Aviators, of course, do not travel on foot.
The Xianzhou has a craft called the starskiff.
Shaped like a boat, it serves as an all-purpose vehicle for swift transit within the Xianzhou, and at a pinch it can even manage interstellar journeys.
“Woo-hoo!”
Baiyun whooped as she worked the wheel, sending the starskiff streaking across the battlefield.
“I wouldn’t have guessed.
You’re actually a decent pilot.”
Felutina sat beside her, chin in hand, watching the scenery scroll past below with open interest.
“Obviously.
I won the Foxian division of the Starskiff Flight Grand Prix!”
Baiyun tipped her head back, preening.
“Why only the Foxian division?” Felutina asked, curious.
“Well…
about that.
I couldn’t brake at the end, wrecked the skiff, and got disqualified from the rest of the meet.”
“…Amazing that you’re still breathing.”
“Heh heh.”
Baiyun jabbed Felutina with an elbow, her tail swishing restlessly behind her.
“I’ve crashed more times than I can count.
Trust me, I’ve got experience with this sort of thing.”
“Bai, quit elbowing— no.
No, don’t sound proud of that.”
Felutina didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh.
“Anyway, forget that.” Baiyun eased off the throttle a little and turned her head, watching Jingliu carve her way through the battlefield below.
“That sister of yours is a bit of a monster, isn’t she?
Do we really need to worry about her?”
“You don’t understand.
It’s her first time on a battlefield.”
“Ah, a parent’s undying love?”
“No, I’m serious.
In a few minutes her confidence is going to swell past its limits, and she’ll pick a fight with something she can’t beat yet.”
“You sound like a street-corner fortune-teller…”
Baiyun was still muttering when a chain of screams rose from below.
Several Cloud Knights came flying backward into view, and a beast ten times their height rose behind them.
A beast-machine footsoldier.
A Longbo.
“Whoa!”
Baiyun’s mouth fell open wide enough to fit an egg.
She turned to stare at Felutina.
“Okay, sister, seriously, how did you call that?”
…
Jingliu was breathing hard.
After cutting her way all the way here, she ought to have been exhausted.
Instead she felt better than she ever had.
Swordplay had opened itself to her; she understood it now, bone-deep.
So even facing a Longbo ten times her height, she felt no fear.
“I’ll win.”
Twelve flying swords launched as one.
She raised her Cloud Knight greatsword high, sprang onto the Longbo, and left wounds across it by the dozen.
And that was all she did.
A beast-machine footsoldier feels no pain.
The gashes Jingliu opened weren’t enough to slow it by a step.
It could let her scrape at its hide all day.
She couldn’t afford the same.
One mistake, just one—
BOOM!
The thing everyone feared happened anyway.
The huge palm found its opening and slammed down on Jingliu mid-leap.
“Bai, put me down there.” Felutina drew a long breath and tightened her grip on her sword.
“That’ll be too slow.
Relax, I’ve got a more efficient approach.”
Baiyun’s ears twitched.
The corners of her mouth curled up into an excited little arc.
“…You’re not planning to ram it, are you?”
A very bad feeling took root in Felutina.
“Bingo~” Baiyun winked at her.
Felutina wanted to argue, or simply jump off the skiff and be done with it.
Then she caught the shine of expectation in Baiyun’s eyes, and let it go.
“…Once.
This once.”
Whoosh!
Like an arrow off the string, the starskiff plunged under Baiyun’s hands and smashed straight down onto the Longbo’s skull.
An instant before impact, Baiyun triggered emergency ejection mode and threw both arms around Felutina.
The two girls were flung into open air.
“Hold on tight.”
Felutina spun mid-fall, brought her sword up, watched for the moment, and drove it home.
The blade punched into the beast-machine’s body, throwing a violent spray of sparks.
Their descent slowed, dragging to a crawl.
Baiyun let out a breath and patted her chest, feeling her heart hammer with delight.
“What a rush!”
“Save the review for later.
There’s a bigger rush coming.” Felutina’s voice drifted over, flat and haunted.
“Now, please name the fallen human.”
“Huh?”
Baiyun blinked, and then she heard it: a small, brittle crack.
No way.
Before the thought finished, weightlessness swallowed her whole again.
“—Eeeyaaah!!!”
The Cloud Knights’ standard-issue sword was well made, but nothing made could absorb that much punishment.
It held for a moment, then snapped.
Out of options, Felutina fell back on being a Pathstrider of Abundance and staged another King Descends from the Heavens.
She twisted to put her own body underneath, shielding Baiyun as best she could.
…
It hurt.
Pain and helplessness rolled over Jingliu’s mind like a tide.
She lay in the bloody mud of the battlefield, wrapped in fear again.
Beaten that easily.
Here, at the edge of drowning, she finally understood: swordplay had a limit too.
A Borisin walked over to her, teeth bared, one clawed hand rising.
So this is how I die, Jingliu thought.
Then the Borisin toppled, revealing the slender figure standing behind it.
“Are you all right?”
The girl tilted her head.
Blood streaked her cheek, and half a dozen fresh wounds crossed her body, some already knitting closed, some still raw and ugly.
Lower down hung a sword, broken the same as Jingliu’s.
“Get up.”
Felutina’s voice kept coming, but Jingliu stayed in the mud, her pupils unfocused, only her chest still rising and falling with each slow breath.
All at once she had no reason left to live.
She had picked up a sword and called herself a genius.
She had given everything she had, and done less damage than a starskiff dropped from the sky.
And now Felutina had to drag her own broken body through the fight to save her.
Wasn’t this exactly like Cangcheng, all over again?
Maybe if she died, Sister Felu would be better off…
“I’m sorry…” the girl whimpered, faint as a mosquito’s whine.
“Fine.
You die, and I’ll die right here with you.
I’ll cut my own throat on this spot and be done with it!”
“…Don’t!”
That finally reached her.
Jingliu pushed herself up and stretched out a trembling hand.
Another hand caught it at once.
Felutina was no fool.
She could guess well enough what was going through Jingliu’s head, and she couldn’t be sure whether her own presence here might set off some butterfly effect and get little Jingliu killed in the past for real.
All she could do was grip that hand hard, pull Jingliu into her arms, and try to give her a little warmth with the heat of her own body.
“Jingliu.
You have to live.”
The girl spoke softly, right beside her ear.
“We have to live.
Life is the only thing we have left!”
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