Over the course of the next hour Sesako and Takeu easily recruited the fifty purified core cultivators who they wished to have to support them.

Many were eager.

Very few of the defenders of the city had died. But the Yatamo defenders were angry and full of verve and desire for action. They’d cringed the whole day, as stone after stone was thrown at them. Nothing to do, no opportunity to act. To be warriors.

And now. Now… now their greatest cultivator had suggested a way to strike back. Fitzuki had the greatest respect as a warrior — but Sesako was known as special.

The son of the one who had sacrificed his own life to wound and scar the emperor. The man who'd been predicted by the Great One herself, the matriarch, to do great things. And the youngest man in the island’s history to achieve a profound soul.

Great things were expected from him.

Most of the eagerest volunteers to join Sesako’s raid were young men, of the same long generation as Sesako. Men who developed their purified core and their full power after the independence of the island.

Sesako sometimes thought that Takue, Kisiko and Dairuke — and especially Mena, who was nearly eight hundred years old, and far, far past his prime — all felt deep in their bones that the rule of the emperor was simply the natural way of things, and that their independence was an odd, strange, and above all temporary departure from the ordinary.

It had not been their profound souls who had driven the emperor from the land, but the sacrifice and blood spilled of the clans, the purified core, and often those with merely their golden cores.

Fitzuki was the only exception. He had dedicated his entire life and soul to the defeat of the emperor, to making him pay after he had killed the two dragons. The great blue and silver scaled son of the matriarch — dragons defined themselves in terms of their relationships, and not with names like humans — had been his particular friend, and he had been murdered by the emperor.

Besides, Fitzuki enjoyed war.

Even in some ways Akine, who had been already in her sixties when independence was achieved sometimes spoke as though the emperor ought to be their ruler, and they were like naughty students hiding from their teacher on a day when the sun was perfect, the breeze was cool, and the cicadas chirped.

But those like Sesako who were younger, understood.

We know what truly matters.

Despite the obvious danger, it was simple to find volunteers for the raid. The problem was to choose amongst those who desired to fight and gain a place of honor in the battle.

Hinete’s uncle Gakonga was chosen to be the leader.

He was a man who was chiefly famous for his music, as he was one of the finest players on sitar that had ever been born. But he also was well known as a fearsome warrior, who had served the city well in the expeditions that had been led to foreign lands.

Sesako always grinned when he saw him, because the man was huge, like a giant out of a tale, with bright blue eyes, though the features of Hinete, and most of the inhabitants of Yatamo had black or brown eyes. His arms were covered with tattoos, displaying various musical instruments, and the image of two of the dragons.

Besides him, it was a wide selection of men from the different clans — but the different squads were made of men who had trained together or fought together.

Once each warrior was selected, the group assembled in the great park at the center of the city. Beneath the fountains, ponds, pathways, hedges, oak trees, and rose bushes there was a labyrinthine network of tunnels, hidden chambers, storehouses, and great arrays of inscribed runes and wardings.

During the first decades after independence, the chief of the Tsogroa clan had invested heavily into building the defenses of the capital. One idea he’d had was that he wanted to be able to easily send out sorties in the case of any invasion, largely because he expected that a force going against them would be much weaker relative to the cultivators of the island than the emperor’s forces now were.

If they were facing a weaker army, the ability to launch sorties easily would force the attacking force to clump themselves in one area for safety, and that would make the defense more thaumaturgically efficient. Also, the hurlers would be kept at a far greater distance, again making the defense easier and requiring the attackers to use more stones before they burned through the defender’s magical power.

As it was the massive superiority in numbers and resources which the emperor’s army had access to meant that they had been able to place their hurlers aggressively in widely separated and closely emplaced groupings, without having much fear of them being destroyed.

The only reason that Sesako’s raid would work was because they’d made a mistake in structuring the geometries required for sending in reinforcements, and even then, the raid would cut the time close, and had substantial risks.

But they had to do something.

Hidden underneath the lawn where the dragons settled during festivals, there was a set of fifty powerful hurlers that had been designed to safely throw purified core cultivators.

The sun had barely fallen when the group was chosen, and they were all assembled and armored.

Sesako’s plan depended on striking during the short summer night. Despite the powerful eyes of cultivators, the darkness made invisibility workings more stable, efficient, and cheaper. They’d to get close to the firing point before the guards saw them.

Black dyed robes for everyone.

The robes were made from a light silk that breathed easily in the hot summer air. Soot rubbed faces; soot covered hands.

The robes had ribbons with spells of hiding enchanted into the weaving. Each took weeks to weave and enchant. They were made of the finest mage silk from Diet Vinh.

Sesako’s heart beat fast and hard.

The signal. When would the signal come?

His teeth felt like they buzzed, and there was a hollow feeling in his gut. What he was about to do was more dangerous than any action he’d taken in the cautious and deliberate battles where Fitzuki had taught him the craft of a war mage.

Even if this were not a trap as Fitzuki feared, it was possible — no, likely — that some of the men he’d gathered together would die.

The majority of them were older than him, even though he was the only one to have opened and developed his third dantian.

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It had always been like that for Sesako. Success, progress, and growth when others struggled.

That which was easy for him was hard for them.

And something which was easy for many others — happiness, satisfaction with himself, was difficult for him.

The fourth dantian barely leaked any power into him. Almost useless. It was still chiefly a waste of the limited chances and time that they had. The hordes of his enemy had come, and every other success that he had achieved during his life might be made worthless in the next weeks.

When would the damned signal come? There was the sound of an argument about the setting up of one of the other hurlers. That was delaying the whole group.

The other inside of him was terrified.

They had decided to work together, to win, to survive, and then once they had survived and somehow won, he would help him to achieve his nonsensical goal. The other ultimately wanted to make a paradise for everyone. The world would resist his efforts with all of its might, for nature demanded unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and struggle.

But for a man to scream defiance at the heavens was a noble fate.

But while the other might be a man, he was no warrior.

He was scared, and it fed a terror into Sesako’s guts. Sesako enjoyed that added edge.

Sesako could however tell that the other’s attention was chiefly on the fourth dantian, studying it and thinking about it. He would have no luck in finding a way to use its power for their benefit.

The use and development of the dantian was a great mystery that would take one with the talents, knowledge, and experience that Sesako possessed to unravel. Such a mystery would not fall to the unguided meanderings of an amateur.

There was a shout from the last of the enchanters working the hurlers. Everyone was ready.

Ten seconds was called out.

Nine.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

It was not his own phrase, but rather the other’s, but it seemed proper.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick—

BAM!

Seven cultivators with fully developed golden cores and another two with purified cores managed the hurler that propelled Sesako into the sky, tuning it and powering it. And then with a single burst they forced the power through the twisted, wrapped, and tangled cords of wire with enchantment runes carved into a line that so thin that the eyes of an ordinary human could not even see it.

From the side Sesako heard a magically enhanced scream of delight from Gakonga. “WHOOOOOOOO! WHOOOOOO!”

It would be stupid to not delight in moving this fast.

At first Sesako flew at a mile every two seconds, ten times as fast as he could fly with only his own power. There was a loud snap in the air behind them.

The only reason that the force of the launch did not instantly kill even a cultivator as powerful as Sesako was that the hurler absorbed the gargantuan pressure of acceleration, and at the same time also compressed the change in speed into a fraction of a second.

G-forces.

A phrase from the mind of the other.

In the inky blackness of the night, Sesako could not see the other cultivators who flew with him in support.

You are reckless and stupid.

This was his own thought, even though his mind spoke to him in Fitzuki’s voice.

In the five seconds that it took for them to hurtle themselves through the warding dome Sesako saw himself, his reasoning, and his motivations as though from outside, as though he saw himself the way that Fitzuki saw him.

He’d been stupid.

So, so, so stupid. Fitzuki was right — he’d been desperate to do something, but this was not something worth doing.

And then they’d hurtled out into the air between the city and the invading army.

Sesako gripped in one hand a crossbow that was three feet across, and the bolts in it were enchanted to fly fast, and to pierce the defenses with which cultivators draped themselves. In his other hand he held a long halberd which could shred hurlers and their stored ammunition.

The bolt from the crossbow could be sent flying at thousands of miles an hour, though to be effectively used, the recoil had to be shunted through a leyline into the planet.

Time moved slowly as he flew.

He slowed down second by second due to the air resistance and gravity.

Above and ahead the imperial cultivators were invisible in the dark.

But the points of power were sensible to him as he approached. Few were moving, a couple fleeing, a couple working themselves into an elaborate formation, lines of power for resistance flowing together.

As they reached within a mile Sesako aimed and shot his powerful crossbow at the cultivator in the center of the formation.

A hit.

The man was not killed, his dragon scale armor and the formation’s defensive spell work around him made a fatal strike exceedingly unlikely, but he’d been knocked head over heels, stunned, badly bruised. The man floated away from the lines dropping away from the fight — he wouldn’t recover sufficiently to return before the battle was decided.

The other cultivators with Sesako attacked the defensive line, while Sesako swept towards the first of the hurlers.

Far below, with the heavy hurlers kept on the ground, Fitzuki was sending carefully arranged volleys that disrupted the formations of the reserves, as they had to break apart to avoid being ripped to shreds by bolts that were too powerful for even the defensive spell work of a formation to protect them from.

A purified core cultivator defended the hurler, and his hands began to move in motions that would tear his second core out of his body and use it as a suicide weapon.

That extra edge of speed that he’d gained from having a little power from the fourth dantian in his body allowed him to reach him before he finished the spell, and Sesako struck him in the chest with his hand, sending him hurtling miles away.

Perhaps he was dead, but he probably was only injured terribly

But he’d play no further role in this battle, and likely no further role in this siege.

Instantly Sesako turned and smashed the hurler to bits with his halberd.

Sesako himself was now hurtling past the battlefield at an enormous speed — just because he had reached his goal did not mean that the momentum, he’d been given by the hurler disappeared.

The blue sash around Sesako’s robe had been enchanted to have a connective strand of power that attached onto a matching point around one of the chief columns of the house of the clans in the city center.

Without any hesitation Sesako channeled his power through the belt.

Fuck, damn, hell, hell, damn, fuck.

The sash slowed him to a complete stop in less than a quarter of a mile, and despite his magical toughness and healing abilities he’d have a giant purple bruise around his waist for a day or two. Anyone who had not at least mostly developed their purified core would have been killed by using this belt to slow them down, even though the acceleration it used was far milder than what had been required to send them hurtling up into the sky.

As he was slowing Sesako barreled through a second one of the hurlers, and also hacked it to pieces.

Bits of fantastically expensive wood and metal floated like feathers towards the ground. The enchantment that held them in the air, at this precise altitude, angle, and position, slowly dissolved away.

The golden cores managing their part of the firing cluster had all gathered around one of the hurlers, in a tight defensive formation that would take time for him to break through.

Twenty of the purified cores that had been in the group were preparing attacks that they would launch out form within the weave of that defensive line, while the others, faces pale but determined, floated around the outskirts, preparing to use that dreaded suicide attack that was the only way they might kill a profound soul if he came too close.

And floating below that group, with an enigmatic smile on his face was Sesako’s true enemy in the group. A tall man with a gleaming bald head, his features, and eyes clearly visible in the massive light he’d created to display the battlefield. He wore the blue robe with a crimson sash that only profound souls who'd sworn oaths of personal loyalty and service to the emperor were permitted.

The commander of the firing cluster.

He floated even lower, going away from the defensive line, and then below the lines of Sesako’s cultivators. It looked like he meant to try slowing their retreat after they had demolished the hurlers, but one man would not be able to do much in that way, unless he was willing to risk letting the Yatamo purified cores close enough to kill him.

Sesako hacked two more of the hurlers to bits, and others from his group destroyed three more.

Giant balls of light exploded beneath him and to the northwest. Stones with flare enchantments on them were being hurled from the city, and they allowed Sesako to easily see the progress of the guard forces coming up to defend the hurlers — they’d be too late. Sesako had almost a minute and a half before he’d need to call the retreat.

Two of their hurlers were safe behind the defensive line, and nine of the others had already been destroyed, and the last one was being ripped apart by Gakonga.

Sesako propelled himself towards the floating field of enchanted marble stones.

It was a beautiful ammunition field, much bigger than most. His group could not destroy more than a tenth of them in the minute they still had.

Sesako readied his halberd to strike the nearest one.

And then dozens of the marble stones exploded apart without him touching them.

His cheek was scored by one of the shattered fragments as he stared blankly at the stone that had been shattered from within.

The cultivator who had hidden inside of the nearest stone threw himself at Sesako. He was a purified core, and he tore his second core out of his body to use as a weapon.

The man was too close for Sesako to dodge, even with the additional speed he’d gained from the fourth dantian.

He was only a few meters away.