by Ivan Kal
Ming-Li raised an eyebrow at the Arc Commander. “Spies did that to you?”
She saw Danir’s stance straighten and his eyes tighten as he glared at her. “They were not ordinary spies—or rather, one of them wasn’t. I only encountered one of them.”
Ming-Li managed to hold her tongue and refrain from asking how just a single person fought him, a fragment-bearer, and did that to him. She knew that he was powerful, enough so that he might even pose a problem for her. Fighting fragment-bearers had always been difficult and dangerous during the war on Orb, especially the non-mages like Danir.
“So, what does this have to do with me—us?” Ming-Li asked, and saw Darza straighten as well. So he, too, does not know.
“The man that fought the Arc Commander introduced himself,” Grand Marshal said as he glared at Darza and her, and Ming-Li narrowed her eyes. There was only one reason why he would inform them of this. Before she had a chance to speak, the Grand Marshal continued. “He said that his name was Kai Zhao Vin. Correct me if I am wrong, but is that not the name of the man you said somehow managed to come over from your world? The one who helped the Eternal Soul recover Tourran?”
Darza started and then looked at Ming-Li. They had been forced to reveal Vin’s presence to the Lashians once Ming-Li had returned from Tourran, when the Lashian troops had lost the city. The Grand Marshal and the Emperor himself didn’t really blame her, as it had not been her job to keep the city, but stories had spread of Vin and his strange power. While they hadn’t shared everything with the Lashians, they still needed them for their plans. Warning them about Vin had been prudent.
Ming-Li looked at Danir with something like respect in her eyes. “I am surprised that you managed to survive, Arc Commander. Few have ever fought the great Sage and lived to tell the tale.”
Danir frowned at her, but before he could speak, the Grand Marshal asked, “Then this is the same person?”
“I assume,” Ming-Li started, glancing at the Grand Marshal, “that you already have a description of him from the Arc Commander. If it matches the one we gave you, then you already know that it is him.”
“You did not tell us that he could fight a fragment-bearer to a standstill,” the Grand Marshal said through his teeth, his hands tightening on the back of his chair.
Ming-Li exploded into laughter, shocking the room and drawing an angry look from the Grand Marshal.
“What is so amusing?”
Ming-Li caught herself and shook her head. “The man has killed ten times more fragment-bearers than there exist on your entire world! We told you that he was a threat, that he was a spirit artist like me, yet your arrogance blinds you—you could not so much as imagine someone being more powerful than you.”
Danir’s face changed as he heard her speak, becoming more thoughtful. “He was very strong, Grand Marshal, the most powerful opponent I have ever faced. I nearly died.”
Ming-Li nodded her head at him. “Be glad that you faced him as he is now. He has lost much of his former power. Had you faced him at his peak, you would’ve been dead before you had the chance to summon your weapon.”
She was actually glad that Vin had found them, that he had fought Danir. It gave her an idea of how strong he had become. He hasn’t outgrown me yet. It made her feel elated, even with all the time he’d had, and the knowledge he possessed, he still hadn’t reached the seventh step.
The Grand Marshal grimaced and turned to Darza. “You said that this Kai Zhao Vin was a rebel against your Host, that he acts alone, correct? There is no chance that he had more allies like him?”
The lies they told the Lashians were many, but explaining who Vin was had been easy enough. The Lashians were not aware that the world they had visited was not where the Arashan originated. In their eyes, spirit artists like Ming-Li were the elite of the Arashan—which was, in a way, correct.
“Kai Zhao Vin is a dangerous individual, but he is alone on this world, yes. The only other spirit artist here is Ming-Li,” Darza said slowly.
Ming-Li nearly laughed again. Calling a man who nearly beat back the Arashan invasion dangerous was like calling a lion a cat.
“So what do you suggest now? Should we increase security?” the Grand Marshal asked.
Darza glanced at Ming-Li but took the lead. “Vin has some ties with this Eternal Soul and with Tourran. I do not think he would return here alone. But…I do think he might urge the Eternal Soul to attack.”
Grand Marshal waved his hand, dismissing that thought. “Tourran does not have the strength to march into the Empire. They don’t have the numbers.”
“Kai Zhao Vin is a persuasive individual, and while I do not know much about the politics of your world, we cannot afford a delay, not now, not when we are so close. Even if an army can’t reach us, a fragment-bearer along with Kai Zhao Vin could deal a lot of damage.”
“There is no time for them to gather,” Grand Marshal said. “The first opening of the gate will be in only several months.”
Darza looked nervous. Ming-Li understood—he was charged with making sure that the gate was successfully opened. Finally, she decided to help him out a bit. “Darza is right, Grand Marshal. There is no need to leave things to chance. You said that your armies are ready to take Tourran?”
“They are, but we were promised an army,” Grand Marshal said slowly.
“An army to help you conquer the world, but you are capable of dealing with one small nation alone. Attack Tourran—keep them busy, unable to strike at us. Once the gates are opened, the Arashan armies will walk through and help you do the rest.”
The Grand Marshal didn’t looked convinced, but she could see that he was entertaining the idea. Finally, he turned his eyes at Darza. “I will speak with the Emperor, and we shall see what he says. That will be all.”
The three of them bowed and then walked out of the room. Once outside, Ming-Li approached Danir.
“I would very much like to hear about your battle with Vin,” she told him with a predatory grin on her face.
CHAPTER EIGHT
VIN
Five Years Ago
Vin sat in Kyarra’s library, the two of them working on a joint project. Vin had been trying different engraving techniques, trying to enhance his abilities. The best ability that his body allowed him was to use threads of ki to scan, sense, and even control ki, or aura, or anima. So far, for combat purposes he had used it as a way to control his ki constructs. He would create a blade and, by attaching a thread of ki to it, he could move it according to his will—within a certain range, of course. The problem was that his Shaping, while quick, was only as strong as his ki, and the amount of will he decided to set aside for the Shaped blade. During a fight he couldn’t really afford to keep his will on a Shaped blade. Against opponents who were weaker, there was no problem, but those who were stronger could easily break his constructs.
So he came upon the idea to use a real forged blade. The problem had been that any thread he attached didn’t do anything to the blade; he couldn’t move it at all. After some thinking, he decided to try and create engravings which would allow him to fill the blade with his ki, enhancing it further, as well as allowing his thread to have something to attach itself to.
His first attempt had been on a small ki-forged sword. It was a process where he added some of his ki during the process as well as utilized it to purify the metal, making it stronger. After he created the blade, he engraved it with simple etchings that allowed him only to infuse it with ki. The experiment had been a success—he could attach his thread to the blade, and he could just barely move it. As he played around, though, he figured that he could just attach more threads, which seemingly gave him greater strength and control.
He then began thinking on what kind of blades he wanted. His skill set had always been offensive in nature, but now he found himself thinking that he needed to be able to defend himself from powerful attacks, especially since he hadn’t taken the Path of his old body. He had the idea to use
a shield, but he didn’t like being limited only to defense. Instead, he had a particularly crazy idea: make a sword large enough that he could hide himself behind it as well as use it for attacks. It hadn’t been a serious idea, he realized that such a blade would’ve weighed quite a lot and he wouldn’t be able to lug it around with himself all the time. But still he forged the blade, simply because he needed practice and he had no better ideas.
Which was when Kyarra found him. After he explained what it was that he was doing, she immediately showed interest, even proposing that she help him engrave the blade with her own type of engravings. Vin was skeptical, but they had already established that the anima that they used was just completely unrefined aura, and Vin could theoretically supply his ki to their magical wards.
So they started working together. Kyarra summoned her fragment of power to show him some advanced wards, and that was when Vin got the idea. He had known that the fragment of power was somehow bonded to a person’s soul, but it was also stored within it. That drew his attention, as he realized that if her staff that was manmade could be stored somehow in a person’s soul, why not his blade?
Kyarra insisted that only the fragment of power made that possible, but Vin wasn’t so sure. He had visited his own soul’s plane, a realm inside of himself, and the seventh step of the Path had been what Vin had realized as the first step in the development of the soul. He had devised many techniques that utilized such power, and he had been well on his way to creating the greatest and most powerful techniques a master of the seventh step could: a soul realm, the technique that manifests the spirit artist’s inner world. He had never quite gotten the hang of it in his old body, simply because the records that the old masters made concerning the creation of such techniques hadn’t made any sense to him at the time. They called for a way to shape a world within themselves and enter it. He hadn’t understood what that meant, but now he did. He had done it.
When he had realized that he had achieved what the old masters spoke about, he had been confused; after all, he hadn’t been at the seventh step at the time. He came to understand, however, that this power came from the soul, and his soul hadn’t changed—he possessed the soul of someone on the seventh step on the Path, only not the body. He couldn’t utilize this power, or create a technique which required soul ki.
But perhaps the fragment of power did something similar by accessing an inner world without their user being able to do the same. So he asked Kyarra to see all of her books on the subjects of fragments of power, and more precisely on the way that they are stored in the soul.
And so here the two of them were, going over her books looking for clues. So far the closest thing Vin had found was the fact that, in order for a fragment to be stored in a soul, one needed to have a bond with it.
“I don’t think we will find anything. People have been studying fragments of power for a long time, and you would think that someone would’ve figured out how to store items in their souls if it was possible,” Kyarra said.
“I doubt that people with undeveloped souls like yours could manage it, but I am another matter,” Vin said.
He could see Kyarra growing annoyed at his words, but he didn’t apologize. It was the truth. Kyarra grumbled something that Vin didn’t quite hear as he was focusing on the words. She had given him several tongue-gems which allowed him to learn a few of this world’s languages. Of course, his understanding wasn’t perfect, but he had made an effort to learn more on his own. He was currently reading one of the journals written by one of her old lives. The woman that Kyarra used to be had spent some time trying to break the bond with the staff because Tourran had been in a crisis that the Guild Mages refused to help them with, and she had hoped that returning the staff would get them on their side. In the end, she failed, but she did describe the bond between the fragment and the soul as an “unbreakable tether.”
That got Vin thinking.
“The fragment of power is just an anima-well, yes?” Vin asked.
Kyarra raised her head from her own book to look at him. “Just as anima-well? It’s so much more!”
“I mean technically.”
“I…I guess, yes,” she grumbled, returning to her book.
Vin looked to the blade next to him. It had the engravings that allowed him to push his ki inside of it, but those weren’t really anima-wells. The ki was there only for as long as he was supplying, enhancing the blade with it.
“Do you think you could make an anima-well for the blade?” Vin asked.
“I thought you wanted to use your ki to activate wards?”
“I don’t want this anima-well to power anything. I want it separate and completely blocked off—I don’t want anything able to draw power from it.”
Kyarra looked intrigued. “I think I can do that, yes.”
Vin nodded as things started to fall into place. Anima-wells were created from spirit-beast cores, refined ones, and Vin was certain that that was what he had been missing.
Kyarra retrieved an empty anima-well, but when she went to fill it, Vin asked her to give it to him. He put his hand on it and pushed his ki inside. Only a tiny amount of his ki went inside, far less than what Kyarra had to put in, but they had found out that if he was to fill an anima-well with much of his ki, it would shatter. The anima-wells could barely contain a fraction of his ki, as it was far more potent than mages’ anima.
“Let me try it like this first,” Vin said, and took the anima-well from her hands. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the round gem in his arm and remembered what he had done in order to reach the seventh step of the Path—how he had taken a small piece of his soul and fashioned a conduit to attach to his spirit. He did something similar now. He pulled on his soul, just a tiny bit, extending a small tether from it and into the anima-well into his ki. He felt something snap into place and he opened his eyes.
“Well?” Kyarra asked impatiently.
Vin could feel a connection with the gem. He remembered Kyarra explaining how she used her fragment, how she willed it to go inside and pushed. He focused on the tether and tried to pull it inside. Suddenly he had something like double vision, where he could see Kyarra’s library but also his soul’s plane. He saw the Hunter sleeping on a boulder and one eye opening to look ahead. Vin knew that he was looking at him even though Vin wasn’t really inside. The gem disappeared from his hand and he could see it drop inside his soul.
“Vin,” Kyarra whispered. “Do you realize what you have just done?”
He did, although he was certain that she didn’t. Vin could tell that she could never do this, as she didn’t have the required control over her own soul. Something about the fragments of power allowed their bearers to circumvent the need for control, but while Kyarra believed he had just discovered how to create a connection with anima-wells and bring items inside of his soul, he had done something even more.
He could see the tether stretching from his soul; he knew how to create it, and he knew how to cut it, to break the connection. Vin could cut her connection to her fragment, provided he had the time to study it a bit more. From what he had seen of Kyarra’s connection, he knew that it was strong. Breaking such a connection would take him great effort and time, probably not something that he could do in a heat of battle. But he didn’t tell her that; instead, he steered the conversation toward further enchanting his blade. He had some great ideas about the direction the Way of the Soaring Blades would go from here.
CHAPTER NINE
ASHARA
Five Years Ago
Ashara walked into the large building that housed Tourran’s forges and made her way to Vin’s shop. It had been a month since she had asked him to help her get stronger. She hadn’t had many opportunities to speak with him, as he had been closed up in the forge working on his weapons for all this time. She envied him—he had been granted a title, nobility, estates and wealth, just like Ashara, but he didn’t seem to care. The gold he acquired was only a means for getting himself stronge
r. He spent it on rare plants, magical ingredients, beast cores, on the forge. He didn’t even care to show up to the meetings.
The other nobles were already talking, and Ashara knew that they disliked the two of them being granted nobility, that they looked down on them. It was to be expected, she supposed. Vin didn’t care, however—he just kept working on himself. She wondered if she could ever be like him, focused on a single thing to the exclusion of all else, but she didn’t think so. Vin wanted to stop the Arashan, and now while Kyarra was negotiating and trying to get the other nations on their side to band together against the Lashian Empire and their Arashan allies, he didn’t just sit around doing nothing like Ashara. Instead, he grew his power, prepared for the moment when Kyarra would succeed.
She walked over to Vin’s forge and froze at the entrance. Vin wasn’t alone. Kyarra was sitting next to him as they were both bent over the slab of metal that resembled a blade. They were discussing things animatedly as Vin slowly used some kind of tools to engrave the blade.
Ashara wanted to go in, to sit next to them even though she couldn’t contribute anything. She wanted just to be close to them. But she couldn’t; something made her hesitate. Seeing the two of them together, sitting next to each other, comfortable in each other’s presence like longtime lovers made her feel a plethora of emotions: jealousy, anger, sadness, rage…but most of all, self-pity. She wondered if they had slept together, if they had already left her behind. Was she just a friend that they didn’t know how to get rid of? Maybe their lack of attention toward her was their way of telling her that they didn’t need her anymore. Maybe she was just dense and stupid enough not to see it. The words came unbidden to her mind again—Those two, they are giants—and she knew that the strange and powerful man had been right.
He had offered her power, and she only needed to speak his name. She didn’t know who he was, why he had set his eyes on her. Perhaps he was a god, or a demon, but it didn’t matter. A single word from her lips and she could stand next to them as their equal. But she didn’t say anything. She just watched them as they worked. Vin had to have said something funny, because Kyarra laughed and nudged him with her shoulder. Then Vin leaned in and kissed her.