An omake to represent her sudden jump in Sword Stepping skill.
Sword Stepping Into Enlightenment
Every waking moment that Eirny was not hunting alongside her employer, Gunnar Toad-Terror, she danced through the property he called home. Luckily there was plenty of room on the less than fully developed farm, because the dancing meditation she underwent was far from safe for those around her. At first her sword only slashed into the ground around her, as she spun herself free from the earthly attachment to thought. But as she whirled her way around the Sun, as she envisioned herself as nothing but another constellation, her reach became more; her body was not all she was, and the physical form of her blade was far from all it was.
Everything was a concept. Eirny realized it as she danced through the night, as she forwent sleep. Before it was a physical Thing, it was a metaphysical concept, before it was metaphysical concept, it was an idea, a spark of inspiration, before it was an idea... it was nothing. And she was nothing. So why did she skip the steps between Nothing and Something? She thought that she understood the blade, that she knew what it was meant for, more than any other. A blade was made to cut, and so she cut, she became the blade, and she cut, as her blade was made to cut. She fought as her blade was meant to Fight.
But a Blade was just a Sword. A Sword was just a Weapon. A Weapon was just a Concept of How To Kill. To Kill was, at one time, but an Idea. But all of them bore truth in them, in the idea behind them, a truth of death, of destruction. Why did her Blade only cut - was it because it was curved in such a way that that was what it was made to do? That it was born to do? But it wasn't - it wasn't made to cut, to slash. It was made to kill. To cut, to slash... that was only the way it did so. It was not its reason - she had mistaken the way it walked for the path it walked. She felt like a fool, as she realized the cutting motions of her dance became only a physical representation.
With each spin, the ground was slashed in three sections.
With each slash, the ground was pierced instead.
With each piercing thrust, a rock was chopped to bits.
All of these were the Truth, and none of them were - they were nothing but an infliction of the Idea that birthed the Weapon, that became the Blade.
All of the objects she cut were the same as Nothing - they were concepts, ideas, they were nothing, just like the Blade was Nothing at its core. And so they cleaved as the Idea of Ending that she wielded met the Idea of Existence that formed them.
The motions were blank, they were invisible, they did not happen, or they happened wrong - and yet their effects scarred the earth. For of these were an expression of the Truth; a weapon was made to be an End. An end to a story, an end to a life, an end to an existence. How it ended it was not the truth, it was revelation, what it ended was not the truth, for all things must End. The girl swirled through the void of blades that she felt she had walked in so many times before, and she saw all that existed around her in that moment. All the things she could end.
The thoughts swirled in her head as each step became a step closer to an End. Nothing was born of the blade. It could only end.
She could only End.
And End she would.