Lien

Lien is the protagonist of The Lost Edge series, narrating much of the first book, Edge of the Woods, talking about his past.

## Physical Description

Lien is tall, with silver eyes and long black hair. He has a six-petal mark on the centre of his right cheek.

## Name

In the summary of Edge of the Woods, Lien is referenced as bearing "only half a name". Lien can be translated as Edge or Blade which is why Lien is sometimes known as Edge. His title is Edge of the Woods.

## Skills and Abilities

Edge is an essence sorcerer of unknown level, at least Torch almost definitely higher, with at least sword and breach essence and a strange destructive power partially sealed in his right hand.

### Essence Sorcery

As an essence sorcerer, Lien absorbs essence of specific types (or related types which he can convert into the correct types) and compresses them into his Dianis Points for advancement so he can use more powerful and more techniques.

#### Dianis Points

Lien has at least two complete Dianis Points, his Heart Point has sword essence and his Vision Point has breach essence. He also has a partially sealed essence in right hand that he can draw from. The seal tries to block Lien's connection to something destructive. At least the first layer of the seal has been broken. The Points act as self-refilling pools for essence that can be used for spells and techniques.

**Heart Point: Sword Essence** - The Heart Point is the first Dianis Point to develop and it theoretically allows for the essence in the Heart Point to mix with essence from any of the other Dianis Points in the body. Sword essence has very limited range.

**Vision Point: Breach Essence** - The Vision Point is typically used for observation and sensory techniques relating to the essence in the Vision Point. Breach essence is a dangerous, unstable type of essence that impacts multiple layers of the self.

#### Destiny Mark

Lien has a yet unrevealed destiny mark. He was presented with the "Heartbreaker Sword" destiny in his destiny dream but rejected it and instead "reached down, formed a sword, and cut the words that would define my future. Three cuts. That was what I’d hoped would make my own destiny." This means he modified the Heartbreaker Sword with three cuts through it so the name of the destiny he received is unknown.

#### Aspects

Aspects refer to a more specific part of an essence - usually a form, feature or function of the essence. Lien typically refers to aspects as [aspect name]-aspected [essence name] essence. Eg. cutting-aspected sword essence. Lien is very talented with adding aspects to his techniques able to apply far more techniques than he should for his level, far more than most people use in general.

For sword essence he demonstrates that he can use aspects for: cutting, deflection, slashing, piercing, hardness, scabbard and riposting. There is also an unnamed aspect that he finds easy to use, this aspect seems to be related to the cutting aspect of sword essence but more specialised.

For breach essence he demonstrates that he can use aspects for: memory, core, visibility, layer, corporeality and breaking.

#### Techniques

Lien is very skilled at constructing techniques and makes them in very short periods of time.

**Ultimate Blade Creation**

Ultimate Blade Creation is a proto-technique that Lien used to create a rudimentary blade of essence. Ultimate Blade Creation uses sword essence.

**Sword Hand**

Sword Hand is a sword essence technique which creates a blade-like aura around Lien's hand. This technique uses an inner blade made from deflection-aspected sword essence to give it solidity and make it deflect objects and other forms of essence. This layer is wrapped by an outer edge of cutting-aspected sword essence. Then there is a third layer with piercing-aspected sword essence over the point which assists with thrusting attacks. There is also a hardness aspect inside the deflection layer which makes the essence blade more stable.

**Primary Essence Compression**

Lien can perform a basic sword essence compression technique which compresses his usable sword essence into sword essence that he can then compress on his Heart Point. This technique is performed by taking some sword essence, matching it with his Heart Point and shifting it back to the Point and the essence will then merge with the compressed essence of the Heart Point. This technique helps Lien advance his Heart Point when he does not have an easy source of sword essence to pull in from the environment. This can only be performed a few times per day safely.

**Sword Sharpening Shroud**

Sword Sharpening Shroud is a sword essence technique for wrapping a weapon in an aura of cutting energy. It uses unaspected sword essence in the first layer, slashing-aspected essence around the edges, and piercing-aspected essence at the tip. Lien also has a version with a hardness aspect at the centre. The hardness aspect reinforces the sword.

**Shattering Sword**

Shattering Sword is a sword essence technique that uses Sword Sharpening Shroud as a base and splits it with the strange sword aspect that Lien finds absurdly easy to use. Once the sword aura has been cut then Lien uses a deflection aspect to deflect the split auras away from each other. Timing for this technique is very important. This technique effectively causes the aura to split into multiple pieces which cuts through things in multiple positions. However, the range is still short. Lien can produce four blades from this technique.

**Draw Sword**

Draw Sword is a sword technique used to convert sword essence through Lien’s star veins into secondary essence. This technique uses an outer layer of scabbard-aspected sword essence and then Lien forms a sword on the inside with slashing essence on the edges and unaspected sword essence within.

**Star Sharpening**

Star Sharpening is a sword technique which splits down essence and removes the unwanted parts. This uses the same strange essence for splitting that Shattering Sword uses.

**Shattering Sheath**

Shattering Sheath is a sword essence technique that uses layers of scabbard-aspected essence on the innermost layer, hardness-aspected sword essence around that, and deflection-aspected essence on the outermost layer. He converts the essence at the last moment to cutting aspected sword essence. The technique then releases it just before impact causing the essence to shred what it hits.

**Echo Perception**

Lien has a basic breach essence technique that uses unaspected breach essence and a little memory-aspected breach essence. The technique is focused inwards and alters his perception so he can hear and properly interact with echoes.

**Star Shattering Sight**

Star Shattering Sight is a breach essence technique that uses three different breach aspects: core, visibility and layer. The layer-aspected breach essence is used to deal with overlap for the layers of self. The technique lets Lien view layers of the self (spirit, shade, memory) and Dianis Points and star veins and how they connect to the different layers. The technique allows Lien to target his opponent's Dianis Points with his Star Shattering Sword technique.

**Star Shattering Sword**

Star Shattering Sword is a technique that uses breach essence and sword essence. The breach part of the technique uses layer-aspected, corporeality-aspected, and breaking-aspected breach essence and the sword part of the technique uses general sword essence. The technique can be focused around Lien's hand or his sword or a Sword Hand technique. If Lien manages to hit his opponent's Dianis Points the Point cracks. There is a very limited physical part of this attack, it mostly damages the essence on other layers of self.

**Rejoinder**

The Rejoinder technique uses deflection-aspected sword essence and riposting-aspected sword essence. The technique attemepts to cause an opponent's sword or sword essence to rebound towards them.

**Sealed Sword Creation**

Sealed Sword Creation is a technique that uses sword essence and the essence from Lien's sealed Dianis Point. This technique is a combination of the Sword Hand and Ultimate Blade Creation techniques and this forms a phantasmal greatsword. This technique has great cutting power because of the essence from the sealed Point.

#### Secondary Essence

Secondary essence is the essence used by the body to passively enhance it. This essence can not be used for spellcasting. Different essence types impact the body in different ways, like building up secondary motion essence will passively increase speed, compared to secondary sight essence which increases eyesight. Having secondary essence of the same type as the essence in a Dianis Point can increase resistance to that type of essence.

Lien has a significant amount of secondary essence from the "tea" and food that Gramps makes him.

Lien has absorbed a decent amount of sword essence as secondary essence using his Draw Sword technique to speed up the absorption process. Sword essence generally increases Lien's physical strength, especially striking strength, and it has smaller benefits for durability and speed.

Lien has absorbed some breach essence as secondary essence which has enabled him to hear the echoes (beings created by a breach on the plane of memory) without the use of a technique.