Joshi had been stalling for time. He could sense the power difference between him and the Inquisitor every time her attacks brushed past him. His will threatened to collapse while his whole body shook with her presence. But every attack dodged was a little more of her lux used up. They could drain her and stall until Chang-li and Noren returned.

  As Morning Mist unleashed their first attack, his kinsmen formed red lux barriers, making a ring inside which Joshi and the Inquisitor fought. It felt right to be championing his people and his father here, on the plains where he had grown up. His path had taken him far from here, and he would never be truly a member of the clan again. His fate lay elsewhere, should he survive this, but to have his kinsmen recognize his strength made his heart glad.

  The multi-wave attack crashed down, dozens of techniques all launched at once against the Inquisitor. Joshi held his breath as they pounded against her. With every moment, his Intent firmed. It only worked because the Inquisitor was not focusing the Intent of her attacks on the Darwur. He could sense the Morning Most cultivators moving away to their fall-back positions. No doubt the Inquisitor would sense them as well, but hopefully she would think they were fleeing her wrath. It wasn’t honorable for them to intervene, but the Inquisitor hadn’t called any rules for this fight.

  Joshi waited.

  Inquisitor Pak swung her sword, unleashed a lux-forged blow that rippled across the space they’d been fighting, tearing up dirt and showering it everywhere. Joshi evaded. He tossed his Binding Chains and wrapped them round her legs and arms. It slowed her for half a second as she fought to tear the technique apart.

  In that instant Joshi yanked a scroll from his tunic and activated its script. The scroll flared up in flame without heat and vanished. As it did scripts placed all around the circle, buried before the fight, exploded in brilliant flashes.

  Dust rose up all around, hiding the Inquisitor.

  He felt a wild, uncontrolled burst of will smashing through the scripted techniques and had just time to throw up a shield of his own against that burst. It knocked all the Darwur cultivators off their feet, their shields crushed in an instant. The ground shook. Some of the abandoned tents farther away crumpled. A campfire that had been put out days before roared back to life. The Inquisitor was concealed within the storm of dust.

  Joshi lowered his Intent as the dust blew away in a strong wind that carried the debris of several of the tents into the newly lit fire. They caught quickly, the smoke adding to the chaos of the battlefield. His kinsmen scrambled to their feet, desperately trying to get their shields back up as he held his breath and watched.

  The Inquisitor emerged from the middle of the field. She turned and faced him. Her face was dirty and there was a single drop of blood on her lip. She wiped it away with the back of her hand before smiling. “So you have taken your shot. That's always how I like my inquisitions to go. I let the accused speak, and then I judge.”

  She raised a hand, and multiple lux constructs appeared from her soul space. They were like swallows, made of indigo and green lux wrapped in a red shell. Chang-li probably could have made sense of them at once. They unfolded wings and lifted into the air before vanishing to do her will.

  “My eyes will see all,” she said. “You can't hide from me.”

  But Joshi was heartened. The attacks had touched her. She bled. It had been a massive conjoined effort from every cultivator here, and she had brushed it off, but they had touched her. It must have cost her some lux to defend herself. Surely.

  The red lux barriers around the ring shook and cracked under the impact of the Inquisitor’s attacks. At first he had been surprised they had not shattered instantly. The force of each hit and near-miss spread across the barrier, absorbed by the efforts of several dozen cultivators.

  She was weaving a complex technique now, one packed dense with indigo lux, even as her constructs flew about.

  “I am marking each and every one of you as traitors,” she said conversationally. “With my mark on you, even if you try to flee, I will find you. If I have to hunt you to the ends of the earth. Every single one of your traitorous sect will be hunted down and brought to justice.”

  Min was whispering in Joshi’s ear across her delicate blue lux spiderweb. “We’re preparing for another joint assault. It’ll take us another moment to get everything ready. Then you tell us when to strike. Her constructs really are hunting us all, but they’re not hurting anyone. Just marking.”

  Joshi kept his attention focused forward. “You and your sect are about to find why I am the very best at what I do,” Inquisitor Pak said. Her Intent was like a knife’s edge, hard, sharp, pressing. “In the name of the Emperor, I judge you. I find you guilty. I sentence you. And now I pass sentence.”

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  She flung out her technique. Joshi had been expecting it. His gauntlets flashed as he attempted to slice it to pieces, but it settled in around him, wrapping him in folds of lux. He activated his slippers. He felt their power dissipate as Pak’s Will held him imbedded in her technique

  Inquisitor Pak smiled triumphantly. “Ah,” she called. “You are relying on an artifact, and that’s no match for my pure skill.”

  Joshi fought to remain calm. It was alright. While her attention was on him, she wasn’t destroying the lesser members of the sect. She was toying with him, he realized. That was fine. He protected them all by delaying.

  Inquisitor Pak began pulling on her weave, dragging Joshi toward her. As her will worked through the technique, he saw the edges of it, the holes, how she had bound him. She wasn’t tying him to the spot. No, she had just used the indigo lux in her technique so that when he tried to call the slippers to move him to a place, it intercepted and turned him back to the beginning.

  Once he saw that, the technique couldn’t hold him. He slipped right through it, stepping behind her.

  She whirled, face astonished.

  “I cannot be bound,” he said, and he felt his Intent flare. “But I can choose to bind myself.”

  He used that resolve, funneling it into a punch, not trying any fancy technique, just infusing his arm with red lux and his gauntlet with orange. He drove his fist into her stomach. “I choose to stand with my sect. That doesn’t make us traitors.”

  He followed up with a left-hand blow, catching her on the jaw. She gave a great grunt and slid backward.

  Joshi stepped in, bringing his right hand around in a heavy blow to the Inquisitor’s stomach. She gasped and was knocked back several feet, doubling over.

  She looked at him, eyes full of hatred and pain. “I was going to wait until your master arrived, but I think it’s time to start showing you what true power is,” she said.

  Behind her, the smoldering ruins of multiple tents broke out into flame. Wind knocked through them, spreading the sparks throughout the encampment. Smoke rose. Some of the cultivators coughed, though they were all at the Peak of Bodily Refinement, and most could ignore a little discomfort like that for a short time.

  Joshi braced himself as the wind whipped around in a circle, answering Yoonji’s will. The smoke gathered tighter. Now he couldn’t see the edges of the circle, his kin hidden by a blanket of smoke.

  Inquisitor Pak thrust both hands forward toward him, and a burst of wind smashed against him like a hammer. Joshi staggered back, and suddenly Yoonji was there, her hand wrapped around his neck.

  Before he could activate his slippers she lifted him from the ground one-handed. With the slippers touching only air, they didn’t answer him. He cursed. He had discovered that limitation in practice when he had tried to use them for a jumping attack, but he had not realized the full implications.

  She smiled. “Now then, we—”

  She interrupted herself looking upward. Joshi felt it too: a great burst of willpower coming from the direction of the tower. He smiled.

  Chang-li must have completed his advancement. That power must be him and Noren returning. They had delayed long enough, or so he hoped. He had no idea how much lux was left to the Inquisitor.

  Yoonji glanced at the tower in dismay.

  Joshi flared his will not to be bound and her hold on his neck slipped. He dropped to the ground. Then, with their soles on the ground once more, the slippers took him across the circle in a step. The smoke had died away. His kin were watching with worried faces.

  “What happens now?” Temaj asked.

  “Now, I hope, we see a real battle,” Joshi said grimly.

  ~~~

  Hiroko watched, heart in mouth, fingers weaving blue, indigo, and green lux together as the Inquisitor swung her sword at Joshi. She could feel the woman's will focusing down on him to the exclusion of everything else, for a blow that would surely cleave him in two when it landed. When the woman lifted Joshi, Hiroko was about to release her technique half-formed in a desperate move to save him. Before she could, they all felt the flare of power from the tower.

  Joshi vanished, appearing twenty feet away.

  The Inquisitor snarled and turned on him. She seemed too offended and enraged even to bother with techniques, as though just her will and her sword were more than enough to handle any of the ones who dared attack her.

  Hiroko focused. She had been practicing with her blue weaves all through the tower, feeling them strengthen as she gained more sense of exactly what blue light could do. The tutoring Sun Wukong gave her had helped. Now she put everything she knew into this weave.

  It didn't matter that she was teetering on the verge of the Peak of Spiritual Refinement, and Inquisitor Pak was a Lux Dominator. If the Inquisitor's will was focused somewhere else, blue could get past her barriers.

  As the Inquisitor snarled, pointing her empty hand in rage at Joshi and shooting a blast of unformed lux Hiroko hadn't even sensed her gathering, Hiroko threaded out her technique.

  Hiroko's technique moved out. She imagined it like a shadowy cloak, flittering across the battlefield.

  Joshi disappeared again and Inquisitor Pak turned to locate him. The blue technique settled around her shoulder, and there it held. Hiroko could feel it becoming part of Pak as the subtle influences took hold. She didn't dare try anything particularly flashy. Not yet. Instead, her technique was designed to confuse the Inquisitor's senses just a little. Any more than that and Hiroko was sure the Inquisitor would sense the technique and throw it off. She used all her will to keep her techniques as small as possible. They wouldn't do any good against Pak’s will or her lux senses, only her eyes. But Inquisitor Pak looked so furious, Hiroko suspected this might just work.

  "I'm ready," she called, knowing Min would hear her through her Thousand Whispers. Hiroko sensed it quivering the air across the camp, because she was so in tune with blue and knew where to look. She doubted the Inquisitor would notice.

  Across the camp, Morning Mist Acolytes emerged from the tents where they had concealed themselves, or popped up from behind their hiding places. Some climbed up to the barricades, others merely emerged into the open space where Joshi and the Inquisitor were fighting. A couple moved into the mass of waiting Darwur, spreading the word to them.

  Hiroko smiled in satisfaction as she began her next blue weave.