Salt wind slapped the black glass reefs.
Dune City hunched above, sandstone veined with obsidian, dull green glass domes, alleys sunk with bodies of the dead and poor.
Soldiers fill their bellies as civilians starve.
Nobles dragged trunks of Tola toward cellars.
The rest of the city chewed on dust.
A silhouette stood upwind.
One vermillion eye opened in the darkness.
Every red cloak bowed.
Shinshō bowed.
Shinshōkan bowed.
The eye closed.
The silhouette turned away.
"Okay, class," Shinshō Luna said, book tucked under her arm, ink on her fingers, smile too bright for a war. "Pop quiz."
A hairline ripple cracked her mask, older and serpent-sharp, then smoothed again.
"Question one. How many archers cannot hit what they cannot see? Ibara?"
Shinshōkan Yamanashi Ibara robbed in his red order cloak rolled his shoulders.
White-gold light licked under his skin.
"All of them."
"Correct."
Luna tapped her book against her shoes knocking sand off.
"Blind them and I'll grade you."
She did not look at Moro.
She did not need to.
"Open me a door." Luna said calmly
Shinshōkan Moro flexed once calm.
"I will open it."
"On my mark," Luna said, voice sugary.
A nod from Ibara.
A blink from Moro.
The Red Army sank lower on the reef shelf, breath quiet as the tide.
She raised two fingers.
The city's archers leaned out, smug behind stone.
Ibara turned his palm saying "Wind Muti:
Wind rose, scooped the dunes, and hurled a dust sheet up the face of the wall.
Dune City archers released and bowstrings sang blindly.
He drew up more wind and said "Fire Muti: Solar Flame" Solar Flame bloomed making a fire columns white-gold making a sunspot heat.
He twisted the storm into fire columns saying "With combining my wind Muti ! With my fire Muti you get! Weather Muti: Fire Tornadoes" producing Fire Tornadoes rushing towards the wall. The first man they touched screamed, he blazed white and then fell, a black statue mid-step that shattered on the stones.
Arrow slits slagged aura shields blistered to syrup, and Helm rims flashed. Three archers jumped to clear the fire but wind flicked their feet they missed the step and went off the wall backward, arms pinwheeling, bodies thudding flat into the square.
Moro strolled to the foundation, dust coating his boots, and set his palm to the stone like greeting.
"Spatial Muti."
"Shura Ōshin 修羅大進 — The Great Push."
Obsidian veins bulged the wall bowed like a lung about to burst, then it did.
Blocks sheared inward and exploded through the avenue, the shock threw men from the battlements, two landed headfirst and left red fans on the paving.
A third sailed into a stained-glass shrine and vanished in a shower of green knives.
A wagon yawned black where the rampart had been.
The Red Army flowed through.
Front ranks in locked shields.
Second ranks in short spears.
Third ranks carrying mantlets.
Drum left.
Drum right.
Just the sound of people who had decided violence.
"Stack and drive," Luna said.
"Turtles by twos. Hook the crenels. Sappers on the right."
Hooks flew.
Ropes bit.
Shield turtles heaved under boiling oil that vaporized to harmless steam as Ibara cut the heat sideways with clean wind saying "Wind Muti: Suzushi Kaze."
Mantlets kissed the next corner.
A sapper team vanished under the breach lip and reappeared on the other side with a door already off its hinges.
A city captain lunged into the gap, blade high, breath sour with the corrupt power.
Moro met him with one hand to the throat, tilted his head as if listening two fingers reached into the air.
A thin dark filament lifted from the man's chest and fought the light. The captain's face went chalk and then a wet gray knees knocked.
"You'll never know the infinite madness that lay in your heart," Moro said, almost bored.
The soul thread shivered, and then nothing.
Civilians on the rubble flinched like they had been slapped.
Moro stole the thread, someone's soul.
The body emptied without a mark, it hit the stones and twitched once, mouth wide open.
Moro had already stepped through the dying breath to meet the next man.
An arrow kissed his cheekbone and drew a line of red.
He did not wipe it away.
He stepped into the street.
The garrison decided to be brave, shields locked straight A drum rumbled.
They charged the breach they had laughed at the day before they thought would hold.
"Blind them again," Luna said.
Ibara raised a ring of heat around the charge and he dipped the wind, and their front rank lost half its soldiers to flame and wind
Red shields met the rest of them steel rang.
Horses panicked when white-gold heat ran along their backs.
Handlers let go and were trampled by their own mounts.
A sergeant got his sword into a Red neck.
The Red dropped, fingers scrabbling, blood bubbling.
His partner took the sergeant's jaw sideways with a shield edge and stamped his throat flat.
"Wind Muti: Air Chamber, Fire Muti: Fire Watch," Ibara called.
Air pressed and Fire carved a neat path along the wall and blew two defenders off their feet.
A Red wedge climbed through the flame and Moro went through the line like a ghost saying "Spatial Muti: Mind Over Matter"
"Push to send soldiers flying, Pull to rip weapons and shields or shorten distances between me and an enemy, Lift to elevate my position or show my enemies what Margerina looks like."
His hands found what was closest and show off his devastating abilities.
Pikes, Fallen saber, Broken paving stone lifted.
He sent weapons flying towards the Dune soldiers hitting some in the back, neck, ribs, head and stabbed through the eyes.
A lieutenant clipped Moro's shoulder.
Moro's grin flashed, quick and feral.
He let the next cut ride shallow so he could feel it, then elbowed the man senseless and finished him with a knife to the ear, one clean twist.
Blood sheeted across Moro's forearm, he tasted iron and moved on.
From the towers, archers tried again.
Ibara snapped a solar lash along the crenels, metal ran.
He vented heat upward so the spill did not bake the families under the awnings.
He saw a child under a stair and cut a breeze there, cool and clean, then turned the next volley aside so it feathered the stone where Luna had been.
"Keep going," Luna said.
"Break the spine. Cut the head off the snake."
Red squads vanished into alleys, popped out behind a barricade, and took it from the back with short knives and no noise.
A hammer team shouldered into a side gate.
The defending pikemen braced, then saw the second Red turtle arrive on their flank and knew, too late, that they were in a box.
They fought anyway.
One gargled red while he tried to breathe.
A defender drove a hook into a Red's mouth and tore it open to the cheek but another Red cloak still killed him.
Dying under a Red Night.