Path of Transcendence Omnibus II, page 70
I smirk. "That grey haired cunt turned into a scaled monstrosity and flew off leaving a trail of yellow rain. The surviving whores from her collection are my slaves, now."
Anger mixes with the fear in Tie Quan's expression. "Xiao Mao ran from a pig with no Power like you? Your lies are getting worse, pig."
I laugh mockingly. "Just like you she nearly pissed herself just looking at these swords. Are you going to go all scaly monster, or do I need to beat your ass first?"
Arrogance, or maybe pride, partially hides the mix of anger and fear in Tie Quan's expression, but the fear is still clearly dominant. "I am a Dragon Blood. My grandmother and great-grandfather are Holy Ones that were allowed by Fate to carry on their lines. I will make you squeal like the pig that you are."
The way that Tie Quan says Fate gives the word an extremely strong emphasis compared to the rest of the sentence. It seems that the followers of the Celestial Court may have a concept of Fate that is similar to the DokkAlfar and Jotun Lords' recognition of the Sisters of Fate. The Sisters of Fate that are supposed to be the source of the Provenance of the DokkAlfar bloodlines are considered to be greater in Power than most of the Jotun Lords. Their existence predates the DokkAlfar following the Jotun Lords. Does the Celestial Court have similar beliefs?
When I thought I was playing a game called Taereun, I read some account about Handmaidens of Fate personally appearing to give proclamations of Provenance. I did not pay that much attention to them and do not recall all the details. Most of them were about some Jotun, maybe an Asgardian, named Skuld, but she was not a Sister or Fate or Fate itself or anything like that. She was just their messenger.
I reveal a faint smirk. "And here I thought all the Dragonians were sterile like mules."
Even though his face is an ugly mask of mixed fear and anger, Tie Quan puffs out his chest like a rooster. "Fertile Holy Dragonians are Chosen by Fate and acknowledged by the Celestial Court. They are the progenitors of the Dragon Bloods, those born to rule over the race of two-legged pigs called humans. I am one of the Chosen. I am a Commander of the Claws of the Dragon. Kowtow before me and I might spare you."
"I thought you Dragon whores claimed the Dragons created the entire metaverse. Why would those with the blood of the creators of everything bow to the three Hags of Fate?" Dacbold's condescending smirk makes mine look amateur. The raw hauteur in his demeanor catches me off-guard. He suddenly has the aura of someone far above the common masses.
From Tie Quan's confused expression, he has no ready answer to Dacbold's question. He may have never even thought about such a question.
Fwoosh! CLANG!
I dive to the side and roll to my feet. There is a six inch deep gash in the metal deck plate where I had been standing. I did not see or sense anything with my spatial awareness. No, I did. There was a feeling of air pressure from the attack. What was that attack from?
Tie Quan frowns. "You are more alert than you appear to be. Musclebound oafs like yourself are not usually so agile."
Behind me, Dacbold, Valcrit, and Angelique are all staring at the gash in the deck with dumbfounded expressions. None of them saw the attack, either.
*Angelique, put your strongest wards on yourself and the others.*
*Yes, Master!*
I charge toward Tie Quan. With an amused smile, he remains standing with his bisento on his shoulder. As I reach a distance of twenty feet from him, he moves. The speed of his attack is faster than my natural physical speed, but there is no sign that he is using Power to augment himself.
I twist to the side of his attack and slip into the Shadow of the Od.
CLANG!
Another gash appears in the metal deck. It passed right through my body, which was out phase with this warped dimensional space. If I had not been in the Shadow of the Od, my spine would have been severed.
In succession, both of my swords pass through Tie Quan's chest. There is no blood, but his form warps and partially derezzes like an interrupted holographic projection. As soon as my blades exit his body, he returns to solidity. In addition to my eyes, my spatial awareness tells me that he is there. What is he doing, and where is he hiding?
I may be unable to experience fear like a normal being, but there is still a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. I am at a severe disadvantage.
The projection or whatever it is keeps attacking, but it is nothing more than a distraction.
Steel is pain. Steel is cruelty. Part of my Trinity flows into the paths used for Making, and I cast the spell for pattern sight on my left eye.
I still do not see any sign of Tie Quan's location.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
With only the slight changes in air pressure to give them away, I avoid or parry a series of attacks from Tie Quan. All the attacks are overhead strikes coming straight down one me. I attempt to counterattack, but I cannot identify his actual position. My thrusts and slashes hit nothing but air. It feels like I am fighting a dancing weapon rather than one being wielded by a person.
Angelique takes a step forward. *Master?*
*Don't move! If you can't figure out what he's doing, don't distract me!* My words are an angry growl that seems to reverberate in the raid channel.
*Yes, Master.* With her eyes downcast, Angelique's response comes across as barely more than a whisper in the raid channel. From her reaction, you would think that I just hit her.
I have been dodging Tie Quan's strikes for less than a minute, but the metal deck already has hundreds of gashes in it.
*Master, he…* A surge of Psi energy envelops Valcrit, and he crumples to his knees. Runnels of blood flows from his eyes, nose, and ears. Valcrit must have figured out what Tie Quan is doing, and Tie Quan shut him up before he could tell me.
The Psi energy seemed to be the scatter from a Psi attack, but it just appeared around Valcrit. A Psi attack goes from a source to a destination in the same way that a lightning bolt or a beam type attack would. There was no source for the Psi energy around Valcrit. How did Tie Quan make his attack? What did Valcrit notice?
Valcrit was taken down with Psi Power. None of the six women are Psis, so Tie Quan should be the Psi. I do not know what technique he is using, but it is probably a form of specialized Psi. The question is how do I break it? Valcrit must have found the way, but what was it?
To my eyes and my spatial awareness, Tie Quan's projection appears to be the real him, but I cannot sense any trace of emotions coming off it with my empathy. I can feel the amusement and pride from the six sluts that are watching with smiles on their faces, so it is not this warped dimensional space that is causing the problem. Somehow, Tie Quan is completely concealing the presence of his real self. The technique is so perfect that it is almost like he does not exist.
Does not exist? Could it be that he does not exist in this realm? Maybe, he has a way to shift himself out of phase with the surrounding dimensional space. It could be something similar to the way that I shift into the Shadow of the Od.
I know techniques to shift my vision into the Realm of Mind and the Realm of Soul, but even during The Great Fuck Over, I seldom had a need to use them.
I stop trying to retaliate against Tie Quan and just dodge his attacks. It requires a few seconds to use a Ki technique with my Trinity to change the way that my eyes see.
"Have you given up? You put up a good fight for a pig, but the truth is, in the end, you are nothing but pig. If you surrender now, I will emasculate you and allow you to live as my slave." Tie Quan laughs arrogantly.
The Realm of Mind is a realm of thoughts and ideas. Its appearance bears little resemblance to the Realm of Body. Everything appears translucent or transparent, but looking through objects distorts what you see on the opposite side. The ground appears to mostly solid, but in places, such as where a hole was dug or dirt was piled, it tends to be transparent and ephemeral. Though, after a long time, millennia at the least since the change was made, the echo of the old shape disappears. Walls, buildings, and other static objects that do not occur naturally tend to look like outline drawings with shadings ranging from white to black.
Other than living creatures, there is very little color in the Realm of Mind, and sentient beings appear as distorted versions of themselves. The less sentient a living creature is the closer it tends to resemble its normal appearance. For a sentient being, the level of difference from its appearance can vary greatly, since, a living creature appears in the manner in which it sees itself, in the Realm of Mind. Someone who was a fat tub of lard can be slender or muscular in the Realm of Mind, and someone who is attractive can be hideously ugly. The only consistent thing about how things appear that are primarily objects in the Realm of Body is that they appear somewhat transparent.
The six women near the throne all appear as somewhat caricatural versions of themselves. They have facial and physical features that are exaggerated or minimized. Angelique looks like a dumpy childish version of herself with a blank mask for its face. Valcrit appears almost exactly like he does in the Realm of Body, except for extremely large piercing eyes. Dacbold looks a twisted hybrid of human and Dvergar.
Tie Quan looks exactly like his projection. This is not his perception of himself. This is his Body. As I fix my stare on him, his eyes spring wide open in shock.
"You shifted your Body into the Realm of Mind." My lips peal back from my teeth in a predatory grin.
Tie Quan laughs, but it sounds forced. "You're not a proper Psi. So, what does it matter if you can see me?"
I can see his real body, but I cannot see his Power or his pattern. Even if I push a fair amount of Trinity into my pattern sight spell it makes no difference.
There are a number of ways to hide your pattern. There may be thousands of them, if not more. I only know how to do it with a few techniques and know of the existence but not the method for a dozen-odd more. The main idea is to use raw Power or some variant of dimensional warping to mask or obfuscate your pattern and make your form look like nothing more than a "solid" object in any way, shape, or form you try to view it. They all share a major problem of requiring either a lot of concentration or not inconsiderable use of Power. By hiding your pattern and the nature of your Power, you limit the amount of Power you have available. So, trying to hide the nature or level of you own Power from someone with a greater level of Power or a higher Circle of Coalescence becomes difficult to impossible depending on the level of difference between you and the being trying to ascertain the nature your pattern or Power.
Tie Quan has a higher Circle of Coalescence than me, more Power than me, or both.
From within my core realm, I draw a thick rope of Trinity. Preparing to wrap my swords with my Power, I look at the blade held in my left hand and momentarily freeze. What the hell are these swords supposed to be?
Even though I am only distracted for a fraction of a second, my attempt to dodge Tie Quan's next strike is slow, and the tip of his bisento leaves a deep, diagonal wound across my chest. My internal organs are undamaged, but three of my ribs and my sternum are almost completely severed.
Now that I can see him, Tie Quan changes his attack pattern and shows real skill in the way he wields his bisento, but even if he is skilled, his chicken legs are a fatal flaw. His bisento does not appear to be made from Elemental metal, but from the way he handles it, it must have twenty times the mass of a steel weapon of similar size. Looking at the way he moves, his stance is unsteady. He lacks the mass and strength in his legs to provide a solid base for a heavy weapon like his bisento. He uses Ki to stabilize his stance and to aid in accelerating his movements. Without Ki, he looks like the weight and momentum of his weapon would be constantly dragging him out of position.
As I keep moving to avoid a series of successive attacks, I clamp my jaws shut and try to ignore the pain. Using the Trinity that I am controlling, I stop any further blood loss from the wound in my chest. I only need to survive the fight, and afterward, I can advance the healing considerably with the Light Od. Life was angry with me for not using it to heal my wounds after the fight with the whores. Now that I have traces of both Dark and Light Od mixed into my Trinity in my personal realm, I should have a much easier time using the Light Od to heal myself.
It was my first look at the appearance of my swords in the Realm of Mind that gave me enough of a shock to break my focus. Without leaving myself vulnerable, I take the time to examine them more closely.
Items of Power are technically inanimate objects, and with the exception of Legendary Items, they should look exactly the same when viewed in the Realm of Mind as in the Realm of Body. My bastard swords do not look the same. It looks as though I am holding a pair of winged dragons with their forward claws stretched out to rend a target. Also here in the Realm of Mind, there is also a faint but clear intent to destroy Tie Quan surrounding both blades.
I do not know what Boran did when he Made these weapons, but having just been forged, they cannot be Legendary Items with millennia of accumulated Power and lore. There should not be anything hidden in them that would give them an alternative nature that would be revealed in the Realm of Mind.
Taking the rope of Trinity that I drew from my core realm, I split it in twain and fill my bastard swords with my Power. As though it is feeding on my Trinity, the destructive intent in my bastard swords forms a nebulous black cloud around each blade. It may not be very strong, but the idea that the aura exemplifies, destruction, is clear and easily understood in the Realm of Mind.
Tie Quan halts his attacks and takes several steps backward. He stares not at me but my swords, and the shadow of fear bordering on terror is visible in his eyes. What is it about these swords that instills such fear in that Dragonian cunt and him?
Clang!
Without giving Tie Quan any time to recover, I spring forward into a thrust with my left-hand blade, and he barely blocks it with the haft of his bisento. With my Trinity enhancing the blade, it is capable of affecting the Realm of Mind.
Tie Quan's control over his Ki is lacking, and the force transmitted to him through his weapon knocks him off balance. Following through with the momentum from my thrust, my right-hand blade sweeps down on him in an overhand strike, and Tie Quan tries to twist out of the blades path at the same time as he tries to bring his bisento up in a cross block.
Clang! Thump.
It is a testament to Tie Quan's speed and reactions that he manages to interpose his weapon between my blade and himself, but he barely slows my blade. The impact against the haft of his bisento knocks him to the ground. Instead of trying to slow his momentum as he slides across the idea of a deck, he twists and springs back to his feet with his weapon at the ready.
Again, a predatory grin splits my lips. Even though Tie Quan has a weak lower body, he has enough talent and skill that this might be interesting.
As we close with each other, neither of us bothers with taunts. Our weapons lash out at one another. We strike, block, riposte, parry, counter, and dodge. As each of us searches for a hole in the other person's defenses, the timing, speed, angle, and force of each blow changes, and I am the defender more than the attacker.
My techniques are not as polished as Tie Quan's, but my attacks have more speed and power behind them. Other than Thrall, Tie Quan is the best technician I have ever faced with weapons in our hands. Compared with his mastery of his arts, I am years behind him in perfecting my mastery of Shadow Fist.
Growing up, I always knew that I was stronger than the norm for my age, and despite being a fat-ass, I was fast. Even though I always try to improve my skill, I developed a habit of my relying on my innate strength and speed. There was no need to use proper techniques when beating the shit out of the trash that thought of themselves as the bullies, and my Half-Dvergar body was so powerful that I could crush most enemies with raw physical power.
Urehara-sensei's martial arts came so easy to me that I equaled the best of his students in only a few years. It was only after meeting Thrall that I really started focusing on perfecting my technique. I had never understood the philosophy and intricate detail that could exist in a martial art before Thrall taught me the proper version of Shadow Fist.
My initial estimate on the weight of Tie Quan's bisento is off. From the impacts between our weapons, it has to be closer to thirty times the weight of a similar steel weapon than twenty.
Tie Quan stops doing whatever he was doing to conceal his Power, and his speed increases. For the first time, I see Power flow through him and into his bisento. It is made up of ten braided strands. He is in the Third Circle of Coalescence and working toward the Fourth Circle. Even though he is so far ahead of me in his Circle of Coalescence, he seems to be slightly under my level from a pure physical perspective, and the strength of the braided Power he is controlling does not look any greater than the strength of Trinity that I can summon.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG-CLANG! CLANG!
Every weapon and fighting style has its own advantages and disadvantages. The better trained a fighter is, the more they unconsciously focus on the strengths of their weapon and fighting style. The most difficult thing about fighting a partially trained amateur is their unpredictability, the way they use attacks that seem to be pulled out of their asses. Tie Quan is moving like he expects me to fight in a certain way and use certain types of patterns. He seems to almost be able to predict my attack patterns.
Most two weapon fighting styles either use one weapon as the primary defense and the other as the primary offense or constantly change from one weapon to the other in the attack to keep up a flow of strikes. Stances and techniques all evolve to support the basic philosophy of the style.
I deliberately break the fighting patterns that I have developed. While I attack more aggressively, using more speed and force behind my attacks, I switch to attack patterns that do not flow naturally. As I mix in two or three strikes with one blade before unleashing the other, Tie Quan's responses slow down. As I change the lines of my attacks to be non-optimal, his reactions start to break down.
