Waterstrider

Basements, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fourthmonth, 1634 PTS

When Jihan arrived before the lobby, he had found the hallways surrounding it filled with martial artists milling around in the darkness. Some of them turned in surprise to see the arrival of the final group he was leaving. Some of them called to him happily in greeting, thankful for his rescue of them, though he knew that Rachel had done all the work. He had merely been an escort.

This brought to mind a question he had. The moment they had split from Cyrus, her physical form had vanished. Was it somehow difficult for her to maintain a physical form, or even the appearance of one? Though he knew little of extant practitioners, he did know that such a problem had to be extremely rare. Just what sort of techniques did the woman practice?

Still, though her image was absent, Rachel’s voice was still present, and the incantation she had taught him worked perfectly well. All of the martial artists had been freed from their restraints. They all also naturally listened to his commands. Not only was he at a higher realm, he was also someone who had apparently freed them, and who spoke of a method of escape in an authoritative tone.

“Has something happened?” he asked, curious why none of them were entering the lobby.

“I don’t see any of the Palace Leaders,” said Rachel.

Jihan swept his soul senses over the group, and noticed several individuals in the core formation realm. None of them were wearing the same dark robes and featureless metal mask that the members of the Redwater Sect had been. Jihan stopped a nearby one of the core formers, and asked why they had left the room. Apparently, there was suspected to be poison within the lobby. For some reason, it had not spread to these adjacent hallways.

“Oh,” muttered Rachel, as if she were speaking aloud to herself. “How devious.”

Before Jihan could ask her to clarify what she was referring to, suddenly the hatches on either side of the hallway slammed down, sealing everyone off into the corridor. Shocked exclamations spread around the area, concerned about the development.

‘What’s going on?” Jihan asked again, believing that Rachel had somehow noticed something before it had occurred.

“They’ve turned all the hallways into killboxes,” she said. “The Staiven were fed information on our exact locations, and waited until this group was large enough to kill us all in one go. I would recommend breaking the seal on this room. The poison they’ve started to pump in is quite nasty.”

Jihan ran for the door. He spiraled his miasma within the twisted channels he had built within his body. His three cores were at the center of warped masses of red channels, which would have looked more than anything like twisted masses of blood vessels to anyone capable of seeing them. He called on the technique inside of his lower dantian, feeling a surge of energy flash through his body. This technique was very simple, and merely enforced the power of his muscles. The blessing he was using through it was from the spirit of a long-dead immortal practitioner of the genesis attribute, and together they provided him great strength.

The blood vessels around Jihan’s fists popped as he made contact with the hard material of the hatch, giving him a slight extra boost to his power as he slammed through it, shoving the hatch off of the tracks in the walls, and onto the floor of the hallway outside. He waved the weaker martial artists through, before turning back to face the hatch at the other end of the hall, the one that led to the lobby.

“Should we look for the Palace Leaders?” he asked. “I expect there must have been similar traps in whatever hallways they entered.”

“Yes. Their location was also sent out, so I can tell you they’re in one of the hallways across the lobby from here.”

Jihan was puzzled. Just where was Rachel getting this information from? Was she using some computer device to access the local network? If so, was her body actually not present around her, and she was simply speaking from afar? The mysteries about her continued to pile up, but Jihan knew that it could wait. He sprinted back down the hallway, whose vents still continued to spit out a vile miasmic poison, and used his lower technique once again to tear through another hatch.

As a spirit refiner, Jihan could keep the technique up indefinitely, but it strained his muscles and flesh, and the longer he used it the more time he would need to spend healing afterwards.

Ripping the hatch Rachel directed him towards from the wall, to Jihan’s surprise he found himself faced with one of the oddest sights he had ever experienced. An eerie, shimmering haze filled the room. It was clearly not miasma, but instead an odd, ethereal energy.

“What an odd energy projector,” muttered Rachel.

As he could hardly see due to the haze, Jihan activated his Eye of the Osine, the technique stored in his cerebral dantian. This contract was unique, one of the greatest techniques of the Lee Clan. It involved a contract with one’s own spirit, and allowed practitioners to use the senses of their own soul. With their own eyes, they could see into the spirit world.

With the assistance of this additional viewpoint, it was far easier to see what was going on. Several martial artists, three of which were clearly the ‘Palace Leaders’ of the Redwater Clan, and one manifest practitioner, were fighting against a number of white-garbed Staiven. There was something at the end of the hallway covered in a thick haze of ashata, hidden from Jihan’s gaze, and he knew that had to be the source of the glowing energy. He watched as one of the masked martial artists, a tall, very muscular man who was missing an arm, charged through the smoke, burning the top layer of his skin away. Jihan could not help but respect the man’s sense of self-sacrifice, but he could not let him sacrifice himself when Jihan could assist.

He offered a hand down to help up a female martial artist on the ground, and easily lifted her up as another blood vessel in his arm popped. She was much heavier than he had anticipated, clearly some sort of genesis practitioner. He gave her a comforting smile, and then ran into the haze.

His skin burned, and Jihan realized that while the energy itself was not composed of miasma, there were definite traces of manifest miasma to it. So this energy had been generated in some way, he thought. Perhaps this was what Rachel meant when she referred to it as an energy projector. He thought he heard her say something, but it was drowned out by the pain, and the torrent of additional sanguine miasma that it granted. He smiled against the agony, as he was inured to far worse than this. He fueled his leg muscles with the miasma, propelling himself in moments through the haze. Behind him, his strides had torn deep hashes into the floor. As he had thought when he decided upon this technique for his lower core: who needed a movement technique when sheer power could accomplish the same effect?

He grabbed the bulky man as he passed him, quickly dragging him to the edge of the field, and then leapt to deliver a powerful kick to the machine. It sputtered and spit out braided spirals of light, before bursting apart in a torrent of purple miasma. Jihan realized that a sword had been embedded into it, and he pulled it free. It was of decent make, though damaged by the battle. Holding it in his hands, he faced the four Staiven who had been frantically working on the machine before his arrival.

He smiled at the group, playing with the sword in his hands as he slowly approached them. They took steps backwards, clearly fearful for their lives.

“Was that all you had?” he asked, his words emerging in fluent, though lightly accented, Staiven.

One of them responded with rapid nods, while the others hesitated. One simply trembled, fearful to even move. It seemed that they knew how to cower before a powerful figure. Jihan had once wondered how it felt to be met with such a fundamentally superior force, but he had felt like these mortals before him when he had met with Her.

Suddenly, Jihan heard a voice again, Rachel’s voice, now speaking as a whisper in his ears, as if she was leaning over his shoulder. He instinctively shivered, uncomfortable. All thoughts of Her fled his mind.

“There’s an issue where Cyrus is. I can help you start to evacuate the weaker martial artists to the surface. You and the core formers will need to defend the lobby for another few minutes.”

Jihan nodded.

“If this is all they can muster,” he said, glancing back at the trembling guards, “There will be no issue.”

He raised his sword up, like a butcher preparing to chop his goods.

Sanguine Arts: [Sanguine miasma's nature is to server as a conduit between spacetimes, and serves the role of binding the body to the soul. In essence, there is only one real sanguine art: turning oneself into a conduit, and using it to connect to something in another spacetime. That is to say, that sanguine practitioners contract with spirits and gods, when possible. The difference is in just who they contract. Some practitioners lack such assistance at all, and are forced to simply fuel themselves with the flows of energy within the spirit world, while the most blessed can borrow the favor of an ascendant or Osine. Of course, such favor would destroy the soul of one too weak to handle it. Specific sanguine techniques relate to just what is being enhanced or borrowed through the conduit, and so two practitioners with the same contract but different techniques might use it in very different ways. Due to the particular connection between humanoid bodies and sanguine miasma, all sanguine practitioners are able to enhance the amount of miasma within their body at any time simply by willfully damaging their own meridians. There are many sanguine practitioners who do this in every battle.]