Personally, she felt it spoke of combat experience and ingenuity. She didn’t think many of the Yecine would choose to rush from behind. But that didn’t an she wouldn’t school the attempt to end things quickly instead of prettily. Honor aside... he just wasn’t fast enough.
She pivoted as her foot landed. Not with the kind of explosive speed that a a cultivator using techniques to wildly burn physical energy through their legs and hips might make. Just a tiny dip and rotation that seed perfectly tid to bring the flat of her blade into contact with his. Lifting up, stepping into his space just like the younger man, she pressed him forward.
Her forward, anyway - the sa direction she had been walking when he stabbed - which in a flash had beco his backward. Through the eting of blades alone, she’d taken advantage of his montum. And he found he couldn’t do anything against her strength and smiling face but to be lead by her.
"Step left now."
He didn’t. She didn’t think he *would*, but if he *had* the mont the words sunk in... then he could have gotten out of her quickstepping rush... probably. As long as she didn’t do anything but let him!
"Too bad."
Her leg lunged forward more than her shoulders, locking behind his own leg and pushing him onto the flat of his back. Where head should have cracked on stone, it instead found a high-density gradient of perfluorobutane, her heaviest new companion, that felt like landing on a syrupy cushion. One that slowed the slam over many inches of devoted control.
Uvraneht was not always a good dancer, or a good swordswoman, or much good at anything but trying hard. She also was never a good teacher from the start, a good drill instructor, squad captain during a Descent, or essentially *any* role the first ti she tried it on. Even her ability to love, as well as truly respect, the rationale of the person she had fallen head over heels for - unlike the third Yecine who she parried and seated gently - had taken many clear failures.
Likewise, shifting around and pressurizing her liquid feeling but blissfully inert substance was a skill and joy that had taken weeks of concerted practice. Granted, she was generally able to carry that out while doing any number of other things thanks to her spiritual efficiency, but Elua er Goltbred had long since stopped thinking of her reincarnated advantages as a crutch. If she put a hundred and eighty-eight percent effort into sothing and then managed to nearly master it faster than most could, that didn’t an she wasn’t taxing herself in that interim!
Four blades had already been slung into a growing pile she didn’t particularly look back at. The first Primalist to try his luck had dropped the fifth into her quickly freed hand. Dodging out of the way, even knowing the looks he would get. But the mont that set of mint eyes t his, as she took that copper blade directly behind her back with the ring poml overhead, he’d felt like he was facing sothing even more awful than a Voidling leader alone on the battlefield.
For a mont she did pause her forward steps toward her real goal, looking at the construction of the weapon and twirling it in one hand into a reverse grip. Before slinging it to join the others without looking. The theatricality of that hadn’t been sothing she planned on doing that consistently, as part of her opening statent on the way here. But their flashy and proud symbol on the ground, with their vaunted swordsmanship dismantled and sat alongside with it, was too good of a whim to pass up.
"What I’m feeling so far..."
She took two quick lateral steps and swung her weapon against her hip, prid for the next taker to her clear challenge. One who had made a different decision after seeing all of the guards so far were alive and ’unhurt’ beyond bruised pride - and sore spots that would heal within a day... or two. Because of that, the man thought it would be easy if he just fought with usual abandon against the woman.
"...is that none of you are very willing to learn along with ."
Having long ago morized the footwork and tells of the Yecine style, the Goltbred heiress - which many of them in witness were just now realizing she *was* - began to copy his movents. eting his strikes with near perfect opposition. Of course, she did swing *fractionally* harder than her opponent, because there was no sense taking any strain of the forces shared between them.
A full minute went by as most of them did nothing more than watched. Losing their will to fight back as the brunette proved what she already had once, during the bridal test tradition. She was more capable than the average one of them by far. The easygoing look on her face and lack of strain at every et of weapons was clearly different from the Primalist in front of her.
The man whose blade had already chipped in two different places. But he was stubborn, if not confident in his win, so Elua also made another choice. Instead of using it as a cushion, the orb of dense gas roaming around the ’training’ started to rotate at high speed. When he committed to yet another downward strike that she’d been opposing... she stood with the blade over her head instead.
While she forced a fist-sized punch of pressurized perfluorocarbon to smash into his jaw with a spinning uppercut.
She was already composing the first section of her lecture to the council as he dropped. Head rocked by the concussive force of the sudden direction change of his skull. For the first ti she didn’t catch this one’s fall, as there did exist a limit to her patience and care. And soone who had bared so much bloodlust for a full minute at her was well past that line.
"My apologies, you were overstaying your welco on this song. Is that my last dancing partner for now? Shall I proceed to your elders with my lack of invitation?"
Mint eyes panned around the courtyard at faces looking through her while clenching their swords. Faces that didn’t want to admit that the cultivator walking calmly up the path had dismantled their will, all without any clear ’malice’ directed their way. But more importantly, half of them were deeply concerned... as they had no idea what she ant by song and dance.
At least, until none of them rushed forward again and the sword disappeared. Replaced by a waltz, humd by the Goltbred heiress as she approached the open door into the main building. The estate’s layout of large corridors in the larger building were a bit maze-like by intention. With the council chamber set deep in the administrative wing at the back.
A place where heavy doors, thick walls, and careful sigil script ensured that the loud disagreents of proud family n stayed private even among the rest of the Yecine. Her spirit had already swept the building before she crossed the gate threshold and she hadn’t stopped keeping ntal track of sothing she hadn’t cared about for years.
The marks she’d planted on suspicious people at the wedding answered her ping with faint impressions, existing as tiny energy constructs buried like a tick in their spirit. Sothing that could have easily been located and removed if any of them knew what she considered the basics of spiritualism. After all, she had been hoping they would find the *obvious* ones.
’A real sha that not a single one of them did. Unless there is a hidden one that removed both successfully...’
Her mory said that was unlikely. The count of people seed right, from their group. Though there were a few others at their wedding who had looked at the happy couple *unpleasantly* enough for her to add them to the monitoring. People she had never seen again in the months after the event.
After disappearing from sight to avoid the panicked and hiding servants, she eventually spoke out to two more guards that were in the final corridor toward the chamber. These n were clear veterans of multiple Descents to her senses, stationed on interior rotation because the family trusted them with proximity to their core leadership.
"I’ll be intruding."
Both drew their two handed heavy blades from their back without hesitation or banter. The two were clearly willing to work together - and not treat this situation like a duel, such as the arrogant young ones outside had done. If she was being honest, she expected she would have goaded them all into coming at her at once to humiliate them after she started chucking their weapons into a pile.
’Even the lowliest of them has an infusion of pride in themselves due to their na. So did my beloved.’
Neither was going to be toyed with like the others, because these last ones were doing their job as properly as possible. Elua had never enjoyed punishing competence. She simply made it irrelevant - if it was below her own. Which is why she caught both of their blades... one swung high toward her chest and slowed by her gas into her palms, the other low and trapped under her foot after a well tid hop and kick.
Fire licked at her feet imdiately. One of them had used the spark on the ground by tal contacting stone to ignite the air - and special oil on his weapon. But the Primalist’s Elent transferred no heat past her layer of defenses. Just as the equally high echelon Sleep Astralism for a Yecine did nothing but slip through her hard to pin down cloud of spirit.
But the very gall to try and take control of her spirit to knock her out flipped all of her intentions once again. Her spiritual energy pulled closer, thickening with a terrifying ’apathy’ that morphed clearly into the kind with that certain edge to it. The kind of intense yet fleeting feeling of a walker along a path, seeing an insect coming and swatting it away.
"I can break these swords - or I can break you. I’ll let your companion pick. Hope he values you more than his weapon."
...She truly was just a whimsical, easygoing Ogre in this life.
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