Swinging out with his blade, Yun knocked away the foreign Immortal’s baton before slicing through his flesh once more. Another flesh wound, another waste of time. He knew that if he could get away then he could solve the issue of the incoming army with the help of Laurence and Peter, but getting away was his issue. He stopped mid-swing, earning himself a blow to the gut and the back of the head. Two more cracks appeared on his armour, but rather than worrying he began laughing.
“You really did find a good solution to me,” Yun said as he rolled away from the third follow up strike, which instead smashed into the ground and left a crater.
“Are you finally willing to banter?” Wilbur replied as he continued to try and follow up on the opportunity given to him. “I thought you could take more head blows than you have”.
“I should just be more like my friend Jim sometimes. I’m a bit too straightforward and you’ve taken advantage of that”. Yun smiled, before breaking away from the melee between the two of them. Hopping backwards over the destroyed earth and through the mire formed from blood and sweat he eagerly watched Wilbur’s smile fall from his face.
“You can’t just leave! There’s nobody left to hold me back here, I’ll destroy your defenses like paper! Where are you going? Come back!”
The further Yun got, the more distressed Wilbur became, and the less Yun felt the shackles that lay upon him. Eventually Wilbur was completely out of sight and Yun began laughing uproariously as he tore apart the army of a thousand sects from behind. Bodies fell apart after a mere touch by his blade and the By the time he broke through the enemy lines and located Peter his control over space had returned completely. He flashed over to the pale man and immediately got his attention.
“Afternoon, Yun. What can I do for you?” Peter bowed slightly with a smirk before waving at the trail of corpses that followed him. “Do you like my work? I put a lot of effort in to make sure that I left enough of a corpse trail behind me. The kids you gave me were a bit squeamish though, only that boy... Piao? Piao. He could at least hold his food down”.
“My son is a pride to us all. Golden child worthy, even”. Yun looked back. He could still hear Wilbur’s impotent cries of rage as the man tried to call Yun back. “Can you deal with him? I need to deal with the cause of the siren going off right now”.
“No problem, no problem. I’ve got a few things I want to test out on someone more fitting than the small fry Saints surrounding us. Anything interesting about him?”
“Solutions Immortal, he’s good at finding answers to things and people. You’re a variable so he might not be able to deal with you”.
“Oh I do enjoy a challenge,” Peter replied. “The Solutions Immortal... I like the sound of that. Let's see if I can do some real damage to him, eh?”
Before Yun could say anything else, Peter dashed off the way Yun had arrived, the malevolent aura around him swelling to an unbearable degree. The man was determined to have as high a kill count as possible. In Yun’s eyes he was still the menace to society that he had been when they were children. It was just that this warzone was his element.
Following Peter’s trail in reverse, Yun worked his way back to Misty Peaks in short order. He watched his people, his family, struggle under the weight of the attacks, even with the alleviation of Peter’s rampage. If a second army truly arrived then chances were high that the entire mountain would be sacked, but first he had to confirm that there really was a second army.
Going against the crowds of people that patrolled the town, Yun moved to the tower that thrust into the sky in the middle of the town. It was his residence, and his staging point for combat. Thanks to thousands of arrays and several incredibly inventive creations he could have complete purview of the town from a single room in the base of the tower.
The room was sparse, with an island table in the middle and ring of desks on the outer edge, only breaking for the door into the room itself. It could fit enough people to easily assess any situation within the city in a time of war, but it was still incomplete. On the outer ring were scraps and tools that had been left behind by people who had been working on the room before the sirens began, who had left to join the war effort. This room was useless to everyone involved in its creation, except Yun.
He loomed over the table in the middle of the room, his palms gripping the corners tightly. Channelling mana into the table, a three dimensional map began inching its way out of the tabletop. From the top of the twin mountains to the dents in the dirt left by the boots of the approaching army, Yun could see for miles in exquisite detail. This Manifestation was not his creation, but rather one of the many engineers who had joined the Hephaistians when he and Laurence had been climbing up the tower together. The skill used to make it was something that Yun understood intimately, but the fine skill behind the device was something that leant towards the aspects of Chaos rather than Order.
As he loomed over the map that had formed beneath him, Yun watched the second army approach and sighed. They were only a day away, but the fact that they were there at all was a huge problem to him.
“I heard the sirens”.
Yun turned round and saw Piao behind him. He was paler than normal, but uninjured in general. Smiling, he ushered the young man over. “How was it?”
Piao’s shoulders sank. “It was awful. Incredible, I had so much power, but the way they died? That will give me nightmares for months. Have you spoken to mother?”
“She's well. The refugees are acclimatising. They always do”. Yun scanned the table, searching for a solution to the imminent problem of the approaching army, but all his answers were limited by time.
“How is it? I mean the sirens can't be good but surely there's an answer. There's always an answer”.
“Time”.
“Time? Time what?”
“The answer is time. We need more, more than we have”. Yun looked at Piao and ruffled his hair. “They are a day away, so our only options are leave Misty Peaks for good or stick it out and hope for a miracle”.
“Why?”
“You should be able to see the situation around the mountain”.
Piao walked over to the table and looked at what Yun saw. On one corner of the map was a river of people and carts approaching the mountain. The contents of the carts were near impossible to see on the scale of the model, but the sheer amount alone spoke volumes towards their intentions: set up camp and cut the New-Hephaistians off from the world. Both Yun and Piao knew that their clan was like that of a wounded wolf pup, perfect for picking off before they grow into a ferocious wolf. They knew that if the armies could set up shop they would entice more of the sects and cults into their army and their numbers would swell to proportions that even Yun feared. They simply could not show that weakness.
“How can they have so many Saints to throw at us?” Piao asked.
“Look at the flags,” Yun pointed to the barely visible coloured banners depicting myriad different groups.
“Thats... are we fighting a third of the thousand clans? How did things get so bad?”
“I don't know. I... I don't know”.
“We can't run,” Piao growled, “They will chase us to our next home and keep this cycle going there. But... we can't fight either. They outnumber us by at least fifty to one. We can't even force a stalemate”.
“Because they have control of our borders”.
“Is there really nothing we can do?”
“I don't...” Yun stopped. Something caught his eye on the model. Around the perimeter of the model mountain was the start of a spiral. The spiral wound further and further into the mountain range, in tighter and tighter coils with the eventual target of the very tower that they stood in. Yun knew this mountain range. He had a hand in designing the structure itself, including the numerous unfinished defenses that littered the city and nearby plains, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that the spiral before him was not natural. He knew that there could also only be one cause. “What is he doing?”
Pushing Piao aside, he ran up the stairs, concern etched onto his face. Laurence was a wild card, and Yun could not tell whether the wild card would cause him to win or lose. The only way he could tell was by asking the man who was coming ever closer to him.
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