotten a fairly good look at Lu’s internals; his next host body should be made much more cleanly.
…When I’ve dragged myself back, which will take a few months. At least I’ll have plenty of time to ponder what I’ve learned…