General Li fought with the fury of an avalanche, the strength of an earthquake, the brutality of a lightning strike. His Intent and will were perfectly forged into a weapon and armor both. He attacked his enemy with all the rage he’d been storing up for these past two decades.

  Eri weathered his attacks. She tried to appear nonchalant as she tossed them off, but he knew her, had known her for decades now, and he knew when she was finding it difficult to keep up.

  “You’ve gotten soft,” he taunted. “All these years with the title of Prism, relying on sheer power of Lumos to get you what you wanted. You’ve forgotten how a proper cultivator duel should work.”

  “Nonsense,” she told him, flashing a quick smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “I’m just playing with my food a little. Tell me, Li, how do you like the mess I’ve made of your little war?”

  “That war was only ever to keep people away from this tower until it would arise,” he responded. “Now that you’re here, its purpose is over.”

  “You know you can’t do more than delay me,” Eri said. “You haven’t the strength to stand against me. Not for long. I will take this tower and I will take what is long overdue. I shall remake this empire in my image. It’s what we all talked about when we were young, Li.”

  And the General was forced, despite himself, to remember those heady early days of cultivation.

  “Do you recall how you and I plotted together that we would change how things were? We saw the injustice and the control the Emperor has over us all, and we swore we would not let him win. How is it that you were co-opted when I was not? Didn’t we swear that last night together, that we wouldn’t let our spouses come between us?”

  Li had sworn. At the time, he’d meant it. At the time, he’d believed she had too. Besides, that was before he had actually met Akiko.

  His marriage to the Violet Princess had been arranged by the Emperor himself of course. Presented to him as a fait accompli. He hadn’t even met Akiko until their wedding day. He’d gone into the marriage railing about the unfairness of the system and how he would not let it corrupt him.

  And then he’d fallen in love with his wife.

  Partly it was because she was as strong and driven a cultivator as he and Eri ever had been, but without a tenth of their prior opportunities. Akiko had been permitted only into her father’s tower, and then for controlled periods of time. Yet she’d built herself a stronger foundation than many pampered scions of great sects. In time he’d learned she had demanded the marriage from her father, had chosen him as the partner most likely to help her climb. Akiko had pushed him to heights he’d never have reached on her own.

  Akiko had helped him cure the anger and rage that had been his constant companions, showing him a better way. Together they had climbed, as she first caught up with him, then leapt ahead.

  They had spent decades together. He had begun to believe the system could be redeemed. Reformed. The Emperor's grand vision was flawed, yes, but it held back the madness and strife that marked the outside world. The Emperor might rule with an iron fist, but no one truly suffered under his reign, not compared with the outside world.

  He and Akiko had ventured beyond the borders several times as imperial envoys, and he had seen for himself what the world beyond was like. How the strong dominated the weak, treating them as less than insects, crushing them underfoot at whim. No ordinary mortal could oppose a cultivator with lux at his fingertips.

  Of course cultivators took what they wanted without regard for anyone else. Yes, the empire needed reform. He and Akiko had talked of it many times. Their own climb together was driven by their desire to spur on that reform. They had chosen a new path to the heights, bypassing the crushing grip of the established sects. With him serving as one of the four great generals of the army, they had become a check on the bureaucrats and the sects. They had lobbied together for an overhaul of the Imperial Army entrance examinations, making it more open to any with talent. Now, joining the army was a path for anyone from a humble family who wished to become a cultivator to at least take the first few steps. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than it had been when he and Eri were children.

  And Eri had refused to acknowledge the progress that had been made, was still intent on smashing away everything and remaking the world in her own image. He could have forgiven that, even though he would have opposed her. He could not forgive what she had done to Akiko.

  "The last feelings I had for you died the day Akiko ascended," he said coldly, as he brought his Intent down in a heavy blow. At the same time, he unleashed six different techniques, all of which shattered and broke into sub-techniques, attacking her at simultaneously.

  Eri swatted them away with her sword. Her hair rose up around her like a cloak, deflecting the techniques he'd shot at her back as she scoffed. “Your violet princess corrupted you, made you weak. All I did was help her to move on. You'll be reunited with her eventually. But first, why not help me achieve what we always wanted?"

  "What you wanted," the general retorted. "You will take the empire and make it into a charnel house."

  "Nonsense," Eri said. "All I want to do is free cultivators from the chains the Emperor has placed on us. It's not right that scribes and bureaucrats, with no lux at all, can force us to bow and scrape and obey them."

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  "We do not obey the bureaucrats. We obey the will of the Emperor. If you truly believe in the rule of the strongest, you should respect that."

  "If the Emperor cannot hold on to what is his without the help of weaklings, he doesn't deserve his empire," Eri said.

  She was straining to hold him back. General Li allowed himself a smile. The years of fighting against the Darwur had strengthened him, teaching him to do much with little lux. Now he was surrounded by as much as he could possibly want, and he could employ what was available to him with three times the force of an ordinary cultivator.

  Eri was keeping up with him, but she wasn't besting him. Then again, she seemed somehow distracted, he noted, as she flung a handful of techniques at him that he easily brushed aside.

  Eri's particular talent was in enforcing techniques with her will and Intent. She would weave a single golden hair from her head into her technique as she launched it. That meant every single attack contained a portion of her will. Her individual attacks were stronger than his own, but it left her will divided.

  Most of her opponents would never suspect anything of the sort, but he'd known her for years, and so he was looking when he spotted the crack in her will.

  He attacked with all his might. He had multiple techniques readied and waiting. As a master of war, General Li had shaped his own attacks to match. He unleashed three high-level weaves, dense with dozens of strands of lux, and let them fly out. The weaves themselves unfolded into multiple techniques, organizing them like cohorts of an army and throwing them at Eri, all focused on the weakness in her will.

  At the same time, he reinforced his sword with red and orange lux and dashed forward.

  The point of his sword struck against Eri’s chest. It froze there against the tight layers of lux and will she had woven like armor around herself. Her hair whirled round, lengthening. It wrapped around him three times, tugging him off of his feet and hurling him aside.

  Even as his own techniques continued to work on her, he reached up and slashed. His sword slid off of her hair as though it were made of something harder than diamonds.

  "You know better than that," Eri scolded. "If you're going to attack me, don't attack where I know I'm strong."

  She flicked him away, releasing him from her hair. He flew back and skidded against the air, catching himself with an effort of will.

  Light gleamed around Eri as she gathered in lux. Here in the tower, there was plenty of Lumos. He would take it in if he had to do so in order to defeat her. He had not been granted permission to crack Lumos, but compared to losing this fight to Eri, it was a risk he was willing to take.

  On the other hand, she hadn't touched it either. Why not?

  The answer came to him as he considered what her true goal was here. She didn't want to ascend. She wanted the freedom to act.

  Eri was being very careful in how she approached this tower. She knew as much as he did that one wrong move could result in an imbalance of power that could be resolved only by death or ascension. It was what had happened to Akiko.

  It was something no one spoke about, but every high-level cultivator understood. Enough Lumos gathered together in one place for long enough could take on a hint of sapience of its own.

  Dealing with a tower, especially an unmanaged one, was a dangerous matter. If you weren't careful, you would find yourself crushed, or sent along to the heavens before you were ready. For Eri, that would be a fate worse than death, to ascend without her sect to serve her. She hadn’t brought them with her because she didn’t want to risk the bulk of her sect against the Darwur. It was why he had allied with the Darwur in the first place, to keep her from bringing her full strength to bear.

  He'd hurt her in that last attack. Even though she had been the one to throw him back, he could feel the cracks in her will. Eri, after all, had an Intent that could not stand to be opposed by others as strong as she was. Every time he went against her and remained standing, her Intent gave just a bit.

  On the other hand, his Intent was as firm as the bulwark which had come in his mind to symbolize it: I Stand. It might not give him the fine control of lux that some of his fellows could boast or the deft command of clever techniques. But it did make him most able to withstand the kind of assaults Eri was putting in.

  She must be thinking along the same lines, because she attacked him with everything in her. This time, his head bowed unconsciously as he answered back her attacks. General Li felt Eri's will strengthen as her Intent was flattered by her momentary upper hand in the situation.

  A voice buzzed in his ear. "Good day, General," it said. "You don't know me, but I've had the pleasure of meeting your daughter. I thought perhaps we could conduct a bit of business."

  He risked a quick glance to the side, suspicious of a trap. A moth buzzed beside him, a moth with a human head and a long prehensile tail.

  He blinked in astonishment, then had to turn his attention back to the fight as Eri took advantage of his momentary distraction. He fended off another of her attacks, searching out the technique for the single strand of hair at its center, then cleaving that and watching the lux dissolve into motes.

  “Who are you? What do you want?"

  "My name, though unimportant, is Sun Wukong. I have long been a prisoner in this tower. I am here now with Grandmaster Noren, your ersatz ally. He first begs me to tell you that your daughter and her companions are all fine, having exited the tower, and they are now engaged in a life-and-death combat with Inquisitor Yoonji, who has turned traitor."

  The man-headed moth buzzed again. "I am not entirely certain that he has the same standards for safety as you do when it comes to your daughter, but she and her friends are quite adept. I'm sure they will manage nicely handling a cultivator two levels higher than themselves. Her barbarian lover, in particular, seems very sure of himself.”

  General Li fought to contain his astonishment. It was clear that Sun Wukong, whoever he was, had indeed met Hiroko and her companions. That they had reached the top was obvious since the tower had been opened. Since there was no sign of her here, he had assumed she had exited. So this Sun Wukong was telling at least that much truth.

  But fighting the Inquisitor? “Inquisitor Pak is sworn to the Empire," he said. "Why would they be forced to fight her?"

  "I'm just reporting what this fellow Noren tells me," Sun Wukong said. "Believe me, I'm as surprised as you are to hear that such a person could have betrayed her oaths and be looking for her own interests. At any rate, that's unimportant. Grandmaster Noren and I have a plan to propose for you."

  "I'm listening," the general said as he caught a sword blow from Eri on his own weapon.

  The two were fifty feet apart at this point, their swords extended to incredible lengths as they clashed in the void space of this tower. He could feel the lux around him responding to his will as he summoned more into himself.

  Eri's Intent was strong indeed, but he would be able to fight for a while longer.

  He detailed a plan. General Li's interest was caught when he heard the center point of it.

  He laughed aloud. "Yes," he said. "Yes. Whatever else happens, whether I'm forced to ascend immediately or not, it's worth it if we can bring that about."

  "I thought you might say that," Sun Wukong said.