It was an impressive and resourceful process, even if it left the operator vulnerable.
Any aura convergence drew Remnants and sacred beasts like flies to rotting meat, and anyone operating the mining construct was helpless. Hence the guards.
So the Sandvipers had come to the conclusion that using captured prisoners was the most expedient way to gather large numbers of scales in a short period of time. The operators would die, but replacing them was cheaper than sending strong sacred artists to guard them. It wouldn't last as a long-term operation, but in the short term it was a ruthlessly efficient strategy. Eithan wondered if it had been Jai Long's idea.
Jai Long started moving casually in Eithan's direction, and Eithan saw through the young man's intentions immediately. He puffed away at his pipe as though oblivious.
When you saw everything, you usually had to pretend you didn't. It was more polite that way.
“The most we can hope for is a temporary truce,” Jai Long said from behind his scripted mask. “This is a game we can win alone, but not if we allow enemy agents to do as they like.”
The spear strike had quite a powerful technique behind it. If Eithan let it land, it might even split through his chest and skewer him on the rough wooden wall at his back.
But he felt the technique build in the accelerated cycle of Jai Long's madra, in the quick breathing as the young man ramped up his spirit. As the muscles in his arm tightened, as his whole body moved in concert like a finely tuned instrument, Eithan saw. Eithan saw the move before it was born, felt it in the thousand webs of invisible power that passed through everything around him.
Jai Long was very powerful, Eithan couldn't deny that. But he'd found that people tended to overrate raw power.
The spear passed over Eithan's head, trailing light, as Eithan sank casually to a crouch. A ribbon of smoke traced his descent, even as the smoldering leaf in the pipe's bowl went dark.
He used his finger to tamp it down, taking a half-step to the left. The spear passed to his right. Then, before Jai Long could execute a technique with more madra behind it, Eithan walked into the crowd of Sandvipers.
One of them had a light.
“Forgive me,” he said to the young woman with the scripted bit of wire in her pocket. He held out his pipe. “Would you mind?”
The Sandvipers scattered as Jai Long swept his spear in an arc, glowing with light to rival the moon and enough force to split a tree's trunk. Eithan followed the young woman's motion as she threw herself out of the way of the technique, dipping a hand into the pocket of her fur coat and withdrawing the metal wire.
Jai Long's deadly madra passed over his back. He gave a flick of his spirit, and the end of the wire sparked to life.
He straightened as he used the tiny device to light his pipe, sighing as the leaf caught. Eithan blew a ring of smoke in Jai Long's direction and then tossed the scripted wire back to its owner.
“Thank you.” To Jai Long, he spoke out of genuine admiration. “Your spear is everything I'd heard it would be. The Jai clan must have been blinded when it came to you, that's my honest opinion. Casting you out because of your Remnant. Give them a chance, and I'm sure they'll take you back.”
Eithan had a general policy of being encouraging whenever possible, though he'd found that it wasn't always taken in the spirit he'd meant it.
Kral, for example, had darkened as though he was prepared to pass a death sentence. He cradled a pair of awls that crawled with corrosive green madra, brandishing them like a couple of stingers. The Sandvipers spread out, entrapping Eithan in a formation they'd obviously practiced. The pale blue aura of the air began to crawl with toxic green; they were calling up some kind of poison aura, probably to trap him in a deadly fog.
They'd reacted quickly. He favored them with a half-bow of respect.
But the poison fog would ruin the flavor of his pipe, so he would have to decline.
Eithan turned to Jai Long, who—unlike the members of the Sandviper sect—had no special body to protect him from the incoming poison. The man with the red-wrapped features had paused with spear cocked in one hand, regarding Eithan.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Ordinarily, you would ask that question before trying to stab me with your spear,” Eithan said, blowing out another mouthful of smoke.
“You've been following us.”
“You're more interesting than most of the people I follow,” Eithan pointed out. “And there is a purpose to this, despite what you may think.”
Jai Long readied his spear. “I am Jai Long, attendant of the Sandviper sect.”
Kral stepped out. “Kral, heir to the Sandvipers.”
The spearman looked at his friend, ready to protest—it wasn't entirely honorable for a sacred artist to fight two against one, but that was the only way this would hold any interest for Eithan.
He spread a hand in a generous gesture. “You're welcome to come at me both at once. I don't have anything else to do for the evening.”
Kral gripped his awls tighter, and Eithan could practically hear him refusing out of general stubbornness. He sighed.
“Fine then. I spit on the honor of the Sandvipers, that pathetic collection of cowards and cripples. You don't have a spine between you, you only use poison because it takes courage to face an enemy in battle, and I could improve on a Sandviper warrior by stapling a snake to a scarecrow's arm. Also your mothers were dogs and your fathers were blind, and so on. Fight me.”
Some of the less mature among them were actually angry. Kral in particular was growing hot around the collar; he wouldn’t be used to people challenging him to his face. The majority of them were either confused or looking for a trap. Jai Long glanced around the road as though to find Eithan's companions.
“I'm alone,” Eithan said. “No need to soil yourselves.”
That was enough to make Jai Long level his spear again, if only in reservation. “If you wanted to kill yourself, you didn't have to bother me.”
Eithan blew smoke in his eyes.
There were eight enemies. Three women, five men. Of those, only Kral and Jai Long were at the Highgold level; the rest were Lowgold, though that didn't mean he could entirely discount them. A Sandviper's venom would do to flesh what a live coal did to a sheet of thin paper, and he was surrounded by toxic aura now; a quick scan of the area with his spirit showed him an ocean of malicious green. All the Sandviper Goldsigns hissed at him, green madra rolling quickly through seven sets of madra channels.
And though he toyed with them, Highgold was actually a fairly impressive stage of advancement. He reminded himself of this even as he enjoyed the smoky taste of autumn shadows.
A power like the one he'd inherited from his father's line tended to make one careless. Superior awareness made him difficult to hit, but did nothing to protect him otherwise. He had to remind himself that there was a reason why people usually felt fear.
But ultimately, even his own reminder did nothing to make him more alert. Why should it? He was born careless, after all.
And this was fun.
A twisting line of starlight represented the Jai clan's spear techniques, and he stepped forward in between one thrust and another. Needles of green fell from above him as a Sandviper tried to drop Forged spikes on top of him, but he brushed into the crowd and the sacred artist had to cancel his attack or risk impaling his friends.
Smoke trailed behind him as Eithan waded deeper into the crowd, hands in his outer pockets. An awl pierced where one Sandviper expected his head would be, but it passed harmlessly through yellow hair as Eithan sped that step up a fraction. A sword slashed at his ribs, but his next stride carried him slightly to the right, and the sword caught another Sandviper in the ribs.