Sobon had pre-pared the fol-low-ing morn-ing for things to go one of two ways; ei-ther she snuck off with-out hav-ing to face Ki'el and Lui, or some-one stopped her be-fore she could. As it turned out, she was able to get away, and with every-thing else more or less pre-pared, she moved as far from the city as fast as she could. It wasn't so much that Sobon couldn't stand good-byes... and more that she want-ed des-per-ate-ly to pre-tend that it wouldn't be one, and that every-thing would, some-day, be fine.

  Only when she was well away did she send sev-er-al pings to the Coro-na, giv-ing an up-date, pro-vid-ing in-struc-tions, and mak-ing sure, one last time, that the Ri'lef en-gi-neer, or even the Cap-tain, hadn't left any oth-er di-rec-tions, in-for-ma-tion, or in-sight. It was... min-i-mal-ly sur-pris-ing that she did get one brief mes-sage back, from the Ri'lef cap-tain, say-ing [We re-gret in-volv-ing you in this mat-ter. I have asked the Coro-na to ap-prove your re-quest.] But only that, and with-out ad-mit-ting, even on one of the most se-cure chan-nels on the plan-et, what Sobon had sur-mised.

  So she turned to the mat-ter at hand, and lo-cat-ed the Mofu army, trav-el-ling the dis-tance to meet them at more than the speed of sound. They had found a suit-ably dra-mat-ic re-gion of the moun-tain road lead-ing from Emer-ald Val-ley into the Djang em-pire; it was a pret-ty val-ley, for the mo-ment, with a moun-tain over-look where a few non-com-bat-ants had set up, and be-neath that, a widen-ing of the val-ley where more sol-diers than Sobon would have ex-pect-ed them to bring were sud-den-ly surg-ing into po-si-tion, as they all de-tect-ed her ar-rival. Among the watch-er on the cliff, Sobon though, must have been the ob-serv-er from the Im-pe-r-i-al Fam-i-ly, but she was dis-tract-ed from them in the first mo-ments by the enor-mi-ty of the army be-fore her.

  Sobon had though that House Mofu had per-haps a few hun-dred ex-perts to bring to bear. Per-haps they were mak-ing use of their wealth to pur-chase as-sis-tance, be-cause there were thou-sands of qi war-riors there, though most of them were garbage--un-less the house had some kind of de-fens-es, Sobon ex-pect-ed many would die just from the amount of qi that would be thrown around, with-out ac-com-plish-ing any-thing. With-out ques-tion, a full-fledged bomb pat-tern would clear all but the high-est lev-el ex-perts here, but that... would leave Sobon's lega-cy in much greater jeop-ardy.

  As the army moved, though, Sobon was eas-i-ly able to de-tect that there was a hid-den method be-hind it all, as they be-gan to surge into cir-cu-lar for-ma-tions, ones with cir-cles with-in cir-cles and lines con-nect-ing larg-er pieces to-geth-er. From above, it was ob-vi-ous-ly a mas-sive mul-ti-user ar-ray; al-though Sobon was by no means an ex-pert in their back-wards meth-ods, she es-ti-mat-ed the whole less-er half of the army might pre-tend, briefly, to be an-oth-er two Ti-ta-ni-um-lev-el ex-perts.

  There was an enor-mous gap be-tween that and any of the play-ers in the fight that ac-tu-al-ly mat-tered.

  Al-though Sobon had found it dif-fi-cult to judge the "star lev-el" of her op-po-nents us-ing the de-tec-tion ar-ray from a dis-tance, she had known the rough num-bers, and now was able to place them as two op-po-nents with Mithril qi--what was that met-al sup-posed to be, any-way? Sobon had no idea, ex-cept that it had light band-ing pat-terns--and three more at Dam-as-cus, which was a much more ob-vi-ous black and white band-ed pat-tern, and five at Bis-muth, which had all the col-or-ful ox-ide splash-es of the crys-talline met-al. For Ti-ta-ni-um war-riors, there were per-haps a dozen, not count-ing what-ev-er ef-fect the rest band-ed to-geth-er were sup-posed to have.

  "For-eign de-mon witch!" The Mithril el-der leaped into the air, al-though what-ev-er qi pat-terns he was us-ing to at-tempt to fly flick-ered and fum-bled, fi-nal-ly pro-duc-ing a gold-en, burn-ing, hand-like plat-form for him to stand on. Two oth-ers, one a Mithril and one Dam-as-cus, joined him, and Sobon thought they must have been the first Mofu's broth-er and wife, who Lord Shi-da had said would be around that pow-er lev-el. "You may have come to plead for your life, or the lives of those you got in-volved in our dis-pute, but it is fu-tile! We have al-ready de-clared a blood feud with the Djang Im-pe-r-i-al Fam-i-ly, and we will wipe out all those who have ever sup-port-ed you, to the five de-grees al-lowed for in Djang Im-pe-r-i-al Law!"

  Sobon didn't even both-er ask-ing Alas-si about those de-tails, and in-stead glanced over, fi-nal-ly, at the cliff. There were two things, there, which set her teeth on edge; the least of them was that Mofu Suno him-self, his cul-ti-va-tion crip-pled and one arm am-pu-tat-ed, was there, and Sobon could all but feel in-tense swirls of fate aether wrapped around him, the ed-dies of which curled back to-wards her. In truth, she wasn't ex-act-ly sure what the sen-sa-tion was, but it was an aether above her abil-i-ty to per-ceive, and every-thing about the sit-u-a-tion, and what she had al-ready seen, sug-gest-ed it was ex-act-ly what the K'val had warned her might hap-pen. A myth-ic shear fault? She con-sid-ered that only for an in-stant, though, be-cause her eyes drift-ed to the oth-er pow-er-ful man stand-ing be-side him, and her heart clenched.

  The man was for-eign to Sobon, his qi core a sol-id red crys-tal--Ruby, she as-sumed, and there was no oth-er any-where near his lev-el around. His face was frozen in a mask of ar-ro-gance, and he was, for the mo-ment, pay-ing no at-ten-tion to her or the bat-tle, in-stead ar-gu-ing with a ser-vant about the bot-tle of... some al-co-hol, she as-sumed, that had been of-fered him. With a flick of his fin-ger, one of the ser-vant's arms was ripped off, spi-ralling off the moun-tain-side, but the ser-vant bore it with an as-ton-ish-ing willpow-er, only bow-ing and re-treat-ing as though she had only been light-ly punched or smacked. The man, de-spite his protes-ta-tions, clean-ly cut off the top of the bot-tle and be-gan to drink straight from it, re-lax-ing in a large padded couch that he had ap-peared from a space ring.

  What-ev-er had hap-pened, the Djang Im-pe-r-i-al Fam-i-ly ob-serv-er was not the swords-man she had met with the Prince and Princess.

  "With us is the es-teemed majesty, Djang Ren Sui, who shall en-sure that the Em-pire for-ev-er re-mem-bers what hap-pens here to-day!"

  The name meant noth-ing to Sobon at all, ex-cept that the man low-ered his bot-tle enough to get a look at Sobon, his eyes burn-ing only for a mo-ment as he as-sessed her. And then... with-out con-cern, he raised the bot-tle again, turn-ing his head away, and be-gan to re-al-ly dig into the cush-ions on his couch, end-ing up with his head propped up on one hand as he lay slouched there. Sobon was half ready for the ar-ro-gant man to snap his fin-gers and sum-mon half-naked women, or men, to at-tend to him, but per-haps that was the rea-son why he was so in-sis-tent on drink-ing heav-i-ly.

  Sobon glanced back at the army be-low, not-ing that the mul-ti-man ar-rays were now linked up. In-stead of do-ing any-thing in par-tic-u-lar about it, Sobon turned and bowed to the ob-serv-er, speak-ing with sim-ple in-tent.

  "Greet-ings, Djang Ren Sui. You seem in a worse mood than your cousins were when I spoke to them a few days ago." That was a to-tal shot in the dark, but when Sobon felt the aether in the en-tire re-gion crack, as though an earth-quake had placed enough shear force on a sin-gle piv-ot to cleave mile-thick stone into sev-er-al pieces at once.

  At the same mo-ment, the bot-tle of wine in the man's hand shat-tered into dust, though for a long mo-ment, he didn't move. "Cousins?" he asked, af-ter a mo-ment, his voice only in-ex-pert-ly mod-u-lat-ed with qi.

  "If you would pass on to Djang Ban Dai and Djang Ban Fen that I would be hap-py to have din-ner with them again some-time, I would be in your debt." It took more of Sobon's cy-borg self con-trol than she would ever ad-mit to keep the wry smug-ness from her voice and in-tent, leav-ing the words seem-ing-ly in-no-cent.

  The ef-fect that they had on the man was not to be un-der-es-ti-mat-ed, but per-haps to his cred-it, the Mofu el-der--or rather, pa-tri-arch, Sobon sup-posed--didn't let Sobon com-plete-ly dis-tract from their pur-pose.

  "Your bluff will not fore-stall this any fur-ther! In hon-or to the Djang Im-pe-r-i-al Fam-i-ly, I com-mand the Mofu fam-i-ly. At-tack!"

  Al-though it had been said that the Pa-tri-arch was crip-pled, and al-though Sobon could see that fact plain-ly her-self--as there was a ma-jor crack run-ning through his spir-it, which bled qi even as she watched--his mas-tery of qi tech-niques far sur-passed Mofu Gin. He ges-tured with both hands, and sev-en nee-dles of pure flame en-er-gy ma-te-ri-al-ized above him, every one of them denser and pur-er than the tech-niques Gin had used, and when they lanced for-wards, they were a match for bul-lets in speed. As they left his con-trol, Sobon could clear-ly hear the man's tech-nique name screamed by his qi: [Sev-en Gold-en Sun Spears]

  But Sobon was not un-pre-pared for com-bat this time.

  She bent time com-pres-sion to her ad-van-tage, speed-ing up her aether and qi use, and cast an qi gath-er-ing net-work through her cap-tive por-tal to the oth-er side of the moon, us-ing the hauled in pow-er and di-rect-ing it into ar-rays hang-ing in midair. She com-plet-ed them in in-stants, lay-er-ing three large shield walls be-fore her, com-bin-ing qi and aether into a de-fense she her-self would hate to have to pen-e-trate.

  Un-like Gin's [Gold-en Sun Shot], these nee-dles did not bounce. In ac-cel-er-at-ed time, Sobon thought they were in-tend-ed to be like pen-e-trat-ing ex-plo-sives, ex-plod-ing into what-ev-er sub-stance they struck, but her first aether de-fense dis-trib-uted the load across their sur-face, cre-at-ing a shock-wave out-ward that screamed [burn-ing] into the aether in the way Sobon's own at-tacks screamed [de-struc-tion]. That shock-wave caught every im-pu-ri-ty in the air on fire, and where it met ground, an in-fer-no sprung into be-ing... but the shield held.

  Sobon spared the mo-ment to cal-cu-late how close the at-tack had been, but de-cid-ed the first shield had room to spare, even as she ad-just-ed her sec-ond and third lines of de-fense. But one of the oth-er two high-est-rank-ing Mofu flew, at what Sobon sup-posed was a nice high speed for the lo-cals, to flank Sobon, piec-ing to-geth-er his own tech-nique. Sobon men-tal-ly tracked the boy, who must have been Mofu Gin's broth-er, and de-cid-ed the man had only just re-cent-ly reached Mithril Qi.

  If Sobon had any sym-pa-thy for the Mofu fam-i-ly, she would have ad-vised the man not to fight. He seemed younger, and gen-uine-ly hurt by the loss of his broth-er. But for whichev-er rea-son, whether he was emo-tion-al-ly dis-turbed, or get-ting used to new qi, new im-plants, some-thing, his head wasn't on straight, and his tech-niques fum-bled in the de-tails. Sobon knew the boy was aim-ing to get around the shield that Sobon had set up, and could have ad-just-ed the shield be-fore he got into po-si-tion, but with-drew from her space ring a set of rings of Core ma-te-r-i-al.

  These weren't even from a Star-beast core; aether beasts on this plan-et all cre-at-ed cores of one kind or an-oth-er, and Sobon had got-ten sev-er-al cheap-er sim-ply be-cause they were lo-cal. But the Ri'lef hadn't in-vent-ed the con-cept of beast aether cores, nor had this plan-et been the first one the Founders used the pat-tern on. So Sobon sim-ply formed one core into sev-er-al matched rings, sup-ple-ment-ing them with di-a-mond around the edges, to recre-ate the can-non pat-tern she'd used on Mofu Gin in a much more com-pact, much more ef-fi-cient, and much more durable form.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  It took more care-ful work than any-one watch-ing the bat-tle knew, for Sobon to draw the in-tense en-er-gy from be-yond the moon through the can-non pat-tern with-out ex-pos-ing her-self too much or burn-ing out her own aether path-ways. It was in-stinct, most-ly, and she had to flick tem-po-rary bar-ri-ers into ex-is-tence briefly when the coil-ing en-er-gy got too close. She could also sense that the oth-er army forces were not wait-ing for her to fin-ish, and once she was con-vinced the can-non was charg-ing cor-rect-ly, she spared a glance at oth-er forces.

  They were most-ly try-ing to scat-ter and ap-proach her from many an-gles, al-though sev-er-al were mov-ing to-wards her and forg-ing large tech-niques, ei-ther to dis-tract her or to at-tempt some oth-er so-lu-tion to... well, any of the mas-sive-ly dan-ger-ous abil-i-ties Sobon was show-ing.

  Sobon found her-self sur-prised, though, when one of those tech-niques ac-tu-al-ly worked.

  It was from the only real wild-card Sobon had ex-pect-ed--Gin's wife, who was only half a step be-hind her broth-er-in-law in pow-er, but was not of the Mofu clan, and had an en-tire-ly dif-fer-ent type of tech-nique. It was, in fact, some form of ice tech-nique, but one which also in-volved time and space ma-nip-u-la-tion; just as Sobon was about to fire the can-non at Gin's broth-er, a bar-ri-er of frozen space and time snapped in place be-tween Sobon and her tar-get, its qi scream-ing, [Ab-solute Freez-ing Do-main].

  Sobon's can-non shot, which was pure essence of de-struc-tion with-out any ad-di-tions, had no way to pierce a de-fense meant to stop space and time.

  What she did have, how-ev-er, was a small sup-ply of much small-er ri-fle pat-terns on lit-tle di-a-mond-and-core rods, and she scat-tered them at the oth-ers tak-ing places around her bar-ri-er, all of the ex-tra time she gained form her time ac-cel-er-a-tion go-ing into charg-ing and aim-ing those ri-fle shots. With much low-er en-er-gy re-quire-ments, she was able to lance dozens of beams at them, each shot send-ing a tar-get reel-ing, but with so many tar-gets, she knew she would need to fo-cus fire on any one in or-der to take them down. The Ti-ta-ni-um war-riors she'd faced off against at her home had tak-en sev-en or eight shots apiece, and that was with-out any time to re-cov-er.

  Most-ly, these shots were a de-ter-rant. She was con-trol-ling six-teen now, and feed-ing aether into them and her main can-non script. With the six-teen less-er guns, she could dis-suade the ones around the edges, but that was all just buy-ing time.

  A block of frozen time and space ap-peared at the edge of Sobon's de-fens-es, stop-ping some of the in-com-ing fire. She could have con-grat-u-lat-ed her-self--she had the mo-ment to spare--but her in-stincts were rapid-ly falling back into old pat-terns. Cy-borg Ma-rine pat-terns. She'd as-sumed the woman's freez-ing field couldn't pass through her own de-fens-es, be-cause she used space in her de-fense, and so even do-main-type at-tacks like a freez-ing field would have to ap-proach from an-oth-er di-rec-tion. Giv-en how long Sobon ex-pect-ed those fields took to cast, it was a dan-ger-ous les-son to learn, but one the en-e-my woman would need to know if she planned to win.

  And doubt-less, that was what all the en-e-my planned to do here. Sobon wasn't un-der-es-ti-mat-ing any-one--not the Pa-tri-arch, the broth-er, the wife, the oth-er ex-perts, and not the le-gion of less-er war-riors pow-er-ing a pair of mas-sive ar-rays.

  Now that Sobon stud-ied them, they were rapid-ly con-vert-ing the lo-cal qi to some kind of So-lar qi, and col-lect-ing it in a pair of mas-sive balls of fire. They lacked the fi-nesse and pow-er even of Gin's [Gold-en Sun Shot], but that as-sumed that they were meant to be an at-tack. Sobon could eas-i-ly imag-ine the pa-tri-arch snag-ging the en-er-gy and com-press-ing each down into a much denser weapon, es-pe-cial-ly af-ter they grew some more.

  As Sobon's can-non reached full charge again, she sensed every-one on the bat-tle-field lock-ing their sens-es on it, an-tic-i-pat-ing an-oth-er shot, per-haps half ex-pect-ing it to be wast-ed on the Freez-ing Do-main. But in-stead, Sobon gripped all of her de-ployed items with her wings, and ac-ti-vat-ed her move-ment core.

  They were pre-cise move-ments, and only one per-son on the bat-tle-field was able to fol-low it with his eyes from above, but Sobon didn't care ei-ther way. She sim-ply flicked for-ward through space four times, ap-pear-ing on the ground at an an-gle no one could have pre-dict-ed, even with a war-ship's pre-dic-tive AI. That was no guess; she'd iden-ti-fied al-most a dozen ad-e-quate lines of ef-fect, and with a small, fate-shield-ed al-go-rithm, picked ran-dom-ly be-tween them three times, then among the re-sults twice.

  She ap-peared on the ground and re-leased the can-non shot seem-ing-ly at ran-dom, the shot tear-ing straight through a hill-side be-fore it hit the first of her tar-gets--the cen-ter of one of the ground ar-rays. The man lead-ing it, a mere ti-ta-ni-um, of-fered no re-sis-tance, and the beam lanced through to hit an-oth-er four ground tar-gets across both ar-rays, but pass-ing close enough to hun-dreds more that the can-non's de-struc-tive aether ef-fects washed over their sens-es, throw-ing their con-cen-tra-tion and co-or-di-na-tion com-plete-ly off, and in some cas-es, forc-ing that de-struc-tive aether into the pat-terns them-selves.

  Three of the ex-perts hold-ing the mas-sive ar-rays to-geth-er suf-fered se-ri-ous back-lash, but Sobon sim-ply moved again, tar-get-ting the war-riors at and be-low Gold Qi with one or two shots apiece, and sim-ply flick-er-ing through the en-tire army in a scant mo-ment, leav-ing al-most noth-ing be-hind but bod-ies.

  At a mo-ment when she deemed it un-like-ly to be pre-dict-ed, she tele-port-ed up be-hind the Mofu Pa-tri-arch, and un-leashed all six-teen ri-fle rods in a sin-gle wave, then tele-port-ed away with-out wait-ing to see what hap-pened. She wasn't ex-pect-ing him to die from that much, and he did not dis-ap-point.

  Sobon was dim-ly aware that peo-ple were speak-ing, and a part of her cy-borg in-stincts tried to col-lect the words while re-main-ing large-ly in com-bat time ac-cel-er-a-tion. It was an in-ex-act art, and she was dis-tract-ed, but Sobon could tell that the Djang Fam-i-ly ob-serv-er was speak-ing, and when she checked, she found him slow-ly stand-ing up from his couch, a firm-ly dis-pleased look on his face.

  In-stead of wor-ry-ing too much about it, Sobon flick-ered close enough to Gin's broth-er to use her Thrust Aether ar-ti-fact of-fen-sive-ly, throw-ing the man at the ground, then leaped back be-hind her shield, ma-neu-ver-ing slight-ly so that she could be-gin fo-cus fir-ing her ri-fle rods on ex-perts. By now, sev-er-al of them had forced up per-ma-nent or semi-per-ma-nent de-fens-es, and Sobon could see they were all wild-ly dis-tract-ed and con-fused by her move-ment dis-play.

  She could keep that up, but made the cal-cu-lat-ed de-ci-sion to seem wind-ed, slow-ing down her charg-ing and fire rates as she dou-ble checked the aether on the oth-er side of the por-tal. In truth... she was us-ing more en-er-gy than she was hap-py with, but she repo-si-tioned that far end of the pick-up with a sud-den thrust, putting it on a course into open space where she could col-lect more aether.

  Two Ti-ta-ni-um War-riors fell, and a Bis-muth bare-ly raised an ef-fec-tive bar-ri-er of some kind of Met-al na-ture qi in time to avoid to-tal de-struc-tion; Sobon moved on to un-de-fend-ed tar-gets rather than waste her time cut-ting through. As she did, she paused briefly, catch-ing up to what Djang Ren Sui was speak-ing into the bat-tle space.

  "What kind of mon-sters have those de-mon-damned fools...?" Sobon didn't take the time to try to trace the sen-tence to a log-i-cal con-clu-sion, in-stead let-ting her sub-con-scious con-tin-ue as the bat-tle con-tin-ued on, one long sec-ond af-ter an-oth-er.

  Her can-non charged again, and Sobon flicked at un-pre-dictable an-gles to a spot where she was sure she had a clean shot at the Mofu Pa-tri-arch, as well as Gin's wife, and once more feigned ex-haus-tion, spend-ing a mo-ment too long aim-ing.

  As she hoped, Gin's wife snapped a bar-ri-er in place--not mas-sive, and in-deed, if she'd fired the can-non from any re-spectable dis-tance, the can-non blast would have been at least di-min-ished by the shield by the time it ar-rived, if not en-tire-ly stopped.

  But Sobon didn't fire, in-stead leap-ing again to Gin's broth-er, who was gath-er-ing in-tense so-lar en-er-gy into some kind of bat-tle suit, with wings, clawed feet, and a mas-sive beaked hel-met, but Sobon sim-ply moved be-hind him, lin-ing up a shot that would strike the Pa-tri-arch from an an-gle he would nev-er ex-pect--straight through Gin's son.

  To be fair to him, the man re-act-ed al-most in-stant-ly, and used the dense en-er-gy he was rais-ing to de-flect as much of the can-non shot as he could, but still the shot tore through his shields and body and con-tin-ued on to his sis-ter-in-law and the pa-tri-arch. With so much of the en-er-gy de-flect-ed or used up, though, the pa-tri-arch had a long mo-ment to set up a prop-er de-fense, an an-gled one which took lit-tle dam-age.

  Sobon was al-ready mov-ing, though, scyth-ing through an en-e-my that had no con-cept for the tac-tics she was us-ing, tac-tics she would nev-er have in-vent-ed her-self. Al-though the Mixed Ma-rine hand-book didn't ex-act-ly have sec-tions ded-i-cat-ed to this kind of fight, they cer-tain-ly had laid out sev-er-al tac-tics to sur-vive against su-pe-ri-or num-bers us-ing high mo-bil-i-ty, ad-vanced aether, and psy-cho-log-i-cal ma-nip-u-la-tion. Al-though there were still hun-dreds of ad-vanced fight-ers left, and al-though Sobon's own qi, and re-mote-ly sourced aether, were not tech-ni-cal-ly lim-it-less... to Sobon, this still felt more like a drill than a war.

  A par-tic-u-lar-ly screwed up drill, one in-vent-ed by a sadis-tic Ma-rine Com-man-der, most like-ly as an at-tempt to prove that he was wor-thy of every-one else's re-spect... but still a drill. Sobon could imag-ine get-ting out of a sim-u-la-tor pod at the end, when the Com-man-der had pulled rank and some-how cheat-ed her side out of vic-to-ry, and Sobon would sim-ply con-tent her-self in know-ing ex-act-ly how hard the man had need-ed to cheat.

  Sobon wasn't ex-act-ly think-ing about that anal-o-gy as she moved, but a part of her sub-con-scious con-sid-ered it, and con-sid-ered who in this sce-nario would be that ar-ro-gant Ma-rine Com-man-der, set-tling on Djang Ren Sui. And that sub-con-scious piece not-ed the flows of fate qi around him, and around the crip-pled Mofu Suno. And al-though Sobon wasn't quite aware of it, the sub-con-scious piece flagged those flows as con-se-quen-tial.

  Sobon trust-ed her in-stincts, when things like that came up, but when she glanced over and not-ed the fate flows, she in-stant-ly saw a prob-lem: the mytho-log-i-cal fault that was de-vel-op-ing ei-ther fell on a war-rior too pow-er-ful for her to kill... or on Mofu Suno, who she would still have to of-fend the Djang Im-pe-r-i-al in or-der to at-tack.

  It wasn't a prob-lem for her to deal with in the mid-dle of com-bat, though, and so Sobon flicked away, ded-i-cat-ing a part of her mind to it even as she went back to at-tack-ing the Mofu army and tak-ing oc-ca-sion-al shots at the Pa-tri-arch, or more com-mon-ly, spook-ing them into think-ing she was at-tack-ing and then pick-ing a dif-fer-ent tar-get. She saved her can-non for tak-ing out ma-jor tar-gets, but used the splash to harm oth-ers; one more Dam-as-cus Qi ex-pert fell, along with all but one of the Bis-muth.

  With-out a word, fo-cus-ing only on her, Sobon con-tin-ued through the bat-tle sec-ond af-ter sec-ond, though she saw di-min-ish-ing re-turns as the en-e-my be-gan to adapt. Even-tu-al-ly, a quar-ter of an hour af-ter the bat-tle be-gan, Sobon had cut the num-bers of the Mofu by more than half--not count-ing the droves of near-ly help-less less-er war-riors--and their ef-fec-tive pow-er by per-haps eighty per-cent. The Pa-tri-arch and Gin's wife had worked to-geth-er to guard each oth-er's backs, along with the last re-main-ing Dam-as-cus ex-pert, who was some kind of ar-ray or pat-tern ex-pert who had im-proved their de-fens-es, and giv-en the two the oc-ca-sion-al win-dow to shoot back.

  For Sobon, though, more than ten times that amount of time had passed, and her aether chan-nels and spir-it bones were aching, the en-grav-ings in her spir-it and her bones get-ting clos-er to fray-ing--some-thing far more dan-ger-ous with-in her body and spir-it than it was when she lost tools.

  And she was be-gin-ning to lose tools.

  At no time had the en-e-my de-clined to try to shoot her with var-i-ous qi blasts, burst, beams, fields, whips, claws, blades, or oth-er col-or-ful metaphors for an-tique weapons. Some had got-ten close; a few had come from odd an-gles and only been de-tect-ed in time for Sobon to de-flect them with per-son-al aether de-fens-es. One had de-stroyed two ri-fle rods as it passed, and Sobon had made the per-son who per-formed that at-tack pay dear-ly for it. Oth-er ri-fle rods, not quite per-fect in their ma-te-ri-als and con-struc-tion, were be-gin-ning to fray, and the can-non it-self had tak-en a beat-ing from be-ing used too of-ten and too much. It would con-tin-ue to fire for a while yet, but each shot was less pow-er-ful and less ef-fi-cient than the last.

  Her thrust qi core and wing pat-terns were the most abused, though, even though Sobon was us-ing both to-geth-er to min-i-mize the strain on each. That was al-ways the true dan-ger--los-ing weapons of-fered few-er chances to win, but shields and en-gines on the verge of fail-ing were in-vi-ta-tions for in-stant de-feat and death.

  Sobon kept her eyes on the two on the cliff--and their at-ten-dants, al-though she had some doubt any of them were in-volved in the fate aethers swirling around them--but still wasn't sure ex-act-ly what she was see-ing meant, or why.

  In the end, that ig-no-rance cost her great-ly.