Waterstrider

Little Celah, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fourthmonth, 1634 PTS

In but an instant, everything Rachel had worked towards had begun to fall apart.

Operating upon her first instinct, she amplified her temporal perception, ensuring she had plenty of time to think. In the room, every movement slowed to a crawl. She watched the maddened eyes of Cyrus as his blade neared one of his own sect members. There was nothing that Rachel could do to save him, but the lives of these few Seiyal were not her priority at the moment anyway. She needed to get Cyrus out of the trap and help him regain his sanity, otherwise her plans would all be wasted.

First, she considered the nature of the trap, intent on ensuring she wouldn’t fall for such a ploy in the future. What Astna had done to trick her was so simple it pained her. She had merely programmed her slate to send and receive messages automatically, so that it would still seem to an infiltrator such as Rachel, who could monitor all traffic but not read the messages themselves, that she remained by the slate. Then, she had simply walked out of the building, used a device unconnected to her little network, and messaged her allies to set the trap.

Despite being, objectively speaking, far more intelligent than the Spider, due to her mind that could use processing power far beyond that of a Celan supercomputer, Rachel had been fooled by a mere mortal. It rankled her, but she supposed this was simply a difference in experience. She would not fall for such a ploy again.

These thoughts were complete in less than a microsecond. In that time, the material organisms in the room around her conduit had not even moved by a millimeter, as if time had frozen entirely.

The efficiency of thought at this sort of timescale was extreme, and Rachel could sustain it indefinitely. No matter how inattentive or easily distractible one was, compared to timescales for material organisms, one would be considered efficient.

Some Terran enclaves lived false lives for untold millennia in subjective time inside of simulation worlds using this ability. Rachel herself had lived several simulated lifetimes in one of them. However, her people had found that when interacting with the real world, and in particular when interacting with material life forms, this rate of temporal perception should not be sustained. The waiting that was required had a tendency of weighing on the mind, and could cause mental illness to develop. It was best to remain at just a bit faster than a biological mind, and simply accelerate temporal perception as needed.

Of course, that strategy increased the odds of mistakes such as the one she had made today.

Rachel could tell that she had become stressed, and she needed a clear head in order to have any real chance of salvaging the situation. To that end, she summoned a simulation of a comfortable room in her head, one that looked almost exactly like the living room of her childhood home, down to the ugly old couch her father had inherited from her grandmother and the family portrait hanging on the wall. She curled herself up, pulling out a novel she had been intending to read. Recently, she had been reading xianxia novels from the twenty-first century. She found it amusing to compare them to the culture of the Seiyal.

Such similarities were not uncommon within Telles. Given how many alien races existed, and the vast number of different cultures that could be theorized within each of them, most races found that one or two concepts of fictional works of theirs bore a superficial similarity to one race or another.

She summoned a glass of iced tea, taking a sip. She suspected that the drink had not existed in reality for many centuries now, but this simulation of it tasted just like the real thing. She leaned back, enjoying the story, the drink, and the comfort that the room brought her. For a time, she was at peace.

Many hours later in subjective time, Rachel had finally decided that she was calm enough to focus back on the situation. In the outside world, less than a second had taken place, and Cyrus had still yet to slay the former gangster before him.

Of all the unorthodox arts, formless practitioners faced one of the most survivable ends. Madness was treatable, in theory. If she could somehow present Cyrus with something capable of reawakening his true self, he might be able to regain control of himself. The soul damage was a larger issue.

While it was not listed in the dossier that the Hadal Clan had received from Sunlit Hall, the moment Rachel had met the man she had seen for herself the state of his soul. Cyrus’ soul was tattered and frayed, missing great chunks as if it had been torn in half. It was a barbaric method, but she suspected it had been some sort of attempt to stave off the madness and soul dissolution that resulted from a stalled progression. Over the course of painful years he had healed, but a soul could not simply regrow itself. It was the sort of tactic that could only ever be used once without being faced with death.

Normally, the damage his soul had already suffered would have left this second bout of madness untreatable, and would have caused his shroud to quickly fall apart. However, this time he had the assistance of Rachel. As an artificial spirit, one fully awakened inside of the realm of souls, she found it trivial to hold the fragments of his soul together with her many limbs.

Sometimes she was disgusted by the current state of her true body, a large geometric shape covered in apertures from which a host of flailing tendrils emerged, but times such as this reminded her why the scientists had designed it this way. It was simply an effective form for an organism residing within the Brink. The flagella-like appendages she referred to as tendrils or tentacles gripped with ease onto the ashata of her friend’s shroud.

With his life preserved, Rachel’s attention turned to helping Cyrus regain his faculties. She would need something shocking and recognizable. Herself would not work, as she suspected he would simply ignore her in his present state. If she knew the appearance of his master or old friends, she would have tried taking their forms, but that was an impossibility. Was there anything else? Something he had not seen in a long time, something that could be meaningful to him…

She had all the time in the world to think, but she knew that putting ideas into practice would cost valuable time. She suspected there was less than a minute in realtime before the trap’s jaws would close around them.

If Cyrus lived, saving his mind would matter, but if he died here it was all for naught. With her goals prioritized, Rachel continued to think desperately, seeking any sort of solution to the matter. She analyzed the floor plan of the various buildings of the stack, trying to brainstorm ways out if she could somehow get him to listen to her in his current state.

Her thoughts paused as she inspected a building several levels above the level Cyrus was currently on. It was a building originally designed as a Staiven nutrient bathhouse, but one that had been repurposed for Celan residency in the district.

She smiled, an idea coming to mind. One that could perhaps solve both of her most pressing issues.

Little Celah, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fourthmonth, 1634 PTS

I sliced through the forms of traitor after traitor, relishing the blood that flew in all directions from the forceful power of my slashes. My technique, Torrential Downpour, comprised a fusillade of blows useful against both singular or multiple enemies at a time. Combined with my Water Striding Steps, the traitors were slaughtered in less than a minute by the endlessly flowing strokes of my blade. Neither bones nor flesh could stop them, no matter their reinforcement by the mere energy of meridian establishment grade miasma.

They had begged for their lives, unable to comprehend my actions, and I had laughed at them as I reaped them like grain. I had not even broken a sweat doing so. The martial arts of the glorified street thugs was so poor that the strongest of them would likely not have beaten me even when I was a pinnacle level foundation refiner. Truly, the weak lived upon the mercy of my blade.

I could sense approaching souls and a vast quantity of miasma, and I reformed my stance. I existed to fight and kill, it was the purpose of a martial artist’s existence. I was, as someone had once told me, not a person. I was a demon of the sword, and I would slaughter all in my path.

The wall to my side crumbled, a hulking monstrosity breaking through, charging towards me. I met its charge, my steps taking me right between its legs as its many swords attempted to take my life. One of them nicked my shoulder, but I was too agile. A slash scraped at the plating on one of its legs, unable to break through. Behind the great machine stood another, and shards of metal sprayed out from the barrels of its guns.

I laughed as I continued to run, able to sense that a third such machine was bearing down from another angle, while a good deal of foot soldiers marched behind, interrupting any escape. I had no intentions of doing so.

The machines bellowing in some alien tongue, but I paid no heed to it, much like I had given no heed to the pleas of the traitors. They would all die by my hand.

I vaguely remembered that this had been a trap I had fallen into, and the thought brought another smile to my face. A trap was what one called it when your enemies delivered themselves to your sword.

A projectile tore through me, leaving a deep gash in my thigh. It would not impact my movement, but it brought an intense surge of pain with it, and my blood dripped out, merging with the streams of blood already covering my body and the floor.

Perhaps I would die here. I licked my lips, tasting blood. That was fine. A martial artist lived to kill and die in battle. It was the natural state.

In the distance, I heard a series of explosions, the sound coming from far above me, but I continued dodging the bullets, attempting to make my way back to the enforcer before me. Something loudly cracked and shifted overhead, as if the entire stack was going to fall.

Suddenly, a droplet of something impacted my head from above. It was followed by another, then another. I glanced up, seeing liquid dripping upon me from above. The speed slowly intensified, as if it was a slowly forming rainstorm. I laughed in joy. For the first time in almost a decade, it was truly like the sensation of rain.

The Riverfiend: [The leader of a newly founded organization known as the Redwater Sect, the unorthodox martial artist known as the Riverfiend, whose true name is now known to be Cyrus Yu, is primed to become one of the most important figures among Canvasian culture on the station, as well as a real player within Tseludia Station's criminal underworld. Having announced his intentions through a recruitment, many question whether he intends to attempt to supplant the Hadal Clan. Despite this, his new sect's formation was tacitly accepted by the clan, a fact which has prompted rumors that the Redwater Sect represents a new unorthodox branch of the Hadal Clan. After surviving an assassination attempt by members of a Celan criminal syndicate, his position has strengthened even further, his name the most respected of all Core Formation practitioners on the station, regardless of allegiance. Due to his unorthodox nature, however, many Seiyal and Tovus have sent in reports and requests for the Justice Office to apprehend this powerful individual. No response has yet been made by the Pantheonic Government on the matter.]