Copper alloy, blended together to form a spectacular many-shaded pattern of silvery and golden tones that summoned flashing waves of metallic color as it danced through the candlelight, struck hard against black, light-drinking titanium. Edge to edge, this impact resounded hard and cold. Powered by the combined strength of two spirit tempering realm cultivators, it unleashed a clash reverberating with hillside-shattering force. The surrounding cavern sprouted gouges, nicks, and powdered nodules as the shockwaves splashed across every available surface.

Qi flared along the skin as reinforced bodies resisted the blast. Tempered forms joined and altered to the point that they automatically diverted and absorbed such discharges.

The alloyed blade, likewise, had been forged in power and reinforced to endure engagements where might greater than the hands presently wielding it could harness would be unleashed. Beautiful and deadly alike, it endured perfectly unscathed.

Not so the black titanium greatsword. Lacking such elder-forged strength and designed to defy time and corrosion rather than trade blows between high realm cultivator peers in lethal conflict, it could not sustain such rigor unharmed. The impact saw a tiny white crack sprout across its surface.

Tall and lanky, the athletic orthodox cultivator smiled wide, bringing a burst of ivory white into the center of a face painted entirely in red and gold glory. Those markings, the characteristic and stunning warpaint of the Golden Flame Sect, were well known to Scoria Scorn. She did not know this woman, a priestess flung across time after being trapped in stasis for an age, but she recalled the long-ago rivalry that saw that sect bound to her father's will.

Such knowledge offered an additional glaze of satisfaction as she lunged and thrust in battle, a spicy flavor to season the power this elder's qi would supply her when slain.

The combatants danced about on the flat stones of the cavern floor, a surface hewed out and leveled by sword rather than spade. The painted-faced elder, eyes focused on the crack in the titanium forging, struck hard, driving forward and inward with broad, heavy strikes of her single-edged golden bronze blade. Great strength infused each blow, for this woman had the strength and leverage of the tall and seized upon any possible advantage when thrust into battle with a foe of equal cultivation capability.

Scoria Scorn fell back before the onslaught. Surrounded by veins of ore on all sides, she moved about freely in three dimensions as she evaded. Just as fast and many times more agile than the burning fire steps that propelled her foe, she nevertheless remained on the retreat and allowed her body to be pressed back against the stones until she was forced into another ringing parry, strength against strength.

A second crack spider-webbed outward from the center of the first, and the smile splitting the painted face deepened.

Though both a cloth veil and a mask of metal plates covered her face, Scoria Scorn kept her expression perfectly level. Her focus and qi were calm, devoted entirely to the clash itself. Her spirit, iron-hard, never wavered. The surface of her soul left no trembling radiations, no leaking qi an enemy might read. Against the battle lust of her enemy, she maintained a perfect, faceless, fortification.

Striking out beyond the parry with a snake-swift pivot-and-shift motion, the black edge streaked across red-gold metal on the left hand of the opera-costume-armored cultivator. A mark, red-gray and ugly, stained the brilliant garb but it failed to pierce the hardened protective layer lying beneath the blazing silks on the surface. Even so, a talisman inscribed into the weave of the textile disintegrated, silken strands crumbling to dust. The brownish detritus left behind sprayed out into the still air of the cavern and marked this loss.

The success of this swift riposte demonstrated a status the demonic cultivator had recognized from the very first pass. The foe might have an advantage in reach and power, but skill and technique lay firmly with Scoria Scorn. Hardly unexpected, given the extra millennia of practice and dozens of battles she'd faced to temper her experience, but a welcome confirmation. Such knowledge served to plot out the death duel upon its suitably inevitable course.

Though lacking matching skill, the orthodox cultivator's intuition was good, and she reached the realization in no more than a single additional exchange. Painted eyes narrowed, masking them in fire, and she redoubled her already vigorous assault. Aggression edged into recklessness as she pressed the attack with all the strength and speed her body could summon. Weight, rather than elegance, propelled each blow forward with crushing force.

A method in search of a quick end.

To avoid smiling; to calm her qi as the trap closed, was very difficult indeed. Thankfully, this recently awakened woman was skilled enough that the duel demanded absolute attention and commitment. Scoria Scorn held her grip fast to the titanium blade and steadily pursued the absolute course she'd embraced from the very first moment the weapons crossed.

A prolonged, grinding battle of attrition would produce victory for the demonic cultivator every time, cut after tiny cut. Dozens, hundreds of passes would unfold first, defenses slowly stripped away one layer of cloth, metal, and flesh at a time. No lethal blow would come, but the costumed woman would eventually bleed dry of qi and vitality alike. To survive, the orthodox cultivator would need to overcome a superior defense by a more agile opponent in a space perfectly level and open. No distractions, no terrain variance, and no chance for support.

The demonic cultivator commended her opponent's aggression, her willingness to embrace the mad gambles needed to overcome a stronger opponent and embrace desperation.

But desperation could be directed by the cunning.

A simple lure, amid the dance of death in the darkness, sufficed.

Cracks, spreading steadily across the titanium edge, served as more than alluring bait. A dancer, a performer clad in sacred ceremonial regalia that only mimicked proper battle armor, the ritualist priestess of the Golden Flame Sect lacked any true knowledge of nuances of metals. She did not understand the difference between the complex multi-compound copper alloy in her hand and titanium. She knew only that her blade was stronger than her foe's.

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Break and disarm. Take the head of the weaponless foe. A simple plan, and every warrior knows that simple plans are generally superior.

But the properties of titanium are not those of bronze or steel.

Twelve times the blades clashed in the fullness of spirit tempering realm strength. The walls of the chamber buckled and crumpled, until the ground was covered in thick dust and the floor strewn with fallen stones. The flame-laced steps of the tall priestess brushed these aside as she moved, leaving molten puddles behind. Scoria Scorn simply glided over such obstacles, feet not even touching the floor.

Though the carved chamber quaked, it did not collapse.

Talismans burned away with each flurry of counterstrokes between the grand exchanges, and dark metal scored lines through silk and across armor. In two places it even drew blood out from beneath the paint. Cracks radiated out through the titanium blade until it appeared a spiderweb in truth and the smile beneath flame-wrapped eyes burned white hot.

The orthodox cultivator took a broad step backwards, buying a full stride's worth of separation at the price of a cut just above the right knee. Accepting this blow, she pulled her long-handled sword up high in a two-handed guard. The bare edge extended outward, its base level with her right shoulder. One foot slid forward, and she launched a massive, sweeping cross-cut from side to side aimed directly at Scoria Scorn's neck.

The confines of the cavern made a clean dodge impossible. The move demanded, invited even, a straight parry. Such a move, made with the expertise the demonic cultivator possessed, would allow her to step in and deploy a deadly thrust in follow-through.

If the black blade survived the contact. And both combatants knew absolutely that it would not.

Scoria Scorn would never know what move the orthodox cultivator expected her to make in response to that blow, but when the eyes surrounded by inscribed wind and fire wheels went wide, she confirmed that it was not to make the weapon-shattering parry.

Titanium struck, snapped, and gave way. The blade cleaved along fragmentation lines embedded in it since its forging. The meter-and-a-half length weapon shattered in the center. Fragments of black metal scattered outward. Most fell harmlessly to the floor.

But the outer edge of the blade did not halt its course or fly freely toward the far wall in a dynamic spiral. Low density, it was far lighter than a bronze or steel blade of the same size. It, guided by the precision alignment to which its master had turned it in the moment of destruction, continued forward on its initial course.

Darting through the open air, with boulder-splitting strength behind it, it connected with the next solid surface in its path edge-on.

Red blossomed in the center of the orthodox cultivator's gut as a half meter of black metal lodged in her intestines.

Scoria Scorn, not done, ducked beneath the suddenly aborted cross-cut blow and slammed the pommel of her shattered weapon against the base of the broken blade. Black metal smashed through flesh and bone, and the spine shattered.

"Monster," the golden-faced woman collapsed to the cavern floor. Blood poured from her mouth.

"Truth is monstrous, in the eyes of a fool," Scoria Scorn knelt, plunged her hand into the broken woman's guts, and pushed her arm up until she found the heart. Clenching her fingers once, she crushed it beneath her fist.

She sucked in air through compressed lips as the plague grasped the qi and pulled it to her, flooding her soul. Power rushed into her dantian and out, tempering her joined mind, body, and soul further than before. Another layer, another step further towards heaven and restored immortality. The sixth layer of the spirit tempering realm, finally achieved after nearly four decades of labor in the dark. The strength she needed to dare to breach the hidden lands she knew the great caverns hid. The refuges she had just begun to detect.

Strength, and also a weapon.

Decades in the dark, plundering the remains of the descendants of cowards, had allowed Scoria Scorn to accumulate a considerable cache of weapons. Regrettably, they had almost all been pathetically weak. Cultivators might have fled the world above as the demon war blossomed, but while the cowards were easily able to evade conscription, they were rarely able to take any pieces of true power with them as their predilections were known long in advance.

She had a pile of weapons suited to initiates and disciples, but only three weapons fashioned to withstand the strength an elder could evoke, and that pair of spears and lonely mace were wholly unsuited to her fighting style, one she would not be changing after almost thirty-five hundred years of practice. She had nearly begun to despair of ever finding a proper replacement for her titanium butcher's blade.

This enemy, thankfully, stemmed from roots near to her own. Her alloy-forged weapon, now grasped eagerly in steady, wrapped, hands, possessed a single-edged blade nearly a meter and a half in length and a hilt half as long. A very large weapon that, slightly oversize due to a clearly ceremonial emphasis, but whatever the ritual purpose, it could not hide its craftsmanship. A soul forging realm smith had forged the blade. The extremely fine woven rattan-strap pattern that wrapped about the long hilt, designed to appear as if a striking golden cobra rested there, was familiar to the demonic cultivator.

Ma Kyee Say. The was the name of the smith who had forged this weapon. A powerful elder, a pillar of the Golden Flame Sect, he was the most formidable smith in their history. He had spent nearly one thousand years honing his craft.

Scoria Scorn had studied under him, once. He had called her envious and prideful, a woman with no respect for her betters, and had hidden his secrets from her. Cast aside, she'd spent centuries bottlenecked, until she refused the despairing death of age by embracing her current path.

It was, to her, a certainty. She'd offered to obey any command, fulfill any quest, that he might direct. He had spurned her as unworthy.

At the time, that act had poisoned her with hate. Now, she was almost grateful for it. Her current path had much more to offer than the false lure of ascension.

He'd perished early during the demon war, long before she'd turned to the plague. That was a slightly melancholy recollection. Destiny would suggest that she ought to have killed him herself. The unnamed priestess whose body had been consumed by the plague at her feet was hardly a worthy consolation prize. The blade though, she would carry that without regret. It would serve her well, all the way until she once more obtained immortality.

It would also help to remind her of a lesson the long years scrambling in the dark had taught well, one ruin and murder at a time. Orthodox cultivators were stronger than she'd thought. It was not only the Twelve Sisters. Without the plague to aid her and vast masses of demons to hide behind, the danger they represented was terrifying. Even cowards would strike when cornered, and whatever poor choices had led them to the bowels of the earth did nothing to weaken their cultivation.

Had they managed to unite earlier, had they not waited until nearly half the world was ruined, the plague would have been crushed. That had not been possible then, it was not in the nature of the old world, but the world had changed. The demonic cultivators had not changed with it. Only she had, by dying. Death and rebirth taught many lessons, all of them painful but necessary.

She intended to use them to conquer.

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