“I do not know what these dishes are but they are all delicious.”, Rana spoke happily and with his mouth full.

“Yeah, this one is meat, but I didn’t see or sense any animals in this place. Could this be a Fabrication?”, Satt was also enjoying the food.

“This spiced and iced milk is so yummy and filling and it even boosted my shakti reserves a bit.”, Amita said putting down an empty glass.

Suvi mumbled. She was looking at Rudra. Rudra was absent-mindedly chewing on a long tubular piece “meat” or similar. His gaze was fixed on the courtyard, at the meditating woman, and he was lost in his thoughts. While he’d reached the table first and piled up a lot of food on his plate and grabbed three different drinks, he’d hardly eaten or drunk anything. She had a sinking feeling in her gut. She’d never seen him like this, but he was willful and reckless, pulling the craziest of stunts when you least expected it.

Rudra had sensed her attention and flashed her a smile, then attacked his plate with gusto. The feeling in her gut drowned.

“What in the nine blazes of the seventh hell? How do you have so many techniques?”, Satt exclaimed.

“You got around to it?”, Amita smiled.

“What? Who?”, Rana looked up, confused at the sudden outburst before he realised what was happening and looked up Rudra’s profile through the Party Info screen. He spat his food out as he saw ninety-seven skills listed against Rudra, each at different levels of development and of various affinities.

“Effect of my boon. I gain the skills and techniques of my opponents at the development level they have reached.”

“How many opponents have you had? And you would get their skills when they are fighting you. When the fight ends, they should fade away… unless you… no way, that would mean…”, Rana’s mind was moving faster than he could speak.

“Sparring with two new opponents every full week and one in the half week, since I started school.”

“That would be when you were three, so about two years now. Twenty months, six full weeks and one half week a month. Two hundred and sixty!”, Satt’s voice was a whisper at the end.

“I didn’t get new skills with each fight. I’d often get slight variations of the same skill and not all skills or techniques are useful to me.”

Rana had checked Rudra’s attributes by then, “Your intelligence score. How?”

“ ’Intelligence’ measures our brain’s capabilities. It doesn’t mean I am intelligent.”, Rudra deflected.

“For you to keep the skills at the levels you get…”

“We’ll go through each of our profiles before we go into the trials. We need to have a plan for that. Right now, it's time to say hello.”, Rudra said as he got up and sped towards the courtyard. The others scrambled to catch up. Suvi shot out of her seat right after Rudra, her curses echoing through the hall.

“Don’t do something stupid.”, Suvi screamed as she ran towards the courtyard and stopped abruptly as she ran into Rudra who stood surveying the courtyard.

“Huh, why would I do something stupid?”

Suvi’s reply got lost in a mumble as the others caught up. Rudra shrugged, “You check the left side of the courtyard, I’ll check here. Amita can do the right, Satt the back, and Rana can stand lookout.”

“Why do you get to decide who checks where?”

“I reached first, so I call dibs on the front. You all can work out the rest.”

“I’ll check the front, you check the left side.”, Suvi said with narrowed eyes.

“Ok.”, Rudra sighed and turned.

“No. I’ll go left and you check here.”, Suvi replied, still suspicious, and stomped off. She looked flustered as she saw Rudra’s grin.

Amita and Satt were already going off to the left side. Rana nodded at Rudra as he kept a lookout at the entrance to the courtyard. Rudra turned to look at the woman in the centre of the courtyard.

Once in the courtyard, she looked even bigger. Seated as she was, her head was a foot above his own. There were some spatial manipulation and illusion techniques at play. From the hill, the courtyard had appeared to take up half the area of the whole complex. The hall they entered had been rectangular and most of a hundred gaz in length. Now the courtyard itself was a hundred gaz in diameter, with the pond in the centre taking up half of that. The hall and courtyard were much bigger than they had appeared when seen from the outside. The woman looked as big as she had from the hall.

The courtyard floor was covered with green, white and sand coloured tiles. Except for the white marble tiles, none of the green or sand coloured tiles kept their colour or texture once you walked over them. He had walked over green coloured sand, sand-coloured grass, green grass, sandstone, green paper, sand-coloured wool, and much more from the entrance to the pond. Clear blue water rippled towards the pond's edge, away from the silver lotus the woman was floating over. From the hall, it had appeared as if she was on the lotus, but up close he could see she floated a foot above the lotus’ receptacle. The pond itself was deep, and the bottom was not visible.

The most interesting aspects of the courtyard were not visible. The energy flows were very turbulent. His senses revealed a massive energy whirlpool right above the woman that appeared to be pushing down on her. The whirlpool end at a point above her head and many energy tendrils radiated out from the point, forming an oblong shell that enclosed her and the lotus. The ripples in the water were caused by the energy waves that radiated from the lotus stem where the energy shell converged. These waves crashed at the pond’s edge and then flowed in complex patterns across the tiles to converge at one tile. This tile was placed at the edge of the pool, right in front of the woman. He stood on it and noticed a small triangle inscribed on it with three circles at its points, coloured green, sand and white. The base of the triangle was towards the woman, the apex towards the courtyard entrance. A path, made of emerald lotus leaves, going from the pool’s edge to the lotus, started from this tile’s edge.

He crouched over the triangle, trying to decide. He could sense the others. He was out of sight for everyone except Rana who didn’t seem to be interested in him. He looked at the woman. A red cloth covered her lower body and legs with many folds down the front, condensing into a strip that wrapped around her chest. Her stomach and shoulders were bare. The visible muscle definition conveyed a sense of latent power. She had on a thick gold necklace band with a shiny red ruby in the centre and matching earrings. Gold bracers covered her forearms and all her fingers had rings. She had jet black hair tied up in a bun on the top of her head. She had a slight smile on her lips. Rudra didn’t know how, but she seemed aware of them, of him, and was waiting.

He sighed and then a finger on the white circle at the apex of the triangle and turned it till the triangle pointed at the woman. A sword materialised in front of him. It had a two-inch thick three and one-thirds feet long double-edged blade. The blade ended in a point that lay on one edge while the other edge curved into that point. The hilt was half a foot wrapped with a tan coloured leather strip and had short blunt guards. The blade was covered with intricate patterns and a script ran down the middle, interlaced with shining crystals, shining with stored shakti. Five crystals, corresponding to the five tattvas, primal elements. He grabbed the sword and ran down the lotus leaves to the woman. The silver lotus was twelve feet across and easily bore his weight.

He used the momentum from his sprint to add force to his thrust, as he stabbed the sword into the woman’s heart.

He had been worried that the oblong energy shell was a force field that could stop him, but it collapsed the moment the sword touched it. The whirlpool over her also dissipated. As the sword plunged into the woman, it released a five coloured wave of energy that travelled all over her body. Everything went still. He was wondering if he succeeded or if he needed to cut her head off instead.

The woman’s eyes opened. They were a blazing orange. Her aura flared out and everyone in the courtyard felt tremendous pressure. She uttered a single word, soft yet clear to everyone in the courtyard.

“Why?”

“I thought it would be a good way to touch your heart.”, said Rudra as he was moving back keeping his eyes on the woman.

She gripped the hilt of the sword and the next moment a metallic sound rang through the courtyard as the sword hit a staff in Rudra’s hand. When he had started weapons training on Earth with his Guru it turned out he was a natural with a sword, learning even advanced techniques with ease. But he didn’t like swords. He preferred fighting with a staff. That had been more difficult to learn, but more satisfying. It had been the same on Vendhya. Swords, especially when executing shakti based techniques, sang in his hand. Complicated sword techniques were like child’s play. But he preferred the staff. So Yashi had one custom made for him. It had a living diamond core enclosed in a helix of an alloy of osmium, iridium, uranium and boron covered by a layer of wood stone with many yantric circuits and mantras engraved in gold and silver. At six foot, it was heavy and hard and unbreakable even for those at Stage 6. The sword left a scratch.

Rudra could only defend. He was whirling the staff around, trying to anticipate attacks and intercept them. But it was difficult. Soon after her attack, his attributes had jumped tremendously. His unit showed he was now at peak Stage 6. He had enormous strength, speed, dexterity and shakti reserves at his disposal. Adjusting to this new state, mid-battle was proving difficult. He was overcompensating, under reaching, shooting beyond and stumbling a lot. He was learning his new abilities and adapting. It was coming together at a slow pace, too slow. Focusing on defence and keeping a tight grip on his staff had helped, but he was still covered in cuts and slashes, a few serious. His enhanced vitality and endurance combined with his healing factor meant they healed rapidly, allowing him to keep on fighting.

Suvi and Amita joined Rana at the edge of the pool. Satt came up soon after. What they saw was Rudra battling the woman at high speed. Both Rudra and the woman moved so fast that they appeared to be fighting on a solid platform, rather than rippling water. The woman’s attack was relentless, her every move was a strike at Rudra, even when she was pulling her sword back. All her moves flowed in a smooth, never-ending technique, deadly and mesmerising. Rudra was clumsy and bloody. He could hold her off from inflicting serious wounds, but it seemed a matter of time. It came soon. She swung the sword in an upward arc, Rudra moved back, pushed down with the staff to defend. As staff and sword connected, the force of the hit launched him a few feet into the air. He hung there for a moment, face to face with her, when she grabbed his staff with one hand and punched him in the chest with the other. The power of the punch loosened his grip and threw him out of the pond onto the courtyard tiles, several of which shattered as he formed a small dent in the floor. She kicked the falling sword back into her free hand and then walked slowly over the water towards him.

Suvi and Satt rushed to Rudra to check on him. Rana got his shields out and ready to defend the group. Amita powered up her sonic-quard. The woman flicked her hand and four drops of water flew out from the pond, hitting Suvi, Satt, Amita and Rana and smashing them against the far courtyard wall. Rudra turned to look at them and was relieved when he saw they were injured but nothing serious. As he turned back, she was there and her sword pointed rested on his neck.

“Why?”

“You were a prisoner.”, Rudra replied.

“Those who imprisoned me could have been the one’s who were wrong. Being a prisoner doesn’t make me evil.”

“They imprisoned you in your home. You were powerful. Powerful enough that they couldn’t even move you.”

“That is neither here nor there. Being powerful is not a crime.”

“They could have killed you. You were respected and of value, but not enough to be let free. You were someone who would have stopped at nothing to change their world, your world, to set right the wrongs as you saw fit.”

“Again, that doesn’t mean I was wrong.”

“Your world is gone. Your people too. You would have turned to mine.”

“I could have brought great knowledge, solved many problems and changed your world for the better.”

“When your Collectorate existed, if it was attacked by powerful and knowledgeable beings who offered to solve all its problems if the Collectorate submitted and adopted their ways, would it have been acceptable?”

She stared at him for a long moment, “No.”

“It doesn’t matter how good and benevolent an invader is. An invader is an invader.”

She looked at him and smiled, “Good, any other answer and I would have killed you for wasting my death.”

“You will not kill me? But… but I ki… attacked you.”

“You killed me?”, she laughed. Calming down, she continued, “You were just a delivery boy. That sword through my heart means my death. Fortunately for you, at my level of development, that death is not instantaneous. Now come, you have the mark but I fear we may not have enough time, we need to hurry.”

Rudra’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly. From afar, Suvi started laughing, “I never thought I’d see the day when Rudra was speechless. This is priceless. The look on his face…”