The Stargazer's War - Chapter 2.5

Chapter 2.5: Ilirian

“I got it!” Charlotte’s cry echoed across the jungle floor as she darted in to meet the argentivore’s charge. Her rapier flashed through the air as she parried its advance, sending the quadruped hurtling off to the side. With a crash the silver plate on its forehead slammed into a tree, carving a deep dent into the ebonleaf trunk.

Xavier dashed in for a swing on the stunned beast, but it whirled around before his axe could meet its flank. He aborted the swipe, pulsing his muscle meridian for the strength to leap the eight feet up and over the creature’s hungry maw.

Fighting the argentivore was, to put it plainly, a bitch. Both Shiver and Xavier’s axe had more than trivial amounts of silver in their composite, forcing us both to keep our weapons clear of our quarry’s mouth. Xavier’s techniques fared little better, Silverskin and Imbued Edge alike weak in the face of creature built to devour silver.

At least he could cast his techniques. I’d been living without my Vac Suit for almost a week now, unwilling to spent qi I couldn’t readily replace.

Xavier slammed the base of his axe into the beast’s upper back as he vaulted over it, the rounded pommel breaking through dirt-caked hide to clang against a silver-infused rib.

The argentivore unleashed a metallic roar at the flesh wound, racing out from under Xavier as he kicked off the dented ebonleaf trunk to arrest his momentum. It’s long, burrowing claws dug into the forest floor, offering more than ample purchase for the one-ton beast to round on its attacker.

Through this all I crept along the sidelines, Shiver grasped tightly in both hands as I searched for an opening, moving as silently as possible across the underbrush. Stealth came difficultly without my Vac Suit to keep the light off me, but the canopy above offered shadows enough to make do. The tricky part was keeping the thing facing one direction long enough to make my approach.

Xavier darted to the right to avoid the argentivore’s imminent charge, but it predicted the move and spat viscous acid in his path. The globule splashed against his left hip, chewing through his clothes and skin but thankfully not too far beyond.

The haft of his axe it ate clean through.

Before Xavier could so much as notice his weapon’s handle was half as long, the beast was upon him. It’s lowered forehead met Xavier’s shoulder with a sickening crunch, bowling the tall warrior over.

Charlotte made it to the creature’s side before it could lower its mouth to Xavier’s prone form, stealing its attention with a thrust of her rapier into the dense muscle above its rear hip. It lashed out at her with its front claws, scoring a shallow gash across her cheek as it struck faster than she could withdraw her blade to parry.

That meant the technique was ready for its next attack.

I had my opening.

I crept in from the rear, mindful of my every step to avoid the twigs and dry leaves that’d risk alerting the beast to my approach. It kept relatively still as it clashed with Charlotte, standing guard over Xavier as a predator defending its kill.

Xavier, who was still very much alive, by the way, had the wherewithal to not even attempt to bring his already-damaged axe to bear from his restrained position beneath the argentivore. Instead, he focused his attention to keeping clear of the creature’s claws as it stepped and positioned itself in its fight with Charlotte. With a lateral roll, he slipped his great axe beneath him, keeping his body between the beast and the weapon. He knew what it really wanted.

The beast reared up to spit another glob of acid at the pesky duelist.

Charlotte raised her rapier to parry.

I made my move.

I reversed my grip on Shiver as I leapt onto the creature’s back, my eyes fixed on the nape of its neck. Frost gathered along my blade. I landed astride its shoulders. I felt the flinch run down its body as I surprised it, its every muscle tensing for a precious moment.

It was all I needed.

Shiver plunged for the soft spot between its upper vertebrae and the base of its skull. It pierced through skin and muscle and sinew, blood freezing around it.

It struck bone.

Shit.

Shiver skidded off the dense vertebra, slipping to the side and across a broad shoulder plate. Flesh parted in its path, freezing shut cold enough hold a few minutes before thawing and letting the blood flow.

The argentivore bucked.

Shiver flew from my grasp as I fell from the creature’s back, landing gently on the thankfully soft forest floor.

The creature stepped towards me, forgoing Xavier to put an end to the pesky human that’d dared slice into it. It’s claws caught a scarce beam of sunslight and glinted silver as they moved to impale me.

I didn’t panic. My heart didn’t pound with dread or sorrow as I watched my doom approach with starry eyes. The qi running through my brain meridian wouldn’t allow it. I faced death with the same gray apathy with which I faced life. Claws across my throat, my skull crushed beneath the beast’s weight, my blood a red stain upon the forest floor, none of it mattered.

Nothing mattered.

I was calculating the odds that the blow that’d kill me had just happened to pass through one of the rare bits of direct sunslight to make it through the canopy when the argentivore collapsed. Only when I came to a number—somewhere in the low trillions to one—did my focus shift across the deluge of equally unimportant information to spot Charlotte’s rapier stuck through the monster’s eye.

All at once I cut the flows of qi through my various meridians. Vibrancy returned to the world around me as details faded away. Adrenaline coursed through my veins at the behest of my now racing heart. I exhaled for the first time since we’d first laid eyes on the argentivore.

My headache returned.

“I’m okay, I’m okay.” Xavier’s protests pulled me from my thoughts as Charlotte fussed over him.

“I can see your hipbone,” Charlotte snapped at him. “Stay still.”

I pushed myself to my feet and darted over to the hovercart to grab the first aid kit. By the time I made it to Xavier’s side, Charlotte had already cut away the worst of the melted flesh and clothing.

“Caliban!” Xavier grasped my hand the moment it left the red-and-white box on the ground. “Excellently fought!”

From anyone else I might’ve thought the words sarcastic, but this was Xavier talking. I knew what he was doing. However well he read people, subtlety had never been his strong suit. I’d barely participated in the fight—I literally hadn’t before Xavier got hurt. With two words and a genuine smile, he let me know he didn’t blame me.

I grimaced nonetheless. “Thought I’d had it with the weak spot at the back of the neck. Didn’t realize the way it was rearing its head back to spit at Charlotte would block it.”

“You bought me the opening I needed,” Charlotte said without looking up from the treated bandages she was applying. “Just ‘cause you didn’t land the killing blow doesn’t mean you didn’t contribute.”

If anyone had stepped up since we’d landed on Ilirian, Charlotte had. I’d never dared verbally doubt her family’s ancestral fighting style, but in my time on Fyrion I’d always questioned the amount of focus and qi it took to make a rapier a functional weapon. Shiver penetrated most qi defenses way more effectively, and I didn’t need a special technique if I wanted to block something.

Here, the rapier shined. The flimsy blade found gaps in bone and shell and chitin I’d never thought existed, bending as it needed to snake around into the vulnerable organs beyond. Watching Charlotte these past few days, I finally glimpsed the purpose of her Way, finally grasped how her father, a lone man with a seemingly impractical weapon, had singlehandedly saved the sect from a void beast incursion.

It was humbling.

Xavier and I, in contrast, fared worse. Before Ilirian, I’d had more monster kills with an ice cream cart than an actual weapon, which somehow still left me more experienced than Xavier. He, at least, had the benefits of lifelong training, constant duels against a variety of opponents, and, barring the argentivore, full use of his techniques.

I’d only started learning to fight a little over a year ago, and the vast majority of that practice I’d spent preparing for a specific opponent. I had enough experience—and qi running through my brain, heart, and lungs—to keep a cool head and make snap decisions, but there was only one answer to my relative ineffectiveness against our prey—more practice.

I filed away today’s lesson: Weak spots didn’t exist in a vacuum; they depended on the confluence of anatomy and posture. I’d have to keep both in mind moving forward.

We left Xavier sitting on the ground as we cleared the hovercart of gear to make room for our kill. We had to power the three-by-five floating platform down to roll the dead argentivore onto it. It’s limbs and head dangled off three of the cart’s four sides, but it stayed put well enough. Charlotte stacked our supplies on top of the carcass while I went to help Xavier up.

Minutes later saw us starting up the trek back home, Charlotte and I walking on either side of our overpacked cart while Xavier lay back on the dead argentivore’s stomach. We cut a straight path back towards Lucy’s clearing, weaving around trees and wading through underbrush as we crossed untrod ground rather than retrace the wide arc we’d walked while hunting.

The scent of the carcass attracted a handful of scavengers, but we warded off the dull brown insects readily enough. At just over the size of my head, the flying beetles were larger than I personally thought they had any right to be, but not remotely large enough to pose a real threat, not alone at least. If they decided to swarm us I doubted we could’ve stopped them, but the bugs weren’t hunters; their every instinct told them to wait for the real predators to eat their fill and leave before they swept in to clean up.

I wasn’t particularly sorry to disappoint them.

It took just under two hours before Lucy’s clearing came into view, a few dozen feet of exposed forest floor beneath the heap of cut branches we’d piled atop the skiff to hide her from aerial view. The camouflage wouldn’t fool a direct observer, but the AI that sorted through all the orbital footage would be none the wiser.

The gangway dropped for us as we approached.

“I’m okay!” Xavier preempted Lucy’s question before we’d even crossed her threshold. “I’m okay.”

“Sixth degree chemical burn to the left hip,” Charlotte rattled off the prognosis. “I’ve already cut away the effected tissue, but he’s going to need a patch job.”

“Bring him to cabin four. I’ll get it ready for him.” The medical cart—which had been waiting by the airlock just in case—sped away towards Lucy’s soulspace before she’d even finished speaking.

Charlotte and I obeyed, the former pushing the hovercart while I maneuvered the argentivore’s limbs around to fit it through the narrow upper-deck hallway. My task grew easier once we made it to the extra-dimensional lower deck, leaving me little to do but walk alongside until we reached cabin four.

I never set foot inside. Three tendrils of Lucy’s qi lifted a squirming Xavier from atop his perch and carried him in while Charlotte stepped around to follow, shutting the door behind her.

“Just you and me, buddy.” I patted the dead argentivore’s leg. “Let’s get you comfortable.”

The only thing I have to say about the proceeding thirty minutes is how relieved I am that Lucy was too busy treating Xavier to notice my humiliating attempts to remove the carcass from the hovercart all on my lonesome. I left it lying on the floor of Lucy’s cargo freezer, surrounded both by shelves of various perishables she’d collected over the millennia and the partially-butchered corpse of the saber cat we’d killed two days ago. Actually harvesting the beast would be Xavier’s job. The closer he worked with the bone that would become his new axe handle, the better.

My part done, I returned to my quarters to wash the fight and the jungle off of me before settling down at my desk. The bane of my existence awaited me.

I had no intention of ever using the pale chunk of singing quartz in my focus—its kinship to sound didn’t resonate with mine to silence—but lacking any of the materials I actually wanted, it made for a perfectly functional practice piece. The crystal, at the very least, wasn’t alive, so there was nothing to resist my attempts to supplant its qi with my own.

Wouldn’t that have been nice?

My eight hundredth and thirty-first attempt went roughly as well as the prior eight hundred and thirty. I welled up a pool of qi in my hand—far more than the quartz contained—placed my palm atop my target, and pushed.

My qi slipped off it, passing around the kernel of bright energy within to first encircle the quartz then dissipate entirely. I snatched it out of the air, reabsorbing the precious qi before it could escape. It came readily, my own core the nearest and easiest escape from the onslaught of existence around it.

I sighed.

How had Nick done it? Whatever notes he’d taken had died with him, locked away behind his holopad’s encryption—not that we’d ever had access to the device to begin with. I knew he must’ve taken the qi directly from the infinite sea rather than his own body, given that his body couldn’t interact with dark qi, but down here I couldn’t try that.

In theory, once the three of us had all the materials we needed, we could leave Ilirian behind and I could advance in outer orbit, but that assumed it was the source of the dark qi that was the problem.

In the meantime, I tried again.

Somewhere shy of attempt nine hundred, my focus lapsed long enough for a wisp of qi to drift out of reach, escaping through the halls of Lucy’s soulspace and out the open door. “Gods damnit!” I cursed and stood, snatching the quartz off the table and hurling it across the room. It landed with a thump against my pillow.

Even frustrated, I wasn’t stupid enough to throw a rock at Lucy’s pristine walls.

“It’s okay, Cal,” Lucy’s voice drifted gently to my ear. “You’ll figure it out.”

My shoulders sagged. “I’m worried, Lucy,” I whispered. “What if Nick only managed it ‘cause the seed barely had any qi to begin with? What if I just… can’t invert something powerful enough for a focus?”

“You will,” Lucy insisted. “Just because it’s different from what Nick did doesn’t mean it isn’t possible, and even if it isn’t, we’ll figure something out. Your Way doesn’t end here.”

“I know, I know. I just… the longer we’re here, the more it feels like what I need isn’t on Ilirian; it’s out there. This place it’s… it isn’t meant for me, Lucy, not anymore.”

Lucy’s tone shifted from reassurance to concern. “How’s your head?”

“The meds didn’t work, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I figured as much,” she said. “It’s a spiritual ache, not a physical one. It won’t go away until you learn to coexist with the qi around you.”

“It needs to learn to coexist with me. I’m not the one screaming in its ear.”

“Cal…”

“I’m the sensitive one, I know. It’s unrelenting. Even when I’m not looking for it, it’s there, pushing, pressing, leaving the entire world a little too bright, a little too loud. Fuck, it’s like I’m hungover all the time.”

“Cal!”

“Right. Language. I’m sorry.” I let out a breath. “How’s Xavier?”

“Asleep,” Lucy said. “It’s almost midnight.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“If you want to know more it’s going to cost you.”

I blinked. “Are you… holding my friend’s health hostage against me?”

“Of course not. I would never do such a thing. I’m holding information about his health hostage.”

I sighed. “What’s your price?”

The door to my suite slid open to reveal, held aloft on two tendrils of pale qi, a ceramic tray with a fork, napkin, and a single bowl.

“Fried rice,” Lucy said as she brought the tray inside. “You need to eat.”

“You know my metabolism runs slow.”

“Slow doesn’t mean stopped.” She set the tray on my desk. “I’ll not have you wasting away on my watch. Now eat.”

I sat, grumbling as I lifted my fork. I hadn’t truly felt hungry since I’d opened my stomach meridian, but the moment Lucy’s cooking hit my tongue I couldn’t stop myself. She had thousands of spices I hadn’t known existed from planets I’d never even heard of, and threads did she know how to use them. For someone with no taste buds of her own, Lucy was altogether too good at this.

Only once I’d made a good dent in the meal without showing any signs of stopping did Lucy offer up the promised update. “The burn’s not as bad as it seems. Yes, it reached to the bone and even left a small dent in it, but only where the pelvis presses almost directly against the skin. There’s very little muscle damage, and the lost bone is negligible enough not to warrant replacing. He’ll need a few days for the dermal patch to take, so no fighting for a bit, but he’ll be fine.”

“Xavier’ll hate that.”

“He’d hate tearing the patch more,” Lucy said. “He can spend the time repairing his axe. I understand he has his work cut out for him.”

I shrugged. “He intended to replace the handle anyway, and he has the argentivore he needs. If there was ever a good time for the thing to break, today was it.”

I shoveled the last of the rice into my mouth and set down my fork. “Thank you, Lucy,” I told her. “It was delicious.”

“You’re very welcome,” she chimed, lifting the tray up and off the desk. “Now get some sleep. You need it.”

I pushed myself to my feet. “Not quite yet. I still have to feed Nick’s tree, and I want to get some meditation in.”

“Cal…”

“It’s better at night. Easier. Threads know the qi doesn’t get any quieter, but with the suns down…” I shut my eyes for a breath. “At least I can see the stars.”

Lucy let me go. We’d had this conversation before, and she knew short of physically barring my way she couldn’t keep me inside. I stopped at the garden on my way out, releasing a trickle of qi into the pallid sprout. It was the only expenditure I kept up, unable to replace the qi with the infinite sea so far away. By the end of the week I wouldn’t have enough left to advance, but that could always wait until we left Ilirian behind. In the meantime, I could keep feeding the apple tree for years, so little were its demands in the face of my well trained reserves.

I settled in the clearing just out from under Lucy’s wing, in a spot I’d found and cleared of debris days ago. I lay on my back, my hands folded behind my head, as I steadied my breathing and gazed upon the distant stars. The minutes dragged on as I allowed my thoughts to wander, acknowledged the fears and worries and petty things as they came and accepted them for what they were. I can’t say how long passed before I retreated into myself, but I can say one thing.

It sucked.

The moment my mind’s eye flicked open so too did the floodgates, the light and din and swelter so intense I’d never truly shut it out. Like every night, I let it bombard me. Like every night, I pushed past it.

I had no metric by which to judge my progress further into the heavens, no measurement of how high my senses reached. I hoped these evening sessions drove me closer to reconnecting with the infinite sea, to the only real reprieve there could ever be from existence’s cacophony. I refused to even entertain that it didn’t.

My head hurt worse than ever by the time I fell into bed. My holopad read three AM, though Ilirian’s twenty-seven hour days robbed that number of much of its meaning. I didn’t sleep, not yet anyway. That took another few hours’ tossing and turning to achieve, a function more of mounting exhaustion against the light and the noise and the everything than any real semblance of rest.

By the time I woke, my biometrics claimed I’d slumbered for three hours. These days I counted that a win. I can’t tell what aspect of my dreary heart rate or blood-oxygen content or any of the other thousand datapoints triggered it, but my holopad displayed a message of reassurance.

It’s going to be okay.

As I rubbed the grogginess from my sunken eyes and forced myself upright to face the day, I wrestled with myself trying to decide if I believed it.

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