Dodging Echoes (Part Seven)
Maria Turn 10 Eighth Omake
"When?"
Shu Cangquiong did not consider herself a passionate woman. Emotions, in her experience, took up too much time and energy, and worse, it got in the way of good thinking. Neither did she see herself as particularly imaginative. She could create, certainly. She could form an idea, nurture it, develop it. But that was always purely practical – an equation, almost, solved through evaluation and consideration and thought.
But she had no real option, provoked as she was, than to give in to both personal vices and just picture the irritation as it most assuredly was; something fat and reptilian and slimy, cold-blooded, dragging itself out of the turgid, stagnant pit in her lungs where it lived and clawing its way up her spinal column until it coiled, sweating, by her brain and swiped a webbed paw at it, demanding her attention.
She ignored it. She'd learnt, over the last few months, to ignore a lot of things. Having a stolen fragment of universal wisdom lodged between the hemispheres of your mind required it.
"When?"
Instead, she focused on the diagram in front of her, its nexus of mad lines and glowing qi-flows dragging her consciousness up, up,
up- high as she could go, to look down at the twitching corpse of the Song empire and witness the cultivator maggots battle madly for the scraps. It was a good view. Entertaining.
"Fear-witch, you will listen to me when I speak or I shall split open your ribs and eat your heart."
The irritation swiped at her again, then opened its maw and groaned. The diagram shivered, the qi-flows weakening as her attention drew briefly away.
"I don't know," she said, as calmly as she could manage. "As I have stated, elder, at least six times before."
She was pushing her luck, said the part of her mind that still managed to cling to lucidity. Elder in particular should have been more deferential. The rest of the sentence was unsalvageable. She couldn't find it in her to care. Thousand Child Devourer was her senior by less than two months. He'd only just made it to foundation establishment. In any reasonable world, he would not be leading this… exercise.
But this world was not reasonable, and so her current superior was an imbecile with good political connections. Honestly, not even that good. If she'd tried, really tried, she could probably have taken the position herself by asking a few favors. But the truth was, it wasn't worth it. She didn't care about this. Any of it. The girl was a mild curiosity – her bloodline sounded interesting – but curiosities littered the many seas of the Turtle Emperor like fish. She was only here to distract herself.
That's what the lucid part of her thought.
The other one?
HOWLED.
She felt its maelstrom-thought patterns smash against the walls she'd so carefully constructed around it, part technique, part compartmentalization, part self-inflicted ignorance. It screamed and begged and threatened, each idea and word strung nonsensically together until the whole was a jumbled mosaic bereft of any meaning other than desperation;
please. please. please.
please make it stop.
please, just for a moment, make it stop.
But she couldn't.
The Dao-piece would rend at her mind for the rest of her life.
The walls crumbled a little. Shu Cangquiong closed her eyes and forced her attention away. Thousand Child Devourer was still speaking.
"…expect to be obeyed in a timely manner, do you understand?!"
He was closer than she'd like. She stared at him, and weighed different futures against each other. She could kowtow, apologise, and explain again that no, she could not predict when the caravan would leave the granary with its new escort… or…
The irritation croaked again.
Hmmm.
That was
tempting.
She'd have to dress it up a bit… but then, the Altar turned on each other all the time, right? Not hard to use that to her advantage. His second, Lung-Slice, was ambitious, too.
Yes. Time to express herself.
Shu Cangquiong smiled, suddenly, letting a manic gleam slip into her eyes. Devourer blinked.
"Do you know, great elder, why they call me the Mother of Mists?"
No point in letting him answer.
She breathed.
A thick, misty tendril unrolled from her mouth, cool and wet. It lashed across the short distance between them and buried itself in his face. He gagged.
Time to have some
fun. With a blink, she shifted the chemical composition into one of the simpler poisons in her repertoire, a funky little nerve-toxin that would make his every moment of life agony. It was cute, but it didn't quite have the spark she was looking for. No. She needed something better. What…
She thought about the irritation and its long journey upwards.
Aaaaaah. Yes. Long. Slow.
The composition shifted again, layering one of her better drugs over the top. A hallucinogen, subtle but potent. It would drag out every second to an eternity.
Thousand Child Devourer keened quietly, his hands spasming. She broke the connection, letting the mist seep into him, and sat back to watch.
Another twitch of his hands. What-
Oh. Oh,
clever boy.
Shu Cangquiong reached into Devourer's robes, slapping away his desperate, spasmodic fingers, to find what he was trying so hard to reach without her knowing. A heavy, golden skull, run through with tendrils of red meat. From the way it pulsed with life qi, it could only be a treasure.
"Smart boy," she said casually, before searching him more thoroughly. Two more trinkets on him. Not a bad haul. "Not
quite smart enough, though."
There was a polite cough behind her. Shu turned to look. Lung Slice stood, watching her, his face composed in courteous inquiry.
"Something you're forgetting?" he asked.
…What was he-
His eyes flickered to the treasures in her hand.
Oh. Yes. Silly of her.
She tossed the skull to him. There was the briefest moment after he caught it where she could still see it, but then it was gone completely.
"Such a terrible tragedy," she said casually.
"Certainly," said Lung -lice, his face contorting into respectful sorrow. "So full of promise. So young too… commander."
She liked Lung-Slice. She liked Lung-Slice a
lot.
"The poisons of the Slaughter of the Sands are mighty indeed," she said. "I could not save him in time. So lucky that you were here to save his cultivation, at least." With that, she tossed him the antidote.
"Kind of you," he said mildly, eyes fixed hungrily on Devourer's contorted face.
"Think nothing of it. Wait for him to die, first, though, just to be safe."
She turned back to the diagram again, and settled in to wait.
---
Everyone knew, before they even set off, that this was going to
suck.
None of them said it out loud, of course. The mortals on the caravan were skittish enough as it was. But the threadbare handful of survivors from the escort said a lot, and experience filled in the rest. The alliance wanted Wu Diao Shi badly enough to put serious effort into getting her. Far more serious than anyone had expected.
Why was one little girl so important?
Still. At least they knew. They could plan around it as best they could. Book-of-Names had filled them in as best as he and his survivors could; previous assaults had been effective more because of how well they seemed to know the escorts' weaknesses than anything else. In particular, they'd seen no major talents; whether that meant there were none, or they were waiting for a better moment, was anyone's guess. Either way, it suggested Noble Knowledge diviners were present. Good ones too. Coalition Guerillas were warded against scrying. For someone to punch through…
That had put stealth out of the question. The alternative was speed. The mortals were exhausted, so they'd need to be carried – except that too would put the escort down cultivators they would very clearly need. The argument had flown back and forth for a while until Maria had stopped, furrowed her brow, and turned to Draconis.
"How big can we get a Kataphractoi?"
He considered, then glanced back at the squad.
"…Not big enough for all of the mortals to get on," he muttered. "Not as we are."
Ganbei had interjected then.
"Define 'as we are.' Qi generation issue?"
"Yes."
The drunkard had glanced across at the portable still her squad had brought with them and smiled.
"That," she'd said, slowly, "might not be insurmountable."
And thus they'd arrived at this lunacy.
"Imperator," muttered Nikolas, staring into the mason jug of …something… he'd been handed, "grant me the strength to drink this shit."
"And the fortitude to survive the hangover tomorrow," added Priscian fervently.
"Oh, it'll arrive earlier than that!" said Ganbei brightly. "You should
really start to feel it in about four hours."
Priscian turned a horrified face to her, then to Maria, then to the bottle, and then back to Ganbei.
"…I hate you," he said, faintly. The drunkard smiled.
"Good! You're paying attention."
"Hush," said Maria. She turned to the squad. "I know," she said. "This is fucked. Won't lie to you. Might fuck you up long term, or your cultivation. Big ask. But we are the Golden Devils. Big asks is what we do, for the clan, for the world…"
She turned to look meaningfully at the mortals, huddled against the back wall of the granary, exhausted, wounded, and numb.
"…and for them."
There was a pause. She watched her juniors. They watched the mortals. Then, at last, they turned back. Priscian pasted on a bright smile, visibly smothering his fear. He raised the jug.
"Prosit, lads."
"Prosit," said Maria, smiling, her voice echoed back by the others. Brave boy. Still frightened, but doing the job regardless.
No more stalling. She brought the jug to her lips, and drank.
It was fucking
foul. She felt her throat convulse, trying to gag, but she forced it open again and swallowed, draught after draught. The booze wasn't far off of neat alcohol, sharp and clear and
burning like she'd swallowed a flaming coal, but there was an awful floral tinge to it too, like aniseed, that gave it a cloying sweetness.
Rotting flowers.
Shut up. Still not talking to you.
At last, the mason jar was empty. She dropped it, coughed once, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
"The fuck was that?"
"The best I could do under short circumstances," said Ganbei. "Be grateful it even tastes
that good. Could have been worse."
"
HOW?!" gasped Cecilia, her bronze flesh starting to trend uncomfortably towards green. Ganbei shrugged.
"Could have used Wise Hearted Carp for fining. Your tongue would actually disintegrate, and you'd call it a mercy. Couldn't figure out how to balance that with the demon hedgehog urine, though, so you escaped that."
"Stow it," said Maria. "How long till it takes-"
And then it hit her stomach.
The result wasn't what she'd expected, from long experience of Drunkard battle-brews. Those were hard kicks of qi, immediate and external as the beer poured new power directly into her system. Instead, she felt her heartbeat start to speed up till it was a constant staccato rapping on her ribs. Her qi began to cycle through her meridians completely unbidden, faster and faster, sending heat running through her every inch.
"Gods," she gasped. "What the-"
"Ride it out," said Ganbei. "It'll work. I promise."
Faster, it cycled, and faster. And yet, somehow, it stayed ordered, a tight sharp stream speeding through her like lightning. A stream, she realized, that was growing. Each second, more and more power began to flood through her, the qi deepening and intensifying as it went. The energy anchored her into her own flesh – aware of every fibre of muscle, every twisting nerve.
She felt like a god.
Heaven's guts.
"I take it back," she muttered. "This. This is good shit."
Ganbei gave a wry shrug.
"We do what we can."
No time for more than that. Imperator alone knew when this madness would end.
"Outside and form up, lads. Kataphractoi. Speed and size, fuck the defense."
They nodded. Each one had the flushed, mad look she was sure was gracing her own features. She'd never heard of… of too much qi. It couldn't really be hazardous.
…Could it?
Fuck. No. Focus. This was going to have to be fast. They walked/stalked/stumbled/staggered out, one after another, out of the granary, falling quickly into position. The kataphractoi wasn't as common as the hoplite, but they'd drilled it enough to make it work. Hands dropped onto shoulders. Stances were assumed.
"Lock," she growled.
"Locked," chorused the squad.
"Cycle."
That one felt pointless, considering, but fuck it, protocol was protocol.
"Cycling."
"Sync."
And with that, she felt seven qi systems, each one relentlessly churning out qi by the second, snapped into one thrumming circuit. The mad surge rushed through her, catching her own speeding system and gunning it faster like water through a millwheel. She had to fight down an audible gasp; the sheer pressure was forcing the air out of her lungs.
As they did, the kataphractoi didn't so much form as explode into existence. She directed the torrent of power as carefully as she could, guiding it through the lines and planes of the construct, but the sheer amount of what she had to work with almost got away from her. She'd thought the increased size would be an issue, but to be honest, it might have made things easier. Trying to guide this lunacy would have been impossible through a smaller, more intricate space. As it was, she had to run her mind back over everything a few times, tightening uneven flows and pulling runaway capillaries back into sequence.
"Call that syncing, shall we?" she croaked. A few affirmative wheezes answered her. Gods. This wasn't a formation. This was a fucking
engine.
The rest of the caravan had poured out behind them, dropping into position around them and shepherding the mortals like exhausted sheep. The katapractoi, standing an easy ten feet tall if it was an inch, bent its knees as much as it could. There'd be room behind the rider for all of them, at least. Fuck, there'd be room for a small house.
The mortals were helped up into position one by one by the other cultivators. A handful then settled around them for protection – Strength Purity and a few of the itinerants. Then, as it started to rise-
"WAIT!"
They stopped. Shanshu, jaw set, pulled herself up onto the back of the kataphractoi, settling herself at the back of the party.
"Better position to shoot," she muttered under her breath.
Maria, staring out of the rider's eyes, made herself turn back. No. No point reading into that. Too much to do.
"Departing," she said, her voice amplified by the qi construct, and set off.
---
Lung-Slice had decided to start at the head and work his way down. Anything else, he had confided, always felt uncivilized; too much like torture for his taste. She had to admit, she respected that. A lot of the Blood Path practitioners she'd met were sadistic as a matter of course.
"Not an inaccurate statement," Lung-Slice responded, as he finished cutting away the softer meat that clung to the corpse's face. "Something of an occupational hazard. Not much room for empathy before the Altar, so a lot of people go as far as they can in the opposite direction."
"But not you?"
"Well." He pondered, chewing. "I'm not averse to causing pain when necessary. I just can't help but think that revelling in it is rather pointless. Power needn't be so… unsophisticated."
"And yet you're the minority," said Shu Cangquiong idly, not turning away from the diagram.
"True. Then, I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise. Can one even
be in good taste if there's no classless ruffians to compare yourself to?"
She laughed.
"Excellent-"
And then the diagram sparked, dragging back her attention immediately. The caravan was moving. And at its head-
The mad half of her mind screamed again, louder, as the dao-fragment pulsed in recognition. Some combination of fury and fear send black vines climbing up her skin.
"How quickly can we mobilise?"
Her voice was tight and clipped. Lung-Slice looked up at her, catching her shift in mood and following suit.
"Now. We're in position already."
"Go. Hit them. Time Shatter to distort, e veryone else scorched earth – whatever you have to throw at them, do it. Just make sure they're all dead."
He tilted his head.
"But the girl-"
"
I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE GIRL!"
The madness crawled into her voice as she screamed, sprouting little flowers of hate. Lung-Slice flinched. She forced herself to modulate her tone.
"She's one little brat of minor use at best. The escort has several individuals in it who can cause us the worse kind of trouble. Lung-Slice. Scorched. Earth."
He watched her, face inscrutable. Then, at last, he bowed, every inch the obsequious servant.
"As you command, elder."
---
The first sign that something was wrong hit them twenty minutes out. The outbound trip had been long, but that had been dragged out by needing to be stealthy. Going back at full-pelt in a fucking kataphractoi should have cut the damn thing in half. And yet…
"I – saw – that – house – before," gasped Nikolas over her shoulder. Priscian nodded, not speaking, trying to maintain his qi cycle.
"You – sure?"
They nodded.
Fuck. Okay.
Maria shifted formation-lead back to Draconis and clenched her eyes shut, trying to focus. Flared her qi twice in tight pulses. A moment later, the other squad leaders had leapt onto the back of the Kataphractoi. She pulled herself, careful as she could, back through the formation, and pushed her head out from behind the construct's surface.
"Something – wrong," she grunted.
Liming nodded slowly.
"Lan Hua said the same thing," she said. "It's a loop."
"We'd have noticed by now if-" began Ganpei, but Book-of-Names stopped her.
"They have someone who can alter the sequence," he said tersely. "Time Shatter specialist. If they fuck around with enough of the details, and if you aren't looking for it, you might not realise."
And they hadn't been looking for it, because of course they hadn't. Either they were keeping up a full-pelt run, or they were cycling the most insane amount of qi. All they'd been watching out for was a direct assault.
Like fucking idiots.
"What – now?"
Liming considered.
"We can cut our way out if it," she said eventually. "But we'll need to slow down for that. Too many of us for a mobile strike."
"Can't – you – do – it – on – the - kataphractoi?"
She shook her head.
"No. The illusion-severing cut is about stillness. None of us are advanced enough to try it on the scale we need as is; we'll have to stack the deck."
Ganpei hissed through her teeth. "Make it obvious what we're doing."
"They'll hit us," chimed in Book-Of-Names.
Liming shrugged.
"If you have an alternative, I'll happily hear it."
We stood in uncomfortable silence. She was right.
"Well then. We stop, circle around my squad and the … horse… thing-"
"Kataphractoi-"
"I am not even going to
try and pronounce that, but we defend until we can make the cut, and then we bolt again."
It was a bad plan. But then again, so was everything else so far. Why change habits?
We agreed on our signal – Ganpei would flare her qi three times – and she sank back into the construct, pulling herself back to the rest of the squad to brief. Then came ten minutes of tension, watching the orders filter back through the ranks.
Took lead back form Draconis. Gritted her teeth. Any moment, now. Any… moment…
Ganpei's qi rapped out a sharp staccato.
Now.
She yanked on the rider's reins and locked the horse's knees, and the kataphractoi skidded to a halt. The mortals and their defenders clung tightly to the construct's surface. Around them, the rest of the caravan was shifting, the Sabres darting behind them and stilling immediately in prepped stances. Priscian's qi-sense flicked out over them, filtering information back through him to the rest of the squad; their systems moving into a loose, whirling spin as they prepared themselves. A tight perimeter around the kataphractoir was already in place – dozens of cultivators in tight defensive poses, facing out.
One second.
Two.
Three-
And then they hit them.
Equal mix of Gao and Altar at the front. A lot of both. Clawed fingers and strange fleshy appendages came boiling up out of the rubble, alongside poisoned blades and thrown bottles. The perimeter was immediately a mass of shifting violence, too fast to read. Blows and techniques and weapons, locked in the eternal dance of the sect foot-soldier.
Should be down there, muttered the Red Place, but there was no heart in it.
Shut. Up.
Don't like this – distance.
I look like I'm in a place to be distracted by your shit right now?
Four seconds.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
The caravan were taking casualties. Not many, and less than they were dishing out, but it didn't matter when the assault had the weight of numbers. The mortals were muttering fearfully, staring down. Behind them, Maria watched Shanshu throwing gouts of fire down into the melee in thick streams, her face locked into a furious rictus.
Eight seconds.
Nine.
Ten-
Priscian's senses sparked with meaning; the Sabres hunkered down, their swords gripped loosely in their sheathes. Liming whispered something too quiet to hear.
Breath in.
Eleven seconds.
Breath out.
Twelve.
Breath in.
Thirt/
They cut
/een.
It's like the world snapped in two, and everyone went with it. In one half, they went on, circling forever, moment after moment repeating like a chain of pearls on a thread. In the other-
Oh.
Oh shit.
In the other, they were three miles off course, and the rest of the assault bore down on them in a shrieking horde, directly in front of them.
Fuck.
FUCK.
"HOLD FAST!" shrieked Ganpei. She leapt, cavorting and spinning through the air with the madcap rambling grace of her sect, to perch on the kataphractoi-rider's head. "SHANSHU, GET YOUR ARSE UP HERE NOW!"
The sorcerer sprinted along the back of the kataphractoi-horse. Maria could see the weakness of Xin Sorcery in every step; she moved like a fucking mortal, graceful and skilled but too damn
slow. Ganpei was a boiling pot of frustration.
Damn it. Needed to interject-
Closed her eyes, snarled, forced the whorling pattern of qi to shift-
The flesh of the construct warped and flowed like water into steps. Shanshu took them three at a time. Below them, the sabres had waded into the fray like warrior gods, their swords slicing through the descending tide in graceful silver arcs. It didn't matter. They couldn't move forward with them in the way.
Ganpei, you better have a fucking plan.
Shanshu at last arrived at the rider's head. Ganpei was gulping something potent out of a bottle, her cheeks bulging with every mouthful. Then she flung the empty bottle down into the fray.
"Fire. In front of me."
Shanshu's hands snapped into position. A tongue of flame started dancing in the air. Ganpei closed her eyes.
"Fucking better appreciate this," she muttered. And then she spat out a thick plume of qi, roiling with the oil and fire she'd just dragged into her system. It hit Shanshu's flame-
WHUMPH
An impossible second sun roared into life, searing Maria's eyes with light she could still see it through her eyelids, a blazing blue-white colour that scorched everything clear in front of the Kataphractoi for gods knew how far.
Shanshu gaped. So did Maria. Then Draconis thumped her shoulder with a closed fist and she came back to herself.
"Travelling," She bellowed, and set the Kataphractoi into a dead run. Behind them, the rest of the escort fell into a fighting retreat, disengaging as fast as they could and following. It was a bastard maneuver to pull off at the best of times; she watched another dozen casualties in that mad cauldron of seconds.
Didn't have time to think about that. She had three miles to make up and the assault wasn't done. They were still streaming after them, skirmishing over and over with the ground troops. They were going to loose all of them before we even made it to the damn route.
But Ganpei wasn't done. "Give me another," she grunted. Shanshu's hands danced through another complex seal, and a spark burst into life. Ganpei's head snapped forward like a bird. She swallowed it.
"This," she muttered, "is embarrassing, stupid, and crude as hell."
A smile slipped across her face.
"Mother always said that's how it would end."
…What?
Ganpei leapt again into the air. Priscian's senses ran up over her in the air, seemingly of their own accord; through him, Maria felt her qi twist into some bizarre shape she couldn't, for a moment, recognise. Shanshu's face stilled. Maria watched as shock/understanding/horror/rage rolled in quick succession across her features.
"Transmutation," she muttered.
The roiling, volatile cocktail of fire and oil in Ganpei's stomach spread through every inch of her system. The spark of real fire, still held tight in Ganpei's mouth, sustained somehow through a technique Maria barely understood, brushed against her contorted qi-flows.
And bloomed through every inch of her.
The second explosion was bigger than the first. It was also more controlled, because of course it was. Ganpei
was that explosion. She directed it to scorch backwards across the Gao and Altar foot-soldiers with the precision and grace that hid beneath every Drunkard's rambling dance, scorching them clear one by one. Even the light seemed to flare towards them, not back at us. She was empyrean.
She was beautiful.
And then she was gone, and there was nothing but smoke.
On their head, Shanshu was muttering some prayer she couldn't quite catch. She kept running. She didn't know what else to do. The mortals had to get back. The girl had to get back.
Couldn't tell you how long they kept running. Time blurred. Had to make herself check for repetition on the route a few times. Paranoia her new, creeping friend.
Then, at last, the route was on the horizon, in front of them, beneath them. The rest of the escort gave a ragged cheer. Easier now. A straight line from here to the line, with reinforcements dotted along the way. Good news. So of course heaven had to ruin it.
The world fractured again into clean, sharp lines. I watched potential futures dance before me. Out of that kaleidoscope came our next attackers.
More Gao. More Altar. And worse, Time Shatter. Not many – they were a reclusive bunch, and the Alliance deployed them rarely – but enough. They moved through the horde with an eerie, disjointed motion, rewinding, accelerating, splitting into possibilities and resolving back again.
Another assault. Gods. How many fucking
were there?
They poured in from either side of the road, leaping out of the possible future they'd been hidden in to pincer closed in front of the caravan and on either side. Less of them than before, but what did that matter? Less of their own too. She'd have to cut through to get to the first fortification, and they didn't have a way to clear the path first; the construct could only take so many hits before it would shatter like glass.
Liming and Book-of-Names were fighting already. Fuck.
Fuck.
…Can't stay.
No.
Girl first.
Yes.
…This is evil.
This is war.
Fuck.
No. Focus. Still had a little time – can't accelerate, going as fast as we damn could as it was. Needed to try something else.
Fuck.
Reached back through the construct's pattern, beneath the mortals. Distort. Bubble formed around them as the construct's surface closed gossamer-thin above them. It would just about hold their weight.
Fuck.
The rider pulled on the reins. The horse reared.
Back legs kicked. Front legs reached.
The Kataphractoi jumped.
The world became a lurching mess. The mortals crashed into one another and the shield above them like ragdolls. But it didn't matter. It had worked. The were airborne. Now they just had to survive the landing in a qi construct far too big without shattering it like porcelain
while she'd already distorted the fucking flows.
Fuck it.
Fuck it.
Keep going.
They started down again. Positioning was easy enough – momentum and weight had the front pointing down, the horse's legs already extending out to take the weight. Problem was going to be keeping the surface together.
Alright. Reinforcement. Split off capillary flows from every major stream in the hooves and legs, turned them out, down, back, in – felt the construct waver a little as the flow shifted to favour the bottom.
Impact. Shock, juddering and heavy. The reinforced feet took the brunt of it, but it was rolling up already.
Took the circular capilliaries and
yanked, heaving them up along the main flows to match reinforcement as it rose up through them, a single tight band of iron-hard solidity. Felt her lungs fluttering in her chest.
Almost done.
Almost.
And finished. She'd fucking
made it.
On the head, Shanshu was bellowing curses, clutching to the helmet and staring back at the fight.
"FUCKING LUNATICS!" She shrieked. Then her hands moved again, and spurt after spurt of flames spun away from us to descend into the distant melee. Give the bitch her due, she was a fine shot.
Kept running. Kept running. Kept running.
First fortification gleamed, ahead of us.
---
Shu Cangquiong was watching, howling with fury.
She could stop them. She could catch them, even now.
Kill them.
But she wouldn't. Would never admit why, but the fear was an icy, laughing demon on her back, wearing Maria's face, and she wasn't ready to face it again.
---
Closer.
Closer.
Closer.
The fortification was rough as hell, a rough wooden wall thrown up by legionnaires and manned by hoplites. The most beautiful thing Maria had ever seen.
"ASSAULT FURTHER UP!" She bellowed.
The Hoplites nodded, flickered, shifted, and then two kataphractoi bulleted past them towards the fight.
And through the wall as the gates yawned open. She could see the next fort already.
And through that one.
And the next.
And the next.
And at last, the ward fortress is there, and she goes through as the last few guttering sparks of qi in her system burn out, and everything went black.
---
Think trying to write this in the third person past tense is what made it harder.
@Falconis , you spoiled me!
Going to do one last bit to sum this arc and then on to something Not Shit.
@Alectai @Kaboomatic @ReaderOfFate , may I have a threadmark please?
