The slaughter began in [Silence].
No shouts, no cries of alarm, no resounding metallic clashes of weapons and armor, no buildings going up in flames or collapsing.
The Knight Thalor who was engaging in the termination of what seemed to be the headquarters of a faction did so in a way that only exposed how unperturbed she was with the whole proceedings.
Whatever this faction had done, and whoever was present there, they were all down on their luck to have had a Faith Of The Aspects' Sentinel Knight sent after them.
That, or Knight Thalor was brazenly abusing her power and authority.
Something which would imply she either had a murder addiction, a personal vendetta against this faction, or... something else that I couldn't imagine.
In any case, the effortlessness with which she was tracking and eliminating all living people within the area was honestly all I could have asked for.
This was what an [Aura] Path led to.
Whether she faced up against one or multiple opponents.
Whether she went up against someone ready to avoid her strikes or someone wearing heavy plating.
Whether her quarries tried to flee or hide.
All it took was ever but the sole [Awareness] of where she needed to strike, and that would be it.
She didn't need to artistically wave her hand, turn her head to look, or employ skillful footwork to close in on anything.
Everyone and everything she targeted simply wound up with a head separated from their body.
That was... a very awe-inspiring sight to behold.
After beheading exactly forty-eight people—I counted—she at last appeared to reach her target warehouse and, for the first time, her nonchalance gave way to a readied stance, arms slightly raised, posture subtly lowered, the lines of her body shifting into a quiet, contained readiness.
Being there "just in case", I, under [Guided]'s suggestions, similarly readied myself more than I already was, not lowering my altitude yet, but anticipating the worst.
Like the entire warehouse detonating.
I swore that since the explosion on the fourth floor, [Guided] had turned much more... not cowardly, that wouldn't be the word, but something along that line when it came to far-fetched possibilities happening.
In this case, such far-fetched possibilities vanished when the side of the warehouse she was apparently intent on entering was split apart, and a dozen or so people initiated the stupidest ambush I had seen in a long time.
Who thought it was a good idea to hide behind a wall that needed to be ripped into pieces for the ambush to be a thing?
Or were they planning on blowing-slash-cutting up the wall themselves?
Regardless, Knight Thalor's preparedness noticeably manifested as she rushed right into melee to demonstrate one of the many whys a fairy-sized being such as myself was combat-wise prohibited from going up against a giant-sized and giant-weighted being from the front.
If prior, her fighting style had been that of a fancy [Aura] conjurer who apparently didn't deign to dirty her hands, now, she truly reflected her [Ambition] of one day becoming an [Aura] Knight and joining the faction named as such.
She moved in short, measured bursts, darting left and right with practiced precision.
Every part of her body became a weapon.
Hands, elbows, knees, feet—each strike carried [Aura], and whatever it touched simply ceased to matter.
It was not graceful.
It was not theatrical.
Nor did it resemble the spectacular exchanges I had imagined high-Tier Aspects-enhanced combat would produce.
It was plain.
Brutally, relentlessly plain.
Every movement served a purpose.
Every strike removed a threat.
No wasted motion.
No flourish.
No hesitation.
A dozen people died without landing a single blow or leaving so much as a blemish upon her.
Then she stepped into the warehouse, whose occupants had clearly already been alerted to her arrival, and I followed after her from afar using my good old pipe skulking skills, ready to intervene.
Fifty or so people silenced for eternity—or until they were resurrected—later, whichever faction occupied this warehouse finally mounted a resistance that sounded like it caused some trouble to Thalor.
Nevertheless, that resistance was patently unsustainable and short-lived as over minutes, the loudness of the fight diminished commensurably with what I supposed to be its number of active—living—participants.
I wasn't stupid enough to expose myself, and [Guided] was too faint-hearted to even entertain the idea, but I would have really liked to see for myself how everything unfolded.
How did they answer a threat such as Knight Thalor?
Did they cause her any trouble?
Was resistance vain from the onset?
Was their strategy to [Focus] on the neutralization of the threat or to evacuate the leadership?
Evidently, I would not be receiving answers anytime soon.
And as it turned out, the battle was also far from over.
The intensity of what I was hearing suddenly escalated by several orders of magnitude, surpassing even the height of the initial resistance.
This time, the warehouse itself was being affected.
Metal shrieked under strain.
The massive structural arches groaned.
Entire sections of the building reverberated with impacts powerful enough to travel through the framework.
Prompted by [Guided], I immediately retreated, leaving the narrow pipes of the warehouse to regain altitude and distance until I could observe the situation with a more holistic perspective.
What I ended up witnessing was one of the primary motivations behind why I decided to accompany Knight Thalor in the first place.
A grandiose display of what the local powerhouse level looked like.
A glimpse into what true local powerhouses looked like when forced to contend with one another.
Knight Thalor had finally encountered an equal in an Orun, like Lorekeeper Avenorium, yet profoundly different.
This one was lean where Avenorium was imposing, pale where he was weathered, clad in flexible plated armor that seemed designed to flow with motion rather than resist it.
Most importantly, he was a fighter.
One capable of meeting a Knight blow for blow without immediately dying for the attempt.
The battle unfolded in distinct phases.
At first, they tested one another.
Measured. Probed. Evaluated.
Then came the transition.
The restrained exchanges vanished, replaced by sudden bursts of lethality as both combatants began unveiling the capabilities they had kept hidden. Every opening became a potential death sentence. Every movement carried intent sharp enough to kill.
And gradually, inevitably, a pattern emerged.
Knight Thalor was superior.
Not overwhelmingly so.
Not effortlessly.
But undeniably.
The Orun began yielding ground in fractions.
A defensive adjustment here.
An aborted commitment there.
Tiny concessions accumulated into a growing impression that part of his attention was no longer dedicated to victory, but to identifying a viable path of escape.
What I was witnessing, truly, was just a repeat of what I already saw before, simply at a higher Tier.
Knight Thalor was executing her [Mastery] of combat, displaying her competence across a bewildering number of disciplines, only now against an opponent capable of surviving long enough for that [Mastery] to become apparent.
And as it turned out, there were no elaborate traps.
No hidden contingencies.
No dramatic reversals.
The warehouse remained standing, if quite damaged and unsteady-looking.
In the end, the conclusion arrived with terrifying suddenness.
An opening I couldn't perceive must have appeared.
Whatever the case, Knight Thalor committed without hesitation.
She surged forward like a sandstorm given purpose, [Will]ingly entering what should have been a lethal exchange.
The resulting impact blasted her sideways in a violent eruption of force.
And yet, while she was being hurled away, the Orun's head had already separated from his body.
The battle ended before the corpse realized it had lost.
Once I detected no more movements apart from those of Knight Thalor pulling herself together, I initiated a slow descent to join her.
"That looks broken," I remarked after my [Awareness] passed over her oddly-bent right arm. "If I were you, I would go back like that and treat the whole thing as opportunistic pain resistance [Cultivation]."
"The fact that you talk about [Pain] [Resistance] to someone who uses [Aura] says a lot about your ignorance on the topic," she countered.
"Guilty as charged."
Registering her words for later questioning, I flew to her broken arm and [Will]ed it back to its mended state, my [Comprehension] of her species, bones, muscles, tendons, blood vessels, and all that significantly lessening my energy expenditure.
Compared to the absurdity that was [Will] healing-induced [Regeneration], this was nothing.
No sooner had I stabilized her than we were already on the move again, this time back towards the fifty-fourth floor.
And of course, I had a thousand new questions to ask on the way, to our mutual greatest pleasure.
"Who was that?"
"A wannabe warlord supremacist from Red Sand who formed his own faction."
"And why did he need killing?"
"Don't know. Don't care."
"Said like the [Ideal] embodiment of one of my future [Faith]ful. When you [Aura] go out of control and your Path is crippled or something, keep me in mind for the [Faith] Aspect."
"Sure."
"By the way, what would you have done if the entire warehouse turned out to be a huge trap prepared explicitly for you?"
"Strategic retreat."
"Let's say it was impossible to retreat. Would you have preferred for the entire warehouse to detonate alongside you in the middle of it, or for a hundred of that Orun guy to have been waiting in ambush?"
"A hundred ants."
"Ants? Are ants weak or strong?"
"Both. Weak in this context."
"Was that guy weak?"
"I was [Training]."
"Oh. That explains a lot. Could you have just gone 'Off with your head!' and that would have been it?"
"He didn't have any counters."
"And what do you think about species with decentralized nervous and processing systems?"
"Body-sized heads."
"An apt perspective if I do say so myself. A shame it takes [Aura] to fuel it. Also, believe it or not, I'm also all about heads, or head-like vital points..."
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
"You have but one single objective. Cause me to make a mistake with my [Aura] [Control]," Knight Thalor said, then neither blinking nor making any manner of move.
She simply stood there, her words causing a hush to grace the little corner of the Sentinel training grounds she reserved for this small session.
"And how am I meant to do that?" I reasonably inquired. "[Will] with all my energy for your [Aura] [Control] to slip? Either mutilate yourself for my education or explain the basics."
My words, in turn, I imagined, caused every spectating Sentinel to have no other choice but to feel inspired by my amazing [Truth]fulness.
Following a contemplation that lasted more or less eight seconds, during which she stared at me like I was only prolonging my own suffering, she eventually saw reason and nodded. "The basics, it is."
That... hadn't been my goal, but I would take it anyhow.
"The [Aura] Aspect, at its most basic, is the Aspect associated with the concept of [Destruction] [Energy]."
"Just like the [Vitality] Aspect is associated with the concept of [Life] [Energy]."
"The [Anima] Aspect with the concept of [Soul] [Energy]."
"The [Mana] Aspect with the concept of [Nature] [Energy].
"The [Ether] Aspect with the concept of [Crafting] [Energy], and the list goes on and on and on, because Essence is only ever one thought away from manifesting a new [Energy] into existence."
"Whether those [Energy] can be wielded, however, is another question. What's more, when they concern [Energy] related to typically destructive concepts such as [Death], [Fire], [Anger]."
"The final result of this whole conundrum is that every one of those Aspects associated with the concept of being the [Energy] of something eventually evolved to become not just embodiments of their core concept, but legacies in and unto themselves."
"Why? Because, as you no doubt already know, any Aspect, once formed, becomes an integral part of one's Essence."
"Meaning, be it the [Aura] or [Mana] Aspects, the instant they are formed, [Aura] or [Mana] will start coursing through your Essence, including through your physical vessel."
"That has many implications, the foremost of which was instilled in me by my teacher, a wandering member of the Aura Knight who taught me the basics of [Aura], before he even entertained telling me what [Aura] was..."
"Was that, before I even dared to think about forming my first speck of [Aura], I had to first have a pre-existing synergy of Aspects allowing me to survive introducing it into my Essence."
"Because olden legacies or not, and as I just reiterated, [Aura] is, by its very fundamental concept, an energy whose sole purpose is [Destruction]."
"Hence, to properly contain it, one ultimately has to resort to a combination of two methods that are not dissociable, [Tempering] and [Control]."
"[Tempering] is irrelevant here, and what you need to know is that [Control], as a means to protect myself from [Aura] and harm others through it, is done via two [Discipline]s. [Purpose] [Control] and [Aura] [Control]."
"[Purpose] [Control] refers to how [Destruction] can be expressed in millions of ways, some much milder and endurable than others."
"[Aura] [Control] refers to the handling of [Aura] itself, inside or outside the boundaries of my physical vessel, irrespective of its form, purpose, density, intensity, insidiousness, or even uncontrollability," she finished her explanation in the most abrupt of manner, then stared at me...
Expectantly?
Was that it?
"Nice bit of [Teaching] there," I commented first, in a devious and pointless attempt to mellow her out, "But I fear that if I attempted to interfere with your [Aura] [Control] as is, now that I know what to search for and what to do... things won't be pleasant."
"Irrelevant," she replied, and further provoked me by raising her right arm, seemingly inviting me to land on it and make the [Aura] that must be coursing through it go wild.
"If this is part of your continued dissuasion against me pursuing [Aura], I expect to see a shower of blood the moment I use a single percent of my energy," I commented as I made my way to her. "That, or show me something new about [Will], I can accept bo-"
The moment I landed on her palm, however, feeling the sudden shift in my momentum as I experienced another bout of being cast uncontrollably through the air, informed me about an additional constraint I would have to work under.
Or so I assumed.
"I object to this fairy throwing activity," were my first words upon returning. "Please abstain from launching without my consent a second time, or I will have to take countermeasures."
Evidently, words meant nothing, and when I gave her a second chance, Knight Thalor threw me out once more, definitely opening the hostilities.
Yup, alright, we were on the Sentinel training grounds for a reason.
The ensuing not-duel unfolded much the way I imagined it during my idle contemplations, with me being demonstrated with absurd [Clarity] how long my Path still was before it escaped the confines of its emergence phase.
Nevertheless, as always, it eventually all came back to the apex strategy of circling my opponent and diving in whenever I believed there was an opening.
It was just that "opening", in this case, referred to all of Knight Thalor's extremities, where her [Control] should be the weakest.
Slowly but surely, my [Awareness], enhanced by my [Will], was grinding away at the puzzle she offered me, and it wasn't long before I commenced to [Will] her [Aura] to go out of [Control].
A first attempt was followed by a second attempt, which was momentarily trailed by a third, then a fourth, all with an increasing [Comprehension] of what I needed to [Will] into reality.
Fraction after Fraction of my energy vanished into Knight Thalor's [Aura] [Control] without showing any result, my [Cultivation] unable to follow my expenditures.
This being an exchange without meaningful stakes, I couldn't be bothered with pacing myself.
What would be the point?
So it was that I allowed myself to be thwarted many times over, learning everything I could, until [Guided] told me I was ready.
I dove in just like any other time.
I was caught.
My [Will] surged outwards, targeting the very hand that was presently on the verge of sending me flying in a wild tumble.
From her fingertips to the smallest articulations hidden within her palm, I [Will]ed for her hand to reach the anatomical complexity I had to deal with whenever I was [Guided] to push the intricacy of my [Cultivation] to the edge of what my [Will]-enhanced [Focus]ed [Awareness] was capable of tracking.
Half of my energy instantly vanished, and right as I was uncontrollably tossed away, I added a last spin to it.
I [Will]ed for this complexity to be her natural state.
When my [Awareness] instantly caught onto a ripple of [Aura] that emanated from her hand, I did not doubt for a second that whatever it was Knight Thalor had expected of me, I lived up to it, and that was why she allowed my trifling trick to achieve its goal.
Stopping my wild tumble through the air with a practiced manifestation of my [Will] to drastically increase my wings' air resistance, I finally got to witness what she promised me when we first set out.
A loss of [Control].
It began at the fingertips.
Where my [Awareness] had previously perceived nothing, a faint shimmering suddenly appeared, wavering with barely contained instability.
Then the shimmering spread.
From the distal joints into the fingers proper.
From the fingers into the palm.
From the palm to the wrist.
That was what the final spin I had added was for.
A natural state ought to propagate.
After all, it was now her "natural state".
The shimmering continued upward, growing steadily stronger.
What had initially only been perceptible through [Awareness] gradually intensified until even my eyes could begin to discern fleeting wisps of it, ethereal and elusive though they remained.
Her wrist twitched.
Then her forearm seized.
The muscles beneath her skin visibly tightened.
By the time the shimmering reached her elbow, its instability had become obvious even from a distance, the wavering no longer subtle but increasingly violent and seemingly capable of affecting her physically.
Then, finally, some critical threshold was reached, and her [Aura] effectively did the equivalent of detonating.
Crimson lines erupted across her hand.
Then her forearm.
Then her entire arm.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Cuts manifested simultaneously as uncontrolled [Aura] carved through the very limb that had failed to contain it.
Skin split open.
Muscles parted.
Tendons severed.
Several lacerations bit deep enough to expose the bone beneath.
Blood followed a heartbeat later, first spraying outward as a fine mist before pouring freely from wounds that would have crippled most fighters outright.
And through it all, Knight Thalor remained perfectly composed.
She did not blink.
She did not open her mouth to utter so much as a sound.
She simply stood there, almost like another observer, calmly allowing everyone present to witness the consequence of a single loss of [Control] with the [Aura] Aspect being part of her Essence.
"That's what a rudimentary loss of [Control] looks like." She raised her mangled arm, the maimed flesh contorting in all sorts of disgusting ways as she mobilized it despite its abominable state.
Well, I had to admit it.
She was making an exceptionally compelling case against pursuing [Aura].
Though, whether her warnings survived contact with Everwell's presumably bottomless reservoir of knowledge on the subject... that remained to be seen.
Still, just like I gave her the benefit of the doubt when it came to the Two Laws Essence Doctrine, doubts which were proven so absolutely and absurdly right that I ended up electing to form both the [Purity] and [Harmony] Aspects, I wouldn't forget her warnings.
Not that forgetting the gruesome sight of her mangled arm was something I could easily do.
Of course, now that she had made her point, there was still one last step needed for me to anchor that memory and not lose it to something stupid like infantile amnesia.
"Alright, I see your point. But while we're there, are you feeling [Pain] with that degree of injury? And if it's needed, can you still [Control] your [Aura]? Actually, how impairing is such an..."
Questions.
Lots, and lots of questions.