The gash on Qatrand’s shoulder throbbed. The wound was not deep, but it was a painful reminder of how close the creature had co to doing much worse. Blood of Void creature dripped from the fuller of her weapon as it remained held ready in a low guard stance.
After letting her scan the clearing for any remaining threats, Elua finally spoke.
"What a spectacle. A truly impressive duel."
The familiar ’sweet’ voice ca from beside her, though no one had visibly approached. Despite an old promise not to use illusions that were not ’obvious’ to her belove, the cultivator had little choice but to remain completely invisible. The ’dead scout’ was only done with her own spirit and worked upon Qat and Kefa.
But to hide her form from the leader effectively, she’d been forced to do a deeper blanketing illusion through the obsidian mirror that made absolutely everything within a large range ignore her entire presence. All while holding tight over the creature’s spiritual emission trying to force its way through to the network of lesser Voidlings.
’An extra task of making myself available to her sight... when my dancing around their fight for new angles to watch it would have distracted her? Unthinkable!’
The brunette wore a please expression on her face while her spirit swirled with analytical interest - as if she were examining the results of a particularly successful experint. Qat knew details about the Descent that most did not, because of her wife’s near inability to keep secrets with her for long. So she felt a little bit like both the heiress and the slain leader had been putting her through a trial.
"You might have warned it could explode like that so quickly."
Her low voice had no real heat to them. Just the fatigue of combat and relief at surviving.
"I wasn’t entirely sure it would. As much of a Hivemind they may be, they have different self-defense chanisms depending on their experience and age. Especially when you isolate them like I did."
Elua’s silver dress was untouched by the gri of battle despite the proximity to so of it. However, her face still held the dark handprint that she’d chosen not to wash off *quite* yet. She looked back at her fortress with mint eyes shining with pride.
"Full disclosure, I may have annoyed it into coming this way."
"El..."
"I swear it was already out and looking around! Just a little spiritual nudge to make sure it wouldn’t turn left instead of right. That was all."
The swordswoman was handed a piece of clean cloth by her wife. Carefully wiping away the majority of the strange vantablack substance from her blade, she then sheathed it before taking a step closer.
"How much of a ’nudge’, exactly?"
If the eyes darting away were not enough, the ’reluctance’ in her spirit... that was rapidly morphing into ’obedience’ as tendrils of energy wrapped around her. The sa ones that had just been used to perform such distant manipulation of her Elent
’Maybe my Qat is a genius after all? A late blooming one.’
Her idealized, love tinted assessnt quickly ignored that she had explained in the illusory training tool how to ’extend’ the essence field with spirit. With lots of details. So many that soone who heard it, had ti to practice, and any amount of talent would have been able to learn the techniques.
"J-just enough to make it co this way. And... and to make it use its interference on you two because I let it know sothing was in its head."
Qatrand closed her eyes and pressed her fist in between her own eyes.
"You made it do that?"
"Well... yes. I may have also threatened to take over its body as a puppet. If it didn’t... fight you properly. After isolating its spirit from its companions and allowing it to have the equivalent of a ntal breakdown."
"El..."
"What? It was already planning to kill both of you if it could."
The reincarnator shrugged with a hint of petulance. Her foot dug into the sand laying on the stone underneath her.
"Besides, I’ll keep my word. I won’t take its remains and use it to infect the Hivemind of the remaining Voidlings with new intents. Okay?"
While the Yecine didn’t know exactly what she was talking about, all of it sounded like sothing ridiculous. It sounded about right for her mint-drop. When she sighed and looked into the sky - recalling advice from Ondua about pretending she didn’t see or hear sothing - a small hand reached up to examine the wound on her shoulder with a frown.
"This will need cleaning. The tips of their talons have denser quantities of essence and the residue can cause a form of sepsis even in cultivators."
Her fingertips above the tear in the black fabric hovered close enough that Qat could feel the faint warmth emanating from them. For all her talk about threatening (or in her case, promising) an eldritch invasion creature a horrible experience... Elua’s concern for her beloved was genuine.
Enough that Qat couldn’t help but say sothing to try and lower it.
"I’ve had worse wounds in training."
"No, you haven’t. Unless you trained with poisoned blades that you haven’t told about. Even if you did, that doesn’t make it acceptable to ignore."
The brunette’s gaze tore away to look at the twin-blade wielder... who had been rendered useless at the start mostly out of spite. It was true that it was ’simpler’ to let her precious gem fight on her own - without so much risk from the fast moving Order mber getting herself maid in her excess of fear.
’But she was also all too happy to have been out here with my husband-wife again. If I hadn’t convinced myself that there was use for her beyond her weapon arms, then I would have just let whatever would have happen, happen.’
"She saw the end of it. Enough to spread the word properly."
Monotone statents flowed out over top of the deep ’satisfaction’ of a plan coming together. But the reincarnator understood that there was still more that was necessary to call it a success. After all, she had gone quite a bit ’off the rails’ this morning.
"How do you feel? About the result, so far. Was it... what you wanted?"
The question from the shorter girl carried an unexpected weight of tension and intensity. The tendrils of spirit poking at the illusionist suddenly sunk in deeply. Qatrand could feel the amount of deep thought, worry, and self-argunts that her wife had dealt with throughout the hours she’d been awake.
Pigeon blues watched Kefa struggle to her knees, the false ’scout’ that she could not save nearby, and thought about the mortal and cultivator lives they had saved by acting imdiately. The only ’risk’ had been her own life, apparently... but she knew that also was not the case. Not just because her El would likely prevent that.
’If I’d sohow failed, she already told it would break her.’
The Yecine heir liked to think the Goltbred would still act like herself. Like the person she loved, even with the faults she accepted. But even she could vaguely picture the unpleasant possibility of such a loss in the reverse.
It seed impossible, but Elua going missing from her life would surely affect her severely. While the teenager was not confident in saying that such a thing should break the blade of her heart - the swordswoman *did* think it would at least bend. A warped piece of steel would never swing the sa way again.
"What you did was... necessary."
"That’s not what I asked."
Qat t the dull mint eyes that studied her so intently. Her wife, her El, had taken steps for her sake. She knew the reasons why. Knew that it was ultimately her ’fault’. That there was a haste to it all because the muscular cultivator herself had been... rushing.
"I feel like I’ve grown. Like I’ve proven sothing to myself that I wasn’t able to do in the competition."
With the opinion released into the air from the raven-haired cultivator, a smile broke across the face that had long ’forgotten’ how. Practicing in the mirror on how to remove her ingrained instincts for ’limited waste of physical energy states’ had made Elua progress from *awkward* twitches to ’stable but sohow still off’.
Used to it, Qatrand still thought it was kind of cute and felt sentintal. Even as part of her started to think about what was still ’missing’. She was pretty sure it was the listless eyes.
’A smile that isn’t in the eyes does seem like a taunt, of sorts...’
"Good. That’s what I wanted for you most."
"...It was?"
"Yes. After all, I can tell everyone how great you are myself. I already do. But I can’t tell you to trust and believe in about it, because I wouldn’t believe in either. And not just because I’m biased about you."
The hands of the brunette moved up and rubbed the soft cheeks that seed to have gotten a little stuck. Seeing it, Qat kind of wanted to take over the job, but the girl shook her head and continued speaking before she could offer.
"Results, Qat. Whether anything is true or not only matters when results exist in the past to build off of. When goals are t they are no longer dreams and hopes."
Elua breathed in deeply, pushing her chest out as she paused and regained control of her emotions. She let go of the tendrils of spiritual energy her own spirit was kind of being a little ’abusive’ toward by overloading them with information. So many millennia of examples had ran through her mind.
Successes of her own, of people she loved, and especially every single one she’d seen in her ’fortress’ since the mont they t.
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