Compared to the original twelve sisters, Eculay was a callow youth. She'd only recently reached the two thousand year milestone. As a cultivator in the first layer of the celestial ascendancy realm she was also weaker than any of her seniors. To make up for this difference she had long since adopted an approach of absolute perfection with regard to her techniques. She matched every aspect and motion to that of Orday's original diagrams with uncompromising fidelity, an idealized emulation that magnified the impact beyond the traditional limits of her cultivation. Though such hyper-idealized methodology had limited application in the chaotic struggle of life-or-death conflict, it had certain utility when given the chance to strike with surprise.

  Black Howl had been drawn into battle against the youngest of Mother's Gift's immortals, the blind battle mistress Onimray. Wielding a thin sword in each hand and a dozen more suspended in the air upon lines of qi, the whirling storm of blades she possessed covered all approaches at once. This barrage, though no match for the fury of the lupine demonic cultivator, served well to delay and de-fang his assault while waiting to spring the trap.

  Though she'd turned many dozens of attacks from the horrid axes aside, paying a price in blood each time, the blind woman still stood strong when the gongs rang out and the tide turned.

  Ohlay, golden, glowing, and grand, wielded her thick sword with a combination of delicate grace and shocking power. As a fourth layer immortal she had the power to match Black Howl blow for blow. Forced to race between that formidable singular threat and the wall of floating blades built by one whose sight without eyes cut faster than any other, he chose to tear free by main force.

  This move, a bursting lunge with axes out to both sides that carried him past the sword-wielding ladies, generated an opening Eculay had anticipated and exploited fully.

  “Nice Spheres Arsenal,” she spoke the words aloud, slow and carefully dictated. All to invoke supreme focus and to allow this blighted enemy to know the doom that descended upon him. “Mace Arts: Seventh Form,” she raised her weapon, a narrow-hafted design topped by a many-color sphere formed of composite diamond, above her head upon a single extended arm. Her qi flowed out from her dantian and into the weapon according to a pattern that was ancient, simple, and utterly overwhelming. “Unyielding Gravity.”

  The spherical head of the mace expanded ten thousand times and more, forged into a qi construct the size of a fortress. A single motion, flick of Eculay's arm, and it dropped down onto the foe. Unstoppable, propelled forth by the primordial force of the cosmos that binds all things together, it was drawn unerringly into Black Howl through crushing, cosmic, acceleration.

  Tiny beneath that blow, the wolfskin-cloaked form of the demonic cultivator vanished completely under the strike.

  Unable to dodge, Black Howl raised his clawed hand and tried to simply catch the blow as it came. A pointless effort. The energy within could smash a mountain flat. It pressed down his hands, collapsed across his shoulders, and slammed his body to the earth. A vast crater, large enough to swallow up an entire pavilion, radiated out beneath his crumpled body. Stones and dirt thrown out from the contact slammed into the Starwall hard enough to leave them embedded in the construct, bound to the masonry by molten mortar.

  Though this represented the strongest attack available within the mace arts, and possessed almost immeasurable destructive power, it did not suffice to slay Black Howl. Injured, blood pooling beneath him, the wolf-like monster howled in pain and sought to stand. No single attack by one in the first layer, no matter how idealized, could slay one in the fourth layer outright. It was simply impossible to channel such a vast quantity of qi at once.

  So Eculay repeated the process. A second, and finally a third, sphere of destruction crashed down, slamming the demonic cultivator further until he was tens of meters buried beneath the earth. All attempts at flight were blocked by flashing swords that pinned his arms in a defensive crouch. Curled up and forced to endure, he could not possibly evade.

  Three strikes. They took every fragment of control Eculay possessed, and drained her qi down to nothing. When the third blow fell she dropped prone, unable to even grip her mace and barely clinging to consciousness. Qi depletion surged through her body, damage that would take months to properly restore.

  But Eculay was among her sisters. If she collapsed it meant nothing. She was cared for, protected.

  Black Howl could not say the same.

  By the time Ohlay's sword slashed apart the cowl-shaped remnant soul of the demonic cultivator as he tried to escape the destruction of his body by crawling away through the shadows, the Killing Fields had acquired a crater over one hundred and fifty meters in depth. The smeared remains of the once mighty mercenary, pulped and mashed beyond all recognition, dissipated away into the muck as the plague reclaimed its own.

  A surge of triumph ran through Itinay as the second demonic cultivator's qi vanished from her senses, a polluted drop of oil burned free of the world. The trap, her plan, had succeeded. The enemy attack, powered by three extremely dangerous foes, had been wholly thwarted. Loses to this point were minimal.

  She herself stood before the gateway, the only point of exit from their land, ready to complete the sweep. The weapon she had devised had won the day, and its utility had barely begun to be tapped.

  Everything was glorious, save for one small, slight deviation from expectations. A problem that now screamed straight toward her.

  The first two demonic cultivators had conformed perfectly to expectations. Faced with a trap, they had sought to fight their way out, abandoning all allies to their fate. This allowed them to be surrounded, pinned, and destroyed in a manner that minimized risk to the sisters through proper leverage of their numeric superiority.

  The third broke from this trend. She had advanced slowly, engaged from a distance, and fled instantly when the trap was sprung. The totality of her considerable cultivation and an unexpectedly impressive movement technique were dedicated to her escape. None of the other sisters expected a demonic cultivator to flee with such open cowardice.

  How could they discard the pride and predatory nature that had brought them this far so easily? Demonic cultivators were singularly dedicated to consumption, to predation, to the seizure of the strength of others. They had aggressive, hungry daos that did not easily turn away from conflict. With victory their only path to advancement, the avoidance of battle was always their last choice.

  Except this one was somehow the exception.

  It had fallen to Itinay to find out what that meant. She had taken the failsafe position for herself, a bargain struck as part of the implementation of her plan. The deployment had been meant to remove her from any glory to be gained, a price she was fully willing to pay. A duel had not been part of her plan for this day.

  Nevertheless, the sword in her hand, thin and glowing with the same soft blue shade as her skin, stood ready to face this enemy. Not eager, never that when faced with an opponent two layers above her own cultivation, but steadfast. Ice did not yield the pond swiftly in the coming of spring. Nor did the soft blue star surrender readily to the inevitable dark end.

  Her enemy sliced her way across the terrain of the Killing Fields at impressive velocity. Each step traced out an erratic, razor-edged path of shifting angles structured along a complex and hidden pattern. She moved as an arcflash, sparking from one point to the next. The expenditure of her qi in this manner left behind a distinctive scent of ozone, flaring hard as she pushed to the utmost in her retreat.

  The golden blade in her hand carved through all obstacles, whether they be boulders, fences, or her allied demons.

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  Upon approach, Itinay channeled a line of icy stellar qi down her blade and launched a sharp thrust of blazing white light out before her opponent's path.

  The demonic cultivator blocked it with trivial effort and surged forward with heavy, molten qi burning free of her every pore. This rampaging, liquid heat sought to cut loose the sister's life, but elder minds worked swiftly and even the tiny pause purchased as the bronze-clad demonic cultivator caught her momentum and shifted into charging battle stance provided ample time to take the measure of this inexplicable enemy.

  Armored and with weapon bare, the woman kept the rest of her existence utterly concealed. She? ? wore wraps layered over her hands, and a thick veil covered her face where her helmet did not serve to opaque all. Every scrap of skin was coated in at least two, and often more, layers of textile. Her eyes, darkly grayish and lightly metallic, were shaded by the overhang of her helmet. A bizarre affectation, especially from a cultivator in the celestial ascendancy realm whose body was their dao made manifest.

  Soul Forging required melding body, mind, and soul into a singular immortal entity ready to challenge the boundaries of reality itself. This always resulted in an idealized version of the self, manifest through individualized paths. Though the plague twisted demonic cultivators such that their selves were unerringly aligned towards destructive and consumptive paths that spurred revulsion, the ones who made the choice to follow that abominable course usually reveled in this.

  Black Howl, feral, wolf-like, and cruel, had loved walking the world as a personification of a deadly predator. The Fuming Shade, a being Itinay knew from the long-ago days of the Demon War, was somewhat more subtle, but his death mask visage only served to emphasize the crumbling, ashen, countenance whose facelessness disturbed even many of his own kind.

  This woman chose to hide herself instead. Doubly puzzling given how pointless the gesture ultimately was. Qi signatures were unique to every cultivator. Only a rise in realm could alter them, and that marginally at most. A thousand years from now, if Itinay ever met this woman again, she would be able to recognize her perfectly, sight unseen. The choice to deny this truth through dress was absolutely fascinating, especially to one with a weaver's heart. A puzzle of such profound import that it almost distracted her from the golden blade that sought, with silent ferocity, to remove her head from her shoulders.

  Holding nothing back, the demonic cultivator attacked with cold, unrelenting fury. The blade's edge descended in one attack after another, fast and heavy at once. Blow after blow drove out toward her opponent without pause. A simple, but hideously efficient, effort to rend the enemy asunder.

  Itinay flowed away from those blows, constantly shifting, sidestepping, and scrambling. She held back her sword, sustained the threat of devastating riposte as a brake upon the onslaught. A tried and true measure honed in the fires of the demon war, where she'd survived those more than her match many times. Few were more experienced in drawing out an imbalanced fight in order to delay defeat from an unbeatable opponent.

  Many would call this cowardly. Itinay did not care. She valued survival above such petty needs. Alive, she would endure beyond any criticisms of how she chose to fight. A desperate, pointless, effort to strike beyond her capacity would achieve nothing but her own swift death.

  Delay, and she could endure, preventing the escape of this shifty and cunning foe.

  Her body paid the price for this tortoise-like engagement method. Shuffling avoidance, last-second shifts, deflection to armor and weak edge alignment; these methods might spare her a fatal wound, but they did not allow her to remain unscathed.

  Blood leaked from a dozen cuts. Bruises multiplied from hard blows lashed across her armor. Vision blurred following a strike to the temple by sharpened knuckles. Dizziness threatened to rip her defense apart, even as compounding pain rendered the grip on her blade progressively looser and looser.

  She measured survival one second at a time. Desperate block after lurching parry, everything given just to stay upright, to keep the shining blade from her vitals. Qi roared through her veins, channeled to the point of bursting just to keep her alive and in front of her opponent. Never stop, never retreat, those were not options. A million lives, perhaps all that remained of humanity, depended upon her holding for just a few critical seconds.

  Against this devastating enemy even a minute of delay was impossible. To survive for even half that would demand everything she possessed. The veiled foe spared no mercy, played no games, did not even announce her own name. To that masked demon the sister was not even a person, just one more obstacle to remove in the pursuit of her own survival.

  It was a sentiment Itinay would have admired, if it had not been in service of the greatest depravity in all of history.

  Itinay could not have survived for one minute. Even thirty seconds had a greater than even chance of bringing about her end. Each tick of the time, each heartbeat, was purchased in blood and agony, the each harder than the last.

  Only twenty-two were necessary.

  Nothing is faster than light. At the fullest expression of the Stellar Flash Steps the limitations on speed came not from the technique itself, but the need to avoid setting the body aflame by blasting through the air at such incredible velocities. The stronger the shroud of qi that could cloak the corporeal form, the faster any distance might be crossed.

  At the zenith of strength beneath the heavens, that was truly a mind-bending rate indeed.

  Itinay exchanged hundreds of blows over twenty-two seconds, but in that seemingly minute, impossibly compressed interval, light crossed the distance between the gateway and the Starwall tens of thousands of times over. More than enough to carry a single immortal across without ripping the fabric of Mother's Gift apart from the shockwave.

  Iay descended from the west as a white-edged bolt of absolute power. Shockwaves blasted apart the Killing Fields in her wake. Unable to keep pace, they roared across the landscape tearing apart grass and shattering the closest ghouls simply through the force of her passage.

  “Impossible,” the demonic cultivator spoke the first words from beneath her veil since the beginning of the battle. Absolute astonishment, a palpable disbelief, filled every syllable. “It can't be! No one has that strength!”

  The look granted in response spoke the bare truth, that only a demon would be so foolish as to deny the evidence of their qi, without any need for words. The white-haired immortal raised her arms, and a pair of razor sharp chakrams, one black and one white, appeared in her hands. “If your kind is granted the next life,” the words that came from the throat of one who rarely spoke were soft, calm, and devoid of malice. “Reflect upon this.”

  The metallic rings began to spin. “Scoria Scorn, this life ends this day.” How Iay knew the demonic cultivator’s identity was never said, but the revelation shook the veiled woman to her core, a spoken blow far greater than any Itinay had landed with her sword.

  Sheer panic seized the armored woman. She bolted, accelerating to full speed as she made a beeline for the gateway and egress from Mother's Gift. All defenses were abandoned, sacrificed to pure motile effort.

  Despite her injuries and exhaustion, Itinay was an immortal too, and she retained the presence of mind to strike. Her blue sword thrust forward, all her remaining strength placed behind the formidable burst.

  Scoria Scorn did not defend, did not pause her rush. She simply bent her body and threw her right arm in front of the blow.

  Sapphire-shaded edge contacted the bronze plating, sliced through, and took bones, tendons, and vessels as well, piercing the shoulder clean. The limb tore to pieces, falling free and leaving naught but ruin above the elbow. Gray-brown blood oozed out, coating all directions.

  A crippling wound, one that could well slay even an immortal if left untreated, but by accepting this devastating blow and its horrific consequences, Scoria Scorn successfully passed beyond Itinay's reach in the race to escape.

  Not swift enough.

  Iay's arms snapped forward. The chakrams flew through the air, spiraling around each other in flight. Afterimages formed as they passed, arrayed into a cylindrical lens many meters in length lodged in midair. Power crackled across the edges of each shimmering ring. An immense mass of qi concentrated, channeled, woven, and, at the perfect moment when all things reached alignment, unleashed.

  “Nine Spheres Arsenal Chakram Arts; Seventh Form: Pulsar.”

  A blast of pure qi, invisible to the unaided eye, detonated down the spiral lens. The full, unbridled energy of a star, directed into a perfectly oriented beam for a single fragmentation fraction of time, crossed the gap to slam straight into Scoria Scorn's chest.

  Unleashed at the speed of light, the demonic cultivator was not even aware the attack had begun when it hit.

  Armor disintegrated. Over two dozen protective talismans evaporated. The flesh beneath simply fell apart. All bonds holding its constituent atoms together were utterly overwhelmed and shattered. A single strike, and she simply ceased to exist.

  In the aftermath the air ignited in a perfect firestorm. The backlash of displacement hurled Itinay to the ground hard enough to fracture six bones and burn the skin off every exposed surface on her left side. Overwhelmed entirely, she briefly lost consciousness for the first time in a millennium.

  When she awoke, no more than a few seconds later, Iay had stuffed three healing pills down her throat. Their soft warmth filled her body, repairing damage and bringing out the familiar itch of regeneration. Nerves calmed and her vision gradually returned to its proper inhuman acuity. “Thank you, sister.”

  Quietly, she exulted. Victory. Achieved in full! Her design, her moment of triumph.

  Glory sustained for a single sheltered breath, until her white-eyed elder sister's expression proclaimed a new and terrible truth.

  The remnant soul of Scoria Scorn had escaped destruction.

  Itinay rolled over, leaned on her still good side, and vomited.