Story:

The palace still trembled with afterdust and violet sparks when Wen Xia moved.

Her aura-rune sword was already drawn—pale silver blade etched with flowing script that glowed faintly, its runes tasting the air like a serpent's tongue.

"Michiru-sama," she said quietly. "This way. The keep's inner chamber is warded. I will escort you there now."

Michiru-sama shook her head, brown waterfall of hair swaying, her eyes still on the eastern window and its boiling red wound of sky.

"There is no safe place in Yamato," she said softly, "if this kind of evil cannot be stopped. A keep is only stone, Xia-chan."

"Besides—" and here the tension at the corners of her mouth eased by a fraction, "—I feel safe enough with the powerful Wen Xia around."

Wen Xia's grip on her sword tightened almost imperceptibly. She looked away, toward the vanishing-point where the violet teleport light had died, and exhaled through the veil.

"...Even the two wives of Oda Nobunaga are far beyond me," she said, in the flat, measured tone of a professional filing a fact she did not enjoy filing.

"The violet one folded space like a letter. The pink one's stillness alone would have told me everything, if I needed telling." Her thumb ran once along the rune-etched flat of the blade.

"There is always someone stronger in the pursuit of the martial arts. I know this. It is the first law of the sword. But knowing it," she added, very quietly, "never gets lighter."

Michiru-sama laughed—a genuine, bright peal that rang strangely through the dust and the tolling bells, warm as a struck bell in a cold temple.

"Oh, Xia-chan. I was not speaking of the martial arts at all." Her eyes curved with ancient fondness. "And there you go again—your mind holds nothing but sword forms and footwork. You would never guess, so I will stop hinting"

Wen Xia stared at the Tenno for a long moment—completely failing, visibly, to solve the riddle, filing it away as one more thing her liege said that had no sword in it.