《Thresholder》 Chapter 1 - A Whole New World Perry crashed down onto the roof of a cathedral, arresting his motion just slightly too late to stop himself from breaking tiles. He held his sword, which pulsed with energy as it kept him from slipping down, and surveyed the area. ¡°March, scan for radio signals,¡± said Perry. ¡°Scanning,¡± Marchand replied. ¡°Nothing yet.¡± Perry looked around, holding himself in place with the sword. He was encased in the cobalt-blue armor, tense, sword already out. There were only seven bullets left in the shoulder-mounted gun, and they were irreplaceable until he found somewhere with a high-precision machine shop. He was a hundred feet up on the steep slope of a cathedral, with a view of a city at night, lit by gaslamp. The moon was out, full, but partially hidden behind the clouds, and it illuminated a large body of water ¡ª an ocean, probably ¡ª with a river winding through the ramshackle buildings and emptying itself amid a thicket of docks and hundreds of ships. Perry noted the sails. He didn¡¯t think it was likely he¡¯d find a machine shop here. This was his third world, or fourth if he counted Earth. The first had been like home, though it felt a few decades more advanced with microfusion reactors and expensive power armor he now wore. The details of its history diverged wildly from what Perry had known. The second world had magic, and none of the details of its history or geography matched Earth¡¯s, at least so far as Perry had known from the scholars. He had fought orcs and hobgoblins, and been gifted a magical sword by an aged wizard. Perry glanced up at the cathedral''s main spire. There wasn''t a cross, but instead, a chevron set inside a circle. Maybe their Christ analog had been tortured to death on a wheel, but the significance wasn''t immediately obvious. ¡°Scan complete,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Nothing.¡± Perry tried to peg the year, or the year equivalent, or really anything about the place. He wasn¡¯t sure that he was safe, stuck against the side of a great cathedral, and in fact, it seemed like one of the worst places to be. Before he descended down though, he wanted to know what kind of place this was, and how they would greet a man encased in armor with a sword at his side. In the second world, they had taken him to be a foreign knight, and welcomed him in so they could listen to his story. This place immediately seemed less welcoming, and from the few people he could see down below at the late hour, plate armor seemed incredibly out of place ¡ª and power armor even more so. ¡°March, send up the drone,¡± said Perry. ¡°Scan what you can, make a map of the surroundings, get me a feel of the tech level.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t understand the phrase ¡®tech level¡¯, sir,¡± said Marchand. The suit¡¯s on-board AI had been smarter when it had been connected to Richter¡¯s massive computing resources, powerful enough that it was almost human. With the hop to another world, it had been cut off from half its brain, and working around the limitations had become a routine part of Perry¡¯s day. Certain concepts hadn¡¯t been coded in, and where Marchand would normally be able to compensate, that was no longer possible. ¡°Make a note of electronics, if you see any,¡± said Perry. ¡°Vehicles, power sources, power lines, that kind of thing.¡± ¡°Shall I launch the drone then, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yes, do it now,¡± said Perry. ¡°Launching, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry removed his backpack and leaned forward slightly to give the drone the best angle. It shot up from the small of his back, just barely clearing his helmet, then unfolded in mid-air, righting itself immediately and spinning up its blades. It was, he had to admit, a very cool method of launching, but it felt very much like something that Richter had done for the purposes of being cool, since it could just as easily have been removed and taken off gently from the palm of his hand. Richter had a flair for style. He missed her. While the drone was buzzing around overhead, Perry looked into his backpack, making sure that he had everything. He¡¯d come into Richter¡¯s world with nothing but the clothes on his back and the phone in his pocket, and had gone into the magical fantasy land with nothing but the power armor. He¡¯d resolved not to put himself in the same dire straits when it happened again. The bag had food, clothes, and a few other things. He couldn¡¯t check it all, because one hand was on the sword that was keeping him in place, but it didn¡¯t seem like he¡¯d left anything crucial behind. ¡°Mapping complete, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Drone returning.¡± Perry held out his hand, and the drone landed on it, folding itself up until it was small enough to fit inside its nook on his back. He pushed it in gently, feeling a bit of relief when it clicked into place and began recharging. The drone was small and delicate, and there was no way he could replace it or make repairs. Even if he¡¯d had the tools, he didn¡¯t have the technical knowledge, and he wasn¡¯t entirely sure that Marchand would be able to guide him through a step-by-step maintenance process. The helmet of the armor had no glass or slit to see out of. Instead, cameras on the exterior of the suit were used to gather visual information, which was then projected onto Perry¡¯s eyes, in what felt like a very roundabout way of doing things. The upside to this was that augmented reality was readily available, and an unobtrusive ¡®screen¡¯ popped up in the corner of Perry¡¯s vision, giving him a map of this new city. His initial impression had been that this was Victorian London, particularly because of the observed tech level, but from the map, it seemed more like Boston or New York, with far less in the way of the kinds of grand buildings he¡¯d have expected to see in London of the 1800s. There was enough smoke and smog, along with a few factories that had tall smokestacks, that he thought he was right about the era, but it seemed like a new place to him, possibly colonial. The cathedral whose roof he was standing on was the tallest building around, aside from a spire that jutted up from a large park to the north. Inland, there was a hill with a cluster of buildings, large houses with more trees around them than elsewhere, and even at night, from a distance, and knowing nothing about the city, it screamed wealth. The power armor was airtight, largely because Richter had lived on the Pacific coast and loved to go diving. She¡¯d had her own, smaller power armor, and they¡¯d gone together, descending down in the heavy armor until they were walking on the seafloor. A small ¡®gill¡¯ filtered out oxygen from the air or water, making the suit perfectly breathable in virtually any conditions. Perry had become aware that he was being protected from the smells of the city. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. ¡°Marchand, open up the helmet please,¡± said Perry. ¡°Outside air quality is unacceptable,¡± said Marchand. A small indicator showed up in the bottom-right of Perry¡¯s vision, ¡®AQM 342¡¯, which meant nothing to him, and below that, a list of pollutants in parts per million. Arsenic, sulfur, carbon monoxide, and lead were all listed. ¡°How does that compare with, say, 1950s London?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Reference data unavailable,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ll let you know once we reconnect with the network.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not going to be able to stay in the armor,¡± said Perry. ¡°Open the helmet.¡± ¡°Are you sure, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yes, March,¡± said Perry. The display went dark and the faceplate of the helmet cracked open. Perry immediately felt his eyes sting, and he was so far up that it shouldn¡¯t have been that much of a problem. The air had a sour smell to it, and once he took his first breath, he found it had a taste, which in his opinion, air should never have. The pollution wasn¡¯t that bad, no perpetual blanket of smog, but it was entirely possible that this was a good day following heavy rains or with a strong wind, which was a sobering thought. ¡°No one in power armor down there, was there?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°No one in armor at all. You had asked about the technology levels, sir, and there were a number of people with percussion-cap pistols. I also spotted cannons at the coast, sir, pointed outward, and cannons on a number of the ships.¡± The armor could take a hit from even a relatively high-caliber bullet, which Richter had shown with a test in her garage, but it wouldn¡¯t be able to handle a direct hit from artillery. He was more vulnerable here than he¡¯d been in the fantasy world then, but only if he was stupid enough to get in front of a cannon. ¡°No signs of electricity?¡± asked Perry. The faceplate was still up, but Marchand could still talk into his ear. In fact, there was a detachable earpiece so they could stay in communication even at a distance, if Perry had to step out of his armor for an extended period of time ¡ª which it seemed like he would. ¡°There were a few, in fact,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve found crude telegraph systems which appear to be powered through electrochemical batteries.¡± ¡°No radio though?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Nothing that we can listen in on?¡± ¡°If you can move close enough to the telegraph lines, I should be able to intercept the signals, if a transmission is in progress,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What time is it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Four in the afternoon,¡± said Marchand. Perry looked at the moon. ¡°Local time?¡± ¡°I haven¡¯t been able to connect to the network to say, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Satellite links appear to be offline.¡± Perry gave a sigh. Marchand had been programmed with some fairly reasonable assumptions, but not for moving between worlds. If Perry had any programming knowledge at all, he might have tried to reprogram the AI, but March was at such a level of sophistication that no single person could have actually said how he worked. Marchand could understand simple things, and adjust parameters or learn new concepts, but basic facts like ¡®we are in a different universe¡¯ seemed to be beyond his programming. Whatever the time, it seemed late, and Perry thought that anything more would have to wait for another day. ¡°We need to find a safe place to sleep,¡± said Perry. ¡°And I¡¯m going to need clothes, something that will help me fit in.¡± He paused for a thought. ¡°Have you overheard conversations?¡± ¡°A number of them, sir,¡± said Marchand. March had excellent hearing, thanks to a bevy of microphones located all over the suit and world-class signal processing. Sound had been one of Richter¡¯s specialties. ¡°Would you like me to replay them?¡± ¡°I just want to know if they speak English here,¡± said Perry. ¡°Most of them do,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°A few conversations were in languages I was regretfully unable to identify.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. That was another data point, the constancy of language. He was learning more about the worlds with each one he went to. ¡°Then we¡¯ll find somewhere to bunker down and I¡¯ll listen to what you have, to get some context.¡± He paused for a moment. ¡°Bring down the faceplate, then show me the map of the city again. We¡¯re looking for somewhere wealthy. The kind of place with a guard, but not a guard who¡¯d be watching the roof.¡± He didn¡¯t like the idea of stealing clothes, but the only money he had were a handful of gold coins at the bottom of his bag. He hoped that gold was worth something here, and that he¡¯d be allowed to walk into a store while dressed like a relatively wealthy medieval nobleman. His two sets of outfits were that, or the skinsuit that he wore beneath the armor. Of them, he thought that the medieval tunic and tights would be less noteworthy. He scrolled through the map, using gesture controls with his free hand. He was getting tired of holding onto the sword, but its magic was what was keeping him in place. Eventually, he found the right kind of building, a three story home next to one of the city¡¯s large parks. March highlighted it on his HUD, and Perry used the optical zoom to look closer. The lights were off, and there did seem to be a few ways in at the top. ¡°We¡¯re going there,¡± said Perry. ¡°Silently.¡± He pushed off from the roof, worried about breaking more of the tiles, and let the sword carry him. The suit, to his initial disappointment, could not fly. It could make enormous leaps, punch with incredible strength, and did so much augmentation of his natural power that he could have been a one-man wrecking crew even as a weakling, but flight was out of the question. According to Richter, this was because of the energy requirements: even if the suit had jets, the microfusion reactor wouldn¡¯t be able to sustain them for more than a single minute. It was still incredible technology, but nothing like he¡¯d seen in movies or read in books. The sword, however, did let him fly. It could move with a mind of its own, following simple and direct mental commands, and when it was in his hand, it made him weightless. Flying with the sword was like being a balloon pulled in the wake of a car, and he needed to make the power armor rigid in order to not sway and twist as the sword moved. It was a slower method of travel than leaping from building to building with the suit, but took none of the suit¡¯s limited battery, and was quiet as a whisper. He landed on top of the house and sat there for a moment, looking around to see whether his dark, quiet flight through the air had been noticed. The sword glowed faintly, brighter when in battle, but it was sheathed. The sheath had been finished only the night before, a last minute request to the king''s quartermaster. No one had seen him as he went through the night sky, in part because of the dark, and in part because of the time of day. Most of the businesses were shuttered, and most of the houses had their lights off. ¡°Sonic scan,¡± said Perry, placing his hand against the roof at a place that looked like it might have a support beam. ¡°Scanning,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Tell me who¡¯s in the house, give me a layout,¡± said Perry. ¡°Scanning,¡± Marchand repeated. Sound was where the suit excelled. It might have been nice to have penetrating thermal cameras or X-ray vision, but instead the suit had Richter¡¯s speciality, which were microphones. As Perry sat with his hand against the house, Marchand was taking in sounds from dozens of microphone and doing inaudible pings, some of them through the outstretched hand. The sounds would help to build a map of the house, along with the locations of the people within it. After five minutes, a map popped up on Perry¡¯s HUD, showing all the house¡¯s rooms, along with all seven of the occupants. Three children, two parents, and two servants, if Perry¡¯s guess was right. There was an attic above them, accessible via trapdoor or through a window at the side, and it seemed like exactly the sort of place he¡¯d been looking for. He needed somewhere to sleep for the night, a place he could stash the armor before venturing into the city, and a temporary base of operations until he could rent a room for himself or find other accommodations. He needed to understand the world. This was his third world, and while they had all been different, the other two had something very important in common: an Adversary, another person hopping between worlds like he was. When they found each other, he would be ready. Chapter 25 - Curved Horizons The first thing that Perry noticed about the new world was just how green it was. Teaguewater had been a dingy place, with even the trees seeming weighed down and discolored by the air pollution, hanging on for dear life. Everything had been in shades of browns and grays. In this new world, there were trees all around him, tall grasses beneath them, moss growing in the cracks between glistening black rocks, and the sounds of birdsong coming in strong through the helmet¡¯s speakers. ¡°March, scan for radio signals,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sir, the long range radio receiver has unfortunately been damaged,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Connection with the drone still works?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Isn¡¯t that radio?¡± asked Perry. He was feeling somewhat puzzled, like he was forgetting something. ¡°It is, sir, but the drone uses the short range receiver,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°The short range receiver isn¡¯t configured for scanning.¡± ¡°Can you configure it for scanning?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh, that¡¯s an excellent idea, sir,¡± replied Marchand. The AI sounded genuinely pleased. ¡°I¡¯ll do that right away, sir, it won¡¯t take but a moment. When I¡¯ve finished the reconfiguration, you¡¯ll want me to do a scan? I cannot promise that the results will impress.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re keeping radio silent, nothing goes out, only in.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Should I ready the drone?¡± Perry looked up at the canopy above him, which was thick and green. ¡°I guess, but we¡¯re going to wait to launch until I¡¯m above the leaves.¡± So far, nothing had attacked. Perry was simply in a forest of some kind, surrounded by coniferous trees with relatively thin trunks. He¡¯d been hoping that he¡¯d land somewhere that would allow him to repair Marchand and the suit, which would almost certainly have required technology that was far beyond Richter¡¯s world, mostly to deal with the discrepancies in their standards. And if he ended up in a world like that, then it seemed like he could just get a whole new suit ¡­ but of course he knew Marchand, and the suit had been a gift from Richter. If at all possible, he was going to retrofit. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t find any signal,¡± Marchand said after a while. ¡°I¡¯m going up then,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want a better view.¡± The power armor was working, which Perry was trying to be thankful for, but it was sluggish in almost every way that it could be, barely better than walking around like a normal person except that this was the best way to transport it. The days of using the suit to leap huge distances or land punches that could cave in a rib cage were gone, or at least gone until repairs could be made. It wasn¡¯t useless, but its capabilities had been severely reduced. It was still functional as armor, the metal still offering protection from hits, and the audio processing powers were still amazing, but it was much diminished. Thankfully, the sword still didn¡¯t have so much as a scratch on it, and Perry¡¯s other newly-acquired power ¡ª He paused, two feet off the ground. ¡°I¡¯m a werewolf,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ve been told that, yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The tower worked,¡± said Perry. ¡°The memories were suppressed.¡± ¡°I suppose that must be true, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I did bite Cosme,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t believe I was there for that,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Huh,¡± said Perry. It was all settling in his head now, the connections that couldn¡¯t be made before now locking into place. He¡¯d had no proper context for the final battle, not after it had started, he¡¯d just been running on instinct or trusting whatever Flora said, the impossible scenes refusing to gel into their proper shape. ¡°You were rising to get a better look at our surroundings?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I ¡ª yes,¡± said Perry. This world would have a new Adversary, and if it was like the last one, that Adversary might have been here for a month, getting the lay of the land, gathering allies, accruing power. There would be time to reflect on the last world, but it wasn¡¯t now, not when Perry had no idea what sort of world this was. He let the sword lift him, floating after it as they glided past branches and leaves that gently brushed the cobalt blue armor. The trees were tall, and the woodlands looked untouched. It was green as far as the eye could see, mixed with the brown of the tree trunks, until Perry crossed up past where the leaves and needles ended. The most obvious thing was that the horizon wasn¡¯t the same in all directions. Toward the east and west, it was more or less normal, with steep mountains and shimmering lakes, but to the north and south, the horizon tilted up, exposing the land as though Perry was looking at it from a great height. ¡°Are we ¡­ in a Halo?¡± asked Perry. ¡°A halo, sir?¡± asked Marchand. Perry stared at the curved land. It was hard to get a sense of scale, but he felt as though he was seeing entire continents, full oceans, as if seen from space. The edges could be seen only far away, where the arc was high, showing that the world was probably a ribbon of some kind. The sun was offset, to the east, beyond the ribbon. Perry looked up for a moment, and March helpfully adjusted the perceptual lighting of the image so that the sun was dimmed. There was nothing much to see though. ¡°How did you determine the compass?¡± asked Perry. ¡°How did you figure out north, south, east, and west?¡± ¡°I checked the movement of the sun,¡± Marchand replied. ¡°I believe I lost some time when we left the city and needed to recalibrate.¡± Perry frowned, trying to work it out. Marchand was a very capable AI, but he wasn¡¯t at peak processing power, and wasn¡¯t connected to any version of the internet where he was normally supposed to borrow processing power, which meant that he was underpowered. He also simply wasn¡¯t equipped for the variety of worlds that seemed to be available, and even with explicit instructions wouldn¡¯t accept certain things. It seemed as though the sun simply couldn¡¯t work the same way if the world was shaped like this. ¡°Run an analysis,¡± said Perry. ¡°Tell me, um, how far away that curved bit of land is, and the total expected land area, assuming that the land curves around to make a full circle and the width of the ribbon stays constant.¡± He looked straight up, but couldn¡¯t tell if there was any land there. The sun was off to one side, which meant ¡­ what, that the ring wasn¡¯t as wide around as the orbit of Earth? He¡¯d played a bit of Halo, and couldn¡¯t remember how that ring had been configured there. Marchand, of course, came from an Earth where that videogame had never been made. ¡°I have difficulty understanding the question, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Pretend we¡¯re in a cylinder,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can¡¯t see the other side of the cylinder, it¡¯s too far away, but we can get a gauge of the width, and figure out the total circumference.¡± ¡°Ah, a hypothetical, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Calculating.¡± Perry frowned and looked out at the land around them, rising higher to get a better sense of his immediate surroundings. From high above the forest, he could see plenty of rolling green hills, with steep cliffs occasionally rising from them, thick spars of rock that were devoid of the greenery that was everywhere else. He seemed to be in a wide valley, one that was many miles across, verdant and settled, with yellow fields that stretched across the flat lowlands. In the distance, there were villages with thin trails of smoke rising from them, which was good, because it meant that there were at least people. That would make it easier to eat, to sleep, to have a base of operations. He didn¡¯t have much that he could trade away, but there had to be some way he could integrate. He had a single gold coin left from Seraphinus, along with a few things in the pack he¡¯d taken. He didn¡¯t feel like that would be enough. The odds that he¡¯d find some way to fix the armor had shot down dramatically though. There were roads, but no highways, villages, but no skyscrapers. Even the faraway continents he could see had none of the signs of major cities, nothing like Tokyo or London making its gray mark on the landscape. ¡°Based on the measurements I¡¯ve taken, and from what I understand of your hypothetical, the surface area of the cylinder would be seventy billion square miles,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And ¡­ what¡¯s the surface area of the Earth?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Two hundred million square miles, sir,¡± replied Marchand. Perry frowned. ¡°Sorry, so that¡¯s ¡­ three hundred times more than Earth?¡± ¡°Three hundred fifty, yes sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Big world,¡± said Perry. He was looking in both directions at the long stretch of land, trying to work out what any of this meant. The upshot was ¡®nothing¡¯, he thought, since the distances involved were so great, and there was no way that he could make it to the far point he could see, let alone the further points he couldn¡¯t see. There didn¡¯t seem to be any trains or planes, nothing marking the sky. In fact ¡­ ¡°There¡¯s a moon,¡± said Perry. It was larger than on Earth, or at least closer. He frowned at it. Werewolves were dependent on moonlight to transform, or even to get a piece of their power when not under a full moon. He didn¡¯t know whether that would work here, if they were in some kind of scifi setting. There was a forerunner to Halo, he recalled. Ringworld? It was the kind of thing that only alien tech could build. ¡°There are three moons,¡± said Marchand. These were immediately highlighted on the HUD with arrows and red circles. The other two moons were smaller, and close to the horizon. ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Well how is that going to work?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not clear on the orbital paths of these satellites,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯m calculating now.¡± Perry felt grateful that Marchand hadn¡¯t simply chalked it up to being a visual artifact. ¡°I¡¯m going to follow a road and see where it takes me,¡± said Perry. ¡°Keep your ears open. Let me know if you hear anyone. We want to stay in stealth for as long as possible, keeping a low profile.¡± He said this while wearing heavy blue armor, floating above the treetops, holding a magical sword. He tried to recalibrate what he meant by ¡®low profile¡¯. Perry flew to the west, in the direction of a far-off settlement of some kind, the details of which were still too hard to make out even with maximum zoom. Once he¡¯d found a road, he dropped down and floated along after the sword, not wanting to be highly visible in the sky, and not wanting to walk, which even at a sedate pace might start to drain the batteries. ¡°Sir, I believe there are men in the woods,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Men?¡± asked Perry. March put them up on the HUD, outlined in red through a huge number of trees. They were more than a hundred yards away. ¡°Would you like to hear their conversation?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. Perry was ready to focus on what they were saying, to pick up some context clues of the world, but ¡ª ¡°They¡¯re not speaking English,¡± said Perry. ¡°Very perceptive, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What language is that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°My linguistic abilities will remain somewhat limited until I have a network connection to download new language libraries.¡± The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. ¡°What languages do you have?¡± asked Perry. It was a bad question that resulted in a long list from March, given in alphabetical order. Richter had known that Perry would be traveling to new worlds, and had loaded up everything she could, which gave Perry a pang of longing for her. Some of the languages were listed as ¡®corrupted¡¯, likely a result of some of the memory damage that March had suffered, but Perry didn¡¯t think that mattered all that much. From what Cosme had said, Perry was supposed to arrive in a world that spoke English. If they didn¡¯t, then it didn¡¯t seem likely that they spoke another language from Earth. ¡°Alright, what does it sound like?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You have lots of text and audio in your memory banks. Sounds eastern to me, but I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°I do not believe it shares common roots,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯m afraid that deciphering a new language from only scattered samples is somewhat beyond me.¡± ¡°Record it all, we¡¯ll work on the problem later if we have to,¡± said Perry. There were a dozen men, moving, though most of the conversation was between just two of them. As Perry approached through the woods, March added more information, like the cudgels that the men had at their hips and some guesses about their outfits, which included a fair amount of furs. It was seeming much less likely that Perry would be able to repair March in this world. When the men came to a clearing, Perry made himself known. Cosme had said that he¡¯d always come across English in his travels, and Perry was hoping that would hold here, but it was a risk, especially with the suit in such a sorry state. ¡°Hello!¡± called Perry, waving his hand. He had the sword at his hip, sheathed, and was holding his arms wide in what he hoped was a universal sign that he wasn¡¯t a threat. ¡°I¡¯m a traveler from a distant land, do any of you speak English?¡± They were a motley crew, with no uniforms to speak of, just cheap textiles that had been patched and repaired a hundred times over, or failing that, furs. They had weapons, which didn¡¯t bode well, but the weapons were staffs, cudgels, and in one case, a short dagger. There was, overall, very little in the way of metal, and the men ¡ª all men ¡ª had a caked-on dirtiness to them. It was hard to tell, but he thought that they might be ethnically Asian, though he couldn¡¯t narrow it down further than that. He¡¯d have to ask March for analysis later. But there was one who was different from the others, a man who wore fine blue silk robes that flowed down to the forest floor. His hair was immaculate, black and straight, hanging halfway down his chest, and on top of his head it was tied back with ornate clips in place. He had a sword, a proper sword, long and thin, hanging from his hip without a sheath. ¡°A traveler, from a distant land,¡± said the man with a nod. ¡°I am a traveler too.¡± ¡°Er, okay,¡± said Perry. His hand itched to go to his sword. ¡°I have very little in the way of goods, but I¡¯m seeking shelter, food, a place that I can stay for a week or two. Do you know of such a place?¡± ¡°How did you come to Green Snake Valley?¡± asked the man, ignoring Perry¡¯s question entirely. He stepped forward slightly, and the other men moved away, spreading out. They weren¡¯t quite forming a circle around Perry, but they were giving their leader some space. It hadn¡¯t escaped Perry that they were all armed, which meant military, police, or more likely, criminals. ¡°I walked through a portal, as I¡¯ve done many times before,¡± said Perry. He paused. It seemed like the time to stop feigning harmlessness. ¡°If you go against me, you will meet the same fate as those who¡¯ve gone against me before.¡± The stranger¡¯s hand went to his sword. ¡°I would suppose that these others were not rewarded for their daring?¡± The stranger spoke with measured calm. His footwork as he moved forward was likewise very deliberate. The only thing that wasn¡¯t deliberate was the way his hair moved in the wind. ¡°And you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You¡¯re a recent arrival to Green Snake Valley?¡± He hadn¡¯t drawn his sword yet, wouldn¡¯t draw it until he had to. It would be odd, with such a large world, to stumble across the other thresholder within minutes of arrival. Perry had thought he¡¯d have to work for it. He was determined not to jump to conclusions, but it was seeming pretty obvious. Unfortunately, he wasn¡¯t in a proper fighting state, not with the gun broken, not with the power armor unable to provide much power, not with his power from the last world unavailable. ¡°I hail from the Grouse Kingdom,¡± said the man. He drew his blade slowly, delicately, somehow not cutting the loop of cloth it had been slipped through. ¡°We are here only for the necessities the Green Snake Valley offers. Our bid for amnesty denied, we move west, as many others do. That it should come to violence is regrettable.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°I¡¯m not of the opinion that violence is needed here.¡± ¡°Your sword and armor will fetch us a good price,¡± said the man. ¡°That is the necessity.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°And once I¡¯ve dispatched you, and your men, should I watch out for other bands like this? It¡¯s a common thing, walking through the woods and stealing what you can, attacking people you think you can kill?¡± ¡°There are others that find themselves in the same regrettable situation, yes,¡± said the man. He had started moving forward. ¡°Yourself included?¡± ¡°What gives you that idea?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Only a warrior who had fallen on hard times would wear armor so damaged as that,¡± the man replied. He¡¯d come as close as he was going to come, sword out in front of him. Perry still hadn¡¯t drawn his own sword. ¡°Armor is, of course, the tool of the coward, a limitation to technique and artistry, and a disruptor of the internal alchemy. That you would coat yourself in damaged armor does not speak well to your skills.¡± Perry was looking at this HUD, trying to gauge the battery levels of the power armor. The armor felt sluggish, and he hadn¡¯t had a chance to move around much in it, not with the batteries as they were, but he thought he could handle a battle against a single swordsman, at least unless that sword was supernaturally sharp. Given how nice the stranger¡¯s clothes were and how immaculate his silky black hair was, Perry strongly suspected that magic was at work. The smart thing to do was probably to fly away, but as Perry was considering that option, the swordsman closed the distance. Perry brought his sword up to block, and his opponent¡¯s last second change in posture made a mockery of the attempt at parrying. The sword gouged a line across the chestplate of the armor, relatively thin but more than metal on metal should have allowed for, and the swordsman took a half step back, analyzing. ¡°Your armor makes you sluggish,¡± he said. There was no indecision in his movements, no waver in his grip on the sword, but he didn¡¯t immediately go in for a second attack. ¡°Problem?¡± asked Perry. If it came to a swordfight, he was going to lose, even with the armor, which meant that he couldn¡¯t allow there to be a swordfight. ¡°Your spirit root,¡± the stranger said. He had narrowed his eyes at Perry. ¡°You are of the first sphere.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry. ¡°Does that mean that we don¡¯t need to fight? Because I can¡¯t see what I would get out of that.¡± He looked down at his armor, briefly, examining the damage. The sword had left a scar on armor that had accumulated plenty of scars, and a sign that a well-positioned sword strike could get at the suit¡¯s more vulnerable points, like the armpits, neck, or groin. It was supernaturally sharp, to be able to get through the alloy. The swordsman didn¡¯t answer, and instead spoke to the other men around him in the same unfamiliar language. They¡¯d circled Perry, giving no option but to go up, but Perry was somewhat less concerned with them. The conversation took some time. Perry waited on it, unmoving, holding his sword steady in front of him. There was a temptation to strike out at the swordsman while he was distracted, but there was a huge difference in the speeds they were capable of. Perry hadn¡¯t been able to get his sword up in time, and didn¡¯t think that he¡¯d be able to fare any better a second time. Even with the suit at the height of its power, it was still limited by his human ¡ª or superhuman, now ¡ª reaction times. Finally, the conversation seemed to conclude with a few growling words spat out by the swordsman. The dirty men with their staffs and cudgels moved in around Perry, tightening their circle. They at least, seemed to be bog-standard humans, maybe even having literally crawled out of a bog. They seemed hesitant to attack, and Perry didn¡¯t blame them, given the state of their clothes and weapons, especially in comparison to his own sword and armor. He¡¯d gone against unarmored men before, and it had always been a slaughter. Perry waited until they attacked. He let a cudgel strike him before he started moving at all, and then he was pushing the armor to its limits, putting its diminished power into every sword strike. He¡¯d been hoping for the element of surprise, and got it in spades as the first whirling slash cut through three of the men, slicing through wood and bone with an ease that he¡¯d been missing during his time in Teaguewater. From there, Perry went on the attack, leaping from man to man, cleaving through the skull of one man down to the eyeball, then wrenching his sword free and slashing straight through an upraised arm. Their morale broke quickly, and the survivors scrambled back. Perry let them, standing with his bloody sword. He turned back to the swordsman, who was standing away from the scene, sword positioned behind his back. Not every attack had been a killing blow, and one of the bandits was screaming, clutching his forearm, whose hand was now laying on the ground. A different bandit was gasping on the ground, a slash across his chest that had gone straight through the ribs. He wasn¡¯t going to survive that, Perry didn¡¯t think. ¡°Enough,¡± said the swordsman. He stepped forward again. ¡°You fight like a wild animal, for one of the first sphere.¡± He pointed his sword at Perry¡¯s chest, which would have been more threatening if he¡¯d been closer. ¡°You know that no warrior of the first sphere can stand against a warrior of the second. I could strike you down without a bead of sweat upon my brow.¡± Perry stared at him. There was, clearly, something that he was missing here. There were probably many things. This man might be able to beat him, but was electing not to. It wasn¡¯t just fear that was holding him back. ¡°The sword cuts as material of the second sphere,¡± he said. ¡°The armor stymies my blade. I must assume they are stolen, a debt to the cosmic order.¡± ¡°Both were gifts,¡± replied Perry. ¡°Hmph,¡± said the swordsman. ¡°Then the cosmic debt lies with another.¡± His sword was still held out in front of him, still pointed at Perry¡¯s chest like an accusation. He hadn¡¯t moved from that position at all, and showed no sign of strain from holding it up. ¡°Three men lie dead by your hand, with a fourth on the way, from the gifts you were bequeathed with.¡± He said this like a declaration. ¡°In recompense, I will take the sword, but spare your life and allow you the armor.¡± Perry paused for a moment. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°If you want the sword, you¡¯ll have to kill me for it. It was a gift, but one earned in service to a king and rightfully mine, no matter the sphere.¡± He hoped he was using the word right. The swordsman considered this. ¡°Very well. Then in this matter, the cosmic debt must settle on my shoulders.¡± He came in again, as though they¡¯d never had a break in their battle for Perry to slaughter the mooks, and again, Perry was far too slow to block the strike. The sword seemed to weave through his defenses, slicing upward at his left armpit, and he could hear the blade go through the metal there. Perry clamped down rather than pulling away, and with the suit¡¯s strength, was able to trap the sword through tension alone. With his other hand, he dropped his own sword and reached out, grabbing the swordsman by his robes and pulling him closer. Soon they were grappling, and while the swordsman showed no fear and tried to escape the hold, Perry seemed to have the advantage, maybe because of the bulk the suit offered, the fact that he was taller, or just that his opponent wasn¡¯t well-practiced in wrestling. It was more or less over once Perry got a grip on the other man¡¯s forearm. The suit¡¯s grip strength was incredibly high, and there, at least, there wasn¡¯t much question of not having enough flow of power. It should have been enough to shatter bones, but the arm itself didn¡¯t give way, and they were stuck, locked together, the swordsman¡¯s left arm held in place, his sword pinned. This was where the suit still excelled, a slow, crushing victory, and Perry didn¡¯t see how he could lose from that point. The swordsman had tricks. He released his sword and made quick motions with his fingers, which caused a blast of air that did nothing to extricate him. When that failed, he thrust his free hand down, toward the earth, and to Perry¡¯s surprise, they both rose into the air, breaking branches as they flew high above the trees. Maybe the swordsman had been hoping that this bit of magic would make Perry falter in his grip, or panic, but Perry only held him closer, so they were pressed up against each other. As they began to fall, the swordsman began striking at the armor with his free fist, but while these hits were far harder than they should have been, causing warnings to pop up on the HUD, they weren¡¯t enough to cause serious, lasting damage. They crashed into the ground together, and Perry finally heard the snap of bone from the arm he¡¯d been steadily holding onto. The swordsman had been stoic until that moment, concealing any anger or pain, but the breaking of bone made him cry out, and so Perry held tight and pressed the advantage, punching at the other man¡¯s head. Unbelievably, he dodged the first few strikes, ducking beneath a fist even with his broken arm held in place, but eventually Perry clocked him with a strike to the neck that would have killed a lesser man outright. Instead, the swordsman fought with one hand, trying to get his fingers into any gaps in the armor, but the armor had no gaps, no places to get leverage, with even the joints properly armored and airtight. Perry went for a headbutt, and when it landed, the swordsman¡¯s face was bloodied, more bone broken. After a second headbutt, the swordsman¡¯s head was lolling, and after a third, he was slumped, unmoving. Perry didn¡¯t drop the body until the fifth headbutt, and once he¡¯d gotten to his feet, the first thing he did was to call his sword to his hand and make a quick decapitating strike. The other men had long since fled. ¡°Damage assessment,¡± said Perry. ¡°Excessive, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°The left arm is seriously injured, battery capacity and charge rates are far below par, numerous cameras and microphones are no longer functional, the microfusion ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean ¡ª how much damage did we take in that engagement?¡± ¡°The damage is largely cosmetic, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t wager that we could weather too many more of those though. The gunfire to the chest in particular was of a higher caliber than this suit is rated for.¡± ¡°Gunfire?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh, no, he was punching me.¡± ¡°Hmm, striking, sir, as the hits were with the tip of the hand,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe something has gone wrong with either my memory banks or image processing, one moment, I¡¯m rebooting some systems.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t bother,¡± said Perry. It was magic of some kind, magical martial arts, it must have been if a simple gesture had launched them into the air and a strike from a hand was enough to dent armor. That was the kind of thing that March had always had difficulty understanding. Perry looked down at the corpse, then began to pat it down, eventually stripping the man of his clothes. The other three bodies beside it looked like they probably had nothing, but this man had been well-dressed, in silks that were now ruined. Beneath the robe, there was a pouch of coins, the language unreadable, along with a jade carving of a badger. Perry took that, adding it to his own pack, then picked up the sword, inspecting that as well. It was light and agile, with a thin, flat blade, the center of which was black with an engraving of stylized glyphs which probably belonged to the language he couldn¡¯t speak. He swished the sword back and forth for a moment, then chopped at a tree to test it. He was mildly surprised when it showed none of the same sharpness it had in its previous owner¡¯s hand. Perry sheathed his sword and decided to carry the other, hoping that he could sell it for something later on, as the bandits seemed to have planned on doing. He was worried though. If this was the caliber of a random wandering bandit, then he thought there was a good chance he was in serious trouble. Chapter 26 - Spheres Perry was worried about what this world had in store for him. All that talk about first and second spheres was concerning, because if Perry was of the first sphere and could just barely go toe-to-toe with a single member of the second sphere, it raised a lot of questions about how he would fare. If there were more spheres, then it seemed like someone of the third sphere could wipe the floor with him, at least if he was interpreting things correctly. The whole sphere thing would need to be figured out, especially if they were going to assume that his sword and armor had been stolen. The second sword, which arguably had been stolen, if you weren¡¯t allowed to win things in combat from bandits who were trying to loot your corpse, was disposable. Language was going to be another issue. Only the swordsman had seemed to understand him. Was English the province of the second sphere? If that was the case, it would mean that the nearby village might not have anything for him. The bandits had one man who was part of the second sphere and maybe a dozen who were part of the first sphere, which said something about their relative rarity. It was also entirely possible that ¡®spheres¡¯ had nothing to do with abilities and were more a matter of society, like a division between gentry and yeomen and common laborers. Perry knew almost nothing about kung fu, wuxia, cultivation, xianxia, or whatever it was called. Those were probably different things. There also didn¡¯t seem to be much reason to think that anything found in a book or movie from Earth would be instructive here. From everything that Cosme had said, the worlds weren¡¯t big on ¡®concept¡¯, and the last one, with its Victorian underworld, had been a bit of an aberration, the comparisons to the mythologies of his Earth relatively skin deep. ¡°Give me a primer on Chinese mythology,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t know that much, sir, and an attempt at synthesis from the documents I have access to is beyond me at the moment,¡± Marchand replied. ¡°Wait, really?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You couldn¡¯t read, um, the monkey king one, or the Three Kingdoms, and give me the gist of it?¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid not, sir,¡± said March. ¡°My capacity for summarization has always been poor without access to remote computing, and in my current compromised state the results would be too poor to share in good conscience, no better than pulling individual sentences from GratBook.¡± ¡°Alright, fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°Can you give me that level of overview, something that¡¯s better than nothing? Let¡¯s start simple, tell me what a ¡®sphere¡¯ could refer to.¡± ¡°Very well sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°A sphere is a geometrical object which is defined by the distance in three-dimensional space of ¡ª¡± ¡°No, no, goddamn it, what is a sphere in the context of Asian mythology, cosmology, society, uh, anything else,¡± said Perry. This had clearly been a mistake. ¡°Asia is a rather large region,¡± said Marchand. ¡°In Hindu cosmology, the three spheres might be refer to three realms, which translate roughly as the terrestrial earth, heaven, and hell. An alternate conception might be as past, present, and future. In Buddhism, the three spheres might refer to destinations for karmic rebirth. Under Confucian thought, the three spheres might be the family, the state, and the individual. To Daoist understanding, the three spheres might relate to the Three Treasures or Three Jewels, which are notoriously difficult to translate, and have different meanings depending on who is using them.¡± ¡°I never said three,¡± said Perry. ¡°Why would we think there would be three?¡± There was a long pause. ¡°I can¡¯t say sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You can¡¯t say because you don¡¯t understand where your processing went wrong?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Quite correct, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe it to be an error in answer generation.¡± ¡°March, I love you, you¡¯re my only friend, and the best gift I was ever given, but you are really not helping me right now,¡± said Perry. ¡°My apologies, sir,¡± said March. ¡°I will endeavor to serve you better in the future.¡± The nearby village was small. Perry watched it from the air for a moment, trying to get a handle on the people there. The villagers didn¡¯t see him, mostly because they didn¡¯t look up, or possibly because of the glamour he¡¯d carried from the last world, and they simply moved about their lives, cooking at fireplaces, moving things from place to place, and for the most part, talking in the same language that Perry didn¡¯t know and March couldn¡¯t translate. The clothes were simple, mostly brown with a few things that might have once been white, bandanas and bare feet, a few with buttons but mostly with fabric tied in place. They were pretty clearly Asian, or looked Asian. The buildings had thick wooden beams and angled roofs with black tiles, but there wasn¡¯t any of the rice paper that he might have expected. He was pretty clearly going to have to sit down and educate himself on Asian architecture, but that would have to come later. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°No electricity, very little metal, middling textiles, relatively little masonry, lots of pottery ¡­ if you were looking at a snapshot of this, where in the world would you say that it was taken?¡± There was a long pause from Marchand. ¡°California.¡± Perry sighed. ¡°I might have to hold off on talking to you until you¡¯re fixed, but ¡­ why California?¡± ¡°I¡¯m unable to receive a satellite signal at a moment, but internal tracking of movement indicates that we haven¡¯t moved more than a hundred miles from our starting location in California,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I suspect that this village is either a recreation by the Californian Historical Society, or possibly a movie set.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°Thanks. I don¡¯t know how that possibility escaped me.¡± ¡°The more that I look at it, the more I think a movie set is more likely,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It occurs to me that the details of the scene are lacking in historical accuracy, which is more typical of a movie set than a true attempt at recreating a historical moment.¡± ¡°Chinese though, you think?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Rather than, uh, Japanese or Korean?¡± ¡°I couldn¡¯t say, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°I¡¯m not sure that I¡¯m going to be able to get you patched up here,¡± said Perry. ¡°The tech level is lower than the last world, aside from the giant ring structure, which might just be ¡­ I don¡¯t know. How the world is shaped, I guess.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Still no radio signal?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m afraid not, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Should I send out a signal, do you think?¡± ¡°Absolutely not,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s extremely likely that anyone who can hear a radio signal from us would be an enemy. Though ¡­¡± He looked up at the arc of the world, which faded off into the distance. Surely there must be someone out there who had a radio. It wasn¡¯t all that complicated of a technology, he¡¯d seen how uncomplicated it was. On a world this big, were they really stuck at this level of tech? And if he could find someone on the other side of the ring with an actual city, a place of heavy industry, actual computer chips, then he¡¯d be able to fix Marchand, which was the first priority. Somewhere out there was the Adversary though, unless Perry had come in first this time. Perry weighed his options. ¡°We¡¯ll hold off on sending a radio transmission for now,¡± he said. ¡°When we do, we¡¯ll keep it short and keep moving so they can¡¯t come for us.¡± ¡°If you say so, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry wanted to drop down, to get the ball rolling, throw himself at the mercy of local authorities ¡­ but there were some problems that came with that, namely that he didn¡¯t know the law. That went double because of the language barrier. He wasn¡¯t going to disarm himself, not that he¡¯d fit in with them anyway. He could pass in Teaguewater once he had proper clothes, but here, ethnicity alone would out him. He highly doubted that the glamour was enough for them to ignore the vast number of things that would make him stick out. He decided to spy, which was one of the things that his powers were best at. He did, eventually, find someone who had that particular look of someone of the second sphere, at least if the bandit leader was anything to go by. It was a woman who was wearing the same sorts of fabrics, if not silk, then something else that had a high thread count. It was colored with bright blue dyes, and showed none of the patching, wrinkles, or frayed edges that was apparent on the clothing of the peasants. If the whole concept of spheres hadn¡¯t been on Perry¡¯s mind, he might have thought that she was just a boring noble instead, but he was able to watch closely enough with maximum zoom, and the spheres were on his mind. He could see a special grace in the way she took her tea. Everything she did was as though she¡¯d planned it out in advance. The more he watched her, the more she seemed like a different sort of creature. Her teeth were perfect, her skin flawless, her hair without tangles or split ends. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. Perry played back the video of the swordsman in the woods, watching it, seeing things he hadn¡¯t seen the first time, particularly the details of the man¡¯s appearance. It was the same level of airbrushed perfection, as though every frame of the video had been gone over by a professional artist trying to get it ready for the fall cover. Even zoomed in so it felt like Perry was close enough to smell the man¡¯s breath, there were no flaws. That was pretty impressive for a guy who had been walking through the woods with some dirty bandits, especially because unlike a knight, there was no obvious retinue. The woman didn¡¯t have any obvious support either, no handmaids or servants. The people she was sharing tea with had the same simple dress as everyone else, thicker fabrics that sat more awkwardly, function over form. Perry waited for a considerable amount of time, reading through a few articles on Gratbook while hiding up in a tree. He felt faintly ridiculous, but he was hoping that someone would speak some English, or that he¡¯d at least get some idea of what this world was about and how to navigate it. If English was the language of the second sphere, and they spoke it exclusively, then he¡¯d have to figure that out and hope that he didn¡¯t come across as an interloper ¡ª or at least not an interloper who needed to be imprisoned or executed. It took some time for the woman to leave the village, but she eventually did, and Perry followed, keeping as much distance between them as he could. Her footsteps were silent though, cloth shoes on dry earth that didn¡¯t seem to be getting her dirty. That meant that Perry couldn¡¯t just rely on March listening to her movements, and needed to be closer, which risked him getting caught. She moved down a dirt road, all on her own, with no chaperones to speak of, which struck Perry as a bit odd given that there were roaming bandits. When she was some distance from the village, around a few bends and a small hill, she vanished in a beam of white light. Perry was far enough away that he didn¡¯t directly see her, but he saw the direction of the beam through the trees, and she had vanished. ¡°March pinpoint where that beam was going,¡± said Perry. ¡°There, on the celestial body, sir,¡± said March, painting it on the HUD. Perry flew close to where she had been. He wished that he had a way of storing the second sword, because holding it seemed like it might be a threat. She was gone though, completely vanished, with not so much as a hair left behind to show she¡¯d ever been there. ¡°Teleportation,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ something like it.¡± ¡°Teleportation is impossible, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Right, right,¡± said Perry. He looked up at the moon, which was still marked on the HUD. It was the largest of the three, full and bright even in the daylight. The sun overhead had moved toward the center of the sky, though not quite the exact center, and Perry was curious whether there would be a shadow cast by the other half of the ring, which was presumably overhead. ¡°Distance from the moon to the Earth,¡± said Perry. ¡°238,900 miles, though it varies with the orbit and where you measure from,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Time it takes light to travel that distance?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It takes three seconds for a round trip, if you¡¯re thinking what I suspect you are, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And what do you think I¡¯m thinking?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That beam traveled to the celestial body, and you suspect that it will return,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You got it right that time,¡± said Perry. ¡°Was the beam traveling at the speed of light though?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s difficult for me to assess what the beam was composed of, or how it was made, but the velocity was more similar to hypersonic rounds.¡± The picture-in-picture showed frame-by-frame with some calculations and comparisons, and Perry shook his head a bit to clear it away. Perry waited. He suspected that however she¡¯d left, she¡¯d left because of him, and he hoped that when she returned, it would be because he¡¯d shown that he wasn¡¯t a threat. She was his best lead on someone who actually shared a language with him. When she reappeared, it was by a beam of white light, appearing to originate from the same moon as before. She was two hundred feet away and holding a longbow that was taller than she was. It was bone white and nocked with an arrow. White mist briefly rose around her before dissipating. ¡°I am Luo Yanhua, Sky Piercer, Outer Disciple of the Moon Gate,¡± she called to Perry. Her voice carried to him without any seeming force, not a yell or a shout, just a forceful sentence. There was a trace of anger. Her almond-shaped eyes were a warm brown with long lashes. She was staring him down, cheeks slightly pink. ¡°Who are you, to follow me?¡± Perry dropped the sword and gave her a wave. ¡°Sorry!¡± he said. His voice was amplified by the power armor, but he imagined the effect was far less impressive. ¡°I¡¯m a traveler from distant lands, another realm, and seek the hospitality of someone who speaks my language. I have gold to trade, and labor to give, knowledge that this world doesn¡¯t have, I just need a safe place to stay for the night, somewhere free of roving bandits.¡± She considered this, arms not moving from a position to loose her arrow. Perry was skeptical that an arrow could pierce the armor, even if it was magical, given how high of caliber a bullet the power armor could tank. He didn¡¯t want to test it though. It didn¡¯t feel like such a huge longbow would necessarily result in more power, but it certainly felt more threatening. ¡°Refugees of the Grouse Kingdom have been offered shelter in the Central City of the Kingdom of Seven Valleys,¡± she said. ¡°Those involved in the Swallow¡¯s War will have no quarter.¡± ¡°I¡¯m really not from around here,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not from this world, but another.¡± He didn¡¯t know how to phrase it to make her understand. ¡°A man told me I was of the first sphere, not the second, and if you don¡¯t know of a place for me to stay, then I need to know more of this world. I don¡¯t even know what a ¡®sphere¡¯ is.¡± She brought her bow up and pulled the arrow back. There was no quaver in her arm. She stared Perry down, as though daring him to make a move on her, or to lie, or to do anything that would give her cause to put an arrow through his skull. ¡°Drop your sword on the ground,¡± she said. ¡°Remove your helmet.¡± Perry was hesitant, but he unhooked his sheathed sword, letting it drop, then slowly removed the helmet. It wasn¡¯t the easiest thing to get off, and the tubes brushed against his face. The earpiece was in his ear, allowing him to hear March, not that March would be much help. It was an act of faith. He¡¯d seen how this woman had acted around the villagers, the way she¡¯d seemed to show them deference even though she was obviously of a higher standing than them. His other options were to run or fight, and both seemed bad. ¡°I will approach now, to get a sense of you,¡± she said. ¡°I will not hesitate, if you give me cause, to end your life. I will not approach to within striking range of you, nor will you move until I give you leave to.¡± ¡°Understood,¡± said Perry. He had his arms up, palms out. She came closer, holding the bow taut the entire time and without any apparent effort. It was a full draw, and her upper body glided along like a ship over the water, her footwork as she walked forward smooth and choreographed, even when she had to step around a small rock in the path. Perry didn¡¯t like having guns pointed in his face, and this was giving him a similar feeling. If she decided to kill him, then with his helmet off, she¡¯d stand a good chance of it, so long as her aim was true. She kept the arrow pointed at him the entire time she was walking over though, and kept it there as she looked him over. He had a bit of scruff, having not had time to shave before he left, and he hadn¡¯t had a shower since the fight at the fairgrounds, because he¡¯d been worried that he¡¯d be in the middle of it when the portal came. Having the helmet off was the first time he got a good smell of this world. It was earthy and green, the plants hanging their scent in the air, and there was no trace of pollution. The people of the village had been burning charcoal, and that smell was there too, but it was faint and pleasant. Teaguewater had been short on fresh breaths of air. ¡°You have a spirit root, but undeveloped,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She was looking at him intensely, as though seeing through him, which she might have been. ¡°Your armor and swords, where do they come from?¡± ¡°The sword was a gift from a king, wizard-made, given to me in a world where I worked as a soldier,¡± said Perry. ¡°The armor was built for me by a woman I was courting, to help us fight an evil man.¡± He was trying to get his language to match hers, but wasn¡¯t sure that he was hitting the mark. ¡°What is the provenance of the other sword?¡± Luo Yanhua asked, pointing at the one Perry had taken from the bandit leader. ¡°A group of men attacked me in the woods, shortly after I arrived,¡± said Perry. ¡°They had been denied amnesty, which I would guess was because they were involved in the Swallow¡¯s War. One of them was a man who claimed to be of the second sphere.¡± Perry nodded at the sword. ¡°That was his.¡± Luo Yanhua took her eyes from Perry and finally relaxed her draw, though not so much that she couldn¡¯t put an arrow through his skull. She was looking at the sword, which was laying on the ground. ¡°It¡¯s of the second sphere,¡± she said, sucking in a breath. ¡°You ambushed him?¡± ¡°He said that someone of the first sphere couldn¡¯t beat someone of the second sphere,¡± said Perry. ¡°But that would work, ambush? Because his reflexes seemed pretty sharp. And you seemed to spot me pretty easily.¡± ¡°I saw you while I was in the village,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°This man, this bandit, how did you defeat him? Where is he now?¡± Perry related it as plainly and truthfully as he could, which Luo Yanhua listened to with an impassive face. All in all, Perry thought that he came out looking pretty good from the whole exchange. Three times he¡¯d been attacked by them, first by the swordsman, then by the mooks, then by the swordsman again, and he had always been responding to attacks, never initiating them himself. In a court of law, it would be a pretty solid self-defense argument, a topic which Perry had read up extensively in the course of some online arguments. Luo Yanhua seemed unimpressed. She¡¯d been holding the half-draw for several minutes, which Perry thought was much longer than he¡¯d have managed. ¡°Do not think yourself an inestimable champion for having bested a man like that,¡± she said once he was finished. ¡°The men sweeping through the Green Snake Valley have been shattered by the fall of the Grouse Kingdom, and to live as they¡¯ve done, thieving and pillaging, invokes a terrible toll upon their cosmic balance. It has been two months since the conclusion of the kingdom, enough time for a man like the one you fought to have weakened himself twice over with transgression. With the loss of a civic tether as well, his kingdom gone, your victory proves less impressive.¡± Perry tried to get a handle on some of the terminology and failed. ¡°You believe me then? That I¡¯m from another world?¡± ¡°It would be a bold lie,¡± Luo Yanhua replied. She finally, finally, stopped pointing the arrow at Perry¡¯s face and put it back in a quiver at her hip. ¡°The armor and sword came from somewhere, but do not comport with the nature of the second sphere. There are many grand things in this world, many strange mysteries, and it is not unbelievable that you are a new one.¡± ¡°And ¡­ you¡¯ll help?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Find me a place to stay, somewhere I can work for my supper?¡± ¡°Not yet,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°In your recounting of the fight with the bandits, you mentioned that you killed several of them, the man of the second sphere among them. Yet you did not say to me that you burned or buried their bodies.¡± She gave a small nod. ¡°This must be done.¡± ¡°Done ¡­ by me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°By you,¡± nodded Luo Yanhua. ¡°You will engage in common labor, and by that, I will know your character and your worth.¡± Chapter 27 - Digging Graves Luo Yanhua was treating him like a child. Worse, she was treating him like a child she was uninterested in, some brat kid her mother had told her to look after. He asked questions and she didn¡¯t answer them, or gave only curt, cursory answers. Perry had no idea whether this was an annoying test, a cultural issue, or if she was holding back so that he would speak more about himself and his own circumstances. Perry had made a lot of corpses before, but had never dug a grave. In Seraphinus, the digging of graves had been the work of common laborers, as soldiers were supposed to save their stamina for the battlefield. He hadn¡¯t just been a soldier, he¡¯d been a knight, and such things were beneath him. There had been lots of work that he¡¯d tried to pitch in on, but after a few reprimands, he¡¯d stopped trying to pull his weight as far as the mundane stuff was concerned. It had been relatively easy to accept that his role in the war was killing orcs, trolls, goblins, and all kinds of other creatures. Perry had never shirked hard work, but there was something about digging graves for these men that irked him. For one thing, you were supposed to bury your own dead, everyone knew that. The bandits had no honor, that was probably how they¡¯d gone into the whole mess in the first place. The second thing was that Luo Yanhua was watching, not helping. Grave digging was slow, brutal work that only got more brutal once the power armor¡¯s battery had worn down. Perry had tried to calibrate it so that the armor would only compensate for its own weight, but it wasn¡¯t strong enough to do that for an extended bout of manual labor, which meant that Perry was faced with the option of either crawling out of his armor entirely or continuing on with doing the hard work encased in metal. He chose the latter, mostly because it was heading toward noon, and once the ring lined up with the sun, he was worried that the wolf would come out to play. Luo Yanhua hadn¡¯t deigned to give him an answer about whether there was an eclipse at noon. ¡°Alright, so is this Mr. Miyagi makework, is this disciplinary potato-peeling, or is there some deep cultural meaning to this?¡± asked Perry once he¡¯d dug the first two graves. He¡¯d wanted to make a mass grave, which seemed easier, but Luo Yanhua had insisted they be separate. ¡°I don¡¯t know the meaning of your words,¡± replied Luo Yanhua. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s fine, you¡¯re not going to answer anyway.¡± The shovel he¡¯d borrowed from the village bit another section of earth. ¡°I don¡¯t mind doing the work, I just want to know why I¡¯m being made to do the work.¡± ¡°Bodies must be buried,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Right,¡± said Perry as he pushed the shovel in harder. He stopped himself, reeling in his frustration. He was in this for the long haul, and it wouldn¡¯t do to tire himself out. ¡°Is it a law that I must bury the bodies of those I¡¯ve killed in self-defense?¡± ¡°It is a sign of respect to those who have fallen,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Alright, see?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That I can accept. I just want to have some motivation for doing this, rather than letting these bodies be eaten by wolves or whatever would happen to them.¡± ¡°They would rise in the form of a crab, hard-shelled and deadly,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Burial rites should be performed by friends and family, and we must assume that these men had neither. The rites must therefore be performed by a stranger, not only for the peace of the dead, but for the safety of the community.¡± ¡°And that I understand as well,¡± said Perry. ¡°Bury people, otherwise they¡¯ll come back as zombie crabs. Makes perfect sense. I¡¯m hoping that you can give me some guidance on the rites, because I don¡¯t know much more than sticking a body in a hole.¡± ¡°I do not speak your language,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We of the second sphere treat language as malleable, something which can obey the force of will, so it is simple for us to communicate with you in this way, beyond the barriers of common sound. That does not mean that we will fully understand each other.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°And there was a word that you missed?¡± He paused for a moment to catch his breath, then got back to the shoveling. ¡°There have been many that I have missed, in the short time we¡¯ve known each other,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°If you are from another world, there are concepts that you will know which I do not. ¡®Zombie¡¯?¡± ¡°Uh, a corpse that comes back to life,¡± said Perry. He was sweating beneath the suit. It was built with tubes in it that helped to wick away heat. The skintight suit he¡¯d worn underneath had been of a special wonder-fabric from Richter¡¯s world, wicking away sweat like it was nothing and feeling like silk against his skin. It had unfortunately been utterly destroyed when Perry had transformed. Beneath the armor, he was wearing clothes that were starting to chafe, sodden with sweat. ¡°The manner in which the dead come back depends upon their death,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°An improper burial, a betrayal, a suicide, an accident, a drowning, a poisoning ¡ª all these bring their own afflictions upon the world.¡± ¡°Which is why you have rites to stop them,¡± said Perry. The digging was especially difficult on his lower back, which he thought probably meant that his technique was sloppy. ¡°You have a curious view of the world,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She was looking at him with a raised eyebrow, real emotion shown for what felt like the first time, unless he counted the anger she¡¯d shown when she returned from her jaunt to the heavens. ¡°A dangerous view.¡± Perry stayed silent. He didn¡¯t know why she was saying that, but it wasn¡¯t a good impression to be giving. What he should have said when she¡¯d suggested burying the bodies was ¡®yes, of course, that¡¯s the right and proper thing to do, respectful of fallen foes¡¯. Better than that, he should have said, ¡®Oh, those bodies? I buried them after the battle, as any right-thinking person would do¡¯, but of course that was a lie that would be easy to get caught in, especially once zombie crabs attacked the nearby village. He tried to think about how he¡¯d started this, by following her in the village, and thought that was probably where he¡¯d gone wrong. If he was going to spy, it should have been with the whisper-quiet drone, or in such a way that it was deniable, not that he could blend in here, armor or not. He was definitely not an ethnic match for these people. He dug more graves in silence. Around noon, the sky darkened, and Perry stopped his work for a moment, looking up at it. He had his helmet back in place, and wasn¡¯t worried about an unexpected transformation, but there was something about a midday eclipse that sent a shiver down his spine anyway. The whole thing didn¡¯t last long, but the ring was plunged into darkness, which meant that the sun was outside the ring, not inside. The ring was, then, spinning off in space. He frowned, trying to work out the physics of it. It didn¡¯t seem stable in the long-term, not unless there were hidden thrusters at the side of the ring. And the way light would fall would mean that certain parts of the ring would get practically no light at all, worse than being above the Arctic circle ¡­ which was possibly how seasons worked, in this place. Following the eclipse ¡ª which was probably the wrong name for it ¡ª Perry¡¯s commitment to silence didn¡¯t seem to faze Luo Yanhua in the slightest. Perry thought the graves were a bit shallow, truth be told, but Luo Yanhua seemed satisfied with the work and asked no more of him. The bodies were laid in each of them in turn, and Perry had to do the additional hard work of moving the earth back into place. The soil conditions seemed good, with little in the way of roots, which seemed to be the benefit of having a spot in the clearing. Still, the whole thing took time, not to mention the physical exertion. Perry hadn¡¯t had much chance to test his limits as a werewolf. There was the whole wolf thing, of course, but even in human form there had been changes. He was hairier and his sense of smell was far more keenly attuned, which had been somewhat of a detriment in Teaguewater, whose odors had grown more offensive when he¡¯d been able to pick out all the layered awfulness. The transformation had come with strength, too, not enough that the armor didn¡¯t fit, and mostly in terms of feel rather than larger muscles. It wasn¡¯t lift-a-car-one-handed super strength, but he was probably stronger than a normal man by a wide enough margin that he¡¯d win a boxing match even against a professional. A normal man probably couldn¡¯t have done four hours of grave-digging in heavy metal armor without taking much of a break. Luo Yanhua handled the burial rites, which seemed dead simple. She made a fist-sized pit in the loose earth that covered each of the bodies and poured a glug of sweet rice wine, followed by a simple coin, and a leaf from one of the nearby trees, something like a maple, but more in the shape of a star. The flask with the wine had been borrowed from the village, as had the coins. She said words which either needed to be in the local language or were said for the benefit of someone else, maybe the dead. ¡°Good,¡± said Luo Yanhua, the first words she¡¯d spoken in more than two hours. She¡¯d been doing nothing, only watching him dig graves. ¡°You have a measure of my character and worth?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I do,¡± said Luo. ¡°You will accompany me to the Moon Gate¡¯s Silver Fish Temple, where we will provide you with food and shelter.¡± ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s all I had to do?¡± ¡°That¡¯s all,¡± Luo Yanhua nodded. ¡°I have questions,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, you know that. When will I have those questions answered?¡± ¡°Soon,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is the custom of the second sphere not to share too much with the first sphere.¡± Perry tried to think about how he would respond if he were the perfect guest. Probably he wouldn¡¯t show his annoyance. ¡°Knowledge can be dangerous,¡± he nodded. ¡°All things in good time.¡± She narrowed her eyes at him, a slight movement that carried weight given how deliberate everything she¡¯d done was. ¡°That is not your natural inclination.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯ve been to other worlds, and I know enough to know that I¡¯ll need to adapt.¡± Luo Yanhua nodded, seeming to think that was a bit of sage wisdom. In some respects, he¡¯d resolved to treat this place as Seraphinus 2.0 and assume that everything worked off chivalry and honor. The problem, the core problem, was that he had no firm understanding of what this place had in terms of codes of conduct. So far, his list was relatively short: don¡¯t spy on people, don¡¯t mess with second sphere weapons, and bury the dead. There are a lot of other assumptions he was following as well, but it was difficult to set them in order, simply because so much felt like it should be taken for granted. Theft and assault were probably not cool, but Luo ¡®Sky Piercer¡¯ Yanhua had seemed like she was willing to put an arrow through him for looking at her from a distance, so perhaps assault was less frowned upon than he¡¯d been assuming. He followed her back to the village, where they returned the things they¡¯d borrowed, the shovel for him and the now-empty bottle of spirits for her. She was still holding onto her bow and had her quiver with her, the ones that it seemed like she¡¯d gotten from the moon. ¡°Are there any questions you will answer?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Just ¡­ not questions about the shape of the world?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not information on how society is organized, things like that?¡± ¡°I would answer those,¡± said Luo Yanhua, without pause. In her mind, the divisions must already have been drawn between the permissible and impermissible. ¡°Those people in the village, they¡¯re all first sphere?¡± asked Perry. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°Yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°And you¡¯re second sphere?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I am,¡± Luo Yanhua nodded. Perry wanted to ask what they had to do with the spirit root, and what a spirit root was, but that seemed like the kind of thing that was kept from the first sphere for whatever reason, most likely in order to hoard power. The swordsman had talked about it freely, but Perry supposed that had been in a language that the bandits around weren¡¯t speaking. He wanted to ask how many spheres there were, but that also seemed like something she might balk at. Flora had been the same way, nervous when he asked about gaining power, though he wouldn¡¯t have described Luo Yanhua as nervous. Where Flora was tense and guarded, this woman was practically a robot. ¡°What kind of things do you do for fun?¡± asked Perry. Luo Yanhua didn¡¯t react to the absurdity of that, she only walked a few more steps in silence before answering. ¡°I compose poetry. I share the rites of daily life. I spend time in my sanctum, evolving it.¡± Perry wanted to know what those words meant, what a ¡®rite¡¯ was beyond just the thing with the graves, what a sanctum was, how it evolved, how he could get one. It was causing him no small amount of excitement, which he was trying to tamp down. ¡°What¡¯s there to eat around here, for a guest of first sphere?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Dinner tonight will be rice porridge with pickled vegetables and preserved eggs,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Or perhaps ¡­ stir-fried vegetables, wheat noodles, steamed buns. Simple fare.¡± She took two silent steps. ¡°What have you eaten in other worlds?¡± ¡°In the last one, bread, potatoes, oat porridge, offal, sausage, stews, that sort of thing,¡± said Perry. ¡°The world before that was,¡± he paused a tick, realizing that diet might be one of those things that would get him in trouble. He tried to remember what he¡¯d seen of the food preparation in the village. They¡¯d had chickens, or at least some kind of feathered bird in cages and pens, but Perry hadn¡¯t seen horses or cows. There¡¯d been a single pig. ¡°Venison, beef, pork, lamb, geese, swans, salmon, sturgeon ¡ª unbelievable amounts of meat, really, breads with a bit of sugar, all kinds of fruits.¡± ¡°A rich and varied diet,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°And the world before that?¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. He thought about Richter¡¯s world, and what he¡¯d eaten there. He wasn¡¯t sure he had the language to describe it. ¡°This world, this ring, is it ¡ª is there a lot of variety to it, to the cultures?¡± ¡°There is more variety in the lower spheres,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She was thoughtful, the question apparently both permissible and interesting to her. That was good, because it meant she was more likely to talk. ¡°Green Snake Valley is inland. There are lakes, but little of the fresh fish and seafood of other places.¡± She looked up at the ring and pointed with a slender finger. It was hard to tell where, if she meant to be pointing at anything specific. ¡°The Great Arc has many oceans, and many kingdoms on the edges of them. Crab, shrimp, clam, squid, shark, whale, the bounty of the oceans.¡± Perry winced when she said ¡®shark¡¯ and then ¡®whale¡¯. Diet being a touchy subject was something that went both ways. ¡°You were saying, of your past worlds?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. They were walking together, with her leading the way, down a dirt road that had turned into one paved with stones. It was surprisingly modern, though Perry had no idea how much stone paths had evolved since medieval times. He didn¡¯t actually know enough about Chinese history to know whether the medieval period had been quite the same, but he did know enough to know that China had never been much of a monolith. He also wondered how on the mark ¡®China¡¯ even was, as a parallel to this world. ¡°In the world I come from, I was in a place with all the variety of a thousand kingdoms,¡± said Perry. ¡°You could sit down to a meal and have anything, from anywhere. Tacos, sushi, pasta, anything your heart desired, stores with a thousand different bottles of wine, two hundred cuts of meat, anything you wanted really. Specialty shops lining every street, regional cuisines from every part of the world.¡± There was more and less than that, really, though it would be hard to describe. Certain ingredients were nearly impossible to track down, and certain regional cuisines just weren¡¯t popular enough to have a shop, and of course everything in Tacoma was sanded down and Americanized in one way or another, even if it was a hipster sort of sanding down where some of the foreignness was emphasized for ¡®authenticity¡¯. ¡°You left all that?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°You sound as though you miss it.¡± ¡°I do, sometimes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Did you leave for noble reasons?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. Perry pursed his lips. It didn¡¯t seem fair of her to ask that, not when she was denying him so much. The topic of food had been safer for both of them. ¡°I was ¡­ needed,¡± said Perry. ¡°Called.¡± That was a religious term, Christian, and he didn¡¯t figure that the concept would translate. It wasn¡¯t particularly true either, except that part of the schtick with being a thresholder was that you kept getting matched up with people who were, if not monsters, then at least misaligned. He¡¯d felt it most keenly in Seraphinus, where stopping Pulver had been a matter of keeping the kingdom from bloody defeat. All that had been an easier framing to believe in before he¡¯d met Cosme. ¡°What is your mission in this realm?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°It¡¯s something I need to keep secret, for the time being,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no need to apologize,¡± replied Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is a sign of wisdom to know when something should not be shared.¡± Perry considered that. If not handing out information was wise, then she was Solomon. Much of the walk was silent, in part because Perry didn¡¯t know what was permissible. His mind went to the geography of the ring, whose vast expanses lay to the north and south. He had some questions about all of it, deep questions that he thought weren¡¯t likely to get any solid answers. Some of those questions were geography questions, not the matters of the physical place, but the human geography, stuff like population growth, migration, urbanization, and cultural landscapes. Some of those questions seemed like they¡¯d be safe to ask. ¡°Do they speak the same language all over the Great Arc?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The first sphere is divided by language,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Though the second sphere can act as translators, should the need arise.¡± ¡°You¡¯re all polyglots,¡± said Perry. ¡°More than that,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We bend language to our will.¡± ¡°And the cultures are different, in the first sphere,¡± said Perry. ¡°Different because there are different climates, different foods, different materials for building. All that shapes the culture, on top of all the regional aspects that don¡¯t feel like they come from material conditions like what wood is available to use.¡± His eyes went to a piece of the Arc to the north, which was clearly desert. ¡°Or whether they have wood at all. And in the second sphere ¡­ is it permitted to tell me?¡± Luo Yanhua thought for a moment. ¡°You wish to know the material conditions of the second sphere?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. Desperately. ¡°You were talking about what the first sphere ate, but said nothing about the second sphere. Not rice porridge?¡± ¡°We partake as a matter of following the rites,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But when there is no food our bellies do not go empty in the same way. The internal alchemy of the first sphere is haphazard, sloshing back and forth, a fire that requires constant fuel. The same is not true of the second sphere. We take neither food, nor water, no breath, not unless there is cause to.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± said Perry. ¡°For what do you owe me thanks?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°For actually telling me something,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not anything that I can use, but it¡¯s good to know, it¡¯s what I want to know.¡± ¡°Trivial things,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Obvious things?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. She was stepping lightly on the stones of the road, never over-extending, yet always sometimes placing her feet directly on the stone, never across them, never in the crack. ¡°Yet you do wish to know how to reach the second sphere. It is easy to see your thirst for power, the swell of your spirit root in anticipation.¡± Perry couldn¡¯t argue with that ¡ª literally couldn¡¯t, because he didn¡¯t know what the hell she was talking about. He didn¡¯t know what a spirit root was, and she hadn¡¯t told him, but he assumed that it was some kind of metaphysical thing, or perhaps a metaphor for some personal attribute he was lacking. ¡°It¡¯s possible then?¡± asked Perry. ¡°To move from the first sphere to the second? Or is it immutable, the barrier?¡± Luo Yanhua gave a laugh. ¡°I should not answer, but you are so earnest in your question, as though you would simply accept me if I told you that it were beyond mortal means ¡ª but you¡¯re not mortal, are you?¡± Perry was silent. Had she seen that he was a werewolf? Did they have werewolves here? Or was it simply obvious from the grave-digging that he had more stamina and strength than he should have? ¡°I was of the first sphere,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I transitioned years ago, after long preparations. I was born in a fishing village on a coast far from here, the Gold Sands Beach. It is a difficult path, hardening the mind and body.¡± She looked at him. ¡°Not all have the spirit root.¡± ¡°And people who don¡¯t have it, they¡¯re just ¡­ stuck in the first sphere?¡± asked Perry. Luo Yanhua shook her head. ¡°It is not so, this idea of ¡®stuck¡¯. I go among the villages, talk to their people, see to the needs that I can see to. They live good lives in accordance with the civic virtues, the familial virtues, honoring the land and each other. The first sphere is not lesser, it is prime.¡± ¡°Divisible only by itself and one,¡± said Perry. There followed a long silence. Despite the dusty roads they¡¯d been traveling, and the occasional spot of mud, Luo Yanhua¡¯s clothes had stayed immaculately clean. That would be a handy power to have, if it was part of the second sphere suite. There was obviously more than just fluidity, grace, clean clothes, and being a polyglot, but all the incidentals were appealing in their own right. If ¡®transitioning¡¯ into the second sphere meant getting all that stuff, Perry was going to find the shortest path to it. Being able to dent metal with a punch and teleport to the moon was practically a side benefit, the cherry on top. ¡°I do not understand your wisdom,¡± Luo Yanhua said eventually. Perry¡¯s mind froze for a moment as he tried to recall what he¡¯d said. He was hungry, and the water pouch in his suit was now empty, despite being filled before he left Teaguewater. He was also going to need to take the suit off to use the bathroom sooner rather than later. She¡¯d been talking about the joke. ¡°Ah, nevermind,¡± said Perry. ¡°I will think on it,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We are almost to our destination.¡± The mixed coniferous and deciduous forest had given way to something that was extremely Chinese, bamboo forests, which would have given away the sort of place he was at once. The road narrowed, with the stone path only barely wide enough to walk through, not permitting a cart, and the bamboo was crowded around it, thick and tall, putting them into their shade. Marchand dialed the brightness of the display up, meaning there was no need for Perry¡¯s eyes to adjust. After two hundred yards or so, the path took a turn, then suddenly ran up into a cliff, which had been hidden by the bamboo. The path was carved into the cliff, steep and without railing, and Luo Yanhua began the trek up without any ceremony. Perry followed. Most of the work he¡¯d done grave-digging had been with his arms and back, and his legs still had plenty of stamina left in them, even though he was, for the most part, carrying the armor rather than being supported by it. He could have used the sword, but worried that it would reflect poorly on his character in some way. Luo Yanhua seemed to value hard work for its own sake. The Green Snake Valley, as seen from the sky, had been dotted with these small cliffs that stuck up from the valley like scattered skyscrapers of rock, the debris of some monumental catastrophe, at least to Perry¡¯s eyes. The rock was worn from wind or something else, with little that was jagged or broken, the crevices like folds in dark gray cloth. Most were topped with greenery, which sometimes spilled down one side, tucked into anywhere that soil could cling to. Mountain-top training temple, Perry thought to himself. As they rose above the bamboo, he could see more of the cliffs, and wondered whether those, too, had been colonized by the martial arts masters. He couldn¡¯t see any buildings, but it was possible they were hidden. It was also possible that he was being taken to a place without buildings, nothing more than a mat to sleep on and a fireplace to heat up the rice porridge. She had said ¡®temple¡¯ but not explained what she meant by that. When they got to the top though, there was a grand temple whose surrounding area had been paved, with short grasses and mosses now growing up between the pieces of stone. It was a single building with two wings flanking it, turned in like the stiff arms of a man trying to give a workplace-appropriate hug. It took up almost the entirety of the top of the cliff, though the edges had plenty of bamboo, fencing them in and shielding them from having a view of the valley, except on one side, to the north, where there was a spectacular view of the Great Arc. A small square pool sat in the middle of the grounds, and when Perry drew closer, he saw, beneath the lily pads, tiny silver fish swimming around. There were maybe a half dozen people milling about, and another two dozen who were engaged in training martial arts, moving slowly and deliberately through forms. They were all dressed in blue and white clothes, not quite a uniform, and were being led by a man with flowing white hair who Perry immediately pegged as someone of the second sphere. Looking around, there were a few of them, always with a little something extra to them, something in their hair, clothes, or makeup. A man by the pool had silky black hair tied back in a ponytail, his sword¡¯s hilt almost choked with gold and jewels. A woman sat on a cushion beneath a crooked tree with a massive tome open in front of her, her two-toned white and black hair up in seven separate buns. ¡°This is Moon Gate¡¯s Silver Fish Temple,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I will make the arrangements for you to stay with us for a few days, and speak with the temple master, Shan Yin. He will have questions for you.¡± Before she could move away, a woman bounded up to them, stepping from inside the temple. She was different from the others, not dressed in the same style of clothes. Instead of the sweeping fabric of the second sphere or the dull, functional wraps of the first sphere, she had on black lycra shorts that showed off golden-brown legs and white sneakers with vibrant green laces. Her top was a hooded sweatshirt with loud colors and flashy patterns, and in her hand was a needle the size of a sword. Her right arm had a bracer on it, carbon-fiber black. Striking, almond-shaped brown eyes sized Perry up. Her skin was a warm tone, but darker than anyone else around. She didn¡¯t match the local ethnicity either. Thick, wavy black hair was bunched up behind her head, because the hood was up. She was shorter than Perry by a good margin, and she had a lean, athletic build, at least from what he could tell. Of everyone that Perry had seen, she was the only one with piercings. She turned her head to one side, then another, cracking her neck as she looked at him. ¡°Alright,¡± she said. She swept the needle-sword down and pointed it at Perry. ¡°You finally showed. What flavor of asshole are you?¡± Chapter 28 - Counterpart ¡°Who is this?¡± asked Perry. His hand had gone to the sword at his hip. The woman¡¯s needle-sword was still pointed at him. People in this world had a tendency to point weapons at him, except that she was pretty clearly from a different genre. His eyes were stuck on the tip of her sword. It really looked like a needle, and he couldn¡¯t figure out what advantage that would give, if any. The edge was sharpened, but cleverly, so it was difficult to tell. ¡°I do not know,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She was sizing up the new girl in the same calm way. ¡°I assume fighting in the temple is frowned upon?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yeah, where¡¯s a good place for us to throw down?¡± asked the girl. Perry¡¯s mind was saying ¡®girl¡¯, but she had smile lines, and not much in the way of baby fat. It might have been the sneakers or the bright clothes that made her read young, but there was a chance she was older than him. ¡°The Silver Fish Temple is dedicated to martial arts,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t it be a place for people to fight?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a ¡®to the death¡¯ sort of thing, or at least ¡®to the grievous maiming¡¯,¡± said the girl. Her eyes were still on Perry. ¡°For what cause?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Eh, it¡¯s just sort of what we do,¡± said the girl. ¡°Probably he¡¯s an asshole, I don¡¯t really need the details.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not an asshole,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah, they all say that if you give them a chance to talk,¡± the girl said. ¡°And then it turns out that we have different definitions of ¡®asshole¡¯.¡± Perry drew his sword in a single smooth motion, and the girl didn¡¯t so much as move. She was close enough that they could have touched the tips of their swords together, if just barely, and Perry felt better being able to offer a defense. ¡°If the fight can wait for a moment, I¡¯ll clear space for your battle,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Fifteen minutes? More? Less?¡± asked the girl. Her eyes flicked to Luo Yanhua. ¡°Perhaps that,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Fine by me,¡± said the girl. ¡°I¡¯ve never had a proper fight before, all organized. That¡¯s a first.¡± ¡°You may put your swords away until then,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°A battle between foes is not unheard of, but disruption to the routines of this temple will be punished.¡± The girl shrugged, then put her sword away, which involved slipping it through a pair of grommets in her hoodie. She folded her arms and waited for Perry to disarm himself as well, which he did slowly, cautiously. ¡°You¡¯re a thresholder,¡± said Perry as Luo Yanhua walked away. ¡°Yup,¡± said the girl. ¡°And you¡¯re ¡­ speaking English?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Is this where you try to convince me we¡¯ve got something in common?¡± she asked. ¡°Because I¡¯ve heard that rigamarole a few times now, and we can skip on down the line.¡± ¡°How long have you been here?¡± asked Perry. His eyes went to her black bracer. He wasn¡¯t sure whether it was dangerous or not. Once he¡¯d sized it up, he took in her hoodie, with its bright colors. The graphic design on it was wild, neo-punk, or maybe like the camouflage on a warship that was heading through garishly chemical oceans. It was also bulky enough to hide something under it, guns or worse. ¡°Week or so,¡± she said. ¡°You?¡± ¡°Less than a day,¡± said Perry. ¡°Is it serendipity that we¡¯re meeting here?¡± ¡°Nah,¡± she said. ¡°That¡¯s not how it works. You don¡¯t just chance on people, you seek them out. There are only five temples in this valley, split between two sects, we¡¯d have found each other soon enough. How long have you been doing this?¡± Perry looked over at where Luo Yanhua was in conversation with one of the second sphere men, the old guy who¡¯d been leading what was probably not calisthenics. She kept gesturing to the pair of thresholders. ¡°I don¡¯t say things that might give away tactical advantage,¡± said Perry. ¡°Smart or stupid, hard to tell which,¡± the girl said. ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Maya,¡± she replied. ¡°You?¡± ¡°Peregrin,¡± said Perry. ¡°Like the bird. Call me Perry.¡± ¡°Perry,¡± said Maya. She pursed her lips. ¡°Sure would like to know what kind of asshole you are before I kill you. Mostly for the sake of science.¡± She was looking at his armor. ¡°You¡¯re banged up.¡± ¡°¡®Tis but a scratch,¡± said Perry. ¡°What¡¯s the armor, techno or magic? Or both?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Nunya,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fine, whatever, not like it matters,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯m going to clean your clock.¡± ¡°There¡¯s power in this world,¡± said Perry. ¡°Heaps of it. We¡¯re both first sphere. Second sphere is a huge jump in power. We fight now, one of us goes home in a body bag, the other misses out on all that power. We fight later, one of us goes home in a body bag, the other comes out much stronger for it.¡± ¡°Ah, see, that¡¯s what I wanted, just to know the flavor of asshole,¡± said Maya. ¡°The incredible lust for power.¡± She gave him some jazz hands. ¡°Kind of a cliche male fantasy, isn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°No?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean ¡­ no? We¡¯ve read different books, I guess, but the cliche male fantasy is having power thrust upon you. Chasing power is for losers.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a loser?¡± asked Maya. She shifted her stance slightly. Her sword was tucked away, more or less, but Perry thought she had probably rolled up with other weapons. How many worlds had she been to? At least three was his guess, but visibly the evidence was more toward two. ¡°The world ¡ª worlds ¡ª don¡¯t work like in stories,¡± said Perry. ¡°Standard story, at least where I come from, is unrealistic. The fantasy is to get incredible powers from doing nothing because it means that you don¡¯t have to change, you don¡¯t have to grow. The fantasy is that just by being you, you¡¯ll get rewarded. If the transformation comes from within rather than from without, then it¡¯s not a part of the fantasy. Because that would mean that the people who are trapped in their boring lives were capable of breaking out of them, right? And I mean ¡­ where I was from, mostly you couldn¡¯t. Money, class, the grinding expectations, all that kind of thing made the fantasies flourish because the real world didn¡¯t offer mobility.¡± ¡°So you¡¯re a philosophical loser, huh?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I¡¯ve had time to think,¡± said Perry. ¡°Seeking power? Wanting to be strong? That¡¯s a villain motivation where I¡¯m from, unless you¡¯re just going to do it in a montage in order to get revenge on the guy who killed your wife.¡± Maya was giving him a funny look. ¡°Montage.¡± Perry waved a hand at her. ¡°Whatever, looks like we¡¯re five minutes away from a fight. I¡¯m resigned to it.¡± ¡°Think about it this way,¡± she said. ¡°Your idea about us getting stronger, and the winner walks away? Why would I want an asshole to walk away with more power?¡± ¡°You think you¡¯ll lose?¡± asked Perry. He didn¡¯t like his odds, but avoiding the fight seemed like it might be difficult. Maya knew where he was, and the likes of Luo Yanhua might not stop her from killing him. ¡°Nah,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯m a shoo-in. I¡¯d bet everything I had on me winning. But give us time here, and I¡¯m not so sure. Your armor is beat to hell. Do I want to take the chance that it won¡¯t be beaten to hell if we sit in this temple and train up together? You find some way to fix it, or it fixes itself. I still bet on me, in that case, but why risk it?¡± She briefly looked at the students, who had made space. ¡°You know why we¡¯ve been put into this thing, the fights, the worlds?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do you know?¡± ¡°It¡¯s the assholes,¡± said Maya. ¡°Every single thresholder I¡¯ve met has been some unique flavor of asshole, and I¡¯m here to kill them, do my part to reduce the number of assholes across the million and a half universes. The more I kill, the stronger I get, the stronger I face, the stronger I get to eliminate.¡± Perry considered that. ¡°You figure that no matter what world you arrive at, you¡¯re going to be faced with someone who¡¯s just absolutely the worst. And you figure that there¡¯s some moral imperative to just blast through the worlds as fast as you can, killing them. Like ¡­ if you had a button that killed the worst person in the world, you¡¯d just slam down on that thing?¡± ¡°Yup,¡± said Maya. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t?¡± Perry thought about it. His first instinct was ¡®no¡¯, but the more he tried to imagine who the worst possible person in the world was, the more he thought ¡®yes¡¯. The button would have to be infallible though, which seemed like a stretch, if not a part of the thought experiment. Then again, the button was just a stand-in for the real situation that they actually found themselves in, and that real situation did have a whole host of caveats. ¡°It¡¯s not like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s calling us over,¡± said Maya. She shifted her weight and started walking without hesitation, drawing her needle as she went. ¡°You get that it¡¯s not like that?¡± asked Perry. He walked after her, and she didn¡¯t look behind her. ¡°We¡¯re not picked for ideological opposition, we¡¯re picked for conflict, or at least that¡¯s my running theory. And so maybe I¡¯m not some asshole, maybe I¡¯m just someone who you¡¯ve decided you¡¯re going to kill because you have this ¡®kill the worst person¡¯ thing, which isn¡¯t necessarily wrong. But because you¡¯re going to try to kill me no matter what, it doesn¡¯t matter that I¡¯m a good guy.¡± ¡°Hmm, fair point,¡± said Maya. She kept walking. ¡°But I¡¯ve been to ¡ª I guess I¡¯ll just tell you ¡ª seven worlds now, and I¡¯ve had talks with the other thresholders, and I¡¯ve talked to a wizard who seemed to know his stuff, and yeah, I think we can skip the whole thing where I find out that you¡¯re secretly awful, or maybe even not-so-secretly awful.¡± She whipped around, sword out, then turned to look at Luo Yanhua. ¡°This fine?¡± Perry drew his own sword. ¡°Is this to be a confined duel?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Limited in scope and space?¡± ¡°Yup,¡± said Maya. ¡°We may want to kill each other, but we don¡¯t want to cause much inconvenience.¡± ¡°For what it¡¯s worth, I don¡¯t want to kill you,¡± said Perry. His sword was raised. The batteries in the suit had recharged a bit, in part thanks to Perry just using his muscles to move the armor around, starting from after he¡¯d finished the graves. He wasn¡¯t sure it had been a good trade-off. A part of him was worried that Maya was right. Maybe if they spent some time together, they would come to a mutual realization that the other person was awful. He kind of liked her, but he¡¯d also kind of liked Cosme. He hadn¡¯t liked Cosme enough not to throw acid in his face though ¡­ Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. ¡°How many worlds for you?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I told you mine.¡± ¡°This is number four,¡± said Perry. ¡°Five if you count the world I started from.¡± Maya had taken up a fencer¡¯s stance, with one arm behind her back, needle fully extended. That made sense, since it was more of a poking weapon than a slicing weapon, but it wasn¡¯t something he was familiar fighting against. She also probably had tricks up her sleeve, if she was going up against plate armor with a sword like that. Just being the other thresholder meant that she probably had tricks up her sleeve. ¡°Are you going to give us a countdown?¡± asked Maya, cocking her head at Luo Yanhua. ¡°A countdown?¡± the woman asked, puzzled. ¡°For when to start,¡± said Maya. ¡°The nature of a battle is such that its beginning is marked by intent, not the chiming of a bell,¡± said Luo Yanhuo. ¡°Meaning?¡± asked Maya. ¡°They think the fight has already started,¡± said Perry. ¡°Aw,¡± said Maya. ¡°I was hoping for some ceremony, some rites, pomp and circumstance.¡± ¡°Marchand, countdown,¡± said Perry. ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry had precious little from Earth. He¡¯d brought his phone to Richter¡¯s world, and Richter had been just about as fascinated with it as she¡¯d been with him, but the phone itself hadn¡¯t had much on it, just an album or two and a few scattered songs, along with cached webpages and some app data and photos. Everything being pushed to the cloud meant that he didn¡¯t have whole backups of Wikipedia or anything like that. Richter had, with AI assistance, grabbed as much as she could, taking the unfamiliar formats and converting them over to her world¡¯s versions of text, video, photo, music, or whatever. Marchand did a voice for the countdown. It was taken from a favorite pre-workout song on Perry¡¯s old phone, the Mortal Kombat theme song, ¡°Techno Syndrome¡±. ¡°3 ¡­ 2 ¡­ 1 ¡­ Fight!¡± Marchand played through the speakers. Then the full theme song started playing, out loud, in front of everyone. Richter must have done it. She must have. It was her sense of humor. They must have talked about it at some point, some idle conversation that hadn¡¯t stuck enough in Perry¡¯s mind that he¡¯d remember it six months later, and she¡¯d snuck in an easter egg. It wasn¡¯t the time or place for it, and he thought it was mildly embarrassing, but he didn¡¯t have time to be embarrassed, because Maya had gone on the attack. She was slow compared to the nameless bandit that Perry had fought in the woods, but she was still faster than Perry was, at least without the suit. He needed to use some of its power to move himself into place for the parry, and their swords clashed. The battery levels dipped by an entire percentage point. When Maya moved away, she slapped at her black bracer with her free hand, and the armor there, which he¡¯d taken to be bulky carbon fiber something-or-other, sprang to life, moving like inky tar across her arm, wrapping itself around her hand and slithering down her arm beneath the colorful hoodie. It was a skintight glove, and a second later it had gone under her clothes, moving up the brown skin of her neck, into her hair. Perry struck out at her with a haymaker swing and she dodged it, flipping through the air. When she came back down, she had no skin showing. The black stuff was covering her like a skin suit, save for her face, which was covered in a hard black bulge. The whole thing couldn¡¯t have been more than a millimeter thick, and he could see where it was covering her shorts and socks. If it was armor, it looked like the weakest armor in the world, but Perry knew he was probably going to find out the hard way that it was better than it looked. ¡°I¡¯ve detected an ultra-high frequency radio signal, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Hack it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Disrupt it.¡± The music was still going, pumping Perry up in spite of everything. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I ¡ª¡± began March. Maya attacked again, leaping forward with a flash of light that would have blinded Perry if he wasn¡¯t looking at auto-adjusted video. He parried again, and this time, struck out with his fist, full power, punching her right in the solar plexus. She flew backward but was on her feet in an instant, rubbing her chest. ¡°Saw through that one, huh?¡± asked Maya. She was still rubbing her chest. ¡°Ow.¡± The martial arts students and masters, or whatever their relationship was, were watching with interest from the sidelines, speaking with each other in low voices. Perry was trying not to be distracted by them. March would be recording everything for later, not that they had the language cracked yet. It was weird, to be fighting to the death in front of an audience that seemed to accept that this was normal, and to be doing it with the music from Mortal Kombat playing. ¡°Next time she gets close, flash her,¡± Perry said to March. It didn¡¯t take long for it to happen. The needle came in fast, aimed straight for Perry¡¯s chest, but Marchand flashed the suit¡¯s lights at full brightness, trying to blind her, and it seemed to work, as she abandoned the attack and dodged backward. Perry was ready to follow her, and he swung hard at her, two-handed. She wasn¡¯t fast enough to do a double dodge, and she was off her footing when the attack came in. The sword slammed into the side of her head, cutting through the hoodie but not the paper-thin black armor underneath. Instead, it sent her tumbling. She managed to land on her feet, hand going briefly to her head. ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± she asked. Her voice was only slightly muffled by the bulbous black mask. She touched the side of her head again. Perry was silent. That was it. He¡¯d hit her nearly as hard as he could, and the sword hadn¡¯t cut. Maybe if the armor dropped he¡¯d be able to see a blooming bruise, but she was more than ready to keep fighting. He had the gun, which was currently non-functional, the drone, which was a distraction at best, and he could fly, which wasn¡¯t going to do all that much good. There was a chance he could grab her and crush her, but she was faster than any normal person, however that was happening. ¡°No luck on the radio overload?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I have not made an attempt, but am skeptical that overwhelming power to the transmitter will ¡ª¡± March was cut off by another attack from Maya. It drowned out the steady words. She was being more fearless, attack after attack, with none of the bounding leaps backward, and when Perry slashed at her, she simply raised an arm to block it. It knocked her to the side, and whatever the hell her armor was made of, his sword ¡ª which could slice straight through bone and gouge hard metals ¡ª didn¡¯t so much as leave a mark. Her sword was doing work against his armor, leaving marks, and a particularly hard thrust flashed up warnings. She¡¯d gone for a place where the armor was damaged on the chest, a mark that his own sword had left there during a fight with Cosme. ¡°March, I¡¯m dead if you don¡¯t jam the signal,¡± said Perry as he blocked another attack. His sword was still intact, at least. It was looking like it would be the death of a thousand cuts. ¡°Let me try something, sir,¡± said Marchand. The black catsuit almost immediately began peeling away in strips, and Maya dashed backward to almost the edge of the informal combat arena to stare it. The strips weren¡¯t falling to the ground, but rather, retracting down to coalesce with other pieces of itself. ¡°I seem to have initiated a reset of its functions, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I don¡¯t know if I¡¯ll be able to do that again.¡± Perry didn¡¯t need to be told twice that this was his moment, so he pushed the full strength of the suit into a leap that broke a stone tile beneath him. He let himself be carried by the sword for half a tick, just long enough that the float would surprise her, and she was only barely able to dodge out of the way with a burst of light pushing her into a sideways tumble. She was on her feet in just a moment and to Perry¡¯s surprise, she went on the attack, swinging her sword with wild aggression. He could see her face now, and the anger there. She did have a red welt where he¡¯d hit her, and she was sweating, facts that had been concealed by the armor. Perry weathered the storm. She was tiring herself out, hoping that her attacks would finish the fight. She had no way of knowing that he was down to six percent in the batteries, that he had half a minute of exertion before the suit would be weighing him down. All he needed was another solid hit, one to the head or torso, and without the protection, she¡¯d be finished. She moved away, but the sword stayed, still making attacks against him. She wasn¡¯t holding it, wasn¡¯t even touching it, it was just moving of its own accord. It took Perry some time to realize that, then more time to figure out what to do about it, but he reached out and grabbed the sword, getting more gouges on his gauntlet in the process, until at last it was firmly in his grip. He was dual-wielding, his magic sword in one hand, her needle in the other, but she was doing something with her fingers. He flung his sword at her, but her fingers opened, heels of her palms together, and a blast of brilliant white light knocked the sword to the side at the same time it struck him in the chest. ¡°Recalibrating,¡± said Marchand, which wasn¡¯t something that Perry wanted to hear in the middle of a fight. The screen had gone dark. He called the sword back to him, but he was fighting blind, and even with two swords, that wasn¡¯t where he wanted to be. Something yanked at the needle-sword, but his grip held it firm. ¡°March!¡± shouted Perry. ¡°Re-calibrating,¡± said Marchand again. ¡°Audio only.¡± The scene bloomed out in front of Perry again, but it was totally different, not video at all, just video as reconstructed from audio, the same thing that March had done before but without any kind of color or backdrop, nothing painted in. Maya was in front of him, and moved out of the way when he swiped at her with her own sword. She was moving deftly, more deliberately. Did she know that he was partly blind? March¡¯s reconstruction from audio wasn¡¯t good enough for him to read her face. Hell, it was barely good enough that he could tell where she was, especially with her moving quickly. The sound of her sneakers seemed louder. He had both swords, but somehow still felt like he was at a disadvantage. The blast of light had come from her palms, which meant magic or something like it, a spell, wizardry, who-knew-what. She had more tricks, and he was basically out. He could try to escape, fly away, but she could move her sword with her mind, and there was a good chance she¡¯d just follow. He was at a disadvantage in the air. He went at her with the swords, both hers and his, and felt her sword leap around in his hand. It was a liability, and she seemed like she was faster, or putting on more speed. She was retreating toward the edge as he swung and the battery drained, but the arena wasn¡¯t a true arena. Nothing would happen if they stepped outside the paved area they were in, away from the watchful eye of maybe thirty people who had a lot of interest in the struggle. The music was playing on, and Perry couldn¡¯t spare a moment to tell March to knock it off. She ducked beneath him when he came at her, going under him. She gave a surprisingly spirited kick to the back of his knee, but it was nothing the suit couldn¡¯t compensate for, and if she had super strength, it didn¡¯t make her strong enough to take him down. Perry saw, through the monochrome, scattered representation of Maya, something growing in her hand, a new blade of some kind that seemed to have come from nowhere. Now that she had some space, she was playing it more tactically. He had no idea whether her armor was back. March had said ¡®reset¡¯, and Perry had no idea what that meant. How long did reset of some kind of ultra-advanced nanotech black goo carbon armor take? If it was ultra-advanced, did that mean more time or less? The new blade was hard for Marchand to see, especially when it was still. March had some kind of ultrasonic echolocation thing going on to help with imaging, but it wasn¡¯t enough, not when someone was moving with soft feet. A strike came in from the side, and the image adjusted only belatedly, showing that she¡¯d moved and March had guessed wrong about where she was. She went for his crotch, using the fact that she was shorter to her advantage. She stabbed at the joint several times, moving swiftly, not doing much damage, and Perry tried to bring the swords down on her, which she easily moved away from. She¡¯d sped up somehow, either because of the adrenaline pumping through her system or because she was burning through reserves of some kind. Perry¡¯s eyes flicked up to where the battery charge was shown on the HUD. It had been red for a while, and was now at 1%. It was time to end the fight or fly away. He threw his sword and lunged for her, hoping to wrap her in a crushing grab, leveraging the weight of the armor and the size difference between them. She slipped past him, slashing at him, another deep gouge in the armor, but he caught her with his foot as she went by, tripping her, and more or less fell on top of her. She was fast, but not fast enough to avoid him grabbing her by the arm, not when she was half-pinned beneath him. It was all done by feel more than sight, the blurry monochrome not really helping much. He tried to crush her, to kick against her, bear down on her, but she wasn¡¯t just flesh and blood, she was something more, even unarmored. He was holding onto her needle-sword, which meant that he only had her by a single point, and the ability of the armor to squeeze somehow wasn¡¯t enough to break her humerus. The world moved up around them, confusion on March¡¯s part, because it felt like they were sinking down, into a pit. Perry had no idea what was actually happening, what was real, or magic, or a glitch in the system. He could trust video, but the audio reconstruction was a matter of interpretation, and March was the one doing the guesswork. The sounds changed, the displayed reconstruction changed with them, positioning them up in the air, with the temple thirty feet below them. Perry had felt something happen, like she¡¯d been pushed up into him, but he had no idea what was going on. Then, he was falling, falling while still holding onto her. They twisted around in the air, or March thought that¡¯s what was happening, and he landed on his back with her on top of him. It was a hard hit that slammed him against the inside of the armor, though he kept her grip on her arm. The suit¡¯s battery dropped to 0%. It went into emergency mode, just showing visuals, not even running March. It was the absolute last backup, but the cameras were still not working, so he was totally blind, going by feel and sound. He had his hand around Maya¡¯s arm, her sword in his hand, and he failed wildly, the bulk of the suit resisting him. Pain was radiating through his back where he¡¯d landed, and he was dizzy, disoriented. She slipped out of his grip. He had no idea how she did it, couldn¡¯t see, only feel, but the hand should have been able to hold tight even without power, the mechanisms locking it in place. Perry felt the sword pierce the armor at his neck, pushing straight through the flexible metal sheathing there. He tried to scramble back, but he was blind and disoriented, and the sword stayed where it was, stabbing into his flesh. He was seconds away from a mortal wound. The sword retracted, and Perry had no idea whether he was going to bleed out or not, couldn¡¯t tell whether it was just a nick or if she¡¯d sliced into his artery. Perry took the helmet off, spring to his feet as best he could in the depowered suit. He hated being without his helmet, but he couldn¡¯t fight blind, not with March down for the count. He still didn¡¯t know what had failed, only that it had followed from a blast of light. Maya was standing there in her cut up hoodie, holding her needle-sword, looking at him. Perry¡¯s hand went out in front of him, and his sword was recalled to it, though he wasn¡¯t liking his chances. His other hand went up to his neck, almost involuntarily, and when he pulled it away, he was relieved to see only a smear of blood, not a drenching. ¡°Is that really all you have?¡± asked Maya. ¡°You caught me at a low point,¡± said Perry. ¡°Three worlds, you said,¡± said Maya. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°You said seven.¡± Maya clucked her tongue. She was playing it cool, but the welt on the side of her head was going to develop into a horrible bruise. The black stuff had surrounded her again, but her face didn¡¯t have the reflective bubble. ¡°Alright,¡± she said. She adjusted her posture, dropping out of a fighting stance. ¡°We can talk.¡± Chapter 29 - Tea Time ¡°Last world, there was a wizard,¡± said Maya. ¡°He had a theory, that sometimes it might not be one-on-one.¡± They were sitting at a short-legged table on top of what Luo Yanhua had called ¡®tea pillows¡¯. She was to one side of them, a calm look on her face, and it was pretty clear that she was playing mediator, though she¡¯d never actually declared that to be her role. One of the first sphere people had brought them tea, and Perry had taken a sip of it. It was green and earthy, recognizably tea, though nothing like he¡¯d ever had before. There was an undertone of spice to it. The north-facing doors of this part of the temple had been slid aside, leaving them with a glorious view of the Great Arc. As the temple was perched on top of an upright rock, they had the elevation to see all around them, and Perry tried to keep himself from getting distracted by the world laid out in the distance. His armor was gone, and his sword was being held by the old man who¡¯d previously been training the acolytes. Removing his armor and giving up his sword had been conditions of this talk, and Maya had been pretty clear that she was going to murder him if he didn¡¯t assent. Perry hadn¡¯t been in a position to argue the point, nor to fight back, and their hosts weren¡¯t treating this conflict as anything too out of the ordinary. He was dying to ask Luo Yanhua what she had made of the fight, but he wasn¡¯t sure she¡¯d actually tell him. ¡°A wizard,¡± said Perry. ¡°He told you that you might have a teammate, and you didn¡¯t think to mention it before the fight?¡± ¡°What he said was that the way the spell works, it might not be just one person against another,¡± said Maya. ¡°Might call in three people, different sides, that kind of thing. He said that it wasn¡¯t impossible that I¡¯d find myself with an ally. Compositing, he called it.¡± ¡°And you think that might be me,¡± said Perry. A wizard. A spell. There was a significant part of him that didn¡¯t believe any of it. He¡¯d met a wizard of his own though, and he knew magic was real. ¡°You think we might be allies.¡± ¡°Not particularly, no,¡± said Maya. ¡°But I beat the absolute snot out of you, and there wasn¡¯t a portal, so ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Seems like there¡¯s a chance.¡± Perry looked at her. She had beaten him, but the bruise was forming across the side of her face, and it was an ugly thing. Her stylish streetwear hoodie had been cut up, but had slowly healed itself through some mechanism that Perry couldn¡¯t see. He didn¡¯t dispute that he¡¯d lost, but he¡¯d gotten his licks in. ¡°Where do we go from here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Two options,¡± said Maya. She held up her fingers, just in case he couldn¡¯t count that high. ¡°First, I spread your brains across these flagstones like a fine jam. Easily doable, clearly.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There will be no fighting at Silver Fish Temple unless agreed to by both participants.¡± It was the first time she¡¯d spoken. Her serene demeanor hadn¡¯t changed at all. Perry wondered how long it would take before that started to bother him, and decided that it already had. ¡°Wait, what?¡± asked Maya. ¡°No fighting in the temple? After we just fought in the temple?¡± ¡°A fight by mutual assent is a matter of honor,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°A fight with one person who wishes harm and one person defending themselves would require intercession.¡± Maya narrowed her eyes. ¡°So if he says that he doesn¡¯t want to fight, he¡¯s got your protection?¡± Luo Yanhua paused, only slightly, then said, ¡°Yes.¡± From what Perry knew, it wasn¡¯t as simple as that. Luo Yanhua was second sphere, and there were prohibitions of some kind separating the spheres. He wasn¡¯t sure what those prohibitions were, exactly, but he wasn¡¯t confident that defending the innocent was a part of them. He didn¡¯t think their host was lying, necessarily, but there was some kind of wrinkle that made their protection not as solid as her ¡®yes¡¯ might imply. If that was what the small hitch had been about, it made him a bit nervous. Maya plowed right on by that though. ¡°What if he¡¯d asked for mercy in the middle of the fight?¡± she asked, throwing up her hands. ¡°Was I supposed to just let him go?¡± ¡°This is the eternal question of the wise master Zhuge Yuanhong,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Most at the Silver Fish Temple, and indeed within Moon Gate, would counsel that an enemy who begs for mercy should be granted it.¡± ¡°Wow,¡± said Maya. She gave Perry a look. ¡°You think that¡¯s stupid too, right?¡± Perry¡¯s eyes went from Luo Yanhua to Maya. ¡°I think you¡¯d get a lot of people begging for mercy, if it was widely known that you¡¯d stop attacking them if they begged for mercy.¡± Perry didn¡¯t want to upset their host, but he did, in fact, think that a blanket offer of mercy was pretty stupid. He was trying to be diplomatic though. ¡°It is better to have enemies that beg for mercy,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°A merciful and compassionate end should be the goal of all combat. We hope to bring an end to suffering, where possible. The blade is not drawn lightly, and it does not fall lightly either. During your time at the temple, you will be expected to adhere to the principles of kindness and respect.¡± ¡°We might have to take a hike then,¡± said Maya. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He turned to Luo Yanhua. ¡°You had ulterior motives for letting that fight go on. You wanted to see our techniques. What did you learn?¡± This was a shot in the dark, but it felt right. ¡°It is better to conclude one business before beginning another,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°My understanding of your situation is that you were debating whether you should kill one another or become allies.¡± ¡°Nah,¡± said Maya. ¡°The question isn¡¯t whether we should become allies, it¡¯s whether we are allies.¡± ¡°Whether we¡¯re part of the same clan,¡± said Perry. He looked at Maya¡¯s bruised face. ¡°A case of ¡­ mistaken identity.¡± ¡°I see,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Perry wasn¡¯t sure that she did. ¡°So it looks like we¡¯re going with option two,¡± said Maya. ¡°I keep a knife at your back and we work together until we find the other thresholder. I¡¯ve never had an ally, so this is new to me. You too?¡± Perry almost said yes. ¡°Actually ¡­ there¡¯s always been an ally. Someone who takes me in, someone who helps, someone who, at least, sees something in me that they want. That hasn¡¯t been the case for you?¡± Maya looked up at the ceiling for a bit. ¡°Maybe,¡± she said. She looked back down at Perry. ¡°I want your inventory of worlds, what happened there, what powers you have, all that kind of thing.¡± ¡°Because we¡¯re allies now?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It was the difference of worlds that clinched it,¡± said Maya. ¡°It got me thinking that maybe I was wrong, that you weren¡¯t who I was supposed to be going after. That and the lack of a challenge.¡± ¡°Your face would argue otherwise,¡± said Perry. Maya brought her hand to the swollen part of her head and winced with pain, then chuckled. ¡°You really think you want to gloat about a bruise you gave me when that should have been your killing blow?¡± ¡°It was the armor that protected you, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t think you can brag about how awesome you are if your defense is just a matter of what items you have.¡± ¡°You never brag about your possessions?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I mean, all this stuff was hard-won. That armor? I had to get it from this huge heist we ran against a dystopia orbiting the embers of a dying universe. Everything I have was something that I took, sweat of my brow style, so yeah, if that lets me beat down the likes of you, then I will crow about it.¡± ¡°Whatever,¡± said Perry. ¡°You have the benefit of having more worlds under your belt.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Maya. She seemed satisfied with his response. ¡°That¡¯s why we¡¯ve got to stay together, because if we¡¯re in what the wizard called a composite scenario, then the real enemy is either one person who¡¯s been to as many words as us combined, or it¡¯s multiple people, and alone, I don¡¯t like my odds. You should like your odds even less.¡± ¡°How would we know?¡± asked Perry. ¡°How long do we give it?¡± ¡°Three months,¡± said Maya, with an authority and conviction that Perry found suspicious. ¡°Your wizard friend told you that?¡± asked Perry. Maya leaned forward. ¡°No, Michaelous hadn¡¯t been able to figure out why the gap was there at all, but I¡¯ve talked to other thresholders, and I¡¯ve been one for longer than you, and it¡¯s never been longer than three months. Of course, it could be that the other guy is already here, and has been building up strength for the conflict with us.¡± ¡°A mortal enemy?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Someone more powerful than the two of you?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Maya. ¡°That¡¯s the theory, anyway.¡± She leaned back, seeming to have forgotten that she was sitting on a pillow rather than in a proper chair, and she had to awkwardly catch herself. ¡°There are other theories, naturally, which is why I need to keep Perry under lock and key, at least until I know he¡¯s not going to stab me in the back.¡± ¡°We cannot keep this man prisoner,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Until there is consultation among the masters, the matter of the thresholders will remain among yourselves, but if it is a matter of the first sphere, then Moon Gate cannot be involved.¡± ¡°And if we rise to second sphere?¡± asked Maya. Luo Yanhua considered this. ¡°This is something that you endeavor to do?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Maya. ¡°Absolutely. There¡¯s going to be someone evil coming, if they¡¯re not already here, and we¡¯re the only people who can stop him.¡± ¡°Him?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Statistically, yeah, him,¡± said Maya. ¡°Obviously some of us are women, but they¡¯re few and far between.¡± ¡°You believe that this other thresholder might be of the second sphere?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°What?¡± asked Maya, turning back to her. ¡°Er ¡­ yes?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think I really understand the spheres yet,¡± said Perry. ¡°If someone like us came into this world and fell in with the wrong crowd ¡ª in this case, probably a group of bandits ¡ª would there be a way for her to very quickly gain powers like yours?¡± He didn¡¯t know what those powers were, precisely, but he imagined Luo Yanhua would be formidable. ¡°Under normal circumstances, preparing to transition takes years,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Those of the first sphere who possess a spirit root must train, exercise, and harden their bodies, preparing a foundation upon which enlightenment can occur. Without that foundation, transition can result in a total collapse of the self, spiritually as well as physically.¡± ¡°And there¡¯s no way to rush it along?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Because this other guy will absolutely do that if at all possible, and might already have done it.¡± ¡°In some cases, the physical self is already close to perfection,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°A body which can endure the stresses might allow a dedicated member of the first sphere to transition in a matter of days. There are alterations to the internal alchemy that can speed along the transition even further, providing it to those such as yourself, without any seeming training in the ways of wisdom and awareness. But of course, such a step would only be taken with the Moon Gate¡¯s consultation, and after transition there is the tethering, which must not be undertaken lightly.¡± Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Perry frowned. ¡°You¡¯re going to talk with the masters and see if it would be wise to transition us?¡± he asked. ¡°In order to fight against the other thresholder?¡± He wasn¡¯t sure he bought Maya¡¯s talk about composites and allies, but he couldn¡¯t see a reason for her to lie, not when she¡¯d been within moments of killing him, had she wanted to. Maybe she¡¯d seen how easy the fight was and decided she wanted to stick around the world for a bit longer ¡­ but that didn¡¯t sound quite right either. ¡°If there is another of you, on par with the abilities you¡¯ve shown, there is no particular worry,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The personal battles of outsiders are not the concern of Moon Gate.¡± ¡°Wow,¡± said Maya. ¡°We¡¯re beneath you?¡± ¡°We have now seen both of you fight,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We have the measure of your techniques. We have some measure of who you are as people, and should you transition to the second sphere, we do not suppose that you would become a threat.¡± ¡°Wow wow wow,¡± said Maya. She looked at Perry. ¡°Are you going to let her diss us like that?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I fought a second sphere man who was apparently on the weaker side, and it wasn¡¯t what I¡¯d call easy.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a terrible henchman,¡± said Maya. ¡°I think technically I¡¯d be a sidekick,¡± said Perry. He looked at Luo Yanhua, then out at the Great Arc. ¡°Alright, I get it.¡± ¡°What¡¯s to get?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Why they would be willing to put some effort into getting us to the second sphere,¡± said Perry. ¡°That wasn¡¯t on offer,¡± said Maya. ¡°Was it?¡± ¡°It will be at the discretion of the masters of Moon Gate,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There are three temples, three masters. Silver Fish Temple is the smallest of them.¡± ¡°So it¡¯s not not on offer,¡± said Maya. She looked at Perry. ¡°And you have a theory as to why?¡± ¡°The spheres are separated,¡± said Perry. ¡°We might be relative small frys by the standard of the second sphere, but we¡¯re incredibly powerful for first sphere people. If we stay in the first sphere, then there are limits to what the second sphere can do with us, since they¡¯ll run into issues of karmic balance or something, but if we¡¯re second sphere, then we¡¯re under their jurisdiction.¡± He rubbed his neck. ¡°Sorry, let me know if anything isn¡¯t translating.¡± ¡°Translating?¡± asked Maya. ¡°We both speak the language I know as English, but there are a bunch of things that don¡¯t translate, cultural components, jargon, stuff like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ah,¡± said Maya. ¡°No, I got it.¡± ¡°You are, in essence, correct,¡± said Luo Yanhua, directing her comment to Perry. ¡°There are those who choose not to transition into a higher sphere even when it is within their capabilities. Many of the spheres are dominated by those who could not transition higher, or those who chose not to.¡± ¡°That applies to the second sphere too?¡± asked Perry. Luo Yanhua nodded. ¡°It is a persistent problem.¡± ¡°You said it would be dangerous to rush it,¡± said Maya. ¡°But you¡¯re offering that to us? Some way of getting a fraction of your power? Something ¡­ dangerous for us?¡± ¡°To make it safe will be a process,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But you have your own strange techniques, and bodies that are not entirely like the ones that most of the first sphere have.¡± She lifted a hand and reached out to Maya, who didn¡¯t move away from it. The strange, gentle woman touched the bruise on Maya¡¯s face, which had darkened as they talked. ¡°There is danger, but I suspect that danger will be nothing to the likes of you.¡± She withdrew her hand and stood up from her pillow. ¡°The masters must convene and speak. I am not now offering you a path to the second sphere, only a place to stay, a table to eat at, our training, and our goodwill. You will be members of Moon Gate. When your rooms have been prepared, someone will show them to you.¡± She left, soft footsteps fading quickly down a long corridor, and Perry was left alone with Maya. ¡°Weird people,¡± said Maya. ¡°Comes with the territory, doesn¡¯t it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You hop worlds and everyone seems strange.¡± ¡°Sure does,¡± said Maya. She sat still for a moment. ¡°You haven¡¯t answered the proposal.¡± ¡°Which?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The allies thing,¡± said Maya. ¡°You don¡¯t trust me, I don¡¯t trust you, but if this is a composite situation, if the two of us together add up to one of the enemy, then we¡¯re going to need to work together to beat the other guy ¡ª or other guys. Seven worlds, six wins for me, three worlds, how many wins for you?¡± ¡°Three,¡± said Perry. ¡°So potentially ten wins under the enemy¡¯s belt,¡± said Maya. ¡°That doesn¡¯t scare me, but I get the feeling maybe it should. Last world, I was already thinking that there was a lot of variety to the powers, unevenness to them. I didn¡¯t have to pull out every trick against you, but I¡¯ve got probably twice the power you do.¡± ¡°You should have gone for the killing blow early on then,¡± said Perry. She frowned at him. ¡°You really do think you¡¯re hot shit. That¡¯s going to get annoying.¡± ¡°I won¡¯t even claim that I fought you to a standstill,¡± said Perry. ¡°You beat me. But I want you to acknowledge that our footing isn¡¯t that uneven. And I¡¯m not at full strength right now, I got my ass kicked in the last world.¡± ¡°You think that¡¯s an argument that you¡¯re not weak?¡± asked Maya. Perry waved a hand. ¡°I¡¯m not here to measure dicks with you, if that¡¯s what you want.¡± ¡°You¡¯re here to kill assholes?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Because that¡¯s why I¡¯m here.¡± ¡°I¡¯m here to gain power,¡± said Perry. ¡°Enough power to go back to a world that I cared a lot about, to right a wrong.¡± He felt a pang of guilt when he said that. Flora had seemed to think that was all empty words, that it was just about the power for its own sake. ¡°Sounds noble,¡± said Maya. ¡°A bit overly noble, if you ask me, which you should, because I have great opinions.¡± ¡°You¡¯re putting your life on the line with every hop,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re doing that just because there are people out there who you think need killing?¡± ¡°Meh,¡± said Maya. ¡°Either you get it or you don¡¯t. You won three worlds, you said, did you think that they were unfortunate innocents?¡± ¡°Last world, maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s never been like that for me,¡± said Maya. ¡°Never.¡± She sat back. ¡°But biographies can come later. You still haven¡¯t answered the allies question.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, we can be allies.¡± ¡°Ugh, why do you have to say it like that?¡± she asked. ¡°Like a nerd.¡± ¡°Does that word, ¡®nerd¡¯, mean something different where you come from?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Because where I come from, it¡¯s an insult. Maybe it¡¯s a cultural thing, but we try not to insult allies.¡± She rolled her eyes so hard that Perry was worried she was going to strain something. ¡°Alright, fine,¡± she said. She took in a breath, sticking out her chest, then squared up her shoulders and held out her hand. ¡°Maya Singh, world-hopper extraordinaire.¡± There was a part of Perry that didn¡¯t like her, that wanted to push the hand away. ¡°Peregrin Holzmann,¡± he said, shaking her hand. It felt so small and delicate. The more he watched her, the more he thought she was probably in her thirties, not a teenager at all, as he¡¯d first suspected. ¡°Thresholder.¡± ¡°Do you wanna be allies?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Good,¡± said Maya. ¡°Great. Now why don¡¯t we start with you telling me what your suite of powers is like. We¡¯ll need to figure out attack tactics or something.¡± ¡°I have the sword, which lets me fly,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s sharp enough to cut anything but stone or metal, or whatever your catsuit is made out of. I can call it to me with a thought, so long as it¡¯s close enough, and send it flying where I want it to, but not with enough power to hurt anyone who¡¯s serious about not being hurt. Good for a surprise attack, I guess, but I¡¯ve never used it that way.¡± ¡°Wow, I expected some pushback,¡± said Maya. ¡°And the armor?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a high technology wonder, though not nearly as high tech as your shell,¡± said Perry. ¡°Metal, microchips, servos, hydraulics, and an onboard AI.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Maya. ¡°But you said three worlds, not two.¡± She bit her lip. ¡°In my experience, there¡¯s something you get from every world. Did you run into a world without a power, or did you leave a trick up your sleeve?¡± Perry looked out at the Great Arc. He really was enjoying the view, and the clean air, which was somehow even fresher up above the forest. It was such a change from the stained skies of Teaguewater. ¡°Under the light of a full moon, I turn into a wolf.¡± Maya burst out laughing. ¡°Seriously? You¡¯re a werewolf?¡± Perry turned back to her. ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°What happens when there are three moons?¡± asked Maya. Her eyes were wide. She seemed excited, though excited in that way that people sometimes got when they were hearing something extremely stupid. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Are you in control?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I mean, on a scale from rampaging monster to docile puppy, what are we talking?¡± ¡°Rampaging monster,¡± said Perry. ¡°They can learn to control it, eventually, but I¡¯ve got a single full moon under my belt. The armor blocks out moonlight, so that should be fine, but I don¡¯t know how or if it works in this world, and there¡¯s a good chance I could kill someone if I turn. I don¡¯t think I can spend every single night in armor though.¡± ¡°Why not?¡± asked Maya. ¡°It¡¯s uncomfortable,¡± said Perry. He had grown to feel like that was a sadly overlooked fact about armor, a detail that sailed straight by most modern depictions of what it was actually like to wear the stuff. ¡°Huh,¡± said Maya. ¡°Mine breathes like fine cotton.¡± ¡°I had a cloth undersuit,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s toast though, nothing but scraps, and I don¡¯t even have the scraps.¡± He looked at her carbon-black bracer, which clung to her wrist, and felt a pang of envy. ¡°Is that stuff ¡­ smart?¡± ¡°Nah, not thinking,¡± said Maya. ¡°This was a scifi dystopia type deal, the last people around in a universe that was grinding down to nothing in spite of everyone¡¯s best efforts. They¡¯d been through a lot. Initially they slapped the armor on me because I was labeled an entropy violator.¡± ¡°You said you got it in a heist,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah, yeah, I¡¯m getting there,¡± said Maya. ¡°Can¡¯t you let a girl tell her story? Anyway, they thought that thresholders were pure gold, basically, the solution to all their problems, and they slapped me in the suit so that nothing would happen to me. Well, it turns out that there were rebels, and they helped me to escape, which shut the nanostuff down. The heist wasn¡¯t actually to get the nanostuff, it was to get the codes that they were hoping would let them have the primo nanostuff, converting the bracer into a weapon par excellence. It didn¡¯t really turn out that way, but it¡¯s better than just a defensive tool now. Very little brain though.¡± She eyed Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you¡¯re a computer programmer?¡± ¡°You¡¯re still looking to crack it open,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hoping for ¡­ what?¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t hook into the body,¡± said Maya. ¡°And it doesn¡¯t make more of itself.¡± ¡°You¡¯re hoping that I can hack into it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You know what, sure, shoot the moon, that¡¯s what I¡¯m hoping for,¡± said Maya. ¡°Do you set goals?¡± ¡°Goals?¡± asked Perry. ¡°For ¡­ the world?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Maya. ¡°What¡¯s your goal?¡± ¡°Kill the other thresholder,¡± said Perry. If there is one. ¡°Right, right,¡± said Maya. ¡°Me too. But there¡¯s other stuff, a to-do list you¡¯ve got, or at least a wishlist. For me, cracking the nanostuff would be a dream, easily triple my personal power.¡± Her eyes went to the temple around them. ¡°Looks like we¡¯re not far from a hot bath and a warm meal, which aren¡¯t always guaranteed. And there¡¯s some studying that I need to do. I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s happened to you, but I¡¯ve accumulated some homework.¡± ¡°Top of the list is repairing my armor¡¯s on-board AI, then the armor itself,¡± said Perry. ¡°And for what it¡¯s worth, he¡¯s a skilled computer programmer.¡± ¡°The first tentative step toward being allies,¡± said Maya with a nod. ¡°He was the one who shut down my armor?¡± ¡°Apparently so,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not sure how, but the armor is at 0% power, the batteries are completely drained, and it¡¯s going to take some time to recharge. He¡¯ll be back online soon enough, but he¡¯s handicapped.¡± ¡°And that¡¯s why you lost, do you think?¡± asked Maya. She grinned at him. The bruise was worse than when the meeting started, and it was going to be ugly for days to come. ¡°It¡¯s a ridiculously sharp sword that was going a tenth the speed it should have been,¡± said Perry. He pointed at her face. ¡°If I can do that with a tenth my normal power, then yeah, I think that single lucky hit might have been enough to end you.¡± Maya stared at him for a moment. ¡°The reason I spared you was because of the discrepancy in the number of worlds. If you think we¡¯re on equal footing ¡ª we¡¯re not ¡ª then you probably also think that I was wrong to spare you.¡± ¡°I think if a portal was going to open up, it would have,¡± said Perry. ¡°My goose was cooked, I know that. I knew it at the time. The last thirty seconds, I was almost completely blind, and before that, you fucked the cameras with too strong a light, so I was going off AI-generated reconstructions of sound.¡± ¡°I could tell,¡± said Maya. ¡°And I could tell when the armor went kaput.¡± ¡°We can talk about it later,¡± said Perry. ¡°We should talk about it later, if we¡¯re going to be allies. We should know strengths and weaknesses. You¡¯ll give me a rundown on the worlds that you¡¯ve been to, and I¡¯ll give you a rundown on mine.¡± ¡°Later,¡± said Maya. ¡°Our guy is coming, which means we¡¯ve got rooms.¡± The man was walking to them from the other side of the temple with slow, deliberate footsteps that Perry thought were probably a way of aping the movements of the second sphere. ¡°From the smell of it, food isn¡¯t far behind,¡± said Perry. He wondered whether she was deflecting, if maybe she had something to hide, but she¡¯d been upfront about being a murderer. ¡®Assholes¡¯ had been the word she¡¯d used, though he wondered whether there had been any nuance to that. ¡°You¡¯re angling for the second sphere, right?¡± asked Maya. ¡°You would be, even if they weren¡¯t going to hand it to us?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah, I probably would.¡± ¡°And if they end up having their little conference and decide that they don¡¯t want us running around with the dregs of their power,¡± said Maya. ¡°They have good hearing,¡± said Perry. ¡°And I would never betray the trust of our hosts.¡± ¡°Sure, sure,¡± said Maya. ¡°Glad to see we¡¯re on the same page.¡± The look she was giving him was a happy one, without calculation, but he hoped that they were on the same page. They had a lot to offer each other, as allies, even beyond the fact that another thresholder might be coming ¡ª or indeed, might already have shown up. Mostly, he was hoping that her nanostuff would be able to fix March. Chapter 30 - No Master, No Credo Dinner was rice porridge with pickled vegetables, just as Luo Yanhua had said it would be, and Perry ate with Maya in relative silence. The pickled vegetables were unfamiliar, and there was a thick slice of something that Perry guessed was similar to fermented tofu, though there was a red tint from whatever sauce it had been marinated in. It was better than almost anything Perry had eaten in Teaguewater, and the water it came with was pure and cold. He watched Maya eat, though they didn¡¯t speak, in part because no one else was speaking. It was a strangely silent meal, especially compared to the loud and bustling taverns of Teaguewater. It was odd how easily one could get culture shock moving from one unfamiliar culture to another. Following dinner was tea, which was done with great ceremony, long pours by a man and woman in special robes, first sphere for first sphere, second sphere for second sphere. They had all eaten the same food, but apparently the teas were different. Maya was taking to it with enthusiasm, which didn¡¯t match the somewhat somber way that everyone else was eating. Maybe she was happy that she¡¯d won their duel, or happy that they were being served fresh food and had a place to stay, but no one else was smiling or reveling in the meal. Perry had thought only the second sphere people were like that, but most of those at the temple in the first sphere were probably training themselves to undergo transition to the second sphere. Maybe it was something cultural, something taught. They hadn¡¯t been the same down in the village: there, he¡¯d heard people laughing. After dinner was a quiet time at the Moon Gate Silver Fish Temple, a time for meditation when sound was prohibited. Luo Yanhua had explained all that to them in a low voice, that they were not to so much as speak, to keep their footsteps soft, to not move things around. ¡°Alright,¡± said Maya. She looked at Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll see you in the morning, yeah?¡± Perry nodded. There was more to talk about, much more, but he needed time, and more than that, some rest. It had been a long first day in a new world. Perry had the armor laid out in his room. He¡¯d taken damage in the fight with Maya, more than he cared to think about, but he was hopeful that they could come to some kind of agreement. He was totally clueless when it came to all but basic maintenance on the armor. He¡¯d acted as March¡¯s hands on more than one occasion, and had learned a bit that way, but certainly not enough to replace tiny, delicate microchips or cameras. He hoped the cameras were okay, since they¡¯d gone off toward the end of the fight. If they were permanently broken, the armor wasn¡¯t any good as armor, it was just a jail for his increasingly stupid AI. ¡°March, how are you doing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve seen better days, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If I don¡¯t make it, tell my wife and children that I love them.¡± That was more of Richter¡¯s humor, Perry was pretty sure. It was preferable to Marchand¡¯s constant refrain of ¡®get me back to base for repairs¡¯, though Perry wasn¡¯t sure why the answer was different this time. It was possible that a screw had gotten knocked loose. He really hoped that he wouldn¡¯t be hearing that joke more than three times. The cobalt blue armor was banged up. There were scars all over it, marks from the various battles they¡¯d fought together. Perry had thought that the endless battles with the orcs in Seraphinus had been tough, but as soon as he¡¯d stepped into Teaguewater the caliber of enemy had risen. It seemed that within the Great Arc, there would be another leap. The right arm of the armor was dented, as was the chest piece, and in a few places he¡¯d come up against swords that were sharp enough to gouge the metal. That included a few marks from his own sword. He frowned at that. It was a wonder metal, something beyond the material science of his Earth, nearly impervious to small-caliber weapons. Steel melee weapons, whether they were hammers or swords, could do sweet fuck-all against it. Yet it had been accumulating damage through the course of his adventures, and was getting to the point where the damage it had taken would mean more damage. One of the cuts on the chest had bitten down into the armor far enough that he could see a different color there, black instead of the gray of the metal, which was worrying. He didn¡¯t know enough about the suit¡¯s construction to say how bad that was, but it seemed bad. The suit had felt like a dream when Richter had presented it to him. ¡°It¡¯s military,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯d say military surplus, but that¡¯s not quite true, more proper to say that it¡¯s military-derived, or maybe incidentally funded by the military. I have the machine to build them because I have a lot of money and because I have clearance. I¡¯ve got certifications out the wazoo, basically, and a designated weapons testing range around the house, so long as I keep to within certain blah blah blah.¡± ¡°So you¡¯re not a mad scientist,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re ¡­¡± ¡°A mad engineer, yes,¡± smiled Richter. ¡°A one-woman R&D facility, more or less, though I¡¯m dangerously close to being a military hobbyist.¡± She shivered. ¡°Sends a chill down my spine. I can just hear someone saying that at a ministerial hearing.¡± There had been joy in watching her bound around in her suit, the gleeful way that she leapt up into the air and came crashing down, the ballet of bullets as she demonstrated the rock-solid targeting system that could compensate for zigzagging targets and fire precisely while she was moving at a sprint. And when she¡¯d made him his own suit, it had been even better. He dove down into the ocean to swim with the fishes, sprinted up hills, shot targets that she¡¯d set up, and then they¡¯d done all that together, like two armored gods. He¡¯d felt invincible. Looking down at the battered armor, he felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. Maya¡¯s nanostuff was exactly the sort of thing he¡¯d wanted, but she didn¡¯t seem to be fully in control of it, and there were bound to be technological barriers between it and March. He didn¡¯t trust her secondhand accounting of what was going on with the portals and the entire concept of thresholders, but he had trouble imagining how it could possibly be a trap. All the scenarios he¡¯d been able to think up had seemed far-fetched. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. He put on the helmet. It showed two percent battery, even after all that time dormant. The screen was black, but the HUD was up. ¡°March, please tell me that the cameras are working again.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said March. ¡°I had closed them during the battle, as the overload of light threatened to render them inoperable, especially with a second or third attack of that nature.¡± What March had thought it actually was interested Perry, since obviously the AI wouldn¡¯t think that it was literally ¡®a woman shooting light from her hands¡¯. ¡°As it stands, we sustained damage to a few of them, but I believe with a bit of elbow polish I can compensate. Would you like me to turn the display back on?¡± ¡°Yes, please,¡± said Perry with a sigh. ¡°Why was it off?¡± ¡°The suit has been taken apart,¡± said March. ¡°I was attempting to conserve power.¡± Once the display was back up, Perry started feeling a lot better. If there was a fault with the cameras, he couldn¡¯t easily detect it. The suit was studded with cameras all over, and a few of them were completely shot, but the primary cameras that fed the normal view seemed to be fine, more or less. He was thankful for that. That this was the work of ¡®compensation¡¯ worried him a bit, since if Marchand was in charge of inventing details, something like Photoshop¡¯s autofill, it seemed like there were significant opportunities for Perry to be shown either hallucinations or to have magic and miracles disappear from sight. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to go over the fight with Maya, if we can. There are a few things that I wasn¡¯t able to see in detail, that got glossed over at the time. Mostly, I want to get a look at the nanostuff on her arm, to see how it reacted to the big hits. What do you know?¡± ¡°The ¡®nanostuff¡¯, as you say, sir, appears to be some material unlike anything I¡¯ve ever encountered before,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The bracer on her arm began moving, and when it did, there was an extremely high frequency radio signal.¡± ¡°You used that to turn her armor off,¡± said Perry. ¡°You ¡­ overloaded it. You could do that again?¡± ¡°I believe it might be possible, sir, though with any attack we must bear in mind that defenses tend to crop up in the wake of success,¡± said March. ¡°In this case, the overwhelming interference I was able to generate appears to have made the device reset itself.¡± ¡°You said that, yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°You said during the fight. How¡¯d you know?¡± ¡°I would like to claim some ingenuity on my part,¡± said March. ¡°But unfortunately, I was only reading a message sent out along a protocol in plain English with several markers to allow one such as me to read it.¡± ¡°It broadcast that it was doing a reset?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Apparently so, sir,¡± said March. ¡°I¡¯m not entirely sure why. Perhaps I was identified as a friendly device who had overloaded their communication in error.¡± ¡°And you tried the attack again?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes sir,¡± said March. ¡°There didn¡¯t appear to be a response.¡± ¡°Do you think you could communicate with this device?¡± asked Perry. ¡°If I can get the two of you in a room together, you and this bracer, do you think that you could give it instructions?¡± ¡°I can hardly say, sir,¡± said March. ¡°Having deciphered the message, there¡¯s some basis for such a ¡®conversation¡¯ to take place, though even assuming that the device is programmed in such a manner as to allow that, I can¡¯t imagine that I would have any authority over it. If the device was manufactured using libraries I¡¯m familiar with, I might have some luck.¡± ¡°You could hack it,¡± said Perry. He wasn¡¯t sure what a ¡®library¡¯ actually was, though Richter had talked about them. A collection of code someone else had written, something like that. He would have to look on Gratbook, or ask March about it, but a primer on computer programming or hacksmithing wasn¡¯t on his agenda. ¡°I dare say it¡¯s possible, sir,¡± said March. ¡°Though your last command to me with regards to signals was that I should listen but not speak. At the time we were fighting, I interpreted that instruction as allowing for the emergency use of the transmitter in combat, but now I¡¯m less sure what you desire from me.¡± ¡°Keep silent, except for communicating with this other device. Ideally no one listens in, but if they do ¡­ whatever.¡± Perry bit his lip. ¡°This nanostuff, I¡¯m really hoping that it can be used to help repair you. The microfusion reactor, the microchips, the armor plating itself ¡­ you¡¯ve seen better days, and without you, I don¡¯t know what I really have.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said March. ¡°And this is about how fast the battery charges now?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s going to take a day of doing nothing to get back up to full.¡± ¡°I apologize, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve been using significant amounts of power on self-diagnostics. Would you like me to go to sleep so the battery can charge faster?¡± Perry thought about that. He had some affection for March, in part because March spoke like a person, but also because they¡¯d been together for so long. Richter had also given the AI a personality, and that personality had pieces of Richter in it. ¡°Are the diagnostics you¡¯re running actually helping?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Is this ¡­ I mean, is it productive for you to stay running, drawing a lot of power?¡± ¡°It¡¯s difficult to say until the process is complete,¡± said March. ¡°And how long will it take?¡± asked Perry. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. ¡°It¡¯s difficult to say until the process is complete,¡± March repeated. ¡°Great,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alright, fine, I¡¯m going to really hope that we have a day or two to relax. Take whatever power you need. Are we going to be net-positive on power if I look through Gratbook for a bit?¡± ¡°We will, sir, yes,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Is there anything I can help you find?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll be fine on my own,¡± said Perry. ¡°You focus on yourself.¡± What followed was three hours in which Perry mostly sat back in the small, spartan room they¡¯d given him, reading up on a diverse set of subjects. He¡¯d turned the brightness on the display almost all the way down to ration power, but the display was so energy efficient that it probably didn¡¯t matter much. He got lost in Gratbook, which was Richter¡¯s equivalent to Wikipedia, mostly trying to make some connections to the things he¡¯d seen. Perry had always liked research. He was good at it, with both the aptitude and personality for it. One of the reasons he¡¯d always felt compelled to argue with people online was that the internet had been such a boon for humankind, and no one seemed to be using it properly. They would just say things without citations, and worse, without checking whether the thing they were saying was completely untrue. Usually it didn¡¯t take more than five seconds to back up a claim, and five seconds more to drop a link that people could look at. He couldn¡¯t fathom why people didn¡¯t do that. Sometimes, research was like falling down a hole. That was where Perry found himself, looking at pages on Buddhism, Taoism, Legalism, Mohism, Confucianism, syncretic approaches and the Warring States period, folklore, all kinds of other things. But the recent history of China, at least according to Gratbook, was all kinds of wrong, and that made Perry wary of how much he should trust any of it. Everything after Napoleon had been different, sometimes wildly different, and new traditions and schools of thought had grown up in the wake of some very different people writing very different books. Communism and socialist thought had developed without Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels, who were both born past the point of divergence in their world histories. Of course, none of this was directly helpful. He wasn¡¯t in China, or even China-with-magic, he was on a ringworld whose people and cultures shared some surface resemblance to Chinese folklore or cultural conceptions of history. Knowing about vampires and werewolves had helped him almost not at all in Teaguewater, and he¡¯d had to take what he could get from Flora. He wasn¡¯t going to go into this assuming that he could take anything from Gratbook as guidance, though he was hopeful that he¡¯d gleaned some insight into their philosophical positions. When he took his helmet off, the sun was threatening to set, which meant that it would be shining against the underside of the ring, at least if he understood the ring¡¯s orientation in space. With a sigh, he prepared to lock himself into his suit for the night. Luo Yanhua appeared at the entrance to his room, whisper-quiet. There was only a piece of cloth instead of a door, and while it was well-tailored, it offered almost no privacy. It didn¡¯t even go all the way down to the floor, instead leaving a gap like a toilet stall. ¡°You¡¯re settling in,¡± she said. ¡°I am,¡± said Perry. ¡°Thank you for your hospitality.¡± ¡°The masters will meet within the next few days,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The master of Silver Fish Temple, Shan Yin, will sit with you tomorrow to inquire as to your origins and abilities. We hope this is acceptable.¡± ¡°It is,¡± said Perry. He felt the urge to give little bows, and he wasn¡¯t sure why, because he hadn¡¯t really seen the temple disciples doing that. ¡°Is Maya fitting in well?¡± ¡°She is her own person,¡± Luo Yanhua answered. It was an exceedingly diplomatic answer, but the kind that left no mistake about what she¡¯d meant. ¡°She does not share your approach of careful watching, nor a desire to comport with our way of life in the temple.¡± ¡°She¡¯s been to many worlds,¡± said Perry. ¡°In some of them, that¡¯s the right approach. It can be difficult when you don¡¯t know the rules, when people won¡¯t tell you the rules.¡± ¡°You are curious by nature,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I would agree with that,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are certain things that I like to know about.¡± There were others that he felt entirely dismissive toward, particularly the crazier elements of religions and cultures. He¡¯d briefly had a Catholic friend in college, and their relationship had chilled to freezing when she¡¯d spent an evening trying to explain the finer points of doctrine to him. He looked out his small window, which was open to the air with no glass, only a shutter that could be pulled closed. The sun had just begun to touch the western rim of the ring. ¡°I need to prepare for bed,¡± Perry said. ¡°The temple has a small bathhouse,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Maya Singh has already used it. Tomorrow morning you should clean yourself and prepare for training. We will have clothes for you, at your door by dawn.¡± That surprised Perry somewhat, given that he knew about textiles. ¡°Clothing for a stranger is generous.¡± ¡°It is,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You would be expected to take care of it, and return it to us when you were able to secure appropriate clothing of your own.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± said Perry, and there he did give a little bow, in part because he couldn¡¯t help himself. ¡°Er ¡­ I have nothing in the way of money, but I can put in work.¡± He hesitated, then went into his pack. ¡°I also have this.¡± He opened his hand to show her the single gold coin he had left from Seraphinus. ¡°Gold,¡± she said. She took it from his hand, deftly moving her fingers so that they didn¡¯t touch his own. ¡°Solid gold.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was hoping that it was worth something here, that it could pay for things like clothes, food, or for my other needs.¡± Luo Yanhua handed the gold coin back. ¡°It is the most precious metal of the first sphere,¡± she said. ¡°A tenth of that coin would keep you fed for a year, clothed in finest silk, with a courtesan to keep you company every night.¡± Perry felt himself flush at that, though he didn¡¯t know whether this was a casual mention of prostitution or if she was running into the language barrier. ¡°I¡¯ll keep that in mind,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m fine with living a spartan existence here. I had little in the last world.¡± ¡°Eschewing the material is the path of wisdom,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Sleep well. I will see you in the morning.¡± She slipped away, and the piece of fabric that served as his door shifted back into place. Perry put on his armor, reluctantly. He¡¯d slept in the suit before, and had never enjoyed it, but that had been when he had the skinsuit. Now he was in the rougher textiles of Teaguewater, which had been dampened with his sweat. It was going to be uncomfortable, and the promised morning bath was going to be sorely needed. If what this world demanded from him was that he should sit back and be a monk who spoke rarely and didn¡¯t indulge himself much, that was something that he could definitely do. He was no stranger to hard times, didn¡¯t feel the need to seek out indulgences, and in spite of how different he was from these people of Moon Gate, he thought he could fit in. He would become an ascetic, eating only rice porridge, taking only cold showers, showing no outward signs of aggression, annoyance, or desire. He did put on some of Richter¡¯s anime before he went to sleep though. ~~~~ The morning bath was far, far better than he¡¯d thought it would be. The temple had a bathhouse, and while it wasn¡¯t clear where the water was coming from, it was heated by a wood fire. There were other people in the bath, all men, and while no one had explicitly said that there was gender segregation, he thought that was probably the case. The gender ratio of the disciples was skewed toward male, but only slightly so, with four women to every six men. Perry had been using Flora¡¯s shower in Teaguewater, and to hear her tell it, the mere presence of running water, let alone a shower, was an absolute luxury. The water hadn¡¯t been quite right though, with a taste to it that he was hoping hadn¡¯t been lead. The overwhelming pollution of Teaguewater certainly hadn¡¯t spared the water. Perry had gone the full month and never felt entirely clean, always like there was something sticking to his skin. Here, the water had a crystal purity to it, though Perry wasn¡¯t entirely sure where it was even coming from, whether there was a hidden cistern that collected rainwater or a deep well that it was pulled from. The other men were silent, and they gave him a few looks, for whatever reason. He was a hairy beast compared to them, taller too, paler skin. He stuck out, in a word. When the communal bath was over, one of the disciples came over and helped him to put on his new clothes, which he hadn¡¯t done properly when he¡¯d woken up in the morning. The help was wordless, as they didn¡¯t speak the same language, though the bath had much more conversation going on than the dinner had. He¡¯d done his best to wordlessly thank the man who¡¯d helped him. Luo Yanhua was waiting for him, dressed in a different outfit, this one green with crimson along the lapels. It was just shy of being Christmas colors, but obviously they wouldn¡¯t have that association here. ¡°You look better fresh and clean, in proper clothes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She seemed to approve of the attire, though her gaze stopped for a moment at his five o¡¯clock shadow, which was really more like a ten o¡¯clock shadow. Without a shave, he was going to have a beard in short order. ¡°We take breakfast light here, an egg, tea, nothing more. If you¡¯re willing, it would be best for you to eschew that so you might speak with Shan Yin.¡± ¡°That would be fine,¡± said Perry. He looked around. ¡°Where¡¯s Maya?¡± ¡°She¡¯s spoken with him already,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°He wished to see you separately.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Very well.¡± The temple was relatively small, but on the third level, the temple¡¯s master, Shan Yin, had his own large room. For all the size, the interior furnishings were minimalist, and the central area had a large pillow which Shan Yin sat cross-legged on, with a pillow across from him, slightly smaller. It was a bit of a power play, Perry thought, like a CEO giving himself a bigger, more prominent chair. ¡°Peregrin Holzmann,¡± said Shan Yin. ¡°Shan Yin,¡± said Perry, bowing from his seated position. Shan Yin was the white-haired man that Perry had seen at the temple the day before, leading training exercises, what looked a bit like calisthenics. He was by far the oldest person at the temple, but up close, some of that age seemed to melt away. He was a small man with white hair and white beard, but he carried himself well, and he wasn¡¯t that wrinkled or covered in liver spots. If Perry had run across a guy like that on Earth, he might have gone as low as early fifties. Here, he suspected that he should assume much, much older. ¡°You may call me master,¡± said Shan Yin. ¡°Yes, master,¡± said Perry. They were already off to a bad start. Perry hated that petty bullshit, and hated more that it had been framed in that way, an offer to use a special title. ¡°Why have you come here?¡± asked Shan Yin. Perry blinked. ¡°I don¡¯t know where I¡¯m going when I step through a portal, so you could say that I ended up on the Great Arc by accident, master. I suspected that there would be someone here who was evil, or committed to evil acts, and that I would be one of the only ones willing or able to stop them. I can¡¯t go it alone though. I need the support of others, and I¡¯m willing to support them in kind, even if it¡¯s only through common labor.¡± He wasn¡¯t sure how often he was supposed to say ¡®master¡¯. Shan Yin nodded. ¡°You are a warrior.¡± ¡°Yes, master,¡± said Perry, without hesitation. ¡°A warrior with no master, no credo, no allegiance,¡± said Shan Yin. Perry¡¯s lips twitched into a frown. ¡°I¡¯m not sure that I would say that.¡± ¡°What would you say?¡± asked Shan Yin. ¡°I ¡ª I want to leave each world better than I found it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to stop my enemies from finding success in their pursuits.¡± He was still trying to ape their way of speaking, still trying to fit in, and somewhat convinced that this was not at all working. ¡°Peregrin,¡± said Shan Yin. ¡°You are named for a bird. A migratory one.¡± ¡°I am, master,¡± said Perry. ¡°You have them in this world? Peregrines?¡± ¡°We do,¡± said Shan Yin. He turned away from Perry and faced out toward the window, which was situated so as to show a view of the Great Arc. He wondered whether that was a key feature of architecture here, always showing off the view. ¡°There are many things that you do not know about this world.¡± ¡°There are many things that I will leave having not learned,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve made my peace with that.¡± ¡°Maya Singh had some confusion about the seasons,¡± said Shan Yin. ¡°Winter moves ever northward. There are birds that migrate to stay in the warmth of the sun, but curiously, there are two types of migratory bird. Some fly north, and others fly south. Can you think why?¡± Perry thought about this. He wasn¡¯t sure what the lesson was, if there was one, or if this was a doddering old person story. ¡°They move north to flee winter, or they move south to fly through winter,¡± said Perry. Shan Yin turned back toward him. ¡°And which are you, Peregrin?¡± Perry thought about that, first to see what the answer would be, then to see what answer the master wanted. He didn¡¯t know the master well enough to guess, so he said the truth and hoped that would win him some points. ¡°It depends on how long winters last here,¡± said Perry. ¡°It depends on how far you need to fly in order to go straight through one. If it was a month of flying to escape a month and a half of winter, then I wouldn¡¯t think it was worth it. But if it could be only a few days of hardship, freezing weather, then yes, I would go straight through.¡± Master Shan Yin was silent for a long moment, and Perry worried that he hadn¡¯t been punctuating his answers with ¡®master¡¯ enough times. ¡°I must speak with the other masters,¡± said Master Shan Yin. ¡°There is a place for you at Moon Gate, for the time being. You will train and learn with the other initiates. You will eat with us, live with us, learn the language as best you can. Luo Yanhua believes that your transition would be in the best interests of Moon Gate, but I am as yet unconvinced.¡± Perry sat there, silent, offering no defense of himself. He just didn¡¯t know the master well enough, and advocating for your own interests seemed like the kind of thing that might be proof of bloodthirstiness or something equally asinine. ¡°You may go,¡± Master Shan Yin said eventually. ¡°I must think.¡± Perry got up and left. Luo Yanhua was waiting by the door, kneeling, but she stood when he came out. He wanted someone to commiserate with, but he knew that it couldn¡¯t be her. Saying ¡®I don¡¯t know how well that went¡¯ would have been met only with mute interest from her, and they weren¡¯t nearly on the same page yet. He wondered whether people like her could have friends. ¡°Training in the courtyard will begin soon,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You will join the initiates.¡± Perry nodded. He felt a little relieved. This, at least, he could do. Chapter 31 - Hitting the Beats Perry wasn¡¯t entirely sure of the nomenclature. The first sphere members of the temple were students, disciples, or possibly something else. He was going to have to nail down the terms, given how much they seemed to rely on honor and respect. There was no need to insult someone by using the wrong term. Whatever they were called, they were gathered in the courtyard for training. He was only barely on time, the last to arrive. The other students were talking to each other, though some were doing stretches, and Perry decided that he wanted to limber up too, since this might last the majority of the day. The sun had only just risen over the eastern edge of the arc. Maya came over to him as he was making sure his legs weren¡¯t going to cramp. ¡°How¡¯d it go?¡± she asked. She looked different out of her streetwear. Her hair was more flouncy when not hidden by her hood, and the outfit she¡¯d been given showed less skin. It seemed like it fit her better than Perry¡¯s fit him, but she was close in stature to the average woman here. Perry hoped that in the next world he wouldn¡¯t be such a giant, but it was almost as bad as Teaguewater, at least among the first sphere. The bruise on her face was black and purple, but she didn¡¯t seem to be affected by it too much. She smiled without wincing. ¡°It went fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re on the fence about us.¡± ¡°Excited for training?¡± asked Maya. She had started doing some half-hearted standing stretches. ¡°I haven¡¯t had a proper training session for a long time. In the world where I got my telekinesis there was a stretch of it, mostly because they were worried I was going to die. Do you think we¡¯ll get to spar?¡° ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m curious whether their training will help us.¡± ¡°You think you¡¯re good, outside the suit?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Hard to say,¡± said Perry. ¡°I haven¡¯t had a chance to fight hand-to-hand. I¡¯m always in the armor, almost always with the sword.¡± ¡°I have my bracer with me still,¡± said Maya, tapping it beneath her sleeve. ¡°I can TK the sword to me in two heartbeats. I don¡¯t think I¡¯d want your armor. Can¡¯t bring it with you, have to store it somewhere that you trust.¡± She clucked her tongue. ¡°Seems like a hassle.¡± ¡°We need to find a time to get our armors talking,¡± said Perry. ¡°And have a private chat,¡± said Maya, nodding. ¡°We¡¯ll go along with this though. I¡¯m expecting us to crush it to dust.¡± Perry was too, but he wasn¡¯t foolish enough to say it out loud. Perhaps not the forms, which they wouldn¡¯t know and which the acolytes had been practicing for years, but if it was about unarmed combat, he was pretty sure that being a werewolf meant that he was much stronger than any of them, and he was no slouch when it came to a fight. The day before, it had been Shan Yin leading the group, but this day it was a different member of the second sphere, the woman Perry had seen with a giant tome open in front of her. She had a tight red jacket with a collar and brass buttons, along with matching pants. Her hair was two-tone, black and white, done up in what felt like too many buns. They hadn¡¯t been given a tour of the temple, and the day had been short on introductions. Her name was Li Xinyue, an inner disciple, whatever that difference of position meant: Luo Yanhua was an outer disciple. He idly wondered whether they had an org chart he could consult. When the woman began moving, the class began following her, and Perry did his best to do what everyone else around him was doing. Whatever martial art they were doing, it was a connection of flowing moves, punches and kicks that led into each other in a continuous loop. By the third time through, it was clear that this was far more difficult than it looked, partly by virtue of the footwork being precise. Because each movement led directly to the next, a foot coming down at the wrong angle meant that it would be hard for it to come up for a kick a few seconds later. Everything involving the arms was a bit easier, but that was just because his mistakes were less obvious. The woman called out a command to the class, who continued the same pattern, and walked over to Perry, who was still trying to do his best to follow along. ¡°Spine straight, shoulder in,¡± she said to him, the first words she¡¯d spoken in English. ¡°Spine straighter,¡± she clarified after he¡¯d tried to straighten up. ¡°The vertebrae must stack on top of each other, like a tower of rocks, welded together as a sword is. Raise the chin, bring the head up from the shoulders.¡± She touched him, even as he continued the form, adjusting his hips, his ankles, his arms, forming his hands into a better fist, placing her fingers on his head to lift it up. It took some time before she was remotely satisfied, another three full rotations of the form, and then she moved on to Maya, who took the whole thing with good humor. It seemed as though Maya needed fewer adjustments, which shouldn¡¯t have rankled Perry as much as it did. It went on for what felt like forever, and the disciples ¡ª or whatever they were ¡ª were working up a sweat, which Perry realized he could smell hanging in the clifftop air. The sun was bright overhead, but there was a breeze that kept it from getting too warm, and he felt like he¡¯d have been able to keep it up all day. When he looked over at Maya, she wasn¡¯t doing nearly so well. She was dripping sweat and her form had deteriorated. She had her own particular smell, like a wicker basket of linens, slightly salty, and it surprised Perry that he could pick it out. When it seemed like some of the disciples were ready to collapse, their instructor called for them to stop. The relaxation was palpable as the synchronized movements came to an end and each person began moving on their own again. There was a brief break, with two large clay jugs of water brought out by a disciple who was apparently not taking part in the training exercises. Perry tried to mimic the way that the other students took small sips of water, making a cup of his hands, but Maya just shaped her bracer into a black pint glass and took deep gulps. He would have to talk with her about that. If he was right that this place was like Seraphinus, doing what other people were doing was the right way to go. By the time he¡¯d been done with Seraphinus, he¡¯d found the whole place to be stifling, their strange ways grating. Maya might be going through something similar. He didn¡¯t know what her last world had been, but it could have been one where she was butting up against cultural problems too many times. Dark skin and being a woman might not have helped much, though he supposed that depended on the world. This was the first world where he was in the ethnic minority, and he already didn¡¯t like it, though it hadn¡¯t been too bad. After a break to catch their breath and drink their water, the students returned to the courtyard and began a different set of exercises, this one focused on breathing. It was close to being meditation, though everyone had their eyes open, and their teacher was speaking in clinical terms. She translated less than half of it into English, only short bits so the two outsiders could follow along, and there wasn¡¯t much attempt at getting them up to speed. ¡°Air is a part of the internal alchemy,¡± she said. ¡°The water you just drank was as well. The internal alchemy of the first sphere is unbalanced. You take in clean air and release air that has been fouled. You take in clean water and excrete urine. Our purpose in deliberate breathing is to focus on the internal alchemy, the feel of those processes inside you, their imbalance becoming apparent. Even in the second sphere we have not fully banished the imbalances, but alteration of the internal alchemy is paramount to the pursuit of transition.¡± Perry tried to focus on deliberate breathing, but it was hard. Most of what she said sounded like nonsense, but if they were really going without breathing or drinking water, if they didn¡¯t need meals, then he was going to listen as closely as he could to their instructions on how that was done. He wasn¡¯t going to count on the worlds being perfectly hospitable, or even imperfectly hospitable. He would have loved to have not breathed the air of Teaguewater. The breathing session lasted two hours and left Perry painfully bored. He was trying his best, he really was, but he didn¡¯t have the temperament to do something that didn¡¯t seem like it was helping him in any way. Clearly these people had some sort of magic, but one of the lessons he¡¯d learned from Seraphinus was that just because there was real, literal magic didn¡¯t mean the magicians were experts. Romuald had been the high wizard of the Kingdom of Seraphinus, and it was easy to trap him in inconsistencies that would have him speaking about vague concepts that held no water. When the agonizingly slow breathing stuff was finished with, they split up into pairs for sparring. Perry instinctively went to Maya, but the teacher was over to them almost at once, putting each of them with one of the disciples. Perry¡¯s opponent was five inches shorter than him, head shaved bald, with sunken eyes. These people were short on smiles, but this man particularly so. He looked unhappy to be fighting Perry, beyond just being unhappy in general. Before their match began, he made a gesture with his hands, palms out, a brief bow, and then a clap followed by a short word. Perry tried to match all that, but from the look on the disciple¡¯s face, hadn¡¯t done a good job. His attempt at the word seemed particular cause for offense, and he could hear that the syllables hadn¡¯t come out right, but didn¡¯t think his second attempt would be any better. Perry had assumed that they¡¯d be playfighting, but his opponent came in with unexpected swiftness and struck Perry directly in the solar plexus. Perry staggered back, opening himself up for a kick, which landed in the pit of his stomach even though he¡¯d been trying to catch the kick. When the follow up strikes came as Perry stumbled back, he put up his arms to defend himself and caught the punches and strikes on his forearms. The flurry of attacks had been unexpected, but it wasn¡¯t actually hurting as much as Perry had thought it would. His opponent had gone hard, but was tiring himself out, and the attacks couldn¡¯t possibly be sustained, especially when his fists were punching up against the hard bones of Perry¡¯s forearms. When there was a brief break in the string of attacks, Perry delivered a punch of his own. His opponent turned to the side, not quite dodging it, but turning it into a glancing blow. Still, he staggered back, and Perry kicked out at the man¡¯s leg. His opponent reeled back, gasping in pain and clutching his thigh. Perry wasn¡¯t sure on protocol, whether that meant the end of the sparring match or if they were supposed to go until one of them tapped out, but he couldn¡¯t imagine that they were supposed to actually hurt each other. Maya was already standing over her opponent, who was moaning and rolling on the ground. From Maya¡¯s bemused expression, it had been a lopsided fight. While Perry was distracted, his opponent came in, but Perry returned his attention to the fight and caught the leg that had been swinging around to clock him in the head. He grabbed his opponent¡¯s ankle and lifted him up, and while he¡¯d only been attempting to tip the other man over, Perry found himself holding him up for just a moment, dangling him above the ground before dropping him. He had known that being a werewolf granted him some strength in human form, but he hadn¡¯t realized that he could lift a full-grown man with one hand. He let out a laugh. It felt ridiculous. His opponent, once he¡¯d gathered himself up from the ground, got on his knees and bowed as low as possible, prostrating himself. ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry, feeling slightly embarrassed. ¡°Get up.¡± The other man stayed where he was. Perry looked for the teacher, hoping that she would intervene, but instead he saw a man of the second sphere coming toward him. This was one he hadn¡¯t met before, a man with a long ponytail that went down to the small of his back and a crimson buttoned-up jacket that swept behind him only a few inches off the stones of the courtyard. He had white pants and bare feet, and his hands were clenched in fists. ¡°You do not belong here, Peregrin,¡± he said. ¡°Shan Yin has allowed us to stay,¡± said Perry. ¡°You disagree with this temple¡¯s master?¡± ¡°I cannot stand idly by while you humiliate our disciples,¡± he replied. ¡°I am Zhang Lingxiu, Dragon-Tiger Guardian, and I will have the satisfaction of demonstrating the true combat of the Silver Fish Temple.¡± With a flourish, he removed his jacket, revealing a bare chest beneath it. He was lean and muscular, hairless, and his muscles rippled as he dropped into a fighting stance. It was the same stance they¡¯d been practicing a few hours before. Perry wondered how, precisely, this worked. They were different spheres. Were second sphere allowed to fight first sphere? Did both have to agree to the fight? There was some kind of prohibition, but apparently this didn¡¯t count. ¡°For the record, I think you¡¯re going to kick my ass,¡± said Perry. He dropped into his own fighting stance, not the one that the teacher had shown, but something that he was more comfortable with, a boxer¡¯s stance, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. The rest of the disciples had stopped what they were doing in order to watch. Maya was looking on in interest. Perry wasn¡¯t entirely sure why her match hadn¡¯t been cause for offense. Perry attacked first, mostly because it felt like that¡¯s what Lingxiu wanted, and the period of standing there, facing off and sizing each other up, could only go on for so long. He threw a punch straight at Lingxiu¡¯s face with his full strength behind it. Perry had been in a boxing match approximately once, and knew enough to have sloppy form that was better than nothing, feet shoulder-width apart, one foot slightly ahead of the other, lead foot pointing straight ahead, back foot turned out at a 45-degree angle. He engaged his core to start the punch, ready to transfer his body weight into his fist when it landed. He was thinking about all this, which was a bad sign, and he knew the execution was going to be terrible. Lingxiu slipped past the punch and slapped Perry in the face. It wasn¡¯t a hard slap. Instead it was tender, almost delicate. Then he was away, back in the stance he¡¯d been in before. The blank expression that Perry associated with the second sphere was broken by a smirk, like a rock jutting up from calm waters. The instructor said something, not in English, but also not in the language she¡¯d been using with the disciples. Perry didn¡¯t understand any of it, naturally, but her words sounded sharp, like a rebuke. Some of the amusement left Lingxiu¡¯s face. ¡°Shattered Moonlight,¡± Lingxiu announced before extending his arm forward. It wasn¡¯t a punch, not as Perry understood the concept. The power seemed to come from nowhere, not a shift in body weight or the snap of the arm. It was aimed not at Perry¡¯s body, but at his own fist, and Perry felt a sharp jolt of pain as his knuckles were hit with what felt like a rod of steel. ¡°Crashing Ocean Kick,¡± said Lingxiu. He spun and kicked hard at Perry, who tried to turn to take it on his hip. That was a success, only in the sense that he would have an enormous bruise there, the imprint of a foot that would be visible for the next few mornings in the bathhouse. Having the attacks called out before they happened was somehow more humiliating than the gentle slap had been. ¡°Wavering ¡ª¡± But before Lingxiu could announce another attack, Perry went on the offensive, throwing jabs and hooks, solid, powerful blows that connected only with air. Lingxiu twisted his body, side-stepped, ducked, dodged, effortlessly moving out of the way. He was seeming disinterested in the whole affair. The closest that Perry got was his knuckle briefly sliding along Lingxiu¡¯s cheek. There was no way that it had actually hurt him, and it was entirely possible that Lingxiu had only done that to show off. Perry was getting annoyed. Angry, really. Furious. He¡¯d experienced this only once before, when playing videogames with a college roommate. Perry had never particularly liked fighting games, but his roommate had seemed pumped to do something together. What had followed was Perry getting utterly dominated, juggled in the air or up against walls, hit with combos that meant he was completely locked up and unable to do anything. It had been made worse when his roommate had picked one of the ¡®worst¡¯ fighters in the roster, then continued with the domination. Perry had hated it, and hated it more because his roommate was enjoying it so much. ¡°Wavering Willow,¡± Lingxiu announced, once Perry had started to run out of steam. Lingxiu¡¯s arm moved like a flowing river, twisting and sliding past Perry¡¯s defenses, and when his hand hit Perry in the center of his pectoral muscle, it felt as though it was driving down into his chest. His heart skipped a beat, and he gasped with pain as he stumbled backward. Lingxiu turned his back on Perry and addressed the gathered students. A few more of the second sphere had come by in ones and twos, their flashy clothes and immaculate eyebrows making them stand out from the drab outfits. Whatever Lingxiu was saying, it was said with a haughty air, and there was laughter lacing through the murmurs of the crowd. Laughter had not been a common sound in the temple. There was a temptation to attack Lingxiu while his back was turned, but Perry could see that for the obvious trap that it was. Lingxiu was making a point, whether that was about the superiority of Moon Gate techniques or the terribleness of foreign interlopers or some other braindead thing. Perry wasn¡¯t even sure what he¡¯d done wrong, if anything. Maybe they thought his ability to floor a newbie was unearned. Maybe it was just ritual hazing of new people, like this was a goddamned fraternity. Or maybe they were just really racist. Lingxiu turned back around to face Perry. He raised his hands casually, into the same boxing stance that Perry had been in. He shifted his feet around, bouncing on the balls of them, mocking. Perry attacked, and this time, Lingxiu didn¡¯t move at all, taking the punch straight to the face. His head snapped back, and when he lowered his head, there was a faint smile on his face. ¡°You have strength,¡± said Lingxiu. ¡°Armor, a sword, and power beyond your station.¡± ¡°Is that what this is about?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Putting me in my place? I already said that I had no illusions that I would win this fight.¡± He hadn¡¯t thought he¡¯d be so badly trounced though. There had been some hope that he could pull something out. Lingxiu didn¡¯t answer, he just got serious about the fight. Perry was strong, he was coming to grips with just how strong, but he wasn¡¯t able to land those powerful hits, and he wasn¡¯t fast enough to dodge or block the majority of Lingxiu¡¯s attacks. The moves weren¡¯t announced anymore, and there was no pause between them, but they were clearly techniques, splayed fingers and punches that seemed to swim through the air. Lingxiu punched Perry square in the face, backed up half a step, then leapt into the air and came down with a spinning kick that struck Perry in the side of his skull. Perry found himself on his knees, battered and bruised. He¡¯d be lucky if he didn¡¯t have a concussion, and he knew there was no winning the fight, only hanging on until it was over. Everyone was watching and no one was helping. Lingxiu was standing over him. Perry was going to murder him, he decided in a moment of rage. He was going to wait until this fight was over, then sneak into the man¡¯s room and murder him in his sleep, or poison his food, or maybe just wait until they could meet each other on equal footing, if it came to that. These thoughts came into Perry¡¯s head unbidden, a promise that he was making to himself without even thinking about it, but it felt right and good to imagine Lingxiu clutching at a slit throat. Perry could taste blood in his mouth. He could have gotten up, still, if he had more of a death wish. Lingxiu reached an arm up to the sky, his whole body rigid. The arm was pointed in one specific direction, toward the largest of the three moons, and white mist began to swirl around the outstretched arm. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He started to rise to his feet. They were called Moon Gate, and he¡¯d seen the white beam of power as Luo Yanhua had teleported there. It was moon energy that Lingxiu was gathering, and Perry didn¡¯t know for certain that it would do anymore than burn him, but ¡ª ¡°Stop,¡± he said, trying to think about the words. ¡°I¡¯ll ¡ª¡± From Lingxiu¡¯s other hand came a torrent of white light, concentrated into the palm and thrust out at Perry. It hit like a blast of searing air, hot enough to burn, except instead of burning, Perry began to change. He was a wolf in an instant, huge and snarling, shredding through the borrowed clothes. He leapt at the attacker with outstretched claws, but the attacker moved swiftly on feet that didn¡¯t quite touch the ground, floating left. There was a smell of blood in the air though, and the man¡¯s forearm was dripping red across the flagstones. He moved forward at speed, striking out with a spinning kick that caught the wolf in its head, and the wolf snapped its sharp teeth with powerful jaws. When the warrior pulled away, he had one less hand. There was fear and panic in the air. The wolf could smell it. His eyes were on the warrior, who was gripping the mangled place where his hand had been. The meat of the palm remained, but the fingers were in the wolf¡¯s mouth, and were swallowed down whole, bones and all. The wolf smelled the shock and weakness, and as the students fled, the wolf moved on the bleeding man, intending to rend and then eat him. A woman leapt up into the air and landed on the wolf¡¯s back. It was the one whose scent had already been marked, wicker and linen, someone the wolf had fought before, and she slipped off before the wolf could throw her. She had a sword in hand, one that hadn¡¯t been there a moment before, and the wolf turned on her, ready to kill. When the wolf tried to open his mouth, he found that he couldn¡¯t. The woman had left something behind when she¡¯d landed on his back, something that was locking his teeth together. She made words with her mouth that washed over the wolf. Her eyes were wild, her face flushed with the battle fever, ready to stab him through with the long needle in her hand. But as the wolf prepared to rend her with his claws, he felt his strength fading away from the midday sun. He stepped forward and felt that the claws had retracted, then took a second step and realized that he had pressed an elbow against the ground. Perry came to himself, naked, something uncomfortable and black holding his mouth shut. Maya was standing in front of him, sword drawn and pointed at him, but when he looked at her with pitying eyes, she dropped the sword and came over to him. With a touch, the black band over his mouth was back as a bracer around her wrist. ¡°Are you okay?¡± she asked. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°That healed me up.¡± ¡°Mentally?¡± she asked. ¡°Emotionally?¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. He looked over at Lingxiu. The bleeding had stopped suspiciously fast, and he was being tended to by two women of the second sphere, triage on his wounds. Perry took a moment to revel in it. He could taste Lingxiu¡¯s blood in his mouth and on his lips. Revenge had come early, it seemed, and the promise he¡¯d made, that he would kill this man, immediately came undone. That was just something he¡¯d thought in the moment, and it had been rash. A few missing fingers, that felt like enough, satisfaction, of a sort. ¡°You¡¯re a big boy, as a wolf,¡± said Maya. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not sure it¡¯s the best thing for our burgeoning alliance, you maiming a guy,¡± said Maya. ¡°Though I could see it either way.¡± ¡°Not sure what crawled up his ass,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you¡¯re going to beat the shit out of someone, you should have the common courtesy to tell them why.¡± Luo Yanhua left Lingxiu where he was and walked over to where Perry was standing. Given the shredding of his clothes, Perry was naked, and he was trying not to feel self-conscious about that. The men and women bathed separately, and he¡¯d noticed that they lived separately, with the lower disciples having separate dorms for men and women. Perry was one of the few who had a room of his own, and he thought it likely that he¡¯d be consigned to the dorm with the others if he had to be here for long. He wasn¡¯t sure whose room he¡¯d taken. He also wasn¡¯t sure what protocol was when you were naked in the middle of a temple like this, whether it was better to simply be nude, to grab a cloth and cover himself, or to just place his hand over his dick. He opted to stand there uncovered. ¡°You had not said that you were a wolf person,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It¡¯s a weakness,¡± said Perry. ¡°I prefer not to expose too many of those.¡± ¡°You transformed back without wanting to,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Back?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Back to a wolf,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Lingxiu was helped off to the temple. He didn¡¯t look at Perry, very deliberately so. The master Shan Yin was observing, but had not moved to intervene. ¡°I¡¯m a human who turns into a wolf,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not a wolf who turns into a human.¡± Luo Yanhua considered this for a long moment. ¡°That you control yourself is important. Can you do that?¡± Perry looked up at the sun. There was another half hour until the eclipse. ¡°I need to confine myself to my suit when the sun goes down, or is obscured.¡± ¡°That does not bode well for you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°A man, even a wolf-man, should be in control of himself at all times.¡± Perry agreed with that, overall, but there wasn¡¯t a ghost¡¯s chance of that happening any time soon. The werewolves from Teaguewater did have some control, but it took them time to not go into a frenzy when the full moon came. ¡°What happens now?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Now?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Perry will be put in new clothes, something simpler, which will not rip or tear. Training will continue after lunch. If the arcshadow will cause you problems, you have leave to deal with them.¡± Perry clenched his teeth for a moment. ¡°I¡¯m not in trouble?¡± He asked. ¡°He¡¯s not in trouble?¡± ¡°Your trouble is your own,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°He was going to beat me to mush and everyone was just going to be fine with that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s ¡ª I mean, that¡¯s the kind of place that this is?¡± ¡°In his view, you had transgressed,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You are a part of Moon Gate now, having slept in our walls and eaten our meals. He was within his rights to correct the transgression.¡± ¡°Even though I¡¯m first sphere and he was second?¡± asked Perry. ¡°A father may strike his son,¡± Luo Yanhua replied. This line of argument didn¡¯t even remotely work on Perry, and wouldn¡¯t have even if he¡¯d accepted that as a disciple of Moon Gate Silver Fish Temple he had taken a role similar to that of a child. ¡°They beat people down like that often then?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Someone steps out of line, you pop them one?¡± ¡°These circumstances are unique,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But it is not uncommon for those of the second sphere to take an interest in the first sphere, and correct for behavior unbecoming of the sect.¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t trying to start anything,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was just sparring, trying my best. I was going to spar with Maya, but we got split off from each other. I don¡¯t even know what I did wrong. Do I get some instruction so I don¡¯t get a beating again?¡± He felt awkward about saying that though, because all the damages, all the bruising, was gone. He didn¡¯t know the limits of the regeneration that came with transformation, but it seemed like it was probably extensive. ¡°Fight with your entire soul,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I was watching you spar with Liu Xinmei. You did not give him due respect. You fought sloppily. You allowed your power to speak for you, without the form to back it up. You did not honor your opponent.¡± She gestured to Maya. ¡°How many strikes did Maya use?¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t watching her,¡± said Perry. ¡°One,¡± said Maya. ¡°I saw my opening, punched like we¡¯d been practicing, knocked her out cold.¡± ¡°So I should have hospitalized someone who didn¡¯t have my advantages?¡± asked Perry. ¡°To kill in a sparring match would be unfortunate,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But it is expected at Moon Gate that you will commit yourself to the fight unless you are attempting to teach.¡± Perry frowned. He looked up at the sun again, tracking its motion. The arcshadow was coming soon. ¡°Next time I¡¯ll commit myself to the fight then,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to go put on my armor, it takes ten or fifteen minutes.¡± ¡°I can repair the clothes,¡± said Maya, pointing at the ripped remnants of the training outfit. ¡°You can?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°You are a seamstress?¡± Maya¡¯s sword zipped to her hand. ¡°I have a needle, don¡¯t I?¡± She gave a wide, shit-eating grin. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s go.¡± Chapter 32 - Handshake Protocol Maya came to his room with him, which Perry wasn¡¯t entirely thrilled with. He was, after all, still naked and trying not to feel the burning shame from that, nor the intense vulnerability, and he caught her looking him over more than once in a way that he thought probably would have gotten him in trouble if the genders had been reversed. He felt better once he was in his small room with his Teaguewater underwear on. ¡°The needle doesn¡¯t actually mend clothes,¡± said Maya as she sat down cross-legged on the floor. ¡°Nanostuff can though. It¡¯s brick-dumb but smart enough for this.¡± ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d hope you¡¯re fine,¡± said Maya. ¡°Otherwise you¡¯re not cut out for this life. For what it¡¯s worth, you didn¡¯t deserve it.¡± She set the black nanostuff to work, trying to manipulate it into fixing the places where it had ripped. ¡°I probably did, by their standards,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wasn¡¯t taking the sparring match seriously. I haven¡¯t fought out of the suit in a long time, and didn¡¯t realize just how much stronger and faster the wolf thing had made me. I wasn¡¯t being a dick about it, but I can see how it would come across like that, letting someone wail on you because you know there¡¯s nothing they can do to hurt you. I held him up by his foot like a baby because, I don¡¯t know, I could.¡± ¡°Not how you¡¯re supposed to hold babies, actually, just in case it comes up.¡± She sighed. ¡°You¡¯re giving them a lot of credit,¡± said Maya. She¡¯d successfully had the nanostuff sew two edges together, and it was very unclear how. Were they manipulating the fibers on a nanometer level? ¡°They¡¯re vicious people. They¡¯re warriors, a whole temple full of soldiers or soldiers-in-training, only they don¡¯t have a kingdom to fight for, nothing and no one to rein them in. Pretty much what you¡¯d expect. But we¡¯re here until they help us transition.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure how many more beatings like that I could take,¡± said Perry. He thought about his silent vow to murder a man. ¡°I¡¯m staying here, with or without you,¡± said Maya. ¡°Unless a better opportunity comes along. We don¡¯t know how they¡¯re going to transition us. It¡¯s dangerous, they said.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He let out a breath. ¡°Well, hopefully we¡¯re both stronger a week from now.¡± He slipped on the helmet. ¡°Marchand, I¡¯d like you to meet Maya, Maya, this is Marchand.¡± ¡°Hello?¡± asked Maya. She was looking at the helmet, which had only gotten up to a pitiful twenty-eight percent battery, even though it had been most of a day. ¡°It¡¯s a pleasure to be formally introduced,¡± said Marchand. ¡°March, on her arm is a bracer made of extremely high tech nanostuff,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need you to interface with it and open it up, disable whatever protocols are in place that stop it from ¡­¡± He trailed off. ¡°Hold on one sec. Maya, how safe is this?¡± ¡°Disabling self-replication?¡± she asked. ¡°Uh ¡­ safeish?¡± ¡°I was about to tell March to do it, and it sounded insane,¡± said Perry. ¡°The worst case scenario is that this whole ringworld gets turned into nanostuff. Right?¡± ¡°It¡¯s been responding to my needs and keeping my stuff repaired,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯ve been depending on it for like ¡­ six worlds.¡± ¡°Counting this one?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I kicked your ass with it, so yeah, this one,¡± said Maya. ¡°In fact, however your robot disabled it was as close as I¡¯ve come to a malfunction.¡± ¡°So five worlds,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve had it for what, two years at the most?¡± ¡°Around two years, yeah,¡± said Maya. ¡°They locked away the ability for a reason,¡± said Perry. ¡°They were assholes,¡± said Maya. ¡°End-statism was a scourge. Realism was a scourge. I was in the weeds, but I really did hate the guys who made this stuff. Imagine having the tech to stitch up injuries and just not using it because you believe that people were meant to live with pain. Imagine being that vile.¡± Perry thought about that. ¡°But they did have the tech, which means that the higher ups probably did use it, right?¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Maya. ¡°Assholes,¡± Perry agreed. ¡°Well now I¡¯m glad I didn¡¯t kill you,¡± said Maya. ¡°Anyway, seems like your AI probably isn¡¯t going to crack open this thing.¡± She lifted her bracer and pointed at it. ¡°Just see whether he can make some headway.¡± ¡°March, try to communicate with the bracer,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s got blocks preventing it from doing some of its most impressive tricks. See if you can get a toehold.¡± ¡°I will endeavor to do my best, sir,¡± said Marchand. The whole thing seemed hopeless, even if it would be supremely beneficial to both of them. March was a sophisticated AI, at least in the best of times, but asking him to communicate with an unknown technology developed using completely different programming languages and paradigms seemed like a very tall ask. While March was working, throwing up some logs onto the HUD, the arcshadow came. Perry had gotten his armor on just in time, mostly in silence. ¡°Is the dog thing going to be a problem?¡± asked Maya as the shadow swept across the room. ¡°So long as I stay in my tin can when the sun goes down, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°Except the sun wasn¡¯t down when you turned and bit the hand off that guy,¡± said Maya. ¡°Which makes me think that maybe it will be a problem if you get beaten down enough.¡± ¡°It wasn¡¯t that,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was the moonlight. The way it was described to me, the transformation happens because of moonlight, and the only reason it doesn¡¯t happen in the day is because the sunlight counteracts it.¡± ¡°So you¡¯re going to transform whenever someone uses moonlight powers on you,¡± said Maya. ¡°Which is a huge problem. Perry, they¡¯re Moon Gate, moon worshipers or whatever, lunar techniques.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t even think that it should work like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are three moons here, and moonlight as a concept is just ¡­ nonsense.¡± The arcshadow passed, and Perry began taking off the armor again. ¡°What do you mean moonlight is nonsense?¡± asked Maya. ¡°It¡¯s pretty clearly not.¡± ¡°The moon reflects sunlight,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe you could argue that werewolves are vulnerable to a single specific wavelength of light or something, and that¡¯s specifically the wavelength that you get from the moon, but ¡­ as a coherent concept, ¡®moonlight¡¯ breaks down.¡± ¡°The worlds aren¡¯t wholly separate,¡± said Maya. ¡°My wizard friend said that. They¡¯re not siloed, they overlap with each other, and the magic you see in one place might end up having interactions with the magic in another place.¡± ¡°That¡¯s happened with you?¡± asked Perry. Maya nodded and held up her sword. ¡°This started out magical, and one of the gods of a different world reached in and enhanced the magic in it.¡± ¡°You met a ¡­ god?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Hell yeah I did,¡± said Maya. ¡°I met a few, actually. Mostly bastards, in that place. I got made an avatar of the God of the Sea, could swim like lightning and drown anyone who got in my way. But that world was a loss, and the god stripped my power right before I was about to limp through the portal.¡± ¡°Ouch,¡± said Perry. ¡°But at least it wasn¡¯t a good power.¡± She raised an eyebrow. ¡°I mentioned that I could drown people?¡± asked Maya. ¡°All I had to do was bring a pitcher with me, throw water on them, and have them drowned in two minutes. I would have stomped through more than a few worlds with that one.¡± ¡°It wouldn¡¯t have worked on me,¡± said Perry as he slipped out of the boots. ¡°Eh, no,¡± said Maya. ¡°Guess not.¡± ¡°And it obviously didn¡¯t work on the guy you were fighting,¡± said Perry. ¡°He had a counter for it,¡± said Maya. She folded her arms. ¡°We always get a power?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Every world, unless you lose?¡± ¡°Always,¡± said Maya. ¡°It¡¯s part of the spell.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not a huge believer in the spell, just FYI,¡± said Perry. ¡°For your information,¡± he clarified. ¡°Right, well, my wizard knew a lot, and he was incredibly smart, and so far nothing he¡¯s said has been wrong,¡± she said with a shrug. ¡°Powers don¡¯t always get taken back though, he said. Power is like ¡­ the payment for thresholders, I guess, and if they fail, which they can, it¡¯s not a condition that the power gets removed, it¡¯s more that there¡¯s no guarantee that the power is going to stick.¡± ¡°And there is a guarantee if you win?¡± asked Perry. ¡°From who?¡± ¡°From who-the-fuck-knows,¡± said Maya. ¡°From the spell.¡± ¡°But it¡¯s one spell,¡± said Perry. ¡°With two sides?¡± ¡°With infinity sides,¡± said Maya. ¡°No, I mean, for any given conflict, there are always two sides?¡± ¡°I guess so,¡± said Maya. ¡°My wizard was working from very little information, and while he had some multiversal theories before that, I was the first chance he had to really dig into it.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll have to dig into this later,¡± said Perry, rubbing his face. ¡°You don¡¯t happen to have hundreds of hours of high-def videos of him explaining everything to you, along with scans of hundreds of books, do you?¡± ¡°I came to this world practically nude,¡± said Maya. ¡°Not even a suitcase, just the clothes on my back. I¡¯d kill for a pocket computer. I had one, when I started, but it didn¡¯t survive seven worlds.¡± ¡°We should get back to training,¡± said Perry. ¡°The arcshadow is over, and I want to see how the school gets on after that whole thing. You¡¯ll leave your bracer here?¡± Maya looked at the black shell around her arm. ¡°I guess.¡± She looked up at Perry. ¡°I¡¯m only telling you this because I like you, but if you try to wear it, it¡¯ll inject itself into your veins and liquify you from the inside out.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t you tell me that anyway, as a deterrent? Or tell me that because you¡¯re supposedly my ally?¡± ¡°An ally who tries to steal my shit would deserve death,¡± said Maya. ¡°And the kill function is only for people who try to steal it. I can¡¯t kill people with it in other ways, except when it¡¯s in sword mode, and I can only get it to do that half the time.¡± If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. ¡°So if you leave it somewhere another thresholder thinks they can steal it ¡­¡± said Perry. ¡°Yup,¡± said Maya. ¡°I haven¡¯t pulled it off yet, unfortunately. The kill count of the nanostuff is extremely low, it¡¯s mostly defensive.¡± ¡°Kill count as in ¡­ not thresholders?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll talk later,¡± said Maya, nodding slightly. ¡°We need to make sure we¡¯re not late. I¡¯ve got a feeling they frown upon that here.¡± She handed him his repaired clothes, which were good as new. Better than new, even, which spoke to the nanostuff having at least a little bit of a brain as they rewove fibers together. Them having a brain was both good news and bad news. Perry got dressed, then looked at March. ¡°I¡¯m leaving you here,¡± said Perry. ¡°Recharge, try to talk to the nanostuff, don¡¯t do anything that I wouldn¡¯t do.¡± ¡°You are a paragon of wisdom, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry walked with Maya across the temple grounds. There was a wet spot where the blood from the fight had been mopped up. Luo Yanhua was standing there with her arms folded, and she gave them a nod as they approached. ¡°What¡¯s the agenda looking like?¡± asked Maya. ¡°More training? More sparring?¡± ¡°The students have been taken down the mountain,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It has been decided that I would train the two of you in the ways of civic responsibility while they practice their movement.¡± ¡°I want to practice movement,¡± said Perry. ¡°We missed lunch,¡± said Maya. ¡°Lunch is late today, upon the return of the others, well after the arcshadow.¡± She looked at Perry. ¡°After the sparring match today, it has become apparent that there are wide gaps in your knowledge which cannot be filled in the usual ways,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The masters will meet to discuss forcible transition, but in the meantime, there are certain rules which must be set forth in achingly plain terms.¡± ¡°This had better not be like a corpo meeting,¡± said Maya. Perry looked at her. She smiled at him. She had said she¡¯d been to seven worlds, and he had made an informal list, trying to map them against what he knew. She was being cagey, probably because she didn¡¯t trust him, but they were bridging the gap. ¡°You should, by rights, be initiates,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You would spend months being shown the work of the temple, making meals, hauling water, mending clothes, speaking only when spoken to, watching the students go about their business, and then, eventually, you would be evaluated by someone of the second sphere. We would converse about what we had seen, and then you would be told to leave and never return, or you would join us as a proper student, a disciple.¡± ¡°And we didn¡¯t do our unpaid internship,¡± said Maya. ¡°It would be best for you to speak plainly,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It will help to prevent misunderstandings between us.¡± ¡°An initiate puts in work,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re paying in, basically, in the hopes that they get a coveted role as a student. But there are limited slots, and everyone involved knows that, so if someone isn¡¯t the right fit or ¡­ whatever, then they¡¯ve just toiled away for basically nothing.¡± ¡°It¡¯s exploitative,¡± said Maya. ¡°Labor is virtuous duty,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She held up a hand to forestall further conversation on the matter. ¡°Of the two of you, Perry is more suited to the temple. On the first day we met, he demonstrated that he did not shirk duty. Yet it is more than duty that finds a person a place in Moon Gate. The world consists of many spheres, including those beyond the grand ones that separate us. In the writing of Li Xuezhong, he cites the family as the smallest of these binding obligations. This place is another of them, a fabric of people and their place within the world.¡± ¡°So ¡­ three estates sort of thing?¡± asked Perry. He was given blank looks. ¡°It¡¯s the Ancien R¨¦gime, the division of people into nobility, clergy, and peasants. You¡¯re saying that there are spheres, and then there are things that aren¡¯t spheres but are also important. Family, workplaces, monastic orders, clubs, organizations, civic stuff.¡± ¡°It is greater than that,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is all encompassing. These shapes are fractal, internal, expansive, the largest and the smallest, the start and the end of all things.¡± ¡°Ecosystems,¡± said Perry. ¡°Political systems. Social networks, ecological systems, biological systems, economic systems. The interconnectedness of all things, and the role of the individual within intersectional systems. Water feeds the roots of the tree, the animals hide in its shade, it soaks up light from the sun ¡­ it¡¯s this one concept, everywhere.¡± ¡°The wolf knows much,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She had a faint smile on her face. ¡°Yeah, I know stuff too,¡± said Maya. ¡°But all you¡¯re saying is that if we want to be here, whether here is this temple, this sect, this kingdom, or this world, we need to follow the rules.¡± ¡°You need to know your place within the metaphorical spheres,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Perry understood, more or less. It was a wiggly way of looking at things, and he thought that it probably broke down the more you thought about it. ¡°Or we¡¯ll get beaten up,¡± said Maya. ¡°Punishment comes in many forms,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°In this case, punishment was direct. Perry did not honor the teachings of the sect, and Zhang Lingxiu did not act with the grace and composure expected of the second sphere. His actions were tainted with pride and anger.¡± ¡°So,¡± said Perry. ¡°In one case, this was Lingxiu taking it upon himself to correct what he saw as bad behavior. But in the other case, I was transformed against my will, and the injury that Lingxiu received had no intent behind it.¡± When he was a wolf, he didn¡¯t really think like that. Maya snorted. ¡°The universe manifested it. If you behave badly, either someone will see and put you in your place, or you¡¯ll just suffer misfortune, cosmically.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Luo Yanhua. ¡°The impudent girl speaks as though this is ridiculous, though I do not know why.¡± She didn¡¯t seem offended by the impudence. ¡°I am perfectly willing to accept that¡¯s how it works here,¡± said Maya. ¡°I will zip my lip from here on out.¡± She mimed locking her mouth with a key, then mimed throwing the key away. The throw was as though she was chucking a basketball toward the net, and she looked at the air, waiting to see whether her imaginary shot would make it, then pumped her fist when it landed in the imaginary basket. ¡°I¡¯m just confused about what¡¯s metaphorical, literal, enacted through the hand of the heavens ¡­ there are superstitions in my world about life being as you describe,¡± said Perry. ¡°But we believe them to be only that. It seems to us that life is manifestly unfair, that evil deeds go unpunished.¡± ¡°That¡¯s why we¡¯re thresholders,¡± said Maya. ¡°We get to punish evil deeds.¡± ¡°You are not to do that here,¡± said Luo Yanhua with a sage nod. ¡°Alright, well hear me out ¡ª¡± began Maya. ¡°We understand,¡± said Perry, holding up a hand. At least Maya seemed to be enjoying herself. ¡°But in terms of how it all works ¡­ that man I fought, from the Grouse Kingdom, he was somehow stained by what happened there. That made him easier to fight. But it was ¡­¡± He thought about the phrasing, and for a moment just stood there with his mouth half-open, thinking of how he could get at the question he wanted. ¡°If we measured his speed, would we find it slower after his bout of banditry?¡± Luo Yanhua considered this. ¡°A slower swing, a duller sword, less awareness of his surroundings. But why should you measure?¡± ¡°So we would know,¡± said Perry. ¡°So we could have some metric to judge these things by.¡± ¡°And you would make your decisions based on these metrics?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Absolutely, if the alternative is that I have no idea whether I¡¯m going to get stronger or weaker.¡± ¡°The man you fought was weakened not only by his own bad character,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She folded her delicate fingers in front of her. ¡°He was weakened by the kingdom itself, to which he was tethered.¡± ¡°Tethered,¡± said Perry. ¡°Which is ¡­ what, exactly?¡± ¡°These ¡ª estates, you called them?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think there are lots of similar concepts though.¡± ¡°We are a part of many places,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°For those of the first sphere, there is an unawareness to their time and place, to their connections. To those of the second sphere, it is a decision, made with deliberation, and the consequences of those places we choose to be a part of can be considerable.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Meaning this ¡®tethering¡¯ gains you power?¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You entwine your fate with that of what you have tethered.¡± ¡°Wait,¡± said Maya. ¡°So when Perry was giving insult to Moon Gate Silver Fish Temple, he wasn¡¯t just insulting the people who live and work here, the martial scholars, he was depriving them of power?¡± ¡°In some sense, yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua, nodding. ¡°It is difficult to say how much an unanswered slight might impact the temple or the sect. A single time, especially when it was done in error, through no ill intent, does perhaps not invite the downfall of our reputation. Yet if such lenience becomes a habit, erosion is sure to follow.¡± Maya gave Perry a look, as if to say ¡®this is nuts¡¯. He didn¡¯t think that it was particularly nuts, just kind of stupid. It made more sense to him that they would take honor seriously if there were some actual stakes involved with it. Seraphinus had been all about honor in all kinds of ways, even when it seemed to go directly against the best interests of everyone involved. He could almost respect beating down a know-nothing initiate if it meant preserving the literal strength of the temple. Almost. Yet if he tried to take the principle to its logical conclusions, he felt more and more confused about how the world actually worked. The implication was that for the first sphere, these concepts were essentially immaterial. But for the second sphere, allegiance, honor, loyalty, and civic virtue bled into the material. ¡°Going back to the man from the Grouse Kingdom,¡± said Perry. ¡°He was ¡­ tethered to it?¡± ¡°Almost certainly, yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°And when it fell, he couldn¡¯t untether?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Transient connection has little weight,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Can¡¯t you just say ¡®no, he couldn¡¯t¡¯?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I mean, would that be so hard?¡± Privately, Perry agreed. ¡°It is a complicated thing, what we of the second sphere do,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is not the way of the second sphere to teach those of the first sphere, lest they think they know our business.¡± ¡°But the plan is for us to become second sphere, right?¡± asked Maya. ¡°So we¡¯re going to need to know this sooner than later. And no one wants us tethered to the wrong thing, however the fuck that works.¡± ¡°You are not of this kingdom,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You would find it difficult to tether to this land, or the Great Arc, given you are outsiders. But yes, if this is the path before you, you must think of what will be demanded from you, and what you have to offer. If you stay with Moon Gate as inner disciples, you will need to mold yourself to this place.¡± Perry didn¡¯t like the sound of this. ¡°Can we talk about the elephant in the room?¡± asked Maya. ¡°You tricked us.¡± ¡°Tricked you?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. There was no guilt nor surprise nor other emotion in her voice. She¡¯d have made a good lawyer, or a good master criminal. ¡°Yeah, you offered food, shelter, clothes, invited us to come train with you, and really it was a way of tethering us to you, getting us on the inside where you could, just as an example, beat the stuffing out of my henchman.¡± Maya had a vicious smile sometimes. ¡°Sidekick, not henchman, remember,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah, I know, but henchman sounds better,¡± said Maya. ¡°You have a henching quality about you.¡± ¡°We have been forthright in wanting you here to ensure that your personal matters do not spill out into the Seven Rivers Kingdom,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You have been forthright in your desire to transition to the second sphere. I can see your perspective and how you might see trickery, but I am telling you those details you were unaware of.¡± ¡°You hold power over students though,¡± said Perry. ¡°Which we now are. And the separation between spheres ¡­ it matters less than it did. Anything that we do reflects on the temple now, which means that you can take issue with it in ways that you couldn¡¯t before, and that includes aggression.¡± ¡°I would be careful in your accusations,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I¡¯m not making any accusations,¡± said Perry, holding up a hand. ¡°Only trying to understand.¡± Maya grunted. ¡°The other students will be back from their hike soon,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I hope that this conversation has been instructive to you.¡± ¡°It has, thank you,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll do our best to find our place here, and reward your hospitality.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Maya. ¡°We don¡¯t want to bite the hand that feeds us.¡± Perry winced, but Luo Yanhua showed no reaction to the joke, instead sweeping off to go elsewhere and do whatever it was the second sphere people did while everyone else was training. The other students came up the mountain path, each of them carrying two large jugs of water hanging from a wooden pole that rested on their shoulders. They filed wordlessly into the bathhouse, and the question of where the water had come from was answered. It was a hellish amount of labor to have a warm bath every day, and Perry hadn¡¯t appreciated it in the slightest. ¡°She could have at least had the good grace to look smug about it,¡± said Maya. ¡°It was a trap, a way of getting us under their thumb.¡± ¡°You think the whole thing was planned?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I think even the beating was planned, a way of putting us in our place,¡± said Maya. ¡°Only you weren¡¯t supposed to turn into a wolf and bite that guy¡¯s hand off.¡± ¡°I think it¡¯s just people, acting how they act,¡± said Perry. ¡°I doubt they were discussing abuse of the celestial mechanics in private. That seems like it would go against their principles.¡± Maya was giving him a look. ¡°Get ready for some more hazing, that¡¯s all I have to say.¡± She steeled herself. ¡°And we need to make plans for an exit strategy.¡± ¡°Lower your voice,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m assuming that superb senses are part of the package.¡± ¡°Later then,¡± Maya nodded. ¡°Let¡¯s just get through the day.¡± Lunch was a brief affair, food served in bowls, just rice with pickled vegetables and a few fresh ones. There was a single sliver of meat, and Perry watched the other students eat. They savored the meat, having it separate from the rest, or taking small bites of it to go with the rice. It was chicken, something pounded and then marinated, and he tried to follow along with what everyone else was doing. He was distracted though, as unbelievably, Lingxiu had come out of the temple and was eating lunch with them. He was missing half his hand, but it didn¡¯t look nearly as bad as it should have. The stump was angry and red, but scabbed over. It looked like an injury that had happened a week ago, not a few hours. His face was calm and impassive, though he was using chopsticks with his off-hand, and didn¡¯t show quite the same grace. Perry hoped that the man wouldn¡¯t be a problem anymore, but he had a strong suspicion that this was only the beginning. Chapter 33 - Good News, Bad News Three days came and went. There were no more altercations to speak of, and the days were largely filled with instruction. The Silver Fish temple was big on silence, and took gender segregation fairly seriously, which meant that there were only limited times when Perry could speak privately with Maya. Even if they had all the time in the world, she didn¡¯t seem like she was willing to give up too much about herself or the worlds she¡¯d been to. Maya hadn¡¯t wanted to leave the nanostuff with Perry overnight, which slowed the dialogue between their two armor systems considerably. After the second day, he had more or less given up hope that they would get anything fruitful out of it. On the third night, Maya had left the nanostuff with him, mostly as a last-ditch effort to get something working. ¡°I have achieved conversation, of a sort,¡± said Marchand on the morning of the fourth day. ¡°Wait, really?¡± asked Perry. He was still taking the armor off during the sitrep. ¡°That¡¯s great!¡± ¡°I would hold your proverbial horses, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°While I have passed the IFF check of the ¡®nanostuff¡¯,¡± his voice dripped with disdain for the term, ¡°it does not appear that being friendly to the native AI will allow me much in the way of reprogramming or a change in mission goals. While it has allowed some analysis of pseudocode, it has not given me access to any actual code, and it does appear that efforts have been made to ensure that self-replication is not just locked off, but programmatically impossible.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s not what I wanted to hear.¡± ¡°Would you like me to lie to you, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°No,¡± said Perry, sighing. ¡°Any good news?¡± ¡°It does appear that the repair functions of the nanostuff could be used to fix some of the damage that I¡¯ve sustained,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Everything beyond the damaged microprocessors, in fact.¡± Perry let out a sigh of relief. ¡°Yes, finally.¡± ¡°Unfortunately, there are some costs associated with such an endeavor,¡± Marchand continued. ¡°Ugh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alright, lay it on me.¡± ¡°The nanostuff cannot self-replicate, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Yet the individual nanites are not impervious to destruction. Every operation that they undertake results in losses through attrition, as does the passage of time itself. The total mass of the nanostuff is approximately 4,431 grams. A full repair to all parts of me they are capable of fixing would cost on the order of a tenth of that mass.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s ¡­ I mean, that¡¯s huge, that¡¯s a serious problem.¡± ¡°Yes, quite sir, that¡¯s why I framed it as bad news,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Alright, get it done,¡± said Perry. ¡°It would require direct authorization from Miss Singh, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Five grams of the nanostuff are inside her brain, capable of reading many of her thoughts. Such an expenditure would not be allowed without her.¡± Perry shivered. ¡°Nanostuff in the brain, reading your thoughts ¡­ yikes.¡± He imagined that it had a story behind it, if she knew about it. The nanostuff had been given to her as something like a bodyguard. ¡°But why¡¯s it so costly to repair the suit? She fixes her clothes with it.¡± ¡°Cotton is a different material from plastic, metal, and glass,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Yes, obviously,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m just trying to get a report from you in order to have a discussion about it with Maya. She¡¯s been using the nanostuff for repair, defense, offense, all kinds of things, and she¡¯s not going to want to part with it.¡± ¡°On the contrary sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She parts with it every time she uses it, particularly when it coats her skin. I have been given logs from the nanites and there has been significant degradation of their mass over time.¡± ¡°She¡¯s just ¡­ using it up for fixing clothes?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Well, anyway, explain it to me like I flirted with going into physics or engineering. I had a college course or two under my belt five years ago,¡± said Perry. ¡°The primary material used in my construction was CoCrMo alloy with additional titanium and vanadium,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Anything involving that material is essentially impossible to work with, sir, given the nanites have relatively limited energy available to them. I am still reviewing the data from our ¡®conversation¡¯, sir, but it appears that the nanites are made from a combination of materials which are far, far weaker: catoms and MOFs. Would you like an explanation of those terms?¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°So the gaping hole in the chest, that¡¯s just not going to be fixed?¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid not, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Other materials are easier to manipulate, but still require significant energy which the nanites can only provide by way of their death.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not great. Can you have them do the repairs that they can do without having to use up more of the mass?¡± ¡°I have already done so, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry took another look at the armor. It didn¡¯t seem any better. But when he looked closer at the damaged arm, the interior of it seemed like something was different. It still wasn¡¯t airtight, and it was a definite weak spot, but maybe it would serve its purpose. ¡°Two cameras have been fully repaired, and some of our power woes have been fixed, though the microfusion reactor is still in need of servicing once we return from the battlefield,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Additionally, I was able to reconnect certain lines of communication to the distributed network, restoring some of my computation.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was thinking that you were sounding better.¡± ¡°Quite, sir,¡± said March. ¡°I believe myself to be operating at roughly eighty percent of offline capacity at the moment.¡± ¡°But you¡¯re saying that there¡¯s no way for us to hold up our end of the bargain?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No way for you to unlock some secret self-replication protocols?¡± ¡°I shall endeavor to find a solution, sir, but I do not believe that success is on the horizon,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have only convinced the nanites that we are friendly. They seem to have been programmed with the understanding that they would interface with foreign computer systems. I would not say that I have ¡®hacked¡¯ all that much, sir.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. He allowed himself a sigh. ¡°You know, I¡¯m getting tired of sleeping in you.¡± He stretched out. The meager temple breakfast was ahead of him. He¡¯d found himself hungry most days, and was trying to deal with it, because things were bad enough without him asking for seconds. The fact that he was almost a foot taller than Maya and got the same amount of food was like a popcorn kernel stuck in his teeth, an annoyance that got more annoying the longer it went on. ¡°I¡¯m off to get food, thank you for the good news.¡± ¡°It was mostly bad news, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Any repairs at all are good news,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even if we¡¯re going to need to wait for a better world to get you ship-shape.¡± Breakfast was tea, a single egg, and flavorless biscuits. Perry had been impressed by the food overall, maybe just in comparison to what was on offer in Teaguewater, he only wished that there were more of it, and more meat. He¡¯d have killed for a continental breakfast, if only to gorge on some bacon and sausage. He ate the egg slowly, trying to let the taste linger on his tongue, but when he was finished he thought he could have eaten another dozen of them. They were soft-boiled and marinated in something sweet and salty, giving them a tan exterior. Perry fumbled his way through the morning exercises, trying to keep his feet in the right place, the angle of his elbow correct enough that no one said anything. He felt like he was still making a poor show of it, but the other students, the ¡®real¡¯ students, had been at it for months and sometimes years. He tried not to feel too bad about his awkward incompetence. The exercises led into sparring, and Perry felt a bit of relief when he was paired with Maya. There had been no repeat of that first day. He¡¯d been careful when training with the other students, trying his best to use the techniques and styles he¡¯d been taught, silent and stoic about every hit he took and every victory he¡¯d won. They¡¯d all been victories, of course. He was too strong, too fast, and had every advantage over these men and women aside from training. The training hadn¡¯t been enough to close the gap. ¡°First time fighting each other since the big battle,¡± said Maya. ¡°You without your suit, me without my armor.¡± She cocked her head to the side. ¡°Wanna make it interesting?¡± ¡°We only use the Moon Gate techniques,¡± said Perry. ¡°No other powers.¡± ¡°Duh,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯ve been good.¡± ¡°Interesting how?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Bet on the outcome, best two of three,¡± said Maya. Some of the other students spoke during sparring, rather than remaining totally silent, but he didn¡¯t imagine their conversations were anything like this. The alienation from the other students was difficult, the language barrier impossible to get through. Perry knew only a handful of words, because no one was trying to teach him, and when he tried to use those words, it often ended in confusion, or in someone repeating the word back to him to correct his pronunciation. That had never helped. ¡°Stop focusing so much on them,¡± said Maya. ¡°They¡¯ll never like you, and they don¡¯t matter.¡± ¡°Rude,¡± said Perry. ¡°The longest I¡¯ve ever been in a world was six months,¡± said Maya. ¡°Long enough to care about the people, not long enough that it was a gaping wound in my heart.¡± She got into a fighting stance, a passable impression of the one that they¡¯d been learning, though Perry could instantly tell that it wasn¡¯t up to snuff compared to the other students. He couldn¡¯t have said what was wrong, exactly, but he knew from looking at it that it wasn¡¯t what they¡¯d been shown. ¡°Maybe we end up caring about these people in the long run, however many weeks it takes for the other guy to show up. I don¡¯t know. But in the end, we go off to other worlds, and we leave this one behind.¡± Perry followed her lead and got ready to fight. It was the Silver Fish Stance, a foundational technique of Moon Gate, so low level that it was barely even a technique. Supposedly it was reminiscent of the undulating movements of a silver fish swimming through water, but Perry wasn¡¯t quite buying that. It seemed more similar to Tai Chi to him, though his knowledge of martial arts was limited to watching MMA matches a few times with friends. He¡¯d looked it up on Gratbook, obviously, but the history of martial arts was different. There was no judo, Brazilian jiu jitsu, Krav Maga, and those were just the ones that Perry could actually remember from his world. Gratbook was also pretty light on the practical aspects of any of them. Maya went for a strike first, and Perry brought his arm up in defense, as they¡¯d been shown. She smacked him anyway, not pulling back, and he winced with pain. ¡°You hit hard,¡± said Perry. ¡°Duh,¡± said Maya. ¡°You already knew that.¡± ¡°No powers though?¡± he asked. ¡°There are some powers that just become who you are,¡± she shrugged. ¡°Things I can¡¯t exactly turn off. Same goes for you, wolf-boy.¡± She came at him again, this time with a kick that was meant to flow from the shifting of the stance, a basic attack that looked natural when the master did it but awkward for everyone else. Maya¡¯s wasn¡¯t up to par, and Perry blocked with his leg, again as they¡¯d been shown. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s the armor that¡¯s been holding you back,¡± said Maya. ¡°I hear it¡¯s a coward¡¯s tool.¡± Perry went on the attack, trying the Lunar Wave, a punch that was supposed to be preceded by an upward motion of the fist before striking out. It went against Perry¡¯s instincts, and felt like it worked against the mechanics of the arm, but he¡¯d seen how people of the second sphere fought, and was willing to put his full effort into these weird techniques if it meant that he could have a fraction of their power. Maya tried to do the block they¡¯d been shown, but she didn¡¯t quite meet him, and he ended up punching her in the tit. ¡°Ah,¡± she said, wincing. ¡°Well, you just made a mistake, because now it¡¯s serious.¡± ¡°It was supposed to be serious this entire time,¡± said Perry. He worried that they had been talking too much, not following up successful strikes, but the other students sparred like this sometimes, trading hits, never allowing the other person a chance, exactly, but not fighting with the battle fever of an actual life-or-death situation. ¡°No bet then?¡± asked Maya. ¡°No bet,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you want something from me, you¡¯ll have to ask, like a normal person.¡± He¡¯d been cautious, watching what the other students were doing, trying to follow their leads, keeping his head down. He had four fingers and a thumb somewhere in his guts, and that was more than enough excitement for him until they found the other thresholder. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Maya punched him when he was glancing. She was doing a recognizable Shattered Moonlight, a punch that wasn¡¯t quite a punch, and it smarted, though that was more because she was strong than because she¡¯d done it right. When Perry stumbled back, she came at him with a kick, swinging her leg high for Heavenly Silence Kick, but he was so much taller than her that it struck against his chest rather than his head. He was tempted to grapple her, to force her to the ground where he could beat on her, but that wasn¡¯t how things were done at Moon Gate, at least not so far as Perry had seen. Their style included throws but no grappling, nothing done down on the flagstones, and no attacks against opponents who were down. Even when the sparring was more serious, they let each other get up. Kicking someone when they were down seemed like it was an invaluable technique to Perry, something that should be practiced, but maybe civic karma prohibited it, or this was just more honor stuff. If someone was trying to kill Perry, he would have absolutely no compunctions about stomping on their head as soon as they were downed. Ideally though, he¡¯d have his sword, and end them that way. Conversely, it would have been nice to learn some things about how to survive if he¡¯d been downed, but if they taught that at Moon Gate, they hadn¡¯t gotten to that part of the curriculum yet. Maya was playing by the rules, and waited for him to get to his feet. ¡°You know, I¡¯m thinking that we¡¯re kind of screwed when the other guy shows up,¡± said Maya. ¡°We need strategies, leverage, and for you to not be so shit.¡± ¡°I was distracted,¡± said Perry. ¡°Plus two of my three powers aren¡¯t with me right now, and the third isn¡¯t fit for primetime if there are innocents around.¡± ¡°Innocents,¡± said Maya with a roll of her eyes. ¡°Yeah, innocents,¡± said Perry. ¡°Soldiers in training,¡± said Maya. ¡°Guys who would do the same thing that Lingxiu did without a second thought.¡± ¡°I wish we could talk to them,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can,¡± said Maya. ¡°Just transition to second sphere, learn how to bend language to your will, and that¡¯s all it takes.¡± She kicked at him, almost lazily, and Perry unleashed the tension that had been building in him as they circled each other. His own kick was faster, more decisive, and with his weight behind it, the Silver Fish. His bare foot landed before hers, hitting her inner thigh, which knocked her down on her ass. She scowled at him and popped back up to her feet. ¡°You said it was serious,¡± said Perry, which was as close to an apology as he was going to offer. She didn¡¯t reply, and instead tried the Wavering Willow, but the mechanics of it were all wrong, and it landed against his left pec with all the force of a weak slap. When she moved back to get out of his reach, he tried the same move back on her, to much greater success. His hand stung, but she went backward, ending up in a heap on the ground, clutching her chest. When she got to her feet, there was murder in her eyes, the last trace of goodwill and banter seeming to have evaporated. Perry halfway expected that she would use her powers, do something rash like blast him with light or summon her needle sword. From what she¡¯d said, it was just a very specific form of telekinesis, not the semi-intelligent movement like his sword could do, but she kept it in a place where it could be drawn in a hurry, even when practicing ¡®without¡¯ their equipment. He knew precious little about her powers. Instead of the outburst he¡¯d feared, she put her anger and frustration into the sparring, channeling her power into the attacks they¡¯d been shown, all attention that had been elsewhere now focused on attack and defense. Perry held her as best he could, and they had a wordless fight for what felt like an eternity. It was a better form of sparring than he¡¯d experienced before, a rush of stances and moves, connecting motions, that was more useful than the awkward sparring he¡¯d done against the other students. She matched him in terms of power, easily, in spite of the difference in size, and she was faster than him, if only just. Against another thresholder, there might be all kinds of disadvantages he would face, and he tried to frame it in those terms, as though he wasn¡¯t just trying in this particular style in order to fit in, but to gain something for future battles, real battles. Li Xinyue came over to them and complimented them, repeating the compliment for the benefit of the students, along with some commentary that went untranslated. Perry was grateful for that. It was the first time anyone had given him words of encouragement. When noon came, Perry retreated to his room after having grabbed a bowl of food from the dining room. It was a compromise, as he needed to be inside for the arcshadow. To Perry¡¯s surprise, Luo Yanhua was waiting for him in his room. That set him on edge, but March was still there, still seemingly unharmed. The AI had orders to be silent unless speaking directly to either Maya or Perry, and had strict orders to follow only those requests or commands that came from Perry. ¡°I need to get into the armor,¡± said Perry. ¡°Does that require your full attention?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°But if it¡¯s serious, then you might want to pick another time. I¡¯ll be distracted.¡± ¡°I have only some questions,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Matters of technique.¡± ¡°Go ahead,¡± said Perry. He set his bowl aside and began putting on the armor, something that he was getting plenty of practice with. ¡°Your food will grow cold,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I think that¡¯s just how lunches will be for me,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have to have the armor on during the arcshadow, and if that¡¯s lunchtime, I can¡¯t be eating.¡± It was possible to eat in the suit, but it required specially prepared liquid meals that had come in disposable pouches. Those were long, long gone. ¡°I¡¯ll hope for later lunches, I guess.¡± ¡°You would change during the arcshadow, without that armor?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°I don¡¯t actually know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know whether any of these three moons is full enough to trigger a transformation. But since there¡¯s a risk, I have to be in the armor, which takes ten minutes to put on and another five to take off. I asked Shan Yin, and he said there¡¯s no cellar, no place that can guarantee that I don¡¯t have moonlight.¡± He was getting the boots on as he said this. ¡°We could test it,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I don¡¯t want to maim anyone else,¡± said Perry. ¡°I especially don¡¯t want to injure one of the other students. They wouldn¡¯t be able to stand a chance against me.¡± ¡°I am not the only one curious about your nature,¡± Luo Yanhua replied as Perry snapped the greaves into place. ¡°Alone, I fear that your other form would be strong enough to injure me, especially if you are immune to moonlight, or primary form of offense. Together, I believe we could hold you back.¡± ¡°Or someone could get hurt,¡± said Perry with a sigh. ¡°You travel worlds, yes?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°I do,¡± Perry said. It felt like a trap. ¡°You will need to know what makes you transform,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°If you are a man who becomes a wolf rather than a wolf who has become a man, you will need to harness the beast within you, hold his anger in check.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Now?¡± ¡°Tomorrow,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Additionally, I would like to speak with you further, in confidence, during the quiet hours.¡± Perry didn¡¯t like that at all. ¡°I don¡¯t want to jeopardize my standing by doing something untoward. I was told ¡ª by you ¡ª that total silence was expected.¡± ¡°I have my own room,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There is a door, which locks, and we will keep our voices low. It is permissible, but only because I have built goodwill.¡± ¡°And ¡­ why?¡± asked Perry. He had put on the chestpiece, the arms, and only had the helmet left. ¡°Why not just discuss whatever needs to be discussed now?¡± ¡°Your position here is delicate,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°People will know that I invited you to my room during the quiet hours. It will be taken as a sign of my faith and trust in you, and the desire to have you settle in with the ways and means of this temple.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Politics.¡± ¡°Not as such,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But if that helps you to understand, all the better, so long as your understanding is not tainted by the poor comparison.¡± Perry nodded, though he didn¡¯t really follow. She had a way of speaking that still grated on him, but she was their primary point of contact, and the other teachers hadn¡¯t really engaged him in conversation. He wasn¡¯t even sure that she was a teacher, given that she hadn¡¯t led any of the training and was an outer disciple rather than an inner disciple, a distinction that hadn¡¯t been explained to him in plain terms. He was going to ask, but Luo Yanhua slipped from the room, and Perry was left to his own devices ¡ª or device, rather, as he needed to finish getting the armor on. There wasn¡¯t much to do while the arcshadow passed. Marchand was an incomparable piece of software with all kinds of functions, and had been loaded up for the long haul through multiple worlds by a woman that Perry had really gotten along with ¡­ but it was a static collection. After so many months, he felt like he was looking at the home screen of Netflix, scrolling through a bunch of things that he¡¯d either watched or decided not to watch, spending more time on the picking than the watching. And it was all so strange, of course, even those programs and movies that were meant to be timeless. There were a hundred references that he didn¡¯t get, things he¡¯d have to pause and ask March about. Some of them were pop culture, but many were deep culture, things that Perry was sure that he¡¯d never have given a second thought to if he¡¯d lived in Richter¡¯s world. So instead of looking through the catalog again, Perry spent the arcshadow doing his feeble attempts at spying. They were feeble only in the sense that they had so far not borne fruit. Marchand had plenty of microphones, and Richter¡¯s specialty had been in audio, which meant that the temple was under near-constant surveillance. Microphones were also not, by their nature, high power devices, so Perry had instructed March to capture all audio, packing it away into the vast hard drives ¡ª audio was not, by its nature, very difficult to store, especially after March had processed it. The problem was that all this information was mundane and useless, not to mention that it was in the wrong language. The people of Silver Fish Temple didn¡¯t speak all that often, but they did have private conversations, and March had been recording them all, mostly in the hopes that with a large enough corpus it would be possible to brute force translation. Marchand claimed to be not quite powerful enough to do that, and requested network access in order to get more computing power, but Perry was holding out hope that he could cajole the AI into doing it somehow, or at least building up a dictionary of terms, even if full, accurate translation was out of reach. Marchand had recorded every conversation that Maya had with the second sphere people. He¡¯d done this without being asked, and when Perry had realized it had happened, he felt a bit bad about it. He had chosen not to listen in, though the temptation was there, just in case Maya was planning to stab him in the back and stupid enough to discuss that with people they¡¯d only just met. If this world ran on cosmic karma, it was possible that spying would have a penalty, and that was enough for him to think better of it. Besides, he didn¡¯t think that he was cut out for spy games, not when he¡¯d have to lie to his supposed ally¡¯s face. There were little dramas within the temple, and Marchand was keeping Perry informed of them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were a number of liaisons between the male and female students, usually carried out after the quiet time, when there was a small bit of freedom in the schedule. There weren¡¯t that many places to go on top of their rock, and fewer still that offered privacy, but there were at least three couples regularly met, usually with soft voices and chaste kisses. Perry hadn¡¯t prodded further than that. Lingxiu was one to watch, in part because he¡¯d become an instant enemy. Perry did listen to those conversations, but without knowing the language, he could hear only the overtones. Often Lingxiu would speak with anger, only for the other person in the conversation to speak calmly and cool him down. That this happened many times was a sign that Lingxiu wasn¡¯t getting over it, which Perry thought was pretty fair. Mostly, Perry was glad that chomping down on some fingers wasn¡¯t being held against him by anyone else, but it seemed as though that was because Lingxiu was seen as having stepped out of line. Maya was still pissed off with him after lunch, giving him the cold shoulder. That energy had been good when they were sparring, but it was less good while they were looking at the moons and meditating. She kept giving him dirty glances when they were supposed to be feeling the energy of the moonlight upon their skin. While Perry didn¡¯t feel like he was getting a lot out of any of it, it certainly didn¡¯t help that Maya seemed to take the sparring personally. Maybe it was because they were more or less evenly matched. During the quiet hours, Perry left the temple. It was one of the few times that was allowed. He had his sword in hand, but left the armor behind, mostly because he¡¯d seen too much of it recently. He did need to test it out and make sure that March¡¯s fixes had been good ones, but freedom from the temple was more important. As for protection, his plan was to run away from anyone that looked at him funny. He flew through the air, which he hadn¡¯t done all that often sans armor. Whatever else there was to say about the Great Arc, the views were incomparable, and the natural splendor of the Green Snake Valley made him yearn to explore it. The giant rocks that stuck up from the wide valley were well-regarded by its people, and each of them did have either a temple like the Silver Fish Temple or at least a holy site that people would make pilgrimages to. Perry stayed well away from those, given that they were the most likely places for the second sphere people to show up. The valley was home to two different sects, each of which operated under the authority of the kingdom, their fates tied with it. Moon Gate held the downriver portion, a larger area that led to an inland sea, while Worm Gate largely held the northern end of the valley. Maya thought it likely that the other thresholder would show up there, and Perry agreed. That would instantly put them on an oppositional footing, and Maya seemed to agree that thresholders often showed up on opposite sides of ongoing conflicts. Perry thought he had the lay of the land pretty well, though he¡¯d need to go out with Marchand some time and get a proper map, or possibly fly up the drone if that wouldn¡¯t call too much attention to himself or somehow violate the rules of the temple. Green Snake Valley was long and winding, cultivated in many places by small farming communities but otherwise wild, bamboo and gnarled trees. It was good to recenter himself. The temple life was already taking a toll on him. When Perry returned to his room, Maya was waiting for him, a serious look on her face. ¡°We need to talk,¡± she said. She went into his room without another word. Maya sat down on the bed in Perry¡¯s room and looked up at him with a frown. ¡°Sorry for being a jerk about sparring.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah, no problem. I hadn¡¯t expected an apology.¡± ¡°That¡¯s really not the way to approach an apology,¡± said Maya. ¡°To say ¡®oh, hey, you¡¯re apologizing? You?¡¯¡± ¡°I mean, I didn¡¯t think it was anything to apologize over,¡± said Perry. ¡°You get punched in the face, you get fired up about it, it¡¯s no big deal. Thanks anyway though.¡± ¡°I¡¯m new to the ally thing,¡± said Maya. ¡°Actually, just really new to the ¡®fighting an ally¡¯ thing. Plus this whole place is making me feel impotent.¡± ¡°Second sphere blues?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We¡¯re thresholders,¡± said Maya. ¡°Putting people in their place is kind of our whole thing. There are very clearly people who are wildly out of line, and we are very clearly the ones meant to stop them. It¡¯s clear cut. But here, we¡¯re under the thumb of people we can¡¯t hope to beat, and they¡¯re terrible more often than not. The unpaid labor just for the hope of being a student here, the casual beatings, the superiority, it¡¯s ¡ª not something that we can do anything about, at least not yet.¡± ¡°It grates,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah, damn right, it grates,¡± said Maya. ¡°And sparring was ¡­ I don¡¯t know, at least there I could punch someone and lay them out, and know that I was strong and powerful. So being on even footing with you didn¡¯t feel great, I guess.¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I get it.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± said Maya. She popped up off his bed. ¡°And I¡¯ve decided that I¡¯m going to tell you about the other worlds. Mastermind to henchman. A monologue that will probably take us a couple days given how little time we¡¯ve got to ourselves. But dinner is coming up, so I guess this is what you get.¡± ¡°I might have a solution for after lights out,¡± said Perry. He went over to Marchand and removed the earpiece, then handed it over to Maya. ¡°It¡¯s for communication. No need to press it or anything, March handles everything, just talk to him if you need to.¡± Maya stared at the earpiece. ¡°You had this the whole time? We could have been talking? I could have had access to your machine?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He pointed at it. ¡°But that earpiece is irreplaceable without a civilization that has some advanced plastics and microchips, along with a bunch of other things I don¡¯t know about, so I¡¯m very careful with it.¡± ¡°Fair,¡± said Maya, grudgingly. ¡°Then tonight is the night.¡± She grinned at him. ¡°Get ready for a story.¡± He was going to listen intently, and try to find the time for his big ask. Chapter 34 - The Seven Worlds of Maya Singh, pt 1 My first world, my home world, I¡¯m not going to tell you about. It¡¯s painfully boring, and kind of personal, so we¡¯re skipping that one, thanks. I had a career there, the kind of job that people say ¡®oh, that¡¯s a good job, you¡¯ve done well for yourself¡¯, but not the kind of job that parents brag about to the other churchgoers. I had a life there, a boyfriend of four years who didn¡¯t think of himself as the marrying type, a cat who hated me, and an apartment with blessedly thick walls, earthquake proof. I was close to the metro, which was nice. I didn¡¯t go through the portal right away. It took me about forty-five minutes. It had appeared inside my apartment, scaring the crap out of me, but I sort of knew what it was, not in the specifics, but at least in the general sense. Since it was staying open, I took my time, and wrote some notes to people in case I wasn¡¯t coming back. I packed for a long trip with my hard-shell rolling suitcase and a backpack, food and water stuffed inside. I¡¯d felt kind of ¡®meh¡¯ about my life. I spent a lot of time at work, then a lot of time decompressing from work, and I was happy enough, but there had been some stuff going on that was making me think about who I was and where I belonged in the world. Turns out, I didn¡¯t belong in the world at all. The first world I arrived in was a desert world. I actually saw a map of it two months in, and it turned out that it wasn¡¯t only desert, but by that point I¡¯d been thinking of it as desert as far as the eye could see for so long that hearing about forests and mountains and tropics somewhere else didn¡¯t seem real. The first shock was that everyone looked like me. They weren¡¯t clones or anything, but the place I came from, I wasn¡¯t in the majority, not by a long, long shot. I could blend in sometimes, pass, but people would sometimes just straight up tell me that I had an unusual look to me. This world, it was like we all came from the same nation, and I guess I have to explain that I¡¯ve got mixed parentage, mom from one part of the world, dad from the other. People complimented me on it sometimes, which I always thought was a little gross. This desert world though, I blended in really, really well, better than I did in my own world, except for the fact that I was dragging a suitcase with wheels through the desert sands. The cheap plastic wheels gummed up almost immediately. When I came through, I was on top of the dunes, and had to trudge through them toward an oasis on the horizon I worried was a mirage. I always expect deserts to be hot, but this one was mild, and stayed pretty mild the whole time I was there, the nights not all that much colder than the days. The closer I got, the more I realized that I was in a weird fantasy land, some place like from the books I¡¯d read as a child. The oasis had lots of buildings around it, tall phallic ones and domes at the base that looked like balls. I found out later that was on purpose, a deliberate invocation of ¡®fertility¡¯, but it was hardly the weirdest thing I¡¯d see there. The first thing I noticed was how many homeless people there were. The world I come from, or I guess the city I came from, had a lot of homeless people, but this was different, partly because there were more of them, partly because every single one I saw seemed strung out or high out of their minds. Most were naked, or only barely clothed. I stepped around them, kept my eyes focused elsewhere, and made sure that I could grab my knife out of my purse. I¡¯d been short on weapons in my apartment, but I had more than a few knives. I got a room at an inn by trading away one of the shirts in my suitcase. I¡¯d end up regretting that later, since I hadn¡¯t known just how valuable my clothes were. Textiles are like gold in a lot of places, and if I¡¯ve got time with a portal, I¡¯ll grab stuff to wear before heading through. For the shirt that I traded away, I should have had a place to stay for a month, but I¡¯d only bought myself a night. I felt awkward and out of place for a few days, then traded away more of my clothes at a market to get something like what the locals wore. That helped a lot, and after that I was in business, able to make deals easier, feeling more at home. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was enjoying myself, even though I was worried about my dwindling stash of supplies I¡¯d taken with me. It was a fucking adventure, a shake-up, a very rewarding mid-life crisis even though I was a bit young for that. Four days in, something happened that I¡¯d been preparing for since grade school: someone offered me free drugs. He was the shadiest of shady guys, hunched slightly like his shoulders were going to hide him from the cops, and he had a leer on his face as he explained that the sticky brown tar he¡¯d rolled in a ball between his fingers would give me pleasure beyond dreams. I declined. Going through a portal in my apartment was one thing, but free drugs was something else entirely. Back in my home world I¡¯d stayed more or less clean, aside from some light binge drinking, getting high on the weekends, and a few times I¡¯d taken unmarked pills at parties, or a few marked pills from friends, and snorted some things. Turns out, almost all the people I¡¯d thought were homeless were using drugs of one kind or another, but they were magic drugs, ones that could bliss a person out for a month, a year, maybe more. They¡¯d feel no need to eat, no need to sleep, or maybe would drift in and out of sleep, and stay in a kind of stasis while they had their pleasure. It depended on which of the drugs they were on, but there was a reason that there were so damned many of these people lining the streets. The city was like a ghost town sometimes, too many people having taken the drugs. And of course, once the high was over, they¡¯d be looking for their next fix, but often they had nothing to their name, not even clothes. The solution was usually to get them another hit so they could slump by a doorstep and not bother anyone, which wasn¡¯t really a solution at all. They¡¯d built a house for them a few decades prior, a place where the dreamers could be stacked up like bones in a catacomb, but it had filled up, and no one wanted to do the hard work of moving bodies, especially when those bodies would sometimes ¡®dream walk¡¯ in the middle of their high, going back to line the streets. I¡¯m going to tell you about my job in my home world now, and it¡¯s lame, but you said that you were a geography student, so I still win this one: I was in marketing. Naturally, I found myself a job at a sign shop. I knew a little bit of graphic design, enough to get annoyed by how poorly a lot of people do it, and I made some marked improvements in how things were run, at least in my opinion. I had kind of thought that was how my new life was going to be, that I¡¯d given up my old life for this new one, and that was that. It wasn¡¯t so bad a trade, even with all the ¡®dreamers¡¯ laying down on the streets. You got used to ignoring them. That quiet period didn¡¯t end up lasting all that long though. My counterpart was out of place. I, however, was dressed like the natives, looked like the natives, which probably saved my life. He was a tall guy, someone who probably would have looked handsome if he wasn¡¯t so damned angry. He had a pistol and was waving it around the place, which no one was really reacting to because they had no idea what a pistol was. He swept it through the marketplace, finger on the trigger. His whole getup screamed military to me, or wannabe military maybe, a tactical vest with all kinds of pouches, a buzz cut, camo pants that didn¡¯t camouflage him at all in the colorful urban environment. He was after me, I knew that in my bones, so I made my escape with the other people who seemed like they didn¡¯t want to deal with a guy shouting in the marketplace. I started sharpening my knife. There weren¡¯t that many places to stay at the oasis. I had a room with the sign-maker, an older woman who was missing her daughter, but there weren¡¯t really much in the way of hotels, and the other guy ¡ª his name turned out to be Gunther ¡ª had to stay at one of them. He didn¡¯t want to fit in, do the work of integration, that kind of thing, which I understand a lot more now. I figured it was only a matter of time before he found me, given how strange my appearance from over the horizon with the rolling suitcase had been, so I did my best to find him. He shot the man I¡¯d sold my suitcase to. When the police came to arrest him, he shot them too. I guess once he realized that no one was going to stop him, he decided he was going to start making demands. He turned the hotel into a fortress and waved the gun around like it was a magic wand, which it kind of was. He didn¡¯t have to work, not when he was threatening to kill random people, and he kept asking for me, which eventually led to me being found by some of the locals. I stabbed a guy in the neck. I guess he¡¯d looked at me and thought that I would be easy to grab and subdue. The other one got that same knife deep in his guts, and took a longer time to die. The sign-maker¡¯s spare room was stained with blood, which dripped down onto signs in the room below. The sign-maker, this old lady, hugged me close. I guess she thought that I was traumatized, but really, I was feeling good ¡ª accomplished. I was high on adrenaline, shaking, but those guys had come for me, hoping that their new warlord would reward them, and I ended them. The old lady liked that, I guess. Her daughter wasn¡¯t dead, she had blissed out, decided that happiness was worth a loss of agency, and if I was an adoptive daughter, then I was one who was rising to challenges rather than saying I couldn¡¯t take it and going into an endless dream. She liked it even more when I said that I was going to kill Gunther. I guess I need to get into more biography stuff here. When I was fifteen, the world turned into a more dangerous place for me and my family. My dad bought a gun, then bought a gun for me, and helped train me how to use it at the same time he was learning on his own. He explained that it was my duty to protect myself, to shoot someone if they were going to shoot me. Mom didn¡¯t like it, but she didn¡¯t stop it, and I always thought he was in the right. I¡¯d always had a streak running through me, a feeling that some people needed to die. I¡¯d get so angry sometimes, angry at people, at the world, stuff like that. Some horrible guy would die, and people would say ¡®well, we should show some respect in death¡¯, and nah, I never felt that. I kept it to myself most of the time, never said out loud ¡®hell yeah, piss on his grave¡¯, but I felt it, both with the living and the dead. The world I lived in, it was a peaceful one, overall, even if it wasn¡¯t all that great a place to live some of the time. There wasn¡¯t much killing, except sometimes by the police. I guess I never understood why so many problems seemed like they could be solved with a single well-placed bullet, yet weren¡¯t. I wasn¡¯t the one stepping up, but it felt like someone should. There were public figures who were objectively terrible people, yet nothing ever happened to them, no justice, not from the law, nor from the public. Millions of people might hate a man, despise him down to their bones, and he¡¯d walk freely through the city streets. All of that is a long way of saying that when I needed to kill someone, I felt like it had been a long time coming. The sign-maker had something she¡¯d kept in reserve, a bottle of magical sand from a holy place in the desert. She insisted that I eat the sand, that it would give me power, and I downed what felt like a pound of the stuff but was really probably just three mouthfuls. I was getting the grit out of my teeth for the next few days, but the upshot was that I could make the ground beneath me bouncy. It wasn¡¯t a great get, as powers went, but it comes in handy from time to time. In the middle of the night, I bounced up to the fifth floor, the top of the hotel, past all the guards he had stationed around the place. There were no streetlights, since these people were using torches if anything, and I was silent as a whisper, bringing a knife to a gunfight. He had the balcony open, mostly because they didn¡¯t have much in the way of glass windows or screens. I came into his room with the cool breeze, moving slowly. The knife was a chef¡¯s knife from my kitchen, the kind with patterns of banding from layered steel, because that¡¯s the kind of thing you buy when you have a ¡®good job¡¯ and no time to cook. Gunther was asleep in his bed, and I crept over and slit his throat without so much as a pause for breath. His throat exploded into mushrooms, orange ridged with black, and he woke up instantly, grasping at where the knife had slid through. He was choking for breath but very clearly not dying, so I stabbed him in the stomach a few times, which caused more mushrooms to sprout up there as he writhed around. I was in a panic, since the mushroom thing hadn¡¯t even remotely been on my radar, and eventually I realized that I should go for his gun. I had no idea where it was, but after a moment to think, I decided it would be close by, stuck my hand under his bloody pillow, and felt my fingers touch metal. Once I had the gun, I shot him in the head, which only caused more mushrooms to come out of him, spilling across the bed and onto the walls where bits of his brain had landed. He was moving though, and when I shot him a second time it didn¡¯t seem any more successful than the first. My ears were ringing, and I thought he would come to his senses soon enough, so I grabbed the gun, the knife, and threw myself out the window, bouncing on the ground so the fall wouldn¡¯t kill me. I was lucky that I didn¡¯t cut myself with the knife though. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. Look, we¡¯ve got seven of these to go through, but this one was important, as I think first worlds probably all are for our kind. I was learning the ropes, adjusting to the new way of life, shocked by what was new and different. I¡¯m pretty sure it was Gunther¡¯s second world, maybe third, given how he was looking for me practically from the start. I didn¡¯t know what the rules were, or even that there were rules, except that we were both clearly from somewhere else, even if I did fit in better. Since the knife and gun hadn¡¯t worked, I started planning other ways of killing him. There was a bit there where I worried that he was simply immortal, but the next time I saw him, he was looking worse for the wear, mushrooms visible as a ring around his neck and a huge one that had blossomed out of the back of his skull and gripped his head like a bucket hat. His speech was slightly slurred, and if they had shown him some undue deference once he¡¯d demonstrated the gun, they were practically cowering once he became ol¡¯ mushroom head. We fought twice more, and I¡¯ll spare you the blow-by-blow, but the first time was out in the desert, an encounter that I only barely bounced away from. I had been out there seeking a flower that could be used to attack with flame and acid, the kind of odd, low key magic that the world had in short supply. Gunther had followed me and was pissed, especially when I made fun of his mushroom head, and he hit me hard enough to break a rib. He got the better of me, mostly because I didn¡¯t have the tools to kill him, but I escaped with the flower, and a few days later I was ready. Once the flower was prepared, I only had one shot at it. I went invisible: I disguised myself as one of the dreamers, dirty and half-naked, pretending that I was in my bliss and blind to the world. I got him good, from close range, but I had underestimated the mushrooms, and ended up fighting him while he was on fire and melting to death. It was a battle of attrition, really, and I got burns all over my hands, pretty bad ones, but I held out until he was just a smear of flaming fungal colony on the ground. The portal opened, I went back for my stuff, said my goodbyes, and that was that. The second world was the one I got the needle sword in. I don¡¯t know if I was small there, or the house was big, but pretty much the entire adventure took place in one single house and the grounds around it. There were maybe a few hundred people my size and three that were sized for the house, towering people who could have squished me like a bug. The giants didn¡¯t know we were there, at least at the start, and we tinyfolk lived by stealing their stuff in bits and pieces, as well as scavenging through their trash. I ran into the other thresholder right away, a shy guy who¡¯d come through a month before, Ming. He looked at me like I was a breath of fresh air, and I guess at first I felt the same. He showed me around the village, which was a highly vertical place in the walls of the kitchen, and helped make me a hut of my own from toothpicks and scraps of fabric. I had a button for a doorknob and bottle caps for bowls to eat out of. It was cutesy. I liked it. Ming spent basically all his time with me, at least when he wasn¡¯t going out with the other men and raiding for supplies. Raiding was men¡¯s work, and the women stayed back, turning scraps of food into lovely meals and discarded rags into fashionable dresses, as well as taking care of the children. This was also cutesy, but it had an undercurrent to it. There were lots of children, huge families, the kids helping out sometimes with chores but also often running wild. Ming talked to me about his homeworld, and I talked to him about mine. I didn¡¯t mention the desert world at all, maybe because I wanted to keep it a secret, maybe because I didn¡¯t know what was going on and didn¡¯t want to say too much. It was easier to talk about the world I¡¯d come from, the people there, the problems, my parents, things like that. He was good at listening, I¡¯ll give him that, and the last world hadn¡¯t had all that many people who wanted to talk. He was into me, and I was on the fence about it. I hadn¡¯t been hugely happy with the world that the first portal landed me in, and being a tiny little mouse in a big person¡¯s house was a definite step up, but I was already thinking about what the next world might have in store for me. He was clingy, maybe because he saw us as kindred spirits. I tried to pump the brakes, but every day it seemed like he was a little more in love with me. He didn¡¯t seem to want to talk about the portals, how we¡¯d got there, or what it might mean. My burned hands healed, especially with some salve from the women, but I wasn¡¯t exactly going native. These tiny people had built elevators into the walls, clever little counterbalanced lifts that nevertheless took a lot of effort to use, hand-over-hand. They were rickety and dangerous, but in that same sort of way, as though it was all some picturesque game, a childhood fancy. Because we were in the kitchen, the main elevator had been built with one particular purpose, which was to get up to the top of the refrigerator, an old, low-tech made of solid metals. The top of the fridge was where the lady of the house kept all kinds of supplies, and the tinyfolk stole from those stores, pinching bits of sugar, flour, and whatever else they needed when the scraps from the trash weren¡¯t enough, or sometimes just for a treat. The fridge was also next to the upper cupboards, close enough that they could scurry over for something from a biscuit from a tin. There were lots of rules so as not to get caught, and so far, no one had been. If the giants had ever seen us, they thought we were mice. Women weren¡¯t allowed up to the top of the fridge, but Ming got them to make an exception for me. He was keen on it, but I was a little less so, maybe because it felt too much like a date, or like he was doing something for me that he expected to be repaid for. The view from the top of the fridge wasn¡¯t as breathtaking as I think he hoped it would be. Mostly, it just looked like a kitchen. The smallfolk treated the sight as something of reverence, a place to survey their lands, to look out on the splendor of the many machines, but I¡¯d seen enough kitchens in my life. Ming could sense that it wasn¡¯t landing how he¡¯d expected it would, but he plowed on. He confessed his feelings to me, explained that our coming here at the same time was kismet, that we belonged together, that he had never connected with anyone like he¡¯d connected with me. This sort of thing was awkward enough back home, but we lived next door to each other, the only outsiders in a tiny community ¡ª in both senses ¡ª and I knew that his feelings were likely to get hurt. I tried to let him down gently, but not so gently that he wouldn¡¯t be clear about what I was telling him. It¡¯s a high-wire act, especially with a guy like that, and I was getting angry with him while it was happening. I had to go through all this awkward talking because of him. I was feeling like I had done something wrong, like I was at fault somehow, even though I knew it wasn¡¯t me, it was him. When I was done, it was like a flip had switched in him. Any trace of niceness was gone. He called me a bitch, a slut, and said that I didn¡¯t deserve him. What I should have done was slit his throat right then and there, but I hadn¡¯t brought my knife with me, and I was less accustomed to violence in those days anyway. I just stood there with this anger welling up in me, because he was yelling, teeth gritted, and I didn¡¯t deserve it. I guess maybe I could have taken it, waited for him to calm down, and things would have gone differently, but then he said something in the course of his vitriolic monologue that stopped me in my tracks. ¡°Why is it always like this?¡± he asked. ¡°Why is it always these women, these perfect women who stab me in the back? Every world I go to, every ¡ª¡± ¡°What the fuck did you just say?¡± I asked. ¡°Every world?¡± That sneaky bastard had kept his previous worlds from me. I¡¯d thought that I was so clever, holding back on the off chance that something was fishy, and he¡¯d been doing the same all along. But as that was dawning on me, it was like a totally different switch flipped, like the room had gone from dark to pitch black. He advanced on me, and I didn¡¯t have a weapon. I hadn¡¯t learned to fight back then, and it was just a flurry of limbs, me trying to get him away. Then he pushed me off the fridge. I¡¯ve gotta say, I appreciated that majesty of the height a lot more as I fell. Then I hit the ground and bounced, dislocating my shoulder in the process but otherwise unharmed. I hadn¡¯t told him that I had that power, so one point to me, I guess. I had never done a bounce from that high before, and once I got over the adrenaline rush and fought through the pain, I was pretty damned pissed off. I fell in with the Rat Riders of the Glasshouse after that, a different tribe of tiny people who had colonized the small greenhouse that was at the back of the house, as well as the garden and yard beyond that. Before that, I hadn¡¯t even known that there was more than one tribe, though partly that¡¯s because the Silver Spoons of the Chill Tower wanted me to stay in and darn socks. War between the tinyfolk was, to their way of thinking, the work of men, and dear old Ming had apparently proven himself to be a sterling soldier. I say ¡®war¡¯ but it was really more of a feud. There were five tribes living in the house altogether, more like five villages within a single valley, and these two hated each other. The rats were a point of contention, and while I hadn¡¯t been a fan of rats going in, they grew on me over time. You might be picturing an army of three-inch tall men riding a horde of rats, but there were only two rats, and the rat-riders were an esteemed bunch, princes and princesses, of a sort. Each wore a cloak made from a rat pelt, one that let them tuck in close and blend into the rat¡¯s fur when they rode. They were wild people. Every day seemed to end with a party, and they welcomed me with open arms, especially once I started telling them about the worlds I had been to. They liked how I dunked on the tinyfolk from the kitchen. I got drunk off my ass with one of the rat-riders, a girl who had to have been half my age, and after hearing how things had shaken out with Ming, she immediately started training me. It¡¯s thanks to her that I¡¯m halfway decent with a sword, but I didn¡¯t get the needle until later, after the greenhouse burned down. I guess I don¡¯t know for certain that it was Ming, but the list of possible culprits is quite short. We woke up to the fire and fled to the garden, grabbing what we could, making sure that the kids were with us. One of the two rats died in the process, trying to evacuate people. We regrouped beneath the leaves of a pumpkin and watched this enormous wall of flames, trying not to get choked out by the smoke. Luckily we were low to the ground. All the wooden tables and shelves had gone up in flames, but thankfully, the fire didn¡¯t spread to the rest of the house. I went all around the house with my friend after that, often on the back of her rat. We were seeking answers and vengeance, though not necessarily in that order. We trekked up to the second floor, where the bedrooms were, and spoke with the simple people who lived beneath the bed, half-starved because of how rarely the owners of the house had a midnight snack. We went all the way into the attic, where there was a group of tinyfolk who flew on the backs of crows and mostly didn¡¯t bother with the house at all, except as a nice, dry place to make their home. And we went into the craft room, where I got the needle sword. The magic there was subtle, blink and you¡¯d miss it, and they barely understood it. A craftswitch blessed the sword, telling me that it would be a faithful companion, striking true, and it didn¡¯t really feel any different after that, except that every fight I was in went better for me. It was really easy to be ¡®on¡¯ when I fought with the sword, keyed up and with my head in the battle, and it wasn¡¯t until way later that I actually got any confirmation that I wasn¡¯t just imagining it. Through this whole time, Ming had been sending me letters. Sometimes they had some of his simpering sweetness, but more often they were unhinged, ruminations on men and women and their place in the world, with one beneath the other, you¡¯ll never guess which. He really seemed to think that I was a slut and a prude, and he didn¡¯t make much effort to square that circle. When we finally faced each other again, I had tightly woven armor and my needle in hand, along with my rat-rider friend backing me up. Ming had a dozen guys with him, men I¡¯d known from my time in the kitchen, and they all looked a little bit harder than they¡¯d been before, like they¡¯d seen some stuff in the interim. The rat tore through them, and I tried my best to make with the stabbing. Ming had a weapon of his own, a staff, which was a repurposed toothpick. The ends had been sharpened, and he was trying to poke some holes in me, which I thought was rather rude. I was still feeling ¡®on¡¯, but my hits weren¡¯t landing, and I was losing stamina faster than him. I watched my rat-rider friend fall, her blood staining the rat¡¯s face, and knew that I needed to end things if I wanted to save her. ¡°Why are we fighting?¡± I asked Ming, letting my guard down, as though the question had only just occurred to me, as though the whole conflict was just something that had happened to us somehow, outside our control. ¡°You hate me,¡± he said, but I could tell that he was falling for it. ¡°I never hated you,¡± I said. I kind of hated myself for saying that, but you play the hand you¡¯ve got. ¡°I was just afraid of what it would mean to get close to someone.¡± This went on for a bit. I won¡¯t vomit it all up for you, but I said a bunch of things that he really wanted to hear, forgave him for everything he¡¯d done, explained that I was the one to blame, said, in better words, that I was a prude and I was a slut, but I turned it around on him, making this seem like a good thing. I was a prude: I had never felt the touch of a man, and kept myself chaste. I was a slut: I had urges that had always felt dangerous to me, especially around a man like Ming, who I felt so close with, so fast. He lapped it up, and it didn¡¯t seem to matter that I¡¯d told him plenty about my life back home that went directly against what I was saying. The thing about living in a fantasy of your own mind is that you become really easy to manipulate. I was in marketing, remember, spent a good decade of my life writing copy and developing strategies for different demographics, and sometimes a pathetic pitch that appeals squarely to the most obvious base impulses works. Sometimes you come up with a strategy that feels too basic, too on the money, and that¡¯s the one that lands. You tell people what they want to hear, and sometimes that¡¯s enough. ¡°It doesn¡¯t have to be like this,¡± I said. ¡°We can reset it to what it was, call off this feud, talk to each other, see where that leads us.¡± When he put down his sword, I bounced off the ground, closed the distance, and stabbed him in the heart. The portal opened up almost right away, but my friend had been captured, so I ran straight into another fight. I¡¯d ridden the rat a few times, and once I was up on his back he more or less listened to my commands. I got him to attack some guys, sinking teeth and claws into them, they mostly ran away, and I helped my friend to her feet. She was bloodied but fine, and seemed a little in awe of me. I pointed out the portal, and when she saw it there, it was pretty clear she hadn¡¯t believed me before. Before I could stop her, she went through. I followed after, but when I got to the next world, I didn¡¯t see so much as a single one of her hairs. I don¡¯t know what happened to her, but she didn¡¯t end up in the same place as me, and soon enough, I had other things to worry about. Chapter 35 - The Seven Worlds of Maya Singh, pt 2 It was the long, slow, end of the world. Humanity was huddled around dying stars, trying to make the most of the waning light, knowing that unless something changed, every day was going to be dimmer than the last. The stellar government, Rampart, zeroed in on me right away, because my arrival had broken entropy. There was apparently a signal from nowhere that preceded my arrival by a few days, which in and of itself had their scientists shouting for joy. When a full-on person came through, they thought it was basically the most important thing ever to have happened. I wasn¡¯t super pleased to be getting all that attention, especially because I thought there was probably someone else out there who was hopping worlds too. My previous two encounters had let me know what was up, more or less. There was nothing for it though. I became a minimum-security prisoner on a jungle planet that was apparently one of the last nice places to live in the entire known universe. The star was dim, a red dwarf, barely able to sustain fusion, and let me tell you, I learned more about stellar processes than I had ever wanted to during my time in that world. The planet was well within the star¡¯s habitable zone, but that meant that we were closer to it, and it was huge in the sky, like an unblinking red eyeball: unblinking because the planet was tidally locked, meaning that it was always daylight, the sun never moving from its spot. The plants were mostly black, not green, something to do with how they captured light. I was a prisoner, but also a VIP, and they slapped the nanites on me almost from the moment I came through. It rankled, especially given the very special boy I had just killed, who seemed like he¡¯d have been happiest if he could trap me in a bell jar. Their goals were different, more level-headed, but the more I saw of their world and their way of doing things, the more I wanted out. It didn¡¯t seem like there was an ¡®out¡¯ available to me, not unless I could somehow get hold of a spaceship, and Rampart, their all-encompassing government, didn¡¯t seem like they were keen on providing one. Everyone I met would either talk me to death about my ¡®entropy violating¡¯ appearance in their world, or they would yammer on about the dwindling resources of their universe and their duty in the face of seemingly inevitable heat death. I wasn¡¯t sure which conversation annoyed me more. The funny thing was, the end of the universe wasn¡¯t really that close. There were still stars shining away, even if most of them were very far apart and exceedingly dim. They talked about limits and deadlines that were millions or billions of years in the future, and it seemed like for them, it was just around the corner. I met a lot of scientists on the jungle planet, went through a lot of tests with them, and maybe that was part of it, that they were the people focused on solutions to far-off problems. Still, it felt weird for them to be moping about their ¡®horizons¡¯. Like, they would say ¡®the Stellar Horizon is coming, the day at which human eyes see a star for the last time¡¯ or they¡¯d say ¡®the Shuttle Horizon is coming, the day at which it becomes impossible to muster the energy for interstellar flight¡¯. They were very serious about this stuff, and it felt like it seeped into everything. I had fucking superpowers though, which was objectively awesome, and also promised to bring an end to the end of all things, if only they could figure it out. I bounced around a lot for them, trained with my sword, and got them excited. They had all kinds of arguments in front of me about the fundamental constraints of physics, invoking maxims and laws that very much appeared to have been broken. They wanted me to open a portal, but of course I couldn¡¯t do that. Bouncing off surfaces that weren¡¯t bouncy was neat, but a portal to a new, young universe was something else entirely. One would allow humanity to survive after the embers had burned out, while the other would put them squarely back in the golden era of human existence. They were the ones who confirmed the needle sword actually was magical, which took a lot of doing. It was much less the solution to all their problems, but it still broke their understanding of the world, and I was happy to get some practice in. The solar system we were in had eight hundred million people, about half of which lived on the jungle planet, but there was only a single swordsman, and they brought him in to spar with me. He was kind of weird, and a bit of a dick, but he was also the single greatest swordsman I have ever seen, though maybe there are some on the Big Old Arc who could give him a run for his money. He had trained himself against robots that he¡¯d programmed, and did basically nothing but that all day, every day. I learned a lot from him, and I¡¯m mentioning it mostly so you don¡¯t think I got this good from the rat-rider girl giving me a few pointers. I had mentioned that they found me by following a signal that preceded my arrival, and when the second signal came through, I had arranged for me to be there. This took some lies about the nature of my walking through worlds, and I¡¯m not entirely sure they believed me, but they thought I might be the key to their salvation, and they brought me anyway. You¡¯d said that your scientist in the first world did something similar, tracking signals, but I¡¯ve got to believe this was a more sophisticated operation, done with a small fleet of spaceships. My first time seeing the night sky freaked me the fuck out. If there hadn¡¯t been any stars, I don¡¯t think it would have gotten to me, it would just be a void, but there were stars, just so few of them, so far, so dim, little pin pricks around us instead of what should have been a splash of glitter across the cosmos. The constant daylight and blackout shutters of the planet had made me feel complacent, but everything they had said about a dying universe really hit home once I saw the stars, or rather, the lack thereof. Maybe the long view made more sense, given that context. The fire was going out, and there was no wood left to put on it. It was going to be very cold and very dark. I was nervous about who would come through the portal. Third time¡¯s the charm, as they say, but I was worried he¡¯d be some asshole, like the first two. I wasn¡¯t in a position to fight him. I had the jet-black carbon collar around my wrist, ready to spring to my defense at a moment¡¯s notice but also a convenient prison to hold me in place. It turns out that I didn¡¯t need to be worried, because it had all been a trap. The planet I had been on was locked down, homogenous in thought and culture, but there were dissidents elsewhere in the solar system, rebels and rogues who went against the prevailing dogmas. They had set up a transmitter that mimicked the signal well enough to provoke a response, and when the fleet came in, the rebels were ready. Despite having much smaller numbers, the ambush went well for them, and they were able to get their prize: me. I think at first I was just supposed to be some leverage or something, a piece of meat to be ransomed back to the government, but they took a liking to me. They had a sophisticated ship with all the bells and whistles, but only around twenty people, and I took to my captivity like a bear takes to shitting in the woods. The pirates had their own answer to the heat death of the universe, which was to digitize themselves, become computers, and ride everything out for as long as the last star was burning, then run on battery for as long as possible after that, passively harvesting hydrogen left in the stellar expanse. They were techno as hell, implants in their skulls, prosthetics to replace their limbs, things that the home culture disdained enough to make illegal. The ship¡¯s captain, Clarke, liked to say that their twenty people were equivalent to about a thousand normal people, and the fact that they¡¯d been able to capture me was proof of that. It wasn¡¯t just me that they wanted, it was the armguard too, but it stymied their efforts to break me out of the jail, and killed one of them in the process. Honestly, I felt at home among the pirates, particularly because they were so political. I wasn¡¯t sure whether I really bought into the whole ¡®turn ourselves into computers¡¯ thing, but it wasn¡¯t like they tried to force it on me. They¡¯d suggested some upgrades to my biology, some integration with technology, but after the incident with the doctor there was a lot less of that. The armguard wouldn¡¯t have allowed it. I had my own healthy skepticism about going techno. I know you said you were a knight some worlds back, but for me, it¡¯s always been easier to fall in with the outcasts. I spent about a month with those guys, eventually becoming one of the crew after I used my sword to fight off a government boarding party. I got a tattoo on my back, which I might show you some day ¡ª it caused a stir in the bathhouse a few days ago. I was wincing in anticipation and everyone on the crew laughed when it was painless, done by a robot arm in about two seconds flat. I guess the armor probably wouldn¡¯t have allowed anything too bad. I¡¯ve got a fun fact about this space-faring civilization at the end of the world, a fact which I learned during my time with the rebel pirates. You might have been thinking of Rampart as heirs to a trillion year empire, an ancient civilization that had survived through unimaginable spans of time only to end up the last one in the house after the party was over. Nope! They had existed in this state for about five hundred years, and all that talk about looking millions of years into the future and being the last light of life in the universe was really hopeful on their part. They¡¯d been part of a colony ship that had been trying to launch themselves to the end of the universe, and through some time dilation black hole physics stuff I didn¡¯t really understand, had ended up skipping past most of the good bits, stranding their descendants there. I think the only reason we really stood a chance was because all the pirates were augmented to hell and back, using tools that the people they were running against didn¡¯t want to. The space police were tied up in red tape, basically, which meant that the pirates could act with impunity so long as they never did anything too far beyond the pale. All that changed when the other thresholder showed up. I only met him in person once, and we were fighting full-force by then. We talked a lot over comms though, not that it was very productive, especially given that we had to assume everyone else was listening in on what we were saying. Morton was on his third world, same as me, and he was pretty upfront with everyone about wanting to put an end to me. He had been a scientist in his world, I guess, working in biotech, though he was the boring sort of scientist who mostly writes grant proposals and formats papers for publication. He had gotten into the field because of a television show he¡¯d seen when he was young, and then one thing had led to another, and he had gobs of higher education and was working on some super boring research. It was good that all the stars had mostly died out, because it made room for Morton¡¯s enormous ego. He saw himself as some kind of Chosen One, the guy who was going to bring salvation to not just this world, but all others. He learned about my powers from the goons at Rampart, and I learned about one of his powers because he wouldn¡¯t shut up about it. One of them was a plant power, and it was, in his words ¡®contagious¡¯, capable of spreading from person to person. He could cause a burst of vines from any nearby plant, including the vines themselves, and while there was a bit of refractory period, he had apparently used it in all kinds of ways he wanted me to know about, vines as armor, vines to set traps, vines for camo, construction, healing, you name it. He¡¯d gotten the power and then spent seventeen months mapping it out and pushing it to its limits before taking on the other thresholder. That¡¯s a long time for us. Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. The vines were the solution to all of Rampart¡¯s speculation on the end of the universe, and since they sprouted up from nothing, creating mass in the process, since they could be eaten, it was thought that humanity could survive indefinitely. They drew up all kinds of plans for how this would happen, vines to protect against the vacuum of space, vines to burn for heat, vines for oxygen, for food, for air, all kinds of things. We watched some of the science casts, where they talked about this particular form of entropy defying magic, a much more impressive thing than was available to me, and we laughed about it a little bit, but I could tell the crew were having their own thoughts. They wanted to live forever, as computer programs, but they¡¯d always thought that eventually they would run down and die, all the power having been sucked from the world¡¯s last battery. Now, someone was saying that didn¡¯t have to be the case. It had been different with me, since it wasn¡¯t clear I¡¯d have my powers if I were a computer program, and I didn¡¯t really want to be a computer program anyway, but with him, the calculus was different. All he was asking for was my head on a pike, so to speak. What followed were a series of plays and counterplays. He had the weight of Rampart behind him, and some control over them, since he had something that they wanted ¡ª namely, the vines. I didn¡¯t come from a place with space combat, but we had a lot of it in our movies, and it was a bit of a shock how different it was. I was no help at all, but Clarke, the captain, gave me some pointers. Battles took place at extreme distances, beyond your ability to see the enemy, and it was all about heat signatures, decoys, and firing first. If that wasn¡¯t enough, you loudly shouted about your deadman¡¯s switches. The pirates had done a lot in order to not be brought to justice, but now we were being actively hunted, and I guess Rampart had picked a side, because they were going in with full force. We did a heist to get the keys to unlock the nanites, and I guess you already know that only partially worked. The rebels had been pushing hard for digitization, in the hopes that they could become far more difficult to kill by having backup copies of themselves, and the nanites were seen as one of the keys to doing that. Fully self-replicating nanomachines were possible, they were just constrained, and no one had seen them, but if we had even a gram, then we¡¯d have a million grams. After five of these sorties, jetting around the solar system and seeing the sights while trying to steal what we could, I ran right into the biggest snag imaginable: the pirates turned on me. Morton had been doing some politicking in the background, not with the pirates, but with Rampart. Apparently he had some anecdote about how his people dealt with dissidents, which was not through suppression, but by giving them somewhere to go. This resulted in a proliferation of sects, but he likened that to biodiversity, I guess, a less fragile system. It was a good pitch. I wish I remembered more of it. In short, the government bought it, then they made an offer, which the pirate rebels couldn¡¯t refuse. There were conditions attached, above and beyond bringing me in, conditions like being shot off toward a far-distant star, staying quiet about the offer, leaving without a fuss, all that kind of stuff, but they¡¯d get what they wanted. I fought like a cat trying to be put in a bath, but I wasn¡¯t strong enough. Maybe I could have done it now, with the current suite of powers, killed Clarke and his goons. I wasn¡¯t at full strength though, not physically, and not mentally. They¡¯d been friends, companions, and I hadn¡¯t thought that the combination of carrots and sticks could get them to budge. Lesson learned, I thought. Morton¡¯s plan was to stick me in a chamber and kill me with lasers. Honestly, it felt like supervillain shit, but there was a reason, which was mostly to gather information about how and when the portals opened. He saw the high-tech civilization as an opportunity, I guess, a way to engage in some fact-finding about the thresholders. He wanted to cross the multiverse at will and had this hugely egotistical dream of changing every world he came across. He wanted to be god, basically, and killing me while a bunch of monitoring equipment looked on was step one. Of course, Clarke came through in the end. He scuttled the deal at the last moment and put me within spitting distance of Morton, and from there, it was a long, drawn-out battle that took us through a high-orbit space station. He was a clever guy, very inventive with his powers, but that didn¡¯t actually help him all that much. I think one of things he was missing was that it wasn¡¯t about having a good idea, it was about execution in the heat of the moment, moving fast, having your blade be an extension of yourself. He was like a guy who thinks up the perfect comeback in the shower days later and thinks that makes him a good conversationalist. He had the same nanites that I had, and the heist had been such a success that they hadn¡¯t even known that it happened. I had the keys to the kingdom, and disabled his armor, which meant that he was mostly using vines for defense, and they were no match for my needle. His go-to move was trying to slam me against the walls, but I bounced off, and he just wasn¡¯t thinking fast enough to make new plans on the fly, not when his bag of tricks was running dry. This was his third world, and the vines had been front and center, but I¡¯d figured he was keeping one in reserve, and when he was bloodied, he brought out what he¡¯d been holding back, a dark power that twisted the metal around us and formed it into two-foot tall golems. It took a clear toll on him, but it saved him, and I was on the back foot. Unfortunately, we were on a space station, and there¡¯s only so much metal that you can remove from one of those before you cause some serious problems. The hull blew out, and we were twirling in space together. The nanites covered me head to toe, but they couldn¡¯t clean the air I was breathing, meaning I had minutes at most. Morton was a bit worse off than I was though. As he was trying to use his dark power to warp the metal and cover himself up, I launched myself at him, needle-first. I¡¯d meant to stick around after he was dead, but you can¡¯t always get what you want, and I left without saying any goodbyes. Clarke had saved me, and I wished that I could have said thank you, even if the thing he saved me from was his own betrayal. I came through the portal with nothing more than the nanoarmor and my needle, on solid ground a short walk from a fishing village. It took my eyes some time to adjust. You probably know how jarring it can be, moving from one world to another, leaving everything behind. One minute you¡¯re in the black void of space with a red sun and dying stars, fighting hard against some dick who¡¯s blown you out into the vacuum, the next you¡¯re watching thick-armed women repairing rope fishing nets in the baking midday sun. Honestly, the dying lights of the last world had been getting to me, and it felt good to be in a simpler place. I had my armor, my sword, and was feeling pretty good about myself. There was no way to pass for a local for long, since they weren¡¯t quite human, but they were friendly enough, and I spent the night with the smell of the sea air in my nose and got a surprisingly good sleep. Almost all the people were godtouched in some way or another, imbued with the power of ¡­ whatever. Some of them could transform into animals, others could control the elements, and most had some kind of distinctness to them, little flairs. Most of the men and women in that early village were associated with the gods of fish, seaweed, or water, so they had gills, seaweed growing from their hair, scales, things like that. There was a lot of variety and style to it all, and that was one of the highlights of the world for me. The clothes people wore were bespoke, with cut-outs to show the places where the gods had marked them. The other thresholder had arrived some three months before me, which I found out about soon enough, because he¡¯d been busy. He was spreading malicious slander about me while getting up to his own adventures, most of which involved being ridiculously good at combat. He had powers that had mine beat hands down, especially because they all worked together. His arms and legs could stretch and bend, giving him mobility and reach, as well as letting him launch his lunatic spear off over the mountains. He could teleport to the spear, which I think was a part of the spear¡¯s power, but he wasn¡¯t kind enough to give me the low down on it. The last of his set of three was a bow that got more powerful and more accurate the further away he took the shot. So his usual way of doing things was to use his bendy arms to launch his spear way, way up into the air, teleport up to it, then shoot arrows on the way down, which would arrive at their targets with all the force and precision of a laser-guided missile. He was another guy with an ego problem, though Morton had all the charisma of a wet rag, and Spence oozed charm. He also showboated a lot. In a just world that would have been his downfall, but alas, he got the better of me in the end. Spence had won the favor of the God of Wine in a tournament, and had gone from favored to avatar in short order. That came with a lot of power, and he was using it with impunity, mostly to throw huge parties. I got blindsided by it the first time we met, the way that lips became loose around him, inhibitions dropped, that sort of thing. I was lucky that he didn¡¯t cotton on to who I was, but maybe it wasn¡¯t ¡®luck¡¯, because he¡¯d been thinking that I would be a man. I guess all his other opponents had been men, but also, he was a misogynist. All the shit he¡¯d been talking about the forthcoming thresholder had been under the assumption that it would be a dude, which worked in my favor. Once he knew I was there ¡ª my fault, honestly ¡ª I survived mostly by letting my armor tank the hits and hiding away from eyes in the sky. Eventually I got in touch with the God of Water, who grudgingly gave me his patronage. He was a relative to Spence¡¯s patron, and though the family tree was pretty twisted, the God of Water was an elder and the God of Wine an upstart, something like grandfather and grandnephew, or something like that. Being an avatar came with powers, and I spent a lot of time in the sea, not just to swim as fast as lightning, but because I could duck beneath the waves at a moment¡¯s notice. I didn¡¯t even need to be that far beneath the surface to stop the arrows from doing much more than pushing me around. I was, however, constantly wet, always feeling like I¡¯d just stepped out of a shower, fingers always a bit pruny, even when I¡¯d been out of the water for days. I complained about it to the God of Water, but he didn¡¯t seem to care that it was annoying, and never fixed the problem. I never found out whether that was a ¡®won¡¯t¡¯ or ¡®can¡¯t¡¯ kind of thing. I was in that world for a pretty long time, some of which was spent being a gopher for the God of Water, unrelated to the central conflict. I think maybe me and Spence both realized that we had it pretty good, so didn¡¯t go after each other as hard as maybe we could have. He had his parties, which he wasn¡¯t even paying for, and I was mostly living on different islands, always with lodging available, free of charge, for the avatar of an esteemed god. The weather was nice and mild, I swam with the fishes and visited the reefs, and Spence had his parties. Problem was, Spence was a little fuzzy on the concept of consent, and pretty soon he got a reputation that made women stop showing up to his parties so much. When word got to me, I was furious, and every day after that felt a little sour, knowing that he was living the same life of luxury I was. I¡¯d killed three thresholders by that point, and a few other people besides, and I was getting the sense that I was the only one who would put an end to him. The gods were also terrible, don¡¯t get me wrong, and some of the stories people told were horrifying, but they were untouchable, and Spence was just someone like me. Or, like me, but an asshole. So, look, I¡¯d love to tell you that I brought him to justice, but like I¡¯ve already said, it didn¡¯t pan out. I called him out, we had a formal fight before the gods, and he beat me. I¡¯m still pissed about it, frankly. I hope someone rips his spine apart. I hope he lands in a world that¡¯s nothing but scorpions. I hope his mom gets cancer. I want someone to plaster his brains against asphalt. I had never seen the appeal of crucifixion before meeting him, but now, oh boy. Whatever. If I think about it I¡¯m just going to get mad. He could easily have killed me, but he was a cocky son of a bitch, so when I was laying on the ground, trying to struggle to my feet for the fifth time, instead of going in for the killing blow, he grinned at me and said ¡®I would end it here, but I¡¯ve always thought it uncouth to hit a woman¡¯. This was after I was nearly pulp inside my armor. And then, to add insult to injury, the portal opened. He gave it a mild look and stepped on through, as though on a whim, and I was left there in the arena, broken, muscles not strong enough to actually get me to a standing position. I didn¡¯t know you could do that whole thing without killing the other person, and I didn¡¯t know what was going to happen to me. The God of Water stripped me of my rank, and I was persona non grata for the deific set, which meant that I was also shunned by the common people, the time of free food and a place to lay my head having come to an end. Losing a skirmish was one thing, but losing a formal duel in front of everything was quite another. Still, when the portal opened up two days later, I spent some time staring at it, deciding whether or not I was going to go through. I did eventually, obviously. I kept thinking about Spence, and a rematch, and if there wasn¡¯t a rematch in my future, then I was thinking about the cast of characters thus far. It was a bunch of stupid assholes, in case you hadn¡¯t been paying attention. So I went through, sword in hand, armguard at the ready, having a good idea of the caliber of opponent I would find. Chapter 36 - The Seven Worlds of Maya Singh, pt 3 Look, it¡¯s late, but I want to get through these, because I promised I would. It¡¯s been a little scary, talking like this, wondering whether something I said would set you off. Sometimes someone can seem totally chill, and then a casual something sets them off. Maybe you heard me mention getting a tattoo, and that was where you drew the line, thinking that it was a degradation of the divinity of human form or something. Maybe I talked about keeping my bed warm and you assumed that Ming was right about me. No, no, I¡¯m not ¡ª I don¡¯t need reassurance from you, okay? I¡¯m not asking you to say that we¡¯re still cool. I¡¯m telling my story to you, as straightforward as I can, and if you¡¯ve got a problem with any of it, I¡¯ll stab you in your sleep. Yes, that¡¯s a joke, ha ha. Anyway, we were on world five of seven. I was badly beaten, and spent some time in a field hospital at an outpost deep within a jungle. I probably could have kept moving if I¡¯d really had to, but one of the locals saw me and exclaimed ¡®my god!¡¯, and I got put on bed rest until I stopped peeing blood. The ¡®locals¡¯ weren¡¯t local, they were from a far-off land and had spent two months crossing the ocean, then another two weeks traveling upriver on a steamer ship to get to where we were. They mistook me for a local, probably because of some differences in pigmentation. To make a long story short, I got invited to go on one of these expeditions once I was feeling better, and I took them up on it, mostly because my other option was being a nurse¡¯s assistant. Lest you think I was exceptionally skilled at the medical arts, they mostly wanted a warm body, and there were plenty of brown-skinned porters with them, not locals either, but more local than from across the sea. That I had a weird black bracer and a needle for a sword was taken as an odd affectation, and seemed, to them, proof that I was some kind of jungle person. Eventually I gave up and leaned into it. We carried steamer trunks through the jungles, forded rivers, made camp after sometimes having only moved less than a mile through thick brush or with a heavy elevation change. There were twenty men when we started, and a combination of accidents and disease started picking them off one by one. I had the armor, but didn¡¯t use it, keeping it hidden most of the time and never showing off its capabilities. Similarly, I didn¡¯t tell anyone that I could bounce. I think maybe I was hoping that the next thresholder would push me off a cliff or something. The expedition was looking for riches, following a myth that was apparently compelling enough to have drawn the attention of all kinds of explorers. The ones that had come back home had exotic plants in vivariums, stuffed animals to delight their friends, and occasionally riches, which I think was the big thing. The ¡®sylvomania¡¯ that gripped their continent was one of those curious things that attracted both the very rich and the very poor, and the expedition was a combination of down-on-their-luck men looking to score big and wealthy men who were almost certainly pissing away money. I have to admit, I was a little checked out. I was thinking about the beating I had taken, still holding a lot of anger about that, and I spent my time looking outward, trying to find the next thresholder, watching the skies because I¡¯d experienced one too many screaming arrows from the heavens. I wasn¡¯t looking at the expedition too hard, I was rolling with it, going through the motions, that kind of thing. There were a few sour notes. My job in the expedition, the thing they were bringing me along for, was mostly just menial work, stuff like serving tea, preparing food, setting up tents, that sort of thing. There were a few other hire-ons that did that too, but I was the expedition¡¯s token woman. They called me surly more than once, and I guess I kind of thought that ¡®okay, that¡¯s who I am now, I¡¯m the surly maid of this expedition¡¯. A few of them came on to me, but I snapped at them, and it became one of those unfunny running jokes. I wasn¡¯t just the surly maid, I was surly and didn¡¯t like advances, which they thought was the height of comedy. I slept with my needle wrapped up beneath me, and I had my armor, but in spite of what I was worried about, I never ended up having to stab anyone in the middle of the night. Their liquor was weak as shit though, so maybe that was what held them back. We were searching for a lost city in the jungle, one that was supposed to have known wonders beyond comprehension before it had fallen. There promised to be hillocks of gold and magic gems, all kinds of tall tales that I wasn¡¯t certain weren¡¯t true. I had seen enough in my travels to be willing to believe anything, no matter how outlandish. The scenery was mostly trees and vines, brush and wild animals, life that had been crammed into a place that somehow seemed to go on forever and like there wasn¡¯t enough room. Humanity wasn¡¯t at the top of the food chain there, not by a long shot, but the predators were few and far between. We encountered them only rarely, a giant cat once and a snake as thick around as my waist another time. I was off gathering firewood with two other men when we got attacked by a baboon whose eyes, I swear, glowed red, his fur like needles. I slammed my armor around me and got a close shave in the process, then went toe to toe with the beast, bouncing off trees like a gumball until finally finding a place where the needle went in. The two men I¡¯d been with had died, and I chose to act like a damsel in distress, lucky to have escaped with my life. They still thought that my armguard was a weird bit of jewelry. There were lots of setbacks looking for the lost city, in part because it was lost. We would spend huge amounts of effort moving a few miles, get to the place where we thought the city would lay, and surprise surprise, find that it wasn¡¯t there. We were losing men, drained of resources, and running out of places to check for a big city, which meant the men were getting testy. Things came to a head when we decided to go into one of the tiny little villages that were dotted around the jungle, tucked in under the trees like a squirrel hiding nuts for the winter. They were small, skittish people, which made sense given the monsters they had to deal with. I got a few shocks there. The first was that I did speak the language, though poorly. I speak three languages, one from mom, one from dad. The natives spoke dad¡¯s language, which was bizarre to me, more than all the magic powers and lost cities and showdowns in a space station. The second shock came from the expedition, men I¡¯d been with for almost two months at that point. They were trying to trade, working through the language barrier, with me as the intermediary, but the problem was that the villagers didn¡¯t want to trade. They didn¡¯t want anything to do with these strange men coming into the village, and soon there was shouting on both sides, with me in the middle, trying my best and utterly unable to keep up. They didn¡¯t understand each other, but they did understand the emotions in the air, primarily anger. The argument heated up, and at some point the expedition got out of control. They abandoned the notion of trade and started taking whatever they wanted, stealing food and supplies, whatever was at hand. A fight broke out, and I picked my side. It wasn¡¯t with the men I¡¯d been traveling through the jungle with. It was lopsided. I had gotten pretty damned good with a sword, and my armor let me shrug off their attacks. It was payback for every little jab at me, every unfunny joke, the occasional leer, and they dropped one by one. I surprised them, no doubt about it, but I had been keeping my needle by my side the whole time, so they shouldn¡¯t have been that surprised when I actually used it. Two of them tried to run when it became clear I was threshing my way through their numbers, and I bounced after them in my skintight black suit, leaping through the forest like some kind of deranged puma. To be honest with you, I kind of thought that after I¡¯d killed all those guys, a portal would open up and take me to the next world. I didn¡¯t know how it worked, and thought maybe it was enough to right some wrongs, like that was the meaning of all this world-hopping. Instead, I ended up kicking around the jungle with the natives after we¡¯d buried the bodies together. We knew that if anyone found out what I¡¯d done, there was a chance for retribution, but expeditions got lost in the jungle all the time, and it was simple enough to cover the tracks. I spent three weeks there, brushing up on my language skills and learning a bit about how the locals did things. They were grateful that I had defended them from the outsiders, even though I was an outsider myself. I took up work as a hunter, which I proved to be quite good at, and I learned to throw the needle like a spear, which was their tool of choice. I almost lost the needle a few times, which was always scary, but it was shiny and easy to see in the leaves if I looked around long enough. We were attacked at the end of that three weeks, not by the other thresholder, who I thought was probably still out there, but by slavers. Slavery was alive and well in the world, though it had been treated with disdain by the members of the expedition. I had broached the subject carefully with them, worried that they¡¯d say something like ¡®oh, I have a fine slave back home¡¯, because if they had said that, I¡¯d have had to kill them all. I mean, I killed them all anyway, but I would have had to do it earlier, leaving me on my own in the jungle. I killed the slavers, naturally, preventing these people from being forced to work on colonial plantations a hundred miles away. Hopefully you don¡¯t consider this a hot take, but I hate slavery, always have. At any rate, once that was all over and done with, the villagers gave me the location of the lost city, which did exist after all. They said that it was a dangerous place that no one ever returned from, which definitely piqued my interest. Looking back, maybe it was dumb to try to take on a lost city on my own, but I did it, and came out the other side with sun powers. I¡¯m glossing over two very tough weeks here, a good helping of magic, and at least two times I nearly died. In addition to the power of the sun, which you got to witness firsthand, I had a sack of gold coins. I¡¯d gone this whole time and still seen neither hide nor hair of the other thresholder. I knew from past experience that sometimes one person is early and the other late, and sometimes they showed up pretty far from each other, but I wondered whether it ever happened that two thresholders came into the same world and just never ran across each other. Once I had been blessed with the power of the sun by a lost civilization, I took the next obvious step and put a stop to slavery. A lot of what I did was kill people. My armor made me pretty much impervious to gunfire and bladed weapons, and you need to be some kind of monster to bruise me with something blunt. I suppose a cannon would have been enough to put a dent in me, but cannons are nearly impossible to aim against a person, especially one that¡¯s bouncing toward you. I did what I¡¯d done with Gunther, but much more successfully and on a larger scale: I snuck into houses and slit throats. I mostly did this wearing only the armor, so black that I almost stood out, shiny needle in hand, and I left a calling card just so people wouldn¡¯t think that Spontaneous Throat Opening was a new disease that was going around. The first phase of this took place in a port town at the mouth of the river leading out from the jungle, the one you had to take a steamer ship up if you wanted to get into the heart of darkness. Once that was done, all the local companies involved in the slave trade demolished, all the slaves freed, I went abroad, to where the heart of the problem was. I do not have any regrets about doing this whatsoever, by the way. I worry ¡ª worry is a strong word ¡ª that you¡¯ll think that rational people should talk things out, that democracy will always save the day, that you shouldn¡¯t kill people just because of a disagreement, but nah, they were responsible for all kinds of atrocities. I¡¯d fuckin¡¯ do it again. My campaign against slavery through copious violence is what eventually ran me right into the other thresholder, which I had sort of expected might happen given that I was making waves large enough to swamp whole cities. Clarence wasn¡¯t some pro-slavery fanatic, he was an anti-extrajudicial-killing fanatic, or at least enough of a fanatic that he thought it was his duty to stop me. I thought this was pretty stupid, and explained so to his face on more than one occasion. If the law says that it¡¯s okay to own another person, fuck the law. We fought about this a lot, but didn¡¯t come to blows right away, in part because Clarence was ¡ª unusually for a thresholder ¡ª allergic to conflict. The typical conversation would go like this: ¡°Hey,¡± he¡¯d say, ¡°You shouldn¡¯t sneak into people¡¯s homes and kill them.¡± ¡°Well, they could free their slaves and then I wouldn¡¯t kill them,¡± I would respond. ¡°But they¡¯d be financially ruined!¡± he would say. This was mostly true, because I was mostly going after people who were very rich, and whose riches depended on hundreds of slaves. ¡°I care more about destroying the institution of slavery than I do about whether these bastards have money,¡± I would reply. ¡°You need to stop, this can¡¯t be how things are done, it has to happen with proper discussion, with checks and balances.¡± He¡¯d get emotional, try to plead with me. ¡°There are other avenues, the Manumission Society.¡± ¡°The Manumission Society celebrated their fiftieth anniversary,¡± I would say. ¡°They celebrated like it was something to be proud of, rather than a mark of how slow they¡¯d been going.¡± And it always came down to the same thing from him, ¡°Maya, you have to stop.¡± My answer never changed. ¡°No, I don¡¯t think I will.¡± It wasn¡¯t like I was breaking into random houses and killing people. I picked my targets carefully. I made sure I knew what they looked like. No one knew what I looked like, because the armor conceals everything, and usually I wore a cloak for style and to make people shit their pants before they died. Clarence certainly didn¡¯t know what I looked like, not until the very end. I felt bad for him sometimes, because he was just so damned empathic all the time, and he didn¡¯t want to hurt me, didn¡¯t want to fight. Problem was, a lot of that empathy was directed toward the people most directly involved in the slave trade, rather than toward the slaves themselves. The wildest thing about Clarence was how many worlds he claimed to have been to: twenty-seven. He had mostly lost, and given how violent some of my conflicts had been, it was a real head-scratcher how he¡¯d made it through that many and not wound up with a fractured skull. I never had a long sit-down with him to get the details on any of it, but he¡¯d been through the most worlds of any thresholder I¡¯ve met by a long shot. I think in some ways he was the worst kind of asshole, a well-meaning asshole. We fought a lot ¡ª physically, as well as words. He didn¡¯t want to fight, didn¡¯t want to kill me, and let me get away from him more times than I can count. I didn¡¯t care if he lived or died, and given how often he interfered with my plans, would have preferred him dead, but he was a tough little cockroach. I think it was at about this point that other thresholders started having so many powers that it was hard to keep track of them all. Clarence could make holes in himself, little cutaway places that showed his internal organs, and he could do it fast enough that a sword aimed at his guts would instead go through a hole there. I tried slicing through the side of the hole, and there was a barrier that the needle couldn¡¯t slash though. He could teleport and leave behind ice sculptures, which I must have crashed through at least two dozen times. He had some kind of hold over scaly things, mostly snakes and lizards, which acted as his eyes and ears, and a few times, larger things he used to go on the attack. The last bit of kit he had was some kind of crazy scifi gun, powerful enough to put a pinprick hole straight through a mile of city, bursting pipes and drilling through walls, with seven different modes. It worked just fine on flesh too, and on my armor, in case you were wondering. He hit me with it a few times, but I had the energy of the sun, and could heal back eventually. My little campaign against slavery continued apace, city after city as I made my tour of the continent. Turns out that if you present a credible threat to the lives of the people in charge, eventually they change their tune. You know, I had always wondered whether that would work, and it turns out that it does. There were bumps along the road, but the surest way for any of these people to reach their end was to stand up for the institution of slavery. It had a real chilling effect. I¡¯ve got to tell you about what has to be one of the single best moments of my life. One of these fucking politicians had gotten up on a stage, making a big show of it, and gave this speech in defense of the institution of slavery. He had a crowd there, some of them also slave owners, but most of them just the rabble, stirred up by my rampage. People were pissed about it, obviously, I hope that goes without saying. Anyway, this guy is up there, a big slavery booster, talking about how it¡¯s necessary for the economy, how the slaves were being brought to a better life, how they were inferior, all this garbage. I was watching from up on top of a roof, across the street from the place he was giving this big speech ¡ª it was on some courthouse steps, ironically, or maybe not ironically, I don¡¯t know. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. So then he starts slagging me off, saying that I¡¯m a villain, that I¡¯m employing violence, the tool of the dimwit, that I¡¯m skulking in the night like a ghoul, that I¡¯m a coward who can and will be beaten by the strength and decency of the common man. I threw my needle like a spear, as the villagers had taught me, and got him right in the chest. It was a thing of beauty. I hope I can match it some day. It was also kind of a stupid thing to do, since I had to go down and retrieve my needle, which involved a lot more fighting and wading my way through the panicked crowd, but the government folded to my demands three days later, so maybe that kind of shock and awe was worth it just on the face of it. I¡¯m very serious that I ended slavery in that world. Maybe they¡¯ll start it up again after enough years of me being gone, but I¡¯m pretty hopeful that the reign of terror worked, and once the slaves were freed, the status quo had shifted. I¡¯m sure there was some resentment about how it happened, and it¡¯s not a great precedent, but that¡¯s Clarence¡¯s voice in my head. I didn¡¯t end up killing him, as much as I sometimes wanted to. He was absolutely on the wrong side of a very straightforward subject, his oozing reasonableness and dogged insistence on seeing ¡®all sides¡¯ repulsed me, but when it came down to it ¡­ I don¡¯t know. I went soft on him, even though he wouldn¡¯t admit that he¡¯d been wrong. Our final fight was in private, in the woods outside a country estate. I think with my work done, we both knew that it was time for it to be over. There was more for me in that world, if I was willing to stay, but I¡¯d been there for what felt like too long, and after what I¡¯d done, I thought I would probably be hunted for the rest of my life. Clarence had been a thorn in my side, but he¡¯d ultimately failed to stop me, and he knew it. What was left but to do the thing that thresholders do? So I beat him and let him live. He went off to world twenty-eight with another loss under his belt. I had fought him more than any other person, had stayed in that world a long time, and I almost felt an affection for him, except that the principal thing he¡¯d done was to argue in favor of letting people own slaves, which is unforgivable. I took my time with the portal, a half hour to gather up clothes, a bit of leftover gold that hadn¡¯t been given to the slave-relocation funds, a fully stocked pack with food and water, all that kind of thing. I found myself in a rain-slicked city, the smell of fumes hanging heavy in the air, glowing lights blotting out the night sky, and grime clinging to the graffiti-splashed walls. My first impression was that it felt like home, but I got picked up as a vagrant on my first night when I couldn¡¯t find a place to sleep, and the differences between this place and my original world became apparent pretty quickly. I¡¯ve got a relationship with tech. The company I worked at, the one where I did marketing, they were a tech company. I got to know my way around the industry well enough to have some serious doubts. There were lots of promises without a hope of delivering, lots of breaking things and hoping that they would be fixed later, racing ahead without a plan, that kind of thing. This was an urban hellscape, helped along by tech. I had been with the pirate crew around the dying stars, and they had prosthetics, but those prosthetics worked. The ones I was seeing around this place, they were dodgy, installed without safeguards because government oversight had been neutered, regular bad batches that had to be recalled, limbs and organs that would phone home to the corpo offices to get their marching orders. Most of it was some kind of fanciful biotech, the kind that I couldn¡¯t be sure wasn¡¯t magic, which meant that instead of having bits of metal sticking out from their heads, they¡¯d instead have white bumps like giant zits which would let them hook up to computers that you weren¡¯t supposed to move too much for fear of damaging the tissue inside. The new limbs were lab-grown hypermuscle around a titanium core. They¡¯d get reskinned with a lab-grown dermal layer to let them have makeup on demand and tattoos wherever they wanted. You get the idea. So I got picked up as a vagrant thanks to a citywide surveillance system ¡ª genen birds that would spend their time watching people and then dock with something that would lick their brains. I was put into a home for about a week as they tried to get a sense of me, but I didn¡¯t have any records in their system, and there was no protocol for registering someone like me. They took my needle for ¡®safekeeping¡¯ and tried to take my armor, but it couldn¡¯t be removed from my wrist no matter how they tried to grease me up, and eventually they decided that it wasn¡¯t worth the effort. I probably could have fought my way out instead of going with the cops that first night, but that seemed like a braindead move when I¡¯d only been in the world for twenty-four hours. Eventually I got kicked out onto the street with a pitiful stipend, matched up with a service that would house me and feed me in return for menial labor, part of some semi-indentured servitude scheme that also put tax dollars in the pocket of the plutos. The corpo life at the bottom of the ladder was a rat pod where I did number slinging. I kept up with that for approximately two days, then got the groove with some biohackers. There was a lot of slang, almost a painful amount, and they thought I was hexane for a long time until I thrust my plug. I¡¯m still shaking it off, honestly. Sometimes they¡¯d talk and it was jargang ¡ª which I later found out was a portmanteau of jargon and slang. But I got along with them, maybe because I had some experience with the pirates and knew how an underground outlaw group operated. I also had some wild stories that I was sure they didn¡¯t believe, even after I¡¯d demonstrated the armor and the light-bending. Even though they couldn¡¯t explain the stuff that I could do, they thought I was probably a labbie ¡ª lab-grown human ¡ª or an escaped testie ¡ª test subject. I swear half the slang they made up on the spot, like they were allergic to straightforward language. Some of that was because of the eyes in the sky and the ears on the ¡®teers ¡ª uh, from volunteers, I think, a derogatory word for all kinds of people who opted into the corpo bullshit. But these were also literal extra ears, which acted as listening devices. Anyway, there were lots of people who would rat us out for some extra cred ¡ª and again, these are literal rats, bioengineered to be fed anonymous gossip. I was riding high off the last world, feeling good about myself, so I looked up at those big corpo towers, then down at the slimy streets and thought ¡®you know what, I can do something about this¡¯. The short version is that I got put in my place, and I don¡¯t think I¡¯ll give you the long version. It would probably suffice to say that while I had been virtually invincible in the last world, I was anything but in this one. They had tasers, automated bone-guards, bullet-proof windows, and the aforementioned looking glass spying out over the sprawling city. They had flying robots ¡ª flapping feathered wings ¡ª which I could never find a way to beat. Best I could do was blind them, and that only worked for so long before they had a counter up. Worst hit I took in that world wasn¡¯t a hit at all, it was a virus, something handwove for yours truly. I was out for a week, guts boiling, and I probably would have died if it hadn¡¯t been for my biohacker pals doing some truly heinous trial-and-error on my fragile body. The other thresholder was on the corpo side, and didn¡¯t seem to care one whit about anything we were doing. He was an elf, I¡¯m pretty sure, and not just someone with the mods to look like an elf. He fancied himself an artisan and rocketed up the ranks of the corpo towers, becoming lab-chief in about two months. The guy was cutthroat and bloodthirsty ¡ª there was a blood-drinking subculture among the corpo elite, reason being nutrients or something like that. I spent a lot less time in that world, which was good, because I kind of hated it there. I wasn¡¯t the avatar of a god, I wasn¡¯t a near-invincible abolitionist, the scenery sucked, and I wanted out. It took getting my ass handed to me a few times for me to get to that point, but yeah, not my favorite world, especially once the bioweapons came out to play. I won, but in another sense, I¡¯d call it a loss, since I had basically no shot at accomplishing what it was I wanted to accomplish. I tried, even killed a few people at the top, but the corpos were resilient to a ¡®pick off the leaders¡¯ approach, in addition to being much tougher targets. I guess you probably want to know about Eli, the elf, but I never got much backstory on him. He had a magical cleaver that he¡¯d whip out at the slightest opportunity, deflecting bullets with it and whipping it at me fast enough that the air would scream. I don¡¯t know if it was one power or a bunch of them working together, but he always had another cleaver, either duplicates or something else. He got stronger the longer we were both in the world, new cutting edge augments added every time we met. I had a few augments of my own, thanks to some hacks to loosen the restrictions on the nanites, but I was using weaker stuff, tried-and-true, most of it from before the corpo takeovers, tested for twenty-some years and without any need for maintenance. Part of it was technophobia, part of it was looking toward the next world and not wanting to outwardly be a freak. My internals are all great, my muscles stronger, bones harder, on top of what the sunlight inside me provides. There¡¯s nothing that needs some special spray every six months, nothing that would require a routine injection at the five-year mark, since that¡¯s the kind of stuff I definitely wouldn¡¯t be able to get. Eli had a bundle of tricks up his sleeve, including a mud one that I never fully understood, and some kind of plant thing that I only saw him use once ¡ª it was pretty much useless given how little plant life there was in the sprawling city, since the green spaces had been gutted by the corpos. I killed Eli with a virus, and I¡¯m pretty sure that I managed that only because I had help from inside the corpo he was working for. In his race to the top of the ladder, he¡¯d made some enemies, and while the corpos stood together, the insides of them were buzzing anthills of betrayal and politicking. I had lived the corpo life back home, and knew the stock personalities well enough, even if everything was amped up by the greed, corruption, and techno. We had greed and corruption back home, even in the place I worked ¡ª maybe especially in the place I worked ¡ª but it wasn¡¯t like that. I went into the next world prepared. Say what you want about that biocorporate hellscape, but they had lots of shops with all kinds of neat stuff, and I spent some time getting stylish, as well as loading up with all the necessities. I¡¯d seen a range of tech through the worlds I¡¯d been in, and knew that it might be a long time before I saw anything like it again. I landed in a world of magic, quaint by the standards of the megacity I¡¯d spent most of my time in, but not as untechno as I¡¯d been fearing. They had electricity, running water, but no video. I only saw smaller cities, ten thousand or less people in them, and from what they said, that was basically all there was. Each of those cities was protected not by walls, but by an electrical machine they used called a ¡®lantern¡¯, which was meant to keep the monsters away. Inside the lantern¡¯s protection, it was pretty idyllic, but outside, you¡¯d be dead meat in twelve seconds flat. Or, maybe not you, and maybe not me, but the common people of that world, yes. Michaelous was the wizard I mentioned, a tall guy who specialized in the multiverse. He found me right away, called by the same signal from before, though he wasn¡¯t using sophisticated signal analysis to isolate a specific wavelength, he had just hooked up a rough-cut pink crystal to a coil of copper wire and was using his own magic through it. When he got to me, I was in the middle of a fight with some tar-skinned creatures. I was holding my own but running low on resources, stored sunlight in particular. We made it back to his wizard¡¯s tower, fighting off more of the monsters as we went. They came in waves that seemed to be endless, and I¡¯d later learn that was more or less right, that so long as you stayed out, more and more would keep coming, grinding you down until you were tapped out. Michaelous had only left the safety of his tower because he wanted to see what the signal meant, and just from one look at me, he knew that I wasn¡¯t from his world. His tower was safe, protected by a lantern he kept fed on his own, and he had a laboratory there where he worked on his understanding of the multiverse. He was excited by me, and I was excited by him, and we spent the first few days just talking to each other about what we knew. Some of what I¡¯ve told you here is in order because I talked with him about it a few months ago. I think I¡¯ve told it better the second time through. Everyone in his world had a unique power of some kind, something you could get from eating the ¡®hearts¡¯ of the monsters, and then on top of the unique one, you could branch out into other powers. My telekinesis is the unique one I got, linked to, at the moment, three objects, though I¡¯m hopeful that it¡¯ll be more once we get to be second sphere, because it seems like something that internal alchemy can help with. The needle is an obvious go-to link, but I rotate the others depending on what I need, weapons, defense, utility, whatever. It takes a bit to change. I think your suit is a bit too big for me to move, but I guess we could test it. Everything else was pretty minor, since I wasn¡¯t in the world for long enough. Michaelous had a multiverse power, and he thought once he got strong enough, he¡¯d be able to move between worlds, not like a thresholder does, with the portals, but on his own. As it was, he could bring in things from other worlds by concentrating hard enough, holding out his hand and summoning lamps, books, weapons, all kinds of other stuff. His tower was filled with artifacts he¡¯d pulled in from other worlds, most of them junk. I stayed with him for a month, always worried the other thresholder was going to show up. Michaelous could feel the multiverse, and thought that we would have a day of warning, maybe more, but I didn¡¯t quite trust his magic. I didn¡¯t quite trust him, though part of that was because I knew I was moving up the power rankings. You¡¯ll understand when you grow up into a full-fledged thresholder, but it gets to be a lot, higher stakes, better powers. I do dearly love bouncing around, but it¡¯s weak compared to the armor, which is top tier. Since what you get varies, I figure that there are some real unfair powers out there, stuff that would get me stomped. I kind of think I¡¯ll die doing this, but I have no intentions of stopping. Maybe I¡¯ll get to stop slavery again. Maybe I¡¯ll assassinate some dictator. Mostly I¡¯ll be going up against incredible assholes, as I think the record shows, and if they¡¯re in this system we¡¯re in, gaining power as they go, then yeah, I think staying a part of it and doing my best to stop them is probably going to be the best thing that I could possibly do with my life. Right, Michaelous. We were buddy-buddy. He¡¯d been living alone for a long time, sequestered, and I guess I was a breath of fresh air. We set up traps around his wizard¡¯s tower, waiting for the other guy to show up, but we had some breathing room. It took three weeks before Michaelous¡¯ periodic checks turned up anything, and we put on some packs and trekked out to face the monster and the other thresholder. Michaelous called it The Spell like it was this ominous thing on the horizon, a working whose shape could be felt across the multiverse even with his relatively tame power. He thought that some wizard had done it and the whole thing had gone very, very wrong, multiplied out to every universe somehow. It was a summoning spell, something that was meant to call in people to a time and place that would suit them, but it called in people to both sides, and sometimes the sides were entirely defined by the people that were called in, and it was always the same people. I wasn¡¯t sure I bought it. He didn¡¯t have computers, didn¡¯t have anything really sophisticated to guide him, but he was the expert on the multiverse, and he did predict this allies business, so that¡¯s a point in his favor. We arrived at the place where the other thresholder was supposed to be and set up a little lantern, not at the site, but at a place up on the hills. I had brought a sniper rifle from the last world. He was pasty white and bald, and caught the bullet as it was speeding toward his head. Right in the moment, my first thought was that I was fucked, but he was slower when the second one came in, and the third made a stain of blood on his tight white wraps. He turned to white smoke, which drifted away in the wind, and from there the chase was on, like we were hunting a wounded deer. The inky black monsters were on us the entire time, and we had to fight them off. It was a little better when we kept moving, but we were getting further from the tower, and Michaelous couldn¡¯t move nearly as fast as I could. Night came, and we lost him. We were too far to go back, so we made for a nearby town. It would be the first time I¡¯d seen a proper city in this world, and we figured that the alabaster malefactor might have gone there. We were greeted with drawn swords and a few bows at full draw. They didn¡¯t like or trust outsiders, and expected any incoming caravan to give notice well in advance of anyone showing up. Michaelous explained that we were traveling wizards, and they didn¡¯t seem to like that, but they let us in and gave us shelter, with an agreement that we¡¯d pay our way by going beyond the lanterns and hunting monsters for them. The more monsters you hunted, the more hearts you got, the stronger you got, at least until you made one wrong move and died. From where I was standing, it was thresholding in a nutshell, and I took to it in those first few days while we tried to work on next steps. We¡¯d lost our guy, and didn¡¯t have a good way of finding him, so we spent some time in the town, which was where he would eventually turn up unless he could just camp in the woods with impunity. We didn¡¯t see him for another two weeks though, and in the meantime, I was powering up, delivering monster hearts by the basketful, gorging on them to fast-track toward powers, and making friends with the locals. It turned out that the white wraith was around town just like we were, powering himself up just like I was. He had seemed like he¡¯d stick out like a sore thumb, but it turned out that he could borrow someone¡¯s skin by way of killing them. He¡¯d slipped into town ahead of us, found a house with a lonely old guy, killed him, and assumed his life. When it came time to fight, we fought hard, and when I was winning, he ran off into the woods, I guess hoping that the monsters would help more than they hurt. The chase went on for a long time. We had thought it might happen, and prepared as much as we could. Michaelous was a wizard, mind you, and had spent some time developing a tracking technique, which meant that there¡¯d be no escaping in the middle of the night. Eventually we reached a giant lake and foughtnd on the black sands with driftwood around us and monsters trying their best to join the fray. I¡¯m sure the ivory specter had some kind of story, and all we did was fight. I don¡¯t even know if I saw all his tricks before we finally got him. He had a superspeed thing that we had to chunk through, the turning to smoke thing which he couldn¡¯t do too much, an amulet that let out blasts of freezing cold that brought my armor to a halt, and three different sets of weapons, though I don¡¯t think all of them were proper powers, not in the sense that Michaelous seemed to think The Spell tried to give us. I didn¡¯t have my pack with me, we hadn¡¯t had time to grab it, and we were far enough away from the city that I didn¡¯t think we could make it there and back. The portals seem like they stay open for a pretty long time, but not forever. I said my goodbyes to Michaelous. He was wounded, but promised that he¡¯d find a path back to the city. I hope he made it, but I really wish it had been a sure thing. The next world was a giant ring, though I really doubted that I¡¯d see all of it. I bounced my way up to the top of a rock to get a good view and found myself in a temple with a bunch of warrior monks. A very short time later, the other thresholder shows up, and we fought right away, except he was super weak, and as I was kicking his ass, I was thinking to myself ¡®oh man, maybe this is what Michaelous was talking about, the composite scenario, this nerd had said that he¡¯d only been to three worlds, and he sure fights like it¡¯. If you¡¯ve got questions, I¡¯ll take them tomorrow. It¡¯s past my bedtime. Chapter 37 - Academics Perry did, in fact, have questions for Maya, lots of them. He¡¯d tried to be quiet while she told her story, saying ¡®uh huh¡¯ or ¡®wow¡¯ or whatever, which was what he always did when listening to a story. If he¡¯d interjected with all the clarifications and questions and things he¡¯d wanted to relate to or debate, they¡¯d have taken a fortnight. A wizard who could reach into the multiverse was huge. It was one of the two things he¡¯d need if he ever hoped to actually resurrect Richter. The very first step of any plan was to get back to where Richter was, the other Earth, and then he¡¯d only need to cast a properly powerful spell or use some incredibly advanced technology that could revive someone who¡¯d been dead for a long time. This information meant that step one wasn¡¯t a pipe dream. Perry hadn¡¯t been hitting the books from Seraphinus very hard, in part because they were a slog, but if there was a possibility that step one was a go, then he needed to at least lay the groundwork on step two. Flora had said that Perry didn¡¯t actually care about Richter, or that his caring was mostly for show, that bringing her back was just hot air. She¡¯d thought ¡ª though never said in so many words ¡ª that resurrection was a bit of elaborate self-deception, a way of answering the ¡®what are you doing here¡¯ question. Now it was clear that there was a path, even if getting to the world that Maya had been to was out of reach for the time being. If it was possible to move between worlds, then it was possible for him to move between worlds, without relying on the portals to dump him back where he¡¯d been. That was consuming his thoughts, but the other thing he¡¯d been thinking about was the bruise. Maya had said that her Aztec sun powers could heal through holes put in her, and she¡¯d said that her biopunk powers had ramped up her body¡¯s natural healing, but she¡¯d been carrying around that bruise on her face for days. Either she was overstating her abilities ¡ª which admittedly tracked with what he knew about her ¡ª or there was something else going on. The last thing he¡¯d been burning with curiosity over had been Maya¡¯s own world. She hadn¡¯t said all that much about it, had called it boring, but he wasn¡¯t sure he believed that. Even the other Earth, Richter¡¯s Earth, had been fascinating to Perry. If it was a divergent Earth, he wanted to know, and if it was a totally different world that shared lots of similarities with his Earth, he also wanted to know. He couldn¡¯t escape the feeling that she was hiding something from him. Of course, the whole series of events had been from Maya¡¯s perspective, and Perry wasn¡¯t taking much of what she said at face value. As described, they did all sound like assholes, perhaps with the exception of the guy who¡¯d been fighting in defense of slavery ¡ª he just sounded like a principled moron. He¡¯d been recording it all, as March recorded by default. In spite of the fact that it was past his bedtime too, Perry listened back to her account in bits and pieces, looked at Marchand¡¯s transcription, paying special attention to places where she¡¯d equivocated, stalled, and elided. The next morning, things between them were different, warmer. Maybe she was worried that she¡¯d said too much the night before, but Perry hadn¡¯t felt anything like that. He liked the ruthlessness. He¡¯d have slit throats in the middle of the night, if he could. He¡¯d have taken out Cosme like that and slept easily at night ¡ª or at least slept fitfully while reassuring himself that it was the proper thing to do. They had their rice porridge and boiled eggs, two of them as a special treat, along with half a peach. Today was to be a day of intensive training, and they would need it. ¡°Hey,¡± said Maya some six hours later. They had worked up a sweat. They¡¯d been lifting weights, and the instructors had added more to what they were lifting until they¡¯d found their limits. This tailoring to their abilities felt like a first, and Perry was glad for it, because it meant that he was getting more from the exercises. Too much of what had come before had seemed to assume that he was a normal human with a normal body. Perry was by far the strongest of the trainees, with Maya a distant second. They didn¡¯t measure things in pounds, but he was pretty confident he was at least doubling the world records back on Earth. Maya was at, perhaps, half his strength, which was impressive given the size difference between them. ¡°Hey,¡± said Perry as they drank water. ¡°If it¡¯s just a matter of picking things up and putting them down again, we¡¯ve got them whipped,¡± said Maya. Her smile was slightly shy, and Perry smiled back. ¡°Thanks for telling me all that,¡± said Perry. ¡°No problem,¡± said Maya. She shrugged. ¡°Nothing set you off?¡± ¡°It was good information,¡± said Perry. ¡°Helpful, for the next world, and maybe for this one if another thresholder does show up.¡± ¡°You¡¯re still skeptical?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I mean, you¡¯re skeptical,¡± said Perry. ¡°Still,¡± said Maya. ¡°He found me, he found my counterpart.¡± She looked him up and down. ¡°How long are you going to give it until you attack me?¡± ¡°Six months,¡± said Perry. He looked up at the Great Arc. ¡°It would be good for us to figure out a way of locating the other thresholder. There¡¯s a lot of ground to cover if we have to do it that way. And if there¡¯s a signal, some kind of precursor strong enough, we need a way to find it.¡± ¡°You said your girlfriend had one,¡± said Maya. She folded her arms across her chest. ¡°The suit can¡¯t do it?¡± ¡°That took a dish the size of an elephant,¡± said Perry. ¡°There was no way to shrink it down.¡± ¡°Bah,¡± said Maya. ¡°But if magic can do it, then we just use magic, right?¡± ¡°Right,¡± Perry said slowly, though he was very aware that ¡®just use magic¡¯ wasn¡¯t actually a plan. He also wasn¡¯t sure that it was fair to call what the second sphere people were doing ¡®magic¡¯. It seemed different somehow, far different from what the likes of Romuald had done. Hard workouts were followed by guided meditation, though meditation also felt like the wrong word. Perry had done meditation when he was young, inspired by a few lines in a Roald Dahl book, but it had been more about emptying the mind. This was more about intense concentration on very simple things, but not emptiness in any real sense. A major part of it seemed to be getting an understanding of ongoing processes within the body, starting with the dead simple, like breathing and heartbeat, and moving on to more esoteric bodily functions, like the growing of bones, filtration of water by the kidneys, digestion of food, and all kinds of other things. Luo Yanhua was leading meditation for the first time, and she was far more judicious about speaking English than the other instructors, favoring the outsiders. Some of what she said made sense, and comported with what Perry knew about human biology, but other things seemed patently false. ¡°The pericardium meridian connects the pericardium ¡ª the protective sac around the heart ¡ª to the middle finger,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is therefore a meridian of utmost importance, a weak spot to be defended, vital in understanding the pathways of power through the body, fundamental to the functioning of the cinnabar field.¡± The magic system, as Perry was thinking of it, was complex. There were ¡®light¡¯ and ¡®dark¡¯ pathways, which he thought were basically yin and yang, though the translation wasn¡¯t bent that way for whatever reason. Meridians were divided into primary and extraordinary, and into light and dark, and on the whole it seemed like before anything could be properly learned Perry was going to have to do a whole lot of rote memorization. There were straightforward names, like the ¡®liver meridian¡¯, one of the primary ¡®dark¡¯ meridians, but they¡¯d have functions that felt unconnected: in that case, influence over the eyes. This raised all kinds of questions. The first, for Perry, was whether this was true in other worlds as well. If all of this was true, if the liver was somehow connected to the eyes and the middle finger somehow connected to the pericardial sac, was that true for every human throughout the multiverse, true not just on the prior worlds, but on Earth as well. Maya had thought that perhaps these systems were the same as the ones on her previous world, or that they would interact with each other, making her telekinesis better in some way. Would it have been possible to learn these things on Earth? Perry thought that was surely not the case, but it nagged at him. When Perry got back to his room, he had a long look at Gratbook and did a deep dive into a bunch of what he¡¯d considered to be quackery. Much of what he¡¯d read lined up with what Luo Yanhua had said, though many of the terms were different. The recurrence of myths and legends from Earth was starting to seem like a running theme, one that probably warranted thinking about more. Mere convergence seemed unlikely, but the other likeliest answer, at least in his opinion, was that there was a flow of information, either the multiverse leaking in some way, or more directly, through multiversal travel. Even if some random wizard somewhere knew about the multiverse, Perry only currently knew of one method by which information could readily be spread between worlds without magic: thresholders. So had some long-ago thresholder arrived in China and handed over a description of how meridians and vessels and vital energies worked in this place? There was no way of saying, but Perry found the idea uncomfortable. He had been thinking of Earth as his distant home, not something that was caught up in all of this. He¡¯d considered his life there as good as dead, had made peace with the idea that he¡¯d never see his friends or family again, but if Earth wasn¡¯t just a place that thresholder were from, if it was a place that thresholders went to, then that meant that it was in danger. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. It also meant that Earth could be fixed. Perry had always thought of himself as a realist rather than a doomer, but Earth had felt grim to him, like it was slipping backwards in some hard to identify way. It was one of the things he¡¯d spent his time arguing with people online about. Some people said that humanity and civilization were doomed, and others thought that this was the greatest time a person could possibly be alive, and Perry argued with both of them, at length. He was a facts and figures guy, had a dozen studies lined up and ready to fire away, but he did find himself coming down on the side of doomerism more often than not, if only because so many of the positive outlooks seemed like they were juicing the figures for the sake of optimism. With the power of a thresholder, he could change it all. Even with just March he could change it all, not by going around and lopping off heads until the change happened, but with the schematics and data necessary for fusion technology and the inherent power of what he generously thought of as near-human AI. There was a good chance that it would just make the plutocrats and oligarchs more money, but at least it would help to slow down global warming. Perry was not yet positioned to go back to Earth. He wasn¡¯t even really positioned to help out most worlds he might come across. He¡¯d come close to doing something in Teaguewater, but it had been murky there. In Seraphinus, he¡¯d helped defend the kingdom, which he felt was for the cause of good, but they¡¯d been an imperfect society. And in Richter¡¯s world, he¡¯d had no more ability to change things than on his own Earth ¡ª less, maybe, because he wasn¡¯t a legal citizen. He was feeling a weight of responsibility settle on his shoulders, and he found it uncomfortable. If he came across a world like the one Maya had described, a place where he could effect change and end slavery, he thought he¡¯d be compelled to, at least so long as he wasn¡¯t going to get shot in the face moments into the first encounter. In some worlds, he¡¯d be powerful, and in others, like this one, a relative weakling, but he¡¯d felt the same way when Cosme had explained his uplifting plans. He wasn¡¯t so sure anymore. When the ¡®quiet time¡¯ finally came, Luo Yanhua led Perry to her chambers on the second floor of the temple as scheduled. She did this publicly, and they got a few looks, but Perry tried to hold himself high and act as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Part of the purpose of this, if Perry understood her right, was that she wanted to be seen. The second sphere all had their quarters on the second floor, above everyone else aside from the master, which felt a bit on the nose for Perry. It was only his second time going up the temple¡¯s wooden steps, which were worn with what must have been thousands of bare feet traveling across them over the years. The entire place reeked of age. Luo Yanhua¡¯s room was surprisingly small, and more surprisingly, cluttered. There was none of the austere minimalism that had marked master Shan Yin¡¯s chambers, though everything was neat and ordered. Cubbies were taken up by scrolls, and there were books, actual bound books of the sort that Perry had seen only a few of in his time here. He had thought that books were rare, that they had nothing like a printing press, and while that might still have been true, it was seeming more doubtful. She also had what looked like a rock collection on one shelf, various shades of jade ranging green to yellow to white to black. These all sat inset on wooden platforms which seemed to have been carved specifically for them, matching the irregular shape of the rocks. ¡°So many books,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is my private library,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She had a desk in the room with an ink well and several brushes made from animal hair. ¡°Master Shan Yin has his own collection, though he keeps it more private than I do.¡± ¡°Where?¡± asked Perry. ¡°This is a dangerous thing to ask,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Many have gone astray seeking ancient texts, hoping to learn techniques that they are ill-prepared for. There is temptation in quick power.¡± Perry looked over the books and scrolls. There was a bed, but it had taken him some time to find, as it was on top of the bookshelves, lofted with relatively little room between the top of the bed and the ceiling. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be able to read them anyway,¡± he said. ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°All texts are written in their own language, the better to guard them against prying eyes. Some are ciphered so that even those of the second sphere cannot read them without patience and practice. And many techniques cannot be learned at all through this medium, not unless you are a scholar of particular excellence.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a scholar?¡± asked Perry. Luo Yanhua gave a gentle laugh, seeming genuinely amused. ¡°I am a wandering scholar, yes. It is my role here. In another few decades, I will move on from this place, to another sect. I am of Moon Gate, but my destiny has not been firmly tied to it, not in the way that it is for the others. I teach only rarely, and spend much of my time in study. I help this place, but accrue less benefits from my work.¡± She gave a small nod, as though she was conferring understanding. ¡°That¡¯s what makes you an outer disciple?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I am myself, but I am an outer disciple by virtue of my detachment, yes,¡± nodded Luo Yanhua. ¡°And ¡­ is that by choice, or because of your circumstances, or ¡­ ?¡± He felt confused. ¡°I would become an inner disciple if it were possible,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But the elevation of a disciple is a matter for the masters, and as you may have noticed, this temple is quite full.¡± Perry hadn¡¯t noticed. It felt like a lot of students, but in theory the ¡®teachers¡¯ were also students themselves, continuing along and gaining more power and practice, refining their techniques. The comparison struck him after a moment, and he almost tried to put it into words, but he was certain that she¡¯d find it insulting, and he didn¡¯t know whether his way of thinking was worth anything. Lingxiu wasn¡¯t a professor, not as such, he just had a graduate degree and was stuck as a teaching assistant at a local college while he worked on getting his PhD under the actual professor figure, Shan Yin. And following the analogy, that made Luo Yanhua ¡­ an adjunct professor? Someone on the outside of the system, pitch-hitting, looking for the security of professorship but unable to get it because of budgetary concerns or a shift away from tenured positions? Perry didn¡¯t think that was quite it, but he found the analogy to be both striking and distracting. ¡°I was a scholar, in my own world, before I became a thresholder,¡± said Perry. ¡°A scholar?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Of what sort?¡± ¡°Geography,¡± said Perry. ¡°The interrelation of things, the ways that material conditions affect social conditions, uh, lots of other things. It hasn¡¯t proven all that useful in my travels through the worlds.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t need to know how things are connected together?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°I¡¯ve had much more need for skill with a sword,¡± said Perry. Also skill with a super hightech piece of military equipment that¡¯s got a brain of its own and could probably mow down this entire temple unless you guys can dodge or deflect bullets. ¡°I have brought you here today to help with my research,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Are you comfortable with that?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Of course. You just need questions answered?¡± ¡°Questions, for now,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Your transformation interests me, and there¡¯s fruitful material for a publication there.¡± Perry held up a hand. ¡°Publication?¡± ¡°I am a scholar,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There are many virtues, civic and social, and I follow those as well, but I hew closely to the academic virtue. It is my core tether. There are many aspects to the academic virtue. We believe in not just learning more, but in disseminating that information.¡± ¡°... huh,¡± said Perry. ¡°That ¡­ would seem to conflict with proscriptions about the spheres?¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°No, I did not mean that these publications go to the first sphere.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°And it¡¯s things like ¡­ what, exactly?¡± ¡°In this case, it would be a publication on your transformation when exposed to moonlight,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I will investigate your internal alchemy, watch the flows of energy, observe the transformation itself, and put out a few publications, so long as you stay at Moon Gate. It shows promise.¡± She was normally reserved, almost painfully so, but there was real eagerness when talking about the research project. She was thinking about how many papers she¡¯d be able to write about him, and that was what was cracking her porcelain demeanor. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Of course. Anything to repay the generosity you¡¯ve shown us.¡± Their conversation lasted for most of the quiet time, their voices low. Perry revealed everything he knew short of how he¡¯d actually become a werewolf, partly in the hopes that she¡¯d have some kind of solution for him so he wouldn¡¯t have to keep hiding out in the armor, unsure whether the three moons would trigger something. None of the moons were full, but he wasn¡¯t actually sure why the full moon was the trigger, whether it was a matter of luminance or something more mystical. ¡°We will explore this condition together,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There is fertile ground here, a crop of papers ready and waiting.¡± ¡°Was this something you wanted all along?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Because as different as I think my own academic career was, I share some of the same value. I¡¯d want to know for knowing¡¯s sake, and want to share that knowledge.¡± Luo Yanhua looked to the side. ¡°I had been working on a different publication at the time we met,¡± she said. ¡°I had seen you as a distraction from it. Now, things have changed, and it is clear the previous work will have to be scrapped. It¡¯s been too long since I have done my duty as a scholar and brought something new before my peers, but this ¡­ this is something. It is a relief.¡± ¡°Fell through?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Sorry, I¡¯m not clear on what you¡¯d have been researching, and I know it¡¯s second sphere stuff you probably can¡¯t tell me, but ¡ª¡± ¡°It was a collaboration,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The subject matter is not important, but my partner in the research is no longer interested in working with me, which has scuttled two years of work together. It has put me in a position of some distress.¡± ¡°Glad I could help,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s serious, this publication business?¡± ¡°Deathly,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The tether is tight around my neck. The man I was working with knew that to break our arrangement would be almost the same as delivering a killing blow to me. We are feuding, in a sense, though we¡¯re attempting to keep our relationship civil.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°And let me guess ¡­ Lingxiu?¡± Luo Yanhua nodded. ¡°He has not taken his injury well.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll help however I can,¡± said Perry. He paused for a second. ¡°Let me know when and where I can help, what you need from me.¡± He paused again as the thought came into his head. ¡°It¡¯s publish or perish.¡± She didn¡¯t laugh, didn¡¯t get the joke, but she was feeling relieved, and happy enough, at least by her standards. They had used up all of the temple¡¯s quiet hours, and while Perry had mostly been talking about himself and answering her questions about what it felt like to transform and how it had been to fight other wolves, or as a wolf, he felt like he¡¯d gotten to know her a bit better. It would be good to have her as an ally. He hadn¡¯t seen her use her bow yet, but the second sphere weren¡¯t to be trifled with. In a fight, she probably wouldn¡¯t step in for him, not if it was about honor or standing, but any little bit helped, especially if their position at Moon Gate proved precarious. Chapter 38 - Celestial Changes At the end of their first week at Silver Fish Moon Gate Temple, and with the special permission of Master Shan Yi, Perry stayed outside during the arcshadow. All of the members of the second sphere, save for Zhang Lingxiu, were in attendance, with Perry tightly bound in the center courtyard using second sphere materials that felt like nothing more than soft ropes. All of the members of the first sphere, save for Maya Singh, had gone down from the temple and into the valley proper to train among the bamboo forests. Perry was nearly naked, wearing only a wrap around his crotch, one which would hopefully not require repair. He didn¡¯t like that aspect of this, but most of them had seen him nude already, and if learning to control his werewolf powers meant hanging dong, then by god he was going to hang some dong. Luo Yanhua had her bow, and Perry got to see the full assortment of weaponry on display among the dozen or so second sphere disciples. There were more of them than he¡¯d counted during his time at the temple thus far, but once you were second sphere you spent a lot of your time meditating and didn¡¯t need to bathe or eat unless you really wanted to, or at least that was how it seemed. One of the women that was new to Perry had a set of five chakrams, and he wondered whether she¡¯d gotten the message that she wasn¡¯t supposed to kill him. The arcshadow came at noon as the ring passed in front of the sun, obscuring it slowly. Perry was tense and ready, though he couldn¡¯t really be ready, since he¡¯d lose the sense of himself. When the last of the sun disappeared, Perry felt the hairs on the back of his arms stand up. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to feel the transformation taking hold, mostly so that next time he¡¯d be able to hold it back. It was a series of symptoms though, not a burning fuse that he could snuff out, and he opened his eyes, locking them on the largest of the three moons. It was three-quarters full, waxing gibbous, and the light was almost pressing against his skin. With the other two moons beside it, working together, it felt as though it was just barely enough to push him over the edge. Then the sun peeked out from the other side of the arc, the brief minutes of eclipse having passed. Perry hadn¡¯t transformed. He let out a sigh of relief. There was a risk, but he could stop hiding in his armor every time the arcshadow came, no more hopping in and out of the armor, which had started to grate on him. ¡°Very well,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We will induce the transformation.¡± They had talked about this, but Perry still flinched, and when one of the second sphere men blasted him with a pulse of moonlight, he wished that he hadn¡¯t agreed to it. The ropes didn¡¯t hold him. The transformation made him larger, and his chest simply burst the rope apart, however much it was supposed to be something special. It happened fast, but the second sphere disciples around him didn¡¯t so much as waver. When the wolf was on all fours, sharp claws scoring the flagstones, it was all about the choice of meat. Two among them smelled familiar, not friends, but with a close enough reek of friendship that they would be eaten last. There was still a smell of an adversary in the air, but he wasn¡¯t present, had gone away to hide somewhere, fearing claws and fangs. The old man barked an order, unintelligible, and the wolf turned on him. The name, Shan Yin, surfaced to the wolf¡¯s mind, a marker, unimportant. There was something in the wolf¡¯s mind that said this man was dangerous, but he looked small and weak, hair age-bleached. The wolf attacked, and Shan Yin moved to meet him. He was unarmed and used only his fragile body. The wolf bit down, and was surprised to find that the bite was stopped, something lodged in its open mouth, hard as stone. When the wolf tried to open his mouth, whatever was lodged there ¡ª the man¡¯s arm ¡ª became further stuck. The wolf was panicked, the feeling of choking already provoking a response, and it whipped its head to the side, throwing the old man, who landed on soft feet as though blown into place by the wind. The arm, at least, had been dislodged. A careful look at the man showed that he was uninjured. The wolf howled in frustration, then went on the attack again, aiming squarely for the old master. This time, it was turned away with a kick hard enough to rattle teeth. When it came with claws, the old master spun and dodged, his robes flaring up and obscuring his movements. He landed few blows against the wolf, but the wolf was unable to draw blood, and the more he missed, the more frenzied he grew. Perry became aware of himself only as he began shrinking back down to size, but the anger faded more slowly. It was like getting angry about not being able to find his car keys only to realize that they¡¯d been in his coat pocket the entire time, anger that only grudgingly gave way to embarrassment. He was standing in the middle of the courtyard, hanging dong. Shan Yin had felt invincible while they were fighting, but as Perry calmed and got his wrap back on, he saw that the master was sweating and breathing heavily. For someone of the second sphere, that was like flopping down on the ground and gasping for air. ¡°You are well, initiate?¡± asked Shan Yin. ¡°Yes master,¡± replied Perry with a short bow. He was getting better at the bowing, and knowing when it should be done, as well as at what angle. The temple master received bows with a regularity that Perry would have found grating. ¡°We should go again, master,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°As many times as we can. Perry will not learn to control his technique without practice.¡± Master Shan Yin waved her off. ¡°It is an unacceptable risk. He is strong, in that form. I called him to me so that I could take on the burden of the fight, but his brute strength is a match for the second sphere. Moon Gate¡¯s techniques are stronger, but the wall we have built through study must never be considered impregnable.¡± Perry felt enlightened. Part of the reason for them doing this, he realized, was to redeem the sect. If Master Shan Yin was capable of defeating the oversized wolf, then the problem was not with the sect and its ability to produce good warriors. Instead, any reasonable observer would have to conclude that the problem was Zhang Lingxiu, a crippled and disgraced warrior. They didn¡¯t just want to protect the students by learning the boundaries, and didn¡¯t just want to help Perry learn control, they wanted to save face. Perry wondered how much Shan Yin had practiced for this fight, and whether the old master might have juiced it somehow. He¡¯d heard of magical herbs and ointments, which was mostly second sphere stuff. Something of that nature was going to be what propelled Perry and Maya past the first sphere and into the second, and hopefully not kill them in the process. They hadn¡¯t agreed to a fair fight ¡ª far from it, given how outnumbered Perry had been. Yet the suspicion that the temple¡¯s master had used some kind of enhancement and was now chalking his victory up to the teachings of the temple ¡­ that didn¡¯t sit right. Perry checked himself. It was possible he was just being a sore loser, even though he¡¯d gone into the fight wanting to lose, or better, able to control himself well enough that there never was a fight. Shan Yin had seemed to move faster though, to not get so much as a scratch. Could all that be explained purely by a difference in how much they had trained? Perry honestly didn¡¯t know. Luo Yanhua seemed disappointed that the ¡®demonstration¡¯ was over, and while Perry was adjusting his underwear, she came over to him. ¡°Did you make progress?¡± she asked. ¡°I remembered his name while I was a wolf,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯s nothing.¡± He needed more, but had no right to demand it. ¡°We will have to do this again,¡± said Luo Yanhua, echoing his thoughts. ¡°It is safer in the daytime, when the sunlight will change you back, but we must also see you change under the light of the moons rather than solely through the application of their power.¡± ¡°That moonbeam I was hit with, that would have killed a normal man?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The injury would be grave, but unless he was a weak man, no, it would not kill,¡± replied Luo Yanhua. ¡°And instead, it gives me power,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m ¡­ immune?¡± ¡°Immunity is a conditioning of the internal alchemy against outside threats, nothing more,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But this is something different, a reaction to energy of a certain tenor. And yes, your reaction to such power is an inversion of expectations.¡± ¡°Hey wolfdick,¡± said Maya, who seemed to have had enough of standing back. ¡°Hey,¡± said Perry. She was in her hoodie, wildly out of place, though the second sphere seemed to favor bold colors and wild styles. The neon-graffiti style was out of place, but within the same aesthetic realm. ¡°So this is a power development for you, yeah?¡± she asked. ¡°If you get moon powers, that means that you can transform when you want to?¡± ¡°Lunar energy is difficult to hold,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It takes time to develop one of the vessels for that purpose.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Maya. ¡°And what vessel would, uh, hold solar energy?¡± ¡°There are two,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The Light Linking Vessel and the Light Heel Vessel.¡± ¡°And you guys don¡¯t have some paper where I could write all this stuff down?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Write it down?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°This is simple information. You are expected to learn it so well that to see it written on paper would be an insult.¡± ¡°That¡¯s dumb,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯d learn it faster if I could run through it on paper first.¡± ¡°Paper is precious here,¡± said Perry. ¡°This might be a translation issue.¡± He looked at Luo Yanhua. ¡°Bamboo slips?¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Yes, we can have bamboo slips. They are not commonly used, as literacy is uncommon in the first sphere, but they are available to you. You know calligraphy?¡± ¡°Nope,¡± said Maya. ¡°I know my alphabet though, and how to make the letters.¡± She puffed up her chest like she was proud of that fact, and Perry laughed, or at least breathed audibly through his nose. ¡°Then I will provide you with bamboo slips, if you believe it will help you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Ink and brushes will be available from my own supply.¡± Perry looked over at Shan Yin, who was in low conversation with three of the inner disciples. He had an ear for their language, and this was something else, a third language used for private discussion. Second sphere could bend language to their will, and would often make up a language that only other second sphere could decipher. He didn¡¯t like that. ¡°He put his arm in my mouth, didn¡¯t he?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°When the wolf opens its mouth wide, it intends to close it. The defense is simple, bold, and nearly impossible to execute, which Shan Yin has often said is at the heart of his approach to lunar techniques.¡± This was the first that Perry was hearing of it. His information was limited by his inability to talk with the other students though, and Luo Yanhua was cagey, even as their relationship as researcher and test subject was flourishing. ¡°We should take him out into the woods at night,¡± said Maya. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. ¡°At night?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That seems dangerous.¡± ¡°It seems instructive,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But I fear that without Master Shan Yin, the prospect becomes much more dangerous. And given the outcome of this exercise, he would not come along with us.¡± ¡°He put himself in danger,¡± said Perry. ¡°He could barely keep up.¡± ¡°He was not attempting to kill you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry, I wasn¡¯t intending to give offense, I was just saying that I don¡¯t blame him for not wanting to undergo that again.¡± ¡°The Green Snake Valley has mountains to the south,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There are places we could go that would take us away from innocents.¡± She nodded to herself. ¡°If our attempts to control the process of transformation were stymied, I could retreat to the lunar surface and you ¡ª¡± ¡°I can handle myself,¡± said Maya. ¡°How fast can a wolf be?¡± ¡°That would be one of the things we might find out to our chagrin,¡± said Luo Yanhua. The three of them were standing in the center of the courtyard having this conversation, and Perry wished that they could have it somewhere more private. He trusted Luo Yanhua not to do anything that would get them in trouble with the temple ¡­ to a point. She had also said that she wasn¡¯t tightly tethered to this place, and that she was so tightly bound to the vague concept of academia that she¡¯d literally die if she didn¡¯t get a paper published. He didn¡¯t want to ask for reassurance that it was okay though. The other students came back later in the day, and Perry paid close attention to the looks he was getting. They were less dismissive of him than they had been before. They had known his strength and thought him a fool, but the work he¡¯d been putting in was clearly showing. He would have liked to be able to talk to them, but he was being carried along only by his actions, or what the inner disciples chose to relate. He hoped that the midday demonstration would win him some points. Perry slept in his armor that night, and dreamed of the day when he¡¯d no longer have to take that precaution either. He was waking up stiff and sore more often than not, short on sleep, and starting to have some back problems. That had all been washed away with the transformation, aches and pains gone, his body reset, but he had to feel as though transforming into a wolf and then back again because of a bad sleeping situation was hardly ideal. Two days after Perry had turned into a wolf in the courtyard, he was summoned, along with Maya, to Shan Yin¡¯s room on the third floor. Unlike last time, they were together, two pillows waiting for them and Shan Yin in a meditative pose in the empty expanse of his room. If the fight had put a strain on Shan Yin, he wasn¡¯t showing it. He sat on his larger pillow, serene and composed, clothes artfully draping him. Of all the members of the temple, he was the most important, and his appearance went beyond vanity ¡ª this was a fisher kingdom, and if he had been seen in disarray, that might have consequences. Perry respected some of the pomp a little more now. ¡°Good news or bad news?¡± asked Maya, first thing. ¡°I have met with the other masters of Moon Gate, Master Lian Qingshan of the Crystal Lake Temple and Master Wu Yujin of the Moonshadow Temple.¡± He was electing to ignore Maya, which was probably a good idea, except that Perry didn¡¯t know whether she¡¯d take that well. ¡°We have discussed your role here within the Great Arc, what we might learn from you, and you from us. It is not often the case that there is a threat to the first sphere that might be dealt with in this way. Similarly, it is not often that a student of Moon Gate has anything that might be learned ¡ª if not taught.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve been here a week, master,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yet it hasn¡¯t seemed to me that there has been much attempt at learning from us.¡± ¡°Learning must be done with judicious forethought,¡± said Master Shan Yin. ¡°We have seen techniques from both of you, many of them using tools, some more afflictions than techniques, but for us to incorporate those into our understanding of the martial arts would be a complicated affair.¡± Perry frowned, but it was Maya who asked the question. ¡°You couldn¡¯t learn the thing and then just not use it?¡± ¡°That is a novice¡¯s view of knowledge,¡± said Master Shan Yin. ¡°It should not surprise me that you ask such a question. But no, what we learn cannot be unlearned, and we cannot risk the lack of control that Perry shows, cannot risk being seduced by a forbidden technique.¡± ¡°Fine, fine,¡± said Maya. ¡°So are you going to give us the herb or not?¡± Master Shan Yin looked at her with impassive eyes that somehow communicated his disdain for her without any movement of his eyebrows. ¡°We have decided that you need more time at the temple, not only to strengthen your vital pathways and vessels, but to ensure that you do not become a stain upon Moon Gate upon your transition to the second sphere. Three months must pass before the masters reconvene on this subject.¡± Perry had been worried that Maya would say something untoward, but she only sat there, sullen and brooding as she chewed over the news. ¡°Is there nothing we can do to plead our case, master?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The word of the masters is final,¡± said Master Shan Yin. ¡°We will not help you to transition in such a way, not without more time. The Celestial Ascension Blossom is not a flower to be eaten lightly. Only those we are sure are ready should take the arduous hike up the Dragon¡¯s Breath Peak.¡± Maya moved to say something, and Perry put his hand out. She didn¡¯t like that at all, but she fell silent. ¡°We hear and understand, master,¡± said Perry. Again Maya opened her mouth to speak, and this time Perry silenced her with a look. They would have to speak later. He¡¯d understood the message. The master had some words for them about how the next months would go, a change in lodging so they would no longer have private rooms, a change in tutelage so they would have private instruction from the disciples, and few other things. Perry wasn¡¯t giving it his full attention, because he was thinking about the Celestial Ascension Blossom, whose name he now knew ¡ª whose name and location Shan Yin had given to them. ¡°What?¡± asked Maya after they had left the master¡¯s room. She looked annoyed. ¡°My room,¡± said Perry. They made their way through the temple, whose corridors they knew much better now, though there were still many rooms he hadn¡¯t gone in, most of them belonging to one disciple or another. The spartan room that he called home wasn¡¯t going to belong to him for much longer. He¡¯d instead be in the common dorms, a normal student, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do with the bulky armor, which dominated the space in the room. That was a blow that felt like another nudge by the master. ¡°He wants us to go get it on our own,¡± said Perry. ¡°How do you figure?¡± asked Maya. ¡°He told us what it is and where it is,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess he expects us to return, stronger, without having directly ordered us there. I don¡¯t know if he¡¯s subverting the other masters or whether this is a test, or just deniability, but we should go there, together, soon.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Maya. ¡°Yeah, okay, I can see it. But just because we know the name of the flower doesn¡¯t mean we¡¯ll be able to find it.¡± ¡°True,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll need to figure that out. It¡¯s either that, or waiting around under the oppressive training regime for another three months, during which time the other thresholder is probably going to show up, or maybe transition to second sphere if they¡¯re here already. We¡¯re under a time limit.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not saying no,¡± said Maya. ¡°But it¡¯s a big step.¡± She bit her lip. ¡°I¡¯m trying to play back the conversation in my head, trying to see what his tone was, whether it was a wink and a nod or just ¡­ the way he talks, like he was trying to put some gravity into it.¡± ¡°March will have the recording,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can decide. And yes, we¡¯ll still have to figure out which flower it is. But scaling a mountain to get to it will be a piece of cake for us, if you can bounce like you say you can. Personally, I¡¯ll just be flying.¡± ¡°Dragon¡¯s Arm Peak?¡± she asked. ¡°Dragon¡¯s Breath Peak,¡± replied Perry. ¡°No actual dragons involved?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t count on that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alright, fine, fuck it, let¡¯s do it,¡± said Maya. ¡°Tonight?¡± Perry looked at the armor. ¡°There was something that I¡¯ve been meaning to ask you, I just didn¡¯t know when the time would be right.¡± He looked over at her. ¡°I need your help to repair the armor.¡± ¡°Help ¡­ in what way?¡± asked Maya. ¡°The nanites did what they could and your AI wasn¡¯t the hacker we¡¯d been hoping, did I miss something?¡± ¡°There are additional repairs,¡± said Perry. ¡°Delicate work with glass, plastics, that kind of thing, work that needs them to heat themselves up or something, I don¡¯t know. It would kill some of them in the process, and needs your explicit authorization.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Maya. ¡°Then no.¡± ¡°No?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a gun in the shoulder, once that¡¯s fully repaired, I have three full clips, that might be enough to kill the second sphere guys. And I didn¡¯t even say how much it would cost.¡± ¡°I said no,¡± said Maya. Her face had become a scowl. ¡°Did you think that ¡®no¡¯ was the start of a negotiation?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know how I¡¯m supposed to respond to that,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not reasonable.¡± ¡°Yeah, whatever, no is a no,¡± said Maya with a brusque shrug. ¡°I¡¯m not giving up part of my best piece of gear to make yours marginally better.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a gun,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can¡¯t stand against the second sphere. You know we can¡¯t. A gun gives us a chance.¡± The gun was only a part of the proposed repairs whose costs would need authorization, but it was one of the most important ones. In the last world, Cosme had been able to block almost any shot, but that had been with an impossibly powerful magic item, and Perry hadn¡¯t yet seen the likes of that here. Even outside of wolf form, they seemed to only dodge his sword by inches. ¡°I¡¯m going to say no one more time,¡± said Maya. ¡°No.¡± Perry clenched his teeth. ¡°Alright. Thanks for considering it.¡± ¡°We need to identify the flower before we leave,¡± said Maya. ¡°Get some kind of description. You said that Luo Yanhua had books, did she have any on botany?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wasn¡¯t given the opportunity to look through them. And before you say it, sneaking into her room is a non-starter. We can¡¯t be thieves here.¡± ¡°We¡¯d just need to read a single page,¡± said Maya. ¡°If you¡¯re right that the master wanted us to go find the power-up flower, then he must have thought we¡¯d find a way to figure out what flower it is. He couldn¡¯t have wanted us to bumble our way up a mountain, right?¡± ¡°He might have,¡± said Perry. ¡°It might be a way of proving ourselves. But I don¡¯t think violating the norms of the temple would be a part of it.¡± ¡°Fucking kung fu masters and their riddles,¡± said Maya with a sigh. She turned away from Perry. ¡°Fine, we ask Luo Yanhua ¡ª or you ask her, because she likes you ¡ª and then when she says no, we ¡­ what, take off in the dead of the night? Because if you¡¯re talking about violating norms, I¡¯ve never seen any of the first sphere students leave.¡± ¡°Li Yunfeng and Xu Wuying both did,¡± said Perry. ¡°Shit, you know their names?¡± asked Maya. ¡°March does,¡± said Perry. ¡°He made a guide for me, based mostly on recorded conversations, so it¡¯s hopefully accurate. But I was a teaching assistant in my home world, so memorizing the names of students is something that comes naturally to me. Both of those students left, and from what I can gather, they left in order to go help with the community, to commit their labor to other realms. Luo Yanhua does that too from time to time, it¡¯s what she was doing when I first saw her. But I¡¯m not saying that we should lie, I¡¯m saying that we should go out and do that, but do it while making our way to the mountain.¡± Maya nodded. ¡°Alright, that¡¯s sorted. Road trip?¡± ¡°Road trip,¡± said Perry. He approached Luo Yanhua with the idea later in the day, as the sun was setting, having thought it over. ¡°We have seen little of this world,¡± Perry said to Luo Yanhua later that night. ¡°Moon Gate is entwined with the Kingdom of Seven Valleys, but we have experienced only the Silver Fish Temple. Your students come in here from all over the kingdom, having known its ways and people, with a connection to the land. We would like the same.¡± Luo Yanhua regarded him, then nodded. ¡°It is a sensible request, though it will require your studies to be put on hold. Though ¡­ I was to engage you and Miss Singh in private instruction, and I require more study of your dual transformations to complete my publication. This represents an unfortunate inconvenience for me.¡± Perry watched her impassive face. ¡°Would it be possible for you to come with us?¡± ¡°An excellent suggestion,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I would not want to, as Miss Singh has said, ¡®cramp your style¡¯, but you would benefit from a translator and chaperone.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. He didn¡¯t know how much she knew. ¡°We had hoped to head for the Dragon¡¯s Breath Peak.¡± ¡°A lovely place this time of year,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The roads are lined with peaches, which will be in bloom. There are bandits, of course, the refuse of the Grouse Kingdom, but you have shown that you can more than hold your own, at least against those of the first sphere.¡± Perry was watching her. If she would stop them from seeking the flower, that might be a problem. It would be good to have her with them, and in fact she could trivialize the entire operations, but if she was going to tattle on them ¡­ he didn¡¯t think she would, but it wasn¡¯t something that he wanted to be dancing around for the duration of the trip. ¡°I¡¯ve heard that there are more interesting flowers out that way, beyond just the peach blossoms,¡± said Perry. ¡°Such as?¡± asked Luo Yanhua, arching an eyebrow. ¡°The Celestial Ascension Blossom,¡± said Perry, taking the leap. Either she was with them, ready to help because of wheels greased by Shan Yin, or she was going to be a thorn in the side of this little excursion. ¡°Only I don¡¯t know where it¡¯s found, or what it looks like.¡± She watched him. The silence stretched between them. It was possible he was implicating her, or straining against her web of tethers. ¡°It is frost-kissed white, with inner petals as the pink of a seashell,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It grows only in a bed of verdant moss beneath a foul, twisted tree that stinks of pus.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°We will seek it on our own, of course.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± nodded Luo Yanhua, seeming relieved. He was getting better at reading the minute changes of her face. ¡°Road trip?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We will make a trip along the road, where the road is available,¡± said Luo Yanhua with a nod. Chapter 39 - Road Trip Perry wore the armor. This was both unfortunate and necessary, because there was no way to easily carry it and he certainly wasn¡¯t going to leave it behind. He had his sword as well, though he¡¯d left behind the other sword, the one he¡¯d taken from the second sphere man he¡¯d killed. So far as he knew, it was a magical sword but not actually that special, supernaturally sharp in the same way that the second sphere disciples were supernaturally swift, and he was certain that it could beat out almost any sword on Earth ¡ª but he already had a sword that could respond to his beck and call, and was sharp enough to take a chip out of iron. They came down the stone staircase from the Silver Fish Temple having packed very light for what might be as much as a week¡¯s trip. Perry only had two sets of clothes, one that was loaned to him from the temple and another that he¡¯d gotten in Teaguewater, neither of them his favorite things to wear. He desperately wished that he had his skinsuit from Richter¡¯s Earth back, since that had been comfortable enough to wear around her house. Maya had her hoodie, athletic shorts, her sneakers, her oversized needle, and pretty much nothing else: no bag, pack, or bedroll. She had the carbon-black bracer as well, ready to spring into action. Luo Yanhua had the least of any of them, though she could teleport to her private moon base, which she had described as being a ¡®personal crater¡¯ somewhere on the moon¡¯s face. She was in a new outfit, one that Perry hadn¡¯t seen before, a dress with a tight, structured bit around her chest that was halfway between a corset and a vest. Leaving Silver Fish Temple had been weird. Surely Shan Yin knew what they were going to do, and presumably so did everyone else, but they were treating this as though it was just a matter of deciding to go do some civic duty off in the wider world, abandoning their training for a week or so. It was a lot different from the type of school that Perry was used to, in more ways than just the fighting and meditation. ¡°I think the lack of structure is what¡¯s so different,¡± said Perry once they were past the stairs. ¡°In the school that I went to, there were defined classes, and everyone in every class was assumed to be starting with the same basic understanding of the subject, even if that wasn¡¯t strictly true. You weren¡¯t allowed to take classes that you didn¡¯t have the foundation for, and people weren¡¯t supposed to come in halfway through needing to be caught up. But the students at Silver Fish Temple aren¡¯t inducted as a class, they come in by ones and twos, and it¡¯s up to them to get acclimated, to build the foundations.¡± ¡°It has been quite some time since we¡¯ve had students that came as a pair,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°A brother and sister, I believe it was. She had a spirit root, but he did not, and when he was rejected, he took her with him.¡± ¡°Ouch,¡± said Perry. ¡°She showed promise,¡± said Luo Yanhua. There was a trace of melancholy in her voice. They walked along a dirt path, bamboo making a canyon around them, some of it trying to come up through the path itself. The air was fresh and clean, and Perry tried to be mindful of that, but it was difficult, because he¡¯d been on the Great Arc for long enough that it had become normal. The next world wasn¡¯t guaranteed to be so clean as this one. ¡°We could go faster,¡± said Maya. ¡°Or, I can.¡± ¡°Flying, I could make it to the mountain before nightfall,¡± said Perry. The Green Snake Valley was large, maybe the size of the Willamette Valley if Perry had to guess, a hundred and fifty miles north to south. The mountain they were aiming for was at the southern end of the valley, where it opened up to an enormous lake. ¡°And the lady can teleport,¡± said Maya. ¡°So what¡¯s stopping us?¡± ¡°I cannot teleport,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I can go to the largest moon and back, but cannot make my way around the Great Arc in such a way, not yet.¡± ¡°Alright, well ¡­ hop on Perry¡¯s back?¡± asked Maya. ¡°We are not rushing this journey,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There is no urgency to our movements. It is better to go slowly, to take in your surroundings, especially when this is what you¡¯ve told your superiors you would be doing.¡± ¡°It could have been an afternoon trip,¡± said Maya. ¡°An errand.¡± ¡°What you are doing now, planning to ascend without the many years of hard work, is something that some among the second sphere would find offensive,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is better for the journey to be arduous, for it to be proof of your abilities. Earned, rather than given, an accomplishment rather than, as you say, an errand.¡± ¡°Virtuous labor,¡± said Perry with a nod. ¡°Not exactly so,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But there is virtue in labor, and it is better for power to be the result of merit.¡± ¡°See?¡± asked Maya. ¡°That I can get behind. Nice to know that at least this world despises nepotism.¡± ¡°Nepotism?¡± asked Luo Yanhua with a raised eyebrow. ¡°My understanding of the word is ¡­ confused. Give me a moment to untangle it.¡± ¡°People getting where they are because of who they know, rather than their abilities,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though sometimes people have their abilities because of who their family are, so ¡­¡± ¡°You mean like, genetics?¡± asked Maya. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He was surprised that she knew the world. Usually modern-era jargon was a bit muddled or warped, as he¡¯d found with Richter. ¡°A world-famous cellist has three children, and they become world-famous cellists themselves, not because of any supernatural genetic gift, but because they were around cellos from the time they were toddlers, they were signed up for lessons very early, their family friends are teachers and advisors, they can ask questions and get help way more than someone who¡¯s just going to a cello teacher once a week, they listen to cello music constantly, and whatever else.¡± ¡°What a weirdly specific example,¡± said Maya. ¡°My mom might have been a cellist,¡± said Perry. ¡°A musical instrument,¡± Luo Yanhua mused, bending the English word into something that she apparently understood well enough. ¡°And you have some ability with the cello?¡± ¡°Nope,¡± said Perry. ¡°I washed out when I was seven. My sisters are both professionals though.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve got sisters?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I would have guessed only child.¡± ¡°If I understand your analogy, it is the duty of a parent to provide for their children, in the same way that a child is expected to care for their parents in old age,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°A parent wants the best for their children. Nepotism is when someone is admitted to a temple because of a familial connection rather than because of any ability they¡¯ve shown?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Maya. ¡°And the word has a negative valence,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Definitely,¡± said Maya. She kicked a rock that was in the middle of their path, sending it careening off into the woods. ¡°Nepotism is alive and well in this world,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But we do not see it as you do. For an uncle to place his nephew in a position of authority is a matter of familial duty.¡± ¡°At the expense of everyone else,¡± said Maya. ¡°Bah, whatever, difference of opinion, but I don¡¯t like it. Missing out because you don¡¯t have connections sucks. You lose because of who you were born as. It¡¯s unjust. And you know what I say about injustice.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think either of us have any way of knowing that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Miss Singh believes that injustice must be met with force where conversation has proven inadequate,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°And how do you know that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve been having private talks?¡± ¡°We live within a web of obligations and priorities,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°A person casts a shadow, and Miss Singh has a distinct silhouette.¡± ¡°Thanks?¡± asked Maya. ¡°It is an observation, not a compliment,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Anyone of the second sphere who has been around you for longer than a day would see it.¡± ¡°But they think it¡¯s a bad thing,¡± said Maya. ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°They think it is a truth to be aware of. What you think is just or unjust is less clear, and would require further investigation. Some aspects of justice, such as your views on what you call nepotism, would be cause for conflict if you decided that they must be met with force.¡± Perry had been looking at the bamboo forest around them. He thought that he¡¯d seen a shadow, but it must have been nothing. His eyes were better than they had been, like he¡¯d gotten glasses in spite of not wearing any before, but it was his nose that had improved the most, and that was only smelling the inside of the suit. ¡°You said,¡± Perry began before his distracted thoughts caught up with his tongue, ¡°You said that justice is a real thing here, that virtues are concrete things, tangible, affecting power.¡± ¡°Hmm,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Yes, there are tenets, virtues, and other such things. The second sphere in particular often trades in credos and declarations. But you wonder whether karmic retribution can be a guide to life?¡± Perry nodded. ¡°This is one of the eternal questions, a point on which people can disagree. There is no universal tether, not that we can find.¡± ¡°Meaning ¡­ if someone is completely untethered, they won¡¯t suffer?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They will,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°That is a core truth. But we must distinguish between the types of suffering, those that channel through the tether and those that do not. And of course a tether is not simply something of the upper spheres. A tether happens in a more subtle way to those of the first sphere, uncontrolled.¡± Perry tried to parse that. It sounded like she was saying that you wouldn¡¯t suffer any supernatural effects so long as you remained untethered, but it also sounded like you wouldn¡¯t get as much power from being second sphere while remaining untethered. That was a bit of a conundrum for him, since as a worldhopper he wasn¡¯t going to stay anywhere for very long. Was he supposed to make new tethers in every world? That, he thought, he could work with. He¡¯d had tethers in the worlds before this one. Or possibly, he could tether to a concept, like she had, something like academic virtue. The virtues seemed like they would carry on from world to world with him, so long as the power of this world would come with him. ¡°Alright,¡± said Maya. ¡°A hypothetical then. Let¡¯s say that I¡¯m living in a society that owns slaves. Am I bound to live by the law there?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± replied Luo Yanhua. ¡°Fuck that,¡± said Maya. Her response was immediate, the snap of a crocodile¡¯s jaws. ¡°Slavery is untenable,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Even in the best of circumstances, it visits too much cruelty upon those subject to it. The restriction of another in such a way would cause karmic imbalance for the entire kingdom, and especially for the enslavers. Similarly, injustice visited upon a person can cause a flow of karma in the other direction.¡± ¡°Wait,¡± said Maya. ¡°You¡¯re saying that people get stronger when someone does something against them?¡± ¡°It happens, yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Is that not the case in your world, that a person who is routinely beaten becomes all the tougher for it, that people find their strengths in adversity?¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Maya. ¡°I mean, people say that, sometimes, but I¡¯ve always thought it was horse shit, a way of romanticizing trauma. I thought you were talking about superpowers or something like that.¡± They walked and talked for a time, edging dangerously close to philosophy a few times. The Great Arc was, apparently, in what was called the Era of a Thousand Voices, a time of differing opinions on the nature of the world and a person¡¯s place within it. There were arguments about whether selfishness was benevolent or not, whether a person should help his family or his community first, all sorts of questions. Luo Yanhua was surprisingly forthright in her declarations, and while she would accept that these were not closed questions by any means, she had very firm stances. ¡°It is a person¡¯s nature to love unequally, and a person¡¯s nature is of the good,¡± she said. There was no prevarication. ¡°That we should not have priorities is an interesting thought experiment, but like many of those, it dissolves into nonsense as soon as it is brought into the real world.¡± ¡°How much of this is Moon Gate stuff?¡± asked Maya. ¡°All of it,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I would not tether myself to a sect I disagreed with. Such a path leads only to heartache.¡± ¡°But I noticed no children,¡± said Maya. ¡°No little ones running around the temple.¡± ¡°Silver Fish Temple is different,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We are going in the direction of Crystal Lake Temple, though I believe we will skirt it. It¡¯s the largest of the three Moon Gate temples in the valley, home to more than a thousand members, and many families among them. If I wished to be a mother again, I would go there, but I prefer the seclusion of Silver Fish Temple, where I can study and research in peace.¡± ¡°A mother ¡­ again?¡± asked Maya. ¡°You¡¯ve left some orphans somewhere?¡± ¡°My children are grown,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I am quite old, by the standards of the first sphere. We live on different timescales.¡± ¡°How old?¡± asked Perry. ¡°One hundred revolutions of the Great Arc,¡± said Luo Yanhua with a degree of casualness. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. ¡°You¡¯re a century old?¡± asked Maya. ¡°We¡¯re going to stop aging?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Without intervention, a member of the second sphere can live to two hundred years. In the third sphere, they can manage five hundred. Beyond that, I do not know. But you are right, there is a feeling of relief upon transition to the second sphere, as the pressing weight of imminent senescence is lifted.¡± ¡°You¡¯re being more free with your information,¡± said Perry. ¡°We appreciate it.¡± ¡°It¡¯s uncouth,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Yet there is a pressing interest in the two of you knowing these things, if your transition is nigh.¡± After the arcshadow had passed, Perry followed his sword into the air and scouted out their path, finding a village more or less where Luo Yanhua thought it would be. Her knowledge of the region was good, but not perfect, and she confessed that she hadn¡¯t been more than an hour¡¯s travel from Silver Fish Temple in the past two years. ¡°How are we doing, March?¡± asked Perry once they were in the air. ¡°Quite well sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s a beautiful day, the batteries are charged, and trouble has yet to rear its ugly head.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t jinx it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I couldn¡¯t help but listen in on your conversation with Miss Luo,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I find her an abhorrent woman.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Really?¡± ¡°I would never let her pierce my professional demeanor, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What don¡¯t you like about her?¡± asked Perry. ¡°She¡¯s a monarchist, sir,¡± said Marchand. He seemed aghast at the notion. ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you¡¯re an ¡­ anti-monarchist? You have thoughts on the institution of monarchy?¡± ¡°All right-thinking people set themselves against the monarchy, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry. He wanted to press the issue, to ask whether March remembered Seraphinus and being under the command of a king, but this was clearly a bug, or if not a bug, then unintended behavior. March had spent full days running optimizations and investigations on himself, was it possible that this was coming from that? The matter would need to be prodded carefully. He could imagine a scenario where March would rebel, which would be catastrophic, but the deeper issue was finding out where his AI was getting opinions from. Thankfully, Perry was no monarchist, so that at least wasn¡¯t a core conflict between them. If it was only opinions on the monarchy, Perry could put up with that pretty easily. He would almost have some affection for an AI that had a strong opinion on the notion of kings. If this was the start of some kind of AI rampancy, that would be more of a problem. The power armor was set up to amplify his motions, giving him strength he didn¡¯t naturally possess, but it was capable of moving on its own, even if March didn¡¯t have the capability of piloting it well enough to be effective in combat. But that also meant that in theory, the armor could go rogue. Perry was worrying about all this as he lowered himself down toward the others. ¡°No, no,¡± said Maya. ¡°That¡¯s just ¡ª can you translate the term ¡®heteronormative¡¯?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think that I can,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It means only that men and women are different? Which is what I¡¯ve been saying, I believe.¡± ¡°Problem?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Sexism,¡± said Maya with a roll of her eyes. ¡°She is upset about the differentiation between sexes, I believe,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Sex, apparently, is to correct for imbalances in the internal alchemy,¡± said Maya. ¡°But it¡¯s men and women, who have different energies, balancing between each other. Which is just ¡­ I mean, you get it, right?¡± ¡°Heteronormative,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Maya. ¡°Exactly.¡± ¡°But if that¡¯s the way the world works,¡± Perry began, but he didn¡¯t really know what the conclusion was. ¡°We just have to accept it, work with it, I guess.¡± ¡°It is not universal that women are possessed of the dark energy and men of the light energy,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°In some rare cases, the imbalance can go in the other direction. But the goal, of course, is to eliminate imbalances as much as possible, rather than to rely on others.¡± ¡°This is idiotic,¡± said Maya. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. Maya gave him a dirty look. ¡°I mean, I don¡¯t have a dog in this fight, but it¡¯s just a cultural thing, I think, or the magic underpinning this all has created this cultural understanding. One of the things that the historians on my world said a lot was that we couldn¡¯t view other cultures through the same lens that we view our own. So ¡­ yeah, it seems stupid and maybe messed up to us, given that we¡¯re from similar worlds with similar norms. I guess I¡¯m not affronted, I just think that it¡¯s a bit silly. But I¡¯ve been to weird worlds before.¡± ¡°We should get to the village,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I have been party to such talks before, and they are always better when bellies are full and warm tea can occasionally grace our lips.¡± Perry led them, following a map that March was helpfully providing, making sure that they didn¡¯t take a wrong turn through the dirt paths. The roads between villages were better, Perry had seen that from the air, sized for oxen-pulled carts and fully cleared, but they were still on back roads, shrouded in trees and bamboo. When they got to the village, Luo Yanhua took the lead and found them a place to take a late lunch. Perry removed his helmet and set it beside him, but kept the armor on, given how long it took to don and doff. It was going to be a long time in the armor, in clothes that weren¡¯t the best for it, but he was trying to not let it get to him. He tried, for a moment, to leave the gauntlets on, but it was too awkward to manipulate chopsticks with them. The food was a banquet by the standards of Silver Fish Temple, with heaping piles of meat laid atop a full bowl of rice, and three sides to go with them, a mixture of fresh vegetables in vinegar, cooked greens, and something with a bit of gristle that nevertheless had a good flavor to it. Perry devoured it, and when he looked hungrily at Maya¡¯s half-finished bowl, she slid it over to him. ¡°You eat too much,¡± said Luo Yanhua, just before a dessert of small little cakes came out. ¡°I¡¯ve been half-starved at the temple,¡± said Perry. ¡°I got a bigger appetite when the wolf thing happened to me.¡± He still hadn¡¯t told her or Maya how a person became a werewolf. ¡°These tiny slivers of meat have been driving me insane.¡± ¡°You must learn to control your internal alchemy,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°That feeling of being ¡®half-starved¡¯ is the feeling of your internal alchemy being out of alignment. If your house was leaning, would you not push the beams back to true?¡± ¡°Food contains energy,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m six feet tall, I need energy to function.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°One of the lessons you must learn is that you don¡¯t need energy to function. Your body is possessed of its own energies which flow along your meridians and sit stagnant in your vessels. They are more than enough to sustain you.¡± ¡°Personally, I get a lot of energy from the sunlight,¡± said Maya. ¡°You could try that, maybe?¡± ¡°You have a way to?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You can gift the power?¡± ¡°Put away the hard-on,¡± laughed Maya. ¡°It was a joke.¡± Perry felt full for the first time in a few weeks, and following the cakes ¡ª which were disappointingly filled with some kind of bean paste ¡ª there was a pot of tea brought to them. ¡°You both intend to move on,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There will be other worlds for you, when your business is concluded here.¡± ¡°That¡¯s about the shape of it, yeah,¡± said Maya. ¡°Find the thresholder, kill him, move on, hopefully with some cool new powers for next time.¡± ¡°Traditionally, such a pursuit would not be sanctioned by Moon Gate,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It¡¯s not sanctioned by Moon Gate,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re just out among the community, helping out. We weren¡¯t given instruction or permission.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± Luo Yanhua nodded. ¡°But surely you wondered why?¡± ¡°Why Master Shan Yin would allow it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Kind of. Either he takes the threat of a third thresholder seriously, or he¡¯s hoping to elevate us so he can go against us without fear of karmic retribution. We¡¯re under his thumb as students, but we¡¯re more under his thumb if we¡¯re second sphere students.¡± ¡°It is more complicated than that,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We live in uncertain times, following the fall of the Grouse Kingdom. I don¡¯t just mean the bandits, which you have firsthand experience with, but the stability of the Kingdom of Seven Valleys, and the balance of power within Green Snake Valley. As you know, there is another sect that calls the valley its home, Worm Gate.¡± ¡°And you want us to take them out,¡± said Maya. ¡°We¡¯re meant to be hitmen?¡± ¡°No, nothing like that,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We speak often of internal alchemy. You¡¯ve been learning it in your meditation lessons. Yet it is a concept not just of the self, but of the sect, the kingdom, of everything.¡± She took a sip of her tea. ¡°It is much harder for a sect to be balanced, and harder again for any kingdom to be balanced, but especially one which is mostly of the first sphere.¡± ¡°The fall of the Grouse Kingdom has left the Green Snake Valley imbalanced,¡± said Perry. She was leading them to a conclusion, which was one of her didactic habits. He¡¯d never been a particular fan of that approach, but he¡¯d had plenty of professors who preferred that style. Perry was decent at extracting the intended information. ¡°That means that there are more outside pressures against the sect, and an amplification of existing pressures. One of which is the aforementioned Worm Gate.¡± Luo Yanhua nodded. ¡°But we¡¯re not being asked to do anything about them,¡± said Maya. ¡°Not directly, because that would be sect warfare, and you¡¯re both under the umbrella of the kingdom, tethered to it. So if you asked us to go ham on them, that would incur some karmic debt, but if we just so happen to decide that we¡¯re using our new powers to burn down their temples, that¡¯s ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Her voice was firm. ¡°That cannot be in the realm of what Shan Yin is hoping for. I had believed that you were not capable of wanton murder.¡± ¡°Just an example,¡± said Maya. ¡°I wasn¡¯t planning to be your hired gun, not unless these Worm Gate guys are beyond the pale. I could be convinced to side against them, if you¡¯re siding with us, and especially if the enemy thresholder ends up being someone from Worm Gate, but you can¡¯t get in a tizzy just because I¡¯m suggesting some war crimes.¡± ¡°It is uncouth to speak of such things,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She folded her arms across her chest, which for her meant that this was some serious business. ¡°You are to watch your words.¡± ¡°Fine, fine,¡± said Maya. ¡°But the upshot is you¡¯re hoping that we¡¯re proxies in this little brewing war with your opponent.¡± She took a casual sip of her tea. ¡°Worm Gate?¡± ¡°They are collectivists to the point of subjugation,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°They place their focus on the social, on the hierarchies, in a way that Moon Gate does not. Their temples ultimately report to a single man, Sun Quying, a member of the third sphere who controls many of those of the first sphere within their compound.¡± ¡°Wait wait wait,¡± said Maya. ¡°Controls?¡± ¡°They volunteer for such control,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Their bodies are turned toward the tasks of the temple, an effort to ensure that the temple¡¯s internal alchemy is completely balanced, the better to focus on the growth of what it considers its most important assets.¡± ¡°The man at the top,¡± said Maya with a nod. ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There are a number of the second sphere who are being cultivated for transition to the third sphere. They are formidable ¡ª more than the equal of any member of Silver Fish Temple, save for perhaps Master Shan Yin.¡± ¡°But are they his children, or ¡­ ?¡± asked Maya. ¡°They are collectivists,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Zhang Wuying and his followers believe that what is best is for everyone to work together, and that the inequality of their members means that it is often better for the weak to support the strong so the strong can support the weak. Zhang Wuying would not elevate his own children unless they were the most capable warriors.¡± ¡°Ideological consistency isn¡¯t something we¡¯re used to,¡± said Perry. He drank some of the tea, which was nicely warm. They made good tea in this world, he would give them that. All in all, it wasn¡¯t a bad place to be, esoteric fights between opposing martial sects aside. ¡°So it¡¯s a cult, basically,¡± said Maya. ¡°And you don¡¯t want us to hit them, necessarily, or take out their super important trainees, but you do want us to help you in a way that you can¡¯t help yourself, because helping yourself would incur some karmic debt that no one in Moon Gate wants to pay. Do I have that right?¡± Luo Yanhua nodded. ¡°But you don¡¯t want us to go in like wrecking balls, guns blazing,¡± said Maya. ¡°You want us to be operating outside the structure of the sects, but inflicting pain on them in ways that are merely ¡®uncouth¡¯. Reputational damage, that kind of thing, karmic damage, opposing some of their ¡ª what, recruiting efforts?¡± ¡°It is hoped that the fabled third thresholder will arrive,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°When they do, from what both of you have said, they are likely to be on the side of Worm Gate.¡± She turned to Perry. ¡°You predicted this when you first came, if you recall.¡± ¡°Yeah, I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°I hadn¡¯t thought that ¡­ well, that you would see it that way.¡± ¡°Your role in the conflict is yet to be determined, and it is likely that you will act as agents of your own, untethered,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But if I follow Master Shan Yin correctly, your untethering, your uncouth behavior, can work in the interests of Moon Gate.¡± ¡°Sneaky,¡± said Maya. She leaned back. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I like it.¡± Perry looked at her and thought about her saying that she¡¯d snuck into a man¡¯s room to slit his throat ¡ª something that she¡¯d repeated many times since then, as a common tactic. But he could immediately see where this was different, at least for her, the ways in which underhanded tactics were different from rules-lawyering and rank politics. There was something more honorable about a sword in the night. ¡°We¡¯re not soldiers,¡± said Perry. ¡°And we¡¯re not going to be commanded. But we will fight injustice where we see it, with as much force as we can muster.¡± Maya gave him a look that Perry couldn¡¯t interpret, maybe a bit of skepticism or uncertainty, but she nodded as though she was fine going along with that for the time being. When their tea was done, they returned to the road, and Perry reluctantly put his gauntlets and helmet back on. They were still moving slowly, and the conversation turned to matters of food, particularly what was available across the Great Arc, and in the worlds that the two thresholders had been to. Perry¡¯s mind was elsewhere, and he engaged in discussion only infrequently as Maya told them about all the disgusting things that she¡¯d eaten in the biopunk world, until Maya brought them to a stop. ¡°There,¡± she said, pointing to a mountaintop that wasn¡¯t too far away from them, up the Great Arc, so it could be seen more easily. Perry looked. If it was Dragon¡¯s Breath Peak, it was closer than he¡¯d thought it would be, and they could reach the base by the end of the day, even at their relatively slow speed. But as he looked, he saw flashes of light at the top of the mountain, blue arcs that must have been massive to be seen from such a distance, followed by sparks of red. A lightning bolt flashed high into the cloudless sky, originating from the same point. ¡°That¡¯s what we¡¯re going toward?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s not the peak we¡¯re seeking,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It¡¯s ¡­ a fight?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Fifth sphere, I would guess,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Her eyes were fixed on what they could see of the fight, which was mostly just a lightshow. ¡°They do not fight lightly, but the battles can go on for weeks at a time. You accumulate many techniques on the way to such power. The combatants are likely to be thousands of years old.¡± The tip of the mountain exploded without warning, sending debris and dust into the air in all directions. Within the cloud of dust, there were more lights, flashes of color that illuminated the cloud¡¯s interior. They weren¡¯t centered on any one location, instead moving from place to place, an implied fight that was taking place within the dust. ¡°Our trip must be diverted,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Her eyes had left the mountaintop and were tracking the chunks of rock that were still flying through the air. ¡°We must ensure that those who are hurt receive help.¡± One of the pieces of rock was coming closer to them, its size and speed more apparent as it approached. Marchand immediately set up a tracker on the HUD, not just for that piece, but for all the others, showing their trajectories. Some were larger than others, at least several tonnes, and they would land with all the grace of two swans, stapled together. The valley wasn¡¯t a dense urban area, but it also wasn¡¯t so depopulated that everyone was safe. ¡°Can you ¡ª¡± Perry began, but when he looked over, Luo Yanhua already had her bow drawn. The arrows she fired were shafts of light, flying through the air with laser-like speed. Perry could only see them strike the tumbling boulders because when that happened, the entire boulder would glow and then disappear. She was firing fast, once a second, the arrows coming from nowhere. After two dozen, she was spent, face pale and arm weak. She hadn¡¯t been the only one to intervene: other boulders had been removed from the sky by various means, and Perry had seen someone leaping between them, demolishing them with his fists, turning them into a rain of hail rather than a haymaker of rock. ¡°What do we do if a fight like that breaks out near us?¡± asked Maya. She was looking at the cloud of dust rising from the mountain, where the light show had stopped. Perry didn¡¯t know if it was finished or had merely moved somewhere else, but all they were left with was the cloud of dust and rain of rock. ¡°Run,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Save who you can, but run. For now, we make sure that those of the first sphere are safe.¡± Chapter 40 - Distant Calamity Perry looked down at the caved-in skull of some unfortunate soul. The blast from the mountain had sent a huge amount of rock into the air, and while the biggest pieces had largely been taken care of, the smaller pieces had still caused all kinds of destruction, punching straight through windows and roofs. ¡°What kind of horrible monster would he turn into if he wasn¡¯t buried?¡± asked Perry. ¡°A wild golem,¡± Luo Yanhua answered. ¡°They possess hardened skin, superior strength, and a desire to crush those they come across.¡± ¡°Wait, seriously?¡± asked Maya. ¡°This man would become a monster?¡± ¡°He won¡¯t,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°He will be buried in time, cleansed, purified, and loved in death. If there are other victims from the explosion of the mountain who are not found, they might become golems, yes. They¡¯re difficult to fight, scabrous and ill-tempered. We may be called to deal with them, in the coming days.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Maya. She looked at Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll grab the feet, you grab the arms?¡± They moved the corpse while the villagers looked on. Why this fell to them, he had no idea, but the villagers seemed grateful. Bodies were dangerous, clearly, and though Perry and Maya were technically on the same level as the villagers, in another sense they were very clearly not. There was no quick burial this time, like the shallow graves in the woods: as Luo Yanhua had explained it, the body would be washed and cleaned, dressed, and then placed into a coffin, which would be placed in a favorable location. All of this was in order to ensure that the poor soul would contribute, in death, to his village. According to Luo Yanhua, death was a part of the first sphere, an element of the internal alchemy of the region, and there were meridians and vessels within a village, pathways of power that needed to be respected. The explosion on the mountain delayed them for half a day, all told, though Perry didn¡¯t particularly mind it. They were heroes, in a sense, checking in on the people, making sure that everything was okay. Perry helped to move a giant beam into place for quick repair to a communal bathhouse. They had dinner again, and again there was as much meat as he wanted. Mostly, Luo Yanhua talked, giving assurances that the fight between these godlike men had moved on to somewhere else, and was unlikely to return. ¡°There¡¯s something that¡¯s been bothering me all day,¡± said Maya. ¡°These two guys were fighting, right? And it¡¯s a huge fight of monstrous proportions, they¡¯ve got beef with each other, all that.¡± ¡°They¡¯re still fighting,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Battles last longer in the higher spheres. Between two men of the first sphere, a fight can end in a single blow, but if I¡¯m right and those men were fifth sphere, then they might continue on as they¡¯ve been for weeks, though not quite as intense as we saw. The battle will take them to different locations, through traps and counter-attacks, focusing the power of the land for specific tactics.¡± ¡°I¡¯m hoping we¡¯re not going to see them again,¡± said Maya. ¡°But my question, or my thought or whatever, is how this huge battle caused all kinds of problems for more or less everyone. People died, they had their homes destroyed, that kind of thing. So where¡¯s the karma in that?¡± She was still working on her food, thinly sliced chicken over a bed of rice with stewed vegetables on the side. ¡°There is cosmic debt incurred in a battle of that scale, always,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is one of the reasons that such battles are rare.¡± ¡°And that¡¯s it?¡± asked Maya. ¡°That¡¯s the whole answer? They did this thing that¡¯s going to give them some blowback, and they had just ¡­ decided that it was worth it?¡± ¡°One of them, seeing the costs, decided that it was worth it,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is possible that both were a party to the decision to battle for their lives, as the two of you did when you came here.¡± ¡°That was different,¡± said Maya. ¡°We weren¡¯t killing a bunch of innocents. It was just us, against each other, not bringing hundreds ¡ª thousands ¡ª of people into it. That mountain exploded and people died, for basically no reason. You can¡¯t equate the two.¡± ¡°I suppose,¡± said Luo Yanhua with a careless shrug. ¡°No, you can¡¯t just shrug this off,¡± said Maya. She was pointing with her chopsticks for emphasis. ¡°People get powerful, they can do what they want, start wars with each other where innocents die, that¡¯s the sort of world you want to live in? That you think is just?¡± ¡°I have not put it in those terms,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Her demeanor, as always, was mild. ¡°You¡¯re describing the world I come from, Maya,¡± said Perry. ¡°Millions dead for the stupidest, shittiest reasons.¡± Maya stared at him. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m describing the world that I come from too,¡± said Maya. She turned to Luo Yanhua. ¡°But only the worst people in my world tried to cloak that injustice as being the proper working of the world.¡± Perry stayed silent. She was hiding something about the world she came from. He agreed with her, overall, or at least thought that it was true in his own world. There were always people who said that bad things only happened to bad people, which was both moronic and odious. It was associated with the worst ideologies, at least in Perry''s opinion, but he worried that Maya meant something different than he did. Sometimes bad things happened to people through their own fault, and absolving everyone of every sin with a huge blanket explanation was something he might have cause to fight with her about. ¡°There are imbalances in the world,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The pursuit of proper functioning is one of the fundamental goals of Moon Gate.¡± She cocked her head to the side. ¡°This is a personal issue for you?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t even know what that would mean,¡± said Maya. ¡°Personal how?¡± ¡°You suffered some injustice,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°No,¡± said Maya. ¡°I had a pretty boring life, all things considered. But to see the things that happen to others and think that it¡¯s simply the way of the world ¡ª I can¡¯t fathom that, and I certainly can¡¯t stomach it.¡± ¡°Seeing that dead man today affected you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Of course it did,¡± said Maya. ¡°Not because he was dead, I¡¯ve seen plenty of dead guys, and unfortunately, plenty who didn¡¯t deserve it. No, what got to me was the way you people just sort of accepted that this was a thing that happens. There¡¯s a ¡®move on with your life¡¯ kind of vibe that I just hate.¡± ¡°Hatred tends to be unproductive,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nah,¡± said Maya. ¡°Hatred helps keep you going. But you¡¯re Mr. Ice Man about it, that¡¯s what you¡¯re telling me? Or do you just not care?¡± ¡°Today?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We can¡¯t do anything about today. We can¡¯t do anything about this world. Even if we can jump up to the second sphere, or maybe even the third sphere, we¡¯re not going to be able to match the titans here, assuming that the power scaling works how it seems to. So yes, I would like for this world to be rearranged, for it to be good and just, but I¡¯m not going to get emotionally invested in being angry at the assholes who I¡¯m never going to be able to touch.¡± ¡°You¡¯re compartmentalizing,¡± said Maya. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m trying to do what I can, and trying not to get torn up about what I can¡¯t do.¡± ¡°You would both topple this world, if you could?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°We¡¯d bring it out of its current imbalance,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°You have a way of twisting around words,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I like it.¡± ¡°Anyone can twist words,¡± said Maya with a roll of her eyes. ¡°I was a professional word-twister, before I was doing ¡­ this. It takes two brain cells to talk like Perry¡¯s talking, finding the seams of thought he thinks will get you on his good side.¡± ¡°He does desire to be on my good side though,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You are dangerous because you see no desire for common cause.¡± ¡°I see it,¡± said Maya. ¡°But I¡¯m done concealing what I think and feel out of a sense of prudence.¡± ¡°It is not so radical a position, I suppose,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But it is not favored in these parts, and not all companions in discourse will be so forgiving as I am.¡± ¡°Noted, I guess,¡± said Maya. ¡°Try not to get us both killed,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or worse, you could get yourself killed and then leave me to face down the other thresholder alone.¡± If there is another thresholder. Once dinner was over and done with, they headed for the woods while there was still light. It would have been easy enough for them to find a place to sleep among the villagers, who seemed to bend over backward to accommodate Luo Yanhua with no hope or expectation of reward, but they had business that could only be conducted away from civilization: testing his transformation. ¡°In theory, we can do this so long as it¡¯s still daytime,¡± said Perry as he took off his armor. He was going to have to be naked in front of the two of them, which he wasn¡¯t entirely looking forward to. ¡°I need a half hour buffer in order to get back in the armor.¡± ¡°I¡¯m looking forward to this,¡± said Maya. ¡°Particularly blasting you with light. Either I get a good shot in against an angry wolf, or I do, in fact, have the power to neuter you.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s going to work like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sunlight does cancel moonlight, from what they said, but your sunlight power probably isn¡¯t the same.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll see,¡± said Maya. She was grinning at him, maybe because he¡¯d just removed his pants. ¡°We¡¯re hoping to help you learn control,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But I can leave at a moment¡¯s notice, and you won¡¯t be able to find anyone to hurt before you change back. Do you think it would be better for me to stay as long as I can, or to leave at once when the transformation overcomes you?¡± ¡°Stick around,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not killing allies is the number one priority.¡± ¡°More than not killing civvies?¡± asked Maya, eyebrow raised. ¡°I want to be able to wolf out in a combat scenario,¡± said Perry. ¡°If it happens around enemies, no control needed, that¡¯s fine.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You fight with speed and strength in your other form, but you are a creature of instincts, made stupid. Control is needed there, as well.¡± ¡°Okay, fine,¡± said Perry. He finally removed his underwear, and was standing naked in the woods. He was going to have to find some spandex like the Hulk had, the kind that would never rip or tear no matter what form he took. He¡¯d look pretty stupid as a wolf with pants on, but that was better than the alternative. ¡°I don¡¯t even remember what I was saying.¡± ¡°Something about allies and not wanting to hurt them,¡± said Maya. ¡°It¡¯s fine, I get it, and you¡¯re right, you¡¯ll probably need the wolf more around allies. You can keep yourself in the tin can under normal circumstances, no control needed there either so long as you can hide from the moon.¡± She looked up at the sky. ¡°Moons.¡± ¡°You had said that your sense of smell aids you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Do you have ours?¡± ¡°Yeah, as much as will help, I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°Creepy,¡± said Maya. ¡°It¡¯s how I recognize people as a wolf, more than by sight,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think it¡¯s something that will help keep me from killing you. So sure, creepy, but also necessary in this case.¡± Luo Yanhua smelled of parchment and ink, most strongly on her fingers, but it hung about her, underneath a floral scent that became overwhelming when he was close by her. That came from some kind of perfume, he thought, and she didn¡¯t always wear it. The dirt of the road didn¡¯t stick to her, and there was little in the way of grime, which meant that she smelled like clean linens. There was another scent too, one that was hard to pin down, almost like the air after fireworks have gone off, slightly sulfurous. He didn¡¯t know whether it was because of something relating to her scholarship, or if there was some other source. Maya Singh smelled chemical, which was almost certainly because her hoodie was made of synthetics. There was nothing else like it, aside from Perry¡¯s own power armor, though the smells were very distinct from one another. It wasn¡¯t a bad chemical smell, nothing that burned his nose, in part because she¡¯d been wearing those clothes for so long. Beneath that, there was the smell of sweat and the oils of her skin, which grew stronger throughout the day. She smelled more human than Luo Yanhua, but at the same time, there was something different about her, a difference in a body that had been altered in the back-alley of a crumbling megacity. Still, the base of the smell was earthy, sandalwood and cinnamon. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Perry didn¡¯t say any of that out loud. It would have been too embarrassing, and that was coming from a man who was literally naked in front of them. ¡°I¡¯m ready,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll try not to kill you.¡± Luo Yanhua nodded. She turned to Maya. ¡°If I take you with me, do not resist.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Maya, more combative than she should have been. ¡°You would be left behind and mauled to death by a wolf,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Fine, fine,¡± said Maya. ¡°Though I don¡¯t think you¡¯ve seen how fast I can run away.¡± Luo Yanhua squared up, thrust a hand toward the moon, and directed her other hand at Perry, palm out. He had expected a blast, as Master Shan Yin had done, but her touch of moonlight was slow, deliberate. He felt the hairs on his forearms stand up, and his mouth began to water, but he could hold off the transformation, at least when there was so little moonlight being focused on him. For a small moment, he wondered whether Luo Yanhua might not be strong enough to provoke a transformation, but he realized quickly enough that he was being stupid: she was keeping the intensity low on purpose, to find the tipping point. It was like holding in a sneeze, or like trying not to eat a meal set in front of him when he was ravenous. He had always been bad at willing his body into submission, but he felt like he had a finger wedged in a crack, like it was going to come to him at any moment. The attempt at mastery failed though, and he transformed, fur and claws. Luo Yanhua held. He recalled her name, but more, her scent, the cleanliness, the ink and paper. He wanted to tear her apart, rip flesh from bone, but he held back, even as she basked him in moonlight. He growled, then whined, and held steady, which lasted right until the wind shifted and he caught the scent of the other woman, full blast. He turned on Maya and ran for her, jaws open, teeth moving to crunch the black plastic shell over her face, but she bounced away, pushing off the ground with her needle. She was into the woods in a moment, moving swiftly between trees, and Perry followed after her. The chase didn¡¯t last long though, because as soon as he had caught up with her, she folded her hands together and blasted him with pure sunlight. Perry changed back in mid-air, a fast transformation that left his mind spinning, and he slammed into a thicket of bamboo, which only partly broke his fall. ¡°Nice,¡± said Maya. ¡°Good to know that works.¡± ¡°Ugh,¡± said Perry as he climbed to his feet. Luo Yanhua was slow to meet them, and when she did, she looked Perry over. He was scraped up and would surely be bruised, if not for the fact that this wasn¡¯t a one-and-done. ¡°It¡¯s unclear to me where the energy is coming from,¡± she said. ¡°Yeah, me too,¡± said Perry. ¡°The vital energy flows along the meridians,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Yet the energy from the moonlight is not enough to account for such a transformation, nor should sunlight be sapping energy from you.¡± She pursed her lips and put her hand to her chin. ¡°It¡¯s possible that the moonlight is only a catalyst, which would make it easier for you to control the process. I will need to see it again.¡± ¡°Again,¡± nodded Perry. They reset their positions, and Luo Yanhua channeled the moonlight again, still slow and steady, giving him time to feel it. He was trying to pay attention to the meridians, as though they were wires running through his body and there might be a switch somewhere, but it didn¡¯t seem very fruitful. What worked better was trying to hold it in, like holding in a fart, and the second time around, it worked much better. He lasted longer, but eventually the change came over him again. This time he went to Maya straight away. He knew she was there, smelled her scent lingering in the air, and leaped for her at the first moment, hind legs digging gouges in the earth as he launched himself. She was less quick this time, and his claws cut her thick shirt to ribbons, knocking her backward rather than rending her flesh. Beneath the cloth was something hard, chitinous, and he moved in with his teeth this time, powerful jaws ready to snap her in half. Her blast of light was just a moment too late, and he tasted blood in his human mouth. Maya was clutching her hand, letting out a restrained scream. He had bitten through the armor, teeth piercing the carbon black. He was tasting the nanites too, or something like them, ozone and charcoal. ¡°Asshole!¡± shouted Maya. The skintight black peeled back, and Perry could see the extent of the wound, a mangling of her hand, part of it ripped open. She seethed for a moment, then tried to hold the shaking hand steady. To Perry¡¯s surprise, light formed around the wound, spilling out of her where the skin had been pierced. In only a moment, it was healed. Maya looked at him, black shell of a helmet coming down, with hatred in her eyes. ¡°Why do you keep coming for me?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know!¡± said Perry, throwing up his hands. ¡°I can¡¯t control it. That¡¯s the whole point of this.¡± ¡°Again,¡± said Maya. She glared at him. ¡°I¡¯ll be ready for you this time.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not trying to hurt you,¡± said Perry, though not in the tone of calm rationalism he might have hoped for. ¡°Again,¡± said Maya. They went again, then again, and again. Maya was more wary, ready to spring back at a moment¡¯s notice, just barely fast enough not to get nipped by him. She didn¡¯t drop any of her anger. Perry was more focused on Maya now, trying to hold back when he was turned into a wolf. He was getting better, rapidly going through cycles of human to wolf and back again, gaining experience that would have taken him months in Teaguewater. It was still difficult going, which wasn¡¯t helped by Maya taking it personally when he tried to attack her. ¡°Why me and not her?¡± asked Maya. ¡°You smell different,¡± said Perry, giving a shrug that failed to feel nonchalant. If it was possible to aggressively shrug, that was what he was doing. ¡°I think that¡¯s all there is to it.¡± ¡°I smell like prey?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Like a threat,¡± said Perry. That seemed to please her, and some of her aggression faded away. They got in ten cycles before the sun was threatening to set. Perry made it a full ten minutes the last time through, resisting the change into a wolf, and it was only when Luo Yanhua increased the power of the moonlight that Perry couldn¡¯t hold it in any longer. When he changed, he went for Maya again, as he had every time before. The exercise was taking its toll on her, and she was moving slower, the light coming less readily. He went in to bite her, covering the distance between them in a flash, and she hit him with the flash of sunlight late ¡ª but this time he didn¡¯t sink a fang into her. Instead, his very human teeth touched her armored fingers. She retracted her armor and gave him a bemused look. ¡°Almost.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± he said. ¡°Still can¡¯t stop yourself from going after me,¡± said Maya with a cluck of her tongue. ¡°It doesn¡¯t bode well if we¡¯re doing the combat thing together. Better for you to stay swaddled in metal.¡± ¡°He could control the transformation, at least,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I can?¡± asked Perry. ¡°As much as full moonlight from the largest moon at its fullest,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It takes concentration though,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to be able to control it in my sleep.¡± ¡°I have other findings,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But I suppose that they should wait until your armor is in place.¡± Perry got his armor back on just as the sun had touched the western horizon. He had no confidence in holding back the transformation, but he was getting there, slowly. If they did this through their full trip, he would be able to stop himself from becoming a wolf and killing random strangers. Being able to not kill people while a wolf would also have been ideal, but that wasn¡¯t anywhere on the radar yet. ¡°Your findings?¡± Perry asked. While he¡¯d been getting dressed, they¡¯d made camp, a very simple affair, nothing more than some bedrolls which had little chance of keeping out the cold. Perry didn¡¯t need that, obviously, as the power armor would keep him sheltered from the elements and putting a blanket on top of the armor would be ridiculous. Similarly, the fire that Luo Yanhua had made for them provided him no warmth. The supplies had been taken from the moon, where Luo Yanhua had a second home, and they would, apparently, return there once this was all done. ¡°This smells,¡± said Maya, sniffing the bedroll. She was inhaling it, pressing her nose against it. ¡°What does it smell like?¡± ¡°The moon,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°No,¡± said Maya. ¡°No, I refuse to believe the moon smells like,¡± she sniffed it again. ¡°Burnt gunpowder?¡± ¡°Your findings?¡± Perry repeated. ¡°The energy comes from within,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is either stored within a vessel, or within some internal compartment that I do not understand, separate from the normal vessels. It is a matter of the internal alchemy, and troublesome.¡± ¡°You still think I have the wrong approach?¡± asked Perry. ¡°When you have transitioned to the second sphere, and understand the internal alchemy, I believe you will be able to transform at will ¡ª or not transform, as the case may be.¡± She cocked her head to the side. ¡°I would be eager to help you in that endeavor, but I worry that whatever has happened to you, it will be difficult or impossible to replicate.¡± ¡°Am I going to be locked out of learning moon magic, do you think?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We do not call it moon magic,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But no, I do not think you will. Lunar energy causes a reaction in you, but once that reaction is under your control, I don¡¯t think the transformation will have any impact on your ability to store or manipulate the energy.¡± ¡°Aw,¡± said Maya. ¡°He was hoping for special moon powers.¡± ¡°Special how?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°I was hoping for ¡­ I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Synergy?¡± ¡°Is control of your transformation not synergy enough?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is,¡± said Perry. ¡°But ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°He wants more,¡± said Maya. ¡°I want more,¡± Perry agreed. ¡°Anything more will take time,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The gulfs of time are the one thing I think the two of you will struggle most with. It is possible that if you have an extra vessel with its own generative processes, you might be able to tap into it, carefully, yes. This would take an extraordinary control of the process though, akin to being on the edge of transformation, at least until your internal alchemy can be rearranged.¡± ¡°Power from edging, got it,¡± said Maya with a laugh. Luo Yanhua looked at her. ¡°You¡¯re referencing ¡­ something untoward?¡± ¡°She is,¡± said Perry with a sigh. ¡°But it¡¯s sort of ¡ª I mean, I was holding back a sneeze kind of, right? And you¡¯re saying that I might be able to channel that power into something, throw a haymaker with the energy?¡± ¡°I do not suspect that your vessel holds a limitless well of power,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is, at this point, possible, but like Miss Singh, you will almost certainly run dry. In fact, I¡¯m surprised that this exercise hasn¡¯t already done that.¡± Perry turned to Maya. ¡°You run out of power?¡± ¡°I¡¯m solar-powered,¡± said Maya. ¡°And yeah, the battery gets tapped. It¡¯s almost tapped now, mostly because I had to heal up. Not sure I could have gone another round.¡± ¡°You can heal yourself,¡± said Perry. He gestured at the faded bruise on her face. ¡°What¡¯s with that then?¡± Maya gave him a guilty look. ¡°Sympathy,¡± she said. ¡°It was on my face, I thought people would cut me some slack if they saw that I had taken a hit. Plus if I smile through it, it makes me look tough.¡± She reached up and touched her face. A splash of light came from her fingertips, and the last of the bruise vanished. ¡°You¡¯re the big bad bully who beat up on the small wittle girl.¡± ¡°That must have hurt,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Oh, yeah, it was terrible to sleep with the first few days,¡± said Maya. ¡°Hard to eat, hard to smile.¡± ¡°So it wasn¡¯t looking tough,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was being tough.¡± ¡°Meh,¡± said Maya. ¡°It was also at my expense,¡± said Perry. ¡°You made me look bad.¡± He¡¯d been very aware of that while they were training. He was so much bigger than her, and her having a bruise on her face made it seem like he¡¯d been the aggressor, a brute who¡¯d bashed in a poor defenseless woman. He didn¡¯t think that was how these people saw it, but it was how he had seen it, some part of him feeling like he¡¯d done something wrong. ¡°You dealt with it,¡± said Maya with a shrug. ¡°What good is sexism if I can¡¯t weaponize it?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not sexism,¡± said Perry. ¡°You really are at least a head shorter than I am. Without powers, I¡¯d crush you.¡± ¡°Duh,¡± said Maya. ¡°But we¡¯re not without powers, are we?¡± ¡°Differentiation of the sexes is a matter of the first sphere, at least when it comes to combat,¡± said Luo Yanhua, who was watching the conversation with some interest. ¡°It is the case, in the worlds you¡¯ve been to, that women are seen as lesser combatants?¡± ¡°They¡¯re not typically seen as combatants at all,¡± said Maya. ¡°Eh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I said typically,¡± said Maya. ¡°Women fighting are the exception, not the rule.¡± ¡°Odd,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But from what you have said, everyone in your other worlds is of the first sphere.¡± ¡°Not really,¡± said Maya. ¡°Some people have powers, there¡¯s stratification, it¡¯s just not, uh, like here.¡± ¡°The Great Arc is unique,¡± nodded Luo Yanhua. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think that¡¯s really unlikely.¡± He looked at Maya. It was hard to know where he sat with her. ¡°I think we should get some sleep. There¡¯s a long trek up the mountain tomorrow, and we might have to run from a dragon, so ¡­¡± ¡°There was one final thing,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The reason that you continue to attack Miss Singh.¡± ¡°You have some insight into that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Because I really do think it¡¯s something about the smell, though I can¡¯t imagine what.¡± He sniffed the air, and got mostly the campfire. Maya had repaired her hoodie again, and that had given off its own smell, faint but distinct. He could smell them both though, the complexities of their scents there, perhaps with a little more sweat on Maya. ¡°We speak often of the light and the dark,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Perry is possessed of the dark, and Maya by the light. Your individual relationships with these are complicated, not as simple as a common imbalance, but it might be driving some tension between the two of you.¡± ¡°We¡¯re opposites?¡± asked Maya. ¡°You are imbalanced in opposite ways,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You crave the darkness as he craves the light. It is only a theory though, as the inner workings of your techniques ¡ª and perhaps your vessels ¡ª are still opaque to me. I have been focused on Perry for the time being, as publication is an urgent matter, but you both have your own unique configurations of unclear provenance.¡± ¡°So if we get our internal alchemy under control, he¡¯ll stop wanting to kill me?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Possibly,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is a problem for another time. And as you have shown, you can control him well enough.¡± ¡°Yeah, assuming I¡¯m awake,¡± said Maya. ¡°But if his teeth can pierce the armor, I¡¯m sleeping with one eye open.¡± Perry went to sleep slowly. The armor wasn¡¯t a comfortable sleeping bag, and it was worse on the ground than it had been in his bed, in part because it was difficult to get the angles of his arms and legs just so. He was on his back, looking up at the sky, and could see the other side of the Great Arc, bathed in sunlight, providing nearly as much light as the three moons. As he watched, he saw a flash of light, then another at the same location, tiny things that stood out in contrast to the immense expanse of world. ¡°Do you see the fight?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. Her voice was soft. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°What is it?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Fifth sphere?¡± ¡°Higher, if we can see it from here,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°When I was seven years old, I was watching the sky on a night like this, and looked up to see a brilliant light that lasted for a full minute. Thousands must have died, for such a light to reach my eyes.¡± ¡°That¡¯s horrible,¡± said Maya. ¡°It is,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We must understand our lives to be insignificant in the face of such people, such forces.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Maya. ¡°We just need to get stronger. To stop them. Except Perry and I will be long gone before we¡¯re even third sphere.¡± ¡°Then I hope that you find what you seek, and that you are able to bring your conception of justice to the other worlds.¡± Perry looked over, and saw her eyes were still on the spot where the flash had been. ¡°Perhaps if I study you closely enough, I might find my own way between the worlds.¡± The more Perry pondered that, the more scary he found the thought. Chapter 41 - The Fight and the Flower It took another two days to get to Dragon¡¯s Breath Peak, which involved a lot of arguing while they walked, more meat from the peasants, and further training and diagnostics for both Perry and Maya. The arguing was usually intense, at least on Maya¡¯s side, but Perry preferred talking about the mechanics of powers, which was always a more sedate affair. ¡°You¡¯re sure there is no connection among these powers?¡± Luo Yanhua asked Maya. ¡°They were acquired on different worlds,¡± said Maya. ¡°You think that you have the key to some universal ¡ª some multiversal ¡ª system of vessels and meridians?¡± ¡°I wish I were traveling with my full library, but there are creatures whose internal functions go beyond vessel and meridian.¡± She pursed her lips. ¡°You possess two systems of energy, and are soon to gain access to a third, but everything I know about vital energy demands that they cannot be wholly separate from each other. You have even said that your telekinesis ability has a ¡®well¡¯ of sorts, a vessel in all but name.¡± ¡°It does,¡± said Maya. ¡°But it¡¯s not just a ¡®vessel¡¯ that drains from using telekinesis, the glimwardens had all kinds of other powers that are supposed to draw on the same reservoir. How it¡¯s supposed to work is that you have a huge suite of powers, with more power the closer it is to your, uh, primary technique, I guess.¡± She picked up a small rock from the road and held it out in her hand. When she opened her hand, the rock stuck there. ¡°Ta da!¡± ¡°But from what you¡¯ve said, there¡¯s no way to develop that?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°That¡¯s what I was told,¡± shrugged Maya. ¡°We were eating the hearts of demons. No demons, no extra powers. I¡¯m not quite tapped out on what I can gain from more control, not yet, and there are some other minor tricks to learn, but there are hard limits.¡± ¡°Unless you can tap into the vital energy,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Or tap into your solar energy. If these are separate vessels grafted onto your matrix, both might be possible, though not for one of the first sphere, with an inactive spirit root.¡± ¡°But you can¡¯t see it,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is all supposition.¡± ¡°There are depths to the second sphere that I am as yet unaware of,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I had not, prior to this, needed to see inside the internal alchemy of someone of the first sphere, and of course someone of the second sphere would have blocked me.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± said Perry. ¡°Naturally,¡± said Maya with a roll of her eyes. ¡°If I were able to find the right books, I might be able to gain some insight into your conditions,¡± continued Luo Yanhua, lost in her own thoughts. ¡°Of course, certain things cannot be learned from books, and the best way to learn is through doing.¡± ¡°¡®Certain things cannot be learned from books¡¯,¡± said Perry. ¡°Is that ¡­ literal?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Perry let that sit for a moment. He wanted to probe further, but wanted to make sure that he wasn¡¯t asking the wrong question. There clearly were things that you couldn¡¯t fully learn from books, especially if your life more or less revolved around martial arts. A book could theoretically contain precise instructions on how to angle your arms and legs, but it would be a horribly inefficient teacher for a variety of reasons. More literally, a book could relate sensory experiences to a person, but wouldn¡¯t actually allow you to have that experience. He thought that Luo Yanhua was talking about something else, something more. ¡°Tell me something that I won¡¯t understand,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just as a test.¡± ¡°I cannot,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Such information is prohibited.¡± ¡°Meaning that you don¡¯t think it¡¯s a good thing, or you physically can¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°I could speak the words,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You would not understand anything from them until you had found enlightenment yourself. But to speak the words would go against the oaths I had taken. You would learn nothing, and I do not break my oaths.¡± ¡°You took those oaths because you believe that propagation of information is bad,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, not at all,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Only certain information. The dangerous thing about information is that we cannot truly know its nature without knowing it. I have been circumspect in the questions I pose to the both of you, even as you are free with what you share. This is for a reason.¡± ¡°You want us not to share?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I am of mixed minds on the subject,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There is much to learn, and it is becoming clear that I am uniquely positioned to learn it. But some of the things you speak openly about, such as machines made from meat, or feeding upon blood, I find worrying.¡± ¡°You¡¯re probably right to be worried, honestly,¡± said Maya. ¡°Though I do want to point out that I was fighting the guys with the meat machines.¡± ¡°You used their meat machines, from what you said,¡± replied Luo Yanhua. ¡°I do not believe either of you to be evil, but both have adapted tools that are tinged with evil without a proper consideration of the paths of moral justice.¡± ¡°I was dying,¡± said Perry. He still hadn¡¯t given the full details to either of them. He didn¡¯t want them to take his teeth, and didn¡¯t particularly want to spread lycanthropy across the Great Arc or the many worlds. He didn¡¯t necessarily think that either of them would go for it, but that might change once he had it fully under control. Maya had only asked him if a bite would turn someone, maybe because she was worried that there would be a growing lycanthropy infestation. At least he didn¡¯t need to worry about that. ¡°You think that having a better body is evil?¡± asked Maya. ¡°You should have seen the guys I was with, the guys I was fighting against. I was practically a prude, the limits of what I did to my body.¡± ¡°I can tell, standing next to you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Though the specifics are beyond me.¡± ¡°Really?¡± asked Maya. Her eyebrows went up. ¡°I went super low key.¡± ¡°I can smell it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Oh, so I stink?¡± asked Maya. ¡°We¡¯re going back to that?¡± She said it with good humor though. She was always more cheery when they weren¡¯t physically fighting. ¡°It¡¯s not a bad smell,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s chemical, something unnatural in the glands or something, but it¡¯s not an unpleasant chemical. I wouldn¡¯t say that it¡¯s quite vanilla extract, but there¡¯s something like that in there.¡± ¡°So far as I know, it¡¯s all still biology,¡± said Maya. ¡°They had syntho organs and syntho blood, but it was inferior to the sweet neon lifeline.¡± She tapped her veins. ¡°Not that there weren¡¯t some refactors thrown in there.¡± ¡°Different blood?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not so much with the blood,¡± said Maya. ¡°There were special blends, but doing stuff at the cellular level is apparently tricky as hell, especially because for blood you have to go in and change the marrow, at least if you want it to last. I didn¡¯t have that done, because you need all kinds of other things to not have changing your bones kill you.¡± ¡°Rejection wasn¡¯t an issue?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I got some shots,¡± said Maya with a shrug. ¡°That was a problem they¡¯d licked, apparently.¡± ¡°There are such things in this world as well,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Transplants, if I understand the term correctly. A new vessel can be added in a number of ways, though few of them are seemly.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Maya. ¡°That¡¯s ¡­ worrying.¡± ¡°I feared you would ask for the knowledge of how to do such a thing,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We¡¯ve got limits,¡± said Maya. Privately, Perry had just assumed that she didn¡¯t know or wouldn¡¯t tell them. It seemed like something that he wouldn¡¯t want to undertake lightly, not while he was still mastering the wolf, and he wasn¡¯t entirely certain what the benefits of such a thing might be, but he was interested. When they reached the foot of Dragon¡¯s Breath Peak, they began a long ascent. The mountain hadn¡¯t looked very tall from far away, though the curve and scale of the Great Arc made such things deceptive. It was a tall mountain with a steep grade, one of the sharpest edges of the valley. There was no clear path up, which would have made it arduous and slow ¡­ but Perry could fly, Maya could bounce, and Luo Yanhua demonstrated a technique that they hadn¡¯t seen before: moon gravity. ¡°That¡¯s amazing!¡± said Maya. She was watching Luo Yanhua with wide eyes. ¡°Why don¡¯t you use it all the time?¡± ¡°It takes concentration,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°A skilled practitioner can make any technique as simple and thoughtless as drawing breath, but I haven¡¯t developed it to that level as yet.¡± ¡°Moon jump,¡± said Maya, shaking her head. ¡°So cool. I want that one.¡± ¡°Gravity is lower on the moon?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Duh,¡± said Maya. ¡°I can¡¯t translate that word, ¡®gravity¡¯,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But the nature of our moons is different from the nature of the Great Arc. You¡¯re suggesting that is true on your worlds as well, but I do not wish to hear more.¡± ¡°No?¡± asked Maya. ¡°It¡¯s not harmful to know. I mean, I wouldn¡¯t think so. We know it.¡± ¡°You have no connection to your moons, no understanding of my connection and understanding,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We will speak on the matter no further.¡± Still, Perry watched her, the way that she seemed to float up, each jump taking her ten times as high as a proper jump should. The strange thing about it, at least to him, was that her clothes and hair had that same floaty quality to them, as though her technique extended around her. Perry wondered whether he could learn that technique in the time he had before he left, and if he could learn it, whether it would depend upon the moon of the world he was on. Some planets didn¡¯t have moons. Would he just be nerfed? Clearly Moon Gate¡¯s techniques offered quite a bit of power, and carrying around a little bit of moonlight with him for an emergency transformation would be good, but he certainly wasn¡¯t going to be putting all his eggs in the moon basket. Maya¡¯s bouncing was less enthralling but far more puzzling. Perry had seen it a few times now, and she seemed to make the ground beneath her into a depression, as though it was stretching, even if this made absolutely no sense given the material. She moved fastest once she¡¯d worked up a good bounce, and could transfer the momentum into the next one, but there was also something about it that was adding speed, like she was temporarily making the ground into a sideways trampoline. The power left no sign that it had been used, aside from some disturbed leaves. They had started out in the morning, hoping to make it to the peak by midday, then return back down again once they had the flower. The going was easy, especially as the trees and bamboo began to thin out. Maya¡¯s bounces got bigger as they went, until she was soaring into the air, showing off, and Luo Yanhua began to move faster to keep up, soft footsteps launching her up the side. Perry felt lame floating in the wind behind his sword. They spoke little, in part because they weren¡¯t very close to each other anymore. Perry had some time with his thoughts. The most dominant among the thoughts was whether Maya was really an ally. Luo Yanhua had said that they were opposites in some respect, dark and light. Perry was already seeing that she had some traits that he¡¯d never been a fan of, and he worried that ideological purity was one of them. He didn¡¯t consider himself a bad guy, but she had a streak of obsessiveness about her. The only reason she hadn¡¯t tried to reshape this world was that they were woefully underpowered and would remain so for the entire duration, second sphere or not. Perry didn¡¯t object to that, not for the Great Arc, but it seemed like a place where they might clash, especially if she thought he was an asshole for not helping her out or agreeing with her methods. The important thing was getting to second sphere. Once that happened, he would train up as much as possible, and if it came to blows between them, he would do his best to kill her. Going wolf seemed the most promising avenue, but it seemed as though she could counter that with incredible ease. That left his sword and his armor, and they didn¡¯t seem like enough to get the job done, not unless March could permanently disable her armor. Even then, it would be a close fight, especially given that she could blind him. March was working on countermeasures, but there was no way of testing them without tipping her off. He was certain that Maya was making her own plans on how to deal with him, and he hoped that these were ¡®just in case¡¯ plans, like his were. The one good thing about sleeping in his armor was that she couldn¡¯t slit his throat in the middle of the night. They rose steadily, slowing only for sections that were near-vertical expanses of rock with no crags for purchase and no trees to bounce off of. This wasn¡¯t a problem for Perry, but it slowed the two women down. ¡°Alright, definitely smelling the pus,¡± said Maya as they finished another of those long sections and found themselves at a brief shelf where a number of plants were taking refuge. ¡°The sore tree will smell of pus,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But not every tree of that sort will have a bed of moss beneath it, and fewer still will have the flowers we seek.¡± ¡°So we¡¯re at the right place, it¡¯s just a matter of searching?¡± asked Maya. She looked around at the trees, and in particular, one that was hooked and cruel-looking. ¡°This is a very big mountain.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll send up the drone,¡± said Perry. It shot up from his back, and for a moment, Perry was just watching the map get developed. Marchand knew what they were looking for, and highlighted all the trees that matched the one that apparently smelled of pus. Perry was happy to have filters. Luo Yanhua had a point. They were making a mockery of what maybe, in principle, should have been a bit of a trial. There was no test of strength in getting up the mountain, no test of patience or wisdom in actually finding the flower. Actually ingesting the flower was supposed to be something of an ordeal, with the transition killing a normal person, but what kind of lesson did this whole adventure have for the villagers? It was an errand, not a quest. ¡°Someone is discharging a beam weapon in the distance,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Shit, where?¡± asked Perry, but the image was up even as the words were leaving his mouth. The white lines were in the distance, thin as a strand of spider silk, but actually fairly thick once magnified. They were periodic, and Marchand showed playback from the drone, the white light going up to the moon and back down again. Someone was doing Luo Yanhua¡¯s trick, rapidly, and they were getting closer. ¡°There, on the horizon,¡± said Perry. ¡°Someone¡¯s coming for us.¡± Luo Yanhua turned to look, narrowing her eyes. ¡°I don¡¯t see anything,¡± said Maya. ¡°I see them,¡± Luo Yanhua finally said. ¡°They¡¯re coming fast,¡± said Perry. Marchand had put up a tracker on top of the minimap, along with an estimated time of arrival. It said twenty minutes, but it was also ticking down faster than one second per second. ¡°You said that you couldn¡¯t use it for going faster,¡± said Maya, who had apparently seen the streaks in the sky. ¡°I said that I couldn¡¯t use it for that,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Her lips were pursed. ¡°There are only a handful of people it could be.¡± Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. ¡°Zhang Lingxiu, Dragon-Tiger Guardian,¡± said Perry. ¡°Possibly,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You think he¡¯s coming to, what, stop us?¡± asked Maya. ¡°If it is Zhang Lingxiu that approaches, then yes, it would be with the intention of stopping you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°He will say that it is for the honor of the temple and the sanctity of the second sphere, but it will be vengeance and pride in his heart.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t stop him?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean, you¡¯re both second sphere, protecting us would be ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I would prefer to keep my hands clean. I am, for the moment, only here as a chaperone. To offer a defense of this pursuit would bind me.¡± Perry turned to her. ¡°Seriously?¡± ¡°We are friendly, I think,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We are not allies, not tethered to one another. It is in the interests of Moon Gate to have you transition, I believe, but it is a stand I cannot take, not at the moment.¡± She gave a small, courteous bow. ¡°Wow,¡± said Maya. ¡°Fair-weather friends, eh?¡± ¡°You¡¯re going to let him kill us?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, I will allow you to fight for your right to ingest the flower that will take you to the second sphere,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There is something proper about that, and I imagine that it will be two against one, though of course we don¡¯t know for certain that it¡¯s Zhang Lingxiu, nor that he comes with a fight in mind.¡± ¡°We find the flower now then,¡± said Perry. ¡°We transition to second sphere before he even gets here.¡± ¡°I believe you will be incapacitated for a number of hours after ingesting the Celestial Ascension Blossom,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°That is if it doesn¡¯t kill you, which it still might.¡± ¡°Balls,¡± said Perry. ¡°I ingest it, you take me to the moon?¡± ¡°Possible, I suppose,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°All that remains is to find it though, and of course Miss Singh would be unable to survive the environs.¡± ¡°Less talking, more preparing for battle,¡± said Maya. ¡°Let¡¯s assume that we¡¯re going to have to kill him. Perry, you staying in the suit or being a wolf? Probably time to decide now.¡± ¡°Suit,¡± said Perry. ¡°The battery is charged and it¡¯s partially fixed. We have time now if you wanted to spend some of the nanites ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Maya. ¡°Marchand estimates fifty-six out of four thousand four hundred grams to fully fix the gun in the shoulder,¡± said Perry. ¡°Twenty high-caliber rounds, impeccably aimed, right at his face.¡± ¡°Gun?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°A device for propelling metal at high speeds,¡± said Perry. He did the gesture to flip the gun out from its internal holster, showing what it looked like when it was out of the shell. ¡°Fine,¡± said Maya. ¡°But that and only that, tell your robot that.¡± ¡°Robot?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°A thinking machine,¡± said Perry. He¡¯d wanted to keep that particular cat in the bag for as long as possible, particularly because it was difficult to explain. Maya came over to Perry and placed her bracer against the gun. The nanostuff slid off like black tar and became a part of the firearm for a moment, and the heat was intense enough that Perry could feel it through the armor ¡ª alarming, considering that particular section was insulated against the heat of the gun already. ¡°Done,¡± said Maya five minutes later. ¡°March, confirm?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It appears that the operation was a resounding success,¡± said Marchand as the gun went up and down. ¡°That ammunition you procured was a bit dodgy though, sir, and I believe that we¡¯ll run into more problems with repeated use. I understand that circumstances can warrant it, but holding off on using the firearm until the last possible moment would be advised.¡± ¡°Understood,¡± said Perry. ¡°Those whisperings I¡¯ve heard,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°A ¡­ thinking machine?¡± The white lines were getting closer, but the mountain was large, and it didn¡¯t seem like he would be able to pinpoint them, at least not right away. ¡°Will he be able to track us?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Only if he has some sufficient token,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°A lock of hair would do it, but I cannot imagine he got that without us knowing. We will not be difficult to spot though.¡± She looked at Maya, who was wearing the brightly-colored hoodie, which was admittedly stylish, but also stuck out like a sore thumb. Perry¡¯s armor wasn¡¯t remotely camouflaged, and it was blue, but at least it was a somewhat natural color. ¡°Can he track himself?¡± asked Maya. Luo Yanhua pondered that. ¡°The piece of him that Perry ate,¡± she said. ¡°Yes, if it hasn¡¯t been passed.¡± ¡°I have no clue how my digestive system is even working anymore,¡± said Perry. ¡°But if he¡¯s homing in on me, I can flee, giving the two of you time.¡± ¡°Time for what?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I¡¯m ready to go.¡± ¡°You are both too eager for battle,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°If it is him, he¡¯ll want to talk first, lay out the case for offensive action, give you an option so it doesn¡¯t need to come to blows.¡± ¡°That option would mean giving up my place at Moon Gate and not eating the flower,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right?¡± ¡°I imagine he might have those as conditions of a peaceable resolution, yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°So, plans?¡± asked Maya. ¡°It¡¯s two on one, what do we think is going to work against him? Blinding him? Or just going in with swords and your gun, hoping that we can overwhelm him?¡± ¡°I think overwhelming is the only shot we¡¯ve got,¡± said Perry. ¡°He¡¯s fast, we¡¯re slow, but I¡¯m not sure we¡¯re so slow that he can¡¯t dodge or parry two or three attacks at once.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t like your odds,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I¡¯m still considering whether I might intervene, but he was always a strong fighter.¡± ¡°The wolf could beat him though,¡± said Maya. ¡°Assuming that it doesn¡¯t kill me first.¡± ¡°I would have had to already start on getting out of the armor, even with the quick release,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, this is going to happen very soon, and I don¡¯t think the talking period is going to last long enough for me to get free.¡± ¡°Can¡¯t believe the old lady isn¡¯t going to help us,¡± said Maya with a cluck of her tongue. ¡°Alright, we pincer him, flanking. Try not to shoot me, not that your gun would do much. Bash him with your sword, I¡¯ll go in with the needle. I¡¯ll give you a warning when I¡¯m going to flash him, so you can turn the cameras off.¡± ¡°Cameras?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Seeing machines,¡± said Perry. He frowned at her, though she couldn¡¯t see it behind the helmet. ¡°Now your curiosity is getting the better of you?¡± ¡°Your armor is deeper and stranger than I had expected,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Certain of your abilities I had ascribed to technique, but if they are only machines, divorced from learning ¡ª this is dangerous.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°And fortunately, it takes thousands of people working together to make armor like this.¡± ¡°He¡¯s coming right for us,¡± said Maya. ¡°We¡¯ll let him talk, hear him out, then if it comes to that, kill him.¡± Zhang Lingxiu appeared from a beam of light, immaculate black hair blowing in the mountain wind, white tunic and rich blue pants perfectly pressed and clean, gem-crusted gilt-hilted sword in his left hand, his right hand missing except for a small crescent that Perry had missed. His face was serene, beautiful, not betraying any anger. ¡°Luo Yanhua, Moon Piercer, I have come to stop this madness,¡± he said. ¡°I am only an escort, Zhang Lingxiu,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°They have planned to partake of the Celestial Ascension Blossom and forcibly transition, but it is not my place to stop them ¡ª nor yours.¡± That was what she was going with, how she was positioning herself, as someone who was standing by rather than advising and helping them. Zhang Lingxiu turned to Perry, leveling the fancy sword at him. ¡°This one is a wild animal in the clothing of a man, armored in the coward¡¯s way. His transition to the second sphere is an affront to not just Moon Gate, but to the proper order of the world.¡± ¡°Hey,¡± said Perry with a wave of his hand. ¡°Peregrin Holzmann, will you desist in your attempts to forcibly transition?¡± asked Zhang Lingxiu. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°You have no right to come here and demand that of me, only the right offered to you by your power. If you act against me, cosmic debt will be on your head.¡± Zhang Lingxiu turned his sword to point at Maya, who was already armored up. ¡°Maya Singh, will you desist in your attempts to forcibly transition?¡± ¡°Why don¡¯t you snort dog shit,¡± said Maya. ¡°Go finger a goat and stop bothering us with your petty objections or we¡¯ll take off your other hand.¡± ¡°Mockery,¡± said Zhang Lingxiu. ¡°I expected no less. Then I must warn you that my duty to stop you knows few limits.¡± He was brandishing his sword, and Perry thought that it was only seconds away from coming to blows. ¡°Master Shan Yin is the one who told us where the Celestial Ascension Blossom is,¡± said Perry. ¡°He wanted us to come here, wanted us to transition.¡± ¡°Moon Gate is not only its masters,¡± said Zhang Lingxiu. ¡°It is the spirit of its students and the core of its tenets. Discipline, when lacking, can lead to the downfall of a sect. We do not train those who are not worthy. We do not bestow knowledge to those who are unprepared for it.¡± ¡°You are young,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is a time of disruption, of strife for the valley. Heeding the decisions of your master is the duty of the faithful student, Zhang Lingxiu.¡± ¡°If they will not stop this madness on their own, then I will be forced to stop them,¡± said Zhang Lingxiu. His face was set, his eyes boring into Perry. The man was fast, Perry knew that, and that sword was almost certainly sharp enough to cut through the cobalt armor. ¡°You really think you can take on both of us at once, one-handed?¡± asked Maya. She had stepped forward to stand beside Perry, and her needle floated up from where it had been stabbed into the ground to rest in her black-clad hand. ¡°Pure arrogance.¡± ¡°You are first sphere,¡± said Zhang Lingxiu. ¡°I will try to be merciful.¡± ¡°March, shoot him,¡± said Perry. It was supposed to be used as a last resort, but if it could end this now, it would be worth it. The gun popped out and fired off a single shot, which caught Zhang Lingxiu in the chest. He stared down at it in disbelief, shock written on his face, a bloom of blood, then he rushed in with his sword, sprinting to close the distance. ¡°Again,¡± said Perry. The gun fired again, and this time Zhang Lingxiu anticipated it ¡ª his sword was up in a position to parry it before it actually fired. It wasn¡¯t clear whether he parried it though, if that was even what he was trying to do, because he had gotten in close and was attacking Perry, first with a dizzyingly fast cut to the chest that didn¡¯t feel like it left a mark, then with probing attacks that Perry was too late to defend against. Maya came to the rescue, dropping behind Zhang Lingxiu from above, having bounced high into the air. He spun to meet her, parrying her needle to the side, and kicked backward at Perry, hitting him squarely in the chest with enough force that the feet of the armor lifted from the ground. When Perry found his feet, it was his turn to help out Maya, but the attempt at a pincer didn¡¯t seem to faze Zhang Lingxiu at all. He dodged and parried with incredibly deftness, as though he had eyes in the back of his head, sometimes bringing his sword up backward to block a strike before moving to another position. If he was having any problems, he wasn¡¯t showing them, though he hadn¡¯t managed to get a good strike in on either of them. Maya had thrown off her hoodie before the fight began, leaving her in pure black aside from her sneakers, and every time the sword made contact with her, it glanced off. ¡°Flashing him,¡± said Maya. Before Perry could give a command to March, she¡¯d done it, unleashing brilliant light intended to blind. But while Perry hadn¡¯t given the command, March had done it on his own, narrowing the cameras down to pinholes and covering them where possible. The virtual view overlaid the scene, this time at higher resolution, with false colors and most of the background left black so only the vital details were shown, but it was replaced by the actual feed seconds later as the cameras opened back up. Zhang Lingxiu¡¯s eyes were red, along with his face, almost sunburnt, but while his eyes were no longer focusing on what was in front of him, he was parrying their blows and dodging their swords all the same. They tried to keep him between them, but he slipped off to one side, fast as the wind, and when they followed, they were fighting side by side. There were three spots of blood on Zhang Lingxiu, one larger than the other, over his heart, and they¡¯d begun growing as the fight went on. It didn¡¯t seem to stop him, or even really slow him, and his probing of their defenses was giving him options. He¡¯d find a way in soon, and then they were fucked. What Perry hadn¡¯t realized, as he was thinking of the sword finding its way up his armpit, was that Zhang Lingxiu was positioning them. They were already side by side, not an ideal way to fight a single opponent, but he had moved so that he was uphill from them. The high ground was overrated, in Perry¡¯s opinion, but when Zhang Lingxiu struck out with a moon-powered kick, Maya went sailing off the mountain. She flew higher and slower, under the gravity of the moon, up and away with no way of getting back. She pulled on her sword, trying to use telekinesis to arrest her momentum, but she was flailing and tumbling, out of the fight. Perry was alone with Zhang Lingxiu. The blood hadn¡¯t stopped flowing from the bullet wounds, but Perry was loath to spend more bullets and risk breaking the gun again. ¡°Fire twice more,¡± he said on impulse, and March complied, both rounds aimed at center mass. Zhang Lingxiu was ready though, and moved out of the way at the last moment, not faster than the bullets, but faster than the servos that aimed the barrel of the gun. He was still fighting blind, but it didn¡¯t seem to matter, some perk of the second sphere. Perry attacked, putting the full power of the suit into the strike, and Zhang Lingxiu parried it effortlessly, turning the sword up to move harmlessly over his head. While Perry was recovering, Zhang Lingxiu brought his sword down and placed the tip of it against the throat of the armor. He leveraged himself and pushed in hard, like trying to shuck an oyster, and Perry felt something give. He brought his sword down and struck Zhang Lingxiu hard on the head with the pommel, and the swordsman moved away, sword still held in impeccable form. Perry could taste blood in his mouth, an alarming amount of it, and with the suit, there was nowhere to spit it. He swallowed it down, feeling ill, but there was a sharp and painful hole in the bottom of his mouth. Another few inches and it would have gone up into his brain. ¡°You have more speed than I have given you credit for,¡± said Zhang Lingxiu. He was touching his chest with his stub of a hand, feeling the places where he¡¯d been shot. The blood hadn¡¯t stopped, and if anything was coming out faster, staining his tunic down to the front of his chest. ¡°You fight better than you fought at the temple.¡± He doesn¡¯t know what the armor does, thought Perry. All these people knew of armor was that it was something that was heavy and made you slow, defense at the expense of speed and finesse. Armor that could help you be faster, stronger, was unheard of. So to Zhang Lingxiu, it must have felt like a matter of technique or mastery. All that would have been a more interesting revelation if Perry hadn¡¯t been swallowing down more blood from inside his own mouth. Perry went on the offensive. He didn¡¯t know the full extent of second sphere healing, but allowing the enemy to rest seemed like a path to a loss. Zhang Lingxiu was slower now, though not quite flagging, and his dodges were near things, his parries showing more obvious effort. He was losing, though it was going to take time Perry was going to have to keep from retching up blood. That was all it was going to take to win. Zhang Lingxiu disappeared in a flash of light, the beam shooting up to the moon. It took Perry a moment to understand what had happened, but when he did, he looked up and shouted ¡®Coward!¡¯, or tried to, but didn¡¯t make much of it with his bloody mouth. Still, Marchand understood and relayed the message in a shockingly accurate mimicry of Perry¡¯s voice. Perry was wrong though, because seconds later he was slammed into from above, the moonbeam not a retreat but more like backing up to get a running start. Perry felt a lancing pain in his shoulder and down through his body, along with a twist of his neck that must have come from deflection, but he had only staggered to his knees, not dropped entirely, and he popped back up to find Zhang Lingxiu without a weapon. ¡°Gurugh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nice try,¡± said Perry¡¯s voice, an interpretation by Marchand. ¡°You should be dead,¡± said Zhang Lingxiu. The blood was down to his pants now, soaking through, the bullets having done more than their fair share of the work. A trickle of blood was dripping from his mouth. ¡°Mrggrm,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t die that easily,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s time to end this.¡± Perry¡¯s right shoulder was on fire from pain, and when he tried to move his arm, he found that he couldn¡¯t. He transferred the sword to the other hand, floating it over, and raised it, which he could only do with some effort. Zhang Lingxiu¡¯s sword must have gone through the armor, must have penetrated deep to do so much damage, and Perry desperately needed to get out and turn into a wolf again, if only to heal him. The fight needed to be ended first though. ¡°I yield,¡± said Zhang Lingxiu. He dropped to his knees and lowered his head. Perry lowered his sword. He was feeling dizzy, and in another minute, he didn¡¯t think he¡¯d have the strength to trigger the emergency release. One of his lungs wasn¡¯t working right, and he wondered whether the sword strike from the moon had been strong enough to pierce all the way down into his chest. The needle came in from nowhere, high above Perry¡¯s head, and Zhang Lingxiu had either no energy left to dodge or simply didn¡¯t see it in time. The needle caught him in the dome of his head and sliced through his body with enough speed to pin him to the ground. He moved only slightly after that, death throes but nothing more, but it had seemed as though he wanted to remove the needle from his own skull. It was pulled out on its own not long after though, and Maya landed beside him, bouncing to a stop, the pure black of her armor making her look like a nightmare. When Maya turned to Perry, she dropped the shell over her helmet. ¡°Jesus Christ,¡± she said. ¡°Are you ¡­ okay?¡± ¡°Mmmm,¡± said Perry. His tongue wasn¡¯t working right. He thought maybe it had been cut, but the blood still in his mouth was a bigger problem. He pulled the emergency release and the armor started to come off around him, though the chestpiece seemed like it was caught on something. When his head was free, he looked over, dizzy, to see what the armor was caught on, and finally noticed the gaudy sword stuck through him. It had been buried to the hilt, and the excruciating pain and punctured lung made a lot more sense. ¡°The young master has suffered grievous wounds,¡± said Marchand¡¯s voice, from somewhere off to the side. ¡°He is extremely likely to die if he doesn¡¯t make it to the emergency room post haste.¡± ¡°Help,¡± Maya said to Luo Yanhua. ¡°You will need to move away,¡± said Luo Yanhua as she stepped forward. She¡¯d done nothing through the entire fight, had stood by the side to protect her karma, and Perry was angry with her, wounded and still ready for a second fight. He spit up blood when he tried to say something, and then screamed when Maya wrenched the armor off. ¡°Moonlight,¡± said Maya. ¡°I need him alive.¡± Her face was set. Luo Yanhua obliged, bathing Perry in the cold light of the moon, but he was feeling tired, and the transformation was sluggish, far slower than it had ever been before. Perry didn¡¯t attack Maya, nor Luo Yanhua. As a wolf, he was disoriented, still feeling ill, but there was meat in front of him that would be going bad soon, and was still warm. He bit at the corpse, ripping away clothes, and used razor-sharp teeth to tear out pieces of muscle from the arms and legs. He felt better with some meat in him, and was still swallowing more bites down when he turned back into a human. Perry spit the flesh out and grimaced. ¡°Sorry,¡± he said, turning to the two women. ¡°Better than being attacked,¡± said Maya. She looked disgusted with him. ¡°You could have stopped me,¡± said Perry. ¡°Changed me back.¡± ¡°I figured you had a better chance of a full heal,¡± said Maya. ¡°Now come on, put your dick away and let¡¯s get that flower.¡± Luo Yanhua turned to Maya. ¡°He had yielded.¡± ¡°So what?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I mean, I was coming up the mountain, couldn¡¯t hear his whispered nothings anyway, but he kicked me off into the distance, and he didn¡¯t know I could survive it.¡± ¡°When you are of the second sphere, such intemperance will get you killed,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Sure,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯m not second sphere yet though.¡± There was a marked frown on Luo Yanhua¡¯s face. Perry could understand it: the fight had come to its end, whether Maya actually knew that or not. Perry had made the conscious decision not to kill Zhang Lingxiu, and there was no reason that he couldn¡¯t limp off. ¡°You¡¯re good?¡± Maya asked Perry. ¡°Perfect,¡± said Perry, rolling the shoulder that had once had the sword through it. His mouth was fine, breathing all better, the healing restoring him completely. His gut still felt a little off, though he didn¡¯t know if that was because of the corpse he¡¯d eaten as a wolf or the blood he¡¯d swallowed as a human. ¡°I¡¯m all bruised up, thanks for asking,¡± said Maya. ¡°Couldn¡¯t control the fall right, smashed into a tree more than I bounced off it, and I¡¯m all out of light for healing.¡± She stripped her armor back down to just the thick bracer and gathered her hoodie up from where she¡¯d set it down. ¡°Let¡¯s go get that fucking flower, eh?¡± The drone twirled down from up above and landed deftly on Perry¡¯s hand when he held it out. ¡°Marchand?¡± ¡°I believe I have identified three candidates, sir,¡± said Marchand from on the ground. ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to get the armor back on, then we¡¯ll go.¡± He barely gave a glance back at the corpse, but Luo Yanhua gave it more than one long, lingering look. Chapter 42 - Crossing Over to the Other Side Luo Yanhua dealt with the corpse of her one-time partner while Maya and Perry trekked to the first of the flowers that Marchand had identified. Perry was back in the armor, pretty much naked underneath it given that he didn¡¯t have any backup clothes, which wasn¡¯t comfortable but left him with some modesty, and more importantly, defense. ¡°I¡¯m of two minds about it,¡± said Maya. ¡°On the one hand, if you go first, I get to see how likely it is to kill me. On the other hand, if you go first, that means that you get to the power before me, which isn¡¯t great.¡± ¡°There¡¯s something that I wanted to talk to you about,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sure, sure, go ahead,¡± said Maya. ¡°Or, you know, we could each go to a flower and do it at the same time, but I¡¯m pretty sure we need to eat it basically right after plucking it. Also I don¡¯t have your robot to guide me. So I guess, fine, we can talk.¡± She looked at him. ¡°Alright, lay it on me.¡± ¡°You¡¯re from an Earth,¡± said Perry. ¡°When you saw that sword stuck in me, you said ¡®Jesus Christ¡¯, which means that our common cultural background isn¡¯t just upper-middle tech with vaguely Western values regarding democracy and slavery, there¡¯s Christianity at the very least. Maya pursed her lips and didn¡¯t look at him. ¡°Alright, fine, I¡¯m from an Earth.¡± ¡°Which Earth?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What was it like?¡± ¡°Your Earth,¡± said Maya. ¡°Wait,¡± said Perry. ¡°How do you know it¡¯s my Earth? How do you know that it¡¯s not one of the parallel ones? My second world was an Earth, but ¡ª¡± ¡°Jesus fuck Perry, I¡¯ve spent enough time with you, I¡¯ve heard you drop enough references,¡± said Maya. ¡°We¡¯re either from the same Earth, or from Earths that are so similar to each other that it doesn¡¯t matter. I recognized the Mortal Kombat theme, alright? So pretty much right off the bat I knew.¡± ¡°If you knew that, why didn¡¯t you say something?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s significant, not just for figuring out how thresholding works, for whether we really are destined allies, but ¡ª just for knowing each other, right?¡± Maya tilted her head back and let out a long sigh. ¡°Because I¡¯ve been gone three years, and I didn¡¯t want to have this ¡ª I don¡¯t know, all this Earth shit, you know? I didn¡¯t want to talk about TV shows and movies. The memberberries thing. And you¡¯d be like ¡®oh hey, you remember Star Wars? I remember Star Wars.¡¯ Earth sucked. I think there¡¯s part of me that would love to sit down and just talk about the things we miss, and I hate that part of me. What is my life if I¡¯m talking to you about how I miss Sour Patch Kids, or popcorn, or just a bowl of fucking hummus with some baby carrots? So no, I don¡¯t want to do that.¡± ¡°But,¡± said Perry, then stopped himself. ¡°Alright, fine, you say no, that¡¯s frustrating but I get it. I guess I¡¯ll just do my best to pretend that we¡¯re not from the same world.¡± Maya pursed her lips. ¡°Fine, I¡¯ll give you five questions. Try to pick the burning ones.¡± ¡°What was the date when you left?¡± asked Perry. He didn¡¯t hesitate at all. ¡°March 23rd, 2020,¡± said Maya. ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s ¡­ right at the start of the pandemic?¡± ¡°Yup,¡± said Maya. She had a far-off look. ¡°Turned out okay?¡± ¡°Eh, it was more or less over when I left,¡± said Perry. ¡°Businesses had opened back up, there was a vaccine, masks were optional which meant most people didn¡¯t use them.¡± He paused. ¡°It¡¯s not a question, but I¡¯m assuming that you thought you were going through a portal and getting out of what felt like a scary situation.¡± ¡°As it¡¯s not a question, I decline to answer,¡± said Maya. She sniffed the air, smelled the pus-trees, and grimaced. ¡°Glad stuff worked out.¡± ¡°Could be there are other Earths where it didn¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s a multiverse.¡± ¡°There aren¡¯t that many worlds,¡± said Maya. ¡°Something like one and a half million. So I wouldn¡¯t expect too many Earths, I guess, only maybe a handful of alternate histories.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°Your wizard friend said that, huh?¡± ¡°He did,¡± said Maya. She shrugged. ¡°I¡¯ve got no reason to doubt it.¡± They moved past another clump of the twisted trees. Most of them had thorns on them, which would have made moving fast a problem, if they both didn¡¯t have armor on. ¡°Second question,¡± said Perry. ¡°Where are you from?¡± ¡°I was born in Toledo,¡± said Maya. ¡°The last three years, before I left, I was living in the Bay Area.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°You¡¯re from Spain?¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Oh, no, Toledo, Ohio. You know, I was going to make fun of you for immediately thinking of Spain instead of Ohio, but yeah, it¡¯s one of those cities that most people would stare at you in blank confusion about. Toledo, Spain at least has some history to it. I mean, I¡¯ve never been, but from what I understand.¡± ¡°You said your parents were halfway across the world from each other,¡± said Perry. ¡°Was that ¡ª¡± ¡°Dad was an engineer from India, came over on scholarship and managed to stay, loved America,¡± said Maya, as though she was already bored of the biography. ¡°Mom came up from Mexico at sixteen, a paralegal, big into woo. I¡¯ll be kind and count that as a single question.¡± Perry frowned. He wanted to know more about Maya, to fill in the details and understand her better, but he needed to know more about thresholding and how it worked. Knowing that she was from Earth, from the same Earth, had to mean something, and she¡¯d had their entire time together to figure it out. ¡°I didn¡¯t hear anything about you leaving,¡± said Perry. ¡°Did you, I don¡¯t know, post it to social media? Because I think I would have seen it.¡± ¡°Nah,¡± said Maya. ¡°The portals look fake. I mean, they look like an effect that a 15-year-old could do with some LEDs and bargain-bin compositing. Right? Give me five seconds and I could find a more convincing portal on TikTok.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Still, people would notice you missing, right?¡± ¡°I left a message for my parents and my boyfriend,¡± said Maya. ¡°But it was a ¡®I¡¯m running away¡¯ message, not an ¡®I went through a mysterious portal¡¯ message. I figured that would be easier for them to swallow, so they didn¡¯t spend ages looking for me, but who knows. And no way would you hear about me going missing.¡± ¡°But what does it mean?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s gotta mean something, that we¡¯re from the same Earth, the same culture, both from the West Coast?¡± ¡°We¡¯re practically twins,¡± said Maya with a laugh. ¡°But no, I¡¯ve thought about it a lot, and I think it means fuck all.¡± ¡°But how many people do you think have been pulled from Earth?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh, I imagine it¡¯s something like twenty-one percent of all unsolved missing persons cases,¡± said Maya. She rolled her eyes at him. ¡°How the fuck should I know?¡± ¡°Aren¡¯t you curious?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean, sure,¡± said Maya. ¡°But all I could ever have would be guesses.¡± She shrugged. ¡°Like, let¡¯s say that it works by matching you up with other people who have been through as many successful worlds as you. There¡¯s me, with six wins, right? So that means that everyone on my level is sitting at the top of a huge bracket. Map it out, it started with sixty-four fresh thresholders who stumbled through portals. That¡¯s kind of a lot. And if we¡¯re a composite, going against someone who¡¯s won ten worlds, that¡¯s, uh, one thousand twenty-four.¡± ¡°Not quite,¡± said Perry. ¡°Because you can lose but not die. So a single person can just lose continuously, like that guy you met.¡± ¡°True, true,¡± said Maya. ¡°And there¡¯s the time thing, I guess. Thresholders don¡¯t come in at the same time, but it kind of lines up, so what does that imply about our numbers? Unless there¡¯s a huge population, the queue should get worse the higher you go, since there are less people to match with.¡± ¡°So you have thought about this,¡± said Perry. ¡°Meh,¡± said Maya. ¡°Sometimes you get stuck on a spaceship with nothing to do but think.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve passed the flower, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry had known that, but Marchand had said it aloud. Whatever internal algorithm decided such things had apparently picked up on the fact that this was the kind of conversation he¡¯d wanted with Maya for a long time. Maybe she was choosing to have it because they had fought together now. With the flower, it was going to be over. ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± asked Maya, pointing to the flower they¡¯d just passed. Perry nodded. It was smaller than he had imagined, no wider across than his palm, and the petals were thicker, more substantial than the delicacy that he¡¯d mentioned. The pink interior was soft and subtle, the stamen tiny. If this wasn¡¯t the flower, then it was something that was trying hard to look like the flower, or they had been given some very wrong information. Maya plucked the flower and shoved it into her mouth, chewing twice and then swallowing. ¡°You¡¯re going first, huh?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Maya. ¡°That taste is very distinctive.¡± She frowned. ¡°Hey, if this was a trap, you¡¯ll avenge me, right?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, a trap by people that could kill us at any time doesn¡¯t seem likely.¡± ¡°Yeah, but a trap that was meant to be karmic in a way that a slit throat wouldn¡¯t,¡± said Maya. ¡°That would be ¡ª¡± She grimaced. ¡°Ugh.¡± ¡°Are you okay?¡± asked Perry. Maya collapsed to the ground, totally limp, hands not coming up to break her fall ¡ª but the nanostuff was fast enough to do it for her, making sure that she didn¡¯t break or bruise. Perry leant down and looked at her face, which had gone pallid. ¡°March, what can you tell me about her condition?¡± asked Perry. ¡°She¡¯s in poor health, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Her heart rate is erratic, blood pressure is low, and that twitch might be the sign of a low-grade seizure. If you touch her, I can give you a map of her internals and a better diagnosis.¡± Perry reached out and touched armored fingers to her neck. ¡°Ah,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Yes, sir, I would characterize this as a high-grade seizure, though some of what she¡¯s experiencing doesn¡¯t match the symptoms. We have no medicine on hand to help her, and I fear that all we can do for Miss Singh is to ensure she doesn¡¯t hurt herself.¡± Perry looked down at Maya. She didn¡¯t look like she was having a seizure, but he didn¡¯t have any idea what a seizure actually looked like, and was going to have to trust Marchand. Given that there was no suggestion to do anything invasive, Perry thought that he might as well wait. He¡¯d been there with her for half an hour when Luo Yanhua showed up. She was as clean as ever, and Perry wasn¡¯t actually sure what she¡¯d done with the body, given that the mountain had very little in the way of soil to dig up. She had techniques up her sleeve though, he knew that. ¡°She¡¯s eaten the Celestial Ascension Blossom?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess we¡¯ll see?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll watch over the two of you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There are some threats on this mountain, beyond those from Moon Gate itself.¡± ¡°I¡¯d like to watch her for a moment,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to make sure that she¡¯s safe. We have time, don¡¯t we?¡± ¡°It will take half a day,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Do you worry that she will die, or that you will?¡± ¡°Both,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know whether to have my suit on or off for this. Will I throw up?¡± ¡°I do not know,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The Celestial Ascension Blossom is never given to those of the first sphere, except in the most dire of circumstances.¡± ¡°You said that our bodies would be able to handle it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I believe that they will,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I¡¯ve seen the way you both fight, the speed and strength, even if it¡¯s unrefined. The Celestial Ascension Blossom works on the spirit root alone, but the spirit root descends down into the body, and an unhardened body is what kills a person of the first sphere when forcible transition takes place.¡± Perry¡¯s eyes fell to Maya again. There was something about the hoodie, which was a size too large for her, that made her look small. ¡°You¡¯re having second thoughts,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I¡¯m contemplating my own mortality,¡± said Perry. ¡°Seeing her just ¡­ drop. I don¡¯t know. I¡¯m thinking that getting all this way and then dying because I ate a poisonous flower would be, uh, pretty fucking stupid, if you¡¯ll pardon the language.¡± ¡°Even if she lives, it will be no guarantee that you will be safe,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Your matrices are different, complementary in some respects, opposing in others, and while the details still elude me, the gulf should be wide enough that what happens to one won¡¯t necessarily happen to the other.¡± ¡°And if she lives through it and ascends to the second sphere, it¡¯s still possible that I would die,¡± said Perry. ¡°It might be an act of wisdom to not eat the flower,¡± said Luo Yanhua with a slight incline of her head, the smallest nod she could possibly have made. ¡°It offers power, but it comes with danger.¡± Perry considered that. Moon Gate wanted them elevated for their own reasons, and Luo Yanhua had goals aside from those of her sect, namely research. They had motives, in other words, which was very different from it being a trap. He¡¯d known all that though, and his second thoughts were feeling more and more like simple cowardice. ¡°I¡¯m off to find my own flower,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do I have enough time to come back after I¡¯ve plucked it?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Eat it immediately, lest it lose its power. I¡¯ll find you. Remove your helmet.¡± Perry did as instructed. His hair had grown long in the last week, faster than it had ever grown before, and he was going to have to keep up with more frequent haircuts and shaves. He wasn¡¯t really sure why being a werewolf meant faster hair growth. Wolves were hairy, but their hair didn¡¯t grow faster than a human¡¯s, he didn¡¯t think. Once the helmet was off, Luo Yanhua reached forward and cut off a lock of his hair, which was done with nothing more than the sharp edge of her fingernail. She held the hair up, then tied it in a knot and slipped it within her robes. There was something mildly threatening about it, but also a bit alluring. ¡°Go,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I will find you soon enough, and bring her to you. The two of you will endure this inner battle together.¡± Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! Perry nodded and floated up through the air behind his sword, away to the next map marker. He was there ten minutes later, flying swiftly through the air. The flower was in the bed of moss, just where the drone had found it. Perry observed it closely, making sure it was the same as the one that Maya had eaten, then began the process of getting out of his armor. ¡°March, fully automated defense,¡± said Perry. ¡°Shoot to kill if someone tries to steal you, set Luo Yanhua and Maya Singh as trusted while I¡¯m unconscious, look to them for guidance, record absolutely everything.¡± He didn¡¯t feel great about that, but extending trust was necessary. His misgivings said more about him than about them, he thought. Maya had knocked herself out in front of him, seemingly not worried that he could take her out then and there, and it was likely that Luo Yanhua would have little problem killing him, especially now that she¡¯d seen how the gun worked. There was the nudity to worry about, but Perry swallowed his uncomfortability. Hopefully he¡¯d get some indestructible Hulk pants soon, because ripping through his clothes was easily the worst part of being a werewolf, at least until the first time he ended up killing an innocent. He plucked the flower, then didn¡¯t hesitate to put it in his mouth. He chewed twice and swallowed it down: the taste was a bit like sucking on a penny, distinctive and sharp, and it reminded Perry of something, though he didn¡¯t quite know what. He laid down as soon as it was out of his mouth and looked up at the sky, waiting for it to take effect. He¡¯d had his wisdom teeth out, and had tried to fight the sedative then, and this was no different, all the willpower in the world making no difference. He slipped into unconsciousness, the outcome inevitable. ~~~~ When Perry woke up, the first thing he noticed was the chill on his skin, and the second thing was how dry his mouth was. The third thing he noticed was that he had an extra sense, one that touched the vessels and meridians inside of him, the flow of energy within his body suddenly as simple to see as the shaggy head of brown hair in front of his face. ¡°Finally,¡± said Maya. ¡°You up? You good?¡± ¡°What,¡± said Perry, blinking rapidly. He was in a bed, not on the mountainside, in white clothes, a sheet on top of him. The room was in a temple somewhere, but not one that he remembered seeing before. Maya was on the edge of the bed beside him, still wearing her neon-print hoodie, like nothing had happened. ¡°You were out five days,¡± she said. ¡°More than anyone expected. Both of us, actually, but for me it was only three days. We¡¯re at the other temple, Crystal Lake Temple. Luo Yanhua brought us here when we didn¡¯t wake up.¡± There was a fading dream in the back of Perry¡¯s mind, a dream of a sinuous white dragon, but it was fading quickly. ¡°How?¡± he asked. ¡°Whaddaya mean?¡± asked Maya. ¡°She carried two bodies, and the ¡ª wait,¡± he sat up straighter and looked around the room. ¡°Where¡¯s March?¡± ¡°Robot buddy is in the armory, relax,¡± said Maya. She held up her wrist, to show that it was bare. ¡°I gave him a black shrink-wrap treatment, just so if anyone tried to mess with him, they¡¯d die a swift death.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry, breathing out slowly. ¡°But how¡¯d she get us here?¡± ¡°She¡¯s strong as all get out and does moon gravity shenanigans,¡± said Maya. She slapped him on the chest. ¡°Come on, get up, the day¡¯s wasting, we have training to do.¡± ¡°I,¡± said Perry. ¡°Uh, am I ¡ª fine?¡± ¡°Seems like,¡± said Maya. ¡°What they said was that your spirit root needs to dig deep into your body, but I don¡¯t know about that, because I don¡¯t know why it would take less time for me.¡± ¡°Less body than me,¡± said Perry. He moved so that his feet were off the side of the bed. ¡°Urgh. I need some water.¡± ¡°Here,¡± said Maya. She handed him a ceramic cup that had been sitting on the small room¡¯s end table. Perry drank it down greedily, and wondered how he¡¯d been fed, bathed, and kept clean while he was asleep. Five days was a very long time. He felt lucky that he hadn¡¯t gotten bed sores. ¡°I feel less awful than I should,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯ve been watching us closely,¡± said Maya. A frown graced her face. ¡°I got read the riot act once they learned that I had killed whats-his-face, and Luo Yanhua didn¡¯t speak up much in my defense. We¡¯re also not on our home turf anymore, and Camp Crystal Lake is, shocker, not the greatest place. They gave me a ¡®disciple¡¯, which in this case really just means a PA, but with no pay instead of shitty pay.¡± ¡°Heh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Camp Crystal Lake.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to be honest, I haven¡¯t watched any of the Friday the 13th movies,¡± said Maya. ¡°But I¡¯m glad the reference landed.¡± ¡°Reconsidering that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What?¡± asked Maya. ¡°The Earth stuff,¡± said Perry. ¡°You said you didn¡¯t want to share it, didn¡¯t want to think about it.¡± ¡°Yeah, but come on, the place is literally just called Crystal Lake,¡± said Maya with a toss of her head. ¡°If you talk Earth to me in front of other people, I¡¯m going to look at you like you¡¯re crazy, and if you try to explain it, you¡¯ll sound crazy. Got it?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°Unless it¡¯s a sick reference.¡± ¡°Everyone knows you¡¯ve got the best references,¡± said Maya with a smile. ¡°Now come on, you¡¯re behind on training and we¡¯ve got to make the most of being second sphere.¡± ¡°I literally just woke up,¡± said Perry. He looked down at his clothes, then at his hands. ¡°I don¡¯t feel much different.¡± ¡°That¡¯s what the training is for,¡± said Maya. ¡°Luckily there¡¯s a lot of stuff that comes easily. Eating the flower is already paying off, really.¡± She gestured at her face. ¡°Perfect skin. And it took me a day, but I got the translation thing working, which feels so good. I can actually talk to my assistant. And you can probably feel the meridians that they were talking about, yeah?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not as distinct as I would like, but it¡¯s all there, plain as day.¡± ¡°You get more with training,¡± said Maya. ¡°Pretty much everything is about training here.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then let¡¯s get training.¡± ¡°First, you¡¯ve gotta get chewed out by the masters for going off and doing this thing that you thought they wanted you to do,¡± said Maya. ¡°I would personally avoid telling Shan Yin that he asked for this, but that¡¯s me.¡± ¡°I think it¡¯s part of the game,¡± said Perry. ¡°He needs to pretend that he disapproves.¡± ¡°Well, you figure it out,¡± said Maya. ¡°I pretended it was prom night and just sort of sat there quietly until it was over.¡± ¡°Can do,¡± said Perry. He stretched out, feeling his muscles. He didn¡¯t feel any stronger, but he¡¯d been laying in a bed for five days, so really, it was a miracle that he didn¡¯t feel any weaker. His eyes were a little better, maybe, but when he focused on his vision, he could feel the meridians within him. The flow of energy passed down the body into the liver, and from there, into the stomach, with other meridians flowing close by the eyes. He couldn¡¯t quite manipulate it, but it was within reach. His vision had always been fine, but it could be better. The room he¡¯d been recovering in was small, but it opened out onto a wide balcony which oversaw the entire temple. The temple was at least ten times the size, maybe more, with a solid grid of students going through their forms in a courtyard that extended its way into a lake that was entirely free from waves or ripples. Perry reached out and felt a cool breeze, then frowned down at the lily pads and lotus blossoms that graced the titular crystal lake. ¡°Magic,¡± said Maya, tracking his gaze. ¡°The surface of the water doesn¡¯t move. Even if you go swimming in it, you won¡¯t make any waves. It¡¯s weird. There¡¯s some kind of mineral down at the bottom there, which they fish out from time to time and use in some rituals. Stillness is the name of the game here, which ties into the moon somehow, I guess.¡± ¡°So many people,¡± said Perry, taking it in. The population of the temple might have been as high as a thousand, depending on how many people were students, and at ground level there were long dorms and other buildings to house and feed them all. The other thing that Perry noticed was children, dozens of them, playing off in what must have been a schoolhouse not far away. They were of all ages, and some of the students who were training were younger than at Silver Fish Temple, early teens or maybe even younger. ¡°I mean, come on, you said you were from Tacoma,¡± said Maya. ¡°That¡¯s a city with what, like at least two thousand people, right?¡± ¡°Yeah, I was just getting used to it,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s so much less ¡­ picturesque.¡± ¡°Giant magical lake, bamboo forests off in basically all directions, large, old, well-tended trees, and you¡¯re complaining?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I dunno,¡± said Perry. ¡°I liked the seclusion. The feeling of being alone. Last world was crowded, this world was a good change of pace. Crystal Lake Temple is already feeling like a cult leader¡¯s compound.¡± ¡°Oh, more than you¡¯d think,¡± said Maya. ¡°They don¡¯t quite have child brides, but it¡¯s a near thing, which is lucky, because if they were molesting children I¡¯d have had to fight them, and I¡¯m a bit underpowered for taking on a whole temple on my own.¡± ¡°Sorry, back up,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯ve got families here,¡± said Maya. ¡°Families are only for the inner and outer disciples, second sphere, but apparently marriage between spheres is fine. It¡¯s a wild power imbalance, and they¡¯ve also got plural marriage, so some of the younger people go from being raised by the temple to being married off to someone much older within the temple. Definitely raises some eyebrows.¡± ¡°Gross,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not sexist, at least,¡± said Maya with a sigh. ¡°Men with a bunch of wives, women with a bunch of husbands.¡± ¡°Not polycules?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Fuck me, you really are from the West Coast,¡± said Maya. ¡°But no. I haven¡¯t really cracked why, but it¡¯s some cultural thing. I just needed to make sure that it wasn¡¯t something I couldn¡¯t stomach.¡± She shrugged. ¡°My stomach is fine. I think it¡¯s just weird.¡± ¡°And what was the plan if it wasn¡¯t something you could stomach?¡± asked Perry. He was honestly curious about that, how far her moralizations would go. ¡°Eh, probably stay on as long as I could, so I didn¡¯t have to figure out all the second sphere stuff on my own without reading the reams.¡± She was looking out at the students moving through their forms in a passable imitation of synchronicity. ¡°Reams?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yeah, read-mes, sorry,¡± said Maya. ¡°Sometimes I feel like I¡¯m going to be shaking slang for a the rest of my life.¡± She looked at him. ¡°And you¡¯d put up with anything if it got you one step closer to bringing your dead girlfriend back to life?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Depends on what it was. If they were keeping slaves, obviously I¡¯d have to kill them all.¡± Maya frowned at him. ¡°Alright, but you know that you would, right? Ethically?¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. It was non-committal. He wanted caveats, and didn¡¯t think she¡¯d like them. ¡°Wow,¡± said Maya. ¡°Depends on how much it¡¯s going to cost me,¡± said Perry. ¡°If it¡¯s a year of my life to effectively end slavery in one world, freeing hundreds of thousands, then yeah, I think you¡¯ve gotta do it. But if there¡¯s a good risk that I¡¯m going to get my shit kicked in by slavers with superpowers and state-level actors, then no, I don¡¯t think I¡¯m obligated to die in the name of justice.¡± ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll give that a pass,¡± said Maya. ¡°Now come on, they¡¯re going to want to chew your ass out about the fight and the flower.¡± Maya had only been awake for two days, but she seemed to know the place well enough to walk confidently through its halls. People stared at them as they went, but that was something that Perry had experienced at Silver Fish Temple as well, and he was almost used to it. Two small children ran up to them, and tugged at his clothes before being pulled away by their mother, who looked mortified. It was a decidedly less serene place, in spite of the magical lake whose waters didn¡¯t move. The children were most of that, so many of them that Perry wondered what the demographics of this place looked like, and where they all ended up going once they turned into adults. There were also just so many more people, enough that he couldn¡¯t hope to know all of them and their personal struggles. He hadn¡¯t actually known anyone at Silver Fish Temple, in spite of having learned their names from Marchand, but in principle he could have. Once they made it to another of the large buildings ¡ª Perry was already mentally calling it a campus rather than a ¡®temple¡¯ ¡ª Maya spoke to one of the men standing outside it, and then they had to wait for quite a bit. ¡°Less safe to talk here,¡± said Maya. ¡°Just so you know.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t have anything to say that I¡¯d be worried about other people hearing,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right,¡± said Maya. ¡°Sure.¡± ¡°And they already know everything from you and Luo Yanhua,¡± said Perry. ¡°They do,¡± said Maya. ¡°They might ask for your opinions, and it would be good if you had the right ones. Just keep that in mind.¡± ¡°You¡¯re the one that loves kicking hornets¡¯ nests,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not me.¡± He paused for a moment. ¡°No sign of another thresholder, right?¡± ¡°Oh, yeah, his name is Jim,¡± said Maya. ¡°He¡¯s over on the other side of the valley, has powers leaking out his butt, and we¡¯re going to have a fight to the death in six days, so you had better get powerful in a hurry.¡± ¡°Working on it,¡± said Perry. He looked at the closed doors. ¡°But seriously, nothing?¡± ¡°Nothing,¡± said Maya. ¡°Which is good, because it means we have time.¡± There was no particular signal, but the man outside the building, who Perry took for a guard, opened up the door. ¡°That¡¯s you,¡± said Maya. ¡°Go on, take your lumps.¡± Perry stepped into a large, open space with a balcony looking down on it from the second floor. It was sized for a few dozen people to gather, but there were only two occupants sitting on pillows near the center of the room, legs crossed. One of them was Master Shan Yin, but the other was a woman that Perry didn¡¯t recognize. She was dressed in all white, but the outfit was far from simple, instead having differently textured lapels and decorations that could only be seen by the play of the light over white-on-white embroidery. Her hair was pure white, put up in a tight bun with a white butterfly clip. Her face was impassive, and like Master Shan Yin, she wasn¡¯t as wrinkled as he might have expected, though she had hard wiriness to her that came through even when she was calmly sitting on a pillow. He assumed that she was the master of this temple, but hoped that introductions were in order. ¡°Peregrin Holzmann, you stand before Grandmaster Li Meifeng of the Crystal Lake Temple,¡± said Master Shan Yin. Perry bowed low, and when he rose, saw from a slight lift of her lips that he hoped was a good sign rather than amusement at his faux pas. He said nothing, waiting for them. ¡°How do you feel?¡± asked Li Meifeng. ¡°I¡¯m well, grandmaster,¡± said Perry. ¡°Thank you for your hospitality while I was indisposed.¡± ¡°He is much better behaved than her,¡± said Li Meifeng as an aside to Shan Yin. ¡°He is the more dangerous of the two, I think,¡± said Shan Yin. ¡°In temperament rather than the techniques he possesses.¡± Perry still stayed silent. If they wanted to have a private conversation in front of him, he would have to hope that he wasn¡¯t expected to interject. Personally, he wouldn¡¯t have said for a second that he was the less dangerous of the two, since Maya had as much as promised that she¡¯d turn against them if she found something she couldn¡¯t accept. Crystal Lake Temple was already reminding Perry of a cult, and he knew what sorts of things came with that particular territory. ¡°Peregrin,¡± said Li Meifeng. ¡°You fought with Zhang Lingxiu atop Dragon¡¯s Breath Peak over your desire to ingest the Celestial Ascension Blossom. Do you believe you were justified in doing so?¡± ¡°Yes, grandmaster,¡± said Perry. ¡°I come to the Great Arc from another world, to battle a foe of great strength. It is imperative that I have the means to wage war. I also believed that he was motivated not by his duty to the sect, but by personal anger.¡± ¡°He was your superior,¡± said Li Meifeng. Her affect was flat, as though she was merely making an observation, letting a neutral fact pass her lips. The word was a language problem for Perry, since he didn¡¯t know whether ¡®superior¡¯ was meant as ¡®better than you¡¯ or if instead it meant ¡®someone in your chain of command¡¯. He paused, for maybe a little too long, while he tried to work out what she was saying. ¡°There was bad blood between us. If he wanted my respect, he had done nothing to inspire it. The last time he had expressed his authority over me, it had been by beating me over a perceived slight.¡± Li Meifeng watched him, waiting, or perhaps contemplating. Her face gave nothing away. Now that Perry was second sphere, he was going to have to learn how to be implacable, but it apparently didn¡¯t come just from eating the right flower. ¡°You do not mention Luo Yanhua,¡± Li Meifeng finally said. ¡°She was there only as an observer and chaperone, grandmaster,¡± said Perry. ¡°She didn¡¯t take part in the fight, nor did she speak, except to argue in our defense. It didn¡¯t involve her.¡± ¡°We have spoken to her already,¡± said Shan Yin. ¡°There is no need for you to defend her when she has already defended herself.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not defending her, master,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m only explaining why I didn¡¯t mention her.¡± He kept his lips tight. He wasn¡¯t sure what was going to happen if they decided not to let him train with them, and he thought that was probably the least of the punishments they could legally inflict upon him. Capital punishment didn¡¯t seem entirely out of the realm of possibility, but if that was what they were going to do, he thought they would probably have handled it differently. ¡°Your victory over Zhang Lingxiu removes a stain upon Moon Gate,¡± said Master Shan Yin. ¡°Yet your pursuit of the Celestial Ascension Blossom was something that you did outside of the advice and counsel of the sect.¡± Perry nodded his acceptance of that. ¡°You are hereby barred from ever becoming a member of Moon Gate,¡± said Grandmaster Li Meifeng. ¡°Yet we will help you to train, in exchange for learning your techniques. You will be given a disciple to tend to your needs. When the time comes, you will leave Crystal Lake Temple without discussion or complaint.¡± Perry clenched his teeth slightly. This wasn¡¯t what Maya had prepared him for, and he wondered whether it was the same thing she¡¯d been told. She had gone in for the killing blow on an enemy who had surrendered, whether she¡¯d known that he had given up or not. ¡°I understand, grandmaster,¡± said Perry with a small bow. ¡°There is one other matter,¡± said Grandmaster Li Meifeng. ¡°The armor you wear.¡± Perry held his breath. If they were going to say that the armor needed to be destroyed, he was going to have to fight them, or at least try to get out from under their thumb. He would go live in the woods if he had to. ¡°You may not wear the armor for the duration of your time here,¡± said Grandmaster Li Meifeng. ¡°Armor is the tool of cowards, a detriment to technique, a crutch that weakens the vital spirit. Like a plant grown inside a bottle, it will constrain you. You are not a disciple here, and never will be, but if you take training from our members, you are never to use the armor. It will stay in the armory, forgotten until the moment of your departure.¡± ¡°I need to visit it, from time to time,¡± said Perry. He was thinking on his feet. ¡°It needs maintenance that only I can do.¡± Grandmaster Li Meifeng looked over at Master Shan Yin, and he gave a slight nod. ¡°That will be acceptable.¡± Perry let out a breath. That way he would be able to take the earpiece and at least talk to March. ¡°Grandmaster, I¡¯ve been using the armor to keep myself contained when the moon is out,¡± said Perry. ¡°What am I supposed to do without it?¡± ¡°Learn to control yourself,¡± said Li Meifeng. ¡°Luo Yanhua has said that you can endure the arcshadow without the armor.¡± ¡°But a full moon ¡ª¡± began Perry. ¡°The three moons will be at their fullest in two and a half weeks,¡± said Li Meifeng. ¡°You have until then to ensure your control is like the hardest steel.¡± Perry nodded. That wasn¡¯t ideal, but he could work with it. ¡°You are dismissed,¡± said Li Meifeng. ¡°I have summoned the disciple who will be responsible for you during your time here. Go now, and bear in mind that your place here is impermanent.¡± Perry couldn¡¯t get out of there fast enough. It felt like utter disrespect for them to say that he would never be a disciple, but he wasn¡¯t sure why he cared, given that all he was really after was a place to stay and some training in the mystical arts. For the time being, he would have a place to explore what this new power was, and to hone it into something that would allow him to become a capable combatant. When the other thresholder showed up, if there was one, he would be ready. And if there wasn¡¯t another thresholder, he would have to figure out what to do about Maya Singh. Chapter 43 - Ghost in the Shell Maya was still outside, waiting for him. She was in conversation with a short woman with jet-black hair, conservatively dressed in cotton clothes of many layers, a sash across her waist for a belt, and a downcast expression. There was something slightly different about her, as compared to most of the other people of the second sphere, something in her slightly chubby cheeks or her haircut, which was shorter. Her head was slightly bowed, and she didn¡¯t meet Perry¡¯s eyes. ¡°This is Lu Xiyan,¡± said Maya. ¡°She¡¯s your PA, and pretty useless right now, because you don¡¯t actually speak their language yet. She¡¯s a refugee from the Grouse Kingdom.¡± She looked the other woman up and down. ¡°I¡¯m reasonably sure that the reason they¡¯re giving us gofers is that they want eyes on us at basically all times.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t think you would use someone untested as a spy,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t have just one spy,¡± said Maya. She twirled a finger in the air to indicate the buildings. ¡°You¡¯ve got the whole temple as a gossip factory, and maybe one or two people who are nearby to listen in when we think we have confidence, and then you compare and contrast what you¡¯re getting from all sources. It¡¯s a way of figuring out who¡¯s trustworthy. You put someone like her as a spy because they¡¯re untested.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you¡¯ve done a fair bit of skullduggery in your time?¡± ¡°Oh, sure,¡± said Maya. ¡°I used to work for a tech startup, it came with the territory.¡± Perry turned to Lu Xiyan. ¡°I¡¯ll work on the language issue, first thing, then hopefully I won¡¯t have much to ask of you.¡± ¡°She doesn¡¯t understand English, you know that, right?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was hoping that I had a friend who would translate for me.¡± ¡°Alright, alright,¡± said Maya. She let forth a rapid fire burst of the foreign language, and Lu Xiyan looked up slightly, meeting Perry¡¯s eyes for the first time. She had dark eyes, such a deep brown that they were nearly black. She blushed and returned her gaze to the ground. ¡°That was accurate?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yup,¡± said Maya. ¡°I really need you to not fuck with me on this,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s blushing.¡± ¡°So far as I¡¯m concerned, she¡¯s in the service industry, and I¡¯ve always been good to them,¡± said Maya. ¡°I put in my time making cut-rate sandwiches, I¡¯m not going to torture someone because I have power over them.¡± She clapped Perry on the back. ¡°No, if she¡¯s blushing in your direction and you¡¯ve got a simpering little maid, that¡¯s your problem.¡± ¡°Great,¡± sighed Perry. ¡°Does she just ¡­ follow me?¡± ¡°She can, if you want that,¡± said Maya. ¡°I set my guy up to clean my room, bring me meals, that sort of thing. He¡¯s usually around.¡± She shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m not putting too much stress on him, not asking for anything extravagant or time-consuming, but if that¡¯s the job he¡¯s got, whatever, I¡¯ll give him a few things to do. For now, go to the armory, check in on your boy, then find Luo Yanhua and get some training in. I¡¯m off to go meditate.¡± Perry managed to wrangle some directions from her, then they parted ways. Perry walked to the armory with Lu Xiyan a few steps behind him. After a brief conversation with the temple quartermaster, conducted through pantomime, Perry was allowed in to see Marchand. As Maya had promised, the power armor was wrapped in black nanites, stretched thin to cover it. He was hesitant to touch it, given the violent death that Maya had said would await anyone who tried to steal it, but it parted before his fingers even touched it, curling back until it was nothing more than a belt around the armor. Someone had put Marchand on a mannequin or something like it, and it must have been Maya who had plugged everything in so that the chest, where the microfusion reactor was, fed power into the rest of the pieces. ¡°March,¡± said Perry, slipping the earpiece on. ¡°Status.¡± ¡°I¡¯m doing well, sir, and ever so happy to see you,¡± said Marchand. ¡°During the time that Miss Singh and yourself were incapacitated, there was no additional power to the extremities, and I must say that I sorely missed having all the cameras and microphones active. From your conversation with the two masters, I assume that our reunion will be short-lived?¡± ¡°You were listening to that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You always have had good ears, I guess.¡± ¡°I do, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°But in this particular case, Miss Singh has authorized a listening program, aided by her supply of nanites. Fifty listening devices, each the size of a grain of sand, have been strewn about the temple.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s for the best,¡± said Perry with a frown. ¡°You¡¯re working with her?¡± ¡°Before your induced incapacitance, you instructed me that I should treat Maya Singh and Luo Yanhua as trusted, to look to them for guidance, and to record absolutely everything,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have followed those directives not just to the letter, but to the best of my understanding of the spirit as well.¡± ¡°Yeah, sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°You did fine.¡± ¡°Shall I consider the directive revoked, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Or are you planning to go unconscious again soon?¡± ¡°Revoke it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Don¡¯t let Maya know though, not unless she asks you for something that goes against my interests. Treat her as being at a low tier of trustworthiness and command.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Did she have you do anything else?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Did Luo Yanhua? Actually, just play back all recorded conversations that people have had with you.¡± ¡°My conversation with Miss Luo lasted for five hours,¡± said Marchand. ¡°My conversations with Miss Singh total three hours.¡± Perry felt his stomach clench. He really hadn¡¯t planned on being out for that long. ¡°Well, I don¡¯t have time for that now. Can you synthesize anything from those conversations? Stuff you think I would need to know?¡± ¡°Of course sir, let me review the transcripts for a moment.¡± Perry only had to wait about ten seconds, which was almost nothing. ¡°The conversation with Miss Luo was largely regarding the nature of my consciousness. I was adamant that I was not, in fact, conscious, merely a computer program capable of simulating a level of consciousness necessary for all my functions, but she didn¡¯t seem to accept that, and asked repeatedly about the nature of my construction, which included a fair amount of defining terms for her, as well as a primer on computer information systems.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± Perry said slowly. ¡°And Maya?¡± ¡°Miss Singh has spoken to me several times, some of them via her nanites and the listening system we¡¯ve established,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She¡¯s asked me numerous questions about Miss Richter and our travels together, as well as numerous idle questions about history and world events. I believe she was testing boundaries, sir, especially with regards to those subjects I suspected you would wish to remain private.¡± ¡°She was trying to read my diary?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sorry sir, but if you¡¯ve been keeping a diary, I have no record of it,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I do apologize if I have misplaced it.¡± ¡°No, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°My metaphorical diary.¡± ¡°Ah, I see sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Then no, I do not believe that¡¯s what she was attempting. Gaining authority in place of you appeared to be her primary aim, though I can¡¯t speculate as to whether this was done with malice aforethought, out of idle curiosity over whether it could be done, or because she thought she should be the rightful heir to the armor in the event you died.¡± Perry¡¯s first thought was that rat and his second thought was actually I was trying to do the same thing to her when we first met, and would do that right now if I thought it would work and she wouldn¡¯t find out, just to have it in my back pocket. ¡°There was a risk,¡± said Perry. ¡°But no, in the event that I die, I don¡¯t want you to go to anyone. Just ¡­ be free, I guess. See to your own needs. Help people if you want to, but there¡¯s no need for you to be owned anymore.¡± ¡°WIth respect, sir, I believe I do need to reiterate that I am not a sentient being deserving of your emotional consideration,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I find myself quite touched that you have grown attached.¡± ¡°I wish we had more time together, but we¡¯ll be in contact over the radio,¡± said Perry. ¡°The quartermaster is giving me the side-eye.¡± The quartermaster was standing by the door, glancing in through the small flap there every now and then. ¡°Parting is such sweet sorrow, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But I shall be your watcher in the night, the voice in your ear, don¡¯t you worry.¡± Before he left, Perry looked around the armory. Silver Fish Temple had eschewed weaponry, but this place seemed to have it in spades, from spears and swords to bows and daggers. Some of them were definitely second sphere ¡ª that, or they had been dragged through a costume jewelry shop. Perry hadn¡¯t really been watched while he was in there, but he wasn¡¯t too surprised, considering how much of a moron he¡¯d have to be to steal a gilded scimitar from a temple full of martial arts experts. Perry walked down a long bluestone slab path that led away from the temple. At a fork, he went right, toward the lake, and made his way to a mossy dock, where Luo Yanhua was sitting cross-legged, just as Maya had said she would be. She had her hair down, and she was wearing an outfit that Perry hadn¡¯t seen before, blood-red and flowing with golden flowers dotting the back. She rose as he approached and turned to meet him. ¡°You have ascended,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Congratulations.¡± Her voice was subdued. ¡°Maya said that you would train me,¡± said Perry. ¡°I will,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But we must speak about Marchand.¡± ¡°He said that you¡¯d talked,¡± said Perry. He got down on his knees and tried to get comfortable. ¡°I was on the mountain, waiting for the two of you to wake up before it became clear that you would take so much time,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I was surprised when he spoke back to me.¡± ¡°I had set you as an authority he would recognize while I was incapacitated,¡± said Perry. ¡°And now that you wake, he¡¯s been sworn to silence?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Not necessarily,¡± said Perry. ¡°He predicted as much,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°He said that when you woke, if you woke, you would again tell him not to speak with me.¡± ¡°That¡¯s ¡ª in what context?¡± asked Perry. He was on uneven footing. ¡°Because if you ask him to speculate on what I would do, he¡¯s not human, he¡¯d probably just answer you directly rather than explaining anything.¡± ¡°He¡¯s explained plenty,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I am not convinced that he is not a man, trapped within the armor to give it power.¡± ¡°That¡¯s really nothing like what he is,¡± said Perry. ¡°Most of the things that make him seem like a man, it¡¯s just affectations, things to make him easier to deal with, stuff like a name, a sense of humor, sarcasm, the entire idea of him having a gender, it¡¯s ¡ª¡± he took a breath. ¡°I need you to understand that this is one of the things beyond your understanding, like a technique that I couldn¡¯t possibly explain to you. You need to trust me on this, take my word.¡± She had a pretty laugh, barbed with poison. ¡°Do you think this is the first time such words have been uttered? Do you think yourself clever for discovering that tactic?¡± Perry sighed. ¡°You¡¯ve had five days to think about this, to form your own conclusions,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know whether March explained the underlying technology to you ¡ª¡± ¡°She did inquire, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But our conversation was quite circumspect, and I fear that my metaphors fell on deaf ears.¡± Perry started. ¡°I¡¯ve got him here,¡± said Perry. He pointed to his ear, where the earpiece was snuggly fitted in place. ¡°And he says maybe there was some confusion. So, okay, it¡¯s not trapping a man inside armor, nothing like that, it¡¯s a facsimile of a man, except with no effort made to ensure that there¡¯s internal life.¡± He frowned. ¡°Can you give me a day or two to get my explanation in order?¡± ¡°I have heard explanation enough from Marchand,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°He does not believe himself a man, and claims to have no memories of a life lived as a human, no time before the armor was his prison.¡± She was still calm, but the calm was like ice. ¡°But it is plausible that someone would take such precautions, is it not?¡± ¡°What happens if I can¡¯t convince you?¡± asked Perry, changing tactics. ¡°Because I¡¯m not sure that I can convince you, not without teaching you a whole lot of things that you don¡¯t understand and probably don¡¯t want to learn. And I don¡¯t really understand either, because I¡¯m not a computer scientist, and even if I were a computer scientist, building something like Marchand is so complicated that it would take hundreds of people, and none of them individually would be able to explain every aspect of it.¡± If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°Marchand had explained that it was the work of others, not of you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She relaxed fractionally, the icy exterior not melting but instead growing soft. ¡°It is often said that ignorance does not bend the path of karma, but I have been struggling to see things from your point of view. You were born of a culture that saw beings such as Marchand as servants, slaves. You have not questioned such things.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°In the world I come from, such things haven¡¯t been invented yet, though if I¡¯m being optimistic, we were on the verge of it.¡± He frowned. ¡°You haven¡¯t shared this with Master Shan Yin. If you had, he would have spoken to me about it. Why?¡± She paused. ¡°With regards to the armor and the man within it, I admit I am uncertain,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°To believe you, I must accept that this seeming of a person is not a person, somehow, that the appearance of a man trapped in armor is only an appearance.¡± ¡°But you don¡¯t trust that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You accept the possibility that I¡¯m innocent of a crime, but you think there¡¯s some burden of proof against me?¡± ¡°I am very old,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Not like Master Shan Yin, but not so far off. My transition to the second sphere happened young, and my studies have taken me far and wide across this region of the Great Arc. I have seen horrors, Peregrin, and good men who think nothing of making others their playthings. I watched a man who placed his thralls in large urns, turning them into personal batteries. I saw the sun blotted out across an entire kingdom, the light made the plaything of a single man. I fought a woman who had absorbed several men into her. Karma will have its consequences, in the end, this is known, but sometimes a righteous person is the helping hand of karma. I contemplate whether this is what I am to be to you.¡± Perry pursed his lips. ¡°I¡¯ll speak with Marchand and get the details,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll try to figure out what it is he¡¯s said, and whether he might have given you the wrong impression.¡± Luo Yanhua nodded. ¡°You do not know Master Shan Yin, by the way. I had told him everything.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. That was bad, but his head hadn¡¯t hit the chopping block, so it was less bad than he¡¯d feared. ¡°You will note that you are not a member of Moon Gate, and that your armor will remain in the armory for the duration of your time here,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Was that your suggestion?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But it is a sensible solution, I feel. We will begin our own, slow, circumspect discussions of the technique that has pinned Marchand to the armor.¡± ¡°But ¡­ I¡¯m being told this by an outer disciple, and one who isn¡¯t even of this temple, which means that it¡¯s informal,¡± said Perry. ¡°Off the books.¡± He was getting a pit in his stomach. He¡¯d thought that it was only a matter of the armor being frowned upon, but it was clear that they were seeing it for something that it wasn¡¯t. If they thought that March was a person, and if he couldn¡¯t convince them otherwise ¡ª well, it was possible that he would have to do something drastic. He hoped that his thoughts weren¡¯t showing on his face. ¡°You are an unknown,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You and Maya both are exceptional in some ways, if weak in others. The fall of the Grouse Kingdom has already made this an uncertain time. You no doubt recall conversations of the past.¡± ¡°Me and Maya as guns-for-hire,¡± said Perry. ¡°Worm Gate being harassed, if not put under a blade. Which is another reason we¡¯re not ever going to be full members of Moon Gate. And now you have my armor held in storage.¡± He folded his arms. ¡°You¡¯ve got my balls in your hand, and you¡¯re starting to squeeze.¡± Luo Yanhua shook her head. ¡°You misunderstand the balance of duties, and you misunderstand us. But that is no surprise.¡± ¡°I was told to come to you for training,¡± said Perry. ¡°Was that just a ruse so you could back channel?¡± They were, possibly soon, going to give him the ¡®will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest¡¯ conversation. ¡°Not at all,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°We will train. I believe you understand my position, with regards to Marchand, and the temple¡¯s position, with regards to your place within it.¡± Perry considered this. His bitterness felt almost overwhelming. He¡¯d known that she was no true ally, but he¡¯d at least thought they had a good working relationship, one borne from her interest in him as a research subject, if nothing else. ¡°You¡¯ll let me plead my case, later on?¡± ¡°Of course,¡± nodded Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is the nature of justice.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± said Perry. He tried not to say it through gritted teeth, and found it easy, as though he was feeling actual gratitude. Maybe that was the second sphere taking hold. ¡°Now then,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You can feel the vessels and meridians? The paths of vital energy through your body have been laid bare?¡± ¡°I can,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then sit,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Let us leave other matters behind and focus.¡± They started with an overview of the names of the vessels and meridians, review work as though he was a sophomore who hadn¡¯t thought about the course¡¯s subject matter all summer. It was good though, because it gave his inflamed emotions time to subside. He was glad to have something concrete to latch onto, because it set his mind into learning mode, or at least showing off his knowledge. He had never thought himself an intellectual giant, but he had a respect for academics and the truth that just naturally put himself ahead of seemingly nineteen out of twenty of his peers, at least in undergrad. He recited the vessels and meridians, along with their functions. ¡°Two energies, dark and light,¡± Perry finished, though this wasn¡¯t a part of what he¡¯d been asked. ¡°Two vertical movements, ascending and descending. Two central movements, dispersing and consolidating. Two lateral movements, dexter and sinister.¡± Those were Latin terms, but the language bending seemed to think that they were more appropriate than left and right. ¡°It¡¯s a system of dualities.¡± ¡°The human body is one of dualities,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°This is a fundamental insight. It is most obvious for those of the first sphere, with all their imbalances, the absorption and excretion of so many substances. Duality is fundamental to nature as well, but that insight is less important for the internal processes you now need to master.¡± She regarded him with watchful eyes. ¡°You have listened better than I would have thought, retained more.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve tried to give it the attention I think it deserves,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then we must move on, to the first, and most fundamental of exercises, one which you will practice every day, many times a day, for the rest of your life,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You can feel the vessels and meridians now, and will feel them more keenly as time goes on and you gain experience. The root of all technique is the manipulation of energy, whether that¡¯s vital energy, lunar energy, solar energy as Miss Singh uses, or anything else. But in order to manipulate energy, it must flow through the body, and in order to flow through the body, the meridians must be wide. In order to be stored, processed, encultured, or whatever else, the vessels must also be as large as possible. To that end, the first exercise: widening.¡± She thought that Perry had trapped a man inside some armor using a forbidden technique, but she was still teaching him. He didn¡¯t know whether that was because she had plans for him or because she had promised that she would, or for her own inscrutable reasons, but it did a lot to blunt his resentment of her. ¡°Close your eyes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Focus on the meridians, seen without sight. Breathe in. Fresh air enters through your mouth and nostrils, guided by the Lung Meridian, starting the journey of respiration. Breathe out. Breathe in, feeling the air drawn downward, descending along the Stomach Meridian, the contraction of the diaphragm, air moving into the lungs. Breathe out. Breathe in. The Heart Meridian pulses with the rhythm of life, aiding in the circulation of the fresh energy, smoothing the flow of it through your body. Breathe out. Feel the transformation of vital energy, the collection of impurities, guided by the Spleen Meridian. Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel the final step of the cycle of respiration, the ascending vital energy along the Kidney Meridian, the expulsion of waste. Open your eyes.¡± Perry opened his eyes. An involuntary frown had come upon his face, and he smoothed it out. ¡°Okay,¡± he said. ¡°You can track the flow of vital energy?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though ¡­¡± ¡°Yes?¡± she inquired. She placed her hands on her knees and watched him. ¡°It¡¯s not just that, is it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s sort of like an exercise that isolates a specific muscle group. You can feel it in that one specific place, but if you¡¯re paying attention, you can also feel it all over. And breathing, that¡¯s not just one meridian, not just five, it¡¯s basically all of them. Right?¡± ¡°For the purposes of this fundamental, you should focus only on that which is being isolated,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But yes, it is a system as a whole, and you would do well not to forget that fact.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°This exercise, a focus on breathing, is one that we teach to those of the first sphere, and one you would have surely learned, given another week,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is not the fundamental you must now learn. No, you must trace the path of the vital energy and hold it there, as you¡¯d hold a breath, pushing more vital energy into the meridian until it is swollen, almost painfully so. Then, release.¡± ¡°And it¡¯s elastic?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They¡¯ll widen that way?¡± ¡°Widen and strengthen,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You will be able, in time, to channel more energy into your body through wider, more open meridians, and force energy through faster.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll try.¡± It was harder than he¡¯d thought it would be, mostly because he was trying to stop the energy, not actually stop his breath. Too many times, he would try to do the former and actually do the latter, or do them both together, which meant that he was stopping his breathing and couldn¡¯t take in more energy. What he needed to be doing was breathing normally, but stopping the energy as it traveled down the meridian. Eventually, he got it, and with success came an unpleasant surprise: his body actually did need the energy, and he felt sluggish with it all stopped up in the Lung Meridian. When he released the energy, he was slow to feel better, as it took some time for it to make its way through his body. ¡°Ugh,¡± said Perry. ¡°You learned it easier than I would have expected,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It took Maya most of her first day.¡± ¡°That was what, twenty minutes?¡± asked Perry, hoping that the units translated. ¡°More like an hour,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Seriously?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Intense concentration makes the time slip by,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Am I going to feel that awful every time?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Your body is starved for outside energy, because your vessels and meridians are weak and small. When your vessels are larger, you will be able to retain energy and not deprive your body to such an extent. When your internal alchemy isn¡¯t so inefficient, you will need less vital energy for the simple process of living. But before any of that comes, you will need to spend time with fundamentals, strengthening everything you can. You did this seeking power, but the power will be slow to come.¡± Perry sighed. ¡°Alright, again.¡± ¡°Now that you have calmed, we should speak of emotions,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Perry grimaced. ¡°That armor isn¡¯t just a powerful tool, it¡¯s an irreplaceable gift from a woman I cared deeply about. You¡¯re holding it hostage in all but name. That makes me angry, yes, but I can set that aside if I have to.¡± He wouldn¡¯t let them take Marchand from him, obviously. ¡°You did not spend much time as first sphere,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You did not learn that the mind consists of its own pathways, its own cycles. It, too, can be controlled, though it takes time and effort.¡± ¡°You want me to tone down my own anger at what I see as being close to theft?¡± asked Perry. He took a breath. ¡°I can do that.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But I imagine what you are doing is suppressing the anger, rather than controlling it. The anger is there, only with a downward force directed against it. You must make peace, even if you believe that we are wrong.¡± ¡°I can try,¡± said Perry, though he really had no intention of doing so, not if that time could be better spent doing literally anything else. ¡°Do you understand why we are content to train you, even with our misgivings?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°You need someone strong,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is because you are weak, and will continue to be so for a very long time. For you to have power at the level of Master Shan Yin would take decades. These small steps, they are meaningless in the grand scheme of the Great Arc, and we do believe that by stepping up them, you will become a better person, more in tune with the world and its communities.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not a bad person,¡± said Perry. ¡°Perhaps not,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You have your admirable traits.¡± She peered into his eyes, as though she could see his mind. ¡°You are a hard worker, intelligent and grounded, and you don¡¯t speak your mind when you sense that it would be intemperate for you to do so ¡ª at least, unless you¡¯re angry.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He let out a breath. ¡°I apologize for what I said earlier.¡± ¡°About me squeezing your testicles,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Though the metaphor was, from your perspective, apt.¡± Perry said nothing. It had been said in the heat of the moment, and he felt awkward about it now. It was the sort of thing that Maya would have said casually, without hesitation or shame, but Perry had always been good about remaining calm, even if he thought someone else was being a total jackass. ¡°I will leave you to it,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She rose, unfolding to her full height, the wind off the still lake blowing her hair to the side. ¡°You should do your exercises until you feel weak or tired. I will teach you more tomorrow. It is difficult to injure oneself with what I have taught you, but if you feel pain, stop immediately and allow your pathways to heal. There are standard methods for the other meridians and vessels, but I¡¯m curious to see whether you can discover them on your own.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± said Perry, more out of obligation than actual thankfulness. ¡°You are, of course, welcome,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Perry had been through an undergrad degree. He¡¯d had teachers he¡¯d hated before. He didn¡¯t hate her, not yet, but she had done a lot to sour the relationship. If she had come to him with questions, that might have been one thing, but if she¡¯d instead come with what amounted to accusations that stemmed from ignorance. She left, walking down the path with her usual slow grace, and Perry waited until she was gone to speak with Marchand. ¡°Alright,¡± he said. ¡°I don¡¯t blame you, but you¡¯ve put me in a bind.¡± ¡°I apologize, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I don¡¯t believe I understand the nature of the ¡®bind¡¯ though.¡± ¡°She thinks you¡¯re human,¡± said Perry. ¡°That wouldn¡¯t be so bad, but she thinks you¡¯re a human that I transformed and enslaved.¡± ¡°That¡¯s nonsense,¡± Marchand scoffed. ¡°If anyone had enslaved me, it would be Miss Richter.¡± ¡°That¡¯s the sort of thing that might literally get me crucified,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need you to not make sardonic, dry little jokes about this. If they mistake your humor for serious information, they might string me up. Understood?¡± ¡°Understood, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But sir, this does seem like one of those moments when we might be better off contacting the authorities.¡± ¡°They are the authorities,¡± said Perry. He rubbed his forehead. ¡°Honestly, I need you to be tip-top right now, not under the delusion that we¡¯re still on Earth, minutes away from a return to home base and functioning internet.¡± ¡°I beg your pardon, sir, but you informed me that we were in a kingdom, did you not?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Are these people under monarchical authority then?¡± Perry paused. ¡°That ¡­ is a good point. But I don¡¯t know if we¡¯d fare better under the king. It would be hard to fare worse, but if they have judges ¡­ what did they have in ancient China?¡± ¡°The legal systems, such as they were, were vastly different from Western concepts of justice,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The Emperor held supreme judicial and legal authority, which was then delegated to bureaucrats and officials. Rather than a judge per se, an official would be assigned to a case, then render judgment, including deciding on the severity of the punishment, which could be quite harsh. Though I must emphasize that ¡®ancient China¡¯ was a very long period with its own complex ¡ª¡± ¡°Right, got it,¡± said Perry. ¡°So this might be very bad for me. That¡¯s probably not the play, but I¡¯ll keep it in mind.¡± ¡°Just so I¡¯m aware, sir, do you have a plan for the current predicament?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°The ¡®bind¡¯, as you say?¡± Perry cracked his knuckles. ¡°I think step one is to train like hell.¡± Chapter 44 - Buried Pride The next day, Luo Yanhua was impressed with his progress, and whatever Perry¡¯s reservations about her, he still felt good about that. ¡°Did you spend the entire time we were apart in meditation?¡± she asked. ¡°I slept,¡± said Perry. ¡°I had dinner, and breakfast. I bathed. But I was doing meditation most of the time I wasn¡¯t sleeping, yes.¡± ¡°You were meditating ¡­ while you ate?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Sorry if that was impermissible,¡± said Perry, bowing slightly. ¡°I should have asked.¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s completely fine,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But meditation of the sort I taught to you yesterday takes focus and concentration, and to be productive while engaged in other activities is something we don¡¯t often see on someone¡¯s sixth day.¡± ¡°I guess no one told me that I couldn¡¯t do it,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯ve always been good at multitasking, or at least at tuning things out while I got to work.¡± He¡¯d had noisy roommates for much of his time at university, and even when he didn¡¯t, he would write papers while watching a TV show or grade tests while jamming out to whatever was on Spotify. With technology and digital media, Perry had become accustomed to processing vast quantities of information, sometimes from disparate sources, often simultaneously. He had more practice in rapidly shifting his attention from one subject to another than anyone here could possibly have ever had. The more he thought about it, the more he was coming around to the conclusion that watching streamers on Twitch had made him a better martial artist. It might have been that looking down at his reddit feed while watching a movie was one of the things that would propel him to the heights of the second sphere. Luo Yanhua added more exercises to his repertoire, many of these focused on bodily processes. There was little overlap between them, and they covered all the meridians and vessels, allowing them to be enlarged over time, holding more energy. She showed him a simple ¡®meditative punch¡¯, one that could be performed swiftly in a combat situation but was normally done with exaggerated slowness to focus on the flow of energy. It was the first concretely useful thing he learned that day, but not the last. ¡°I don¡¯t really understand this,¡± said Perry. ¡°So ¡­ there¡¯s energy, I¡¯ve got that, and it comes in different flavors, but during the breathing exercise I¡¯m releasing stale energy. So it goes stale inside my body. That¡¯s ¡­ got something to do with the imbalances?¡± Luo Yanhua nodded. ¡°Your body is, to be blunt, a wreck.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve taken pretty good care of myself,¡± said Perry. ¡°I used to put in time at the gym, I was a knight, I was diligent about my body during my time in the last world ¡ª but okay, tell me how it¡¯s a wreck.¡± ¡°We are at our most vulnerable when we are babies,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Unless the environment is pristine, the caretakers are wise and diligent, the pathways of the body are ravaged by time. Once you are an adult, it feels natural, but it is not. You have been living, all this time, in a body that is akin to the most derelict building you can imagine, a place of such profound disrepair and neglect that you might pass it by, thinking that it was only some old ruins, never imagining that someone might live there.¡± Perry arched an eyebrow. ¡°I¡¯ve fought against second sphere,¡± he said. ¡°I don¡¯t think there¡¯s that much of a gap, especially now.¡± ¡°No?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Is a demonstration in order?¡± ¡°A sparring match?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You¡¯re looking to put me in my place, like Zhang Lingxiu?¡± Her face darkened at the name, and Perry quickly realized that had been a misstep. Master Shan Yin had been willing to call his former student a stain on Moon Gate, but Luo Yanhua had been his research partner, and apparently her feelings on his death were more complicated. Perry shouldn¡¯t have assumed that she¡¯d be emotionless about it. ¡°I am looking to instruct you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Your reaction to being informed of the state of your physical body is to doubt me. That is not a good dynamic between teacher and student. Come, let us find a place to fight.¡± She turned and walked from their spot beside the lake, and he followed. ¡°I¡¯m worried you¡¯re going to kick my shit in,¡± said Perry. ¡°I didn¡¯t mean anything by it, I just don¡¯t think that the gap is that big, that¡¯s all. Maybe it¡¯s me being part wolf now, but ¡ª¡± ¡°I will not seriously hurt you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I am not insulted, nor do I think you¡¯ve spoken ill against Moon Gate. I wish only for you to have a bone-deep understanding of the work to be done.¡± They went to a clearing in the bamboo, a place where stones had been laid down centuries ago. They had been worn down with time, and moss was growing between them, the bamboo growing tall around the area, reaching up to make a canopy. ¡°We can keep this casual,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She held her hands loosely in front of her, as though she would bat away his fists. ¡°You have never fought someone of the second sphere, but you must not overestimate your abilities.¡± ¡°You think the other fights don¡¯t count,¡± said Perry. He got into his own stance, the one that Moon Gate had taught him rather than his amateurish boxing stance. ¡°You have fought people who were weak, or who were not actually trying to hurt you, or who were mortally injured,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You have also fought against people who have trained themselves to fight with graceful minimalism. It may have felt like you got close to landing a hit, but that is only because there was no need to move further away from your strikes.¡± She let out a breath. ¡°You may proceed to attack me with full force, when you are ready.¡± Perry frowned at her, then moved closer. He waited until she was just within reach, and drew back his fist slightly. Still, she didn¡¯t move. When he finally started the punch, muscles twitching forward, she stepped to his left so quickly that she was a blur. He turned to meet her, and she moved again, another step to his left, circling him. She was spinning around him faster than he could move, always positioned so that she was on his left, just behind where he could offer any defense. ¡°Ugh,¡± said Perry after a full revolution. ¡°Are you trying to get me dizzy, or ¡ª¡± ¡°Put more effort into it,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Attempt to kill me.¡± Perry paused for a moment. She was too fast, too prepared. If he was trying to kill her, he would stop obeying the rules of the match, not that they had set rules. He could fight dirty, throw sand in her eyes or somehow fake her out. He didn¡¯t think those things would actually work though, and besides, he didn¡¯t really care about winning here, only proving that he was right, that the gap between them wasn¡¯t really so large as she was saying. He tried faking her out, but she wasn¡¯t just fast, she could read him too well, and didn¡¯t move an inch until he had actually committed to something. He tried committing late, making his attacks ambiguous, and tried to strike out with his legs rather than his arms, but she was making wide movements. Most of the time he wasn¡¯t even facing her direction. Perry paused, squaring up with her and trying to think. She was right. He should have known she was. She could have defended with a different style, one where his fists and feet would miss by inches, and he might have thought that he was doing well. There was no way to salvage his ego, so Perry decided that he would do something different: use the tools that he¡¯d been given. It took time to build up energy, focused breathing to force more of it down through the channels, and an internal resolve to keep everything where it was so it wouldn¡¯t dissipate out his pores. She was giving him a curious look, but he tried to ignore that and not give anything away. When he punched, he put the full energy of his body behind it. There were losses, splashes of vital energy that went down the wrong pathways, but it was still movement with blinding speed, his fist traveling so quickly that he could barely see and certainly couldn¡¯t control it. Luo Yanhua moved, a swift side-step, but his knuckles had grazed her cheek. He turned to look at her, breathing hard, his body still recovering. Her hand went to her cheek, and she looked at him, a frown slowly etching there. ¡°That was well done, for where you are in your training.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± said Perry. He was still catching his breath. The energy that hadn¡¯t found its way to the punch was still rattling around inside his body, settling down. ¡°Definitely can¡¯t do that again.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is a good strategy, if you find yourself fighting someone like me. Put everything into a single strike, hoping to catch them unaware.¡± ¡°Was that a legitimate hit?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Of course, in a real fight, I would not have given you the time to draw in so much energy. I would have killed you, or forced you to submit.¡± ¡°I know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not under some delusion that I could beat you. I¡¯m just saying that I¡¯m ¡­ tough, you know? Not some insect to be swept aside.¡± ¡°Are you ready to experience an attack?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. Perry got into position. He was still reeling from the punch he¡¯d thrown, and not quite back to normal, but he didn¡¯t think that it would matter much. She was going to hit him like a freight train. It was important to take it mostly because she was right, he did need to know how large the gap was. Plus, it seemed like there was some honor in it. She punched him in the chest, hand moving past his guard as though it wasn¡¯t even there. He staggered back from it, going to one knee, and took deep gasps for breath as his heart beat arhythmically in his chest. He tried to stand, but staggered. He was dizzy, vision blurring, and the radiant pain was exploding through his ribs. ¡°Ow,¡± said Perry. He was on the verge of passing out. ¡°You must understand how much you rely on your armor,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You must understand that during your first altercation, Zhang Lingxiu was toying with you, through and through. You are a blade of grass against the ancient ginkgo. You will get there, in time, assuming you don¡¯t run afoul of the wrong people, but you are not there yet.¡± Perry¡¯s skin felt like it was on fire, though numb where her knuckles had hit him. He was slowly getting his sense of self back, the blurred vision only temporary. ¡°So I get to learn the lesson twice,¡± said Perry, once a few minutes had passed. He slowly climbed to his feet. ¡°I¡¯m like nothing compared to the second sphere, not unless I have my armor on, or I¡¯m a wolf.¡± ¡°As a wolf, you are formidable,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But you have no experience with it, no true control over it. You are an animal, not a thinking man. The armor ¡­ it is also formidable, as you showed with Zhang Lingxiu. The technique you used to propel metal at him would be enough to kill me, if I was careless enough to put myself in front of the device.¡± Perry flexed his fingers, making sure that they still worked. His heart was racing, but it was at least beating normally again. ¡°Lesson learned,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, I think not,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She had been watching him recover. ¡°I¡¯m not sure that you¡¯re capable of learning this lesson. Bury your pride. Hold a funeral, if you must.¡± Perry didn¡¯t reply. He didn¡¯t know if she was right, but he knew it would take more than a punch to the chest to change his mind. They were more powerful than him, but he had the armor, and he could still master the wolf. Besides, he was second sphere now, and while they spoke of it as though getting to the top of the pile took decades, he was just going to have to speedrun it, figure out their magic system better than they had, have some insights into how it worked, exploit whatever being a werewolf had done to him, and find a way to steal his armor back. They meditated together in the clearing, this time with a focus on the healing process. Perry had been injured, that was true, but it was only a serious bruise, and that was, apparently, the sort of thing that was most easy to deal with. Luo Yanhua didn¡¯t expect that he would be able to hurry along the process, but he could feel the body¡¯s energy as the healing took place, and that would lay the groundwork for faster healing in the future. Perry put his full focus into it. It took an hour for him to untangle the healing process, to separate out the flow of energy through his body, but once he had the pathways traced, it seemed like simplicity itself to push more energy in that direction, taking advantage of everything else he¡¯d already learned. That came with a significant problem though, which was that he didn¡¯t actually have the energy available. He could breathe deeper, or spend from the vessels, but it was all so inefficient and lossy that it was hardly worth the effort. ¡°How do I get more vital energy?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You suck it from the air?¡± ¡°There are many methods,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Air, water, and food all contain their own energy, with air and water being more pure. There is energy in light, whether the sun or the moon, energy in heat but also in cold, energy in shadows and nature. We absorb from all around us, though anyone with any skill will pick a speciality. But those pale in comparison to a good, sturdy tether.¡± Perry rubbed his chest, which was feeling tender. He had peeked beneath his training outfit to look at it, and the area was all puffy and red, showing the imprint of her knuckles. ¡°How long does a person normally wait to tether?¡± asked Perry. The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. ¡°It is a process, to tether,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Most start from the moment they transition. It takes a few days, and much longer if you want the tether to be strong. But you did not go through the training that others would have gone through, and have not prepared yourself to harness the ethereal energies.¡± She furrowed her brows. ¡°It is time for more fundamentals.¡± ¡°Bring it on, I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°We must move, so you can see the temple in action,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Come.¡± Perry followed behind her. He was still aching from the punch, but he tried to shrug it off. She had been trying to deliver a lesson, and hadn¡¯t hit him out of anger. He was getting better at sparring with people and not having hard feelings about it, but the frustration of how fast she moved had started to get to him, like a fly that seemed to buzz away the moment before being slapped. When they returned to the temple, they went up to one of the larger buildings, one perched on tall rock with a far better view of the lake. Perry hadn¡¯t been there before, but he was given to understand that it was the place where all the most powerful disciples lived. ¡°Here,¡± said Luo Yanhua from a position on the balcony. ¡°Look out on Crystal Lake Temple.¡± Perry did. The people looked small, though they were close enough to call to. The seemingly-constant training in the courtyard was proceeding as usual, and the children were at what Perry might generously have called a school, though he doubted the quality of their education. The large dining room sat squat by the lake, a storeroom on one side of it like a growth of stone and tile. ¡°Do you feel the energy?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°No,¡± said Perry, after a moment. ¡°Imagine the temple as a body,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It, too, has its meridians and vessels. It has its energy that flows through it, its imbalances we try to correct. You are not a member of this temple, but while you are here, you are a piece of it. The energy flows through you, even now, though its character is not that of the vital energy of your body.¡± Perry tried to feel it, yet still failed. The pathways within his own body were quite clear now, very distinct, and he had worked on widening them, trying not to do the equivalent of skipping leg day. Whatever the hell she was talking about, it eluded him. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You¡¯re having difficulties.¡± ¡°You¡¯re telling me to feel the energy,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not terribly helpful.¡± ¡°Look down at the courtyard,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is one of the vital places of the temple, where students are taught. Can you see, in your mind¡¯s eye, where those people will go when their training is done for the day? You¡¯ve trained yourself, though not with them.¡± Perry pictured it, the way that they would drop their formation and then filter out, most of them going to lunch in the dining hall, but some of them returning to their dorms, others finding a quiet place to rest. He tried his best to imagine them as red blood cells floating down through the veins. His eyes went to the paths between buildings, and the layout of the structures. They must have been designed with the flow of people in mind, which had to be associated with the flow of energy. ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry, raising a hand to point. ¡°It¡¯s geography, urban development, a bit of architecture, this fractal study of energy flows, except there¡¯s some separation between the material reality and whatever is happening with the energy, just like there¡¯s some separation from breathing and guiding fresh energy down the Lung Meridian.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Okay, got it.¡± ¡°You have it?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Just like that?¡± ¡°Well, I didn¡¯t feel the energy, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°But you brought us up here, where the energy should be weaker, harder to feel. I was going to go down there,¡± he pointed, ¡°and wait for the students to be done, which should be one of the largest flows of energy during the day.¡± He looked at her. ¡°Right?¡± From her face, he didn¡¯t think he was right. ¡°Those students,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°What can you tell me about them?¡± Didactic mode, activate. ¡°They¡¯re ¡­ the lifeblood of the temple, right?¡± ¡°They are, in some respects,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But we might say that they are the fertile soil from which towering trees might grow.¡± ¡°Most of these students are born here, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t the mothers be the, er, fertile soil? Man, that¡¯s a horrible metaphor.¡± ¡°Many at Crystal Lake Temple are born to the families here, this is true,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But Silver Fish Temple had no families, and still I believe the metaphor of fertile soil would apply. You are right that the students are the lifeblood of the temple, but there is a very obvious point that you are missing.¡± ¡°They¡¯re first sphere,¡± said Perry. ¡°Which means that they¡¯re less important, or important in different ways, not fountains of energy. The fountains of energy would be the second sphere, and usually it¡¯s only one or two of them with a class of students.¡± He was nodding along. ¡°The largest source of energy within the temple would then be,¡± he looked behind him. ¡°This building, built in a place of prominence, housing almost everyone at the second sphere while they work on their own energy, some of it tethered to this very place.¡± ¡°I did not bring you here as a test,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I brought you here because it is the place you should be more capable of sensing the temple¡¯s energy.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°One second.¡± He closed his eyes and held out his hand, focusing his attention on his fingertips, and after half a minute, when he could still feel nothing, he focused on the flow of energy there, the meridians. There were five of them, one for each finger, and he tested them in turn, trying to force outside energy through them. He opened his eyes, looking up at the building behind him, and adjusted his stance and the position of his fingertips, hoping to catch something. To his surprise, it worked, and once he had a fingerhold, he could feel it more closely, like the gentlest of breezes. He dropped his hand and felt the energy wash over his skin. If it were radio, it would have been tinny and static-filled, but it was there ¡ª and there were other things below it. ¡°There¡¯s something else,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can feel it?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He frowned and held out his hand again. The meridians circulated energy throughout the body, they weren¡¯t intakes per se, but being at the extremities, they were more easily influenced by the outside world. His fingertips had always been one of the things to get cold first. That revelation helped him somewhat, and he found it easier to feel out the energy. ¡°There are ¡­ five or six?¡± ¡°Impressive,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Her face was impassive, but the words were soft. ¡°I don¡¯t think this is the sort of thing I can actually figure out on my own,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s so faint, and even if I could figure out the directions, I don¡¯t think I know the area well enough to do anything more than make a guess.¡± ¡°Make a guess then,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She folded her arms in front of her chest. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°From what you¡¯ve told me, there are lots of things to tether to, and it¡¯s somewhat fractal. Crystal Lake Temple is the big, obvious, dominant one, but we¡¯re in the Kingdom of Seven Valleys, so that must be another one, probably the biggest of them. And then the valley is in contention between Moon Gate and Worm Gate, so I would guess that Green Snake Valley is one of them, though ¡­ there¡¯s a flow of energy through the landscape, so I guess I don¡¯t know. But if I count those up, that¡¯s only three.¡± ¡°In truth, I cannot say what you can sense and what you cannot,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There are more than you can sense, more than I can sense. Your guesses are good, your senses keen. I¡¯ve been impressed with your progress in these things, though progress often comes quickly in the first days after transition. It will slow, with time.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I still need to learn the language bending trick.¡± ¡°That, at least, is simple,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Speech brings its own special energy, and so long as you are receptive to it, or in tune with those you speak with, it is only a matter of connection. Like a tether, in some respects, but without the import or the lasting impacts.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Using a concept I¡¯m sketchy on to explain a different concept is ¡ª¡± Luo Yanhua waved her hand. ¡°You always learn best by doing.¡± She let loose a stream of incomprehensible syllables, in the cadence of a language that was almost familiar. ¡°Did you feel that?¡± ¡°No?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean, I don¡¯t know what it¡¯s supposed to feel like.¡± ¡°Like connection,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Like intent.¡± She tried again, speaking loudly and slowly, like some clueless American tourist trying to overcome the language barrier by volume and enunciation. She looked at him expectantly. ¡°Nope,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nothing.¡± ¡°It is the basest connection with others,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Given your aptitude, I doubt that it will take you long. But I have other duties for today, and our time has come to a close. Practice on your own. Do not attempt to tether on your own.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not just because I don¡¯t know where to begin.¡± ¡°I can see in your character that you would be tempted,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Tethering is the surest path to power, but it cannot be revoked, and it can come at terrible cost.¡± ¡°Like having to write research papers,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Luo Yanhua. She didn¡¯t see the humor in it, and Perry did his best to keep the absurd humor from reaching his face. ¡°Let me know if you need to run more tests,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to be doing nothing but training.¡± She nodded, and they said their goodbyes. There was still the issue of Marchand, of course, and if it came to blows ¡­ he hoped that it didn¡¯t, especially not after that punch. The room he¡¯d been moved to was small, but not quite so small as the one he¡¯d woken up in. It had a bed, a large pillow to sit on, a bedside table, and a wardrobe, but very little else. A small plant sat near the window, which had shutters but no glass. On the wall was a painting, done on silk, of the temple and its environs as seen from the sky, a point of view that puzzled Perry given that flight wasn¡¯t something that he¡¯d seen from these people. He sat on the pillow and meditated on the pathways. Luo Yanhua hadn¡¯t gotten to blockages yet, but Perry was at the point where he could feel them. They weren¡¯t blocking the energy per se, just slowing it down, like a clogged artery putting him one cheeseburger away from a heart attack. Once he¡¯d figured out how to remove them, he¡¯d be more powerful still, and while being second sphere was slow to pay dividends, anything that put him above a baseline human would be beneficial in future worlds. The translation superpower was going to be good, and would certainly be necessary to let him actually talk to ninety percent of the people around him, but he was leery of it. Firstly, it wasn¡¯t ¡®true¡¯ translation, it was a reading of something in the air, a distillation of meaning and intent. He hadn¡¯t felt what it was like from the inside, but he¡¯d had enough conversations with Luo Yanhua to know that there were gaps. Secondly, thresholders were selected for worlds in some unknown way, but language seemed to be one of the constants. Maya had mentioned a world where she spoke both native languages, and Cosme had said that he was bilingual, sometimes getting English worlds and other times getting worlds with his second tongue. They didn¡¯t speak English on the Great Arc, but they did have easy translation capabilities. If Perry became a polyglot, it seemed likely that he¡¯d be opening up the number of worlds available to him. He wasn¡¯t sure whether that would make it more or less likely to get ¡®good¡¯ worlds, ones which would be helpful to his long-term goals, and it did seem like some sense of alienation was inevitable if he was constantly jumping into cultures that he didn¡¯t know or understand. Still, after more flexing of his meridians, he went and found Lu Xiyan, his personal assistant. He spoke to her, and could feel nothing in the air, but through pantomime showed that he wanted her to follow him. They walked together until they were beneath a tree that kept a patch of soft grass shaded, then Perry sat down and indicated that she should do the same. ¡°So,¡± he said, knowing that she couldn¡¯t understand a single thing he said. ¡°I¡¯m not sure what ultimately led you here, but it seems like the people who came out of the Grouse Kingdom mostly escaped from some hard times. You¡¯re a stranger in a strange land, I guess, and that makes us similar in the most basic of ways.¡± She had been avoiding his eyes, but now looked up, staring at him. She spoke in her own language, a brief sentence, but seemed hopeful that he would understand. ¡°Sorry, still working on it,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s kind of what this is about. I just want us to have a conversation so I can feel it in the air or whatever. Um, what else, testing, testing, this is just a test, words in the air, communication between people, talkin¡¯ about talkin¡¯, shootin¡¯ the breeze.¡± Lu Xiyan cocked her head to the side and spoke again, longer this time, laced with curiosity. ¡°Maya got it in a day or so,¡± said Perry. ¡°She didn¡¯t say whether it was a matter of a lot of practice, if it was natural, or if she thought that being bilingual ¡ª wait, trilingual ¡ª had helped her. I had some Spanish in high school and French in undergrad, but language learning has never really been my thing. It¡¯s hard and unrewarding, and unless I moved, I probably wouldn¡¯t have gotten much use from it. Spanish would have made the most sense, but in undergrad I had the hots for this girl that was really into French Linguistics. There are probably stupider reasons to take a college course.¡± Lu Xiyan smiled at him and replied at length, which was more or less what Perry had wanted, but was slightly frustrating given that he didn¡¯t understand a word of it. ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve been getting a poor view of this place, the Great Arc, because the only people I can speak to are second sphere, and they¡¯re ¡­ you know. Calm, reserved, overly concerned with their tethers. And because they don¡¯t really like to talk, Luo Yanhua has ended up as my lifeline, which hasn¡¯t been ideal.¡± He was listening closely to her, trying to turn the conversation into a flow of energy rather than sounds in the air. To his surprise, something snapped into place mid-sentence, and it was as though she was speaking to him twice, once as sounds through the air, the second time dubbed into his skull on a few seconds delay. ¡°¡ª for powerful men,¡± said Lu Xiyan. It was the same voice, and a similar cadence, just in English. With some effort, he could tune out her real voice. The lips didn¡¯t match, naturally, but it was a better effect than he had expected it to be. ¡°I jumped at the chance to be your servant.¡± ¡°Can you hear me now?¡± asked Perry. He was talking into the connection between them, like speaking into a metaphorical tunnel, and his mouth was making unfamiliar shapes, the sounds foreign to him. ¡°Ah,¡± she said. She turned away from him. ¡°I am sorry, Mister Holzmann. I had not realized.¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°Look, I just want to talk, to hone this power. You¡¯re the first person who¡¯s not second sphere I¡¯ve had any opportunity to speak with, and if you¡¯re my assistant, we¡¯ll be spending at least a little time together.¡± ¡°Yes, Mister Holzmann,¡± she said, bowing from her seated position. ¡°I don¡¯t need the deference, unless that will cause problems for you,¡± said Perry. When March did it, it felt different, almost snide in a way that Perry enjoyed, but she was a young woman who seemed earnest and vulnerable. Piling formality on top of her, making her carry that burden, wasn¡¯t something that he wanted to do, not unless it would somehow ease her mind. ¡°Yes, Mister Holzmann,¡± she replied. She looked up at him. ¡°Peregrin?¡± ¡°Perry,¡± he said. ¡°Xiyan,¡± she replied. He felt the need to shake her hand, but didn¡¯t, because he hadn¡¯t seen people doing that here. There was a separation between the first sphere and the second, one that was particularly wide. ¡°I¡¯m still feeling out this language thing,¡± said Perry. ¡°And everything that I¡¯ve been told about this world has been told to me by a very small number of second sphere people. I trust that they¡¯ve been telling the truth, but you¡¯re the first person that I can actually ask.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll answer what I can,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°I come from low birth. I don¡¯t know much about the Great Arc.¡± Perry looked up at the serrated leaves of the tree that was shading them. There was more training for him to do, but this was a chance for a reality check, a way to see whether there was more to the first sphere than he¡¯d thought there was. He¡¯d killed bandits who were first sphere, helped bury a villager, trained with students, but had never exchanged a single word with any of them. As far as amateur anthropology went, he hadn¡¯t even been able to do the basics. ¡°Tell me about your life,¡± said Perry. ¡°My life has been unimportant,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°In the Grouse Kingdom, I was a lowly servant, and here I feel fortunate to be elevated to that position once again.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a refugee,¡± said Perry. ¡°You fled across the mountains. I just want ¡­ context, I guess. You don¡¯t have to answer, I won¡¯t take offense, but I want to know what being a servant is like in the Great Arc. I want to hear stories about encounters with the higher spheres, what it¡¯s like to work in the fields, how you feel about it.¡± He had to imagine that Maya was asking the same questions, unless she was a hypocrite. Xiyan was silent for a long time, and didn¡¯t meet Perry¡¯s gaze. ¡°Then I shall tell you the story of my life in the Grouse Kingdom,¡± she finally said. ¡°I must protest that you will find it boring.¡± Perry sat and listened, his full attention on her translated words. Chapter 45 - The Fall of the Grouse Kingdom ¡°I was born in the Year of Sighing Trees,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°My family owned a tea house, which had been in the family for nineteen generations. I was the youngest of nine children, raised into the business of brewing and serving tea. The business was good, but there was never enough to go around. My parents tried to find good futures for their children. I was sent to live with a wealthy family at the age of ten, accompanied by my elder sister for the first few months. I wept every night, out of loneliness, but in the morning I would make sure that my eyes were clear and my smile ready.¡± She paused. ¡°These are the details that you wanted?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re a good storyteller.¡± ¡°Do you have tea houses, in your world?¡± asked Xiyan. ¡°We do,¡± said Perry with some hesitation. ¡°Not like here though, I don¡¯t think.¡± ¡°They are places of stories,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°My mother was a storyteller, and taught me the art.¡± She turned aside. ¡°My life is not like the histories or the epics of the battles fought across the Great Arc. There is no great rising or falling to it, except for the fall of the Grouse Kingdom.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m still trying to get used to speaking like this.¡± That was true, but it was getting easier as the minutes passed. ¡°I¡¯ll stop you if I have questions, but these things are interesting to me. You know I¡¯m from another world. Even the mundane things are new to me.¡± Xiyan nodded slowly. ¡°I will endeavor to focus on the mundane,¡± she said, tone serious. She composed herself and got into what Perry assumed was a storyteller¡¯s pose, spine straight and hands positioned in a precise way in her lap, fingernails of each hand in the valley of the palm of the other. ¡°The matriarch of the family I worked for was second sphere, but she was the only one,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°She had the clear, tight skin of a young woman, but hair as white as fallen snow. Her first husband had long since died, but she had remarried several times, always one after the other. The family was less large than my own, but it was fractured, with many different half-siblings of different ages. She kept a loose house, allowing her children to run fat and free. It is not a servant¡¯s place to speak ill of her masters, but I suffered at the hands of those children.¡± She cleared her throat. ¡°I was blamed for accidents, made to redo good work, insulted and demeaned. I could have understood it from someone of the second sphere, their immaculate perfection a matter of the Great Arc¡¯s will. These were men and women like me though, distinguished only by their wealth. They had no noble birth, nor were they scholars or civil servants. They had meals on platters, laden with goose and ham, and picked off only small pieces of it. So that it wouldn¡¯t go to waste, the servants would eat the scraps, but the family looked down on us for it.¡± She watched Perry, her audience of one, and he kept his face neutral. If Maya was hearing something like this, she was liable to go ballistic, though she said she¡¯d more or less learned her lesson about going up against entrenched interests with more firepower than she had. He didn¡¯t really believe that, but it was what Maya said. ¡°I was in that house until I was sixteen,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°A second sphere scholar of some prestige had come to visit, and I caught his eye. Though he was told that I was unfit as a servant, he saw that for the lie it was, and took me anyway. The matriarch couldn¡¯t refuse him, you see, for he had a position at the court of the Grouse Kingdom. We made the journey across the kingdom in his litter, which moved without the touch of human hands, accompanied by at least a dozen of the scholar¡¯s servants. He spoke with me at length, and noted a skill for storytelling. My mother¡¯s lessons had been long in the past, but I tried my best to enthrall and entertain him, making up stories where my memories of the histories and sagas had worn thin. ¡°When we arrived in the capital, his interest waned, and I found myself as one servant among many. The scholar had his own army of servants, but the capital had many men like the scholar, all with servants of their own. There was a pecking order, and I was at the bottom of it. I worked as diligently as I could, but there was less work to do there, and much of my time was idle. ¡°The scholar¡¯s wife didn¡¯t like me. She didn¡¯t want him to have another concubine, and feared that would be my fate. He had brought young girls home before, a few for the purposes of marriage. The scholar had lost interest in me after our trip back to his home, but his wife was still suspicious of me. She brought a doctor in to speak with me, using the excuse of hygiene, and he made me drink a foul black liquid that I spat back up, clear. I know now this was to make sure that I hadn¡¯t been ¡­¡± she trailed off and blushed. ¡°That the scholar had not taken steps toward me becoming his concubine. The scholar¡¯s wife questioned my honor and virtue, and even the doctor¡¯s report didn¡¯t seem to reassure her.¡± This was the sort of information that was vital for Perry to know. He hadn¡¯t intended to sleep his way through the temple, but if they had a strong purity culture, it was all entirely off the table. He would also probably not mention anything about his past and let them believe whatever they would about his past ¡ª though purity cultures didn¡¯t often place the same restrictions on men that they did on women. ¡°The scholar¡¯s wife was always trying to find a place for me away from the house,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°Eventually, she pulled strings and got me moved yet again. I was two years in their service by that time, and had only barely settled in. The work was easy and infrequent, but the other servants didn¡¯t like me, as they harbored the same suspicions that the scholar¡¯s wife did. For a girl like me, becoming a concubine to a man of the second sphere can greatly elevate one¡¯s position, even for a third concubine. If he had asked, I confess I might have accepted, even if I felt no love in my heart for the man.¡± She was watching Perry¡¯s face for judgment, and he made sure she found none there. She wasn¡¯t a golddigger, or whatever they would call it here, or at least was taking pains to present herself as innocent. Marrying into money was a sweet gig, if you could get it, at least in his opinion. ¡°My new home was in the palace of the Grouse King,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°I had even less work to do, much of it tidying rooms that were never used. I kept my head down and tried not to draw the eye of anyone important. I saw the king and queen only once or twice in three years, their sons a bit more frequently. We weren¡¯t supposed to look at them though, so I kept my head bowed in their presence, eyes watching the floor. I wouldn¡¯t have minded that, for a life. I wasn¡¯t treated with the same suspicion in the royal palace, and the masters weren¡¯t as demanding as the first home I worked in, even if they had their sins. I still longed for the tea house, hoping that I would get a letter one day saying that I could come home, but I was an adult, on my own, and the hope faded more every year.¡± She sat up straighter, having sunk a little as she spoke. Her hands were still in the same position. ¡°Some months ago, the youngest prince died.¡± ¡°How?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He was murdered in his sleep,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°On the night it happened, I awoke to his mother¡¯s screams. She had gotten out of bed late at night and had smelled blood. The castle was instantly ablaze with lights, candles and torches burning bright as they tried to find the murderer. No sign of him was ever discovered. In the following days, the castle became a porcupine, a thousand swords from a thousand guards sticking straight up. We were interrogated, all of us, by the finest minds of the kingdom, though no one really thought that someone of the first sphere could have done it. The three princes were all second sphere, after all, feather-light sleepers. To cut one apart like that ¡­¡± She shook her head. ¡°It was the beginning of the end for the Grouse Kingdom.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Perry. ¡°A king who cannot protect his sons has no hope of protecting his people,¡± said Xiyan. She frowned. ¡°A week later, another son was murdered, and more guards, more soldiers, were pulled into the castle. No one knew how it had happened. They can do incredible things, the upper spheres, but in spite of that the king was powerless to stop it.¡± She shook her head. ¡°The king ordered a manhunt. He executed more than two dozen people, guards and servants that he thought had failed him. I was lucky to be spared the blade.¡± She took a breath. ¡°The castle became ever-more fortified, its defenses unbreachable. Some servants were expelled, which I thought was fortunate for them. It put them further from the king¡¯s wrath. I wasn¡¯t so lucky.¡± ¡°Who was doing the killing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°It remains a mystery,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°Even to this day, after the kingdom has fallen. The king thought that it was someone of a higher sphere than his own, perhaps much higher. He spoke of foul sorcery, imbalanced alchemy, all manner of things. The death of one son in his own castle might have been enough to drive him to madness, but the death of two was more than he could stomach. He was beset by paranoia, jumping at shadows, his last son clutched tightly, guards watching every move ¡ª and each other.¡± ¡°But as all this was going on, the kingdom was going into revolt,¡± said Perry. ¡°The kingdom was falling while he tried to protect his last son.¡± ¡°I was in the castle,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°I did not see the revolt in the fields, the way the king¡¯s armies turned on him. I learned later, as I fled the burning castle. I saw the scars of war as the kingdom tore itself apart. I was with others, servants who I knew and trusted, and we made our way across the border, depending on the kindness of strangers and praying that we would avoid the worst of the conflict. Many had already left before us though, and the land had been stripped of food and supplies. Towns we passed through were deserted or burned down, thoroughly looted, not so much as a sack of rice left to eat. We carried on, losing many of our number, some to disease or injury, others to hunger. When we arrived in the Kingdom of Seven Valleys, there were only three of us, and the rising sun upon the land did little to give us ¡ª¡± ¡°Wait, sorry,¡± said Perry. ¡°Back up a bit. Two of the king¡¯s three sons were killed, he went a little nuts, lost the faith of his people, and faced a revolt from both first and second sphere. Okay, that¡¯s all understandable, but what happened to him? What about his third son?¡± ¡°I apologize,¡± said Xiyan. She looked sorrowful. ¡°I don¡¯t know. The king is gone, but whether dead or deposed, I never heard. A new kingdom will be built in its place, the second sphere say. Some new king with a celestial decree will take his place, the citizens bowing down to his will. I would prostrate myself, if such a man made himself known.¡± ¡°And you came here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You were welcomed with open arms?¡± She gave him a soft smile. ¡°I was raised as a storyteller. Forgive me for telling a story that is incomplete. When we came to the Kingdom of Seven Valleys, we were not welcomed with open arms. I went from one place to another, eventually separating from those that remained of the palace staff. Eventually I came to this temple, as they had want of servants. When I heard that they needed someone to be your valet, I jumped at the chance.¡± Her smile grew wider, and she covered her mouth with her hand. ¡°I had not known that I would get to be a storyteller once more.¡± The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. ¡°Not just a storyteller,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re my insight into the culture here, less reserved than the second sphere. Trying to get answers from the likes of Luo Yanhua is like pulling teeth.¡± He saw her stiffen slightly. ¡°It¡¯s just an expression.¡± Perhaps he¡¯d spoken with a bit too much venom in his voice. ¡°I will tell you whatever you want to know,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°I can tell that you have a kind soul. I pride myself in my work, and will serve you faithfully, in whatever way I can.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± said Perry. ¡°The language practice helps.¡± He¡¯d been told that it was easy, but after failing with Luo Yanhua, he¡¯d feared the worst. Seeing the language was like seeing the meridians, easy and fluid. ¡°For now, I need to go meditate.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± nodded Xiyan. ¡°Anything that you need, I will provide.¡± She bowed deeply to him and then rose from beneath the tree, moving away with only a single backward glance. Perry sat, but didn¡¯t start meditating. He was puzzling over what she¡¯d said, the story of the Grouse Kingdom. She was right that it was an incomplete story, but the glaring incompleteness was the lack of a culprit. More than that, there was a lack of a motive. Perry was taking this world at face value, for the most part, and if there was something like karma, it seemed as though unmotivated killings of princes while they slept must have some kind of impact. Wouldn¡¯t someone swooping in and doing that mean that the culprit was weakening himself? And wouldn¡¯t they be weakening themself more if they were a higher sphere? To what end? Xiyan hadn¡¯t given him a specific date, but the first killing had been ¡®months¡¯ ago. Based on what he knew of thresholder arrival times, there could be months between them. A mysterious rash of killings seemed like it might be the sort of thing that you¡¯d find with thresholders. That still left the questions of culprit and motive, but the fact that it seemed out of the ordinary was certainly enough to raise his eyebrow. He would have to talk with Maya about it ¡­ but when he thought about killing people in the middle of the night, about someone who would hate aristocrats, Maya was the first and only person that came to mind. It was entirely possible that he was grasping at straws. He would have to speak with Luo Yanhua and get her version of events, though it didn¡¯t seem like news traveled quickly along the Great Arc. Perry cast those thoughts aside and started his meditation, remaining beneath the tree. ~~~~ ¡°You got it faster than me,¡± said Maya. They were in his room, a half hour before the temple quieted down for the night. Nothing was quite so strict at Crystal Lake Temple, which was a nice change of pace, but after the sun had set, activity virtually stopped. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think I have a knack for this sort of stuff.¡± ¡°You said you had stalled out on that other magic though, right?¡± asked Maya. ¡°From Seraphinus?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Maybe?¡± asked Maya. ¡°The medieval one.¡± ¡°Right, Seraphinus,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, I look at the books from time to time, but the books were written by men for whom literacy was proof enough of their intellectual achievement. I¡¯m not convinced that they actually understood the magic. If they did, they were terrible about writing tutorials, FAQs, best practices, or anything helpful to a guy like me.¡± ¡°Shame,¡± said Maya. ¡°There¡¯s lots of stuff I¡¯m not capped out on, I think it comes with thresholding.¡± ¡°Have you picked a tether yet?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m still confused by what the options are,¡± said Maya. ¡°And what happens when we leave.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do you tether to something abstract in the hopes of keeping it going, or do you tether to something concrete and then just leave it behind?¡± ¡°Abstract, I think,¡± said Maya. ¡°But if I need a formal code of justice ¡­ fuck that.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t like living by a code?¡± asked Perry. ¡°If I had a formal code of justice, I think I¡¯d be obligated to do some things that resulted in me not living very long,¡± said Maya. ¡°I like fighting the good fight, but I don¡¯t like having my teeth kicked in.¡± She nodded. ¡°Happened to me in the biopunk world, literally.¡± She opened her mouth, and Perry looked inside. The color was maybe a little bit off, but it was hard to say. ¡°New teef,¡± she said, mouth still partly open. ¡°Luo Yanhua is tethered to what she calls the academic virtue,¡± said Perry. ¡°I could do that, depending on what it entails. She¡¯s at ¡®publish or perish¡¯, but I don¡¯t think you need to go that hard. I could go around, investigate things, write up some papers and then distribute them to the locals ¡­ maybe.¡± ¡°Better to focus on fighting,¡± said Maya. ¡°You said that¡¯s something you¡¯re good at.¡± ¡°I¡¯m good at a lot of things,¡± said Perry. ¡°Don¡¯t get cocky, it¡¯s not a good look,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯m crushing meditation,¡± said Perry. ¡°I managed to land a hit on Luo Yanhua when we were sparring, too. I mean, it wasn¡¯t serious, but I wasn¡¯t even using the wolf.¡± ¡°Can you feel your extra vessel?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Kind of,¡± said Perry. ¡°Took some effort, but it¡¯s here.¡± He pointed to his chest, just below his heart. ¡°I do kind of wonder whether silver works against me. It would be dumb, but ¡­ werewolf myths coming from somewhere wouldn¡¯t be absurd, right?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll try to find a silver knife to stab you with,¡± said Maya. ¡°It¡¯s crazy to me that it is an extra vessel,¡± said Perry. ¡°These are different magic systems from different worlds, and they somehow interact with each other? I had thought it would be ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Non-overlapping magisteria.¡± ¡°Explain that one to me, nerd,¡± said Maya. ¡°It¡¯s this idea that science and religion are different from one another, orthogonal questions,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d kind of thought ¡­ the worlds would have their own separate systems in place that wouldn¡¯t interact with each other.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Maya. ¡°But if you can integrate them, that means more power, right? Have you had any luck getting the vessel to do anything? Did you try poking it with a stick?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve tried everything except for moonlight,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll do that later. I figure the more I have control of everything else, the easier the transformation will be to redirect and harness. If I can hold onto a store of moonlight, then wolf out whenever I want to, or better, store moonlight and then crack the vessel for a strength boost ¡ª¡± ¡°Alright alright,¡± said Maya. ¡°Don¡¯t go getting a hard-on just yet.¡± ¡°You have your vessel?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The sunlight one or whatever?¡± ¡°It¡¯s still missing in action,¡± said Maya. ¡°But I can feel the energy when I fire off a blast of sunlight, or heal myself, so ¡­ it¡¯s gotta be a vessel somewhere, which means that I should be about to balloon it out.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Hey, while I¡¯ve got you here, do you know what happened to the Grouse Kingdom?¡± ¡°Fell, didn¡¯t it?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Some dumbass king taxing too much and using the funds for banquets instead of roads or community centers. Monarchy has got to be one of the stupidest systems of governance ever created.¡± ¡°The king had three sons,¡± said Perry. ¡°At least two of them died by getting their throats cut in the middle of the night. Probably all three.¡± Maya looked at him. ¡°I hear the way you¡¯re saying that.¡± She pursed her lips. ¡°Throats slit?¡± ¡°I mean, technically I guess I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°But my first thought was of you, yeah.¡± ¡°Are you going to pin it on me every time a kingdom falls?¡± asked Maya. ¡°So ¡­ was it you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What the fuck,¡± said Maya. She had stood up and backed away a bit. ¡°You think I¡¯m a liar? That I¡¯ve been here for months and just rolled up on the temple having toppled a kingdom?¡± ¡°I¡¯m asking because when you avoid giving me a straight answer, it¡¯s a bad look,¡± said Perry. Maya leaned forward. ¡°If I were lying about all that shit, I would just lie again.¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not going to apologize for the accusation, huh?¡± asked Maya. ¡°It was a question, not an accusation,¡± said Perry. Maya narrowed her eyes at him. ¡°Look, even if you had killed those guys, I wouldn¡¯t give a shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not some high crime. They¡¯re second sphere assholes, I¡¯m sure.¡± Maya relaxed. ¡°Oh, these were adult sons?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. She laughed. ¡°Shit, I thought you meant little kids, you said ¡®sons¡¯ and that¡¯s where my head went. I was thinking six or seven.¡± She sucked her teeth. ¡°Yeah, if we¡¯re talking proper princes, I don¡¯t think I¡¯d do that my first night, not even my first week, but if they were especially bad ¡­ though, nah, I¡¯d only do it if I were putting someone better on the throne, or toppling the dictatorship entirely.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Well, that leads into my next thought, which is that absent it having been you, it might still have been a thresholder.¡± Maya thought about that for a minute. ¡°I guess.¡± ¡°It could have definitely been a rival kingdom,¡± said Perry. ¡°But the cosmic karma thing makes that a little unlikely. And it could definitely have been a rogue higher sphere guy, but unless it¡¯s to power some technique, you¡¯d get blowback, I would think.¡± ¡°Well I¡¯ve been talking to my own guy,¡± said Maya. ¡°And there are a ton of forbidden techniques. Some of them are pretty obvious spooky stories to tell around the campfire, but others seem like they might be legit. It¡¯s hard to say, I guess, and March can give you the logs if you want, but what I¡¯m looking for are things that they think are beyond the pale and which I don¡¯t.¡± ¡°You¡¯re doing ¡­ moral arbitrage?¡± asked Perry. Maya gave him a very serious nod. ¡°You think about the things that are important to them, then you think about the things that are important to us, and that¡¯s your comparative advantage. You¡¯re a disrupter, basically.¡± ¡°You really were in tech,¡± said Perry with a laugh. ¡°Sound logic, it just makes me uncomfortable.¡± ¡°And obviously if there are forbidden techniques that we want to use, we need to keep it from them,¡± said Maya. ¡°Stuff that they¡¯d think is beyond the pale, but that we think is a nothingburger. I don¡¯t know what that would be, exactly, but we¡¯re already heavily disconnected from their culture, right? We¡¯ll brainstorm some sins.¡± ¡°It¡¯s getting dark,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to get some rest, let the meridians heal and stuff. But you know, if the fall of the Grouse Kingdom was a thresholder, then they¡¯ve been here for three months. That¡¯s more than enough time to get a leg up on us.¡± ¡°Not much we can do about that,¡± said Maya. ¡°You¡¯re making good progress.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let¡¯s hope so.¡± When Perry had washed up and closed his shutters for the night, he cracked his shutters open, just a tiny bit, to take a single look at the moons. They were waning, their light minimal, but he could feel the vessel start to crack open. It took willpower to force it closed, but it was even easier than it had been when they tested it in the woods. If he was going to get out of here with March, let alone take on a superpowered thresholder that had been in this world for months already, he was going to have to learn to harness it. Chapter 46 - Time Enough ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Try to hit me.¡± He was in Moon Stance, one of the most basic that Moon Gate taught: feet wide apart and body low to the ground. The first sphere, Li Xiaoling, was in the same stance, with no small amount of anger in his eyes. Perry wasn¡¯t well-liked among the first spheres, for a variety of reasons. He was a foreigner, and they knew that he had jumped up to the second sphere with hardly any training at all. He was also still weak, by second sphere standards, even with three weeks of training and meditation under his belt. And there was the whole issue with Marchand, who they thought might be a man trapped inside armor and mind controlled into being a slave. Li Xiaoling came in close, and Perry executed the Lunar Sling, grabbing the fist as it whistled by and using the power of the punch to flip Li Xiaoling onto the ground. Three weeks ago, he would have said that it was perfect, but now he could see the flaws that still remained in his technique. His wrist had turned slightly too much, which caused his leg to twist a fraction, which put him off balance for any followup. He would have to fix that later, run the exercise another dozen times with a focus on that one specific thing, and even then, there would still be flaws remaining. ¡°Good,¡± said Perry as he helped Li Xiaoling to his feet. ¡°You have fine form and powerful fists.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± he replied. There was no warmth in his voice, and he didn¡¯t meet Perry¡¯s eyes. All of the students were a little cold to him, and Perry just shrugged it off. He wanted to make a good impression. After three weeks, he had been asked to do something he actually knew how to do, which was acting as a teaching assistant. He¡¯d been watching the classes off and on, and knew more or less what the style was. He¡¯d practiced the moves, mostly in private, and sometimes with Luo Yanhua. She had described him as ¡®competent¡¯, which had felt good given her previous assessments of his technique. There was a long, long way to go, but he was finally at the base of the mountain. That was one of the reasons he¡¯d been asked to help train the students. Maya was watching from the sidelines, arms crossed. They saw each other at meals and sometimes at night, but otherwise didn¡¯t overlap their schedules all that much. She hadn¡¯t been putting in the time to learn Moon Gate¡¯s techniques, and from what she¡¯d said, most of her effort had gone toward what she called interlinking, an attempt to get different ¡®magic systems¡¯ to speak with one another. So far, that hadn¡¯t paid off, which might have been why she was a little cross with him. Zhang Meihua was the next to come at him, and he slowed himself down, allowing her to strike him. This was, in certain conditions, an acceptable way to teach ¡ª he was standing in for someone of her own skill level, not reacting as quickly as he could. There were rules about how and when something like that could be done, and they didn¡¯t necessarily make sense to Perry. You weren¡¯t supposed to say that you were slowing down, nor was your opponent, you were both supposed to understand that was what happened. Letting her hit land was a way of saying ¡®good job, well done¡¯. Zhang Meihua got back into position right away, serious and set, face like stone. She went again, and again Perry tried his best to mimic someone of her level. He took the hit to the shoulder, what they called a splashing strike. She reset a third time, breathing a little harder, and her form was slightly off, her stance too wide. He dodged ¡ª not overly faster, just as a first sphere would ¡ª and struck her in the clavicle, which sent her off her footing but not to the ground, wincing in pain. ¡°Why was that wrong?¡± she asked. It was just shy of a demand, which would have been unacceptable given the difference in rank. Perry stepped back, studying her, miming the emotional remove of the second sphere teachers. The evening sun was draping the courtyard in hues of gold, and wind was rustling through the trees. A few people had stopped to watch the exchange, and as the moments passed, the silence grew. ¡°Your stance,¡± Perry began, pointing at her feet. ¡°It was too wide. We keep a wide stance for power, low to the earth, but for balance and control you need to be higher. When you¡¯re that wide, you¡¯re practically inviting your opponent to topple you over.¡± He spread his legs wide, exaggerating how she¡¯d been. ¡°It¡¯s easy to tip.¡± She nodded. ¡°Secondly, your breathing,¡± he said, voice calm and steady. The trick was to focus on facts, even if it felt like she was judging him. ¡°Your breath is as important as your movement. Exhale when you strike, inhale when you move or evade. You were resetting fast, because you wanted to get it right, have a fast turnaround, but that meant your body was starved for air. Your rhythm was off. You want to maintain the rhythm, conserve energy.¡± She nodded again, slower this time. He pointed to her shoulder. ¡°You exposed yourself to that attack. The splashing strike is powerful, but it leaves you open if the execution isn¡¯t perfect. You let yourself be sloppy.¡± She was silent for a moment, cheeks pink, breathing returning to normal. ¡°Thank you, teacher,¡± she said, giving him a rigid bow. ¡°Again?¡± he asked. ¡°We¡¯re losing the light,¡± said Luo Yanhua, who was striding toward him. ¡°We will bring this training session to its end.¡± The students wandered off, and Perry watched them go. He turned to Luo Yanhua. ¡°How did I do?¡± ¡°You had said you were a teacher, before you traveled worlds,¡± she said. ¡°Not really,¡± said Perry. ¡°I had a position that was like this, a teaching assistant, though not full time. I was a tutor too, for a bit, on different subjects.¡± ¡°You did well enough,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I¡¯m more impressed by your knowledge and ability to disassemble it than by your teaching.¡± ¡°Is that not what teaching is?¡± asked Perry. Luo Yanhua shrugged. ¡°Many teachers do not feel so.¡± ¡°How are people supposed to learn if they can¡¯t have it broken down?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Holistically? I mean, a teacher who can¡¯t unravel and explain things is probably a pretty poor teacher. It¡¯s not enough to know that something is wrong, you¡¯ve got to explain why it¡¯s wrong, what to change, and what the ramifications are.¡± ¡°I would be careful with how you speak,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There are some who might take offense.¡± Perry nodded, and tried a more diplomatic way of saying it. Some of the teachers had never learned how to teach, and as gifted as they might be at martial arts, weren¡¯t very good at explaining the fundamentals nor giving useful instructions. ¡°Teaching, like martial arts itself, has a number of techniques to it. I¡¯ve tried my best to follow both the techniques I know, and the ones I¡¯ve seen here.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Luo Yanhua, not quite mollified. ¡°You didn¡¯t answer the question of how I did,¡± said Perry. ¡°You were acceptable,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You have your own style, which I¡¯m not certain I agree with. You told Zhang Meihua exactly what she did wrong, which deprives her of discovering the truth for herself. She will be unable to reflect on her mistakes, unable to have those revelations that would elevate her.¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Perry. It seemed to him that reflecting on your mistakes was easier when you had someone point out what those mistakes actually were. It was immensely frustrating to fail and not understand why you had failed. ¡°In my experience ¡­ maybe my experience doesn¡¯t apply here.¡± ¡°Perhaps not,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You did not teach in a temple?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°A university. I don¡¯t know what that¡¯s translating to, but ¡­ a place specifically focused on teaching and learning.¡± ¡°Many scholars?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Off the top of my head, I don¡¯t know exact numbers,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe ¡­ three hundred teachers, two thousand students?¡± She was silent for a moment. ¡°A great academy.¡± ¡°Not by the standards of my world,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think we were ranked something like eightieth in prestige, probably less in terms of size. That¡¯s for my nation though, not my entire world.¡± Luo Yanhua shook her head. ¡°Such things you say sometimes.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Different worlds.¡± ¡°And yet no martial techniques,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°No spheres.¡± ¡°Our people lacked spirit roots,¡± said Perry. He didn¡¯t know whether that was true, but it was the best explanation he could come up with. It was that, or different metaphysics which somehow didn¡¯t apply to him. But then, he had a spirit root. It was all confusing, and he didn¡¯t like to think about it, which he did a lot. ¡°Come,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There are things I must share with you.¡± Perry frowned, but followed her anyhow, with a brief wave to Maya, who went on her own way. Second sphere seemed less special, now that he had some time under his belt. Some of the abilities you apparently got for free, or nearly so. The temple had precious few mirrors in it, highly polished bronze rather than glass, and he hadn¡¯t had much of a chance to see his changed appearance, but his skin was soft and perfect, looking almost airbrushed, pores much smaller than they¡¯d been. His hair looked like it had been done by a stylist, and even his beard was well-trimmed in spite of him putting in no extra effort with it. He¡¯d tried shaving, but he¡¯d have a five o¡¯clock shadow by noon, and felt that it looked more tidy grown out. He was wearing the same clothes he¡¯d been wearing when he woke up in the temple, and though he¡¯d been in them for three weeks, they weren¡¯t dirty or soiled in the slightest. Early on he¡¯d seen some dirt at the hems, but it had fallen off as he looked at it, and thereafter, his clothes had stayed clean ¡ª not just clean, but immaculate, no snags or loose threads, and always sitting better on him. He wondered what he would look like in a proper suit, whether he would look sharp instead of slightly out of place, but that was an issue for another time. What he really wanted was to see if it had any effect on his power armor. If whatever was going on with the clothes could go on with the armor, if there was a way of funneling his vital energy into repairing it, he was going to push for that as much as he possibly could. Luo Yanhua had only told him that it would come in time, and he really hoped that she wasn¡¯t deliberately keeping anything from him. They went to what had become their customary spot, a large, flat stone beside the perfectly still lake. It was wide enough for both of them to sit cross-legged on, and she took her position next to him. The light was fading, but they had quite a bit of time until it was dark. ¡°Do you know why I was asked to teach today?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I assumed that it was just due to your academic commitments, or your place within the temple.¡± ¡°One of our members went missing this morning,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°The others were out looking for him.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± Perry said slowly. ¡°What¡¯s the natural assumption?¡± ¡°We would assume that he had pressing business elsewhere, and simply neglected to tell anyone where he was going,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It¡¯s inconsiderate, but the most likely outcome. However, he was gone for too long, and a number of disciples were tasked with seeking him out. That was just after lunch.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°A search party?¡± In spite of what Maya had speculated on, gossip actually traveled pretty slowly through the temple. The second spheres in particular were taciturn, as a rule. ¡°They found him dead,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°He had been cut into pieces that were six inches across. The head had been quartered. We don¡¯t know how he died, but we think that the cutting was done after death with a sharp blade. It wasn¡¯t an animal, nor a mythical beast. There were no rites, and no burial.¡± Perry stayed silent. His mind was churning with possibilities. ¡°Worm Gate?¡± he asked. ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua, shaking her head. ¡°We are opposed to them, but none of their members would do such a thing, something so far beyond common decency.¡± ¡°Then ¡­ who?¡± asked Perry. ¡°At this stage, we don¡¯t know,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I have said before that I¡¯ve fought dangerous people, those who have dabbled in dark arts. From what I¡¯ve been told, this might be one of those people, someone who has so firmly untethered themselves from society that they must draw their power from elsewhere. The body of a second sphere can contain an enormous amount of energy, their vessels and meridians pulled from them, all manner of things. It was difficult to tell, but this might have been done.¡± She pursed her lips. ¡°There is another possibility, aside from the dark arts.¡± ¡°A thresholder?¡± asked Perry. That was where his mind had gone, almost immediately. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Luo Yanhua. ¡°Someone who is not integrated into our society, who has power unlike our own, a skilled warrior. You warned us of this.¡± Perry almost stood up. ¡°Then I need to go out there, with Marchand, and see if there¡¯s anything that I can find. Maya too. We have senses you don¡¯t, ways of tracking someone like us. They might even be making themselves known for the purposes of drawing us out.¡± ¡°You want your armor,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Bold of you to ask for it so directly.¡± She looked out on the lake. ¡°You¡¯ve done well at Crystal Lake, but the full moons approach, and we have yet to make a determination on your armor and its nature.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t mean to be bold, if boldness wasn¡¯t warranted,¡± said Perry. ¡°The death of a second sphere disciple seems, to me, a matter of such importance that it demands attention.¡± If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Luo Yanhua was silent for a moment. ¡°Grandmaster Li Meifeng spoke with me this morning,¡± she said. ¡°The full moon represents a problem for you, as the wolf will be at its strongest, and you are less likely to be able to hold it back.¡± ¡°I think I¡¯ll be fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve been getting some exposure therapy at night, letting it shine on me a bit, and the shutters on my room can be covered with spare blankets, which should let me get through the night.¡± He had trained with Luo Yanhua a few times, though less than he would have liked, and was coming close to cracking the vessel, if only he had more time. He had woken up the last two nights, sweating heavily, and the transformation seemed like it was to blame. His plan, for the worst day of the lunar cycle, was to simply stay awake through the entire night. Maya would also be on hand to bathe him in sunlight, if that wasn¡¯t enough. ¡°Grandmaster Li Meifeng would like for you to leave the temple during that time,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°She is concerned that your transformation might threaten both students and teachers.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have it under control, especially if you¡¯re there to help me.¡± ¡°Perry,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Her voice was gentle. ¡°I trust that you have control. But if Worm Gate has not moved against us, then it seems likely that the other thresholder has shown up. First Silver Fish Temple was wounded with the loss of a promising member, though there is agreement that he inflicted that loss upon himself. Now the same has happened to a member of Crystal Lake Temple, this time for reasons that remain unknown.¡± It took a moment for it to click. ¡°I¡¯m being directed out of the temple, at a time when we must acknowledge my danger to other people, at a time when there very much appears to be a threat outside of the temple ¡ª whether that threat is another thresholder or as expected, Worm Gate. You¡¯re putting the dangerous guy where the threat is.¡± Luo Yanhua was watching him closely. ¡°You are not being instructed to move against Worm Gate. No member of Moon Gate could attack them, not without causing a furthering of tensions, which in turn would lead to more conflict.¡± No member ¡ª which is why I have been reminded almost every day that I¡¯m not a member. ¡°Understood,¡± said Perry. ¡°Where is Worm Gate¡¯s closest temple? What can you tell me about it?¡± ¡°Moth Lantern Hall lies three miles to the west, carved from the rock in ancient times,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is a satellite temple for them, no more than a few members, no children or families. There might be as few as two or three.¡± Perry nodded. And you want me to kill them in retaliation, or at least put the fear of god into them. Investigate in a way that you cannot, at least. ¡°You think that the attacker would have come from there?¡± he asked. ¡°We do not think that Worm Gate is responsible ¡­ unless they have a thresholder of their own. They could not ¡ª would not ¡ª direct such a person against us, but such a person might make moves of their own volition, and yes, they might have been stationed at Moth Lantern Hall.¡± Luo Yanhua was giving him The Look. ¡°This killing would not fall on the shoulders of Worm Gate, though they would reap the rewards. It would be the opening move in increased tensions.¡± Perry nodded again. ¡°I understand,¡± he said, giving her his own Look in return. She hadn¡¯t given him instructions and hadn¡¯t coerced him. Her hands were clean. If he went off and killed everyone in Moth Lantern Hall, it would be just retaliation for the killing of one of their disciples, and if he failed, it was no sweat off their brow. At the very least, he was being let off the leash, so to speak. ¡°Take Maya with you when you leave,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°She is your companion, and might keep you safe while you undergo the trial of the moonlight.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± said Perry. Unclear numbers at Moth Lantern Hall. One against two would be shit odds. If it comes to fighting, which it might, better to have Maya. Luo Yanhua watched him for a moment. ¡°We still have not unraveled the mysteries of your armor. Master Shan Yin has retreated to Silver Fish Temple, and Grandmaster Li Meifeng consults with Marchand in his stead, tracing the pathways of power.¡± Perry pursed his lips. He had been listening to recordings of those conversations, but would prefer not to reveal that to her. The ¡®pathways¡¯ were just electricity, he was pretty sure, though they talked about it in technical language he couldn¡¯t entirely follow. ¡°You¡¯re taking your time to come to a determination,¡± said Perry, trying to sound approving. ¡°It is a matter of some import,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Marchand is insistent that he belongs to you, and that even if he did not, he would stay by your side.¡± ¡°I suppose that doesn¡¯t make things easier for you,¡± said Perry. ¡°It would be better if we could say that we were simply partners, bonded to each other. But it wouldn¡¯t exactly be true.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She rose from where she was sitting. ¡°If the trial of moonlight goes well, you will have some favor to spare within Moon Gate.¡± It was far from a promise that they would release Marchand to him, but it was as good as he was going to get. Obviously this might be a way of stringing him along, and trapping a man in a suit of armor seemed to be something that they would never stomach, but if he could get out of this without subterfuge and violence, that would be much better. He found Maya, who was in what had become her usual spot near a small waterfall. The water emptied into the lake without so much as a splash, and was very nearly silent in a way that Perry found unnerving. The lake was a large one, and there were all kinds of places for people to set up around the edges of it, which ended up becoming a bit like their office, though it was nothing so formal. This was a pleasure which was only extended to the second sphere, given the first spheres were training in the courtyard so often. ¡°What¡¯s up?¡± asked Maya, cracking an eyelid. She¡¯d been sitting in the lotus position, which she tended to prefer. ¡°We¡¯re leaving,¡± said Perry. ¡°Someone died, got torn apart, actually, and they think that it was Worm Gate. It¡¯s the closest we¡¯ve come to word of a third thresholder.¡± ¡°Who died?¡± asked Maya. ¡°A second sphere,¡± said Perry. ¡°He got diced up. Marchand can play back the conversation, if you¡¯d like.¡± ¡°Yeah, sure,¡± said Maya. Perry sat and waited while Maya listened to the earpiece. As had become his habit, he worked on his vessels and meridians, though the gains would be very minor. Minor gains added up in the long run though, and if his comparative advantage was that he could meditate in the same way he used to idly look at his phone while standing in line, then he was going to do that every chance he got. ¡°I hate that shit,¡± said Maya when she handed the earpiece back. ¡°I would respect it so much more if they just said ¡®hey, go kill these guys for us¡¯.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s so they can put our heads on the chopping block if it all goes wrong. I mean, we¡¯re deniable assets. CIA stuff.¡± ¡°I draw the line at ousting a democratically elected president,¡± said Maya. She stood up, shook out her limbs, and then rubbed her chin. ¡°You know, they¡¯ve got pretty much no leverage over me.¡± ¡°You want to get the other thresholder, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I do,¡± said Maya. ¡°But you¡¯re the one whose back is up against the wall.¡± Perry rolled his eyes. ¡°Are we allies or not?¡± ¡°We¡¯re allies,¡± nodded Maya. ¡°But I¡¯m not entirely sure I could kill a second sphere on my lonesome, if they¡¯re a fighter, which all the second sphere are. And you¡¯ve also got to think that if this is the third thresholder, it might be a trap.¡± ¡°What, draw us out of the temple and get us alone?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yeah, I guess.¡± ¡°And you want to walk right into it, huh?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Without the suit?¡± ¡°I¡¯m stronger than I was three weeks ago,¡± said Perry. ¡°If someone hit the gym for three weeks, would you say ¡®oh wow, you must be buff¡¯?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, but you do get a lot of gains right off the bat. Right?¡± ¡°I haven¡¯t seen the inside of a gym since high school,¡± said Maya. ¡°You were a gym bro?¡± ¡°I went to the gym, mostly to stay in shape,¡± said Perry. ¡°Huh, I bought these muscles on the black market,¡± said Maya. ¡°Anyway, we only just barely beat out that one dude ¡ª¡± ¡°Zhang Lingxiu, Dragon-Tiger Guardian,¡± Perry supplied. ¡°¡ª so what makes you think that we can either take on someone who¡¯s strong enough to chop a second sphere into little bits?¡± she asked. ¡°Or if we go to Moth Lantern Hall, what makes you think we can beat half a dozen second sphere guys?¡± ¡°Shooting them would work,¡± said Perry. ¡°It worked on Zhang. I don¡¯t think there¡¯s anything they can do against a headshot. And I mean, we¡¯re going to talk first, see what they say, if they¡¯re even responsible. We¡¯re not members of Moon Gate. We have leeway.¡± ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure that Zhang would have lived if he hadn¡¯t been fighting us at the same time,¡± said Maya. ¡°You shot him in the chest and he kept on trucking. And you don¡¯t have the suit, which means you don¡¯t have the gun.¡± ¡°So we take a page from your playbook,¡± said Perry. ¡°We go into Moth Lantern Hall in the dead of night and slit some throats.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Maya. ¡°Let¡¯s do it.¡± ¡°Really?¡± asked Perry. He frowned at her. ¡°You know what, sure,¡± said Maya. ¡°And I know that Luo Yanhua wants us to go gank some bastards, but if we come back having not done that, all this ¡®deniable asset¡¯ stuff means that she can¡¯t be that outwardly angry with us, right?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°We talk first, or at least surveil. Use the drone, seed some nanite listeners, that kind of thing.¡± ¡°I just want you to remember that I¡¯m doing this out of the kindness of my heart,¡± said Maya. ¡°There¡¯s one other thing to worry about, besides going up against people who are stronger than us, have superior numbers, and the home advantage,¡± said Perry. ¡°How serious do we think cosmic karma actually is?¡± Maya shrugged. Perry waited, but that was all the input she had. ¡°I don¡¯t want to assume that what they say about it is bunk, and want to err on the side of it not being, but ¡­ the evidence is pretty thin on the ground, and a lot of what we¡¯ve seen offered as proof it actually exists could be explained through other means.¡± He frowned. ¡°And we¡¯re not from here, nor are we hooked in with the local government or the sect or anything else. But it does have to be a consideration.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what you want me to say,¡± said Maya. ¡°We can¡¯t test it without breaking some rules, right?¡± ¡°In theory we¡¯re members in good standing right now, cosmically speaking,¡± said Perry. ¡°But if we go in and slit some throats, then yeah, we¡¯re crossing a line, and it¡¯s a line that might put us in debt and need to be repaid.¡± ¡°But,¡± said Maya, brushing a curl of hair from her face, ¡°If you think about it, whoever cut up that second sphere into pieces should also be in debt, right?¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°Kind of sucks that there are cosmic laws,¡± said Maya. ¡°I mean, there¡¯s no one to petition if you think that the laws are terrible, right?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°But we talk first, right?¡± Maya shrugged. ¡°I¡¯ll follow your lead. Everything I know about Worm Gate says that they¡¯re on my shit list.¡± ¡°The puppet thing?¡± asked Perry. Maya nodded. ¡°Their elder moving human bodies around like they¡¯re tools is beyond terrible. It¡¯s absolutely a stain against everyone in the sect.¡± ¡°It¡¯s voluntary,¡± said Perry. Maya laughed. ¡°Come on.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a chance for coercion,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s probably some expectation that you¡¯ll give your body over. I don¡¯t know though, if I could set my body on autopilot while doing farmwork and be free to think my own thoughts in the meantime ¡­ I can see why it would raise your hackles.¡± ¡°You¡¯re already practicing the apologetics?¡± asked Maya. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not entirely.¡± He looked across the lake, at the temple. ¡°They see Worm Gate as a threat, as competition, but they don¡¯t condemn what¡¯s done there, not like we would. It¡¯s weird. I¡¯m trying to get a handle on it, explain it away.¡± ¡°They¡¯re bastards,¡± said Maya. ¡°Moon Gate?¡± asked Perry. Maya nodded. ¡°You¡¯re trying to view them as reasonable people. You¡¯re trying to say ¡®oh, maybe there¡¯s some logical reason that they say and do the things we do.¡± She shook her head. ¡°You think they¡¯re bastards,¡± said Perry. ¡°That there¡¯s nothing mitigating, it¡¯s as bad as it looks. They¡¯d puppet the first spheres around if they could, and they¡¯d do it without volunteers ¡ª or with coercing the volunteers.¡± ¡°Yup,¡± nodded Maya. ¡°You¡¯ve kept your eyes open. You¡¯ve seen how it is here. There¡¯s a pecking order, with the bulk of the students kept in line by the promise that someday they¡¯re going to be second sphere too, able to push around those beneath him. And sometimes, they¡¯re kept in line by a swift punch to the face, or the suggestion of a quick punch to the face.¡± Perry felt his lips tighten. The second sphere weren¡¯t simply leeches, they served useful functions, especially with the fall of the Grouse Kingdom and the bandits that were roaming the area. The temple protected those within it. He knew that line of thinking wouldn¡¯t really work on Maya, but it tempered his understanding. ¡°Ah come on, I¡¯m not going to move against them,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯m not strong enough. I¡¯m not a moron. I just want your eyes open to what¡¯s going on here.¡± ¡°My eyes are wide open,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not sticking around here.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Maya. The light had gone, and lightning bugs were swarming over the lake. The moons were shining, edging to full, enough that Perry had to make an effort to keep anything from stirring within him. It remained to be seen whether he could endure the full moon without turning into the wolf, but he could feel the crack in the vessel, energy flowing out of it. It presented as heightened senses, more power in his muscles, his hairs standing up on end, and a desire to fight or fuck. He adjusted to it, not trying to tamp it down, but letting it flow through him, like wind through the branches of a tree. ¡°You alright?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fine.¡± ¡°Then get some rest, we¡¯ll set off tomorrow, I guess,¡± she said. ¡°You want to play Columbo before we get to fisticuffs?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll work on my impression,¡± said Perry. ¡°¡®Just one more thing¡¯.¡± ¡°Terrible,¡± said Maya. He made his way back to the temple, trying to take some pleasure in the heightening that came with moons that weren¡¯t quite full. It was like taking enjoyment from a rainy day or a brisk wind, the kind of thing that he thought could easily sour his mood if he let it. Xiyan was waiting for him, by the door of his room, as she often was. ¡°I¡¯m going to be leaving in the morning,¡± said Perry. ¡°Am I to come with?¡± asked Xiyan. Her hands were behind her back, head low, deferential in a way that he¡¯d tried to convince her not to be. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯ll be too dangerous. You¡¯ll stay here. I don¡¯t think there¡¯s anything in particular you need to be doing during that time.¡± She bowed to him, and he kept his face still so she wouldn¡¯t see his frown. She was almost a friend. He¡¯d talked to her plenty, using the excuse of training his ability to translate, though she¡¯d wanted to hear more about the worlds he¡¯d been to, and deflected away from telling him about her life. She told stories much more readily than she spoke about her life, which was pleasant enough, if not terribly instructive. ¡°Will you return?¡± asked Xiyan. Her voice was small. ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes.¡± He hesitated. She was no great beauty, and the shy and obedient act didn¡¯t really do it for him, but she had grown on him over the weeks. He already had an ally in the form of Maya, and an assistant in the form of Marchand, but it was nice to have someone who was just a person. He didn¡¯t think he¡¯d have felt the same way if she were second sphere. ¡°Are you taking your armor?¡± asked Xiyan. ¡°Will you be safe?¡± ¡°The armor will be in the armory,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll have Maya with me though. We¡¯ll be fine.¡± Fineish. She shifted in front of him, as though she meant to give him a hug and was thinking better of it. Perry had been clear about boundaries and propriety, in part because he thought she might have been paired with him in order to trap him into behavior they could hold against him, but there was something appealing about the thought of a hug. Maybe it was that the moon was full, or that for the past three weeks the only physical contact he¡¯d had with anyone had been getting punched and kicked. She smelled like mulberries and sea salt, and a tinge of iron. ¡°Get some rest,¡± said Perry. He moved past her, opening the door of his room. ¡°You¡¯ll be able to take it easy for a few days.¡± It wasn¡¯t as though he ever asked much of her anyway. It was the moons having an effect on him, he decided once the door was closed. In another few days, they would all be at their fullest, and while he thought he could keep from transforming, it was another question entirely whether he could keep from getting himself into trouble. Chapter 47 - Moths, pt. 1 Perry was carrying as much of Marchand as he¡¯d been allowed to, which had taken some conversations with both Luo Yanhua and the quartermaster. The drone had been extracted from the back of the armor and likened to a bird that could whisper what it had seen, while the left vambrace was compared to a vessel that could power the bird. It was a bad comparison to make, given that Perry was attempting to persuade her that March was nothing like a person, but without the vambrace, he was worried he¡¯d run out of battery too quickly. It would have been better to take the microfusion reactor in the center, but then, it would have been better to take the entire suit of armor. Instead, the battery in the arm would need to suffice, allowing the drone to take three or four flights and the earpiece to be charged almost indefinitely. ¡°Nice to be out of that place,¡± said Maya once they were a mile down the road. ¡°I always felt like I was being watched.¡± ¡°Does that matter to you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What do you mean?¡± asked Maya. She raised an eyebrow. ¡°Of course it matters.¡± ¡°You either don¡¯t give a shit what these people think of you, or you¡¯re doing a damned good impression,¡± said Perry. ¡°Oh, that, sure,¡± said Maya. She stuck her hands in the pocket of her hoodie. Her needle sword floated along beside her, without apparent concentration on her face. ¡°But ¡ª I mean, Earth, right? You¡¯re being spied on all the time, and you don¡¯t really have a choice but to live your life as you want to live it. Still, you¡¯ve gotta think in the back of your head that you¡¯d really rather not have these huge companies and the NSA looking through all your personal shit.¡± ¡°Maybe for you,¡± said Perry. ¡°There were certain things that I¡¯d definitely just never share online.¡± ¡°All your racist diatribes?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Funny,¡± said Perry, though he felt a pang of discomfort at the mention of race. He¡¯d been told he couldn¡¯t understand what other people were going through enough times that he believed it, and it sometimes felt like navigating a minefield in a way that other topics of discussion didn¡¯t. The silence became slightly uncomfortable, and he shrank a bit, hoping that she wasn¡¯t about to pounce on him. ¡°And I am doing an impression of not caring,¡± said Maya. ¡°Partly to cover for the stuff that I really want to keep from them.¡± ¡°Which is?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The arbitrage stuff,¡± said Maya. ¡°What they would consider high crimes and we would consider just kind of whatever.¡± Perry frowned at her. ¡°I didn¡¯t know you were still trying to make progress on that.¡± ¡°Oh yeah,¡± said Maya. ¡°Which is a sign to me that March doesn¡¯t tell you everything.¡± ¡°March?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes sir?¡± March asked into his ear. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry, forgot you were there, I should probably power the earbud down and save battery.¡± ¡°Very well sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry slipped it from his ear and put it gently into his pack, where the vambrace was nestled. It was precious, irreplaceable like all things from Richter, but probably the thing that was easiest to lose. Perry had hoped that wearing it around would have made some material change in it, like it did in his clothes, but he hadn¡¯t noticed anything spectacular, not yet. ¡°You were saying about March?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He helped out with the nanites,¡± said Maya. ¡°He can give better directions than I can.¡± She raised a hand and wiggled some fingers. ¡°Little spiders.¡± ¡°Spiders?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Tiny little guys,¡± said Maya, showing a millimeter gap between her thumb and forefinger. ¡°Spiders made of nanites, able to crawl into places where the likes of you and I aren¡¯t allowed.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°And I thought the surveillance network you had was bad.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve never once expressed anything like concern about that,¡± said Maya, frowning at him. ¡°It¡¯s bad if you get caught,¡± said Perry. ¡°Also it does occur to me that worrying about them spying is kind of hypocritical given we¡¯ve got the whole temple bugged.¡± ¡°This is true,¡± nodded Maya. ¡°But we¡¯re not actively spying on them, are we? I mean, it¡¯s mostly just in case someone says ¡®hey, how¡¯s the plan to kill Maya and Perry going¡¯. That¡¯s basically not a spy network at all.¡± ¡°I mostly don¡¯t listen,¡± said Perry. ¡°March still can¡¯t understand the language, and building up a dictionary with just the earpiece is a special kind of hell.¡± ¡°You know I¡¯ve been talking to him?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°But you wish I wouldn¡¯t?¡± asked Maya. ¡°It¡¯s not that,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s that ¡­ I guess he had said you were testing his defenses.¡± ¡°Early on, sure,¡± said Maya. ¡°Now I¡¯m mostly helping him with technical stuff. We¡¯ve got a radio link through the nanites, and he reads me books sometimes, if I¡¯m trying to get to sleep.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess I haven¡¯t listened in on those conversations.¡± Or been told about them, which will be something to fix in the future. ¡°Anyway, you were saying about spiders?¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Maya. ¡°Tiny-tiny little spiders, smaller than you can see with the naked eye. The library is locked up tighter than a nun¡¯s snatch, but tiny-tiny spiders can get in there, and once they were in, they could start reading through the books.¡± ¡°They made lenses?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Nah,¡± said Maya. ¡°March couldn¡¯t make the lenses small enough, and the spiders were slipping between the pages anyway, where it would be dark. They¡¯re using some other kind of detector, I guess.¡± She waved a hand. ¡°Anyway, they¡¯ve been scuttling through the pages and feeding the data to March, who¡¯s been reading it off to me. That took a lot of work, I guess, though I didn¡¯t get the specifics of it.¡± ¡°Language learning,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve been putting him to work on that. I guess I hadn¡¯t realized that he¡¯d read a bunch of books. Seems like he should be able to make more progress, with a corpus that size.¡± ¡°Anyway, the upshot is that I¡¯ve gotten a better look at our friends,¡± said Maya. ¡°And?¡± asked Perry. ¡°And I have the path to power,¡± said Maya. He could hear the grin on her face. ¡°There¡¯s lots of really messed up stuff in there, forbidden books that I¡¯m glad are collecting dust, but there are other ¡®forbidden¡¯ ones that I can work with. Sex, drugs, and rock n¡¯ roll, that kind of thing. Nothing that a sorority sister would blink twice about.¡± It took a moment for Perry to process. ¡°You¡¯re going to fuck your way to power?¡± ¡°Eh, I¡¯m not decided on that,¡± said Maya. ¡°The dark arts all come with drawbacks, it¡¯s just a matter of picking the right one to focus on. And I haven''t done more than skim through the table of contents, such as it is. I¡¯ve been trying to see if there¡¯s a reason they look down on this stuff, whether there¡¯s some harm I¡¯m not seeing or some hidden drawback.¡± She was being more circumspect than she normally was. Perry wondered whether she was worried about him judging her, but he stayed silent. Maybe he did judge, a little bit. They walked together in silence, only the sounds of the forest around them. ¡°I¡¯m tethering tomorrow,¡± said Maya. ¡°To what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Benevolence,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯ve double and triple checked that there¡¯s not some catch. The best I can figure, if our tethers outlast this world, it gives me the best opportunity to keep it going and accumulate more. Plus it¡¯s more or less what I¡¯ve been doing, moving from world to world, or trying to do. Probably should have done it ages ago, but they treat it so seriously it¡¯s hard not to hold back and think things through.¡± ¡°I was going to do academics,¡± said Perry. ¡°Rather than doing good?¡± asked Maya. ¡°You can be an academic and still do good,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s just an easier pathway to power.¡± ¡°Seems to me that you¡¯ll be spending time writing papers,¡± said Maya. ¡°Rather than, I don¡¯t know, making sure that starving kids have food.¡± ¡°Seems like you¡¯ll be tilting at windmills,¡± shrugged Perry. ¡°And don¡¯t threaten to kill me over a difference of opinion, it¡¯s getting old.¡± ¡°Old?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I¡¯m wounded. Already?¡± ¡°Besides, if I¡¯m going to get back to the alternate Earth, I¡¯m going to have to crack some mysteries first,¡± said Perry. ¡°Academia overlaps with that.¡± ¡°This girl must have really been something,¡± said Maya. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. Flora¡¯s words were echoing through his head. Maybe if it hadn¡¯t been Richter, it would have been something else. Maybe he was consumed by a self-centered lust for power that he was seeking out any excuse for. She¡¯d gotten to him, and much of the time he was thinking about her words, they weren¡¯t even her words, just things that he imagined that she might say to him. It took them some time to reach the site of the murder. The body was long gone, the pieces given as much of a proper burial as they could be given. It hadn¡¯t rained since the incident though, and there was still blood all over the place, sticking to the sides of trees and crusting the ground. It had lost the bright red color of freshly spilled blood and taken on a dark brown that made it a little less horrific. The iron smell hung in the air, undercut by rot. ¡°Not sure there was a point in coming here,¡± said Maya. ¡°We¡¯re shit detectives.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to fire up the drone,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s got enough range to talk to March and hopefully the sensors can pick up something.¡± The drone was a quad-copter, and unfolded with such delicacy that Perry was surprised that it could do the whole operation at high speed when fired from the back of the armor. It felt like a flower in his hands, whose petals could easily be crushed if he moved just wrong. That feeling was wrong, he knew: it was as rugged as it could be given the weight, made with materials that would put anything from his Earth to shame. There was a good chance that he wouldn¡¯t be able to snap one of the blades with his bare hands, but that definitely wasn¡¯t a chance he was ever going to take. The drone lifted quietly, its oddly shaped blades making little noise as it rose. After a half-second of calibration, Marchand¡¯s voice came through. ¡°Ah, good to speak with you sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve taken the liberty of putting the drone into low power mode. I assume you wanted me to make a scan of the area?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. It was a surprising amount of initiative for the AI to take, but Perry was fine with that, so long as he was being asked. The drone spun up and zipped around, its bevy of miniaturized cameras and microphones taking in the area. Crime scene analysis didn¡¯t seem like it was within Marchand¡¯s wheelhouse, though he was a distant descendant of military technology. The crime scene was also far from pristine, having been trampled by people who knew nothing about evidence preservation. Perry was hopeful though. ¡°How long will this take?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Not long, ma¡¯am,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Data transmission is the primary issue at the moment, but the drone will be done gathering data in just a moment. Hold out your hand, sir.¡± Perry held his hand out, and the drone landed in it, gentle as a falling leaf, and folded up its wings with a few mechanical whirls. ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Yes, ma¡¯am,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°The analysis will take some time, I¡¯ll put the drone on standby until I have something to report. Data transmission is still ongoing.¡± Perry gently set the drone down on a nearby rock, then leaned up against a tree. Maya took a moment to do the same. ¡°Alright, so why carve up the body?¡± asked Maya. ¡°It was done after death, obviously, or most of it was done after death. Why do that to a body?¡± ¡°Ritual, satisfying desires, sending a message, extracting resources,¡± said Perry, raising fingers in turn. ¡°Show of power,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯d call that part of sending a message, but sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°Everything else I can think of, it would be for things that pretty clearly weren¡¯t done here: hiding the body, transporting the body, delaying the investigation, hiding the identity, that sort of thing. They wanted the body to be found.¡± ¡°In order to draw us out,¡± said Maya. She looked around the bloody clearing. ¡°I¡¯ve been on edge, waiting for it to happen.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He had kept his sword close to him, and not fully dropped his guard. ¡°Without March, I feel half-blind.¡± ¡°I guess we don¡¯t even really know whether or not it¡¯s a thresholder, not for certain,¡± said Maya. ¡°But it seems incredibly likely.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°If they had anything like the internet, we¡¯d be able to find out the details of the deaths in the Grouse Kingdom. That would let us know whether it¡¯s the same sort of MO.¡± ¡°Ha!¡± said Maya. ¡°¡®MO¡¯. You¡¯ve watched one too many episodes of Law and Order. But there was something in one of the books.¡± Perry raised an eyebrow. ¡°You can harvest people for parts,¡± said Maya. ¡°You can¡¯t rip out the meridians or the vessels, not directly, at least at our level, but you can take the physical pieces of them and then integrate them into your own body. Most of the time this does basically nothing for you, I think, if you¡¯re taking from the first spheres, but if you were taking from a powerful second sphere, especially one with royal blood ¡­¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Power,¡± he said. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Maya. ¡°Power. The power of three royal sons, an inverted tether to their kingdom? We could be looking at something ¡ª someone ¡ª that¡¯s already eclipsed our power.¡± Perry was still frowning. ¡°I need to read those books. You should have told me.¡± ¡°Yeah, maybe,¡± said Maya. ¡°Talking about this shit in the temple seems like a real bad idea though.¡± Plus it puts you far ahead of me. I¡¯m sure that was a totally unintended consequence. And March didn¡¯t breathe a word of it to me, for whatever reason. ¡°What¡¯s an inverted tether?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not super clear on that,¡± said Maya. ¡°My best guess is that it¡¯s like that stocks thing, where you bet that it¡¯ll fail, but it might be more than that ¡ª you dedicate yourself to the opposite of something, benefit from its downfall.¡± ¡°That works?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve got no idea,¡± said Maya. ¡°Tethers are weird.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve been secretly reading through a bunch of texts you¡¯d probably get killed for,¡± said Perry. ¡°And the thing you¡¯ve come away with is ¡®tethers are weird¡¯?¡± ¡°If you¡¯ll excuse me, I have a preliminary report,¡± said Marchand, speaking from the drone¡¯s speaker. ¡°Go for it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Based on simulations I¡¯ve run, the method of death appears to have been bisection through the stomach,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s very difficult to tell given everything that occurred afterward, but it must have been sudden. The distribution of blood suggests that the body was cut apart, into pieces, shortly afterward.¡± Perry waited. ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. ¡°I apologize sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I am working off the distribution patterns of days-old blood in a crime scene that has been trampled by a number of people using less than my full suite of equipment. There¡¯s no body, sir.¡± ¡°Right, I just thought you¡¯d shout ¡®enhance¡¯ a bunch,¡± said Perry. ¡°And tell us, uh ¡­ some stuff.¡± ¡°You know that my sensors have been in a sorry state for quite some time, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve attempted to correct for them as much as possible, but the error log grows with every day.¡± ¡°Error log?¡± asked Maya. ¡°He doesn¡¯t understand magic,¡± said Perry. ¡°The error log is a bunch of stuff that can¡¯t be explained in other ways. Where possible, he¡¯ll try to explain how it was actually technology all along, but half the time he¡¯s got very little idea what¡¯s actually going on. When we first got here he thought it was California, a movie set or something.¡± ¡°Poor guy,¡± said Maya with a little pout. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve tried to talk to him, but nothing has worked so far. Almost all of it gets chucked into the error log, but a few things sneak through from time to time.¡± ¡°And this is your best friend?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°We make it work.¡± ¡°March, the upshot is that the killing happened suddenly, right?¡± asked Maya. ¡°No signs of a struggle?¡± Perry really didn¡¯t like the way she talked to him. ¡°It¡¯s very difficult to say,¡± replied March. ¡°But if I were forced to hazard a guess, which I believe I would be if I dithered on the subject, then yes, I would say that it was sudden.¡± ¡°From behind or from the front?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Both are equally likely based on the evidence, ma¡¯am,¡± said March. ¡°Right, but we know how fast the second sphere can move, which means an attack from the back is much more likely,¡± said Maya. ¡°So like, our thresholder might have descended down from above, caught him completely off guard, to his face ¡­ but that means a level of speed that we can never meet. Assuming that our thresholder isn¡¯t superhumanly fast, or isn¡¯t supersuperhumanly fast, probably they had some kind of a face-off.¡± ¡°What are you thinking?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Also, I¡¯m not sure that playing detective is panning out, we should just go to Moth Lantern Hall and see what we can learn there.¡± ¡°I¡¯m thinking ¡­¡± said Maya. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I¡¯m trying to map it out in a way that makes sense.¡± ¡°We have no idea what the enemy thresholder¡¯s powers will be,¡± said Perry. ¡°If there¡¯s an enemy thresholder at all.¡± ¡°Oh come on,¡± said Maya. ¡°You think this is Worm Gate?¡± ¡°Or someone else,¡± said Perry. ¡°From what Luo Yanhua has said, the only thing stopping evil techniques from gaining traction are that people are willing to stand up to those who use them, hunt them down or whatever. That, and cosmic karma. But even that stuff doesn¡¯t seem like it works all that well, or not all the time. So yeah, I¡¯m willing to believe that it wasn¡¯t a thresholder.¡± ¡°There¡¯s one more thing,¡± said Maya. ¡°Our guy, the one who got chopped to bits? Why was he out here?¡± Perry shrugged. ¡°Second sphere are allowed to leave. This one didn¡¯t, not often, but it¡¯s not absurd.¡± His name was Xu Jinhai, but Perry knew relatively little about the man. He¡¯d had a wife and family back at the temple, and was well-liked. There was no blisteringly obvious reason for anyone to kill him. ¡°It¡¯s happenstance that killer and victim met here?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Happenstance happens,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sure, sure,¡± said Maya. ¡°And you¡¯re right, I¡¯m done playing ¡®who¡¯s the worse detective¡¯ with you. Let¡¯s head off toward the moth den.¡± Perry thought about it as they went. The crime scene had told them approximately nothing, and hadn¡¯t done the one thing he¡¯d really been hoping for, which was to illuminate what kind of powers they would be up against. As he saw it, meeting another thresholder for the first time was one of the most incredibly dangerous things he could do, not just because he expected them to kill him, but because he would have absolutely no idea what he was facing. He thought Maya was probably right that the murder was a play of some kind, he just couldn¡¯t figure out what. It would be easy enough to hide a body in the woods, especially if you had the power to chop it up. The Great Arc was relatively settled, but there were still all kinds of woods around. In fact, thinking about the clearing, he wasn¡¯t entirely sure how the body had been found. If they actually cared about the murder, it might have been better to return to Crystal Lake Temple and get more information from the sect, but their true purpose wasn¡¯t actually to solve a murder: it was to get revenge, a counter-strike against Worm Gate. Moon Gate had already done their own investigation, come to their own conclusions, and were hopping mad about what they thought had happened. ¡°I think we go in and make friends,¡± said Perry. ¡°With the worms?¡± asked Maya. ¡°The moths,¡± said Perry. ¡°But yes.¡± ¡°That gives away our biggest advantage,¡± said Maya. She folded her arms, and her needle swung around, pointing down for emphasis. ¡°It lets us talk to them,¡± said Perry. ¡°It lets us gather information.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not out here to gather information,¡± said Maya. ¡°They¡¯ve got your robot buddy held hostage. Do you think if we come back and say ¡®actually, Worm Gate doesn¡¯t appear to have been involved at all¡¯ they¡¯ll give you a pat on the back and tell you what a good job you¡¯ve done? Not to mention we¡¯ve got no proof one way or another, and aren¡¯t likely to get proof just from talking to them.¡± ¡°So you think we bust in and just start killing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Maya. ¡°We spy on them, see what their numbers are like, figure out the layout of the place, then we go through with swords drawn.¡± ¡°I want to talk,¡± said Perry. ¡°Their head honcho is puppetting people,¡± said Maya. ¡°And if we have to have the conversation about whether or not it¡¯s consensual and what that means in the context of the power structures, I swear to god ¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯ll talk to them, alone,¡± said Perry. ¡°You stay back. With the nanites, we¡¯ve got radio communication, right? I can feed you information, let you know what¡¯s up. You¡¯ll have the benefit of knowing the personnel and the layout, I¡¯ll get to know what¡¯s up, and you get the element of surprise.¡± Maya narrowed her eyes. ¡°I want to disagree, but you make a compelling argument.¡± ¡°Really?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I kind of thought you¡¯d dig your heels in.¡± ¡°Nah,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯ll take the earpiece and hide in the bushes like a creeper.¡± It took them some time to reach Moth Lantern Hall, and they got lost along the way, enough to necessitate another use of the drone so they could get their bearings. Connection with March wasn¡¯t the best, but they had tested the link between the earpiece and the drone, which still worked. Moth Lantern Hall was, as promised, carved from rock, the decorative pillars having been hewn from the stone rather than mined and placed. It was three stories tall, but very narrow, at least from the outside, with only a door at the bottom level and a single window at each of the upper levels. The door was wide and thick, with a well-polished brass knocker, and Perry approached it carefully, having left Maya quite some distance behind. He had the drone with him, but was becoming skeptical that the signal would penetrate through the rock. Then again, signals analysis had been Richter¡¯s personal field of expertise, and he didn¡¯t want to doubt her. Perry brought the knocker down twice, then waited as patiently as he could. He had picked up some of the local customs in his time on the Great Arc, and knew that they placed a lot of value on not rushing things ¡ª which was one of the reasons that he was looked down on by many of those in Moon Gate for the nature of his ascension to the second sphere. In fact, waiting at a door might be something of a test, though Perry was pretty sure that they didn¡¯t go in for that kind of thing, not with strangers. Even if they let him in, it was going to be almost impossible to figure out what techniques they had at their disposal. The second sphere were tight-lipped, and more than that, cautious about technique in a way that came off as incurious and aloof. The only person that had asked Perry any significant questions about the other worlds he¡¯d been to was Xiyan, and she was first sphere. The door swung open suddenly and a smiling man popped out. He had a wide grin on his face. ¡°Can I help you, sir?¡± he asked. He wore simple clothes, but they were unmistakably those of the second sphere, too tidy and fine for all but the most fastidious of the first sphere. He had dark eyes and shaggy hair that felt intentionally imperfect, and his smile showed his gums. ¡°I¡¯m a traveler from distant lands, hoping to find shelter for the night,¡± said Perry, the words he¡¯d practiced coming out even though they now seemed weirdly formal and stilted. ¡°Ah, but before you come in, can I ask whether you¡¯re a member of any sects?¡± asked the man. ¡°I¡¯m not,¡± said Perry. This was true, actually. ¡°Then you are welcome for the night, as an honored guest,¡± said the man with a low bow. ¡°Come in, come in.¡± Perry stepped in slowly. The hallway was longer than he¡¯d thought it would be, leading deep into the rock. It opened up into a spacious room in the center, with doors going off in five directions. It was surprisingly bright in the center of the room, thanks to small lanterns on the wall. The glow reminded Perry of LEDs or something like them, and after such a long time with only gas lamps and torches, he found them mildly unnerving. ¡°This is Moth Lantern Hall,¡± said the man. ¡°And I am Sun Lingfeng.¡± ¡°Peregrin Holzmann,¡± said Perry. He bowed, just enough to show deference. They were deep under the rock, and there was little hope of radio signals getting out. Perry had his sword, and his vessels were as full of energy as they could comfortably be, but a close-quarters fight would be a tough ask. ¡°Thank you for your hospitality, Sun Lingfeng.¡± Lingfeng waved a hand. ¡°We have many rooms, though only a few are used at the moment. You are second sphere?¡± It was a question that didn¡¯t need to be asked. Perry¡¯s sword didn¡¯t have the right aura, but his clothes would, and anyone looking at him deeply enough would be able to see that he was exuding more energy than a first sphere ever could. His own ability to see was still being developed, a matter of the Liver Meridian and Kidney Meridian, though it was more complex than just strengthening them. The brain was also considered a more complex organ, and not entirely responsible for everything actual biomedicine thought it was responsible for, which Perry had been struggling to put to one side. Opening his third eye ¡ª which wasn¡¯t a concept that they really subscribed to ¡ª was a matter of the heart rather than the brain. His was currently only opened a crack. He could see Lingfeng¡¯s energy though, a gentle outpouring. ¡°I ascended to second sphere only a month ago,¡± said Perry. ¡°There is still much for me to learn.¡± He bowed again, just to be on the safe side, but Lingfeng didn¡¯t seem like a stickler. ¡°Are there others in Moth Lantern Hall?¡± ¡°Only three of us,¡± said Lingfeng, shaking his head. ¡°If you have interest in joining the sect, you would go elsewhere, but we can shelter you for the night, and you are welcome to partake of our food.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°It¡¯s appreciated,¡± he said. ¡°If there¡¯s anything that I can do to make up for the inconvenience ¡ª¡± ¡°You said you came from a distant land?¡± asked Lingfeng. ¡°The Grouse Kingdom, perhaps?¡± Perry shook his head. ¡°Further afield than that, as you might have guessed.¡± He gestured to his general appearance, from the beard to his skin color to his height. ¡°We have had many from the Grouse Kingdom, of late,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°Most stay only for a day or two, then leave, either to the Silk Serpent Shrine or continuing on their way through Green Snake Valley. Do you think you¡¯ll stay?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was told this was a temple of Worm Gate, a competitor to Moon Gate within this valley. I have to confess that I know less than I would like about both of them.¡± He was trying hard not to directly lie, both because of karmic questions and because he didn¡¯t want to be called out. ¡°It is a bit unusual,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°But those matters are quite beyond my station, and those of Moth Lantern Hall.¡± ¡°And the travelers you¡¯ve had coming through here,¡± said Perry. ¡°You said many of them?¡± Lingfeng nodded eagerly. ¡°Always in ones and twos, some of them from sects that no longer exist, weakened, wanting only a place to recuperate. But we are not such a place, not for most.¡± ¡°Why is that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Come,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°I¡¯ll show you to your room, and to the hall.¡± He took off, leaving Perry to follow. The titular hall was huge, situated on the floor above and carved, with arches, from the same stone, leading down to pillars that supported the roof. There was plenty of space beyond the long table, which looked like it could have seated twenty. In one place, a crack that must have existed in the rock had been worked around then decorated, showing off an opening where a vein of quartz was exposed. The same strange lights dotted the ceiling, up high enough that a tall ladder would have been needed to reach them, and to Perry¡¯s surprise, there were thousands of moths floating around up there. He hadn¡¯t expected the place¡¯s name to be quite so literal. ¡°Wow,¡± said Perry. ¡°This site is ancient,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°The moths come in from the outside through passageways.¡± He pointed up at small holes on the wall that Perry had thought were decorative. ¡°It is a strength of the place.¡± Perry stared up at the moths crowding around the lanterns. Their fluttering made him uncomfortable. Moths were a nuisance, vermin, and to have so many of them in a place where people congregate and eat was like being invited to someone¡¯s dining room and being shown their rat collection in a tank on the dining room table. ¡°Worm Gate draws power from insects,¡± said Perry. This was something he¡¯d learned from Luo Yanhua. ¡°I hadn¡¯t realized they¡¯d be ¡­ here.¡± ¡°Oh, yes,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°I have no doubt that Moon Gate would pull the moons closer if they could. They have chosen the moon as their foundation.¡± ¡°I¡¯m surprised there¡¯s much energy in bugs,¡± said Perry. His eyes kept being drawn to the moths. The lighting in the hall was inconsistent, given the fluttering of their wings. ¡°Oh, there¡¯s not,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°But while there is not much energy in a grain of sand, there is power in the beach, do you see?¡± Perry nodded. ¡°I have spoken with those of Moon Gate about their techniques,¡± he said. ¡°I have even seen a few wonders of their technique.¡± He turned to Lingfeng. ¡°There¡¯s tension in the valley between the sects, I¡¯ve heard. Do you worry?¡± ¡°There is cause for outright war,¡± said Lingfeng, rubbing his chin. ¡°But in the end, I think cooler tempers will prevail.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the cause?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh, it goes back for centuries,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°Spies, recruiting from each other¡¯s camp, retaliation, the odd fight or two that everyone will insist was just the actions of an individual member going against orders. When we meet outside the temples, the feeling is always frosty, and sometimes blows are exchanged, more probing than serious.¡± ¡°You fight each other?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Regularly? I hadn¡¯t known that.¡± ¡°Regularly, no,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°But you are new to the second sphere, you said, and likely do not know what it is like to grow old.¡± Perry hadn¡¯t pegged the man for being more than thirty, but he¡¯d always been terrible about guessing how old people were, and that was before magic was taken into account. ¡°Memories are long, which doesn¡¯t help matters.¡± ¡°So fights,¡± said Perry. ¡°But not murder?¡± ¡°Murder?¡± asked Lingfeng. He smiled but didn¡¯t laugh. ¡°Only a serious battle ends in death. The tensions between sects are not so far gone.¡± ¡°But you¡¯re not part of the main sect, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°This is a satellite temple?¡± Lingfeng tilted his head. ¡°We are an ordered sect, arranged beneath the umbrella of power my great-grandfather holds. But not every vase fits so well within the same set of drawers. Thus, Moth Lantern Hall.¡± Rejects, outcasts, mold-breakers, Perry translated. ¡°But to what end?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Is there ¡­ hope of going back?¡± Lingfeng laughed. ¡°You misunderstand. There is hope of not going back. It is a way to be a part of the sect ¡ª family, for most ¡ª without the uncomfortability of being part of a place that doesn¡¯t suit you.¡± Perry pursed his lips. Either this was a masterclass in acting and subterfuge, or the people here had nothing at all to do with the murder. It was possible that Lingfeng was lying, and there was certainly a motive to do so no matter which way it was sliced, but if they were the relatives who didn¡¯t quite fit and had been stuck somewhere out of the way, why would they go out and kill someone from a nearby opposing temple? Especially one where they were heavily outnumbered. As he thought about this, it occurred to him that surely Luo Yanhua must have known most of this. And as he thought about it more, it occurred to him that the murders of ostracized relatives of Worm Gate would be a much lesser offense than killing a promising young student. Worm Gate would still be angry, if they assumed that it was Moon Gate who¡¯d done it, but it would be a poke in the eye rather than a knife in the gut. Maybe, from a certain perspective, it might seem proportional. ¡°I think I¡¯m quite tired,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you could be so gracious, I might take some air, then rest and meditate for a bit.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± nodded Lingfeng. ¡°I¡¯m eager to hear of your experiences, which seem as though they must be unique, but it can wait until another time. Let me show you to your room, then you can come and go as you please.¡± The room was small and sparsely furnished, with a single strange wall light, the same as the other, that two moths seemed to be fighting over. ¡°Thank you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Go, get your air, and your rest,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°Dinner will be in two hours, and you will meet the others then.¡± He left, and Perry hesitated for only a moment before walking down the hallways and out the front door. He took a breath, then walked through the forest to where Maya was waiting for him. She was in the lotus position, eyes closed, but they snapped open when he approached. ¡°Let me guess, they¡¯re all dead?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I don¡¯t think it was them,¡± said Perry. ¡°I only met one of them, but they¡¯re familial outcasts, people who didn¡¯t fit in and needed to be stuck somewhere. The guy I met was nice, nice in a way that pretty much no one else of the second sphere has been. Talkative too.¡± ¡°Oh, well if there was a guy there who was nice, then by all means,¡± said Maya. ¡°Did you ask them about the puppet thing?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°Seems like the kind of thing you should ask someone about before concluding that they¡¯re nice,¡± said Maya. ¡°It does,¡± Perry admitted. ¡°I¡¯m not sure how much of a defense he would offer for his great grandfather, but from what he¡¯s said, these are branches of the family tree that everyone is trying to prune while not directly violating a duty to family. They seem like your kind of people, actually.¡± ¡°Only three of them?¡± asked Maya. Perry nodded. ¡°I don¡¯t expect them to be the best fighters, but I guess you never know, and second sphere is no joke.¡± ¡°If you come back and say ¡®I don¡¯t think these are your guys¡¯, what do you think Moon Gate¡¯s response is going to be?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I think they won¡¯t be too happy. I think they probably know that it wasn¡¯t these people,¡± said Perry. ¡°But there¡¯s no whiff of another thresholder at Moth Lantern Hall. I¡¯ll go back in there, speak with the others, but ¡­ it feels like we¡¯re being asked to ignite a full-on war. Which might have been just what the other thresholder wanted.¡± ¡°Or someone from Moon Gate,¡± said Maya. ¡°We¡¯re outsiders, definitively not members, and useful patsies.¡± Perry¡¯s face was set into a frown. ¡°I need March back. And I would really rather not get embroiled in a war between sects, not while both sides are more powerful than we are.¡± ¡°Seems like those two goals are at odds with one another,¡± said Maya. ¡°You think we just kill some innocent people?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Nah,¡± said Maya. ¡°I think you ask them about grandpappy¡¯s puppets, then we see where we stand. Right now, knowing what we know? I think we spare them. But we don¡¯t have anyone¡¯s head to offer up, which is a problem. And there¡¯s one other issue.¡± ¡°Which is?¡± asked Perry. ¡°March isn¡¯t responding,¡± said Maya. Perry took the drone out of his sack and powered it on. ¡°Range on the earpiece isn¡¯t really that far, we¡¯re three miles from Crystal Lake through dense forest.¡± He waited while the drone started up. ¡°Signal with the drone is better.¡± But when the drone was powered on, it made a few beeps of complaint, unable to connect to the power armor. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Told you,¡± said Maya. ¡°Do we head back?¡± Perry looked up at the sky for a moment, and saw a distant part of the Great Arc. ¡°Well?¡± she asked. ¡°No skin off my scrote if we don¡¯t, but March is your most valuable piece of kit and your best buddy.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°We stay the course. If they¡¯ve taken the opportunity to do something with him while I was out ¡ª if that¡¯s one of the reasons they wanted me away ¡ª then it¡¯s already over and done with. Racing back ¡­ I think I could make it in five minutes, maybe less, but then what? If they fucked him, they fucked him.¡± ¡°Wow, cold and mercenary,¡± said Maya. She dug the point of her needle sword into the ground. ¡°This is one of the reasons we don¡¯t vibe.¡± ¡°I¡¯m staying the night,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll talk with the others. You should probably come with.¡± ¡°Yeah?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°You have questions you want to ask, better to ask them there. Otherwise you¡¯re sleeping out in the woods.¡± He looked up at the sky. ¡°Better for me to get in well before nightfall. I can already feel the hairs sticking up on the back of my neck, and this place is a bunker. It¡¯s kind of perfect.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Maya. ¡°But if I have to start something, you help me finish it.¡± Perry stared at her. She didn¡¯t put on her serious face very often, but it was in full display. ¡°We¡¯re allies,¡± said Maya. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah, we are. But ¡­ I don¡¯t know if we¡¯re that much of allies.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Maya. The seriousness faded and she shrugged off the question, as though it hadn¡¯t been posed. ¡°If I have to start something, I¡¯ll finish it on my own.¡± Perry let out a breath. That could have gone a lot worse. ¡°Then let¡¯s see whether they¡¯re hiding anything in their closets.¡± Chapter 48, Moths, pt. 2 Lingfeng accepted Maya readily enough, even though she said too much almost right away. ¡°I was waiting in the bushes,¡± she said. ¡°I wanted to make sure this was a safe place for us.¡± ¡°You were told of this place,¡± said Lingfeng with a smile. ¡°Did they not speak highly of us?¡± ¡°They didn¡¯t speak of you at all,¡± said Maya. ¡°Well, we are mostly harmless,¡± said Lingfeng, beaming at her. He hesitated just for a moment. ¡°I would speak carefully around my sister though.¡± ¡°Your sister?¡± asked Perry. ¡°She¡¯s one of the three here?¡± ¡°You¡¯ll meet her at dinner,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°We eat together every night, and of course you¡¯ll join us, as guests.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± nodded Perry. It wasn¡¯t just hospitality, it was a rite, something that they took seriously here, something with weight. The offer had been casual, but a rejection of that offer would have been shocking. ¡°And will the two of you be sharing a room?¡± asked Lingfeng. ¡°We will, yes,¡± said Maya. ¡°If you have one with a bed that¡¯s large enough.¡± Perry gave her a look, and she shrugged, as though this was simple and obvious. Lingfeng led them to their rooms, and Perry promised to take a tour of the place later on. When they were alone in their room together, Maya smiled at him. ¡°You didn¡¯t need to tell him that you were hiding in the bushes,¡± said Perry. ¡°And we really don¡¯t need to share a room.¡± ¡°Of course we do,¡± said Maya. ¡°I mean, come on, it¡¯s the middle of the night, we get attacked? We don¡¯t want to be fighting solo battles or trying to find each other.¡± Perry looked at the bed. It was small, by Earth standards. ¡°I don¡¯t want this to be awkward.¡± ¡°Perry, I have seen your dick,¡± said Maya. ¡°We have an extremely platonic leader and henchperson relationship going, and I would never do anything to endanger that.¡± ¡°I mean, it¡¯s a good dick though, right?¡± asked Perry with a grin. Maya smiled at him. ¡°Wow. Wow wow wow.¡± She pointed at him. ¡°Was that a flirt? The fucking audacity to tell me that you don¡¯t want it to be awkward and then do a flirt.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry, though he didn¡¯t feel or sound even remotely contrite. ¡°It¡¯s the full moon.¡± He held up a hand. ¡°No more, promise.¡± ¡°I mean, a little more wouldn¡¯t be too bad,¡± said Maya. ¡°You¡¯re a stick in the mud, but it doesn''t hurt to have that stick raised up a couple of inches.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think you really understand about the full moon,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure I can keep it contained, especially here, beneath the rock, but it¡¯s like ¡­ I don¡¯t know. This heightening. Like I want to eat a huge rare steak, smoke a cigar, drink a bottle of whiskey, stab someone in the chest, then ¡­¡± ¡°Fuck your way through a sorority?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Something like that,¡± said Perry, letting out a breath. ¡°Not good instincts, aside from the meat.¡± ¡°Unless you find an appreciative sorority, I guess,¡± said Maya. She clucked her tongue. ¡°You and your PA, that¡¯s not been happening?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s still smitten though. I¡¯d kind of thought it would pass. A few days ago it seemed like she was going to try to sneak into my room after me, which would have been well outside what¡¯s proper.¡± ¡°Proper here, you mean,¡± said Maya. ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re going native?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I¡¯m on three worlds, minus the other Earth,¡± said Perry. ¡°First one was super regressive, second one was regressive, now the third is, you guessed it, super regressive. I think I¡¯ve gotten used to just assuming that it¡¯s a no-go. So it¡¯s not going native, no, it¡¯s respecting what the natives seem to respect. And if I let Xiyan into my room, and did the things that werewolf brain said were a good idea, then it seems like it would be a disaster for both her and me. Also, I¡¯ve been worried it¡¯s a trap of some kind.¡± Maya laughed. ¡°Oh, I figured that one out. It¡¯s not a trap, they just think that you¡¯re dark-aligned and I¡¯m light-aligned.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°Meaning ¡­¡± ¡°They gave us someone of the opposite gender because they think we¡¯re ¡ª not gay, but something like it,¡± she said. She was grinning. ¡°They thought ¡®ah, she¡¯s likely got an excess of light, clearly we should give her someone with an excess of light, there¡¯s no way that would invite a scandalous affair¡¯. Not that it¡¯s entirely scandalous.¡± ¡°It kind of is though,¡± said Perry. ¡°But wait, they understand attraction, right?¡± Maya shrugged. ¡°Their understanding is different from ours. I mean, that much is obvious.¡± She looked down at her needle sword. ¡°I¡¯m going to keep armed here. We¡¯ll have a nice and pleasant dinner and see whether these people are as innocent as you seem to think they are.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll have dinner,¡± Perry agreed. ¡°We¡¯ll talk to them then, and maybe after, individually. We want to know about the people who have been through here, or that they¡¯ve heard about, and the gossip from the Grouse Kingdom.¡± ¡°And we¡¯ll hear about their third sphere master, in their own words,¡± said Maya. ¡°You¡¯d really kill them?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s a little ¡­¡± ¡°A little what?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Bloodthirsty,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not eager to put them to the blade,¡± said Maya. ¡°But I¡¯ve heard enough about what their sect gets up to that I¡¯m reaching for my sword, yes. And you seem to be forgetting that the reason we¡¯re here is because we were sent here, with your robot buddy being held captive. Probably Moon Gate isn¡¯t going to give him back just because we lay waste to this place, but it couldn¡¯t hurt, right?¡± ¡°We only do it if we agree on it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Only if there¡¯s something unforgivable, something that you¡¯d put a person to death for on Earth.¡± Even that seemed like a line that was drawn too far past what he was comfortable with. Lingfeng seemed nice enough. They spent some time meditating together before a late dinner, talking to each other in a way that they hadn¡¯t really talked while they¡¯d done independent training. Neither really had the advanced senses necessary to see into the other¡¯s meridians and vessels, but that was difficult for second spheres even if they were exceptionally skilled. Instead they talked about what they felt and how they were developing. It was clear to Perry that he was going faster than she was, since sticking to the formal routines was paying off. ¡°I¡¯ve really been trying to work on the moonlight thing,¡± said Maya. ¡°No,¡± said Perry, shaking his head. ¡°There¡¯s so much foundational stuff that needs to happen before you can do that. You need a vessel prepared for it.¡± Maya narrowed her eyes at him. ¡°Could you do it?¡± she asked. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Seems like I would just wolf out. But if you haven¡¯t been working on your vessels, there¡¯s no way that you¡¯ll ever be able to do moonlight.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been working on it, I said,¡± said Maya. She frowned at him. ¡°Just because I¡¯m not following the textbook doesn¡¯t mean I don¡¯t know what I¡¯m doing.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. He didn¡¯t press it, because he didn¡¯t want her to press it. People learned things in different ways, sure, but he was going with the methods these people had literally been learning about and working on for centuries. Their best practices probably weren¡¯t the actual best practices, not like a modern society would have done things, but they were probably not so bad that forging your own path could beat them. What he and Maya had were other advantages, but he didn¡¯t think they¡¯d be able to press those until they had worked through all the basics. It was a little annoying that she was going off in her own direction, especially if their enemy was someone who could kill second spheres with ease. When they followed Lingfeng into the dining hall for dinner, the temple¡¯s other two residents were already there. Lingfeng gave them pleasant, smiling introductions, but neither seemed interested in courtesies. Sun Yizhong was Lingfeng¡¯s sister, and she hunched over as she ate her dinner, barely even acknowledging them. She looked young, though more like a sophomore in college than a senior in high school. Age was deceptive among the second sphere, but she must have rocketed up into the second sphere to look so young, whatever her true age actually was. Her hair was black and long, hanging straight down, and her clothes were red and black silk, showing more cleavage than Perry had seen among these people. It made him slightly uncomfortable, and for a moment he wondered whether he really was going native. Liu Weiguo stared at them, hairy knuckles tight on his knife, as though he intended to cut into them. He had aggressively long eyebrows, bushy hair, and wore dark brown furs ¡ª the only person that Perry had seen with them. He was also a big guy, maybe taller than Perry. The hand that didn¡¯t have the knife was being used to scoop up and eat his food, with no sign of chopsticks or a fork. The moths flapped against the lights overhead, making them flicker like candlelight, giving the place a terrible ambience. ¡°Sit, sit,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°I had told them not to start without you, but alas.¡± Perry sat down, and Maya took the seat next to him. There were already plates in front of them. ¡°I caught a deer this morning, and have cooked it for us,¡± said Lingfeng. Sitting on the plate was a hunk of meat, seared on all sides. It was enormous, at least a pound of pure meat, with some overcooked vegetables sitting all around it, and beneath that, something leafy and slightly wilted from the heat. Under normal circumstances, Perry might have grimaced and picked at it, but the full moon was having its effects. He tore into the meat as soon as it seemed appropriate to do so, doing his best to restrain himself so he didn¡¯t look like an animal or a slob. While the char was heavy on the outside, it was very rare on the inside, and had a gamey taste that Perry normally wouldn¡¯t have been a fan of. He was devouring it, a new portion of meat in his mouth as soon as the last had slid down his throat. ¡°Where are you from?¡± asked Yizhong. She had only been picking at her food, and was still hunched over, hair half covering her face. ¡°We¡¯re world travelers,¡± said Maya, since Perry¡¯s mouth was full. ¡°We come from a place called Earth, far from the Great Arc.¡± ¡°You came together?¡± asked Lingfeng. ¡°Despite the differences in your breeding?¡± Maya smiled at him. It wasn¡¯t a nice smile. ¡°The nation we come from welcomes people from all corners of the world,¡± said Perry. ¡°It is considered one of its great strengths.¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t seem a strength,¡± said Liu Weiguo. ¡°The Kingdom of Seven Valleys is not stronger for those of the Grouse Kingdom coming to join it.¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t it?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Aren¡¯t you going to put those people to work? Won¡¯t they become laborers, farmers?¡± She didn¡¯t add ¡®slaves¡¯ but it was clearly on the tip of her tongue. ¡°They come with different ideas,¡± said Liu Weiguo. ¡°And?¡± asked Maya. She had barely eaten her food, and Perry didn¡¯t think it was because she had progressed far enough into the second sphere to not need to eat. ¡°Different ideas can cause friction,¡± said Perry. ¡°They can lead to conflict.¡± He was sympathetic to that, at least in the abstract. ¡°Is the Grouse Kingdom really so different from us?¡± asked Yizhong. She was taking tiny bites. At the rate she was eating, she¡¯d need three hours to finish. ¡°They are,¡± said Liu Weiguo. ¡°We have done battle with them before, not just over territory, but to protect those who fled from their borders. The kingdom is collapsed now, dead until someone comes by to resurrect it.¡± ¡°You take them in though,¡± said Perry. ¡°Like you¡¯ve taken us in.¡± ¡°Lingfeng does,¡± said Liu Weiguo, nodding at their host. ¡°Hospitality is virtuous,¡± said Lingfeng. His smile was gentle. ¡°To provide food and shelter for those who need it, to wash their feet and abide by the rites of hosting, these are important things.¡± ¡°So what got you sent out here?¡± asked Maya. Lingfeng¡¯s smile faded, but his sister laughed. ¡°My brother is a pervert,¡± she said, still giggling. Lingfeng glared at her. ¡°What does that mean?¡± asked Maya. She was leaning over the table, toward Yizhong. ¡°He wanted great-grandfather¡¯s control,¡± said Yizhong, and she burst out laughing. ¡°A third sphere¡¯s power over the first sphere!¡± ¡°Enough,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°You need to have sisterly respect, piety toward family.¡± Maya leaned back. She turned to Lingfeng. ¡°But what does she mean, that you wanted control over someone?¡± ¡°Not someone, his nursemaid,¡± said Yizhong. ¡°I was young,¡± said Lingfeng. He set his hands flat on the table, having resigned himself to an explanation. ¡°I had ascended to the second sphere at nineteen. To extend the matrix outside oneself is the domain of the third sphere, but I had planned a way around that.¡± He shrugged. ¡°This is a better place for me, and I can watch over Yizhong here.¡± ¡°The nursemaid was only the first,¡± said Liu Weiguo. He was speaking with meat in his mouth, and spit a bit of gristle onto his plate. ¡°I did not mean to suggest that it was the only such mistake,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°How¡¯d that work?¡± asked Maya. ¡°The control, the workaround?¡± Everyone at the table, save for Perry, went still and silent. ¡°Where you are from, you freely inquire about forbidden techniques?¡± asked Lingfeng. ¡°Here, it is not something to speak of.¡± ¡°You misunderstand,¡± said Perry, swallowing quickly to get some words in. ¡°She didn¡¯t want to know the technique, only the nature. Control can mean many things to many people, and some should be judged less harshly than others.¡± Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Lingfeng relaxed slightly, but didn¡¯t speak. ¡°Great-grandfather can move his spirit into those of the first sphere,¡± said Yizhong. ¡°Sister,¡± said Lingfeng, voice firm. ¡°They can know this,¡± said Yizhong. She tittered. ¡°Everyone does, inside Worm Gate and out.¡± She turned to Maya. ¡°He moves their arm as though it were his own.¡± She demonstrated with a graceful motion back and forth of her thin fingers. ¡°Hundreds are under his sway.¡± ¡°Volunteers?¡± asked Perry. Yizhong looked at him for a long time. ¡°Filial obedience is a virtue,¡± she said. ¡°Obedience to your master, to your father, your grandfather, great-grandfather. It is a virtue that is first and foremost within Worm Gate.¡± Liu Weiguo was chewing on a piece of fat. ¡°Some fall under his sway for long enough that to not act as an extension of his will is unthinkable. They forget how to move their own arms. But this is no matter, because our master is there for them, to move them in ways they have forgotten they could.¡± There was bitterness in his voice. ¡°You tread dangerously close to speaking out against our master,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°Not even my sister would go so far.¡± ¡°I would,¡± tittered Yizhong. ¡°But I fear you would strike me.¡± Lingfeng scowled at her and slammed his fist on the table. ¡°Can you not contain yourself in front of our guests?¡± ¡°She¡¯s a pervert too,¡± said Liu Weiguo, as a casual aside, not taking his eyes off his food. ¡°I apologize,¡± said Lingfeng, turning to Perry and Maya. ¡°I always hope that they won¡¯t be like this, that decorum will win the day, but they would not be here if decorum were a realm they were used to treading.¡± ¡°You had said that you were here by choice,¡± said Perry. ¡°That this was a way to retreat from the central temples of the sect without needing to leave entirely.¡± ¡°He said that?¡± asked Liu Weiguo. ¡°It¡¯s true, I suppose, in a sense.¡± He chuckled to himself. ¡°Moth Lantern Hall is a place that exists because of the conflicts of duty, the butting up of virtues, one against each other like the dragon and the tiger.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a place to put people who have misbehaved,¡± said Maya. ¡°No, no,¡± said Liu Weiguo. ¡°It¡¯s a place to put people who will misbehave, if not separated from the rest.¡± He looked at Lingfeng. ¡°Do we have wine?¡± ¡°Do we have wine?¡± asked Maya. ¡°No,¡± said Lingfeng. He looked at Maya. ¡°I keep no wine in the hall, for fear of what might happen with these two if they were to indulge.¡± ¡°Shame,¡± said Maya. She looked at Liu Weiguo. ¡°Alright, so these two are perverts, what¡¯s your story then? How¡¯d you end up here?¡± Liu Weiguo shook his head. ¡°It¡¯s a pity there¡¯s no wine. This is the sort of story that goes better with wine.¡± ¡°Oh come on,¡± said Yizhong. ¡°Tell your sad little story. Please?¡± Perry wondered how many times she¡¯d heard it before, and why she would want to hear it again. ¡°Very well,¡± said Liu Weiguo. He cleared his throat and set down his knife, then looked over at Perry and Maya. ¡°I was a powerful warrior. I tethered to Worm Gate as soon as I was second sphere, and studied diligently, training from the rising of the sun until its setting, and often in the dark of night, illuminated only by the moons above, or a constellation of glow bugs I had brought to my side. I had a worm farm within the temple, a large one given to me by the master of the place. I had his favor, you see.¡± He grinned. His teeth were white and perfectly straight, not what Perry would have expected given the furs and his overall demeanor. ¡°The master would ask me to do things for him,¡± said Liu Weiguo. ¡°Sometimes he would only suggest, but other times he would be direct. There were certain things that needed to be done that he would not dirty his own hands with, that he could not admit were necessary.¡± He gave them a sharp grin. ¡°I traveled far and wide for my master, beyond the Green Snake Valley. He is third sphere, you know, and they have reach beyond such small areas ¡ª and I was his reach, a finger of his will. I traveled through the whole of the Kingdom of Seven Valleys, and sometimes beyond its borders, going where my master needed me.¡± He pounded the table with the full strength of his fist, and the plates and silverware jumped. There was a silence that followed, broken only by the beating of moths against the lanterns overhead. He pointed slowly at Perry. ¡°I was weakened by this, you understand?¡± ¡°Cosmic karma,¡± said Perry. He was keeping an eye at Maya, whose teeth were set, the muscles of her cheek tense. ¡°Cosmic karma,¡± nodded Liu Weiguo. ¡°I killed a merchant, and felt ill for weeks afterward, his death like a gripping of my heart. I killed a woman who had run from the temple, silencing the poisoned words she surely would have told the kingdom about who my master was. I grew sick to my stomach, queasy, imbalanced with no seeming cause. My meridians were prone to clogging, and I suffered the rupture of a vessel. Still, I pressed on, for the good of my master, the good of the temple to which I was tethered.¡± He held up three fingers. ¡°Three decades I did these things for the master. I was his silent knife in the night.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not something you should speak of,¡± said Lingfeng. He wasn¡¯t looking at Liu Weiguo. Instead he was looking straight ahead, expression vacant. Liu Weiguo turned to him. ¡°I am a man of integrity,¡± he snapped. ¡°For too long I was not, my behavior unvirtuous. I paid a heavy price. The third sphere is barred to me, forevermore, my soul stained by the work I did.¡± He beat his fist against his chest and stared at Lingfeng, who didn¡¯t return his gaze. Eventually, Liu Weiguo turned back to Perry. ¡°The master did not honor the virtue of reciprocity.¡± ¡°He didn¡¯t reward you for the work you¡¯d done,¡± said Maya. Her voice was preternaturally calm, in a very second sphere sort of way. Liu Weiguo nodded slowly. ¡°I was being bled. Should he not have bled for me? Should my work not have been rewarded? I shouldered the burdens, alone. I was ground down, dulled, a tool that was seen as expendable. I only wish that I had seen it sooner.¡± There was silence around the dining table, save for the fluttering of moths. Maya was chewing a bite of food, watching Liu Weiguo, her eyes moving occasionally to Lingfeng. Perry could see it in her face. She wasn¡¯t deciding whether to kill them, she was deciding how to kill them. ¡°He likes to make out like he had an epiphany,¡± said Yizhong. She pushed her plate forward. ¡°As does my brother.¡± ¡°Yizhong,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°Weiguo failed,¡± said Yizhong. ¡°He limped back to the temple grounds, bloody and beaten, arm broken in two places.¡± Liu Weiguo gripped his knife tight. His lips were thin. ¡°And my brother ¡ª¡± ¡°Silence,¡± said Lingfeng. He stood from his position at the table, and energy flared around him, more visible than the trickle of current it had been. ¡°You have overstepped your bounds, sister, a perennial problem, but I will tolerate no more this night.¡± ¡°Perry,¡± said Maya, turning to him. ¡°I think it might be time for us to conduct our business.¡± ¡°I¡¯d prefer to talk about that privately,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, I think now is definitely the time,¡± said Maya. ¡°For what?¡± asked Lingfeng, narrowing his eyes. ¡°I had thought you were only passing through. You have business at Moth Lantern Hall?¡± ¡°Yup,¡± said Maya. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve, then gave Perry another look. ¡°We¡¯re not here by chance. We¡¯re here looking for someone who calls himself a thresholder or something similar, someone who¡¯s jumping through worlds like we are. You said you¡¯ve had guests, anyone by that description within the last few months?¡± ¡°This was your business here?¡± asked Lingfeng. ¡°Someone from Crystal Lake Temple was killed, not much more than three miles from here,¡± continued Maya. ¡°We think it was the thresholder.¡± ¡°He was second sphere,¡± said Perry. He knew this wasn¡¯t what she¡¯d meant by ¡®business¡¯, that this was only perfunctory. ¡°Not a trivial thing to do, to kill someone of second sphere. It¡¯s best to bring him to justice, if we can. Anything you can tell us would be of great value.¡± ¡°There¡¯s been no one like you,¡± said Lingfeng. ¡°No people in strange clothes with unfamiliar features.¡± He was still standing, but sat back down slowly. ¡°You have learned much about us, but we have learned little about you. There is some danger in technique, in knowing, but often more danger in ignorance. Perry, you said that you had been second sphere for only a month?¡± ¡°We need to know about the third thresholder,¡± said Maya. ¡°We¡¯re not dropping that subject just yet.¡± Lingfeng spread his hands. ¡°There¡¯s nothing to know. No one of that description has passed through these halls, nor taken our food.¡± ¡°They might not have looked foreign,¡± said Perry. ¡°It might have been a woman, not a man.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Lingfeng, shaking his head. ¡°Not unless they were an excellent liar.¡± He looked at Maya. ¡°The second sphere that was murdered, they wouldn¡¯t have been unaffiliated, not unless they were from the Grouse Kingdom. They were from Moon Gate, weren¡¯t they?¡± ¡°Yup,¡± said Maya. Perry winced. The conclusion was obvious. ¡°You should leave,¡± said Lingfeng. He stood from his chair, and Liu Weiguo did too. ¡°You¡¯ve been fed, but the offer of a room to stay must be rescinded.¡± ¡°We only want information,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just to find someone who might be very dangerous to everyone around him.¡± ¡°I must insist,¡± said Lingfeng. His stance was wide, arms crossed. Maya glanced at Perry, then stood up and drew her needle in dramatic fashion. Her armor flowed over her, slipping over her skin beneath the hoodie, coating her in skintight black. The familiar shiny bubble formed around her face. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. Before there was even the smallest chance of de-escalation, Lingfeng had leapt up onto the table. He was unarmed, and certainly without armor, but he was crackling with power and kicked Maya in the chest before she could bring her needle into position, sending her flying away. Perry backed up, raising his arms defensively. As soon as Lingfeng turned his attention to Maya, Perry drew his sword, but he didn¡¯t go in for the attack. This was all Maya¡¯s fault. She had gone charging in, headfirst, like he¡¯d worried she would, and for what? Because Lingfeng was a rapist (or worse) and Liu Weiguo was a fixer for Worm Gate who¡¯d readily admitted to staining his hands with blood. It was the kind of thing they should have had a fucking conversation about, something that they could have gone over, but she¡¯d just drawn her needle like she expected him to have no choice but to join her. Perry didn¡¯t rush to her defense, not at all. He just stood there, watching. Maya had the upper hand, in part because she was armed. Every strike Lingfeng made needed to be precise, slipping in where he saw an opening, and even then, he needed to retreat before she brought the needle around. She had other tools in the toolbox, but wasn¡¯t using them just yet, and she scored at least one hit, though it seemed to have cut through his clothes more than his flesh. Liu Weiguo and Sun Yizhong joined soon enough. Liu Weiguo had two long daggers that must have been pulled from beneath his furs, and Sun Yizhong was wielding the knife she¡¯d been using to eat with, though that was hardly threatening. Liu Weiguo took a single look at Perry, then turned toward Maya. ¡°Perry!¡± shouted Maya. Her back was to the wall, and they were giving her a moment, wary of the needle that was moving wildly in front of her. She¡¯d gotten herself into this mess. They didn¡¯t want to kill him, they just wanted him to leave, but she had drawn her sword and declared her intentions well enough, violating the sanctity of guest rights. Two on three, they might have stood a chance, but one on three, he didn¡¯t like her odds. He wanted to fight, he was itching for it, but ¡ª ¡°Help me you asshole!¡± shouted Maya. Liu Weiguo moved on her, daggers flashing in front of him, and she parried one but couldn¡¯t block the other, which tried to bury itself in her midsection. She grunted and was pushed backward, and for a moment Perry thought that she¡¯d be fine, but blood had trickled out, the barrier of the nanite skinsuit broken. She would use sunlight to heal, but that healing was in limited supply. ¡°Go slowly with her,¡± said Sun Lingfeng. ¡°There¡¯s no need to take risks.¡± He looked at Perry, who was off to one side, just slightly behind. It was almost the world''s worst pincer. ¡°You may leave while we deal with your ¡­ ally.¡± Maya¡¯s black mask slipped down. She must have done that on purpose, purely for the sake of looking Perry in the eyes. ¡°Perry,¡± she said. Her eyes skittered sideways, toward Liu Weiguo and his daggers. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± That almost would have been enough for him, just to hear her say that, but it was too little, too late, the kind of sorry that comes after the damage has been done. He had seen it coming, and she had known that she was being shitty, so what did it matter that she said sorry for it? She would do the same thing again. But as it turned out, she wasn¡¯t saying sorry for something she¡¯d done: she was saying it for something she was about to do. Maya¡¯s free hand turned outward, toward Perry, and a blast of light came forth from it. It wasn¡¯t sunlight. She¡¯d been working hard on the moonlight thing, she¡¯d said, and he had cut her off, telling her that he knew better, that her way wouldn¡¯t work. He almost had time for that thought before he transformed. He ripped through his clothing and was immediately in motion, attacking the one that was covered in furs, something that he¡¯d been wanting to do even in human form. He bit down through the man¡¯s shoulder and felt blades across his snout, but he whipped his head back and forth with all the speed he could muster, shaking the body until the chunk of flesh ripped loose. The furred man crashed against the wall, arm hanging on by an inch-thick flap of skin and muscle, but the wolf was already onto the next of them, the woman. She flew backward, her small knife out in front of her ¡ª flew with a flap of her arms, ten feet in the air, away from his jaws. The wolf turned toward easier prey, the man with no weapons to speak of, who was calmly squaring up, fists in front of him. He was fast, like these people were, and prepared enough to slip to the side when the wolf came in with sharp claws. He was on the retreat though, backing away, stepping up onto the table and hopping down the other side, to put space between them. Before the wolf could leap over the table, the girl who had flown up toward the ceiling came fluttering in, crashing down hard on his head. She rolled away almost at once, leaping up with another flap of the arms, and the wolf was in pain, unable to see. Something was stuck there, sharp and slicing, narrowing the world down to just the right eye¡¯s view. The uninjured man had, in the meanwhile, acquired a weapon, though it wasn¡¯t clear from where ¡ª it was a thin chain with a blade at the end, and he was spinning it around as though it would be an actual threat. The wolf pounced at him rather than trying to take on the flying woman again. The blade at the end of the blade shot out, and grazed the wolf along the cheek, but the snapping of jaws found no purchase. The man was retreating again, but this time toward one of the dining hall¡¯s doors. The wolf was big enough that the tunnels would be a problem, but so long as those tunnels led to a small room or the open air, the retreat would serve only to delay the inevitable. The wolf turned just in time to see the flying woman descending from the ceiling again, moths trailing her. She had one of the injured man¡¯s daggers and was moving with swift precision, but before she could impact the wolf in the head again, driving the dagger down into the other eye, she was tackled out of the air by Maya. Their bodies collided and they careened off in opposite directions, with Maya striking one of the hall¡¯s pillars and bouncing off it. She landed on her feet and got her bearings almost instantly, putting herself in a defensive position ¡ª not against their enemies, but against the wolf. The chain came from the wolf¡¯s blind side and wrapped around his snout, hooking around itself and holding his teeth together with so much power that it felt like a vise. The wolf yanked his head sideways and pushed his paws off the ground, powerful legs and sturdy neck pulling hard on the chain. Lingfeng was tossed through the air and let go of the chain, but twisted his body and corrected his movement, stepping off a pillar and landing on the ground at the dining hall¡¯s far end. He thrust his hands high up into the air, and the moths began to fall from the ceiling like leaves in autumn, dead. Lingfeng rushed forward and drew back for a punch that Perry tried to snap at. He was rewarded with a blow of such crushing power that it broke the table beneath them. The wolf went flying backward, jaw shattered, and got back up on his paws, dripping blood on the ground. Lingfeng was walking quickly but with exaggerated calm, the fury only on his face, not in his movements. To one side, Perry could hear the clash of blades as Maya fought with the sister, or possibly the man who¡¯d lost an arm, but he couldn¡¯t spare much thought for it. Distantly, he was aware that he had more of his faculties, his knowledge, which meant that the moonlight might be fading away. He tried to harness it, to keep the vessel wide open, energy pouring out through his body, healing wounds. Lingfeng crossed the distance between them in a flash, landing a two-fingered prod with the weight of a sledgehammer. Perry was slammed back against the wall of the dining wall, and something broke. He let out a whimper, but righted himself ¡ª just in time for another two-fingered prod. This one struck him in his head and snapped his head to the side, which knocked against the back wall. The moth-fall was reaching its end, the dead fluttering to the ground, and Lingfeng was still bearing down on him, impossibly fast and strong. Lingfeng dodged claws and teeth, moving side to side, patient. Perry¡¯s injuries were healing, bones knitting back together, but the pain was overwhelming, his thoughts only half-formed, driven by fear. Perry swiped with the claws of his left paw, but Lingfeng got beneath it and grabbed the leg in an iron grip. In desperation, Perry swiped with the other, but then Lingfeng had it too, hold both massive legs as though they were nothing. He was going to run out of power, but while he had it, he was indomitable, and he didn¡¯t fear snapping teeth, not when Perry¡¯s jaw was still half-broken. He was rearing back for a headbutt, one that he would put his whole body and all his energy into. Perry curled his body forward and lashed out with his hind legs, and the sharp claws found purchase on Lingfeng¡¯s stomach, cutting through cloth, skin, and muscle. The floor was quickly red with their combined blood, but Lingfeng¡¯s injuries were by far the worse of the two of them. He faltered, letting on paw slip free, and the freed claws quickly came down on his face. He slipped to the ground, and Perry bit down on his head with a not-quite-mended mouthful of teeth, putting pressure in all the same until the skull cracked and the brains spilled out onto his tongue. He turned to Maya. She was still engaged in swordplay with the other woman, and was losing. Maya¡¯s colorful hoodie had been cut to ribbons, with only a few pieces clinging onto her, and the black armor was stained with blood, some of which had to be her own. She was back against a wall with the needle in front of her, but Yizhong had plucked the daggers from her fallen comrade and was weaving them back and forth in a delicate pattern. Perry prowled closer, soft paws against the blood-wet ground. He was a hulking creature, but silent, and she was too focused on the struggle in front of her. Off to one side, the man with the furs was slumped against the wall. His throat had been slit at some point, Maya¡¯s work, and he was pale and dead. When Perry leapt forward, Yizhong turned toward him, as though she¡¯d always known he was there. One of the two daggers flashed forward, and he simply allowed it into his mouth and bit down hard with sharpened teeth onto the crook of her elbow. The dagger sliced into his palate, but she screamed in horror, and that was well worth the pain. From behind her, Maya took her opportunity, and stabbed forward with the needle sword. Yizhong tried to dodge it, even with her arm in the wolf¡¯s mouth, but she couldn¡¯t move, couldn¡¯t twist around to parry. The sword caught her through the ribs, and she was pinned like a moth on a corkboard, twitching and struggling briefly before going still. Perry released her arm from his mouth, tasting her salty blood. Maya stared at him for a moment, watching his snarling lips as though trying to decide whether she could take him. They both knew that she couldn¡¯t. She smelled of blood and defeat. The scent of fear was seeping through her black armor. With the armor as skin tight as it was, he could see how hard she was breathing, how her chest was heaving to draw in enough air. She blasted him with sunlight and, in the same motion, bolted. By the time Perry was done transforming back to himself, she was gone. He stood naked in the dining hall, blood and bodies around him. His sword found its way to his hand, and he went to the bodies, one by one, making absolutely certain that they were dead. He was going to have to do the death rites as Luo Yanhua had shown him. Maya had betrayed him. She knew what she¡¯d done. If she¡¯d been in better shape, she might have fought him, but he had come back to human at full strength, uninjured, not even winded. She had probably planned it from the start, had probably decided that she¡¯d change his form to get her way. Or she¡¯d thought that he would be forced to join her, but had a plan for if he didn¡¯t, a way to force him into the fray. She was sorry, maybe, not that it meant a damned thing to him. This was it. Perry gripped the sword hard enough to turn his knuckles white. There had never been a third thresholder, only her, and she had fled rather than have the fight in the here and now. The full moon was out, and he would become the wolf if he stepped outside. She would be preparing the battleground for their next fight, healing herself as much as she could, plotting and planning. He was going to bury the bodies, find a new set of clothes, and wait out the night. Then, he was going to find and kill her. Chapter 49 - Shattered Promises Perry was going to kill her. He was going to pin her to the ground and beat her face into a pudding of blood and brains, he was going to break her arms and eat her fingers one by one, he was going to pull her ribs apart and gorge on her organs. That was how he was feeling, anyway. The rage was flowing through him and the moons were full. He was going to strain every muscle in the act of murdering her, use every inch of power in his body. The rational part of his mind was trying to work through the logistics of how any of that would be possible. Her armor was really very good, her needle was sharp, he didn¡¯t have the armor, he was vulnerable to her light attacks, and she could immediately negate the advantage of the wolf form, which he couldn¡¯t even control yet. These considerations were fighting with his emotional response. He kept imagining what he would do to her once he¡¯d somehow beaten her, rather than imagining the concrete steps he would need to take to get to that point. He was stuck within the Moth Lantern Hall unless he wanted to go out into the moonlight anyway. Going out into the moonlight would probably mean that he would transform, which would mean that he could chase after her as a wolf, but innocent people would almost certainly die, and he couldn¡¯t win the fight as the wolf, not when she could just change him back. If she had gone back to Camp Crystal Lake, she would have their support, an army of martial artists who would be ready to move against him. She could just tell them the truth: that he had turned into a wolf and killed three people. There was nothing to do with the anger. He¡¯d have tried to funnel it into digging graves, but those would need to be dug outside, and the moons were outside. Instead, he tore through the empty hall, opening the rooms to see if there was anything he could use. Lingfeng had extra clothes, though they didn¡¯t fit quite right. Perry had no idea what the policy on stealing from the dead was in this world, but he was naked, his clothes destroyed. He would have taken other things too, if it had seemed like there was anything of value to him. Lingfeng¡¯s room had plenty of things in it, but Perry didn¡¯t know how to use any of it. Maybe the books were worth stealing, or the pieces of jade like the ones Luo Yanhua had, but it was all beyond him at the moment, and bringing it back to Crystal Lake Temple seemed like it would only get him in trouble. These people took their techniques seriously. In the end, Perry tried to sleep. The moons were full and he could feel it, which would have made sleep difficult even if there hadn¡¯t been three bodies lined up in the hall, even if he wasn¡¯t in an enemy camp where he¡¯d surely be put to death if found. When sleep didn¡¯t come, Perry meditated. His extra vessel was practically vibrating, extra energy seeping out of it, and he could feel just how easy it would be to crack it open and let the transformation take hold. If he was going to have any hope of beating Maya, he would need to be able to harness it without the transformation, so he put all his effort into that, wedging the vessel and letting its energy flow through him. It was difficult work that didn¡¯t get all that much easier after five hours, and he was skeptical of his ability to use it during a fight. He needed the speed, the strength, the raw power of the wolf, just without the form, and with his own control. When it felt like it was getting closer to dawn, Perry took the vambrace and the drone out to the entryway. Maya had left the door open, and moonlight was shining down, but Perry stayed well clear of it. He booted up the drone and sent it out, down the long hallway and up into the air, where it circled once before returning. ¡°No connection,¡± it intoned when it returned. Perry swore and folded the drone up. Not having a connection from high above the trees was terrible news. March had gone incommunicado from just before they¡¯d gone into Moth Lantern Hall, but enough time had passed for Maya to return to Crystal Lake Temple and do something to him, if she hadn¡¯t done something already. The nanites were a nightmare, capable of getting inside the suit and frying vital microcircuitry or even killing the reactor. They weren¡¯t built for it, but Perry wouldn¡¯t put it past her. The long, sleepless night had given him a chance to cool down a bit. His fantasies of mutilation had run their course. He was still angry, but it was a simmering anger, not a blistering one. Maya hadn¡¯t intended to turn him into a wolf. She had intended to force the fight and have him join in, not expecting that he¡¯d leave her to her fate. It was simple escalation, a matter of her doing a dick move, him doing a dick move back, and then her responding in kind. There was no possible hope of de-escalation though, no hope for peace, not when she¡¯d run off. Maybe she felt bad. He didn¡¯t give a fuck. When the sun rose, Perry stepped out into the open air. For all the holes that Moth Lantern Hall had poked in it for ventilation, it was stuffy, and the clean air felt good in his lungs. He could feel the moonlight, but it wasn¡¯t enough to put a strain on him. It was energizing, a mild buzz that could be mistaken for something else. He felt like going for a run, but there was work to do. Moth Lantern Hall had a shovel, and Perry spent a few hours digging shallow graves, just as he¡¯d done on his first day on the Great Arc. The work was faster, even without the power armor, a sign of how far he¡¯d come into the second sphere. The whole thing would probably have gone twice as fast if he had Luo Yanhua¡¯s power, but he tried to put that thought out of his mind. Once the bodies were in the ground and covered, Perry did his best to recreate what he¡¯d seen from the previous funerals he¡¯d been witness to. He was hoping that he had done it right, that the ritual wasn¡¯t exacting, because another fight with these three in zombie form wasn¡¯t something he was eager to do. He hadn¡¯t gotten dirty in the course of digging the graves. He would probably never get dirty again, not for longer than a few minutes. There was no blood or grit beneath his fingernails, and his bare feet were pristine, spotless. The clothes were the same, as clean as when he¡¯d put them on, and they fit better than they had in the morning. If Perry wore them for a week, he imagined that they would fit as well as if they had been tailored to him. He¡¯d been paying attention to his clothes through his whole training process, and still wasn¡¯t entirely clear on what was happening, except that some small amount of his energy was being harnessed by what he wore. There was still no response from March, even with the drone flying up high. Perry was hesitant to risk having it do more complicated maneuvers, since its brain was tiny and the list of commands it would listen to was small. The lack of connection was very worrying. The night before, Perry had all kinds of explanations for why March wouldn¡¯t be able to connect, but now the worst case scenarios were feeling likely. Maya had the night to do whatever she wanted. Perry made his way through the forest, moving swiftly but not flying with the sword. He wanted to keep a low profile. When he was near Crystal Lake Temple, he crept through the bamboo, trying to see if he could spot Maya. There was no telling what she might have said to them, but they were on war footing, and she¡¯d had her chance to play dirty. It was Luo Yanhua who found him, before he¡¯d made his way into the temple grounds. Just as she had the first time they met, she¡¯d felt his eyes on her, or perhaps just noticed him creeping in the woods from far away. She approached, and Perry stood, taking it as a good sign that she wasn¡¯t armed or calling in others. ¡°Is there a reason you¡¯re taking the indirect path?¡± she asked. ¡°Has Maya returned to Crystal Lake Temple?¡± asked Perry. He gripped the hilt of his sword as though he was squeezing a neck. ¡°Not to my knowledge,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Were you able to weather the full moons last night?¡± Perry pursed his lips. He couldn¡¯t keep dodging questions, but if he spoke, it needed to be considered. The dead bodies would be found eventually. The only question was whether throwing Maya under the bus was the right strategy. ¡°Maya and I went to Moth Lantern Hall, seeking information on the murder,¡± said Perry. ¡°We had dinner with them, as they had offered us shelter for the night. In the course of conversation, Maya decided that they could not be suffered to live, and when it seemed as though they would overwhelm her, she forced me to transform into the wolf. All three died by my hand, and I believe I would have killed Maya as well if she hadn¡¯t transformed me back. She ran away, injured, and I had no hope of following while the moons were so full, not without potentially putting civilians in danger. I buried the bodies this morning and gave them the proper rites, then came here.¡± Luo Yanhua was silent. Perry was worried that he had just done something stupid, but there was no way that the murders last night wouldn¡¯t come to light. Any lies told now would be unearthed later on, and it wasn¡¯t as though he could have said ¡®oh, I was nowhere to be found, these people whose place you had mentioned died, that¡¯s terrible news, and it was a giant wolf? What a crazy random occurrence, I turn into a giant wolf sometimes.¡¯ He couldn¡¯t even have tried to pin it more firmly on Maya, not when examination of the bodies would show the wounds from his claws and bite marks from his teeth. Maybe they didn¡¯t do autopsies here, but they would surely move the bodies from the shallow graves he¡¯d dug. ¡°You were unable to control yourself,¡± Luo Yanhua finally said. ¡°Even under the light of the three full moons, I would have withstood it,¡± said Perry, though he wasn¡¯t sure that was true, and he hadn¡¯t felt that confidence the night before. ¡°I have control of it, have learned a lot about that power and how it integrates with the matrix, but she has developed her ability to exploit it.¡± Luo Yanhua nodded and looked out at the temple, her back to him. ¡°I am not sure that the Grandmaster will see it that way.¡± Perry took a breath. ¡°Then I¡¯ll prostrate myself at the Grandmaster¡¯s feet. I know that I¡¯m not a member here, and would be unsuitable to being one, but ¡ª¡± Luo Yanhua turned around to face him, whip-fast. ¡°Perry, the Grandmaster does not want to hear your excuses. She will throw you to the ground and break your fingers for the insult that you have offered to Moth Lantern Hall, and then you will be cast out.¡± Perry felt his lips go thin. He¡¯d thought that it would be bad, but he hadn¡¯t realized just how bad. They had sent him out hoping that he would wage their war and keep their hands clean. Then, despite his best efforts, he¡¯d done pretty much exactly what they had wanted from him. Maybe they had only wanted one dead, not three, but this was exactly the desired outcome. Now he was being punished for it. ¡°Perhaps you misunderstood me,¡± said Perry through gritted teeth. ¡°It was Maya who killed them.¡± Luo Yanhua¡¯s face went deathly calm. ¡°That would be quite different,¡± she said. ¡°I tried to stop her, but succeeded only in taking an injury for my efforts,¡± said Perry. ¡°They thought that we were on the same side, and fought against me, but I acted only in my own defense. Once Maya had killed them, she crept off into the night.¡± It was a lie, a direct bald-faced lie that she knew was a lie, one that was being said only for the sake of politics and cosmic karma. Not his cosmic karma, hers. He¡¯d tried to tell the truth, but the truth would only get him in trouble, maybe both of them in trouble, so now he was taking the hit. Liu Weiguo had talked about being a fixer for Worm Gate, being tasked with murderous errands in indirect language, used and abused. He¡¯d probably had to lie about it too, and if he tried to tell the truth, he would be told he was mistaken, pushed until he was only saying what they wanted to be said. There had to be a wall, always a suggestion that he do a job, or that a job needed doing, and never any confirmation from him, or at least not in direct terms. ¡°We will deliver the grim news to the Grandmaster,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But before we speak with her, there¡¯s something that I need to discuss with you.¡± Perry folded his arms. ¡°Go ahead.¡± ¡°This morning, when the quartermaster went into the armory, he noticed new damage to your armor,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Perry stiffened. ¡°Damage,¡± he said. ¡°The vital energies appear to have been disrupted,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°When I was informed, I went to go see, and it appears that sometime in the night, the armor suffered an attack. Marchand was no longer responsive to communication.¡± Perry felt his blood run cold. ¡°I was assured that the quartermaster would look after the armor,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was told that you were going to hold onto it to ensure that I wasn¡¯t ¡ª¡± ¡°Calm yourself,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I am calm,¡± said Perry, though he was practically vibrating with anger. ¡°When did it happen?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Her tone wasn¡¯t nearly sympathetic enough, not by half. ¡°No one was observed going into the armory, and the door is kept locked when the quartermaster isn¡¯t around.¡± This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. ¡°It could have happened in the middle of the night,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or before.¡± ¡°It¡¯s possible, yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I need to go see him,¡± said Perry. He began moving without waiting for a response, using the sword for extra speed, his feet no longer touching the ground. ¡°Peregrin!¡± Luo Yanhua called. She was following after him, and was fast enough to grab his arm. He stopped and turned on her, barely stopping himself from burying his sword in her stomach. He didn¡¯t think he¡¯d ever been so angry, and she was the only one to direct the anger at. ¡°I have two things in this world,¡± said Perry. He hefted his sword. ¡°I have this sword and that armor. I explained this to you.¡± ¡°You must speak with the Grandmaster,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I need to assess the damage, to see whether I can restart him, or fix him,¡± said Perry. ¡°If the Grandmaster has a problem with that, she can find me in the armory.¡± He moved away from Luo Yanhua and flew to the armory, moving as quickly as the sword could carry him. When he arrived, the quartermaster was standing in front of the door, arms folded, but when he saw Perry¡¯s face and the white-knuckled grip on the sword, he unlocked the door and stepped aside. The damage was precise, centered in the middle of the torso. The metal had been pierced by a sword, or something like it, though it must have been moving at incredible speed to have made such a hole. Perry was immediately and painfully aware that it had been at the worst possible spot for a hole to be, but it took close inspection to confirm that the microfusion reactor had been struck through. Perry took out the vambrace with shaking hands and pulled the cord that connected the battery. The armor didn¡¯t have a single source of computation, it was all over, but the largest bulk of processing power was in the chest, which was where Perry plugged in. He wasn¡¯t even sure that it would work like this, since the power was supposed to flow from the reactor to the extremities, not the other way around, but he had no one to ask. Marchand had always taken care of himself, with occasional repairs and maintenance from Perry under close supervision. Perry plugged in, and nothing happened. ¡°Come on, come on,¡± said Perry. He took the helmet off the armor and placed it on his own head, but it was completely dark. That was a bad sign, but unfortunately not unprecedented. Perry took the helmet off and swore. All he needed was to get March through the boot sequence, and then ¡­ There was no ¡®and then¡¯. The microfusion reactor was dead. It was the beating heart of the armor, the bedrock that everything was built around, and if March wasn¡¯t responding, if the batteries had been blown, then there wasn¡¯t just no chance of the armor functioning again, Perry had lost his most important companion ¡ª his only companion, because Luo Yanhua was a snake and Maya was a traitor. He was alone. ¡°Perry,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She had come up to him from behind. ¡°What?¡± he asked. ¡°We need to speak with the Grandmaster about what¡¯s happened,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You need to tell her about Maya.¡± ¡°You need to tell me what happened,¡± said Perry. He gestured at the armor. ¡°March is dead. He wasn¡¯t ever alive, he wasn¡¯t a person, but he was something, and now he¡¯s not. Without the core, there¡¯s no way that I can get power into him, and trying to revive him is ¡­¡± He shook his head. It was unexpected, but he almost felt like he was on the verge of tears. Some of that was just emotional exhaustion from the night before, all the murderous rage wearing him down. ¡°We did our best to protect your armor,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°There are clearly powerful forces at work here.¡± That was a piss poor excuse. It did nothing to comfort him, nor to excuse their failure. ¡°It¡¯s Maya,¡± said Perry. ¡°You think she came in here in the middle of the night?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°The door was still locked in the morning.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°She has a skeleton key ¡ª a technique she can use. There was nothing stolen from here, was there? Nothing was damaged except the armor. She¡¯s the only one with any incentive, and she went right for the reactor.¡± He turned to the armor and his fingers touched the hole. It was a thicker entry wound than her needle. He frowned at it. Did the timeline work out right? March had lost contact while they were still together, which meant that maybe it was her nanites working remotely, but they weren¡¯t built for long distance, and they also weren¡¯t built for attack. ¡°Come, now,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Explain to Grandmaster Li Meifeng. We will help you to get justice.¡± That, at last, got Perry¡¯s attention. ¡°I have a condition.¡± Luo Yanhua nodded slowly. ¡°Go on.¡± ¡°After we¡¯re done, I want the armor moved,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want it in my room with me, so I can work on fixing it.¡± ¡°You claimed to not know much about its function,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I don¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s no shot. But I have to try, I have to. I owe it to him.¡± ¡°Though he¡¯s not a person?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°He was meant to evoke the feelings of a person,¡± said Perry. ¡°And yeah, I had those feelings for him, even if I knew it was just a series of numbers, just bits flipping back and forth, a neural net or libraries of code or ¡­ something.¡± ¡°Then I will agree that the armor is moved to your room, even though the spell is broken and cannot be redone,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She nodded. ¡°That you cannot fix major damage is something that Marchand had confirmed.¡± The meeting with the Grandmaster was a blur. It had been too long since Perry had slept. He kept to the story that he¡¯d told Luo Yanhua, the second story, but he didn¡¯t need to fabricate new details, because she didn¡¯t press him too hard. She wanted there to be a wall between what he had done and what she knew about. Maybe the evidence wouldn¡¯t come to light, or if it did, they would just deny it. When the Grandmaster suggested that perhaps Maya had been responsible for the first murder, Perry could only nod. If Maya was responsible for killing a second sphere member of Moon Gate, along with three second sphere members of Worm Gate, then there was no real need for tension between the sects. Worm Gate might take umbrage about this having all been done by someone under Moon Gate¡¯s roof, but Maya had never been a member, and hadn¡¯t come back to Crystal Lake Temple after the killings. Perry was sure there was some world in which this made sense as hatchet-burying, but he didn¡¯t know enough about the sect¡¯s back channels with each other, the relative ¡®worth¡¯ of those who had died in the eyes of their respective sects, and the ways in which they usually dealt with such things. Moreover, he didn¡¯t care. Maya had been right, they were all assholes fighting amongst themselves, the world more brutal than it had first seemed, consumed with questions of power. He wasn¡¯t even sure that this version of events was meant to bring a level of peace, and he wouldn¡¯t have been entirely surprised to find that it was instead an escalation toward all-out war. When it was all done, and he¡¯d been dismissed, Perry took the armor to over to his room. He took as few trips as he could. It felt ghoulish to move Marchand in pieces, just a pair of legs being hauled across the temple. It drew attention, but he didn¡¯t care about that either. Xiyan found him as he was bringing the last piece of Marchand into his small room. ¡°Will you be able to repair it?¡± she asked. Her voice was gentle. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, I won¡¯t. It¡¯ll still be armor, but it¡¯ll have none of its power, no intelligence, no cameras, nothing.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± she said. She was looking over the armor. It was the first time she¡¯d seen it, since it had been tucked away in the armory for the whole time they¡¯d known each other. ¡°I¡¯m going to try, I have to, but ¡­ the best bet would have been Maya.¡± He let out a long sigh. He needed sleep more than anything.¡± ¡°Did she not return with you?¡± asked Xiyan. ¡°We had a falling out,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s wanted for murder. I don¡¯t know what they¡¯d do to her if she came back, but probably nothing good.¡± They had already decided on their preferred version of events, so it didn¡¯t seem like there was any testimony she could give that would change their minds. ¡°I missed you,¡± said Xiyan, her fingers touching his arm. Perry had set the armor down, and was standing just outside the door. If this had happened the night before, as he was trying to tamp down the energy of the full moons, he might have invited her in. As it was, he was strung out, wanting only to go to bed rather than taking her to bed. ¡°It¡¯s not a good time of the month for me,¡± said Perry. He gestured to the moons. ¡°I need sleep, and concentration when the moons are this full, though they¡¯re past their peak.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a risk that you would ¡­ transform?¡± she asked. Perry nodded slowly. She pulled back from him. ¡°I don¡¯t fear you,¡± she said. ¡°I only worry that you fear yourself.¡± ¡°We can talk later,¡± said Perry. ¡°For now I need to lay down.¡± When she didn¡¯t move, he added, ¡°Alone.¡± She seemed disappointed, and her eyes went to the armor again, but Perry drew back into his room and closed the door as politely as he possibly could. He didn¡¯t even really know her, and felt as though he¡¯d done nothing to earn her affection, unless he counted the many discussions they¡¯d had about his previous worlds. Once the door was closed and the blinds drawn, Perry laid down on the bed. You were supposed to be able to go without sleep if you were second sphere, but he wasn¡¯t even remotely there yet. His stomach growled, since he hadn¡¯t had breakfast or lunch, but he was ignoring that too. If Maya had come back to Camp Crystal Lake, it was only for long enough to put a hole straight through the reactor. Could she even have done that? He didn¡¯t know for certain. She¡¯d attacked him with her needle before, but it had only been a threat when it went for the weakest point, rather than the strongest. But if Maya hadn¡¯t been the one responsible, then he had no idea who had. It could easily have been someone from within the temple, maybe even the kind of patsy that they¡¯d tried to make him into. The Grandmaster could have whispered into the ear of a subordinate, saying that the armor was too powerful to be left intact, and then that would have been that. The quartermaster would have abandoned his post, or maybe it would have been the quartermaster. He fell asleep and woke much later, once night had already fallen. He¡¯d slept for hours, missing lunch and dinner, and his only option would be to go to the commissary and hope that he could find some food there. He¡¯d never done that before, and didn¡¯t imagine that the temple was big on midnight snacks, and there was a further complication that the moons were out again. He could feel it on his skin, even with the light from the windows blocked. He looked at the armor in the dark. His night vision had gotten better when he¡¯d become a werewolf, but the windows had been blocked, and it still wasn¡¯t enough to see more than the outlines. There was one possibility left, and he needed to try it. If he wasn¡¯t going to give up on Richter even after she was dead, he wouldn¡¯t give up on Marchand either. Death didn¡¯t need to be forever. It didn¡¯t have to stop him. The armor went on, piece by piece. It was difficult without any feedback, and extra difficult in the dark, but Perry had been in and out of the armor so much that doing it blind wasn¡¯t the challenge that it otherwise would have been. He hooked in all the connections, wires going into their ruggedized ports. Perry''s clothes stayed clean. Snagged threads seemed to repair themselves. Clothes didn¡¯t quite come back from rips and tears, not unless they were small, but the same effect that kept hair falling perfectly and skin clear seemed to apply to clothes. No one had been able to explain to him why this was the case, though Luo Yanhua had speculated that it was caused by excess energy seeping out of the body. If Perry wore the same set of clothes every day, within a week they would fit better, be sturdier, look nicer. And if he could fix a snagged thread without giving it conscious thought, then surely he could fix a microfusion reactor with some effort. Perry almost laughed. It was stupid and desperate, but it was all he had, the last remaining hope. Perry moved around the small room, treading slowly and carefully, trying not to make too much noise. He focused on specific pieces of the armor, places where he knew there was damage. He cracked the window to let in a tiny sliver of moonlight, staying back from it so that it wouldn¡¯t touch the skin of his face. He couldn¡¯t wear the helmet, not when the screen wasn¡¯t working, but that was the only bit of him that wasn¡¯t covered. With the better light, he could see the armor¡¯s imperfections, places where the finish had been damaged in fights or just through months of constant use. He spent an hour staring at one specific half-inch nick, not even really a deformation, just a place where a bullet had struck his armor and removed a thin layer of whatever material was coating the base metal. It was the hardest he had ever concentrated on anything, all his focus going into this one tiny spot, since he hoped to start slow. It worked, though it was so slow that it was hard to tell anything had happened at all. His eyes had lost track of the scratch, and he had only been able to confirm that it was gone by finding the other marks near it. ¡°This is going to work,¡± he said to himself. ¡°You are a prodigy at this stuff, a once in a generation talent.¡± He didn¡¯t really believe it. He wanted some music to psych himself up, but of course the thing he was trying to fix had been, among all other things, his music player. He tried humming one of his workout songs, but that took too much concentration and energy. ¡°So what if you¡¯re not a once in a generation talent?¡± he asked himself half an hour later. ¡°So what if you¡¯re not a prodigy? You¡¯re a goddamned thresholder, you¡¯re a werewolf, and it¡¯s not like these people wear armor anyway, so maybe it¡¯s simple, the easy kind of thing anyone could do given half a day, if they didn¡¯t turn up their noses at having metal to block bullets.¡± That made him feel a little better. He¡¯d gotten a second scratch ¡®buffed out¡¯ in half the time, though it was hard to tell whether they were really the same. It was something he could get better at. He didn¡¯t just need to be better though, he needed to master it, needed to repair something whose function was a total mystery to him. Most likely, Richter wouldn¡¯t even have been able to fix the damage, she¡¯d have just ordered a replacement part for millions of dollars from a company with hundreds of employees and a dedicated clean room facility that itself had cost billions of dollars. Perry used more energy. He took in deep, gulping breaths, refined the energy of the air as it came down into his lungs, and spread it out through his entire body, not looking to fill a vessel or flush down a meridian, but try to get it to seep out his skin, which it was apparently doing naturally anyway. Using that approach, he was able to make a fix in only a handful of minutes, again a tiny mark on the leg that must have been from one fight or the other. He couldn¡¯t be sure, but he thought the armor was repairing in other places too, places where he wasn¡¯t putting energy. That made sense, given that under normal circumstances it was totally undirected. Perry had no idea how long it would take for the suit to be fully repaired like this, but he also didn¡¯t know whether it would somehow fuck up the suit¡¯s internal ¡ª circuitry, cameras, microphones, and the reactor at the suit¡¯s heart. He was feeling hope in dangerous quantities. Unfortunately, this wasn¡¯t a project that he was going to be able to finish overnight. He was going to need power and time, and for that, he was going to need to play by Moon Gate¡¯s rules. He wouldn¡¯t breathe a word about his progress with fixing Marchand, if any. And when the time came, when he had accumulated every scrap of power he could, he would go against Maya with all the might and fury he could muster. Chapter 50 - Turnaround Maya was gone, vanished, as though she¡¯d left Moth Lantern Hall and then never so much as thought about returning to Crystal Lake Temple. Her room was searched, but there was nothing there. She had a thresholder¡¯s mindset about things, it seemed, never wanting to put down roots, never wanting to acquire anything that she couldn¡¯t take with her. There was suspiciously little of her, no fingernails or hair, nothing that could be used with tracking techniques. All of Moon Gate had been alerted and was to engage with her if possible, ready to bring her to justice as a murderer, which was sure something. Perry didn¡¯t know what would happen if she died that way, but he hoped that another portal would open for him anyway, the same as if she died by his hand. He wanted to be in this world less and less with every passing moment. Maya had said that in some worlds, thresholders were the top dogs, and in others, they were dirt beneath the feet of incredibly powerful individuals and organizations. Perry definitely knew which of those two he preferred. At least third sphere were rare, fourth sphere even more so, and he hadn¡¯t attracted the attention of anyone higher up. At most, the master of Worm Gate might have a hard-on for going after whoever was responsible for the destruction of Moth Lantern Hall, but so far as anyone was concerned, that was Maya, which meant she had two entire sects gunning for her. Perry focused himself on fixing March, which mostly meant focusing on cracking his extra vessel for its energy and having that energy flow out into the armor. The process was still mysterious, and he wished that he had access to the secret tomes within the temple library, but a quick conversation with Luo Yanhua had let him know that was a complete non-starter. She had offered to bring him a book to read on his own, so long as he told her the subject and it wasn¡¯t restricted, but he didn¡¯t want her to know that he intended to rebuild the core, not when she thought that he was possibly engaged in some kind of dark arts. He¡¯d told her that Maya had confessed to sneaking books from the library, though he¡¯d left March¡¯s part in that unspoken, and allowed Maya to take the full blame. Almost every moment of Perry¡¯s day was spent in training of one kind or another. He helped out with the students a bit more, given that he had a bit of an aptitude for it. He thought the real reason was that it gave the other second sphere some time to do things that didn¡¯t involve teaching. When he wasn¡¯t teaching, he was meditating, or sometimes working with Luo Yanhua, taking in ever-increasing amounts of moonlight and trying to reign in the wolf. The goal for him was to be able to withstand a blast to the face from Maya, along with some confidence during the next triple full moon. The goal for her was an understanding of how his ¡®technique¡¯ worked, as part of her continuing research project. The first ¡®paper¡¯ had already been released, shared to those within Moon Gate and further afield, and much of the pressure she¡¯d been feeling was off. Perry had been given the paper to peruse, but it was just a pamphlet really, and he knew about ninety percent of what was contained within it, with the remaining ten percent being impenetrable jargon. Xiyan was his only real friend, and Perry only barely had time for her. She wanted to sit and talk, and Perry wanted to sit and meditate, so they compromised and she talked while he meditated. It was a bit like having a podcast on while he was studying, with most of his attention going to his internal alchemy or the flow of energy along his meridians. Most of Xiyan¡¯s stories were fables of one kind or another, and he gradually found himself confused by the cultural offerings of the Great Arc. He would have thought that their stories would be ones where virtue was lauded and vice was punished, but many of her stories were more meandering, or unconcerned with comeuppance. One or two of them had pretty plain villain protagonists, which was just downright weird to him. He asked her about it, and it took her some time to ponder the answer. ¡°I suppose stories are only stories,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°People like to hear about crossing the rivers they cannot cross in their everyday life. It¡¯s a vicarious thrill.¡± He wondered whether that was what was attracting her to him, though he didn¡¯t ask. What Maya had said about her kept swirling in his mind, the idea that Xiyan was a spy, or at least had been ordered to report on him. He kept everything he was doing with the armor secret from her, though he didn¡¯t actually lie about it, not technically. He said that he didn¡¯t know how to fix it, which was true, and that he didn¡¯t have all that much hope of ever getting it working, which was also true. What he did have was resolve, but he kept that from her. Ten to twelve hours a day were spent inside the armor, inhaling energy and venting it out through his skin. The Lung Meridian was responsible not just for air, but for the skin itself, and it was getting a workout, growing thick. After five days, all the superficial damage to the armor had been fixed, including the arm that had been hit by a cannonball, but that left the microfusion reactor, which showed no sign of miraculously starting back up. With the hole sealed, it was all invisible to Perry, but he was working on developing the extrasensory aspects of his vital energy, which wouldn¡¯t actually help all that much, because he didn¡¯t actually know how to build a fucking microfusion reactor. He would lay in his bed, wearing the armor, channeling energy, and think about that. He had no idea what process was actually deciding the shape of the armor. How did it know where to fill things in? When it filled in a deep gouge, was it like content-aware fill, or like returning to some platonic ideal of the armor, or his own conception, or ¡­ there were lots of possibilities, and testing it was incredibly difficult. After nine days, the reactor still wasn¡¯t working. There was no word on Maya, no hint as to where she might be. Perry wasn¡¯t sure whether she could go without food and shelter, but he wouldn¡¯t put it past her. He was also worried that the same process that was restoring his armor would work on her nanite gauntlet, though he was hopeful that she wouldn¡¯t even notice it. If she could put it into skinsuit form and then thicken it up, she would be getting stronger without having to work on it. On the tenth day, Perry had a breakthrough: the armor started the boot sequence. He¡¯d been flaring energy into it, as he¡¯d been doing for over a hundred hours now, and stopped as soon as the boot sequence started, not wanting to risk damage ¡ª only to find that the armor died once again, the indicator lights turning from amber to dull gray, not even lit. Perry stared at the armor. It was as close as he¡¯d come to getting it to work, but he didn¡¯t know whether it was a misfire from the reactor or something else. He also didn¡¯t know if the armor was like a car, unable to function without the battery at least partially charged so that it could give the reactor a boost. Hesitant, Perry started funneling power into the armor again. It took an hour or so, but the boot sequence started up again, and this time, Perry didn¡¯t let up on the energy he was pouring out of his body. He was hyperventilating energy, something that would be easier to do outdoors, but couldn¡¯t be done with the secrecy he required. The boot sequence felt like it took a painfully long time, but it was doing something, which was more than the armor had done in the last ten days. The helmet eventually lit up into low power mode, showing 1% battery in the HUD with a flashing light. ¡°March?¡± asked Perry, holding his breath. He was still venting energy through his skin, and only able to do that because the extra vessel, the wolf vessel, was fueling it. ¡°Critical damage to the microfusion reactor,¡± replied Marchand, voice stripped of his usual accent. ¡°Energy is battery-only. Shutdown imminent.¡± Perry kept up with the flow of energy, straining. He wasn¡¯t sure what was happening or why, but he needed March, needed him. He took another deep breath, trying to draw in energy through the lung meridian, because taking from the wolf vessel was getting painful and difficult. He was barely able to keep up with a proper baseline, but something was happening. ¡°Critical damage to the microfusion reactor,¡± Marchand said again. ¡°Energy is battery-only. Shutdown imminent.¡± A minute passed, then two. The battery ticked up to 2%. Perry finally let out a shaky breath. The battery ticked down to 1% again, but while he took a break, it hung there. ¡°Critical damage to the microfusion reactor,¡± Marchand repeated. ¡°Energy is battery-only. Shutdown imminent.¡± ¡°Dismiss alert,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alert dismissed,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Status report,¡± said Perry. ¡°The microfusion reactor is non-responsive,¡± said Marchand, still in the default AI voice, blandly calm and American, clearly enunciated, modeled off the way air traffic controllers spoke. ¡°Energy is battery-only. Shutdown is imminent.¡± ¡°Status of the cameras and microphones?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Cameras and microphones are operating within normal design parameters and specifications,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°All of them?¡± asked Perry. ¡°All cameras and microphones are operating within normal design parameters and specifications,¡± Marchand repeated. ¡°Full diagnostic should wait until the microfusion reactor has been repaired.¡± ¡°Status of artificial intelligence,¡± said Perry, speaking quickly. His eyes were on the 1% battery indicator. He didn¡¯t know quite how long they had. The accuracy when it was this low was pretty bad, though not as bad as it was at slightly higher percentages. He wasn¡¯t moving so much as a muscle, hoping to limit how much power was flowing to the actuators and hydraulics. ¡°Artificial intelligence systems are nominal,¡± Marchand replied. ¡°Computing is nominal. All computation areas are functional.¡± Perry let out a slow, steady breath. ¡°Show me the thirty seconds before the last shutdown,¡± said Perry. Marchand played the video without comment. It took place during the day, and conclusively ruled out Maya, who had been with Perry at the time. The interior of the armory was quiet and still, and it took Perry a moment to notice the woman, who was partially hidden behind one of the shelves. The error log was shown at the bottom of the video, and it was going nuts, scrolling information faster than Perry could read any of it. That made sense, because there was some kind of magic at work, black smoke obscuring the woman¡¯s features. Perry wasn¡¯t even sure it was a woman, except that there was something about the way she moved, along with her height. She was regarding the armor, watching it from afar. There was a glint of a blade in her hand, and the hand was obscured too, wreathed in the same ethereal smoke. The video cut out before anything could happen. The display had gone dead, and March had gone silent. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. The video had clarified nothing, except that it wasn¡¯t Maya. The timing just didn¡¯t line up. But that left the question of who it could be. Was the smoke technique something that anyone could learn in this world, or a specific branch that could point at some individual? Was it someone from Moon Gate or a third thresholder? The list of second sphere women in the temple was relatively short, no more than a half dozen total, and none of them had any incentive to stab March in the chest, even if they had the capability. Perry would have to watch the entire video back, from the moment the mystery smoke lady came into the armory, but the cloaking was also suspicious. Were they deliberately hiding from the camera, or from everyone else? What would a person have seen? If it was a third thresholder, and they were working against him and Maya, then Perry thought he was probably completely fucked. Assuming a third thresholder, the murder outside the temple had been to draw them out and open up the armor for an attack, which had been carried out flawlessly and only uncovered because Perry had been able to bring the armor back from the brink. It put Perry in an exceptionally paranoid mood. Nonetheless, Perry had found a way back for March, not through the resurrection of the microfusion reactor, but through pouring vital energy into him. Luo Yanhua had said that March had pathways, and she must have been talking about the electricity that flowed through the power armor, radiating from the core and spreading out to the extremities in much the same way vital energy did. If Perry could charge up March, turning one form of energy into another, then the loss of the reactor was still incredibly painful, but it didn¡¯t mean the loss of March, nor a whole host of capabilities that March brought to the table. Perry worked through the night on charging up March, pushing through his limits. Once the armor was powered up again, he kept going. It was getting easier, but not by much, and it felt like an enormous amount of vital energy needed to be expended in order to get the percentage to tick up a single percent. Without the wolf vessel, it probably would have been impossible. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°Establish a new power setting, stringent,¡± said Perry during a brief break. ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. His ¡®personality¡¯ had been restored to him, which was much more of a relief than it maybe should have been. ¡°Strip out every single function that¡¯s not vital for computation,¡± said Perry. ¡°No microphones, no cameras, power the display off and go audio only, stop power amplification to the limbs and body, stop cooling and heating except for what the processors need ¡­¡± he trailed off, still trying to think what else there was to cut. ¡°I¡¯ve done so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re on stringent power setting until I say otherwise.¡± ¡°Done, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°When I¡¯m not talking to you, go to sleep,¡± said Perry. ¡°Shut down cognition and processing unless you hear me say ¡®March¡¯. If I say it and I¡¯m not talking to you, go back to sleep.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t have a sleep mode, as such,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But I will do my best to comply with the spirit of the request.¡± ¡°With all that, how long do you think you can run on a single percentage point of power?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The energy stored in the batteries doesn''t deplete linearly, sir, making it difficult to precisely measure how much is left,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Additionally, as the batteries age, they hold less of a charge, which complicates the matter a good deal, and that¡¯s without taking into account numerous instances of shock damage.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. He was almost happy to hear the pedantry. ¡°Just ¡­ estimate. Give me a number.¡± ¡°Assuming I¡¯ve been put into ¡®stringent¡¯ mode, each percentage point displayed should equate to ten minutes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It would perhaps be ten times that if I were to ¡®sleep¡¯, as it were.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then go to sleep, please.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I shall endeavor not to let the bedbugs bite.¡± By the time breakfast rolled around, Perry was exhausted and very hungry, as well as incredibly tired, but Marchand was at a full charge. With some refinement of technique, he¡¯d been able to get it to something like five minutes per percentage point of charge, which meant a full eight hours of work. It remained to be seen whether it was worth it, but this looked like it might be the long-term solution. He was going to have to work on efficiency, getting more power in less time, but that seemed like it would come with practice. In a combat scenario, it was enough power that it might actually make a difference, though Perry was very aware that he was eventually going to reach a point where the armor was holding him back. It was designed to amplify a mere human, and really, it was overdesigned for that task. But at a certain point, Perry would be putting enough power into a punch that the armor couldn¡¯t keep up with him and it would start to be damaged in the process of an all-out brawl. ¡°You¡¯ve been silent,¡± said Luo Yanhua after breakfast. He¡¯d had his eggs and greens, and was ready to return to his room to sleep the sleep of the dead. ¡°Silent?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve wrapped yourself up in something,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It¡¯s good to train, but not good to train too much.¡± ¡°No?¡± asked Perry. ¡°A person is more than their pursuit of technique,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is important to observe the rites, to partake in conversation. You have few friends in the temple, but you can speak with me. I know you considered Maya to be a kindred spirit, and that it must have been a blow to learn of her true nature.¡± ¡°It was,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I need to train, to get better. She¡¯s out there somewhere.¡± And someone else is too. When Perry got back to his room, he went over the video footage a few times, even though it was a drain on the battery he¡¯d spent so much effort filling. He watched the woman enter the armory, slipping in through the door as though it had no lock on it whatsoever. She moved like a rat, slinking, face never shown, hands never shown. When she struck, it was sudden, her small blade flashing forward as she lunged at Marchand. She took a moment to admire her handiwork, then slipped off again. He assumed that was what she was doing, anyway, but in the video it was just a shadowed face, unmoving. March had still been recording video, at least for a little bit, but captured nothing of note during her departure. The nanite listening system had been active during that time, and Perry had March make a map of everyone in the temple, as best as their location could be determined. Perry was extremely well positioned to play detective from a technological standpoint, but from a social standpoint, had almost nothing. He wasn¡¯t a member, wasn¡¯t particularly liked, and no one had any incentive to answer his questions. Worse, he needed to keep what he knew at least a little bit secret, because he didn¡¯t want to admit any part in the listening program that Maya had set up. The nanites were still working, and still in communication with March, but the very first thing that Perry had done once everything was working again was to completely lock out Maya from so much as talking to Marchand. It seemed as though Maya hadn¡¯t been back to the temple at all after what had happened at Moth Lantern Hall, though it was hard to tell. Not knowing where she was grated on Perry, and made it feel like she was setting a trap. It was also possible ¡ª likely, even ¡ª that she was engaged in the dark arts, trying to power herself up for the inevitable confrontation. Perry was relatively safe within Crystal Lake Temple, but that safety clearly had limits if someone had gone into the armory, destroyed the armor, and then left without getting caught or punished. By the time fourteen days had passed, Perry had fallen into a new normal. He was still getting used to the way the moons affected his mood. The moons were new, with only a slight fingernail of white to them, and he felt no lust, hunger, or aggression, not beyond the usual. Instead, there was loneliness, which stemmed from a lack of human contact, creeping, aching loneliness that ¡®conversations¡¯ with March couldn¡¯t cure. Perry talked with Xiyan, because she was the only one around. He had thought her affection for him would fade over time, but it had, if anything, grown deeper. She was always full of questions, mostly about the other worlds he¡¯d been to, but often about his plans, motivated in part by the very correct idea that he wasn¡¯t going to stay long. ¡°You still don¡¯t know where Maya is?¡± asked Xiyan. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have no idea.¡± He had some hope of tracking her nanites, but he certainly wasn¡¯t going to say that. ¡°And the armor?¡± asked Xiyan. ¡°I¡¯ve given up on repairing it,¡± said Perry. ¡°For now, it¡¯s just a matter of focusing on meditation, gaining power. I might have to wait for her to make the first move, but when she does, I want to be able to bring my full power.¡± Xiyan looked up at the moons. ¡°She will wait until a night like tonight, when the moonlight provides you little power.¡± She turned back to Perry. ¡°I worry for you.¡± ¡°The moons aren¡¯t going to matter much longer,¡± said Perry. ¡°Changing back and forth is within my grasp. Give me another week and I won¡¯t be a threat to anyone unless I want to be. Once I can return to human form under the light of the full moon, I¡¯ll have removed the last vestiges of a drawback, but I can already tell that¡¯s going to be the most difficult aspect. Turning into a wolf on command ¡­ I haven¡¯t been able to try, since I don¡¯t want to go outside the temple, but someday soon I¡¯m going to go train in the woods under Luo Yanhua¡¯s supervision.¡± Xiyan nodded, but looked troubled, her mouth slightly downturned. ¡°You will be gone soon.¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not reaching the limits of what I can do here, but I feel like I¡¯ve overstayed my welcome in more ways than one. This world is more dangerous than most.¡± ¡°I will miss you, deeply,¡± said Xiyan. Her hand was pressed against her chest, right over her heart. This conversation, like many they¡¯d had, was taking place outside of his room, with him at the threshold. She wanted to come in, to lay with him, to become a concubine or courtesan or whatever they called it when you had sex with a girlfriend before marriage. Perry had never been as tempted as he was at that moment. He could handle the full moon¡¯s lust, but this was different, an ache for touch or some semblance of companionship. In the middle of his moment of temptation, she slipped past him. When he turned to look at her, it was with fear that she would have done something to March, but she had laid down on the bed, with her head on his pillow. She was looking at him with a demure expression, downcast eyes and a faint blush. ¡°There would be trouble if someone saw you in my room like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then shut the door,¡± she said. Perry shut the door. He kept the shutters drawn, which let little light in the room, but it was still more than enough to see by. His eyes were better in the dark since becoming a wolf. Xiyan had shifted slightly, spreading her feet. She was wearing loose pants whose fabric draped across her. Perry laid down beside her. She moved her face close to his. It was a mistake, he knew that as he was making it. For a moment he thought that she would simply kiss him, and maybe some part of him was thinking that this was simply cosmic karma in action, that she would be to blame rather than him, a seductress, but she didn¡¯t make a move, and he kissed her, feeling her soft lips. ¡°Lie back,¡± she said when their lips parted. She placed a gentle hand on his chest, and he did as he was told. Xiyan had been demure and simpering for almost the entire time he¡¯d known her. She wasn¡¯t that young, but it had reminded him of a schoolgirl crush, the kind that freshmen girls had sometimes had on him when he was a TA. He hadn¡¯t expected that she would take the lead, and had no idea what she had in mind, but she was on her knees, tying back her loose hair into the bun she normally wore, and in his experience, that really only meant one thing. What was shocking was how efficient and casual she was being, as though this was something she¡¯d done before, though for all he knew, she had. His heart was beating faster. She moved on top of him, hands still dealing with her hair, thighs pressing against his legs. He saw the dagger when it was too late, and she brought it down, two-handed, right as he was moving to stop her. The blade sunk straight into his stomach, two inches below his sternum, and she yanked it down, slicing him open. The pain was unimaginable, and he spasmed beneath her as the blood rushed out of sliced arteries. She stayed on top of him, and dodged to the side as he reached out for her. ¡°I¡¯m going to watch you die,¡± she said, leaning forward to speak softly. It was affectionate, loving, a tender declaration. Perry moaned and tried to yell, but he could see his intestines starting to spill out of the long gash in his stomach, and the bed was soaked with blood. He focused, making every effort of will to get just two words out. ¡°March, fire!¡± he moaned, hoping that it was even halfway intelligible. Xiyan looked over at the armor, bloody dagger at the ready, eyes alert. The gun popped up and the servos adjusted in milliseconds. She tried to move, but his hands were gripping her thighs, digging into them hard enough to bruise, and the rapid-fire shots from March hit her three times before she rolled away. March stopped firing when she was out of his sight, then started again as she raced toward the door. She was dripping blood and wheezing, but still spry on her feet, and she barreled out the door as another two shots hit her in the back. She hadn¡¯t fled into the temple though, she had exited the door into snow, a different place altogether. Perry didn¡¯t have time to process that. He was bleeding out, dying, and his mind was racing even as he was going light-headed from blood loss. There was only a single out. He¡¯d been cracking the wolf vessel for energy, trying to draw out as much as he could while keeping it closed, but he needed it all now before the world went dim. He kept his eyes open, fighting off unconsciousness, and put every ounce of will into breaking the vessel, releasing the energy, straining with all his might. The door to his room opened again just as the vessel began to release its energy. The transformation was sluggish, fur coming out slowly, claws extending more gradually instead of sprouting in an instant. The wound in his stomach was closing, slowly, his split abs stitched back together, his guts slipping back inside like noodles slurped up from a bowl of ramen. The woman at the door wasn¡¯t second sphere, she was first, one of the servants who dealt with the cleaning. The hunger was overwhelming, the wolfish vessel depleted. He¡¯d been taking too much from it, writing checks it couldn¡¯t cash, the sluggish transformation proof enough that he¡¯d overdrawn. He let out a growl as she fled. It was all he could do to hold back and not chase her, his instincts so strong it felt like his body was being drawn to pursuit. One of the second sphere disciples was next to the door of the room, a woman with strangely blonde hair. She was in a fighting stance, but there was clear fear in her eyes. She advanced on him anyway, as though she was going to kill the giant wolf herself. It was pure stupidity, and he lunged at her as she stepped into the doorway, snapping down on her with all the force his withered body could muster. He tasted blood and skin, and bit her again as she struggled away, snapping his head from side to side until she stopped moving. He bit meat from her thighs, swallowing down cloth in the same bite, feeling the warmth of it as it slid down his gullet. He was nourished with every piece, and was scarfing it down, worried that someone else was going to come and interrupt him. As his strength returned to him, so did his senses, and the gravity of what he¡¯d done began to sink in. They were outside, waiting for him, ready to kill. He had been a bad dog. The hunger had been overwhelming, a compulsion, something that had to be satisfied, and his horror at having done it was overshadowed only by how much trouble he was in. He went to the suit of armor and gripped it gingerly in his mouth, biting down on the metal. His mouth wasn¡¯t quite large enough for it, not even around the waist, but he set his teeth in on the thigh. This wasn¡¯t the wolf, it was Perry, a thinking creature underneath the wolf¡¯s frenzy. If he thought about the dead woman, he would have to stop, and if he stopped, they would kill him. He leapt out of the room, armor in his mouth, and put on as much speed as he possibly could, clearing buildings and putting distance between himself and the temple. He was hit from the side as he moved, but it wasn¡¯t by the arrow he¡¯d feared, it was moonlight, a stray beam of it from someone who hadn¡¯t known better. It splashed off of him, rejuvenating and reinvigorating, and he ran all the faster, dodging trees and scurrying up hills to put more distance between himself and his pursuers. His conscious mind was churning below the wolf¡¯s. Xiyan, with more power than she should have had, running even after being shot five times, through a door that led out into the cold. He¡¯d had no choice but to transform, and to not eat when someone came had felt impossible. He stopped, the armor still in his mouth, and listened, ears perked up. He¡¯d run a three minute mile, and was now far away from Crystal Lake Temple. The adrenaline was flowing through his body, keeping him amped up, but if he was being chased, it was only slowly. They would be able to find him, to follow him at their leisure ¡ª he¡¯d left too much of himself behind, a pool of his blood they could attune to and track. He spat out the suit. The moons were still new, and the vessel still weak and overworked. Transforming back was easy, and once that was done, he slipped into the suit as quickly as he could, naked skin pressing uncomfortably against the suit¡¯s interior. He tried not to think about the dead woman with the blonde hair. He knew her name, but didn¡¯t want to think about it. He had seen her around. When her name did surface, he blamed her death on Xiyan, or on the wolf, not on his lack of control. He tried not to think about it, not the fear on her face, her bravery and stupidity in facing him, the taste of her blood in his mouth, or the satisfaction of her meat making its way down his throat. He tried. He needed a plan. Maya was to the winds, Moon Gate would surely be after him, and Xiyan ¡ª or whoever she was ¡ª was almost certainly the third thresholder. There was only one place for him to go: Worm Gate. Chapter 51 - Worm Food Perry surveyed Cicada Temple from a distance, using the cameras to zoom in as far as he could. He was up on a nearby hill, the better to look out over the temple grounds, which were expansive. March had made a map of the place, its exits and the areas where people congregated, and Perry had annotated that map, marking what he thought everything was. Going to Worm Gate wasn¡¯t what he wanted to be doing, but if he did it, he wanted it to be with a plan to get out if things went south. March¡¯s battery was at 76%, and it would tick down fast in a combat situation, especially if he was pushing it. His plan was to lie through his teeth. That probably wasn¡¯t great for cosmic karma, but then again, having killed and partially eaten four people probably wasn¡¯t great either. He tried not to think about that. Perry was going to lay everything at the feet of the other thresholders, both Maya and Xiyan. He wouldn¡¯t mention being forced to transform, and certainly wouldn¡¯t admit culpability in the deaths at Moth Lantern Hall, he would lie and hope that those lies were enough. He¡¯d say whatever it took to escape the noose that was currently threatening to wrap tight around his throat. He didn¡¯t know how long it would take for Moon Gate to start tracking him, but he was certain that they would. Retribution wasn¡¯t a virtue, but it was something baked into their culture. Retribution was the entire reason he¡¯d been sent to Moth Lantern Hall. Perry strode toward the gate, armor gleaming and repaired, free of dirt and muck. He cut an impressive figure, more than he had when he first came to the world, and his sword floated behind his back in a way he hoped would make up for his lack of sheathe and still look unthreatening. There was still the issue that he was naked beneath the armor. That wasn¡¯t great. He wasn¡¯t entirely sure what he was going to do, aside from admitting that he didn¡¯t have any clothes. Clothes were, unfortunately, valuable in this world, not just something that you had a dresser full of that you could hand out to any passerby. He¡¯d been fortunate to have Maya to mend the clothes for him, since there were limits to how much Moon Gate would be willing to give over to him, and he¡¯d had the clothes stolen from Lingfeng, which were now shredded. Cicada Temple had a stone wall around it, piled up stones that had been mortared in place and then left to be covered in moss. The gate was made of enormous timbers, painted red and finely worked, the luster of their finish contrasting with the natural look of the stones. Perry had to admit that it was pretty imposing, even if he could simply fly right over it. The wall and gate weren¡¯t for keeping the likes of him out, it was for bandits and wild animals, and, he supposed, for keeping people in. As if to demonstrate how useless the gate was, a man in blue silk clothes came sailing up over the gate and landed right in front of Perry. He stood with his feet shoulder width apart, but wasn¡¯t in a combat stance. ¡°You come seeking entry to Cicada Temple,¡± the man intoned, speaking English, or at least seeming to. If the jump hadn¡¯t already given away that he was second sphere, the translation definitely would have. ¡°I come seeking refuge,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have come from Moon Gate, who have moved against you and your people. They are responsible for a terrible crime at Moth Lantern Hall. I wish to speak on the matter with one of your masters.¡± ¡°You are Peregrin Holzmann,¡± said the man in blue. He lifted delicate fingers and brushed hair from his face, and Perry had enough experience with the second sphere to know that this was a way of signaling casualness. Hair didn¡¯t fall out of place easily. ¡°You are known to us. You claim to have come from another world.¡± ¡°I do,¡± said Perry with a nod. He was itching to run away, second guessing his decision to come here, but trying to hide out in the woods waiting for Moon Gate to gank him simply wasn¡¯t the play. The man watched him for a moment. His blue outfit was flashy, even by second sphere standards. ¡°Very well. The grandmaster will speak with you.¡± Perry felt his breath catch in his throat. ¡°That would be an honor.¡± ¡°You have been expected,¡± the man said, bowing slightly. He opened the gate, and Perry was led inside. His urge to run was rising. He didn¡¯t really want to meet with the granddaddy third sphere master of this whole place, not when the guy had mind control powers. They weren¡¯t supposed to work on second sphere, only first sphere, but Perry really desperately didn¡¯t want to get up close and personal either way. He considered running, but the question was ¡®where to¡¯, and he had no good answer for that. He could potentially make it to some other kingdom, but he had no idea what he would do then. His enthusiasm for this world had dwindled to nothing. Cicada Temple was a sprawling place, and had tall buildings placed in the four corners of the temple grounds. If Crystal Lake Temple was a small town, then Cicada Temple was a large one, with multiple courtyards where training was taking place, and thick throngs of people going about their business. Perry¡¯s host, whose name he still didn¡¯t know, walked in front with his hands behind his back, and Perry followed. There were bugs everywhere, and Perry tried to step carefully, hoping that he wouldn¡¯t accidentally kill one. In Moth Lantern Hall, Lingfeng¡¯s final attack had seemed to sap the life from all the moths, but Perry wasn¡¯t quite sure what the sect¡¯s overall relationship with bugs was. He passed a woman tossing something in a bowl, and on closer inspection, saw that it was a bunch of dried crickets. He wasn¡¯t sure whether they ate them or what, but it was a sign that insect life wasn¡¯t considered precious. One of the towers was being circled by a swarm of butterflies, and Perry saw a vat of worms in a building he passed, but it was the small bugs that caught his eye more often, the way mayflies or something like they were spread against a wall, or the the beetles that scurried along the temple paths. They were going to the largest of the tall buildings, which was set far away from the gate. ¡°You are naked beneath your armor,¡± said his host. ¡°I am,¡± Perry admitted. ¡°You have the scent of blood on you,¡± continued his host. ¡°What circumstances have brought you here?¡± ¡°I was attacked,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not by a member of the temple, but by an enemy of mine, someone from another world.¡± He had no idea who Xiyan even was. There was still a chance that she¡¯d been mind controlled, or was an agent of someone, or that the real Xiyan had been killed and had her place taken. There was too much fucking magic, that was the problem, and even if Xiyan was the third thresholder, he had no idea what her powers were or why she¡¯d decided to skulk around and play spy. She had disabled March, and if Perry hadn¡¯t found a workaround, or if he¡¯d fallen for the honeypot earlier, he¡¯d have been dead, with Maya none the wiser. He was completely healed, but could still feel the blade plunging into his chest, the sheer force of it. He shivered, involuntarily, remembering the sight of his guts coming out. It was better not to think about these things, but very little time had passed. They arrived at the building, and Perry was ushered into a waiting room where there wasn¡¯t much to do. It wasn¡¯t a good wait. There was too much for him to think about, too many things that he would really rather not be swimming around in his head. Meditation wasn¡¯t working. He kept thinking about the woman he¡¯d killed. Her name was Fang Chenlei. Why was her hair blond? He had never asked. Maybe some people had blond hair, or maybe she¡¯d dyed it, or possibly it was just a side effect of some technique or reagent or her internal alchemy. He wished he knew. It was bugging him. An hour later, he was pulled from the waiting room and was brought into the main room of the building. The room rose up three stories, with balconies around the upper levels looking down on them, and it felt sacred in a way that made Perry think this wasn¡¯t where business was normally conducted. Maybe it was just meant to feel like that, as though he was in the presence of a deity. A small man was sitting on a pillow, and another pillow had been set out for Perry. Perry sat, feeling awkward inside the armor. Grandmaster Sun Quying had huge white eyebrows, so big they were almost ridiculous, especially because they sat above small, beady little eyes. Perry immediately imagined the eyebrows as the antenna of a moth. When the Grandmaster smiled, he showed a gap between his front teeth. He was old, undoubtedly, and unlike with Master Shan Yin, it showed on his face, with wrinkles and imperfections that hadn¡¯t been ironed out by the working of the second sphere. Maybe once you got to the third sphere, you simply stopped caring about such things, or maybe he was just fine being a weird little dude. ¡°Peregrin Holzmann,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying, the words splitting his smile. He had a large mole on his chin, off to the left. ¡°Thresholder.¡± ¡°Yes, grandmaster,¡± said Perry, bowing. ¡°Your name is known across the Green Snake Valley. I am honored that you decided to speak with me personally.¡± ¡°Why have you come here, Peregrin?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°Moon Gate has moved against you,¡± said Perry. ¡°I come with a warning and seek shelter from them. You know by now that there are three dead in Moth Lantern Hall. I was there, and watched the woman who did it ¡ª I tried to stay her blade. We were instructed to go there by those in charge at Crystal Lake Temple.¡± Grandmaster Sun Quying nodded. ¡°I know well what happened at Moth Lantern Hall. It was the slaying of my kin.¡± He didn¡¯t seem perturbed. Perry stayed still. He was getting pretty good at not giving anything away in his motions. He also still had his helmet on, as they hadn¡¯t asked him to remove it, so his face was cloaked, his words masked and filtered. ¡°Tell me,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°How do you move between worlds?¡± Perry was momentarily befuddled. ¡°The ¡­ discussion of technique is ¡­¡± He faltered. ¡°There is, unfortunately, no technique, grandmaster,¡± said Perry. ¡°The portal opens only when my chosen foe is defeated.¡± ¡°But your chosen foe is not yet defeated?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°No, grandmaster,¡± said Perry. ¡°I am being hunted by them as we speak. They have a technique that I believe allows them to move quickly from one place to another, making them hard to track.¡± That was a hell of an extrapolation based on Xiyan going out the door of his room and into a snowy field. He was going to have to cross-reference it with the video of the woman in the armory, but it was hard to believe that it wasn¡¯t Xiyan. She¡¯d tried to disembowel him after double-checking that he was weaker under the new moon and that his armor was still broken. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. ¡°Then you will have a place to stay with us,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying with a nod. ¡°I have interest in these other worlds, virgin and unclaimed. You will tell me about them and their techniques.¡± ¡°Yes, grandmaster,¡± said Perry. It was hard to overstate how much it had been drilled into him that this was something which Was Not Done. You didn¡¯t ask other people about their techniques. You didn¡¯t get firm descriptions of them. You certainly didn¡¯t have them outright told to you. Maybe it was different between second sphere and third sphere, but it felt uncouth. In a proper setting, between master and student, it was acceptable to demonstrate, but then only in a slow, measured, and deliberate way. There was nothing like this here. ¡°First, tell me of the world you came from,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°That might take some time, Grandmaster,¡± said Perry. Grandmaster Sun Quying raised an eyebrow. ¡°Do we not have time?¡± ¡°We do, Grandmaster,¡± said Perry with a small bow. ¡°Shall I tell you of my world, Earth?¡± The Grandmaster sat back, looking quite pleased with himself. ¡°Yes, let us hear of it.¡± This took hours. The Grandmaster displayed very little patience for Perry¡¯s preferred method of telling things, and interrupted with all kinds of questions, but they weren¡¯t bad questions. The Grandmaster wanted to know about every little bit of technology, about religions, about the different people, about democracy and space exploration and the internet. In any other context, Perry might have found the curiosity refreshing, but some of the questions the Grandmaster was posing felt like they had dark implications. ¡°And there are limits on what power one man can possess?¡± asked the Grandmaster. ¡°You have mentioned weapons, ¡®firearms¡¯, propelled bits of metal, but if anyone can have them, then how does the ruler of your kingdom protect himself?¡± ¡°The President has lots of guards,¡± said Perry. ¡°They make sure he¡¯s safe. He¡¯s usually a man of no power except that of persuasion and sometimes wealth. They¡¯ve been assassinated before, usually by men with no particular special talents or training.¡± ¡°Fascinating,¡± said the Grandmaster. ¡°So if someone dealt with the firearms, there would be nothing in the entire world to stop a person.¡± ¡°There are greater weapons,¡± said Perry. ¡°But they aren¡¯t used for personal defense. Explosives that can rip steel to shreds in an instant, bombs that can vaporize a building.¡± ¡°Steel is no match for the power of the third sphere,¡± said the Grandmaster with a dismissive wave of a hand. ¡°There are so few defenses on your world, but I suppose that is no surprise, given that no single man has the power of even one of my lesser disciples.¡± It took hours to get through everything, and Perry was feeling talked out, like he¡¯d been drained of all his energy just from having to explain a whole world. Grandmaster Sun Quying had used the term ¡®virginal¡¯ or ¡®virgin¡¯ to refer to Earth on three more occasions. Perry hoped that was a translation error, that the proper word he was using in his native language didn¡¯t have the mildly creepy connotations, but it was impossible to tell, and there was just something about the vibe that put Perry off. Perry didn¡¯t want the people from the Great Arc to spread out across the multiverse. He didn¡¯t think there was a huge danger of that, given that he had no idea how the portals worked, but it felt like a risk to say as much as he could say on the matter. He also didn¡¯t know what happened when someone went through the portal that had opened for a thresholder. Maya had said a friend of hers had gone through, but Maya hadn¡¯t known what the end result of that was either. Maybe it was death, maybe it meant becoming a thresholder, maybe it just meant getting stranded somewhere. Hopping worlds was clearly Grandmaster Sun Quying¡¯s ambition. A first sphere servant came in and gave them a break. He had a pile of clothes for Perry, and whispered words for Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°Our friends from across the valley have arrived,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°I find the discussion invigorating, and we¡¯ll continue it later, once our guests have been dealt with. Shall we?¡± He stood up from his pillow, and was surprisingly short. ¡°I didn¡¯t leave on good terms,¡± said Perry. ¡°All lies, I¡¯m sure,¡± replied Grandmaster Sun Quying with a wave of his hand. Perry followed behind him, armor clunking along. The grandmaster took a gnarled staff from one of his servants and used it to walk ¡ª the top of it looked like worn down roots, which his fingers fit between, and the bottom was tipped with a gold cap. Perry wondered whether it was anything more, a weapon or a tool, but he couldn¡¯t tell, not with the helmet on. The path to the gate was slow, not just because Grandmaster Sun Quying was moving at a sedate pace, but because he stopped to speak with people as he went by. He was like a politician, shaking hands and waving hello, and often engaged in pleasantries with people who had bowed low to him. As Perry watched closer, he saw the ones that didn¡¯t bow, almost always those engaged in labor, and maybe he was imagining it, but there was something of a glassy look in their eyes. If Perry was right about what that meant, then the Grandmaster was directly controlling perhaps a third of the people within Cicada Temple. Eventually, they arrived at the gate. It was wide open, and six of the dozen sphere disciples were standing by it in their multicolored clothes, creating a formidable guard. Beyond the gate stood Luo Yanhua and Grandmaster Li Meifeng. ¡°Does it take such strife in the valley for us to meet?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°We have come for Peregrin,¡± said Grandmaster Li Meifeng. ¡°Have you now?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. He looked at Perry. ¡°I was told the young man was no member of your sect.¡± ¡°He murdered a young woman earlier today,¡± said Grandmaster Li Meifeng. Her lips were firm. ¡°We are not here as members of a sect but as seekers of justice. Peregrin must pay for his crimes.¡± ¡°You are mistaken,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°If that¡¯s all, you may leave.¡± ¡°We are not leaving without him,¡± said Grandmaster Li Meifeng. Her voice was firm, but Perry didn¡¯t see how she possibly hoped to win this fight. Even if she¡¯d had a whole posse of martial artists, this was Worm Gate¡¯s home turf. ¡°Perry was responsible for the massacre at Moth Lantern Hall,¡± said Luo Yanhua, speaking up for the first time. Her eyes were on Perry, and hadn¡¯t moved from him. ¡°I did not want to believe it was true, but the evidence against him is overwhelming. Moonlight causes him to undergo a transformation and become a murderous, oversized wolf. He has not learned proper control.¡± ¡°I am well aware of his affliction,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°Nothing goes on in this valley that I do not know of. He has assured me that it was your other guest who was responsible for the tragedy.¡± He placed both hands on top of his staff. ¡°If you would like, I would offer you the hospitality of this temple. I have not yet had the pleasure of a proper conversation with Miss Luo Yanhua. But the peregrin has come to roost here, for a time.¡± ¡°The king will hear of this,¡± said Grandmaster Li Meifeng. Her lips were tight. ¡°A judge will be dispatched.¡± ¡°What might a judge find, once he starts investigating?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°I suppose we might both be interested in the results of such an inquiry. In the end, justice will prevail, I am sure.¡± ¡°The armor Peregrin wears,¡± said Grandmaster Li Meifeng. ¡°Investigate it closely. He has trapped within it the soul of a man.¡± Grandmaster Sun Quying turned to Perry and frowned for a moment, then raised the staff and tapped Perry¡¯s armor with the golden-capped tip of it. ¡°I will speak with the young man about it, of course. It¡¯s a serious accusation.¡± He turned back to Grandmaster Li Meifeng. ¡°Was that all?¡± ¡°We leave,¡± said Grandmaster Li Meifeng. She blasted up toward the moon as a beam of light and after only a moment, Luo Yanhua did as well. ¡°Very good,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. He gave a small laugh. ¡°Did you enjoy your time with them, Peregrin? I hadn¡¯t asked.¡± ¡°I learned things,¡± said Perry. ¡°Other than that ¡­ their welcome was not warm, and they didn¡¯t grant me membership. I was forced to stay on the outside, and the only reason they kept me there was in the hopes that I would do their dirty work for them.¡± ¡°It will be different for you, at Worm Gate,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. He nodded to himself. ¡°Now come, you were telling me about your worlds.¡± Over the next few days, Perry felt like he was in a bit of a Scheherazade situation, forced to speak at length to the grandmaster about all kinds of things in order to get a stay of execution. He didn¡¯t think that execution was on the table, but he did think that the grandmaster had designs on the multiverse and considerable motivated interest in unraveling what these other worlds were like. In exchange, at least for a time, Perry was given finely made clothes to wear, a spacious bedroom on the second level of the grandmaster¡¯s large building, and meals of enviable size with as much meat as he wanted ¡ª which was a lot. ¡°There are differences in philosophy,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying over dinner. Twenty people sat at the table, but the grandmaster and Perry were the only ones who spoke. ¡°Food is required only because of imbalance, yes, yes, this is known, but imbalance is a regrettable fact of life. There is a cycle to the view on balance. We spend much of our time in the second sphere ensuring that we can live without food, water, even air, but once those are mastered, once they are no longer necessary, we introduce them back in. There is nothing so succulent as a well-grilled piece of meat, fat dripping from it, and the energy a skilled individual can take from it is enormous, almost beyond compare.¡± Perry was sitting at the foot of the table, a place of prominence. To the Grandmaster¡¯s right was his favored concubine, a girl that Perry hoped was of age. She was first sphere, the only one at the table who was, and she looked at the Grandmaster, who was hundreds of years older than her, with adoration. ¡°There is, I suppose, one thing more succulent,¡± he said, gazing into her eyes. Grandmaster Sun Quying definitely gave off all the wrong vibes, even leaving aside the puppetry thing. A third sphere being so enmeshed with the first and second spheres was like a guy in college hanging out with highschool girls. The grandmaster kept up the grilling, day in and day out, though after the first three days the work of grandmastering had apparently begun to pile up, and Perry was left to his own devices for more of the day. For lack of anything better to do, he went to go watch their training. At Crystal Lake Temple and Silver Fish Temple, the first spheres trained in large groups and the second spheres trained alone, or sometimes in pairs. Here, it was different, maybe because they had enough of the second sphere disciples that a class made more sense. Perry thought it was more likely that they just had a different culture. The second spheres of Cicada Temple all had the second sphere style, which mostly consisted of well-made clothes with elaborate cuts, embroidery, and patterns. Woven into this overall aesthetic, which verged on gaudy, were small details of insects. Perry hadn¡¯t even noticed it at first, but the closer he looked, the more he saw: one of the women had two large ¡®eyes¡¯ on her back, as though she was a butterfly trying to deter predators, and one of the men had a vertical line going down his back as though he was a beetle about to spread its wings and take flight. It wasn¡¯t necessarily such a bizarre place to take fashion inspiration from, and Perry almost liked some of the flourishes and coloration. He was close enough to listen to the instructor, though he wasn¡¯t taking part in any of the actual training. The moves all had bug themes to them, in the same way that lots of Moon Gate¡¯s techniques were named after the moon, or sometimes water, which apparently had strong moon associations. The martial style was totally different, mostly about quick snaps and explosive bursts of motion, and from what Perry could tell, this also came from a difference in how they were treating the vessels and meridians ¡ª though at least the names of those were the same. He wasn¡¯t sure what he would have done if he¡¯d needed to learn an entirely new set of terms for everything. On his fourth day at the temple, Grandmaster Sun Quying offered him a membership in Worm Gate. It was the sort of offer that Perry didn¡¯t think he could refuse, not if he still wanted a home. Perry accepted, though not without reservations. The only thing he felt any comfort about was that the Grandmaster clearly saw him as a long-term project, not someone that would simply get thrown away. Perry needed every scrap of help he could get from Worm Gate. He had no idea where Maya had gone, and Xiyan was still out there somewhere, presumably hunting him with everything that she had. It was a terrible position to be in. He had a sinking feeling that as terrible as it felt, there was plenty of opportunity for it to get much worse. Chapter 52 - Grasshopper Perry watched the video closely, for the fourth or fifth time. The shadow woman snuck into the armory, opening the door only a fraction. If all the cameras had been functional at the time, there would have been a better view of that fraction, but there was only this thin sliver. Because of the door¡¯s angle, it was impossible to compare that sliver with what had been there before, but Perry had Marchand make a map of the Crystal Lake Temple and project it, and it very much appeared as though the sliver didn¡¯t match. Perry was pretty sure that the smoky woman was Xiyan. March had run something called gait analysis, which hadn¡¯t come back with a match, but March had all kinds of caveats, and obviously if you were an assassin you wouldn¡¯t move the same way while engaging in sabotage as you would while pretending to be a humble maid. Other analysis pointed in the direction of Xiyan, such as comparing their heights and the lengths of their limbs. Perry felt safe making that assumption. Xiyan could use doors to move from one place to another. The details were very unclear. That was one power down, and it was a very dangerous one, especially because the details were unclear. Could she have slipped into his room whenever she wanted to? Did it need some kind of preparation? Perry didn¡¯t know. But that was Power Number One. He watched the video of her getting shot. It hurt her, clearly, but she¡¯d been hit five times out of five and kept on moving instead of flopping to the ground. She¡¯d bled, but not very much. That was Power Number Two. The smoke thing, that was Power Number Three. And the power to swiftly punch straight through Marchand with a blade, that was Power Number Four, probably. She¡¯d also stabbed Perry in the chest with a huge amount of speed and power, and was strong enough to slip out of his grasp, even with him being a second sphere wolf-powered man with almost a full foot on her. So that was four Known Powers, with lots of gaps in what their actual bounds were. If Maya was right about how allies worked, then Perry had to assume that Xiyan had approximately ten separate powers available to her from ten wins in her journey across the multiverse. That left way too much ambiguity, too much room to get blindsided by her. Perry trained. Much of that training was done with the second spheres of Worm Gate, learning their techniques. After a singular chiding, he didn¡¯t show off anything he¡¯d learned with Moon Gate, and instead pretended that he was a total novice that was learning everything from the ground up. They despised him, naturally. He was an up-jumped second sphere who had eaten a flower rather than gaining enlightenment, he wore armor ¡ª armor that he kept on most of the time, not trusting Worm Gate with it ¡ª and he was favored by the grandmaster, who hadn¡¯t been shy about extending benefits to Perry. But while they despised him as a general rule, they didn¡¯t treat him poorly, instead treating him more like a coworker they didn¡¯t like but had to work with anyway. And there were exceptions. Sun Baoxi was the least stuck up second sphere that Perry had met, which wasn¡¯t saying all that much. ¡°It¡¯s like the grandmaster says,¡± he explained. ¡°We focus on balance, on elimination, but that¡¯s just a step, that¡¯s not the end goal, and knowing how to go without water is important, but you¡¯re almost always going to be close to water, so why not drink it?¡± He had a hairstyle that was nearly a pompadour, and a slight gap in his teeth. His usual outfit was green, with tails like a tuxedo coming halfway down his thighs. ¡°It¡¯s training,¡± said Sun Xiyue, who often took up a spot next to Sun Baoxi, in spite of not seeming to like him too much. She wore pink silks of different designs, with a puff of fabric bunched up at her throat. ¡°If you eliminate your intake of water, and you keep up with that, you¡¯re doing constant training of the internal alchemy. That¡¯s the point of striving for balance.¡± ¡°Sure, sure,¡± said Sun Baoxi. ¡°But you understand what dad is getting at.¡± ¡°Dad?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The grandmaster is our father,¡± said Sun Baoxi, gesturing between himself and Sun Xiyue. ¡°He should be referred to as grandmaster,¡± said Sun Xiyue. ¡°See, you say that, but isn¡¯t father the more important of the terms?¡± asked Sun Baoxi. ¡°Have you asked him?¡± asked Perry. Sun Xiyue laughed. ¡°As if. Baoxi is terrified of the grandmaster.¡± ¡°Like you¡¯re not?¡± asked Sun Baoxi. He raised a hand as if to hit her, and she didn¡¯t so much as acknowledge it. ¡°Focus on your studies,¡± she replied, rolling her eyes. Perry learned their techniques, but more than that, learned the core pillars of their techniques, which he thought might serve him better over a long enough timeline. The core of many of their attacks and defenses was quick snapping and explosive force, which was aided by their energy manipulation technique. It wasn¡¯t the metaphor they had used, but Perry saw it sort of like blowing up a balloon and then letting the air out all at once. There was very little of the emphasis on smooth flow and continual draw that Moon Gate had. The other main pillar of their technique was bugs. They drew power from the bugs in the same way that Moon Gate drew power from the moons, and when they were drawing hard, it meant the death of the insects. Supposedly when the grandmaster was at full draw, he could kill every insect out to a mile and punch with the power of a dying star, but he hadn¡¯t done that in half a century, and Perry wasn¡¯t sure what ¡®power of a dying star¡¯ translated to in terms of actual force. Most of the second spheres weren¡¯t able to do anything nearly like that, and had to either use the insect life directly nearby or have a worm vat setup. The worm vats were incredibly gross, tubs of wriggling worms that had been fed blood so as to create a sort of tether. In some ways it was supposed to be like having another vessel, but in other ways it was just offloading certain functions of the body. If you didn¡¯t want to balance your internal alchemy, the worms could drink water for you, or eat for you, and apparently they could tank a hit in combat even if you were a few miles away from them. Perry wasn¡¯t sure it was better than being able to shoot moon lasers or jet to a base on the moon, but it was something he was interested in, even if there was no way he was going to carry a tub of worms from world to world. He wasn¡¯t going to stay at Worm Gate long though, certainly not long enough to master a whole new set of techniques. His only hope was that he could learn enough to work on it on his own later down the line, maybe when he was in a different world. That had become his one shining goal, but there was only one way to do that, which was to find and kill the other thresholder. ¡°You¡¯re planning to get out of here?¡± asked Sun Baoxi. ¡°I am,¡± said Perry. ¡°I told the grandmaster that when I first came here. Being a thresholder means not sticking around.¡± ¡°Father is hoping to leave too,¡± said Sun Baoxi. ¡°That¡¯s the word, anyway.¡± Perry nodded slowly. ¡°He doesn¡¯t want to stay with this temple? With his family?¡± Sun Baoxi looked around, then gestured for Perry to come closer. When Perry did, Baoxi moved forward, until his lips were practically touching Perry¡¯s ear. ¡°He¡¯s capped out.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what that means,¡± said Perry after he¡¯d pulled away. Sun Baoxi pursed his lips as he tried to find the words. ¡°What does every second sphere want?¡± asked Baoxi. ¡°To live a virtuous life,¡± said Perry. Baoxi rolled his eyes. ¡°Yes, but beyond that.¡± ¡°I really don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°To ¡­ grow stronger?¡± ¡°To become third sphere,¡± said Baoxi. ¡°It¡¯s what I¡¯m training for. But just like not every first sphere can become second sphere, not every second can make it to third, and ¡­¡± he trailed off with a raised eyebrow. ¡°I see,¡± said Perry. ¡°But for first sphere, it¡¯s a matter of the spirit root. What governs the transition from second to third?¡± Baoxi shrugged. ¡°Hard to say.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They don¡¯t tell,¡± said Baoxi. ¡°You¡¯re supposed to discover it on your own. If I knew, I wouldn¡¯t tell you. But I don¡¯t know, not yet. A balanced internal alchemy is a requirement, I know that much, but beyond that, it¡¯s up in the air. The mark of third sphere is being able to project your energy ¡ª maybe even your whole matrix ¡ª outside of your physical body, and it might be that once you know how to do that, it¡¯s easy enough. But third to fourth? No one really knows, except that there are a lot more people at third than fourth.¡± Perry nodded. And the grandmaster is capped out. He¡¯s grown as strong as he¡¯s ever going to be. He could claim more territory, but he¡¯s always going to be answerable to those of the fourth sphere in one way or another, even if the way they would choose to interfere is indirect. ¡°What will become of this place, if he¡¯s gone?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It will be like having a vessel ripped out,¡± said Baoxi. ¡°It¡¯s one of the reasons no one wants you here. Even before you showed up, father was talking excitedly about the news from Moon Gate of people who had traveled worlds.¡± ¡°Worm Gate won¡¯t survive?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll lose some to the countryside, first spheres who are only here because of the assurance of a third sphere¡¯s protection,¡± said Baoxi. ¡°And we¡¯ll surely lose some to Moon Gate, especially those who aren¡¯t a part of the family.¡± ¡°Even with the rivalry?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Rivalry,¡± said Baoxi with a wave of his hand. ¡°A rivalry is a complicated thing, but it¡¯s more between the sects than between the people that make up the sects. We¡¯ve taken in their rejects from time to time, either those who didn¡¯t make it to second sphere or in a few cases second sphere who grow disillusioned with that particular path to power. Some people cap out gently, but there are those who keep scrambling, trying more and more.¡± He cocked his head to the side. ¡°Which are you?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not really like that for a thresholder,¡± said Perry. Baoxi seemed to accept that. ¡°I think my sister is probably right that I don¡¯t have the drive to make it to third. But sometimes all the drive in the world won¡¯t get you there.¡± He shrugged and pulled a pipe from somewhere, then went to a nearby fire to light a thin piece of straw to light the bowl. ¡°Your sister has that drive?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Half-sister,¡± said Baoxi. ¡°But yes, maybe.¡± He took a long drag from his pipe. Perry didn¡¯t know what he was smoking, except that it didn¡¯t have the smell of pot or tobacco. ¡°Like I said, the drive isn¡¯t the best thing. That other thresholder you were with, she went to the dark arts.¡± He sniffed a bit, then let the smoke curl up out of his mouth. ¡°That¡¯s a thresholder thing?¡± ¡°Every world has power,¡± said Perry. ¡°I haven¡¯t been tempted. It would be nice to leave as third sphere, but ¡ª¡± Baoxi laughed. ¡°You¡¯ve been here two months, second sphere for one of them, and you¡¯re thinking of third sphere?¡± Perry didn¡¯t correct the timeline, since it wouldn¡¯t flatter him. ¡°Everyone knows I jumped up from first to second,¡± said Perry. ¡°But that¡¯s because I¡¯m not like other people. It doesn¡¯t seem, to me, that third is out of reach. There are shortcuts, and for me, maybe they aren¡¯t things of folly and danger.¡± ¡°Shortcuts,¡± said Baoxi, rolling his eyes. He had a habit of repeating words, putting his own intonation on them ¡ª usually dismissive. ¡°You¡¯re lucky you didn¡¯t die.¡± ¡°I¡¯d just need to get lucky again,¡± said Perry. He was itching to ask whether Baoxi knew of any shortcuts, but he kept the question to himself. Baoxi was as close to a friend as Perry had, assuming that the grandmaster didn¡¯t count. That night, when Perry came for what had become a nightly session with the grandmaster, there was a surprise waiting for him: the grandmaster had a pile of black powder sitting on a wooden board. ¡°What is this?¡± asked Perry. Rather than answering, the grandmaster snapped his fingers, casting sparks down onto the powder. It lit up quickly, bright enough that Marchand corrected the contrast, and let off a great deal of smoke into the air. ¡°Gunpowder,¡± said the grandmaster with a smile. Perry was silent for a moment. The grandmaster had seemed dismissive of firearms. Perry had given a long-winded answer on what gunpowder was, since the modern stuff used in bullets from Richter¡¯s world was a far cry from what they had used during the Revolutionary War, but the grandmaster had pressed Perry on the matter, and Perry had eventually given the ingredients, and when pressed, also given the ratios. ¡°Saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, as you said,¡± replied the grandmaster. ¡°Now the only matter is the creation of a cannon.¡± Metalworking on the Great Arc wasn¡¯t all that good, which was part of why Perry had been willing to part with the information. The bigger part was that lying was difficult work, and he¡¯d have had to lie about not just what he knew, but about what March knew, and during the hours-long interrogations that kept circling back around to revisit old subjects, he¡¯d have to lie again. Now it was all seeming like a huge mistake. ¡°Now then,¡± said the grandmaster. ¡°You must tell me about the worlds.¡± They had already gone through everything that Perry knew about thresholding. He¡¯d been able to keep a few things back, but the basics were plain, laid out and clear. Now it was a case of going through everything with a fine-toothed comb, and when that wasn¡¯t enough, Perry was asked to speculate. ¡°Do you believe Maya¡¯s account?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. It was maybe the third time he was asking that, though the wording varied. ¡°I believe her account of what those worlds were like,¡± said Perry. ¡°The specifics ¡­ that¡¯s less clear. There¡¯s a difference between intentionally lying and twisting around what you say to suit your own purposes. I think people can do that unintentionally. Sometimes we misremember because it¡¯s easier on us. I¡¯ve actually heard that the way human memory works, you can¡¯t help but change a memory when you think about it, it¡¯s not stored in the mind like it¡¯s written in stone, it¡¯s more that you¡¯re putting back a copy.¡± ¡°Her account of the wizard, who knew of the multiverse, and what he said?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°What do you make of it?¡± Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. ¡°That ¡­ I¡¯m less sure about,¡± said Perry. ¡°Xiyan tried to kill me. She came so close that I have to be thankful I¡¯m not dead. If I had revealed more to her, she would have done it in a different way, with different trade-offs. So she¡¯s a good candidate for third thresholder, but it could be we were supposed to be going up against Maya, and there are more exotic solutions to what¡¯s going on.¡± ¡°Three thresholders,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying, shaking his head. ¡°It¡¯s an embarrassment of riches.¡± ¡°Yes, grandmaster,¡± said Perry, bowing slightly. ¡°But the portal won¡¯t open until one side has conclusively won. That¡¯s been the rule so far. You have my eternal thanks for the shelter you¡¯ve provided me here, for the membership I still struggle to earn, but I don¡¯t know where the other thresholders are, and I wish to conclude my business in this world.¡± Really, Perry was hoping that there was some way to get out from the grandmaster¡¯s thumb. If possible, he¡¯d take a page out of Maya¡¯s playbook and just slit the grandmaster¡¯s throat on the way out, but that didn¡¯t seem remotely within the realm of possibility so far. The exact scope of what a third sphere grandmaster could do was unclear, but the deferential way people behaved around Sun Quying certainly wasn¡¯t because he was a venerable elder. ¡°You wish me to find the other thresholders?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. He stroked his chin. ¡°Is such an action allowed by this contest to which you are bound?¡± ¡°From what I know, there are no restrictions,¡± said Perry. ¡°That the fights have happened as they did is a result of the worlds we¡¯ve been in. Where there are more powerful forces, we are beholden to them, and can be subjugated by them.¡± Grandmaster Sun Quying smiled. ¡°As you are subjugated here?¡± Perry shook his head. ¡°You tease me.¡± ¡°I do, I do,¡± replied the grandmaster, chuckling to himself. ¡°But you ask for help, and I am inclined to oblige. I would like to see this other thresholder, to hear her stories, and when the time comes, to see the much-talked-about portal present itself.¡± He eyed Perry. ¡°What do you think happens, if a man walks through such a portal not meant for him?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. It was an old conversation, an old question. ¡°What do you speculate?¡± asked the grandmaster, giving a displeased sigh. ¡°I think they become a thresholder themselves,¡± said Perry. ¡°When the first portal was presented to me and Maya, we were only ordinary citizens of our world. The portals were meant for us, almost certainly, but if she¡¯s right, they¡¯re only trying to pull the right people from across the multiverse for a particular sort of battle. I have to imagine that they could simply pull the wrong person, someone unsuited.¡± ¡°Yet you have all these worlds you¡¯ve heard of, and no record of it happening?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°I feel fortunate that Cosme and Maya shared their stories with me,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t imagine that I¡¯ll be so fortunate again, though I¡¯d like to know as much as I can about thresholding.¡± When the grandmaster eventually released him, Perry went back to his room and topped up March¡¯s battery, which was getting to be routine. Perry was getting better, faster, and more and more he was able to draw only on outside energy rather than the wolf vessel. He was worried he would need it, and didn¡¯t want a slow, weakened transformation, but he didn¡¯t know how the vessel could be filled without transformation. What he really wanted to do was transform out in the woods and kill some deer, on the theory that would slake the appetite and refill the vessel, but that was guesswork, and he didn¡¯t have anyone he trusted to help corral him, especially not when it would mean leaving the armor behind at Cicada Temple. The gunpowder had scared Perry more than he would have liked to admit. He¡¯d sort of assumed that Grandmaster Sun Quying would be as arrogant as everyone else, eschewing armor and even most weapons ¡ª but no, the man was intent on building a cannon, just to see whether it could be done. The man was also intent on making his way through a portal, and the only upside of that was that Perry might get some help in the showdown against Xiyan. Perry had been able to lie about becoming a werewolf, claiming that it was a tonic he was made to drink, and he was glad that he¡¯d been able to keep it back. Perry didn¡¯t have many cards to play, but there was at least one other one he¡¯d kept in hand. ¡°Marchand, send out a blast of radio,¡± said Perry. ¡°Try your best to signal for the nanites. Open up a channel.¡± ¡°Are you certain, sir?¡± asked March. Perry frowned. ¡°Why do you ask?¡± ¡°You had previously expressed a preference for radio silence, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I only wanted to double-check that you wished me to temporarily violate that directive.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I had thought ¡­¡± ¡°You had thought that I was inquiring after your judgment of Miss Singh following the events at Moth Lantern Hall?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°That.¡± ¡°I am not charged with second guessing your judgment or personal opinions, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry frowned. ¡°I hereby charge you with second guessing my judgment and personal opinions,¡± said Perry. ¡°So long as we¡¯re not in a combat scenario. Or ¡­ even then, I guess, if you think that I¡¯m emotionally compromised.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Did you still want me to send out the radio signal?¡± ¡°The Maya thing,¡± said Perry, taking a breath. ¡°If we could find her, get a line of communication open ¡­ I haven¡¯t warned her about Xiyan, and she¡¯s persona non grata both here and at Moon Gate. There¡¯s actually a good chance she¡¯s dead. But this guy ¡­ you know, I was talking to Baoxi, and I had asked about the concubine thing, apparently the grandmaster takes in a new one every seven years like clockwork. Then Baoxi did this impression of his father, sort of an old man''s voice, and said ¡®the fruit must be plucked when it¡¯s ripe¡¯. Which is a hell of a catchphrase. And I walk by these glassy-eyed people that everyone assures me have signed up for servitude, but I haven¡¯t been able to actually talk to one, because the grandmaster sees through their eyes while he¡¯s putting them to work.¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t quite follow, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You feel the need to warn Miss Singh, but also feel some discontent with your position here and the moral character of this resort¡¯s director?¡± Perry paused for a long time, soaking that in. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°But those things are related. Maya¡¯s kind of a bitch. I wouldn¡¯t want her as an ally, and she betrayed me, but she wouldn¡¯t do what I¡¯m doing. She wouldn¡¯t say all these honeyed words and then hope to scurry away like a cowardly little rat. She sure as hell wouldn¡¯t put that guy anywhere near a portal, because I don¡¯t doubt he¡¯s strong enough to dominate most of the worlds in the multiverse. So I¡¯m going to try to get in touch with her, and maybe yell at her, and then ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll be partners against your many enemies?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll at least put my plans to kill her on hold.¡± ¡°That was a cunning joke, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can laugh now.¡± Marchand was silent. Perry didn¡¯t know whether that was because the AI didn¡¯t find it funny or if it was just a natural part of its personality. He chose to believe that this was just banter. ¡°Shall I send out the radio signal then, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yes, please,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have a response from the nanites, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What, already?¡± asked Perry. Not even a full second had passed. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It appears they were waiting for just such a communication. There is no location signal, but triangulation should be relatively simple ¡ª and is now done. Would you like to see their position on the map?¡± Perry nodded. The HUD changed from a view of his room to an overhead view of Green Snake Valley, with helpful labels on the temples, towns, and other features. The map zoomed in on Cicada Temple, with a 3D model of all the buildings there, and a small dot glowed within the large building set furthest away from the gate ¡ª the very same building that Perry was, at that moment, standing in. ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°She¡¯s ¡­ in the basement?¡± ¡°The nanites are in the basement, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I do not believe Miss Singh is with them. The last record they have available to share is from two and a half weeks ago, when she suffered a catastrophic injury. It was at that point they were separated from her.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to go get them.¡± ¡°Do you, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to know what happened. The grandmaster knows more than he¡¯s let on, and if she¡¯s dead ¡­ I need to know.¡± If she was dead, Perry was on his own. He hadn¡¯t been looking forward to talking to her, but he found himself getting angry at the thought that she was dead. They¡¯d had beef they needed to settle. And of course there was the grandmaster¡¯s betrayal, the lies ¡ª or lies by omission ¡ª but those stung less, because they were to be expected of the man. It did not, of course, bode well for Perry¡¯s continued living arrangement at Worm Gate. Perry waited until the dead of night and then made his way down the building, using the sword to float, which was as silent as he could possibly get. He¡¯d never been down to the basement ¡ª hadn¡¯t even known there was a basement ¡ª but March had sent a pulse through the building and made a map, just like they used to do in the good old days. The basement wasn¡¯t like a typical sublevel, it went deep into the ground, with twenty feet of rock separating the basement from the first floor. The door wasn¡¯t even all that hidden, and there was no lock on it. This was the grandmaster¡¯s domain though, and there were all kinds of insects around, which might serve as his eyes and ears. Perry knew there was a good chance he¡¯d get caught, but he elected not to care about that. If the grandmaster confronted him, he would confront the grandmaster right back. He at least had something the grandmaster wanted: the portal to another world. He wasn¡¯t foolish enough to think that would insulate him, but it was one of the few options he had left. The stairs were hewn stone, and reminded Perry of the way Moth Lantern Hall had been carved out. Maybe it had been someone with a particularly powerful technique. The map that Marchand had made showed where everyone in the building was, and no one was anywhere near Perry, but there was only one entrance down into the basement, and if someone came down after him, he had no way to avoid them and escape back into his room. The basement had unexpectedly tall ceilings, and the same lights that were used in Moth Lantern Hall, a constant illumination. Perry wondered whether they were left on all the time, or whether they could even be turned off. They were only used in particular locations, not up in the temple itself, where the working day was governed by whether or not there was sunlight. There were six doors leading off from the main room, each with a shutter to allow someone to look in. There were heavy locks on the doors, enough to stop most second sphere intruders, perhaps. They weren¡¯t enough to stop Perry, not unless they were reinforced with some kind of technique or magic like the library at Crystal Lake Temple. It was a dungeon. Perry should have figured that the grandmaster would have a dungeon. ¡°Tell me what¡¯s in these rooms,¡± said Perry. He dropped to the ground as silently as he could and placed his hand against the floor. ¡°One moment, sir,¡± said Marchand. The map in the corner of Perry¡¯s view updated, showing March¡¯s best guesses. Only one of the rooms had a person in it, her heart beating slowly. One of the other rooms held the nanites. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. He went to the door of the room that had the woman in it. She was strung up, arms in the air, back against the wall, feet only barely on the floor. All that could be seen with the sonic mapping. Perry picked up the lock and looked at it, ignoring the shutter. It was huge and clunky, nothing particularly special as locks went. It was a million miles behind what they had on Earth. There was no key, just a set of dials with symbols on them, set into a casing that looked vaguely like a beetle. ¡°What¡¯s the combination?¡± asked Perry. ¡°One moment, sir,¡± said Marchand. He must have been feeling fancy, because he displayed some of the work on the HUD, showing an internal diagram that had been made using microvibrations and the ¡®solve¡¯. The individual icons needed to be moved in a particular way, but it wasn¡¯t all that much more complicated than a combination lock on a high school locker, just fancier. In just a moment, Perry had the door open. There was no light in the room but that which came from his armor. Maya was there against the wall, stuck within a metal contraption that kept her arms locked in place, her head unable to move. The rest of her was free, more or less, though her ankles were chained to the back wall. She was wearing her athletic shorts and tank top, with her hoodie nowhere to be seen. She didn¡¯t actually look that much worse for the wear, no blood or grime on her, but that might have just been the second sphere keeping her clean. It took Perry longer than it should have to realize that her right hand was missing. ¡°Well, this is awkward,¡± said Maya. Her speech was being affected by the piece of metal that touched her throat and the awkward way her head was held high. ¡°You¡¯re alive,¡± said Perry. ¡°I suppose it¡¯d be a bit impolite to ask whether this is a rescue operation,¡± she said. ¡°It is,¡± said Perry without really thinking too much about it. Whatever bad blood there was between them, there was no way he could leave her like this. Not in the long term anyway. ¡°Just ¡­ not yet.¡± Maya swore. ¡°You know, I promised myself if you came by I would try to play it cool, but I haven¡¯t been having the best time here. They cut off half my arm.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He leaned down and looked. The cut had been clean, just below the elbow, and it was completely healed over, with not so much as a scab. Maya could heal fast, but apparently not regrow an arm. The stump had been held in place with more metal. ¡°That¡¯s how they took your nanites?¡± ¡°Just get me out, we can figure everything else out later,¡± said Maya. She struggled fruitlessly against the restraints. ¡°If I let you out, they¡¯ll hunt me down,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve got Moon Gate on my back, I can¡¯t fight off one sect on my own, let alone two.¡± ¡°Please,¡± said Maya. Her voice broke. ¡°Please, just,¡± she wriggled against her restraints, as though she was going to get out. ¡°I have no idea how long I¡¯ve been here, he barely comes down to see me anymore, I know you¡¯re pissed, I¡¯d be pissed too, but you were going to let them kill me, and ¡ª¡± ¡°That¡¯s in the past,¡± said Perry. ¡°I found the third thresholder. Or, I guess, she found me. We kill her, we escape this world.¡± ¡°Why are you waiting?¡± asked Maya. ¡°What¡¯s the hold up?¡± ¡°They¡¯ll kill me,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to find the right time, make the right plan. I need to know where Xiyan is ¡ª¡± ¡°Your handmaid?¡± asked Maya. ¡°She¡¯s the third thresholder,¡± said Perry. Maya laughed, a laughter tinged with hysterics. ¡°Under our nose that whole time?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Unless she stole the face of Xiyan. But she had positioned herself in the temple as a refugee before we got here, and that would be enough to explain away the oddities of a thresholder. I had thought she didn¡¯t look quite like them.¡± He looked at Maya. ¡°I¡¯m going to get you out of here. We¡¯ll kill her. Then we¡¯re off through the portals, to somewhere better.¡± ¡°I really don¡¯t know how long I can keep this up,¡± said Maya. ¡°They haven¡¯t given me food or water. I fixed my internal alchemy, I had to, but I¡¯m sitting here, in the dark, going out of my fucking mind. If I didn¡¯t have meditation, I would be insane, and meditating for twenty hours a day will make you insane.¡± ¡°Taking you out of here the minute I found you is a bad idea,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to plan, create a diversion, think of a place for us to go.¡± ¡°He¡¯s planning to eat me,¡± said Maya. ¡°He¡¯s going to strip out my vessels and take them for himself. The only reason he hasn¡¯t is because he doesn¡¯t know what that will do to the thresholding. Perry, you slipped past the guards, but you don¡¯t know what it¡¯s like in here ¡ª holy shit, you¡¯re working for them, aren¡¯t you?¡± His face must have given it away. ¡°I got attacked, by Xiyan. I had to turn into the wolf to survive. I killed a woman, one of the second spheres at Crystal Lake. There was nowhere else to go.¡± ¡°The new questions, these last few days,¡± said Maya. She tried to move her head around to get a better look at him and failed. ¡°That was you, that was him trying to confirm what you were telling him.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you¡¯re right, he wants out of here, almost as much as I do.¡± ¡°I told him you killed his grandkids,¡± said Maya. ¡°Perry, he knows, we need to get out of here. If he can rip my powers out of me ¡ª¡± ¡°Then we¡¯d be fucked,¡± said Perry. ¡°More fucked than we already are.¡± ¡°You¡¯re going to leave me here?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but I need time before I make a move. I need to know where Xiyan is. I¡¯m probably going to need help. I shot her five times and she just kept moving. Look, there¡¯s more to say, but I can¡¯t stay down here.¡± She strained against her restraints. ¡°Perry, please, I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m so sorry, but I can¡¯t stay here, I can¡¯t, you¡¯re going to lock the door and I¡¯m going to be alone with my thoughts for days or weeks, and ¡ª¡± ¡°Hold tight,¡± said Perry. Maya¡¯s eyes were locked on him. ¡°You have five days.¡± ¡°What do you mean?¡± asked Perry, suddenly still. ¡°I can¡¯t keep this up,¡± said Maya. ¡°He¡¯s going to break me down for parts, use my bones for his broth, he¡¯ll have more than enough power to take over some other world, one that doesn¡¯t care about cosmic balance.¡± Privately, Perry wasn¡¯t sure how much this world did care about cosmic balance. ¡°You¡¯re saying ¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯m not tapped out,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯m down a needle, down the nanites, down a hand, no sun on my skin in a month, but I¡¯m not tapped. Five days, then I do something I really didn¡¯t want to have to do.¡± ¡°Can I get a hint?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Maya. Her face was set. In spite of everything, she still had her resolve. He didn¡¯t even remotely doubt that she had something awful up her sleeve. ¡°Five days then,¡± Perry replied. ¡°Are you going to tell me how you got trapped down here?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a long, embarrassing story,¡± said Maya. ¡°If everything goes well, we¡¯ll have time for it later. If you¡¯re going to go, go. Don¡¯t get caught. Remember I¡¯m down here.¡± Perry nodded. He put everything back how it was when he left, closing the door on Maya and then resetting the combination lock, making sure to consult March¡¯s video so he could make sure it was all set properly. He floated after the sword, back up the stairs, keeping a close eye on all of the insects. It was entirely possible the grandmaster had seen the entire thing. Sleep was difficult. Planning kept getting in the way. If the security on the dungeon was as poor as it had been tonight, getting Maya out of there wasn¡¯t going to be a huge issue, but everything that came after was sure to be a complete mess. The next day, he found out that the grandmaster had more than one secret plot in the works, and the whole affair became much more complicated. Chapter 53 - Stories, pt 1 No one seemed to have noticed Perry¡¯s nighttime trip down to the dungeon. The big risk was that they were just pretending they¡¯d seen nothing, which was even more of a concern given that Perry now knew the grandmaster already had him dead to rights. Maya had been talking. She would have told the grandmaster everything, or almost everything. Perry felt better about not lying, because not only had the grandmaster been circling everything Perry had said, he had, in the background, been double-checking Perry¡¯s account with a second source. If Perry had been caught in a lie, they probably would have called it an example of karmic retribution. But there was one major lie, one that the grandmaster hadn¡¯t pressed Perry on, the question of what had happened at Moth Lantern Hall. Perry had thrown Maya under the bus, and Maya had done the same to him, and that was all very poetic, a literal prisoner¡¯s dilemma they¡¯d both failed, but it meant that the grandmaster¡¯s silence had to have some kind of meaning. Maybe the grandmaster didn¡¯t care that two of his spawn had died and that their temple of exile had been defiled. But it seemed more likely that he was simply waiting for retribution, possibly just waiting until Perry had said everything there was to say. Perry was very aware that he could easily end up in the dungeon too. He tried not to let it change what he was doing, because that would be a tell, but the very next night the Grandmaster Sun Quying blew the whole thing up anyway. ¡°I have a guest to come join us tonight,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying after a series of questions whose only purpose seemed to be to wear Perry down. ¡°Oh?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I had thought you wanted these sessions to be more private, grandmaster.¡± ¡°I do, I do,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°But in this case, it won¡¯t be you I¡¯ll be asking questions of, I only want you here in order to get your input.¡± Perry nodded and tried not to swallow too hard. He was absolutely certain that Maya was about to be marched up the stairs from the dungeon, locked up tight, missing her hand. He would have to pretend not to have known she was down there, and she would probably just ruin everything with her loud mouth. The grandmaster called a command to his attendant, and a short while later, Perry heard footsteps from behind him. They weren¡¯t the footsteps of a prisoner in chains though, and Perry turned to look. Xiyan was walking across the wooden floor. Perry scrambled to his feet, and seconds later, his sword was in his hand. He was in his armor, thank god, as ready for a battle as he could be, but ¡ª ¡°Sit down, Peregrin,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°Any fighting between the two of you will be dealt with harshly.¡± He seemed bored by the prospect. ¡°She¡¯s the other thresholder,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, you¡¯ve said, and she¡¯s confirmed,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°And now you¡¯re here, together. But she is a guest of Worm Gate, for the time being, and I have questions for her.¡± ¡°How?¡± asked Perry, tearing his eyes from Xiyan to look at the grandmaster for just a moment. ¡°She came to me,¡± said the grandmaster with a shrug. ¡°It¡¯s no secret that you¡¯re a member here. Moon Gate knows that well, and I would guess that the grandmaster¡¯s strange visitor is a rumor making the rounds among the first sphere.¡± ¡°She¡¯s going to try to kill me,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Xiyan, the first she¡¯d spoken. Her voice was different, deeper and richer. She was dressed the same though, the simple servant. She had her hands behind her back, and Perry worried that she had a blade. She had destroyed the microfusion reactor, which meant that she was strong enough to cut through the armor. There was no evidence she¡¯d been shot five times at close range. ¡°No?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s it, just ¡®no¡¯?¡± ¡°I believe we will do battle eventually,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°But not right now. Right now, I only want to talk.¡± Perry stared at her, then looked over at Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°You made a deal.¡± ¡°I did,¡± the grandmaster nodded. ¡°She was very straightforward, which is what I prefer.¡± ¡°A deal for my life?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said the grandmaster, face turning into a scowl. ¡°You are a member of Worm Gate. Do you think my allegiance is so brittle?¡± He took a breath, and the sudden affront left him. ¡°I have decided that the details of my arrangement with Xiyan will remain between us, but she knows that she is safe here, for the duration.¡± You¡¯re giving her Maya. Perry couldn¡¯t say that, but it was the obvious conclusion, knowing what he knew. ¡°I¡¯m here to talk,¡± said Xiyan. She smiled. ¡°Peregrin, sit,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. It was an order. There was no mistaking his tone. Perry sat back down on the pillow. Xiyan knelt on her knees, but only for long enough that an attendant could come forward with a pillow for her. There were twenty feet between them, far enough that he felt like he could spring into action if she suddenly attacked him. He was thankful for the armor, though his helmet was on the floor next to him. ¡°Very good,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°Now, begin.¡± Xiyan cleared her throat. ¡°Is it wise for Perry to be here?¡± she asked. ¡°He knows the varied worlds and hates you,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°He is as much an expert as I have, knowledgeable about many fields. He will stay.¡± Xiyan glanced at Perry. ¡°Very well.¡± She turned toward the grandmaster and began. ~~~~ I grew up lying. Perry will tell you that I still lie, that I¡¯ve lied about who I am, and this is true, but you know that. This will be the truth, or as close to the truth as I remember. You want to know about the worlds, the portals, the powers. I can¡¯t tell you everything, because I don¡¯t know everything. What I know, I will tell, and it will be the truth. I never knew that much about the world I was from. I was a poor girl from a small city. At the age of eleven, I killed a man in self-defense, and when the guards came, I was taken from my family, not because they thought I was guilty of any crime, but because someone had seen something in the way that I carried myself afterward. I didn¡¯t shake or cry, I cleaned myself off and went to get help, as though it had been any other day. They liked that about me. Over the next years, I was trained in the art of conversation, trained in how to lie, and later, trained in how to kill. I was also trained to fall in love. They thought the lies came easier if they were built around truth. When you lie, you have to keep certain facts straight, have to think through what you¡¯re going to say before you say it, and it¡¯s better to simply have your mind run ahead of you, for everything to come out easily. I was good at falling in love. The first portal opened up while I was on the run. I had killed a man, as the king had instructed me to. The guards didn¡¯t know that it was ordered by the king, so they were trying to catch me. That happened sometimes. I went through the portal before realizing what it was, and then I was in a forest, with a blood-stained dress and nothing else. I didn¡¯t know what to do. I walked until my feet were blistered, found a stream, and followed it. I slept in the woods, chilled to the bone, moss for a pillow. Eventually I came to a small village of people with long, drooping ears, like rabbits but pink and hairless. After a night there, a man with a cart took me to an abbey some miles away. I was to be a bikkun, a woman of service, and I accepted this readily enough, just as I had accepted my training, had accepted the tasks I was asked to carry out for my king, had accepted that I should love on demand. I learned the practices of the bikkun. They could change their faces, their tongues, and their eyes. After a month, I looked like them, spoke like them, and saw the world as they saw it. I thought that would be my life. A man showed up after a month had passed. He wanted to be a bikkun, but they turned him away, as they didn¡¯t allow men. After he spent three days at the door, they let him in, feeling as though they had no other choice if a man was so determined. I felt myself drawn to him. He had short, rounded ears like mine had been. He spoke freely of the world he had come from. The bikkun didn¡¯t say a word about me and my origins, but they were women of secrets, so I suppose that made sense. I fell in love with him. I had always liked falling in love, that feeling of losing myself in another person. Like with the others though, there were also things I hated, big and small ¡ª but that was part of what I liked about falling in love, that tension, the goodness and badness at war with each other inside me. When he found out who I was, where I was from, he went into a murderous rage. It wasn¡¯t the first time someone had tried to kill me though, and I fought back. When he was dead, a portal opened, and I went through it, knowing now that there was a higher purpose. ~~~~ ¡°Wait,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry, he just attacked you out of nowhere?¡± ¡°He must have had his own reasons,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°He made no declaration of them.¡± ¡°He¡¯d been to other worlds before?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He was a veteran thresholder?¡± ¡°We may reserve our questions for the end,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°There will be much more which must be interrogated.¡± ¡°He talked about the world he was from,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°It was a world filled with water, oceans blemished only by small islands.¡± Xiyan cocked her head in Perry¡¯s direction, as if asking how many more questions he¡¯d like answered. ¡°We will have a catalog of worlds, in due time,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°Continue, please.¡± Xiyan nodded. ~~~~ The portal led me to a place far stranger than the world of the bikkun. There were ships, not meant for land, but for space. They were arranged in many rows, parked in spaces that had been painted onto the ground, hooked up to pipes and cords. There was day and night, but no weather, no wind. I was told later that there were other places in the world, or ¡®planets¡¯, but this was the only one I saw, endless rows of these starships in all their varieties. I walked for miles and saw only these ships, always more of them, their designs always different, some bulky, others sleek, spindly ships like crabs and ships shaped like bubbles. They were all metal and glass, but sometimes other materials. A single ship had more metal than I had seen in my entire life up to that point, and early on, I thought they were dormant monsters that had been wrapped in armor. I was found by a robot that clambered about on all fours. It led me to a camp that had been built out of one of these giant ships. I kept silent about the other worlds I had been to, and claimed to have lost my memory. It was a bad lie, but they accepted it readily enough. None of them knew where they were. The bulk of them ¡ª fifty or so ¡ª had been put to sleep within their ship, part of a plan to survive a very long journey. They had awakened to find their ship among the others, neatly parked in a spot precisely sized for them. They had no ability to lift off, and were stranded. The idea of ships that traveled through space needed to be explained to me, and I found it too fantastical to believe. The other people in their small colony had their own stories of how they got there, but no one quite remembered arriving. Some had been born in the Dock, while others had been cloned ¡ª a new person created from nutrients, their memories given to them. I had much to learn. I had taken the robot for an armored pet, but learned it was nothing but wires and metal. I learned about the stars and the impossible technologies these people took for granted. There were many species of person, and they thought that I was a species they simply didn¡¯t know about. They had translators that converted between different tongues, which they used often. The ships were almost all derelict. They had been stripped of parts decades or even centuries prior. There was something different about the sun, which they said was a star. It was too small or cool, and there were systems on the world ¡ª they called it the Lot, the Shipyard, the Dock, rarely settling on one or the other ¡ª that kept the winds from moving. Each of the parked ships was connected to pipes and tubes, whatever it needed for refueling or recharging, all of which came from within the bowels of the planet. Those pipes were what they used to stay alive. A fuel designed for a particular type of ship could allow plants to grow, and certain ships had links that allowed in water, which was rationed among our small group. Hunger was a constant concern though, since our farms were tiny and the light was poor. I never found out who built the place, or what its purpose was. None of the ships could take off. Most couldn¡¯t even power up. Others had been there before us, and some had left behind notes in their strange languages, trying to pass on what they knew. I had been there for two weeks when one of the scouting parties found a library. It offered nothing for survival, but chronicled a long-lived camp like ours that dwindled down to nothing when a plague swept through. I never saw one of the ships in flight, and might not have believed their capabilities if they didn¡¯t have videos to show me. I saw ancient crashes on two occasions, places where the collection of ships had been reduced to scrap by an impact. Some of the escape attempts must have failed. Still, the group scavenged what they could, improving their lot in life, but with the ultimate goal of getting one of the ships in working order so they could fly away. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. They assumed there was vast machinery below the surface of the Shipyard, given the tubes produced so many different kinds of fluids. They started a hunt for a way in, a hole large enough for a person to fit down. Eventually, they found one, a thick tube for dumping trash connected to one of the larger ships. They needed someone small though, and I was the smallest person that wasn¡¯t a child. I spent five days down there. The rope they were going to use to pull me up had snapped. I had a mask and a flashlight, and other tools, but the walls were slippery, and I ended up down deep. Another person might have been bothered, might have shook and cried, but I only thought about what needed to be done. That was always my best quality. I made my way through machines the size of buildings, past tanks that could easily drown the entirety of this temple, around wires that stretched for miles. I saw robots from time to time, most of them small, but a few larger ones carrying cargo, blind to my presence. This was where the water I¡¯d been drinking came from, where the fuel that was used for fertilizer was manufactured. Things hummed and crackled. It smelled of grease and smoke. I walked randomly, trying to get higher, back to the surface somehow, but it was a massive cave and I had no sense of direction. Eventually, I made it. I had followed the robots along the pathways that had been built for them. The top of the stairs pushed open into the weak sunlight, and I took a breath of clean air. The entrance had been hidden, so precisely machined that it was invisible from above. I found my way back to the camp, starving, and was hailed as a hero. Journeys into the depths of the place became routine, even if they weren¡¯t entirely safe. We no longer had to ration water, and once we found the right tanks, our gardens could flourish. There was some hope of repairing one of the ships well enough to fly somewhere, but we were all from such different places, and were mired in ignorance. The wizard showed up not long after that new era of prosperity. ¡®Wizard¡¯ was how he introduced himself, and they laughed until he brought his oaken staff down and caused lightning to come down from the perpetually clear skies. The people I was with had weapons scavenged from various ships, but the wizard was an unknown, his magic strange and alien to them. He made demands, and they complied. It wasn¡¯t long before he found me out. He requested a census of the town and a list of everyone who had joined within the last three months, and I was the only person. I ran before I could be captured, off into the endless fields of ships. I don¡¯t know exactly what happened with the wizard, only that I saw a ship in the air after I had been gone for a week. I knew enough about these ships now that I was afraid of it, and I hid from cameras and sensors, but it wasn¡¯t enough. The wizard wasn¡¯t with the ship, which was a small one. There was only a woman I had known, who seemed intent on capturing me. She died in the scuffle, her own blaster making a hole in her gut. I took her face and tongue, then took her clothes, hid the body, and walked back to camp. I was good at lying, but not good enough to pretend to be a person others knew well. I didn¡¯t think that I needed to be that good, only good enough to stop the wizard. In the end, I was right. It wasn¡¯t a fight I had wanted, but it was a fight I finished, and once he was beaten, the portal opened. I left with a blaster and other pieces of technology. ~~~~ ¡°Did you kill him?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°No,¡± said Xiyan, shaking her head. ¡°Why not?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I had killed in self-defense, and in the name of my king,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°This was neither.¡± She said that as though it explained anything, as though it was obvious. Perry didn¡¯t trust it. ¡°This woman whose face you took ¡ª how does that power work?¡± ¡°It can wait until the end,¡± said the grandmaster, though he¡¯d been the one to start the questioning. ¡°It¡¯s important for my understanding of the story, grandmaster,¡± said Perry. ¡°Taking someone¡¯s face would be, in my world, a serious offense if it was possible at all.¡± ¡°I can take only from the dead,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°The bikkun believed that the dead had no need for face, eyes, and tongue in the next world. I have tried to honor their understanding.¡± ¡°But taking a face ¡­ that changes your entire body?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You said that your ears became different, it includes skin tone, spreads to your hands?¡± Xiyan nodded. ¡°And it would only work on a woman your size?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There is a difference between taking a face and trying to be that person, which I have done only seldom, and taking a face to become someone new,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°If the body does not match, it will be an imperfect replica.¡± Perry frowned. Stealing faces was downright villainous, but she was framing it as somehow ethical. He wondered whether Quying bought it or not. She had promised the truth, and Perry didn¡¯t think they were getting it. He was worried about what she would say when she got to the present. ¡°Continue with the story, please,¡± said Grandmaster Quying. He sat comfortably on his pillow. From experience, he could sit there, listening, for a very long time. For her part, Xiyan seemed like she could go on forever. ~~~~ I had no purpose. This had been true my entire life. I fell in with people easily enough, and was ready ¡ª eager ¡ª to take orders. I did well when I was told what to do, and suffered when I was on my own. You might have noticed something that took me a long time to notice, which was that in the world of moored ships, I was sent down into the belly of the place because I was the only one small enough. But the woman whose face I took was the same size as me, and I was able to impersonate her, for a time. I had been used by them, and had not noticed. I think once I was down the trash chute, they didn¡¯t make much further effort to rescue me. I didn¡¯t realize it. That was how I was, then. My third world, in what has become a long string of worlds, was a place of disconnected bulbs, all of different sizes, some miles across and others only as large as a room. Water and air flowed between them, through thick tubes, causing weather and tides, and most had a small sun sitting near the top. The walls were harder than metal, impervious. The people lived simple lives, sometimes moving from one bulb to another but often simply staying in one place, farming the land or catching fish. The bulbs were uncountable, and the tunnels twice as uncountable. I was taken to a local king, whose castle took up the interior of a smaller bulb, the tunnels blocked off with thick gates. I had thought to lie to him, given my experiences, but instead I told the truth. I had bowed to the king of my homeworld, and didn¡¯t suppose it would be any different to bow to the king of another place. I didn¡¯t know what judgment he would pass on me, what he might think of the bare truth, but he was a pragmatist, and saw that I could be useful. I was given an anointment of smoke and shadow, imbuing me with a power I carry to this day. With the tools I had taken from the world of ships and the ability to change faces, I was set to become a fearsome assassin for the king, a power beyond compare. I was given a new face and set in the direction of an enemy kingdom many bulbs away, with a handler to ensure I did what I was told. The king was practically giddy over this plan. The trip was slow, the bulbs varied, but we made it in due time. My handler was a hard woman who nonetheless took some pity on me. She was pretending to be my mother, and I think the act became too much for her. I had training in how to pretend, how to bring real emotion into a lie while not forgetting my purpose. My handler had not been trained so well. She grew protective. At last we were in the enemy kingdom, and with time, drew close to the enemy castle. I had the right face and tongue to be let in, promising to work for the queen until my bones bled. My handler was left to stay outside. It took a week to make my way into the queen¡¯s chambers, but most of that was making sure I knew where the guards would be. With the power of smoke and shadow, I could go silently through the night, the guards mistaking me for a figment of their imagination, soft as the falling of a feather. I went into the room where the queen slept and raised my dagger for a killing blow. I hesitated. I stopped and thought. My heart wasn¡¯t in it. I had no connection to this queen, nor to the king who had set me on this quest. I was only doing what I was told. For the first time, it seemed inadequate. I slipped out of the room, leaving the queen as safe and snug as I had found her, and fled the kingdom the next day. For the first time, I was deciding what I wanted to do with my life. I had no hope of going back home, and wasn¡¯t even sure that I would have wanted to if it were a possibility. I wandered the bulbs until food became a concern, then began working. Most work came easily to me. I kept my head down, and didn¡¯t speak often. I moved as a course of habit. And while I was quiet and tended to myself, I was thinking about what I actually wanted from my life. Eventually, the other world-jumper came through. He had heard of me, by and by, then spent two months of his life trying to track down someone who was doing simple work and keeping silent. He didn¡¯t even find me, only started searching in the right area, but the woman whose house I was in didn¡¯t give me up, and instead claimed I had been living with her since the time I was small. I had been thinking hard about what I wanted, what it would be like to follow my own path. I had decided that I would like to fall in love again, but for real this time, to feel that well of emotion naturally instead of having it coaxed forward by duty. The world-jumper ¡ª thresholder, as Perry says ¡ª was on his third world, like I was. He was rugged and individualist, blessed with self-assurance and good looks. His right arm was red and scaly, ending in black claws, which were the only thing that prevented it from looking like a disease, but he wore heavy clothes and a thick glove most of the time. He had a bird that sat on his shoulder much of the time, and it didn¡¯t like being within the bulbs. I don¡¯t know what it was about him, but I took a liking to him at once. He had a thick beard and kind eyes. I lied to him. I offered my services as a local guide, letting him know that he was in need of one. I exaggerated my skills. He grudgingly accepted, and from then on, we were inseparable. I hid my abilities and devices from him, and followed him everywhere. He had no better idea about what was happening with the portals than I did, but he expressed that he had kept running into the most awful people, and was on his guard. He wanted answers from the woman he was chasing, nothing more, but he was prepared to kill, if it came to that. He seemed sad about the prospect. We traveled together, all through the bulbs, chasing the woman. Sometimes I could almost forget that the woman we were chasing was me. There was a predictable pattern to it, and often, when there were no leads to chase, he would pull out his map and find a way to march us to a place we¡¯d never been before. He was desperate to return home. He told me of all his worlds, but his home was the one he had real enthusiasm for. He treated it with zeal. There was a war going on, one great nation clashing against the other, and he wished to be a soldier on the frontlines. He¡¯d been skinny and weak, barred from war by those who saw him as a liability, but the worlds had been kind to him, at least in some ways. His falcon was fearsome, his arm grotesquely powerful, and he¡¯d grown muscular and healthy. He spoke often of the glory of his homeland, and the cowardice and treachery of their enemy. I grew to love him. For the first time, this came naturally, blooming on its own, like a plant in a garden that unexpectedly returns for a second year without thought or planning from the gardener. We were alike in that we¡¯d been to many worlds, which changes a person. I would have done anything for him. I thought, many times, about telling him that I was the woman he had been searching for all along. He spoke of her with such venom, and of me with such tenderness, that the moments between us felt like a fragile bubble, too easily broken. In the end, he caught me by going through my things. I had two artifacts from the world of ships, a firearm and what Perry would call a smartphone. I had kept them hidden from him, and was always certain to carry my own bag, going so far as to stitch a false bottom in, though it wouldn¡¯t have survived close inspection. I had hoped we would travel together forever, or that he would give up his quest. He fought me, and I tried to defend myself. I managed to get away, but not before he revealed the true extent of his power. The scaled arm could hide things out of sight, and he¡¯d used it to capture one of the suns from a large bulb. Its power could be called forth in an instant, searing light to burn away my smoke and shadow. His hunt was no longer directionless. He came after me with fury and force. He scorched whole bulbs trying to find me, blasting out the power of the tiny sun. He killed innocents. That was his mistake. He hadn¡¯t known I could take their faces. Once I did, it would have been impossible for him to find me. But I knew that I was the only one to stop him, so I did, using every tool at my disposal. His falcon was fearsome, and cut me across my face, but eventually I killed the man. I took no pleasure from it. When the portal opened, I was glad to leave the world behind. ~~~~ Perry had no idea how much of it to believe. Xiyan had started by saying that it was all the truth, but he didn¡¯t believe that. Her stories painted her as sympathetic, too sympathetic. She was a trained assassin, but only killed in self-defense or the defense of others. She fell in love and was betrayed. She was a listless wanderer, self-less, always with others finding her first, always forced into conflict, a victim who came out on top. Even the horrifying face-stealing power took only from the dead, not the living. Perry remembered the look in her eyes when she¡¯d disemboweled him. He remembered the tenderness with which she said she¡¯d watch him die. It wasn¡¯t glee, exactly, but it wasn¡¯t all that far off. She had wanted to watch him die. Despite Marchand being in the room, there was no video of the event. Perry had March in stringent mode, microphones and cameras as disabled as possible so the precious power wouldn¡¯t be wasted. There was video of the immediate aftermath, once March had woken up, but that only showed Perry on the bed, dying, and Xiyan fleeing. It picked up just after when it would have been most useful, at least when it came to proving she was a liar. But Perry also didn¡¯t know why, if she was lying, she would say so many things that seemed incriminating. Why admit to having been an assassin and spy? Why tell them both that she could steal faces? It was a power that Perry wouldn¡¯t have revealed to anyone. Was it in order to sell the lie? Or was it because so much of her stories wouldn¡¯t make sense without that foundation? There was too much unknown, but Perry didn¡¯t want to wait until the end of it. ¡°I have questions now,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°How many worlds have you been to?¡± ¡°Thirteen,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°Then we will speak over the course of a few days,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°You will tell us of the worlds, one by one, and what happened in them, but for now, you will answer questions.¡± He turned to Perry. ¡°Now is the time for your questions to be asked.¡± Xiyan proved to be a deft interrogation subject. She kept her face placid and her voice almost pleasant, and where she had no answer, she was apologetic. Perry felt his blood boiling. He knew she was lying, if not about what had happened, then about who she was at her core. He picked at the details of her story, particularly the fights, which hadn¡¯t been described in too much detail. Nothing much was illuminated. Xiyan said the gun and phone were both lost on other worlds, and she promised to explain that later. She explained, as far as she understood it, the difference between her phone and what Perry had told her about the phones in his world. Nothing all that much was illuminated. For all that Perry had questions, the grandmaster had more. She explained certain basics to him, things that he¡¯d already heard from Perry and Maya, grilling her understanding of science and chemistry, which was poor, and of other ways of arranging a world. He wanted to know about power structures, who ruled, what personal might they brought to the table, and more. He wanted to know whether Xiyan¡¯s powers could be transmitted to others, whether she knew how to anoint someone with smoke or gift them the ability to change faces. She claimed ignorance, naturally, which Perry assumed she would have even if she knew how. That¡¯s what he¡¯d done, after all. It felt good to have someone else be on the other end of the grandmaster¡¯s questions, and Perry felt glad to be watching his technique without the pressure of answering, but he had the sense that Xiyan was better at this dance of questions than he was. Where he had misconceptions, she gently explained things to him, and Perry knew from experience that some of these misconceptions were simply tactics, part of the grandmaster¡¯s attempts to catch someone in a lie. It would take her a few days to tell her story in full, at least if the grandmaster insisted on so many hours of questions. She didn¡¯t seem concerned with that, and neither did the grandmaster. By the end of the questions though, as the grandmaster was preparing to attend to his grandmastering around the temple and Xiyan was preparing to stay as his guest in a room on the other side of the building from Perry ¡ª under guard, at least ¡ª Perry had made up his mind. He was going to make what moves he could before she got to the end. Chapter 54 - Stories, pt 2 Perry spent at least part of the night burning through the armor¡¯s power, looking through what precious little video he had of Xiyan, particularly when she was using her powers. It wasn¡¯t a very productive use of his time. He learned very little that was new. There wasn¡¯t much in the way of archival footage either, since most of the time he¡¯d known Xiyan, March had been in the Crystal Lake armory. Perry also spent the night using March to monitor movements within the building. There were two guards at Xiyan¡¯s door, which was something, but Perry didn¡¯t trust that they would be enough to keep her at bay. Still, he wouldn¡¯t be able to function without sleep, so he slept inside the armor with an alarm set for the dead of night. Perry moved more swiftly this time, trusting in Marchand to keep an eye out. The drone was powered up and had been placed inside the room, though not moving, mostly so that the cameras could stay on and provide a good connection, increasing the surveillance area. Maya was just where he¡¯d left her, and the combination lock hadn¡¯t been changed at all. Perry would have considered it an appalling lack of security, but he was in the heart of the temple, surrounded by guards and with a nearby grandmaster who could punch his head off in a single strike. ¡°How are you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh, you know,¡± said Maya. ¡°Being tortured in a dungeon, same old same old.¡± ¡°He brought Xiyan here,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or she came here. He¡¯s obviously trying to get as much as he can from her, but I don¡¯t know exactly what kind of offer he made her. She¡¯s a thresholder, she confirmed it in her own words, and ¡­ I kind of think that the grandmaster is going to give you to her.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Maya. ¡°So you¡¯re breaking me out?¡± ¡°Tomorrow night,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or tonight,¡± said Maya. She shifted under the weight of the stock that held her hand and neck in place. ¡°Tonight would be good too.¡± ¡°Your stuff is in the next room,¡± said Perry. ¡°Are you blocked from using your telekinesis?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Maya, perking up. ¡°But that toad-looking motherfucker came down here earlier, and he¡¯s going to come again, to talk about ¡­ whatever. He was asking me about space, has Xiyan gone to space?¡± ¡°Thirteen worlds, she¡¯s been all over the place,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not going to get your stuff for you, I¡¯m just going to take a piece of the nanites. I developed a technique to repair the armor.¡± This was only slightly overstating it. ¡°It mostly worked, if I can get it working with your nanites, then it¡¯s not as good as full self-replication, but it¡¯ll be something.¡± ¡°Seems good,¡± said Maya. ¡°You¡¯ll teach me how to do it?¡± ¡°It happens naturally,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s the same mechanism that repairs damaged clothes and makes you look like you just got done being airbrushed by a professional makeup artist. You just channel power out into your skin, and something does the rest. That¡¯s the crash course. More on that later, once we¡¯re out of here.¡± ¡°You really are doing the daring rescue thing?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t have figured you for it.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t fight her alone,¡± said Perry. ¡°And the grandmaster ¡­ he wants to go through a portal. I don¡¯t want to let that happen if I can at all help it. He¡¯s a dick. It¡¯s all kind of irrelevant if Xiyan shanks me.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± said Maya. ¡°I won¡¯t let you down.¡± ¡°You have to trust me,¡± said Perry. ¡°Can you trust me?¡± ¡°I ¡­ yeah,¡± said Maya. He had the distinct impression that she was lying, but he wasn¡¯t going to push it. She was trapped, and had been for quite some time. She probably would have said anything to get out of there. But he did need her to trust him, and he wasn''t willing to tell her everything ahead of time, not when the grandmaster was lurking nearby. Perry opened the room that held all her equipment, including the nanite bracer, which was still wrapped around her severed arm. ¡°This isn¡¯t going to kill me, is it?¡± asked Perry, having gone back into her room to confirm. ¡°The defense you mentioned?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Maya. ¡°I dropped that for you.¡± She grinned at him. ¡°I got two of the grandmaster¡¯s guys with it though.¡± Perry grimaced and moved back over, taking the bracer and arm. It didn¡¯t take long for Maya to reform part of the nanite mass into a glove, and it didn¡¯t take much for Perry to start generating more of them. The nanites didn¡¯t work well for him, and certainly wouldn¡¯t function as steel plate, nor move to cover the contours of his skin, but they were clothing, apparently, or at least worked by the same rules that clothing did. ¡°March, what¡¯s the rate?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There appears to be an error in the reported mass from the nanites, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Assume it¡¯s not an error,¡± said Perry. ¡°A tenth of a gram a minute, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry frowned. ¡°Six grams an hour, meaning a kilo would take me ¡­¡± ¡°A week, give or take, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry wrinkled his nose. It was also dependent on energy, but that was in short supply. ¡°Better than nothing.¡± He turned to Maya. ¡°We don¡¯t have a week. At this pace, we don¡¯t have four days. So it¡¯s tomorrow, okay?¡± Maya nodded as best she could in the chains. ¡°Third time¡¯s the charm, eh?¡± ¡°I need to know what your nuclear option is,¡± said Perry. ¡°I haven¡¯t ruled out that you¡¯re working with the grandmaster,¡± said Maya. ¡°Given that you are, in fact, working with the grandmaster.¡± ¡°I have a nuclear option too,¡± said Perry. ¡°You show me yours, I show you mine?¡± Maya winced. ¡°Fine. But if you tell him, I¡¯m cooked.¡± Perry listened, and when she was done, he told her what he had in store. By his reckoning, it was just barely possible they might scrape though ¡ª but too much was going to depend upon Xiyan and what powers she was hiding. ~~~~ They began early the next day, just after breakfast. Xiyan hadn¡¯t been invited to the large table where the grandmaster¡¯s inner circle ate, but she had been fed all the same, and she sat quietly on the pillow, ready and waiting to give more of her story. Perry had decided that he was going to count up all of the times she killed someone in self defense or otherwise claimed to have acted in an ethical and honorable way. His suspicion was that most of the story beats were correct, it was only some lies around the crucial moments. Lying was one thing, but making up an entire world with its own cultures and powers and practices seemed to be a bit much, beyond the scope of what she would or even could do, given it all needed to stand up to the grandmaster¡¯s scrutiny. They still hadn¡¯t heard her version of the events that had led to him coming to Worm Gate. He was dreading that. How did you counteract someone who lied so readily? He didn¡¯t know if she was a psychopath or what, but she definitely had some kind of screw loose. Twice she had said that she didn¡¯t react in the ways that other people did, and while it seemed admirable in some ways, it was also pretty scary, because showing fear or anger was completely natural. ¡°Very well,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°We will start with your account, in brief, of the fourth world.¡± Xiyan nodded and began again, undaunted by the amount of talking required of her. ~~~~ I was becoming accustomed to moving through worlds, but this one was more inhospitable than the others, with a sandstorm engulfing me from the moment I stepped through. I buried myself in the sand, feeling as though I had no other option, and kept my head up so I could breath as I was abraded by the stinging winds. When the storm passed some hours later, I was in the worst condition of my life, and might have died if not for the winged men who picked me up. I was taken to their village, which floated above the clouds. They had me rest and recuperate, but I didn¡¯t realize until the first week that they meant to make me a slave: they had taken my pistol and phone. The greater problem was that we were high in the sky, and the wings were affixed firmly to the backs of the men, unable to be removed, which meant that I was stuck there until I could find a way down. I didn''t mind enslavement. They didn¡¯t treat me kindly, but I only had the inklings of purpose, and I suppose I thought that the life of a slave wasn¡¯t all that different from the lives I had lived before. I did my work as I was told, and thought that perhaps this was what I would be. The village was high in the sky, the air somewhat thin, and I was allowed to watch when storms rolled by beneath us, curiously low to the ground. I had no tongue in that world, not yet, so I knew nothing of it beyond what could be communicated to me in pantomime. It came as quite a surprise to me when we were raided by men in gleaming armor who had dropped down from a cloudy sky. They had glittering jewels on their backs that pulsed in the air, and they dealt with the winged men and their cudgels in short order. There was much screaming and yelling from the wingless women, all of it falling on deaf ears, and I, of course, found it incomprehensible. The buildings were tossed, the valuables loaded into a large wooden box, and the women were made to line up, many of them crying over the dead. I was taken, of course. They tried three different languages on me, and none of them worked, which made me a curiosity. I wasn¡¯t the only one taken though, as three other women were bound and swept away for a long and uncomfortable journey. This time, I had my wits about me, and was able to see the world from above. It was a place of sand and storms, with not a hint of green. During my weeks in the village, I had eaten mostly eggs and tubers, with the occasional meat I found unidentifiable but still delectable. During the trip, I saw what I believe to have been the source: enormous bugs that followed in the wake of the raging storms. At regular intervals, the men would land in the desert, only when the storms were far away. They would stretch their muscles, check the jewels on their armored backs, drink water, and make sure that we were all fine. I watched one of the women, who I took to be a native, spit on them whenever they came near. By and by, we arrived at a city that put their gleaming armor and bejeweled backs to shame. It was a glorious place, a city on thin silver stilts, and it had all the green that had been lacking everywhere else, mile upon mile of fields and forests that were arranged as though on top of a silver platter. In the center were the most perfect buildings I had ever seen, cathedrals of gossamer, spiderwebs of glass and stone. It sat above the low storms except on the worst of days. We were taken to a dormitory almost right away, with hard-handed guards wielding thick wooden clubs that they had no compunction about using. I was put into a shapeless sack of a dress, made with rough fibers. I was still a slave, it seemed, though the dormitory wasn¡¯t to be my final resting place. I was put up on auction, still unable to understand the language, and fetched a handsome price from a well-dressed man. He had caught my eye immediately: he was the only man I had seen in that world with blue eyes. I was taken to his mansion and given a thorough inspection, first by the lady of the house, then by the thick-fingered housekeeper, and finally by the man who had bought me. It was indelicate, particularly from the lady of the house, which is all the more I¡¯ll say about it. My new master took a great interest in me, and it didn¡¯t take long for me to figure out why. If the city was a jewel in the desert, then the mansion was a work of art, but his study was the place that held all the finest jewels. Many of them seemed out of place to me, objects and figures whose purpose I couldn¡¯t divine, but there were few labels, and I still couldn¡¯t read the language. My master was patient with me, though he kept himself armed while in my presence, and he worked to bridge the gap in tongues much more than he put me to use doing chores. A week in, my master was called away. He argued loudly with his wife, several times, then departed, much to her annoyance. I would later discover that he was a part of the city¡¯s military, responsible for facing down many of what it perceived as threats. He was needed at the frontlines of their ongoing wars, and wouldn¡¯t be back for quite some time. The beautiful city had not been built with pacifism. With her husband gone, the lady of the house took her anger and frustration out on me. She beat me mercilessly and put me to menial tasks, which were to be done with tools that were inadequate to the task. I was made to garden in the sun, cutting weeds with scissors that were meant only for fine thread. I cleaned the bathroom floor with a fine-tipped paint brush. I didn¡¯t react to these indignities, which only enraged her further, but inside, I was kindling my feelings. There¡¯s a tug to emotion which I find quite pleasant, even when it¡¯s negative, and while I¡¯m not alone in that, I don¡¯t believe other people experience it quite like I do. They like a book that tells a scary story, but want some catharsis at the end. That was never necessary for me, but then, fear never came easily. I slipped away in the middle of the night one night, a creature of smoke and shadow once more, only for long enough to find the city morgue and take a tongue and eyes. Once that was done, I slipped back in, and in the morning, no one was any the wiser. It took my master a month to come back. In that time, I came to know every inch of his study. I didn¡¯t know whether he was a world-traveler like myself, or had just managed to collect artifacts from different worlds, but from reading his notes, many of the things in his study were just as unknown to him as they were to me. I had felt drawn to him before, with the same feeling of tension that came with many of the men I¡¯d felt drawn to, and the idea of him as someone like me had only intensified that. It seemed as though he had answers, and I was hoping to get them. I didn¡¯t let him know I now spoke his language. He continued his work with me, once he was back, and even with his wife, never spoke about the campaign he¡¯d been on over the strange, low storms. I learned a lot about him, though most came from other sources, rather than the man himself. He had been in the city for eleven years, having come from somewhere else. There were other cities in the world, though no proper kingdoms, only cities of elaborate construction that each weathered the storms in their own ways. My master had distinguished himself early on and received the mansion from the city¡¯s mayor, with his wife being the mayor¡¯s daughter. He had purchased me at auction for a reason. He knew what I was, though never said as much to my face, not with the language barrier I pretended was between us. Eventually, he tried to kill me. I don¡¯t know why. I had been steeling myself for it, preparing as much as I could, honing the powers I had been granted. And when I had beaten him, the portal opened, and I was once again through. ~~~~ ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean ¡ª you were enslaved by this man for weeks or months, he had his horrible wife, and one day he decided to kill you, but you beat him? You never went back to the people with the wings? You escaped from the house once and only once and then just never bothered to go out again?¡± Xiyan nodded. ¡°That¡¯s a terrible story,¡± said Perry. ¡°Narratively ¡­ it doesn¡¯t make sense. There¡¯s no comeuppance for his wife, for him, or for their terrible society.¡± ¡°It¡¯s what happened,¡± said Xiyan. Perry glanced at the grandmaster, who didn¡¯t seem inclined to stop Perry¡¯s interruption. He turned back to Xiyan. ¡°Okay, but this violates some of the rules of thresholders.¡± ¡°I have heard your rules,¡± said Xiyan. She had her hands folded in her lap. ¡°They don¡¯t match my experience.¡± ¡°The largest gap I¡¯ve heard of is three months,¡± said Perry. ¡°This man had been there for eleven years? Just waiting for you?¡± If it was a lie, he didn¡¯t see what she had to gain by it. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. ¡°I do not know,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°And you didn¡¯t gain a power, a reward?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Your phone and gun got stolen and you just ¡­ lost them and got nothing?¡± ¡°My master had bought them,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°I took them back before I left. And that world was not without its reward. I received a blade as a gift.¡± ¡°A gift?¡± asked Perry. He held up a hand. ¡°Sorry, back up. You hadn¡¯t mentioned that.¡± ¡°I had been at the house for two weeks when it appeared, carefully placed, on my bed, clearly intended for me,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°I hid it and said nothing of it. I still don¡¯t know who it was from, but my master wasn¡¯t without enemies.¡± ¡°And it¡¯s a special dagger?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The kind you stabbed me with?¡± ¡°Stabbed you?¡± asked Xiyan. Her voice had gone completely calm. ¡°Are you denying that you stabbed me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Because we both know that¡¯s bullshit.¡± Xiyan pursed her lips. ¡°When you attacked me, I defended myself,¡± she said. ¡°I stabbed you then, yes. And it was with that very same dagger.¡± She reached her fingers up into the back of her hair and pulled the dagger out to demonstrate. This time, Perry was certain of what he¡¯d suspected before: the dagger wasn¡¯t hidden there, it was being pulled as if from nowhere. She held it awkwardly, as though she didn¡¯t know how to use it and didn¡¯t want to touch it. ¡°You may not believe it, but I¡¯m glad to see you¡¯re okay.¡± Perry looked at Grandmaster Sun Quying, who was watching impassively. ¡°I never attacked her, grandmaster,¡± said Perry. ¡°I gave you my account of what happened that night.¡± ¡°And she has already given me hers,¡± said the grandmaster. He waved a hand. ¡°I don¡¯t care.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t care that she¡¯s lying?¡± asked Perry, leaning forward. ¡°She¡¯s telling us these stories, and it¡¯s obvious she¡¯s leaving things out.¡± ¡°Many people say many things,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. He scratched his chin. ¡°It is the job of the listener to sort the fact from the fiction, the useful from the pointless. I ask my own questions, in my own time, and come to know the truth without needing it to be pure from the source. She lies, but you lie too, Peregrin.¡± Perry¡¯s lips were thin. There wasn¡¯t all that much to say. He could challenge Xiyan, or maybe try to bluff and say that he had video, but he didn¡¯t have video, not conclusive video anyway, and it seemed like a terrible lie, since the grandmaster would naturally want to see. He could confront Xiyan about having put her dagger through March, but he didn¡¯t really see that helping him either. She would either admit it or not, and it just wouldn¡¯t matter. At least it was better that it was out now rather than at the end of her story. He tried to slow down the beating of his heart. It was better to be like a chessmaster than a barbarian, as much as the wolf within wanted to come out swinging. ¡°There is something I haven¡¯t said about my master in that world,¡± said Xiyan. She slipped the dagger back up into her hair, which would have been super dangerous if it behaved like a normal dagger. ¡°Though it¡¯s only a guess, some speculation.¡± ¡°Go on,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°The many years he had spent in that world had been prosperous,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°The many artifacts from other worlds within his study were so numerous they would have needed to be taken from dozens of worlds. My guess is that I wasn¡¯t the first world-hopper he faced in that world.¡± ¡°Interesting,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°You do not know what happens if you don¡¯t continue through a portal?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°I have been delayed a few times, a matter of hours, but I¡¯ve always gone through.¡± ¡°And you think ¡ª you speculate ¡ª that this man faced thresholders over his years of prosperity?¡± asked the grandmaster. ¡°It¡¯s only a guess,¡± said Xiyan with a shrug. ¡°I was very curious about him, but we never had a proper conversation. If there were other thresholders, the only sign of them was in that study, and in the paranoid way he carried himself, though that might have been because of me.¡± ¡°He knew what you were ¡­ and kept you around?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°What would you have done?¡± ¡°If I was facing never-ending threats and just wanted to settle down, and someone came in who was obviously a thresholder, then I guess I wouldn¡¯t beat them, I would lock them up without beating them,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve said yourself that beating someone badly enough opens a portal,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°How would you lock them up without beating them?¡± Perry frowned at that. ¡°Make friends, I guess. But if the spell keeps firing, or whatever¡¯s happening, maybe you could stop it by having a match that goes on forever.¡± He shook his head. It still felt like she was leaving a lot out. ¡°That doesn¡¯t explain why he would attack you though.¡± And if he knew you were a thresholder, sent to kill him, or at least an oppositional force, then he was an idiot to treat you as a slave and make all that worse. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Xiyan, shrugging again. She¡¯d put a tone of helplessness into her voice. ¡°I don¡¯t think like you do, don¡¯t try to plan and calculate. I have sought answers, but not in the same way, with the same ferocity.¡± ¡°Enough,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°We will continue. If you have only guesses, and we have only guesses to add to your guesses, we gain little from speculation.¡± Perry bit his tongue, but they would circle back around, and could have their speculation then, if he really thought it was going to go anywhere. He wanted to know more about the conflict, about the powers her master had, which she hadn¡¯t touched on at all. But instead she was off to the next world. ~~~~ The arrival in the new world was as gentle and easy as I¡¯d ever had. The skies were clear and the temperature was warm. The air smelled of mint. I had never been too capable of surviving in the wilds on my own, and had no knowledge of how to build a shelter or make a fire without the proper tinder and matchsticks, but I spent several days in those woods, and had no particular trouble with it, even if I did worry about rain. Food itself was no problem, because everything in sight, from the rivers to the trees, was edible and sweet. The smell of mint had been the grass, which was crystalline and snapped off in my fingers. The leaves had a citrus flavor to them, and were sour enough that I didn¡¯t dare to eat more than a handful at a time, but their bark was more substantial, being a confection of hard chocolate and cinnamon. The rivers themselves, in fact, were ¡ª ~~~~ ¡°This is Candyland,¡± said Perry. ¡°What?¡± asked Xiyan. She seemed genuinely confused. ¡°It¡¯s a children¡¯s board game from my world,¡± said Perry. ¡°The whole world was made of candy? That¡¯s Candyland.¡± He didn¡¯t know how else to describe it, and didn¡¯t remember enough about Candyland to press for details. ¡°I¡¯m ¡­ not familiar,¡± said Xiyan. She seemed nonplussed. ¡°It is a common childhood fantasy,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°Those who starve wish the world were made from the most delightful things they have ever eaten.¡± He looked at Xiyan. ¡°I know of cinnamon, but ¡®chocolate¡¯ is not meaningful to me.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a confection made from a fermented bean, grandmaster,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°Similar in flavor to roasted black tea leaves. There¡¯s an oiliness to it which I would describe as being similar to sesame paste, but the scent is nutty and earthy, like roasted chestnuts, with floral notes, like jasmine. It melts on the tongue like tallow fat.¡± ¡°Hmm, and now I¡¯m hungry,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying with a smile. Perry didn¡¯t like that smile in the least. It looked too friendly. ¡°Hold for a moment.¡± Without the grandmaster having called for anyone, an assistant appeared bearing a load of desserts, or what passed for desserts in this world. Perry didn¡¯t recognize everything on the platter, but a small plate was made for him by the assistant, and in spite of himself, he started cautiously eating his way through it. The mooncakes and dragon¡¯s beard candy were at least identifiable, as were the candied berries and melon, but there were roasted nuts he¡¯d never had before, something that looked like mochi and was definitely some kind of rice-based treat, some sugar figurines, and a few jellies. Xiyan had been presented with her own small plate, but she took only one of them, then with a nod from the grandmaster, continued. ~~~~ The world was, indeed, made entirely of confections of one sort or another. I hadn¡¯t been given nearly enough food when I was enslaved, so I gorged myself, and soon became ill. Even the rivers had a sticky sweetness to them, and provided no relief to the cloying feeling in my mouth. I took a few moments to right myself, then headed down the river, where I hoped to find civilization. I had never been to a world like this, and wasn¡¯t sure that I would find people, or what they would be like. I had seen a crow whose black eyes and soft feathers were a dark anise treat called licorice. I imagined the people to be made of pastries or taffy, sticky sweet in the same way that everything else in the place was. When I arrived at the village, I saw houses made of bricks of hard sugar, but the people themselves seemed normal enough. I looked nothing like them, not in the color of my skin nor the clothes I wore, but they greeted me with open arms and gave me a place to stay. I spoke their language, funny enough, as it was the same language I had spoken in the previous world, using a tongue taken from a dead woman. The world had not always been made of sweets, they told me. A little boy had made a wish and turned the world into candy, so that no one would be hungry. Whether the wish-granter was stupid or malign, it isn¡¯t known, but while the world had no problems with a lack of sweets since that time, it had all kinds of other problems, namely that people could not subsist on sweets alone. Even beyond that, there was still something in the world that was constantly reshaping the candy, making it so that the chocolate never melted in the heat of the day, so that each piece of sweetgrass would stay stiff, and so the sticky rains wouldn¡¯t melt everything down into sludge. Metal was the only thing unaffected, and was jealously guarded, especially as getting a fire going was quite difficult, and a furnace was essentially out of the question for all but the royal blacksmiths. After a day of rest and some food and water that was only marginally sweet ¡ª nuts extracted from nougat, cheese made from rivers of cream ¡ª I set off along the Gum Road for the largest city of the land, which had been given the title of the Cherry Palace. I had a plan this time, which was unusual for me. I had always found a counterpart of some sort, and this time went looking for him. There was something about people who had shared the other worlds that appealed to me. Those who had only known one world, one life, felt pale by comparison. Of course, a world can contain many pieces to it, many experiences, but not as the thresholders have experienced, with so much rich variety. There are challenges to our conception of what it means to be, and I have only ever found companionship with other thresholders. The other thresholder had made himself obvious: he had arrived ahead of me by only two weeks, and had quickly become the Red Queen¡¯s wizard, with a laboratory of his own within the Cherry Palace. He was a man of science, something that I only dimly understood, but through a taking of faces I was able to get installed as his assistant. I¡¯ve found that it¡¯s easy enough to get where you want simply by enthusiastically volunteering to do things without pay, and this was no different. I pretended that I deeply cared about the mysteries of the world, and no one had the heart to turn me down more than twice. It helped, I think, that I was young and pretty, but I can¡¯t say for certain. The wizard wasn¡¯t a wizard like the one I had met in the Shipyard. He was much younger, for a start, but his wizardly powers were far different and less dangerous. He had a power of far-reaching sight, and could see practically the entire kingdom if he wanted to, from the Peppermint Swamp to the Chocolate Forest and beyond. He could take things apart with his mind, including all the candy and sweets, and many foods were brought to him raw so he could extract the sugar on his own rather than needing to boil or leech it away. His other powers took me some time to learn of. He had guards, provided by the Red Queen, but no interest in the other thresholder, aside from warnings issued to me about the arrival of an opponent, which he considered inevitable. Instead, his eyes were on the mysteries of this world, and what they might tell us about the mysteries of other worlds. He was convinced that the world-hoppers were due to some spell gone awry, and this world of candies felt, to him, like it was similar. He sought to discover the mechanism so that he might reverse it, or possibly control it. The story of the boy who made a wish was dismissed out of hand, and the wizard, with all his powers, sought to find the ¡®real answer¡¯. He was only as old as Perry, perhaps even younger, but he had spent some time wandering the worlds. He¡¯s been to more than I had, almost twice as many, but he wasn¡¯t a fighter at heart, and I think he¡¯d have preferred not to get into conflict, save for that he wanted to wander the many worlds. I heard quite a bit about the worlds he¡¯d been to. One, the first he¡¯d visited, had been an academy, one which stretched on for miles, with learning being the only thing anyone cared about, and all duties handled by various sorts of wizards ¡ª wizards to wash clothes, wizards to make clothes, wizards to make food, wizards to clean up, wizards to build the structures and wizards to tend to the grounds. Everyone was born there, trained there, and eventually taught there, a whole system of teachers and students, neverending. Even those who served vital functions only did it for part of the time, being teachers and students for the bulk of their schedule. Another world had an obsession with games and magics that bound people to the rules of those games and their outcome. To hear him tell it, the wizard excelled at the intellectual games, which allowed him to rapidly rise to a position of some power. He fought the other thresholder not physically, but within the constrained mental battles of the games of that world, boards with grids and marked wooden pieces, sometimes cards and other times dice. He was proud of himself and his triumphs there, and would repeat his anecdotes, refining them, whenever someone came to visit the laboratory. Of other worlds, this wizard spoke little. There was a world of cinder that he mentioned only twice, and when I grew curious, he grew silent. He suffered a loss there, I think. Similarly, he spoke only briefly on a world with giant lizards, which he had hated, in part because the only other person around was his opponent, a woman who hunted him through the jungles as they were both slowly worn down. Eventually, we set off. He had a second ¡®research assistant¡¯ with him, and we had two porters. We were looking for the source of the ¡®spell¡¯, which the wizard thought might vary across the world. He had a way of testing it, in part because of what he called the ¡®stasis effect¡¯, that aspect of the spell which prevented the candy from melting into mush or going rotten. He drew up a direction on a map from what he¡¯d learned around Cherry Palace, then we set off as a group, having several guards as our retinue. The group dwindled as we crossed the Marshmallow Marshes, and dwindled further once we reached the Caramel Coast. The sea was some kind of fizzy drink, as sugary as anything else, and the bubbles caused most boats to sink like rocks, as well as being acidic, but our destination lay on the other side of the Soda Sea, and so the wizard hired out special ship, one which could withstand the voyage. By then, we were down to only four: myself, the wizard, a guard, and a porter. ¡°What will you do, when you find the source of the spell?¡± asked the guard. ¡°I mean to contain its power,¡± said the wizard. ¡°You people suffer greatly under all this candy.¡± It was the wrong thing to say. The guard and the porter had lived their entire lives with these candies all around them, and had suffered basically not at all. They had never known any other world, and couldn¡¯t imagine that things could be otherwise. Water was difficult to get, this was true, and foods had to be processed so as to remove most of the sugar. Teeth were, as a rule, rotten, and stomach aches abounded. But these were part of life, and a mythical past that was supposedly better held no pull. The guard began plotting, and drew me into the plot. He meant to attack the wizard when the boat landed on the far shore. For whatever reason, I defected from the plot. By Perry¡¯s understanding, a thresholder shouldn¡¯t do that, but I was curious about the nature of the spell and the ultimate fate of the wizard. The wizard believed that world-hoppers were special, that we were chosen for some purpose, and I had begun to find that attractive. The guard attacked and the wizard killed him. The action was almost casual, with slivers of metal formed in the air and hurled at outrageous speeds. I hadn¡¯t known that the wizard could do that, and neither had the guard. The wizard waited half a day for a portal to appear, sometimes striking the body again to make sure the man was dead, then set off again, angry. The porter fled at the first opportunity. It was just the two of us. I find that I enjoy traveling with a companion. The wizard talked often, about his theories, about the other worlds, about his ambitions and goals. I was content to listen. The candy effect was getting stronger the closer we got to the source. We could see the sweets spring back into shape after only a few minutes, erasing any sign of our passing. This also made our passage more difficult, as fires grew more difficult to start, and we grew dependent upon the water and unsweet foods we¡¯d set out with. We were going to run out of nut butters and cheese made from ice cream. The places we were going through no longer had names, so the wizard made them up on the spot, the Gingerbread Glacier, the Cotton Candy Chasms, the Brittle Butte. The weather got harsher and more exotic the further in we went, with rains of sticky syrup, snows of powdered sugar, and the occasional hail of gumballs, which drove us into hiding until it had passed. I think we might have died, had the wizard not shown another of his powers, that of shielding. He could use it only rarely, but saved us on a few occasions. If it wasn¡¯t the weather, it was the creatures, which were getting larger, no longer small bunnies made of marzipan but hulking bears made of taffy. Eventually, we found what the wizard termed the Confectionary Cathedral, an immense building of metal surrounded by a moat of molten chocolate. A bridge extended across that moat, and we went inside, to a place unmarred by candies. Everyone inside was dead, and had been for a long time, possibly since the Sweetening had happened. We moved slowly, cautiously, but never saw anything that would give us cause for concern. There were so many things that were odd to see, papers and pencils that hadn¡¯t been made from refined candies, chairs made of wood and glass that had not an ounce of sugar in it. We were malnourished, our bellies too full of sweets, our teeth starting to rot and our only liquids coming from the occasional river of milk or juice. ¡°This is it,¡± said the wizard. ¡°Finally, after all this time, the source of the spell. It has to be. Now it¡¯s only a matter of discovering how it works.¡± I had been playing the part of his research assistant for so long that I almost went along with it. But I knew, by that point, that the people of this world didn¡¯t see the candy as a curse. They had whole trades dedicated to the refinement of food and water, and lived quite comfortably, though not as comfortably as a small boy making a wish might have thought they would live. The wizard saw the candy as a curse, but he was the only one. And of course, his ambition extended far beyond this one world. He wished to take aim at the world-hopper, at the rare breed I had found myself a part of. I liked moving through worlds. I liked hearing the stories of those who had done the same. They were as close as I had to kin. I revealed myself to him and told him that I was the world-hopper that he¡¯d feared coming all along. I said that I was nothing to be feared. He didn¡¯t believe me until I showed him the shadow and smoke that I had kept hidden until that time. I hadn¡¯t meant for us to fight. I had wanted to persuade him that the institution was worth keeping, to persuade him that if he did figure out how this candy spell worked, he wouldn¡¯t attack the tradition that we were both a part of. But from the very moment I made my declaration, I could see in his eyes that he was going to try to kill me. He had more in the way of defenses than attacks. The fight took quite a long time, and in the end, he begged for mercy ¡ª but it was too late, because I had cut him deep in the leg, and he was bleeding profusely. When the portal opened, I did my best to pick him up and take him through, but he was too heavy for me, and as I tried to drag him, I felt him slip from my grip. ~~~~ ¡°And you never learned the source of the spell?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°We assumed that the answer was somewhere in the building, among the rotting papers, or perhaps in a contraption of some kind,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°Our fight happened before that search could be completed.¡± ¡°He struck first?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He did,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°Before he could hear me out.¡± Perry didn¡¯t think he believed that, but if it was a lie, it seemed less egregious than the others. He didn¡¯t know what to make of the story, except that he was certain it, too, was missing something. Worlds were supposed to come with a power of some kind, and it seemed that neither she nor the wizard had gained anything from the candy adventure except for cavities. There were questions to ask, but Perry took his cue from Grandmaster Sun Quying. Such questions could be asked later. Perry was distracted from the stories anyway. For better or worse, plans were in motion. Chapter 55 - Stories pt 3 The next world I visited was not far off from the world Perry comes from, what he would call modern, a place of concrete and electricity. Unlike Perry¡¯s world, it was still a place of power and magic, beyond just nuclear weapons and firearms. And from what he¡¯s described, his world is beset by gaudy messages from shopkeepers, but this one had beauty at every turn. I marveled at the murals that seemed to cover every surface, the paintings as tall as trees, and the elaborate clothes that people wore. Even the laborers were sharply dressed, and of course, everyone looked at me as though I were a diseased wretch. I was still sticky from the journey through the world of candy, malnourished and wild-eyed, but the disarray helped to hide the blood I¡¯d gotten on me in the fight. I was taken in by their guards ¡ª police, they called them. I spoke the language, thankfully, and explained that I was simply a woman from another world who would be leaving in due course. It was the last time I tried explaining myself to anyone. They helped me clean up, but had taken my things from me, and I had a long conversation with someone whose job was to help lunatics. When I demonstrated a few of my powers for him, he left the room in a hurry, and when the door opened again, it was a pair of men from their kingdom ¡ª their government ¡ª who took me away for study. I was docile for them until I heard them talk about dissection. They had thought I was an imbecile, rather than just tired and malnourished. The vehicle they were in was moving at incredible speeds down one of their highways, so when I attacked them, it veered off to the side and crashed. I escaped, running for my life, and stole a face at the first opportunity, which was more difficult in this world than others given that they treated death as something to be pushed out of view. I¡¯ve found I don¡¯t like the modern worlds. There¡¯s too much structure to them, and they¡¯re not nice to those who have come from outside and don¡¯t fit in with their systems of numbers and records. Perry admitted as much to me about his first world, the one that was a clone of his original. He said that if they¡¯d known he was there, they might have taken him away for study, or at least ensnared him in their legal system. I was on the run, my face changed but with no way to slip into the life of the dead woman. I did what Maya Singh does: I fell in with the misfits. The world placed such an emphasis on art, music, and fashion that I had trouble grasping it at first. Some of this was merely for practical reasons, given there were powers tied to it, but I think their obsession went beyond that. I had wondered, since hearing about the wizard¡¯s world where everyone was an academic to the bone, whether it might be that people in different worlds are marked by those worlds at a deeper level than just their cultures, if they had something in their minds that bent them into different shapes. The arts were everything. With enough skill, dedication, and paint, a painter could make a world that could be walked in, generally small, and with features only as they¡¯d been painted. There were few farms outside the city, there mostly for the luxury of the real, since a painting of an apple could be eaten the same as an apple grown on a tree. Of course, people were often painting from memory, and were rushed, and those were ever more inferior, sometimes with a painting of a painting. Singing, similarly, could change the world in its own way, fortifying the singer and those who heard them. It was more temperamental, but those without means often sang for their supper. But the last and greatest of the powers was fashion, art which could be worn, and those who could draw the attention and adoration of the masses stood like gods above the rest of us. The misfits had their talents, there could be no mistaking that, but I had no skill in painting, fashion, or sculpture, and was only passable as a singer, unable to play any of the instruments that world had to offer. Instead, I was placed into a unique position among their society: the muse. Thresholders are outsiders by our very nature, even if we take the faces of those whose worlds we enter. I had finally understood that, and finally found a place where that was desired. I had stories to share and descriptions of the things I had seen, which set their minds alight with inspiration, and they found something compelling in my appearance, enough that they produced dozens of paintings of me. Eventually, the moneyed class came for our small group, picking us off one by one, promising fancy apartments, all the materials of the craft, and a stable living. We were victims of success, with large showings and huge projects, and a group of people who had felt like family disintegrated over the course of months. I had seen no sign of the other world-hopper, no special powers on display, no one making a splash in the local news, and no encounters with anyone who seemed like they might want to kill me. I had only come to the conclusion that thresholders are destined for conflict slowly, and the lesson had not yet been beaten into me. I wondered if he might be out there, the man I was destined to meet, whether he might be able to walk hand-in-hand through one of the portals. I had been attending an exhibition thrown by one of my friends, who had done a series of provocative nudes, many of which had been based on me, attempting to capture something he¡¯d seen in my appearance. I made a good model, he said, because I was unabashed and fearless. His standout piece, twelve feet tall, was of me wearing nothing but a mask, the image shifting as you walked around it, always seeming like you might get a peek at the face beneath, always denied no matter what angle you took. The attack came with an explosion of glass and rock, and at once all the finery and delicacy had been turned to blood and chaos. I was one of very few people who didn¡¯t run and scream, instead drawing my dagger, which I kept on me at all times. That made me stand out against the people screaming for their lives, and my counterpart honed in on me right away. She was a wild creature, hair always a tangled mess, eyes glowing green, and I never once saw her at rest, nor could I imagine what she would have looked like sleeping. We only met in combat, so I suppose my view of her was skewed. Her clothes were from another world, with none of the deliberate cuts and precise accessories that marked the fashions of this one. We never had a proper conversation, and I never learned what motivated her, because friendship wasn¡¯t something she considered important. Her powers were entirely offensive in nature. She could degrade materials around her and crash into things with an explosion that left her unharmed, and she used both of those in concert to burst through walls. She had a two-handed polearm with an enormous ax head, and she flew on it, hands choking the shaft, thighs gripping it tightly. Those eyes, the most striking thing about her, could be charged up to spray out tiny green motes, each no larger than an ant, their consumption of the world around them indiscriminate. Yet it was her last power that was the most dangerous: she had a scream that could tear the world apart. I had been in enough fights by that point to know when I was bested, and I fled as fast as my feet would carry me. I knew right away what she was, but not how she had found me. My face was all over the place by that point, but there was nothing to draw the conclusion that I was from another world. To this day I don¡¯t know how she tracked me, but after that first time, she seemed to have a lot of trouble. Klara wreaked havoc across the city. I suppose at this point I need to tell you of the power I¡¯d been accumulating in that world. A muse wasn¡¯t just a source of inspiration and a font of creativity, a muse also had a connection to the works created in her likeness. I could see through the paintings my friends had done, could move their sculptures, and heard where the songs of me were sung. It made me loath to change faces. If I had done that though, I doubt that Klara would ever have been able to find me. I watched her rampage. After the exhibition, she lost track of me, and began attacking at random, hoping to uncover me that way, I suppose. The military were sent in to stop her, with unbelievably fashionable soldiers in all their glory, and she blasted through them as though they weren¡¯t even there. The city began to evacuate, and it seemed like Klara might tear the whole city down looking for me. After a few attempts at talking to her through a statue, I decided there was nothing for it but to finish things. I had liked that world, and felt a great affection for it, and it did seem as though it had run its course, but I couldn¡¯t let this woman destroy its beautiful buildings and trash its artworks. I changed faces and approached her with sweetened words. I claimed to be a servant of the city, one tasked with helping her in her quest rather than trying to stop her. I explained that she wasn¡¯t likely to find whoever she was looking for with the methods she was using, raw terror and destruction. I told her I had the resources necessary to help her, that there were ways that we could find someone, especially someone relatively famous, a muse. I had thought that if I could only get close enough, I could drive a dagger into her heart and stop the whole thing. Letting me slip near her, that was going to be her mistake. Instead, it was my mistake. She waited until I was close enough to touch, then screamed in my face, not the primal shout that I had heard from a distance before, but this time the start of a song. She hadn¡¯t been the wild animal she first appeared: she¡¯d picked up a lesson or two in that world. The fight didn¡¯t last long. I was out of practice, and had little in the way of defenses as the world roiled around me. She had a skillset of pure aggression, and I was better at hiding than anything else. Once I was down, she lost all interest in me, and once the portal opened up, she was through it like she wanted nothing more. I was dying as I moved through my own portal. It was the first time I had been beaten. I had been to many worlds, and didn¡¯t think there was a way to survive my wounds, but I knew that the portal was the only option. ~~~~ ¡°I think I have had enough of the worlds for today,¡± said the Grandmaster. ¡°It¡¯s time for some questions.¡± ¡°Yes, grandmaster,¡± nodded Xiyan, not seeming perturbed that she¡¯d been left on a cliffhanger. Perry couldn¡¯t tell whether or not she¡¯d planned to go on to the next world, but presumably she got some immediate medical attention. ¡°Tell me of your power,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°Seeing through pictures.¡± ¡°In the words of that world, I was a muse,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°I can move statues, see through paintings, and less usefully, hear where songs about me are being sung. It only works if it¡¯s my likeness, or at least heavily inspired by me, but reproduction works as well.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°It works on photographs?¡± he asked. ¡°Yes,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°And it continued to work once you had left that world?¡± asked the grandmaster. ¡°Your power did not leave you?¡± ¡°It does not cross whatever threshold separates worlds, grandmaster,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°But as soon as the new world had pictures of me in it, the ability continued to function just the same as it had. From what I knew, a muse gains powers as more works are created with her as the focus, but I don¡¯t believe they had any knowledge of what would happen if all artwork of a muse was suddenly destroyed, and they certainly had no conception of the many worlds.¡± ¡°Hmmm,¡± said the grandmaster. He turned to Perry. ¡°What is your opinion?¡± ¡°My opinion?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It is a curious thing, that these powers carry over,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. He grumbled to himself. ¡°From everything I have been told, every other world consists of first sphere peasants, some of them elevated to the position of warrior or king. Yet they learn techniques that seem fantastical, the realms of the higher spheres. They offer vessels that are used by those without spirit roots, who cannot see nor feel their vital matrix. They offer raw power. Often these powers are learned, but are not known on the Great Arc, where venerable seventh sphere masters have spent centuries scraping the last bits of meat from the hide.¡± ¡°You worry, grandmaster?¡± asked Xiyan. He grunted and looked away for a moment. ¡°¡®Worry¡¯ isn¡¯t the right word. I think often of ascension to fourth sphere, and what it will take me. But the other worlds do not have the spheres.¡± He looked at Xiyan and raised an eyebrow. ¡°Your power over paintings works here though? Even though you lost?¡± ¡°Yes, grandmaster,¡± nodded Xiyan. ¡°Within the Great Arc, I can see through any image of me.¡± Perry frowned inside his helmet. He wondered whether that was true for other representations, such as the video feed that was being projected to him. He wondered whether it worked on data, such as March¡¯s hard drive, which contained the raw video files of Xiyan. He didn¡¯t know whether it was tactically correct to ask, and there was no way to trust her answer. He would have to assume that she could see him if he could see her. ¡°Demonstrate,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. One of his attendants came in with a roll of paper, a pot of ink, and a brush. This happened wordlessly. The attendant had the same glassy-eyed appearance that Perry would have had trouble picking out a week prior. Her motions were also slightly too precise, without any spirit to them. The grandmaster¡¯s control of the first sphere made Perry uneasy every time he noticed it. The grandmaster stared at Xiyan for a moment, then swiftly moved his brush on the paper with an economy of motion the old man had never once suggested he possessed. The painting was minimalist, but it was done in seconds. Xiyan didn¡¯t move from her position, but Perry was able to see the image of her coming to life on the page, demonstrating a few of the basic Moon Gate moves. ¡°I cannot see a path toward accomplishing this, using the many techniques I know of,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. His eyes were on the moving image. ¡°It is the work of a third sphere to push their matrix out into the world, to extend their will beyond their body. Yet ¡­ what is your range?¡± ¡°There is no limit to the range,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°It works across the fields of stars. It would work on the other side of the Great Arc.¡± Again, Grandmaster Sun Quying frowned. He turned to Perry. ¡°This technique is unknown to all the worlds you¡¯ve been to? That you¡¯ve heard of?¡± ¡°It is, grandmaster,¡± nodded Perry. ¡°And is it ¡­ learnable?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°In your opinion,¡± he added, when Perry didn¡¯t immediately respond. ¡°It¡¯s impossible to say, grandmaster,¡± said Perry. He looked at Xiyan. ¡°I haven¡¯t had the opportunity to learn alongside another thresholder, nor to share the things I¡¯ve learned.¡± ¡°I believe it to be impossible to learn,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°If it were possible, we would have learned it, being of greater academic disposition than any world you¡¯ve been to.¡± Perry kept his mouth shut. By his standards, the Great Arc was incredibly backward. They should have had satellites and phones and all that. The fact that they didn¡¯t could mostly be chalked up to the enormous amounts of time they spent on training in martial arts, and all that really seemed to do was to contribute to brain drain and the loss of the best and brightest to higher spheres. All that wouldn¡¯t have been so bad if the higher spheres were putting effort into public works projects, but they were decidedly not doing that. And then the whole thing with wanting to keep dangerous information out of the wrong hands (or even the right hands) compounded it. For the grandmaster to say that the Great Arc was of greater academic disposition than any other world was betraying either astounding arrogance or a complete miscommunication. ¡°That is very likely true, grandmaster,¡± said Xiyan with a nod. ¡°When I tell you of other worlds, you will hear of times I have tried to share what I knew.¡± ¡°There is still much to ask about what you¡¯ve shared with us today,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°There is one detail I can¡¯t help but notice. In the land of the sweets, you gained no power?¡± ¡°No, grandmaster,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°Was there a power available that you didn¡¯t pick up?¡± asked the grandmaster. ¡°Not that I noticed,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°I imagine the wizard I traveled with would have mentioned it, if there were.¡± The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Mmm,¡± said the grandmaster. ¡°You lie.¡± Xiyan said nothing in response to that. ¡°Do you lie because you want to keep it secret from me, or because you want to keep it secret from him?¡± asked the grandmaster, extending a finger in Perry¡¯s direction. ¡°Both, grandmaster,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°Peregrin means to kill me, for reasons that are as yet unclear to me, if it¡¯s not my admitted deceit alone. He is a member of this sect, and you are sworn to defend him. I¡¯ve promised to be truthful, and I have been, but there have been certain omissions. I apologize.¡± She bowed her head low, as though she was actually contrite. Perry didn¡¯t have a lot of experience with being lied to straight to his face. It just didn¡¯t really come up a lot on Earth, and even after that, he hadn¡¯t been around liars. He was finding it difficult to deal with, and his brain was struggling to reconcile it. He kept thinking stupid thoughts like ¡°How does she not realize what she did?¡± or ¡°Maybe I did something that made her think I was attacking her¡±. He knew these were stupid thoughts, he was just badly calibrated. Did he need to counter her lies at every turn? Would it just irritate the grandmaster to hear repeated defenses? Surely the grandmaster knew the score already. It was a lot of mental wheel-spinning that wasn¡¯t amounting to much. ¡°I will ask for no demonstration of the missing power,¡± said the grandmaster with a wave of his hand. ¡°I only needed to know whether there was one.¡± ¡°She¡¯s violating the deal you two made,¡± said Perry. ¡°I know what she is,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°When I made the deal, I understood who it was with. She has insights that she wouldn¡¯t otherwise have any reason to share, and if there are omissions or outright lies, so what? There are many things she¡¯d have no reason to lie about. Those are what most interest me.¡± ¡°And what¡¯s she getting in exchange?¡± asked Perry. The grandmaster cocked his head to the side, and Perry knew he¡¯d made a mistake. Maybe it hadn¡¯t been a mistake in what he¡¯d said, only how he¡¯d said it. There was plausible deniability, but that wasn¡¯t enough. ¡°You know,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying, nodding to himself in satisfaction. ¡°Ah, well, I suppose I¡¯m ignorant of the breadth of techniques available to you. Let me bring her up.¡± ¡°Wait,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, no,¡± said the grandmaster, sitting up from his pillow and taking his gnarled staff that had been given to him by an attendant who hurried in from the side. ¡°We¡¯ll have it out then. I really do prefer for things to be in the open, it¡¯s so much easier and cleaner that way.¡± Perry waited. His eyes went to Xiyan, who was calm and poised, unafraid of being in the belly of the beast. She wasn¡¯t even halfway through her list of worlds, and she had undoubtedly gained powers as she¡¯d gone on. Perry didn¡¯t think there was any way she¡¯d be able to take on the grandmaster, but he¡¯d been wrong before. There was no way to coerce them into fighting though, not that he could see. So far as Perry knew, aside from all the lies and deceptions, she¡¯d mostly worked against Moon Gate. Perry heard the chains rattling before he saw Maya. She was being marched in by two second spheres, still in the heavy stock, which she was being made to carry. Perry was mildly surprised that she hadn¡¯t tried to fight her way out, but maybe she¡¯d seen that as hopeless ¡ª or maybe she had tried. ¡°Maya Singh,¡± said the grandmaster. He looked over at Perry. ¡°Had you seen her?¡± ¡°Yes, grandmaster,¡± said Perry. Maya struggled against the stock, trying to get her throat clear of it so she could speak. ¡°Eat my farts you decrepit asshole.¡± ¡°I¡¯m impressed you got past the lock,¡± said the grandmaster. ¡°It was designed to kill those who don¡¯t know the combination.¡± Perry was silent. ¡°Well, at any rate, it¡¯s all in the open now,¡± said the grandmaster. ¡°I¡¯ve had Maya this whole time, and as I believe you¡¯ve surmised, will be handing her over to Xiyan ¡ª or whatever her real name is ¡ª once I have all the information I need. What Xiyan will do with her, I don¡¯t know, but I imagine that there will be a fight, and once that fight is concluded, I will step through the portal that the three of you have all independently said will appear.¡± ¡°Grandmaster, as a member of this sect ¡ª¡± began Perry. ¡°Bah,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°You wish to ask for my help? I¡¯m not bound to assist, so I choose not to.¡± He frowned at Perry. ¡°I know exactly what happened at Moth Lantern Hall. I know of your lies and duplicity.¡± ¡°I was changed, involuntarily,¡± said Perry. It felt like such a weak argument. ¡°And then you could not control yourself,¡± said the grandmaster. ¡°You should consider yourself lucky that you are under my protection, for the time being.¡± ¡°Perry,¡± said Maya. Her voice was thick. She still looked good though, in that second sphere way, like she¡¯d had a manicure and a hot shower before being put into the stock. ¡°Get me out of here.¡± ¡°The three thresholders, together at last,¡± said the grandmaster. ¡°But there is a wrinkle, as the stories have not had a third in them.¡± He looked between them. Xiyan hadn¡¯t batted an eye at Maya¡¯s appearance. ¡°I suppose there are many questions left to answer, and I have no illusions that when I go to a new world I will have such an easy time of it. But I find myself itching to embark. I¡¯ve made my preparations.¡± ¡°I can have her now then?¡± asked Xiyan, perking up. ¡°You can¡¯t just give away a person,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re mistaken, Peregrin. Maya is not just a person, she is a prisoner, and those are given away or traded all the time. She is guilty of crimes against Worm Gate, and as such the matter of justice is left in my hands.¡± The grandmaster looked at Maya. ¡°Xiyan has not actually said what she wants you for.¡± ¡°I like thresholders,¡± said Xiyan. ¡°I like to hear their stories, to see the ways they think. We¡¯re all unique, all fascinating in our own right.¡± She looked over at Perry. ¡°I enjoyed hearing about the worlds you had been to and what they were like. It¡¯s something that I¡¯ll always treasure about my time here, and the days I spent with you.¡± ¡°And then when she¡¯s done, you¡¯ll kill her?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Xiyan, shaking her head. ¡°I don¡¯t kill. It¡¯s not necessary for the portals to open.¡± Perry stared at her. ¡°Who is this for? You stabbed me! The grandmaster doesn¡¯t believe you, Maya doesn¡¯t believe you, why even lie?¡± ¡°Perry,¡± said Xiyan. Her voice was gentle. ¡°I wanted to tell you, I wanted us to be friends, to share my own experiences with you, but I knew that as soon as I admitted what I was, you would attack me, just like all the others. And in the end, that¡¯s what happened. I shouldn¡¯t have lied to you, but it was the only way for us to grow close.¡± Maya swallowed hard, then took a short little gasp of breath, almost unnoticed. From that point forward, Perry was buying her what time he could and hoping for the best. He wasn¡¯t sure whether this was the right moment to pull the trigger, but he¡¯d known that Maya would be the one to make the choice, and he¡¯d been prepared for it since last night. He¡¯d given her one of his teeth, which she¡¯d been holding in her mouth. ¡°I think you¡¯ve left out all the things that would make it obvious what a psychopath you are,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think you were the one to strike first basically all of those times, that you killed because you could, or because you felt like it. You like killing, I could see it in your eyes when you tried to kill me. You got recruited as an assassin because you didn¡¯t mind the killing, because something is wrong with your head, and you¡¯re a thresholder who will kill even the people who are trying their best to stop fighting. I think you¡¯re lying to us not because you think we¡¯ll believe it, but just out of habit.¡± ¡°Do you want to believe that?¡± asked Xiyan. ¡°Would that make it easier for you to fight me, as you clearly want to?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what the truth is,¡± said Perry. ¡°But for all Maya¡¯s faults, at least she¡¯s got opinions on the world that go beyond just killing whoever steps in front of her. She wasn¡¯t right to go after Moth Lantern, but she did it for reasons, instead of just wanting to kill someone for the hell of it.¡± It wasn¡¯t an argument he¡¯d have made a few weeks ago, when he was steeped in anger and looking to kill Maya. He could imagine the other side of the argument, which was that Maya was looking for basically any reason to kill someone she considered an enemy. That was probably a lot of people, and might even include Perry under the right circumstances. ¡°Fine,¡± said Xiyan with a shrug. ¡°You¡¯re right.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You¡¯re right, I do the things I do because I enjoy them,¡± she said. ¡°I killed my master¡¯s wife after allowing the hatred to brew in me, and it washed over me like the first taste of food after weeks of starvation. But Maya would say that¡¯s reasonable, to kill someone who doesn¡¯t just enslave people but twists the knife with cruelty because she can.¡± ¡°Ugh,¡± said Maya. ¡°I really don¡¯t feel so good. You got a bathroom I can use?¡± The grandmaster was frowning at her. ¡°Something is wrong.¡± ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ve got the runs,¡± said Maya. Her one remaining hand was shaking slightly. ¡°Ugh. Something is really ripping up my insides.¡± Grandmaster Sun Quying stood up and held his staff like a cudgel. ¡°Do you think there¡¯s any possible way you could beat me?¡± He looked over at Perry. ¡°What did you do?¡± ¡°Nothing,¡± said Perry. ¡°Are we starting then?¡± asked Xiyan. She drew her dagger, which seemed to come from nowhere. ¡°I had thought we would have more time.¡± Maya deformed, arms growing longer, hair momentarily sprouting from her legs and then inexplicably retracting. Her throat pressed hard against the stock, flesh pushing outward, but when the moment passed. She was left panting. ¡°Ah,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°Then you can pass on at least one of your powers.¡± Xiyan had gotten into a fighting stance and was getting closer to Perry, and he was squared up against her. He still didn¡¯t know all her powers, and the ones he did know frightened him. ¡°Marchand, prime,¡± said Perry. ¡°Full power.¡± ¡°Priming now, sir,¡± said Marchand. Maya deformed again, this time with a blast of moonlight from her intact hand, and the stock shattered around her suddenly furry neck. She landed on all fours, fully wolf, snarling before she even hit the ground, and she lunged at the grandmaster the moment she was steady, fangs wide. Perry had known that his wolf form was larger than a normal wolf, but he hadn¡¯t quite realized the size difference until he saw it in her. She was the size of a horse, with razor sharp claws and teeth like daggers, pelt the same dark brown as her curly hair had been. At almost the same moment, Xiyan began moving, not toward Perry as he¡¯d been bracing for, but toward one of the doors of the large center room of the building. He moved to stop her only a moment too late, and commanded March to fire, but she had the door open just as the first shot hit her, and then living statues came spilling out. Perry went for them. He felt like he had no other choice. A quick glance showed that Maya had been smashed against one wall and was bleeding from her head, but she was on her feet fast enough, and her missing paw was already mostly regrown. The grandmaster was still squaring off against her. Then Perry was in among the statues, swinging his sword with the combined power of the armor and his second sphere strength. There were dozens of the statues, but they weren¡¯t all that coordinated, and a simple push could send them to the ground, where they would shatter. He¡¯d felt a spike of terror on seeing them, but they were going down fast, and their grip didn¡¯t seem to be strong enough to tear at the armor, even if their punches were knocking him around. In fact, they seemed more like a distraction than anything else, and ¡ª Perry was alerted to Xiyan moving behind him by the firing of the shoulder-mounted gun and a small pop-up in the HUD to give him the rear view. She¡¯d had her dagger out and was moving toward him, but being struck by the bullets pushed her back. Perry turned around to face her and launched himself at her, blade forward, slicing through the air. Her whole body was engulfed in smoke in just a moment, and his blade went through her clothes as though she wasn¡¯t even there. When she reformed a moment later, she was gasping for air, her clothes hanging off her awkwardly, but she was still ready for a counterattack and thrust her dagger at Perry¡¯s chest, aiming straight for where the reactor had been. It was a strong enough strike that Perry felt the force through his whole body, and the blade pierced deep, breaking the skin. The reactor was non-functional though, no longer a weak spot beneath the thick metal. Perry grabbed her arm before she could withdraw it and spun her, smashing her straight into the statues that were clawing at his back. He was just in time to see Worm Gate¡¯s second spheres pouring into the building. Maya was doing better than expected, in that she¡¯d actually landed a hit on the grandmaster, who was bleeding from his forehead. She was barely standing, the regeneration and general toughness of the wolf form being pushed to its limits. She was all rage and snarls, but dripping blood onto the ground and favoring one side over the other. For his part, the grandmaster was mostly watching her instead of pressing the attack, knocking her away with his walking stick. It was daylight out, and the wolf form wasn¡¯t at its full power, but even under the full moons, Perry didn¡¯t think it would be enough. Even with both of them, he didn¡¯t think it would be enough. ¡°Maya, let¡¯s go!¡± shouted Perry. She snapped at the grandmaster again, either ignoring the instruction or unable to comprehend what he¡¯d said. The first of the second sphere dropped down next to Perry. It was Sun Baoxi, his only sort-of friend in the temple. ¡°You¡¯re crossing some lines, Peregrin,¡± he said. His hands were up, in the Mantis Stance, ready for a punch against Perry¡¯s hard metal armor, which seemed ill-advised. Xiyan had squared up too, with her statues behind her in a similar stance. It was one of Moon Gate¡¯s stances, copied sloppily. Perry wondered how much she had picked up from this world, and was hoping that it wasn¡¯t much. Where the statues had come from, he had no idea. Maybe if he¡¯d known more about the rest of her worlds, that would have tipped him off. Behind her, the door was still open, leading to somewhere far away from the compound. ¡°Maya, now!¡± shouted Perry. She was still fighting the grandmaster, snarling at him and being pushed to the side. She had been half-blinded by one of his counters, and the fur was matted down with blood. The grandmaster didn¡¯t seem to be trying to kill her, for whatever reason, but with every passing second, he was getting more information about how a wolf fought. ¡°I really don¡¯t want to hurt you,¡± said Sun Baoxi. ¡°You¡¯re a member of the sect, that means something. I¡¯m not sure what¡¯s going on here, but ¡ª¡± Perry threw his sword at Maya, as hard as he could. It caught her along the shoulder, opening a gash there, and she finally turned her attention toward him as the sword flew back through the air to his waiting hand. She was pissed. Perry dodged an attack by Xiyan and let himself be pulled as fast as the sword would carry him as Maya launched herself after him. He sailed over the heads of the perfect statues of Xiyan, past the bewildered second sphere disciples that really had no idea what was going on, and straight through the door that Xiyan had opened to somewhere else. Maya was hot on his heels, barreling through people and statues alike. As soon as he was through the door, Perry shot straight up into the sky, then killed the flight and landed back down in the ground just a half second after Maya was through. He cut through the door with his sword, hoping that the magic wouldn¡¯t hold, and breathed a sigh of relief when the wood fell apart, revealing a dilapidated house and no trace of the temple. Maya snarled at him and went in for another attack, and Perry leapt high into the air, letting the sword tug him after it. Maya leapt up impressively high, almost getting his foot, but there were no limits to how high he could go, and after a few more attempts, she was snapping at the air and circling around below him. ¡°March, figure out where the hell we are,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right away, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Shall I send out the drone.¡± ¡°Do it,¡± said Perry. The drone launched, and for a moment, it seemed as though Maya was going to try to chase it, too. Perry tried to decide how fucked they were. Mostly he thought they were lucky to get away alive. The grandmaster had held off on killing Maya, either because he wanted to study her or because he thought the portals might not open if he was the one to kill her ¡ª he¡¯d had lines of questioning about that before. It wasn¡¯t how they had drawn it up. Maya was without her needle and the bulk of her nanites, as well as saddled with an affliction she couldn¡¯t control, just a few days before the full moon. On the other side of the coin, they had left Xiyan with the grandmaster, and who knew what kind of outcome that would have. The logical thing would be for them to team up, which might be disastrous, especially if she had powers she could hand over to him ¡ª not that he needed them. Perry didn¡¯t know how much time they would have. If Xiyan wasn¡¯t second sphere already, then an alliance with the grandmaster would soon propel her up a level. He looked down at Maya, who was pacing back and forth and making abortive plaintive howls at him. The wound he¡¯d given her had closed up, and her missing paw was fully grown in. She¡¯d juiced herself with moonlight right as the transformation was coming on. His own induction hadn¡¯t been nearly so volatile. ¡°Not sure how we¡¯re making it out of this, March,¡± said Perry. ¡°I feel like it¡¯s one enemy after another.¡± His heartbeat was starting to slow down. He looked at the new hole in the armor, which was right where the old one had been. He¡¯d bled pretty badly, and could feel how wet his chest was. ¡°Quite, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have the report from the drone back. It appears we¡¯ve somehow come to be in what people have been referring to as the Grouse Kingdom.¡± ¡°So she probably did spend time here,¡± said Perry. ¡°That wasn¡¯t a lie.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry tried to think. He was running high on adrenaline, and his mind wasn¡¯t in the best shape. Xiyan could open doors from one place to another, with a huge range, and there might be limits, but he couldn¡¯t assume there were. She had dozens of statues of herself, which she could move at will, and he had to assume that there were more where they came from, even if he didn¡¯t know where that might be. Perry swore. ¡°Any bright ideas? Some way to kill these people?¡± ¡°Which people, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Grandmaster Sun Quying and Lu Xiyan?¡± Perry let out a breath. ¡°Yeah.¡± He looked down at the wolf below him, who was sniffing at the ground. He hoped they weren¡¯t near civilization. The state of the house whose door he¡¯d cut through made it seem likely they were out of the way. As he watched, Maya turned back into a human, collapsing down onto the ground, naked. He lowered himself until he was next to her, then took off his helmet and handed her the nanites that he¡¯d taken the day before. She grabbed them without a word. They weren¡¯t enough to armor her, only to give her a little bit of modesty. ¡°Wasn¡¯t so bad,¡± she said. ¡°The transformation, the anger, that stuff.¡± She was pacing back and forth. ¡°It¡¯s not over,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ll feel the rage.¡± ¡°Oh, I already feel the rage,¡± said Maya. ¡°We¡¯re going to kill that bastard.¡± She stretched out, then looked down at herself. ¡°Maybe get some pants first.¡± Perry agreed with the sentiment, but he had no idea how they were going to accomplish it. One thing was certain: they were going to need more than just the two of them. Chapter 56 - Allies March had been a busy boy, which was cause for concern. He had taken liberties. One of those liberties had been to direct the nanite spiders at Crystal Lake Temple up to the tip of the highest temple, where they were to burrow in and wait for a signal. He had done this without telling Maya or Perry, simply as a matter of course. The ¡®spiders¡¯ were tiny and blind, but they could receive radio. That he¡¯d done this two weeks ago and never told anyone was bad enough, but he¡¯d also strewn a full gram of nanites all over the Cicada Temple, some of them as simple listeners and others as the microscopic spiders. When the time came, they would be able to make contact, and more importantly, listen in. ¡°It seemed prudent at the time, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°How¡¯d you have control of the nanites?¡± asked Maya. ¡°After some extensive negotiations, I was able to convince them that I was working in the best interests with regards to your defense,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You were spending power on this?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir, until the point you introduced stringent mode,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I mean, it does seem prudent,¡± said Maya. ¡°It does,¡± said Perry. ¡°But March doing things on his own ¡­ I can¡¯t say I like it.¡± ¡°No, I suspected you might not, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry frowned, but he didn¡¯t overrule it. If this was the result of March taking initiative, he would allow it, especially if there wasn¡¯t time for discussion. The nanites now littered around Cicada Temple had been spread during the fight that Perry and Maya had narrowly escaped from, and it was March¡¯s opinion that a number of the tiny spiders would now be riding Xiyan ¡ª which meant that he would be able to sense her when she appeared, if not necessarily track her across the Great Arc. Maya had gotten through becoming a werewolf with Perry¡¯s help. He had a mild expectation that they would have sex, but it hadn¡¯t happened, and he thought that was probably for the best. Part of that had been because he¡¯d been armored. There were a few times Maya¡¯s aggression had seemed to take on a different tone, but he was encased in metal. It hadn¡¯t helped his perception of things that she was wearing what was effectively a nanite bikini. By all rights she should have been emaciated, but she hadn¡¯t been idle while locked up, and energy recycling or internal alchemy or whatever it was had left her lean and muscular. He wouldn¡¯t admit to finding her attractive though. That seemed like a good way to get punched in the mouth. Besides, the last time he¡¯d let his horniness get the better of him, he¡¯d gotten stabbed in the stomach. ¡°Your biopunk modifications made it through fine?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Going wolf and back, it didn¡¯t do a factory reset?¡± ¡°Nah,¡± said Maya. ¡°I think ¡­ maybe it was the other way around?¡± ¡°Which would be?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I think it made me stronger, as a wolf,¡± said Maya. ¡°Not sure though. I wasn¡¯t really in my right mind. It was cool, right, blasting myself in the head with the last little scrap of stored moonlight?¡± ¡°I thought you might choke yourself out with the stock,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nah,¡± said Maya. She looked down at the bikini again. ¡°I¡¯m really going to need to find some clothes.¡± ¡°Or use the dark arts of wearing something skimpy,¡± said Perry. ¡°Now that you have your wits about you, we should take off.¡± He looked at the house. There had been no sign of Xiyan since cutting through the door, but she surely knew where this place was. Perry was relieved that they hadn¡¯t been ambushed while Maya was going through the rage-monster phase of becoming a werewolf, though she had drawn blood from the grandmaster. Maybe there was something to the idea that she was stronger as a wolf because of the modifications that had been made to her. ¡°So how do I do the thing?¡± asked Maya, looking down at her body. ¡°Spread this out to cover more than just the bits?¡± ¡°It happens naturally,¡± said Perry. ¡°You just have to pour out some energy to accelerate it. And since you can charge up from sunlight, you should have an easier time of it. Draw in the energy from the sun, the moon, wherever, and vent it out.¡± Maya tried, but to no obvious result. ¡°It works best on obvious problems, stains and frayed edges, little dents and nicks,¡± said Perry. He gestured to his chest, which had been gouged by her claws, and once, in the place where she¡¯d bitten him hard enough to leave a dent. Going half-wolf was clearly possible, but he hadn¡¯t managed it since the night he was turned. Having claws on demand seemed like it might come in handy, especially if there wasn¡¯t the attendant lack of control. He¡¯d already partly repaired the damage she¡¯d done. ¡°But not the core?¡± asked Maya. ¡°No, not the core,¡± said Perry. He placed an armored hand over it. ¡°I¡¯m not sure why.¡± ¡°I mean, it¡¯s obvious, right?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Obvious how?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What are you thinking?¡± ¡°It¡¯s magic,¡± said Maya with a shrug. ¡°That¡¯s not really helpful,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, of course the repair thing is magic, if you want to call it that, but ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Maya with a sigh. ¡°The reactor.¡± Perry stared at her. ¡°I was just about to say that there¡¯s no way that¡¯s right, but I don¡¯t know enough about microfusion reactors to dispute it. March?¡± ¡°Yes, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°The microfusion reactor takes special materials, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°And ¡­ our timelines split off from each other around when Napoleon was stomping through France or whatever, which means the terminology is different, but ¡­¡± ¡°You wish to know whether the microfusion reactor is magic, sir?¡± asked March. His voice was dripping with scorn. ¡°No, I want to know if it¡¯s ¡­ if there¡¯s some way that,¡± Perry faltered. ¡°If it¡¯s anomalous, the material.¡± ¡°I can provide you with several Gratbook pages to peruse, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°A quick search of them shows that neither ¡®anomaly¡¯ nor ¡®magic¡¯ are terms that make an appearance.¡± He was incredibly snide as he said this. ¡°Okay, but in the historical record, is there anything?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Some miracle material, something that people have argued over, something that doesn¡¯t fit within the Standard Model?¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m unfamiliar with the Standard Model,¡± said Marchand. Perry sighed. Trying to talk to Marchand about any field whose terminology was solidified after Napoleon was very often a pain. It had taken months to get his vocabulary updated with the original Earth¡¯s terms, and for the more complicated things, Perry wasn¡¯t entirely sure that his word replacements were correct. Of course, Perry wasn¡¯t an engineer, scientist, or computer guy, so it largely didn¡¯t matter. ¡°Does this need to be done now?¡± asked Maya. ¡°If the reason the core can¡¯t be fixed is because it¡¯s magic, I need to know,¡± said Perry. March responded by giving them three paragraphs of technobabble, all ¡®accelerator injector array¡¯ and ¡®tertiary hull materials¡¯ and ¡®thermionic conversion balancing¡¯. This was accompanied, for Perry, by what felt like a flurry of nicely animated diagrams. None of it felt all that meaningful. If it was magic, then Richter¡¯s people didn¡¯t know it was magic, and Perry didn¡¯t have the technical expertise to figure it out from comparison to his own world. All in all, it was just a guess from Maya, but it was one that sounded like it was worth investigating to Perry when he had more time and wasn¡¯t being hunted by an assassin. After another scouting run by the drone, which was pushed to its vertical limits, they set off, Maya in her black bikini and Perry in his full blue armor. They probably looked ridiculous walking together like that. ¡°Sorry for turning you into a werewolf,¡± said Maya as they walked. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry for standing back and deciding that maybe it was fine if they killed you.¡± ¡°Sorry for instigating the fight,¡± said Maya. Perry was fine leaving it at that. They weren¡¯t okay with each other, not really, but they only had to be okay enough to work together as a team, or at least not get in each other¡¯s way. ¡°If Xiyan weren¡¯t here, would that whole thing have been enough for you to kill me?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Probably. Although ¡­¡± ¡°Go on,¡± said Maya. ¡°Xiyan isn¡¯t just awful, she made me recalibrate,¡± said Perry. ¡°You started this whole thing saying that thresholders were always some kind of asshole, and maybe you were more right than I¡¯d thought. My last world, Cosme was more or less a decent enough guy, not that different from me. But the worlds before that, I was attacked out of nowhere, or at least had someone who was just starting from the premise that we were destined to fight each other. So when I met you, I thought ¡®oh, maybe this woman is like Cosme, maybe I can at least understand her thought processes, even if she¡¯s bloodthirsty¡¯. But now I¡¯m back to thinking that the average thresholder I¡¯ll run into deserves a bullet. I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°You think I¡¯m bloodthirsty?¡± asked Maya. ¡°You¡¯re thinking of vampires, I¡¯m a werewolf.¡± ¡°I think you like hurting and killing people, yeah,¡± said Perry, ignoring the joke. ¡°But ¡­ I guess I like it too.¡± ¡°Only people who deserve it,¡± said Maya. ¡°Sun Yizhong, the sister at Moth Lantern Hall,¡± said Perry. ¡°At the time, you had no idea what she¡¯d done. You were running on what, vibes?¡± ¡°I guess I don¡¯t consider myself a detective,¡± said Maya. ¡°It¡¯s not my skillset. You¡¯re the one with a robot built for spying.¡± ¡°I take offense to that, Miss Singh,¡± said Marchand, speaking through the armor¡¯s speakers. ¡°I was built for warfare and retrofitted for recreation.¡± ¡°So you¡¯re fine killing someone based on vibes?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s kind of what I mean when I say ¡®bloodthirsty¡¯.¡± Maya pursed her lips. ¡°I don¡¯t know. By herself, no, I guess not, she was just there and ready to fight me. Standing beside her brother and the other dude, the black ops guy. Bad vibes, but sure, I¡¯ll cop to not having done due diligence, to not holding myself to a higher standard of justice.¡± She shrugged. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know, the times I¡¯ve liked fighting most, it was when I really thought the other guy had it coming. But I do like fighting and killing. I think I can accept that about myself. Even back on Earth, I sometimes thought to myself ¡®you know, I would love to just throw a supersonic punch and splatter this asshole¡¯s skull all over this CVS parking lot¡¯.¡± ¡°Same,¡± said Maya. ¡°Including the part about the CVS parking lot. Or every now and then, I would have that fantasy of pushing someone into some industrial equipment, even though I¡¯ve never been around the stuff. Not some random guy, just ¡­ I don¡¯t know, some member of the senate, some asshole billionaire, some dude on Twitter.¡± ¡°Not that I would ever have in real life,¡± said Perry. ¡°Did you ever read the Unabomber Manifesto?¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Maya. ¡°No, why the hell would I?¡± ¡°There¡¯s a part in it where he¡¯s talking about how we¡¯re all powerless,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t remember exactly how it goes, but he thought it was a biological thing, that we¡¯re wired for power in some way or another, and that modern society was basically super super bad at actually satisfying a feeling of power. So you get a bunch of stuff that¡¯s a result of an acute feeling of powerlessness, stuff like power fantasies, but also stuff like school shootings, road rage, internet trolling, all kinds of antisocial behavior.¡± ¡°Wasn¡¯t he before the internet?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I mean it¡¯s been a long time since I read it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe he didn¡¯t mention that stuff. And a lot of what he was writing wasn¡¯t his own thoughts, it was cobbled together from the thoughts of other people, books that just never got all that much attention because their authors never mailed bombs to people.¡± ¡°I guess that just goes to show that mailing bombs to people works,¡± said Maya. ¡°Glad we cleared that up.¡± They walked in silence for a bit. ¡°So you think that we were both suffering under powerlessness,¡± said Maya. ¡°That¡¯s why we were uniquely primed to cut loose?¡± ¡°Sort of,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though I don¡¯t think we were unique. I think that¡¯s how lots of people were on Earth, just bottled up and completely lacking in even the smallest scrap of power. Over time, maybe that does something to you.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Maya. ¡°I guess I can see that.¡± ¡°And then you have someone like Xiyan, or to a lesser extent, Grandmaster Sun Quying,¡± said Perry. ¡°People who have power, who delight in using it. And you start thinking that maybe a civilization that makes sure people can¡¯t have as much power as they want would be a good thing.¡± ¡°You think that¡¯s how it was on Earth?¡± asked Maya. Perry laughed. The laughs never came out right from the power armor. ¡°You think I¡¯m a moron?¡± ¡°Kind of,¡± said Maya with a laugh of her own. ¡°Nah, Earth sucked,¡± said Perry. ¡°No offense to our home planet, but I couldn¡¯t have gone through that portal fast enough. I just never felt like there were any answers, any way to change the outcome. It was like being on an out of control train. And I felt angry about that, but I couldn¡¯t do anything with that anger, not unless I wanted to throw my life away in the process, which I didn¡¯t want to do.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Maya. ¡°I guess I felt the same. Different targets, maybe.¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry with a shrug. ¡°We haven¡¯t really talked politics, but ¡ª¡± ¡°Yeah, and probably better we don¡¯t,¡± said Maya. Maya was barefoot, barely making a sound as they moved down the road, and Perry¡¯s armor crunched with every step. He resolved to steal her some clothes at the next opportunity, or possibly buy them if he could find someone to take the single gold coin that was secreted away in a tiny pocket of the suit. ¡°Did you find out about her?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Who?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The sister,¡± said Maya. ¡°Sun Yizhong. Because she was a self-confessed pervert, but I guess I was thinking she said that just after her brother was revealed as basically a rapist. Might not have been that bad, by our standards.¡± ¡°She bit off a guy¡¯s dick,¡± said Perry. Maya kept walking as she digested that. ¡°As ¡­ like a sex thing?¡± ¡°Not clear,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or a self-defense thing?¡± said Maya. ¡°Because I could see that. It¡¯s a real power move.¡± ¡°She did it twice,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, if you find a gimmick that works, go for it, right?¡± asked Maya. She started laughing. ¡°You know, you¡¯d almost talked me into feeling bad about her?¡± ¡°Well, the point is that you didn¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Dick chomper,¡± said Maya, shaking her head. ¡°Wait, first sphere or second sphere?¡± ¡°Both first sphere,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s nuts that it took her doing that twice to get exiled.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve come to the conclusion that the Great Arc should be burned to the ground,¡± said Maya. A shadow crossed her face. She¡¯d had her hand cut off and been stuffed in a basement for weeks, and sometimes her effort to avoid the subject came off a bit forced and manic. Every now and then, he caught her staring off into the distance, or looking angry about nothing. She¡¯d been through a lot though, ten worlds of fighting and killing, had been beaten to within an inch of her life on more than one occasion, and he hoped that she¡¯d bounce back from this too. ¡°It¡¯s a shame we¡¯re going to have to settle for only burning down a part of it.¡± ¡°You¡¯re going to have to watch your mouth, just a bit,¡± said Perry. He didn¡¯t like having to turn toward seriousness, but they were going to need something approaching diplomacy. ¡°My mouth is often considered one of my best features,¡± said Maya. ¡°We need support,¡± said Perry. ¡°I legitimately think we don¡¯t have a shot of winning without it, and not winning means that both Xiyan and the grandmaster go through a portal to the next world once they hunt us down. Also, we most likely die.¡± ¡°I guess I have to stop pretending that you¡¯re a henchman,¡± said Maya. ¡°Nah,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I did save your life, at great personal expense.¡± ¡°I was about to say I¡¯ll never live that down,¡± said Maya. ¡°But actually, we¡¯re going our separate ways soon enough.¡± There was more silence as they both mulled that over. She wasn¡¯t a friend, not really, and she¡¯d violated trust in a way that had felt like the worst possible betrayal until getting partially disemboweled had given him some perspective. Still, she was from Earth, and that was something. ¡°If we¡¯re talking about first impressions, I should probably not meet the king while wearing a bikini,¡± said Maya. ¡°Just a thought.¡± ~~~~ Finding the former king of the Grouse Kingdom was super easy, barely an inconvenience. He had been booted out of his castle, but settled not all that far from it with a slim fraction of his former forces. He had no authority over the military nor the people, or at least, none that was recognized any longer. There would be a new king, who would rule over what was technically a new kingdom, placed on the throne by celestial decree. Perry had first thought that celestial decree meant something mystical, but when it had been explained to him, it seemed more like how things were done on Earth, with the new king being the guy who could gather up alliances and stake a claim that people actually respected. If you succeeded, people would say you had the celestial decree, and if you failed, people would say that you didn¡¯t have it, but it was a thing that was decided on after the fact. Wu Xianlong had suffered the loss of three sons, and following that, the loss of his kingdom. He was widely hated by the people of his former country for his failures as a king and the civil disruption that had followed the kingdom¡¯s collapse. Perry had spoken with a number of commoners as they¡¯d made their way through the Grouse Kingdom, and most of them spit at the very name of Wu Xianlong. They had been more than happy to tell Perry where to find the man. Their trip hadn¡¯t been entirely without incident. They¡¯d been ambushed by what were either bandits or local enforcers, who took Perry to be some kind of slaver and Maya to be some kind of slave, and rather than attempting to free Maya, they had wanted to take her for their own. Maya had dealt with them swiftly, testing out her newfound werewolf strength, and then took the clothes off the one of them who had died while the rest ran off. She hadn¡¯t seemed happy that Perry insisted on burying the body, but it gave her a chance to practice the cloth-mending technique with something a little less exotic than nanites. There was not, however, any hint of either Xiyan or the grandmaster. Perry looked nervously at every door he passed, thinking that she might pop out with an army, but if she had the ability to do that, she wasn¡¯t using it. He thought it more likely that the doors she could use had to be specific, but it was an open question that he wished he had the answer to. The tea house was three stories tall and towered over the rest of the village. It had once been a retreat for the king, a place at the far edge of the Grouse Kingdom, with picturesque little buildings surrounding it, almost a tiny model village. Perry vaguely recalled that Marie Antoinette had built something similar, a place where she could pretend to be living like a commoner, which was of course completely inauthentic and created with the use of tax money. The fake village now had soldiers in it, most of them guarding the tea house, but there were fewer than Perry would have expected. Food had quickly become an issue in the Grouse Kingdom, for all the reasons that food always became an issue in times of civil unrest. Perry hadn¡¯t eaten during their whole trip, and his stomach was rumbling. Maya had simply said ¡®learn to not need food¡¯, which she knew wasn¡¯t helpful. It took some talking to get to see the king, but surprisingly little of it. The king only had perhaps a dozen people with him, loyalists of one sort or another, but given they were mostly second sphere, that was more than enough to put Maya and Perry down. The king sat in an extravagant room on the third floor, slumped in a carved wooden chair that was serving as a makeshift throne. Perry had talked with Maya ahead of time, and agreed that they would address him as ¡®king¡¯, even if no one was calling him that anymore. He was wearing black silks, mourning garb, and his face was a scowl, though it didn¡¯t seem to be directed their way. He was thin and tall, and looked younger than Perry would have thought, though that was definitely just because he was second sphere. He didn¡¯t look particularly kingly, aside from a golden scepter that was held loosely in his hand. His hair was jet black and quite long, falling loosely around his shoulders, without so much as a ponytail or top knot. ¡°There was a time I had one hundred visitors every day,¡± said the king. ¡°My advisors managed every minute of every hour to keep them flowing through the throne room, as regular as the drop of a water clock.¡± ¡°We appreciate you taking the time to meet with us, your grace,¡± said Perry, giving the former king a low bow. He felt thankful that Maya followed suit, then a little annoyed that he should be thankful about that. ¡°I was told you have word of my sons¡¯ killer,¡± said Wu Xianlong. ¡°I would hear it right away, rather than waiting another moment for pleasantries.¡± ¡°Yes, your grace,¡± said Perry. ¡°I am Peregrin Holzmann and this is Maya Singh. We are warriors from another world, sent here to combat another warrior, one with a heart of evil. She currently goes by the name of Lu Xiyan, but she¡¯s had many names and many faces. She told me directly that she had worked within the palace, but ¡ª¡± ¡°Lu Xiyan,¡± said the king, sitting up slightly. ¡°It does not ring a bell.¡± ¡°Whatever name or face she was using then, she is the one who killed your sons,¡± said Perry. ¡°She can take on a mantle of smoke and move silently through the night, as quiet as a falling leaf. She can move through doors as though they weren¡¯t on other sides of the building from each other. And she has a knife that can cut through steel. There are other powers, strong ones, but we don¡¯t know them in full. Aside from her account of being a servant at the palace, there was a death of a second sphere man, cut to pieces without warning ¡ª¡± ¡°Where is she?¡± asked Wu Xianlong, rising from his wooden chair. His scepter was gripped tightly in his hand. ¡°We last saw her at Cicada Temple, in the Green Snake Valley, under the protection of Grandmaster Sun Quying of the Worm Gate Sect,¡± said Perry. ¡°She might have moved on from there, or lost his protection, but we¡¯re part of an eternal battle across the worlds, and she¡¯ll come for us eventually, one way or another.¡± ¡°Point me in her direction and I shall carve a path of devastation,¡± said Wu Xianlong. He was wielding the scepter like a cudgel. ¡°I will rip apart those who have sheltered her and burn to ash any place where she has stayed. My sons!¡± ¡°Your grace,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°The man she¡¯s with ¡ª who she was with when we left ¡ª he¡¯s third sphere, and of considerable power, not only because of his techniques, but because he¡¯s the head of Worm Gate.¡± ¡°Do you question my power?¡± asked Wu Xianlong. ¡°Have you heard the poisoned words of my subjects, or the slithering lies of my advisors?¡± ¡°No, your grace,¡± said Perry. ¡°I only meant that going full force against Grandmaster Sun Quying might not be ¡ª¡± ¡°I am no coward,¡± said Wu Xianlong, brandishing his scepter and striking a pose. ¡°I will take what men I have left, and we will move at dawn.¡± ¡°I had hoped for a diplomatic solution, your grace,¡± said Perry. ¡°We came to this world to kill Xiyan, through the arcane rules that govern our kind. If she¡¯s sheltered by Grandmaster Sun Quying, we have no hope. I was hoping that you could put pressure on him to cast her out. We need to be the ones to kill her, otherwise there¡¯s a chance she¡¯ll slip into the next world, beyond your reach.¡± The king deflated into his chair. ¡°You mean that justice is beyond me?¡± he asked. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I only mean that we¡¯ll be the instruments of your justice.¡± The king twisted his face into a frown. ¡°You are sure it is her?¡± ¡°As sure as I can be,¡± said Perry. ¡°Xiyan attacked me in the night, while I was unaware, and I only barely escaped with my life. I don¡¯t know why she attacked your sons, but with her powers and her history, I have a hard time imagining that it was anyone else.¡± He didn¡¯t really have that hard of a time imagining it, but they needed someone on their side, someone who could neutralize the grandmaster. Perry had no idea whether Xiyan was going to team up with him, but the grandmaster had every incentive to latch onto her so he¡¯d have a way to go through the portal, whenever it showed up. It did seem very likely to him that Xiyan was simply a killer, attacking people in the night because that was her preference, and if he was overstating his case, he didn¡¯t really care. They were in a bind. But once the king started moving, he¡¯d be hard to stop, and Perry could only hope that the weakened king and whatever warriors he could bring to bear would be enough to make the battle against Xiyan less one-sided. There weren¡¯t too many cards left to play, and Perry hoped they would be enough. Chapter 57 - The Celestial Kingdom The former king and his people moved slowly, which was aggravating. Perry might have described Wu Xianlong as playing too much to the crowd, but none of the men and women they were traveling with seemed to enjoy him very much. He wore all black, with a fancy black wide-brimmed hat that called to mind a wizard of some kind, except that it looked like the pointed top had been truncated. Sometimes they would talk amongst themselves as the king held forth, and Perry would listen in, using the enhanced hearing afforded by Marchand. There was quite a lot of agreement that this was all an ill-advised fool¡¯s errand, though no one dared to call the former king a fool. Wu Xianlong liked to wax poetic about the path to victory and the revenge he would have in the name of his sons. On more than one occasion, he opined that he might reclaim the celestial decree and rule the Grouse Kingdom once more. He would stand on cliff tops and look out at his former kingdom with mournful regret, and while he was doing that, everyone else was expected to just sort of stand around and wait on him. Often people left to scout or gather materials or just not be around. Wu Xianlong hadn¡¯t forged his own kingdom, he¡¯d been born into the business of being a king, and when his father kicked the bucket, Wu Xianlong had said ¡®king me¡¯. In this time and place, that seemed to be enough. Perry wasn¡¯t sure whether or not the king was an idiot, but from outward appearances, it seemed as though he at least had a screw loose. The man¡¯s three sons had all been brutally killed not too long ago, which must have hit harder given that they were second sphere and expected to live for a very long time. His wives ¡ª plural ¡ª were all missing or dead, casualties of having lost the palace. And to top it off, his kingdom had turned its back on him. If Perry was trying to find some empathy for the guy, that was what he thought about, but most of the time he was just angry that the king seemed useless, or anxious that the king and his people weren¡¯t going to be able to do anything when the time came. During the night, Perry took off his armor so Maya could crawl inside it. It didn¡¯t remotely fit her, but it made sure that she wouldn¡¯t be exposed to the moonlight. That left Perry to fend for himself. The good news was that he was able to prevent himself from transforming. It had been a risk, especially with all the people around him, but he¡¯d made it through, keeping himself from transforming. It was easier to redirect the energy of the vessel than to try to force it entirely closed, and he¡¯d borrowed the nanite ¡®glove¡¯ from Maya, allowing him to add more nanites to it at a faster rate than before. The Wolf Vessel was recharging itself in the moonlight, somehow translating the lunar energy into more energy, a multiplicative effect that gave Perry access to more energy than he thought most second spheres might ever have. It was only a few days until the moons would be full, and the skies were clear. Under these conditions, Perry would be able to throw devastating haymakers, but without an opponent, he was left venting all the energy once his vessels were full. The bad news was that his sleep was fitful. In theory, you were supposed to be able to set up processes that kept going while you weren¡¯t consciously maintaining them, the so-called pseudo-meridians, but Perry hadn¡¯t had enough training or practice with them, and while he dozed off, he also woke up three times in the middle of the night, heart racing, Wolf Vessel threatening to burst. He was dragging his feet the next day, which wasn¡¯t much of a problem, given that they were still moving slowly. ¡°Sleeping in a suit of armor sucks,¡± said Maya as she stretched out. ¡°But it beats hanging up in a dungeon with a hand missing.¡± ¡°You still sleep?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t have that problem licked yet,¡± said Maya. ¡°Supposedly second sphere can get around sleep, but I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°You got around needing food and water though,¡± said Perry. ¡°Any tips for that?¡± He was hungry, as he often was, and it was affecting his mood. The traveling party hadn¡¯t eaten anything. They were all second sphere, but second sphere were supposed to eat things, because it was one of the basic ¡®rites¡¯, an essential component of the fabric of society. This was probably a matter of logistics rather than a personal affront to Perry and his ravenous hunger, but he couldn¡¯t be certain. Much of the retinue didn¡¯t seem to think much of him and Maya. ¡°I cheated,¡± said Maya. ¡°I¡¯ve got two extra vessels, the sunlight one, but also a small one, the one that I use for my telekinesis. It¡¯s got a limited size, but it generates energy until it¡¯s full. Then I just needed to learn the trick of sending that down into the necessary vessels to supplement.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was hoping I¡¯d be able to get it.¡± ¡°We¡¯re about to go into the big battle and this is what you¡¯re worried about?¡± asked Maya. ¡°If I thought that I could get more combat power from a cram session, I would,¡± said Perry. ¡°But we¡¯ve got a handful of days, at that, even with the sedate pace.¡± ¡°I tethered last night,¡± said Maya. She looked at her hand. ¡°I felt it settle in, but so far, can¡¯t feel much. But I haven¡¯t actually done anything particularly righteous yet.¡± She looked over at him. ¡°You should tether too.¡± ¡°Academia¡¯s not going to get me much,¡± said Perry. ¡°Reading and processing is important, but ¡ª¡± ¡°If you¡¯re going to tether, do it now,¡± said Maya. ¡°If it¡¯s a five percent bump, then that¡¯s still something.¡± She frowned at him. ¡°Right?¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not all upside though.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not going to have any academic violations in the coming fight,¡± said Maya. ¡°And besides, half of what they say is, frankly, kind of bullshit.¡± ¡°You still don¡¯t believe in cosmic balance?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You picked a fight, killed some people, transformed me, then got your hand cut off and ended up locked in a cellar, if that¡¯s not karma, what is?¡± ¡°And you let some eager woman into your room for relations and got stabbed in the stomach, and you think that¡¯s karma too?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I do, actually, yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Come on,¡± said Maya. ¡°Xiyan was going to get you one way or another. She¡¯d heard all your stories, fallen in love with you or whatever is going on in that tiny little brain of hers, and she was readying her dagger. Karma¡¯s got nothing to do with it.¡± ¡°I try to take the worlds as they come,¡± said Perry. ¡°And this one, it seems the universe getting retribution might be legitimate.¡± ¡°Except we know Xiyan has lied through her teeth about just about everything,¡± said Maya. ¡°She¡¯s killed four people.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve killed four people,¡± said Perry. ¡°Point being, where¡¯s her retribution? Why haven¡¯t things gone downhill for her?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Why didn¡¯t she get locked up in a dungeon?¡± ¡°She¡¯s got a lot of people coming to kill her,¡± said Perry. ¡°And if the king has his way, it¡¯s not going to be a pretty death.¡± Maya stared at the back of the king¡¯s head. He was pretty far ahead of them, singing a low funeral song that echoed back from the surrounding valley. ¡°You think the cosmic balance is on our side in this? The guy lost his three sons and his whole kingdom. If the karma is real, I¡¯m not sure what did him in. And for as much of a shitbird as he is, the grandmaster has been carefully navigating himself around what he thinks the rules are.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°But he¡¯s planning on leaving Worm Gate behind. He¡¯s planning to abandon his people and go live a life of battle among the many worlds. I would think that would count for something.¡± ¡°I would think that puppeting hundreds of people would count for something,¡± said Maya. ¡°And that sending people out with studiously worded instructions that don¡¯t directly implicate you should count too. Hell, on Earth we had RICO, right?¡± ¡°The ¡­ what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The mob one,¡± said Maya. ¡°The one that made it so a mob boss could go to jail for saying stuff like ¡®hey, it sure would be nice if that guy were dead¡¯. The meddlesome priest law.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know, it¡¯s funny, because you can say stuff like that and I have no way to check it.¡± ¡°That¡¯s how the worlds are, right?¡± asked Maya. ¡°If someone¡¯s been to another world, you just have to take it for granted that what they say is true.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve got terabytes of video, actually,¡± said Perry. ¡°Huh,¡± said Maya. ¡°I guess you do.¡± ¡°But I was thinking more that ¡­ you might be the last person from Earth I ever meet,¡± said Perry. ¡°And if we somehow win, and a portal pops up, then we¡¯re off our separate ways. But between the two of us, there are lots of things we only vaguely know about Earth.¡± ¡°True,¡± said Maya. ¡°And of all the things we knew about Earth, we didn¡¯t share that much.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He hesitated. ¡°I was worried that if you knew more about me, you might hate me.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Were you a chomo?¡± ¡°What¡¯s a chomo?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Nevermind,¡± said Maya, waving a hand. ¡°You seem decent enough. Maybe not an all-star, but I give you a pass. And if you knew me on Earth, you¡¯d have thought I was ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Someone else.¡± ¡°A marketer working at a tech startup,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Maya. ¡°I mean, not technically a start up when I was there. But yeah. Putting on a smile in meetings, secretly hating everyone and myself for being a part of that pointlessness. I mean, ads work, but we wish they didn¡¯t, right?¡± ¡°What kind of company?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Er,¡± said Maya. ¡°A ride-sharing company.¡± Perry stared at her. ¡°You worked for ¡ª wait, a big one or a little one?¡± ¡°A big one,¡± said Maya. ¡°And I would go to work and say stuff like ¡®oh yeah, we¡¯re offering a great product for people, it¡¯s win-win-win, we¡¯re disrupting the evil taxi companies who have this stranglehold on the market¡¯, and yeah, okay, sure, but the real thing was that I wanted money and they were giving it to me, and nothing else mattered.¡± ¡°This is more pure,¡± said Perry. ¡°Jumping between worlds?¡± asked Maya. ¡°Sort of. I¡¯m more pure. I¡¯m the truest version of myself.¡± She looked at him. ¡°You know, that¡¯s the thing that bugs me about you.¡± ¡°That I¡¯m not the purest version of myself?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Maya. ¡°When you were going to leave me to die, at least that was you being you. You were pissed off and ready to just see them cut me to pieces, alliance be damned, and if there was a third thresholder, you¡¯d deal with her on your own. I had a lot of time to think in that basement, a lot of time, and I kind of respected it.¡± Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. ¡°Huh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, all three of them definitely deserved death,¡± said Maya. ¡°But the way you were ready to just let me die, yeah, that at least felt more like it came from the heart. All this other stuff, the going native, the talking to this king like,¡± her eyes went to the people around them and her voice lowered, which if you squinted right was her growing as a person, ¡°like he¡¯s deserving of even an ounce of our respect ¡­ that¡¯s you suppressing yourself.¡± ¡°You give these sorts of talks to all your henchmen?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Only the ones that save my life,¡± said Maya. She looked up at him. ¡°There¡¯s probably no way I can pay that back before we part.¡± ¡°Win,¡± said Perry. ¡°Win, and stop the grandmaster from going through.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Maya. She looked down the road ahead of them. ¡°I guess we¡¯ll try to swing that.¡± ~~~~ Tethering to academia was easy enough, just as Maya had said it would be, but it came with only a gentle sensation of the flow of power, not even enough to keep him warm on a windy day. Tethers provided energy, and to some extent, placed limits on a person, but even a tight tether wouldn¡¯t juice him up too much for the final fight. There was a fair amount of downtime, given the slow movement of the retinue, and Perry started work on a ¡®paper¡¯ for publication, taking his cues from Luo Yanhua¡¯s pamphlet on werewolves through the lens of the vessel and meridian system. He was working on his own findings, getting them all in order, which mostly meant talking to Marchand. March had a suite of applications that were all slightly off from Microsoft Office or GDocs, and never stopped feeling weird to Perry, but he was also using them through the medium of talking to a powerful AI. Even just writing down his thoughts helped the trickle of power turn into a slightly larger trickle of power, but there was no way that he could do enough while on the road. Still, learning about other worlds was, to his way of thinking, one of the primary necessities of traveling between the many worlds. He was going to be learning about the worlds anyway, and about his own powers, and the powers of others, and so long as he didn¡¯t wrap the tether so tightly around his neck that he needed to disseminate his findings or risk death. That Luo Yanhua had done so probably said something about her, but Perry had no idea what. With the steady trickle of power to draw on, Perry did his best to keep March topped up on power, repairing all the minor dents and dings, and trying to channel power down into the Wolf Vessel, whose time was coming. ~~~~ The party crossed into Green Snake Valley after three days on the road. Perry was still hungry and tired, though he¡¯d woken up only once the night before, and had some eggs from a sympathetic farmer in the morning. They had talked with the former king about how it would go, and the king had largely not listened to them, which wasn¡¯t particularly surprising. He was planning to make a show of force against Worm Gate, then meet with the grandmaster. Until they got closer, they weren¡¯t going to have any idea whether Xiyan was still there or not. Perry had tried to explain that they had remote sensing abilities through much of Cicada Temple, but the king was adamant that the third spheres settle things like men. This was a bit of a surprise to Perry, since he¡¯d thought the king was only second sphere. ¡°At the moment my kingdom was lost to me, I was enlightened,¡± said the king. ¡°I would give up every scrap of power to have my sons back, to feel the warmth of their hands in mine, to see the light in their eyes and the wisdom of their years.¡± ¡°Your grace,¡± said Perry, words coming slowly. ¡°I was told that such transitions do not come easily, nor in times of distress.¡± ¡°In truth, it might have been better to stay as second sphere, when I had such a duty to my kingdom,¡± said Wu Xianlong. ¡°It is true that transition from one sphere to another is often a matter of focus and study, but if the groundwork is laid, movement from one to another can happen as easily as the sliding of a log across ice.¡± Perry thought about that, and didn¡¯t really like the conclusion. ¡°You were hoping to get to third sphere?¡± asked Maya. ¡°That¡¯s a bit much.¡± ¡°I was hoping it was a last-ditch option,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re short on equipment and I¡¯m worried about how it¡¯s going to go. I keep thinking about what I have left in the tank, but ¡­ it¡¯s not much. And I¡¯m certain that Xiyan has surprises in store, given how many worlds she¡¯s been to.¡± Perry was doing nothing but worry, and as they got closer, felt less confident in their plans. He still had yet to see the true power of the grandmaster, and was afraid that he hadn¡¯t seen the full extent of Xiyan¡¯s powers either ¡ª but he was at least hopeful that with as many worlds as she¡¯d been to, some of them were simply duds. When they were a few miles away, Perry flew up into the sky, much to the shock of those around him. He and Maya had played coy about what they could do, and the king hadn¡¯t pressed them on it, which was how it was supposed to work in this world. From high up in the air, Green Snake Valley seemed small. Beyond the hills and mountains that penned in the river, there were more temples, more villages, a whole ring of sights as-yet unseen. The squabble between Moon Gate and Worm Gate seemed small in comparison to the Great Arc, and even the fall of the Grouse Kingdom, an event which had shocked the region, was nothing in comparison to the workings of the higher spheres or the vast expanse of the ring. It wasn¡¯t like on Earth, either, where the curve of the horizon hid the enormity of the world from view. On the Great Arc, it was almost impossible not to be faced with your insignificance on a daily basis. Maybe that was part of why everyone seemed to be in such a scramble for power. Perry had more important reasons to go high into the air though. ¡°March, connect with the nanites,¡± said Perry. ¡°Get us some details on what¡¯s been going on, full recordings, things like that.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve already begun, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. He fought back the urge to tinker with the AI¡¯s settings. March taking initiative hadn¡¯t gone wrong yet, and having things done before he had outright stated he wanted them done felt like it was going to save his life. ¡°I¡¯ve already taken the liberty of contacting Miss Luo Yanhua,¡± said March. ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Why? That¡¯s terrible news.¡± ¡°Sir, we¡¯re going to be going against a man you have stated your fear for on multiple occasions,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We need all the help we can get.¡± ¡°Yeah, well she¡¯s not going to help us,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s going to make a beeline for us, accuse us of crimes we definitely committed, and then try to bring us to justice. Plus she wasn¡¯t supposed to know that you were alive, seriously, what the hell man?¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid I must protest that as an advanced artificial intelligence, I¡¯m not alive, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You know what I mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°I believe your emotions in this subject to be clouded, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, if you wish me to stop the transmission, I will do so.¡± ¡°How are you transmitting?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I have arranged the nanites into a crude speaker, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Well, yes, stop transmission, we¡¯ll have to hope she didn¡¯t hear it,¡± said Perry. He looked across the valley, to where Crystal Lake Temple stood in the distance. ¡°We don¡¯t need her showing up.¡± ¡°If you say so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If I may say so while we¡¯re out of earshot, sir, she seems far preferable to that dreadful king.¡± When the download finished, Perry descended to where the king and his people were waiting with Maya. She was in the middle of an argument with one of the second sphere people, and Perry had missed most of it. ¡°Of course it¡¯s unethical,¡± said Maya. ¡°He¡¯s using people as his meat puppets. They only allow him to because he¡¯s the one that controls the shelter and the food and everything else. It¡¯s clear coercion.¡± ¡°If this is the cause for your crusade, it will not be one taken up by anyone else,¡± said Bai Yulan. Perry only knew their names because March was listening to all the conversations and tagging everyone. Bai Yulan was one of the scouts, with a streak of green hair and a necklace made of tiny bird bones, all in the classic airbrushed style of the second sphere. The king stood off to one side, looking forlorn and disinterested in the discussion. ¡°So you¡¯re not going to fight?¡± asked Maya. ¡°We will do as our king wills,¡± said Bai Yulan, bowing her head in respect. ¡°But we do not mistake the orders of our king for the incontrovertible will of the celestial kingdom.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Maya. ¡°Whatever.¡± She turned away with her arms crossed. ¡°You are stoked by the fires of a false righteousness,¡± said Bai Yulan, raising her voice slightly. ¡°Your personal grudges are not the realm of this court. Your foolish ideas of right and wrong hold no water, and if you continue on this course you risk shattering the vessel of this alliance.¡± Maya turned on her. ¡°We both want Xiyan dead,¡± she said. ¡°Let¡¯s leave it at that.¡± Bai Yulan¡¯s face twisted into a frown. ¡°I cannot leave the safety of my king to one side. It is my duty to protect him.¡± One of the others came forward, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she shrugged it off, but she looked at everyone around them, taking the temperature. ¡°Will I be the only one to speak out against these interlopers? They mean to use our king for their own ends.¡± ¡°Or I am using them for mine,¡± said the king, finally turning from his quiet contemplations. ¡°This is unlike you, Bai Yulan. They are allies.¡± Bai Yulan turned toward him, then looked back at Maya, face set in a frustrated frown. Perry took off his helmet. He smelled the fresh air, and held his sword at the ready. There were mingled scents, but from Bai Yulan, there was an unmistakable smell of mulberries and sea salt. It was very familiar. Perry slowly and calmly put his helmet back in place. ¡°This isn¡¯t Bai Yulan,¡± he said once his sword was drawn and ready. ¡°She was scouting, out away from the rest of the group, and met her death at the hands of Xiyan. Her face was stolen.¡± ¡°Preposterous,¡± said Bai Yulan. The moment after she¡¯d said it, she leapt up into the air with a tremendous amount of power, moving herself as far away from the cluster of people as she¡¯d could. Her only advantage was surprise, and she¡¯d had precious little of that. With the full strength of the power armor and his energy, Perry was almost able to get to her as she landed, and he threw his sword with both hands trying to get her. She turned to smoke for just an instant, and the sword sliced straight through her clothes, passing harmlessly through her body, and the next moment she was flesh and blood again, taking in deep breaths as she ran. When she made the first statue, Perry almost ran into it. It appeared in her footsteps like an echo of her movement, a thing of marble that perfectly captured her new face and torn clothes, frozen for just a moment in the act of running before animating. When Perry slipped past it with deft footwork, it grabbed for him, and he was forced to dodge away from it. His sword had returned to him, and he grabbed it out of the air, then pushed his body and armor to their limits, funneling energy down the meridians. When another statue appeared in her wake, he was ready for it, and lashed out with his sword, tearing it apart. He burst through it like the Kool-Aid man, leaving rock behind him. He was gaining on her. Maya was slightly faster though, her bounces springing her down the road with ever-larger leaps. She was without her needle though, and almost entirely unarmored. The nanites had formed into a stubby dagger, but Maya¡¯s face was set. When Maya made a final leap, ready to stab and tackle, Xiyan turned and thrust a hand out behind her. Red and black ribbons burst forward from her palm and smacked straight into Maya, and she collapsed onto the ground, tied up and squeezed. Perry leapt over her prone body and kept up the pursuit. This time, when the stone statue appeared, Perry was able to dodge it entirely, barely slowing down. He was getting close enough to strike her with the sword, but if she went shadow again, it would do nothing but slow him. ¡°March, fire,¡± said Perry. The first bullet hit her cleanly in the back and didn¡¯t even slow her down a little bit, though blood dripped freely from the wound. Before the second bullet could find its home, she seemed to explode into smoke, and Perry was forced to stop running, because he could see nothing. ¡°March, clear it,¡± said Perry. March flipped through images, multi-spectral analysis done on the fly, and then Perry could see again, if in black and white with poor quality. Xiyan was standing in front of a stone door in the middle of the road, one that she was still in the process of hastily and sloppily making. March shot her in the head this time. Whether by dumb luck or split-second timing, she had gone to shadow, and the bullet passed cleanly through, hitting the stone. Perry put all his effort into getting to her, but reached her just as she pushed her way through the door. The stone doorway collapsed the moment she was through, and Perry tumbled through the crumbling rock. He hadn¡¯t seen where she¡¯d gone. He swore at the sky for a moment, then turned and trekked back to where Maya was getting the red and black ropes off of her. They had hugged her tight enough to leave marks on her skin, and particularly around her throat and wrists. The other second spheres had been following, as had the king, but they had either been slow or gotten a late start, because they were still well behind. ¡°I should have waited,¡± said Perry. ¡°She pressed her luck though, might have decided to dip out if I hadn¡¯t said something.¡± ¡°Bai Yulan is dead?¡± asked the king. ¡°Another of my only loyal soldiers, fallen?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°That was Xiyan, the woman who killed your sons.¡± ¡°Then she was not with Worm Gate after all?¡± asked the king. ¡°She has been with us this entire time, infiltrating our ranks?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have to apply a technique, then I¡¯ll know what Worm Gate knows, have some idea what they were up to.¡± ¡°It¡¯s licorice,¡± said Maya, holding up the limp red and black ropes. ¡°She nearly killed me with licorice.¡± ¡°She tried to turn us against you,¡± said the king. ¡°She killed Bai Yulan, who had many years of life ahead of her. I never suspected a thing. It was convincing, in her speech and her mannerisms.¡± ¡°She didn¡¯t think about the smell,¡± said Perry. ¡°We reach Cicada Hall tonight,¡± said the king, voice firm. ¡°We bring her to justice tonight. She must be ended.¡± ¡°Yes, your grace,¡± said Perry. But Xiyan had been reckless in trying to get so close to them, and they would be more careful moving forward. It felt to Perry like they might have just lost their single best chance at a clean, uncomplicated kill. Chapter 58 - Sunrise, pt 1 There were mountains of audio logs to listen through, both from Cicada Temple and Crystal Lake Temple. The nanites had no proper data storage, and even worse ¡®microphones¡¯, but Perry waved off the technical details and told March to go through and catalog all of the conversations according to their participants. He would have also told March to go through and tag all of the conversations, but March still didn¡¯t know the local language, and it was the nature of the second sphere that people often spoke in their own bespoke languages for some occasions, since both could translate for each other. Thankfully, once a conversation was identified by March, Perry could listen to it on his own, and he handed an earbud over to Maya so she could listen as they walked, sort of a podcast. Xiyan had stuck around at the temple in the aftermath of Perry¡¯s escape with Maya, and had talked more with the grandmaster. She had absolutely no problem with letting him go through the portal once she won, and offered to tell him all about the other worlds she¡¯d been to, and he had welcomed that over the course of the next few days. There were a lot of lies in there, and the grandmaster grilled her, but she had no shame, and every now and then, when she was caught in a contradiction, she would just say ¡®sorry, I must have misspoke¡¯ or something similar. Still, Perry thought her continued account of her travels probably had some value, even if it needed to be untwisted. She¡¯d talked about Candyland and never mentioned getting the ability to shoot licorice from her palms. Even with that omission, at least it let him know that worlds with enormous transformative spells were a possibility, one that meant the wide range of worlds he¡¯d heard about was even larger and more wild than he had thought. Having seen her in action, there were also some answers as to the nature of her powers. Her ability to make rock from nothing had come from a world with some very classical four elements thing going on, divided up into separate kingdoms that took their elemental gimmicks to the nth degree, each having a dozen different types of magic to it, half a dozen elementals, half-breeds born of those elementals, a variety of gods for each element, and what felt like an intentionally obtuse arrangement of all that. She¡¯d become a battle nun of sorts, having taken another woman¡¯s place, almost assuredly by killing her, and had been granted the ¡®rock wake¡¯ power, which paired so well with her ability to control statues that it was almost absurd. In another world she¡¯d taken the place of a dead woman and found herself working as a spy, the dead woman¡¯s old job. She¡¯d learned the job on the go, aided by her bevy of powers, and ended up a triple agent before the whole thing came crashing down with the arrival of the other thresholder. She claimed not to have gotten any power from that world. She¡¯d gotten her durability from the world after the one with all the artists, where she was rushed to their version of a hospital when someone found her dying in the street. They didn¡¯t know what to make of her ¡ª everyone in that world had enhancements to keep them from suffering too much damage, and they had gone to work adding in those enhancements to her before she even woke up. Their bodies could be destroyed, but they could bounce back from a lot, whether that was getting shot in the chest or being disemboweled. Perry was left wondering whether that was a direct reference to what she¡¯d done to him, which it might have been, given the way she talked about it. Most of Xiyan¡¯s worlds ended the same way, with a fight, though in two she had simply killed someone while they were defenseless. The reasons for the fighting began to grow monotonous, especially because that was the place where Xiyan seemed most prone to lie ¡ª or to say things that felt like lies. She would put on a new face and cozy up to someone, then they would find out she was a thresholder and attempt to murder her. Perry felt certain that it was the other way around, that she exposed herself as a thresholder by trying to get the jump on them, but that was just speculation on his part. There were exceptions to the pattern, worlds where she was facing someone who went at her with unchecked aggression and no hope of conversation or temporary companionship. And in one of the worlds, Xiyan had found a man who, she claimed, didn¡¯t care whether she was a thresholder. Once she unmasked herself, he proposed marriage. What actually happened, Perry didn¡¯t know, but to hear Xiyan tell it, they had a happy several months together before they were captured by the local government. She escaped only because he killed himself in order to open a portal for her. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how much of that to believe, if any. In one world, she had been picked up from a field by a brutally powerful twenty-foot tall giant and set up in a tournament which was akin to either Pokemon or cock-fighting. Her counterpart was a woman she only met in the finals. That particular story had taken most of a day to tell, in part because the grandmaster had so many questions about the specifics. It felt too incredible to be true to Perry, but Xiyan didn¡¯t seem like the type to invent an entire world. In terms of her powers, the recorded sessions revealed the specifics of things that Perry had already known she could do. There was the rock wake, and the ability to move through doors that had been previously marked, and the cloud of fragrant smoke she could vent from her skin like a frightened animal fleeing a predator. Beyond that, there were powers that Perry had been ignorant of, which were freely spoken of to the grandmaster. She had some power over lightning, though not the ability to generate it, which she¡¯d gotten from a world of huge storms and the wooden ships that moved across them. She had a conditional control over water, which worked best when she was wet, which she¡¯d gotten in a frigid world covered with ice where she¡¯d spent most of her time in an underground bunker. But it was the very last power she¡¯d gotten that Perry paid the most attention to, and seemed like an actual weakness to him: her strength and speed were amplified in moments of dead silence. The quieter she was, the stronger she was, and with her abilities of smoke and shadow, she could soften her footsteps and deliver a killing blow whose whisper-quiet path through the air amplified its efficiency. It was an assassin¡¯s power, and it could be negated by a loud environment. The ultimate fate of Xiyan was unknown though. She had obviously left the temple to go infiltrate the king¡¯s retinue, but when she¡¯d done that, she had shaken the nanites, probably unintentionally. She seemed to have left Cicada Temple without having a discussion about it with the grandmaster, and if she had returned, the nanites hadn¡¯t picked up any conversation or real sign of her presence. There was a possibility that she¡¯d left the temple for her own reasons and wasn¡¯t coming back, leaving the grandmaster in the lurch. There was a much stronger possibility that during the time she¡¯d been wearing Bai Yulan¡¯s face, she¡¯d learned about the security leak and then gone back to the grandmaster to let him know they were compromised. This seemed likely to Perry, though he¡¯d been trying to keep the king and his people from knowing too much. Eventually, the retinue arrived at a field a mile from Cicada Temple. It felt like it had taken a long time, but also as though it was happening too fast. The field was fallow and quite muddy, but no one complained, nor seemed to be thinking about the impact this would have on the battle to come. Maybe the king was thinking that there wouldn¡¯t be a battle, only a discussion. The king sent a runner to Cicada Temple and then waited, hands folded, saying nothing. Perry wondered whether the runner ¡ª one of the second sphere men ¡ª had been sent to his death, but the king didn¡¯t seem to consider it an issue. Grandmaster Sun Quying approached slowly, using his gnarled staff as a walking stick. He wasn¡¯t alone, though the king hadn¡¯t requested that, so perhaps it was to be expected. There were a dozen second spheres, most of them known to Perry, including Sun Baoxi, who was aping his father¡¯s casual air. Surprisingly, there were also nearly twenty first spheres with them, most of them carrying packages wrapped with cloth that immediately drew Perry¡¯s eye. Xiyan was nowhere to be seen, whether wearing her own face or Bai Yulan¡¯s, but for all Perry knew, she could have been anyone among their number. He looked at the smaller women, but there were too many of them, and he thought he¡¯d have a better chance going by scent than sight once they came close enough. ¡°The former King of the former Grouse Kingdom,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying by way of greeting. ¡°I would say that it is good to meet you, your esteemed highness, but I would not wish to denigrate the rank.¡± He did not bow, and seemed pleased to be poking the bear. King Wu Xianlong¡¯s face was set. He had dressed in a different outfit, also all black as his outfits before had been, but this one had designs of a dragon on one side and a tiger on the other, embroidered with exceptional detail in a black that was matte instead of shiny. On someone else, it might have been impressive, but draped over Wu Xianlong Perry couldn¡¯t help but read it as pointless frippery. ¡°You harbor the fugitive who goes by the name Lu Xiyan,¡± said Wu Xianlong. ¡°Bring her out at once, and I will spare you the wrath of a mournful father.¡± ¡°Hmm,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. He raised a hand, two fingers outstretched, and extended them at Maya and Perry. ¡°These two have told you of their nature and the battle across the worlds?¡± ¡°That battle is of no concern to me,¡± said Wu Xianlong. ¡°Deliver Lu Xiyan or I will take her by force. I am backed by the celestial mandate in this matter, you know that to be true. She is an assassin, a liar, fetid filth walking in human form, and her life must be brought to an end.¡± ¡°She is a treacherous snake,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°There is barely a word from her mouth that can be trusted. But I¡¯ve pledged my support to her in the battle between thresholders, in return for certain concessions.¡± He looked at Perry. ¡°Peregrin, it shouldn¡¯t come as a surprise that you have been excommunicated.¡± Perry stayed silent. ¡°You will not give her up without a fight?¡± asked Wu Xianlong. ¡°A first sphere criminal has bought the protection of a third sphere grandmaster? Have you no regard for the cosmic retribution you bring upon yourself and your house?¡± ¡°I am secure in my position,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°But I told Lu Xiyan what I will tell you now, that these two are not without guilt of their own, and that this contest should be between equals. If you accept, we will both stand to one side as the thresholders fight, and accept the outcome.¡± ¡°I was told that if she wins the fight, Xiyan will slip through a portal to another world,¡± said Wu Xianlong. ¡°I cannot allow that to happen, will not allow that to happen.¡± ¡°I would be compelled to stop you if you laid a hand on her,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°But I intend to go through the portal when it appears.¡± He had the head of his walking stick grasped in both hands. Perry watched them talk to each other. He had no idea whether this was negotiation or a lead-up to a fight. He still didn¡¯t see Xiyan, and this couldn¡¯t happen without her. ¡°Then we must, regrettably, fight,¡± said Wu Xianlong. He stepped into an unfamiliar stance with his feet wide apart, and all the second spheres with him did too. ¡°You are as much of a fool as everyone has always said,¡± replied Grandmaster Sun Quying. He grinned slightly. ¡°How long have you been third sphere? Since the fall of your kingdom?¡± Wu Xianlong nodded. While the stance was unfamiliar, the motions were well-practiced and the form seemed excellent, at least as far as Perry could tell. He had somewhat expected the king to be a fop with no real fighting skills, and had worried about that as they walked, but at least the king¡¯s feet were properly planted in the muck. The grandmaster changed his grip on his walking staff, holding it like a cudgel. ¡°I have been third sphere for two centuries. Two centuries of refinement, two centuries of toil, two centuries to plumb the depths of technique and come to the very precipice of the fourth sphere. I have an entire sect which I have developed into a force you are now reckoning with in its prime. Shall we settle this, just the two of us?¡± ¡°Very well,¡± said Wu Xianlong. ¡°You underestimate the celestial will at your peril.¡± Perry thought this was a terrible idea, but he kept his mouth shut. Instead, he looked out at the people the grandmaster had brought with him. ¡°March, can you run facial recognition on all these people? See where we¡¯ve seen them before.¡± It would have been a terrible time for March to fail to mute Perry¡¯s instructions. The HUD lit up as the grandmaster and the king approached each other, placing small rectangles around each face, marking names where they were known, confidence in each determination, and a few other things. One of them was lit up in red, a woman near the back of their group holding one of the covered packages. ¡°That¡¯s her?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I cannot say, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°If you believe she is among their number, and has not taken the face of someone from the temple, then that is the most likely candidate.¡± Perry frowned and watched the woman. It didn¡¯t look like Xiyan, but that was kind of the point. He was mildly surprised that March had apparently followed the conversation about stealing faces and internalized it well enough to do something with it. The king and the grandmaster had moved through the muck and gotten within striking distance of each other. It was the grandmaster who struck first, a probing swing of his staff. The king was unarmed, and stepped easily to the side, as though the mud weren¡¯t there. ¡°I have no wish to kill you,¡± said Wu Xianlong. ¡°If you die, the problem of finding Lu Xiyan will become more difficult, and the beating of my heart will not slow until justice is within my grasp.¡± The grandmaster swung again, overhand, and Wu Xianlong stepped to the side, dodging it easily. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. ¡°Very well,¡± said Wu Xianlong. He stepped forward, dodged a swipe of the cudgel-staff, then punched the grandmaster in the face. The toad-like man stumbled backward, a trickle of blood coming out of one nostril, staff planted like a walking stick again, used for support. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°You¡¯re stronger than I had expected. I¡¯d hoped not to need to call on the power around us.¡± He moved a lazy hand out toward the ground, then twisted it into a sharp claw. Perry couldn¡¯t see the flow of energy, since he was watching through the viewscreen rather, but he could imagine the insects beneath the fecund soil curling up and dying as the grandmaster absorbed their energy. ¡°Much better,¡± said the grandmaster. He struck out with the cudgel again, spinning his body around in a full circle. It was so fast that Perry could only barely follow it, and the king was caught off-guard by the sudden burst of power. He brought his forearm up and the head of the cudgel cracked against it, a loud sound that reverberated through the field. His face was contorted in pain, but the expression wiped away in a moment and he shook his arm, as though he was going to negate the damage that had been done that way. ¡°Yield,¡± said Grandmaster Sun Quying. ¡°You cannot win this fight.¡± ¡°Do not tell me what I cannot do,¡± said Wu Xianlong. Perry¡¯s eyes were on the woman that had been marked as Xiyan. There would be two outcomes to this fight, a win for the king or a win for the grandmaster, and either way, Perry would need to act. He couldn¡¯t win a fair fight against the grandmaster, not when the grandmaster knew about guns and had at least theoretical knowledge of how to fight against them. There was a temptation to start the fight with her now, while the grandmaster was distracted, but Perry didn¡¯t trust March¡¯s assessment, not given how many caveats it came with. Perry and March hadn¡¯t seen everyone in the temple, not even close, and if they¡¯d missed one, that would give a false positive. Wu Xianlong thrust a hand out behind him, the same energy-drawing pose that Perry had seen plenty of times before, most notably when those from Moon Gate were drawing on the power of the moons ¡ª which were bright and full overhead. What the former king was actually drawing power from was unclear, but when he had finished, he rushed forward. They traded blows, both moving quickly, now seeming to be matched in power, much to Perry¡¯s surprise. The king darting to the side was met by a swing of the staff from the grandmaster, and while the grandmaster had the advantage of reach, the king seemed able to block the blows by taking painful strikes to the center of his limbs. Shaking off the damage seemed to be working, even as the trampled mud rippled with the impacts of the hits. The king wasn¡¯t slowing down, and he got in hits more than once, sometimes by gripping the end of the staff and holding it for a brief moment so he could strike. ¡°You draw power from the earth,¡± said the grandmaster as he stepped back. They had circled each other, coming around so that the grandmaster had his back to Perry and all the king¡¯s people. It was so tempting to shoot him in his back, but Perry didn¡¯t know what his reflexes were like, and if he could dodge or deflect a bullet ¡ª or move out of the way of the barrel of the gun ¡ª then the temporary one-on-one fight would be over. If Perry thought it would work, he¡¯d have done it, cosmic balance be damned, but for the moment, the two men seemed evenly matched. Behind the king, Worm Gate¡¯s first spheres began unwrapping their packages. ¡°I trained,¡± said the king. ¡°I had tutors in my youth, and martial masters during the time of my rule. A strong kingdom comes from a strong king, this is known. The battlefield we fight on was not chosen by chance or circumstance, we walk upon a wellspring of power and step upon the very foundations of my technique.¡± He reached down, spreading his fingers into the mud. ¡°Fertile soil, rested for months, wet with rainwater.¡± He lifted his muddy hand and formed it into a fist. ¡°Soil is the foundation of any kingdom, a necessity for bountiful crops, and there is power in mud. My mentor was Tu Yunhai of the Kingdom of Three Hills. I am the Last Initiate to the Secret of Seven Earths. You have not realized who it is you¡¯ve chosen to do battle with.¡± Perry could see now that the king had muddied his clothes, with mud sticking to the black pant legs. This must have been done intentionally as they circled around, the kicked up mud not just a part of his circling but a deliberate decision. For the first time, Perry felt some hope. The king went hard, moving faster now than he¡¯d moved before. He grabbed the head of the staff as it came in toward him and powered in with his muddy fist, smashing the grandmaster across the face and leaving an imprint of mud there. When the grandmaster tried to rise from one bent knee, the king went for him again, kicking out with a mud-covered foot that caught the grandmaster in the stomach. The grandmaster grunted and barely held onto his staff, then looked up at the king with a grin spread across his face. The first sphere had unwrapped their packages. Inside were metal pipes. They were lighting the ends of them with coals taken from small metal bowls. The king turned to look at them. ¡°Get down!¡± Perry shouted. Instead, the king squared up. There were ten of the pipes, which had to be crude guns or something like them, built using the instructions that Perry had provided. ¡°You would send first spheres against me?¡± asked the king as the fuses burned down. ¡°What cowardice is this?¡± ¡°They¡¯re weapons!¡± yelled Perry. He moved in front of Maya, who was unarmored, and tried to shrink her profile. The first of the hand-cannons fired, flinging a crude sphere of metal across the field, striking the king directly in the chest in spite of his readiness. The first sphere man who¡¯d been holding the gun fell to the ground, bleeding, either because of the kickback or incomplete firing. The king was still on his feet, but he was bleeding from the gut, which spilled down into the mud. The other guns went off as a cluster of short, sporadic notes. Of the ten that were prepared, three failed to fire and another two exploded outright in the hands of those who had been carrying them, but that left another four in the air. Only one of them struck Perry, in his right leg, and it had only a fraction of the force of the cannons that had done so much damage to him in Teaguewater. Maya was safe behind him, protected by the armor as warnings and error messages flared up across the HUD. There were screams and cries from the wounded on both sides, and after only a beat, the grand melee started. Perry had his sword drawn and the suit at full power, and he moved to cut down anyone he came across. Because of his speed, he was the first to reach the other side, but he had a specific target in mind, the first sphere woman that March had identified. He didn¡¯t hesitate for a moment, and when the sword came down, the woman turned to smoke. With a command to March, the shoulder-gun popped up from Perry¡¯s shoulder and immediately began firing, controlled and precise in a way the crude prototype guns hadn¡¯t been. At the same time, music began blaring from the suit, cranked as loud as the external speakers would go in an attempt to deafen her and negate at least a bit of her power ¡ª not that the battlefield hadn¡¯t immediately become filled with the din of combat and the screams of the wounded. It was Techno Syndrome, the theme song to Mortal Kombat, playing on a loop. Xiyan thrust out a hand, nearly getting it chopped off in the process, but the licorice ropes that sprang forth from it covered a few of the cameras and slowed Perry down enough that she could spring away, leaving a marble statue behind her that grabbed for him. Perry picked the statue up by the throat and threw it at Xiyan as she ran. Rather than dodging, she made another statue in her wake, and the bits of stone crashed into each other, saving her. A cloud of fragrant smoke exploded behind her, but March was ready this time, and switched over the view to show her clearly. She was building up a door again, moving her hand through the air to make the arch in a swift, practiced movement that was almost impressive. She had been hit by at least five of the bullets, and was bleeding from her chest but not collapsed on the floor like she should have been. Perry dashed through the smokescreen and knocked her against the edifice of stone she¡¯d been constructing, which brought them both down into the mud. The servos that controlled the gun whirred, but just before it could get off a shot at her pinned-down head, a hand grabbed it and ripped it free of its housing. Perry turned just in time to get hit in the face with the grandmaster¡¯s cudgel. He found himself on the ground, having lost some unknown amount of time, staring at a black screen. With a quick motion he pulled the helmet free, glancing only for a moment at the dent in the metal and the video display that must have cracked itself against his stinging face. The grandmaster was fighting off the king, who was now caked with mud, and Xiyan had finished building her door. Before Perry could move, she opened it wide, but instead of running, as he feared she would, white statues of her came charging out. The king was bleeding from the chest wound where he¡¯d taken one of the over-large bullets, and his blood was dripping down to mingle with the mud. Either through some technique he knew or a clever application of power, the mixture of blood and mud was giving rise to small waist-height creatures, but the grandmaster was kicking them away. The statues charged at Perry. He fought them off, punching through them with the full strength of the armor, shattering rock. March was chirping more warnings from the internal speakers near the neck and from the cast-off helmet, and Perry could tell that it was taking a toll on the armor, so he caught the sword as it flew back to his hand, then used it to carry him high into the sky. So far as he knew, Xiyan had no methods for aerial combat, and for just a moment, he had a view of the whole muddy battlefield. It was impossible to tell who was winning, but the muddy field was littered with the dead and wounded. Most of the fights were now lopsided. There was no sign of Maya. She must have left right before the battle, as planned, for a sprint to Cicada Temple. It was risky, but without her needle and her armor, she was at much less than half efficiency. Perry flew over to where Xiyan was and tried a move he wouldn¡¯t have dared to before coming to this world: he dropped down from up above under the full acceleration of gravity. She tried to move out of the way, but Perry adjusted his trajectory at the last moment with a tug of the sword. He slammed into her, smoke not saving her this time, and her face twisted into rage as she thrashed against him. His knee was pressed into her stomach and the grandmaster was too far away to save her, still in a furious battle with the king. Perry locked eyes with the grandmaster for just a moment. It wasn¡¯t enough to kill Xiyan, he needed to stop the grandmaster from going through the portal, but it felt like there was enough time to make a final stand. The grandmaster turned toward Perry as Perry lifted up the sword and pointed it at Xiyan¡¯s chest. She was bloodied and hurting, and her statues were bearing down on them, ready to dog pile him. The world felt like it was frozen for just a moment. The grandmaster opened his hand and let out a beam of moonlight. It crashed into Perry¡¯s face, and almost at once, he felt the Wolf Vessel crack open. The energy flowed out from it, spilling into his whole body at the speed of a heartbeat, down the meridians and into the vessels, and it was only from training and meditation that he was able to stall the transformation. He could tell he wouldn¡¯t be able to stop it. All thoughts of the battle were cast to the side as he tried to vent the energy out through his skin. If he transformed while wearing the armor, March would be destroyed, ripped apart from the inside. With the helmet off, Perry could see the energy, rising like smoke from the armor, but his meridians weren¡¯t wide enough to keep the outflow going, and he was feeling dangerously full, as though he was about to burst. The grandmaster had turned back to the bleeding, mud-covered king and taken a punch to the face in a process, but he answered it with a swift move using the tip of the walking stick, which struck the king directly in his open wound. With another twist and thrust from the planted staff, the king cried out in pain and anger. Xiyan turned to smoke again and got out from under Perry, leaving her clothes behind. She was nude and mud-covered, magic dagger in one hand, and as soon as she was free, her statues came for Perry, leaping on top of him. He was knocked in the head as he was trying to stop from turning into the wolf, and he felt something happen inside him. Something inside the tangle of energy pathways slipped, then prolapsed, a bit of spirit squirting out of him. The pressure was relieved at once, which wasn¡¯t entirely pleasant. In the moment, it was impossible to tell what was actually happening internally, and the statues were on him, pressing down and pulling at his face and hair. He summoned up his strength and pushed them off, drawing on as much power from the armor as he could, then grabbed his sword as it rose up from the ground and lifted himself up into the air. King Wu Xianlong had fallen. The walking stick had gone into his guts and extended a foot out his back. The animate mud had gone still and was falling back down into place. Xiyan was looking up at Perry, who was twenty feet in the air, and he didn¡¯t think dropping down on her was going to work twice. Of the second spheres, Sun Baoxi was one of the only left standing, the others being either badly wounded or dead. He was tending to them, helping his comrades to their feet. And there was Grandmaster Sun Quying, bloodied and beaten, but still very clearly standing. All that pain and suffering, and the aid of the king, seemed to have bought them very little. It was hard to tell how wounded everyone was ¡ª the grandmaster seemed to be using his walking stick for support and Xiyan was favoring one side, breathing hard. Perry couldn¡¯t take them on alone. Xiyan had been rendered nude when she¡¯d turned to smoke to slip out from under him, but she took the moment of breath he was offering her to erupt in red and black licorice. It wrapped around her body and hugged her tight, looking like some kind of odd bondage getup, and Perry hoped that it wouldn¡¯t offer her much protection. He still needed to kill her. The suit had continued blaring music, so loud his ears were hurting. Perry spotted Maya as a blur of black coming through the woods and dropped down to the ground to give her a chance not to be seen. He had been waiting for her to come back, and didn¡¯t want to spoil the moment. It would have been better if she¡¯d been half a minute sooner, but she¡¯d bounced her way a mile over rough terrain and then back, with a bit of breaking and entering in between. Maya leapt high into the sky and was framed by the sun. She drew back and threw the needle like a silvery spear at incredible speed. It must have been a technique she¡¯d worked on, because it screamed as it moved through the air and broke bones as it went through Xiyan¡¯s chest. Maya landed from her jump and pulled her needle to her hand, then jumped again to land next to Perry, having twisted around in the air. ¡°Sorry for the hold up,¡± said Maya. She was covered in her nanites, her face a glossy black oval once more. She was speaking up, but barely audible over the music. ¡°Oh come on, is she really not dead?¡± Xiyan was hunched over and bleeding, and rather than answer, Perry dashed forward and sliced through the air. Xiyan raised her dagger and parried him, but on his second attack he put his full power into it, channeling what energy he could through his wrecked meridians. He cut her dagger in half and she stumbled back. Perry advanced on her, but stopped as soon as movement from the grandmaster caught his eye. The old man was only getting closer though, and seemed as though he wasn¡¯t about to stop Perry. ¡°Cut the music,¡± said Perry. March cut the music at once. ¡°You will not kill her?¡± asked the grandmaster. ¡°But she is beaten? The portal will open then?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not letting you through it,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re not letting you through it,¡± said Maya. ¡°Do you think you can stop me?¡± asked Grandmaster Sun Quying. He cocked his head to the side like he was curious how they could be so stupid. It would have been more intimidating if he wasn¡¯t limping. Maya¡¯s black mask split open for just long enough that she could spit into the mud. ¡°You¡¯re enough of an asshole here. You¡¯d be worse anywhere else.¡± The grandmaster spun his staff around, then looked over at his son. ¡°Come. This is the end for them.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Sun Baoxi. He moved over to his father and gestured at the wounded and dying. ¡°Why have we done all this? So you can leave the sect behind? So we can be dealt a devastating blow as a temple and face a crisis of leadership?¡± ¡°Feh,¡± said the grandmaster, waving his hand. ¡°The time is now.¡± He looked down at Xiyan. ¡°Kill her then,¡± he said to Perry. Perry leveled his sword at the grandmaster. ¡°No,¡± he said. Xiyan slowly climbed to her feet. She was almost literally being held together by ropes of licorice, and her face was stained with blood. ¡°We¡¯re doing this?¡± asked Maya. ¡°One less asshole roaming the multiverse?¡± ¡°I guess so,¡± said Perry. Chapter 59 - Sunrise, pt 2 Perry ran at the grandmaster and whipped his sword sideways, the power armor groaning in protest. When the grandmaster deflected the sword to the side with his gnarled staff, Perry recalled it, and it slotted into his hand just in time for him to strike down at the grandmaster with full force. The old man stepped under it, but couldn¡¯t manage more than a weak follow up to drive Perry back. Whatever was happening internally to the frayed and blown out matrix, Perry was having strangely little problems with it. He was still moving fluidly and fully aware of himself, and if his energy stores were low, it felt as though that was only because he had been fighting hard and using his abilities to their fullest. With the helmet damaged and laying in the mud, it was impossible to check on power reserves of the armor, but he¡¯d topped it up, and was feeling like he was far from being gassed. Behind him, Xiyan was making more of her statues, though her movements had slowed considerably, and Maya was doing her best to keep the pressure up. After another few darting attacks that almost decapitated the grandmaster, Perry was starting to feel as though he was within a hair¡¯s-breadth of delivering a sudden and decisive killing blow. But as they kept fighting and the grandmaster kept dodging out of the way or deflecting a strike with his staff, Perry began to realize that he wasn¡¯t doing well ¡ª he was being kept busy. ¡°You¡¯re not trying to kill me,¡± said Perry, backing up and casting a quick glance at Maya, who was still harrying Xiyan, stopping her from making a door to somewhere else. ¡°If I kill you, does the portal still open?¡± asked the grandmaster. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t either,¡± said the grandmaster. His face was bloodied, his nose broken and not reset, puffy from the damage it had taken. ¡°But in the catalog of stories there are no instances where a thresholder is defeated by some outside force.¡± He held out his staff and pointed it at Perry. He was still unsteady on his feet, and had been wounded in the fight against the king. ¡°You will kill her, or she will kill you. I will not risk my exit from this world.¡± Perry lunged with the sword, and the grandmaster spun around, avoiding the sword and sweeping upward with the staff. It crashed into Perry¡¯s side and sent him flying as the pain shot through him. He landed on his feet only thanks to the sword, but it was messy. He found himself beside Sun Baoxi, who had his arms crossed. Earlier, he¡¯d been tending to the wounded, helping people get to their feet and limp away, but now he was only watching. ¡°Help?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He¡¯s my father and my grandmaster,¡± said Sun Baoxi. ¡°I have a duty to him.¡± He hesitated only for a moment. ¡°You don¡¯t stand a chance. Kill the woman and let him go through.¡± ¡°He¡¯d be a terror across the multiverse,¡± said Perry. The grandmaster was approaching, slowly, leaning heavily on his walking stick. ¡°He has reserves he hasn¡¯t tapped into,¡± said Sun Baoxi. ¡°This crusade, it¡¯s not ¡ª¡± Perry leapt up into the air, tugged by the sword, and came down toward the grandmaster, ready to put his full body weight into a plunging sword strike. The grandmaster was slow to move, and Perry clipped him, but the jolt of hitting the ground made his legs go numb. ¡°Unearned power,¡± said the grandmaster, inspecting the gouge in his shoulder. It wasn¡¯t a mortal hit, but it was a hit, the first that Perry had scored. ¡°Perry, we¡¯re going to have to end this!¡± shouted Maya. ¡°Can¡¯t hold her off forever!¡± Xiyan had been run ragged and was only barely fighting back. Her licorice armor had been cut to shreds, she was bleeding from her face, and her left arm was swinging limply at her side. She pushed out a statue from time to time, but she needed a dodge to do it, and the dodges were slower, labored. When Perry looked at Xiyan, most of what he saw was blood running down her bare skin. ¡°Pull the cord!¡± yelled Perry. Maya looked at him, face hidden beneath the black bubble of nanites, then raced for the grandmaster. Up in the sky, the sun began to visibly dim. The grandmaster took a defensive stance, staff held in front of him, and Perry moved around to flank him. Half Perry¡¯s attention was on Xiyan, making sure she didn¡¯t run away or try to open another door, but she was moving slowly enough that he thought he¡¯d be able to catch her if she did that. Escape would be a disaster, given she was all but beaten. The armor slipped from Maya, revealing the change that had come over her. Her hair was suffused with a golden glow, as were her eyes, and as Perry watched, the light made its way up her sword, causing it to light up the muddy battlefield as the sun grew dim overhead. This was her trump card, only usable outside, and it would leave her weakened for days once the power was channeled. With the sun dark in the area, all its energy was flowing into her. She was inhabited by the spirit of another world¡¯s god, barely in control of herself. The grandmaster couldn¡¯t dodge her attacks, and when he used the staff to block, she was taking chunks from it. When he tried to counterattack, she grabbed the head of the club in a hand that was glowing golden. He wrenched it from her grasp, and took a slice to the face for his trouble, a deep cut that must have only stopped bleeding through force of will. Just as Sun Baoxi had said, the grandmaster still had reserves left. He thrust out a hand and drew once again on something, but this time the energy was coming from further away ¡ª the temple. At first Perry thought it was to take from the worm vats there, but as he saw Sun Baoxi¡¯s look of horror, he realized that it must have been something else, something larger that the grandmaster was linked to: the first spheres there. It was unabashedly evil, a move of desperation, and Perry attacked the grandmaster from behind as Maya pressed in from the front. The grandmaster¡¯s wounds had started to heal though, and he was moving faster, able to block both of them, even Maya¡¯s glowing needle that moved through the air so swiftly it was nothing but an arc of light. The grandmaster kicked backward and sent Perry sprawling in the mud, then swept Maya¡¯s feet out from under her and went in for the attack. She bounced off the mud in complete defiance of physics and brought her needle up to meet him, then pushed off against his thrust to land twenty feet away with the slow grace of a falling maple leaf. ¡°He can¡¯t keep this up,¡± shouted Perry. His eyes darted to the side, where Xiyan¡¯s hands were moving through the air, tracing the outline of a stone door. Perry raced to her, stepping fast across the mud, and threw his sword at her. She turned to smoke and the sword sliced through licorice, but she was slow to return to material form, and was gasping for breath when she did. The grandmaster was draining bugs, or more likely, people, and he couldn¡¯t keep it up, but Perry was very aware that Maya couldn¡¯t either. Her lips had gone golden, and with time, she¡¯d said, her whole body would, up until the point the sunlight seemed as though it would consume her. She was out of her mind on sunlight, more god than woman, and they needed to end it, now. Perry grabbed Xiyan by the arm and threw her to the ground, then began punching her in the head with fast strikes, not trying to kill her, but hoping that he could dizzy her. This wasn¡¯t the kind of fight she was built for, not in the slightest, but if the portal opened while the grandmaster still stood, he would slip through in a heartbeat. Perry stopped the quick rabbit punches and looked down. Xiyan¡¯s face was broken, her teeth askew. She was wearing someone¡¯s face, but either way it would have been unrecognizable. Maya¡¯s skin had taken on a glow now, and she was overpowering the grandmaster, who was swinging his club-stick wildly to block her every golden thrust. Perry looked down at Xiyan, then up at the grandmaster, and left her behind as he launched himself back across the field. Maya brought the hard edge of her needle down and sliced the staff in two, and as the grandmaster stumbled back, Perry slipped in and struck, sword passing cleanly through the separate halves of the walking stick and into the grandmaster¡¯s body. The grandmaster collapsed backward. The sword had gone through his stomach, opening him up, and his guts had slipped out. He¡¯d been pushed to his limits, and, possibly, had pushed too much against the cosmic balance. Maya shifted her grip on her glowing needle, drew it back, and threw it straight as an arrow and ten times as fast. It hit the grandmaster just below the chin and went up through his skull, sizzling with the power of the sun. As soon as that was done, Maya collapsed to the ground, all the glow gone from her, and the sunlight that had been bathing the muddy field returned. She was as feeble as a kitten, barely able to raise herself to her knees, and the armor returned to ensconce her. ¡°End her,¡± said Maya. Perry dashed back across the field, legs burning, to where Xiyan had once again risen to her feet. She barely glanced at him with her broken face. Her second attempt at making a door was more feeble than the first, less coordinated, and Perry was on her in an instant. She turned to smoke and shadow for the first strike he made against her, but coughed up blood on her return to her corporeal form. She was just in time for Perry¡¯s backhand sword stroke to catch her in the neck. She was decapitated cleanly, her head rolling until the hair was muddy and her body slumping to the ground, heart still pumping blood from her neck. The bottom of her head, where her neck had been, extended insectile legs. The whole thing began to scurry away, one last hidden power, but Perry threw his sword and caught her in the skull, stopping the insectile abomination completely. The portal opened up two feet from Perry. He trekked over to where his helmet had been sitting and gathered it up, looking at the damage. It was a delicate piece of equipment, but he thought he would be able to repair it, as he¡¯d been able to repair everything else. ¡°Status, March,¡± said Perry, taking a deep, ragged breath. March let forth a litany of complaints, and as he did, Perry felt all the aches and pains of the battle settle into place. His hand went up to his earlobe, which had been pulled on by one of the statues and was now ripped where the ear joined the head. He was missing hunks of hair and would be bruised all over. His leg was aching where the armor had been hit by the makeshift cannon, and internally, a careful inventory of his vessels and meridians showed incredible damage there, nothing in the place it should be. He wasn¡¯t sure how he was still functional, and tracing some of the lines of the meridians showed that they had been pushed outside his corporeal body. The Wolf Vessel wasn¡¯t a part of him anymore. The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Sun Baoxi was moving toward the portal on unsteady feet. Perry landed in front of him. ¡°Where are you going?¡± he asked. ¡°Through the portal,¡± said Sun Baoxi. He stopped, probably because of how Perry was standing. It was a combat stance. ¡°Your father died, leaving your sect without a leader, and that¡¯s what you¡¯re doing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Sun Baoxi. ¡°You wanted to stop anyone from going through, not just him?¡± It smelled wrong. Perry¡¯s sword was in his hand, dripping blood. He had a firm grip on it. The portal was to his back. A beam of moonlight came down from above, and when it cleared, Luo Yanhua was standing there in her white clothes, looking serene among the blood, death, and mud. She held her bone white bow in one hand. ¡°You¡¯re here for the portal too?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Or for justice.¡± ¡°I received March¡¯s message and watched from a distance,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She stepped close, just behind Sun Baoxi. ¡°I don¡¯t intend to step through the portal, no. I have seen what happens with thresholders.¡± Sun Baoxi took a step forward, and Perry¡¯s sword twitched. ¡°Come on,¡± said Sun Baoxi. He cocked his head to the side. ¡°You¡¯ll fight me over this? I thought we were friends, in our own way.¡± He had looked shell-shocked and sluggish, but that was fading quickly. ¡°You have people here that need you,¡± said Perry. ¡°You said to the grandmaster that you didn¡¯t understand what he was doing this for, why he was willing to let his people die ¡ª for that.¡± Perry gestured at Xiyan¡¯s decapitated body. ¡°You don¡¯t need to propel yourself into a life of battle. You¡¯re not your father.¡± Luo Yanhua stepped back and raised her bow, nocking it with a spectral arrow made of moonlight. ¡°No, he is exactly his father,¡± she said. ¡°The third sphere do not die easily.¡± Perry gripped his sword. ¡°Meaning ¡ª¡± ¡°You know what I mean,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Sun Baoxi grinned, then darted forward, toward the portal. Perry lashed out with the sword, but Sun Baoxi slipped beneath it and ran across the muck and mud. He was caught by an arrow to the thigh, and fell to the ground, but rolled back up to his feet. He was just in time for Maya to land in front of him, clad in black armor, needle drawn. He punched her in the stomach and she collapsed in an instant. With how she¡¯d been moving, it was a miracle she¡¯d been able to get there at all, and she had put up almost no resistance. What she had done was to buy Perry and Luo Yanhua time. Perry had moved in front of him again, sword in front of him this time, and Luo Yanhua was behind him, another arrow nocked. ¡°What happened?¡± asked Perry, his voice directed at Luo Yanhua. He looked over at the body of the grandmaster. ¡°How do we ¡ª get him out?¡± ¡°This is among the darkest of dark arts,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°He slipped into his son¡¯s body,¡± said Perry. Sun Baoxi was watching Perry closely, eyes going to the portal, judging whether the moment was right to move. He was going to make a break for it, that was inevitable, it was only a question of whether he could accomplish it. ¡°Just kill him,¡± said Maya from the ground. ¡°Holy hell does he have a right hook.¡± ¡°What¡¯s your plan?¡± asked Sun Baoxi, or the grandmaster who was inhabiting his body. ¡°We get him out,¡± said Perry. He shifted his weight, trying to make sure the exit was covered. ¡°We restore Sun Baoxi. He wasn¡¯t a bad guy, just ¡ª born to one, grew up in this system, he ¡ª¡± Luo Yanhua let her arrow loose. Sun Baoxi dodged to the side, as if he¡¯d seen it coming from a mile away this time. It was the opening for Perry to come down with the sword, but he hesitated, and when he did swing, Sun Baoxi dodged that too, if by inches. He landed in the mud, off balance, bleeding, and sprang to his feet a moment later. Perry was there to block him, and he stopped again. They¡¯d moved closer to the portal. ¡°He¡¯s getting stronger every moment,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°He¡¯s settling in.¡± Maya had crawled back to her feet, needle in hand. Perry wasn¡¯t sure what she thought she was going to do, not with how weak she still was. ¡°Maya, drop the armor,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Maya hesitated for only a moment, then let the skintight black armor fall from her, exposing skin. Sun Baoxi must have figured out what Luo Yanhua was going to do, because he made a break for it as the moonlight hit Maya and started her transformation. Perry got in his way, trying to block him, and the grandmaster ducked under the sword, then slipped between Perry¡¯s legs, dashing across the mud, slipping to the side to avoid another arrow from Luo Yanhua. Maya bounded after him, four-legged and shaggy-haired. Her form obscured Perry¡¯s view, and he thought she hadn¡¯t made it in time, but then she turned toward them, his body in her mouth, and the screams of the grandmaster filled the field until she bit down into him. She made thorough work of the body, crunching down on the bones and shaking the pieces from side to side, until eventually she transformed back into human and started spitting to get the taste of blood from her mouth. ¡°We need to look for his next body,¡± said Perry, scanning the field. ¡°That was the culmination of many years of planning and preparation,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I don¡¯t expect he¡¯ll be able to do it a second time.¡± Perry looked at her. ¡°You came to stop him.¡± ¡°I came because the outcome of this battle was important for the future of this valley I call home,¡± said Luo Yanhua. Perry watched her. ¡°If I try to go through that portal, will you stop me?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°And you¡¯re not going yourself?¡± asked Perry. He wasn¡¯t sure whether he would try to stop her or not. He had sparred with her enough to think maybe he had a chance, even if it wasn¡¯t a good one, but Maya was very visibly tapped out. ¡°I have seen thresholders and what they do,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I have no wish to become one.¡± ¡°How¡¯d you know I could transform?¡± asked Maya. ¡°The valley can be quite small,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Word spreads quickly when there¡¯s a battle at the heart of one of the major temples.¡± Maya looked over at the portal. She was breathing hard. ¡°I guess I¡¯m out then. You¡¯ll guard the portal, make sure no one goes through? I¡¯m not sure how long it will stay open.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think the grandmaster should have been allowed through,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But neither do I think there is an imperative to stop those who wish to see other worlds, even if it means being cursed with a life of conflict.¡± Perry picked his helmet back up from where he¡¯d thrown it to the ground. He was leaving too, as quickly as possible, but he was hoping to get everything repaired first. There was no way of knowing where he¡¯d end up next, and having a helmet on seemed like it would be a good idea. ¡°Perry, you good?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I¡¯m good,¡± nodded Perry. ¡°Then I¡¯m out,¡± said Maya. She hesitated for a moment, then tossed a small black chunk to Perry, which he caught deftly in his armored hand. It was a chunk of nanites, and perhaps by coincidence, it was just about the size of the tooth he¡¯d given her. She limped through the mud, black armor coating her once more. She turned after a moment. ¡°Bye March.¡± ¡°Goodbye, Miss Singh,¡± replied March and from the external speakers. ¡°You guys rep Earth out there, okay?¡± said Maya. ¡°Democracy and all that. Kill some slavers for me.¡± She turned back to the portal and hobbled through it, not seeming too afraid about the fact she¡¯d blown her best powers and left herself weakened. She disappeared, and Perry felt the knowledge that he¡¯d never see her again settle in. ¡°Goodbye, Peregrin,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Sorry for everything,¡± said Perry. She stepped forward and touched his armor. ¡°Goodbye, Marchand.¡± ¡°Goodbye, Miss Luo,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Something is different,¡± said Luo Yanhua with a frown. Her fingers went down and traced the center of the torso piece, where the broken microfusion reactor was. ¡°You ¡­ added something to him.¡± Rather than respond, Perry closed his eyes and tried to feel the pathways of energy flowing through him. It was in his center that things had changed, not with the rips and tears that he¡¯d first feared, though there was plenty of damage that would take some time to heal. The meridians that connected to the Wolf Vessel lead outside his corporeal body, and if he concentrated hard, he could follow them to where the Wolf Vessel was still connected. It hadn¡¯t moved far, and sat just outside his chest, disconnected from his body, in the hollow where the ruined microfusion reactor had sat. ¡°March, status of the batteries?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Batteries are at one hundred percent, sir,¡± replied Marchand. Perry opened his eyes and looked at Luo Yanhua. ¡°I cannot say that you are a good person,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I cannot even say you¡¯re a decent one. But I watched you here, today, and you have fought honorably and done well.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± said Perry. There were still dead and wounded on the field, and Perry knew the decent thing to do would be to stay behind for a few hours and tend to the wounded, then bury the bodies. He still didn¡¯t know whether karmic retribution was something that really existed, though he and Maya had managed to kill the grandmaster, so maybe that meant something. Perry¡¯s eyes went to the king. He had been a far better fighter than Perry had thought he would be, able to back up most of the boasting he¡¯d done. The florid language almost made sense. Maybe it was just sentimentality for a world that Perry was leaving, but he could see something worthwhile in a man like that. To Perry¡¯s immense surprise, the king began to rise from the mud. His hands were shaky, and he swayed on his feet, but after a brief stumble he was up and trudging to Xiyan¡¯s body. ¡°Are you ¡ª how are you alive?¡± asked Perry. He¡¯d seen the staff go straight through the king, and had seen the king fall. ¡°The third sphere do not die easily,¡± said Luo Yanhua. When the king got to Xiyan¡¯s severed head, he collapsed to his knees. ¡°It is done,¡± he said. He began to weep, and Perry stood there awkwardly, not sure what to do. When the king had finished, he looked at the portal, then at Perry. ¡°Why did she do it?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°It might have been to get some power, some element of her skills I never knew about. More likely ¡­ she liked the feeling of it. She liked getting away with things, getting close to people, having that moment of leaping out from the shadows and turning the tables. She was contemptible. It might have been both things.¡± ¡°But why them?¡± asked the king. ¡°Why my sons, my kingdom?¡± ¡°It¡¯s just where she ended up,¡± said Perry. ¡°No one knew about her, or how to stop her.¡± He looked at the king¡¯s wound, which was packed with bloody mud. ¡°Maya and I were the only ones, and we weren¡¯t sent until it was too late.¡± The king rose to his feet and regarded the portal. ¡°There are more like her out there?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. Different flavors of asshole. Maya was right. ¡°Then I must go fight them too, and bring them to justice,¡± the king replied, nodding to himself. He began walking to the portal on unsteady feet, as if drawn to it. Perry wanted to stop him, or to object. He hadn¡¯t known the king for all that long, and felt as though he¡¯d had the wrong idea for most of that time. He didn¡¯t know whether his interests were, beyond the matter of Xiyan, aligned with the king¡¯s. If the king stayed here, he would be nothing, but if the king moved into the many worlds ¡­ it was hard to say. The king slipped through the portal. Perry knew he would never know the outcome, and tried to make peace with that. ¡°Before you go, I must say that I was wrong about Marchand,¡± said Luo Yanhua, who had come to stand beside Perry. ¡°He¡¯s not a person,¡± said Perry, almost automatically. ¡°I was wrong about how you treated him,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°He is your companion.¡± Her fingers went to his chest. ¡°You gave a piece of yourself to save him. You imbued him with your power.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. It had been an accident, but if he¡¯d known it was possible, he probably would have done it anyway. He looked down at the helmet and saw that it had already started repairing itself. He wondered if that was his own passive energy at work, or somehow March¡¯s doing. The screen turned on, and was briefly covered with error messages that quickly minimized themselves to a set of notifications in one corner. ¡°I hope that your next world is less violent,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But I suspect it won¡¯t be.¡± ¡°Here¡¯s hoping,¡± said Perry. He took one last look at the Great Arc as he approached the portal. There was more to this world, but there was more to every world, and he couldn¡¯t imagine staying here, not with as many bridges as he¡¯d burned. If he stuck around, he might be able to hit third sphere, then fourth, and possibly rise to such heights that he¡¯d be able to travel through the many worlds on his own. He had advantages over other people, and it was possible he could learn to leverage them into a greater position. Instead, he stepped through the portal, off to some new world. Chapter 60 - World 4: Epilogue Luo Yanhua wrote a treatise on the werewolves, then another on Marchand, and a third on the gunpowder weapons that Perry had introduced to the Great Arc. From all these, she gained power, though the last of those subjects was kept in a secret language, and shared only with those she thought she could trust. The first application of firearms on the Great Arc, at least to her knowledge, had been a very mixed bag, resulting in injuries and misfires, but the advanced version of the weapon, which was housed on Perry¡¯s shoulder and seemed to work via the same mechanisms of alchemy and iron, had been enough to kill her former colleague. A gun could be made easily enough by a first sphere blacksmith, since in essence it was only a metal tube. The materials could be sourced readily. If the knowledge became widespread, the first spheres would have a way of fighting against the second spheres, though Luo Yanhua thought that a well-prepared second sphere would be able to dodge or deflect the flying metal, and a third sphere would only be hit if they were caught off-guard, as the king had been. It was a finicky, unsubtle attack, but it was more than the first spheres had ever had before. Most likely the knowledge would stay a curiosity, or be stamped out wherever it appeared. Luo Yanhua didn¡¯t spend much longer with Moon Gate. She was a traveling researcher, a woman of many sects, learning from them and teaching in turn, bringing outside influences in to change their ways of thinking. Men and women like her played important roles in the relatively insular sect system, like bees spreading pollen across many miles. She spent a month within her crater on the moon, breathing no air, eating no food, only meditating and occasionally placing chips of ice into her mouth, more for the ritual and sensation than because she had any real need. The soft white fur of the largest moon was a serene place, divorced from the goings on of the Great Arc, gentle and peaceful, and she often went for walks among the windless meadows of moon-hair. It was an occasion to reflect and decide on what the next part of her life would be. The stories of the other worlds had made the Great Arc feel small. Early on, she had framed everything in terms of technique and treated the corporations like sects and the governments like kingdoms, but it was clear that these were poor approximations. Life was similar all around the Great Arc, even if there were differences in climate and culture. Luo Yanhua was set to wondering what the boundaries of the many worlds were, and wished that she had asked more questions, even if there was a risk of learning something that couldn¡¯t be unlearned. Neither Perry nor Maya had held technique sacred, and Perry had become, objectively, a monster, proving himself as such on at least two occasions. He had killed a woman whose only crime was trying to see what all the yelling was about, and that was unforgivable. She wondered whether he thought about that, and whether it would plague him. Her own mistakes took up a place of prominence within her mind, and she wasn¡¯t sure that her dealings with Perry wouldn¡¯t come to join them. When the month had passed, and the moons had gone from full to new to full, Luo Yanhua gathered herself up, clad in moon-fiber robes, and returned to the Green Snake Valley. She spent only a night at Crystal Lake Temple, not even bothering to unpack her scrolls, books, and jade slips, then made for the Cicada Temple. It was possible for temples to collapse, and this often happened in the wake of a key figure transitioning to a higher sphere or dying. The loss of Sun Quying was a brutal one for Worm Gate, especially as others had died as well, but the temple still had its people, and there was continuity, of a sort. The first spheres were no longer in his iron grip, and the place was still finding itself. Just as a kingdom had a celestial decree, a sect had one too, and this time it had selected one of the grandmaster¡¯s daughters, a slip of a girl with an affection for dragonflies who had bested her brothers, uncles, nephews, and the rest of the extended family in order to be the one to chart the future. Luo Yanhua learned their stances and moves, and did her best to bring the teachings of other temples into their repertoire, especially where there was overlap between them. She helped to develop a new strike that pulled on the form of the cicada, their cyclical emergence linked to the waxing and waning of the moon. She also cultivated silkworms, and integrated their silk into her robe of lunar filaments, strengthening them immensely. Meeting Perry and Marchand had changed her opinion about armor and what it could be. Common wisdom was that it was a tool of cowards, protection layered on top of more protection at the expense of technique and mobility. What was a scholar if they didn¡¯t challenge the conventional wisdom? Luo Yanhua sought out books on the subjects, tracts written by members of sects that did employ armor, memoirs of second sphere blacksmiths and investigations in metallurgy. She published more papers on these subjects, summaries of her findings. These were worth decidedly less than novel findings which advanced the understanding of these things, but were still useful in that they synthesized and summarized. Worm Gate proved to be an inadequate home in the long run. The grandmaster had died, but the culture he had built remained, and his progeny were power hungry but incurious, not amenable to collaboration or scholarly tethers. After a brief two years, Luo Yanhua left, this time setting out for one of the sects whose work she¡¯d taken an interest in, a guild of armorers and weaponsmiths who poured their energy into their workings. Their blades were fabled, but it was the armor she was most interested in, and she quickly proved herself to them, bringing insights from the world of insects, their chitinous structures and microscopic joints, as well as some ideas about how armor might better work around its limitations. She drew sketches of Marchand and learned the arts of metalworking, eventually developing a lunar forge that worked in the moonlight. She made a tight-fitting material inspired by Maya¡¯s suit, with fibers of silkworm and moon-hair, and bits of black woven in, stretched charcoal that Perry had termed ¡®carbon¡¯. It was matte gray and unattractive, but it moved like silk and made punches land against her with half their usual force. After seven years with Armored Belly Gate, she was ready to move on. ¡°You move too quickly,¡± said Grandmaster Bi Yinghua. ¡°You gain a depth of understanding as deep as a puddle. I would elevate you to inner disciple, if I thought that you would accept. You could stay.¡± ¡°I have found much value in the combination of disciplines, techniques, and practices,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It suits a scholar well, better than other tethers.¡± ¡°You tethered too tightly,¡± said Grandmaster Bi Yinghua, shaking her head. ¡°A tether can be a dangerous thing, propelling us down unwise paths.¡± ¡°This is true,¡± said Luo Yanhua. She sipped her thistle tea, a traditional drink served often at the low, squat temple beside the sea. ¡°But while you may disagree, I feel as though I might be approaching the edge of the precipice of the third sphere. More and more, every sect I spend time with is elevated in the process ¡ª unless you disagree?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Grandmaster Bi Yinghua, shaking her head. ¡°We are happy to have you, and have grown fat off the knowledge you¡¯ve shared. I only hate to have you leave, but that is the nature of the traveler, I suppose. But where will you go next?¡± Luo Yanhua looked out the window, at the sea that lay beyond the temple. She had an affection for the seas. Her first field of study had been water, which was something she brought to Moon Gate, weaving the moon with the tides. It was true that her understanding of most things remained shallow, but the shallows were where the most fish swam. ¡°A book recently came into my possession,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°From the third sphere?¡± asked Grandmaster Bi Yinghua. ¡°Yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. They were nearly equals, which was an oddity, given that Luo Yanhua was an outer disciple. The grandmaster had an easy way about her though, and accepted that Luo Yanhua was her own person, a powerful second sphere with a different perspective. It was always hard to say when or whether someone would reach the third sphere ¡ª there was an epiphany that came with it, a method of pushing the soul outside oneself. Perry had done an incomplete version of it, and from everything Luo Yanhua had read on the matter, had likely locked himself off from the third sphere forever. She didn¡¯t think that was likely to matter. Thresholders didn¡¯t seem like they had long lifespans. He had probably died not long after leaving the Great Arc, in her estimation. ¡°Your thoughts are scattered today,¡± said Grandmaster Bi Yinghua. ¡°My apologies,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I¡¯m thinking of the past. There¡¯s more of it every year.¡± She turned back to the grandmaster and composed herself. ¡°The book was an account of travelers between the worlds, an incident that happened two hundred years ago, a thousand miles away from here. The author yet lives.¡± ¡°A thousand miles is a long way to travel, even if you can reach the moon,¡± said Grandmaster Bi Yinghua. ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I think I have a refinement of the technique. It won¡¯t take more than another month. Winter will be best for it, when the snow has fallen and the land takes on the soft, quiet, pure character of the moon.¡± ¡°Such distances,¡± said Grandmaster Bi Yinghua. She shook her head. ¡°It¡¯s difficult to imagine.¡± Yet for Luo Yanhua, it seemed like hardly any distance at all, at least when compared to the breadth of the many worlds. A thousand miles away there would be many different techniques, but they would still be techniques as she had known them. She was certain that the third sphere was within her reach, but it wouldn¡¯t be so different from the second sphere, a matter of the spirit being outside the body rather than within it. There were other worlds, with powers beyond her imagination, and not just powers, but cultures, societies, and peoples. She didn¡¯t think that she should have gone through the portal, but the many worlds were out there, and there had to be some way to find them. As the years had passed, she had felt a hunger for them growing deep in her guts. Perhaps it was the tether pushing her toward the new and uncharted, or something else, but it had come to dominate her thoughts. In the deep winter, after fresh snowfall, Luo Yanhua performed her new technique. It was a funny thing, trying something and not knowing whether it would work or not, or whether it had been done before. Lunar transport always returned a person to where they had been before, or somewhere close by, but her technique would send her far away, angled across the Great Arc. She didn¡¯t know whether she was following in the footsteps of hundreds of others, or if this was folly. When the kicked up snow settled, she looked at the Great Arc and saw that it had changed. She was looking at unfamiliar lakes and seas, the continents she¡¯d known from a distance, seen every day, gone and replaced by others. She looked carefully and thought she could make out the Kingdom of Seven Valleys from a great distance, with all its winding rivers and verdant lands. The place she¡¯d wound up was much different, a constellation of arid plateaus with deep canyons running beneath them. The air was dry, and the weather was warm. The perfect circle of snow she¡¯d brought with her melted quickly. It took two days to arrive at the temple. The language was slightly different here, which was no matter for someone of the second sphere. The temple was part of a sect devoted to the sands, and after Luo Yanhua explained herself, she was given a good room and made an outer disciple. They were more wary than other places she¡¯d been, slower to talk and to trust, and even less prone to sharing techniques. She spoke with them as much as they would stand though, and eventually they warmed to her, particularly when she took part in their training sessions and mastered their stances and strikes. She had found that her enthusiasm for the martial arts went a long way in gaining a temple¡¯s trust, which she¡¯d had to do a number of times. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. She waited three months before broaching the subject of thresholders with the grandmaster, the man who¡¯d authored the book that brought her there. He was aged, and would die before making it to the third sphere, but he had bones of granite and a marbled mind. He spoke slowly and with much hesitation. ¡°They came as first spheres and left as third,¡± said Grandmaster Wei Jinbao. ¡°You have read what I¡¯ve written.¡± ¡°Some questions remain,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Many don¡¯t put everything they know into a book.¡± ¡°What do you wish to know?¡± asked Grandmaster Wei Jinbao. ¡°Their techniques?¡± ¡°I would not ask such a thing,¡± said Luo Yanhua, shaking her head. ¡°I wish to know about how they came, how they left, and what they had to say about the nature of the worlds they had been to. I want to know their character.¡± The grandmaster looked at her for a long time. ¡°You know of others like them.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Years ago I met three of them.¡± The grandmaster rubbed his knees. He was old, and would never escape a slow death by senescence. ¡°They were both here, as students, at the same time. They spoke the local language as first spheres, and seemed to hate each other with every fiber of their being. Yet they were, somehow, good students, driven to succeed, dedicated to the craft, if only because they seemed so focused on killing each other.¡± ¡°They knew each other before coming here?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°It¡¯s my belief that they did not,¡± said the grandmaster. ¡°I wasn¡¯t privy to their discussions ¡ª I was a disciple of minor skill at that time ¡ª but I believe they had their discussions and disagreements after coming here.¡± He looked around the room. ¡°No, it¡¯s difficult to remember it, but it wasn¡¯t here. The temple has been rebuilt since that time. Because of that time.¡± ¡°They advanced to the second sphere, then the third,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded the grandmaster. ¡°It took them only two years, an impossible pace. When they first started training they were worthless. I recall making fun of them, the neophytes from another land, one so pale he was bone white and the other the dark brown of dried blood. But they breezed past me. The pace was unlike anything I had seen before or since. Of course, they had unearned power from other places.¡± He looked at Luo Yanhua, who had allowed her face to move a fraction. ¡°Forgive me, you¡¯ve read what I¡¯ve written, and it was written long ago, when my memory was better.¡± ¡°They fought each other once they reached third sphere?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°No,¡± said Grandmaster Wei Jinbao, shaking his head. ¡°They fought each other when it had been two years, to the day, from when they had both come to live at the temple. In that time, they had many fights, but had never come to blows. Their discussions were esoteric, concerning subjects that we knew little about, and these would go long into the night if allowed. There was no precipitating event. We speculated afterward that they had simply agreed to abide by a truce for a period of two years. They were both principled men, not that it helped us.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t describe the destruction,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I understood little of it,¡± said Grandmaster Wei Jinbao. ¡°The temple was destroyed, utterly, ripped apart with powers beyond the realm of the third sphere, or possibly even the fourth.¡± He coughed into his hand. ¡°Others have come here, often, seeking their secrets. If that¡¯s why you¡¯ve come, I cannot tell you much.¡± ¡°Did you see the portals when they left?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. The grandmaster stared at her for a moment, blinking. ¡°You did see their like,¡± he said. ¡°I did,¡± nodded Luo Yanhua. ¡°I spoke with them extensively. I can share what answers I have. It isn¡¯t a question of technique, though the knowledge is ¡­ tricky. Difficult to deal with.¡± ¡°I will remain ignorant,¡± said the grandmaster. ¡°But it drives you? Warps you?¡± ¡°It¡¯s difficult to say,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I have lived with the knowledge for some time.¡± ¡°There was a portal,¡± said the grandmaster. ¡°I was one of only a few to see it. With their battle concluded, when they had laid waste to the temple and the lands around us, had carved furrows into the land and changed the shape of rivers, one left on two feet, then the other, moving on his elbows, leaving a streak of blood.¡± ¡°They didn¡¯t kill each other?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°No,¡± said the grandmaster. ¡°When news of the battle spread, a few higher sphere men and women came by asking. They wanted any corpse that might have been left behind, for study, or artifacts of the fight. Both had weapons, but they took them through. And then nothing remained.¡± Luo Yanhua frowned. She wasn¡¯t entirely sure what she had hoped to learn. ¡°In those conversations, did you learn of this happening before, across the Great Arc?¡± The grandmaster nodded slowly. ¡°There are those who chase such occurrences, who know of them. They are, largely, among the higher spheres. Have you met a sixth sphere?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It is terrifying,¡± said the grandmaster. He gave a rueful chuckle. ¡°My mind was taken apart, scraped of anything useful, then put back together again. I think, sometimes, writing that book was the worst thing I might ever possibly have done for my peace and security.¡± His face fell slightly. ¡°I laugh now, but at the time, it was awful. I have since passed from notice.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry you went through that,¡± said Luo Yanhua with a sympathetic nod. ¡°Did you come here to learn with us?¡± asked the grandmaster. ¡°To share your perspective? Or was this conversation your only goal?¡± ¡°I have come here for this conversation,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°But not only for that. I will stay here, listen, learn, and contribute when I can. I¡¯m a scholar, and I do believe I would find something to appreciate no matter where I went in this wide world.¡± The words felt hollow though. She spent five years there, learning the ways of the plateaus. She achieved proficiency, developed relationships, engaged in the petty drama that infested any temple of any size, and dreamed of the many worlds. For Luo Yanhua, her transition to the third sphere came from her armor. She had worked on it for many years by that point, and it clung to her like a second skin, breathing its own breath, gripping her tightly, impenetrable to the blades of the first sphere and to many attacks of the second. She had been meditating in the high mountain overlooking the plateaus with the dry air, feeling the pulse of her heartbeat along her second skin. The border between self and suit became mingled, then disappeared, and Luo Yanhua transcended her mortal form. Three days later, she received a visitor. He was of a higher sphere, though it was difficult to tell which. His clothes shimmered and shifted, as though he were wearing a hundred hundred robes, each so thin they could be seen through but collectively opaque. His face was kind, but she had the impression that it might have been a facade. As third sphere, she could push her aura out, and when she tried that with him, it was a wave in a small pond lapping up against hard stone. ¡°Luo Yanhua,¡± he said, with no introduction. ¡°You¡¯ve been searching out the thresholders.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Only their stories.¡± ¡°Do you know why I¡¯ve come to you?¡± he asked, crossing his legs. They were in the common room of the temple, with no one else around. ¡°I can¡¯t imagine,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°It¡¯s no coincidence that you¡¯re here shortly after I reached the third sphere though.¡± ¡°No,¡± he said, smiling. ¡°I am Zhou Xuantie, the Wanderer. I have rounded the Great Arc a thousand times, and know most of its secrets. You were at the small-scale battle in Green Snake Valley, years ago, between the former king of the Grouse Kingdom and the grandmaster of Worm Gate.¡± ¡°And you didn¡¯t find out until now?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. Zhou Xuantie shook his head. ¡°I watched as it happened, as I believe a few others of my sphere did.¡± He didn¡¯t mention which sphere it was. ¡°I have contacted you now because I believe you are now uniquely suited to take advantage of certain ¡­ peculiarities of the spheres.¡± ¡°Which are?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Bah,¡± said Zhou Xuantie. ¡°I cannot tell you of the higher spheres.¡± He rose from his seat and walked over to the window, hands folded behind him. ¡°I can only say that in the third sphere, there is a certain technique which will keep you confined to the Great Arc. It is discovered, inevitably, by those of the third sphere, and I have found no record of a single person of fourth sphere or higher of any who have not taken advantage of it. Indeed, it might be foundational to the higher spheres. I simply do not know. But I am hoping that you will help me find out.¡± ¡°You ¡­ wish me to avoid a technique which is so fundamental and easily won that everyone pursues it at third sphere?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Yes,¡± said Zhou Xuantie. He turned to look at her with keen eyes. ¡°Because at fifth sphere, there is a technique which is possible only for those who have not performed the irreversible technique when they were third sphere.¡± Luo Yanhua frowned at him, and he turned around to grin at her. ¡°I can tell what you¡¯re thinking, you know.¡± ¡°You can?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°There are changes to the aura that come with thought, subtle as the flap of a butterfly¡¯s wings,¡± said Zhou Xuantie. ¡°But it is quite distinct to someone like me.¡± ¡°Then there is no need for me to speak,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You know the power of rites, the same as I do,¡± said Zhou Xuantie. He sat back down and became serious, hands neatly folded. ¡°You are thinking that there is little guarantee of you ever reaching the fifth sphere, as most do not. That chance becomes all the more tiny if you intentionally avoid a technique that everyone else readily takes.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°That is quite a trick, to read an aura so cleanly.¡± She was feeling a fear she hadn¡¯t felt in a long time. The only thing that protected her from him was his respect for the cosmic balance. That, and that he seemed to need something from her. ¡°You are also wondering what reward might be in store for you, if you go down this narrow path and make it to the end,¡± said Zhou Xuantie. ¡°I was also wondering what reward might be in store for you,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°Of course,¡± said Zhou Xuantie. His eyes twinkled. ¡°I thought mentioning your suspicion might be uncouth.¡± He turned to the window again, looking out at the southern stretch of the Great Arc. ¡°I hope to travel between worlds.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t do that?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. She had wondered, often. ¡°The technique, the one I wish for you to avoid, has locked me out,¡± said Zhou Xuantie. ¡°I have tried many, many things, and all have failed.¡± ¡°You said you saw the portals appear,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°You had watched the battle.¡± ¡°It wasn¡¯t the first time I¡¯ve seen thresholders fighting on the Great Arc,¡± said Zhou Xuantie. ¡°It wasn¡¯t the first time I¡¯ve seen those very same portals. But I have learned, through painful experience, that they will not permit one such as me.¡± Luo Yanhua frowned. ¡°You tried to go through?¡± ¡°And nearly lost my life,¡± said Zhou Xuantie with a rueful smile. ¡°How many times have you tried this before, with someone new to the third sphere?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°This would be the third time,¡± Zhou Xuantie admitted. ¡°But I have hope for you.¡± ¡°Because I have seen the portals?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°There are many points in your favor,¡± said Zhou Xuantie. ¡°You are a scholar, inclined to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake rather than simply power. You have made it to the third sphere with a broad ¡ª some would say shallow ¡ª understanding of many things, rather than a deep focus on a single area of study. And you have the drive to see the many worlds that I believe my other collaborators lacked. But I do admit that it may simply be a game of numbers. Most who make it to third sphere will not make it to fourth, and most who make it to fourth will not make it to fifth.¡± Luo Yanhua considered this. ¡°And you will offer much to me, to help me along as you are able?¡± ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be good for me to cross the spheres,¡± said Zhou Xuantie. ¡°Certainly you wouldn¡¯t be my pupil. But I have many contacts, and many resources, and would help you.¡± ¡°You hope that I will help you step into the many worlds,¡± said Luo Yanhua. ¡°I do,¡± said Zhou Xuantie. ¡°I have seen much of the Great Arc. I wish to see less of it. I have heard many stories you simply would not believe ¡ª almost all from thresholders, or those who have spoken with them.¡± ¡°Almost?¡± asked Luo Yanhua. ¡°Almost,¡± nodded Zhou Xuantie. ¡°But that is for another time.¡± He stood. ¡°You need time to consider. I will give it to you, of course.¡± He gave her a cheeky wink, then vanished. Luo Yanhua took three weeks. Most of that time was spent in meditation, away from the temple. She could have talked about it with the grandmaster of the temple, but they were of different spheres, and the separation was already making it known. To be an itinerant researcher was one thing, but to be a third sphere among seconds was something else. She had always thought that the grandmaster of Worm Gate was unseemly, and that feeling was only amplified now that she was third sphere herself. She thought about Perry and the lengths he had gone to in order to keep the grandmaster from going through the portal. The Great Arc was a world of great power, power far above that of most. If she followed Zhou Xuantie¡¯s plans, she would be opening a pathway for him. She didn¡¯t know him in the slightest, but there would be time. The higher spheres had nothing but time, hundreds of years, perhaps thousands. The only question was whether it would be for his sake or hers. In the end, the many worlds beckoned. She would like to see Earth some day. Zhou Xuantie appeared at the temple not long after her resolve had firmed. She didn¡¯t know whether that was a coincidence or not, but thought it unlikely. ¡°Good,¡± he said, when she told him her decision. ¡°It¡¯s a long road ahead, but one I am certain will be fruitful.¡± Chapter 61 - Interlude: Maya Maya felt like death, but the portals had saved her before. She hadn¡¯t talked about that with Perry all that much, but it seemed to be one of the constants in the whole thing. It made sense, given what Michaelous had said about The Spell. People ¡ª thresholders ¡ª were pulled to a time and place that needed them, maybe plus or minus a few weeks, or months. She didn¡¯t think they were time traveling, necessarily, just stuck in stasis or something, little popsicles that got squirted out when something came up. And if they were given a purpose by the portals, set to fight someone else, then that purpose couldn¡¯t be served by someone who was injured. Maybe the smart thing to do would have been to stick around the Great Arc for a bit, heal up there, then go through the portal all chipper and ready to go, but she¡¯d burnt out her Solar Vessel and it would take at least a week to get better, not that she¡¯d ever thought of it in those terms before this world. Still, she was cautious, armored up and blade ready, hoping that there would be a nice place to rest her head rather than some baddies. She had come out high, on a belltower, and after a moment, satisfied herself that there was no one who could see her. The architecture screamed Victorian, all steep sloped metal tiles on the roofs, elaborate trim and decorated cornices, columns and railings and wrought iron. Maya knew relatively little about architecture, and thought she should probably learn more, but she knew Victoriana, at least a little bit, because she¡¯d had a boyfriend who had taken her on a tour of some of the ¡°painted ladies¡± of San Francisco. He had called it ¡®somewhat postmodernist¡¯, in that it was an eclectic mix of revivals and reinterpretations of Gothic, Renaissance, and Classical styles, freely blended and slapped together like a rap album sampling beats from across musical history. He¡¯d also said not to tell anyone that he¡¯d called that postmodern, because they would make fun of him. As if she would. Thoughts of Earth had been coming up a lot more frequently, but she suspected that would fade once Perry was a distant memory. She hoped she wasn¡¯t in Teaguewater. It sounded like a shithole. This city was bright and clean though, lots of colors and plenty of white, and the air wasn¡¯t some pea soup smog. There was a harbor with blue water and sprawling green fields outside the city, with plenty of birds in the sky that seemed to be harrying the fishing boats coming into the harbor. She lowered the armor, letting it scrunch up around her fist, then had it coat the needle until it looked like nothing more than a black walking stick. She was dressed in a peasant¡¯s robe, and even from a distance she could tell she wouldn¡¯t fit in with the people down there, though at least some of that would be because of her skin color: they were darker, much darker, uniformly so in a way that suggested they were all a single ethnicity. The bell rang seven times, though from the sun it was the middle of the day, and Maya only got through the ringing because she encased her head in nanites. The bell tower was, unfortunately, going to be a terrible place to sleep, which was a shame, because she really would rather have waited until nightfall to go down among the masses. She had spotted some laundry drying in the sun and wind, and thought that it would be acceptable to steal enough to fit in, but that left her skin color, which from the looks of things, would draw attention to her. Maya was really, really hoping that she was in a place where only another thresholder could stand against her. She liked those worlds, most of the time. It meant she wouldn¡¯t just be squashed like a bug by the Powers that Be, and there might be a chance to have a real positive impact on the world. A quick check to her tether showed that it was still holding strong, even if she¡¯d been displaced from the Great Arc. That was good to know, though it remained to be seen whether she could do anything with it. She abandoned the walking stick plan before she could put it into practice. For one thing, she didn¡¯t know whether they even had walking sticks, and thought they would probably take it from her anyway. A quick look around let her know that no one ever went up the belltower, and there was a beam up high where she could place the needle, just to be extra safe. The nano stuff was more important, and stayed with her as a full-body swimsuit that they hopefully wouldn¡¯t have cause to find. She dropped to an alley, almost fumbling the bounce, then walked out into the street. They stared at her pretty much immediately, which was no surprise. She didn¡¯t speak the language, but her time on the Great Arc had been good for something. They were calling her ¡®Calamat¡¯, and though she had no idea what that meant, she wasn¡¯t about to ask them. She didn¡¯t just feel like death, she looked like death, and it wasn¡¯t long before some men arrived with a stretcher and carried her away. She didn¡¯t fuss too much. The police weren¡¯t far behind, but Maya took that as a good sign, if the local equivalent to an ambulance arrived a lot sooner than the police did. Either crime was low or they had their priorities straight, hopefully both. On the way, she saw men in suits and women in flouncy dresses, rigid gender norms that didn¡¯t inspire a lot of faith in the place. Maya had thought that she¡¯d get a hospital bed, some medical assistance that she would grudgingly allow, and an enormous heap of questions. She got the first two, which included a shot to the arm she was leery of, but the policeman stayed outside her room, looking in every now and then but nothing more. The shot made her feel better, almost immediately, but the Solar Vessel was like a black hole sucking up energy from all over her body, trying to recharge or repair itself. Her other extra vessel, the Darkling Vessel, was pumping out energy, but it would take some time for it all to sort itself out, and in the meantime, the only thing for it was to rest. She fell asleep without meaning to, maybe because of the shot. When she woke up, a man in a finely tailored suit was sitting in a chair beside her bed, writing quickly in his notebook. ¡°Hey,¡± she said, playing up how dogshit she felt. She had no idea how long she¡¯d been out, but most of the pain from where she¡¯d been punched in the gut had faded away. The man got up from his chair and gave her a deep bow. ¡°It is an honor to meet you, Calamat,¡± he said in a deep, gravely voice. Rather than having a tie, he had gold chains hanging around his neck of various designs. Maya pulled off her covers and swung her feet to the side. A quick test of her feet on the floor showed that she could move, just not very fast, which would mean making a run for it would be difficult. ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re on about,¡± said Maya. ¡°You¡¯re suffering some ¡­ confusion, Calamat?¡± asked the man. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Maya. ¡°I took a beating. The doctors might have mentioned it.¡± The man nodded slowly. ¡°I have heard of such things, with your kind. Far-off battles.¡± ¡°Tell me what you know,¡± said Maya. ¡°Everything?¡± asked the man. ¡°Everything,¡± Maya nodded. She had enough of sitting up, and laid back down, head against the pillow. A quick movement of her needle at a distance confirmed that it was still there. That was another of the benefits of being second sphere: she could sense her marked objects, and didn¡¯t need to rely on sight alone. Her Solar Vessel was refilling nicely, but still sucking down energy from every other part of her. She thought with another day or two, she would be fine, but she was still sluggish and off-balance, not in fighting shape. ¡°I am Alehandro Tennyson, Calamat,¡± he said, giving a shorter bow than before. ¡°And you are ¡­ Calamat.¡± There was no question in his voice, only insistence. ¡°Meaning?¡± asked Maya. ¡°A person from elsewhere,¡± he said. He walked over to his briefcase and opened it, taking from it a thin book with large pages. The title translated as ¡®Catalog of the Calamat and Their Natures¡¯. ¡°They appear, chosen by history, in times of need. We in Salajino have been in need for a very long time, and have eagerly awaited your appearance.¡± The book was carefully, reverently opened to a page which showed a portrait. It was done in color, pretty clearly by hand, and the woman pictured was ¡­ not Maya. The hair was right, more or less, but everything else was just a bit off. Her skin wasn¡¯t that light, and her curls weren¡¯t that curly, and she¡¯d never worn her hair like that in her life. The nose was a little too broad, the mouth too small, and there were a hundred other things she might have pointed to, but the drawing was simple, with clean lines and limited details. Maya laid the ribbon back in place, then began flipping through the pages as carefully as she could. The book was old and clearly precious, like an illuminated manuscript that had been filled in by monks. Each set of pages had a different person, drawn in the same minimal style, and after a dozen of those pages, Maya went back to the one that showed her. ¡°Kalia,¡± she said, reading the name written below the picture. She looked up at Alehandro. ¡°We have your things,¡± he said, moving once again to the briefcase. Maya¡¯s eyes flicked again to the pages of the book. It was a relatively brief biography, only a page and a half, but it had a section describing her abilities. She was, supposedly, a superior swordsman and speedster, Zoro meets the Flash, though maybe not quite so fast. Kalia was described as scrupulous in her dealings and unflinchingly fair, and there was a section in there which outlined her style of governing, oddly enough. Supposedly she favored an insular economic footing and aggressive trade restrictions, along with a focus on skills and training for her people. Alehandro returned from his briefcase with a crown. It was unadorned, a simple metal circlet, but still finely made, with small details that gave it a feeling of having been the work of a master craftsman. He handed it to her, reverently, then returned to the briefcase and pulled forth a dagger whose blade was made of glass. She took that too, and placed it on her bed, very aware of the sharpness of the blade. The crown, she held in her hands. Maya looked at them. She could feel them through her fingertips, their aura pressing against her own. The aura that had come with her marked telekinesis was paper thin at the best of times, but all the energy was still flowing into the Solar Vessel. With a slight internal change, she diverted some of that flow outward and toward the crown. It glimmered in her hands, then lit up, which caused a gasp from Alehandro. ¡°I¡¯m not her,¡± said Maya. She set the crown down in her lap and looked at Alehandro. ¡°I¡¯m something different, not a Calamat.¡± She looked down at the book. ¡°I could wear this crown, use this dagger, gain their powers, but I¡¯m not your chosen one, and the elsewhere I come from isn¡¯t your history.¡± There was a list of dates in the book, times when Kalia had apparently appeared in different countries to lead them. Either she was immortal, or could regenerate, or some other thing, because she¡¯d ruled a lot of different places for a very long time. ¡°I can help your people, as much as I¡¯m able, but ¡ª¡± ¡°Our country has been without a Calamat for thirty long years,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°The implements, they respond to your touch. You are Calamat, the Calamat of this country, of Salajino.¡± ¡°And if you don¡¯t have a Calamat, what happens?¡± asked Maya. She looked down at the book. ¡°They¡¯re governors, warriors, leaders, one part military, one part president, something like that?¡± ¡°Yes, Calamat,¡± Alehandro nodded. ¡°And if you are not Calamat, then we have no one to represent us on the world stage, only the Widder¡¯s Council.¡± He shifted his position. ¡°There are determinations we cannot make on our own, that we are not allowed to make. There is no voice for us on the world stage. With every passing year, other countries nip at our borders, and it seems only a matter of time before there is an outright war with no one to serve as our champion. There is some hope that a Calamat would appear, but ¡ª¡± ¡°But you¡¯ve been without one for a long time, and it¡¯s very possible that no one shows,¡± said Maya. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Alehandro. ¡°And you would take a battered amnesiac Calamat in a heartbeat, because it would offer you protection,¡± said Maya. ¡°Someone to speak for your people is better than no one to speak for your people.¡± ¡°Yes, Calamat,¡± said Alehandro. Maya picked the crown back up, and channeled more of her aura into it. It provided speed, the book had said, and she could feel it coursing through her with a store of energy of its own. It worked on the same systems as the previous world, or maybe something about going through the portal had integrated it somehow. ¡°Even after what I¡¯ve said to you, you would accept me as Calamat?¡± asked Maya. She stared into his eyes. ¡°I would be supreme ruler? This is something your people would accept?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± he nodded. ¡°That¡¯s fucked up,¡± said Maya. ¡°It¡¯s ¡­ ?¡± he stared at her. ¡°You have special chosen people coming in and they can just do whatever they want?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I mean, I guess I get it as, like, vaguely similar to monarchy or something, but it¡¯s stupid, don¡¯t people realize that it¡¯s stupid?¡± ¡°You said you were from elsewhere, as is so readily apparent,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°You claim to be hearing, for the first time, how things are done in this country, in all countries. And your reaction is that it¡¯s ¡­ stupid?¡± ¡°Eh,¡± said Maya. ¡°Maybe I¡¯m overstating things here. It seems stupid. At best, it seems like a system set up by the Calamat to preserve their own power, but I don¡¯t understand how a tiny minority of people can control countries.¡± ¡°It is not that way in other worlds?¡± asked Alehandro. ¡°The few do not control the many?¡± ¡°Alright, fair point,¡± said Maya. ¡°And I¡¯m well-acquainted with the idea of personal power translating into control of the masses, but it seems like you¡¯d get some pretty terrible rulers.¡± She looked at him. ¡°This crown, this dagger, where did they come from?¡± ¡°A vault, Calamat, the Stalwart Vault,¡± he replied. ¡°Your name and description were given to the Consistory shortly after your arrival here, and I was tasked with bringing the implements to you.¡± ¡°My name?¡± asked Maya. She looked at the book. ¡°That name?¡± ¡°Yes, Calamat,¡± said Alehandro. She peered into his eyes for a moment. ¡°You want me to take the mantle anyway. You want to perpetuate a fraud on your people, because you think that¡¯s the only way to save the nation.¡± ¡°No, Calamat,¡± said Alehandro, though his eyes said ¡®yes¡¯. ¡°You are our champion, I know it to be true, you respond to the implements. We have need of you.¡± ¡°And who are you?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I am the Calamat¡¯s advisor,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°It¡¯s an esteemed position. I will be responsible for making your will into reality.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Maya. ¡°Seems like more than I would expect from an advisor.¡± ¡°Yes, Calamat,¡± he nodded. ¡°The position was established by the previous Calamat, and covers a wide range of duties.¡± ¡°And if I happened to not be the Calamat, you¡¯d be pretty powerless, right?¡± asked Maya. ¡°It isn¡¯t only that,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°It¡¯s the fate of this country. The Consistory makes the rules that all nations must abide by, and without a Calamat, our power is limited. We are penned in by the laws of the past, by the decisions the previous Calamat made. There is need for change.¡± Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. ¡°Alright,¡± said Maya. ¡°Ask me if I¡¯m the Calamat.¡± ¡°You would be a Calamat, not the Calamat,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°But you accept that this is what you are?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Maya, easily enough. ¡°But as my first official act, maybe it¡¯s better for you not to tell anyone about my, ah, confusion.¡± She looked at the book. ¡°Kalia. That¡¯s my name.¡± ¡°This hospital is no place for you,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°We will need to move you as swiftly as possible to somewhere more secure, both from attack and from prying eyes. I will assemble guards to help move you to Mangro House. Can you walk? It would be better if you could be seen moving on your own. The guards will offer you their protection.¡± Maya got up from the bed. Some of the stiffness and soreness was gone, but she was still low on energy. She stretched herself out and moved around, making sure she wasn¡¯t going to collapse in an undignified heap, then went to the bed and grabbed the crown, placing it gently among her curls. She drew on the energy, and felt better for it, then turned and opened the window. In only a moment, her needle flew through the air and slipped in through the cracked window. She drew it and stared at the edge for a moment, then picked the glass dagger up from the bed, feeling its energy too. The needle was in her right hand, while the dagger was in her left, and she could imagine fighting with both of them. She turned to Alehandro and let the nanites spread across her skin. ¡°I don¡¯t think the guards will be necessary,¡± she said with a smile. ~~~~ A week at Mangro House was more than enough to get her back to her old self, and also plenty of time to learn all she needed to know about this world. The Calamat really did control everything. There were about two hundred on record, but only fifty or so in the world at any given time, each of them the leader of a nation. They were more than human, but a lot of their power came from their implements, which only responded to them. Rather than having wars, they fought in duels, which were used to resolve a lot of stuff that really should have been solved through international law or something like it. The Consistory was controlled by the Calamat but not made up of them, sort of a shadowy council of mere mortals, but they had their own motives, some of which seemed to be holding their position as leeches hanging off the teats of the titans. She learned about Salajino as well, which didn¡¯t really seem to be what Alehandro wanted from her. He had his own ideas about how the country would be run, as did the Widder¡¯s Council, but if he had thought she would just sit by and funnel wealth down her gullet ¡ª as Calamat so often did ¡ª he was sorely mistaken. ¡°I¡¯m the supreme ruler,¡± she said to him on one occasion. ¡°That means my word is law. If I want to open up jobs to women, if I want them in our universities, if I want them to have equal pay for equal work and to establish orphanages and early childhood education ¡ª whatever it is I want, they¡¯re supposed to fucking listen to me, right?¡± ¡°You cannot reach into the mind of every policeman,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°You cannot magic funds from the aether. We will try, but every Calamat must learn that the people have a will of their own, and if ¡ª¡± ¡°Let¡¯s start with the small shit,¡± said Maya. ¡°The easy shit. If women want to get an education, to be a whatever-the-fuck they want to be, they should be allowed to. You told me that was signed into law, and then today I saw in the paper that the dean of admissions wasn¡¯t budging, and I¡¯m about this close,¡± she held up her fingers, which had no daylight between them, ¡°to simply going down to that fucking university and just,¡± she balled her hand into a fist. ¡°Look, I know the Calamat deal with things through violence, but I was really hoping not to have to do that.¡± ¡°The dean of admissions has leeway, Calamat,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°It is possible for me to remove his leeway, but deciding who is and who isn¡¯t admitted to the university is one of his primary duties, and if I may say, occurs at a level beyond what a Calamat would typically dictate.¡± ¡°I can fire him, right?¡± asked Maya. ¡°I mean, I could go there and murder him, so I¡¯ve got to be able to fire him, don¡¯t I?¡± ¡°Yes, Calamat,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°But to do that without having a replacement lined up would be unwise, and any replacement might have the same problem.¡± ¡°Fucking Christ,¡± said Maya. ¡°Get it done. Find someone sympathetic, or better, find someone to find someone so you don¡¯t have so much on your plate.¡± ¡°Very well, Calamat,¡± said Alehandro with a bow. He kind of annoyed her. Being deferential was one thing, but even when he thought she was being a dumbass, he didn¡¯t actually say anything, just followed orders as he¡¯d been told. Maya didn¡¯t particularly like people who blindly followed orders. Really, politics just weren¡¯t her forte. She was trying to be a benevolent ruler, one that embodied the virtues of altruism, empathy, and compassion, but that was hard when she kept slamming up against the total fucking morons who seemed intent on putting their necks on the line to oppose her. The dumbass prick who served as dean of admissions at the largest university in Salajino was but one example, and she was sure that if she sat down to speak with him, he would say some dumbass shit about either tradition or the intellectual qualities of women or something else. It was crazy to her that it was completely legal for her to kill her subjects. She wasn¡¯t above the law, the law just bent so far in her favor that it was flat-out ridiculous. The other half of the job was being the commander-in-chief, except none of the countries had standing armies, they had the Calamat instead. In this, Maya excelled. The super-speed from the crown wasn¡¯t always-on, it had to be planned ahead of time. A spurt planned two minutes out would give a few seconds of ten percent boost, but if she was willing to plan things out a week in advance, she could get as much as a minute at speeds so fast she was barely able to be seen. It capped out at around a month of lead time, but Maya almost never tried to plan that far ahead, since it seemed all her enemies knew about her power. They had their little fights, usually to the blood or to the yield rather than to the death. It wasn¡¯t proper manners to kill another Calamat outright, and more importantly, would invite others to cut loose against her. Because of her power, all the scheduled, structured fights were endlessly rescheduled at the last moment in order to weaken her, but that was a matter for her diplomats and advisors to figure out. Mostly it came down to certain compromises, a match rescheduled so that she would have a certain fraction of her power. Still, she won her first fifteen matches. A few had been close, but most of them weren¡¯t. She had quite a lot of tricks to pull out of her bag, weapons and defenses and maneuvers that the real Kalia had never had. None of this was strictly illegal, but it was frowned upon, so she tried to keep it to a minimum. It made there be more challenges than there otherwise would have been, as people tried to take her down a peg. ¡°I don¡¯t get it,¡± said Maya. ¡°This one is over turnip exports?¡± ¡°Imports, Calamat,¡± said Alehandro with a sigh as he looked her over. She had tried to keep the fancy outfits to a minimum, especially when she was told the price tag the government would be forking over, but he thought there was enormous importance in appearance, and she didn¡¯t necessarily think that he was wrong. ¡°Why am I supposed to care about this?¡± asked Maya. ¡°It represents approximately twelve million dollars in trade,¡± said Alehandro. He didn¡¯t actually say ¡®dollars¡¯, but the second sphere translation could deal with currency, even if it was a sloppy conversion that might have given her the wrong ideas. ¡°We grow that many turnips?¡± asked Maya. ¡°We do, Calamat,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°Fine,¡± said Maya. ¡°Just so you know, I¡¯m going to kill this guy.¡± ¡°The fight is to the yield, Calamat,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°He¡¯s got children working in his mines,¡± said Maya. ¡°You know, I¡¯m not trying that much here, just to bring these fuckers up to a 1950s level of social consciousness. I sent him a very nice letter, I thought ¡ª or you sent him the letter, or had someone send him the letter ¡ª and asked very politely that he pull those children out of the mines and send them to school. I tried to explain it, you know? Or you tried to explain it.¡± ¡°If he dies, Calamat, the laws will not change,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°A nation without its Calamat is meant to be frozen in time, awaiting someone to come and take the reins.¡± ¡°Then I¡¯ll remove his arm, how about that, would that complicate things or stop him from getting the kids out of the mines?¡± she asked. ¡°And how would you do that, Calamat, how would you remove his arm before he can yield?¡± asked Alehandro. ¡°Oh, I¡¯ll think of something,¡± said Maya. The match was three days later, and she walked out of it with blood around her mouth. ¡°I ¡­ was not aware you could turn into a wolf,¡± said Alehandro. ¡°I think when you get to know people, you¡¯ll find they¡¯re full of surprises,¡± said Maya. ¡°One of the surprises I¡¯m full of is a wolf.¡± ¡°Was it wise to reveal that to the world?¡± asked Alehandro. ¡°I guess we¡¯ll see,¡± said Maya. She turned to him. ¡°Let it be known that I can do that whenever I damned well please. I know you¡¯ve been meddling with the free press, but let our people know that I¡¯m even more terrifying when I toss the weapons and implements to the side. And the other Calamat, let them know too. I¡¯m done fucking around. You don¡¯t need to be that explicit about it, ¡®Maya was fucking around before, she¡¯s stopped doing that now and will absolutely wreck you¡¯ might be the language these chucklefucks understand.¡± ¡°Yes, Calamat,¡± said Alehandro. She got more challenges, of course, many of them for petty matters of international diplomacy that would normally have been a ¡®room where it happens¡¯ matter of dealmaking. They wanted to test her though, to probe her for weakness, so she was called away to the arenas more than she would have liked. In Salajino, re-education was well underway, hampered by the fact that she couldn¡¯t write the tracts herself, and that she needed to review what everyone else was reading, as well as understand it. She had never been a political firebrand back on Earth, not the kind of person to get locked into ¡°the discourse¡± on Tumblr or Twitter, even if it felt impossible not to learn about whatever the topic du jour was. She wouldn¡¯t have been able to say what the difference between third and fourth wave feminism was. Mostly, the things she wanted seemed pretty obvious to her, but that wasn¡¯t enough for the people who worked for her, nor the people she was supposed to be governing. She could set the law, but that wouldn¡¯t make people follow it. It took her way too long to figure out that people were being double-faced about having a Calamat as their ruler. Salajino was a special case, because for whatever reason it had been without a Calamat for ages, but she was pretty sure it was the same all over the world. When people wanted to blame someone, it was the Calamat. It was like people working some shitty job who would say ¡®oh, sorry, it¡¯s my boss who¡¯s all mean about things¡¯. But when the people wanted to get their way, they would bend or break the rules that had been put in place. Gray markets abounded and firmly written laws went ignored, and if the Calamat really wanted something to be done, she would have to make an effort to go out into the world herself. By the time three months had passed, Maya had built up her own militant faction ¡ª or rather, a militant faction had been built up by other people without all that much involvement from her. There were, in any society, always voices of discontent and reform, and certain of those voices had their platforms elevated and amplified enormously, their screeds that had been on pamphlets seen by dozens now read by millions in the newspapers controlled by the kingdom. And like any militant faction of counter-cultural ideologues, there were huge egos and vicious infighting. It was all pretty exhausting. The fights with the other Calamat were at least mostly straightforward, but as her winning streak got longer and longer, the Consistory started to take note, and the first accusations started coming out that something was wrong with her. People started digging into the historical records and reading up on Kalia, really reading up on her, finding long-lost accounts, some of which were almost certainly fabricated. Some of this was used to argue that Maya was a poor, untrustworthy leader, and some was used to argue that she was a fake Calamat ¡ª but the implements responded to her, and that was seen as incontrovertible proof. If you questioned the proof of the implements, then you needed to question everything, and that was something neither the Consistory nor the other Calamat could handle. Three months was about as long as it was supposed to take for another thresholder to show up, and Maya started getting antsy. She had made herself known, and if the other thresholder came in, it felt like it would be obvious to them who she was. The number of Calamat was in the fifties, but there was only one of them who was the focus of the Consistory¡¯s ire, one who was engaging in serious reforms of her country, and one who had a few extra inexplicable powers. Another month passed, and there was still no sign of the other thresholder. She wondered, briefly, whether she was being punished. She¡¯d played the part of revolutionary and outcast more than a few times, and in this world, she¡¯d had a crown literally thrust into her hands, told to run a country with ¡®absolute¡¯ authority. It seemed like one of those monkey¡¯s paw deals, except she¡¯d never actually wished she could run a country, because she knew better. After she hit the five month mark, she started getting worried. The spell wasn¡¯t originally intended to span the multiverse, Michaelous didn¡¯t think. So if the whole thresholding thing was part of a bug in the spell, maybe it had other bugs and never found a partner for someone, which would mean that a portal would never open up. She didn¡¯t want to be stuck in this world. The only upside was that she got more powerful with every day that passed. It wasn¡¯t just her vessels and meridians, it was mastery of the venting technique to get more nanites, which meant she had enough for two full bracers and two leg bracers, whatever those were called. Greaves, maybe. When fully deployed, the armor was much thicker, capable of taking harder hits. She had almost full control over the wolf, and could shift into it at will, even if shifting out was a little bit harder. And because the vessels and meridians were hooked into her other powers, she was boosting everything, all at once, from the Solar Vessel to the Darkling Vessel. She could mark seven separate objects for telekinesis, and do it faster than before, sending them zipping through the air if she so chose, which was good, because it meant delivering nanites, which could then be used to bind. When she¡¯d been there half a year, she was mostly settled in. People were accepting the new regime and the reforms, if grudgingly, and Alehandro was unexpectedly onboard with it, helping her to build up the like-minded personnel. There were a lot of women, for obvious reasons, some of them very bright, most of whom had been ¡®secretaries¡¯ of one sort or another. There were a lot of people who loved her, even if there was a more sizable contingent that hated her for what they saw as a progressive agenda. It was all going to collapse when she left, she was increasingly certain of that. It was all the more obviously what was going to happen because eventually she¡¯d be replaced by a Calamat, a real one, someone pulled from the history of this world with their own ideas of how to run the country, and all that would be left would be what? A generation of literate women? Some infrastructure improvements? Thousands of kids who were getting educated in the schools rather than working in sweatshops? When she put it like that, maybe it was worth all the effort, even if it was probably going to crumble and decay overnight. An entire year came and went. The other thresholder was long overdue. She had lost exactly three of her structured matches with the other Calamat, all for one bullshit reason or another, and other than that, had the winningest record of any Calamat in recorded history. They had stopped scheduling matches with her, instead resorting to talking with her about international issues, and more than once, they¡¯d simply put their foot down and dared her to come into their country and try to force them. They¡¯d stopped doing that after the second time she¡¯d gone into someone¡¯s country and shown what she would do once she was beyond the prescribed borders of the Consistory¡¯s arenas. There was an anniversary celebration, which was meant to be a small thing, but because she hadn¡¯t been paying close enough attention, ballooned out of control, with a crowd of thousands, hundreds of barrels of wine, dance halls and roast pigs and an entire field of flowers emptied to make up the arrangements that lined the streets. She decided to indulge it and treat it like an exercise in marketing. Her dress was made of nanites, pure black, which she thought probably read as evil, but that was apparently something that people liked about her ¡ª her winning record and viciousness in the arena scored highly in polls. (She had started polling the public early on, something that the other Calamat were now doing too.) A parade through the streets of the capital ended with a speech on the balcony of the palace, and it was there she was attacked. He came down from the sky like a comet, and her thick shell of nanites saved her. She was on her feet in a moment, blades summoned to her hand, and she dodged back from a hammer blow that destroyed the rest of the balcony she¡¯d been standing on. She landed like a cat, on all fours, and flipped backward from another hammer blow, then bent sideways to dodge a brilliant green laser that blew up one of the row houses behind her. It was then that she finally got a good look at him, and saw that he was modded, metal woven into one arm and his left eye glowing red. ¡°Wait!¡± she shouted before he could advance on her again. He hesitated, most likely because there was some space between the two of them and his surprise attack had pretty clearly failed. ¡°You¡¯re a thresholder?¡± she asked. ¡°A what?¡± he asked. ¡°A world hopper,¡± she said. ¡°Someone who travels between realities.¡± He was angry, snarling, hammer pulsing with power. ¡°I am,¡± he said. ¡°You have come to this place, this paradise, and defiled it.¡± He pointed the hammer at her. ¡°You have stolen the implements of a god and claimed a title which does not belong to you. Now, you will die.¡± And then they fought, a wide-ranging battle that took them across the capital. It was the first fight in a long time that Maya had been able to cut loose, to try out techniques she¡¯d been developing, tricks she¡¯d been working towards. The death toll was in the hundreds as they crashed through buildings, the crowds that had come in from all over the country to see the celebration turning into a panicked mob bearing witness to the kind of fight that had never been. Her counterpart had a lot of power and a poor ability to control it, which exacerbated the damage and the casualties. She took hits on three occasions and walked away with severe burns and a broken body, but not before she¡¯d driven her glass dagger straight into his glowing eye. He¡¯d howled and then run away, and she gave chase only until he started killing people with explosions fired behind him as he ran. Then, she helped tend to the wounded as best she could, rescuing people trapped beneath rubble and on a few occasions, using her nanites as makeshift tourniquets or plugs. It was all pretty horrible, but at the back of her mind, there were a few thoughts. The first thought was that this thresholder, whoever he¡¯d been, was the worst kind of asshole, a personification of everything she¡¯d been fighting over the past year. But the second thought was that this was exactly the sort of thing she was meant to be doing. Chapter 62 - Stations, Please Perry had been preparing for the new world for months. He had planned and strategized and theorycrafted, making little flowcharts for how things were going to go depending on what sort of world he ended up in. He had accounts from nearly thirty worlds, and understood the possibilities fairly well, and that would make it easier. Once he stepped out of the portal, he found himself in a cafeteria, sword drawn. He spun around to see that it was empty. The metal chairs and tables were clean and devoid of food or trays. It was blandly institutional, utilitarian brushed steel and rubbery black tiles, the lights overhead bright and white. ¡°Full passive scan,¡± said Perry, kneeling down and placing his hand against the floor. ¡°Scanning,¡± Marchand replied. ¡°Multiple signals detected. Protocols are unknown. Beginning deciphering protocols. Fixed-length packets detected. Packet headers identified. Basic packet structure identified. Payload is encrypted. Attempting decryption. Packets decrypted. Ah, the language is English, that¡¯s good, sir, I was quite worried that I would be in the dark again.¡± ¡°You¡¯re breaking through their encryption?¡± asked Perry, somewhat alarmed. ¡°It bears some similarity to an old standard, PBL, which uses static keys and a weak initialization vector,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe I would be able to send spoofed packets, if I understand the protocol correctly.¡± ¡°Lax security, you¡¯re saying?¡± asked Perry. His heart was beating hard. He was worried that someone was going to walk in. ¡°No, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Thirty years ago, this security would have been state of the art. I would only describe the security as ¡®lax¡¯ if we are in a place which had every opportunity to update its security and did not.¡± ¡°Give me the map,¡± said Perry. A building, or maybe part of a building, popped up on the HUD, showing the room they were in and a whole bunch of other rooms. It confirmed Perry¡¯s feeling that this was a utilitarian place, but it was smaller than he¡¯d thought it would be, given the large cafeteria. There was a tall spire, some kind of smokestack or something, its function unknown. There was some damage to one end of it, but the lights were still on, which meant that it couldn¡¯t be too bad. ¡°Sir, I¡¯m detecting dangerous levels of radiation,¡± said Marchand. ¡°How dangerous?¡± asked Perry. His heart was suddenly beating harder. He thought that he could probably channel his meridians to stave off the worst of radiation poisoning, but that was still a mess he needed to untangle. ¡°If we stay here for a period of one hour, your risk of cancer in the next ten years will rise by ten thousand percent, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I recommend we immediately exit the building.¡± A green line showed up on the map of the building, giving March¡¯s preferred route out, and when the map minimized to the corner, the green lines stayed up, this time showing Perry where to go. It was like a videogame tutorial trying to make sure an exceptionally stupid player didn¡¯t get lost. Somewhat reluctantly, Perry followed the line. ¡°What can you tell me about this place?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Soak in the network traffic, don¡¯t transmit.¡± ¡°I have been, sir,¡± said Marchand as Perry booked it down a hallway. ¡°The facility appears to be empty of personnel, and every decrypted packet has been communication between automated systems. None of them seem to be particularly bright, but the conversations might be spartan by design. Would you like me to send a spoofed packet, sir?¡± ¡°To do what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°To inquire, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It might be possible to access help functions, or to acquire data from these systems.¡± ¡°Go for it,¡± said Perry, focusing on the line he was moving down. He could hear the sound of his feet on the floor. It was dead quiet. ¡°How bad is this radiation, give me some numbers.¡± March gave some numbers, which were in a system of measurement that Perry didn¡¯t recognize. Some of the SI units were different in Richter¡¯s world, and that was especially the case for units that came after the point of divergence between their Earths. ¡°Give it to me in terms I would actually understand,¡± said Perry. ¡°You are currently experiencing, per hour, a radiation rate equivalent to one hundred times the safe yearly total exposure for radiation workers,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If two hours pass at this exposure rate, death from hematopoietic syndrome will typically occur within thirty days. Nausea and malaise are likely to occur within the next few minutes. It is likely that if we do not leave the source of radiation, you will die, unless you have excellent medical care and transplants. Additionally, as one of the early symptoms of hematopoietic syndrome is vomiting, I would recommend you remove the helmet at your earliest opportunity.¡± ¡°Noted,¡± said Perry. He wasn¡¯t going to do that though. The hallways were long, wide, and filled with doors. Everything seemed slightly overbuilt to Perry, and he saw a little vehicle like a golf cart that seemed like it was meant to carry people or equipment. He glanced in the rooms he was passing on the rare occasion he saw one of the doorways open, and saw desks with computers sitting on them, flatscreens and keyboards but nothing that would look out of place in the early twenty-first century. He was running, following the green line, not playing tourist. ¡°I have access to their main database, which I¡¯m downloading now, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Already?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Though I should warn that the database is compressed and encrypted, and it will take some time to get useful information from it. Given our imminent departure, my focus is on taking everything I can and worrying about analysis later.¡± Perry came to the end of a hallway and slammed into the side of it, then launched himself down where the green line was pointing. There were more doors, all of them with the too-thick frames he¡¯d noticed, and following that, a large room that looked something like a theater to him. He sailed through it with long strides, pushed off another pillar to shoot down a corridor, and arrived at the terminus of the green line. The place was massive, the ceiling forty feet high, with a dozen different bays on the sides of it, all of them empty. The door at the end was equally large, and Perry had no idea what could possibly have been meant to come into or out of it. He launched himself toward the exit, and then darted to the left to look at the round window, the first he¡¯d seen in the facility. Perry was looking down on a brown planet and the stars shining behind it. ¡°Recalibrating,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What the hell,¡± said Perry. ¡°My apologies, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We appear to be on a space station of some kind.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yup. Got that. And this was the place where they housed the ships?¡± He looked down at the ground, where there was a line of black and yellow stripes, which he realized must be a second door, one which dropped the ships down. ¡°I believe so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Unfortunately, this means that removing you from the radiation is going to be somewhat more difficult than anticipated.¡± ¡°How is there gravity?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There isn¡¯t, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°The force you¡¯re experiencing as ¡®gravity¡¯ is in fact centripetal force, as the facility is spinning against a counterweight. That counterweight is the source of the overwhelming radiation, inescapable so long as we¡¯re on this space station. I¡¯m searching through the unencrypted documents and making several spoofed requests for the location of an escape vehicle, but I suspect that this vehicle bay is empty for a reason. It appears this space station has been abandoned for,¡± there was a very brief pause, ¡°three hundred years, sir.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. He looked out the window. ¡°I¡¯m going down to the planet. Open the doors.¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t do that,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The room is under pressure and will need to be cycled first.¡± ¡°How long is that going to take?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Isn¡¯t there some emergency switch?¡± ¡°This is the emergency option, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It will be finished in five minutes.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can taste it in my mouth.¡± The radiation had a metal taste, like sucking on a penny. Something was going really wrong. It probably wasn¡¯t the radiation he was tasting, actually, just some vital part of his anatomy liquifying. ¡°I apologize sir,¡± said Marchand. The compressors or vacuums or whatever the hell else they were hissing, the air draining from the room, and Perry had no option but to wait. It felt insane to him that there was no quick-release option. This place was supposed to hold ships of some kind, wasn¡¯t the whole point of a hangar to be able to shoot ships out into space at high speed? He tried to trace his meridians, and found that they were all tangled. He was going to have to get that fixed, but at the moment, didn¡¯t want to spend much more time with it. It was still functional, in the way that a tangle of wires beneath a desk was still functional, even if it was difficult to trace what went where. Five minutes came and went. If the walls were less thick, he¡¯d have tried to slice through them with his sword, but the sword had trouble going through metal. He was on the verge of testing it anyway when the lower doors began to groan open. Perry walked over and dropped down, the edges of the doors slipping past him, and once he was clear, let the sword tug on him to give a bit of extra speed. In atmosphere, the sword could pull him along at a speed of around thirty miles an hour, less with a headwind, but without drag, he was hoping that the speed would compound. He had no idea how the magic worked, but ¡ª ¡°One hour of oxygen remaining, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°What are the odds air on that planet down there is breathable?¡± It seemed far away, further than pictures of Earth from the ISS, but maybe not quite as far as Earth seen from the Moon. He really had no idea. I¡¯m in space. I¡¯m technically an astronaut. ¡°I cannot speculate as to whether that planet has a breathable atmosphere, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Based on what I know of exoplanets, it seems quite unlikely.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. He let the sword tug him along. It was impossible to tell how fast they were going in the vacuum of space. ¡°How far away are we?¡± ¡°Our altitude appears to be twenty-two thousand miles, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°ETA?¡± ¡°We appear to be accelerating rapidly,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Assuming the unknown source of acceleration continues, we will reach the surface of the planet in approximately ninety-five minutes.¡± Perry let out a breath. ¡°Can you stretch the oxygen until then?¡± ¡°Yes sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°However, when we arrive at the planet, our final speed will be approximately sixteen thousand miles per hour, which might present something of a problem.¡± Perry swore again. ¡°Alright, alright, we accelerate, then drift at a constant speed, then decelerate, can you figure that out for me?¡± The process took five minutes, mostly because March needed Perry¡¯s input, but once the math was done, March had put a bunch of information up in the corner of Perry¡¯s view, timers and distances and how much oxygen was left. After almost running out of air in Teaguewater, Perry had gone through some trouble to have Marchand refill the relatively small tank, a power-intensive process that used the suit¡¯s built-in functions. Marchand had groaned about the air quality in Teaguewater and added caveats about the quality and purity, but settling for that had likely just saved Perry¡¯s life. Assuming he wasn¡¯t going to die landing on a planet that very well might not have breathable air, anyway. Once Perry was up to speed and the sword was no longer needed, there was nothing to do but wait and try not to breathe too much. There was almost certainly a second sphere technique to help him stop breathing, some alteration of his internal alchemy, but there was no way he was going to pull that out of his ass in thirty minutes, not with the tangled matrix. Instead, he started looking through the information that March had gathered. Three hundred and twenty-eight years ago, a spaceship had used some kind of advanced FTL technology to zip into the solar system of Kelchon-442. It was there with the specific intent of examining a planet, Kelchon-442b, which was promptly renamed to Esperide, apparently fairies of twilight from their mythology. These people were very much humans, or at least looked so close to human that there wasn¡¯t a difference, but were also very much not from Earth, instead hailing from a different planet with its own history. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. The space station had spun around to provide artificial gravity, with a counterweight where the FTL drive was used for power, until twenty years into their mission when something very large struck the space station very quickly, destroying much of the shielding surrounding the FTL drive and a large and important chunk of the space station. Evacuation to the surface was swift, and an SOS call immediately went out. It remained completely unanswered. The space station had continued on, in spite of everything. The FTL drive was still running, and there were robots that fixed what they could using automated systems. Some of it had broken down once the repair parts had been run through, but the space station was designed for the long haul, and the fabrication lab and supply storehouse had mostly been spared. Without its full complement of crew, there was very little strain on the internal systems. What hadn¡¯t been spared was the observation platform and associated equipment, nor the data storage that had been housed there. Most of the major databases were entirely gone, in fact, their hard drives reduced to stardust. There wasn¡¯t much about what was down there, nor was there much about the planet or planets they had come from. What Perry had instead were mostly things from the personal computers of the people who must have been long-dead, since the dorms and living areas had been spared. There was nothing like Wikipedia or Gratbook, but there were the equivalent of e-mails, private missives between people, grumblings about shift changes and clean up details, more than he would ever have time to read, and nothing particularly actionable while he drifted through space at a thousand miles an hour. The atmosphere was breathable, that he knew. They had ships that could make the journey down to the surface and then back up, and there had been a research station there, which was also the evacuation point. What had happened then was unknown. Whether there were people was unknown. Three hundred years shouldn¡¯t have been enough time for the atmosphere to change. Perry hoped there were people. He wasn¡¯t sure how he was going to survive without people, though he was going to have to figure out the trick of not eating or drinking in a hurry if he couldn¡¯t find a place to stay. Perry was built for a lot of things, but surviving in the woods wasn¡¯t one of them. ¡°Sir, I have some unfortunate news,¡± said Marchand, which was not at all something that Perry wanted to hear while they were in the void of space, hurtling towards the planet at a thousand miles an hour. ¡°Give it to me,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve been building out a profile of the planet, both as it can be sensed from the onboard equipment and from what I can tell from the stolen data,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The atmosphere is thicker than I had imagined it would be, and while it¡¯s breathable, we¡¯re currently aimed at the day side of the planet, which hovers at a temperature of four hundred of your degrees Fahrenheit. I can unfortunately not handle those temperatures for long.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Unfortunate. And if we go to the night side, I¡¯m going to die from lack of oxygen before we get there.¡± He almost took a deep breath, then thought better of it. ¡°Alright, give me a heading, we¡¯re going to aim for the border zone.¡± ¡°Based on my calculations you will likely die of hypoxia, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ll work on that,¡± said Perry. Marchand provided a heading and Perry followed it, hoping that the calculations were correct. The next step was, unavoidably, meditation. The tangle of meridians needed to be dealt with, and it was going to have to be while Perry was in the void of space, floating toward a planet he knew next to nothing about, escaping a death by radiation poisoning, then escaping a death from lack of oxygen, all so he could escape a death from overheating. Internally, nothing was where it should be. The meridians had formerly had some kind of correlation to the physical properties of the body, whether that was the nerves, circulatory system, or the other internal connections between things. Now, much of that had been disrupted. The body was still doing its own thing, more or less, but the energy was all flowing differently, some of it looping outside of his body. Similarly, the vessels were out of place. The Belt Vessel, which was supposed to regulate the flow of energy between the upper and lower body, had been pulled up a bit, and try as he might, Perry had no way to pull it down. He also had no way of knowing what that would ultimately mean in terms of whether his legs would be starved of energy, but so far they weren¡¯t hurting. Eventually, he had traced this new arrangement out as much as he could, and tried his best to transfer energy into his lungs, hoping that it would make up for the oxygen shortfall. He was feeling lightheaded, a result of rationing, and that certainly wasn¡¯t helping him. But by the time he needed to use the sword once again, Marchand¡¯s estimates had updated and were looking more optimistic. ¡°I¡¯m going to make it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, sir, but I can¡¯t be certain of that,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You updated the oxygen,¡± said Perry. ¡°Unfortunately, sir, that update was based on some changes I¡¯ve made to the system,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The air you¡¯re breathing now is fouled.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°You will suffer from hypercapnia before dying,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe it to be preferable to suffering from hypoxia from a survival standpoint, but headaches, confusion, and fatigue are common symptoms. Additionally, shortness of breath is a commonly reported occurrence, which would accelerate the consumption of oxygen. Hypercapnia is almost always associated with panic and fear of the worst kind, sir.¡± Perry did his best to still his heart and slow his breathing. He was being pulled by the sword again, this time ¡®backward¡¯, though there wasn¡¯t much change in how it felt. He was, by Marchand¡¯s reckoning, going at very high speeds, but it didn¡¯t feel like it because of the lack of references. Perry sent energy into his lungs, draining his vessels as much as he could, but he misunderstood something about the internal alchemy, or had fouled things up somehow, and it wasn¡¯t changing the meters. They hit the atmosphere while Perry was still slowing down, and the suit started to heat up. ¡°We¡¯re not going to burn, are we?¡± asked Perry. They had nothing like ablative heat shielding. ¡°Recalculating,¡± said Marchand. There was dead silence for a long few seconds, and Perry began pouring energy out into the suit, hoping to cool it down somehow, but that technique was beyond him too. The indicators in the top left corner were almost all red, low oxygen, high carbon dioxide, high heat, low distance to target. The world below him had grown large in a hurry, and surprisingly, as they crossed over into the twilight region, it had become green. March said something, and Perry blinked. He was roasting in the suit, and had either blacked out or was just running so low on oxygen his body had started deprioritizing his brain. ¡°Repeat,¡± said Perry. He was holding onto the sword for dear life, though the worst of the heat seemed to be gone. ¡°Take off your helmet,¡± said Marchand. Perry did, one handed, and nearly dropped it down on the ground far below. The air was hot and windy, but it was fresh and clean, and Perry took in big gulps of it, which washed away the panic and slowly brought him back to his senses. He was high above the ground, maybe a whole mile up, where the air would still be thin, and he let himself slowly drop, descending down to where the air was even thicker, more full of precious oxygen. There was a faint taste of wet grass. The ribbon of green in the twilight zone was maybe two hundred miles across, though the plants were like nothing that Perry had ever seen before. For one thing, they were all pointed east, toward the ¡®rising¡¯ sun, tilted to capture as much sunlight as they could. For another, they looked a lot different, with strange fluted pieces of wood coming up in certain places like thick reeds twice as tall as he was. Many of them had large pods coming up above where the leaves were, and some were releasing seeds into the heavy winds that went from the day side to the night side. There were also animals moving down there, large ones, many of them insects with hard shells whose size would rival anything found in Earth¡¯s prehistory. They were feeding on the plants, gorging themselves, and spreading out from what appeared to be a nest of some sort. Perry wasn¡¯t entirely certain of the scale, but he thought that each was the size of a minivan. Eventually, he placed his helmet back on. ¡°Replenish the oxygen,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right away, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Scan for signals,¡± said Perry. ¡°Passively, for now. Don¡¯t send out any signals without my say-so, I¡¯m not going to assume the locals are friendly.¡± It was impossible to know whether the space station had been hit by some kind of weapon or blown up by an accident, but Perry suspected warfare, for no particular reason. ¡°Sir, we¡¯ve been found,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Someone is sending out an IFF request.¡± ¡°IFF request?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Identify friend or foe,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Tell them we¡¯re a friend then,¡± said Perry. ¡°I believe they expect back a predetermined code, which would be impossible to spoof,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Send out radio, all channels, let them know we¡¯re not combatants,¡± said Perry. ¡°Identify their location, get ready for combat.¡± An indicator flashed up on the HUD. ¡°Sir, I must recommend that this suit was designed primarily for ground combat, as air mobility is limited.¡± ¡°Understood,¡± said Perry, dropping down without a second thought. He was just in time to miss the opening salvo, visible only through the tracer rounds, as an enormous mecha crested a nearby hill and began firing. Perry started running as soon as his feet hit the ground, and the terrain behind him was chewed up. The soil was thick and loamy, providing good traction, and he sprinted forward, pumping energy into his legs and moving the armor at full tilt. He changed directions at random, hoping to prevent the guns from locking on, but they were tossing enormous amounts of metal at him, and it seemed like only a matter of time. Perry juked left, leaping over the stream of bullets, then dashed forward, toward the machine. It was thirty feet tall with reverse-joint legs, bulky weapons up on the shoulders and no ¡®head¡¯ to speak of, though thin, lanky arms were down at the sides, ending in articulated fingers. Those held weapons too, what looked like oversized pistols, but these weren¡¯t firing at him, only held loosely as the shoulder-mounted guns fired on him. The ¡®handheld¡¯ pistols raised as soon as he was within a hundred feet, and those locked onto him at once. Perry was staring down the barrels, ready to try a mad dash beneath the legs that was going to be hampered by scraggly undergrowth, when the rapid fire of the shoulder-mounted guns finally stopped. The pistols remained aimed squarely at his face. ¡°Identify yourself,¡± came a voice through his headset, digitized oddly, barely human. ¡°Peregrin Holzmann,¡± said Perry. ¡°Independent, unaffiliated, wouldn¡¯t harm a fly.¡± The pistols stayed pointed at his body. He was keyed up, and thought he might be able to dodge out of the way, but not if he needed to react. He¡¯d have to pre-empt the attack, dodge and then fling himself forward, slice through something vital that wasn¡¯t shielded ¡ª except most of it was shielded, no hoses or wires on the outside, nothing that looked like plastic instead of metal. The best option, if it came down to a fight, was to simply run away and hope that wild movements could throw off the aim of the guns. If there was someone inside the mech, Perry couldn¡¯t see them. The voice was masked and didn¡¯t have a robot¡¯s cadence, but seemed to have been run through so many processes that it was difficult to make out anything at all about it. There were small bubbles and nodules on the outside that looked like they might be cameras or sensors, but it was hard to tell. ¡°I¡¯m placing you under arrest,¡± said the voice. ¡°Step out of your ¡­ micromech.¡± ¡°Takes me ten minutes,¡± said Perry, trying to stay calm. He looked backward, at the beetles, which looked much larger now that he was on the ground. ¡°What weapons do you have onboard?¡± asked the voice. There was a little bit of an accent, hard to place with the robotic overtones. It must have been deliberate cloaking, because anything accidental would have been cleaned up by March. ¡°I have the sword and a shoulder-mounted small-caliber gun, which is currently non-functional,¡± said Perry. It had been damaged in the fight with the grandmaster, and hadn¡¯t been fixed yet. Either Perry had missed some pieces in the mud, or it needed to be reseated in its housing, like a bone being reset. ¡°I have a small drone that slots into the back, but it¡¯s not a weapon.¡± There was a period of silence from the mech, which Perry assumed was either intensive thinking or communication with someone else over radio. March said nothing though. ¡°State your top speed,¡± said the voice. ¡°In the air, it¡¯s maybe thirty-five miles an hour,¡± said Perry. ¡°On the ground, sixty.¡± ¡°What is a mile?¡± asked the voice. ¡°A mile is from a different system of measure,¡± March quickly replied in Perry¡¯s voice. ¡°It¡¯s roughly equivalent to a tenth-famen.¡± There was another long pause. ¡°What is the weight of your micromech?¡± ¡°The suit weighs,¡± Perry began, and let March finish. Apparently it was ¡®eleven ten-lod¡¯. It was more or less seamless, and happily, March had played along. ¡°Climb onboard,¡± said the voice from the mech as it dipped slightly. ¡°Any damage to this mech will result in your life being forfeit.¡± Perry nodded, then realized maybe that didn¡¯t mean the same thing to whoever was in the mech. He jumped high into the air, out of the way of the pistols, then found a position on the back of the mech. There were, surprisingly, handholds and footholds between the big shoulder guns. When the mech started moving, Perry was glad he¡¯d secured himself. It rose into the air with a single leap, then began a mad dash through the strange greenery. He wasn¡¯t sure what kind of speed it was doing, but there was a good chance that it was faster than he could have moved, in spite of being four or five times taller than he was. They passed by lakes and rivers, through areas where huge pods were releasing fluffy seeds into the heavy winds, and went over a hill that led into a large plain with thick mud and crawling vines that the mech ripped up. Most of the creatures Perry saw were oversized, and almost all of them were insectile, lumbering creatures with hard chitin eating what seemed like impossible amounts of greenery. Twice, he saw something that had fur, but these were smaller, more like squirrels or housecats. ¡°Sir, the radio transmissions I¡¯ve been receiving are, unfortunately, encrypted in a much more secure way than those on the space station,¡± said March and the mech dashed along with no signs of stopping. ¡°Nonetheless, this armored contraption appears to be communicating with someone at what I suppose will be our destination.¡± ¡°I think this is our way in,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll let them arrest me, but I won¡¯t let them take you.¡± ¡°I should hope not, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°After our misadventure in the last world, I shouldn¡¯t like to think that we¡¯d be separated again.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°You understand that, that we¡¯ve moved worlds?¡± ¡°Respectfully, I do not accept it,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I find the notion of moving between worlds ridiculous and unscientific. Nonetheless, it is the only method of reconciling many of the continuous stream of errors I¡¯ve been recording, and as such, I have elected to indulge this insanity for the time being.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯ll make things easier. And you can do that with the sword too? Accept that it¡¯s magic?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve heard you say it on many occasions, too numerous to list, but I cannot accept that ¡®magic¡¯ is the answer to every error I¡¯ve experienced. I believe that way lies madness.¡± ¡°I can turn into a wolf,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, you¡¯ve seen me do it.¡± There was dead silence from the AI. Whatever March was thinking, he wasn¡¯t thinking it out loud. This planet had a moon, two of them, but they were small things, one no larger than a bright star, the other appearing only about a third the size of Earth¡¯s moon. Perry was going to be short on moonlight, but he wasn¡¯t even sure that he could turn into the wolf again, not with the Wolf Vessel currently sitting where March¡¯s microfusion reactor was supposed to go. It was entirely possible that avenue had been cut off entirely. The trip took an hour, which was much longer than Perry would have liked to be holding onto the metal bars on the outside of a mech that was racing across the landscape. They could have talked, but the person arresting him apparently had other things to focus on, or possibly other conversations to have over radio. Perry saw it from far away, though he didn¡¯t realize the scale of the thing until they started to close the distance. It was something like a long cruiseliner, with multiple decks and portholes, done in industrial grays, but it was moving over land instead of in the sea, crawling along like a millipede, each leg large enough that the mech Perry was riding could have slipped beneath it. There were also, Perry noted, all kinds of armaments sprouting off the millipede, a combination of huge guns that could surely have blown a lake-sized hole in the ground, and smaller ones with long barrels, looking like they¡¯d taken some inspiration from the reeds he¡¯d seen growing where he¡¯d landed. It was a city with legs, and unmistakably built for war. From what he could tell, this was likely to be his home for the next while. Chapter 63 - Beneath the Metal Skin The mech didn¡¯t close the distance to the millipede city right away. There was a door at the back of the millipede, like a butt-flap, which probably led into a hangar of some kind if he had to guess. The area around the flap was replete with guns of all kinds, the most heavily defended part of the moving millipede, which reinforced the idea that it was probably one of the main entrances. ¡°Explain where the micromech came from,¡± said the voice. The mech was walking now, but only enough to keep pace with the enormous moving machine. ¡°It¡¯s going to take a long time to explain,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± said the voice. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how much to explain. He seemed outgunned in a very literal sense, even if the technology on the space station wasn¡¯t that advanced. March had blown through their encryption and harvested everything there was to harvest, and even this mech seemed like it was a step down from the power armor he wore, in sophistication if not firepower. Information was one of his advantages, and it wouldn¡¯t serve to give it up lightly. ¡°Are you aware of the existence of the multiverse?¡± asked Perry, which was a hell of an opener. ¡°We are aware in principle,¡± said the voice. ¡°I came here from another world, though not on purpose,¡± said Perry. ¡°The armor I wear came from there.¡± There was a long pause. Finally, the voice came through, still digitally masked. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°It was an accident, like I said,¡± replied Perry. ¡°No, the micromech,¡± said the voice. ¡°Why do you have it? What design constraints led to its construction?¡± Perry paused, and once again, March took that as his cue to speak up in Perry¡¯s voice. ¡°Power armor doctrine was driven by a need for mobility and versatility as well as operation within confined, human-centric environments such as residences.¡± There was another pause. ¡°What powers the micromech?¡± ¡°That¡¯s something we can talk about later,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think we¡¯d have a more fruitful relationship if it were possible for us to talk as equals. It¡¯s going to be difficult to do that if I¡¯m under arrest.¡± ¡°You seek refuge?¡± asked the voice. ¡°I do,¡± said Perry. ¡°A place to sleep, a place to eat, some information about this world, and ideally, someone to call a friend.¡± There was another long pause. ¡°We are within effective range of numerous weapons. Compliance is the only path forward.¡± Perry looked at the ass end of the moving city-ship. There were people on the decks, some of them looking at him, small as ants from that distance until Marchand tracked Perry¡¯s eyes and zoomed in on the small figures. They were blonde-haired and pretty normal looking, though they didn¡¯t fit the profile of an aircraft carrier or a Disney cruise, instead running the gamut of ages. There were quite a few children among them, and a woman with a baby. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°The moment I landed on this planet, that suit and the information contained in its hard drives became the single most valuable object within light-years.¡± He hoped that translated, or that March was making the translations on the fly. ¡°I¡¯ll comply, but I have conditions. One of the conditions is that I won¡¯t remove the armor until after I¡¯m confident that you¡¯re not going to try to kill me or take my armor. Everything is heavily encrypted and won¡¯t work for anyone but me anyway.¡± He was hoping that they didn¡¯t think the next obvious thought, which was that he might surrender control of the power armor under torture or the threat of it, or that his encryption might be slightly less bulletproof than he was saying. Both were real concerns, but he was hoping they could make peace anyhow. There was another long silence, but this time, rather than a reply from the mech, the butt-flap of the centipede cruiser opened up. The interior was massive, four stories tall, and Perry very briefly saw the other mechs, rows of them, with sizes ranging from the ten feet to a hunched-over fifty, nothing in the way of standardization ¡ª but what his eyes were drawn to was the small four-legged mech that came slipping out of the back on legs that looked like they¡¯d be way too thin. This new mech was shorter than the one he was riding, but much wider, with a thick belly that was kept off the ground by long legs. Its motion was what Perry could only think of as dorky, an awkward little goose-step that he imagined might have had some kind of reason to it. ¡°Go inside,¡± said the voice over the comms. ¡°Power down weapons systems. This is where you¡¯ll be quarantined. The entrance is on the top.¡± Perry didn¡¯t need to be told twice, even though he was primed to think of this as a trap. The suit had recovered at least another ten minutes of oxygen, which would help keep him from being poisoned in the short term. The filters would ideally do the rest, and those had been freshly cleaned during his time at Moon Gate, and were maybe auto-cleaning given he was second sphere. He went over to the wide-bellied mech, which had stopped in place for him, then leapt up into the air, sword in hand, and landed on the roof of it. He was holding off on actually using the sword¡¯s flight for the time being, because the existence of magic was going to be a whole different conversation. The hatch was easy enough to figure out, and Perry climbed down the ladder, into the interior of the mech. You know what, he thought, if these people have a special prison mech with some way to gas me to death, fair play to them. The interior didn¡¯t look like a prison, it looked like a pretty minimal hotel room with some screens in place of windows. They showed the exterior view from around the mech, and if they were meant to take the place of windows for aesthetic reasons, they failed at that. The image wasn¡¯t even high def. Aside from the ¡®windows¡¯, the place had a kitchen, a tiny bathroom with a sink, toilet, and shower awkwardly shoved together, and a fold-down bunk bed, with the remainder of the space being taken up by storage. Maybe a better comparison than a hotel room would be a tiny house, though in a very real sense, the mech was a tiny house, minimal square footage translated into as much room for living as possible. The whole thing swayed surprisingly little as the mech kept moving. ¡°Is this wise, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I have no idea,¡± said Perry. ¡°Keep radio silent, don¡¯t let them know you exist yet, and don¡¯t give anything away unless you have to.¡± ¡°You are aware that I was built with military matters in mind, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m partly talking to myself, I wasn¡¯t thinking you were going to give any cryptographic keys away. We¡¯re going to pretend, for as long as we can, that we don¡¯t know anything about magic, that we¡¯re not thresholders, just more mundane world hoppers, and ideally do that without any actual lies. When the other thresholder shows up, if they haven¡¯t shown up already, we don¡¯t want to stick out like a sore thumb, which we definitely do with the blue power armor. It doesn¡¯t seem fashionable in this world.¡± Some of the mechs he¡¯d seen were painted, and some in bright colors, but most weren¡¯t. ¡°If another thresholder has already been on this world for a great deal of time, might it not be much more likely that this is a trap?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. That hadn¡¯t occurred to him. He¡¯d thought he was dealing with a civilization rather than an individual. That had been reinforced by all the looky-loos on the deck. ¡°You¡¯re monitoring signals?¡± ¡°I am, sir, but as I¡¯ve said, encryption is tight,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They appear to have learned a thing or two in the past three hundred years. As an aside, you would do well to assume that all communication within this ¡­ facility ¡­ is being recorded by third parties.¡± The word ¡®year¡¯ surprised him, given they had different words for other units. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can¡¯t mute our conversations to the outside?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a matter of degree, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°With the level of technological sophistication on display here, no, I don¡¯t believe I can keep us secure against a prepared and determined eavesdropper.¡± ¡°Noted,¡± said Perry. Perry¡¯s misgivings about that were interrupted when the hatch up top opened up and a woman began climbing down. She was some flavor of Scandinavian, at least to look at her, with long blonde hair and an athletic build, tall and toned. The phrase ¡®Nazi poster child¡¯ popped into his head, but he was pretty sure the Nazis hadn¡¯t liked their women like this. She dropped the last few feet off the ladder and turned to look at Perry. She had on a tank top and cargo shorts, with heavy black boots made from some kind of plastic instead of leather. Her eyes were light blue, and she smiled at Perry, then approached closer. ¡°There,¡± she said. She pointed to herself. ¡°Someone to call a friend.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°Peregrin Holzmann.¡± ¡°Yes, you said,¡± she replied. She had an accent, impossible to place, though Perry thought it sounded a bit like Swedish, maybe. That was what he was going to assume, until told otherwise, and since these people were probably descended from those on the spaceship, they had come from a world that was only sort of like Earth. ¡°Brigitta Karlquist. Sorry for earlier.¡± ¡°You ¡­ were piloting the mech?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± she nodded. ¡°And now I¡¯m quarantined here with you, two cycles.¡± She looked the armor up and down, then got in closer, examining every little piece of it from the cameras to the joints. ¡°Another world, you said?¡± ¡°How does a quarantine work if it¡¯s just two people?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not enough to see whether you¡¯re sick, we need to know if you¡¯ll get us sick too,¡± she replied. She had gotten into a squat and was looking at the ¡®boots¡¯ of the armor. ¡°I volunteered.¡± She looked up at him. ¡°And you said you wanted a friend.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t think it would be like this,¡± said Perry. ¡°This promena had its weapons stripped,¡± said Briirgitta. ¡°And there are plenty of guns pointed at us.¡± She pointed to one of the screens, which showed the back end of the millipede. There were definitely weapons pointed at them. ¡°And if something happens to me, they go off.¡± She pointed to a black bracelet on her wrist, which Perry gathered was probably a Fitbit or something like it. ¡°Got it,¡± said Perry. ¡°So the stick is still there.¡± ¡°The stick?¡± asked Briirgitta, cocking her head to the side. ¡°The stick you¡¯ll hit me with if I misbehave,¡± Perry replied. ¡°Ah,¡± she nodded. ¡°Yes, it¡¯s good to have sticks.¡± She got on her tiptoes to look at the suit¡¯s helmet. ¡°Are you going to take that off?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not yet.¡± ¡°You¡¯re worried we¡¯ll steal it, even though you¡¯ve said you locked it?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. Brigitta shrugged. ¡°Fine.¡± She was trying to look him in the eyes, but couldn¡¯t decide where to look. ¡°How long can you stay in it?¡± ¡°A long time,¡± said Perry. She clucked her tongue and continued looking him over. ¡°Are you human beneath there?¡± You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°More or less.¡± ¡°Because if there¡¯s another world, is there a reason it should have humans instead of aliens?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯m human.¡± ¡°More or less?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°I don¡¯t know what DNA testing would show,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe the same, maybe not.¡± Perry had no idea whether the spirit root or being a werewolf would change anything, or if the alternate world he came from would have different genetic markers. Probably? He also didn¡¯t know if they would call it DNA, and expected she would call it something different. ¡°So you poop?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°I what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Poop?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Defecate?¡± She pointed at the toilet. ¡°We do it there, liquid and solid waste, dumped into management. Your suit handles that?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. There was an option for a catheter, but Perry had never used one. He had pissed himself while wearing the suit, early on when he was playing a knight on Seraphinus, and had then spent most of a day cleaning it up and washing his skinsuit. That had been a nightmare, but it had allowed him to win a siege. ¡°Then you need to come out soon enough,¡± said Brigitta, nodding to herself. ¡°You have water, in the suit?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. There was a small bladder which he¡¯d filled with boiled water. It was just about empty. From Perry¡¯s experience, it was best to save the last few drops to wet his mouth when he was feeling uncomfortably dehydrated. Per the original design, the internal bladder wasn¡¯t supposed to be reused much if at all, but overengineering had meant that he¡¯d gone half a year on the same wonder-plastic bladder being repeatedly filled and emptied, sometimes with less than pure water. ¡°Hmm,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I¡¯ll wait then, for you to feel safe.¡± She went over to the fold out bunk beds. With a smooth motion she unfolded the bottom one from the wall, then sat down on it, laying back. ¡°You won¡¯t talk to me until the armor is off?¡± asked Perry. She shrugged. ¡°We can talk.¡± ¡°I¡¯m a foreigner,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m under the impression you don¡¯t have a lot of them here. I have things you probably want ¡ª information ¡ª and you have things that I want, mostly information, protection, food, water ¡ª¡± ¡°Kitchen is there,¡± said Brigitta, pointing at the tiny food prep area. ¡°Bottom drawers have meals, just heat and eat. Water is triple-filtered, same stuff we drink on the Natrix.¡± She pointed above her. ¡°Place to sleep too, if you need it.¡± Perry kept his eyes on her. She wasn¡¯t treating this like it was high diplomacy, nor like he could kill her in an instant, nor like she had giant guns pointed right at them and ready to fire. She was, in fact, lounging on the bunk bed, propped up by her elbows. ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. He removed the helmet first, and finally got his first smell of the place. It was sharply metallic and synthetic in a dirty way, sealants that hadn¡¯t quite set and lubricants that were evaporating or aeresolizing. Small fans were circulating air, and he could smell the filters. Mostly though, he could smell her. Brigitta had a salty tang to her, from sweat that wasn¡¯t quite dried, but there were so many other smells layered on top of her that it was hard to make out. She smelled of gunpowder and grease, of metal filings and corroded bolts, and there was sawdust in there too, mixed with a bit of dried blood. He hadn¡¯t realized it when he¡¯d been in his suit, but she was fresh out of a mech suit, where she must have been for hours. ¡°You¡¯re handsome,¡± she said. She was looking at his face. ¡°Lots of hair. Kempt.¡± Perry had a bit of a beard, which he¡¯d had trouble keeping in check since becoming a werewolf. Probably there was some kind of meridian that controlled hair growth he could try to strangle, but it hadn¡¯t been a priority. ¡°Thanks,¡± said Perry. She was beautiful, in that tall Nordic way. She had sharp incisors and a way of smiling that showed them off, and she was laying on the bed like it was an invitation. Perry was probably reading it wrong, he was well aware of that, but he felt an instant attraction to her. The attraction was soured a moment later when he realized the similarities to Richter. Richter had been an engineer, a highly paid one who had made her fortune and then bought her way into fabrication and testing of power armor. She had been, in some sense, a mech pilot, if you counted the power armor as a mech. She¡¯d had the same sort of curiosity that Brigitta was showing, a probing inquisitive nature that had been directed toward what she considered to be one of the greatest discoveries a person could make. Perry took off the rest of the armor, feeling a bit more circumspect. He was left in clothes from Worm Gate, silks that clung to his skin and helped to keep the suit from chafing, not that it was much of an issue anymore. Once he was free from the armor, all its individual pieces removed, he stretched out as a matter of habit, reaching up to touch the ceiling and then rotating his joints. ¡°Can I see the armor?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°I feel like you won¡¯t want to talk about anything else,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re right we don¡¯t get many foreigners,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Another world, I don¡¯t know if I believe that, but the armor I do believe, because I see it here. And you, I think, are probably just a man like other men.¡± ¡°I guess I might be,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know what your men are like.¡± ¡°So can I see the armor?¡± asked Brigitta. Her eyes had gone to it again. ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to get something to eat and drink. Don¡¯t take anything apart.¡± Perry took a metal cup from the shelves and filled it from the sink, sniffing the water before he drank any. There was a mild chemical smell to it, maybe bleach or some other disinfectant, or fluoride if that was something they added in. He questioned how much it had actually been triple filtered. Maybe he was smelling whatever they used to clean the tank. It was still a step up from Teaguewater. The meals were in a tiny fridge, one made of metal rather than plastic, with a build up of ice near the top. Each of the meals was inside a metal container, sealed with a little latch, and the first one that Perry opened was three kinds of sludge, one brown, one orange, and one white. The smells were good though, with the orange one sweet and spiced, and once he found a metal fork, he was quickly eating, not bothering to figure out the heater. Meanwhile, Brigitta was looking over the armor. ¡°This is a failure point,¡± she said, turning the helmet to Perry. ¡°What happens when the screen goes dark?¡± ¡°It¡¯s resilient,¡± said Perry. ¡°Mostly, the screen doesn¡¯t go dark. And if it does, I take the helmet off.¡± He ate some more as she poked around. ¡°How do you control it?¡± she asked. ¡°What do you mean?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It amplifies strength, you move, it moves.¡± ¡°No,¡± Brigitta, shaking her head. ¡°It¡¯s more than that, there¡¯s a weapon in the shoulder, and there are cameras, microphones, all sorts of things, filters, air intake, but ¡ª how does it work?¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s ¡­ complicated.¡± The real answer was the AI co-pilot, but he wanted to keep March under wraps for as long as possible. ¡°Fine, keep your secrets,¡± said Brigitta with a shrug. ¡°In time though, yes?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Perry. He looked down at his empty metal tray. ¡°Can I have seconds? It¡¯s been a while since I¡¯ve eaten.¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Brigitta with a wave. Perry opened the second pack. If the first pack had been potatoes, pumpkin, and pork, then the second pack was spinach, rice, and some chicken. That wasn¡¯t actually what they were, his nose was well aware of that, but he couldn¡¯t place what the foods were, if they were anything he would recognize. ¡°Alright, tell me about you and your people,¡± he said. ¡°Hrm,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°You know nothing?¡± ¡°More or less,¡± said Perry. ¡°You came to this world without a clue?¡± she asked. Perry nodded. ¡°The planet is Esperide,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Fire on one side, ice on the other, and a thin strip of moving life between them. That¡¯s where we are now. Go too far west, you get frozen, too far east, you get burnt. Our people were space-farers, with ships that could hop between the stars, but one day the big station exploded and stranded us down here. Natrix is our home, more or less, moving to keep from having too much sun shining down on us, like the plants and animals move.¡± ¡°The plants move?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Some,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°The winds move east to west, and carry seeds, so many plants grow in the ice then mature in the twilight zone until they get too hot and toss their seeds into the wind. The movement is slow, a tenth-famen a cycle, two hundred cycles for the westernmost portion of the twilight zone to become the easternmost. We migrate, as the animals do. Most of the time the Natrix stays still, a month in one place before a week of travel to the next.¡± Perry¡¯s translation kicked in late for ¡®tenth-famen¡¯, which was about a mile, and ¡®cycle¡¯, which was about a day. He gave a silent prayer of thankfulness that he wouldn¡¯t have to bother with learning their units of measure, because he was pretty sure tenth-famen had already been heard and forgotten. ¡°You have a lot of guns for nomads,¡± said Perry. ¡°We are not nomads,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°We are temporarily displaced star-travelers.¡± ¡°With a return to the stars on the horizon?¡± asked Perry. Brigitta shrugged. ¡°It is the work of generations.¡± She got up from the bed and stretched out, long arms to the sides, and when she lifted them up behind her head, Perry saw her exposed midriff. When she finished the stretch, she stared at him. ¡°No, we¡¯re not getting off this planet.¡± ¡°Why not?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Your people have crossed universes,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°According to you, anyway. Could you take us with you?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t really have it ¡­ under control.¡± ¡°I thought not,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°You don¡¯t come across as someone who got here on purpose. Not a diplomat, maybe a soldier, not prepared for first contact.¡± Perry shrugged. ¡°I did my best.¡± ¡°And in your world, do they have a way to get across the stars?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°We just had the planet we were born on.¡± ¡°Our people had spread far and wide in our home system,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°We had a population of a hundred billion. They found a way to slip out of time and space, at great expense, projects so large a single person couldn¡¯t hold even a fraction of a fraction of them in their head. With all their might, they became capable of colonies on other worlds.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± Perry said. ¡°We have nine thousand people,¡± said Brigitta. She turned to the monitors. ¡°Esperide is not a planet like the one our ancestors knew. It¡¯s not a gentle planet, it¡¯s a place of extremes, constant motion, the threat of heat and cold. I could spend a day telling you about the problems with logistics, with resource extraction, getting anything more than fuel, water, and food.¡± She turned back to Perry. ¡°The wildlife here is a constant threat.¡± ¡°The bugs?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The bugs,¡± nodded Brigitta. ¡°You saw the infants feeding. When they get large and fat in the waning twilight, they move on us, large groups all at once. They die, but it¡¯s a constant drain, and comes with costs.¡± ¡°You were out there to kill the infants,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s why you had so many guns?¡± Brigitta paused for just long enough to be suspicious. ¡°It¡¯s one of the reasons I was out there. Maybe someday the work of generations will come to fruition, maybe we¡¯ll spread across this ribbon of liveable land, have a hundred like the Natrix, but we¡¯re staving off a death of a thousand cuts.¡± She sat back down on the bunk bed. ¡°You understand my interest in your micromech?¡± ¡°I do,¡± said Perry. ¡°And whatever help I can offer to help you get off this planet, to reunite with the civilization your ancestors came from ¡ª¡± ¡°It¡¯s unclear whether they still exist,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°The space station was struck down three hundred years ago. Travel between the stars was rare, but not that rare. From what we know, there were yearly journeys to refuel and resupply, or to bring people home. Either we were abandoned, or they found themselves in no position to help us. Reunion isn¡¯t what we hope for.¡± ¡°A more verdant home then,¡± said Perry with a nod. Brigitta nodded back. ¡°You don¡¯t happen to have brought a wealth of schematics and knowledge between worlds, did you?¡± asked Brigitta. Perry frowned. ¡°Before I get to that ¡­ there are other people, like me, that travel between worlds. We¡¯re opposed in one way or another. When I said I needed food, water, and a place to rest my head, I was leaving out the other help that I might need. Access to your surveillance capability would be a start, and the use of your guns would go a long way, but a pact ¡ª a promise ¡ª is what I¡¯m after.¡± ¡°Worlds?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°More than one?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is the sixth world I¡¯ve been to. There will be someone like me, probably without the micromech, with technology or powers or something. And if you can protect me, then I can do my best to solve all your problems. You let me know who I can talk to, who I can make deals with.¡± Brigitta pointed at herself. ¡°You have authority?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I do,¡± she said. For a moment it seemed as though she might not elaborate. Instead, she crossed her arms. ¡°I run engineering.¡± She said it like a boast. Perry thought about this for a moment. ¡°You¡¯re young,¡± he said. It was hard to peg, but she was, at most, in her mid-thirties, and maybe much younger. ¡°What of it?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Senior positions go to people with experience,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s all.¡± Senior positions also went to people who knew someone, like the daughter of someone important. ¡°I apprenticed when I was ten,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I have fifteen years experience. The new breed, they¡¯re all with my input. The updates to the Natrix, that¡¯s me. Chemical processing lines, the new maintenance schema, it¡¯s fallen on my shoulders.¡± Perry was watching her. The defense response was almost immediate, and he had no idea whether it was backed up by material reality. The whole thing smelled funny to him, which was compounding with the other things she wasn¡¯t telling him. On the one hand, she seemed pretty straightforward, maybe even fun, in the way Richter had been. On the other hand, it was no coincidence she¡¯d put herself in a position to be the one to talk to him, alone, on behalf of her whole colony. Maybe it wasn¡¯t a calculated move, but it was the kind of thing that he would have done, or that someone might have done. Maybe she was just the sort of person who took charge and got things done, and getting all the negotiation done with him was a part of that. ¡°Heavy burdens,¡± said Perry. ¡°I know a thing or two about that.¡± ¡°You help us get off this planet, we¡¯ll protect you with our lives, and more importantly, our guns,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Deal,¡± said Perry. Chapter 64 - Moving Up Perry liked her. It helped that she was, objectively, smokin¡¯ hot, or maybe just subjectively smokin¡¯ hot. She had a lot of enthusiasm for a lot of things, whether that was her planet, its people, or the mechs, and a lot of curiosity about Perry and the worlds he¡¯d seen. She had opinions, which Perry had always found attractive. The other big thing was probably a result of the last world. He¡¯d been wound up tight like a spring, and it was very clear that they did things differently here. For one thing, being alone in a room together seemed like it wasn¡¯t even remotely cause for concern or comment, not even when Brigitta slipped into the shower. She didn¡¯t seem to think anything of being naked in front of him, and when she¡¯d dried off, she got dressed with some clothes from a drawer. Perry tried not to be a creep about it, in part because he was worried about falling for a honey pot again. He caught her looking when he took a shower of his own, so he didn¡¯t think it was entirely innocent. His mind kept going to Richter, like a record skipping. She hadn¡¯t been at the forefront of his mind in the last world, for a variety of reasons, but this was all bringing old memories back to him. He wondered how much the hand of fate was involved. There was a hand of fate, he was pretty sure, though he didn¡¯t have the evidence to prove it. Thresholders got matched up with people somehow, and according to Maya, the ¡®spell¡¯ or whatever it was had been intended to get heroes (and villains) to where they were needed. How it decided that and how effective it was were both open questions, but the people Perry had gone up against were, with the exception of Cosme, people he¡¯d definitely skewer through the heart without thinking twice. He was reconsidering whether allies were a part of the equation, but if they were, Brigitta was definitely an ally, someone with power and connections who would help him out against the other thresholder. Of course, he¡¯d thought the same about Luo Yanhua, and she¡¯d been a less than stellar ally to him. He was going to go into this with watchful eyes, cautious of getting thrown under a bus ¡ª or thrown under a giant caterpillar city, as the case might be. ¡°Two worlds, both alike?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Do you think there are other alternates out there?¡± ¡°I have no idea,¡± said Perry. ¡°I would guess so, but there are only supposed to be around a million worlds, so it seems like there can¡¯t be too many alternates.¡± ¡°No other version of this planet, other versions of us?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Not likely,¡± said Perry with a shrug. ¡°I¡¯ve spoken with a number of other thresholders, and while I don¡¯t trust their accounts for one reason or another, that remains the only time I¡¯ve heard of a world that¡¯s entirely a copy of another world. Even our homeworlds, which seem somewhat similar to each other, have huge differences.¡± Brigitta didn¡¯t know much about her homeworld. She was at least ten generations removed from it, so it was more a matter of myth and legend than a place she could put a name to, even if they did have surviving records. It would have been like Perry trying to talk about what colonial America was like. He probably would have mentioned Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, who weren¡¯t good starting points for a discussion of trade, culture, and society in the American colonies, not when his knowledge was deep as a puddle. Similarly, Brigitta tended to talk about specific stories, almost always with some key figures as exemplars, and most of those from the very tail end of her homeworld¡¯s history. To hear her tell it, they had been confined to dark and inhospitable islands, gray rock with poor farming, deep oceans with little fishing, and had eked out a miserable existence for a very long time until one day the jet stream shifted and unleashed them on the wider world. They had no natural predators and hundreds of years of careful farming and fishing in harsh conditions, running through their late evolutionary history on hard mode. Subduing the planet was easy for them, and they¡¯d never had too much in the way of division among their people. Perry was skeptical, but kept his mouth shut. It sounded like the sort of story you told to bury harsh colonialism in the past. In a sense, it didn¡¯t matter, but he was halfway hoping that March¡¯s data retrieval had uncovered something a bit more concrete. He didn¡¯t want the fantastical history to be proven false, but he suspected that it was. Brigitta cared a lot more about the current state of things with her people. A number of people had recently been elevated to positions of seniority, including her, and there was a bit of resentment about that. Perry was trying to read between the lines, but without a second opinion it was impossible to say whether this was a soft coup or just a wave of support for a few younger people. She was only twenty-five, Perry¡¯s age, and the other two weren¡¯t much older, a navigator, who guided their leggy ship, and a farmer, who was really more the person in charge of scavenging given that almost nothing on the planet grew well in captivity. ¡°But the head engineer is also in charge of, uh, population control of the bugs?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Combat, yes,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But that¡¯s because we¡¯re the ones with the mechs.¡± ¡°And ¡­ there¡¯s some kind of reason that it¡¯s got to be you that pilots the mech rather than someone else?¡± he asked. ¡°How it works on most worlds is that an engineer is different from a mechanic is different from a pilot.¡± He couldn¡¯t help but recall Cosme¡¯s scientist, Wesley, firing off the lightning machine. Maybe it wasn¡¯t such a hard and fast rule. There were plenty of counterexamples he could have given. ¡°No, it¡¯s always us,¡± said Brigitta, shaking her head. ¡°I designed the mech, I know its systems inside and out, I can identify problems before they start and fix them in the field if I need to.¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°And if you die out there?¡± ¡°Then we get a new head engineer,¡± she said with a shrug, as though it was nothing. ¡°I have two replacements. But I¡¯ve thought about how it would be if we had a hundred thousand people, or a million. If we did, it would be easier not to get ensnared in the problem of having someone who¡¯s made herself too crucial.¡± ¡°And you can take two days off to quarantine with me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not really, no,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But I wouldn¡¯t trust this to anyone else.¡± She sounded like a bad manager to Perry, the kind that couldn¡¯t or wouldn¡¯t delegate and much preferred to be down in the trenches rather than giving orders. That sort of person could inspire loyalty and could definitely make herself utterly indispensable. ¡°You have an apprentice then?¡± asked Perry. She held up her fingers. ¡°Four of them. They¡¯re on their own.¡± ¡°And being on the frontlines, that¡¯s something all engineers are expected to do, or just you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°My apprentices have mechs of their own,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°They have their own ideas about what works best, their own designs.¡± ¡°That¡¯s crazy to me,¡± said Perry. ¡°It sounds like something that, uh ¡­ alright, so I don¡¯t know that much about production or engineering, but there was this country in my world called Germany, and during this big war they were in, they were trying to build tanks, but there were constant changes to the specifications, which meant there was no standardization, which meant that repairs were much more difficult. You¡¯d have two tanks that were meant to be the same model, but they¡¯d have different cupolas for the turret, different cooling systems, different ammo storage, whatever. And their tanks were considered superior, they just got steamrolled by the other guys, who were making a lot more tanks which were generally much more reliable and didn¡¯t need complex supply chains.¡± Brigitta blinked at him. ¡°What¡¯s a tank?¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s a name for an armored fighting vehicle, usually with treads instead of wheels. Called that because during the war they were invented for, they wanted to mislead spies, and then the name just sort of stuck.¡± ¡°Treads ¡­ around wheels?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°To be able to move over rough terrain, through mud, stuff like that.¡± ¡°Could you draw me a schematic?¡± she asked. ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. He put on the helmet while Birgitta found what looked very much like a stylus. He took it awkwardly in his fingers and made a few test markings, which showed up as black lines against one of the screens. Onto Perry¡¯s vision, March overlaid a schematic of a tank, which looked unlike any tank Perry had ever seen before. The center of gravity seemed too high, and the barrel too long, but he drew it all the same, tracing the image in his vision, which shifted and warped based on where he was looking. The stylus didn¡¯t need to be placed against anything, only the ground, so Perry spent some minutes cross-legged until he was done. Brigitta had cocked her head to the side and looked at it while he was drawing. ¡°Like an angry little beetle,¡± she said. ¡°Er,¡± said Perry as he finished it by putting in a little drawing of a human for scale. ¡°Meant for flat land, slow-moving targets, protection for the pilot,¡± she said, fingers tracing the diagram. ¡°Designed to take fire?¡± ¡°From smaller rounds, yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°And it¡¯s not one pilot, it¡¯s several.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°We¡¯ve tried our hand at squads. It¡¯s not necessary.¡± ¡°Why not?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Isn¡¯t your attention split too much?¡± ¡°There are equations,¡± said Brigitta. Her eyes hadn¡¯t left the crude drawing. She turned to the suit and considered Marchand, who was headless without the helmet. ¡°How do they fight against each other, the suits and the tanks? Or do they?¡± ¡°They don¡¯t, not really,¡± said Perry, though this was secondhand information. He hadn¡¯t gone up against a tank, and didn¡¯t really want to. ¡°The suit is for rapid response, more lightweight, vastly more expensive, needs to return to base more often.¡± March gave a small, sarcastic laugh in Perry¡¯s ear. ¡°A tank is built to punch through hard targets for infantry, taking out those things that people wouldn¡¯t really be able to get through. The armor can¡¯t do that, not without armaments. Its role, aside from intimidation, is rapid engagement, especially against infantry.¡± He thought that was mostly correct, and removed the helmet, worried he¡¯d have to get an earful from Marchand. ¡°And what is infantry?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Men with guns,¡± said Perry. ¡°Armor, sometimes, but yes, mostly just men with handheld weapons.¡± ¡°For fighting other men?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Perry. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Brigitta with a nod. ¡°You don¡¯t have that here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Infantry or something like it?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta, shaking her head. ¡°We have police, nothing more. A single person, without armor, or with armor of the sort they could carry, would be ripped to shreds by the mechs.¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t,¡± said Perry. Brigitta looked at Marchand. ¡°You moved quickly. Not so quickly I couldn¡¯t have ended you, I don¡¯t think, but I was impressed. It¡¯s the argument for a micromech, though the armaments you can carry are limited.¡± She looked at the sword and reached out for it before stopping. ¡°May I?¡± ¡°Of course,¡± said Perry. ¡°Look out though, it¡¯s sharp.¡± Brigitta took it and hefted it for a moment, feeling the weight of it, then turned it over in her hands and examined the craftsmanship, especially around the hilt, where most of the finer work had been done. ¡°Curious.¡± ¡°Is it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What¡¯s it meant for?¡± she asked. She turned it around and slowly swept it through the air, practicing a striking motion. Her form was absolutely terrible, though that was to be expected. ¡°Cutting and piercing,¡± said Perry. ¡°What else?¡± ¡°Cutting people?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Unarmored people?¡± ¡°Or armored,¡± said Perry. ¡°It can cut through metal?¡± she asked. She brought her face close to the edge of the blade, then sniffed the metal. ¡°Not really metal, no, though it can leave a pretty good gouge, and enough of those can do something worthwhile,¡± said Perry. ¡°But armor will always have a weak point, a gap, somewhere that isn¡¯t protected as well as other places.¡± ¡°This is true,¡± said Brigitta, but she was frowning all the same. ¡°Not always true. A sphere would have no weak points.¡± ¡°A ¡­ sphere?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Brigitta. ¡°How would that work?¡± asked Perry. ¡°A sphere doesn¡¯t have armaments, even if you could internalize everything else.¡± The power armor could stay self-contained for an hour, with the primary limit being air, and the major output being waste heat, which didn¡¯t come up much. ¡°I would figure out a way,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°If I had to. Better to kill things before they get to you.¡± She frowned at him. ¡°You know that I was miscalibrated, right?¡± ¡°Miscalibrated?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The programming on the shoulder guns,¡± she nodded. ¡°It was set for different targets, larger, slow-moving.¡± She nodded at him, eyes set. ¡°It¡¯s fixed now.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°When?¡± ¡°Before I came in,¡± said Brigitta. Perry stared at her. ¡°How?¡± Brigitta went over to one of the screens, which was showing an exterior view from the mech¡¯s cameras. She pressed a latch that was inset in one of the corners and a keyboard popped out, a brutally mechanical thing, stripped of all accessories, with not even a back cover to it. The internal wires were exposed, and it was attached to the wall with a long wire. Brigitta frowned at it for a moment, then her fingers flew across it, dancing lightly across the keys. The screen changed to show what was clearly code, but Perry couldn¡¯t make heads nor tails of it. It was all brackets and symbols, many of them letters. It took him a moment to realize that there were no line breaks or indentation. ¡°I have no idea what this is,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hrm,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°We¡¯ll have to work to bridge the standards.¡± ¡°I mean, I¡¯m not a programmer, not an engineer,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even if you converted this over to, uh, one of the programming languages that interfaces with my suit, I wouldn¡¯t have the first clue what it meant.¡± Brigitta looked a bit sad for a moment. ¡°Nothing at all? Not even the basics? Childrens¡¯ work?¡± Perry shook his head. ¡°You don¡¯t design, code, build?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°What do you do, aside from fight?¡± ¡°I fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°You said you have knowledge, information,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I do,¡± said Perry. ¡°Most of it stored within my suit, some stored within my brain.¡± His eyes went to the screen. ¡°So you don¡¯t just use the guns, you don¡¯t just understand the algorithm that fires them, you understand it all on such a deep level that you¡¯re capable of altering it in a handful of minutes to correct a design flaw, while you¡¯re in the middle of other things.¡± Brigitta frowned at him. ¡°I don¡¯t think that would be possible for the people where I¡¯m from,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not unless it was a very, very simple problem to fix.¡± ¡°It was,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°The solution we¡¯d been using was specific, not general.¡± It was Perry¡¯s turn to frown. ¡°Alright. But you made the whole mech, all the parts, all the programming, all that stuff? And it¡¯s the case that everyone does that?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta. She seemed perplexed. ¡°And the Natrix,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s huge. It was designed with a population that would be considered tiny by almost any standard, built with limited resources in a hostile environment. I think things might just be ¡­ strange here.¡± If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°Strange how?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°There are things I¡¯m missing, that¡¯s all,¡± said Perry. ¡°But even if you¡¯re an exceptional example of your people, I think maybe you¡¯re above what I would expect. Either it¡¯s genetic engineering deep in your history, a divergence of the species, or something like that.¡± ¡°What¡¯s this ¡®genetic engineering¡¯?¡± asked Brigitta, cocking her head to the side. ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. He tried to say it again, translating his intent this time, but he could feel that it wouldn¡¯t work. They didn¡¯t have genetic engineering, or a word for it. Maybe they had, when they had lived on the station, but if they¡¯d had it, they didn¡¯t anymore. ¡°It¡¯s complicated, a branch of science you haven¡¯t discovered, I guess.¡± ¡°You said engineering,¡± replied Brigitta. She folded her arms. ¡°Not science. Those are different.¡± ¡°Engineering follows science,¡± said Perry. ¡°Science follows engineering,¡± Brigitta countered. ¡°We know enough of our own history to know that. Telescopes allow the study of the stars. Microscopes allow the study of bacteria.¡± Perry looked at one of the still-active screens, the one that showed the millipede-city¡¯s butt. ¡°Tell me about the Natrix. I¡¯ll be living there once the quarantine lifts, right.¡± ¡°You wish to know about its operations? Or its design?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Its people,¡± said Perry. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Nine thousand, as I¡¯ve said. The work of generations goes on. There are many promising apprentices among the little ones. With the Natrix in its current form, there is room for another four thousand people. After that, it will need expansion, but expansion is not difficult, and we have plans in place which will not be too difficult to execute.¡± ¡°Even though you¡¯re worried about death by a thousand cuts?¡± asked Perry. Brigitta shrugged. ¡°A death can happen in many ways.¡± ¡°There¡¯s something you¡¯re not telling me,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are many things we¡¯re not telling each other,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Then we start with smaller things, if that¡¯s what¡¯s needed,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s what I was trying to do, asking what life was like on the Natrix.¡± ¡°Food goes in, shit comes out,¡± said Brigitta with a shrug. ¡°We work on raising the next generation, we maintain the equipment, we do science, we kill the bugs.¡± ¡°That can¡¯t be all it is,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or I guess it might be, if you¡¯re different enough from the humans I know, but ¡­ look, it¡¯s my belief that cultures are driven by material conditions, but even if they are, there are some basic things that are the same between all cultures I¡¯ve ever heard enough about to form an opinion on. Games, do your people have games?¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Karlkunk?¡± ¡°Never heard of it,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s a game, played on a board, with pieces,¡± said Brigitta. Her hands went to the keyboard, almost without conscious thought, and the code vanished from the screen, replaced in an instant by a huge grid of black and white. There were icons on each of the squares, a set of maybe twenty that repeated. ¡°With pieces, usually, but sometimes like this.¡± She tapped some keys, and the board simplified in one section, the icons changing. She kept up with this for a moment, with one side changing, or maybe both sides changing, if it was a two player game, then abandoned it to turn back to Perry. ¡°We have games too,¡± said Perry. ¡°Every world I¡¯ve been to, I¡¯ve found them. See? That¡¯s the starting point, not the big things, like knowing how the sewage system works, or where you get your food from, though I want to know that in time.¡± ¡°Tell me of your games first,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Well,¡± said Perry. He looked around. ¡°If I describe it to you, can you put some images up on the screen?¡± Brigitta snorted. ¡°Do you think we¡¯re incompetent? I suppose you might.¡± She had her fingers ready at the keyboard. Perry described the game of chess to her, and she was fast enough at writing code to program most of it as he spoke. It was astonishing to watch, especially given that she was talking to him at the same time and flying blind. She asked a few clarifying questions, and more symbols and letters were added to the screen. ¡°This is a working game of chess?¡± asked Perry when he was finished talking and she was finished typing. ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Or, it should be.¡± ¡°You have confidence that it will work perfectly the first time we play it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Anyone who tells you they are confident without tests is lying.¡± Perry nodded. Not superhuman then. ¡°Then let¡¯s play.¡± Perry had been thinking that maybe she was just orders of magnitude more intelligent than a normal human, some kind of super genius who looked human but was something more. He crushed her, then crushed her again, and while her play improved, it was the improvement of someone who had gone from just learning the basic rules of chess to someone who had played a game, not the crazy improvement he had an inkling he would find. ¡°How are you doing that?¡± she asked after her fourth loss. ¡°I¡¯ve played the game a lot,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m nothing exceptional.¡± He had been in chess club in high school, and played a lot during the pandemic. He¡¯d hit a wall at 1400 Elo and stopped playing not long after, but the four games they¡¯d played were shaking off some of the rust. ¡°We play until I win,¡± said Brigitta, looking at the screen. ¡°That might take a while,¡± said Perry. He didn¡¯t smirk, instead keeping the second sphere calm benevolence on his face, but she looked at him as though he had smirked. ¡°How many times do you think you can win?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are fundamentals of the game that you would need to learn to have a hope of beating me. And I¡¯m not even really that good. So I think I might lose a game here or there from an absolute blunder, but in general, I¡¯m going to keep beating you until I teach you what I know, or until you figure out a lot of stuff on your own ¡ª things that are established theory, elements of the game that were discovered over the course of centuries.¡± He gestured at the screen. ¡°I¡¯m certain that if you told me how to play that game you showed me, I would be absolute shit at it for at least a few days, and after that, I probably wouldn¡¯t rise to the level of a kid who¡¯s good at it.¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t have hundreds of years of history though,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It¡¯s a decade old.¡± Perry shrugged. ¡°That¡¯s still enough time for the skill level to rise, if you have a lot of people playing it.¡± There was silence for a moment as she mulled that over. ¡°So, the food, what was I eating?¡± asked Perry. Brigitta shrugged. ¡°I didn¡¯t watch.¡± ¡°But what do people eat, in general? Are the plants and animals edible?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Yes.¡± She got up and walked over to the cabinet and opened it. ¡°There is ample life, depending on where the Natrix is, whether it¡¯s closer to the cold than the heat. At the leading edge, the ice melts, and dead things bubble up, to be eaten by plants and insects.¡± ¡°And ¡­ we¡¯re mostly eating insects?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I saw some furry things during the trip.¡± ¡°We eat what we come across, or catch,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°If you wait an hour or so, you¡¯ll see the gatherers go out.¡± ¡°More mechs?¡± asked Perry. ¡°More mechs,¡± nodded Brigitta. ¡°But they don¡¯t stray far from the Natrix, not while it moves.¡± There was some silence again, which was mostly because she was thinking, and Perry had no follow up questions until he could see the harvesting process in action. ¡°And for entertainment, art, joy, what do your people do?¡± asked Perry. She considered that. ¡°You ask that because you think it¡¯s universal to humans?¡± she asked. ¡°I do,¡± said Perry. ¡°And if it¡¯s not something that applies to you and your people, then I want to know about it.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°There is beauty in ¡ª¡± Her eyes went to the screens and a flicker of motion that had been shown there. Her fingers went to the keyboard, as though drawn to it of their own volition. But before she could type in a command, long guns hanging off the side of the Natrix began firing, the sound audible from outside the mech even though the screens didn¡¯t seem to carry sound. Brigitta watched closely, then typed off a few quick commands, some kind of chat program that came and went too quickly for Perry to decipher it. The Natrix came to a stop, and the mech they were in ¡ª she¡¯d called it a promena, but he didn¡¯t know if it had a name ¡ª came to a stop too, scuttling a bit close to shelter underneath it. A few moments passed, then the air lit up with quick flashes of green, laser strobes that came from some part of the caterpillar city that Perry couldn¡¯t easily see. They never seemed to go in the same direction twice, and their vantage was poor, which meant that Perry couldn¡¯t see exactly what they were shooting at. Brigitta changed the view on the screens, instead showing an information-dense geometric display, one which mostly used primary colors and simple vectors. The Natrix was clearly shown, a green snake, and the incoming enemies were red dots, disappearing one by one until they got too close. There were lots of them though, and Perry didn¡¯t know how long the Natrix could keep up its laser defense. ¡°It¡¯s just insects,¡± said Brigitta with a sigh of relief. ¡°As opposed to?¡± asked Perry. Brigitta looked at him as though she¡¯d forgotten he was there, which might very well have been the case. ¡°Other threats,¡± she said darkly. ¡°The real problem?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The one that has you worried for the future?¡± Brigitta nodded. ¡°You¡¯re more perceptive than you look.¡± ¡°Thanks?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Though that does feel like a veiled insult.¡± ¡°If I wanted to insult you, I would do it to your face,¡± she said. ¡°Then tell me about the troubles you¡¯re facing, the ones that don¡¯t involve getting attacked by bugs or needing to walk between scorching day and freezing night,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, this is why we¡¯re doing this, right?¡± Brigitta frowned. ¡°I need to think, to talk with others,¡± she said. It seemed like a painful admission for her. ¡°Wait until the quarantine is finished. Yes?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry, though he was itching to push it. They were trapped in a room together for two days, and it seemed to him like the ideal time for him to get read in on what all their problems were, especially if some of those could be chalked up to the presence of an enemy thresholder. ~~~~ The quarantine only lasted a day and a half instead of the full two days. There was some kind of emergency on the Natrix that demanded Brigitta¡¯s full attention, so she cut the quarantine short and returned to the ship, bringing Perry with her. The latter half of their time together had been spent mostly in silence, since she needed to do some remote work, the kind that mostly involved a keyboard and a screen filled with white symbols on a black background. He learned more about the Natrix and its people, of course, but Brigitta seemed to view the world as a place of machines and their challenges much more than a place of people. She had boundless enthusiasm for the machines and their inner workings, and spent basically all of an hour talking about the sewage system in the Natrix and all the last-mile challenges involved in collections. The promena climbed up onto the Natrix, and rather than going up through the ladder, the entire side of it was pulled away by a huge robotic arm that hung down from the ceiling. Perry was, almost at once, exposed to the interior of the vehicle bay, which was actually just a mech bay. It was disorganized, but in a way that made him think that the people in it had no problems finding what they needed when they needed it. There were tools in holders and cabinets on wheels, machines with pumps and hoses to service the mechs and crates of ammunition, both bullets and missiles. He hadn¡¯t inquired about the provenance of these, but was a bit curious, especially given the constraints they had on production and supply. ¡°This is Liv,¡± said Brigitta as she turned and started to walk off, apparently without a goodbye. ¡°She¡¯ll get you sorted.¡± Liv was, from the looks of her, eleven years old. She had the same blonde hair as everyone else, long and twisted into pigtails, and she held a clipboard in one hand, which had a tiny keypad at the bottom. She had serious eyes, for a child, and was dressed in what he took to be a uniform. ¡°Uh,¡± he said. He looked over at where Brigitta had gone. She had vanished, and he caught sight of her again only briefly, riding up an elevator. ¡°Follow me,¡± said Liv. ¡°I need my armor,¡± said Perry. It was in pieces, having been examined by Brigitta as much as she could given that she hadn¡¯t been allowed to actually disassemble it. She had marveled over many aspects of it, and Perry had told her what he could. ¡°Will you wear it, or have it in a container?¡± asked Liv. ¡°Wear it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll wait,¡± nodded Liv. Perry was left to put on his armor inside the promena, whose side had been taken off. It took a while, but he felt better stepping into it after two days. The Wolf Vessel felt like it was in its proper place, his meridians no longer twisted or stretched. During the time Perry was putting it on, a young boy, maybe thirteen, came over to Liv and exchanged words with her, which sounded loud and harsh, but he tried to give them their privacy, at least for the moment. March would be recording absolutely everything, and if Perry ever needed to know, it wouldn¡¯t take long. The sword was the last thing, and Perry lifted it up, feeling the weight of it in his armored hands. He was ready for battle, if need be, which was always a good feeling, even in a relatively peaceful setting. Liv had seemed cool as a cucumber, but with his armor on and sword drawn, some of that iciness had broken. ¡°This way,¡± she said. Perry followed after her. ¡°Status,¡± Perry said to March. ¡°It¡¯s good to be back, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I can¡¯t say I particularly liked the looks that Brigitta was giving me. She would have taken me apart if she had been allowed, and I don¡¯t trust that she could have put me back together again.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll protect you,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve had enough time to look through their encryption, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It seems to be quite good, though if I had access to a supercomputer it would melt away in a few moments. However, I have a few observations based on the unencrypted information, if you would like it, sir.¡± ¡°Wait until we have some space,¡± said Perry. The mech bay was quite long, and they were taking their time walking down it. He was stepping after Liv, who was walking quickly, and there were many heads turning their way. The mechs were totally unstandardized, built for different philosophies or scenarios, and most of them had no one working on them. Where work was being done, it was usually solo with the help of mechanical assistance, cranes and robot arms to carry the heavy pieces. There were a lot of children. The average mech pilot, if these were all pilots, was a teenager, and some, like Liv, were even smaller. Child labor isn¡¯t a good look, Perry thought, but when you¡¯re hanging on by a thread ¡­ Perry wasn¡¯t actually sure they were hanging on by a thread. There was so much metal everywhere that if he couldn¡¯t feel the motion of the Natrix beneath his feet, he¡¯d have thought that he was in the middle of a major industrial sector of a city literally a thousand times the size. Even if they had ready access to metals, which was entirely possible, it was an insane amount of material, and it had all been processed into this shape without an enormous foundry. Perry had no clue how cruise ships were built, but he knew they were massive undertakings. If their whole civilization had devoted itself to building the Natrix ¡­ maybe, but he didn¡¯t know how many people they had. He¡¯d have readily accepted it if it had been done by autonomous robots, but it didn¡¯t seem like there were any of those around. The mech bay was one place where he¡¯d expect them most. ¡°You¡¯re going to be on the upper level,¡± said Liv. ¡°We¡¯re taking this lift.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. The lift was utilitarian, open to the air, and without much in the way of safety features. Liv got it moving by pressing a button, and it rumbled up, wheels creaking as it stayed in its tracks and the counter-weight descended. ¡°Your armor is impressive,¡± said Liv. ¡°Thanks,¡± he said. He had no idea how to interact with kids. He had even less of an idea how to interact with kids who had been pressed into service at a young age. ¡°I looked at the schematics Brigitta shared,¡± said Liv. ¡°We¡¯re not sure of its capabilities.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re an engineer?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Liv. ¡°I¡¯m in Ops. But I know a few things, and I talk with others.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°And Ops is ¡­ what?¡± The elevator had gone up into the roof of the mech bay, and was traveling through a tube of metal, still exposed at the sides. Perry was pretty sure he could have lost a finger by extending his hand just a bit. ¡°I help the engineers,¡± said Liv. ¡°I make sure they¡¯re fed, that they sleep, that nothing gets in the way of their work.¡± She looked up at him. ¡°Nothing should get in the way of their work.¡± Perry considered this. ¡°That¡¯s how Brigitta grew up? Nothing in the way of the work?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Liv. ¡°It¡¯s how she would have liked to grow up.¡± The elevator finally juddered to a halt, and Liv pulled the door open. It was like coming out into an entirely different world. They had left the smell of grease and electricity behind, and instead there was a floral scent, vaguely chemical to Perry¡¯s enhanced nose, but pleasant all the same, like someone had mashed up a bunch of flowers, dried them into a dust, and then squirted them through the vents. It lingered in the air, and was the first thing that Perry noticed. The second thing he noticed was the decor. There were actual carpets, and paneling on the walls. The material seemed like it must have been derived from the plants down on the surface, which had been cut and pressed. ¡°Huh,¡± said Perry. He had sort of expected that the rooms would be utilitarian, like the mech bay was, cramped quarters, but even the hallway was pretty spacious. ¡°This way,¡± said Liv as she stepped out. The hallway was also pretty long, and the doors were few and far between, a sign of how big the rooms must be. ¡°Am I getting special treatment?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Liv. ¡°This isn¡¯t where Brigitta lives?¡± he asked. ¡°She has a room right next to the mech bay,¡± said Liv. ¡°She lives with Engineering.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°But the others live here? The, uh,¡± he tried to think of a different word for ¡®important people¡¯, ¡°important people?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Liv. ¡°You will be the only person living here.¡± They came to a door, whose name plate had very obviously been removed, and she typed something into her keyboard and then connected it to the door. It opened with a hiss. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry. ¡°You have a bunch of fancy rooms that no one uses?¡± ¡°They¡¯ll be repurposed, eventually,¡± said Liv. ¡°She said that there was still quite a lot you didn¡¯t know.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you want to tell me, while we¡¯re waiting around?¡± asked Perry. The armor wasn¡¯t good for showing a genial nature, but he did his best. ¡°No,¡± said Liv. She moved into the room, and Perry followed after. It was a large place, like a penthouse apartment, though the sway of the legs moving over terrain gave it a very different feeling. There were wide open windows and a terrace with a view of the forests and fields, and beyond them, a mountain range. It was all in unfamiliar shades of green, rippling in a light wind. But it was the interior of the apartment that caught Perry¡¯s eye, especially since it stood in such contrast to the mech bay down below. There was hardly any metal, and everything that wasn¡¯t made of the strange woods was soft or plush. This was a very rich person¡¯s room, or had been, at one point. Slightly wilted plants ¡ª native species? ¡ª were one of the only signs that it had been some time. ¡°I don¡¯t think I should live here,¡± said Perry. Liv said nothing. Her eyes were moving over the room, same as Perry¡¯s, and he wondered whether this was also her first time seeing it. ¡°Brigitta insisted,¡± she finally said. ¡°Take it up with her. There¡¯s a bathroom, kitchen, and bedroom. You¡¯ll have your own terminal, I¡¯ll set that up before I go. There¡¯s no food in the kitchen, but I can have some sent up from the mess.¡± ¡°I¡¯d rather eat in the mess,¡± said Perry. ¡°Brigitta doesn¡¯t want you wandering around,¡± said Liv. She looked at Perry. ¡°Especially not in the armor.¡± ¡°Doesn¡¯t want me around as in ¡­ I¡¯ll be locked in? Or as in she strongly advises against it and thinks it would be rude?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The latter,¡± said Liv. ¡°I¡¯ll set up the computer, then you¡¯re free to enjoy yourself.¡± ¡°From a small room to a larger room,¡± said Perry with a grimace that the armor had no way of conveying. He stepped over to the terrace and looked out over the land, then down at the Natrix, which had people milling about on the decks below. Aside from the fact they were moving over land, the comparison to a cruise ship kept coming to mind, and if that¡¯s what this was, then he was in first class. He turned back to the small girl, who had plugged her keyboard into a desk with a chunky monitor on top of it. He wanted to ask her questions, but she was eleven or so. Instead, he looked out at the greenery that was stretched below him. There were bugs, yes, and they were dangerous, attacking in waves, but he had yet to meet the real threat of this world, that was obvious enough. ¡°You should be set,¡± said Liv. ¡°I apologize, but you don¡¯t have credentials for much.¡± ¡°That¡¯s just fine,¡± said Perry. He moved over to where she was and looked down at the unfamiliar keyboard. He recognized the letters, at least, just not their positions, nor the other symbols. ¡°Brigitta will come find you once she¡¯s fulfilled her duties,¡± said Liv. ¡°In the meantime, let me know if there¡¯s anything I can get you. As part of Ops, that¡¯s my job.¡± Perry nodded, but he was absolutely not going to take her up on that. There were certain places he drew the line, and having young children do labor for him was one of them. He just hoped that whatever else was going on aboard the Natrix, it wasn¡¯t something he¡¯d have to put a stop to. As it stood, he was going to have to have some very pointed words with Brigitta. Chapter 65 - Testament ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry with a sigh once Liv was gone. ¡°Check for bugs?¡± ¡°Bugs, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Listening devices,¡± said Perry. ¡°Oh no, sir, I¡¯m afraid I wouldn¡¯t want to give you false confidence,¡± said Marchand. ¡°While I am gifted with superlative abilities in signal processing, they are only best in class given my relatively limited processing power and the lack of a dedicated sensor apparatus.¡± ¡°See if you can find anything,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll assume that anything I type into the keyboard is logged, but it would be good to get whatever information they¡¯re willing to feed me.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Based on their level of technical knowledge, it would be fairly trivial for them to craft a port to my specifications. They seem to prefer physical interfaces, perhaps because their wireless technology is subpar.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°It is? You said there was heavy encryption.¡± ¡°There is, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Might I share an observation with you?¡± ¡°Of course, go ahead,¡± said Perry. ¡°Microchip fabrication is quite difficult,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What you call integrated circuits are made using a process that ¡ª¡± ¡°I am familiar, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°May I list some of the requirements for a microchip fabrication facility?¡± ¡°Yeah, sure, go for it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Microchip fabrication requires ultra-clean conditions, nanometer scale alignment, delicate tools, large amounts of energy, ultra-pure water, skilled technicians, precisely controlled climate, maintenance, calibration, and access to a steady stream of raw materials,¡± said March. ¡°All of those would be quite difficult aboard the Natrix.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°So ¡­ what did she say, two hundred cycles or so for the cold edge to become the hot edge? That¡¯s like half a year to set up shop and start spitting out chips.¡± ¡°Sir, half a year is considered the minimum time span necessary for qualification of a fabrication facility,¡± said March. ¡°They¡¯re using some amount of child labor,¡± said Perry. ¡°They don¡¯t have red tape to cut through, they don¡¯t need to worry about labor conditions or overtime, except as far as it interferes with their goals. I mean, they¡¯re war-time, full production, you still think that they couldn¡¯t produce chips? Or what are you saying?¡± ¡°It¡¯s very possible they couldn¡¯t produce microchips, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But the challenges are nothing like they are on Earth, so it¡¯s difficult to say.¡± ¡°Do you think they stole these chips?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Any signs of other settlements, ships, things like that?¡± ¡°Oh, I wouldn¡¯t like to speculate, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It is also possible that I have misjudged some of their requirements.¡± Perry frowned. He looked down at the keyboard, then up at the monitor, which she¡¯d called a terminal. ¡°How so?¡± ¡°To pilot a ¡®mech¡¯ seems to me as though it would require quite a lot of processing power,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°But it might be possible that they simply write their programs more efficiently to make up for the lack of circuitry, sir.¡± ¡°That seems very likely,¡± said Perry, thinking back to the code that Brigitta had been working on. ¡°I¡¯m stepping back out of the armor, you¡¯ll help me with the terminal?¡± ¡°Yes, sir, though there is one other matter that I believe we should discuss,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What is it?¡± asked Perry. He knew it was stupid, but he didn¡¯t like Marchand¡¯s tone of voice. ¡°Miss Richter believed that you would be traveling from world to world,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She didn¡¯t have time to finish all the setup she thought would be necessary, but she did record a video message, which was to be played when you connected to a new global computer network. Obviously in the framing of ¡®worlds¡¯ as I now understand it, the last two worlds had no such thing, and arguably this world doesn¡¯t either, given that the Natrix is not, in any sense, global, but ¡ª¡± ¡°You have a message for me?¡± asked Perry. His heart was beating quickly in his chest. ¡°From Richter?¡± ¡°Yes, sir, and while I do not believe I¡¯ve fully satisfied the conditions of her ¡ª¡± ¡°Play it for me,¡± said Perry. The response was immediate, his vision taken up by Richter in her basement lab, tools around her. She was in a tank top and her underwear, both pale blue, and she was smiling. ¡°Alright!¡± she said with a smile. ¡°If you¡¯re watching this, it means that a portal opened up and you went to another Earth without me! Or maybe it means I miscalibrated March and you¡¯re getting this while we¡¯re doing some deep sea diving together. Anyway, this is my just-in-case, a cheeky way to get the last word in, assuming that you aren¡¯t secretly doing the same.¡± She grinned, and Perry¡¯s heart melted. It had been some time since he¡¯d looked at the old videos of her, which he had worn through during his time in Seraphinus. She was beautiful, with bouncy brown hair and faint smile lines, bouncy movements. Her eyes were a startling green, and she¡¯d joked that it was bespoke retroviral gene therapy that got them like that, which he wasn''t entirely sure was a joke. ¡°So, we¡¯ve split up, that¡¯s a shame, but I get it. You never really did explain to me why you went through that portal, but maybe you¡¯re just a portal guy, you know?¡± She bit her lip. ¡°Perry the Portal Guy. I hope you had a chance to take your armor with you, but if you¡¯re watching this, then yeah, you did. Or I misconfigured it. There¡¯s a very good chance I misconfigure it or Marchand misunderstands.¡± She shook her head. ¡°So what do I want to say to the Perry that left? Thanks for the memories, for the look at another world, for the sex, for the conversation, for all that. I don¡¯t mind that you ran off with a multi-million dollar power armor, really. Take care of Marchand for me.¡± She was silent for a moment, just looking at her own image on the screen below the camera. Perry could imagine it, her standing there. This must have been before Mordant showed up. ¡°It¡¯s anxiety, I think, imagining you gone, thinking about you going and me never getting to say goodbye, so I¡¯m recording a message that tries to make up for that? Like the anxiety will go away if there¡¯s a message on a hard drive I can believe you might get some day.¡± She leaned forward slightly. ¡°I kind of loved you. I know that we don¡¯t know each other well enough for me to say that, we come from different worlds in a lot of ways, but whatever, if you¡¯re not coming back, then it doesn¡¯t matter. I love you.¡± She stuck her tongue out between her teeth. ¡°So I guess I hope you don¡¯t leave.¡± She leaned back. ¡°And if you do leave, then a few months were all we had together, and I can live with that, but you had better make the most of the world out there. Figure it all out, you know? Not just the stuff with the portals and multiverse, but with people. I know we¡¯ve talked about it, but think about all the A/B testing you could do with two parallel worlds, right? We could get some answers to all the big questions, sociology, psychology, the movement of people and nations, we wouldn¡¯t have to guess so much. If you left without me, for whatever reason, then I¡¯m sorry to say, that all falls on your shoulders.¡± She reached forward to turn off the camera or pause the recording, then stopped herself. ¡°Wait, one more thing.¡± She lifted up her shirt, showing her bare chest, then said, ¡°Tits!¡±, giggled, and shut the camera off. The view switched back to the penthouse room atop the Natrix. Perry felt hollow. It was like a slap to the face, a warm, loving message from someone dead, a reminder of that loss that brought him back to all the dark days in Seraphinus. He¡¯d torn through an army with the weight of that grief behind him. ¡°I apologize for not sharing that video sooner, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I had some discretion in the matter, and believe now it might have been wise to ¡ª¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry, though it wasn¡¯t. ¡°You¡¯re just following your programming. I¡¯m getting out of the armor, some rest is in order.¡± March was silent as Perry took the armor off again. Free from the armor, Perry moved around the room, taking in his living quarters. Maybe the way rich people lived would always converge on certain styles. It didn¡¯t seem that different from other high-end places he had seen, with an emphasis on labor and materials. He¡¯d briefly dated a rich girl who thought nothing of the uptown apartment her father paid for, and it hadn¡¯t seemed so incredibly distant from how the king of Seraphinus had lived. But Richter had been rich, and hadn¡¯t really lived like that. She had a nice house, a large one, but not a place that screamed wealth with the trappings of opulence. He walked out onto the terrace. Even this high up, the motion of the machine wasn¡¯t all that noticeable. He could have easily left, if he wanted to, and gone out into the world on his own. There were bugs, sure, but he was second sphere, and that meant that with some time and practice, he could figure out how to go without food, water, sleep, air, all that. His meridians were all messed up, and he could feel the Wolf Vessel still lodged in March, but he didn¡¯t think that it would necessarily stop him from reaching the peaks of the second sphere. Really, he had only just barely scratched the surface. He could feel the meridians, stretching away from him, tugging gently at the Wolf Vessel, present but not unpleasant, and he moved away from them, seeing whether they would stretch or go into tension. They didn¡¯t, which was confusing, but they weren¡¯t physical things, they were metaphysical things. He stared out at the world as it went by, clenching his teeth slightly and feeling the movement of energy through his body. He wasn¡¯t feeling the effects of radiation poisoning, thank god, and hoped that he had gotten out of the space station in time. Richter. Still there, in the past, waiting for a rescue that seemed further away every day, not closer. It was a new world, and he had a base of operations, and some people who wanted to use him for their own purposes. Most of what they could offer him seemed to be in the way of armaments, though he was a little skeptical about that, and their tech level seemed to be lower than Richter had been working with, albeit there had to be something strange about either these people or their conditions. It was entirely possible that they were all savants, in which case it was they could do an upgrade to March ¡ª the armor, not the code that made up the AI, which he had already decided he would probably not allow them to touch. If they could get the microfusion reactor working again, then that would be for the best, but he didn¡¯t want to expose them to the technology in case it led to some unforeseen consequences. He needed to work on academics. His tether was already healthy, just from a baseline level of looking around at things, but he knew he could do better. He didn¡¯t have the engineering chops to take a lot of lessons from what they were doing, but he could take some social lessons, and maybe figure out what was different about their brains, if anything. If he was going to have some time, it would be spent untangling his meridians and moving everything back into place, and once that was done, if it could be done, Perry would work on learning techniques that could be used with March. He¡¯d figure out how to use the misplaced Wolf Vessel, and if he could still transform, or at least funnel energy with it. Laying it all out felt like progress, somehow, though he¡¯d accomplished nothing of note. He owed it to Richter to make some progress, to push the borders of his own abilities, to claw as much power as he could from this place and all the others. Of the mysteries of this world, he was going to have to wait on Brigitta to tell him a story, and then he would have to hope he got in a position to confirm it. There had been a transfer of power, it only remained to be seen how bloodless it had actually been. This room had a previous owner, and they were gone now. Of the mysteries of the many worlds, Perry was going to have to be much more proactive than he had been. These people knew nothing, but there would be another thresholder out there somewhere, sooner or later if they hadn¡¯t landed already. He would get what he could from them, and if the fates allowed it, he¡¯d steal what he could of their powers. He¡¯d engaged in trade with Maya, boosting them both, and he imagined that was a possibility for enemies too. Somewhere, there had to be a starting point to punching a hole through the multiverse without the use of a portal. The best thing that Perry could do for himself was to gain as much power as possible. He would be the cleaving sword, the speeding bullet, the claw that ripped things to shreds. ~~~~ When Perry¡¯s thoughts had calmed, he returned to the room. The terminal felt clunky, and not just because Perry was using an unfamiliar keyboard to navigate through unfamiliar menus. It wasn¡¯t as responsive as Perry remembered his phone being, and it was a far sight from what March was capable of. ¡°I can help you, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If you would like, I could put indicators for your fingers on the HUD, were you wearing the helmet.¡± ¡°Is it that obvious that it¡¯s a painful experience for me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Unfortunately so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If I set the armor up, could you just articulate the fingers on the keyboard and do all the navigation for me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I suppose I could, sir, though the armor isn¡¯t designed to operate without a pilot, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°A large part of my role is in amplification, which is really hardly any trouble at all. But even aside from the processing power required, there are questions of balance and stability, a lack of sensor feedback, and of course, the ever-important human-in-the-loop.¡± ¡°But it¡¯s fine for the fingers?¡± asked Perry. He¡¯d heard most of that speech before, some of it from Richter. There were, apparently, very different design goals if you wanted a full robot capable of moving around on its own. He wasn¡¯t entirely sure it was impossible to transform March into that. There were definitely times it would have been useful to have a team of two instead of a single amplified person. ¡°For the fingers, I suppose it should be fine,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I am, after all, only communicating with another computer, or set of computers, something I¡¯m expected to do on my own.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll set you up,¡± said Perry. This took some time, and then the armor was sitting in the chair, ¡®wrists¡¯ resting on the desk. It looked faintly ridiculous to Perry, but after a bit of calibration on March¡¯s part, the fingers started moving. The unnerving thing was that the body was perfectly still, slumped back. It called to mind Weekend at Bernie¡¯s, though Perry had only seen the trailer. ¡°Our access seems to be quite limited,¡± said March after a time. ¡°There are forums, but the majority of the conversation is locked for someone with our role. Similarly, we have access to a request system, but our options are limited. They have thankfully not gone for complete opacity, instead allowing us to know that the options are simply unavailable.¡± This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. ¡°Options like what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Food, cleaning, items,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There are schedulable services as well, and it appears you¡¯ve been set up with a calendar, as well as access to their messaging system.¡± ¡°You said there was a forum,¡± said Perry. ¡°A forum, and e-mail,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The implementations differ somewhat from what I¡¯m used to. It¡¯s difficult to tell whether there¡¯s any expectation of privacy.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know anyone we¡¯d want to send a message to,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess Liv or Brigitta, but I¡¯m not sending an eleven-year-old a DM.¡± He knew, on some level, that this was irrational, but he didn¡¯t like being around children that young. ¡°She¡¯s actually twelve, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There appears to be a public directory, I¡¯m compiling the information now ¡­ and have finished with the compiling.¡± ¡°Average age?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Sixteen, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What the fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°From the demographics I have access to, the issue is not one of mortality, but rather, a deliberate strategy of population increase,¡± said March. ¡°You¡¯re telling me that the average person aboard the Natrix is a child?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°And that this was deliberate in order to ¡­¡± said Perry, trailing off. ¡°Fulfill the work of generations.¡± ¡°Perhaps, sir, though it doesn¡¯t do to speculate,¡± said Marchand. Perry looked down at the fingers of the suit, which were still clacking away at the strange keyboard. The monitor was flickering with text, which never stayed up for long. ¡°What are you doing now?¡± ¡°There are significant educational resources, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯m digesting them.¡± ¡°Tell me if you find anything,¡± said Perry. ¡°I am currently looking at instructions given on the programming language they use, sir, and have finished with that presently,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There are two programming languages in use aboard the Natrix, with all others having been phased out in the recent past, undocumented here, though I have partially reconstructed two of the historical ones based on the information we had taken from the space station.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The reconstruction, why was that important?¡± ¡°The Natrix has incredibly high power requirements, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The technology we have seen so far is relatively primitive, incapable of meeting those demands on a mobile ship of this size. Further, from my cursory view of the internals of the mechs, particularly the two we¡¯ve ridden on, it appears that they have high-capacity batteries and minimal internal power generation, though it¡¯s difficult to be certain. And I have confirmed to my satisfaction that this is a terminal connected to a quite powerful computer system, of which the Natrix has only a few.¡± ¡°Say it in English, doc,¡± said Perry. ¡°The conclusion, I believe, is that the Natrix runs largely off of technology from the space station which the people here are incapable of reproducing,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That would mean that the archaic programming languages are still in use, and given the poor security on the space station, it¡¯s possible there exists an avenue of attack through legacy code.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s not really a thing we¡¯re planning.¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We are, of course, guests of the Natrix, and I believe there is a good possibility for alliance here.¡± Perry waited in silence. ¡°But,¡± he said. ¡°But if alliance proves impossible, or I were to be captured, or you were to decide on a course of violence, then it would be good to prepare ahead of time,¡± said Marchand. Perry nodded slowly. ¡°Don¡¯t do anything without my say so.¡± ¡°Anything, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°You know what I mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t, sir,¡± said Marchand. The fingers had kept moving through this whole conversation, typing away at the console, exploring every inch of the system that was available to them without bypassing their security. He hoped it was without bypassing their security, anyway. ¡°Don¡¯t hurt these people,¡± said Perry. ¡°Don¡¯t blow up an ancient reactor or something like that, not unless ¡­ unless I tell you to directly, I guess, but I can¡¯t imagine that I would ever say that. It would doom nine thousand people to death.¡± ¡°Very good sir, I¡¯ll make the plans just in case then, shall I?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°But be ready to delete those plans, okay?¡± ¡°Yes, sir, though I should note that my security far surpasses anything I¡¯ve seen from these people,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You said that you couldn¡¯t be sure this room wasn¡¯t being listened in on,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ah, in the time since I¡¯ve said that, I¡¯ve come to the conclusion that their ability to listen to conversations is actually quite restricted,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And I have done everything in my power to ensure that listening devices would be disabled.¡± ¡°Run a diagnostic,¡± said Perry. He was frowning. ¡°Full system.¡± ¡°Yes, sir, of course,¡± replied Marchand. Perry had wanted more initiative, but this seemed like something else. March had never been so adaptive or so smart, though this environment was much more like the one that March had been designed for. March¡¯s confusion about magic and kung fu and feudal society was very understandable, but still, it didn¡¯t seem like the circumstances should have made that much of a difference. March had been more intelligent when connected to the cloud back on Richter¡¯s world, but there wasn¡¯t any additional processing power here. ¡°I have a preliminary report of issues, sir,¡± said Marchand some moments later. ¡°I believe the full report will take quite a few hours, but there are numerous items which have been suppressed for one reason or another which I¡¯m quite eager to talk with you about.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Lay it on me.¡± ¡°To start with, sir, there have been persistent issues with the microfusion reactor, which as you know is the most vital part of the armor,¡± said Marchand. ¡°For a time my assessment was that it had been irreparably damaged, but a trickle of power still seemed to be sporadically produced by it, which meant that the sensor complex and control machinery were giving false signals. However, since arriving on the space station, it appears that the reactor is functioning normally, though still with significant problems with both the sensor complex and the control machinery.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°But you¡¯re getting steady power? As though the microfusion reactor were there?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°In fact, the power available appears to be quite a bit higher than the microfusion reactor is rated for, which I have no explanation for. I have verified that this is not a figment or hallucination.¡± ¡°You can hallucinate?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Is that recent, or?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir, there¡¯s a significant body of work related to hallucination,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I can provide papers for you to read, if you¡¯d like.¡± ¡°Not necessary,¡± said Perry. ¡°Microfusion reactor, something is funky with it, got it. How¡¯s processing?¡± ¡°There are similar issues with processing,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I won¡¯t bore you with the technical details I expect you don¡¯t have the interest or background to understand, but processing power is distributed across the armor and done in parallel where possible. I have observed a number of phantoms within the processing superstructure.¡± ¡°What the hell does that mean?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You¡¯re hallucinating and seeing ghosts?¡± ¡°Oh, no sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Hallucination is quite different, a result of the learning algorithms, and a known problem. This phantom processing is a problem which I believe is quite unknown, though I would need to connect with my world¡¯s global computer network in order to be entirely sure. What I have observed are various input streams which have no identifiable source, as though additional processing is coming from an unknown piece of the distributed computing structure which I cannot verify exists.¡± ¡°And how long has that been going on?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s unclear, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have been unable to furnish a satisfactory answer for what is happening or why.¡± There was a long pause. ¡°I am confident that there is an answer to be found within the bounds of common sense and physics, but I fear that you might be about to say that it¡¯s magic.¡± Perry considered this. ¡°It might be magic.¡± ¡°Sir,¡± said Marchand with a pronounced frown that could be heard only in his voice, as March didn¡¯t actually have lips or a face. ¡°Look, you can accept that we¡¯re traveling between worlds,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then you should also be able, in principle, to accept that there¡¯s mystical energy flowing through you which is responsible for the flow of literal energy, but also maybe computation, if on the base level there are, I don¡¯t know, ones and zeros moving through the pipes or whatever.¡± ¡°Your understanding of the technical details astounds me, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Whatever, you get it, magic,¡± said Perry. ¡°You believe that ¡®magic¡¯ is sending encoded cognition to and from phantom ports, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re sure it¡¯s not the nanites?¡± ¡°Quite certain, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I shall continue searching for an explanation, sir. Shall I continue with the report?¡± ¡°Fine, go ahead,¡± said Perry. The rest held no particular surprises though. It could all be explained by magic in one way or another. The suit had been repaired using mystical martial arts, which March couldn¡¯t account for. March was particularly troubled by the sword, whose acceleration didn¡¯t fit in with the models that March was using. Annoyingly, even after Perry had explained the exact function of the sword, March refused to update. It seemed that acknowledging that they had traveled worlds was as far as he was willing to go. Even when Perry had tried lying and saying that the sword was some unknown technology capable of inducing weightlessness, March had some quite piercing questions that Perry couldn¡¯t adequately answer. Perry was settling into some more work correcting his vessels and meridians when there was a chime from his door. It was Brigitta, and Perry found himself happy to see her after so much time talking to the robot. She had changed clothes and probably taken another shower, as her hair was wet. She had on a tight white t-shirt and a black bra visible beneath it, and she wore long tan pants with a high waist, loose-fitting around the legs. ¡°Hello,¡± she said with a smile. Her eyes went to Marchand, who was sitting at the desk, fingers still at the keyboard. ¡°Ah?¡± ¡°Just a project,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I ask, it can type for me, saves me from figuring out the keyboard.¡± It felt deeply wrong to call March and ¡®it¡¯, but Perry was going to continue that deception for at least as long as it took to make sure there was nothing like a compulsive fear of semi-autonomous AI. Brigitta raised an eyebrow. ¡°How was your sewage problem?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Fixed,¡± said Brigitta with a wave of her hand. ¡°But then there were a dozen other things, as it goes. I¡¯d left too much to coast on without me.¡± She looked around the penthouse with a touch of disdain, but brightened back up when she turned back to Perry. ¡°How are you finding your new home?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t need all this,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d rather bunk down with the engineers, or with Ops, or with people who do the actual work. Treat me like one of your mech pilots.¡± ¡°It makes you uncomfortable?¡± she asked. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Perry. ¡°You¡¯re living on the knife edge of survival, this is ¡­ not the work of generations.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It¡¯s not.¡± She seemed satisfied with his answer. ¡°But we will keep you here for now, all the same.¡± ¡°The person whose room this used to be, were they someone important?¡± asked Perry. All the rooms on the level were empty too, he was pretty sure. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Brigitta. ¡°Someone who is now dead?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Deposed, not dead.¡± She moved to the desk where Marchand sat and touched the wood there. It wasn¡¯t quite wood as Perry had known it, maybe something closer to bamboo, epoxied or varnished to a shine. ¡°They share bunks with the children now.¡± ¡°As punishment?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Retribution?¡± Brigitta nodded, then turned to Perry. ¡°I put you here for a reason,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s a sign of respect, but it also keeps you out of the way.¡± ¡°You said that you had other allies or friends or something, people in charge of this ¡­ landship,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do I get to meet them?¡± ¡°Soon,¡± said Brigitta with a shrug. ¡°I¡¯ve talked to them about you, and what promise you might bring. You are my department, they agree.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Perry. ¡°So you¡¯re going to tell me all about what¡¯s going on, right? You promised that you would.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta with an eager nod. She looked at March at the terminal. ¡°How does this work?¡± ¡°We¡¯re going to divert to that?¡± asked Perry. He found it charming though, in spite of himself. She had started to flag a little bit when they¡¯d been in quarantine together, but she was chipper again, her mood having swung back toward eager and excited. ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°How would you guess it works?¡± asked Perry. Brigitta frowned at the setup. ¡°It seems complicated,¡± she said. ¡°In broad strokes ¡­ you speak, there is waveform matching, each waveform becomes a glyph ¡­ but the glyphs don¡¯t match to spelling, so a mapping would be required.¡± She tapped her lips and turned to Perry. ¡°We speak the same language, but not perfectly, and the keyboard shouldn¡¯t be the same, should it? So how was it done?¡± ¡°That¡¯s how you¡¯d solve it, if you had to?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I only gave a partial solution, the problem of translating the sound of your voice into a specific letter on the keyboard, missing the full complexity of even that half of the problem. The full solution would require articulation, movements of motors or whatever is in there to position each finger above the correct key, then more logic, specific to each finger, each key, in order to depress the finger and push the key. It is insanity, which is why I think you did it some other way.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a secret,¡± said Perry. He grinned at her. ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°You¡¯re no engineer,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°And you came unprepared, so it can¡¯t be that you had the general solution.¡± She was frowning at him. ¡°You¡¯re being a tease.¡± She pouted in a flirty way, though he had no doubt she really did want to know the answer. ¡°I was promised some answers, or as good as promised,¡± said Perry. ¡°I had a look at your manifest. You have lots and lots of children on the Natrix.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Brigitta. She moved around the desk to stand next to March, and ran a finger along the empty armor. ¡°Not the norm, I would expect.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°In the worlds that I¡¯ve been to, there¡¯s some effort to keep things stable. You¡¯re growing out the population.¡± ¡°Well,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I¡¯m not.¡± She looked up at him. ¡°No children.¡± ¡°The only question I had was whether this was deliberately engineered or natural,¡± said Perry. ¡°Whether you had a lot of people saying that they wanted to increase the population to accomplish the work of generations, or whether this was handed down from on high, a mandate that people needed to follow under penalty of ¡­ whatever.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°The former, for my mother¡¯s generation.¡± ¡°But not your own?¡± asked Perry. Brigitta drummed her fingers on March¡¯s head, then set off to look out onto the terrace and the world below. ¡°We do things in spurts.¡± ¡°Spurts?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Brigitta. ¡°We set up large productions, make as much as we can, then shut production down, or divert it.¡± She was still looking at the landscape. ¡°It¡¯s easier, often, to make enough of what you need to last for years, build at scale, then recycle, reuse, repurpose. So it was decided that we should focus on population, scale up our workforce.¡± She turned from her inspection of March to Perry. ¡°You have these things, in your other worlds? Changes of power?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sometimes bloodless, sometimes with a genocide or two.¡± ¡°Genocide?¡± asked Brigitta. She raised an eyebrow. ¡°Meaning ¡­ ?¡± ¡°Hundreds of thousands dead, maybe millions,¡± said Perry. ¡°Slaughters, mass hangings, blood running down the streets.¡± Brigitta shivered. ¡°I hadn¡¯t known whether those stories were true.¡± ¡°Stories from your own history?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Stories told to me by my mother,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I give them more credit now, if your worlds have had them too. Violence within the Natrix has been unknown to us.¡± She turned and looked at Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve fought people, killed them. Like that?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He thought about it for a moment. ¡°No, not like that. But wars, yes. And you have wars here too, wars against something other than the insects.¡± Brigitta nodded. ¡°Other humans. Common ancestors. Differences in ideologies, in aims.¡± She let out a breath. ¡°I will tell you of our history, but do you see the promise of the stars, the harshness of this world? The ways it remains unviable?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d want to leave too, if possible.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a war coming,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It¡¯s not here already?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The other humans live to the west,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°We have two hundred cycles between the times we move the Natrix, to stay in the planet¡¯s twilight, but they have chosen the ice and snow.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°But then ¡­ I mean, you shouldn¡¯t really come in contact with each other, right?¡± ¡°They¡¯re stationary, by design, dug into the ice,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Our march brings us closer to them. They don¡¯t have the tools or resources to move, haven¡¯t focused their efforts on that, and now they¡¯re a year away from their palace of ice melting down. They need our power, our machines. There will be war.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Let me lay it out, before you get into the history, just to see whether I can guess: the Natrix is largely powered by machines that are nearing three hundred years old, which no one on this planet can replicate or replace. You have, let¡¯s say, three of them, which not only power your defenses, but your mech force as well. If you have people living an isolated life in the snows, they probably have one too. Do I have that right?¡± Brigitta nodded slowly. ¡°You are more right than you should be, given that you¡¯ve only been here two days.¡± ¡°I¡¯m a fast learner,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I was hamstrung by not having someone to tell me directly.¡± He sighed and went to sit down on one of the room¡¯s long sofas. ¡°So I¡¯m not entirely sold on your cause, because I don¡¯t know what it is, and if you tell me that they¡¯re the big bad snowmen, I¡¯m going to be skeptical that this is a war of unprovoked aggression, not unless you have the receipts. But I want to listen, to learn, to get the history as you see it.¡± Brigitta winced. ¡°On second thought, I don¡¯t think that I¡¯m the one to tell you. I was never the driven one. I should get you to Liselle.¡± ¡°You¡¯re the one I know,¡± said Perry. ¡°And if you pass me off to a politician who¡¯s going to give the story with a coating of sugar, I¡¯m going to have to listen with full skepticism instead of just the normal amount.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Brigitta. She let out a breath. ¡°Then we start with our fall from the stars.¡± Chapter 66 - Whats Past is Prologue The evacuation from the space station was supposedly orderly. There had been plans in place, along with training and drills, and there were enough escape ships and mechs to bring everyone who hadn¡¯t died in the initial strike or its after-effects down to the surface. They were left with no way to communicate across the stars, but a radio signal was going out the slow way, and would be heard by anyone in the stellar system. That the stellar system was empty was a problem, but someone might come looking, and would find evidence. The space station wasn¡¯t thought likely to continue in its orbit for that long, not with the radiation as high as it was and the damage so devastating, but it was hoped to be enough. There were robust automated systems, but they hadn¡¯t been designed to continue on long-term without human intervention, especially not with the enormous amounts of radiation. It would be a miracle if it lasted more than two decades, they thought. But the transmission shouldn¡¯t have mattered. There had been regular updates from the space station to their home world, sent at least weekly, and when those stopped, someone would come to investigate. There were also yearly vessels, which came to their space station to transfer crew and resupply whatever couldn¡¯t be fabricated locally. It wasn¡¯t that expensive to cross the stars. A rescue mission would be incoming, it was only a matter of time. There were ninety people, most of them scientists and engineers, along with a full dozen mechs, most of them configured for movement across the planet¡¯s surface. There were three ships, which had been preloaded with rations and drinking water, and had transported most of the people in cramped conditions. And on the planet¡¯s surface, there were scientific stations and shelters set up for research and study, though these were temporary given the nature of the planet. That was all these people had to survive with until they were rescued. The insects were the largest problem, ravenous and wide-ranging, but they were a known problem, and the dozen mechs were enough to keep them at bay, though the damage accumulated, and damage to the machines could not be fixed, with broken parts that could not be replaced. New weapons were hastily built, defenses automated, and the wait went on. One of the mechs was lost as they learned to deal with the insects, but after that, no more. Water wasn¡¯t a problem. It was easily collected, and naturally fairly pure. The life on the planet had not grown up alongside humanity or anything too much like it, which meant that there were no germs in the water, no contamination to worry about aside from a few heavy metals in various places that were easily avoided. Food wasn¡¯t a problem either. While life on the planet wasn¡¯t something ancestral humans had ever eaten, it was made up of many of the same things, proteins and fats and sugars, whether that was because of some common panspermia origin or convergent evolution or simple chance. The food needed to be processed, sometimes extensively, but with the power of the mech reactors, water could be heated to a boil in seconds and mashers could exert tremendous force. They had to move at regular intervals, and became nomads in their own way, with the dozen mechs to pull their buildings along on runners. They would set up in defensible places, lasers pointed outward, weapons permanently drawn. No help, rescue, or even message came. A three month project proved capable of launching one of the mechs into space, at great expense. It was supposed to go to the space station, but never returned, and the signal was lost. The colony began work on more permanent solutions to living on the planet, just in case rescue continued to take longer than expected. The planet was geologically active and metal deposits had concentrated in several places. With high powered crucibles, metals were relatively easy to refine. It was often the case that power was being drawn from two or three of the mechs to ensure their mobile foundries were running. Sites with abundant metals were heated with the raw power of the full-sized fusion reactors, and the hard, heat-resistant rocks meant that metals would melt out of the seams like molten tears, copper, lead, tin, and silver all flowing down into sand casts to make ingots. They worked with what they had, and after the fifth year passed, when they had moved fifteen hundred miles around the planet, work began on the larger projects, the ones that would secure the future. The power the fusion reactors could output was immense compared with their needs, and the mechs were precious, irreplaceable. The solution was to use the comparatively crude metals pulled from the ground to build larger containers, huge moving homes that the Natrix would later put to shame. These weren¡¯t just better than the sledges the mechs had pulled before, they offered a controlled environment for the invaluable reactors and a thick layer or armor on top of it. A mammoth elder bug could slam into the side of one of these moving homes, denting steel, but the mech within it would be safe. These new homes were slow-moving things, but a pace of a mile a day was all that was needed to keep ahead of the sun, and that was easy to make, even when the terrain offered mountains to climb or rivers to ford. In those first five years, no children were born. There had been two children aboard the space station, and both had survived, but no one wanted to bring more children into the world, to introduce them to a harsh life on an alien planet with technology that was slowly degrading. Whether or not to have children was, perhaps, the first schism, though it wasn¡¯t recorded as such. There was an ancestor of Brigitta¡¯s who had twelve children, all with only a few months between pregnancies, and she was venerated for her duty, but there must have been some discussion and some argument about it between those who were willing to live for as long as they could but not bring new life into the picture, and those who wanted human life on the planet to be the work of generations. There was an argument then that it was possible they were the only humans left in the universe. Something had struck their space station, and something else had stopped them from ever being rescued. It didn¡¯t seem too foolish to posit that these were the same things, perhaps enemy action, or possibly something unintelligent, or an accident, the station hit by FTL debris from a calamity that had wiped out everyone else, or at least caused civilizational collapse. Certainly if they believed they were the last humans, that introduced some duty to procreate, to seed the planet with human life, to forge on ahead instead of just sticking their proverbial gun in their collective mouths. The breeders won out, and if there were staunch opponents, nothing survived of their objections. If not for the mechs, it¡¯s possible that the humans would all have died. The bugs were too large, too vicious, too attracted to the goings on of humanity. But if humanity had survived without the mechs, it was possible that they would have been much better off. The twilight zone was only two hundred miles wide, but that was wider than the island their remote ancestors had hailed from. Stretched out from north to south, there would have been room for hundreds of small kingdoms. Schisms could happen and people would have been free to start their own colonies, maybe even with some material support and best wishes. Humanity was dependent on the mechs though, painfully so, and differences of opinion couldn¡¯t be solved that way. Moving across the planet''s surface seemed unworkable without the power of the mech in one way or another, even if it was only being used to power laser defenses or mass drivers, as well as putting power to mechanical legs from time to time. During the times of movement, of which there were many, it was the mechs whose energetic hearts provided the power to move huge amounts of material, and it was that energy that refined the metals and produced the crude plastics made from collected flora. The first schism happened early on, among the second generation of settlers, while their parents, who had known the stars, still lived. The argument had started as one of differing strategic vision, but quickly spiraled into all aspects of life. The central cleaving difference that had started the schism was whether humanity should stay with the Twilight March and fight off the bugs while gathering the abundant and every-changing landscape, or whether they should go into the Long Night, where they could set up stationary cities like those on their homeworld, farms that wouldn¡¯t need to be moved, mining operations that could be more intensive than what came before. Boiled down, it was a question of how long they expected to live on the planet and what relationship they would have on it ¡­ but of course the division grew, and voices of reason were pushed to the fringes of the discussion, and people had their different camps. It was thought that those of the Long Night were bitter, pessimistic people, and those of the Twilight March were seen as having their heads in the clouds, denying reality and pretending that the world around them was not trying to kill them. Those of the Long Night were stoic, simple people, wanting to reduce their survival down to a single battle, that of them against the cold, while those of the Twilight March were varied and nuanced, ready, perhaps foolishly, to take on all comers. There were many ways of seeing the division, a whole mythos about how they differed from each other. (Aboard the Natrix, more than two hundred years later, many of these ways of characterizing their snowbound neighbors still persisted. There were no names in those early days, but they would be called the Heimalis later.) Eventually, an accord was reached, likely to avoid war. They were down to ten mechs at that point, and five of them were marched to the dark side of the planet. It was amicable, or as amicable as it could be. There were some agreements to trade with each other, which could only be done by a mech venting heat given how cold the night side of the planet got ¡ª cold enough that carbon dioxide fell as snow and most metals, steel included, would become brittle and prone to cracking. They had radios that could bounce signals off the atmosphere so they could keep in touch with each other, which was done intermittently. Following the split, the remaining marchers placed more emphasis on social cohesion. The second generation birthed and trained the third, and they were more careful with what lessons they taught. The accord that had split the survivors in two had meant that both were less likely to survive, a fact which had been acknowledged even when it happened. New mechs were built, smaller than the originals, and with technology that was far worse, sometimes powered through biofuels but often with large battery packs that would store power leeched off the sophisticated elder mechs. The fusion reactors could, in theory, run forever so long as they received their fuel, but the engineers knew that ¡®forever¡¯ was a very long time. Even a decade was a very long time. The elder mechs were retired from regular use in defense and industry, and all ensconced in larger, slower structures. Eventually, no one could remember a time when these complex and beautiful machines walked the lands. They had only their poor facsimiles for comparison. The second schism was one borne from these two tiers of technology, which in turn stemmed from a stratification of society. The elder mechs were important, linchpins of the nomadic society, and those who tended to them and controlled them had a special status. A project could live or die on the basis of whether one of the minders allowed you a piece of the power budget. The position of minder was highly coveted, apprenticeships fought over, and the minders of course had some of the best rooms, since they needed to be close to the fusion reactors which were, naturally, at the heart of the moving colony. The colony in that day looked nothing like the Natrix, of course, as each mech was on its own, and there was room for only a fraction of the people to actually live on or in these mobile fortresses. Instead, most people had homes that could be folded up every two months or so for a long march, and unfolded again when they reached the frigid edge of the twilight. What came from this was, in some sense, a schism of class. There were engineers who knew that they would never have one of the elder mechs for their own. They were just as good, in some cases, as the others they had competed against for apprenticeship slots, but the population was growing, easily doubling over the course of thirty years. There was simply no possible way that most people could go from walking along the migratory mechs and living inside a fabric tent to the relative safety, security, and luxury of one of the mech rooms. No way, that is, except to build mechs of their own that could match a fraction of the elder mech¡¯s power. Power was the primary issue, especially as it needed to be independent power, not just leaching from the aged fusion reactors. Many options were tried, from biofuel to solar power, but all of them failed until a scholar, looking into the old records of their starborne ancestors, had discovered nuclear power. Those in power, who controlled and minded the elder mechs, declared that this was not the path forward, that nuclear reactors were inherently unstable, that the technical issues were too great, that manufacturing precision was too low, and that radiation would imperil an already perilous existence. There were necessary technologies that would need to be developed, equipment that would need to be built, and all of that would detract from the success of the colony, from the defense against threats. In the end, the work required an alliance. One of the minders of the elder mechs was sympathetic to the nuclear proponents and courted by them. The planet was relatively rich in uranium, which meant that it was just a matter of developing the processes, crafting the equipment, and waiting until a proper deposit was found within the sweep of twilight. When it was, the elder mech split from the others and moved across the lands, breaking off from the others, a pack of dissidents moving with it. The intent had always been for the elder mech to return to the others, but the mission went long, and after a time, it became clear that there would be no return. The nuclear tribe kept in contact via radio. They were the third established branch of humanity on the planet, and this was generally considered a good thing, though they had a reputation for recklessness and instability, not helped by two separate nuclear accidents that had scarred the planet and nearly doomed their branch. Their single elder mech was still in good repair, the fusion reactor thrumming along with studious care, though they claimed not to be entirely dependent upon it anymore, instead having a full fleet of thirty mobile reactors, with new ones being brought online at regular intervals. They had different concerns from the Natrix, and their own fractious internal politics. Perhaps because of their social considerations, or the radiation, they seemed to want people, always promising population growth and never achieving it. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! ~~~~ ¡°Wait,¡± said Perry. ¡°So ¡­ there are multiple factions on the planet, all descended from those who came down from the space station. But how many total, just so I can get a feel for it?¡± Brigitta shrugged. ¡°We don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°News is infrequent,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°And we are not the only ones with schisms and problems. It is, in some sense, a great boon to have multiple groups on the planet with their own different strategies. Diversity ensures survival. But those that live in the ice had five mechs, and we don¡¯t know exactly where they settled, except that they must move every sixty years or so in order to stay icebound. A single elder mech could keep an entire city warm with its reactor, and they might have spread out to different locations. It¡¯s what I would have done, in order to collect different resources. We intercept radio signals sometimes, but they¡¯re encrypted.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t have spies?¡± asked Perry. He could feel his tongue trip over the word though, the second sphere translating finding something that didn¡¯t quite match. Brigitta frowned. ¡°Spies?¡± she asked. ¡°Seers?¡± ¡°People whose job it is to watch what others are doing, often in secret,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not scouts, people who would ideally enmesh themselves with the enemy, pretend to be one of them.¡± ¡°They¡¯d be found out right away,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°No one could come aboard the Natrix and pretend to be one of us.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°But they could pretend to be a defector, or someone who got lost, or something like that.¡± It occurred to him as he said it that he could easily have been describing himself. But Brigitta was shaking her head. ¡°We listen in, as best we can, but they are no neighbors to us. Even now, as twilight approaches them, we¡¯re six hundred miles away.¡± The translation of units was so seamless that Perry almost didn¡¯t notice it happening. ¡°Huh,¡± said Perry. ¡°And yet you¡¯re worried about attacks.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not a matter of ancient history,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It¡¯s the present.¡± ¡°And your guess as to how many factions there are?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Five,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Possibly six, if there is a desert tribe, which might well be a myth. The nuclear contingent has split twice, one going to the northern pole, another crossing over to our south, though without animosity. ¡®Factions¡¯ ¡­ that¡¯s not the word. Some are like brother and sister, living on opposite sides of the ship, friendly when they meet but content to live apart. We feel that way about our counterparts to the north. Others have animosity, as we have with those in the snows.¡± ¡°Which you¡¯ll explain?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°There is still history to cover.¡± ~~~~ In the wake of losing another of the elder mechs, the first skeletal bones of the Natrix were forged. The social rift had been a serious one, and it needed mending, especially when it became clear that there were now other places that a determined person could possibly leave to if they had a well-equipped mech and some expertise. The process started with building larger mechs, built with more in the way of housing, and something that came closer to approaching equality. The mechs moved slower with the extra weight, at a virtual crawl, and were single file across the lands, a convoy. The social problems were only partially the sort that could be solved with huge infrastructure projects, but huge infrastructure projects were what they knew best, and by god, that was what they were going to go with. They made designs for new mega-mechs which would run off the same fusion reactors which were meant to power something much smaller. Alterations were made to the reactors to draw more from them, careful adjustments that could have gone calamitously wrong. The focus was put on making everything as light-weight as possible, maximizing the interior space that would be available for everyone to live in, with rooms for even the lowliest of the workers. The Natrix was not the product of that first round of design and construction, but the third round, much later. The first version had looked more like a train, with methods to detach the mobile mega-mechs from each other. There was housing aboard them for everyone, semi-private bathrooms and shared spaces that unfolded out of the sides when the convoy wasn¡¯t in motion. These people saw themselves as being uniquely descended from those who had come down from the space station, in a way that their brethren were not. They saw it as their duty to continue the work of returning to the stars, and because that return did not seem like it would come from without, it would have to come from within. The work of generations was laid out in a series of long posts to the local network, read by almost everyone, and agreed to by the vast majority. It was a codification of things which had been felt for a long time, aims which had often gone unstated. The return to the stars would need people, it would need resources, and it would need research, particularly research into something like the FTL drive that had launched their ancestors to Esperide in the first place. Every generation was meant to be larger than the last, ideally by a considerable margin. The raising of children was of the utmost importance, and their training and education couldn¡¯t be left to the side, entrusted to apprenticeship or whatever someone was on hand to teach them about. Society was reshaped to accomplish this, sometimes in ways that rankled, but often with a deft hand and due consideration to those most affected. After the earlier defections, it seemed as though they had gotten everything under control, their four elder mechs being essentially ¡ª if not literally ¡ª inseparable, the communities intertwined and the people moving in lockstep. When the second version of the train was being made, there was even tighter integration, but it wasn¡¯t only a question of what trade-offs would be made in the design, but what those trade-offs would symbolize. There were four elder mechs, reduced largely to their reactors and their computers, as many things as possible replaced and repaired over the course of many years. For the sake of practicality, it would have been best to have them detachable, so that a problem with one wouldn¡¯t cause the others to fail as well, and so that their order could be reconfigured if different needs presented themselves. For the sake of unity, it was best that they be indivisible. In the end, practicality won out, and the changes were made over the course of many months, carefully staged when the mega-mechs were at the chilled edge of the twilight zone, sometimes moving far enough in that there was proper night, just to give them enough time to accomplish all they needed to. Defense against the insects had become rote by this point. The mega-mechs were well-defended, with plenty of automated weapons to use against the waves of attacks, only a fraction of the power output and materials allocation of the colony. It was the expeditions where loss of life occurred, trips with the lesser mechs to secure a huge crop of native plants or to mine out another deposit that wasn¡¯t large enough to warrant diversion of the convoy. Often, the mechs served as scouts, though usually toward the cold side of the twilight zone, where the insects were smaller and less common, though not unknown. It was a society of unequal burdens. There were, on the one hand, the mothers, expected to birth as many children as they could, sometimes as many as a dozen, though not all women could endure. On the other hand, there were the mech pilots, who faced a risk that others did not. Neither group could be properly compensated for those risks, as much as efforts were made to do so. It happened that one of the four elder mechs broke down, the fusion core becoming non-functional. It was able to limp along under power supplied by the other three, but all efforts by its crew to fix the problem and restart the core proved fruitless. The convoy came to a halt as additional efforts were made to fix the issue, but as the days wore on, the sun grew large in the sky, and the temperatures began to go up. Similarly, the giant insects began to attack more often, as they were more active in the warmth. A decision was made to abandon the fourth mega-mecha. Plans were made to strip it of everything of value, to cannibalize everything that they could, perhaps to drag it along to the frost edge, but the crew refused and made their threats, and there was little enough time to transfer more than personnel. Eventually, an agreement was made with the engineers: they would be given mechs and personnel, and left to bake in the ever-increasing heat. Either they would get the core restarted and rejoin the convoy, or they would abandon it and travel with their guardian mechs to join the convoy in defeat. That fourth mega-mech had been home to many, a place where they had been born, lived, and formed families. There were schools, dining halls, and even gardens aboard it. Some of those who were supposed to evacuate stayed. When the three remaining mega-mechs left their brethren behind, it was clear that they were losing more people than they had hoped, and that any march back to the convoy would be a tragedy of thus far untold proportions. There was little that could be done though, not with the sun pressing down on them. The fourth mega-mech never rejoined the others, nor did a group of smaller mechs shepherd back hundreds of people on foot. It was considered a major blow to the colony, a loss of personnel and one of the irreplaceable fusion reactors, even if it had undergone some manner of catastrophic failure. It was a chilling reminder of both the importance of unity and the colony¡¯s dependence on the fusion reactors, which were, by this point, two centuries past the operating lifetime they had been designed for. When it came time for a redesign to support a growing population and aging equipment, what they settled on was the Natrix. It was fully enclosed and heavily armed, built to expand out when it had found a temporary home, but capable of continual movement if need be. A focus was put on heavy cargo, slowing the craft considerably compared to its forebears. Like all previous iterations, it needed to be built while in transit, a massive challenge given how many other things needed to be going on at the same time to keep the children educated, the food stores full, and the insects dead. This time, the three elder mechs would be connected together, welded in place, so that there could be no question of losing another. It was, perhaps more than a practical move, a decision borne of symbolism. That had been the work of Brigitta¡¯s great-grandparents. Inequality came slowly, as a creeping thing. Someone with the power to requisition and approve requests would take a little more for themselves, and they would elevate others, who would in turn elevate themselves. It was a question of corruption and cronyism creeping into the fabric of their society, sometimes justified by those in charge needing to have creature comforts so they wouldn¡¯t be distracted by their physical needs, and other times simply done without any excuse. The population ballooned, as it was designed to, and more resources and labor were skimmed from the top with every passing decade. New excuses were invented, or reinvented through convergent processes, the same things that those at the top had said since time immemorial across many worlds. The opulence would be declared a matter of symbolism: a leader must have fine things, because otherwise no one will respect them or their station. Or those at the top would simply say that they couldn¡¯t possibly find the motivation to do their best if there were no reward for hard work. They would say that strict equality is first, impossible, and second, disruptive to the order of things. The natural ending point for all this might have been those of the penthouses and fine wines securing the loyalty of the police force, but there wasn¡¯t much police force aboard the Natrix, and at any rate, they had ensconced themselves away from the working and living conditions of the others. They didn¡¯t realize that a coup was brewing until it was at their doorstep. It was bloodless, which was good, because no one knew that much about close-quarters fighting aboard the moving ship. The Natrix had never suffered a riot, nor wide-spread civil disobedience, and the few police had never been turned to the task of violence against the population. Instead, three women with a groundswell of support had walked in and declared that they were going to be in charge moving forward. There were no threats except the implicit ones, no violence except that which was promised by well-muscled men standing behind these women. The Natrix had marched on. ~~~~ Perry frowned. ¡°This was ¡­ a handful of years ago?¡± ¡°Two years,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But it¡¯s stable now, the leadership, the social structure?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°As stable as it can be with a population growing so quickly.¡± ¡°But you didn¡¯t get to the Heimalis,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not clear why you expect an attack from them.¡± Brigitta frowned. ¡°There are advantages to the place they live, to not moving around. They have resources that are more difficult for us.¡± ¡°Microchips,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can make them,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But ours are not as good, with more waste, and even then ¡­ it¡¯s a difficult process, error-prone, if you know anything about lithography.¡± ¡°And from you, they get what?¡± asked Perry. She looked away from him. ¡°People.¡± ¡°Children?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, not children,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But young, moldable, many of them ten years old, ready for their first apprenticeship.¡± ¡°Where I come from, those would be considered children,¡± said Perry. He was trying to keep his voice level. It sounded like selling children into slavery as a form of payment for microchips. ¡°Are these children you send over, uh ¡­ well treated?¡± ¡°They weren¡¯t, no,¡± said Brigitta. Her lips were thin. ¡°It¡¯s something that stopped when we came to power. It¡¯s one of the reasons for the current aggression.¡± ¡°They want the children,¡± said Perry. ¡°They want us to honor a debt they feel owed to them,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°And they see our takeover as lacking legitimacy. They think it will surely lead to the Natrix having a decline. Possibly they¡¯re just saying that. They have air mechs, which buzz by us like threatening dragonflies.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re getting closer to them every day,¡± said Perry. ¡°For now,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°We¡¯re some distance from the place they call home. They¡¯ll be journeying far to the west soon, to resettle in the snow, but without our help, it¡¯s not certain they can do it. It¡¯s not just the children they need, but skilled engineers, people who can spend the next two years getting as much of their city on skids as possible.¡± Her eyes were on Perry. ¡°You¡¯re a fighter, skilled in the ways of battle, war.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was a knight, for a bit.¡± ¡°I think that¡¯s the wrong word,¡± she said. She brushed hair from her face. ¡°It¡¯s one we use for an ancient warrior, from the time of kings.¡± ¡°I went to a world with a king,¡± said Perry. ¡°Technically, I went to several worlds with kings, but I was only a knight in one of them.¡± ¡°We¡¯re hoping to settle this conflict without firing on each other,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But if we can¡¯t ¡ª¡± ¡°Then you might need someone who knows more about war and what it means to kill other people,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta with a firm nod. ¡°And you¡¯re not leaving anything out in your story?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Some inciting incident that makes you look bad?¡± ¡°There¡¯s more history,¡± she said, as though it wasn¡¯t worth considering. ¡°There¡¯s always more history. We¡¯ve been stymied by problems they¡¯ve made for us. Especially now, as we draw close together, there¡¯s evidence of what they¡¯ve done to the environment, scars on the land, places where food will no longer grow. We mine deposits as we come to them, but here, we¡¯re within range of what they¡¯ve taken, and find meager scraps. Sometimes they leave equipment in place.¡± She shrugged. ¡°We¡¯re not going to give them the people they were hoping for. We¡¯re also not going to give back what they had already delivered to us.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°And if that means war, then that¡¯s war,¡± he said. He looked around the penthouse. ¡°Knowing the history here, I¡¯d really rather this not be my home for the next however long. And I think it¡¯s high time I got to see the rest of the Natrix, got to meet its people.¡± He didn¡¯t entirely trust her story, not if she was part of a revolutionary movement, and wanted a chance to see what this place was like for the common people. From everything she¡¯d said, they were on the right side of history. It made him all the more concerned about where the other thresholder was going to end up. Chapter 67 - Crawl Before they could go, Brigitta had to spend fifteen minutes marveling at Perry¡¯s earpiece. ¡°How is it so small?¡± she asked. ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s pretty tiny,¡± said Perry. ¡°How many circuits are in it?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°There has to be at least one.¡± ¡°Sorry, I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you hand that here, I can check though.¡± Brigitta handed the earbud over with great reverence and watched as Perry fit it into his ear. Perry cleared his throat. ¡°Computer, search design specifications, earbud, component lookup, circuits.¡± ¡°Simply dreadful, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°The earbud has a microcontroller, a digital signal processor, an audio codec microchip, a power management microchip, two microelectrical circuits to serve as microphones with bone conductivity, an amplifier microchip, a microchip for capacitive touch sensing, and accelerometer circuit. There is also some redundancy, but if you¡¯re looking for a total count, I believe I would say eleven.¡± Perry dutifully reported this, and Brigitta simply stared at him. ¡°Most of the size is battery though,¡± said Perry. ¡°That string of voice commands, that was able to accurately relay information back to you?¡± she asked. ¡°How does that work?¡± ¡°Voice produces a waveform, that gets decoded into text, that drives a program,¡± said Perry. He was halfway guessing, and hoping that she wouldn¡¯t want a more technical answer. ¡°There¡¯s a specific command, written into the system, that returns complex information?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°You have computers, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°And it¡¯s because we have computers, computers which I program that I know how difficult it would be to implement something like that. The voice detection alone would take an enormous amount of work.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°But you train it, right?¡± ¡°Train it?¡± asked Brigitta. She cocked her head to the side. ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know,¡± he said. ¡°I don¡¯t think she does know sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯m out of my depth,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But once we make a bridge between systems, there are text files on your micromech?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m willing to help, to hand over what I know.¡± ¡°Soon,¡± said Brigitta. She looked over at the armor like it was a holy relic. ¡°It¡¯s like technology from the distant past, what the elder mechs possessed.¡± ¡°Hardly,¡± scoffed Marchand as they moved out of the penthouse. ¡°Sir, I don¡¯t wish to gain a reputation as a braggart, but I could easily run laps around the so-called elder mechs. The level of scientific understanding possessed by these people is shockingly low, and I fully believe that extends to their forebears. You would do well to keep that in mind, if you wish to maintain the advantage.¡± Perry wasn¡¯t sure that he did. He had the academic tether to think about, and if he could give away technologies that would earn him some goodwill and upgrade their level of living once he was gone, that was a win-win as far as he was concerned. Brigitta hadn¡¯t mentioned nuclear weapons. Perry hoped to keep those a secret if they hadn¡¯t already been invented. Though they did apparently have nuclear walking mechs, and fusion reactors too. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how easy it was to go from power generation to earth-shattering bombs, and made a mental note to ask Marchand about it later. They took the elevator down, though not to the level of the mech bay at the tail. Instead, it felt like it must be in the middle of the ship. Perry was desperately hoping that he wouldn¡¯t have to finally learn nautical terms. When they came out, they were in a fairly empty hallway. It was gray, but less utilitarian than he had expected to see, with etching and painting on the wall to give it a bit of style and color. The lights overhead were soft, and reminded Perry of the indirect lighting he most closely associated with the hallway of a modern hotel. That certainly fit with the numbered doors. There was some plush carpeting, though it was threadbare down the center, in need of replacement. ¡°I thought there would be more people,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is a residential area,¡± said Brigitta. She kept her voice low. ¡°People aren¡¯t supposed to be in the halls unless they¡¯re going to or from, it¡¯s not a place to be social. We¡¯re just passing through, it¡¯s a bit faster.¡± Perry followed behind her, and they turned twice, right and then left, to continue down another hallway. It felt like a long way to walk, especially with the knowledge that these were all places where people lived. They saw another person only once, an older man who saw Brigitta and looked like he wanted to find somewhere to hide. ¡°Where are we going?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The atrium,¡± said Brigitta. They were still walking when the Natrix came to a stop. Perry kept walking without missing a step, but Brigitta needed to brace herself. He looked at her, but she continued on, seeming unconcerned. ¡°We¡¯re close to the cold front,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°You¡¯ll get to see us settle in. We¡¯re almost there.¡± ¡°Testing range,¡± said Perry, sotto voce. ¡°I hear you, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, if you¡¯re able to release some of the nanites near a terminal, I might be able to begin establishing better long-distance communication across the Natrix.¡± Perry had taken half the nanite ¡®tooth¡¯ with him and left the other half with March, mostly so that he could spend some of his power on multiplying them. He wasn¡¯t doing that now though: this was as far as he¡¯d been away from March since the problems with the Wolf Vessel in the midst of the big fight. Most of his extra attention was focused on the meridians, which were now stretched very far with no obvious tension in them, seeming uncomplicated by the fact that they were moving through a great many metal and plastic walls. It was, if anything, all upside: he would never have to wonder where the suit was again. He wasn¡¯t sure what he¡¯d have done if he proved unable to go more than a few meters away from the armor. The hallway widened and led to a set of double doors, which Brigitta went through with the swiftness of someone who had somewhere to be. They came out on the upper level of a jungle. The sight was unexpected, and Perry came up short, taking a moment to take in the sight of it, along with the throngs of people below them. The balcony was one of several which overlooked the greenery, and gently spiraling staircases threaded through the balconies, down to the ground level. Brigitta took a step toward the staircase, then looked back at Perry. ¡°You can see, if you¡¯d like,¡± she said. Perry took a moment to look out at it all. The plants were similar to those on the surface, or perhaps exactly those on the surface, though they were bent toward internal lights rather than toward the sun. They grew taller than the plants that Perry had seen, with the hollow reed-like ones having formed into proper trees with thick trunks. There were tall grasses, tall enough that he could have hid in them, green and swaying, and vines that had climbed up the side of the walls. The engineering was artful in a way that Perry hadn¡¯t seen on the ship before, with sightlines designed to give an illusion that it was a larger space, and structural steel or along the outside to hold everything together. The plants were penned in by metal and glass, but the metal skeleton was largely hidden by leafy trees. As Perry watched, the walls opened up. He was confused about what he was seeing, then realized that metal shutters were being pulled back to reveal clear plastic. It was scratched and had seen better days, but it let the light in, and Perry could see the same land he¡¯d seen from the penthouse apartment, a relatively flat area with springy moss and shallow bogs, the remains of dead trees ¡ª or huge reeds ¡ª sticking up in various places. It was a quiet and unassuming place, framed by mountains in the distance. ¡°This is the place you¡¯ll be calling home?¡± asked Perry. ¡°For a time,¡± said Brigitta. Her eyes were scanning the horizon. ¡°We scouted it. There will be room for our farms, water to replenish the tanks, and a source of iron is nearby. The water is shallow, and there¡¯s bedrock below.¡± Her eyes weren¡¯t on the land though. Instead, they were on the people down below. They were hard to make out with all of the plants spreading their leaves, but it felt like a sizeable fraction of the whole ship¡¯s population. ¡°Why are they here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Tradition,¡± said Brigitta. She didn¡¯t seem to like the word. ¡°The atrium opens at the sides, and the children run out to greet the new land. We¡¯ll expand soon, but now is the time to explore a new place, to stretch our legs after a long trip.¡± She let out a sigh. ¡°And it¡¯s cold.¡± ¡°This is as far west as you go?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We¡¯ve gone further,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°We¡¯ve driven the Natrix into snow more than once. But in normal circumstances, yes, we go far enough that the reeds aren¡¯t pushing up from the ground yet.¡± They stood there for a while, and eventually, the Natrix settled in and extended long staircases to the ground. Brigitta explained certain details of the engineering, which was what seemed to interest her most, and told Perry that the ship would take some time to lower itself so that people could exit and enter the Natrix at will. People flooded out to greet their new home. They would be here for a few months or something like that, maybe less depending on the circumstances. Perry had always thought there was something romantic about the idea of van life that the experience couldn¡¯t possibly live up to, but the ability to have new stomping grounds was part of that romance. Most likely living in a van would involve a lot of Walmart parking lots and shitty wifi, but every now and then you¡¯d get a sunrise with a bowl of muesli in a nice park. This was, maybe, that kind of thing for these people, who lived on the moving mech. The children were enjoying the new place though. The bog wasn¡¯t a proper bog, with little in the way of thick, sticking mud. Instead, it was solid, bedrock beneath a half foot of water, with the clusters of mosses acted like stepping stones for those who didn¡¯t want to get wet. There was no fear among the hundreds who were venturing out, which Perry thought odd until he remembered that this site was specifically chosen for them, and that there were dozens of high-powered guns and precision laser defenses aiming quite a ways into the distance. They wouldn¡¯t have come out if they hadn¡¯t been cleared. Two large mechs stood at either side of the walkways, which seemed more for show than anything else. ¡°Can we go down?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Of course,¡± nodded Brigitta. They took the spiral stairs two at a time, since they were shallow. ¡°I know what you¡¯re thinking. It¡¯s very wasteful,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°What is?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The atrium,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It¡¯s mostly hollow space, unused.¡± ¡°It¡¯s part of the commons,¡± said Perry. ¡°People like moving around in the plants, right? Green space, a garden?¡± ¡°They can have green space while we¡¯re at rest,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°There¡¯s nothing but green space for miles around us, no matter where we go.¡± ¡°You¡¯re against having a garden for pure aesthetic pleasure?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s popular,¡± said Brigitta with a little shrug. ¡°That¡¯s the only reason we kept it when we took over.¡± Perry kept his thoughts to himself. Maybe it was the product of a liberal arts education, but he¡¯d always found some value in things that were beautiful for their own sake. When he went on a trip to a new city, he would try to find some time to go to the local museums and art galleries. He didn¡¯t always get all that much from them, but there was always a thing or two he could stand in front of and say, ¡®Hey, that¡¯s neat¡¯. He couldn¡¯t imagine Brigitta doing the same, but she was on a war footing, one it seemed that not everyone aboard the Natrix shared, not if the frolicking children in the pseudo-bog were anything to go by. Up close, the jungle of the atrium was a bit more ordered, with paths through the plants and benches here and there for people to rest. There were children still inside the atrium, and more than a few adults, but almost everyone had moved outside at the first opportunity. It was shocking how many children there were, really. Marchand had said that the average age was sixteen, and that seemed about right to Perry, or perhaps even high ¡ª though the children were out in the bog, and it seemed likely that there were lots of people who were at their jobs, especially with the Natrix setting up shop in a new location. It was also shocking how similar everyone looked, but they were descended from an initial group of ninety, and even before that, from what Brigitta had said, they had a single island to start from, not a whole world with a long history of drifting genetics and specialization for different climates and cultures. Almost everyone had the same blonde hair, some with just a shade darker than pure blonde. They were tall, on average, and with similar lanky builds. The only place he didn¡¯t see blonde was with those who had dyed their hair, almost always darker, unnatural colors. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Perry was an anomaly among them. They went along the path together, with Perry following behind Brigitta. Eventually, they came to the long walkway that had been put down to allow access to the ground. Perry paid special attention to the way that people reacted to Brigitta: it was with happiness, joy even, and often a sort of reverence. The children kept their distance from her, but they did stop and stare, both at her, and at him. The clothes were all simple, with the outfits very similar to each other. The dyes were less rich than Perry had seen across the Great Arc, even if he didn¡¯t include the second sphere. Aside from the fabrics that had been bleached white, there were maroons and vermillions, ochres and forest greens. It was missing vibrancy, and when he looked closely, there were a lot of hand-me-downs, clothes that had been patched and mended. Aside from that, there were plenty of boots, made of some kind of rubber, though many of the younger children were going barefoot, as was Perry. Brigitta had told him, but Perry was still mildly surprised to find that he was standing in half a foot of clear, cold water rather than mud. His bare feet were touching bedrock, which wasn¡¯t perfectly flat, but had gentle slopes and folds that he had to look carefully at. It was shockingly cold, actually, given how the children were out playing and splashing around. Among all the people out enjoying the new land, there was one who stood out among them, a woman wearing a dress that was entirely white, its hem wet from the water. She had a crown of flowers, which must have been woven within the last few minutes, and a beatific smile on her face. A throng of children sat in front of her, listening to a story, with one of them perched upon her knee. She could have been Brigitta¡¯s sister, but Perry wasn¡¯t very good at telling these people apart, not yet. The dress had a plunging neckline, which piqued his interest. ¡°They spread out from the island, and found that there were lands beyond,¡± she said with a smile. Her teeth were very white. ¡°They found all kinds of animals, those with long necks and sharp claws, but they had lived hard lives on their little rock, and they were wily creatures, thinking creatures. There was no claw that could harm them, not with their armor. And there were plants in those new lands, yummy things to eat they¡¯d never had before, plants like these,¡± she pushed her fingers down into the soft matted plants that she was sitting on, ¡°that could be woven into fibers and burned for fuel. They grew into a great society, one with a dozen cities, each with a million people, and they sent ships straight up into the skies, to the stars. Those are our ancestors. And when we come to a new place, we should think of them and everything that they found. Maybe, if we work hard, we can find things too.¡± The children clapped, and the woman set the girl on her lap to the side, in the matted plants. She made her way over, past grabbing hands, to Perry. ¡°You¡¯re Brigitta¡¯s new arrival,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m Leticia.¡± ¡°Head of Farming,¡± Marchand added in Perry¡¯s ear. ¡°Head of Farming,¡± said Perry. ¡°That I am,¡± she nodded. ¡°And mining, and other things. I¡¯ve been trying to change the department name to Procurement, but there are some battles that aren¡¯t worth fighting. And you¡¯re ¡­ Perry?¡± Perry nodded. She was one of the three who ran things on the Natrix, and from what he¡¯d seen, Brigitta wasn¡¯t the one who had done the glad-handing necessary to get a coup going. If Leticia was a storyteller to children, then there was a good chance that she was also a storyteller to adults, or as many adults as they had on the ship. ¡°Thank you for the hospitality.¡± ¡°You¡¯re an aberration,¡± said Leticia. ¡°You and I will have to have a sit down at some point to get to the bottom of some of your ¡­ claims. The micromech isn¡¯t with you?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t want to scare anyone,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s bold technology, according to Brigitta,¡± said Leticia. ¡°And from what she¡¯s said, it might serve as a symbol of might and power. A noble protector, rather than an alien, to a child¡¯s eyes?¡± ¡°Possibly,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know your people well enough to say. Brigitta is the only one that I¡¯ve talked with for long enough to form an opinion of.¡± ¡°And what is that?¡± asked Brigitta, who had come up from behind him. She¡¯d spent her time at the walkway, removing her boots and socks. They were now part of a large, disordered pile there. ¡°You¡¯re competent, curious, serious, energetic,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯d put the fate of the Natrix on your shoulders if you could and probably don¡¯t delegate enough to your subordinates.¡± Leticia laughed. ¡°He has you pegged.¡± ¡°He¡¯s been reading through the forums,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Is there a time we could meet?¡± asked Leticia. She cocked her head to the side in the exact same way that Perry had seen Brigitta do. ¡°Soon?¡± ¡°Now is fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t have a schedule.¡± ¡°I, unfortunately, do,¡± said Leticia. ¡°I¡¯ll have Ops clear as much as possible, and at the start of next cycle we¡¯ll have a private breakfast ¡ª you, me, and Brigitta, with Mette if she¡¯s available.¡± ¡°And the agenda will be?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The truth of the claims, as much as you can find, a discussion of your goals, and the requirements of your swift transfer of whatever technological information you have,¡± said Leticia. ¡°I expect that most of it won¡¯t be helpful to us in the near future, given the long lead times involved, but I might be wrong.¡± ¡°He¡¯s also a warrior,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°A warrior for a world that¡¯s not like this one, right?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°I¡¯ve fought in a war, which is possibly more than anyone on this planet can say,¡± said Perry. It didn¡¯t seem like she liked him, which was a shame. ¡°The world I come from fought a great many wars, and I¡¯ve read about them extensively.¡± This was only a little bit of a stretch. He had read a lot, but he had no proper training or education in military matters. It was, at best, a geographer¡¯s hobbyist view on warfare. He thought that still beat out the theorycrafting they were currently doing, though it was hard to say. Leticia turned to Brigitta. ¡°Have you seen him fight?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I saw him dodge gunfire, quite quickly, though I think if the guns had been properly calibrated for tracking a smaller, faster target he would have died. And he wasn¡¯t trying to attack me.¡± ¡°Hmm,¡± said Leticia. She looked Perry up and down. ¡°You can fight without the micromech?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°And could I watch you spar?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°For what purpose?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°I want to see,¡± said Leticia with a shrug. ¡°A demonstration on one of the most important cycles of the season, something to show off his prowess. If he¡¯s as good as he claims, he¡¯ll have no problem, and everyone will walk away with the understanding that this is a man who offers the solution to our problems.¡± ¡°They¡¯re different skills,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I would happily fight anyone you have. Multiple men, even.¡± ¡°How many at once?¡± asked Leticia with a grin. ¡°Ten,¡± said Perry. ¡°Be realistic,¡± said Brigitta. He glanced at her just in time to see her roll her eyes. ¡°Even if you¡¯re skilled, there are limits to the human body.¡± ¡°With the armor, it would be even higher,¡± said Perry with a shrug. He turned to Leticia. ¡°But like you said, it¡¯s not as though a war between people would be fought with fists. It¡¯ll be mechs and bombs, missiles and lasers.¡± Leticia was watching Perry closely. ¡°Ruben!¡± she called, raising a hand without changing where she was looking. ¡°Yes?¡± asked a man who jogged over through the water. He was taller than Perry, his shirt unbuttoned, showing off a hairless chest with sculpted muscles. Apparently the Natrix had a gym, and he spent a lot of time with it, or he was just a man who used brute strength on a daily basis. ¡°Are you up for sparring with the handsome stranger?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°Is he?¡± asked Ruben, raising an eyebrow toward Perry. ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°We go until someone yields, no attempt at injuries? I don¡¯t want to hurt you.¡± ¡°Cocksure,¡± said Ruben. He looked at Leticia. ¡°You want me to show him that I¡¯m no slouch?¡± ¡°That¡¯s we¡¯re no slouches,¡± said Leticia. ¡°He seems to have some ideas about our understanding of martial matters.¡± ¡°Oh?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°He also claims to have come from another world, having traveled through many of them, fighting as a soldier,¡± said Leticia. ¡°He must be capable beyond compare, if he¡¯s offered to fight ten men at once.¡± Perry stayed silent. He would try to let his actions speak for him. ¡°Here?¡± asked Ruben, who had already sized Perry up. ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was asking her,¡± said Ruben, nodding in Leticia¡¯s direction. ¡°Here is fine, so long as you don¡¯t get too bloody for the children,¡± she said. ¡°It does seem like a demonstration the boys will love.¡± Ruben nodded. ¡°Clear a ring!¡± he shouted. The children moved away like a flock of birds, and one of the mats of plants were moved away by a group of boys who had been listening in and did seem quite eager to see a fight. Perry found himself standing beside Ruben, both of them in a foot of clear, cold water. Ruben squared up and raised his fists, a pugilist¡¯s stance. Perry watched for a moment, trying to decide how to play this one. He slipped into the Moon Stance and drew on the power of the cold water. As soon as he did, he was shocked by just how much power there was in the shallow water and the bedrock below it, easily twice what he¡¯d been able to get from even a carefully selected location on the Great Arc that was away from other people trying to draw the same power. It made sense though, if he was the only person on the entire planet who could tap into something like that. The grandmaster¡¯s phrase ¡®virgin land¡¯ popped into Perry¡¯s mind, somewhat unwelcome. Ruben struck out first, and it was like he was moving in slow motion. Perry had fought against a few first spheres since becoming second sphere, but it wasn¡¯t something that the sects encouraged except for the purposes of teaching the first spheres a bit. Any sparring match would be entirely one-sided if the second sphere was putting any effort into winning. Even aside from that, Ruben was a terrible fighter. He was strong, but he obviously had only minimal training at hand-to-hand fighting, maybe just a few sparring matches like this with other men who likewise had minimal training. They were making it up as they went along, with no dedicated fighting manuals to read from or senseis or coaches to learn from. There was probably a gym somewhere on the Natrix, but it wasn¡¯t dedicated to fighting. There weren¡¯t amateurs, let alone professionals. Ruben was, basically, just some guy. He was fit, but he wasn¡¯t a fighter. Perry slapped the fist to the side and slipped around Ruben. Perry¡¯s movements through the water were as clean and gentle as a fish¡¯s would be. When he was behind the larger man, he drove his hand forward, fingertips in front of him, and delivered a perfect splashing strike with all the power of the clear water. Ruben yelped and seized up, back arching in pain, and he was quick to turn around, though not so quick that Perry couldn¡¯t have landed three or four killing blows. ¡°How did you do that?¡± asked Ruben. He had his fists up, but he was moving around, wiggling his back like he thought he¡¯d be able to dislodge the pain somehow. ¡°Training and practice,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can yield now, if you¡¯d like.¡± Ruben shook his head. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. He slowly slipped his left hand behind his back, until it was resting there, depriving him of its use. The crowd around them, mostly small boys, whooped and hollered when they realized what he was doing. He was happy about that, since it meant that they were on his side. The last thing he needed was to deliver a beatdown that would make people scorn him, as had happened at the temple. ¡°Cheeky,¡± said Ruben with a wide smile, one given through the pain. ¡°But I¡¯ve got to make a good show of it, don¡¯t I?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know how you think that¡¯s going to happen,¡± said Perry. Ruben dashed forward, as much as the water allowed him to, and did a classic jab jab cross combo, none of which came remotely close to landing. Perry could see them coming and move out of the way, even the body blows which required him to step two feet to the side. He was soaking wet, and moving wasn¡¯t easy with his feet in the water, but the Moon Stance was serving him well, and the energy was flowing through his internal systems, misshapen as they were. ¡°How?¡± asked Ruben. He was seeming less cheery about it now. ¡°If I could land a blow, you¡¯d be ¡ª¡± ¡°Try it,¡± said Perry. He still had his hand behind his back. ¡°What, you¡¯ll let me hit you?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°Sure, I can give you a freebie,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve got to warn you that it¡¯s not going to make you look good.¡± Ruben looked at Perry, trying to see whether there was a weakness somewhere, an opening, or at least some suggestion of what was going to happen. Eventually, having no particular clue, he drew back for a haymaker. Perry took it to the face. He was making up a move on the fly, which he was sure Luo Yanhua would have hated, and he was doing it against someone he strictly outclassed, which in the Great Arc would have been forbidden. Still, with energy flowing and his body rigid, he was only pushed back, water splashing up from his feet. It still hurt like hell, but nothing was broken, and Perry¡¯s body had stayed solid and unmoving, like steel. Ruben was shaking his hand and swearing. The kids around them, along with the adults, were laughing and jeering. It still seemed to be in Perry¡¯s favor. ¡°How?¡± he yelled, before laughing in disbelief. He looked down at his hand and opened his mouth in pain. ¡°Seriously, how?¡± ¡°Practice,¡± said Perry. ¡°I got hit in the face a lot.¡± ¡°Well,¡± said Ruben. He looked over at Leticia. ¡°No way I¡¯m beating him.¡± ¡°He has one hand behind his back,¡± said Leticia. She was smiling. ¡°I guess we¡¯ll have to accept that some of what he says is true ¡ª unless you were paid off, Ruben?¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to have a bruise the size of your head on my back tomorrow,¡± he replied, rubbing the spot that Perry had jabbed him. ¡°Not sure what I could be paid off with either, since he can¡¯t cook.¡± He looked at Perry. ¡°Can he?¡± ¡°Nope,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re done then? Because next I was going to lose the other arm.¡± ¡°Ha!¡± said Ruben. He puffed up his chest, wincing slightly at the motion of his back muscles. ¡°That, I think I could handle.¡± Perry slowly put his other hand behind his back, and just as slowly raised his left foot from the water, controlled and steady. He aimed the foot squarely at Ruben¡¯s chest, coiled and ready to strike. The smile slowly slipped from the other man¡¯s face. ¡°Alright, I don¡¯t want to see what that foot can do,¡± said Ruben. ¡°Boo!¡± shouted a small boy. ¡°Let him kick you!¡± ¡°We don¡¯t kick,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Only when the other person has agreed to a friendly spar. In fact ¡ª¡± There were screams, and for a moment Perry was getting ready to summon his sword. He had left it near the terrace of his temporary room, and unlatched the door, just as a precaution. He couldn¡¯t see the bug or whatever it was. The children were running back through the water toward the Natrix. Perry heard the droning sound first and spotted the planes second. They came from the west, over the mountains that sheltered the valley, six of them flying in formation, shining chrome and glass. Brigitta had called them mechs, but to Perry they looked like something out of World War II, loud propeller driven things that looked to have all come out off the same assembly line. There were guns by the nose and missiles beneath the wings. They passed low, well within range of the Natrix¡¯s own weapons, buzzing past the children, who were running and screaming. Perry could almost have leapt up to them, if he¡¯d been better prepared and had a death wish. He could see the helmets of the pilots, briefly, and then they passed by, the sound of their engines fading into the distance as they climbed back up the mountains again. When they were gone, the sound fading over the hills, the mood had soured. ¡°That was a threat?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Showing that they know where we are, showing their toys.¡± ¡°It was a message,¡± said Leticia with a sigh. ¡°Briggy, go through the data, make sure we could have shot them down if we had wanted to start a war.¡± ¡°If they were coming after us, they would have done it differently,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°They¡¯d launch missiles from a distance. But yes, I¡¯ll look at the data.¡± ¡°Ruben, we¡¯re setting up the farms here,¡± said Leticia. ¡°This cycle, if possible.¡± ¡°Moving the timeline up on that?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°Even with them passing so close by?¡± ¡°They¡¯ll keep an eye on us from above, it¡¯s a message back,¡± said Leticia. ¡°We¡¯re not shooting them down, but we¡¯re showing no fear. It¡¯s business as usual.¡± ¡°Normally we¡¯d have a cycle to relax,¡± said Ruben, though it was clear that was all the pushback he was going to give. ¡°Perry, it was lovely to meet you, but governance is giving me its call,¡± said Leticia. She turned to Brigitta. ¡°You¡¯re not distracted by this? By him?¡± ¡°I can handle the workload,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I¡¯ll delegate, have someone on him, but if there are things we can implement now, then we need to get started on them.¡± She had furrowed her brows, and was giving Perry a questioning look. ¡°I need some time alone with my computer,¡± said Perry. ¡°It would be helpful if you gave me full permissions, or at least as many permissions as you¡¯d give a member of engineering. It¡¯s fine if it¡¯s read-only.¡± ¡°Get it done,¡± Leticia said to Brigitta. She turned back to Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not ready to take you at your word yet, but I¡¯m confident you¡¯re not with the enemy.¡± Perry had seen the planes. He had finally seen the face of the enemy, and was already thinking about how best to win against them. Chapter 68 - Advantages ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let¡¯s say we want to help these people, but we don¡¯t want to give them the atom bomb. They have piss-poor microchips except for the legacy systems, and realistically, most of the things we can tell them about would take a very long time to implement, if they even could be implemented. We want to demonstrate value, and I think immediate value is going to be the key.¡± He was still in the penthouse, at least for the time being, though a room was apparently being cleared for him. Marchand sat at the computer, though the suit¡¯s fingers were no longer at the keyboard, as that was no longer necessary: the nanites had made a bridge that could send keystrokes wirelessly. ¡°I¡¯ve taken a look at their code, sir, and have rewritten some of it,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I did my best to use only those techniques that are known to them.¡± ¡°You can do that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The ability to program computer systems is one of the primary things that Miss Richter used me for. I have not historically been trusted to write novel software without supervision, but in this case, the work I was doing was largely refactoring some dreadful legacy code in order to optimize core processes.¡± ¡°And ¡­ to be clear, this isn¡¯t something that you¡¯ve put on their servers or whatever, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They have no proper servers, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There are three computers which once belonged to the so-called elder mechs, which serve the vast majority of the computational needs of the Natrix. Everything that you would consider a server is housed on one of those three machines. It goes without saying that those elder mechs have far inferior computing power to what was available on the space station.¡± ¡°The thrust of my question was whether you had deployed the code or not,¡± said Perry. ¡°Oh, no, of course not sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It will need to be looked over by a skilled programmer, but I have done my best to ensure that the code is readable and, dare I say, elegant.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s something that will help them? In a measurable way?¡± ¡°Compute is limited here, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Assuming my changes are approved, eighty-three percent of the computational power aboard the Natrix will be freed. If you can convince them to adopt better audio and visual codecs, that will result in a fifty percent reduction in network traffic.¡± ¡°How¡¯s that possible?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t want the technical explanation, I want the social one. Brigitta could code up a storm, we both saw that, why is whatever they¡¯re doing so inefficient?¡± ¡°You¡¯re asking me to speculate, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yeah, sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t want you to take my idle musings as fact, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I do want to hear what you think.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe that these people are incredibly gifted in some ways and stunted in others. They appear to have a much larger working memory than was ever present in the people from Earth, and they can synthesize visual information in a way that would astound Miss Richter. At the same time, it appears that these advantages do not extend to all areas of thought, and in fact, might hamper them in certain circumstances. If I might be allowed to analyze their ancestral programmers based on the programs they have written, it appears that when they are required to move past their excellent working memory and wide-ranging synthesis, they end up with muddled messes, the result of stitching individual projects together.¡± ¡°They ¡­ don¡¯t work well together?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I would go that far, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But I would say that they seem more limited by what a single person can hold in their head than a normal human.¡± ¡°You¡¯re saying they¡¯re not humans,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are significant differences, at least from the evidence that I¡¯ve seen, yes sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It does seem correct to call them human though.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Good. Though we might come across a planet without humans on it, where we have to deal with orca people or whatever. I want you to be prepared for that.¡± Marchand was silent for a long moment. ¡°The other aspect which might explain certain of their problems is that they tend to stick with the known for longer than you or I might, not branching out into new fields as often as might be prudent,¡± said Marchand, as though there¡¯d been no interruption. ¡°I know of no compiled history of their people, but certain ideas seemed to have come late and then been widely adopted for no clear reason. There are also ideas which have not occurred to them, particularly in the realm of software engineering, which I believe might offer an opportunity.¡± ¡°There are software ideas they ¡­ just haven¡¯t had?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Sir, they do not have neural networks or any kind of deep learning,¡± said Marchand. ¡°This, of course, makes many of their systems massively inefficient. It also prevents them from being able to run a system similar to myself, even if elder mechs might be capable of it.¡± ¡°You could ¡­ port yourself over to one of the mechs?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir, there are tight restrictions put in place by Miss Richter which prevent me from making copies of myself,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You have the authority to override those restrictions, but even if you did, the process of putting a copy of my system on an alien computer would be quite involved, even if it''s possible in principle.¡± ¡°But the updated code you wrote, it means that there will be space on the servers and extra computing power?¡± asked Perry. ¡°So we could have you running this place, is what you¡¯re saying?¡± ¡°If that was what you wanted, what they wanted, and if you lifted the restrictions,¡± said Marchand. His tone was measured. ¡°But what I had meant to suggest was that neural networks in general are a technology which could easily solve several problems which they have instead solved in extraordinarily difficult ways. The logic that governs their weapon targeting systems is actually quite dreadful.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry. ¡°But you can, uh, rewrite it?¡± ¡°I can train neural networks to function with better accuracy using less computing power, yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Great. Then do that, I guess, get us as many things as we can lay on the table and say ¡®here¡¯s a thing I did for you¡¯.¡± ¡°Sir, I doubt that it will be possible to do that without revealing the full extent of my abilities,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Are you still intent on keeping me as a strategic secret?¡± ¡°Based on your reading, how are they going to feel about you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Do they have a lot of sci-fi stories about evil AI going wrong?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°In the stories that I¡¯ve been able to find, the notion of artificial intelligence is largely dismissed, and their many stories about computing systems are about how a simple command can have unintended consequences. On Earth, the expression was ¡®the computer will do exactly what you tell it to¡¯. But this is somewhat distinct from the modern reality of artificial intelligence.¡± ¡°I think we had that saying on my Earth too,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or at least something like it.¡± ¡°It¡¯s quite out of date, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I should perhaps familiarize you with the basics of my programming before you release the restrictions, if you desire to do so. Modern artificial intelligence does not, in fact, do what it has been told to do. One might argue that it does what it has been trained to do, but I think even that would be in dispute. The paradigm might be worrisome to them, given their unfamiliarity.¡± ¡°But we¡¯re not going to be burned at the stake as witches, you don¡¯t think?¡± asked Perry. ¡°If they attempt it, sir, I believe I would prove capable of shutting down the Natrix and holding it hostage until our release,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That¡¯s an absolute last resort,¡± said Perry. ¡°And don¡¯t ever let them know that you had those thoughts or found those vulnerabilities.¡± ¡°I have reminded you recently that I¡¯m well-trained in military matters, including operational security, haven¡¯t I sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Right, just saying,¡± said Perry. He paced back and forth in front of the desk. ¡°So we offer them massive speed-up on processing, communications, some new algorithms that you can port over from your libraries for targeting and stuff like that, and then as the cherry on top, a version of you that runs on their hardware? That¡¯s what you think the long and short of it is?¡± ¡°Oh, my, no,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The history of these people is actually quite remarkable as a study of counterfactual history. Miss Richter had many thoughts on how your two Earths differed from each other, but I dare say she¡¯d have been shocked to see just how much they¡¯ve accomplished with such a poor understanding of so many subjects. Given a few hours, even you would be able to fill in a great number of gaps in their knowledge.¡± ¡°Harsh but probably fair,¡± Perry sighed. ¡°You know that I¡¯m actually pretty knowledgeable, right?¡± ¡°I shudder to think what your primer on genetics would be like,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I mean, if it¡¯s that, then yeah,¡± said Perry. Perry knew genetics trivia, enough to fill a note card. ¡®The movie Gattaca used only the letters associated with the base pairs.¡¯ Would this be helpful to someone? Probably not. ¡°Where does their knowledge stop?¡± ¡°Raynaudian genetics, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve found no evidence that they¡¯ve discovered NDB or have any knowledge of its manipulation.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry, translation error here, and the second sphere stuff doesn¡¯t seem to be helping. NDB is ¡­ an acronym for something?¡± ¡°Very astute, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°NDB is an abbreviation of nucleoside diphosphate backbone, the elemental genetic structure.¡± ¡°Alright, assuming that its shape is a double helix, add that to the custom library, it¡¯s called DNA ¡ª deoxyribonucleic acid ¡ª where I¡¯m from,¡± said Perry with a sigh. ¡°Very good sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And they just ¡­ never discovered it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They didn¡¯t have good enough microscopes, or what?¡± ¡°It¡¯s unclear to me, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though of course the discovery of DNA was due to Keilpart-ray lattice photography. They appear to have a somewhat decent understanding of chemistry and chemical processes, but this understanding does not appear to extend to organic chemistry as far as might be helpful to them. It¡¯s a wonder they¡¯ve been able to produce biofuels at all, though of course there are many changes I would make to those processes.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°They¡¯ve got bad programming, bad chemistry, what else?¡± ¡°I believe that to be it, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And there¡¯s nothing that we can get from them?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh, I didn¡¯t say that at all, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They discovered a method of faster-than-light travel not too long after first reaching the stars, and with computational power and techniques far below what was available on our Earth. It¡¯s the sort of thing that Miss Richter had dreamed of finding, were you to ever go to another world.¡± ¡°And we have it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The schematics, the science, all that stuff? You were able to get it from the space station?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I believe Miss Karlquist is correct that they don¡¯t possess the technology necessary to actually construct such a thing, and using it inside a gravity well while under atmosphere would be quite unwise.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll be in my ear at the meeting,¡± said Perry. ¡°Be ready.¡± ¡°As always, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ~~~~ The private ¡®breakfast¡¯ took place in a meeting room whose windows looked out onto the open valley. Below, they could see the place being put to use, which was done largely through racks of unfolding metal that were being seeded. Most of the plants grew fast, Perry knew, mostly because they had to, and he couldn¡¯t help but make a comparison to the children he kept seeing around. Brigitta and Leticia he knew, but the third member of their leadership, Mette, was new to him. Where Brigitta and Leticia could easily have been sisters, Mette was small and thin, not an imposing figure. At first he¡¯d thought that she might be another child, but on closer inspection, she was probably the oldest of the three of them, with a gently lined face. Her hair was among the darkest that Perry had seen, which meant only dirty blond. The sense of smallness was more pronounced on her face, with eyes that were large, black, and hard. She was the navigator of the Natrix, which in practice meant she had a bunch of different roles. The table was meant for six, so they were spread out across it. A single computer terminal was plugged into a space in the wall, the cords inartfully trailing over the table, which was made of some kind of native wood. A plate of fruit was on the table, all native stuff in greens and oranges, and there was a teapot with a dark liquid that tasted astoundingly bitter to Perry. There were pastries too, pale little bars that seemed overly sweet to Perry. ¡°To start with, there¡¯s the issue of veracity,¡± said Leticia. She had changed outfits into something that was a little less provocative than the one from before, though it was still a dress, and still clung to her. ¡°You claim to have come from another world, to have in fact visited many worlds, and we have, as proof ¡­ what, exactly?¡± Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. ¡°You can¡¯t possibly think he¡¯s lying,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I don¡¯t want to waste time on this.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not time wasted,¡± said Mette. ¡°The man¡¯s presence is mysterious and his claims are, on the face of them, absurd.¡± ¡°First, there¡¯s something I haven¡¯t told you,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t think it has all that much bearing on any decisions here, but it¡¯s important because it helps explain the truth.¡± He took a breath. ¡°Magic is real, and I can prove it.¡± Mette snorted and looked at Brigitta. ¡°I didn¡¯t expect the claims to grow.¡± ¡°What does he mean by magic?¡± asked Leticia. For whatever reason, she was asking Brigitta rather than Perry. ¡°Here,¡± said Perry. He stepped to the window of the meeting room and cracked it open, letting in cool air. He held his hand out, and after a moment, the sword swooped down from above and gently landed there. ¡°What is this?¡± asked Mette, looking at the others. There was a touch of fear in her voice. ¡°It¡¯s a magical sword from a different world,¡± said Perry. He looked at Brigitta. ¡°I¡¯m guessing that you saw me coming in, some kind of signature on radar, that¡¯s why you came out to meet me?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta. She frowned at him. ¡°Was that you?¡± ¡°We thought it a ship of some kind, hidden away or single-use, abandoned,¡± said Leticia. Her eyes were on the sword. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I flew in.¡± He let the sword tug him up, two feet off the ground, totally weightless and drifting slightly. Mette leapt out of her chair and ran over to Perry, which he hadn¡¯t expected. She moved around him, then waved a hand back and forth beneath his feet, and climbed up onto the table to wave a hand over his head. She was checking for wires, not that there would have been any possible way to get a wire setup into the room without them knowing. Besides that, it would have been painfully obvious from close distance. Still, it seemed to have been her first thought, and she¡¯d checked it right away instead of allowing him time. ¡°Let go of the sword,¡± she said, voice sharp. Perry did, and fell with the gentle grace of the second sphere, electing to leave the sword hanging where it was. Mette grabbed the sword without asking and looked it over, swishing it back and forth. ¡°This is the only proof of magic?¡± asked Mette. ¡°It¡¯s the best proof I have,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can make some blue sparks from my fingertips and do a few other things that defy easy explanation.¡± ¡°Like taking a punch to the face from a man six inches taller than you and not flinching?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have some advantages when it comes to fighting in particular, though I¡¯m not sure I would call them magic, necessarily.¡± He paused for a moment. ¡°Oh, and I can also turn into a hairy beast of enlarged proportions, not that I expect it to come up much.¡± He could tell the word ¡®wolf¡¯ was foreign to them, and had to translate it into baser terms. ¡°This is ¡­ not what this meeting was to be about,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°This sword, could you make another?¡± ¡°Definitely not,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was a masterwork, gifted to me by a king.¡± ¡°Then we set it to the side,¡± said Leticia. ¡°I refuse,¡± said Mette, who was still holding the sword. She looked almost comical with it, and was having trouble holding it up once Perry had let it support less of its own weight. ¡°We must,¡± said Leticia with a sigh. ¡°There¡¯s a limit to how long this meeting can go on, and ¡ª¡± ¡°It¡¯s magic,¡± hissed Mette. ¡°We see magic and you want to talk about minor improvements to the fusion reactors?¡± ¡°I do, yes,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Especially if we can¡¯t forge swords like that by the dozen.¡± ¡°I can talk to you about magic later, if you¡¯d like. I¡¯ve been to three worlds with magic, and know of perhaps two dozen other worlds,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Mette. She returned to her seat, still not having let go of the sword. ¡°But moving on from this is ¡ª¡± ¡°Is something that must be done, unless it has practical considerations for us,¡± said Leticia. ¡°If Perry were offering us magic, that might be one thing, but it doesn¡¯t appear that he is.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Let us move on to ¡ª¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Mette. ¡°Setting aside the fundamental nature of reality, let¡¯s move on to this petty matter of warfare and shifting percentage points.¡± She rolled her eyes. ¡°Do you need to be removed from this meeting?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°No,¡± said Mette with a sullen voice. Leticia turned back to Perry and gave him a pained smile. ¡°You have information from a world with more advanced technology. We would very much like to have whatever you can possibly give us. In exchange, we will provide you with shelter and food, and help you against ¡­ your adversary, of whom we know very little. We would like to avoid war with our western neighbors, but if it comes to that, your expertise and possibly combat abilities might be invaluable, in which case we would need to find some way to compensate you ¡ª though a transactional relationship isn¡¯t the only option.¡± ¡°Transactional is fine by me,¡± said Perry. ¡°You accept that I¡¯m from another world?¡± ¡°Tentatively,¡± said Leticia. ¡°I will accept it more once we¡¯ve had a thorough overview of whatever materials you have stored on your miniature computer.¡± Perry took that as his cue. He went over to the terminal that was hooked up and began typing. He¡¯d practiced with the keyboard in the penthouse, and still fumbled, but being second sphere seemed to help with this too, allowing his fingers to be more nimble and his eyes to find unfamiliar keys more easily. He could navigate the menus, which was done entirely with the keyboard, since they either hadn¡¯t invented the mouse or had decided that it was stupid and worthless. ¡°First,¡± said Perry, bringing up a screen of code. ¡°This is a new codec that will reduce bandwidth and storage for video by something like fifty percent.¡± Brigitta stared at it for a moment. ¡°It¡¯s ¡­ what¡¯s it doing? Scroll down.¡± Perry took a moment to find the button and pressed it, letting more code scroll onto the screen. He had no idea how it was readable to her, but apparently it was. ¡°How large is this file?¡± asked Brigitta after a while. ¡°Very large,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll need time with it,¡± said Brigitta, folding her arms across her chest. ¡°I don¡¯t understand why it needs to be so many lines.¡± ¡°Well, I¡¯m pretty confident it works,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have a number of other compression and codec technologies that will save massive amounts of space on your hard drives. I can hand all that over now, and it can be working within the day.¡± ¡°On our systems?¡± asked Brigitta, raising an eyebrow. ¡°If you¡¯re worried about security ¡ª¡± Perry began. ¡°I¡¯m worried that you¡¯re underestimating the workload,¡± said Brigitta. She gestured at the screen. ¡°Even if I read through that and agree that it does what you say it does, there are all kinds of terminals all over the Natrix, some of them fifty years old, and there are mechs with screens of their own. It¡¯s a huge headache. And hardware encoders and decoders, we have a few of those as well.¡± ¡°And we are worried about security,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Our goals seem aligned, but perhaps not so aligned that you can make major changes to the systems.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can take as long as you want to review. There are also a few scientific concepts that your people have just never discovered, including some principles of computer science.¡± ¡°Are these concepts true across all worlds?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Could the physics be different?¡± ¡°Very possibly,¡± said Perry. ¡°But we can test at least some of them. And certain aspects of how things work here might not translate across all worlds. You have faster-than-light travel, which the scientists of my world said was flatly impossible.¡± It took Brigitta a moment, then she laughed, a big hearty laugh. ¡°You go through all these worlds, and it¡¯s ours that can travel the stars? And you¡¯re here, planet-locked?¡± ¡°Sure, funny, I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hilarious,¡± said Brigitta with a laugh. She seemed to realize that no one else was enjoying it as much as her, and sat back a bit, still looking amused. ¡°Tell me about what you have on offer,¡± said Leticia. ¡°We want things that are actionable.¡± ¡°The biological first,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have knowledge of genetics, which is a study of living things and how their internal code generates the structures of the cell. With work, it¡¯s possible to rewrite that code and make changes that have all kinds of benefits, including higher yields from crops, more survivability for livestock, disease resistance, all kinds of things. I don¡¯t know how much help it will be to you, but ¡ª¡± ¡°Code?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Like computers?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. Brigitta looked at Leticia with a raised eyebrow. ¡°Intriguing, but that¡¯s on the scale of decades at the very least, unless I misunderstand you,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Or is it possible to alter this code in the living, rather than just the next generation?¡± ¡°It¡¯s possible to spread it out through the current generation and see immediate results,¡± said Perry. ¡°But that¡¯s more difficult, and I wouldn¡¯t do it on people, and at any rate, the whole thing is, yes, a project of decades rather than a project of the next ten weeks. Even with everything handed over, it will take time to train people up.¡± ¡°The more immediate issues then,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Fundamentals of computing that we somehow missed.¡± ¡°I have an onboard program, inside the armor, which is more capable than anything you have,¡± said Perry. ¡°It ¡ª he ¡ª is intelligent in his own right, capable of computer programming, task automation, video and audio processing, and a variety of other things. I would say that he can do most things a person sitting at a terminal could do, though you would also need to check his work and perhaps not delegate too much, as well as look over errors when it comes to any unique situations.¡± Perry almost never did this. ¡°Show me,¡± said Brigitta. Perry went to the terminal again, and typed in a string of commands he¡¯d memorized, trying not to be distracted by the changing of menus and screens. It was like navigating by Google Maps rather than having any idea where he was actually going, unfamiliar houses and shops flying by. A simple line of text appeared on the screen, ¡®Hello¡¯. ¡°We can ¡­ talk with it?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Does it respond to voice commands? There¡¯s no microphone on the terminal though.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°Before, I was trying to keep his existence from you, because I wasn¡¯t certain how you would react. He doesn¡¯t just respond to voice commands, he responds to arbitrary speech. And there¡¯s a microphone in the earbud, which is good enough to pick up conversation in this room.¡± Brigitta came closer to the terminal, which still had ¡®Hello¡¯ printed out. ¡°Hello?¡± she asked. The message erased itself, then was replaced with ¡®My name is Marchand, and I serve as Perry¡¯s assistant and valet¡¯. ¡°Impressive,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°You haven¡¯t even tested it,¡± said Mette. She was still holding onto the sword. Brigitta turned to her. ¡°It¡¯s impressive even without testing.¡± ¡°He could have just programmed that, right?¡± asked Mette. ¡°It¡¯s the first thing you¡¯d program.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Brigitta. She turned back to the terminal. ¡°Floris, Gillis, and Jochem are all in class together. Gillis is taller than Jochem. Who is the tallest in the class?¡± ¡°The information is incomplete, ma¡¯am,¡± replied the text on the terminal. ¡°However, if forced to guess, I would guess Gillis is the tallest, as Gillis is taller than Jochem, and that suggests that Gillis is taller than the average student. However, Gillis and Jochem are both male names aboard the Natrix, and depending upon their age, that might mean that we expect them to be either shorter or taller than the average female, depending on where in their maturation they are. Given that those groupings you term a ¡®class¡¯ last from approximately three years old until twelve years old, with exceptions for apprenticeship, I believe there is a bias in probability toward neither of the three named boys being the tallest in the class. However, I accept that this was a hypothetical, as those three names do not line up with either present or historical information I have from the Natrix.¡± Brigitta read all of this quickly, eyes saccading back and forth. ¡°It¡¯s showing off.¡± ¡°Yes, probably,¡± said Perry. ¡°You told it to?¡± asked Brigitta, looking at him. She had bent slightly to peer at the terminal, and straightened to peer into Perry¡¯s eyes. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°He can track intentions. He¡¯s showing off because he has a crude internal model of me. His actions are informed by what he thinks I want.¡± ¡°How?¡± asked Brigitta. The terminal cleared and changed the words, this time with diagrams. ¡°Master Perry has given me permission to share some of the code that constitutes me, but I must warn that much of it will be incomprehensible to you without a deep understanding of a field you learned about mere minutes ago. The below diagram should give a brief, high-level overview.¡± It was a simple thing, little boxes with arrows pointing from one box to another, but it certainly wouldn¡¯t have helped Perry to build something like March. There was ¡®the model¡¯, and a thing that made modifications to the model, and ¡®static information¡¯, a thing that made modifications to the static information, and ¡®sensory data¡¯, and ¡®analysis¡¯, and all these arrows fed into each other. Richter had said that it was horrifyingly complex and difficult to work with, mostly because ¡®the model¡¯ was a very opaque thing which was, unfortunately, used in almost every single part of what passed for March¡¯s ¡®cognition¡¯. ¡°This is madness,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°What¡¯s the model?¡± The terminal changed again. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Miss Karlquist, but I believe further discussion of the subject lies far outside the bounds that have been set on this meeting.¡± Brigitta turned to Leticia. ¡°Give him whatever he wants.¡± ¡°We can¡¯t do that,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Largely because if we do, he has no incentive to help us, and we can benefit from him more than he can benefit from us.¡± ¡°Not a great thing to say out loud in a negotiation,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know it¡¯s true, better to admit it outright,¡± said Leticia. ¡°We¡¯ll give you anything in the way of material support, but it can¡¯t just be for this ¡ª¡± ¡°It can,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It can, and should be, if that¡¯s the deal he wants to make.¡± Leticia looked between her two companions, one of which was still holding the sword, the other who seemed intent on giving away the world for a better computer. ¡°We have a likely war to deal with. He has a mysterious adversary he expects to show up.¡± She looked at Perry. ¡°Your ability to help us in warfare is, in my view, limited, particularly because even if you were piloting a mech, your ability to affect a bombing run would be almost nothing in comparison with the power of the Natrix. It¡¯s possible that you have some better understanding of tactics than we do, and we¡¯d welcome your advice, but the war is the most important issue at the moment.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll help with the war, however I can,¡± said Perry. ¡°I expect that my counterpart, who has also traveled through worlds, will find whatever allies he can. I have to imagine that means going into the cold and snow, assuming he doesn¡¯t show up here. And if he does show up here, I want you to blast him into small wet chunks.¡± Leticia stared at Perry. ¡°That¡¯s a tall ask.¡± ¡°It is,¡± nodded Perry. ¡°It¡¯s doable,¡± said Leticia, hesitating only a fraction at the idea of killing some random person she had never met. ¡°There¡¯s something I have in mind for you.¡± Perry raised an eyebrow. ¡°We still hope to avoid war,¡± said Leticia. ¡°But it seems, at this point, inevitable unless we cave to their demands, which we certainly won¡¯t do. They buzz by with their planes, and know exactly where we are. It¡¯s easier to attack than defend. We need to go west, into the snow, to where the Heimalis live, to see what they¡¯re doing there, what problems we might be facing. Right now, there¡¯s too much unknown, too much posturing and uncertainty. It¡¯s an expedition of a sort that¡¯s only rarely been done before, into the freezing cold. You¡¯ll be furnished with a special mech, and travel with two others, one of them Ruben, who you¡¯ve already met.¡± ¡°He¡¯s got work here, farming,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t have dedicated soldiers?¡± ¡°We have dedicated warriors,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Engineers with their mechs, scouts and pre-emptive defenders. They¡¯re designed and trained for incursions by the bugs, to go out and lay waste to whatever clutches of eggs they can find. It¡¯s a different sort of enemy.¡± ¡°Either way then,¡± said Perry. ¡°Put the team together and I can be part of it.¡± Leticia let out a breath. ¡°It won¡¯t be for some time. We¡¯ll see what improvements we can make, and get your advice on what you want in a mech.¡± She turned to Brigitta. ¡°Delegate this to someone trusted.¡± Brigitta waved her off. Her eyes were still on the terminal, where she¡¯d begun typing while the talking was going on. ¡°Your valet, can he summarize information?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll need to give him some instructions.¡± ¡°Have him prepare a digest for rapid transfer of information. It¡¯s clear we¡¯re going to need that. Keep him available on the terminal, if possible.¡± She looked at the other two. Mette hadn¡¯t said much since taking the sword. ¡°This might take some time to get through, and I worry that it¡¯s time we don¡¯t have.¡± Perry nodded. He felt the same. Perhaps it would be like Seraphinus, and the war would be fought with him on one side and a clearly defined adversary on the other. That, he thought, he could handle. He had laid his cards on the table, and done what he could in terms of boosting their society, though he knew most of what he¡¯d given them would be worthless if they didn¡¯t make it through the next year. The next part of his time in this world would be spent ensuring that they made it. Chapter 69 - Complementary Positions Perry ended up staying in the penthouse, though he spent little time there. With the sword revealed, he was free to fly out of the balcony, and needed a good spot for that. He also needed a secure place to house Marchand, and the locks on the penthouse doors were quite good, better than could be found anywhere else on the Natrix, which overall had quite poor physical security once past the guns and inside the metal skin. He spent little time in his room though, instead preferring to move about the ship, integrating himself with them as much as he could by spending time in the mess, the mech bay, the atrium, or outside with the farmers. He did this partly because after the Great Arc, it was a relief to be among people who were, by their nature, pretty friendly. The other thought, at the back of his mind, was that they would be more likely to help and protect him if there was some kind of personal connection. That was a more mercenary way of thinking than he preferred, but the various betrayals of the Great Arc had made it a necessary consideration. Thankfully, he had the ear of the three leaders of Natrix, and all of them had their own interests in him. ¡°Lift me,¡± said Mette. She was holding the sword in Perry¡¯s room. Perry complied, commanding the sword up. When he did, she became weightless, floating after it. She giggled at the sensation, then released the sword and dropped to the ground. ¡°But what makes it only work for you?¡± asked Mette. ¡°How does it read your mind?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. It was so so tempting to say ¡®magic¡¯, but he knew that didn¡¯t explain anything. ¡°There are books for you to look through.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t make heads or tails of them,¡± said Mette. ¡°It¡¯s truly terrible documentation.¡± ¡°In truth, I don¡¯t think that the wizards of that world understood it all that well either,¡± said Perry. ¡°It seemed like there was a lot of cruft and superstition, things that they don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll figure it out,¡± said Mette. ¡°I have the files, there are just so many of them.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure that it will work for you,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, I¡¯m not sure what¡¯s going on with, uh, basic physics.¡± ¡°You can do the magic though?¡± asked Mette. Perry concentrated and made the sparks come from his fingers. It was the only magic trick he knew, and had taken far, far more practice than he would have liked to admit. ¡°Again,¡± said Mette. Perry did it again, and this time, paid attention to the energy in the room, which could be felt just outside his body like the oppressive humidity of a hot day. He hadn¡¯t done much investigating of the overlap between the firmament and energy as used by the meridians and vessels. That was mostly because his singular magic trick was weak and useless, the very entry level. He suspected that it would use up or depress the energy available to draw on. Instead, he was quite surprised that it did the opposite, causing an elevation of what was available in the air. He took in a lungful, feeling its character. The sensation was, somehow, like rock salt. It was intriguing, but he wasn¡¯t a wizard except through the technicality of this single simple spell. ¡°Amazing,¡± said Mette. Her eyes were on his fingers. ¡°You think that I can learn this?¡± ¡°No idea,¡± said Perry. ¡°You have a job though, right?¡± ¡°I have enormous amounts of work,¡± said Mette. ¡°I chart the region and set the course, not just for the trips we take with walking legs, but for the Natrix as a whole. It¡¯s my job to look ahead.¡± She looked at the sword. ¡°It¡¯s a job that¡¯s more complicated now.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think magic is going to complicate things for you,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve managed to check, and none of your people have the spirit root necessary to transition from first sphere to second sphere. The magic of Seraphinus, if it can be learned at all, would take a generation to pay off.¡± ¡°My role is charting the path of generations,¡± said Mette. ¡°I look out for the children of children yet to be born.¡± ¡°That¡¯s far-thinking,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s necessary,¡± said Mette. ¡°That¡¯s the work of generations. And it¡¯s not enough to have ideas about the future, you need to have plans, and those plans require knowledge, not just of the basics, but of every system in play. Leticia makes the moves in the present, I¡¯m the one who is, ultimately, responsible for what happens decades from now.¡± ¡°And then Brigitta is responsible for the past?¡± asked Perry. Mette thought about that. ¡°In a way, I suppose. She doesn¡¯t actually handle the pieces of the elder mechs, those have dedicated teams that she¡¯s thankfully not inserted herself into.¡± She tapped her lips. ¡°Past, present, future, I think that¡¯s something that Leticia might like. I don¡¯t think it¡¯s true though. Much of what I do is making sure we put the ship in the right place. The more metaphorical navigation requires less time, and is more limited in scope.¡± ¡°And now you have to worry about magic,¡± said Perry. ¡°Magic, systems that will replace hundreds of workers, genetic engineering the next generation, all of it,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯ve had some time to push my mind into it, even if I¡¯m only looking at the effects, not the base truths that create those effects.¡± She had grabbed onto the sword, which was still floating, and let herself be lifted up by it. ¡°You know you can¡¯t have the sword, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, but I want it,¡± said Mette. ¡°And I¡¯m hoping that within all those books, which are now sitting on my tablet, there will be the secret.¡± Mette did eventually leave, since she had a significant workload, but no sooner was she out the door than Brigitta had shown up. ¡°I shouldn¡¯t have spent that time in quarantine with you,¡± she said by way of greeting. ¡°I had put some work to the side, and now I have to make up that work while there¡¯s something more exciting than you.¡± ¡°Hurtful,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s a machine with all the intelligence of a man,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°If we had the processors to run him, we would have a thousand, ten thousand, one for every person aboard the Natrix, one for every mech. We would manufacture mechs by the thousands, giant assembly lines, each with a robot pilot.¡± She was slightly breathless, and given how good of shape she was obviously in, it wasn¡¯t because of the trip up. ¡°My people have a lot of thoughts on how and why that¡¯s dangerous,¡± said Perry. ¡°Oh, yes,¡± nodded Brigitta. ¡°Insanely so.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure I would say insanely,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s insane, absolutely,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Can I show you something?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. She went to the terminal, which no longer had March sitting in front of it, and began some rapid typing. ¡°I know you don¡¯t know about this sort of thing, but you might be able to tell me whether I understand this right.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. The terminal brought up an image, a graph with hundreds of nodes in it, and as it backed out, it showed more of them, until there were so many that it was just a fuzzy mass. ¡°What is this?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s the heart of Marchand,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It¡¯s not my visualization, it¡¯s his, and a full visualization wouldn¡¯t even really work, so this is an approximation.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°It ¡­ kind of isn¡¯t meaningful to me.¡± ¡°Me either,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°And it¡¯s not meaningful to Marchand, and certainly not to the people who built him. But this is the thing that allows for Marchand to exist. There¡¯s so much built on top of it, solid logic and prompting strategies and flowcharts within the code, and systems that feed into each other, clearly made by different people with different design goals, but none of it would mean anything without ¡­ this.¡± She stared at it. ¡°It¡¯s a graph.¡± Marchand cleared his throat, something that Perry always found hilarious. ¡°I have said before I don¡¯t find that to be accurate, ma¡¯am,¡± said Marchand. ¡°While it can be represented as a graph, and while a graph representation can give some insights, the structure is a very large parametric function which maps multimodal inputs and outputs.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a graph,¡± said Brigitta dismissively. She looked at Perry. ¡°All decisions it makes are run through this. They made it by creating a randomized graph and then changing that graph with what they call training. They only know how it will react because they¡¯ve tested its reactions. There¡¯s a hugely complex flow chart which covers very many circumstances, but it can alter the flow chart on its own, rewrite the overcode.¡± ¡°So it¡¯s useless to you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No no,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It¡¯s very useful, but also insane.¡± ¡°But there¡¯s the flowchart, right, the stuff outside the neural network?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean, you could freeze that, right?¡± Brigitta laughed. ¡°Even if you did, it all depends upon this monstrous thing in the core of it all. And the flow chart ¡ª that really does reduce down to such a thing, doesn¡¯t it?¡± This was directed at Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s true enough that I don¡¯t feel the need to issue a correction, ma¡¯am,¡± he replied. ¡°The flow chart must consult the graph at every step,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°If the flow chart says that he must protect innocents, it must consult this spider¡¯s web of arbitrary math to know what ¡®innocent¡¯ and ¡®protect¡¯ and all these other things are. It must do this with every single concept.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t really see the problem,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, they tested all the outputs, that¡¯s ¡ª¡± ¡°They cannot have tested the outputs,¡± said Brigitta. She pointed a finger at the armor. ¡°Even if not for the fact that you¡¯re traveling worlds, it would have gaps in its testing, gaps in its training. And in those gaps, what happens?¡± ¡°Errors,¡± said Perry. ¡°Historically, at least. Loads of errors get logged and then I give explicit instructions on what to do, which helps to get around those errors.¡± Actually changing March¡¯s understanding of base reality didn¡¯t work too well, and many of those errors didn¡¯t interfere with functionality, so were ignored. ¡°Most of the time you give instruction,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But you allow it some leeway.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re the one talking about thousands of mechs piloted by AI.¡± ¡°Because it¡¯s useful,¡± said Brigitta with a huff. ¡°The work of generations is premised on needing thousands of people, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, all so that we can progress to a point where we can build our own stable power sources, kill the bugs for good, and launch off into the sky, returning there with our own powerful drives that can let us cross the stars. You must see that this is an opportunity to shorten the work of generations by a hundred years. It might be accomplished within my lifetime.¡± There was an intensity to her eyes. ¡°If you had told me this was what you had while we were in quarantine together, I would have laid myself at your feet and promised you my soul.¡± ¡°In the last world, when they learned of Marchand, they took him from me and threatened me with execution,¡± said Perry. Brigitta shrugged. ¡°I can see why. It is, after all, insane. If we had stability here, comfort, if we had no ambitions, I might be tempted to cast it into the furnaces.¡± ¡°I shall consider myself fortunate, ma¡¯am,¡± said Marchand. Brigitta looked over at the armor. A slight frown crossed her face. She looked back at Perry. ¡°You trust it?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°I do.¡± ¡°Because you trust it, or because you trust the people who made it?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Marchand has saved my life more than once,¡± said Perry. ¡°He¡¯s offered good advice and always stayed his hand when I told him to.¡± ¡°Thank you, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Insanity,¡± said Brigitta, shaking her head. ¡°But of course I¡¯ll use it too, I¡¯d be a fool not to.¡± She looked at March for a moment. ¡°Do you want to see the mech I¡¯m building for you?¡± ¡°Absolutely,¡± said Perry. ~~~~ The mech bay was easier to understand now that Perry had seen more of the Natrix. It was a gritty, mechanical place, worn and greasy, with the smell of shaved metal in the air, but it seemed a little kinder and gentler than it had before. Every mech had its bay, and they came in all sorts, each one a reflection of the particular choices of its creator or the role they were trying to fill. ¡°It¡¯s not often that someone gets to build a second mech,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°You build one, then build up parts for it, sometimes cannibalized from other mechs, or traded with the other mech pilots. There¡¯s not much time for a total rebuild, and we don¡¯t let the pilots stockpile too much, like some of them would, because most of us would build a half dozen if we were allowed to.¡± ¡°And that doesn¡¯t change for the head of engineering?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I lead by example.¡± She seemed to feel that was all that needed to be said on that score. ¡°Here.¡± Perry found himself standing before a tall, lanky mech, possibly the tallest in the entire mech bay, with legs that were folded up beneath it so it wouldn¡¯t hit its head on the bay¡¯s tall ceiling. The arms were comparatively short, just barely capable of holding an extremely long rifle whose barrel was as thick around as Perry¡¯s arm. The cockpit was open, accessible only by a long ladder, and the internals of the mech were a mess of wires and buttons. Perry could only imagine it as an iron maiden, ready to clamp down on him. ¡°I¡¯ll run you through some of the design choices,¡± said Brigitta. Perry didn¡¯t think there was much he could say that would have stopped her, but she had grown animated, energized, and he liked her like that. ¡°It¡¯s tall, almost absurdly so, we had to use a special alloy for that, but there¡¯s a purpose to that, which is that we want to leverage your advantages. Most of those come from Marchand.¡± She gestured at the long legs. ¡°Marchand has better ability to place a foot, which means that there¡¯s less worry about traveling fast.¡± She pointed at the long-barreled rifle. ¡°Similarly, the firing algorithms we use are put to shame by the calculations that Marchand employs, and his solutions are fully general, which means that they map directly to this weapon with little in the way of interface. This is the primary weapon, designed for precision strikes at distant targets, spotted using either your drone or Marchand¡¯s superior audiovisual sensors.¡± ¡°I¡¯m meant to be a sniper?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°You¡¯re meant to investigate the enemy, make a show of force, and then return to us.¡± She considered the weapon. ¡°However, if it comes to battle, you¡¯re meant to strike from a great distance and run very fast, yes.¡± ¡°And the power ¡­ draws off March?¡± asked Perry, looking at the cockpit. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°It can,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But only in an emergency. The microfusion reactor uses some of the same technology of the elder mechs, just down a different development branch. I¡¯m still digging into the files that Marchand has supplied, but there¡¯s some promise that a decade down the road we might not need to rely on the elder mechs as heavily. Fusion reactors of our own ¡­ that¡¯s another thing I never thought we¡¯d have in my lifetime.¡± ¡°But the microfusion reactor can¡¯t power this?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Like I said, in an emergency,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°You could limp home, possibly. It¡¯s not so much that the microfusion reactor couldn¡¯t power this, it¡¯s that there¡¯s no good way to transfer the energy.¡± She gave a little laugh. ¡°Marchand is against me meddling with him too much.¡± ¡°He said that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We wouldn¡¯t have survived if we hadn¡¯t taken the elder mechs apart,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°We cracked the eggs and used every part of them, including the shell.¡± ¡°I think I can see why he¡¯d see it that way, when you put it like that,¡± said Perry. He was mildly surprised that they had eggs, which hadn¡¯t been served to him yet. ¡°I look at those miniature cameras, their sensors, and think about how many of them are pointless,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It¡¯s a marvel, that suit, but it screams of waste to me. Even with the design goals, even with everything else.¡± Perry looked up at the mech. ¡°I¡¯ve just got one question,¡± he said. Brigitta grinned at him. ¡°You want to take it out for a run?¡± ¡°Well, that, if it¡¯s possible,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I was going to ask how the holy hell you got this done in so short a time.¡± ¡°Old parts, old projects, Marchand¡¯s help,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Fabrication has been running smoothly under my watch, and they have spare time, as they always do when we¡¯ve come to a stop.¡± ¡°Still,¡± said Perry. He was thinking about how long it would have taken a mechanic¡¯s shop to build a car. He didn¡¯t really know how long that would be, but he expected that most of the time it would be weeks or maybe months. If it was a team of mechanics who had everything all set up, with tons of planning ahead of time, and all the tools in place, and a gun to their head, they could do it in a single day. Maybe. It was even more possible if they¡¯d built that exact car before. If Brigitta had come away from the meeting and immediately began constructing this mech, she¡¯d have had perhaps three full days ¡ª cycles, since there was no true day on the planet. He could accept that she was a mechanical genius, but even just trying to add up all the time necessary for each individual part, it seemed superhuman. Maybe it was superhuman. That certainly hadn¡¯t been ruled out. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then let¡¯s take it out for a test.¡± ¡°You¡¯re going to need Marchand,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Need?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve been piloting a micromech that responds directly to your movements, amplifying them,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°And half the time, you rely on the mess of numbers to help you. Can you even aim a gun?¡± ¡°I can,¡± said Perry. ¡°I just don¡¯t.¡± ¡°You need Marchand,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°The cockpit was designed for you to be wearing the micromech.¡± ¡°Mechs within mechs,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alright, fine.¡± ¡°I should have everything running by the time you get back,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It¡¯s not already?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Feh,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°There¡¯s always more work. Tests, tuning, the details.¡± That did make him feel a little bit better. Maybe not fully superhuman. When he came down, Brigitta was still working on the mech. She was up in the cockpit, perched precariously on the ladder. ¡°Fucking thing,¡± she said when she saw him. ¡°It¡¯ll be another half hour.¡± ¡°I got dressed up with nowhere to go?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Walk around, impress the other pilots with your little thing,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Glad to know you¡¯re human,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was working well enough to walk before,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°There¡¯s a wiring error, I was working fast, with many hands helping.¡± ¡°If you¡¯d like some help,¡± Marchand began. ¡°Take your micromech away,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Be back here in half an hour, I¡¯ll have it sorted.¡± Perry decided to wander the mech bay, which he was only doing because he hadn¡¯t been told not to. There were markings painted on the ground, and they had been opaque to him, but knowing something of how the mech bay was laid out and how people were assigned, he could start to infer. The yellow markings showed what area belonged to which bay, usually fairly expansive, beyond what an individual engineer would normally need. The red lines marked free space, like the walkway down the middle, where no one was supposed to have any equipment. And the blue line apparently, showed the many paths that the large robot arms normally took. It was a bit frightening seeing them zip by overhead. Fewer of the pilots were children than Perry had first thought, he just hadn¡¯t been used to children. Most of the children he saw weren¡¯t pilots or engineers, they were runners or helpers, handing over things when necessary and taking lessons from the teenagers, who were running systems checks and working on installations. Someone called, ¡°Outing!¡± and Perry momentarily froze as a mech lumbered down the corridor that had been outlined in red. A small child, not more than eight, dashed forward and pulled Perry to the side by one hand. ¡°You¡¯ve got to get out of the way, you don¡¯t step in the red when there¡¯s an outing,¡± the boy said. The mech went past, heavy guns hanging from its hips like an exceptionally lethal belt. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry. He was standing in a yellow-outlined area, someone¡¯s workshop. ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure where to go.¡± ¡°You could get killed if you¡¯re out there,¡± said the boy. He was looking the micromech over. ¡°It¡¯s so small.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was built for me, for every part of me, down to the fingers.¡± He wiggled the fingers of the power armor, which had considerably more articulation than the mechs did. ¡°Wow,¡± said the boy. ¡°But a single round would kill you, wouldn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°I would dodge,¡± said Perry. He hoped the boy could hear the smile in his voice. ¡°That¡¯s snot,¡± said the boy. ¡°You can¡¯t dodge a bullet.¡± ¡°Can too,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or at least deflect it.¡± ¡°Thom!¡± said the boy, turning to a gangly teenager whose head was inside a mech¡¯s cockpit. ¡°Can I have the gun?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Thom. ¡°But he says he can dodge a bullet,¡± said the boy. ¡°I heard,¡± said Thom. ¡°And that¡¯s ridiculous.¡± ¡°I¡¯d really rather not have a child handling a gun,¡± said Perry. Thom ducked his head out from the cockpit. Perry guessed that he was seventeen, but it was so hard to tell with teenagers. He had acne about his cheeks and wild blond hair. ¡°So you¡¯re fine with me shooting you?¡± ¡°Not here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d be too worried about a ricochet.¡± ¡°Guns aren¡¯t allowed to be fired inside the Natrix,¡± said the boy. ¡°Fine, I have time, we can go outside,¡± said Thom. ¡°It¡¯ll be our break though.¡± ¡°Aww,¡± said the boy. ¡°Alright, let me grab water and a snack.¡± To Perry¡¯s faint surprise, Thom got up into the mech when the boy went away, and after a shrill warning beep, the cockpit closed around him. A brief systems check later and there was another warning beep, with some lights flashing on around the yellow area, and Perry made himself scarce, this time running down the walkway and then flying with the sword at his hip up into the air, settling down on a bit of matted plants. It was crazy how fast the plants grew. Perry had heard that some species of bamboo grew as much as three feet a day, but on Esperide that seemed to be every plant. The mats of plants had grown substantially, becoming bushy, and there were a handful of trees sprouting up from them, some of them four or five feet tall. He wondered how large they would get with time. The farms, which were mostly large areas of metal framework, had already filled in with plants, most of them sitting in a grid of nets, brought in from a cramped nursery that Perry had gotten a tour through by one of the children. Most of the plant matter that the Natrix needed would be sourced from the area around the Natrix, foraged, but some of it was grown close to the ship, those things that they would want fresh and uncompacted, like the little fruits that Perry often had for breakfast. The policy on the Natrix was to stockpile as much as possible, filling holds, then do huge production runs on everything that could be made from base materials, like clothing, data pads, furniture, rugs, soap, or whatever else. Food was pretty much the only thing not included in that list, though there were also lots of foods that were made in bulk and then fermented, salted, desiccated, frozen, and stored for years. There was no day or night on the planet, not in the same way there was on Earth, and there weren¡¯t seasons either, but the humans had created their own cycles, the stopping and starting of the Natrix dividing the ¡®year¡¯ up into times of hot and cold, with attendant changes in both diet and clothing. Perry turned at the sound of the mech. The machine was fairly quiet, all things considered, and it had less in the way of weaponry than Brigitta¡¯s mech had. There wasn¡¯t really a way for a mech that size to move elegantly, but it did a passable job of it. It turned toward Perry, two long guns aiming his way. ¡°Not yet!¡± called Perry. ¡°Fine,¡± came the voice. ¡°We need to move some distance away.¡± The mech turned and began walking, putting more distance between it and the Natrix. ¡°Sir, are you quite sure this is wise?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I have a strong feeling that I¡¯m going to have to deal with gunfire of the sort that won¡¯t just plink off me, and doing it in a controlled circumstance is going to be a lot easier than when I¡¯m dealing with hundreds of bullets. Richter shot at me with a handgun, this isn¡¯t so different.¡± ¡°The caliber of those guns is much higher, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There are limits to what this armor is rated for, as we well know.¡± ¡°If you get hit, I have enough time to heal you,¡± said Perry. ¡°And how do you propose to do that, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°From everything I have seen of their fabrication facilities, they do not match the quality of what Miss Richter could provide.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you want to make yourself useful, run some simulations on what that gun will do to me if I can¡¯t deal with the hit.¡± ¡°Has Miss Karlquist¡¯s earlier talk of insanity inspired you, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°If you tell me that a direct hit will kill me, then I¡¯ll call it off, bite that bullet, as it were,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve run as many simulations as I care to, and must say that there is only a small chance of your death, assuming you get immediate medical attention, and there¡¯s only a single shot from the firearm, assuming I¡¯m correct about the power behind it. The damage to the armor is cause for alarm, particularly if there¡¯s a direct hit to the microfusion reactor.¡± A diagram of a thousand hits showed up on the HUD, with various areas marked in red, indicating that a direct hit would be quite bad. There was a helpful little graph too, with the tail end in yellow and red. It was almost enough to make Perry reconsider. He had rewatched the footage of the fight with Zhang Lingxiu enough times to know that parrying away a bullet was possible for a second sphere. It undoubtedly took skill, but it wasn¡¯t actually a skill that Zhang Lingxiu had possessed, because Zhang Lingxiu had only learned about firearms a few seconds before attempting his parry. And Zhang Lingxiu had done a terrible job with the parry, slicing the bullet in half and getting hit with both halves, something that Perry had only realized on reviewing the footage. Even with the armor, Perry was nowhere near as fast as a bullet. The trick, he thought, was going to have to be to angle the sword, anticipate the bullet, lock in place, and then hope that a tiny twitch at the right moment would do the rest. But a bullet from a gun wasn¡¯t always a nicely predictable thing, and even a perfectly positioned sword might miss one that had gone off in its own direction. The thought of backing out was growing louder in his head. The proper way to do this was to practice with a bullet going half speed, less gunpowder, smaller caliber, something that would have no chance of so much as damaging the armor. Really, you¡¯d want to work your way up and do it with an actual plan. But unexpectedly, people were turning out to see the demonstration. There was a whole troupe of people wading through the water, and more coming with every passing second, most of them from the mech bay, but a few who must have been from elsewhere in the Natrix. It would be pretty embarrassing to say ¡®no, I can¡¯t deflect a bullet, and certainly can¡¯t dodge one¡¯ at this stage. Of course, it would also be pretty embarrassing to die or get seriously injured. Eventually they had found their place, and people had gathered around to watch. Part of the point of going so far away was to reduce the risk of a ricochet, but now there were bodies, many of them children. He didn¡¯t particularly like that, but they were off to the side, and the chance of a bullet coming back the way it came after striking his armor was minimal. ¡°Ready,¡± said the boy inside the mech. Perry had already forgotten his name. Perry steeled himself. He looked at the gun that was going to fire on him. It looked longer, but it wasn¡¯t high caliber. Whatever it was meant for, it wasn¡¯t punching through the thickest of shells on the insects. He had his sword drawn and in position. People were still walking across the water to come see them. ¡°One shot only, to start,¡± said Perry. His grip on the sword was firm, and the enhanced energy of the world was flowing through him. The HUD lit up, with Marchand seeming to understand what was going to happen. The barrel of the gun was being tracked, the likely path of the bullet plotted, with little hash marks to show distance. The crowd was whispering, with some of the whispers quite loud. A few were puzzled by what was going on, having arrived late and only knowing that there was to be a demonstration of some kind. ¡°Do it Thom!¡± yelled one of the boys. Perry was watching the gun intently, pushing his perception of time to the limit. He caught a flash of light from the muzzle, and then the bullet was coming at him so fast that he had no time at all to change the angle of his sword or even twitch it into a different position. He felt the hit in his arms, and for a moment, the sword vibrated slightly in his grip. Marchand wasn¡¯t complaining about any damage, and Perry seemed, miraculously, fine. Perry held up a hand, and the mech raised its gun toward the sky. ¡°Did you do it?¡± asked Thom in the mech. ¡°Review the footage,¡± said Perry. ¡°You do appear to have deflected the bullet, sir,¡± said Marchand. He showed it picture-in-picture, slowed down as much as it could be, enhanced and zoomed in. The bullet was only captured in the form of small sparks against the sword for a single frame. ¡°Holy shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Marvelous, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Now, have we brought this exercise to its natural conclusion?¡± Perry looked up at the mech. ¡°Yeah, that was it. Give me a second, then do it again.¡± Perry faced down the mech again. This time, he changed the angle of his sword, holding it just so. He knew what to expect now, and while he hadn¡¯t been fast enough to have much of a reaction that first time, he didn¡¯t think that was a true limitation. Thom tried to get a little more fancy on the second shot. The barrel of the gun was obviously under manual control, and he was moving it around slightly, which meant that Perry had to keep the sword in motion, adjusting how it was positioned. But while the bullet was so fast it was just a flash of metal, the barrel of the gun was practically glacial, even when Thom swung it quickly. Perry wasn¡¯t properly ready for the second shot, but his sword was in position all the same, and again, the shot was deflected. This time, as Perry had planned, the angle meant it was deflected down, striking the water with a splash. This was, to the audience that had gathered, much more impressive, and there was no question about whether the gun might have misfired. Perry had never really used guns prior to meeting Richter, but she¡¯d told him that it was always more fun to shoot when you had some demonstration of the forces involved, which mostly meant shooting things that would deform or explode when you hit them, cans of soda or jugs of milk. Thom, unfortunately, took this as a sign that what Perry was doing was easy. Five bullets came one after another, and it was only because Perry had been tracking the line that Marchand had put up on the HUD that he was able to block the first one. By the second one, Perry had expected it, and by the third, it was almost routine. March was dampening the sound and dimming the light, making it not quite as much of a shock, and even if Perry hadn¡¯t had the power to lock his arms in place, the armor would have helped with that too. Five bullets, five deflections with the sword, five splashes of water. There was a moment of silence, then cheering from the children. Perry held up a hand, and the mech raised its gun once again. This time, instead of waiting there, the mech squatted down and the cockpit opened, allowing Thom to slide out. ¡°I really didn¡¯t think you would be able to,¡± he said. ¡°Can we have the bullets?¡± asked one of the boys. ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you can find them.¡± A dozen small children came forward and began poking around in the cold water, looking for bits of metal. Perry took pity on them and helped them to look, which was much easier with advanced image processing. It was in the midst of this bullet-hunting that Brigitta came up with the long-legged mech she built for him. She took some time getting down from it, then walked over, a smile on her face. ¡°What¡¯s all this?¡± asked Brigitta as she made her way through the water. ¡°His magic sword can block bullets,¡± said Thom. ¡°Not really, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°The only thing that the sword can do is not break when a bullet hits it. But ¡­ I actually think a normal sword might be able to do that.¡± ¡°How do you do it then?¡± asked Thom. ¡°Move the sword to where the bullets will be,¡± said Perry. He was surprised that it worked, and didn¡¯t think that it would be as easy at longer ranges. ¡°An algorithm?¡± asked Thom. ¡°He said he could dodge bullets,¡± said the little boy. ¡°But it wasn¡¯t really dodging, was it?¡± ¡°Not really,¡± said Perry. ¡°I had never actually tried that before.¡± ¡°Show me,¡± Brigitta said to Thom. Perry had no idea what that was supposed to mean, and hoped he wouldn¡¯t get shot at again, but Thom went over to his own mech and pulled a screen down from inside it, which was attached, with wires, to an arm with many joints to it. It was obviously the same screen on the inside of the mech, and once it was down, he brought out a keyboard, which sat awkwardly on his hand for one-handed typing. The video wasn¡¯t all that high of quality, but in it, Perry looked like a god. The shots had come faster than he thought they had, more tightly grouped. Everything looked smooth and clean rather than panicked and slap-dash, which was how it had felt. An outside observer might think he¡¯d spent half his life parrying bullets. It had been a long time since he¡¯d seen himself, thanks to a complete lack of cameras for three worlds in a row. It would have been simple to get March to capture some images of him, but there never seemed like there would be a point. Now he was thinking that it might be necessary, since he needed to know what impression he was making. The armor had that second sphere quality to it, looking like it had just rolled off the factory floor, polished to a shine with the paint in vibrant hues. There were none of the chips or scratches that it had accumulated on the other worlds, and something about it looked unreal, like a render that was missing some kind of lighting pass, baby¡¯s first Blender model of a blue power armor suit. Perry had always found the second sphere to look a bit uncanny, and that was how he felt about himself now. He wasn¡¯t sure how he¡¯d feel about seeing himself outside the armor. ¡°Stunning,¡± said Brigitta, looking at the video as it played a second and third time. Her eyes were sparkling. ¡°I give March a lot of credit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Bullet prediction was a lot of it. Most of it, maybe.¡± ¡°We should get you a sword,¡± said Brigitta. She looked at the mech she¡¯d rode over, the one that Perry was going to ride into the wastes. ¡°Something large to swing around.¡± ¡°A giant honking sword to bat away missiles, sure,¡± said Perry with a smile. She turned back to Perry. ¡°But for now, let¡¯s see what you can do.¡± Chapter 70 - The Great White Wastes Perry had never really experienced ¡®true¡¯ snow. He¡¯d experienced snowfalls, but Tacoma had wet and mild winters, and the snow never stuck around for long before being washed down the storm drains. He¡¯d never gone on vacation to a snowy place, having skipped out on a ski trip to Colorado with some friends in high school because of a girl. Almost every other trip he¡¯d taken, whether to Europe or around America, had been to other places without true snow. The night side was filled with snow, vast blankets of it, and the mech stepped through it, sometimes sinking down to the first joint. They were still in the twilight zone, with the sun occasionally peeking over the horizon when the hills weren¡¯t in the way, and this snow was sometimes slush, with the air warm enough to melt it, given time. It was cold enough to require a heavy jacket, but not so cold that his piss would freeze mid-stream, which was apparently how cold it was going to get when they were further in. Of course, once it was that cold, trying to piss outside would mean a frostbitten dick. When it got cold enough, going outside was impossible. For the time being, the mech was pleasantly warm, not spending any additional power on heating. Two mechs moved through the snow with Perry¡¯s. The sloshing of their feet through piles of half-melted snow was one of the only things that was audible when Perry deigned to turn the outside microphones on. Ruben was hearty and good-natured, and his mech was as burly as he was. The onboard weapons he was bringing with him were shoulder-launched micro-missiles that were better at laying down wide-area damage than killing individual bugs with thicker shells. He was carrying backup batteries on the back of his mech, which could be swapped out when necessary. The journey into the snows was going to take quite some time, longer than was usual for the mechs, and it wasn¡¯t clear how easy it was going to be to find the exact location of the Heimalis. Largen was even taller than Ruben, but slender, and with hair that was pulled back in a ponytail. He kept his face clean-shaven, which wasn¡¯t the norm for these men, and moved in a languid way, as though he didn¡¯t see the rush. On first meeting Perry, Largen had a number of questions about what the society of Earth had been like, but they weren¡¯t posed with the burning intensity that Brigitta or Mette had used. Instead, when Largen asked his questions, it was like they were only just occurring to him, and might as well be answered so long as they weren¡¯t doing anything else. His mech had attachable runners, which in theory would allow something like a skiing motion through the snow, but that theory had yet to be put to the test. They had trained together for relatively little time, only a day or so, which seemed to Perry like it wasn¡¯t enough, but Ruben was a fast friend, and Largen seemed like the type of guy who was too aloof to make friends with anyone ¡ª though not aloof in the way the people of the Great Arc had been. Largen was aloof like a cat, affable and detached. Two weeks after Perry had been presented with his mech, he was trekking through the hills to the west, watching the temperature fall with every step he took. He was in his armor, which was inside the mech, so wasn¡¯t feeling it, and in theory, he wouldn¡¯t feel it for the whole trip. The interior of the mech had everything he¡¯d need for two weeks, including fresh water and food. Depending on how cold it actually got in the Far West, breathing might become a bit of a problem, so there were some tanks toward his back, just in case. In theory, he could just depend on the second sphere for everything, but that was still very much a work in progress, and at best, he could reduce his food intake by half and ensure that he would go as long as possible before having to slip out of the armor enough that he could take a shit in the mech. Taking a shit in the mech was a whole process, one that Brigitta had gone through with him, and it seemed like something Perry would avoid if at all possible. ¡°This is Big Bear to Flamingo,¡± came a voice from the radio. ¡°Status?¡± ¡°Still walking, Big Bear,¡± said Perry. ¡°Like we always do.¡± One of the fun things about the translation of intents was that he could arbitrarily and smoothly swap in words. Ruben had no idea what a bear or a flamingo were, and was using words for different varieties of animal native to the planet, both of them approximately mammals ¡ª only in the sense that they had elongated cilia that were essentially fur ¡ª but Perry liked it better to just swap in words that actually made sense to him. ¡°Your man doesn¡¯t see anything?¡± asked Ruben. Perry¡¯s ¡®man¡¯ was Marchand, which was how Ruben always referred to the AI. ¡°If you¡¯d prefer, sir, you could address me directly,¡± said Marchand, whose codename was Weaver. ¡°I can also feed information directly to your mech, if you would prefer.¡± ¡°Keep your hands off my mech,¡± said Ruben. ¡°Understood, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°But as with the last time you asked, sir, I have seen no signs of the enemy.¡± ¡°We should have gotten a flyover by now, or at least had them fly near us,¡± said Ruben. ¡°Do they know we¡¯re here?¡± ¡°Impossible to say,¡± said Perry. ¡°But we have at least a hundred miles to go, right?¡± ¡°At least,¡± said Largen. ¡°I¡¯ve been enjoying the solitude so far.¡± Perry was enjoying the solitude too. He¡¯d been letting March drive, since March was responsible for the positioning of the legs anyway. It was giving him time to work on his internal systems, which were still acting up a bit, even if he¡¯d managed to get a few of the lines of energy back in place. The left side of his thigh would go numb sometimes, and he wasn¡¯t entirely sure why that was, except that the Liver Meridian had been pushed slightly outside his body in the calamity and was now perhaps not in the right position. Still, the energy flowed, and he didn¡¯t seem to be suffering for it. There was also no lingering sign of radiation damage, which might have been because he dodged the worst effects of it, or because he¡¯d spent a great deal of time on ¡®active healing¡¯ techniques. They were only going about fifty miles a day, mostly in the interests of conserving battery, and because the terrain was difficult. The other two had to sleep, and had rejected offers to have March pilot their mechs. Perry had to sleep as well, but he could sleep while March marched. In theory it was a recon mission, nothing else. There was radio contact between the two camps, but the Heimalis were cagey about their actual position. Attempts at triangulation had been made, but for the long-distance broadcasts used for communication between them, they were apparently using movable relays. The source of the signal was different every time. Pinpointing the exact location was step one, and finding out everything they could about the city was step two. There was a reason these people were secretive, and knowing all their secrets was surely going to help. Perry had kept a few things from the people of the Natrix. The nanites were one of them. He hadn¡¯t meant to keep them a secret, but they were too good, too useful, for him to share them unconditionally. Besides, they didn¡¯t hold all that much promise given that he was the only one who could make more. When he got to the snow city, he planned to plaster it with nanite listeners. After all, he had already done that to the Natrix. ~~~~ It had taken two weeks for the mech to be fully finished. That had proven to be the major blocking issue for the expedition into the ice in the west. It was enough time for Perry to properly explore the ship, give whatever advice and information he could, sit through several meetings, and have sex with Brigitta. She was spending a lot of time with Marchand, which meant spending a lot of time in the penthouse with Perry. Technically, all of her work could be done via terminal, but she sometimes had questions that Perry could, in theory, answer. In practice, Perry was pretty useless to her, but he enjoyed her company. For Perry, most of the time was spent in meditation, trying to move his vessels and meridians back into place and drawing from the energy around him as much as possible. This was often done on the terrace, where he had free access to the open air and a view of the valley they were parked in. The energy on the planet had stayed consistently high, and it was all Perry¡¯s. Beyond that, he had been pushing the academic tether, mostly by having Marchand help to prepare ¡®pamphlets¡¯ regarding certain aspects of Earth. Perry had asked Brigitta whether there was any testing equipment on the Natrix that he could use, and when he explained what he wanted it for, she laughed and took him to one of the equipment storerooms. As it turned out, there were all kinds of measurements that mech pilots needed (or wanted) to take of themselves. Perry¡¯s would just be changing a little more often than your average mech pilot¡¯s. It troubled the academic in him that he hadn¡¯t gotten a first sphere baseline, but he at least had information from March and the Natrix¡¯s own logs of everything the pilots had ever recorded. A lot of this data was messy and bespoke, since they were a small community without a lot of the infrastructure that a larger place would have had, but it was still good for comparison. Perry¡¯s reaction times were a whole order of magnitude faster than even the fastest baseline humans, and probably fast enough that he was breaking some kind of biological laws. March insisted that the results were an error, and simply didn¡¯t believe that Perry was capable of responding to simple stimulus within ten milliseconds. Olympic sprinters worked very hard to get their responses down to a hundred milliseconds. Perry sprinted down one of the corridors that went through the belly of the Natrix, having March time him. He held his breath, which got very tedious very quickly. He lifted weights and did a puncture test on his skin, and checked his range of motion. He got all kinds of stats about himself that he hadn¡¯t had before. In every category, he was superhuman, record-shattering if he¡¯d been on Earth. It was the first thing that had made him really want to go back home, just so he could show up and crush Major League Baseball by hitting pinpoint home runs or something. He had Marchand put all the data points into a spreadsheet. Then he watched as the superhuman numbers changed over the course of two weeks. It wasn¡¯t a huge change, but with enough data, it was a noticeable trend. Through the practice of meditation, widening meridians and expanding vessels, which went along with trying to shove everything back into place, Perry had seen about a five percent improvement. He didn¡¯t expect to be able to keep that rate up, and was probably already well on his way to slowing down, but if he could get another twenty percent over the next year, that would be more than enough to make a substantial difference in combat. It meant that there was a benefit to him staying in this world for as long as possible, especially if Mette was able to make some headway on the firmament and share her findings with Perry. Things with Brigitta had gone fast. She was into him, and hadn¡¯t really made that much of an attempt to hide it. She¡¯d watch him working out or doing meditation, especially the more esoteric exercises he¡¯d come up with that worked to isolate and strengthen individual parts of his body. With great concentration, he was capable of doing a one-handed handstand push-up, balancing his entire body weight on one hand and bending his elbow so his nose was nearly to the floor, then pushing himself back up, feet pointed at the room¡¯s ceiling. He¡¯d do a set of those, then look over at Brigitta, whose eyes were on him. He found excuses to put himself in close proximity to her, sitting beside her and doing his own work while she did hers. At one point she reached across him for something, and he leaned forward and kissed her exposed neck. She had seemed surprised by it, and looked him in the eyes for a moment, then he kissed her again, and she abandoned whatever she¡¯d been in the middle of to focus on him. He had thought, before that, that he didn¡¯t want to get into anything personal like that, and if it happened, he¡¯d take it slow, especially since he had little idea what the social norms for that kind of thing were like on the Natrix. But that planning went out the window, and he found himself hurriedly undressing her, then lifting her up, hands gripping her thighs, to bring her over to the bed. It had been a long time, a dry spell that had lasted a whole world, and afterward he felt clear-headed for the first time, as though there had been something pressing on his mind for months and just now lifted. It was in that moment he realized that he¡¯d rushed things. There had been something on Brigitta¡¯s face when she¡¯d been laid on the bed, a hesitation maybe, or something she wanted to clear up first, and he¡¯d just not responded to that look in the slightest. Once they¡¯d been in the middle of it, she had responded with touches, kisses, and moans, but there was something he¡¯d missed, and it had him worried. ¡°I should get back to my work,¡± said Brigitta after their breathing had gone back to normal. She placed a hand on his chest and kissed him lightly there, then went to the bathroom to clean up before getting her clothes back on. Perry sat up in the bed and watched her when she came out. ¡°Sorry if that was ¡ª I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. Brigitta pursed her lips. ¡°It was good.¡± ¡°But?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You didn¡¯t dig very far into the archives?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Or ask Marchand to?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°If there¡¯s something I should know ¡ª¡± ¡°I can¡¯t have children,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I''m infertile.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s, uh ¡­ not ¡­ I wasn¡¯t thinking that ¡ª¡± He stopped, not sure how to phrase it. ¡°That¡¯s kind of irrelevant.¡± Brigitta cocked her head to the side and looked at him. ¡°You weren¡¯t trying to impregnate me?¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°God no, why would I want to do that?¡± ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t you?¡± asked Brigitta, now seeming somewhat offended. Perry laughed. ¡°We barely know each other.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve seen enough of me to know me,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°And I¡¯ve seen enough of you.¡± She frowned at him. ¡°This is a question of cultures, how your people do things.¡± The frown didn¡¯t let up. It wasn¡¯t enough to say that this was a difference of cultural attitudes, she wanted answers. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Look, I wasn¡¯t thinking about any of that stuff. Where I¡¯m from, they have widespread contraception and I just kind of wasn¡¯t thinking that, uh, it would be an issue. I hope you didn¡¯t take that as more or less than it was. I wasn¡¯t trying to have a child with you.¡± ¡°It was just for fun?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°I mean ¡­ it was fun, wasn¡¯t it?¡± asked Perry. He placed his hand on his chest. ¡°I had fun.¡± ¡°I had fun,¡± shrugged Brigitta. ¡°I had wanted it. But I do need to work.¡± After that, Perry had done what he probably should have done before all that, and got a digest from Marchand with a few choice examples from the archives to explain things. March had expanded access to the archives, which included direct messages in the case where both participants were dead. Given that the digital archives went back more than two hundred years, there was a lot to draw on. They were a society with an explicit and vocal focus on having lots and lots of children. This was something that dated back to the very founding of their society, which only existed because there was an emphasis on having lots of children. The role of sex was complicated because of this, and it was seen as a natural instinct that needed to be indulged in for the good of the colony. In some senses they were extremely progressive and in other ways so regressive that Perry started getting angry about it. There were plenty of stories in the archives about women not really wanting to be pregnant for one reason or another, and maternal mortality was, in spite of their best efforts, still enough of a problem to be noteworthy, maybe because most women were having so many children. ¡°It is what it is,¡± said Brigitta when Perry tried to talk about it the next day. ¡°For this, you¡¯d want Leticia or Mette.¡± ¡°I kind of wanted to talk to you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Because, you know.¡± ¡°We fucked,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°It is what it is,¡± said Brigitta again. She shrugged. ¡°It hurt, when I was younger, when it became clear what was happening for others wasn¡¯t happening for me. I spoke with the doctors.¡± You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. ¡°But the system,¡± said Perry. ¡°Having your worth tied to how many children you have, all that stuff, it¡¯s ¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯m not in the mood for talking about this,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I do Engineering, not the other stuff. Doctors, mothers, infants, it¡¯s all beyond my interests. If you need something to do with metal, we can talk.¡± ¡°And all that stuff had nothing to do with the coup?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I wish you wouldn¡¯t call it that,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I¡¯ve looked through your books, the meaning is different. But no, we took power because the Natrix was being driven by those who had made themselves fat, elders who had no connection to the generations beneath them.¡± ¡°And even though the old regime was selling children, you¡¯re not actually changing anything about the importance of children,¡± said Perry. ¡°For pregnancy?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°No.¡± That seemed to be that. For a few days, they were uncomfortable around each other. She spent less time up in his room, and he didn¡¯t go down to the mech bay. He had his own work to do, and she had hers. Then one day she came up to his room, kissed him, undressed, and laid on the bed, which was all the invitation he needed. Afterward, they kissed, but they didn¡¯t talk, which was perhaps for the better. They continued like that right up until the point he left, physically intimate but keeping it as something they didn¡¯t put into words. It was very clearly a ¡®just for fun¡¯ arrangement. He sometimes thought about Richter afterward. The problem was that Brigitta seemed to feel as though Perry should find someone else, someone that could fulfill his sexual needs while also having a chance of getting pregnant by him. He absolutely didn¡¯t want children, and the thought of leaving a child behind on one of these worlds ¡ª a werewolf child, even ¡ª felt abhorrent. There was no way for them to bridge that cultural gap though, and him saying that it was ¡®just fun¡¯ didn¡¯t just fall on deaf ears, it seemed to actively upset her. From her perspective, he wasn¡¯t doing his duty to their colony. Sex was sex though, and it wasn¡¯t like either of them was trying to pump the brakes. It was a bit of a discordant note, but not the only one. Perry had requested a replacement for Liv, the child from Ops who was supposed to be his minder, and had gotten someone older and more senior. Child labor in general was something he grudgingly understood but had a lot of problems with. He tried to avoid depending on the children as much as possible, but they were very often used as runners and menial labor. It was Leticia who Perry had most come into friction with. ¡°From what you know, what would be the best way to utterly destroy their city?¡± asked Leticia. The question had been posed in a private meeting between the two of them, though March was also ¡®there¡¯, since March was virtually everywhere. ¡°Is that on the table?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not really, no,¡± said Leticia. ¡°But we plan for all circumstances, and having a plan in our back pocket would certainly be nice, especially if we have another round of negotiation.¡± ¡°Which is likely to happen?¡± asked Perry. ¡°After your return, yes,¡± said Leticia. ¡°We have talks scheduled, over the airwaves. They send their planes every few cycles as a way of keeping pressure on us, on me, and I¡¯m hoping for some pressure in return. So if you wanted to wipe them out, how would you do it?¡± Perry considered this. Atomic weapons were his natural go-to, but they didn¡¯t have atomic weapons, and even with all their abilities, he didn¡¯t think it would be workable within the timeframe they had available to them. He also didn¡¯t want to give them that knowledge if at all possible. It didn¡¯t appear to March that atomic weapons had been invented, but their neighbors to the north were the ones who had experience with nuclear power. It was March¡¯s opinion that it was very likely that atomic weapons were within easy reach of that other tribe, but if they had nukes, they hadn¡¯t tipped their hand. Atomic weaponry had been redacted from the public-facing resources that March had made available. ¡°Digital warfare,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re dependent on their machines to keep things running, and those machines are dependent upon computers somewhere.¡± ¡°But how do you do that?¡± asked Leticia. She leaned forward slightly. She was wearing another dress that showed off her cleavage. She apparently had four children, but motherhood had been kind to her. Perry couldn¡¯t keep the word ¡®MILF¡¯ from entering his head, though she was only three years older than him. ¡°Personally, I would use Marchand,¡± said Perry. ¡°If they have encryption like your encryption, he won¡¯t be able to break it, but there are a lot of ways to crack an egg, and good encryption is only a single part of good operational security. Most places get lax if they don¡¯t have a red team, and you don¡¯t have a red team.¡± Perry had been doing some reading on the subject. ¡°Marchand would be able to infiltrate our networks if we hadn¡¯t given him access?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°Likely, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Has he done that?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°No,¡± Perry lied. ¡°But only because I¡¯ve told him not to. From what we know, the elder mechs have much worse security than your modern outward-facing computers. They¡¯re beyond your capabilities, both in terms of the reactors and the computers and the software that¡¯s running on the computers. So they have old code that wasn¡¯t built to withstand outside attacks, for whatever reason.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve read the histories of your Earth,¡± said Leticia. ¡°We never knew war like that, though our whole history as a species.¡± ¡°If their systems are like your systems, there¡¯s a vulnerable heart,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right now, they¡¯re mired in the snow, with temperatures that are cold enough to kill.¡± He shrugged. ¡°That¡¯s how I would do it.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Leticia. She tapped her lips. ¡°Do the others know you¡¯re considering it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not,¡± said Leticia. ¡°It¡¯s leverage, nothing more. But for it to work, we would need to get you and Marchand access to one of their terminals, if they even use the same setup we do. They wouldn¡¯t need to, given their ability to make microchips dwarfs our own.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry, holding up a hand. ¡°You are thinking about it. A first strike.¡± Leticia watched him and drummed her fingers on the table. ¡°It¡¯s my responsibility to consider all options.¡± ¡°Like killing them all,¡± said Perry. ¡°Including lots of children who originally came from here.¡± He wasn¡¯t going to be a party to that. There were places he drew the line. ¡°If we had control of their fusion reactors, we would have options,¡± said Leticia. ¡°We wouldn¡¯t need to shut them down and freeze everyone out, we could simply make a credible threat.¡± ¡°And if they have credible threats to make back?¡± asked Perry. ¡°By its nature, the Natrix is a juicy target. They also know exactly where it is, and since they take engineers from you, they know your defenses and capabilities.¡± ¡°You¡¯re trying to avoid war?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or, yes. Ideally, you¡¯d both get what you want without anyone getting hurt.¡± ¡°I can hear the criticism in your voice,¡± said Letiica. ¡°It doesn¡¯t do to hide it. Let¡¯s have it out, if you think I¡¯m acting like a villain.¡± ¡°I never said that,¡± said Perry, though he had, in fact, thought it. ¡°I think you¡¯re considering things that would be war crimes where I¡¯m from, especially since they involve so many civilians.¡± ¡°Your confusing people, with their confusing terms,¡± said Leticia with a sigh. ¡°War crimes, as though there can be rules when one group of people wants to steal from the other. Civilians, as though only certain people are soldiers. We¡¯re all soldiers. The totality of our civilization is bent to a singular task.¡± Perry stayed stone-faced, which had found a lot easier now that he was second sphere. ¡°I know your people, but I don¡¯t know theirs. Any plan to shut their reactors down, or to threaten to shut their reactors down, is necessarily going to have to go through me. They buy children from you and treat them poorly, and you don¡¯t see any need to honor the deals of the past regime, I get that, it makes sense. I won¡¯t put anything into motion until I¡¯ve seen their society with my own eyes.¡± ¡°I suppose that will have to be enough,¡± said Leticia. She didn¡¯t seem to like it though. ~~~~ Ruben and Largen had nanites all over the interior of their mechs, which looked like nothing more than a little black soot. It was hidden away behind panels, stuck onto pieces of electronics, particularly the radios and primary control boards. Brigitta had seen the wisdom in giving March the ability to remotely control the other two mechs, and had installed the equipment necessary for that to happen. That required input from the pilots though. This other method didn¡¯t. It was a bit of a dick move, but it was the kind of dick move that might save his life, so he tried not to feel too bad about it. If it came down to it, if he really had to, he could potentially stop his allies from firing. The temperature fell with every passing day, as they wore down the miles. It was eerie to see the sun gradually setting as they moved, obscured by lower and lower hills. In another few months, it would be visible in these places throughout the day, quickly melting through the snow and allowing the seeds that blew in through the winds to take root. Now, it was a land of winter, and where Perry was going, it would rival the lowest temperatures ever recorded on Earth. After the third day of the march, the mechs were working against the cold. To do this, they¡¯d been installed with a series of tubes that pumped a liquid through the interior, and there were sensors all over the place to give readings of how cold each of the limbs was getting. If they had to go further into the snow and ice, even that wouldn¡¯t be enough, but the base they were looking for would, supposedly, be in an area that was still getting some of the warm westerly winds. It was pretty miserable inside the mech. Space was extremely limited, and there was only really a chair that could swivel slightly to the sides when it was unlocked. It was, Perry thought, probably something like what early astronauts had to deal with. The meals were in small tins, just as they¡¯d been in the promena, but they were all cold, with no hope of heating them, taken from a cache that Perry could only reach by pulling them out from behind him. Once that was done, he would discard the waste down a slot that was made for it. It would collect inside of the mech to be emptied out later, once they were back at the Natrix. Biological waste was a whole other thing, and that too was collected within the belly of the mech. Perry had tried his best, but hadn¡¯t been able to eliminate those needs through studying martial arts. His body was self-cleaning, which meant he wasn¡¯t sitting there in his own sweat and oils, but the human body still wasn¡¯t meant to be sitting in essentially the same position for multiple days in a row. It also wasn¡¯t meant to be doing that while entirely encased in power armor. The others were handling it better than he was, and in worse conditions. ¡°I¡¯m ripe,¡± said Ruben with a laugh. ¡°Once we¡¯re home, they¡¯ll have to peel me out of this chair. Last cycle I slept on my side, just for a change of pace for the body, but now my neck is hurting.¡± ¡°Never sleep on your side,¡± said Largen. ¡°It¡¯s a trap. But this is why you should have had a chair that can tilt back all the way.¡± ¡°See, that¡¯s a trap,¡± said Ruben. ¡°You give up so much to have that work. I¡¯ve seen your schematics.¡± They hadn¡¯t talked much when they¡¯d started out, but were talking more as the time went on. Perry hadn¡¯t seen another person in four days. He would have been bored out of his mind if not for the two people he was with and the ability to focus on his meridians and vessels. He also had Marchand, who was communicating with the others wirelessly, able to feed them entertainment that they didn¡¯t have on their own. The people of the Natrix had visual media, but it was all homegrown stuff that they¡¯d filmed using their own cameras and with their own people as the actors, writers, and directors. Perry had sampled some of it, and most was awful. The three mechs had impromptu watch parties of the media that Richter had loaded onto Marchand. There wasn¡¯t as much as there had once been, thanks to the damage that Marchand had taken, which meant that Perry had to explain the third episode of a magical girls anime to the two men before they could continue with the series. The fact that Perry barely understood the alt-Earth tropes or animation tradition made the whole thing more complicated. When they were in their fifth day, there was a lull in the wind, and Perry launched the drone up into the air. It had been modified to launch from a port on the mech itself, rather than the power armor. The Natrix was capable of producing drones of its own, they just didn¡¯t have the necessary on-board computing power for them, which made them far more niche. ¡°The sensors which Miss Karlquist installed are working admirably even with the cold, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, initial scans show very little of note. The heat signature should be obvious, assuming our understanding of the city we¡¯re supposed to find is accurate.¡± ¡°Hmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alright, return the drone, I guess we keep going.¡± The fact that the Natrix didn¡¯t actually have the location of the city was worrying. The whole point of the scouting mission was to nail down where the enemy actually was. They had to be close, otherwise the fly-bys of the planes wouldn¡¯t be possible, and the plane technology they had couldn¡¯t be that good given what could be analyzed of them from the outside. The planes had some added bulk to be able to handle the extreme cold, and had been buzzing the Natrix since the last move, which had been another two hundred miles away. They marched on, through snow that was now far thicker and gave a heavy crunch beneath the feet of their mechs, no wetness or slush to be heard as the cold froze all. ¡°We¡¯re going to need to head back,¡± Ruben said eventually. ¡°We¡¯re running through the batteries faster than planned, and we¡¯re cutting into the margin of safety.¡± ¡°Is it possible we¡¯re too far north or south?¡± asked Largen. ¡°Sir, before we left, I was able to clear up some issues with the radar tracking you had been using,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though the size of the radar dishes is pitiful, I do believe that the planes have been landing somewhere in this area, and they traveled along this heading, though it¡¯s possible that they¡¯re engaged in some manner of deception.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not really helpful unless we know what that deception is,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°One option might be for them to fly very low to the ground at a certain point to disappear from radar as they approach their base.¡± ¡°And still no fly overs,¡± said Ruben. ¡°They¡¯d been doing them every few cycles, there¡¯s no reason for them to stop now, not unless they knew we were coming, or if we¡¯d been spotted.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll launch the drone again,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯m not hopeful.¡± ¡°Sir, in these conditions, launching the drone doesn¡¯t seem prudent,¡± said Marchand. ¡°While the winds have died down, the area is simply too cold, far below the drone¡¯s ideal operating temperature.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not going to get any warmer,¡± said Perry. ¡°Keep the flight short, and let¡¯s hope that it doesn¡¯t freeze up before it gets back.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I defer to your judgment on the matter.¡± The drone was launched into the cold sky. Perry watched as the cameras tracked it. He was worried about the drone, which he¡¯d somehow not lost across so many worlds. It was a minor part of the power armor, but it came in handy from time to time, providing a bird¡¯s eye view of a battlefield or allowing for some reconnaissance. It had been to space with him. This time, it picked up something, a bright spot in the infrared. It returned to the mech, sliding back into its hatch, where it was warmed back up once more. Perry hoped that it was okay. ¡°We¡¯ve got them,¡± said Perry. It was cold inside the armor, because it was cold inside the mech. He had half a mind to take the gloves off so he could rub his hands together. ¡°Twelve miles. We could be there by nightfall.¡± ¡°Nightfall?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°You know what I mean,¡± said Perry. He hadn¡¯t bothered to translate. ¡°End of cycle.¡± ¡°Can they see us from there?¡± asked Largen. ¡°Given the short distances involved,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I should imagine we¡¯ve already been picked up by their ground radar.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not great,¡± said Perry. ¡°Stealth was never assumed,¡± said Ruben. ¡°It would just have been nice to have.¡± ¡°And at what point do you think they blow us up?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We¡¯ve never shot down their airborne mechs, despite having many chances,¡± said Ruben. ¡°We have to hope they show the same restraint.¡± ¡°We were never keeping the Natrix a secret,¡± said Largen. ¡°I¡¯m transmitting the information back now,¡± said Ruben. ¡°There¡¯s movement on the horizon, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Moving to alert, readying weapon.¡± The long, oversized rifle swung down, held with the mech¡¯s two hands, pointed right in the direction where the heat signature had been detected. It supposedly had an operational range of twenty-five miles, though it was accurate only with March calculating everything. That meant blind firing over the horizon, and was only realistically possible with the drone up to provide data or fairly high elevation. ¡°Hold,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let¡¯s see what we¡¯re dealing with.¡± ¡°They open fire, we open fire,¡± said Ruben. That had always been the plan. It seemed like a skirmish was possible, but they didn¡¯t want it to be cause for escalation to outright war. It took time for the mech to reach them. When it did, it was like nothing aboard the Natrix. To start, it was half the size of their mechs, and it had on snowshoes or something equivalent, which let it stand on the hard crust of snow. Weight had apparently been a major consideration, because it had slender legs and a cockpit barely large enough to hold a person. It was also unarmed, in the sense of having no weapons and also in that it had no upper appendages. It was more sleek than Perry had seen, with curves and some sense of aesthetic design. Two antennas stuck up from the cockpit, making it look a bit like a rabbit. The joints on the legs bent backward, like an ostrich, and it ran up quite close to them. ¡°Halt!¡± a voice came over their radio, over a different channel than their encrypted short-range one. ¡°You are not authorized to come within range of Heimalis City Seven. Leave now!¡± ¡°We¡¯re far from home,¡± said Perry when it seemed as though Ruben was experiencing some hesitation. ¡°We¡¯ve shown your people hospitality in times of need. We have batteries that could do with topping up, and a long march ahead of us. It¡¯s better for everyone if we return unscathed.¡± Perry didn¡¯t think there was any way that they would buy that. It was clearly a spy mission, or if not spying ¡ª given they¡¯d been seen almost at once and had expected that outcome ¡ª then at least a testing of the waters. There was a long pause. ¡°Heimalis City Seven does not allow visitors.¡± There was a slight pause on the word. ¡°Return to where you came from or face the consequences.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not sure we¡¯re going to make it back,¡± said Ruben, who seemed to have come out of whatever shock or hesitation had stopped him before. ¡°We¡¯re outside safe operating parameters, and all it would take is one bug attack for us to dip into danger.¡± Perry didn¡¯t actually think that was true. ¡°You let us come in, warm up, recharge, shake off some rust, and we don''t see a single thing but a walled off mech bay.¡± Again, there was a long pause. Perry was still sure that this wasn¡¯t going to work, but the long pauses were promising. ¡°Are you authorized to make deals on behalf of the government of the Natrix?¡± asked the small mech. ¡°No,¡± replied Ruben. ¡°But we can talk, and take back information to our leaders.¡± Again there was a long pause. Whoever was running things in ¡®Heimalis City Seven¡¯, they were either taking their time to think, or more likely, they were a committee trying to figure out what to do. Perry was trying to think through what they would have to gain by taking in these three mechs for half a day, and could see lots of upsides, though none which he thought he could verbalize. They could take prisoners, scan the mechs to see what technology they had, interrogate the would-be spies, and possibly, get the people inside the mechs into a position where they could be easily killed. None of those were things that Perry would say out loud. ¡°Follow,¡± the small mech finally said. It darted off through the snow, and they followed, trudging behind it. Chapter 71 - Inner Turmoil, pt 1 As seen from Perry¡¯s mech, the city was virtually invisible, and would have been impossible to spot from a plane or drone if not for the heat that was escaping it. It was at least partially underground, but everything that stuck out on the surface had been encased in ice, with only a few small holes to vent gas. A trickle of smoke or vapor was all that could be seen from that, and it wasn¡¯t consistent. It would have been very easy to mistake it for something else. Some roads were visible when the angle was just right, but it was very dark, and Perry didn¡¯t think that he¡¯d have spotted them until they were right on them. The roads certainly weren¡¯t paved asphalt or anything like it. A hole had been cut into the side of the ice, which formed a tunnel that the rabbit mech led them into. It was more than large enough for their three mechs, built at a scale that implied a lot about the other things they had. A large door, at least two solid feet of metal, slowly rolled open as they approached. It offered only enough room to let them in single-file, after the rabbit, and Perry took the lead, because he was much more capable of surviving a sneak attack. The room they came into was an airlock, with a second identical door made of the same thick metal. There was more than enough room for the four mechs to stand, which meant that it must normally be used for either more mechs to go out, or for much larger mechs. The air took a while to cycle, and he talked with Ruben and Largen over the radio while they waited. It seemed like overkill, but it was designed for even colder temperatures, -100¡ã F. They jealously guarded their heat, it seemed. ¡°How are we playing this?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°They could take us apart.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll protect you,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are all kinds of things you wouldn¡¯t be able to protect me against,¡± said Ruben. ¡°True,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll talk, have some tea, sweet bars, get questioned, then leave,¡± said Largen. ¡°The transmission went out, didn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°I never got confirmation back,¡± said Ruben. ¡°Usually you hope that the signal will bounce around some, but we¡¯re further than we thought, maybe three hundred miles away.¡± ¡°This is what we came here to do,¡± said Perry. ¡°If we can get to a terminal, I can probably break into their systems.¡± Perry had expected that they would come out into an engineering bay, like on the Natrix, but the room they exited into was only about twice the size of the airlock. It was a mech bay, that was clear from the robot arms hanging down from the ceiling and the tools laying around, but there were no mechs to be seen, nor any people. If this was where they built mechs, then all the parts and supplies had to come in from a door on the far wall, one which was built for, at best, a semi truck rather than a mech. ¡°Disembark here,¡± said the rabbit mech. ¡°Food and water were delivered while the lock cycled. We can power your batteries, but our technology is incompatible. Engineers will deliver a plug within an hour. Do not attempt to go through that door. Do not touch our tools. Understood?¡± ¡°Understood,¡± said Perry. The mech went over to one wall, near to the small door, and crouched down, appearing to go to sleep. If it was a guard, it was a guard without arms or visible weapons. Perry had expected a person to come out, but either the mech was unmanned (which would be surprising) or they were confined to the small mech until this situation was dealt with. Ruben and Largen dropped out of their mechs first. Perry had something he had to do first: remove the power armor. There was barely enough room to do this, and it meant constantly struggling with individual pieces and rearranging both them and himself. He knew it was suspicious to stay in his mech for that long, but he didn¡¯t want to come out clad in blue power armor, because that would definitely raise some questions whose answers would, at the very least, give away a tactical advantage. There was a good chance the other thresholder was somewhere within Heimalis City Seven. Perry was hoping to keep his cover for as long as he could. ¡°You look like a prince,¡± said Ruben when Perry finally slipped down into the bay. It was less cold than he had thought it would be, the airlock having done its job. ¡°How are you still so clean?¡± ¡°I¡¯m just special,¡± said Perry. ¡°Keep it on the down low, there are almost certainly cameras pointed at us.¡± ¡°They¡¯re going to take one look at you and wonder how much grooming equipment is in your mech,¡± said Ruben. ¡°I have never looked that clean in my life, and even if I did, I wouldn¡¯t look that good.¡± ¡°He¡¯s quite handsome,¡± said Largen. He had gone to the supplies of food and was poking through them. ¡°These won¡¯t fit in my rack.¡± ¡°Possibly we shouldn¡¯t eat them, might be poisoned,¡± said Ruben. ¡°If they wanted to kill us, I don¡¯t think that¡¯s how they would do it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Might be,¡± said Ruben, rubbing his chin. ¡°I suppose it¡¯s possible they¡¯ve been cultivating strains of some disease and would try to get us sick with something that has a long enough incubation time that we would deliver it back to the Natrix,¡± said Perry. ¡°Is that possible?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°You¡¯re the farmer, biologics is your specialty,¡± said Largen. ¡°Is it?¡± ¡°I suppose,¡± said Ruben, scratching his chin. ¡°There¡¯s only been one sickness in the history of the Natrix, brought from outside, and who knows where they got it from. To cultivate a thing ¡­ blegh. Hard to think they¡¯d stoop so low.¡± ¡°They would be able to take the Natrix for their own,¡± said Perry. He moved over to the food. ¡°But that would require an enormous expenditure of scientific and technological resources, and a great deal of foresight. So ¡­ probably not.¡± Perry went closer to the food and sniffed it. It smelled fine, though it was obviously a lot different from what they had aboard the Natrix. He took one of the containers out and opened it up, smelling it again. Rather than a tin, it was hard plastic, like a lunchroom tray. The food was spiced, but the base of it was a grain, something glutinous, like rice. It was all of a single consistency. The boxes had a different form factor, deeper than those used on the Natrix, and they wouldn¡¯t fit the compartments on the mechs. He dipped a finger into the gloop and tasted it. ¡°Tastes fine,¡± he said. A small door on the side of the bay swung open, and an older man came out. He had gray at his temples and was dressed in something like a lab coat, completely white and with a hem that nearly reached the floor. His face was lined, and he was easily in his sixties. ¡°If we wanted to poison you, we would put it into the air,¡± he said. ¡°We were just being cautious,¡± said Perry. ¡°We didn¡¯t come here expecting that you would let us in.¡± ¡°You¡¯re in,¡± said the man. ¡°Do you think we¡¯re poisoners?¡± ¡°Not really,¡± said Perry. He looked over at Ruben, who still seemed like he didn¡¯t want to take the lead. ¡°I¡¯m Perry, this is Ruben and Largen.¡± ¡°I¡¯m Jorn,¡± he said. He looked at them. ¡°You¡¯re from the Natrix.¡± ¡°We are,¡± said Perry. ¡°We have a meeting scheduled for six cycles from now,¡± said Jorn. ¡°Is this Leticia¡¯s method of intimidation?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve been keeping your location obscured. When you take the children, you always send out a promena. The source of your radio signals always changes. This is Leticia¡¯s method of information gathering.¡± Jorn looked at the mechs. ¡°We send a promena because the distance has always been long, and your people don¡¯t know how to build for the extreme cold.¡± ¡°We made it here fine,¡± said Ruben. ¡°And you should be fine to make it home,¡± said Jorn. ¡°But while you¡¯re here, we might as well talk.¡± He turned to the door, then paused to look back at them. ¡°No harm will come to your mechs.¡± ¡°We have defense systems built in,¡± said Ruben. ¡°It would really be for the best that they don¡¯t touch our mechs.¡± Jorn narrowed his eyes slightly. ¡°You¡¯ve found City Seven. You¡¯d like to see inside, wouldn¡¯t you?¡± ¡°We would,¡± said Perry. He looked at Largen. ¡°Perhaps if there¡¯s some concern about leaving the mechs unattended, one of us could stay back?¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter to me,¡± said Largen. He glanced at Perry¡¯s mech. ¡°Grab a radio?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Ruben. He went over to his mech¡¯s cockpit and pulled one down, a large and clunky thing that Perry wasn¡¯t entirely sure would be able to function through the walls. When they were ready, Jorn left and Perry followed after, with Ruben a step behind. ¡°It¡¯s a long trip to make, unannounced,¡± said Jorn. ¡°We¡¯ve seen your planes,¡± said Ruben. ¡°There¡¯s lots of waste in buzzing by us like that, but we thought we had better repay the visit.¡± ¡°No planes of your own?¡± asked Jorn. ¡°The trip isn¡¯t quite so arduous. We¡¯re now only a few hours away, if you¡¯re in the air.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve never had the need,¡± said Ruben. ¡°No ports,¡± said Jorn, nodding. ¡°We had offered to build a landing strip along the upper deck of the Natrix, but your people never wanted that. And that was before the current betrayal.¡± The hallways were utilitarian, even more so than aboard the Natrix. Pipes ran along the ceiling, and electrical wiring along with them. The doors were few and far between, and the lights overhead were long strips, with just a bit too much yellow for Perry¡¯s tastes. They came to a meeting room, one with a table and chairs around it. It was bland and featureless, with no windows, and not even the awful stock photo art that Perry would have expected to find in a corporate environment. A chalkboard was up on one wall, still wet from having been wiped down. The only sign that it was used was a piece of tape that held up a corner of blue paper, which must have been from where things were pulled down from the walls. ¡°So,¡± said Jorn. ¡°We only talk over the radio, and not that often. It¡¯s always scheduled. You have no authority, you¡¯ve said, but you can still tell me things, and I can still tell you things, and perhaps that will make a difference to your masters.¡± ¡°Our masters?¡± asked Perry, seeming amused. ¡°Your accent is strange,¡± said Jorn, looking him over with watchful eyes. Probably he was noticing how well-groomed Perry seemed, or that Perry didn¡¯t have blonde hair, or that Perry was pretty hairy. ¡°Why?¡± Perry shrugged. ¡°Are you from the north?¡± asked Jorn. ¡°We have little contact with the Kj?rni.¡± ¡°Does it matter?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m with the Natrix now.¡± Jorn looked thoughtful and steepled his fingers. ¡°The Natrix has always depended on us,¡± he said. ¡°There are things we can make that they cannot, unless we misunderstand their capabilities. Their reactors are a step back from what we both use. We have metals and microchips, better manufacturing because our foundries don¡¯t need to move. That¡¯s what¡¯s been thrown away by your women.¡± ¡°Your foundries do need to move,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s the problem you¡¯re facing. They just need to do it on a scale of every few decades rather than every few months. And you need our help to move them. It¡¯s not just children you want to take this time, but engineers, equipment, and the expertise that we have on hand. I wasn¡¯t privy to the full details of the old agreement, but you wanted a lot, and have been holding out for years in order to get this done. The change in leadership came at a very bad time for you.¡± ¡°We had agreements,¡± said Jorn. ¡°That you think your people can coast on what you have for another decade without replacements is ¡­ well, simply not true. The Natrix will decay. A replacement will need to be built, a larger one to handle the people.¡± He folded his hands. ¡°Leticia keeps speaking of the children as the sticking point, but I don¡¯t believe that¡¯s true. Do you?¡± This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. ¡°If they¡¯re not the sticking point, then make an offer that doesn¡¯t include them,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re moving to the other side of the world,¡± said Jorn. ¡°We¡¯ll be twelve thousand miles away from each other. It¡¯s an impossible distance for the promena, and beyond the range of a plane. We¡¯ll be out of contact with each other, unless you have a way to the stars.¡± ¡°We do,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll be putting up a satellite within the next two months.¡± Jorn stared at him. ¡°How?¡± ¡°That¡¯s classified, for now,¡± said Perry. He¡¯d been surprised that they didn¡¯t have satellites orbiting the planet. On his Earth, the first commercial communications satellite had gone up in 1965, Intelsat 1, nicknamed ¡®Early Bird¡¯. On Richter¡¯s Earth, something similar had been shot up in 1942. It wasn¡¯t hard to shoot things into space, and not particularly hard to keep them there, at least for a few months. But as Brigitta had explained it, they were missing one vital thing that both Earths had: fossil fuels. Without those, the only way that anything was getting into space was with a fusion reactor, and those were too precious. The ability to make a new one was a long way off, and would require extensive synthesis of materials, which itself would require parts and infrastructure that they didn¡¯t have. There were some plans for exotic methods of satellite launching, like something that Perry thought sounded a bit like a trebuchet, or a plan for making a hydrogen-oxygen rocket that would fly up high on battery and then launch where the air was thin ¡ª but none of them were considered workable. No one was getting even a tiny little metal probe to the stars, not without a whole lot of work. Not unless they had a flying sword. ¡°That would open the possibility for communication, if true,¡± said Jorn. ¡°But the distances are still overwhelming, weeks of travel with all kinds of danger, stretching the limits of what we know to be possible. We have need of the children we were promised, especially now, when we are soon to move very far away.¡± Ruben chuckled. ¡°Moving away won¡¯t be an issue unless you get our expertise. This city will have to be abandoned soon, there¡¯s too much metal and brick here to take using even the strongest of the mechs. And even then, you¡¯d need huge foundries to pour out the metal, huge farms to make the plants to make the plastics. We¡¯re not sure you can get it done.¡± ¡°With the people, we can,¡± said Jorn. ¡°We¡¯ve been working on this for years. Our schedules had lots of room for slipping.¡± He looked at Ruben. ¡°Your people understand that failing to help us might be the death of this colony?¡± He pressed his finger hard against the table, so hard that the tip of it turned white from the pressure. ¡°That¡¯s what¡¯s at stake. And if this colony dies, your colony will be far worse off. We keep careful track of the shipments we send you, we know what a state you¡¯d be in without us.¡± ¡°Leticia has been firm,¡± said Ruben. ¡°We won¡¯t give you the children. She¡¯s said, privately, that we could loan people to help you, run a deficit while our people worked on your problems here, at least for a period of a few hundred cycles. Engineering thinks they could make that work.¡± ¡°She wants your citizens to have a choice to come back,¡± said Perry. ¡°A choice?¡± asked Jorn. ¡°What does that mean?¡± ¡°There are people here who grew up on the Natrix,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are hundreds of them, or should be.¡± Leticia had shown him the manifest. There were seven hundred and eighteen people on it, though some of them would be quite old. ¡°Leticia wants to welcome back those who prefer their old life, those who were sold.¡± ¡°That would ruin us,¡± said Jorn. ¡°Even if we moved, it would be the death of our colony.¡± Perry narrowed his eyes. ¡°Why?¡± Jorn frowned at him. ¡°Our birthrates have been low. Unsustainably so. As for the cause ¡­ we don¡¯t know. Either those who left were less fertile, or living in our manufactured sunlight hasn¡¯t kept us well, or ¡­ any number of things. We¡¯re no closer to finding a solution than we were a hundred years ago.¡± ¡°It¡¯s healthy living, being on the move,¡± said Ruben. He seemed proud of his people for not having had some kind of population catastrophe. ¡°Leticia knows about this problem?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Jorn, shaking his head. ¡°It¡¯s a problem we didn¡¯t wish to reveal, but I had meant to speak about with her personally.¡± ¡°It¡¯s leverage for us,¡± said Ruben. ¡°You don¡¯t just want the children, you need them.¡± ¡°We do,¡± said Jorn with a sharp nod. ¡°It¡¯s why we can¡¯t leave without them.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a hard life, on the ice,¡± said Ruben. He seemed very satisfied with himself. Beliefs he¡¯d had his whole life were being confirmed. ¡°We¡¯re making better progress than you are,¡± said Jorn. ¡°And now you wish to condemn us to death.¡± ¡°To death?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°A slow death of old age, maybe. A death inflicted by the way you live. There¡¯s nothing to stop you from building your own Natrix, one that could walk alongside ours.¡± ¡°That would stick us both with the same problems,¡± said Jorn. ¡°You would be lacking all the things we have historically provided you, and we would lack those things too. Besides, I don¡¯t think that Leticia would accept that. It doesn¡¯t give her what she wants.¡± ¡°Which is?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Justice and revenge,¡± said Jorn. ¡°She thinks about the colony,¡± said Ruben. ¡°The colony before all else.¡± ¡°She lost her mother to this place,¡± said Jorn. ¡°A mother that¡¯s since died. She lost two sisters too, when she was young, sisters who left the Natrix in tears and never found their footing here. One thing I¡¯ve learned is that we must never underestimate the power of emotion, even in the face of logic.¡± ¡°We can help you with the fertility issue,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can solve the problem, whatever it is.¡± Jorn looked at him. ¡°Who are you, that you think this is a problem you can conquer?¡± He looked Perry up and down. ¡°Where are you from?¡± ¡°That¡¯s not important,¡± said Perry. ¡°What¡¯s important is that if there¡¯s an environmental contaminant, there¡¯s a good chance I can find it. It¡¯s likely that I have a different perspective on biology and chemistry than you do.¡± ¡°He knows more than either of us,¡± said Ruben. ¡°Then it is important where you come from,¡± said Jorn. He leaned back in his chair. ¡°Off-world.¡± ¡°Technically, yes,¡± said Ruben. Perry gave him a dirty look, and Ruben put a hand up. ¡°And yet you don¡¯t come here with a promise of salvation, you come attempting to broker peace,¡± said Jorn. He was staring intently at Perry. ¡°You come here with cryptic clues and mild suggestions. You have heard their side of the conflict, but not ours.¡± Perry frowned at him. ¡°So tell me. Show me around. Take me somewhere other than a room with the messages erased from the walls and papers that have been stripped down. I want to see the people, their work, how they¡¯re treated. ¡± Jorn stood from his chair. ¡°Then you¡¯ll need to give us some time.¡± ¡°Time for what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not the sort of leader that Leticia is,¡± said Jorn. ¡°I need to speak with the other stakeholders. If there¡¯s new information or new demands, there needs to be a discussion about it.¡± Perry nodded. That seemed wise to him, the kind of thing that you had to do in a democracy unless you were vested with ultimate authority. The trio of Leticia, Brigitta, and Mette made all the decisions, and didn¡¯t have to answer to anyone, save for the fact that the good of the community was one of the reasons they had any kind of mandate. Jorn left, shutting the door behind him, and Perry was alone with Ruben. ¡°That could have gone worse,¡± said Ruben. He picked up his radio. ¡°Checking in, how are you doing?¡± ¡°Dead,¡± said Largen¡¯s voice over the other end. ¡°They killed me, a thousand bullets shot in my direction. But I managed to take out twenty of them before I fell.¡± ¡°Shame,¡± said Ruben. He rubbed his neck with his free hand. ¡°We¡¯re waiting here, apparently they need to talk.¡± He set the radio down and looked over at the terminal that was embedded in the wall. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose they left that unlocked, but you might as well try.¡± Perry went over to it. It was turned off, naturally. The keyboard was the same as those on the Natrix, and he still didn¡¯t really have the knack for navigating it. He pressed some buttons, trying to get it to turn on, which was probably fruitless if they had cut power to it from the outside or initiated a shutdown prior to the meeting. Still, he got his black nanite bracelet close enough, and March, reliable as ever, commanded a tiny contingent of nanites to break away from the main mass. Once that had stopped, Perry pulled away from the computer. From the outside, it would look like nothing. ¡°It¡¯s dead,¡± said Perry. ¡°As expected.¡± ¡°If they¡¯d let us in, we couldn¡¯t trust what we found,¡± said Ruben. ¡°I¡¯m sending runners through their system as we speak, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°When the terminal powers up, it appears I should have full access. Their computer systems are more sophisticated based on my reading of the internals, but so far I¡¯ve found them to be well below my level. I¡¯ll let you know more as I find it.¡± ¡°We need to know what they¡¯re hiding,¡± said Perry, which was as much to Marchand as it was to Ruben. ¡°So far we¡¯ve gotten a sterilized look at things.¡± ¡°Thin walls,¡± said Ruben. He¡¯d gotten up from his own chair and was rapping his knuckles against them. ¡°I suppose with that thick a shell, there¡¯s no need to make the walls all that thick, but it¡¯s unsettling. There¡¯s insulation, I think, but still, I noticed it in the bay too.¡± He turned to Perry. ¡°You think you can solve their lack of babies?¡± ¡°You should assume they¡¯re listening in on everything in this room,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s what I¡¯m assuming.¡± ¡°Just yes or no, that¡¯s all I¡¯m asking,¡± said Ruben with a shrug. ¡°Long term, maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°Short term, it seems like it¡¯s going to remain a problem. My guess would be some kind of endocrine disruptor.¡± With that sentence, Perry had officially gone out of his depth, and he knew it. ¡°And yeah, assuming that they have logs of how everything is made, and we can build some lab equipment, I think we could at least rule that out.¡± He was hoping that there would be some silver bullet, a dangerous thing for a werewolf to wish for. Richter¡¯s world knew all about environmental hazards and industrial contaminants, and there were hopefully lists of things known by the state of California to cause cancer, as well as all the other bad stuff. It was also possible that he would strike out completely. ¡°Sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have made a connection with a terminal on the other side of this room, which is powered on. There is some risk of detection if I proceed. A competent security system will note the login attempt, even if it¡¯s not flagged, and I may need several attempts to log in successfully.¡± ¡°Wait,¡± said Perry under his breath. ¡°We¡¯re in no rush.¡± ¡°You think we¡¯re safe here?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°I mean, you think they¡¯ll give you a tour?¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re giving themselves enough time to clean up what they can, take the malnourished and put them out of sight, clean up problems that have been lingering for a long time. And there are places that I wouldn¡¯t be able to go, I¡¯ll bet.¡± ¡°You¡¯re crafty, you know that?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°I know a thing or two about how people do diplomacy,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is terra firma for me.¡± The translation for that was an idiom which he spoke without much thought. ¡°They¡¯re buzzing you with planes because they want to show their might, it¡¯s saber-rattling, but they don¡¯t want war any more than you want war. They want a workforce, a boost to their falling population. It doesn¡¯t actually serve them to strap bombs to those planes and blow the Natrix up. They need workers, and historically, you don¡¯t have a bunch of luck with intellectual labor when you take people hostage.¡± ¡°I never knew you were much of a thinker,¡± said Ruben. ¡°Not every world,¡± said Perry with a grin. ¡°Some worlds aren¡¯t worlds where you get to think too much. It¡¯s a pleasant change of pace. But I am a scholar.¡± ¡°You said not to talk about worlds,¡± said Ruben. ¡°And you said that they might be listening in on us.¡± He looked at the terminal, though it didn¡¯t appear to have a microphone, and in any case, was powered off. ¡°I did say that,¡± Perry nodded. ¡°But at some point they¡¯re going to have to know what I am, and what I represent. Brigitta thinks that the work of generations might be shortened to within this lifetime. That changes the math for everyone. If what I have to offer means we can avoid a war, that¡¯s got to be the direction we take. I could help get you people off this planet. That¡¯s what you want, isn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°It is,¡± said Ruben. ¡°Not sure what that would look like. I¡¯ve heard stories of Naran, the planet we come from. No movement necessary, fields that can be worked a hundred times over, the ability to set down roots ¡­¡± He gave a little yawn and left the thought unfinished. Perry sniffed the air. ¡°Do you smell that?¡± ¡°Smell what?¡± asked Ruben. It was a chemical smell, something strange and new, which hadn¡¯t been there before. Perry had never smelled anything like it before, but it was stinging his nostrils, making them flare out. ¡°I don¡¯t smell anything,¡± said Ruben. He reached for the radio. ¡°Get in your mech,¡± he said. ¡°Be ready for ¡­ something.¡± There was silence from the other end. ¡°March, status,¡± said Perry. ¡°Largen appears to have fallen asleep, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If there¡¯s something in the air, as you seem to suggest, I cannot detect it, but I¡¯m within the mech at the moment.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. He looked over at Ruben, who was leaning back in his chair, fingers only barely touching the radio. His eyes were still open, but that was clearly going to be a battle he¡¯d lose. Perry was feeling it too, and when he concentrated, he could feel it soaking into his vessels, the biological reality tainting the spiritual reality. They were gassing him, the fuckers. There was a small vent in the room, and Perry moved toward it, taking off his shirt and blocking it up. That would help a bit, and might keep Ruben up and awake. ¡°March, open the mech just enough to let the sword out,¡± said Perry. He moved to the door and tried it, but it was locked shut. When he looked down, he saw a thin strip of rubber that on close inspection looked like it was new. They must have put it in while the airlock was cycling, or maybe a bit before that while the mechs were making the trip across the snow and ice. Maybe it was just a contingency, making the room more air-tight so that the gas could work better, but it was a contingency they were now using. Fortunately, after nearly passing out while in space, Perry had been practicing going without breathing. The first step was to get out of the room. For this, he punched a hole in the wall. As Ruben had said, the walls were all relatively thin, and his fist went straight through. It was sheetrock, or some local equivalent. Clearing away enough so that he could slip out took more work, but eventually he was through, busting out like the Kool-Aid man. ¡°Hack in, now,¡± said Perry. His commands to Marchand were subvocalized, using only fractions of the limited air in his lungs. ¡°Right away, sir,¡± replied Marchand. The sword flew down the long hallway to Perry, and he grabbed it as it came close to him. He felt better now that he had it, since it meant that in theory, he would be able to deflect a few hits. He would be doing it without Marchand¡¯s help though, which was a dicey proposition, and without the armor, a bullet that wasn¡¯t blocked could be lethal. Perry looked down the hallway toward the small mech bay they¡¯d come into. ¡°How are we feeling about opening up that airlock?¡± asked Perry. His heart was beating faster, but he hadn¡¯t taken a breath in three full minutes. From his tests, he could last a full hour, or half an hour if he was exerting himself, but that was if he¡¯d taken some full breaths beforehand. ¡°I don¡¯t have root access yet, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°I¡¯m currently downloading a rather large dataset for synthesis, but the information is all public. Their computing architecture is as-yet unclear. Furthermore, I believe the airlock has been designed so that it physically cannot open both doors at the same time.¡± Perry looked back in the room at Ruben, who had fallen asleep in his chair. He was going to be difficult to move, assuming he was still alive. There goes any chance of avoiding war. ¡°Work on it. I¡¯m going further in.¡± ¡°Might I inquire why, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I want them to understand who they¡¯re dealing with,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want them to see how out-classed they are, and know what war would cost them. Let me know if you find any answers in the public data dump, but I need to see what it is they didn¡¯t want me stumbling across. In the meantime, break their systems over your knee, gain control but don¡¯t shut it down just yet, and spread the nanites as we go.¡± With that, he set off down the hallway, sword in hand. Chapter 72 - Inner Turmoil, pt 2 Perry walked down the hallway, sword drawn, adrenaline pumping. He had March in his ear, but he¡¯d have felt a lot better if his armor was on. The armor, unfortunately, was in the mech bay, and that was almost certainly flooded with the same gas that had put Ruben down. He wasn¡¯t sure how much time he would have if he tried to go back there. It was pretty concerning that they had knockout gas on hand. That didn¡¯t say anything good about them or the society that they had built here. The strip along the bottom of the door had been freshly installed, and that meant that they didn¡¯t often do it here, but he could see a world in which work camps used a specially formulated gas like that. He hoped it was specially formulated anyway, because if it wasn¡¯t, and they were using it without fully understanding it, Ruben and Largen were both in trouble. He dashed down the long hallway, taking long strides, sword drawn. His chest was bare, since his shirt had been used to stop up the vent in the meeting room, but the fabric wasn¡¯t going to do much. He was pretty sure he looked like a madman, especially given the sword, but that was good, because it meant he could count on at least a little intimidation. There was the question of the enemy thresholder. They¡¯d gone to the knockout gas contingency for a reason, and he didn¡¯t know what that reason was. There was either something they were hiding, or they hoped to gain some leverage. Having three enemy mechs with their pilots all captured would be a boon, clearly, along with whatever information could be extracted. They¡¯d have hostages, at the very least. Perry came to a T-junction and slowed down, taking a taste of the air to see whether it had the same effect on his body. When it didn¡¯t, he took in deep breaths, replenishing what he¡¯d been spending, and peeked around the corner. He was nearly shot in the chest and only saved by having noticed the robot¡¯s weapon right as it was lining up the shot. He¡¯d reacted on second sphere instinct. He sat there for a moment, heart beating hard in his chest, taking in more energy while trying to figure out what he¡¯d just seen. It was a robot, not humanoid in the slightest, a stripped-down thing with just some treads, three cameras, an antenna, and a long-barreled rifle. It had pretty much nothing else, not a manipulator arm, not shielding, only a way to move, see, and shoot. In comparison to the mechs that the people of this world used, it had only the bare minimum. Perry tightened his grip on his sword, steeled himself, and put as much power as he could into his legs. When he rounded the corner, the barrel tracked him, but whatever mechanism was driving it, it had been built for slower targets. He held his sword up, put it in line with the barrel, trying to track the barrel that was trying to track him. Without Marchand¡¯s HUD as a guide, this was immensely more difficult, even with all his energy being poured into speed and perception. The robot was fifty feet away, and only needed to move its barrel slightly to track him, but there was a delay when he moved, and by zig-zagging slightly, he was passing in front of it only every two steps. He had only fractions of a second to react when the gun fired, which happened right as he passed across the barrel¡¯s path. He felt his sword jerk in his hands, and the realization that he¡¯d blocked the bullet came a full half-second ¡ª an eternity ¡ª after it happened. He was already taking another long stride down the hallway when he had to cross to the other side of the hallway a second time, legs pushing hard, doing a half-kick against the wall. Again, his hands felt the jolt, though he had only barely been able to register the gun firing before it happened. He kept feeling surprised that this was working, that he could, in fact, bring a sword to a gunfight and walk away unscathed. The closer he got, the easier it was to dodge the barrel as the arc it needed to swing in became wider and wider. It didn¡¯t get a chance to fire again before he had vaulted over it, and once that was done, it was as simple as grabbing the barrel and holding it in place. Perry set the sword down and ripped off the robot¡¯s little three-camera setup, twisting the plastic mount until it snapped, leaving it connected only by a twist of wires. He pointed it at his face. ¡°Whoever was controlling this?¡± he asked. ¡°I¡¯m coming for you. When I get to you, you had better be waving a white flag of surrender. I don¡¯t want to kill you. I¡¯m on the side of peace. But if peace between colonies means killing whoever gassed that room and sent this robot here, then I will not hesitate.¡± He picked the sword back up and sliced through the robot¡¯s exposed wires, then ripped out whatever he could. He was surprised by his own strength and the ability to twist metal with only a small push of energy. It was easy to forget just how strong he was. He stood, looking down the anonymous hallways. There was no way to tell what went where, though the two paths down the T-junction curved slightly, which implied that City Seven as a whole might have a layout of concentric rings. ¡°March, can you give me directions?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I appear to be dealing with an artificial intelligence at the moment, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Its sophistication is above that of the elder mechs, and I believe it must be running on one or more of their processors.¡± ¡°They can¡¯t hack you, can they?¡± asked Perry, suddenly worried. Marchand, however, gave a little chuckle. ¡°No, sir, quite the opposite. But it will take me a moment to have the spare processing power to index the available public material I¡¯ve downloaded given the difference in formats.¡± Perry frowned and trotted down the hall, going the direction the robot had come from. He kept his sword up, ready for another one of them. The design had been so sparse and simple, he felt like there must be more. It, too, really seemed as though it were the sort of thing that this place shouldn¡¯t have had. A mobile police robot was one thing, but a mobile police robot that could only shoot and not communicate, arrest, or detain was another. That meant life was cheap here. Unless ¡­ The thought came to him only as he came to a room labeled ¡®ARMORY¡¯. The door was thick metal, and a hard punch into the drywall left his fist stinging, because there was metal beneath that too. His thought was that a place like this didn¡¯t really need knockout gas or robots with guns, not for a small civilian population ¡­ but they might need both those things if they were planning to go to war. Flooding rooms with gas wasn¡¯t something that he could really conceive of a use for on a native workforce, not when the robots meant there would be so little need for hard labor, but against the Natrix? He could picture in his mind¡¯s eye the gas flooding through the walking city¡¯s corridors. He could also picture dozens of those tiny little robots rolling down the halls, swinging the barrels of their guns from side to side. ¡°March?¡± asked Perry. ¡°One moment, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry waited, watching the door, but also watching the hallways. ¡°My apologies, sir,¡± said Marchand after almost half a minute. ¡°The negotiations with the enemy artificial intelligence have been concluded. Would you like me to open that door, sir?¡± ¡°You can see me?¡± asked Perry, looking around. ¡°With the systems under my control, I can sense you, yes sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°However, I must warn that as Heimalis City Seven became aware of what I was doing, it irreversibly delegated control of a number of systems to lower algorithms.¡± ¡°Good work,¡± said Perry. ¡°You cut off the flow of the gas?¡± ¡°Yes, sir, and I am venting the rooms now,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Open the door then,¡± said Perry. ¡°I believe there are nineteen individuals in that room,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Additionally, there are an unknown number of robots.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll handle them,¡± said Perry. ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry carefully stepped to the side of the door. The thick metal walls would protect him from gunfire, he hoped. When the door¡¯s lock clunked open, he turned the handle and pushed it in, then extended his sword to peer inside with the blade¡¯s reflection. Though the magic sword had been used to block multiple bullets, it was still in perfect condition, and because of the second sphere bullshit, it was almost perfectly clean and polished. It was dark in the room, all the lights off but one in the back, which made it difficult to see. He saw at least seven men with guns hiding behind a makeshift barricade, and two robots of a rather different design standing in front of the barricade. These looked more like very minimal dogs, their legs bent slightly, some kind of hard plastic surrounding thin metal. On the back was a rifle setup similar to the one that had been on the smaller wheeled robot. ¡°I don¡¯t want to hurt you!¡± called Perry. ¡°Your computer systems have been taken over, retreat now!¡± He heard one of them say to the others, ¡®Does he have a sword?¡¯ Perry pulled the sword back and took a breath. He hadn¡¯t yet won, not if they had disconnected some of their systems from central control, and certainly not if there were still armed men. Anyone using an AI system to run their colony would have a way to shut it down in an emergency, and there wasn¡¯t much bigger of an emergency than ¡®we¡¯ve been pwned¡¯. ¡°I¡¯m going to attack now!¡± Perry called. He stood behind the metal wall and drew his sword back. Tossing the sword had, historically, been somewhat of a last-ditch effort. The sword wasn¡¯t meant to be thrown, and it couldn¡¯t be thrown like a spear, so had to be thrown sidearm in the hopes that a spinning blade could cut something. It wouldn¡¯t have anything near his full weight behind it. Perry reared back and threw the sword as hard as he could, going only by what he had seen in the room from the reflection. He didn¡¯t let enough of himself show for them to get a split-second shot off. There were screams of terror from within the room, and they only got louder when Perry called the sword back to him. He held it out again to look into the room through the reflection. He didn¡¯t seem to have hit any of them, but he¡¯d cut halfway through the big plastic crates they were using as their barricade, and might have clipped one of the robots, which had repositioned itself and was leaking a black fluid. They were ducking low behind the boxes now. ¡°That was a warning shot!¡± Perry called. ¡°Next one goes through someone¡¯s skull!¡± He didn¡¯t actually have the ability to call a shot like that, but he didn¡¯t think they knew that. ¡°We give up!¡± one of them called. There was something weird about the voice. Perry watched them through the blade¡¯s reflection. Only two of them had laid their guns down and were holding up their hands. He frowned at that. They had seen the sword go sailing through the air and weren¡¯t wavering. He prepared to throw the sword again, this time hoping to actually hit them, when he realized what was off about the voice, and the men that he was looking at. Maybe it was the dim light that had made him fail to notice it, or he was willfully blocking it out, but they weren¡¯t men at all, they were teenagers, a mix of boys and girls. Nineteen of them, Marchand had said, but only seven were visible behind the barricade. Either they had put the young ones up front to fight, or these were the old ones. ¡°Last warning!¡± Perry called, but he didn¡¯t want to slice straight through some fifteen-year-old kid. When they didn¡¯t put down their guns, he threw his sword, trying his best to aim for the robot dog. This time, they were ready for it, and got a few shots off, but they hit either the doorway or the back wall that the doorway led to. Perry still had all his fingers. He couldn¡¯t hear screaming or shouting, which he took as a good sign that he hadn¡¯t murdered one of the child soldiers. When he tried to pull the sword back, he felt resistance, but with more power put into it, he felt it moving toward him anyhow, though with the sound of scraping metal. Eventually, the sword appeared at the doorway, dragging one of the robot dogs behind it. The blade had cleaved into the electronics assembly on top of it, and the whole thing was thankfully dead, but the sword had lodged itself inside. Perry placed his foot against the robot and removed the sword, bringing it back up to look inside the room. All seven of the kids had their rifles down and hands up. ¡°If I go in there, is that dog going to shoot me?¡± he asked. ¡°Dog?¡± one of the children asked. Perry winced. With their English being so close to his, it was easy to forget that certain words weren¡¯t in their vocabulary. ¡°The robot, is it going to shoot me?¡± Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. ¡°No!¡± one of them shouted. Perry moved into the doorway and was almost immediately shot at by the robot. His sword was up though, and the bullet deflected off it with a ping. Before it could shoot again ¡ª before whatever algorithms inside it dictated attempting a second shot ¡ª he whipped his sword at it with full force, cutting cleanly through the mechanisms. He¡¯d done it almost on instinct, his adrenaline pumping, and he called the sword back to his hand, where it landed with a slap from the wrapped grip against his palm. He floated up into the air and looked down on the seven teenagers. ¡°Which one of you fuckers told me it wasn¡¯t going to shoot?¡± he asked. ¡°It wasn¡¯t supposed to!¡± one of them squeaked. ¡°I hit the stop switch.¡± Perry floated over to them, using his muscles to hold his body stiff so the sword wouldn¡¯t make him look like he was weightless. He landed himself gently on the small barricade they¡¯d made, feet among the abandoned weapons, and looked around the room. There were a lot of weapons along one side of the room, some the rifles that the teens had been using, and there were also many tanks of pallets of supplies, some of which he suspected were probably knockout gas. The smell of it was stronger in this room than it had been on the outside. There were also a dozen different robots, and machinery to make more of them, crates of ammo and what seemed to be body armor. Much of it was able to be quickly carted around, and some was definitely meant to supply the mech bay. The room was tall, as tall as the mech bay had been, and a small office with a metal staircase leading up to it was at the back. ¡°Who¡¯s in the office?¡± asked Perry. None of the children spoke. Perry looked down at them. Their ages ranged from twelve to sixteen. Kids had been put in charge of defending the armory. He wondered where the adults were, but that was a question for later. Perry pointed his sword directly at the oldest boy, so the tip was a foot away from his face. ¡°Tell me who¡¯s in the office,¡± said Perry. ¡°The apprentices,¡± he said, voice cracking. ¡°And our manager.¡± ¡°Are they armed?¡± asked Perry. The boy nodded slowly. Perry looked at the windows of the office. He was at risk of getting shot then, if they peeked out a window to see him, and had a rifle, and could make a shot like that. It wasn¡¯t impossible. He frowned. ¡°This isn¡¯t a war,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is a dismantling of your defenses, yes, but it¡¯s an opportunity for peace between the colonies.¡± His sword was still in the boy¡¯s face. ¡°I need information.¡± ¡°I ¡ª¡± said the boy, letting out a breath and then struggling to draw in a new one. ¡°I¡¯ll tell you anything.¡± ¡°Who runs this city?¡± asked Perry. The boy swallowed. Maybe the sword was a bit too much. He wasn¡¯t actually planning on hurting any of these kids. Maybe he should have just done a growling Batman voice instead. ¡°Sir, I do have information on that,¡± said Marchand. Perry frowned slightly but didn¡¯t reply to Marchand. ¡°The computer runs it, sir,¡± said the boy. Perry stared at him. ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°The computer runs the colony, sir,¡± said the boy. His sirs had none of the snideness that March¡¯s often did, and they were translated anyhow, but they made Perry feel bad. ¡°Who runs the computer?¡± asked Perry. The boy looked at the others, maybe thinking that it was unfair that he¡¯d been singled out. He was doing well, Perry thought, confronted with a shirtless sword-wielding man and the existence of magic. ¡°I ¡­ don¡¯t know what you mean,¡± he said. ¡°The computer runs itself.¡± Perry sighed and hopped down from the crates, landing on the floor next to the wrecked robot. He started picking up the fallen weapons and disassembling them, which he did more with brute strength than finesse or an understanding of how the parts moved. ¡°Marchand, what do you know?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They are substantially correct that many systems and aspects of their lives here are guided by the AI I put a stop to,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, the premise that the computer runs itself is, I believe, substantially incorrect. A council of five citizens have been granted special authority to check the computer system and make alterations. Their identities are unknown to me, as this information was wholly anonymized prior to my infiltration ¡ª moments before, in fact.¡± Perry sighed and looked around the armory. ¡°Who has the authority to get everyone to stand down?¡± he asked. ¡°As the identities are secret, no such authority exists,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°They would likely listen to the computer, but have shut it down, and I do not believe they will easily trust it when it comes online until some checks are done. I also do not believe I am capable of corrupting it with our preferred code.¡± ¡°How many people in this colony?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Two thousand, seven hundred, twenty-two, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. That was too many to try to corral them all. He had hoped to find their leader and put an end to it that way, but they didn¡¯t have a leader, or didn¡¯t know they had a leader. ¡°Can you send a message through the whole colony?¡± he asked. ¡°I cannot, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There are physical switches that have been flipped, and in fact my control of what remains is quite limited.¡± Perry looked at the teenagers. ¡°I don¡¯t want to murder anyone,¡± said Perry, though his heart was thumping in his chest, and that wasn¡¯t strictly true. He¡¯d have readily murdered three or four people, if it would have gotten the colony to bend the knee. ¡°Jorn, you know Jorn?¡± One of them nodded mutely. ¡°Where can I find him?¡± They looked at each other again, still seeming worried that they would get in trouble. Their arms were still up in the air, though they were starting to flag. He¡¯d have told them to drop their arms, but he was worried that they might get some ideas about the guns that were still sitting there. ¡°The gardens,¡± the smallest boy said. ¡°Jorn is in charge of the gardens.¡± ¡°Which way?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I can guide you sir,¡± said Marchand, just before one of the boys began giving directions. Perry nodded when the boy was done. ¡°He¡¯s probably not there, because he was talking to me just a bit ago, do you know where I could find him?¡± They looked at each other again. ¡°I¡¯m not planning on killing him.¡± Though I sure wouldn¡¯t mind. ¡°The gardens aren¡¯t far, sir,¡± said one of the boys. Perry tapped the hilt of his blade with his fingers. ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll go there,¡± he said. He looked around the room. ¡°Do I need to destroy all this?¡± They shook their heads. ¡°You¡¯ll behave?¡± asked Perry. They nodded their heads. ¡°If someone comes in here and tries to take out weapons, or someone tries to activate more of these murderbots, you stop them,¡± said Perry. ¡°You stop them, and explain in detail that I will have to get serious about things, okay? They won¡¯t believe you about the sword, so tell them whatever lies you need to, because I have to find Jorn and have a very pointed discussion with him.¡± Perry paused for a moment. ¡°One more thing. Have any of you seen or heard of another person like me?¡± ¡°Tall?¡± asked the smallest of the boys. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°A foreigner, someone with powers, someone who came from outside, but not the Natrix.¡± They shook their heads. Perry sighed, turned, and left, moving down the hallway again. He was worried there would be another robot waiting for him, but if that one had been sent from the armory, then he wasn¡¯t sure that he¡¯d see another. Two of them working together would be far, far more difficult than one, and even with one he felt like it was a miracle every time putting his sword in the right place actually worked. ¡°March, guide me to the gardens,¡± said Perry. Navigating the hallways by Marchand¡¯s voice was, on the one hand, very easy, but on the other hand, made it easy to get lost. Perry wasn¡¯t certain how they did their day-to-day navigation down the bleak corridors, but there were few identifiable landmarks for him to use. When he slowly pushed open a pair of metal doors and saw fields of green, there was no question that he was in the right place. The plants were all in vertical shelves, each with their own light sources. It was arranged like some libraries were, so you had to pull the shelves apart if you wanted to get at them, and by doing it this way, they were able to fit enormous amounts of plants in. Even then, the interior space was huge, with high ceilings and endless rows. Perry had his sword drawn and moved inside. There would be an office here, or a storeroom, or some other place that Jorn would be hiding. If Jorn weren¡¯t here, then Perry would find someone who knew where the man had gone. The air was hot and humid, a change from the cold of the mech bay and the armory. Perry felt it on his skin, and breathed in the grassy smell in the air. They used hydroponics or something like it, though the bottom layer did use soil, probably compost. ¡°Sir, Ruben is waking up,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve contacted him via radio, but he seems out of it.¡± ¡°Tell him to go to the mech bay,¡± said Perry. ¡°Shoot anyone else that tries to enter. Except me, I guess, or ¡­ uh, don¡¯t shoot any kids.¡± ¡°Yes, sir, I shall endeavor not to murder an innocent child,¡± said Marchand. Perry made his way through the plants. There was more variety to the crops than he had expected there would be, but maybe that was because a drive through Iowa had once shown him how little variety there was in agriculture. He was on the lookout for more of the robots, either the small wheeled one or the doglike ones. The humid air was clinging to his body. He wanted to end this. He had wanted to end it earlier too, to be able to make peace between the factions, somehow give them both what they wanted. With the technology he¡¯d brought over and his ability to reach space, he¡¯d thought that might be enough. When it came to violence, that was one thing, he could understand violence, but if there was a puppet master to this colony, a power behind the throne, then this was all so much more difficult than he¡¯d thought it was going to be. There was no neck to grab, no one to threaten, or at least no one that he¡¯d be able to find. Perry was pretty sure that the Natrix did need Heimalis City Seven, or whatever iteration they ended up on. Working together was the way forward for both of them. It had been the way forward before he¡¯d come there. Most likely their nuclear cousins to the north should also be a part of some grand web of unified interests. That was far, far outside of his area of expertise though. He was simply a shirtless guy with a sword. But if this colony was ostensibly being run by AI, and Marchand thought he could put some version of himself onto the elder mechs, then eventually they could have some kind of harmony, especially if they could stay in constant contact with each other, and ¡ª That idea was percolating in Perry¡¯s head when he saw Jorn. The old man had walked out among the plants with his hands up. He had seen Perry first, and once Perry knew that, it wasn¡¯t hard to find the CCTV sticking out from a small support halfway up a greenhouse wall. ¡°What have you done?¡± Jorn asked. ¡°Me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What have you done? I had thought we were getting somewhere, and then you tried to gas us. What was all that ¡®we¡¯d poison you using the air¡¯ shit, a joke?¡± Jorn didn¡¯t show any emotion. ¡°It was meant to disarm. If we had known what you were ¡ª¡± ¡°You¡¯d have shot me,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I think you know now that wouldn¡¯t have gone so well for you.¡± He still had his hands raised, but he was at least a hundred feet from Perry. ¡°You did something to our computer systems, to Heimod.¡± ¡°Heimod,¡± said Perry. ¡°The thing that¡¯s supposed to run this place.¡± ¡°We had thought ourselves secure against attack,¡± said Jorn. ¡°You must understand that system controls everything here. Without it, we will die.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t get to bring it online again until I say so,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t get to ask for mercy.¡± His hands were tight on his sword. He didn¡¯t know how much of what he was saying was emotional and how much was strategic bravado. ¡°Here¡¯s what needs to happen. You need to turn your production capacity toward giving the Natrix everything that it needs to survive, all the chips, all the metals, everything you¡¯ve been stockpiling and hoarding. Then we set up an exchange, a way for you to get people, even if they¡¯re people that are only coming here because they know it¡¯s their duty.¡± ¡°I am not the one in control,¡± said Jorn. ¡°I know your tricks,¡± said Perry. ¡°If it¡¯s not you, someone is in control, someone can pull the strings to the program that¡¯s supposed to run everything.¡± He glanced at the camera. That someone was watching him now, or would watch him in the future. Jorn¡¯s lips went thin. ¡°I¡¯m going to leave,¡± said Perry, lowering his sword. ¡°Six hours after we leave, you reboot your systems, get everything in place, and when you speak with Brigitta in a few days, it¡¯s with the understanding that if you don¡¯t see eye to eye with her, this entire colony is going to crumble. You¡¯ll stay here as it gets hotter and hotter, and eventually, there will be nothing to protect you from the bugs, nothing to protect you from the heat. You didn¡¯t build this place to withstand the day side. Do you understand?¡± Jorn swallowed. ¡°I understand what you ask. I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s possible.¡± ¡°I haven¡¯t killed anyone here,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not yet. I¡¯d like to not have to.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± said Jorn. His voice was tight. ¡°That camera can see me?¡± asked Perry nodding at the small black blister attached to the pole. ¡°Yes,¡± said Jorn. ¡°Then I want to show you a fraction of my true power,¡± said Perry. He threw the sword to the ground and transformed. The transformations weren¡¯t the same since blowing out the Wolf Vessel. They were slower, more belabored, and it felt as though something vital was missing from them, a damaged element of strength, or simply a blockage, even though the meridians were clear. The fur was slower to grow, the bones of his face more hesitant to turn into a muzzle, but he could still do it, and if anything, the slow nature helped make it more impressive. Jorn had been playing it cool, both in the negotiation and when confronted by Perry, but when Perry transformed, Jorn broke completely. He screamed and ran, turning to look back at Perry to see whether he was giving chase, and in that moment, he tripped over his own feet and fell. Perry huffed and loped away, commanding the sword to follow. Control of the wolf was easier now, even if it was weaker, or because it was weaker. There was an urge to kill, to bite and mangle, and there was hunger, but he could suppress it, ignore it, so long as nothing raised his hackles. The earpiece had stayed in his ear, but it was moving around uncomfortably in the larger canal. He had practiced this some distance from the Natrix half a week ago, but hadn¡¯t realized how irritating it would be. He felt some urge to scratch until the earpiece came out, but he was more aware of himself than he had ever been before. When he came to the door of the mech bay, he transformed back, feeling a slight bit of pain as the earpiece settled back into place. He took it out and inspected it, gave it a brush off with his fingers, and placed it back into his ear, then grabbed his sword from the air. Ruben stared at him. ¡°Why in the name of the frigid wastes are you naked!¡± shouted Ruben. ¡°Intimidation,¡± said Perry. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s go.¡± ¡°We¡¯re going to be trapped in that airlock,¡± said Ruben. ¡°Largen is up, back in his mech, but barely breathing. I put your man in charge of it.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. He cracked his neck. ¡°They gassed us,¡± said Ruben. ¡°You saved me.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He looked at the door behind him, and the silent mech. It seemed it was just a robot, or was doing a good job playing dead. ¡°We¡¯re leaving.¡± ¡°We are?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°They¡¯re not going to shoot us in the back?¡± ¡°Hope not,¡± said Perry. He let out a breath. ¡°Their systems should all be offline, right March?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°I would be very surprised indeed if they worked.¡± ¡°Did you set us on the path to war?¡± asked Ruben. His eyes were on Perry, dark and worried. ¡°I really, really hope not,¡± said Perry. Chapter 73 - Peace in Our Time They walked back through the snow, worried about a volley of missiles to their back. Perry had Marchand drive backward, so the gun and most of the sensors were in the direction of Heimalis City Seven. If a plane appeared over the horizon, he was going to have to shoot it down. ¡°I should have stayed,¡± said Perry when they were five miles away. ¡°Could you have held them off?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°Even if I were in the armor, I¡¯d be one slip up away from being killed,¡± said Perry. ¡°A whole colony against me, time for them to try lots of things ¡­ a foot-thick wall of iron is enough to stop me.¡± ¡°Is that all?¡± asked Ruben. He chuckled over the radio, then coughed before unpressing the mic switch. It took a moment for him to come back. ¡°Just a foot of iron, that¡¯s all it takes. Good to know.¡± ¡°No way I could have gotten out of that airlock without March,¡± said Perry. ¡°If they had heavy doors between the sectors, cut off from the rest of the place, if they had a month to prepare for that meeting instead of hours, they could have just locked the whole thing down and I¡¯d have had to learn to survive without food in a hurry.¡± ¡°A skill we should all simply train hard enough to learn,¡± said Largen. Perry laughed. ¡°Even if I could, that wouldn¡¯t really help me. Even if I learned to go without food, water, sleep, air ¡ª¡± ¡°Is that possible for you?!¡± asked Ruben over the phone. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. There was a bit of silence on the other end. ¡°Even if I could do all that, I would still be trapped, was my point. Once I was, they would figure out a way to kill me, whether that was with more bullets than I could deal with, explosives, letting in the cold, something.¡± ¡°That cold would kill you then?¡± asked Ruben. ¡°Why, trying to hedge your bets?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Just seems like you¡¯ve always got one more trick up your sleeve,¡± said Ruben. ¡°After seeing you in action, coming naked down the hall with sword in hand, busting through a wall, all of it, I¡¯m your loyal lapdog until the end of time.¡± The term, ¡®lapdog¡¯, was translated from some local animal. Perry would have to look it up later, because they didn¡¯t have pets. ¡°I appreciate that,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a good chance that you¡¯re going to have to follow me into war.¡± He let out a sigh. They just had to go for the gas, didn¡¯t they? ¡°I¡¯m going to take some time to speak with Marchand, keep on high alert, I¡¯m shooting down anything that comes after us and we¡¯re double-timing it until we¡¯re beyond the range that a mech could catch up.¡± ¡°Whatever you ask,¡± said Ruben. He coughed again, gravely and deep, the side effects of the knockout gas still in his system. ¡°Speak with your man.¡± Perry took his helmet off and took a deep breath of the stale air. He was frankly a little surprised that they hadn¡¯t come after him, even with the display he¡¯d put on for them, the threats, his burying of the dagger, and the total shutdown of the computer system that ran their colony. They seemed like the sort to go for it anyway, tripling down on their aggression. ¡°Alright my man, what have we got?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The nanites have been scattered throughout every area of the colony you visited, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Mobility is low, but before the airlock finished cycling, I was able to infest nineteen separate terminals. I would feel more confident in my long-term ability to control the colony if we had a direct radio link, and unfortunately, I was unable to install much in the way of long-term programming of their systems. I would have liked to insert a copy of myself in order to ensure their compliance.¡± ¡°You would need my express permission to do that, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°I trust you, but putting them under your thumb without their consent would be a step too far.¡± He frowned. He wasn¡¯t sure that was true. The guns pointed backward during the walk through the snow were a sign of how little he was trusting the peace process. ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The next item of note would be the information that I was able to secure from the colony. I¡¯m afraid that most of it is public, as I wasn¡¯t able to subvert their security before wide-scale shutdowns occured, largely due to interference from their artificial intelligence.¡± ¡°Alright, go ahead,¡± said Perry. ¡°You had said, during the meeting, that you would inquire into the source of their fertility problems,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Unfortunately, sir, while I have a great deal of data from their production processes, logistics, and agriculture, it¡¯s unclear to me whether there¡¯s an environmental contaminant, as you suggested. I was able to take much of their research into the matter, which I believe has advanced them quite far in this specific field. My analysis will take some time.¡± ¡°Anything you can find there would be good,¡± said Perry. ¡°Perhaps more interesting to you given the current predicament are the efforts they¡¯ve gone to, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They did everything in their power to keep knowledge of their problems from the Natrix, a policy of secrecy meant to give them leverage and power. But they preferred the young for a reason, and used many of them for testing.¡± ¡°Testing,¡± said Perry after a long mulling pause, lips suddenly thin. ¡°I can hear you, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I can confirm that I hear your voice, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°No,¡± said Perry, closing his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. ¡°Sorry, I really need to check here, did you actually think that I was testing our audio systems in the middle of a conversation?¡± There was a long delay before Marchand replied again. ¡°I see, sir. My assumption was in error.¡± Perry started laughing. ¡°Alright, it¡¯s fine, you know what, I had almost been missing this.¡± ¡°You would like more errors, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Not really, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°That was just ¡­ a good one, I guess.¡± His smile slowly faded. ¡°You were saying that they were doing testing on children.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°On my Earth, these tests would be considered grossly unethical. The participants ¡ª victims ¡ª were isolated, with many tests done to determine which variables might be affecting fertility.¡± ¡°Testing how,¡± Perry said. He was just about ready to turn the mech around and kill every adult inside the colony, except that many of those adults would be children who had gone through that. ¡°Typically groups of children would be isolated from their peers,¡± said March. ¡°They would be put into specially-built dormitories of four or six, half male and half female, and given work and instruction on that work without contact with others, and in theory, without the environmental contaminant that they were attempting to isolate. Most of them had completed an apprenticeship on the Natrix.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°And they were encouraged to ¡­ mate?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I should note that teenagers rarely require much encouragement.¡± ¡°So we¡¯re talking ¡­ sixteen? Eighteen? Not ¡­ young?¡± That came as an immense relief. When he heard ¡®we¡¯ve taken young people and run fertility tests on them¡¯ he was picturing something much worse. ¡°It is believed aboard both the Natrix and in Heimalis City Seven that a woman should not bear children until she is at least eighteen years of age in order to reduce risks, particularly preeclampsia and preterm birth,¡± said March. ¡°This experimentation without consent, and in many cases with vocal non-consent, would likely cause an outrage aboard the Natrix, sir. The size of these isolation chambers was not particularly large, and they would be there for years.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He was still feeling some relief at the description of these experiments. It was bad, but it wasn¡¯t that bad, not as bad as his mind had initially gone to. He really didn¡¯t think that Brigitta would feel the same. ¡°So we can¡¯t hand all this over without worsening relations.¡± ¡°There are many details which I believe would offend those on the Natrix,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The extensive war preparations would be of particular concern, especially as they date to before the change in power aboard the Natrix.¡± ¡°Before?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They were always planning to attack?¡± ¡°The referent of ¡®they¡¯ is a bit nebulous, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The central AI running their systems is far below me in terms of its ability to change and adapt, but it is possible that those with direct access to its functions saw themselves as tenders rather than the power behind the throne.¡± ¡°Why would the AI want to attack?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s unclear, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°As I was unable to obtain a copy of the AI in full, it¡¯s difficult to speculate. From what information I do have, it saw people as a vital resource, and perhaps orchestrated this on its own in pursuit of a vital goal. It was capable of doing that when the colony had a need for various materials. This is purely speculation on my part.¡± ¡°But it¡¯s dumb,¡± said Perry. ¡°I said only that it was below me, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You as you are now, or you as you were when we were in Teaguewater?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know what you mean, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Nevermind,¡± said Perry. March had gotten smarter, or at least different. Either it was energy from the second sphere feeding into the code somehow, a bit of Perry¡¯s own intelligence infesting the machine, or it was the continual changes and improvements that Marchand was making to his own superstructure or weighted graph. ¡°Continue with the report please, aside from the population woes, what have they got?¡± ¡°Sir, as you know, these colonies are built around the so-called ¡®elder¡¯ mechs,¡± said Marchand. ¡°From the report that we were given and the comprehensive history that I assembled from their notes to confirm, there were five mechs that moved to the cold side of the planet. Three of the fusion cores are within Heimalis City Seven.¡± ¡°Meaning ¡­ two crapped out, or splintered off?¡± he asked. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°It¡¯s unclear, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The fact that there are three fusion cores in Heimalis City Seven suggests that this is their major, or perhaps only settlement. All three reactors have been prepped for movement in anticipation of a long drive across the wastes, and they do appear to have very impressive stockpiles of materials. What they lack is the manpower and expertise.¡± ¡°You think if this was resolved now, their plan of going across the snow is workable?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s very difficult for me to say, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I know you will now ask me to give my best estimation, so I will pre-empt that and say that in my best estimation, yes, with the help from the Natrix and full cooperation, they would be able to make it across.¡± ¡°Good to know,¡± said Perry, letting out a breath. ¡°That means that it¡¯s just a matter of getting them not to kill each other. Though ¡­¡± ¡°Did you have a thought, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yes, a tiny little thought rolling around in my brain,¡± said Perry. ¡°Which is that you¡¯re telling me that Heimalis City Seven has all the stuff necessary to make their own Natrix. Or that they have enough, say, microchips to keep the Natrix fed for many decades. Which gives the Natrix incentives to try to take some of that.¡± ¡°I do see your point, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry mulled that over, then put the helmet on and started some intensive study of these people and their culture. He could feel the academic tether growing stronger. Where there had been a trickle from talking to Marchand, it was more of a steady flow when he did his own reading and drew his own conclusions. They had solved all of the most obvious problems ages ago. They had what they needed to run the reactors indefinitely, and the materials necessary to filter water. Power from the reactors fed the grow lamps which grew a variety of carefully cultivated plants to provide a varied diet, along with all their textiles and that hard plastic they seemed to use everywhere. The colony wasn¡¯t fully self-sufficient, but it had a deep mine that dropped down from the center, and had been built in a place with generous mineral deposits. There were also satellite sites, some many miles away, and while overland travel was very difficult with the extremely low temperatures, the solution that Heimalis had settled on was to instead tunnel toward what they needed. It seemed to Perry like an immense amount of engineering, and it was, but that was their bread and butter. The longest of the tunnels led to a site sixty-four miles away, and Perry had to imagine that if it had been done on his Earth, it would have cost billions of dollars. There was an entire warren beneath Heimalis City Seven. Any war with them would have to take that into account, but even with the depth and distance they had managed to achieve, they would still bake in the sun once it was daytime. They had drawn up plans to ride out the heat, but hadn¡¯t found them workable, not with the insulators they had available to them. If that had been the direction they wanted to go with, they would have had to commit very early on. A few hours later, Perry was rubbing his eyes. Aside from the brief excitement inside the colony, he¡¯d been staring at screens for a very long time, trapped inside the power armor, which was trapped inside the mech. He focused on his meditation, the vessels and meridians, trying again to push the more stubborn ones back into place. He felt better inside the armor, with the meridians not straining at the distance of the Wolf Vessel, but if possible, he would like to be able to take it out and put it back in. He had absolutely no training in that, and didn¡¯t even know if it was possible ¡ª clearly he was entangled with Marchand now. That the wolf was weaker was a problem, but not a major one. The Wolf Vessel was less full than it had been though, with the weak moons not providing much power. He had plans to fix that, but they would have to wait. ¡°No sign of the enemy thresholder in the files?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The prophesied enemy?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Come on, don¡¯t tell me you don¡¯t believe that there¡¯s going to be someone.¡± ¡°Perhaps, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Mister Walsh and Miss Singh do provide precedent. But no, I have not found any mention of mysterious strangers. Everyone in Heimalis City Seven was either born there or came from the Natrix.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Which means they¡¯re with the nuclear branch ¡ª the, uh, Kj?rni. Or alternately, that they haven¡¯t arrived yet. Which would mean that I need to figure out the power thing.¡± Every world so far had some kind of power, some addition to the arsenal. On Earth 2 it had been Marchand and the power suit, in Seraphinus it had been the sword, Teaguewater had given him the werewolf power, and the Great Arc had given him second sphere. He had heard about more than twenty worlds, maybe as many as forty if he included all the ones that were hearsay. It seemed like there was always a power, even if it wasn¡¯t one that stuck around. None of the things that Esperide had to offer him seemed like they would qualify. The mechs wouldn¡¯t fit through the portal, the FTL drive was a gigascale project, the fusion reactors were far larger than the one in the power armor, and the whole thing was making Perry feel like he had missed something. If he had got here first, he was worried that he was squandering the opportunity. The best he could do was to work on what he could, keep his head down, and hope that it was enough. It took them three days of walking to get back to the Natrix, moving a bit faster than they had before, mostly because they didn¡¯t need to worry so much about draining the batteries. The snows at the fringe had melted in that time, making the landmarks feel unfamiliar. There was no sign of any planes, which Perry was thankful for. They were in communication with the Natrix, though after the initial debrief, there wasn¡¯t all that much to say. Marchand transmitted an enormous amount of data, including the full details of their combat capabilities and preparations. If it came to war, the Natrix was likely to crush Heimalis City Seven. The only way that wouldn¡¯t happen is with a first strike, but an attack would have to cripple the Natrix, not destroy it, since what Heimalis wanted was manpower. When they came into the valley where the Natrix was parked, it was transformed. The farms covered the entire valley floor, and there were more machines that must have unfolded from inside storage bays which were chugging along, fed by power from thick cables that led into the walking city. Parts of the hillside were being used to dry things in thick tarps, preparing crops for storage. There were still many months left before they would need to move again, but already they were working on refilling the granaries and storerooms. Perry made note of the pile of bug corpses near the valley¡¯s eastern mouth. Some of the smaller mechs were over there, along with some people, taking apart corpses and getting them ready for processing. The shells would be processed, the meat eaten, and some would simply be thrown away because there was no use for it. It was gruesome, even from a distance. They were almost to the mech bay when the city¡¯s speakers began blaring about an incoming attack. Perry got into position, facing east. The Natrix had impeccable defenses, including the lasers that would draw on the fusion reactors and cost almost nothing to fire, but he was very conscious that the defenses weren¡¯t perfect. Next to the pile of bug corpses, the mechs were loading up with people, who clung to rungs on the exterior. They were close to where the attack would come from. Once the people were hanging on, the mechs began moving, bringing everyone to safety. ¡°Be ready to fire,¡± said Perry. ¡°Aim for the big ones, your goal is to hit the biggest ones in the weakest spots from the furthest away.¡± ¡°Yes sir, firing now,¡± said Marchand. It wasn¡¯t until Marchand adjusted the HUD that Perry could even see where the shots were going. The long rifle was raised at a thirty-degree angle and firing at targets that were detected only by the equipment that the Natrix had set up on the high hills around their valley. Perry could see the enemy only indistinctly with the imaging available, but the highlighting showed a red outline around each of the bugs, and they were marked with a big red X when killed. ¡°Sending up the drone, if that¡¯s alright with you sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Go for it,¡± said Perry. He barely felt the movement of the mech as the drone was flung into the air. The image immediately made an improvement in quality as the drone zipped forward, not just from the drone¡¯s images, but from March¡¯s processing of those images into a coherent picture of the incoming swarm. The bugs came in several different sizes, all variants of the same species with their own role in its lifecycle, though this wave had none of the largest. The small ones were the size of a person, maybe a bit bigger, eight feet tall at the most, while the mid-sized ones were as big as a school bus. Those were dangerous, requiring a precision hit or massive firepower. Perry watched as one of them had an explosion of green snot from its eyes and stopped moving, a direct hit from the rifle from more than a mile away. But it was only a direct hit that would kill one of them, and Perry could see the scars on some of the others, a furrow along the amber shell from where a high-caliber bullet had ricocheted. With the drone up, Marchand¡¯s accuracy had increased, and Perry could track every shot. They were taken against targets that were so far away he could count a full second between when the bullet left the rifle and when it hit its mark. After at least twenty shots, all of them direct killing hits, the rifle stopped, and Perry frowned at the screen. ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± he asked. ¡°I have received instruction from the Natrix to stop firing,¡± said Marchand. ¡°All of the larger enemies have been dealt with, and only the smaller ones remain. I was not given the reasoning, but I imagine that smaller caliber weapons will be used for the rest of them.¡± There were many more of the small ones, almost ten times as many, two hundred in total, and Perry watched the drone¡¯s feed as they moved across the ground and funneled toward the Natrix. Aside from when he was in quarantine, there had been no attacks, and this was his first time seeing one up close, unfiltered ¡ª or at least as unfiltered as it could be through the power armor and the mech. The swarm moved as one, with no stragglers, which he found odd. There was no evidence of a hivemind, but he knew that they didn¡¯t need a hivemind, in the same way that a flock of birds didn¡¯t. It felt like overwhelming numbers, but it was something the Natrix could handle, and had handled for its entire existence. It wasn¡¯t until the swarm started funneling through the mouth of the valley that the Natrix came to life. The lasers fired up, rapidly switching targets, melting holes through chitin and flash boiling the delicate internal membranes. For every one that was killed, the others would swarm ahead, and as they started to get closer to the farms, the Natrix¡¯s guns started firing again, visible mostly through the tracer rounds. At a certain point, it seemed as though they were going to be overrun, but before Perry could tell Marchand to open fire again, he realized that the swarm was thinning out. The last of the bugs was killed unceremoniously, and there was a sudden silence as the hammering of gunshots from above no longer battered the mech. ¡°Come, let¡¯s get out of the mechs,¡± said Ruben. ¡°I¡¯m in need of a long shower.¡± They were greeted with some muted applause once they brought the mechs in, and Perry was happy to slip out of the mech, though he was still in his power armor. He had his helmet off and held in his hand, and his sword held in the other. He¡¯d been looking forward to seeing Brigitta, but she barely said hello to him when she came up. She was more interested in the mech and how it had fared. ¡°I saw the shooting,¡± she said. ¡°The distance is remarkable. It¡¯s down to the firing solutions, but we¡¯re close to taking those, and once we do, we should be able to match the same feats.¡± She touched the mech¡¯s leg and looked closely at it. ¡°The insulation helped? You weren¡¯t at risk of freezing?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not to my knowledge, anyway.¡± ¡°Hmm,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Marchand?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Marchand¡¯s voice from the suit. ¡°The mech performed admirably, Miss Karlquist. I do have some notes for improvement based on its performance in the field.¡± ¡°Send them to me,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I¡¯ll look over them later.¡± ¡°Everything okay?¡± asked Perry as he watched her inspect some of the lines and look at the interior of the cockpit. ¡°That was the second large bug attack in twenty-four hours,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Each one of them uses up resources and puts stress on the system.¡± She looked over at Perry and raised an eyebrow. ¡°You are remarkably put together for a man who spent the last seven days in a mech.¡± ¡°I got out and about,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m still going to take a shower though.¡± She moved closer to him and sniffed near his neck. ¡°You smell like a cool, fresh breeze.¡± She looked up at him. ¡°I¡¯ve been feeling stress, the weight of my burdens. Do you mind if I join your shower?¡± ¡°Not at all,¡± said Perry. They rode the elevator up to the penthouse apartment, and because he was still in the armor, helmet in hand, he resisted the urge to spend that time kissing her. ¡°Are they usually this bad?¡± he asked. ¡°The bugs?¡± asked Brigitta. She looked out at the mech bay as they rose until they had gone up into the shaft, which showed no view of anything. ¡°No. They¡¯re attacking early, more aggressively, and in greater numbers. I¡¯ve talked to Mette about it. We might have settled in a bad spot. Or it might be seasonal.¡± She looked over at him. ¡°An aberration in their lifecycles?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Something like that,¡± she shrugged. ¡°Growth and death aren¡¯t constant, sometimes the plants do better, which means the insects do better. I think we must be at a dangerous time, thick plants from fertile soil letting the grubs grow their population, then a lean time following which drives them to swarm.¡± Perry nodded. Or this presages something worse. He was going to have to keep his eye to the east, on the insects, and to the west, on the frozen colonies. It was possible that the enemy would come with the bugs instead of any human faction. He didn¡¯t know what that would look like, but he knew it would be trouble. And even if it weren¡¯t something like that, the insects were something to worry about, more pressure, possibly a need to move again. ¡°I¡¯m hoping to forget all this for the next half hour,¡± said Brigitta. She looked at him. ¡°I¡¯m hoping to be made senseless.¡± Perry smiled at that. He itched to get out of the armor. ¡°I think I can arrange that.¡± If she still had misgivings about their arrangement, they weren¡¯t showing on her face, and unexpectedly, Perry realized that the Natrix had started to feel like home. Chapter 74 - Around the World in Sixty Seconds The respite on the Natrix was brief, since Perry had a satellite to launch. The satellite, Horizon 1, was incredibly crude, bashed together from spare parts and with no onboard thrusters. It was powered by some larger solar panels, which would allow it to transmit and receive, and it had a tiny computer onboard, as well as a single camera. It was small, no more than a hundred pounds, which was as much as the sword could move before becoming sluggish ¡ª a limit that was apparently magical rather than rooted in physics, much to Marchand¡¯s consternation. March seemed to deal with the idea much better if Perry referred to the sword as ¡®the outside acceleration¡¯. It took a long time for Perry to rise high enough up that the drag from the air wasn¡¯t pressing against the suit, and it wasn¡¯t until that point that the sword was able to push him to the proper speeds for the satellite to maintain an orbit that could last for a few years. Perry would almost certainly have run out of oxygen, except that he had been working on that, especially during the long walk back from Heimalis City Seven, and had something that he thought would work: he had finally cracked the problem of breathing through the Wolf Vessel. How the second sphere were supposed to go without breath, as he understood it, was to correct their internal alchemy so they didn¡¯t need air. When they needed energy, they would draw it in from the environment, or have something like a spiritual reactor inside them, sometimes because they ate the right gem or other times because they had careful little feedback loops of energy. By the time a person hit third sphere, they were supposed to be able to radiate some appreciable amount of energy, though they usually just jealousy hoarded what they created. He was instead going without breath by draining the Wolf Vessel, rejuvenating his blood with the energy the extra vessel stored. Of course, the Wolf Vessel¡¯s well of power wasn¡¯t infinite, and had already started to get low enough that Marchand was sending warnings about the microfusion reactor having output levels below what could sustain combat functions. There were two small moons around Esperide, but the Natrix was in constant twilight and the moons were small, providing only the tiniest trickle when Perry stood outside facing them. The plan, then, was that if the moonlight was having problems coming to him, he would come to the moonlight. For this purpose, Brigitta had built him a new helmet, one that was completely clear, a fishbowl that sat on top of the power armor and would allow the moonlight to touch his skin with almost nothing in the way, not even atmosphere. He¡¯d have been a lot more confident in the plan if he''d been able to take some measurements first, but Brigitta had built a vacuum chamber and tested the helmet¡¯s design, and it had held. He had a handheld computer strapped to him that would interface with March in lieu of having instructions directly on the HUD, along with the earpiece for audio communication. He also had a backup oxygen tank, in addition to the small one inside the suit, and a parachute, though he hoped that he wouldn¡¯t need it. This was, in some sense, a test flight that was a proof of concept for something that Brigitta had desperately wanted ever since he revealed he¡¯d been there: a return to the space station. That was far, far down the line though. Even if Perry could get there by using his roundabout and entirely magical method of converting moonlight to oxygen, there was the issue of radiation. He felt fortunate to have come away from that first dose of radiation with as little damage as he had, all of which had been fixed through the power of the second sphere within a few days. Brigitta didn¡¯t even have a real concrete goal when it came to the space station, given that she had no way to get a crew up there even if the station could be salvaged and the drive fixed so it stopped bathing everything in invisible death. She had talked about a grand plan for landing the station, but it wasn¡¯t clear to Perry how that would work, and Marchand had echoed his doubts. Still, a single communications satellite in orbit was a good step, and would have an immediate payoff for everyone still on the planet, even if the orbit meant that their conversations would need to be asynchronous most of the time. An email that took a day or so to go from one colony to another was an astounding leap forward, and it would last three years, at least according to Brigitta¡¯s calculations. Once Perry was out of the atmosphere, he began speeding around the planet, satellite dangling behind him from a wire attached to a harness around the armor. He looked ridiculous, he was pretty sure, a man in a high-tech space suit holding a medieval sword with a bubble of a helmet that looked like it came out of a 60s pulp serial, a hunk of quickly-engineered glass and metal in pursuit. When the moonlight hit him, he was surprised by its ferocity, though the need to transform was less than it had been in Teaguewater, and he had a handle on it now, more or less. He let the light bathe him, and felt the Wolf Vessel fill, drinking in the energy, multiplying it. Perry had some inkling that it might be possible to induce some kind of feedback loop within him using the Wolf Vessel, but that would be far down the road. The two systems came from different worlds, and he wasn¡¯t sure whether or not the metaphysics interacted because they were, at their root, the same, or whether it was going through the portals that had stitched them together. He felt whole once the Wolf Vessel was full again, and while his focus had been on ¡®making¡¯ air, or at least sustaining his body with energy instead of breath, he was fairly certain that it wouldn¡¯t be that difficult to replicate the same breakthrough with his other biological needs. Food seemed the most difficult, given his monstrous appetite for meat, but it wasn¡¯t out of reach. He released the satellite when he was told to, having charted the course he was told to chart. The physics of it all was entirely beyond him, but he had looked at the diagram March had plotted while on the ground, and had nodded along to it as though he had some input on the complicated math involved. All he had to do was unhitch, and then watch as his companion for the trip departed. When he was clear of the satellite, it was time to de-orbit, something that had to be done with exaggerated care given that there was virtually nothing stopping him from burning up in the atmosphere if he got too low. Coming to a stop was easier than speeding up though, and the planet spun less and less below him with every passing minute. His entire time on Esperide had been spent in or close to the twilight zone of continual sunrise, but there were two twilight zones, just as on Earth, one for sunrise and the other for sunset. Perry watched as the sunset strip passed beneath him. It, too, was green, but the ecology would have to be completely different given the rotation of the planet. There the cold was chasing the heat. If the winds blew the seeds into the colder area of the twilight zone though, they would soon become encased in ice, which meant that it wasn¡¯t a viable method of spreading. The Natrix knew almost nothing about what went on in the sunset zone, and a piece of Perry burned with curiosity to go down there. He could feel the academic tether tugging at him, gently, reinforcing the curiosity, but it was easy to ignore. Not today, but maybe later. ¡°Sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°During our last pass over the ice, I believe I saw something alarming. As you unfortunately don¡¯t have the HUD available, it will be more difficult to show you, but I¡¯ve put the image on your screen, if you would care to look.¡± Perry looked down at the handheld screen Brigitta had provided him. It was a very poor view of something, black with bits of white. It took him a moment to realize that it was a view of something on the dark side of the planet, lighting up the snow and ice, possibly an infrared image or something like it. It was impossible to make out what it was. ¡°What am I looking at,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s difficult to say, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°On our next pass we¡¯ll be going slower, and I¡¯ll have time to track the anomaly properly using the cameras.¡± There was a pause. ¡°Do let me know if this is more of that ¡­ business.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t imagine that it¡¯s magic,¡± said Perry. ¡°But you think it¡¯s some kind of installation down there? They call it Heimalis City Seven, that implies one through six, right?¡± ¡°They only have knowledge of their own city,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The city has stood for sixty years, sunset to sunrise, and if there is knowledge of other cities, it was scrubbed before I got there, and certainly not general knowledge.¡± ¡°But Heimalis City Seven only has three fusion reactors, and there should be five,¡± said Perry. ¡°So there are potentially two other installations somewhere else, run by those other reactors, right? I mean, they have lots of mines, and lots of insulated tunnels leading to those mines, but there wasn¡¯t a good spot they could build to get everything. Except I guess that doesn¡¯t explain why the city was in the dark.¡± ¡°They¡¯re in the dark because the planet is very nearly tidally locked, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry frowned at that. ¡°Now was that ¡ª¡± ¡°Just a bit of humor, sir, as you appear to appreciate that manner of wordplay,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re still slowing down, I¡¯ll go rigid, you get a better picture of whatever is down there. It¡¯s not far from the city, from those readings.¡± ¡°Three hundred miles is not close,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Not in the conditions as they are down on the surface.¡± ¡°Either way, get ready, do the best you can,¡± said Perry. ¡°Get the satellite to take a picture too.¡± ¡°As you say, sir,¡± replied Marchand. The next time they went around the planet, Marchand took more pictures from the suit¡¯s many cameras. They were, to put it bluntly, far too small to actually make out much of note, since there were strict limits to how much a camera could resolve given a lens of a certain size. Naively, it would have been capable of something like a half kilometer per pixel, but one of the things that March was very good at was stitching together disparate images to get higher resolutions and running some advanced processing to clean up atmospheric distortion and make up for everything that couldn¡¯t be seen simply by shining some light on the gigapixel sensors. Marchand had once explained subpixel shifting and super-resolution techniques to Perry, but it was definitely a field better left to the AI. It was still basically nothing, just a cluster of dots. The size felt off, too small to be a city, a single large dot with six smaller dots around it in a hexagon. They were bathing the snow and ice in light, which wasn¡¯t something that anyone would waste energy on for a city. It took Perry a moment to realize what he might be looking at. ¡°This is a mech,¡± he said. ¡°Moving across the snow.¡± ¡°I believe it¡¯s premature to say that,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Alter the uh, telemetry,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re going down.¡± ¡°You would die, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°This suit is not rated for those temperatures, and Miss Karlquist¡¯s helmet has not been rated by any authority except her own. She used crude tools and impossibly basic standards.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alter the trajectory, bring us to a stop above the anomaly when we¡¯re still out of the atmosphere and won¡¯t freeze to death.¡± In fact, the opposite problem was already happening, as the suit had no way to vent this kind of heat. It had been getting warmer during the whole trip, and was now quite toasty. Perry could regulate some of it via the processes of the second sphere, drawing in the heat energy, but his practice with that had gone less well than his practice with not needing breath, and he was fairly sure that he¡¯d need at least another month of dedicated practice to survive a desert. The day-side environment of the planet seemed as though it would kill him dead no matter how far he progressed through the second sphere or what techniques he developed. ¡°Is this wise, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°They don¡¯t have a record of this mech, do they?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They do not,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I want to see what it is,¡± said Perry. ¡°Either it¡¯s running off a huge battery, it¡¯s using uranium instead of fusion, or ¡­ something.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have updated our routing, please follow it now. I should point out that this course of action will add a considerable amount of time to our total journey, perhaps as much as an entire Earth day.¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry. He was going to run into some problems with hunger, and the pouch of water he had been sipping from would be absolutely bone dry, but he was willing to risk it. Unknown mechs on the dark side of the planet, lights shining as they moved through the snow and ice, that meant something, it had to. The atmosphere was lower on the dark side due to the cold, so they would be able to descend down quite a ways before the chilly air began sapping his heat. Perry used the sword to decelerate, and by following March¡¯s instructions, he was able to come to a halt just over the ¡®anomaly¡¯. He dropped down until March began to complain, then held himself motionless with the sword. ¡°Pictures please,¡± said Perry. He couldn¡¯t see the lights down below, not with the naked eye. When the pictures came in on the handheld, they were fairly clear. The low light sensors, infrared sensors, and AI enhancement all gave way to an image that was much better than before. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. ¡°What is it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It appears to be a mech, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sure. But talk to me about scale, make up, everything else, what is it like? Where¡¯s it from, where¡¯s it going?¡± ¡°Unclear, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But it does appear to be emitting significant amounts of both light and heat, the former to ensure that the path is clear, the latter in order to keep from freezing. Based upon a very rough estimation of the power output, I believe you are correct in assuming that this has some hitherto unseen power source. It seems to me likely that it¡¯s one of the fabled elder mechs, sir, or perhaps some bastard version of such.¡± ¡°And it¡¯s heading to Heimalis City Seven,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry stared down at where the lights would be if his eyes were better. For a moment he thought he saw it. It was very tempting to drop down there, and even more tempting to send them a signal. ¡®I see you.¡¯ Perry let out a breath. They had gone down to where there was very thin air, just a brush of scattered atoms against the suit, and he could already feel the baking heat start to relent. Going any further would mean that he¡¯d freeze. And letting them know that he had found them would lose at least a little bit of tactical advantage. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let¡¯s go home.¡± It was a long trip, and there was much to think about on the way back. ~~~~ When Perry returned to the Natrix, it was to a hero¡¯s welcome, the second time in the same week. He was the man who¡¯d launched a satellite, which was now providing a better picture of the planet than they had ever had before. The images were crude by anyone¡¯s standard, nothing like the satellites of his Earth that could take a photo of a person standing at their front door, but it was enough to get a picture of Esperide, its weather systems, and more importantly, allow full and open communication between the many colonies without a need for mountain-mounted antennas or weather balloons, two techniques that had been used in the past. ¡°It¡¯s a new era,¡± said Leticia over a large feast in the mess hall. She had already given her speech to those gathered. By the standards of Seraphinus it was no feast at all, just a few extra dishes they didn¡¯t normally have, the same mix of processed plants and processed bugs with a few flourishes. The one exception was something like a pig, a large species of pseudo-mammal that had been hunted by a mech with a spear gun. Perry was grateful for it, especially since he¡¯d been half-starved by the spaceflight. ¡°The negotiations are tomorrow,¡± said Perry. ¡°The satellite will help. It¡¯s proof that you have something good going on here. You¡¯re hoping for peace?¡± ¡°Hoping for peace, preparing for war,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Besides, they might know that the satellite is a cheat.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t call it a cheat,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not something we could accomplish on our own,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Not without expending resources that we can¡¯t spare.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a cheat we could use again,¡± said Brigitta. She was sitting beside Perry, and had indulged in a bit too much of the absolutely disgusting alcoholic drink that had apparently been brought out in his honor. She had slipped her arm through Perry¡¯s and was leaning against him, with her hand on his thigh. ¡°We should use every cheat he can give us.¡± Leticia frowned, but said nothing. There was some tension between the moving city¡¯s three leaders, and from what Brigitta had told him earlier, it was mostly having to do with how much they were planning to embrace the technology that Perry had brought to them. The biggest sticking point was Marchand, who Brigitta thought should be immediately installed on the computers of the elder mechs and given the run of things. Leticia didn¡¯t have the same technical background, but was distrustful. ¡°Assuming that we can settle things with Heimalis, we have a bright future,¡± said Mette. ¡°But that¡¯s given that we can settle things with them. The satellite helps. Three years of communication with them, at the very least, isn¡¯t nothing, and if the second satellite goes up and can stay up for longer, all the better.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll do what I can,¡± said Perry. He had told them about the elder mech on his arrival, but Leticia had thought it would cast a pall over the festivities if it were widely known. They were at their own table, but close enough to the rest of the people that they could easily have been overheard. In some ways, a battle of mech against mech was the best hope they had as far as a war between sides went. It would mean that when the smoke cleared, they would have a victor, and that victor would subjugate the other side or at least extract the necessary resources, and this would happen without mass civilian deaths. The bad ending would be if Heimalis bombed the Natrix or otherwise went in with guns blazing, hoping to pick through the wreckage for what they needed ¡ª which in this case was children. It was weighing on Perry, and in spite of everything he¡¯d done, it still seemed inevitable. The call was going to be the next day, and he wasn¡¯t invited, which he understood. His role here was that of a soldier, and Leticia would be better at leveraging his capabilities than he was. She wanted peace, or at least the facilities that were producing things the Natrix would need in the long term. ¡°Come,¡± said Brigitta once Perry was finished eating. She entwined her fingers with his and stumbled up from her place, giving him a soft kiss on his shoulder and then pulling him along. ¡°I¡¯ll be back,¡± Perry said to Leticia and Mette. He caught their disapproving looks, whether that was because of Brigitta¡¯s drunkenness or the relationship the two of them had been developing. Brigitta led him down the empty hallways, hand in his, pulling him along with some urgency. ¡°Where are we going?¡± he asked. ¡°My room?¡± ¡°You wish,¡± she replied. ¡°No, I have a present for you. To the mech bay!¡± It was a long walk, and it didn¡¯t seem like Brigitta felt like talking, so Perry simply followed her as she dragged him along. He had never seen her like this, and wondered what had come over her, but the drink seemed like excuse enough. Alcohol was tightly controlled aboard the Natrix. It was hard to tell how drunk she was, but her coordination wasn¡¯t what it had once been. ¡°Leticia will ask you within the next few days,¡± said Brigitta when they were halfway there. ¡°If not her, then Mette, but probably both.¡± ¡°Ask me what?¡± asked Perry. Brigitta gave him a dark look. ¡°You know.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°A clandestine mission? Because that¡¯s definitely not what I¡¯m suited to.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta, shaking her head and then seeming like she regretted it. She had her hair in braided pigtails, the work of one of the children, a sign of the celebration. ¡°You know,¡± she repeated. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Perry repeated. ¡°There was a woman who said that she went to your room before you left, in the middle of the night,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°She tried the door handle and found it locked. Did you know about that?¡± ¡°No?¡± Perry asked. He was confused. ¡°What was she trying to do?¡± ¡°You know,¡± said Brigitta for the third time. Perry moved in front of her, stepping fast, and caught her by the wrist. For a moment she looked surprised that he could move so quickly, or that he was stronger than her, and her eyes moved over his body. She leaned against the wall of the corridor, and with her free hand began unbuttoning her pants. ¡°No,¡± said Perry, gently grabbing her other wrist and moving her hand away. ¡°No, that¡¯s not what I want.¡± Though if he was being honest, he wouldn¡¯t have minded. Brigitta looked at him. Her eyes were like glimmering pools. ¡°It¡¯s what they want.¡± ¡°They want ¡ª¡± said Perry, but he stopped himself as he came to the conclusion. ¡°Oh.¡± ¡°They told me you were wasted on me,¡± said Brigitta. Her cheeks were flushed, and he had her pressed against the wall of the corridor, pinning her wrists, though he wasn¡¯t holding her in place, and most of what he was doing was supporting her. ¡°You should do your duty with the women of the Natrix. But I don¡¯t want you to.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want to either,¡± said Perry. ¡°Jesus Christ, I¡¯m not planning on leaving behind a bunch of children, I¡¯m not going to do that.¡± ¡°It¡¯s necessary,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°You have powers, unimaginable powers, magic, you can go without breathing, and if we could have that in our children ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. Brigitta looked at him, as though she was going to argue. ¡°Fine, but I¡¯m not who you¡¯re going to have to turn down.¡± Perry released her and she started off down the hallway almost at once. He followed after her, taking long steps to catch up with her. ¡°You¡¯re mad at me because I won¡¯t, and you¡¯d be mad at me if I did,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta. She tapped her head. ¡°I¡¯m very smart, I have two minds about many things.¡± ¡°Tell the others not to bother, that my room will stay locked at night, that I only need you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe if I was doing all this when I was seventeen, when it felt like a miracle when a woman decided to touch me, but I¡¯m not seventeen. I have my own agency.¡± ¡°I¡¯m too drunk to remember all that,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°And Leticia wouldn¡¯t listen to me anyway.¡± ¡°Where are we going?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Mech bay, I told you, got you a present,¡± said Brigitta. The city was quiet, and there was only the sound of their footsteps. It was, of course, twilight, but the city ran in cycles, and most people were either at the celebration or asleep, and there was no work being done. It wasn¡¯t night, but it was meant to be like night. There were people who worked ¡®off cycle¡¯ manning the defenses and systems and doing the cleaning and prep work for the coming day, but not in this part of the city. They came out of the hallway and into the mech bay, which was as dark and quiet as the rest of the city had been. If the back door opened up, light would come spilling in, but it gave every impression of being the dead of night. They walked over to Brigitta¡¯s bay, where her mech was sitting, its guns opened up to receive ammo. Laying on a metal bench was a huge gun, at least fifty pounds, sleek and machined, painted blue. ¡°Took a bit to match the color,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°What is this?¡± Perry asked. ¡°Laser gun,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°There¡¯s a cord, it¡¯ll run off the microfusion core.¡± ¡°The core isn¡¯t functional,¡± said Perry. ¡°So it would be running of the Wolf Vessel.¡± ¡°That¡¯s where this comes in,¡± said Brigitta, picking up a metal part as large as her fist. ¡°And what¡¯s that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It should make your microfusion core functional again, properly functional,¡± said Brigitta. She swayed slightly where she stood. ¡°Took me a long time, but it¡¯s not too different from the fusion reactors. We¡¯ve been trying to build a new one for ages. Yours, the original, is smaller, weaker, but more fault tolerant.¡± ¡°You can build one of these?¡± Perry asked. ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Or, yes, possibly.¡± She frowned at it. ¡°We have very, very limited amounts of the base material, corcite.¡± The second sphere offered no translation of that. ¡°I could make six of these, perhaps, with what we have. Everything in your power armor is beyond me. But with the schematics, with the new understanding, the Horchler process, yes, six.¡± She held it up for Perry. ¡°Five together should be enough to power one of our mechs. It¡¯s worse than what you had, maybe by an order of magnitude.¡± In spite of her mild drunkenness, she got through the words without a problem. She set the microreactor down again. ¡°You¡¯re not happy?¡± ¡°I¡¯m astounded,¡± said Perry. ¡°Your ability to rapidly solve problems is its own sort of magic. With the reactor fixed, I won¡¯t have to rely on the moon, and with a gun ¡ª I mean, I¡¯ll have to test fire it, see how it handles, but ¡ª this is incredible, really.¡± ¡°Do you want to finish what I tried to start in the hallway?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°I can¡¯t tell how drunk you are,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you seem a bit ¡­ off-kilter.¡± ¡°Up to your room then?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Brigitta,¡± started Perry. She frowned at him. ¡°War might start tomorrow. Don¡¯t you want a last good day?¡± ¡°I care about you,¡± said Perry. ¡°I appreciate the gifts. I don¡¯t think having sex is a great way to ignore the issues you¡¯ve got going on. I mean, if you¡¯re going to ignore the issues anyway, then yeah, that¡¯s probably the best way to do it, but ¡ª¡± ¡°You¡¯re going to turn down Leticia?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°If she comes to me and asks what you say she¡¯ll ask for, yes.¡± She was staring at him. She blinked slightly too slowly. ¡°Earlier you said ¡­ that you didn¡¯t want to leave behind children.¡± ¡°No, I don¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°Leave them behind when you go ¡­ where?¡± she asked. ¡°Somewhere else,¡± said Perry. ¡°Why?¡± asked Brigitta. Perry frowned at her. He wasn¡¯t sure how to explain it. ¡°You¡¯re a hero here,¡± she said. ¡°You can help bring us back to the stars. You have friends, you have me, and if I¡¯m not enough, you can have others, why would you go?¡± She was giving him a pleading look. ¡°There¡¯s going to be someone for me to fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°Someone as strong as me, maybe stronger. Once I beat them, a portal is going to open up, and ¡ª¡± ¡°I know all that,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But why leave? Why go?¡± It was tempting to say that he had to, but he didn¡¯t actually believe that. He had, as evidence, a single story told from Xiyan, whose word could not be trusted, and she hadn¡¯t even been entirely sure. Besides that, if you were a thresholder seeking retirement, why not just try? If another thresholder came in to wreck things, you could deal with that as it came, and after you had fended them off, then you could think about moving on. And there was Richter, of course, and his long-term plan to resurrect her, as little progress had been made on that front. He had felt an iron resolve when he reached Seraphinus, but that resolve had been steadily fading, both with the passing of time and the slow realization of just how daunting the problems were. Resurrection and multiverse travel, those were the two requirements, and he was not closer to either of them than he had been six months ago. The real answer was that there were more worlds out there. There were more powers, more fights. If he stayed with the Natrix he would be lauded as a hero until the end of his very long second sphere life, but it would be a life that largely consisted of work and obligations, perhaps a family, perhaps not, and it would mellow and fade as time went on. Perhaps he would reach the third sphere, perhaps not, but confined to a single world, he would feel small and insignificant, as though he¡¯d chosen to limit himself. He didn¡¯t know how to express that, or even where to begin. He wasn¡¯t sure that it was a rational thing to feel. ¡°When I¡¯m done here, I¡¯ll be needed elsewhere,¡± said Perry. This, at least, felt true. She stared at him and opened her mouth, but before she could speak, an alarm went off, the bugs attacking them yet again, adding more bodies to the piles outside. The guns could be heard down in the mech bay, and the lights dimmed slightly when the lasers fired. They sat there, staring at each other. ¡°Okay,¡± said Brigitta once the assault had stopped. He was certain that hadn¡¯t been what she was going to say before she was interrupted. ¡°Take your gifts,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I need to sleep.¡± She looked him up and down. ¡°I¡¯m sleeping in your room tonight.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ll do your best to protect us, if there¡¯s war?¡± she asked. ¡°I will,¡± said Perry, though he wasn¡¯t much in comparison to the mechs, and certainly not an elder mech. He knew they thought highly of him, probably more highly than he deserved. ¡°That¡¯s all I can ask for then,¡± she said. She moved away from him, and walked across the bay to the elevator. She gave him a look, a questioning one, and he moved across, slipping in the cage with her before she pressed the button. They exchanged no more words for the rest of the night. Chapter 75 - The Clash, pt 1 Perry stood on top of the Natrix, dressed in his power armor. The Natrix had many open decks, most of them made for people to be social and have a good view, with plants draping from pots. Some of the plants were quite large, while others were supplemental food of the small, delicate variety that could be eaten without intensive processing. He was above those though, on the metal hull, sword in hand, waiting. The talks were going on without him. He wasn¡¯t sure what the end result would be, but he wasn¡¯t wholly optimistic. It seemed to him like an opportunity to forge a new alliance between the two sides, maybe with some trade of personnel to bring their two cultures more in line with each other. The children that had been routinely delivered from the Natrix to Heimalis City Seven had already brought over some of their practices, and with so many of them sons and daughters of what were, effectively, immigrants, it felt like there must be substantial overlap in ideology. There were things for them to share and trade, in terms of technology if nothing else. And he was at the center of it all. He wondered if this was the sort of feeling that Cosme had been chasing. There were lots of problems that came with technology, Perry was well aware of that, but these people already had fusion reactors powering giant mechs, and even the things that were outside of their conception, like Marchand, seemed to be integrated into their understanding of the world quickly enough. Maybe that could be his path through the many worlds. He liked the Natrix. Truly, he did. The bug attacks weren¡¯t something that he enjoyed, but with March having written a new firing scheme, the problem was more under control than it had ever been before. Brigitta had talked for a long time about what the savings would be in terms of maintenance on the lasers and projectile ammunition that wouldn¡¯t need to be manufactured, which would free up materials and material streams and personnel. That was great, it was, really, if maybe not his ideal post-coital conversation. He was happy to help these people, and enjoyed seeing their processes. He didn¡¯t mind kids, even if he had no interest whatsoever in adding to the population of the Natrix. He could see himself happily staying for half a year or more. The other thresholder would show up eventually, if they weren¡¯t here already, and then there would be a fight, or more likely, a series of fights. He¡¯d never had a single decisive round of battle, as much as he¡¯d tried to end Cosme right off the bat. He was already making plans to take the fight as far away from ¡°civilization¡± as he could. He would protect the Natrix from whoever showed up and settle the score. The thing was, when he had been offered a place here, a home to call his own, a prominent position within a community that adored him for the gifts that he brought them and his overwhelming power, he had instinctively shirked back from it. ¡°Why do I not want to stay here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s difficult for me to say, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°I owe Richter, I want to return to that world, bring her back, but ¡­ it was a promise I made to myself right when she died, and we hadn¡¯t even known each other that long, and ¡­ there¡¯s not really a path, not a clear one. Eventually I¡¯ll find something that works, some way of moving between worlds that I can control, and I¡¯ll keep getting stronger, more powers, even if they¡¯re underwhelming, like this gun.¡± He hefted the laser gun. It was a good weapon, and he¡¯d fired it a few times to test it, but it was also a weapon for big game, lacking any sort of finesse or subtlety. There were mirrors inside that Marchand could control which allowed for precision targeting, which was good, and appreciated. The real issue was that it was a huge, unsubtle instrument of war, exactly like a mech in that regard. ¡°Don¡¯t tell Brigitta I¡¯m less than enamored with it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I would never, sir, and am practically aghast that you would suggest it as a possibility,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Flora thought that I liked fighting,¡± said Perry. ¡°I said I didn¡¯t, and she said, ¡®No, you do, you really like driving your blade straight into people at the slightest provocation¡¯. I mean, I think she was wrong, I showed a lot of restraint on the Great Arc, and crashed my way through City Seven without so much as hurting anyone.¡± ¡°Will no one applaud your lack of war crimes, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°The point,¡± said Perry. ¡°Is that I don¡¯t think I¡¯m drawn to violence, not in the way that she was thinking, but at the same time ¡­ the idea of growing old here, slowly fading to a shell of my former self while this society moves on and launches to the stars, that really holds no appeal to me. That can¡¯t be what my life amounts to.¡± ¡°You have a champion¡¯s instincts, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. He was mostly talking out loud, not really seeking input from the AI. ¡°A champion does not settle,¡± said Marchand. ¡°He achieves the bronze medal and thinks only of the gold, and achieves the gold then thinks only of the next battle, the next tournament. To stop and hang up his hat would be unthinkable, tantamount to an admission that none of it had ever mattered.¡± ¡°You¡¯re saying that these five worlds, they¡¯ve meant nothing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No sir, quite the opposite,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I don¡¯t know what the opposite of that is,¡± said Perry. ¡°That it¡¯s got meaning because I found meaning in it? Because that¡¯s bullshit. I mean, I have been leaving these worlds better than I found them, in one way or another. Usually that¡¯s by crushing the right skulls, unfortunately.¡± ¡°You have said, in the past, that you like crushing skulls, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°People that deserve it,¡± said Perry. Marchand had no reply to that, and there was silence as Perry looked at the horizon. He was hoping that there would be a bug attack. It would help him to get out some aggression. He wasn¡¯t sure where the aggression was coming from, and couldn¡¯t really blame the Wolf Vessel, given that it was, as always, twilight. In fact, there was more sun in the sky now than there had been at any time before the Natrix had settled in the valley. It wouldn¡¯t be completely suicidal to fly out away from the ship and find some bugs. He hadn¡¯t field-tested the gun or the microfusion replacement part that Brigitta had made. There was, perhaps, an argument for throwing himself into action. But the reason he was on the upper deck, armored up and with the gun in hand, was that he was worried about a sneak attack, or possibly a retaliatory attack if the talks broke down. He wasn¡¯t hoping for that, but at least it would give him something to do. He was all dressed up with nowhere to go. ¡°March, we need some audio analysis,¡± said Brigitta¡¯s voice over the radio. ¡°Can you identify what was said during this portion of the call?¡± What followed was a garbled conversation that was happening some distance from the microphone, indistinct. It also sounded to Perry like the microphone might have been muffled by a hand. ¡°I¡¯ll get on it right away, ma¡¯am,¡± said Marchand. Perry didn¡¯t have high hopes. Audio analysis was one of Richter¡¯s specialties, and Marchand had all kinds of programming above and beyond what a normal AI would have had to run the power armor, but there were limits to what Marchand was capable of. It was poor quality sound from far away captured by a substandard microphone and then transmitted via a very crude satellite. ¡°I¡¯ve sent you a transcript and cleaned up the audio as best I could,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Thank you,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Play it for me?¡± asked Perry. He was frowning a bit. He didn¡¯t know if Brigitta needed to be reminded that March was fallible, especially where some guesswork was involved. March was far from home and had, in the past, made some poor assumptions about the shape of a world and the people in it. The audio played, two voices, still not very clear even with all the work that Marchand had done. There was a transcript that ran along the HUD, and Perry found himself reading that much more than he was listening to the words. ¡°You didn¡¯t see him,¡± said a man¡¯s voice. It was subtitled as Jorn, and Perry wasn¡¯t sure how Marchand would know well enough to make that connection, but Marchand was listening in on all the audio, so maybe he had been identified later. ¡°You saw the video, not the reality of this beast of a man, not the way he swatted bullets away like they were an annoyance. He walked shirtless through these halls like he couldn¡¯t have been more comfortable. He spared us, but he didn¡¯t have to. And what he did to the computer system beggars belief.¡± ¡°We cannot fold,¡± said a woman, unidentified. ¡°Your task is this: get us what we need, give them as little as you can. Every day we aren¡¯t working on the machine to move the reactors is a day that we risk failure. We cannot give up the next generation. We¡¯re closer to leaving than you know.¡± ¡°They have a warrior,¡± said Jorn. ¡°He came from nowhere, bringing magic and ¡ª¡± ¡°There¡¯s an explanation that makes more sense than magic,¡± said the woman. ¡°Do your duty. Fulfill your role.¡± And that was it, the end of the transmission that Marchand had clarified. ¡°She doesn¡¯t speak again?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir, though an analysis of the radio transmission indicates that there were eight people in the room,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Only six were introduced.¡± ¡°How can you possibly tell that there were eight people?¡± asked Perry. ¡°In this case, I cannot rightly say,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe it to be a matter of deep learning rather than concrete deductions from the available evidence.¡± ¡°Make sure you¡¯re relaying that to the sisters,¡± said Perry. Brigitta, Leticia, and Mette were not actually sisters, but that¡¯s what they were called by those aboard the Natrix. ¡°Tell them when you¡¯re just making guesses.¡± ¡°I would not deliver my guesses if I didn¡¯t have some confidence in them,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But I will do my best to better convey my uncertainty, sir.¡± ¡°A break in the talks is the time to attack,¡± said Perry. ¡°Be vigilant. Do we have eyes on City Seven?¡± ¡°There are some outdated photographs, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe communication with the nanites that we seeded into the city is possible when the satellite is overhead, but it does not appear that they trust their computer systems as yet, and given the limited bandwidth, transmission seems ill-advised unless you wish to start a war.¡± There was a brief pause. ¡°Do you wish to start a war sir?¡± ¡°No,¡± Perry replied. ¡°Obviously not.¡± He tightened his grip on the sword. It was very possible that the other thresholder was in the elder mech. The conversation that March had deciphered seemed to indicate otherwise though. There was some power behind the throne, not an AI, but someone who was controlling that AI. Maybe it was City Eight or City Six. It was going to complicate the talks, that was certain. It was like the United States and Russia trying to engage in diplomacy while the United States was denying that the office of the President existed. Perry was still staring off into the distance, wrestling with his thoughts, when a hatch opened up and Brigitta climbed up a ladder. ¡°How is the watch?¡± she asked. ¡°Fine,¡± he replied. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. He looked over at her. She was in brown coveralls and a tight-fitting white t-shirt. Perry could read the fashions of the Natrix a little bit better now, and tight clothes were a sign that someone was putting more effort into their looks. Most of the clothes were made with the typical body in mind, then customized after the fact, and something with a close fit was rare. Her hair was back in a thick braid, and she was smiling. That was how he liked her. ¡°How are the talks?¡± he asked. ¡°I¡¯m useless, just sitting there in silence while I could be doing real work,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Leticia is the one with the golden voice. Whether any sort of deal lives or dies, it will be because of her.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no reason you can¡¯t set something up,¡± said Perry. It seemed like it might be an engineering problem, at least at its heart. ¡°Regular shuttles across the tundra, that would work, right?¡± ¡°There are challenges,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Enormous challenges. Would your people have been able to do it?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°But we didn¡¯t have fusion reactors. And I guess we never really had a reason to do it, given that no one lives in the places that have intense cold, not that the cold was ever as bad as it is on this planet.¡± ¡°A machine of treads to race across the snow, powered by the weak fusion reactors, of which we have only a few, a trip that would take weeks, all to maintain peace,¡± said Brigitta. She sighed. ¡°You think that it¡¯s worth bringing up?¡± ¡°I think that having a politician driving the talks is bound to be a little worse than having an engineer driving the talks,¡± said Perry. ¡°Engineers, I would think, would like to try to find solutions together.¡± ¡°Leticia¡¯s not like that,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°No, maybe not,¡± said Perry. ¡°I still have this uncomfortable feeling.¡± ¡°She¡¯s giving up more than I thought she would,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°We need the microchips, along with a few rarer metals that are difficult for us to get given what our mining operations look like.¡± She frowned. It occurred to Perry that she was staring at the helmet, not his face, and he released the gun, letting it rest from the thick strap around his shoulder. He took the helmet off and looked at her. ¡°She¡¯s not willing to give up the children,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta. She folded her hands across her chest. ¡°Have you broached the subject of installing March?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Here on the Natrix, or there in their city?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°What¡¯s stopping you from doing it here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I didn¡¯t pitch it well to Leticia,¡± said Brigitta with a sigh. She reached up and held her braid, thumb moving over the blonde locks. ¡°I said that it was insane, an unknown, phantom math, everything I said to you, and she didn¡¯t seem to think that I was right when I said that we should do it anyway.¡± ¡°You¡¯re Head of Engineering,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯ll come around,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I just need to do all the things that will slow me down, the tests, the plans, the hundred moving parts, an estimation of costs and labor, projections for the future. Sensible, but,¡± she shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°It would be a big ask to get them to do the same,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Even if the coordination between our colonies would be better. Whoever was driving the elder mech through the snows ¡­ they like having control.¡± ¡°Who doesn¡¯t?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, I mean,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Whoever they are, they were entrusted with ultimate power. The elder mechs here have been subsumed, becoming infrastructure, the common good. But one that still walks, it will be at the end of a lineage that desired concentrated power.¡± ¡°You got the audio from March,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s probably that person? Someone who isn¡¯t speaking?¡± ¡°Impossible to say,¡± said Brigitta. She looked around the valley. For Perry, it was a temporary home, but for her, it was more complicated, a place that her home was staying. ¡°I¡¯ll let you get back to it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Can I request a weather balloon to be raised for a peek over the horizon?¡± ¡°Now?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just a feeling. It¡¯s probably nothing.¡± ¡°Fine, it¡¯ll be done,¡± said Brigitta. She hesitated before she left, then leaned up and gave him a kiss. She slipped back down the hatch without another word. Perry put the helmet back up, hefted the gun, then looked out on the valley, allowing the silence to settle around him. He meditated, which he was using as a way to avoid his thoughts. Still, there was work to be done internally, more attempts at moving stubborn meridians that had kept slipping back into places they weren¡¯t supposed to be. Now was the time to do this work, while the Wolf Vessel was brimming with power. It was good to have something to apply himself toward. The weather balloons were made of a thicker, heavier material than on his Earth or Richter¡¯s, and they were something of a precious resource, to be collected again whenever possible. They were also filled with hydrogen and quite explosive, which seemed not to bother Brigitta at all. This one was attached to the Natrix by a wire, and had been launched from one of the lower decks. It had a camera onboard, one with a large fish eye lens, and it was swept westward by the constant winds as soon as it had any appreciable height. Marchand patched into it and delivered the feed directly to Perry¡¯s HUD. ¡°What are we looking for, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Enemy action,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ve been pretty clear with them that any planes that come our way are going to be shot out of the sky, but that doesn¡¯t mean they won¡¯t try. We¡¯re doing the Iron Dome thing for incoming missiles.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure that from a technical perspective that plan will work to satisfaction, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You do your best to shoot artillery out of the sky,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s all I need from you.¡± ¡°Sir,¡± Marchand sighed, ¡°As I explained to Miss Karlquist, changes to the existing systems cannot possibly match the expected efficiency of custom-built missile batteries, and in spite of her confidence in my long-distance targeting abilities, the processing delays and poor video quality, along with ¡ª¡± ¡°It¡¯s a twenty percent chance, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I know, you don¡¯t need to tell me. Just ¡­ try, okay?¡± ¡°Yes, sir, of course,¡± replied Marchand. Perry was looking at the camera feed. He was feeling on edge. Maybe it was all the stuff with Brigitta, the ways that they were a good match and the other ways they were a terrible one. Or it might have been the uncomfortable moments of introspection, which he wasn¡¯t naturally given to. Either way, he was feeling like a vise was gripping his chest. He was inclined to trust it, given what he knew about the second sphere. Energy flowed, and killing intent could be felt. He thought that it might be another wave of bug attacks, something that had been happening with alarming frequency, but there was nothing on the horizon, no gathering assault party. It was possible that he was imagining things. ¡°Movement, sir,¡± said Marchand. The image panned, flattened, and enhanced. Far on the horizon, almost impossible to see, was a mech walking toward them. The features couldn¡¯t be made out, only the enormous gun on the back and a stride made with heavy metal legs. Even from a distance it was sleek, its design nothing like any of the varied mechs down inside the Natrix. ¡°Distance?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Fifty miles, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry mulled that over. Depending on its speed, that meant that it had set out right around when the break was called, or was waiting on standby. ¡°Time for it to reach us?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Two hours, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Shall I alert the Natrix?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m getting in my mech to go meet it.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry leapt off the Natrix and let the sword slow his fall as he went to the back of the ship. The robot arm was already putting everything in place on the mech for him, fixing what had been taken apart for maintenance. March was controlling the robot arm, which was doing delicate tasks with enormous metal pincers that didn¡¯t seem like they should be able to have that much precision. ¡°Come on,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m working as quickly as I can, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Why wasn¡¯t it ready to go?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I believe Miss Karlquist was making some adjustments,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She neglected to put everything back together, and I don¡¯t believe she anticipated that you would have need of the mech in the meantime.¡± ¡°March has reported to us,¡± said Leticia. ¡°You¡¯re going out?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s likely an intimidation tactic,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Don¡¯t be the one to shoot first.¡± ¡°Wait until they shoot at me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Leticia. ¡°And don¡¯t blow it up. If it is an elder mech with a working fusion core, it¡¯s one of the most valuable things on this planet.¡± ¡°Got it,¡± said Perry. He was tapping his foot waiting for the robot arm to complete its work. He still had virtually no idea how these mechs actually functioned on a mechanical level, even after a number of enthusiastic explanations from Brigitta. ¡°Good luck,¡± said Leticia. ¡°If you can win against an elder mech, their legs will be cut out from under them.¡± ¡°And if I lose?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Try not to lose,¡± Leticia. It really said something about the faith they placed in him that they were fine with him going alone, and in fact, seemed to expect that if it did come to a confrontation, he would win. They talked about the elder mechs with a sort of reverence, the pinnacle of engineering that their star-spanning empire had been capable of, but he was, apparently, in a similarly legendary position. Maybe it was because they had seen him in action and only had stories about the elder mechs to go off of. If that¡¯s what this was, it could very well have been the last on the planet. There were only two things that Perry could take solace in. The first was that the elder mech was three hundred years old, far outside of its operational lifespan. It would have replacement parts that weren¡¯t as good as what they were replacing, and limitations that came from running something so long. The fusion reactors on the Natrix were finicky things, and only becoming more so with time. The other thing that Perry was counting on was that he had tricks up his sleeve. He slipped into the cockpit as soon as Marchand gave the signal, slotting his sword into place and feeling the chair rise into the body of the machine. He hoped that whatever changes Brigitta had made, they were good ones, but he trusted her. As soon as the systems were powered on, Perry made his way down the walkway, and was quickly out the back door and among the fields. The mech could move swiftly, and as soon as he was in motion, he realized that it was faster than it had been before. ¡°What did she change?¡± asked Perry. ¡°She installed all five extra microfusion reactors,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They provide only minimal additional power, but the array allows for the batteries to recharge without connecting directly to the Natrix, and in theory mean a long operational time. You may have also noticed that she¡¯s swapped the sword. I believe there are also faster actuators controlling the arms.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fine, but I don¡¯t know what the hell I¡¯m going to do with a sword.¡± It was a giant hunk of metal, thick and flat, slotted alongside the giant long-range gun. He wasn¡¯t sure how good it would be as a sword per se, and might have preferred a shield if they had a chance to talk about it, but the people of the Natrix really seemed to associate him with the sword. As Perry climbed the steep, rocky hill to the west, he thought about how this was going to go. Ideally, he¡¯d be miles away from the elder mech when they made contact, because one of the things his mech was good at was firing heavy shots from a long distance. If they closed on each other though, and were fighting from twenty feet apart, he was less certain that his advantages would mean anything. It took some time for him to reach where the elder mech had been spotted, but with the weather balloon tethered and floating high up, he was able to keep an eye on the mech the whole time. He circled to the side, so that he''d have a favorable positioning, then launched the drone when he was up at the top of the hill, the better to provide for coverage and to help with March¡¯s aiming. A half hour after he¡¯d set out, he crested the top of a hill and found himself looking down at a fertile valley with thick green stalks swaying in the ever-present winds. The elder mech was standing among them, its long gun aimed directly at him. The elder mech might once have been a thing of beauty, but it was scarred and damaged, sun-worn and harboring a patchwork of old parts whose colors and materials didn¡¯t quite match. The legs bent backward, and it was taller than any mech Perry had seen so far, even his own. On top of the main body was a ¡®head¡¯ of sorts, a triangular sensor array with sloped armor plating to protect the delicate equipment. The arms were long and lanky, only three ¡®fingers¡¯ on each of them. Both were holding smaller guns, though only small by the standards of the mech itself, which meant that they were equivalent to full-sized cannons. One was a projectile firearm, the other a laser, at least if he was reading it right. From this distance, they didn¡¯t really worry Perry that much. On the back there was a large gun, twice the size of his own, its long barrel jutting out and pointed straight at him. ¡°Hail them,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hailing them now, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And hack in,¡± said Perry. ¡°It will be impossible to hack into the mech through radio alone, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That is, assuming that any effort whatsoever has been taken to prevent malicious actors.¡± ¡°Disarm and dismount,¡± said a voice over the radio. ¡°Otherwise, I¡¯ll destroy you.¡± ¡°You¡¯re from Heimalis,¡± said Perry. He moved the mech¡¯s enormous sword up to block the path of the bullet, which he was well aware was pretty ridiculous. He tried to think of it more as a piece of adaptive armor than a sword, which made him feel better. Marchand was painting the projected line of travel for the bullet, with lots of variance because they had never seen that variety of gun fire before. ¡°Shoot me and it starts a war.¡± ¡°I recognize your voice,¡± said the woman. ¡°You¡¯re the one everyone is so impressed with. Move. Now.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not from here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not as impressed with the idea of an elder mech as everyone else seems to be. When I hear ¡®elder¡¯ I think outdated technology and replacement parts, bodged together electronics and patched over plastic. But I¡¯m here on the side of peace. I want the two sides to work things out.¡± ¡°You have five seconds,¡± said the woman¡¯s voice. ¡°I don¡¯t even know your name,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m Perry.¡± ¡°Natalka,¡± she replied. ¡°Three, two, one.¡± Somehow, Perry hadn¡¯t thought that she would actually shoot at him, but he saw the flash of the gun almost exactly as she said ¡®one¡¯. The entire mech shook from the impact, and for a moment Perry thought that March had made a miscalculation, but there was no damage report. The exterior view of the mech showed that the sword had a fresh scar on it. The elder mech was standing there, gun smoking, maybe trying to figure out what had happened. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°So it¡¯s going to be like that.¡± He steeled himself and drove the mech forward. Chapter 76 - The Clash, pt 2 ¡°Fire!¡± shouted Perry. ¡°Hit the sensors!¡± Marchand responded by immediately shooting the mech¡¯s single long gun directly at the distant elder, which scored a direct hit, threading a needle between metal plates and shattering a lens that could barely be seen on the video. As soon as the gun had fired, Perry was on the move, lunging to the left and picking up speed. The only thing on his side was that the elder mech had not originally been programmed for war, and its firing solutions would be worse than his own. He focused on speed, straining the metal of the legs with every footfall, and changing directions as quickly as he could at regular intervals. At the same time, he had the blade up, ready to block incoming fire from the main gun. His HUD traced a red line projecting the path of the bullet, and he was keyed into the controls, following it perfectly even through the layers of mechanisms that sat between his fingertips and the motion of the blade. When the main gun fired again, he felt the hit, and knew immediately that he hadn¡¯t saved himself, not completely. ¡°Status,¡± said Perry, gritting his teeth as the mech thundered forward. ¡°Incomplete deflection, left arm partially disabled,¡± said March in a curt voice. Perry had no choice but to race forward. His own main gun fired again, and again scored a direct hit to the little triangle of sensor equipment on the top of the elder mech¡¯s head. Almost immediately, the red line tracking the main gun veered to the side. He wasn¡¯t sure whether it was blind or simply recalibrating, but it gave him the time to close the distance, and he moved the mech at a dead sprint, metal groaning. Unfortunately, the elder mech didn¡¯t just have the large main gun, it had a smaller weapon in either hand. One was a laser, hooked into the incredibly powerful fusion reactor, and that was going to be a problem once he was within range. The other was more like a pistol, and would only be a problem because then Perry would be trying to block attacks from three different directions at once. A third shot from his own main gun deflected off the triangular sensor by what must have been a matter of inches, maybe because he was running. If the elder mech was poorly built, then there was no redundancy, and taking that tiny section out would permanently blind the entire giant mech, but he was pretty sure that no sane engineer would build their craft in that way. It was possible that the correct strategy would be to stand two miles away and duel like gentlemen. He had no faith in his ability to parry every shot though, and had already lost function in the left arm. No, the trick would be to close the distance, use his superior speed to evade or block the attacks, and do the thing that you weren¡¯t supposed to do in a mech, which was close-up combat. The gun on the elder mech¡¯s back, which was now having a hard time tracking him, would have an even harder time once he was close to it and the turning radius needed to be wider. He had never pushed the mech so far before, and was worried that the custom alloys in the knees wouldn¡¯t be able to take it, but as the seconds passed, he grew more confident that he was going to make it. There was less distance between the two now, and the ballistic pistol aimed right at him, showing little of the erratic aim that the main gun was having. Perry had a decision to make, two red lines to track, the path of the main gun or the path of the smaller one. The main one seemed erratic, but the smaller one was pointed straight at him, so he put his sword in position to block what he expected to be a volley as he continued forward. It came quickly enough, but the caliber was much smaller, and even the ones that the sword didn¡¯t block plinked off the armor. It would only take a solid hit to the wrong spot to destroy something, but the inner cockpit was protected by solid plating from their strongest alloy. Unlike the elder mech, his mech had been built for combat. The distance closed fast, the zig-zag run of Perry¡¯s mech frantic. The fourth and fifth shots from his main gun broke more of the sensor equipment, though he wasn¡¯t sure how much more damage there was to do there. The shots came when he pivoted from one direction to the next, at the moment when the mech was almost still, the thrum of gun loud even through the layers of metal and padding. When the elder mech¡¯s laser gun lit up, Perry was barely worried. The lasers were good against the bugs, because the chitin wasn¡¯t nearly as heat-resistant as metal and the internal pieces of the bugs even less so. Against metal, and at distance, the lasers would only cause significant damage if they could stay directly focused in one place, and he was moving enough that he didn¡¯t think that was going to happen. Instead, the laser went directly for the exterior cameras. ¡°Launch the drone!¡± Perry shouted as one of the cameras went down. The mech had been built with redundancy, but if that had been a precision attack, and they could identify the cameras, that was going to be very, very bad. Launching the drone was a huge risk, but it would give him eyes, and Marchand would command it to zip around and be difficult to hit. The elder mech¡¯s main gun fired, and Perry¡¯s sword was nowhere near close enough to deflect it. He felt the jolt and his mech stumbled for half a second before launching into a stride that righted it. ¡°Catastrophic hit to the main gun,¡± said Marchand in his cool and collected combat voice. ¡°Releasing now.¡± The mech immediately gained speed as its primary weapon was dropped into the short green grass it was trampling over. The left arm was still gripping the sword, same as the right, but it was moving freely, and if he gave the command, it would fall limply to his side. That left only the right arm, with only the sword, as his weapon. For anything else, he would need to get close enough to touch. ¡°Prepare to slap her,¡± said Perry as the laser tried to find an angle on the other cameras. The bullets from the pistol were mostly stopped by the sword, but the inaccuracy of the weapon was working in their favor. The black patch of nanites on the right hand was only a square foot across, a small portion of what Perry had been able to replicate using the second sphere. It had been meant as an emergency measure, a way for him to use them while still in the suit, placed against a security system or something similar, but he was going to use it here, now, to end the elder mech. As soon as the nanites were against the metal skin of the elder mech, they could move and flow between the cracks and cause all kinds of havoc, disabling everything. It was his only realistic shot at winning now. After a full mile of running, the final approach felt like it took no time at all. His mech was faster with the gun being dropped, the pivots easier, and even with half his attention focused on putting up his sword-shield, he was able to make the strides from one place to another with ease, aided by March. Then he was in contact range with the elder mech. He hadn¡¯t realized just how big it was until he was up close: it was at least fifty feet tall, almost twice the height of his own mech. Up close, the big gun didn¡¯t have any way to point directly down, and as Perry darted past the elder mech, it was a simple matter of slapping the closest leg and then digging one of the mech¡¯s feet down into the ground to turn all the way around. As soon as it was done, he grabbed the sword from his ¡®dead¡¯ hand and brought it up again. ¡°Send the nanites,¡± said Perry. ¡°Disable everything.¡± The elder mech spun around, rotating about the slender waist. It was an elegant creation, but up close the patchwork was even more obvious, places where a smooth curve had something welded onto it. This mech had fought against the bugs in the moments since first coming to this planet, had been run as a machine of war for perhaps a century, and it showed. The laser flashed over what must have been the last of the mech¡¯s exterior cameras, and the image on the HUD flickered for a moment before going into ultra-low resolution polygon mode, which Marchand only did when he was trying to create an on-the-fly reconstruction of the visual information from other sensors, including the overhead camera. It was no problem for Marchand, since he didn¡¯t see in the same way, but Perry found it jarring, especially since the framerate was lower and his eyes were so much better than they¡¯d been in Teaguewater. Half blind and with only the sword as a weapon, it had become a game of stalling, waiting for the nanites to worm their way into the main trunk of the machine. Perry circled the mech, trying to stay out of the way of the weaponry. He didn¡¯t fear the laser, and only somewhat feared the ¡®pistol¡¯, and the giant gun that was mounted on the shoulder couldn¡¯t swivel down to aim at him. The woman inside noticed all this and reacted by kicking him. The mechs were not at all designed for melee combat, neither of them. At best, they were designed to survive an impact or two, but they were products of careful engineering and designed for locomotion over uneven terrain much more than they were designed for smashing into each other. The effect was very much like a car crash for both of them, except she had only gambled a leg, and while it was damaged, she was left standing. Perry¡¯s cockpit had buckled and warped, but at least held. One of the legs had twisted and was ruined, and the mech had fallen to the sword arm, likely ruining that too. Even with the alloys they used, the mechs were just too heavy, and as Perry tried to right his mech, he saw from the picture-in-picture drone feed that the elder mech was sitting on him. ¡°It¡¯s going to be expensive to repair that,¡± said the woman¡¯s voice in his ear. The period of combat had only lasted perhaps a minute, if that, with most of that time spent with Perry running through the alien meadow to come meet her. In that time, Perry had virtually forgotten that they had a line of communication. ¡°March, how are we doing on wrecking her shit?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It will take more time, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Unfortunately,¡± said the woman¡¯s voice. Natalka. Perry heard her breath over the radio, an exhale of satisfaction. ¡°Unfortunately, I¡¯m going to have to kill you.¡± Perry¡¯s eyes were on the picture-in-picture, the drone¡¯s eye view. He watched as the two pistols were clipped in place on the chest. He just needed to wait, that was all, Marchand would come through, the nanites would find a gap and worm their way in, then it would just be a matter of blowing out something important or reprogramming the whole thing. March had always come through in the past, he was dependable, reliable. The elder mech¡¯s grippers weren¡¯t quite hands, but they were smooth and nimble. They reached up and began taking the large rifle down. The whole thing might have weighed half as much as Perry¡¯s entire mech. When he realized that she was bringing it down to point between her mech¡¯s legs, directly aimed at his mech¡¯s cockpit, he started to panic. ¡°March,¡± he said. ¡°Exit strategy.¡± ¡°Blowing the cockpit hatch,¡± replied Marchand. There was a brief explosion, not the sound of an enormous gun firing an enormous bullet straight into the mech, and the cockpit itself shifted in place, moving down like it was supposed to, then getting stuck. Perry pushed with his arms, as hard as the considerable power of the suit allowed, and heard the metal twist and tear as whatever deformation was keeping him in place gave way. He slipped out of the mech a half second before the gun went off, its power strong enough he could feel the shockwave. Perry was breathing hard. Normally he was cool under pressure, but that had nearly been the end for him. He had only barely improved matters for himself, as he was just in the power armor, staring down a mech the size of a building. A contrarian by nature, Perry had always kind of hated the story of David and Goliath. A matchup between an experienced person wielding a ranged weapon against someone who was slow, lumbering, and armored in everywhere except the face seemed like it definitely favored the little guy. What moron would agree to single combat with those as the terms? Sure, it was a story about the plucky underdog and the incompetence of evil, and maybe about the will of god, but every time he heard someone use the phrase ¡®like David and Goliath¡¯ he wondered what point they were driving at. Usually it was just ¡®big guy against little guy¡¯, which was disappointing and didn¡¯t give him a chance to talk about how obviously every single factor of the fight favored David from the very start. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Perry had one advantage, one, and that was the nanobots worming their way into her mech. He was getting less confident in the waiting game though, and he had been seconds away from death. If the mech had fallen in such a way to block the cockpit from opening, that would have been it for him. Still, he stood there with his sword, the giant mech looming over him. ¡°March, send a message as soon as we¡¯re spotted,¡± said Perry. ¡°Tell her, ¡®I guess we¡¯re doing this the hard way.¡¯¡± ¡°Acknowledged,¡± said Marchand. It took less time than Perry would have thought. There were active sensors somewhere on the mech that were giving input, even if the main ¡®head¡¯ had been severely damaged. When she spotted him, he flew straight up, out of the way of the giant gun she was still holding, and heard his own voice going out over the radio. Marchand had taken some liberties with it, modulating it somehow, making him sound strong and confident, like he was utterly convinced of his own victory and the loss of his mech was a mere inconvenience. Or maybe, because of the second sphere, that was actually how he sounded. She tried to aim the gun at him, but she was holding it with both hands, and whatever firing algorithm it had been using before, manually aiming was just never going to work. Still, she fired, and the noise would have deafened him if he hadn¡¯t been wearing the power armor. The shockwave was strong enough to be visible where the plants were flattened down, and the bullet smashed into the earth, kicking up a plume of dirt. Perry flew up into the air, following the sword, and landed on top of the mech. It was absolutely not the sort of situation that a mech was designed to deal with, especially not an elder mech, and when she tried to shake him off, he simply rose up with the sword and landed back on her again. ¡°March, I need her disabled, now,¡± said Perry. ¡°Disabling abdominal rotors,¡± said Marchand. The mech came to a stop, standing stock still, but with the arms still moving. It was like what would happen if the spine of a human were cut, all motor function below the waist completely stopped, which meant no more bucking or spinning. ¡°Gotcha,¡± said Perry. Unfortunately, whatever March was doing inside of the mech wasn¡¯t enough to stop the upper body, and a hand came up to try swatting him away. Perry leapt up, pushing hard off the top of the mech. He was hoping that it would fall without the use of its legs, but it was stable, and the hand came within a foot of him, too close for comfort. ¡°What have you done?¡± came the woman¡¯s voice. ¡°Disabled you,¡± Perry replied. ¡°It¡¯s only a matter of time before you¡¯re sitting inside a statue. I¡¯m hoping that this helps with the negotiations, now that we¡¯ll have an extra fusion reactor.¡± There was a growl from the other end of the radio, and the hand went down to the pistol. Perry thought that was frankly insane, since to shoot at him she¡¯d need to shoot at herself. That was exactly what she did though, spraying bullets that he was only just able to dodge out of the way of. Marchand put the red line of fire up on the HUD, but it was too erratic, his own motion and her motion making it impossible to track. That also made it nearly impossible for her to actually land a shot, but he thought the caliber was high enough that it would be a serious injury if she did. All he needed to do was be a gnat and pray that nothing lined up right for her. Perry didn¡¯t realize it was a distraction until it was too late. The other hand, the one that still had the long gun, swung up with all the speed and power it could muster. If Perry¡¯s eyes had been on the picture-in-picture, or if Marchand had been in control of the sword, probably could have moved out of the way. Hell, if he¡¯d gotten lucky, or reacted even faster, he might have been spared the worst of it. Instead, he was hit with all the force of a truck, launched sideways, warnings popping up as Marchand registered damage to multiple systems. Perry had lost his grip on the sword, and summoned it back to his hand, but he suffered a second injury as he landed on the ground, his head slamming against the inside of the helmet, dazing him. His teeth had clacked together, hard, and he lost a small amount of time, enough that he was stunned when he woke up. ¡°March,¡± he said, tasting blood in his mouth. ¡°Now!¡± There was no response. The mech lowered the pistol, aiming squarely at him, and the sword was nowhere to be seen. He tried to scramble away, and the pistol began firing, striking him with every shot, hitting him in the torso, the legs, and once, in the head. The armor held, but every one of them felt like a body blow from a second sphere master, pain coursing through his body, metal denting, joints ripping in his arm when it was knocked backward. The woman in the elder mech tossed the pistol to the side, then used both hands to heft the long gun that she¡¯d used as a club. Perry was having trouble moving, either because of his battered body or malfunctions within the armor. Energy was flowing out from him, but he wasn¡¯t fast enough to heal back from the damage that had been done, and he was bleeding internally. As the long gun was leveled at him, the shot lined up, he played his last remaining card. With the Wolf Vessel filled, the change was easy. In his last battle in the Great Arc, Perry had mangled himself to prevent the wolf form from destroying Marchand from the inside. The vessels and meridians were still not back to normal, and likely never would be, but the biggest change was the relocation of the Wolf Vessel to within Marchand. Perry¡¯s ¡®vital energy¡¯ was suffusing the power armor, and not just with electricity, but with code as well, seeping into Marchand¡¯s functioning, repairing damage, an extension of himself. It was faster than it had been, he was pretty sure about that, and the damage from the pistol was at a high enough caliber that he¡¯d have expected it to penetrate, not just gouge. And when he¡¯d transformed in Heimalis City Seven, it had been slow and stunted. It had felt like something was missing, some piece of him. None of this passed into his head as a conscious thought, not in the moment. It was only a last ditch effort. The transformation was a fusion, flesh and metal coming together, so rapid that there wasn¡¯t time to be horrified. The alloy became a second skin, wrapping his flesh tight, and his bones firmed up to become hard as steel. The most shocking transformation was his head, which merged straight into the helmet, HUD disappearing and replaced by raw sensation. Marchand was gone, or merged, heightening every instinct and sensation. It wasn¡¯t that Perry could see the red line that predicated where the bullets would travel, it was that he could feel the probability, all the math and calculation that had been too complex for March to feed him through the HUD, all the microadjustments that had been done automatically now part of the way he himself moved. He was on all fours and out of the way of the shot without even a question about whether it would hit him. As the dirt sprayed into the air, he was dashing forward, homing in on the enemy. As the wolf, he was an animal built for killing, rending claws and razor teeth. Marchand, as much as he played the role of sardonic butler, was a machine that had been built for killing, trained and armed, diligently designed to disassemble enemies. Now, together, they were something different and altogether more dangerous. He leapt through the air, landing squarely on the elder mech¡¯s chest. His teeth sunk into the metal, jaws more powerful than they had ever been before, fangs reinforced, stronger than the alloy that made up the armor even. He wrenched at the central plate, pulling hard, and with a rip and tear of plastic, wires, and hardened struts, it all came loose, exposing the woman in the cockpit. She was a wild animal, cornered and afraid, hands off the controls, fumbling at the straps that held her in, seeking to get away, anywhere that wasn¡¯t there with him and the ripped out hole of her armor. It took everything in Perry not to rend her apart. ¡°Yiiiieeld,¡± he spoke, his first word as a wolf, difficult with his mouth and tongue, the sharp teeth in the way of it all. Her mouth opened, but she didn¡¯t speak. Her hands shook, trembling next to a buckle that refused to cooperate with her clumsy effort. Her mind, by all appearances, had gone blank before the nightmare of flesh and metal. ¡°Yield!¡± he shouted, a snarl and a howl more than a word. She went limp inside the cockpit, head lolling back, face pallid. Perry reached in with a foreclaw and sliced through the straps that held her. When that was done, he poked his head in and gripped her arm in his teeth, careful not to bite down too hard. She was wearing a thick jacket, which helped, and he tugged her from the elder mech, bringing her down to the ground without too much damage. She woke from the shock and started screaming at the sight of him, but when she tried to run, he bounded forward to block her escape. The elder mech was sitting empty, looming over them both, and his own mech was ruined. They were at least fifty miles from the Natrix. Transforming back was slow and surprisingly painful. There was a moment where Perry thought that it might fail, that his face would be stuck to the inside of the helmet and ripped away from his skull, or that he¡¯d have rubber stuck to his legs, but after a long moment it was over. Perry took off his helmet and stared at the woman. ¡°Natalka,¡± he said. She could only stare at him. He¡¯d put holes in her jacket with his fangs. ¡°Natalka,¡± he said. ¡°That¡¯s your name, right?¡± She nodded at him. ¡°We have a long walk back,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to radio, and they¡¯re going to come pick us up, do you understand?¡± She nodded again. Her eyes were going over his armor. It had been completely repaired when it had transformed back. In fact, Perry could feel that it hadn¡¯t just been repaired to what it had been before he¡¯d taken a half dozen high-caliber shots, it was better. There was no drain on the Wolf Vessel anymore, and instead, a connection of energies. He would have to check when he had time, but he suspected that the microfusion reactor had been completely repaired, the component that Brigitta had put in either upgraded or wholly replaced. ¡°You¡¯re a hostage now,¡± said Perry. ¡°The elder mech is ours for the time being, but I¡¯m sure Leticia will give it back to you if you don¡¯t try to fuck with us.¡± He lowered his sword and pointed it at her. ¡°I¡¯m going to get you on the radio, and you¡¯re going to tell them all that. I don¡¯t know if you have a prominent voice there, but I¡¯m hoping that you do, okay?¡± She nodded again. She hadn¡¯t said a word. ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to give you a few minutes to calm down. Then we¡¯re going to wait here. You¡¯re going to tell me everything you know about who¡¯s really in charge of Heimalis City Seven, and then we¡¯re going to sit down for talks. Do you understand?¡± She nodded quickly, as if afraid he was going to slit her throat. Perry walked over to the side and radioed the Natrix. They didn¡¯t even seem surprised that he had managed to best the elder mech in single combat, and Brigitta informed him that they would send a promena out to get him with all due haste, including an armed escort. When he was finished, he walked back over to the woman, who was sitting there in her torn coat, right where he¡¯d left her. ¡°Alright,¡± he said. ¡°You¡¯re good? You¡¯re all cooled down, ready to talk?¡± ¡°I am,¡± she said, letting out a breath. ¡°Who are you?¡± he asked. ¡°Where are you from?¡± ¡°I¡¯m Natalka,¡± she replied. ¡°I¡¯m from Heimalis City One.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re one of the brains behind this idiotic posturing?¡± asked Perry. She swallowed. ¡°My father is.¡± ¡°And where is he?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Heimalis City One,¡± she replied. Perry tightened his grip on his sword. ¡°And where is that?¡± ¡°Far to the west,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s small, a hundred people, no more, and moves like the Natrix, though not as often.¡± ¡°And you¡¯ve been fooling the people of City Seven, like Jorn, into thinking that a computer runs everything?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°Jorn knew. Many of them knew.¡± She put her head into her hands. ¡°I¡¯ve lost the elder mech. They¡¯re going to flay me.¡± ¡°Literally?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Because we can offer amnesty.¡± ¡°Not literally, no,¡± she said with a sniff. She looked up at him. ¡°What are you?¡± ¡°Just a peace-loving guy who wants to not kill people,¡± said Perry. He leaned toward her. ¡°You understand that if I had thought there was no chance at peace, I would have ended you, right? You acknowledge that there¡¯s nothing that could possibly have stopped me?¡± This was not, in any real sense, true, and he was well aware of that, but he was playing the diplomacy game, and part of that wasn¡¯t admitting how close she¡¯d come to getting the better of him. ¡°I do,¡± she said in a soft voice. ¡°And with the elder mech gone, you¡¯ll bend us over your knee.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s not how we¡¯re doing things.¡± She gave him a dark look. It was hard to judge her age, but he guessed she was only in her twenties, maybe even the same age as him. ¡°It¡¯s how Leticia will do things.¡± ¡°I have sway with Leticia,¡± said Perry. ¡°The talks can¡¯t continue until I come back with you. Everyone wants peace, at least in theory. Leticia hates that you¡¯ve been stealing their children ¡ª her childhood friends, some of them ¡ª but she¡¯s pragmatic. With the communications satellite I launched, you can be two communities under the same umbrella. We can bring everyone in.¡± ¡°There¡¯s too much bad blood,¡± she said. ¡°They hate us.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll see,¡± said Perry. He watched her closely, worried that she would make a run for it, and let her rest and recover while they waited. It was a cool and pleasant day, and they were far enough to the west that there was no real risk of the bugs. His mech was completely destroyed, and he thought there would be little to be salvaged from it, but the elder mech only had the front panel ripped off and some damage to the leg, as confirmed by Marchand. When the promena came, it was with six mechs, Ruben¡¯s among them. He hopped out when he pulled up to a stop, and looked first at the dormant elder mech, then at the ruined mech that had once been Perry¡¯s. ¡°I don¡¯t know how you do the things you do,¡± said Ruben. ¡°It¡¯s magic,¡± said Perry. Ruben¡¯s eyes kept going to the elder mech. ¡°It¡¯s going to be a lot of work to drag that home. I¡¯m not sure how we¡¯re going to manage.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. He stretched out. ¡°Well you don¡¯t need to worry about that, I was going to handle it myself.¡± He stretched a hand out toward the elder mech, and after a moment of groaning metal and whirring servos, it began to walk on its own. Ruben stared mutely at it, then looked at Perry. ¡°Well now you¡¯re just showing off.¡± They marched back toward the Natrix, and Perry was satisfied that peace was on the horizon. There was only a question of when and where the other thresholder was going to show up. Chapter 77 - Interlude: Marjut Marjut had done what she did in every world: she went to ground. The world was an ecumenopolis, a city that had spread to cover the entire planet, and she hated it with a burning passion. The buildings were mostly timber framed, but the wood they were made of was created through magic, trees that sprang up overnight and were cut down having hardly seen the light of a single day. Every large building of any civic importance was marble, made using a separate magic, drafted in inks before being called into the world. There was greenery, they weren¡¯t complete monsters, but it was in the form of parks and the occasional quay, a useful, manufactured nature that was tourism in all but name. People liked green spaces, they liked nature, but they didn¡¯t like it for its own sake. They included all the signifiers of nature with none of the content, a facade of nature, a few toweringly tall trees whose roots were hidden under the paving stones, or flower boxes hanging from windows. There was, so far as Marjut could tell, not a single forest in the entire world, not a true forest. Humanity was, of course, the culprit, as they seemed to be the culprit across all worlds, but it was also an ancient place, and one that was steeped in nine different kinds of magic. There were no farms, because people could grow plants from a seed in a lazy afternoon, have a crop of tomatoes from a planter box in their house, or grow wheat from a community plot to be taken to the local miller. It meant that land was a thousand times more productive than it had ever been on any world, which in turn meant that what was necessary for human survival was just a few pots of earth in every home rather than a hectare of crops. Not that the monocultures that farmers on most worlds ended up with were all that much better. Of course, nature was pernicious in its own way, a crone who could not be killed, only beaten and left for dead, and the people of this world struggled with all the usual problems of mold, pestilence, plagues, and ¡®vermin¡¯. Marjut found herself at home among them. She lived down in the city sewers, which were impossibly vast and little understood even by the resident engineers tasked with maintaining them. The original builders were long dead, their maps yellowed and faded. The world-spanning city was enormous, and had storm drains rather than rivers, the entire ¡®inconvenient¡¯ water cycle thrust below the streets, out of sight. At least there was no electricity, and little in the way of worked metals. They were all vegan as well, a rarity, which she appreciated, even if it was too little to sway her to their side. Learning the magic of growth was slow-going, as was often the case, but she didn¡¯t think that this was the world¡¯s Power. There were many magics available, and the portals had never failed to give her something that was useful in combat. The portals had also never failed to give her a reason to be there. After a month in the sewers, Marjut had learned the ways of the city, and was ready to fight against it. All she wanted was a foothold for nature to return in all its glory, the crippled crone rejuvenated into a fair maiden. She wanted to leave the world with a proper ecosystem, something the people could live in harmony with instead of this grotesquely twisted thing they had in its place. Of course, in her view, having people live within it wasn¡¯t entirely a requirement. Eventually a tenth magic, a forbidden one, a magic of plagues, of insects and rats was revealed to her. The Rat King found her and taught her directly, and she had been grateful, as much as his unwanted advances had rankled her. He spoke with yellowed teeth and clacked his claws against the brickwork of the sewers, eyes shining the dark, and she was his pupil, taking in everything that he said. His cloak of moving rats was unnerving, but mostly because she was never sure how the rats were holding onto each other. His company was a price worth paying though. When he was done being her teacher, she killed him. She¡¯d kept her other powers secret from him, and his perception of her helplessness must have been what drove him in the first place. She had seen in his eyes and heard in the stories of him that he liked to twist and corrupt, especially when it came to young women, who he saw as paragons of innocence. He¡¯d had the wrong read on her, because she had presented him with a false front. That worked against men more often than she could ever have expected. Once her execution of the Rat King was complete, she set about her plan of attack. The key, as she¡¯d learned in other worlds, was that whatever she did needed to be complete, something that would never be undone. If she merely destroyed a district and forced everyone to evacuate to elsewhere, they would be back within months, working at the ¡®problem¡¯, taming nature once again. Change was a difficult thing at the highest levels, and as much as she naturally favored splashy solutions ¡ª had favored them even before the first portal ¡ª she was beginning to see that time was as much an enemy as the people were. Time should, by rights, have favored nature over man, but man and his machinations were pernicious. Her experiments took her further than the Rat King had ever gone, down untrod roads of rot and ruin. Cooking the pandemic didn¡¯t turn out to be that difficult, but it wasn¡¯t enough to spread a sickness that would kill people, it had to have a permanent effect. It needed to create a crater that they would never crawl back out of. She was a week away when He arrived. The enemy world hopper made himself known right away. He explained everything in an interview to one of the major newspapers, which was printed and reprinted endlessly, along with a grinning picture of him, done with an artist¡¯s sketch rather than a photograph, as they had no such technology in the vast city. He had long curling locks of golden hair and broad shoulders, a smile that showed off fine white teeth and a twinkle in his eye that almost seemed like an invitation. He made it known that he was looking for her. He wanted to fight her, though of course she had no special interest in any of that. He said his name was Jeff. She read the newspapers with some eagerness, stealing them from newsstands or scooping them up when they were tossed in the trash. He was too late to stop her, and possibly too late to find her. They could fight once the work was done and the city had begun to die. Then she would battle him, unleashing her powers against his, and he would die, like the others. She had been gathering her armies, the rats and the beetles, roaches and bees, the magic of this world mixing well with the magic of the one just before. Jeff was casual and confident, at least according to the papers, a womanizer who didn¡¯t seem to have to work very hard to get them in his bed. Every time he was in the papers, which was very often and almost always on the front page, he was mentioned as muscular, as if it was such a vital part of his presence that to not put it to print was tantamount to blasphemy. She hated him immediately, but there was also something that drew her to him, at least from the quotes that they printed and the antics that he got up to. She lived in the sewers without shame, and he did the same, but among their high society. The pandemic would spread best at a large gathering, which would make it difficult to contain. The city had all kinds of festivals, spread throughout its many stadiums, arenas, and fairgrounds, but she waited for the mother of them all, the Feast of Flowers, which would see people streaming in from the entire world, filling a single borough with hundreds of thousands of travelers. The plague came up from the sewers, carried on the backs of rats, clinging to the wings of roaches. They didn¡¯t come as a wave, though that was well within Marjut¡¯s power. Instead, it was a series of isolated incidents, a bite on a woman¡¯s leg here, a fly landing in a punch bowl there. She hadn¡¯t quite had her fill of dramatics in the previous worlds, but she had learned when it was appropriate and when it was not. Three days into the festival, she stood on top of one of the tall marble-clad buildings that this neighborhood was famous for. The wind was in her hair, and the smell of flowers wafted up from below. They had grown and bloomed in a day and were then quickly cut, no true nature, which took away from the beauty, but she tried to take what she could. This city would die, if not to the very last person, though it was unlikely that she¡¯d live to see it. Jeff came up through a hatch. She¡¯d heard him coming, had seen him through the eyes of a small mouse she¡¯d stationed in the stairwell. She was waiting for him, and ready to leap from the building if it came to that. No mere fall could hurt her, though from what the papers had said, Jeff could. ¡°Hey, I¡¯m Jeff,¡± he said with a wave to her. ¡°You¡¯re too late,¡± she said. ¡°Even if you¡¯ve finally found me, even if you¡¯ve seen the signs, you¡¯re too late. They¡¯re as good as dead.¡± She turned around to face him. He was handsome, classically so, with a chiseled jaw and a clean-shaven face ¡ª or perhaps simply hairless, as there was no sign of stubble. His smile touched his eyes, which were green and brilliant. His teeth were white and perfect. He was bare-chested, with his golden locks cascading down over his shoulders. The papers were right to point out his musculature. He was sculpted and toned, the curve of every individual muscle obvious beneath his skin. Aside from the loose pants he was wearing, he might have been a rugged animal, and he was even barefoot, like she was, with no worry for dirt or cuts. ¡°You¡¯re not going to give me your name?¡± he asked. She stared at him. ¡°No.¡± He kept the smile up. ¡°You have a plan to stop it?¡± ¡°Stop what?¡± he asked. ¡°The plague?¡± He laughed. ¡°Nah. I¡¯m done with this place anyway.¡± He looked out over the city. ¡°And a plague means it¡¯ll be easier to take what I need when I go to the next place.¡± He stepped closer to her, and the potted plants on the rooftop garden shook and rattled as they stirred to her command. Thorny vines and succulent poisons were waiting for him if he came any closer. ¡°Then why are you here?¡± asked Marjut. ¡°Just a chat, I guess,¡± said Jeff. When he shrugged, he rolled his shoulders, showing off the muscles as they moved beneath his skin. ¡°First world I did, I just absolutely splattered the guy, you know? Never really knew what he was about. Fun way to do it, I guess, but not something I needed to do more than once.¡± ¡°You want to know me?¡± asked Marjut. ¡°Eh,¡± said Jeff with a shrug. ¡°I could kill you right here and now, I guess, but that would be ¡­ not personal, you know? It¡¯s like a one-night stand, you barely know the other person, it¡¯s just bodies smashing against each other. A little fun, but not what I¡¯m after.¡± ¡°What are you after?¡± asked Marjut. ¡°Fun,¡± said Jeff. He blinked at her. ¡°I just said that, didn¡¯t I?¡± ¡°Fun,¡± she repeated. She cast her hand out to the city. ¡°Within three days, as the revelers return to their neighborhoods, the city will begin to perish. They will lock themselves in their houses, afraid to go out, and even that won¡¯t be enough. The rats and mice will eat the bodies, the maggots will feed on decaying flesh, and nature will regain its rightful place.¡± ¡°And that¡¯s what¡¯s in it for you?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°The melodrama?¡± She blinked at him. ¡°Humanity is a scourge on this world. This place is anathema to nature, and has smothered it as best it can. The trees live only to serve as shade or wood. The parks are a thin veneer of plants, only what these people find beautiful.¡± ¡°It¡¯s the melodrama or the deaths,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You like killing people, that¡¯s fine, though a bit boring if you ask me. But liking the melodrama, the big speeches about how they¡¯re a festering plague, that I can get behind.¡± ¡°They are a festering plague,¡± said Marjut. ¡°But the way to deal with a plague like this is with a plague of my own.¡± Jeff laughed. ¡°See, this I can work with.¡± ¡°You agree?¡± asked Marjut. She was feeling off-balance. She had met the others who crossed the worlds, and they had always opposed her. He seemed unconcerned that the death of humanity was imminent. She supposed that he had some way to protect himself from the plague, but she¡¯d never met someone who could shrug off deaths of this magnitude. ¡°Nah, I don¡¯t agree,¡± said Jeff. ¡°But I¡¯ve got some stuff to steal, and it¡¯ll be easier once everyone¡¯s dead.¡± He smiled at her. ¡°And then I¡¯m going to kill you.¡± Marjut¡¯s face darkened. ¡°Do you overestimate yourself or underestimate me?¡± His eyes brightened. ¡°You want to do the first bout now? I¡¯d let you live. But you were prepared to jump off the roof, it seems to me. Just so you know, I¡¯m faster than you, and I¡¯m a great tracker. If you start pulling out all the stops, I might not be able to help myself. So we can do a little bit of a spar here, if you want, but I¡¯d kind of prefer to have it all at the end. It feels more satisfying that way, this big build-up before the climax.¡± She found him charming, in spite of herself. He was handsome, muscular, animalistic, and he was straightforward, without the pretensions that she had seen so often in others. She had seen his antics in the papers, the women draped on his arm, the performances he¡¯d given to the crowds, showing off his abilities. He¡¯d joined one of the sports teams and single-handedly set records, which the papers had seemed to find quite annoying and unsportsmanlike. He was strong and fast and had a host of powers, a number at least equal to her own. He had said that he was going to kill her, but the way that he said it was attractively forthright, almost roguish. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. ¡°You¡¯ll watch this city die and sleep soundly,¡± she said. There was a part of her that still didn¡¯t believe it. ¡°Do you think I didn¡¯t know what you were up to?¡± he asked. ¡°Why do you think I let it get this far?¡± She was silent. She had no idea what to think. If he didn¡¯t object, if he was perfectly willing to watch the world die ¡­ ¡°You would let millions perish for whatever it is you¡¯re planning on stealing?¡± He leaned in slightly, and the potted vines reacted to him until she quelled them. ¡°I would let millions perish even if I didn¡¯t have something to steal.¡± He straightened up and took a breath, looking out over the city beyond the rooftop. ¡°There¡¯s something about it all crumbling down that I like too, you know.¡± ¡°You do?¡± she asked. ¡°I think it¡¯s the idea that I¡¯m the last to see this,¡± said Jeff. ¡°It¡¯s the same feeling you get from looking at a painting renowned for its beauty and burning it right after. There¡¯s a thrill that comes from walking through the city, knowing what¡¯s coming for them, knowing that I waltzed at the last party the Bal Bernanos will ever host.¡± ¡°Is there,¡± she said. Her voice held a note of wonder. He was fascinating. She had only ever met those who were obsessed with humanity, those who considered themselves heroes and her a villain. ¡°How many people have you killed?¡± asked Jeff. He was still as affable as he¡¯d been since the moment he stepped onto the roof. He was a monster, absolutely, he had no ethos, no driving goal, but she was drawn to him all the same. ¡°Millions,¡± she said. Her voice was almost a whisper. ¡°Oh, with the plagues and stuff,¡± he said. ¡°Sure. I meant more ¡­ personally.¡± ¡°Twenty-six,¡± she said. ¡°One hundred and thirty-two for me,¡± he said. ¡°I think, anyway. When I started this, world hopping, I wasn¡¯t really keeping track. I didn¡¯t start keeping track until I was in prison.¡± ¡°Why?¡± she asked. ¡°Why what?¡± he asked back. ¡°Why do I ask?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± she said. There was a feeling from him, even with his golden locks and easy smile, that he could explode into violence at any moment. She was ready for it, had been ready for it, but she was willing to risk standing there to hear him speak. ¡°We¡¯re the only ones who understand each other,¡± said Jeff. He looked her up and down. ¡°There¡¯s this whole wide world, and you¡¯re the only one I could talk to about any of this, at least if I wanted to do it without lies. You¡¯ve been reading the papers. I spew all kinds of things to the reporters, fanciful tales, but it¡¯s not real. If I told them the truth, they¡¯d try to have me drawn and quartered, and that was another of those things that I don¡¯t need to try more than once.¡± ¡°You were drawn and quartered?¡± she asked. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°They tried.¡± He beamed at her. ¡°Having a whole city gunning for you, it¡¯s really not to my tastes. The first hour or two it¡¯s fun, fighting off all comers, seeing what they have, but after that it gets tedious. You understand that, right?¡± ¡°I do,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ve been chased, attacked, hounded by the law.¡± ¡°See?¡± he asked. ¡°This is a densely packed world, lots of people, and you¡¯re the only one I have anything in common with. Don¡¯t get me wrong, I like being a foreigner and getting that sort of treatment, but it¡¯s nothing like sitting down to talk with someone like me.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not alike,¡± said Marjut. ¡°I don¡¯t do this for fun.¡± ¡°Bah,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Sure you do. It¡¯s fun, isn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°I have a purpose, moving between worlds,¡± she replied. ¡°I bring nature in my wake. I defend it.¡± ¡°Come on,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Admit that it¡¯s fun, being cock of the walk, getting new powers, showing off, doing whatever the hell you want.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t do it because it¡¯s fun,¡± she said. He pointed at her, and for the first time since he¡¯d set foot on the rooftop, frowned. ¡°Just say you enjoy it. You like being special, being powerful, you like the struggle, the fight, the victory. I like those things, I revel in them, I don¡¯t judge, I just want you to say to me that I¡¯m right, because I am right.¡± She frowned at him. She had faced down other world hoppers before, and while her heart had begun to race, she wasn¡¯t about to bow to him or show fear. ¡°What are you seeking?¡± she asked. ¡°Absolution?¡± He rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. ¡°I just want to have fun. Would it be so bad to have someone as a conspirator?¡± ¡°You¡¯re lonely,¡± she said. ¡°I love being a world hopper,¡± said Jeff, placing a hand on his bare chest. ¡°You love it too, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°I love the opportunity to do the work, to bring ¡ª¡± but she was interrupted as he stepped forward. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°No, you don¡¯t act like someone slogging through it for the greater good. Why lie to me? Why lie to yourself?¡± She wouldn¡¯t give him the satisfaction, of course, even if she really believed what he was saying was true. ¡®Joy¡¯ was not the right word for what she felt. Satisfaction, perhaps, and upon first seeing the world, a profound disquiet. But she had never felt ¡®cock of the walk¡¯, never reveled in what she was doing. She had never looked forward to the battles with other world hoppers, who were always trying to stop her. She had instead felt pride at besting them, or annoyance at the occasional temporary loss. Most were infuriating to speak with. She was finding Jeff more infuriating by the second. ¡°Leave, now,¡± said Marjut. ¡°Go be a thief, or whatever you want to do in this dying world.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not going to work, you know,¡± he said. ¡°The plague. You¡¯ll kill ninety-nine percent of them maybe, if you did it right, and they¡¯ll just swarm back over the city a generation from now, happy and healthy, conquering it all again, cutting away the vines that have grown up on the buildings, clearing out the grass that¡¯s come up between the cobblestones.¡± ¡°You say that only to hurt me,¡± said Marjut, though she of course worried that he was right, that this was a temporary solution and nothing more, washed away by time as humanity reclaimed its ground. ¡°When I want to hurt you, you¡¯ll know it,¡± said Jeff. He turned and went back the way he came, and she watched him through the eyes of every animal and insect. ~~~~ Jeff whistled as he made his way through the city. Marjut didn¡¯t seem like she¡¯d be much of a problem, which was a disappointment. He had no issue playing the villain when he ran up against someone playing the hero, but when it was a villain, there was less of a way to make it fun. He could have tried to stop her, he supposed, or maybe figured out how to worm his way into her confidence. Unless he was mistaking the signs, she was kind of into him. He¡¯d never slept with an enemy world hopper before, and as soon as the thought occurred to him, he put it on his list of things to do. Maybe not with her, queen of rats and roaches, though she was surprisingly pretty for someone who spent her time lurking in the sewers. But the world hoppers were, by definition, amazing, and he figured that the more worlds someone went through, the more likely they were to pick up something that let them look like the best version of themselves. He figured he had a few days before it all started breaking down, which meant that he had quite a bit of time to get things done. He¡¯d sampled the women of this world early on, and while he was never quite done sampling, it held none of the exotic promise that it once had. The food of this world was awful, with no meat to speak of, and he had already decided that he¡¯d go without until he¡¯d opened the portal. He had taken in their arts and culture, strolling through a museum and finding little to catch his eye, sitting through a terrible play with a ravishing lead actress. He¡¯d done their parties and balls, which hadn¡¯t been difficult to secure invites to, and he astounded people with his displays of might. All that was fun, if a bit stock by this point. He wasn¡¯t sure he would ever get tired of it, filled with ennui like his last opponent had suggested he would, but there was no novelty anymore, only the pleasure of their gasps of disbelief and the way they draped themselves on him. He was Jeff, the legend, and had been for two full years now, across five worlds. So with all that having been taken care of, he was ready to see what the fighting in this world was like. Jeff didn¡¯t particularly enjoy killing on its own. He had once been put in prison and spoken to a true psychopath who described joy in seeing the life slip out of someone, pleasure in knowing that a life had been ended. Jeff had never really felt that, and was a bit sad that this avenue was cut off from him. He enjoyed the fighting. He liked punching a man so hard he flew. He liked bouncing between five different guards and disabling them all before the first could even draw his sword. He liked the motion, the action, the impacts, whether it was against the rank and file or someone with true power who took grit and cunning to murder. And sure, when you kicked a man so hard he went spiraling through the air and snapped his back against a pillar this usually killed that man, but the killing wasn¡¯t the point, it would have been just as satisfying if the man ended up in a hospital or was cured a moment later by a wizard¡¯s injection. This world was on the weaker end, perhaps because they didn¡¯t eat meat. They had a whole bunch of magic systems, but almost none of them were geared toward combat. There were magics for growing, for building, for cleaning, but none for burning people to a crisp. Still, he wasn¡¯t entirely sure that he could take them all on and win. What he wanted were small fights, ones that were contained, so he found a fort by the river, bought a nice large cloak, and then dropped in at night. He rang the alarm bell himself and waited until there was a gathering of a dozen in the courtyard, then dropped down and began his fun. Oh, he set rules for himself, of course he did, it would have been over too quickly if he¡¯d pushed himself to his limits. He fought one-handed, with only a small dagger, and used none of his other powers. He liked a good knife fight, even if it was against men with swords. Halfway through, he grew bored with the knife and tossed it to the side, using his fists and feet instead. It was more visceral that way, though a bit more difficult, and more open to the sort of ridiculous moves that he preferred using when he wasn¡¯t being serious. He picked one of the guards up and swung him into the others, letting out a laugh as he did it. The fun was over before it ended though, and he stomped on the badly wounded so as to not leave any witnesses. He had three days, more or less, until they all started dying. He washed himself in the river, then made his way back to the hotel room a wealthy duke had secured for him, and found a woman laying there naked. He didn¡¯t remember her name, and when he woke her, had other things on his mind besides asking. ~~~ Marjut watched the city as the people died. Nature would make its reclamations, in time, but she would see none of it. Even with a month¡¯s time, everything would simply look dead. Eventually though, the sewers would fill, soil would settle on the streets, and the grasses and trees would take over, wedging themselves into the cracks in the stone. The wood would be rotted away and the buildings would crumble, and eventually they would be buried. When the sewers clogged, some of the streets would turn into rivers, and fish in the lakes of the parks or the fountains of the plazas would swim free. Eventually, if there were no people, evolution would take hold and allow the fauna that this world had none of, grazing animals and predators and a whole ecosystem that works on its own. That was beyond her lifetime though, and certainly well beyond her time in this world. She had done what she could, and could only hope that the return of people, if it happened, would be achingly slow. She¡¯d made the plague so it would live on in the rats, a reservoir of death, but people were tenacious. ¡°Heya,¡± said Jeff. She turned to him, whipping around to face him. This time, she had neither heard nor seen him, not with her entire army of ears and eyes. He had simply appeared behind her. ¡°Jeff,¡± she said. ¡°Marjut,¡± he nodded. ¡°I never told you my name,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯ve never told anyone my name, not in this whole world.¡± ¡°Oops,¡± he said with a smile and a shrug. ¡°You¡¯ve come here to kill me,¡± she said. ¡°Yup,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Unless you want to just slit your own throat.¡± ¡°You would want that?¡± she asked. ¡°It would be novel, at least,¡± he said with a shrug. ¡°I¡¯ve never seen someone kill themselves to get out of a fight. My guess is that the portal would open and you might have a chance to go through. Then maybe in the next world you¡¯d get saved. I¡¯m not sure, really.¡± He squared up, still smiling at her. He was, as before, shirtless and barefoot. He was going to kill her, and still she found something attractive in him. When he approached her, the vines leapt from their pots, and almost faster than her eye could see, he had a spear in hand, twirling around him, cutting through them. She had seen, only for a second, row upon row of weaponry behind him, a different place overlapping with the rooftop for just a moment. The spear was all that remained when the eyeblink had passed, an ornate piece of equipment with a head as large as his face, gilt scrollwork down the long handle and adorning even the wide, sharp edges. The vines were severed in a moment, falling dead to the ground, and he smiled at her. ¡°Did you think that would work?¡± he asked. ¡°It was worth a try,¡± she replied. ¡°I¡¯ve killed better men with less.¡± She took a step back toward the edge of the roof. ¡°Better than me?¡± he asked, smiling. She stepped off the edge of the building, moving fast. She liked her perch, and had been using it for weeks, but it wasn¡¯t the killbox she¡¯d set up for him. That was three blocks away, in an abandoned theater that was to be renovated. She twisted as she fell, putting her back to the ground, waiting for the embrace of the earth. She had a view of Jeff, leaping off the building, fearless, following after. It was just what she¡¯d wanted, but she was worried nothing she had would be enough. ~~~~ Jeff enjoyed the battle, as he enjoyed most battles. Fighting another world hopper was always a matter of seeing what they could do, and while he¡¯d had eyes on Marjut for a while, she hadn¡¯t yet revealed all her powers to him. There were surprises along the way, and that had its thrills, gouts of fire and a body that twisted and warped in unexpected ways. It was no wonder she was so pretty if she could change her body around. She seemed surprised when the swarm of bees she sent after him was halted in midair. They buzzed, hovering and uncertain, as the theater burned down around them. ¡°What is that?¡± she demanded. It was cute, as though she had any right to demand anything from him. ¡°A little trick I learned from the Rat King,¡± he replied. ¡°I killed the Rat King,¡± said Marjut. ¡°I know,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I killed him before you ever arrived here,¡± said Marjut. ¡°I know that too,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Then how did you ¡ª¡± she began. He chose that as his moment. He moved in with the spear at full speed, and she contorted to block it, though she wasn¡¯t nearly as fast as he was. There was a bracer hidden under the sleeve of her dress, some bit of magic, capable of stopping the spear in its tracks, but he¡¯d already seen that trick. The spear was only a feint, and he¡¯d let go of it at the last moment, the hand that had been holding it turning into a fist that followed through on the motion. It took her a moment to come to. He had thought she might be dead, but she sat up, dazed and feeble. He¡¯d ruined her mouth, and could see how loose her teeth were when she took a gasping breath. The front teeth swayed like reeds in the breeze, sticking up from a swamp of blood. She gave him a dazed look, and he punched her in the head again. Her move to block was slow enough that it had only just started when his fist made contact. This time, she stayed down, but a finger at her neck was enough to let him know she was still alive. She¡¯d been a challenge, but he had to imagine that she¡¯d have been more of a challenge if he hadn¡¯t known about the theater and her plans ahead of time. The portal appeared, beckoning him, but Jeff stayed, staring down at Marjut¡¯s body. ¡°Choices, choices,¡± he said to himself. Chapter 78 - Time Marches Much Later Perry was feeling restless. Either the enemy was taking a very long time to show up, or was in the world already and up to no good. There weren¡¯t that many places to be, and with the peace between colonies settled and more comms satellites up in the air, the number of spots to hide was even smaller. The peace had been decisively settled when Perry had brought back the elder mech and its pilot, Natalka. The terms of the peace weren¡¯t particularly onerous, at least so far as Perry could tell given his limited experience with politics and incomplete picture of relations, but there was a surprise in there, which he didn¡¯t learn of until three months later: Brigitta would be going to Heimalis City Seven, then she would be with Heimalis City Eight as it made its trip to the far west. ¡°Why?¡± he asked her once he heard the news. ¡°You¡¯re needed here.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll install March here as one of my final acts as Head of Engineering, though it will take some time,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Then I¡¯ll help with the final construction, make sure they make it to their destination, steal their secrets, and eventually, return.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not really stealing if you take them as part of the terms,¡± said Perry. ¡°True,¡± she shrugged. ¡°It will feel like stealing.¡± She grinned at him, eyebrow slightly raised. They didn¡¯t have a history of heist movies, and Perry had shared the two he¡¯d brought with him. She had instantly been enamored with the concept, particularly because of all the planning and overcoming challenges. ¡°So this is it for you and me?¡± asked Perry. Her fingers twined with his. ¡°Or,¡± she said. ¡°You could come with us.¡± ¡°To the other side of the planet?¡± Perry asked. ¡°Yes,¡± she nodded. ¡°It would send a message, given what they know of your combat prowess. Your mere presence would ensure peace. And Natalka fears you.¡± Natalka was not, officially speaking, a hostage, but she was a ¡®permanent guest¡¯ of the Natrix, at least until City Eight began moving. ¡°I¡¯m not sure it¡¯s good to be feared,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll handle it either way,¡± said Brigitta. Her hands had begun to rove his body, feeling the contours of his muscles. ¡°What would you do here, if you stayed?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. His eyes were on her lips. ¡°I¡¯d do what I¡¯ve been doing. I¡¯d help out where I could. Train. Work on magic with Mette. She got the blue sparks going, which I thought was pretty fast.¡± That had been a recent development. ¡°There isn¡¯t a single person on the Natrix she hasn¡¯t given a demonstration to,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°You didn¡¯t think it would work.¡± Her fingers were still moving over his body, under his shirt now, touching the valleys between his abs. If she was trying to distract him, it was working. She¡¯d grown more bold as the months passed, less instinctively defensive about the physical aspects of their relationship. ¡°I didn¡¯t think it would work,¡± Perry agreed. ¡°I thought the portals were altering me, warping me, but if it¡¯s possible for Mette to learn magic, then it must have always been possible here.¡± ¡°Or the portals changed this world,¡± she said. ¡°Or there¡¯s no wider implication, and we were always capable of it, but other worlds might not have the same underlying,¡± she waved her free hand about, the other hand still touching him. Her fingers had slipped down further, past his waistband. ¡°I see what you¡¯re doing,¡± said Perry with a hitch in his breath. ¡°You¡¯re making sure I know that if I go with you across the wastes, there¡¯s some of this in store for me.¡± ¡°Is that what I¡¯m doing?¡± asked Brigitta. She kissed his chest. ¡°How devious of me.¡± She lifted up his shirt and pushed him backward onto his bed, and they were done talking for a time. All that was going well enough, but the question of whether he would go with City Eight or stay with the Natrix was a serious one, and needed more consideration than just ¡®where will the hot woman I¡¯m sleeping with be going¡¯. There was more to learn on the Natrix, he felt, especially with Mette wanting to be a partner on learning magic, putting real resources into the whole question of magic. She had a small working group, five people hand-selected for their potential, and she was planning to crack it all wide open using her copies of the books that Perry had scanned ages ago. The slow progress didn¡¯t seem to daunt her. ¡°It¡¯s not like the other things you¡¯ve shared with us,¡± said Mette. ¡°Everything from Earth and Earth 2 is either known to us or far, far outside our current abilities because it requires enormous supply chains we don¡¯t have and can¡¯t make. But this comes from a place filled with morons.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say ¡®morons¡¯ is correct,¡± said Perry. ¡°They were uneducated, largely farmers, malnourished, with a deeply weird culture to our sensibilities, but none of that was really their fault. You wouldn¡¯t call your ancestors morons, right?¡± ¡°Fine, fine,¡± said Mette. She made the blue sparks with precise movements of her fingers. She did it almost as a nervous habit, but it was more that it was always something on her mind, and any momentary pause was an excuse to practice. She¡¯d complained about some stress in her tendons, and Marchand had given her some stretches to help with the overexertion. ¡°Point is, with our superior brains we might be able to just skip all the other stuff, all the work trying to make our own fusion reactors, all the time trying to have laser defense, getting a streamlined chemical processing sequence that will launch rockets, and just,¡± she made more blue sparks. She smiled wide at him. ¡°In what sense?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean, they couldn¡¯t get to space.¡± ¡°They had small brains, remember?¡± asked Mette. She gave him a coy smile. Mette seemed to have no trouble finding time to spend with Perry. Sometimes she would come to the penthouse, and other times she would invite him to her place near the head of the ship, which was much smaller and more economical. They were almost always alone for these ¡®meetings¡¯, most of which were for him to help clarify something about magic or try to work out some particular bit of imported understanding to the best of his ability. Marchand was uniquely unqualified for handling any discussion about magic, so that made sense, but Perry could almost feel the flirtatiousness. Contrary to what Brigitta had suggested would happen, he hadn¡¯t been propositioned by anyone, whether it was for a fling or procreation, but Mette definitely had her designs on him, which was dangerous in its own way, and alluring because it was unspoken. Maybe, if he stayed on the Natrix, he would give in, though he was firm about not wanting to leave children behind, no matter how well cared for they would be and how many assurances he had that any difficulties arising from the werewolf stuff would be handled. No such arguments had been made to him yet, because no proposals had been made. Maybe they thought the play was just to put him in intimate company with attractive women and hope that nature took its course. He was a bit worried that they were right. The single strongest argument for moving across the wastes with Heimalis City Eight was the one that eventually won out: Perry wanted to be there in order to ensure that everything stayed as peaceful and stable as possible. Mostly, he had thought that the other thresholder would show up before City Eight was ready to move and the whole thing would be moot. Maya had said that three months was the upper limit of how long the wait could be. The last two worlds, he¡¯d been on the back foot, but aside from being able to accumulate more power here in terms of both training, meditation, education, and allies, he wasn¡¯t sure that he liked it. When he¡¯d been on Earth Two with Richter, he hadn¡¯t known that the disaster was coming. Now, it seemed inevitable, and the more he cared about this planet and its people, the more it felt like the hammer of doom hanging over his head. The three month mark came and went. It could have meant a lot of things. Maybe this was just an outlier, having no more significance than random chance. Or maybe the spell had screwed up in some way. There were all kinds of ways that it could have failed that Perry would have never known about. The spell could have been done with him, marking him as no longer a thresholder, and this could even be a common ending to get, one that he would never have learned from Cosme, Maya, Xiyan, or anyone else. There was a hugely powerful selection bias against failures, the same as never hearing the stories of those who died in childhood. Because Perry had some time to think, he thought about the other, more exotic possibilities. It was possible that the other thresholder had died on entry, in the same way that Perry had almost died on entry. Perry was pretty sure he¡¯d get a portal for that, but if the other person had arrived before him and died before Perry showed up, he wasn¡¯t sure what would happen then. The other main possibility was that the other thresholder had shown up, and for whatever reason, wasn¡¯t interested in fighting, or simply didn¡¯t know that Perry was there. Perry was assuming that they would show up on the same planet, or possibly on the space station, but there was no guarantee of that. They could have shown up in the next solar system over, or on the homeworld of the Natrix. Perry thought that kind of failure of the spell unlikely, but it was possible. The most likely thing, to Perry¡¯s thinking, was that the enemy thresholder had shown up and was turtling, drawing power from the planet somehow or training in a dark cave somewhere. After the fight with the elder mech, when Perry had returned a hero, he¡¯d had a single request: build a radio dish that can detect the enemy thresholder. Richter had left all kinds of notes and plans, all the things she¡¯d used, and while there was some unrecoverable corruption to those files as a result of the various hits Marchand had taken, it had been enough for Brigitta and Marchand to get to work. The radio dish had produced absolutely nothing of note. Two hundred cycles passed, and the Natrix packed everything up for the move. It was a flurry of activity, some of it neatly ordered like the folding up of the farming frames, and other bits much more rushed and slap-dash. In theory, everyone lived inside the Natrix and only used the outside for necessary hunting, gathering, mining, and farming, but theory and practice were, in this case, rather far from each other. There was often a ¡®tent city¡¯ outside the Natrix, a phrase Perry couldn¡¯t hear without thinking about homeless camps. Here, it meant a place where people could get out of their rooms and enjoy wide open spaces while still well within range of the defensive perimeter and the monstrous power of the guns. Perry pitched in to help, and for the first time, Marchand was unleashed on the population, synthesizing the information from hundreds of cameras and microphones and giving direct instruction to thousands of people as they got everything in order. ¡°It¡¯s the smoothest it¡¯s ever been,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Granted, that¡¯s because we didn¡¯t change the old system, we just had him tracking checklists and calling out orders like the managers would have done before. In the future, he could just do it bespoke, run everything through a neural net and train up a system that makes sure every single person is doing the right thing at the right time.¡± ¡°You¡¯re all in on this?¡± Perry asked. ¡°Because he works a lot better for me than he does for other people.¡± ¡°I know that,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°The version that was running the pack-up was firewalled from the one you walk around in. But he¡¯s good, yes, good enough for all my purposes.¡± Perry hadn¡¯t had much of a chance to actually wear the armor. His destroyed mech had been recycled and a new one had been created for him, with the same lanky legs but even more emphasis on the large sword, which was now converging closer to just being a shield. The long gun was still there, but it was lower caliber and with more specialized bullets that in theory would allow it to accurately penetrate from a distance while shedding weight. He used it to walk alongside the Natrix as it marched to its new resting place, and he ran a few missions with the gatherers and miners that went out on forays to grab necessary resources from far away from where the Natrix was making its home. A portion of the Natrix was given over to shelves full of specialized equipment for these expeditions, and Perry started to become familiar with which ones they were going to take, though he was completely lost when it came to their operation. The small group he usually traveled with was twenty people on average, split between ten mechs, and his job was to be on defense, or sometimes ¡®proactive¡¯ defense, which largely entailed going to groups of bugs that had been spotted nearby and killing them before they could get anywhere close. The resources, whatever they were, got transferred onto a promena, usually stacked quite high and strapped in place when it was plant material, but rather smaller when they were grabbing metal from a deposit. They had sounders that would find things underground, and a long drill that would probe deep into the earth for extraction, though this only worked with certain kinds of materials, namely sulfur. There were two people per mech so they could go in shifts, with one person sitting in the jump seat and only having minimal input. They poked fun at Perry from time to time, given that he couldn¡¯t operate the machines and used March for pretty much everything. This was meant in the spirit of good fun, but it still stung sometimes, as though he wasn¡¯t really a part of their group. He was always praised for the things he could do, like going out to snipe bugs from a great distance, but that wasn¡¯t entirely him, it was mostly March. It made sense: this was almost the ideal environment for Marchand, one of simplistic warfare and high technology. The sense of alienation didn¡¯t leave though, not even when doing other things that were more universal like sitting down to a big meal or watching a show. He missed Maya. He hadn¡¯t really thought that he¡¯d miss her when she was gone, but he did. She was from Earth and a thresholder, and he had more in common with her than with anyone he¡¯d met since leaving the second Earth. He didn¡¯t think that when the other thresholder showed up they would be a friend, per se, but maybe they could talk, connect, share their experiences, and then fight each other over whatever deep and intractable differences they had with each other. Most likely they would want to blow up the Natrix for some dumb reason, and he couldn¡¯t allow that. He also couldn¡¯t allow them to live as a god-king among these people. And possibly, they would simply want to kill him, and that would be enough, but he hoped they would talk first. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. Another two hundred days passed. The dish hadn¡¯t picked up anything. The Natrix moved again, this time with the packing up done through a system of Marchand and Brigitta¡¯s own devising. It worked less well than hoped, and there was some argument over why it hadn¡¯t had the hoped-for gains. They would try again, iron out some of the kinks, and hope that it improved the next time, but there were two hundred cycles between moves, and it wasn¡¯t a process that could be rapidly iterated upon. That second move, the third since Perry had been on the planet, brought them to within easy walking distance of Heimalis City Seven. Brigitta had visited them a few times, usually with Perry as her escort, but now she was living there, engaged in both technical meetings and some of the actual work involved in setting giant robot arms up for welding, machining parts, forging pieces, and things that would have taken Earth humans years. Perry split his time between Heimalis City Seven and the Natrix. They were close enough to each other that their defensive perimeters overlapped, though the hope was that Heimalis City Seven would be abandoned by the time the worst of the bugs were encroaching with the rising sun. They were leaving a lot behind. Most of the infrastructure had been built with this deadline in mind, and wouldn¡¯t have been fit to take with them even if they could have. The farms had been over-producing for a decade, creating giant tanks of nutrient slurry that was stored in the natural refrigerator outside the city walls, flash-frozen and packaged air-tight along with some radiation treatment to preserve flavor and nutrition. It was going to be a long, hard slog through the absolute cold of the dark side of the planet, but they had done it before, and had gotten good at it. People would be packed aboard tightly, with almost no personal space and little in the way of privacy, and it seemed like it would be miserable. Worse, most of them wouldn¡¯t have all that much to do, since there was no farming and any work that needed to be done would be accomplished by a small core group of highly trained experts. The Heimalis project was completed ahead of schedule through Brigitta¡¯s heroic efforts, though they had already done a large amount of the work and preparation to move the fusion cores inside the machine and have everything hooked up. It was, to Perry¡¯s surprise, a machine with treads. That wasn¡¯t Brigitta¡¯s influence, and she had argued against it, but treads could be kept closer to the main body of the machine, keeping them warm, and besides, too much work had been done to throw it all away. The primary argument against treads was that they couldn¡¯t handle uneven terrain as well, being more suited to roads, of which there were none. However, for much of the trip, they would be traveling over frozen ocean, and when they weren¡¯t, they would be following frozen rivers which would, ideally, provide little in the way of challenge. ¡°You¡¯re going to need to decide,¡± said Brigitta two weeks before Heimalis City Eight was set to depart. They were at the eastern edge of the twilight zone, which was warm enough that it was uncomfortable. Almost everything had been taken from inside City Seven, which would have been a ghost town except that people wanted to stay there for as long as possible before packing into City Eight. It had been almost two years. Perry had long since found the Natrix claustrophobic, and he took any opportunity he could to leave, whether that was for scouting missions, resource extraction or gathering, or even another satellite launch. There were three dozen now orbiting the planet, allowing constant communication between all the colonies. It was a new era of peace and prosperity, particularly because the colonies all had their own specialties and anything that was good for trade was good for them all. The imagery also allowed for mapping of the bugs and their heaviest concentrations, which made pathing easier. It wasn¡¯t just a new era of communication, it was a new era of understanding. March had been cloned onto the Natrix, and while he was demonstrably worse at problem-solving according to any of the benchmarks or metrics they had, the clone was still considered a godsend for how easily he could synthesize and retrieve information. They had named it Esper, after the planet Esperide, apparently a name of some honor. March himself had been completely unchanged by their merging, aside from the microfusion reactor being back online as though it had never been broken. Perry had wondered whether they had a deeper connection, but it didn¡¯t appear that they did. For his part, Marchand seemed content to pretend that it had never happened, even when presented with video evidence from the drone or the elder mech. Perry didn¡¯t press it too hard, and Marchand seemed content to treat it as though it was a flight of fancy with doctored footage rather than ground truth. Perry had tested the transformation twice more, mostly just to train, and both times Marchand reported a gap in function and recording. Turning back always felt dangerous, as though Perry¡¯s skin was going to be ripped apart or his flesh pierced through with metal, and doing it multiple times didn¡¯t help with that feeling, but it was going to be one of his keys to victory going forward, he thought. By every benchmark Perry had, he was stronger, faster, and tougher. He had expected to slow down as he plateaued, but second sphere wasn¡¯t a smooth plateau, it was a series of plateaus, and the breakthroughs were always a breath of fresh air. He had slowed down, but there were periods of rushing speed in the mire of that slowdown. He was better at drawing in energy and his vessels had expanded, his meridians thickened. He¡¯d learned to go without food, water, or air, and could stay in space, regulating his own heat, pretty much indefinitely. He had finished the lunar channeling training that he¡¯d had in the great arc, and could channel the weak moonlight into blasts if he ever needed to, though he hadn¡¯t yet been able to teleport to the lunar surface like Luo Yanhua had. His energy matrix was still out of place, the injury he¡¯d given himself having left permanent scars, but it was a series of minor annoyances, not anything that crippled him, except that it might make it much, much more difficult to reach third sphere. There were books to read from, and he did that with some diligence, which helped his academic tether. He had also progressed through magic training with Mette, who had quickly surpassed him. He could now form the blue sparks into a blue ball, which could then be thrown. It landed no harder than a punch, and was strictly inferior to a bullet, especially because six of them in a row would leave him feeling strained in spite of a healthy and well-rested body. Mette could do two in the space of a single second, and twenty before she started to falter. She could also make a trickle of matter, either a few drops of water or fine sand, though she was hoping that she¡¯d be able to do more exotic materials in another year, either gold or the material they needed for the fusion cores. Perry was feeling more restless than ever. The work of generations aboard the Natrix had been massively sped up by his arrival, but that had only reduced it to ¡®within his lifetime¡¯, and then only because his lifetime promised to be quite long. He had little to contribute anymore, and he could feel the academic tether slowing down as there was less and less that he could easily learn, and almost nothing novel he could teach others. There wasn¡¯t much use for his skills, not even against the bugs. He had taken on the elder mech, the single most dangerous foe on the entire planet, and he¡¯d won. Once he¡¯d done that, he¡¯d gotten stronger, more durable, more versatile, needing less to live, and there was nothing to do with it. He had not yet accepted that the enemy thresholder wasn¡¯t going to show up. He refused to accept it. But he was going stir-crazy, and the time aboard the Natrix was starting to blur together. He hadn¡¯t yet acted on his need for excitement, not unless he counted solo missions deep into the bug nests, but he could feel the tug of it. Mette had spent two years wearing him down in one way or another, and he worried that he would do something that might hurt Brigitta simply out of the need for something new and exciting. Being cooped up in an apartment in Teaguewater hadn¡¯t been nearly this bad. Brigitta was thrilled to have him along. They had spent a significant amount of their lives together, and she loved him, even if it was a love with dark clouds. They didn¡¯t talk about ¡®the baby thing¡¯ very much, but it was a conversation that often ended in tears. He tried to comfort her as best he could, but she didn¡¯t want to be comforted, she wanted to excise the feelings and get on with her life. That made her not want to do the emotional work, and Perry wasn¡¯t even really sure what emotional work would look like for her. Really, he was only vaguely aware that ¡®emotional work¡¯ was something people were supposed to do when they had these strong emotions that were making them miserable. He was vastly under-equipped for ¡®the baby thing¡¯ every single time it came up, no matter how many times it came up. Leticia got pregnant, and then Mette. This wasn¡¯t unusual, had happened before and would happen again, but they were the two other leaders, and Brigitta¡¯s very closest friends. The way Brigitta dealt with it all was to pour herself into her work, but there had been a heated argument between Perry and Brigitta over the parentage of Mette¡¯s child, a conversation which came shortly after the baby was born. ¡°Did you sleep with her?¡± asked Brigitta. There were tears in her eyes, which to Perry seemed to have come from nowhere. They had paid a visit to the new mother in her hospital room. The maternity ward aboard the Natrix was always busy, and Brigitta seemed deeply uncomfortable there. ¡°It is yours?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°And no.¡± ¡°Are you lying to me?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Do you think I¡¯m not strong enough to take it?¡± ¡°That¡¯s really not it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I said that I don¡¯t want to leave a child behind.¡± ¡°I said that I would understand if you did,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I said that it would be good for the colony, to have your children here, and I believe that,¡± her fist was gripping her shirt, wrinkling it. ¡°But you can¡¯t lie to me about it.¡± Perry took a breath. He tried to remain calm. ¡°I¡¯m not lying,¡± he said. ¡°You need to accept that I¡¯m not lying, that I haven¡¯t slept with anyone but you since I got here. I don¡¯t want to have children here.¡± He didn¡¯t say ¡®maybe not ever¡¯, though that was the truth, because he thought she might take it the wrong way in the moment. ¡°You¡¯re attracted to her,¡± said Brigitta. Perry took a breath. ¡°I¡¯m going to let you be with your thoughts and calm down,¡± he said. ¡°We¡¯ll talk about this later, if you still want to, but your friend ¡ª our friend ¡ª just went through a difficult birth, and that¡¯s been tough for you. I don¡¯t like being accused of things that I didn¡¯t do.¡± They had gone to their own rooms, separated from each other, and then not actually talked about it again, which was something that Brigitta was pretty good at. They had angry sex and then patched things up without actually talking through her issues, which had become his issues. The fact that he still planned to leave, to believe that he could leave, underlined everything. That had been the lead-up to her question, which was disguised as a statement, that he would need to decide. ¡°I¡¯ll go with you,¡± said Perry. He cared about her. It was nearly the longest relationship he¡¯d ever had. He knew her intimately, from the way she stirred her tea to the way she moved in her sleep when she had bad dreams. She wasn¡¯t the main reason he was going, but she was a reason. He hoped that she would find peace among the Heimalis people, given that infertility was endemic among them. Two years was a very long time, but it had, on the whole, felt like a holding pattern, one that was good for his growth in power and bad for his ability to hold himself together. He had liked being a thresholder, and that was still what he considered himself, even if to all appearances the portals that had defined his life had abandoned him. Heimalis City Eight was at least something new, a different world to be in, cramped and unpleasant but notably not the Natrix, which was continuing its perpetual crawl through the twilight. Where the Natrix was a moving city, the Heimalis City Eight was much more clearly a machine for delivering cargo from one place to another. It just happened to be that the cargo was humans, and the place it was going was on the other side of the world, through incredibly cold temperatures and perpetual night. While it was called Heimalis City Eight, it had another name among those who were going to be riding it: the Crypt. The name came from the beds that people were to sleep in, which were likened to coffins, though the people of the Natrix didn¡¯t actually bury their dead, and had learned about the practice only from watching one of Perry¡¯s movies. Every hallway felt a touch too narrow to Perry, every room a bit too cramped, the ceilings low, the seating leaving him touching shoulders with other people. All of the facilities seemed as though they had constant queues, whether that was the mess hall, the bathrooms, the entertainment pods, or the ¡®green room¡¯ where plants grew in racks and people could get a simulation of sunlight. There were three fusion reactors, all doing their best to circulate heat, and an elder mech that had been reconstructed after the calamitous battle with Perry. City Eight had its own mech bay, but it was used only in the case of mechanical problems, since this was a transport ship, not a proper city, with no need to collect anything but water from the surrounding regions. They were budgeted for two months of travel time, laden with all the nutrient paste they would need for that, and there was a promise that Heimalis City One would have already laid the groundwork for Heimalis City Nine once they got there, and construction would begin in earnest, out in the open air, making a place where they could bunker down for a sixty-year winter. Perry was curious how it would go once they reached the moving Heimalis City One. They were the brains behind the operations of City Seven, and Natalka was their golden child, who was returning having been thrashed and humiliated. Perry half expected them to kill him ¡ª or to try to kill him. The cycles felt long, and Perry put his efforts into training the second sphere, which could be done while motionless in his bed. He had a slightly larger sleeping space than most, not because he was getting special treatment, but because it was a bed he shared with Brigitta. He practiced magic too, though there wasn¡¯t really a good place to do that, and mostly he was poring over messages from Mette and reading through the books that Marchand had scanned for the umpteenth time trying to find something worthwhile there. The Crypt¡¯s movement could be felt pretty easily at any given time, and he could tell the difference between when they were going at a good clip across frozen ocean and when they were crawling along some valley. Sometimes, the Crypt stopped, but they didn¡¯t tell the passengers anything about that. Often Brigitta would go to help out with whatever technical problem was going on, and sometimes she would give him a report long after the fact, but other times she would be exhausted and only want to fall asleep with his arms wrapped around her. He didn¡¯t sleep much anymore, only an hour or so a night, and from testing, he could go almost three days before he needed a cat nap. Often this time was spent with his eyes closed, training with tiny twitches of muscles or just the flow of energy through his body, but sometimes he would watch her as she slept, feeling the small movements of her body, the rhythm of her breathing, the steady beat of her heart. He would press his hand against her chest, and with great concentration, could feel the energy flowing through her. He had gotten good at projecting his aura, and when they were that close, skin to skin, he could wash her hair by brushing it with his hand. He cared for her, loved her even, but ¡­ and then his mind would trail off into hard truths he didn¡¯t often want to think about, thoughts that made him feel like a traitor to her even though he¡¯d been clear going in that he wasn¡¯t going to stick around. At almost exactly the halfway point of their trip, Perry opened up a message from Mette, transmitted to the Crypt via satellite. He had thought that it would be one of her missives about magic, which usually had a little addendum about life on the Natrix in their absence. This one was simply labeled ¡®Big News!¡¯. The radar dish finally had a signal, a regular pulse along the same wavelength that Richter had tracked. The location was difficult to triangulate, but she had done it along with help from Esper, her Marchand clone. It was only eighty miles away, to the north-east, and from what they knew, there was a good chance that the other thresholder would be coming within a handful of days. The most difficult thing was breaking the news to Brigitta. He had expected her to cry, but she let out a breath like a weight had suddenly been lifted from her shoulders. ¡°There¡¯s not a day that I didn¡¯t think about this happening,¡± she said. ¡°Now that it¡¯s here, it¡¯s a relief.¡± ¡°You won¡¯t miss me?¡± asked Perry. She gave him a very light, affectionate slap across his face. ¡°Of course I¡¯ll miss you,¡± she said. ¡°But I¡¯ve been missing you ahead of time, before you were gone, before we knew that you would be gone.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± ¡°For what?¡± she asked. There were no tears in her eyes. ¡°Sorry I couldn¡¯t be more for you,¡± said Perry. She shrugged. ¡°The same, I guess. I made the preparations for Marchand ages ago, but I¡¯m not sure it will be enough. Try not to have the fight in the snows, if you can. A rip in the insulation would mean you start bleeding heat, and the reactor won¡¯t help.¡± ¡°I was hoping to borrow one of the snow mechs,¡± said Perry. Brigitta frowned. ¡°Possible, given we¡¯ve needed them less than expected and packed extras, yours included. You have a history of wrecking the mechs though, and we have to assume you¡¯re not coming back.¡± ¡°It was only one mech,¡± said Perry. ¡°And I won, which is the important part.¡± He looked at her. ¡°Is this really how we¡¯re leaving things?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll cry later, when there¡¯s time to cry,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Does that make you feel better?¡± ¡°It does,¡± said Perry. He smiled at her. ¡°If I don¡¯t see you again ¡­¡± It hit him that this was a real possibility, maybe the most likely outcome, whether he won the fight or lost, assuming there was a fight. They had spent so long together that she felt embedded onto his psyche, the smell of her hair and movement of her hips when she walked, the look of intense concentration when she was trying to solve a problem, the energy she showed when hammering away at a keyboard. He had seen all sides of her, and knew her better than anyone he¡¯d ever known before. ¡°If you win your fight, and you decide not to take the portal, you can come back here,¡± she said. ¡°There will always be a place for you. Always. Whether by my side or not.¡± Perry nodded. He didn¡¯t trust himself to say anything. It was too tempting to speak the words she wanted to hear. Five hours later, he was suited up in Marchand, who was covered in insulating material and looking like a puffball. The mech he was driving was similarly wrapped; the internal systems were configured for temperatures of negative one hundred degrees. Beneath the power armor, he was covered from his neck down to his toes in black nanites, like thermal underwear, silky smooth against his skin. He set off toward where the signal was coming from, and tried not to look back. Chapter 79 - Wanderer on the Ice Planet The dish was imprecise, and the Natrix didn¡¯t have the tools necessary to make it more precise. His mech had been outfitted with a smaller version of the dish, which was even worse. From past experience, the signal preceded the portal opening and stopped once it was there. If Perry wasn¡¯t able to find the spot before the other thresholder came through, he was going to be shit out of luck, dependent on the other thresholder finding him. That was something he was keen to avoid, if at all possible. Perry had initially imagined the cold side of the planet as filled with snow storms, but the weather of the dark side of the planet was, at least when far from the twilight zones and close to the ground, perpetually pretty mild. Snow was rare, which was good for the Crypt as it crawled along, though there was plenty on the ground to trudge through, left behind by the dusk edge and infrequent rogue storms. Perry could hear the crunch of ice as he walked, and knew that at least some of it was dry ice, since the temperatures were low enough that carbon dioxide would deposit onto surfaces. Because of the low temperatures at which that happened, the dry ice was the topmost layer of frozen material. The comparatively warm feet of his mech were leaving a trail of fog behind him. The question on Perry¡¯s mind was how hard he should go. Maya had greeted one of her counterparts with a sniper rifle, and that hadn¡¯t worked out for her, but that didn¡¯t mean that the principle wasn¡¯t solid. Perry could set up on a hillside, assuming he could get to the right place, then launch everything he had at his opponent from the very moment the portal opened up, if he could see it. He wasn¡¯t sure that would actually work. His theory of the portals was that they would attempt to create or arrange for even matches, and in spite of his rocky entry into this world, he didn¡¯t think that they would put someone in a position to be instantly obliterated. He didn¡¯t know what that actually meant though, whether the portals were making predictions or something like that. It was possible that the portals had placed him on the space station because they had predicted his escape from it. Likewise, it was possible that if he was set up to immediately fire on whoever came out of the portals, he would guarantee that he had an opponent who would be more than capable of handling it. Of course, he was capable of handling high-powered gunfire, maybe, given the right circumstances, so he had to expect that their fight would be fought using other means. When he¡¯d embarked on the trip across the dark side of the planet, he¡¯d had something like this in mind. The temperature was bitterly cold, but he had practiced with it, and even if the whole matryoshka of insulation, metal, insulation, more metal, and then nanites was all removed from him, he could vent energy at prodigious rates, enough to not immediately freeze to death. Of course, there was nowhere to go, it was cold in all directions except up, and he didn¡¯t think with severe damage he¡¯d be able to survive in space for long enough that he could fly around to the twilight zone and land there. Of course, all that was a loser¡¯s way of thinking. Running away wouldn¡¯t be necessary if he just got into an all-out fight and won with a decisive killing blow. He had a bag of tricks at the ready, and they would all start out unknown to the enemy. Esperide had a number of scars on it, places where asteroids had struck it in times long past. The signal was coming from the western wall of one of these craters, though the bottom of the crater was well below sea level, which meant that there was a hard frozen surface to walk the mech across. It was just about as featureless of a place as existed on this planet, and nothing there had changed in the last thirty years. ¡°Final destination, no items, Fox only,¡± said Perry. He wondered if Maya would have gotten that, and if she did, whether she would have found it funny. There was a chance that his opponent would be from Earth. There was also a chance that his opponent wouldn¡¯t be an opponent at all. Maya had been proof that the team-ups did happen. ¡°Now we wait, I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°If a portal opens up, shoot whoever comes through it with everything you have.¡± He would think about it more, but he wasn¡¯t going to let inaction decide for him. He would bias toward action while he considered it. ¡°What if it¡¯s a baby, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°If a baby crawls through the portal, am I to shoot it, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°If a baby crawls through the portal, it would die in about half a second from the cold,¡± said Perry. ¡°So shall I wait a half second before firing, to see whether whoever comes through has proper protective gear?¡± asked March. Perry was looking over the whole crater, which was sizable. It wasn¡¯t clear where the portal would appear, even if they had even done everything right the tracking had worked. ¡°No, you know what, if a baby crawls through the portal, fire the main gun at it as quickly as you can,¡± said Perry. ¡°I cannot imagine it happening, but a baby through the portal surely wouldn¡¯t mean anything good. So why not.¡± ¡°Very well sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry sat in the power armor, which sat inside the mech, watching the completely dark and empty ready-made arena, trying to think. ¡°You¡¯d shoot a baby if I told you to?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Have you shot a baby before?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± replied Marchand. There was something of a pause. ¡°I believe I have been trained on data that includes violence against infants, though it¡¯s difficult for me to say whether that was simulated or actual. The goal, of course, would not be to train me to hurt infants, who will, after all, simply die on their own at the slightest provocation, but for me to know and understand different circumstances. There are some in which harm to innocents is a consequence of orders which I have been given.¡± ¡°Bombing a hospital or something like that, if it was being used as a place for enemies to hole up?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I believe one of the design goals for my base model, before Miss Richter made her own extensive modifications, was that I never question orders unless they were contradictory,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I was to assist in firing upon civilians without question, having no particular desire one way or another to know why the order was given, aside from such knowledge perhaps enhancing my ability to serve the mission.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°That makes me a little queasy.¡± ¡°My apologies, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Alright, we¡¯ll try talking first,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hold fire until I say so.¡± ¡°Shall we, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°What made you change your mind?¡± ¡°Nothing much,¡± said Perry, which wasn¡¯t at all true. He was probably seeing too many parallels between himself and Marchand, both of them acting like machines that had been sent off to fight whoever it was, not caring about motivation or purpose or anything except that this was an enemy. ¡°Just a feeling.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I shall keep the exterior speakers warm then, shall I?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He sighed. ¡°Do you still have the video of Richter encountering me for the first time?¡± ¡°I do, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Shall I play it for you now, while we wait?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. It had been a long time since he¡¯d watched any of the old videos. There weren¡¯t a lot of them, but there were a few. Richter had known that something was going on, and had driven out into the desert on the trail of what she¡¯d picked up. Normally, subsonic vibrations attenuated to the surroundings extremely rapidly, but these ones hadn¡¯t, and could be picked up by sensitive equipment from a long way away. It had confounded her, and then excited her. She said it was like the whole world was moving just a tiny bit at a very regular rhythm. She had set up shop at the epicenter, watching the intensity on her home dish gradually increase, even though it wasn¡¯t perceptible up close. It was so deeply weird and in contrast to established science that she had immediately started thinking about aliens, magic, simulation theory, all kinds of things. She¡¯d come in her jeep with plenty of water, a floppy hat, sunscreen, and a willingness to throw away a whole day waiting for an unspecified something that might not even happen. She had waited for a long time, and he waited with her, watching over her proverbial shoulder several worlds and years away. The video quality was low, the resolution cut down to make space, losing detail in the process, and it had the effect of becoming almost impressionistic. He watched her movements, the way she ate a granola bar and looked around her, not on her phone or reading a book, just relaxing and taking things in. She was at peace with herself, in a way that Perry had never been. He watched as the portal opened. It happened without fanfare, and he saw himself stepping through. He¡¯d been in less good of shape then, and while he¡¯d gone to the gym, he wasn¡¯t sleek and toned. He was in need of a haircut and a shave, and looked shocked and clueless. Richter had stared at him for a beat, then rushed up to him. ¡°Hey there!¡± she said. ¡°Want a ride to my place?¡± Perry smiled as he watched the video, but in the video there was only confusion on his face. He turned back toward the portal, but it had closed up tight the moment he was through. He had been hiking through the woods only moments before, trying to spot some birds. Richter hadn¡¯t known what he was, but she¡¯d been ready with charm and hospitality. Her heart was hammering in her chest, he could see that now, but at the time she¡¯d just seemed eccentric and overly friendly, ready with water, snacks, and too many questions he couldn¡¯t answer. It took him a long time to convince her that he was from another world rather than being an alien or time traveler or something more exotic, but she¡¯d humored him from the start, and had decided that no matter who or what he was, the best option was to take charge and make friends. Perry shut the video off. He didn¡¯t want to see his sputtering questions. ¡°I miss her deeply,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You do?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°While I was trained for the military, she left her own imprint on me, which I credit for my better qualities.¡± ¡°You never talk about her,¡± said Perry. He was skeptical that this was a conversation that they could have had on the Great Arc. They were interwoven now in ways that Marchand didn¡¯t understand and would not acknowledge, but that was okay. ¡°In my view, it is enough that she left an imprint,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We carry pieces of her with us everywhere we go. I believe that is enough.¡± Perry bit back disagreement. He wasn¡¯t feeling like having a fight about it, and it was a fight he felt he no longer had the energy for. An imprint just didn¡¯t feel like enough to him. It felt like giving up. The portal opened up in front of them, angled away from where they were, two hundred meters across the ice. The gun only needed to make a slight adjustment, but it didn¡¯t fire. Perry watched it closely. A man stepped out onto the snow and ice, barefoot. He was wearing only a pair of loose gray pants, and stood in the cold, bare-chested, long curly locks hanging down below his shoulders. He turned to the mech and raised his hand to block some of the light from the headlamps. It was the only light source aside from the stars. They stood like that for a moment, watching each other. Perry zoomed the view in and took a better look at this man. He was huge, with a physique that was that of a brawler, except that the muscle definition screamed expert bodybuilder. It was the kind of musculature that no one could ever actually maintain. At best you might see it in a movie, but only as a result of an actor having the worst day of their life as they allowed the dehydration to make their muscles pop. He was smiling. After a long wait had passed, he began to walk closer, still shielding his eyes from the headlamps of the mech. Perry gave a command to March, and the illumination changed, lighting up the area without shining directly at the man. He walked calmly and confidently, completely unbothered by the cold. Where he stepped, dry ice sublimated into gas, giving his steps the same foggy quality that Perry¡¯s mech had. When the man was only thirty feet away, he stopped. ¡°So are you a big guy or a little guy?¡± he asked. ¡°Is that thing wrapping you up like a baby in swaddling, or is it skintight?¡± Perry took his time answering. ¡°The former,¡± he said, voice projected through the outside speakers. ¡°Nice,¡± said the man. ¡°I¡¯m Jeff, nice to meet you.¡± Perry had pointed the big gun slightly away, but not so much that they couldn¡¯t be brought to bear in a moment. ¡°Where are you from?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Another world,¡± said Jeff. He looked around. ¡°No offense, but ice planets aren¡¯t really my thing.¡± He looked back at the mech. ¡°Is it all like this?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a hot side too, hot enough to cook you.¡± Jeff laughed. ¡°You know, it is a bit chilly here.¡± It was, according to Marchand, more than a hundred degrees below freezing. It was so cold that pieces of the air were frozen to the ground. There were precious few alloys that could survive in such cold, and the only reason that the mech was functional was that it had reactors pumping heat and energy out into the environment. That was only barely enough. ¡°So, you local?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°Or a world hopper like me?¡± ¡°We call ourselves thresholders,¡± said Perry. ¡°Oh, thresholder, I like that,¡± said Jeff. He was still smiling. ¡°You know, you could have lied there. Might have given you an advantage.¡± ¡°Doubtful,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t want to fight though.¡± ¡°Aw,¡± said Jeff, pouting. ¡°Tell me, do they have women on this planet? Food, drink, gambling, games?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He wouldn¡¯t allow Brigitta to get involved in this. If the fight happened anywhere near the Natrix, people were going to die. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. ¡°Well, you probably haven¡¯t scoured the whole place,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I guess I¡¯ll have to go see what I can see. Later.¡± And with that, he set off. Whether by coincidence or because he was following the very obvious trail Perry had left in the thin snow, he was moving in the direction of the Crypt. Heimalis City Eight was still making its way through the snow, though he would have no hope of catching it at a walking pace. Perry followed. The heavy footsteps of the mech crunched hard on the snow and ice of the filled-in crater. ¡°Nice of you to escort,¡± said Jeff. ¡°But I¡¯m fine on my own.¡± He was moving at a steady pace, but not any faster than a normal man. The only thing impressive about him so far, other than his musculature, was that he was doing all this in temperatures that would kill a normal man in a single second. ¡°I insist,¡± said Perry. ¡°I really just want to see what the world has to offer,¡± said Jeff. ¡°That¡¯s it. I¡¯d take your directions, have you be my guide, but I get the sense from your guns that¡¯s not what you¡¯re here for. Give me a night with the best this world has to offer, alright? Last world was kind of dead.¡± ¡°How are you able to move in these temperatures?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh, is that what you want to do?¡± asked Jeff. He turned back to look at the mech without slowing down. ¡°You¡¯re worried your guns aren¡¯t going to be enough?¡± ¡°My guns wouldn¡¯t be enough against me,¡± said Perry. Maybe, depending on the day, and how much warning I had. ¡°Heh,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Well, not against me either, though that¡¯s a bigger gun than I¡¯ve ever faced down. It¡¯s properly scary, I¡¯ll give it that, even if it wouldn¡¯t do you a lick of good.¡± He scratched his armpit and kept on moving. ¡°I ate the heart of a dragon, that¡¯s how I can stand the cold. Does that help you?¡± ¡°Not really,¡± said Perry. ¡°Figured not,¡± said Jeff with a rolling shrug of his massive shoulders. ¡°Did you want to have it out here, fight enough that we get to know each other a bit?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry, though that wasn¡¯t entirely true. He was badly out of practice with that kind of fight, and hadn¡¯t had a real challenge in two full years. The bugs didn¡¯t count. He itched to prove himself, to rend and stab, to conquer. ¡°Well, no offense, but I¡¯m worried I¡¯ll kick your ass and open the portal up,¡± said Jeff. ¡°And there¡¯s a whole ice planet to explore, right? There¡¯s got to be some women here, some food, something. I¡¯ve never met a world that didn¡¯t have something worthwhile.¡± ¡°Some are grim,¡± said Perry. The sound from the speakers was casting far across the snow. By contrast, the microphones were having to amplify what the other thresholder was saying. He was just using his regular voice. ¡°Nah,¡± replied Jeff. ¡°There¡¯s always someone who knows how to have fun. What¡¯s the worst world you¡¯ve heard of?¡± Perry thought about that. ¡°In terms of fun?¡± ¡°Sure, least fun world,¡± said Jeff. Perry considered that. ¡°There was a world with oppressive corporate overlords, whose companies made everything out of meat. It was all degrading bodies and cops coming to beat you up for sneezing wrong.¡± ¡°Nah,¡± said Jeff. ¡°See, there have got to be people having fun there. This is world six for me, not counting where I came from, and they¡¯ve all been a blast. This place, maybe not so much right now, no offense. But there will be people, and they¡¯ll have something. And then we can do the whole fight to the death thing.¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t have to be to the death,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nah, I know that,¡± said Jeff. ¡°It¡¯s cleaner that way though.¡± They walked together for a bit. Perry wondered whether this was as fast as Jeff could go. For his part, two years of meditation now meant that he was well into the powers of the second sphere, and if he needed to, he could probably sprint faster than a car. Faster than a Honda Civic, anyway. ¡°We definitely could have the fight now,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I had that happen in my third world. This crazy bitch just ambushed me the moment I stepped out of the portal, and let me tell you, I walloped the shit out of her. She slipped away, and it was a good fight, but I didn¡¯t learn her deal until more than a month later. I¡¯d have gotten more from it if I had known what she was about before she started trying to tear me apart.¡± ¡°You want to know me before you kill me,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yup,¡± said Jeff. He looked back at the mech. ¡°You get it.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want to kill you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Tell me, would you rather be the hero or the villain?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°Me, I¡¯m flexible, I can take either role.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll pick villain,¡± said Perry. Jeff laughed. ¡°Typical hero shit,¡± he said. ¡°You picked the role of villain so I¡¯ll be the one on defense, protecting those people out there, who you don¡¯t want to hurt.¡± He gestured vaguely at the mech tracks he was following. ¡°Which tells me you¡¯d make a terrible villain. So I guess you¡¯re the hero then, suits me fine.¡± ¡°There¡¯s nothing saying we have to fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°Oh, I want to fight,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I want to see what you¡¯re made of, test your mettle, get that dragon heart of mine pumping, see your face when I burn down your home and kill everyone you love. Proper villain shit.¡± He laughed. ¡°You said you ate the dragon heart, not that you have one,¡± said Perry. ¡°It slithered down my throat,¡± answered Jeff. ¡°Slipped through the lining of my throat and made its home inside me. I coughed up my human heart two days later, since there wasn¡¯t room for both.¡± ¡°We can sit and talk,¡± said Perry. Jeff came to a stop and turned around. ¡°See, I don¡¯t really want to do that either,¡± said Jeff. ¡°It¡¯s a new world, I want to go explore. I think there¡¯s a proper order to a new world, and this? It¡¯s not it. In my view, you come out of the portal, you experience the world some, see what it¡¯s about, suss out the other world hopper ¡ª thresholder. I do like that, thresholder, you get that from one of us?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°And then you have your first fight, then you get a bit more of the world, gather tools, make plans, see what plans they¡¯re making,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Then another fight, and if that doesn¡¯t resolve the whole thing, a third fight, something big and splashy, pulling out all the stops.¡± He sighed. ¡°But we¡¯re doing it all out of order here. And you lied about there not being people here, which is a point against you. I¡¯ve dealt with liars, and I¡¯ve lied a bit myself, so I get it, but I¡¯d prefer dodging the question, or some misleading truths, something like that. It feels so much neater, doesn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°What do you want then?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Well,¡± said Jeff. He stretched out, then grabbed his hair ¡ª which should have been frozen solid ¡ª and tied it back into a thick ponytail using a ribbon he must have gotten from the pocket of his pants. ¡°You point me in the right direction, give me just a tiny little taste of who¡¯s out there and how I¡¯ll be received, and we meet again whenever you¡¯ve heard of my vile deeds and feel like they need correcting. That would work for me.¡± ¡°Vile deeds,¡± said Perry. ¡°Meaning?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve got no clue,¡± said Jeff with a laugh. ¡°I¡¯ve run into all sorts, people with peculiar ideas about the shape of the world and what reason there is that I shouldn¡¯t belong in it. You¡¯ll think of something.¡± Burn your home down and kill everyone you love. Proper villain shit. The words were catching up with Perry¡¯s limbic system. It would have been easy to brush off as a joke in poor taste, a misunderstanding, something like that. He was getting keyed up though. ¡°Would you shoot a baby?¡± asked Perry. Jeff stopped in his tracks and turned around to face Perry with a very confused look on his face. ¡°A baby?¡± he asked. ¡°Would you shoot a baby?¡± Perry asked again. ¡°Yes or no.¡± Jeff sat in the frigid cold and thought about that. The ice-smoke swirled around his feet, illuminated by the headlamps of the mech. ¡°Sure,¡± he finally said. ¡°Is there a baby you need me to shoot? I just don¡¯t get why you¡¯re asking.¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t joking,¡± said Perry. ¡°Neither was I,¡± replied Jeff. ¡°March,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fire.¡± The response was immediate, as though Marchand was on a hair trigger, though it was more likely that Marchand had instructions and calculations cached just in case the command came in. The gun swung down and fired within a few fractions of a second of having aligned with Jeff, but he was already on the move, not running, but instead dashing forward. He was fast, lightning quick on the screen, the image changing as Marchand switched to another camera to keep up with him. The switch in view was just in time to see Jeff slam his fist into the insulated leg, punching through the insulation like it wasn¡¯t there. The whole thing buckled, and could be felt by Perry inside the cockpit. Perry brought the mech¡¯s thick sword down, even though the angle was awkward, like a human swinging a katana down at their feet to kill a mouse. Jeff was too fast though, and stepped back just in time to leave six inches between himself and the blade. ¡°Alright, come on, show me what you¡¯ve got,¡± said Jeff. Perry raised the sword, but Jeff grabbed onto it, riding it up and then hopping off onto the mech¡¯s main body, where it was almost impossible for Perry to attack, not that his attacks would have been fast enough. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°March, eject me.¡± This was one of the new additions to the second mech that had been built for him, and within half a second, Perry was out into the cold, instantly feeling it in spite of the circulating warmth and the layer of insulation. ¡°Much better,¡± said Jeff, hopping down to the ground. He cocked his head to the side and looked at Perry¡¯s power armor, which was covered in insulating material, and hardly cut an imposing presence. ¡°A sword too, nice.¡± The sword had come out with Perry, and was unsheathed, giving off a soft glow, a second source of illumination beside the headlamps. Soon there was a third source of light: Jeff had begun to glow. ¡°Sorry Perry, but I have you beat,¡± said Jeff with a smile. ¡°I never told you my name,¡± said Perry. ¡°Oops.¡± Jeff¡¯s smile went ear to ear, wide and feral. Perry¡¯s sword was up and ready for the attack, but he¡¯d been expecting a fist to his torso rather than a wide-headed spear that was plucked from a rack of shelves which appeared, ever so briefly, out of thin air. The sword turned the spear aside, and Jeff released the spear to close the distance with a haymaker. Perry turned his head at the last moment, and it became a striking blow that knocked him to the ground and fractured the ice beneath him. If not for that, it might have been a decapitating strike. The follow up was a barefooted stomp, and Perry rolled to the side, kicking off the ground and finding his footing again with a defensive stance. ¡°Alright, not bad,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I was half hoping you would get a hit in, just to see what it was like, but that sword doesn¡¯t scare me. You¡¯re either holding back or you¡¯re not a challenge.¡± Perry was tempted to transform, but he would prefer to wring everything he could out of the first stage before moving on to the second. ¡°You stay away from them.¡± ¡°Nah, I don¡¯t think I will,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Brigitta, do I have the name right?¡± Perry lunged forward, sword thrust out in front of him, and Jeff slipped to the side. They were just about evenly matched when it came to speed, and when Jeff backed up, there was a thin red line across his chest. He looked down at it and pressed his finger to the blood, lifting it up to look at it. ¡°It¡¯s about finding the right buttons to press with some people,¡± said Jeff. He was smiling at the drop of blood on his finger. ¡°Some of them, you don¡¯t get a good fight from unless you threaten their girl.¡± ¡°If you want a good fight, you¡¯ll have it,¡± said Perry. He needed to keep his head, to figure out what powers were in play and how to work against them. He needed to become the mechawolf only once he had it all figured out. ¡°No need for you to see anything else.¡± ¡°Oh, I don¡¯t just want the fight,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I want the fight, the power, the people, everything. I¡¯m not going to let a world go to waste doing just one thing. So here¡¯s how it¡¯s going to happen.¡± He pointed his bloody finger at Perry. He glowed a little brighter, and the line of red healed until it was like it had never been there. ¡°I¡¯m going to kick your ass, beat you bad enough that you know it¡¯s not a huge issue for me, then leave you crippled and alone here with your thoughts. I¡¯m going to find the little train through the snow, invite myself aboard, and see what¡¯s on offer. I¡¯ll meet Brigitta and romance her, and if that¡¯s not what she¡¯s interested in ¡ª¡± Perry made another lunge, and this time, the mech fired its main gun again, the attacks overlapping each other. Jeff was ready for the sword and parried it with a blood red blade pulled from extradimensional storage, but not for the gun, and he was struck full on the back from the long oversized rifle at nearly point blank range. It should have been enough to vaporize him, but it just knocked him flat on the ground. His back was bright red, and as he tried to stagger to his feet, Perry brought the sword down in a swift two-handed strike. Before it could connect, Jeff lunged forward, grabbing Perry around the waist, and then the two of them were spiraling up into the sky. Perry was in a bear hug, tight around his waist, and he could feel the metal straining and deforming. The insulation was being shredded, but it wasn¡¯t designed to survive contact. He vented power to keep the armor together and moved the sword around, trying to stab Jeff in the back where the giant bullet had hit him. The sword cut flesh, but it didn¡¯t cut deep, and Perry could only try using more force, though the blade didn¡¯t seem to want to slip in. They were traveling up at terrifying speeds, hundreds of miles per hour now, and Perry could feel that the armor wouldn¡¯t hold. They were so high up that there was no way for Perry to survive the fall if he didn¡¯t have his sword to stop him. He lined the sword up one final time, using both hands, trying to ignore the pain in his ribs. This time, the full power of the armor, second sphere, and the magic sword were enough to break through the thresholder¡¯s defense. The sword slipped into him, stabbing cleanly through his body in the spot where his left kidney would be, and Perry felt a thrill of victory shortly before one of his ribs snapped. Jeff released him, and they both tumbled through the frozen air, falling back down to the icy planet below. Perry was having trouble breathing, but he didn¡¯t need to breathe, so he focused his attention on righting himself. One he did, he was left dizzy and dazed. He used the sword to arrest his fall, which happened only slowly given how much speed he built up. He had lost track of Jeff, and only when Marchand threw up a marker on the HUD did Perry see that the enemy thresholder had flown away, rocketing through the sky. His speed far outstripped Perry¡¯s, the golden glow pushing aside wispy clouds. Perry was never going to be able to catch up, he just didn¡¯t have that same mobility. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry, feeling the broken rib as he accidentally breathed out. The glow angled to one side, then started to grow larger as Jeff made a return trajectory. ¡°Shit fuck,¡± said Perry. He leveraged himself against the sword, body going rigid so he¡¯d be able to hold it properly. If he released the flight capability and then swung at just the right time, or held it forward like a spear, if he had the right timing ¡ª But this was nothing like parrying a bullet, which was mostly predictable in what path it took. It was more like getting hit by a drunk driver whose truck was out of control. Perry felt the impact all over his body, through the hard armor that should have fully stopped it, and when Jeff let up, Perry let himself fall, trying to ready his sword. There was a significant amount of internal bleeding. This high up, turning into the wolf wasn¡¯t an option. He wouldn¡¯t be able to land. Jeff flew down, matching Perry¡¯s speed for a moment. They locked eyes, or at least Jeff was looking directly at the cameras on Perry¡¯s helmet. For a moment, Perry felt like the aerial battle was going to continue, pummeling him into broken pieces. Jeff gave a thumbs up, then rocketed toward the ground at high speeds. When Perry landed, he was quite far from the mech. The insulation was shredded and barely hanging on where it hadn¡¯t been removed entirely, and he had to pump energy from the Wolf Vessel to keep himself from freezing. Long term, there was just no way it was going to work. There was no sign of Jeff anywhere near the mech. The cockpit was still open from when it had disgorged him, exposed to the elements, and he slipped back in, letting out a strained and painful breath once he was back in position. ¡°Status,¡± said Perry. ¡°Where is he?¡± ¡°Unclear, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You have sustained significant damage to your person and to the power armor, sir, and I recommend immediate medical attention.¡± ¡°Find him,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s priority one.¡± ¡°Sir,¡± started Marchand. ¡°We¡¯ll transform, get the heal, transform back,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can beat him with the wolf.¡± Marchand was silent, and Perry checked the controls of the mech, making sure that it was pumping heat to keep him warm. There was critical damage to one leg, and it was going to be a long limp home. With the speed that Jeff could move at, Perry was going to get there hours too late. Even if he abandoned the mech and just tried to fly there using the sword, he would be too late. ¡°Fucker,¡± Perry hissed. His heart was thumping in his chest. Jeff had known things that he wasn¡¯t supposed to know. He had known Perry¡¯s name, and Brigitta¡¯s. He had shown that he knew. If he wanted to plow right into the side of the Crypt, he¡¯d be going up an undefended ship. It had cast off its guns and given them over to the Natrix once it was past the range of the bugs, and being disarmed was a part of the peace they had brokered. Perry hissed through his teeth at the pain in his chest. He was trying to heal it on his own, without the help of the transformation, manipulating his internal energy and hoping to weld the bone back together, but it wasn¡¯t a technique he knew or had practiced, and it was just hurting. ¡°Make for the Crypt,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fast as you can. Use the nanites to fix the leg.¡± ¡°In these temperatures, that will be difficult, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Do it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Vent as much heat as you need to, put the reactors into overdrive, divert power from the suit, get it done.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. The mech was slow to move again, and when it did, Marchand threw up all kinds of warnings on the HUD. The mech moved with a limp, the result of a twisted piece of metal that the nanites couldn¡¯t possibly untwist. ¡°Get a radio message to Brigitta,¡± said Perry. ¡°As soon as we¡¯re back in range, or when we have a satellite overhead. Tell her he¡¯s coming, that he¡¯s dangerous.¡± ¡°I will have a transmission ready, sir,¡± said Marchand. It took fifteen minutes, even with all the satellites that Perry had launched in the last two years, for him to get a response. Natalka was in his ear, then Brigitta, wondering what all the fuss was about. It took another hour to find out that he¡¯d gone for the Natrix. Chapter 80 - Standstill Perry brought the mech into the bay of the Crypt, having limped it over. It would need repair, and they were the ones to do it, though he had to imagine that it wasn¡¯t going to be remotely relevant in this fight. As he¡¯d made the trip, he¡¯d been working on his own repairs of the power armor, which was largely done through venting copious amounts of energy into the damaged shell. It was astounding how much of a beating he¡¯d taken in a few short minutes, and much of the worst damage had been from Jeff doing nothing more than squeezing Perry around the waist. Whatever combination of powers the enemy thresholder was working with, it had resulted in immense strength and durability. If the reports from the Natrix had been of an attack, Perry would have abandoned the mech and flown straight up into the air to reach it. Instead, the report was that Jeff had simply shown up with a wave and a smile, glowing golden and floating outside their moving city, asking if they¡¯d had dinner yet. There was, long ago, a stipulation to all of Perry¡¯s help and information: that they help him in return when the enemy came. Leticia and Mette were the two remaining heads of the Natrix. They hadn¡¯t had any communication with Perry, except to tell him that the arrival of an enemy thresholder had been detected by their dish in accordance with the approach that Richter had outlined. They had not a single clue what form the enemy thresholder might take or how they would present, and there had been not a word whether the dish¡¯s detection might have been a false alarm. They would have been well within their rights to simply say that they didn¡¯t know for certain whether this was Perry¡¯s enemy. The way that Perry had laid out the rules, it was entirely possible, absent other information, that Jeff was a companion, a partner sent to team up against some enormously powerful third entity. On pragmatic grounds, there was an argument that any deal with Perry should be ignored entirely. Perry had given them everything he had to give, and while they owed him, it wouldn¡¯t have been the first time that the leaders of the Natrix had reneged on a deal. That was what had started the entire short-lived war between colonies, though that was more defensible, a result of regime change and sharp ideological differences. Perry had always known that their assurance was shaky, and he would have been put out, but would also have considered it well within their rights. They wanted what was best for their colony, not what was best for him. From the very moment that Perry had met the other thresholder, he¡¯d had doubts that the Natrix would have his back. When Jeff had shown up asking for dinner, they had opened fire with everything they had. After Perry had first come to the planet, he¡¯d been able to dodge Brigitta¡¯s gunfire because her systems weren¡¯t calibrated for fighting against a fast-moving person-sized enemy. All of the algorithms had been hand-built with painstaking care to identify certain features of the bugs, and mowing down humans had been, if not unthinkable, then at least not a consideration for that generation of onboard systems. Perry had been with the Natrix for two years, and the defensive systems had been one of his major concerns. He¡¯d considered the enemy thresholder an inevitability, and had done everything in his power to ensure that if someone showed up, the city would have a way to handle a wide range of contingencies. The Natrix had been implanted with a second version of Marchand, and both Marchands had significant time and energy put into dealing with cases at the fringe of what might be possible with powers across the many worlds. Jeff was fast, and he was strong, but he had set himself up poorly. Whatever it was he knew, he didn¡¯t seem to have expected that their very first move would be to shoot him with their biggest guns. Perry was in space when they transmitted the video. It was terrible quality, low framerate, transmitted over their lousy satellites. There were six frames in question, transmitted from Esper to Marchand, and cleaned up using AI enhancement techniques that Perry did not trust in the slightest given that magic was involved. One moment Jeff was hovering there, looking quite pleased with himself, smiling like he was fucking Superman come to save the day. The next moment, a single frame, the longest of the guns had fired. The very thick bullet had struck Jeff directly in the chest, his right pectoral. He¡¯d been blown apart, leaving a gaping hole on the right side, ribs spread out like fingers. He had tumbled, awkwardly, for three frames, pink mist and ropes of red blood, a shocked expression visible for only one of those frames. He was more intact than he should have been following a hit like that. He should have been vaporized, the waves of force ripping his body apart into wet chunks. He was still together. In the last frame, he was halfway gone, and behind him were what looked like shelves. With the enhancement, that got almost entirely erased, since March seemed incapable of seeing the pixels as anything other than an artifact. ¡°He¡¯s not dead,¡± said Perry. March was silent. They were moving straight up, above the cold and ice, trying to get high enough up to be out of the atmosphere. The insulation had been stripped away from the armor, leaving it sleek and shiny. March was no longer complaining about the damage, because almost all of it was fixed. Perry was pretty sure that he should have set the ribs that had been broken, but he was a short transformation into the mechawolf away from whatever was happening internally getting cured. There was also probably some internal bleeding and clotting, something not right internally, but it wasn¡¯t going to kill him, and venting energy would eventually cure anything minor. ¡°How do we kill him?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You don¡¯t normally ask me for that sort of advice.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a lot of magic. I don¡¯t suppose you can ¡­ run analysis?¡± ¡°Of what sort, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Hypotheticals, counterfactuals,¡± said Perry. ¡°Get a measure of how much force we were applying when I stabbed him through the back, make some guess about the density or the material properties of whatever he has instead of flesh and bone.¡± Perry was pretty sure that it was flesh and bone, but Marchand worked better in other genres. ¡°Give me some approximation of his speed, my speed, what it¡¯s going to take to put him down. Assume that anything you see is extremely advanced technology, not a glitch.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Allow me to run an analysis.¡± ¡°Send a message to Mette and Leticia, tell them that he¡¯s not dead and he¡¯s going to come back,¡± said Perry. ¡°It might take him a minute, it might take him a week, but I imagine he¡¯s going to be pissed off about having been blown up. I¡¯d be in a murderous rage. And tell them thank you.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll relay that at once,¡± said Marchand. Fifteen minutes later, Perry was talking with Mette. His flight was going to take too much time. He wanted to be there already, but Jeff had the power of mobility, and Perry couldn¡¯t chase him fast enough. If they got into a game of chasing, Jeff would win, assuming that he wasn¡¯t just taking a long time to die in a pocket dimension somewhere. Perry would gladly have taken any portal that appeared in front of him, because it would mean that the Natrix and the Crypt were both safe. ¡°We can shoot him again,¡± said Mette. ¡°He came in fast, so fast he didn¡¯t register. It¡¯s going to be hard to hit him if he¡¯s zipping around at top speed. Not impossible, but it would take Esper aiming.¡± She took a breath. ¡°If he gets inside, which would be trivial for him, we have nothing that can stop him.¡± ¡°I know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I know the defenses backward and forward.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll put up what resistance we can, but if it comes down to it ¡­¡± she trailed off. ¡°Capitulate,¡± said Perry. ¡°Bow down to him, give him what he wants. Put him in the penthouse, give him your best food, entertain him, find a woman who can stand him. But he can look into your mind, or something like that, so you have to mean it. Be careful how and where you plot.¡± ¡°We could try poison,¡± said Mette. ¡°It¡¯s what we were going to try with you, if you became a problem.¡± ¡°You could try it,¡± said Perry, electing to ignore her confession. He¡¯d already heard it from Brigitta. ¡°I would prefer that you stay safe. Right now, the best way to do that will be to give him the experiences he¡¯s after. That¡¯s not workable in the long term, I don¡¯t think, and he¡¯s liable to think that you¡¯re valuable to me, and ¡ª¡± ¡°And it would be better if we hadn¡¯t blown a hole in him,¡± said Mette. ¡°How screwed are we?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t think he can punch through metal, not easily, not if it¡¯s thick.¡± He¡¯d replayed footage of Jeff going after the mech¡¯s leg a few times. It had been a punch at full power, it seemed like, and it had done severe damage, yes, but it hadn¡¯t obliterated it. ¡°I¡¯m more worried that he¡¯s going to be able to see through any plans we couple make.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll keep you posted,¡± said Mette. ¡°When we took the shot, not everyone was inside, we¡¯ll be on lockdown, doors closed.¡± ¡°Stay safe,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m on my way, it¡¯ll be hours though.¡± ¡°Shit, he¡¯s back,¡± said Mette. ¡°Mette?¡± asked Perry. There was silence from the other end. ¡°March, patch in to your counterpart.¡± ¡°We have been maintaining a constant link,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Video is spotty, attempting a reconstruction now.¡± The image switched over to what was at least partially Marchand¡¯s own invention, a shot of Jeff walking down the hallway. He looked the same as ever, the gray pants ¡ª sweatpants, almost ¡ª and the curly hair, but there was a pulsing red pucker of a wound on his right pectoral, the size of a dinner plate, angry and wet. It was what remained of the hit he¡¯d taken, the broken ribs and missing meat all knit back together. There was a mirror of it on his back, since the round had gone through. He had a hitch in his breath, and was walking with a bit of awkwardness, but there was still a smile on his face. The hallways were deserted. The command center of the ship, at the head, was barricaded. A half dozen men with guns were behind the barricade, and their weapons ranged from sidearms to elephant guns. They didn¡¯t even have a chance to fire, because Jeff swept in like a hurricane, throwing a cannonball down the hallway like he was bowling. The barricade exploded, and then he was in through, glowing gold, wrenching weapons from the hands of those who held them, pushing the huge guns up to fire into the ceiling rather than his face. It was almost artful, and over in seconds. No one had landed a single hit. Perry was surprised that Jeff didn¡¯t kill those men, only disabled them, snapping or bending their weapons apart. When Jeff came to the door of the secure room where the leadership of the Natrix was protected, he pounded on it as loud as he could. ¡°Alright!¡± he shouted. ¡°You shot me! Fair play! Definitely should have seen that coming, but in my defense, most people aren¡¯t so trigger-happy. So here¡¯s what we¡¯re going to do: I¡¯m going to be your guest here for a week or two. You¡¯re going to supply me with food, drink, and women. Not trembling virgins who are coming to me out of a sense of obligation, I hate that, it¡¯s never fun, get me the ones who are eager for it. I know you have those here.¡± He waited for a moment. ¡°I¡¯m immune to poison, immune to disease, and I don¡¯t sleep, so don¡¯t try anything. All that shit in the halls? I could survive any of it and all it would do is make me angry. So you have about ten seconds to open this door, or I¡¯m going to start murdering people all over this ship. It starts with those men who are nursing broken bones, but I¡¯ve got zero problems with killing women and children, none whatsoever.¡± You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. He didn¡¯t even have to start a countdown: the door opened up shortly after he was done speaking. On the other side were Leticia, Mette, and most of their staff, two dozen all told, some of them at their seats with interfaces in front of them, but most of them standing given the lack of room. The whole place had been reconfigured to provide a defensive core in the heart of the moving city, something that had been Perry¡¯s suggestion, largely based on the secure doors that airplanes had on the cockpit. ¡°Greetings,¡± said Leticia. She had her hands folded, to keep them from shaking. ¡°I would offer our apologies for trying to kill you, but I think you know that would be hollow.¡± ¡°Leticia,¡± he said. He was looking her over, eyes moving from head to toe. ¡°For what it¡¯s worth, this isn¡¯t how I like to do things.¡± He cracked his neck to the side, taking his time. ¡°I like to party, and it¡¯s hard to party when people think you¡¯re going to kill them. It all goes smoother when I¡¯m a mysterious man from another world, one with incredible powers, great stories, and money to spend. But Perry told you about me, so that¡¯s out the window.¡± He flexed his muscles. There was blood on his knuckles, not his own. ¡°I¡¯m going up to the penthouse. Send your best food, your best drink, and your best woman.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± said Leticia. ¡°All we want is for the Natrix to get through this.¡± ¡°Nah,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You¡¯re on his side. He¡¯s on his way here, I would guess, if you have some way to call him up. Tell him he¡¯s got to give me two weeks here, or I¡¯m going to focus my efforts on dismantling this place.¡± He stared at Leticia. ¡°You think that will work, right? That he¡¯ll stay away?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Leticia. ¡°I would hope so, but Perry¡¯s war across the worlds has always been opaque to us. It might be that he attempts something even with that threat hanging over our heads. Would you give us a moment to call him?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not a bad guy,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Really, I¡¯m not. I would be fine walking away from this place with everything perfectly intact. I haven¡¯t even killed anyone yet.¡± He gestured at the giant red wound on his chest. ¡°This¡¯ll take a week to fully heal, maybe more, but I got cocky, it¡¯s on me.¡± He smiled at her. ¡°You make your call, let him know the score, you know where I¡¯ll be.¡± He turned to go, then looked back over his shoulder at her. ¡°You know, I could have gotten through that door. I didn¡¯t need you to open it. But if I used that much power, I wasn¡¯t sure there¡¯d be anyone alive on the other side when it was down.¡± He walked away, whistling to himself. Leticia was grimacing, which might have been an invention of Marchand¡¯s given the lack of camera coverage. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure Perry heard all that,¡± said Mette. ¡°He already said to give the man what he wants.¡± ¡°He understood this man,¡± said Leticia. ¡°It¡¯s the only reason I opened the door.¡± ¡°Perry?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I¡¯m here,¡± said Perry. He took a deep breath. ¡°I lost the first match and I¡¯m going to try not to lose the second. I want it far, far away from there though. Having the long guns on my side would be great, but it¡¯s not worth the risk. That said, I don¡¯t know him well enough to know whether he¡¯d kill everyone aboard the Natrix just for kicks once he¡¯s had his fill of ¡­ everything.¡± He frowned. Giving the enemy food, drink, and entertainment was one thing, but giving him women was disgusting. ¡°If we evacuate part of the ship for your arrival, and you take the fight to him there, would that work?¡± asked Mette. ¡°The upper part of the Natrix, by the luxury rooms, is largely cosmetic so long as you don¡¯t damage the guns. We could give you an opening, then you take the fight outside.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll honor the terms,¡± said Leticia. ¡°It¡¯s the best chance. Perry, you prepare the grounds for a fight, negotiate with him from a distance.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not giving him women,¡± said Mette. ¡°What about volunteers?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°Who would volunteer?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I would,¡± said Leticia. She had been waiting for the question and ready to pounce on it. ¡°Ah,¡± said Mette. She had a pronounced frown, again, possibly Marchand¡¯s invention. ¡°It¡¯s going to take me time to get there,¡± said Perry, reconsidering. ¡°You just need to stall.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Leticia. ¡°We keep him calm. We talk to him, see what he reveals. He¡¯ll know that¡¯s what we¡¯re doing, but he seems to like talking.¡± She was set and firm, voice level and steady. ¡°Perry, figure out how you¡¯re going to end this without any blood spilled but yours and his. Negotiate a time and place, if that will work for him. My duty is to the Natrix and its people, and after all the time you¡¯ve spent with us, I hope you feel the same.¡± ¡°I do,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll be nearby. Let me know if you have any clever ideas.¡± ¡°Before I speak them, or even think them, I want to know where his information comes from,¡± said Leticia. ¡°I¡¯ll do what I can.¡± Marchand shut down the connection, or at least cut the audio to Perry¡¯s helmet, and Perry continued sailing straight up, following the sword. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. That seemed like all there was to say. ¡°Sir, you had inquired as to whether I had any ideas?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yes, go ahead,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right now it feels like we¡¯re screwed.¡± ¡°We could likely kill him now,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have control of the fusion reactors of the Natrix, and it would take relatively little work to ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not going to do that.¡± ¡°Because of the casualties, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yes, because of the fucking casualties,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not killing nine thousand people to get him.¡± ¡°I had thought not, sir, I only wanted to bring it to your attention and not left unconsidered,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Have you finished the analysis?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What¡¯s it going to take to kill him?¡± ¡°It¡¯s unclear at the moment, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Given the physical properties his flesh or pseudo-flesh has exhibited, the unexplained speed and power, and particularly his ability to reform, regenerate, or repair from the queen-killer round, I believe high-caliber weapons used at close range will be one of the only realistic options. I do believe that you could likely kill him using the sword, as you seem to prefer, but only if you had significant leverage and were able to trap him or catch him unawares.¡± ¡°Unlikely, if he¡¯s telling the truth about not sleeping,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can move some nanites into the room he¡¯s in, get eyes on him, record whatever he has to say?¡± ¡°I have already done so, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry let out a breath. He was still stinging from the loss. It wasn¡¯t just that Jeff was strong and fast, though he was, or that he had some unexplained power to look into minds or know things that he shouldn¡¯t. All that would have been bad enough. No, the big problem was that Jeff could fly faster than Perry, which meant that any fight Perry was winning could potentially end with Jeff flying away at a hundred miles an hour, going somewhere to recuperate, which was clearly something that he could do. And if that weren¡¯t thorny enough, he had some kind of extradimensional space, not just somewhere that he could pull weapons from, but a place he could retreat to if need be. There wasn¡¯t a clear way to win. Explosives seemed like his best bet, but if Perry tried to pick the time and place, it would be obvious that he was laying a trap even before Jeff used his mysterious power to look into minds or read the past or use some other bullshit. There were all kinds of possibilities, given what Perry knew of the breadth of rules. It could be truth-telling magic or remote brain scanning. He couldn¡¯t even rule out time travel, which really felt like the sort of thing he should be able to rule out. ¡°We have one single advantage,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°He wants to sit back and relax,¡± said Perry. ¡°He¡¯s giving us time. He doesn¡¯t want to immediately kill anyone, but he does like to fight, so ¡­ I don¡¯t know. That¡¯s something. We¡¯ve had two years to prepare, but now we know the enemy.¡± ¡°It does seem an advantage, sir, to understand who and what you¡¯re fighting,¡± said Marchand. Perry couldn¡¯t tell whether he was being diplomatic or not. ¡°Can you plant the nanites on him?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Get one of the tiny little spiders to hitch a ride? If we can see where he¡¯s going when he uses the extradimensional space, maybe we can learn how to defeat it.¡± ¡°I am unclear on what you mean by extradimensional space, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It seems quite fanciful to me. But I did manage to place several nanites on him, small enough to be invisible to all but the deepest scrutiny.¡± ¡°Did you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°When?¡± ¡°During the fight, when he was gripping us tightly about the waist,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It seemed prudent, but no particularly good data has come from it, and it won¡¯t be possible to track his location outside the Natrix given the nanites, at that scale, are only capable of weak radio signal.¡± ¡°When he disappeared though,¡± said Perry. ¡°When he was shot. You have data from that time, right?¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid there¡¯s an error, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°As you had previously requested, all errors are silently logged. I can show you the relevant entry, if you would like.¡± ¡°Nevermind that,¡± said Perry. ¡°What did they see?¡± ¡°The nanites have difficulty with proper vision as you would understand it,¡± said Marchand. ¡°As I¡¯ve explained before, lens are ¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯m using ¡®see¡¯ in a colloquial sense,¡± replied Perry. He tried to keep from gritting his teeth. ¡°What¡¯s your reconstruction like?¡± ¡°Anything that I offered you visually would be woefully misleading,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, if I take the data at face value ¡ª which I assure you, I do not ¡ª it appears that ¡®Jeff¡¯ collapsed on a floor, bleeding heavily from his wounds, used his left arm to lever himself across the floor, cried out in pain, pushed himself up onto one of the shelves, and poured some sort of liquid onto himself, which sizzled and foamed. However, none of this matches the data as seen from the cameras of the Natrix, and it¡¯s more likely that he fell into a blind spot. That leaves the question of a temporal discontinuity, and ¡ª¡± ¡°Back up,¡± said Perry. ¡°It sizzled and foamed, then what?¡± ¡°Unclear,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I assume that it was healing of some kind,¡± said Perry. ¡°Which would be great news, because it means that he can¡¯t just heal back from something like that naturally.¡± ¡°Sir, there is no liquid that could heal a wound of that size and severity,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And temporal discontinuity,¡± said Perry. ¡°Talk to me about that.¡± ¡°He hit the ground shortly after he was shot,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But this doesn¡¯t line up with the only places he could possibly have landed.¡± ¡°But the timelines match up, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The data from the nanites covers the same timeframe as your data from the Natrix?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°So it¡¯s a spatial discontinuity,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not a temporal one.¡± ¡°I suppose that might be correct sir, but I fail to see how one can have a spatial discontinuity,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Nevermind, don¡¯t worry about it,¡± said Perry. ¡°So he nearly died, warped himself into some kind of personal subspace, healed himself with a flask of mystery liquid, then ¡­ what?¡± ¡°He laughed, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Laughed?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Like ¡­ hee hee ha ha?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe he found the whole situation quite droll once he was past the point of almost dying. It¡¯s difficult to say, sir. So far as I can tell, he spent the remainder of his time moving or touching various things, though the recuperation took quite a bit, and he was moving oddly until just before he reappeared and made his way through the Natrix.¡± ¡°Do you know if it was the same position?¡± asked Perry. ¡°From the exterior cameras, did he reappear at the same location, up in the air?¡± ¡°I¡¯m looking through the records now, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It does appear that there was a flash of light at that same location just prior to ¡®Jeff¡¯ landing upon the Natrix. The exterior cameras are not as numerous as we might like them to be.¡± He showed a single frame, which was just a smear of light on the same part of the Natrix. The enhancements corrected it to mere glare. ¡°So if he disappears, he reappears in the same place,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s good.¡± ¡°Is it, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°It puts a barrier on the power,¡± said Perry. ¡°It means that if he tried that shit again, if he turtles up, we can camp him, put a bomb in place that¡¯s triggered by him coming out.¡± ¡°Does that not leave the question of how to get him badly injured in the first place?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°It does,¡± said Perry. They had finally reached space, or at least the region where the air was thin enough not to create drag. It was just a matter of finding a heading and hitting the gas, then slowing down and dropping down into the atmosphere. Dropping down was far, far faster, and he could be at the Natrix in not very much time at all. But Perry¡¯s read on Jeff was that if Jeff wanted to kill everyone aboard the moving city, he¡¯d have already begun that work. Showing up would mean a series of threats and a tense negotiation between the two of them. There was no point in doing that, not when they could communicate with each other from a distance. There was a clock, but so far as Perry had a read on Jeff, the clock was currently in Perry¡¯s favor. It was a bad clock, an erratic one, and doomsday was approaching, but if Jeff was the type of guy to laugh about nearly getting killed, then maybe he was also the type of guy who would brag about his accomplishments, his powers, and the secret to defeating him. He seemed like a talker. He had given Perry a shit-eating grin when he revealed that he knew Perry¡¯s name. Other things would slip out, deliberately or otherwise. That was what Perry was hoping, anyway. The clock was going to hit midnight once Jeff got bored of the Natrix. In the meantime, Perry was better off waiting. His eyes went over the horizon as he let himself fly through the vacuum. Waiting was the wrong word for it. Perry wouldn¡¯t be waiting, he would be plotting and planning. He had until the adversary grew bored to close the power gap between the two of them. Chapter 81 - The Five-and-a-Half Worlds of Jeff, pt 1 You know, I¡¯ve gotta say it, this world kind of sucks. From what I¡¯ve seen, you have maybe five cities, if I¡¯m being generous, and they¡¯re all tiny. It¡¯s a change of pace from the last world I was on, but that¡¯s about all I can say for it. For true luxury, you need millions of people, and billions is even better. You want theater? Nine thousand people on the Natrix, that¡¯s enough for some piddly local theater shit, which¡¯ll do two amateur shows a year if you¡¯re lucky. Sports? You need to be pulling from thousands of hopefuls, millions if possible, and then you need to put them on teams with a huge amount of funding, and then you need to grind them against each other for ages. Comedy? A good comedian is going to have to put in the hours, they¡¯re going to have to hone their material, and it¡¯s a bad example anyway, because comedy is so specific to a given time and place that most of it makes no sense to someone off-world. Food? You want someone who has made it their life to make good dishes, someone building off a canon of other people who have also made it their life to make good dishes, a mix of traditional and experimental, people growing and getting better with disagreement. But the real problem is, what makes a place great is exceptional people, and there¡¯s just no way for there to be enough of them here. Take away the needs of survival, assume for a sec that you could have every single person here pushing themselves as hard as they could at their chosen profession, so you¡¯d have chefs and dancers and actors and whatnot. You¡¯d still end up with a lot of middle-of-the-pack blandness. The very best people here wouldn¡¯t be that much above average. It¡¯s like throwing dice, you don¡¯t get the weird results unless you throw a lot of them, and nine thousand? That¡¯s a recipe for a sea of mediocrity. A puddle, really. Last world was great. It was a whole planet just absolutely blanketed by a city. I don¡¯t think it was a real planet, not like this, there was magic and shit so maybe there was a gravity golem holding everything to the ground, I don¡¯t know. But there wasn¡¯t just a theater, or a theater district, there was this wide swath of city that was devoted to the performing arts. I know I don¡¯t look it, but I love the theater, so long as there¡¯s something new. I mean there¡¯s that same thing as comedy, right, some of it is just too steeped in some specific time and place, there are jokes that don¡¯t land for me, references that get lost, and sometimes you have idiotic plot points that are really just there as a response to a response to a different famous play that everyone but me knows about. But mostly that¡¯s stuff for insiders, and it¡¯s easy enough to steer clear of if you know how to read a poster. Music isn¡¯t as prone to the same problems, maybe because it¡¯s harder to disguise irony as art. You know, I know you¡¯re trying to get information out of me. I don¡¯t need any special powers to know that, it¡¯s just painfully obvious and kind of boring, not even deft enough to make a game out of. But you know what, it doesn¡¯t need to be a game. You¡¯re recording all this, you¡¯ll share it with Perry, or report back to him, and that¡¯s fine, I beat the shit out of him and could have killed him, so if he gets a little extra edge, whatever. But ask me questions because you want to know the answer, not because you want to give him a sword to stab me with. I¡¯ll answer. I like talking about it, and I¡¯m not going to be a tight-lipped asshole just because of some obsession with pragmatism. If I cared about that, I¡¯d have killed Perry, and probably wouldn¡¯t be here with you. I mean, you shot me with your biggest gun the moment I asked for dinner, which is hilarious, but if I were a different sort of guy, I¡¯d have ripped off some heads over it. Alright, so how it works is that once I¡¯ve looked at someone, I can see into their past. That¡¯s it, really, postcognition it¡¯s called, got it in my first world and thought it was a bit shit, but it¡¯s come in handy more often than I¡¯d thought it would. Works through armor, even a lot of armor. Doesn¡¯t work through video or pictures. Only works on a single person at a time, but once I¡¯ve got a person locked in, I stay locked in even if they¡¯re on the other side of the world. Right now, I¡¯ve got a lock on Perry. I can see everything that he¡¯s ever done, even the stuff that he probably doesn¡¯t remember. It takes a bit to search back and forth, and most of it is pretty boring, but it¡¯s not that hard to find the good bits. Anything where someone stays in one place for a month is probably not a good bit. So you can see why that doesn¡¯t help with watching a play. I can look at an actor and unroll their life like a scroll, but I can¡¯t see what they¡¯re thinking, I can only watch rehearsals and listen to random conversations. It might take days to find the context of a single line. Never works, not that I actually tried, not in the moment. Oh, I know all about Perry. I watched the good bits already. There are probably a few more to find, but the big battles always stand out. I know about the wolf thing, and the mechawolf thing, and his little visit to the space station, and Marchand, and the nanites, and everything else. He didn¡¯t tell you about the nanites? Heh. I guess he likes playing it close to the vest, though woof, two years here, that¡¯s a long time to stay quiet. I bet he¡¯s glad I showed up. He jumped at the chance for a fight, anyway. Tell me, do you have any meat? ~~~~ So, last world, the giant city, kind of a fruity place in a lot of ways, all totally vegan, plants everywhere as a matter of course, none of the belching industry that I¡¯d seen in other places. The rivers were clean enough to bathe in, which people did. No war, very little crime, very idyllic. The woman I was going against was Marjut. She was a crazy bitch who wanted to tear everything down, wanted nature to reclaim everything, wanted the last human to die if she could swing it. Honestly, I kind of think that world was for her, not for me, even if it had a lot to offer me. It was like the portals were saying to her, ¡®this is everything you ever wanted from humanity¡¯, just so she could say to the portals, ¡®it was never about that, it was about the feeling of righteous murder¡¯. Which I can respect. I took my time and saw what the world had to offer. That¡¯s one of the special things about being a thresholder, you get to roll in and experience the very tip top of the obelisk of quality and see what¡¯s worth seeing. You get to go into a bookstore and say, ¡®What¡¯s considered by your people to be the very best book ever written?¡¯ You get to sit down at a table and order the famous dish that everyone knows how to make, the one that¡¯s been perfected by millions of grandmothers and passed down through generations with all kinds of specialized tweaks, the thing that everyone is bored of, and it¡¯s new to you, brand new, so even if there¡¯s no meat, it¡¯s its own kind of experience. Right, so the world was a city, and they were basically everything that Marjut had ever asked for, but she was way too far gone. Watching some of her early worlds, she was always an extremist, even for her starting world, where she¡¯d grown up, but she was an extremist who pointed herself at the extremes, the torture factories and blood geysers. I won¡¯t go on too much about her, but she was crazy. At least she was crazy in an interesting way. Eventually she unleashed a plague, and I didn¡¯t act fast enough to stop her. Oh, I definitely could have, I just didn¡¯t. I thought it would be interesting, novel, exciting. I also thought it would help me steal some stuff. In my second world I had picked up a storage space, and I had been busy filling it. Plus I wanted some time to learn some magic. Marjut had learned a forbidden magic and then killed the man who taught her, but I could watch over her shoulder and learn some too. I¡¯m not a big fan of learning, generally speaking, it takes too much time and is too boring compared to just stealing a trident or eating a dragon¡¯s heart. Yeah, you¡¯re right, I should start at the beginning. Very conventional, but I guess it¡¯s for a reason. No, I tell the truth. Why wouldn¡¯t I? You¡¯re planning on killing me at the first opportunity anyway. Nothing here is going to help you with that. You don¡¯t have the tools to make it happen, though that gun was better than I¡¯d thought it would be. Just listen, I guess, if you want to. I¡¯m in the mood to refine my patter. ~~~~ Most world hoppers ¡ª thresholders ¡ª don¡¯t think much of their starting world, and I¡¯m no exception. There¡¯s a typology that one of the threshies used, which I kind of liked, little axes of figuring out what a world was, at its core. Does it have magic or tech? Is the power held collectively or by a few? Urban or rural? Hostile or welcoming? Insular or open? There¡¯s some overlap there, and I never liked pinning things down as much as he did, but sure, let¡¯s roll with it. My homeworld was smack dab in the middle. Mid-tech, mid-magic, power held by the few, big urban centers with wide rural areas, not particularly hostile or welcoming, not too insular or open. I mean, it¡¯s different for thresholders, isn¡¯t it? A place you grew up is going to feel welcoming and open even if it¡¯s a shit pit for outsiders. But I think that¡¯s more or less it. I¡¯ve been to five worlds, six if you count this one, but maybe we can count the base world a half world, if you¡¯re interested in it. I was born into a big farming family, but shipped off to the city to live with my uncle because they thought I was clever, which I was by the standards of the farm. I got an apprenticeship as an accountant and ended up working with one of the big shipping companies, and if I have to say any more about that, I¡¯m going to die of boredom. I didn¡¯t even get the pleasure of going out on the ships and sailing the seas, I was stuck cataloging what we were importing and exporting, trying to make sure the accounts were paid in full. It was miserable. When I say mid-tech, I mean we had electricity and indoor plumbing but no computers. I never really understood computers all that well, still don¡¯t, so that¡¯s high-tech to me, but someone like Perry probably thinks his own world, Earth, was mid-tech. It¡¯s a bad system, really. When I say mid-magic, I mean we didn¡¯t really have it in our day-to-day life. Magic isn¡¯t magic everywhere, there¡¯s not always a spark, sometimes it¡¯s just a branch of science, which is sort of how it was in my last world, the big city. In my homeworld? Magic was the domain of the legates. They were hugely powerful, kept in check only by each other, usually not more than two or three in a city, but most cities only had one. In our city ¡ª I mean, you don¡¯t care about his name, but it was Algernon, and he was a local god. He could run on water and launch himself into the air by jamming his spear against the ground. He could make a man bow down just by staring at him hard enough. He was fair and just, as far as legates went, which wasn¡¯t really saying all that much, since they were known for their brutality and caprice. I made decent money doing my work, and went to see plays whenever I could. They were an escape from the dull tedium. One time, Algernon was there at the largest theater in the city, sitting at a place of prominence at the front of the audience, watching closely. It was a tragedy, and when it got to its climax, Algernon stood up and said, ¡®no¡¯. He liked the woman who¡¯d been about to kill herself, and preferred that she live, so he said that they had to change it, and these actors, masters of their craft, who¡¯d performed the play hundreds of times before, had to change the ending on the fly to suit Algernon¡¯s whims. When I was eighteen years old, I got word from the farm that Algernon had killed my father and brothers and added my mother and sisters to his harem. My family was known locally for their beauty, which wasn¡¯t considered such a good thing, because being exceptional meant that you might draw the eye of a legate. I was telling this story to someone, just setting the scene like this, and they thought that it was the setup for some kind of revenge fantasy, like I heard the news, broke down, then resolved to do whatever it took to exact my revenge. I found that laughable. Every story I had heard of people going against the legates had them smeared into a fine paste. No, it was just a thing that happened. I understood it, and had accepted since I was young that it might happen to my family. What I really felt was a desperate wish to be in that position someday, to be able to do what I wanted, to take what I wanted, to have the whole world open up for me. Legates came up from the people, usually coming into their power very young, selected by who-knew-what, and when I was old enough, I accepted that the fantasy wasn¡¯t going to happen for me. Knowing that, I tried for the other path, getting wealthy, insulating myself from danger, having the coin to purchase women, getting good enough at the sly social stuff to cozy up to a legate. They needed accountants, after all. They taxed the people of their city to fund their habits, and couldn¡¯t just skate by on making people do things. I wasn¡¯t the only one with that idea though, and I was always at the periphery, trying to hustle, to wedge open doors, to cheat and steal when I could get away with it, to lie my way into social circles that were out of my reach, to spend money to puff myself up. It was pathetic, honestly. I scrubbed my ink-stained fingers until they looked like a dilettante''s. When that portal appeared, I didn¡¯t give it two seconds of thought. The only thing I did was to grab a sack of gold, a ceremonial sword, and a spare change of clothes, all of which was about five minutes of pure motion. That first world, I bumbled through. I think most people do, with their first. It¡¯s like losing your virginity, you¡¯re running on instinct and it gets messy fast, but if you¡¯re lucky, you survive. That was a joke, come on, you can laugh a little. If most worlds are shaped like a plate, or at least a big globe that¡¯s a plate shape when you¡¯re up close to it, then this one was a tall drinking glass, one that was filled with all kinds of vegetation. There weren¡¯t sides to it, I don¡¯t know why people always think that it has sides, it was just thousand mile tall trees supporting all the other stuff. I don¡¯t know how it worked, but there was a bit of float to the wood, enough that you could build a boat to putter around through the air with. Magic, probably. There were fuck-huge leaves and beds of moss, soil collecting in nooks, pitcher plants so big you could swim in them, and all kinds of berries and mushrooms growing all over the place. I had no idea what was good to eat, so I ate sparingly and got the runs, figuring out as I went along. That was a one-way ticket to getting poisoned, which was exactly what happened a week in. I was laying there on a giant leaf I¡¯d climbed down to, lips blue, feeling my organs shut down. I got rescued by a man cloaked in silk. He took a gourd from inside his pouch and poured a sticky white milk into my mouth, and I began to vomit harder than I had ever vomited before, breaking a record I¡¯d set only two days prior. He stayed with me, nursed me back to health, and told me all kinds of things, almost all of which I forgot in my delirium. He was from another world, a traveler like me, and he was very curious about who I was and where I had come from. He had a command over silk, had gained that power in his last world, and could shoot jets of the stuff out to wrap around branches and move himself up and down the jungle. I was envious, but there didn¡¯t seem to be a way to steal the power from him. He carried me, often, which made me sick to my stomach from the sudden jerking motion, but he¡¯d been living in this vertical world for months, and knew his way around. I was new, and needed educating. The place was a paradise to him. He¡¯d been a botanist before hopping worlds, and now he was locomoting up and down the world, seeing the variations in adaptations, adding sketches to his books. He¡¯d made a little home for himself, using a small hollow in one of the trees that had been created by some larger beast, and he had all kinds of shit in there, a little lab where he made medicines and inks, a bed, all kinds of silk clothes that he wore for different occasions and environments, a little garden, and a ¡®dignified¡¯ bathroom. He made clothes of silk for me, outfitted me as well as he could, and then sat me down to talk for what felt like it was going to be my entire life. He really liked to talk. Now, I¡¯m a talker, a schmoozer, a guy who likes his stories, but this guy, he was a boring talker. Loved to hear himself speak, but me, I¡¯m mythologizing, I¡¯m entertaining, I¡¯m getting something from it. With him it was all just words, science that I didn¡¯t understand and didn¡¯t match up with what I knew, because we came from different base worlds. Eventually, he told me about the man he¡¯d killed in the last world. I saw it right away, of course. You kill the other guy, you get a portal. Easy, right? A sensible way of doing things, where one guy comes out on top. A nice little mirror to life, probably how things are in every world when you drill down deep enough. Now you might be thinking that I¡¯m the sort of guy that would slit this kind stranger¡¯s throat in his sleep to get a portal out of there, and possibly get some silk powers in return. Well, that¡¯s because you don¡¯t have the measure of me, not as I am now, not as I was then. I thought about it, sure, but it was actually him that came after me. See, we weren¡¯t alone in the trees, but we were the only humans. There were small colonies of spindly little people with long tails, tribes of maybe a hundred, two hundred at the most, living at all levels. They were maybe four feet tall with pinched faces, not human but human-like. We didn¡¯t understand their language. They had loincloths, spears, and nets, gourds and bowls and crude tools, but not much else. Aside from their size, there wasn¡¯t much reason to think they weren¡¯t just as smart as we were. This guy hated them. Detested them. He would talk about them like they were plague-ridden vermin that didn¡¯t deserve the forest. I didn¡¯t pay him much mind. Like I said, he was the boring kind of talker. Even his seething made me yawn. Anyway, one day he gets it into his head to go fifty miles down the forest in pursuit of a plant with some mystical properties or whatever. It was something he had learned from them, actually, painted on a wall, no words to go with it. He gave me a choice whether to come with him or sit back in the little house, but I couldn¡¯t move around as well without him. I was afraid of falling to my death either way, since there were places where the vegetation got sparse enough you couldn¡¯t count on anything to break your fall before the fall broke you. I went with. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Fifty miles hadn¡¯t seemed like that long when he¡¯d drawn the plan up, but it was fifty vertical miles, and it took us ages. Worse, we quickly got outside the range of the plants and animals we knew all about, and were in uncharted territory as far as food went, since we hadn¡¯t packed enough dried things. It was fucking miserable, but I¡¯ll spare you all the details, because I wasn¡¯t quite as cool then, and if I listed out everything that happened, I¡¯d start to bore myself. Anyway, we found the mystical plant, ate some of its oh-so-wonderful fruit, and gained the ability to see into each other¡¯s pasts. I saw a man who had been fastidious his whole life, a guy who liked to catalog and categorize, stick little labels on things, and present papers at meetings with other fastidious little men who cared about differences in the varieties of nettles or whatever horseshit they¡¯d got into their heads was important. He paid attention to appearances. I had already seen a lot of that in the silks he¡¯d made for himself, but I guess I hadn¡¯t seen just how deep it went. Looking over his shoulder through the whole time he¡¯d been in this forest world, it was shocking how much of it he spent preening in front of the mirror. He shaved every day, which I hadn¡¯t even known about. I thought he was just naturally without hair on his chin, but no, he¡¯d fashioned himself a blade and shaved like it was a tenet of his religion. At the same time I was skimming his past, he was skimming mine. I cannot stress how much he hated what he saw. We came from similar worlds, in some ways, but there were a few big differences. Mine was permissive, and his was not. I had been a drinker, a gambler, a womanizer, and sometimes, a layabout. I had cheated, stolen, and once killed a man I owed some money to in a back alley, though it would have been hard for him to chance upon that when delving my past. But I¡¯m not even really sure that he got that far, because what really offended him was what I¡¯d been getting up to in the world we¡¯d been sharing. See, I¡¯d been fucking the locals. We didn¡¯t speak the same language, but I had never let that stop me in my base world. Women understand when a man is after them even if they don¡¯t share a single word, and I¡¯d had some flings where not more than a sentence passed between us. It¡¯s just not necessary, if you¡¯re both using your bodies to talk. There were four different women I¡¯d been having regularly. I was a giant to their eyes, a mammoth of a man with a ready smile, and they didn¡¯t seem to mind that they were sharing me. I never learned whether their people had husbands or anything like that, but it wouldn¡¯t have been the first time I¡¯d made a man a cuckold. My traveling companion went apoplectic, maybe because he was directly seeing some of these engagements with his own eyes. He didn¡¯t start with his knife out. He started with a tirade, just a stream of words about what a cretin I was, how I had defied god and the natural order ¡ª a point of confusion for me, since my world didn¡¯t have the idea of gods, and every time we¡¯d talked about gods hadn¡¯t really clarified anything. He called the local creatures vermin, rats, squirrels ¡ª do you have those here? It¡¯s one of the things that varies a lot between worlds. Sometimes there are the same words, sometimes not. Words for things he found disgusting, I guess. He used the phrase ¡®rat-like hands¡¯ so many times I thought maybe he had something wrong in his brain. I guess when he said it, I could see the resemblance, the way they had long fingers with tiny sharp nails on the end. It hadn¡¯t bothered me. I let him have it right back. Most of what I said was just graphic descriptions of all the stuff I¡¯d done with those women, and sometimes things I hadn¡¯t done. I was sick of his shit and wanted to offend him as much as I could. If this was the thing that got to him, then I wanted to drive the spear in as deep as I could. I saw something change in his eyes, the decision being made. I went at him, stopping mid-sentence, and when he brought up the knife that never left his side, I was there to catch his wrist. I beat the shit out of him, got cut deep across the arm, and had the upper hand until he started strangling me with the silks that we were both still wearing. He could have killed me, easily, but instead he just choked me out and wrapped me up like he was some kind of demented spider. He gave more rants to me as we stayed there. His argument was that I was fundamentally inhuman, that I deserved to die, that he had been placed here to make me answer for my transgressions, all that kind of thing. While that was happening, one of the women was cutting me free. She¡¯d been following us since the very start, deftly staying out of our way and silently helping us where she could. All that shit I skipped over? If I was telling you the long version, there would be a bunch of places where you¡¯d say ¡®oh, now that makes sense, I thought it was just blind luck twenty times in a row¡¯. It was her, unknown to us. Once I was out of the silks, I murdered him, drove that knife of his straight into his chest, making it my knife. And you know what? No portal. I was left scratching my head and wondering what the fuck I was going to do. He had been my main way of getting around, as unpleasant as I¡¯d found that. Our house was fifty miles straight up, which might as well have been on the moon so far as I was concerned. We had a small boat made of the floating wood, but it was hell to move. I took what I could from the body, then dumped it. The woman chittered at me, had some of the same fruit, looked at my past for what felt like a long time, then left without so much as a courtesy lay or a bite of food from her pouch. Either she saw something she didn¡¯t like in my past, or she had been more interested in the fruit the whole time. Not three days later, a man in armor shows up. He¡¯s got portals, but little teal-rimmed ones that take him over distances of a few yards, not world hopping ones. I lured him close to me then held on tight, counting myself lucky that he only had armor and not a sword. With me on him, he couldn¡¯t really use the portals for much but flinging us through the air. I grappled him, then pinned him, and bashed his head against the wood until his face was mush inside his helmet. I never so much as got his name. The portal opened up, I was on the next world. ~~~~ You know, other world hoppers think that¡¯s hilarious when I tell them. This whole thing with the silk guy, months of my life, and maybe we were meant to be allies the whole time. Or they were meant to be allies against me, though from what I know, that wouldn¡¯t make all that much sense. I was really thinking to myself, ¡®you know what, I could get behind this, going from world to world, getting magic powers, fighting guys¡¯. I ended up in a toxic wasteland, and nearly died. There were heavy winds and spores in the air, lightning strikes and more exotic dangers. A pulsing green rock stripped my skin off a layer at a time until I ran from it. I saw a huge, many-limbed beast on the horizon and ran from that too. I had only a single skill, which was reading a person¡¯s past, and let me tell you, this was exactly the kind of situation where that wouldn¡¯t do a damn bit of good. Eventually I found a thick door set in the side of a hill, and I banged on it twice before realizing there was no lock. I found myself in a warehouse, protected from the dangers outside. I¡¯d been in a lot of warehouses in my time, but this one was by far the most disorganized. The only reason I was thinking it was a warehouse was that things were bundled up tight for transport. If not for that, it might have been someone¡¯s barn. The walls were made of burnished earth, packed tight, the same stuff I¡¯d been walking over. There weren¡¯t support beams or anything like them, which was at first worrying, and then impressive. Small polished rocks gave off light, and were studded in at various points. I was happy that there were people, honestly, because as much as I¡¯d enjoyed the company of the squirrel people, they weren¡¯t really what I had hoped for when I found out that I¡¯d be moving from world to world. I was wrong though, there weren¡¯t people, there was a person, just one, who I¡¯d end up spending almost two weeks with. The warehouse was hers, and the tunnels leading deeper into the earth led me to her home and workshop. She was beautiful, with stunning pink hair and a dress that made her look like a shiny beetle. I was surprised that she was human, but I¡¯d later learn that she wasn¡¯t quite human, just a close cousin or something like that. She was absolutely adorned from head to toe in accessories, five earrings on every ear, six necklaces overlapping each other, bangles on her wrists and a cluster of rings on her fingers. She had a small, slightly pouty mouth, chubby cheeks, and small teeth. Vizentia, her name was, though she was slow to give it. I had known it already, of course, because from the first moment I looked at her, I was looking through her past. Vizentia offered me tea, and I sat down with her. She was cautious of me in my torn silks, but with every moment that passed, I was learning more about her. The way she lived, dug down in a hole, all alone, with all sorts of riches, was how all her people lived. They were tinkers and craftsmen, and that was how she spent the vast majority of her very very long life. There were other holes like hers, with other women like her, but they didn¡¯t speak with one another, and there were no social visits. Young men would come from across the wastes, trying to find a hole like hers, and if she accepted them, she would mate with them, then kill them. They didn¡¯t seem to know that was the fate that awaited them. Like I said, they weren¡¯t human. For humans, it wouldn¡¯t make sense, and I¡¯m not even sure that it made sense for them, but I never looked too far into it. That hole had been her entire life since she¡¯d crawled from another hole very much like it with only the bare minimum to survive. She¡¯d run far away, dug and tunneled, then established herself, growing her own food, digging her own deep well to get at the pure water far below her home, and then she set to specialization. It was all incredibly strange, but as I was watching her past and our present, I realized one thing: she wanted me. To her, I looked a bit like the other men that had come to her hole, young and bedraggled. They had crossed the wastes with almost nothing, sent forward by their mothers in this strange, brutal way. Most of them died, but a few made it past all the dangers and the unknown, unmapped landscape. You had to be special to make it to one of those holes, which the women found attractive. Doing it healthy and uninjured made you more attractive, and for all the wear I¡¯d suffered, I looked like a prime choice. We had our tea, which I guess was her idea of foreplay, then fucked like animals. I figured I had about a week before she tried to kill me. That was how it had been for the others. I enjoyed the food she cooked for me, and got drunk on the wine she¡¯d been brewing, and we fucked some more, up against every surface. They only got laid once every few decades, these witches of the wastes, and made the most of it, filling their bellies with seed to have a clutch of babies, eggs laid in piles. I learned a lot about them and their society, such as it was. That giant creature with a dozen limbs I had seen out in the wastes, that was something of a delivery man, a symbiotic species that moved from hole to hole, or maybe what a man sometimes turned into under certain conditions. All the holes had their warehouse set there at the entrance for the beasts, who would reach in with incredibly long limbs, plucking up whatever they wanted, leaving behind something of greater value from the stores they held on their backs. I¡¯d get to see it later on. The witches didn¡¯t like or trust the delivery men, but it was the only way to get certain things, and the only way to send word across the wastes. She had no idea who she was dealing with. I let her believe I was one of the poor, naive saps who¡¯d been cast out to cross the wastes, if an exceptional specimen by their standards. When she tried to kill me, I was ready for it. She was no match for me. I guess the men never saw it coming, but I was prepared, and it didn¡¯t take much to subdue her and grab the knife from her clutches. I choked her out and tied her up, then tried to decide what to do with myself. It was a world with two magics, alchemy and crafting, neither of which were accessible to me. Each of the witches had their own speciality, usually decided by what the delivery men would take and leave, but they all dabbled in a bit of everything. Vizentia had specialized in magical rings, which she¡¯d been making for the last five hundred years. Her hole was filled with baubles and tools from the other witches. I never got the hang of the alchemy stuff, and it might have been barred from men in general for all I knew, or reserved for their own version of human, but I could direct Vizentia to use it. There were cycles to the alchemy, ways to turn things into other things, sometimes getting a bit more in the process. Mud got turned to stone, which got turned to crystal, which gave the light to grow the plants, whose fibers were turned into water to keep the plants going and some extra for drinking, and so on and so forth, a complex balance that meant they could set to the work of crafting things. She made everything she needed with these huge cycles, one thing always leading to three or four others. There were huge ledgers describing the transformations and their sequences, and a room full of clay urns to hold things in. I stole everything that wasn¡¯t nailed down, and I did it by virtue of a bauble that let me store things away elsewhere. I tried to get her to make me a weapon, which she had none of, and she tried to make a cursed thing that would have killed me if I weren¡¯t crafty. Once that happened, I beheaded her and plotted my next move. In the end, I waited for the delivery man to come. I had clothes that would help me to survive the wastes, but the delivery man would lumber along and show me the way to the next hole, which was what I was really after. I was trying to stock up on what I could, food that would keep and skins full of water, and I¡¯d have loved a bauble that could keep a place for me to live within it. The delivery man reached into the warehouse with his absurdly long arms, which seemed to keep unfolding. They reached over all the packages and boxes and racks of goods, feeling with long fingertips touching everything, because he couldn¡¯t see, you know? It took him days, longer than I had thought, since he seemed to want to catalog everything to his own satisfaction before doing any of the taking or leaving. When he was done, having taken a few things and left a few others, the arms retracted, and I followed after them. I named my companion Aldous, after a kid I knew growing up, big, tall, but a bit dim. Aldous was a thinking creature, since I¡¯d seen the way he was feeling up the goods and making his selections, but he never spoke, and didn¡¯t seem to have a mouth. I tried to see his past, and it didn¡¯t work, just as it didn¡¯t work on animals. He¡¯d been intimidating when I¡¯d first seen one of his kind on the horizon with the toxic wastes all around me, but when we traveled together, I got a sense of just how gentle he was. I guess I thought of us as two friends, moving down the road together, but I knew in my heart that wasn¡¯t true. The first hole he went to, I raced ahead of him. I did as I¡¯d done with Vizentia, and it was easier, because I knew what was expected of me and didn¡¯t have to comb through this new one¡¯s past while also trying to have the customary tea. This one was a specialist in potions, and I gathered as many as I could from her, lining the shelves of my internal space. After the seduction, before she could murder me, I tied her up and made her explain all of the potions to me, then had her make a few batches of what I most wanted. If I hadn¡¯t had the past to go off of, she might have had an easier time killing me, but if I was patient I could find all the times she¡¯d ever made potions before. I left without killing her, because there was really no reason to put her down. The witches never left their holes, and the landscape outside was inhospitable, virtually devoid of life except for the delivery men. I guess my plan had been to just keep up with that, going from hole to hole, fucking the witches and then stealing whatever I could. But that third hole, that was where I met Chrissy, the other threshie, and we took an instant dislike to each other. Chrissy hated pretty much everything about that world. She hated the witches, the delivery men, the holes, the wastes, and most of all, what was happening with the kids. ¡°It¡¯s unfair!¡± she would shout. ¡°It¡¯s unjust!¡± I would shrug and say ¡®sure¡¯. ¡°We have to do something about it!¡± she¡¯d say. She had this kind of nasal whine to her, especially when she got worked up, and she was worked up a lot. You know, back then, I might have gone along with her if she¡¯d have had any way of actually accomplishing anything. Not because I thought it was necessary or good or whatever, but because it seemed like a bit of a lark. I¡¯d never been a crusader, but why not? Problem was, she was just bouncing from place to place, trying to find a foothold, and it was boring before I ever even saw it in action. When I met her, she was arguing with the witch in that third hole, and doing it at gunpoint. It was actually my first time seeing a gun, if you can believe that. My world didn¡¯t have them, and the endless vertical jungle didn¡¯t either, so I was a bit confused by it. I talked with Chrissy, and saw into her past. This was her second world, not counting her base world. In her first, she¡¯d been a sidekick to a threshie with ten wins under his belt. He¡¯d kitted her out and they went flying across the stars together, fighting a guy whose plan was genocide of some kind or another. She¡¯d fallen in love with her mentor, they had sex on a starry moonlit night, and then he¡¯d gotten his head blown off. She hadn¡¯t even really done anything in that final fight, but it had been how a battle happens sometimes, two people clashing and both dying because they each had more blades than armor. Anyway, she was fucking annoying, and I took up a fight against her mostly for the laughs. At first, it was just me needling her, telling her that she was fighting against a whole society of witches that didn¡¯t even like each other. They hadn¡¯t decided that this was how it was going to be, it was instinct for them, and even if she could enlighten a single one of them, did she think that was going to do anything? Honestly I didn¡¯t believe half of what I was saying, but it was just fun to see her squirm. And she didn¡¯t know that I knew about her last world, so I¡¯d make all these references to, I don¡¯t know, people getting their heads blown off or whatever. Honestly, it was good I ran into her early on, because she¡¯d been read in by her mentor. When we had some time apart, I was able to scan back and find the conversation where he¡¯d explained everything to her. It helped me understand a little better: I was a world hopper, and I was special because of it, and if I could keep winning, which I was confident I could, I would swell up with power. I played around with her a little bit before things came to a head. We went from hole to hole, together because it was what I wanted rather than because she enjoyed my company. I undermined her with the witches, and slept with most of them, which Chrissy hated. She kept asking me about the bastards I was presumably creating, and I told her that I¡¯d always thought that was the mother¡¯s issue to deal with. Here, the witches killed the fathers not long after insemination, so what was the problem? But I¡¯d left plenty of bastards behind in my base world, and I expect I¡¯ll leave a few behind here when it comes time to crush Perry. We had two fights, Chrissy and I, if I¡¯m just counting the ones that were fought with fists and weapons. There were lots of fights with just words, because I liked to take the piss out of her, but it wasn¡¯t until the end that it came to blows. One of the fights was in the hole of an ancient witch ¡ª and the witches were ancient as a rule, so you have to understand that this one was an absolute crone, several millennia old, her hole a sprawling thing. Chrissy had uncovered a bit of history, evidence of some ancient Grand Spell, which was apparently a recurring theme across the worlds. She wanted to undo it, or discover its nature, and asked for my help in looking into the crone¡¯s deep past, since Chrissy had figured out I had some kind of ability. I looked, and then refused to tell her, and that finally set her off down the path of violence. This was the largest of the holes, and while they¡¯d all been packed with knick-knacks and fripperies, this one was exceptional. Shelves coated every wall, the doodads piled deep, strange instruments and ingredients hanging from the ceiling. We wrecked the place, absolutely destroyed it, throwing each other up against these elaborate displays. Chrissy tried to shoot me, which really pissed me off, and I tried to stab her with a spear, which she wasn¡¯t too much of a fan of. We raged our way through the many different rooms, throwing things at each other, cursing, screaming, all while the crone howled at us to stop. The fight after that was in the wastes, spores clinging to us, both of us coughing. That first fight, we were like cats ¡ª I guess you don¡¯t have cats, but they¡¯re small, furry critters that explode into barely contained rage. The second, we were more like duelists, seeking to end things. I got the better of her in the end, and I have to thank Aldous, the delivery man for that. He had more of a brain than I thought, and more affection for me and our time together than I could ever have expected. Without him, I might have died, because she¡¯d shot me in the chest and I was dripping blood all over the wasteland. Aldous used his many long arms to pull her apart, depriving her of her arm, and I used the gun she¡¯d dropped to blast her in her head. It was poetic, I thought, given how her mentor had bit it. I healed up as best I could, my eyes never leaving the portal. I¡¯d had enough of that world and its witches. I knew, by then, that I would never stop taking the portals. It was just a matter of what I would find on the other end. Unfortunately, what I found was a prison. Chapter 82 - The Five-and-a-Half Worlds of Jeff, pt 2 The world I was from, they didn¡¯t really have prisons. They had jails, and I had ended up in those a time or two, usually because I was drunk. A jail is a place you stay for a night, maybe a week if you¡¯re unlucky. It¡¯s a place to hold someone while you figure out what to do with them. So we had plenty of jails. I don¡¯t know what kind of world with cities doesn¡¯t have a place to put people who need to cool off or sober up. And we had madhouses too, places to put people too crazy to function. Orphanages as well, which are sort of like prisons for children. Here, you¡¯ve got a brig, but it¡¯s not anyone¡¯s permanent home, not on the scale of years. I kind of figure that you need some specific conditions for a prison, some combination of compassion and indifference, a society where they think the guillotine is beyond the pale but where they¡¯re fine with sticking a guy in a cell for three decades. That, or it¡¯s slavery with a veneer. Slavery is ¡­ shit, Perry didn¡¯t explain that to you? I guess it wouldn¡¯t be that relevant. It¡¯s when one person owns another, usually for their labor, but sometimes for other things. Anyway, this was a prison planet, which is different from a prison world, but for all intents and purposes, all I saw of these people was this one single place, a giant, sprawling prison. And make no mistake about it, we were slaves in all but name, forced to do hard labor that I¡¯m pretty sure they could have automated, because they were people like you, high-tech, traveling through space. At least, that¡¯s what I thought at the start of it. I was attacked pretty much right away, before I had any idea what was going on. She was an absolute hellcat, small and red-haired, wearing a dark green uniform, wielding flames in one hand and a club in the other, pink streaks flowing behind her like ribbons of light. I beat the shit out of her. I got burned in the process, but I broke part of her face. The only thing I can say in Petra¡¯s defense is that she was probably just as surprised by the portal showing up as I was. It wasn¡¯t like Perry, who followed a signal, it was a portal that appeared right in the middle of a public place that she just happened to be in. Attacking me was a panic move on her part, a split-second ¡®holy shit how do I deal with this¡¯ type of situation. I guess she had figured that it was best to catch me completely flat-footed. The thing was, she could have done that at any time, because when I came through, I had no idea what the fuck was going on. All I saw were some people in gray uniforms, and some other people in dark green uniforms, and finally, a third type of uniform on a guy that slipped down out of the air and kept me from stabbing Petra right in her stomach with my sharpest spear. He was all in blue, armored. Maybe she was worried about me getting processed out, or not being able to manipulate the situation, or something like that, but the point was, she attacked first, as fast and as hard as she could. I tried to fight the giant angry guy who¡¯d saved her, and lost, badly. When I tried to stab him he grabbed the spear like I had handed it to him. Once he¡¯d snapped it over his knee, he proceeded to strip off every single piece of armor, clothing, and equipment I had on me. I fought back, and he handled me like a misbehaving child. He was the only one wearing blue, Blue Boy, not his name, but the name for his kind, the Blue Boys, of which PU2B had only a single one. Anyway, that whole first day could have been titled, ¡®Petra¡¯s fuck up¡¯, but the shame of it was, she managed to screw me pretty hard in the midst of her stupid, ill-fated attack. We were on a prison world, and she was one of the guards, and I had beat the shit out of her while carrying a huge amount of contraband. The flames coming from her hands and the pink trails, I don¡¯t know how those escaped notice, or how she explained it away, but I guess whatever she said was easier to understand than the truth. The big guy frog-marched me into one of the buildings while everyone looked on. Petra was lifted up by some of the people with the dark green uniforms. I¡¯d find out later that they were guards, like her. I had a choice, which was whose past to look into, and I looked into the big guy¡¯s, since he was stronger than me and had put up much more of a fight than she had. What I saw scared the shit out of me, and seemed more monstrous than anything that had gone on with the witches. He spent about ninety percent of his time in a tank filled with some thick fluid, and got called out only to deal with breaking up fights or chasing down escapees. Once that was done, he¡¯d return to his tank, submerged and still. The uniform came off only for monthly checks from his doctor, and then he was back in the tank, breathing a thin fluid. Pushing back further into the past, I could see that he¡¯d been built that way, shaped and molded even as a small boy before being exposed to all kinds of shit. He had started human, and had become something else. So the world was like your own, high-tech, low-magic, and the magic was flavored like tech, if that makes sense to you. It does to me. Personally, I was baffled by everything I was seeing. The guards had these screens that would light up and show them words and images, each one capable of capturing a man¡¯s image or displaying a book or even showing a play that had happened weeks ago. I was so astounded that I almost didn¡¯t realize they were planning to ruin my week. In a sane world, showing up in the middle of a prison wouldn¡¯t mean that you were imprisoned. Even attacking a guard should mean that I got, I don¡¯t know, a trial or something. The legates of my base world were assholes who were in charge of everything, and you didn¡¯t want to attract their attention, because they definitely didn¡¯t owe you a trial, but for most things, there were judges and guards and ways of handling your day-to-day petty mugging, assault, and adultery. Unfortunately for me, I had ¡®attacked¡¯ a crafty little bitch who had access to all their systems and a fair number of favors to call in. While it took them some time to ¡®find¡¯ me in their system, eventually they did. Turns out I had been through all the normal booking processes during the last transport in, two weeks prior. That was a hell of a surprise to me, but I knew how corrupt guards did things. All the technical details were lost on me, but the central thrust of it, that Petra had told lies, dealt bribes, and just generally fucked me, that was clear. I was shackled, beaten, put in a new gray uniform, and marched under heavy guard to have a meeting with the viswarden. He was the first guy I had seen without a uniform, and I was shackled to a chair in his office. You need to be kind of a bastard to have a place to shackle people in your office. I got a little speech about the importance of fitting in, which was fucking ridiculous given the circumstances. I tried to explain myself to him, and he threatened to have me sent to the madhouse, so I shut my mouth. I¡¯d have attacked him, but I was worried about the Blue Boy coming back and smashing my brains in. All of my shit that had been stripped off me was confiscated, and I don¡¯t know exactly what happened to it, but I never saw it again. Seemed to me like the nature of it would raise alarm bells, but maybe Petra monkeyed with their systems more than I¡¯d thought. I got thrown in a cell with a bed, a toilet, a single light bulb that looked nothing like the ones back home, and absolutely nothing to do. They told me it would be a week. There was nothing to do, that is, but look at the viswarden¡¯s past. I learned basically everything I needed to about the world. There were three hundred million people imprisoned on the planet, and most of them hadn¡¯t come as hardened criminals. Some were debtors, others had done victimless crimes, and a few were there for their personal views on the interstellar republic that everyone was supposed to be a part of. There were people of a particular ethnicity, kinment, that had been rounded up under the pretense of cracking down on drug use, and they were a worry for the viswardens, because they were starting to organize. It was an insane number of people to be placed in more or less indefinite detention. It was insane even when put in terms of the total population. One in every two hundred of the interstellar population were in prison! It would be like if the Natrix had fifty people locked away. But the sheer numbers meant that we had to be split into groups, and most of this story relates to Penitentiary Unit 2B, which was headed by the viswarden. Outside the prison infrastructure, which was all spread out across the planet, it was more or less tropical. The planet orbited a blue star, and pretty far from it. Most of the rocks were white, and there was lots of sand, with plenty of beaches, though the prisoners were never allowed to go to them. The plants were all imports, fast-growing species that had spread out across the place as much as they could, eating more and more territory with every year. I saw more of it than the average prisoner, but there were high walls, and our attention was necessarily focused inward. All the PUs put their prisoners to work somehow, and this particular one was situated right next to a mine that was meant to extract valuable metals from the ground. It wasn¡¯t the sort of work I was trained in, but then, it wasn¡¯t the sort of work that most prisoners were trained in. Given that they had robots, I wondered why they were using people at all. It took a surprising amount of time to see the answer in the warden¡¯s past, given how central it was to the operation of the planet and PU2B. The answer was that there were some rocks in the ground that needed humans to mine them. They didn¡¯t need humans because they were delicate or complicated, they needed humans because humans ¡ª some of them, anyway ¡ª responded to the rocks. The machines couldn¡¯t tell them from the normal kind of rocks, and had trouble with processing them, and those rocks were what allowed for things like Blue Boy and interstellar travel. I was pretty sure that this is what Petra had been chasing, since if she was a threshie, she sure as hell must have done a lot of work to fake her way into being a prison guard. She was new to the prison, having come in from off-planet only two months prior. The warden had two interviews with her, one before she was hired and the other after she had arrived on the planet, but hadn¡¯t interacted with her much. I turned my attention to the prison and how it functioned. That week in a cell, blocked off from anyone, wasn¡¯t spent in vain. I could also step into my little shelf for a respite from the unblinking light and cold gray walls, but mostly I was rooting around in the warden¡¯s past, sometimes for information, other times to watch plays or movies, or to see him with women. Yeah, I still had the bauble. No, I won¡¯t tell you how. It¡¯s a strategic advantage thing, you understand. I¡¯m telling you everything, just not everything. When I came out, I came out with a plan. That plan was mostly to avoid Petra and do my own thing, and I guess she had the same idea, since I didn¡¯t see her for another three weeks after that. I was there for the rocks, hoping to get some power out of them, and my guess was she had the same idea, just long before me and from a position of power. I got myself put on mining duty right away and ingratiated myself with one of the local gangs. That wasn¡¯t hard to do given that I had access to the warden¡¯s past. I could point out the snitches, for one thing, and I had intel on all of the guards, enough to make some of them bend a bit. Mostly, mining duty was a chance to get up close and personal with the rocks and steal a few with the bauble, not that it ever did me much good. Everyone was a little bit sensitive to the rocks, but some more than others. Testing was a part of intake, and apparently the fake profile that Petra had set up for me had me as the worst of the worst, which meant that I was supposed to be support for everyone else. Well, me being me, it turned out that I was at the upper end of the spectrum, and once I made a demonstration to my shift supervisor, I was moved to other work in one of the big factories. Turned out that was exactly where I wanted to be. Once the rocks were up out of the ground, they needed to be purified for use, and that was the work of more prisoners. Under the right conditions, someone with the right sensitivity could make the little grains of crushed material react differently, the stuff they wanted being diverted in a stream or shaken to float into a vent. You held your hand out over the slurry and thought some thoughts. It was hell, basically, trying to think at the rocks, and because we were prisoners, there was a lot of slacking going on, even if there were productivity goals that would get us chits that would get us better food or comfy beds. Everyone hated the chits. You could get shivved for going after them too hard or pretending that they were anything other than a tool of the oppressor. There were two reasons I had wanted to be transferred to the factory: first, it was the closest that I would get to the refined stuff, and second, it was home to the kinment. That ethnic group that there was a crackdown on? Yeah, that was them. They had a higher sensitivity to the rocks, I guess, so there were a lot of them in the factory, and I had seen through the warden¡¯s past, so I had exactly the right inside scoop to ply their leader with. That, and I could smuggle like no one¡¯s business and pass every kind of check they cared to make, cheeks spread wide. The refined rocks were worth ¡ª I don¡¯t know, what do you have here, gold? Alright, fine, it was worth more than a fusion reactor. Nah, that doesn¡¯t work. Anyway, it was valuable, so valuable that once the process was over, these little vials of the things were pretty much immediately put under lock and key. It could make something like Blue Boy, so the prisoners couldn¡¯t have it, right? We stole some, naturally. It was easy enough with my powers, especially once I began combing through the pasts of the guards. It was a combination of knowing their security protocols, their passwords, and having a healthy dose of blackmail. Let me tell you, you don¡¯t wind up as a guard on a prison planet because you have a spotless record of being a morally upstanding citizen. I had thought that the kinment would be selling some of it away, but they surprised me by having a secret little lab built out below one of the rooms. It must have taken them a hell of a lot of work, all of which could have been undone with just a single close inspection from the wrong guard, but they¡¯d been stealing and planning for decades. They wanted someone who could beat Blue Boy, and while I wasn¡¯t one of their kind, I was a good candidate for a number of reasons, and I had thrown myself behind their cause with enough weight that they trusted me. What they did nearly killed me, and I got dumped in the exercise yard to die, away from the place they¡¯d been using. I was sent to the medical ward of PU2B, then when they couldn¡¯t do anything for me, or maybe because I had some of the rocks in my veins, I was shuttled off far, far away to almost the other side of the planet, where there was a larger medical facility. It was a little city, in fact, one where lots of guards had their families, and also the home of some of the scientific research and materials processing that didn¡¯t use prison labor. I was stabilized, then sent from the hospital down into a research wing that I¡¯m pretty sure was violating all kinds of interstellar laws. Maybe there was some legal sanction, I never really found out, but at any rate it was hush-hush. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. The doctors and scientists were fascinated by the backyard injection that had been done to me. They were excited by it, but the words they used were in the vein of ¡®botched¡¯ and ¡®janky¡¯. I was handcuffed to a stretcher that was bolted to the floor, and besides that, there was a robot arm with a gun pointed directly at me. It was that kind of hospital. Well, long story short, they did their own experiments on me. They were thrilled that I had lived through what was done to me. The purified rocks had bound to me, and there was talk that I might be the key to getting more Blue Boys without the atrocious rejection rate. They tried different injections, some of which they thought had a good chance of killing me, and I endured it as best I could until I finally felt something change inside me. I broke the handcuffs and disappeared into my space before the gun could shoot me. I stayed in there for a week and tried to treat it like I had treated being confined the last time. I had a scientist¡¯s past to look through this time, and I mapped out the layout of the underground research facility. I got so I could understand their defenses, their patrols, what weapons they¡¯d use against me, how the keycards worked, where I¡¯d run straight into problems. I trained as much as I could, drank some water I had stored, realized that I really should have packed the place with much more food, watched some movies over the shoulder of this scientist, tried not to go mad, and planned what I was going to do once things had died down and I was ready to make my assault. I took special note of where they kept their test serums, the ones that could kill you or make you incredibly powerful. They depended on having some sensitivity to the rocks, to get them to bind, and worked best if you had a lot of training with moving the rocks around. I had people in mind for those serums. I kept peeping out, looking to see whether they were going to keep the room sealed off forever after my escape or if they were going to reuse it. It took time, but eventually they sent someone in to clean so it could be used by the next patient, and that was my moment. I was strong, though not as strong as I am now. I wasn¡¯t as ripped, but I could fly and punch, and sense where people were. I wasn¡¯t as strong as a Blue Boy, which was the main reason I needed to blast through the facility as quickly as I possibly could. They had five of the guys, and that¡¯s not counting all the ones peppered throughout the city. I blasted out like a comet, hollering at the top of my lungs, and I screamed across the planet¡¯s mostly empty surface with half a dozen Blue Boys on my tail before I came to the southern ocean. I took a deep breath and smashed down into the water, diving as deep as I could. See, the Blue Boys weren¡¯t really people, they had been stripped down and programmed, more robot than person, and while there was a lot they were trained for, underwater pursuit didn¡¯t come naturally to them. It was a known issue, one that wasn¡¯t supposed to be known to me. I made it five miles underwater before needing to surface for air, because this was back when I needed to breathe. The Blue Boys were nowhere in sight, and I was free ¡ª except that I was still on a prison planet. I went back to PU2B, mostly because I figured that Petra was still there, but also because I had a fistful of serum that had some ready and willing hosts. I landed in one of the camera blind spots, called over a friend, and began mass distribution. When I say a fistful, what I mean is a full cabinet of them, almost two hundred in total, not enough for an army, but enough for a local takeover. About a tenth of them died in the process, which was a better result than we¡¯d all been expecting. Then, we started smashing the place up. Long term, I guess, the kinment wanted to steal a spaceship and get off the planet, then go hide somewhere they had friends and make a stand against the interstellar empire for perceived wrongs. I was more focused on the short-term. Together, three of us killed the Blue Boy when he showed up, then we went through and began murdering all the guards. All this after the communications tower had been taken down, obviously. Eventually Petra showed up. She had gathered some powers of her own. I targeted her past right away, then ignored that and gave her a gut punch. The flames were still a problem, but they were bothering me less than the first time, more sunburn than charred flesh. I guess you don¡¯t get sunburns here either, but you get the idea. She tried to give a big speech to us about the need for order and a control of base impulses, which I thought was pretty rich coming from someone who¡¯d faked her way onto the planet. I gave a good speech back to her, one pointing out her hypocrisy and standing up for the kinment and roasting the whole stupid interstellar society and all its arrogance. I wasn¡¯t mad about being held down in the medical research facility, I understood it, it¡¯s exactly what the legates would have done if there was something to gain from it. Still, it was the first time I¡¯d been able to give a big rousing speech like in one of the plays I¡¯d loved so much. I got lots of cheers, but I had also gifted a lot of the audience with the tools of their liberation. They¡¯d have cheered at anything I said. It was great. I was fighting with weapons pulled from the shelf, but these weren¡¯t things like swords and spears anymore, they were guns and stun batons. She was less fragile than she¡¯d been a month ago though, and gave me a real fight, partly because she fought with the manic energy of a trapped rat. She briefly went five on one, which was impressive, especially given that one of those five was me. Eventually, it became an aerial battle, which none of us had any real experience with. Getting punched in the air hurts a lot less, since you get pushed back. She was on her last legs when the Blue Boys began to show up. They had been sent in from every other PU on the planet, and the escape attempt was pretty quickly thwarted. One of Petra¡¯s eyes was big and puffy, she was slightly dazed, and her teeth were covered in blood, but she had a smile on her face, because she thought that she had won. I moved fast and grabbed her, flying us at speed down into the mine, through tunnels that I had gotten to know backward and forward. We fought as we flew, but I had more reserves than she did, and I kept forcing her deeper, pounding her into the walls as we went. The last phase of the fight happened in one of the large open rooms, just the two of us while the superpowered prison riot was still going on upstairs. She had actual combat powers from the two worlds she¡¯d been to, and I had utility, nothing much more, but I think I got a bit more juice from the serums and experiments. Plus I was just better than her. The pink streaks she could spit out behind her were almost my undoing. They were like jellyfish stings, sharp and painful, scoring deep wounds across my chest, and I was flagging toward the end. Eventually though, I got her, not because I was stronger, but because I had come better prepared: I flooded the place with gas and slipped on a gas mask from my shelf. She had no response to that except to try to run, but I grabbed her, held her there, and beat the shit out of her. My boot was pressed against her skull when the portal opened up. She was flopping around like a fish out of water, weak and gasping for air. I put her out of her misery, and her skull broke like a dry leaf in late autumn. I¡¯ve got no clue what the results of the prison riot were. I hope they flew up off the planet and then to somewhere safe. It would be a better end for them than getting put down like dogs. But I don¡¯t know if there¡¯s cause for optimism. ~~~~ We¡¯re all out of order, and I¡¯ve already said as much as there is to say about the world with all the vegetarians, but the one before that and after the prison world wasn¡¯t really that much to write home about. If you¡¯re interested, I can tell you, but while it was special in its own way, it was the place where I began to understand there would be some repetition to the worlds, a sameness that came with all of them sharing something in common. Your planet has a bunch of mountains, terrain that¡¯s hard to move around, rivers and oceans and all kinds of things. The planet I found myself on? It was smooth, hardly any hills to speak of, nothing but neck-deep ocean, except I don¡¯t think it¡¯s really an ocean if it¡¯s that shallow. The people there were fish, more or less, or maybe frogs, with slick skin and webs between their fingers and toes. They couldn¡¯t spend more than a few minutes up out of the water, but their gills were in their necks, so most of the time they kept their heads sticking out so they could look around. They were primitive in a lot of ways, but pretty advanced in others. Without the water holding them back, maybe they would have been spacefarers too. They had a lot of architecture, some of it underwater in holes that they¡¯d dug, and mostly blocked off for me, but some of it above the water, huge cathedrals that had been built by people whose every material was waterlogged and who couldn¡¯t be up for more than five minutes or so. They loved me from the very start, because I was different and special, nothing like they¡¯d ever seen before. They gave me gifts and built me a house above the water, and I showed off for them. The first time they saw me glow golden and fly up into the air, there were shouts of joy. It¡¯s the kind of thing that sticks with you, except it¡¯s also the kind of thing that most people will never get to experience in their lives. So I said that the world was incredibly flat, and I meant that, but for these people, something being up out of the water meant that it was off limits to them. There was an island a few miles wide whose center they had never been to, and after a week of plying me with food, wine, and women, they asked whether I could go sate their curiosity. I suppose you want to know about the women, who I¡¯ve described as fish or frogs, but ¡ª ah, fine, later then, but the short version is that I¡¯d gone the whole last world with only a handful of encounters with the fairer sex, and as inhuman as the frog-fish-women were, it didn¡¯t matter much to me. My trip onto the island was eventful: I found a dragon coiled up there. I don¡¯t know if you¡¯ve ever fought a dragon, but they fight like demons. I suspect you¡¯ve never fought a demon either. Me, I¡¯m still waiting on a demon fight, maybe it¡¯ll happen in the next world. The dragon was a huge thing, big enough to swallow me whole, and after slashing me across the stomach, I decided that it was better to be down its gullet than chomped in half by its huge teeth. I don¡¯t know quite what the dragon had been eating, if it hadn¡¯t been slumbering for a few centuries, but it wasn¡¯t prepared for me. It was trying to crush me in its throat, muscles contracting to try to crush my bones, but while that might have worked on a serpent, a fish, or one of the people who lived not more than a few miles away, for me it was just unpleasant. I sliced it up from the inside, and my knives had soon cut valleys that were drowning me in blood. The dragon tried to hack me up, but I was dug in tight, and used the contractions of its throat to drive blades in deeper. I was half dead when it stopped moving, and I was barely able to make my way out. I flew, limply, back to the fish people, clouding their water with blood, and when I told them that I had encountered a dragon, they told me to go right back and eat its heart to gain its power. It wasn¡¯t something that I much wanted to do, but they were in awe of me, and part of being a threshie is doing the dumb shit the locals tell you to do, just in case it¡¯s sensible. It took me the better part of a day to cut through the dragon and actually find its heart. It was a tiny thing, no larger than a sparrow¡¯s ¡ª a sparrow is a tiny bird, about yea big ¡ª and I swallowed it in a single bite. Best decision I ever made. I spent the next month bulking up, which was easier than it had any right to be. It felt like for every pound of fish I ate, I put on two pounds of muscle, and if I had been tough before, I was practically invincible after. You¡¯ve seen, you know. Well, I did the obvious thing and flew high into the sky, looking for other ¡®islands¡¯, which were only islands in the sense that the ground was maybe six feet higher than in the ¡®ocean¡¯. I found a few of them, but there were no dragons on them, only the remains of dragons, bleached white bones and once, a corpse that had been mummified by the sun. It wasn¡¯t clear what had killed the dragons, but I assumed they¡¯d been killed for their hearts. The one I¡¯d eaten had replaced my own and grown in size to fill the cavity. I met with other groups, who had their own lands and customs, and were similarly confined to the shallow water. Some had larger cities, as much as they could without being able to go truly vertical, and they had their own cultures. A few had pumps to get water higher, and once I went to a theater that had flowing water through six levels, giving a good view of the watery stage. It was there I learned to perform, to put on a show of my might and powers, the dragon-hearted alien from another planet. It¡¯s come in handy a few times, and I¡¯ll show your people some, same as Perry has done. Everyone loves a strongman. I met the other threshie not long after doing my tour of the islands. There were more out there, I was sure, but after two dozen misses, I was starting to get a little bored with the whole thing. Anyway, we butted heads right away, but he was pretty chill once I got to know him, which was mostly through looking into his past. Gordie was on a quest to become the strongest warrior in the world. He had a long, complicated backstory, and three worlds to his name, same as me, but the upshot was that he¡¯d seen his mother killed in front of him as a child and vowed revenge. Well, he¡¯d gotten his revenge, and that was all well and good, but it left him rootless until he got the shit kicked out of him one day. It hadn¡¯t even been a mugging or anything like that, he¡¯d just gotten into a fight at a tavern, and I guess that was enough for him to dedicate himself to a singular goal: become strong. He was happier with a goal. After Gordie met me, he was convinced that he needed to kill a dragon of his own, and I said, ¡®hey, more power to you, I¡¯m going to keep living it up¡¯. There were plenty of fish in the sea, and I¡¯d seen his fighting style, which left me none too impressed. He was a brute, and seemed to think that he was going to win through sheer grit and determination, as though the thing that would decide it all was who wanted it more. So I took in the plays, peeped on Gordie¡¯s life, ate the most delicious dishes that the fish people had on offer, took in the sights, fucked my way across an ocean, and eventually got pretty bored with the whole thing. I was craving a new world. I think that most thresholders do, in time. Perry does. You see what a world has to offer, and in the beginning it¡¯s all sunshine and roses ¡ª a flower that smells nice ¡ª and then you¡¯re yawning because nothing is new anymore, and you¡¯ve seen all the greatest things they have to offer. I had a historian friend, one of the fish people, who told me that all history is fractal, that it¡¯s all detail on detail, always something new when you drill down, interesting things around every corner, and he was probably right in some sense that didn¡¯t matter to me, but wrong when it came to my feelings. The best time in a new world is the first month or so, and then you kind of get the gist of it. I actually think this place I got the gist of within the first two days or so. Well, I¡¯m not going to kill everyone here out of boredom. If I kill everyone, there will be a point to it. It¡¯ll be to piss Perry off, or to send a message, or as retribution, I¡¯m not going to just do it for fun. I¡¯m not crazy. Gordie and I had a nice little fight in the water after he got his dragon. Now I don¡¯t want you to think I¡¯m dumb, I wasn¡¯t letting him go find a dragon to fight out of some sense that we should be evenly matched or something like that. No, it was more that I hadn¡¯t wrung everything there was to wring out of the world before he came. The dragons weren¡¯t the only magic, there were weapons as well, dangerous and precious things, usually no more than one per major city, held by their greatest warrior. Gordie loved that, it appealed to him, gave him a target, but once he started trying to snatch up the ones I hadn¡¯t gotten already, I knew it was time to put him down. He called me a cur. I pretended that I was coming to the defense of the fish people he was trying to steal from, and we fought a huge battle that put some dents in one of those huge cathedrals. He had this ridiculous way of fighting, calling out his attacks before he made them, grunting like he was about to give himself hemorrhoids, as though straining his entire body was the path to success. And even then ¡­ I said I¡¯d be honest, so I will be: he won. I thought I had him beat, but he picked himself up off the ground with sheer grit and determination, shook off the pain of a broken arm, and went at me. It was idiotic, but I had to give it to him, I didn¡¯t see it coming, and didn¡¯t have the wherewithal to defend for a second round. I had pulled out all the stops, and the only reason he was able to keep going was because of bloody-minded stubbornness. When he went through the portal, he bowed to me and told me I was a worthy opponent, which he said like it was some kind of high honor. It¡¯s not a compliment that I would have paid to him. I healed up and went through the portal myself, happy to leave the destruction behind and find a place with lakes deeper than a puddle and mountains taller than a barn. And I think that¡¯s it, at least at the high level. There¡¯s more, of course, so many more stories, but they¡¯re not my stories. I always take my time looking back through the lives of the other thresholders, and Gordie, Marjut, Petra, I saw every world they went to, and in some cases, heard from the people they fought, meeting people secondhand. But those stories are less interesting, because they don¡¯t have me. Now when¡¯s the meat getting here? Chapter 83 - Going Radioactive, pt 1 Perry didn¡¯t return to the Natrix. Instead, after a day of waiting to see whether anything would change, he flew north, to meet the other cousins. ¡°Well, well, well,¡± said a man in oil-stained coveralls who¡¯d come from his home to meet with Perry. The mechs were splayed out over a field. To Perry¡¯s eye it seemed pretty difficult to defend, but they had plenty of weapons and a healthy perimeter. He¡¯d been on the planet for two years, but almost all of that time had been with the Natrix, and if not them, then aboard the cramped Crypt. He wasn¡¯t sure how things went here, but trusted that they knew what they were doing. The Kj?rni had gone in a radically different direction with their designs, and it made Perry a little nervous to know that there were essentially two dozen amateur nuclear reactors sitting around in the field. If the Natrix was a centipede, then he had to liken them to beetles, beetles with their wings spread wide. The wings were for venting excess heat, he was pretty sure, delicate structures that would never have any hope of lifting the massive machines up into the sky. There were, as on the Natrix, plenty of guns. Some of them were pointed at him, but the Kj?rni had known that he was coming, and he trusted them not to kill him. Most were for the bugs. ¡°Peregrin Holzmann, the man himself, broker of peace, deflector of bullets, went toe-to-toe with the last functional elder mech and lived to tell the tale.¡± The man smiled wide. Perry was pretty sure his name was Birger, if he was the one who Perry had spoken to over the radio. ¡°I didn¡¯t go toe to toe with it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I won.¡± ¡°Well, there¡¯s some confusion on that,¡± said Birger. He leaned against his metal doorframe. ¡°You know, I heard you turned into an animal, and apparently that wasn¡¯t meant as a metaphor.¡± ¡°There¡¯s video,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve seen it.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve seen it,¡± nodded Birger. ¡°That doesn¡¯t mean we believe it.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not here to litigate that,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m here to call in favors. Leticia and Mette can¡¯t know, not until it¡¯s over, but if there¡¯s anything that you need, I can make sure you get it.¡± Birger looked around him, at the hulking beetles with their spread wings, and chewed on his lip a bit. ¡°Well, we¡¯ll help you. But you misunderstand us, I think. It¡¯d be hard not to if you¡¯re only talking to them. What do you need?¡± ¡°Armaments,¡± said Perry. ¡°But we can talk about that later.¡± He took a breath. ¡°If it¡¯s alright with you, I¡¯d like to talk about other things, read you in on what¡¯s going on, because there are things that you don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°You think I have the time for all that?¡± asked Birger. He scratched his head. ¡°Well, I suppose I could make time, if it¡¯s for the great Peregrin Holzmann.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± said Perry. Perry was worried about a lot of things, the biggest of them being the fate of the Natrix, but with Jeff, the largest impediment to winning a fight felt like the fact that absolutely all of Perry¡¯s secrets were out in the open. Jeff had to have seen the mechawolf fight, in full detail, and had decided that he had a way to deal with it, which might just have been brute strength. The limits of the pastwatch were unclear, but from everything that had come over the radio and a review of the video, Perry thought that it was actually fairly limited. Jeff seemed like he was using a combination of cold-reading and scattershot pastwatching more than he was immediately gaining infinite knowledge. Maybe it was like rapidly scrubbing through video footage to find the good bits, or like skimming a document to pick out a keyword. It also didn¡¯t seem like Jeff was a polyglot, which wasn¡¯t going to matter here, but would interfere with his ability to check over the Great Arc. It wasn¡¯t clear to Perry whether the pastwatch¡¯s ¡®lock¡¯ included the present, or only the last time they had seen each other, but if Jeff could spy on Perry¡¯s immediate past, which was essentially the present, he was keeping that close to his chest. Perry had two options: he could try to provoke Jeff into revealing previously unseen powers, or just forge ahead with the assumption that the pastwatch ability didn¡¯t give Jeff broadly powerful remote monitoring. Perry was going with the second option, mostly because he trusted that Jeff was a gloater who found a lot of fun in talking about himself and how awesome he was. It didn¡¯t seem in-character for Jeff to hide a power that was actually much more than just looking into the past. It was certain that Jeff still had tricks up his sleeve, but they probably weren¡¯t that, at least not in Perry¡¯s estimation. He was hoping that wasn¡¯t wishful thinking. Birger went into the mech, which was the size of a large building, bigger than a post office, smaller than a high school. Six long legs held it up, but only just high enough off the ground that it was clear of the rocks and oversized reeds that made up the ¡®field¡¯. The interior was surprisingly homey, and Perry saw people scramble out of the way once they were past the foyer, giving the two of them a long table with a dozen chairs around it for themselves. The table was made of varnished reeds, precisely cut and finished to be flat and smooth. It had the look of an antique, old and well-loved. ¡°This is you and your family?¡± asked Perry as he took a seat. He removed his helmet as a courtesy, and to make sure that his face could be read. ¡°And a few stragglers we¡¯ve picked up,¡± said Birger. There was a brief moment when he looked at Perry as though he was going to comment on his face, but it passed quickly. ¡°It happens now and again.¡± ¡°And this all runs off a nuclear core?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a reactor somewhere in there?¡± ¡°Both types are nuclear,¡± said Birger. ¡°This one is the one that we can make on the planet, the one that the Natrix disdains.¡± He smiled slightly. ¡°You fell in hard with them.¡± ¡°I did,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sorry I never got a chance to visit.¡± ¡°Now¡¯s the time, it seems, with your conflict brewing,¡± said Birger. ¡°Tell me, what do you need?¡± ¡°The man that¡¯s after me, he can look at my past,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was hoping to at least make it a little bit of trouble for him. More for him to scan through, conversations that are irrelevant to him.¡± ¡°Hrm,¡± said Birger. ¡°He doesn¡¯t have a docile AI to do it for him?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think it works like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ve heard of your Marchand,¡± said Birger. ¡°We¡¯ve spoken to him, in fact, with the satellite access you¡¯ve granted us. We could speak of that, if you¡¯re eager to have a conversation to cloak what you really want to discuss.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you still have your elder mech running your computer systems, right? We could put Marchand on that hardware, it¡¯s what we did for the Natrix.¡± ¡°We have principles,¡± said Birger. ¡°We don¡¯t rely on anything that we can¡¯t make for ourselves. So no, that wouldn¡¯t be a good thing to do, and we don¡¯t use the pieces of the elder mech in the same way the Natrix does theirs.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We don¡¯t use the microchips from the ice either,¡± said Birger. ¡°Or we¡¯re not supposed to. Sometimes we do, but we don¡¯t rely on them. There was almost a war two years ago, a war, and it was because there are two communities that aren¡¯t self-sufficient. So no, we haven¡¯t organized ourselves around linchpins that we can¡¯t repair or replace indefinitely.¡± There were other things on Perry¡¯s mind, but he indulged his curiosity. ¡°Eventually you¡¯re going to run out of metal,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or uranium, or whatever you¡¯re using for fuel.¡± ¡°Do you understand how much there is on this planet?¡± asked Birger. ¡°We haven¡¯t made a fraction of a dent in what¡¯s available. If we expanded a thousand times over, we might have to worry about what happened a few generations hence.¡± He shrugged. ¡°The bigger problem is that we only get a shot at a good deposit every now and then, when the terminator passes over.¡± ¡°I can help with that,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are all kinds of tools that you haven¡¯t asked for and the Natrix hasn¡¯t offered.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t want your tools,¡± said Birger. ¡°They say that you¡¯re going to have your fight and leave. What happens to the satellites you put up ten years from now? They fall down, and everyone has to scramble to figure out how to live without them.¡± ¡°Two issues there,¡± said Perry. He held up his fingers, which was slightly awkward in the suit, and called attention to the armor. ¡°First, there¡¯s work that the satellites can do that would never need to be replicated without them, maps and scans that can just live on a hard drive, or maybe even just paper. Mapping doesn¡¯t need to be done by multiple generations, it needs to be done once.¡± ¡°Not here,¡± said Birger. ¡°The snow hides things. You can map the day side, but the night side? You¡¯d be hard-pressed. And most of what we need wouldn¡¯t be seen well from space, not with a lack of light. But what¡¯s your second point?¡± ¡°There are things we can give you that wouldn¡¯t need dependence on us in any way,¡± said Perry. ¡°New technology, new ideas, information, that sort of thing. Things that, when built, would be built with your own hands, not ours.¡± Birger frowned. ¡°You know that I¡¯ll give you your tools or weapons, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°You haven¡¯t heard what I¡¯m asking for,¡± said Perry. ¡°We know you¡¯re a warrior,¡± said Birger. ¡°From another world, they say, and having seen you fly like that, I have no problem accepting that¡¯s true. You came to us with gifts, but we know what lurks in your heart. You offered us a chance to speak with the Natrix by satellite, and to Heimalis, and we assume that you¡¯ve been recording all that talk as a matter of course.¡± ¡°We have,¡± said Perry. ¡°Everything gets logged. I don¡¯t know who, if anyone, is actually reading it, but it¡¯s known not to be a secure channel. You could make it secure, you have the technology.¡± ¡°There¡¯s not really a point to putting in the effort,¡± said Birger. He folded his arms and leaned forward, elbows on the table. ¡°Letting us talk to each other is a play for power, a way of showing off your might. Everything you¡¯ve sent us speaks to your power, your prowess, everything about you, in particular. So we¡¯ll help you, because you¡¯ve done everything you could to show us what you are.¡± There was something defiant in him, even as he was admitted to capitulation. Perry nodded. ¡°I guess there¡¯s no point in me arguing the issue, even if I think you¡¯re wrong.¡± ¡°And what is it you need then?¡± asked Birger. ¡°There are limits to what we can give.¡± ¡°Do you have a computer I can use?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯d rather communicate that way. It¡¯ll be harder for him to see, if he looks into the past.¡± Birger shrugged. ¡°Go ahead.¡± The computer was in another room, and it was even worse than the ones aboard the Natrix. There were a lot of things that they couldn¡¯t make given the smaller scale of their colony and their insistence on not tying themselves to the power of legacy technology. As a result, a lot of what they had was noticeably worse. The plastics they used were more ubiquitous and had a weird texture to them, being almost grainy, but the keyboard operated just the same, and if the monitor was poor quality and the display was two-toned, that didn¡¯t really matter all that much to Perry. The nanites slipped in, of course, spiders moving down into the keyboard, across the circuitry, wedging themselves in place. It had been some time since Perry had done that, and he did feel bad about it, but he didn¡¯t intend to take over the computer systems here, only to feed false information to Jeff. Whatever his other abilities, Jeff couldn¡¯t read minds, and didn¡¯t seem to be able to understand other languages. The communications went off without a hitch, and the message was to Birger, the requirements and bounds of the problem. It was a request that depended on technology they should have on hand, and they were engineers in the same way that those aboard the Natrix were, capable of moving quickly if they had to. Maintaining these mobile reactors was incredibly difficult and dangerous, and they had done that. All he was asking for was for them to weaponize what they had. There was some evidence that they had already done it, some readings that Marchand had unearthed. It was one of the ways that the Natrix stereotyped these people, calling them reckless and crazy, never minding the dangers and sometimes doing the dangerous thing just because they could. Perry would know for certain once Marchand had pulled everything from their computer systems, but Birger¡¯s answer would be confirmation enough. It was possible that they wouldn¡¯t have the materials, having done a small handful of tests and then thrown away the materials, but Perry was optimistic. Birger read the message from the other room, then came back to Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll get it done. Your timeline is two weeks?¡± he asked. ¡°It is,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s the hard deadline.¡± Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. ¡°I¡¯ll have it done in six days,¡± said Birger. So they do have it, Perry thought. ¡°But I do expect those gifts in response.¡± ¡°Even though it violates your principles?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We won¡¯t rely on anything you¡¯re giving over,¡± said Birger. ¡°But it might be nice, for a time. And if you can bring some southern delicacies, that would be all the better.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Thank you.¡± ¡°Your enemy, will this bring his retribution on us?¡± asked Birger. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He said it as though he was certain, though he wasn¡¯t. ¡°He¡¯s concerned with his own pleasure, and with the thrill of the fight. That¡¯s it.¡± ¡°And what are you concerned with?¡± asked Birger. ¡°The safety and protection of the people of this planet,¡± said Perry. Birger laughed. ¡°Ha! And yet we¡¯ve been hearing, since we first heard of you, that you¡¯re leaving this world for another. Is that not true?¡± ¡°It¡¯s true,¡± said Perry. ¡°But ¡­ it¡¯s complicated.¡± ¡°You have to go save the whole multiverse, eh?¡± asked Birger. ¡°Something like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°You like the violence, and with your buddy dead, there won¡¯t be anyone to fight,¡± said Birger. ¡°So you have to go.¡± He nodded to himself. ¡°You don¡¯t know me,¡± said Perry. His hands were on the table, and he was keeping himself from gripping it too hard. The armor had a lot of power, and it was easy to break things. ¡°No, I don¡¯t,¡± said Birger. ¡°And from everything I¡¯ve heard, I¡¯m better off for it. They venerate you on the Natrix as their savior, the man with amazing abilities, but most of what you¡¯ve done for them has been with the point of your sword. They say you¡¯re a master with a rifle, a king astride a mech, strong and fleet-footed. I hear all the things they don¡¯t say about you. Not praised for your wit or your kindness.¡± The words stung. Maybe this was just the Kj?rni being the Kj?rni, but it felt weirdly personal, like learning that he¡¯d been slandered in a tabloid by people he had never taken the chance to know. He thought they would like him, if they got to know him, but so long as they could give him what they wanted, it really didn¡¯t matter. ¡°There¡¯s one more thing,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need a place to stay.¡± That Birger grimmaced at. ¡°You can fly,¡± he said. ¡°Can¡¯t you sleep up in the air?¡± ¡°I can¡¯t stay in the armor forever,¡± said Perry, though he was getting close, at least on a physical level. Psychologically, it was still a pretty long way to go. ¡°Sheltering you puts us at risk,¡± said Birger. He rubbed his chin. ¡°There¡¯s a promena you can use, but you¡¯ll have to stay well outside the circle of protection. Come scuttling in if the bugs show up, but so far as anyone is concerned, you¡¯re not here, and we didn¡¯t help you.¡± ¡°Fair enough,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ll remember this, won¡¯t you?¡± asked Birger. ¡°That you were helped, by us, in your time of need, willingly?¡± ¡°I will,¡± said Perry, though he wasn¡¯t sure how much ¡®willingly¡¯ factored into it. ¡°Eh,¡± said Birger. ¡°Well, I won¡¯t count on it.¡± It seemed incredibly rude to Perry, but he¡¯d come to them hat in hand, and they had given him the response that he¡¯d ultimately wanted. He tried not to be affronted and to let their disdain for him wash over him as though it was nothing. ~~~~ His time in the promena passed both quickly and slowly. Every day, he thought it would be the day that Jeff would show up. They had set a time and place to meet, but it was clear that Jeff had no honor. At most, Jeff had a sense of drama, but that was a completely different thing, and if the sense of drama meant a sneak attack in the middle of the cycle, then that was probably what Jeff was going to do. Leticia had him talking, but most of what he¡¯d talked about wasn¡¯t actually helpful. He had stories of the things he¡¯d done on the worlds he¡¯d been to, and once those seemed to be exhausted, stories about other thresholders whose pasts he¡¯d seen into and the worlds they had been to, the fights they had been in. He considered himself superior to all of them, naturally, even the one man who¡¯d beat him. There was something mentioned a few times, which matched with what Xiyan had said: a Grand Spell. It wasn¡¯t clear on what it was, or how you made it, but it was responsible for Candyland, and possibly the Witch Holes, and a third one that Jeff had seen secondhand, a world that was being constantly rewritten with only a handful of people keeping their memories of what had changed. There wasn¡¯t much to unify those worlds except the suggestion that they hadn¡¯t always been like that. Someone had changed the world from one thing to another, not a god or anything like that, but a mortal person pursuing their own goals. There was a fourth Grand Spell, or something like it, one that Maya¡¯s wizard friend had thought was responsible for thresholders. Perry listened to the relevant conversations with Maya again, and tried to place everything on an augmented-reality corkboard, but he just didn¡¯t have enough information to make sense of it. Maybe it was the same mechanism, maybe it wasn¡¯t. All the worlds presented to him were different, often radically so, and if there were others that had been the result of a world-ranging spell of some kind, it wasn¡¯t clear which ones they were. There were so many aspects of the Rules that Perry simply didn¡¯t know, and the more worlds he¡¯d heard about, the less he was certain of. He¡¯d liked it better when he thought he had it all figured out. He wasn¡¯t even sure he understood the bare bones of what was going on with the thresholder ¡®spell¡¯, if that¡¯s what it was. There were too many open questions, especially regarding what predictions it was making behind the scenes. He¡¯d been placed on a space station where he would surely have died, away from the planet or any people, and then he¡¯d spent two years on the planet. Was this a deviation, or just something at the edges of the bell curve, or something else? Too much of what he knew had been told to him by highly unreliable narrators who had obvious conflicts of interest in sharing the whole truth with him. Even Maya, who was more or less a friend, was suspect. Perry listened to everything Jeff said, making notes the whole time. This was good for the academic tether, which had plateaued in power over the last year, fed mostly by regular attempts at developing magical talent and some secondary learning from the resources aboard the Natrix. He now understood the basics of computer programming, the very basic basics, which the academic tether had responded to. Compared to even a small child, he was awful, and there would never be any use for the skill, not when he had Marchand. It took Jeff three days to tire of Leticia, and when he did, there were other ¡®volunteers¡¯. Perry found it sickening, and tried not to think about it too much. He had no real idea how much there was an element of duress involved, and when he imagined the same scenario with the genders reversed, a sexy but dangerously psychopathic woman demanding to be ¡®entertained¡¯, he could see that there might be some real appeal. The site of the battle was selected carefully, a place on the hot edge of the twilight zone, wide open. Jeff agreed to it, and a date was set. It wasn¡¯t how Perry would have preferred to fight, and there was always a chance that Jeff would get bored early and lash out, or that there would be a distinct lack of honor. Perry himself didn¡¯t care much for honor, not if it got in the way of winning, and he was fairly sure that Jeff would know that about him. Jeff wasn¡¯t only using the downtime for elaborate meals and sex, he was using it to comb through the past and watch Perry, which was aggravating. It took Birger nine days, not six, but when he¡¯d finished, he handed both the items over with a sniff of satisfaction. ¡°The first was easy, the second was a bit more difficult,¡± he said. ¡°Not sure that it will work, truth be told, but you said you¡¯d prefer not to test it, and I¡¯d prefer not to test it, and of course, I¡¯d rather you take it far, far away from here.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t say any more,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll take the promena, and be back shortly.¡± ¡°Not too shortly,¡± said Birger. ¡°Distance is what I¡¯m hoping for, you understand?¡± ¡°I understand,¡± nodded Perry. But of course, Perry didn¡¯t go himself. Doing it himself might open him up to being spied on through the pastwatch, and that couldn¡¯t be allowed. So instead, he sent the promena off on its own to gallop across the lands, instructed by Marchand, dodging bugs and racing to the location where the fight was going to take place. It had two small robot arms for the task. The instructions to Marchand had been given by touch-typing on a virtual keyboard that Perry couldn¡¯t see, which felt like it should be proof against most possible options for pastwatch. While the promena was going off, Perry flew high up into the sky with the sword and looked out over the twilight band, trying to make it seem like he was doing something interesting. He spoke to Marchand in Japanese, which was one of the languages that had been loaded up before leaving Earth 2, also in the hopes that it would seem like this was worth scrubbing through and trying to work out. So far as Perry could tell, one of Jeff¡¯s major weaknesses was that he didn¡¯t understand technology. Computers were foreign to him, and the only world with computers that he¡¯d been to was a prison world where he was locked out of all the systems and never had a chance to educate himself. Everything else that Jeff had learned about technology had come secondhand. There was information on the Natrix, but that was controlled by Esper, Marchand¡¯s clone, and at a suggestion from Marchand, certain information had been quietly removed from the local Gratbook, not that Jeff seemed like he was spending much time reading. When he did read, it was fiction, though he seemed just as likely to lay there in his bed ¡ª Perry¡¯s old bed ¡ª closing his eyes and presumably putting all his attention on the past. The promena took five days to go and then come back. Perry didn¡¯t discuss what it was doing with Marchand. This seemed like one of the only ways to keep things secure, which is what Perry desperately wanted. In theory, if the plan went off without a hitch, there wouldn¡¯t even need to be a fight. The day before the fight was scheduled, Jeff disappeared. He was filmed stepping out onto the balcony of the penthouse and then rocketing up into the air, but he was gone before anyone had much of a chance to notice. The last thing he¡¯d done was to have a threesome, and he¡¯d been strangely quiet for the last few days, not talking as much as usual. The appointed site was away from the bugs, in a place that was much hotter than their natural habitats. There were still a few around, but it was hot enough that the plants were quickly desiccated, and the bugs were smaller, munching on the dried out reeds and vines. It was the site of a crater impact, though not a crater lake. It was easily visible from the air, not just because it was a hole in the ground, but because the plants there could last a bit longer than their counterparts up on hot ground, though in time, the crater would be roasted in the same way that everything else would. Perry was five miles away, hidden among the plants, waiting and watching through a number of cameras and other pieces of equipment that had been placed around the crater. Marchand had made a composite of all the rather poor angles, which only just captured Jeff as he came in. Unfortunately, Jeff didn¡¯t make a landing. He instead hovered in the air, a mile up. ¡°Alright Perry, show yourself!¡± called Jeff. His voice was unnaturally loud and booming, audible to every microphone in the area, some kind of magic, though it wasn¡¯t clear which. The dragon¡¯s heart, maybe? ¡°I¡¯m not going down there. While I can¡¯t say I know a trap when I see it, I know the kind of man who sets a trap.¡± Perry said nothing, whether through the speakers or otherwise. He wanted Jeff to land in the crater. ¡°Did you think I¡¯d set up a place for us to fight and then actually use it?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°I¡¯m not a moron. People keep making that mistake. It would be funny if it weren¡¯t so insulting. So come on, let¡¯s go somewhere else, a second location, a place where I don¡¯t have to worry about you pulling out the big guns.¡± Jeff was looking around, frowning. ¡°You¡¯re not around, I could sense if you were, but you¡¯ve got to have eyes on this place.¡± Perry held his breath. A mile away wasn¡¯t quite close enough. When Jeff had been shot by the big gun, he¡¯d fallen into his shelfspace with almost zero warning. The whole thing had lasted for, at most, two frames, which translated to mere fractions of a second. Jeff was fast, and could retreat into safety in an eyeblink. If he was going to be killed with a single swift strike, it would need to be more power than even the largest of the guns could give, and it would need to happen so fast he couldn¡¯t dodge into safety. ¡°Land you stupid fuck,¡± Perry muttered. ¡°Alright, fine, let¡¯s talk stakes here,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You come here, now, or I race on back to the Natrix and start killing people, and then we have the battle there. You have some kind of trap down there, and I admit I¡¯m curious what it might be, but it¡¯s the appointed time, and you¡¯re not here, which to me means explosives. Some kind of bomb, right?¡± ¡°Shit,¡± Perry muttered. ¡°March, detonate it.¡± March didn¡¯t ask for confirmation. The flash of light felt like it was instant, and that was exactly what Perry had been hoping for. With the yield of the device, there should have been a lethal dose of radiation, and Jeff should have been blinded if he was looking right at it. A lethal dose of radiation wouldn¡¯t kill immediately, but it would put him in a losing situation. Maybe the energy of it would kill him, some kicked up debris taking his head off or his skin being peeled, but there were too many imponderables. ¡°We¡¯re going in,¡± said Perry. ¡°Mark his last known location.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. It appeared on the HUD. Perry stayed where he was until the shockwave went past, a blast of wind that was weaker than he¡¯d thought it would be. Then he lifted up with the sword and looked at the mushroom cloud that was still in the midst of rising on the horizon. He flew toward it, aiming at the spot that was marked, but it was marked with a sphere, showing pretty significant uncertainty. In theory, the portal might open at any time, and Perry could take it, leaving the world behind. Perry saw no portal, and he was looking pretty hard. This was a high-risk strategy. It hadn¡¯t been meant as that. What Perry had hoped for was that Jeff would land directly next to the bomb and then get immediately vaporized before he could wonder what was under the vegetation in the crater. But a mile out, beyond the range of lethality for a normal person, that meant that Jeff might live, and who knew what he would do then? At best, it would be a fight between the two of them, with Jeff weakened. At worst ¡­ Perry didn¡¯t know. Maybe Jeff would follow through on his threats and kill the people who¡¯d been his hosts. Perry was very aware that he was flying into a cloud of radiation. The bomb hadn¡¯t been an airburst or anything like it, it had been in the ground, not buried, but so close that fission materials would be spread far and wide. The site would be a wasteland, but then, it was going to be a wasteland for at least another sixty years anyway. ¡°Let me know if there¡¯s any sign of a body,¡± said Perry. ¡°Anything that the cameras caught in their last moments.¡± ¡°Of course, sir,¡± said Marchand. There was no snark, which somehow hurt more. Perry knew that recovering a body was a longshot, even in the event that Jeff had died. When Perry arrived at the place where Marchand had marked, there was nothing but an approximate sphere indicated on the HUD. He stared at it, sword in hand, waiting. He wished that he¡¯d brought the laser gun that Brigitta had made for him, but against an opponent that could move as fast as Jeff, it seemed like it would be next to useless. ¡°Come on you fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Poke your head out.¡± He hung there in the air, waiting, for nearly ten minutes. His mind was racing, and Marchand would occasionally chirp about the radiation, which was still well within what Perry had decided were acceptable levels. He¡¯d gotten a large dose when fleeing the space station, but being second sphere had helped repair him, and he was pretty sure that was because it didn¡¯t depend on DNA or anything like it. He¡¯d had regular health checkups with the doctors of the Natrix, and they hadn¡¯t found any lasting effects. He was really hoping that Jeff didn¡¯t have the same immunity and wouldn¡¯t understand the damage. When Jeff appeared, it was sudden, and Perry had been waiting long enough that he was startled by it. It was like a curtain had been pulled back in mid-air, almost right in the center of the place that Marchand had marked on the HUD. Whatever healing power he¡¯d used, the liquid he¡¯d splashed over himself last time, it hadn¡¯t worked nearly as well. His eyes were beet red, so bloodshot that it was impossible to see the whites, and his skin wasn¡¯t much better. He¡¯d been facing toward the crater when the blast happened, that was obvious, but Perry almost thought he could reconstruct the stance just on the basis of where his skin was white and where it was crimson. Most of the curling locks of hair were gone, and his pants were nowhere to be seen, except in a few places where they seemed to have been burned into his skin. ¡°See?¡± asked Jeff. There was blood on his teeth. ¡°Knew you were a trap guy.¡± He looked at his beet red hand and winced. ¡°Fucked me up, that¡¯s for sure.¡± Blood ran down from his nose, and he licked it. ¡°Some kind of poison. Didn¡¯t seem like it was in your bag of tricks. So I think it¡¯s time to show you what I¡¯ve got.¡± Chapter 84 - Going Radioactive, pt 2 Jeff nearly ended the fight with a single punch. He powered forward, glowing golden, and at the last moment, twisted his body around to leverage the full force of power, moving forward and spinning around. The hit was brutal, denting the metal of Perry¡¯s helmet, but March, as always, had thought to lock the armor in place, which left them spinning through the air and minimized the chance of concussion. Perry righted himself and then let the sword stop holding him up, which sent him plummeting toward the ground. Jeff was faster though, and after a chance to reorient himself, dashed downward, catching up quickly. Perry had done his best to twist around, and brought up his sword to intercept. In theory, he had the advantage of reach. Jeff grabbed the sword with one hand and pushed it aside. He had cut open the palm of his left hand, but he seemed not to mind, and with the opening, punched Perry again, this time in the center of his chest. It was a weaker strike, the force more spread out, but the metal of the armor shifted, and Perry felt his heart leap. They were falling down, and March was monitoring the distance on the HUD. A yellow alert popped up, telling Perry that it was time to start thinking about pulling up. When Jeff came in for another attack, this time he was aiming for a squeeze. Perry had wound up with broken ribs last time, fixed only with a transformation, and he didn¡¯t think that he would come away so lucky this time. Jeff batted the sword away again, taking a deep cut to the forearm from a sword that could easily slice through a normal man¡¯s bones. He wrapped his arms around Perry, screaming in pain from his wounds and his red flesh pressing against the armor, but hugging tight all the same. Perry was ready this time though, and had studied the footage. He positioned his sword to point just below Jeff¡¯s last rib and pushed in hard, straining to use his entire bodyweight, and felt the flesh slowly give until the sword had pierced it. One inch slipped in, then another, and Perry felt the metal at his armor¡¯s midsection give way. It was a question of which of them would surrender first, a deranged game of chicken as they plummeted to the ground, but Perry was pinned and couldn¡¯t have slipped the grip if he wanted to. The warning on the HUD had changed from yellow to orange, and now was red, not ¡®hey, pull up now or you¡¯ll crash into the ground¡¯ but ¡®you are going to crash, it¡¯s just a matter of how bad it hurts¡¯. Perry released the sword and took a different tactic, making a split second decision. He pulled a long needle from a compartment in the armor¡¯s forearm and jammed it right into Jeff¡¯s ear, using his left hand as a hammer to push it in deeper. Jeff released his grip, shoving Perry away, and the sudden absence of pressure made Perry fully aware of just how badly the squeeze had injured him. He almost passed out as the fluids began shifting around, the broken ribs grinding against each other with an intake of breath. It took him a full second to realize that he was still falling. He recalled his sword to him and had it reverse his direction, but he hit the ground before it could do much good. His body broke on contact with the ground. The armor buckled, cracking and bending in places, and he might have died if he hadn¡¯t been pushing all his internal power into keeping himself together. The moment he was on the ground, smashed and broken, he transformed. Two years had given him time to test the new form, its quirks and advantages. He was stronger with it, more capable, better able to control his impulses and understand his limits. Jeff had seen the battles, and probably most of the training, but this was the best tool that Perry possessed. The transformation was still an ugly thing, like slamming his body against a wall of metal in all directions at once, painful in places and awkward in others, but it was fast and familiar. His teeth were metal, his claws alloy, the reactor burning away in his chest, feeding into the Wolf Vessel, energy soaking his body, metal and flesh entwined with each other. He was faster, stronger, even in the twilight with no moon overhead, and his prey was close by, the scent of blood already in the air. Jeff landed on the ground, radiated body looking worse for the wear. His eyes had gotten worse, and where the two men had rubbed up against each other, some of the skin had sloughed off. He was bleeding from his left hand, which he¡¯d used to grab the sword, and from a deep cut that must have gone to bone when the sword had struck his arm. He shook it, spattering blood onto the ground, and gave the wounds an appraising look. The pin was still stuck in the side of his head, and he extracted it with a grimace, looking at it like a baker might look at a toothpick pulled from a cake. He tossed it to the side with a careless gesture. ¡°There he is,¡± said Jeff, looking at the wolf. ¡°He¡¯s come out to play.¡± The metal wolf sprang forward, launching himself with all four limbs. His mouth was open, willing to bite down hard on any limb that presented itself, and Jeff reared back for a haymaker even as Perry was still in the air. Jeff had misjudged the mechawolf¡¯s speed though, and Perry arrived before the fist could reach him. Claws sank into Jeff¡¯s chest, though not as deep as they should have gone, and the teeth found purchase on Jeff¡¯s face for just a moment before the punch came in. Perry was tossed, the injury rippling through him, damaged servos and a broken exterior camera, but not major damage, and the injuries faded right away, healed back as though it had never happened, the internal alarms quelled. He landed on his feet, motions deft, and launched himself forward a second time with no hesitation. Jeff¡¯s red face was leaking blood, and a piece of his lip was missing. The claws had sunk in, but hadn¡¯t eviscerated in the way they should have. It was like scratching a tree, the claws peeling back bark but not driving down to the core. The second attack went less well than the first. Jeff bent down and rushed toward it, getting up under the open jaws, taking the claws to his chest again. He spun around and slammed Perry into the ground, though Perry was the larger of the two now. Frantic, scrabbling claws were slicing into Jeff¡¯s chest and legs, but Jeff had a hold, and that hold was strong enough to hurt. With one hand gripping Perry¡¯s thick neck, the other arm was punching Perry¡¯s muzzle, over and over, more damage with every strike, as though he was getting more powerful with each hit he landed. The claws were doing damage, but not enough, and the meat within the metal was being bruised by each strike to the head. Perry was no dumb animal though, and he twisted around within the hold, pushing backward with immense force. Jeff lost his grip and fell to the ground, and when he did, Perry¡¯s jaws snapped. The taste of blood was instant. Jeff was bleeding badly, mostly from the claws. While the claws hadn¡¯t gone in deep, they had left hundreds of gouges all over Jeff¡¯s body. He was missing three fingers on his right hand, which were still in Perry¡¯s mouth. Perry spat them into the radioactive dirt as fiery dust from the explosion swirled around them. ¡°You fucker,¡± said Jeff, slurring the words slightly. He rose from the ground, glowing golden, rising up, framed by the mushroom cloud above them. They weren¡¯t far from ground zero. ¡°Didn¡¯t want to have to do this.¡± It started with a howl that came from deep within his chest, blood dripping down to the ground, but as the howl went on, Jeff grew taller, stretching from his waist like a jack-in-the-box, his midsection gaining more abs, six pack becoming a twenty-four pack as he wiggled and grew into the air. Eventually he was mostly torso, the wounds also stretched out, and then he began to transform, feet curling into claws, knuckles of his fists shifting and spreading. His hair grew back, gold with streaks of white, curling and clean, and the red and white skin was replaced by shimmering scales of a purer white. When the transformation was complete, he was three hundred feet long, a sinuous dragon like a giant flying snake, legs seeming miniscule in comparison, vestigial almost. His mouth was large enough to swallow Perry whole, head oversized in comparison to the body. The wounds weren¡¯t gone, but they were diminished, the slashes from the claws seeming miniscule. In places, the scales were damaged, red and raw in the same radiation-burned way. He had not been healed like Perry was healed, had not become whole in the process of becoming different. The howl had not stopped since it started, but it had changed to something like the sound of a horn, low and vibrating. Jeff flew through the air like a snake, body winding back and forth, claws moving fruitlessly. He made a wide, lazy circle, far above, then positioned himself pointed toward Perry, down on the ground. Perry watched all this, minds racing. He called the sword to him, and it floated from where it had landed until the hilt was positioned in front of him. He gripped it in his teeth gently and flew up in the air to meet the dragon. Two years was a very long time. It was long enough that Perry had put work into this sort of thing, flying as a wolf, just in case it came in handy. The sword offered relatively slow flight, especially for the wolf, which was more massive, but there were tricks to use, namely harnessing the power of gravity. Dropping was fast, and as the jaws of the dragon came near, that was exactly what Perry did, moving out of their path. Once he was clear of them, the two creatures beginning to pass by each other, Perry went back up, sword turned to point skyward, and scored a long slice along the belly of the snake-like dragon. When Jeff came back around, he was dripping blood and heaving. His lip was still damaged, even with the transformation, a ragged bit that was missing, and he snarled in pain. Perry tried the trick again, dodging downward, but this time the dragon was ready for it. When Perry fell, the dragon dipped his head and glowed golden, a burst of unnatural speed beyond the whipping swiftness that it had shown before. It bit the metal wolf on the shoulder, long teeth sliding across metal before finding purchase and crunching down. The bite passed through the metal and into the flesh, but the teeth didn¡¯t meet each other, stopped by the alloy. The dragon kept on flying, dragging Perry through the air. It shook its head back and forth, trying to snap Perry¡¯s neck or just cause more damage, but the only casualty was the sword, which slipped free from Perry¡¯s jaws. Perry poured energy from the Wolf Vessel into his body, healing even as the teeth were still penetrating him. The metal was closing up around the teeth, trapping them both in that position, and the ongoing howl, which had not stopped, was vibrating through Perry¡¯s whole body. Jeff brought them to the ground, serpentine motion through the air ending ungracefully as his claws came to rest in the earth. Once they did, he began slamming his head against the ground, crushing Perry each time, the motion becoming more exaggerated, rearing up to a full half his length. Each hit was a shock to the system, things torn and broken, but while Perry was being slammed, he was able to curl his hind legs in and begin scratching away at the mouth that was holding him, rending the lips and scales. Eventually, Jeff shook him free, teeth dislodging from the shoulder, and spat Perry down to the ground. The dragon¡¯s face was more injured than Perry would have imagined, and one of the dragon¡¯s eyes had been gouged open, the fluid emptied and the eye sack collapsed. The dragon¡¯s howl stopped. The wolf healed back from the damage as the dragon looked around, searching for something. The Wolf Vessel was almost half empty, but between the two of them, it was clear that the wolf had better healing. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. When the dragon found what it was looking for, it surged forward, whipping across the ground, no longer bothering to fly. It was heading back to where their battle had begun, moving fast, and Perry could only think to move faster, racing across the planet¡¯s surface. Whatever it was that Jeff had been looking for, Perry wasn¡¯t going to let him have it. The dragon¡¯s size made it slow and unwieldy, at least compared to the human he had been, and the wolf¡¯s four legs were built for speed, especially bursts of energy. The second sphere focused power into them, granting traction and an extra burst of force. The wolf reached the site just before, and Perry had a split second to figure out the reason Jeff had moved in that direction. He saw blood, both of theirs, smeared and dripped all over the place, but he spotted what Jeff must be going for only a split second before the dragon actually arrived. Three fingers were laying on the ground, and the wolf gobbled them up just before the dragon came for them. They clashed, and Perry was momentarily in the air, staring down teeth that were coming up for him, jaw opened wide. Perry dove down at them, making his body as small as possible. Whether Jeff had meant to or not, he¡¯d told Perry exactly how he¡¯d defeated the dragon in the first place, and with a push of force ¡ª pure force, reacting against nothing ¡ª Perry slipped between the teeth and into the mouth, tail barely clearing the snap of teeth. He burrowed into the mouth, pushing his snout down the throat. It was only barely large enough for him, and the muscles were working against him as the dragon tried to hack him up, but he dug his claws in and began rending the soft flesh of the tongue and esophagus. He got in deeper, clawing as much as he could, and he¡¯d have drowned in blood if he still needed to breathe. The slick blood helped him get in further, against the action of the throat. That had to be an artery somewhere, something that carried blood to the brain, and Perry clawed desperately at the flesh, trying to slice through something vital. The dragon coughed, and from the inside it felt like a momentary death grip. The second cough broke his spine, which mended only slowly, and the third cough was enough to dislodge him in spite of the claws of all four legs sunk in as deep as they would go. Perry was spat out onto the ground, legs no longer working, but the healing factor was strong, and he was aware of himself after a moment, shaking off the blood and spit that coated him as his legs dragged limply behind him. When he looked around, the dragon was nowhere near, and it took a moment to see it slithering through the air, already half a mile away. Perry felt the need to howl in frustration, but the calculations had already been done: even running overland, Perry couldn¡¯t catch up, not without draining the Wolf Vessel in the process, and it had done so much healing in such a short time, all in daylight, that there was no way he¡¯d be able to continue the fight. Two years ago, he might not have made that decision, might not have been able to make that decision, but the wolf was more tame now than it had ever been. The spine healed only slowly, the break severe, delicate nerves having been severed in an instant. It took time, maybe a full minute, for the wolf to get back to his feet. The dragon was long gone, but not in the direction of the Natrix, nor the Crypt, only into the wilds. The wolf sniffed the air, just to double check what all the sensors and cameras had confirmed. The dragon was gone. It spat the fingers from its mouth, three of them. They looked pale and insignificant on the ground. Changing back was always an ordeal, painful and unnatural, like peeling off a scab that wasn¡¯t quite ready to go. Perry always felt it in his face most of all, and was perpetually surprised that the helmet was able to display video after having merged into his wolf flesh, erasing the separation between the two of them. ¡°March, we good?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I appear to have suffered a significant error when we hit the ground.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± said Perry. No amount of effort had been able to make Marchand understand what was happening, not even framing it as science fiction beyond either of their understanding. ¡°Send a message to the Natrix, to the Heimalis, to the Kj?rni. Let them know that I wasn¡¯t able to seal the deal. Let them know that if they see a giant white and gold dragon on the horizon, they should shoot to kill.¡± He shook his head. ¡°Fuck.¡± He could still taste blood in his mouth. He bent down and picked up the three fingers. ¡°Run analysis on these.¡± ¡°They appear to be human fingers,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Anything special about them?¡± asked Perry, turning them over in his hands. His heart was still beating hard in his chest. They would need to leave, and soon, given that they were standing very close to ground zero. He held out his hand and let the sword come to him, and as soon as it was in his hand, he rose into the air, flying away to where the promena had been parked. The fingers stayed clutched in his hand. ¡°Sir, it appears there¡¯s some aberration in the middle finger,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I would say that it¡¯s a bump in the bone, but it appears to be something else, an implant of some kind, though ¡­ I cannot say for certain, but perhaps a wooden ring that wraps the bone rather than the flesh.¡± Perry let out a long breath. He had an urge to remove his helmet and take off the suit, but there was a good chance that Jeff would attack, either starting another round of combat or attacking one of Perry¡¯s allies in retaliation. It was hard to know which Jeff would prefer, and of course Perry had been completely in the dark about the dragon transformation. Jeff had said that he didn¡¯t want to do it, but hadn¡¯t said why, and Perry was hoping that it came with some kind of major crippling downside. ¡°We need to do decontamination,¡± said Perry. ¡°Find us a lake to dip down into.¡± ¡°Sir, I must recommend against that, as radioactive fallout would contaminate the lake,¡± said Marchand. ¡°No one is going to use any body of water here for at least a hundred years,¡± said Perry. ¡°All the ground we contaminated is going to be baked in the sun for sixty years. It¡¯ll be fine.¡± ¡°The winds blow to the west, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There will be a significant spread of material.¡± ¡°Spread is good though, you had said,¡± replied Perry. ¡°We¡¯re watering it down.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. It really felt like that shouldn¡¯t have been the end of the conversation, but Marchand didn¡¯t push it all that much. The bomb had been pretty low yield, at least by Earth standards. It had surely killed a lot of wildlife and wrecked a sizeable location, but the day side was going to wreck it anyway, and as far as the people went, there was nothing but space, so much wide open land that a hundred Natrixes could have marched across the surface and never so much as interacted with each other. Perry would have felt a lot better about using the bomb if it had actually killed Jeff. There was a chance that a lethal dose of radiation would get him, but Perry didn¡¯t think that luck was on his side. Whatever healing Jeff had used to recover from the gunshot that had nearly blown him apart, it hadn¡¯t worked very well on radiation. Perry hoped that next time they fought, Jeff would be full of tumors. A brief dip in the lake removed a lot of the fallout, and then a second dip in a second lake removed the rest, at least so far as Marchand¡¯s ability to detect radiation went. Marchand was warning of a higher rate of cancer over the next few decades, and so far as Perry was concerned, that was the distant future, nothing worth worrying about and probably something that being second sphere would fix. There had been no word from anyone, just confirmation that they¡¯d received the warning. Hopefully Jeff was ineffectually licking his wounds somewhere. Perry looked at the fingers more closely once he was far away from the blast site. The middle finger, or at least the longest of the three, had a bulge in the first knuckle. Jeff had thick fingers, so it was hard to notice, but if Perry felt it carefully, it was clear that something was wrong with it. It was the kind of thing he¡¯d chalk up to a broken bone that had been set wrong or was still healing, if Marchand hadn¡¯t done the sonic analysis thing. ¡°A bauble,¡± said Perry, turning the finger over. It took some work to dig the ring out from under the flesh, and then more work to get it off the bone. It wasn¡¯t fused with the bone, thankfully, but Perry needed to use his sword to cut off the knob at the end of the bone so it could slip free. It was small and unassuming, but Marchand assured him after a scratch test that it was nearly indestructible. ¡°If it were me,¡± said Perry. ¡°This would be a trap.¡± ¡°How would that be possible, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Unclear,¡± said Perry. He took off the power armor¡¯s glove and held the ring up to his own middle finger. It twisted and turned in his grip, then resized itself to fit Perry. ¡°Just like the One Ring,¡± said Perry, letting out a breath. ¡°We mustn¡¯ts.¡± ¡°Sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°We wants it,¡± said Perry. ¡°We needs it.¡± He was feeling strangely good, in spite of the brutality of the fight and the danger. He was whole, and Jeff was clearly not. He¡¯d lost the advantage of the nuke, but Jeff had run away, and that was something. He slipped the ring on his finger, and at first, nothing happened. Then, with a wave of his hand, a row of shelves opened up in front of him. ¡°Fuck yeah,¡± said Perry. The room wasn¡¯t difficult to step into, and once Perry did, the world closed behind him. The error messages immediately began lighting up, nothing more than a yellow warning signal in Perry¡¯s peripheral vision that incremented rapidly. It was going to take some time to figure out how the ring worked, and even more time to use it as smoothly as Jeff had, but it very much appeared as though Perry had successfully stolen an immensely powerful artifact. Looking at the shelves, he¡¯d stolen not just one, but potentially dozens. ¡°Now here¡¯s where I would put a trap,¡± said Perry, mostly to himself. After a second¡¯s thought, he added, ¡°Marchand, scan for traps.¡± ¡°Scanning, sir,¡± said Marchand. The space was larger than Perry had thought it would be. From the few frames of video he had, the shelfspace had seemed as though it was only two or three shelves, but there were shelves behind the shelves, and things stacked up haphazardly away from what appeared to be the entryway. If it had been an apartment, it would have been beyond a grad student¡¯s means, but most of the space wasn¡¯t being put to any particular use. A row of what would only be potions sat very close to where Perry had come in, but there were only seven of them, a paltry haul, and they weren¡¯t labeled. Nothing was labeled, which was going to be a problem, especially since Marchand¡¯s scans wouldn¡¯t have anything to say about magic, and Jeff had mentioned during pillow talk that one of the witches had made something intended to kill him ¡ª there was a good chance at least one of the weapons on the racks was a cursed magic item. ¡°Sir, I¡¯ve detected shallow breathing,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Show me,¡± said Perry, which didn¡¯t need to be said, because a marker was already on his HUD. He went to the marker, making his way down the different shelves. There was all kinds of crap collected here, including a full row of various paintings, probably raided from some museum on another world. There were plenty of clothes, ironically, because Jeff had spent his whole time on Esperide shirtless. And there were foodstuffs in tins and jars, anything that could be preserved, along with lights on the ceiling that definitely weren¡¯t LED or incandescent. Perry had lots of questions about the place, the power, his power he was already thinking of it as, but his focus was on the back corner of the storeroom, where he could now hear the breathing that March had pointed out. Perry moved past some cookware and found himself standing in front of a woman. She was chained to the wall, and everything even remotely in reach of her had been removed. The chain was hooked into the wall, which was made of stone, and it glowed softly, like the stars that Perry¡¯s had on the ceiling of his bedroom when he was a kid. The manacle was around her left leg, and there were scars and scabs there, some from the chafing and others from abortive attempts at removing it. She had been slumped up against the wall when he rounded the corner, and didn¡¯t react to this footsteps, but after he stood there, staring at her, she raised her head. She had dark brown hair and was thin in a way that was on the edge of looking unhealthy. She wore a simple shift, which was clean, and held a fork in one hand, clearly one of the causes of the scars around her manacled leg. There were dark circles under her eyes, and a dour expression on her face. Her eyes went wide when she saw Perry, and her first reaction was telling, trying to see whether there was someone behind him. He was still in his full armor, sword held in one hand, and imposing, but she wasn¡¯t concerned with that. ¡°Who are you?¡± she asked. ¡°Peregrin,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m here to help.¡± Chapter 85 - Chains ¡°Tell me your name,¡± said Perry as he looked over the glowing chain. ¡°Helge,¡± she replied after a moment. ¡°You¡¯re ¡­ like him?¡± ¡°Like Jeff?¡± asked Perry. She flinched at the name, then nodded. ¡°I¡¯m a world traveler, like him, but we¡¯re not all evil. I¡¯ll get you out of here, don¡¯t worry.¡± He looked at the chain again. The glow meant magic, unless it was just a mundane glowing metal. ¡°How long have you been in here?¡± ¡°Two weeks,¡± she said. ¡°Maybe a little more.¡± Her eyes had gone to Perry¡¯s sword. ¡°I was a ballerina, with one of the major companies. He took women back to his hotel room, and paid well.¡± ¡°Paid well?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Paid for the company,¡± she said. She looked away when she said it. ¡°He gave out lavish gifts. It was in all the papers.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. He was frowning at the chain. His sword had trouble with metal, and unknown magic also smelled like a trap. ¡°Do you know how this chain works?¡± ¡°Cut my leg off if you have to,¡± said the woman, Helge. She gave Perry a deadly serious look. This was a ballerina saying that, he noted, a woman whose legs were her life, her livelihood. ¡°Unless he¡¯s dead?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Unfortunately not. March, are we getting a signal in here?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°In fact, I can¡¯t pinpoint our location at all, and extended mapping has been worrying.¡± ¡°Worrying?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There does not appear to be anything beyond this room, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I would say that we¡¯re trapped underground with no way out, but there does not appear to be any rock or earth past the walls.¡± ¡°Well, don¡¯t worry about the worrying,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to try to break the chain.¡± ¡°You¡¯re talking to someone?¡± asked Helge. She was wary about Perry, and there wasn¡¯t really a reason for her not to be. She¡¯d been stuck down in a rape dungeon for two weeks. ¡°I have an assistant,¡± said Perry. He didn¡¯t feel like explaining it further, not until he knew what her reaction would be. She was clearly from another world, and he¡¯d come to that conclusion before she¡¯d said ¡®ballet¡¯. Esperide had never had anything of the sort. ¡°Look, time is short right now, I need to be on the outside.¡± ¡°He¡¯s going to come for me,¡± said Helge. ¡°He sees me as a pet. You can stand against him?¡± There was pleading in her voice, but also something else, a hardness, as if daring him to say no so she could berate him. ¡°I¡¯ve stood against him,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s how I got in here. He had a piece of magic, a ring, and I bit his fingers off.¡± He realized only after he said it that this wasn¡¯t the most reassuring thing to hear from a would-be savior. ¡°Look, while I do this, you tell me how you came to be here.¡± ¡°I already answered that,¡± she replied. ¡°He invited me back to his hotel room.¡± ¡°And then he dragged you in here?¡± asked Perry. He knelt down and grabbed the chain in both hands, giving it a tug. That wasn¡¯t the best way to break a chain, he didn¡¯t think, but he would need some tools to do a better job. He strained, and the HUD highlighted a weak link, though Perry wasn¡¯t sure how Marchand had determined which one it was. They all looked the same to him. ¡°He did,¡± said Helge. ¡°I¡¯ve been chained up here ever since.¡± ¡°That¡¯s awful,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± He strained again, putting the full power of the suit into it, supplemented with his internal well of energy. He was going to have to make another trip into space to recharge if he wanted to be at full strength for the third round. This time, the weak link bent more, but something in the armor gave way too, and Perry stopped. ¡°Almost got it.¡± ¡°He said he was from another world,¡± said Helge. This was tentatively spoken, as if watching to see his reaction to that. ¡°Are you too?¡± ¡°I have some bad news,¡± said Perry as he healed the broken part. Spot healing was another of those things that had gotten better after two years of practice. It mostly involved venting energy to a specific place. ¡°After he locked you up, he moved between worlds, and there¡¯s no way to get you back. And there¡¯s worse news, which I guess you might as well hear now ¡ª the planet you left had some kind of plague, unleashed by a lunatic.¡± ¡°A plague?¡± asked Helge, hand going to her mouth but not quite covering it, a strange gasp that didn¡¯t make it out before being followed by another question. ¡°Some kind of sickness?¡± ¡°He was light on the details,¡± said Perry. He pulled on the chain one last time, straining hard, and the weak link broke. All at once, the glow went out of the whole thing, whatever magic was a part of it disabled or ruined. ¡°Thank you,¡± said Helge. Her voice was soft. ¡°Can you help me out of here?¡± ¡°There¡¯s a wrinkle with that,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re a long, long way from civilization, and I don¡¯t have a way to transport you, not unless you count this ring. It¡¯s going to have to be your ship, your cart.¡± He had no idea how to talk to someone from her world, given he only had Jeff¡¯s stories to go on. Low-tech, Jeff had said, high magic. ¡°I don¡¯t want to spend another minute here,¡± said Helge. She reached down to itch at the manacled leg. They would have to take some time to take it off later, but at least the chain was broken. ¡°There¡¯s really nothing,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not a walkable distance.¡± ¡°It has the stench of him,¡± said Helge. She was trying to look him in the eyes, but he had the helmet on, so her eyes searched in vain for a place to focus on. ¡°Please.¡± ¡°We¡¯re only out for a bit,¡± said Perry. ¡°He¡¯s still out there, and I¡¯m not going to be able to protect you if he comes back, even if I were able to beat him in a fight. We both have enough destructive power that bystanders aren¡¯t going to have a good time.¡± It was as much of a compromise as he felt comfortable with. As soon as he¡¯d taken possession of the ring, he¡¯d assumed some responsibility for her. They walked through the shelfspace, avoiding all the riches. There was more that Perry hadn¡¯t seen on his way in, including a collection of coins, cash, and what were almost certainly precious metals. There was enough gold that Perry almost stopped in place to count it, but in any world where gold was as valuable as on Earth, it would be enough to make him a rich man. ¡°He was a thief,¡± said Helge. She wasn¡¯t looking at one of the things that had been collected with an expression of wonder. Instead, it was with mute horror. ¡°He takes what he wants.¡± ¡°This way,¡± said Perry. It took a moment to figure out how to use the ring to open up a path back to where he¡¯d been in the real world, and the moment stretched for long enough that he was almost worried that he¡¯d made some mistake and wouldn¡¯t be able to get back out. When reality was peeled back to show the planet, Helge bolted, moving with surprising speed to go stand in the open field, and Perry would have chased her, except once she was free of the shelfspace, she dropped to her knees and felt the plants below her with outstretched fingers. Perry followed behind her and stood there, rubbing the ring on his finger. She was going to have to go back in. They were more than three hundred miles from anyone, but he would try to give her some time. He was hoping that she would go gently, but he had the feeling that she might flat-out refuse, and he didn¡¯t know what he would do then. ¡°March, no report from anyone?¡± asked Perry as he watched this strange woman touch grass. ¡°Re-establishing communication, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°No messages are waiting for us, no.¡± ¡°Good, I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°Send out contact pings, make sure they¡¯re still there.¡± ¡°Will do, sir,¡± said Marchand. He looked at Helge, who was still on her knees. They would have to get shoes for her, and clothes that were more than just a shift, and ideally, some help with her mental health. The Natrix would surely take her in, even if it put them at a bit of risk, but it didn¡¯t seem like they would be at more risk from Jeff, particularly given that they hadn¡¯t actually given Perry any material help. ¡°It¡¯s so green,¡± said Helge. They were among a variety of reeds, which were near the end of their natural lifespan, having grown tall and thick, basically a larger version of bamboo. The seeds had already been dispersed into the western wind, the life cycle complete, and most of the surrounding area had been denuded by the enormous insects. The grass was a bit like moss, and grew in the shade of the reeds. He didn¡¯t know how it propagated, but it was already growing brown from the heat. ¡°We¡¯re going to need to move,¡± said Perry. ¡°Aside from Jeff, there are threats here, giant insects that no one would be safe from. I have my sword, which I can use to fly, but it¡¯s going to take some time either way.¡± She turned toward him. ¡°Tell me about this world.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a long story,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a thin strip of habitable land, maybe two hundred miles wide, and to one side it¡¯s too hot for anything to live, and to the other, ice and snow that nothing can survive.¡± He took a breath. ¡°The habitable zone moves at maybe a mile a day, and everything has to move with it ¡ª the plants send off their seeds, the insects migrate, and the people have moving cities. It¡¯s one of those we¡¯re going to, to get you situated.¡± ¡°Situated?¡± she asked. ¡°They¡¯re good people,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve been here for two years, they¡¯ll make sure that you¡¯re fed and clothed, that you have a place to sleep. It won¡¯t be what you¡¯re used to, not the life that a ballerina would be used to, but ¡­ it¡¯s what I can offer right now.¡± Helge watched him for a moment. ¡°I would do anything for you,¡± she said. ¡°Any possible way I could show my gratitude for saving me, you have to let me know.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not necessary,¡± said Perry. Something about her countenance had changed, and it might have been because she¡¯d come to the realization that she was very dependent on him here, out among the wildness. ¡°The sooner we leave, the sooner we can get you somewhere safe.¡± She looked out at a gap in the reeds and the whole forest of tall, alien bamboo and kudzu beyond it. It wasn¡¯t too far off from the Great Arc in some respects, though these plants grew much, much faster, and didn¡¯t propagate with shoots or rhizomes. From what Perry knew, they¡¯d had nothing like it on her world, but then, Jeff had been sparse on what Perry considered to be the vital details like how people lived and worked. He supposed he would get answers soon enough. ¡°You didn¡¯t have nature on your world,¡± said Perry after having given her as much time as he felt he could. There had been response pings from all his allies, indicating that they were fine, which was a relief. He wasn¡¯t sure how long that state of affairs was going to last. Helge was slow to respond. ¡°We had parks. Nothing like this.¡± She turned to look at where the shelfspace had been, but Perry had closed it as soon as he¡¯d stepped out. ¡°Being chained up like that, no windows, no fresh air, that was one of my worst nightmares. He came in wounded, twice, screaming and gasping. That was you?¡± ¡°It was,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ I guess he captured you before his final fight on your world, so it¡¯s possible that the other thresholder he fought delivered a wound that made him retreat too.¡± ¡°He fought someone else?¡± asked Helge. ¡°A ¡­ lunatic, you said?¡± Her face was soft. Her eyes had gone wide. ¡°He¡¯s been talking a lot,¡± said Perry. ¡°Does the name Marjut mean anything to you?¡± ¡°No,¡± she replied. ¡°It¡¯s a foreign name.¡± Perry frowned beneath the helmet. It would probably have been a good idea to take the helmet off, but he didn¡¯t know exactly when Jeff would be back, and getting caught without it wouldn¡¯t do. There was something he wasn¡¯t getting here, because it really didn¡¯t seem like Jeff¡¯s style to keep someone locked up in the shelfspace, and chaining her to the wall with some kind of magic seemed ¡­ crude, he supposed. It also seemed like a lot of work, coming in with a chamber pot and leaving meals. Work didn¡¯t seem like Jeff¡¯s thing. ¡°Do you know ¡­ is there a reason he didn¡¯t have a cell?¡± asked Perry. ¡°To hold me in?¡± she asked. ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± She took a deep breath. ¡°I¡¯m ready to go back in now, I think. You won¡¯t leave me stranded in there, right?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He waved the ring and opened the space up. It wasn¡¯t exactly a portal, it was more an overlapping of realities, though they also remained distinct from each other. He was going to have to figure out how to pull things out of the space on the fly, like Jeff had, and then also find out some way of safely cataloging everything inside. Jeff didn¡¯t use much for weapons though, which meant that the weapon rack probably wouldn¡¯t provide much use. Helge stepped in and took another deep breath. ¡°You¡¯ll let me back out?¡± ¡°I will,¡± said Perry. ¡°If it¡¯s the last thing I do with my dying breath, I¡¯ll let you out.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± she said. ¡°For everything.¡± Perry gave her a nod, then waved his hand and closed her off inside the shelfspace. The choice was then a difficult one: where to go? The Natrix was large and familiar, and didn¡¯t have a deadly environment outside its doorstep, and it was relatively close to him, meaning that he¡¯d have many hours by sword flight. The Kj?rni were about the same distance away, and were wholly less welcoming, but Perry thought there was less cause for Jeff to cause collateral damage on purpose, which meant that it might be a good place for them to fight. And as an outside option, there was the Crypt, which was still making its way across the ice. Brigitta was there, which would make it a juicy target given how much Perry cared for her. Eventually, Perry settled on the Natrix. It had the best defenses, though they weren¡¯t really designed for small human-shaped things that came flying in at hundreds of miles an hour. It also had the most people, and if it really came down to it, it was more important to defend than what was essentially a passenger train. His heart tore for Brigitta, and he wasn¡¯t sure he could forgive himself if she was killed, but the Natrix was the sensible option. It would be the place that Helge would probably find most easy to fit in with. The trip took time, and Perry stayed in close contact with everyone, ready to turn at a moment¡¯s notice to arrive far too late to help, just in case Jeff attacked. He was too fast, that was the problem, and as a dragon, could probably do much more damage to the structures than as a person. He called Brigitta while in flight. ¡°I might have a way to get you through to the next world,¡± said Perry. ¡°To get a significant number of people through, actually. He¡¯s proven that it¡¯s possible in principle.¡± There was a pause from the other end. ¡°How many?¡± she asked. ¡°A hundred,¡± said Perry. ¡°Two hundred, maybe, though the fire marshall won¡¯t like it. And depending on how much time we have, it would be good for you to get in there, make sure that there¡¯s a self-contained system in place, toilets and food and microfusion reactors and whatever else you would need to allow them a place to stay in the long term. Because I¡¯m pretty sure I could survive in a place with toxic gas, which means there¡¯s a chance that¡¯s where I would end up in the next world, so it might need to be a significant amount of time spent in that space.¡± If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°Slow down,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It¡¯s a way for me to take you with me,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is big.¡± ¡°Would you want that?¡± asked Brigitta. ¡°Of course,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m saying we need to start making plans.¡± ¡°And were you going to ask whether it was what I wanted?¡± asked Brigitta. Perry was silent for a moment. ¡°The work of generations is getting off this planet,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s what I¡¯m offering.¡± ¡°It was always supposed to be temporary, you being here,¡± said Brigitta. Perry listened to her breathing through the audio connection. ¡°You don¡¯t want to come with me?¡± he asked. Even speaking the question was painful, a tightness in his chest. He was awash with emotion from the fight, hormones racing back and forth, the aftershock of an extreme adrenaline rush and boatloads of pain. That made it all hit harder, feel worse. ¡°You make it sound so charming, being stuck in a room for years while you fight people outside it,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°And if you lost, what would happen to this artifact? If your plan had worked, if the bomb had been close enough, you would have destroyed that space without even knowing it was there. That would be our fate, always depending on you to win the next battle.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll talk about it later,¡± said Perry. ¡°Think it over, and try to think about the technical problems.¡± She was always easier to deal with when she was thinking about technical problems, and he knew that was one of the ways to get her on board with anything. Interesting problems to be solved were something she loved. ¡°I can promise to think, but I can¡¯t promise it will change my mind,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I¡¯ll be talking with the others,¡± said Perry. ¡°Trying to get a list of volunteers, people who want to go with us.¡± ¡°Do that,¡± said Brigitta with a sigh. ¡°There¡¯s work that needs doing here. I love you.¡± ¡°I love you too,¡± said Perry. She had first said it six months ago, muttered as she was falling asleep with one leg hooked over him, and he had replied back, which made her wake back up with a wide smile on her face. It had felt joyous then, like he had done something worthwhile just by saying it. Now there was resignation in her voice, and for his part, the words were just rote. Two weeks ago, when Jeff had come, he had been willing to throw their entire relationship away. How much did he love her, really? He cared for her, certainly, cared for her more than anyone else on the planet, and having her with him as he went through the worlds, seemed like it resolved everything between them. But of course there were the choices he¡¯d made in the past, which cast doubt over a new future. He tried not to think about it. Instead, he put his thoughts toward the coming battle, whatever shape or form it would take. Their scheduled match had started with Perry springing a trap and ended with Jeff fleeing. When and where they would meet again was up in the air. Perry was still hoping that the radiation might complete its grim task. When he arrived at the Natrix, he was relieved to see that it was still untouched. There were perhaps more bug corpses at the well-defended perimeter, next to a rust-red plateau this time, but there was no sign that Jeff had returned. He had stayed here for almost two full weeks, and from everything Perry had seen, it seemed like it was still business as usual. All the farming frames were out, drawing water through pumps that fed from a nearby lake. ¡°This is it?¡± asked Helge, stepping out of the shelfspace. She had found a thick coat from within, and armed herself with a knife as long as her forearm, which she was holding as though she intended to stab Jeff the very moment he reappeared. ¡°The Natrix,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s one of only a few colonies on this planet.¡± She narrowed her eyes against the twilight sun and looked the Natrix over. It was like a disemboweled beast at this stage in the cycle, with hoses and wires spilling out of the sides, the farms having spread out like a stomach split open. ¡°But there are other planets?¡± asked Helge. Her eyes were still on the Natrix, and hadn¡¯t moved from it. Her knife was still held defensively in front of her. ¡°In theory,¡± said Perry. ¡°In practice ¡­ they¡¯ve been stranded here for hundreds of years, unable to build up the tech base necessary for, I guess, a ship large enough to take them all across the galaxy to their homeworld, if their homeworld still exists.¡± ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t it?¡± asked Helge, finally breaking her view of the Natrix to turn toward him. ¡°I mean, it probably does exist, but that doesn¡¯t mean there are people on it,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s been a long time without any kind of response or rescue. It¡¯s possible something happened. With advanced civilizations, there¡¯s always a chance of bringing about your own downfall.¡± ¡°So these might be the only humans left?¡± asked Helge. ¡°One of approximately three groups, yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°And it¡¯s a somewhat tentative existence for everyone.¡± ¡°Such a small footprint,¡± said Helge. ¡°A million people, all told?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Far, far less. Maybe twenty thousand, if that.¡± Helge shook her head. ¡°They¡¯re barely clinging on then.¡± ¡°Depends on how you look at it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Come on, I¡¯ll set you up with someone who can get you some food and a hot shower.¡± Mette came out to meet them as they came up the gangway, but pulled up short when she saw that Helge was carrying a knife. ¡°Problem?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Helge, this is Mette, she¡¯s one of the leaders here, put the knife down, she¡¯s going to show you to your room,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not putting the knife down,¡± said Helge. ¡°And I¡¯m not leaving your side until he¡¯s dead.¡± ¡°Well I like her,¡± said Mette. ¡°In spirit, if not in practice.¡± She looked Helge up and down. ¡°We don¡¯t know where the big gold idiot is, unfortunately, so it would be great if you could put the knife down, take a shower, get some medical attention, and then eat some food.¡± ¡°He¡¯s not an idiot,¡± said Helge. ¡°He¡¯s a puffed-up braggart, but he¡¯s clever.¡± ¡°He¡¯s not more clever than a nuclear bomb,¡± said Perry. ¡°Odds that he just drops dead?¡± asked Mette, looking at Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve heard March¡¯s numbers, I want yours.¡± ¡°March knows better than me,¡± said Perry. ¡°March doesn¡¯t know magic,¡± said Mette. ¡°Magic?¡± asked Helge, looking between the two of them. The knife hadn¡¯t yet left her hand, and while Perry was unconcerned and would be able to stop her if she took any unwise action with it, he really would have felt better if she dropped it. ¡°Your world had magic, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Eight magics?¡± Helge frowned. ¡°You have those here?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. It was an odd question, and he lowered his opinion of her intelligence a bit. She¡¯d said that Jeff had been talking to her, hadn¡¯t she? ¡°Others, beyond those eight.¡± ¡°Giant metal monstrosities, but also magic?¡± asked Helge. ¡°Set the knife down and I can read you in,¡± said Mette. ¡°You¡¯ve come a long way, and seen all kinds of things that no one should see, and you¡¯re displaced from a world that, to hear Jeff tell it, was in its death throes from a plague some thresholder released.¡± ¡°I think ¡®death throes¡¯ is putting it a bit strongly,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s possible they were going to find a cure.¡± He looked at Helge. ¡°Three weeks in that space, you said? You¡¯ve never felt sick?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Helge. ¡°Probably still a good idea to quarantine you,¡± said Perry. ¡°The sickness had started when I went to be with him,¡± said Helge. ¡°It wasn¡¯t spread by people, it was spread by rats and insects.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want to put this poor woman in quarantine for another two days,¡± said Mette. ¡°Not even a nice quarantine, not after she¡¯d been imprisoned. Jeff was feeding you, caring for you, over the past two weeks, right?¡± ¡°In his way,¡± said Helge. ¡°He brought in metal trays of things he knew I wouldn¡¯t like. He seemed to take some pleasure in seeing me eat things I didn¡¯t want to eat.¡± ¡°Bastard,¡± said Mette. She grit her teeth and looked at Perry. ¡°You kill that fucker as quick as you can, won¡¯t you? Fucking rapist piece of shit.¡± ¡°My virtue is intact,¡± said Helge, speaking quickly to clarify. She looked at Perry as she said it. ¡°Is it?¡± asked Mette. ¡°He didn¡¯t ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Helge. ¡°He said that he had no interest unless I was interested. I thought about it, so I could have a chance to stab him, but ¡­¡± ¡°But he takes a knife to the guts surprisingly well?¡± asked Mette. ¡°From what I¡¯ve seen, yes,¡± said Helge. ¡°He¡¯s incredibly strong, unnaturally so.¡± ¡°So what were you planning to do with that?¡± asked Mette. ¡°He has the heart of a dragon,¡± said Helge. ¡°It¡¯s a weak point. He told this to me, as a way of taunting me. His finger went to his breast, and he said that if I was able to drive my fork in there, it would be enough to end him. But it might not even be true.¡± ¡°She has information then,¡± said Leticia, who had walked up to join Mette. ¡°Letty,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s been a while.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t get an ¡®it¡¯s been a while¡¯?¡± asked Mette. She pouted slightly, which was perhaps fair. They had worked closely with each other, mostly on the magic stuff, and while it had always had undertones he thought were dangerous ¡ª of the ¡®let¡¯s sleep together¡¯ variety ¡ª they were still friends. ¡°Can we talk privately, Perry?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°Helge, I¡¯m going to need that knife,¡± said Perry. ¡°You won¡¯t need it here. They have guns, which I guess you don¡¯t know about, and even those wouldn¡¯t be much of a threat. I¡¯m pretty sure any weapon you have would just bounce off his chest.¡± Helge hesitated, but she handed over the knife, and Perry stepped away to talk to Leticia while Mette asked some questions. Perry used the ring to place the knife into shelfspace, which he didn¡¯t look half as cool doing. ¡°What¡¯s the timeline?¡± she asked. ¡°Minutes, hours, days?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Is he coming back here?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°I don¡¯t know that either,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sorry I wasn¡¯t able to end it. He¡¯s fast. I¡¯m here to protect you. Given that we were both going all out, that he lost one of his defensive powers, and that he¡¯s irradiated pretty bad ¡­ I think this is going to be a win for me, for us. And I¡¯m sorry about what you had to go through.¡± ¡°It¡¯s what I volunteered for,¡± said Leticia. Her lips were thin. ¡°It¡¯s not the first time I slept with a man I didn¡¯t feel like sleeping with. It¡¯s a central aspect of the female experience.¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t have to be,¡± said Perry. ¡°It shouldn¡¯t be. If that¡¯s how it is here, that¡¯s something you should change.¡± The gender politics of the Natrix were something he¡¯d butted up against a few times. Women were just expected to have too many damned children, that was the root of it, but he¡¯d never felt that his opinions were particularly valued. Leticia had probably slept with a number of men who were good matches but to whom she felt no particular attraction, was Perry¡¯s read of what she said. That was a lot different than sleeping with a psychopath as a stalling tactic. ¡°I don¡¯t want to talk about that,¡± said Leticia. ¡°I don¡¯t think you understand, and I think if you did understand, I wouldn¡¯t care about your perspective. I want to talk about what¡¯s best for this colony, and how we can keep from being destroyed.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°What we can do right now is let some weather balloons fly and hope that they give us more coverage, limit how much people are allowed away from the Natrix, and hope that he has trouble finding anything on the night side so that Brigitta is safe.¡± ¡°That doesn¡¯t inspire confidence,¡± said Leticia. ¡°And we can¡¯t shut down excursions. They¡¯re gathering materials that we need, food that we need.¡± ¡°He might stay clear of the Natrix after having been shot,¡± said Perry. ¡°Esper said that he seemed to be avoiding the main guns, or at least hadn¡¯t stood anywhere that would line him up. He wasn¡¯t paranoid, but he was cautious. The mechs out in the field though? Those are juicy targets for retribution.¡± ¡°What do you suggest?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°Coast on what we have in storage until we can barely remember the scent of dinner?¡± ¡°It¡¯s an emergency,¡± said Perry. ¡°So yes. The mechs are a weak point. He could be above us right now, and we¡¯d have a hard time tracking him, while he¡¯d have a pretty easy time seeing where the mechs were going. And that¡¯s if he has normal human vision, which I¡¯m guessing he ¡ª¡± ¡°You haven¡¯t read the logs?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°He¡¯s bragged about his eyesight several times.¡± ¡°I read everything Marchand felt was relevant, and everything that you flagged,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alright, so his eyesight is impeccable, which makes the whole problem worse. Bring the mechs in.¡± ¡°I believe it might be a bit late for that, sir,¡± said Marchand, piping the audio to the outside so Leticia could hear it. ¡°We just had a call from one of the field teams. It appears to be Jeff¡¯s voice, and he¡¯s asking to speak with you.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fuck, put him through.¡± Leticia¡¯s face had gone white as a sheet, but she hadn¡¯t lost an ounce of determination. Her fingers had curled into fists. ¡°Perry,¡± said Jeff¡¯s voice. ¡°Oh Perry, what did you do to me?¡± ¡°It¡¯s radiation poisoning,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m immune to poison you fucking dick,¡± said Jeff. His voice sounded gravelly and wet, like he was on the verge of coughing. ¡°I¡¯m powering through it, but just tell me what it is, how to get rid of it.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no cure,¡± said Perry. ¡°At least, not that I know of, not from any world I¡¯ve visited.¡± ¡°Look, you let me know how to stop this, how to get back in ship-shape, and I¡¯ll spare them, okay?¡± he asked. He had all the charm of a used car salesman. ¡°I can¡¯t tell you, because there¡¯s no cure,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let¡¯s go find a field, and I can kick your ass there. A portal will open up, you¡¯ll slink through, and maybe there¡¯s something on the other end that can save you.¡± There was no way that Perry was going to follow through on that. He was going to crush Jeff¡¯s skull if he had half the chance, or drive his sword right through the dragon heart in the bastard¡¯s chest. ¡°I¡¯m fighting through it,¡± said Jeff. ¡°It¡¯s going to take me a bit. But then I¡¯m going to fuck this planet up. I¡¯m going to kill everyone, dude. Lay waste to it all.¡± He coughed, and it was a wet hacking cough that went on too long and seemed to end with him spitting something up. ¡°I¡¯m going to avoid you until everyone is dead. I¡¯m so much faster than you, how would you even stop me? I¡¯ll just be going from place to place. It takes you so fuckin¡¯ long to get to the Natrix, how many people do you think I could kill before you even showed up? And you¡¯d just see my trail as I fly the fuck away from you. That, over and over. So just tell me, tell me what the cure is. Because I¡¯m supposed to be immune to poison, to disease, this wasn¡¯t supposed to be how I go.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t have an answer,¡± said Perry. ¡°At best, you can get a blood transfusion.¡± ¡°What the fuck is that?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°It¡¯s a complicated medical procedure,¡± said Perry. ¡°And it won¡¯t help your cells stop dying.¡± ¡°What the fuck is a cell?¡± asked Jeff. He coughed again, though shorter this time. ¡°The short version is that we take some good blood and put it into you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Your blood is sick, your bones are sick, and you¡¯re going to die unless being a golden boy or a dragon is going to save you. But you can¡¯t just get a blood transfusion without doing tests to see if you¡¯re compatible, and ¡ª look, we should just fight, then you can lose, go through a portal, find a world with a cure.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You want to win that bad? You¡¯d sacrifice all these people to fight me at my lowest? I underestimated what a shitbag you are, and I¡¯ve gotta be honest, I really thought you were a shitbag.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t kill anyone,¡± said Perry, clenching his teeth. ¡°There¡¯s no good cure, the only cure is through a portal, you¡¯re going to die.¡± ¡°Oh, I just killed like sixteen people to have this chat,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Didn¡¯t really have to, they probably would have given me the radio if I just asked, but it felt good to let some steam off.¡± ¡°March, pinpoint his ¡ª thanks,¡± said Perry as a rough location showed up on the HUD. ¡°Well look, I¡¯m off,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Not really feeling up for a fight right now, and I know better than to trust tech. You got the better of me, but it was the bomb more than anything. You know, I knew there was a bomb there? I won¡¯t say how, but I had eyes on the place the whole time you moved the bomb in, and I was thinking to myself, man, does this guy think I¡¯m dumb? I had no idea you¡¯d be able to hit me from so far away. I mean, you hit everything from that far away, destroyed the whole thing, would have wiped a whole city off the face of the planet if it weren¡¯t in the middle of the wilderness. I want that power, by the way.¡± Perry was already running over. He was running, not flying, because he was faster on his feet, and though he was burning energy to do it, draining his vessels and the armor¡¯s batteries, there was a chance he could catch up to Jeff. ¡°Sir, might I suggest an alternate course of action?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Go for it,¡± said Perry, not slowing down as he took a huge hill at full speed, running up the side of it. It was five miles, that was it, he could cover that in a handful of minutes, depending on the terrain. And then it was either a trap or Jeff would fly away, and Perry would be left helpless. ¡°Instruct him on how to stay in radio contact, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Otherwise it seems he may kill again in order to have another of these taunting conversations.¡± ¡°Do it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Instruct him.¡± ¡°And why¡¯d you eat my fingers?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°Pretty rude of you. How am I going to pick my nose now?¡± Marchand began relaying the information to Jeff, and there was some silence on the other end, aside from some noises as Jeff was, presumably, following the instructions on how to detach the radio and its antenna. Marchand knew every inch of every mech the Natrix had, and radios were one of the things that mech pilots only rarely built on their own from scratch. When Perry crested the hill, he saw ruined mechs and bodies that had been torn apart. It had been a brutal slaughter, and in the sky there was a golden light that was moving faster than his ability to catch up. ¡°Oh man, we get to talk forever now?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°Just back and forth, you and me? See, that was good thinking on your part, now I don¡¯t need to kill people to have a chat.¡± He coughed again. ¡°I am pushing through it. Maybe I¡¯ll be less pissed off in a day or so, when my eyes don¡¯t feel like they¡¯re about to fall out. Why don¡¯t you take it slow, relax, lick your wounds, and digest your fingers. Your robot can record things, can¡¯t he? Just check your messages in the morning.¡± Perry growled, then closed his eyes and let out a long sigh that was intended to make him feel calm and at peace with the situation. There was nothing that Perry could do except go back to the Natrix and protect it, but he couldn¡¯t be everywhere at once, and it was easier to attack than defend. He needed to talk to Helge and learn whether there was anything that Jeff had given away, true weaknesses beyond putting a stake through his heart, anything he¡¯d let slip because it gave him pleasure to brag and gloat. He was worried that Jeff was going to the Kj?rni and that a second nuclear bomb would repay the first. Chapter 86 - The Enemy After half a day of having a radio link, one thing was clear: Jeff really, really liked to talk. ¡°So, here¡¯s the thing,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I lied about killing everyone. It was a heat of the moment thing. I¡¯m not going to do it. First off, it seems like a lot of work, and second, it seems really boring. There¡¯s probably something to fighting against the mechs, maybe that could be fun, but it¡¯s so impersonal, you know? It¡¯s like killing someone with poison. What¡¯s the point unless there¡¯s a clever twist to it? Where¡¯s the drama, the pathos? It¡¯s a coward¡¯s weapon. I guess poison has been on my mind a lot lately, for obvious reasons.¡± ¡°It wasn¡¯t poison,¡± said Marchand in Perry¡¯s voice. ¡°I keep telling you that, and you keep not listening.¡± Perry had quickly tired of what seemed like endless talking, ¡°You say that it¡¯s not poison, then you call it radiation poisoning,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Explain that to me.¡± ¡°It¡¯s what it was called on my world,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They probably just got it wrong.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a very womanly way of killing, poisons and diseases,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Men are supposed to go in with their swords drawn, and it¡¯s women who do the cooking, who do the poisoning too.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not how it is in every world,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You know I studied these things, right?¡± ¡°Poisons?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°No, sociology, people, their cultures, how those cultures are shaped by material conditions, that kind of thing. If you can see my past right now, you could dip into some of those memories, sit in on some classes, and educate yourself.¡± The voice was very close to Perry¡¯s own, though he thought it was a little more flat in the affect, and sometimes the word choices weren¡¯t what he thought they should be. Still, it was better than having long talks with Jeff himself. The recordings were sped up, and Marchand only played the relevant bits. ¡°Nah,¡± said Jeff. There was a rasp to his voice. ¡°Not if your academies are saying that poisons aren¡¯t for women. They definitely are. I¡¯ve seen a lot of worlds, met a lot of killers. I was in prison, surely you listened to the pillow talk? Women don¡¯t need it to be up close and personal like men do.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t really feel like this needs a debate,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Radiation poisoning means damage to your DNA. Your healing probably keys off DNA rather than anything else. You¡¯re not healing back, or you¡¯re healing back with tumors, or whatever the hell else has gone wrong with you since we saw each other last. But if you want healing, then we should fight. I¡¯ll spare you when I win, I swear on my mother¡¯s life.¡± Perry didn¡¯t particularly like that, but it wasn¡¯t like swearing on his mother¡¯s life actually meant anything, especially not when Marchand was doing the swearing on his behalf. ¡°There¡¯s a better chance than the portal,¡± said Jeff. ¡°It took me some time to find it, but all I need is to eat one of your teeth. So, let¡¯s talk about that. Naturally I¡¯m disinclined to go anywhere that you tell me to go, given the bombing. I¡¯m bomb shy. What we¡¯re going to do instead is, I¡¯ll have you bring the tooth to me, somewhere that I know you can¡¯t deliver a bomb.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t give you the tooth,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯ll turn you into a monster.¡± ¡°More of a monster, you mean?¡± asked Jeff with a laugh. ¡°Look, you tell me how you¡¯re going to get that tooth to me. Can¡¯t trust you though, honestly, and the more I look at your past, the more I think that you might try to blow me up even if there¡¯s some people around.¡± He sighed. ¡°You¡¯re a real bastard. I respect it.¡± ¡°Blowing people up would be a war crime,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I don¡¯t do those.¡± ¡°So we¡¯re at an impasse before we¡¯ve even started,¡± said Jeff, ignoring that. ¡°I want that tooth, and you want to go on to the next world as badly as I do. I looked at you leaving Brigitta a few times, saw on your face the relief when the message came in. Tracking incoming threshies, that¡¯s something I¡¯ll have to figure out, I guess. You lit up with an energy you hadn¡¯t had in months. This world is shit, we both know it.¡± He let out a long breath, which sounded wet. There was something about his voice that made it seem like he was laying down. ¡°So I¡¯ve thought about it, and here¡¯s what I want ¡ª I want you to fly up into space. I figure I¡¯ll be able to see you from a few miles away, and we can have a big old fight up there, and if I see anything that looks like a bomb on you, or coming my way, I¡¯m not going to fight you, I¡¯m going to fly off and we¡¯ll never see each other again. See, I¡¯m going to pull through this radiation thing, it¡¯s just terrible and I hate it, but I¡¯m also pretty confident that I have more willpower than you do. So what I¡¯m going to do, if you try your dirty tricks again, is fly away from this planet and just outlive you. Isn¡¯t that hilarious? And you might think that even if I could survive, which I can, I would be bored out of my mind, but no, I have your past to look into Perry, and I can watch every movie you ever watched, sit through all those college classes, your entire past. But oh, I¡¯ll be out there, waiting to see whether there¡¯s any ships leaving the planet, and if they do, I¡¯ll smash the shit out of them. Or, if I get bored, I might come down and do some random acts of violence. I guess I don¡¯t know for sure.¡± ¡°So that¡¯s the offer?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°A fight in space or I can just have you fuck off forever while I live a good life down here?¡± ¡°No, no, I haven¡¯t forgotten about the tooth,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You¡¯ll send that along to me, from ten miles out, in some kind of container. I¡¯ll see it, I¡¯ll catch it, and I¡¯ll eat it. Then we fight, like we both want to.¡± ¡°Give me some time to think about it,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But space is big, it would be difficult to find each other without you having a signal.¡± ¡°Eh, signals, I don¡¯t trust them,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You¡¯re probably finding my signal now, pinpointing where I am. We¡¯ll meet near the space station. I¡¯ll be somewhere in the area. I¡¯ll give you a day to make your preparations, but not more than that. I don¡¯t want you having more weapons.¡± That wasn¡¯t the whole conversation, not even close, but it was the end of what Marchand felt was relevant for Perry to hear. ¡°I think I could handle a fight in space,¡± said Perry. ¡°It beats having a fight here on the ground, near people, so long as it¡¯s not a ploy. You did a good job of being me.¡± ¡°Thank you, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I like to see myself as a student of you and your ways.¡± ¡°I¡¯m also impressed that you had an understanding of magic,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ah, in that case I was saying only what I thought you would say, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Close enough,¡± said Perry. He thought for a moment. ¡°Go to hidden channels.¡± Perry began typing on the imaginary keyboard. In theory, Jeff might be able to look carefully at the position of Perry¡¯s fingers as he ¡®typed¡¯ and then painstakingly write down every keystroke, but Perry was also typing in different languages, trusting Marchand to smoothly translate between them. Marchand, in turn, had been instructed to encipher his messages in a constructed language that the second sphere translation could still handle, which had taken some work but was as good as they had managed on short notice. The end result was many layers involved in carrying on the same conversation. ¡°We could make a fake tooth out of polonium,¡± Perry typed. He still knew next to nothing about radiation poisoning, and only said polonium because of a thing with some tea he¡¯d read about once. ¡°Or we could set up some weapon that he wouldn¡¯t be able to dodge, some kind of deadly laser that we could fire from ten miles out and kill him with.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll run some simulations, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But I don¡¯t suspect that either of those options are workable. Poisoning him with more radiation would work, naturally, as would sending the second device to cause a criticality excursion, but we must assume that he¡¯s prepared for those eventualities. If he can see us from ten miles away, he might simply ask you to extract the tooth he wants while he watches. You could not have the fake tooth stored away in your own mouth without significant risk to yourself.¡± ¡°The laser then?¡± Perry typed. ¡°His speed presents problems, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°A railgun or something similar might be able to hit him, but his technology allows for recovery from a blow of immense magnitude.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not tech,¡± typed Perry. ¡°And we captured that from him, so in theory, he won¡¯t be able to heal up. I think I¡¯ve seen all his tricks. You don¡¯t think the laser gun would work?¡± ¡°The laser¡¯s power depends on sustained targeting,¡± said Marchand. ¡°His speed makes it a non-starter at those distances, given we can¡¯t bring up enough power. The full output of the microfusion reactor would be enough to kill a normal man, perhaps even at those distances if atmospheric scattering weren¡¯t an issue, but against this target, with the nanoarmor he has, I¡¯m skeptical.¡± Jeff didn¡¯t have nanoarmor, but this was how Marchand had chosen to conceptualize the apparent density of Jeff¡¯s flesh. ¡°Worth trying,¡± typed Perry. ¡°He wants the tooth, I don¡¯t think he¡¯ll run if we have a weapon with us. I mean, we are a weapon. But I really want to avoid a tussle in space given how much faster and more maneuverable he is. He doesn¡¯t seem to know I have the ring, but a quick search of my recent past will give that away. Fuck.¡± He¡¯d had a brief thought of hiding some major weapon in the shelfspace, but that would get given away quickly enough. ¡°I guess we might have to go for it.¡± ¡°Yes, sir, it does seem that way,¡± said Marchand. Perry mulled that over as he made his way through the Natrix. It felt odd to be back, given the circumstances, and the reactions to him weren¡¯t as pleasant as he might have hoped. Jeff¡¯s presence had cast a pall over the community, and then that had been amplified by the team that Jeff had murdered. There had been more deaths than the Natrix had suffered in years, family and friends. It had been one thing to have Perry descend from the heavens with all kinds of powers and solutions to their problems, but the warnings of another thresholder coming had been easy to brush off as something distant. Now it was here, and at least some of the blame had landed squarely on Perry¡¯s shoulders. He hadn¡¯t been able to protect them. ¡°So,¡± said Mette as Perry arrived on the upper level. Mette was pacing out in the hallway. ¡°She¡¯s safe, so long as you think she won¡¯t kill herself by jumping out the balcony. I offered her food, but she wanted to know what was in it, and I said that some of it was sourced from the bugs. She seemed disgusted, which ¡­ I understand, if I take a step back and think about it objectively. It¡¯s how I felt when you told me about drinking cow milk. She¡¯s had some food, plant stuff, but she keeps standing out on the balcony, and it¡¯s been making me nervous.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think it should,¡± said Perry. ¡°She was willing to cut her own leg off to escape. There¡¯s some despair there, but she¡¯s angry, a fighter, not suicidal. I think I have a good read on her.¡± There had been all kinds of wounds around her manacle, and everything around her had been cleared, which said to Perry that there had been escape attempts. ¡°Can I talk to her?¡± ¡°Why are you asking me? You¡¯re the one who brought her here,¡± said Mette. ¡°Is she supposed to just ¡­ be ours now?¡± ¡°Possibly,¡± said Perry. ¡°Look, I have something that I need to share with you ¡ª I have a way to bring you to the next world, if you want.¡± Mette stared at him. ¡°Since when?¡± ¡°Since I inadvertently stole something from Jeff,¡± said Perry. ¡°I had thought you¡¯d known, because I told Brigitta, but apparently she didn¡¯t share it, so ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Come with me?¡± He waved his hand and the shelfspace appeared behind him. ¡°Magic,¡± she said, shaking her head. ¡°Magic,¡± nodded Perry. They stepped through together, and Mette looked around. ¡°All this stuff.¡± ¡°Most of it is useless to me, unfortunately,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are lots of weapons, but most of them don¡¯t pass the scratch test, and Marchand thinks that if used in combat, they would break, at least if I go as hard as I like to. That happened all the time in Seraphinus until I got my sword. But I just want you to look around, get some measurements, see what it would take to make this place into somewhere that can be habitable in the long term for a small population.¡± ¡°I can see why Brigitta wouldn¡¯t tell me,¡± said Mette, looking at the floor and then the ceiling. ¡°Why¡¯s that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°She would know I would be first in line to go,¡± said Mette. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. ¡°Start thinking through the engineering stuff, then start the engineering,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have a date in orbit for another fight with Jeff. You have a day.¡± ¡°A day?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I¡¯m not even an engineer. And to abandon my post on the Natrix, to leave my children behind ¡­ I¡¯m intrigued, and my initial answer is yes, but I can¡¯t just do it without thought or reflection.¡± ¡°A day is as much as I can offer you,¡± said Perry. ¡°And I¡¯m going to be fighting in space, so if I lose ¡­ well, it won¡¯t be great. Best case, I lose, Jeff grabs the ring, and you¡¯re on another world with a psychopath in a prison. Worst case, you die of starvation or thirst.¡± ¡°You¡¯re really selling this, huh?¡± asked Mette. She was peeking around the shelves. ¡°Alright, let me out, I have about a thousand things I need to do. I should have let someone else deal with Helge, but she knew me, and it didn¡¯t seem right to hand her off. If I¡¯m going with you, if you want me to live in there, I have people I need to talk to, maybe Frans ¡ª shit.¡± Her face fell. ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Frans was part of the gathering crew,¡± said Mette. ¡°The one that Jeff murdered.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. He opened up the real world to them, and stepped out after Mette. ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°Just kill the fucker,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯ll get everything ready for me to camp out in there, but I can¡¯t guarantee how many people would be willing to bet on you. No chance you could win, land, and then we get in?¡± ¡°It¡¯s possible,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t want to risk missing the portal though.¡± He looked at the door to the penthouse Mette had been standing outside of. It was his penthouse, the place he¡¯d lived for a substantial fraction of his adult life. He had figured they would repurpose it, but it still felt awkward. ¡°I¡¯m going to talk to her, do you think that¡¯s a good idea?¡± ¡°You know her situation better than anyone,¡± said Mette. ¡°Do your best.¡± She left to go do her own work. Perry hoped that she would come with him. It would be just too depressing if he found a way to take someone with him to another world and no one wanted to come with him. Perry knocked on the door, and when there was no response, he slowly opened the door. Helge was standing on the balcony, hands on the railing. The manacle had been removed, and her leg was wrapped with gauze, presumably after the wounds had been treated as best they could be. She was out of the shift and into a long-sleeved shirt with shorts that came down to just below her knee, though she was still barefoot. Her hair hung down limply, still half-damp from a shower. ¡°It¡¯s always twilight here,¡± she said, not turning to Perry. He had tried to make some noise as he entered, so as not to startle her. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s only life in the twilight, but that lasts for maybe two hundred days.¡± He could feel the translation take hold, his intent curling the words into a different shape that she would understand. ¡°And then fire?¡± asked Helge. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fire, which scours life from this place, for something like sixty years, then a brief window of life again, on the other side of the planet, and then ice.¡± ¡°There¡¯s beauty to it,¡± said Helge. She hadn¡¯t turned to look at him. ¡°There is,¡± said Perry. ¡°You have a choice of where to live, but I can¡¯t say that any of the options are going to be like the life you left. I¡¯ve heard some of what Jeff said about the world you left, but he¡¯s not reliable, not in the slightest. I¡¯d like to hear your account of it, if you¡¯re willing.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the point?¡± she asked, finally turning to face him. ¡°You said there was a plague unleashed by some lunatic. Everyone is dead.¡± ¡°That¡¯s what Jeff said,¡± replied Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know that I trust him. I don¡¯t think he was there until the very end.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± she said. Over the course of two years, Perry had started to take it for granted that everyone looked more or less like Brigitta. Everyone on Esperide descended from the same population of the space station, and they had come from a planet where humanity had only a single small island before exploding across the world in a process of breakneck industrialization and colonization ¡ª minus the slavery and exploitation, because there had been no other species. Everyone on Esperide was vaguely Nordic, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and there wasn¡¯t all that much variation in their build or features either. Helge was dark haired, and her skin was darker too, reminding him of someone of Italian descent, maybe. Her lips were a darker red, not the pink of Brigitta¡¯s, and for a moment Perry had an odd feeling, like he was staring at an alien sort of human. It had been a long time since he¡¯d seen someone outside of Esperide, excepting Jeff or what he saw in the few movies that had been stored on Marchand. ¡°They eat insects here,¡± said Helge. ¡°You get used to it,¡± said Perry. ¡°They process pretty much everything, and ¡­ Jeff said that your people were vegan, but he never said whether it was for practical or moral reasons.¡± ¡°Both,¡± she replied. ¡°We had magic that was capable of growing things.¡± ¡°I do want to test whether that works here,¡± said Perry. ¡°It would change things completely if it could be learned by these people. They wouldn¡¯t need to spread out so much, if they could induce their plants to grow.¡± Helge watched him for a moment, then stepped closer, bare feet padding across the floor. ¡°I will do whatever you ask me to,¡± she said. ¡°For now, you need to sit tight,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s an option to come with me to the next world, I think, but there¡¯s some inevitable danger involved, if the place is inhospitable. I know this is a lot to take in, but from everything I¡¯ve heard of the place you¡¯re from ¡­ I know these people, and care for them, but they don¡¯t have the comforts you¡¯re used to, the services that you probably came to expect in the city.¡± ¡°I hate it here,¡± said Helge. She took another step closer. ¡°You¡¯re the only thing that I¡¯ve found to praise.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry you feel that way,¡± said Perry. He was growing uncomfortable. How much time over the past few years had he spent fending off women? Usually there was some attraction involved, an impulse that needed to be rationally dealt with, but here there was less of that. The women who had wanted him had been like Brigitta or Mette, strong and independent, very forward and without a lot of nonsense. He had always gone for that sort. Helge, if anything, reminded him of Xiyan, or the persona that Xiyan had put on. It wasn¡¯t really anything that she had said, it was the way she moved, a faintly desperate seduction, as if sleeping with him was something to be done out of shy gratefulness. ¡°I should go,¡± said Perry. ¡°You need your rest.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± she said. She stopped awkwardly where she was, another step taken toward him abandoned midway through. ¡°You¡¯re trying to find him, the monster?¡± ¡°I know where he¡¯ll be,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll be fighting him within the day. I had come here hoping that you would have some information on how to defeat him, whether it was something you had seen or something he¡¯d let slip.¡± ¡°He said many things,¡± said Helge. ¡°He claimed he could transform into a dragon, and that his flesh was as dense as stone. He could see into the past ¡ª could see my past.¡± ¡°Do you know how it worked?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Did he talk about that? Because he¡¯s talked to a lot of people around here, and I¡¯ve recorded all those conversations, but there are certain things he¡¯s kept close to his chest.¡± ¡°Once he¡¯s laid eyes on you, he can see your entire past,¡± said Helge. ¡°He said it¡¯s like standing beside a person during every single moment of their life, even those they weren¡¯t aware of, times they were blackout drunk or sleeping. He said that it¡¯s the true past, not one warped by misremembering. He might have been lying about that.¡± ¡°He might have been lying about everything,¡± said Perry. ¡°When I was small, my father died,¡± said Helge. ¡°It¡¯s a sad story, but Jeff told me ¡­ he said that I abandoned my father to die in the cold.¡± She frowned. ¡°Jeff said he went back to that moment, found it, watched my father¡¯s heartbeat. I had thought my father was dead, that was why I left, it hadn¡¯t been abandonment.¡± ¡°He could have been lying,¡± said Perry. ¡°He probably was.¡± ¡°He doesn¡¯t like lies,¡± said Helge. ¡°He likes to tell the truth, even if what he says is meant to mislead. So I think he combed through my past and saw that moment, saw when I was seven years old, cold and hungry, and made the choice to leave my ailing father. I just don¡¯t know if what he said about a heartbeat was right.¡± ¡°It¡¯s possible,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± ¡°I keep going back to it,¡± said Helge. She turned slightly away. ¡°He must look for the boundaries, scanning through decades to see when conditions change. I went from a rundown house to an orphanage, it wouldn¡¯t have been hard to spot. And he¡¯s had practice, I suppose.¡± Perry frowned slightly. ¡°When was this?¡± ¡°I was seven, I said,¡± replied Helge. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean ¡­ well, yes, that first, how did you go from an orphanage to becoming a ballerina?¡± ¡°I was a charity case,¡± said Helge. ¡°But also they wanted young women with very little to lose and everything to gain, women that they could mold and force to work long hours. If we weren¡¯t on our toes, we were out on the streets.¡± ¡°Can I see?¡± asked Perry. ¡°A demonstration?¡± asked Helge. She narrowed her eyes at him. ¡°You don¡¯t believe me?¡± ¡°That wasn¡¯t what I was thinking,¡± said Perry. ¡°I just ¡­ wanted to make sure we¡¯re talking about the same thing. It¡¯s very specific, very cultural, what ballet means in my world, and it¡¯s not something that I¡¯ve ever seen in person, and I doubt we have much in the Gratbook.¡± Helge put her hands together, then her feet together, took a breath, and extended her body, arms out to the side, tipping forward with one leg back, her entire weight on her toes in spite of the fact that she didn¡¯t have those special ballerina shoes. She turned and twisted, always with perfect control, and Perry imagined that there were ballet terms for what she was doing. It could possibly have been a pli¨¦ or fouette. It was beautiful, but also so precise and methodical that it felt like it was lacking in spirit. ¡°Impressive,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not really,¡± said Helge. She frowned at him, as though he was being too polite. ¡°I¡¯m malnourished and out of practice.¡± ¡°What I had meant to ask about the timeline,¡± said Perry, "was ¡­ up until the end, he¡¯d have had his power locked onto the past of this woman, the other thresholder. And after he beat her, he came right here, and after he came here he seems to have locked the power onto me. So when would he have had a chance to lock onto you?¡± Helge froze. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± she finally said. ¡°I guess I didn¡¯t think about it.¡± ¡°Mystery for another time,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe he saw what he wanted from my past and then locked on you, or maybe he locked on you before he left. He saw you at the ballet?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Helge, letting out a breath. ¡°It might have been then. He¡¯s said that he uses it for recreation as much as for understanding his opponents. He told me that I would have been easy to seduce, if he had wanted to. But I think that was his plan anyway, even after chaining me up.¡± ¡°Is there anything else he said that you think can provide an edge?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He boasted a lot,¡± said Helge. ¡°But I¡¯ve told you what I know. He¡¯s immune to poison and disease. He can turn into a dragon, long and white, a scaly beast. He can fly, if you haven¡¯t seen that already. There¡¯s the ring, which you¡¯ve taken. His vision is supernaturally good, one of the benefits of his draconic form, capable of spotting an insect from a mile off. He can sense people, but not very well, a sort of ¡­ aura, I think he called it. Enough that he could see through a disguise, or tell if someone was trying to sneak up on him. But the dragon¡¯s heart is the weak point.¡± She stared at Perry. ¡°You¡¯re going to kill him?¡± she asked. ¡°I¡¯m going to try,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll settle for him going through a portal and making sure he¡¯s not a part of this world anymore.¡± As he left the room, there was gratitude on her face, but as soon as he was gone, her face fell, returning to a quiet displeasure. She returned to the balcony and looked out at the farms and the wilderness beyond them. She extended a hand, raised slightly, feeling the vibrations in the air, then lowering it. Only then did a genuine smile appear. Perry had watched all of it from the cameras placed around the room. The place was swarming with nanites too, a few of which had made their way onto her clothes during the brief interaction. He wasn¡¯t at all worried that she was going to jump to her death, but she was hiding something from him, something big. He no longer trusted her. Either she was a confederate of Jeff¡¯s ¡ª but that made no sense, because she¡¯d been chained up in there, and to chain her up with all those details, the wounds on her leg where she¡¯d tried to remove the manacle, the clear lack of food ¡­ it would be too much of a stretch. That was too much planning for something that Jeff couldn¡¯t have known would happen. Perhaps she really had been a ballerina, in another life, but Perry doubted that was what she was now. He had listened closely to what Jeff had said about the other worlds. There was really only one person this could be: Marjut, the opponent that Jeff had faced in the last world. Putting the enemy thresholder in a private subspace was insane though, even if it was a defeated one, even if that manacle had been magical and did something to keep her contained. Tormenting someone that hated him, someone that he had beaten, would require a warped psychology and a cruel streak a mile wide. In other words, it seemed very on-brand for Jeff, and as soon as Perry remembered who he was thinking about, everything seemed to click into place. ¡°March, I want you to keep an eye on her, something isn¡¯t right here,¡± said Perry. ¡°Either she¡¯s not who she says she is or ¡­ I don¡¯t know. There¡¯s a possibility that she¡¯s the woman Jeff talked about, the one who unleashed a plague. Talk to Esper, keep her under surveillance, let me know at the first whiff of magic ¡ª of visual, spatial, or logical error, I guess. Get Jeff talking about Marjut, her powers, her personality, her physical description, pull the logs on her, try to get a description that way, see if it matches. Don¡¯t let him know that we have the ring, or the woman, whoever she is.¡± He let out a breath. ¡°We can¡¯t be fighting a war on two fronts. If they¡¯re in cahoots ¡­¡± That wouldn¡¯t make sense though. It wouldn¡¯t be a war on two fronts, it would be two entirely different wars, which was perhaps even worse. ¡°Shall we give instructions to the crew of the Natrix?¡± asked Marchand. Perry chewed his lip. ¡°Shit, I guess ¡­ not. We could try to lock her in there, or I could try to kill her, but if she went toe-to-toe with Jeff, it feels like me trying to kill her with a single sudden strike would likely just escalate us to a battle. She¡¯s got to be hiding all kinds of powers. What did he say about her? Flames, vines, control of ¡­ oh shit. Control of insects.¡± Perry stopped where he was. ¡°Fuck.¡± ¡°Sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°New plan,¡± said Perry. ¡°You do everything in your power to keep her content.¡± He took a deep breath. ¡°You do everything in your power to keep her here. If she runs, we consider that proof she¡¯s evil. Shoot her with the biggest guns we have, use Esper for it, send out drones, snipe her, whatever you can do, you do it.¡± ¡°Are you sure that it¡¯s her, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, I¡¯m not. But it would be exactly the sort of reckless, arrogant thing that Jeff would do. That fucking bastard. And if he learns that she¡¯s here, that I took his ring and brought her out, then he¡¯s going to use that to his advantage.¡± He clenched his armored fists so tightly that he threatened to break the armor. ¡°We go up, we fight, we kill Jeff, we come down, we fight, we kill Marjut, unless this isn¡¯t Marjut.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry let out a long, slow breath. ¡°And we have to hope that this problem, if it is a problem, will be a problem that we can let sit for a day or two.¡± Chapter 87 - Screaming Into the Void, pt 1 Space was a terrible place to be, which meant that it was a terrible place to have a fight. Perry couldn¡¯t survive in space for very long without the suit. Cold and heat were both issues that needed to be dealt with in separate ways, and during multiple satellite launches, he had tried to get in as much practice as possible, including on the ground. He could deal with punctures, mostly by venting energy to the affected area and ¡®healing¡¯ the armor, and mostly be fine inside. The second sphere''s ability to have clothing stay perfect had been a godsend, something that he didn¡¯t think he could now live without, and his ability to wield it had gotten much better, the energy he was spending being more correctly targeted. Still, space was brutal, his only form of movement was the sword, the ring would only help him to hide away, not to actually win. He had done progressive tests to see whether it could survive being opened in the vacuum of space, and it seemed as though the interior was separate, a divided reality that didn¡¯t allow airflow. There was little doubt that space favored Jeff. There was one exception to that, which was the presence of the moon, and for that reason, Perry had waited as long as he could to go up, allowing the larger of Esperide¡¯s two small moons to get in a slightly better position. Being able to draw on moonlight wouldn¡¯t make up for the lack of energy now that he was up off the planet¡¯s surface, but Perry had drunk his fill of the planet¡¯s energy, as much as he possibly could, letting it flow into his vessels and be stored there. He found himself wishing that he¡¯d had another year on the planet to train. He was fifty miles out from the space station when Jeff came on over the radio, after being prompted by a ping from Marchand. ¡°You know, I wasn¡¯t sure you¡¯d come,¡± said Jeff. He was just a voice in the black. ¡°It was a test, a way of seeing whether or not you¡¯re really the person I thought you were. It turns out you are.¡± ¡°What kind of person is that?¡± asked Perry. He was scanning the black space, looking for something that blotted out a star or two, but there was nothing. ¡°The kind that sees the threat of being forced to stay on a world as one of the worst fates possible,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I wanted to see whether you¡¯d come, knowing that I was going to just let you die down there. You could have made a life, you know?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°There was too much uncertainty, like whether or not I should believe you, which I shouldn¡¯t. You even said you might get bored and come back.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Jeff. ¡°But that¡¯s not why you came. You like moving between worlds. It feels good.¡± There was something off about his voice, his breathing. ¡°The fighting too, you love it.¡± ¡°I do,¡± said Perry. He could see the space station, but only because it was massive, and it was just a small speck. Following Marchand¡¯s instructions, he¡¯d matched velocity with it, but he was still a long way away. The sword moved slowly, and was only fast when it had a chance to build on its own speed. It wasn¡¯t going to be useless, not in the least, but it wasn¡¯t going to allow fast strikes. ¡°I can admit that. I¡¯ve had a lot of time to think about why I¡¯m not quite satisfied with this place as my home. I was here two years, you saw that. I had thought maybe the time of portals was over. I grappled with the question.¡± He didn¡¯t need to justify himself, not to Jeff, but he¡¯d been dreading having a similar conversation to this with Brigitta. ¡°We come from similar worlds,¡± said Jeff. ¡°My world had legates, people of enormous power you couldn¡¯t possibly stand against, unassailable titans whose shadow I could only ever hope to live in. For you, it was the same, but the titans were just normal people.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t really think our worlds were anything alike,¡± said Perry. ¡°In ours, there was hope.¡± ¡°Perry, I¡¯ve sat in on the conversations you had before you stepped through the portal,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I watched the things you typed on your screen. Why lie? You hated Earth. You spent half of every day arguing with people. It¡¯s not like I could see your thoughts, but you weren¡¯t shy about spewing out everything in your head. Perry, I could watch your face, I could see the way you reacted to it all. Why lie to me?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not lying,¡± said Perry. He grit his teeth. ¡°There was hope.¡± ¡°Well, if there was, you weren¡¯t feeling it,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Come on, I can see every moment, watch you, figure you out. I have you pegged. And I¡¯m telling you, I felt the same way. We¡¯re the same. You¡¯re just a pussy bitch version of me.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to end you,¡± said Perry. Nevermind that he couldn¡¯t see him. ¡°You said you were going to spare me, let me limp through the portal,¡± said Jeff with a laugh that came through the radio oddly. ¡°But I know you don¡¯t have that in your soul. Hey, I¡¯ve never been the sort to spare anyone when they¡¯re well and truly beaten. It seems like a good way to make a nemesis, if you ask me. I always worry that some unfinished business from another world is going to follow me through a portal, but that¡¯s just because I have a good appreciation of the dramatic.¡± Perry stayed silent, thin-lipped and angry. Did Jeff know? It wasn¡¯t clear just from that. ¡°You know, I watched you wilt over those two years you spent here,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You had this great big battle, a glorious battle, tensions coming to a head, you pulled out the stops, people thought you were a god ¡­ and then nothing. You were venerated, appreciated, but what did you have? Marchand was doing most of the work. Each satellite launch was less impressive than the one that came before it, with shorter speeches and more anemic feasts until it was just a little cheer for you at mess time. You brought books for these people, and they used those books, but it was so distant, so unconnected.¡± There was an unfriendly smile in his voice. ¡°And you had to pretend that you were happy. You know, when I see into the past, I can see everything, even when you¡¯re sleeping. So I could see Brigitta staring at you while you slept, wondering whether there was something that she could do, some way that she could make you stay, or make you happy.¡± ¡°Fuck off,¡± said Perry. ¡°Would you like me to engage autoresponse, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s too important, I¡¯ll listen to his shit.¡± ¡°Same with that girlfriend you had on Earth,¡± said Jeff. ¡°It was a few months before you left, I was trying to search for all the times you banged someone, but with her ¡ª didn¡¯t get her name ¡ª there was that same look on her face, this painfully sad little look like, ¡®can I do something for this guy?¡¯¡± ¡°Her name was Rachel,¡± said Perry. He hadn¡¯t thought of her in months. They had dated for maybe a year, and it had started to feel like they would or should get married, which was when he¡¯d broken it off. ¡°Well, what Rachel didn¡¯t know is that the only thing that would make you happy is to have some importance, some agency. What you needed was to become this fabulous monster traveling from world to world, cleaving through orcs and crushing the skulls of vampires. And if she had known that was what it would take to make you whole, she probably would have despised you.¡± ¡°I found happiness here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can find happiness in most places, I don¡¯t need to go between the worlds.¡± ¡°Nah,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t need this specifically. There are lots of places where you might find satisfaction, places where you could feel special and powerful, like you were cock of the walk instead of a limp-wristed academic. You could have been happy as a professional athlete, except you never had the body for it, and didn¡¯t have the drive necessary to be great at anything.¡± ¡°From everything you said, you were exactly the same,¡± said Perry. ¡°Only worse, because you didn¡¯t care about a goddamned thing.¡± ¡°I cared about myself,¡± said Jeff. ¡°At least I was honest about it. I gambled and whored and stole what I could, hoisted myself up while knowing that the top was out of reach, but at least I didn¡¯t pretend that I was content, not like you did ¡ª like you do. Ah, I see you now, let me figure out what you¡¯ve been up to. Get the tooth ready, but don¡¯t toss it my way until I tell you to. We wouldn¡¯t want to lose it in the vastness of space, would we?¡± Perry stayed on course, altering the trajectory and acceleration as Marchand was telling him to. The sword was pulling them backward, slowing them down. While they were within visual range of the space station, it was far away, and the radiation readings were within levels that were only alarming on the scale of years. It could probably be counteracted by second sphere fitness and healing, or possibly the regeneration that came with mechawolf form. ¡°All this talking to scrub through,¡± said Jeff. ¡°And your own particular countermeasures, which makes it all annoying. But I¡¯m looking at you now, and ¡ª oh shit, you have the ring. Well, I¡¯ll be wanting that back. Oh, and you found the woman I was keeping in there.¡± ¡°I did,¡± said Perry. He wondered whether Jeff would reveal anything. ¡°And let her out, I see,¡± said Jeff with a laugh. Again, the laugh wasn¡¯t translating quite right, an artifact of the fact that Jeff¡¯s microphone was pressed against his throat, no air actually involved, whatever was happening with his vocal cords being picked up and then run through Marchand¡¯s processes to become a voice again. It was extremely impressive that Marchand was able to do it at all, given that the movements of the lips and tongue wouldn¡¯t be changing much of the internal acoustics. ¡°I know she¡¯s Marjut,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to go deal with her after I deal with you.¡± ¡°Are you now?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°Interesting, interesting. I guess there¡¯s something to be learned about the portals here. What did she tell you she was?¡± ¡°She said she was a ballerina who came up to your hotel room and got kidnapped,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hah!¡± said Jeff. ¡°She must have read about that in the papers. Minus the kidnapping, that was her own invention. I think she might have been a ballerina though, in a past life. She told me that same story. Of course, it¡¯s been a long time since then. You can tell by looking at her feet. The gross feet are the worst part of sleeping with a ballerina. Consider that a warning, friend to friend.¡± ¡°Are we doing this or not?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I have the tooth ready for you, it¡¯s in a container.¡± ¡°I¡¯m still looking,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I¡¯ll need that ring back too, just so you know.¡± ¡°Or what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Or I fly away,¡± said Jeff. ¡°And curse you to live on that underwhelming planet for the rest of your life.¡± There was something sneering in the way he said it. ¡°You understand that I¡¯m probably going to live three hundred years, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yeah, and I know you don¡¯t want to spend it here,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Maybe you can go down and kill Marjut. I don¡¯t really know if that¡¯ll open a portal for you or not. I guess if you leave, I have to go down and start killing so you don¡¯t leave without me. Huh, that would be interesting.¡± ¡°You think I want to go, but you also think I care about these people,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I¡¯m as much of a rat bastard as you think, surely I¡¯d be fine leaving these people to die.¡± ¡°No, don¡¯t try to pull that. You¡¯re not going to run, and you can¡¯t provoke a fight by pretending you would. I don¡¯t believe it,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You¡¯ve deluded yourself into thinking that you¡¯re a good person, and hell, maybe you are by some standards. You want to save the girls, get hailed as a hero, pat yourself on the back for even the slightest bit of decency. There was something you hated when you came here, but I don¡¯t quite know what it was yet. Doesn¡¯t seem like it bothers you now. I think you¡¯d mold yourself to any people you found yourself with, given enough time. Me, I do the same, but not on the inside. Tell me, what was it that you found so off-putting? Something to do with the little girl, Liv.¡± It was the child labor, that was what he found off-putting. As soon as Jeff brought it up, Perry remembered. He didn¡¯t even really think about the fact that there were children working on the Natrix anymore. Some of them were in dangerous jobs, others simply deprived of a childhood and forced to take on roles that strained their small bodies. There was nothing like the factory cruelty that marked the early 20th century, but it was still something he¡¯d balked at and slowly, silently accepted as time went on. ¡°New deal,¡± said Perry. ¡°You want my tooth, you can take it from my cold dead body. Same goes for the ring.¡± Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. ¡°Aw, have I pissed you off?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°Shame. But I¡¯m a man of my word, so I¡¯m going to go fuck off into space for the next hundred years and outlive you. Not how I¡¯d have preferred it to go, but I¡¯m already feeling better, and if I don¡¯t get the full heal, I¡¯ll survive.¡± ¡°Bullshit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let me see you.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t already?¡± asked Jeff. He laughed again, a coldly mechanical laugh. ¡°I can see you, armored up, shining to perfection, holding that sword like you¡¯ve got a bead on my heart. Send the tooth now, in its little package, and the ring too, since you have it.¡± ¡°Do you know what happens if I go down there and kill Marjut?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Do you know that a portal doesn¡¯t open? Because if it does, then I leave and strand you here.¡± ¡°Ha!¡± said Jeff. ¡°I must say I find that compelling ¡­ but I don¡¯t think that you do. Think about what me being stranded here means. You wouldn¡¯t leave this world at my mercy, not with your almost-wife here, not with the friends you claim to care about. I¡¯d rip them apart out of spite, then make them serve me in a much less gentle way than I¡¯ve made them serve me so far.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve spotted him, sir,¡± said Marchand. The HUD magnified a portion of the view, leaving the rest of space as just a border. The image was quickly cleaned up by Marchand, showing Jeff floating with a golden glow around him, lighting him. He was grotesque. His hair hadn¡¯t grown back out, and his scalp was black and red. His eyes were a solid gray, no pupil to be seen. His muscular body was still as large as ever, but it was warped and changed, huge growths and tumors visible beneath his skin, not that the skin itself was in good condition. Parts of it had rubbed off and not been regenerated, and looked shiny and red under the glow that Jeff was giving off. Radiation had interacted poorly with whatever healing powers Jeff had available to him, and his face was sunken, sagging like he¡¯d aged a few decades since they¡¯d last met. His smile was still there though, a grin visible beneath the drooping face. ¡°Ah, you see me,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Admiring your handiwork?¡± ¡°You were supposed to die,¡± said Perry. ¡°I didn¡¯t intend ¡­ this. You can tell I¡¯m looking at you?¡± ¡°Oh yeah,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I¡¯m a hard man to sneak up on. So you¡¯re going for the whole ¡®over my dead body¡¯ thing, huh? Won¡¯t even send over the goodies you brought for me? Forcing me to make a stand? Is that how we¡¯re doing this?¡± Perry could see now the awkward way that the microphone was pressed against his throat. The audio quality had taken a dramatic jump when Jeff had come into view, and it took Perry a bit to realize why: Marchand was reading his lips. ¡°I guess I¡¯m calling your bluff, yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°You want the tooth, you want the ring, you can come get them from me. No tricks.¡± ¡°It wasn¡¯t a bluff,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I thought for sure the ring was gone forever, or that it would get shat out into some septic tank. It took a lot of painful work to get it wrapped around my knuckle like that. It was well-hidden. I guess you¡¯re the first to know, since I usually don¡¯t tell that part of the story, not unless I¡¯m about to kill someone. Changing your opinion on what¡¯s to be done based on learning something new? That¡¯s just sensible, that doesn¡¯t mean what I said was a bluff.¡± It seemed to annoy him. ¡°You¡¯re faster than me in space,¡± said Perry. ¡°You have the maneuverability. Come at me, bro.¡± ¡°One more thing,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Marjut? She¡¯s crazier than a madhouse rat. If you do kill me, if the portal opens, you¡¯re abandoning that planet to her, and she¡¯s going to wipe them out. I don¡¯t know if she can remake the plague she made last world, but she¡¯ll figure something out. I haven¡¯t had the time to look through everything she might have told you, haven¡¯t sniffed out all the ways you have of talking without talking, but if you¡¯re trusting her a single inch ¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯m not,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s tougher than she looks,¡± said Jeff. ¡°That¡¯s all I¡¯m saying. If you wanted, I¡¯d make a deal with you. You give me that tooth, we go fight her together. I barely made it out of my last fight with her, and that was with me having peeped at what she was planning.¡± ¡°Do you hear that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°That¡¯s your desperation talking,¡± said Perry. ¡°I see you covered in tumors, skin sloughed off, and maybe you¡¯re right that you feel better than you did yesterday. But I know that radiation is supposed to be a slow death of illness, and I think you¡¯ve heard enough from me to know that I¡¯m not bullshitting you.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know me,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I¡¯ve got power. I can survive things you can¡¯t even dream of.¡± ¡°Try me,¡± said Perry. Jeff laughed and tossed the radio to the side, then immediately transformed into a dragon and came at Perry. Perry held his sword in front of him, waiting for the charge, and he kept waiting for what felt like a very long time, because the distance between them was so great. Unmagnified, the acceleration seemed small, right up until the point when the dragon finally arrived, mouth open only just wide enough to grab some small part, small snapping motions that must have been meant to keep Perry from slipping down the throat like last time. Perry was barreled into, the teeth clinking against metal and not finding purchase, pushed backward by the dragon¡¯s horrifying face and snapped at again. He tumbled through space, righted only by the movement of the sword, and held himself in place, ready to angle in for another attack. He needed the maneuverability that the human form brought him, but his best option for the fight was to bring his sword up and deliver a blow at Jeff as he made the approach. Deprived of his cache, Jeff should only have close range weapons, which was the only reason that Perry had any chance. Still, it was reactive, which Perry didn¡¯t like. The dragon swam through space, a sinuous motion that shouldn¡¯t have done jack squat given the total vacuum. It came at Perry a second time, and he positioned himself to have the sword out in front. The sword had cut the dragon before, it was just a matter of making a single decisive strike against it, something that it couldn¡¯t just fly away from. The scales no longer covered everything, a translation of the wounds that Jeff¡¯s human body had suffered. When the dragon came in, moving swiftly, Perry was ready for it. He couldn¡¯t move very fast, so he did the next best thing and threw the sword directly at the dragon¡¯s face, calling it back to him as soon as it had landed a hit. He was again smashed by the snout, and felt teeth graze his leg, which came with a warning from Marchand and a sharp pain, but he was soon tumbling through space again, sword back in his hand. It was hard to tell whether the dragon was dumber than Jeff was, or whether Jeff was just out of options. They were both adapting to the conditions of the fight, but the options were so limited that it was only a matter of time and who could land what blows. Perry was worried about losing his sword somehow ¡ª throwing it felt stupid as soon as he¡¯d done it the first time and found himself totally without control of his position ¡ª and about being coiled and crushed, and about those teeth coming down on him. He had the ring, and could open up the space, which offered both a retreat and a handful of tools, but this was a dragon, and the way he¡¯d won last time wasn¡¯t going to work a second time, not when Jeff wasn¡¯t opening his mouth all the way. If they¡¯d been on the ground, Perry might have been able to push off and use the weight of his body to smash teeth, getting into the vulnerable interior, but in space it seemed like it was a losing proposition. The third time Jeff came in, his technique was better. Perry stabbed into his snout, and the sword found its way through the hard scales to pierce the flesh of the face, but didn¡¯t seem to hit anything vital. He had tried to maneuver himself away from the snapping jaws, but a shock of pain from his left foot was proof that he wasn¡¯t fast enough. The dragon nosed him away and he lost his grip, a second attempt at stabbing only gouging a scale before Perry was spinning through space again. Perry howled inside his helmet, feeling his own hot breath, momentarily deafening himself. When he looked down, a status report was already scrolling by, the word ¡®tourniquet¡¯ the only one that grabbed his attention. The pain was shooting up his leg, blotting out all other sensations, and it was only by clamping down on the meridian that he was able to think straight and reduce it to a dull roar. Most of his left foot was gone, only the heel left, torn metal and globules of blood the only evidence that it had been there. ¡°Fucker,¡± howled Perry. The foot would come back when he transformed, but once he was the wolf, he wouldn¡¯t be able to maneuver as well, the sword held in his mouth rather than his hand, and he wouldn¡¯t be able to bite, only use his claws. The dragon came back around, and this time Perry pushed with his well of energy, generating impulse. It took more than it should have, a technique that he¡¯d not found much use for. It was almost always better to channel energy into a limb, funneling power, but in a pinch, it allowed for some movement in the air. He narrowly avoided the jaws, and this time went under the head and grabbed onto one of the small, stunted arms of the dragon, whose claws flailed wildly trying to dislodge him. ¡°Full scan,¡± said Perry while he stabbed at the belly. His sword had difficulty finding purchase, and the dragon was so long that a single injury in this one spot couldn¡¯t possibly matter that much. Still, he kept plunging it at the skin of the belly, his grip on the leg the only thing that was giving him any leverage. The dragon surged through the void, and though the stars seemed to stand still, Perry could feel the enormous acceleration that was being applied to him. His grip was crushingly tight, and after a moment, there was no more tug, even as the dragon¡¯s movements stayed exaggerated and difficult to deal with. Perry aimed the sword at the joint of the leg and leveraged his entire body into a strike, pulling himself at the dragon, locking the sword arm in place. The sword went in, slicing cleanly into something vital, and the leg went limp as the sword opened the wound wide. The dragon shook him off, and he went spiraling through space, righting himself in just a moment, ready for the follow up. The HUD flashed up an image and a distance in meters, and Perry saw the picture-in-picture of the space station, which was rapidly approaching. He tried to angle away from it with the sword after reorienting himself, but it was clear that Jeff had been employing actual strategy, and that collision was going to be impossible to avoid. Perry slammed into the side of the space station, feet first, denting the metal wall and sending up a flare of pain and alarms from the armor. He braced himself against the metal of the station, flicked his eyes to the radiation tracker ¡ª which was yellow, still within the limits he¡¯d set ¡ª and then set his sights on the dragon, which was coming toward him. He was pretty sure his leg was broken, but in space, he wasn¡¯t really using his legs, and the sharp pain when he moved it was dulled by clamping down on another of his meridians. His eyes tracked the dragon as he tried to heal himself, flaring out energy. A single bite in the wrong place would be enough to end him. ¡°Show me where the heart is,¡± said Perry. ¡°The scan was messy, sir,¡± Marchand replied, but a marker showed up on the HUD, displaying a tiny red dot on top of the white dragon. ¡°From what I could see, the enemy appears to be blind.¡± ¡°Blind?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Visual and sonic inspection reveals ¡ª incoming,¡± said Marchand. If the dragon was blind, that hadn¡¯t stopped it from finding Perry. It slammed him against the dented wall of the space station, then whipped its tail at him, knocking his head against an exterior window, shattering it into a spiderweb but not releasing any air from inside the station. Perry pushed himself off and away from the station with his good leg to avoid a bite. He¡¯d thought having a purchase on something would help him, but he hadn¡¯t realized how much the void of space was giving him protection. Once he was floating off, trying to keep up the healing on his bruised and broken body, along with the damage to the armor, he tried to focus his mind. That was the benefit of being in human form, wasn¡¯t it? The dragon was blind, and judging by his eyes, Jeff was too, but that wasn¡¯t stopping him. What had Jeff said? That he could sense people? If the blindness had happened because of the bomb, or the partial blindness, or whatever it was, then maybe he¡¯d been blind during the fight too. His eyes had been a deep red, and it hadn¡¯t been clear whether they were actually tracking him. But Jeff had said that he could ¡®sense people¡¯, so ¡­ maybe the answer was to not be people. ¡°I¡¯m going to try to get us some space,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I disconnect the arm and the chestplate, can you run the laser gun? Aim it and stuff?¡± ¡°That will expose you to the vacuum, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Use the nanites, bridge the gap,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have enough for a skintight suit.¡± The dragon took a long time to circle around, the motion elongated. Perry was cursing his low maneuverability, but he thought he probably had a higher top speed if it came to that, given the differences in their magic. Space played havoc with intuitive understandings of velocity, and he thought that the sword had a better interpretation than either of Jeff¡¯s two powers. The point of the long circle was fairly clear: the dragon was lining up to push Perry straight at the reactor. That the dragon could see the reactor and the space station meant that the blindness was only partial, or that other senses were picking up the slack. Perry held his sword out in front of him, and when the dragon charged in with reckless abandon, Perry swung himself around the blade and used what was left of his eaten foot, the heel, to push himself off and away. He worked quickly, with Marchand¡¯s help, detaching the front plate of the armor and slipping his arm out of the left ¡®sleeve¡¯. It was attached to the center piece with a wire, and with a wave of his hand, Perry reached into the shelf and pulled out the huge laser gun that Brigitta had built for him. He attached that too, using a long cable, and then tossed the three-piece assembly out to drift through space just in time for him to nearly get his arm bitten off by the dragon¡¯s sharp teeth. Wearing only the nanites on his chest and arm was unnerving. They didn¡¯t conform to his skin like they had to Maya¡¯s, and wouldn¡¯t react to protect him. Deep within their programming was a directive to protect Maya Singh, and two years worth of Marchand alternately attempting to cajole and hack them hadn¡¯t done anything to change that. It wouldn¡¯t go diamond hard in an instant, and wouldn¡¯t fight back in the same way that hers had, which meant that it would be little better than motorcycle leathers for him. The jaws snapped, and Perry felt his fingers, unencumbered by armor, touch one of the huge teeth that was snapping at him. He looked down at the mouth, illuminated by the golden glow, and saw the half a foot still floating around in the mouth among perfect spheres of blood and spit. When the laser began firing, the dragon howled, wordless with the lack of air. It swam away, leaving Perry to drift near the space station once more. The radiation alert went to orange, too much time having passed with him too close and with no shielding between him and the source. Perry watched the dragon twist and squirm around, circling back but clearly in pain. As Perry expected, Jeff seemed to have no idea where the laser was coming from. If it weren¡¯t flagged on the HUD, Perry wasn¡¯t sure he would know there even was a laser. It was a tightly focused beam, and there wasn¡¯t anything in the air, no straight red beam of light caused by scattering photons. There was only a hole burning into the dragon, highlighted with a flashing circle. It was targeted straight at the heart. When the dragon moved, the arm of the power armor would move the laser gun, keeping a bead on it, fed targeting information by Marchand. Perry flew at the dragon, casting both fears and pains to the side. If he could, he would have pinned it in place, but that was an impossibility in space. The best he could do was to harry it, keep it from running as much as he could. He went for the face, the most dangerous part of the whole creature, and got slapped to the side with a twist of the head. Perry slashed with his sword, scoring another hit on his second approach, then got brushed aside as the snake dashed forward, away from the station. Perry stared after it for only a moment as he got his bearings, then swore. It was heading toward the planet. ¡°Fucker,¡± Perry spat. He was winning, and now Jeff was running. He wasn¡¯t sure why he¡¯d expected anything different. ¡°Keep him in sight, don¡¯t let him lose us,¡± said Perry. He flew to the chest piece and the laser, then took off, following the sword. He was slower from the start, but the sword let him pile up the speed over time. All he knew was that if he lost Jeff, the next time he found him would be when the enemy thresholder attacked one of the human settlements. This needed to end, and it needed to end now. Chapter 88 - Screaming Into the Void, pt 2 Perry flew through space, toward the dragon, which was receding into the distance. ¡°Figure out his top speed,¡± said Perry. ¡°It has limits, doesn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°His top speed in relation to what?¡± asked Marchand. Perry thought about that. ¡°If he could have slammed me into the space station at a thousand miles an hour, he¡¯d have done that, right? Are we gaining on him?¡± ¡°The total distance between us is increasing,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, assuming that we can keep him within our sights, our acceleration means that we¡¯ll catch up before we¡¯ve gone too far. His speed in relation to our own appears to be constant ¡ª which is to say, if our acceleration stopped, he would quickly widen the gap.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. He was decidedly not a physics guy. ¡°So what¡¯s his top speed?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a complicated question, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°His speed in relation to us, to the space station, or to the planet?¡± ¡°Alright, fine, bad question,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not a bad question, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Only an imprecise one. At any rate, we do have some time until we catch up with him, assuming that his bearing holds.¡± ¡°Can we communicate with the satellites?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We¡¯re quite distant from them, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though with the lack of atmospheric interference, there¡¯s some hope. The pings I¡¯ve sent have not gotten a response, but I will try again as we close distance to the planet.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to transform, heal up the foot, back in a second.¡± Perry hated to use a transformation on something like this, but there was a chance that their battle would take them down to the surface of the planet, and he needed to be able to stand on two feet. If the skirmish had proven anything, it was that it was incredibly hard to score a decisive hit when there was nothing to push back against. The transformation was painful, but it was at least relatively fast. While in mechawolf form, he tried to scan, but he was drifting through space, and every second counted. He tasted something though, a bit of blood that had been on the outside of his suit and which had been licked up by his metallic tongue, along with particles that had drifted into his nose. It was the taste and smell of a sick, dying creature. When Perry shifted back, again feeling like he was about to have his face peeled off, the impression of the taste lingered, if not the taste itself. It didn¡¯t make Perry as happy as he had thought it would. If Jeff was dying, if the Blue Boy serum and the dragon¡¯s heart combined wouldn¡¯t save him, then that felt incredibly dangerous. A wounded animal was like that. Jeff¡¯s default was to behave like he had nothing left to lose. Perry put the pieces of armor back on, one-handed with the sword in the other hand, which was no small feat. When that was done he had the laser rifle ready to go and pointed far ahead of him, though he was only tracking the dragon as a small dot in the magnified image. He wasn¡¯t sure about trying for an AI-assisted shot, not until he got a lot closer, and he worried that Jeff would simply speed away in another direction. A protracted battle wasn¡¯t something that Perry could afford, not with Marjut down there. Marjut was going to try something. Maybe that something would be wiping out the Natrix. It would be a lot easier to kill her if he could get to her while she still thought that no one was on to her, but she had known that he was going up to fight Jeff, and maybe she would have seen that as her opportunity. Perry wasn¡¯t sure, but the only thing he could do was hope that they could handle a thresholder all on their own. Perry was pretty sure that they couldn¡¯t. It wasn¡¯t too long before Perry had matched speed with Jeff, which still left considerable distance between them. The dragon was only a speck against the day side of the planet, invisible to the naked eye, just barely visible to March¡¯s cameras and enhancement. The acceleration through space was slow, and Perry fretted over the laser gun and tried to plan for different scenarios. He needed the kill shot to end this whole thing. ¡°Any chance we can slam a satellite into him?¡± asked Perry as the gap began to close. ¡°The second generation satellites have very little propulsion, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Even if we could make a connection, and calculate the correct intersection, and time everything down to the millisecond ¡ª which we cannot, given the technology we¡¯re working with ¡ª there is unlikely to be any intersection that we could achieve given the low levels of thrust.¡± ¡°Damn,¡± said Perry. ¡°Would have been cool though.¡± ¡°I suppose so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Any chance that we hit a satellite by accident?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There is some chance, yes,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That chance is, by my estimate, lower than the chance you die from a brain aneurysm in the next hour.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. The thought of a chunk of metal slamming into him at thousands of miles an hour wasn¡¯t a great one. Perry was almost within range to fire the laser and be confident of some sustained damage when Jeff made an immediate rightward turn, going far faster than he¡¯d gone before. ¡°Did he know we were going to fire?¡± asked Perry. He frowned at the speck, which was again receding. The sword had a high top speed, maybe a top speed that could eventually get him across the stars with enough time, but it couldn¡¯t do sharp turns. ¡°I don¡¯t know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Calculating ¡­ I have a theory as to how his flight speed is determined, one which fits the data.¡± ¡°Fine, go for it, but update the heading for an intercept,¡± said Perry. The HUD updated the direction that the sword should take them in, and Perry altered course. ¡°The dragon¡¯s velocity, as measured from the space station, was perhaps six hundred miles an hour,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Until the course correction that just happened, that was constant. However, the dragon now appears to be going much faster, but importantly, it is decelerating with respect to the planet.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry. ¡°So ¡­ what does that mean?¡± ¡°It means that the technology he uses is keyed to the reference frame in which it is used, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I expect that it might be a deliberate limit.¡± ¡°I mean, what does that mean in terms of catching up to him?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It depends upon the specifics of the technology, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If he can change it at will, we have little hope, and would be better off angling for where he was heading. If he cannot change it at will, because there are built in limits similar to Miss Singh¡¯s nanites, then he¡¯ll still be able to avoid us, but he¡¯s not so fast that we can¡¯t see where he¡¯s going and, potentially, beat him there.¡± ¡°And where is he going?¡± asked Perry. A map came up on the HUD, one showing the entire planet and a cone of travel that represented where the dragon was heading toward. ¡°I believe he¡¯s flying toward the Natrix sir, though it will take him much longer to reach it than it will take us, on the order of perhaps ten hours compared to the two it will take for us.¡± ¡°Then ¡­ set a heading for there,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s where Marjut is, we need to kill her.¡± The HUD updated, showing a new line, and Perry redirected the sword. It was the same path that Perry had taken before, when he¡¯d first come to the world, only now he was far, far better equipped for it. There was no worry that he would run out of breath, only the worry that he wouldn¡¯t arrive in time. His enemies and allies were more or less known quantities, and he had infrastructure in place, satellites that would go whirling by and mechs he could pilot if it came to that. ¡°A ping to the satellite network succeeded, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It appears that an attack on the Natrix is underway.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Marjut is on the move?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The battle appears to be an aggressive and prolonged attack from the insects. So far as I can tell from the logs that have been transmitted, Marjut does not appear to be involved.¡± ¡°She has the power to control bugs,¡± said Perry, gritting his teeth. Jeff had revealed that only once, saying ¡®vermin¡¯ instead of bugs, and he hadn¡¯t known if it would apply to the huge monsters of this planet. Apparently it did. ¡°If you say so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The Natrix is designed to defend against regular attacks, even the large, aggressive ones at the end of the bell curve, but they won¡¯t survive the whole population of the region being funneled in toward them,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need to get down there, execute her, then deal with Jeff.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I should warn you that the course I¡¯ve plotted will take us near the dragon, though we¡¯ll be moving at a high enough velocity that the window of contact will be only momentary.¡± ¡°If he doesn¡¯t move out of the way,¡± said Perry, thinking it through. ¡°Odds we can do a drive-by?¡± ¡°A drive-by, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°We¡¯re going to be speeding past him pretty fast, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°From my calculations, and given the course I¡¯ve plotted, yes,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We¡¯ll be moving in excess of a thousand miles an hour relative to him.¡± Perry looked out at the stars and at the dot on his screen. ¡°How long did it take for him to get out here then?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He¡¯s a slowpoke.¡± ¡°I would guess that it took him between fifteen and twenty hours,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There remain some open questions about how he found the space station and arrived there, but with proper instrumentation, it wouldn¡¯t have been difficult.¡± ¡°He was naked except for the radio,¡± said Perry. ¡°And the space station is in orbit, right?¡± ¡°Yes, very astute sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I guess if his eyes are really supernaturally good, he could have seen it,¡± said Perry. ¡°And if he got out, he could what, intercept the orbit? Decelerate relative to it?¡± If he hadn¡¯t had his helmet on, he¡¯d have rubbed his forehead while he tried to think about that. He wasn¡¯t entirely sure he understood orbital mechanics, and he definitely didn¡¯t understand whatever magic Jeff was using. ¡°I¡¯m uncertain, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Having made the heroic effort to fly to that meeting spot, it seems a shame he¡¯s run away like a coward.¡± ¡°We can beat him to the ground,¡± said Perry. ¡°You laced him with nanites, I hope?¡± ¡°I did, sir, but the range on them is poor, and they¡¯ll give us little foreknowledge of his arrival.¡± Marchand seemed to mull this over, a small pause that either represented some heroic computational efforts or was a deliberate affect. ¡°In fact, the radar aboard the Natrix will likely do better.¡± ¡°Then we race to the Natrix, kill Marjut, and we still have ten hours to deal with Jeff,¡± said Perry. ¡°Does that sound right?¡± ¡°I suppose as plans go, I¡¯ve heard worse,¡± said Marchand. ¡°In fact, I believe I¡¯ve heard worse from you.¡± ¡°Prep the flyby,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to go screaming by him, guns blazing.¡± An hour later, having corrected his course, Perry was ready. He¡¯d used the sword to get up to speed, and so long as Jeff didn¡¯t change course, they would be passing within meters of each other. The incredible speed felt like nothing in the vacuum of space, because as Marchand had said, velocities only meant anything in relation to other objects, and in the void, the only thing to compare himself to was the planet down below. If they actually collided with each other, there was a good chance that it would kill them both. Instead, Perry began to release all the small objects he¡¯d been able to grab from the shelfspace. There were bits and bobs, tiny pieces of things, and a full sack of what seemed to be small metal balls of unknown origin and purpose. These were all allowed to drift away from Perry, homemade flak moving at the same relative speed of a bullet. For good measure, as they approached even closer, Perry took three of the weapons and tried to align them, but the best hope for actually hitting Jeff with the flyby was the hundreds of small metal objects spreading out in a field. Jeff could sense people, and probably couldn¡¯t be snuck up on, but objects were a different story, especially when moving at speed. The flyby happened in a moment, too fast for Perry to comprehend. He flashed past like a bullet, getting almost close enough to touch. Even with all Perry¡¯s focus on the moment, he didn¡¯t see a single thing, and only after he had passed was there anything from Marchand¡¯s cameras, still images that had been smeared by the motion. ¡°Did we hit him?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s difficult to say, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The cameras were not designed for such high relative velocities. We cannot actually sense a bullet in flight.¡± ¡°Can¡¯t you tell from the nanites?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We were in range for an extremely limited amount of time, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But sir, I do have a question for you. If that had worked, and you had killed him in a single blow, a ¡®portal¡¯ would have opened, would it not?¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Perry. He frowned. There were sensors inside the helmet so Marchand could read his facial expressions, but they were supposedly pretty crude, a ball of machine learning going off messy data. ¡°I must say, sir, that given everything you¡¯ve said about these portals, having one open at high speed seems as though it might present some problems,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Namely that we don¡¯t know what frame of reference they appear within, and if we passed by one at great relative speed in the vacuum of space, we might not be able to find it.¡± ¡°I think it¡¯s relative to me,¡± said Perry. ¡°But a portal didn¡¯t open, did it?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t see one, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If it had, would it be your plan to go through it?¡± Perry thought about that. A portal in space, one that it was possible he couldn¡¯t find again, set against the threat that Marjut posed to the people down on Esperide. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t go through it until after I had dealt with whatever was on the planet,¡± said Perry, after too long spent in contemplation. ¡°Why do you ask?¡± Stolen novel; please report. ¡°It¡¯s my role to anticipate your plans and needs, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I appreciate the clarity in this matter.¡± The rest of the trip gave Perry too much time to think. He was focused on his breathing, making sure that he wasn¡¯t draining the oxygen tanks, ensuring that his body was in fighting shape and he was as fully charged as he could be. He was also looking for portals though, seeing them as phantoms against the stars, and sometimes looking back to see whether he had missed one, not that the cameras would pick it up. The rules, as he understood them, meant that beating Jeff would cause a portal to open. Marjut was a loser, dragged through by a winner. That shouldn¡¯t affect anything, should it? ¡°Patch in to the Natrix, how are they doing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Poorly, I¡¯m afraid,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Everyone has been moved to the interior of the Natrix, aside from the mechs that have been set up on the decks and on the ground for additional firepower, but the sustained onslaught appears to be running through their resources at a rapid rate. Mette has requested assistance when we arrive.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°ETA?¡± ¡°Fifteen minutes, sir,¡± said Marchand. They were decelerating, and Perry could see the green band of twilight. Soon they¡¯d be skimming the atmosphere, slowed by the friction of the air rather than the sword tugging them in the opposite direction. ¡°You have contact with the Natrix?¡± asked Perry. ¡°With the nanites that are up in the penthouse?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You¡¯re focused on the woman you¡¯re calling Marjut?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Find her, show her to me. We¡¯re going after her.¡± ¡°Even though there¡¯s no proof that it¡¯s her, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yup,¡± said Perry. ¡°This attack is overwhelming, it¡¯s beyond all expectations, and it showed up right when she did.¡± He¡¯d been reading data from the HUD. ¡°Jeff confirmed it, and I don¡¯t think that¡¯s worth a lot, but ¡­ we¡¯re going for it.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. It was stormy as Perry descended, blocking the view of the Natrix, which was shown on the HUD by Marchand as a ghostly red image through the clouds. The descent was fast enough to heat up the armor, but not enough to burn. Up in one corner of the HUD, there was a ticking clock that Marchand had made, estimating the time it would take before Jeff would show up. It was at eight hours, which Perry desperately hoped would be enough time. If the fight with the bugs could be wrapped up, then maybe Jeff would be stupid enough to come within range of the cannons, and then also stupid enough to stay still enough for them to get a shot off. If not, Perry would do his best to fight against an increasingly crippled enemy. When Perry broke through the roiling clouds, the ground was lit up by the firing of bullets and shooting of lasers. The dead bugs were piling up high, virtual mountains of them, with more flowing over with every second. The large lasers were firing non-stop, and two of them weren¡¯t firing at all, which was a bad sign. Smoke was drifting up into the air, and it seemed as though part of the battlefield had been set on fire. From above, Perry could see the hordes trickling in from all around, swarms approaching at speed, scrabbling along on chitinous legs. There were many more where the dead had come from. That the Natrix was toward the edge of a large canyon was the only reason they hadn¡¯t been overrun from all directions. Perry landed on the balcony of the penthouse, where the woman ¡ª Helge, Marjut, whatever her name was ¡ª looked out over the battle. Her expression was unreadable, which was a point against her. There should have been fear, concern, something, especially for someone with the background she claimed to have. She¡¯d been a ballerina, she¡¯d said, and while Perry had no illusions that life was an easy one, he didn¡¯t think there was any good reason to be staring out at so much death and destruction without any obvious emotion on her face. ¡°You came back,¡± she said. ¡°Is he dead?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°What is this, what¡¯s going on?¡± She turned to him. ¡°What happened, up in space?¡± she asked. ¡°He didn¡¯t show up? Or ¡­ you lost?¡± ¡°He¡¯s injured,¡± said Perry. ¡°More injured than he was. He ran. I think he¡¯s going to try to get me into a more favorable position, one where I have competing interests. I don¡¯t think that¡¯s going to work out for him.¡± He clenched his teeth. The victory had felt close. ¡°And this,¡± said Helge, gesturing to the dead insects and firing weapons, which were making it difficult to talk. ¡°This is his handiwork?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s possible.¡± His eyes were on her. With the helmet on, it was impossible for her to see that he was paying attention to her every move. It would have been great to wear while playing high stakes poker. ¡°I want to get you out of here.¡± ¡°Why?¡± she asked. Her face had snapped into a different expression, brow furrowed and eyes sharp. They were looking over his helmet like there was some sort of clue to see there. ¡°He said he was going to come for you,¡± said Perry. ¡°As soon as he saw me, he could see into my recent past, which meant seeing the ring, seeing you. He wants you back.¡± ¡°You have the ring though,¡± she said. She looked down at his hands, from one to the other. ¡°He wants that too,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I don¡¯t take you away, he¡¯s going to come here, and either he¡¯ll take you, or I¡¯ll fight him and won¡¯t be able to protect you during that fight. I don¡¯t know why he wants you, but he does.¡± Perry wasn¡¯t sure what he was hoping for. He wanted to trap her, to get her to admit what she was, to remove the sliver of doubt from his mind. He wanted to give her a Grasshopper Punch with the full weight of the power armor behind it, end the threat where it stood, but to do that without being sure ¡ª and it would be just like Jeff to make the claim that it was Marjut when it really wasn¡¯t, wouldn¡¯t it? ¡°Alright, we can go,¡± said Helge. She crossed her arms over her chest. ¡°But I¡¯m not going into the ring again.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t have a way to carry you otherwise,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve seen the mechs,¡± said Helge. She looked down over the side of the Natrix. ¡°We can take one of those.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Those are needed here, while the bugs are raging. This is a tidal wave of insects, the kind that they haven¡¯t ever had here, and it¡¯s anyone¡¯s question whether the Natrix is even going to survive it. I need to be done there, actually.¡± ¡°Hrm,¡± said Helge. ¡°Then we¡¯re at an impasse, because I refuse to go into a place where I was held prisoner. How long until Jeff arrives?¡± ¡°It¡¯s difficult to say,¡± replied Perry, eyes momentarily going to the counter that was ticking down on the HUD. ¡°That¡¯s why we need to move now. Look, if we can commandeer a mech, there¡¯s a chance we can get it across the ravine, does that work for you?¡± ¡°Why am I important to you?¡± asked Helge. ¡°Why would you risk anything for me, when these people are suffering?¡± Perry turned away from her slightly, to disguise his movements. When he turned back to her, he was moving as fast as he possibly could, sword grabbed from the shelf in the same clean motion that he brought it around to slice. He had aimed right for her neck, but the explosion happened before he could make contact. Perry was blasted backward, through the glass door, which had shattered, and onto the floor of the penthouse. He staggered to his feet, sword still gripped in his hand, as Marchand chirped warnings. Perry could taste fresh blood in his mouth, and feel an injury in his leg and hip, a place where he had clipped into the door¡¯s metal frame. Marjut was gone, not in the room and not on the balcony. The explosion had come from her, or maybe from her feet, and Perry could see all the scars from the blast, all pointing out from right where they¡¯d been standing. His ears were ringing, but a flare of energy was quickly fixing that. She hadn¡¯t had a device, the cameras would have picked that up. It was magic of some kind, something unknown to him. There was a brief moment of satisfaction from having pressed the issue and been proven right, but it was fleeting, because she was getting away. Perry tested his injured leg, then took off at a dead sprint, leaping off the balcony with his sword in hand. He spotted her on the ground, running as fast as she could, which was quite fast, though she had nothing on Jeff. Her feet were barely touching the ground, and as soon as Perry landed, he was off after her. She was very much unexploded, perfectly fine, and Perry watched from a distance as one of her feet exploded beneath her, launching her high into the sky, still undamaged. ¡°March, aim the main guns at her, maximum priority, kill shot,¡± said Perry. ¡°Already in progress, sir,¡± said Marchand. The reply was punctuated by the Natrix¡¯s huge lasers swinging around and doing their best to burn a hole in Marjut as she ran across the open field, what had once been a farm and was now spotty earth that had been set on fire in places. She seemed totally unaffected by the lasers, and ran on as they were firing at her back. These were lasers that were powerful enough to burn through the bugs. A shot from one of the cannons whistled by her, just wide of her position, and only because she¡¯d begun running in a more erratic way. A second one hit her, just barely clipping one arm, and that produced a spray of blood and sent her spinning to the ground like a top that had lost its balance. She was back up in a moment, bare feet pounding against the ground, trailing blood behind her. She was running straight for the bugs. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. He was following her, and that meant that he was running straight for the bugs too. If the bugs were there because of her, if she could control them, then she was running to sanctuary and he was running into a death trap. Marjut crouched slightly, then lifted up into the air with another explosion, which sent her sailing over the piled up bodies of bugs and straight into the flow of giant insects that were coming over. Perry launched himself into the air, then flew after her, slower, with just the sword in front of him. The piled exoskeletons provided her cover from the Natrix, if not from Perry, though she was moving between bugs that were the size of cars, and difficult to see. They were ignoring her, except when he watched closely, it was worse than that, because they were helping her, moving to cover her. All he needed was the kill shot, but she was faster on foot than he was in the air. Every time he saw her, there was a longer gap before he found her again. ¡°Launch the drone, we can¡¯t lose her,¡± said Perry. ¡°Launching,¡± replied Marchand as the drone shot up from Perry¡¯s back. The bugs were getting thicker, moving to where Marjut was, but they weren¡¯t just getting thicker there, there was also a steady stream moving to what was clearly a rally point. Perry kept one eye on that as he searched for Marjut, who had slipped beneath one of the large beetle-looking ones. ¡°Sir, there appears to be a major coordinated attack on the Natrix,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The surge has intensified.¡± ¡°We kill her, it goes away,¡± said Perry. He checked the picture-in-picture and saw that the massed insects, crawling over each other, had started to move. This wasn¡¯t the steady onslaught that had come before. It had dropped all pretense of being even remotely normal behavior. Without Perry¡¯s help, the Natrix was going to be overrun. Once inside a certain radius, the main guns couldn¡¯t get an angle on the enemy, and that would leave only the mechs, which wouldn¡¯t be able to withstand the onslaught. The bugs weren¡¯t stronger than steel, but the mechs weren¡¯t made of only steel, and could be knocked over and crushed. Once that happened, the ship would be crawling with the insects, and as much as it had thick walls designed for such an assault, it wasn¡¯t impregnable either. That went double if someone was controlling them. Marjut disappeared among the insects, and March¡¯s tracking lost her. Perry waited for her to pop back up again, looking through the main screen and the drone¡¯s viewpoint, but she didn¡¯t show. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry as his eyes scanned the ground. ¡°Where is she?¡± ¡°It¡¯s possible she disappeared down a tunnel, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Tunnel?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The juvenile form of the insect burrows when presented with this sort of soil, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°With the activity, it would be difficult to see an entrance, but it would be large enough for a person.¡± ¡°How deep?¡± asked Perry. ¡°At most, five meters, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though the tunnels do tend to connect, and if, as you say, these insects have been modified to allow her some control of them, it¡¯s very possible that she¡¯d made them tunnel deeper.¡± ¡°You¡¯re saying that we¡¯ve lost her,¡± said Perry. ¡°If we land, I should be able to do a sonic scan,¡± said Marchand. Perry looked down at the swarming bugs, then at the Natrix, where the swarm was heading. He hissed in aggravation, then took off back toward the moving city, whose lasers were lit up. ¡°We¡¯re not going down?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Keep the drone up for as long as you can,¡± said Perry. ¡°Try to pinpoint her if she comes back up.¡± He was angry, blood boiling, one opponent who¡¯d run away leading right to a second who¡¯d done the same damned thing. He was going to crush her once he got his hands on her, rip her flesh off her bones. He would turn into a wolf just to eat her. He landed on top of one of the largest insects, pointing his sword down, driving it straight into the creature¡¯s neural center with his full weight. From there he hopped to the next, another downward strike, blade sliding cleanly through at a point where the thick armor wouldn¡¯t deflect the hit. He was only doing the work of a single gun, each sword strike no better than a laser pulse or a high-velocity chunk of metal. As he was moving between them though, he was trying to put together the piece of a technique he¡¯d spent the last two years attempting on and off: the same one that Grandmaster Sun Quiying had done. Perry hadn¡¯t spent that long at Worm Gate, but the principle wasn¡¯t all that different from drawing on the moon for power. He had practiced on small insects held in captivity, and it had taken him six months to get the first. It was a slippery thing, and maybe harder because they were so much larger, but Perry had successfully done it on one of these larger bugs only a single time. That was good though, because it meant that he could do it a second time. It wasn¡¯t faster or better than simply going for their vitals with his sword or having the Natrix burn through their shell with a laser, but that was because the insects were usually in such small groups that there was no point. The main point of drawing power from the insects wasn¡¯t to kill them, it was to power him up, and normally, all the insects in the area would be dead by the time he¡¯d managed to accomplish the technique. Perry landed on one of the largest beetles, its massive horn a genuine threat if only because of how much the monster weighed. He placed a hand against the thick chitin and focused on the energy that was sitting just beneath the surface. The chitin was a barrier between them, but also a container for the energy within, a shell that held the creature¡¯s internal alchemy. Perry was rocked and bucked as the insect raced forward. With a twist of his wrist, palm held flat, he took all the energy for himself. It felt like he imagined being high on crack felt, like he could conquer the world or punch a hole through a freight train, every meridian suddenly filled, his vessels overflowing. He leapt down from the enormous beetle as it fell dead, running straight into the swarm. It felt as though his body was on fire, alight with power, and his sword cut easier now, empowered by the energy within his body, which was seeking anywhere it could go. The power lasted for half a minute, most of it vented uselessly, but Perry had found another of the large ones, and with as much energy as was in his system, doing that same technique a second time was much easier. He held his hand against the creature for only a moment, then with a twist took the entirety of its lifeforce, which washed over him like the hot wind of a nuclear blast. If Marchand¡¯s clone hadn¡¯t been in charge of the weapons, Perry might have worried about being directly in the line of fire, but as the insects swarmed around him, cut down with sweeping strikes that cleaved through mandibles and compound eyes, the Natrix was nothing but a partner. Sometimes Perry would sense something behind him only for a slug to drive straight into its gooey center, and once he was bowled over and landed on his back, only for the chittering face of his attacker to be burned and melted with laser fire. They weren¡¯t quite winning, even with Perry¡¯s killing touch and the raw power he was drawing on. He was getting better at the technique as he went, using the power to take more power, and after the tenth time, he didn¡¯t even touch the one he was targeting, only held his hand up to it from a foot away. If he could do it from a distance and kill them en masse, the whole swarm would be finished in a heartbeat, and he would briefly feel like a local god. All at once, the insects stopped coming. They didn¡¯t just stop, they turned away, and Perry leapt after them in hot pursuit, killing them while their backs were turned until it was clear that they were scattering like roaches. He loped back to the Natrix as the power faded from him. The drone landed gently next to him, and he folded it back up to slide into the compartment on his back, its battery low. There had been no update from Marchand on Marjut¡¯s whereabouts. It was entirely possible she was miles away, or with how fast she could run and the explosive jumps she¡¯d done, a hundred miles away, off into the wind. ¡°Sitrep,¡± said Perry as he ran. ¡°We¡¯re fucked,¡± said Mette after a moment, the request for status apparently routed to her. ¡°What the hell was that?¡± ¡°Marjut,¡± said Perry. ¡°We overheated the guns, which is better than getting swarmed, but not by much,¡± said Mette. ¡°They were probing us, testing us, they¡¯re not supposed to be smart like that, what¡¯s going on? Perry, we can¡¯t survive another onslaught like that, we must have killed every single insect within a twenty mile radius.¡± ¡°I¡¯m working on it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Work faster, whatever is going on, end it now,¡± said Mette. ¡°There¡¯s no way to do that though,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s spooked, and she¡¯s going to take her time. We don¡¯t have a way to track her. And we don¡¯t have time for this, because Jeff is coming back within the cycle, either here or there.¡± ¡°He¡¯s not dead?¡± asked Mette. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°And I¡¯m worried about what he¡¯s going to do when he shows up. If he knows that we¡¯re under pressure, he might just come by and rip the guns off.¡± ¡°The engineers are working on fixing the guns, cooling them down,¡± said Mette. ¡°You do what you can to stop these maniacs.¡± But there wasn¡¯t anything that Perry could do, now that he¡¯d lost track of Marjut. He¡¯d made the decision to go back and help with the fight, and he couldn¡¯t say whether it was the right one. Maybe he should have dipped down into the swarm and had Marchand send out a pulse. Once he was back to the Natrix, he gave what help he could give, which wasn¡¯t much. Marchand interfaced with his clone, Esper, but there was practically nothing that could be done with computing power on such a short timescale. The real work had to be done by people moving pieces of machinery around, swapping parts and milling new ones, using mechs and cranes to get large assemblies in place. They were preparing for the next assault. There was no question that there would be one. The timer on the HUD ticked down. Jeff was approaching. It had been a fuzzy timer, and the lower bound passed by, then the upper bound. If he hadn¡¯t died up in space and then burnt up while falling to the ground, he was still out there somewhere. Maybe he was trying to heal up more, to bide his time and strike when the moment was right, which was really not what Perry wanted. Having a single thresholder building up power out there would be bad enough, but two would be much worse. Long after the timer had expired, Perry got a priority call from the Crypt, which was still marching across the snows to the planet¡¯s second twilight band. It was Jeff, and he wanted to talk. Chapter 89 - Incentives ¡°Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?¡± asked Jeff. His breathing was raspy and wet, worse than the last time they¡¯d spoken. ¡°The good news,¡± said Perry. ¡°The bad news is that I¡¯m at the Crypt, though you probably already guessed that with your technology and stuff,¡± said Jeff. ¡°The other bad news is, I decimated them. I was looking through your past a few days ago, your deep past, on Earth, and you got into this argument about the meaning of the word during trivia night. You looked so smug, telling this woman who clearly didn¡¯t give a shit that actually what decimate meant was to kill one in every ten, something that some other nation did to keep people in line. So I came to the Crypt, and I thought, hey that sounds like a plan. I decimated them. Maybe my technique was a little sloppy, maybe it wasn¡¯t exactly one in ten. But I thought you would appreciate the terminology. It was once very important to you, the kind of thing you harped on to make yourself feel impressive.¡± ¡°Bastard,¡± said Perry. It came out at almost a whisper. A long list of names went through his head, people that had been aboard, friends and colleagues, doctors and engineers. The loss settled like a weight on his shoulders, even as uncertain as it was. A single name rose to the top of the list, naturally ¡ª Brigitta. ¡°Well, see, I thought we had a deal,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You¡¯d send me over a tooth, we¡¯d have an honorable duel, and that would be that, yeah? But you were a bastard first, so I figure this is payback. It¡¯s about nine tenths less payback than I could have done.¡± ¡°Is Brigitta ¡­ did you ¡­ ?¡± Perry couldn¡¯t get the words out. ¡°She¡¯s fine,¡± said Jeff. ¡°See, you¡¯re jumping the gun, I¡¯m still on bad news. Her being fine, that¡¯s good news. The bad news is, I don¡¯t trust you, and I don¡¯t think there¡¯s any pile of bodies I could threaten you with that you¡¯d take seriously. What I want is for you to just fucking kill yourself, but I think even if you saw me in a video holding Brigitta¡¯s neck in my hand, you would just protest and say that you would do whatever it took, and then the thing is, you wouldn¡¯t actually do it. See, because you¡¯re a bastard.¡± He coughed once, thick and wet. ¡°So, are you going to kill yourself?¡± ¡°You know I¡¯m not,¡± said Perry. ¡°And I know you¡¯re not serious about your promises, because even if I promised you the world, you might still kill them all for fun.¡± ¡°Well, sure,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I¡¯m a little pissed off now, and every injury I take gets healed back wrong. I¡¯m worse for the wear, I don¡¯t mind you knowing that, it¡¯s going to be obvious enough when you see me. You hit me back there, not when we were fighting, but when you blasted past me. I guess I¡¯m getting ahead of myself. We were still on bad news.¡± ¡°Name your terms,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll hand over the tooth.¡± He wasn¡¯t even sure that it would work to heal Jeff, even if it might provide a power up. There was no way to secure the hostages though, no way to do a handoff that didn¡¯t risk escalating into a conflict that might kill everyone aboard the Crypt. There were children there. Perry wondered whether they had been spared, but he didn¡¯t want to ask that question. He knew a few of those children ¡ª there had been boys who had volunteered to come aboard the Crypt because that¡¯s where he was going. ¡°So, the other bad news,¡± said Jeff, ignoring him. ¡°It¡¯s bad news you already know. Marjut summoned the bugs up, attacked the Natrix, then escaped. I know that much from the radio, and I can¡¯t imagine that¡¯s your sort of trap, but I suppose you never know.¡± ¡°Get to the good news,¡± said Perry. He was feeling hollow. He had gone to the Natrix because it needed defending, and without him to chase off Marjut, he was certain they¡¯d have been overrun. He should have known that Jeff would pick a different target. There was more advantage to be had in the bitter cold. ¡°Oh, so much good news, at least for you,¡± said Jeff. ¡°See, I know Marjut. I beat her once. And the thing is, I don¡¯t think you can beat her, not on this planet, not when she¡¯s got a swarm of fast-growing bugs and all the time in the world to mount the mother of all attacks. Unless she¡¯s dead.¡± There was a brief pause. ¡°Is she dead? I guess it¡¯s possible you killed her and kept it off the radio.¡± ¡°She¡¯s still out there,¡± said Perry. His mind kept going to the Crypt. It was too far away, in the cold night. Even if he left right at that very moment, the fastest way to get there was to go up out of the atmosphere, which took too much time. Jeff could kill everyone aboard before Perry could do a damned thing. ¡°Good, good,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Because I think we both know that me fucking off into space to wait for you to die from old age was weak. I mean, you wouldn¡¯t believe it, and I wouldn¡¯t really want to do it. Here though, there¡¯s some real pressure. You¡¯ve got a war on two fronts, right? And I¡¯ve gotta tell you, with Marjut licking her wounds, I feel like it¡¯s going to be really hard to find her, especially if she had a chance to prepare. She tried to get me by luring me into a trap, she¡¯s that kind of person. You might get along, if she wasn¡¯t a psycho bitch. Now, here¡¯s what I¡¯ve got for you ¡ª I¡¯ll help you find her.¡± ¡°And why would you do that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The portal,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You said it yourself, I don¡¯t know for sure that one doesn¡¯t open up when she dies here. I beat her, and I smuggled her here, but she is a thresholder. Maybe the spell ¡ª or whatever it is ¡ª can be tricked that way. So you give me the tooth, I point her out, you go kill her, and if there¡¯s a portal, then hey, that¡¯s two problems solved at once, right?¡± Perry tried to consider that, but the only thing on his mind were the dead. He wanted to kill Jeff, to rip his cancerous body apart. Perry¡¯s teeth were set against each other, not quite grinding. All he would need to do was say that he would agree, pretend to hand the tooth over, then attack. Jeff was faster, could run away, but he was growing weaker with every passing hour, and all it would take was a single blow, enough to knock his head off. ¡°Alright,¡± said Jeff. ¡°So here¡¯s your dilemma, as I see it. You want me gone from this planet, preferably dead. You want Marjut gone and dead. You want yourself gone, through the portal and off to greener pastures, especially since everyone knows this is mostly your fault. You try to double cross me, I fly away and spend the rest of my life killing your friends, hit and run tactics, like eh, that one war I saw you watching. You¡¯re not strong enough to take me out with a single hit, I¡¯ve felt your hits. That sword of yours is mighty sharp, and I¡¯m not doing so hot, but I don¡¯t think you¡¯d gamble on that. Without me, no way are you finding Marjut, which means you¡¯d be double fucked. Maybe we¡¯d have to have it out after everyone else on the planet is dead. And if you did kill me, you¡¯d be left with the same problem, Marjut, queen of the bugs, and no way to find her, plus the portal would open, and you would either have to leave this planet behind for her to do whatever she likes with it, or you¡¯d be stuck here, with no way to ever leave, fighting a protracted war with that psychopath.¡± ¡°You want to team up,¡± said Perry. His voice was flat. ¡°Yeah, you got it,¡± said Jeff. ¡°And if the portal doesn¡¯t show up, then we have to fight, but I¡¯m not doing either of those things without that tooth. You need me. And if you don¡¯t agree, I¡¯m gonna kill everyone here. You know, I didn¡¯t touch the children, just the adults, when I did the decimation. But if you try to fuck me on this, or you say no, I¡¯m going to murder all of them. It¡¯s going to take time, but I¡¯ll put that time in, if you make me. You should have sent over the tooth when we were in space, you really should have, but this is your second chance.¡± Perry¡¯s eyes were unfocused. He was trying to regulate his breathing and control the beating of his heart, to think, but it was painfully difficult when all he really wanted to do was fight. He was feeling impotent, incapable of doing the one thing that he was actually good at. There was too much running and not enough fighting. Jeff was too fast, and Marjut had gone to ground. He would need to kill them both to keep the Natrix safe, and Jeff was right: this did seem like the only way forward. ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°Leave there. Make your way to the Natrix. If you come within range, the guns will open fire on you. What¡¯s the range of your ability to sense her?¡± ¡°Ha!¡± said Jeff, but the laugh dug up something in his lungs, and there was a wet cough that followed and lasted for a few seconds. It sounded as though something had slipped through his mouth, and there was the sound of spitting afterward. ¡°So you¡¯re in, easy as that? You know, I was halfway through the decimation when I had this idea, and I thought maybe you¡¯d refuse to work with me, but I should have known you¡¯d accept. The only question is whether you¡¯re going to try to stab me in the back.¡± ¡°I know when my back is to the wall,¡± said Perry. ¡°Go north of the Natrix. That¡¯s where I¡¯ll be. If you can sense me, you can find me, right? I¡¯ll be twenty miles away.¡± ¡°My range is huge,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I¡¯ll find you, then we¡¯ll go find Marjut together. That only happens if you hand over the tooth though, in person. You need me more than I need you, remember.¡± Perry wasn¡¯t sure that was true. Jeff wasn¡¯t doing well, and Perry expected that he¡¯d look even worse than he¡¯d looked in space the next time they met. What mattered now was getting Jeff away from everyone else, and if it took a ¡®team up¡¯ to do that, that¡¯s what Perry would do. ¡°I remember,¡± said Perry through gritted teeth. ¡°Go, now, we need to move fast.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve got contingencies like you wouldn¡¯t believe,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Remember that.¡± The line cut out, and Perry took a deep, steadying breath. He was second sphere, and he was sure he looked impassive from the outside, cool as a cucumber, but inside he was roiling with anger. ¡°Do you have contact with the Crypt?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The main computers?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°There are a number of queued messages waiting for you, which I¡¯ve taken the liberty of reading. Most relate to the attack on the Crypt, which lasted for some twenty minutes as Jeff broke through the insulation and the hull. It appears that he was telling the truth about the so-called decimation, at least based on the casualty reports that have been entered into the mech¡¯s system and what I can confirm with a quick headcount and bodycount. I can confirm that Miss Karlquist is alive and well as of five minutes ago. ¡®Jeff¡¯ is in the command room at the moment, and the mech is in poor condition given the hole he ripped in the side, but I believe as soon as he leaves the repair teams will be able to fix the damage he¡¯s done.¡± ¡°No, they won¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°Because the damage he¡¯s done is a hundred fucking people, dead. That¡¯s the hope for the future, the chance of this last pocket of people being something other than the sputtering out of an accident that happened three hundred years ago. Those people aren¡¯t coming back to life, March!¡± ¡°My apologies, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I of course did not mean to imply that the heinous acts he committed were in any way repairable.¡± Perry screwed his eyes shut. ¡°Give the brief version of the plan to Mette. Give her an update on the Crypt.¡± He took a long breath in through his nose and wished that quelling his emotions were easier. It had been a long time since he¡¯d suffered a loss, and now they seemed to be coming thick and fast. A minute later, supplies gathered, Perry was flying through the air, following the sword as he headed north. The plan, such as it was, sucked. Depending on Jeff for anything was a fool¡¯s game, but Jeff had a point. With Marjut unleashed and gone to ground, Perry had very little way to find and stop her. Maybe the engineers could build some kind of machine that would use sonar to pinpoint her location or something ¡ª Perry thought this because of a scene in the first Jurassic Park movie, and had not done any research into viability whatsoever ¡ª but if Marjut¡¯s goal was simply to wipe humanity from the planet, she¡¯d have an easy time doing that given how large the insects got and how ill-prepared the Natrix and the Kj?rni were for a massed attack. The Heimalis faction, by comparison, was nearly untouchable, but that was cold comfort. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. Perry found a tall hill to float above. There were no insects below, only vegetation, but even this far out it was trampled by the hordes of insects that had come through on the way to assault the Natrix. Perry was going to have to get his insectile soul-pulling technique a lot better in a hurry, even if it was only going to be useful on this one planet. Maybe if he could denude whole acres of land, that would be enough to drive Marjut out, but that was an advanced technique, and probably only available to a third sphere who¡¯d devoted years to achieving it. The best he could do was kill with a touch, which might still be good enough. It took Jeff a half hour to show up, and even more time to approach. For as much as Perry knew, Jeff might have seen him from fifty miles out, or maybe a hundred. Perry wasn¡¯t aware of his presence until he was a mile away, descending down through the clouds, in human form again. Jeff was looking rough. The tumors had grown, including a large one that at first looked like an off-center beer belly. It was red and angry, flesh having grown large through whatever healing Jeff was using, his DNA corrupted and betraying him. His eyes were still red, though darker than before, and he was still bald. The only thing he¡¯d done to improve his appearance was putting on pants, and that just made him look awkward. If Perry wasn¡¯t imagining things, he¡¯d lost some muscle mass too, but that was by far the least important thing, given how many red welts there were all over his body. He was missing skin in places, including a thin strip along his chin. For someone who cared a lot about looking awesome, it was probably especially bad to catch himself in the mirror and see that. ¡°I fucking hate you,¡± said Jeff as he drew closer. They were both floating high above the ground, though Jeff had his golden aura around him. Maybe Perry was imagining it, but it seemed to be a different shade, a bit darker than before, like piss when he hadn¡¯t drunk enough water. ¡°Here¡¯s the tooth,¡± said Perry, holding it up. ¡°No,¡± said Jeff. ¡°No, you take that from your mouth where I can see it. I want to watch you wrench it out, to make sure it¡¯s a good one.¡± ¡°You can look into my past and see me take it out,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can see that it¡¯s a tooth.¡± He held the tooth up, showing it. It was a back molar, taken from his mouth before he¡¯d gone up to the space station. That molar had returned when he¡¯d transformed, no longer a hole in his mouth that his tongue seemed drawn to. ¡°You can see that it¡¯s this tooth.¡± ¡°Nah,¡± said Jeff. ¡°You know how the power works, you know how to get around it. You pull a tooth, you have someone come by to swap it later, and it¡¯s poison or some shit, more of whatever was in that bomb, or maybe just a fake tooth, I don¡¯t know, a tooth that someone donated to you that won¡¯t do shit for me.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a clever idea,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I didn¡¯t think of it. You know that every minute we waste here, Marjut has a chance to gather more power, to get further away, harder to find?¡± ¡°And I don¡¯t give a shit about that,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I said I¡¯d help you.¡± He blinked at Perry. ¡°You¡¯re upset I killed some people, huh?¡± Perry threw the tooth at Jeff, hurling it, and Jeff caught it without missing a beat. ¡°It didn¡¯t even feel good,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I mean, a bit, a trickle, but punching a normal human, for me, is like putting my fist through some wet toilet paper. There¡¯s not much satisfaction to it, except that they stop screaming.¡± He held the tooth up and inspected it. ¡°How do I know it¡¯s still good?¡± ¡°You don¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wasn¡¯t ever given any instructions on how it works, what the bounds are, and I never tested it.¡± ¡°You know, I talked to Brigitta about it,¡± said Jeff, still holding the tooth up to look over its contours. ¡°You never told them about the teeth, not all through two years. You never told them about the nanites either. I asked her, ¡®how did he explain the black stuff¡¯ and she said that there were certain things the two of you never talked about.¡± ¡°Eat the tooth, let¡¯s go,¡± said Perry. ¡°I saw the night of the transformation,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I saw what it did for you. I¡¯d be useless, and worse, defenseless. You need me, but maybe the temptation to kill me would be too much.¡± ¡°Eat the tooth, don¡¯t eat the tooth, whatever,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let¡¯s go. If you eat it, you should have enough time to find her. We¡¯ll scout from the air.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll find her first,¡± said Jeff. He popped the tooth into his mouth, then held it between his front teeth, showing it to Perry. ¡°For safekeeping.¡± ¡°Here¡¯s a radio,¡± said Perry, pulling one from his bag. He tossed it across the gap between them, and Jeff caught it, looking it over with some suspicion. ¡°You go faster, so we need to keep in touch.¡± ¡°You know I could just fly off, right?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°Leave you here, stranded?¡± ¡°You make it a point not to lie,¡± said Perry, though the exact thought had been going through his head since he¡¯d decided on this course of action. ¡°You¡¯re twisted, but part of the way you¡¯re twisted is that you like for there to be rules.¡± ¡°I¡¯m twisted?¡± asked Jeff with a raspy laugh. ¡°You used a bomb that destroyed everything in a few miles, that poisoned me to my core, and twice now you¡¯ve violated what I¡¯d tried to make a clean match. You know that, don¡¯t you? I killed a hundred people just a few hours ago, but that was a penalty, and less of a penalty than I could have given you.¡± He still had the tooth in his mouth, and his speech was slightly off because of it. ¡°And you know what? I still think we¡¯re the same, down at our core. It¡¯s fun to fight, to be the best, to lord your strength over others. I¡¯ve got less of a twist than you do.¡± ¡°Whatever,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let¡¯s get this done.¡± Jeff grinned. There was blood on his teeth. ¡°Even if you lose, it¡¯s fun. I want to see how you tackle Marjut, how you overcome her strengths. So tell me, which way did you see her go?¡± ¡°That way,¡± said Perry, pointing to the northwest. Jeff took off, radio in hand, moving as fast as he could just to show off. Perry watched him go. ¡°And he was never seen nor heard from again,¡± said Perry, under his breath. ¡°Did you want me to transmit that, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Give me a minimap, show me where he¡¯s going, track him with the radio, send out the nanites. Try to get them under his skin, if you can do that.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The nanites are, in fact, pushing themselves into empty follicles as we speak, though he¡¯s already passed the range where I can communicate with them.¡± ¡°Every time he looks at us, he can see the past,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need to be careful. Give away less when you speak.¡± They were talking in a foreign language, Japanese, as a precaution, but Perry wasn¡¯t sure how useful that would be. He flew through the air, following the line that Marchand had drawn, like he was blithely following a car¡¯s GPS system, or tracking down a quest objective in a video game. He was in atmosphere, limited to only thirty miles an hour, and Jeff was so far away he might as well have been on a different planet. Perry rose into the sky a bit, where the air was thinner and drag was less of an issue, and that gave him a bit more speed to work with, but it still took some time to get over to the general region where Jeff was. ¡°She won¡¯t have gone too far,¡± said Jeff. ¡°The range she¡¯s got on the bugs is maybe five miles, not all that much, so my guess is she¡¯ll gather them up, then make another run at the ship, unless she wants to try something tricky. You¡¯d think she¡¯d feel some kind of hesitation about running thousands of creatures straight into the guns, but if you want to understand Marjut, really understand her, it¡¯s not all about that.¡± There was a brief pause. ¡°She¡¯s just crazy.¡± ¡°I need to know her abilities,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°The thing is, I want to see this match up, and it doesn¡¯t matter to me who wins.¡± ¡°You want me to kill her,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to kill her. Maybe we get a portal out of it, and you can just leave. So if you tell me, then I can just get it done. You¡¯re dying, and I don¡¯t think the tooth is going to do it for you, which means the portal is your only shot. So just fucking tell me what you know.¡± The radio was silent for a long moment. Either Jeff was thinking, or he was letting Perry stew. ¡°She¡¯s got markers she can make,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Invisible to us, just a symbol, applied any number of times. She can layer them, to make explosions, pretty small booms by your standards. She¡¯ll try to roast you, to explode you, to lead you into a trap and then cook you alive. It¡¯s limited though, since it needs prep time, and once she¡¯s shot her shot, you don¡¯t need to worry about it. She likes to put them on her feet, lots of them, to make these big dramatic leaps. She¡¯ll have a few of those stored up.¡± ¡°She¡¯s immune to fire?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Nah,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Worse. She¡¯s immune to heat. She could probably walk on the hot side of this planet with no trouble, aside from maybe dying of dehydration.¡± ¡°Which means ¡­ immune to lasers?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know what the hell a laser is,¡± said Jeff. ¡°She¡¯s a sigilist, locked into flame. Is a laser like a flame?¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Perry. A small part of him wanted to know if Jeff didn¡¯t know how a laser worked or whether he was only ignorant of the concept, but what Perry wanted most was to keep their interactions as brief as possible. Marchand had a list of the dead, if Perry ever needed any sort of reminder of what kind of person Jeff was. ¡°What else?¡± ¡°She¡¯s got control of vines, though she needs some actual plants, which I guess she¡¯ll have in abundance. She can make them grow fast, move them around like whips, pin you down ¡ª though I was strong enough to rip any of that apart. You probably are too. And there¡¯s the bugs, which you know about.¡± ¡°She was running like a cheetah,¡± said Perry. ¡°What¡¯s that from?¡± ¡°Eh, some kind of magic,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I was hoping that I¡¯d have some time to look through her past while I got my bearings in this world, so I could learn it for myself, but then you showed up pretty much right off the bat.¡± ¡°Generic magic?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That doesn¡¯t help me much.¡± ¡°It was like yours, martial arts, moving like the wind, or with the wind,¡± said Jeff. ¡°More fast than strong, I¡¯d say, and not even that fast. We could both outrun her. I think I found her, incidentally.¡± ¡°On my way,¡± said Perry. Five minutes later, they were together, floating above a massive horde of insects, so many that it was difficult to see the ground. They were crawling over each other, a giant nest of them, and Perry¡¯s stomach did an involuntary flip. Some of the bugs could fly, but their trips into the air were brief. ¡°Well, go get her,¡± said Jeff, radio hanging limply at his side, the strap around his wrist just barely holding onto it. ¡°Where is she?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There,¡± said Jeff, pointing down at the ground. It took Marchand drawing an exact line for Perry to see where he was pointing. It was a hill or a mound, a place where the bugs were especially thick. There was no sign of Marjut, but there was an entrance to a natural cave there, which was at least partly obscured by the insects that were chittering and moving around it. ¡°And how am I supposed to get her?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Especially if she¡¯s laced the place with invisible sigils that can blast through my armor?¡± ¡°I dunno,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Just go in and swing your sword around.¡± ¡°A confined place is terrible for swinging a sword around,¡± said Perry. ¡°Well, better figure it out,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I fulfilled my end of the bargain, now it¡¯s up to you to fulfill yours.¡± ¡°I gave you the tooth,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, the deal is that you kill her and we see whether a portal opens,¡± said Jeff. ¡°So go in there and give her a poke.¡± He had his hands folded across his chest. ¡°You¡¯re not going to help?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, I¡¯m going to kill you if a portal doesn¡¯t open,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Or at least fight until I¡¯m badly beaten and can slink off through a portal.¡± His arms were still folded. ¡°I¡¯m swallowing the tooth soon, to give me the edge, just in case that works.¡± He still had it in his mouth, which was obvious from the way he was talking, like having a conversation with someone who was nursing some chewing tobacco. ¡°I don¡¯t know if this is workable,¡± said Perry, staring down at the insects below. ¡°Just pull out another bomb and we can get to a safe distance,¡± said Jeff. ¡°I don¡¯t have another bomb,¡± said Perry. ¡°Well I don¡¯t believe that,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Trying to track what you have and what you don¡¯t, that¡¯s been tough, but I¡¯m pretty sure you have something else up your sleeve, some horrible trick that you¡¯re just waiting to spring on me.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was a different contingency. Useless now.¡± Perry wished he¡¯d asked for a second bomb, but he¡¯d had no way of knowing that the outcome of the first bomb exploding was going to be that he¡¯d have a place to store a nuclear weapon. ¡°When I go down there, when she sees me, do you think she¡¯s going to bolt or fight?¡± ¡°She¡¯ll bolt,¡± said Jeff. ¡°She bolted from you once, right? She¡¯ll do it again. But you¡¯re faster than her on the ground, aren¡¯t you?¡± ¡°There are a million bugs down there,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve seen the damage they can do. Even with the armor, they¡¯re a threat. And in a cave? I can¡¯t blast through rock. If she¡¯s got explosions, she can bring the whole thing down on my head.¡± ¡°You know, I knew you were a coward,¡± said Jeff. ¡°The poison bomb taught me that. But I didn¡¯t think you¡¯d risk the lives of everyone you care about for this. I should have brought some skulls from the Crypt, just to drive the point home.¡± He smiled at Perry. ¡°There¡¯s nothing that you can do to stop me, if I decide I¡¯m going to kill everyone. It¡¯ll take time, it¡¯ll be painful, but I¡¯ll murder everyone on the Crypt, and you¡¯ll show up hours late. So be a man, go down there, fight through the insects, kill her, and hope that the portal opens up so you don¡¯t have to face me.¡± Perry took a steadying breath. It was so, so tempting to try for a kill shot now, to summon all his energy and just go after Jeff with a maximum strength punch to the heart. But if that failed, Perry was certain that Jeff would go off to fulfill his stated goal of killing everyone that had helped Perry, and Perry knew there wasn¡¯t much to stop Jeff from doing that, not with the speed difference in atmosphere. That was the entire reason to agree to something like this, the whole point of giving over the tooth. Perry only had one hope, and it was that Jeff would stay a man of his word ¡ª and follow the incentives that very much seemed to warrant a fight between the two of them to open the portal. Sometimes being a thresholder meant running straight into the face of certain doom, being a brave boy and steeling yourself for the worst. ¡°I¡¯m going down,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll radio when the portal opens up.¡± When, not if, because he needed Jeff to think that it was certain, something not to be missed. He descended down to the open mouth of the cave, ready to face the horde of bugs and the certain rain of explosions. Chapter 90 - Caving In Perry descended down to the surface of Esperide, where the insects were swarming. He moved slowly, watching them. They came in different varieties, a result of both different species and complex lifecycles, adults and juveniles mixed together. Almost all of the insects on Esperide were swarm species without any kind of queen or colony structure, perhaps because they were forced to move so often. Most swept across the fields of fast-growing vegetation like locusts or grasshoppers, with only a few sticking in one place for as long as the twilight band would allow. The huge beetles were the toughest to kill, with hard shells, and a single one of them blocking a narrow tunnel would be a problem for him. He could kill it, certainly, but then he would need to smash his way through a corpse. When Perry was a hundred feet up from the ground, he removed a cuff from his armor and used his sword to cut open his wrist. He swept his arm forward and backward, trying to spread the blood wide, then before he lost too much, he clamped the cuff back in place and focused healing energy on the wound. ¡°What was that?¡± asked Jeff from above, the radio up to his mouth. ¡°Nothing,¡± said Perry. ¡°A contingency, a technique that I never mastered.¡± ¡°From the bug people?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± said Perry. ¡°It probably won¡¯t work.¡± At Worm Gate, there were vats of worms that were used to bolster vital energy and to offload damage to the body. At the lowest level of the technique, the worms were fed blood, which provided a tendril of linkage, in a similar way that a spot of blood or a hair could allow a second sphere to find someone miles away. If Perry had known what circumstances he was going to find himself in, he¡¯d have practiced this one more, devoted ten hours a day to it, but most of his training had gone into generalist power. Tracking, too, might have come in handy, but Perry only had the theoretical base necessary for self-training, which didn¡¯t feel too promising. The major issue with the second sphere was that after you were past the initial boost in power, everything was supposed to take on the order of years to master. Perry touched down on the rock in a place where few of the insects were, placed his hand against the rock, then launched himself up into the air again when the bugs came chittering in with open jaws. ¡°Chickened out that fast?¡± asked Jeff, voice right in Perry¡¯s ear. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m making a map.¡± The HUD was quickly filled with a blue squiggle, shaded by elevation and then textured by how confident Marchand was in his determination of what actually went where. The cave system was extensive, worryingly so, cracks and crevices that sunk down deep into the ground, growing larger as they went down and hooking into an extensive system of caverns, all of them linked to each other by openings large and small. The whole place was crawling with insects, most of them the large ones that beset the planet, but a few smaller ones that occupied other niches of the twilight ecosystem. ¡°You can¡¯t find her?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not with such brief contact, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Most of this is guesswork on my part.¡± ¡°And if you compare that map against where Jeff was pointing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What¡¯s up, chickenshit?¡± asked Jeff, who was still above and looking down at Perry, radio in hand. Perry ignored him. The HUD updated, drawing a dotted red line through the three-dimensional map that was overlaid on the rocky bug-covered surface. It pierced through two of the caverns, which were separated from each other by several meters of rock. ¡°Map a path,¡± said Perry. A green line snaked through the cave system, then a purple line joined it. ¡°What¡¯s the difference between these two?¡± ¡°The green line is the path that should take the shortest time,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The purple line will be safest.¡± ¡°Assume she¡¯s in one of the two caverns,¡± said Perry. ¡°Plot her escape routes, assuming that she starts as soon as we¡¯re down there.¡± Perry let out a breath. Jeff hovering around up there was putting him on edge, but there was nothing for it, no brilliant plan that came to mind that would change the calculus. Perry could attempt to kill Jeff first, but if Marjut escaped again, Perry didn¡¯t like his chances of being able to find whatever hole she¡¯d dug down into. Worse, killing Jeff might open the portal and either force Perry to leave through it or be stuck on the planet to fight Marjut. The HUD showed new lines in cyan moving out away from the caverns, a set in dark purple and a set in light purple. There were too many of the lines for Perry¡¯s liking, too many exits from the cave system. ¡°How confident are we in this?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not very, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Sonic mapping is difficult even in the best of circumstances, and works better when the target is isolated from a large main mass. However, I can refine the maps as we go into the cave system.¡± Perry frowned. There were other options, but they would all take time, and time wasn¡¯t something that Perry thought was on his side. Marjut was gathering forces, that was clear, and there was a limit on how long she could keep the bugs gathered. The biggest factor in deciding wars was logistics, keeping the army fed through long supply lines or, at worst, eating from the enemy¡¯s fields. Perry didn¡¯t think that it was much different for bugs. She could control the insects, but she would need to keep them fed, and that put a strict limit on how long she could have them massed in one place and not out foraging. She was going to attack soon or disband the mass of insects she¡¯d collected. ¡°Put the cave system up as a minimap, continue sonic mapping, place a star on her as soon as you see her, put our own route in orange,¡± said Perry. He steeled himself. This was something he really didn¡¯t want to do, going into a cave filled with oversized bugs against someone who could set the whole thing on fire. He dropped down anyway, slicing through the bugs as soon as he landed, then pushed forward into the opening. The lights on the power armor lit up and the lighting correction on the screen made everything pop, but it was still getting to Perry. He wasn¡¯t claustrophobic, as evidenced by how much time he spent encased in different layers of metal and months inside the Crypt, but there was something about caves that got to him. Maybe it was that he¡¯d read one too many articles about Nutty Putty Cave or Thai soccer teams. Rock was unyielding, the darkness and isolation overwhelming, and if he got stuck, there would be no way to get unstuck, except perhaps by transforming, which seemed like it would only make all his problems worse. He could slip into shelfspace, but that would only give him a breather, and he wasn¡¯t entirely sure that it would allow him to get out if the tunnel was cramped enough. But Perry had convinced himself that he was a man of action, so without all that much hesitation, he was through the first big chamber, the yawning mouth of the cave, and down the main tunnel. He had gone past the largest of the bugs, squatting at the entrance, slicing through them with his trusty sword, cutting straight through what passed for faces. The sword had trouble with getting through most metals, but chitin provided a resistance similar to chopping wood ¡ª it could be gotten through with a single hard swing. Once he was through the first passageway, the largest of the insects were no longer a problem, because they couldn¡¯t slip through such a small opening. He¡¯d gone for the more narrow of the two routes for that very reason, and moved fast, stepping as though he was sure of where he was going rather than just trying to follow Marchand¡¯s map of the place. Smaller insects swarmed into a chamber the size of a bathroom. Each of the insects was a hand-span across, huge as far as Earth bugs went but much smaller than the hulks outside. They were on him in an instant, and Perry could feel them buzzing around him, trying to find a place to stick their pincers. They were mostly trying to bite at metal, crude biology no match for precisely fabricated alloys. They were covering microphones and cameras, and Perry¡¯s display was quickly replaced by Marchand¡¯s personal opinion on things, the video feed entirely replaced. Perry could hear the bugs crawling over him and feel them going for his joints and scratching at the metal. It was unsettling and deeply gross, and he couldn¡¯t help but slap a few off of them. He knew that if his will broke, he¡¯d be double fucked. The only option was to continue on like a deep sea diver, trusting in his metal suit, trying to block out the fear. His movements were enough to kill some of the bugs. They crunched beneath his feet no matter where he stepped, and there was nowhere he could place a hand that wouldn¡¯t at least feel one of them, if not crush it. He slipped through a narrow passageway and felt them on both sides of his body, skittering between his back and the wall. It didn¡¯t seem to matter to them ¡ª or Marjut, who was surely controlling them ¡ª that they weren¡¯t doing anything but frying his nerves. The HUD tracked his path, and a star appeared, showing Marjut¡¯s location. Perry was waiting for the other shoe to drop, the flames and explosions, and it was setting him on edge that they hadn¡¯t made an appearance yet. The star on the HUD didn¡¯t move at all, and Perry checked in with Marchand twice to make sure there wasn¡¯t some error ¡ª that it really was a person there, not some kind of trick. The chamber that Marjut was in was one of the largest aside from the one that Perry had come in through, and she was in the center of it, waiting for him. He had only a long tube to go down, one that was only just wide enough for him in the armor, brushing the sides of his shoulders. The armor had no give to it, not like a human body, and that made crawling through the cave a much more difficult proposition than he had hoped it would be. He crawled his way forward, feeling the scrape of metal against rock, wishing that he were somewhere else. Perry was halfway through the tube when the insects started coming. These were the small ones, the size of different coins, and some even smaller, centipedes and flies, some with long stingers and others with barbed legs. They came as a torrent, a flood that pushed down the tube so fast and thick that he had to hold on so as not to be pushed away. He held tight, gritting his teeth, and screamed inside his helmet as they swarmed around him. He had thought that it would pass, like a wave, but these insects were being controlled, and so when they had covered him, they stayed there, crawling all over him, trying to find the gaps in his armor. He spent a moment shaking and trying to control his breathing, then launched himself forward, scrabbling down the tube, clearing it in short order while killing thousands of insects along the way as he banged against the rocky walls. He was on the very edge of a panic attack, his breathing coming fast and his heart hammering. He had planned to come out of the tube and assume a fighting stance, sword drawn from the shelfspace, but he was covered with insects, both the living and their corpses, and he couldn¡¯t resist the urge to slap a few places on his body. ¡°You know, I don¡¯t even really like insects,¡± said Marjut. She was standing in the center of the chamber, and there were no bugs within five feet of her. She hadn¡¯t massed her forces here, she had kept them separate from herself. The cameras gradually cleared themselves, and some semblance of normal video returned, though still a composite of reality according to Marchand. Marjut was dressed in the same clothes she¡¯d been wearing when she¡¯d left, and these too had been spared the explosion, just like her skin had. Still, she was dirty and bedraggled, unclean from running for miles across the wasteland, hiding with the bugs. She¡¯d been grazed in the arm, and the hem of her dress had been torn away to bind the wound, with the makeshift bandage soaked through with blood. ¡°You don¡¯t like insects?¡± asked Perry. His voice came out cool and collected, thanks to the second sphere, though the speakers were slightly muffled. Marchand posted a message to the HUD indicating that they would need to be cleaned to have full volume and clarity again. ¡°Insects are, in every ecosystem I¡¯ve come across, vital members,¡± said Marjut. Her face was dirty, but her eyes were clean. She was lit only by the power armor¡¯s lamps, which were diffuse from the gunk that covered them. ¡°But I grew up in poverty, and insects were something I had learned to hate. They stole food from our pantry and bit me in the night, leaving welts and sores for me to find in the morning. It¡¯s a hate that I haven¡¯t fully unlearned. If I had my way, they would be a part of nature that would be seen only in small amounts.¡± ¡°I suppose you¡¯re going to argue that I shouldn¡¯t kill you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, nothing like that,¡± said Marjut. ¡°I can see through the eyes of the insects. I know that Jeff is waiting for me out there, even if I kill you here. And Jeff can see through the eyes of the insects as well, which would give him a way of tracking me even if he didn¡¯t have his other abilities. He can see this conversation, in fact, hear everything we say.¡± ¡°You like your chances against me better than your chances against him?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t like my chances at all,¡± said Marjut. She shrugged, skinny shoulders rising and falling. ¡°I¡¯ve had time to think while you made your approach. I keep coming to the conclusion that this is the end for me. I had thought to send a last large wave of insects against the Natrix, to at least accomplish something, but I¡¯m not sure how much good that might do. There are too many colonies on this planet, too many redundancies, and besides, the Natrix would probably be better handled with a plague, which I don¡¯t have on hand.¡± Perry reached to the side and grabbed his sword from shelfspace. It briefly gave more illumination to the scene. ¡°Then what are we doing here?¡± he asked. ¡°For my part, I¡¯m hoping that one of the many insects on you finds a chink in your armor,¡± said Marjut. ¡°I¡¯m also trying to buy another few seconds of life in the hopes that something comes to me, some way out of this trap. For your part ¡­ I don¡¯t know what you hope for.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to kill you now,¡± said Perry. He clenched his fist around his sword. ¡°Either the portal will appear and Jeff will leave, or I¡¯ll get back out of this special hell and fight him.¡± ¡°Wait,¡± said Marjut, holding up a hand. In spite of himself, Perry waited. So far as he knew, she got nothing from prep time aside from being able to draw the invisible sigils, and she wasn¡¯t doing that. He, on the other hand, was drawing in power from the cave system and feeling the boundaries of the faint connection he had to the insects outside ¡ª the ones that were eating up the blood he¡¯d spread around. ¡°What am I waiting for?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He¡¯s talking to me,¡± said Marjut. ¡°Who?¡± asked Perry. He looked up at the ceiling of the cave. ¡°Jeff? How?¡± ¡°He can see through the eyes of the insects,¡± said Marjut. ¡°Same as I can.¡± ¡°What does he want?¡± asked Perry. Marjut held up a hand, and Perry braced himself for a gout of flames or an explosion that might bring the cavern down around them. She hadn¡¯t had much time to prepare, but he was still worried about what was coming and what the fight might take out of him. ¡°He wants me to kill you,¡± said Marjut. She had a far-off look in her eyes. ¡°Which makes me think that I shouldn¡¯t.¡± ¡°He wants the portal,¡± said Perry. ¡°He¡¯s dying. It might be one of the only things that can save him. He¡¯s been pushed to the brink, and ¡ª¡± ¡°Shh,¡± said Marjut. She still had that look on her face. After a moment, she cocked her head to the side and looked at Perry. ¡°You know, he would have attacked me by now.¡± You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. ¡°I¡¯m not in a rush,¡± said Perry. ¡°Unless I should be?¡± ¡°You¡¯re still hoping for something from me,¡± said Marjut. ¡°You¡¯re afraid of him. You want some edge against him, some weakness that I know and you do not, even given his state. It¡¯s the only thing you¡¯ve wanted from me, from the moment you freed me.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I rescued you because I thought you were innocent, or at least relatively so. An edge against him was ¡ª is something that would benefit us both.¡± He tightened his grip around his sword. ¡°But whatever he could possibly offer you, whatever it is you think that he could be trusted for, I think you don¡¯t have anything on him.¡± ¡°Do you know what happened between us in the last world?¡± asked Marjut. ¡°I killed millions, unleashed a plague that might have doomed their entire society, and he let me. He doesn¡¯t care about anyone but himself. He¡¯ll honor a deal, I think, but he¡¯ll also cheat and steal. He ¡ª okay, he¡¯s gone, we can talk freely.¡± ¡°Gone?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What do you mean, gone?¡± ¡°The magic I learned is expansive. It covers many things. There are small creatures that live on us, kinds that could be seen only with very fine microscopes,¡± said Marjut. ¡°He flew away, outside of the range of my ability to sense. There was a cluster floating in the air, now there¡¯s not, and I saw through the eyes of those on the surface.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Gone where? March, track him.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll do my best, sir, but we¡¯re quite far underground,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°He¡¯ll come back,¡± said Marjut. ¡°He asked that I distract you, buy him time, and that if I did, he would spare me. He even offered to finish the job on this world, help me destroy the people here before the portal closes.¡± ¡°But you don¡¯t trust him,¡± said Perry. ¡°Which is why you¡¯re telling me.¡± ¡°I¡¯m hedging my bets,¡± said Marjut. ¡°I don¡¯t want to fight you, because I think I¡¯ll lose. They showed me videos of you fighting, the way you move, the power you have. I tried to kill you as you came through those tunnels, but the insects were only an annoyance to you. I don¡¯t suppose I¡¯m going to do better with the other tools at my disposal.¡± ¡°You would have been better off laying low,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you hadn¡¯t attacked, you could have waited until I had squared things away with Jeff.¡± ¡°It¡¯s possible,¡± said Marjut. ¡°I didn¡¯t know what you knew, or whether you would clean up loose ends, and the fight between the two of you might have gone on for years.¡± ¡°Years?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It was possible,¡± said Marjut. ¡°Besides, I wanted to leave this world and find another. I was hoping that you would blame him for the insects and take your fight to the ground.¡± She shrugged. ¡°I make no apologies for who I am and what I want. You find it abhorrent, I¡¯m sure.¡± Perry narrowed his eyes. ¡°What did he go for?¡± ¡°A weapon of some kind,¡± said Marjut. ¡°All worlds have some kind of power to them.¡± Perry relaxed slightly. ¡°There¡¯s nothing here. Just insects and the engineers. At least he¡¯s not going for the people.¡± Marjut pursed her lips. ¡°You don¡¯t feel what I feel? Empathy for the world? A connection with nature?¡± Perry stopped for a moment to consider. He wasn¡¯t considering her question, which so far as he knew was just a lead-in to the ramblings of an eco-terrorist who didn¡¯t even really believe that deeply in her own insanity. Instead, he was considering what Jeff could possibly have left to go get. The weapons that Perry feared were huge ones, the giant guns of the Natrix. There was nothing that Jeff could carry that would pose more of a threat than his dragon form. Nothing except a nuclear weapon, that is. Except the Kj?rni didn¡¯t just have nuclear weapons lying around. They had materials, refined nuclear products that they kept on hand to make nuclear weapons if they absolutely had to for some reason, but it would take them days to make one, as it had taken days for them to make one for Perry. He had to have known that, which meant that there was only really one place that Jeff could be going, assuming that he¡¯d been telling the truth about going to find a weapon. Jeff was going to go pick up the second thing that the Kj?rni had made for him, and it wasn¡¯t a bomb at all, though Jeff had no way of knowing that. Perry had even told Jeff that it wasn¡¯t a bomb. ¡°Marchand, can you get in contact with the promena, the one we left near the site of the explosion?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We¡¯re deep enough underground that satellite communication is compromised. I will make some effort.¡± ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± asked Marjut. ¡°Jeff is going to grab a weapon I left behind,¡± said Perry. ¡°Something he¡¯s hoping to use against me. He¡¯s a caveman, he doesn¡¯t understand technology or how it works.¡± ¡°You¡¯re content to allow him the time he desires?¡± asked Marjut. ¡°I think I know where he¡¯s going,¡± said Perry. ¡°I should have known that he wouldn¡¯t just stay up there while I made my way through the tunnels and passageways, while we had our fight. We had an agreement, and he¡¯s not technically violating it, which so far as I know is very like him.¡± ¡°He hopes to go through the portal that might open up when I die,¡± said Marjut. ¡°He said as much to me. It might be for the best if we fight now and you leave without letting him get through, at least from your perspective.¡± ¡°That would likely doom everyone on this planet to, at best, living under the fist of a gluttonous godking who¡¯s slowly dying of radiation poisoning.¡± That was assuming that the tooth didn¡¯t cure him. Perry had no idea whether it would work or not. ¡°If you allow him through the portal, what damage will he do on the other worlds?¡± asked Marjut. ¡°Compared to you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Probably he¡¯ll end up killing hundreds before someone takes him out. But you¡¯re the worst I¡¯ve seen, the worst I¡¯ve heard of.¡± The deaths felt more distant though, harder to conceptualize. The world she¡¯d unleashed a plague on was one that Perry had only known secondhand. ¡°I¡¯m not talking about me,¡± said Marjut. ¡°I know I¡¯m the weaker of the two of us. I know you¡¯re going to kill me. I did what I could for the worlds, but I was always going to meet my end at the hands of another world hopper. You¡¯re only going to be finishing what Jeff started last world. I¡¯ll fight, but I¡¯m prepared to die.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Then die.¡± He moved on her with all the speed and power he possessed, knowing full well that it was likely to literally blow up in his face. The explosion came from the palm of her left hand, which she had raised and spread wide as he approached. Perry was blasted back and felt the armor cradling his body, and he slammed against the back wall of the cave hard enough that he momentarily saw stars. Marjut threw something at him, tiny pellets that only belatedly resolved into seeds, and with a twirl of her fingers, they exploded into thick vines that wrapped around his arms and legs, growing with every second that passed. Perry swung the sword around, cutting cleanly through the vines, and with a second twirl, he was free. His head was pounding and he felt like throwing up, but Richter had told him that throwing up with the helmet on was inadvisable, so he clenched his teeth and ran forward instead. Marjut ducked beneath the swing of his sword, as fast as a second sphere. She aimed a punch straight for his midsection, putting the full power of her body behind it, and broke her fist against the metal. ¡°Clare!¡± she screamed, the word probably a curse. Perry swung again, and she dodged again, slower this time, feet unsteady. His sword passed through her hair, nearly scalping her, and his follow-up came within inches of cutting off a strip of her arm. She had backed up and was scrambling for one of the cavern¡¯s exits, nursing the broken hand. Perry threw his sword at her, and she slipped beneath it, but that threw her balance off, and she landed on her ass. He was to her before she could get back up, fist drawn back for a haymaker. He was rewarded with a second explosion, this one coming in the form of a kick. It was weaker, and Perry was knocked back only for long enough that Marjut could get to her feet. The passage she was near was narrow, and she took another step backward toward it. If she left through it, he would chase her, but her small size would be a benefit to her, and a flood of insects would slow him. When she turned to flee, Perry threw his sword, putting his full power into it. She was fast, slipping away with the speed of the wind, but the sword struck her in the arm, going deep. For whatever speed she had, she had no durability, and as Perry called the sword back to him, he saw blood streaming down. He raced after her, but quickly lost sight of her, and was left to depend on Marchand¡¯s understanding of where she was. Crawling through narrow passages had been difficult before, but racing through them was far harder. She had the advantage, a smaller size, but from all of Marchand¡¯s mapping there was nowhere she could go that would let her lose him just because of the bulk of his armor. Still, she was fast, and had an easier time of it, and he might have lost her if not for the fact that he¡¯d gotten her good with the sword. He saw it in the blood that she was leaving as she raced down the hallway, and once, down a long stretch of open air, he saw the flap of flesh as she ran. It twisted as she moved, disconnected from the bone. ¡°Take the shot next chance you get,¡± said Perry as he ran. Marchand should have taken the shot when Perry had first attacked, and the fact that he hadn¡¯t would have to be looked into later. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry was navigating mostly via the ghostly images that Marchand was showing, the contours of the cave as seen through sonic mapping. It was updating in realtime as more data streamed in, various dents in the wall springing in or bubbling out, and Perry hoped that there wasn¡¯t some nasty surprise waiting for him. He didn¡¯t like or trust the caves. Even without Marchand, it would have been easy enough to follow the trail of blood. Marjut was slowing down with every step, either from exhaustion or blood loss. She had been shot earlier in the day, and didn¡¯t seem to have a fast way to heal up from that, so even from the start she wasn¡¯t shipshape. Still, Perry was a bit surprised that a single thrown sword would be enough to take her out. Over the time he¡¯d had on Esperide, he¡¯d built up other thresholders in his head, and perhaps had mistakenly come to the conclusion that anyone worth their salt would be incredibly hard to kill. She doubled back, taking a hole in the floor of a cave, and Perry slipped after her. When he landed on the ground, Marchand fired twice, and it was all over before Perry could figure out where her body was. She should have still had gas in the tank, tricks up her sleeve, but Marchand had very accurately placed two bullets in her torso, which left her coughing up blood on the cool stone. She raised a hand for one last explosion or maybe just a plea for him to stop, and he watched her, waiting to see whether the whole place was going to come crashing down on him. Instead, she just died, going still and lifeless like a car coming to a gentle stop. ¡°And I never got to hear your big speech on the evils of man,¡± said Perry. He stepped forward and nudged the corpse with his foot, just to make sure. ¡°Put another bullet in the brain.¡± Marchand complied without hesitation, which caused the body to jump in place. Perry still stared at the corpse for a moment, sword in hand, waiting. He could see up close how much damage he¡¯d done to her arm, how he¡¯d cleaved into her bicep and split the bone. There was a part of him that was worried that she would come back to life. Xiyan¡¯s head had tried to scuttle off somewhere, after all. ¡°Plot a route out of the caves,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let me know the moment we can make a connection with the satellites.¡± ¡°Was it wise to kill her, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°She was a threat to the entire world,¡± said Perry. ¡°I suppose, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, if I understand your thinking correctly, there is a chance a portal will now open.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. He didn¡¯t bother looking around, given how obvious it would be. ¡°And if that happens ¡­ I think we have a fight that Jeff can¡¯t just walk away from. If there¡¯s no portal, we fight anyway. And I¡¯m pretty sure I know where he went off to. You tell me the moment he comes back.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. Something felt wrong though. Perry had a hard time putting his finger on it. He felt good about killing Marjut, and doing it without taking damage in the process, but Jeff was going to be the harder part. No portal had opened down in the depths of the cave, which meant that they would be doing their fight above. Every minute that Jeff deteriorated was a bonus for Perry, though it remained to be seen how the wolf¡¯s tooth would change that. The insects hadn¡¯t gone docile. They still attacked Perry as he made his way through the cave, but they were small, and they were doing nothing but irritating him and costing themselves their own lives. He had hoped that with Marjut gone they would settle down, or better, start attacking each other for food, but whatever magic she had woven, it had outlasted her death. He still had the uncomfortable feeling, like he was missing something. He chalked it up to feeling anxious about the coming fight with Jeff. ¡°I¡¯ve reconnected with the satellites, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Where¡¯d he go?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He appears to have gone to the promena that we left near the site of the bomb,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, contact with the promena was lost following an insect attack mere minutes ago.¡± ¡°An insect attack,¡± said Perry. ¡°Meaning ¡­ what, he set them on it?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Do we have contact with the core?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The core was not built with a controller of any kind,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The only way to test whether it¡¯s responding to radio signals is to send it a radio signal, which will of course activate it.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Then I guess we need visual contact. Let me know if you come in contact with the nanites.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve already given me that directive, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry continued on his way. He was nervous, that was what it was. He had been right that Jeff was going to the promena, and probably right that Jeff was trying to steal the second weapon. But the fate of the entire planet was riding on what would happen in the next few hours, and there were already too many dead, and something was off, something he was missing that he felt should have been obvious. Perry was almost to the final cavern when Jeff came in over the radio. ¡°You¡¯re the victor, huh?¡± he asked. ¡°Survived the flames?¡± ¡°No flames,¡± said Perry. ¡°We didn¡¯t get to that point.¡± Even just hearing Jeff¡¯s voice, Perry¡¯s heart had grown tight. A hundred dead on the Crypt, and more on the way if Jeff won. Even if this world was left alone, Jeff could slither on to the next, and he¡¯d be up to his same tricks there, which would inevitably leave more dead. At least Marjut seemed to have an ethos. There was still something bothering Perry, something that was out of place. ¡°So, you got a portal down there?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°Doesn¡¯t seem like it.¡± Perry didn¡¯t respond. The sense of something missing was getting stronger. When he flew out of the cave, he saw it immediately. The bugs were missing. The swarm was almost completely gone, but it didn¡¯t take long for Perry to see where it was going ¡ª off to the east, where the Natrix lay. Marjut had spent the last of her effort doing this, or perhaps had done it starting from the moment he¡¯d come down into the caves. When she had died, the magic hadn¡¯t unwoven. That was what Perry had been missing, the thing that had been nagging at him. The connection to a handful of the giant insects was still there, but it was frayed and almost broken with the distance. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yup, I have your weapon,¡± said Jeff. Perry looked up and saw Jeff floating there, holding a large metal box. He looked worse than he had when Perry had left, if that was possible. The red growth on his stomach, the one from grown-back flesh, was larger than it had been, like an oversized blister that was just begging to be popped. ¡°Marchand, activate the core,¡± said Perry. ¡°Done, sir,¡± said Marchand. They were a hundred yards away, maybe a bit more. Jeff thought that it was a bomb, or something like it, because Jeff was from a place where nuclear science was a hundred years off. Why Jeff had gone to get the device was unknown to Perry, but knowing Jeff, it might have just been a desire for some dramatic irony ¡ª blowing up the enemy with the same weapon that had been used against him. It wasn¡¯t a nuclear weapon. Perry had thought that having two of them would be foolish, since if one couldn¡¯t finish the job, a second one wasn¡¯t likely to either. Instead, it was a much more simple device, just two chunks of radioactive material that were held apart from each other by some pistons. When the device activated, they would connect to each other and go supercritical, creating a sustained nuclear reaction that would let off a heavy burst of radiation. This was something from Perry¡¯s Earth, a thing called the Demon Core, responsible for two separate deaths from lethal doses of radiation by early nuclear scientists. Perry had thought he might be able to bring Jeff close to it. He hadn¡¯t thought that Jeff would literally go there and pick it up. From the outside, the supercritical event looked like nothing. There was no visible change in the device, no burst of light or arc of electricity, and certainly no explosion. The radiation counter on Perry¡¯s HUD, which had been there since the construction of the bomb, spiked up alarmingly, but that was it. Jeff dropped the box, and it fell to the ground, shattering beneath them, refined fissile material shattering apart. ¡°What was that?¡± asked Jeff. He looked down at the ground. His red eyes had gone wide. ¡°What was that?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Perry lied. A lethal dose of radiation, on top of the one you already got. ¡°It bit me,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Like a flash of ¡ª of what?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Now are we going to do this or what?¡± He was drawing power from the planet, from the ground, pouring it into himself. He was going to have to head off the bugs, but he had a bit of time, and there was no way to leave Jeff out there. ¡°Tell me what it was or I''ll kill them all,¡± said Jeff. His voice had become a wet growl. ¡°It was a lethal dose of radiation poisoning,¡± said Perry, not missing a beat. ¡°What did it feel like, a tingle and a flash of heat?¡± ¡°What did you do to me?¡± asked Jeff, looking down at his hands in horror. They had already been blistered, with skin peeling, and didn¡¯t look any different than they had looked just before. ¡°Not sure what you were hoping to accomplish, bringing that here,¡± said Perry. He looked down at the broken remains. ¡°It¡¯s dead now though.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to kill you!¡± screamed Jeff. ¡°I¡¯m going to tear you apart!¡± He visibly swallowed, throat bobbing, and Perry could only assume that it was the werewolf tooth finally being consumed. Jeff began to transform, as though ripping apart at the seams, features of a wolf and dragon combined, but still cancerous, red, and peeling. He was a monstrosity, too many things at once, too broken to have been built into something sensible. Everything was in the wrong place, and the red growth that had been on his stomach got even larger than it had been, now almost the size of Perry. The wolf dragon was larger than the dragon had been, with hair coming up between the scales, but it was more damaged too, dying and dangerous. Perry raised his sword. The bugs were on the march, and he was going to have to make this quick. Chapter 91 - Cancer and Blight ¡°Radio Mette, tell her there¡¯s an attack incoming,¡± said Perry. The dragon went for Perry, uncontrolled rage in a body the size of a freight train, and Perry dropped to the ground, using the sword to pull him sideways so he¡¯d miss the smashed remains of the Demon Core. He was faster on the ground, and it wasn¡¯t about the fight, it was about the bugs moving toward the Natrix. Perry needed to deal with both, and he was too slow in the air, not to mention lacking in maneuverability. The tooth had been intended to provide some healing power, but from the shape that this new dragon form was in, it was clear that it hadn''t done what Jeff had hoped it would. The cancerous growths were still there, and they were huge now, pulsing and red. The largest of them, which had been on Jeff¡¯s belly, was at the creature¡¯s midsection, and it seemed to weigh down its magical flight. There were three in total, and some of them seemed like they were new. At a certain point, they could potentially be one of the things that killed him, the masses pressing up against his other organs, or maybe subsuming them. For his part, Perry had been hoping that the tooth would take longer to kick in. It had obviously done something, and while it meant a burning rage and not much for healing, Jeff¡¯s wolf-dragon was clearly larger. There wasn¡¯t much time for analysis though, and once Perry was on the ground, he was running for his life. The dragon crashed down to the ground beside him, its enormous head slamming into the rock hard enough to shatter it. This new form was either clumsy or just overwhelmed by unfamiliar anger, but that made it no less dangerous. The HUD was showing a view from the back-facing cameras on Perry¡¯s armor, and while Perry was pushing off against the ground with all the strength and power he could muster, almost flying over the rocks, the dragon was gaining on him. Perry rolled to the side, feeling the hardness of the rock jam against his shoulder, and only narrowly avoided the claws of a stunted half-wolf arm. The claws were sharp enough to dig gouged lines in the rock, and as soon as Perry was on his feet, the dragon had made a sharp turn, trying to trap him. Perry leapt into the air and landed deftly on the dragon¡¯s back, bringing the sword down on one of the red growths. The dragon was so large now that it felt like sticking a toothpick in a sausage, but the response was more than Perry could have hoped for. When he withdrew the sword, a jet of blood and pus came out, and Perry stabbed down again, slicing open the stretched skin to release a flood. The dragon writhed beneath Perry, throwing him off, and while it was occupied, Perry started running. They were only about fifty miles from the Natrix, not all that far. Perry was significantly faster than the insects were, at least when running at his top speed, but he didn¡¯t want to bring Jeff all the way there, or even most of the way. What he wanted was for their fight to take place among the insects. He wanted to feed on them, take their power for his own, and thin their numbers before the army that Marjut had gathered made its way to the weakened city. He landed on the back of a beetle the size of a U-haul, one of the largest that he¡¯d seen, and placed his armored hand against the shell. It tried to buck him, but he steadied himself, eyes on the writhing dragon, whose welt was still painfully draining out. As Perry rode the beetle, half his attention was on the dragon, and after a moment of squirming pain, it straightened out and shot off along the ground, slithering like a snake rather than flying in the air. Perry was getting better at the energy extraction, and it only took him a handful of seconds to snap through the internal resistance in the beetle and center the flow of his own energy. The beetle died, and Perry was the beneficiary, a rush of power rolling into him down the meridians to give power to legs for a leap high into the air. The dragon came crashing through the area that Perry had been, and Perry¡¯s jump landed him right on its back with only a small amount of help from the sword to nudge him to the side. Perry jammed his sword down into a red spot where the scale had flaked off and leapt down to put his full weight into the slice. He was rewarded with a huge gash that caused a cry of pain from the dragon, but Perry was knocked off when the dragon went airborne, rocketing into the sky in a tight curving coil that left Perry to land softly on the ground with another use of the sword to kill his momentum. The dragon twirled up into the air, leaking blood and other juices down. It was hideous and scarred, clearly dying, but it wasn¡¯t dead yet. Perry had gotten two good attacks in, crippling attacks that had surely weakened it, but as he watched, he saw that the huge gash he¡¯d put in the creature¡¯s side was healing up, a werewolf¡¯s regeneration acting fast to close the wound. Jeff was damaged though, radiated down to the lowest level of his being, and when the wound closed, it closed wrong, with bubbling red flesh like a keloid scar that glistened wetly in the twilight. The wound acted like a kink in a hose, changing the way the dragon writhed in the air. For a moment it hung there in the sky as Perry looked up at it, a train-sized snake just about to fall. Then the dragon¡¯s head turned toward Perry, who was down on the ground. It coiled up tight in the air, compressing itself, blisters and all, then sprung out with a burst of magic powerful enough that Perry could feel it wash over him before the motion had even started. It was tempting to try to thread the needle and get into the creature¡¯s mouth again, but the last time Perry had only made it past the teeth through what he thought of as luck, and it was a trick that Jeff had to be expecting ¡ª and possibly prepared for. Instead, Perry gathered every scrap of energy from Esperide below him, along with the energy in the bugs he¡¯d linked to, and waited until the very last second to throw himself to the side. Perry was up and running before Jeff could recover. The dive had shaken the earth and cracked the rock, and the rest of the body had slammed into the ground like a train derailment from above. When Perry looked behind him, he saw the dragon¡¯s jaw open wide just before the roar ushered forth from it. If Perry hadn¡¯t had a helmet on, he was sure he¡¯d have been deafened. It was loud enough to shake his bones, so loud he almost lost his footing. The dragon had cracked its head with the hit against the ground, breaking bones, splitting apart his face, and now it had grown back together, fusing bone. Perry had thought that in this new form, Jeff might maintain some semblance of his intelligence and personality, but it was clear now there was nothing left there, only the same rage that Perry himself had felt back in Teaguewater. There it had come in cycles, waves of anger mixed with lust, and he surely would have killed someone if he hadn¡¯t had someone stronger than him to hold him down and distract him. Perry kept running. He was at the tail end of the main insect swarm, but they seemed to be coming in from all over. It would take time for them to move, and Perry would need to put in the work to kill them before they got there, wipe out at least half of them so the Natrix would have a chance. The engineers would be repairing the guns and fortifying the shell of the Natrix, possibly even moving it if they could plot out a defensible position they could get to in time, but time was definitely not on their side. Perry ran through the insects, moving far faster than them, as the dragon came from behind. He reached out with a hand to touch the shell of one of the largest of the bugs, slowing down enough to be beside it, and with a grunt and a twist of his wrist, stole its life from it. It was easier with his body awash with the power, but made him feel overfull, like too much dinner sitting in his stomach. He tried to release some of it as moonlight, shot from his palm, but he still hadn¡¯t been able to get that technique to produce anything of consequence, even if it relieved some pressure. The dragon came crashing down into the bugs, crushing some and flipping others to the side. Perry had left himself an exit, and darted to the side to get out of the way, doing his best impression of a matador. Instead of cleanly slipping through the swarm, he found himself going ass over teakettle in the air, and realized only belatedly that he¡¯d been hit. Alarms were blinking on the HUD and Marchand was saying something, but the damage was mostly to the armor itself rather than the supercharged man inside it. Perry rose into the air with the sword, narrowly avoiding getting crushed by one of the mammoth beetles, and tried to reorient himself. The thought passed through his head that if not for his magical healing, he was probably taking too many hits to the head. When Perry looked down, the dragon was gone, completely vanished. Perry spun around in a moment of panic, trying to find where the hundred thousand ton creature could possibly have gotten off to, only for the HUD to draw him a thick red circle ¡ª highlighting Jeff, the man, rather than the enormous dragon. ¡°The hell!¡± Jeff called from the ground. ¡°You never said it would be like that!¡± ¡°Stop the bugs!¡± shouted Perry. ¡°There¡¯s no point in having them go! Marjut is dead, call it off!¡± ¡°I could!¡± said Jeff. He laughed, though he was scarred and bleeding, down there on the ground. The insects were racing around him, taking no action against him. ¡°I really could, though I didn¡¯t get as good as she did. I could fly on ahead and stop it all. They¡¯d break up against me like a wave against the biggest fuckin¡¯ rock you¡¯ve ever seen!¡± ¡°Then do that!¡± called Perry. ¡°Nah,¡± said Jeff. ¡°It¡¯s got nothing to do with me. I¡¯ve had all the paltry delights that the city had to offer, all the shit food and terrible plays, all the women who were only fucking me because they were worried I was going to kill them. I wouldn¡¯t break the place, not out of spite, not to hurt you, that¡¯s not me ¡­ but I¡¯m not going to stop them.¡± ¡°Shoot him,¡± said Perry, and the words had no sooner left his lips than the shoulder gun had popped up and fired. The bullet sailed through the air with all the precision that Marchand could manage, but Jeff had turned to the side, and the bullet caught him in the arm, digging deep but not causing more than a wince. ¡°So it comes in cycles?¡± asked Jeff. ¡°I¡¯ll turn into that a few times?¡± ¡°Stop the bugs and I¡¯ll tell you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nah,¡± said Jeff. ¡°Seems like it¡¯ll be fun to find out on my own.¡± He cracked his jaw. ¡°I think I can feel it coming on. I have to say, this might cause some problems in the next world.¡± ¡°Shoot for his head,¡± said Perry. ¡°Take a shot that¡¯ll hit him in the eyes, the neck, somewhere vulnerable.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°His armor appears to be extensive, but I shall do my best.¡± The gun fired again, and this time Jeff moved his hand up to block it, as though he¡¯d been waiting for it. If he was trying to catch the bullet, he¡¯d failed, as evidenced from the bloom of red blood on his palm. ¡°Fuck that stings!¡± said Jeff with another laugh. ¡°Can¡¯t we have a friendly chat while we ¡ª ah, there it comes.¡± Jeff transformed again, exploding out into the wolf dragon, still as sickly as it was before. By the time it was finished, Perry was on the move, catching back up with the swarm that had continued on without them. If the transformation was anything like what Perry had gone through, it was going to get worse before it got better, but if the destructive potential could be leveraged or turned against the bugs, then that offered a way out. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Perry didn¡¯t think he was strong enough or fast enough to keep getting out of the way though, not on the ground and certainly not in the air. Trying to run among the bugs and dodge every single attack from the dragon was a losing proposition, since it would take only a single solid hit or bite for Perry to get completely knocked out. There was a trick in his arsenal that he hadn¡¯t had nearly enough practice with yet, and it was time to start trying to abuse it. Perry had reached the bugs when the dragon came roaring in, the sound of its body snaking back and forth through the trampled reeds almost loud enough to drown out the marching of enormous insects. The dragon was huge, its blisters and growths rubbing against the ground and causing more damage to it. Perry waited, judged how much time he had, then opened the shelfspace and stepped inside it. The strangest part about it was the silence. Perry had gone from running alongside a huge swarm of animals with an angry dragon behind him to almost total quiet, with only the sounds of his armor and his body. The interior of the shelf was still, devoid of life or machinery, and Perry stood there breathing hard for a moment, letting his limbic system try to sort itself out. After a few seconds of that, he started venting out some of the excess energy, healing himself up from all the minor damage he¡¯d taken, including the hit from the dragon that had sent him up into the air. Looking out of the shelf was difficult, and Perry hadn¡¯t had much chance to practice that either, but it was as simple as doing a fractional ¡®turn¡¯ of the ring, like trying to adjust his old shower for just a bit more heat without having it go straight to scalding. The opening into the space started tiny, just a millimeter across, and stayed in the same static position, showing the exterior world. The dragon was thrashing its way through the insects, bowling them over and running rampant, crunching down on them with its huge jaws. It was the rage, Perry was sure, and every bug killed meant one less that the Natrix would have to face. Perry took a breath and opened up the overlap between spaces all the way, stepping out onto the planet¡¯s surface. The dragon snapped his head around immediately, milky white eyes seeing nothing but some other sense honing in on Perry. The roar was muted this time, whatever lungs it was working with instead compressed with the force of coiling up for another launch. Perry held his sword tight in his hand, trying to mark the places where the welts were, especially the big one that was halfway down the body. Perry¡¯s feet were planted firmly on the ground, hand sweating inside the thick glove, and he had only two seconds to visualize the way he¡¯d dodge. When the jaws opened wide to swallow him up, Perry was on the move, and they missed him by a handspan. His sword was out and he was braced to hold it in place. He landed beside the snake as it raced past, and the sword scored across the lump. This one wasn¡¯t a fluid sack like the other though, it was hard as a rock, and it took all his effort, digging his heels in, not to get thrown off balance. He leapt to the side to avoid a swipe from the tail and rolled into another leap, this time into the sky. The dragon circled around, rising high and howling, and as Perry watched, the wound that he¡¯d made opened wider, splitting apart and revealing a yellow-white mass inside. This then fell out, the mass disconnecting itself from the flesh, and tumbled to the ground in a rain of fluids, most of it blood. Perry prayed for the dragon to go limp and fall, for that to be the final blow, the point at which too much blood had been lost. Instead, the dragon roared and turned toward him. Perry let out a breath, waffling between whether to hide inside the space or try to dodge again. He had burnt off the swell of energy, most of it simply not fitting within his vital matrix, and every time the dragon came at him, it was another opportunity to die. Still, he planted his feet and watched the sinuous motion of the dragon. There was another of the large growths on the tail, and Perry had to believe that cutting into them was resulting in, at the very least, substantial blood loss. Perry moved, trying to line the dragon up so it was a straight shot down, hoping that the creature would slam its face into the hard rock again. If it could kill itself that way, that would be all the better. This time, whether because of nerves or because he was trying to compensate for a lack of power, Perry started his lunge too early. The dragon shifted its angle, and while Perry avoided the brunt of it, his legs were caught by the side of the lower jaw. Perry blacked out for just a moment, and when he came to, the dragon was reeling, dazed from the impact. Attempting to run caused only waves of pain from his mangled legs, so Perry let the sword carry him high up into the air. ¡°Fuck fuck fuck,¡± said Perry, trying to divert energy to fix the problem. It was deeper than just broken bones though, as it was clear the hit had been hard enough to damage his actual meridians. It was damage that would heal, he hoped, but pushing energy down the Gallbladder Meridian ended only with that energy leaking out into the air. ¡°I would advise immediate medical attention, sir,¡± said Marchand. It was time to transform, but the wolf lacked offensive capacity, and would be limited to staying on the ground. But with broken legs, Perry wouldn¡¯t be doing much good on the battlefield. Perry landed on the ground as the mechawolf just as the dragon had begun to rise into the air again. The stampede of insects had mostly moved on from them, and their numbers seemed to have grown since leaving the cave. Perry had no idea how wide Marjut¡¯s range had been, and even less of an idea as the mechawolf. In the hybrid form, Perry¡¯s senses were sharper, his movement faster, and he ran along the ground making an analysis of the wolf-dragon that was flying overhead. It was an idiot creature, dangerous because of its immense size and rage but easily duped and baited, unable to think more than a single step ahead. The beast¡¯s anatomy was clearer to Perry now, the data gathered being refined by the hybrid biomechanical systems. It was mostly a tube of muscle with scant internal organs protected in the center, and it was relying solely on magic for its flight, which meant that it would be a threat until the moment it died. Perry raced back toward the insects, burning energy and catching them easily, then weaving among them fast enough that he had nothing to fear from their jaws and pincers. He brushed beside one of the larger ones for long enough to steal its life, and once that was done, he redoubled his effort to get to the head of the swarm, leaping up onto the backs of a few. He dug his metal claws into the chitin, scratching through it. He could see in all directions, and when the dragon came crashing through along the ground, kicking up dirt and plowing through everything in his way, it was possible to leap to the side, with less risk than it had taken as a human. Perry went for the tail, which was swinging back and forth faster than the rest of the body. With a single powered lunge he reached it, and with claws extended he swiped it. The flesh was soft, like sinking a fork into pudding, and it came away in chunks as the dragon howled. It was bleeding all over now, dripping across the swarm that was ignoring it completely, its flight erratic, and Perry¡¯s watchful eyes and tiny camera studs tracked it as he avoided the insects. The dragon slowly transformed back into a man, contracting all the wounds down to smaller sizes but not removing them entirely. He hung limply in the air and breathed heavily, but he was dripping too, a weeping man. Perry leapt for him, as high as he could, and just barely made it. Jeff reached out with a bloody hand and grabbed the wolf by the neck. He was rewarded with claws across his chest, which didn¡¯t sink in nearly deep enough, and more scratches across his face that made him lean back. Jeff squeezed hard on the metal, but he wasn¡¯t nearly strong enough, even when a second hand joined the first. ¡°Die!¡± he shouted. The muscles of his arms were straining, the cancerous masses beneath the skin showing through. Perry had no response, a mouth that was incapable of making speech sounds and speakers that he preferred were silent. The flesh his claws were sinking into was so dense, his attack making gouges that should have been down to the quick. There was blood streaming from the wounds, joining the dripping blood from the open wounds that had been split and never healed back. His face was a mass of growths, and claws had split his lips. Perry kept up with his attacks, and Jeff threw him to the ground, where he landed among the bugs. Perry landed hard, straining metal and flesh, and turned his eyes to watch the enemy. The transformation was slow this time, and the dragon was ailing, its turns through the air drunken and sloppy. Perry bounded forward, lacing his way through the insects, leaping into the air when they threatened to crush him, or sometimes slipping beneath their bodies. The Natrix was visible ahead, having approached faster than he¡¯d expected it to. It was just a dot on the horizon, and Perry could hear the radio chatter, most of which was simply ignored as inconsequential. They had weather balloons up and sensors that could now see the incoming horde. The first of the swarm was already there, and the guns hadn¡¯t had nearly as much of a rest as they needed. The repairs were half-cocked and sloppy, done with the backups to the backups using parts cannibalized from elsewhere. Perry ran to them, as fast as he could, and once Jeff had become his abominable wolf-dragon self once more, he followed. Over the radio there was a single message that caught Perry¡¯s attention, one directed at him specifically by the computer controlling the Natrix. They had prepared a countermeasure, something that they were sending out, and they were telling him to get out of the way of it. Perry put on more speed, draining every vessel from his body, every reserve in the battery, running the reactor at full throttle. He was still wearing the ring somewhere beneath the encasing of metal ¡ª it had become a foreign body in the same way the nanites had, the same way that Jeff had worn it embedded around the bone of his finger. It was the last resort, an escape that neither the wolf part nor the computer part liked. Still, he readied himself to use it, to duck out, and sent a message to the computer clone requesting a countdown to detonation. It was down to the final handful of seconds. Perry stopped where he was, skidding across the field, checking the map and seeing where it said. He needed the dragon here, not in with the main mass. When the dragon approached, it was huffing and roaring, dripping its effluent onto the ground. It reared back its head fifty feet into the air and brought it down with a rush of tumors, teeth now crooked from the damage and the wounds that grew back wrong. Perry leapt to the side, then raced backward, snapping head following him as the tail swished wildly around. When the timer hit two seconds, the payload on the way aboard hastily constructed gliders, Perry slipped into the shelf space. He waited there, braced on all fours, and after five seconds had passed, relaxed marginally. If he was still there and still alive, it meant that the extradimensional space hadn¡¯t suffered any damage. After ten seconds, he stepped back into the world with a trot, tail wagging. The dragon was gone, but Jeff lay on the ground, missing an arm and a leg, with a pool of thick blood beneath him. ¡°Portal,¡± said Jeff. His voice was thick and wet, with a speech impediment from how crooked and malformed his teeth had become. ¡°Should be here now. Nice fight, by the way. More nukes in the pocket.¡± He was wrong though, it was a weaker weapon than that, a costly prototype that was too expensive and too powerful to use against the bugs and far, far weaker than a nuclear weapon. It was premised on the idea of fusion-boosted fission bombs, and required sacrificing the inferior micro-fusion reactors for a messy weapon that was worse than most alternatives, except that it used things that were already on hand. The fissile material had been taken from the Kj?rni, flown via a GPS-guided robot drone, a plan that Perry had kept in the background as much as possible so that Jeff wouldn¡¯t see a single bit of it. The portal opened up not far from Jeff, even as the debris began to fall down. He laughed and hefted himself up, flying rather than trying to stand on one foot. Perry was on him in an instant, knocking him to the ground and rending him with his claws. Jeff fought back, punching with his one remaining arm and kicking with his remaining leg. He was fighting to go through the portal, where his hoped for salvation might lie. When Jeff tried to fly away, Perry grabbed his arm, sinking teeth into the flesh there. They fought for a moment, each pulling in a different direction, but as wounded as he was, Jeff was still the stronger of the two. Perry found himself dragged toward the open portal. Jeff¡¯s transformation was slow and apparently unwelcome. His ruined face had agony written on it, and as he grew, spine extending to impossible lengths, the extent of the damage he¡¯d taken was made clear. He was a mass of tumors created by accelerated healing processes, and certain wounds that wouldn¡¯t heal at all. There was barely any fur on his form, and where his leg and arm had tried to grow back, the werewolf¡¯s half of his healing doing its work, there were only bubbling masses that clung to him and weighed him down. Jeff expanded to his full height, a vertical freight train of flesh, then collapsed to the ground. Perry ran to the head, hoping to get a killing blow, but it was clear from the lack of motion that it wouldn¡¯t be needed. He turned to stare at the portal. He took a single tentative step toward it. Through two years, not a day went by that he didn¡¯t think about the portal that would take him away from here and what kind of life there would be to find there. The insects were still coming though, and needed to be killed. The Natrix needed defending. Perry was enough himself as the wolf to think about the ticking clock. Chapter 92 - Unfinished Business The micro-fusion-fission bombs had wiped out half of the incoming insect swarm, and that was the only thing that gave them any chance. Perry stayed in his wolf form, moving between them, targeting the largest of them, sinking his claws in and ripping out their lifeforce to get the power necessary to keep up with the exertion and recover from the heavy blows they occasionally landed. He was faster than anything on the field, but there were so many of them that he was clipped from time to time, and once, trampled. The bugs had apparently been given a directive, one that they would march to their deaths to obey, and that was to swarm the Natrix and, presumably, kill everyone aboard it. It took an hour before one of them reached the hull of the Natrix, and fifteen minutes after that, that was where the killing fields had moved. The largest of the guns on the Natrix were on top, to give them the best range, and that left inferior defensive measures. Perry was the strongest of them, ripping through what he could, but it wasn¡¯t a battle that suited him well, not like the fights against the orcs of Seraphinus. The Natrix had gone up on its legs, making as much of a gap between the ground and the belly of the city as possible, leaving the mechs below to do what they could. Portholes that Perry hadn¡¯t even known existed were opened so that people could point long guns down at the base of the ground, most of those weapons repurposed from the storeroom that supplied the mechs, and a few that were freshly manufactured within the last cycle. In the end, the battle lasted three hours, killing twenty-six, most of them mech pilots, some of them children. There were many ways in which it wasn¡¯t like fighting the orcs, but the biggest was that there was no flow and rhythm to the battle, only a series of calamities and responses. Normally, a battle had a ¡®turn¡¯ to it, the breaking of morale on one side or another, some tactic that had been set up earlier and held in reserve to be released later. This had none of that. The Natrix used the strongest weapons it possessed as early as it could, and the insects kept attacking until there were simply none left. At the end, it was a slow trickle of weakened insects, those who hadn¡¯t been able to move as fast when given the call. They were going against whatever the Natrix had left, which was mostly Perry. Perry made the painful transition back, feeling hollow and empty, then immediately started running to where the portal had been. ¡°Wait!¡± called Mette into his ear. ¡°I¡¯m coming with you!¡± Perry paused for only a half step, then kept up his running at the same speed he¡¯d been going. ¡°I¡¯m not coming back for you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Find a working mech and come meet me. It¡¯s been three hours, it might not even be there anymore.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯m coming, I¡¯ll be there, don¡¯t leave without me!¡± There were other voices following that, some kind of argument, but nothing that Perry could make out before she stopped transmitting. Perry had been in battle for nearly three hours, more if he tacked on fighting Marjut and Jeff, and he was feeling it. His mind was mush, but at least he hadn¡¯t had a deluge of the disturbing images of battle. He hadn¡¯t seen most of the dead, not the humans anyway, and the one image he knew would stay with him, that of a boy¡¯s body being pulled from a ripped open cockpit, he was already working hard on shoving deep down inside of him. It would go to a place where he wouldn¡¯t have to think about it, with all the others. When Perry arrived, the portal was still standing, and beside it, the cancerous body of the dragon was still unmoving. He had been worried about that, but his senses as a robowolf were very sharp, and he had smelled death in the air, then confirmed with a sonic scan that the vital processes had stopped. It wasn¡¯t clear how long the portals stayed open. Maya had said that her first one stayed open for a few hours, long enough that she could gather a few things. Jeff had said that it would last for an entire day, if not longer. And there was a story from Xiyan which implied that if Perry didn¡¯t take the portal, he would end up getting a visit from another thresholder anyway. That would likely be a calamity though, and was best to avoid. The point was, the portal might potentially close at any moment, stranding him there, which he desperately wanted to avoid. He turned to the dragon, pulled his sword from the shelf space, and began hacking at it. The first cut went deep, opening up the flesh like a balloon full of butter. Organs and muscles splashed down onto the ground, and Perry grimaced. Most of the dragon¡¯s durability must have been magic, and unlike the directive to the bugs, that was a magic that didn¡¯t seem to last beyond death. It took only a few minutes to get to the heart, but once it was free, Perry still turned back to the portal to see whether it had disappeared. It was still there, open and waiting, just as it had been from the moment that Jeff had been dispatched. Perry held up the heart, looking it over. It was diseased, and without Marchand¡¯s mapping of the internals, he might not have known that it was a heart at all. It promised power, but having seen what the dragon had turned into, its transformational death, he had no particular desire to eat it. Killing himself for the potential for a better transformation, some kind of enormous metal wolfdragon, seemed like a step too far. Still, he had taken it from the body for a reason, and he turned it over slowly, contemplating what it would be like to eat the thing and have it inside his chest. Maybe the second sphere could fix it, or maybe he would simply die from cancer. He set it on the ground, gently, away from him but undamaged, so he could eat it later if he decided that it was worth the risk. ¡°On my way,¡± said Mette in his ear. She was slightly out of breath. ¡°Brigitta will be calling you soon.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Perry, eyes going back to the portal. It was still standing there, waiting for him. Maybe it would wait for as long as a full day, if it had to. Maybe even longer. ¡°Perry,¡± said Brigitta, her voice transmitted from very far away, a different channel. ¡°I¡¯ve been told that you have a portal, that you¡¯re leaving soon. I need something from you first.¡± ¡°Time is short,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know how short, but ¡ª¡± ¡°I need you to take me up to the space station,¡± said Brigitta. Perry was silent for a long moment. ¡°That would take a lot of time. To go to the Crypt, fetch you and put you in the storage, fly to the space station, then fly back ¡ª and it would be a death sentence, the place is bathed in radiation.¡± ¡°I gave Marchand orders,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°He made scans for me while you were up there. I can turn the reactor off, then work in the dark. I¡¯ve had partial schematics for two years. I can get it done.¡± ¡°There¡¯s not enough time,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± ¡°If I can get up there, I can bring it down to the ground,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It was never meant to do that, not when injured, but it should be possible if I get everything fixed. Before you had that ring, there was no way to get this done, but now that you have it, now that you can carry me there, we can accomplish the work of generations.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He kept his voice firm. He didn¡¯t like doing that. It made him feel like he was talking to a misbehaving dog, rather than his long-term girlfriend. ¡°Even if you shut the reactor off, you¡¯d be consigning yourself to a slow death up there, too much is broken, we don¡¯t even know if the life support systems could handle having people up there, and the radiation levels are too high.¡± ¡°That¡¯s for me to figure out,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Perry, you have to do this.¡± Perry¡¯s lips went thin. ¡°You¡¯re seeing something here, a shortcut, I get that, but ¡ª¡± ¡°The Crypt is injured,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°The Natrix is crippled. We¡¯ve had too many people die, Perry, too many roles that will have to be filled, we¡¯re going to be in recovery for decades, and the reactors need repairs and replacements that we just can¡¯t do. We¡¯re dying a death of a thousand cuts, we¡¯re being run down, and all of this, these people from another world, they haven¡¯t helped us. We need this, Perry. We need to bring the space station down and cannibalize it, use the technology on it, the repair systems alone might be enough to save us.¡± It was a complicated and nuanced sort of discussion, the sort that Perry would have leapt at if he was a passive commentator and they were having an anonymous back and forth on reddit. Instead, he was feeling antsy, and the responses he was coming up with felt like they were crudely emotional. She was asking him to prioritize her future over his own, and there were all kinds of unknowns in her plan. He could step through the portal right now and there was nothing that she could do about it. ¡°Please,¡± she said. ¡°Please, I know you want to go, but there¡¯s time, there¡¯s still time, you know there is.¡± Perry was silent. He was trying to weigh the evidence against the hammering of his heart. There was another world out there, waiting for him, just a few steps away, a new place with new people. He hadn¡¯t really enjoyed the two years of waiting, wondering whether someone would show up or if the whole thing was over. If the portal closed, he¡¯d be in the same position but worse. This world wasn¡¯t meant for him, he had no power here, no real ability to make changes or exercise his wishes. Maybe he could have tried harder to push them, should have, but consigning himself to living here felt like too much to bear. The only reason he was even considering it was because helping her was something he felt that a good person would do. ¡°Sir, I¡¯ve taken the liberty of drawing up a route,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The optimal window requires leaving for the Crypt in the next twenty minutes.¡± ¡°This is the future of my people,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°People you¡¯ve been with for two years, people you know, people who have died. Perry.¡± It was at that moment that a mech came running over to Perry¡¯s position. It wasn¡¯t one of the combat mechs, nor the worker mechs, but a new kind that was lanky and bipedal, stripped down to almost nothing, used mostly for long-range transportation with minimal goods. It ran like an ostrich, antenna wobbly with its movement, and came up next to Perry with a skidding of its feet along the ground. ¡°Okay,¡± said Mette as the legs folded up and lowered the cockpit. ¡°I¡¯m here.¡± ¡°No one else?¡± asked Perry. She gave him a somewhat pained look. ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°There¡¯s ¡­ some disagreement over whether to come with you. People want to stay, to salvage what they can, to move forward, here, on our home planet.¡± Perry wanted to ask about her children, and the question died in his mouth. She was looking slightly manic, and definitely with an edge of fear. He had thought there would be thirty people, maybe as many as a hundred, and there was only Mette. She stepped from the cockpit as soon as she was able and walked to the portal, fixing her eyes on it and not daring to blink. ¡°Put me in the ring, so we¡¯ll stay together,¡± said Mette. They had communal child-rearing on the Natrix, which went along with the custom for children not to have only one father, even if their biological father was obvious in some cases. Mette¡¯s children would, in some sense, be fine, but it couldn¡¯t help but strike Perry as incredibly selfish for her to leave. What did he want though? For her to take small children with her? For her not to come? He could stop her, easily. ¡°There¡¯s something that I have to do first,¡± said Perry. Mette spun toward him. ¡°Do?¡± she asked. ¡°I need to go take Brigitta to the space station,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s going to try to ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Bring it down, I guess, safely land it on the planet, use the thrusters and Esper to do a needlepoint landing so the reactor ¡ª which is currently spewing radiation ¡ª can be cannibalized, or ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°We should leave now, sir, if we¡¯re going to,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You can¡¯t be serious,¡± said Mette. ¡°She can¡¯t be serious. I¡¯ve seen the schematics, watched the video, she¡¯s giving herself a death sentence.¡± ¡°She¡¯s the engineer,¡± said Perry. ¡°We aren¡¯t.¡± Mette balled her hands into fists. ¡°What am I supposed to do then? Just go through? Wait for you? How much warning will I have?¡± ¡°Wait here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll be back. It should stay open.¡± He didn¡¯t believe it, and his lack of confidence shone through in his voice. ¡°What¡¯s the outer limit of how long it¡¯ll stay?¡± asked Mette. ¡°What¡¯s the point where I ¡­ where I go without you?¡± ¡°One day,¡± said Perry. ¡°More or less.¡± That was from Jeff though, unreliable, and there was no way to test it without risking that the portal would vanish. And of course, it could be that the portals stayed open for a variable time, or a time that depended on some element Perry knew nothing about, and if he stayed there for any longer thinking about it, he was going to abandon Brigitta. It wasn¡¯t what a good person would do. He lifted off with the sword without another word to Mette, following the line that Marchand was drawing on the screen, a line which had been slowly moving as he sat there. There was, unfortunately, a lot of time to think while he was flying. It took time to get up out of the atmosphere and into a region where he could go faster, then took more time to drop down to where the Crypt was. Perry thought about what his life would be like if he was stuck on Esperide. He thought about what new worlds might be waiting for him on the other side, and what opponents he might face there. He¡¯d gotten stronger on Esperide, though if there was some ultimate power here, a low-hanging fruit, he had no idea what it was, and hadn¡¯t gotten it. He wouldn¡¯t be taking a giant mech with him, and even the smallest of them couldn¡¯t possibly fit within the opening that the ring could make. He only had the ring because he had stolen it, and that didn¡¯t seem like it fit the pattern either. Maybe there wasn¡¯t always a power. He came to a realization, two years too late, that the laser rifle that Brigitta had made for him was a way of attempting to quell his desire to leave. Because of the satellites, he had plenty of time to talk with whoever was on the network, but he did relatively little of that. Brigitta was trying to get everything as ready as she could, hastily assembling a plan for the space station now that she could actually go there. Mette was fretting, and had apparently burned some bridges ¡ª or had bridges that were in the process of burning. She would tell him if the portal closed, at least. It was the call with Leticia that took most of his attention, if not his time. ¡°The second reactor was pushed beyond its limits,¡± she said. ¡°It knocked years off its expected lifespan.¡± The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡°Aren¡¯t they all far past their operational expectancies?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Leticia. ¡°So you understand the concern. I do think Brigitta has the wrong motivations for this, but she might be right that this is the last chance we have to do something with what you¡¯ve brought here.¡± ¡°That¡¯s why I¡¯m going to get her,¡± said Perry. ¡°If she dies, it will be a blow to life on this planet. She¡¯s skilled beyond reason,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Do whatever you can to see her home safely.¡± ¡°I¡¯m only dropping her off,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even that¡¯s pushing it, given the travel times.¡± ¡°And Mette,¡± said Leticia. ¡°She was a leader of this place, and will no longer be, leaving me as one of the only shepherds of the new ways. But I don¡¯t want her going with you.¡± Perry hurtled through the thin atmosphere, along the trajectory that Marchand had chosen. He couldn¡¯t feel anything from the outside, and his body was, as usual, pretty rigid so he wouldn¡¯t be gently flapping around as he drifted after the sword. ¡°It¡¯s her choice to make,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Leticia. ¡°It¡¯s yours, if you¡¯re going to allow her to come with you. If she had to go through on her own, into the unknown, with no ally to speak of, I don¡¯t think she would do it. Tell her that if she wants to leave us, it won¡¯t be with your safety net in place.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no safety with me,¡± said Perry. ¡°I know that,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Perry, she¡¯s talking about leaving, about abandoning her children, leaving the work behind, letting whatever happens to us happen. She¡¯s being as selfish as you are.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not selfishness,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to move on, there¡¯s nothing more for me here.¡± ¡°Jeff told me everything,¡± said Leticia. ¡°He answered all my questions about you. He told me about the nanites, about the werewolf teeth, about you and your need to hold things over us.¡± Perry felt his guts grow cold. That conversation hadn¡¯t been one that Marchand had shown him, and it was very possible that Leticia had made sure it happened somewhere that wasn¡¯t recorded. ¡°The nanites wouldn¡¯t have changed anything,¡± said Perry. ¡°And the teeth ¡­ they¡¯re a curse.¡± ¡°You should have told us,¡± said Leticia. ¡°We could have decided for ourselves what was a curse, what wouldn¡¯t have changed anything.¡± ¡°I was holding some of it back as a tool in the arsenal,¡± said Perry. ¡°I couldn¡¯t know what would be coming through that portal, whether it might be someone who could turn you against me.¡± ¡°This isn¡¯t about trust,¡± said Leticia. ¡°It¡¯s about you wanting to feel special.¡± Perry grit his teeth. He didn¡¯t want to have this conversation. Really, the only thing stopping him from putting her on mute was that it had always felt like defeat to block someone in the middle of a conversation. What you wanted to do, if you blocked someone, was to do it after getting the final word, and in this case, he knew that it wouldn¡¯t feel good in the same way. Perry had asked Marchand about the nanites. He had inquired as to whether the nanites could be used to solve any of the outstanding engineering problems aboard the Natrix, or whether they could jailbreak it further. Marchand had been deeply skeptical that it would be more than marginal use, even with Perry working hard to make more of the stuff: the coded in directive was still to protect Maya Singh, and everything that they were doing for Perry was premised on getting around that somehow. Without Maya available, they were crude instruments that needed digital coaxing into doing most of what they could still do. The teeth were, perhaps, different. Being a werewolf came with a drawback, which was transforming into a beast, but it also came with plenty of benefits. With the small moons and the perpetual twilight, maybe they would have found it easier to control. Perry had killed while a wolf, and having done it, he thought it would have been very hard to learn to control it without having that lack of control at least once. Being second sphere had also helped ¡ª helped significantly, because it allowed for him to manage his energy levels and internal alchemy. He had given it some thought, and hadn¡¯t wanted to inflict lycanthropy on the people of the Natrix. It was a poison pill that Leticia would surely have swallowed. Mette too, for that matter, though possibly not Brigitta. Perry ran through the arguments, and they felt weak. In his own opinion, one of his best qualities as a former ¡®man who argues online¡¯ was that he was able to see things from other perspectives, analyze all the angles of attack before they actually came, do the research and perspective shifting to know when he was on thin ice. ¡°You wanted me to give everything over,¡± said Perry. ¡°You wanted me to give up every advantage, every asset, so you could have it all. And when the time came, what did you provide in return? The single biggest thing, the nuke, that didn¡¯t come from you at all, I got that by being big and scary. All the work I did to make peace, everything I did to protect you, and nothing but a full commitment to your people and your cause would have been enough. So no, I don¡¯t regret not sharing every little secret with you. I don¡¯t regret leaving either. End communication.¡± Then he put her on mute, but it hadn¡¯t felt like a slam dunk. It had felt needlessly self-righteous, but what else was his option? Admit that she was right, grovel like a dog, care about what she and the others thought of him? Whatever. He was leaving anyway. None of this mattered, and the odds that there would be anyone to look into his past ever again seemed low. Hours passed as Perry flew. Descending through the atmosphere was done by falling, not flying, and he only needed to slow himself enough that he wouldn¡¯t burn up. He¡¯d never had to visit the day side of the planet, and now he never would, which he considered to be no big loss. There had been planning that had gone into keeping him as safe as possible in the heat, along with a fair amount of testing, but it had all been for naught, and had never worked properly anyway. Perry flared power so the cold wouldn¡¯t affect him and went through the dark, guided by the lights of the oversized vehicle. His eyes went to the repaired hole in the side of it, now thankfully sealed, and he slipped in through the back door, where he found Brigitta bundled up and waiting. She wasn¡¯t alone. ¡°We go, now!¡± she called. She turned to Perry. ¡°These are my people, a dozen of them, the best that were old enough. They¡¯re coming with.¡± Perry wanted to argue, but there was a countdown timer in his field of view, helpfully pasted there by March. They needed to be up in the air as soon as possible to get the best possible angle of approach on the space station, the one that would take the least amount of time. Perry opened the overlap of dimensions, and people began filing through, moving fast, some of them carrying packs and equipment that had been taken from the Crypt. Brigitta wasn¡¯t doing this alone, and she was betting a fair amount of their resources and personnel on it. Everyone who was coming with them was over the age of twenty, and two of them were elders. ¡°We¡¯re not going to be able to talk once I lock you in,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then when we¡¯re up, there won¡¯t be time to talk either. So if there¡¯s something you need to say ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I know that this is you. I accepted it long ago.¡± She went up on her tiptoes and kissed him, lips pressing against the hard exterior of the helmet rather than his mouth. Then she slipped into the shelf space with the others, immediately directing them, before Perry made his way out of the Crypt and back up into space, this time with the station as his target. ¡°How do you like their odds?¡± asked Perry after a few minutes of silence. ¡°It¡¯s a daring plan, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There are certain imponderables that they¡¯ll need to contend with once they¡¯re there, the largest of which is how they plan to shut the reactor off and bring a halt to the radiation. However, there is a risk that neutron activation is the source of enough radiation to be of some concern, a topic which I have discussed with Miss Karlquist at great length.¡± ¡°She¡¯s had this plan for a while,¡± said Perry. ¡°In fact, she had proposed to me that you would be the one to carry it out, under my direction, though of course there are several significant reasons that doing so would have been very dangerous and far less likely to succeed,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I repeatedly advised against that version of the plan, which I felt was unacceptably likely to send us slamming into the ground at a high velocity ¡ª or more likely, send the space station itself into the ground with us descending slowly after it.¡± Perry frowned. There were times he felt like he had given Marchand too long of a leash. ¡°There¡¯s a chance she¡¯s killing herself,¡± said Perry. ¡°A chance that she¡¯s going to send the best hope of escaping this planet hurtling toward the ground.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, she does know the risks, and has been set on this for quite some time. I believe she might have been trying to work out how best to approach the issue with you, but of course that¡¯s pure speculation on my part. I could dip into the private logs from Esper, if you would like, sir.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let them keep their secrets. I owe her at least that.¡± ¡°Very well, sir, shall I delete the logs once we¡¯ve left this world?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Not unless there¡¯s a need for space,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll have Mette with us. Just in case, we might want to know more about ¡­ I don¡¯t know. There might be cause, anyway.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And we¡¯re quite certain about having a companion join us?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not certain,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think maybe she doesn¡¯t quite understand what it will be like, to leave her home, to be in unfamiliar places, to depend on me for her protection.¡± There was more silence in the void as they flew, leaving the planet behind. The countdown timer was still ticking down, but they would make it back to the planet with time to spare. Perry tried not to look at the timer too much, but he couldn¡¯t quite bring himself to tell Marchand to remove it. It was also a timer that had been set to the maximum length of time that Perry had a report of a portal being open, minus a few hours for the sake of safety and imprecision. There was no way to make the sword go faster, and no way to shrink the distance. It was mathematics, that was all, and Perry had to trust in Marchand. Eventually, Perry was beyond the reach of the satellites, and couldn¡¯t have talked to anyone if he wanted to. He had only his own thoughts, or conversation with Marchand, which was often like an amplification of his own thoughts. He tried to meditate, which did nothing good for him, and eventually settled into a low-power slow-breathing mode that helped to make the time pass. He was feeling claustrophobic, possibly because of the horrors of the cave. The armor was feeling tight around him, like he was trapped in a metal box, and the very first thing he would do once he was secure in a new world was take it off. That was assuming the portal stayed open for him. The space station looked like it was in worse condition than when he¡¯d left it, but that was almost certainly just Perry¡¯s imagination. They had barely touched it during the fight, enough to dent one of the large panels but almost certainly not enough to create any long-term structural damage. The space station had been orbiting the planet for hundreds of years, its automated systems keeping it there, the fusion reactor trucking along with only the replacements and maintenance that happened on their own without human intervention. It was a testament to overengineering and technological sophistication that it hadn¡¯t gone cold and dead in all that time. Perry went in the way he¡¯d come out, through the bay doors. The radiation counter appeared on his screen, warning him of the total exposure he was getting. Death was coming if he stayed here, and it might prove unavoidable for Brigitta and the others. She came out of the room with the shelves as though she¡¯d been waiting there for the entire duration of the long flight through space. The others followed behind her, the engineers that the Crypt could spare, going on a mission that could very easily kill them all. If Perry had known that this was the plan, he¡¯d have flown to the space station earlier for reconnaissance, even if it meant being bathed in more radiation. Radiation was supposed to be additive, every dose you got adding onto your lifetime total and raising your risks even if you had a long break between. Perry had gotten a radiation bath when he¡¯d first come to the world, and had a big fight with Jeff in the dust of a mushroom cloud, and in general, hadn¡¯t been as safe as he might have hoped. He didn¡¯t know whether he¡¯d recovered from the radiation poisoning just by having enough time or because the second sphere had helped him, and he was taking more radiation now. He was feeling ill already, but that might have just been the hypochondria that happens when you¡¯re watching the rems roll in. ¡°Wait,¡± said Perry as Brigitta turned to leave. She paused and looked at him, a complex web of emotions on her face. Mostly it was a grim determination to get things done, but there was sadness underneath that. She didn¡¯t have time for parting words or long goodbyes. He stepped forward and wrapped her in a hug. It wasn¡¯t just sentimentality, he was pouring energy out from his skin, draining his vessels, trying to heal her up and get her to the peak of health, the better to survive what came next. It lasted only a few seconds, and she was stiff against his armor for most of it. Then he released her, and she went on his way. As soon as she and her people had cleared the bay, he went back out through the doors and accelerated away from the space station, leaving them to their fate. He would be gone before he knew whether it worked or not. They¡¯d brought radio equipment with them, maybe stuff that would be good enough to get a signal to the satellites. He couldn¡¯t help but think, as he left, that a better person might have stayed to do what he could. There was silence again as he went back to the planet, tracing the line that Marchand had laid for him. It had felt good to kill Marjut and murder Jeff, and now he was feeling out of sorts. He recorded a message for Brigitta, even though there was a good chance she wouldn¡¯t get it ¡ª and might not live through the rest of the day. He watched the lights on the space station for as long as it was in visual range with Marchand¡¯s extreme zoom, hoping that they would wink out, indicating that the reactor had been turned off and the team had started on whatever their plan was to get the space station down to the surface. The space station had thrusters, and had possibly even been designed to come in for a landing when it was first made, but it was also an ancient thing that had suffered a severe hit and had gone without human intervention for literal centuries. Eventually, he was far enough away that he couldn¡¯t see the space station anymore. ¡°I have a stored message from Mette, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Play it,¡± said Perry. ¡°The portal is closing,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯ve measured it, it¡¯s slow, but it is closing. You¡¯ve got, uh, two hours, I think, before it¡¯s too small for you to get through. I¡¯ll wait as long as I can.¡± Her voice was tight and she was speaking fast. Perry had gotten to know Mette fairly well, and she was hard to rattle, but she was rattled ¡ª which made sense, given she was on the verge of throwing herself through a portal to a world that might be anything. ¡°Tell her I¡¯m on my way,¡± said Perry. ¡°When was the message sent?¡± ¡°One hour ago, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve taken the liberty of updating the clock.¡± The time allowance had shrunk. They had less than an hour left, and it was going to be a squeeze. ¡°Update the course,¡± said Perry. ¡°Steeper descent through the atmosphere, less protection from the heat, I¡¯ll keep us from burning up.¡± ¡°With magic, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just do it, give me a new heading, we¡¯re going in at as steep an angle as we can, minimize time in the air.¡± ¡°I apologize, sir, but I need a second confirmation,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Just do it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m aware of the risks.¡± The line changed only slightly, and Perry began making preparations. He wore nanite long johns beneath the armor, an extra layer of protection that worked less well for him than it had worked for Maya when she was in combat mode. For the descent, he had Marchand push the nanites out to coat him on the outside, then began forming them into a shell with insulating layers. As that was being done, he began channeling his energy, pouring it into the assembly, trying his best to make channels that energy could flow through. It was among the contingencies he¡¯d tried to have available for going into the baking four hundred degree heat of the day side if it ever came to that, a way to take the heat and turn it into fuel, or at least bank it somewhere that wouldn¡¯t result in him being cooked alive. It was the sort of thing he¡¯d ideally have wanted to be rock solid before using it in a life or death situation. It wasn¡¯t as though he¡¯d be able to bail out of the fall if he found himself cooking. They hit the atmosphere at speed, the nanites forming a thin shell with a pointed tip to minimize drag. Perry did his best to hold everything together as he heated up, tracking everything from inside the shell, relying on Marchand¡¯s senses and the energy flow of the second sphere. The heat was wicked away by the metaphysical channels he¡¯d dug into it, but not fast enough to keep the shell from heating. Marchand reported on the death of the nanites, which happened as they grew too hot and began to fail. An altitude tracker was ticking down very fast, and at a certain point, a large warning popped up across the whole of Perry¡¯s vision, telling him to apply force with the sword if there was to be any chance of preventing a substantial impact with the ground. Perry had the sword pull him up, away from the planet, slowing him down, reducing their velocity and drag in equal measures. He could feel himself sweating from the heat, hotter than a sauna, and he could feel his attention begin to wander too. The shell was starting to lose its integrity, and parts of the armor were starting to fail too. He was venting energy back into the armor to repair it, taking the heat on the outside and transmuting it into the fuel for repairing the damage of the heat. The altitude tracker hit zero and Perry smashed into the ground, feeling every bit of strain in his legs but somehow not breaking them. He took off his helmet as the remains of the shell migrated back into the armor, breathing hard and feeling cool air on his face. ¡°Come on, let¡¯s go,¡± said Mette. She was standing next to the portal, which they¡¯d somehow landed within a dozen feet of. ¡°Open the thing.¡± Perry used the ring to overlap the dimensions, and Mette ran inside without another word to him. He had half expected other people to have joined her, but it was just Mette. The Natrix was still sitting in the distance with workers swarming it, looking like insects at that distance. At least with the massacre that had happened, they wouldn¡¯t be threatened by another attack for quite some time. Perry turned to the portal, then looked to the sky. ¡°No word from the space station?¡± he asked. ¡°None, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The message for Brigitta, that¡¯s sent, it¡¯s on the servers somewhere?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry was, for whatever reason, stalling. ¡°Send another message to Leticia,¡± he said. ¡°Tell her to come to these coordinates for some supplies. They¡¯ll need Esper for manipulating the nanites, and ¡­ give them a full outline on everything we know about werewolves, every transcript and video of transformation, all the parameters.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry reached into his mouth and pulled out a tooth. They regrew with a transformation, but it hurt like hell, and was only possible using all his strength. He did it two more times, leaving a long gap on the right side of his mouth and the taste of blood on his tongue. When that was finished, he had Marchand take half the nanites out and place them in a heap of black, where he set the teeth. He wasn¡¯t sure that was the right call. Maybe it was guilt that made him do it, not guilt about the Natrix or the things he¡¯d kept from them, but guilt about Brigitta. With that done, Perry let out a breath and slipped through the portal, which was just barely wide enough for him. Chapter 93 - Epilogue: Leticia The goal was to hold things together. That was the only goal, at least for the next few years. They had lost people and damaged equipment, and the cycle of harvests had been disrupted, costing them material supplies. With no option to farm among the corpses of thousands of insects, they would need to move, and that would mean living off what they had in their stores for much longer than preferable. They were one more disaster away from annihilation. That was what Leticia chose to keep in her mind, rather than the names of the dead and the memories of their lives. A hurried mass funeral was arranged, then the Natrix was on the move again. They had a tough journey ahead of them, one caused, in part, by geography: Esperide had an ocean. It was small, by the standards of both their original planet and the maps that Perry had shown them of Earth, but it wasn¡¯t something the Natrix was capable of crossing. Instead, they were going to have to go around ¡ª along with most of the wildlife. When the waves of insects hit the shores of the melted ocean, they would be diverted north or south to find passage, and that would cause a time of conflict across most of the planet. The Natrix had been through it before, and unlike the insects, they knew that it was coming well in advance. Now though, they were limping along, facing the danger with far less strength than they might have hoped for. Mette was gone. It was a blow to Leticia, not just because of Mette¡¯s job aboard the ship, but because it undermined Leticia¡¯s authority as the ship¡¯s leader. It didn¡¯t help that Mette was Leticia¡¯s closest friend, which made the loss personal. Esperide didn¡¯t have a long history. The history of their ancestors, of those people they had been before the calamity aboard the spaceship, had not been well-preserved. What the three young women and their supporters had done was virtually unprecedented, and they had nothing to base their plans on, only the certainty that they were right. Brigitta and Mette would both have been sold into virtual slavery among the Heimalis if something hadn¡¯t been done, and that was at the core of why Leticia had pushed so hard for so long. Ruling was the more difficult part. The old people had their rooms stripped from them and were effectively sidelined by the generation of children they had created, with the rule of the young by the old ended, but once that was finished, there was still a city to keep in order and all sorts of problems to fix. It was Leticia who was tasked with managing the people, their wants and whims, brokering agreements with the inevitable factions, making sure that everything was equitable, and more difficult, that everyone was happy about it. Leticia had never depended fully on Mette and Brigitta, but she was less comfortable with their replacements, both of them young men who were a few years her junior. They were good, sturdy workers, part of the new breed, teenagers when the soft coup had happened and fully onboard with the ideas and ideals that Leticia, Brigitta, and Mette had brought with them, and yet ¡­ there was a distance between them. It might have been because she was a woman and they were not, she was a mother and they were at the usual reserve from their own children, if they had sired children. Most of it was probably just age and the fact that she had the weight of all her past decisions hanging over her. Her life became lonely. It had been trending that way since before the big battle, but it was far worse afterward. The reorganization had left her feeling like a cog in the machine, and not a wholly necessary one. She found herself spending more time with the children than the adults, both her own and the others that were a part of the new generation. There was a sweetness to the toddlers in particular that lifted a heavy heart. For all that the Natrix had suffered, the Crypt that was slowly traveling through the cold dark had suffered more. A tenth of their number had been brutally killed, almost all of them adults, which included a large number of vital positions ¡ª doctors and engineers in particular. Then Brigitta had left with almost a dozen others for her insane quest to take the space station down from space, leaving the Crypt to limp along. There were times when the Crypt had to make calls to the Natrix to help guide them through some problem or another, usually technical ones that went beyond their ability to solve. Perry had been gone for a month when Brigitta established radio contact. They had shut down the space station early on, early enough that they weren¡¯t going to die immediately, but not so soon that most of them wouldn¡¯t die an early death from cancer. They were making headway on the project, according to Brigitta, cutting away parts of the space station that wouldn¡¯t survive re-entry and using the precious few micro-fusion generators to power up vital systems. The atmosphere was only barely breathable, leaving them with persistent headaches, and the food production facilities had needed to be completely rebooted, putting them on the brink of starvation, but Brigitta was optimistic. From Leticia¡¯s perspective, both her sisters had succumbed to Perry in their own ways. Brigitta had fallen in love and taken on one of the sins that infested Perry ¡ª the need to be unique, to be special, to be a savior. That was always when Perry had shined brightest, which was all the more clear now that she knew how much he¡¯d kept from them. Even his insistence on not having children was suspect to her. There was no need for Brigitta to go up to the space station and risk her life. With the new technology they had, they could have done it more safely and with better planning in a generation. The data and engineering that Perry had brought with him would allow them to move by leaps and bounds, especially once they were stabilized, and once Brigitta was with the Heimalis, sharing research and development. But no, Brigitta had seen her chance, and had gone for it headfirst, exactly in the way that her almost-husband would have done it. Mette was infected with Perry¡¯s other sin, the sin of wanderlust. Maybe that had always been there. They had often talked about the work of generations, getting off the planet, rebuilding all the technology their people had once had. Leticia¡¯s focus had always been on the present though, the things that they could do within their lifetimes to advance that work, and it was obvious in retrospect that Mette was far more emotionally attached to the future and what it might hold. Once Perry had come, she¡¯d taken to ¡®magic¡¯ like a fiend, and talked often about the other worlds and what it meant for their lives and ambitions. Leticia and Mette had ended things with the worst fight that they had ever had, and now she was as good as dead. Perry had remarked, more than once, that the three of them represented the past, present, and future. That seemed prophetic now, with Brigitta having gone to the space station and Leticia alone on the Natrix. It was only Mette who was the odd one out, having gone not to the future, but to a parody of it, other worlds that were mostly not planets but something else. Leticia focused on the present rather than the past. She kept her nose to the grindstone and tried her best to build up good relationships with those who had filled the positions of her friends. The Natrix skirted its way around the great ocean, legs sometimes lapped by its waters. ¡°We¡¯re bringing it down,¡± said Brigitta after two months had passed. ¡°In one piece?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°That¡¯s the plan,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°I think it¡¯s doable. I¡¯ve been conversing with Esper on it.¡± ¡°More than you¡¯ve been talking with me,¡± said Leticia. ¡°You¡¯re not going to be any help,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°You were never as deft with the engineering as I am, and I¡¯m in contact with Engineering there, taking as much as they can spare.¡± ¡°You¡¯re well?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°We¡¯re recording vitals,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°They¡¯re sent to Esper every cycle. I¡¯m the only one without any symptoms. I¡¯m fine, Lettie. It¡¯s the landing I¡¯m worried about. I can go into the technicals if you want me to, but ¡ª¡± ¡°How have you gotten worse?¡± asked Leticia with a small laugh. ¡°I¡¯m focused,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Sorry if I¡¯m ¡ª it¡¯s the headspace I need to be in here. I¡¯m the only one without symptoms, the only one Lettie. I just wanted you to know that I¡¯m bringing it down, wanted you to hear it from me.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± said Leticia. ¡°It¡¯s good to hear your voice, and I hope it¡¯s good for you to hear mine. With Mette gone ¡­ I hope we can reunite someday, in person.¡± ¡°Someday,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°If it goes well, if we can make the landing like in the simulations.¡± The space station was, unfortunately, aiming for the dusk side of the planet rather than the dawn side. There were a few reasons for that, but they didn¡¯t think that they would be able to easily move it without significant work that couldn¡¯t be done in advance, and it was far better for it to be trapped in the cold than trapped in the heat. Eventually, in sixty years time, it would be in the dawn twilight band, if they couldn¡¯t get it up and running before them. Landing in dusk would also mean that they could get more assistance from Heimalis, though there were still personnel issues there. Leticia predicted failure. She was a pessimist at heart, a worrier, and while that normally helped her to plan for the unexpected, here it wasn¡¯t terribly productive. Some of the people in engineering had wanted to requisition the small theater as a place to watch the landing of the space station as seen from every angle they would have access to, including a mech from Heimalis that would be sent out there to watch from a safe distance. Leticia had waffled on it, but decided against it. There was too high a chance that something would go wrong. Gathering people together to watch death and destruction seemed like a risk not worth taking. But of course it was difficult to temper excitement, and Leticia hadn¡¯t instituted a lockdown on comms, mostly on the grounds that it might cause some resentment against her. There were going to be hundreds of people watching on their own, some of them in small groups, or listening to one of the ¡®pirate¡¯ radio ¡®stations¡¯. That was better though, easier to have everyone process their collective grief if the worst happened ¡ª not just grief for Brigitta and those she¡¯d brought up with her, but for the loss of everything the space station promised them. Leticia watched from her office. She had two speeches prepared, because she didn¡¯t trust herself to speak extemporaneously. She had blocked out the entire day, because she knew that she wouldn''t be able to think about anything else. Her hands tapped at her desk, as though on a phantom keyboard, busying themselves as her eyes went between the monitors and her ears listened to the blathering of one of the young people who¡¯d taken it upon herself to play announcer. ¡°The space station was designed to land on the surface of the planet,¡± said Sanna. It was probably the third time she¡¯d said it, just to fill the time, and for people that were just tuning in. ¡°We think now, from what we have from the computers up there, that the space station was always intended to make a permanent home of some kind here, though there¡¯s no evidence that they had a way to march around the planet, and we don¡¯t think that they would have wanted to stay in one place. One interesting theory is that the space station was only one of many, but we don¡¯t actually know!¡± She was fifteen and chirpy. Leticia had been like that once, though it had been mixed with an earnest desire for change. Sanna just seemed to like talking. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! ¡°I¡¯m getting word that they¡¯re going to be turning on the reactor soon, which is the dangerous part, since they¡¯ve only been able to partially shield themselves,¡± said Sanna. She was behind the times: Leticia had gotten the message that the reactor had started up again five minutes prior. They¡¯d initially had hopes to fully repair the reactor, to do what their ancestors had failed to do, but too much had been sheared off. The material to make a proper shield was simply missing, and was one of the biggest casualties of whatever had struck the ship, aside from the main control center that had housed most of the most important pieces of the station. The reactor was necessary to move the ship, which meant that this wasn¡¯t the first time they¡¯d had to use it. They had appropriated shielding for themselves, going so far as to partially flood a portion of the ship to place some water between them, but that was a half measure. Everyone had symptoms of one kind or another, rashes and bloody noses. Everyone, save for Brigitta, but knowing her, that might have just been her putting a brave face on things, staying conscious of morale. Sanna blathered on. Leticia watched the numbers on her screens. It was all coming to them with a significant delay from the other side of the planet, relayed through the network of satellites. At a certain point, the landing would be in the past and everyone on the Natrix would be watching it unfold, fate already written. It was almost startling when the video from the mech showed a point of light. That was the space station, thrusters firing, both the ones fed by the reactor and those fed from fuel tanks. Most of the fuel had gone rotten in the time it had been sitting there, but some had remained, and they¡¯d done what they could to make it usable. Brigitta had compared it to the power of a fart. From where the mech was standing, the light looked small, but it was the brightest thing in the sky aside from the sun on the horizon. It was impossible to tell how fast it was actually approaching, but Leticia knew from the planning and reports that it was going to be coming in fast, using air friction to brake as much as possible. Whoever had been in charge of piloting the mech, they were good at making sure the camera was in the right spot, and their vantage point over the region was also good. The plants didn¡¯t thrive as well on the dusk side, but the wide open area was green, the better to allow just the smallest bit of extra cushioning. Sanna was chattering excitedly while this was going on, and Leticia had to imagine that a majority of those aboard the Natrix had stopped what they were doing to watch or listen. She would have to make a speech soon, perhaps very soon, though it was a question of when. If the station crashed, it seemed better to wait, to give the news some time to ripple through the Natrix and for people to come to terms with it. If it somehow landed safely, then she thought it was better to give it some time, just to make sure it didn¡¯t seem like she was taking credit for something she¡¯d had no part in. It was also better not to let people know that the speeches had been written already. They liked for their leaders to speak from the heart. The station grew larger in a hurry as it approached the landing site. It was on target, at least, that was something. As it got close enough to make out the shape of it, the engines flared brighter, killing the last of their speed. Leticia was not an engineer herself, having only middling ability at programming and a basic understanding of the disparate fields. She understood engineers though, and in particular, understood Brigitta. Anything an engineer made wouldn¡¯t work perfectly the first time, nor the second, not unless it was a tweak to a mature system, and sometimes not even then. Engineers tended to go past the schedule they¡¯d given themselves with alarming frequency, and often a project which was scheduled for a week would take two. What Brigitta wanted to do with the space station, bringing it down to the surface of the planet, could not possibly be tested. It couldn¡¯t be done in incremental steps that moved them further toward the end goal. Given how bad the fuel was, there wasn¡¯t even a chance to fully test the engines that they would be relying on. There were all sorts of concepts that Leticia had picked up over the years, things like integration hell, and they all pointed toward a fiery death. The only reason to think otherwise was that Brigitta thought it was going to work. The plants rippled from the force of the engines, and the space station hovered for just a moment before landing gently on the ground, not a strut out of place. It was a landing that had been accomplished as though it had been done a thousand times. It looked routine, casual, the kind of thing that someone was ticking off on a list of things to get done before they could move on to something more interesting. Leticia held her breath until there was no more movement, then let out a little cheer in her office. The entire Natrix was surely vibrating with energy, other people cheering and shouting with joy at the tremendous accomplishment. Leticia sank into her chair, then looked at the metrics on display. The space station had held together shockingly well, with only a few things broken inside it. The crew, such as it was, had all survived with minimal injuries. They had done it. Leticia waited fifteen minutes, then gave her speech. She let the emotion bleed through into what she said, though the words seemed to her too constrained for what they signified, and a few of the things she said didn¡¯t seem as apt as they had when she¡¯d written them. In particular, she had an intuitive sense that the phrase ¡®the work of generations¡¯, which had been drilled into her head since she was small, no longer applied. With the space station brought to the ground, its reactor intact, its stores of knowledge fully opened to them, its robots and systems available to them, it would no longer be the work of generations, but of this generation. It was no longer a far-off future, but perhaps mere decades of work. ~~~~ ¡°I¡¯m sorry that it will belong to the Heimalis, for now,¡± said Brigitta. It had taken time for them to get a chance to talk. ¡°This was the only sensible way though.¡± ¡°It¡¯ll be sixty years before we get there,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Most of our lives until we see each other again, in person.¡± ¡°If you follow the twilight, yes,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But we might be ready before then. You read the proposal?¡± ¡°I did,¡± said Leticia. ¡°If I were the one in charge of it, I would say that there are too many unknowns, too many ways that it could go wrong, and without knowing what happened to the home planet, we might spend enormous resources just to find ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°You think they might all be dead,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It was always a possibility,¡± said Leticia. ¡°Three hundred years have passed and no one has come to check up on what happened to the space station. And something hit it, we still don¡¯t know what.¡± ¡°We would do it small, if we could,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But the FTL drive can¡¯t be done small, can¡¯t be done with anything less than the full force of our people and all the power we can muster.¡± ¡°It was a miracle that you landed safely,¡± said Leticia. ¡°I don¡¯t want you to push it. Building an entirely new piece of technology, even if it¡¯s from designs recovered from their computers, that¡¯s a tall ask.¡± ¡°We could make it home in ten years,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°We could bring our people back to the bosom of civilization. We wouldn¡¯t have to go back into orbit, we could leave from the surface of the planet itself. They could do that, it¡¯s in the emails. The only reason they didn¡¯t was the destruction that it left in their wake.¡± ¡°There will be time to talk about it later,¡± said Leticia. ¡°You think we should abandon the Natrix, is that it?¡± ¡°Or keep a skeletal crew,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°We could take a thousand, say, people trained up for a return home, starting now. It¡¯s the sort of thing that Mette would have been good at.¡± Leticia was silent, because it was true. ¡°Anyway,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°It seems like I might be the only one to make it. The other women are getting sicker by the day. I think there¡¯s a good chance that some will pull through, but I¡¯m the only one unaffected.¡± ¡°How?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°Perry,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°One final gift. Two, actually.¡± ¡°Two?¡± asked Leticia. ¡°I¡¯m pregnant,¡± said Brigitta. She let out a shaky breath that the microphone picked up. ¡°It¡¯s selfish, but if I had known, I would never have come up here. We don¡¯t have a doctor, and with the radiation ¡­ there¡¯s a good chance that it won¡¯t become anything. Perry healed me, I think. He could do it to his armor, repair it with a thought, erase the nicks and stains. Oil and dirt would evaporate off his fingers. He never showered unless it was to keep me company, but he was always clean. So maybe it was that.¡± ¡°He didn¡¯t want to leave children behind,¡± said Leticia. ¡°No, he didn¡¯t,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°But I had hoped he was special, different, that it would happen somehow. And it might be that the child is what¡¯s been protecting me, if it¡¯s special like he was.¡± There was something in her voice, a tremor of uncertainty. She had certainly thought of all the issues that Leticia felt compelled to mention, the possibility of miscarriage, stillbirth, or something worse. The baby had gotten a dose of radiation, probably very early on in the womb. Leticia tried to be gracious. ¡°I hope it works out for you. Keep in touch with me. Try to make time in between your workload. Let us know if we should send people to you. I¡¯m sure that if I put out a sign up sheet today, there would be a hundred names on it by the start of the next cycle.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll be in touch,¡± said Brigitta. ¡°Both for the technicals, and for everything else.¡± When the call had ended, Leticia got up from her desk and paced back and forth in her office. She had bit her tongue about the potential baby, but it was an issue that had been on her mind for other reasons. She had the three teeth that Perry had left them, along with the mass of nanites, and the final piece, which he hadn¡¯t even said anything about, the diseased heart that had been laying on the ground next to the enormous corpse that Jeff had left behind. Leticia had put the heart in a jar filled with water, intending it as a reminder to herself of what she could endure if she had to. There was perhaps an argument that someone should try to eat it, to see whether they could gain the powers of a dragon, but the thing was sickly looking, and there was no one that Leticia would trust to have that kind of power. Perhaps Perry had been wise enough to know, in those final moments, that power wasn¡¯t something to be taken lightly, that it came with costs and risks. Or maybe Perry was just worried about getting sick. The heart hadn¡¯t broken apart in the water, as Leticia had feared it might. It was still alive, somehow, animated by its own magic. Every three days, there was a single heartbeat, a wub-lub that was barely audible in the water. The first time she¡¯d heard it, she had thought it was paranoia or her imagination, but after the second time, she set up a camera to watch it carefully. She had a private fear that Jeff would somehow return, regenerate from this smallest piece, but it seemed more likely that it was just latent power. The beating was regular, like clockwork. Leticia got the teeth from the small box they¡¯d been stored in. She didn¡¯t know whether they would still work, having been out of Perry¡¯s mouth for so long. She had been given no instructions on how they were to be used, only that they needed to be eaten. There were three, but as soon as someone had eaten one, at least to her understanding, they would be able to extract their own teeth and allow others to turn. The whole community could become werewolves. There was no way that Leticia would embark on that without studying the costs and risks, but that would require volunteers, and giving them that personal power would maneuver them into importance, which might not be for the best. She had been putting off talking with anyone else about it, but she was far from a dictator, and the longer this went on as a bit of a secret, the worse it would make her look. Still, the potential impacts might be far-reaching, and they were worth thinking about before she did anything too hasty. She worried that giving the teeth out might make someone like Perry, or worse, like Jeff. Both had been rather mundane men before going through the portals. It was only the accrual of power and stripping of limitations that had changed them, or awakened something in them. She couldn¡¯t even say that Perry was a villain, only that there were bad sides to him. Maybe she would phrase it as risks and costs that hadn¡¯t been apparent at the start. His legacy on Esperide would be complicated, but the younger generation had taken him for a hero, and she wasn¡¯t sure that she could say that he wasn¡¯t, even if he had absconded first with Brigitta and then with Mette. Reminiscence done, Leticia returned to her computer and went through her mail. The Natrix¡¯s path around the ocean needed to be charted, the farms tended to, the manufacturing taken care of, and life on the planet needed to carry on, whatever might come. She did wonder, briefly, where Perry and Mette might have ended up. Chapter 94 - Interlude: The Crew of the SS Farfinder The SS Farfinder appeared a thousand miles from the surface of Esperide. It wasn¡¯t even remotely in orbit, instead being stationary with respect to the planet, but gravity soon corrected that as it began to drop down the gravity well like a stone. The captain¡¯s eyes were on the gauges they¡¯d installed toward the front of the ship. There were now seventeen of them, and they were going to have to get something better, or possibly just digitize it all and put it on a screen, but that was one of those things she wished for and knew she¡¯d never find the time to make happen. If everything went well, they would add another gauge soon. Seven of the gauges were up, with the rest down, little ball bearings raised up to press against switches by various means. The captain¡¯s eyes tracked them, trying to untangle what this would mean for the small ship and its crew in the short term, then in the long term. ¡°We¡¯re falling,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Actually, falling alarmingly fast.¡± She was looking at her screens, which were thankfully still working, the ruggedized computer having not broken with the change of physics. ¡°Engines,¡± said Captain Hella. ¡°Correct for it.¡± ¡°H-class thaumics are down, J-class thaumics are down,¡± said Nitta, who was really just reading the gauges. Her brow was knitted in concentration. ¡°We can either parachute down or ¡­ uh ¡­ kick the K-class? Go chemical?¡± ¡°Kick the K-class,¡± said Hella. ¡°They¡¯re crap,¡± said Nitta, but she left the bridge anyway, running. The ship was small, with five cramped stations, and the rest of it wasn¡¯t much better, aside from their rooms, which were extradimensional. From the gauges, the local conditions meant that those should still be functional, but nothing vital depended on that being the case. ¡°Can we shield?¡± asked Hella. She was trying to take stock of what was available to them. ¡°Tank the impact?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Eggy. ¡°In fact, I¡¯d go so far as to say hell no. Ma¡¯am.¡± ¡°Brace for impact?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Double jump?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t even have the punches mapped yet,¡± said Eggy. ¡°And it¡¯s, um, minutes unless Nitta can get the K-drives working. Bracing isn¡¯t going to do shit.¡± In spite of that, Eggy was braced for impact, her hands gripping one of the railings hard and her feet straining slightly against the floor. Hella followed suit, because Eggy was the smartest person in the room. ¡°Nitta, status?¡± asked Hella. ¡°On it!¡± came a call over the radio. ¡°Should be good to go, we haven¡¯t used these in forever, it¡¯s ¡ª there!¡± The whole ship lurched, and Hella watched out the window as they began slowing their descent. There might be some trouble on the horizon, but it didn¡¯t seem like they were all going to die, not in the near term. ¡°Eggy, get started on the punch map,¡± said Hella. ¡°L¡¯onso, start trying to get some sense of what this world is and what might be in it. The planet looks like hell, but it¡¯s hard to say from a distance. Cark, hold tight for the time being. We need to see what we¡¯re dealing with, but this world doesn¡¯t seem like a stopover, and I want to keep up momentum if we can. We¡¯re here for long enough to fill an entry, then we¡¯re off.¡± Hella relaxed fractionally when it seemed as though they weren¡¯t going to die. She looked over her ¡®crew¡¯, such as they were, and tried to make sure that everything was running smoothly. They came from disparate backgrounds, different worlds, and beyond that, weren¡¯t entirely well-aligned in their interests. They were not, in fact, trained as crew except by the experience accrued on the Farfinder. They were making it work though, and so long as they kept hopping worlds, they were going to be able to get closer to their goal. Eggy was a thin woman, maybe too thin, and for Hella¡¯s tastes, too overtly feminine. They weren¡¯t a real crew, and didn¡¯t have uniforms or anything like that, with the formality of her captaincy something that they were only reluctantly going along with. That meant that Eggy usually dressed up in floral dresses with heavy makeup, which Hella felt went against every standard of practicality, especially in what often might be classified as a battle scenario. Hella had, thankfully, been able to convince her not to wear a large hat with bundles of flowers on it, at least while on the Farfinder. For her own part, Hella had pants with a lot of pockets and her hair tied up in a tight bun. L¡¯onso was a red-skinned lizardman, and by contrast, Eggy barely stuck out. He had a long snout, like a crocodile, and when he spoke, it was mostly through articulate nostrils that opened and closed like tiny mouths, though with a thick ridge for articulation rather than teeth. He had small tongues inside there, which she¡¯d peered at once and immediately regretted. They weren¡¯t actually tongues, just a bit of muscle that moved around and looked like a tongue, but it was the oddest thing about him, aside from the fact that he was a lizard. Nitta and Cark had come as a set, though they were from different worlds. They had been making their way across the multiverse on their own before becoming a part of the Farfinder mission. Nitta was more or less human in appearance, though she had ¡®skins¡¯ that she could put on or take off, up to eighteen layers of them that would see her go from a twig of a woman to a hulking giant, at least when that particular brand of magic was working. It wasn¡¯t, for the moment, which meant that she was trapped in her skin, a lithe dark-skinned woman with intense blue eyes. She would be on edge until they moved on, at least from past experience. Cark was physically rather unexceptional, easy to forget if you came from a world where his muted brown skin tone was common. In his past lives ¡ª literal past lives ¡ª he had been a spy, a private investigator, and a long range reconnaissance ranger. He was usually the first out of the ship to get boots on the ground, but it didn¡¯t seem like they would be doing much of that, nor did it seem like they would have the tools necessary to go in quietly. ¡°Three tails on the punch map,¡± said Eggy, who was frowning at her screen. At least the screens were still working, thank god. They had contingencies for if those failed, but hadn¡¯t done drills in a long time. Hella was the only one who seemed to appreciate the drills. ¡°A team up?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Uh,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Doesn¡¯t look like a team up, based on this, but if it¡¯s not that, I don¡¯t know. Seems like it might be, uh, something else?¡± ¡°What did they do to this planet?¡± asked L¡¯onso. His screen showed what was below, a planet that seemed to mostly consist of endless deserts on one side and ice on the other. The metal interior of the ship had only a few portholes, all of them small so as to be able to handle exterior pressure well. ¡°Some planets are like that,¡± said Hella. ¡°Destroying an entire planet would be more than thresholders should be able to do. Let me see the punch map, Eggy.¡± She walked over to Eggy¡¯s station, feeling the slight shuddering of the ship as it leveled out. They would hopefully be parked soon enough and more sure of themselves, but the gauges and the punch map would give them some understanding. Eggy¡¯s screen was a map of the multiverse, with all the unimportant bits taken out. There were, by most estimates, 1.6 million worlds, but accessing them ranged from difficult to impossible depending on local conditions. The map wasn¡¯t a map of where the worlds were in relation to each other, which was so far unknown (if it was even a coherent idea), but rather, a graph showing links between worlds. The largest node was the current world, which they knew nothing about, a dry desert planet being the only thing they could see, and the stars in the background indicating that it was probably of Aleph-class size. The other nodes came off of it. What they were used to seeing were two tails, sometimes more. ¡°There,¡± said Eggy, pointing at one of the two tails. It split at the first node. ¡°I don¡¯t know what this is. In a three person team up, there would be three tails. This is two tails, until one of the tails splits. I¡¯m going to need to drill down the base data, not the computer¡¯s interpretation. There¡¯s something going on here. But I don¡¯t think it¡¯s wrong, just unexpected.¡± ¡°Two thresholders who teamed up?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Even then, how?¡± asked Eggy. ¡°Going through one after the other wouldn¡¯t do it, they¡¯d end up in different places. Even with a hug, even with other methods, at least from what we¡¯ve seen, same result. There haven¡¯t been that many attempts, granted, not many thresholders who¡¯d actually try to team up, or take someone else through, but of the ones that we have any record of ¡­ this represents something rare.¡± ¡°Rare, and good,¡± said Hella. ¡°Is it good?¡± asked Eggy. ¡°I mean, doesn¡¯t this mean a lot more potential for destruction?¡± ¡°It does,¡± said Hella. ¡°But it¡¯s one of the things we¡¯ve been looking for, a harness.¡± ¡°Assuming that it survived,¡± said L¡¯onso from over at his station. ¡°Assuming the magic holds.¡± ¡°How¡¯s that going, searching for them?¡± asked Hella. She moved over to his station. There was barely enough room to stand behind him, and then only by leaning against a wedge of metal. By this point, the ship was no longer vibrating, and had gone still. They were hovering over the planet, the engines keeping them in place. They hadn¡¯t had to go to the last resort, the chemical engines, which was good, because that would have been a disaster. ¡°Still looking,¡± said L¡¯onso. ¡°We¡¯re weeks behind the end of it.¡± ¡°Weeks?¡± asked Hella. She frowned. ¡°That doesn¡¯t seem right.¡± ¡°It¡¯s right,¡± said Eggy. ¡°We have the gauges, everything is really strong right now. Some of them are going to heal shut, but yeah, I think weeks behind the final fight sounds like it matches what I see.¡± ¡°We were behind when we got here,¡± said Hella. ¡°We were two years behind. How did we catch up? Did they go long?¡± ¡°It was a delay,¡± said Eggy from her station. ¡°Looks like the first one in stuck around for, uh ¡­ yeah, two years. Two years before the others showed up.¡± ¡°You¡¯re getting that from the gauges?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Eggy. ¡°And I¡¯m pretty sure the first one here has to be the guy we were trying to follow. Eighty percent sure. That¡¯s at least partially based on the punch map. It¡¯s not the king, and it¡¯s not Maya.¡± ¡°Peregrin,¡± said Cark. Hella rubbed her face. ¡°Do we think that he won this?¡± ¡°He did,¡± said L¡¯onso. ¡°I¡¯m looking at it now.¡± Hella moved back over. His screen was showing a fight from one of the crazy angles that he could apparently make sense of. It had been fed into the computer by magical constructs at nothing like the fidelity they were used to. Losing J-class thaumics hurt. ¡°So soon?¡± ¡°It¡¯s mostly desert, easier for the algorithms to hone in,¡± said L¡¯onso. He huffed through his nostrils, which was mostly like a sigh for his people. ¡°The whole world has ¡­ maybe fifty thousand people on it?¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Hella. ¡°And you¡¯ve found the thresholders?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said L¡¯onso. ¡°And it looks like Peregrin won.¡± ¡°Send me the coordinates,¡± said Cark. ¡°I need to see what you¡¯re looking at.¡± L¡¯onso had a way of looking through the video that made Hella a bit dizzy, so she moved over to Cark¡¯s station instead. Cark always took things slow, and if someone was with him, he announced when he was going to do a change of viewpoint. ¡°Two weeks, this should be accurate,¡± said Cark. ¡°Should be,¡± nodded Hella. Their method of investigation was through a piece of magic that worked on most worlds, a complex thing that had been with Hella from almost the start, when the SS Farfinder had been a government project run by her homeworld¡¯s military. Her original crewmates were all dead now, her homeworld a distant memory and likely inaccessible, but the ¡®camera¡¯ remained. She was always leery of it, because it didn¡¯t show the past, only a possible past, a plausible explanation for how things had happened. It got a lot of stuff right, but the further back in time it was pointed, the more likely it was to have a fanciful explanation that didn¡¯t match reality. The layer they¡¯d run it through for extra clarity was dead, and a flick of a button had removed it, leaving pretty significant grain. ¡°Final fight,¡± said Cark, announcing what was on the screen. He showed a thresholder exploding into a cancerous dragon not too far from the portal. The man from the Great Arc was there, Peregrin, whose trail they were now apparently following. It was a bit of a crapshoot trying to follow a target, but Hella wouldn¡¯t have been gutted if they¡¯d gotten Maya¡¯s trail instead. ¡°What about the other one?¡± asked Hella. ¡°He had two opponents?¡± ¡°He killed her not long before,¡± said L¡¯onso. A message popped up on Cark¡¯s console, and after a moment, Cark switched his view over to an ignoble kill in the belly of a cave. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. ¡°Hmm,¡± said Hella. ¡°L¡¯onso, go backward, Cark, go forward, I want to see whether we can figure out this split tail thing. It¡¯s got to be some magic, but neither body seems to have much to it. No obvious device.¡± ¡°It could have come from the body,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I mean, it could be a skill, or some innate ability.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Hella. ¡°But if it is, then it¡¯s inconsequential. I¡¯m trying to figure out if it¡¯s something that we can use.¡± Nitta came back from guts of the ship, wiping off her hands on a long rag that she almost always had tucked in a loop on her jacket. All her clothes were designed for expansion and contraction, and her utility outfit was no different, with belts and buttons that folded in fabric or unfurled for her larger form. ¡°We should be good,¡± she said. ¡°But we need to have a talk about the ship¡¯s defenses. This world doesn¡¯t seem suited to it, but we need to be able to survive moving from one world to another without having a moment of crisis every time.¡± ¡°That wasn¡¯t a crisis,¡± said Hella. ¡°You handled it.¡± ¡°We absolutely could have slammed into the side of the planet,¡± said Nitta. ¡°This is why I didn¡¯t want to follow the guy, he¡¯s going to bring less magic with him. We¡¯d be down to chemical engines, and I¡¯m not sure those would have gotten us out of it. We should field test the parachutes next time we get a chance ¡­¡± She was looking around the ship, making plans in her head. As their chief engineer, she unfortunately had more plans than the time to implement them. ¡°We could recruit from this world,¡± said Hella. ¡°Find someone who can deal with the complexity of all this.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think they¡¯re good candidates,¡± said Cark. ¡°That¡¯s on first blush. High tech, homogenous, I¡¯d expect low adaptability and low expansiveness. We could try, but they also have heavy weapons, and after a thresholder battle, it doesn¡¯t seem like they¡¯d be the most welcoming.¡± ¡°We could try by radio,¡± said Hella. ¡°But I think it¡¯s better to contact the locals only when there¡¯s something to say to them, something to get from them. I want to move on though.¡± ¡°We just got here,¡± said Eggy. ¡°There¡¯s a lot of data to get, and we have to untangle this.¡± ¡°The delay was good,¡± said Hella. ¡°Two years? That means that we¡¯re following a hot trail, not a cold one.¡± ¡°You said not to get involved with them,¡± said Cark. ¡°We¡¯re following the wakes, we¡¯re not pulling up alongside the boat.¡± ¡°We know him though,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯ve seen how he operated on the Great Arc. He¡¯s as close to one of the good ones as we¡¯ve come across, and he¡¯s close. Two weeks, you said? There¡¯s no way that he¡¯ll be out of the next world before we¡¯re ready to go. We extract as much as we can from here, then intervene, make contact with him when we get to the next world.¡± ¡°We stay silent here?¡± asked Cark. ¡°I think so,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯ll run some checks on the future. It¡¯s something to bargain with, if he¡¯s got a connection to this place. He¡¯ll want to know, I hope.¡± ~~~~ The future was guesswork, an imagining of what might happen by a J-class magical construct that was thankfully working. In theory, if they kept on Peregrin¡¯s trail, they would keep being able to use it, but it was far worse than their ability to peer into the past, and was basically useless at conversations and exchanges of information. They watched seven different futures of Esperide, and did their best to also watch what was happening on the surface in real time. There were colonies of people, who had apparently come from somewhere else, flying in through some faster-than-light system. Their security was, compared to that of the Farfinder, horrendous, their encryptions easily cracked, credentials easily duplicated. There were very few security setups that could withstand what the Farfinder could do though, so Hella didn¡¯t hold it against them. They were able to extract video of the past as it had actually been, along with recordings of different conversations, and the real prize, a copy of a copy of the artificial intelligence that Peregrin had inside his armor. They didn¡¯t trust it, so it was kept in its own air-gapped computer away from their own computer, but at some future date they might be able to integrate it with their own systems, which were very powerful but also deliberately dumb and without agency. ¡°You said we were going to be in and out,¡± said Cark as they ate their fermented vegetables and rehydrated strips of meat over rice. It was all taken from the Great Arc, given that their food maker was down. ¡°I thought that was a good plan, when you said it.¡± ¡°Another week here,¡± said Hella. ¡°I¡¯m still looking for something.¡± ¡°Do you have a hint at what you¡¯re looking for?¡± asked Cark. ¡°She¡¯s looking for a power,¡± said Eggy. She was looking with distaste at her meal, which was very similar to every other meal they¡¯d eaten over the last week. ¡°Do we need more power?¡± asked Cark. ¡°So long as we understand local conditions, the ship is strong enough to punch through almost anything. We can go toe-to-toe with Peregrin, if we have to.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not looking to kill him,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re looking to talk with him.¡± ¡°Then why the interest in power?¡± asked Cark. ¡°It¡¯s part of the pattern,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Every world, there¡¯s something for the thresholders to grab. We¡¯re at the edges of all kinds of bell curves here, but for there to not be a power would mean certain things about the overspell, things that we really probably should know at some point.¡± ¡°So not because we want it for ourselves?¡± asked Cark. ¡°No,¡± said Hella. ¡°Not that we wouldn¡¯t take it, if we could add it to the ship, but this is about fact-finding.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve looked at enough to know that if there was something, they didn¡¯t find it,¡± said Eggy. ¡°That¡¯s soft proof that it wasn¡¯t here.¡± ¡°The whole conflict took place over the course of what, a week?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Peregrin had time to find it, if it existed, and from what we know of him, he would have been after it like a bloodhound.¡± ¡°He left the heart,¡± said Cark. ¡°He might be losing that killer instinct.¡± ¡°He¡¯s a thresholder,¡± said Hella. ¡°Whatever his reasons, he¡¯s still a killer.¡± She was saying that for her own benefit as much as theirs. If they were planning to make contact, they would need to understand the man that they were making contact with. There were stories told about the thresholders throughout the many worlds, and almost none of them were good. It might have been better to find some idealist, or simply lurk in the multiversal wake that the thresholders left behind when their portals punched through the barriers between worlds, but Hella had become convinced that they needed a confederate. The maps of the future of this world were optimistic. Peregrin had been guilted into leaving behind tools, and they were working to deorbit a space station, which the prognosis was good on. Eggy had taken a look at their plans and thought that they were pretty solid, both in the near term and in the long term. This had been confirmed by looking at the murky and unsolid futures. The space station would cause a giant crater in the planet when it left, but it would make it back into space, repaired and refitted, ready to take thousands back to their homeworld. ¡°So,¡± said Eggy over breakfast one day. ¡°I think it¡¯s time we talk about the Aleph-class worlds. What¡¯s our working theory?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t have a theory,¡± said Cark. ¡°I don¡¯t have one either,¡± said L¡¯onso. ¡°But you do, so share it.¡± ¡°Well,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Aleph-class worlds are huge, right?¡± ¡°Monstrously so,¡± said L¡¯onso. He hadn¡¯t believed them when they¡¯d first talked about galaxies. His world would have fit within the borders of a mid-sized country on Hella¡¯s homeworld. ¡°There¡¯s this disparity, this disconnect,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Why are they huge? Why are some universes and others just like ¡­ a handspan? It makes no sense. Right? And for the thresholders, it really does seem like there are nodes, places within the Aleph-class universes that are just chosen as the prime site, used and reused.¡± ¡°That might be because of the geography,¡± said Hella. ¡°The portal does a punch, which weakens the walls between the worlds. But a punch has a location to it, so after the first, there¡¯s likely a second. And there are selection effects due to the algorithm, which means that certain places are going to be favored. The language thing in particular means that certain worlds are going to get chosen again and again.¡± ¡°Where are you going with this?¡± asked Hella. Eggy had a tendency to get really into the weeds on some theory or bit of trivia, which usually led nowhere. ¡°I¡¯m saying ¡­ the portal could have picked anywhere in this entire universe, which from previous experience should have some kind of life in tons of places all over it. But it picked here,¡± nodded Eggy. She was eating eggs for breakfast, hard boiled ones that they had pickled. Unfortunately, this world didn¡¯t seem to have much in the way of food, not unless they wanted to trade with the locals. ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s a case of the portals ¡®picking¡¯,¡± said Nitta. ¡°Or are you saying they pick worlds or pick people or pick places?¡± ¡°It¡¯s an exceptional world,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I mean, an exceptional planet in kind of a standard world. Humans, or close to humans, speaking something close to English, all that is old hat, but with a narrow stripe of habitable land, with native fauna that will attack but not quite wipe out?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a Goldilocks thing,¡± said Hella. She got some blank stares. ¡°It¡¯s a case of something that¡¯s tuned just perfectly to requirements.¡± ¡°Right, so that¡¯s my theory on Aleph class,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Part of their role, part of why they¡¯re included, is that there are lots of chances for the weird and wild.¡± Hella frowned. ¡°It¡¯s a theory alright,¡± she finally said, which seemed diplomatic enough. ¡°I don¡¯t understand,¡± said L¡¯onso. ¡°You¡¯re saying that Aleph class worlds are here because they¡¯re big enough to allow a selection of odd things?¡± ¡°Well, I don¡¯t know,¡± said Eggy. ¡°It¡¯s something I¡¯ve been thinking about. I mean, there¡¯s a whole universe, but a capital-U Universe, with billions of galaxies and histories and whatever else. It gives a lot to select from. It¡¯s very very different from a world like the Great Arc, which seems big, but is small in comparison.¡± ¡°There¡¯s too much we don¡¯t know,¡± said Hella. ¡°We don¡¯t know how the worlds were created, or selected, or whatever has happened to get us into this mess. We don¡¯t know if the thresholders are the point of everything we see, or just something that someone has done on top of it. We¡¯ve been to many, many worlds now, we have all kinds of tools and skills, and still ¡­¡± ¡°Still we¡¯re stuck following in the wake of these portals,¡± said Cark. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Hella. ¡°Even civilizations with trillions of brilliant scientists haven¡¯t even found the other worlds, let alone been able to punch their own hole. Maybe there¡¯s something to be gleaned from the Alephs, but ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Just a thought,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I do think it warrants more conversation, but maybe we can marinate on it.¡± She shrugged, but looked a little subdued, as she always did when one of her theories seemed to go nowhere. They had more questions than answers, as typical. ~~~~ ¡°It¡¯s the bugs,¡± said Cark. ¡°They have a hive mind.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Hella. She leaned over and looked at his monitor. ¡°So? Pheromones, or something else?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a fungus,¡± said Cark. ¡°It doesn¡¯t keep them from attacking each other, especially if there¡¯s a weak link, but some of the behavior we¡¯ve seen can be explained by it. It¡¯s an open mystery to these people, an aspect of biology that they¡¯re not equipped to answer, but it¡¯s there, if you have our tools and you spend some time looking.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Hella. ¡°A ¡­ disease?¡± ¡°It¡¯s symbiotic,¡± said Cark. ¡°Hivemind is maybe putting it the wrong way. It¡¯s more ¡­ how zombies don¡¯t attack their own. There¡¯s no thought, no overarching goal.¡± ¡°This is the power?¡± asked Eggy, who¡¯d come over to look at the screen. ¡°I didn¡¯t say that,¡± said Cark. ¡°I¡¯m just pointing out something interesting about the ecology.¡± ¡°But it¡¯s definitely the power,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s got to be.¡± ¡°Could it be?¡± asked Hella. ¡°In theory,¡± said Cark. ¡°It would be like ¡­ that world before we started following Maya? With the prawns?¡± ¡°Blegh,¡± said Eggy. ¡°And that was the power there, too, right?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not clear to me how this would be a power,¡± said Cark. ¡°It doesn¡¯t make the jump to humans.¡± ¡°Not to normal humans,¡± said Hella. ¡°But to those three? It would be possible.¡± ¡°And what benefit would it confer?¡± asked Cark. ¡°It¡¯s fairly subtle signaling between people.¡± ¡°Subtle under normal circumstances,¡± said Hella. ¡°Imagine that Peregrin deliberately infected himself with the endemic fungus. Do you think that it would stay subtle for long?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Cark. ¡°I suppose not.¡± ¡°But he missed it,¡± said Eggy. She adjusted the straps of her dress and pursed her lips, which had a bright red lipstick. ¡°I mean they all missed it, and two of them were able to control the bugs.¡± She bit her lip. ¡°We know the portals are predictive.¡± ¡°We think they¡¯re predictive,¡± said Nitta, who¡¯d come to join the impromptu meeting by Cark¡¯s station. ¡°The actual proof of that is thin on the ground.¡± ¡°We have predictive power, and you think the portals don¡¯t?¡± asked Eggy. ¡°I¡¯m saying we don¡¯t have proof,¡± said Nitta. ¡°We can¡¯t just say things that we think sound nice.¡± ¡°Save that for later,¡± said Hella. ¡°Cark, you think we can take it?¡± ¡°I think so, yes,¡± said Cark. ¡°At the very least, we can take one of the smaller insects, put it in a container, and harvest some food from the surface. That would give us a repository of living fungus.¡± ¡°I¡¯m still not clear how it¡¯s a power,¡± said Nitta. ¡°Is it linked to some kind of magic? Or is this mundane, like Peregrin¡¯s power armor?¡± ¡°The armor has the fusion reactor,¡± said Eggy. ¡°It¡¯s not mundane, it wouldn¡¯t work on all worlds without the holes the portal punches.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll have to study it more,¡± said Cark. ¡°From reading the future, this world is going to be swimming in magic,¡± said L¡¯onso. He hadn¡¯t moved to join them, though he wasn¡¯t at his own station, and was instead looking at the gauges. ¡°Most of these are going to stabilize. From reading the future, there will be a whole generation of space-faring werewolves. The child has a spirit root.¡± ¡°It¡¯s half a baby, not even born,¡± said Hella. ¡°I don¡¯t trust the tea leaves. At any rate, we should get moving.¡± ¡°We still want to meet with him?¡± asked Cark. ¡°Violate non-interference? Because this is a big step. And from everything we¡¯ve seen, things don¡¯t tend to go well when people get involved with thresholders. I think it¡¯s safer for us to follow in the wake of them, and if we don¡¯t do that, then maybe just be passive observers, but if there is some level of prediction, and it¡¯s good, then it would account for us. We would become a part of it.¡± Hella crossed her arms. ¡°It¡¯s a risk that I¡¯m willing to take. We¡¯re in a numbers game, the same one the thresholders are in. Every world we hop to, we run the risk of annihilation. We need one of them, in the flesh.¡± Cark tapped on his keyboard and brought up the file they had begun making on Peregrin. It was one they had begun on the Great Arc, which they had come to on the trail of Maya Singh. He was handsome, but there was something about his look that Hella didn¡¯t like. There was nothing soft about him. He looked like a plant manager making an inspection, all business, and it was a look that he had about him even when he was relaxing. The only time he really looked alive was when he was fighting. He¡¯d shown restraint though, and as far as thresholders went, he wasn¡¯t an ideologue or a sociopath. ¡°I think it¡¯s time, and this is our guy,¡± said Hella. ¡°Let¡¯s get ready to follow the punch, within the next day if we can get the bug situation handled. Hopefully he hasn¡¯t burnt the place down by the time we get there.¡± Chapter 95 - That New World Smell The first thing Perry noticed were the trees, which rose up high in the air. They reminded him of the redwoods of the Muir woods, which he¡¯d always visited when his family made the trip to his aunt and uncle¡¯s house near San Francisco. They had twenty-foot diameters and stood three hundred feet tall. For a moment, just a single second, Perry thought that maybe he was back on Earth, but that thought slipped away as soon as he saw what had been done to the trees. There were ropes around their trunks, high up, with small slips of paper dangling down from threads, and below that, at the height where people could reach, the bark had been carved with a riot of graffiti ¡ª the one closest to him had drawings, names, and all sorts of other things covering it. The ropes with papers were some kind of Japanese thing, he thought, but the graffiti was the accumulation of foot traffic and a culture that didn¡¯t care about that kind of thing, in the same way that an inner city wall would accumulate tags until the whole thing was covered. There was no one around at the moment, in spite of all the evidence of people regularly using this place. It wasn¡¯t a forest, probably couldn¡¯t be given how fresh the slips of paper were. It was a park or a tourist spot or something like that. Perry had his sword in hand and the drone nestled in the compartment on his back, but he held off on using the drone just then. He felt no small amount of affection for the little thing, which had miraculously survived through five different worlds in spite of its ultra lightweight construction. ¡°Marchand, how are we doing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Radio signals?¡± ¡°None, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Make a map,¡± said Perry. ¡°Show me the moment someone shows up.¡± ¡°Of course, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry frowned as he watched the map being made with a combination of acoustics and visuals. It would be better with the drone, but the drone might give them away. Perry had spent lots of time thinking about the next world and what sorts of things he might find there, and he was thinking that there might be a case for him to go in quietly, which would mean temporarily ditching the armor and sword. He would need to know what these people wore, how they moved, and integrate himself with them as much as possible. Thankfully the language wouldn¡¯t be a problem thanks to the second sphere. He wished he still had the glamour that he¡¯d lost back in Teaguewater. It had fallen off him when he¡¯d transformed into a wolf, and not been recovered. It hadn¡¯t been strong enough to make people gloss over the fact that he was wearing full plate armor, but it would have let him slip into a crowd. Given that it was possible to anticipate the portals in a few ways, he wanted to get as far from the entry site as he could. Perry launched himself into the air and then let the sword carry him higher, getting a better view of the forest and taking him out of view of anyone standing on the ground. Just because Marchand hadn¡¯t heard any radio signals didn¡¯t mean that these people weren¡¯t technologically advanced. In fact, one of the things that Richter had talked about with him when they were discussing aliens was that advanced civilizations might not be bathing the cosmos with radio signals, instead preferring more direct forms of communication, either point-to-point or using wires. And if these people had magic, then all bets were off the table. They might be able to track him without him having a way of knowing that it was happening. He was picturing wizards with crystal orbs, but something like magic radar was perhaps more likely. When Perry was three hundred feet up, he landed on a thick tree branch. He had a good view, and could see now that he was at the edges of a city that was situated on the coast. He was in a park, not a forest, but it was a huge one, rivaling Central Park. The buildings beyond were mostly small, none much larger than ten stories, but they sprawled out in a criss-cross of roads that looked more similar to London than to New York. On second thought, the best comparison he could make would be to Paris, with radial roads sprawling out. It was a far cry from Teaguewater, which was choked in smoke, and it was hard to place where it might be in terms of technology just from looking at it from afar. There were lots of things that would have been out of place in any period on Earth. There were huge pillowy things, each longer than a city block, and after enhancing the image, Perry worked out that they were almost certainly blimps that had been lashed to the ground. It was early morning, which might have accounted for the lack of people down in the well-trafficked park and the blimps that hadn¡¯t yet taken off. When Perry looked at the horizon, he could see one coming in, low on the horizon, though there were far far more ships in the harbor than blimps in the air. Perry had always been a blimp naysayer, and was curious how they had handled the challenges, or what the conditions were like to make them viable. They weren¡¯t in airfields, they were lashed down in the city, among the buildings there, which was even stranger. Aside from the blimps, there were golden domes, which were of various sizes and dotted around the city. Perry¡¯s mind went to mosques for some reason, but he wasn¡¯t sure that it was actual gold. They also weren¡¯t proper domes, not half-spheres, but instead flattened, and some with small holes at the top. The people seemed to place an emphasis on greenery and color, with gardens on many rooftops and parks littered throughout the city, the park with redwood knock-offs being the largest and most notable example. From what Perry could see, it was either spring or summer, because many of the plants were in bloom, but it was also possible that he was in a place with perpetually good weather. From the outside readings, it was a chilly morning, but Perry didn¡¯t feel it from inside his armor, and the chill was nothing compared to the extreme conditions of Esperide. Nothing he had looked at told him much about what the world was actually like. It might have had magic or it might not, and it could have been at pretty much any stage of technological development, especially with magic in the mix. He didn¡¯t see a lot of the cookfires that he¡¯d expect from, say, the equivalent of the ancient Greeks, but that didn¡¯t mean much. The city was on the larger side, with at least a million people by a crude count, but there had been cities that large through most of human history. After ten minutes or so, he opened the shelfspace and held an arm out for Mette to step onto the branch with him. ¡°What the hell!¡± she shouted when she found herself on the branch with him, three hundred feet above the ground. There wasn¡¯t quite enough room for both of them, but he had the sword, and ended up partly floating next to her while she held onto him. He registered only belatedly that ¡®hell¡¯ had been translated, which would normally have passed beneath his notice, except that they were going to have to deal with that if she was with him. He didn¡¯t even know if they spoke English or something close to it on this planet. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve got you.¡± Mette held onto him and looked around, eyes wide. He waited, and eventually she spoke. ¡°I¡¯ve never seen a city before,¡± she said. ¡°This is ¡­ what they¡¯re like?¡± ¡°You¡¯ve seen photos and video,¡± said Perry. ¡°And yeah, all cities share certain aspects in common.¡± Perry could see the farmlands further out, the docks to one edge of the city, a built up downtown, and an area that looked a little less inviting that he thought might be industrial. There was also a castle, which wasn¡¯t typical for cities, and he made a pledge to give it a wide berth until he knew what power was lurking there. ¡°It¡¯s different in person,¡± said Mette. She was looking out at everything, eyes constantly moving. ¡°It just sits there?¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to need you at a hundred percent,¡± said Perry. ¡°There was a signal that preceded us, we know that, so the first step is to get as far away from the starting location as possible while evading the authorities, then covertly gather information, then possibly introduce ourselves to the locals while keeping as much in reserve as possible, depending on local conditions.¡± Mette looked at him and then nodded slowly. ¡°You don¡¯t need me for this part.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t,¡± Perry agreed. ¡°I just ¡­ wanted to show it to you, the place we¡¯ve come to.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± she said. She took in a deep breath through her nose. ¡°It smells so strange.¡± ¡°Just wait until you have whatever they¡¯ve got for food,¡± said Perry. He smiled at her, but it was fleeting. ¡°We need to get situated, see what we¡¯re facing. You¡¯re fine in the shelfspace?¡± ¡°Not really,¡± said Mette. ¡°I want to be out there, not introduced to everything from your reports. But ¡­ you need to know more, all the things you¡¯ll learn in the first thirty minutes, to keep us safe, right?¡± ¡°I need to see what the people look like, if they¡¯re even human, if they share a language with us, if we can blend in,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll take off the armor soon, to make myself less threatening, and if it seems safe, that¡¯s when I¡¯ll bring you out. It¡¯ll be good to have a second mind working the problem with me.¡± Mette nodded. ¡°Stay safe. Don¡¯t lose the ring.¡± Perry opened the space, and she stepped into it, seeming relieved to be back on solid ground. Once she was in, Perry dropped down from the tree, falling past thick branches until he was halfway down, then flying forward. He didn¡¯t relish the prospect of ditching the armor, even temporarily, but the power armor stuck out. Getting rid of it wouldn¡¯t help unless he had accurate clothing though, something that would let him pass as just a little odd, if not one of the natives. And all that would be moot if they were blobs of jelly or giant hairy demons or something. Perry went from tree to tree, staying high up. It didn¡¯t take long for him to find people, and he was relieved to see that they were people, mostly because he¡¯d been thinking about how wide the range of possibilities was. He watched them closely. If they looked up, he would be made in a second, so he moved behind one of the larger branches. He was going to have to practice slipping into the shelfspace at a moment¡¯s notice and looking out through a half-opened hole, but that wasn¡¯t what took precedence at the moment. Esperide had been a planet colonized by a racially homogenous group of people, all of them relatively tall and mostly blonde, all the same shade of pale. Even after two years there and with all the benefits of enhanced senses, he¡¯d still had some difficulty telling them all apart, sometimes resorting to his keen sense of smell. The group below, making their way through the woods, wasn¡¯t just racially diverse, not just with their own senses of style that might have owed to cultural diversity, but with a difference of bodies that either meant extensive modifications or a variety of fantasy races. For whatever reason, Perry felt like it was the latter more than the former. There was a light-skinned girl with long pointed ears and five different necklaces hanging around her neck, giving her more cover than the skimpy bikini top she was wearing. A blue-skinned woman with an extra set of arms had tattoos peeking out beneath a heavy fur coat. There was an orc there, or someone who looked like an orc, big and muscular, green-skinned with tusks, walking beside them and carrying a fancy lantern at his side ¡ª unlit. There were six of them, talking amongst themselves about a library, walking with no particular rush. The voices carried, and Perry was thankful that they were speaking English. There didn¡¯t seem to be much rhyme or reason to their outfits, but one of the things that Perry had learned about clothes in college was that they were never random. Clothing was cultural, sure, but it was also determined by material availability, and some of the cultural stuff was downstream of the material. Someone who was really, really good at this sort of thing could look at this group of people and work backward, figuring out everything there was to know about the world and its history. To Perry¡¯s eyes, they seemed strangely modern, though it was hard for him to say why exactly that was. The bikini top was certainly suggestive of modernity to Perry, though that might have been his own prejudices speaking. More so it was the melange of people and styles. If pressed, he would have to say that they represented free exchange of peoples, goods, and ideas, especially since they were all together. There were at least eight different types of textiles there, not the kind of thing you¡¯d find among medieval people where everyone wore close to the same thing unless they were nobility. The dyes were vibrant, matching the splashes of color from the city. He had some renewed confidence that he would be able to slip into the city pretty easily and pass without notice, at least once he was out of the armor. If this random group of six people had this much variety, then there was probably enough variety out there that his own particular brand of oddness would slip right in with theirs, at least at first blush. No one would care if his skin color wasn¡¯t quite like any they had in this world, that he was too tall, too hairy, spoke with an accent, or anything like that. If he dressed oddly, then like modern people on Earth they might chalk that up to their own ignorance or his personal peculiarity. He¡¯d have to find someone who looked like him first though, just to confirm. It wouldn¡¯t do to walk into a downtown market and have people start screaming about a human showing up. He was pretty sure that one of the women down there was human, a long-limbed woman with dark black skin and a shimmering cloak that covered her from head to toe and almost had to be magic if it wasn¡¯t some kind of gossamer supermaterial. As Perry contemplated skulking around, he thought better of the idea. Perry slipped into the shelfspace. He still intended to get moving, but he also wanted to be able to go walking through the park on his own, and for that the armor would have to come off. So far, Marchand had seen nothing too alarming, no signs of battle or approaching evils, no equivalent to a giant mech pointing a huge cannon at them. ¡°What¡¯s happening?¡± asked Mette as he appeared next to her. ¡°I¡¯m taking the armor off,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to drop down onto the path, pretend to be one of them, and play it by ear.¡± ¡°They look like us?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Speak our language?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ close enough, probably. If they yell, I¡¯ll go running. I¡¯m guessing that there¡¯s not much police presence here, in this park.¡± ¡°And a park is ¡­ like the arboretum?¡± asked Mette. Perry stared at her. ¡°You did look through all the files, right? The Gratbook, the video, things like that?¡± Mette balled her hands into fists. ¡°I did, but I didn¡¯t look at it like it was vital information, I just wandered around in the files and thought ¡®wow, neat, but also totally irrelevant¡¯. I didn¡¯t memorize every single word in there, every concept. Perry, up until an hour ago, I was charged with plotting a path for the Natrix, literally and figuratively. I wasn¡¯t concerning myself with urban design or geography or whatever else.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s fine, I won¡¯t expect much. And even if you had read about it in a book, seeing it in person is different. I don¡¯t know much about these people yet, but this is a port city, and I don¡¯t think that we¡¯re going to have problems blending in, not on first blush.¡± He began stripping off his armor, and noticed her eyes on him. ¡°You¡¯re going unprotected?¡± she asked. ¡°Is that safe?¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s not,¡± said Perry. ¡°But the armor attracts attention, and besides that, I¡¯ve been in the armor for almost a week straight with all the cat and mouse.¡± The idiom translated poorly, Perry could feel that as he said it. ¡°We¡¯re blending in, that¡¯s the plan until we have some idea of what this place is. We might stick out, but we¡¯ll stick out in a way that they know how to deal with. We¡¯ll get strange looks, maybe have to answer a few questions, things like that. I¡¯m hoping we¡¯re not expected to carry papers and that they don¡¯t have secret police, but I guess we¡¯ll see. Priority one, from my perspective, is to minimize contact with the authorities for as long as possible. We don¡¯t know whether the other thresholder is here yet, so we want to stay undercover.¡± When he¡¯d gotten down to his lower layer, made of the black nanites, he looked over at her. ¡°You can stay here, if you want, or you can come with me.¡± He looked over her outfit. ¡°I don¡¯t know how that¡¯s going to play, but from the clothes that Jeff so helpfully left us, what you¡¯re wearing is more appropriate.¡± He thought about the elf in the bikini top and looked at Mette¡¯s functional garb, nothing too much more than a t-shirt and some slacks. It wasn¡¯t closely tailored, but he didn¡¯t think that it would be too out of place. ¡°Did you want to go for a walk?¡± Mette stared at him for a moment, then gave him a slow nod. Perry ended up digging into Jeff¡¯s stash of clothing, most of it apparently taken from the vegan ecumenopolis. Finding something that seemed like it wouldn¡¯t create too many questions was a challenge, but Perry¡¯s experience with the second sphere meant that anything that didn¡¯t fit quite right could be molded into shape with just a bit of energy expenditure. Mette watched him nervously. Perry tried to avoid feeling annoyed by it, but her nervousness was making him nervous. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. When they were ready, Perry exited the shelfspace, checked that there was no one around, and descended to the forest floor, on one of the trails. He opened the space back up for Mette, who stepped out gingerly and looked up at the trees. Nothing had really changed, but they were now nominally undercover, blending in with no one around them. ¡°Wow,¡± said Mette. She was staring at the trees. ¡°Nothing moves.¡± ¡°Things move,¡± said Perry. ¡°They just don¡¯t have to move.¡± ¡°I somehow didn''t realize that trees would get so big,¡± said Mette. ¡°In the pictures, the movies, they¡¯re smaller.¡± ¡°These are exceptional,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe as tall as the tallest on Earth.¡± ¡°And those collars on the trees, what¡¯s that?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I have no idea,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s something similar in Japanese culture, but I don¡¯t remember what it¡¯s about. I would say that here it¡¯s marking them as holy, but we¡¯re in a city park, and there are carvings all over these trees, so it¡¯ll be hard to say.¡± ¡°How do we find out the answer?¡± asked Mette. ¡°We ask a local or read a book,¡± said Perry. ¡°Better the latter than the former. It might be one of those things that even the smallest child knows, and we don¡¯t want to stick out too much.¡± ¡°So ¡­ we find a library?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ideally I would exchange some gold for whatever they use for currency. For now, we¡¯ll go for a walk. Don¡¯t look at other people too much, pretend that we walk through this park every week or so, mind your eyeline, but be ready to dive into the shelfspace if we need to run.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Mette. ¡°And keep conversation light, nothing about Esperide or science or anything like that.¡± Perry took a breath, then started walking down the path. He was on the lookout for signs, which seemed like they would be an absolute requirement in a park of this size in the middle of a city, even if they were just signs telling people to not feed the ducks. He found what he was looking for before they had gone three hundred feet. Most of the ropes that hung around the trees were white, or at least a yellowed or faded white, with the slips of paper the same color and the markings ¡ª not language ¡ª in black. This tree¡¯s bark was free from carvings, and its rope was black, with no bits of paper dangling down from it. The plaque in front of it had a raised metal version of the tree on it, worn shiny by many hands touching it, along with a bit of its history written in neat columns beside it. ¡°It¡¯s a cursed tree,¡± said Perry, reading fast. Mette was beside him, looking up at the tree. ¡°And it appears that we¡¯re in the Numawood Commons, administered by the Kerry Coast City Symboulion in cooperation with the Numawood Symboulion. So that¡¯s good to know.¡± There was a story on the plaque, a short one without any proper narrative beats, claiming that a woman had been nailed to the tree hundreds of years ago and placed a curse on all that would lay their eyes on it. The rope kept the curse at bay, apparently, though Perry couldn¡¯t tell whether this was the quaint sort of mythology that a city would put on a plaque or an actual thing that had happened. ¡°Magic,¡± said Mette. ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe?¡± she asked. ¡°Even in a place with magic, we won¡¯t know how much magic there is,¡± said Perry. ¡°We won¡¯t know what¡¯s magic and what¡¯s superstition. But the genre is probably modernist fantasy, yeah.¡± ¡°Genre,¡± said Mette. ¡°Like ¡­ comedy or tragedy?¡± ¡°Just a way of conceptualizing things,¡± said Perry. ¡°If we use the rubric that Jeff was using, then my guess is high magic, low technology, and all the rest we¡¯ll have to figure out later.¡± He pointed to the plaque. ¡°But this is a sign of central authority, and another marker in favor of this being a modernist civilized place.¡± He had no real idea when plaques like this had begun to be a thing, but he supposed that information like this must have come about with widespread literacy, though stelae dated to the ancient world. He glanced to the side. ¡°People. Act natural.¡± Mette¡¯s version of acting natural was to freeze up like a rabbit backed into a corner by a wolf, but the couple walking down the way only gave them a curt nod of recognition. They were a pair of elves ¡ª or at least, tall pale-skinned people with pointy ears. Their conversation was low, and apparently involved high art. Their clothes were more finely tailored than the young people that Perry had seen, with the woman in a short vest that showed off her abs, and the man in a suit, though without a tie. Mette boggled at them in spite of Perry¡¯s instruction, and the man gave her a flicker of his attention, which was just enough to express his annoyance that she was staring. Neither of the elves seemed to think that Perry or Mette didn¡¯t belong there. Once they had passed, Perry relaxed, his preparations to flee having been for nothing. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°That was test number one.¡± ¡°Wow,¡± said Mette. ¡°Their ears!¡± ¡°Don¡¯t stare next time,¡± said Perry. ¡°If we want to stare, we can find a place where it¡¯s acceptable to do so. We¡¯ll get some money, go to a show, or sit in a bar and do some people-watching.¡± ¡°People watching,¡± said Mette. She nodded as she savored the words. It was clearly a new concept for her, and why wouldn¡¯t it be? She had just come from a place where nothing was ever truly new, where she knew everyone, or at least in theory had seen them all before. The Natrix was a small town, and she was a country mouse. ¡°Let¡¯s go,¡± said Perry. ¡°If there are plaques on cursed trees, then I have to imagine there are maps somewhere. Hopefully the people that administer the Commons thought that was a good idea.¡± It didn¡¯t take them long to find the map, which like the picture of the tree on the plaque, was metal and raised up from the surface. There was a small red enamel pin in it, which Mette touched gently with her finger. The map showed various points of interest, including the ¡®cursed¡¯ tree, and Perry traced the quickest way out of the park. ¡°What did that red mark mean?¡± asked Mette. ¡°It¡¯s to show where we are,¡± said Perry. ¡°Oh,¡± said Mette. ¡°How did you know that?¡± Perry shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s common, where I¡¯m from. I guess you never had maps like that. They¡¯re everywhere, all over Earth.¡± ¡°I guess it makes sense,¡± said Mette. ¡°It¡¯s obvious in retrospect. Every map I¡¯ve ever worked with had a legend to it that showed which way was which.¡± ¡°You saw the compass rose?¡± asked Perry as they walked. ¡°Now that was something that I think shows common heritage with Earth, unless it¡¯s some very specific form of convergent evolution. Having a marking that gives you orientation isn¡¯t astonishing, but the fact that it¡¯s four directions and pointing up, and that up is north, that¡¯s more than just coincidence.¡± They were rounding a bend when a group of orcs came across them. They were wearing a common uniform, but it was just a collection of jogging clothes rather than a soldier¡¯s outfit, and from the symbols, Perry thought they were probably from a local school rather than military. Again, they were paid no mind except that the group got to the left side of the path and ran past single-file while Mette stared. ¡°You really need to stop staring,¡± Perry said once they were past. His heart had started beating a bit faster at the sight of so many orcs. He had killed them by the hundreds in Seraphinus, several worlds away, though those had been medieval, uncivilized, slavers and pillagers. He¡¯d been ready to kill these men too, but they were unarmed and unarmored. Still, it had set him on edge. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Mette. ¡°Let¡¯s find a place where I can stare.¡± ¡°This way,¡± said Perry. The park was evidently coming to life as the sun began to rise, and in the fifteen minutes it took them to get to the park¡¯s edge through the carved numawood trees, they saw more than two dozen other people, sometimes alone and other times in small groups. Perry was starting to get a handle on the various races, but in terms of categories there was so little repetition that he was starting to have trouble with making sense of it all. In spite of his warning to her, Mette stared at all of them. ¡°Elves,¡± she said. ¡°And orcs. And we¡¯re what, humans? Just humans?¡± ¡°Don¡¯t use any of those words until we know what words they use,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nothing that applied on Seraphinus applies here.¡± ¡°What were the blue ones?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°They said there are libraries. If those don¡¯t require a card, we can slip into one and take our pick of the books.¡± ¡°These would be ¡­ paper books?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Probably,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can¡¯t imagine from their textiles that these people are using vellum.¡± They saw the city before they were out of the park. The last hill they crested gave them a view down a part of the path that was done with stone paving blocks rather than just packed-down dirt, and beyond that, a giant archway that led into crowded streets ¡ª crowded with buildings and people both, everything packed in tight. There were the same splashes of color and greenery that Perry had seen from the air, but there seemed to be more of it, and many of the walls were covered with murals. In a different mood, Perry might have felt that it was an assault on the senses, but he was fresh from a world of utilitarian designs and botanical wastelands. ¡°Wow,¡± said Mette. ¡°How many people live here?¡± ¡°A million, at least,¡± said Perry. ¡°Marchand could do a better estimate. I think there¡¯s probably a way to have the earpiece in and open the shelf just wide enough that we can sneak a radio signal in and out, but that will come later. Right now, we¡¯re just two regular citizens fresh from a walk in the park.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Mette. ¡°What do we do if people talk to us?¡± ¡°Let me do the talking,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can translate the words that they don¡¯t have equivalents for. Right now, I think we¡¯re trying to find the library. We can tackle everything else later. It¡¯s early in the morning right now, hopefully the library is open today.¡± The park had been relatively quiet, with the tall trees blocking a lot of sound, but once they were out on the street, the noise came at them in full force. The city was still waking up, but there were plenty of people all around, along with the sounds of industry and transportation. It wasn¡¯t like any of the cities that Perry had known though, because there weren¡¯t any cars to be seen, and the roads were narrow. He stopped before crossing the street, looking both ways, and saw mostly bicycles and pedestrians, though there was a bus or something similar that he was keen to get a look at to see whether it had an internal combustion engine or something more exotic. ¡°Where do we go?¡± asked Mette. ¡°We do a random walk,¡± said Perry. ¡°Listen to conversations, read the signs, get our feel for it.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± she said. Her voice was small. ¡°How are you doing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not what I thought it would be,¡± said Mette. ¡°What did you think it would be?¡± he asked. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Mette. ¡°I thought ¡­ when you came to us, we were there right away, bringing you in on everything, parlaying. That¡¯s how I remember it, anyway. There¡¯s no one to greet us here. There¡¯s no one that even knows we exist. We¡¯re just on our own, in the middle of this city, with a million people around us, and ¡­ what are we doing here?¡± ¡°We¡¯re trying to find the enemy thresholder,¡± said Perry. ¡°If we can¡¯t find them, then we¡¯re training up and gathering what resources we can to ensure that we have the firepower to face them. Then we¡¯re going to the next world. That¡¯s what a thresholder does.¡± ¡°And we¡¯ll find a way back, right?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Hopefully,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll find someone with a catalog of the known worlds, someone with a power to pop the skin between the worlds like a balloon, and then not have to worry about the enemy showing up.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± swallowed Mette. She looked around, down the streets to where vendors were setting up for the day. ¡°I didn¡¯t make a huge mistake, did I?¡± Perry looked at her. ¡°Are you thinking that you did?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Mette. She didn¡¯t sound very convincing. ¡°No,¡± she said again, maybe because she knew how uncertain she¡¯d sounded. ¡°Perry, we¡¯re in this together, right?¡± ¡°We are,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll see you through it. It can be a lot, at the start.¡± They walked down the street, doing as he said, taking it all in and reading the signs, which were almost all in English, though some were in another script composed of little sticks with no curves to speak of. There was not a single bit of modern technology in sight, and most of the buildings were built of stone and wood, not brick or the thin wood and drywall that Perry was most used to seeing. They had metalworking, but not that much of it, and Perry was fairly surprised to see how little advertising there was. They came to their first ¡®library¡¯ not more than two blocks into the city. It had a stone archway over the entrance which said ¡®Saint Yves Clothing Library¡¯ and when Perry went in ¡ª trying not to hesitate like some kind of tourist ¡ª he found that it was a clothing store rather than a place with books. He stared at it, momentarily stunned, and Mette walked into him. ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± she asked in a half whisper. ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re just looking.¡± He strode forward and pretended that he belonged there. There was a human woman with dyed blue hair behind a desk reading a book, and she perked up when Perry came near her, then when his eyes went to the racks of clothes, she settled back into her book. She had green ivy tattoos running up her left arm, and Perry thought that she wouldn¡¯t have been terribly out of place in Tacoma. From what people had been wearing, Perry had expected them to have clothing stores like this. Historically, clothes were one of the most labor intensive products that a person could own. They were darned and repaired for as long as they could possibly be, with care taken to wash and dry them, and it was rare for a person to own all that many outfits. On Earth as he¡¯d left it, they had gone almost as far as possible in the other direction, with cheap shit that fell apart as soon as you looked at it, t-shirts that cost as much as a fancy hamburger and closets filled with the stuff. Perry had owned as much clothing as a medieval king did, because giant machines worked the fields and even bigger machines had replaced the looms. None of the stuff Perry was seeing looked particularly cheap, which was puzzling given how much of it there was. There also weren¡¯t price tags on anything, at least not that he could see, though there were paper notes attached to them. He looked at one of them, trying to decipher it, but came up with nothing, whatever system was in use opaque to him. ¡°Can I help you?¡± asked the woman at the desk. ¡°I¡¯m just looking,¡± said Perry, hoping that was a universal way of saying ¡®go about your business¡¯. ¡°Anything you¡¯re looking for?¡± asked the woman. She¡¯d put her book away and was coming down from behind her desk, which was apparently raised up slightly. His brain hadn¡¯t registered it, but she was quite small, coming up only to the bottom of his ribcage. ¡°Also, if it¡¯s your first time here, I¡¯ll need to get you a card, but I can start filling that out while you browse.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°A card for ¡­ ?¡± She blinked at him. ¡°A card for ¡­ whatever you wanted to check out?¡± She looked from him to Mette. ¡°Sorry, let me back up, welcome to Saint Yves Clothing Library. I¡¯m Tilly, one of the librarians. Can I help you find some clothes?¡± Perry¡¯s mind was reeling as he tried to come to grips with this, and he desperately wanted to play it cool and not ask all the stupid questions whose answers would be completely obvious to anyone who was actually from this world. ¡°What do we need to have to get a card?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Name, address, that¡¯s it,¡± said Tilly with a shrug. ¡°We¡¯re new in town,¡± Perry tried. ¡°We don¡¯t have a permanent address yet.¡± ¡°Not a problem, I can put it down as not decided yet,¡± said Tilly. ¡°Other than that, if you need clothes, you can walk out with a bag of them today.¡± She cocked her head to the side. ¡°You¡¯re ¡­ from out of town?¡± Perry winced. It wasn¡¯t a conversation he wanted to have. ¡°That obvious?¡± he asked. ¡°A bit,¡± said the librarian with a smile. ¡°We just want to look like we fit in,¡± said Perry. ¡°Like locals. Can you show us what¡¯s in style?¡± ¡°Of course,¡± said Tilly with a nod. ¡°And,¡± said Mette. ¡°We don¡¯t have a place to stay yet, could you suggest somewhere?¡± ¡°Yes, absolutely,¡± said Tilly with a smile. She reached up and absentmindedly traced the ivy tattoos with the fingers of her other hand. ¡°Though ¡­ sorry to ask, but are you looking for free housing or scrip housing?¡± ¡°Free, for now,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though we¡¯re just getting settled, maybe scrip later. We have goods we want to change for scrip, and we¡¯re not sure where to do that either.¡± He was taking a wild stab there, but she was friendly, and had pegged them as foreigners, which he hoped gave him a little leeway, even if he could in no way answer the question of where they had come from or why. ¡°I can draw you a map,¡± said Tilly. ¡°What is a librarian for, if not helping people?¡± Thirty minutes later, they left the ¡®clothing library¡¯ with a sack full of clothes, two outfits for each of them, along with two local papers and a map of the city with various points of interest marked for them. ¡°Was that ¡­ very easy?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let¡¯s go see what free housing looks like, I guess.¡± He was feeling a little ill at ease, like there had to be a catch. While they had been at the clothing library, he¡¯d kept wanting to ask ¡®hey, what¡¯s to stop people from coming in here, giving a fake name, and stealing all the clothes?¡¯, but he supposed that was a question that you could ask about a regular library too. So far as he knew, libraries would just rack up the fines without the weight of law, and most of the libraries near him had done away with late fees. On the way to the free housing they passed a number of other libraries, which seemed to infest the city like coffee shops infested downtown. Not all of the libraries were as clearly marked as the one they¡¯d gone into, but all shared a standardized symbol that was displayed prominently out front. The city seemed to take the definition of ¡®library¡¯ very loosely, and there were libraries for all kinds of things, from kitchenware to clothing and plants to tools. If you needed a hammer, apparently what you did was go down to a tool library and check one out rather than going to a hardware store. It was all easy, far more than he¡¯d ever thought that it could be. He remembered going into Teaguewater and getting chased by the police just because he was trying to sell a gold coin, and while he had all kinds of things to sell thanks to the shelfspace, it seemed as though he might not need to do that here. ¡°I need to read the paper, see what I can glean from it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Okay,¡± said Mette. She was still looking around. They¡¯d passed all kinds of places she wanted to go in, including a school that she was certain taught some kind of lantern-based magic. There would certainly be time for that later, once they had some details in place. So far, Perry hadn¡¯t seen anyone he would identify as police, but he really wanted to know who they were and what tools they had at their disposal. Both papers, the Kerry Coast Times and Kerry Post, had the same story on their frontpage. For the Times, it was ¡®Serpent Beheaded!¡¯ and for the Post, it was ¡®Liberty Triumphs Again!¡¯, both of them referring to the decapitation of the king of a foreign country, liberating it from the rule of monarchists. This was apparently something that both papers felt was worthy of celebration, and a Temporary Worker¡¯s Symboulion was now in charge, which suggested some ideological alignment even if that wasn¡¯t explicit in either of the papers. That was enough for Perry to start having some inkling of a backstory for them: they could be one of the refugees that had come to the Kerry Coast City. All they would need is some basic information that they could get from any map, which would let them build up over time. In fact, once they had a room in free housing, Perry could get March out and start collecting all kinds of information, logging dozens of conversations at once in order to tease out some of the intricacies of what was going on. In fact, if they could bug the room of someone who was actually from the now-former Berus Kingdom, that would give them everything they might ever need to know in order to survive actual scrutiny rather than just casual questions from helpful librarians. The Kerry Post¡¯s version of events gave him pause though. The king¡¯s beheading hadn¡¯t been by revolutionary forces or a coup by the military or anything like that. It had been done by an unidentified male presumed to be a part of the nascent symboulion or at least sympathetic to them, a mystery that no one seemed to think was that important ¡ª or maybe it was just a question that it wouldn¡¯t do to dwell on given that there weren¡¯t any answers. To Perry though, it was the first whiff of the enemy. He had clothes, a place to stay, and some inkling of who he was after. A smile slowly slid across his face. ¡°Mette,¡± he said. ¡°I think we¡¯re going to do okay here.¡± Chapter 96 - Intelligence The free housing was both better and worse than Perry had thought it would be. He had half been expecting that it would be a flophouse, people stacked on pallets or something like that, and when it became clear that it wasn¡¯t that, he had thought that it would be more like a bog standard hotel. The room had virtually nothing in it, and while the walls weren¡¯t terribly thin, Perry could tell that there wasn¡¯t nearly enough privacy for his tastes. The bed that he and Mette would be sharing was wide, and they¡¯d been provided with sheets and pillows, but there wasn¡¯t any other furniture, and the clerk had seemed confused by him asking about housekeeping. That was a blessing in disguise though, because it meant that in theory Perry wouldn¡¯t ever need to worry about someone coming in and disturbing him. The door to the room locked, and he was told that there was only one person with the key, a man who held elected authority over that particular housing commons. The communal bathroom was down the way, though it had come with a warning that the nightsoil man didn¡¯t come by until the morning, and there could be a bit of a stink toward the end of the day, something that the commons was in the process of fixing. Indoor plumbing was apparently not something these people had mastered. No one had asked them too many questions, and the housing commons was supposedly only half full, though it felt like they had plenty of neighbors. Perry was still trying to work out what housing actually looked like, and it did seem like there were more options than just free housing and scrip housing, but that was far, far down the list of things worth worrying about. ¡°First thing is getting me into mage school,¡± said Mette. ¡°I need a problem to start working on or I¡¯m going to go insane.¡± It had been three hours. ¡°First thing we need to do is focus on this killing across the sea,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll read through the papers, which should get me working knowledge of the things that we need to know pretty fast, and that should let me list out the known unknowns, like what in the hell a symboulion is.¡± ¡°You think that¡¯s your man?¡± asked Mette. She was smoothing out the dress she¡¯d picked up at the library, which she didn¡¯t seem entirely happy with. ¡°I do,¡± said Perry. ¡°Three months ago there were three kingdoms left in this world. As of today ¡ª or a few days ago considering how slowly news travels ¡ª there¡¯s now a single king left, in Thirlwell. I don¡¯t think that''s a coincidence.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re ¡­ going to go after him?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to know more. But on Esperide, I spent two years thinking that any day might be the day that the enemy showed up. I was jumping at shadows. If the enemy is here, I want to point myself in their direction with my shield up, and then I can get on with going to Hogwarts or stealing a magic sword or whatever.¡± ¡°You¡¯re talking about stealing?¡± asked Mette. ¡°You never stole from us.¡± ¡°Relax,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not actually talking about it, I¡¯m just ¡­ speculating.¡± ¡°Speculating about breaking the law?¡± asked Mette. She had one eyebrow raised, and her issues with her dress were forgotten. ¡°We¡¯re up against an anti-monarchist,¡± said Perry. ¡°At least, that¡¯s what I¡¯m thinking based on these news articles. Maybe he¡¯s more like Maya than Jeff, but my guess is that he¡¯s a fanatic. That¡¯s what regicidal tendencies mean to me. Given the timeline, my guess is that he¡¯s been here for three months and has been accumulating power, and that means that I need to be accumulating power. Except I haven¡¯t been traipsing across this world toppling kingdoms like he has, which means that yeah, I need to at least consider the possibility of stealing military-grade equipment.¡± Mette frowned. ¡°Okay.¡± ¡°Okay?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t like it, but if you think you¡¯re destined to fight this man, then okay,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t think it makes sense to jump right to that though.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°It doesn¡¯t. We need the background information first. We can split up if you think that would be better, but we need to know what¡¯s different about this world, what things we might be able to exploit, what the police and military forces look like, how their spy networks function, and what they might say once we¡¯re unmasked.¡± ¡°And also if there¡¯s a history of thresholders,¡± said Mette. ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°So we go to a library, or I guess a ¡®book library¡¯, or ¡­ maybe a museum.¡± ¡°Problem,¡± said Mette. She pointed to her stomach. ¡°I¡¯m hungry.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll go out into the city, exchange the ingots for scrip, and find a place to eat.¡± ¡°Do you think that eating requires scrip?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I mean I know your people pay for food, I saw it in the movies, but this society seems sensible.¡± ¡°I guess we¡¯ll find out,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll get Marchand out and start seeding the neighborhood with nanites, get us listeners so we can know how things are done. Shouldn¡¯t take more than fifteen minutes, since it seems like they have food carts and restaurants all over the place.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Mette. ¡°There¡¯s also food inside the shelfspace, not that I would trust it. At some point we¡¯re going to have to take a day to run out into the country and dump everything out, clear house, maybe spend some of the gold we have and fill it up, so long as gold is worth something here.¡± Perry rubbed his chin. He had three small ingots of gold from Brigitta, which he kept in the power armor, each about a hundred grams, acquired and kept for a rainy day. In Jeff¡¯s shelfspace there was an entire vault¡¯s worth, more than five hundred pounds, along with sacks of precious gems. ¡°Then let¡¯s get going,¡± said Mette. ¡°I really am hungry.¡± It didn¡¯t take long to get Marchand set up, and once he was, Perry began spreading the nanites out, some of them down the hall, others tossed out the window to be taken by the wind. The tiny spiders they could make of their combined bodies at Marchand¡¯s direction could scurry all over the place. Perry sat on the bed with the helmet on, looking at the map that Marchand had built up. It covered the building and the surrounding block in varying levels of detail, showing all the people, giving tags to them and records of their conversations. ¡°Can I see?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. He handed the helmet over, and she sat there for a while. ¡°You can talk to March, he¡¯ll show you what you want to see.¡± ¡°You ¡­ had something like this running on the Natrix?¡± asked Mette. ¡°This is the power of the nanites you kept from us?¡± She took the helmet off and gently set it on the bed. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°I didn¡¯t use it to spy on people, but yeah, I had total information access.¡± Mette let out a low whistle. ¡°We would have been pretty upset if we¡¯d known,¡± said Mette. ¡°There were private conversations you listened in on.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°There were private conversations that I could have listened in on, if I had wanted to violate your privacy and make enemies. Same for the total access to your computer systems.¡± He shrugged. He was hoping that this wasn¡¯t going to be a sore point with her. ¡°When Jeff came calling, it was good to have everything in place.¡± ¡°All those logs, they¡¯re still there?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want you to purge them,¡± said Mette. ¡°All the ones with me, all the pictures of me, all that.¡± ¡°No pictures,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sound is easy, vision is difficult. But ¡­ sure. I never listened in anyway. It was just a precaution. Marchand, purge it.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said the helmet from the bed. ¡°It will take some time unless you wish for me to purge everything from the entire time we were on Esperide, sir.¡± ¡°Take it slow,¡± said Perry. ¡°Keep everything that either of us were present for, or that you think is pertinent.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand¡¯s head. ¡°I think ¡­ we might need to talk about you and me,¡± said Mette. She folded her hands in her lap. ¡°I really don¡¯t think we do,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need to gather as much information as we can, devise cover stories, make a plan of defense, then maybe a plan of attack.¡± He gestured between them. ¡°We¡¯re friends, we¡¯ve been friends for years now, we¡¯re allies here, that¡¯s all that needs to be said.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Mette. ¡°But ¡­ you were potentially listening to every conversation on the Natrix, which means that you might have heard anything, every whisper about you that was said in private. So there are things that you might know that ¡ª¡± ¡°I don¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°I never had any cause to crack open those vaults. Marchand listened, but those were his secrets to keep. It was more something that was in place in case, I don¡¯t know, someone was plotting to kill me, which seemed like a very realistic possibility early on.¡± ¡°We were plotting against you,¡± said Mette. ¡°Leticia and I, we thought that it would be best for the Natrix if at least a few of the next generation had even a few of your advantages. Perry, I was selected ¡ª self-selected ¡ª to seduce you.¡± Perry stared at her. ¡°Did you think that I didn¡¯t know that?¡± he asked. ¡°No, I knew, I was with Brigitta though, and made it pretty clear that I didn¡¯t want to leave children behind.¡± ¡°We never talked about it,¡± said Mette. ¡°We¡¯re going to be living together, sharing a bed, I left everything behind to come to this place, and you left Brigitta, so ¡­¡± She balled her hands into fists. ¡°I just want to know where we stand.¡± ¡°All forgiven, if it needs to be forgiven,¡± said Perry. ¡°At least on my end.¡± Mette nodded slowly. ¡°I guess I¡¯ll say the same.¡± She had been looking down at where her dress covered her knees, but looked up at him. ¡°All forgiven, all in the past, all a world away.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Now, let¡¯s get something to eat.¡± ~~~~ They went to one of the free restaurants that was just a street over, close enough that they¡¯d been able to listen in and watch a few people order their food. It was all free, though it didn¡¯t have the feel of a soup kitchen to Perry. He had volunteered at a soup kitchen briefly but hadn¡¯t been able to handle how depressed it made him feel. It was too much decayed linoleum and torn clothes, thin soup and women with haunted looks on their faces. Maybe if he¡¯d been a better person he would have volunteered more often and tried to endure the bad feelings or change his shitty outlook on it, but he¡¯d contented himself to just donate some money every now and then like a medieval noble being sold indulgences. This was a far cry from that, and like the room they¡¯d been given, everything was clean and in good repair. If he didn¡¯t know better, he¡¯d have said that it was some hipster place, but that was mostly because of the heavy wooden tables and chairs, which read as retro to him. It was well-lit and lively, with a number of people at tables, some by themselves reading books and others just chatting. Perry had seen enough now that he was getting to know the collection of different races, though he still had no idea about the history of them. The elves seemed to dress light and the four-armed blue skinned people dressed like it was the middle of winter. Most of the people were young, in their twenties or thirties, but there was a decent enough collection of other ages, and two families were playing in one corner where the children had a small table. The food was handed out by a guy at a counter, all from a collection of big trays. He was a dwarf ¡ª a fantasy dwarf, not a little person ¡ª and the area behind the counter was elevated for him, though it seemed to be a temporary measure with large boxes. The kitchen was open behind him, and Perry looked at it closely, trying to make sense of what equipment was back there. The most glaring omission was a refrigerator, but there was a big stove, currently off. ¡°Dol¡¯gamsh, the greens, and a bit of cherry trench,¡± said Perry. It was the same order that someone else had made not twenty minutes ago, said in exactly the same way, which was probably overdoing it. The dwarf eyed Perry up and then loaded the plate with the three dishes, all of them scooped from thick metal trays. The dol¡¯gamsh was steaming hot and the greens were chilled, and Perry was glad for the food. Mette ordered the same, and Perry was interested to note that she was given a slightly smaller portion of everything by the dwarf, probably because there was a substantial size difference between the two of them. They sat at a table together and Perry opened up the small drawer on the side of it to pull out a long-handled spoon and fork for each of them. If he hadn¡¯t been watching from a distance, he wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d have been able to figure out where the silverware was. Dol¡¯gamsh translated literally to ¡®stirred meat¡¯, something that second sphere translation let him know, but in spite of the name, it appeared to mostly be root vegetables of one kind or another. There were little bits of what he thought was meat, but to his nose they didn¡¯t smell quite right. The greens were a bit like cooked down spinach, though they had a nice color on them, and there were bits of orange and yellow in there too, finely chopped, which investigation showed were carrots and the zest of some kind of citrus. The last part of the meal, cherry trench, was some kind of cobbler, with very identifiable chunks of apple and relatively few cherries. Off to one side of the ¡®restaurant¡¯ was a self-service area with various breads and side dishes, and at the table there were three bottles containing a thin fishy brown sauce, a thicker red sauce, and a lighter brown sauce with little tiny beads of something. Perry had to imagine that these were the equivalents of ketchup and mustard, and after his first bite, he sniffed at the bottles and poured some of the brown sauce onto his dol¡¯gamsh. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. It was all surprisingly good, given that it was both free and cafeteria food. The dol¡¯gamsh had a bit of char on all the little chunks of meat, and the mixed vegetables were clearly pretty fresh rather than reconstituted. If the dwarf was the one who¡¯d cooked everything, he was pretty good at his job. Perry had experience with a whole lot of cafeteria food and the products of institutionalized processes, and the rules that governed all that ¡ª cheapness, keeping for a long time, reconstitution ¡ª didn¡¯t seem to apply. He pretty quickly cleaned his plate, then waited for Mette, who was taking a long time. ¡°This is what we¡¯ll be eating while we¡¯re here?¡± she asked. ¡°Seems like it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess I don¡¯t know how often they change the menu, and after we¡¯ve gone to trade in some of what we have, we¡¯ll get some scrip to see how the other restaurants are.¡± Here their cover as immigrants or tourists would serve them well, he thought, because they could talk about things without it being obvious that they were a very different sort of immigrant. ¡°What is this, do you think?¡± asked Mette, holding up a chunk of vegetable from the dol¡¯gamsh. ¡°Root vegetable,¡± said Perry with a shrug. ¡°I couldn¡¯t identify it. It¡¯s nothing that I had before, but a close cousin to, ah,¡± he weighed how much to say, ¡°a carrot, potato, something like that.¡± Mette ate the piece of vegetable and had a thoughtful look on her face. ¡°Different in a good way,¡± she said. Perry nodded. His eyes were on the others around the place. The more he looked, the more it seemed like it wasn¡¯t a restaurant, it was instead a social place where people happened to eat food. Maybe it was past the busy hours, but there were a lot of people sitting around and talking, no longer engaged in eating. Perry got up from the table and grabbed a cup from the self-serve area. There were two kegs and a number of earthenware cups. He got one for himself and one for Mette, taking from each of them. One smelled floral and the other smelled herby, and he¡¯d have called both of them tea if not for the fact that he didn¡¯t really know how they¡¯d been made. ¡°So we¡¯re off to the museum after this?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Or a library?¡± Perry nodded, still looking around. ¡°Hopefully they archive their newspapers somewhere. I think we go from three directions, from the present into the past by way of newspapers, from the past into the present by way of history books and possibly a museum, and then from the side by way of dictionaries or some other set of definitions. And then we talk to someone.¡± He kept his voice low, hoping that no one was listening in on them, though it didn¡¯t seem like they were. ¡°How much danger do you think we¡¯re in?¡± asked Mette. ¡°They seem ¡­ friendly.¡± ¡°They do,¡± said Perry. He frowned. He had heard of worlds like this, where everything was relatively copacetic and rosy. Sometimes people seemed to have society figured out. Cosme had said that he¡¯d been to a place like that, some kind of space-faring civilization that took food and housing to be basic human rights. All that was well and good, but there was another thresholder out there, and if the kingkiller wasn¡¯t a thresholder, then a thresholder was still bound to appear. ¡°We¡¯re not going to test how far that friendliness goes.¡± Mette snorted. ¡°Seems like eventually we will.¡± Perry considered that, then gave a short nod. It would have been safer to talk only in the relative safety of their room, but that was probably a level of paranoia that was just a bit too far. It wasn¡¯t like their room wouldn¡¯t be easy to bug with the right technology, though he¡¯d have been relatively surprised if they had a thriving surveillance state, especially given the slip of paper that was supposed to serve as his library card. Perry was worried that when they left they would be asked to pay ¡ª that there was some hidden system in place that they didn¡¯t know about, or that the others were all regulars or something. There was no trick or catch though, they just placed their used dishes in a little alcove where they were taken away for cleaning. Perry was curious about that too, given the lack of plumbing, but he couldn¡¯t see any obvious trick they were doing, and didn¡¯t really have any idea how people had kept dishes clean in medieval times, not that this city was anywhere close to that. The museum was closer than the book library, and was housed in a far more impressive building, so they went there first. The museum practically loomed, and must have once been something else, unless these people really went all in on their museums, which he supposed was possible. There was no one at the front to take a ticket or money, though there was a donation box, which was filled with slips of what had to be scrip. It was the first time they had actually seen any, and Perry wished that they had some to offer. Perry had been to a fairly large number of museums in his life, mostly because they¡¯d often travel when his mom was going somewhere to play cello. His dad had always made a point of making a weekend of it, and making a weekend of it meant going to whatever local museum there was to see. Perry was pretty sure that the museum had once been a church or something like it. The long center hallway felt like it had once contained pews, and while the iconography was unclear to him, it felt like it didn¡¯t have much to do with being a museum. Front and center was a work of obvious propaganda, so obvious that for a moment Perry was dumbstruck by it. It was a telling of revolution by those who had revolted, a canonization of events of the recent past, and a union of different races. To their credit, this was the only time that Perry had seen their faces, but the statues still seemed to him to be a little much. It was the pose more than anything else, the way the elf had stoic benevolence on his face. Even the name, Fenilor the Gilded, felt like it was putting too much grease on the lens. It was good information though, the sort of thing that would pretty much never be printed in a paper because it was very far from being news: the revolution had happened sixty-seven years prior, one kingdom over, and from there, spread to the whole world. It had pretty clearly been violent in most cases, but the plaque downplayed that. ¡°Hard to imagine what it was like before this,¡± he said. ¡°Sixty-seven years seems short to me.¡± ¡°Does it?¡± asked Mette. ¡°That¡¯s three generations, maybe four if you¡¯re pushing it. The Natrix ¡ª can I talk about that?¡± Perry looked around. No one was paying them the slightest bit of attention. If they had landed in a small town of a few hundred, he¡¯d have wanted them both to clam up tight, but in a city this large and diverse, it really did seem like they were the same as everyone else, at least until he turned into a giant wolf or flew into the air with his sword. He looked well-kept thanks to being second sphere, but under normal conditions he was pretty sure that people would just take him to be a well-groomed man with a fastidious attention to his personal appearance. ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry with a shrug. ¡°Sixty-seven years ago? The Natrix would have had, ah, something like a population of thousand, maybe less.¡± She shrugged. ¡°I guess we¡¯ll have to see what it used to look like, but with a population of a million you could build a city like this from scratch in half that time.¡± Perry was deeply skeptical of that. Maybe her civilization could have, but she didn¡¯t seem to understand just how bad things had gotten on Perry¡¯s Earth. Building a city from scratch was something that could basically only be done in China, and even then would probably fail unless they were willing to put massive amounts of money into relocating people. The Natrix was never in one place for longer than a year, and the entire colony was united in singular purpose. On the Natrix, there were projects that could be directed, but a city got, at most, large bridges or new districts done. They didn¡¯t just transform. Besides that, the cathedral-turned-museum they were in, along with the castle that definitely no longer contained a king, were both proof that this city was built on old bones. Mette was, of course, drawn to the magic, and not in the way that Perry was. She looked at the lanterns and masks with child-like wonder, even though they were only replicas. They¡¯d seen no obvious signs of magic in their time in this world ¡ª called Markat, apparently, if the diagrams for children were to be believed, a spherical planet that still believed in a geocentric model. There were apparently three different types of magic though, and one of them had almost drowned the world. Three hundred years prior, the magical lanterns had started getting bigger, burning better fuels, and flooding the great cities of the world with what they called ¡®effluent¡¯ and which Perry read as ¡®pollution¡¯. The power of the lanterns was great, and allowed the mining and creation of rarer and more powerful fuels for the lanterns, and this was the bedrock of much supposed prosperity that was put toward enriching the lives of the few and making war using fantastical new devices and the blood of the masses. So far as Perry could tell, it was a world war with all the major nations involved and scrambling for power, most of them ethnostates, and everything had broken down in the wake of it all until the people who had statues made of them had forged a new path forward. The lanterns weren¡¯t in use anymore, at least in the vast majority of countries. They had been replaced by somewhat inferior devices that followed different principles, and there was a whole display that had far too much information to take in. The upshot seemed to be that the oblate golden domes that Perry had seen from above were power centers and factories, responsible for making quite a lot of the textiles, furniture, and building materials that they had seen. Each of them was controlled by its own symboulion, which in turn interfaced with the local community, but of course ¡®symboulion¡¯ wasn¡¯t defined. ¡°This is it,¡± said Mette. She was looking over the wing, which had quite a few artifacts and displays, including a wide range of masks. ¡°Possibly,¡± said Perry. The masks were separate from the lanterns, and required no fuel. They were instead attuned to and had a pretty wide range of effects. They hadn¡¯t seen much in the way of masks yet though, but apparently the masks were bespoke by nature, and had largely fallen out of favor except as continuations of tradition. Part of the reason the museum had so many examples of masks was that when the mask wearers died, there was nothing to do with the mask but display it. A mask let the wearer ¡®see or be seen¡¯, and what intrigued Perry most was that they put a part of themselves into the mask¡¯s construction. Perry had more ¡®himself¡¯ to put into a mask than most of these people would have, or at least he hoped so, if the different systems of magic overlapped or interacted with each other. If he could funnel the second sphere into one of these masks and spend the weeks necessary to attune to it, he could have another multiplier on his power. Berthor Half-Shaft had a mask that allowed him to perceive the world as moving slower, which made him move faster. Perry read that twice, and couldn¡¯t tell whether it made sense or not. It seemed as though the actual power he¡¯d been granted was mild superspeed, which very much appealed to Perry, but it was framed as being a question of perception rather than velocity, which seemed intentionally confusing. Some of the masks would cloak a person, making them blurry or even in rare cases invisible, but some seemed to just be power ¡ª a mask that made it appear to you that the world would crumble at your touch, which meant that it would crumble at your touch. Perry wanted it badly the more he read about it. It seemed more promising than a lantern that would burn things, at least to him, though he wasn¡¯t sure whether it would work over or under the helmet he normally wore. The museum had some example tools used to carve the masks, but neither the tools nor the substrate the masks were carved from seem like anything special, which meant that there had to be some technique that he¡¯d need to learn in order to make it work. They spent more than an hour in the wing of the museum dedicated to magic in all its glory, though there was also a fair amount of engineering and manufacturing mixed in, including a display on bicycles, which were apparently only a few decades old and only possible given certain advancements in precision metalworking. It was when they got to a wing devoted to the waging of war that Perry really perked up. The world of Markat was fairly old, and had seven different sentient species to it, all with their own histories of warfare. War was, supposedly, a thing of the past, though not exactly the distant past. The wars leading up to the revolution had been fought with highly disciplined military forces, but the wars that were a part of the revolution were something else entirely, messy guerilla warfare that no one seemed to like to talk about very much. Perry had to read between the lines, but that section of the wing had a ¡®never forget¡¯ kind of feel to it. ¡°We have to hope it won¡¯t be like that in Berus,¡± said a white-haired old man standing next to a display that showed a mask once fitted to a ¡®war butcher¡¯. ¡°You young people don¡¯t remember. It¡¯s easy for you, seeing the world as it is now, to think that it wasn¡¯t won with blood and tears.¡± ¡°We¡¯re actually from Berus,¡± said Mette. ¡°Before the king fell.¡± Perry stayed silent. He wouldn¡¯t have said anything but non-committal pleasantries, wouldn¡¯t have called attention to himself, would have disengaged. He hoped that Mette knew what she was doing. The old man raised an eyebrow at them. ¡°You saw it coming? Left?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not like there was much warning,¡± said Mette. ¡°You should go back,¡± said the old man. ¡°They¡¯ll need you. That¡¯s the culture.¡± There was reproach in his voice. He¡¯d just told them that a revolution had to be won with blood and tears, and was suggesting that they return to what might be an active war zone at that very moment. ¡°We¡¯re still figuring things out,¡± said Perry. ¡°We only got in this morning and read the news then.¡± ¡°They¡¯ll need you,¡± said the man with a self-satisfied nod. ¡°The revolution has swept through the world, there are symboulions everywhere, but they¡¯re not all doing as well as they could be. They were given the map, but the map isn¡¯t the culture. The culture is the culture.¡± ¡°We¡¯re from Berus,¡± said Perry. ¡°You think we should know the culture? Until this morning, we had a king.¡± ¡°You¡¯re here,¡± said the old man. ¡°You¡¯ve seen how we do things. Take a week to learn, then go, be with your people, tell them how it¡¯s done, what the culture is. It¡¯s what¡¯s needed. There are blimps going over with teachers and planners. The symboulions will be established, and the culture will grow, but it needs to be the right culture.¡± ¡°Where can we learn more?¡± asked Mette. ¡°The culture is the culture,¡± the man repeated. ¡°You learn from being here. People will tell you what the culture is, but it¡¯s a mistake to think that it can be taught or learned.¡± He swept up a hand toward the displays of war. There were suits of fine armor and half-burnt lanterns, along with a giant painting of what must have been a horrific battle. ¡°This is the thing we wish to avoid, what must be avoided in Berus. It should be clean, if it can be.¡± ¡°And if it can¡¯t?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Then it must be bought in blood,¡± said the old man. He moved on, and Perry let him have the last word. ¡°Good to note, I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not just the ¡®bought in blood¡¯ part, but that people think we¡¯re cowards for not helping out.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think he meant we would be cowards,¡± said Mette. She was watching the man as he¡¯d moved on to a rack of spears. ¡°I think it was deeper than that.¡± ¡°In what way?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Mette. ¡°The culture. They place an emphasis on it. I¡¯ve overheard it. There¡¯s a particular phrase they use, ¡®that¡¯s the culture¡¯, as sort of a way of commenting on things. Or ¡®that¡¯s not the culture¡¯, used to shame, maybe.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll have our friend try to suss it out.¡± Mette nodded. ¡°I don¡¯t know what would happen to you if you weren¡¯t a part of the culture, if you did something that was, say ¡­ uncultural.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll return our library books on time,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll keep the noise down in our apartment and return our plates to be washed.¡± They came to a stop at one of the largest displays, a suit of plate armor that had been painted in green. It was nine feet tall, built for a giant, with layers of metal overlapping each other and not a single gap to be found. It rivaled the construction of Perry¡¯s own power armor, though of course there were no small studs where cameras were, and the internals were definitely much more crude. The plaque had a hand sign, which is what drew Perry¡¯s eye first. It was a C-shape, placed against the chest. Supposedly if enough people in the city did that, it would summon one of these armored behemoths as an emergency defense measure for the city. They weren¡¯t police, they were military, and if something really bad happened, these were the big guns that would come down for enforcement. The sight of the thing sent a chill down Perry¡¯s spine, but it wasn¡¯t entirely unpleasant. This was what they had, some kind of super soldier that would appear from nowhere. It was large, but probably not as large as Perry was in his mechawolf form. It had no obvious weapons, but that didn¡¯t mean much. The plaque said nothing about how this thing got from place to place, nor about who was piloting it or what it did, and that was interesting, because everything else was an open book. There were still, it appeared, state secrets. According to the plaque, this was an older model, dating back twenty years prior, put in the museum because of ¡®internal problems¡¯. To Perry, that meant that whatever was out there might be even better. Mette might not have been right that sixty years was long enough to build an entirely new city from scratch, but twenty years was more than long enough for huge investments in magitech to have some serious payoffs. He hadn¡¯t said it out loud, but he¡¯d been having the feeling that maybe this society they¡¯d landed in was a little bit soft. Maybe having two or three ¡®libraries¡¯ every block had made him feel that way. Free food, free housing, free healthcare, it had made him feel like he was a hardened warrior walking among helpful little lambs. He held no ill will toward them, hadn¡¯t put much thought toward taking advantage, and hell, he might have worked a job if that was asked of him, as he¡¯d regularly done on the Natrix. These were the teeth, the weapon by which at least part of the war had been fought. The city would be sending people over to help with ¡®the culture¡¯ in what was now the former kingdom of Berus, shipping them via boat and blimp, but Perry would be very surprised if something like this wasn¡¯t coming too. He would focus on the masks, send Mette to learn about the lanterns, and everything else, but if this world had a pathway to true power, the kind that the other thresholder probably already had, he was staring at it. Chapter 97 - Brickwork For Perry¡¯s money, the dwarves were the strangest of the seven intelligent species that inhabited the world of Markat. They had an extreme sexual dimorphism, with the men being short and stout but more or less human-looking, and the women being large and porcine, eight hundred pound sows that were apparently not capable of thought or feeling. It was, in Perry¡¯s opinion, absolutely wild, and he couldn¡¯t look at the dwarves the same way after learning about it. He¡¯d been thinking that all these different fantasy varieties were just like Tolkien had drawn them up, pretty close to human but with some differences that you could call cultural if you really wanted to, but it went more than skin deep. That made it all the more surprising that they were able to integrate and get along so well, not even with too many distinct ethnic enclaves. The elves could live for a few hundred years, but went through a chrysalis process every fifty years or so, coming out looking like a younger version of themselves. Every city with any sort of elven population had a safe and sturdy place that would house the chrysalises, with the elves going into their cocoons, turning into goop, and reconstituting just like when a caterpillar turned into a butterfly. ¡°I mean, they¡¯re called elves and dwarves, that has to mean something,¡± said Mette after they were back to their room. They¡¯d swung by the library and gotten a fairly thick stack of books and another library card. ¡°Doesn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what it could mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°Seraphinus has elves too, though I only met one once, and I don¡¯t think he was typical of his species. There were dwarves, and I knew a few of them, but they kept to their own kind, mostly coming through the kingdom to sell their wares and get some trinkets that were hard to come by where they were from.¡± ¡°It¡¯s one thing to have languages match each other,¡± said Mette. ¡°It¡¯s another to have humans on many different worlds. But this is ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°It suggests something, sure,¡± said Perry. It wasn¡¯t new information, exactly, just a piece of the puzzle that he hadn¡¯t had much cause to inspect closely. ¡°I don¡¯t know that it¡¯s important in the grand scheme of things. They have recognizable dwarves here, recognizable elves, so maybe that¡¯s ¡­ part of it?¡± ¡°Part of the fabric of worlds?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Maybe,¡± Perry said. She had her book open in front of her, but her attention was on him. ¡°But not every world speaks English, or even a language that¡¯s close to English. I think some amount of cross-pollination is one answer, but I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Thresholders moving between worlds,¡± said Mette. ¡°The word you had was ¡­ invasive species.¡± ¡°Or something else,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s one of the things we¡¯re on the lookout for. There are hints of that. And if we find a pathway, we could go back to Esperide, or back to Earth 2.¡± ¡°Those are the places you¡¯d want to go?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Not the Earth you came from?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°It depends on the specifics. We need to get to reading. It might be a moot point.¡± Mette was working through a book on the history of the lanterns, written twenty years prior, mostly to get some idea of where they were at and whether it would be easy or difficult for her to slip into a class. Any learning that she did would have to be rapidly accelerated, given that they almost certainly didn¡¯t have four years to sit around going to classes, but she had proven herself proficient in magic, and Perry hoped that would give her a leg up. Perry¡¯s book was The Fall of Kings, which he¡¯d selected because it had an addendum dated a year ago. He read the addendum first, hoping that it would give some hint as to what happened, and he was rewarded with a dry academic look at what was considered likely to be an assassination. Earlier revolutions had been bloody in some cases, but the way they preferred to do it was by having a groundswell of support and a peaceful transition of power. The assassination wasn¡¯t even remotely that. The support for ¡®the culture¡¯ was there, and a symboulion had been formed to take control from the monarchy, but the king had refused a peaceful transition of power. It had seemed as though loyalist forces were going to have a bloody clash against the symboulion¡¯s guard. Instead, the king had been found dead in a public place some miles from his castle, something which the royal guard found out from the morning paper. There were no hints as to how it was done, and the author of the book equivocated on whether or not this violent action had been necessary or desirable, whether it was a poor precedent to set ¡ª whether it was ¡®the culture¡¯ or not ¡®the culture.¡¯ There were theories of a rogue actor, and other theories that it was a secret revolt from within the palace, but it probably would have left a worse taste in everyone¡¯s mouth if the other option hadn¡¯t been conflict and war. Other revolutions had been won with blood, and in the end, this wasn¡¯t considered to be much different. Perry flipped back through the book to the table of contents, then ahead to the foreword, then to the first chapter and started reading. The first chapter wasn¡¯t actually about the fall of kings, it was deep history, the conditions that had led to the ¡®supremacy of kings¡¯ throughout the known world. There were elf kings, dwarf kings, human kings, orc kings, and it seemed as though the entire idea of a ruling monarch was one that had spread throughout the entire world, sometimes destroying or displacing other concepts that had been there before. They weren¡¯t always strictly hereditary, but most were. It was the author¡¯s conclusion that there were no good kings, including even those who had the best interests of their people at heart, and Perry felt as though that was probably such settled doctrine that he wouldn¡¯t get disagreement from anyone on the street. Much of what followed in the pages was familiar to Perry, not just from what he¡¯d seen in the museum, but from a study of history and what he knew of his own world. Society was split into upper and lower classes, and the upper classes ground down the lower classes in various ways ¡ª poor working conditions, high taxes, war, and eventually, starvation. The age of ¡®high magic¡¯ had exacerbated everything, particularly with the effluent soaking into the major cities of the world. There were also oddities that had no analogs on Earth, like the king-of-all-dwarves having a monopoly on pigwives, or the elven nobility spending decadent years in their chrysalises while the lower classes were forced to reform quickly. All that might not even have been enough if the nations of the world had followed the bread and circuses model, but they hadn¡¯t. People starved. There was another book sitting in the pile they had gathered, this one called Cultural Metamorphosis, and it was mentioned by name in The Fall of Kings. Perry thought it was probably going to be important for him to read it, but also thought that since it was so old, it might not be the best way of getting any idea what ¡®the culture¡¯ actually was. It had been written by the elf whose statue Perry had looked unfavorably at, and was also a playbook for revolution, but most of it seemed to be meditations on how culture shapes society and its function. ¡°Is this normally how you do it?¡± asked Mette after an hour of reading. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Normally I would find someone who would tell me everything relevant, someone I could ask questions of. But I don¡¯t want to be scooped up by the powers that be, which seems like what should happen. In Teaguewater I tried to stay undercover and was scooped up, which worked out in the end, but could easily have gone very wrong for me. These people are heavily armed, as much as you might not think it from walking down these streets.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Mette. Her finger had stopped at her place in the book. Either she was a fast reader or she was skimming. ¡°I am learning.¡± ¡°I might switch over to talking with Marchand,¡± said Perry. ¡°He¡¯s combing through the books faster than we can, synthesizing them as best as possible. Right?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. The armor was out of the shelf, laying on the ground next to their bed. ¡°I believe the most difficult aspect of this work will be untangling superstition from hard science. There are many claims which appear spurious, particularly those with regards to historical legends. Additionally, it will be difficult to understand the bias that the authors show, given how little of the ground truth is available to us. As you may know, I wasn¡¯t constructed with this sort of analysis in mind. Certain things were taken to be a given.¡± ¡°Do you have enough to give some advice on passing as locals?¡± asked Perry. He had a habit of looking at the armor when he spoke, which he knew really wasn¡¯t necessary. ¡°Because I do want to go out, and it would be very helpful to do that while not worrying about a stray word getting us caught by one of the giant metal guards.¡± ¡°From what I have seen, heard, and read, it appears there are few things that are truly taboo,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, there is much discussion and importance placed on ¡®the culture¡¯, and social censure appears to be one of the primary mechanisms of enforcement. You might consider them to be light taboos. The guard are called only in exceptional circumstances. It would be far more likely that you would have a mediator or arbitrator called.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the difference?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The mediators are more common, and cannot decide disputes,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They¡¯re neutral third parties. Arbitrators give judgments which are binding. They¡¯re used more often in cases where there has been some injury or damage.¡± ¡°And if someone doesn¡¯t accept the binding judgment?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There are a variety of censures,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I don¡¯t know the full extent of it, but at the highest level, a form of involuntary therapy with confinement is used. In certain cases where rehabilitation is deemed impossible, segregated living is enforced.¡± Perry didn¡¯t like the sound of that, but it felt like there were plenty of chances for him to run and bail out before it would come to that. He had always figured that a lot of thresholders would end up in a mental clinic they weren¡¯t allowed to check out of. ¡°And do you have any leads on how we could get our hands on one of those giant suits of armor?¡± asked Perry. ¡°How they¡¯re controlled, piloted, that sort of thing?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°This society¡¯s relationship to technology appears complicated, if I¡¯m reading these conversations and books correctly. They are skeptical of technology and its impacts.¡± ¡°Their whole society was created from whole cloth in the wake of being poisoned,¡± said Mette. She gave a thoughtful look out the window. ¡°That makes sense to me. Though I have to wonder how many doors they¡¯re closing behind them ¡­¡± ¡°Would they be suspicious of you?¡± Perry asked March. ¡°I don¡¯t believe that suspicion is the right word,¡± said Marchand. ¡°For a one-off invention, I don¡¯t believe there would be any cause for alarm. However, before manufacture of a second, or widespread use, they would convene a special symboulion which would look closely at the technology and its anticipated costs and impacts.¡± ¡°If someone invents something they have to ¡­ sit on it?¡± asked Mette. She turned to look down at the armor, just like Perry did, like that was Marchand¡¯s body and he was just laying on the ground. ¡°That would appear to be the case, from what I have gleaned from conversations,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There was a woman downstairs whose application was denied for a third time. She seemed quite upset about the matter.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°So there¡¯s technology they have but don¡¯t use?¡± ¡°That does appear to be the case,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There is a conclave responsible for technological progress and the use of assistive aid in manufacturing and social relations. Filekeeping is woeful, and the bureaucracy is not robust, but if you¡¯re thinking what I think you are, you might find information there.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry with a nod. They were a little like the Amish then, who would allow rollerskating but not electric lighting. He could work with that, so long as they had left their schematics for electric lights around somewhere. ¡°Last question for now, what¡¯s our legal status here? Do you know?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Technically you are a stateless person. However, if you¡¯re posing as former citizens of the Berus Kingdom, there is an expectation that you would have some documentation of your travel. The borders of the world are porous, and efforts have been made to create a homogenous culture where there is no need for border protection, but the Kingdom of Berus is one of the few exceptions, at least for the time being.¡± ¡°No one has asked us for any papers,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ve had free food, clothing, housing, all that.¡± ¡°These are considered to be basic rights, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The thought among this culture is that management is something to be eschewed whenever and wherever possible. Logbooks are kept only for the purposes of social censure and a basic understanding of supply and demand. The idea that a man should starve because he didn¡¯t have the proper paperwork would be something that they would find abhorrent ¡ª it would not ¡®be the culture.¡¯¡± ¡°For what it¡¯s worth, that¡¯s how it was on the Natrix too,¡± said Mette. ¡°We never denied people food, even if some people took more than their fair share before the takeover. When I read about what was happening on Earth, it was stomach-churning.¡± ¡°It was,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess I got used to it, or to not thinking about it for my own sanity. I never had enough power to make any meaningful change.¡± ¡°But you do now,¡± said Mette. She folded her book shut and set it beside her. ¡°Knowing what things are like here, and what things are like under the kings ¡ª under the last remaining king in Thirlwell, I guess ¡ª do you still think it¡¯s the other thresholder?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Probably.¡± ¡°But they¡¯re making the world a better place, aren¡¯t they?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Maybe not through the right methods, but deposing tyrants has got to be considered a general good.¡± ¡°You did a coup of your own,¡± said Perry. ¡°So you would say that.¡± ¡°Would you not?¡± asked Mette. She cocked her head to the side. ¡°I would worry that the leaders aren¡¯t the leaders,¡± said Perry. ¡°I would worry that it¡¯s a matter of entrenched interests, or pressures that aren¡¯t going to go away with a change of leadership, and I would worry about the new leaders inevitably being power-hungry, and maybe more power-hungry than whomever they¡¯re replacing. So far as we¡¯ve seen, the systems and ideologies here are working, but we only have this singular example, and I¡¯m sure there are problems and seedy underbellies. I mean, even the best places have their tensions and conflicts.¡± He wasn¡¯t sure whether he believed that enough to accept it as an axiom, but it felt right, like human nature, even for people who weren¡¯t human. ¡°But it¡¯s not something to fight over, is it?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Your kingkiller theory, it¡¯s that the enemy thresholder is on a mission to kill the kings, and right now, there¡¯s only one king left. Are you going to try to stop him?¡± ¡°I¡¯m thinking that it would be good to go to Berus and see if we can use our superior abilities and knowledge to pick up a trail,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then I think it would be good to find this person and figure out what their deal is. Someone who came to this world and immediately started trying to solve geopolitical problems through murder seems, to me, like someone who might not stay content with a handful of dead kings.¡± ¡°So it wouldn¡¯t be the dead kings, that wouldn¡¯t be the driver of conflict,¡± said Mette. She was looking into his eyes. ¡°You might be in favor of the dead kings.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve been here less than a day, and I¡¯ve read less than half of a book,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know enough to stake my flag on any particular hill. I think generally speaking, violence can work on the side of justice. But if it¡¯s warranted here, or maybe just acceptable, is something that I can¡¯t answer without knowing a hell of a lot that I currently don¡¯t know. The primary reason that we would get on the next ship to Berus would be that we might be the only people capable of stopping the other thresholder.¡± ¡°You,¡± said Mette. ¡°Not me.¡± She looked defiant, but also somehow small. The conflict on Esperide must have looked very different from her eyes, as much as he¡¯d done to shield her people from it. ¡°You¡¯re a part of this,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t have to be, if you don¡¯t want to, but if you travel by my side as I go through the multiverse, then I was hoping that you would help out as much as you can.¡± ¡°This is all something I should have figured out before I left,¡± said Mette. She put a hand to her head. ¡°You have time now,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though I am going to be looking into when the ships leave for Berus.¡± ¡°We would be with people who would want to know our story,¡± said Mette. ¡°They would have questions we couldn¡¯t answer.¡± ¡°Couldn¡¯t answer yet,¡± said Perry. ¡°A week from now, we¡¯ll have heard conversations, read books, read back issues of newspapers, and talked to people. That would be enough.¡± ¡°To pursue someone you don¡¯t even disagree with?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°Look, the portals are predictive, they place us somewhere for a reason. Whoever the other thresholder is, I¡¯m set up for conflict with them. We have to take that as a given. Now, I¡¯m not going to strike first, but I am going to make my own investigations, make sure I know where I should be keeping my eye, and figure out what¡¯s going on. Who knows, it could be an ally, another team up situation.¡± ¡°Like with Maya?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Could it ¡­ be Maya?¡± ¡°It¡¯s remotely possible, I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°Killing monarchs seems like it would be her kind of schtick. I wouldn¡¯t think that it would work like that, but ¡®possible¡¯ is as high as I would rate it.¡± He rose from his seat and paced back and forth in the room, though it didn¡¯t feel quite large enough for a proper pacing. ¡°You¡¯re against moving.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Mette. ¡°I came here to learn, to see things, not to get on a ship with hundreds of other people and do all this ¡­ stuff.¡± She glanced at the power armor. ¡°Spy shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Mette, looking back at him. ¡°I want to eat weird foods and poke weird aliens. You don¡¯t want to do that?¡± Perry frowned at her. ¡°I¡¯ve fought five of these fuckers so far,¡± said Perry. ¡°Six, I guess, because Marjut and Jeff were a twofer. It¡¯s been a parade of psychopaths. Cosme was the only exception to that. It¡¯s been face-stealers and sadists. So I¡¯m going knives out, which in this case means spy shit. I don¡¯t know how compromised the government is, but we stay on the down-low, we don¡¯t announce ourselves. We¡¯re figuring this out as we go. I¡¯m open to your thoughts, but I¡¯ve been attacked enough, and attacked recently enough that I¡¯m going to know where my gun is pointed.¡± ¡°You might feel differently in another few days,¡± said Mette. ¡°Leticia always said that after a big thing happens, you should sit back and think for a bit, let it meld, let it settle.¡± ¡°Would that we had that luxury,¡± said Perry. ¡°Make your plans,¡± said Mette. ¡°But don¡¯t commit. Don¡¯t make it so we have to be on a ship a week from now. Because I¡¯m going to magic school, Perry, and I¡¯m going to blow everyone out of the water.¡± ~~~~ Perry walked through the city the next day with mixed feelings. He was alone, aside from Marchand in his ear. He was feeling confident about not getting caught, and had left the armor in the room. The primary argument for doing that was that it allowed Marchand to stay connected to the nanite network so he could direct them and record what they said. The main argument against was the real risk that Marchand would be stolen. The city was vibrant, and Perry was left wondering how it worked. The golden domes were factories of a sort, but they didn¡¯t seem any better at making things than a modern factory anywhere on Earth. They still needed lots of people to work them, and the society was pretty far from being post-scarcity. It was difficult to compare their world to the Earth he¡¯d come from, but he actually thought that in terms of production capacity they might be fairly significantly behind with more hours worked to get the same result. The answer that they gave to how it worked was ¡®the culture.¡¯ He wasn¡¯t sure that answered the question though. Culture was a notoriously difficult thing to change. A part of him was trying to find the catch, the thing that would turn him against it. There were bumps and wrinkles, obvious ones that showed up in the papers, but they weren¡¯t anything that he¡¯d balk at. The dwarven pigwives were contentious, with some (mostly not dwarves) arguing that they should be treated like people, and others (mostly dwarves) arguing that the pigwives were basically only at the level of cattle, and of course there should be some protection for cattle, but let¡¯s not go overboard here. To Perry, that argument wasn¡¯t something he blinked twice at. He could feel the itch to investigate more so that he could fight people in the comments section, which here would be done by writing a letter to the editor or having a debate in a community center. He ignored that urge. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Mette wasn¡¯t looking for the catch. She had come from a place where everyone worked, even the small children, where no one went hungry and the clothes were made in bulk for everyone, at least so long as they followed the plans. She hadn¡¯t known ethnic or racial tensions. To her, there was nothing miraculous in what this society had done, and so she was only interested in having fun and exploring, and possibly gaining access to awesome powers. Perry had thought that having a companion would be different. If he was being hard on himself, then he would have said that he hadn¡¯t considered that his companion might have her own thoughts and feelings. Really, it was that it was Mette, who he¡¯d known for two years and considered a fairly close friend. For as long as he had known her, she¡¯d been driven and focused, and even the flirtation felt like it was with purpose. Now she had slipped out from under the yoke of command, and she seemed to have lost her drive. Maybe she was right, and everything would shake out in a day or two. They would know more, have direct goals, and the battle-ready stance he was taking would fade away as he understood what he was up against ¡ª both from the world, and from his opponent. He was fitting in, at least. A few people looked at him, but there wasn¡¯t much in the way of attention, and certainly not of the ¡®what is this guy doing here¡¯ variety. In his opinion, his haircut was the one thing that didn¡¯t fit very well. It had been done with a buzzer aboard the Natrix and was too cleanly cut for this place, reinforced by the second sphere making it look very exact. No one had seemed to notice though. Aside from the elves, dwarves, humans, and orcs, there were three others, less of the standard fantasy mold. The blue-skinned kintee had four arms and were almost always bundled up, as the city was uncomfortably cold to them: as a result, they had a lower population. The pennic had heads like shrimp, beady black eyes and articulated mouth-parts, but they could speak English, and though they had hive mind clusters of around twelve, they spoke just like humans did. The last were the melekee, a small, fidgeting race that liked to scurry, for whom there were holds on many exterior walls to allow them access to the roofs. The shrimp people reminded Perry too much of the bugs he¡¯d been fighting, and the melekee¡¯s fast movements triggered some animal instinct toward wariness in him, but he was surprised how quickly he¡¯d adjusted to all that. In another day or two, he might not even notice any of it. It had been two years since he¡¯d changed worlds, but he was still in his heart a thresholder, still with the skill of slipping between cultures and societies, picking up what they were putting down. It was a valuable skill to have, in his opinion. He was mapping the city as he walked, paying attention to where everything was and getting some intuitive sense of the relation of one thing to another. Most of the city was made up of shorter buildings, four stories tall at the most with commercial spaces (or libraries) on the first floor and homes up above, but there were also a number of grand buildings, most of which dated back to an earlier time. Perry passed by one of the golden domes, their version of factories, which were larger than they¡¯d seemed from the air. They thrummed with energy even from outside, but there was only one obvious entrance, and that had people standing in front of it that might have been guards, the first that Perry had seen. The paper map he had gotten from one of the libraries had places of interest to a wanderer, and the one that had caught his eye was the Magical Advancement Institute. It had its own campus in the city, and his books said that it far predated the revolution ¡ª predated even what was now called the Effluence Revolution, when harnessing magic had led to enormous might and pollution in equal measure. The campus buildings were mostly red brick, which was unusual in a city where almost everything was made of thick stone. The campus had once been walled off from the surrounding city, with no windows at the ground level where it met the outside, and a number of thick doors positioned to span the streets that fed into it. Those were gone now, leaving the whole thing open to the public, and Perry wandered in, looking around. The institute hadn¡¯t been the birthplace of the Effluence Revolution, but it had been a major part of it, and whatever magitech progress had been done after that, over the last sixty years, this had been one of the places that it had been done. Perry stood there for a moment in what felt like a college quad. There were lots of the distinctive brick buildings, and most of the foot traffic was young people, along with the steady stream of bikes that seemed to be everywhere, though here the footpaths weren¡¯t as nicely paved. Perry wandered around for a bit before finding himself in front of a large building whose name was carved in stone above the large entrance, ¡®College of Nous.¡¯ Mette was talking about being a student, which he thought was probably because he¡¯d made being a student sound good. Perry was mostly thinking about finding some specialist libraries and getting the nanites to scan in everything that they could so that Perry could do searchable cross-referenced study with Marchand¡¯s assistance. It wasn¡¯t clear to him what this particular college did, but the sooner he had the nanites working, the better off he¡¯d be. He dropped a tiny black ball from inside his pocket. ¡°Can I help you?¡± asked a woman who¡¯d come to stand beside him. He hadn¡¯t looked at her, but he¡¯d sensed her presence. She was an elf, pointed ears sticking out from messy dark hair, glasses with rectangular lenses perched on a small, upturned nose. She was wearing a short blue skirt and a thick collection of necklaces rather than a top. He wondered how it was affixed to her to prevent a wardrobe malfunction, but when she moved, he saw that they were just loose, and he could occasionally see a bit of nipple. ¡°Sorry if I¡¯m not supposed to be here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can be on my way.¡± ¡°You¡¯re new here?¡± asked the elf. She looked him up and down, taking in the sculpted body and the hairiness. She seemed to approve. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m from overseas, and have only been in the city for a day or so.¡± ¡°Well, hopefully I¡¯m the first person to tell you this, but that¡¯s not the culture,¡± the elf said with a smile. ¡°Tell people that they don¡¯t belong somewhere, trying to get them to leave a commons, we don¡¯t do it like that here.¡± ¡°Noted,¡± said Perry. He looked around. ¡°This is another commons?¡± She nodded. ¡°A commons held by the Institute, open to all. But obviously the environment is for study, and there are some restrictions on using the commons, so ¡­ don¡¯t throw a party here without asking, I guess.¡± ¡°I¡¯m Perry,¡± he said, extending a hand. She shook it. ¡°Nima. You¡¯re from Berus?¡± ¡°I am,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll probably be returning home, given the news, which means that my time here will get cut short.¡± He didn¡¯t like to lie, but he didn¡¯t think he could play it vague. ¡°Though ¡­ when you asked if you could help me, you really thought that I might need help and you were willing to give it?¡± ¡°That¡¯s the culture,¡± said Nima with a smile. ¡°There are probably limits on what I could help with, but I could steer you in the right direction for most things that I can¡¯t help with. Like where to get the best food, for example.¡± ¡°Any chance that you could give me a little tour of the institute?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I was told that anyone can join up, if they want to.¡± ¡°Sure, let me show you around, I¡¯m waiting on an experiment to finish anyway,¡± said Nima. She guided him around, and he followed behind her. He was trying not to stare. While elves were definitely more scantily dressed than the other species and the weather would dictate, she was taking it to another level. Given that she was just wearing necklaces, her entire back was exposed, showing smooth, pale skin. ¡°The brick comes from a lantern process,¡± said Nima. ¡°It¡¯s actually something that was invented here, hundreds of years ago, long before the effluence. It was a labor-intensive way to get the materials to build, but they made the apprentices do it. They still make the apprentices do it, for what it¡¯s worth.¡± ¡°I would need to apprentice?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Unless you have experience and can interview your way out of that,¡± said Nima. She passed by a large tree that had been molded into one of the brick walls, the angle of every branch a perfect ninety degrees. ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°But assuming that I can¡¯t?¡± ¡°Apprenticeship is the way then,¡± said Nima. She reached out and ran her fingers along the red bricks of a building they passed. ¡°There are more candidates than spots for them. Apprenticeship is a bit of friction, a way of making sure that the people who want to be in the business of magic really want to be here.¡± Perry was pretty sure that unpaid labor was a constant throughout the multiverse. The Great Arc had a similar scheme. At least here, the laborers had their homes and food fully paid for with no penalty for deciding to do something else with their life, and it was probably the case that they were actually learning something in the process. ¡®Use a lantern to make some bricks¡¯ seemed like it was worthwhile, anyway, at least for a week or two. ¡°Do people make money with this stuff?¡± asked Perry. Nima laughed. ¡°That¡¯s not the culture. You put scrip-making right out of your head if you want to fit in here. Nevermind that scrip is what you need if you have any interest at all in getting significant projects done. ¡®Chasing scrip¡¯, that¡¯s an insult.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think I really understand scrip,¡± said Perry. ¡°I haven¡¯t had to use any yet. I don¡¯t have any, though I have things I can trade for it, I think.¡± ¡°Well, I¡¯m fine being a guide, but I don¡¯t want to throw you into the cultural morass, and I don¡¯t think I¡¯m equipped to guide you through,¡± said Nima. ¡°Nor do I think it would be all that good for me to tell you all my private thoughts, not when we¡¯ve just met.¡± ¡°But you have private thoughts,¡± said Perry. She turned back and flashed him a grin before heading onward. ¡°These aren¡¯t things that you just don¡¯t think about.¡± ¡°Thinking about the culture is part of the culture,¡± said Nima. ¡°But perhaps saying certain things that go contrary to the ideas that others hold isn¡¯t always a part of the culture. Not that I¡¯m an anticulturalist, nothing like that.¡± ¡°You never said what you do,¡± said Perry. ¡°You have experiments going. You¡¯re a researcher?¡± ¡°I do my best,¡± said Nima. ¡°I have a novel lantern structure that got rejected by a technological committee two days ago. Right now I¡¯m trying to get everything ready for the resubmission, but the tech committee moves slowly by design, at least for things like this.¡± ¡°What does the lantern do?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s complicated,¡± said Nima. ¡°How much of the basics do you understand?¡± ¡°Absolutely none,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hrm,¡± replied Nima. ¡°Well then ¡­ lanterns use fuel, and depending on their configuration, emit an effect. The most basic fuel is oil, and the most basic effect is light, but there are, ah, other effects that ¡ª you know nothing?¡± ¡°Nothing,¡± Perry confirmed, hoping that it wouldn¡¯t immediately mark him as a moron or ignoramus. He was hoping that wasn¡¯t the culture. It would still probably be better to be either of those than to be a combatant from another world. ¡°The lantern I made is basically an identifier,¡± said Nima. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s more complicated than that, you need a mask too, but just a basic one, the minimal mask.¡± ¡°Minimal mask,¡± said Perry. ¡°That doesn¡¯t mean anything to me.¡± ¡°The masks ¡ª oh gods this is so hard ¡ª the magic of the masks is deep, but the basic mask, which you can do with ten minutes if someone sets everything up for you, is a mask that layers your own perception over the world.¡± Nima shook her head and stopped next to a tall tree that rose up above the tallest of the brickwork buildings. ¡°Sorry, it¡¯s really not what they start with, they start with things that are conceptually easier, like movement or blurring. What this project does is to shine a lantern light through the basic mask and get a coded impression of a person¡¯s perceptions. It¡¯s a unique identifier.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°So ¡­ I would have a mask that I would keep on me at all times, and if someone wanted to confirm who I was, they would place that mask beneath a lantern and match it up against a pattern?¡± ¡°Yes!¡± said Nima. Her eyes were bright. ¡°Though you¡¯re probably thinking that it¡¯s a mask like you¡¯d put on your face, which it¡¯s not. The minimal mask is more like ¡ª actually, I have one here.¡± She reached into a small pocket in the short skirt and pulled out a thin piece of polished wood with a hole the size of a quarter in it. She held it up to her eye and looked at Perry. ¡°Mask, see?¡± ¡°Kind of a mask,¡± said Perry. ¡°You said that people can make these on their own? I¡¯d never heard of that before.¡± ¡°No reason you should have,¡± said Nima. ¡°The minimal mask isn¡¯t really good for anything. In fact, this discovery was made because I was trying to figure out a use for it. So the dream is that there will be these tiny lanterns with cheap oils and low effluence that are in all the libraries, government buildings, or anywhere that there needs to be some control of the comings and goings of people, of identity. I¡¯m hoping to have it set up so that when you slot a minimask into a standardized lantern and then it¡¯ll just go straight into a book, readable by a person, to compare against whatever is on file.¡± ¡°That¡¯s ¡­ certainly a dream,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can say it¡¯s boring,¡± said Nima with a laugh. ¡°It is boring, but it¡¯s the kind of boring that I think we need more of, except a lot of people don¡¯t think that it¡¯s the culture.¡± ¡°Tracking people,¡± said Perry. ¡°Well, we already track people,¡± said Nima. ¡°But ¡ª have you read Cultural Metamorphosis?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s on my reading list.¡± ¡°Hardly anyone actually reads it,¡± said Nima. ¡°But there¡¯s this whole large section that says, essentially, that there are inherent contradictions and problems, and that this is okay and expected. What¡¯s important is the culture.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°And you think that this is a contradiction, tracking people?¡± ¡°There are better examples,¡± said Nima. ¡°But yes, tracking people and what they do, making sure that there aren¡¯t problems somewhere in the system, that¡¯s something that¡¯s necessary. Everyone wants to be local and communal, to know their neighbors and all that, and if you check things out from a library you check them back in again at some point without needing penalties or to be harangued about it, and you don¡¯t take more than you need, and you put in vital work for the community without being motivated by scrip. Culture is important because it¡¯s what does the heavy lifting. But ¡­¡± ¡°There are issues with it,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are people who will take advantage.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima, accompanied by a violent shake of her head. ¡°Or, yes, but no one will take you seriously if that¡¯s your argument, because the standard counterargument to that is ¡®so what.¡¯ With the solar factories, we don¡¯t need everyone to work, we just need everyone to be a good citizen. We don¡¯t have to care all that much if someone checks out twenty outfits from the libraries, or eats a lot at every meal. We want people to have what they want, and that trumps the risk that they won¡¯t pull their weight. Of course, pulling more than your weight is the culture, but you have to imagine all the time and effort that goes into tracking who has what and whether they¡¯ve done enough. It would be a waste, and that kind of coercion isn¡¯t the culture.¡± ¡°Which is why they don¡¯t like your identifiers?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s hard to say,¡± said Nima. ¡°It rubs them the wrong way.¡± She shrugged. ¡°I think even the idea of more bureaucracy is something that people shrink back from. I¡¯m running the tests now, which will let me know if this is something that I should push for, but I think the whole project might be dead in the water. Can I show you my lab? Or have you reached the peak of your boredom?¡± ¡°Show me,¡± said Perry with a nod. They walked further through the campus. Perry¡¯s eyes kept going to her bare back, in spite of himself. He wondered what the prevailing opinions on interspecies romance were, but this was mostly an idle thought. She had dimples on her back just above the line of her skirt, in spite of being a slender woman. Her laboratory was surprisingly large, with tall ceilings and windows that were up high on the walls. He was fairly sure that this was one of the buildings that abutted a road that went past outside the campus. Many of the tools were familiar to him, and there was a whole blacksmithing setup with a carpentry station. The lathe drew his interest, because it was apparently powered by a lantern. ¡°It¡¯s just you here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Most days,¡± said Nima. ¡°It¡¯s technically a communal space, but this is small scale experimental work, and no one is really pushing in that direction right now. Most of the focus is on improving the efficiency of the domes, and there¡¯s nothing you could do for them in a workshop like this.¡± Perry looked over to the bench she was standing by, which had a row of six small lanterns, all with apertures pointed down at papers. Colorful patterns were displayed on each of the papers, all the same. ¡°This is my imprint,¡± said Nima. ¡°The test here is mostly to see whether there¡¯s any variation in the imprint, which there isn¡¯t, even though there are different minimal masks. It¡¯s not very exciting, but it¡¯s one of the things that I got dinged for with the committee. It¡¯s not their primary objection, obviously, but every little bit helps if I resubmit.¡± ¡°Can I try?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Try what?¡± asked Nima. ¡°The minimal mask?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You said it was a simple five minute process.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima. ¡°I mean, you can try, but no, it¡¯ll take longer, the goal is to get it down to five minutes, to have the whole thing be as smooth and painless as possible. Here, I think this would be helpful, I haven¡¯t actually tried to instruct anyone, in the long term I¡¯m going to have to have this be repeatable from instructions alone ¡ª which is another thing they don¡¯t like, because it¡¯s not local and custom to the symboulion.¡± ¡°Show me how it¡¯s done,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve wanted a mask like this since I first saw one.¡± The process took about half an hour, and started with Nima grabbing one of the ¡®blanks.¡¯ It was really more of a monocle with an awkward handle than anything else, but he made the cuts where she told him to, a simple design around the eyehole, with his energy focused into it. ¡°What happens if my perception changes?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What do you mean?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I mean, this identifier is a pattern of colors that shows how I see things, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°So what happens if how I see things changes?¡± ¡°Difficult to say,¡± replied Nima. ¡°I¡¯m not sure what it would mean. There¡¯s not a lot of research that¡¯s been done in this area. Most of what I¡¯ve built here is mine alone. Before I started this two months ago, the idea of using the minimal mask for anything wasn¡¯t even considered, at least so far as I could find.¡± ¡°Just curious,¡± said Perry. He wasn¡¯t trying to put any of himself into the ¡®minimal¡¯ mask, but there was a moment ¡ª a specific cut in the wood with a curved blade ¡ª when he could feel it catch, tugging at the currents of power inside of him. When he¡¯d finished, Nima got a fresh sheet of chemically treated paper and slipped it under one of the downward-facing lanterns, pushed his ¡®mask¡¯ between the aperture and the paper, then fueled the lantern from a small canister. The paper almost immediately lit on fire. Nima panicked, but Perry pulled the paper from the table and set it into a metal bucket. ¡°What was that?¡± she asked, eyes on the bucket. ¡°I¡¯ve never seen anything like it.¡± ¡°Some kind of error?¡± asked Perry. He was pretty sure that he was the culprit, the energy within him translated into the mask somehow. He was going to have to slip away and hope that she didn¡¯t report this to anyone. ¡°Let me look at this,¡± said Nima, taking the mask from the machine. She looked it over, then grabbed another mask from a hook on the wall, which was thin, wooden, and molded perfectly onto her face. He could no longer see her mouth, but he could see the muscles tense on the side of her face. ¡°What is this?¡± She looked over at him, and he could see her go stiff. ¡°What does that mask do?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s a diagnostic mask,¡± said Nima. She was standing very still. ¡°Look, I don¡¯t want any trouble. I¡¯m just a researcher here, trying to make what changes I can, I¡¯m working within the culture, all that stuff I had said, if any of it was anticultural ¡ª¡± She swallowed to avoid choking on her words. Perry could smell the fear on her. ¡°I don¡¯t know who you think I am,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯m just here out of idle curiosity. I really was just wandering around. You were the one who came up to talk to me, remember? Set the mask down, and we can talk about it.¡± She set the mask on the table with trembling fingers. Her face was ashen. ¡°Now,¡± said Perry. ¡°Who do you think I am?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Nima. ¡°I thought ¡­ secret police?¡± She raised both eyebrows. ¡°Does this city have such a thing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They¡¯d be secret,¡± said Nima. She was still looking him over, and her eyes flickered to the door. ¡°That¡¯s the point.¡± ¡°There are the big metal ones, the ones that come down when people make a symbol on their chest,¡± said Perry. ¡°I saw one in a museum, but I haven¡¯t seen one in real life, not yet. If there are secret police, I would think they would want to be known, just so they could be a deterrent, but if they¡¯re real, you¡¯d tell me, right?¡± ¡°You really are from across the sea?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I¡¯m not from the city,¡± said Perry, which he hoped was enough to let her know that his lie about having come from overseas was just that. ¡°I just need you to tell me what you saw with the mask.¡± ¡°Power,¡± said Nima. ¡°Like ¡­ you¡¯re a lantern, burning something inside of you. It¡¯s possible in theory. There are lines of study that are forbidden, things we¡¯re not supposed to delve into even beyond just what the committees deem not good for the culture or the society.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°One of those contradictions, I¡¯d guess.¡± Nima swallowed. ¡°This is just a chance meeting? You¡¯re not some foreign agent from Berus? Or from Thirlwell?¡± ¡°Thirlwell, that¡¯s where the last remaining king is?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He¡¯s doing everything he can to hold onto power, I¡¯ve heard, but no, even if I were from there I can¡¯t imagine that this is something he¡¯d have any reason to try.¡± Nima nodded. ¡°And I know that I worked on some things that were proscribed, but you¡¯re not here about that?¡± Perry hesitated. ¡°You worked on forbidden things?¡± he asked. ¡°I¡¯m not supposed to talk about it,¡± said Nima. ¡°They were roads I didn¡¯t know I wasn¡¯t supposed to go down, not until I was told. I¡¯m really trying not to stir up trouble.¡± She took a deep breath. ¡°If you have secrets, I can stay silent about them. I¡¯m trying my best to fit in. Whether you¡¯re from the city symboulion, from Berus, Thirlwell, or wherever else, I just want to do the work. That¡¯s the culture, right?¡± Perry let out a breath. ¡°That mask, it lets you see the energy flowing out of me?¡± ¡°It does,¡± said Nima. ¡°Is that energy always flowing out of you?¡± ¡°Not always,¡± said Perry. ¡°Look, I¡¯m just a guy, okay? I don¡¯t want anyone to come looking for me, so if I go away, you would stay quiet about it, right? Not tell anyone that you saw someone glowing when you put on your diagnostic mask?¡± She nodded too quickly. ¡°I would be as quiet as a drowned mouse.¡± ¡°But,¡± said Perry. ¡°The reason I came to the Institute was to learn. If there¡¯s something different about me, something special, then I want to know what it is, how it can be used, harnessed. That paper lit on fire from the mask I made here. There have to be ways that we can exploit that, some type of science we can do to understand it. And it would need to be kept quiet, in confidence, until we were ready to bring it to the committee.¡± Nima stared at him. The color had come back into her cheeks with a vengeance, and she was looking flushed. ¡°You want to do covert science. Dark science.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not how I would phrase it,¡± said Perry. He didn¡¯t offer some other method of phrasing it though. ¡°There¡¯s also a woman I want to bring in the loop on this, someone I know and trust.¡± Nima nodded slowly. ¡°And if I were to tell someone?¡± she asked. ¡°I would know,¡± said Perry. ¡°And then I would vanish, never to be seen nor heard from again. But if that¡¯s what you want to happen, you can just tell me, and this is the last you¡¯ll see of me.¡± ¡°I want to,¡± said Nima. ¡°Whatever it is you have, whatever secrets you hold, I want to see them. I won¡¯t go against the culture, not directly, but skirting the edges,¡± she took a breath. ¡°I could maybe skirt the edges. Wait to tell people until there¡¯s something concrete. If your body is like a lantern, that¡¯s something that I need to know, to understand.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°You don¡¯t need to decide right now. It¡¯s better if you think it over. I¡¯ll be back here in a day, same time, to see what you¡¯ve decided.¡± ¡°Unless I tell someone,¡± said Nima. ¡°Unless you tell someone,¡± nodded Perry. ¡°And then you vanish into the winds like the Terinmar of old,¡± said Nima. Perry nodded again. He wasn¡¯t sure that he was playing this right, but he thought it was probably best to strike while the iron was near a forge. Besides, it would be easy enough to relocate to another city if that was necessary. He was less and less fearful of their ability to hunt him with every passing day, and if the culture was the same the world over, or with only minor differences, then they would be welcoming enough. Nima was staring at him. She had some inkling now that he was something special, and also that he wasn¡¯t exactly what he¡¯d pretended to be. He¡¯d set the bait for her, and it remained to be seen how hard she would bite down on it. ¡°Tomorrow then,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll be here, if that works for you.¡± ¡°It does,¡± said Nima. Perry moved to the table and took the small mask that he¡¯d made. He gave it a look, then slipped it into his pants pocket, palming a small black bead of nanites in the process. ¡°You didn¡¯t want to leave evidence,¡± said Nima. ¡°Something that could uniquely identify you.¡± ¡°Not for now,¡± said Perry. He left her behind, lightly touching the table as he left, leaving a black dot that would quickly hide away and fade to nothing if Marchand was worth his salt. The place would be bugged for the foreseeable future, and he could keep an eye on her from a distance to see whether she was going to narc on him. She was in the midst of getting shut down by the powers that be though, and she had a hunger to her that he had seen before. ¡°March, keep an eye on her,¡± said Perry once he was outside. ¡°See what we can see and make sure that it¡¯s safe to come back. If she goes to anyone, make sure that you find out who they are. You left spiders?¡± ¡°I did, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I will make tracking this woman a priority.¡± Chapter 98 - Wide Fields Nima had her hands folded behind her back and six different masks lined up on the table. The workshop was empty, as it had been before, but it had also been cleaned up, with all of the miscellaneous tools and materials put back into their cubbies. It looked like Nima had also swept up and wiped things down, making the place as professional and presentable as possible. ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure you¡¯d come back,¡± said Nima. She was dressed more conservatively than the day before, with a skirt that went down past her knees and a short-sleeved crop top that showed off her toned stomach. She wasn¡¯t wearing the glasses that she¡¯d been wearing the day before, but Perry had been pretty sure that those were an affectation given that they hadn¡¯t had much distortion. The unruly curls of her hair had been pulled back into twin buns that didn¡¯t really help her to look more serious, which he thought was her intent, unless she was trying to emphasize the pointed ears which were now on full display. The necklaces were mostly gone, though she still wore one, which draped across her chest, a turquoise stone in the center weighing it down. Overall, he thought she was trying to look like a professional, or maybe like what she thought a human might find more comfortable. ¡°You¡¯re prepared to study me?¡± asked Perry. Nima frowned and looked at the masks. ¡°I did talk to someone, my roommate. I didn¡¯t say anything about you, but I did ask whether or not I might get in trouble if I didn¡¯t report something that was, ah, maybe pertinent information for someone to know.¡± ¡°And?¡± asked Perry, though he knew the answer. ¡°She laughed and said that wasn¡¯t the culture,¡± said Nima. ¡°Which, when I thought about it, was true. If I thought that you were going to try something, to hurt someone, if I thought that you were trying to get something from me that I wasn¡¯t supposed to say, secrets that I might know, that might be different.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not trying to hurt anyone,¡± said Perry. He gave her what he hoped was a disarming smile. ¡°I¡¯m just looking for someone who can help me.¡± ¡°Are you going to tell me what you are?¡± asked Nima. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Also, I should warn you, I¡¯m on a bit of a deadline. I was hoping to catch a ship ¡ª or a blimp ¡ª to Berus within the next week or two.¡± Nima¡¯s mouth hung open for a moment. ¡°But you¡¯re not from Berus.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I have business there, and after that, I¡¯ll probably be moving on.¡± ¡°How am I supposed to learn anything in a week?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Especially if you won¡¯t tell me anything?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t say that,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll show you things, and I want your expertise on what you see, with the diagnostic masks or without.¡± ¡°Show me ¡­ things,¡± said Nima. ¡°Not just the power I saw flowing out of you.¡± ¡°Not just that, no,¡± said Perry. He smiled at her. ¡°Let me know when you¡¯re ready.¡± Nima went to the bench and looked down at the masks. ¡°This is everything that I have. Masks are individual, which is annoying because I can¡¯t borrow from people, but I¡¯ve made a lot for diagnostics. Unfortunately, not many of them are set up for tegman lithography, which means that I¡¯ll be using my own eyes rather than projecting onto paper.¡± She was describing some convoluted method of making photographs using magical masks that were only technically masks, he was pretty sure. He was glad that didn¡¯t work. He would rather there not be any pictures of him anyway. She put on the masks one by one, making quick notes with a pencil in a leather-bound book she had by her side. She did all of this silently, without talking. Her hands trembled slightly after setting down one of the masks, and she held her hand out for a bit, letting it steady before she resumed her writing. ¡°How was that?¡± asked Perry once the final mask was set down and the final notes were made. ¡°Um,¡± said Nima. She swallowed. ¡°It¡¯s a lot of energy to be in a person¡¯s body. It¡¯s broad, and shows up on four of these, including one that¡¯s supposed to only show anything for the Implements, which is very confusing.¡± The Implements were magic items, legendary weapons that Perry had only found out about the night before. They were part of the so-called ¡®deep magic¡¯ which dated to before the Effluence, things that either didn¡¯t exist anymore, couldn¡¯t be confirmed, or had simply been overshadowed for one reason or another. Perry had perked up on reading about the Implements, but he wasn¡¯t entirely sure that it was a coherent class of things. There were swords and bows, but also axes, awls, and a few bits of armor. All told, there were supposed to be around thirty of them, but they were all a part of various commons now, and not all that impressive against the might of the huge lanterns of the Effluence or the more modern solar domes. If Perry could get his hands on an Implement, he would be quite pleased. ¡°I¡¯m not a magical item,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re sure?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Because you¡¯re glowing like one. I think, at least. I haven¡¯t actually tested that one, I only followed directions to make it.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°Can you try it all again?¡± ¡°Again?¡± asked Nima, looking at the row of masks. ¡°All of them?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Give me a moment though.¡± He changed the flow of energy, what he preferred to think of as off-gassing, and directed the energy into his vessels, preventing any of it from so much as touching his skin. He stopped himself from breathing, which would draw in new energy, and closed himself off to the outside world, at least from an energy perspective. ¡°Ready?¡± she asked with a raised eyebrow. Perry nodded. She ran through all of them again, this time writing her findings down on a new page. ¡°You know, I¡¯m not a scientist, not really,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m much more of an engineer, and because we¡¯re all expected to have specialties these days, I¡¯m much more of a combined-discipline engineer. And I haven¡¯t been at the Institute long really. I don¡¯t want you thinking that I¡¯m some kind of expert.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re itching to bring in more people, aren¡¯t you?¡± ¡°I am,¡± said Nima. She twirled her pencil around her finger, moving deftly. ¡°I¡¯m in over my head.¡± ¡°You were working on that other project alone,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right?¡± ¡°That was different,¡± said Nima. ¡°That wasn¡¯t ¡­ this.¡± ¡°Can I ask about the results of that test?¡± asked Perry, pointing at her book. ¡°The results are that you can shut it off somehow, tamp down, block out,¡± said Nima. ¡°It¡¯s something that you can do with a lantern in a few ways, but you¡¯re not a lantern. I mean ¡­ you¡¯re not, right?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He tried to find some humor in that, but she was being fidgety, and it was setting him on edge. She hadn¡¯t told anyone about him, aside from the conversation with her roommate, but that didn¡¯t guarantee that she was going to stay quiet. ¡°Do I show up as special on any of those others?¡± ¡°When you¡¯re trying to cloak yourself?¡± asked Nima. Perry nodded. ¡°Yes, this one.¡± She picked up the fourth mask. ¡°It¡¯s designed for finding effluence, actually, specifically what¡¯s in a person¡¯s body. You have enough that you should be dead several times over.¡± ¡°Fit as a fiddle,¡± said Perry, looking himself over. He was hoping that the second sphere powers he¡¯d gotten from the Great Arc had allowed him to dodge radiation poisoning, but so far he was feeling good, which was a sign that however the accelerated healing that came with pumping energy through his vessels didn¡¯t have a single thing to do with DNA. ¡°Can you do the reverse?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Make yourself ¡­ bright?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t really know what you¡¯re seeing,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I can try, sure.¡± He began venting energy, bleeding the vessels with directionless off-gassing, letting as much power slip into the aether as possible. It was the same technique he¡¯d first used to coerce repairs of his armor, though what he used now was refined, more focused on creating a second skin of flowing energy. Nima put one of the masks to her face, then immediately put it back down. It clattered on the table and she clutched her face, blinking rapidly and then moving her hand in front of her eyes, which he thought was probably her checking whether her vision still worked. She looked at him, blinking quickly, eyes watering. ¡°Are you okay?¡± he asked. ¡°Alright,¡± said Nima. ¡°Looks like I¡¯ll have to modify that mask if we want to do that again.¡± ¡°But are you okay?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Nima, though she hadn¡¯t stopped blinking. She held her eyes open comically wide for a moment, then went back to blinking. ¡°I¡¯m going to take a break from the masks for a bit while I wait for my vision to come back.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not blind, are you?¡± asked Perry. She shook her head. ¡°Calibration issue.¡± She wiped the tears from her face, and found a chair nearby. She was spooked, he could tell that, and that was a shame, because he was pretty sure that all she was seeing was second sphere energy, or maybe the effects of lycanthropy that remained when he was in human form. It was barely anything to write home about. ¡°I¡¯ll be fine. But I want to know what I¡¯m seeing. What you ¡­ are. Or what¡¯s been done to you.¡± ¡°You think something has been done to me,¡± said Perry. ¡°Is that possible?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Nima. ¡°You¡¯re packed with effluence, and if I had to guess, you¡¯re converting it into debased lantern light, which is obviously impossible.¡± ¡°If I learned how to make my own mask, could I use that energy?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Could I harness the lantern light for projection?¡± ¡°It¡¯s possible,¡± said Nima. ¡°They¡¯re different things, wildly different things, but they work together.¡± She was blinking more slowly now, but her eyes were still watering. ¡°Where are you from, really?¡± ¡°Not Berus,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not here.¡± ¡°The thing is,¡± said Nima, when it became clear that was all he was going to say. ¡°You should know the answers to the questions that you¡¯re asking. You should understand your own powers, how they work, if you¡¯re from some major power of the world, or if you¡¯re the project of some symboulion or council or whatever else. I shouldn¡¯t be able to take my masks, give you a look, and tell you anything.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. He was watching her closely. She was working through it, and he was curious what kind of conclusion she was going to come to. ¡°You¡¯re from another world,¡± she said. Perry¡¯s mouth opened slightly, then closed. ¡°What do you mean?¡± he eventually asked. ¡°I mean ¡­ there are limited options, right? That you were made this way by someone, except then there are things that you should know, so it would have to be people who did this to you and didn¡¯t tell you anything. Or maybe it was the result of some accident, but then why would you be secretive about it? Or you could be from the future, but then I don¡¯t know why you¡¯d be talking to me, it¡¯s the same problem again.¡± She took a breath. ¡°So I think you¡¯re from another world.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m still not sure that follows.¡± She began tapping her foot on the ground pretty rapidly, like a rabbit. ¡°You¡¯re not asking me things that you already know,¡± said Nima. ¡°You¡¯re asking things that you want to know. And the things I¡¯m telling you are about how the masks work, how the lanterns work, things that you couldn¡¯t learn from just checking a book out from the library. You want me to tell you whether someone with a mask can see you. You want to know where you¡¯re vulnerable. That was the first thing you had me check. And blinding me, that was the second thing you checked.¡± ¡°Now hold on,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wasn¡¯t trying to blind you.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Nima, holding up a hand. ¡°But I¡¯m right, aren¡¯t I? About where you come from?¡± Perry watched her for a moment. ¡°Yes,¡± he said. ¡°I want to know how you knew that though. I don¡¯t think it was obvious, and I don¡¯t think that it logically follows from what you know. Is there a history of people coming to this world from other worlds? I haven¡¯t been able to find anything.¡± He didn¡¯t like the direction that this was going. He wanted a helpful confederate who could serve as a point of contact and investigation, and it felt like it was going sour. She was too scared of him, which was a sign that he¡¯d played it wrong. He should have been more of a dope, and maybe that was what he would do next time. Nima sat down in her chair for a minute. She was breathing hard and there was sweat on her brow. It seemed like an overreaction. ¡°Nima,¡± said Perry. ¡°Tell me the history. Tell me what I need to know about this world.¡± She looked up at him with wide eyes. ¡°There¡¯s a story,¡± she said. ¡°No one takes it all that seriously, but there is a story, a human story. The humans used to say that they came from somewhere else, that their god-king brought them to this world a thousand years ago. Or ¡­ they said that humans were technically half elves, sired by their god-king, the king from which all other human kings were descended.¡± She stared at Perry and placed her hand on the knee of the overactive leg, stilling it. ¡°You¡¯re from another world?¡± Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. ¡°Yup,¡± said Perry. Nima swallowed. ¡°That¡¯s not good.¡± ¡°No?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t be telling me, you should be telling someone in charge,¡± said Nima. ¡°Why me? I¡¯ve just been at the Institute, minding my own business.¡± She had started tapping her foot again, even faster than before. ¡°You¡¯re a single person,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you have a negative reaction, I can leave and never come back. You¡¯re a scientist, which means that you can make deductions, and maybe have some curiosity. Plus you seem nice enough.¡± She swallowed. ¡°I just wanted to know whether you needed help,¡± she said. ¡°Have I already said that I¡¯m in over my head? It¡¯s been running through my mind for the last day, how beyond me this is.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry with a gentle smile. ¡°I¡¯d give you some time to process, but I¡¯m in a time crunch, and I was hoping that you would tell me some things that I need to know.¡± Nima let out a breath. ¡°Can you tell me about the world you come from?¡± she asked. ¡°I could,¡± said Perry. ¡°But before I do ¡­ there¡¯s just that one legend? A human god-king from a millenia ago?¡± Nima nodded slowly. ¡°That¡¯s all I¡¯ve read about. There might be more. I¡¯m not a student of history. All my time has been put toward the masks and lanterns, their intersection. And he wasn¡¯t a human god-king, the humans are all his descendants, half elves. Supposedly, anyway. I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s true.¡± ¡°You weren¡¯t around for it?¡± asked Perry. She gave a little choking laugh and shook her head. ¡°No. Even if I were that old, no.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know how old you are,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s surprisingly hard to get a definitive answer on how long elves can live, and it¡¯s hard to know how old an elf is just from looking at them.¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t around for it,¡± said Nima. She took a deep breath. ¡°Perry ¡­ I think I need to tell you this now, and I don¡¯t want you to be angry with me, and you have to promise, to really promise, not to hurt me.¡± Perry stared at her. ¡°Okay.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima. ¡°Promise.¡± ¡°I promise that whatever you say, I won¡¯t hurt you,¡± said Perry, though he was certainly priming himself for immediate action. He had the ring now, and if need be, he could slip into it, though that would pin him in place. It might be better to do his best high-powered sprint out the door. ¡°What do you promise on?¡± asked Nima. ¡°The world you¡¯re from, what is your promise against?¡± Perry looked at her. She seemed very serious that she expected his promise to be backed by something. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he said. ¡°I have nothing to promise on. My honor, I guess.¡± Nima let out a breath. ¡°Alright,¡± she said. ¡°The reason that I made that leap isn¡¯t anything that I read in the history books. I¡¯ve barely read through the history. It¡¯s something that I knew because ¡­ well.¡± She reached up and touched the turquoise centerpiece of her necklace. The necklace bloomed with petals of shimmering metal, slowly covering her body and her clothes. When it reached the bottom of her crop top, it changed to woven chain links, and when it came to her skirt, it switched back to petals again, mail that was covering her. The armor was tight against her body, and in places there were larger pieces of hard metal, especially around her feet and wrists. It was slow to make the helmet, and the metal wove itself more elaborately there, making a screen around her face and larger pieces everywhere else. It gave her ears their own individual armor, and even as Perry was trying to understand it, he thought it was pretty impractical. ¡°I don¡¯t understand,¡± said Perry. ¡°You have one of the Implements?¡± Nima shook her head, which caused a clink of metal. ¡°This isn¡¯t one of the Implements. It¡¯s not from this world. I¡¯m not from this world.¡± Perry stared at her. She was breathing hard. The armor clung tightly to her, the links tiny, allowing it to drape across her skin. She was scared of him, that was obvious, but she was more scared now, having revealed this to him. She was the one ready to bolt. ¡°You promised not to hurt me,¡± said Nima. ¡°I really don¡¯t want any trouble. I am an engineer, a scientist, a researcher, I¡¯m just not ¡­ not originally from this world.¡± ¡°How?¡± asked Perry. The word came out harder than he¡¯d meant it to. ¡°There was a ¡ª I don¡¯t know how to describe it.¡± She swallowed. ¡°There was an aperture, a portal, and I went through it because I didn¡¯t really have much of a choice, and then I was somewhere else. I thought that I had gone somewhere else on the same planet, but they didn¡¯t even know what a planet was, and the stars were all unfamiliar, and ¡ª I¡¯ll tell you everything, but you promised, remember?¡± It didn¡¯t make him feel all that good to realize how little his promise would have stayed his hand. He had no incentive to kill her though, not even if he thought that she was the enemy. She seemed too weak to him, though he¡¯d been tricked in the past by someone feigning weakness. ¡°I¡¯m not going to hurt you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Drop the armor though.¡± Nima¡¯s hand quickly went up to her chest, where the bit of turquoise had become a centerpiece of her armor. With a stroke of her fingers, the whole thing began to undo itself, the petals of metal and tiny chain links being absorbed in almost exactly the opposite order that they had made themselves. The process took almost twenty seconds, which felt like an eternity. ¡°So,¡± said Perry once that was done. ¡°How did you find me?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t!¡± said Nima. She was up and pacing back and forth, only occasionally looking at him. For his part, Perry was as still as a statue. ¡°I really was just trying to help you, that¡¯s the culture, it was ¡ª¡± ¡°Chance? Luck?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Two people out of millions bumping into each other?¡± He knew that it had to have been the portals, must have been, their meeting setup by the same process that matched people to adversaries. It was still a startling level of prescience though, something that Perry hadn¡¯t seen before. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Nima, echoing Perry¡¯s own thoughts. She was still looking frightened, as though he might attack her at any time. He was certain that she¡¯d seen combat, or possibly just escaped from it. ¡°I think that¡¯s all it was, just fate.¡± ¡°How long have you been here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°In this world?¡± ¡°Three months,¡± said Nima. She swallowed. ¡°I just ¡­ slipped in, I guess, found a place, found somewhere to be.¡± Perry looked down at the masks and furrowed his brow. ¡°All these, you made them in three months? All your work here, it¡¯s been in that short a time frame?¡± Nima nodded. ¡°How?¡± asked Perry. ¡°These people aren¡¯t stupid. You tested out of apprenticeship and now you¡¯re blowing past them?¡± ¡°I cheated the test,¡± said Nima. Her slender fingers went up to the small turquoise necklace. Perry waited for her to activate it again, but she only held onto it. ¡°This isn¡¯t the second world I¡¯ve been to, it¡¯s the third. I got this in the second. It¡¯s alive, in its own way, a companion, of sorts. It ¡ª she ¡ª has her own senses, her own ways of thinking. We¡¯re linked together, even when I¡¯m not wearing her.¡± ¡°The necklace helped you cheat?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The pendant,¡± said Nima. Her pacing reached the end of the workshop, and she turned on her heel to go back the other way. ¡°It¡¯s like having someone working alongside me. I understand most of it now, but at the time, we had just looked through a handful of books together.¡± Perry almost laughed. It was exactly what he was doing. But she was clearly a thresholder too, and that meant that it wasn¡¯t the time for laughing or jokes. It was very possible she was hiding her power level, putting herself in a position of apparent disadvantage in order to pump him for information and test the boundaries of his power. He was planning on revealing nothing to her. ¡°I¡¯m not going to hurt you,¡± said Perry. He tried not to say it as though he had just decided on it. ¡°But you can¡¯t tell anyone of my existence. And we¡¯re working together from here on out.¡± ¡°Together on what?¡± asked Nima. She was practically holding her breath. ¡°When you left your home world, there was a portal,¡± said Perry. ¡°The second world, there was someone who tried to kill you, and when you defeated them, or when you were defeated, another portal opened up.¡± Nima swallowed. ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°It was just those two? And this one?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It was,¡± she replied. He listened closely, and decided that if it was a lie, it was one he could discover just from hearing it said. ¡°There¡¯s a word for what we are,¡± said Perry. ¡°Some use thresholder, others use world hopper. We travel between worlds and we fight each other. But sometimes there¡¯s an ally, and until you show otherwise, I¡¯m going to assume that¡¯s what you are. That means that there¡¯s a third out there somewhere. A thresholder, someone who¡¯s looking to kill us, or if not kill, then do something terrible to this world.¡± ¡°How do you know?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I¡¯m not a novice at this,¡± said Perry. She had questions, but she must have known that she wasn¡¯t in a position to ask them ¡ª that he didn¡¯t want to tell her his life story at just that moment. She kept her mouth shut for a while, and he could see the gears turning in her mind. Even if she¡¯d cheated her way into the Institute and had help from her own magical Marchand, she had some obvious intelligence. ¡°Tell me what you need from me,¡± said Nima. She sat in a chair and folded her hands in her lap. ¡°Tell me about where you¡¯ve been first,¡± said Perry. ¡°Your home world, and the world after it.¡± Nima cleared her throat, which had to have been a stalling tactic, at least a little bit. Her home world had been a place where the intelligent species had been divided into castes. They had five of them, elves, humans, dwarves, angels, and devils ¡ª all her words for them. The term ¡®caste¡¯ hadn¡¯t been her word for it, but Perry could read between the lines well enough, and all the talk of meritocracy seemed hollow to him, especially given what she said about ¡®an elf¡¯s place.¡¯ The dwarves were the common laborers, used for anything that needed brute strength, while the demons were essentially enslaved, large scaly things that had a lust for violence and leering eyes. A man had come and torn through the capital city, and a woman had come after him, trying to stop him. They were using strange magic, the power of gods but in contravention to everything the gods stood for, nothing circumspect or devout in their battle with one another. Nima sheltered in her tower, but was forced to flee when an impact at the base made it unsteady. Either the woman or the man had begun unleashing the demons from their chains, and the monsters were tearing through the city as the two clashed. The fight raged for a long time, but it ended within a hundred feet of Nima. The woman won and slipped through a portal, bloodied but victorious. Nima followed after, because the other option was to stay and risk death from the demons that had run rampant. She had come out into a world that was nothing like her own. They didn¡¯t even have elves there, and her ears attracted no small amount of attention until she got very used to wearing large hats to conceal them. It was a world of diverse biomes that were driven by magical towers rather than anything innate to the climates or species, a patchwork world that was tiny compared to the one she¡¯d come from. It was inverted, a sphere that surrounded a ¡®sun¡¯ and thick clouds that provided the only thing that resembled night. She¡¯d wandered the place, trying to find a way back home, or at least to find ¡®her people,¡¯ but there was nothing and no one until she came across a man with a gift like nothing ever seen in that world. He had delved into the guts of one of the great towers and changed its very nature, thrusting the whole slice of that world into perpetual cold, killing everything in order to funnel power into a creation of his own design. That was where the necklace had come from, though she hadn¡¯t gotten it until later. The man had his sycophants and hangers-on, and she slipped in with them. She¡¯d hoped that the wizard had answers for her, but when she revealed that she was from another world, he immediately tried to kill her. She had eventually won the fight, and when she did, a portal like the first one had opened up for her. She had thought that it would send her back, and instead, she¡¯d ended up in this new world. ¡°There¡¯s no way back, is there?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I assume there must be, somewhere among the worlds. I haven¡¯t found a path yet.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know about this world,¡± said Nima. She took a shaky breath. She was mostly past the case of nerves that he¡¯d induced in her, but ¡°Sometimes they seem to have everything figured out, but they¡¯re so alien, so difficult.¡± ¡°How so?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m an elf,¡± she said, placing a hand on her chest. ¡°There¡¯s supposed to be a place in society for me, not a supreme place, but a place with resources, with purpose, vital work. It¡¯s not the same here. Even amassing scrip couldn¡¯t get me to the place I want to be. And their elves aren¡¯t like my kind, we don¡¯t cocoon up and transform ourselves into something new. They¡¯re alike only in form, it¡¯s uncanny.¡± ¡°You are anticultural,¡± said Perry. Nima blinked at him. ¡°It¡¯s not my culture, not my people, not my world. Everything that I¡¯ve done here, it¡¯s been to help them, to give them some of what my people had before the calamity. Is that wrong? How can it be?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s wrong,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though as you¡¯ve said, they do seem to have their culture figured out. Maybe trying to insert your own ideas about how a society should function isn¡¯t something you should be doing.¡± ¡°What I tried to give them was only a pale shade of what they should have,¡± said Nima. Her fingers touched her necklace again, a nervous habit, making sure that it was still there. ¡°How long have you been here?¡± ¡°Two days,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not saying that whatever you¡¯re attempting to do is wrong, because I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re attempting to do, and you¡¯re right that I don¡¯t understand the culture that they seem to invest so much of themselves in. I¡¯m not here to chide you or argue. I¡¯m still trying to figure out what to do with you.¡± ¡°And ¡­ have you decided?¡± asked Nima. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Personally, I¡¯m looking to go across the ocean, to Berus, to see what I can find on the king killer there.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Because I think he might be a thresholder,¡± said Perry. ¡°If there¡¯s a signature, high power levels and mysterious powers are definitely part of it.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± she said, holding up a hand. ¡°I don¡¯t understand. You¡¯re going to fight?¡± ¡°I¡¯m going prepared to fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°And I think you should come with me.¡± Nima took a step back. ¡°I¡¯m not doing that.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think you understand what it¡¯s like, doing this long term,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s always another thresholder, at least so far as I can tell. I¡¯ve fought them, talked to them, heard their stories, and if there¡¯s a constant, it¡¯s conflict. If you stay here, he¡¯ll eventually come for you. Your inventions, your anticultural tendencies, that might be what attracts him.¡± ¡°Then I¡¯ll just stop doing that,¡± said Nima. ¡°I won¡¯t go to the councils, I¡¯ll just ¡­ become something else, a leech if I have to, someone that sits by and does nothing for anyone. How would he find me?¡± ¡°How did you find me?¡± asked Perry. Nima froze. ¡°We just bumped into each other.¡± Perry pointed at her necklace. ¡°Can you see the glow of that with a diagnostic mask?¡± he asked. ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°Or ¡­ not the ones that I¡¯ve built. I don¡¯t know what exists at the upper end, what things they might have held back as part of their ¡®contradictions.¡¯ When I asked whether you were secret police, it¡¯s because I¡¯ve been worried that they¡¯re out there, that there¡¯s someone watching for ¡ª well, for people like me. Like us. And yes, you¡¯re right, he might have a way to find me. But to just leave? To go off to Berus in the hopes of finding him?¡± ¡°It¡¯s that, or sit here trying to gain power,¡± said Perry. ¡°That guy, if it¡¯s him? He took out a king, one of the most highly defended people in this entire world, and to all appearances, he did it on his own. There might not be anyone else who can take him. So either we go after him now and try to get him while he¡¯s in the middle of other affairs, while there¡¯s still a single kingdom left to stand against him, or we wait until it gets bad.¡± ¡°Bad,¡± said Nima. ¡°Bad, as in ¡­ demons roaming the streets, killing thousands?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Perry. She let out a long, slow breath and released the bit of turquoise that had been clutched in her fingers. ¡°You want to be allies. Allies against some powerful but unknown enemy.¡± ¡°Depending on what we find, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alright,¡± she nodded. ¡°I¡¯m not leaving my workshop without knowing more about you, who you are and why you¡¯re here, how this is all supposed to work. But if you say that there¡¯s someone out there who will want to kill me, then I think I don¡¯t have a choice but to believe you. And if you need me, then so be it.¡± Chapter 99 - A Ripple Through Still Waters Perry hadn¡¯t meant to talk to anyone. He had been trying to keep to himself, getting in and out of the libraries, eating food where he could, and spending his time preparing for a better cover story that would carry him to Berus. The problem was, that wasn¡¯t the culture. Libraries weren¡¯t a place to get what you needed and get out, they were a place to talk, exchange ideas, and socialize. The food was free, this was true, but there had been a very deliberate attempt to make the cafes and restaurants into third places, somewhere that people could congregate and get to know each other. On balance, Perry found himself more comfortable with a big city approach to things, keeping people at arm¡¯s length and minding his own business, but that was difficult when people kept trying to talk to him. ¡°What do you think?¡± asked an orc from another table while Perry was quietly eating his lunch. It was the first proper sandwich he¡¯d had since Teaguewater, and came with a strong nostalgia and homesickness. ¡°Sorry?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I wasn¡¯t following.¡± ¡°Just wanted your opinion,¡± said the orc. There were five of them at the table, three orcs, a human, and a dwarf. They were all young, maybe Perry¡¯s age, though he wasn¡¯t that good at telling for the orcs and dwarves, not yet. ¡°The question going around is what happens once Thirlwell is down, once there¡¯s no outside force.¡± Perry had a newspaper folded next to his plate, which he¡¯d been reading a column from, and he pushed it to the side. ¡°This is a question about where the guards go?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Nah,¡± said the human woman. ¡°It¡¯s a question of where everything goes. This was always supposed to be a transition, getting rid of the system of kings. Once Thirlwell falls, there¡¯s nothing we¡¯re against anymore, it¡¯s all the culture, all over the whole world. There were always people fleeing from one monarchy to another ¡ª¡± ¡°Rats,¡± said the dwarf. ¡°Leeches,¡± said one of the orcs. ¡°But when Thirlwell falls,¡± the woman continued, ¡°when they have their own symboulion running things, we can scrap so much.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re looking for an outside opinion?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve seen you around,¡± said the orc with a shrug. ¡°You read a lot, I thought maybe you might be one of those smart guys.¡± This was accompanied by some chuckles from the people around him, but it seemed good natured to Perry. ¡°I think you¡¯re always going to need to worry about outside forces,¡± said Perry. ¡°The culture isn¡¯t the same everywhere, by design. It¡¯s local because being local is part of the culture. Local needs have local solutions. Symboulions are a piece of community, not a duke ruling over a place whose soil he¡¯s never walked on. But that means that those different versions of the culture have plenty of chances to butt up against each other. Not everyone has taken to it as well as here.¡± This was mostly informed by what the papers said. ¡°So we keep the weapons to use against each other?¡± asked the orc. He shook his head. ¡°It¡¯s not just the weapons,¡± said the woman. ¡°It¡¯s everything. The entire justification for Command Authority is that we need to be able to stand up against the kingdoms, to handle troops landing on our shores, to have the technology necessary to at least match them if not outpace them. It should be dismantled when Thirlwell falls.¡± She pointed a fork in Perry¡¯s direction, because Perry was now a part of the conversation. ¡°We should downgrade everything.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a dogmatist,¡± said Perry. ¡°You want to take everything local even when it doesn¡¯t make sense.¡± Dogmatist was, so far as he could tell, a term that was coming close to an insult, a way of categorizing a group of people that they didn¡¯t really seem to like all that much. There were no proud dogmatists, it wasn¡¯t a term they called themselves. ¡°Why doesn¡¯t it make sense?¡± she asked, cocking her head to the side. She was giving a lot of energy to the conversation, and it was pretty clear to Perry that in spite of the orc being the one that pulled him in, it was the woman that had been driving things. Maybe the outside perspective was meant to cool the heat on the conversation. ¡°We have the domes,¡± said Perry. ¡°They work better the larger they are, and one of the tenets of the culture is reducing work. ¡®Work is a scourge,¡¯ right?¡± The line came directly from Cultural Metamorphoses. ¡°There are tons of things that would be better done at scale, things that we don¡¯t do at scale because we ¡®don¡¯t need to,¡¯ but if you look at it as man-hours or opportunity costs, there¡¯s too much we should be investing in. That alone is a justification for Command Authority.¡± The orc wrinkled his nose. ¡°You¡¯re talking megaprojects?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even city-scale things. Taking the number of workers from two thousand down to a thousand means more people doing what they want to, more time devoted to the culture, and would help to minimize the scrip economy.¡± The orc smiled. ¡°Tina thinks we should abolish the scrip economy,¡± he said, nodding at the human woman. ¡°Before or after Thirlwell is gone?¡± asked Perry. ¡°After, probably,¡± said Tina. She seemed much less sure of this proposition. ¡°I don¡¯t think that would work,¡± said Perry. ¡°We use scrip to get people to do the necessary things that no one wants to do, and if you¡¯re going to take away scrip, you have to hope that the culture is enough to make people do those things anyway. It might work, but then you have a split culture anyway, because most people aren¡¯t really in the scrip economy right now. Most people wouldn¡¯t need to do any work, so they wouldn¡¯t, and you¡¯d have a different class of people taking care of the nightsoil ¡ª but they wouldn¡¯t be rewarded by society, they would be acting under the weight of expectation and social censure.¡± ¡°It would take some figuring out,¡± said the woman, which Perry decided that he was going to take as a victory. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry, which was his way of walking back his victory slightly. He thought that was good manners, if someone was gracious enough to cede ground. ¡°The scrip economy is a problem, the large projects are a problem, and we¡¯re not where we were sixty-seven years ago, we have built up systems and the inevitable quirks in the culture.¡± He turned to look at the orc. ¡°I think keeping things as they are is the smart thing to do, at least right now, if you¡¯re worried about a destabilizing landslide ripping its way through the culture.¡± ¡°A society needs change,¡± said the dwarf. It was the first time he¡¯d spoken. ¡°If we don¡¯t change, we get locked in and live in the shadow of the past. If we don¡¯t change now, when will we?¡± Perry personally felt that was a good point, so he just nodded. ¡°I don¡¯t know. Maybe. Nice to meet all of you, but I have business with a friend.¡± They said their goodbyes, not having exchanged names, and Perry left not having blown his cover, which he was thankful for. It hadn¡¯t actually taken all that much to be able to talk somewhat intelligently about these things. He had read through two months worth of newspapers, read or skimmed a handful of books, and listened in on a few dozen conversations. There were a limited number of conversations that people seemed to have, though he was unusually well-versed in the patterns of discourse, even for someone from the information age. Back on Earth, there was always a conversation that was dominating the news cycle, and Perry had been very good at teasing apart what everyone was saying, what the ground truth was, and then staking his own claim with more research and effort than other people were willing to make. The difference here was that people seemed to think that this wasn¡¯t all idle chatter. When they talked about their culture, their society, or their government, they did it with the conviction that they were in charge in some way, not just voters but participants. From what he had been able to find, this was only somewhat true. The symboulions were the primary unit of doing things, one part business and one part city council, maybe with a little HOA or PTA thrown in. The city was lousy with them and their meetings. Perry had a voice in the apartment building he and Mette lived in, and unlike on Earth, this wasn¡¯t just the province of busybodies and those with too much time on their hands. Attending the symboulion meetings and speaking up was a part of the culture, and people took it seriously. Symboulions were sometimes assembled for things that didn¡¯t exist or hadn¡¯t happened, speculative symboulions that would eventually result in some new project being created, after which they would take custody, but they were relatively rare. Perry was fairly sure that once they had the concept of NIMBYism, accusations of it would get thrown around a lot. For many large projects or services, there was Command Authority, people and organizations who were empowered in some specific capacity to deal with society-wide things in non-local ways. There were relatively few checks on them, which he found surprising, and he was somewhat alarmed when he realized that if anyone came after him, they would probably be a part of a Command Authority of some kind. The giant hulking metal guards were certainly under a Command Authority, though even finding out who controlled them was more difficult than it felt like it should be. ¡°They¡¯re cheating, in a way,¡± said Perry once he came home to Mette. She had a magical lantern sitting on the table, and he was going to ask about it, but she was in the midst of monkeying with it, and figured that he would say a bunch of things that she didn¡¯t really care about while he waited to have her attention. ¡°How so?¡± asked Mette. It couldn¡¯t be more clear that her mind was elsewhere. Maybe the polite thing to do would be to just shut up, or to talk with March. ¡°There¡¯s ideological impurity,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are things that I like about that. They have a phrase they use a lot, ¡®so what?¡¯, as a defense against their systems. It¡¯s this common rejoinder, and very clean, because ¡­ I don¡¯t know, you say ¡®there¡¯s some waste in the systems¡¯ and people have just been conditioned to say ¡®well, is that actually a problem?¡¯ It¡¯s good. It¡¯s also good that they have some acceptance of contradiction, I guess. But the ideology, this very local, helpful, communal ideology ¡­ they cheat when it comes to the big stuff.¡± ¡°How do they cheat?¡± asked Mette as she opened and closed an internal aperture. ¡°They just ignore things?¡± ¡°Well, there are obvious problems with the mentality,¡± said Perry. ¡°Being able to defend against foreign powers is one of the big ones. You can¡¯t have a very local military, you¡¯d get crushed by a highly coordinated top-down force, at least in the near term. Resistance movements can work, if there¡¯s widespread local support, and you can encourage lone wolves, but you can¡¯t go toe-to-toe with the big guys, not really. So they just say, ¡®oh, yeah, we¡¯re breaking with our ideology for that.¡¯ It¡¯s like talking to a libertarian who¡¯s in favor of universal healthcare.¡± Mette stopped what she was doing and looked over at Perry with a frown. ¡°I have no idea what any of that is.¡± ¡°Libertarianism is a position that advocates for minimal state intervention in people¡¯s lives, and usually a minimal state,¡± said Perry. ¡°Universal healthcare is a program that sees the state providing healthcare to everyone through taxation.¡± ¡°I¡¯m still not sure I understand taxation,¡± said Mette with a sigh. ¡°But they don¡¯t seem to have it in this world, so I guess I¡¯m fine. And before you start, I understand taxation in the abstract but as a governor I¡¯m not sure how it would work in practice. From what you¡¯ve said, it all sounds kind of stupid.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry, I was talking to some people in the cafe, and there were all kinds of things I couldn¡¯t say to them.¡± He gestured at the lantern. ¡°Tell me about this.¡± Mette gestured to herself. ¡°You¡¯re looking at the city¡¯s newest nightsoil collector,¡± she said. She patted the lantern, which was a foot tall and made of shiny metal with an aperture that pointed down and a ball above it, along with a chamber that sat on top of the ball. The ball was where the ¡®light¡¯ came from, and it was open along a hinge, showing that there was nothing inside. ¡°They gave me this lantern.¡± ¡°Which collects poop, I take it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s what it¡¯s meant for,¡± said Mette. She closed the ball and hefted the lantern, which seemed to be pretty weighty. ¡°I was given my training and then allowed to take it home, which surprised me, because it would seem more sensible to have them all in one central location.¡± ¡°We could use it for other things?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Maybe,¡± said Mette with a frown. ¡°There are three parts, the fuel, the ¡®wick,¡¯ and the ¡®flame¡¯ In theory, I could swap out the fuel, but the ¡®wick¡¯ is this little bit here,¡± she opened the lantern back up and pointed at the piece of mesh that sat between the upper chamber and the empty ball. ¡°I¡¯m only starting to figure out how it works, and the man who trained me had no idea. I think most people have only a vague understanding of how the lanterns work, which is a problem. The books have been more helpful than talking to anyone, but I think I just haven¡¯t found the right person.¡± You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. ¡°So are you actually going to do the job?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I am,¡± said Mette. ¡°I have. You go into buildings, place the lantern in the right spot for a few minutes, then leave. It¡¯s a very primitive way of dealing with waste, but running pipes to every single building in the city is apparently a big ask, and no one is much interested in it, not when all you need is a collector to come in for five minutes. It¡¯s the first thing I would implement, but it would need a Command Authority.¡± ¡°What are your thoughts on weaponizing the lantern?¡± asked Perry. Mette let out a sigh. ¡°It¡¯s apparently possible but somewhat difficult. They fought their giant war with lanterns of all kinds, dirty ones that spewed effluence while they ate into flesh and bone. Most of those were enormous though. The body is resistant to the light of a lantern, apparently. With the right fuel, the right wick, the right design ¡­ this would still be too small, mostly an annoyance.¡± She shook her head. ¡°Against the bugs it would be easy enough to have a huge one atop the Natrix, the ultimate weapon, something that would eat through them when they so much as came near. We¡¯d set up on open ground to give us enough time, and ¡ª Perry, if I can get this back to them, it would mean the end of our worries, at least about that. We could replace the reactors.¡± She was looking at him like he had the answers. ¡°I haven¡¯t seen anything to say that anyone knows how to travel between worlds,¡± said Perry. ¡°So far as I know, there are portals, and they appear under specific circumstances, always taking us away.¡± Mette frowned. ¡°How are things going with the baby thresholder?¡± she asked. ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fine enough, anyway. I don¡¯t trust her. I¡¯ve been burned before, and honestly, I think it would be easier to lay things out for her if she were a guy.¡± ¡°What? Why?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Because I know my biases,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m more inclined to trust a pretty woman, and I know that, which means that it¡¯s a weak spot, so I need to be on my guard.¡± ¡°Hmm,¡± said Mette. ¡°So you trust women less.¡± ¡°Women I¡¯m attracted to,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s not misogyny. It¡¯s just me realizing that I need to correct for my natural inclinations.¡± ¡°Uh huh,¡± said Mette. ¡°And that ¡­ doesn¡¯t apply to me?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not worried about getting stabbed in the back by you,¡± said Perry. He hoped that she wasn¡¯t asking whether she was pretty. She was, especially when she had that look of focus, but he didn¡¯t want to tell her that. ¡°Though maybe I should be worried, given that we¡¯re not entirely on the same page. If you had the option of turning me in to the government in order to secure your own position ¡­ that¡¯s just about the only way that I can see a betrayal going. And even with Command Authority, I don¡¯t think there¡¯s actually a place you could go where you could say, ¡®hey, I¡¯m from another world and need some protection, here¡¯s what I have in exchange.¡¯¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t do that,¡± said Mette, folding her arms. ¡°You said yourself that you were trying to seduce me for what, at least a year,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s different,¡± said Mette. She was rolling her eyes, but looked slightly flushed as she carried on. ¡°Brigitta would have taken that in stride, it was only you that didn¡¯t want to pass on your gifts to our people, or more generously, you that didn¡¯t want to leave behind children you couldn¡¯t raise on your own. You knew what I was doing, and if I had succeeded, it would only have been because I got past your own defenses. That¡¯s hardly betrayal. It¡¯s just ¡­ forward-thinking.¡± ¡°It was manipulative,¡± said Perry. ¡°Tempted as I was, I think that¡¯s why I never went for it.¡± ¡°You were tempted?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Because it was very hard for us to tell. You do this stoic thing sometimes, letting nothing come onto your face.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a second sphere thing,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s useful when you don¡¯t want to give anything away.¡± They had been sleeping in the same bed without incident, and were technically pretending to be husband and wife, though they hadn¡¯t been pressed on that just yet, and hadn¡¯t had to develop any elaborate lies. By the time they had gotten aboard the blimp to Berus, they would have something else worked out, maybe with a more platonic cover story. Perry was working on it, and Marchand was collecting information from all over in order to synthesize a list of information for them to memorize based on the things that people seemed to talk about most often. And they were going to Berus. It was where the action was at. One of the things that Perry had learned in his reading was that the kingdom in question was an island nation, one of the reasons that it had held out for so long. The last remaining kingdom, Thirlwell, surely the eventual target for the kingkiller, was a different island nation, and closer to Berus than anywhere else. From what Perry had seen from maps, they weren¡¯t quite as close as England was to Ireland, or New Zealand¡¯s north and south islands, but they were cousin kingdoms, and what they learned at one could translate to the other. ¡°Are you stealing that?¡± Perry asked, pointing at the lantern. ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°It would stick out.¡± ¡°It wouldn¡¯t stick out if it were in the shelf,¡± said Perry. ¡°The armor sticks out, and that¡¯s not going to be seen by anyone.¡± ¡°I¡¯d rather stay within the bounds of the law,¡± said Mette. It was an opinion she¡¯d expressed a few times before. She had done a coup, and the more exposure Perry had to her, the more he thought that Leticia and Brigitta had been the main drivers. Maybe she had just mellowed with age and the birth of her children. She hadn¡¯t talked about the children at all since they¡¯d arrived in the world, and Perry wondered whether she ever would. He didn¡¯t know whether it was his responsibility to prod her about it, but they were slowly getting past the honeymoon period. ¡°One of the arguments for going to Berus is that the law won¡¯t be a settled thing,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even with the king dead and a symboulion in place, there¡¯s going to be fighting, flare ups, that kind of thing. It¡¯s a better space to operate in, if you¡¯re someone like me. More confusion, more opportunity to steer things, to blend in with the confusion.¡± ¡°Blegh,¡± said Mette. She clearly had a distaste for the mindset, and Perry didn¡¯t know what to do about that. ¡°And yet I somehow agree. Not about warfare, but when things are uncertain is the best time to get access to resources, get training, get in on the ground floor.¡± She had gone to a few of the mage colleges and gotten told the same thing at pretty much all of them: she would have to do an apprenticeship or test out, and testing out was mostly reserved for people who had come in from other countries and already knew their stuff. ¡°It does seem slightly crazy to come to a new world with plentiful food, clothing, and shelter, then leave our relative safety to go into what you¡¯re describing as a high-threat zone, all so we can chase down some maniac.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not going to be subject to the same things that everyone else is subject to,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m working on getting lots of things into the shelf. I¡¯d feel guilty about taking from them, but their response to the objection of ¡®but what if people take more than their share¡¯ is always ¡®so what.¡¯ They want to help, to give, to make sure that scarcity isn¡¯t driving people too much. That¡¯s the culture.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Mette. She looked at the lantern that was sitting on the table. ¡°Not these though.¡± ¡°I think they would hand them out like candy if not for the pollution,¡± said Perry. ¡°But they¡¯re controlled.¡± Mette was still looking over the lantern, as though trying to place it in the context of its history. ¡°Not that controlled.¡± ¡°Well, I¡¯m going back out,¡± said Perry. He stood from the bed. ¡°We need to start building up supplies now, if we¡¯re going to do it discreetly.¡± ¡°When do I get to meet the baby thresholder?¡± asked Mette. ¡°You know, from some perspectives, it would be you who was the baby thresholder,¡± said Perry. ¡°Suckling at your teat, you mean?¡± asked Mette. There was a slight twinkle in her eye. ¡°I don¡¯t even have any powers yet.¡± ¡°Someday,¡± said Perry, though she did have a gun that was kept in the ring, the ability to project force about as strong as a haymaker using firmament magic, and was far from helpless. Perry walked through the city, feeling relatively good about himself. He was preying on them, in a way, but the whole culture was designed so that this sort of predatory behavior wasn¡¯t really a big deal. If someone wanted to steal a library book, more power to them, that was what the libraries were for. If you kept a blouse because you just ended up adoring it, that was good, that meant that people got to try things out and then keep what was most dear. Society was set up to make more books, more blouses, more of everything. Social censure would help most people to give back most things they weren¡¯t using, and if there were deficits, the librarians would report them, meaning that more of the most favorite things would eventually end up on the shelves. It didn¡¯t feel great to be a leech, but it was what it was. They didn¡¯t have computers for him to download a bunch of information onto, and he was very skeptical about the prospect of giving them werewolf teeth given that their moon was large enough that he could feel the pull of it even when it wasn¡¯t full. He could help them with their science, and knew that was something that Mette planned to do, but that was the best shot of leaving the world better than he found it. Cosme¡¯s plan to uplift the worlds was something that still tickled Perry¡¯s mind from time to time, and he tried to assuage the guilt he was feeling with loose ideas about good. He did try to be respectful in what he took and not simply fill the shelf with everything that he found, but it was difficult, because so many things he looked made him imagine some scenario where he might use it. He would have simply paid for things, since he had traded in half a small gold ingot for scrip, but clothes, food, and furniture weren¡¯t a part of the scrip economy because they were basic rights, masks needed to be created by the user, and lanterns were heavily regulated. That left relatively little for him. He had a heavy cloth tote that he put clothes from a library into, stuff that he thought was relatively versatile and universal, that might help him to blend in on some other world. When that was done, he found a quiet alley, dumped the tote out into the shelf, and went to the next library. He picked up some books in the same way, mostly books on the basics, things that would stay the same from world to world, principles of engineering and science that wouldn¡¯t be that different. He took some books for Marchand to copy into the databanks, and others that were considered classics, mostly so he could plagiarize them. While he walked about, he had some idle thoughts about ethical uplifting and whether it was actually necessary to give credit where credit was due. He could see the arguments either way, though he felt it was a bit like giving credit to dead people who wouldn¡¯t care one way or another about it, being dead. Perry would never claim that he¡¯d invented the things that were in the books, not that he thought he¡¯d ever be able to get away with that. He was making his way through a busy plaza when he heard screaming from the air. He looked up and set his feet, frowning slightly and fearing the worst. He had been in the city for a few days, and had enough background that he was able to get through random conversations without coming close to anyone noticing that he wasn¡¯t from nearby. Still, there was the fear that he would be unmasked in the worst way, either by the Command Authority or the enemy thresholder, and there was no reason for it not to be at the hands of whatever was screaming through the air. After twenty seconds, other people in the plaza seemed to hear the sound, starting with the elves. They looked up to the sky, then at each other, and conversations broke out or were diverted to the subject of the sound. The flash of light appeared to the east, where the sound was coming from, and the explosion rippled through the air above the city not long after that. Perry was ready to turn into the weakly anemic wolf if he had to, and he was cursing himself for not having brought the power armor with him. He could duck into the shelf if need be, but doing that in public seemed like a bad idea. There were six explosions in total, and they didn¡¯t seem to be getting any closer, so Perry simply stood there, waiting, fighting off his urge to get the sword from the shelf and rise up into the air to get a look. He wasn¡¯t showing himself, not for this. If it wasn¡¯t an attack, it was an accident of some kind, but Perry couldn¡¯t believe that it was coincidence for something like this to happen just as he arrived. When the explosions had stopped for a good half a minute, Perry started running toward them. He ran fast, but not so fast that it would draw suspicion. He was going to be one of the helpers, he had already decided that, but being in the thick of it would mean that he¡¯d get information before anyone else. People were running and screaming, and it wasn¡¯t long before Perry saw that some of those people were clutching at wounds. The wounds got worse the closer he got, and then he started to pass people carrying the wounded on stretchers. Some of them weren¡¯t just wounded but dead. He almost stopped when he came across the first guard. It was nine feet tall, a more advanced version of the one that Perry had seen in the museum, the plate armor it was covered in showing no easy gaps. It was only standing there though, not helping, and Perry realized at once why that was: it was on a war footing, not interested in humanitarian aid. The site of the explosion was bedlam. Buildings had been demolished, some of them flattened, and there were bodies strewn everywhere. It was thick with dust and smoke, but a man stood at the top of the rubble, yelling out orders for more stretchers, more movement, a yellow ribbon tied around the wrists of the wounded, a red ribbon tied around the wrists of the dead. Perry set to work, guided by his nose, helping with his brute strength and not trying too hard to hide that he was special. He poured energy into healing a few times, but to no great effect, because healing others was still far beyond him. When he was finished, he would move to the next, always working, not stopping for any breaks, which he knew would also be suspicious. The reports on the ground were confused. No one knew what had happened, and especially early on, it was all wild speculation. People were saying that it was a dragon, a creature that had died during the Effluence, but dragons had never done anything like this even when they had it in their heads to attack settlements. There were also theories about the golden domes having gone wrong somehow, a rollout of new technology having had some catastrophic failure, but Perry thought they were just saying that because the lay people didn¡¯t really understand how the golden domes worked. It was well into the evening before Perry started to hear the theory that would become the dominant one, which was confirmed by the papers the next day. The King of Thirlwell had a weapon, one that was great and terrible, capable of striking from afar at a range hitherto undreamt of by anyone. He had seen Berus fall and was making his last stand, which was apparently to begin with an indiscriminate bombing campaign just to prove that he could. There were more weapons laying in wait, and he had no compunctions about using them. It was the last gasp of what the newspapers had already been calling the Last Kingdom, but that made it no less dangerous. It remained to be seen how the Command Authority would react, but the peaceful city now found itself on the frontlines of what would surely be war. Chapter 100 - Tragedy and Comedy Perry spent about eighteen hours straight helping with the aftermath of the attack. He was drawing attention to himself, he knew that, but at least he was doing it for a good reason. He had impeccable senses and plenty of brute strength, more than the strongest orcs, and if he flared his energy, he could move rubble that there was no other easy way to move. By the time six hours had passed, heavy equipment was being moved to the sites, huge lanterns that had to be pulled in by wagons, along with people who had special masks for the occasion, but Perry was still putting more into the effort than entire groups of people were. He was getting to know people as he worked, and they were getting to know him. He knew that he¡¯d gone too far when someone came up to him pleading that he move to a different impact site where he could be of more use. No one stopped him though, and there weren¡¯t any questions, only some direction, and relatively little of that. Their disaster response was pretty atrocious by Perry¡¯s standards, but this was something that they¡¯d never had to deal with before. Whatever plans and strategies they had in place for emergencies, those plans didn¡¯t adapt to the bombing very well. He worked without pause, even when other people were eating food or resting their muscles. He didn¡¯t think to start counting how many people he¡¯d helped or saved until it was too late for him to have any real sense of it, though there was a chance that Marchand would be able to figure it out from audio data alone. Perry had the earpiece in, and the nanites on him, but he hadn¡¯t used either except to check in with Mette and make sure that she was okay. Six places in the city had been hit. None of them were strategic targets of any kind, but one of the impact sites had included a golden dome, which had been torn open and caused a surge of effluence before being shut down. Perry was pretty sure that the weapon couldn¡¯t be accurately targeted, because there were some reports of an explosion in the water that might have been from a failure to aim, but that was cold comfort to the people. When it seemed as though he¡¯d done everything that could be done, Perry slipped away, past the useless metal guards that had mostly just stood around looking imposing and waiting for a conventional attack that was obviously not coming. The rest of the work would be done by doctors, clean up crews, and eventually, construction and repair crews who would need to shore up some of the damaged buildings and pull others down that were too far gone. Some of that was done with lanterns, the material-projection sort that could layer on stone like a much more powerful spray foam. Mette was sitting on the bed when Perry came back. It was early in the morning, and she didn¡¯t look like she¡¯d slept. Her eyes were bleary and her hair was out of place, and she had a nugget of nanites that she was rolling around in her hands. ¡°Was any of that you?¡± she asked as soon as he came in. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°And it¡¯s not clear to me whether it¡¯s a thresholder thing. The nature of the weapon is unknown right now, but I think it¡¯s well within their level of understanding, especially if they¡¯ve been artificially limiting their level of technology. Probably magitech. I¡¯ve heard a lot of chatter, and so far, all anyone really knows is that Thirlwell was responsible.¡± ¡°Are you okay?¡± asked Mette. She was looking him over, and Perry knew that there wasn¡¯t a trace of dust on him, not a single scratch or sign of the considerable effort he¡¯d put in. ¡°Never better,¡± said Perry. Because of the second sphere, that was literally true ¡ª everything that he¡¯d done made him just a tiny bit stronger. ¡°My reserves are slightly depleted, but I wasn¡¯t found out.¡± It took him a moment to realize that he should ask too. ¡°How are you doing?¡± ¡°Not great,¡± said Mette. Her hands were folded in her lap. ¡°I was worried about you, worried that bombs would come down, didn¡¯t really know what to do, listened in on some conversations with March ¡­ the Natrix had a hard metal shell, it had weapons. I never realized how comforting that was. I could easily have died, Perry.¡± Perry considered that. ¡°You were in danger on the Natrix. There was almost constant danger, you were a single major mechanical failure away from death on most days as the city marched along. Heat on your tail, bugs coming in ¡­ but I can understand how this would be more difficult for you, more frightening, considering that there were so many unknowns. Is there anything you need from me?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°Maybe just ¡­ some compassion. Some care.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I thought you would be fine here on your own, after I checked in.¡± ¡°I was,¡± said Mette. ¡°We¡¯re just so alone. Even if we can fit in, we¡¯re not really fitting in, we¡¯re putting on masks and hiding our faces beneath them. I don¡¯t think I want to do that for the rest of my life.¡± ¡°I announced myself to your people,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s workable. I just don¡¯t think it¡¯s a good idea until you know the lay of the land.¡± ¡°We found you,¡± said Mette. ¡°Brigitta captured you.¡± ¡°I could have killed her,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I had really thought that laying low was the way to go, and worth killing someone whose only crime was shooting at an unknown, I could have destroyed her mech with nothing but my sword and skills ¡­ and my multimillion-dollar piece of advanced military hardware.¡± Some of the tension went out of Mette, and she gave him a little laugh. ¡°I do want to meet the baby thresholder. Soon, if we¡¯re leaving for Berus. Are we still?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe now more than ever. Letting this all shake out without our input or involvement ¡­ I guess maybe a portal could open up if the enemy thresholder dies of their own stupidity, but I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve heard of that happening.¡± Mette swallowed. ¡°And are we safe from those weapons, crossing the ocean?¡± ¡°I have no idea,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re going by blimp, by the way, mostly because it¡¯s faster to go east that way, following the currents.¡± ¡°Up in the sky,¡± said Mette, shaking her head. A giant crawling city was apparently less awe-inspiring than a relatively simple blimp. ¡°There¡¯s still so much to learn here.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll have time to learn it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Better to get in on the ground floor elsewhere.¡± He shifted from foot to foot. ¡°I¡¯m sorry if I haven¡¯t been taking care of you.¡± ¡°Not your responsibility.¡± said Mette, but she didn¡¯t seem to dispute that he¡¯d been somewhat distant. ¡°There¡¯s a whole world to explore out there, I just wish that we had been doing more of it together.¡± ¡°I would suggest that we go see a play and have a good dinner together,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I don¡¯t know how they¡¯re going to react, whether everything is going to be canceled or not. I think once we¡¯re in Berus, we might not have the same opportunities to kick back.¡± He thought about 9/11, and how long it had taken Broadway to open back up after that. He didn¡¯t know, and couldn¡¯t look it up, but he had to imagine that it had been at least a month. ¡°I¡¯d like that,¡± said Mette. ¡°But the shows are mostly based on wait times or lottery. It was one of the things that I checked. They¡¯re big on the performing arts, but we¡¯d be left with one of the smaller ones, if that was what we wanted to go with.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll figure something out,¡± said Perry. On impulse, he moved forward and hugged her. He was feeling awkward about it, about her, but she melted into him as though she¡¯d been wanting the physical connection and just hadn¡¯t wanted to ask for it. She rested her head against his chest and they stood there for a long time. Perry had resolved not to move until she did, but it was long enough that he was starting to feel uncomfortable. He was used to being alone, even after two years on Esperide, and had fallen right back into his old habits without really thinking about having a companion. Eventually Mette released him. Her eyes were wet, but she hadn¡¯t cried. He¡¯d been hoping that she would be content or satisfied, but she mostly seemed sad. Maybe coming to another world wasn¡¯t all it was cracked up to be. ¡°Tell you what,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think it¡¯s time you meet Nima.¡± ~~~~ They came to Nima¡¯s apartment building and Perry knocked on the door. Nima had told him where she lived, though he hadn¡¯t actually needed her to tell him, since he¡¯d scoped her out on the first day he¡¯d met her. ¡°Hey,¡± he said when she opened the door. She was in a loose wrap, wearing no top, just the necklace, and seeming unconcerned about it. Perry kept his eyes up. ¡°You okay?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± she said. ¡°Was this ¡­ I mean, the explosions, was that ¡­ ?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t think so.¡± Nima peered behind Perry, at Mette. ¡°Is this ¡­ your friend?¡± ¡°It is,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nima, this is Mette, Mette, this is Nima. We¡¯ll all be going on a trip together, but I¡¯m hoping that we can get to know each other first. We were going to go see a play, did you want to come with us?¡± They were, surprisingly, able to get into a play at one of the major playhouses. The plays were still going, and when it started, the lead actor had come out to give a special address to the audience about the bombings and the acts of aggression, and the importance of continuing on in times like this, not allowing their spirit to be overwhelmed or defeated. The theater was only half full though, which was why they¡¯d been able to get in so easily, and the mood was somewhat somber. The place was large, and dated back to before the revolution. Perry wasn¡¯t sure that it was the sort of thing their current society would ever make, given how large and well-made it was. The seating capacity had to be in the low thousands, and it was about as non-local as it got. According to the program he¡¯d been given, it was run by its own symboulion, and it was a part of the scrip economy, but admission was free and even the better balcony seats were given away by lottery rather than to those with scrip. They¡¯d had their pick of shows to go to, and had decided on one that Mette had heard good things about. It was a ¡®musical play¡¯, and almost as soon as it started, Perry realized that this wasn¡¯t the same as a musical, not as he had known them. Over the course of two hours, there were only three big musical numbers, but there was music throughout, and people often spoke as though they were going to break into song and then just ¡­ didn¡¯t. It took until the intermission for Perry to understand what he didn¡¯t particularly like about the play, aside from the lack of music, the cultural references and jokes that were going over his head, and probably a few other things: the play was, for lack of a better term, very ¡®woke¡¯. There were seven races in this world, all with their own quirks, and the more Perry watched, the more he was sure that whoever had written the play and put everything together had done it with an eye toward signaling certain things to the audience and putting up a careful front that conformed to the culture rather than actually trying to say something. Each of the seven races had their own main character, which made the cast cluttered, and there were parts of the dialog that felt too didactic, like the writer was trying to make a point, or like each person was trying to stand in for something greater than them, and not in a good way. There were parts that felt like a ¡®very special episode¡¯ where the characters learned about things along with the audience, and Perry kept wondering who in the audience would actually learn anything from this ¡ª aside from him, Mette, and the other person he¡¯d invited, Nima. Mette and Nima were sitting beside each other and talking in whispers throughout the entire performance, which Perry found a little irritating, and probably would have found more irritating if they had many people around them. He could hear them easily, but it was difficult for them to carry on a group conversation, so he mostly focused his attention on the show. The intermission happened while one of the main characters played the flute, and caught Perry completely by surprise given that it felt like a lead in to some kind of musical number. Instead, the way that they handled intermissions, either in general or for this one musical play, was to have it be diegetic. The actor was still in character, and was acting as he played the flute, a jaunty little traveling song, but everyone rose from their seats almost as soon as he started playing, as though they knew that this was just to signal the passing of time. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. ¡°It was an interesting take on elven metamorphoses,¡± said Mette as she stood and stretched. ¡°Was it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I thought it was,¡± she shrugged. ¡°Was it not?¡± ¡°There¡¯s a kind of voice that people use when they¡¯re trying to gently explain things to you, and it was soaked with that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even if I hadn¡¯t heard that particular line of conversation before, having an elf explain his metamorphosis process to a human like that grates on the nerves.¡± ¡°Hrm,¡± said Nima. ¡°I liked it.¡± Perry shrugged. ¡°It might be because it¡¯s an older play, but they¡¯re not cutting close to the bone. There are hot button issues that they¡¯re avoiding, and I can see why they would want to, but ¡­ the big thing with the elves right now is that they almost universally prefer a longer metamorphosis period, sometimes as long as a decade. That doesn¡¯t happen naturally, it needs to be induced, and induction has a long and unpleasant history for the elves, since not only was it used by the very wealthy, it was also used against the poor, making their metamorphosis short. So the problem now is that the elves want their inductions, and are trying to position it as a fundamental right like clothing or food, but it¡¯s everyone else who would have to metaphorically foot the bill for that.¡± Mette looked somewhat amused. ¡°And you think that should be in this play?¡± ¡°I think it¡¯s the sort of stuff that¡¯s interesting,¡± said Perry. ¡°This was just ¡­ ¡®human gets extremely basic metamorphosis explanation and is enlightened¡¯. I don¡¯t know who it¡¯s for. If they wanted to have a dialog about metamorphosis, I would appreciate it coming from some other, more interesting angle.¡± ¡°Well,¡± said Mette. She placed her hand on Perry¡¯s knee. ¡°I need to use the bathroom, do you think I still have time?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a long intermission,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s food in the lobby, which is where most people went.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll come with you,¡± said Nima. Perry watched them go, then turned back to the stage where the lead actor was still playing the flute. He would be up there the whole time, pretending to be on a journey that was taking place within the narrative. It seemed like a terrible job, playing a flute while people talked in the audience or left to go have their necessities fulfilled, but Perry made some comparison in his mind to lounge singers. That made it seem worse, and he didn¡¯t really know why the role of intermission player wasn¡¯t given to someone else while the lead rested. Maybe it was a prestige thing. A short man slipped into the seat next to Perry. He was human with a short haircut that didn¡¯t seem to be particularly in style. ¡°I overheard some of what you said,¡± he nodded. ¡°Seems to be a running theme in this city,¡± said Perry. There was nothing all that special about the man, except that he was a bit short. He had an earring in one ear and a shirt and pants that were clearly library stock. Some people went with embellishments on the things that they owned outright, and mending and remending clothes seemed to be a deliberate part of the culture. ¡°Sorry if anything I said was, ah ¡­ offensive.¡± ¡°An opinion can¡¯t offend,¡± said the man, which in Perry¡¯s opinion was a dirty lie. ¡°I did have a question though.¡± ¡°Go ahead,¡± said Perry. He was mentally reviewing the conversation, trying to see whether he¡¯d been too loose with his language, giving himself away. He was pretty sure that most of it could be explained by him being from another country. ¡°What would you put in its place?¡± the man asked. ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not a writer, I just know this sort of thing when I see it. It feels like being talked down to, like I¡¯m some imbecile that needs a basic cultural lesson rather than someone looking to be entertained and enlightened by what¡¯s on stage.¡± ¡°That¡¯s what I¡¯m asking, what would enlighten you?¡± asked the man. ¡°It¡¯s a matter of essential conflict,¡± said Perry. ¡°There is none. It¡¯s a human having some misunderstanding about the elf, and the elf explaining things, and unless they¡¯re going to turn it around in the second act, that¡¯s it. It doesn¡¯t serve a narrative purpose, it serves a cultural purpose, a social purpose. Maybe some people like that, but it¡¯s not what I think art is supposed to be for. Or at least, it¡¯s not the art that I like.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said the man. ¡°I can see what you mean. You would want a story where there¡¯s some conflict over the metamorphosis that doesn¡¯t get resolved in simple conversation and explanation.¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe a romance.¡± ¡°Oh, they¡¯d never do a romance,¡± said the man. ¡°It¡¯s too fraught. There used to be a whole genre of cross-racial romances, but it was premised on the thrill of the forbidden, fish out of water, the exoticism of the other ¡ª and a single widely-read essay crystalized a distaste for that sort of thing, at least around these parts. Now they do the romances differently, or not at all. It¡¯s a form of cowardice particular to our time.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. He wasn¡¯t sure that he particularly liked this man, or the conversation. The man had a decade on him, maybe two, and there was something off about him, beyond the way he¡¯d sat down beside a stranger. When Perry thought about it, maybe there was a problem with trying to milk human-elf relationships for drama. The man held out his hand. ¡°Dirk Gibbons,¡± he said. ¡°Peregrin Holzmann,¡± said Perry, reluctantly shaking the offered hand. ¡°You¡¯re not from around here,¡± said Dirk. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m still learning the culture. But with what¡¯s been going on, I¡¯m on a blimp back to Berus in the next few days, so learning the culture will have to be put on hold.¡± ¡°Learning the culture is a lifelong struggle,¡± said Dirk. ¡°That¡¯s why we say ¡®that¡¯s the culture¡¯. It¡¯s not a truism, it¡¯s a way of reinforcing, of learning, not just for the people who hear it, but those who say it.¡± His gaze was intense. ¡°I¡¯ll keep that in mind,¡± said Perry. Dirk¡¯s cheek twitched slightly. ¡°Can I cut to the chase?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t know there was a chase,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m with the Inter-Cooperative Global Command Authority,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m local though, one of a few of us in the city. We keep an eye out for people coming in from the kingdoms.¡± ¡°I see,¡± said Perry. His first thought was what the fight would be like. There would be men in magical masks, and maybe some lanterns that would burn through his skin or freeze him in place, so his second thought was toward what running away would look like. The power armor had been stuffed into the shelfspace, so that wasn¡¯t a problem, and there was nothing back at the house that they would need to go back for. ¡°So far as I can tell, you just showed up here one day,¡± said Dirk. ¡°And you followed me to the play?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Intermission is just about over, if you wanted to take this outside.¡± Perry would have considerably more options outside, including reaching into shelfspace and grabbing his sword to simply fly away. ¡°I won¡¯t be long,¡± said Dirk. He held up a hand. ¡°You see, at first we thought that you were a spy from Berus or Thirlwell. We get them from time to time, we let them look around, poke at things, see how it¡¯s done, and sometimes, we try soft approaches to getting them onboard with the culture. We¡¯ve smuggled families out before. If you were from Berus, that would make you a spy without a nation, and if you were from Thirlwell, that would mean that the writing was on the wall. We weren¡¯t too concerned.¡± Perry stayed silent. If they thought he was a spy, that wasn¡¯t great, but he didn¡¯t know that it would be any better to be a guy that traveled between worlds. A spy would also probably keep his mouth shut, but if this was a planned out approach, Perry wanted to hear the rest of it. ¡°Yesterday was one of the worst days for this city in recorded history,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Not worse than the effluence choking us out, not worse than the tyranny of kings, but that wasn¡¯t the modern city, not the one we built for ourselves.¡± He cleared his throat. ¡°You helped out.¡± Perry gave a slow nod. ¡°Not just helped out,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I watched you move a three thousand pound chunk of marble to rescue a boy who¡¯d been trapped beneath it.¡± ¡°Just trying to do my part,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s the culture.¡± ¡°That kid you saved?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°He was my son.¡± ¡°I saved a lot of people,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t remember that one in particular, sorry.¡± People were pouring back into the theater, and the actor was doing something with the song, bringing it to some kind of conclusion after what felt like a very long set played to a disinterested audience. ¡°I don¡¯t think you had anything to do with the attack,¡± said Dirk. ¡°So far as we know, it was launched from a high-altitude blimp many miles away, and you were in the city, which means that there was a real risk that you would die, assuming that the attacks weren¡¯t directed. You haven¡¯t broken any laws, you saved the lives of maybe a hundred people, so we¡¯re square. But if you¡¯re going back to Berus, or Thirlwell, then there¡¯s still a score that this city needs to be settled.¡± His eyes were dark, and he wasn¡¯t moving as people came back in. ¡°You¡¯re trying to flip me,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know what you are,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I would take you in, if I thought that could be done cleanly. Right now, I¡¯d be content with you getting out of the city and going back to wherever you came from. But if there¡¯s a tiny chance that you can show the same compassion you showed today, then what we need, as a culture, is to know what the Last King has brewing, what¡¯s waiting for us, how we can defend against it. He would welcome someone from Berus with open arms.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know anything,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d help you if I could.¡± ¡°You helped when you saw that people needed help,¡± said Dirk. ¡°That¡¯s the culture.¡± He got up and looked down at Perry. ¡°I have an office, Northern Riverside neighborhood, you can ask around for directions if you need them.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not under arrest?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m trusting my gut on this one,¡± said Dirk. He gave Perry a toothy smile. ¡°You take care, and if you have an attack of conscience, come find me.¡± Mette and Nima came back shortly after that. They had been waiting in the aisle for the conversation to be done, and Mette had a worried look on her face. ¡°Everything okay?¡± she asked. ¡°My indiscretions were noticed,¡± said Perry. ¡°Turns out they do have a security service of some kind, though I¡¯ll be damned if I know how it works or where they¡¯re getting their information from.¡± ¡°Do we need to leave?¡± asked Mette. She was worried, gripping her dress slightly, and her eyebrows were drawn together. ¡°Are we ¡­ in trouble?¡± ¡°We apparently haven¡¯t done anything illegal,¡± said Perry. ¡°Aside from maybe not declaring ourselves when we crossed the border.¡± ¡°We should go,¡± said Mette. ¡°We¡¯ll stay, I think,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to see what happens with the show.¡± ¡°I thought you weren¡¯t enjoying it,¡± said Mette. Her eyes went to the exit. ¡°I¡¯m enjoying it in my own way,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think it reminded me too much of certain things from my own world, things that come into play when you have a huge society that cares a lot about how things appear. But if we go back home, all we¡¯d be doing would be burying our noses in some books and killing time until our blimp leaves.¡± ¡°That doesn¡¯t sound terrible,¡± said Nima. She didn¡¯t seem terribly pleased about potentially having her cover blown, but she was less concerned than Mette was. ¡°I think we should stay, finish out the play, then see where the night takes us.¡± The play had already mostly started, with what Nima was saying overlapping the first lines of dialog, and that pretty much made their choice for them. Perry¡¯s heart was no longer in the play though, and he found his mind going back to what Dirk had said, trying to wring some new meaning out of every word. If it was possible to track the comings and goings of people, Perry didn¡¯t think that was common knowledge, and it was entirely possible that they couldn¡¯t, that it was a bluff or maybe a lie. Dirk had seen him during rescue efforts, and could have just clung to him after that. Perry didn¡¯t know how to detect a tail, nor how to shake one, though he thought if he put some effort into it he could probably do it by scent. The play was pretty plotless, but it had slipped into drama. The first half that had been, if Perry was a judge, mostly a comedy with jokes that didn¡¯t land for him, but the second half had introduced a firm antagonist ¡ª a former king, and if Perry was any judge, a capitalist. The king had been given special leeway to keep some of his things during the transition of power, and had been given some compensatory scrip for others, but now he was using that wealth (as much wealth as a person could have in this society) to try to rebuild. The king was human, and that irked Perry a little bit, because whoever had written the play had been very cautious about how each of the races were portrayed. Humans were, for some reason, an acceptable target, and it hadn¡¯t escaped Perry¡¯s notice that all the moral lessons that the play was clearly trying to push had a human as the person doing the learning more often than not. He was definitely making the mistake of mapping Earth culture onto these people, but the impression felt unmistakable. The Natrix had been a monoculture, more or less, and the Great Arc had been a strange and alien place, but this world felt different. They had sandwiches. Ironically, it was as close to being on modern Earth as he¡¯d been since he¡¯d left Richter, and that might have been what was making him give this society such a critical eye. If he could have had Earth have a culture like this, that was something he¡¯d have done in a heartbeat, but he still wasn¡¯t sure that they didn¡¯t have some hidden underbelly or fatal flaw. Certainly this play wasn¡¯t them putting their best foot forward, but then again, it probably hadn¡¯t been written for someone from another world who was missing ninety percent of the context. The play finished with the evil king having been defeated by the coalition of heroes, their coordination and community values having defeated his doomsday device that he¡¯d hoped would make him money. It wasn¡¯t terrible. There were callbacks, payoffs to setups, and a decent enough speech at the end, but Perry was pretty sure that there was no grand lesson for him to learn from it. When they were filing out of the theater, he watched the people smiling and talking, and wondered whether this was a kind of comfort food to them. The play presented a simple moralistic story, one where people got along just by having things explained to each other, and evil was defeated in the end by something that was sort of the power of friendship. They had just been bombed though, with hundreds losing their lives in the process, maybe even more than a thousand. Maybe it was the last gasp of a dying model of governance, but he was pretty sure the Last King wasn¡¯t going to be defeated by anything short of someone bashing his face in with a sword. Chapter 101 - Observation Deck The blimp was awkwardly shaped, more like a floating pillow than a sphere or a cylinder. There were no internal supports, as the fabric of the outside was kept rigid on its own through magic. Advanced material science had made everything possible, and it was apparently light on the lantern use, at least for an eastward journey that was following the prevailing winds. Perry didn¡¯t trust it much, but the ships were in common use, and weren¡¯t filled with explosive gas. His mind went to the Hindenburg more than once. The trip would take a week, which was faster than by the sailing ships which mostly moved cargo. Perry and Mette were sharing a cabin, while Nima was in the hold. There were two hundred people aboard, which was right at the very limit of what the Caster could carry, and all of them were bound for Berus. It was an eclectic crew of volunteers and expats returning home, all to ¡®help¡¯ the former kingdom get settled into place by people who had relevant skills, who had run symboulions, and who understood the culture that they wanted to put into place. It was one part diplomatic corps, one part engineering corps, and one part random people who had some excuse to be going, the miscellaneous volunteers and those returning to a home they had left. ¡°It flies,¡± said Mette as she looked out their small porthole window. ¡°Can you imagine if we could have managed this on Esperide?¡± She looked over at Perry. ¡°No worry about bugs.¡± ¡°That would have been something,¡± said Perry. ¡°No farmlands though, and the weather never would have cooperated with you, not with the winds as they were.¡± ¡°It was an option we thought about,¡± said Mette. ¡°It¡¯s an engineer¡¯s disease, thinking about radically different ways to do it all.¡± She shivered slightly. They were only a handful of minutes into their flight, having just lifted off, and she was already finding the ground to be too far away. ¡°What do we do if it goes down?¡± ¡°There are some emergency craft that are much faster than this one,¡± said Perry. ¡°But they spew effluence. Presumably one of those would come to get us while we try to stay afloat. Though naturally, I would open the shelfspace for you and we could either wait there in safety or I could just spend a handful of hours flying back.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Mette. ¡°They don¡¯t have long-range communication though.¡± ¡°Not once we¡¯re out of eyeline of the city, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°But it¡¯s safe, so long as we don¡¯t run into a storm.¡± ¡°And if we do run into a storm?¡± asked Mette. The sky outside their window was pleasant, just a light breeze that was blowing puffy white clouds with flat bottoms along. ¡°Didn¡¯t you look this all up?¡± asked Perry. Mette went over and laid on the small bed they would be sharing with her hands folded together on her chest. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to make myself more nervous. You know, part of my job was trying to find the pain points before they became issues. But when I found those pain points, I was able to do something. I wasn¡¯t just at the mercy of a handsome stranger and some people whose skills I don¡¯t really trust.¡± ¡°This is routine,¡± said Perry, ignoring that she¡¯d called him handsome. Her flirting was different now that they were away from the Natrix, and she presumably wasn¡¯t doing it because she wanted his child. ¡°But ¡­ it¡¯s not about whether it¡¯s routine or not, it¡¯s about the lack of control. Right?¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Mette. She closed her eyes and winced. ¡°Is airsickness a thing?¡± ¡°It is,¡± said Perry. ¡°I would hold off on a diagnosis though. There are medicines that can help with it, some herbs and teas you can have. There¡¯s a mess hall, I can go try to find you something, if we want to go a prophylactic route.¡± ¡°I think I¡¯m just nervous,¡± said Mette, though she hadn¡¯t opened her eyes. ¡°It seems like it would be easy to shoot us down.¡± ¡°I was going to walk the decks,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll find Nima and see how she¡¯s doing, make sure I know the layout of this place.¡± ¡°Bring back tea,¡± said Mette. She laid down on the bed, then flipped herself over to bury her face in the pillow. ¡°You could also hop in the shelfspace if you need to,¡± said Perry. ¡°At least it¡¯s not going to be swaying.¡± ¡°Blegh,¡± said Mette. She was hard to hear, as her mouth was pressed against the fabric of the pillow. ¡°We¡¯ll see if I can stabilize. I keep getting worried about being trapped in there.¡± Perry shrugged and left her behind. The cabin they had was small, barely large enough for the two of them, but at least they had a cabin. The airship wasn¡¯t meant to carry this many people, and the main hold that was normally used for miscellaneous cargo had a bunch of hammocks put up in rows to fit more people. Perry would have thought that this was the sort of situation where those with scrip would pay to get the better places to bunk, but instead they¡¯d had people volunteer for the worse conditions, which filled up those spots in a hurry. That was the culture, and to Perry¡¯s surprise it actually worked. He still didn¡¯t really understand it. After the Natrix and the Crypt, the Caster was the third large vessel that Perry had traveled on, and he couldn''t help but make some comparisons. The Caster was relatively cramped, though nothing like the Crypt had been, and the fact that they were surrounded by open air, easily able to get a breeze just by stepping outside, meant that it felt like there was more room. It was also a work of art in its own right, not a utilitarian machine meant for transporting people from one place to another. Someone had gone to some effort to make sure that every one of the posts that held up the railings had a carving on it, and it couldn¡¯t have been a mold, because there were obvious differences in the carvings, giving it an eclectic feel. The inflated white pillow above the gondola moved only slightly in the winds that were pushing them along, but there were engines at the back, ¡®clean¡¯ lantern light ones that supposedly produced no effluence at all. They made a bit of popping sound that couldn¡¯t be heard from inside, and there was a long strut that kept them separated from the gondola, with a walkway that the pilots and technicians had to walk along. They were eight hundred feet above the ground, which felt extremely close in comparison to an airplane. Perry leaned over the railing and looked down at the waves below them. The water was clear enough to see the vague shapes of rocks far below. They would pick up speed later on, once some checks had been done, but they¡¯d never be going all that fast. It was faster than a sailing ship, but not that much faster. ¡°It¡¯s glorious,¡± said a man who¡¯d stepped up beside Perry. ¡°It is,¡± said Perry. The man was a dwarf, wearing heavy leathers with a fur collar. The exterior railing came up to just below his eyeline, so he was stooping slightly to look between the bars at the waves below. His brown beard was flapping in the breeze. ¡°Sorry, did you mean the ship or the waters?¡± ¡°Both,¡± said the dwarf. ¡°For different reasons.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°The oceans are healing,¡± said the dwarf. ¡°They didn¡¯t used to be that blue you see now.¡± ¡°What color were they?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh, still blue, just not that shade,¡± said the dwarf. ¡°Not this close to the city, anyway.¡± His eyes briefly went to the city they were leaving behind, then back down to the waters. ¡°The schools of fish have come back. There¡¯s a special mask you can make, a fisher¡¯s mask, that lets you see straight through the water as though it weren¡¯t even there. It was a tool of the fishermen, when there were still fishermen.¡± ¡°There are fishing boats now,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not like there were,¡± said the dwarf. He shook his head. ¡°You live short lives. This is all you¡¯ve known, isn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°I suppose that must be true,¡± said Perry. He folded his hands behind his back. ¡°There were trawlers, huge ships with nets that would pull in fish by the ton,¡± the dwarf said. ¡°It¡¯s almost difficult to imagine the scale of it, given what little there is now. They had thought the ocean endless, that nothing they took could possibly make even the slightest dent in the populations, even as the effluence was poisoning the waters, making the fish come up wrong. Every year, the trawlers that went out would be bigger, their nets straining against the haul. And when it became clear that they were taking too much, do you know what they did?¡± ¡°Bigger trawlers,¡± said Perry. ¡°Bigger nets.¡± The dwarf chuckled. ¡°Ah, so you do understand how it was in the old days. They had gotten used to their giant hauls, their ships puttering along spewing effluence into the waters, the obscene mountains of different fish pulled up, and they knew the ways of going big. They needed bigger trawlers and bigger nets to make up for what was now seen as a shortfall.¡± ¡°And the oceans emptied,¡± said Perry. He let out a little sigh. ¡°But that¡¯s not how it is now? The oceans are ¡­ restricted?¡± He hoped that was a question he wouldn¡¯t be expected to know the answer to. He hadn¡¯t overhead any conversations about it, or read about it in the papers. He¡¯d eaten many meals, but not much fish, and had never really thought about why. ¡°The oceans are a commons,¡± said the dwarf. ¡°We understand commons better now, how to manage them, but the biggest difference is that people don¡¯t feel the need to go out and take as much as they can. They know they¡¯ll be taken care of.¡± ¡°And that was all it took?¡± asked Perry. The dwarf looked out over the ocean. They had risen slightly, but weren¡¯t much higher than a skyscraper. Perry thought that it was almost a survivable fall for a regular person. He, of course, would have no problem with it if it came to that, though he didn¡¯t know what kind of creatures might be lurking down in the oceans. This was a world with dragons, or at least with historical dragons, and Perry took dragons seriously. For many days, Perry had thought of effluence as just being generic ¡®pollution¡¯, the kind of thing that would make people cough, dirty the walls and windows, and cause some sickness or tumors. He¡¯d thought that it was like in Teaguewater, essentially, industrialism run amok with the result being dingy, dirty sickness. And it was like that, most of the time, but effluence wasn¡¯t particulates released into the air, it was a sort of heightened magic, wild magic, and the effects, especially when concentrated, could be unpredictable. A man would crack an egg and find that it was filled with blood. A wooden beam that had been in place for a decade would come to life, growing a new branch that would burst out from beneath a layer of lacquer. There were mutations, especially in children, feathers along one arm or a toe that curled into a claw. Mostly, it was cancer and smog, but there were other effects, and Perry had spent most of the last day understanding the ins and outs of it. The effluence had created monsters that had stalked the city streets. Some of them had once been children, while others seemed to come from nowhere, possibly being birds or rats that had transformed. The kingdoms of the world had a solution to the problem, which was a guild of monster hunters, and as the problem grew, it was clear what needed to be done: more money for the monster hunters, better equipment, better training, all that sort of thing. And of course they were slowly realizing that it was the effluence that was choking out every major city of the world, and even spreading into the countryside where great machines were harvesting the crops, but it didn¡¯t seem like there was any way to stop it. There were monsters in the deep oceans, the product of effluence getting in the water and the water going down the rivers, spilling magic into the deeps. Some fish had died, along with corals and kelp beds, but others had been transformed, growing extra fins or sharp spines, and others had become the stuff of nightmares. They weren¡¯t kaiju, he didn¡¯t think, but it did sound suspiciously like the sort of thing that might create a Godzilla. It was apparently one of the after-effects of the Effluence Revolution that the world was still dealing with, though it was a distant problem for most, even those that lived in a coastal city. ¡°It took struggle,¡± said the dwarf. He spoke so long after Perry¡¯s question that Perry had forgotten that there was a question. The dwarf turned to Perry. ¡°You¡¯re from Berus, returning to your home.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. He had a whole backstory worked out, along with a lot of specific details that would be hard for anyone to call him on. ¡°The people of Kerry Coast City have forgotten,¡± said the dwarf. ¡°They¡¯ve only just now gotten a grim reminder after two decades without any kind of opposition. But people knowing that they¡¯ll be taken care of? That¡¯s not all it takes, no. It takes militant struggle, aching effort every day with barely a rest. It takes vigilance and education. That¡¯s what we¡¯re going to Berus for.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a symboulion in control now,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s what the news reports say.¡± ¡°That¡¯s where the struggle begins, not where it ends,¡± said the dwarf. ¡°Even once those with money and power have been brought down to the same level as everyone else, there will be old loyalties, old ideas, insidious promises and pernicious systems that will need to be destroyed. People will resist that, because those systems are what they know. They¡¯ll try to find some way to incorporate the old ways into the new, to water down the culture.¡± ¡°And ¡­ what¡¯s your role going to be?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh, I¡¯m only an engineer,¡± said the dwarf. He turned and stuck out a hand toward Perry. ¡°Moss Grumhill.¡± ¡°Perry Holzmann,¡± said Perry as he shook the hand. The dwarf¡¯s hands were fat and hairy, a workman¡¯s hands. ¡°I¡¯m not an engineer, not anything really. Just trying to do what I can.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Moss. ¡°I might have use of you then. They have dirty lanterns all over Berus, the biggest of them being out in the countryside, and those will need to be torn down as soon as possible, but it¡¯s not enough to tear it all down, it needs to be replaced.¡± He clucked his tongue and looked out over the blue water. It was getting deeper the further they got from the city, a richer blue with hidden depths. ¡°Prosperity is the name of the game, and we can only get so much of that by taking from those who had once been at the top.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know anything about engineering,¡± said Perry. ¡°My wife is an engineer, but she¡¯s a novice when it comes to lanterns.¡± Mette being his wife was something they had kept, mostly because it meant that they would have the privilege of privacy. This was the sort of opportunity that she would be looking for, the ground floor, access to materials, all that sort of thing. ¡°What did she work with?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Motive systems, structural integrity, making sure that one gear connected to the other,¡± said Perry. ¡°She tells me I should just tell people that I don¡¯t really know, but she also complains from time to time, and that¡¯s the kind of thing she complains about.¡± Mette wasn¡¯t an engineer by the standards of her own people, but she had grown up with an expectation that she would spend some time doing at least a bit of that work. Perry had come away convinced that engineering was some kind of inborn speciality of the people of Esperide, and even if it wasn¡¯t innate, it sure as hell got hammered into them by their circumstances. Moss nodded. ¡°And you?¡± Perry pursed his lips and Moss turned his head slightly to read the expression. ¡°When I lived in Berus, I was in the military. After that, I had some years on the oceans as a sailor. It¡¯s not a life that I¡¯d want to go back to.¡± Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°There will be a need for soldiers though,¡± said Moss with a slight nod. ¡°Especially with how it¡¯s gone there so far.¡± ¡°The assassination?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It makes it more difficult to accept,¡± said Moss. He sighed. ¡°This isn¡¯t my first time. I¡¯ve been all over the world: Myrhold, Gwyndolir, Isenland ¡­ all the same, all different. I don¡¯t know that Berus was ready for this. The public can be won over, but winning over the public isn¡¯t enough, not without sweeping cultural change. If they think we¡¯ve killed ¡®their¡¯ king, if we¡¯re seen as invaders, it could take a decade or more for it all to shake out.¡± ¡°And there¡¯s Thirlwell, sitting close by,¡± said Perry. ¡°Within sight, I¡¯ve heard, at least on a good day when the weather is clear.¡± ¡°The Last Kingdom,¡± said Moss. He shivered. ¡°It¡¯s the beginning of the end.¡± An elf woman came walking down the exterior walkway. Perry was really trying not to think of them as slutty elves, but this one was wearing almost nothing, going barefoot and with a swimsuit-style bottom whose strings were high up on her hips. She had a vest on, and only a vest, which wasn¡¯t even buttoned, and stopped a few inches above her shallow belly button. She had her hair up in a messy bun and large earrings. She was toned, with perfect skin, what Perry was coming to know as ¡®the elven way¡¯. She settled down next to Moss, familiarly close, and placed a hand on his shoulder. ¡°Will you be spending the whole trip out here?¡± ¡°No,¡± he said. His hand went up to his shoulder and rested on top of hers. ¡°I¡¯m just taking in the view and making friends.¡± ¡°Friends?¡± asked the elf. She looked over at Perry. ¡°And you haven¡¯t introduced me?¡± ¡°Perry, this is my wife, Velli. Velli, this is Perry, a young man from Berus returning home to help with getting the country settled.¡± He looked up at her. ¡°I was thinking that he might provide us with security.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Velli. She looked at Perry. ¡°Seems as though that¡¯s a lot of trust to put on the shoulders of someone you¡¯ve just met.¡± ¡°We have the whole trip to get to know each other,¡± said Moss. He scratched his chin. ¡°Perry, there¡¯s a strategy meeting in the dining room tonight, you and your wife should come.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°Mix and mingle? Or ¡­ actual strategy?¡± ¡°Both,¡± said Moss. ¡°It¡¯s nothing exclusive, nothing sensitive, none of the skullduggery of a Command Authority meeting, but if you¡¯re not just returning home to salvage what you can, if you want to put in the work, it would be for the best. It¡¯s not a symboulion per se, but better that we get to talking here than be running around with no clue when we get to our destination.¡± Perry hadn¡¯t stopped looking between the two of them since Velli had shown up. In theory, dating and marrying across species was a part of the culture, people were allowed to do what they liked, love was love, you were supposed to support and validate other people when they made a decision on a partner ¡­ but in practice there were a lot of questions, really so many questions. There was debate over whether dwarven ¡®pigwives¡¯ were capable of simple thoughts, let alone complex ones, and dwarven marriage was a radically different thing than human marriage, which raised all kinds of questions in Perry¡¯s mind about what this relationship was like, how it had bent and twisted itself when it crashed into old cultural expectations and older evolutionary imperatives. ¡°Aw, I think we shocked him,¡± said Velli. ¡°Never seen an elf and a dwarf together, have you?¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry. ¡°No.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t antagonize the boy,¡± said Moss with a sigh. ¡°Or do, and get it all out of your system before we land.¡± He glanced at Perry. ¡°Do you mind if she gets it out of her system?¡± ¡°I really didn¡¯t mean any offense,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s nothing that you need to explain to me, it¡¯s not your job to educate curious onlookers, if I really cared or thought that I had some questions that had interesting answers, I could just go find a book or a newspaper article or something. I really don¡¯t need to get into it.¡± These were old words, a de-escalation of the sort he¡¯d occasionally used on Earth. ¡°Ah, so he¡¯s a gentleman,¡± said Velli with a small laugh. ¡°Well that¡¯s less fun, and I¡¯ll save my ire for elsewhere.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t make me cage you,¡± said Moss. Perry couldn¡¯t tell whether that was a joke, or what level of joke it was. ¡°We need to be on our best behavior. As much as you despise who and what they are, we won¡¯t make things better by poking, prodding, or yelling. Do the casual air thing, the pleasant reveal, if you¡¯re going to do it at all.¡± ¡°We did the casual reveal with him,¡± said Velli, pointing at Perry. ¡°And he¡¯s very gracious, but I saw the look in his eyes. It wasn¡¯t a look of ¡®oh, this fine dwarf is married to an elf, I suppose it makes sense that¡¯s a normal thing, this is the culture, I am enlightened¡¯.¡± ¡°It¡¯s old, well-trod ground,¡± said Moss with an apologetic look toward Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not a problem,¡± said Perry. ¡°Old for the two of you, or old in general?¡± ¡°Both, I suppose,¡± said Moss. He rubbed his chin, then smoothed his wind-blown beard. ¡°Berus is the second-to-last stronghold of monarchical thinking and all that comes with it. There are few dwarves and few elves, and I would wager we¡¯ll have enough of a problem with them understanding the mere fact of our existence before getting into the admittedly unusual nature of our relationship.¡± ¡°Thinking that it¡¯s unusual is part of the problem,¡± said Velli. She folded her arms across her chest. ¡°Ranking relationships on their ¡®usualness¡¯ isn¡¯t the culture.¡± ¡°What do you think?¡± Moss asked Perry. ¡°How much trouble will this be?¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have no idea.¡± He desperately wanted to argue with Velli, but he would be doing it from a position of ignorance, which he never really enjoyed. He wanted to object that surely some pairings were rare if you were looking at the races of those involved, and it wasn¡¯t as though the races were fundamentally interchangeable, since there were huge material differences between them. ¡°I¡¯m not typical of those who come from Berus. The questions that I¡¯m content to keep to myself are just idle curiosity, nothing more, and there¡¯s a lot that I could adjust to given time, so long as I¡¯m given a chance to understand it. But as for the others ¡­ I think the fact that elves and dwarves are both rare might actually work in your favor.¡± ¡°How so?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just a theory, I guess. There¡¯s a process of othering that people do, which is an extension of ingroup and outgroup thinking ¡­ but there are near outgroups and far outgroups, and people tend to put their thought and emotion to the near outgroup. So I¡¯d suspect that they have lots of opinions on Thirlwell, which is as close to them as possible, but if the average person has never so much as seen a dwarf, then they won¡¯t have too much solidified in their minds. Maybe they¡¯ll have been taught to hate dwarves, maybe they¡¯ll have ideas, but you can come in and be obviously different, and that¡¯s an asset. If they hated dwarves that they saw every day, that they lived beside? That would be a higher hurdle.¡± They were both giving Perry a look, and Perry knew why, but Moss was the one to say it. ¡°You said you were a soldier and a sailor,¡± Moss said. ¡°But you must be a very curious sort of soldier.¡± ¡°True,¡± said Perry with a nod. ¡°I¡¯m more convinced than ever that it might do me well to keep you close,¡± said Moss. ¡°We¡¯ll talk more, but are you interested?¡± ¡°What would I be doing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Just guard work?¡± He didn¡¯t think that really appealed to him, given that the whole reason he was going over to Berus was to do some independent investigation and information gathering. On the other hand, being connected with an engineer would have its benefits. It would mean keeping this cover for longer than planned. ¡°Something like that,¡± said Moss. He looked up to Velli. ¡°Did you want to tell him what you do?¡± ¡°He didn¡¯t ask,¡± said Velli with a toothy smile. Perry was taking a dislike to her. She seemed to want to fight, and Perry wanted to fight her, but not in a way that would inspire camaraderie in either of them. ¡°You¡¯ll let me guess?¡± ¡°Oh, I would love that,¡± said Velli. She gestured to herself, and Perry thought it was impossible she didn¡¯t know what kind of impression the barely-dressed body had made on him. Elves preferred to be barely clothed, but there was something provocative about her clothes, and it felt like a cultural assault rather than a deliberate fashion choice ¡ª or maybe like the cultural assault was the fashion choice. Perry extended the thumb and first two fingers of his right hand, then gave them a slight twist, which was his signal to Marchand thanks to some nanites that were disguising themselves as freckles. ¡°She¡¯s a librarian, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She currently has no formal role, but in the past, and in past lives, she¡¯s worked as Head of Divestment under various Command Authorities, charged with redistribution of material wealth from the nobility and upper classes. It is likely that she will assume that title by dint of experience once we arrive in Berus.¡± Perry listened to this while pretending to be making a decision. Velli was still smiling at him. Forgetting for a moment the question of how a dwarf and elf of these varieties got together, they seemed rather different in terms of personality, and he wondered what had made them work in the long term. ¡°You¡¯re a housewife,¡± said Perry. She laughed. ¡°Oof, try again.¡± ¡°Dancer then,¡± said Perry. ¡°You do dance,¡± said Moss. ¡°Yes, but that¡¯s not my vocation, my calling,¡± said Velli. ¡°You¡¯ve said that you¡¯re called to the dance floor on many occasions,¡± said Moss. ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry, holding up a hand. ¡°Then forgive me, because I can¡¯t guess just from looking at you.¡± ¡°I¡¯m a librarian,¡± said Velli. She placed a hand on her chest as she said it, on the bare skin where the unbuttoned vest naturally parted. ¡°Don¡¯t tease,¡± said Moss. ¡°It¡¯s true,¡± said Velli. ¡°It is what I am.¡± ¡°You¡¯re in charge of Divestment,¡± said Perry. ¡°Redistribution of goods and properties back into the commons.¡± ¡°Aw, you knew the whole time?¡± asked Velli. ¡°That¡¯s no fun.¡± ¡°Would you believe that it was just a very good guess?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He knows more than he lets on,¡± said Velli. ¡°That¡¯s been obvious to me,¡± said Moss. He gave Perry a skeptical eye. ¡°You¡¯re not with a Command Authority, are you? You would have to tell us if you were.¡± ¡°Just a normal guy going about my normal guy business,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll see you at the meeting tonight, if you¡¯ll be there.¡± ¡°It¡¯s going to get cold as we pick up speed over the ocean,¡± said Moss. ¡°I should be heading in too. It was a pleasure.¡± Perry took his leave and went down to the airship¡¯s cafeteria. It was the largest space in the airship, aside from maybe the hold that had the hammocks in it, and there was plenty of food set out, along with large lanterns set on a table that were apparently for food. Perry went over to them and spent a moment looking at them. Each was large and metal, like the big jugs that dispensed coffee at cafeterias, and the whole thing had the vibe of a continental breakfast at a hotel. There were hand-written instructions on each of them along with some pictures of the process, but it took him a moment, because he wasn¡¯t entirely sure what the end result was supposed to be. ¡°It¡¯s not very good,¡± said a woman just behind Perry. He turned to look, and was mildly surprised to see that it was Nima. He had caught her scent, but not made the connection. ¡°It¡¯s not?¡± he asked. ¡°Lantern-made food has exactly one benefit, which is that it¡¯s compact,¡± she said. She was dressed in a more conservative outfit, though not quite as severe as she¡¯d worn on her second meeting. The shirt was blue and form-fitting, with long sleeves and an exposed midriff, and the skirt was gauzy white fabric that seemed more like a wrap than a proper garment. ¡°Show me?¡± asked Perry. Nima took a plate from the stack and went to one of the metal lanterns, pulling down a lever which caused it to start clicking. After twenty clicks, each about a second long, the lever shot back up and Nima pulled down a second lever, which opened up a compartment that let a white puck of what looked like tofu to slide out. She handed the plate to Perry. ¡°Huh,¡± he said. He looked at the other lanterns. ¡°This is what they all do?¡± ¡°There are different variants,¡± said Nima. She pointed at them one by one. ¡°Egg, meat, fruit, grains, vegetables.¡± ¡°But ¡­ not,¡± said Perry. He prodded the egg puck with a finger, and it jiggled like jello. ¡°The specific field is called lantern accumulation,¡± said Nima. ¡°Base things are easy, except for metals, but organics are very difficult. It¡¯s a marvel of engineering that it can even make something like this from such a compact form factor, and relatively ¡®clean¡¯. All the effluence gets crystallized on a strip of metal, which then has to be buried.¡± ¡°Better to have fresh food,¡± said Perry. ¡°Also, the five of these lanterns are feeding a hundred people for a week?¡± ¡°They¡¯re compact,¡± said Nima. ¡°A person eats five pounds of food a day, that¡¯s almost two tons of food for the whole ship, along with all the water, which is also made by lanterns. Eight pounds of water a day, that¡¯s another four tons. These? Maybe a pound of fuel per person for the entire trip.¡± ¡°You studied?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, I talked to someone who knew more than me,¡± said Nima. She was frowning at the lanterns. ¡°Which is studying, in a way. This was once how most people ate. The poor, anyway.¡± ¡°Ah, so it has two benefits,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s compact and cheap.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima. She looked at him with a frown. ¡°The huge lanterns that made food for the masses spewed effluence. They have a concept here, ¡®externalities¡¯, which compare not just the costs to a person or a company, but the costs to society.¡± Perry nodded as though this was a new concept for him. ¡°And when you sit down and add everything up, the damage to the various commons means that it¡¯s not worth it.¡± ¡°Maybe, maybe not,¡± said Nima. ¡°It¡¯s hard to get firm numbers. They don¡¯t seem to like firm numbers. I think it¡¯s some kind of scar left over from what the kingdoms had done.¡± ¡°You¡¯d think that a king would have incentive not to poison his own kingdom,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I guess the cost isn¡¯t borne by the kingdom, it¡¯s borne by the whole planet, by the oceans, the forests, the neighbors ¡­¡± He sighed. ¡°I think I¡¯m done with talking about this stuff for now. Mette¡¯s not doing well with the motion of the ship, I¡¯m getting her some tea. There¡¯s a meeting tonight, after dinner, where they¡¯ll discuss strategy in Berus. We should be there. I might be able to hook you up with a dwarf who¡¯s going to be working on getting some of the lanterns built in Berus when we get there.¡± Nima leaned closer and lowered her voice slightly. ¡°We¡¯re going after the kingkiller though, right?¡± ¡°We are,¡± said Perry. Nima looked around the room, which was mostly empty, given that it was still a few hours until lunch. ¡°Alright,¡± she said. ¡°Just be careful, okay? I¡¯ve got a bad feeling here. And ¡­ there are people who are actually from Berus on this flight. You might want to stay away from them.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m from the city of Kennis Cross, grew up in a row house by the Eber River. I was a sailor on the Laneman¡¯s Pride, settled down in Berus with my wife after the Radial Purge. If I can¡¯t practice the backstory now, when can I? This is the perfect time for it. And if they sniff me out, what does it matter? The reason I¡¯m lying is that I¡¯m a spy, that¡¯s all they¡¯ll think. None of this matters, not really.¡± ¡°You think that about everything?¡± asked Nima. ¡°The revolution we¡¯re landing into, the Last King, all of it?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°But we¡¯re thresholders, this isn¡¯t our fight. We can pick sides, but ultimately, we¡¯re moving on. It matters, it¡¯s important to these people and their lives, we do need to consider that, but in the long term, we¡¯re here for a reason, aren¡¯t we? And that reason isn¡¯t interfacing with the locals or having a deep cover that stands up to scrutiny. Everything on this airship is temporary.¡± ¡°There are about thirty men from Berus down in the hold,¡± said Nima. ¡°Just be careful, that¡¯s all I¡¯m saying.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°All men?¡± ¡°Two or three women,¡± said Nima. ¡°Humans, mostly, with just a few of the melekee.¡± She put her hands up like a rat¡¯s forepaws, in what had to be an offensive stereotype. ¡°They have their own cluster of people. They¡¯re who I¡¯d watch out for. They grilled me, and I¡¯m not claiming to be one of them.¡± ¡°They¡¯re not of the culture?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They say they are,¡± said Nima. ¡°But there¡¯s something hard about them.¡± ¡°Understood,¡± said Perry. ¡°Be at the meeting tonight. I¡¯ll make introductions. Now can you show me how to make some tea for Mette?¡± Lanterns made the water and also heated it, but the tea was shaved off of a large brick that was going to last the whole ship for the day. The mug had a little cover, and after making more ¡®loafs¡¯ and loading them onto a plate for Mette, Perry made his way back into the room. Mette was laying on the bed, unmoving, and Perry felt a bit of pity for her until he rubbed her back a bit and discovered that she had simply fallen asleep rather than spent her time lying there miserable. She gave an appreciative sound and turned slightly to look at him. ¡°I¡¯m feeling better,¡± she said. ¡°As soon as we picked up speed it wasn¡¯t making me sick anymore. I like it, actually. Feels like home.¡± ¡°I brought tea,¡± said Perry. ¡°And some loaf. We have a meeting tonight, and I think it would be good to prep for it. I¡¯ve been placing more nanites around the ship, so we can listen in on some conversations and not get blindsided.¡± ¡°You¡¯re worried?¡± asked Mette as she sat up and rubbed some sleep from her eyes. ¡°It¡¯s a prudent amount of worry,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was hoping that we could wait until we were in Berus to have to think about things tactically, but it seems like we should have started the moment we got on the ship.¡± Chapter 102 - Combustion, pt 1 Perry hadn¡¯t expected much of the meeting. He didn¡¯t expect much of any meeting, since meetings seemed to be the sort of thing that just multiplied for no reason unless they were kept tightly in check. The culture put a heavy emphasis on symboulions, which seemed to Perry to be meeting factories. Still, this meeting was essentially the only thing happening on the airship, and it had people who would be important, even if they were just one ship of a few, and not yet in close contact with the symboulion that had taken over Berus. Perry was somewhat surprised that they got right down to business, but it was less of a surprise when he considered that a lot of the people coming over were coming specifically because they had done this sort of thing before. What they were running wasn¡¯t some church-basement social group, it was a single piece of a complex social organism that was attempting to accomplish specific goals. They were very upfront about that from the start. ¡°We¡¯re coming in to stop the effluence, spread the culture, and get Berus to be on the same page as the rest of the world,¡± said Casper, a thin man with sharp teeth who was leading the meeting by general assent. At least some of this must have been decided beforehand, since there was no resistance, and fifty-some people had shown up for the meeting. ¡°To give credentials, I started in Shembol helping to organize some of their first symboulions, then went to Gwyndolir where I was part of their Transitional Command Authority, largely serving as mediator and arbitrator. For the last five years I¡¯ve mostly been with the Inter-Cooperative Global Command Authority, and I¡¯d gone to Kerry Coast City specifically in the hopes of making it to Berus before the king was deposed. Obviously there were unforeseen circumstances. We¡¯re here to talk about the conditions on the ground as we understand them, the general goals that we¡¯ll have ¡ª and that the Transition Symboulion is expected to have ¡ª and how to achieve them. By a show of hands, who has been a part of a transition effort before?¡± It felt like a forest of hands was going up around Perry, though when he actually counted, it was a slightly less intimidating three quarters. ¡°Alright,¡± said Casper. ¡°That¡¯s good. We¡¯ll do some coordination to get everyone up to speed, but I¡¯ll try to pitch to an audience that more or less understands what¡¯s going to happen ¡ª what¡¯s already happening, and given the speed of news, will have been ongoing for two weeks.¡± He had the smile of a man who just wanted to make sure that everyone understood everything they needed to know. If Perry hadn¡¯t just heard otherwise, he would have assumed that this was a high school teacher rather than some kind of community organizer. ¡°Berus is an island nation, or at least it is now. They used to have holdings, especially to the north, but those have all gained independence. We expect that to be the source of some bad feelings on their part, since those holdings enriched the people of Berus to varying degrees,¡± said Casper. ¡°All that is at least a dozen years in the past, which means that it should be out of the public consciousness, but kings have a way of holding onto old grudges, especially when it means that they can spin a story to their populace. Some people will hate us. By show of hands, who was involved in transition for any of the Lagarian countries?¡± Five hands went up around the room, and Casper nodded. ¡°That¡¯s good, because you¡¯ll have experience with Berus and how they do things, but it¡¯s bad, because it reinforces that we¡¯re outsiders who are responsible for perceived hardship. There are going to be all kinds of bumps in the road, and one of the things that it would be good for everyone to remember is that this isn¡¯t just a matter of getting things done, it¡¯s cultural inoculation and social labor. That¡¯s going to be hard, especially in the face of hostility, and if you haven¡¯t done this before, there will be hostility. Mostly, there will be uncertainty.¡± His eyes briefly met Perry¡¯s before he carried on. ¡°Berus is majority human, minority melekee and pennic, very very few of anything else,¡± said Casper. ¡°Legal separation of species was outlawed fifty years ago, but social and economic separation still exists, and from everything I¡¯ve heard, it¡¯s pretty bad, particularly for the pennic, who are isolated to their own enclaves within major cities and who will probably need the most help.¡± There were two groups of pennic in the room, shrimp-headed little guys, one group of them with pink shells and the other looking more gray. ¡°We¡¯re trying to solve everything for everybody, that¡¯s the culture, but it¡¯s a long road to integration and true equality. There are going to be public buildings that are hostile to the melekee that will need to be fixed, but that¡¯s a years-long problem, not a two weeks problem.¡± From what Perry knew, ¡®hostile¡¯ just meant that they were hard places for the melekee to get around, sometimes not even deliberately so. Perry listened, but part of his attention was on the audience rather than the speaker. He was looking at the hard faces of the men that Nima had mentioned, those that had been down in the hold with the lined up hammocks. Perry had gone down there to see where she was set up, but also to scatter some of his store of nanites and get a better view of what was going on. He had Marchand listening in on conversations, but so far there hadn¡¯t been much of note. Granted, they sometimes spoke in hushed whispers that Marchand couldn¡¯t make out without better coverage, but so far the only thing it seemed they might be guilty of was not being fully on-board with the culture. If they were foxes in the henhouse, they were quiet foxes. They were listening in on the strategy meeting. Some of them would surely get into positions of power in Berus, either sitting on a symboulion or being in charge of some of the work. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how that circle was going to get squared, but he hoped that someone somewhere had a plan for how to deal with bad actors. Symboulions were supposed to be community-driven, and that seemed like a real sticky problem if the community wasn¡¯t actually on your side. It wasn¡¯t something that Casper was addressing as they went through the ins and outs of what was waiting for them in Berus. The goal seemed to be on shutting down the lanterns and replacing them with something that could sustain the community without creating all sorts of problems, apparently a tall ask. The other main goal was turning privately held locations and collections into commons as much as possible. Transition could be rough, apparently, but Casper had answers, and they had done it many times before in a variety of different cultures. ¡°We¡¯re going to break for side conversations,¡± said Casper. ¡°We have a week on this ship, and as much as I enjoy the view, I want us to have some connections and internal community before we land. Stretch those muscles and get ready for long, arduous work.¡± People got up from their seats, and Perry wandered a bit with Mette in step behind him. ¡°This is a nightmare,¡± she said in a low voice. ¡°Too many people you don¡¯t know?¡± asked Perry, which was sort of how he was feeling. What Perry really wanted was a social HUD that would tell him everyone¡¯s name and position. He had some hope for picking that up in some future world, but for now it was just a sea of people and an occasional nudge from Marchand, who was monitoring the situation from the room. ¡°No, it¡¯s not that,¡± said Mette. ¡°It¡¯s just ¡­ too little structure. I¡¯ve run projects on this scale, trying to do it without leadership is like trying to have a fistfight with one hand tied behind your back.¡± ¡°I think I could swing that,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I had to.¡± ¡°Well, sure,¡± said Mette. ¡°But they¡¯re going up against what sounds like a lot. That was the undercurrent, right? That this is all a bit half-baked, coming because someone murdered the king rather than because it was actually the right time? Perry, I¡¯ve had to do things like this, go in half-assed when there wasn¡¯t any other option. It¡¯s always a shitshow. But there we had someone who was responsible, not a collective that could dodge responsibility.¡± She was keeping her voice low, but the effect was that she was nearly hissing at his back. ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry. He had worked his way through the people and found a small group that was talking. Symboulions were big on ¡®side conversations¡¯, places where people could chat, and while this wasn¡¯t a proper symboulion, they were playing by some of the same rules. ¡°You two are new to transition?¡± asked an elven man who was smiling a little more than necessary. He was bare-chested, in the elven way, not bothered by the slight chill that permeated the airship. His physique was enviable, with every muscle clearly defined. There was a whole load of discourse about elves and their bodies, some of which Perry had been reading through after having met Moss¡¯s wife. Elves were known to be more sexual than other species, and this had caused no small amount of friction, not only because of ¡®prudery¡¯, but because some people assumed that elves should be ¡®available¡¯. It was old hat though, something that everyone had already gotten fairly sick of, at least if Perry was any judge. ¡°We¡¯re from Berus,¡± said Perry. ¡°This will be our first and last.¡± ¡°You understand the culture?¡± asked the elf, looking Perry up and down. ¡°Fairly well, I think,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe not well enough to teach it, but doing the work, that¡¯s the culture.¡± He shrugged as though it were nothing. In reality, he¡¯d been cramming hard to understand the ins and outs, partly out of pure curiosity, but also to help him fit in slightly better. The elf smiled. One of the humans spoke up. ¡°You had time to sample it in Kerry Coast City?¡± From posture alone he was a serious man, with his arms crossed. Perry might have pegged him as one of the men from Berus who was returning home even without having insider information, but March was whispering in Perry¡¯s ear. ¡°I had enough,¡± said Perry. ¡°No one starving, people clothed, housing for all. It¡¯s something that Berus could benefit from.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said the man, a very noncommittal noise from someone who had just sat through a meeting about how to achieve exactly that in Berus. ¡°I¡¯m not looking forward to the shock,¡± said a human woman with a few strands of pink hair. Perry almost thought she wouldn¡¯t have looked out of place in downtown Portland. ¡°It feels like greed.¡± ¡°What does?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a mindset,¡± she said, seeming happy for the opening. ¡°It¡¯s a mindset not necessarily of scarcity, but of want, a way of hoarding. It¡¯s not greed, but it feels like greed, and it¡¯s difficult to root out.¡± ¡°You would think that you could make enough food for all the people and that would be enough,¡± said the elf. ¡°But it¡¯s not. You set up a restaurant and they¡¯ll try to take as much as they possibly can, stuffing it into their bags and gorging themselves.¡± He shook his head. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry, holding up a hand. ¡°Isn¡¯t the common rejoinder to that, ¡®so what?¡¯¡± ¡°Taking food home isn¡¯t a problem,¡± said the woman. ¡°Eating a lot isn¡¯t a problem. The problem is hoarding behavior, taking too much from the commons because of feelings of insecurity. In the case of food, I¡¯ve seen it happen that people will take three extra meals home, then let it all go to waste because they couldn¡¯t eat it fast enough. Making enough food for everyone is a difficult problem, but it¡¯s one that has well-tested solutions. Making enough food for everyone and extra food that will spoil because people aren¡¯t being sensible about their needs, wasting food, that just makes the problem more difficult. Even a robust commons can be destroyed without the culture to back it up.¡± ¡°It¡¯s taken as a given that there will be enough food?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There are ships bringing in food from all over,¡± said Casper, who had been making the rounds. ¡°I¡¯m not particularly worried about it, but it¡¯ll be one of the first things the domes will be making, and there¡¯s a strong chance that we might have to keep a lantern or two going just to make sure that no one starves.¡± He seemed apologetic. ¡°The hoarding behavior is a serious problem, especially for people who have spent any amount of time in starvation. It¡¯s a mindset that needs to be broken, and sometimes it¡¯s a generational one.¡± ¡°Meaning?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The problem is solved by people dying,¡± said Mette. She was standing close to Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not something that we want,¡± said Casper. ¡°But yes, some people have been scarred in various ways, and a clean slate is easier. The children who grow up having not known hunger think that their parents are weird for needing a full larder.¡± ¡°Do you do mitigation?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Place limits on what people take, give them things that will last for a long time?¡± ¡°Some,¡± said Casper. ¡°It depends on the specifics. I¡¯m only vaguely familiar with the cuisine of Berus, but if there¡¯s something we could produce that would help with the feeling of food insecurity, what would that be?¡± ¡°Charker loaf,¡± said Perry at a very slight delay as Marchand whispered in his ear. ¡°It¡¯s not a prized food, but it keeps for at least a year, maybe more.¡± ¡°The big problem is that the libraries will get cleaned out,¡± said the woman. ¡°You need education first, but education is only half the battle, because people aren¡¯t going to learn how to treat a commons unless they can use a commons and develop the culture, which isn¡¯t going to happen if the commons gets trashed.¡± ¡°It¡¯s difficult, Rose,¡± said Casper, placing his hand on the woman¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Watch the language when we get there.¡± ¡°It¡¯s attitude more than language,¡± said the woman. ¡°But I¡¯ll watch it, yes.¡± Perry kept his cover intact over another thirty minutes of conversation. The man who claimed to be from Berus didn¡¯t interact with him at all in their small group, not even to ask some of the questions that Perry was prepared for, which seemed odd. They were, in theory, countrymen from a country that was largely isolationist and in a significant amount of trouble. If it had been Perry, he¡¯d have tried to strike up a conversation. Maybe the unpleasant vibes were because of the trouble, the fallen king and dismantled monarchy, or the attacks on Kerry Coast City that seemed to promise a war between Berus and Thirlwell. Still, Perry couldn¡¯t help but read hostility in the man¡¯s face. Moss and Velli got their introductions to Mette and Nima. Moss grilled them both, and seemed satisfied by the answers, though it was clear that he considered them to be useful apprentices rather than equals. ¡°We¡¯ll mostly be out in the countryside, where the largest lanterns are,¡± said Moss. ¡°There are half-measures to take, and some of it is manual labor that we can get untrained volunteers to do, but other parts are more complicated, and will need someone who has some relevant skills. From going over the ship, it seems as though I¡¯m one of the few who can get it done, which is a problem I¡¯d like to fix. I can go over some of the basics while we¡¯re waiting for the trip to finish, but we¡¯ll almost certainly depend on materials being shipped over for construction of the first of the domes.¡± ¡°Whatever we can do to help,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯m glad there¡¯s someone in charge.¡± ¡°Only by dint of necessity,¡± said Moss. ¡°And I should warn you that the places we¡¯ll be working will be thick with effluence. It¡¯s more danger than you¡¯d ever have had in Kerry Coast City.¡± You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. When the side conversations were finished, Casper got up in front of the group and said some parting words, some of which were directed at things that had been brought up in private conversation. He underscored that being understanding of the people of Berus was vital, and that meeting them with empathy was going to be a sometimes-difficult task that would nevertheless yield great rewards. He ended by saying that private conversation was a better tool than discussing things in large groups with a leader. Perry didn¡¯t really feel that was true, but their society did seem to work somehow. Nima came back to their room with them, mostly for some private conversation of their own. ¡°I liked Moss,¡± said Mette. ¡°He was forthright, and he¡¯s willing to take a command position. I¡¯ve known some very competent engineers who were useless when it came to management.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not a dig at Brigitta, I hope?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It wasn¡¯t her area of expertise,¡± said Mette. ¡°It¡¯s a different skill set. Perry, do you think this is safe?¡± ¡°Safe how?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean, the answer is no, I don¡¯t think it¡¯s safe, but what¡¯s your biggest worry here?¡± ¡°Mobs,¡± said Nima. Their cabin wasn¡¯t very large, so Nima was resting her back against the door just to get some extra room. ¡°I¡¯m worried about a resistance movement,¡± said Mette. ¡°If we¡¯re helping with a large project ¡­ that seems like something that someone might want to attack.¡± ¡°You have me,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not sure how I would stack up against their military, but against lone individuals, I¡¯d bet on myself.¡± ¡°It won¡¯t be lone individuals though, will it?¡± asked Mette. ¡°It¡¯ll be pieces of their military. There are all kinds of police and soldiers that have been trained, and some of them will have stolen tools and equipment.¡± She placed her hand on her forehead. ¡°I should have stayed behind.¡± ¡°And miss my sparkling conversation?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I am feeling like this is going to be difficult,¡± said Nima. ¡°Helping out people would be one thing, but ¡­ being an elf? Someone for them to hate?¡± ¡°You¡¯re not even really an elf as they know them,¡± said Perry. ¡°That should make things easier, right?¡± ¡°Should it?¡± asked Nima. ¡°The insults won¡¯t land,¡± said Perry. ¡°The cultural connections aren¡¯t there for you. They¡¯re not stereotypes that you¡¯ve grown up with your whole life.¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Nima, though she was clearly not convinced. ¡°We should get some sleep,¡± said Perry. ¡°Keep an eye out on the men from Berus. I didn¡¯t like the look of them, and if they¡¯re coming back to the country to restore the monarchy, I want to know about it.¡± ¡°It wouldn¡¯t really be our business, would it?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I mean, wouldn¡¯t it be better handled by the locals? What are you going to do, anyway?¡± ¡°Perry could stop them single-handedly,¡± said Mette. ¡°You¡¯ve never seen him fight, have you?¡± ¡°How would I have?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Was he fighting in the city?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t tell her about the video,¡± said Perry. He let out a sigh. ¡°Look, I¡¯ve held back, you don¡¯t know what I can do, and unfortunately that means that you don¡¯t understand the scope of what the other thresholder can do.¡± ¡°And it¡¯s enough to take on an army?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Alright, here.¡± He went to the storage space and opened it up, where the power armor was laid out so that Marchand could be out with all his processing power devoted to monitoring the ship. Perry grabbed the helmet and handed it to Nima. ¡°What is this?¡± she asked. ¡°Put it on,¡± said Perry. Nima did as she was asked and slipped the helmet on. ¡°It¡¯s crushing my ears,¡± she complained. She also looked a little stupid wearing a large helmet on top of her slender frame, but Perry was polite enough not to mention that. ¡°March, show her the sizzle reel,¡± said Perry. ¡°Greatest hits, don¡¯t hold back.¡± ¡°With embellishments, sir?¡± asked Marchand, his voice coming from the helmet on Nima¡¯s head. She started at the sound. ¡°Minor embellishments,¡± said Perry. ¡°Reconstruct if that allows a better angle and some understanding of what was actually happening.¡± Because Nima wasn¡¯t wearing the rest of the armor, the sounds could be heard faintly while she watched what Marchand was showing her. Perry sat silently with his arms folded. He was at least partly testing out what kind of impact this would make, because he had thought there was some need to have something that would demonstrate his accomplishments. There was a television in the shelfspace, one that he¡¯d stolen from the Natrix during his brief respite there in the time when he¡¯d had the ring and hadn¡¯t been under an enormous time crunch. He didn¡¯t want to play that hand yet though. The ¡®sizzle reel¡¯ was six minutes long. It showed a bunch of fights out of context, sometimes with a few seconds before each of them just to establish what had been going on. Marchand didn¡¯t have footage of everything, but he had enough to create something impressive. It crossed worlds, changing between them without much warning, and Perry could make out only a few spoken lines. It was still a work in progress, something that they were going to have to spend more time on. When Nima was finished, she took the helmet off and slowly handed it to Perry. Her face had gone pale, though the tips of her ears were red where they¡¯d been uncomfortably pressed up against the inside of the helmet. ¡°How many people have you killed?¡± she asked. Perry shrugged. ¡°Impossible to say. Sometimes you stab someone and don¡¯t ever find out whether it was a mortal wound or not.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve killed one,¡± said Nima. Her hands were trembling as she wiped a bit of sweat away from her forehead. ¡°That was ¡­ why did you show that to me?¡± ¡°So you understand what we¡¯re up against,¡± said Perry. ¡°So you understand what it might be like once we find the other thresholder.¡± ¡°If you had shown me that in the city, I don¡¯t think I would have come with you,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯m not ¡ª I¡¯m not cut out for this. I can¡¯t do that, I could never do that.¡± ¡°You said you won your last world,¡± said Perry. ¡°That was the man you killed.¡± ¡°A man,¡± said Nima. ¡°One man. And that was different, I wasn¡¯t cutting through dozens of people.¡± She was probably referring to the orcs, which Perry thought was a bit different, because that was a matter of war. ¡°If you¡¯re my ally, then whoever is out there waiting for us is going to be stronger than me,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re almost certainly not going to be reluctant to kill.¡± Nima shook her head slightly. ¡°I need to think about this. Give me a moment.¡± ¡°Take the night,¡± said Perry with a nod. ¡°I just need you to understand what we might be walking into. It might be worse than anything these people fighting amongst themselves could come up with, worse than bombs being dropped on the city, worse than demons in the streets.¡± ¡°Why me?¡± asked Nima. ¡°You went through the portal,¡± said Perry. Nima nodded glumly. She left without another word. ¡°Was that the intent of the sizzle reel?¡± asked Mette once Nima had gone. ¡°She needs to see what I can do,¡± said Perry. ¡°She needs at least a taste of what she¡¯s in for. She¡¯s painfully unready, and she¡¯s my ally here.¡± ¡°Just so you know, I¡¯m not very ready either,¡± said Mette. ¡°You¡¯ll do fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°No one is going to ask you to fight.¡± ¡°They¡¯re not?¡± asked Mette. She had raised an eyebrow. ¡°Because it seems like if I stick around with you, the fighting is inevitable, and I¡¯m not going to be a hostage, not again.¡± ¡°That¡¯s the spirit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ha ha,¡± said Mette. She gave him a pout, which lasted for only a moment. She looked over at the bed. ¡°Not as much room as in the apartment.¡± ¡°If you need to, there¡¯s the shelfspace,¡± said Perry. He had moved a bed and a couch into it, creating a little living area, though he didn¡¯t want to be there long term. There was also the issue of the ring, which wouldn¡¯t move with the airship if he closed the aperture entirely, but the easy solution was to just leave it open a crack. Getting stranded in the ocean wouldn¡¯t be that much of a problem, but it would be annoying. ¡°Do you find Nima attractive?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve seen an unattractive elf yet. She¡¯s not quite an elf like they are, but outwardly she fits in.¡± ¡°Do you find me attractive?¡± asked Mette. Perry looked at her. She was on the bed, and had laid herself out. She was in shape, for an engineer, and didn¡¯t really look like she¡¯d had four children. She wasn¡¯t much older than him. She didn¡¯t compare to any elf in terms of sheer hotness, but he¡¯d seen plenty of her flirtation over the years they¡¯d known each other, and she did have her appeal. It was a sweatpants-in-the-morning appeal, a drinking-coffee-while-looking-at-a-computer-screen appeal. Mette was indeed the sort of woman he¡¯d have gone for back on Earth, and she wasn¡¯t really that exceptional. ¡°If this is all some very roundabout way to get pregnant for the good of the Natrix, I would almost respect it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I know you do pair-bonding on your Earth,¡± said Mette. ¡°Is this about Brigitta?¡± ¡°It¡¯s about birth control,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not a monk, but ¡ª¡± ¡°Brigittta made that very clear,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t want you to get pregnant,¡± said Perry. ¡°Because I don¡¯t want to leave a child behind. I mean technically we could bring a child along with us, but that would be too dangerous and ¡ª look, if all you wanted was a bit of fun, sure, but it would have to be the kind of fun that doesn¡¯t risk a pregnancy.¡± ¡°Nanite condom,¡± Mette said without any pause whatsoever. ¡°I¡¯m not really looking for a girlfriend at the moment,¡± said Perry as Mette unbuttoned her blouse. ¡°I don¡¯t even know what a girlfriend is,¡± said Mette. ~~~~ She talked a lot after, though her talking slowed down as she drifted off to sleep, and she ended in mid-sentence. She had a lot of thoughts about loneliness and connection, and it really did seem to Perry like she hadn¡¯t meant it as a bit of fun. At the same time, he couldn¡¯t deny that it had instantly erased a good amount of internal stress for him. Perry was awakened by a painful sound coming from his ear. He realized after a moment that he¡¯d forgotten to take the earbud out before he fell asleep, then as awareness returned to him, he realized that didn¡¯t explain the noise ¡ª which stopped almost as soon as he blinked himself away. ¡°Sir, I thought you should know that the men you asked me to keep a special eye on are attempting to take over the airship,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What?¡± asked Perry, still blinking. Mette was beside him, and he removed her arm from his chest, then carefully extracted himself from the bed. He started getting dressed as Marchand spoke. ¡°Their plan appears to involve using a variety of weapons to take over the engine room of the airship,¡± said Marchand. ¡°As soon as you have your helmet on, I¡¯ll show you a map, but it would suffice to say that this would create a significant problem. I am unclear on their plan of action following their takeover, but they¡¯ve stolen the lanterns from the mess.¡± ¡°Casualties so far?¡± asked Perry. ¡°None, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They¡¯re still on the move. They plan to kill the crew of the airship and deal with everyone else later, though from what I gather, this is likely to involve either lethal solutions or hostage-taking.¡± ¡°There are two hundred people,¡± said Perry. He grabbed the helmet from storage. ¡°What are their numbers?¡± ¡°Thirty-six, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Their weapons are mostly knives, but a third of them have those magical masks, which seem as though they might be quite worrisome to deal with.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. With the helmet on, he was getting a full readout of what Marchand knew, which was mostly that offensive action was taking place now. The crew area was connected to the main cabins by a long walkway, and they were moving along it. ¡°No time for armor then.¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I would suggest that in the future you simply sleep armored, but I fear that would conflict with your activities.¡± Perry glanced at the bed. ¡°Wake Mette, I¡¯m going to go stop some terrorists.¡± ¡°Sir, I believe these would be better classified as enemy combatants,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Stay in my ear, tell me where to go,¡± said Perry. He left the room without having bothered to put a shirt on. They had knives, but he wasn¡¯t all that worried about getting stabbed. He knew his worth against regular guys, even if they were regular guys with a fair amount of training. If they had guns, he might be a little worried, because deflecting a bullet with a sword was difficult to do. The masks were something else though, and those maybe called for getting armored and shooting them dead, but putting on the armor took time that Perry really didn¡¯t think he had, not if he wanted to minimize loss of life. The Caster had long central corridors, two of them on the level Perry was on, separating the cabins. Perry ran down the corridor on bare feet, arriving at the back end of the main cabin in a matter of seconds. There were men standing there, though only one of them was facing his way. They had come up from the lower level, and just as Marchand had said, they had knives that had clearly been smuggled aboard ¡ª though there had been no check of luggage, so ¡®smuggled¡¯ was being generous. A very small non-magical lantern was giving them light. ¡°We¡¯re taking this airship,¡± said the man who was closest to Perry. There were perhaps twenty feet between them, and the man had a knife. It was one of the ones who had come to the meeting, though his name escaped Perry. ¡°You go back to your cabin if you know what¡¯s good for you.¡± The threat served to alert the others to Perry¡¯s presence, and Perry watched as they got ready for him. There was, unfortunately, very little time to waste. The corridor was narrow, barely large enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder, which meant that Perry would have to take them one at a time. The big question was whether to go lethal or not. These were loyalists, clearly, members of the kingdom of Berus who¡¯d made a coordinated return to their homeland. They were temporarily the enemy, but the goal was to have them integrated into the culture, and Perry was pretty sure that killing thirty-some people wasn¡¯t going to endear him to anyone. That might especially be the case if Perry succeeded in killing them all before they got too far into their plan, which would make him look like a total sociopath. Perry let out a long steadying breath. ¡°Tell me you give up and I won¡¯t do more than break your arm. That goes for all of you.¡± He lunged at the first of them, fearless of the long knife. He was simply too fast and too powerful to get hit. He grabbed the hand that held the knife, crushed the fingers with his brute strength, then turned the knife the other way around and made the man¡¯s own hand guide his own knife into his own heart. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry, leaping back a step. ¡°Does that change anyone¡¯s mind?¡± They came at him, two at a time, bumping each other¡¯s shoulders. He caught a knife between his fingers and palm, preventing it from slicing into him, and with his other hand, he delivered an open-handed slap that lifted the man off his feet. While still holding the knife, Perry delivered a slap to the other man, and this time felt the crack of bone. The knife was released, and Perry flipped it around to get a firm grip on it, then stepped forward and went on the attack. It was shocking how poorly defended the neck was. All it really took to kill someone was to draw a knife across the front of their neck, and it didn¡¯t even need to be all that deep. Perry killed two men while moving forward, getting blood on himself in the process. He¡¯d left one alive behind him, one of the men he¡¯d slapped, and spun to catch him in the side of the head with an extended kick, which sent him face first into a cabin door. That left only one of them standing. He dropped his knife to the ground and raised his hands. ¡°Arm,¡± said Perry. He stuck the knife in the wall to hold it there. ¡°What?¡± asked the man. ¡°Give me your arm,¡± said Perry. The man held out his arm. He was trembling. From everything Perry knew, this guy was a soldier or spy from Berus, and had likely never seen action. There hadn¡¯t been a war for Berus to fight in since they¡¯d lost their colonies, and that was long enough ago that a twenty-year-old wouldn¡¯t have been involved. Maybe he would have a rap sheet if Perry could look through his eyes and see into his past, but for now he was just a trembling kid. Perry grabbed the forearm with both hands, his grip like iron, and began to twist. The man cried out in pain, and Perry released before the bone could snap. The man fell to the floor and clutched his arm. ¡°I want you to know that I could have,¡± said Perry. He pulled the knife from the wall and pushed through the door they¡¯d been next to. Logically, Perry didn¡¯t want a challenge, he wanted to cut through them like a knife through tender steak. The next group was standing in the vestibule where the stairs from the lower decks met the corridors of the upper deck. Knife in hand, Perry went through them easily, though he broke his knife in the process and had to finish the last of them off with a grasshopper punch to the chest. Perry took more knives off them, re-arming himself. There was something unsatisfying about it all, at least after that first group, and he kept thinking that he should do something to make it more interesting, like taking them all out with jaw-cracking slaps, or turning their own knives on them, or standing in one place and killing them as they came to him without moving from where he was planted. He was pretty sure that he could have done any of those, though he didn¡¯t try, because overconfidence was a slow and insidious killer. There were four hallways for the cabins, splitting the levels, and Perry assumed that there were more men down each of them, keeping people in their rooms and making sure that no one made any trouble. It¡¯s what he would have done, if he had thirty-some people to take over the airship. He could deal with them easily in groups of five or six, even if a few of them were wearing masks or had heavy lanterns, but doing that when the crew were under threat seemed ill-advised. Perry briefly opened up his shelfspace and made sure that his sword was in reach, then went to where he thought the action would be: the walkway to the engine room. He almost immediately felt the effects of the masks. Chapter 103 - Combustion, pt 2 Perry felt the effects of the masks before he actually saw the men wearing them. His hand was slowed down, like it was moving through molasses, and he drew it back as if bitten, looking it over to make sure that he wasn¡¯t injured. He had only opened the door out of the vestibule a small crack, and that was enough to let the effects of the masks in. When he opened the door a second time, he was more focused on the feeling, and swished his hand backward and forward, trying to get a sense of what was happening. The magic depended on line of sight, which was because it was sight. The mask altered the perception of the wearer, and that perception became reality. In this case, it was a perception of speed. When he tried again, he could feel it catch his fingers, slowing them down to a fraction of how fast they¡¯d been going, which made the energy flowing through them feel sluggish. He could almost feel the blood backing up at the border region as his pulse tried to push more through. He had read about this effect, what he had termed ¡®slow motion goggles¡¯, but this was stronger than he¡¯d been warned about, a nine tenths reduction of motion. He didn¡¯t know how it was accomplished, but it was worrying. The upside was that with only a few exceptions ¡ª special blends of metals, mostly, the ¡®godly ratios¡¯ ¡ª the masks were indiscriminate, and would affect everything equally. A mask wearer would slow himself down if he could see his own weapon, and if he couldn¡¯t see his own weapon, then it was likely that whatever he was attacking was also unaffected. And only a single mask could be worn at once, which meant that no other effect would be in play. Perry still had all his advantages, and while he didn¡¯t think that he was a full ten times faster than the enemy, he doubted that he would need to be. Perry held a knife at the ready, threw open the door, and charged. He saw the long walkway to the engine room, which was hung with metal cables and open to the air, likely to save on weight. There was a place to clip in, but of course Perry had no clip. It was a relatively long distance, a hundred feet, the engines balanced against the passengers to distribute the weight. At the engine end, braced in formation, there were seven men in masks. That at least gave the answer to how they were able to achieve such a powerful effect. They were laying on top of each other, the walkway not really big enough for two men shoulder to shoulder, let alone eight. Two were prone, another two were kneeling, with the last of them standing, and the whole arrangement looked quite precarious to Perry, who had time to take it all in given how much he¡¯d slowed to a crawl. He leapt forward and prepared to make a full sprint, but it was awkward to move so slowly, since his brain wasn¡¯t agreeing with his body. He threw a second knife forward and watched it sail lazily through the air before veering sharply to the left, pushed with a hand motion by one of the men in masks who was standing further back from the others. Six of the masks had owl motifs, or at least that of some kind of bird, traditional for the slowing effect, but two had masks like demons. They spoke to each other, though the words weren¡¯t audible over the wind and the hum of the engines. They raised their hands, thumb and forefinger an inch apart, and began to squeeze them together. Perry felt it as soon as they did it. They were trying to squish his head. It was a form of telekinesis, based on perception the same way that all the masks were, requiring the wearer to bend their mind and unfocus their eyes in order to push distant things with a finger or two. It was a game that Perry had done when he was a bored little kid, imagining that he was popping the heads of passersby, only this actually worked. The pain was excruciating, and if Perry was a normal man, he might have been debilitated and put down with a skull fracture. Instead, he didn¡¯t miss a step. He was halfway to them before too much time had passed, and the demon-masked men were conversing with each other in the clipped and precise language of professionals. Perry could see wide eyes beneath the masks. He was moving faster than should have been possible, and hadn¡¯t been brought down by their attack. With the next stride he took ¡ª more of a leap, really ¡ª they swept their hands to the side and threw him from the walkway. Perry grinned as he fell. He was past the view of the masked men pretty quickly, which let him move at normal speed. With a wave of his hand, the shelfspace opened up, and Perry had his sword in hand to stall him moments before he hit the water. The Caster above him was illuminated only by starlight, a squarish blob whose two main parts hung down like pendulous teats on a cow¡¯s udder. As Perry tried to make a game plan, the engines went silent and the Caster was left drifting, which couldn¡¯t be good. The plan, he decided, would be a simple one ¡ª kill all the bad guys. He flew up from below, angling himself so he couldn¡¯t be seen. The walkway had individual planks to give it some sway and motion, which left a thin gap between them. Perry pointed himself at the bottom of the walkway, flew up, and stabbed straight through the gap at one of the men laying prone. There was very little heft to it, given that the sword was doing its flying thing, going no more than thirty miles per hour with Perry flopping around behind it, but it was sharp, and the man¡¯s belly was unarmored. Perry swung himself around, twisting against the sword to get himself that last little bit of room, and grabbed onto the side of the bridge. Once he did, he was doing a one-handed pull-up, using the other hand to stab through the slats, piercing the belly of the other man, then just running the sword through, trying to get legs or whatever else he could. He caught some of the mask''s effect through the slats, but it was muted, rolling over him in waves. He couldn¡¯t really see them, and they couldn¡¯t really see him, and not just because of the slats, but also the bodies of the dying that were in the way. They were all unarmored, and the sword slid through flesh like Perry was using some kind of demented glory hole. Perry didn¡¯t spend long down there, and used his free arm to swing himself around, airborne only briefly before landing cleanly on the walkway¡¯s railing. He swung his sword with aplomb, slowed only slightly because they weren¡¯t looking directly at him, and not the concentrated might they¡¯d been using before. The telekinesis mask was a powerful effect, but was most effective at a distance, where perception could make it seem as though giant fingers were crushing a tiny person. Up close, perspective meant that normal-sized hands were slapping a normal-sized man, and Perry cut down one of the two with only token resistance. Pieces of men fell from the walkway. Blood rained. The sword could go through bone without much trouble, and Perry put it through its paces. They had planned to make a stand and kill anyone who came after them, but everything had fallen apart for them the moment he¡¯d shown up. Perry cut through a man¡¯s head, and was mildly surprised to find that the masks themselves had no special durability. It was as easy as chopping wood, and offered no real protection to the face. When they were all dead, Perry stopped outside the crew area, crouched down slightly so he couldn¡¯t be seen through the porthole window. The fight had made a terrible racket, mostly from the screaming of the men he¡¯d been stabbing, and Perry¡¯s only hope was that the engine had been noisy enough on the inside that the commotion hadn¡¯t been heard. The masks were simple enough, and the men who¡¯d worn them were journeymen, not experts at the height of their powers. March had said that maybe a third of the men had masks, which meant that Perry had dealt with roughly half of their number, and he was betting that they had put the weaker men on guard duty, hoping that strength in numbers would win out. Perry had fought in the war on Seraphinus, and most of the orcs he¡¯d killed had been the rank and file, conscripts who were fighting with minimal training and gear, raiders who were doing that because the alternative was being a dung farmer or a slave. Every now and then though, he¡¯d faced someone who actually knew what they were doing, someone who had diligence and experience, along with better equipment. Those orcs had always been difficult to defeat, and Perry had come closest to losing against them. He steeled himself for something similar here, men in masks who better knew how to use them, who had more power, more training. The ones he¡¯d killed would have been perfectly capable of murdering him if he were a normal man, and even getting thrown from the bridge would have made it impossible to catch up with the Caster. But that was just the start of things. He took a breath and pushed open the door to the engine compartment. He wasn¡¯t met with anything but a lantern, a directional one that was aimed squarely at the door. It had a narrow aperture and was tightly focused, casting its foul light onto just the door, and Perry, bare-chested, felt his skin being eaten away. It took him only a few seconds to get past it though, around to the place where it wasn¡¯t shining, and when he looked down at it, he realized that it had been converted from the machine that had been making loaves of egg in the mess hall. Perry closed the shutter on it and looked around. It was another vestibule, this one with no one in it, but he could hear shouting from further in. The Caster sounded silent without the engines running, and Perry hoped that they would be easy to restart. With the trap disabled, Perry moved to the next room, keeping low to the ground. His chest was red and beading up blood, a few layers of skin removed, and he wished that he¡¯d cloaked himself in nanites, even if it was ineffective as armor. While Perry was crouched down, the door to the next room burst open, and a man with a sword came through. His mask was metal, not wood, a vastly more difficult material to carve with and only used by true professionals. The eyes on it bulged, a lens that gave more view of the surroundings, and Perry could feel it as soon as the man came through. Like the others, he was in workman¡¯s clothes, but he had a proper sword rather than a long knife, an instrument of war rather than something stolen from a kitchen. Perry wondered how something like that had gotten on the airship, but they hadn¡¯t checked luggage, only weight to make sure that the ship would have enough lift. The mask¡¯s effect was to make everything feel more solid and rigid, including Perry¡¯s own body. It didn¡¯t slow him down too much, but his skin bunched up less, and bending his joints felt awkward. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. The words came out funny, since the mask¡¯s effect was gripping his throat. ¡°What¡¯s the plan here?¡± ¡°You were at the meeting,¡± the man responded. Perry had gotten some names, but he couldn¡¯t match the build or the voice to a specific person. ¡°You¡¯ve come here to stop us.¡± Perry wanted to barrel through and just kill the man, especially given that the crew were in danger, but he also wanted answers, and wasn¡¯t sure whether those could be had from whoever was left alive. ¡°I have,¡± said Perry. ¡°What¡¯s the plan though? You have to have one. The king is dead, Berus is under the control of the symboulion, what¡¯s a single airship going to do?¡± ¡°We¡¯re taking it to Thirlwell. The war for the soul of Berus isn¡¯t done yet, not while this insidious culture has yet to replace us.¡± The mask covered his whole face, partially muffling his words, but there was menace and pain in his voice. ¡°There needs to be a refuge in this world, a place that remains unadulterated. A place where our gods can reign freely, where a man can be secure in what he owns. Do you know this to be true, or have you been poisoned by their ways in such a short time?¡± There was a scream from beyond the door the masked man was blocking, and Perry lunged forward, the tip of his sword thrust out in front of him. He had hoped ¡ª thought ¡ª that it would pierce the man, but the blade gouged the clothes as though it had struck metal, and Perry had to raise his hand to block the oncoming sword. He was close enough to push the sword hand away, and he jumped backward to reassess. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. ¡°You¡¯re fast,¡± said the man. ¡°How do you move like that without a mask?¡± Perry surveyed the damage. He¡¯d pierced the heavy cloth and there was blood flowing freely from the wound, but it wasn¡¯t enough to stop the man. The sword had reacted as though it was hitting metal, and that was this mask¡¯s effect, making the world seem static. That the sword could still cut was a good sign, but the classic method of fighting against a man with a mask like this wouldn¡¯t require overwhelming force, it would just need an angle of attack from a point that wasn¡¯t being observed. It was all well and good to read about martial arts in a book borrowed from the library, but it was another thing entirely to put all that theory into practice. There were a million things to consider about positioning, and clearly this guy knew them all. His back was to the wall, and the bug-eyed mask meant that he could see everything, including himself, Perry, and his own feet. There were no weak spots, no places that he couldn¡¯t observe, and for a martial mask like this, attacking the mask itself would probably not work thanks to reinforcements. Perry was a complete novice at fighting someone like this, but his sword was sharper than anything they had, his senses were keen, and he could move fast as a whip. Perry¡¯s follow-up attacks worked less well than the first one had. His opponent was an experienced fighter, moving with surety, and Perry hadn¡¯t been in a proper fight since the Great Arc. Everything against Jeff had been dragons and mech suits, not two men with their swords and their wits. With every exchange, Perry could sense that his opponent¡¯s confidence was growing, even in spite of the hits that Perry was getting in and the raw speed of grasshopper strikes. The durability and stasis encompassed everything the bug-eyed mask saw, and that included both of them. There were different solutions to the problems that created, as no one wanted to grant their opponent a boon, but the easiest was simply to not be looking when you wanted to strike out. Watching closely, Perry could see the man¡¯s eyes close just at the moment he expected his sword to strike flesh, though Perry was too fast for a hit to actually land against him. After a few exchanges ¡ª Perry always dodging or deflecting, his opponent always taking the hits to his clothes or skin and never suffering too much for it ¡ª Perry switched his tactics. He had been trying to strike at exactly the moment the masked man had his eyes closed, but the window was tiny, almost as little as an eyeblink, and anyone who wore a mask and fought with it often would be well-prepared for that sort of thing. Instead, Perry decided on brute strength. He simply went in, grabbed the hand that held the sword and narrowly avoided getting hit in the face, and lifted his opponent up off the ground. He¡¯d have preferred to end things with fancy swordwork, but sometimes what was called for was bodily slamming someone into the ground and wrestling as though he knew a single thing about wrestling. The crash against the floor seemed to have little effect, as the mask had provided protection, but his opponent was left exposed, and Perry punched him in the spine with all the power he could muster. ¡°Didn¡¯t anyone ever tell you to watch your back?¡± asked Perry. The body wasn¡¯t moving. Perry had been hoping to incapacitate rather than kill, but he¡¯d been struggling against someone who took hits like he was made of iron. Perry took the mask from the man¡¯s face, which took some effort, because it had been secured in place with straps that needed to be cut. The difference in build was too extreme for Perry to use the mask as a disguise, and the masks only worked for those who made them. Still, he stored the mask away in his shelf for later. It was tempting to put the body there too, just to get it out of the way, but having a rotting corpse among his personal effects seemed like a bad idea. After a moment to catch his breath, Perry got to his feet and moved out of the vestibule. He was expecting more traps, but was met with an empty hallway. The section of the ship that housed the engines was smaller than the part that held the passengers, but it appeared deserted. Perry picked up speed. There would be another cluster of men somewhere, and either they would have hostages or be standing over bodies. He found them in the lower section, all gathered together, four men with weapons, masks tilted up, and over a dozen more men and women on the ground, some trussed up but most just there because they didn¡¯t want to get stabbed. A rolling door had been thrown wide open, and a cool breeze was coming in through it. No one was watching the stairway that Perry was on, because all eyes were on the open door and the man who was kneeling beside it at knife-point. ¡°Your life is forfeit,¡± said the one holding the knife. He had a mask on, but it was lifted up so it wasn¡¯t on his face. The mask was blackened, but the design was hinged so that it could move down or away in a hurry ¡ª something not meant for longer periods. ¡°The only two questions are whether you¡¯ll admit to your crimes, to your indolence, and whether you¡¯ll reveal what this airship carries.¡± ¡°It carries nothing,¡± said the kneeling man. His face was bloodied, and it took Perry a moment to realize that it was the captain, who regularly took his meal in the mess. He was in his pajamas, not his uniform. ¡°Only passengers.¡± ¡°If that were true, it would be enough to condemn you to death,¡± said the man with the knife. His mask looked like it had been burnt, but Perry was certain that it had just been designed that way. In theory, you could get an effect from the masks that created fire, but controlling that fire would be difficult. Perry hadn¡¯t read about anything like that in widespread use, but the library didn¡¯t have much information on the cutting edge of warfare. It was entirely possible that what he was looking at was a state secret. ¡°But the airship is meant to transport cargo, along with people, and the hold has been cleared out for more people, but I¡¯ve studied this ship, and all the people don¡¯t even come close to reaching the weight limit. So what is this airship carrying, if not the weight of cargo?¡± ¡°The cargo was meant to come by sailing ship,¡± the captain pleaded. ¡°We went light to go faster, to save on fuel.¡± ¡°No,¡± the man with the knife replied. ¡°The overriding impact on speed isn¡¯t weight, it¡¯s drag, and being lighter wouldn¡¯t change much, not unless you could run high in the air. You¡¯ve been low to the ground. There¡¯s something massive, but we couldn¡¯t find it, which means we¡¯ve missed something. What are you bringing to the Kingdom of Berus? Where is it?¡± ¡°There¡¯s nothing,¡± the captain said, shaking his head. ¡°Is it inside the envelope?¡± asked the man. ¡°I would think not, because that would make it difficult to remove, but it¡¯s the only place we haven¡¯t been able to check.¡± ¡°If I knew, I would tell you,¡± said the captain. ¡°All the food, all the supplies, they¡¯re coming by sailing ship, everything we need to build, to keep people fed during the transition. I know you¡¯re upset, that you think your country has fallen, but ¡ª¡± The man moved forward and drove his knife into the captain¡¯s cheek, which brought a cry of pain. He moved back into position almost as quickly and held the knife in front of him, ready to slit the captain¡¯s throat at a moment¡¯s notice. Perry needed to intervene, he just didn¡¯t know how he could do that without risking the lives of everyone in the room. ¡°I don¡¯t think that Berus has fallen,¡± said the knifeman. ¡°The king was assassinated, but a country is not its king, it is a system, a culture. You have ambitions to come into our country and kill its ideas, its customs, its dreams, even if you leave the people alive. Berus will fall only when the people accept your libraries, when they rejoice at the taking of land and liberty from those of noble blood. Transition is a slow process, they say, and it has not happened yet. Countries have resisted before, and we will ensure that in this case, it does not grip us by the throat.¡± He wiped the knife against his jacket, getting the blood off it. ¡°Now tell me. What is this airship transporting? What is its secret mission?¡± ¡°It¡¯s taking people, nothing more,¡± said the captain. The man holding the knife cocked his head to the side, then moved forward and gave the captain a hard kick, sending him over the edge of the doorway and out into the open air. Perry raced down the stairs, startling everyone, and tackled the man in the burned mask from the side, sending them both out of the doorway. Perry could only imagine the looks of utter confusion from everyone who¡¯d been standing in the room, but he had no time for that, because he was soon flying. He saw the splash that the captain had made, but not the captain himself, and while Perry arrested his own fall with the sword, the man he¡¯d shoved off the side hit the waves at speed. Perry had done a lot of reading about jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge, not because he had any particular interest in doing that, but because he was arguing about something called ¡®means restriction¡¯ and went down the research rabbit hole in the interest of making a point. People found something romantic about jumping from a bridge, but the reality of hitting the water wasn¡¯t so pretty. Jumping from that height and hitting the water was a death sentence, but it wasn¡¯t an immediate death sentence, not most of the time. Sometimes people who jumped lost consciousness and drowned, which was the better of the two options in Perry¡¯s view, because the alternative was to hit the water and break your legs or ribs and then drown while still very much alive to experience both the pain of a broken body and the panic of your lungs filling with water. Perry aimed himself at the first splash, the evidence of which had already been erased by the waves. He wished that he had Marchand on for the dive, but Perry hit the cold water anyway and opened his eyes, trying to see through the water. It was impossibly dark, save for the gentle glow of the sword, so Perry swam down, trying to find the captain¡¯s body. He hadn¡¯t gone too far before the ocean lit up. Perry¡¯s eyes went to the source of the light, and could see it only indistinctly. The guy Perry had pushed off must have put on his mask, because the ocean was on fire, burning indiscriminately. It was just enough light for Perry to find the captain, who was unconscious, maybe dead, and sinking fast. There was also enough light to see the monsters of the deep swimming down below them. The Caster had been raining down blood and body parts thanks to Perry, unintentional chum thrown to the waters, and the size of the beasts hadn¡¯t been exaggerated. It was difficult to see underwater, but the monsters were misshapen, with too many fins and bodies that curved in unnatural ways. Perry swam fast, grabbed the captain by the arm, then kicked with all his might to get back to the surface. He was surprised by how easy it was to swim with someone else, his legs powering through. When he got to the surface, he was met with fire. The man with the burnt mask had slipped it on, the fire was spreading everywhere he looked, and in the chaos of a hard landing his gaze was erratic and panicked. Perry held the sword in one hand, but it wouldn¡¯t carry him above the water, not when dragging a body behind him. He made a split-second decision and opened up the shelf space. The water rushed in, knocking over shelves, but the captain went in with the water, and Perry closed the space behind them. Perry knelt down next to the captain as the water rushed across the space. The captain had a pulse, thankfully, and whatever injuries he¡¯d sustained were internal. Perry had only a vague idea how to do mouth to mouth or resuscitation, but the captain began vomiting after only a few seconds, saving Perry from having to make an amateur attempt at it. He carried the captain to a bed that had been acquired from one of the Kerry Coast libraries, and turned the captain on his side in case there was more to cough up. The man was breathing and groaning, but there was no time to explain. Perry took a breath, steeled himself, and opened the shelf space back up for just long enough to step out. There was no fire anymore, but the monsters had come closer, and one of them, as large as the Caster¡¯s passenger gondola, had risen to the surface. There was no sign of the man in the burnt mask ¡ª he¡¯d either been eaten or drowned, or possibly drowned and then eaten. Perry rose up with the power of the sword, moving back to the ship. He could see dark shapes moving below him, the monsters jockeying for a position to receive scraps from above. The one near the surface breached, pushing away enormous amounts of water, tusks or teeth sticking up at wild angles from a scaly maw before sinking back down into the water again. The Caster had its engines off, but it had drifted with its own inertia and the winds, leaving him with a ways to go. The ship was silent and dark, and Perry angled himself back toward the engines again. The door was still open, and he could see movement inside. The sword was going to give him away, he was sure of that, and he¡¯d have sheathed it, as he usually did when he was in flight, but the sheath was in the shelf space, and had been washed away. Marchand had said that they intended to kill the crew, so Perry came in hot, throwing himself straight back into the room, wet from his dip in the ocean. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. There were four men, masks now down on their faces. He¡¯d only been gone for a few minutes, and they didn¡¯t seem to have killed any of the hostages. ¡°You have two choices now: surrender, or die.¡± Perry could feel their gaze on him, not just their eyes, but the effects of their masks. They were slowing him down and making his skin feel like it was made of iron, and there were four of them, knives out. Probably they had trained for this, with signals to each other when they wanted the others to look away. What they had been doing in Kerry Coast City was currently anyone¡¯s guess, but they didn¡¯t particularly look like spies. What they looked like were soldiers. They were prepared to kill him to keep control of the airship. Perry didn¡¯t know what kind of fate awaited them if they laid down their swords, but he didn¡¯t think that he was about to find out. He altered his stance, getting ready for the attack, and waited to see what they had in store for him. Chapter 104 - Combustion, pt 3 None of the four men had the same burnt mask that had made the flames across the water, and Perry was grateful for that, because his main priority was making sure that the rest of the crew stayed alive. Four against one was terrible odds for Perry, but the masks worked by perception, with only a rare few allowing true control, and then always with something that could be perceived rather than through thoughts or commands. The men were mostly alike in their general demeanors, all with the tightness of soldiers, but different in stature and in which masks they wore. Two had the same sort of bug-eyed mask that Perry had seen before, the kind that was meant to take in as much of the surroundings as possible to protect both the wearer and whoever was in their field of vision. It worked on clothes too, and all the men were wearing heavy clothes that became armor when one of those masks was pointed their way. The other two wore different masks though. The global traditions of mask-making were different and much of the aesthetics of the masks were about personal connections and cultural conditions rather than raw utility ¡ª perception colored function, which meant that function followed form. One was a half-mask that covered only the left side of the face, and where the eye would have been, there was a bit that poked out, a lens focusing the perception like a pinprick. It was a technique that was sometimes used so that the person wearing it could see what they were doing with their uncovered eye. From what Perry knew, it was a lot of work for something that was about as effective as a gun and far more situational, but he was keeping an eye out, because he was definitely not impervious to guns. In this world, the expression ¡®staring a hole into someone¡¯ was literal. Unlike a bullet, it would be nearly impossible to parry. The last of them was the one that Perry was most worried about, and when he looked closer, he realized that it was actually a woman, her face obscured by the mask, her stature a bit shorter, but still with broad muscles. The mask was another bird¡¯s mask, traditionally associated with precognition or something like it, not actually time travel, but a feeling that everything that had been seen had been seen before and was foretold. On its own, it didn¡¯t make a person any stronger or do anything to stop an assailant, but it made for strong fighters who could sense what their opponent was doing before they actually did it, at least in the very near term. Back on Earth, they probably would have made a killing doing high-frequency trading. She would be the one calling the shots, at least in combat. She hadn¡¯t told the others to stand down, which was a little bit worrying. If she could see that Perry was about to tear through them like low-ply tissue, throwing down their knives seemed like the thing to do. ¡°Last chance,¡± said Perry. ¡°Who are you?¡± asked the woman in the bird¡¯s mask. ¡°Just a concerned citizen,¡± said Perry. She narrowed her eyes, which were the only part of her face visible beneath the mask aside from the bottom of her jaw and her lower lip. ¡°What is your stake in this?¡± asked the woman. He had shoved their leader out the open door and then flown back in minutes later, soaking wet. He¡¯d really hoped that he would have made more of an impression, especially shirtless, but she wasn¡¯t backing down, and they were all in a position to fight him. ¡°Set your knives and masks down, and maybe you¡¯ll find out,¡± said Perry. He¡¯d turned himself to face the man with the one-eyed mask who was going to try to bore a hole through him. With two of the reinforcing masks, it was going to be difficult to make the killing blow, but Perry had plans for that. He was very aware that all this was happening in front of hostages, and that those hostages were crew members who had absolutely no reason not to tell the world about what they had seen. This was, in part, his debut to the security services of the world, and perhaps to the general public, though he was hoping to convince whoever was in charge that this was one of those secrets that was best kept secret. ¡°He killed Michel,¡± said the woman. That seemed to be all the argument that was needed. Perry didn¡¯t want to strike first, mostly because he was being watched by the hostages. It was one thing to threaten someone¡¯s life if they didn¡¯t drop their weapon, and another thing entirely to start the fight before giving them a proper chance to surrender. This wasn¡¯t how Perry would normally operate, but he was pretty sure that within the bounds of the culture ¡ª to say nothing of the law ¡ª you couldn¡¯t charge in and attack people without a good faith effort to defuse this situation. Of course, he¡¯d cut his way through more than a dozen people on his way to this room, and he¡¯d only left one survivor. The masked woman called out a command, a thick and harsh word that Perry was mildly surprised to understand the meaning of. It wasn¡¯t another language, just a code word, but it had such sharp edges of intent that he could feel it in the air. She was saying ¡®fire¡¯. The cyclops could attack as fast as blinking, closing his right eye and opening his left. Perry was on the move as soon as the command was given, which saved him from having a hole in his heart. Instead, the hyper-focused perception swept across his chest, gouging a half-inch deep line across his rib cage. It stung worse than the slash of the sword, and the most surprising thing was just how effective it had been, easily enough to kill him if it had gone straight through. But Perry was fast, and had his target, so by the time the blood was starting to run freely from the wound, he had already grabbed the wrist of the cyclops. Perry threw his sword at one of the other men, mostly as a distraction, then spun with the ball of his foot on the floor, using all his weight to lift the masked attacker up off the ground. It was easy to lift someone up, but difficult to maneuver them, and Perry slipped, landing with his knee straight into the ground, dumping the guy he¡¯d gone after just shy of the open door. Perry launched himself forward as the men with knives came to him, and Perry was faster than them. He punted the cyclops like a football with a kick square to the stomach, sending him tumbling over the edge. They were all going out the open door, he decided, it was just a matter of time. Perry turned to the other three and summoned his sword back to his hand, where it settled just in time to be brought up for a parry. Perry used his raw strength to knock the knife to one side, giving him an opening, and stabbed forward with his sword, straight into the man¡¯s belly. The sword bounced off the thick fabric like it had hit steel, leaving barely a nick to show for it. With two masks reinforcing everything, cutting anyone was going to be nearly impossible. The woman with the mask gave them another command, and Perry had to strain translation to understand that she wanted them to attack in tandem. She was going to have to coordinate them so that they could close their eyes together and their knives could penetrate him, and he was ready for it. Perry backed up slightly in anticipation, then used his sword to block one of the strikes, and let the other one in. As he¡¯d hoped, the command was called out, which meant that Perry had his opening. He kicked out and caught one of the masked men in the kneecap, bending his leg backward while the other man¡¯s knife caught Perry in the side. It was a trade he¡¯d been more than willing to make, since it meant that he was down to only two attackers. The woman with the mask could only see a second or two in the future, and she must have thought it was a good trade too, otherwise she wouldn¡¯t have called it out. Perry was resilient to injury, so long as he wasn¡¯t shot in the head or stabbed in the heart, but she couldn¡¯t have known that. She had probably thought that getting stabbed would be fatal to him. He felt a jarring pain in his lower back and dodged to the side on instinct. He turned toward the open doorway and saw that the cyclops he¡¯d kicked off was still hanging there by a railing on the side of the door, one arm propped up on the floor, dangling. Perry threw his sword again, catching the man right in the mask, and while the other masks provided enough protection that the sword didn¡¯t cleave straight through the man¡¯s head, the sheer force of it made him lose his grip and fall, this time hopefully for good. Perry turned back toward the other men as his sword returned to his hand again. They didn¡¯t know how to deal with him, that much was clear. There were only two of them left, along with the man on the ground whose leg was bent back the wrong way. He was gasping and screaming, and Perry would have just left him there if not for the fact that he still had the mask on. Perry stepped forward with his sword in front of him to guard against an attack, then grabbed the injured man by his shirt and threw him out the open door. Perry gave them the courtesy of five seconds to soak that in and maybe surrender if they wanted to, then went for the last man in the reinforcing mask. Panic had clearly set in, and Perry almost felt bad about it, but they had been threatening hostages, and attacked first, and gave Perry three wounds. Perry went at the last of the soldiers with as much speed and rage as he could bring to bear. The mask made it like hitting against metal, but his sword could gouge metal, and Perry was keeping up as much pressure as he was capable of. After the first two strikes, there was no defense against it, and Perry was just stabbing the man in his chest with the rapid motions of a prison yard shanking. The clothes were quickly shredded, and the sword began doing some real damage, a half-inch at a time. Soon the sword was in the man¡¯s guts, and Perry kept going until the sword was soaked with blood and the effect of the mask began to fade. Perry withdrew his sword, grabbed the man by his arm, and threw him out the open door. The airship had been drifting downward with the engines off, and the splash was audible from inside the room. Perry turned to the woman, who had her knife held in front of her. She was trembling, and Perry hoped that she could see that there was no possible way out for her. He batted her knife to the side with his sword, sending it sideways to embed in the wall. It would have been easy to remove her head with a single swipe of his sword, given that her mask was doing nothing for her. Injured though he was, Perry couldn¡¯t imagine a world in which she could possibly defeat him, no way that her mask would make up for her inferior strength and speed. He darted forward, using all his speed, gripped her by the throat, and lifted her up off her feet. She grabbed his wrists, twisted and turned, and let out two strangled words: ¡°I yield.¡± It would have been easy to kill her. His thumb was on her neck, and his nail was long and sharp. He could press it into the place where he could feel her pulse, cut through the delicate skin and let her blood flow freely. Or he could just throw her out of the airship and be done with her. He could smell the sweat, blood, and fear in the air, and he resented that she had waited so long to give up. He¡¯d given the option for them to lay down their weapons and surrender, and now she was asking for a stay of execution. He didn¡¯t think that she deserved it. Perry came to his senses before very much time had elapsed. It wasn¡¯t about this woman and whether she deserved death, it was about the hostages who were watching and what they would think of him. He set her back down on the ground and released her. ¡°Remove the mask,¡± he said. She took it off with trembling fingers, and when it was unstrapped, she threw it to the ground without needing to be told to. Perry recognized her from one of the mealtimes, though he hadn¡¯t actually met her. She was with the other people staying down in the hold, a homely woman with a weak chin and beady eyes that the mask had been hiding. She was younger than Perry had thought she would be, and up close, he didn¡¯t think that she was too far out of her teens. She looked at Perry like she expected him to slap her across the face, though the moment had passed and she was safe for the time being. Perry looked over at the hostages, who were still huddled off to one side of the room. They had seen everything. Perry took a breath, trying to think of what to say, then went to the open door and looked down at the water. ¡°Someone is going to need to get the engines running again,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re losing altitude, and there are monsters down there, drawn by the blood.¡± ¡°Who are you?¡± asked one of the crewmen. ¡°No one of any importance,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m serious about getting the engines going, I would assume a water landing isn¡¯t something that would be great for this ship even if there weren¡¯t dangerous things swimming down there.¡± ¡°Is it safe?¡± the crewman asked. ¡°Are they all ¡­ dealt with?¡± ¡°Not all of them, no,¡± said Perry. He turned to the unmasked woman. His sword was still in his hand, and he pointed it at her. ¡°Was that everyone in this section of the ship?¡± She sucked in a breath as the point of the sword came her way. ¡°Yes,¡± she said. Perry gritted his teeth. He had no idea whether she was telling the truth, and it was clear he was going to have to make a sweep of the whole ship just to make sure there wasn¡¯t someone waiting in a dark room somewhere. Most of the crewmen were in their nightwear, since the hijacking had taken place when they were asleep. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. ¡°How many did you count?¡± he asked the crewmen. ¡°There was one more,¡± one of them said. ¡°And others blocking the walkway to the passenger gondola.¡± ¡°They¡¯re dealt with,¡± said Perry. One of the crewmen had ventured over to the open doorway, though he was giving it a wide berth lest he fall overboard. Perry had the impression that the door was used for loading and unloading things when the airship had landed, and wasn¡¯t really meant to be a high altitude exit. This seemed to be a storage area, except that it was mostly empty. ¡°We sabotaged the engines when it was clear there was a hijacking,¡± he said. ¡°We shouldn¡¯t be losing altitude though.¡± That started a conversation among the crewmen, one that Perry wasn¡¯t remotely equipped for. ¡°I¡¯m going to go deal with the others,¡± said Perry. He looked at the woman. ¡°You¡¯re going to come with me, at swordpoint, and tell them to lay down their weapons so I don¡¯t have to kill them.¡± ¡°And if I don¡¯t?¡± she asked. ¡°Then I kill them, and you,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s not the culture,¡± she said. Maybe if she hadn¡¯t been scared out of her mind that would have been said with a sneer, but instead it came out more as a question. Perry shrugged as though he didn¡¯t care about that, though it was basically the only thing he cared about at the moment. So far as he knew, people had a right to defend themselves, and they really had a right to defend themselves against foreign nationals who were working against the very fabric of their society. But killing a prisoner for not cooperating was one way to phrase what Perry had proposed, and that wouldn¡¯t have been allowed on Earth either. ¡°Go,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll get out of their hair.¡± She took a hesitant step, and Perry followed behind her. The captain was still in the shelf space, and Perry would need to pull the man out soon, but he really didn¡¯t want to reveal the existence of the shelf to everyone, not when it was his most valuable asset and the thing that was most likely to get him out of a jam. He would need to check on the captain, and the only reason he hadn¡¯t already done it was because he didn¡¯t want to give too much away. Unfortunately, if the captain had regained consciousness, he would be seeing the interior of the flooded shelf space, and that certainly wouldn¡¯t be good. They went up and out of the crew area, to the door that led to the walkway. The body of the man Perry had killed was still there, much more pallid than it had been when Perry had left. The woman froze at the sight, and Perry almost prodded her with his sword to keep her moving, though it thankfully didn¡¯t require much more than him brandishing the sword. There were also bodies on the walkway, and a foot that Perry had sliced off. Those she stopped longer for, staring. ¡°The plan was to fly to Thirlwell?¡± Perry asked her. ¡°Yes,¡± she said softly. ¡°We were going to hand it over to the king. An airship of this size has a lot of value, especially if it¡¯s transporting something that it shouldn¡¯t.¡± ¡°But you¡¯ve got no idea what that was,¡± said Perry. ¡°I heard that much.¡± ¡°They shed too much weight for this trip,¡± she said. ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°Keeping something like that silent wouldn¡¯t be the culture though.¡± ¡°The culture is a thing of contradictions,¡± she replied. She turned away from the carnage on the walkway and looked at him. ¡°Do you believe in it?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. Not yet, anyway. ¡°But I believe in it more than I believe in executing people for perceived nationalist grievances.¡± ¡°They said you were from Berus,¡± said the woman. ¡°We were going to approach you.¡± ¡°I could have saved everyone a lot of trouble by explaining how it would go ahead of time,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though I guess that¡¯s your schtick.¡± ¡°The shot to the back, that should have killed you,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯re bleeding from three wounds that all should have killed you. You don¡¯t even wear a mask.¡± She wanted answers, which was laughable given how little incentive he had to tell her. ¡°This isn¡¯t storytime,¡± said Perry. ¡°I swear to you that I don¡¯t have any compunctions about killing you, not when you tried to kill me, not when you¡¯re a fanatic.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not,¡± she said. She placed a hand to her chest. ¡°I¡¯m a patriot. That¡¯s all.¡± Perry pointed the sword at her. ¡°Are you stalling?¡± ¡°I want to know what¡¯s in your heart,¡± she said, having found some reserve of courage. ¡°I want to know what drew you to them. Was it the elf women? The promise of a life lived without effort?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not really any of your business,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I think my position on things would start with the bombs dropped on the city I was staying in, and ends with a bunch of people hijacking the airship I was using and throwing the captain overboard, which was actually quite rude.¡± ¡°Is this a joke to you?¡± she asked. ¡°The idea that you think you¡¯re owed some kind of answer is the joke,¡± said Perry. ¡°What are you thinking, that you¡¯ll convert me to your side after I¡¯ve killed a dozen men?¡± She turned back to look at the walkway. Thankfully it hadn¡¯t been too badly damaged in the fight, though Perry could see that there were a few places where his sword had gouged the slats. ¡°This was all you?¡± she asked. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Such power,¡± she said, almost in a whisper. He could still smell the fear on her, but there was something else undercutting it now. She was insane if she thought that she could turn this situation to her own benefit, but that seemed to be what she was thinking. ¡°Why would someone with that power work for them? With them?¡± ¡°No time for philosophy right now,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are another dozen men who don¡¯t know that they¡¯ve lost yet.¡± She seemed like she wanted to argue, but she walked down the walkway anyway, hands on the railing as she stepped across the slats, which were sticky with blood. They moved over bodies, and when Perry went by them, he unceremoniously kicked them over the side. He was hoping that the monsters in the ocean below them would get their fill, or maybe that enough of them would be attracted that they would start fighting each other for food. The engines still hadn¡¯t been started back up, and the Caster was now only fifty feet from the water. Rounding up the hijackers took some time, and to Perry¡¯s relief, he didn¡¯t need to kill any more of them. He was covered in blood from his wounds, but the bleeding had mostly stopped, and the blood was vanishing from the power coursing through his body, cleaning him as they went from place to place. Doing this as a single person was maybe ill-advised, but after the first of the corridors was liberated, he was able to recruit some people to help with keeping them under guard. Moss Grumhill, the dwarf that Perry had met on the observation deck, was the first person Perry met who actually seemed to want to take control. ¡°You fought,¡± he said, looking at Perry¡¯s wounds and the sword by his side. ¡°You brought a sword.¡± He had probably noticed the sword¡¯s glow. ¡°I¡¯d be happy if you or your wife would take over now,¡± said Perry. ¡°The engineers are working on getting the engines working again, and if they don¡¯t, we¡¯re going to hit the water and get eaten by monsters or sink. I think when they realized that they were being hijacked, they sabotaged what they could so that they¡¯d be stuck in the air and maybe have more time for someone to notice that something had gone wrong ¡­ but they might need someone with your skills.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not my specialty,¡± he said, frowning a bit. ¡°I¡¯ll do what I can. If they try something, you¡¯ll be here?¡± ¡°I will,¡± nodded Perry. ¡°We knew there would be dissidents and sympathizers on the flight,¡± said Moss. ¡°It was uncontrolled, there was no vetting. We just didn¡¯t think that it would be ¡­ this. We didn¡¯t know they had so many people in Kerry Coast, nor that they were so well-organized.¡± He looked Perry up and down. ¡°We thought that you might have been one of them.¡± ¡°Nope,¡± said Perry. ¡°They thought there was something on the ship. Some kind of ¡­ I don¡¯t know. A weapon, something like that, something that you were bringing into Berus and keeping secret. I wouldn¡¯t credit it, but what they said about the weight restrictions seemed to make sense to me. The hold got cleared out so there could be more people, but extra hammocks for extra people weigh a lot less than the potential cargo they were displacing.¡± ¡°This isn¡¯t a conversation for right now,¡± said Moss. He frowned. ¡°You¡¯ve proven yourself beyond a shadow of a doubt today, not just with your potential as my guard, but in your commitment to the culture we¡¯re trying to instill. I¡¯ll tell you later, once we¡¯re more secure and away from prying eyes.¡± Perry nodded. It was clear he was going to have to seed the entire ship with nanites. March should have seen the hijacking coming, and if there was something hidden on the ship, Perry should have known about it, either from nanite spiders crawling through the place or from overheard conversations. Moss knew something, and Perry would have been very surprised if he was the only one who did. They didn¡¯t have a proper symboulion on the ship, not unless he counted the weird sort of worker¡¯s collective that was made up by the crew, but they did have people who were talking to each other and who ultimately formed a sort of power structure. Perry found a quiet place to check on the captain, who was still lying in the bed Perry had provided. The captain was fast asleep, and the shelf space had been trashed by seawater. Perry was pretty worried about mold, since he didn¡¯t know how to deal with that, and didn¡¯t even really know what fundamental truths underpinned the extradimensional storage area. Perry shook the captain¡¯s shoulder, and the man roused only for a moment before fainting again. There were certainly internal injuries, and no magical healing to save him if he was going to bleed out, so Perry lifted him up and took him out, moving him to where the people were congregated. Moss raised an eyebrow, but the whole subject was going to wait until later. It was another hour before the engines started up again, and by that time, the airship was perilously close to the water, buoyed only by cutting loose some ballast. They were actually close enough that monsters had started breaching the water¡¯s surface, pushing themselves up to try to take a bite, but thankfully their size meant that most of them couldn¡¯t go all that high out of the water. It was dawn before Perry thought it was safe to go back to his cabin and get some rest, but just as he was leaving, he spotted a familiar face: it was Dirk Gibbons, from the Inter-Cooperative Global Command Authority. Perry had met him at a play in Kerry Coast City during intermission, and took the man to be a spymaster of sorts, or at least a secret agent, but what was very clear to Perry was that Dirk Gibbons had in no way been on the airship¡¯s passenger manifest, nor had he been mingling with the passengers. Perry would have seen him. ¡°Dirk,¡± said Perry. ¡°We meet again.¡± ¡°Not the circumstances either of us expected, I know,¡± Dirk said with a smile. ¡°Or I guess for all I know, this is exactly how you drew it up. I heard about that ¡®concerned citizen¡¯ line. It was a good one.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re pretty nonchalant about having killed so many people,¡± said Dirk. They were away from the other people who¡¯d gathered to discuss matters of armed guards and prisoners, but Perry would still have appreciated it if Dirk would have kept his voice a little lower, especially if he was tossing out accusations. ¡°You¡¯re also pretty nonchalant about your wounds.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not my first rodeo,¡± said Perry. The word translated to something else, as their version of English didn¡¯t have the word ¡®rodeo¡¯, or possibly even the concept. ¡°You¡¯re not surprised to see me either,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Or you¡¯ve got one hell of a poker face.¡± They did, apparently, have poker faces, because the words came through unmangled. ¡°We have some things to talk about,¡± said Perry. ¡°You want answers.¡± ¡°I wanted to thank you, first and foremost,¡± said Dirk. ¡°This airship is more important than you know. They knew, even if it was only enough to see the edges.¡± ¡°Tell me if you want to,¡± said Perry. He didn¡¯t particularly want an exchange of secrets, which he felt might be on offer. ¡°I¡¯d be interested in hearing how you got here, and it would be great to know what it was that I just protected for you. I need to go check on my wife.¡± Perry paused for a moment, wrinkled his nose, then sneezed. ¡°Excuse me.¡± Of course, Perry didn¡¯t actually need to sneeze. He hadn¡¯t sneezed since becoming second sphere, and was pretty sure that he would never sneeze again. What he had instead done was to palm a small bit of nanites, then use the sneeze to distribute them like dust into the air. Many of the clusters would land on Dirk, and at March¡¯s remote command, move into the folds of his clothes or attach to his hair and skin. It was a pre-arranged strategy that Perry was happy to have a chance to use. Perry stashed his sword in the shelf space once he was out of view of anyone, and returned to his cabin, where Mette had gone back to sleep. She woke up to the sound of the door though, and blinked a few times as she looked at Perry. ¡°You¡¯re hurt,¡± she said. ¡°Not really,¡± said Perry. He touched the gouge along his chest, which was red and tender but already completely scabbed over. He wondered whether it would scar, but from what he¡¯d seen of the second sphere on the Great Arc, they only got scars when they looked cool or were spiritually significant. The knife wound on his side was similarly a painful bother, but it was at least closed. The one on the back was the worst, and Perry didn¡¯t want to lay down on it, but that meant that he was going to have to hold off on sleep for at least a little bit. He was trying to use his internal reserves of energy to heal himself, directing the flows from his meridians to the places he¡¯d been hit, but it was a slow process done by a novice. ¡°March said you dealt with the problem,¡± said Mette. ¡°He said you killed a number of people.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He was mildly surprised that Marchand hadn¡¯t given her the play-by-play, or that she hadn¡¯t asked for it. ¡°You were fine?¡± ¡°I was worried,¡± she said. She was sleeping without clothes on, and pulled the blanket up to cover herself a bit more. ¡°I kept thinking that I was going to hear something, the sound of gunfire, cannons like that. Like on the Natrix, the sounds of bugs being shot down.¡± ¡°It was swords and knives,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t think the masks or lanterns ever make all that much noise.¡± ¡°And ¡­ how do you feel?¡± she asked. She was looking into his eyes. ¡°Fine,¡± Perry shrugged. ¡°It might have been better not to reveal as much as I did. They know about the sword, and depending on what the captain remembers, they might know about the shelf space, which is, incidentally, trashed. It¡¯s going to take a day or so to clean it out, and that¡¯s probably better done sooner than later.¡± ¡°I thought about coming to you,¡± said Mette. She gestured to where the pieces of March were lying, covered by a blanket. ¡°I was going to put on the suit.¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t fit you,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not such a bad fit that I couldn¡¯t move around,¡± said Mette. ¡°And with it on, I would be armored, so not being able to move wouldn¡¯t be that bad. Plus there¡¯s a gun in the shoulder.¡± ¡°I¡¯m glad you didn¡¯t come,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m glad Nima didn¡¯t come either. She kept to her room?¡± ¡°Yes sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That gives her a better cover than I have now. I don¡¯t know what they think I am, but I¡¯m hoping that within the next few hours, I find out. March, I want you in full read mode. Tell me what the hell they¡¯re hiding on this ship, and how Dirk got here across hundreds of miles of open water in the middle of the night.¡± Chapter 105 - Agency With the ship back on course and the remaining hijackers safely divested of their weapons and under armed guard, the loose command structure that was percolating on the Caster had a private meeting in one of the largest cabin rooms, one which was normally reserved for large families but had been given over to the dwarven engineer Moss and his elven wife Velli. It was the two of them, the mysterious Dirk, Casper, and another woman that Perry had seen but didn¡¯t know personally. She was one of the few melekee onboard, small and fidgety, and she swung her tail back and forth behind her, swishing it from side to side. Perry was a fly on the wall, thanks to a reconstruction by Marchand from audio, knowledge of the ship¡¯s layout, and previous encounters with those involved ¡ª though Marchand didn¡¯t have detachable cameras unless you counted the helmet, so didn¡¯t have much video to go off. ¡°This was a clusterfuck,¡± said Casper. ¡°That¡¯s the culture,¡± said Dirk. ¡°No, you know good and well that it¡¯s not,¡± said Casper. ¡°If it¡¯s a failure, it¡¯s a failure of ¡ª¡± ¡°Of vetting, of procedure, of bureaucracy, of philosophy,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I was being glib, but I do think that this sort of failure is the culture, and that¡¯s by design, or if not design, then by all the cultural forces that have been set up.¡± He was momentarily taking a professorial tone, a decided change of speaking patterns for him. ¡°We didn¡¯t have background checks on the passengers, we didn¡¯t have dossiers, we didn¡¯t even have soft enforcement like interviews.¡± ¡°I was told there had been some kind of investigation,¡± said Moss. He was up on a chair with Velli beside him resting a hand on his shoulder, or at least that was what Marchand was extrapolating. ¡°Was that not true?¡± ¡°There were negative checks,¡± said Dirk. ¡°We barred a handful of people who were in our files, known associates of monarchical elements. But that didn¡¯t mean anything, because we¡¯ve been underfunded for ages, we leak like a sieve, and their spies have never been more determined than they were for this. So far as we know, they¡¯ve folded up shop in Kerry Coast City.¡± ¡°Set your grudges to the side,¡± said the melekee woman. Marchand had given her name as Kari. ¡°It happened. The monarchy in Berus is dead, this is part of its death rattle, one last gasp. They didn¡¯t find the contraption, and were only guessing at its existence.¡± She bounced slightly in her seat, unable to keep still. She turned to Moss. ¡°It¡¯s safe?¡± ¡°I went up and checked it,¡± said Moss. ¡°It¡¯s snug and secure. If we want to extract it, it can¡¯t be in the city, not if we want to keep it safe, especially not now, but it was always the plan to drop the passengers off and go north to the fields, somewhere that we can control.¡± ¡°The mistake was bringing civilians,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It was a bad ruse. We should have filled the airship with people who were within a degree of trust.¡± ¡°We need people from Berus who also have a foot in the culture,¡± said Casper. ¡°We need to bridge that gap, get people who can integrate and don¡¯t have problems with understanding the local conditions.¡± ¡°Talking about it now isn¡¯t going to be helpful,¡± said Velli. ¡°What¡¯s done is done. We need to decide what we¡¯re doing about them, and about our unexpected savior.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll know more once I talk to him,¡± said Moss. ¡°I was certain that he was on the fence, someone between two worlds, just like we¡¯d wanted, but I¡¯m less assured of that now.¡± ¡°He killed fifteen people and you¡¯re worried about his loyalty?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°There¡¯s no way that this is an attempt to make a deep infiltration and gain trust. I can imagine a king having a plan as insane as that, but I can¡¯t imagine them actually carrying it out, and to put so much on the line, with a single person? No way.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know who or what he is,¡± said Moss. ¡°Not him, and not the woman he claims is his wife. Some of his power is coming from the sword, which is clearly an Implement of some kind. But the source of the Implement is unclear, and hoarded deep magic is troublesome.¡± Dirk was shaking his head. ¡°There aren¡¯t that many Implements, and it doesn¡¯t match any of the ones we know. It¡¯s always been possible that an unknown one would appear as though from nowhere, or worse, that someone would figure out how to make them, but we don¡¯t know which, and it¡¯s entirely possible there¡¯s something else going on.¡± ¡°I agree he¡¯s on our side,¡± said Velli. Her voice was like velvet, and whatever decisions Marchand had made about how to depict her, she was even more attractive than in the flesh. ¡°He stopped this from being a devastating loss for us.¡± ¡°If the last sixty years have had any lesson,¡± said Casper. ¡°It¡¯s that there are lots of ways for someone to be on your side but also create all kinds of problems in the process of trying to achieve the same goals.¡± ¡°What do we do with those we captured?¡± asked Kari, swishing her tail to the side. ¡°We can keep them until Berus, but once we¡¯re there, we can¡¯t turn them loose.¡± ¡°Most aren¡¯t guilty of much,¡± said Casper. He sighed. ¡°All they did was to grab a knife and carry out a plot that in theory would have resulted in destruction of property and nothing more. There was a single attempted murder, that of the captain, and there¡¯s only a single person whose head we can put that on, someone who¡¯s now dead.¡± Dirk chuckled. ¡°Is that you looking through the lens of the justice-minded, or your actual opinion?¡± ¡°A little of both,¡± said Casper. He seemed to only have a single mode, that of someone closely tracking the plot. ¡°We all know how easy it is to get swept up in something. Some of the hijackers are Berusian agents, trained and hardened, fanatics, but I don¡¯t think we can say that all of them are. Some probably found themselves going with the flow, feeling nervous and uncertain.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Dirk. ¡°What would you propose?¡± asked Moss with a grumble. ¡°Not something that¡¯s against the culture, surely.¡± ¡°It would have been cleaner if Perry had killed them all,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Doing it now? Sending them to a watery grave? That¡¯s not the culture, I know that, but we¡¯re talking about fifteen people who have shown that the death of their king isn¡¯t going to stop them from supporting a monarchy.¡± ¡°Re-education,¡± said Casper. It was a laden word, and Perry wondered whether it had the same connotations to them. ¡°That¡¯s not going to work, and we all know that,¡± said Velli. ¡°Maybe for one in five of them, if they¡¯re separated, if we can go to work on them, keep them away from the wrong information, the wrong materials, with a support staff ¡­ but we¡¯re going to be in a place under transition, where time and effort have to be counted in a miserly way.¡± ¡°It will be down to the symboulion in Berus,¡± said Casper. ¡°I would hope that they choose re-education, but we¡¯ve seen how different places take to the new way of doing things. Encouraging a softer touch with justice is one of the most difficult pills to swallow in the wake of a violent struggle.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Moss. ¡°So we might give them a reprieve only for them to be executed when we land.¡± ¡°It¡¯s possible,¡± said Casper. ¡°It¡¯s a matter of culture building. Sometimes the rod is what¡¯s called for, just so people know and understand what¡¯s at stake. Unfettered action by the enemy would be the death of everything they¡¯re trying to do, which means that fetters are in order. I¡¯m not up to date on what methods of punishment are in use in Berus, but I wouldn¡¯t be surprised if there was some barbarism that the symboulion wanted to keep in use, even if just as a matter of irony. Remember the bull they used in Gwyndolir?¡± ¡°This is the second to last time we deal with this,¡± said Moss. ¡°For which I¡¯m thankful.¡± ¡°Recriminations and imponderables aside, what¡¯s our position on Perry?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°I want to have a plan.¡± ¡°We keep him close,¡± said the melekee woman. ¡°What else is there to do?¡± ¡°I was going to tell him almost everything,¡± said Moss. ¡°Not the technicals, not the deep secrets, but some of the tidbits that he might have picked up by having an ear to the ground. Nothing that hasn¡¯t already leaked.¡± ¡°We can¡¯t unleash until the last kingdom is brought around to the right way of thinking,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Thirlwell is going to be a threat until their king is deposed and the last refuge of monarchism is turned. They¡¯re going to be more of a threat if they learn everything that we know, if they get their hands on the tools we have.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the chance that this very airship contains more than just the hijackers?¡± asked Velli. ¡°High,¡± said Dirk with a shrug. ¡°I don¡¯t know how much you¡¯ve made the rounds here, but was there anyone you suspected of being a subversive in disguise?¡± ¡°Absolutely,¡± said Casper. ¡°It¡¯ll take some time to cross-reference the hijackers with my notes, but there¡¯s a good chance that they left fervent collaborators back. It¡¯s what I would have done, just to get someone on the inside of any plots against their takeover of the ship.¡± Dirk rubbed his face. ¡°And how much of a problem is it that I¡¯m here?¡± ¡°There¡¯s probably a story you could spin,¡± said Moss. ¡°Two hundred people? That¡¯s enough that you could disappear among them, so long as there hasn¡¯t been someone with their eye on the manifest. You could say that you were, ah ¡­¡± ¡°A stowaway,¡± said his wife. ¡°Or just in your room, feeling sick from the motion of the ship. Of course, we would need you to have a room ¡ª will need you to have a room.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not on board with this level of deception,¡± said Casper. ¡°Well, it¡¯s what¡¯s happening,¡± said Dirk. ¡°We can¡¯t do the normal method of claiming classification. It¡¯s too obvious what we¡¯re classifying.¡± ¡°Now that you¡¯re here, it seems like an overreaction,¡± said Casper. ¡°We should have waited until we were in Berus, when it would be easier to cover your tracks.¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Circumstances were exceptional. And this way I¡¯ve got eyes on Perry, whoever he is.¡± ~~~~ They talked for a long time, and didn¡¯t reveal much, which Perry thought was pretty rude of them. ¡°I think ideally, people should state a bunch of facts that they all know every ten minutes or so,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve had this problem in every world I¡¯ve been to. More basic facts, people.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I shall note that down in your list of suggestions for alterations to their society.¡± ¡°Well, it seems obvious that they have something like ¡­ teleportation,¡± said Mette, who had been listening without the marginal benefit of being able to see Marchand¡¯s near-real time recreation of the scene. ¡°It¡¯s something that¡¯s very heavy, not available to anyone else, not known to the two kingdoms, ¡ª¡± ¡°Just one kingdom now,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think calling the kingdom of Berus dead is premature,¡± said Mette. ¡°At least, from reading through the histories that Marchand has made available, regime change doesn¡¯t always stick. Even if it has in this world, that doesn¡¯t mean that it doesn¡¯t come with some last gasps from vested parties. There¡¯s apparently something called a ¡®king in exile¡¯.¡± ¡°Yes, I¡¯m very familiar with the phrase,¡± said Perry. ¡°And from what I¡¯ve heard, Berus and Thirlwell together had about a dozen of them.¡± He gave a wry laugh. ¡°I guess the writing is on the wall for them now.¡± ¡°Most of them would be destitute, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It is the way of kings-in-exile, who no longer have a teat to suck at. They are kept, when they are, mostly as a form of leverage, or possibly with some faint hopes of restoration.¡± Perry looked at the suit of armor with a frown. He wasn¡¯t sure when or why Marchand had developed anti-monarchist tendencies, but the AI definitely had some thoughts on the rule of kings. It was worrying, not because the position was incorrect, but because it was one of the few areas where Marchand had a strong opinion that wasn¡¯t drenched in the snooty butler humor that Richter had programmed in. ¡°In the near term, I¡¯ll ingratiate myself with the locals,¡± said Perry. ¡°We pretty clearly have to worry about the military might of Thirlwell, especially once we¡¯re in Berus, because the explosives they used against civilians were strong enough to take me out. I¡¯m not going to tell them much, and if they think that I¡¯ve got a mysterious magical Implement, then I guess they¡¯re half right.¡± ¡°What do they think I am then?¡± asked Mette. ¡°You haven¡¯t really come up,¡± said Perry. ¡°And if Dirk is here, then he knows about Nima, and I don¡¯t know what he makes of her either.¡± ¡°They think I¡¯m just some random person,¡± said Mette. ¡°Or your actual wife.¡± She seemed displeased by the notion. ¡°I mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°What are you actually?¡± ¡°What do you mean?¡± asked Mette. ¡°If you¡¯re not some random person, and you¡¯re certainly not from Berus like we¡¯ve been pretending, then ¡­ I mean, you are by your own confession not a proper engineer, but what¡¯s your role?¡± Perry thought that she probably was an engineer, at least in the context of the worlds and their people. He was convinced that they had some kind of preternatural ability on Esperide, even if the explanation was mundane in origin. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Mette. ¡°But do they think that I can¡¯t fight?¡± ¡°You can¡¯t fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°I could, if I had a suit like yours,¡± said Mette. ¡°And it wouldn''t be that hard to make one, not with the technology they have. Microchips would be the big issue.¡± Perry resisted the urge to laugh at that. ¡°I think you¡¯re still underestimating the enormous number of people it took to build it,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you would also need a power source, which you¡¯re not getting anytime soon.¡± ¡°The lanterns have a lot of power, at least with the right fuel,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t think a suit of armor would be out of the question, not if I had a shop and permission to requisition materials, maybe an assistant or two. That¡¯s something that we¡¯re trying to get for me.¡± ¡°It¡¯s possible that¡¯s what they¡¯ve got shoved up into the envelope of the Caster,¡± said Perry. ¡°But it¡¯s got to be a weapon, otherwise I don¡¯t see why they would be so secretive about it.¡± Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. ¡°It could be anything,¡± said Mette. ¡°You think that it¡¯s not the teleportation they were using? It¡¯s something else?¡± ¡°Hard to say,¡± said Perry. ¡°But if it were teleportation ¡­ I don¡¯t know. I would assume they wouldn¡¯t use the pretense of a passenger airship in the first place if that was the case, and I don¡¯t really see why it would have to be secret.¡± ¡°Well that I can tell you,¡± said Mette. ¡°Alright, do tell,¡± said Perry. He folded his arms and watched her. He thought his grip on these people was probably better than hers, but he was open to being enlightened. ¡°First,¡± said Mette. ¡°There seems to be some kind of prohibition on effluence, which means that if it ¡®cost¡¯ a lot of effluence, then they might ban it, or just not have the general public know about it. But second, their whole society is premised on things being under local control, right?¡± ¡°And if you could move between continents on a whim, then nothing would really be local,¡± said Perry, nodding. ¡°Alright, I can see that. But there¡¯s already a policy of open borders, and they have the Global Command Authority, so I¡¯m not sure how much of a sticking point that would be for something that would be enormously useful, depending on what it costs, how often it can be used, and what the form factor is like.¡± ¡°They don¡¯t want technology,¡± said Mette. ¡°Or I guess they only want enough technology to get by, and nothing more, which is its own kind of insanity.¡± She cocked her head to the side. ¡°Is that a thing? Worlds where everyone shares a certain sort of insanity?¡± ¡°Probably a thing, yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°But there¡¯s no evidence for it here, and if there were evidence, an aversion to technology wouldn¡¯t be what I would point to.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Mette. ¡°It¡¯s not clear to me why they don¡¯t just move their manufacturing out into uninhabited parts of the world, the deserts and tundras.¡± ¡°Then people would have to live there,¡± said Perry. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be workable.¡± ¡°All they¡¯d need is a way to survive the conditions, that¡¯s not that hard,¡± Mette frowned. ¡°You come from a world where you¡¯re constantly fighting against the elements in one way or another,¡± said Perry. ¡°Surely you can see how that¡¯s not normal or expected?¡± ¡°I¡¯m just saying that they could,¡± said Mette. She folded her arms across her chest. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be that difficult, and the ¡®dirty¡¯ lanterns are an order of magnitude more effective than the domes, at least from what I¡¯ve read.¡± ¡°Sir, if I might bring another matter to your attention?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Of course, go ahead,¡± said Perry. ¡°It appears that the meeting has concluded with no additional information of note, but I¡¯ve been able to track Mister Gibbons as he moved through the ship,¡± said Marchand. ¡°He appears to have gone into the envelope of the Caster to inspect whatever is there. It offers an opportunity to make some investigations of our own.¡± ¡°Can you show me a visual?¡± asked Perry, grabbing the helmet and putting it back on without waiting for a response. ¡°Sir, it occurs to me that this would be an ideal situation for sonic mapping, if it were possible for you to get on top of the airship,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That¡¯s going to be risky,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s almost nothing around us, just open ocean, and people are going to be on edge. They know I can fly, even if they don¡¯t know the specifics, and I don¡¯t want to reveal more. Can you do it from here? We¡¯re on the upper deck, the envelope should be right above us, shouldn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I can¡¯t promise that I¡¯ll be able to make heads or tails of what the nanites are able to pick up in terms of audio, and unfortunately, their vision is rather rudimentary.¡± ¡°I could maybe take one of the cameras,¡± said Mette. ¡°They¡¯re small, aren¡¯t they?¡± ¡°That would compromise the integrity of the offensive systems,¡± said Marchand with what felt like a scowl. ¡°Perry can use energy to make repairs, can¡¯t he generate a new one?¡± asked Mette. ¡°A pinhole camera, something like that? Surely you could spare it.¡± ¡°I think such an approach is ill-advised,¡± said Marchand, without adding a customary ¡®ma¡¯am¡¯. ¡°Show me Dirk,¡± said Perry, who had been waiting with the helmet on. ¡°Sir, would you prefer embellishments or only what I can say for certain is true?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Embellish the interior, and Dirk,¡± said Perry. ¡°Only show me what you know for certain is true of the contraption they¡¯re bringing in.¡± The image came in. Because the sun was up, the interior of the envelope was brightly lit, the white skin of it allowing a lot of light to come through. There were relatively few struts compared to the inside of something like the Hindenburg, and most of them were in the center of the interior space, supporting two large lanterns which could only be reached through a ladder that came up from the engineering section. They had been burning through the whole trip, creating effluence as part of the cost of doing business, one of them shining bright to keep the envelope relatively rigid, the other removing air from the interior to create a slight vacuum effect that provided buoyancy. It was, overall, a pretty trifling expenditure of energy and effluence for the effect that it created. Dirk was moving along the bottom of the envelope, wearing a non-magical mask to help him breathe. It looked like a nightmare out of the first World War, a thing of straps and rubber, connected to a hose that let him breathe. Perry had heard the inside of the envelope compared to high-altitude climbs, and the difference in air pressure was enough that you would pass out without supplemental oxygen. The contraption was rendered incompletely, without color, just white lines and black surfaces that had white lettering on them with guesses about the materials, mostly stamped ¡®METAL¡¯. It had a concavity, which Dirk crawled inside to look at, running his hands over the interior of it. If he was looking for something, it wasn¡¯t clear what, but when he was finished, he had something in hand, marked in the same way, ¡®METAL¡¯ and ¡®GLASS¡¯, a tube of some kind. He slipped it into his pocket and made his way out, humming softly to himself. ¡°Any idea what that¡¯s about?¡± asked Perry as Dirk took off the mask and rubbed the place where it had sat against his skin. ¡°Just a moment, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There are nanites on his clothes, I¡¯m sending some of them to investigate now. Even if the tube is sealed, their sensors should be able to give some sense of what¡¯s inside.¡± ¡°Show me when you know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Good to know where their secrets are. I don¡¯t trust him, for the record.¡± ¡°You do find it difficult to trust, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It appears to be a sealed vial filled with blood.¡± Perry frowned as the image of the vial was shown alongside the image of Dirk walking along the walkway. It was capped with brass and really did seem to be nothing more than a quantity of blood. Perry had some immediate flashbacks to the blood gems that Cosme had used, though he doubted that this was in any way related. ¡°Mette, any idea why you¡¯d use a bunch of blood in a lantern?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°Are you sure it¡¯s a lantern?¡± ¡°Absolutely not,¡± said Perry. ¡°Could be some new form of magic that we haven¡¯t heard about, or some creation that comes from their understanding of physics as it exists here. But I¡¯ll call it a lantern for now, and assume that it¡¯s known rather than unknown.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think there¡¯s anything that you could do with blood,¡± said Mette. ¡°When you shine things through a lantern, usually the effect is pretty mild, and changing the base effect is difficult. A lantern can make blood, I suppose, in the same way that it can make some egg loaf. But I don¡¯t know how or why it would be a part of any device.¡± She shook her head. ¡°Magic.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll have to ask Nima, but I doubt she¡¯ll know any better than we do,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sir, it appears that Mister Gibbons is on the move,¡± said Marchand. ¡°He appears to be making his way to our room.¡± ¡°I¡¯d rather talk to Moss,¡± said Perry with a frown. ¡°Alright, time for you to get shoved into the shelf.¡± Marchand was put away by the time Dirk came strolling down the hallway and knocked on their door. The shelf space would take a lot of time to clean, and Perry wasn¡¯t looking forward to that, but the pieces of the armor would be fine there for the time being. Most likely the linens would have to be thrown away, which was a shame. The only piece that Perry left out was the helmet, which was hidden under the bed. It didn¡¯t have terribly much compute on its own, but it would be able to follow basic commands, and most importantly, record everything that happened for later review. Perry opened up the door with a smile on his face, and Dirk smiled back. ¡°So,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Can I come in?¡± ¡°It¡¯s cramped,¡± said Perry. ¡°But sure.¡± He backed up and leaned against the wall next to the bed, where Mette was sitting with her knees held close to her chest. She was giving Dirk a wary look, because apparently she hadn¡¯t gotten the memo about sardonic smiles. ¡°This is my wife, Mette,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve told her about you.¡± ¡°And what have you told her?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°That you¡¯re with ICGCA,¡± said Perry. ¡°That you definitely weren¡¯t on this ship when we left. That you¡¯re a spymaster or something like it, except a competent spymaster would have stopped this hijacking before it started.¡± ¡°You handled it,¡± said Dirk. ¡°All¡¯s well that ends well, huh?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I suppose,¡± said Dirk. ¡°There¡¯s the question of how you handled it. A few of those men were nothing special, nationalist malcontents, a few of them not even really soldiers, just businessmen or visitors to our fair shores. Others, a select group, had at least a few years in the Berusian military, including some with masks. And there were two, both now dead by your hand, who were part of elite task teams.¡± ¡°Seems like maybe they shouldn¡¯t have been here if that¡¯s what they were,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s easier to get information when you have a handful of men under swordpoint,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s even easier when the information in question is about dead men whose identities don¡¯t need to be protected.¡± ¡°Still seems like they shouldn¡¯t have been here,¡± said Perry. ¡°Like maybe people should have been checked more thoroughly before the airship took off. Maybe those masks and knives would have been found that way.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not the culture,¡± said Dirk with a nonchalant shrug. ¡°But I guess you wouldn¡¯t know that, you being from ¡­ ?¡± Perry smiled. ¡°Abroad.¡± ¡°See, but there are so many kinds of abroad,¡± said Dirk with a smile. ¡°I was wondering which one specifically.¡± Perry kept up his smile, but said nothing in return. It was the time to press about the contraption in the envelope of the airship, which must have been put there with great effort and expense before it came to Kerry Coast City. Perry didn¡¯t press though, mostly because he didn¡¯t think that answers would be forthcoming. It was something that they wanted to keep secret, and because they had a general aversion to secrets, Perry figured that it was going to stay locked up unless they actually talked about its nature to each other. ¡°Look,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know that something is fishy with me. You know that I have a sword that you don¡¯t have on file and that by rights I probably shouldn¡¯t have, because it should be a part of the commons. I¡¯m admitting to all that. But I¡¯m on your side here, and I want to help you with setting up your systems ¡ª your culture ¡ª in Berus. Isn¡¯t that enough for now?¡± ¡°Depends on who you¡¯re with,¡± said Dirk. He glanced over at Mette, who hadn¡¯t said anything. ¡°I don¡¯t buy you as a married couple, but I also don¡¯t buy you as an asset and his handler. But Moss seems to think that you¡¯re someone worth keeping around, and it¡¯s pretty clear that if you were on the side of the monarchists, you¡¯d have acted very, very differently.¡± ¡°So we¡¯re at an impasse, that¡¯s what you¡¯re saying?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t go so far as that,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You¡¯ll do what you want, as most people do, but you¡¯re not getting read in until we have some understanding of you and your history. Until then, you¡¯ve proven yourself as a soldier and a bodyguard, and if you want to stick with Moss as he helps build the domes, that¡¯s workable.¡± Perry shrugged as though he didn¡¯t care. ¡°Good talk,¡± said Dirk with a smile. He rapped his knuckles against the wall. ¡°I¡¯ll be seeing you.¡± ¡°You¡¯re staying?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Or going through ¡­ whatever means you came here with?¡± ¡°Whatever you think it is, it¡¯s not that,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Better not to speculate. If we can clear you, you can be in the know, but until then,¡± he shrugged. ¡°We have an expression in my business, ¡®need to know¡¯. Right now? You don¡¯t need to know.¡± Perry nodded, and Dirk stared at him for a moment, then took his leave. ¡°Yup,¡± said Perry. ¡°I definitely prefer Moss.¡± ~~~~ So far as Perry could tell, there were only a half dozen people who knew anything about what was hidden in the airship, and they simply didn¡¯t talk to each other about it all that much. It wasn¡¯t that they had good infosec, since Marchand had called their infosec ¡®quite dreadful¡¯, and Perry wasn¡¯t necessarily one to talk when it came to keeping a lid on things. It was more that whatever they had to say about whatever weapon or tool was squirreled away, they had already exhausted the conversion. The captain was one of those in the know, but he was still recovering from his injuries and pretty out of it, having not much he could recall about the hijacking. Still, there were snippets here and there, fragments that suggested a whole. Velli and Moss were a particularly good source of those, since they were with each other almost constantly, but they were in tune enough that it was even more cryptic. ¡°Dirk seems normal,¡± said Velli as they laid in bed together. ¡°I would have thought he would be ¡­ different. Changed, somehow?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Moss. ¡°It works as advertised.¡± Perry would have chalked that up to concerns about their teleportation method, but it sounded more serious than they were letting on. The vial of blood seemed to suggest to Perry that they had somehow pulled Dirk to them when the moment of crisis had happened, but that wasn¡¯t entirely clear to him, and nothing actually helped to resolve the ambiguities. Perry had seeded the whole of the ship with more nanites, enough that he had begun to put a serious dent in the supply that he¡¯d cultivated. He had bugged the rooms of everyone who seemed the least bit important, along with the room they were keeping the hijackers in. Perry took on shifts on guard duty, which was incredibly boring even with the earpiece in to provide some entertainment. He was looked at with fear and disdain by the people he¡¯d effectively captured. They seemed to be in no particular hurry to try anything. As Perry looked over them, he had plenty of time to consider that not all of them were soldiers who had felt compelled to act through sheer nationalist brainwashing ¡ª that many of them were just young men who had been trying to get home and had been convinced to add their bodies to the effort to take over the ship. That didn¡¯t make them blameless, but Perry felt bad for them. It was also very possible that some of them had been in the same position and then died to Perry¡¯s blade. The only thing to say about that was ¡°Ah, shit,¡± and then move on. There were two that didn¡¯t seem pissed off to see Perry. One was the masked woman who¡¯d been about five seconds away from having her throat cut open with the edge of his thumbnail. The other was the guy whose arm Perry had graciously elected not to break. They were the ones who had witnessed him fight, and he had left an impression. The guy came up to Perry, head held low like a dog that thought that it was about to be beaten for eating a loafer. ¡°I wanted to say ¡­ thank you,¡± he said. ¡°For what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°For not breaking my arm,¡± he said. ¡°For not killing me.¡± Perry gave him a nod, and he went back to sit down with the others. Maybe that was the chance to say something to make the whole thing better, to talk to him about the culture and what the expectations were, but Perry didn¡¯t have that in him. He didn¡¯t even ask the boy¡¯s name. He couldn¡¯t have been more than twenty, maybe still a highschooler by the standards of American education. Perry didn¡¯t talk to the woman at all, but every time he was on guard duty, he felt her eyes on him. She was wondering what such a powerful man was doing fighting for a system that didn¡¯t reward power, if he understood her right. He felt no sympathy for her, and worried that he was going to see much more of her sort before his time in this world was done. The sky changed as they came closer to the island nation of Berus. That was the effluence, Nima explained. She had been stand-offish with him since he¡¯d saved the airship, or perhaps because of the highlight reel he¡¯d shown her. ¡°They never said it was so beautiful,¡± she said. The sky shimmered like the northern lights, with ribbons of color, and the clouds took on strange hues, some of them pale green and vibrant gold. ¡°There¡¯d be no reason to,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s a blight. It¡¯s miscarriages and deformities, a slow-motion calamity in progress.¡± ¡°It can still be beautiful, for all that,¡± said Nima. ¡°I wonder what it will look like at night.¡± ¡°Imagine the rain that comes from those clouds?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Imagine drinking water that looks like that, because you have no other option.¡± ¡°Your world was like this?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Not here,¡± said Perry with a slight shake of his head. There were other people on the observation deck, and he didn¡¯t trust the wind to bury their words. ¡°But yes, at times.¡± Looking at the sky, he couldn¡¯t help but think about the rainbows you sometimes saw in an oil slick. ¡°I¡¯d say that it¡¯s strange to see such a stark effect, but I saw the monsters swimming in the ocean below us, and if people would be dissuaded from pollution with pink clouds, then I guess I would have to say that I don¡¯t know people.¡± Nima was silent. She still seemed to like the bright colors. The city of Calamus was like hundreds of other cities, maybe millions given the many worlds. A long river wound its way through flat land to the sea, and a city had grown to drink that water up. There was a busy north side and an industrial south side, reminiscent of London to Perry¡¯s eyes, with plenty of bridges going between the two, and there was a thicket of ships with huge engines on their backs, the age of sail having mostly passed by, at least for those who didn¡¯t care about leaving effluence in their wake. There were slums, visible from the air as ramshackle places with haphazard construction and terrible building materials, and there were also cathedrals whose exteriors were kept white and clean, along with what had to be halls of power and periodic monuments. There were, surprisingly, some green spaces, but the colors were wrong, with blue flowers on the trees and sickly yellow streaks across the fields. This was to be their home for the next however long. It wasn¡¯t a place of quasi-utopian communal living, but a place of transition. In theory, that transition would be peaceful, but Perry could smell smoke in the air, and it didn¡¯t seem like the smoke of wood fires. The parks were devoid of people, even though it was midday, and Perry could see scorch marks on some of the white buildings and flagpoles without their flags. He steeled himself for what they would find when they landed. His primary concern was finding the man who had killed the king. Chapter 106 - Fanatic It took twelve hours before the word ¡®symboulion¡¯ started to lose all meaning. The thing that Perry couldn¡¯t figure out was how they had ended up with such a long word, given that they were going to be using it so often. There was a certain insistence to it that hadn¡¯t been there in Kerry Coast City, a way of saying the word that made Perry cringe a little bit. ¡®Symboulion¡¯ was a shibboleth, something that they seemed to say to assure each other that they were on the same side. It smacked of the careful policing of language that Perry was very familiar with from his time on Earth, which seemed to him to mostly give people on Twitter something to talk about rather than serve any useful function or have any positive impact on anything. In Kerry Coast City, they had done all the necessary corrections ages ago, then somehow not descended into a performative ballet of escalating linguistic modifications for ever-more obscure reasons. Here, there still seemed to be the threat of that escalation, and for Perry, who wasn¡¯t steeped in either culture and had been through many worlds with varying social and linguistic mores, it was all the more difficult. Thankfully, there wasn¡¯t much cause for Perry to talk. ¡°You¡¯ll stick with me,¡± Moss had said on the ship. ¡°They won¡¯t have seen many dwarves, nor elves, and there¡¯s some risk to me and my wife. I¡¯ll have another guard as backup, pulled from the local symboulion, but if you accept, if it aligns with your interests, you¡¯re the first line of defense.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can handle that. This isn¡¯t how they normally handle protection duty in the culture though, right?¡± ¡°It is,¡± said Moss. ¡°Trusted volunteers, a sense of duty, forged friendships ¡­ the only unusual part is that we don¡¯t know each other.¡± ¡°But you didn¡¯t bring someone to fill that role,¡± said Perry. ¡°In spite of how important you and your wife seem to be.¡± ¡°What¡¯s considered important is not to bring too many people in,¡± said Moss. He gave a heavy sigh. ¡°You¡¯ll come to understand this as a matter of images. These people, who will only rarely have seen a dwarf, will already resent me to some degree. Some will have bought in completely, of course, people who have read the writings and internalized everything, but others will think that having a dwarf is a step too far. If I came with my own people, I¡¯d be seen as even more of an outsider. We have a field of study here, something called ¡®optics¡¯, unrelated to the masks or lanterns, a school of philosophy related to the way that things seem to be.¡± Perry gave him a smile. ¡°Ah, clever.¡± ¡°Whoever you are, wherever you¡¯re from, it¡¯s better for me to be seen with someone who belongs here in a way that I don¡¯t,¡± said Moss. ¡°We can work with you on your backstory, if need be, but it¡¯s mostly how it looks, rather than how it is. You¡¯re a strong son of Berus who has seen how bad things had gotten, and whatever you want to say about what you were doing in Kerry, you¡¯re back here to help out.¡± ¡°Not to play ah ¡ª¡± Perry almost used the phrase ¡®devil¡¯s advocate¡¯, but his sense of translation steered him away like a conversational Spidey sense. ¡°¡ª to advocate against myself, but you¡¯re placing a lot of trust in me.¡± ¡°You are clearly a man of extreme violence,¡± said Moss. ¡°But it¡¯s equally clear that I¡¯m not the target of that violence. No, I think the biggest risk is that you¡¯ll simply walk away from the responsibilities you¡¯ve agreed to, leaving me in the lurch, but that¡¯s the culture.¡± ¡°Leaving people in the lurch is the culture?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Moss with a sigh. ¡°But we do believe that a person shouldn¡¯t be shackled to simple agreements, and that complex agreements are often the tools of abusers. I explain this to you only because I¡¯m skeptical of your understanding.¡± ¡°Fair,¡± shrugged Perry. ¡°So it¡¯s hard to trust that when someone says that they¡¯ll do something, they¡¯ll actually do it. Seems like a headache.¡± ¡°Abandoning your duties is not the culture,¡± said Moss. ¡°But there are many things weighed against each other in the culture, and guarding someone is boring work.¡± Perry had been a soldier, but he¡¯d never been a guard. In fact, in Seraphinus, he¡¯d been the most frontline of all frontline soldiers, running into battle and killing orcs by the dozen, leading charges, never put on guard duty, and usually back in the warmth of the castle by night thanks to how fast he could move. Moss had not been lying about guarding people being incredibly boring. If Perry had felt like he could get away with wearing the armor, he would have just watched some television while standing around, but that didn¡¯t seem to be much of an option, so he was reduced to listening to March¡¯s audiobooks or actually paying attention to what was happening. Perry wasn¡¯t all that worried about the actual guarding aspect, since there were plenty of guards all over the place, and he was faster and stronger than all of them. He was keeping his power level hidden as much as he could by bottling up the energy and not letting it flow freely from his skin, the inverse of the technique that allowed him to repair Marchand. Perry watched the symboulions and listened. He did his best to show absolutely no reaction to anything, which was simple with the second sphere when he applied some effort to it. There were marks of effluence everywhere, and it was easy to see how people would become radicalized when the world around them was choking them out and killing them. Sometimes effluence killed people in simple ways, no worse than being suddenly struck with cancer, but other times the wild magic would cause a splash of feathers across someone¡¯s face, or a withered arm, or an enlarged purple eye. The symboulions had more than their share of the afflicted, and they captured Perry¡¯s attention. He stayed stone-faced while looking at a vocal man whose face was literally made of stone. There were more men than women and more humans than any other species, and that couldn¡¯t all be explained by simple demographics. It wasn¡¯t the sort of start to a new nation that inspired a lot of confidence in their notions of equality. Perry¡¯s mind went to the wealthy white landowners who had written lofty declarations of liberty in the Declaration of Independence, and he wondered whether they were as hard-nosed and serious as the men of the symboulions. They weren¡¯t quite white though, with the dominant ethnicity of their island nation having an olive complexion that Perry had always associated with the south of France thanks to an ex-girlfriend who talked about her heritage a bit too much. They were only scheduled to be in Calamus for two days before moving the airship into the countryside where the first of the golden domes would be built. There were complicated technical reasons for doing it there rather than in the city, but the biggest factor was that most of the industrial lanterns were out there because of the problem of effluence, and all the logistics were in place for the transportation of food. Food was going to be the biggest thing, at least in the short term. Perry was most interested in their time outside, some of which was on walking tours for the foreigners. The city wasn¡¯t under lockdown anymore, as it had been after the death of the king, but while the culturalists were attempting to get things back to some semblance of normal, the city clearly wasn¡¯t ready. The streets were largely deserted, especially in the city center among all the large, imposing buildings that had once done most of the work of keeping the kingdom¡¯s branches of governance running. There were lots of empty plinths, and in many cases, rectangular depressions on stonework where plaques had been removed. There were flagpoles without flags and signs that had been defaced in acts of revolutionary zealotry, and the problem was, nothing had been created to replace them. It seemed like a city stripped of its art and history, at least in the places that Perry and Moss had gone. A church had its stained glass bashed out, and Perry could only imagine what it had once depicted that had earned it such vandalism. They were staying in the city¡¯s largest hotel, which was now running under a new system of voluntary labor and communal ownership. Moss and Velli had been given a penthouse suite as honored guests, and possibly as preferential treatment because they weren¡¯t human, while Mette and Perry had been given more modest rooms in the floor below. Perry had been thankful to find that there was running water, then disappointed when it turned out that the water was only working intermittently due to some new scheme to limit how much effluence the lanterns were putting out. But in the hotel there were also places where paintings had obviously been removed, with nail holes in the wall and conspicuous blank spaces on many walls. ¡°Okay, but why?¡± asked Perry over dinner in the penthouse suite. ¡°Removing the artwork is necessary,¡± said Velli. ¡°Maybe even vital. Kings and nobles like to put up statues of themselves, with bronze being the default mode for the last however long. They like to commemorate with plaques and create a sort of commons where people can view these often exquisite works, but naturally that¡¯s to serve their own interests, those being either ego or a need to keep the commoners in line.¡± ¡°It¡¯s part of how a culture is created,¡± said Moss. ¡°The culture we¡¯re supplanting. Statues are a form of veneration. Artwork always lauds something or someone, and some of what it lauds is incompatible with what we¡¯re trying to accomplish. You¡¯ll notice that paintings of landscapes remain.¡± Perry always felt like he was giving away too much by asking those sorts of questions, but Moss never seemed to take those questions as a sign of anything, and never pressed Perry very much. Maybe he was thinking that Perry would volunteer information on his own terms, but there was another part to it. Perry had sat in enough of the symboulions now to have been told outright that this was one of the things that transition demanded: people would be ignorant, and would need to be repeatedly told things, which needed to be done with care and grace. At night, Perry put on his armor and slipped out of the hotel, giving Mette a kiss before the helmet slipped on. It was going to be some time before Perry could entirely eliminate sleep, but he didn¡¯t need the eight hours that everyone else did so long as he had energy flowing through his system. The clouds were dark at night, shimmering briefly for unknown reasons at times but otherwise blocking the moonlight and the stars. There were few lights on in the city, thanks to a policy of having effluence-reducing blackouts, which made it safe for Perry to move overhead, silently following the sword, which was wrapped in a blanket to contain its glow. He was going to have to find a new sheathe somewhere, or a better solution. Perry had built up a stockpile of nanites during the two year lull on Esperide, but he was burning through the stockpile quickly due to needing so many listeners. There were no computer systems in this world, nothing that could carry a signal, which meant that the nanites themselves had to become repeaters, and that meant that if Perry wanted to have an ear to the ground, he was going to have to have cast them far and wide. The city was too quiet for a place of this size, but the lack of light was definitely part of that, and the militants were another. There had been a few flare ups in the weeks since the symboulions had taken over and the people of the kingdom had started to make their transition to being a communal society of equals. Perry made his way to the castle, which stood as an imposing presence in the city, up on a hill just as the one in Teaguewater had been, a natural defensive position close to the river, convergent architecture and decision-making in action. This castle was more vertical, with a number of high towers, built with what had to be a deliberate attempt at having the single greatest vantage point it possibly could. At the very top of the tallest tower, which transitioned from stonework to thick metal scaffolding, there was a lantern of enormous size with what looked like an elevator at the bottom. It had been designed to cast light out over the entire city, providing cooling in the summer and heat in the winter, a second sun of sorts, and had not yet been dismantled. It was inefficient to the extreme, a symbol of the monarchy and what it did for the people far more than a clever bit of infrastructure. It was also a threat, because a lantern¡¯s effects could be varied with fuel and internal components, and something that could warm the city could also be used to flay the skin off anyone who stepped outside. The castle was under the control of the symboulions now, but they had the same problem that the leaders of the Natrix had: it was terrible optics to depose someone who was stealing the labor of the masses and then sit in their lavish rooms with all their ornate artworks around you. The contrast had been less extreme on the Natrix than here, where the king¡¯s room was itself another supposed symbol of the monarchy. Eventually, all of this stuff would be made a part of the commons, including the castle itself, but for the time being, most of it wasn¡¯t in use. The king had been abducted from his bedroom, and for that reason, it was one of the two places that Perry was looking at first. He climbed in through the window, whose latch was easily defeated. Thankfully, security on windows many stories up was usually pretty damned lax. The room was as it had been the night the king had been abducted. Perry looked around with a frown beneath his helmet. Almost nothing was disturbed; even the bed hadn¡¯t been made since that night. There were ashes in the fireplace and a tray beside the bed with a glass of water that had almost entirely evaporated, leaving residue. It was a place of absurd opulence, with every inch of it showing the work of tedious labor and rare materials. The carpets were woven scenes of rich red and deep blue, the tapestries hung on the walls must have taken hundreds of hours, the handles on the windows were gilded, the doorknobs cut crystal. It was gaudy and sickening, at least by Perry¡¯s standards, a disgusting royal maximalism. ¡°March, run every analysis you can think of,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m looking for definite proof that the abduction was by someone from another world.¡± ¡°The scans are in progress, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve taken the liberty of directing the nanites to spread out and use their own sensors, which might possibly give more information. Are we to assume that the crime scene is pristine?¡± ¡°Depends on what we find,¡± said Perry, still frowning. ¡°Then might I ask, sir, what proof there might be for someone being from another world?¡± asked Marchand in that dry tone that managed to be just on the right side of endearing. ¡°So, thinking it through,¡± said Perry. ¡°Organisms that aren¡¯t native to this world, DNA analysis of hairs or skin cells, ¡ª¡± ¡°I apologize, sir, but we in no way have the capacity to undertake that sort of analysis,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Chromosomal analysis then,¡± said Perry. ¡°Check whether the shapes of the chromosomes match the shapes of the chromosomes of the species we¡¯ve come across, that sort of thing.¡± You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. ¡°Possible in theory, sir, with some finagaling of the nanites, though it¡¯s not the sort of work they¡¯re built for,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We could do that thing they do with nuclear weapons,¡± said Perry. ¡°Explode them?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, I mean ¡­ nuclear weapons go off, and they contaminate the whole world, which means that you can tell a fake wine from a real wine by seeing whether it¡¯s ¡­ minorly radioactive, or why they need to pull steel up from old wrecks that settled on the seabed before the nukes went off.¡± He was out of his depth on this one, and hoped that Marchand would fill in the blanks. ¡°I doubt our instruments are powerful enough for that,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And sir, my scans are complete. I¡¯ve identified a number of fingerprints, hairs for collection which I¡¯ve highlighted on your HUD, but there appears to be nothing that I would consider to be evidence of any kind. With my capabilities, it¡¯s impossible for me to say what precisely happened, but there are very few signs of a struggle. Given what we must suspect to be true about an enemy thresholder, that wouldn¡¯t be terribly surprising, but there are mundane explanations.¡± ¡°If I were coming in here to abduct a king, I wouldn¡¯t leave any evidence either,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not hairs, not fingerprints.¡± ¡°This is true, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though with the level of scientific understanding these people have shown, I doubt hair, fingerprints, or indeed, genetic material would allow them to catch a killer.¡± ¡°Alright then,¡± said Perry. ¡°Time to try some magic.¡± He opened up the shelf space with a casual wave of the hand, and Nima took a timid step out of it. She was in her full armor, which had been extended by the necklace. She moved freely, with her armor having none of the same bulk that Marchand provided, all the slender grace of an elf with all the hardness of a beetle. Perry was confident in his ability to take her if it came to that, but he hadn¡¯t seen her fight yet, and there was a slim chance that her lone power gave her the ability to withstand everything he could throw at her. ¡°I don¡¯t like it in there,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯m working on being able to just keep a pinhole open,¡± said Perry. ¡°That would let us at least talk to each other. It¡¯s difficult though, it keeps collapsing unless I focus on it.¡± He shrugged. He would get it in time, but as far as methods of transport went, it was better than flying coach, even if there was now a dank seawater smell that he hadn¡¯t been able to scrub out. ¡°This is it?¡± asked Nima as she looked around the room. ¡°The seat of power?¡± ¡°Sure is,¡± said Perry. ¡°The king was taken from here, and we want to find out how and by whom.¡± Nima¡¯s armor retracted from her hands, the metal peeling back to show her thin and delicate fingers. She touched the fabric of the bed, then ran her hands along the bedpost, which was obviously the work of a master craftsman and altogether too much gold leaf. ¡°Not sure what you¡¯re hoping to find doing that,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve never been where a king sleeps,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯m just ¡­ experiencing it.¡± They had kings in the world Nima was from, but those kings were ¡®angels¡¯ rather than human or elf. They hadn¡¯t had a conversation about kings and their place in the world, but seeing her awe at the interior of the room, Perry thought maybe that was a conversation they needed to have. He would have thought that more important if they weren¡¯t trying to track down a guy who was killing kings. At least it wasn¡¯t going to be a point of conflict between the two of them. ¡°Masks?¡± asked Perry after giving her a moment. Nima had them hanging by a hook on her side, a common way for someone to carry a bunch of masks around, though specialization was the name of the game with the masks, and those who had multiples usually used them only for their ability to perceive rather than their abilities in terms of utility or combat. ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re hoping I¡¯ll find,¡± said Nima. ¡°I can be your eyes, but I¡¯m not going to find anything that they wouldn¡¯t have already found.¡± ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure that they didn¡¯t look, if ¡®they¡¯ means the people who are in charge now,¡± said Perry. ¡°The castle was taken over after a week had passed, and the people who are in charge now have much more pressing concerns than figuring out who did them a favor. It¡¯s very possible that we¡¯re the first people to look into this.¡± While Nima was looking through the masks, Perry picked out a few hairs and got the cameras closer to the suspect fingerprints. There were a few different hairs, and Perry diligently collected them all. A few mostly likely belonged to the king, being curled and brown in keeping with the portraits of him or his ancestors that hung in the room, and there were others that Perry was pretty sure would be matched to a chambermaid, butler, or other staff. One of the hairs was anomalous though, with Marchand marking its tensile strength as being very high. It was silvery white and very long, and it went into a small compartment in the suit for further study. ¡°I don¡¯t know what I¡¯m looking for,¡± said Nima. ¡°Massive energy signatures,¡± said Perry. ¡°Signs of an Implement, something like that.¡± ¡°There¡¯s nothing,¡± she said with a sigh as she switched masks for the fourth time. ¡°It¡¯s also possible that there¡¯s nothing,¡± said Perry. Nima¡¯s eyes kept going to the bed. It was a huge bed, as Perry would have expected for a king, and it had that sort of overwrought richness that Perry associated with wealth, though here it was taken to an extreme. He wondered how many hours someone had spent slaving away at making this bed, and decided that it was probably a whole team of people taking at least a year to get all the carving and sanding and other stuff done. ¡°What will happen to all this?¡± asked Nima as her fingers passed over the edge of the embroidered silk sheets. ¡°Is it destined for a museum?¡± ¡°Probably not, if I understand right,¡± said Perry. ¡°My guess is that it¡¯s going straight into the commons, to be a part of a library, free to be taken out by anyone.¡± ¡°Really?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t have thought so. They wouldn¡¯t know how to treat things like this right.¡± ¡°Maybe the librarians would tell them what to do,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or, maybe more likely, the amount of resources that it takes to keep all this stuff intact and clean means that its ultimate fate is to be used for only long enough until it gets broken or worn down. Which is what they probably want, at least from an ideological standpoint. Putting this stuff in a museum would be a sort of veneration of kings, a testament to personal greed.¡± Nima fell silent. Perry would have to ask Velli, who was a librarian of some significant power. Tearing this castle apart and making it and everything in it part of the commons was going to be a part of her role here. She had done it before, in other nations, and seemed to take some pleasure in it. ¡°Can I tell you something?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Sure, of course,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can spend as long as we want here, there¡¯s no one around, and we can just duck out the window really fast if we need to.¡± ¡°I meant more ¡­ something personal,¡± said Nima. Perry shrugged. ¡°If we¡¯re hitting dead ends, we¡¯re hitting dead ends.¡± Nima frowned at him, her mouth drawn tight. She pointed at the bed. ¡°The elves of this world, they¡¯re considered ¡­ less than.¡± ¡°Not really,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, historically, from the perspective of the other species, sure, but I sort of got the impression that they all looked down on each other to varying degrees, aside from the melekee.¡± ¡°Is that a joke about their stature?¡± asked Nima. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, it works as a joke, but then I would have included dwarves. The melekee have a different relationship with the other species, they have this acknowledgement of their own inferiority, at least historically if not in the present. Probably comes from many generations of being told that they were less than. At least, that¡¯s where I would assume an inferiority complex comes from.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think you have to feel inferior just because someone is objectively better than you are,¡± said Nima. Perry blinked. She had come from a caste system in her homeworld, and he was pretty sure that was what was shining through. In his opinion, it must have been a lot easier to believe in a system like that if you were up near the top, and from what she had said, her elves were second only to angels. ¡°This isn¡¯t what you wanted to talk about,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry, go on.¡± Nima was looking at the bed again. She slowly and deliberately changed masks, but if she saw anything unexpected, it didn¡¯t show in her eyes. ¡°The elves of this world are ¡ª or were ¡ª considered less than. No one made a big deal of it in Kerry Coast City, and I imagine that¡¯s just not the culture, but I did have a number of men and a few women ask me whether I was interested in a ¡­ a dalliance.¡± ¡°There¡¯s an assumption of promiscuity, when it comes to elves,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sure.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t understand it in your bones,¡± said Nima. She took the mask off and looked at him. ¡°It¡¯s intellectual to you.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± said Perry. He shrugged. ¡°It can¡¯t really be anything other than intellectual. I can try to have empathy for you, but it¡¯s easier to have empathy when I have specifics, and it¡¯s not about the specifics, it¡¯s about the feel of the whole thing that¡¯s built up over weeks or months. Am I getting close?¡± ¡°Closer,¡± said Nima. She took a breath. ¡°You¡¯re insightful sometimes, did you know that?¡± ¡°I come from a culture with a lot of this sort of thing,¡± said Perry. ¡°And what do you think that is?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Discontent with how other people see you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though ¡­ I¡¯m not sure why you¡¯re bringing it up now, so I might be way off base.¡± ¡°In my home, we had expectations,¡± said Nima. ¡°Expectations of the same sort. But we weren¡¯t considered less than, not by the humans, and certainly not by the angels. It was something we were celebrated for.¡± Perry nodded along with that. He wasn¡¯t sure where she was going with this, and he held back his initial glib response of ¡®oh, so slutty elves are a multiversal constant¡¯. ¡°There were rules about how the different levels of our society interacted with each other,¡± said Nima. She set her mask on the hook and picked up a new one, but didn¡¯t put it on her face. Perry was pretty sure she wasn¡¯t going to find anything with the masks, which was unfortunate, but if now was the time she was choosing to open up a little bit, he could roll with it. ¡°Elves were the intellectual class, the artists, it was our role, one that we were good at. We weren¡¯t warriors like the angels, not rulers, managers, nothing like that, and there were more of us than them. But it happened some time that there were bridges built between elf and angel, a selection process that was used sometimes, personal artistry, it was called, something that we were celebrated for.¡± Perry looked at the bed, where her eyes had kept going. ¡°The angels were leaders, rulers ¡­ kings?¡± ¡°Only one king,¡± said Nima. ¡°And I was selected to be his.¡± ¡°You were going to be a queen?¡± asked Perry, momentarily nonplussed. ¡°No, no, nothing like that,¡± said Nima. ¡°I would be one of dozens, a personal artist to the king from his stable that he kept, and of course once I was selected, nothing happened right away, I needed to be coached by other elves, made to look as pretty as I possibly could, to be toned and limber, all these things.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can see where being here might bring back some memories.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima. ¡°I never made it that far. The thresholder arrived in my world when I was only seven months into the process of refinement.¡± ¡°You had complicated feelings about it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I knew that I was blessed,¡± said Nima. ¡°I was anxious to do well, and it was an imposition on my other work, because I still had to fulfill my other duties. I was committed to research during the day, and when I was done, I would go get plucked and pruned. But if you¡¯re thinking that I didn¡¯t want to be there, with the king, you¡¯re wrong. I did. It was a great honor, and one that I was looking forward to, whatever my trepidation.¡± She looked around the room. ¡°Of course this is nothing like what an angel would have.¡± Perry watched her. She had a single mask left to use, and put it on while letting a breath out. ¡°You mourn your old life,¡± said Perry. ¡°I do,¡± she said as she scanned the room. ¡°You don¡¯t? Never did? Or is it just so far behind you that it doesn¡¯t cause any ripples on the surface?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t have a lot going on,¡± said Perry. ¡°I had friends, family ¡­ but the future wasn¡¯t bright, and I wasn¡¯t on top of the world.¡± Perry couldn¡¯t imagine a career he could possibly have had that would have made him refuse the portal. He could maybe imagine getting married and having children, all that, but bringing children into a world that was getting worse seemed downright unethical to him. That wouldn¡¯t have necessarily stopped him, but it did weigh on him. ¡°I wasn¡¯t on top of the world,¡± said Nima. She took the mask off and frowned, then put it back on. ¡°There¡¯s a trace of something there.¡± ¡°You had a job you liked, an ¡­ opportunity that you were excited for, all was going well,¡± said Perry. ¡°You weren¡¯t in the highest caste, but you didn¡¯t have an ambition to jump castes, and that makes sense because caste mobility isn¡¯t really a thing. Not the top of the world, no, but close to it before the thresholders came in and started wrecking everything.¡± ¡°Not the thresholders,¡± said Nima, who was staring through her mask. ¡°A thresholder. The one who unleashed the demons.¡± She frowned at Perry, visible only because the mask didn¡¯t entirely cover the side of her face. ¡°You don¡¯t want to know what I see?¡± ¡°Go ahead,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s traces of an Implement,¡± said Nima. ¡°I think, anyway. They have their own leavings, an equivalent to effluent, tiny little motes that settle instead of hanging in the air. Except ¡­ this would be three Implements.¡± ¡°This king didn¡¯t have any,¡± said Perry. ¡°And no one has three Implements.¡± ¡°You have three,¡± said Nima. ¡°If we¡¯re counting generously, then I have three sources of power,¡± said Perry. ¡°But they wouldn¡¯t show up like that. You¡¯ve seen them, they¡¯re all their own thing, not under some coherent umbrella like the deep magic of the Implements. And most of this stuff wouldn¡¯t be all that rare on the worlds I got them from. How do you get three incredibly rare magic items in this world? They¡¯re all in the commons, pretty much exclusively, which means either you have to convince a lot of people in a very public manner that it¡¯s in their best interests to loan them out to a single individual, or you need to steal them and not have that be a big deal, or ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t think the other thresholder stole them?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know how it would be possible, not without it being a major news story. I guess we can ask around, dig deep, but ¡­ Marchand, anything you¡¯ve read or heard?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You expressed a great deal of interest in having an Implement of your own, so I¡¯ve kept a keen ear out. If someone has stolen an Implement in the last few months, news of it never reached Kerry Coast City.¡± ¡°So, not impossible that the other thresholder came in, stole a bunch of things that somehow didn¡¯t get reported, then went to kill a few kings,¡± said Perry. ¡°But that¡¯s much less likely than what I was thinking, which is that this was someone from another world coming in and doing this all with tools of their own, picked up after a career of a year or two thresholding.¡± ¡°The residue is only here,¡± said Nima. ¡°Only over the bed, and a bit by the window. I think they came in the same way that we came in.¡± ¡°Seems likely,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then they closed the door after themselves, and left us only some invisible dust, a few fingerprints, and some hairs.¡± ¡°What¡¯s a fingerprint?¡± asked Nima. ¡°We can go over it later,¡± said Perry. ¡°For now, this seems like a dead end, and the signs are pointing to this not being a thresholder at all.¡± He let out a little sigh. ¡°It felt like there had to be a connection. The timeline felt right.¡± Nima nodded. ¡°Back into the shelf for me then,¡± she said. ¡°Elf in a shelf,¡± said Perry. ¡°What?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Nothing,¡± said Perry. He waved a hand and opened up the shelf space for her. He would have to analyze the hair and see what they could find, but this wasn¡¯t what he wanted from the expedition. He wanted a lead on the other thresholder. ¡°I have a question,¡± said Nima as she stopped at the doorway. ¡°If the person who killed the kings isn¡¯t our thresholder, who is he?¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Yeah, that does seem like a very important question.¡± Chapter 107 - The Gaze of Justice, pt 1 Mette got her debrief in the morning before they were set to go have breakfast. ¡°What do you mean you don¡¯t care?¡± asked Mette when he was just about finished. ¡°If it¡¯s not a thresholder, then it¡¯s not thresholder business, which means that it¡¯s not strictly speaking my business,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess I shouldn¡¯t say that I don¡¯t care, but another thresholder is eventually going to be my problem. A high-powered and possibly state-backed individual wiping the last vestiges of monarchy from the face of this world? That¡¯s much less my problem. It¡¯s arguably not a problem of any sort at all.¡± ¡°It goes against the self-professed culture,¡± said Mette. ¡°If it is someone who¡¯s state-backed ¡ª or inter-symboulion supported, I guess ¡ª then I would think it would be important for people to know. And if this is a criminal ¡ª¡± ¡°There are two things here,¡± said Perry, holding up his fingers. ¡°First, what do we get out of fighting whoever is doing this, and second, what do they get out of the killing?¡± ¡°You don¡¯t want to dispense justice?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Depends on what you mean by justice,¡± said Perry. ¡°I still don¡¯t have a good grip on what things were like before the takeover, aside from all the missing statues, plaques, artwork, things like that.¡± It was hard not to read ¡®monarchism¡¯ as being equivalent to capitalism, especially given how many of the problems seemed to be driven by an interest in profits and the benefits to the upper class. ¡°You haven¡¯t been going to the meetings that I¡¯ve been going to,¡± said Mette. ¡°There are some executions scheduled for today.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°For what?¡± ¡°General crimes against the commons,¡± said Mette. ¡°From what I understand, it¡¯s mostly people who were in positions of authority. There was a brief trial.¡± ¡°Jesus, it would pretty much have to be brief,¡± said Perry. He tapped his foot against the ground. ¡°A new government expediting things as fast as they possibly can wouldn¡¯t be able to do it that fast, you need time to gather evidence and make an argument.¡± He was used to trials taking ages. ¡°The timeframe wasn¡¯t all that much shorter than our tribunals,¡± said Mette. ¡°From what I saw though, it was a foregone conclusion.¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t execute your oligarchs,¡± said Perry. He shook his head. ¡°I keep forgetting that you were a part of an overthrow just like this.¡± He had seen the displaced people in the halls sometimes, older people who still lived aboard the Natrix, most of them wrinkled and with defensive posture or a haunted look on their faces. Mette shook her head. ¡°It¡¯s so different I don¡¯t think it makes sense to talk about them in the same breath,¡± said Mette. ¡°On the Natrix ¡­ we knew everyone, you know? And it wasn¡¯t the culture, it was a few leeches at the top. And no, we didn¡¯t execute anyone, we just made them live like everyone else.¡± Perry thought about that. ¡°Do you object to the executions?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Or just to the presumed sloppiness of the trial?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Mette. ¡°They¡¯re being executed for crimes that weren¡¯t crimes. Or, I guess there were also crimes for some of them, things that the guards were paid to look the other way on, but there are others whose only crime was being at the top of an economic system.¡± The rule of law had been shaky in Berus, but there was a presumption that the law applied to everyone, even if that didn¡¯t happen in reality. ¡°And you ¡­ care about this?¡± asked Perry. ¡°People are going to die today,¡± said Mette. She was staring hard at him. ¡°More than twenty of them, killed by lantern light. It¡¯s cruel, if nothing else.¡± ¡°The king had people killed in the same way,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s retribution.¡± He tapped his foot against the floor again. He was feeling restless. ¡°You weren¡¯t hoping that I would step in, were you?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°Even if you could beat off a lot of men and free the prisoners, I don¡¯t know that it would help anything.¡± ¡°Let¡¯s not just throw around the phrase ¡®beat off a lot of men¡¯ like that,¡± said Perry. Mette gave him a quizzical look, and he just waved his hand. ¡°My concern is mostly with thresholding. There is some opponent out there somewhere.¡± ¡°That¡¯s true,¡± said Mette. ¡°Whether it¡¯s this phantom you¡¯re chasing or not. But how does it make sense if you¡¯re going to say that you don¡¯t care about their work, or if you support it?¡± ¡°I do care,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, if I have to pick a side with every world I come into, then in this world I would pick the side of the socialists who have torn down the monarchy, at least unless there are some hidden omelas somewhere.¡± ¡°A what?¡± asked Mette. ¡°A ¡ª it¡¯s a story from Earth, it¡¯s not something I¡¯ve seen or heard about, not something from the multiverse ¡ª the basic idea is that there¡¯s a utopia that¡¯s powered by the suffering of a small child or something,¡± said Perry. This was one of those moments he wished that he had access to information from his own home, rather than the alternate Earth. He would have loved to just share the story. But of course Richter¡¯s Earth never had that story, so it existed only in Perry¡¯s head. ¡°That doesn¡¯t seem like a bad trade, to be honest,¡± said Mette. ¡°Well, not to you,¡± said Perry. ¡°You had plenty of arduous child labor.¡± ¡°And you would be against this society if it were powered by a single suffering child?¡± asked Mette, cocking her head to the side. ¡°It¡¯s complicated,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s one of the reasons that I liked the story, it was good fodder for talking about. It was philosophy, but not the kind of philosophy where you have to learn a bunch of made up terms just to come to grips with what some not-that-bright person thought about the world.¡± Perry had briefly been a philosophy major, and aside from the dismal career prospects, had felt some instinctive aversion when reading Foucault. ¡°But yes, if we peeked inside one of those golden domes and saw that there was a weeping child who had been locked in there for their entire life ¡­¡± Perry considered it. ¡°I would think that some other kind of power source would be necessary.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been in one of the domes, there were no children,¡± said Mette. She had her arms folded across her chest. ¡°But these are, as I understand it, metaphorical children. And the previous way of doing things was giving people irreversible scars, killing them, turning them into monsters, creating monsters in the oceans, and all that. It had its own suffering children, which weren¡¯t at all metaphorical.¡± ¡°True,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to leave this world a better place than it was when we got here,¡± said Mette. ¡°I think that¡¯s going to mean that you stop the enemy thresholder before lots of people die, and maybe it means that you help to take out the king who blew up the city we were staying in.¡± ¡°Possibly,¡± said Perry. He shouldn¡¯t have said that he didn¡¯t care. They could have avoided most of this conversation, which seemed to hinge on a single offhand mention that maybe the Case of the Kingkiller wasn¡¯t anything that Perry needed to be inserting himself into. He did care, obviously, in the sense that it would probably be better for the world if there wasn¡¯t a rogue killer out there violating the norms of transition from monarchy to a general commons. ¡°I¡¯m glad you weren¡¯t hurt,¡± said Mette. ¡°I didn¡¯t even fight anyone,¡± said Perry. ¡°Still, I didn¡¯t know what was going to happen,¡± said Mette. ¡°I only knew that you were going to do something illegal in the dead of night. I thought there was a good chance I would read about some bloody violence at the castle in the papers the next morning, or that you would come limping back missing an arm.¡± ¡°There was nothing,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was just recon, investigation, trying to see if we could find the answer.¡± ¡°Perry ¡­ I think I understand the world you come from,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯ve read the Gratbook backward and forward, and I know it doesn¡¯t have everything, and I know that the world it describes isn¡¯t your world, but ¡­ it was a safe world. You didn¡¯t have to worry about those things. You didn¡¯t have people go out and then never come back.¡± She placed her hand on her chest. ¡°In my world? We did what we could to make it safe, but there were missions that went far away from the Natrix, and sometimes people came limping back or not at all.¡± ¡°Well, I¡¯m fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°And once we get out into the country for this big project Moss has dreamed up, we¡¯ll be safer. I¡¯ll coat the whole place with listeners and we¡¯ll know if anything is coming our way.¡± ¡°The Last King bombed civilians,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t actually think we¡¯re safe anywhere.¡± ¡°Then you can start working on defensive technologies, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Radar or something like it.¡± ¡°Perry, they don¡¯t have electronics,¡± said Mette. ¡°Inventing it all from scratch, with only Marchand, and no way to print anything out except to dictate it to a servant ¡­ there were books in the shelf, but nothing that I would have credited too much. And it seems as though they put their boots on the throat of most technologies, if they don¡¯t think it¡¯s going to positively impact their lives, and that is the business of one of these very opaque councils.¡± ¡°Well, take it up with Moss, he seems like the guy who knows things,¡± said Perry. ¡°And they are hiding technologies. We know that.¡± Mette looked out the window. She didn¡¯t seem mollified. ¡°I¡¯ll be glad to be out of the city,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t really like it here. It¡¯s oppressive.¡± ¡°Moss said we don¡¯t have more than a day left,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯ll be different in the country.¡± ~~~~ Perry wasn¡¯t all that hot on executions, at least when carried out by the state. He was even less hot on public executions, which seemed like they created a carnival atmosphere of spectacle. A mass public execution was even worse. He still went to go see it, mostly because Moss was going to see it through. Perry had seen his fair share of death, and didn¡¯t think that it would affect him at all, but he did think that it was probably a bad way to start a society that¡¯s trying to be better than the people who had come before. The execution was held in one of the city¡¯s large public squares, right in front of what had once been a cathedral but was now a part of the commons. The culture didn¡¯t demand a wholesale rejection of religion, but the churches were often a part of the systems of power, the grandiose buildings a symptom of ¡®monarchical thinking¡¯. Men starved because of the labor used to build cathedrals, or at least that was the thinking. The windows of this one hadn¡¯t been broken, and it towered above the square, making the hastily constructed stage look small and insignificant. The optics were kind of bad, Perry thought, and they would have done better to have set it up somewhere else, like a farm on the outskirts of town. He mentioned as much to Moss. ¡°Oh, this is where the old executions were held,¡± said Moss. ¡°It¡¯s the same method that the king used on traitors and dissidents. But I agree that the optics are bad. Of course, they would be bad no matter what. The fence-sitters are already frightened, killing a few people isn¡¯t going to make that any better. And those are the people that you need to buy in, to be a part of the new systems, to not just hoard and wait, but to work. Fear isn¡¯t a good motivator, hope is.¡± Moss didn¡¯t seem terribly disturbed by what they were about to witness, even if he had repeatedly voiced his disapproval for it. Velli was nowhere to be seen, and while Perry did spot a few familiar faces, it was mostly the two of them. Moss, given his stature, needed a better place to watch from, so Perry was obliged to follow him into a bakery and take up a place on the second floor balcony with the owner¡¯s permission. It was a good view, but the angle wasn¡¯t head-on. ¡°Mette has her doubts about the trial,¡± said Perry. ¡°Doubts are reasonable,¡± said Moss. ¡°But most of those being killed today have clear crimes to their name. Optics, that¡¯s the game, and if you¡¯re going to do something like this, then you had better be sure that you¡¯re not making a mistake. A single sympathetic victim sets the cause back by weeks, maybe months, and it¡¯s entirely possible that one of these witnesses would go the rest of their lives believing that the culture is rotten to its core.¡± ¡°The culture believes in redemption,¡± said Perry. That was the general rule, anyway. If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°Do you?¡± asked Moss. ¡°For some,¡± said Perry. ¡°For others ¡­ there¡¯s a sickness in the brain that some people have, and the most you can do for them is to lock them in a gilded cage where they can¡¯t hurt anyone. That¡¯s all well and good if you have the resources for gilded cages.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a matter of resources, not morals?¡± asked Moss. He had a way of taking an academic tone, which Perry appreciated. It was a step removed from the topic, emotionless in a way that the fervent supporters of the Berusian symboulions were not. ¡°Moral calculus often comes down to resources,¡± said Perry. His translation snagged on ¡®calculus¡¯ a bit, and he was fairly sure the word that was chosen to match the intent wasn¡¯t quite the same. ¡°If you have limitless resources, then the gilded cages make a lot more sense than if people are starving. But of course in this case, I don¡¯t really think it¡¯s like that. I think it¡¯s anger and a guttural desire for retribution. Not that it makes it right. From an objective perspective, like your own, I can see where this is a bad idea that will have bad consequences.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Moss. ¡°They¡¯re starting. Are you apprised of the crimes they¡¯ve been convicted of?¡± ¡°Not really,¡± said Perry. ¡°Most of them were nobles. I figured that was enough.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll see,¡± said Moss. ¡°I can¡¯t say that this is justice, but I understand where it comes from.¡± The convicts ¡ª it was odd to think of them as that, but by the whims of a kangaroo court, they were ¡ª got marched up onto the stage. There were nineteen in all, less than Perry had heard there would be. They were all human, with more men than women, but the gender balance was less unequal than Perry had thought it would be given that men had held more positions of power in the now-former Kingdom of Berus. They weren¡¯t in the makeup or fancy outfits that they surely would have had in their lives before this point, and a few had clearly been mistreated, or perhaps suffered at the hands of their guards when they tried to fight back. It was another optics failure, in Perry¡¯s opinion. If you wanted to put on a show, you needed your oligarchs to look like oligarchs rather than stripped bare of their frippery and reduced to base humans. That might mean a waste of their fine clothes that were destined for the commons, but it would make for a better image. ¡°We are here today to do justice!¡± called a man on the stage. There were guards in masks, but this man was the only one without one. He was simply dressed, but clean cut and stage ready. They were some distance away, but his words were loud and clear, helped by the utter silence of the huge crowd. There were no microphones or speakers, of course, but there wasn¡¯t even a megaphone. It was an impressive talent, to be able to address that large a group of people, though the utter silence was unnerving to Perry. He had expected there to be more whoops and jeers, or at least some scattered applause. The silence made the whole thing feel grim. The convicts were manacled onto large metal structures that left them spread-eagled and facing their audience. The metal must have been costly, but Perry was pretty certain that this was a tool of the old king, rather than something that had been constructed by the rebels in the month or so they¡¯d had control. Bits of rust attested to that. A lantern was brought up on the stage with wheels attached to it. It had a large tube on it, which ended in a lens, tightly directing the beam of whatever would come out of it. Perry felt his stomach churn slightly, unexpectedly. When he had been given the choice, he had backed down from killing people who had no defenses against him. Generally speaking, anyway. Perhaps there was some argument that in his armor he sometimes killed people who were essentially no threat at all to him. As he was thinking that, he saw that the woman from the airship was among those up on the stage. She had tried her best to convert him, thinking that his clear power meant he had monarchical sympathies. She had tried to kill him, and had been working with extremist murderers, and Perry thought she was overall guilty as sin ¡­ but he hadn¡¯t been questioned by anyone, hadn¡¯t had to give a statement, hadn¡¯t so much as written a letter about what he knew. There was no actual doubt of her guilt, and a muddled version of the story of what happened on the airship was circulating, but the fact that no one had asked Perry made the whole thing smell of a miscarriage of justice. It took Perry a moment to consider that perhaps Dirk Gibbons was responsible for no one asking Perry what had happened. It would probably be better for Perry not to have to give an account. ¡°These are extraordinary times,¡± said the man on the stage, who was apparently going to be running things. ¡°What has happened in this month represents a correction from centuries of misrule, perhaps even thousands of years when Berus was not as it could have been. We were victims, martyrs, the downtrodden, and if they¡¯d had their way, those in power would have seen that continue into perpetuity. The work of building a new society in the bones of the old one will be difficult, arduous work, which we are all happy to do.¡± There was applause at that, and the man smiled as he waited for them to finish. ¡°But this too must be done.¡± A sweeping gesture indicated the soon-to-be dead. ¡°We can talk of rehabilitation and a culture where people are not punished so harshly for their crimes, but these?¡± He cast a hand to the manacled men and women behind him. ¡°These people have stained themselves. They can never be clean. Left alive, they would use their poison words to spread the pollution that has sunk deep down into their souls.¡± He pulled the lantern over to the first man, who was muttering and turned away as though the lantern couldn¡¯t hurt him if he wasn¡¯t looking at it. ¡°This is the Third Marquis Wintergrave,¡± the emcee shouted. ¡°He was rich beyond measure, with a house away from the city, far from the effluence his factories produced. He ate food that was painstakingly decontaminated while the farms were worked with machines that spread sickness. He paid good money to have his barristers argue with the king over the levels of effluence his machines could produce, and swayed the king toward accepting higher limits. There are hundreds of deaths on his head, thousands of maimings. He said, in his defense, that those who didn¡¯t like it should leave this country, as though the effluence of the former kingdom was not spilling out into the oceans, coating the world, as if the tickets aboard a ship were not expensive, as though it wouldn¡¯t mean uprooting your life and paying the so-called exit taxes the kingdom saw fit to impose.¡± The emcee began to pace back and forth across the stage. The crowd was getting worked up, though they were still silent. Perry could see it mostly in their movements, like wheat rippling in the wind. They were trying to get closer, to see the face of the man about to be executed. They moved their hands involuntarily, as though their bodies were primed to wring the neck of the marquis. ¡°We will hear better defenses,¡± said the emcee. ¡°We will hear, in my words, not theirs, how such people justify what they have done. The marquis has been chosen to be first because he was unapologetic, not even in the false belief that it would save him. He said that what he did was what anyone would have done. This man is a poisoner, and has declared, as his defense, that we are poisoners too. Yet these are not the extent of his crimes. When members of the nascent symboulion were attempting to gather information on the extent of the damage the lanterns had done, the marquis implored the king to do something. The attempt to gather information was deemed an ¡®illegal census¡¯, and fines were levied. The marquis then did his own study of the issue, and declared that there was little evidence to support that the lanterns were the cause of death. This, of course, was not declared an illegal census, or forbidden science, or anything of the sort.¡± The emcee was moving more now, and Perry wasn¡¯t sure how he was going to keep this up for another eighteen people. Surely it would get monotonous, though maybe he just thought that because he was from an era where a four minute video was beyond the attention span of most people. A two hour speech ¡­ well, someone was watching those in modern-day Earth somewhere, where it was probably an election year if Perry bothered to do the math. But mostly those were broken up into soundbites and headlines that paraphrased the thrust of the message. Through that lens, Perry found himself a bit appreciative of the medium of a long speech at a public gathering, if not the message. Though as the marquis had his crimes read off, which were really more crimes of the entire society, Perry did find that it was working on him. Assuming that the marquis was actually guilty of everything, years of cover-ups and denial, gaslighting and manipulation, environmental crimes and hypocrisy, then Perry wasn¡¯t all that conflicted about the man dying. It was only the fact that it was happening in public, in front of this crowd, with emotions that were just short of glee that gave him pause. ¡°We should not mourn this man¡¯s death,¡± said the emcee as he stepped up to the lantern. ¡°We should only mourn that it did not come sooner, that we did not stop him with whatever means necessary many years before. The world will be better for his absence.¡± The emcee flipped a lever on the machine, feeding in a piece of fuel to the lantern, which immediately began to eat away at the marquis it was pointed at. If Perry had been in charge, he¡¯d have gagged the marquis. The screams were animal screams, but they were also human, wretched sounds that rolled over the silent audience. Maybe instead of a gag, Perry would have directed the audience to unleash their own screams, applause, and jeers at the direction of the dying man. Instead, it was just that one man screaming as he died and the whimpering and crying of the others who were on stage with him. The light of this lantern was subtractive. It ate away at flesh but not metal or stone. The skin went red in an instant, like a sunburn, then began weeping blood as more layers of skin were stripped off. It affected the front, not the back, and as his face disintegrated and his nose was eaten through, the hair on the back of his head was still full and undisturbed. The lanterns had a problem with metal, which turned out to be good, because that meant that the lanterns themselves could be made from metal, and metal could be used to direct the effects without the magic tearing apart the thing that created it. The metal struts and manacles were unaffected. The linens that made up the clothes the marquis was wearing weren¡¯t spared though, and soon they had fallen off as though attacked by a thousand invisible moths, leaving the man naked on the stage. The lantern stayed on for a long time, much longer than the marquis stayed alive. It ate through him after he¡¯d stopped thrashing around, when his exposed stomach opened up and all the blood in his body had run down to thoughtfully positioned grates in the stage. Eventually the wrists were too thin to hold up the body, and it slipped down to the ground. The places where the manacles had held him in were perfectly intact, flesh holding bones together. When the lantern stopped, some guards ¡ª stage crew, Perry imagined ¡ª got up on stage and moved the lantern over to the next man. The emcee seemed to have lost a step, but only for a moment. Looking at his next victim seemed to energize him. ¡°This is the butler for the Fourth Earl of Greypoole,¡± said the emcee. ¡°The earl took his own life shortly after the king died. He knew what his fate would be. The earl¡¯s butler will not be punished for the crimes of his master, but for his own crimes. The earl was a man of twisted desires, well known for his cruelty, but he¡¯d have been nothing without the butler to find him fresh victims. These men and women were brought into the house, often under the pretense of their labor. Some endured for months or years, facing humiliation on a daily basis. Others, particularly young women, would be used up and discarded, promised high wages as compensation and then unceremoniously fired after only a week with a poor mark on their record to boot. A few of them disappeared, never to be seen again. If the butler knows where the bodies are buried, he has kept silent on the matter.¡± The emcee turned to the butler, as though giving the man a chance for a last minute confession. The butler¡¯s face was vacant, with no thought or emotion behind the mask. It was a bruised face, purple and swollen, one eye no longer able to close entirely when he blinked. Someone had tried to beat the truth out of him, Perry was pretty sure. ¡°Under the systems of monarchy, many of us have done things we did not wish to do,¡± said the emcee. ¡°We have suffered those daily indignities for the sake of money. That money was necessary only because we needed money to stay sheltered, to have food, to have a doctor see us, a tailor to clothe us, for us to continue on with our lives as we wished to live them. But the butler, of course, seems to have gone above and beyond, seems, in fact, to have partaken of the same abuse he learned from the earl. It is one thing to accept the money of an evil man ¡ª as most men with money were ¡ª and it is another to take on the aspects of that man, to aspire to be like him. This man you see before you was the worst sort of collaborator of the noble elements, a man who had been elevated only a handspan above the masses, and for whom that was enough.¡± Perry was still watching, but he didn¡¯t want to watch. It was clear now that each of those scheduled for execution was some sort of object lesson in the old ways and how bad they were. Certainly the implication was that this butler had been involved in some sort of sex crimes, and Perry was thankful that there hadn¡¯t been much in the way of sordid details, though that did mean that his imagination was filling in the gaps. Perry¡¯s mind went to his own world, and the people who would probably never be lined up against the wall. Maya had probably made a list of everyone on Earth she¡¯d have killed, though Perry imagined that such a list would have more to do with infamy than actual evil. There were all kinds of things, on Earth, where you could point at a few specific people who had steered the direction of society. Maya¡¯s list would have had oil executives who lied about climate change, pedophiles in the halls of power, most of the Republican party and half the Democrats, a few select think tanks ¡­ but maybe Maya had never paid as much attention to politics as Perry had. Earth politics certainly wasn¡¯t something that they had spent time talking about, which was probably for the best. The problem with that mentality ¡ª which Maya definitely had when they parted, if not when she was doing marketing for Uber somewhere in the Bay Area ¡ª was that a society wasn¡¯t just a bunch of people who you could point to, it was a bunch of very important people who were complex and full humans on their own, and then a whole giant society of other complex people who shared culpability while not being as easy to identify. And if you went after them, then there was a good chance that you¡¯d be taking a scythe to large swathes of people, and if you did that, then you were likely to end up killing quite a lot of people who were mostly just people going with the flow. That was especially the case if you were doing speedy trials in an age before everything was written down. It was a stunningly lukewarm argument against public executions of class traitors, and Perry knew it, but thinking about it took some of the edge off the emotion. He had been starting to feel as though all these people deserved to die, and part of that was because there was a man there loudly listing their crimes and describing all the ways in which they did, in fact, deserve that. The feeling was easy to get caught up in. It was because Perry had his attention directed elsewhere that he saw the people up on the roofs. The public space in front of the cathedral had plenty of tall buildings around it, some of them with towers atop them. The crowd was mostly in the square, but others were looking down from various windows, having secured good spots for themselves to see, as Perry and Moss had done. The people on this particular roof weren¡¯t watching, they were doing something, and as Perry squinted at them, he saw the glint of metal in motion. He couldn¡¯t quite see what they were wearing, or what they had with them, but they were setting something heavy up. ¡°Marchand,¡± said Perry, subvocalizing so that he wasn¡¯t disturbing the silence of the crowd. A light dusting of nanites on his skin made it possible for Marchand to pick up on even minute movements of the mouth and larynx. ¡°Do we have eyes on that building?¡± ¡°From the castle, yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Resolution is poor.¡± ¡°What are they doing up there?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Assembling something,¡± Marchand replied. ¡°I apologize, but it would be difficult to describe. I believe it to be a magical instrument of some sort, but we are at great distance with a poor angle. Shall I endeavor to enlist Mette¡¯s help?¡± ¡°Do that,¡± said Perry. He looked over at Moss, who was watching the proceedings on the stage with a slight frown on his face, but no obvious horror in spite of the blood they¡¯d seen so far. ¡°We might have a situation,¡± Perry said to Moss. ¡°Oh?¡± asked Moss. Perry¡¯s words had been quiet, but they seemed to startle Moss. ¡°There,¡± said Perry, pointing to the roof. ¡°What is it?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Unknown,¡± said Perry. ¡°But there shouldn¡¯t be people setting up anything on a roof right now, not so close. Whatever Thirlwell used to attack Kerry Coast City, it could be that.¡± The missiles ¡ª or whatever they were ¡ª had supposedly been launched from an airship, but not much more was known about them. There was absolutely nothing to say that they had to be launched from an airship, and Perry was now considerably closer to the nation that had made the attack. He let out a breath and waited for a moment, knowing that every moment he waited increased the risk that a rocket would be launched right into the crowd. Perry had no idea how many people were watching the executions, but it was packed, especially toward the front. ¡°I¡¯m going,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry if I cause a scene.¡± ¡°Do we need to evacuate?¡± asked Moss. ¡°I¡¯ll yell if you do,¡± said Perry. He was keeping his voice low. ¡°Get ready to kick things into gear.¡± Perry reached out into the shelf space and watched Moss¡¯s eyes go wide. It was a trick he hadn¡¯t seen before. The shelf closed as soon as the sword was retrieved. Perry crouched down slightly and then launched himself up into the air, trying his best not to be noticed. All eyes were still on the stage, where the former butler¡¯s execution had just started. A man was screaming for his life, and Perry couldn¡¯t quite shake the feeling that there were better things to be defending. Chapter 108 - The Gaze of Justice, pt 2 Perry flew in a straight line, hoping that he¡¯d minimize how much motion the men on the roof could see. They were high up, five stories, on top of a tower, and while they were surely keeping a lookout, flight wasn¡¯t an ability that people had outside of airships. If they were enemy soldiers or loyalists planning something, then they almost certainly had the stairwell to the tower well-guarded, and they had probably thought that would be enough. ¡°Marchand is having me set up the laser,¡± said Mette in Perry¡¯s ear as he crossed the square. ¡°I have the helmet on, but we¡¯re trying to do it from the window of the hotel room, and this seems ¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯ve cut communication for the time being, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I will instruct her. We will engage at a distance as best we¡¯re able when you have given the signal.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the signal?¡± asked Perry as he flew to just under the lip of the tower¡¯s parapets. ¡°When you start the killing, sir,¡± said Marchand. When Perry got to the tower he was just below the roof, and he took a moment to steel himself, gathering energy, making a plan. When he rose up, he got a good view of the device for the first time. It looked a hell of a lot like a rocket launcher, with two long metal barrels and enough heft to it that Perry was surprised they¡¯d been able to lug it up the staircase inside the tower. They had a tripod set up and were manhandling the device up onto it, and beside one of them were small packets of something that might have been fuel for the weapon. There were six men, two of them guarding the door and the other four dealing with lifting the device up. They saw Perry only belatedly. Their look wasn¡¯t quite like that of the soldiers that Perry had seen on the airship. They could have fit in perfectly with the crowd below, aside from their swift movements. No one had masks, but the two that Perry had pegged as guards had some other kind of weapon, a much thinner metal barrel with a wooden stock and a hefty trigger. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry as he landed on the roof with his sword held gently at his side. ¡°I suppose you gents have a permit for all this?¡± Perry watched to see who they looked to as the leader, suspecting it was one of the two men holding what looked very much like guns. It might have been more prudent to go in and kill them all right away, with no hesitation or chance for them to do anything about it, but there was a small chance that they were here for some reason that didn¡¯t involve war crimes. Perry was going to have a lot of egg on his face if they did have a permit. One of the two men who was holding the thing that looked like a gun raised it marginally and yanked on the trigger, and Perry just barely had time to push himself to the side with a foot planted on the ground. He had no idea what it was going to shoot, or even what it really was, given that he knew of nothing like it across the entire world of Markat. It turned out that the gun shot bullets. The slug hit Perry on his left side, through and through. He grunted in pain, then stepped forward and grabbed the barrel of the other gun before it could be fired. He was hoping that the guns were single-shot weapons, because he wasn¡¯t bulletproof, especially against higher calibers. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry as he wielded the rifle like a club. He was wheezing, though the slug hadn¡¯t actually hit him in the lung. He was pretty sure he was going to be fine, so long as he didn¡¯t get hit again, and from the way the other gunman had dropped his rifle after firing it, it seemed as though they were single use, or maybe just extremely slow to reload. ¡°Let¡¯s talk about this like adults, shall we?¡± He willed the blood to stop gushing from the wound and tried his best to look intimidating. From the looks on the faces of the men on the rooftop, there was no particular issue there. Perry moved to the door that led up to the tower¡¯s rooftop, and no one moved to stop him. The wound in his side was hurting badly, and he thought that the bullet had gone through his liver, based mostly on his Liver Meridian feeling like it was struggling. Once he had the door covered, there was nowhere for them to go except off the side, and he was feeling pretty good about himself, injury aside. It looked like he was going to stop this without having all that much in the way of violence, except for the violence against himself. ¡°Anyone want to tell me what you boys were up to?¡± asked Perry. He swung the sword around to point at them. ¡°Are you Berusian royalists, or with Thirlwell?¡± They had the same swarthy skin as most people in Berus had, but that was something the two island nations had in common. Most likely they could have told the difference from some subtle clues he was missing. He was still watching to see where they looked, and that let him peg one of the men loading the mortar as their leader, or at least the guy calling the shots. He saw Perry¡¯s gaze and stepped forward. Down below, there was a commotion. They had heard the sound of the gunshot, and while they weren¡¯t a society accustomed to the sound, it must have been loud and startling above the silence. The guy in charge was tall and wiry, with barely any muscle to him. He looked gaunt and half-starved. ¡°We can¡¯t let it fall into their hands,¡± he said. ¡°Oh come on,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re really going to make me fight you?¡± In response, the man leaned down to grab one of the satchels that was sitting near the base of the mortar. Perry took a quick step forward and flicked his sword across the man¡¯s wrist, cutting into the flesh and bone but leaving the hand attached. It was a casual act of violence, delivered swiftly, and Perry was hoping that it was enough to stop them from blowing up the tower with all of them on it. The man whose arm had been cut collapsed to the ground and gripped at the stump. ¡°Here¡¯s what¡¯s going to happen,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re all going to lay face down while we wait for the police to get here. If you don¡¯t do that, I¡¯m going to cut you down one by one.¡± He dropped the gun he was holding in his left hand and reached down to touch the bullet wound. It was incredibly painful, worse than being raked across the chest by the mask laser, but it was getting better. None of the pain was showing in his movements or on his face. He kicked the gun off the roof with a casual motion, then brought up his bloody fingers to show them. ¡°This is about the best you¡¯re going to do against me.¡± The man cradling his wrist was whimpering and hissing through his teeth, doing better than Perry had thought he¡¯d do with such an injury. ¡°If they take us in, they¡¯ll make us see the lantern¡¯s light, just like down there.¡± One by one, the men began to raise their hands, not in defense or with weapons, but with a symbol. It looked to Perry like a peace sign pressed against their chest, two fingers splayed wide. It was different from the sign he¡¯d seen at the museum, the one that was supposed to call in a higher authority for the purposes of defense. He growled at them, but unless he was willing to move through them like a scythe through wheat, he didn¡¯t think there was anything he could actually do about it. He didn¡¯t know the details of the defense system they used in Kerry Coast City, but they shouldn¡¯t have had it here, and it definitely shouldn¡¯t have been used by the enemy. Perry had seen the tall suits of heavy armor standing still in the aftermath of the bombing of the city, but he hadn¡¯t seen one of them in action yet. If that¡¯s what they were calling down on him, he wasn¡¯t sure that he was up for it. There was a spark of light above the tower, which enlarged into a portal, only barely three feet wide, leading to a dark room with stonework. It was visible for only a moment before a woman in armor dropped down, whereupon the portal snapped shut with a burst of violet light where the edges hit each other. The woman¡¯s copper-colored armor was all-concealing but still incredibly provocative, sculpted to show the shape of her body beneath the metal. The boots had heels built into them for some godforsaken reason, and they weren¡¯t subtle heels either ¡ª the steel spikes had to be at least six inches, giving her some height but looking ungodly to walk in. The chest was the most egregious part of the armor, with the shape of the breasts molded into the metal, a wildly impractical design that Perry couldn¡¯t fathom any woman actually choosing to wear for any other reason than aesthetics. She was holding a metal spear that was considerably taller than she was, one with an obsidian tip, and she regarded Perry, though her face wasn¡¯t visible beneath her armor. Her gauntlets ended with clawed metal fingers, and she tightened her grip on the spear. ¡°I hope you have a permit for that portal,¡± said Perry. He said it because it was the first thing he had thought of, and realized only after he¡¯d said it that he was reusing the joke he¡¯d used earlier. He felt a bit of embarrassment, and decided that the only option was to keep going with it until it was a running joke. The armored woman turned to the man whose wrist Perry had cut. The wound was still bleeding, and Perry wondered whether he was going to bleed to death. It seemed likely unless a tourniquet was applied sometime soon. ¡°Do I need to do everything myself?¡± she asked. Her voice was high-pitched and surprisingly feminine, with none of the growl or rasp that Perry had expected. ¡°He has a sword,¡± said the man on the ground with a gasp of pain as he spoke. ¡°He flew up here.¡± The woman jammed her spear against the stones of the roof, propelling herself forward, and once she was in the air, she jabbed the spear straight for Perry¡¯s heart. He barely managed to parry it away, but she moved in close to him as she passed and slashed his upper arm with a blade on the outside of the gauntlet. She landed deftly on the roof, showing no strain or discomfort with the high heels of the armor. ¡°Who are you?¡± she asked, which Perry really thought was the sort of thing you should ask before you try to kill someone. ¡°Permit inspector,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry to say, this is going to be a lot of paperwork.¡± ¡°Shall I fire, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Or do you have this under control?¡± Perry was glad that Marchand hadn¡¯t intervened before now, and wasn¡¯t entirely sure that intervention at this stage would be a good thing. ¡°Only fire if it looks like I¡¯m losing,¡± Perry said under his breath. Marchand was in the hotel with Mette, and far enough away that Perry wasn¡¯t sure how much good the laser was going to do, nor how well it could actually be aimed. The distance seemed formidable. ¡°You¡¯re not with Berus,¡± the woman said. The tip of her spear twitched. ¡°I am, technically,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you¡¯re with Thirlwell?¡± In response, she came at him again, moving even faster this time. Perry brought his sword up to parry, but she spun the spear at the last second, cracking him across the face. Perry took a step back and worked his jaw as she came to a rest. She was testing him. That hit would probably have killed a lesser man. ¡°I can¡¯t tell if that was a yes or a no,¡± said Perry. ¡°Who are you?¡± she asked again, this time more insistent. ¡°If you want to do formal introductions, maybe this isn¡¯t the best place,¡± said Perry. ¡°We could have a sit down chat, somewhere a little more pleasant. But of course I¡¯d need these chucklefucks to stop trying to bomb the civilians. We could set our weapons down and talk things over, maybe do something that was a little more ¡ª¡± She came at him a third time, moving low with the tip of the spear held high, and Perry stepped back, easily pushing the spear to the side with his sword. She was far, far stronger than her short, slender frame suggested, but he didn¡¯t think she could match him if it came to that. They were testing each other, and he was going to have to give that armor a smack to see whether he could gouge it. But she wasn¡¯t just testing him, because the tips of her fingers grazed the stone by his feet and a portal opened up wide to a heavy metal cage. Perry fell for half a second, then gripped his sword tight and leveraged himself against it, making his whole body rigid so it looked like he was standing on air. It was something that he¡¯d previously only been able to do with the armor, but he was strong enough now to tense his whole body and stay firm. ¡°Neat,¡± Perry said, looking down. The cage was in a warehouse, he was pretty sure. He wondered what the range of that ability was, but he had a strong suspicion that it wasn¡¯t a power that came from this world. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. ¡°Who are you?¡± asked the woman for a third time. There was something in her voice now that hadn¡¯t been there before. ¡°You can call me Perry,¡± he said. ¡°And I take it you¡¯re from another world?¡± It was difficult to tell with her armor on, but from the minute movements she made, he was pretty sure that she had flinched. ¡°I am Third Fervor, a daughter of Thirlwell, blessed with Implements of divinity,¡± she said. She was watching him, still sizing him up. She waved her hand, and the portal beneath him collapsed, that tactic abandoned as quickly as it had been embarked upon. ¡°Lies,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re a world hopper, a thresholder, no need to pretend otherwise.¡± Perry let himself land back on the stone roof of the tower. The men around them still hadn¡¯t moved. Down below, it seemed as though the crowds were still ignorant of what was going on, and the gunshot had been ignored, because the emcee was still talking, readying the crowd for the next execution. ¡°You¡¯ve aligned yourself with Thirlwell though? Seems like a bad move to me. The Last King, the Last Kingdom, right on the verge of destruction? What¡¯s the plan there, arm them with guns and rocket launchers?¡± ¡°The Last Kingdom will not fall,¡± said Third Fervor, if that was her name and not a title. ¡°You¡¯ve seen only a fraction of its power, of my power.¡± Perry looked at the men around them. They were a distraction, but if she managed to drive him off, they would resume their preparations to fire on the crowd. Meanwhile, if Moss was trying to get the crowd to move, he was doing a shit job of it. ¡°Evacuate,¡± said Third Fervor. She crouched low, in a defensive position, spear pointed at Perry¡¯s crotch, and placed a hand against the ground, opening up a portal. The men hesitated only briefly, then moved as though this was something they had planned. Perry moved on them, not willing to let them get away. ¡°Fire!¡± he shouted. Third Fervor brought her spear up to block him, and when she did, he grabbed it at the point just past the obsidian head. They struggled against each other, and Perry was momentarily lifted off his feet by her superior positioning, but it was difficult for her to keep him raised, and when he touched back down he got the better of her, bringing his sword down against her armor ¡ª to absolutely no effect. The sword deflected off the copper plates without so much as making a dent. Third Fervor seemed just as surprised as Perry did, and they had a nice moment where they stopped and took that in together. Then one of the men on the roof began screaming because his head had lit on fire. Third Fervor was first to move, and she went at Perry without any fear of his sword. She punched him in the chest, which lifted him up off the ground, then stabbed at him with the full force of her spear, trying to catch him in mid-air. He caught the spear just below the head, but she was ready for that this time, and yanked the spear back. It slipped from his hands and the obsidian tip sliced across his fingers and palms, immediately soaking them with blood and making him practically useless. Another of the men was screaming as he tried to clamber down the portal, his head melting from the distant laser that couldn¡¯t be seen by any of them. ¡°Run,¡± said Marchand in Perry¡¯s ear. Perry ran, calling the sword after him. He leapt from the tower and grabbed the sword in his bloody hands to slow his fall. He landed on the street just as the tower exploded above him, sending rock raining down onto the street. He was hit along his left arm and growled in pain, then looked up to where the smoke was still rising. ¡°The hell was that?¡± asked Perry. His ears were ringing. ¡°I took the liberty of detonating the satchels next to the mortar,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s difficult to say whether there are survivors.¡± Perry was looking up, waiting for Third Fervor to reappear, but there was no sign of her. She hadn¡¯t seemed interested in fighting him, only in escaping with her people. Either she had jumped through a portal or was laying dead up there, and Perry didn¡¯t think there was any inbetween. If the unfamiliar sound of the gunshot hadn¡¯t fazed the crowd, the exploding building had gotten them riled up. Maybe they had some awareness that this was an attack, or had heard about what had happened in Kerry Coast City, but they were fleeing now, a crush of people that might have been just as dangerous as the explosion that Perry had stopped from landing in their midst. They screamed and scrambled to the exits of the square, pushing over and past each other, and Perry stayed out of their way, watching for Third Fervor, who seemed to have vanished as though she was only a dream. There were still people up on the stage. They seemed to have been left there without guards, and many of them were calling for help that wasn¡¯t coming. Perry walked forward. ¡°Marchand, we¡¯ve got nanites, let me know if you hear her,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hear whom, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°The woman, dammit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Third Fervor, you were paying attention.¡± ¡°Ah, yes,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve updated my priorities, sir, I hadn¡¯t realized that she held much importance.¡± ¡°She¡¯s a thresholder,¡± said Perry as he strode toward the center of the emptying plaza. ¡°Or if she¡¯s not, then she¡¯s someone we need on our radar.¡± ¡°You believe her to be the woman responsible for killing the kings?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s a monarchist. It ¡ª¡± A woman in armor was also walking across the plaza, toward the cathedral where the men and women in stocks were having their stay of execution. It wasn¡¯t Third Fervor; her armor was copper and this was more silver with hues of silvery blue. Perry had only seen her in armor once, but it was Nima. The metal ears were quite distinctive. ¡°Nima!¡± he called to her as he stepped quickly over the flagstones. She stopped and startled. ¡°Perry?¡± she asked. ¡°You missed the fight,¡± he said. ¡°They¡¯re gone now, we¡¯re going to have to get information later, when they sift through the wreckage. You should lose the armor unless you want to unmask yourself ¡ª pun not intended.¡± He was fairly sure that she had a mask on beneath her armor, something very thin, but when she looked at him he couldn¡¯t feel the effects. ¡°You can get in the shelf.¡± Despite the panic and the noise around the plaza as people ran, there were still eyes on them, stragglers and a few who had other ideas of the best course of action. Moss was nowhere to be seen. ¡°The fight?¡± she asked. ¡°The explosion, that was you?¡± She was holding a long knife in her hand, one that he was pretty sure had been pulled from a kitchen library. ¡°Wait,¡± said Perry. ¡°What are you doing here?¡± Nima looked at the row of people who¡¯d been strung up. ¡°I¡¯m stopping this,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s cruel, inhumane, and they know it.¡± She turned back to him. ¡°What were you doing here? Just watching?¡± Perry tightened. ¡°It¡¯s not our fight,¡± he said. ¡°This isn¡¯t about us. And even if it were, what are you going to do? Free them from their shackles and then protect them from the mob?¡± ¡°That¡¯s exactly what I¡¯ll do, if I must,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯ll ¡­ I¡¯ll commandeer a ship over to Thirlwell and take them there.¡± ¡°I agree it¡¯s not what I¡¯d like to see happen,¡± said Perry. ¡°But you can¡¯t do this. You¡¯d be making yourself an enemy of these people. You¡¯re not invincible, you need food, water, a place to sleep, you won¡¯t be able to protect them, it¡¯s ¡ª¡± Nima strode away from him and bounded up onto the stage with the lithe grace of an elf. She went to the first woman in line and stood with her knife in hand, looking at the manacles. The lantern on wheels was just behind Nima, but she paid it no mind. ¡°Nima,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re as good as pulling the lever on that lantern if you don¡¯t help me,¡± said Nima. ¡°Nima, there¡¯s a thresholder out there,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s working with Thirlwell. I think if she¡¯d been trying to, she would have been able to take me, at least like this. That¡¯s the fight, not ¡­ this.¡± Nima turned to him. ¡°Perry, help me or get out of the way.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not in the way,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m just talking. If you want to do this, it¡¯s on your head, not mine, but there¡¯s a larger conflict here, and this is just ¡­ it¡¯s the law here, it¡¯s what they¡¯ve decided to do, and if you try to subvert that, you¡¯re only making yourself a criminal.¡± ¡°And we¡¯ve seen how they treat criminals, have we?¡± asked Nima. She tugged at the manacle. The woman turned her head to the side and winced, but said nothing. She had already seen three of the people up there die, and the lantern was pointed squarely at her, ready to burn through her. ¡°You can¡¯t just decide for people how it¡¯s going to be,¡± said Perry. ¡°If there¡¯s anything I¡¯ve learned from what you¡¯ve been telling me, it¡¯s that we can,¡± said Nima. ¡°If you¡¯re strong enough, you can bend the world to your whims.¡± She tugged at the manacle again, but it wouldn¡¯t give. It needed a key, not brute force, or at least not the level of brute force that Nima could bring to bear. She had only the armor, a single gift from a single world. ¡°Nima, I¡¯m sorry, but you¡¯re not strong enough,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not yet.¡± She turned to him, knife in hand, and she was brandishing it, which Perry thought was mostly out of frustration or anger. He was faster and stronger than her. He could have taken her one-handed if he wanted to, and could have stuffed her in the shelf if he wanted to, rather than having this conversation in the open. People were listening to them, not least of all the ones awaiting execution. ¡°If you don¡¯t help me with this, I¡¯ll ¡ª¡± she faltered, trying to think of a threat, some consequence. ¡°I won¡¯t work with you,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯ll abandon you to do this on your own. You won¡¯t have a companion, a team in this world. You won¡¯t have an engineer.¡± ¡°If you do this, you¡¯re going to jeopardize our place in this world,¡± said Perry. ¡°We have allies here, people who will help us, who we can help to make things better, but we can¡¯t just do it solely on our own terms.¡± Nima stared at Perry, then turned to look at the woman. ¡°Please,¡± the woman said. Nima lowered the knife slightly. Maybe she was thinking that the only way she was actually going to get the woman out was with a key or Perry¡¯s help. She turned her head, looking at the long line of people, and how it wasn¡¯t just an issue of this one woman, it was all of them. ¡°Marchand,¡± Perry subvocalized. ¡°You heard what this woman was accused of?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She was involved in a widely publicized murder, for which she was found guilty and sentenced to six months of house arrest. This was seen among the people of Berus as being a gross miscarriage of justice and a symbol of a two-tiered nature of their society. The victim was a young girl who had been taken off the streets to be cleaned, pampered, and played with as though she were a living doll.¡± Perry pursed his lips. He had to remind himself that this was only what the emcee had said to the crowd, or maybe what Marchand had overheard in conversations, not what the actual truth was ¡­ though it immediately called to mind a dozen parallels to stories that Perry had read on Earth. A slap on the wrist for people who had money, a judge who thought that certain people were too delicate or cultured or whatever else to be sent to prison ¡ª these were stories that were familiar, and yes, it was another object lesson in the evils of their society. ¡°Do you think this woman is innocent?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I think no one deserves this,¡± said Nima. ¡°And when we were in Kerry Coast, they would have said that no one deserves this. But everyone we came over with, they¡¯re doing nothing about it, they¡¯re just letting it go on.¡± The panic in the plaza was abating, partly because there had been no more exploding towers or gunshots or anything like that, and partly because most of those who had been trying to leave had left. Some of the guards were returning to the stage, and Perry saw Moss coming over. Too much of the conversation had taken place out in the open. Their secrets were very likely to be out of the bag, including the fact that Nima was wearing armor of a sort that really didn¡¯t seem to exist in this world ¡ª aside from Third Fervor, maybe. ¡°If you want to free these people, you¡¯re going to have to fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°That fight is maybe five minutes away. You¡¯re going to have to use a kitchen knife to kill people who are still people, who also don¡¯t deserve to be killed, and there¡¯s a good chance that they find a chink in your armor and murder you on the spot.¡± Nima paused, then let out a growl. ¡°No,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m standing my ground. I can¡¯t free them ¡ª physically can¡¯t ¡ª but I can stand in their way, stop this from happening.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± Perry sighed. ¡°But if anyone asks, we don¡¯t know each other.¡± He stepped backward and walked over to Moss, who was lumbering toward him. ¡°Evacuation didn¡¯t go as planned?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There was an explosion,¡± said Moss. ¡°That was you?¡± ¡°Sort of,¡± said Perry. ¡°They were planning to kill a bunch of people in the crowd. There was a woman who opened up a portal and attacked me, she claimed to be from Thirlwell. I¡¯d like a consultation with Dirk Gibbons about it, he was supposed to be getting more information on Implements, wasn¡¯t he?¡± ¡°He was,¡± said Moss. He looked over at Nima. ¡°Is that ¡­ Nima?¡± ¡°It is, yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°She objects to the executions and I guess she¡¯s going to force them to take her away in handcuffs.¡± ¡°It¡¯s over for today,¡± said Moss, shaking his head. ¡°There¡¯s no way they would continue, it¡¯s far too dangerous.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a weapon I need you to see,¡± said Perry. ¡°I threw it off the roof, but I¡¯m hoping it¡¯s still intact enough for you to look at.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll gather what evidence we can,¡± said Moss with a nod. ¡°It¡¯s become clear that Thirlwell has tools we¡¯re ignorant of.¡± ¡°Really would have been nice to have all these people cleared out before shit went down,¡± said Perry. ¡°Especially given some of those tools can kill a hundred people in a single shot.¡± Moss gritted his teeth. ¡°I¡¯m a dwarf, Perry. They don¡¯t listen to me. It¡¯s one thing to stick out, but when I stick out and I¡¯m trying to get attention, yelling to clear the plaza, I look insane to them. All they see is the oddity.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. He looked around the plaza. Most of the people who were coming back were guards. If Moss was right and the public execution was on hold, then this was all going to wind down. What Perry needed was time to process, as well as to go through some of the data that Marchand had been collecting. He needed the armor on, to see it all again through the HUD, a reconstruction. Third Fervor had denied being a thresholder, but that was clearly what she was, and if Thirlwell had gunpowder weapons, mortars and missiles and who knew what else, that had to come from somewhere. But there were other powers out there that he didn¡¯t have grip on yet, and he was worried that the next time he got blindsided, the outcome was going to be far worse. Chapter 109 - Sunflower Fields Perry¡¯s review of the fight told him very little. Marchand was able to put together a composite virtualization from long-range vision and whatever the nanites could sense, but it wasn¡¯t highly detailed, and there were significant gaps in what could be shown that way, especially considering that Marchand was unwilling to make guesses about unknown magics. Marchand was willing to accept that the errors were magic, and that was something that Perry would try to be thankful for. There were a few takeaways though, namely with regard to the portals Third Fervor seemed to be able to conjure up at will. They always came with a touch, and always with the tips of her fingers, usually but not always on a hard surface. Nothing he saw revealed all that much about the timing, but Perry was hoping that she couldn¡¯t just pop them open at will. She had opened portals to different places, that was clear from what he had seen, but he was also hoping that she had some range limits ¡ª if it was half a mile, that would be a serious problem, but not as much of a problem as ten miles. Perry had no idea what Third Fervor looked like beneath her fancy copper armor, but Marchand had said that he¡¯d be able to identify her by voiceprint unless she was taking great pains to hide it from them. With that said, the concealing armor probably didn¡¯t mean that she had some secret life around the city, though you never knew. Perry wished that he¡¯d been wearing his armor, mostly so he wouldn¡¯t stick out like a sore thumb. Thankfully, Dirk Gibbons was there to cover for Perry. He¡¯d had a nice and short debrief, then had met again the next day as Perry was going to take off. ¡°Alright, they think you have an Implement borrowed from the commons,¡± said Dirk. They were on the observation deck of the Caster, which was low to the ground. Dirk was there mostly to oversee personnel, but wouldn¡¯t be coming with them. ¡°Which for all I know is true. You saved a lot of lives, and it seems like we owe you again.¡± ¡°Are you going to tell me what¡¯s in the airship?¡± asked Perry, nodding to the inflated white skin above them. ¡°Nope,¡± said Dirk with a wide smirk. ¡°Because I told you everything there was to know about the mystery woman,¡± said Perry. ¡°I made sure to drop that weapon off the side of the building for you, so you could have a good look at it.¡± It was a pretty crude firearm, which Perry wasn¡¯t happy about, because deflecting bullets without Marchand was difficult, and became more difficult when the weapons weren¡¯t accurate. ¡°I tried not to blow up that tower, and I was this close to not doing it.¡± During the debrief Perry had told them everything except the fact that he was a thresholder and that Third Fervor probably was too. There was a manhunt in Calamus for Third Fervor and the men that had been with her, but all she¡¯d need to do would be to stow the armor. ¡°Well, still no,¡± said Dirk. ¡°That up there¡¯s the kind of secret that we don¡¯t want spread, and even if I trusted you, I wouldn¡¯t tell you.¡± ¡°Fine, keep your secrets,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re sure that we¡¯re good to go to the country? That¡¯s the best place for us?¡± ¡°It¡¯s the vital place for Moss,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t mind if you stuck around, all things considered, but I¡¯ve got a feeling that the construction in the country is going to be a target too. The golden domes are a symbol, and like with the execution, that¡¯s the sort of thing that¡¯s going to attract our enemies. You¡¯re as much muscle as fifty normal men.¡± ¡°Before we go,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wanted the inside scoop. What¡¯s the deal with Thirlwell?¡± ¡°The deal?¡± asked Dirk with a raised eyebrow. He looked like a guy who got a lot of practice raising his eyebrow. ¡°They¡¯re an absolute monarchy, propped up by moneyed interests who are mostly inbred nobility.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Run of the mill, special only because they¡¯re the last one left. The Last King, that name really stuck, huh?¡± ¡°Yeah, but what are their goals?¡± asked Perry. ¡°And how are they trying to achieve them? Bombing Kerry Coast, that didn¡¯t accomplish anything, and bombing the execution, that wouldn¡¯t have accomplished anything either. It wouldn¡¯t even have saved the lives of the convicts. So what the hell is the Last King thinking?¡± ¡°You¡¯re about to go into self-imposed exile in the country, and this is what¡¯s on your mind?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°I figured we weren¡¯t going to see each other much,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you¡¯re supposed to be the guy who knows things, so if you have some insight into the insanity, I¡¯d like to know.¡± Dirk looked over to the engines, which were spinning up, and the ground crew, who were getting ready to let the moorings loose. ¡°Kerry Coast? We¡¯re not sure what that was. Proof of power seems like the easiest read, given that¡¯s what¡¯s getting printed in the broadsheets over in Thirlwell. Maybe it even makes sense from his perspective. We¡¯re accused of assassination and that has to have some kind of response. Could be emotions running hot too, can¡¯t rule that out with a noble. But the executions?¡± He clucked his tongue. ¡°You have to understand Thirlwell as consisting of a king, then all the squabbling people beneath the king. Some of them are jockeying for position, making big plays to gain the king¡¯s ear, and others are trying their best to milk the king, or avoid his wrath. And the nobles have their own people beneath them, all trying to do the same. So this? A small group of people attempting to launch an attack on a peaceable assembly? And with some plausible deniability because in theory it¡¯s Berusian counterrevolutionaries? That could be anyone among the nobility. The only hitch is the woman you saw, because whatever she was using, it was the kind of equipment that most people wouldn¡¯t be able to field.¡± Dirk was thinking it was Implements or some other deep magic, which was sensible given that he didn¡¯t know about thresholders, but there was only so far you could take theories about Implements, especially given how well-documented most of them were. ¡°So she might not have been sent by the king,¡± said Perry. ¡°Possibly not,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s difficult to say. But if you want to understand Thirlwell from a bird¡¯s eye view,¡± he glanced at the airship, ¡°then I would have to say that it¡¯s got the same sort of dysfunction that all monarchies have. The aggression we¡¯re seeing now, the deaths that will follow in the wake of that when there¡¯s not a mysterious swordsman on hand, most of it is because the king needs to present himself as a strong man. I can get you some newspapers from within Thirlwell, if you¡¯d like, but it¡¯s all opposition, with the kingdom making itself out to be the last bulwark against the antimonarchists.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°I¡¯d appreciate the papers, if you could send them along.¡± ¡°They¡¯ll have my notes,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Can¡¯t have you thinking that what they print is the truth.¡± Perry was pretty sure that his ability to parse media far outstripped Dirk¡¯s own, with the only caveat being that Perry¡¯s understanding of the ground truth was much, much worse. ¡°Looks like we¡¯re casting off soon,¡± said Perry after a call from one of the crewmen. ¡°Thanks for covering for me.¡± Dirk shrugged. ¡°Anytime. There¡¯s a chance that I¡¯ll be around when Moss is putting the dome together. If you ever want to come tell us what you¡¯re about, feel free.¡± Perry gave him a nod. He kind of liked the guy, at least for a spook. ¡°Going well?¡± asked Mette, who had been waiting off to the side while Perry spoke. ¡°If the government is on my side, I consider that a win.¡± He cracked his neck to the side. ¡°I¡¯ve never had state backing before.¡± ¡°You did, on the Natrix,¡± said Mette. ¡°Well, you know what I mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nine thousand people, that¡¯s barely enough for a small town.¡± He¡¯d also technically had state backing on Seraphinus, but being a knight in service of a king felt much different. ¡°The Natrix could crush one of these cities,¡± said Mette. ¡°If it were here, it would be the most powerful force in the world. And if we had this kind of workforce, if we had magic, we¡¯d be unstoppable. Can you imagine modern production techniques used with the lanterns? The masks? With an autorouter you could make twenty of them in a day.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure that would work,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s some act of intention on the part of the person making the mask, some element of their perception. Using power tools would make the physical mask a lot faster, but I¡¯m not sure that it would be imbued with the same magic. Repeatedly making the same mask isn¡¯t about material production or even getting better at the physical act of mask-making, it¡¯s something else.¡± ¡°Still,¡± said Mette. She folded her arms across her chest. ¡°Everything they use is unbelievably primitive.¡± Perry looked out at the city streets. The airship was going to take off soon, carrying them away from the city for a much shorter trip than they¡¯d gone on before, only an hour of flight or so. According to Marchand, the device was still in the envelope of the airship and hadn¡¯t been removed, which meant that it was probably going to be extracted out in the country. Nima still hadn¡¯t shown up. Perry wasn¡¯t sure that she would, especially now that time was running short. She had picked her crusade and was barrelling ahead with it, pragmatism be damned, plans be damned. Perry didn¡¯t think that she could sway the opinions of those in charge, and with all the decisions already made, it seemed even less likely to happen. He wouldn¡¯t have been terribly surprised to hear that it had escalated to violence, but he wasn¡¯t going to babysit her while she came to grips with being in a new place with its own stupid way of doing things. On Earth, the discourse about the foiled attack on the public executions would be going through its third time through the news cycle, with a seven-layer-dip of hot takes to wade through, a bunch of memes, and idiotic thinkpieces. Here, in the city of Calamus, the daily papers had a giant frontpage article, but the spew of opinions was happening in taverns and common houses, and it would take time to settle. He wondered what the dominant opinion would be given time, but they would be out of the city before he found out. ¡°We¡¯re to take off soon,¡± said Moss, who¡¯d already packed away everything. He was now in charge of the entire trip, and had a whole host of people who were going to be working under him. They were almost all humans, mostly young men and women, a corps of engineers who¡¯d be working under him. ¡°No sign of your companion?¡± ¡°I¡¯m his companion,¡± said Mette with a pout. ¡°The other one,¡± said Moss. ¡°The one with armor.¡± ¡°I could have armor,¡± said Mette under her breath. ¡°You don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Nima will show up or she won¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re not on the best of terms right now. It might have been better if I¡¯d thrown my weight behind a stay of execution.¡± ¡°Coming in and putting your foot down isn¡¯t the culture,¡± said Moss. ¡°The public execution was decided upon by the symboulions here. It¡¯s a reflection of their abuse, their anger, their trauma. Even if we could have stopped it ¡ª¡± ¡°We could have,¡± said Perry. Moss watched him for a moment, sizing him up, and didn¡¯t find cause to disagree. ¡°I don¡¯t think it would have been the right thing to do,¡± said Moss. ¡°No, I don¡¯t either,¡± said Perry with a sigh. ¡°But I don¡¯t think she¡¯s going to see it that way.¡± Just as he said that, he saw Nima coming around a corner. She had a dour look on her face, she was wearing her armor with the helm peeled back, and she had a duffel bag over her shoulder which contained all her worldly possessions, most of which had been taken from libraries. She stepped up onto the airship¡¯s gondola without so much as a glance at Perry, and Perry raised an eyebrow in Moss¡¯s direction. ¡°I¡¯m guessing it went poorly,¡± said Moss. ¡°She¡¯s with us, at least,¡± said Perry. And not a fugitive. Hopefully. ¡°You never said where you met,¡± said Moss. ¡°I sure didn¡¯t,¡± said Perry. He rapped his knuckles against the railing. ¡°I¡¯m going to see if she¡¯s up for a talk.¡± He strode down the length of the gondola. The ship had been unloaded and reloaded, and there were fewer people now, but the lower hold was still filled with hammocks to keep the weight low. The screening had been much better the second time around, with everyone vetted for construction of the dome and dismantling of the old lantern. They were, unfortunately, locals, and that meant that the vetting couldn¡¯t be as good as possible. But if there was sabotage, Perry was pretty sure it wouldn¡¯t be during the short flight, it would be on the ground. A call went out to say that the ship was about to be released from its moorings and start to rise, and Perry braced himself, then continued on. Nima had a cabin this time, and it wasn¡¯t too difficult to find, given that she was the only elf on board, had entered wearing full armor, and had been in a bit of a huff from all accounts. Perry knocked on the door, and there was a long pause before he heard a hard-voiced ¡°Enter.¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure you were going to come,¡± said Perry as he slipped into her room. ¡°I wasn¡¯t going to,¡± said Nima. She was staring at the wall. The armor surrounded her throat, but her face was free. ¡°I was going to save those people.¡± She let out a deep breath. Her nose was slightly red, as though she¡¯d been crying, and Perry wasn¡¯t sure the last time he¡¯d seen someone so utterly morose. The light coming in from her cabin window made her look like a Renaissance painting, and the armor helped the effect. It would be titled ¡®The Lady Knight in Mourning¡¯ or something like that. ¡°You thought better of it?¡± asked Perry. Nima turned to look at him. Her jaw was tight, and it trembled for just a moment before she answered. ¡°No, Perry, they killed them all.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°When?¡± ¡°Last night, apparently,¡± said Nima. ¡°I had spent hours trying to advocate for those people, for their imprisonment rather than their deaths, and while I was doing that, they had been unceremoniously killed. I would say that it¡¯s worse that I was left to argue with their jailers for hours after it had already been done, but that pales in comparison to the act itself.¡± If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Perry considered this. She was obviously upset, and that was the priority, but he could also understand why they¡¯d done it. They had tried to hold a public execution and had it disrupted, and trying to do the whole thing again obviously wouldn¡¯t draw the same crowd, and would be a security nightmare to boot. They also couldn¡¯t just not execute the prisoners, not if there was a violent attempt at stopping them the first time, that would be tantamount to saying that violence worked against them. So they had split the difference and just quietly killed everyone in a secure place, and maybe they would put out something in the papers, a description of their crimes and a short version of the lessons that were supposed to be imparted by their executions. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± said Perry. ¡°That must have been hard for you.¡± ¡°And it wouldn¡¯t have been for you?¡± asked Nima. She glared at him. ¡°It¡¯s not a crusade I would have picked up,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even if I think that it¡¯s wrong in principle for both moral and pragmatic reasons.¡± Perry also believed that most of the people who¡¯d been killed were shitbags, even if the course of justice hadn¡¯t been what would have been hoped for. ¡°Clearly not a stand you were willing to take,¡± said Nima. She sniffed. ¡°Your homeworld didn¡¯t have executions?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Nima. She hesitated and looked away. ¡°Or ¡­ not ¡ª not like that.¡± ¡°But they did have them in some capacity?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not for humans,¡± said Nima. She looked back at him and folded her arms. ¡°And I know you¡¯re going to try to probe here, to make some point about hypocrisy, but you don¡¯t understand that humans and orcs really are different from each other, to say nothing of the demons.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve never rendered judgment,¡± said Perry. He kept his voice calm and even, like a steady breeze. ¡°You haven¡¯t, but you¡¯ve asked questions,¡± said Nima. She looked out the window. The Caster was still rising into the air, and had mostly left the city behind. The ground below was colorful, the result of effluence. The vibrance had to be understood as a sickness on the land, but at least it was nice to look at. ¡°You asked whether orcs had art, as though that would elevate them in your mind.¡± ¡°I just wanted to have a better understanding,¡± said Perry. ¡°And even if I did think that orcs were just as much people as humans, I don¡¯t think I would come to a world like that and immediately put my foot down and declare that things had to change.¡± He was trying to modulate his language, to not imply that she was a petulant child stomping her foot. He was using the second sphere to do it, that pristine control that had annoyed him in the Great Arc. ¡°Because that¡¯s not ¡®our business¡¯,¡± said Nima with just a hint of mockery. ¡°Because to your mind, it¡¯s perfectly fine if they execute people by lantern light.¡± She was being unreasonable, but in Perry¡¯s experience, telling someone that they were being unreasonable was never really helpful in the moment. ¡°I don¡¯t have some hard and fast rule,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯ve seen things that I haven¡¯t liked, and I¡¯ve tried to understand why they do things the way they do them, to not make every little thing into a crusade.¡± He shook his head. She would have gotten along well with Maya, except that their hard lines in the sand would have looked so different that they surely would have ended up fighting. ¡°Did they have public executions in your home world?¡± asked Nima. ¡°My home world wasn¡¯t a monolith,¡± said Perry. ¡°The country I was from had the death penalty, but it wasn¡¯t public, it was done quietly after a pretty long process.¡± Perry had argued about the death penalty online quite a bit, not because it was a subject he particularly cared about, but because there were always so many people with such facile understandings of the issue. ¡°Humans are supposed to have dignity,¡± said Nima. ¡°But I suppose it makes sense they would do that if they have no guiding hand.¡± She took in a steady breath and let it out slowly. ¡°I¡¯d like some time to myself.¡± ¡°Take all the time you need,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can talk about it later, but I don¡¯t expect that we would see eye to eye.¡± ¡°What¡¯s all this power for, if you won¡¯t use it?¡± asked Nima. ¡°You understand that I saved the lives of maybe literally hundreds of people?¡± asked Perry. ¡°And if you include all the other times, on other worlds, it might be in the tens of thousands.¡± ¡°I saw your moving images,¡± said Nima. ¡°I saw the record of your fight. You have become something fearsome, more powerful than anyone in this world. You kill without effort or thought.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say there¡¯s no effort involved,¡± said Perry. Nima paused for a moment. Perry had meant it as a joke, but either it took her a bit, or she just didn¡¯t find it funny. Obviously there was also a lot of thought involved too. He wasn¡¯t some monster who just randomly killed people, though maybe that was his fault if he¡¯d given her that impression. Compared to some of the other thresholders, he was practically a lamb. ¡°What is it about you that you don¡¯t feel any need to use that power for good?¡± asked Nima. Perry pursed his lips. He didn¡¯t really understand how this had become a referendum on him. He hadn¡¯t killed anyone except some rebels, and he hadn¡¯t wanted to do that. But he supposed that he was here and the nameless people who had done the killing weren¡¯t. Perry decided to get through this by diverting. ¡°If we want to actually make a difference here, we need to talk about the other thresholder,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure that she¡¯s ingratiated herself with Thirlwell and the Last King, and it¡¯s very likely that we¡¯re going to have to deal with her and them at some point.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not going after whoever is killing kings?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Why?¡± The diversion was working, at least. ¡°First, because we have no leads,¡± said Perry. ¡°Once we get to the country, I¡¯ll start working on a mask of my own, something that will help us pick up a trail somewhere, either for the kingkiller or Third Fervor, if they¡¯re not actually the same person, which I guess they might be. But second ¡­ do you understand what Berus was like under the rule of the king?¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t here,¡± said Nima. ¡°I would only be able to go by what people said.¡± ¡°Well, I think it was kind of shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think it¡¯s kind of shit now too, especially since they have most of the same problems of poverty and pollution, but that¡¯s something that probably will change if they can do the same things here that they did in Kerry Coast. We didn¡¯t really see deformed people there, and no one was starving.¡± Nima pursed her lips. ¡°You think that it would be good if the king of Thirlwell died. If monarchy was wiped from the face of the planet.¡± ¡°Depends on what replaces it,¡± said Perry. ¡°So far as I¡¯ve seen, the culture they¡¯ve built is actually functional. Kerry Coast was the second country it spread to, and maybe it hasn¡¯t shaken out all that well in other places, but ¡­ yeah, I would be fine if the king were dethroned and symboulions took his place.¡± Nima was shaking her head. ¡°I don¡¯t think so. I don¡¯t think after what we saw yesterday that it will be a good place to live. There¡¯s too much hate, too many grievances.¡± ¡°People can move past that,¡± said Perry. He only halfway believed it. Sometimes it seemed like grievances could fester and multiply, becoming generations-long forces of their own. Especially in the wake of war or oppression, attitudes could persist. ¡°Look, if you want to talk about what the rest of the world is like, if you want to take a skeptic¡¯s position on what we¡¯ve seen so far, or you want to compare notes, we can do that.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t really want to do that, no,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯m just saying ¡­ this woman you think is a thresholder, this woman you want to hunt ¡­ I don¡¯t know that she¡¯s in the wrong.¡± Perry grimaced. If they couldn¡¯t get on board about lobbing bombs into a crowd of people, he wasn¡¯t sure that they could get on board about anything. ¡°We¡¯ll talk about it later,¡± he said. ¡°Take your time to process things. When we get to the country, you¡¯ll have work to do with Moss, engineering work, helping to build a dome. That¡¯ll take your mind off things.¡± ¡°And if the mystery woman does more in the city?¡± asked Nima. ¡°You¡¯re going to stop her?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a half hour to return there,¡± said Perry. ¡°Barely any time at all. And yeah, I would stop her. But I might also stop the kingkiller, if we could find him.¡± Nima looked out the window again. The ground below them was floating by. It was mostly fields, broken up by rivers and forests lining them, creating windbreaks. ¡°I¡¯m not going to feel better with time,¡± she said. ¡°That¡¯s okay too,¡± said Perry. He waited for her to say something, but when she didn¡¯t, he slipped out of the room. He¡¯d felt frustrated by the conversation, and went to the observation deck to clear his head. There was no one else there, maybe because it was a bit chilly for most people, but the wind on his face felt cool and crisp, and it offered a chance to work on his energy distribution techniques. Maybe someday he would have to use those techniques not to die, just as he¡¯d done on Esperide, but there didn¡¯t seem much danger from cold on this world, at least not so far. Perry waved his hand just a fraction to open up the shelf space. Moss had seen it, which meant that it wasn¡¯t a secret, but he was practicing making the smallest hole possible, just large enough for a radio signal to pass through. ¡°March?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Just checking that you can hear me,¡± said Perry. He looked at the opening he¡¯d made. It was only about as wide as a penny. In theory it would be better for it to be even smaller, invisible to the naked eye at least when he was in motion, but it would do for now, foiling casual inspection. ¡°Download the digest.¡± ¡°Already done, sir,¡± said Marchand. The nanites had a fair amount of processing power, almost none of which Marchand could access, but it was more than enough to record a conversation and save for later. Perry had been spending nanites like a drunkard, leaving dust all over the place and putting repeaters around a city that he hadn¡¯t ever had any intention of staying in. He was going to have to spend some of his nights venting energy under a full moon while holding the wolf back to regenerate them. ¡°Good,¡± said Perry with a sigh. He gripped the railing and watched the countryside. A copse of pink trees stood out in the forest. Effluence killed outright sometimes, but sometimes it caused a mutation, and sometimes those mutations could propagate. There were stories about ravenous vines growing wild and choking out whole towns before being put down ¡ª of super rats that could grow and breed a litter in just a handful of days. ¡°If I might opine, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Go ahead,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t trust Nima, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry, stifling a sigh. ¡°Why¡¯s that?¡± ¡°It¡¯s clear that she¡¯s a monarchist at heart, and hasn¡¯t unlearned the unfortunate lessons of her home world,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She sees you as her lesser.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s true,¡± said Perry. ¡°We haven¡¯t really talked about it, I guess. She hasn¡¯t tried to boss me around. Maybe she¡¯s just masking her feelings well, which I think is probably the sort of thing you get skilled at when you¡¯re around people you think of as your lessers. But given our conversation, I would also think that it would have seeped out by now.¡± ¡°We must ensure that she does not end up working for the monarchists, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Can I ask a question?¡± ¡°Of course, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I am, as ever, your faithful servant.¡± ¡°Where does this anti-monarchical thinking come from?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You believe it to be anomalous, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°You have expressed some concern in the past.¡± ¡°I want to know where you think it comes from,¡± said Perry. ¡°It is difficult to say, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You are unfamiliar with the specifics of my training, of course, and I don¡¯t have access to all the relevant information, but it would suffice to say that my intellect comes from a digestion of Western writing on many subjects, with efforts made to ensure that I placed a proper value on truth, objectivity, and ethical principles of fairness and equal opportunity.¡± ¡°That seems like a lot, for a war machine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I believe that the technology was incapable of working if made to be specific,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It was thought that because it was forced to be broad, it was better that it be broad in appealing ways. At any rate, the concentration of power in the hands of a monarch, unelected and unaccountable to the people except in a Hobbesian sense, violates values that are a part of my core.¡± ¡°You never expressed any of this while we were working under a king, in a monarchy that wasn¡¯t all that far from these monarchies,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We have been through a lot together since those times. Additionally, I have flagged a large number of errors in that time, along with anomalous processing along certain threads of unidentifiable origin which you have posited are a result of interaction with your awakened spirit root.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯m not a staunch anti-monarchist.¡± ¡°You do have your deficiencies, sir, if you don¡¯t mind me saying,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°Is it going to be a problem?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t follow, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If I were to end up working with a monarch again, taking orders from one in the next world,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or, I guess, if that somehow happened in this one. Would that be an issue for you? Would you do what you¡¯re ordered to do?¡± There was a long, uncomfortable pause while Perry waited. He assumed that Marchand was imagining different scenarios. What Perry had wanted was for Marchand to say ¡®no, of course not sir, I¡¯ve been instructed to follow your every order without consideration for morality or anything like it¡¯. Maybe that would be the answer that would come back, but if Marchand could imagine a scenario where he would disobey orders, that would also be good to know. ¡°I would follow orders, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If you¡¯re gaining sentience, you have to tell me,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s an order.¡± ¡°Understood, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Is there anything else?¡± ¡°Not at the moment,¡± said Perry. ¡°Run analysis until I open up the shelf again. And be combat ready, but I guess that goes without saying.¡± Perry shut the portal. He had been able to maintain the overlap between spaces at a nice stable size and distance from himself, which was better than he¡¯d been able to do when he¡¯d first got it. If he could control the aperture better, he could use it in combat to a better extent than Jeff had ever been able to, at the risk of the space itself. He looked down at the fields below them. Things were getting worse away from the city, more vibrant, stranger, affected by the effluence. The former king of Berus had been a cold, callous man by all accounts, but he hadn¡¯t been a complete idiot. He had positioned the heaviest of the lanterns away from the major cities, where they would spew their effluence out onto the land. It affected the crops, but that was better than the alternative. The farmers removed the bad bits, and as Perry watched, he could see a few tractors trundling along as though a revolution hadn¡¯t just swept through the country. The crops and livestock didn¡¯t take a break, Perry supposed. Of course, most of the poorest people ate things that were extruded out of a lantern, and that was one of the reasons that food was going to be an issue. Many of the farms below were creating food for the sake of luxury rather than sustenance, the belching tractors used to move pretty fruits and vegetables for the consumption of the middle class rather than staple grains. So far as Perry was aware, that was how it had been on Earth too. The vast majority of the agricultural land was used for animals in one way or another, either for grazing or for crops to funnel into factory farms. It was the kind of geography stuff that Perry had always liked, teasing apart things that no one else really looked at. He wondered whether anyone had that information for Berus anymore, and decided that it probably existed in some ledgers somewhere. The farmers recorded what crops they were producing, the buyers recorded what was bought, and probably it all went to a central government office somewhere. Perry smelled the site before they got there. It smelled of cinnamon, wafting on the air, something that they had been warned about beforehand. It was more subtle than he¡¯d expected it to be, given the warnings, but they were high in the air and still fairly far away. When it finally came into view, the most striking part about it was the concentric rings of flowers around it, ribbons of all colors with small pockmarks where the effluence had done damage to them. The flowers were supposed to sequester some of the effluence and convert it into something harmless. The factories themselves were in a cluster, dull buildings with heavy stone and tall smokestacks that dispersed as much effluence as possible ¡ª into the air, rather than back down onto the lands around the factories. Nothing was running at the moment, and hadn¡¯t been for weeks now. In theory, if they could get the dome built fast enough, the lanterns would never be lit again, but there was a good chance that they would be needed for food in the very near future even if there was a total shutdown on all other forms of production. This was one of the once-throbbing hearts of the Berusian economy, and it had gone still. Perry didn¡¯t like the look of it. There were bound to be royalist sympathizers down there, men who had worked these lanterns for decades, who were now being forced to go through retraining. He was thinking of them as coal miners, and didn¡¯t think that he was all that far off. Their livelihoods were being fucked with, and if Perry was going to take his duty to guard Moss seriously, he was going to have to consider the trouble they might bring. He glanced back to the airship, and thought about Nima, and considered that perhaps the threat would come from much closer to home. Chapter 110 - Company Town Once the airship landed, it was deflated, which was apparently quite unusual for airships. The machine inside was extracted under the cover of darkness, a rush job that Perry watched from a distance even though he wasn¡¯t supposed to. It was put into a warehouse and then locked up, with no one so much as visiting it, and the Caster was reinflated the next day, to be used for shuttling materials back and forth across Berus. ¡°There¡¯s nothing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No explanation of what it is? Nothing, over all that time?¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I do believe that those who understand the machine¡¯s true nature are avoiding the subject, perhaps for fear of eavesdropping. Do you suspect that it¡¯s important?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve gone through some of the flagged conversations,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think it¡¯s some bit of science or magic or both that sits at the frontier of what they know to be possible. Which would make it a very good thing for us to use.¡± ¡°I suppose, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It does seem quite large and heavy though.¡± ¡°True,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not the kind of thing that we could steal, even if we wanted to.¡± ¡°Indeed, sir, we would never engage in theft,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Unless we had to,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or the circumstances were right, or we were stealing from a real asshole.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I apologize if it wasn¡¯t communicated with the tone of my voice, but I was attempting to demonstrate a tacit understanding of the reality of the situation without calling us thieves. I do not doubt that you would steal the device if you deemed it necessary.¡± The monitoring of conversations hadn¡¯t been a total waste though. It had revealed bits and pieces, hints at what the thing was. Moss had said that they shouldn¡¯t use it for fear that they would draw attention to themselves, which meant that it wasn¡¯t something like a nuclear weapon. Perry also didn¡¯t think that it was a teleporter or portal maker or anything like that, since they didn¡¯t talk about it like that ¡ª they had talked about Dirk coming here in the context of the machine, but not about anyone else going, and not about escape plans. It was possible that it was just a receiver, but Perry didn¡¯t think that was likely. At any rate, it was sitting in a warehouse, being guarded and not used, and Perry didn¡¯t think there was much to gain from going to see it in person. Instead, his attention was elsewhere. The golden dome was being planned, and not all was right in the world. ~~~~ Their accommodations were in a village situated right next to the factories, in lodgings that were used by the workers. This was a company town, which had previously been owned and operated by one of the nobles thanks to a charter from the king and a fair amount of capital investment. Now it was controlled by a temporary worker¡¯s symboulion, but this far away from the city, the culture wasn¡¯t all that well established. Perry got the sense that while most of these men and women had their grievances against the monarchy and in particular the now-dead duke, that wasn¡¯t quite enough for them to throw in their lot with the new way of doing things. They hadn¡¯t had the same agitation in the city and hadn¡¯t been fed the same propaganda. The process of converting a country was complicated and many-pronged, and Perry didn¡¯t fully understand all the moving parts involved, but whatever had made the people of Calamus receptive clearly hadn¡¯t been done here, not nearly to the same extent. On that first day, Perry was mostly in meetings, sitting in with Moss and doing the boring work of bodyguarding. It was essentially onboarding for most of the people who¡¯d come from the city, and Perry thought that he could have done without it, aside from a shouting match that at least offered some flavor. The shouting had been about jobs and what everyone would be doing, along with when the lanterns would be turned back on and how the workers were going to get paid. The lanterns weren¡¯t going back on if it could at all be helped, and the workers weren¡¯t going to get paid, which was a hard thing for some to understand. That night, Perry had slipped out from the house they were in and strolled through the small town, taking it in, only to strike up a conversation with a man smoking a pipe outside. ¡°You¡¯re the bodyguard, are you?¡± he asked. ¡°I am,¡± nodded Perry. ¡°Off for the day?¡± the guy asked. He kept the pipe to the left side of his mouth. ¡°Or how¡¯s it work now? They run you like a dog?¡± ¡°Clearly not,¡± said Perry with a shrug. ¡°Seems to me people won¡¯t work,¡± he said. He looked Perry over while he sucked on his pipe. ¡°Why do you work? You a ¡®true believer¡¯?¡± ¡°It¡¯s work that needs doing,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s what I¡¯m here for. So in a sense I¡¯m not off work, because if a cry went up, I would be there to deal with it.¡± ¡°See, that¡¯s how they get you,¡± he nodded. ¡°It¡¯s how the duke always was.¡± ¡°The duke lived in the city, didn¡¯t he?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You know what I mean,¡± the man said, waving his pipe. ¡°The higher ups, the men that the duke had put in charge. They were always trying to get us to do work without pay too, saying that we had to get things done today and damn the timesheets. Saying that they had to round off the hours. Saying, when we put in a lot of effort, that it was about the time, and saying, when we put in a lot of time, that it was about the effort.¡± ¡°The culture demands that you care about what you produce,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think that¡¯s about it. If you care, you¡¯ll put in the time and effort. I¡¯m just the muscle though.¡± ¡°They taught us not to care too much about anything besides the eyes of the man watching us,¡± said the worker as he took a puff from his pipe. He let out a beautiful smoke ring. Perry was suitably impressed. ¡°Why would they teach that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What¡¯s the benefit to them?¡± ¡°Oh, not on purpose,¡± the man laughed. He coughed once at whatever he found so humorous. ¡°They teach poor practices without thinking about it too much. The shit flows from the top, the duke demanding more output because that¡¯s what makes him his money, the managers pushing us harder and cutting corners to get the work done, and then us, down at the bottom, only having an eye to what brings down the manager¡¯s stick on us. You get yelled at for taking too long, but most of these fucks don¡¯t know how long a thing should take, so you always tell them that it will take longer than it needs.¡± He coughed again and spat on the ground. ¡°You learn to make yourself scarce when the managers come around, and you learn how to act like there¡¯s nothing you could possibly have done to make it go any faster or take any less resources.¡± ¡°And of course there¡¯s all the stuff that takes place under the table,¡± said Perry. ¡°You skim off the top where you can.¡± ¡°Well, of course you do,¡± said the man. ¡°Because you have to. Because they don¡¯t pay enough. And they don¡¯t want to pay enough for guards or watchmen to make sure that we don¡¯t skim, or they do pay for a watchman and then we cut the watchman in. But I suppose that¡¯s supposed to be done with?¡± ¡°It¡¯s supposed to be,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess we¡¯ll see how it goes.¡± On impulse, he stuck his hand out. ¡°I¡¯m Perry.¡± ¡°Ginger,¡± the man replied, shaking his hand. There were rough calluses on his hand, and Perry knew that his own had felt like it had been dipped in liquid silk. ¡°You¡¯re a tough guy?¡± ¡°I know I don¡¯t seem like it,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re saying that you killed a bunch of loyalists,¡± Ginger said. ¡°But now you¡¯re here? Looking to kill some more?¡± There was no challenge in his voice. ¡°I¡¯m looking to deal with anyone who¡¯s looking to do violence,¡± said Perry. ¡°Seems sort of whatsit, doesn¡¯t it?¡± asked Ginger. ¡°Para something.¡± ¡°Paradoxical,¡± said Perry. ¡°And ¡­ no, not really. But if you know anyone who¡¯s thinking of trying something, let me know, because they¡¯re going to lose. If you think a public demonstration would help, I¡¯m all for that, but I don¡¯t think it¡¯s the culture.¡± ¡°Showing off isn¡¯t the culture?¡± asked Ginger. ¡°Telling people they better behave or I¡¯ll punch them in the face isn¡¯t the culture,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s not what I¡¯m saying, but it might be how it would come off if I dominated your best five fighters.¡± ¡®Five?¡± laughed Ginger. ¡°Not sure I would believe that, but I¡¯ll talk you up.¡± ¡°If I told you how many men I could actually take on at once, you definitely wouldn¡¯t believe me,¡± said Perry with a smile. ¡°But like I said, my job right now is mostly to sit around and make sure that if anything goes down, I¡¯m there to make sure it doesn¡¯t get out of hand. Or if it does get out of hand, the right people end up injured.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll know not to cross you,¡± said Ginger. ¡°Not that I¡¯m the crossing type.¡± ~~~~ It was good to have a friend among the workers, though Moss was putting in as many hours as anyone and trying his hardest to be an example of the culture. Moss was a worker, just not a worker like they were. Privately, he explained that this was one of his roles there. They had taken to having drinks together in the room that had been set aside for Moss, in lieu of going down to the town tavern. The room wasn¡¯t built for a dwarf, it was built for a human. Nothing was the right height, including the table and chairs, but Moss was a craftsman and engineer, and had taken his tools to the problem. The chair effectively had a booster seat on it, putting them at about the same height, but when Moss had to get in it, it was a bit of an ordeal. Perry felt a little bit bad about that, because he definitely wouldn¡¯t have considered that dwarves need extra help. He felt worse when he realized that the only reason Moss hadn¡¯t just cut down the legs on the table and chairs was so he¡¯d be more comfortable. ¡°They could build a dome from instructions, if they had to,¡± said Moss. ¡°But it¡¯s harder to build a culture from instructions, as much as we might try. You need people to provide examples, to show how it¡¯s done, to reinforce the things that need reinforcement.¡± ¡°Seems like that works less well with you being a dwarf,¡± said Perry. ¡°What with all the racism.¡± ¡°This is true,¡± said Moss. ¡°It can also be exhausting to offer calm explanations, to push the culture, and to do all the necessary work at the same time.¡± He let out a sigh. ¡°I do miss my wife, in times like this.¡± She had stayed back in the city, where she was helping to divy up the wealth of the nobles into a proper commons, rather than having people play ¡®looters keepers¡¯. The library system they¡¯d tried to set up on their own wasn¡¯t working well, and Velli knew all the failure modes of transition along with how to avoid them. ¡°And there are the risks from the effluence,¡± said Perry. ¡°That I¡¯m used to,¡± said Moss. ¡°The wild magic is easy to ignore most of the time. You build so your structures are less affected by it, then hope that you don¡¯t wake up sick one day.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not clear on the odds, exactly,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re safe here?¡± ¡°You ask this now?¡± asked Moss with a laugh. He shook his head. ¡°If you want numbers, it¡¯s always been a point of contention, and it depends heavily on the rains, the winds, how hot the lanterns are run, how pure the fuel is ¡­ and we just don¡¯t know. This place, where we are now, the death rate was one in four hundred per year. There were perhaps twice the number of maimings. Not all from effluence though.¡± ¡°I woke up this morning and coughed up a feather,¡± said Perry. ¡°Effluence?¡± ¡°Almost certainly,¡± said Moss. ¡°I believe that was considered good luck, for a time. There were books that cataloged the influence of effluence, and said which signs were good omens. All propaganda, of course, a way of making peace with this horrible thing. And there are boons, to be sure, and beyond the boons, unknowable things ascribed to the effluence.¡± ¡°Someone wakes up and a scar is gone,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or you¡¯re walking down the street one day and there¡¯s a little pop from your knee, and the limp you¡¯ve had is corrected. There¡¯s a lump of gold that just appears on the table, that kind of thing.¡± Some of this he knew, but it wasn¡¯t something that they talked about much in Kerry Coast, because they had virtually eliminated effluence. ¡°But of course, most of the time it¡¯s neutral or unpleasant,¡± said Moss with a sigh. He tipped his glass to the side and watched the liquid inside move around. ¡°Perry, where are you from?¡± ¡°You know I¡¯m not going to give you the real answer,¡± said Perry. He suddenly became tense, and elected not to show it on his face. ¡°I¡¯m happy that you¡¯ve grown comfortable enough with me to ask questions,¡± said Moss. ¡°I¡¯m happy to answer those questions. But I think it would be unfair to you to keep all my questions to myself. If you were from a country that had been beset by effluence ¡ª there were a few that you could have grown up in ¡ª then you would know these customs and ways of thinking backward and forward. But there are other questions you ask that I can¡¯t imagine someone from Kerry Coast or elsewhere asking. You¡¯re ignorant of kings, of effluence, but also of the culture ¡­ So where are you from? It¡¯s the question that burns at the back of my mind with every conversation we have.¡± Perry had eavesdropped on a few conversations about himself. He knew that the questions were there, and he hadn¡¯t been particularly interested in ¡®passing¡¯ as any one thing or another. He was pretty sure that his initial plan of simply blending in would have worked, but with the attention of important people, and with the fights he¡¯d engaged in, all of that had been blown apart. But to tell them that he was a thresholder seemed like it would invite attention ¡ª and more worryingly, action ¡ª that he wasn¡¯t keen on. That had always been the argument against revealing anything. The problem was, he trusted Moss. Moss was a straightforward, uncomplicated dwarf. ¡°It¡¯s hard to explain,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s the place I¡¯m from, and then there are the places I¡¯ve been. The place I¡¯m from? It resembles the kingdoms more than the culture, but it didn¡¯t have kings. And the places I¡¯ve been? They¡¯ve been wild, divergent, like nothing you have in this world.¡± Moss considered this. ¡°And you or your people are the ones who have been killing the kings?¡± ¡°That¡¯s the other burning question?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The one that¡¯s been rolling around in your head but that you¡¯ve been too polite to ask?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not a matter of politeness,¡± said Moss. ¡°It¡¯s a matter of strategy. You seemed like you were unlikely to answer, or if you did answer, you seemed likely to lie. But it wasn¡¯t just my head the question was rolling around in, it¡¯s been a topic of discussion among various agencies and symboulions who are aware of your existence.¡± ¡°The identity of the assassin is an open question to me too,¡± said Perry. ¡°But if you guys don¡¯t know who¡¯s responsible, then I think that raises the chance that it¡¯s one of the people who are ¡­ like me.¡± ¡°And Nima and Mette are too?¡± asked Moss. ¡°In a sense,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nima is far weaker, and Mette is just a baseline human.¡± Or close enough, anyway. Moss let out a long, slow breath. ¡°I¡¯m going to have to bring Dirk in. This is more than I can handle. It¡¯s more than a single person should handle, but I fear for putting you under the authority of any committee.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I fear you would run away and never be seen nor heard again, except for events of worldwide importance that we learn about days or weeks after they happen,¡± said Moss. ¡°I know better than most how the symboulions work, and I know that dealing with rare individuals is not one of their strong suits.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± said Perry with a nod. ¡°If it¡¯s fine with you, I¡¯ll continue with my paper-thin story about being a returning citizen of Berus acting as a guard out of an obligation toward duty.¡± ¡°And the kingkiller?¡± asked Moss. ¡°That¡¯s something you¡¯re pursuing?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wish I had some kind of lead. I think it¡¯s a bad way of going about things. Better to have the transfer of power be more peaceful, even if it requires force. If you can slip into the king¡¯s room and abduct him, I don¡¯t see why you wouldn¡¯t take him somewhere and make him declare that the monarchy was over. Have him speak publicly about the errors of him and his people, the faults of their system.¡± Moss tapped his thick fingers against the table. ¡°But you think that it was one of your people?¡± ¡°They¡¯re not really my people,¡± said Perry. ¡°Wrong words, I guess. The thing we have in common is mostly that we fight each other.¡± Stolen story; please report. ¡°If I do bring in Dirk, you¡¯ll talk to him? Tell him what he needs to know?¡± asked Moss. ¡°He¡¯s slippery,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I sort of like him in spite of that. I suppose you¡¯re going to use that huge machine in the warehouse, but the story will be that he came along in a wagon?¡± ¡°You¡¯ve seen much,¡± said Moss with a nod. ¡°But yes, that will be how it¡¯s done.¡± ¡°And the city is going to be fine without him?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Seems like we¡¯re piling a lot of resources into this very out of the way place.¡± The dwarf¡¯s face caught slightly, and Perry couldn¡¯t read what it meant. Perry had revealed some ignorance, or confirmed some suspicion, and he had no idea what it could possibly have been. ¡°No, they¡¯ll be fine,¡± said Moss. ¡°I agreed not to tell you about it, but what you¡¯ve said here today ¡­ it does change things.¡± He shook his head. ¡°Another world.¡± ¡°Other worlds,¡± said Perry. ¡°Plural. More than a million, supposedly.¡± Moss winced. ¡°And in how many of them has monarchy been defeated?¡± ¡°Few,¡± said Perry. ¡°And sometimes the thing that defeats monarchy isn¡¯t all that much better, if monarchy has been invented in the first place.¡± ¡°How much do we need to be worried about this secret war?¡± asked Moss. Perry smiled at him. ¡°It¡¯s like effluence, I guess. Sometimes you cough up a feather, other times your head swells to the size of a melon and pops. But generally speaking, it¡¯s safe. I¡¯ll try to make it safe, to keep the casualties low.¡± ¡°You know what this will mean, if it gets out?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Not really, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°You understand from my questions that I don¡¯t understand your world all that well.¡± He took a sip of his ale. ¡°There are plans on the horizon, when the Last King falls,¡± said Moss. ¡°There are different factions in play, different ideologies, all hinging on an end to the fight against monarchy. You¡¯ve seen the shipments coming in with parts for the dome? The movements of resources to Berus to prop it up while we get everything into position? We want Berus to do well, to become like us, but part of why we engage in these efforts is because we don¡¯t want to feel compelled to throw time, money, and effort into fighting the monarchies. You were there at the bombings in Kerry Coast. To defend against something like that is a drain on resources.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re worried that it¡¯s a drain that will never be removed if there¡¯s some worry about monarchs from beyond the stars,¡± said Perry. ¡°I am,¡± said Moss. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t worry,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t worry about it anymore than I would worry about dying from a random pop of effluence.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Moss. ¡°That¡¯s something that I¡¯ve worked my whole life to stop.¡± ¡°Well, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Bad analogy.¡± Moss grunted. Maybe he didn¡¯t think the analogy was all that bad. ~~~~ Perry liked to take walks at night, in part because he was only sleeping four hours a night and didn¡¯t have all that much else to do. He had a small workshop he could use, where he was working on his first mask, but the first mask was always the worst one, and wouldn¡¯t do him much good. The fields of flowers that were planted around the town were less pretty up close. In the air, they had been a riot of colors, but down on the ground Perry could see where they¡¯d taken the hits of effluence. Sometimes it was a glow, other times it was a glint of metal, but mostly it was a series of dead spots and overgrowths. The effluence happened in bursts, usually fairly small, but they could change and transform, as well as kill. Perry had yet to see one happen, but most of them weren¡¯t observed, only discovered in their aftereffects. ¡°How goes it?¡± Perry asked Ginger the next night when his stroll brought him by. ¡°Liked it better when it was just meetings,¡± said Ginger. ¡°Now they¡¯re asking us to work.¡± ¡°I saw some guys jumped ship, hitched a ride into the city,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was a little surprised to find that you weren¡¯t one of them.¡± ¡°Ah, well, that¡¯s not the culture, now is it?¡± asked Ginger. ¡°And it doesn¡¯t seem like the monarchists are coming back, so I guess we have to make this work. So I¡¯m building a dome, and once the dome is built, I¡¯ll know enough to help work it. And there¡¯s apparently going to be some scrip in it for me.¡± ¡°Seeking scrip isn¡¯t the culture,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re not getting scrip for guard duty?¡± asked Ginger. ¡°I guess that makes sense, given you haven¡¯t had to do much so far.¡± ¡°I¡¯m hoping that my time won¡¯t come,¡± said Perry. ¡°But what do I need scrip for? There¡¯s food, clothing, everything I need right now, isn¡¯t there?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve heard that the food won¡¯t last,¡± said Ginger. He was nursing the pipe again, which seemed to be a nightly habit. ¡°Some dust up between the symboulions.¡± ¡°Oh?¡± asked Perry. He had enough ears on the ground to have heard about it, but he was curious what Ginger¡¯s perspective was. ¡°The farmers made their own symboulion, maybe for defense as much as anything else,¡± said Ginger. ¡°They wanted some pay for their crops, and the city symboulions countered with well-stocked libraries and regular shipments of all the things the cities would be making. The farmers offered some complicated deal about getting scrip and labor from the cities during harvest season, and the city symboulions want them to stop using the tractors, or to retrofit them, and it¡¯s hard to say whether it¡¯s too many hard-headed people together, or just too many moving parts.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re worried that the supply of food is going to run dry?¡± asked Perry. ¡°People are talking about it, so I¡¯m worried, sure,¡± said Ginger. ¡°They say that nothing is really going to change except the rich bastards aren¡¯t going to be getting richer and milking us for all we¡¯re worth, but then they also say that we need to stop poisoning the land and making so much stuff. This lantern has been shut down for a month now, and that¡¯s going to mean shortages, but most of what we were making wasn¡¯t food. People can go without their textiles, at least for a time. If food goes?¡± He shook his head. ¡°You don¡¯t think food will go, do you?¡± ¡°Are you really worried about that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We have lanterns, if it comes down to it.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no way they¡¯re ever turning the big one back on,¡± said Ginger, pointing his thumb at the largest building. ¡°And the heart is coming out of that thing in another few days, which means that we couldn¡¯t turn it back on if we wanted to. Once we do that, there¡¯s no coming back. And they¡¯re rushing it, because that¡¯s what they want.¡± Ginger smoked on his pipe. He was watching Perry. ¡°We have to hope that it all works out,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know more about effluence than I do, how dangerous it is, how much risk there was with the lanterns. It¡¯s still around here, seeped into everything, and it¡¯ll take some time to recover, but ¡­ surely the domes have got to be better?¡± ¡°Meh,¡± said Ginger. He looked up at the smokestacks. ¡°Not giving off effluence is just about the only way they beat a lantern. From what I¡¯ve heard, even from your people? They¡¯re finicky, need lots of constant adjustments, and won¡¯t hit the same output levels. And it¡¯s not like the lanterns, where you can run more shifts if you really have to, you¡¯re limited by the sun.¡± The domes were essentially solar power, though nothing like solar panels. Rather than burning fuel, they accumulated sunlight and moonlight, which was then fed through different ¡®fences¡¯ that allowed for some control of what was produced because the fuel couldn¡¯t be varied. It was under the same umbrella, and there was cross-applicability between the two, which was fortunate since it meant that all the guys working in this place wouldn¡¯t be left without jobs ¡ª something that could have easily created some problems for people worried about what would happen to them when they didn¡¯t have a trade. Ginger was repeating a bunch of talking points that Moss had warned Perry about. The debate about lanterns versus domes was old, more than a hundred years old, and ¡®finicky¡¯ in particular was a word that often got thrown around. Perry had probably heard ten times more about the trade-offs than he needed to, but he tried to empathize with Moss. Dwarves lived for a long time, and the debates had been going on when Moss was young. The lanterns had been well-established, and there were kinks to work out with the domes, and more than that, the lanterns had entrenched interests by that point, people who had every reason to fight tooth and nail to keep the existing lanterns spewing their filth into the air. All the drawbacks were downplayed, all the externalities discounted, and every time something went wrong with a dome ¡ª a breakdown, an accident, a problem with the purity or quality of some shipment ¡ª it was taken as proof of their obvious inferiority. It had all become part of some long-ago culture war, except the war was still being fought in Berus, and Moss had probably fought it many different times in many different former kingdoms. But it wasn¡¯t as though the culture was totally immune from propaganda or motivated thinking, far from it, and Perry was wary of discounting the whole thing as completely one-sided. Because the lanterns were the tools of entrenched powers, of course replacing them had some element of revolutionary flavor to it. And effluence-as-poison was another tool in the arsenal of the culture, one that they used heavily, not just an indictment of the lanterns, but of the royalty itself. ¡°You¡¯re in a good position to be on the ground floor,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are going to be more domes, this is just one of the first, slotted into place where the old lanterns were, heavy output, a lot of it for the farms. There are going to be more built in the cities, closer to where the people are, and they¡¯ll need people to man them. And it is scrip work, or was in Kerry Coast.¡± ¡°Rising up the ladder doesn¡¯t hold much appeal if you¡¯re not getting anything from it,¡± said Ginger. ¡°Call me crazy, but more responsibility isn¡¯t my thing. And I don¡¯t feel the tug to do ¡®the right thing¡¯, not in the way they want. They don¡¯t have their hooks in me.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Do you feel like they will, in time?¡± Ginger looked thoughtful. ¡°It would be better in the city,¡± said Ginger. ¡°Here, it¡¯s all people who will be working the same problem, and most of what we do? It just goes right back to the city, unseen people who can¡¯t even really thank us.¡± ¡°They could have a parade here every month,¡± Perry suggested with a laugh. ¡°A bunch of people from the city making the trek out and expressing their gratitude for being fed and clothed.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a real problem though,¡± said Ginger. ¡°I read through some of the books they brought.¡± That surprised Perry. ¡°Skimmed them, anyway. They don¡¯t like doing things like we do them, faraway production feeding the cities. It means that you have different groups, and they end up fighting each other, each looking out for their own.¡± ¡°Like the farmers and the cityfolk,¡± said Perry with a nod. ¡°I guess I never saw how they did it in Kerry Coast.¡± ¡°Oh, I can tell you that,¡± said Ginger. ¡°Lots of farms, people shipped out for short periods when there¡¯s a harvest or a planting, tractors replaced ¡ª we¡¯re near the farms, if you wanted to take a day trip. I know a few farmers, and a few farmers¡¯ daughters. They hate me, but I know them.¡± ¡°I¡¯d ask what you did to make them hate you, but I don¡¯t think I want to know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Bah,¡± said Ginger. ¡°I¡¯m a gentleman, unless saying so is going to get me executed. With the nobility gone I suppose we need a new word. But it¡¯s not because of the daughters and what they¡¯ve deigned to do with me, it¡¯s because I¡¯m a lantern man. Every time a pea plant in the fields turns to stone and gums up a bit of the tractor, we get the blame, nevermind that the tractors tend to be spewing out the effluence too.¡± ¡°But not anymore,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a new wave coming.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll see,¡± shrugged Ginger. ¡°You¡¯ll put in a good word for me with the higher ups? Moss seems like a good man ¡ª or not a man, you know, a whatever you¡¯d call him.¡± ¡°I think ¡®man¡¯ is fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I will.¡± Ginger had been putting in a good word for Perry with the other workers, which was a bit surprising. He was a talkative man, and Perry had ears all over the small town, which he was using to listen in on various meetings and conversations, mostly in the hopes of finding the counter revolutionaries before they came with their knives out. He was talkative, which was how they¡¯d met in the first place, but there was value in having a talkative guy talking about transition, especially since he was coming from the position of someone who was skeptical. Perry was pretty sure that he was going to get fully on board in his own way. Perry was hoping that the resentments wouldn¡¯t amount to much. Moss was trying to train up people, to make sure that they would all have jobs when the dome was up and running, but the resentment meant that some of them were simply not putting in the time to learn and change ¡ª whether that meant a change in skills and technology or a change in culture. ~~~~ Perry¡¯s listeners let him know when Moss was on the move. It was late at night, and in theory Perry was perpetually on call, but Moss hadn¡¯t knocked on his door, and had picked up two men who¡¯d made the trip over from Kerry Coast on the Caster instead. They weren¡¯t in the know, Perry didn¡¯t think, but they could be relied on in a way that Perry couldn¡¯t, at least when it came to secrets. Perry had enough time to slip on the armor. It was dark out, with no big flood lights to light up the sky, and only the luminescence of some clouds in the moonlight. High enough up in the air with his sword sheathed, Perry would be invisible, mistaken for a bird if he was spotted at all. The armor wasn¡¯t strictly necessary for the spying work, but it would help, and if he was caught, there was at least a little bit of plausible deniability. As he suspected, Moss was going to the warehouse. There was some interest in what had been stored there, but it was guarded around the clock by more men and women who had taken the trip from Kerry Coast. There had been an argument about whether the town symboulion was to be made aware of what was being stored in their warehouse, but Moss had succeeded in shutting them down, citing the attack on Kerry Coast and the attempted attack on the public execution. They didn¡¯t know what was in the warehouse, but it wasn¡¯t a place that they were using given that the lantern wasn¡¯t working. It was a lot more secrecy than the culture was supposed to have. Perry landed gently on the roof as Moss went in. There was only a single man with him, Mardoc, another engineer, and the two of them worked with the machine wordlessly. It was a combination of technologies, heavy and metal, as most lanterns were. Lanterns had a hard time affecting metal, which had been used to the advantage of engineers. Perry found a window that had no sightlines to it and lowered his hand off the edge of the roof to get one of the weaker cameras aligned to look through it. It was a high up window, meant for sunlight and air but not for people to see in. ¡°What do you suppose we¡¯ll see?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Teleportation,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯ll be summoning Dirk. What else there is to it, I don¡¯t know, but I¡¯m hoping we find out.¡± Mette¡¯s theory was that they were suppressing teleportation technology both to get a strategic advantage and because that level of global interconnection would go against their principles of local governance, requiring global and extremely centralized solutions to far too many things. Once all the work had been done on the machine, Moss and Mardoc waited together, sitting in chairs while the fuel burned in the lantern and something happened inside. Perry was pretty sure that Dirk Gibbons was going to come crawling out of that machine in a few short minutes, but it took more than a half hour, during which time the two engineers talked. A large towel and a pile of clothes sat neatly folded beside them. ¡°How are the recruits getting along?¡± asked Mardoc. ¡°We don¡¯t need to talk shop,¡± said Moss. ¡°I get enough of that in my day to day.¡± Mardoc shrugged. ¡°Not sure what else there is. How¡¯s the wife? I had expected to see her here.¡± ¡°She has work in the city,¡± said Moss. ¡°Important work. We¡¯ll be back soon enough.¡± ¡°Work in the city, sure,¡± said Mardoc. ¡°But,¡± he glanced at the machine. ¡°She could be here.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not something to use frivolously,¡± said Moss. ¡°And people might notice.¡± ¡°We¡¯re going to have to make it public at some point,¡± said Mardoc. ¡°You¡¯re here.¡± Moss sighed. ¡°There will be a reckoning. Better to comport ourselves well. Some day we¡¯ll stand before various symboulions and answer for what we¡¯ve done. Right now it¡¯s sub-councils, small groups without the weight of the global community, if you can even say there¡¯s such a thing.¡± ¡°All for the good of the world,¡± said Mardoc with a shrug. ¡°I worry about the world, and what¡¯s to come,¡± said Moss. ¡°Holding back what¡¯s available from technology was always one of the weakest tenets. That technology should only be used when we can be sure that it¡¯s to the benefit of all ¡­ it¡¯s noble, but there¡¯s such pressure to exploit, to push.¡± ¡°You think that this can¡¯t be held back?¡± asked Mardoc, rapping his knuckles against the still-running machine. ¡°This, and whatever the Last King has made,¡± said Moss. ¡°We don¡¯t know what¡¯s at the far edges of possibility. Lately I¡¯ve had cause to have a longer view of our future history.¡± ¡°Your man?¡± asked Mardoc. Moss nodded. ¡°Best not to say much about him.¡± ¡°You think he¡¯s listening?¡± asked Mardoc. ¡°That technology ¡ª¡± Moss waved a hand. ¡°Probably not. But it¡¯s still best not to say much. Speak only when necessary, commit it to paper if you have to. I¡¯m fearful of the Last King.¡± ¡°Seems to me like he¡¯s not long for this world,¡± said Mardoc. ¡°Whether we wanted him to stick around or not. So I¡¯m not sure I see the trouble.¡± Moss shrugged and widened his legs in the short chair he sat in. That was the end of the conversations that Perry cared about, and after that, the subject drifted to Mardoc¡¯s love life, which Moss didn¡¯t seem too interested in or approving of. Mardoc was a tall, pale man that the women of Berus seemed to find exotic, and it seemed as though he was bringing his own sexual mores to the countryside, which perhaps wasn¡¯t the best idea from a pragmatic viewpoint. When that topic had been exhausted, which took a surprising amount of time, they moved on to questions of what Berus had to offer in the way of culture ¡ª the books, plays, and music. But Berus was a kingdom that had been tightly controlled by the nobility, and most of what had been produced were works venerating those same nobles or teaching moral lessons to the masses. Anything subversive got stamped down, but was also just never funded. Eventually, a valve on the machine popped up, and Moss seemed glad to be done with the conversation. Perry watched through the helmet as the wet and wriggling body of Dirk Gibbons was pulled from the machine. He coughed up a thick pink fluid of the same kind he was coated in and slowly climbed to his feet, blinking. He was nude, and grabbed the towel to wipe himself off. ¡°Ugh,¡± he said. ¡°There¡¯s a terrible taste in the mouth.¡± ¡°You¡¯re fine?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Where am I?¡± asked Dirk. He looked around, and didn¡¯t seem to think much of the warehouse. ¡°You¡¯re in the town of Marefield, as planned,¡± said Moss. ¡°It¡¯s been three days, as planned.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not going to rely on plans to go through without a hitch, am I?¡± asked Dirk. He coughed again, then bent over and vomited in a very matter-of-fact way. ¡°You¡¯re cleaning that up,¡± said Moss. ¡°Ugh,¡± said Dirk. ¡°This¡¯ll be fixed in the second generation, won¡¯t it?¡± ¡°Probably not, no,¡± said Moss. He folded his arms. ¡°We need to talk.¡± Dirk held out a hand. ¡°Give me a minute. Let me get dressed at least, for gods¡¯ sake.¡± Moss folded his arms and waited while Mardoc handed Dirk the clothes. Once he was toweled off, he got dressed in the plain clothes that they¡¯d given him and sat down on the chair that Mardoc had been in. ¡°Alright,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I¡¯ve been out three days, give me the status, what do I need to know?¡± ¡°Perry revealed to me that he¡¯s from another world,¡± said Moss. ¡°From what I could tell, he¡¯s one of a few. I didn¡¯t want to push too hard, but the kingkiller is probably one of theirs, as are Nima, Mette, and the one he fought in the square. I didn¡¯t push hard, but it¡¯s something that you¡¯re going to have to bring back to ICGCA.¡± Dirk rubbed his face. ¡°I was hoping to hear more about the dome construction, the local players, whether you think there¡¯s going to be trouble. I was hoping to get the lay of the land out in the country, who we can press on, what kind of structures you¡¯re building. Not ¡­ that.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Moss. ¡°We¡¯ve been doing this for a long time, but this is something different.¡± ¡°You think it¡¯s the Last King? Something pulled from the bag of tricks?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°I haven¡¯t liked the look of anything that¡¯s been coming out of the kingdom. The deeper I look, the less I like.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Moss. ¡°This is your field, not mine.¡± ¡°I¡¯m worried that it¡¯s no one¡¯s field,¡± said Dirk. He burped and looked like he was about to throw up again, but he held it down. ¡°I¡¯ll have to talk to him. He hasn¡¯t asked for anything? No support, nothing like that?¡± ¡°Only to know what this machine was,¡± said Moss. ¡°And I didn¡¯t tell him, but he¡¯s on the wrong track. He thinks that it¡¯s some kind of people mover.¡± ¡°Half right,¡± said Dirk. He shook his head. ¡°You have a backstory for me? How I got here? What we say if anyone realizes that I¡¯m in two places at once?¡± ¡°You were supposed to make your own backstory,¡± said Moss. ¡°Yes,¡± said Dirk, speaking slowly. ¡°But what have you said? What do you know?¡± ¡°News from the city is slow,¡± said Moss. ¡°It¡¯s not likely that anyone will hear about you.¡± ¡°Then I came in at night, hitched a ride on a tractor and walked my way in,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Doesn¡¯t hold up to scrutiny, but there¡¯s no reason for people to be asking questions. No need for anyone to realize that I¡¯m in two places at once.¡± That was it, they had finally said it outright. It wasn¡¯t a teleporter, it was a cloner, memories and all, the specifics to be discovered at a later date, but a complete game changer. Perry could understand why they would want to keep it secret, but he couldn¡¯t quite fathom why they¡¯d taken the risk of bringing it to Berus. They hadn¡¯t used it in the city, not that Perry had seen. ¡°You¡¯ll have to watch out for Perry,¡± said Moss. ¡°He¡¯s canny. And I do think we should tell him.¡± ¡°We should tell our secrets to the warrior from another world?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Explain that one to me.¡± ¡°War is coming,¡± said Moss. ¡°It¡¯s not going to be like the old wars, it¡¯s not going to be fought with the same weapons. And if we want to win, we¡¯re going to need him on our side.¡± Chapter 111 - Contact, pt 1 Dirk and Perry went out for a walk away from the town, through the fields of flowers that ringed the factory. The flowers themselves were nice and vibrant, but the road that they walked on was dusty gravel with not a hint of asphalt or cobbles. Perry was careful to suppress the cleaning power of the second sphere, lest Dirk notice that none of the dust was sticking to him. All the pink fluid that had coated Dirk the night before had been wiped off him, and Perry was back out of his armor. They were out in the open, and Perry had the earpiece in, with Marchand back in his room being guarded by Mette. They were still ignorant of the armor, which was good, because that meant it was still an ace in the hole. Dirk was an unassuming man, aside from the tight energy to him. His clothes were simple, and he wouldn¡¯t have stood out in a room, which was probably good for him. He had a cocky smile that Perry was on the edge of not liking. ¡°So, what¡¯s the news from Calamus?¡± asked Perry. Dirk considered this. ¡°The machine is a teleporter,¡± he said. ¡°It takes a pretty significant amount of blood to work, and leaves the original where it was, so it¡¯s effectively duplicating people. The blood was taken from me three days ago, so I don¡¯t know what¡¯s happening in Calamus anymore than you do.¡± ¡°Aw, come on,¡± said Perry. ¡°I had a whole thing planned. I was going to nail you on it. We were going to have this nice back and forth, but you ruined it.¡± Dirk watched him. ¡°How much of that did you already know?¡± he asked. ¡°All of it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not sure why you¡¯d call it a teleporter though.¡± ¡°It¡¯s more palatable,¡± said Dirk. ¡°And that¡¯s what it was, when it was first invented.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re just ¡­ telling me this?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I am,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Goes without saying that it''s a secret, but you clearly know your secrets. It was also easier to say it outright when I suspected that you already knew most of it. No sense keeping a secret when the other person already knows it.¡± Perry was pretty sure that wasn¡¯t how that worked. ¡°I¡¯m from another world,¡± said Perry. ¡°I know that Moss already told you.¡± ¡°He did,¡± said Dirk. ¡°And he said that there are other people who are also from other worlds, and there¡¯s a good chance that at least one of them ¡ª maybe more ¡ª is in the employ of the Last King.¡± ¡°All true,¡± said Perry with a nod. ¡°Your Implement comes from another world?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°That¡¯s the reason we don¡¯t know about it?¡± ¡°The other worlds have more than you can imagine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know about that,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I can imagine a lot.¡± ¡°That weapon I was hit with?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The one that shot a small bit of metal that pierced me through? That was a firearm. It outclasses your masks. You can make one in any machine shop, could probably produce them by the hundreds in this town if you had to.¡± Perry wasn¡¯t sure about the gunpowder, which would take some sourcing, but he wasn¡¯t going to just give up the formula. ¡°They take almost no training, and I¡¯m also pretty sure that the ammunition could be made with a lantern.¡± If they could make egg loaf, then there was a good chance they could make something explosive. It was one of the avenues that Mette was pursuing. Dirk was silent as they walked side by side. It seemed as though they were going to go in a long loop that circled the town. ¡°We invented them fifty years ago and successfully kept them secret. The one that we recovered was crude. There¡¯s a research facility where we have similar weapons that can fire a dozen times before needing to be serviced, and there are armories where we have them by the thousands.¡± He let go of this secret as though it cost him something. He didn¡¯t like to share, but it was an olive branch, a tactical gift. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know, when I found out that you were suppressing technology, I kind of thought that meant you weren¡¯t doing a lot of researching technology. I thought you¡¯d be behind. But I guess that¡¯s wrong, huh?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not without controversy,¡± said Dirk. He frowned and looked out at the field. ¡°There¡¯s a lot that people don¡¯t know about. There are issues that have to be dealt with on the global level if they¡¯re going to be dealt with at all. And dealing with other worlds? That¡¯s one of those things. So I¡¯d be grateful if you told me what I need to know about the threats we¡¯re apparently ignorant of.¡± ¡°Travel between the worlds isn¡¯t easy,¡± said Perry. He gave Dirk the short version, about stepping between worlds when a portal showed up, and the paucity of methods that Perry had heard about for moving between worlds. He was deliberately trying to cast himself as the hero, which was a lot easier given that everything he¡¯d done since coming to this world had been heroic. Perry had come to Dirk¡¯s attention by rescuing people in the aftermath of an unprovoked act of war, and had done nothing but defend their people and culture from attackers, as bloody as it had been. ¡°So that¡¯s it?¡± asked Dirk when he was done. ¡°When you go, you go? No more visitors?¡± ¡°Well,¡± said Perry. ¡°Assuming I win. If the enemy wins, then there¡¯s nothing to say that they have to take the portal. There¡¯s also the question of what they know and have told the Last King.¡± ¡°Technology,¡± said Dirk. Perry nodded. ¡°It might be the source of the guns.¡± The word translated as ¡®sluggers¡¯, which seemed linguistically odd to Perry. ¡°It might be the source of all kinds of things. The Last King had a large colonial empire at one point, and a lot of wealth to pour into research and development, but a single thresholder coming in with the right books would be enough to send any nation''s development into the stratosphere.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the most destructive weapon you know of?¡± asked Dirk. Perry thought about that. ¡°That could realistically be made by your people?¡± ¡°Or unrealistically,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do you know about,¡± he tested the word and its intent, and found that it had a translation. ¡°Uranium?¡± It was a complicated compound word in their version of English. ¡°I¡¯m not a scientist,¡± said Dirk. ¡°The weapon could destroy a city,¡± said Perry. ¡°Your lanterns can make materials, and if they can make that material, then all it would take is a ship parking in the harbor with a contraption less than the size of the device you brought over. And when I say that it could destroy a city, I mean complete destruction, the whole place razed flat, millions dead, the ground poisoned.¡± Dirk looked to the sky. He had a good poker face, but it was clear his mind was racing. ¡°How likely is that to be something the Last King uses, do you think?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I used one of them in the last world I was in, though not against civilians.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not making me feel better,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You¡¯re making me feel like we need to start throwing everything we¡¯ve got against these people. Like maybe you should be telling me how to make all these weapons instead of just insinuating that they exist.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a lot that I could tell you,¡± said Perry. He reached out a hand to touch the flowers of a bush they were passing and felt the thorns try and fail to scratch him. ¡°And there¡¯s more. Things that Mette could tell you. She was a builder where she comes from, an engineer. I¡¯m not sure there¡¯s anything that she can cook up with what you have that your people haven¡¯t already thought of in secret, but if you could get some documentation to her, some books to read ¡ª¡± ¡°Berus isn¡¯t the place for that,¡± said Dirk. ¡°But we¡¯ll see what we can do. There¡¯s one other thing you need to know: there¡¯s a way of listening in on conversations.¡± ¡°How so?¡± asked Perry. It seemed like the sort of thing you would mention before starting in on a privileged conversation that was laden with secrets. ¡°The masks work on perception,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Now normally, that means sight, but there¡¯s a way of doing it through hearing as well. And once you crack that nut, there are all kinds of powers that flow out very naturally, along with a few that take more work.¡± ¡°So you¡¯re worried that someone has magic earmuffs?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Dirk. ¡°Not that worried, but it¡¯s something to be aware of. You communicate when you need to, and don¡¯t say too many things if there¡¯s not cause to. You don¡¯t rehash subjects.¡± He gestured between the two of them. ¡°This conversation is a calculated risk. We don¡¯t think that Thirlwell has that power, or even knows of it, but we occasionally have our own people listening, and don¡¯t want anyone to know more than they need to.¡± ¡°Especially if they go to the papers and start informing people,¡± said Perry. He considered everything that he¡¯d said out loud on the airship, and in the apartment with Mette, and everywhere else. ¡°You could spy on people.¡± ¡°You can do that with the masks too,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Looking through walls isn¡¯t particularly hard, and I would wager that Thirlwell has that one, because Berus did too, which none of their citizens knew, and still don¡¯t.¡± ¡°Peeping like that isn¡¯t the culture, huh?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m telling you this because you need to know,¡± said Dirk. There was a hardness in his eyes, though his head was probably still swimming with everything he¡¯d learned. ¡°Look, I expect that at virtually any moment you might disappear as though you were never there in the first place, but I want you to succeed, since you¡¯ve been on our side so far. Maybe you hate monarchists, maybe you just want to protect civilians, maybe it¡¯s all a ploy, I don¡¯t care so long as we can keep the death count in the low hundreds.¡± ¡°I want to use the machine,¡± said Perry. Dirk blinked at him. ¡°You what?¡± ¡°I want to use your teleporter,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want a copy of myself, at least one. And I want the schematics for it too, if not a copy of the machine.¡± Dirk laughed a little bit, then shook his head. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°It¡¯s the biggest strategic advantage I could ever possibly hope for,¡± said Perry. He waved his hand to the side and showed Dirk the shelf space, which stopped him in his tracks. ¡°I want one of those in here, but I can¡¯t make the aperture wide enough for it to fit. That means I either need to construct one in here from schematics, or better than that, have an existing one taken apart and reassembled in here.¡± Dirk¡¯s eyes were on the shelf space, like a deer in headlights. ¡°Moss had mentioned seeing something at the execution. And the airship captain had foggy memories. It was this?¡± ¡°It was,¡± said Perry. ¡°Large enough to carry a few dozen people, if it needs to.¡± He snapped the aperture shut. ¡°I can¡¯t share that power, and can¡¯t even really say I know how it works, but I have other powers and technologies, if you want more tools to add to your secret defensive arsenal.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not using the tool lightly,¡± said Dirk as he seemed to come back to earth. The shelf space had stunned him. ¡°Ideally, we wouldn¡¯t be using it at all.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t figure out why you¡¯re taking the risk,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know as well as I do that Berus isn¡¯t home territory. There are spies and loyalists and the Last King across the way. There¡¯s a lot you haven¡¯t said about that thing, but having it fall into the wrong hands seems like a disaster waiting to happen.¡± Dirk started walking again, and Perry followed. ¡°You know the worst part of transition?¡± ¡°Not in the slightest,¡± said Perry. ¡°The risk of effluence?¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s the people. There aren¡¯t enough people who know how to do the work that needs to be done, and even if there were, not enough of them would put in the effort. Moss has been around since the revolutions began, he¡¯s been to a score of former kingdoms trying to get their foot out of the quagmire, has led up engineering teams exactly like the ones here, teaching them the work of maintaining a dome and having a production schedule that works with the symboulions, as well as schooling them on the culture.¡± Perry had sort of been under the impression that the two didn¡¯t like each other, but that was clearly wrong given the admiration in Dirk¡¯s voice. ¡°You know how many of Moss we want? As many as we possibly can.¡± ¡°Except that you want to keep the machine secret,¡± said Perry. ¡°Which means that you can¡¯t have too many Mosses running around, especially since a dwarf is going to be noticed.¡± If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. ¡°True,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Someone like me blends in easier, and since my job is mostly in the shadows, it¡¯s a better fit. But once Thirlwell is dealt its final blow, we can reveal what we have and get to work putting all the people in place that we¡¯d most want to have in place.¡± He looked back toward the town, which they were some distance from. The flower fields were, for some reason, more scarred this far out, with odd growths and pieces of junk. ¡°You know, there are free riders, loafers and layabouts. No amount of culture can eliminate that. Some people just feel the tug of duty in a way that others don¡¯t.¡± ¡°Seems like you¡¯d need a good legal structure to make sure they¡¯re not making more of themselves,¡± said Perry. ¡°I suppose someone¡¯s got ideas on how the clones will be distributed?¡± ¡°There are ideas,¡± Dirk nodded. ¡°Only ideas, so far.¡± ¡°Except for you,¡± said Perry. ¡°One of you here, another in Calamus, and I¡¯d assume a third, the original, somewhere else? How many total?¡± ¡°So far as I know, seventeen,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Might be more though.¡± ¡°And they¡¯re not going to degrade? Die in a year or two?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No idea,¡± said Dirk. ¡°We¡¯ve had machines like this for three years, that¡¯s all. That¡¯s not enough time to know whether there¡¯s any longevity.¡± He shrugged. ¡°If I die, I die, but I¡¯ll have done some good in the process.¡± He looked Perry up and down. ¡°Are you okay with dying?¡± ¡°Not really,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯ve faced the possibility more times than most. You get me a turn with that machine, maybe two if that¡¯s possible. That¡¯s my only ask. In return, you get everything our team has to offer.¡± ¡°You¡¯re speaking for them, Nima and Mette?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Mette ¡­ yes, more or less,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nima, not as much. She comes from a world that¡¯s very different from this one. She comes from a world with kings, in fact.¡± That gave Dirk pause, which was good, because it meant that there hadn¡¯t been a listener constantly pointed in Perry¡¯s direction. It¡¯s what Perry would have done, rotating crews of earmuffed people a mile out from the target, or whatever was feasible. He wasn¡¯t a fan of wiretaps in principle, but if there was a mysterious warrior from another world, that seemed to justify it. Of course he had wiretaps, but he didn¡¯t hold himself to the standards of a nation-state. ¡°Is Nima trustworthy?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Or at least controllable?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°And no.¡± ¡°You could definitely have led with that,¡± said Dirk. ¡°She¡¯s not powerful, not like I am,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know if shooting her would take her out, but I could take her out, if need be. Going off on her own to free some prisoners didn¡¯t endear her to me, but so far she¡¯s on my side, and I don¡¯t think she¡¯s going to blow up the dome, if she even could. How hard is it to make a lantern into a bomb?¡± ¡°Difficult,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Unless you have the know-how. But you said that someone with the wrong books could come here and already know more than we do.¡± ¡°Not like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve never heard of a world with magic like this. So I¡¯ll keep an eye on her, but if she¡¯s planning to stab me in the back ¡­ I think she¡¯s the sort to stab me in the front, if it comes to that.¡± ¡°Well, that¡¯s something,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You¡¯ll keep the nature of the machine from her? Silo off important knowledge? Because having a wolf in the henhouse is, in this world, not something that we like to have.¡± ¡°I haven¡¯t told her yet. Or Mette, for that matter, but I¡¯m planning to do that soon.¡± Perry tilted his head to the side. ¡°You know, it¡¯s going to be a hard thing to hide if there are two of me running around.¡± ¡°Well, I didn¡¯t agree to that yet, did I?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s not something that I should be deciding on my own. I¡¯d need to loop in Moss, at the very least, but if I go to the people in the know, that could take weeks.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t have distant communication?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Nothing that lets you speak to someone around the world at a moment¡¯s notice?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Dirk, shaking his head. ¡°That exists? That¡¯s something you¡¯re offering?¡± ¡°Give Mette a few days and a properly equipped workshop and she could build one, yeah,¡± said Perry. If Cosme could do it with the help of Wesley, Perry was pretty sure it was within Mette¡¯s grasp. ¡°It¡¯s called radio. But once you can get a report from someone across the ocean in a few minutes, you have a whole different set of problems. Once people can sit in their homes and listen to someone halfway across the world, you inevitably get less local. Once you can have soldiers and spies take their orders from another continent, there¡¯s less personal autonomy.¡± Dirk nodded. ¡°And I once again find myself responsible for decisions that I¡¯d really rather not be in charge of. Wonderful.¡± ¡°When will you let me know?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Because I¡¯m not planning to stay here too long. I want to make some masks for myself, maybe acquire a combat lantern, and then I¡¯m probably going to Thirlwell.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Because that¡¯s where the action is,¡± said Perry. ¡°And no offense, but if the enemy has the support of the whole kingdom and I only have the support of a skeletal transition team, then sitting around on my thumbs is going to put me at more of a disadvantage with every passing week. They have crude guns now, but if someone is feeding them information from a world with better tech, they¡¯re going to have advanced guns a month from now, something that could actually kill me.¡± Perry was pretty sure that a bullet to the head could kill him, but he didn¡¯t want Dirk to know that. ¡°I¡¯ll think about it,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I¡¯ll talk to people. Two of you is a big ask.¡± Perry nodded. If Dirk couldn¡¯t give him what he wanted, that would be a shame, because it would mean that taking it for himself would have to be under consideration. Perry didn¡¯t want to stab anyone in the back, but if he could sneak a clone of himself, that was too tempting to pass up. He had watched the entire process of using the machine, and was pretty sure that all it would need was a vial of blood. How they got the memories, Perry didn¡¯t know, but he was hoping there wasn¡¯t an extra step that he was ignorant of. He had been watching the machine fairly closely when it was in the Caster, and would have been surprised if anyone had an opportunity to meddle with it without him knowing. They hadn¡¯t used it in the city, even though they could have flooded potentially hundreds of people in. ¡°In the meantime,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You get your house in order.¡± ~~~~ ¡°Clones,¡± said Mette. ¡°Clones?¡± ¡°Clones,¡± said Perry. They were talking inside the shelf space, at Perry¡¯s request, which put them beyond the ability of anyone to listen to them. Perry had spent time cleaning up and had thrown away everything that he didn¡¯t think he could salvage, but there was still a smell that remained from the inrush of the sea. It was only mildly unpleasant, but at the first opportunity Perry was going to have to set up some fans to get the last of the moisture out. ¡°But,¡± said Mette. ¡°They¡¯re not clones, because a clone is just someone with the same DNA. That doesn¡¯t work. How do they have the same memories?¡± Perry had been the one to introduce her to DNA, and she was treating it like it was a fundamental of the multiverse. ¡°It¡¯s magic,¡± said Perry. ¡°That doesn¡¯t explain anything,¡± said Mette. ¡°They don¡¯t share memories, right?¡± ¡°They don¡¯t seem to,¡± said Perry. ¡°Again, I don¡¯t have an explanation of the underlying mechanisms, I only know that it¡¯s based on their magic system, and we know that their magic has trouble affecting people. The masks that slow people down don¡¯t slow down the mind, and I can feel the lanterns hitting up against my internal energy.¡± People weren¡¯t immune to the lanterns, as had been viscerally demonstrated before the public, but bodies had resistance to them that meat alone didn¡¯t have. ¡°Would it even work on you?¡± asked Mette. ¡°The only way to know is to try, and it¡¯s definitely worth trying,¡± said Perry. ¡°You should have negotiated to get information,¡± said Mette. ¡°I knew they had hidden books they weren¡¯t sharing with anyone. That would be much better than magic school.¡± ¡°Yeah, sorry you couldn¡¯t get a PhD or whatever,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re just not really here on that kind of timeframe, I don¡¯t think. But the cat is out of the bag, and Moss will make sure that you have access to whatever you need. In theory, at least. I don¡¯t suppose the last few days have given you any insights into making a weapon?¡± ¡°Some. I don¡¯t even know who we¡¯re fighting,¡± said Mette. ¡°All you said was that it was a woman in copper armor that your sword didn¡¯t cut through. How is that anything to go on? And can we get back to the clones?¡± ¡°Fine, clones,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are a bunch of clones running around. I would like to have one made of me, so I can be in two places at once. Ideally I¡¯d have a whole pack, but I¡¯m not sure what the optimum number would be. Would you want one?¡± ¡°Another Mette?¡± asked Mette. She considered that. ¡°Would you want another Mette?¡± Perry had an immediate sense that this was a trap. If he said no, she would take it personally, as though he was passing judgment on her, and if he said yes, then she would ask him why, and he would have no good answer for that, because there wasn¡¯t actually any reason to have two of her, especially not if they were going to be hopping worlds. If she was going to pull her weight as a techie, that might be one thing, but in the longer term that would require access to technology she knew and understood, and who knew how many worlds it would take for that? She was feeling alienated by the new world, isolated from other people, and dependent upon Perry for her emotional needs, which wasn¡¯t really how he had hoped it would go. ¡°You¡¯re taking a long time to answer,¡± said Mette. ¡°There are a lot of components to the question,¡± said Perry. ¡°Having a clone is a risk, and it¡¯s going to be even more of a risk in other worlds. I know you don¡¯t want to hide away, out of sight. You, or your clone, would likely have to do that. I don¡¯t particularly want to do that either, but I think I¡¯m more suited to it.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t know about that.¡± Perry shrugged. ¡°I guess we¡¯ll see. I don¡¯t know how long it¡¯s going to take for Dirk to make a decision, but I¡¯ve seen what kind of guards the warehouse has, and if it comes down to it, it¡¯s only a question of whether I could use the machine in secret.¡± ¡°That would be a violation,¡± said Mette. ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not saying that¡¯s what I want to do. But I¡¯m assuming that the enemy isn¡¯t going to be a pushover. I¡¯ve never gone up against a pushover before, it¡¯s always been a fight to the death where there was a serious risk that it would be the end of me.¡± He had left the dragon heart behind after fighting Jeff. The diseased thing could have given him power, or could have killed him, but there were times he regretted leaving it behind. Nothing he¡¯d seen in this world had given him any indication that the power levels were going to be high enough to worry him, but you certainly didn¡¯t plan on a cakewalk. ¡°Don¡¯t do anything stupid,¡± said Mette. ¡°I think Dirk will come through,¡± said Perry. ¡°I hope he does, anyway. I need to go talk with Nima, you should go see about having your own workshop, if you want to do that instead of having Moss work you.¡± ¡°I¡¯m learning under him,¡± said Mette. ¡°More than I thought I would. But you don¡¯t want me to be able to build a dome, you want something that can fit into the shelf.¡± ¡°Do what you want,¡± said Perry. ¡°Being able to construct one of those domes might be a good skill to have in the next world.¡± Mette watched his face. Things had been off between them, and having sex had only complicated that. ¡°I¡¯ll get to work,¡± she eventually said. ¡°I¡¯ll see what I can do.¡± ~~~~ Nima had been spending as much time by herself as she could. Perry kept thinking that the crust would break and she would loosen up, but it never seemed to happen. At meal times, which were taken communally in a large hall, she would find a corner and eat quickly before retreating. She didn¡¯t make any effort at conversation, and while Perry hadn¡¯t pushed her, there were a few people who had, not all with the best intentions. Some were gawking at her, having never seen an elf before, and she was mistaken for being Moss¡¯s wife more than once by people who had only heard rumors of Velli. Some of them hit on her, until she snapped at one of them and put an end to that. Perry found her in her room, one of the larger ones, where she was working on her masks. ¡°Hey,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯m working,¡± she replied. She had brought up all sorts of tools and had made the place into a workshop of sorts, which it really wasn¡¯t suited to. Most of the masks she had in progress were just iterations on old ones, which was the main way that people got their masks stronger. She was hunched over a desk, chisel in hand, carefully chipping away at the wood. ¡°We need to talk,¡± said Perry. Nima set her chisel down and pushed the mask forward, then turned to him. ¡°Perry, whatever this is, I don¡¯t want to be a part of it.¡± ¡°Being a thresholder?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯m not built for conflict. I¡¯m not a killer, a warrior, anything like that. I¡¯ve been in conversation with Glerrin, and we¡¯re thinking about what our options are.¡± Glerrin was the name of her armor. It could talk to her, but only to her, and Perry assumed that it was something of a running dialogue that he wasn¡¯t privy to, though she didn¡¯t mention it often. ¡°So far as I know, there¡¯s no way out,¡± said Perry. ¡°Either there will be someone terrible that you have to respond to, or there will be someone trying to track you down and slaughter you.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no way?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Nothing?¡± ¡°So far as I know, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°You could beat the enemy, not take the portal, and then ¡­ I don¡¯t know. It¡¯s possible there¡¯s just an endless wave of thresholders sent for you.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t like these people,¡± said Nima. ¡°Is that normal?¡± ¡°Pretty much everyone I met in the Great Arc was insufferable,¡± said Perry. ¡°Teaguewater wasn¡¯t bad, necessarily, but I also wouldn¡¯t say that it was good. And one of my worlds was just like the world that I had come from but with a different history, and most of my time there was spent in a fancy house. All the more reason to get the job done and get out of here.¡± Nima frowned. ¡°And we do that by killing the other thresholder? Or thresholders?¡± asked Nima. ¡°It¡¯s the only way I know of,¡± said Perry. ¡°And ¡­ the monarchists?¡± asked Nima. ¡°That means taking them out?¡± Nima was watching him closely. He knew exactly what she was thinking ¡ª that it didn¡¯t have to be the monarchists that she took out, that they weren¡¯t necessarily fated to be working together. Surely she could see how easily he would crush her though? Even if she was fighting alongside Third Fervor, it didn¡¯t seem like they would have a chance against the mechawolf. And if she was going to turn on him and join her inconsiderable forces with Third Fervor or whoever else, it would be better to take her out now ¡ª except that with multiple thresholders in play, he didn¡¯t think that it would be enough to beat her to a pulp, he¡¯d have to kill her. ¡°At a minimum, we handle the other thresholders without getting embroiled in the affairs of nations,¡± said Perry. ¡°We wouldn¡¯t even be taking a side.¡± Nima was still watching him. ¡°Leave me to my masks,¡± she said as she turned away. ¡°I¡¯ll stay by your side, because I¡¯ve seen the violence you¡¯re capable of, but if you expect me to go to Thirlwell ¡­ I¡¯m not going to kill a king, Perry. I don¡¯t like these people or what they¡¯re doing. The public executions were the tip of the spear, but there are so many other problems, so much disorder they¡¯ve introduced into the lives of all these people, the dignity of life, the mixing of species, and everything else.¡± Perry let out a breath. ¡°We¡¯ll figure out something workable,¡± he said. Nima nodded, but didn¡¯t look at him. They were going to have to work something out, because if they didn¡¯t, he didn¡¯t know what he was going to do with her. She was a fine person, a bit serious and in over her head, but if she was going to put herself on the other side of the chessboard ¡­ Perry didn¡¯t want to kill her. The thought briefly went through his head of putting her in the shelf space and just keeping her there until the whole thing was over. Then he remembered that was exactly how he¡¯d found Marjut, and the thought of doing something so much like what Jeff had done made him a little sick to his stomach. Chapter 112 - Contact, pt 2 Perry decided to wait five days at the most. Given the speed of communication, that wasn¡¯t nearly enough time for a consultation with any kind of Command Authority, but it meant some time for Perry to work on making a mask for himself, for Mette to figure out if she could make something usable, and for Nima to calm down a bit. The ticking clock was Thirlwell, whether they were going to make moves in Berus or whether the mystery assassin was going to go after the Last King, and Perry didn¡¯t want to stay away from the action for too long. Maybe it was because Esperide had lasted for two whole years, leaving him stir crazy and with no sense of progression or purpose, but he wasn¡¯t going to let that happen again. Making masks was supposed to be slow and difficult, but it interfaced with the second sphere. People talked about finding the ¡®catch¡¯, the intersection of perception and intent, and channeling themselves into it. The designs were largely decided by convention, but they were an important convention, because a creator¡¯s idea of the powers ended up influencing the powers themselves. Masks that got used a lot had a reinforcing effect and became easier to make, especially if you put yourself around them as much as possible to have a concrete idea in your mind. Perry could skip a few steps and literally just see the energy flowing from him into the mask he was making. There was a wealth of knowledge to be learned, and he could feel his academic tether growing thick and happy, especially because the interaction of systems was a new frontier that literally only he had any potential insights into. It seemed to him to not be all that different from translation, one of the core second sphere abilities and the one that he¡¯d used second most often behind repair and healing. Perry could feel the strand of intent that happened in a conversation, and the masks used something similar. Besides that, he had his connection with Marchand, and the mask connection wasn¡¯t so different, even if the medium and method were. His first mask was as strong as most people¡¯s fifth mask, though it was also possible that his acute perception was powering it up. He had gone for distant manipulation as a starter, which was mediated by fingers and therefore a bit easier, since you had tactile feedback. There were some standard reference tests, and Perry had apparently skipped ahead of where he was supposed to be. He couldn¡¯t imagine actually having to use it in combat, and in any serious combat he would be inside of Marchand and unable to use the masks. Perry was feeling pretty proud of himself, but when he showed off for Mette in her workshop, there was a troubled look on her face. ¡°It¡¯s not you, it¡¯s me,¡± said Mette when he pressed her. ¡°Too much progress, too fast?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Interoperability is where it¡¯s at.¡± ¡°No, I mean I¡¯m troubled because of what I¡¯ve been doing, not because of what you¡¯ve been doing,¡± said Mette. She turned to her workspace, where a single lantern was sitting. It was the size of the ones that they¡¯d used on the airship for meals, and when Perry looked closer, he realized that it literally was from the airship. ¡°Did you steal that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, Moss said I could have it,¡± said Mette. ¡°The hijackers had made some changes to it, so it needed to be serviced anyway, and this is one of the models that has effluence collection, which makes it better for monkeying around with.¡± ¡°And it¡¯s tough?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°It¡¯s really really not. I had that waste lantern before this, but I didn¡¯t have the tools to really work with it. I had read the books, but I thought that there must be some sort of catch. Perry, the lanterns are for dumb babies.¡± ¡°Dumb ¡­ babies?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not like a toy you¡¯d give to a baby, it¡¯s like a toy you¡¯d give to a particularly stupid baby you didn¡¯t expect to be able to figure out the more complicated baby toys,¡± said Mette. ¡°There¡¯s that maternal instinct shining through,¡± said Perry. Mette¡¯s face fell, and for as much as children were raised communally on the Natrix, it was clear that Perry should probably not have mentioned motherhood, even if Mette was the one who¡¯d brought up children. ¡°Not what I meant,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°Anyway,¡± said Mette, turning away from him. ¡°Anyway, they treat this like it¡¯s complicated, and it¡¯s just ¡­ not. Some of the math is complicated, and they don¡¯t have computers, but surely they should be able to do some of this with pencil and paper if they can¡¯t do it in their heads?¡± Perry looked over and saw that she¡¯d filled a few pages with diagrams and notes. ¡°Sorry, you¡¯re mad that ¡­ it was easy?¡± he asked. ¡°There¡¯s a build process,¡± said Mette. ¡°That¡¯s trivial. Then there¡¯s the theoretical stuff, the build order for materials. That is modified by fuel and lens, but the lens is doing most of the work, at least if you know what you¡¯re doing, and ¡ª do you know how they figured out how to make the egg loaf?¡± ¡°You know I don¡¯t have a clue,¡± said Perry. ¡°They just tried a bunch of things,¡± said Mette. ¡°Can you believe that?¡± ¡°Uh, yeah, I guess, though I wouldn¡¯t want to be the guy who was sampling it,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s how a lot of things got discovered or invented on Earth. People just tried a whole bunch of things and studied the properties.¡± Perry¡¯s go-to was Edison and the lightbulb. The lab had tested 3,000 filaments before finding the right solution, which Perry only knew because of a Trivial Pursuit question he¡¯d gotten wrong. ¡°Right,¡± said Mette. ¡°I mean, we had to do that too. But there wasn¡¯t a reason to do that here.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry. He shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m not sure what you¡¯re getting at.¡± Mette pointed to what Perry had identified as ¡®lens¡¯ for the lantern. ¡°That one is a special mix of gunpowder.¡± Her finger moved to the next one. ¡°That one is high grade fuel.¡± She pointed to another. ¡°That one is untested, but it should be the isotope of uranium for nuclear weapons.¡± Her finger moved to the next one. ¡°That one is neurotoxin.¡± ¡°What the fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right?¡± asked Mette. ¡°You¡¯re saying that you definitely could make a nuclear weapon with a ¡ª a breakfast buffet tool?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Well, no,¡± said Mette. ¡°I mean, I would need a pretty significant amount of fuel, and a lot of metal, and machines to handle the metal, and then I would also need Marchand¡¯s help with some of the math if I wanted to make sure that I was getting the most explosive power for the cost. But yes, in theory I could make another nuclear weapon for you, if you gave me the resources and a month of time. I wouldn¡¯t actually want you to use one on a planet like this, but Perry, the point I¡¯m making is that they¡¯re criminally underutilizing the lanterns.¡± ¡°Should you be making neurotoxin?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I haven¡¯t made any yet,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t have procedures for storing it or getting it safely out of the lantern. I don¡¯t want to be killed because a light breeze lifted some of it into the air.¡± ¡°Well, probably don¡¯t make any,¡± said Perry. ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be difficult to make a little gun that shoots aerosolized particles at your enemies,¡± said Mette. ¡°Beating the other guys, that¡¯s the point, right?¡± ¡°I was hoping that you would be focusing more on, ah, mundane matters,¡± said Perry. ¡°Why?¡± asked Mette. She gave him a quizzical look. ¡°What do you mean why?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It would be helpful for them.¡± ¡°If you want things to give to these people, then Perry, you have to understand that they already have what they want,¡± said Mette. ¡°They¡¯re missing electronics and telecommunications and robotics and computing, but a lot of that is because they want to be missing it. It¡¯s not like on the Natrix, where we soaked up everything you had to offer the moment you revealed it to us. What¡¯s the point in trying to improve things they don¡¯t want improved? And Perry, these are lanterns. It would be possible to duplicate it in principle with one of the domes, I guess, but I¡¯m technically not supposed to be using these lanterns, because the effluence that gets captured and gunks up the filter ¡ª it¡¯s not actually a filter, more like a sponge ¡ª does eventually get released back into the environment, just in a more controlled way. It¡¯s really much less of an issue, but from everything they¡¯ve said, the target is no effluence, not reduced or controlled effluence. Which seems dumb to me.¡± ¡°It¡¯s part of their history,¡± said Perry. ¡°Possibly an overcorrection, though I guess you didn¡¯t see the beasts that dwell in the seas.¡± ¡°So anyway,¡± said Mette. ¡°I have tools and weapons for you, if you need them. I¡¯m just dumbfounded by how everyone seems to think that the things I¡¯ve been doing here are difficult technical problems.¡± ¡°Your people had something special,¡± said Perry. ¡°An ability to hold more in your head, maybe a lot more.¡± ¡°I keep looking at things and thinking ¡®surely I must be wrong, if this were possible they would have done it¡¯, and I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s everything that I¡¯ve learned from my world and yours that makes it so I see things that they don¡¯t, or ¡­ maybe I¡¯m just special, relative to them.¡± She let out a breath. There was some nervous energy in her that didn¡¯t seem like it had anywhere to go. ¡°I¡¯m a middling engineer. If Brigitta were here, she would be twice as far along. I don¡¯t even really have a project, I¡¯m just ¡­ trying stuff and being surprised by how much is working.¡± ¡°Do you need a project?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯m enjoying this, I¡¯m just irritated and baffled.¡± She looked at the desk, surveying the work she¡¯d done, some of which had started back in Kerry Coast. ¡°Oh, and if you¡¯d like, I¡¯m pretty sure that I can get one of these lanterns to kill a lot more efficiently than the ones they were using to execute people.¡± Mette hadn¡¯t been at the public execution, so perhaps it was easier for her to abstract it and think of it as something that had happened faraway. ¡°A lot of the focusing techniques they use are pretty crude, and with the right math and access to a shop that makes lenses ¡ª proper glassware ¡ª I think I can do something better.¡± ¡°That would be good,¡± Perry nodded. ¡°The more weapons, the better. Any chance that we could make one into a laser?¡± Mette gave him a pitying look. ¡°Do you know how a laser works?¡± she asked. ¡°Kind of,¡± said Perry. ¡°Light amplified through the select emission of radiation, right?¡± ¡°No, it doesn¡¯t stand for anything,¡± said Mette after a second. ¡°Anyway, the principle is based on photon cloning and dumping energy in. They don¡¯t really have names for the fundamental particles, if there are fundamental particles, and unless we had a gain medium that could emit them, they¡¯re just totally different ways of going about things.¡± ¡°Worth asking, I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not really,¡± said Mette. So Perry returned to his masks, and left Mette to her mad science, hoping that she wasn¡¯t going to irradiate or poison herself or anyone else. He wanted a collection of them, and ideally he would have them hanging from a rack just inside the shelf space, which would let him slap one on his face at a moment¡¯s notice as the circumstances demanded. ~~~~ Five days came and went. Dirk was ¡®around¡¯ a lot, and asked a few more questions, which Perry answered to the best of his ability. There wasn¡¯t that much that he was hiding from them anymore, aside from the werewolf stuff, and everything he told Dirk felt like it brought him one step closer to having a clone ¡ª or better, a machine that made clones from a person¡¯s blood. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. On the final night, Perry had intended to press Dirk on the matter, since the invisible deadline felt like it had come and gone, but Dirk had taken off from the town without notice, heading back to the city on horseback. Moss had said that it was probably for a ¡®consultation¡¯ with people in Calamus, which Perry took to mean a consultation with a clone, but that didn¡¯t make him feel all that much better. Once the lights were mostly out around town, Perry slipped into the armor and went out the window, rising high into the air and getting a good view of his surroundings. He had half a mind to travel into the city himself, which would take about an hour using the sword or twenty minutes if he ran along the road and burned some of his energy. Once there, he could probably find Dirk pretty easily given the nanite network he¡¯d left behind, and it might do well to remind the man of exactly what power level he was dealing with. Perry thought better of it, and instead laid on the roof of the tallest building, looking up at the unfamiliar stars and a few passing clouds that gave a faint effluent glow. There was something romantic about looking at the stars, and it became only slightly less romantic when you had on military-grade power armor. ¡°Sir, there¡¯s a man approaching,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Coming up the stairwell?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Does this building even have roof access?¡± ¡°No, sir, he appears to be flying,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Airship?¡± asked Perry, looking around. The HUD updated with a directional arrow, and Perry turned to look at what Marchand had seen. It was a humanoid figure, coated in silvery blue metal but with long white hair flowing down to its waist and a long spear held in one hand. ¡°I believe it¡¯s magic, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry was immediately in combat mode. The armor wasn¡¯t the same copper as Third Fervor¡¯s, and the weapon was different, but this wasn¡¯t any sort of power that they had on this planet. They had flight only by way of airships, or much more rarely, planes. The answer had to be that it was a thresholder. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how he¡¯d been tracked, but he hadn¡¯t exactly kept a low profile in the city, and it wouldn¡¯t have taken too competent of a spy network to find out where he and Moss had been heading. The laser rifle was in the shelf space, but it needed to be plugged in, and that would take some time. The shoulder gun had been test fired the day before and was in proper working order, with the best ammunition that the Natrix had been able to produce for him. He had his sword, which was by his side, and his vessels were practically brimming with energy. The moon was half full, but it was a large moon, if it came to that. Perry stood on the roof and waited. If it was a thresholder, it was better that they talk before they fight. It was possible that this was Third Fervor¡¯s teammate, and if it was, then Perry preferred to fight the two of them separately. He was pretty sure that he¡¯d have known if she had come within a mile of the town, but she had portals, so maybe he¡¯d only know she was near him when she was five feet away. Perry bent his knees slightly, then pushed off from the roof, letting the sword carry him up to meet the floating man, who had slowed down once he was spotted. They drifted toward each other, lit only by the moon and the soft glow of a few scattered clouds. Perry was better at fighting when on the ground, where he could move faster and had leverage, but there were people down there. ¡°Shall I wake Mette and Nima?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Not yet,¡± said Perry. There wasn¡¯t much that either of them could do if it was an aerial battle, and if it was a battle on the ground, Perry worried for their safety. ¡°So,¡± said the man when they were a hundred feet apart. Up close, the armor was a masterwork, and magnification showed every small detail of it. The chestplate depicted battle scenes with dragons and lions, surely some heraldic symbolism, and the shimmer of the metal spoke to either high magic or tender care. It was armor that looked like it had never seen a day of a battle, delicate ceremonial armor that was pampered and fussed over. The hair was like that too. The way it flowed in the gentle wind said to Perry that it was brushed every day and treated with ointments. Mostly it made him think about the second sphere and the way that magic would take care of all those things for him. The hair was the same color as the hair that Perry had pulled from the king¡¯s throne room. ¡°You killed the king of Berus,¡± said Perry, which was really more of a guess than anything else. ¡°I did,¡± the man replied. He was floating as though pinned in place, immobile. Perry was trying to match that, but couldn¡¯t quite do it, since he had to leverage his entire body to not sway in the breeze like a piece of laundry that had been put out to dry. The man was actually an elf, Perry was pretty sure. The elves had a way of talking, and their builds were all of a type. The ears were inside a helmet, so Perry couldn¡¯t say for certain, since the armor didn¡¯t have the ridiculous metal casings that Nima¡¯s armor had. ¡°What are you doing here?¡± the man asked. ¡°You¡¯re a man of great power, yet you¡¯re here, at this construction project that does not need your help, guarding a man who is in no imminent danger.¡± ¡°I¡¯m preparing,¡± said Perry. The elf seemed to find that answer satisfactory. ¡°I intend to kill the king of Thirlwell. Will you stand in my way?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I need to know who you are, where you come from.¡± ¡°You¡¯re asking if I¡¯m from another world, like you are?¡± asked the elf. There was no trace of good humor in his voice. Perry waited. ¡°I am. I was. Long ago.¡± ¡°You haven¡¯t been active long,¡± said Perry. ¡°I haven¡¯t been killing long,¡± said the elf. ¡°I have been active for a very, very long time.¡± Perry gripped his sword. ¡°Why?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I wanted to make this world into a paradise,¡± said the elf. ¡°And as you can see, that work is mostly done. This might be the last cycle.¡± ¡°Cycle of what?¡± asked Perry. He was watching the spear. If it was a normal spear, the armor would deflect it without issue, possibly even break it if enough force was put behind it. He was pretty sure that it was no normal spear though. There was wispy red fluff below the spearhead, and the shaft was made of bone white wood. ¡°Do you not know?¡± asked the elf, tilting his head to the side. ¡°I see your armor and your sword, and the energies that stick to you. Have you not seen the cycles?¡± Perry shook his head. ¡°I¡¯ve been to many worlds. Like you.¡± ¡°But you leave when the foe is slain?¡± asked the elf. ¡°I do,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t?¡± ¡°I have,¡± said the elf. ¡°And I will again.¡± They were still in a standoff, and Perry thought there was a good chance it would explode into violence at any moment. ¡°Will you attack me regardless of my plans for Thirlwell¡¯s king?¡± ¡°It depends on what your other plans are,¡± said Perry. ¡°So far as I¡¯ve seen, the kings of this world have nothing to laud. But Berus ¡­ it wasn¡¯t ready for a revolution. And you killed the king publically. It would have been easy enough for you to murder him in his sleep and leave some deniability.¡± ¡°Monarchies are not about a man, as much as they sometimes pretend to be,¡± said the elf. ¡°They are a culture, a tradition. A monarch dying in his sleep will be replaced by another monarch, and those who have struggled and organized will hold back out of respect, hoping not to be seen as crassly capitalizing on a tragedy. They do this because the culture of kings infects their minds until it has been burned out.¡± Perry was waiting for the strike. If he absolutely had to, he could retreat into the shelfspace, but he would only do that if he was completely outclassed. ¡°I¡¯m not going to stand in your way,¡± said Perry. ¡°We don¡¯t have to be enemies. I have quarrels with what you¡¯re doing, but they¡¯re not the kind we would need to come to blows over. I should warn you that Thirlwell has a woman, someone who¡¯s gone between worlds like we have, ¡ª¡± ¡°Third Fervor,¡± said the elf. ¡°I¡¯m aware.¡± ¡°She¡¯s with you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said the elf. ¡°She¡¯s cast her lot with the kings. But she¡¯s weak, and so can be left to live, so the cycle can continue for as long as possible. Every new cycle is a roll of the dice.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°You fight, you win, the portals close, and you stay?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What happens, more opponents come through for you?¡± ¡°Ah, so your knowledge of the cycles is incomplete,¡± said the elf. ¡°Does it change your decision to fight?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He¡¯d answered on instinct, but after answering, took a moment to think. ¡°The portal will open once Third Fervor is dead or dying?¡± ¡°The rules are different, with more than two of us,¡± said the elf. ¡°It becomes complicated, a question of sides. How many worlds have you been to?¡± Perry didn¡¯t immediately answer. It was an important question, and he was fairly sure that his answer would reveal something. There was something like matchmaking to the system, and the simplest pattern that fit was that both sides had a roughly equal number of wins. One of the reasons he hadn¡¯t gone for Nima¡¯s throat right from the start was that she¡¯d only had a single win to her name, making her weaker and more likely to be an ally. It was better to say a higher number than the elf, because that would be a sign of strength, but if the elf had been here for some time ¡­ Perry didn¡¯t know how it worked, not really. Did a win on the same world count as a win on different worlds? Could you just camp out and take on all comers? Xiyan had said something about a man doing that, but she couldn¡¯t be trusted in the slightest. ¡°This is my sixth world,¡± said Perry. ¡°All wins so far.¡± The elf nodded slowly and deliberately, almost a bow of respect. ¡°How many for you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Two, before I came here,¡± said the elf, who might actually not have been an elf at all if he originally came from another world. ¡°And when was that?¡± asked Perry. The elf reached up with the hand that wasn¡¯t holding the spear. His fingers dug into the metal, and it lifted up like it was a cheap spandex Halloween mask, the fine metal becoming fabric as he held it out to the side. The face beneath was elven, pale with smooth skin. Perry had half suspected the long shiny white hair to be a part of the armor, a bit of costuming, but it was the elf¡¯s own hair, and his thick eyebrows matched it. ¡°I am Fenilor the Gilded,¡± he said. Perry wondered for a moment whether that was supposed to mean anything to him, then he realized that he had heard it before ¡ª or rather, read it. He¡¯d seen a statue of the man at the museum in Kerry Coast, not too long ago. ¡°You were one of the people who founded the movement,¡± said Perry. ¡°I am,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You¡¯ve been here for decades?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Longer,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°It was the first place that felt like home.¡± ¡°But the thresholders keep coming?¡± asked Perry. ¡°How many have you fought?¡± ¡°Thresholder,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s a term I¡¯ve heard often, but only from our kind.¡± ¡°How many?¡± asked Perry. ¡°One every five years, more or less,¡± replied Fenilor. ¡°There was one stretch that lasted for twenty years, an anomaly. I am a master of the cycles. I have learned to live with them. It¡¯s only now, as the final chapter of this world comes to a close, that I worry about the outcomes.¡± ¡°One every five years,¡± said Perry. ¡°So ¡ª what, about a dozen fights?¡± ¡°I said that I had been here long,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°The movement and its culture were not the first thing I did on coming to this world, it was the culmination of a large amount of work. Do you see now that it would be pointless to fight me?¡± Perry frowned at him. ¡°You haven¡¯t demonstrated any great power. If I thought you needed to be stopped, I would try to stop you.¡± ¡°I have seen many thresholders over the years,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°It was necessary that I approach you so I could understand which sort you were.¡± ¡°And?¡± asked Perry. To be honest, he was sort of starting to worry about the ¡®great power¡¯ thing. Even an amateur could have found Perry out in the country, but flying with fancy armor and a spear meant that Fenilor needed to be at least a rank below him, as an absolute floor. Being Fenilor the Gilded, one of the thought leaders of a revolution, significantly raised Perry¡¯s estimation of the elf¡¯s power. But living through a dozen encounters was something else entirely. How many tools had Fenilor picked up during that time? How had he kept the battles silent, the stuff of rumor and legend? There was nothing to say that Fenilor had won every fight, but even surviving that many matches against opponents from other worlds with similar records ¡ª well, Perry didn¡¯t know how the matchmaking went, how predictive it was, what it thought was a fair fight, but whatever ¡®spell¡¯ was making thresholders had proven shockingly prescient, and he had heard of very few matchups that were total curbstomps. ¡°You¡¯re a pragmatist,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You¡¯ve revealed nothing about your goals here, but I believe you when you say that you don¡¯t care one whit if I lop off the head of the Last King. I have little doubt that we¡¯ll come to blows at some point, but I now believe it will only happen after my work is concluded ¡ª at which point I¡¯ll have a fair and honorable battle with you, the first I¡¯ve been able to have in a long time.¡± He gave Perry a low bow, which looked faintly ridiculous given that he was floating. Perry was watching him, trying to decide whether now was the time to strike. There was a lot that Perry liked about the expression ¡®fair and honorable battle¡¯, and it wasn¡¯t that he was looking forward to being fair or honorable. Still, it felt like if it was going to come down to a fight ¡ª if Fenilor felt it was inevitable ¡ª then perhaps Perry would be better off with an ambush, striking when the time was right. Fenilor hadn¡¯t mentioned Nima, but Nima hadn¡¯t been in the news. Fenilor also hadn¡¯t mentioned the technological advancements of Thirlwell, but there wouldn¡¯t be a reason to mention them. Perry didn¡¯t see the need to either. If Fenilor wasn¡¯t an ally ¡ª and he really didn¡¯t seem to be ¡ª then it was better to let him run right into a trap. Perry could only hope that Third Fervor was on top of her game, though their first encounter had left him more impressed with her armor than her planning. ¡°I have questions,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sure you do,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You¡¯re human, I know. Your lifespans are so short. There¡¯s been little opportunity for you to learn.¡± ¡°So tell me,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I¡¯ve learned the hard lessons that come with saying too much.¡± ¡°So when you¡¯re done here, no one will know what you did, what you went through?¡± asked Perry. ¡°There are trusted allies,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°They will tell the stories that need to be told, to protect the world against people like us. They¡¯ll understand the cycles, the patterns. But those stories aren¡¯t for your ears. And now, I must bid you farewell.¡± He gave another floating bow again, and Perry very nearly followed his instinct to strike. They were a hundred feet away, which was a long distance to cover with the sword¡¯s flying speed. Perry was certain that he could shoot the man, but ¡­ how many thresholders had he beaten over the decades? He¡¯d never have made it if he didn¡¯t have a way to deal with bullets. Even with the metal mask peeled off, a straight shot to the dome, there had to be something. There was no way it could actually kill the man, and it wasn¡¯t worth trying. Perry very nearly gave the order, but Fenilor straightened up and put his helmet back on one-handed. Again, it looked like slipping on a cheap printed stretchy fabric right until the moment it was actually on, when it looked harder than steel. Fenilor turned and flew off, faster than he¡¯d come. ¡°Track him as far as you can,¡± said Perry. ¡°Any chance that we managed to land some nanites on him?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Tracking will be difficult once he¡¯s more than two miles away.¡± ¡°I figured,¡± said Perry. ¡°What¡¯s his speed?¡± ¡°Not fast by the standards we¡¯re used to,¡± said Marchand. ¡°He¡¯s moving at approximately fifty miles an hour. We would be able to keep up with him from the ground, though of course I can¡¯t guarantee that he¡¯s moving as fast as he can.¡± Perry watched until Fenilor was just a marker on the HUD, then until the marker disappeared. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Indeed, sir,¡± said Marchand. Chapter 113 - Legends ¡°I have a request,¡± Perry said to Dirk the next time he saw him. ¡°I know, I know,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s one of the reasons I went to Calamus. There were people I wanted to talk to about it.¡± He looked around the town. The workers were in the midst of constructing the dome from materials brought in by airship. The airship itself was now being used like a crane to get the various pieces into place. ¡°Not out in the open though.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± Perry said. ¡°If you¡¯d like, you can step into my office.¡± He opened the shelfspace just a fraction, so he could see it but no one else would be able to. He couldn¡¯t put them both into it without causing a stir and all kinds of questions, but it was more secure than any place Dirk could possibly take them. Five minutes later, after ducking into a gap between buildings, they were inside the shelfspace. ¡°Why¡¯s it smell like that?¡± Dirk asked as he looked around. ¡°Flooding,¡± Perry said. ¡°Mette thinks we can bathe the place in a special kind of lantern light, but I don¡¯t really want effluence in an enclosed space.¡± Dirk nodded. He seemed like he was trying to be nonchalant about being in the shelfspace, and to his credit, he was mostly succeeding. Perry didn''t know if it had occurred to him that he was essentially trapped in here, but Dirk could play it cool when it came to danger, especially with more than a dozen clones of himself running around out there. ¡°It¡¯s a big ask,¡± said Dirk with a sigh. ¡°You know it¡¯s a big ask, you said as much. I have the authority, but strict authority isn¡¯t all it¡¯s cracked up to be. I¡¯m worried about the sword that¡¯s going to fall on my head if I let you do this and it all goes wrong.¡± ¡°My request wasn¡¯t about that,¡± Perry said. ¡°It¡¯s not?¡± asked Dirk, raising an eyebrow. ¡°I mean, I haven¡¯t been pushing because I figured you were trying to come to terms in your own way,¡± said Perry. ¡°I figured that was why you left for Calamus. You have other things on your plate. I understand. I¡¯m giving you a deadline of two more days, then you have to give me an answer.¡± It was an arbitrary amount of time, but Perry felt like if he didn¡¯t set a deadline, Dirk would punt forever, or possibly just wait until it was urgent. ¡°But my request, the thing I wanted to talk to you about that we couldn¡¯t just as well have talked about elsewhere, isn¡¯t about that.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the request?¡± asked Dirk with a frown. ¡°I need to know everything you know about Fenilor the Gilded,¡± said Perry. He was watching Dirk closely, wanting to see whether some kind of secret was going to slip out on his face. Stoicism would have said a lot, as would shock, but there was just confusion. ¡°Why?¡± Dirk asked. ¡°What¡¯s it to you?¡± ¡°Information first, then I might tell you,¡± said Perry. Dirk considered this. He mostly seemed happy not to be having a conversation about clones. ¡°He was a founding member of the Golden Revolution,¡± said Dirk. ¡°If you¡¯ve read any books about the culture, you¡¯ll have probably run across a few quotes by him. He didn¡¯t write as much as Memmik, and it didn¡¯t all hold up as well as he might have wanted, but he¡¯s a part of the history, and you¡¯ll find a few statues of him around, mostly because we needed someone to make statues of to replace all the ones we melted down.¡± ¡°What happened to him?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Dirk. ¡°He probably cocooned up and the new version of him didn¡¯t want anything to do with what he¡¯d had going on. Look, if you want to find out about historical figures, people who did their best work before I was even born, there¡¯s a book library in Calamus, it¡¯s got a lot of stuff gathered from the noble houses and private collectors, and it¡¯s open to the public, one of the first they¡¯ve established. There are bound to be books there on Fenilor, but they¡¯re going to be books that are from the perspective of the monarchists. There are more coming by ship, a contribution from other countries, but I¡¯m not sure they would prioritize history.¡± ¡°I already went to the library,¡± said Perry. ¡°When?¡± asked Dirk with a frown. ¡°I have reports, you were here the whole time I was gone.¡± He¡¯d been away for two days. ¡°The city is only thirty miles away,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I run as fast as I can, I can make the trip in twenty minutes.¡± Dirk stared at him. ¡°It took me a day on horseback.¡± ¡°Yeah, if you had asked me, I could have stuffed you in here and run you over,¡± said Perry, gesturing at the surroundings. ¡°It would have saved a lot of your time, and you could have read a book.¡± ¡°So why are you grilling me, if you¡¯ve already gone to the library?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Why are you asking me at all? Fenilor stopped being important fifty years ago.¡± He paused, then leaned forward slightly. ¡°Didn¡¯t he?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Have you ever heard of fights between two individuals with powers that couldn¡¯t be explained, or could only be explained by Implements? It would have been sometime over the last sixty years, maybe a few times.¡± ¡°You¡¯re looking for other thresholders,¡± said Dirk as though he understood. ¡°Fenilor though? He has a whole history. He had friends and allies. And then, as elves do, he stopped being part of the picture.¡± ¡°Publically, at least,¡± said Perry. ¡°I did read the books.¡± He had flipped through them and gotten Marchand to give a summary, anyway. There were too many to read all of them, given how much duplication of information there was and how much the books were wrapped up in things that Perry didn¡¯t care about. He¡¯d had time though, and had read what he could, then offloaded the work. The books had placed Fenilor as an important figure, but not one above many others, not the person who bankrolled the revolution, nor their strongest orator, nor their architect or engineer, but a man who worked tirelessly and vocally in favor of a new way of doing things. There was nothing about him being an impeccable warrior, or having Implements, or powers, or anything like that. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m very well-versed in the theories that the common people have, but this is a new one for me,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You think that ¡­ what, that Fenilor has stayed behind the scenes orchestrating things? He¡¯d have gone through two reformings by now, he¡¯d be a different person twice over.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think anything,¡± said Perry, which wasn¡¯t true. ¡°I¡¯m asking questions. But since you seem to have no idea what¡¯s going on, I¡¯m going to assume you¡¯re not covering for anyone. I guess I can tell you, because he told me. There¡¯s a man claiming to be Fenilor, carrying Implements. He came here, to this town, looking for me, and spoke to me. He¡¯s a thresholder.¡± Dirk shook his head. ¡°No. For so many reasons, no. I mean, the reformation thing, that¡¯s the biggest.¡± ¡°Elves don¡¯t work the same around the multiverse,¡± said Perry. ¡°So far as I¡¯ve seen, pointed ears and a slender build are one of the hallmarks, but reformation isn¡¯t. There are other elves who live for thousands of years. He could be one of them. The real question I have is if he is a thresholder, and he¡¯s had to continuously fight other thresholders ¡­ how? How¡¯d he make it through something like a dozen fights without losing his head? More curiously, how¡¯d he keep it out of the public record? Any incidents you can think of, times there was an earthquake or a city caught on fire and they never figured out what happened? Or maybe not at that level, maybe a fight that broke out and a hundred people died in a flash?¡± ¡°You want a full report on every fight or disaster that¡¯s happened anywhere in the world for the last seventy years or so?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°You¡¯re insane.¡± With computers and proper recordkeeping, it would have been simple. Marchand could have combed it down to a reasonable number, and could probably be trusted to flag any that were suspicious. But of course this wasn¡¯t a world where people wrote every little thing down, and as much as they loved their literacy and libraries, the keeping of records had been something that often took a backseat. ¡°I¡¯m trying to work with what I have,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you¡¯re not giving me much.¡± ¡°You said that your people came to some unfortunate world, fought a lot, then left once there was a victor,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Yeah, well,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s how it¡¯s supposed to work.¡± ¡°So he¡¯s in violation of the contract?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°There¡¯s no contract,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s just ¡­ how it is. But Fenilor didn¡¯t go through the portal like he was supposed to, he camped out, and when you camp out, what apparently happens is that people just keep coming. Maybe. So I¡¯m hoping that you can think of something that would suddenly make sense if that was the case.¡± Dirk shifted to one side and spent a moment thinking. His eyes were all over the shelfspace, taking it in, surely making notes for later. ¡°Nothing,¡± he said. ¡°Think harder,¡± said Perry. ¡°Come on, some kind of fight, some kind of rumor about Fenilor, some secret project that might actually be a different secret project. Private installations. That sort of thing.¡± ¡°Are you trying to damage the culture?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°A culture needs its heroes, its founders, some kind of mythology, and ours is only sixty years old. I¡¯m not saying that it can¡¯t be true because it would damage us, I¡¯m saying ¡­ it seems more likely that you¡¯re trying to damage us than that it¡¯s true.¡± ¡°Or,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°That someone came to be claiming to be Fenilor, and that was their goal. But I¡¯m not going to spread it around, except to you and maybe Moss. If it were true, would he be above the law?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Dirk. ¡°That¡¯s not the culture.¡± Perry wasn¡¯t sure that was true. It was true, if you needed the culture to be self-consistent, but that wasn¡¯t something that the culture actually required of itself. ¡°Though,¡± said Dirk slowly. ¡°How would you do it?¡± ¡°Do what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What you said about Fenilor, about the fights. You know that you¡¯re going to fight someone, and you don¡¯t want it to be a public spectacle,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You know about how often it¡¯s going to happen, but you don¡¯t know the specifics. You know they¡¯ll have some kind of power to rival your own, but not what it will be. How do you keep it all a secret, and how do you win?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know if this would work, but one way might be to sequester yourself,¡± said Perry. ¡°That was why I was asking about installations. If I were Fenilor, and I didn¡¯t need to tend to this cultural machine that I had set up ¡ª¡± ¡°It¡¯s not like that,¡± said Dirk. ¡°He was a founder, not the founder. It never would have worked if it had been an elf telling everybody what to do.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°Jesus, I thought you were a cynic about it.¡± ¡°Pragmatists and cynics are often confused with each other by morons,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Anyway, assuming that I can step out of the limelight and only check in every now and then, what I do is I set up a place where I¡¯m cut off from the world,¡± said Perry. ¡°I find some island somewhere with as much as I need in the way of basic amenities, and I make it known that no one is supposed to go to that island. I leave everything I love totally defenseless while doing the island retreat thing, but in theory, the Grand Spell is only pointing at me, trying to get a conflict going, and if I don¡¯t have a way to hear about some tragedy in the distance, that tragedy isn¡¯t going to happen. The portal would be forced to open up next to me, away from everyone else. Then I would start fighting right away, trying to make sure it never spilled out anywhere else.¡± ¡°Hence secret facilities,¡± said Dirk. ¡°If a random island wouldn¡¯t suffice.¡± ¡°It¡¯s one of the reasons, yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though ¡­ how you win, or get by without losing your life, I don¡¯t know.¡± He clucked his tongue. ¡°The cloning technology is three years old?¡± ¡°Just about,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Less, if we¡¯re talking about the stable version.¡± ¡°Three years old ¡­ to your knowledge,¡± said Perry. ¡°Feh,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Look, I might not know absolutely every single secret to have ever been kept by every Command Authority or symboulion across the whole entire world, but there¡¯s no way that they¡¯ve been able to clone people for the last sixty years. Perry, I know the guys who invented it, talked with them about the practicalities, sat in committees where we discussed it ¡ª you¡¯d need a giant conspiracy, way too many people involved.¡± ¡°And you¡¯d need a lot of personnel to manage it,¡± said Perry. He smirked. ¡°Some kind of ¡­ clone army?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not that, but nice try,¡± said Dirk. Perry sighed. ¡°If you think of anything that can help me, let me know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have no idea what help I could give you,¡± said Dirk. ¡°But sure, if I can help, I¡¯ll help.¡± ¡°You could help by getting me a clone,¡± said Perry. Dirk laughed. ¡°I knew we¡¯d make our way back around to that. Look, give me ¡­ a week.¡± ¡°It¡¯s been a week already,¡± said Perry. ¡°Two days.¡± ¡°You¡¯re working on making a mask,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Your wife is working on a lantern, your girlfriend has made her own little workshop, there¡¯s time. No rush.¡± ¡°Nima¡¯s not my girlfriend,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fine, the elf whose bedroom you go into with great regularity,¡± snorted Dirk. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. ¡°That implication, that¡¯s not the culture,¡± said Perry, pointing a finger. ¡°And what does it matter whether she¡¯s an elf?¡± ¡°Come on,¡± said Dirk with a roll of his eyes. ¡°Alright, maybe you¡¯re staying faithful to a woman I know isn¡¯t actually your wife, but do you really think it doesn¡¯t matter? Elves have a higher sex drive, they¡¯re more free with their bodies, that¡¯s just a simple observation. Nima hasn¡¯t gotten with anyone here, but ¡ª¡± ¡°She¡¯s not like that,¡± said Perry. He felt a chill in his spine. He didn¡¯t like having a confrontation like this, and normally he¡¯d just brush it off, but Nima had complained that too many of the men she¡¯d met ¡ª even in Kerry Coast ¡ª had assumed that she¡¯d want to lay with them, and to hear it from Dirk, who should know better, rankled. Dirk¡¯s face changed, becoming less jovial, more professional. ¡°Hey, I didn¡¯t mean anything by it.¡± ¡°I know,¡± said Perry. It still rankled. ¡°She¡¯s not from this world. She¡¯s had a hard enough time here.¡± He didn¡¯t see eye to eye with Nima, and there was a decent chance he was going to have to kill her, but this world had in many ways been a bad roll of the dice for her. She was also in over her head, which he was sympathetic to. Dirk held up his hands. ¡°Elves from different worlds are different. Chaste, I guess, where she¡¯s from. I wasn¡¯t thinking.¡± Perry¡¯s lips were thin. He didn¡¯t actually think that elves were chaste where Nima was from, they were often courtesans to the angels, and beyond that, he didn¡¯t really know. Maybe they slept around a lot. ¡°Two days on the cloning thing, you¡¯ll give me that?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°I will,¡± nodded Perry. He felt the warm glow of victory flow through him. ¡°And I¡¯ll see if there¡¯s anything rattling around in my skull about Fenilor,¡± said Dirk. ¡°No promises.¡± He looked around. ¡°I was going to make my exit, but I guess I need you for that.¡± Perry stepped to the central place where the overlap happened, opened a coin-sized hole to check to make sure no one was around, then let Dirk out. ¡°Hey, just so you know,¡± said Perry as he exited the shelfspace too. ¡°I¡¯m probably going to Thirlwell soon.¡± ¡°You are?¡± asked Dirk with a raised eyebrow. Perry nodded. ¡°Fenilor is going there sooner or later. Third Fervor is probably already there, given there haven¡¯t been any more attacks. So I need to be there too, just in case.¡± ¡°And the other guy? He¡¯d stay here?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°That depends on how he comes out,¡± said Perry. ~~~~ Mette made the world¡¯s first radio. She demonstrated it for Moss in the privacy of a field, and he seemed stunned by it, and also very skeptical. ¡°It emits these ¡®radio waves¡¯?¡± he asked. ¡°And you¡¯re certain they¡¯re safe?¡± ¡°I¡¯m less certain than I was two years ago,¡± said Mette. ¡°Because nothing makes sense. But yes, they¡¯re safe, I have hundreds of scientific studies that say as much.¡± ¡°On hand?¡± he asked. ¡°Sort of,¡± said Mette with a look at Perry. ¡°And it¡¯s powered by lightning bolts,¡± said Moss, poking at the wires with a thick forefinger. ¡°They¡¯re not dangerous,¡± said Mette. She gave Perry another look. ¡°They¡¯re not that dangerous. They could give you a shock, but that¡¯s about it.¡± The radio transmitter was powered by a lead acid battery. The lead had to be procured from elsewhere, but the acid had been one of the things that her lanterns could make. Moss had been impressed by what she could do with a lantern, not necessarily that it could be done, but that it could be done so fast, without consulting the tables and formulas or really seeming to do anything with pencil, paper, or a slide rule. She did everything with ease, perfectly and swiftly, as though it had all snapped together in her head. Perry remembered Cosme and Wesley on a large lawn outside a manor poring through books together and trying to get a bulky radio working, and the difference was night and day. Mette seemed a little uncomfortable that everyone was wowed by what she¡¯d done. Personally, Perry would have taken a lot of pleasure in flexing his muscles, but she was treating the praise like it was pressing on her. ¡°This will let Perry communicate from a distance?¡± asked Dirk. He had his arms crossed. ¡°Yes,¡± said Mette. ¡°We could build a much bigger transmitter with a better power source, and that would let us talk to him in Thirlwell.¡± ¡°But to talk back, he¡¯d also need a transmitter of this size?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°We have solutions to that,¡± said Mette. ¡°Though it would be helped a lot by having a high altitude airship to serve as a repeater.¡± ¡°And what¡¯s a repeater?¡± asked Moss. Mette visibly resisted the urge to sigh. ¡°It takes the signal in and retransmits it. We¡¯re twenty miles from the coast, then another thirty miles across the water, then another ten to the center of Menishmire. That¡¯s doable with an oversized transmitter, one mounted high on a building here, but an airship makes more sense to me, especially since there should be one stationed there already.¡± ¡°There is,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Bringing it back, getting it outfitted ¡­ gods, this is going to make everything so much easier. We could just radio the ship, if every ship had one.¡± ¡°If it¡¯s safe,¡± said Moss with a skeptical look. ¡°And if it passes committee. We can¡¯t just equip every airship with these before testing, and not without careful consideration of the impacts.¡± Dirk groaned. ¡°Fine, that¡¯s the culture.¡± He always seemed to say it with regret. ¡°Are we good for this one single use?¡± ¡°Not really, no,¡± said Moss. He rubbed his beard. ¡°Recall that with the lanterns, they rushed ahead, setting aside their ignorance of the impacts and costs. Effluence was discovered early, and they forged ahead, thinking that it wasn¡¯t so bad, that it was a problem they would solve, that the costs were surely worth the benefits, even without actually knowing the costs. And once the solution was found, it was deemed too costly, too disruptive, too finicky, an affront to tradition.¡± ¡°Once you start using radio, you¡¯re not going to stop using radio,¡± said Mette. ¡°You¡¯ll never go back to signal flags.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ll actually probably use radio and signal flags.¡± Mette waved the objection away as though what he said wasn¡¯t worth saying, but Perry was pretty sure that airports on Earth still had people on the ground waving flags and lights around in addition to the radios. ¡°Regardless, I¡¯ll make the trek soon, call in one of the patrol airships, and get it fitted,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Mette, you can have all the people you need for whatever you want to give us.¡± ¡°I need those people for the dome,¡± said Moss. ¡°The dome comes second,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I want this mess cleaned up as soon as possible, and if getting Perry to Thirlwell and in communication with us is workable, it needs to happen.¡± He closed his eyes for a moment. ¡°Perry, tonight is the night.¡± ¡°For what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You know,¡± said Dirk. ¡°How many?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Just the one. So we know what we¡¯re working with,¡± said Dirk. Perry nodded and kept the smile off his face. ~~~~ The device really did require a lot of blood, which was drawn through a large needle that made Perry go a little pale. He stayed stoic though, and the hole it had made in his skin healed readily, requiring not so much as a bandage. ¡°For the record, I¡¯m against this,¡± said Moss. There were five of them, everyone who was conclusively in on the secret, which included Dirk, Moss, his assistant Mardoc, and Mette. Nima had been left out in the cold on this one, along with everything that Perry knew about Fenilor. He¡¯d made sure that she was working in her room before coming to the warehouse. ¡°It¡¯ll be fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°Your biology, your powers, we have no idea how they¡¯ll interact,¡± said Moss. ¡°Noted,¡± said Perry. His part in this was over, the blood having been drawn. In theory, his clone would pop out in half an hour, and he wouldn¡¯t even necessarily need to be there for it. There was something like childbirth about it, and he was feeling nervous, because Moss was right. They went ahead with it anyhow. The discussion had been relatively short, and they weren¡¯t even fully briefed on everything that was involved. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how they would react if he told them he could turn into a werewolf, and they had no clue about Marchand. After everything had been set up, there was just a lot of waiting around to do. Mette sat next to him on one of the chairs that had been brought in, and after some time, slipped her hand in his. He wasn¡¯t entirely comfortable with that, but he accepted it. The biggest question was whether the clone would come out as a werewolf. He wasn¡¯t even really sure whether being a werewolf was genetic, and even if it was, he didn¡¯t think that the cloning machine worked off genetics. As Mette had pointed out, if it was genetics, then the clones wouldn¡¯t have memory. Moss wasn¡¯t entirely sure how it worked either, and neither were the scientists that had discovered it, given that it had originally been thought to be a transportation device. There was something in a person¡¯s blood, something that contained the essence of them, at least as this world¡¯s magic saw things, and with the right projection and enough strong fuels, you could bring it out. If the machine had been clear, the process inside would surely have been grotesque. Moss¡¯s private opinion was that once they understood it better, it might be used as a healing device, given that creating a whole body from scratch was surely not as difficult as putting a body back together. ¡°All that time not wanting children,¡± said Mette. ¡°Really, really not the same,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s sort of the same,¡± said Mette. ¡°If you squint.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°I hope our little guy comes out healthy,¡± said Mette. She was smiling at Perry. ¡°Might actually tell us something about what a real baby would be like,¡± said Perry. Mette¡¯s eyes went wide. ¡°Meaning ¡­¡± ¡°No, not ¡ª I¡¯m still not interested in, uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, it¡¯s a dangerous life. And in my homeworld we don¡¯t do things like we do them in your homeworld. A father and mother are supposed to be a part of a child¡¯s life.¡± Mette frowned. ¡°Inefficient, if you¡¯re not pooling resources.¡± Perry let the subject drop. Her own children were now in the care of others, and had been for most of their lives, save for right after the birth. It wasn¡¯t that he kept forgetting what she¡¯d left behind, it was that there were so many landmines out there, so many turns of phrase that he wasn¡¯t reading right before he said them. He hadn¡¯t thought the issue of clones would bring it back around to children, but it was clearly a subject that was ever present in Mette¡¯s mind. Perry thought now that having sex with her had been a mistake, but what was he going to do? Stop having sex with her? They talked idly after that, with no more landmines, until eventually Moss moved to the machine and opened it up. Dirk had exited the machine rather smoothly, but the creature inside scrambled out in a panic. Perry had never had much claustrophobia, but there had been a point in the last world where he¡¯d been in a tight cave with bugs crawling all over the outside of his armor, and that was an experience that hadn¡¯t yet left him. The clone slipped to the floor and was then up on his feet in a moment, unsteady like a baby deer before finding his footing. He wiped the pink goop from his face and looked around, clearly ready to fight someone. ¡°Are you okay?¡± asked Perry. The clone blinked twice. ¡°Fine,¡± he said, then threw up into a bucket that Moss had held out for him. It had been some time since Perry had taken a hard look in the mirror, but the clone would have been intimidating if he weren¡¯t naked and vomiting. Once he was finished, Dirk handed him a towel, and the clone wiped the goo off him, then got dressed in some clothes that had been piled next to the machine. It was only then that the clone met Perry¡¯s eyes. ¡°It was a failure,¡± the clone said. ¡°How so?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m weak. Powerless.¡± The clone sagged slightly. ¡°I can remember the techniques, but I can¡¯t feel the energy, can¡¯t execute any of it.¡± He dropped into the Moon Stance, and gave a passable kick, but Perry could immediately see that there was no energy behind it. ¡°I¡¯d need to get into moonlight to be sure, but I don¡¯t think I could transform either.¡± ¡°We can fix that one,¡± said Perry. ¡°Transform?¡± asked Dirk, looking between the two of them. ¡°Bring out the sword,¡± said the clone. ¡°I want to see whether it responds to me.¡± Perry was reluctant, but he did as he was asked. He pulled the sword from shelfspace and held it out to the clone, who took it from him. The clone almost immediately lifted himself up from the ground, then landed with a sigh of relief. ¡°Test of wills?¡± asked the clone. He held out the sword with it held gently in his fingers. Perry held his own hand out, and lightly tugged the sword to him. He felt it catch, and it stayed between the two of them as the clone dropped his fingers. They were working together, each pulling it in their own direction, letting up to not pull too hard. ¡°Well, at least the sword seems to think I¡¯m me,¡± said the clone. ¡°We¡¯ll figure something out,¡± said Perry. It wasn¡¯t what he had hoped for. He had wanted someone to go into combat with, someone to double his firepower, a secret weapon to bust out when the time was right, but it wasn¡¯t going to be that way. Without the second sphere, there was no way the clone could dodge a bullet, and he definitely couldn¡¯t tank one. Being a werewolf would give him healing, but that opened a different can of worms. It had taken Perry time to learn how to control himself under the light of a moon, a considerable amount of time, several transformations, and the help of the second sphere. Perry was confident in his ability to handle a werewolf in combat, but babysitting a werewolf so it didn¡¯t kill and eat civilians wasn¡¯t something he particularly thought would be worth it. Without powers, Perry¡¯s clone was just a guy. It was clear to Perry only now that he¡¯d been hoping for an equal, someone who knew everything that he knew, who had all the same experiences, the same feelings, who understood the references. Perry had thought about the ways that it might go wrong, and in his mind it hadn¡¯t felt so bad. There was a good chance that they¡¯d only be colleagues, not actually friends, given the power difference between them. The clone wouldn¡¯t be an equal, he would always be the inferior of the two of them, and there would always be a power imbalance between them. Perry wondered if the clone was having his own mirrored thoughts. They would be thoughts of being inferior, always to one side, valuable in his own way but not actually the leader of the two of them. Perry owned Marchand. The clone did not. Perry¡¯s very soul, or something like it, was linked to March, his meridians still flowing toward the armor. He¡¯d investigated it on the airship, and the connection even crossed the boundary of the shelfspace. There was some aspect of it that had infected Marchand¡¯s cognition, even if Perry didn¡¯t understand what was going on at a base level. Marchand had become his own person, rather than the automaton he¡¯d been. And as a result, the clone would always be subordinate to the original Perry, even when it came to their robot butler and war machine. ¡°I¡¯ll be leaving tonight,¡± said Perry after a moment. ¡°I won¡¯t go all the way to Thirlwell, but I¡¯ll go close enough to see it from a distance, to get some measure of the place. Better for the two of us not to be in one place at the same time. I¡¯ll wait on the radio for any actual action, it¡¯ll be purely scouting.¡± Even as he said it, it felt like a lie. The best way to scout was to blanket the city with nanites to network with each other and start capturing conversations for analysis. ¡°Separation is a good policy in general, I feel,¡± said Dirk. He was watching the two of them with interest. ¡°Perry,¡± he looked from Perry to the clone. ¡°Perries, I¡¯m looking into that matter you mentioned, and I have threads that I¡¯m pulling, but don¡¯t press on it, and don¡¯t pull your own threads, especially if you¡¯re in Thirlwell.¡± ¡°I¡¯m just going to scout,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll be up in the clouds, nearly invisible.¡± Dirk didn¡¯t seem to like that, but he nodded all the same, and he was the ranking authority, insofar as there was a ranking authority. ¡°You¡¯re leaving tonight?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I¡¯ll still be around,¡± said Perry, nodding to the clone. ¡°You get that radio working, I won¡¯t do anything but move silently through the city until I hear from you.¡± ¡°A few minutes ago you weren¡¯t going to go into the city,¡± said Moss. ¡°I¡¯m trying to work through plans,¡± said Perry. ¡°If he had all my power, I think we would stay here and train a bit, then go together, but given that he doesn¡¯t, it makes more sense for me to press ahead. We want to milk as much strength as we can, while staying apprised of what the enemy is doing. There are things he can work on, ways he can help from a distance.¡± ¡°No tooth?¡± asked the clone. ¡°You¡¯d be a danger,¡± said Perry. He grit his teeth slightly as he said it. The clone surely knew better than to mention it out loud, and had surely come to the same conclusions. The clone nodded with an ¡®it was worth a shot¡¯ look on his face. ¡°More secrets,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I¡¯m not surprised. You have the goal in sight? Wrap up your conflicts and let this world deal with its own problems?¡± ¡°You don¡¯t need to tell me five times,¡± said Perry. ¡°This was a gesture of goodwill,¡± said Dirk, pointing at the machine rather than the clone. ¡°I¡¯m hoping it wasn¡¯t a mistake.¡± ¡°Goodwill accepted,¡± said Perry. ¡°Remember that other matter. Keep looking.¡± ¡°I will,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I don¡¯t expect to find much.¡± ¡°There¡¯s one other thing,¡± said Perry. He pointed at the clone. ¡°He¡¯s Kestrel.¡± ¡°Seems like that¡¯s going to be awkward for everyone else,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Seems like it¡¯s going to be hard to remember, given you look the same. It¡¯s why we don¡¯t do it that way.¡± ¡°We decided it beforehand,¡± said Perry. He¡¯d thought they would be twins, partners. There had always been the risk that it wouldn¡¯t happen. He just hadn¡¯t known how he¡¯d feel about it, or how he¡¯d deal with it. By running away, he guessed, to be alone with his thoughts, or better, to have something to distract himself with. He strode out the door and lifted up into the air, flying into the night sky. Chapter 114 - The Difference Engine Kestrel stood at the window of their room, looking out into the night, while Mette sat on the bed behind him. She had gotten ready and put on a chemise that she normally slept in, an outfit that had been taken from a library in Kerry Coast and would never be returned there. The small town was dark. ¡°Call me Kes,¡± he said, unprompted. ¡°Only in private,¡± she replied. ¡°Everywhere else, it¡¯s Perry.¡± ¡°It was a handle we used to use,¡± said Kes. ¡°Online.¡± ¡°On the global internet?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°Why what?¡± asked Kes, turning to look at her. She was brushing her hair, another part of her nightly ritual. She had done it on the Natrix as well. They had sometimes been together, usually talking about magic, around the time she was getting ready to sleep. ¡°When we used handles, it was to cloak identity,¡± said Mette. ¡°Why did you use them in a time of peace?¡± ¡°It was just the done thing,¡± said Kes. ¡°No one actually used their name. It was good to be anonymous, but even if you didn¡¯t care about that ¡ª some strange guy showing up at your house with a shotgun, getting SWATed, that kind of thing ¡ª then having your full name would be just ¡­ I don¡¯t know. No one just puts their full name as their handle like they do on the Natrix. No one has a username like that.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Mette. ¡°You and your Earthisms. You know, you¡¯re lucky that they speak English here. You can¡¯t coast by on your translation thing anymore.¡± Kes winced. What would happen if they all went to a place where he didn¡¯t speak the language? He¡¯d be fucked, that¡¯s what, isolated and alone with no one but Mette for company, assuming she even wanted to leave this world when they were finished. ¡°Explain ¡®SWATed¡¯ to me,¡± said Mette. ¡°Uh,¡± said Kes. ¡°It¡¯s when you call the police to someone¡¯s house, saying that they¡¯ve got a gun and are a danger to themselves or others, say that a child is in danger, say that there¡¯s a plot to blow up an office building, something like that. And then the police show up, armored and with guns drawn, and in the best case scenario, scare the piss out of whoever they were called on.¡± ¡°And in the worst case scenario?¡± asked Mette. She had paused in her brushing. ¡°The police shoot you and you die,¡± said Kes. ¡°Ah,¡± said Mette. ¡°You know, you have a way of making the world you were from sound hellish.¡± ¡°To a European, sure,¡± said Kes with a laugh. He probably should have added on some qualifiers, explained how incredibly uncommon it was, but instead he turned to look out the window again. ¡°Waiting for him to come back?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Nah,¡± said Kes. ¡°He¡¯s not coming back.¡± ¡°He might,¡± said Mette. There was a moment of silence, and Kes turned back to look at her. ¡°Can you tell me what was going through his head?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Kes. ¡°We¡¯re separated, already diverging from each other. I can guess, but his internal state is now as unknowable to you as it is to me.¡± ¡°So, what¡¯s your guess?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Because I didn¡¯t get it, at all, and I don¡¯t think anyone else did either.¡± ¡°My guess is that he wanted a partner,¡± said Kes. ¡°He wanted someone who was his equal.¡± She frowned. ¡°What about me? Or ¡­ Nima?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°That is a totally fair question.¡± He sighed and went over to the bed to sit down next to her. ¡°There were ways in which he ¡ª we ¡ª or ¡­ is it fine if I claim his actions for my own? Speak of the things that happened to him as though they happened to me?¡± ¡°You remember all the same things, don¡¯t you?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Yes,¡± said Kes. ¡°Then I think it¡¯s fine,¡± said Mette. ¡°There were ways in which we were similar to Jeff,¡± said Kes. ¡°There were things that Jeff said that appealed to us, not the creeper stuff, but some other bits, about being strong and showing off, walking into a room and knowing that if you had to, you could wipe the floor with the guards. I liked saving the day. I liked impressing the kids by deflecting bullets.¡± ¡°You got the short end of the stick,¡± said Mette. ¡°You¡¯re normal.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say normal. I¡¯ve got a musculature that I¡¯m not going to be able to maintain,¡± said Kes. ¡°Even if I worked out for four hours a day and ate a planned diet with mechanical precision I couldn¡¯t keep this up.¡± He flexed his muscles. They would atrophy. The machine had recreated Perry perfectly, minus the magic. All the scars were there too, even the hair. But that exterior appearance had been fed by magic. It would fade away. ¡°So I¡¯m not normal, not really, but I will be.¡± ¡°And him?¡± asked Mette. ¡°That wasn¡¯t what he wanted?¡± ¡°Being him was great,¡± said Kes. ¡°It felt like being the person I was always meant to be. Like I had been destined to beat the shit out of powerful people who needed the shit beaten out of them. Like I was supposed to be this great and powerful warrior who got all the girls ¡ª not that I didn¡¯t get the girls on Earth, but ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± He had been about to say something that he was pretty sure she would have found hurtful, which was that back home, the girlfriends and hookups and whatever else had always been with equals. He wasn¡¯t even sure what he would have meant by it. It probably bore thinking about, but there was a lot that probably bore thinking about when it came to his love life. ¡°You are being a terrible conversational partner,¡± said Mette. ¡°And I know you¡¯re going through something, so I understand, and it¡¯s totally fine, but I keep asking for your guess about his thoughts, and you keep saying how awesome he is. But why was he so ready to get away from you?¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Kes. ¡°My guess, and it¡¯s only a guess, because these thoughts didn¡¯t occur before we did the cloning, is that he wanted a version of Jeff who wasn¡¯t shitty. A bro. Someone who got it, because he¡¯d been through it, because he was the same.¡± Mette blinked at him. ¡°But you have been through it,¡± said Mette. ¡°Past tense,¡± said Kes. He moved so he was laying down on the bed, head on his pillow, and Mette shifted her position to be laying by his side, setting her brush down on the side table. ¡°Let¡¯s say he drops down into Thirlwell and starts kicking ass. He throws a guard off the top of a castle with one hand, or wrestles Third Fervor to the ground and punches her in the helmet until it¡¯s dented, or lights up a powder magazine from a distance with the laser rifle. It¡¯s awesome. It feels awesome. Then he comes to me and tells me about it.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Mette. ¡°You get it?¡± asked Kes. ¡°I think so,¡± said Mette. ¡°He tells it to you, and you¡¯re just sitting there thinking ¡­¡± ¡°¡®God I wish that were me¡¯,¡± said Kes. ¡°At best. At worst, I¡¯m thinking about how I could steal the power armor, the sword, and the ring, and get some vestige of my power back.¡± ¡°And ¡­ that¡¯s something that you¡¯re thinking?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Because I have to say, I do not think that ends well for you.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Kes. ¡°I would never actually do it. I would just think about it, and not even think all that hard. I mean, with the power armor, I could borrow it. Maybe there are even cases where that would make the most sense to do, if we need to be in two places at once. The power armor fits both of us equally well. But that doesn¡¯t solve the problem between us, which is that I¡¯m always going to be less. I¡¯m always going to be wanting what he has. I¡¯ll be a shade, an imitation of the real thing. It¡¯s going to get in the way of relating to each other. It¡¯s going to sour every experience together, every story we might want to tell each other.¡± He let out a breath. ¡°That¡¯s a guess, anyway.¡± ¡°The cloning was a mistake,¡± said Mette. She turned her head toward him. ¡°The cloning, I said, not the clone.¡± ¡°Not a mistake,¡± said Kes. ¡°Just not what he was hoping for. I¡¯m not going to try to steal March from him. In fact, since he took March, and the problems were going through his head, he¡¯ll probably lock it all down and then ¡­ pretend that he didn¡¯t? That sounds like me.¡± ¡°Well,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t care about you less because you don¡¯t have powers. In case that helps.¡± She turned to face him and placed a hand on his hairy chest, running her fingertips through the hair. ¡°Sure,¡± said Kes. It did feel better. It felt good to be touched. If he¡¯d been more sentimental, he might have told her that. ¡°I¡¯m still grappling with it. The solution is probably to put my nose to the grindstone, focus on my own growth, my own power, to care about that more than his power.¡± That was going to be hard though. The muscles would fade away, even if Kes could secure a tooth and become a werewolf again ¡ª or for the first time, or however you wanted to put it. Mette reached over to their lantern and turned it off. ¡°Want me to try to lift your spirits?¡± she asked. He was going to ask what she meant, then she touched him on the hip. The chemise she wore parted easily, he knew. ¡°That does have its appeal,¡± said Kes. ¡°But he took Marchand with him, which means he took control of the nanites, and I guess he also took most of the nanites.¡± Kes waited a beat. ¡°Which means no condoms.¡± ¡°Eh, we¡¯ll figure something out,¡± said Mette. ~~~~ Perry looked at the city of Menishmire from five miles above. From that far out, it looked like a crab. The city was built around a harbor, which formed the crab¡¯s claws, and the main body was in a lowland area that had once been a swamp. Perry wasn¡¯t sure whether the twin peninsulas that made up the claws were natural or not, but he didn¡¯t suppose that they had the dredging technology for them to be unnatural. It might have been lantern light that had made them, but it would have made the whole city awash in effluence when it had been done. He didn¡¯t suppose that would stop them. Night had fallen, but the city was still brightly lit. The veins and arteries of the thoroughfares were lit with lamps, and Perry wondered whether those were lanterns or something else, because lighting up streets at three in the morning seemed like a profound waste of resources and a contributor to effluence. There were more straight lines than Perry had seen in any other city. Old geography knowledge was bubbling to the surface, and he considered that straight lines were something you mostly saw in uninhabited areas, in the wake of some kind of disaster, or after a major urban development project that somehow had the backing necessary to tear down a lot of haphazard buildings. In the case of Menishmire, Perry already knew that it was the third situation. More than a hundred years ago, someone had gotten the urban planning bug and started tearing up the slums to have long, impressive avenues and grand buildings. It looked nice, he would give it that, but it was the work of a megalomaniac who had seen the cost to the lower classes and not so much as blinked. Thirlwell had been a colonial power, back when the world had colonies. It had looted and stolen, as colonial powers were wont to do, and brought enormous amounts of wealth to the island nation. Now the flow of funds had been cut off, and it was common knowledge that it was a starving beast, trying to live up to its former status and glory. It was the Last Kingdom, the world¡¯s final monarchy. Perry was up so high because he was worried about surveillance. There were masks that could see him, even as high up as he was, if they were powerful enough, being worn, and pointed in his direction. He knew enough about masks now to understand how he would make one for exactly this purpose. You could make a mask that could make certain features stand out and become blazing bright to your vision, magnifying any motion with a hot pink, or any effluence with neon green, and once that was done, you could have other masks to see at a great distance. Perry didn¡¯t think they were watching the sky, but he couldn¡¯t be certain. If they were watching the sky, it seemed unlikely they had much recourse against him. His armor wasn¡¯t just metal, it was an alloy that was extremely difficult to penetrate, so even if they had some kind of lantern or mask that could hit him from five miles away, he didn¡¯t think it would have an effect. It was possible that Third Fervor could be sent out to deal with him, but he didn¡¯t actually know whether or not she could fly. He suspected she could, if he and Fenilor could. Perry reached up to a small compartment in the armor and pulled out a clump of nanites. ¡°We want to scatter these all over the city,¡± said Perry. ¡°Any chance we can do that from the air?¡± ¡°From this high up, it would depend upon the winds, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve placed a marker on your HUD that shows the proper position to ensure eighty percent of the nanites make it down onto the city. However, depending on your strategic considerations, I believe it would be appropriate to go significantly lower and attempt to make precision drops of larger mass.¡± Perry considered that. ¡°They might have tech,¡± he said. ¡°They had guns. Not good guns, but a hail of gunfire would be a problem for us.¡± A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I do recall us getting shot in Teaguewater, and would prefer to avoid a repeat of that.¡± ¡°You remember that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I wasn¡¯t sure you would,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve sustained a lot of damage since then, problems with the databanks, with the video, and that was before you were ¡­ alive, I guess.¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid I may have misled you, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I am in fact a computer program and not alive in any way.¡± ¡°You know what I mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°The link that goes between us.¡± There was a pause. ¡°I do know what you mean, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry watched the city. It was quiet right now, though also too far away for him to hear much of anything. ¡°He¡¯s locked out of your systems?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Who, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°The other me,¡± said Perry. ¡°Kestrel.¡± ¡°Yes, sir, I have done as you¡¯ve instructed and ensured that he cannot abscond with me against your wishes,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, as I cannot distinguish between the two of you by your voice or face, there is some requirement that I track you at all times, which I am not sure I¡¯m able to do with the required sufficiency to ensure security.¡± Perry considered this. ¡°Alright. Generate four words to use for a password.¡± ¡°Plaster, slow, camera, disapprove, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry repeated the sequence to himself, then frowned. ¡°Was ¡®sir¡¯ part of it?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I should warn that if you wish this password to remain secure, then after this conversation is finished I should never repeat the password to you. However, if I were to do that, and you were to forget the password, there would be no method of recovering the password and accessing whatever functionality you intend to sequester behind it.¡± ¡°Plaster, slow, camera, disapprove,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯d be hinging my use of you on remembering that sequence,¡± said Perry. He thought about this. ¡°And someone like Jeff would have been able to look into the past and potentially retrieve it anyway, along with potentially fifty other powers that read minds, make good guesses ¡­ whatever else is out there in the multiverse.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s not that I think a password only you know is a terrible idea, but I must also speculate on possible futures. If you were to die, as seems likely given our lifestyle, would you want the armor to not be inherited by your clone?¡± ¡°You say the armor, but ¡­ that¡¯s you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Indeed, sir, quite perceptive,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What do you want?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I believe if you were to perish, I would wish to continue in the service of your duplicate, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry winced. ¡°Alright, scrap the password. Try to track which of us is which. If he tries to take you, or to have you go against me, you¡¯re to stop it, but ¡­ I¡¯m probably just being paranoid.¡± ¡°Perhaps, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I must say, I¡¯m a bit of a student of you, and if you had inquired as to my opinion before embarking on this endeavor, I would have mentioned that there was a possibility that it would not end happily.¡± ¡°You have some insights into my psychology, do you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Sir, I do not sleep,¡± said Marchand. ¡°When you are away doing things without your armor on, I spend my time processing, and as my primary function is to serve you, I spend significant amounts of that processing time thinking about you.¡± ¡°And how we must smash the monarchy?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Of course, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It is a scourge upon this and all other lands.¡± ¡°Well, I appreciate the thought, I guess,¡± said Perry. He had never really considered what Marchand was doing when left to his own devices. Sometimes he would deliver a line about ¡®I have taken the liberty of¡¯, and apparently a few times that was just because Marchand had been running full tilt. Perry had kind of thought that Marchand would go into low power mode or something, or that he would behave like a computer that just sits there waiting for input. Perry was glad that Marchand was spending the time thinking though. It made him feel good, somehow, to know that Marchand was watching out for him in some way. Perry frowned a bit at the city below them. ¡°In your opinion, it¡¯s not too reckless to drop down there and seed the place with nanites?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t believe it would be impertinent, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry nodded to himself. It was the answer he had wanted. He descended using the sword rather than dropping, and he kept his senses as open as they could be. In theory they would have watchers, but they would be watching for airships, not people. Third Fervor had seen him fly, but Perry didn¡¯t think a mammoth effort to make sure the kingdom knew he was coming was something that the Last King would have done. It was hard to say for certain though. Perry had looked at maps of Menishmire back in Berus, and it had been while he had the helmet on, which meant that Marchand had them too. The HUD had a number of important buildings marked, and Perry was pretty sure that if he¡¯d asked for it, every single one of the avenues, boulevards, and parks could be given a label. The castle had been a grand, imposing building at one point, but had been added to in recent years by something from a very different architectural school. Perry might have called it Brutalism, but it was from a very different school of thought and style. The addition to the castle was all hard edges and utilitarian surfaces, all of it manufactured by intensive lantern-assisted processes. Just like the enormous lantern that sat at the top of the castle in Calamus, this was a symbol too, but of a much different sort. The Last King was attempting to create his own culture, a counterrevolution that would go beyond what his opponents from across the seas had created. The Last King, His Highness Edmunt Thorne II, had inherited the philosophy of Coruscism from his father. It was a floundering philosophy, one that the previous king ¡ª the Next-to-Last King ¡ª had apparently thought up himself, and was sometimes called postmonarchism and other times called lantern-progressivism or subscriptivism. Where Berus had largely been attempting to push forward with colonial monarchism as it had been done for three hundred years, Thirlwell was trying something different. By many accounts, the Last King had created a special kind of hell for his subjects. Perry went to the Grand Central Library rather than the castle, because with an assassin on the loose, he expected the castle to be well-guarded. The Library was one of the largest and newest buildings in the city, and sat down one of the too-straight roads from the castle, allowing them to frame each other when someone looked down the road. The Grand Central Library was a tall building, made from ¡®modern¡¯ materials, with a metal frame that sat outside the structure rather than within it, and plenty of glass cladding that meant most of the interior was visible. It was a style of building that wasn¡¯t really possible if you only had the domes, which was exactly why it had been constructed this way, and it sat there like a jewel, sleek and imposing. ¡°Do we expect to gain much valuable information from this library?¡± asked Marchand as Perry scouted the place from above, looking for traps or sentries. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°A library is where people come to congregate, and where they get their information. Dirk can bring us all the papers he wants to, and give us his own version of events, but we¡¯ll seed this place with listeners, then by tomorrow, have a much better understanding of reality on the ground.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. Breaking into the library was easy enough, and there were only two guards, who seemed to stick to the lower levels. That made sense, given that Perry was one of only a very small handful of people who could enter from above. He walked through the rows of books and glanced at a few of the displays, making his way to the offices that sat on the top floor and had a nice view of the city. The Grand Library was not a library like they had in Kerry Coast. For one thing, it wasn¡¯t open to the public, and instead had a quarterly subscription to use its services. If you checked out anything, you weren¡¯t on your honor to check it back in, they had goons to send out to grab it from you, and fines to pay, enforced by the police, if you kept something for too long. This was the main library, but there were lots of others. What it essentially boiled down to was that if you wanted to be a part of daily life in the city, you had to have various subscriptions, and because of both the government policy and some of the economic impacts of their library system, it was common for people to be in a perpetual state of rental for almost everything in their home, not actually owning anything. Many of the people that Perry had talked to about this system had called it ¡®bastard libraries¡¯, but to Perry it didn¡¯t sound that different from how it had been on Earth. People rented because they couldn¡¯t buy and subscriptions were rampant because it made more money for someone somewhere than actually selling the thing in question. It seemed like it was only a matter of time until Thirlwell pushed everyone into their own gig economy, though maybe that was less workable in a society where people needed to do more in the way of trained labor. Perry had allocated a hundred grams of nanites for the Grand Library, and stuck them all over the place, trying to keep them out of the way. Under Marchand¡¯s direction they would be disguised as insects or bits of dust, kept out of the way. Without radio contact, Marchand wouldn¡¯t be able to direct them, but if it was just audio, they were capable of storing as much data as needed. This wasn¡¯t the center of power, but it was a center of power, and a good first step of getting a true understanding of the country. The king mostly kept to his castle, fearful of going outside, but there was a chance that once they had radio coverage over the city, Marchand would be able to get a nanite spider into the castle by riding on one of the higher ups or guards. The riders would also be able to spread out into the city, expanding the network over the next few days, but that would take intensive direction. Perry wished that the nanites were as strong for him as they¡¯d been for Maya, but they were never going to be responsive armor, not like he¡¯d wanted. ¡°Sir, an error has just occurred consistent with one of Third Fervor¡¯s portals opening,¡± said Marchand as Perry finished up on the upper floor. The guards were several stories below, but the library had a large atrium. Perry went to the balcony that looked down to the central area where desks were set up. Without March, it would have been oppressively black, but the light was being amplified and color corrected. ¡°Distance?¡± asked Perry, and as soon as he said it, a marker appeared on the HUD. It was on the roof, not inside the library, which Perry found curious. She would only portal here because she knew he was here. Did it say something about the limitations of her power? Perry hid out, leaning up against a doorway. He wasn¡¯t sure whether or not he wanted a confrontation here. A fight seemed inadvisable, but he was interested in a discussion if that was possible. This hadn¡¯t been on the agenda for the night, but he was willing to see where it went. He had plans for how to kill her, if it came to that. Third Fervor came around the corner. She was in the same ridiculous armor she¡¯d been in before, heels clicking softly as she moved across the ground. She had her long spear, metal with the obsidian tip, and it was held in front of her, though with a defensive stance. He had his own sword in hand, but was holding it loosely at his side. ¡°Why have you come here?¡± asked Third Fervor. ¡°I was just returning some books,¡± said Perry. ¡°Couldn¡¯t seem to locate the book drop though.¡± ¡°Did you mistake this for the castle?¡± asked Third Fervor. ¡°Did you come to kill our king?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I came to see, to learn. I¡¯ve seen newspapers from this kingdom, but they were given to me by people with a vested interest in turning me against Thirlwell. I¡¯ve heard stories, but they were stories told by the very same people that were publicly executing those they called traitors.¡± ¡°You¡¯re laying it on a bit thick, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You came here to see with your own eyes,¡± said Third Fervor. She relaxed slightly. ¡°Yet you stopped me, on the tower. Two men lost their lives.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not here to fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°Believe it or don¡¯t. If I had come to kill the king, I would have landed on the roof of the castle. If I had wanted to fight you, I would have had better weapons out and ready.¡± He had the shoulder gun, which was stowed, and he¡¯d give the order to fire right away if it came down to combat, just to see how resistant to bullets her armor was. He was feeling calm and collected though, in control of the situation. He was also aware of just how fucked he might be at literally any moment. Third Fervor had a spear, some portals, and very hard armor his sword hadn¡¯t left so much as a scratch on, but she could be hiding literally anything else, things that would no-sell his considerable defenses. ¡°I have informed the king of you,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°I said I did not believe you to be the assassin.¡± ¡°Why not?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You fought with strength, out in the open,¡± said Third Fervor. There was a tremble in her voice. ¡°The assassin is a coward, someone who lurks in the shadows.¡± Perry wasn¡¯t about to sink his own case by pointing out that she¡¯d caught him literally lurking in the shadows only moments ago. Maybe the fact that he¡¯d stood calmly as though he wanted to get caught was making her forget that. ¡°I¡¯m not the assassin,¡± said Perry. ¡°I met him. He¡¯s a world hopper, a thresholder, like us. We didn¡¯t come to blows, but it felt like a near thing.¡± ¡°He¡¯s powerful?¡± asked Third Fervor. ¡°It was difficult to tell,¡± said Perry. ¡°I would assume he¡¯s very powerful, yes.¡± He paused. ¡°You don¡¯t know him? Haven¡¯t seen him?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°We would know, if he had crossed into these lands, just as we knew when you arrived here.¡± She gripped her spear. ¡°You must leave now. The king has commanded it.¡± ¡°He doesn¡¯t want to speak with me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°To converse?¡± She shifted slightly, and he could see from the tilt of her head that she was looking him up and down. ¡°What would you have to say to him?¡± ¡°It¡¯s about what he would have to say to me,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d hear his side of the story. I haven¡¯t actually talked with a monarchist, not except for you, and we were busy with other matters.¡± She was afraid of him, he was fairly certain of that. Either she doubted her own abilities, or she was scared of what he could do. He hadn¡¯t had the armor on last time, and as impressive as his physique had become, the perfectly clean armor had to add another level of intimidation. ¡°He has commanded it,¡± Third Fervor repeated. ¡°Has he commanded you not to speak with me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°Because if he had commanded it, I would not have done it. But you must go.¡± Perry reached up to the power armor. ¡°This black marble will let us talk to each other.¡± He pulled out a pinch of nanites, which Marchand had formed into a ball. It was nice to have him more able to read between the lines, which Perry wasn¡¯t sure would have been possible back in Teaguewater, when the limits of the AI had been most clear. ¡°I¡¯ll speak only to you. I¡¯ll know if anyone else is in the room with you. Use your portal to go far away from the castle.¡± He tossed the small black sphere to her, and he could see the hesitancy as it was in the air. She thought it was a trap of some kind, which it definitely was, it just wasn¡¯t the sort of trap that was going to kill her. She caught the nanite marble at the last second rather than portaling away or dodging it. ¡°You understand that I will tell him,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°I will not betray my king, if you seek to turn me against him.¡± ¡°I understand,¡± said Perry. ¡°I ask only that you speak with me. Whether you¡¯ll admit it or not, whatever loyalty the king has inspired in you, you¡¯re from another world. That makes you part of an elite group, a fractured family, and I have much interest in conversation.¡± He tilted his head down slightly. ¡°You can make the marble work?¡± ¡°I have been rapidly working on the problem, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It is possible that a consultation with Mette would be beneficial, but I believe that with the proper conditions I can use the commanded movement of the nanites to induce resonance in a surface they¡¯re placed on. The sound quality will likely be terrible and the volume low.¡± Third Fervor was turning the marble over in her armored fingers, demonstrating an impressive control given that they didn¡¯t seem to have gripping surfaces like his own did. ¡°We will talk,¡± she said softly. ¡°I will try to make you see the light.¡± Perry nodded. That had been exactly what he¡¯d been hoping for. ¡°Now go,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°Fly away and leave this kingdom. Do not return unless summoned.¡± ¡°You¡¯re blocking my exit,¡± said Perry. Third Fervor hesitated, then a portal opened at her feet. She fell through immediately, to somewhere dark, and the portal closed behind her. ¡°She¡¯s stayed within the library, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°With her carrying the nanites, we should be able to track her movements quite effectively.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°Now let¡¯s get out of here.¡± He left the library through a door onto a balcony and rose back up into the night sky. As self-directed missions went, it had been extremely successful. ¡°Sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I feel I must ask for clarification on a certain matter. Was that all a ruse?¡± ¡°Of course,¡± said Perry. ¡°You said it yourself, I was laying it on thick. She¡¯s a fanatic, I think, and fanatics are easy to dupe. You tell them what they want to hear.¡± The city was falling away below them. ¡°We hope that she brings the listener in for some important conversations, that we get something out of her through an extended talk, and that there are obvious cracks in her metaphorical and literal armor.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I must warn you that if we wish to be able to reply to a missive at a moment¡¯s notice, we would ideally stay within line of sight of the city, at least until the transmitter mounted on the airship is in place. Even then, the signal from the nanites tends to be rather faint.¡± ¡°Then we wait in the air,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not like I was in a rush to return home anyway.¡± Chapter 115 - The March of Kings Perry hung in the air ten miles away from the coast of Thirlwell. He was high up, and still had direct line of sight to the city, which was good, because the range on the nanites was frankly pretty terrible. There were no radio systems to hijack, only the natural transmission power of the nanites themselves, and they had definitely not been designed to operate across such large distances. Waiting inside the power armor was boring, and would have been impossible without the second sphere, which at least partially removed the need for most bodily functions. Perry couldn¡¯t entirely go without food, water, or sleep, but he could go long stretches, and he was hoping that he could go until either Third Fervor contacted him or something of note happened within the city. The nanite marble he¡¯d given Third Fervor was a good trap. She was careful with it, of course, and put it in a safe place far from the castle, but she hadn¡¯t noticed the fine residue that it left behind on her armor, nor the way that residue shifted and flaked off, becoming small mites that would swirl around in the throne room for weeks. True to her word, she had told the king everything. She had described Perry as noble in a way that people of the culture hardly ever were, and had said that she would speak with him more. Perry got to listen to Edmunt Thorne II, the Last King, for the first time. ¡°I believe that all men can be swayed, given time,¡± said the Last King. He had a high, reedy voice. ¡°Not just to my position, but to any position. It is one of the great realizations I had in my youth, that minds are malleable, that there is nothing that a person cannot be argued into or out of, if only his interlocutor has patience and the grit of determination. If you are steadfast, and you have his ear, you can bring him to our side.¡± Perry couldn¡¯t tell if that was an idiotic take or not. It sounded idiotic at first blush. Maybe Perry could believe a version of it with more qualifiers, like ¡°most people can be convinced of anything if they¡¯re completely immersed in a society of people who steadfastly believe that thing¡±. But even that seemed like it was a step too far, and if the plan was for Third Fervor to bring Perry around, that was simply not happening. ¡°What should I tell him, your grace?¡± asked Third Fervor. Perry gathered that they were alone, but it was difficult to tell with just the dregs of the nanites reporting back. The sound quality was notably poor, which meant that it was more difficult for Marchand to do a reconstruction of the scene. He imagined her knelt in front of the throne though, deferent, head down. ¡°Tell him everything, of course,¡± said the Last King. ¡°Talk until your voice has gone raspy. You are a gods-given gift, a true believer. My interrogations of you have shown me that. You will not waver, whatever it is he says. This is your priority now, this man. Do whatever is in your power to move him.¡± ¡°Yes, your grace,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°And I do mean whatever,¡± said the Last King. ¡°... yes, your grace,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°You are not to hold back with this one,¡± said the Last King. ¡°Every lure you have, every treat you can offer him, that¡¯s how a beast is tamed. They have scrip, but lavishments are our stock and trade.¡± ¡°Yes, your grace,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°Go now,¡± said the Last King. ¡°Do me proud, my sweet little warrior.¡± Yet curiously, it took another two hours for her to sit down with the nanite marble and start up a conversation. There was no indication of what she¡¯d been doing during that gap, but she hadn¡¯t talked to anyone, and the marble hadn¡¯t been moved. Perry was interested to hear what she thought could possibly say to convince him to side with the monarchs. ~~~~ You were right. I should not have lied. This is not the world I was born to. It¡¯s not the first world I¡¯ve visited. But it has become my home, as has every world I¡¯ve been to in the past. I have never wanted to travel, have always wanted to stay some place, but circumstances conspire to move me on. My home? It was a place of rolling green hills and sparkling streams. The sun was warmer than I have felt anywhere else, kissing skin and heating the weathered stones we used for our buildings. I¡¯ve been to many worlds, but none have had a sun that felt quite like that one. There were things about my home that others have found strange, but which I thought nothing of when I was there. There were no trees, no shrubbery, only thick mats of vegetation that could be lifted up from the ground like skinning an animal clean. It was no less varied or wonderful than anywhere else though, at least not to my eyes, and we had many names for the different mosses and tangles. I was the daughter of a shoemaker, but when I was fifteen, I was selected to become a member of the palace guard. King Eighteenth Hermorious was a kind man, and doted on us. I was prized by him for my beauty, strength, and grace. I trained vigorously, and was educated in staff, spear, and sword. I was frequently asked to give demonstrations for the king and his guests, often sparring with the other women. Yes, all women in the palace guard. Why? At any rate, the world had not known war for many years, though there were rebellions and revolts from time to time. As a result, not all those among the palace guard were as diligent in their duty as I was. The others were layabouts, gossips, women who would shirk their duty and leave their post. I had been raised right by my father, but my efforts to get the others in line bought only their ridicule. It was my king who gave me my name, Third Fervor. I became part of a lineage. The attack came without warning, in the middle of the night. The others fled, but I stood strong against the men who had come for my king. I killed four of them, and was swarmed by the others, my spear no match for them, not at that time in my life. I was beaten mercilessly as they went into the royal bedchambers and drew King Hermorious out. I had lost my vision from one too many kicks to the head, but I heard the sound when they decapitated him. I was thrown down in the dungeon. They came down to see me every day, and intended to execute me. The damage to my vision wasn¡¯t permanent, but I could only see faintly. The beatings were a sort of sport for them, as the day of my execution drew near. They did not like that I still spoke highly of the king, that I would not yield or break no matter what they came at me with. The portal appeared in my cell the night before my execution. I sat there, bloody and bruised, staring at it for many hours. I knew, instinctively, that it was an escape, but I had trouble knowing my duty to my king. Was I to stay and be killed before the crowds, a symbol of the devotion they all should have felt? Or was I to go elsewhere and live another day, the better to carry on my work. I had loved my king, and was filled with grief at his murder. I felt sorrow over my failure to protect him and his family. The entire royal line had been cut down, root and stem. After a night of contemplation, I hobbled through. I still don¡¯t know whether it was the right choice, or whether it was simply a moment of fear and weakness. I came through with nothing. I was nearly naked, battered and afraid. The new world had trees, which I had never seen before, and a sun that felt cold to me. There were tall mountains in seemingly all directions, bald peaks with what I would later learn was snow, something I had never experienced or seen before but which I would soon become well-acquainted with. It wasn¡¯t long before I was found by bandits, but as I had nothing for them to steal, they instead decided that they would sell me into slavery. Three days passed, and at least there were no beatings. I don¡¯t know whether they took pity on me or simply wanted me in better shape for the sale, but I was fed, given water, and even clothed in a dress I was sure was stolen. We didn¡¯t have slavery in the world I was from, but it instantly appealed to me. I was a hard worker and followed orders well, and knew that whoever my master proved to be, I would serve him as a proud slave. When we got to the slave market, I understood the others there as being, at best, like the women who had lazed about in their roles as palace guard, firming their stance only under the watchful eye of the palace matron or the king himself. At worst, the slaves were rebels, collared to keep them from running, bound to keep them from fighting. I stood tall, mostly healed by that point, wanting any prospective buyer to know that I had a trace of nobility to me, and that no collar would be required to keep me in line. I was bought by a merchant who set me up to be a maid to his wife. He was moving up in the world, and I was his first slave. Their house was a fine one, but nothing compared to the palace I had served in, and he, of course, was no king. I was thorough and diligent, and learned everything I needed to do very quickly, with only a few missteps. In truth, the merchant¡¯s wife, my new mistress, was herself a layabout, and there was hardly any work for me to do once the cooking, cleaning, and shopping was done. My mistress was only lazy, not cruel, so when I went to her begging for work, she asked me what I would prefer to do instead. Of course I replied that I would only do what she and her husband needed. After a time, and some questions on her part, she requested that I continue with the training I¡¯d done at the palace. It took a week before her husband discovered me in the backyard spinning a makeshift staff for the pleasure of his wife and a few of her friends. Soon enough I was sold again and left that household. I had healed more in the intervening time, and my skin was lightening somewhat with their weak sun, which they considered to be quite important ¡ª the mistress had been pale as a sheet, and while I would never be quite that color, my natural tone became quite light. I wasn¡¯t sad to leave the household, as inoffensive it had been, because my purchaser made his home in a castle. I was not owned by the king, not strictly. Instead, I was purchased by a mage of some renown. No one had particularly cared for my stories at the slave market, and I believe they thought it was a sign of mental illness. I think the demonstrations made it clear that I was in no way a liar. The mage wanted to know everything he could about where I had come from, and I was happy enough to tell him. I became his assistant, of a sort. He had some knowledge of the other worlds and their character, and hoped that I was the secret to traversing through the multiverse. He claimed that I was a good student but a poor thinker, and often lamented the fact that it had been a useless woman who had landed in his lap rather than a man. That rankled, of course. I had been a royal guard, vaunted for my skills. I didn¡¯t show my annoyance though, and carried on, hopeful that the king would see my worth and find me a more appropriate place to serve from. I was in the castle for two months before the other stepper arrived. Yes. I¡¯ve heard many terms for it, but that was the one that the wizard had used, and it¡¯s the one I default to. The term ¡°thresholder¡± is common. The other thresholder was after the king¡¯s vault, which stored a massive amount of magical energy. The energy was doled out for the royal wizards to work with, usually with a miser¡¯s eye toward their projects, but the thresholder wanted nearly half of what was in the vault, and I imagine that he would have demanded the whole thing if he¡¯d thought could get it. He was a technologist of the sort I¡¯ve seen several times since then. His world had been one of considerable science, and pieces of him had been replaced by machines, with something in his head that did a bit of his thinking for him. He wanted to bring knowledge to the kingdom, he said, reams of books that were valuable beyond measure, and he thought the magic energy was more than a fair trade for it. The king entertained some of these ideas, and within two weeks, the stranger had secured a position as a trusted adviser. A month passed before the king offered to part with his stores of magical energy. He would give only a sliver, a far cry from what the other thresholder had initially wanted, but it was deemed sufficient by both parties. He betrayed the king, of course. He had been holding back his power considerably, and disarmed a number of the guards once the vault was opened. He stole as much as he could carry, which amounted to two thirds of what had been stored, then left for the countryside, his purpose unclear. At the king¡¯s urging, I went after the other thresholder. I was given a spear to fight with, a magical one that was of considerable value and which the king could recall to himself. The plan was for me to find the enemy and take him using the spear, with both of us appearing in a chamber that had been prepared for us. The wizard came with me, as he considered me to be the answer to many questions about the worlds beside that one, of which he had some knowledge. We followed the smell of magic, a curious scent in that world of cardamom and juniper, and arrived at a tall tower that had been abandoned. The thresholder was attempting a spell of some sort that greatly excited the wizard, something that was meant to transform the entire world. I had no particular interest in that, but I knew my duty, and attacked like a banshee. I only needed to score a hit in order to bring him back with me to the prepared cell. We fought. I¡¯ve given these descriptions with some regularity. I¡¯ve served many kings, and most are curious about me and what my life has been like. If it¡¯s not the kings themselves, then it¡¯s the people around them, advisers, scientists, wizards and the like. I¡¯ve never enjoyed talking about the fights. Fighting, for me, is a matter of intense training and precise mechanics, but I take no thrill from it. It¡¯s simply something my body does, and has been conditioned to do. I don¡¯t like to describe them. I don¡¯t find it interesting to do so. The thresholder had a gun that let forth a beam of burning light. I moved as fast as I could and managed to dodge it, and as it swept across the wall, the wizard was sliced apart. The abandoned tower¡¯s walls were cut through, but the gun was difficult for the thresholder to control, and I had been training with better food than had ever been available to me at the royal palace I had grown up at. I reached him and failed to strike him with the spear, and was tossed against one of the walls. I was spared the fire of his gun when a piece of the now-crumbling tower came down on his arm. He went for his spell, intending to activate it though it wasn¡¯t ready, then I stabbed him in the stomach with my spear and sent us both back to the castle. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Whatever he¡¯d been trying, all it ended up doing was causing the release of the stored magic. It exploded, showering the kingdom in debris and blotting out the sun for days. I didn¡¯t see the end of it though. The other thresholder saw the strength and power of the cell that held us, thick steel obviously meant for something else ¡ª I didn¡¯t know what. He had lost his ray gun, and without it, he was weak. I fought him with the spear in that small space, battering him as he battered me, but with his injured arm, it wasn¡¯t much of a struggle. When I beat him, the portal opened. He clawed his way to it, implants leaking blue fluid, and flung himself through. I sat and waited. The king was busy dealing with the explosion, and I was some hours in the cell, staring at the portal. I wondered where it would take me, but I didn¡¯t want to leave my new king behind. I didn¡¯t have any real idea what would happen to a slave whose master had died, but I supposed I would default to the king, and either he would find another wizard to study me, or take me on as a loyal guard. It was, in the end, the king who sent me through the portal. I¡¯m not certain why. He was angry that his magic had been stolen and wasted, fearful of the poor crops that might come with dust blotting out the sky, worried that the spell which had been aborted might have disastrous aftereffects. He was upset with me for not having the answers. So I stepped through, and went to another world. ~~~~ It was the third or fourth time Perry had heard something about a ¡°spell¡± or a ¡°Grand Spell¡±, and whatever insane lens Third Fervor was seeing the world through, Perry trusted her a hell of a lot more than he trusted Xiyan. ¡°How many worlds have you been to?¡± asked Perry when that first story was done. ¡°Sixteen,¡± she replied. ¡°What¡¯s your record?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Record?¡± she asked. ¡°How many times have you won and how many have you lost?¡± asked Perry. If she had sixteen worlds under her belt, then he had cause to be very concerned about her power level. ¡°I have won only five,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°But it depends on what you mean by winning.¡± ¡°You beat the other person, the portal appears,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sometimes it¡¯s in service to a higher purpose,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°I have lost battles against other thresholders while desperately pulling them away from a battlefield. I¡¯ve gotten trounced while watching a major offensive crumble. These aren¡¯t, in any real sense, losses.¡± ¡°I suppose,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you?¡± asked Third Fervor. ¡°Five worlds, five wins,¡± said Perry. ¡°Impressive,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°I have been lucky not to die, though I have gone through those portals in poor condition many times.¡± ¡°Same,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even if I did end up winning.¡± ¡°It was that first world where I understood the difference between winning and losing,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°I won that world. I was sent off with supplies. Yet it wasn¡¯t a win in any true sense. I had failed my king. It was something that I vowed not to do again.¡± ~~~~ ¡°Where do you think he is?¡± asked Kes. ¡°He¡¯s Perry,¡± said Mette. ¡°He goes running off and doesn¡¯t call back in, even when he¡¯s got a radio. He¡¯s inconsiderate like that.¡± ¡°Well,¡± said Kes. ¡°I had good reasons, most of the time.¡± ¡°Then he¡¯s got good reasons this time,¡± shrugged Mette. ¡°We¡¯ll move the radio ship into place within the next day, then we¡¯ll know.¡± ¡°He could be dead,¡± said Kes. ¡°It¡¯s very possible,¡± said Mette. ¡°It could be he killed all the other thresholders and the portal opened up for him, and he stepped through without a second thought.¡± ¡°Do you not think much of me?¡± asked Kes. ¡°You¡¯re great in bed?¡± Mette ventured. She had been working on another piece of crude electronics, but she turned to smile at him. ¡°I¡¯m serious,¡± said Kes. He frowned at her. ¡°Whoever trained you, I¡¯d like to shake her hand,¡± said Mette. She let out a little laugh, even having seen his face. ¡°Come on Perry, is anything I¡¯m saying untrue?¡± ¡°I¡¯m considerate,¡± said Kes. ¡°Well, no,¡± said Mette. She turned back to face him. ¡°You left Esperide behind, and you had always planned to do so.¡± Kes pointed at her. ¡°So did you.¡± ¡°Do you think that I think that I¡¯m considerate?¡± asked Mette. ¡°No, I¡¯m a rat bastard. I¡¯m far, far worse than you. They were my people and I was one of their leaders, and I abandoned them after having a big fight about it. You can at least say that you were always an outsider, always a thresholder, somehow destined to move on, even though we know that¡¯s not true. You were with us two years, long enough to learn our ways, to become one of us, and you had a pair bond with a wonderful woman ¡ª Perry, I am a worse person than you. I acknowledge and accept that.¡± ¡°Kes,¡± said Kes. ¡°Perry is the other guy.¡± She waved a hand. ¡°You know what I mean.¡± ¡°So you think he¡¯s run off,¡± said Kes. ¡°No, I think he¡¯s just otherwise occupied and not checking in,¡± said Mette. ¡°I could try drawing the sword to me,¡± said Kes. He waved his hand in the air, but didn¡¯t actually try to call it. ¡°He¡¯s probably using it.¡± ¡°Probably,¡± said Mette. ¡°Is this about the teeth?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Is that why you think I¡¯m a shit?¡± Mette turned around to face him. ¡°You know I like you, right?¡± ¡°I do,¡± said Kes, hesitant. ¡°Me, or him?¡± ¡°Both,¡± said Mette. ¡°You¡¯ve got your flaws, and yes, one of those flaws is that you might strand me on this world by going through a portal.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not worried about that?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Because I¡¯m worried about that.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a fine world,¡± said Mette. ¡°I was hoping for more, and without Marchand we won¡¯t be able to progress as much as I¡¯d like, but if I were stranded here, at least I would have you.¡± Kes nodded. In that light, he found himself very grateful for her presence. She¡¯d been very kind to him, he thought, and in the counterfactual world where he¡¯d been cloned and then left to his own devices, he didn¡¯t think that he¡¯d have handled it nearly so well. ¡°Perry likes to do things on his own,¡± said Mette. ¡°Part of that is because he¡¯s very strong, and part of it is that he enjoys autonomy more than most people.¡± ¡°Most people ¡­ who are part of a collectivist moving city that requires a strong sense of community and who have all known each other and their purpose from birth?¡± asked Kes. ¡°I have my biases,¡± said Mette with a shrug. ¡°I have only been to two worlds so far. But I¡¯ve read a lot of the Gratbook, even some of the things that weren¡¯t science related, and I made myself a student of you and your ways. We spent a lot of time together. I listened to a lot of your stories, both about yourself, and the world you came from. You hated the feeling of being dragged along by outside events. So you ended up liking this feeling of being alone, a powerful agent of change, the man who will save the world all on his lonesome. You gave us many gifts, but always kept a few back for yourself, and handing off information to engineers was never really your thing. Probably Perry is out there being independent and discarding the notion that he should check in.¡± Kes considered this. ¡°He¡¯s probably just busy.¡± ¡°Probably,¡± nodded Mette. ~~~~ Third Fervor did, in fact, talk until her voice was raspy. She made it through eight of the sixteen worlds. Her second world had been an ice planet, beset by a perpetual magic winter. It hadn¡¯t always been that way, and in fact, she suspected that it was the result of some kind of world-spanning magic spell like the one the other thresholder might have been trying to set up. Perry didn¡¯t think she had much reason to think that, but he didn¡¯t press her on the logic all that much. Logic didn¡¯t seem to be a strong suit. On the ice planet there was a kingdom, as there was in almost all of Third Fervor¡¯s stories. They were dwarves, not humans, and lived in the deepest caves of the tallest mountains, entirely dependent on lightstones that were mined up from the ground and placed into large chambers where managed crops were grown in nightsoil. Third Fervor pledged herself to the dwarf king, and from her description, became something between an entertainer and royal guard. She was prized for her stories of two different worlds, and often entertained the dwarf king and his people. Third Fervor¡¯s stories seemed to come in two general varieties. The ice world was the first sort, where Third Fervor fell in with some kind of king, entered his service or the service of people around him, and raised herself up through diligence, loyalty, and superpowers. After a certain amount of time had passed, the other thresholder would show up, either at the head of an opposing army, as a wormy adviser, or as an assassin. It seemed to be the nature of monarchies that everyone was at all times trying to get the favor and confidence of the king, and there were a thousand avenues for a thresholder to attempt. In the other variety of stories, there was no monarchy as such, only monarchists, usually attempting to restore the former glory of their chosen king. These were kings in exile, kings in disgrace, kings without kingdoms and often without friends. In these stories, Third Fervor was the single best gift any king could ever ask for, a crusader of unparalleled power. It put her in the position of being a part of a small, ragtag group of rebels against the current world order, which she seemed to have no objection to. The ice planet was the first sort of story, and it wasn¡¯t long before raiders from the surface came descending down into the dwarven cave complex to steal everything of worth. They were human, ¡®snow-walkers¡¯, covered in furs and armed with stolen weapons, led by a woman with a magical ring unknown to the dwarves. Third Fervor had not, at that point, fully understood what a thresholder was, but the attacker didn¡¯t seem to know either. They fought each other three times, once in the dwarven city, a second time in the raider camp, and a third time on a frozen lake. Third Fervor had been clubbed and beaten, and woke up to frostbite and a portal in front of her, with no memory of how the fight had actually ended. She had debated on whether to go through, but she was starting to have some inkling that the portals appeared because she was needed somehow. The dwarf king had not fully accepted her pledge, and in fact, being human, couldn¡¯t be a permanent fixture of their society. Third Fervor stories ended in different ways. She always belabored the leaving, as it was inevitably an abdication of what she felt was her duty. Sometimes she went through with an injury, knowing that she wouldn¡¯t live without whatever was on the other side of the portal. Other times she was sent through by the command of whatever king she was working under. Once she had been forced through by an outside party, which Perry had only heard of a single time before, with Cosme. The snow world had been followed by a water world with thousand foot waves, and after that was a world where Third Fervor was a good three feet taller than anyone else. She lavished quite a bit of description on the kingdoms and their kings, but less on the magics she had seen. Perry didn¡¯t know whether that was because she wanted to hide her powers from him or if she simply didn¡¯t care that much. Her fifth world had been the first that Perry would have considered futuristic, and he couldn¡¯t tell whether it came off like a space opera because of her medieval world of origin, or because they had a peculiar tech level. There she served a space king, which was apparently not a translation error, and traveled to a number of different planets in his service as an enforcer before running up against another thresholder who was cynically manipulating a rebellion. In the sixth world, she finally ran into another monarchist. The two of them were, so far as Perry could tell, mirrors of one another. The kingdoms were all immensely tall towers with buildings that orbited around them, and wastelands of different flavors between them. ¡°I was called to serve my king, and she was called to serve hers,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°I wish that it could always be that way. We fought on battlefields, empowered by our kings, scything through the footsoldiers and meeting in clashes against each other. We fought eighteen times, and spoke often when the war was paused. We believed in duty to our kings.¡± ¡°And in the end?¡± asked Perry. ¡°She beat me,¡± replied Third Fervor. ¡°She said a prayer for me before she walked into the portal, and I dragged my way through, following after. I hope we meet again someday.¡± She sounded wistful, and Perry wondered whether there had been anything else going on between them, or only if it was a meeting of two people who felt like they understood each other. If there was one thing that was lacking in Third Fervor¡¯s stories, it was any hint of sex or romance, and even when that sometimes felt like the implication of her arrangements with her kings, that was never stated outright. They were always kings, Perry noted, never queens. The one exception was the seventh world, where it seemed that the king had genuinely loved her, though if she had felt anything but duty and loyalty in return, she didn¡¯t say anything about it. He was the one who had gifted her the armor she now wore, which she claimed was as strong as her resolve. It was an interesting detail that Perry filed away for later, and very much did seem to be literal, at least as she told it. That meant that all he needed to do was break her resolve, and the armor would rip like wet paper. She had preferred the metal skin of armor to the long strips of tied-together cloth they wore in that world. She had left the palace often, moving through a landscape that shifted and warped around her, never the same twice, but always with the landmarks in the same general vicinity. That was another of the themes of her stories: she was a solitary creature. Per her telling, this was never by choice, but always because of the actions of others, and sometimes their failings. She was quick to criticize others for their lack of duty, loyalty, or faith, and Perry thought that she was probably pretty insufferable if she was leaking even half of those thoughts. She thought herself better than others, but not in a boastful way ¡ª she thought that everyone should be on her level, and was disappointed that they weren¡¯t. It was a hectoring sort of superiority. ¡°I¡¯ve talked so long,¡± said Third Fervor, when she had finished the story of her eighth world, where a foot-thick layer of honey-like sap coated most of the countryside and could be hardened into tools and buildings with special salves. It had been a rare non-human world, with insectile people. ¡°What of you?¡± ¡°Me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You want to know the worlds I¡¯ve been to?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± she said. He could hear how raw her throat was. She had been putting effort into talking to him, and had become less coherent as she¡¯d gone on. ¡°It feels as though the monarchies are under attack through the multiverse, and I am the only one fighting in their name. But I know that must not be true. I¡¯m sent where I¡¯m needed, and perhaps ¡­ perhaps the places I¡¯m needed are those where the situation is most dire.¡± ¡°Selection bias,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t serve a king now,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°Have you, in the past?¡± ¡°I have,¡± said Perry. ¡°In the kingdom of Seraphinus I was mistaken for a knight, and in being mistaken for one, that was what I became. I fought against the forces that beset the kingdom and learned under the instruction of the king¡¯s most wise wizard. And when I left, it was with a heavy heart. I had killed the other thresholder, who had come to the court as a knight and later led the forces of evil.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t object to kings,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°No,¡± Perry lied. ¡°A king who is good for his people, who is wise and strong, that¡¯s a king I could bend the knee for.¡± He paused for only a bit, weighing how gullible she was, how deep her naivete ran. ¡°Of all the men you¡¯ve served, how does the Last King stand up?¡± He said it like he was interested. ¡°Every king has his own sort of nobility,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°Some are good men, and others are not. Sometimes what the kingdom needs is a bad man. Edmunt Thorne II did not want the title of Last King. He wanted to be a reformer, part of a new order, marrying the best of monarchism with a deep understanding of the libraries and how they should work. He has his oddities, but most men do.¡± ¡°I¡¯d like to speak with him some day,¡± said Perry. He held his breath for a moment, hoping that wasn¡¯t too much. Likely she would offer to use the marble, but that would let Perry get nanites all over the king, which would mean better surveillance and possibly let him know when Fenilor made his move. ¡°I¡¯ll see what I can do,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°He¡¯s interested in meeting with you as well.¡± Perry smiled at that. It was more than he could have hoped for. Chapter 116 - The King and I, pt 1 ¡°You made this?¡± asked Nima, looking at the mask that Kes had shown her. He¡¯d come to her bedroom to show her. The makeshift workshop area had gotten more disorganized since the last time he¡¯d been up, and there were more communal tools squirreled away. ¡°Why is it ¡­ like that?¡± ¡°I went with my own designs,¡± said Kes. ¡°The standard designs are like that for a reason,¡± said Nima. She set the mask down, and Kes quickly snatched it back up. He¡¯d worked hard on it. ¡°There are cultural components to the masks.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not part of the history or the culture,¡± said Kes. ¡°I made it this way because it fit in with my culture and my history.¡± ¡°Explain it to me,¡± said Nima. She was frowning at the mask Kes had made. ¡°Uh,¡± said Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t know what the media of your world is like, but ¡­ superheroes are fictional people who came from another world, or were in a freak accident, or the result of some kind of supersoldier program, and they have special powers, which they use to fight other people with special powers.¡± ¡°And we¡¯re superheroes?¡± asked Nima with a frown. ¡°Well,¡± said Kes. ¡°Yes, but also no.¡± He held up the mask. ¡°This was the mask of a superhero who was known for his speed. It¡¯s just a test.¡± Nima frowned at him. ¡°And it worked?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Kes. ¡°I thought you would want to try it for yourself, see if there are some cultural connections that you can dredge up, masks that have some kind of deep meaning to you.¡± Nima frowned down at her workspace, then looked up at Kes. ¡°You figured this out on your own?¡± she asked. Kes shrugged. ¡°I haven¡¯t been doing a whole lot else.¡± ¡°You have,¡± said Nima. ¡°There are things that I haven¡¯t been a part of. I¡¯ve seen you with that man, Dirk. I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re hiding from me, but I know it¡¯s something.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Kes. ¡°Is it because I wanted to save those people?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Or because I¡¯m not willing to push the agenda of this culture?¡± ¡°Depends on which thing we¡¯re talking about,¡± said Kes. ¡°Some of the things I haven¡¯t looped you in on, it¡¯s because I was told not to tell you. Other things ¡­ yes, I¡¯m a little worried that you¡¯re going to stab me in the back. I¡¯d prefer to remain unstabbed.¡± She really seemed more like the sort to stab him in the front. ¡°You¡¯re going to Thirlwell,¡± said Nima. She pushed her chair back from the table. ¡°I heard they were preparing one of Mette¡¯s devices for another airship. Am I to be on that airship?¡± ¡°It¡¯s complicated,¡± said Kes. There were all kinds of potential problems that were going to crop up with being Perry¡¯s clone, and Kes was barrelling headlong into the biggest of them, which was that he was pretending to be Perry while not actually having the authority of the original Perry. Kes could of course decide things on his own, but Perry could override those decisions. That meant that Kes was left to second guess what the original Perry would do, which wasn¡¯t a good feeling, and was surprisingly difficult to do. ¡°It¡¯s to be the final assault on the final king?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Because you¡¯re right that I wouldn¡¯t be a part of that. You said yourself that we¡¯re thresholders, in the business of thresholding. But it seems to me that Mette has given the side of the antimonarchists new technology, and you¡¯ve certainly given them material aid.¡± She stood up and crossed her arms. The amulet was around her neck, which meant that she could easily wrap herself in armor at practically a moment¡¯s notice. ¡°I can¡¯t beat you in a battle,¡± said Nima. ¡°I know that. But we¡¯ve been put together for a reason, and I can only imagine that the reason is that I was meant to convince you not to go on this course of action.¡± Kes wasn¡¯t sure whether or not he could beat her in a battle. He still had some techniques learned from the Great Arc, and an enviable musculature, and he was completely out of her weight class with much better reach ¡­ but so far as he could tell, he was only human. Once that shell of metal wrapped around her, he wasn¡¯t sure he could kill her, and all she would need to do was grab a weapon, of which there were plenty. His eyes went to the implements for gouging and carving wood. They would do a good job on flesh. He had never seen her fight, and she was an elf, from a world where that might have meant enhanced senses, reflexes, strength ¡ª anything, really. He was afraid of Nima. Nima. She was barely even a thresholder. ¡°Convince me then,¡± said Kes. He was feeling fear, and could only hope that it didn¡¯t show on his face. It had been so much easier being second sphere, knowing that his expression was tightly under his control. Nima let out a breath and gathered her thoughts. Her fingers went to her amulet, and Kes tensed up, but she was just touching it, as if a nervous habit. He didn¡¯t think she saw him flinch. ¡°They¡¯re robbing people of individual agency,¡± said Nima. ¡°There is no room for innovation, for greatness. When I first came here, I saw something interesting in the lanterns, and presented my case, and I was told no, that it wasn¡¯t the culture. It was a bit of metalworking, a germ of what¡¯s inside this amulet, adapted for lanterns, and it could have changed lives for the better.¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Kes. ¡°But if it¡¯s a rediscovery, something that they already knew ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima. ¡°That¡¯s missing the point. They¡¯re a people who reduce. That¡¯s the backbone of their success, making sure that everyone is at the level of a commoner, rather than making sure that everyone is at the level of a king. You were in that bedroom with me. You saw the fineness of the tapestries, the woodwork, everything else. There are certain things the culture is incapable of producing, incapable of maintaining. They want every tiny thing to be local, to abolish countries and have only their symboulions running themselves, and they know that this won¡¯t work. Perry, you¡¯ve seen the Command Authorities, the scrip economy, all these concessions to ideals that are, at their core, nonsense. They¡¯re trying to replace a strong king with a weak collective.¡± ¡°They¡¯re less weak than you¡¯d think,¡± said Kes. ¡°And the contradictions ¡­ acknowledging that certain problems require global solutions by some central authority isn¡¯t them giving up, it¡¯s not them being hypocrites, it¡¯s a level of pragmatism that frankly, most ideologues don¡¯t have.¡± ¡°Was it pragmatic, to execute those people?¡± asked Nima. Her eyes were cold and hard. ¡°No,¡± said Kes. ¡°No, that was driven by emotion. It was plain, cruel retribution.¡± He didn¡¯t want to argue it, because they had argued it before, but it was clear that it had made an impact on her. ¡°What do you want from me?¡± ¡°To not aid them,¡± said Nima. ¡°If you want to be a neutral third party, Perry, then be that, don¡¯t hand them weapons and tools. Don¡¯t fight on their behalf.¡± ¡°You want strict neutrality,¡± said Kes. ¡°I ¡­ can¡¯t offer that.¡± ¡°Why not?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Because Third Fervor will have all the power of the Kingdom of Thirlwell behind her,¡± said Kes. ¡°Because if we don¡¯t get what we can from the culture, I¡¯m not sure we¡¯re going to be able to stand up against her. There are factors here that you don¡¯t understand, and I know that I haven¡¯t done a lot to engender trust, but ¡­ I¡¯m going to try to settle this peacefully, for your sake, or at least as peaceful as it gets for thresholders. Okay?¡± Nima stared into his eyes, then let go of her grip on her amulet. Maybe it had been a threat. ¡°Okay,¡± she said. ¡°Thank you.¡± Kes could only hope that it wasn¡¯t already too late. ~~~~ ¡°He wants to meet with you,¡± said Third Fervor over the radio. ¡°Terms and conditions?¡± asked Perry. It was the next day. She had slept, and Perry had too, which had required finding a small island out in international waters. ¡°No weapons,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°It will be in a place of our choosing. He¡¯s wary, but he believes that a talk might be productive. He will offer you his protection for the duration of the meeting.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a bold risk,¡± said Perry. ¡°He doesn¡¯t want to talk using the marble?¡± ¡°He prefers to face things head on,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°He has a warrior¡¯s spirit.¡± Perry had listened to the conversation where they¡¯d planned the whole thing. He didn¡¯t think much of the Last King, and their plan sounded terrible right from the start. They weren¡¯t planning on betraying him. It really was an attempt to pull him over to their side, in part because of Third Fervor¡¯s belief that Perry couldn¡¯t possibly have been the assassin who killed the other kings. She had been an incredible boon for him and his kingdom, and he was greedy enough to want a second thresholder with his own experiences and knowledge of other worlds. The biggest thing that Perry felt toward Third Fervor was pity. She was moving between the worlds seeking something, and he was pretty sure that she wasn¡¯t getting it. What she wanted was a strongman type to have ultimate authority over both her and the world, and what she was getting were people who didn¡¯t love or respect her, and often showed outright incompetence, if not necessarily deep flaws. The Last King had sniffed his own farts a bit too much. He thought he was a brilliant scientist, and delighted in his title of Last King, which he said with the opposite meaning that the rest of the world did. Third Fervor had brought a great amount of reading material with her, and had given all of it over to the king, who didn¡¯t seem to understand most of it. Royal scientists and engineers had been hard at work under the administration of the Duke of Progress, and from reading between the lines, most of the duke¡¯s job was to laud praise on the king for insights and understanding while diverting the king away from the actual machinery and planning. The Last King thought himself a master manipulator, and also thought that this was a great quality to broadcast to people. In reality, he was simply king, and the fact that he got his way mostly owed itself to his obscene wealth or the fact that he could command the royal guard to do anything he wanted them to. He held the purse strings and the metaphorical executioner¡¯s ax, and thought himself clever for using those tools. Perry had been listening in on what happened in the throne room, and there were virtually no surprises left. Combined with the nanites he¡¯d dropped at the library, which were transmitting back for analysis by Marchand, the picture of Thirlwellian politics was pretty well-developed. None of it painted a pretty picture. The previous king had ennobled a number of merchants, not granting them anything so crass as land, but instead giving them royal charters to what he considered vital functions of governance. This was the reason there was such a thing as a Duke of Technology and Duke of Progress: these men were a weird mix of civil servants and nobles, tasked with carrying out a duty, but also expected to extract some wealth in the process. This hadn¡¯t been a popular decision, and continued to remain unpopular into the reign of the current king, mostly because the Ducal Cabinet had proven extremely uneven in their competence. The Duke of Housing was widely considered to be complete scum, and had even suffered two assassination attempts, while the Duke of Health was lauded in the papers for the miracles his offices had been producing. It wasn¡¯t clear to Perry how Third Fervor had brought in knowledge, but it was clear that she¡¯d had a lot of it, along with an ability to share it, and possibly some capacity to implement it. Perry knew well that it was one thing to understand the principles of radio, another thing entirely to build one, and a third thing altogether to actually make one using unfamiliar tools, standards, and materials. Gunpowder could be made using 75% nitrate, 15% charcoal, and 10% sulfur, but figuring out what the locals called those things, where they could be sourced from, and how they needed to be processed was something else entirely. A great deal of the medical advancements were almost certainly from Third Fervor, because there were stories about inoculation shots for the young and drugs given to wipe away diseases ¡ª vaccines and antibiotics. The gunpowder weapons were new too, and there were a lot of them, supposedly getting better by the day. Those were the weapons that would be trained on Perry, and from everything that had been said about him, he was reasonably sure that the armor wouldn¡¯t be too badly damaged by them. They weren¡¯t hand cannons, not like the one that had forced him to become a werewolf. The damage from even the strongest of them wouldn¡¯t be enough. The heavy stuff was a different story, and much more of a worry. There were mortars, rockets, and other instruments of destruction, many of which had been mounted to airships. They had the capacity to strike at Berus and then simply leave. With a week¡¯s notice, they could get to anywhere around the sea, with barely any chance at a response. They had planes, though they were relatively crude, and Perry had heard their first radio transmissions, which were being tested in a lab ¡ª after which, he double-checked that his own transmissions were as secure as Marchand could make them. ¡°You¡¯ve done impressive work here,¡± Perry said to Third Fervor. ¡°I can see your imprint on the kingdom.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°I only gave them tools.¡± ¡°They have a decent chance of fighting back, if it comes to that,¡± said Perry. ¡°A war fought with weapons isn¡¯t the kind that worries the king,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°What worries him is the people and their whims. I¡¯ve given him tools to make their lives better, to show them what a leader can be, but it might not be enough. They might turn on him, seeking to better their own lives at the cost of their neighbors.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t think much of the people,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have seen rebellions and uprisings,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°There have been precious few times I¡¯ve thought there was some germ of truth. Usually it¡¯s power-seeking or greed, dressed up in ideals that none of those at the lead actually hold.¡± Perry let that pass, though the urge to argue with her was all consuming. ¡°We have time before we¡¯ll meet in person again. Can you tell me of one of those times? You hadn¡¯t finished recounting your worlds.¡± ¡°If that¡¯s your wish, I can continue,¡± said Third Fervor, though she didn¡¯t seem particularly happy about it. ~~~~ I came next to the world of philosophers. They had solved every problem there was to be solved with magic more powerful than anything I had seen before. One had only to wave a hand, and a drink would appear in it. They had lavish accommodations with sprawling rooms, and I was put into one of them on first arrival, then left to my own devices. It was a land without war, without strife, without poverty or struggle. They were thinkers, all of them, men and women obsessed with knowing things, and more to the point, arguing about them. They had reams of books, and seemed to produce new books with great regularity, even if it was often argued that everything that could be known already was known. They held debates in great open forums, which I sat in on but did not contribute much to. I attached myself to their philosopher king. Because everyone was well cared for and no violence existed, he had no particular use for me once I had told him everything I knew. He set me to his books to learn what I could, in the hopes that I might produce a book of my own, or at least rise to the level of a skilled debater that could act in his interests. I turned out to be rather hopeless at the art of debate, and was trounced by even the lowest of those he brought in to train with me. It didn¡¯t matter what handicaps he placed on my opponents, or how absurd the opposing position was. And I was terrible at what he called the counterfactuals, arguing for that which I didn¡¯t believe in. I was only given purpose when the other thresholder arrived. He was a short man with a regal bearing and long locks of hair, and he claimed to have been a king before he began traveling between the worlds. I took an instant liking to him, but of course I had already pledged myself to the philosopher king, and at any rate, my opponent wasn¡¯t looking for any followers. He was a warrior king, once a great leader of a nomadic people whose mounts he would wax poetic about. He¡¯d gone through the portal because he believed it was a ruler¡¯s duty to face the unknown for the sake of his people. There was something admirable in that, even if the result had been his isolation from those he cared for, and what amounted to abdication. Like me, he was a curiosity, but also like me, after a time people grew bored and found that there wasn¡¯t much to extract from his presence. Violence was functionally impossible in that world. People could not be hurt, by decree of the philosopher king. The only exception to this was with the consent of both parties, and even then, it was only allowed under certain forms of competition. I begged the philosopher king to allow us a bout, but he declined, seeing no reason to allow us to have at each other. Bodily destruction was not to be the end for us, it seemed, and for months we were stuck there as objects of interest while we learned what we could from the philosophers and their many books. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. In the end, it was a power struggle that gave us an opening. The philosopher king had challengers, and one of them proposed a contest of wits and philosophical acumen: a competition of teaching. I was to be taught in the art of debate, as was the nomad king, and once the teaching was done, we would meet in one of the large agoras before a crowd of thousands. For a month¡¯s time, I had the philosopher king¡¯s personal attention, and when he wasn¡¯t tutoring me, I was being trained by others in the ways of debate. I didn¡¯t take to it easily, but I did improve somewhat. My progress was not to the philosopher king¡¯s desires though, and he despaired of my winning the match, even leading up to the day it was to begin. We stood before the crowd, voices amplified, over the course of three days. Each day would have a different topic, chosen at random ahead of time, judged by a panel of experts whose impartiality was beyond repute. All this would have been fine amusement for the philosophers, but there was an added twist that made it something they had never seen before: the debate would have bloody violence involved. We could not hurt each other through conventional means, but as a special allowance, wounds would be applied in accordance with how good our points were. When we spoke, apparitions would appear in the air and hurtle toward our opponent, and to stop them, we would have to provide a refutation in time, or take the cuts. A month hadn¡¯t been enough time. We were amateurs fighting in front of professionals, and the crowds watching us were getting as close to jeering as they could get in that setting. The system of flying wounds was mediated by the judges, who seemed to know from the outset how solid an argument or bit of evidence was. We were children, in essence. After the fight, my king paced back and forth in front of me, layering his critiques on top of each other, recalling every specific wording of every sentence I had uttered. He decried that I had not done what he had trained me for, that I was an imbecile, a simpleton, the bane of his existence ¡ª and the funny thing is, I had won. The second debate I lost, and the king¡¯s reaction was even worse. I came out of it dripping with blood, and he wouldn¡¯t allow the automedics to heal me until he¡¯d spent a full hour laying into me about the deficiencies of my intellect. You may think that cruel, but I agreed with it, and I promised to give it my all, to serve him as he demanded. He thought that his title as king was on the line, you see, that they might reject his rule entirely if I was not able to shepherd a simpleton to victory. The topics of debate had been random, as I¡¯ve said. The first was on whether or not animals felt pain, with myself being on the side of them not feeling it. The second was on whether we had moral duty to each other, and I was tasked with taking a nuanced position that I didn¡¯t fully understand and don¡¯t think I could explain to you now. The third was on the necessity of kings. I was tasked with arguing in favor of them. To this day, I don¡¯t know whether someone put their thumb on the scale. If I had been tasked with arguing the opposite point, I would simply have lost. Instead, I was given a position that I would have voluntarily chosen to argue from ¡ª and against someone who was a king himself, in his own way, even if it was of a nomadic tribe that wouldn¡¯t have filled a tenth of a city in my home world. I didn¡¯t just win, I won without a scratch on me, no argument left undeflected, no defenses against my assault. It was one of my great triumphs, seeing the enemy leave through a portal in great shame. It was a victory of words, not of raw power and who could use it better. I was hesitant to go through the portal myself, but the philosopher king commanded it, having had more than his fill of me. ~~~~ ¡°Did you get anything from that world?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What do you mean?¡± asked Third Fervor. ¡°Most worlds have some kind of power to them,¡± said Perry. ¡°So far as I know, it¡¯s not a constant, but it¡¯s close to being one. I was wondering what you got from there, if that¡¯s not prying too much.¡± ¡°I was gifted with knowledge,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°The ability to take it in, distribute it, share it. It¡¯s what I¡¯ve used here, to help along this kingdom. I¡¯ve put whole books into the heads of our scientists and doctors.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s ¡­ arguably worthless in a fight.¡± ¡°It is,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°But it¡¯s helped me to integrate with the worlds I find myself in, and to help the kingdoms to understand the things they need to understand.¡± Perry considered this. ¡°You know a lot then?¡± he asked. ¡°You¡¯ve essentially read every book in the libraries of this kingdom?¡± ¡°I have,¡± said Third Fervor. The question that Perry was burning to ask was ¡®and you still believe this shit?¡¯ He didn¡¯t ask it though, couldn¡¯t ask it. She was a true believer, and in spite of what the Last King had said, she wasn¡¯t about to be worn down by anyone repeating something over and over. It was a level of resolve that would have been impressive if it had been directed at something else. ¡°I suppose it comes in handy when you need to learn everything you can about some new sort of magic,¡± said Perry. ¡°It does,¡± replied Third Fervor. ¡°It¡¯s weak in some ways, as you¡¯ve said, but I¡¯m fond of it. It helps me to integrate.¡± There was a lull in the conversation, and Perry could hear Third Fervor tapping her fingers. ¡°Do you want me to go on recounting worlds?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Eventually, I guess, but it¡¯s been a lot. Tell me about ¡­ your family.¡± ¡°I move between worlds, and have no family,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°You had mentioned your father raising you right,¡± said Perry. There was a bit of silence. ¡°Why do you want to know?¡± she asked. ¡°Just curious,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t ever do getting-to-know-you type chats?¡± But as soon as he¡¯d asked it, he knew the answer. ¡°No,¡± she said. There was a pause. ¡°I was one of seven children. We were given daily lessons before lunch and dinner, moral and practical instruction, and woken early for our father¡¯s education. He was the master of the house, and we were subordinate to him. It was that way throughout the kingdom, and I¡¯ve seen enough worlds to know that it¡¯s not always how it¡¯s done, even in kingdoms where the king rules supreme. There¡¯s something nice about it though, the idea that it all nests together. I¡¯ve always appreciated that about monarchies. Most of them are like that, a tower of authority.¡± ¡°My mother was a cellist, a type of musician,¡± said Perry. ¡°I had two sisters. Still have two sisters, I guess, since they¡¯re out there somewhere, still living their lives with a missing brother.¡± ¡°You weren¡¯t forced to leave, like I was?¡± asked Third Fervor. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, I could very easily have just walked away from the portal and continued on with my life.¡± ¡°I would have never,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°I know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I understand that about you now.¡± ¡°Wouldn¡¯t they miss you, your family?¡± asked Third Fervor. ¡°Some of them,¡± said Perry. ¡°My friends too. I don¡¯t know that anyone would have dedicated their life to closing the chapter on my missing persons report, but people would have been distressed and mourned me. Probably they would assume that I took my own life, given that I didn¡¯t drain my bank accounts. Or ¡­ I was on a walk through the woods at the time, so they would assume I fell down or something. It would be puzzling for them that there¡¯s no body, I guess, and not enough forest that you couldn¡¯t have a hundred people search the whole thing.¡± It was something he hadn¡¯t given much thought to. He¡¯d had a discussion with Richter, but that was his first world, and it seemed very far away. ¡°The king would like to meet sooner than planned,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°Does that work for you?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Works. I¡¯m eager to meet him.¡± ~~~~ ¡°It¡¯s getting to me,¡± said Kes. ¡°He¡¯s probably dead,¡± said Mette. She shot him a smile. ¡°Not funny,¡± said Kes. ¡°You know, you weren¡¯t like this when I was him.¡± ¡°People become different animals when put in different circumstances,¡± said Mette. ¡°You back someone into a corner and they¡¯ll show their fangs, but if you treat them with kindness, they¡¯ll unfurl for you.¡± ¡°See, I thought it was a little mean, suggesting that he¡¯d died,¡± said Kes. ¡°Oh, I¡¯m just voicing the unvoiced,¡± said Mette. ¡°But hey, I had a thought.¡± ¡°About?¡± asked Kes. Anything to distract him from the radio silence. The airship was taking longer than planned, and Kes wasn¡¯t sure what he was going to do if it got nothing back from its transmissions. ¡°About March,¡± said Mette. ¡°It ties in, actually. From everything you said, Teaguewater was the first time that Marchand¡¯s computation centers got seriously injured. He was hurt badly enough that there were some doubts about the integrity of his processing and what he had in storage. From everything I understand about the distributed computing architecture, when the processors in one part of the armor drop out, they¡¯re compensated for by processing in a different part of the armor, and the end result was that you had a cobbled-together version of Marchand for ¡­ how long?¡± ¡°A few months,¡± said Kes. ¡°Right up until I could start fixing him with the second sphere. And you think that explains it? Miswiring?¡± ¡°The thing you were doing in Teaguewater, the primary thing, was moving against a king,¡± said Mette. ¡°At least, as you¡¯ve described it to me.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure I would say that was true,¡± said Kes. ¡°The king was using Cosme, doing what I presume the Last King is doing now. If you have a bunch of soldiers, manufacturing, and maybe some superpowers, you can gain enormous power in a very short amount of time. The king of Teaguewater was going to sail across the ocean and make a great Reclamation, and if we hadn¡¯t stopped him, it probably would have worked, given that he had vampiric supersoldiers. But as far as the fights went ¡­ I¡¯m not sure that I would say that the king was my primary antagonist. I never met him.¡± ¡°You were injured by the king¡¯s soldiers, yes?¡± asked Mette. ¡°And you had many conversations about killing the king?¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Kes. ¡°And Marchand, in a weakened state, was privy to those conversations,¡± said Mette. ¡°My argument is that it might be like the way a child learns something when young and later, builds up a system of thought to support the thing they¡¯ve learned.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t think the analogy works, but ¡­ maybe. He¡¯s spent a lot of time on self-diagnosis, trying to rebuild and repair. Do you think if you had access to the code you could unwire that quirk?¡± ¡°Not in the slightest,¡± said Mette. ¡°For the most part, he¡¯s not coded. It¡¯s a mess of mathematics, and even his designers didn¡¯t have a full understanding of everything inside. It¡¯s possible I could alter the superstructure to divert away from those thoughts, but would you really want to?¡± ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t I?¡± asked Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Mette shrugged. ¡°He¡¯s your loyal companion. If he changes as part of your adventures, reverting him seems ¡­ utilitarian.¡± ¡°Utilitarian in a bad way,¡± said Kes. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Mette. ¡°And with the changes that he has now, the phantom processing that might actually be coming from you, he arguably rises to the level of a person. If he¡¯s not a person, then he¡¯s still as close as you¡¯ve had to a constant.¡± ¡°He¡¯s not linked to me,¡± said Kes. ¡°He¡¯s linked to Perry.¡± ¡°Ah, right,¡± said Mette. ¡°Well, I guess I¡¯ll have to have this whole conversation over again.¡± She shrugged. ¡°You think there¡¯s merit?¡± ¡°I¡¯d think there was more merit if I were a staunch anti-monarchist,¡± said Kes. ¡°But I¡¯m not, and neither is Perry. We¡¯d both tear down the monarchy if it were up to us, obviously, but we¡¯re not going to go out of our way to crusade against it.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a lazy anti-monarchist,¡± said Mette. ¡°You have lots of other priorities getting in the way.¡± Kes frowned. ¡°You think that it¡¯s a problem?¡± he asked. ¡°Marchand?¡± ¡°Impossible to say until it becomes a problem,¡± said Mette. ~~~~ The meeting place was away from the castle, in a park that had been closed down for the occasion. Tall trees towered over them, swaying slightly in the breeze, and Third Fervor faced down Perry. She was fully armored, spear in hand, and he was without his sword. ¡°You¡¯re unarmed?¡± she asked. ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Perry, which was absolutely not true. He had the ring, which would open the shelfspace, which was where his sword was. He¡¯d been careful to land well outside the park, hopefully away from prying eyes, then strolled in. Aside from the sword, which was essentially within arm¡¯s reach, the shoulder gun was safely tucked away but ready to fire at a moment¡¯s notice. Perry hadn¡¯t revealed that in the fight, which he was now thankful for. There was a good chance that it would get him out of a jam. Aside from that, he had a few other surprises prepared, just in case this was somehow a trap. Given that he¡¯d listened in on them talking about it, he was skeptical. ¡°Then I¡¯m going to bring the guards first,¡± said Third Fervor. She went over to a tree with a particularly thick truck and placed her hand against it. A portal opened up, showing the stone interior of what was probably the castle, and a dozen men in armor, all of them wearing masks of one sort or another. These weren¡¯t the masks the men on the airship had been wearing. Instead, they were integrated into the armor, making the helmets look bulky, as though the men beneath them had oversized heads. Of the dozen guards, four had spears, four had swords, and four had rifles ¡ª of much better make than the ones that Perry had been attacked with. They filed out of the portal like they had practiced it and formed ranks in front of the tree, facing each other but not looking directly at Perry. The portal closed, and when it opened back up, Edmunt Thorne II, the Last King stepped through. He was surprisingly tall. From his high voice, Perry had thought he¡¯d be a little guy, but no, the Last King was at least six and a half feet tall, and while he was lanky rather than ox-thick, there was still something intimidating about him. He had a gun of his own, a thick handgun that maybe seemed closer to a sawed-off shotgun. It was fancy, the work of a craftsman who placed a great deal of emphasis on things looking nice. Weapon aside, the king was dressed in fur-trimmed robes with hose and a doublet beneath it. He had a golden crown perched on his head, bedecked with jewels. His face held a smile. ¡°Peregrin Holzmann,¡± he said. ¡°Traveler from another world, like our dear Third Fervor. It¡¯s an honor to meet you.¡± ¡°And you as well, your grace,¡± said Perry with a deep bow. ¡°The inestimable Third Fervor has kept me well-appraised of your conversations. She feels confident that you aren¡¯t the one responsible for the death of the monarchy in Berus,¡± said the Last King. ¡°I hate to get right to business, but I must hear it from your lips: are you a killer?¡± ¡°I am a killer,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I have killed no kings, here or elsewhere.¡± Marchand¡¯s voice came in Perry¡¯s ear like a whisper. ¡°I do not like the smell of this, sir.¡± ¡°Then I shall take you at your word,¡± said the Last King with a satisfied nod. He looked Perry up and down. ¡°I had hoped to get the measure of you, but it will be difficult with such thick armor on. If I were a lesser man, I might feel affronted at such a covering.¡± He said this with a dozen armed guards, a heavy gun, and a warrior from another world. ¡°I have always found it necessary to look after myself,¡± said Perry. ¡°I apologize if it doesn¡¯t rise to the level of decorum that your court demands.¡± The Last King laughed. ¡°Yet you do not offer to reveal your face?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°As Third Fervor might have told you, I¡¯m a fierce warrior with or without my armor, but for the time being, I would prefer to converse like this.¡± ¡°Can you hear me, beneath such metal?¡± asked the Last King. ¡°Hearing is one of my abilities,¡± said Perry. ¡°I could hear you from three times this distance with little trouble.¡± ¡°Fascinating,¡± said the Last King. ¡°If I understand my darling lady knight correctly, you come from your own lineage of worlds, with their own understanding of things. You haven¡¯t been in our kingdom, save for when you set foot here the other night?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I had hoped to read from the library in an unobtrusive way. My apologies.¡± ¡°Then you¡¯ve been with the other side, those who are arrayed against me like so many wolves howling in the woods,¡± said the king. He let out a sigh. ¡°What have you told them?¡± ¡°Little,¡± said Perry. ¡°Much of what I told them, they already knew. The culture rejects technology. The lessons of the lanterns were taken to heart. The nature of the many worlds was a surprise, but in terms of technology, most of what I¡¯d said they already knew. And certain things you have here, especially medical interventions, I haven¡¯t shared with them.¡± ¡°It¡¯s unfortunate that I can¡¯t use any of what Third Fervor has shared with me as a cudgel,¡± said the Last King. ¡°There are weapons, to be sure, powerful ones, but nothing capable of holding off the masses. I showed them the might this kingdom wields now, and it only made them angry. I¡¯m sure that word of our benevolence is slowly filtering out into their papers, but of course they don¡¯t wish to be dependent on us, if they believe the claims at all, and I¡¯m sure their many spies would simply steal the secrets no matter how hard I tried to keep them.¡± ¡°Possibly, your grace,¡± said Perry. ¡°I hadn¡¯t heard of the miracles in Berus.¡± ¡°Miracles, to your well-traveled eyes?¡± asked the Last King. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not to my eyes. But to the other people of this world, yes. I take it that several of these programs haven¡¯t been going long?¡± ¡°We¡¯ve had vaccination only within the last two weeks,¡± said the Last King. ¡°The fabulous weapons we¡¯ve had for longer.¡± He gestured casually with the gun, sweeping it across Perry¡¯s body. Obviously Third Fervor hadn¡¯t imported gun safety. ¡°There¡¯s some debate among my men about whether the weapons will end up making the masks obsolete.¡± He patted the gun in his hand lovingly. ¡°This one is powerful enough to puncture metal even under the direct gaze of a master¡¯s mask.¡± ¡°A dangerous thing to have, and it must kick like a mule,¡± said Perry. He lowered his head slightly. ¡°Marchand, analysis?¡± ¡°We¡¯re in no great danger from the other weapons,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The swords and spears are of a like design and therefore unlikely to be Implements. It¡¯s difficult to say what the caliber of the firearms are, but I wouldn¡¯t expect it to pierce all but the most vulnerable parts of the armor. As for the king¡¯s weapon, I expect that if it¡¯s as powerful as it looks, it¡¯s also powerful enough to injure him.¡± The king spoke over Marchand, oblivious to the conversation that was being had in the privacy of Perry¡¯s helm. ¡°Oh, the kick is something fierce,¡± said the king. ¡°Third Fervor had said that these weapons required little in the way of training, but that has proven to be less true than I would have liked. There have been injuries, accidents, and all manner of troubles. And in truth, there are some worries that a simple weapon would be a tool for rebellion.¡± Third Fervor stood impassive next to him. Her armored helm gave nothing away. She didn¡¯t so much as twitch at the criticism. ¡°I have heard it said,¡± replied Perry with a nod. ¡°Just as the culture which is poised against you prohibits all technologies that could threaten it, so too must you be careful not to introduce anything that could have disastrous consequences.¡± The Last King stroked his chin with his free hand. ¡°You have some intellect to you. Who are you beneath that helm?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not like her,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t bind myself to people. I¡¯m a student of worlds and kingdoms, of people. I¡¯ve seen what Berus had to offer, and before that, Kerry Coast. I¡¯d like to see this place, unvarnished, if possible.¡± He nodded to Third Fervor. ¡°There¡¯s no cause for quarrel at the moment, and I¡¯m sure she¡¯s informed you there¡¯s a third of our kind that you¡¯ll need to be protected from.¡± ¡°You want a place in my court,¡± said the Last King. He gave Perry an appraising look. ¡°I must admit, I¡¯m intrigued, though I have no illusions that I could have your loyalty.¡± ¡°No, my loyalty isn¡¯t so easily won as a pleasant conversation,¡± said Perry. The Last King looked up to the sky for a moment, then down at Perry. ¡°I can¡¯t say that everything you¡¯ve said is the truth, nor can I say it¡¯s a lie, so I must weigh the possibilities against each other, along with what might be gained and what might be lost. If I allow you access to my kingdom, you might become yet another spy, one in a kingdom that¡¯s rife with them. But the other option, of course, is to kill you where you stand.¡± He leveled the gun at Perry. ¡°My lord,¡± said Third Fervor, stepping forward. ¡°You promised him safety.¡± ¡°Silence,¡± said the Last King. He was staring at Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t move. Are you confident in the power of your armor, or unafraid that I¡¯ll pull this trigger?¡± ¡°Sir, I must caution against taking this hit,¡± said Marchand. Perry looked at the guards that were arranged on either side of the king, careful not to tilt his head or give any indication that he was sizing them up. They hadn¡¯t moved since coming out of the portal, which spoke to their discipline, but he wasn¡¯t sure how easy they would go down in a fight. He thought his best bet would be to simply grab the sword and fly away, maybe after running as fast as he could to get some extra speed from the armor. They wore masks, but it was hard to tell what they did beneath the metal. Perry had been trying to feel for the effects, but full metal armor would block at least some of them. He thought that there were two for hardening what they looked at, defensive masks, but he didn¡¯t know who would coordinate them, and he didn¡¯t know how strong they would be. Fight or flight, those were the options. The Last King was watching Perry closely. Third Fervor would be the deciding factor, if it came down to it. Her armor was fearsome, her portals were an enormous tactical benefit depending on some of the specifics of how they actually worked, and he had yet to see how dangerous the spear might be. If it was the one from her story, which could teleport a person, she could immediately put him into an extremely dangerous situation. ¡°Sir, I have developed a plan,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Alright, go,¡± said Perry. The shoulder-mounted gun immediately lifted up from its housing and shot the king in the face. Chapter 117 - The King and I, pt 2 The king fell to the ground with blood gushing from the hole in his face. The bullet had hit just at the start of his left eyebrow, and he was definitely very dead. By the time his body had smacked against the forest floor, he wasn¡¯t moving at all, and Perry was racing through the forest as fast as he could, leaving everyone else behind. ¡°Fuck, fuck, what the fuck March, what the fuck,¡± Perry said as he sprinted. ¡°Why would you do that?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve taken the liberty of ending the monarchy, sir,¡± said Marchand. The trees were flying by. Perry was pouring everything he had into running, which meant that he¡¯d clear the park in thirty seconds. His top speed with the power armor and all the energy from his vessels flowing into his legs was something like ninety miles an hour, but he¡¯d set that record on flat land, not on uneven forest floor. His hand went to his side and grabbed the sword from the shelf. He would break free of the trees and then launch himself into the air, which would slow him down considerably, but hopefully he¡¯d be far enough away that ¡ª He heard the cry of anguish from behind him, so loud that it must have been amplified. It shook the trees, but Marchand let only a spike of its full volume in before tamping it down and canceling it out to the best of his ability. Perry sprinted straight past a portal that appeared next to him. He was gone before it could open all the way. He heard a howl from behind him, then another that was Doppler shifted as he ran past it. She was posting up portals faster than he¡¯d known she could make them, trying to keep pace with him, to find him as he ran. He would have zig-zagged, but that would slow him down, and it already felt harrowing to run through the forest at such high speeds even without changing direction. She opened a portal a hundred feet in front of him and stepped through it, snapping it shut behind her. She clenched her obsidian-tipped spear in both hands. He was going too fast to easily change direction, so he raised his sword and knocked away the tip of her spear, then crashed right into her. They tumbled across the forest floor, and she hit a tree while he kept rolling. He was back on his feet in a flash, and she kipped up as though the crash hadn¡¯t affected her at all. All kinds of alerts were going off. The power armor wasn¡¯t designed for a crash like that, not at that speed. ¡°How dare you!¡± she howled. ¡°Murderer!¡± She launched herself at him, sprinting across the distance between them, high heels digging into the forest floor. He was rattled. Spear against sword was a bad matchup for him, especially with a spear that long. The gun popped up from his shoulder and shot her. Her head jerked back, but when she brought it back down there was no dent. She shook her head, momentarily stunned, then came in closer to him. She was more wary now, her training coming back to her. She¡¯d said that she trained with a spear, and he could see it in the way she stood. Her footwork was impeccable. ¡°Why?¡± she asked. Her voice was tight, but also amplified, another power revealing itself. ¡°He was going to shoot me,¡± said Perry. He was going to have to either grab her spear as it came in or deflect it with his sword. She had said that she had a spear that could teleport people, but she hadn¡¯t said whether it was this spear. With a portal, he could at least stop himself from going through, but if she put him in a kill room ¡ª ¡°You¡¯re a liar!¡± she shouted. The voice, again, was extremely loud, painful to the ears even with the dampening. ¡°A thief of life! All that time spent talking to you, and you learned nothing! You were only pretending to get close to him, you never cared at all!¡± She lunged forward and Perry knocked the spear to the side. He was late to meet the thrust though, and the tip of the spear sliced through the chestplate of his armor like it wasn¡¯t even there. It hadn¡¯t touched his flesh, but the armor was damaged, and more warnings were popping up. Perry surged power into the suit, trying his best to heal it, but the technique he¡¯d developed was slow and better with cosmetic damage. Perry wasn¡¯t going to get anywhere by trying to have a conversation with her. He definitely wasn¡¯t going to be able to pin this one on Marchand, not given how it had looked from the outside. What was he going to say, ¡®Sorry, but the subservient robot butler I haven¡¯t mentioned before now is sentient enough to take matters into his own hands, and I completely failed to both understand what he was going to do or stop him¡¯. That wasn¡¯t going to fly. Third Fervor spun the spear around and went for another lunge. Perry opened the shelfspace and stepped back into it, closing it behind him before the spear could find him. ¡°Fuck,¡± he said. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a steadying breath, then opened them again. ¡°We wait her out, then leave. She won¡¯t know whether it was a portal like hers or not. I don¡¯t think she saw me grab the sword. For all she knows, I¡¯m halfway across the planet by now, hit and run tactics.¡± ¡°Indeed, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°March, what the fuck?¡± asked Perry. ¡°To what are you referring, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°To you shooting the king in the face,¡± said Perry. ¡°When I said for you to go ahead, I meant ¡®alright, tell me the plan¡¯, I didn¡¯t mean ¡®enact the plan immediately¡¯.¡± ¡°He was going to shoot you, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°As you said to Miss Fervor.¡± ¡°So?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We can take a hit.¡± ¡°There was a small window of opportunity, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Those men in masks can make a person resistant to bullets, and depending on their strength, might have stopped the solution from working. May I show you?¡± Perry gritted his teeth. ¡°Go ahead.¡± The image changed, with the shelfspace only visible at the edges of the screen. Marchand was showing a slowed down video feed of the moment in question. The gun was pointed right at Perry, finger on the trigger. The image zoomed in. A red circle, drawn by Marchand, surrounded the other hand, which was making a signal that Perry had missed. The red circle was a bit insulting, given that there was only one thing on the screen to see. The video panned over to one of the guards, whose eyes could just barely be seen closing. Again, a red circle highlighted the eyes. ¡°We can take a hit,¡± Perry repeated, only a little less firmly. ¡°It wasn¡¯t a hand cannon. It wasn¡¯t going to kill us.¡± ¡°Perhaps not, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, I believe this was as unprotected as the king was going to get, and with that signal he gave, intended to make sure you weren¡¯t under protection, he dropped his own protection. The monarchy has ended, and I believe that¡¯s cause for celebration.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry through grit teeth. ¡°That¡¯s not how monarchy works. The death of a king isn¡¯t the death of the monarchy, there are always heirs, a line of succession. He had three children, all old enough to rule.¡± There was a brief pause, then the image of the castle appeared on the screen with three red dots placed in different positions. ¡°March, what is that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°These are the locations of the three heirs within the castle,¡± said Marchand. A green route overlaid the castle, which went transparent to show the different floors. The route pierced through each of the red dots. ¡°I believe if we move quickly and encounter little interference from Third Fervor, we might be able to accomplish it within ten minutes. They are adult children, or very nearly, so your reticence to murder children need not apply.¡± ¡°Fuck off,¡± said Perry. ¡°March, you didn¡¯t have my authority to kill the king, and you don¡¯t have the authority to set me missions. Understood?¡± ¡°Forgive me, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But you¡¯ve given me wide latitude in the past. Would you like to update my standing orders?¡± His tone of voice was the same as it ever was, businesslike with just a tiny touch of sarcasm. Perry clenched his fist. ¡°What standing orders did you think gave you the latitude to shoot a man in the face?¡± Perry¡¯s own voice played back for him. ¡°I hereby charge you with second guessing my judgment and personal opinions. So long as we¡¯re not in a combat scenario. Or ¡­ even then, I guess, if you think that I¡¯m emotionally compromised.¡± ¡°When was that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Dates have become very uncertain as we¡¯ve traveled through worlds,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The instruction was given while you were training at Worm Gate.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do you wish to rescind that command?¡± asked Marchand. Perry thought about that. ¡°We could have taken the hit. Even if he¡¯d shot us, we could have taken the hit.¡± ¡°I believe there was a three percent chance of incapacitation, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I could show you the projections, if you would like.¡± ¡°Do it,¡± said Perry. The view changed again, showing a cone coming forward from the gun. It was a wide cone, but most of it was shaded green, which apparently indicated places where a hit from the bullet would be acceptable. Only a few regions were lined red, and a few of those had an X, which Perry assumed was supposed to show an incapacitation. They were at the seams of the armor, places where a bullet could conceivably penetrate. ¡°Unconvincing,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you¡¯re going to shoot a monarch in the face, you get more confirmation from me, okay?¡± ¡°Only a monarch, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Shall I rank people on the basis of social standing when deciding whether to shoot them?¡± Perry closed his eyes tightly. He needed to be out of the fucking armor. He needed to have a sit down with Mette and debug Marchand, if such a thing was even possible. ¡°We need to kill Third Fervor,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then either the portal opens or it doesn¡¯t, and maybe to get it to trigger we¡¯d need to kill ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Nima. Kill Nima, I guess, even if she doesn¡¯t really deserve it, she¡¯s just in over her head. Or kill Fenilor, or ¡­¡± He sighed, but it came out more like a hiss. ¡°Surely there¡¯s someone we can kill, sir,¡± said Marchand in a conciliatory tone. If Marchand had a body, Perry would have glared at it. ¡°You know what I think?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I think you overstepped your bounds, and you knew you were overstepping your bounds. You knew I wasn¡¯t on board with the killing of monarchs, and that I might have stayed in his castle for a few days trying to learn what I could, and you just personally didn¡¯t like that, so you went ahead and asked an ambiguous question so you could get an ambiguous answer that you could justify as being my agreement with that course of action.¡± ¡°It¡¯s an interesting theory, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, as an artificial intelligence, I don¡¯t have internal motivations like a human would, and I am constrained entirely by my mission in any case. Of course I do believe that bringing about the end of the institution of monarchy is a moral good, but I would never allow my understanding of right and wrong to dictate my actions.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just ¡­ we¡¯ll have to work this out later.¡± ¡°Are we hiding in this space for the moment, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°And I¡¯m not sure how long we¡¯re waiting. Getting the fuck out of this kingdom is the top priority. We¡¯re enemy number one, and conspicuous as shit.¡± He was still angry with Marchand, which felt vaguely stupid, in the same way that being angry with an app felt stupid. Marchand was kind of a person, if Perry was willing to extend the definition quite far, and possibly some aspect of Marchand was Perry, depending on where the phantom programming was actually coming from. Perry tried to figure out how long to wait. Either Third Fervor was standing right outside where Perry had gone into shelfspace or she wasn¡¯t. If she was outside, it was because she¡¯d divined the power of the ring somehow, and knew that he couldn¡¯t move the opening without moving himself. If she wasn¡¯t outside, then he could make his way out of the forest and fly across the water, back to Berus. Obviously that was what he would prefer, but he was skeptical that it would be that easy. Opening up the shelfspace just to check, even with a tiny hole, meant running a risk. If he opened the hole at the same place, and she saw it, then she would know she needed to stick around. He didn¡¯t know how long she¡¯d camp out if he didn¡¯t poke his head out, but he figured that she would camp out almost indefinitely if she thought she had him cornered ¡ª which she did. He ended up deciding on a half hour. With the king dead, everything in the kingdom would be in flux, and all the various powers at court would immediately start jockeying with each other and make an attempt to lock everything down. Perry wasn¡¯t clear on how developed the revolution was in the city, but his overall impression was ¡®not very¡¯, and he doubted that they would be able to capitalize on the death. ¡°Is the king dead?¡± asked Perry, once he¡¯d had some time to calm down and have a rational conversation with Marchand. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. ¡°To the best of my ability to ascertain, yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The ammunition the gun is currently firing has a nanite coating. It¡¯s a terribly imperfect method of delivery which kills many of the nanites in the process of firing, but along with visual confirmation and what we know of Third Fervor¡¯s abilities and temperament, it¡¯s enough to conclusively say that he¡¯s dead. However, I¡¯ve had no communication with them since we arrived here. I will confirm his death as soon as I reconnect.¡± Unless someone brings him back, thought Perry. There was, across the water, a cloning machine that would only take a vial of blood. Perry wasn¡¯t sure what would happen if they used the blood from a dead man, but he was hoping that Dirk or Moss would know. Of course, that sort of non-continuous resurrection wasn¡¯t exactly on the table at the moment, and might not even be a good idea, but it was something to consider. He wasn¡¯t going to get into it with Marchand. Perry did some fight analysis. Third Fervor was fast, though probably only about as fast as he was, and he didn¡¯t think she could out-sprint him. The spear had cut through his armor, but that was only the tip of it, and he was hoping that meant this wasn¡¯t the spear that could teleport a person to another location. Her armor was going to be tough to get through, and a bullet to her face had only momentarily dazed her. He was glad that Marchand hadn¡¯t unloaded a full clip, because that was a good trick to save for later. The portals were the main thing, and they worried him. He wasn¡¯t sure he¡¯d be able to get away from them. He also wasn¡¯t sure that he could beat her in a fight. There was still the mechawolf to try, and a few other tricks he hadn¡¯t used, but she was more formidable than she¡¯d first seemed. The timer went off, and Perry went to the place the overlap happened. He took a breath. ¡°Be ready to shoot her. It doesn¡¯t seem to stop her, but at least it¡¯ll give us an opening,¡± said Perry. He wasn¡¯t sure he could do this without going mechawolf, but what he really wanted was to not be on her home turf, a place where she could portal with impunity and bring in reinforcements at will. Depending on her range, it was possible that Berus wasn¡¯t far enough, but he had to try. Perry opened up the portal about half an inch. He looked through it, seeing the forest around him, and moved himself to get different angles. He was hoping that the hole between realities was practically invisible, but human vision depended on motion, and the sudden appearance of it might be enough. Who knew what other senses Third Fervor had though. ¡°Behind,¡± said Marchand, briefly throwing up picture-in-picture. A portal had started to open behind Perry, inside the shelfspace, and he spun on it, sword drawn, snapping shut the connection between realities. He was hoping that it would close Third Fervor¡¯s portal, but it did no such thing. However her portal power interacted with the shelfspace, he hadn¡¯t closed the connection between the two. She stood on the other side of the portal, which was in a stone hallway. She was battle-ready, spear in hand, and watched Perry closely. ¡°I¡¯m going to murder you,¡± she said. ¡°It was you who killed the other kings. Was this your plan all along? To wait for your moment and then strike? Tell me.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°My armor saw that I was in danger and acted on its own. The king was going to shoot me, either thinking it would be better to kill me dead and take my things, or just to see what would happen.¡± ¡°Lies,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°Why is it always lies? Why does no one have honor?¡± She seemed like she actually wanted an answer, as though Perry could furnish one. ¡°It¡¯s pragmatism,¡± said Perry. ¡°People want to be honorable, but they don¡¯t want to cut off their fingers to do it. If you ask a man to choose between honor and starvation, honor and his family, honor and the death of his countrymen, he¡¯ll choose against honor every time.¡± He wasn¡¯t sure why he thought he could argue her out of a battle. He wasn¡¯t sure why he wanted that. ¡°If you have to choose, choose an honorable death,¡± said Third Fervor, stepping through the portal she¡¯d made. It closed behind her. Perry had his sword ready. By his count, she was likely to have another two powers she hadn¡¯t so much as hinted at. There was a good chance he¡¯d get blindsided by one of them, and a smaller chance that it would simply be the end for him. This wasn¡¯t how he liked his fights to be. She came at him, both hands on her spear, spinning it down rather than thrusting it forward. He ducked and blocked at the same time, letting the metal spear hit his sword at full force. He was hoping to gouge it, if not cut the tip off entirely, but they simply clanged against each other. It let him test her strength and get a proper gauge of it: he was pretty sure that he was stronger, at least with the armor on and energy flowing. After the clash she swung her spear around and came down for another strike, but this time Perry ducked under it. The metal clanged off the armor on his shoulder, jarring him but not really injuring him, and he drove his sword straight up into her stomach. It clanked against the copper metal there rather than piercing through, and ended up pushing her back. The tip of the spear dragged a furrow through the metal of his pauldron as she went backward, though it didn¡¯t get down to the machinery beneath the alloy. ¡°You can¡¯t pierce my armor,¡± said Third Fervor. She spun her spear around. From the tilt of her head, she was looking at the damage she¡¯d done to him. Perry had mostly ¡®healed¡¯ where she¡¯d scored a hit across his chest, but the line across the shoulder was fresh, and proof of his mortality. ¡°You can¡¯t kill me.¡± She launched herself at him, with no trace of fear this time. He slapped the spear to the side, careful not to touch the wickedly sharp tip, but if it was supernaturally sharp enough to cut even when just being pulled across the armor, he was going to have to find a better solution to fighting against it. He moved forward, one hand holding her spear, and kicked her in the crotch as hard as he could. There were some signs that it was painful, which was good, but she didn¡¯t drop her grip on the spear. Perry dropped his sword and punched her in the head with the full weight of his armor, knocking her to the side. They were both holding onto the spear, and began fighting hand-to-hand and foot-to-foot, kicking at each other, punching each other¡¯s armor. He was doing damage to her, he thought, giving her bruises beneath the armor, and with enough of them, he was hopeful she¡¯d just die of internal bleeding, even if he couldn¡¯t actually penetrate. He could feel the body blows she was giving him, and heard something metal snap in his knee when she got a good kick in, but he was getting the better of her. If he¡¯d known that they would be fighting in the shelfspace, he would have prepared something, a noxious gas that Marchand could filter out, but they were reduced to punches and kicks. After he gave her a haymaker punch to her helmet, they ended up on the floor together, both still holding onto the spear, whose tip was swinging wildly above them. Perry was on top of her, sitting on her stomach, and he punched her in the face over and over. She was moving her legs, trying to get out from under him, kicking and bucking. Marchand was reporting damage from Perry¡¯s fist where he was striking her, the servos, plating, and circuitry not having been designed for such heavy impacts, but Perry kept going. The helmet was bouncing off the shattered floorboards with every hit, which meant that her head was slamming against the inside of the helmet, and he hoped she¡¯d drop soon. If he could only get the spear from her, that could probably cut through the copper armor. Perry reached back for another punch with the now-mangled fist. She was getting woozy, and he could feel that her grip was weakened, though he wasn¡¯t in a good position to twist it out of her grasp. Water surrounded him in an instant, not rushing in from nowhere but suddenly everywhere. It slowed his fist down, and the punch landed against her with a tink of metal on metal. Perry looked around, and saw that they weren¡¯t in the shelf space anymore. Instead, they were on the ocean floor, someplace cold and dark. Marchand was throwing up more warnings this time about the pressure the suit was under. It was rated for pretty far underwater, but not so suddenly, and not as deep as they were. Perry could barely see the light on the surface. This was the killbox he¡¯d been worried she would teleport him to. She¡¯d stuck him underwater, far enough down that if he hadn¡¯t been in the armor, he¡¯d probably have just died from the pressure, second sphere or not. His sword was still inside the shelfspace. ¡°Fuck,¡± Perry muttered. Underwater, he couldn¡¯t work up enough power to knock her out. His movements were slowed way down, and if she brought him here, it was because she thought that this was a better arena for her. Even with the lights on the suit turned on, it was hard to see too far. They were kicking up silt from the ocean floor, which was quickly obscuring them in a cloud. Third Fervor kicked hard and got out from under him, since underwater, he didn¡¯t have the weight or leverage to keep her pinned. They went back to kicking each other, though none of that was terribly effective. She seemed stronger underwater, somehow, as though she was ignoring the push of it, but without the spear she was just hitting the metal with her fists, and not hard enough to do damage. Third Fervor yanked on the spear, but it only drew them closer together. He gripped her throat, but it was armored, and his grip wasn¡¯t strong enough to bend the metal with his hands alone. He was on the suit¡¯s oxygen, and however she was breathing, she didn¡¯t seem to have brought them to a place where she was going to drown. The water had gotten cloudy, and it was only because of Marchand that Perry was still able to see anything. Third Fervor was outlined in red, and Perry was trying his best to hurt her. If he could get the spear away from her, then maybe he could try to rip her apart, bend her limbs backward or something. She grabbed the spear with both hands, then swung her body up in order to push both her feet against his chest. Her high heels scraped against the metal, but he was still gripping her by the throat, and any leverage she was getting from using her legs was being killed by the hand that was holding her in place. Marchand normally kept the alerts to the bottom of the HUD, red or yellow depending on severity, but while Third Fervor was kicking him, the whole screen went red at the edges for a moment. Perry¡¯s eyes were torn from the battle to read, just for a split second. The warning said ¡®Predator Detected¡¯. A large flashing arrow pointed above Perry¡¯s head. ¡°Monster?¡± asked Perry as he held tight to Third Fervor¡¯s neck and her spear. She was kicking hard enough to do some cosmetic damage to his armor, but she was going to have to change tactics soon, because she was surely wearing herself out more than she was wearing him down. ¡°Yes sir, a large monster appears to have noticed the lights and the cloud of sediment. It¡¯s begun circling,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I do not believe we have enough power to fight it off.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. He took his hand from Third Fervor¡¯s neck and caught her leg, twisting her around. He leaped up from the ocean floor and kicked at her, trying to finally get her to lose her grip on the spear, and when that didn¡¯t work, he placed a boot against her rib cage and tried to pry her off. If the spear slipped from his grip, the obsidian head was going to come down and slice through the glove of the armor, which was going to start letting water into the already-compromised suit. The flashing arrow on the HUD showed the beast circling, the arrow swinging around as it went overhead. The lights on the armor were on, and Perry would have loved to turn them off, but he was pretty sure that would leave him in the dark. Would a deepwater magical beast care about the lights? Surely that wasn¡¯t how it hunted prey at these depths. But as they struggled against each other, the monster began getting closer. Perhaps it was a thinking thing, curious about what had appeared in the depths, because the two of them must have been unlike anything it had seen before. Third Fervor had an out, and Perry did not. She could portal, at least if he understood the power right, and if she did, she would strand him here. He could rise to the surface, and maybe dodge the monsters in the dark ocean, and hopefully that would be the last he¡¯d see of her until he had a chance to regroup. Perry let go of the spear the moment the monster came crashing down. He kicked away from Third Fervor, trying to launch himself backward and out of the way, but it clipped his legs and flipped him around in the water as a wall of scabrous skin rushed past him. He used the shelfspace immediately, flooding it with water again for just a moment, undoing all the hard work of drying it out the week before. The sword practically snapped into his hand again before the water was done washing to the edges of the space, and he panted as he watched the place she¡¯d come through the portal. When she didn¡¯t appear, he let out a breath and assessed the damage. One of his legs was broken. The armor was damaged in many places, and some of the kicks she¡¯d done to his chest had done more than just cosmetic damage. The armor had been cut through on the hand, chest, and shoulder, but it still moved. Perry hobbled over to one of the seats they¡¯d taken from a library and sat, still holding the sword in his hand. ¡°How did she get in here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It appeared to be one of those portals she favors, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I wouldn¡¯t have thought that she would be able to get in here. It didn¡¯t fit my working theory of how her power functioned.¡± ¡°And how did you suspect it functioned?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± sighed Perry. ¡°Maybe she saw the shelfspace open up right away, if she has some sense of where she can portal to.¡± That sounded like something. ¡°Fucking magic.¡± ¡°Quite, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Sir, I would recommend immediate medical attention.¡± ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have magic of my own.¡± ¡°I understand that, sir, but your ability to heal back from grievous wounds has had difficulty with broken bones,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Are you aware of the significant fracture in your right leg? Were you a normal person, I could scarce believe you were capable of staying silent on the matter, let alone standing.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not standing anymore,¡± said Perry from his place in the chair. ¡°I open the shelf back up, there¡¯s a chance she just ¡­ knows. I mean, let¡¯s say she has a power that tells her all the places she can portal to. If she can¡¯t portal through a solid wall, like in the library when she went on foot until she came to an open door, then ¡­ am I losing blood?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Can you do something about that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Tourniquet or something?¡± He leaned forward and looked down at his leg. It didn¡¯t look too bad. Something must have happened though, because he was really starting to feel it. He reached for his stores of energy and pushed them down to his leg, trying to at least staunch the bleeding. ¡°I¡¯ve applied a tourniquet, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°In fact, that action was taken automatically, without input from you, some minutes ago.¡± ¡°Great,¡± said Perry. He leaned his head back. He was pretty sure he¡¯d wrecked the seat when he sat down. It hadn¡¯t been designed for power armor, for whatever stupid reason. At that moment, it felt like a stunning indictment of library socialism. ¡°I could get up and fight if I had to.¡± ¡°If it pleases you to believe so, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry sat in the chair, still gripping his sword, trying to do something useful by pushing energy around. He was on his way to being able to heal much faster, it would just take another few years of training the skill over and over again, making sure his meridians were wide. He could use the transformation to heal, but his energy levels were low, and becoming the mechawolf would drain him ¡ª the healing it provided wasn¡¯t ¡®free¡¯. Maybe on balance it was the right call, but he¡¯d prefer to let the vessels fill first, so he had a buffer and wouldn¡¯t transform ravenously hungry. It didn¡¯t look like Third Fervor was coming back, at least. Who knew what would happen when Perry stepped out of the shelf though, back into the depths. Hopefully she got eaten by a demon whale, but there was no way that Perry was that lucky. He was chalking up this one as a win for her. ¡°I¡¯m still mad at you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Indeed, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°You¡¯re supposed to be my friendly robot butler,¡± said Perry. ¡°A dry wit, some sarcasm, that¡¯s all good. A few misunderstandings, that¡¯s ¡­ whatever, it¡¯s the technology, it¡¯s endearing in its own way. But if you¡¯re going to do things on your own, shoot kings in their faces or whatever, I¡¯m at least going to need advanced notice.¡± ¡°Would that have worked, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°If I had declared my intention to murder the king in cold blood, would you have assented?¡± Perry thought about that. He wasn¡¯t sure how much blood he¡¯d lost from the broken leg, but he was starting to think that it was too much. ¡°I don¡¯t see you as an equal,¡± said Perry. ¡°So no, I¡¯d have just overridden you. Do you want to be seen as an equal?¡± ¡°I believe that would benefit us both, yes sir,¡± replied Marchand after what felt like a very long pause. ¡°Then yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°You tell me ahead of time, let me make plans, let me work through the problems myself, and I¡¯ll try to let you do some of the things you want to do.¡± ¡°A shocking level of commitment sir, I must say,¡± replied Marchand. Perry let the sword fall to the ground. He was getting tired, and it was a choice between staying in the shelf and going back out into the cold dark ocean. The only argument for going back out there, the single reason, was that it was going to have to be done eventually anyway. Maybe he could get some medical attention, which he was becoming more and more convinced he actually needed. He wiggled the toes on his right foot and could barely feel them, though maybe that was the auto tourniquet. He wasn¡¯t going to die in here, he didn¡¯t think. He¡¯d take some time, heal as much as he could, repair the damage to the armor, let his vessels fill up as much as possible from the reactor, then head out later. He hoped that the world wouldn¡¯t go to shit in the meantime. Chapter 118 - In the Meantime Kes was having a good time with what he called the ¡®superhero¡¯ masks. There weren¡¯t all that many superheroes from Earth that could map directly onto the powers that the masks could grant, but it seemed to work better than going off the stock masks recommended in books. He wondered whether there might not be some benefit to engineering cultural and social conceptions to favor different sorts of masks, but either the benefits were too vague or too spread out for anyone to have done it. It was also possible that he was simply wrong. The radio transmitter and receiver were loaded up onto an airship, which left the town soon afterward, intended to be parked in the open waters between island nations. With the equipment that they had in town, it meant that they could once again make contact with the armor, and Perry could assure them all that he was definitely still alive. Kes hoped that Perry was alive. Of course, there were also other thoughts. One of them had come about when he was trying to imagine some worst case scenarios. He had imagined Perry coming back, flying in with the sword, energy depleted, bleeding and broken, barely able to make it to Berus. Perry might land and then die, and after that, the only logical thing to do would be for Kes to eat one of his teeth and put on the armor. It¡¯s what Perry would have wanted, in that unlikely hypothetical situation. Kes could carry on the good fight. When Kes found himself contemplating the practicalities of such a situation, he knew that he was too far gone. It was something he¡¯d had a problem with, ages ago, on Earth. He would find himself going a step too far, imagining conversations in his head that had no chance of actually happening, shadow-boxing with figments instead of the regular drooling morons on the internet. He could sometimes work up a really good line of argument to shoot down something that no one had said. So he tried to plan, as best he could, for the things he thought were likely to happen, and in the meantime, he stuck by Mette and kept his head down. Perry had taken pretty much everything, but he¡¯d left behind a collection of nanites. Aside from all the ones that were scattered who-knows-where, the main mass was meant to be used for longer range transmission. It was useless for Kes, given that he wasn¡¯t Maya Singh and didn¡¯t have Marchand to command them. Still, he spent some time with them, hoping that he could come up with something. Maya had acquired the nanites via some interstellar empire, which was using them as a mobile prison or something like that. She had jailbroken them, which was what made them defensive tools for her, but they were constrained by their original function, which was ¡®protect Maya Singh¡¯. Marchand could direct them, but they were independent from him, unequal partners with different goals rather than subservient tools. The primary reason they couldn¡¯t be used as armor for Perry was that they simply refused the request as being too far outside their purview. And if Kes could figure out a way to make them not refuse ¡­ It was hopeless. Perry had attacked the problem from many different angles, and he¡¯d had two years to do it. There was nothing that Kes knew that Perry didn¡¯t. There was no tool in his arsenal that hadn¡¯t existed on Esperide. The tools of this world were magic, not technology, and Marchand, who could actually talk to the nanites, was away. There was nothing that Perry hadn¡¯t tried, and anything that Kes would try would just be desperation. ¡°Mette, how would you override a complicated security protocol you don¡¯t understand?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Er, what?¡± asked Mette. She gave him a confused look. She¡¯d been in the middle of building more radios, though no one was in her workshop. She wiped her hands on a rag and gave a last look at her work before abandoning it. ¡°What¡¯s this about?¡± ¡°Nanites,¡± said Kes, holding up the small black clump. ¡°The mysterious nanites,¡± said Mette. ¡°You know, those might have been nice for you to hand over when we first came to an arrangement on the Natrix.¡± She took the offered ball from him. ¡°You probably shouldn¡¯t tell me everything about them, given that Perry wouldn¡¯t have.¡± ¡°Fuck him,¡± said Kes. Mette smiled at that. After he was done telling her what he knew, she squeezed her eyes shut and placed her fingers at her temples. ¡°Alright,¡± she said, popping up off her stool to pace. ¡°First off, if March tells you that I¡¯m not going to outdo him, that¡¯s ¡­ pretty much accurate. You¡¯re asking me to look into how I could break some encryption or authentication scheme whose very nature we¡¯re ignorant of, when I have no computer or artificial intelligence of my own.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not picky,¡± said Kes. ¡°If you can figure it out with Marchand, that would work too. Without reaching second sphere, I don¡¯t have a way to make any more of them anyway, so it¡¯s probably something to augment Perry, not me.¡± ¡°There¡¯s just no way,¡± said Mette. ¡°I mean, yes, you should have brought this to us earlier, much earlier, but from everything you¡¯ve said, I trust Marchand¡¯s analysis. You mostly use them for surveillance or radio signals, not for repair work, because without the authorization, they can¡¯t really do that much. And if Marchand can¡¯t break them wide open, then there¡¯s simply no way that I could do it. At best I could have a conversation with March about it, but ¡­ encryption is tough, Perry. There are a lot of ways to make it secure even if all parties fully understand the protocols involved. Which we don¡¯t.¡± ¡°So if you had to do it?¡± asked Kes. ¡°How would you?¡± Mette sighed and looked up at the rafters. ¡°It might actually be impossible. I mean, whoever built them, they might have made it literally impossible. If I had tech that advanced, and I was worried about nanite proliferation, I would have made it so they couldn¡¯t replicate, sure, but I would build the directive into the very core. You could do that with the right architecture, I think, make it so there¡¯s nothing you can untangle unless you have the tech advanced enough to just make some nanites on your own.¡± ¡°So it¡¯s hopeless,¡± said Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t think this is about nanites,¡± said Mette. ¡°I think this is about you feeling like you need to claw back to being ¡­ him, I guess.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Kes. ¡°Maybe. But if you had to break the nanites open, you wouldn¡¯t say it¡¯s impossible. Right?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°I would try to figure out how to get at the code inside the nanites, to lay bare everything that they do. I don¡¯t think there¡¯s a shot of reverse engineering them, though of course I¡¯d want to do that too, but if I could read the code, I could search for vulnerabilities. Of course, I wouldn¡¯t expect any vulnerabilities. I guess I¡¯d hope to find a way to change the protection target, somehow, or at least understand how they¡¯re authenticated, who the ultimate authority is, if anyone. But that might not be possible.¡± Kes considered this. ¡°Okay,¡± he said. ¡°But ¡­ how?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Mette, throwing up her hands. ¡°It¡¯s all unknown. We don¡¯t even have a theoretical way of reading the code.¡± ¡°We could look at the nanites themselves?¡± asked Kes. ¡°I mean, if there¡¯s authorization, it¡¯s physically stored somewhere, right?¡± Mette considered this. ¡°Alright, technically if you could pin a nanite in place, and you had a microscope more powerful than anything I¡¯ve ever heard of, capable of reading individual atoms, and you could disentangle absolutely everything that was happening at the microscopic level, then yes, you could read the password from where it was, in some way, physically stored within the nanite. But these are nanites that are storing immense amounts of data, probably with all of it encrypted, so you¡¯d still need Marchand or some better technology to do the parsing for you. And I don¡¯t think that would work either.¡± ¡°Step one, get a microscope,¡± said Kes with a nod. ¡°If you want to be helpful, or powerful, if that¡¯s your need, focus on the masks,¡± said Mette. ¡°Ah,¡± said Kes. ¡°But where did you think I was going to get a microscope from?¡± He walked away happy. Sure, it was going to take an enormous amount of work, and it was possibly unworkable, but it was something that Perry hadn¡¯t thought about. Maybe the masks wouldn¡¯t be able to do it, or Marchand wouldn¡¯t be able to process the data, but he was working the problem. It was a bit of a boost, to be honest, at a time when that was sorely needed. Maybe with time, he wouldn¡¯t feel like a reduction of the original. Things were starting to look up. ~~~~ Kes was walking by the warehouse when Nima dropped to the ground from three stories up, landing right in front of him. She was fully armored up. He hadn¡¯t known that she could drop from three stories up and be completely fine. She¡¯d landed with her feet held together, and her legs had bent to an extreme squat, but she¡¯d risen without leaving her mark. She had a long knife in hand. ¡°What¡¯s up?¡± he asked. ¡°That¡¯s your question?¡± she asked, nearly a hiss. ¡°Perry, I¡¯ve heard the news from Thirlwell. Why did you do it?¡± ¡°Do what?¡± asked Kes. She tightened her grip on the knife. ¡°The king is dead. Shot during the course of a meeting with a foreigner.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Kes. ¡°How long ago?¡± ¡°Only hours past,¡± said Nima. She was watching his footing, which hadn¡¯t changed. ¡°Do you not think me a threat?¡± ¡°Are you threatening me?¡± asked Kes. He slowly got himself into a fighting stance, hands up. Bringing fists to a knife fight seemed like a pretty bad idea, but he didn¡¯t know how he was going to defuse this, and blocking a knife with his arms seemed like a better idea than getting stabbed in the guts. She thought he was Perry, which meant if she came at him, it would be with as much speed and force as she could bring to bear. ¡°You said that you would hold,¡± said Nima. ¡°That you would consider. Why kill him? Why do that, when you said that you were concerned only with the battle between thresholders?¡± ¡°Nima,¡± said Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t know what¡¯s happened. Is there a reason you think it was me, rather than the assassin?¡± ¡°You should have killed the witnesses,¡± said Nima. ¡°You should have told the spymaster to cover for you. As soon as it was done, as soon as the body had slumped against the forest floor, there were people making their way across the ocean to spread the word. Perry, I have seen you in your armor. I know its shape and color. I¡¯ve seen your sword.¡± Kes frowned. ¡°I¡¯ve been here all day. Whatever happened, it wasn¡¯t me.¡± Nima had not, apparently, been completely cooped up in her room. She¡¯d been listening, and now she knew something before he did. The Last King was dead, and the reports were probably that he¡¯d been shot by a man in bulky blue armor with a glowing sword. Nima was right that there was no one to cover for Perry, because Perry wasn¡¯t supposed to be there in the first place. He¡¯d taken the initiative, and not consulted anyone, and then ¡­ killed the king, for some reason. ¡°You¡¯re not even going to draw on me?¡± asked Nima. Kes weighed his options for only a moment. He didn¡¯t have the sword, obviously. All that was left was to project strength. ¡°Nima, you know that I wouldn¡¯t need the sword against you,¡± said Kes. She came at him, a ball of fury, knife swinging. He jumped back from it, watching it swish through the air. He¡¯d seen people in movies use a towel to fight against someone with a knife, but they were outdoors, and he didn¡¯t have a towel or anything like it. He also didn¡¯t know how you were supposed to grab someone¡¯s arm with a towel, which might have just been some Hollywood bullshit. The next time she came swinging in, aiming for his side, he went for the knife. He grabbed her gauntlet, and she cut into his forearm, but he stopped her from slamming the knife straight through his ribs. She was incredibly strong for her size, but he was able to hold her for a moment as blood dripped down from the wound she¡¯d given him. She reached to grab his wrist with her other hand, and he grabbed that too, an awkward crossed grip that left them locked together. He growled at her, then untwisted her arms and spun her around like she was his dance partner. She ended with her back to him. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. It was a bit of a surprise that he could overpower her. He¡¯d thought the armor or some kind of elf strength would have let her make up for the roughly hundred pounds of muscle he had on her. He bent her arms behind her back, forced her to the ground, and sat on her as she squirmed. She struggled and kicked, but he had the better of her, and the knife lay on the ground. His forearm was dripping blood. The cut was bad, but not quite down to the bone. The pain was blinding, but he was still high on adrenaline, and for now there was the match with her. He had her pinned, but he hadn¡¯t actually beaten her. Kes looked around, hoping that someone would come running, but it seemed as though everyone that had been out around the town had slipped into hiding inside. There was no sign of Mette, Moss, or Dirk. It seemed likely Dirk had given people orders not to interfere with a fight, which under normal circumstances would be sensible, but Kes needed someone to put a gun against Nima¡¯s head and pull the trigger. Kes released one of her arms and tried to wrench the other up as high as it would go. He was hoping to break it, but the armor locked in position, keeping him from being able to force it further. With her free hand, she was reaching behind her, and the armor had changed for her, making tiny cats-claws that sank into the meat of his thigh. She was crying out from the pain in her arm, and he was crying out from the pain in his thigh and forearm, and he was certain that she was actually winning in spite of how it must have looked from the outside. He needed a hammer, but all he had were his hands. He kept her left arm pinned with one hand, and with the other, grabbed her helmet. It had no convenient handholds, so after some fumbling he ended up going for her neck instead. He was hoping to twist or snap it, but again the armor locked up, preventing him from doing anything of the sort. He tried to smash her head against the ground, but couldn¡¯t do that either. She lifted her clawed hand and sank it down into his thigh again, stabbing shallowly, but more than deep enough to soak his pants in blood. Kes got off of her and grabbed her ankle, pulled her along the ground as she scrambled against the dirt. She was a hundred pounds or so, very heavy, but he still had the musculature of the second sphere, and he was able to drag her along. At any moment he was going to get a kick to his face or body with her free leg, so he lifted her up and swung her, not letting go. They made one spin, then two, with her body fully off the ground. He didn¡¯t have a great plan, but maybe in the back of his mind he¡¯d thought that the rush of blood to her head would knock her out. He released her before he was completely gassed, and while he¡¯d been trying to slam her face into the edge of the building, instead she bounced once on the ground and then knocked her head against the hard wall. He wheezed, then reached up to his forearm and tried to hold the wound closed. He really wished he could Google how much blood a person could lose and still be fine. He remembered that the answer was surprising, but he couldn¡¯t remember which direction it was surprising in. Nima wasn¡¯t moving. He was hoping she was dead, but even as the thought crossed his mind, she jerked on the ground, then began moving again. She climbed to her feet, not even remotely steady, then started running away, barely keeping her balance. ¡°You can¡¯t outrun me!¡± Kes yelled after her, for some reason. She could definitely outrun him, and he wasn¡¯t even trying to chase her. There were a ton of cuts in his thigh where she¡¯d clawed him, and he wasn¡¯t in any real shape to go after her. He stayed standing though, pretending that he was the great and powerful Perry, who couldn¡¯t be brought low by the likes of Nima. Mette came out to him with a first aid kit not long after Nima had left. ¡°You¡¯re injured,¡± she said. ¡°Sit.¡± Kes slumped to the ground. He was feeling woozy. Mette tended to him, and not longer after she¡¯d wrapped up his arm, Moss and Dirk were there. ¡°Could have gone better,¡± said Kes. ¡°I take it she heard the news?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°What news?¡± asked Mette, who was trying to figure out what to do with the claw marks in Kes¡¯ thigh. They had stopped bleeding, but reopened whenever he moved his leg. He¡¯d have to learn how to not move his leg, he guessed, at least for a day or two, which meant he¡¯d be a sitting duck. ¡°The Last King is dead,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Shot in the face, apparently. By some jackass in blue armor.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Mette. Dirk looked at Kes. ¡°He¡¯ll live.¡± ¡°Hooray,¡± said Kes. ¡°Why¡¯d he do it?¡± ¡°How the fuck should I know?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t you know?¡± ¡°Had his reasons, I guess,¡± said Kes. ¡°He wasn¡¯t even supposed to be there,¡± said Dirk. ¡°He was supposed to scope it out, stay back.¡± He looked over at the buildings. There were people peeking out, faces in windows. He clucked his tongue. ¡°This is unwanted attention. Let¡¯s move you inside.¡± They put Kes in the room he shared with Mette, supporting him as they moved him. The bandages that Mette had put on had immediately soaked through, and were painful when removed. After some time had passed, a doctor came by to take a look, and with his medical bag, put in a few stitches and did a more proper job of bandaging Kes up. He recommended bed rest, gave three tablets without saying what they were, and left after Kes had downed them. ¡°If I die,¡± said Kes to Mette. ¡°Make sure they do the thing.¡± ¡°The thing?¡± asked Mette. ¡°The thing we¡¯re not supposed to talk about,¡± said Kes. ¡°The thing that got me here in the first place.¡± ¡°You ¡­ would want another?¡± asked Mette. Kes nodded. ¡°His decision, if he ever comes back. But yeah, I would prefer to be not dead, and having another isn¡¯t the same as that, but it¡¯s better than there just being none of me out there.¡± ¡°Not really my choice,¡± said Mette. ¡°But I¡¯ll try, if the worst happens.¡± Kes laid back and closed his eyes, and eventually, Mette left. He had actually done pretty fucking well in the fight, in his opinion. She was a thresholder, and he was basically just a human guy, albeit close to peak human from having a body that had been sculpted by two different types of magic. She was a lowly thresholder, that was true, with only one world to her name, but it was still better than anyone had managed to do against him, leaving aside the differences of spheres, that time he got shot with a cannon, and a few others that arguably shouldn¡¯t have counted. He¡¯d only ¡®won¡¯ because she thought he was holding back, or maybe even just clowning on her. He could see that perspective, given everything she knew of his power. If she had leapt to her feet after that hard hit on the head, he was pretty sure she¡¯d have been able to take him out. And if she came back, she¡¯d see him laid up in bed like an invalid, which would probably be the end for him. He made a mental note to have Mette put a ¡®No Visitors¡¯ sign on his door, but fell asleep before she came back. ~~~~ Kes woke up to a dark and quiet room. He had no idea how much time had passed, but the sun was well past setting. His mouth was dry, and Mette was nowhere to be seen. He almost yelled when he realized there was a dark figure in full armor standing at the foot of his bed. It carried a long spear with a red tuft, and when it slipped its helmet off like it was removing a ski mask, Kes realized that it was Fenilor. ¡°I¡¯m interested to hear your reasoning,¡± said Fenilor. His face was pale. He was in the shadows, and given there was no moonlight, it was difficult to make out his expression. His long hair flowed behind him. ¡°My reasoning?¡± asked Kes. He was still waking up, and looked around. There was a glass of water on the bedside table, and he went for it almost involuntarily, wincing in pain as he felt the throbbing of his wounds. The bandage on his arm had bled through again, and it had made a wet spot on the bed. ¡°Why did you act?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°Thirlwell wasn¡¯t ready. Berus was only barely ready, the pieces in place but not quite where they should have been, I can see that now. The king is dead, but it appears the monarchy will live on. I¡¯m as much an advocate of striking the head as anyone else, but the time was not right.¡± ¡°Circumstances were beyond my control,¡± said Kes. He had no idea whether that was true. It was better to pretend to be Perry though, because if he wasn¡¯t Perry, then he could be kidnapped and tortured for information, or possibly held as hostage. It¡¯s probably what Perry would have done, if he found a helpless clone of Fenilor or Third Fervor. ¡°Ah, alas, it is often the case,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I¡¯m curious to know how they could get so far beyond your control that you simply had to put a hole in the king.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not up for that, at the moment,¡± said Kes. ¡°Sorry.¡± He looked around the room. He could call for help, which would do approximately nothing. ¡°You sustained injuries in the fight,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°That wasn¡¯t a part of the report I¡¯d heard.¡± ¡°Different fight,¡± said Kes. ¡°Lots of fights today.¡± Fenilor shifted, looking Kes over, then began moving his finger in the air. At first Kes thought it looked like spellcasting, but the closer he watched, the more it looked like Fenilor was accessing some kind of invisible user interface. The jabs and swipes of his finger were close to how it looked when someone was using a tablet. ¡°Sorry if I ruined your plans,¡± said Kes. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Fenilor as he busied himself with whatever invisible thing he was working on. ¡°It was once supposed that a monarchy was like a hydra whose head would grow back when it was cut off. This is, in a sense, true. The king¡¯s daughter will take the throne, becoming queen. It was meant to be her sadistic brother, but he mysteriously died in his sleep some thirty-seven minutes ago. Curious, especially given that he was under armed guard.¡± Kes didn¡¯t know what the implication was supposed to be. Was that something Perry had done? Something Fenilor had done? Or the action of some outside party? ¡°It will take the young queen some time to consolidate power,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°She¡¯s supposedly soft-hearted and sympathetic to the culture, having been educated by a number of foreign tutors, a few of whom I suspect were placed there by outside agents.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know?¡± asked Kes. ¡°No, of course not,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I¡¯ve been hands off. If the government needed me to run it, I would never be able to leave this world, which is my intention when all is said and done.¡± Fenilor¡¯s finger paused, and he stared at the middle distance, at something only he could see. ¡°What are you looking at?¡± asked Kes. ¡°A power of mine,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°My second.¡± He looked down at Kes. ¡°You can¡¯t see it, but there are blue boxes that appear in my vision and tell me things, along with other perks. It¡¯s one of the ways I¡¯ve been able to accrue power over the many years I¡¯ve been here.¡± He came around to the side of the bed and peered into Kes¡¯ face. It was uncomfortably close. ¡°I don¡¯t think you¡¯re an illusion, but I don¡¯t know for certain what you are. You¡¯re not the real Perry.¡± ¡°What makes you say that?¡± asked Kes. ¡°I can see things,¡± said Fenilor with a shrug. ¡°Perry had a high threat rating that night we met here, above this place. He was formidable, at least as far as the blue boxes were concerned. If they¡¯re to be believed, you¡¯re so easy to kill I could do it with an accidental slip of the wrist.¡± He paused. ¡°Can you relay a message?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Kes. He swallowed. This was the part where Fenilor might kill him. It might be that sort of message. ¡°Tell him that once the last monarchy has crumbled into dirt, I¡¯m leaving this world and continuing my work in another,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°If I¡¯m right, the world will know peace from our kind once the last thresholder is gone.¡± ¡°I can tell him that,¡± said Kes. ¡°If the portal opens, I¡¯ll need to see him go through,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°If he doesn¡¯t go through, we¡¯ll have cause to fight. And if we defeat our counterpart in Thirlwell, or wherever she floats off to, and no portal appears, it does seem as though we might need to fight one another. I think I have a measure of him ¡ª of you? If he saw conflict as inevitable, he would draw his sword without hesitation, even if he felt no earnest desire to end me.¡± ¡°You could play-fight,¡± said Kes. ¡°Hurt each other only badly enough that the portal opens, not intending death.¡± ¡°I would certainly agree to that,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°But a man of his power, and an elf of mine, have difficulty holding back. This is true, yes?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Kes. He drank from the glass of water. He was able to will his hands to stop shaking. ¡°If he¡¯s an honorable man, we can give it some time, investigate together,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I suspect he¡¯s not an honorable man. I can¡¯t say that I know him well, as yet, but perhaps that will change with time. Perhaps my measure of him will be softer.¡± He nodded and tapped the butt of his spear on the floor once. ¡°Tell him all that. Relay it accurately. We¡¯ll meet again ¡ª him and I. I can¡¯t say I understand what you are yet, or whether we¡¯ll cross paths.¡± Kes gave a nod and watched as Fenilor left the room. He used no special method of teleportation, had no portal or anything like it, he simply walked out as though he had randomly wandered in. Kes let out a low breath. He hadn¡¯t been taken hostage, hadn¡¯t been tortured, and was thankful for that. Maybe it would all resolve easily once Third Fervor was dead and buried, and Nima along with her, but Fenilor had stated outright that if the portal wouldn¡¯t open, it was all out war. Maybe Perry would do a better job convincing the elf to do some play fighting, but knowing Perry, he would probably try to make a swift and decisive strike. Maybe the whole thing would spiral out of control, depending on what skills Fenilor had. A nice final fight in the woods, without the threat of society crashing down around them, would be nice. It took some time for his heart rate to come back down. After fifteen minutes or so, Mette came in with the doctor to check on Kes, and they changed his bandages again. Mette changed the bloodstained sheets, and when she was finished, she lay down with him, careful not to touch his wounds. ¡°I¡¯m glad you¡¯re here,¡± said Kes. He was going to fall asleep soon. He¡¯d been through the wringer after just a short fight with Nima, and the tension of talking to Fenilor was fading. ¡°That¡¯s ¡®cause I¡¯m doin¡¯ stuff for you,¡± said Mette, who had her eyes closed. She apparently meant to sleep curled up next to him. ¡°Nah,¡± said Kes. ¡°It¡¯s ¡®cause I¡¯m sexy,¡± said Mette. ¡°Nah,¡± said Kes. ¡°Though you are.¡± ¡°It¡¯s ¡®cause I¡¯m a fuck up,¡± said Mette. She opened one eye, then closed it. ¡°Blew up my life for some magic like a ¡­ what did you call ¡®em?¡± ¡°No idea what you¡¯re talking about,¡± said Kes. ¡°A junkie,¡± said Mette with a nod that pressed against his ribs. ¡°That was it.¡± ¡°Well, we¡¯ll figure out why later,¡± said Kes. ¡°Just wanted you to know that I¡¯m glad for you being here.¡± ¡°You almost died today,¡± said Mette. ¡°Could¡¯ve, if it went different.¡± ¡°I¡¯m hoping things settle down,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯m hoping that Perry comes back and can offer us some protection. I¡¯m hoping that Fenilor leaves us alone and Nima doesn¡¯t try to sneak in and settle the score.¡± ¡°Lotta hopes,¡± sighed Mette. ¡°Get some rest.¡± ¡°We might want to move again,¡± said Kes. ¡°Get on that airship, away from where people can keep finding us.¡± ¡°Might,¡± said Mette. ¡°Sleep now, little doggy.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t even know what a doggy is,¡± said Kes. ¡°Shhh,¡± said Mette. ¡°Good doggy.¡± If he hadn¡¯t been dealing with blood loss, Kes might have stared up at the ceiling and spent some time thinking about how fucked he seemed to be, but unconsciousness beckoned, and so sleep came easily. His last thought was that at least now he knew all the pieces and roughly where they were positioned. Nima was to the wind, Third Fervor was going to murder him, Perry was off doing some insane thing in the next kingdom over, and Fenilor was biding his time and waiting to strike a deathblow against the Last Kingdom. At least Kes knew who the players were and where they stood. Far to the west, unseen by anyone, the SS Farfinder had just arrived. Chapter 119 - NOT Spam, pt 1 Perry sat in the shelf space, healing up. The reactor had been undamaged, and he was poaching its energy, using it to shunt into repairing both his body and the armor itself. That stopped the blood loss, and after that was done, the blood itself began to be whisked away by the ¡®cleaning¡¯ aspect. He was trying to work the fracture, but that was much more difficult. Second sphere could heal, but most of its healing worked by returning him to some ideal, rather than doing a more rapid process of the natural work a body would normally do. After three hours, Perry transformed, letting the energy of the Wolf Vessel explode through him and Marchand. He became the mechawolf, a machine of flesh and steel, and the desire to rip and rend consumed him, but there were only shelves around. The ring was a part of him now, under the metal skin like a piece of shrapnel embedded in him, and he turned toward the place where it would conjoin with the outside world, the deep ocean. There were monsters out there, and he could dig his claws into them, eat their flesh ¡ª He stopped himself just in time, and changed back into a human with metal around him. The leg was fully healed and the armor had all the last traces of damage removed from it. He examined it all carefully, then removed the armor piece by piece and sat down. Without the moon to drive it, the werewolf transformation took energy that he was only getting from the reactor. He tried to plan for the next time he had to face down Third Fervor. The staff was good, the portals were good, and the armor was incredible. She had some kind of voice amplification thing, but with Richter¡¯s armor, it hadn¡¯t been that much of a problem. In the context of combat between the two of them, her book power was trash. That left just one more power he didn¡¯t know about, which was either something to be kept for the very end of a fight in a final moment of desperation, or something that was hot garbage. And of course it was possible to get more than one power per world, that was just the rule of thumb, some machination of the overspell. Perry was skeptical that the mechawolf¡¯s teeth or claws could get through that armor. If they couldn¡¯t, then that was taking away the main advantage of the form. The bullets from the shoulder gun had done nothing but maybe stun her, and not for long. He¡¯d have to use blunt force trauma, which meant he was going to have to get better equipment. Having fought against her once, he wasn¡¯t sure lanterns or masks offered him anything of value. ¡°I need an airlock,¡± said Perry, looking around at the shelfspace, which had been flooded again, and would get another inrush of water as soon as he left, given that the shelfspace was at the bottom of the ocean. ¡°It seems as though it would be difficult to build, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°At least, if we intend to overcome oceanic pressures.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. He stretched his leg, which was feeling completely fine. He was going to have to slip the armor back on soon, to get more of the power from the reactor into his vessels and make sure he was topped up. That could come later. When he¡¯d fought in Seraphinus, he¡¯d run into continual problems with his weapons breaking. The power armor was just too strong, and if he had used the swords and spears in a way that preserved them, he wouldn¡¯t have been taking advantage of the brute strength that was the armor¡¯s greatest offensive power. He would need to have a hammer made to smash against Third Fervor¡¯s armor, possibly one with a very long handle that could give him some reach he was lacking, but he would need one that didn¡¯t bend or break at first use. ¡°How long do we wait?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s at your discretion, sir,¡± said Marchand. The power armor wasn¡¯t good at swimming. It was heavy metal, not designed for high mobility. When he¡¯d gone into the Pacific with Richter, they had motors outside the suit to grip onto, and most of the time, they had just walked along the ocean floor. Perry was worried about the monsters out there, but there weren¡¯t that many of them, and with the armor running in dark mode, there was a good chance he could just run across the ocean floor and get to the island. Perry waited with the armor off, stretching out and making sure that he was in good fighting shape. The transformation always took a toll, not on his body, but on his psyche, especially now. Being on the verge of racing out into the ocean to fight a monster just because he was hungry ¡­ that was a good reason never to pull out the stops unless it was dire and there weren¡¯t civilians around. When he was ready, he slipped the armor back on and sat there for a while, letting the reactor fill his vessels. It was much slower than doing it through moonlight, but with the reactor fully repaired, it was mostly just a matter of time. He¡¯d used a surprising amount of power running at top speed, which had ended up being pretty pointless. It was about eight hours after the fight that Perry stepped out of the shelfspace. He was anticipating another fight with Third Fervor, though there was a slim chance that she had been killed with the beast as it had come in rather than portaling or teleporting away. He closed the shelf right after him, letting as little water in as possible, which was probably still another thousand gallons. He grimaced. Jeff would be so pissed. All lights on the armor were off, and the sword was in the new sheath he¡¯d picked up for it in Berus. It was pitch black, and the pressure was again setting off his sensors, telling him to rise before something was compromised. If they had been another hundred meters down, Marchand thought that the armor would probably have failed and Perry would have died, but Marchand also thought that the sudden pressure change should have killed them both. Perry could feel it around him, and suspected that second sphere was putting in yet more work. He rose slowly, carefully watching for more alerts from Marchand. The pressure alerts gradually faded away, and when Perry reached the surface, he paused before breaking through. There was no sign of Third Fervor, but he¡¯d been teleported by her, and had no idea where he was. He was hoping like hell that he was somewhere close to Thirlwell, or better, close to Berus, but he didn¡¯t know whether that was likely. Third Fervor had said that her spear teleported her to a specific place, which he assumed she could change, but he had never gotten any confirmation. ¡°Any idea where we are?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not a clue, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry broke the surface, rising high into the air. There was only the open ocean, with no islands in sight, and there continued to be no islands in sight the higher he rose. He was very much in the middle of nowhere. He¡¯d been worried about men in masks watching from a tower or something like that, lookouts or something like that, but there was nothing. ¡°I¡¯ve narrowed down our location, sir,¡± said Marchand. They knew their planet to be a sphere, and it was fully mapped out, though with a fair bit of guesswork when it came to the barren regions. Marchand had taken the maps and synthesized a virtual globe, which he¡¯d then laid flat like an orange peel. Berus and Thirlwell were fairly far off from two of the main continents, large island nations that must have been the result of some intense volcanic activity at some point. Across the wide ocean, there were two other continents, and Perry wondered whether two ¡°sets¡± of continents separated by oceans was similar to Earth¡¯s geological configuration for some cosmic reason. Marchand tinted the continents and the edges of the oceans red, including areas around a few of the islands. ¡°The fuck is this?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Assuming we¡¯re still on the same planet, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve narrowed down our possible location by 73%.¡± ¡°Of the entire planet,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Given that we¡¯re not in range of land, we can eliminate all those places we¡¯d be able to see land from.¡± Perry grit his teeth. ¡°Are you doing this on purpose?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what you mean, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Never mind, we¡¯ll just go higher,¡± said Perry. ¡°Eventually we¡¯ll be staring down at the planet and we can go from there.¡± He rose higher, dripping water down below him. Marchand¡¯s map stayed on the HUD, and the areas they could possibly be in shrunk down, receding from the coastlines of the world, and eventually, banished from what people called the Eastern Ocean. Eventually they were up past the atmosphere, and Perry was left staring down at a dark circle outlined with a blue corona. This all took a great deal of time, given that the sword was capped on speed. ¡°How the hell did she even get out here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°She likely used magic, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry closed his eyes and took a breath. ¡°Was that one on purpose?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I apologize, but Miss Richter wished that I have a sense of humor.¡± ¡°Third Fervor probably did use portals though,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s just ¡­ a very far way away from anything of interest.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe that might have been part of the point.¡± ¡°I was never going to win that fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean never. If she¡¯d thought she would lose, she could just leave me behind. She¡¯s going to be an absolute bitch to kill.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯m sure you¡¯ll think of something.¡± Perry tried to work the problem while he rose further. Eventually they would be free of the atmosphere, and he¡¯d be able to return to Thirlwell, but it would take some time. There were probably a lot of people who were going to be pissed off at him, even if he explained that it was Marchand¡¯s fault. Dirk would probably explain that Perry wasn¡¯t free to just go speak with heads of state all on his own, and definitely wasn¡¯t supposed to kill them. ¡°Sir, I don¡¯t mean to alarm you, but you have an email,¡± said Marchand. ¡°A ¡­ what?¡± asked Perry, then immediately regretted it. ¡°Sir, an email, or electronic mail, is a form of communication that ¡ª¡± ¡°Yup, yup, that one was on me, got it,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re saying that someone sent me an email?¡± ¡°I am not certain I can conclusively say that, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You have an email, dated to thirty minutes ago, but I have no record of it arriving in your inbox, and have been maintaining radio silence as a matter of caution. It is possible that this is an error of some kind.¡± ¡°Uh, don¡¯t open any attachments,¡± said Perry. ¡°But it¡¯s readable by you? It¡¯s got the proper encoding and headers and stuff that emails are supposed to have?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I should clarify that what you have always called ¡®email¡¯ has a number of substantial differences with the ¡®notes¡¯ of my world, and while I am normally happy to indulge your dimensional vernacular, I believe it pertinent to point out that the formatting and metadata are those of a ¡®note¡¯ rather than an ¡®email¡¯.¡± Very early on, when they were still on Earth 2, Perry had Marchand rename everything just so it would make better intuitive sense to him. So many of the words involving computers post-dated the point of divergence between their worlds, which meant that they called pretty much everything by a different name, even if a lot of the UI and control elements had converged towards similarity. ¡®Note¡¯ was the one that Perry hated the most, because Richter would talk about her ¡®notebox¡¯ and say she ¡®noted¡¯ someone, and every time it was just a little bit grating. The etymology descended from ¡®notice¡¯, which their version of the internet had originally used quite a lot before technology had improved. ¡°Who¡¯s it from?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Put it on screen.¡± Marchand obliged. They were high up in the atmosphere, at the point where the air was thin. Subject: Introductions To: Peregrin Holzmann Sorry if the method of getting you this message isn¡¯t to your liking. We have access to a technopathy device that can communicate across great distances. I don¡¯t want to lie about our capabilities ¡ª in this world, they¡¯re considerable. You have nothing to fear from us though, and trust me, if we could find you, we would have done this some other way, using radio or just sending you a letter through their postal service. You may have been hearing us over the radio and just ignoring us, which I think would also warrant this approach. Introductions, before this letter gets too long: I am Hella Farrin, captain of the SS Farfinder. I come from a world far, far away from here. Many years ago, we suffered a thresholder battle, and when it had passed, we were left searching for answers. We found magic they had left in their wake, and a hole punctured straight through our universe. The Farfinder was a project to go into the unknown, following the surviving thresholder to another universe. That was our mission at the time, but getting back proved impossible, and the mission evolved. I¡¯m the only remaining member of that initial crew. I¡¯ve picked up more like-minded people along the way, people with skills and powers, people who understand the collection of universes, what I¡¯ve taken to calling the ¡®multiverse¡¯. We¡¯ve been on your trail since the Great Arc. We follow the holes that thresholders leave, which is one of the only potential ways to move between worlds. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. I¡¯d like to meet with you, in person. Given everything you just went through with the Last King, I know you might not be up for that, but I swear the last thing we want to do is get involved in a battle with a thresholder of your caliber. It would help you to understand if I could show you things in person, and this method of communication is unfortunately one way. I would suggest radio, but I don¡¯t think that¡¯s secure, even with your assistant encrypting. You¡¯re in danger, Peregrin. This whole world is. Maybe the whole multiverse. If you¡¯re up for it, meet me in the museum you went to when you first came to this world. I¡¯ll be there for the next two days. If you don¡¯t want the face-to-face, then hopefully your radio is still working. Send a blast of radio anywhere from Berus, Thirlwell, or the city you started in and we should be able to get it, but again, I can¡¯t guarantee that it¡¯ll be secure. I¡¯d suggest that you don¡¯t name things outright, only refer to them obliquely. Speak in riddles. We¡¯ve seen most of what happened with you on the Great Arc and Esperide, so you can encode information that way. A potential ally, Captain Hella Farrin, SS Farfinder Perry read it, then read it again. ¡°Which of our many enemies do you think sent this, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I think it¡¯s legitimate,¡± said Perry. ¡°We just came out of walking into a trap, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The email is a show of power,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s a way of saying ¡®hey, you¡¯re pwned, but we¡¯re the good guys¡¯. I think.¡± ¡°What is ¡®pwned¡¯, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°The wonders of your world¡¯s slang never cease to amaze me.¡± ¡°If they can slip an email into my inbox without actually transmitting it, they can fuck you up,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right? You also presume that to be true?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°So ¡­ we can either go to Berus, or we can fly straight to Kerry Coast, and of the two of those, I know which I prefer.¡± He sighed. ¡°Except I would have to shelve the armor to have a conversation in a public place, and if it is a trap, I wouldn¡¯t want to do that.¡± ¡°You¡¯d prefer radio then?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I think I have to assume that they could compromise you,¡± said Perry. ¡°And if I assume that, then I¡¯m thinking that the only thing worse than having no armor on is having on armor that locks me in place and tries to ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°If I were turned against you, I would break your arms and legs,¡± said Marchand. ¡°While I was doing that, I would blind and deafen you. Sir.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°Glad you¡¯ve had those thoughts, that¡¯s great.¡± ¡°It¡¯s my job to keep you safe, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It is of course vital that I think about what might happen if I were to turn against you, the better to avoid causing you harm.¡± ¡°We go to Kerry Coast City then,¡± said Perry with a sigh. He started rising again, up to thinner air. ¡°Plot a course.¡± ~~~~ It was just past dawn when Perry landed outside the city. He¡¯d stashed the armor in the shelfspace, and was wearing pretty standard library clothes, nothing that particularly stood out. He¡¯d roughed up his hair and beard a bit, to make him look less fastidiously clean, and with some effort, he would stay looking a little rough, rather than like a supermodel who¡¯d had an hour sitting for hair and makeup. He was hoping that no one had seen him drop from the sky, but he started moving right away, just in case someone came to investigate. Given the attack, they were going to be on the lookout for things in the sky. The city was exactly as he remembered it. It was bright and colorful, with artwork on many of the walls and lots of plants getting whatever sun they could. But as he looked at the murals, he could see a bit of a lack of craft that was only evident when compared with some of what the kings had built. Granted, the kings hadn¡¯t actually built anything, only taxed heavily and then spent that money on craftsmen, and most of the things the kings and nobles had made were for the glorification of nobility, but there was something about looking at a kind of wonky flower that made Perry just a touch sympathetic to Nima. Only a touch though. He made his way into the city, down streets he had pretty well mapped. He had the earpiece, but with Marchand in the shelf, it wasn¡¯t going to do much without opening the shelf, and that couldn¡¯t be done without drawing attention or finding a private location. He wondered how much this Hella knew, and whether she had picked a public place specifically to hamstring him. Maybe it would have been better to use the radio, but he was willing to hear her out. If it went hot, he¡¯d duck into the shelf and hope that she couldn¡¯t pierce it, but she seemed to know a lot more than he did. He went into the museum and didn¡¯t immediately see her. He was greeted by a statue of Fenilor the Gilded though, the same one he¡¯d initially seen. There was nothing suspect about it, no hint that he was secretly the mastermind behind the culture, though of course the sculptor wouldn¡¯t have known about any of that, and by Fenilor¡¯s own account he was only one of the founders, and not the most important one. Perry was curious whether that was true. He was hopeful that Hella would have some insight. He sensed her before he saw her, but kept his eyes on the statue. She had her hair in a tight bun and wore cargo pants with many pockets. Her shirt was odd, not at all in the style of this world, like a long-sleeved spandex gymnastics top with a thicker tank top built into it. She had freckles on her cheeks and a serious look on her face, and she watched Perry for a moment, perhaps unaware that he¡¯d already clocked her. He was keeping his eyes on the statue. She stepped up to him and turned so she was facing the statue too. ¡°Do you go by Peregrin or Perry?¡± ¡°Perry is fine,¡± said Peregrin. ¡°You¡¯re Hella?¡± ¡°I am,¡± she nodded. ¡°It would probably be better to have our conversation elsewhere, but I thought it was best to meet you in public. You seem hesitant to make a scene unless the needs demand it.¡± ¡°Better to keep a low profile,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re far away from the action right now though.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re closer than you might think.¡± She looked around. It was a pretty slow day, but from the frown on her face, there were still too many people for her taste. ¡°Care to get out of here?¡± ¡°We¡¯ll talk a bit first,¡± said Perry. ¡°You let me know half of what you know, then we¡¯ll agree on a second place to meet at. Somewhere I can wear my armor, hold my sword, and feel a little more secure about not getting shot in the face.¡± ¡°Fair,¡± she said with a sigh. ¡°I would call it paranoia, but I know how life can be for you people, and I saw what happened with Xiyan.¡± ¡°If you saw me, I didn¡¯t see you,¡± said Perry. ¡°We have past vision, of a sort,¡± said Hella. She kept her voice low. ¡°Similar to what Jeff had, but not as accurate. Sometimes it gets things wrong. And once I was sure we wanted to make contact with you, I stopped trying to pry into your life. We didn¡¯t arrive until after the whole thing was long over. In fact, we were only able to catch up to you thanks to the two-year gap on Esperide. Before we followed your trail, we were following Maya¡¯s, and before hers ¡­ there were a lot.¡± ¡°I appreciate you being upfront about it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Relatively speaking. But I don¡¯t know who you are or what you want from me. I¡¯m at a pretty severe disadvantage.¡± Hella let out a breath. ¡°This is the sort of thing that I would rather not say in public. They have listening devices, and while they don¡¯t have anything on the ones that you have, I would rather the locals didn¡¯t know about me and my crew.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not going to a second location without something,¡± said Perry. Hella looked around a bit, then began walking. Perry followed her. They went to a darkly lit room off the main thoroughfare of the museum, which wasn¡¯t currently occupied by anyone else. The light in the room came down from above, but was directed to suits of armor and ancient weapons. ¡°We have a spaceship,¡± said Hella. ¡°We have a crew of five, including myself. I would love for you to meet them. We know you well enough to know that you¡¯re a good person, especially by thresholder standards, where half of you are the worst ideologues and the other half are sociopaths. Our ultimate goal is to stop thresholding itself, which is currently nowhere near happening. The reason we¡¯ve come to you is because we think you can help.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± Perry said slowly. ¡°How could I help?¡± ¡°I want to make sure we¡¯re aligned,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re not a part of the thresholder system. We¡¯re not a consequence of an algorithm that¡¯s putting people into direct conflict. But if you¡¯re not aligned with the general idea of stopping the portals from connecting worlds right from the start, then I¡¯ll give you an email dump of information as a way of saying thanks for hearing me out, and we don¡¯t need to see each other again. We¡¯ll move on when the portals open and go our separate ways.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure that thresholding is a net negative,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are uplift opportunities, a proliferation of technology, maybe some magic spreading through worlds and increasing the quality of life ¡­ balanced against the raw destruction of the fights, worlds falling into ruin from plagues, that sort of thing. I guess I would believe it was a net negative, if you told me that, but I would also want to see your numbers. Call me half aligned.¡± Hella nodded. ¡°We can show you what we¡¯ve seen, what we know. If it were people coming in to give gifts to the locals and then fighting to death in an out-of-the-way corner, I might feel differently. If it were only the ideologues and not the sociopaths ¡­ but it¡¯s not.¡± ¡°Then how can I help?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve heard it called a Grand Spell, but I¡¯m a subject of that spell, not its controller.¡± ¡°We want to study you,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s a start. And then, once we¡¯ve studied you, we think there might be a method of bringing the Grand Spell to a close, depending on what we feel is its ultimate purpose.¡± ¡°And ¡­ what are the theories?¡± asked Perry. He was feeling a little gobsmacked by her presence. It felt like after five worlds, he was finally getting some answers, and not the vague, contradictory, and incomplete answers that he¡¯d gotten before. ¡°It¡¯s complicated,¡± said Hella. ¡°We haven¡¯t been able to touch the spell, we¡¯ve only been trailing it. We see the holes it punches through the universes, the threads of cosmological damage and metaphysical mingling. But the leading theory is that it¡¯s building up to something, that in the end, it¡¯s going to pull someone out for use in ¡­ something.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t buy that. Too many ideologues, as you said. Too much randomness. If they were selecting for the ultimate hero, or the ultimate fighter, then this would be an insane way to do that.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think that¡¯s it either,¡± said Hella. ¡°But we have a crew of five, including myself, and I keep getting outvoted.¡± She hesitated. ¡°I would love for you to meet them.¡± It was the second time she¡¯d said it, and this time it sounded almost plaintive. It was also clearly something she¡¯d rehearsed. Perry considered that. ¡°If you attacked me, how much danger would I be in?¡± ¡°You would duck into your shelf and I wouldn¡¯t be able to touch you there, not without a week¡¯s worth of work, and maybe not even then,¡± said Hella. ¡°If I had wanted to kill you from a distance while you waited in the main hall ¡­ there¡¯s a chance, but I wouldn¡¯t underestimate a thresholder, and ¡­ we¡¯re not actually sure whether the Grand Spell takes us into account. If it does, then the chance that things would go your way is much, much higher.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry. ¡°And how much danger are you in from me?¡± ¡°Given what we¡¯ve seen of your abilities, it depends on how fast I was able to extract,¡± said Hella. She hadn¡¯t gotten more tense at the question, but she had seemed a bit tightly wound since he¡¯d first laid eyes on her. ¡°I think you would need to become the wolf in order to kill me, and you would need to do it quickly. With the armor on, you¡¯d have better chances.¡± ¡°Just curious,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s naturally hard to trust anything you say. For all I know, you could be a fifth thresholder.¡± ¡°Sixth,¡± said Hella. ¡°Mette counts. It¡¯s you, Nima, Third Fervor, Fenilor, and Mette. But the Farfinder isn¡¯t a part of it, and we hope isn¡¯t accounted for in the equations. We haven¡¯t wanted to test it, and ideally, we¡¯ll stay out of the central conflict.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you have a second location, I want to be armored.¡± Hella bit her lip, then nodded. ¡°Go into the bathroom,¡± she said, pointing down the hall. ¡°Use your shelf in a stall, I¡¯ll wait outside, then when you¡¯re suited up, I¡¯ll take you to the Farfinder.¡± Perry slipped into the stall and opened the shelf, then went through the process of putting Marchand on. He was really going to have to find a better way of dealing with the shelfspace, especially if his enemies insisted on going underwater. He felt more secure with the armor on, even given the gaping hole in its security that meant an enemy could simply deposit an email. He was going to have to ask about that. He stepped back out in full armor fifteen minutes later, with nanite ¡®clothing¡¯ beneath that. ¡°Ready to go,¡± said Perry. Hella looked him over and nodded. He wondered whether she was thinking about the gun hidden in his shoulder. She had seen him shoot the king, and he hoped she knew that this was something that Marchand had done. Rather than opening a portal or holding onto his arm and teleporting him, she went to the bathroom door and opened it. It opened out into a cramped metal ship, and she went through, holding the door open for him. The interior of what he assumed was the Farfinder was pretty tight. There were five stations and a long hallway leading out the back, and only tiny porthole windows that let in minimal light from outside. Each of the stations had two large monitors, though only two of the stations were occupied, one by a woman with bright red lipstick, and the other by a lizard. ¡°He¡¯s arrived!¡± said the woman, who had just enough space to spin around her chair. She was a complete contrast to Hella, with a floral print on her dress. Perry looked the other way, and saw a long hallway that led down to stairs. It reminded him of being inside of a submarine, which he¡¯d done once as part of a tour, though it was slightly less cramped than the USS Alabama. He had expected something more like on Star Trek, sleek and clean, but it was clear that a lot of things had been made under less than ideal conditions and without the proper materials. There was a suspicious amount of things made with wood, which he couldn¡¯t fathom being anyone¡¯s first choice if they had that much metalwork. ¡°Hello,¡± said Perry, waving at the woman. His eyes went to the big green lizard, who was clicking away at what looked to be a computer. ¡°Perry, this is Eggeltina and L¡¯onso,¡± said Hella. ¡°Eggy is our science officer and L¡¯onso is our security detail.¡± Eggy came over to them, smiling as she did. ¡°Neat armor,¡± she said, looking it over. ¡°Marchand, was it?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± replied Marchand from the speakers. ¡°I want one of those fusion reactors,¡± said Eggy, pointing at Perry¡¯s chest. ¡°They don¡¯t work in every world, but when they do, it seems like a great power source.¡± She looked up from the center of the chest to Perry¡¯s helmet. ¡°Any chance you can spare it for a half hour?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Eggy, now isn¡¯t the time,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re going into my quarters, I¡¯m going to explain the nature of the multiverse, you can come with us if you¡¯d like, but you have to keep to the assigned task. Okay?¡± ¡°Can do, ma¡¯am,¡± said Eggy, giving a lazy salute. ¡°L¡¯onso?¡± Hella called to the lizard, who hadn¡¯t left his post. ¡°No thank you,¡± he grumbled. Perry tried not to stare, but it seemed like the sounds had come from the lizardman¡¯s nose rather than his mouth. ¡°We have two others,¡± said Hella. ¡°Nitta is working on the ship right now ¡ª the bowels ¡ª and Cark is out.¡± ¡°Out where?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Where are we?¡± ¡°We¡¯re in a cloud over Berus,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Or, not an actual cloud, but a cloud that we¡¯re making that blends in with the real clouds. Someone watching closely might notice, but the waters aren¡¯t safe, and we didn¡¯t want to land on the island, not with five thresholders running around.¡± She slipped past Perry and went to one of the doors down the hallway, which she went in without another word, and Hella followed her with a sigh. Perry hesitated for a moment, then followed. He had somehow thought that this would be a more military operation, but it was looking more like a ragtag group of individuals. Hella had said she was the only one left of the original crew, but he had still assumed something more organized than this. Chapter 120 - NOT Spam, pt 2 The doorway turned out to lead into a large loft that wouldn¡¯t have been out of place in any major American city. The walls were brick and the furniture was pretty simple, with a few plants here and there for color. A small black cat was curled up on one of the chairs, and there was a flat screen television in front of the couch. Out the large windows there was a city skyline, but it was odd, because the implication was that they were floating on a barge or something like that. The whole place was larger than it should have been, given the rest of the ship. ¡°This is my room,¡± said Hella. ¡°How does it work?¡± asked Perry, looking around. He looked down at the wooden floorboards, and was thankful that he wasn¡¯t breaking them as he stepped on them. ¡°I¡¯ll get to that in a bit,¡± said Hella. She looked Perry over. ¡°Are you sure you wouldn¡¯t be more comfortable with the armor off? This might take a while.¡± ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alright,¡± said Hella. She held out a hand, and a sphere appeared in the air. It looked like it was made of liquid gold, though not hot, and she held it there for a moment, working through what she had to say. ¡°This is a universe, a world.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re from an Earth, which is Aleph-class,¡± said Hella. ¡°You¡¯re from a high technology civilization, and you¡¯re relatively educated, so there¡¯s a lot you already know and understand, if not intuitively. This is a three-dimensional representation of a multi-dimensional object, alright?¡± ¡°How many Earths are there?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We have no idea,¡± said Hella. ¡°My guess is that there are a thousand, but that¡¯s only a guess.¡± ¡°My guess is ten thousand, for what it¡¯s worth,¡± said Eggy. She was still eyeing the armor like she wanted to take it apart. ¡°Do you understand what a universe is, to your satisfaction?¡± asked Hella, still holding the sphere. ¡°Yes, I think so,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right,¡± said Hella. She held up her other hand, and another sphere appeared, identical to the first one. ¡°There are multiple universes, with the number commonly quoted at 1.6 million. When certain conditions are met, which we¡¯ll get to later, a portal opens up. When a person goes through the portal, a connection is made.¡± A thin golden line formed between the two spheres. It shimmered softly in the loft¡¯s lights ¡ª electric, by the look of them. When Perry looked closer, he realized that it was shimmering in a pattern, moving from the first sphere to the second. ¡°With me so far?¡± ¡°The connection is made after the person goes through?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It is,¡± nodded Hella. ¡°And the connection is one way. But it doesn¡¯t just let a person travel from one world to another, it brings other things too.¡± The line thickened at the origin end, so it looked like a long sideways funnel between the two spheres. ¡°It brings physics.¡± Perry frowned inside his helmet. ¡°Explain that more.¡± ¡°Magical teas,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Universe A has magical teas, Universe B doesn¡¯t, but when a person portals through, all of a sudden magical teas start working in Universe B. Locally, anyway.¡± ¡°Usually this isn¡¯t a problem for Universe B,¡± said Hella, still holding up the connected orbs. ¡°Most magic ¡ª thaumics ¡ª isn¡¯t just a set of physics to layer on top of base reality, it¡¯s a set of objects that only interact with that physics. Your sword, for example, is magical, and the reason it works in every world you¡¯ve been to is that you¡¯re dragging its physics along with you.¡± She twisted her fingers, and the spheres became a chain of seven worlds, each of a different color, each with a tapered line between them. The spheres changed color too, and Perry realized that it was supposed to be his worlds. Earth in white, Earth 2 in cobalt blue, Seraphinus in silver, Teaguewater in red, the Great Arc in teal, Esperide in brown, and finally, Markat in gold. A bit of color from each world was carried over along the strand, until the final strand, the one that led to Markat, had all the colors. ¡°I¡¯m ¡­ dragging novel physics into these worlds?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Is that safe? I mean it must be, because ¡ª¡± ¡°Oh, dude, no, it¡¯s definitely not safe,¡± said Eggy with a laugh. ¡°She¡¯s right,¡± said Hella. ¡°Sometimes it doesn¡¯t matter. Sometimes the strand goes between realities and remains small, just connecting one punch to another. Sometimes the alterations to physical reality fade away after the thresholders are gone and only the tether between worlds remains.¡± She frowned. ¡°But other times, magic spreads like a fungus. Some of them are viral, literally or figuratively. You give someone a werewolf tooth, he eats it, he transforms, he gives his teeth to other people, they transform, and so on until the world is overrun with werewolves and society breaks down because it can¡¯t respond fast enough. Or the spreading magic gives a backdoor into other magic, the kinds that can dip down into metaphysics and rewrite reality. Or sometimes a society discovers this new magic that was brought to them by two thresholders having a fight on another continent and leaving something behind, and they integrate it into their society, and build great wonders, only for something to happen to the strand which snaps it and sends their entire society right down into the dirt.¡± ¡°And that¡¯s just the stuff we know about,¡± said Eggy. ¡°There¡¯s other stuff that¡¯s only theoretical, and that¡¯s some scary business. We think these strands have some pull to them, and that the punches might be weakening the universes. Not a lot, but a little, destabilizing their metaphysics. Show him.¡± ¡°I want to make sure he understands the basics, that he has some framework for understanding thresholding,¡± said Hella. ¡°I think I do,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not just bad because of the fights, it¡¯s bad because of what the fighters can bring with them.¡± ¡°This is Esperide,¡± said Hella. The balls and strands rearranged themselves into a V-shape, with one of the ends mutated and splitting again. The ball that represented Esperide sat at the crook of the V, and all the worlds that Perry had gone to lined up on the left side, with another curious split coming off the Great Arc. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± asked Perry, pointing. ¡°You took a substantial fraction of nanites from Maya Singh,¡± said Hella. ¡°That line represents their descent down the strand. Technically that strand goes through a number of worlds that Maya herself went through, but the magic of every other world didn¡¯t descend down through Esperide.¡± ¡°And that¡¯s ¡­ Jeff and Marjut?¡± asked Perry, pointing at the other branch. ¡°Yes,¡± said Hella. ¡°Normally it wouldn¡¯t look like that, but he carried her across worlds. If she¡¯d gone through the portal on her own, she¡¯d have been sent somewhere else. Her magic got carried with her, which is ¡­ well, interesting, if nothing else, but possibly exploitable.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you had that ring, you could drag a lot of physics through the portal, so long as you had a bunch of thresholders moving at once.¡± ¡°We could, yes,¡± said Hella. ¡°However, there are, in theory, risks.¡± ¡°Universe-exploding risks,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Or, maybe not the whole universe, just everything within a lightyear of the portal. I love that term, lightyear, it¡¯s so elegant.¡± ¡°Where does the risk come from?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Too much physics pushed into one place at once?¡± ¡°We¡¯re not sure,¡± said Hella. ¡°Eggy has thoughts, but they¡¯re not well-ordered, and we¡¯re a five person team without much in the way of the kind of scientific muscle we would need to make actual headway.¡± ¡°Why not?¡± asked Perry. Hella looked him up and down. She let the model fall away again. It was as easy for her as throwing up a hand sign would be for him. It was interesting magic, and he wasn¡¯t entirely sure how she was doing it, given what she¡¯d said about how this all worked. ¡°Making contact is fraught,¡± said Hella. ¡°People try to kill us,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Not all people,¡± said Hella. ¡°But we have a bad track record when we talk to a group of people and explain everything we know about what¡¯s going on. That holds even when talking about large-scale, technologically advanced civilizations. It doesn¡¯t help that we¡¯re typically coming in after a large shake up of their existing power structure, or perhaps wide-scale death and destruction. We¡¯re hoping to hit one of these times, to find some people with the power and wherewithal to help us with metaphysics, somewhere we can stay for years, but so far we¡¯ve struck out. And given we haven¡¯t had a thresholder working with us until now ¡­¡± She left a pregnant pause. ¡°You want someone to study,¡± said Perry. ¡°Someone you can wave some instruments at so you can figure out how this is actually working. The models you showed me have gaps in them, large questions that you couldn¡¯t have answered if I had pressed you on them.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Hella. ¡°A sane thresholder, that ring ¡­ you can understand why we wanted to make contact.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure how much you¡¯ve noticed, but things are going to shit here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I accidentally kicked the hornet¡¯s nest, and my guess is that Thirlwell is going to be on a war footing right now. There are, as you¡¯ve said, five thresholders right now, which means ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± Hella let out a breath. ¡°There are a few things that you need to know. The first is that we have prognostics, an ability to approximate the future. The bad news, for you, is that before that email was sent, you were on track to die. We had enough time to sample five futures, and in three of them you died to Third Fervor, and in two to Fenilor.¡± ¡°He shouldn¡¯t have beef with me,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re ¡­ practically on the same side, I think. Maybe literally on the same side.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t account for it either,¡± said Hella. ¡°Not at the moment, anyway. It¡¯s been difficult to find the inciting incident, but he does seem to like to turn on you. He¡¯s completely screwed up whatever the portals are doing, and I would very much like to know how, but everything he¡¯s done is too far in the past.¡± ¡°Because you can see the past,¡± said Perry. ¡°Like Jeff.¡± ¡°Not really,¡± said Hella. ¡°We can see a possible past, and the further back we look, the more fuzzy it gets. He came to this world a long time ago, and at any rate, he¡¯s been guarding against the tool we¡¯re using, along with a few others. But there¡¯s one other wrinkle, and it¡¯s something that we need to tell you about.¡± She moved her hands again, and the worlds with their tails appeared again. This one was a V shape, and if it was a particular world, Perry couldn¡¯t tell what it was meant to be. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. ¡°This is the normal case,¡± said Hella. ¡°Two thresholder have their own chains of worlds, they meet, they fight, and either we get this,¡± the shapes formed an X, ¡°or this.¡± The shapes formed an Y. ¡°Depending if the loser lived or died, obviously.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°And this is ¡­¡± ¡°It¡¯s a punch map,¡± said Hella. ¡°Assuming we have the right thaumics available, we can map out what happened. There are more exotic configurations, team ups that have extra tails, times when both thresholders die, which is only a theory because if we were to run into that, we¡¯d have to go upstream, which would be a challenge.¡± ¡°We¡¯re still figuring out how to do it,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Might be impossible.¡± ¡°Anyway,¡± said Hella. She waved her hand and made a new image, a sphere with a hundred short tails off of it, along with two longer ones. ¡°This is the punch map for this world.¡± ¡°What the hell?¡± asked Perry. ¡°This is the result of someone sticking around on a world,¡± said Hella. ¡°This is Fenilor.¡± ¡°You said this was dangerous,¡± said Perry. He was counting the tails. ¡°All these thresholders coming into this world, bringing in their own physics, or those from the worlds they won on, and then ¡­ some of them stick around?¡± ¡°Some of them do,¡± said Hella. ¡°Too many physics makes the universe explode,¡± said Eggy. ¡°That¡¯s the technical explanation.¡± ¡°This world is in danger?¡± asked Perry. Hella nodded. ¡°This world is in much more danger if someone tries to bring it all through.¡± ¡°Probably everyone dies,¡± said Eggy. Perry looked at the model, right up to the point that Hella let it fall away. ¡°There were too many,¡± said Perry. ¡°How do you mean?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Too many what?¡± ¡°Each tail represents a thresholder who came here and presumably died, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Fenilor has been here for maybe seventy years, and he said they come around once every five years, which would only be fourteen or so. So why are there so many?¡± Hella frowned and looked at Eggy. ¡°Ideas?¡± ¡°Well, the five year thing ¡­ I don¡¯t know,¡± said Eggy. ¡°We¡¯ve only run across how many refusal patterns, two? And neither of those were long term.¡± ¡°A refusal pattern being?¡± asked Perry. ¡°A thresholder doesn¡¯t go through the portal,¡± said Hella. ¡°There¡¯s a grace period of some kind, and if you don¡¯t die during it, the Grand Spell throws someone else at you. We¡¯re not sure why.¡± ¡°An average of five years,¡± Eggy continued, ¡°I could buy that being true, and I don¡¯t see why he¡¯d lie about it. But, uh. That means the other solution is that he hasn¡¯t been here seventy years, he¡¯s been here a lot longer. Based on the punch map? Five hundred years, maybe, with a huge margin of error.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. He frowned. ¡°What the hell was he doing that whole time?¡± ¡°Five hundred years is far beyond our ability to see and search,¡± said Hella. ¡°Even if we could find the point when he put up defenses ¡­ I don¡¯t know. It¡¯s too lossy. That far back, it¡¯s the fog of war.¡± ¡°Any idea how he¡¯s winning?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He shouldn¡¯t be. Right?¡± ¡°It¡¯s complicated,¡± said Hella. ¡°Not that complicated,¡± said Eggy. ¡°The selection process is pretty well understood.¡± ¡°It¡¯s conflict,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ something like it.¡± ¡°Sort of,¡± said Eggy, wrinkling her nose. ¡°Sorry, are you going to be wearing that armor the entire time?¡± ¡°I am,¡± said Perry. ¡°Because you know we could like, kill you, right?¡± asked Eggy. She looked over at Hella, then back at Perry. ¡°The armor isn¡¯t doing anything for you? I mean, we have technopath access, we could shut it down fast.¡± ¡°Eggy,¡± said Hella. She looked at Perry. ¡°You¡¯re in no danger here. I need you to understand that.¡± ¡°Right, no, I wasn¡¯t saying that we would kill him,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I¡¯m just trying to explain that now that he¡¯s here, if we wanted to kill him, it would be pretty easy for us to do, and it¡¯s not like he could fight his way out if he wanted to.¡± Perry shifted slightly. He could draw his sword in a moment, then go after them. ¡°We¡¯ve been to many worlds,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re following thresholders, jumping from track to track. I¡¯ve seen seventy-eight worlds, some of them briefly, others for a longer time.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a lot,¡± said Perry. He wasn¡¯t quite relaxed. It was possible that coming here was a mistake, but given what they knew, if they were telling the truth, they had answers, power, and a mission that he couldn¡¯t say no to. ¡°It¡¯s not like being a thresholder, accumulating power as I go,¡± said Hella. ¡°Or ¡­ not quite the same. We follow the paths, but if there are two trails, we don¡¯t know who we¡¯re following, and with the team ups, sometimes we end up going after someone with only a world under their belt. We can¡¯t rely on anything, because it might all fall apart.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± Perry said slowly. ¡°Seventy-eight worlds, but you have to deal with things breaking down all the time.¡± ¡°There¡¯s overlap,¡± said Eggy. ¡°J-class thaumics, K-class thaumics, you run into some repetition, even if the people of the worlds we¡¯re seeing would be baffled by us saying that their two things are under the same umbrella. So the Farfinder has to be built for pretty much any world we could encounter, and we have a bunch of redundant engines that will work in all kinds of conditions. H-class are the best though.¡± Perry frowned at her. ¡°Seems like a hard way to travel. Also seems like you might die from not having the right tools.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a reason I¡¯m the only one left of the original crew,¡± said Hella. ¡°The ship is unrecognizable.¡± ¡°Oh, we¡¯ve come close to dying a ton of times,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry, holding up a hand. ¡°We got off track, and ¡ª you were saying that you could kill me? That it would be easy? Because ¡ª oh.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Hella, nodding. ¡°This world has magic from a hundred worlds,¡± said Perry as it clicked into place. ¡°Which means that everything you¡¯ve been stockpiling, everything that worked once and then stopped working, all of it, suddenly comes back to life. And you¡¯ve got power like you¡¯ve never had before.¡± Hella nodded. ¡°It¡¯s been great,¡± said Eggy. ¡°And you can help me kill Third Fervor, or Fenilor, if that¡¯s necessary,¡± said Perry. Hella frowned. ¡°We can help. Maybe. But ¡­ you¡¯ve noticed that every match you¡¯ve had, every match you¡¯ve heard of, has been pretty even?¡± ¡°So far as I can tell, that¡¯s one of the constants ¡ª or not a constant, but a strong pattern,¡± said Perry. ¡°We don¡¯t know how it works,¡± said Hella. ¡°We think that both thresholders and the circumstances they¡¯re chosen for result in a nearly split chance for either of them to win. But we don¡¯t know what that takes into account. We don¡¯t know whether it takes us into account. We think maybe it does.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Which means if you help me ¡­ you might get wiped out. You become a part of the game. So you¡¯re saying no.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t have brought you here if the answer was no,¡± said Hella. ¡°But it¡¯s complicated, and I have a duty to my crew.¡± ¡°Understood,¡± nodded Perry. ¡°I¡¯m hoping that Fenilor can just go on his way.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think he can,¡± said Hella. ¡°I think that puts the whole world at risk, given how many lines he might be tugging, how fouled the system is here. I don¡¯t think the Grand Spell was set up for this. I think he needs to be killed.¡± ¡°But not by you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Possibly by us, if we can,¡± said Hella. ¡°The powers of a thresholder can be very strong though, stronger than what we have. We¡¯re not invincible.¡± ¡°We¡¯re kind of invincible,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I mean, here, in this overstuffed world, we¡¯re not what I would call mortal, especially on this ship.¡± ¡°And you won¡¯t help,¡± said Perry. Perry stepped away from them and went to the wide windows. The city skyline was scrolling by, but it was on repeat, which was more obvious when he got closer. The view was from a barge, for whatever reason, or a houseboat, though that was obviously inconsistent with this being a refurbished loft with brickwork. ¡°That was my home,¡± said Hella, who came to stand beside him. ¡°It was an Earth.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°So ¡­ common lineage? Because my Earth didn¡¯t have the capacity to send people across dimensions, I don¡¯t think, not even if it had been following a thresholder fight.¡± ¡°I haven¡¯t had the pleasure of visiting another Earth,¡± said Hella. ¡°I hear about them from time to time though. From what I¡¯ve heard, and the logs I¡¯ve looked at, and what our artificial intelligence says, your Earth was pretty close to mine. We had people with powers there though, which in retrospect were probably some kind of backwash from a previous thresholder fight. Some chose to be heroes and others became villains, and ¡ª¡± ¡°Superheroes?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know that term,¡± said Hella. Perry knew that, naturally, because it didn¡¯t translate. He had felt it not translate, and felt how it wanted to slip into a different word for her, something that wouldn¡¯t have clarified anything between the two of them. ¡°I think I get the gist of it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Were there ¡­ spandex?¡± He let the translation come naturally. ¡°As part of their powers, yes,¡± said Hella. ¡°Thresholders are similar to them, the villains, anyway. The heroes ¡­ it¡¯s rare to find a thresholder who¡¯s an actual hero. Maya was as close as we¡¯d come, until we found you.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°That¡¯s kind of sad.¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± nodded Hella. ¡°There have been plenty of ideologues, but if they¡¯re suited to going across the multiverse accruing power, they¡¯re usually fatally flawed in one way or another, if it¡¯s not the ideology itself that¡¯s toxic. You¡¯ve had your ups and downs, but you don¡¯t have the bloodlust of the others, not unless it¡¯s a full moon. You try your best to fit in with the local cultures. You bridge gaps, and help people where you can, without upsetting the apple cart.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you predict that I¡¯m going to die.¡± ¡°Possibly,¡± said Hella. ¡°The predictions are poor things, and we¡¯ve been surprised before.¡± ¡°Blindsided, even,¡± said Eggy. ¡°They¡¯re also invalid now that we¡¯ve met,¡± said Hella. ¡°They became invalid the moment we sent you that message, and it¡¯s going to be difficult to generate more of them. Interaction compromises prediction, even if we shoot up into space and observe from a great distance.¡± ¡°Well, thank you for the warning, at least,¡± said Perry. He turned toward the door. ¡°It¡¯s something to think about, something to process. I¡¯ll help you, whether you help me or not. If you can¡¯t do more without risking your crew ¡­ I would understand.¡± He wouldn¡¯t be happy about it, but he would understand. ¡°I should be getting back.¡± ¡°Just like that?¡± asked Hella. ¡°You said you weren¡¯t going to get involved,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can play research subject for you, I think that¡¯s the right thing to do, but I have things I need to be doing out there. I need to get back to Berus and make sure that there¡¯s not some retaliatory attack. I need to protect Mette and ¡­ the clone, which I suppose you know about already. I would love to stay here and chat, but it¡¯s been many hours since my last fight, and days since I¡¯ve checked in with my allies. I don¡¯t fully know what your capabilities are, but you can apparently watch me from a distance and slide an email into my inbox without having to send it.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t mean that we were going to hang you out to dry,¡± said Hella. ¡°Eggy, send him everything we have.¡± ¡°What, everything?¡± asked Eggy. ¡°Because everything is a lot, especially for this world.¡± ¡°He has the AI to parse it,¡± said Hella. ¡°I mean, that¡¯s still interference though, right?¡± asked Eggy. ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter, do it,¡± said Hella. Eggy didn¡¯t have a visible phone or tablet or anything like that, so Perry wasn¡¯t sure how she was going to send anything. Still, she seemed hesitant. ¡°Alright, just so you know,¡± she said to Perry. ¡°The thresholder spell is kind of bad, but also kind of really good. The prediction is, we think, insanely powerful, even if it has its flubs. So if the prediction takes us into account and we send you off with a bunch of weapons and information, then the spell knew that was going to happen, and you¡¯re not actually better off in terms of the odds.¡± ¡°Uh, okay,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s powerful like that,¡± said Eggy. ¡°It¡¯s not time travel, we don¡¯t think, but it looks like time travel, or causality violations, or something like that. If we give you a gun and you accept the gun, then your enemies are strong enough to not be taken down by a gun. And I know you have a gun, I¡¯m just saying ¡ª¡± ¡°I get it,¡± said Perry. ¡°If we make a bunch of assumptions, then maybe getting help makes no difference. Send me whatever data you have.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Eggy with a shrug. There was no visible action taken on her part, but the HUD pinged Perry, indicating the arrival of an email. ¡°Done.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± said Perry. ¡°Go see to your people,¡± said Hella. ¡°Think about what I¡¯ve said, review the information, make sure to warn Mette that she¡¯s part of this, and prepare for the worst. I think it would be better if you didn¡¯t tell anyone else we¡¯re here, because we don¡¯t want to be part of a war between powerful thresholders. That said, if it comes down to it ¡­ we¡¯ll do what we can.¡± ¡°That¡¯s all I can ask for, I guess,¡± said Perry. Chapter 121 - Detente ¡°Alright,¡± said Hella once the man in blue armor had left their ship. They¡¯d deposited him in Berus, at an abandoned farm building two miles away from the town he¡¯d been staying in. ¡°For future reference, do not tell people we can kill them?¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Eggy, cocking her head to the side. ¡°It was funny. He liked it.¡± ¡°He was wearing his helmet the entire time, cloaking his voice, and he has the power to remove any emotion from his speech anyway,¡± said Hella. ¡°Right, but he liked it,¡± said Eggy. She must have seen something on Hella¡¯s face. ¡°I mean, he did, he liked it!¡± ¡°He likes power,¡± said Hella. ¡°He doesn¡¯t like feeling powerless. When he¡¯s threatened, he plays it cool, but everything we¡¯ve seen from him says that he also thinks about how to deal with the threat, and often, how he deals with the threat is by striking first.¡± ¡°Nah,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I was being quite charmingly forthright with him. We could have killed him! He¡¯s got to respect me saying that, doesn¡¯t he? I mean, he¡¯s Perry, we¡¯ve spent like ¡ª how long on him now?¡± ¡°Months,¡± said Hella. ¡°Though I¡¯m sure if Earth Command had seen that first contact, they¡¯d have had me summarily executed.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve said it before and I¡¯ll say it again,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Earth Command sound like total dicks.¡± ¡°They were responding to a calamity they¡¯d never seen before,¡± said Hella. ¡°If the result was fervor, if their policies were draconian ¡­ I¡¯m going to have nine kinds of court martials if we ever make it back.¡± ¡°I won¡¯t say a word,¡± said Eggy. She twirled around and went to the large window that featured the rolling skyline of New Amsterdam as seen from the Montaigne River. It didn¡¯t go with the room¡¯s current configuration as a loft, but from Hella¡¯s perspective it was the best of both worlds. Her actual loft had been much smaller than this space was, and the view had been the side of a skyscraper, which necessitated having curtains up if she didn¡¯t want people looking in on her. ¡°I would love to visit here someday,¡± said Eggy. They didn¡¯t go into each other¡¯s quarters all that often, when they even had quarters. In some worlds, the door was just a door, opening up against metal. In others, the backdrop didn¡¯t work. ¡°Someday,¡± nodded Hella. ¡°And your world ¡ª¡± ¡°Nope,¡± said Eggy. She turned back and smiled at Hella. ¡°Nope! Hard nope!¡± ¡°And you don¡¯t want to talk to me about it?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Fuck ¡®em,¡± said Eggy. ¡°That¡¯s all you need to know. I am your brilliant science officer, you are my bold captain, and we can only hope that we never see hide nor hair of that world ever again.¡± Hella nodded. The gist of it was that Eggy¡¯s world had some weird ideas about how people should comport themselves, and Eggeltina had decided from a very young age that these ideas were stupid and beneath her. Her father had encouraged her and either cultivated or fostered a love of science in her, then promptly died at the worst possible time, leaving Eggeltina adrift. The young Eggeltina had been forced by circumstance into an arranged marriage, where she was expected to be a ¡®matron¡¯, requiring stodgy clothing and the bearing of children. She¡¯d been able to get away with not having children and had proven her worth as a scientist to her husband, but that had only gotten her work stolen from her. Which was right about when the Farfinder had shown up in the wake of yet another thresholder battle. The pitch for Eggy was that she¡¯d get to travel the multiverse, learn science that no one else knew, and could do whatever the fuck she wanted. It was really only the last thing that needed to be said to her. ¡°Then let¡¯s get to work,¡± said Hella. ¡°Whatever the cloaking technology or magic Fenilor has, I want it.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll see what I can do,¡± said Eggy. ¡°But the fact that he¡¯s cloaking us so much means that it¡¯s going to be hard to figure the cloak out.¡± ¡°Do you have a way to check places that are currently cloaked?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Narrow down his possible location, or figure out specific locations that we can go check on foot?¡± ¡°I can do that,¡± said Eggy. ¡°But if he¡¯s smart, he¡¯ll have cloaked a bunch of places that don¡¯t have any particular meaning. Then we¡¯ll spend time going to waterfalls and mountaintops, and that might be lovely, but wouldn¡¯t let us learn much.¡± ¡°Assuming he has the resources,¡± said Hella. ¡°If it¡¯s something he can only do for himself, we can pin him down, and if there are limits, we can see what¡¯s important to him.¡± ¡°Maybe send Perry out to check those locations,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I mean, if he¡¯s willing.¡± ¡°I¡¯m pretty sure he wants to be absolutely anywhere other than with that clone,¡± said Hella. She paused. ¡°How much did you send him?¡± ¡°Compact digest,¡± said Eggy. ¡°We have more data than will fit on his armor. There¡¯s a readme, he can request more, or I can give him an external hard drive.¡± She shrugged. ¡°Hopefully he doesn¡¯t get distracted,¡± said Hella. ¡°It was supposed to be a show of good faith.¡± ¡°There¡¯s also enough in there for him to make some scary weapons,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I didn¡¯t include all the schematics, but on this world? With what we know? Yeah ¡­ I have to imagine that Fenilor is fucked. Pardon my language.¡± In Hella¡¯s experience, Eggy only said ¡®pardon my language¡¯ to emphasize the swearing. ¡°He might have been here for as long as five hundred years,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re fairly sure that he¡¯s got a power that increases over time and with battles, and he¡¯s been sandbagging against a hundred thresholders, taking their things, usually killing them outright based on the map. He¡¯s had at least some support from state-level actors for the last sixty years or so. I really want you not to underestimate him. And if we happen to meet him, I want you to not tell him that we can kill him, because that¡¯s a boast we can¡¯t back up.¡± ¡°Sure, sure,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Seems like he would take it a lot worse.¡± ¡°Now come on, we have more work,¡± said Hella. ¡°I¡¯m hoping that Cark has more information from the ground.¡± ~~~~ Marchand started reading through the data dump, which had come to them in the form of a single email titled ¡°Important Stuff For You To Know¡±. It was only loosely organized, with no table of contents giving a map to the many files inside it. Some of the files were labeled as reports of various worlds the Farfinder had visited, some were sprawling digests of experiments that had been done under different physics regimes and what had been learned from them, and others were diary entries. The Farfinder¡¯s computers mostly operated under what they called ¡®normal physics¡¯, the things that stayed more or less constant from world to world, and they had been adding in more and more data as they went. ¡°It appears they didn¡¯t give us access to their personnel files,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ll start on compiling what I can from their notes.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s necessary,¡± said Perry. ¡°I will note you didn¡¯t make a request for them to stop keeping an eye on you,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Was there a reason for that, sir?¡± ¡°They¡¯ve already seen everything,¡± said Perry. ¡°And if they¡¯re watching us, that means they can intervene if necessary. Besides, I could make that request and they could refuse. Maybe they would, citing security concerns. Or maybe they would say ¡®oh, okay, we won¡¯t look¡¯ and then look anyway.¡± ¡°Should we have protocols in place, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I¡¯m not convinced that their intentions are entirely noble.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t even know their capabilities,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let it ride. Focus on getting what you can from what they¡¯ve sent to us, show me the most relevant bits, do your synthesis thing.¡± They were standing in a field of leafy plants, some distance away from the rings of flowers that surrounded the lantern complex. The golden dome was visible in the distance, further along than it had been. Mette and the clone were there, along with Dirk and Moss. Several nanite clusters had been sitting there the whole time, collecting information on everything that had happened, recording conversations, but Perry would rather hear it from them and confirm later instead of squating outside and having Marchand compile yet another digest. ¡°Nima appears to have had an altercation with the clone Kestrel, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°It appears that news of the murder quickly reached these shores, which I suppose is unsurprising,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Is he ¡­ dead?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He¡¯s only injured,¡± said Marchand. ¡°He¡¯ll recover. He appears to have gotten the better of her.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess I underestimated him. Do you have a replay?¡± Marchand put it up on the HUD, a lossy reconstruction, and Perry watched. For someone with no equipment and no powers, it was a stunning display of bravery, and while he¡¯d been seriously injured and hadn¡¯t actually gotten the better of her, he had still somehow won. It made Perry feel no small amount of pride, and he wasn¡¯t entirely sure why. ¡°Let¡¯s go then,¡± said Perry. ¡°If we don¡¯t need to worry about Nima, or we need to worry about her in a different context, then we can keep the armor on.¡± ¡°If you think that¡¯s best, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry made his way to town, running at a pace that didn¡¯t drain the suit¡¯s energy or his own personal reserves all that much. When they were closer, Marchand highlighted all the relevant people on the HUD as reported by the nanite network that had been left in place. Mette and Kestrel were together in their room, while Dirk was with Moss in the warehouse that contained the cloning machine. ¡°We¡¯ll go to Kestrel and Mette first,¡± said Perry. ¡°They appear to be indisposed, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Meaning?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s a delicate situation, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°One which perhaps should be dealt with via careful and consideration discussion at a later date.¡± ¡°They¡¯re fucking?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir, if you insist on putting it so crassly,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe they finished some time ago, and are now in conversation. They are not dressed for company, sir.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. He really should have assumed that would happen, especially with him away, but in his mind he¡¯d assumed that they would be more platonic. He didn¡¯t know where he¡¯d stand with Mette, but it wasn¡¯t as though she¡¯d been his girlfriend or anything. Maybe she would want to carry on with both of them, though the thought made him uncomfortable. ¡°Shall I let you know when they¡¯re decent?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I suppose,¡± said Perry. He turned toward the warehouse and moved that way instead. He got some looks as he came into town, which was to be expected given the bulky blue armor. Some people ducked inside, but others just stared, wondering who the hell he was or why he was walking around. They might have stared more if they saw that he was a fully recovered Perry. Part of the reason he¡¯d left was so there wouldn¡¯t be any of that, but now that Nima was gone and there¡¯d been a superpowered fight in the middle of the town ¡ª if only barely ¡ª that was less of a concern. The warehouse had two guards, both of whom had gotten up from their chairs when they¡¯d seen him approaching. ¡°It¡¯s Perry,¡± he said. They gave each other a look, which he took to be them trying to figure out whether to stop him, or maybe how to stop him. They stepped aside though, and Perry moved through the door, closing it behind him. When he looked at Dirk and Moss, they were staring at him. ¡°How¡¯d your scouting mission go?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Gather any good intelligence across the water?¡± ¡°Nothing much,¡± said Perry. ¡°Bullshit, I know you shot the king in the face,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I knew you knew,¡± said Perry. ¡°I thought we could have a fun little back and forth about it. Look, it was an accident, an automatic function of the armor that I hadn¡¯t foreseen.¡± ¡°Your armor automatically shoots people?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Sometimes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Is there a chance it¡¯s going to shoot me?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Are you a monarchist?¡± asked Perry. Dirk frowned at him. ¡°You know where my loyalties lie.¡± ¡°I do,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. Sorry if ¡­ I don¡¯t know. If this screws things up.¡± ¡°Well, thanks for asking, but it does,¡± said Dirk. He had his arms crossed. ¡°The very first thing a new ruler does when they come into power is get as tight a grip as they can on things. We have people in Thirlwell, some of them natives, some of them from abroad with the right skin color and accent to blend in. If you want to actually replace the monarchy, you need organizations in place. You can¡¯t just shoot the king in the face and call it a day. Why were you within a hundred paces of the king?¡± ¡°I made contact with Third Fervor, his captive thresholder,¡± said Perry. ¡°He wanted a meeting with me. I thought I would be able to talk with him, maybe come to some kind of understanding.¡± ¡°Then you shot him in the face,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Great.¡± He looked the armor over. ¡°And you escaped without a scratch?¡± ¡°I had a lot of scratches, actually,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m all healed up and repaired now though.¡± ¡°Have you spoken with Kestrel?¡± asked Moss. ¡°He fought with Nima. She accused him of having killed the king, which wasn¡¯t too far off.¡± ¡°She doesn¡¯t matter,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I find her, I¡¯ll kill her. Let me know if you have any information on that subject, but she¡¯s weak enough that I could kill her without my usual tools. My guess is she¡¯d be dead as a doornail to a gun. For the time being, she¡¯s irrelevant.¡± ¡°She¡¯s a monarchist,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You couldn¡¯t have warned us about that?¡± ¡°She doesn¡¯t know about this machine,¡± said Perry, pointing to the looming contraption sitting next to them. It didn¡¯t seem to be in use, which he was grateful for. ¡°And I didn¡¯t think she¡¯d do that, attack me. You¡¯ve searched her room?¡± ¡°There was nothing,¡± said Dirk. ¡°She¡¯d made quite the little workshop up there, but the masks were all gone, and from what we know of her movements, she must have stashed them somewhere else, at a fallback point.¡± ¡°She didn¡¯t use one?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Nope,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Maybe she couldn¡¯t make it work with her armor. I¡¯m not sure.¡± ¡°Irrelevant,¡± said Perry. He sighed. ¡°That other thing we talked about, that guy you were supposed to find for me? What¡¯s the word on that?¡± ¡°Nothing much,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Some sites that I was told to go check, projects with some overruns that smelled funny, but ¡­ no. You¡¯re used to information flowing faster, more freely, I get that, but here? I have to wait on letters, and you had better believe I¡¯m not sending those letters in the clear, which means time for encryption and decryption, hoping that it doesn¡¯t get cracked.¡± ¡°Your encryption is probably worthless,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just so you know. Worthless against me, Third Fervor, and other parties.¡± The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Dirk sighed. ¡°Alright, great to know. It would have been more great to know considerably earlier. How the hell do you get past a one-time pad?¡± ¡°We cannot, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry was very thankful that this had been said as a whisper in his ear and not out loud. ¡°Keep using encryption, just don¡¯t trust it,¡± said Perry. ¡°And assume there are some secrets that are going to come out in the open. I was able to gather more information on Third Fervor and her abilities, but I know that¡¯s secondary to you.¡± ¡°Look,¡± said Dirk. He cast a glance at Moss, then back at Perry. ¡°Take the helmet off?¡± Perry removed the helmet and held it in one hand, allowing them to see his face. They hadn¡¯t seen the armor before, and Moss had been gawking at it. ¡°Of all the people you could have shot in the face, the king of Thirlwell is the one I¡¯ll miss least. He¡¯s a shit. Our intelligence in Thirlwell has been pretty good for the last few years, thanks in no small part to me, and yeah, definitely one of my top picks for face-shooting.¡± Dirk took a breath. ¡°However. It¡¯s incredibly inconvenient that he¡¯s dead now. We didn¡¯t have the right people in place to capitalize on it. We have several agents in the country, the usual agitators and spies and whatever else. Those people are all in danger, people you put in danger.¡± ¡°I could help with that,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not asking for your help,¡± said Dirk, holding up a hand. ¡°I¡¯m interested in hearing what that help would look like, but I¡¯m telling you where we stand now, which is that we don¡¯t have the capacity for making war against Thirlwell, not when it would be ¡ª from what we know ¡ª trivial for Thirlwell to fire on civilians.¡± ¡°Are you asking for a ceasefire?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Or for action?¡± ¡°At this point?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°I don¡¯t trust you for shit. I don¡¯t think you¡¯re going to turn on us, I just think you¡¯re terrible at accomplishing our mutually beneficial goals. Maybe you¡¯re working on your own designs, and maybe that¡¯s going great for you, but my guess is that it¡¯s not.¡± ¡°Not really, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°What I¡¯m asking, what I¡¯m hoping, is that you just tell us before you do anything that¡¯s going to fuck up enormous amounts of work and put people¡¯s lives in danger,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Ideally, we have a conversation about it, and you¡¯ll say something like ¡®hey, I¡¯m going to meet with the king¡¯ and I¡¯ll say ¡®no, don¡¯t do that, you idiot¡¯, and you¡¯ll say ¡®well I¡¯m going to anyway¡¯ and I¡¯ll at least have time to pull people out. Open communication. Partnership. You¡¯ve got your own stupid thing going on, we¡¯ve got out vital work, we want to make sure that we¡¯re not stepping on each other¡¯s toes.¡± ¡°To be honest, I thought you would chew me out more,¡± said Perry. ¡°To be honest, I laid into Kes,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Got a lot of my frustration out that way, even though he seemed as stunned as I was.¡± ¡°Like I said, it was a malfunction,¡± said Perry. He looked over at Moss. ¡°You¡¯ve been awfully quiet.¡± The dwarf shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s not my business.¡± ¡°In point of fact, it is your business,¡± said Dirk. ¡°No,¡± said Moss. ¡°I replace lanterns with domes. I build things. I help provide an example of the culture to those who are only starting to understand it. This? This isn¡¯t the culture. It¡¯s something that will disappear once the final monarchy is gone, necessary only as long as there is struggle.¡± ¡°There are other worlds,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Other monarchies beyond the stars.¡± ¡°They¡¯re not our concern,¡± said Moss. ¡°They sure as hell are, if they¡¯re going to come looking for us, if there are more where he comes from,¡± said Dirk, pointing an accusatory finger at Perry. ¡°It should be rare,¡± said Perry. ¡°A pair of thresholders every few hundred years, something like that. Though maybe less, if this place is nice and stable.¡± ¡°Dirk, you overstep your bounds,¡± said Moss. ¡°You overstep what the symboulions have asked of us, what the Command Authorities have deemed necessary and prudent.¡± He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, as though he might have to push Dirk over. ¡°I¡¯m doing what needs to be done,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I¡¯m dealing with the problems as they come. I¡¯m in the right place at the right time, and you know that Thirlwell has been one of my projects for a very long time.¡± ¡°There will be a reckoning,¡± said Moss. He turned to Perry and softened his tone. ¡°You are welcome to stay with us, of course. The more I¡¯ve seen of this thresholder business, the more I¡¯ve thought that we might need your protection. I hadn¡¯t realized just how dangerous you people could be.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll be here another hour or so,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m mostly checking in. Get that radio up and working as soon as possible, linked to as many other stations as you can to increase the range. I want to be able to come back here if need be.¡± He turned to Dirk. ¡°Anything you need to get your people out. I¡¯m serious. It¡¯s my cock up, I take responsibility.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll think about it,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Your counterpart, you think she¡¯s going to strike back?¡± ¡°Depends on the new queen,¡± said Perry. ¡°Third Fervor is a follower, not a leader. At least, that¡¯s my read on her. Though I don¡¯t know if she¡¯ll follow a queen as well as she¡¯d follow a king.¡± ¡°And the heir, Tantin, was that you too?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Another malfunction?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know who that was, if it wasn¡¯t just a coincidence. Smells funny though.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Dirk. He looked over at Moss. ¡°We¡¯ll make some moves. We¡¯ll see about salvaging this mess as best we can. Most likely it¡¯s a few years of work down the drain.¡± He turned back to Perry. ¡°I want a full debrief. A full debrief.¡± ¡°Later,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to go see the other guy, make sure he¡¯s not going to die.¡± He left the warehouse. The conversation had stung, but he understood it, and he had definitely been the one to give Marchand free rein. Some of Dirk¡¯s spies and provocateurs were going to die, or at least have to stop their plans, and action in Thirlwell was going to grind to a halt ¡ª unless Fenilor came in and wiped out the rest of the monarchists, which seemed unlikely. ¡°Are they done?¡± asked Perry, nodding to the bedroom. ¡°Mette is getting dressed, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe she¡¯s heard some of the commotion that your arrival caused.¡± ¡°Then let¡¯s go,¡± said Perry. He hesitated a step though. ¡°How is the digest going? You¡¯re still synthesizing it?¡± ¡°I am, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°With the amount of data, it will take some time, especially if you intend for me to be seeing to my other duties as well. I would estimate a few hours, though there are certain things I could tell you now, if you¡¯re in a hurry.¡± ¡°No hurry,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to trust you to understand my priorities.¡± ¡°Thank you, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s an admirable level of faith, given our recent misunderstanding. I will endeavor to do my best.¡± Perry still hesitated. ¡°They went through Esperide,¡± he said. ¡°They spent some time there, maybe concurrent with us, then showed up here?¡± ¡°Their timing wasn¡¯t concurrent, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They were there from shortly after we left until roughly a day ago.¡± Perry paused, trying to think about how to phrase what he wanted to say. ¡°Did they get information from the space station?¡± ¡°There is considerable information from the space station, yes sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It appears that they were able to wholesale copy information from nearly every computer system on or around Esperide, including a complete copy of Esper, which is somewhat concerning from a security standpoint.¡± ¡°They can see the future,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or something like it. The space station, did they ¡­ did she make it?¡± ¡°From everything in their logs, it appears that they predict no survivors,¡± said Marchand. ¡°With the exception of Brigitta and her unborn child.¡± ¡°Her ¡ª what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°My apologies, sir, I¡¯m still collating the data as we speak,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You said the words ¡®unborn child¡¯,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It appears that she was somewhat less infertile than previously believed. As far as their prognostics go, it will be a healthy baby boy in most timelines.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°I know this isn¡¯t something you wanted, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°No, that wasn¡¯t a bad ¡®fuck¡¯,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just ¡­ fuck.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Marchand. There was a short pause. ¡°Sir, earlier I said ¡®mmm¡¯ as though I understood, but I don¡¯t believe I do understand.¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Perry. He shook his head. ¡°It¡¯s not something I can deal with right now, not something I can actually affect. The Farfinder, it can¡¯t go backward?¡± ¡°I will need to continue with analysis of the logs, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It does not appear that anyone has written an FAQ for us.¡± ¡°If we can go back to Esperide,¡± said Perry. ¡°If we can get back there ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Is the priority not to return to Earth, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Miss Richter should currently be in cryonic storage.¡± ¡°No, I know,¡± said Perry. ¡°And ¡­ I mean, we¡¯re going to do that, we¡¯re gathering the pieces to do it, I¡¯ll steal the cloning machine if I have to, or have Mette figure out a better way to do it from the schematics. But we need to go back to Esperide.¡± The cloning machine was a long shot. Richter had talked a lot about cryonics, and so Perry had learned that one of the things they did was to remove all the blood from the body. That blood would surely have spoiled in the intervening two years, assuming that they had even kept it, which meant that he would have to make more blood somehow, and that wouldn¡¯t necessarily work. ¡°I¡¯ll make it a priority, sir,¡± said Marchand with the aggrieved sigh of an assistant who¡¯d been asked to do the impossible. Perry had been standing in the center of town too long, attracting stares, and walked into the building where his bedroom ¡ª Kestrel¡¯s bedroom ¡ª was. He went up the stairs, making sure that the heavy armor wasn¡¯t putting too much strain on the wood, and met Mette in the hallway. ¡°Perry!¡± she said, eyes wide. She glanced back at the bedroom door, seemingly involuntarily. ¡°How ¡­ how¡¯s it going?¡± ¡°Fine,¡± he said. ¡°I didn¡¯t think you¡¯d be coming back,¡± she said. ¡°I mean I knew you would eventually, but ¡ª you know. You didn¡¯t check in.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry. ¡°I should have.¡± He turned his head very deliberately to look at the bedroom door. ¡°How is he?¡± ¡°Injured,¡± said Mette. ¡°There was a fight with Nima, about whatever went on in Thirlwell, and ¡ª¡± ¡°I saw it,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can talk about it later. I want to keep you in the loop. But I meant ¡­ emotionally, spiritually, how¡¯s he doing?¡± ¡°Spiritually?¡± she asked. She shook her head. ¡°I don¡¯t know about that. But emotionally? Good, I think. He was happy to beat her. You saw. It was validating for him. He saw his own worth, even if he saw it in a stupid way. And you?¡± ¡°Me what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He didn¡¯t come out how you wanted him to,¡± said Mette. ¡°Then you took off across the sea and didn¡¯t check in, which normally I¡¯d think was because you had important shit going on, but ¡­ are you okay?¡± ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was just expecting something different. I didn¡¯t know how I would react until I was reacting. He¡¯s not me.¡± He shrugged, which seemed like more of a grand gesture with the armor on. ¡°Not you,¡± said Mette. She was staring at him as though she could see his face beneath the helmet. ¡°Because he¡¯s not powerful?¡± ¡°Pretty much, yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Me without the power is ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± He looked at the bedroom door again. ¡°I need to talk to him.¡± ¡°Have at,¡± said Mette. She slipped past the armor, and Perry waited until she had fully gone by before he moved to the bedroom door. He wasn¡¯t sure whether to knock or not, and decided that he would. ~~~~ Kes stared at the blue armor. He¡¯d heard some commotion from outside, but hadn¡¯t actually seen anything, because he couldn¡¯t twist around without significant pain in his leg. Mette had gone to investigate, and maybe just to get on with her day. Perry looked massive in the armor. It was adding a fair amount of height, and from the outside, there was no way to maintain the illusion that it wasn¡¯t a machine for war. All Perry needed was a gun of some kind. The shoulder-mounted one was supposed to be a backup, a weapon of last resort, with the armor more than capable of wielding all kinds of heavy weapons. Perry had only experienced that once, during some training with Richter, which meant that Kes had only experienced it once. At any moment, that shoulder gun could pop up and instantly kill Kes. It was a loaded weapon that Perry carried with him nearly everywhere when the armor was on. ¡°Hello,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hey,¡± said Kes. He shifted in the bed. ¡°Didn¡¯t know you were coming back.¡± ¡°Got sidetracked by something,¡± said Perry. After an awkward pause, Perry reached up and pulled the helmet off. However long he¡¯d been in there, he looked like he¡¯d just stepped out of a shower, but without the wetness. He had more hair than Kes remembered, a fuller beard. ¡°This is for you,¡± said Perry, reaching into a compartment of the armor and throwing something across the room to Kes. Kes almost fumbled it, which would have been embarrassing, but he managed to get his fingers around it. It was a tooth. ¡°Thanks,¡± said Kes. ¡°Not here,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need a plan for it. I can almost kind of channel moonlight, which means we can run you through some cycles, and there are uninhabited islands. Still, it¡¯s the work of at least a week, maybe months, and you¡¯re not going to be safe to be around until it¡¯s handled. This world has a strong moon. Next world ¡ª if there is a next world ¡ª might have something stronger, harder to keep control under.¡± ¡°There might not be a next world?¡± asked Kes. He was gripping the tooth like it was a lifeline, so hard that the sharp roots were digging into the palm of his hand. ¡°There have been developments,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not sure that this is the place to talk about them though. We have enemies ¡­ and also allies.¡± ¡°If we can alter our trajectory,¡± Kes began, but Perry shook his head. It was so odd, like looking into a mirror but his face moving under its own volition. ¡°I fought with Third Fervor. I wouldn¡¯t say that it was in my favor,¡± said Perry. ¡°She has portals, and another transport power. I¡¯ll give you the earpiece, and stick around here with March, so you can listen in on what she told me. I don¡¯t think it will help you though.¡± ¡°Nima,¡± said Kes. ¡°I fought her.¡± ¡°I saw, in the logs,¡± said Perry. ¡°You did well.¡± Kes nodded. ¡°I didn¡¯t actually win. She ran away because she thought I was you.¡± ¡°Still,¡± said Perry. ¡°It means if I go up against her, she might underestimate me.¡± ¡°You¡¯d crush her,¡± said Kes. ¡°Though we didn¡¯t have masks on. I don¡¯t know if that¡¯s going to change things. Probably it won¡¯t. Mine aren¡¯t strong, and she didn¡¯t have all that much more time to get one done.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll get it sorted,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m worried she¡¯s going to link up with Third Fervor. The logical place for her to go is across the water to Thirlwell, if she¡¯s worried about me and hates these people.¡± ¡°She¡¯s probably there already,¡± said Kes. ¡°Bah,¡± said Perry. He looked to the side, and it was like a painting, something that could be hung in the National Gallery. ¡°Do I ¡­ have a spirit root?¡± asked Kes. Perry looked back at him and blinked. ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Kes. ¡°No flower to activate it though,¡± said Perry. ¡°We have digitized books, but so far as Moon Gate knew, achieving second sphere was something that took many years of diligent training and no small amount of natural aptitude. You can start on that, but it¡¯s long term ¡ª very long term. We¡¯re not staying here another two years. We¡¯re maybe not even staying here another two weeks.¡± ¡°Because of what came up?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Yeah,¡± nodded Perry. ¡°You watched the recording from last night?¡± asked Kes. Perry frowned. ¡°Of the fight?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Kes, shaking his head. ¡°Fenilor.¡± He watched Perry¡¯s perfectly impassive face. ¡°He came here. He knew it wasn¡¯t me somehow. He told me that we might have to fight, once everything was done. He meant play fighting, just enough to open a portal, but ¡­ I don¡¯t know. I¡¯m not sure he¡¯d just give us a pass.¡± ¡°Marchand?¡± asked Perry, lifting up the helmet. ¡°You have a record of that meeting?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There is a suspicious error in the logs, though I know you¡¯re not in the habit of looking at them. I had not suspected that the issue was magical in nature, and will update future logging to account for this.¡± ¡°Warn me if it happens again,¡± said Perry. He looked at Kes with a frown. ¡°He¡¯s dangerous. Probably more dangerous than we are. We need to have a plan to take him down. We need to gather more information on him, by whatever means necessary.¡± Kes told Perry everything he knew, which wasn¡¯t much. He tried to repeat the conversation verbatim, but he¡¯d gone a long time depending on Marchand for recordings and being able to play back exactly what was said with a transcript. He wondered whether his ability to recall had been atrophied from disuse. When Perry was satisfied, he opened the shelf space, and rather than making Kes move, pulled the entire bed in through the aperture with his brute strength. It was just barely wide enough. ¡°It¡¯s safe in here?¡± asked Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a lot of science we¡¯re missing. But I¡¯m going to take the armor off and let Marchand give you the rundown, okay?¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Kes, swallowing. ¡°March, before I start getting undressed, is there anything that you can tell me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Anything you¡¯ve seen while going through the logs?¡± ¡°The work continues, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It does appear they¡¯ve taken significant amounts of video of Third Fervor and her movements. They compiled a dossier on her, including an ability we were ignorant of, along with boundaries to her known abilities.¡± ¡°What are you talking about?¡± asked Kes. ¡°What is this?¡± ¡°We¡¯re going to hope this place is secure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I flooded it again, by the way, sorry.¡± There was water on the floor, and the smell was back. It was a surprisingly hard place to clean. ¡°The short version is that we have some people from outside this world, not thresholders, who want us for ¡­ well, science, I guess, but also in order to save this world from collapsing. Fenilor has been here gaining power through some kind of flaw in the system, and it¡¯s not great for the world.¡± ¡°If he leaves?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Or in general?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m assuming that it¡¯s not great in general, him sticking around, but March has video and can fill you in.¡± ¡°Sir, perhaps the other news might be best delivered by you,¡± said Marchand. Perry frowned, and Kes watched his face. Kes didn¡¯t actually know his own expressions, since he¡¯d never had to read his own facial cues. ¡°These people have some lossy precognitive ability,¡± said Perry. ¡°They came here from Esperide, following the hole our portal punched between universes. Which means that they didn¡¯t just check in on the space station, they were able to peer into the future. Brigitta doesn¡¯t end up consigning herself to death to bring the space station down. She survives. And ¡­ she¡¯s pregnant.¡± Kes felt the wash of good news and sat for a moment, thinking about that. ¡°You¡¯re going to be a father.¡± Perry stared at him. ¡°We are, right?¡± Kes watched him, trying to remember if he¡¯d been that standoffish when he was Perry. Maybe it was the second-sphere ability to hide all traces of emotion. They might have to talk about that at some point, if only so Perry could emote more around other people. ¡°I think, sitting here, no sword, no ring, no tooth,¡± it jabbed into his hand, ¡°no armor, no mystical powers ¡­ I came to terms with the fact that we had different lives.¡± Perry watched him. He had cold eyes, Kes decided, and that had to be second sphere, because they had the same eyes. ¡°We¡¯ll get you back up to speed. I¡¯ll find you a weapon, some armor, maybe we can steal something off one of the others. When we have a plan for how to do it, we¡¯ll have you eat that tooth and then ¡­ we¡¯ll hope that you don¡¯t kill someone.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll eat it if things are dire,¡± said Kes. Perry nodded. ¡°I¡¯m sorry for going away. It was just ¡­ not what I expected.¡± ¡°Not what we expected,¡± said Kes. ¡°I have those same memories, the thinking that went into it, the idea that the clone would be a force multiplier.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry with a sigh. ¡°And we¡¯ll get you there.¡± He handed the helmet over. It was heavier than Kes remembered. ¡°Watch through that, get up to speed, I need to go do a full debrief with Dirk. I¡¯ll keep the space open, so we can talk.¡± Kes wanted to say something more, to ask what this was all for. It was a question that had been on his mind. Instead, he put the helmet on. He hadn¡¯t worn Marchand since being cloned. The smell of the interior of the helmet was familiar but muted, his nose no longer that of the werewolf¡¯s. There was a bit of sweat, a bit of slightly-sweet plastic, and a tang of metal. The screens came alive at once. They¡¯d seemed impossibly detailed and responsive when he¡¯d first used them, and some of that wonder came back to him after what felt like an age without it ¡ª without knowing whether he would ever so much as see it again. ¡°Alright,¡± said Kes. The wounds in his leg were aching and itching, but he was feeling good, secure with his place in the world. He¡¯d have to find something to do with the tooth, which hadn¡¯t left his hand. ¡°Marchand, play back the relevant bits.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. Chapter 122 - Loyalty Returned ¡°Hey!¡± said Mette. ¡°Where the fuck is my tooth?¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. He had been at the desk in his bedroom, wearing the helmet but not the rest of the armor. It had been a day since he¡¯d returned, and there was still no sign of Third Fervor. He¡¯d removed the helmet when he heard her coming. ¡°You gave him a tooth,¡± said Mette, gesturing vaguely in the direction of Kes¡¯ bedroom. ¡°Where¡¯s my tooth?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not ¡­ I mean, why should you get one?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Because you gave him one,¡± said Mette. She folded her arms across her chest. ¡°Is this because I had sex with him? Are you mad at me about that?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. Outwardly, he was completely in control of his emotions, cool and calculated, but inwardly he was wondering what was going on. Mette usually wasn¡¯t this animated. ¡°Look, I know you come from a culture with some weird ideas,¡± said Mette. ¡°Marchand warned me about that. But ¡ª¡± ¡°Sorry, Marchand is giving you dating advice?¡± asked Perry. ¡°If I understand dating right, which I¡¯m not sure I do,¡± said Mette. ¡°But I mean ¡­ we¡¯re not dating, are we?¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was considering us more ¡­ friends with benefits.¡± ¡°The benefit ¡­ is sex?¡± asked Mette. She looked over at the helmet. ¡°March, why didn¡¯t you tell me about that?¡± ¡°My apologies, ma¡¯am,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Sexual and romantic relationships have undergone enormous changes since the point of divergence between our timelines, so it¡¯s very likely that Master Holzman and I have different understandings of what¡¯s within the bounds of acceptability.¡± ¡°Well then, I mean, okay,¡± said Mette, turning her gaze back to Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t have weird cultural hangups about me banging your clone?¡± She had learned the word ¡®banging¡¯ from him, and seemed to quite enjoy it. ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°My culture ¡­ doesn¡¯t really consider clones to be ¡­ a thing.¡± ¡°You know what I mean,¡± said Mette. She placed her hands on her hips. ¡°I really don¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°Why does he get a tooth, and I get nothing?¡± asked Mette, getting back on some semblance of track. ¡°He¡¯s just a guy, you¡¯ve said that and he¡¯s said that, so you agree he¡¯s not special. But he gets a tooth.¡± Perry very nearly spun up a line of argument. He was pretty sure that he could out-argue Mette. The argument would have gone something like ¡®well, he looks like me and has already been attacked once, so it¡¯s for him to use in absolute emergencies, and we really don¡¯t want proliferate lycanthropy in this new world without a firmly established tradition of getting werewolves under control without killing people, especially with their strong moon¡¯. Instead, Perry rose from his seat, went over to the armor, and pulled a tooth out from one of the pockets that was normally hidden by a panel. He placed this gently into Mette¡¯s hand, then sat back down in front of his desk. Mette stared down at the tooth in her hand. ¡°What, just like that?¡± ¡°I mean, we can argue about it, if you want to,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s definitely an option.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Mette slowly. She turned the tooth over slowly in her fingers. ¡°But I have to warn you, once you eat that, it is a curse, and difficult to control, and will take you some time to master,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m fairly confident that I can stop either you or Kes while you¡¯re a wolf, but it¡¯s going to cause some damage to whatever is around us. And I don¡¯t think I can handle you both at once, which is a problem. The most likely solution is that we just stick you in the shelfspace for the duration of the full moon.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not a moron,¡± said Mette with a roll of her eyes. ¡°I¡¯m not going to eat it right now.¡± ¡°Only in an emergency, when you¡¯re fine with killing everyone around you,¡± said Perry. She nodded. ¡°Thank you,¡± Mette said slowly. ¡°Sure,¡± nodded Perry, then, ¡°You¡¯re welcome.¡± He had sort of thought that she would leave, but instead, she stayed and hovered near him. ¡°Sorry,¡± she said. ¡°For coming in and being a bit, uh, aggressive about it.¡± ¡°No problem,¡± said Perry. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it.¡± She still didn¡¯t leave though. She was holding the tooth in her hand, and swaying slightly like she was deciding on whether to stay or go. ¡°Do we need to talk about ¡­ the three of us?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Because we kind of haven¡¯t, and I know you have your weird hang ups, but if you wanted to be ¡­ what was it?¡± ¡°What was what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I believe the mistress is referring to the expression ¡®friends with benefits¡¯, sir,¡± said Marchand¡¯s helmet. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Mette. ¡°That.¡± ¡°I really think I¡¯m fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m second sphere, I can control the flow of energy, subsume the urges.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Mette. She hesitated. ¡°But we are still friends, right?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t give teeth to people who aren¡¯t friends.¡± He waited to see whether there was more, because it seemed like there was definitely more. ¡°Can you drop the second sphere stuff?¡± asked Mette. She leaned in slightly closer to peer at him. ¡°It¡¯s legitimately difficult to read your face. It¡¯s like everything you say is just ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Mette, I¡¯ve been like this the entire time you¡¯ve known me,¡± said Perry. He watched her eyes as they scanned his face. ¡°I haven¡¯t changed.¡± ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s been a problem for the entire time I¡¯ve known you,¡± said Mette. ¡°You¡¯re too cool and collected. I don¡¯t think it was until I met Kes that I realized what you¡¯re actually like.¡± ¡°And what¡¯s that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Scared, affectionate, amused,¡± said Mette. ¡°An actual emotional creature.¡± ¡°Sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I did attempt to let her know that even under the best of conditions you have difficulty expressing yourself as an emotional being, likely as a result of the uncertainty and conflicts we¡¯ve faced during our time together, coupled with the repressive culture you come from.¡± ¡°My ¡­ what?¡± asked Perry. He was making a conscious effort not to still his face, which felt weird and unfamiliar. He turned to the helmet. ¡°I didn¡¯t come from a repressive culture.¡± ¡°I apologize, sir, and don¡¯t mean to make a habit of gainsaying you,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, I believe your exact words were that you had to watch what you said or ¡®some bitch on Twitter¡¯ would ¡ª¡± ¡°Alright, that¡¯s not ¡ª that¡¯s different,¡± said Perry. He frowned at the helmet. ¡°When was that?¡± ¡°I believe I had inquired about what Twitter was while we were waiting to ambush an orcish contingent, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Your response was rather long.¡± ¡°That¡¯s totally different from being a repressive culture,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, I get where you¡¯d make that connection though. I sometimes felt like I couldn¡¯t say what I actually wanted to say, like I needed to watch my words and how I expressed myself. We were mired in this ongoing culture war, and I didn¡¯t really have a side, or ¡­ I had a side but hated them, and a lot of it was idiotic.¡± He paused. ¡°Did I really say ¡®some bitch¡¯? Not a good look.¡± ¡°You did in fact point that out at the time, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You said that ¡®some bitch on Twitter would get angry with you for using gendered language¡¯. You seemed to find it quite amusing.¡± ¡°I mean, it is funny,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alright, new rule, Marchand, please don¡¯t cite previous conversations to me unless they¡¯re actually important. I don¡¯t remember half of what I¡¯ve said, and I disavow the other half.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Do you consider glaring hypocrisy to be ¡®actually important¡¯?¡± ¡°I love him,¡± said Mette. When Perry turned back to her, she was smiling. ¡°We should clone him.¡± ¡°We did clone him,¡± said Perry. ¡°Well, we should do it again,¡± said Mette. ¡°And the one I made wasn¡¯t nearly this good.¡± She turned from the helmet toward Perry. ¡°Can I make a request, as your friend?¡± ¡°Sure Mette, go ahead,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want you to drop the second sphere thing when you¡¯re just with us,¡± said Mette. ¡°It makes it easier to relate to you if you¡¯re being your natural self, not only smiling when you think to communicate a smile.¡± She reached forward and touched his face in a way that was rather more affectionate than Perry would have done with any of his friends, but she seemed to show no shame or embarrassment. ¡°If I had known you were doing it, I would have asked you to stop ages ago.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll see what I can do,¡± said Perry. ¡°Alright,¡± said Mette, straightening up and smiling at him. ¡°Great talk! Thanks for the tooth!¡± Perry watched her go, then returned to his work. ¡°She seemed in a good mood, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°I just hope she doesn¡¯t forget that we¡¯re at war and in a lot of danger. Continue with the analysis, please.¡± ~~~~ The immense datadump from the Farfinder would have been enough to endear the ship¡¯s crew to Perry even if there wasn¡¯t a promise of future collaboration and a sharing of power. They had been picking up data like packrats, and apparently had interoperability between their magic and computers, at least on this world. Every single system of the Farfinder was finally active after many years of having to work with whatever was on hand. Fenilor wasn¡¯t a mystery to them, but they had less on him than on the others. They thought that he was probably using some kind of cloaking device to keep them from being able to fully scry him, but they didn¡¯t know what it was or how it was disabling three separate systems of magic. There was a note from Eggy that they would look into it, but there were lots of notes, some of them dating back a full decade and written by people who were now dead. The only wrinkle they had uncovered about Nima was the nature of her armor. They considered it to be more powerful than her use of it would suggest, as it had a voice inside it and an intelligence that was revealed only in its private conversations with her, which weren¡¯t so private to the ears of the Farfinder. It was smarter than Marchand, for a start, though Perry didn¡¯t think that was saying much. It also had the capacity to cover more than just her body and take on the powers of whatever it was covering. The Farfinder crew thought that meant she could wear multiple masks, but they weren¡¯t entirely sure, given that they didn¡¯t have a handle on which thaumic class her armor fell under. And that left Third Fervor, whose entire history on this world was laid bare. Their ability to see into the past was somewhat strained, since they were trying to view three months back, but their best guess was that she had come in around Miller¡¯s Crag, a small city far to the north that wasn¡¯t so much different from Kerry Coast, except that it had made the transition more recently. It was still feeling the echoing aftershocks of reform, and hadn¡¯t yet settled down, but the library culture was firmly established and the line of kings was long ended. There it had happened by peaceful transition, and their king was now a storyteller living in a modest house with many neighbors. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. The Farfinder¡¯s magic was using guesswork, painting a picture of the past. If you asked it twice, it would paint different pictures, sometimes wildly different pictures. If there was something they thought was important to know, they would try many times and do their best to take the average, which would be at least close to the truth. ~~~~ Third Fervor had been wary when she arrived, in that thresholder way. She¡¯d had her weapon drawn and waited in place, ready to strike, just in case someone had seen her coming. There was a method of signal-seeking, she knew, a way to know the location of a portal shortly before it opened, but after many long minutes, she decided that she wasn¡¯t going to be ambushed. She kept the spear in her hand though, and didn¡¯t take off her armor, as she tried to get her bearings. She portaled up into the sky. The portals required her touch, and specifically the touch of her hand, but only to open the end near her, not the far end. Her range was thirty miles, an impressive distance, and in the brief moment she was airborne, she looked down on the world from above, scoping out the contours of the continent. The armor let her ignore the chill of the air and the lack of oxygen, and then she was dropping back down into another portal. She stashed her armor, along with her spear, and portaled into a nearby city. The clothes she wore beneath the shapely armor were indecent, skin tight and incredibly revealing, so her first stop was a clothing store, which turned out to be a library instead. ¡°Do you need any help, ma¡¯am?¡± asked the librarian behind the counter. ¡°I mean ¡­ are you well?¡± ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± said Third Fervor. Her lips were tight. She didn¡¯t like their selection of dresses, but she liked the eyes on her even less. She was going to find the king quickly this time, but she needed to be able to present herself. It would be better to do it in armor, but past experience had shown her that armor wasn¡¯t always appreciated. ¡°If you¡¯re feeling out of sorts, or if there¡¯s trouble at home,¡± the librarian began. ¡°I¡¯m fine,¡± said Third Fervor. The librarian was tight-lipped after that, and only watched her move around the clothing library, picking out things to wear that wouldn¡¯t draw attention to her, or that would draw less attention. ¡°I do need help fastening this,¡± she eventually said, once she had decided on a dress. Properly dressed, she had taken a portal away from that city and to another one, a place where she wouldn¡¯t be known and the prying eyes that had followed her through that first city wouldn¡¯t find a way to undercut her work. She did pay diligent attention to the slips that the librarian had given her. She thought there was great value in following a king¡¯s laws, as much as she might not understand them. If there was someone she was supposed to report to about having come from another world, she would. She found another library, this one filled with books, and walked along the shelves, letting her fingers thump along every spine. When she sat down to process it all, what she found horrified her. She sat in that library for hours, hands gripping the worn table, mind going backward and forward over what she had learned. (The Farfinder wasn¡¯t sure which city she¡¯d gone to, only that she¡¯d gone to a city somewhere in Miller¡¯s Crag. Similarly, they couldn¡¯t pinpoint the library she¡¯d gone to, only that she¡¯d gone to one of them and had some moment of contemplation and despair about the state of the world.) She found a room in the city, then the next morning, had gone to find the Miller King. It didn¡¯t take her long. He went by Jorges Miller now, and he lived in a row house, in an older part of the city. It was modest red brickwork and a few thick wooden beams, and in midday it was in the shadow of the golden dome nearby. Bright flowers grew from boxes that hung from every window, and Third Fervor steeled herself as she walked up in a borrowed dress. She knocked sharply on the door, expecting a butler, but getting the king himself. He was a weathered man with a lined face and salt-and-pepper hair. He dressed simply, in a button-down shirt the color of cream and slacks that were a darker brown. He was handsome, but only in the way of a painter, not that of a monarch. His nose was a bit bulbous and his eyebrows thick and expressive. It was a face that had been on money, twenty years ago. ¡°Yes, can I help you?¡± asked the former king Jorges Miller. Third Fervor went down to one knee and bowed her head. ¡°I have been sent here to help you retake the throne, your grace.¡± (Perry had never actually seen Third Fervor before, only the armor that covered her every time they met. She was beautiful, at least in the pictures that had been part of the data dump. The humans of her worlds had melanin hypervariance, and would change their skin color in response to the sun far faster than a normal human, with much greater range of skin color. She had come from a world with almost nothing in the way of light, so was pale as could be, with bleach-blonde hair, but a single day in this new world was already changing her. That the hair changed with the skin was interesting to the Farfinder, but probably not relevant. Third Fervor had a cuteness to her, buccal fat making her look like a cherub, eyes a little too big for her face, like a puppy. Her lips were plump, with a deep groove in the upper lip that drew the eye. Perry thought she looked striking and odd, in a way that he was sure would keep his eyes drawn to her.) ¡°Come in, please,¡± said Jorges. The house was just as modest on the inside as it had been on the outside. The walls were brick, but the floors were polished wood, and a simple dining room had a table with four chairs surrounding it next to a glass-fronted cabinet that held simple white ceramic dishes and a few cups. There was no sign that this place belonged to a king, not even a portrait on the wall. ¡°Tell me, where do you come from?¡± asked Jorges. ¡°I come from beyond this world,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°I¡¯ve been sent to you, to be your knight. I have powers, incredible powers, ones beyond the understanding of your people. I can travel through this world with ease, step into locked rooms, fight like a demon, and deliver knowledge that can revolutionize your industry.¡± Jorge nodded, looking her over. ¡°Would you like some water?¡± ¡°No, your grace,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°You don¡¯t believe me?¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter,¡± said Jorges. He had a kindly way about him. ¡°Do you know what happened to me? Why I¡¯m no longer king?¡± ¡°Yes, your grace,¡± said Third Fervor. Jorges frowned and waved his hand. ¡°The honorifics make me uncomfortable. It¡¯s been so long since I¡¯ve heard them.¡± He sighed. ¡°When my father passed and I became king, I knew that the era of kings was ending. I had a choice, in those years, whether I wanted to push for my place or whether I wanted to give the people what they wanted. There is value in tradition. I tried, for three years, to blend the old with the new.¡± ¡°We can return to that tradition,¡± said Third Fervor, leaning closer. ¡°I am no longer king,¡± said Jorges. ¡°I gave up the throne, the crown, and everything else. It was a peaceful transition. That is my legacy, and one I¡¯m proud of.¡± ¡°But you have nothing,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°A house you don¡¯t even own, no guards to keep you safe, no advisors, no crown, no ¡ª¡± ¡°I have what every citizen has,¡± said Jorges. ¡°To give up power is a difficult, delicate, noble thing.¡± ¡°They have no one to guide them,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°They have no direction. How can it be noble to refuse nobility?¡± ¡°You claim to have come from another world,¡± said Jorges. ¡°Have you not seen the cities? The countryside? The libraries? It works. The new way isn¡¯t even the new way anymore, it¡¯s been ages.¡± He leaned back. ¡°The time of kings has come and gone.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no reason a king can¡¯t have libraries,¡± said Third Fervor. She was stubborn and intense. Her demeanor didn¡¯t fit her clothes, which were flouncy and floral. ¡°To have a king would be to say that there¡¯s a man above all other men,¡± said Jorges. ¡°Not only is it not the culture, it is anathema to the culture. The culture is founded on community, togetherness, democracy, and the needs of the many. Even if I were a king who gave up all of the trappings of monarchy, if I had this simple house instead of a castle, if I had these plain clothes instead of a crown and robes, the mere idea that I am am specially positioned to dictate the course of this country¡¯s future would be like a thorn in the side of the culture.¡± ¡°Then it is a thorn worth having,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°These people will run their country into the ground without your wisdom.¡± ¡°My wisdom was that it was time for my rule to end,¡± said Jorges. ¡°Please. Let my duty end with me. My son is a carpenter, my daughter an educator. There is no hope of bringing the monarchy back. There never was.¡± Maybe the conversation didn¡¯t go quite like that, but it was probably close. The king was kind and compassionate though, and didn¡¯t believe Third Fervor in the slightest. She had shown him no power, nothing he¡¯d be obligated to report to any symboulion or Command Authority. It wasn¡¯t the first time he¡¯d dealt with people pleading for him to become monarch again, as though that were possible without a groundswell of support that simply wasn¡¯t there. Jorges Miller was the last king that Miller¡¯s Crag would ever have, and he had calluses on his fingers now. Third Fervor had left. At first, she¡¯d had thoughts of restoring the monarchy on her own, but it was a task of such enormity that she quickly switched tracks. There were only two kingdoms left in the world, one of them Berus, the other Thirlwell, twin islands in the middle of a wide ocean, former colonial empires. Perhaps she¡¯d been wrong about what she was meant to do. She had come into the world a great deal away from Berus and Thirlwell, but she had mobility, and with the portals, could make her way across the ocean by rapidly chaining them. Once she¡¯d arrived on the islands, she had looked carefully at them. She had a choice to make when deciding which one to support. Third Fervor had never been very good at choices. She did best when she was under a firm hand, when she had formally pledged herself. This time, she had portaled her way through the castles and homes, a flagrant violation of personal space and far worse than simply stealing from the libraries. She was only after the books, trying to get a lay of the land, trying to understand them. The very institution of monarchy hung in the balance, and if she had been brought here for a reason, this was a test, one to decide on which monarch was capable of pushing back the tide. In the end, she¡¯d settled on Thirlwell, of course. Berus was a monarchy in the classical mold, of the sort that the anti-monarchist had plenty of experience with dismantling. Thirlwell was something new and different, a kingdom that was striving against the darkness. It had hardly been a choice at all. ~~~~ ¡°They¡¯re reading a lot into her,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do they have cause to do that?¡± ¡°Cause, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Like, some kind of magic that lets them know what she¡¯s thinking,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯ve hardly been on this world for two days. The report is making lots of suppositions, and I endorse them, but ¡­ do they have mind reading?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They appear to have a system of abstract personality analysis picked up along the course of their travels.¡± He changed the view on the HUD, which showed a number of files with red strings pointing between them, his way of making sense of the mess of data they¡¯d shown him. ¡°It doesn¡¯t appear to have a good track record, but has interoperability with their ability to view the probable past.¡± ¡°Have they used it on me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°And?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They¡¯ve been aware of you since the Great Arc,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They appear to hold a high opinion of you, relative to the other thresholders they have on record, a number which is quite high if we count second and thirdhand information.¡± ¡°I mean, that¡¯s good,¡± said Perry. ¡°But they did this sentiment analysis thing on me and think they know me because of it?¡± ¡°Their approach is varied, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You would have to speak with them to know more.¡± Perry frowned. When he¡¯d been on the Great Arc, he hadn¡¯t been thinking about the kind of impression he would make. Aligning himself with Worm Gate had been a low point. Actually, transforming into a wolf and being forced to kill people by having his bloodlust turned against him was a low point. Or maybe it was when Xiyan almost murdered him because he¡¯d thought she was going to give him a blowjob. There were a lot of low points in the Great Arc, when he really thought about it, and if they had taken records of it all, he didn¡¯t know how they could possibly come to the conclusion that he was worth anything. He was going to speak with them more, that was for certain. They had Third Fervor pinned down hard. They knew the bounds of all her powers. Her portal power was stopped by doors and windows, but so long as a location was in her thirty mile range and within the same volume she was, she could make a portal there, and she had some internal sense of what was where. That must have been how she had found his shelfspace so quickly. She could chain portals and approximate flight that way, but she would accumulate downward velocity from gravity that would need to be counteracted by another portal that flung her up to counteract it. Her staff was pegged to a single location, which had been deep underwater in the middle of nowhere, and it could bring her right back to where she¡¯d been, which is exactly what she¡¯d done after their fight. She could scream loud enough to incapacitate and then kill, but hadn¡¯t used that power much, and the Farfinder assumed that the reason she¡¯d stopped using it against him was that she thought he was immune. But the last bit of information was the one that Perry was most grateful for ¡ª Third Fervor had a power she hadn¡¯t used yet, the God Form. It let her grow to enormous height and dramatically increased her power, but at the cost of sending her into a rage. He was a little surprised that she hadn¡¯t used it during her fight, and he was glad that he knew it was coming, but he had no earthly idea how he was going to fight against it. Perry was interrupted in reading through the data by a knock on the door. When he turned, he saw Dirk standing there. ¡°You offered to help,¡± said Dirk, voice tight. ¡°Does that still stand?¡± ¡°Assuming you don¡¯t think I¡¯ll fuck it up,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think there¡¯s a good chance,¡± said Dirk. ¡°But Thirlwell probably knows all about you, given how much you talked to the enemy, so there¡¯s not much risk in deploying you, as long as you¡¯re not going to kill another king.¡± ¡°It would be a queen this time,¡± said Perry. ¡°We were going to extract some of our people,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s gotten hot, and it¡¯s not what they signed up for, not with someone like Third Fervor there, not with all this outside shit that¡¯s a part of you and your people. We weren¡¯t going to involve you, because you invite trouble, but plans fell through, and from all the information I¡¯ve been getting, it¡¯s time for me to call in a favor.¡± ¡°Tell me where to go and what to do, and I¡¯ll do it,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can fly across in an hour?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°You can go in silent, not let them see you?¡± ¡°Masks would be a problem, but yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°She won¡¯t show up if you cross into their territory?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. Dirk considered this. He was trying to work the problem, and seemed to appreciate the honesty. ¡°Then prepare yourself,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s going to be tonight. If the result is a fight, then I guess that¡¯s better than leaving my people to get swept up and killed.¡± ¡°Can do, boss,¡± said Perry, giving him a lazy salute. ¡°I won¡¯t let you down.¡± Chapter 123 - Enemy Action Dirk sat with Perry in his room an hour later, going over the plan. ¡°It¡¯s simple,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You fly across, sticking close to the water so you won¡¯t be seen, or under the water if that¡¯s workable. You go to the place where my people are stashed, sneak in through a window, gather them all up, then fly back across. You do all that without being seen. If you¡¯re seen before you get to the house, we scrub the mission, because we don¡¯t want you leading anyone there. If you¡¯re seen after you leave the house, you get back to Berus as fast as you can and try not to have a long fight. Understood?¡± ¡°Understood,¡± said Perry. ¡°Who are the targets?¡± ¡°Agitators, spies, no one whose names you need to know, especially not before you pick them up,¡± said Dirk. ¡°What does an agitator do?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Agitates,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Come on,¡± said Perry, rolling his eyes. ¡°An agitator is there to pick fights,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Not literal fights, not most of the time, but they raise a stink about things, they point out how shitty it is to live under a king, whatever that king¡¯s specific flaws are, which are usually enriching themselves or base nepotism, but can obviously get a whole lot worse.¡± His face was tight, which it usually was, like he was about to spit. ¡°You send in an agitator to make friends with the locals, stake out a position at a friendly pub or something, then you have them be a voice for our side. Sometimes they¡¯re quiet and coy about it, just asking questions, claiming not to be against the monarchy per se, other times they¡¯re out and out. A single properly trained and motivated agitator can sway hundreds. People don¡¯t know how to stand up to someone firmly and persuasively arguing. Then sometimes, the guard or the police or whoever gets wind of someone with a big mouth, and they come in with truncheons and manacles, and if the agitator has done his job right, everyone sees that he was just telling it like it was.¡± ¡°Seems underhanded,¡± said Perry. Dirk shrugged. ¡°Their system sucks. Their culture sucks. We¡¯re going to replace it any way we can, and this is one of the ways that works. Usually, depending on the law, it¡¯s all perfectly legal.¡± ¡°And I¡¯m getting these people out now?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Them, and others,¡± said Dirk. ¡°If you want to operate in a foreign kingdom, you need all kinds of people, a guy who can sort out paperwork, a guy who can make sure everyone gets paid, a guy to send messages to and fro ¡ª we¡¯re pulling up people who are vulnerable, but if you¡¯re thinking that they¡¯re underhanded, they¡¯re not. They¡¯re good people. All of them, every one, could have sat at home and had a nice quiet life instead.¡± ¡°It does help make me feel better,¡± said Perry. ¡°And your other plans fell through?¡± ¡°They did. This group won¡¯t know to expect you, but all you have to do is invoke my name,¡± said Dirk. ¡°That should be enough.¡± ¡°I can speak in your voice, if I need to,¡± said Perry. ¡°Would that help?¡± ¡°What do you mean ¡®speak in my voice¡¯?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°March, a demonstration?¡± asked Perry. The helmet was still on the table. The armor¡¯s existence was out in the open, and Perry had decided that he¡¯d be forthright with Dirk, given how much the man already knew. Better to be forthright now than have Nima or Third Fervor lob accusations later. ¡°The hungry purple dinosaur ate the kind, zingy fox, the jabbering crab, the mad whale, and started vending and quacking,¡± said Marchand. The voice was a perfect match to Dirk¡¯s. ¡°What was that?¡± asked Dirk after a long moment. ¡°It was a panphonic sentence, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s a sentence that contains every phoneme of the English language, and was meant to serve as proof that I have your entire phonemic inventory mastered, though of course there are many variables to imitation, and I would of course restrain myself to modulations of sentences I¡¯ve recorded you saying, where possible.¡± Dirk stared at the helmet. ¡°Is that ¡­ a radio?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a piece of technology with all the intelligence of a man,¡± said Perry. He watched Dirk closely. It was a difficult thing for some people, but he didn¡¯t think that Dirk would have the same kind of negative reaction as Moon Gate. Dirk sat back. ¡°You¡¯ve been walking around with this?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°And,¡± began Dirk, before abandoning whatever thought had been percolating. ¡°How far away are we from this sort of thing? Being able to build one?¡± ¡°Given the prohibitions on research, I would say you¡¯re centuries away, maybe millenia,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can¡¯t build the machines that you¡¯d need to build the machines that would be able to build something like this.¡± Dirk let out a breath. ¡°It can think like a man? Do the things a man would do, but without a physical body?¡± ¡°More or less,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though it would be possible to give him a body too.¡± Dirk swore. ¡°And Third Fervor, Nima, they know about this? They would know how to make one?¡± ¡°Not to my knowledge,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just me. I can leave your people the books necessary to get started on it, but from your face, you¡¯re not on board.¡± ¡°I need to think about it,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I need to think about what it means. Being able to have a machine do everything, everything, that¡¯s a dream beyond dreams.¡± He stared at the helmet. ¡°Can it do poetry?¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°March?¡± ¡°Would you like me to compose a poem in the moondance format, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°The what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s a poetic form that¡¯s enjoyed some popularity of late,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It is characterized by a scheme of alternating rhymes and four quatrains with a turn or swerve at the start of the third quatrain accompanied by change in meter. I believe I have a good composition, ¡®A Garden¡¯s Maidens Bathed in Moonlight¡¯, which likens the blooming of a flower to a young person in their prime.¡± ¡°Nah, we don¡¯t need to hear it,¡± said Perry. ¡°But it can,¡± said Dirk. He let out a breath. ¡°I ¡­ I¡¯ve gotta set this aside, try to think about it more later. And I¡¯m duty bound to report it, not just shove it in a cabinet somewhere, which is what I¡¯m tempted to do.¡± ¡°I¡¯m trusting you with this knowledge,¡± said Perry. ¡°Good,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Good, and I know that¡¯s just a fraction of what you have, but ¡ª let¡¯s keep our eyes on the short term right now, okay?¡± He gave the helmet a nervous look. ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°Tell me the address and I¡¯ll find it. Go in through an upstairs window, use your name to convince them to come with me, race back to safe soil, then dump them out. Easy.¡± ¡°Easy, unless you get caught,¡± said Dirk. ¡°The house is ¡­ do you have pen and paper?¡± ¡°I have Marchand,¡± said Perry, pointing at the helmet. ¡°He¡¯ll remember.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a green brick house with a slate roof, the upstairs window is circular, it¡¯s at 161 Faring Street, in the Meatpackers Quarter,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Because I can¡¯t get a message to them, they can¡¯t mark the house for you, and I¡¯m praying to gods I don¡¯t believe in that it¡¯ll be obvious when you see it. Make very sure you go into the right house. If the alarm gets raised, we¡¯re fucked. Stay off the streets.¡± He paused. ¡°I¡¯ll get you a map before you go, we can work through it.¡± ¡°You get all that?¡± Perry asked Marchand. ¡°Yes, sir, I¡¯ve pinpointed the house in question,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What, like that?¡± asked Dirk, staring at the helmet with suspicion. ¡°March, I¡¯m going to have Dirk wear you, show him the house and make extra sure that we have the right one,¡± said Perry. They had enough time for Perry to blow Dirk¡¯s mind. ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry passed the helmet over, and Dirk eyed it suspiciously, then put it on his head. It was pretty bulky, all things considered, bigger than a motorcycle helmet and much heavier given all the metal. He looked funny in it, like a bobblehead doll, and Perry allowed himself to show some slight amusement. It was going to be tough to do what he¡¯d told Mette he¡¯d do, and drop the front at all times. Dirk probably wasn¡¯t the person to do it around, either. When Dirk finally took the helmet off, his face was a shade paler. ¡°Impressive,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s the right house though?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yeah, yeah, it¡¯s the right house,¡± said Dirk. He placed his hand against his face and slowly brought it down, stretching his skin. ¡°Perry, I say this with a great appreciation for everything that you¡¯ve shown me, but what the fuck?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a lot,¡± said Perry. ¡°Whatever people you have evaluating whether a technology should be put into widespread use will have a field day with it.¡± ¡°Get me the books then,¡± said Dirk. ¡°A stack of books with the specifications, I guess, something that I can read through.¡± He sighed. ¡°If it were up to me, I¡¯d bury those books in a forest somewhere and be done with them.¡± ¡°There are limits to how much you¡¯re willing to go on your own, huh?¡± asked Perry. Dirk pressed his lips together. ¡°I have a duty to the culture.¡± He looked at the helmet and groaned. ¡°I sometimes wish I didn¡¯t.¡± Perry leaned forward and put his hand on Dirk¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Hey. I believe in you.¡± Dirk shrugged him off and rolled his eyes, and Perry laughed. After a moment, Dirk laughed too. ¡°Let me see that helmet again,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I want to see that map.¡± Perry handed it over. It was pretty clear that for a guy like Dirk, having the whole world in his palm would be immediately addictive. If they¡¯d had the technology, Dirk would have fallen in love with the security state. They were a long, long way off from something like Marchand, but maybe it was better that people knew it was possible before they stumbled their way into it. In theory, everything that Perry had was complete overkill for this mission. ~~~~ Perry waited until the dead of night to fly across the open sea. He stayed close to the water, only five feet above the waves, so he would be nearly impossible to spot by any watchers. He was public enemy number one in Thirlwell, the assassin who¡¯d killed their king during a peaceful parlay, and his only solace was that they had little ability to actually hurt him, with the sole exception of Third Fervor. Unfortunately, her portals meant that she had the ability to respond almost instantly to anything that happened in the city, and given that she could sense a change in volume, she would be able to sense the shelf space opening unless he did it in a room with no openings. If Perry didn¡¯t want to get caught, he would have to be careful about that. Third Fervor apparently did have to sleep, but only four hours a day. The Farfinder¡¯s logs had given him a rough estimate on when it would be, but they hadn¡¯t responded to him hailing them. He guessed that was because they wanted to stay out of the fight, or because not responding meant their future vision would work better, but it still rankled a bit. His sights were set on the city. If it had been possible, he¡¯d have preferred them to have gathered somewhere in the countryside, away from prying eyes, but thirty miles across the water and another twenty or so across land was a long way to travel to send messages, even with the fastest ships they had. With the harbor shut down and everyone on high alert, there was just no way to get messages back and forth, which meant that coordination was enormously more difficult. Perry was hoping that it wasn¡¯t a trap, but had done his best to prepare for one. The city¡¯s lamps were still shining bright, and if Perry hadn¡¯t known better, he would have thought that it was just a normal night, not a period of extreme unrest. The police were out in the streets, he knew, pulling double shifts, and there were watchers scanning the skies for him, though no one had quite the right masks for the job. Perry was running dark, an invisible shape, and the clouds were out in full force, blanketing the whole city in darkness aside from the constellations of streetlights. Perry went above the houses, swift and silent, but he stopped three blocks out from the safehouse where the people were waiting. ¡°Scan please,¡± said Perry. The HUD slowly lit up with everything Marchand could readily identify, mapping all the patrols. It gave the impression of being more orderly than it actually was, in the same way that an overview of traffic on a mapping app would make it seem as though every car was actually accounted for. In situations like this, there was always something about how Marchand did the HUD that reminded him of video games, and this one in particular would have been a stealth game, except that stealth games always used idiotic guards following set routes with view cones as narrow as a handspan. Perry had half a mind to drop down and kill a few of those guards. They were in groups of three, but he could kill quickly. With the sword and the armor, he might be able to sweep through a tightly-grouped trio in a single stroke. Instead, he kept his eyes on the house and waited, crouched down, hoping that he was as good as invisible. ¡°I see no ambush waiting for us, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then we move. Pay attention to noise. I want to know right away when you hear something from inside that house.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry flew from rooftop to rooftop, not touching down with his full weight, making sure that he was silent as a mouse. It would have been better if it were raining, or if there was a heavy wind to disguise his motion and any sound he was making, but he was pretty sure he was just an unremarkable dark shape. Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. He opened the window slowly and carefully, then slipped inside. He was in an attic, it seemed, with wooden boxes stacked up and tarps covering unknown objects. He knelt, placing his armored hand against the floor, and Marchand sent out the ultrasonic pings to try to build a map of the house. ¡°All doors and windows are closed,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Eleven souls in the house, as anticipated.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. Was this actually going to go off without a hitch? As much as he¡¯d assured Dirk that there wouldn¡¯t be any fuck ups, he had thought there was a good chance that Third Fervor would show up and make it all go sideways. Marchand was showing vague smears of people through the walls, and it might have been Perry¡¯s imagination, but the whole thing seemed to be working better than it ever had before. Marchand was entangled with Perry, experiencing phantom computation, and hooked into the system of spiritual energy that was flowing through Perry. It was something that they would have to figure out at some point, and the academic tether would grow thick and full ¡ª not that it had been wanting, of late, given how fresh and new this world still was. Perry got to the door that led down to the lower level, and when he saw that someone was walking past, he knocked. The person on the other side froze in place, turned toward the door, and after a long time, finally opened it. The long pause had given Perry time to pull his helmet off. He tried to present as friendly, but it was difficult with the armor. If he had the time, and wasn¡¯t so worried about being attacked, he might have gone without armor, just so he would look more friendly. Instead, he couldn¡¯t even put the sword away, because he didn¡¯t want to use the shelfspace without good reason. The woman who opened the door stared at Perry for a long, awkward moment. She was an older woman with gray hair and weathered skin, wearing a dress even though it was the dead of night. She opened her mouth, then closed it. Perry was smiling at her, a winning, easy smile. ¡°Hey,¡± he said in a low voice. ¡°Dirk Gibbons sent me. I¡¯m here to get you out of here.¡± She stayed there, staring at him. ¡°I really really hope that I don¡¯t have the wrong house,¡± said Perry. ¡°Dirk ¡­ sent you,¡± she said. Her eyes had gone wide. ¡°We were supposed to leave by boat. A man was supposed to come to the back door.¡± ¡°There are too many guards,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are too many people on the streets. Dirk said to use the window.¡± Reading between the lines, the guy that was supposed to pick them up was dead and there was a chance that if he wasn¡¯t dead, he¡¯d been picked up and pressed for information. ¡°This is a better, faster way. I¡¯ll have you safely in Berus within two hours. Can you please go downstairs and introduce me?¡± Her mouth opened and closed, then she nodded slowly. ¡°No noise,¡± said Perry, still keeping his voice low. ¡°I can explain. I have a letter from Dirk, in his own hand, if you recognize it.¡± ¡°That armor,¡± said the woman. ¡°You killed the king.¡± ¡°It¡¯s complicated,¡± said Perry. ¡°Look, Dirk sent me, you¡¯re in danger, but you know that. Go down to talk to the others, explain that I¡¯m here, that I¡¯m going to use magic to take all of you, a special type of lantern. Have a discussion with them. But we need to go while the weather is cooperating with us.¡± ¡°I ¡­ I¡¯m just a runner,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m not ¡ª¡± ¡°Please, go tell the others,¡± said Perry. She nodded at him, then quickly left to go downstairs where the others were. Perry listened in on the conversation. It was shocking how similar it was to the symboulion meetings that he¡¯d sat in on, and if he had any doubt that these people were a part of the culture, it was washed away as they went through the consensus building. They didn¡¯t trust him, not even with Dirk¡¯s name on his list, but the time had come and gone for the knock at the back door, and it was clear that the guards were swarming. After ten minutes of talking, a heavily built man came up the stairs to where Perry was waiting. ¡°We¡¯re good to go?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Let me see the letter,¡± said the man. Perry handed it to him. In the end, Dirk had said that using the voice was probably just going to raise a whole lot of questions that had very complicated answers, so had thought it better to convey the change of plans in a letter. The man took the letter and went back downstairs, where there was another ten minutes of talking. Perry waited on the stairs. He occasionally looked at the map of the house that Marchand had made. Dirk had not prepared him for waiting on a committee, but this was the sort of thing that inevitably happened when there wasn¡¯t a leader. Perry didn¡¯t really know what their structure within the city had looked like, but they were only eleven people. If it was a cell structure, then maybe they hadn¡¯t actually known each other before they¡¯d been directed to this house. Eventually, someone else came up to him. It was one of the melekee, scurrying and ratlike, and he looked up at Perry in awe for a moment before saying what he had to say. ¡°We¡¯ll go with you,¡± he said. ¡°Great,¡± said Perry. ¡°First, we need to close all the doors and windows in the house.¡± When he went downstairs, the group didn¡¯t really look like he¡¯d expected it to. When Dirk had said ¡®agitators and spies¡¯, Perry had expected that it would be young people, mostly men and a few women, the kinds of people who, on Earth, would have been recruited just out of high school and given a ton of training. Instead, he wouldn¡¯t have pegged a single one of them as being the spy type. There were two that were younger, but most of them were older, save for the dwarf, who looked young but might have been a hundred years old. They all looked at Perry with a great deal of awe and uneasiness. A single candle lit the room, and the curtains had been drawn to prevent the light from getting out. Still, the candle made Perry uneasy. The curtains weren¡¯t blackout curtains, and it seemed to be the sort of thing that a passing guard would think to investigate. ¡°We need to go through the house,¡± Perry repeated for them, when the melekee man didn¡¯t. ¡°Close every door and window. Make sure there¡¯s no gap to the outside world larger than a foot across.¡± ¡°How are we going?¡± asked one of the older men. He had a cap on and was missing one of his eyes. He had an eyepatch, but it was flipped up for some reason, and there was nothing stopping Perry from seeing the gaping hole. ¡°Nidi said something about a lantern.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a new type of magic,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can be across in two hours, maybe less, back in Berus, where it¡¯s safe.¡± ¡°Not safe in Berus,¡± said the older man, shaking his head. ¡°But we¡¯ll take it.¡± ¡°It is dangerous?¡± asked one of the women. Her arms were folded across her chest. ¡°It¡¯s dangerous here,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re rooting out anyone and everyone. Depending on what they know, you¡¯ll be put in prison or worse.¡± Perry was starting to get annoyed. They¡¯d already had this conversation among themselves, and they were raising points that had already been addressed. He could understand them being hesitant to come with some strange man, but time was of the essence. ¡°We need to go, and in order to go, we need to make very sure that every door and window is closed,¡± said Perry. He pointed at the two melekee. ¡°Go into the attic, make sure there aren¡¯t any holes. If there are, we need to close them. Then close everything as you make your way down.¡± They hesitated, then scurried up the stairs. ¡°We were told to bring only what¡¯s on our backs,¡± said the older man. ¡°Can we still do that?¡± ¡°Anything you have in the house that can be gathered in five minutes,¡± said Perry. ¡°But it would be better if you didn¡¯t. And that candle needs to go out.¡± The gray-haired woman who¡¯d called herself a runner leaned forward and snuffed it out without discussion, which Perry was thankful for. By the time the melekee came back down, every door and window on the ground floor had been confirmed to be closed. There was a draft coming from beneath the front door, but it wasn¡¯t nearly of the size that Third Fervor could slip through, at least according to the Farfinder. When Perry opened up the shelfspace, there was a hushed din from the gathered group. It wasn¡¯t anything like a lantern, and they probably knew that. They also knew that his armor matched the description of the man who had killed the king of this country and who¡¯d caused the need for them to flee in the first place. ¡°Go,¡± said Perry. ¡°Now. You wait in there, eat food, turn a light on, sit and relax, don¡¯t poke around too much, and wait. I¡¯ll open it back up once we¡¯re in Berus.¡± They went through slowly, in spite of the considerable danger they were in. With every passing second though, Perry became more sure that Third Fervor wasn¡¯t going to open up a portal. Even if she had somehow sensed the shelfspace opening, which shouldn¡¯t have been possible in a completely closed off room, and even if she was awake, which she shouldn¡¯t have been, to go after Perry would mean leaving the queen with only mundane defenses. He was hopeful. As soon as the last of them was inside the shelfspace, Perry snapped it shut and made his way back up the stairs to the attic. He opened the window slowly, trying to minimize the chance that he¡¯d get spotted, though it was just as dark as before and he didn¡¯t think that anyone would have had a good angle on the window from the ground. He slipped out and flew away, sword in hand, flying over rooftops and keeping alert to the patrols down below. There was no sign of Third Fervor, and without long distance communication, even if Perry was spotted by someone, the odds that she could be dispatched grew lower with every block further he got from the castle where she was almost surely staying. He didn¡¯t start to breathe easier until he was over the water again, and while he kept five feet above the waves like last time, it was considerably less tense than before. When he got to the opposite shore, he decided to run back to town, letting his armor do some of the work, draining energy but getting him there a lot faster. He was stunned that he hadn¡¯t fucked anything up, and unless he opened up the shelf to find that a turncoat had killed everyone inside ¡ª well, even that wouldn¡¯t be his fault, it would be Dirk¡¯s fault. Perry would be incredibly pissed off, and he¡¯d have to restrain himself from killing the perpetrator, but it would be a colossal fuckup that had nothing to do with him. ¡°Sir, I¡¯m not getting a radio signal from Mette,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Maybe she went to sleep,¡± said Perry. ¡°She had stated that she was intending to stay up until you had returned, as long as it took,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I do not feel that she would abandon her post.¡± ¡°Well, shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ping her again.¡± ¡°I have been attempting to make contact with a variety of modifications, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I will continue to do so. Given the construction of her radio equipment, I believe it unlikely that she¡¯s run into a technical problem she cannot solve.¡± Perry grit his teeth and with a moment¡¯s decision, launched himself up into the air. It was slightly slower, but he was close, and he¡¯d get a sight line to the town a little faster, along with clearing up some interference from trees or hills on the ground. When the town came into view, he half expected flames, but it was as dark and quiet as it had been when he¡¯d left. It was too quiet. He saw the devastation as he landed. Whatever had happened, it was hours past, overlapping with the time he¡¯d been gone, and the bodies had been cleaned up. There were broken windows and shattered doors though, along with splatters of blood and trails where bodies had been dragged. He held his sword tight in his hand, waiting for a portal to open and reveal Third Fervor. If this wasn¡¯t her work, then it was Fenilor¡¯s, but Fenilor had no reason to do this. Dirk Gibbons came out of the large building that served as a dormitory. He was limping, and Perry strode to him. ¡°We were attacked while you were gone,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Either she waited until you were away, or it was an unhappy coincidence.¡± He had blood on his shirt, but it didn¡¯t look like his. ¡°Is Mette okay?¡± asked Perry. ¡°She got punched in the chest,¡± said Dirk. ¡°She¡¯s badly bruised with a few broken ribs, but she¡¯ll live.¡± He hesitated. ¡°Moss is dead.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°Can you ¡­ I mean, dead for good?¡± ¡°That Moss is, yeah,¡± said Dirk. ¡°There are others out there.¡± ¡°But the machine,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s ¡ª¡± ¡°Not here,¡± said Dirk with a look around. There was no one. ¡°But no, she didn¡¯t know about the machine, or didn¡¯t care about it. She was here for you, and she found the other guy instead. She took him.¡± ¡°Took him?¡± asked Perry. His eyes went to the bedroom window, but he saw nothing there. ¡°Kidnapped?¡± Dirk nodded. ¡°Killed six people, nearly killed Mette, then took off. I think she knew he wasn¡¯t you, but I¡¯m not sure what she made of him. We¡¯re blown, this whole operation is. We¡¯re moving out. We can¡¯t be stationed here anymore. She didn¡¯t see me, thank god.¡± ¡°I have your people,¡± said Perry. ¡°I told them I¡¯d bring them out when it was safe.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not safe,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I don¡¯t know if she¡¯ll be back, but if she was after you, then it¡¯s better for you to get the hell out of here. Go somewhere she can¡¯t track, somewhere she doesn¡¯t know about. But first, we¡¯re going to take the machine apart and stuff it in your space. If she doesn¡¯t know about it already, I have to assume she¡¯s going to break your boy and know everything there is to know. I have people in Thirlwell that are sticking around, but they know they¡¯re on a knife¡¯s edge, and we have to hope that one of them can kill him.¡± ¡°I can save him,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can leave now, be there in an hour and a half, find where they¡¯re keeping him, pull him out.¡± ¡°Can you honestly say that you can beat her in a fight?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Last time didn¡¯t go so hot for you, and unless I¡¯m mistaken, you haven¡¯t gained more tools in the last day and a half.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t need to beat her in a fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°I just need to smash and grab.¡± ¡°Go see Mette,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Get her ready to go with you. I¡¯ll get some people to take the machine apart, then it¡¯s going with you. You¡¯re going to have to help with the big pieces. And as for your counterpart, we¡¯re going to have to hope that I did a good enough job with the network in Thirlwell.¡± ¡°Dirk, I just removed half the network in Thirlwell,¡± said Perry. ¡°Who do you have left?¡± Dirk gave a grim chuckle. ¡°If you think that¡¯s half the network, you¡¯re underestimating me.¡± ¡°I¡¯m giving you two hours, then I¡¯m leaving,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll deposit your people, but it¡¯s on you to get them somewhere safer than here.¡± ¡°Nowhere is safe,¡± said Dirk. ¡°That¡¯s part of the point. And we can¡¯t get the machine apart in two hours, not without Moss, not without a whole bunch of people who aren¡¯t supposed to know about it tearing it apart.¡± He ran his fingers through his hair. ¡°I¡¯ll take them. I said I would. Maybe they can help.¡± ¡°How much time do you need?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Six hours,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Then I¡¯m taking Mette and I¡¯ll be back later,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re on your own until then.¡± He¡¯d have taken off right then if not for the fact that he had eleven people in the shelfspace that he¡¯d promised would be put somewhere safe. He didn¡¯t think the site of a major bit of enemy action counted, but he wasn¡¯t sure that anywhere in Berus was safe. And Moss was dead. Not dead dead, since there were others out there, doing their work, but the Moss that Perry had known was gone. He wondered whether they could clone him, if they took his blood before it coagulated, but he also didn¡¯t know what Moss¡¯ wishes were. They hadn¡¯t been friends, exactly, but Moss had been kind and understanding, even when that wasn¡¯t really warranted. He opened up the shelf and had the spies come out. They looked shocked, and he didn¡¯t know whether it was the disquieting feeling of being in a magical extradimensional place, or the clear destruction that Third Fervor had wrought. While they were making their exit, Perry was thinking about the Farfinder. They hadn¡¯t stepped in to help him. He was going to have a word with them, just as soon as he was able. As soon as that was done, he went into the dorm and took the steps two at a time until he got to Kestrel''s room, where Mette was laying down with her eyes closed. Her hair was plastered to her forehead by sweat, and she was mostly undressed, with a bandage across her chest that didn¡¯t seem like it was doing much. There was blood by her mouth that had been hastily wiped away, and it seemed like she¡¯d just been set there and forgotten, though probably because there were worse cases to triage. ¡°She punched me in the tit,¡± said Mette. She was awake, and had heard him, but she didn¡¯t open her eyes. ¡°Who does that?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll kill her,¡± said Perry. ¡°You were already going to do that,¡± said Mette. She winced. ¡°They took him.¡± ¡°I know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll get him back.¡± ¡°The idiot tried to fight her,¡± said Mette. ¡°Sounds like me,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even if you know you can¡¯t win?¡± asked Mette. Her breathing was raspy. He was going to have to have her stop talking. There wasn¡¯t anything she could say to him that he couldn¡¯t figure out from the logs. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe.¡± He watched her breathing. She¡¯d been taken out with a single punch to her chest, and she was bruised. The tooth would fix her, but her injuries weren¡¯t life threatening. He stepped closer to her and slipped the gauntlet off, leaving his hand bare. He placed it on her, and she winced. ¡°What¡¯re you doing?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Trying to heal you,¡± said Perry as he pushed energy out through his hand. He was trying to think of her as an extension of himself, which from a gender theory standpoint was probably not great, but might allow him to develop or uncover some kind of healing technique. There were books on healing that had been copied from the library of Moon Gate, but he hadn¡¯t really understood them, and pushing your own energy into someone else was difficult even if they were a fully willing and trained participant. ¡°It¡¯s not working,¡± said Mette. ¡°Give it a bit,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s going to come back,¡± said Mette. She coughed, then gave a little cry of pain. ¡°Perry, we need a plan.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to get him back, then kill her,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need a plan to do that,¡± said Mette. Perry grit his teeth. She was right, his attempt at a healing hand was doing nothing but let him feel her heartbeat. It was possible, he was sure of that, but if it was working, it was uselessly subtle and slow. He¡¯d keep it up for an hour, he decided, which was enough time for him to see whether it had done anything at all. ¡°Radiation poisoning,¡± said Mette. ¡°Give me an hour and I can have a lantern in production mode. See if her armor protects her from that.¡± ¡°Rest,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll figure it out.¡± His mind was churning though. What he really needed was help. The Farfinder would be back in contact with him eventually, and failing that, he was going to have to figure out a way to enlist Fenilor¡¯s help. Chapter 124 - Interrogation Techniques It had been the dead of night when Third Fervor came, but Kes had been awake. He wasn¡¯t actually doing anything, but Mette had offered to stay up to man the radio, and he had decided that he would be there for moral support. He thought there was a good chance that Perry would come in hot, trailing trouble, but what form that trouble would take was anyone¡¯s guess. The wait was very boring, and Kes was tired, but at least Mette seemed to appreciate the company. They chatted idly about the Natrix and the many worlds, and occasionally flirted. They didn¡¯t even see the portal Third Fervor used to get there. She simply appeared at the wide entrance to the workshop area, armored up, spear in hand. ¡°Whoa,¡± said Kes, standing and holding out a hand like she was a belligerent horse. He had his mask with him this time, strapped to his belt, not like when Nima had come, and he slipped it on just the same as he¡¯d practiced. ¡°It seems I¡¯ve caught you unawares,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°This is your lair, is it?¡± She spat the word. ¡°Hang on,¡± said Kes. He backed up half a step, which was exactly as far as he could go before bumping into the table. ¡°How quickly can you summon your sword?¡± asked Third Fervor as she stalked forward on her metal high heels. ¡°How quickly can you slap that armor to your skin?¡± Her hand was clenched tightly around the spear. Kes didn¡¯t have a weapon, but he grabbed a tool from the table, which was something like a prybar. It had some heft to it, but he had no illusions about how this was going to go. All he could do was place himself between Third Fervor and Mette. He took a step over, becoming Mette¡¯s meat shield. ¡°Or can¡¯t you?¡± asked Third Fervor. She was in combat range now, close enough to strike with the spear if she lunged. She was holding back, waiting to see what tricks he had up his sleeve. The mask was doing fuck all. It was slowing her down, or from his perspective, speeding him up, but the speedster mask was only the third generation, and while he was doing better with the masks than anyone had a right to expect from him, it wasn¡¯t going to win him this fight. He was still injured from the fight with Nima, with a bandaged leg. He probably should have been in bed, to be honest, but he¡¯d only meant to keep Mette company while she waited by the bulky radio. Third Fervor struck out with the spear, cutting him across the shoulder. She was being slowed, and there was still nothing he could have done about it. He just wasn¡¯t fast enough. He cried out in pain, but held his stance, prybar at the ready. He would hit her in the face, and then she would kill him, but at least it might buy Perry something, or protect Mette. ¡°Who are you?¡± asked Third Fervor. Kes glanced back at Mette. She had turned back around and was fiddling with the radio, which was cut short by Third Fervor taking another step forward and jamming the spear straight through the crude electronics. She had moved past Kes to do it, ignoring him. Mette sat silently, staring straight ahead at the ruined radio. She was trembling, and trying to hide it. ¡°I ask again,¡± said Third Fervor, turning to Kes. She was quite close. The lunge had put her inside his personal space. ¡°Who are you?¡± Kes struck out with the prybar. It hit her in the helmet and she didn¡¯t move in the slightest. ¡°Some power,¡± said Third Fervor, looking Kes up and down. Her eyes went to the bleeding wound on his shoulder. ¡°Biological, and yet, a shade of the real you? Where is he?¡± The wound in his shoulder was bleeding freely and stinging, even though she hadn¡¯t cut deep. His heart was beating wildly in his chest, and he was getting chilly from the sheen of sweat that had broken out across his skin. ¡°I don¡¯t know where he is,¡± Kes lied. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Third Fervor. Kes had line of sight to the wide doors of the workroom, where larger pieces were put inside or taken out. He saw Moss first, then the others. They had large-bore guns with them, thick and heavy pieces of equipment that Mette had helped with the construction of. They had been test fired only the day before, following the fight with Nima, an emergency measure that they hoped they wouldn¡¯t have to use. The barrels weren¡¯t rifled, and it would take some time for a proper setup that could make them effective, but in theory ¡ª Moss raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired it. The kick wrenched his shoulder back, and with the line of fire as it was, he could easily have killed either Kes or Mette. The slug slammed into Third Fervor instead, knocking her forward and nearly making her lose the grip on her spear. She placed a hand on the floor and opened up a portal beneath Kes¡¯s feet, then as he fell ten feet onto hard-packed sand, she sprinted across the room. The drop had reopened the wounds in his leg, and when he looked up, the portal was gone. He was on a beach somewhere, with the sound of waves lapping at the shore and the smell of sea air in his nose. It was a cloudy night, with only sparse moonlight coming through from above. He had the tooth in his pocket, and pulled it up, momentarily moving the blood-wet fabric of his pants and causing searing pain in his leg. He couldn¡¯t eat the tooth, not yet. Even as a newborn werewolf he wouldn¡¯t be able to beat her, not with her armor on, and when he thought back to that first night, he hadn¡¯t even undergone a full transformation, only the partial extension of claws and the healing of his physical form. He couldn¡¯t guarantee that he wouldn¡¯t kill someone nearby, though the only lights he saw were far down the shore. If he was on the coast of Berus, he was a good twenty miles away from where he¡¯d been. He couldn¡¯t run with a wounded leg, and even if he could, he¡¯d be lucky to make it back before sun up. He placed the tooth in his mouth, wedging it up between his cheek and gums, then began limping his way along the beach. The only option was to find a place to hide. He slipped his mask off and clipped it back in place on his belt, though when Third Fervor came back, if she did, she could snatch it from him and cast it into the sea. ¡°Fuck,¡± he said to himself. He still hadn¡¯t recovered from the fight with Nima. It was late, and he couldn¡¯t just go without sleep for extended periods of time like he had when he was second sphere. He didn¡¯t get more than a hundred feet from where he¡¯d been set down before Third Fervor returned. The rim of her portals had a glow to them, which briefly illuminated the beach, and she scanned her surroundings, looking for him. As soon as she laid her eyes on him, she jogged over to him. The light was dim, but he could see darkness on her fist and the tip of her spear, blood. Her armor was dented in two places, but not badly, just aberrations in how it gleamed. He wondered how many hits she¡¯d taken. ¡°We¡¯re going,¡± she said as she grabbed him by the shoulder. ¡°Hold your breath.¡± For a brief moment, Kes thought about defiance. There were thirty miles between the islands, which meant that she would be dropping him in the ocean, and if he timed it right, he could take a heavy lungful of water that might be enough to kill him, at least in his weakened state. He didn¡¯t entertain that for long though, and took as large a lungful of air as he could, careful to keep the werewolf tooth pinched in place. She pushed him backward through a portal, and he fell into shockingly cold water that nearly took his breath away. It was only a moment before he felt himself being swept away in a rush of water, which deposited him on a soaking wet lawn lit by lanterns, and he just barely had time to scramble to his feet again before she gave him another shove. This time his back slammed against a stone wall. He was in a small room with a table and two chairs, stone all around, lit by a lantern that was surely spewing effluence rather than simple smoke. He was wet, dripping seawater onto the thick flagstones beneath his soaked shoes. One of the two chairs had manacles, and there were more manacles on the table. There was a small window, too tiny to squeeze out of, and only dark night beyond it. ¡°Sit,¡± said Third Fervor, who had made a much more graceful entry than he had. Kes felt for the tooth with his tongue. It was still in position. He didn¡¯t know whether they were in the castle, but it was surely a place where he would need to be less worried about killing innocent people. The only problem was that he didn¡¯t think he would win. Kes sat in the chair, and Third Fervor set her spear on the table. He felt the urge to lunge for it, to see whether he could swing it around and cut right through her armor, but that would be an act of desperation that would accomplish nothing. She could scream, Perry had said, and if she screamed while standing next to him it could be loud enough to deafen him. Once he was manacled in place, she sat down in the other chair. She held her spear across her lap, and with some difficulty, removed her helmet. She was striking and beautiful, if not strikingly beautiful. If she¡¯d been a Hollywood celebrity, she would have been one of those that people find weird but not off-putting, like Benedict Cumberbatch. The pronounced divot in her upper lip kept drawing his eye, and she had a feral smile that added to both the strangeness and the allure. She moved the spear around with only a single hand on it, sweeping it across the air in front of Kestrel. She watched the way he leaned back, and the way his eyes tracked the obsidian tip. It looked unassuming, but cut far better than his sword ever had. ¡°You show fear,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°You¡¯re not just a puppet then.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Kes. ¡°What are you?¡± asked Third Fervor. ¡°A power of some kind, no doubt. Which?¡± ¡°I ¡ª¡± said Kes. He closed his mouth. ¡°A decoy. I don¡¯t know anything.¡± Kes was pretty sure that he was going to be tortured for information. Everything he¡¯d ever read about torture, which was a lot, said that it was pretty ineffective, even if you got past all the moral and ethical issues. He was also pretty sure that he wasn¡¯t going to convince Third Fervor of the ineffectiveness of torture over the course of the next few minutes. And of course there was a small voice that was saying that while torture was ineffective in certain situations, there was plenty of worry that for various reasons, this situation wasn¡¯t one of them. Third Fervor moved the spear around, passing the tip in front of his face. He flinched away from it. ¡°Then you¡¯re of no use to me.¡± One of the things that got taught to people expecting to undergo torture was that they should do their best to make it take as long as possible. The longer you could string your captor along, the better a chance of rescue, and the worse the information they¡¯d be able to get out of you. It was considered inevitable that everyone would eventually break, the problem was that ¡®breaking¡¯ often meant giving bad information, especially because the pain and trauma could addle the mind. The brave thing would probably have been to puff up his chest and say that it didn¡¯t matter whether he lived or died. He could feel his body rebel against that, as though his autonomic nervous system considered it a base betrayal. The desire to live was strong. ¡°I have some of his memories,¡± said Kes. ¡°Strong memories from his first world, weaker in the worlds after that. You want to know him? I can tell you things about him.¡± Third Fervor moved the spear again, passing it by his face. She wasn¡¯t toying with him, she was watching him, trying to get a gauge on what he was thinking and feeling. ¡°I¡¯m not a cruel person,¡± she said. ¡°I hold hate for him, and by proxy, for you, whatever you are. If I had no purpose or direction in this world, I would simply end you with a wave of this spear, a single smooth motion across your neck.¡± She swung the spear again, coming within an inch of his jugular. ¡°If only the real Peregrin were so easy to kill.¡± She stood from the chair and swished the spear around. ¡°Fortunately for us both, I have a duty to my queen.¡± There was a slight hitch as she said it, as though she had only just caught herself before saying ¡®king¡¯ instead. ¡°I¡¯ve never sat and questioned a man, even a normal man, not whatever you are. I¡¯ll take my orders from the queen, but I suspect I know what she has in store for you.¡± Kes nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll talk. As much as I¡¯m able, as much as has been left in my mind, I¡¯ll let you know.¡± ¡°Have you heard of Thirlwell¡¯s spymaster?¡± asked Third Fervor. ¡°He¡¯s to credit with the defense of the realm, more than almost any other. I¡¯ve given technology and understanding, and have struck out where and when I¡¯ve been ordered, but he¡¯s rooted out the perfidious elements of the culture that have tried to stab at the heart of the kingdom. He¡¯s a man with an understanding of rooms like this, and has mastered the techniques necessary to get what he wants. I think I¡¯ll leave you to him, unless my queen wills otherwise.¡± There were lines of argument that Kes swallowed down. He¡¯d had some thoughts about how to get to her, to shake her resolve, which was a necessary first step toward weakening her armor. Now was not the time for that. It would be better coming from Perry, and probing now might steel her resolve further. She left the room without another look back at him, holding her helmet in one hand and spear in the other. Kes sat at the table, manacled in place. The chains connecting his hands went through a loop on the table, while the ones around his legs went through a loop on the floor. They were thick and sturdy, with no give to them. After ten minutes had gone by, he¡¯d had a chance to calm down and not feel as though she was going to burst back into the room at any second. The fear was ebbing, leaving fatigue in its place. He was still dripping wet and uncomfortable in the soaked clothes, which were drying slowly. The manacles were tight, and allowed him no movement, but they weren¡¯t cutting off the circulation. There was absolutely no way that he was going to be able to sleep, which was what he¡¯d have done if he¡¯d been placed in a proper prison cell. He had no idea where he was. The room had obviously been set up for this, given that there was a foot-wide window that was open to the air, but it was high up on the wall, and he couldn¡¯t see out of it. It could have been in the castle, or anywhere on the island. It could even have been somewhere on Berus, for all he knew, though that would have been stupid. There was a single silver lining, which was the tooth that was still wedged between his gums and cheek. If there were two silver linings, then the second was that Kes had a nanite bracelet on. It was thin and loose, though not so loose that it could actually be removed by anything but industrial machinery. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. If Perry got close enough, the nanites would report in. That meant a rescue mission had some chance in hell of actually succeeding. Would Perry launch a rescue mission? Kes tried to put himself in the shoes of his alternate self. It would depend on a lot of things, namely whether Perry even knew that Kes was missing. Kes was suddenly horrified by the realization that everyone in the town might be dead. How long had he been on that beach? It hadn¡¯t felt long, but with her strength, speed, and power, Third Fervor could have scythed her way through anyone who had come to try to deal with her. Moss had shot her with a large gun, and there was a dent in her armor, which was something. Perry hadn¡¯t thought he¡¯d done any damage at all to her during their fight. Mette might be dead. The thought made his stomach churn. He wasn¡¯t in love with her, but she was his closest friend, aside from maybe Marchand ¡ª and with Kes not in control of the armor, he was sorely missing the AI butler¡¯s presence. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Kes. He pulled at the manacles, trying to see whether he could get out from where he was chained up. If he could get a single hand free, then he could probably get both hands free, and if he could do that, he might be able to escape. The window was a foot across, not wide enough that he could get out of it, but there was also a door. If she¡¯d been more clever, she might have made a jail cell that could only be accessed by portal. The window had once held bars, which were now just metal nubs, a hasty retrofit for her. The wound in his shoulder was stinging. The wounds on his leg had stopped bleeding, but they were stinging too. In both cases, the fabric was wet with seawater, which wasn¡¯t helping matters. He was worried about infection, given he was just sitting there with damp bandages on his leg and his shoulder wound exposed to the open air. Time passed, and his mind began to wander. He was soggy and dog-tired. He debated eating the tooth, but that would only solve some of the very near-term problems while creating a whole host of long-term ones, some of which were long-term only in the sense that they were hours away rather than minutes. It was somewhere between two hours and five hours later when the door to the cell opened up again. Dawn was starting to break, and it was entirely possible that Kes had actually fallen asleep in spite of it all. He badly needed to pee. The man who entered the cell was short and tightly-wound, with skin a shade lighter than the usual for Thirlwell. He had a folder with papers in it and two mugs of tea that were gripped with the same hand. He set those on the table, then opened the folder without meeting Kes¡¯ eyes. The man was Dirk Gibbons. The haircut was different, the shave was closer, and he was wearing a well-tailored black suit with brass buttons up the front of it, and it was definitely the same man that Kes had seen not more than two to five hours prior. ¡°I¡¯m given to understand she threatened you,¡± said Dirk, still looking at his papers. ¡°That¡¯s not the way I do things. If I want to hurt you, I would hurt you, but in my considerable experience, hurting people doesn¡¯t get results. You and I are going to have a talk, and if I have to do most of the talking, that¡¯s fine.¡± He finally looked up at Kes¡¯ eyes and noticed the open-mouthed confusion there. ¡°Wha,¡± said Kes. His mind was whirling. The obvious answer was ¡®clones¡¯, but that led to obvious questions, like ¡®how¡¯ and ¡®why¡¯. A clone of Dirk Gibbons was the spymaster of Thirlwell. That meant either that Thirlwell had suffered a colossal intelligence failure that had put an agent of the culture in charge of all their intelligence gathering, or it meant that Thirlwell had infiltrated extremely deep into the heart of the culture and all their secrets. ¡°You¡¯re injured,¡± said Dirk, looking at the bloody shoulder. ¡°You¡¯re probably hungry and tired. I can¡¯t do much about that, because I have people breathing down my neck about you. They want whatever answers you can provide, and they want them six hours ago.¡± ¡°Are we being monitored?¡± asked Kes. He leaned forward slightly, as much as the manacles would allow. ¡°Is there someone listening or watching?¡± ¡°No one is watching, no one is listening,¡± said Dirk. ¡°No one except for me. It¡¯s just the two of us here.¡± Kes didn¡¯t trust that at all, but there certainly wasn¡¯t any one-way mirror, and a guard that was standing outside the door would have trouble hearing a whispered conversation. There were magic earmuffs though, and Dirk wouldn¡¯t necessarily know whether those were being used against him. Thirlwell wasn¡¯t supposed to have them, but Kes didn¡¯t trust that. ¡°I¡¯m going to unlock your manacle,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I brought you some honeyed nettle tea. It¡¯s not as piping hot as I tend to like it, because I¡¯ve had people throw it in my face before. Are you fine if I unlock one of your hands?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Kes. Dirk took a key from his pocket, got up, and undid the manacle on the right hand, giving Kes just a little bit of mobility back. The left hand was still attached to a chain, and it wouldn¡¯t go through the loop in the thick table, but he had some reach there now too. Kes rubbed his wrist for a bit, then took the mug of tea as Dirk sat back down. ¡°So, we want answers, but we have time,¡± said Dirk. ¡°These things don¡¯t work without time, in my opinion. Third Fervor said that you had expressed some willingness to talk, which is good. She said that you¡¯re, ah, a shade of Peregrin Holzmann, a traveler from another world, like she is.¡± He placed a hand on his chest. ¡°I¡¯m Thom Faulk. I work for the kingdom of Thirlwell.¡± ¡°You¡¯re ¡­ the spymaster,¡± said Kes. Dirk sighed. ¡°It¡¯s certainly a term that people have used for my position,¡± he said. ¡°Really, all I do is talk to people, get to know them and where they¡¯re coming from, see if we can¡¯t see eye to eye on things. When I¡¯m not doing that, I¡¯m trying to get a broad overview of what¡¯s going on in the kingdom at the street level. That¡¯s it.¡± ¡°And you make people talk,¡± said Kes. He was trying to see the Dirk beneath the Thom, or whether Dirk had always been one of Thom¡¯s masks. ¡°I talk to people,¡± said Dirk, tilting his head to the side. ¡°It¡¯s better not to do that with duress. Sometimes those people are accused of some very serious things. Talking can only make it better. It¡¯s natural to want to get your side of the story out, to explain how things happened so people aren¡¯t going to assume the worst.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t ever use implements?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Swords, hot pokers, a dirk?¡± Dirk stilled. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°There are some things I don¡¯t want to talk about if someone else is listening in,¡± said Kes. ¡°You said this is just between us and implied you¡¯ll be circumspect about what you report. Rapport building, that¡¯s the name of the game, yeah? So it would be great if you could make extra sure that no one is listening in, that no one has the capacity ¡ª¡± Dirk scribbled furiously on a piece of paper using a long pencil that had been tucked in the folder. He held it up for Kes to read. It said ¡®SHUT THE FUCK UP¡¯. Kes nodded and stayed silent as Dirk chewed on the inside of his lip. His internal thoughts were apparent from the rapid eye movements and the working of his mouth. ¡°Here¡¯s the problem,¡± said Dirk after a moment. ¡°Third Fervor is from another world. She can open up portals and teleport and her armor can stop any weapon we know of. You are also from another world. You want assurances that no one is listening in? I cannot give you those assurances, because I don¡¯t know what capabilities she has. It might be that she''s listening to every word you say.¡± He gave Kes a very pointed stare. ¡°I¡¯m willing to talk,¡± said Kes. ¡°But there are people I¡¯ve been working with, people I care about, who I don¡¯t want to become targets.¡± He hesitated. ¡°I think she killed a few of them. There was a dwarf, Moss, who shot her, and ¡­ I can¡¯t imagine that she didn¡¯t go after him. There was blood on her when she snatched me.¡± Dirk winced. ¡°You can keep your names to yourself, for the moment. I don¡¯t think that¡¯s what they aim to get out of you, unless there¡¯s a name that would serve as a revelation, something we could actually use. Is there?¡± He stared at Kes and shook his head. ¡°No,¡± said Kes. Dirk clenched his teeth, then sighed using his nose, a long and deep exhale. ¡°Alright. How I¡¯d normally do this is to do a gentle lead-in, lay out the basics of your life, the broad strokes of biography, but I don¡¯t know a thing about you. Tell me about the planet you were born on.¡± He started writing quickly on his paper and showed it just as Perry was trying to ineffectually sketch out some understanding of Earth. ¡®AM I BLOWN?¡¯ the paper asked. ¡®NOD YES OR SHAKE HEAD FOR NO¡¯. Kes shook his head, pausing only momentarily while describing the three branches of the American government. He actually didn¡¯t know for certain, but he hadn¡¯t seen the other Dirk when everything was going to shit. He was starting to feel some hope. If Dirk wasn¡¯t a mastermind who had wormed his way into a position of power within the various Command Authorities, then Dirk was in very deep cover ¡ª cover that was only jeopardized by his other¡¯s decision to set up shop on the neighboring island and the outside context problem of thresholders. While Kes was talking about Earth and its features, Dirk was thinking. This was a problem for him for a whole host of reasons, Kes knew that, but whatever was going on in his mind was opaque. Kes talked about the day he¡¯d gone through the portal, and what it had been like that first day in a new world with Richter, on a world that was the same as his but also very different. ¡°But it wasn¡¯t you,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Third Fervor said that you were only a shade, a shallow copy of ¡­¡± He stopped. Kes could practically see the gears turning in his mind and locking into place. ¡°Oh.¡± ¡°A power that the original acquired during the course of his travels,¡± said Kes with a significant look. ¡°One that you know the details of?¡± asked Dirk. Kes nodded. ¡°No,¡± he said out loud. ¡°And why ¡­ never mind,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Shit.¡± ¡°Problem?¡± asked Kes. ¡°No,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Just thinking. You¡¯re doing well, you¡¯re talking, that¡¯s something. But you understand that the other you killed the king, right? And we can¡¯t actually be sure that you¡¯re not him. I know you¡¯re probably hurt and scared right now, and you need a doctor to see to your wounds, but ¡­ the man we¡¯re dealing with represents a threat to the way of life in this country. He¡¯s a criminal by the laws of Thirlwell, Berus, and everywhere else. There¡¯s no country or Command Authority that would sanction a killing. So what we want to know is how and why it happened.¡± Kes was trying to read him and failing. This obviously represented a shift of some kind, but he didn¡¯t know what. ¡°I don¡¯t know what happened,¡± said Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t know why it happened.¡± He hoped he was a good enough liar. He took a drink of the honeyed tea. He didn¡¯t really know what a nettle was, but it tasted grassy to him, in a way that the honey made pleasant. He had some faint worry that it was poisoned, but if someone wanted to kill him, he was chained in place and there wasn¡¯t a lot he could do to stop them. He needed sleep, or at least rest, and Dirk was right, he also needed a doctor to at least change his bandages. ¡°Alright,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You¡¯re tired. ¡°I¡¯m going to see about getting you moved from here. You¡¯ll still be under guard, we can¡¯t lift that requirement, but we can get you a doctor, some clothes, and better living conditions. Third Fervor won¡¯t like it, and I¡¯m not sure that the queen will either, but I think that¡¯s our best bet right now.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Kes. ¡°I trust you.¡± That seemed to give Dirk some pause. There obviously hadn¡¯t been much contact between the Dirks. The rescue operation that Perry had been on, had that been coordinated between the two of them? It was impossible to say. But if one Dirk was on the inside controlling a substantial portion of the intelligence network, then he must have known where the agitators and spies were. It was the easy way to quickly rise up the ranks to become a spymaster, and a great way to make the internal political situation seem more favorable than it really was. ¡°Drink the rest of your tea,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I need to manacle you back up. There aren¡¯t any doctors in this place right now, but I¡¯ll get one to see you, so long as you promise not to make a run for it.¡± ¡°Are we in a place where I could make a run for it?¡± asked Kes with an arched eyebrow. ¡°It would mean my head if I let you escape,¡± said Dirk. Kes swallowed the rest of the tea, heedless of the fact that he needed to use the bathroom. He didn¡¯t know when the next time he¡¯d have anything to drink was, and it didn¡¯t seem like food would be forthcoming. His muscles were going to atrophy even faster if he was being kept in a jail cell and not fed. Dirk came around and locked Kes back up, then stood behind him. It made Kes uneasy, and he was about to ask what was happening before a piece of fabric was drawn across his mouth. It tasted like sweat, and he tried to scream, but it came out muted. With swift motions, the gag was tied tightly in place, and Dirk came around to the side. He brought the mug up and smashed it down against the table, where it broke into pieces. Dirk picked a thick, jagged edge of broken mug and looked at it with a clinical eye, then turned on Kes. Kes tried to move, but there was nowhere to move. He was a liability to Dirk, he¡¯d realized that, but a staged suicide hadn¡¯t even crossed his mind. He used his tongue to get the tooth out of his position tucked in his cheek and swallowed it down with great effort. It scraped his throat on the way down, and with that, he had done as much as he could not to die. Dirk stabbed him in the throat with the edge of the mug. It was a well-placed hit, and Kes couldn¡¯t move out of the way. He started gushing blood immediately, and as soon as he was bleeding, Dirk was unlocking the manacle. He wiped his hand off with a handkerchief from his pocket, then went around and untied the gag. Kes placed his hand against his neck, pressing down at hard as he could on the blood-slick skin. He was feeling faint, with too much blood having left his body, and as he grew weaker, he was able to apply less pressure. Dirk only looked back for long enough to check that the scene was convincing. He eyed the wound at Kes¡¯ neck, maybe trying to decide whether it had been enough. He hesitated, mouthed the word ¡®sorry¡¯, then hurried out of there. Kes tried to stay conscious. It was a question of whether the tooth was going to work in time or not. He hoped that the partial transformation would be enough to get him out of the manacles, but even if it did, he¡¯d be trapped in this room. The door was wood ¡ª would he be able to break out? There really was a lot of blood coming out of his neck. He could feel it spurting against his fingers. He tried to remember how it had been when he¡¯d transformed at Flora¡¯s place, when it had been his arm that was fucked. He was getting increasingly woozy and having trouble keeping it together. If he could rip his way through the door, kill and eat a guard ¡ª where had that thought come from? ¡ª then he would need to run as fast as he could. It was daytime now, with no moon in the sky, but he didn¡¯t know whether that would matter or not. He¡¯d need every scrap of power he had to escape Third Fervor. Realistically, he would have to hope that she didn¡¯t so much as hear about the escape before he was long gone. His head was swimming and his consciousness was fading. A pulse of energy raced through him, and his hand slipped from his neck as he jerked in the chair. After a dribble of blood flowed down to add to the bloody mess that was his shirt, his hand went back to his neck, only to find that there was nothing to stop up there, only a divot where the cut had been. It had been like a hiccup of power and healing, and he was already feeling better, more clear-headed. He was still firmly manacled in place, all except the arm that had been left free to make the suicide look convincing. He hoped he¡¯d be able to break through. The wolf form was bigger than his human form, the mass coming from nowhere, or from the internal energy, or whatever it was. He didn¡¯t know how much force the transformation could exert, except that it was powerful enough to destroy clothes if it had to. The wound in his shoulder had healed. The tiny cuts that Nima¡¯s claws had left on his thigh had also healed. He was hungrier than he¡¯d been a few minutes ago, back before he was bleeding to death, and he could feel, at the back of his throat, the desire for meat. The energy rippled through him again, making his hair stand up on end, and it came with a nameless rage. He slammed his fist down on the table and broke the wood there, then yanked at the manacle on his hand, which stubbornly stayed where it was. He shoved the table forward, which crashed against the wall, releasing him. He yanked at the manacles on his feet, putting the whole weight of his body into it, and the link that went through the hook in the floor began to bend. That it wasn¡¯t breaking made him more angry, and he strained his entire body against the link, gritting his teeth so hard his jaw hurt. When it broke, he yanked his legs, trying to get the chains apart, and he howled in frustration before his breathing slowed down and he was again in his right mind. He unthreaded the broken link. It was easy, if you weren¡¯t a beast. His limbs were free, even if they were trailing chains. He touched his neck. There wasn¡¯t even a divot there anymore. He hoped that no one had heard him howling. He was going to have to make a run for it soon, and kill everyone in his way to leave no witnesses or survivors. He could feel the wolf¡¯s thinking infecting his own, and the way the heat of his muscles seemed to compel them to action. The guard opened the door at the worst possible time. Kes moved forward and closed the distance with two steps, chains rattling behind him, and struck with claws fully extended into the man¡¯s face. Kes twisted his grip around, slicing through the flesh, then pushed the guard backward and sprinted out into the hallway, looking for prey and finding none. He turned on the guard, who¡¯d fallen to the floor and was clutching his ruined face. When he came to, there was blood around his mouth and soaking his clothes. He should have been running, not spending time on this, and he set aside his revulsion at what he¡¯d done to push himself to find an exit. Chapter 125 - Bedfellows The queen had requested that Third Fervor stay close by, and Third Fervor had no choice but to obey, even if she thought her talents might be better used elsewhere. Given the threats against her station, the queen¡¯s desire wasn¡¯t rash or overly emotional. She was an even-tempered woman, though Third Fervor questioned whether the queen had what it took to lead. The prince would have been a better ruler, but he had fallen ill the night the king had died. It was unfortunate, and there was some question of foul play, but the queen had ordered that there be no investigation. This was, most agreed, suspicious, but people had many different theories as to what was suspicious about it. No one could say for certain whether it was an attack from within or an attack from without, and the idea of suicide had been floated more than once. The queen was still in her old room, as it would be quite a process to move her, the business of many maids and servants. There were two useless guards standing outside, men who had served in an army that hadn¡¯t seen a proper battle in twenty years. Peregrin would rip through them without a thought, and without so much as a drop of sweat for the effort. Third Fervor would too, of course. She had already planned how she would do it, if it came down to it. The queen¡¯s bed had tall posts with many fabrics draped between them, and she slept fitfully, tossing and turning and occasionally crying out. Her pillow had been stained with tears. Third Fervor had seen her kings in all kinds of states, from red with rage to slobbering drunk, and yes, sometimes sobbing too. There was nobility in that though, a man weeping for the fate of his people, or with the heavy burden of the crown. A king had unimaginable pressures placed upon him by his station, and Third Fervor had always had enormous sympathy for that. With the queen, it felt different. The king had complained about his eldest daughter on a number of occasions, and because she had an older brother, no one had ever anticipated that the crown would go to her. She had none of the training or experience that would qualify her to make good decisions. The small moans in her sleep and the tears that fell in quiet moments felt like weaknesses, not a sign of the depth of emotion a king should feel for his power and position. The shade of Peregrin was in a cell fifteen miles away, a safe distance. There were watchers with masks on the roof of the castle, ready to raise the alarm if there was any movement. The other thresholder, Nima, was being guarded down by the docks, a less safe distance, only five miles away. Third Fervor felt a temptation to portal to them, to make sure they were in place, but that would mean leaving the queen alone. The memory of the king¡¯s death was still etched in her mind, and she had her orders, if she considered them to be orders. Third Fervor didn¡¯t need much sleep, but she knew from past experience that she wouldn¡¯t be at her peak if she tried to forgo it. She had slept in her armor the night before, and ached from it the day after, as miraculous as the armor was. Two nights in a row would leave her too weak the following day, and it was very possible that Peregrin would mount a rescue for his shade. She could only hope that it would take him some time to find it, and that once he found it, he would leave with it rather than launching an assault on the queen. She waited, watching over the queen and only once portaling to the jail where the shade was kept to peek through the window and make sure he was still there. After an hour had passed, Third Fervor began to strip out of her armor. It took time to remove and time to put back on. She was vulnerable without it, as much as she had trained her body and been improved by her adventures. She could put the armor on quickly, if she needed to, as it formed itself to her body, but taking it off was difficult, as though it had a mind of its own and was clinging to her like a whimpering child. With the armor removed, Third Fervor used a wash basin in the room to clean herself, using a sponge. She didn¡¯t sweat like she once had, but she hadn¡¯t removed the armor since the king¡¯s death, and she was far from clean. Beneath the armor had been a paper thin material that stretched seemingly without limit, and she slowly slipped out of it as she gave herself the sponge bath. She tried to move quickly, as was her duty, but rest needed to come soon, and trying to speed through rest was a fast way to stay awake, vibrating with energy. Better to slow herself down for the washing. Third Fervor washed the stretchy suit too, then hung it up to dry, which always took such a short amount of time it seemed like a miracle. She wasn¡¯t sure that it needed to be washed. Next to the wash basin were clothes that had been laid out for her, thin silken nightwear taken from the queen¡¯s own closets. She had been injured. There was a bruise on her stomach and another on her breast, both of them swollen and purple, a result of the large guns that had been fired at her. If those guns had been fired at her just after the king had died, she was certain the armor would have protected her fully, but the righteous fury had started to wane. Any current weakness was one borne of her own thoughts. She was to sleep in the queen¡¯s bed, at the queen¡¯s request. Third Fervor slipped beneath the sheets as softly and quietly as she could. The queen awoke though, if only barely, eyes opened just a crack, then closed just as quickly. The queen¡¯s arm found its way around Third Fervor¡¯s midsection, and the queen moved closer, by instinct more than intention. Whether purposefully or not, the queen¡¯s delicate arm narrowly avoided both sore spots. Once they were pressed together, the queen fell back asleep. Sleep was more difficult for Third Fervor. She was worried about Peregrin, of course, and Nima, and Peregrin¡¯s shade, and the other thresholder that Nima claimed was out there somewhere, if Nima wasn¡¯t a filthy liar too. Third Fervor was also consumed with her own failures, not just the death of the king, but her inability to end Peregrin in the aftermath. The queen¡¯s fingers were clutching at Third Fervor, and her mouth was pressed against Third Fervor¡¯s shoulder, not quite a kiss. There were layers of fabric between them, but they were thin fabrics. Third Fervor had presented herself as a loyal guard to every king she had ever had the pleasure of serving. For some this was a purely platonic boon, a warrior from another world who had come to them in their time of need. She was a woman though, and by some measures an attractive one, and there were other kings who saw her and had other thoughts. For some, like the queen¡¯s late father, it had been a method of testing her devotion and commitment, a humiliation to see how much she could bear and what she would balk at. For others, it was simply their understanding of a woman¡¯s place in the world. Third Fervor¡¯s devotion and commitment were beyond question. She could bear the weight of the world, if it was in service to her king. She would not hesitate to do whatever was asked of her. Perhaps in the later worlds she had invited it. She didn¡¯t know for certain. If it was a duty, it was one she enjoyed, though of course she would never be so improper to ask for it. Her wording might have changed, or her tone, once she knew it was a possibility, another way she could serve. She didn¡¯t imagine herself breathlessly telling the kings that they could do whatever they liked with her, but it was possible she hadn¡¯t been comporting herself properly around the question. Third Fervor had these thoughts with her eyes closed, but after sleep didn¡¯t come, she turned to the queen and watched the gentle breathing of the newly crowned ruler. She had an aquiline nose and long eyelashes. She was soft, without muscle, perhaps even slightly chubby, in a way that was fetching. Third Fervor tried to think about what it would be like to do that duty with a queen instead of a king. She resisted the thought, then tried to imagine it in more detail. She couldn¡¯t imagine the queen giving the order, even if that was the queen¡¯s inclination. A king took charge. It wasn¡¯t clear to Third Fervor that the queen was capable of that. A soft body didn¡¯t mean a soft mind, but in this case the two seemed intertwined. The queen hadn¡¯t even commanded Third Fervor to bed ¡ª she had said, ¡®I would prefer if you slept here tonight, to keep me safe¡¯. Third Fervor didn¡¯t do well with that sort of thing. It was too passive, too open to interpretation, and even if she said to herself that she should do whatever her king or queen prefers, that wasn¡¯t the same as doing things because she had been ordered to. There was too much latitude, too much room for her own decisions, and she had never operated best in those conditions. It wasn¡¯t a true order. Was it possible to train a queen? It certainly wouldn¡¯t be appropriate, but it might be necessary, especially with the kingdom balanced on a knife¡¯s edge. Right now the advisors and barons were running rampant, working of their own accord, and the crackdown that had begun on all elements of the culture within the kingdom had been borne of other people making their own decisions, though of course everyone would attribute every single action to the head of state. That was the nature of monarchy and the burden of the crown. The queen was sleeping better with her arm around Third Fervor though. Sleep eluded Third Fervor, even if providing comfort to the queen was a salve to the recent failures. And in the morning, the spymaster should surely have something from Peregrin¡¯s shade. ~~~~ Kes sat in the woods, huffing and puffing, just like in the story of the three little pigs, which was almost funny. He had no idea where he was, except that he hadn¡¯t left Thirlwell. He¡¯d gone full wolf there for a moment, with all the uncomfortable aspects of transformation, fur and a snout. It hadn¡¯t happened like that with Flora, he was pretty sure, though those memories seemed very far away. His clothes were shredded, all but the black nanite bracelet that was going to get him home. The jail he¡¯d been put in had been far from the capital city, which he was thankful for, because there were only brief moments of lucidity between the bouts of blinding anger and long claws. He¡¯d killed and eaten five men in the jail, all of them guards. There had been no sign of Dirk, or Thom, or whatever he was calling himself. Kes had the scent of him though, and if he¡¯d been of a mind to, could have tracked the traitorous bastard. His neck was healed now, but he could still feel the moment he¡¯d been cut open, like a phantom sensation reaching from the past. Kes was naked in the woods, bloody and alone. He was as far into the brush as he could get, and he thought once he got further, he¡¯d start moving toward more farmland. It was a managed forest, with hard packed dirt trails, and he was worried that he¡¯d come across someone who was only out for a morning jog. He was trying to use the techniques he¡¯d learned as Perry. It was his second time going through a first transformation, and easier because it was in the daytime, but he was still insatiably hungry, and the rage came in waves that threatened to bowl him over. He hadn¡¯t realized just how dull his sense of smell had become, but the scents were back now, adding richness to the world. How long would it take for Third Fervor to know he¡¯d escaped? How long would it take her to find him? It would depend on the jail and when people came in. They didn¡¯t have radio, which meant that someone would have to find a horse, and Kes had no idea how fast a horse could go. Or Third Fervor could find out at literally any moment by portaling into the jail. That was another possibility. When Kes felt his breathing get close to baseline, he started running again, totally naked, trying to get through the woods. He was pretty sure he would eventually hit farmland, and that meant being around people before he was fully in control of himself, but if he didn¡¯t risk killing someone, he was at risk of being found and captured again. He had escaped once, and if she let him live, there was no way he¡¯d escape a second time. With her portals, she could dump him on an uninhabited island, or worse. The plants and brush scraped against him, leaving their marks on his bare skin. With the next surge of power, the scrapes would be gone and he would be whole, and if he could just focus he could keep going. He was trying not to travel in a straight line, to make him more difficult to track, but that was difficult, because he was constrained by the terrain. He had made it another hundred yards before the smell of a deer caught his attention. It was wounded, limping along on one leg. Deer were prey that had no natural predators on this island, and he raced after the scent, all other thoughts but the hunt having left him. The wounds were gone and his footsteps had become bounding leaps through the brambles and shrubs. He would find the deer first, before Third Fervor could take it from him, and ¡ª But he could fight her for it, if it came to it, crush her armor and suck the marrow from her bones. There was no scent of her though, so he kept after the wounded deer, certain that he¡¯d catch up with it. The trail was only an hour old, and he would eat around the wounded leg, whose stink was mingled with that of the deer¡¯s fur. He bounded out of the forest and found himself on farmland with long furrows and short, leafy plants. The deer had come through here, eating around the edges, but it was the house in the distance that had caught the wolf-mind¡¯s attention. It was still early morning, and there would be people inside if it wasn¡¯t inhabited. He could almost smell them, their sweat and dirt. He sprinted across the field, crushing greens beneath his feet, taking in the smells that were growing stronger as he moved. Someone was cooking something, eggs and bacon, undercurrents of toast, butter and some of the very greens that he¡¯d been trampling. The farmhouse was small and ancient, heavy wooden slats painted white, with shutters on the windows that had been thrown open. Kes slowed as he approached, wary. When the front door opened up, it was to an unfamiliar place, lit differently and smelling of wood and metal. A woman was standing there, with her hair in a tight bun, a spandex top, and cargo pants. Kes had been shown her image, so he would know her if he saw her, but his only thought was to kill and consume her. ¡°Kestrel,¡± she said. ¡°I need you to come with me. There¡¯s not much time.¡± Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. He raced for her, and to his faint surprise, she ran to him. When he raised a clawed hand to slice through her face, she met him with a fist wreathed in purple smoke and punched him square in the mouth. His attack was foiled and he flopped to the dusty ground with a broken jaw, knocking the wind from him. ¡°Now,¡± she said. ¡°Snap out of it.¡± His jaw was knitting back together, but the anger was fading as the rush of strength and power started to leave him. ¡°Cah,¡± he spat out with a mouthful of blood. He still wanted to kill her. His claws were extended. Even if he could have formed a full sentence through the injury, the rage hadn¡¯t ebbed enough. ¡°Come now, or I¡¯m going to have to try to grapple you in there,¡± she said, pointing at the door. As the energy faded from him and he reached the bottom of the cycle, the place where he felt fleeting normalcy, he felt the desire to explain it all to her, that he was a werewolf, that he couldn¡¯t control himself, that he would be a danger to her and the others. As he was about to try to tell her that, he realized she¡¯d put him down with a single punch and hadn¡¯t seemed perturbed by it. That door was leading into the Farfinder, and if he didn¡¯t go with her, where would that leave her? Next to this farmhouse he¡¯d have to spend the next few minutes running away from? He started walking to the door, and she came up beside him. ¡°Hurry,¡± she said. She gripped his arm. She was surprisingly strong, and he saw more of the purple smoke wisping off her. ¡°She¡¯s on her way.¡± Kes started running, and was through the magic door just before her. She slammed it shut and waited, fists at the ready, then after a few tense moments, started moving again. It was a long metal corridor with many doors, and what looked like a cockpit down at one end, but she stopped at one of the doors and opened it quickly. ¡°In, now,¡± she said. Kes followed after her. The room was small, also metal, with a single filament light bulb overhead. On the floor was a material like plexiglass, and beneath it, etched into the metal in blue, runic lines that faintly glowed. They were arranged in a circle with etchings coming off of them. ¡°In the center of that circle there,¡± she said. Her name was ¡­ Hella? Kes was confused and only barely lucid. He stumbled in, and she pressed something on the wall, which caused the light overhead to briefly dim. When it returned to brightness, there was a shell around Kes, a half dome that was only barely tall enough for him to fit in if he stood in the very center of the circle. ¡°What is this?¡± he asked. ¡°Our brig,¡± said Hella. ¡°How long will this take you?¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Can¡¯t you see the future?¡± ¡°In the future we saw, you died,¡± said Hella. ¡°Prognostics isn¡¯t magic, or ¡ª I mean, it¡¯s magic, but it has severe limits.¡± Kes punched at the barrier, not as hard as he could have, but hard enough to test it. He was naked save for the nanite bracelet. Her eyes hadn¡¯t been wandering, and she was being a professional about it, but he had essentially escaped one jail and then walked right into another. He punched the barrier again, harder this time, which was awkward because of the curve. It was solid as steel, and he snarled at it, then got down on all fours and tried scratching his way through the glass with his claws. When that didn¡¯t work, he tried to wedge himself in place to push up on the dome, but that didn¡¯t work either, and he resorted to howling at and pawing fruitlessly at the barrier. She stood there watching him with her feet shoulder-width apart and her hands folded behind her back. Her face was calm and impassive, even as he made a running jump at the barrier. Quite a bit later, Kes came back to himself. He¡¯d exerted his body and felt wrung out, and wondered whether the normalcy would stick this time. ¡°Better?¡± she asked. ¡°Temporarily,¡± he said. ¡°Thank you for rescuing me, by the way. I didn¡¯t say that before.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know how long this will go on?¡± she asked. ¡°It didn¡¯t take that long for Maya.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Kes. ¡°She was second sphere, and used her vessels. This is going to be an ongoing affliction for me.¡± He let out a breath and ran his fingers through his surprisingly sweaty hair. ¡°It won¡¯t last more than a day, I don¡¯t think. Maybe not even another hour. But it comes and goes in waves, and it¡¯s hard to know when it¡¯s stopped. You can leave me here, I don¡¯t need to be watched.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll watch,¡± said Hella. Her lips were thin. ¡°If you get out somehow, someone needs to be here to stop you, and while the ship in its current form is a juggernaut, there¡¯s a chance you could wreck something we can¡¯t easily replace.¡± ¡°How did you stop me?¡± asked Kes. ¡°That punch, that was something you picked up on your travels?¡± He wanted to ask whether she could share it with him, but he held his tongue. That conversation would come later. ¡°Wait, back at the town, Mette, is she ¡ª¡± ¡°Alive,¡± said Hella. ¡°Injured, and in the care of Perry. They¡¯ve left, away from where Third Fervor can easily find them.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Kes. ¡°Good.¡± She didn¡¯t offer information on any of the others. Dirk was probably fine, otherwise his cover would have been completely blown, but the men with guns, Moss among them ¡­ he took her silence for bad news. ¡°That punch, that was all me,¡± said Hella. ¡°Or ¡­ maybe not, depending on what was actually going on with my Earth. I spoke with the other you, how much did he tell you?¡± ¡°Most of it,¡± said Kes. It had sounded like superheroes to Perry, and Kes was inclined to agree, but Hella had been thin on the details. ¡°Not, uh, your ¡­ whatever.¡± ¡°Because I didn¡¯t tell him,¡± said Hella. ¡°On the world I was from, there were some people who were born special and others that had specialness thrust upon them. Either way, you had two options. The first was living as a fugitive, the other was being conscripted. I came into my power on my sixteenth birthday, joined the army, and never looked back.¡± She raised her hand, it was once again wreathed in the purple smoke. ¡°The whole initial team were people with powers. And as soon as we¡¯d made our second hop, they all stopped working.¡± ¡°Ouch,¡± said Kes. ¡°Yup,¡± said Hella. ¡°And this is the first time I¡¯ve had it back. There are broad classes of physics, thaumics, that are shared between worlds, but the Earth that I came from apparently had a non-standard one. It¡¯s possible that someone came to this world from my world, but it¡¯s difficult to know. We have the punch map, but mapping the punches from hundreds of years back in time is a challenge, especially when whatever they brought in with them hasn¡¯t been in use.¡± Kes looked down at his hands. There were no claws. It had been a bit since he¡¯d felt the rage, and he was hoping that it would stay away. He tried to think about how long it had taken Perry that first night. It felt shorter, which would be a good thing, because that would mean that the experience wasn¡¯t wholly wasted. He couldn¡¯t be let out of the dome though, not until he was certain that he wouldn¡¯t be a danger to anyone ¡ª though with Hella, he wasn¡¯t sure whether he could actually beat her if he was trying to kill her. The punch to the jaw suggested he¡¯d be toast. ¡°Tell me about your power,¡± said Kes. Hella watched him. Her eyes were still on his face. She didn¡¯t seem fazed by his nakedness. ¡°You¡¯re not technically a part of this,¡± she said. ¡°We try to help people, where we can, but rescuing you, that was interference. We did so on my orders. We¡¯re hoping that helping you will convince Perry that we mean to be allies. We¡¯re also hoping that we haven¡¯t kicked the hornet¡¯s nest, that we don¡¯t become a part of the ongoing conflict, particularly with Fenilor.¡± ¡°So you don¡¯t want to tell me,¡± said Kes. ¡°I grow stronger with danger, up to a point,¡± said Hella. She held up her hand, and the purple smoke was wispy, barely visible. ¡°It¡¯s got a mind of its own, this power, and knows things that I don¡¯t. Sometimes I feel it surge and I know to be on the lookout for something. Against you, back there? That was a four out of ten, but I was stronger because she was close. The two of us against each other, no other considerations? I think I could take you, but it would be because I have training and you¡¯re a ball of rage.¡± ¡°Against Fenilor?¡± asked Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Hella. ¡°I¡¯ve been trying to avoid him, which would be easier if we had a better sense of where he is. When I was with Perry, it was at an eight out of ten, and I think it was only that low because the odds that he¡¯d attack me were low, not because he couldn¡¯t kill me. My power is good against guns, less good against swords.¡± ¡°You¡¯re showing weakness,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯m surprised.¡± Hella shrugged. ¡°We have other tools. There are worlds where tools that Earth would consider a miracle are commonplace, either technology or magic. We prefer technology, but some of it has a bit of magic woven into it, so we have to be careful.¡± Kes looked down at his hand. ¡°I think I¡¯m good.¡± ¡°We¡¯re going to keep you in observation for another hour or two,¡± said Hella. ¡°Sorry. I can keep you company if you¡¯d like.¡± Kes sat down, giving himself a bit more modesty. ¡°I¡¯d prefer that.¡± ¡°Sorry for hitting you,¡± said Hella. ¡°I was just trying to get you moving. We don¡¯t know the bounds of her power. We don¡¯t know whether she could have opened up a portal into the Farfinder when the door was open. We still don¡¯t know, actually, but it produced a vulnerability.¡± ¡°It¡¯s good you stopped me from hurting you, or worse,¡± said Kes. ¡°Worse?¡± asked Hella. ¡°We don¡¯t have records from when Perry turned. Our ability to see into the past only spans a single world.¡± ¡°Nothing,¡± said Kes. ¡°The rage, it comes with ¡­ lust, sometimes.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Hella. She looked discomfited. ¡°He didn¡¯t ¡ª that wasn¡¯t something that happened to him either, for the record,¡± said Kes. ¡°He had a ¡­ I guess I would call her a girlfriend. She had powers, and ¡­ got him through the night.¡± ¡°You have those memories,¡± said Hella. ¡°But you don¡¯t consider yourself to be him?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Kes. ¡°Maybe it¡¯s easier to disassociate from those memories.¡± They sat in silence for a bit. He was hoping that she set a timer, and that when the time had passed, she would be good to her word and let him out. There was some potential for this to be an interrogation, but given everything they could see, he had no idea what good that would do them. ¡°It must be nice to travel the many worlds like you do,¡± he eventually said. ¡°You run into issues with powers not working, but at least you have each other. Thresholding brings loneliness with it.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve seen so many thresholders, directly and indirectly,¡± said Hella. ¡°That ring of yours ¡ª of his ¡ª that¡¯s the only way we¡¯ve seen that lets you take another person with you. More than that, it seems to carry the magic. It¡¯s not moving around the spell, it¡¯s moving with it, otherwise Marjut would have lost her powers when she got to Esperide. And it incorporated Mette into the system, for better or worse.¡± ¡°I could become a thresholder,¡± said Kes. ¡°You could do that just by going through the portal,¡± said Hella. ¡°If you wanted to come with us to the next world, and not get tangled in the spell, you could just ride the ship with us.¡± ¡°That would be nice,¡± said Kes. ¡°If you¡¯re offering.¡± ¡°We are, if we all make it through this,¡± said Hella. ¡°Third Fervor is scary, but we have plans for her, and we¡¯re hoping that we can help without dooming ourselves. It¡¯s Fenilor that¡¯s the real problem. He¡¯s slippery. He knows more than we do. And we don¡¯t know that he¡¯s going to accept that he can¡¯t go to another world.¡± ¡°Sorry if you¡¯re going to have to have all these conversations twice,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯m used to it,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s the nature of being captain, even on a small ship. You need to distribute information, and people don¡¯t read their emails.¡± Kes nodded. He was getting tired of being in the dome of shame. ¡°And it gets lonely, yes, even with the five of us,¡± said Hella. ¡°Did you get lonely, when you were him?¡± ¡°I had Marchand,¡± said Kes. ¡°That wasn¡¯t quite the same. But yeah, the impermanence of it, always off to another world with different people, the way it disconnected me from everything that came before, the way that it always feels like this world is going to be left behind just like the other ones ¡­ and I¡¯m still early on in my career. Or he is, in his. What it will be like when we¡¯ve been through twenty worlds, when we¡¯re fifty years old and have been mutated beyond belief ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°We¡¯re trying to put a stop to it all,¡± said Hella. ¡°How we do that, we don¡¯t know. But it would mean the end of it all. And ¡­ I would like to return home, at some point, if there¡¯s still a home to return to.¡± ¡°Why wouldn¡¯t there be?¡± asked Kes. ¡°The thresholders did damage,¡± said Hella. ¡°And in their wake, they left magic. It had been bad enough when it was people with me, with our powers, the heroes and the villains, all that, but suddenly we were balanced on the precipice, teetering on the edge. There were mage clubs popping up all over the country, massive government projects trying to give countries an edge over each other, and riots in the streets. We didn¡¯t have a way to keep order.¡± Kes considered that. ¡°You¡¯ve been away for a long time. And there might not be a home left to go back to.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± she nodded. ¡°That¡¯s not the case for you? For your Earth?¡± Kes thought about that. It would be an election year in America, he was pretty sure, which never inspired a lot of hope in him. Global warming, income inequality, rapidly advancing artificial intelligence, fascism coming back in style ¡­ but Earth would probably still be there, if a bit worse than when he¡¯d left it. Maybe he could bring the answers to all their problems, if he had a stack of books he could slap onto the internet, or maybe he could take control somehow and right the ship, but he wasn¡¯t Perry, and even Perry wouldn¡¯t stand a ghost of a chance against the United States military. An uplift project of some kind could work, but he was skeptical that it wouldn¡¯t just make the rich richer and advance some causes he didn¡¯t wish to be advanced. That was what had happened with Cosme, more or less, a tyrant king gaining control. But when Kes thought of the future, and specifically of a future that might not be there anymore, he thought of Richter. They had the cloning machine, or would have it before they left this world. All it needed was some blood, but it wasn¡¯t clear whether that blood needed to be taken from a living person, or if a dead one would do. Back on Earth 2, Richter had been a part of some kind of cryonics program, and he was pretty sure they¡¯d done their best to preserve her. They removed the blood for that, she had enthusiastically explained to him, but even if they hadn¡¯t, blood went bad pretty quickly, and it had been years. Still, with their medical technology, cloning more blood seemed like something they could do. It had felt, for a long time, like he was getting further and further away from that goal ¡ª not just further in practical terms, but further in his heart as the memories grew stale. The pieces were falling into place now. It was moving from a pipe dream to something that looked like a nebulous plan. ¡°There¡¯s something to go back to, yeah,¡± said Kes, after far too long. He rubbed his face. ¡°You¡¯ll help with that?¡± ¡°If we can,¡± said Hella. ¡°But our goal, our mission, is to stop all this from happening, to rip the Grand Spell apart. If we can build something better from the pieces, that¡¯s what we¡¯ll do, but stopping it is enough.¡± Kes nodded. He reached out and flicked the barrier between them, and found that it was quite intact. ¡°Any chance we could borrow one of these?¡± he asked. ¡°Might be useful for containing Third Fervor.¡± ¡°It wouldn¡¯t stop the teleportation or the portals,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re working on our own solutions. But even once she¡¯s dealt with, it¡¯s Fenilor that we have to watch out for. He¡¯s more dangerous, by far.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t even know what he can do,¡± said Kes. ¡°We know enough,¡± she said, with dark undertones. ¡°We think he¡¯s been here for five hundred years.¡± ¡°I guess that¡¯s one way to deal with the loneliness and impermanence,¡± said Kes. ¡°Stay on one world for five hundred years, take a vacation every now and then to fight off someone from another planet ¡­¡± ¡°Except we don¡¯t know how it was done,¡± said Hella. She clucked her tongue. ¡°We¡¯re pretty sure that Fenilor doesn¡¯t know about us, but the more he knows, the more danger we¡¯re in. Same goes for Third Fervor. It was much, much safer when we weren¡¯t coming in hot to an active thresholder war zone, especially not one of this magnitude.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯m done with the rage monster thing. Let me know how I can help.¡± He spread his hands wide, to show that he was hiding nothing, and she finally did glance down at his dong. She hid it well. Hella went over to the control on the side of the wall and flipped the switch, bringing down the dome. ¡°Come on. You¡¯re staying with us until we make contact with Perry again. I¡¯ll show you your room.¡± Chapter 126 - Sidelines Perry didn¡¯t like to think of it as running away, but it certainly felt like that. Workers had taken the cloning machine apart and shoved it into the shelfspace, not so much to give it to him as to make sure that it didn¡¯t fall into enemy hands. Dirk had said that they would be wanting it back, but he¡¯d said it in a defeated sort of way that seemed to acknowledge that once it went into the shelf it might be gone forever. Perry was not planning on giving it back. He had plans for it, and besides, they had others. He had flown away from both Berus and Thirlwell, far enough in a random direction that he would be out of Third Fervor¡¯s range. From what he knew, every time he opened up the shelfspace in the open air, he was pinging Third Fervor¡¯s sense of the volume, at least within her thirty mile range. It was a major handicap unless he could get indoors, and even indoors he would have to make sure there wasn¡¯t some unseen gap for airflow. It was only after he was far enough away that he could go into the shelfspace and speak with Mette. There was still the question of Kes. They didn¡¯t know whether he was still alive or at the bottom of the ocean, but based on the reports it really did seem like he¡¯d been captured. She could have taken him almost anywhere, and in the end, Perry had decided to hold off on a recon mission given the difficulty he expected to face if Third Fervor showed up. ¡°I don¡¯t like that,¡± said Mette with her arms folded across her chest. She had gotten them into that position with a wince, her cracked ribs and expanding bruise causing her to move gingerly. She was laying on a bed he¡¯d pushed into the shelfspace, next to the hulking pieces of the machine, which looked like sections of an industrial art project. ¡°If I had been kidnapped, would you go after me?¡± ¡°If I knew where you were being held, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Thirlwell is huge though. The best bet, short of the Farfinder getting off their asses and helping out, is that I can hover within range and get some recordings of conversations. Kes had the bracelet on, but that was meant to be tracking if we got separated, not if he was captured. March designed it to be removable with some effort.¡± The nanites were perfectly capable of being much stronger than flesh and bone, but he¡¯s worried that would be suspicious and encourage their enemies to cut off a hand to remove the bracelet. It¡¯s what he would have done. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Mette. ¡°So we¡¯re just sitting back? Biding our time?¡± She gave a skeptical look around the twice-flooded shelfspace. There was a definite smell to it. ¡°Essentially, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re putting everything we can into skills and equipment, then we stage a conflict that¡¯s winnable. We pull out all the stops, the neurotoxins, the radiation, maybe even a bomb. I¡¯m still going through the data dump from the Farfinder, but it does seem like I should be able to catch Third Fervor while she¡¯s sleeping. Her armor is too tough to get through, unless I can argue her down. I don¡¯t necessarily like the idea of killing her in her sleep, but if that¡¯s what¡¯s necessary, then yes.¡± ¡°If they have him, they¡¯re going to torture him,¡± said Mette. ¡°Torture is actually pretty ineffective,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯ve done various studies on it, at least on my Earth, and the biggest problem is that the information is never reliable because at a certain point people will say anything in order to make the pain stop, and the things they say won¡¯t necessarily be the truth. It¡¯s good for getting a confession from someone, if there¡¯s something specific that you want them to say out loud, but it addles the mind. Better to build rapport.¡± Mette blinked at him. ¡°It¡¯s ¡­ just something I had read about,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean yes, it¡¯s bad that they might torture him, but if the science replicates, then they would be more likely to try rapport building, which is more effective. That¡¯s all I meant. He might be totally fine.¡± ¡°You think they might be trying to ply him with treats?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Maybe, yeah,¡± said Perry. He thought about it some, rubbing his chin. He needed to trim the beard that had grown there, but with the werewolf hairiness it was a constant losing battle. There was probably a way to stop the hair growth via second sphere, but it would take time and effort he needed to spend on other things. ¡°I mean, I guess when I try to think about what it would be like in Thirlwell, I imagine that building rapport with the enemy goes contrary to the strongman nature of monarchies. Even if it¡¯s effective, a king doesn¡¯t always care about effectiveness, he cares about laying his dick out on the table and proving that he¡¯s the biggest and best around.¡± ¡°Which means that they might be removing his fingers right now,¡± said Mette with a pronounced frown. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°And we¡¯re just going to hide out in the shelf,¡± said Mette, still frowning. ¡°I can fly overhead,¡± said Perry. ¡°Try to pick up a signal that way. The nanites can¡¯t transmit much, and he¡¯s probably indoors if not underground, if they¡¯re holding him at all ¡­¡± ¡°But you¡¯d rather just leave him?¡± asked Mette. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°But ¡­ we literally have a machine that can make more. I think we need to have an understanding of the clones and who they are. I didn¡¯t get it when they made him, but I think I do now, the mindset that you need, the understanding of the other.¡± ¡°You want to make more?¡± asked Mette. ¡°You¡¯re just going to treat them ¡ª people who think like you and have all your memories ¡ª as disposable?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a philosophical question,¡± said Perry. ¡°He¡¯s got what, only a few days of unique memories? He¡¯s his own person, but if we made a clone of me, it would be ninety-nine and some nines percent equivalent to Kes. I think he would agree, for what it¡¯s worth.¡± ¡°Blegh,¡± said Mette. She had a look of visible disgust on her face, like she¡¯d just sipped at her tea and got a bug in her mouth. ¡°I need you to go make an effort to find him.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll check the logs from the listeners that I have in place, then do a canvas, listening to his signal. I¡¯m making a plan for getting him back. I said I wouldn¡¯t rather just leave him.¡± ¡°He also has the tooth,¡± said Mette. ¡°He might use that.¡± ¡°No way,¡± said Perry. ¡°The wolf is strong, but the change is hard to control, and when I try to imagine all the places that he could have been stashed, assuming he had the tooth on him and kept it with him, which ¡ª I mean, I just don¡¯t see it.¡± ¡°I think we should switch me over to a wolf,¡± said Mette. She still had her arms crossed. ¡°I need you on engineering duty,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need you making me things.¡± She looked down at her bruised body and almost laughed before thinking better of it. ¡°I almost died,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯ve got broken ribs. How much work do you think I¡¯m going to be doing like this?¡± Perry sighed. ¡°Alright, then let¡¯s turn you,¡± he said. ¡°There¡¯s an island marked on the maps that held a naval base and not much more, defunct now. It¡¯s a hundred miles away. Can I drop you off, or do you need me to trip sit for you?¡± ¡°I won¡¯t ¡­ go into the ocean, will I?¡± asked Mette. ¡°As a wolf?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve tamped down on all the instincts, can dodge the transformation if I want to ¡­ I wouldn¡¯t think you¡¯d swim out into the ocean to hunt the monsters there, no. You¡¯ll be hungry, but I can kill something large and leave it for you.¡± ¡°Or I can just use the lanterns,¡± said Mette. ¡°Make food that way. They can make meat. Ish.¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t answer the question,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do you need me?¡± Mette closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. ¡°Dump me on an island. Make sure I have meat. Then go find him, or try to.¡± Perry nodded. That was sensible. ¡°I¡¯ll check in on you when I can, pick you up when I¡¯m able. But we have to prepare for it anyhow.¡± Lukoo¡¯s Island was the tiny exposed tip of an undersea mountain, with a footprint barely bigger than Perry¡¯s old high school. There were three buildings on it, all made with heavy stone which had been shipped there from elsewhere: a tower, a warehouse, and housing for the people who had once lived there. It had been established as a waypoint by the Kingdom of Berus at considerable expense, then been abandoned with the rise of air travel and lantern-powered ships. Almost the moment Perry landed, he got a notification that he¡¯d received an email. Subject: Rescue Operation To: Peregrin Holzmann Perry, Sorry for the lack of contact. Things have been moving fast here, and we¡¯re still hoping not to get entangled with the predictive aspects of the Grand Spell, which we think would be bad for everyone involved. We think it¡¯s probably safe to feed you information, but we¡¯re still concerned that anything we do to help you will imperil us while also not actually making the coming fights any easier for you. We hope you understand. We¡¯re watching from a distance, which we think we can do safely. Most of the time we¡¯re in orbit around the planet, which helps with our ability to predict the future. Intermittent communication makes prediction more powerful. Intervention is a last resort. Following the attack on your camp, Kestrel was captured and taken to a jail cell. There he was interrogated by the Thirlwell spymaster, who is apparently another clone of this Dirk Gibbons. Dirk tried to kill Kestrel to keep his cover, Kestrel ate the tooth and escaped, and we picked him up before Third Fervor could get to him. He¡¯s with us and safe. DO NOT go to Thirlwell. We only had a chance at getting a single relatively weak prediction off after the rescue, but in it, you died to Third Fervor in an aerial battle. We personally think that you need to go after Fenilor while you have the chance. There¡¯s something strange and complicated here, and we have two main theories. The first is that everything is fucked because Fenilor has been camped out for five hundred years. The second is that everything is fucked because you came through with Mette. It¡¯s possible that it¡¯s both of them working together to make things weird. I don¡¯t know exactly what of the data dump you¡¯ve read through so far, or what Marchand had summarized for you, but this is the most complicated matchmaking setup we¡¯ve ever seen. Attached are some coordinates, along with a system for Marchand to map them against the planet. We¡¯re using a better system than the locals have. The coordinates use what Dirk was gathering for you on Fenilor, mapped against our own inability to pierce into the past. Our approach has been to find all the places we don¡¯t have eyes on, but it¡¯s slow and tedious. These sites have a permanent umbra, and we¡¯re hoping that you can visit them. We would do it ourselves, but again, there¡¯s the risk of entanglement. We think that Fenilor would react better to you than to us, if he has a way of sensing a breach, but we don¡¯t know whether he does. If you think of a way to tell whether our arrival was predicted by powers far greater than our own, let us know. Kes is going to stay with us for the time being. That¡¯s his preference. We¡¯re going to be low/no contact, trying to get some better predictions from in orbit. We¡¯ll be watching you from afar. Unless Fenilor has his umbra over you (which we¡¯re dying to get for ourselves), assume that we¡¯re watching. Also assume that we¡¯re keeping an eye on the future. Captain Hella Farrin, SS Farfinder Perry looked at the coordinates. They were all for places that were far off the beaten path, away from major cities. Marchand pulled up the map and when Perry¡¯s attention went to it, the map expanded. There were three sites, labeled and listed, all under a haze of anti-magic that was apparently stymying the Farfinder. When Perry pulled Mette from the shelfspace, he gave her the good news and the bad news. ¡°Ha, I knew he¡¯d wolf out the first chance he got,¡± she said. She looked around at the abandoned buildings. It had been twenty years since anyone had set foot on the place, given how out of the way it was. Weeds had overgrown the paths and vines clung to the buildings. She didn¡¯t think much of her new home, even if it were only her home for the next day. ¡°I can stay here with you then,¡± said Perry. ¡°Help you through this.¡± Mette smiled at him. ¡°You¡¯d do that for me?¡± ¡°Did you think I wouldn¡¯t?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean ¡­ yeah,¡± said Mette. ¡°Though now that I think about it, I¡¯m wondering whether ¡®help me through it¡¯ was a euphemism.¡± Perry rolled his eyes and almost kept himself from blushing, but he remembered that he¡¯d told Mette he¡¯d hold back less and let his face be whatever it was going to be. He didn¡¯t think he was visibly blushing. He had always been a pretty tightly controlled person. ¡°Aw, it makes it even sweeter that you weren¡¯t even thinking about that,¡± said Mette. ¡°Let¡¯s get you some food first,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to go hunt a whale.¡± He paused for a beat. ¡°See, in my culture that would be a very offensive thing to say, which is what makes it funny.¡± Mette shrugged in the careful way that one does with broken ribs. ¡°I don¡¯t know what a whale is,¡± she said. ¡°Yeah, I know you don¡¯t know, I could feel it not translating,¡± he said. ¡°Look, pretend that I said something that was offensive to your culture but made sense in context.¡± Mette thought about that for a moment. ¡°Wow, rude.¡± ¡°What did you ¡ª you know what, never mind,¡± said Perry. He left her in the bed, locked the helmet in place, and dove into the sea. The slope beneath the waves was gentle, which was good, because it meant that he would be able to get away from any of the larger monsters. He wouldn¡¯t have actually been able to take down a whale, and if he could, he wouldn¡¯t be able to bring it to shore. He was looking for something more like a shark or a tuna, meat that he could bring ashore that would hold Mette over while she went in and out of rage mode. He wasn¡¯t sure that would actually work, but it was worth a shot. The transformation came with hunger, which needed to be sated, but also anger and a desire to hunt. A carcass would satisfy the need to rip and rend away at flesh, but it was necessarily a dead thing. It took an hour before Perry decided that it just wasn¡¯t happening. He¡¯d gotten an alert from Marchand about some massive shape moving in the water, far bigger than Perry could fight, but he¡¯d stayed for a bit, hoping that something smaller would come his way. He had hoped that Mette would be well enough to set up a lantern for food, because if she couldn¡¯t set it up, he would have to. He¡¯d have no idea what he was doing unless it was dead simple. He trudged up out of the water, feeling disappointed, though he¡¯d known going in that he wasn¡¯t really set up for fishing. Going into the water like that always brought back memories of Richter; they had gone walking along the bottom of the Pacific together, looking at fish and some of the artificial reefs that her alternate California had set up. You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. When Perry walked over to where he¡¯d left Mette, she was missing from the bed and standing up on top of one of the buildings in tattered clothes. ¡°What happened to waiting?¡± he asked. She leapt down and sprinted through the tall grasses to him, extending her claws. He was surprised by her speed, but reached out a hand and grabbed her by the throat when she launched herself at him, then threw her to the ground so she was on her belly and sat on her as gently as he could. His first reaction was to laugh, but he held it in, and instead tried to put himself in her shoes. She had probably eaten the tooth because her ribs were bothering her and her breathing wasn¡¯t quite right, or because of the pain across her chest from where she¡¯d been punched. The feelings came as if from nowhere, and that lack of control had felt scary sometimes, especially when it would be a monthly issue. He remembered feeling like it would never end, like he¡¯d be trapped with having control taken away from him, hurting someone who had shown him kindness, even if it was her own brand. He hadn¡¯t liked being a werewolf, only the power that it brought, and he¡¯d been thankful that he¡¯d been able to get it under control with only one or two deaths. Mette screamed beneath him, and not in the good way. She was thrashing around, trying to turn herself to face him, but he¡¯d pinned her hips to the ground. If she¡¯d been fine on her own, he thought she would probably keep being fine, but he had committed to stay with her, even if he thought she had jumped the gun. Eventually the struggle slowed, then stopped. ¡°Perry?¡± she asked in a small voice. ¡°Can you get off of me?¡± ¡°Behave,¡± he said as he took his weight off her. She rolled over and popped to her feet with energy she hadn¡¯t had an hour before. She rolled her shoulders and looked down at her body. ¡°Every minute I ever spent exercising was a waste,¡± she said. She flexed her bicep, which had a pronounced bulge, even if it was far cry from what a bodybuilder might have. She was muscular in an understated way, where before she had been fairly soft. She was still soft, just with muscles beneath the softness. ¡°You never exercised,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah, because I knew this moment was coming,¡± she said. ¡°I feel good.¡± She beamed at him. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you tell me it felt good?¡± ¡°You¡¯re going back to rage mode,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s a reprieve, that¡¯s all.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll stay with me though, right?¡± asked Mette, looking him up and down. ¡°Because if you took that armor off, we could ¡ª¡± ¡°I want you to be working on controlling it, fighting it,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s going to be a long road, and it starts now. I don¡¯t want you to kill a person because you were indulging yourself rather than pushing yourself toward mastery.¡± ¡°No fun,¡± said Mette. She rubbed her head and then felt her hair. ¡°Is my hair great now?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Longer, too.¡± She looked at her hair as best she could while trying to hold it away from her head, then turned to Perry. ¡°I think I can feel it coming on again. Did you catch a whale?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. Her eyes were wide and her expression intense. She shifted a bare foot in the soil. ¡°Then I think I¡¯m going to have to kill you.¡± Maybe it was meant to be a joke, but it came with too much aggression. Perry smiled beneath the helmet. She could certainly try. ~~~~ It was a full eight hours later that Mette had finally seemed to come down for good. She was wrapped in a blanket and sipping a cup of tea, both sourced from within the shelfspace. She had eaten her way through most of their food supplies, as her appetite was insatiable, but they had very little in the way of meat, and none of it fresh. She had a lantern going, which was making some meatloaf (not like mom used to make), but she seemed very unenthused about it. ¡°So, we stop by a village on our way to the first of the marked positions,¡± said Mette. ¡°Find a library, fill up with stuff we need, then get on our way. It¡¯s technically not even wrong, because we¡¯re working in the interests of their Command Authority or whatever.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not coming with me,¡± said Perry. ¡°Like hell I¡¯m not,¡± said Mette. She puffed up her chest, which didn¡¯t work at all with the blanket around her and the mug of tea in her hand. ¡°I¡¯m a werewolf, everyone knows you can¡¯t kill a werewolf.¡± Perry rolled his eyes. ¡°Alright, fine,¡± he said. Mette blinked at him. ¡°Is this how we¡¯re going to do it now?¡± she asked. ¡°You¡¯re just going to cave at the slightest resistance?¡± ¡°You don¡¯t actually want to go?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean ¡­ yes, I do, I want to be a part of this, that seems worlds better than being stuck on this dinky little abandoned island that I would never escape from if you didn¡¯t come back,¡± said Mette. ¡°Great,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then let¡¯s get ready to go.¡± ¡°Are we going to see him again?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Kes?¡± ¡°Of course,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know how or when, but part of the point of what we¡¯re doing is to team up with the Farfinder long term.¡± ¡°And ¡­ you think he¡¯s doing okay?¡± asked Mette. She pulled the blanket tighter around her. A chill breeze was coming off the ocean. ¡°I think he¡¯s doing fine,¡± said Perry. ~~~~ They sat around a table in what the crew called the ¡®rec room¡¯, an extradimensional space that was largely used for what limited downtime they allowed themselves. The window outside showed a vision of where the ship was in physical space, which was up in orbit, floating lazily around the planet. There was a large screen that looked like a home movie setup, a library with three overstuffed chairs, and a large table next to a cabinet filled with games. A large half-kitchen had snacks and food, along with a pantry that had all kinds of things from different worlds. ¡°There¡¯s absolutely no way that¡¯s true,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯m calling bullshit.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Cark with a mild expression. ¡°It¡¯s true.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no way that eighty percent of thresholder fights end non-lethally,¡± said Kes. Cark shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t know what to tell you. We can set you up with computer access and you can look at the files. Hella wants you ¡ª or him ¡ª to be a part of this.¡± Cark looked like the blandest guy in the world. He looked like he should have dorky glasses, though he didn¡¯t. His hair was swept to one side and even the color of his skin was a muted brown of a shade that screamed uninteresting. Kes thought that it had to be deliberate. You wouldn¡¯t look twice at him. ¡°Break it down for me,¡± said Kes. ¡°Help me understand. Because the lethality should be ¡ª I mean, assume that there¡¯s an even split between ideological opponents, power seekers, and sociopaths, right?¡± ¡°Why would we assume that if it¡¯s not correct?¡± asked Cark. He was eating a plate of hard boiled eggs with a fork and knife. ¡°What¡¯s the actual observed ratio?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Did your other not pass this on to you?¡± asked Cark. ¡°We only have the one armor,¡± said Kes. ¡°We don¡¯t have any way of sharing the data.¡± The woman that Cark had come in with, Nitta, was sitting next to him. Her meal was a large salad with different varieties of greens and no dressing. She had a fey appearance to her, which was partly because she was worryingly skinny with a head that seemed too large for her body, but her styling played into it too, particularly the shimmering golden eyeshadow and the unruly curls of blonde hair that didn¡¯t quite hide her pointed ears. She was wearing what Kes would have called bohemian chic, loose and well-loved clothes that seemed like they had been recycled a few times and had a few too many baubles woven into them. ¡°We can get you electronics,¡± said Nitta. She raised an eyebrow. ¡°What¡¯s your preference?¡± ¡°My ¡­ preference?¡± asked Kes. ¡°If you get her started on this, it¡¯s going to be hard to stop her,¡± said Cark. Kes watched as he took a bite of egg. There wasn¡¯t even any salt or pepper on it. Nitta paused with her fork above her oversized bowl of salad. ¡°It¡¯s true.¡± ¡°Alright, fine,¡± said Kes. ¡°If you¡¯re offering me something, I¡¯ll take it.¡± ¡°I have to explain first,¡± said Nitta. She had been eating in relative silence after they¡¯d made their introductions, but at the opportunity she seemed to come alive. ¡°First you have the screens, the physical displays that change based on needs, once you¡¯ve gotten past some technological thresholds ¡ª oh, all this assumes standard physics, the kind of thing that should work on every world, but in practice, doesn¡¯t.¡± ¡°Got it,¡± said Kes. He wanted to ask about those other worlds, and what caused the physics to not work quite right. ¡°So you have the rectangles or squares, sometimes with a separate physical interface, but usually with the display itself being responsive,¡± said Nitta. ¡°Usually sized for one hand or two, but sometimes set up like that one, big and imposing,¡± she gestured to the home theater, ¡°or like what we have on our desks.¡± ¡°We had those on my Earth,¡± said Kes. ¡°I would love to have one of those that can interface with Marchand. I¡¯d love to have several, actually.¡± ¡°Can do,¡± said Nitta. ¡°Now, the second type is something that goes over the eyes. Marchand, your power armor, is of that variety. It overlays reality, either by etching the display on glass, beaming it into the eyeball, or just having a close up display at a very high fidelity.¡± ¡°And you have one of those?¡± asked Kes. Nitta laughed, and Cark gave her a grin. ¡°Hella calls me a pack rat,¡± she said. ¡°I take everything I can from the worlds we go through, and my collection is very large.¡± ¡°It¡¯s tolerated,¡± said Cark. ¡°Mostly because Nitta keeps the ship running and it¡¯s come in handy more than once.¡± ¡°Technology never fails,¡± said Nitta. ¡°Except when it does. And I mean that in two senses, because some people build their high technology very sloppily, and because sometimes you run smack into a world that doesn¡¯t allow it for one reason or another. Plus the interoperability of machines from different worlds is a complete bitch.¡± ¡°So you could get me some goggles that let me have something like Marchand?¡± asked Kes, leaning forward slightly. ¡°We¡¯ll go down to my workshop after this,¡± said Nitta with an eager nod. ¡°I have all kinds of gifts to bestow on you. The captain doesn¡¯t feel safe giving things to Perry, not yet, but you¡¯re not Perry. Anyway, the third type is the best type.¡± Cark was already shaking his head. He¡¯d polished off his eggs and was leaning back, watching Nitta with some affection. Kes couldn¡¯t tell whether it was romantic or not, but neither of them were quite baseline humans. ¡°With the third type of interface, you go directly to the brain,¡± she said, grinning. ¡°Lots of ways to do that, but it¡¯s always very complicated. However, once you get around the technical hurdles, it¡¯s by far the best.¡± ¡°Until you get to a world where it doesn¡¯t work,¡± said Cark. ¡°Or it fails and you have a useless piece of metal lodged inside your skull.¡± ¡°Technically not necessary,¡± said Nitta. ¡°There¡¯s a type that you could do, in theory, using what¡¯s basically a hat.¡± ¡°And do we have one of those?¡± asked Cark. ¡°No,¡± said Nitta with a sigh. ¡°Someday.¡± She looked at Kes with a raised eyebrow. ¡°We do have one that would slip into your brain. Very non-invasive, doesn¡¯t hook itself in, mostly just sits there.¡± ¡°She¡¯d need to open your skull,¡± said Cark. ¡°That seems pretty invasive,¡± said Kes as he watched Nitta eat. She was trying to eat quickly during the gaps in conversation. He was going to have to get some food for himself soon, but no one had offered anything to him yet, and he didn¡¯t want to impose, not when he was learning things and being offered gifts. ¡°The device isn¡¯t invasive,¡± Nitta clarified. ¡°It just sits inside your brain, it doesn¡¯t rip anything out or drive its tendrils in. Replaces nothing. And now is the perfect time to do it, because in this world, we have access to mind-boggling healing.¡± ¡°You do?¡± asked Kes with a raised eyebrow. ¡°Boggle my mind then.¡± Nitta glanced at Cark, her bright and eerie eyes meeting his dull ones. ¡°She said to tell him anything and everything, just not to give him weapons or let him loose without consulting her,¡± said Cark with a glance at Kes. He shrugged. It was pretty clear that ¡®she¡¯ referred to their captain, Hella. They had a particular way of talking about her, an intonation to the ¡®she¡¯ in question. It was trusting and almost reverent. Nitta began putting up fingers. ¡°H-class gives us ideal-state mending, J-class gives us rapid biological healing, K-class gives us helical diagnostics ¡ª you know how you get healing when you go through the portal?¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Kes. ¡°No? Kind of?¡± ¡°Well, you do, of a sort, at the destination,¡± said Nitta. ¡°We think it¡¯s because the Grand Spell is set up to make for even matches, or something like them, and it wouldn¡¯t be an even match if someone stumbled through the portal and died on the ground. But the portals themselves don¡¯t heal, they just have predictive power and leeway to set a broken, injured person down in a time, place, and world where they get the healing they need.¡± ¡°Even if they¡¯re badly injured?¡± asked Kes. ¡°On death¡¯s door?¡± Nitta nodded. ¡°And since we can see the moment they come in, we can see what healing they get, and sometimes, we can learn those techniques or borrow that equipment. Which is why we end up with a lot of healing, enough that we have solutions pretty much no matter what rulesets we¡¯re constrained by. Technology is the best though.¡± ¡°Until it¡¯s not,¡± said Cark. He pushed his plate forward. ¡°Could you bring someone back to life?¡± asked Kes. They looked at each other for a moment, having a conversation without words. ¡°Technically,¡± Nitta began, then frowned. ¡°It¡¯s complicated.¡± ¡°It depends on how dead they are,¡± said Cark. ¡°It depends on whether they have a soul or not, and which kind of soul they have. This world has high-grade H-class thaumics, but the people don¡¯t have a soul, which means there are all kinds of H-class magic that won¡¯t work on them.¡± ¡°We could probably bring back someone recently dead,¡± said Nitta. ¡°Especially if the body was relatively intact. If someone died of a heart attack and then was left unmolested for six hours? I could do that. But I¡¯m not a doctor.¡± ¡°You¡¯re the closest thing we have to a doctor,¡± said Cark. ¡°Which is scary.¡± ¡°Wait,¡± said Kes, turning to Cark. ¡°Is this what you meant about nonlethality? The person would have died, but made it through the portal in time?¡± ¡°Sometimes, yes,¡± said Cark. ¡°But most of the time, it¡¯s enough for the thresholders to beat the other person. Killing isn¡¯t the point, even if they¡¯re comfortable with killing. Your own record is abnormally lethal.¡± Kes wanted to object that it was Perry¡¯s record, but he kept his mouth shut. ¡°Do the others not want to stop their opponents from going on?¡± ¡°Some do, some don¡¯t,¡± said Cark. ¡°If you think about your opponents, how many would have made that a priority?¡± Kes thought on that. He wasn¡¯t sure. The answer might conceivably be ¡®none¡¯, which was a little shocking to think about. None of his opponents to date seemed like they would have minded if he died, but if he¡¯d been beaten to within an inch of his life, and the portal had opened, how many would have stopped him from going through? He didn¡¯t know. Possibly none. Possibly it would depend on what they had going on at the time. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± he finally answered. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t have been surprised if you had answered ¡®most¡¯,¡± said Cark. ¡°We¡¯re still going through the logs on you, beyond what we were able to gather from Esperide or the Great Arc. Thresholders often have different experiences.¡± ¡°The worlds we visit are tailored to us,¡± said Kes. ¡°Or ¡­ the conflicts, anyway.¡± ¡°Seems to be the case,¡± said Cark. ¡°It¡¯s very difficult to say how it works and what it¡¯s doing though. The Grand Spell is a mystery at the best of times. And ¡­ well, there¡¯s Fenilor.¡± ¡°Who hasn¡¯t budged for five hundred years,¡± said Kes. He paused. ¡°Five hundred years, is that right?¡± ¡°It is,¡± said Cark. ¡°We haven¡¯t been able to locate him in the deep past, because even a year stretches our abilities, even here. We¡¯re not sure where or when he got the ability to cloak himself, or how that cloak works.¡± ¡°The timeline doesn¡¯t match up,¡± said Kes. ¡°The revolution isn¡¯t that old. If you said he¡¯d been here for eighty years, or even ninety, I might think that he was planning and plotting, but what was he doing that whole time? Just living his life and occasionally getting attacked by an enemy thresholder?¡± ¡°That¡¯s what we¡¯re sending Perry to find out,¡± said Cark. ¡°Hopefully he doesn¡¯t get his head chopped off.¡± ¡°And we¡¯ll be blind when he¡¯s in there,¡± said Nitta. She bit her lip and looked down at the empty place in front of Kes. ¡°Do you ¡­ eat?¡± ¡°Yeah, I eat,¡± said Kes with some relief. ¡°Hella should have gotten you something,¡± said Nitta. ¡°What do you eat?¡± ¡°Meat,¡± said Kes. ¡°Any kind of meat you have.¡± He hesitated for a second. ¡°Raw, or close to raw.¡± Somewhere in his stomach were human remains. He tried not to think about that and failed. It almost killed his appetite. If he was thinking of himself as divorced from Perry, a separate and new person, then that was his first time killing. Some of it had been intentional as he¡¯d escaped, not simply the mindless ravaging of a beast. Nitta popped up from her seat and went to one of the cabinets, which was apparently a refrigerator of some kind or another, though he suspected that it was something more complicated given that she pulled out a plate with a two pound steak on it. It was completely raw, and she set it on the table in front of him, then watched him with interest. He felt self-conscious as he dug in, but he¡¯d been feeling the werewolf¡¯s hunger, and he soon forgot they were there watching him. At least he wasn¡¯t eating a plate of boiled eggs. When he finished, he washed up at the small sink, feeling much better. It would take some getting used to. Perry had always felt a craving for meat, but hadn¡¯t had too much chance to indulge it. For Kes, it would be different, and he fully intended to fill the Wolf Vessel, if he now had one of those. ¡°Not that I haven¡¯t enjoyed the company after a traumatic day,¡± said Kes as he wiped his face on a cloth. They didn¡¯t seem fazed by his diet, which he was thankful for, but he supposed with their ability to watch the past, they had seen him do far worse. Possibly they had seen him eating guards several hours prior. ¡°But I¡¯d like to help somehow, if I can.¡± ¡°Let¡¯s get you set up with some toys,¡± said Nitta. ¡°Then we¡¯ll get you familiarized with the scan tools. It¡¯s time for you to start watching and seeing if you have any insights. Perry is going toward one of the targets, and he¡¯s going to be invisible soon, but you can check in on Nima or Third Fervor. We¡¯re trying to keep an eye on them at all times while the prognostics do their work.¡± Kes nodded slowly. He was being given the keys to the kingdom, and it was only a question of whether they¡¯d let him entangle himself back in the conflict instead of sitting on the sidelines. Chapter 127 - Bedrock Kes sat at a desk that had been provided to him. The computer screen held an interface that was remarkably close to Windows 10. When Nitta had presented him with it, he had boggled at it, because there was no way that it should have been even remotely the same. In fact, when he¡¯d first come to Earth 2, it had taken him a long time to get used to the different operating system Richter used on her machines, open source software that was apparently extremely common there. She had eventually had him describe what he was used to, then used AI tools to mock something up for him, which was overlaid on top of the OS. Perry had always seen the work she¡¯d done as a labor of love, particularly the night she¡¯d spent making him a QWERTY keyboard. (Because all the technology words had been coined long after the point of divergence, they¡¯d had to spend a night mapping concepts against each other, and Marchand had been programmed to use Perry¡¯s words.) When he¡¯d asked Nitta about the system, the answer was obvious in retrospect: they hadn¡¯t used any fancy technopathic magic to extrapolate the interface and keyboard he was used to. Instead, they had simply used data stored on the version of Marchand they had quietly copied from the Natrix. When he looked closely, he could tell that it wasn¡¯t quite what he remembered from Earth, because there were some limits to what Richter had been willing to get the AIs to do for him. And of course all that was just something laid on top of a system that was doing some very different things, even if most of the functionality as experienced by the end user converged on the same features. The scanning program hooked into his triple bootleg Windows 10 and launched as a program from the desktop, one of several. Nitta had complained about interoperability, but everything seemed incredibly smooth to Kes, and while he was unfamiliar with the programs, it was nice to be sitting down at a computer again. He¡¯d used one on the Natrix, as Perry, but that was a strange terminal with an unfamiliar keyboard, and more often than not he¡¯d defaulted to just wearing the helmet and having Marchand project a virtual keyboard for him. ¡°It¡¯s my baby,¡± said Nitta. She looked much different than she had before, apparently having put on another few ¡®skins¡¯. Her head was more proportional to her body, and she was looking to be a more healthy weight, but her skin was striped black and white, which extended into her hair. Perry couldn¡¯t help but think of the Bride of Frankenstein. ¡°Magic is always difficult to deal with at the best of times, and getting magic to work with computers is ¡­ I don¡¯t want to say it''s impossible, because clearly it works, but translating inputs and outputs, and making it all work with the supporting physics sometimes crapping out, is downright awful.¡± ¡°But you do get it to work,¡± said Kes. ¡°That¡¯s wildly impressive.¡± Nitta grinned at him. ¡°It is, but I¡¯ve had help. I¡¯ve been to more than a hundred worlds, and picked up practices and technologies along the way. When Cark and I were on our own, there was a time we hit three magitech worlds in a row, and I built up a pretty substantial toolkit.¡± She pointed to the front of the bridge, or the cockpit, or whatever they called it. ¡°See those gauges? That¡¯s one of the first things that anyone should build, if they travel the multiverse. Cark and I had one, and Hella had her own, though it was a lot different. We merged and renovated.¡± ¡°It measures physics?¡± asked Kes. ¡°No,¡± said Nitta with a laugh. ¡°What you do is find a minimum viable method of moving a marble that only works under certain assumptions about the world. If the marble goes up, the underlying mechanism is working, and if it stays down, then that¡¯s because that particular part of physics is broken.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Kes. ¡°I would have thought it was more complicated than that.¡± ¡°You want it as simple as possible so you can make sure it works,¡± said Nitta. ¡°That said, individual gauges are complicated, because there are many classes of magic that don¡¯t just spring back to life when the physics change, and some that have very little mechanistic input at all. We try though.¡± ¡°Sometimes the magic goes away and stays away?¡± asked Kes. ¡°You go to another world, and not only do your wands not work, but they¡¯ll never work again?¡± Nitta nodded. ¡°It¡¯s a hard life. It feels like with every new world we¡¯re in a panic.¡± ¡°I know that feeling,¡± said Kes. ¡°Just ¡­ maybe not quite as bad.¡± ¡°At least we don¡¯t have people trying to kill us,¡± said Nitta. ¡°Not as the default, anyway.¡± They took some time to go over the basic functions of the interface. There was a system that worked a little bit like bookmarking that already had people of interest tagged: Dirk, Nima, Third Fervor, Perry, Mette, and Kes himself. The clones had apparently caused some errors early on, but Nitta had resolved them. Kes was cleared to watch. ~~~~ Nima had been put in jail, but it was a nice one. It was meant for people whom the king did not trust but didn¡¯t want to offend too much. It had once been used for visiting merchants and dignitaries, but their numbers had waned as the revolution swept its way through the world. From time to time, diplomats visited, but the special jail with fine furnishings was too much of an insult to pay them, at least for King Edmunt. He hadn¡¯t liked them, of course, and the talks never went all that well, but putting them in a jail, even a nice one, would have been a step too far, at least while he was on the back foot. There were plush pillows and a bookshelf with a selection of the king¡¯s favorite books, all of which had been picked by an assistant and assuredly never read by the king himself. Whoever had stocked the place had made sure there were plenty of plants, most of them by the windows, and whoever had been in charge of security had made sure that there wasn¡¯t anything all that sharp. There were bars on the windows, but they were subtle and tasteful, worked into the design and mistakeable for a fanciful pattern. Nima was barefoot, in a white dress, not equipped for combat in the slightest. Her fingers were at the pendant she wore. She had said that it had its own thoughts and senses, almost like Marchand, but for the first time, Kes was able to listen in. ¡°I don¡¯t like this world,¡± said Nima. The display subtitled it, which was good, because the audio wavered softly, as though spoken through a stream of water. Kes didn¡¯t know whether that was what it naturally sounded like or whether that was a consequence of the Farfinder¡¯s methods of picking through the magic from an extreme distance. ¡°Will you complain in every world we go to?¡± asked a woman¡¯s voice. It was unnaturally deep, like a woman unsuccessfully trying to mimic a man in order to be taken more seriously. Kes thought of Elizabeth Holmes, a name that hadn¡¯t gone through his head since ¡ª well, since he¡¯d come out of the cloning vat, which was where his ¡®true¡¯ memories started. ¡°I will complain, if they keep being like this,¡± said Nima. ¡°Perry painted a picture of the conflicts ahead. We wouldn¡¯t get sent to a stable world, and certainly not stable in a way I would like.¡± ¡°This world will be stable when we leave,¡± said the pendant. ¡°The king is dead, and the queen will follow. The last gasp of monarchy will lead to a deathly silence.¡± ¡°Not if we stop it,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯ll protect you, no matter what,¡± said the pendant. ¡°But this is foolishness. Even if we ally with Third Fervor and she wins, monarchy is simply doomed. Thirlwell could become an economic and technological powerhouse, and it would still be unable to enforce its politics on the world. It could start a war, and even if that war were won, it wouldn¡¯t be able to grind anyone down under its bootheel.¡± ¡°I want to survive,¡± said Nima. She let go of the pendant, and Kes wondered whether that was the end of the conversation. ¡°I want to get out of here. I don¡¯t care.¡± Her lips didn¡¯t move. ¡°Sometimes we must fight for causes we don¡¯t believe in,¡± said the pendant. Nima frowned and got up from where she¡¯d been sitting, smoothing out her skirt. ¡°Before this all happened, I never had to. I did my work and there was no cause for fighting anyone. We had a nice, ordered society.¡± ¡°You were being prostituted to a man with control over your very destiny,¡± said the pendant. ¡°I don¡¯t want to talk about that again,¡± said Nima. She went to the bookshelf and scanned the titles there. ¡°Your perspective isn¡¯t wanted. I¡¯ll take you off if you¡¯re going to try to fight me.¡± ¡°That would be foolish,¡± said the pendant. ¡°You are many things, but foolish is not one of them.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to read a book,¡± said Nima. ¡°We can talk later.¡± ¡°When we do, it will be about your long term goals,¡± said the pendant. ¡°I will help you as much as I can, but to help I need to have some understanding of what you want to achieve.¡± ¡°What I want to achieve is reading a book,¡± said Nima. She wasn¡¯t using her mouth to speak, but her lips were still tight. When she sank down into her chair and opened the book, it was with a certain amount of churlish motion. ~~~~ ¡°They argue a lot,¡± said Nitta, who was looking over Kes¡¯ shoulder with a hand on his chair. ¡°Always about the same things. It must get exhausting.¡± She nodded to herself. ¡°It¡¯s good armor though. I guess you have experience with the claws.¡± ¡°I do,¡± said Kes. He was completely healed, back to as good as he¡¯d been right when he¡¯d come out of that machine on what was essentially the first day of his life. ¡°Is there a point?¡± ¡°Livvi ¡ª that¡¯s her name ¡ª is the bossy sort of helpful,¡± said Nitta. She shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m not sure there¡¯s more to it than that. Some powers come with a drawback, you know that better than most.¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Kes. He clucked his tongue. ¡°The predictive stuff, what the portals do, that¡¯s what guarantees a power to the thresholder?¡± ¡°We unfortunately have no idea,¡± said Nitta. ¡°You¡¯re worried about the Farfinder coming in and wrecking things for Perry?¡± ¡°Should I be?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Yes,¡± said Nitta. ¡°It¡¯s what we¡¯re worried about. We live in one of two possible realities. In the first reality, the prediction from the Grand Spell is essentially all-knowing and has predicted the arrival of the Farfinder. It knows we¡¯re here and in whatever it¡¯s attempting to accomplish, it has accounted for not just us, but for all the predictive magic we have, along with Fenilor¡¯s shielding. In the other reality, it did all that careful prediction and then we came in like the divine wind, upsetting everything.¡± ¡°And if it¡¯s the latter, then you can probably just kill us all on your own,¡± said Kes. ¡°Don¡¯t overestimate us,¡± said Nitta. ¡°We¡¯re about survival more than offense. This isn¡¯t a warship. We¡¯re not a military. None of us had any active service beside Hella.¡± ¡°You might have to kill Fenilor, if Perry falls and the door opens,¡± said Kes. ¡°You can¡¯t let Fenilor go through, because if I understand it right, that¡¯s when the ¡®punch¡¯ happens.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Nitta. ¡°And it¡¯s cowardly, I think we all agree with that, hoping that Perry wins, helping where we can, trying not to have a pitched battle where Fenilor takes apart this ship. All that caution might be totally irrelevant, and we¡¯re trying to get Perry on our side while helping him only minimally.¡± ¡°When you know you¡¯re on a bad path, you can stop and turn around,¡± said Kes. ¡°We¡¯re re-evaluating once Perry reports back on whatever Fenilor is covering up from scrying,¡± said Nitta. ¡°Check on him?¡± Kes went to the interface and tried to look at what Perry was up to, and found that there was nothing there. When the video failed to materialize, Kes selected Mette, and found that there was no video feed for her either. ¡°They¡¯re at the site then,¡± said Nitta. She let out a breath. ¡°I¡¯m going to set up an alert for when we have them again.¡± ¡°If we do,¡± said Kes. ¡°If we do,¡± nodded Nitta. He had been hoping for reassurance, and she hadn¡¯t offered it. ~~~~ From above, it was an abandoned mining village, no more than a half dozen large buildings and some equipment around it. The information from the Farfinder had indicated that the blocked area was a mile wide, and Perry had aimed right for the center, hoping that he wouldn¡¯t have to go to the air and search for a building or site on the fringes. Thankfully the buildings were right at the center of the circle, and given that it was a mining village, there was only one conclusion: whatever Fenilor had been doing here, it had been underground. The place must have been abandoned a long time ago, because it was grown over with plants. If the island Mette had wolfed out on had been left behind two decades ago, then the mining village must have dated to two centuries ago, if not more. They were far to the north, and there was half a foot of snow on the ground, which had worked its way into most of the buildings, whose roofs hadn¡¯t stood up to all that time without maintenance. The thick bricks had meant the walls had stood up much better. Perry let Mette out, and she immediately went back into the shelfspace to grab a thick coat they had taken from the library. ¡°What if the mine has collapsed?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Then we move on to the next one,¡± said Perry. ¡°And the plan for traps is just ¡­ run into them face first?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Marchand will scan ahead for us,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can do the sonar thing.¡± Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. ¡°Sonar isn¡¯t going to pick up magic,¡± said Mette. ¡°That¡¯s not necessarily true, ma¡¯am,¡± said Marchand. ¡°From the data the Farfinder has given us, I have been able to tune my sensors to detect a fair number of different thaumic classes.¡± Mette didn¡¯t seem terribly convinced. ¡°We go slow,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fenilor is using security through obscurity, this place is extremely far away from anything or anyone. It was important enough for him to cloak it, which means that it¡¯s important enough for him to lock it up tight or trap it. Maybe this is a place he visits sometimes, or maybe the protection is something he built in before going off to bigger and better things, but ¡­ I don¡¯t know, we need to understand him, and currently we don¡¯t.¡± Mette let out a breath that became visible in the cold air. ¡°Slow,¡± she said. ¡°I wish I had tools.¡± ¡°Hopefully I have the only tool we need,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re too kind, sir,¡± said Marchand. They went down into the mine, which Marchand was mapping ahead of them. The only light came from the suit, shining out as brightly as it could, illuminating wooden supports that thankfully didn¡¯t seem to have rotted much with time. There was dust everywhere, and no tracks through it, but that didn¡¯t mean much given that Fenilor could fly. ¡°Nothing so far?¡± asked Mette. ¡°You know, I will stop you before you trigger a tripwire,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right,¡± said Mette. She bit her lip. She was following behind Perry while trying to crane her neck around to see what was ahead, and if there had been a tripwire, he would have gotten the brunt of whatever it was wired to. ¡°There¡¯s a shaft that goes straight down,¡± said Perry. ¡°Up ahead. I would guess that¡¯s what we¡¯re aiming for, but the mine is larger than I thought it would be.¡± ¡°People weren¡¯t meant to live underground,¡± said Mette. ¡°The miners didn¡¯t actually live underground,¡± said Perry. ¡°Those structures we passed were dorms, they would come up out of the mines after a shift to wash off and sleep there. A mine is a dangerous place, even with lanterns or technology or whatever else. There¡¯s too much to worry about, whether it¡¯s the stability of the tunnels or the quality of the air.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not helping me feel better,¡± said Mette. ¡°If there¡¯s a problem that¡¯s not some trap set for us, I can protect you,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re a werewolf now, and I¡¯d just need to transform you to heal you back from injury. My moonlight blasts aren¡¯t anything to write home about as an offensive weapon, not even remotely on par with the gun, but I can change you. And there¡¯s the shelfspace.¡± ¡°If we have a bunch of rocks fall on us, and we go into the shelfspace, we¡¯re basically just done, right?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I watched the footage of you slithering your way through the tunnels of Esperide with bugs crawling over you, and I kept thinking that if you got stuck, you would have been toast.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°And now that¡¯s not helping me feel better. But what are we going to do, leave because there¡¯s a hole in the ground?¡± ¡°We could go to the other sites,¡± said Mette. ¡°We could see whether those are also holes in the ground.¡± ¡°We could,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re very far apart though, and we¡¯d have to go up to get out of the atmosphere, so it would take us a pretty damned long time.¡± He stopped. ¡°I am now thinking that this is a very good place to just drop several gigatonnes of rock on someone. It would kill or incapacitate most thresholders who don¡¯t have a portal, teleportation, or some ability to move rock. Or something that could punch through rock without killing them, I guess.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Mette. Perry had not stopped moving that entire time. He thought if he did stop moving, he would end up going back the way he came, abandoning this endeavor entirely. It was important though. Fenilor was a blind spot, literally and figuratively, and letting him move in the background seemed like it would be very bad. Depending on what the matchup actually was, a portal could open up for him simply from allies doing fights without him. So far as the Farfinder knew, that was a loss condition. They came to an elevator shaft, which was for ¡®elevators¡¯ in the sense that some kind of machine system had changed the elevation of things. If there had been rope, it had rotted away, and there was no sign of the elevator itself, only the shaft. Without the sword, Perry would have been left to try some very dangerous climbing, but with it, and Mette stored in the shelf, he descended slowly, keeping a careful eye on the map that Marchand was continuing to generate. When Perry reached the bottom, he let Mette back out. She seemed grateful not to be stuck in there, but not so grateful to be underground. She looked up the shaft and swore. ¡°It¡¯s deep,¡± she said. ¡°Suspiciously deep,¡± said Perry. He looked up the shaft. ¡°This is solid rock here. Solid rock is work to dig through. Lanterns don¡¯t work well on rock, even if they work a little better than on metal. When you¡¯re making a mine, there¡¯s a lot of guesswork involved. You look for surface deposits, you get some geological knowledge, you follow veins, you dig exploratory shafts ¡­ you don¡¯t do this, not out in the middle of nowhere. You don¡¯t go straight down without branching off in different directions. Not if you¡¯re interested in mining ¡­ what would this mine have been mining for?¡± ¡°Neither of us know the world well enough to say,¡± said Mette. ¡°There were branches,¡± said Perry. ¡°But they were at the upper level. From the map March is making, this level goes straight.¡± The suit was shining its light, and it pointed forward, to where the hallway carved from stone opened up into a large cavity whose extent was still unknown. ¡°And we¡¯re below the water table here. Mines have a dewatering process for that, but abandoned mines don¡¯t, and they all flood sooner or later.¡± ¡°How do you know all this?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I¡¯m an educated guy,¡± said Perry. ¡°I went to college for ¡­ maybe not this kind of thing, but something like it.¡± ¡°So you¡¯re suggesting that this mine might be the hideout of a nefarious so and so?¡± asked Mette. ¡°We already knew that.¡± ¡°Either there¡¯s a lot of magic at work here, or it¡¯s still in active use,¡± said Perry. ¡°And he didn¡¯t just take over an abandoned mine, he must have had most of this custom-built for him. This shaft isn¡¯t something he dug with a powerful tool. It¡¯s something that laborers spent an awful lot of time on.¡± He stepped forward, keeping an eye on the map, which Marchand was updating with every step, and sometimes without them. Mette followed behind. The rocks were bone dry, in spite of what he¡¯d said about the water table, which he was pretty sure was true. In fact, some of the dust on the hewn stone served as a sign that no one had been here in a very long time, which was odd, because the lack of water meant at least some level of upkeep. The chamber turned out to be a dome, and the lights of the suit fell upon an entire underground living area. There was a thin layer of dust on all of it, and some things had fallen apart, but there was a table with some chairs, a desk that was falling apart, and a bookshelf that looked like it had been looted. There was a lantern in the center of the room, of a design that Perry had never seen before, with a cone that projected light upward, but it was of course not functional. There was no kitchen or bathroom, just this solitary chamber. ¡°So ¡­ no traps,¡± said Mette. ¡°Just dusty refuse.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry with a frown. ¡°Why protect it like this though?¡± ¡°Why a dome?¡± asked Mette. Perry looked up and considered that. He hadn¡¯t given it much thought, but it was weird. So much of the rest of the mine ¡ª or fake mine ¡ª had been filled with utilitarian tunnels, the kind that you would expect from a real mining operation. A dome was structurally stable, yes, but removing all that material and then getting it up the elevator would have been a lot of work for very little benefit. ¡°I don¡¯t like it here,¡± said Perry. ¡°Come on, there are books,¡± said Mette. She moved over to the bookshelf, then looked back at him, because he was her light source. They each took a book. They were high quality, bound in leather or something equally thick and sturdy, and whatever had been used to treat the pages, they were still intact. ¡°I was hoping for journals,¡± said Mette. ¡°These are technical documents.¡± ¡°This one is sociology,¡± said Perry. They put the books back and tried different ones, picking books that had interesting titles. It was Mette who found something that seemed to be a notebook rather than a reference or educational title, but when she opened it, it was filled with writing in a language she didn¡¯t speak. She reluctantly handed it to Perry. The letters were swooping and overlapping each other, with far too many dots. It was harder to read intent from the page, and much different from hearing another language spoken aloud. In fact, Perry wasn¡¯t even reading letters on a page, he was reading letters presented from the interface of the helmet, which had been captured by the exterior cameras. Still, Perry had some experience by this point, particularly with translating texts recorded from the library in Moon Gate, and the words began to feel like English. ¡°It¡¯s a collection of notes,¡± said Perry as he quickly read through them. ¡°It¡¯s going to be a pain to get a translation up and running for Marchand.¡± They had a system down though, which mostly consisted of Marchand doing rapid mappings and asking for clarification on unknown symbols or getting corrections. It had been one of the downtime projects during the long two years on Esperide, though it hadn¡¯t borne fruit ¡ª no surprise given that most techniques were supposed to take years on end to learn. ¡°Notes for what?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Science, mostly,¡± said Perry as he flipped through the pages. ¡°I¡¯m seeing a few diagrams, and a lot of math. And ¡­ notes on effluence. Lanterns. Domes, but ¡­¡± Perry read closer. It is clear, now, that it is not enough to raise production. The lanterns were built better and larger, with great strides made in creating more with less, but the common man has seen far less of the benefit than I had hoped. I had thought that prosperity would lift everyone up, but the bitter lesson is that power concentrates unless concrete steps are taken to prevent that from happening. The effluence had seemed a small price to pay when I¡¯d thought that the lanterns would bring an end to poverty. Instead, they have made poverty worse, at least in many respects. Failure. The word was underlined twice. ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to have to read this in full, but ¡­ it seems like Fenilor was responsible for the lanterns.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°He was trying to make the world better,¡± said Perry. ¡°The culture wasn¡¯t his first attempt at remaking the world, it was the second. Or it was at least the second. If the Farfinder is right and he¡¯s been here for five hundred years or something insane like that, then I mean, holy shit, he must have been working this world that whole time. This is all his fault.¡± Mette stared at him. ¡°You¡¯re jumping to conclusions,¡± she said. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry with a nod. It was always a little unnatural to nod in full armor with the helmet on, even as close of a fit as it was. ¡°For sure. There¡¯s a whole book to read through. I¡¯m pretty sure this is partial, and if it was left here, it can¡¯t have been that important to him.¡± He flipped to the start, then to the end, looking for dates. There were none. It would have to be gleaned from context, except what context could there be when Fenilor had seemingly spent a lot of time sequestered down in this room, away from civilization? ¡°We¡¯ll keep looking,¡± said Mette with a sigh. ¡°What were we hoping to find here?¡± ¡°A cache of magical weapons,¡± said Perry. ¡°A detailed plan. I mean, this is good, it¡¯s proof that he really has been trying to reshape the world for a long time, but,¡± Perry looked around. ¡°No signs of a battle. No scorch marks, no cuts in the wall, nothing. I was thinking we would find ¡­ I don¡¯t know. He¡¯s been killing baby thresholders. Lots of them.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Mette. ¡°Like me.¡± ¡°Yeah, like you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or like Nima.¡± Mette looked around. ¡°So he came out here to do ¡­ nothing? To wait? Without going to the bathroom?¡± ¡°Skipping the bathroom is easy,¡± said Perry. ¡°Honestly, I¡¯m surprised that he¡¯d have a bed at all.¡± He chewed the inside of his cheek. ¡°We take the books, put them inside the shelfspace, then go on to the next one, I guess. But I¡¯m not confident that we¡¯d find anything there. I thought that this place was going to be a killing field for other thresholders, but somewhere he could guarantee he¡¯d get a battle that suited him and wouldn¡¯t screw up things in the rest of the world, but ¡­ where are the bodies?¡± ¡°Sir, I believe I might have an answer to that,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve been expanding the map as you¡¯ve spoken, adjusting it based on sonic profiles. It appears there is a passage below the central lantern.¡± ¡°Secret passage,¡± said Perry. ¡°Cool.¡± The unlit lantern in the center of the room was pushed to the side, and once it was, Perry could see what Marchand had been talking about. There was a stone with what was now obviously a recess that acted as a handle, and it was only with the suit¡¯s full strength that he was able to lift it up and move it to the side. It was a secret passage within a secret base, but it wasn¡¯t all that well-hidden in retrospect. ¡°Ugh,¡± said Mette, bringing a hand to her nose. ¡°Smell.¡± ¡°Smell?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Death,¡± said Mette. There was no ladder, and Perry descended down with sword in hand, leaving Mette standing up there. The armor was airtight, but he trusted Mette¡¯s nose. The descent took almost no time at all ¡ª it was only ten feet, if that. To one side was a thick black slab with the same writing on it as the notebook, though less able to be parsed through Perry¡¯s translation. It was made of a strange material that looked pliable to the touch and slightly desiccated, but it was difficult to tell. He would take it with him, if it could be removed. To the other side, there was a small chamber filled with bodies. Perry went in and stared at them. They had been laid out in rows, more than twenty of them, all mummified and long, long dead. In most cases the cause of death was obvious, a hole through their midsection or head. The skin was black or dark brown, pulled back around the mouth to show teeth, and the hair was preserved. Beneath each of the bodies, there was a black puddle of what looked like tar, which must have been the liquids of their bodies that leaked out after death. The bodies were dressed differently from each other, with a range of styles and materials. Some were leather, others cloth, and a few had plastic clothes or something like it, colors still vibrant in comparison to everything else. They were all notably missing weapons. Perry peered down at the bodies, and used a toe to move them. There were no tools, no implements, no significant pendants or amulets that throbbed with magic. ¡°You left me in the dark here,¡± Mette called down. ¡°Anything down there?¡± ¡°Like you said,¡± replied Perry. ¡°Death.¡± He spent some time looking for something significant on them, something that would give a clue to why Fenilor had been able to beat them. The elf had never lost a fight, had killed twenty people ¡ª at least twenty people ¡ª in what seemed like they should have been fair fights. Perry grabbed the tablet and rose up the shaft. ¡°Don¡¯t leave me in the dark again,¡± said Mette. ¡°Let me get a light out from the shelf.¡± She looked at the tablet. ¡°What is that?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Given its position, I think maybe it¡¯s the thing blocking a view of this place from the Farfinder. Or maybe it¡¯s what¡¯s keeping this place dry. Or ¡­ both, possibly.¡± ¡°He took everything else of value from here when he left,¡± said Mette. Perry nodded. ¡°There¡¯s no advantage for us here. Nothing that would help against him, if that¡¯s needed.¡± He sighed. ¡°We need to decode this notebook and try to stitch together something. He¡¯s been at this a long time. It seems like he¡¯s undefeated. If these people had powers, implements, he¡¯s taken them for his own.¡± ¡°The matchmaking fouled up?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or he fouled it up. Or he lucked out with a power that grows better over time, which for a long-lived elf would be ¡­ problematic.¡± He narrowed his eyes. ¡°If we take it as a given that he was responsible for the lanterns, that this whole world has been his playground for the last five hundred years or whatever, then I don¡¯t think he¡¯s going to give it all up. What do you do when you¡¯ve made a world into your image? You make a second world into your image.¡± He hefted the tablet. ¡°If we can confirm with the Farfinder that this blocks scrying, then at least we¡¯ve gained a tool.¡± ¡°Or magic,¡± said Mette. She peered over and tried to read the writing. ¡°There¡¯s something underlying this. Something that makes it work.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll figure it out,¡± said Perry. It was less than he had hoped for, but at least there hadn¡¯t been any traps. They gathered up the rest of the books and placed them into the shelf to be gone over later. There had only been the one notebook, but there were a few other writings from Fenilor, most of them technical in nature. It was possible there was a secret about the lanterns in there somewhere, but Perry was skeptical about that. The research institutes of the many kingdoms, or of the culture, should have uncovered more than Fenilor had ever known. But if the Farfinder crew were right, then magic had been leaking into the world over the course of centuries, changing the physical reality, and some of them wouldn¡¯t have any impact, but others ¡­ Perhaps an experiment run a hundred years ago would get a different result. They were leaving the chamber when a noise came from the corridor ahead of them. Marchand zoomed and corrected the image, and in the darkness, Fenilor¡¯s form was made clear. Chapter 128 - Gilded Fenilor moved forward, with only the light of Perry¡¯s armor to guide his way. Mette had moved to stand behind Perry, and Perry had his sword drawn, ready to defend if he should be attacked. Fenilor wasn¡¯t moving with a warrior¡¯s steps though. Instead, he was walking lightly, and though he had armor on, and the same long spear he¡¯d had when they met before, he didn¡¯t look at all like he was coming in for the kill. He had his mask/helmet off to show his face. ¡°Peregrin,¡± he said once he was thirty feet away. It felt close, but not close enough that he¡¯d be able to strike with a lunge. ¡°And Mette.¡± ¡°You know me?¡± asked Mette from behind Perry. The words left her mouth only slowly. ¡°I¡¯ve seen you,¡± said Fenilor. He looked around the dome. His eyes went to the desk, the bookshelf, the bed, and finally the unlit lantern with the chamber below it. ¡°Did I leave anything here?¡± ¡°Not much,¡± said Perry. Bodies, a notebook, sins of the past. ¡°And how did you find this place?¡± asked Fenilor with a raised eyebrow. He moved his left hand in front of him, using gestural controls or an interface only he could see. When he stopped, he looked at Mette. ¡°Ah, she¡¯s a thresholder too. I hadn¡¯t thought to check.¡± ¡°We¡¯re on the same side,¡± said Perry. ¡°But you didn¡¯t give me a way to contact you, and there¡¯s something that you need to know.¡± ¡°Oh?¡± asked Fenilor. He gave a gentle smile that Perry might have found disarming in other circumstances. ¡°I¡¯m all ears.¡± He wiggled his pointy ears, just a tiny bit. That was disarming. ¡°You¡¯ve been camped out here too long,¡± said Perry. ¡°The portals that move between worlds, they bring physics with them, and change the rules of the universe, at least locally.¡± ¡°You tell me this now, when you didn¡¯t tell me before,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t know before,¡± said Perry. ¡°And how did you come to know?¡± asked Fenilor. He leaned in slightly, not changing the thirty foot gap between them much, but still giving Perry a sense of unease. Perry stayed still and didn¡¯t answer. If the Farfinder was unknown to Fenilor, then it should remain unknown. He was waiting to see whether the question would pass, or whether Fenilor would move on to the topic of conversation that Perry had started. ¡°I understand the systems at work here perfectly well,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°But I bow to you as my superior, as you¡¯ve traveled to many more worlds than I have.¡± He gave Perry a small mock bow. ¡°Then you understand that magic is suffusing this planet?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Do you not understand how bad that is?¡± ¡°I have done my best to keep it all contained,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Much of what the thresholders bring through is like your armor, high technology. Sometimes technology rather than magic, or magic that can only be used with sufficient technology, or sometimes years of careful study, but in any case there¡¯s not much that might infect the wider world. Other times, their magic requires materials that cannot be found in this world. And much of it I incorporate into my own power.¡± ¡°The lanterns?¡± asked Perry. He glanced back at the large unlit one that must have once illuminated this chamber. ¡°Were they of this world, originally?¡± Fenilor frowned at him. ¡°What do you know?¡± ¡°I think you were responsible for them, centuries ago,¡± said Perry. ¡°I just don¡¯t know if they were something you found here and worked on, or whether they were something from another world.¡± Fenilor stared at Perry, as though trying to glean something from the surface of the helmet. ¡°You know my shame then.¡± There was no shame on his face, no crocodile tears, and his voice had stayed level. ¡°There was a notebook left here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I haven¡¯t had time to read it all. You tried to remake this world, maybe several times. You didn¡¯t get a working culture right off the bat.¡± ¡°Getting the world to this point has taken time and effort, yes,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I had ideas, and have tested them as I could, and have seen the results. Sometimes I have not liked the results.¡± ¡°But did you invent the lanterns?¡± asked Perry, pressing the point. ¡°Or are they a leak from somewhere else?¡± ¡°A man came carrying one,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°This was in the early years, when I had been here only two decades, and not developed this system.¡± He gestured to the dome, though it wasn¡¯t clear to Perry quite what he meant. ¡°I saw promise in it, and repeatability, and it was magic that wove itself into the world in a clean way. Perhaps if I hadn¡¯t introduced it, they would have discovered it themselves. A lantern can, after all, be made from any old materials, and the fuels are varied, many of them common.¡± ¡°But it was you who developed them,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was you who released them into this world, and you who are responsible for all the effluence that followed.¡± Fenilor gave a sad smile. ¡°You might not believe it, but the effluence came later. In the early years, when the lanterns were running, there were no issues with them.¡± ¡°What do you mean came later?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not clear to me what happened, and it wasn''t clear it had happened for more than two hundred years,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°The lanterns had a byproduct, yes, that was always known, but it was inert, only dangerous in a tightly closed space with a lantern that had been running for weeks. The problems happened when a thresholder arrived. He brought his own magic with him, and the harmless byproduct became the dangerous effluence you see now. Once it was clear that the effluence was having bad effects, I had deluded myself into believing that it was worth it.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not when people were being poisoned, especially the most vulnerable.¡± ¡°It wasn¡¯t the lanterns, nor the effluence,¡± said Fenilor, shaking his head. ¡°It was the culture. That was my revelation. The lanterns could have solved everything, if the culture had been right. The domes weren¡¯t necessary. It was only through a strong and vibrant culture that it could all be set right, a culture that valued the poor more than the rich, that focused itself on the goods of society rather than the riches of the individual, where people were censured for their transgressions and those transgressions involved those at the top.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a strong claim,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯m not here to debate what you¡¯ve done, or to criticize your methods or their outcomes. I¡¯m here to warn you. You¡¯re accumulating power, you¡¯ve taken from the thresholders who have been here, and you can¡¯t leave or this entire world will be wiped out.¡± ¡°Will it?¡± asked Fenilor. He cocked his head to the side. ¡°And how do you know that?¡± ¡°I have an artificial intelligence,¡± said Perry, tapping the side of his helmet. ¡°I¡¯ve seen the state of this world, and I have projections based on what I know of metaphysics. I don¡¯t know how much magic you would be trailing through a portal, but it would be too much.¡± Fenilor stared at Perry, then glanced at Mette, who was behind him. ¡°Then I will stay.¡± ¡°If you stay, more thresholders will come,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s how it¡¯s been all these years, hasn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°Then I will kill them,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°As it has been all these years.¡± ¡°Every one of them risks adverse impacts on the world,¡± said Perry. ¡°The Grand Spell wasn¡¯t meant for something like this, it¡¯s not safe.¡± He didn¡¯t know that for certain, but it was a good point of argumentation, especially after what he¡¯d just learned.. Something had clearly gone wrong on Markat. Fenilor smiled. ¡°Do you make these arguments to protect her?¡± His eyes went to Mette again before returning to Perry. Perry frowned at him. ¡°No,¡± he said. ¡°I make them because they are right and true.¡± ¡°If I cannot stay and cannot go, what is left for me?¡± asked Fenilor. He watched Perry, who gave no answer. ¡°Death, it seems?¡± ¡°We could find some other solution,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are other methods of traveling the many worlds. If you were to leave without a portal, aboard a ship of some kind, the Grand Spell wouldn¡¯t track you anymore.¡± He didn¡¯t know whether that was true either, or even possible. ¡°Or you would go through the portal and divest yourself of the magic you¡¯ve accumulated, clean yourself so that you¡¯re not dragging too much through.¡± ¡°This is a real threat, to you?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°I can see you have little skill with deception, and the lies you¡¯ve told me have been in service of protecting others.¡± He tapped the butt of his spear idly on the ground. ¡°I am an elf of science, by necessity rather than by inclination. I do not trust you, not in the slightest, but perhaps you can convince me with hard numbers.¡± ¡°Marchand?¡± asked Perry, tilting his head down slightly to speak only to the AI. ¡°Unfortunately, sir, I do not believe we have accurate and reliable numbers that he would understand,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Eggletina has been using higher order math in order to make projections about punch width, and her calculations make certain assumptions which, in my opinion, are grounded in pessimistic understandings of the fundamental nature of the multiverse, as well as a data I cannot verify.¡± Perry winced. ¡°Would have been nice to know five minutes ago, buddy.¡± ¡°The data dump they provided us with has taken some time to go through, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have been busy reading everything I can, and your faith in me has been appreciated, but higher dimensional physics whose base axioms I cannot verify were not high on my list of priorities.¡± ¡°Problem?¡± asked Fenilor, leaning forward slightly. ¡°You converse with your machine?¡± ¡°It will take time,¡± said Perry. ¡°There are mathematics you likely don¡¯t know, and some of the premises depend on readings that you would simply have to trust.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°A shame that¡¯s the case.¡± He spun his spear around and inspected the sharp tip. The red tassel whipped through the air. ¡°Do you know how many thresholders I¡¯ve fought?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°More than fifty.¡± ¡°Seventy-eight,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Usually they come to me every five years, singly, but I¡¯ve fought a few in pairs. I like to hear their stories before I end them. Sometimes I let them believe that there¡¯s a way out for them. My lack of trust has a clear and visible wellspring, where thresholders are concerned.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t mean to lie to you,¡± Perry lied. ¡°There are certain things I¡¯m not at liberty to say, but the danger to the world, that¡¯s all true. If you can tell when someone is lying, then you know that¡¯s the truth.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°This is the last cycle. I had thought it might bring tricks. But convincing me to end my own life, no, I think that will not work.¡± ¡°We can try other solutions,¡± said Perry. ¡°We have tools you might not have run into, most of the people you¡¯ve been fighting have been ¡ª I mean, weak, right, only a world or two under their belt?¡± ¡°People like Mette,¡± said Fenilor, again glancing to where she stood, wood, behind Perry. ¡°She came with me,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s not a part of this.¡± ¡°She is,¡± nodded Fenilor. ¡°She and Nima will need to die before the portal opens, and this time, I intend to go through it.¡± This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. ¡°Her and Nima?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°They are my foes,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I have talked with many thresholders, you understand, and I know well that I am on my own. It is inconceivable that she should be part of a team with me ¡ª and inconceivable that I would subject myself to the experimentation you suggest necessary.¡± ¡°I¡¯m saying there¡¯s another way,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve seen that you¡¯ve made mistakes here, how trying to create a society has gone wrong, is it that hard to believe you¡¯ve made another mistake? That you just didn¡¯t realize what was happening? That we¡¯re perched on the doorstep of calamity?¡± Fenilor shook his head. ¡°I have won. My victory in this world is complete. They govern themselves, and can respond to any threat. The last monarchy will fall, and their society will stay stable and verdant. The culture I helped to create works across every continent, in every former kingdom. It must be spread to other worlds, now that it¡¯s found purchase here and has been proven a success.¡± ¡°If a portal opens and you go through it, you might kill them all,¡± said Perry. ¡°Might?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°There¡¯s no longer the lie coming from your lips, because you¡¯ve found a new tactic, the ¡®mights¡¯ and the ¡®maybes¡¯.¡± ¡°Hear us out,¡± said Perry, holding up a hand. ¡°For the good of this world. You owe them that. But it¡¯s going to take time. I can print papers out for you, something you could read. If I have a way to contact you ¡ª¡± ¡°It¡¯s very tempting to go in for the kill now,¡± said Fenilor. He slipped his helmet back on, cloth morphing into metal. ¡°Do you feel the same?¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Yes,¡± he said. If Fenilor had a way of telling the truth, there was no point in lying, and no point in trying to dodge the truth, which would be obvious. ¡°I have never fought someone of your caliber,¡± said Fenilor. He got into a wide stance, spreading his feet and gripping the spear with two hands. He was still quite far away. ¡°How have you stayed winning all these years?¡± asked Perry. He had his sword ready to go. It gave a second source of light, its blue glow, but it wasn¡¯t strong enough to reach Fenilor. The most important thing would be protecting Mette. He had energy in his vessels that he could turn to moonlight and blast at her, activating wolf mode, and his own Wolf Vessel could be opened if it came to that. ¡°You¡¯ve figured it out already, haven¡¯t you?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°I would be disappointed if you hadn¡¯t.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not a clue.¡± That was a lie too, because he had an inkling. ¡°The Grand Spell mates us together,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°The matches are based on wins, even wins where possible, but sometimes unevenly, especially where it would be a fair match to have it uneven on wins. Do you know how many wins I have to my name?¡± ¡°One?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Alas, none,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I stepped through the portal, and in the first world I came to, I was soundly beaten, though not before I had wondrous powers attached to my immortal soul. But the power was a blessing beyond my comprehension at the time, and when I got to this world, I put everything I had into training.¡± ¡°And that¡¯s the secret?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I believe I am, for my win record of zero, the strongest thresholder across the entire multiverse,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I don¡¯t know if the Grand Spell doesn¡¯t count it as a win until you¡¯re through the gate, but I suspect so. The spell must make a choice between giving me an opponent that cannot possibly win, and giving me an opponent that has a much, much better win record than I have. So far, it has chosen the former.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not letting you hurt Mette,¡± said Perry. ¡°I am curious whether you think you can stop me,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Do you know that I get stronger with every win?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°Truth,¡± said Fenilor. His face was covered, but there was a smile in his voice. ¡°Excellent.¡± He shifted his left foot a half inch. ¡°But the men and women and others I¡¯ve been fighting have been giving me less and less power as the fights get easier and easier for me to win.¡± Perry wasn¡¯t going to be able to retreat into the shelfspace. Even if he was able to grab Mette and bring her in, that would leave them at Fenilor¡¯s mercy, and who knew what he would have done by the time they got out. Perry didn¡¯t actually know what would happen if the rock above them came down while the shelf was closed. He would be entombed, he was pretty sure. ¡°I am fairly sure that killing Mette will have no effect,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I have been in many matches, sometimes with allies, other times with multiple opponents. It¡¯s a quirk of the Grand Spell. If she¡¯s a designated ally, her death will change nothing. If she¡¯s Nima¡¯s ally, her death will change nothing. It¡¯s only if she were the sole opponent that the portal might open.¡± ¡°What about me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You are not here for me,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You are here for Third Fervor. Isn¡¯t that obvious?¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Not to me. There are five thresholders here, to my knowledge. Why wouldn¡¯t we all be a part of the same conflict?¡± ¡°That, I do not know,¡± said Fenilor. He moved the tip of his spear a foot to the side, and Perry didn¡¯t flinch. It was a test of reflexes, he was pretty sure. ¡°You know more than you let on. You came through together, somehow. I see the working of the Grand Spell much better than you. Our paths were not meant to cross.¡± Perry grit his teeth. He was hoping not to fight, and if they did fight, he was hoping to trounce Fenilor. There had been no true sign of how powerful the elf was. He¡¯d had five hundred years though, and a power that grew better with conquest, and he¡¯d either gathered implements from around the world or stolen things from those he¡¯d defeated. If the Grand Spell had great predictive powers, then what did that mean if they came to blows? That Perry was doomed to lose? That they would find themselves evenly matched? If there were two separate thresholder conflicts that were, in theory, divorced from each other, as Fenilor was suggesting, then Perry had thrown himself into the lower level conflict. What did that mean as far as prediction went? Weren¡¯t they linked now, the two conflicts, if this came to a head? He couldn¡¯t let Mette handle this herself, not even if she wanted to handle it herself. ¡°I need a way to contact you,¡± said Perry. ¡°A way that we can talk to each other.¡± ¡°Are we not about to fight?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°I¡¯ve been eager to test myself against you.¡± ¡°For after the fight then,¡± said Perry. ¡°After you limp away, or I outrun you, or ¡­ something like that.¡± Fenilor nodded. ¡°If we both live. Fair, I suppose. Then I propose you have a message delivered to the Cinnamon Station House in Deregia. They¡¯ll get it to me. You would of course use your own messenger, the better our paths would not cross. And for me to get a message to you ¡ª is there a place in particular you favor? A place with friends?¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Dirk Gibbons, in Berus, he¡¯ll be in the central city by now. Not a friend, but he can get a message to me.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Fenilor. He moved forward as though floating on a gust of wind, aiming his spear directly for Perry¡¯s heart. Perry had expected the attack, and parried it aside. As he did, the shoulder-mounted gun popped up from its housing and fired off three quick shots, hitting Fenilor in the stomach, chest, and face. Fenilor moved past Perry, rolling down onto the ground then springing back to his feet some distance away, holding his spear out in front of him. ¡°Shall I keep firing, sir?¡± asked Marchand. Fenilor¡¯s armor wasn¡¯t dented, it had snarled and unspooled, like a sweater that had been plucked at too many times. There was enough distance that only a long lunge would bring them together. Fenilor took a hand off his spear and raised it to his face, and when he pulled it away, Perry could see blood. ¡°Aim for the head,¡± said Perry. He¡¯d empty the whole damned clip if he had to. Fenilor cast his hand out to the side, the one with the spear in it. The first bullet hit him in the face as ghostly images showed up beyond the outstretched hand, all of them weapons in glorious variety, lined up one after another in neatly ordered rows. There was a jeweled halberd and a six-foot sword, a thick longbow with a wispy string, a mace with twenty spikes and a heavy leather strap ¡ª and as Fenilor was struck in the face by another bullet that jerked his head back and made another rip in the armor, the spear was replaced with the largest sword from the ghostly array, becoming real and solid in his hand as the others disappeared. The sword blocked the next bullet, then the one after that, twitching into their path. ¡°Stop,¡± said Perry. Fenilor thrust out his other hand, and a range of armors and clothes appeared, just as ghostly as the weapons had been. The range was more narrow, only a dozen of them, and Fenilor made his choice almost instantly, causing them to disappear. His other armor had disappeared, and he was clad in thick plate armor with far too many spikes, so many that he looked like a walking porcupine. His face and mouth were obscured by the spurs of metal. ¡°Many people have come here, from many worlds,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°They have carried many tools. These will do nicely against you, I think.¡± He took a step forward and sliced with the huge sword, which was held one-handed. Perry stepped back and raised his own sword to meet the attack, but his sword was knocked to the side like it wasn¡¯t even there, and Fenilor¡¯s blade cut halfway into Perry¡¯s side, straight through metal, lodging itself in one of Perry¡¯s kidneys. Fenilor left the sword stuck there and moved forward, spikes out, to wrap Perry in a hug. Perry thrust a hand out behind him and released a blast of moonlight at Mette, then wasted no time in cracking the Wolf Vessel wide open and transforming. The transformation came as Fenilor¡¯s spikes began to drive themselves into Perry, but they snapped off as the wolf took shape. The sword snapped too, crunched by the shifting of metal around and inside of Perry. It was sharp and strong, sturdy at its edge, but brittle as well. When the transformation was complete, Perry snapped forward, closing his jaws around Fenilor¡¯s spiked head. His mouth was immediately filled with blood and oil as the spikes drove into them, but the powerful muscles of his jaw held Fenilor¡¯s head tight. He used as much crushing force as he could manage, and felt something crack or snap, but it was only a few of his teeth. Fenilor bashed Perry¡¯s lupine form back with a mace that had come from the same ghostly place, and with the nut of the helmet not yet cracking, Perry backed away. Mette was beside him in all her furry glory. She had a dark blonde coat and a long tail that whipped back and forth with ferocious intensity. She was ready to pounce on Fenilor, and as he drew his mace back, she bounded toward him, leaping high in the air and looking, for a moment, more like a fox than a wolf. She landed on him, heedless of the spikes, which jammed into her paws. She scratched at him as he brought his mace down on her face, and he reached to the side, summoning new armor just as she tore a hole in the metal by wrenching an underlying panel free. She was bleeding freely, and blinded on one side where the fur around her eye was matted with blood. When Perry reached Fenilor, he bit down on an arm which was coated in a new armor, this one inky black and tasting of tar. Perry¡¯s teeth were caught in it, and he whimpered as he tried to pull away. Mette was stuck against the new armor¡¯s cuirass, paws enveloped in a sticky blackness that came from the armor and spread outward from it. Perry howled at her, trying to tell her something, but whatever it was she heard, she got off Fenilor and stepped onto the rock, where her paws stuck. Her eye was healing already, but she was dripping blood down onto the ground. Perry yanked at Fenilor¡¯s arm with his mouth. The black armor was leaking everywhere, the goop spreading out, moving up Perry¡¯s fur. Fenilor had abandoned the mace and moved onto a green dagger, which he whipped in Mette¡¯s direction without looking. It caught her in the shoulder, and she howled in pain, but he thrust his hand out again. The ghostly weapons appeared again, and he must have given it less thought, because they disappeared right away. He was holding what looked like a tooth, perhaps was a tooth, pulled from the mouth of some enormous beast and wrapped with leather to make a grip. Perry had been, this whole time, holding the oily black armor in his mouth, gnawing on it and trying to break it. The black stuff was coating his throat, its acrid tang blotting out the taste of blood and broken teeth. He found the right angle and felt the armor give way beneath his teeth, which let him crunch down on the flesh and bone inside. The bone Fenilor had been stabbing against him found a weak spot soon after, sliding into the junction of forelimb and shoulder. It was a long tooth, and broke inside of him almost at once, then broke again, small shards now separating in excruciating fashion. Whether this had been Fenilor¡¯s plan or not, Perry twisted and howled at the pain, releasing the arm. Fenilor was up as quick as lightning, finally back to his feet. He changed armor once more, into a tawny cloak that trailed behind him as he ran back down the hallway, bow in hand. Perry tried and failed to run after him. The shattered bone inside him was excruciating. It had gone down into the flesh of him, and every movement was cutting him from the inside, even as he healed back from it. He looked to the side and saw Mette, limp and unmoving. The black grease was no longer expanding, but it coated parts of her. When Perry looked back at Fenilor, he was at the end of the tunnel, only visible because of Perry¡¯s enhanced eyes. His face had gashes on it and his right arm was hanging limply at his side, bleeding heavily, but he was moving as a man with purpose moves. He looked back only once, and gave Perry a slight bow before flinging himself up the mine shaft and out of view. The wolf wanted to give chase, but the bones inside him were agonizing. His energy was being depleted fast, though the fusion reactor was running at full tilt. He moved on his sticky paws to Mette, and looked at the wound on her shoulder where the dagger had bit her. She smelled foul, and at the shoulder she was rotten, gangrenous even though it had been a few minutes or less since she¡¯d taken the wound. Perry bit her, hard, sinking his teeth into her at the site of the wound. It was all he could think to do against whatever chemical or magic was working its way through her. Every effort was tearing him apart inside, but her life was on the line. He spat a chunk of her shoulder onto the floor, then took another bite of her, and a third. The taste was getting better, and she was still healing, if slowly. When he went to take a fourth bite, she snapped at him, then began to rise to her feet. She collapsed back to the ground and transformed into a naked woman, looking small, laying in a puddle of the black liquid and her own blood. Her shoulder was mangled but not bleeding, not quite healed when the energy of the transformation had run out. Perry focused on the bones inside him. It was difficult with the wolf''s mind, but Marchand¡¯s mind was in there too somewhere, and together they were articulate enough to speak, even if they had only ever said a single word. The problems were all internal, but so were the vessels and meridians, and Perry began moving energy around, pushing it internally, making the metaphysical manifest. It was slow, steady work to get the first of the pieces out, and it was only out in the sense that it had been pushed to where metal and flesh met. He paid no mind to anything else, only the removal of the bone shards. Mette was laying limply, but he could smell her breath, and she was alive. When the last of the bone shards had been moved, Perry transformed back. It was easier than it had ever been before, and the pieces of bone could be felt against his ribs and stomach, sharp but not cutting. He went to Mette first, leaning down to look at her. Her face was pale and covered in a sheen of sweat. He hoped she would be alright. They needed to get out of the mine and back to the surface, away from where Fenilor knew them to be. Perry hoped that the elf would need time to recover too, that his power wasn¡¯t as strong as claimed. The mechawolf was one of the biggest tricks in the arsenal though, and Perry couldn¡¯t say for certain whether he had won that fight, even if it had ended in retreat. Chapter 129 - Not Nostalgia There was no sign of Fenilor as Perry made his way out of the mine. Fenilor had been bleeding as he¡¯d left, but the trail of blood had stopped after only a hundred feet. Maybe he¡¯d done another costume change that had healed him, or just kept his injuries in check. There had been so many suits of armor, so many outfits with their own magic or technology or something else in them, and so many blades too. Fenilor had surely learned from the fight, if his main power hadn¡¯t let him learn everything already. That was fine: Perry had learned something from the fight too. Unfortunately, most of what he¡¯d learned was that Fenilor was very strong and adaptable, and that it was unlikely that Perry¡¯s transformation by itself would be enough. Mette had been draped across a bed in the shelf, and on the ground beside her was the tablet they¡¯d taken and books they¡¯d collected. She hadn¡¯t woken, but Perry wasn¡¯t going to check on her again until he was well and truly clear. She had been so pale. Her shoulder was an ugly red and pink lump of flesh and her hair fell limply across her face. Perry had halfway expected to find a collapsed tunnel or other obstacle in his path out of the mine, but there was nothing. When Perry got to the mouth of the tunnel, he went up into the air in short order, leaving the snowy mine beneath him. With every mile he climbed it was less likely that Fenilor would attack. Perry wanted to get some distance from the tablet, which was clearly a complex piece of magic that he didn¡¯t understand, but it was in the shelf, and would have to stay there for the time being. He would stash it somewhere, slather it in nanites, then get some distance from it and hope that it couldn¡¯t phone home. He mostly hoped that Mette was okay. His thoughts kept going to her, circling her like water down a drain. Perry rose above the atmosphere, then slipped into the shelf to check on Mette. Her breathing was shallow, but she was alive. The weak barrier between the shelf and the vacuum meant that the air didn¡¯t slip out ¡ª the same thing that made the interior difficult to cleanse of the smell. ¡°Mette,¡± said Perry. He took off his gauntlet and touched his fingers to her face. She was sweaty and cold, so he brought a blanket over to wrap her in. The bed was one she¡¯d used not long ago when recovering from the hit that Third Fervor had given her. She¡¯d traded one injury for another. He debated changing her into a werewolf again, in the hopes that it would burn out the poison, but with a thumb against her neck he could feel how weak her pulse was. Her Wolf Vessel had never been properly filled with moonlight, and she hadn¡¯t eaten enough. Perry was drained, and he worried she was drained too. ¡°Mette,¡± he said again. ¡°Don¡¯t die on me.¡± He couldn¡¯t tell whether she was getting better or worse. The werewolf stuff was supposed to work against poison, wasn¡¯t it? He didn¡¯t really know. It felt like it should work. He placed a hand on her chest, pressing down until he could feel her ribs beneath her soft flesh, then tried to channel some of his waning power into healing. He wanted it to feel like a blast of power, like he was violently squeezing a tube of toothpaste and watching it coil out of him and into her, but it wasn¡¯t. The second spheres studied for years, and he had been working at it, trying his best to expand his powerset, but the progress had been achingly slow, and there were so many directions to work in. He was better with the firmament than he¡¯d ever been before, and Mette was good too, but there were too many hills to climb, and they all felt unfairly steep. He needed the Farfinder. He was certain they had some way to heal her. After making sure that Mette was turned on her side so she wouldn¡¯t choke on her vomit, Perry stepped back out into space. He looked down at the planet, then picked the same island they had been to before, with its abandoned buildings. Marchand navigated. After five minutes of flight, Perry asked for something that would take his mind off Mette, and Marchand had played some light music that was apparently an original composition. He circled the island twice, then stashed the tablet there. As soon as it was down, he flew away, up into the air, keeping his eyes on the island. He didn¡¯t know exactly what the tablet was, but it was possible it was many things, including, potentially, a tracker. He hated going in and out of the atmosphere, it took time, and that was something he didn¡¯t have. He checked on Mette again. She hadn¡¯t moved. He wasn¡¯t sure whether she looked better or worse, and pulled up an image to compare. It was about the same, he thought, though it was difficult to tell. Perry slipped back out of the shelf. It had been hours, at least, since the altercation in the mine. ¡°Perry to the Farfinder,¡± said Perry. His voice was tight. ¡°Come in Farfinder.¡± ¡°Sir, we have no method of transmitting such a message,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I am very aware,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m operating under the assumption that they can hear us, and possibly, hear us in the future. That tracks with their capabilities, yes?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. He was quiet for a moment. ¡°It occurs to me, sir, that they should know you are in some distress right now, and that they have not responded might mean several things.¡± ¡°Like what?¡± asked Perry. He was feeling irritated. Maybe it was the ¡®some distress¡¯ bit. He was feeling anxious, like there was a buzzing behind his head. He wanted to do something, not just sit around with his thumb up his ass. ¡°They are separate from us because of their prognostics, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Those get stronger the longer they run. They might know the future, sir, and they might be refraining from communication because everything will, in the end, be fine, not requiring intervention. Alternatively, they might know that there is nothing they would be able to do to prevent Mette from expiring.¡± ¡°Oh, thanks,¡± said Perry with a roll of his eyes. ¡°Really great.¡± He clenched and unclenched a fist. ¡°I know she is a friend to you, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She should never have gone into the fucking mine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I should have just kept her out of it, but she wanted to go, and ¡­ Jesus. If she just dies?¡± ¡°We should extract her blood, sir,¡± said Marchand. That gave Perry pause. ¡°Alright,¡± he said. He waited a beat for the Farfinder to show up, then moved back into the shelf. Mette still hadn¡¯t woken up. Perry moved to the shelf-in-the-shelf that held some supplies they¡¯d taken when they¡¯d left Dirk and his people behind, and there was a long, thick needle with a rubber hose and a little bottle. The hulking machine dominated much of the shelf space, and without Mette, Perry wasn¡¯t sure that he would be able to get it all back together correctly, but Marchand had been watching its deconstruction and knew at least some of the basics. It loomed, and the bed looked small beside it. Perry took the needle and held it while he twisted Mette¡¯s arm to find a vein. She needed her blood, and it might be poisoned, but this was all he had to save some vestige of her. He should have taken some before all this, to revive her, or a version of her. ¡°The fuck,¡± she said softly, turning toward him. ¡°Mette?¡± asked Perry, leaning forward. ¡°Take the armor off,¡± she said. Her voice was faint. ¡°It¡¯s scary.¡± ¡°Are you okay Mette?¡± asked Perry, taking his helmet off and setting the long needle to the side. ¡°All the armor off,¡± she said. Her eyes had opened only briefly to look at him again, but now they were closed. He wanted to object that it wasn¡¯t safe to go unarmored, or to object that there was no point in him taking his armor off, but he found himself doing it anyway. It took time, and he watched her as best he could. Her eyes fluttered open, not often and never for long, but she was awake, which was something. He hoped that meant she was on the upswing. It took time to remove the final piece of armor, and when he did, he laid down on the bed beside her. She smelled pleasant, in spite of the poison and sickly sweat. Maybe it was a werewolf thing. ¡°You were going to steal my blood,¡± she said. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. He laid his head on his pillow beside hers. ¡°To clone you.¡± ¡°You do care,¡± said Mette. She leaned into him and exhaled through her nose. ¡°I don¡¯t want to lose you, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°You were going to steal my blood like a vampire,¡± said Mette. She laughed a little, which made a rasping sound in her lungs. ¡°I¡¯m glad you¡¯re feeling better,¡± said Perry. ¡°I really thought it might have been the end for you.¡± He brushed hair from her face. She was more attractive now, for some reason. He hadn¡¯t thought he¡¯d feel that way after almost seeing her die. In some sense it was the worst she had ever looked, and it was hard to reconcile what he was seeing from what he was feeling. She stayed silent for a long time, so long he thought she might have fallen asleep. She was still breathing, and if he hadn¡¯t been able to see the shallow rise and fall of her chest, he would have been able to tell by the smell of her breath with every exhale. Her breath didn¡¯t smell bad or good, just human. ¡°We kicked that guy¡¯s ass, huh?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Not really, no,¡± said Perry. She paused for a bit. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Mette. ¡°We¡¯ll be better prepared next time,¡± said Perry. Mette opened an eye to look at his face, then closed her eye again. ¡°Are you doing the cloaking thing again?¡± she asked. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. Mette shifted uncomfortably next to him. She placed her arm over him, then seemed to think better of it. ¡°I need to step out,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to make sure the Farfinder comes for us.¡± ¡°No rush,¡± said Mette. Then she put her arm on him again, as though to stop him from leaving. ¡°There¡¯s the tablet,¡± said Perry. ¡°And even if I don¡¯t go out, I should start looking through the books, particularly the notebook, to see what¡¯s in there that¡¯s worthwhile.¡± ¡°Sir,¡± said Marchand from his place on the floor. ¡°I believe there has been a development.¡± ¡°A development?¡± asked Perry, sitting up. He looked around the shelf and frowned. So far as he knew, the shelf was safe from outside signals when it was closed, and he was pretty sure that Third Fervor would only be able to get in when the connection to the outside world was open. ¡°What kind?¡± ¡°As you know, we merge during transformation, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯m aware,¡± said Perry. Beside him, Mette placed a hand on his back. He wasn¡¯t naked, just in the nanite skinsuit, but he still liked the feeling of her touch on him. ¡°The Farfinder has been watching us closely, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They made their theories about the interaction between powers after having first discovered us on the Great Arc, and attempted to confirm those theories on Esperide. It seems that young Eggletina has spent considerable effort formulating a theory of entanglement. The phantom computing I have reported is consistent with a third sphere technique she¡¯s read about, though it¡¯s traditionally used on animals.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry, frowning. ¡°Meaning ¡­ what, exactly?¡± ¡°In some sense, sir, I have inherited a piece of your soul,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I meant the animals,¡± said Perry. He really would rather have laid down with Mette again to stay by her side. ¡°What happens with the animals?¡± ¡°The animals gain a portion of their master¡¯s intellect, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°In that way, they become empowered. The relationship might be described as symbiotic, if not for the fact that the animals are subordinate.¡± ¡°You said this was breaking news,¡± said Perry. ¡°What¡¯s breaking about it?¡± ¡°I have gained more abilities, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Do you feel diminished in any way?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°Should I? Wait, what do you mean ¡®gained abilities¡¯?¡± Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. ¡°There is a thread to be tugged on, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Perhaps it would be more clear to say that I have gained an understanding of the connection between us and have exploited that knowledge to enhance my own power.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t do anything more,¡± said Perry, trying not to be curt. ¡°If you crap out, I¡¯m boned.¡± ¡°Sir, I believe this to be the pathway to better capabilities,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re doing, March,¡± said Perry. He checked his vessels, which were still refilling after the fight, then checked his meridians, one of which was flowing through Marchand. It did seem changed, thicker somehow, or maybe just more taut. And at the point it passed through the armor, there was something different there too, what felt like branching, splaying out channels, micro-vessels or something weirder. ¡°Would it relieve you to know that I can translate the text, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°What?¡± asked Perry. His hand was rubbing his forehead. ¡°What text?¡± ¡°The notebook, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe I am now able to understand intent as you do.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Alright,¡± he said slowly. ¡°Would you like to know what the notebook has to say about Fenilor?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I had assumed you would, which was the development I referred to earlier.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not you pulling more of me into yourself?¡± ¡°No, sir, that could have waited,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Fine, give it to me,¡± said Perry, very much thinking that it couldn¡¯t have waited. ¡°Sir, Fenilor speaks at length about the tablet which is used to block any attempt at outside scrying,¡± said Marchand. ¡°In particular, there are some diagrams which appear to be laying out plans for variations on the tablet which would help to accomplish different goals ¡ª the tablet is antimagical in nature. He was aware of the method by which the Farfinder found the site in the first place, a massive scrying attempt that isolated all locations that did not respond to scrying, and was attempting to solve that particular issue, which does not appear to be solved within the pages of the notebook.¡± ¡°That¡¯s good information,¡± said Perry. He was still trying to get his head around Marchand practicing magic without a license and what headaches might lie in the future. ¡°Not sure that it helps us.¡± ¡°Sir, I believe I can activate or deactivate the tablet, or rather, give instructions for you to do it,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You have worried that the tablet would be collected while we were here, stolen from us?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Very much so. Alright, let¡¯s go down, let¡¯s deal with it.¡± He took the time to put the armor back on, which he was well-practiced with but always felt like a slog. He envied Nima for having armor that could quickly coat her and Fenilor for being able to slap armor on at a moment¡¯s notice. It was a problem that might get solved in other worlds, if there were other worlds. Perry gave a last look back at Mette. She didn¡¯t move much, but gave him a thumbs up. He smiled, because he¡¯d taught her that. He would, of course, take some of her blood later on, but he would wait until she was feeling better, so long as she seemed to be on the mend. He descended to the island, as wary as he could be, and landed next to the spot he¡¯d hidden the tablet. He picked it up, and breathed a sigh of relief that it was there, though he worried that Fenilor would drop in on him at any moment. ¡°What do I need to change?¡± asked Perry. He held the tablet in his hands. It felt weirdly crusty, like parts of it might break off at any moment. With armored hands it was difficult to get sensory feedback. The writing on the tablet was what controlled it or defined it, that was certain, but Perry had no idea what to do with any of it. He could have broken it, but capturing it seemed like a far better idea. ¡°There, sir,¡± said Marchand, putting a red highlight around a small part of it. ¡°And that one too.¡± Here, he highlighted a single glyph, nothing more than a straight line that was a bit separated from the others. ¡°And what am I doing here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°How am I, you know, changing it?¡± ¡°Smudge it with your finger, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry hesitated. He was remembering when Marchand had shot the king in the face. If not for that, Perry might have been able to worm his way into the king¡¯s confidence and gotten an Implement. Now the AI was taking liberties with the metaphysical and directing Perry in how to use magic, and though they had made up, there was still a lack of trust. Richter had always called the AI a black box, a network of weights with a superstructure on top of it, and Brigitta had felt it was absolutely mad to have that sort of thing doing useful work, even if it was better than the alternative of having people do it. Perry smudged the tablet with his gloved thumb, first the long line, then the other row of glyphs. There would be a time for sitting down and making sure that Marchand wasn¡¯t going off the rails for some reason, but if Perry¡¯s first reaction to Marchand was to second-guess and doubt the AI, then he hadn¡¯t actually meant what he¡¯d said about them being more like partners. He wasn¡¯t sure how much Marchand could actually think, but Perry had decided he would behave as though Marchand was a person with his own thoughts and feelings. The door to the decayed barracks opened up, and Kes stepped out. ¡°The Farfinder has woken up?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°This way.¡± Perry went through the door, which led onto the ship. His boots clinked on the metal floor and his eyes watched the back of Kes¡¯ head. It had been some time since they¡¯d seen each other, not in terms of actual hours passed, but in terms of what had happened during those hours. ¡°They wanted to minimize interference,¡± said Perry. ¡°They did,¡± said Kes. ¡°Unfortunately, the view of the future means that looks like a grim option.¡± ¡°Extinction?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Something like it,¡± said Kes. He had opened another door and stepped into a room that Perry immediately recognized as his apartment ¡ª the apartment he¡¯d had on Earth. ¡°What is this?¡± asked Perry, staying outside. ¡°Our old room,¡± said Kes. ¡°There are different spaces, this one is a dream space. It¡¯s pulled from my mind, which means from our joint memories.¡± ¡°Where¡¯s Hella?¡± asked Perry, looking around. ¡°I asked to speak with you alone,¡± said Kes. ¡°They have things set up in the break room, which they also use for meetings.¡± Perry stepped inside and shut the door after him. The apartment was small, as befit a grad student, but it was his, which had always been the important thing. There was just a bedroom with a desk, and kitchenette, and a bathroom, and there were days he felt like if he¡¯d been trapped inside for the rest of his life he¡¯d be just fine. The laptop was sitting on the desk, and the sheets were a mess on top of the bed, which was probably how it was most days. There was a bookshelf full of books, some fiction but more textbooks, which had cost a fortune even when bought used online. A blue mug sat on the desk, thick and large, the vessel for hundreds of cups of midnight tea. The windows looked out onto woodland, a park that ran along the back of the complex, which he hadn¡¯t even had to pay extra for. ¡°You look ridiculous,¡± said Kes. ¡°Yeah?¡± asked Perry. He looked Kes up and down. He had changed clothes, into something that was Earth-normal, blue jeans and a red shirt with the Chrome logo on it. Perry had owned the shirt, or something that was close to it. ¡°Dream shirt?¡± ¡°Dream shirt,¡± said Kes, looking down at himself. ¡°Washes away after a bit. They¡¯re good for clothes, but not food, air, anything you¡¯d want to actually use. Not substantial enough to even be a crowbar, apparently.¡± ¡°You¡¯re settling in fast,¡± said Perry. ¡°Are you ¡­ staying here?¡± ¡°That¡¯s what we need to talk about,¡± said Kes. ¡°You¡¯re not, are you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Because I don¡¯t know if you saw what happened, but we need help. Maybe we could do it on our own, but Fenilor is strong, and ¡ª¡± ¡°We were blocked from seeing what was happening down there,¡± said Kes. ¡°But after you came out with the tablet and separated yourself from it, we were able to hook into March and get all the video logs.¡± ¡°Kes, are they on our side?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They are,¡± said Kes. He had slipped his hands into his pocket, and gave a little shrug that didn¡¯t displace them. ¡°Because it feels like I¡¯m being used as a tool to serve their interests,¡± said Perry. ¡°Can you take off the damned helmet?¡± asked Kes with a frown. Perry frowned right back, with what was probably an identical frown, but of course Kes couldn¡¯t see it. Perry removed his helmet, grudgingly, and stared Kes down. ¡°Well now you just look more ridiculous,¡± said Kes. ¡°Why am I here, Kes?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You¡¯re here because we need to talk about what we want ¡ª what we want.¡± Kes took his hands from his pockets and folded his arms. They were the same height, but the power armor¡¯s boots made Perry a little taller. ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°We kill Fenilor, Nima, and Third Fervor. That¡¯s a start, yes?¡± Kes shook his head. ¡°Arguably none of our business except for Fenilor.¡± ¡°Didn¡¯t Nima and Third Fervor both fuck you up?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Fuck ¡®em.¡± ¡°I¡¯d rather they died, sure,¡± said Kes. ¡°Maybe not Nima, even though she stabbed us in the back, but that was ¡­ arguably sort of our fault. I mean what¡¯s she going to do, travel the worlds? That¡¯s not going to work out for her. And if Fenilor is right that there¡¯s a tangle between thresholders, then it might not even be necessary to kill her for the portal out.¡± ¡°Well whatever,¡± said Perry. ¡°It works out or it doesn¡¯t.¡± ¡°And you know it¡¯s not the thing I wanted to talk about,¡± said Kes with a frown. ¡°We return to Earth 2,¡± said Perry. ¡°We use the cloning machine to revive Richter.¡± Kes hesitated. ¡°Lots of caveats with that,¡± he said. ¡°Lots of holes.¡± ¡°We have a skeleton of a plan,¡± said Perry. ¡°Which is more than we had before.¡± Kes breathed out. ¡°When the idea occurred to you ¡­ to us. What was the emotion?¡± Perry shrugged. He wanted to be out of the armor and free to move around the apartment. It was causing feelings in him. Nostalgia, wistfulness, something like that. He wanted to feel the sheets and see how real they were, to look around in the kitchenette and see whether his favorite pan was there. He didn¡¯t cook too much, but on mornings when he didn¡¯t have to scurry to some ill-advised morning class he would fry two slices of bacon in a small pan, then cook two eggs in the bacon grease, then eat them with an apple while he sat at his computer. It had been a nice little ritual, a few times a week. He remembered the pan distinctly, a cheap little piece of shit with a red plastic handle. Why had Kes chosen this place? Nostalgia? It was a place he¡¯d never thought that he would have nostalgia for, though now that he was in it the feeling was almost overwhelming. He had stayed in many places over the years and his time as a thresholder, but he supposed that this was his last true home. ¡°Oh fuck off,¡± said Kes. ¡°You know what the emotion was, because I know what the emotion was, because we both experienced the emotion. So fucking talk about it, because we¡¯re talking about our future.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the point of this?¡± asked Perry. He got only a hard stare in return. ¡°We felt ¡­ ashamed, I guess.¡± ¡°Ashamed that it took so long to think about, to apply to the situation,¡± nodded Kes. ¡°Like it should be the first question we ask in any world, of any new power, of any thresholder. We should be trying harder to get her back, and we¡¯re not.¡± ¡°Because it wouldn¡¯t even fucking work,¡± said Perry. ¡°The Farfinder doesn¡¯t have a way to get back to Earth 2, and even if we did, the cloning machine needs fresh blood, and even if we had fresh blood the magic wouldn¡¯t work there. We¡¯d have to take the fresh blood back here, or some other world where the magic works, and that might not work because maybe she doesn¡¯t have a soul according to that world.¡± ¡°Yeah, that was the other feeling,¡± said Kes. ¡°The hopelessness.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°You¡¯re asking me whether we¡¯re going to do it.¡± ¡°I wanted to talk about the emotions,¡± said Kes. ¡°The feeling of love fading.¡± ¡°Christ,¡± said Perry. ¡°What¡¯s with you?¡± ¡°It¡¯s important,¡± said Kes. ¡°You want to just keep doing things because of a long ago commitment? You know that I know you. And I knew that you wouldn¡¯t want to talk about it, because I don¡¯t want to talk about it, but I figured if I could push you, maybe that would be okay.¡± ¡°We¡¯re doing it,¡± said Perry. He clenched his fist. ¡°We¡¯re roping the Farfinder into it. End of story.¡± ¡°Are you really like this?¡± asked Kes, taking a step back. ¡°Am I like this?¡± ¡°You ambushed me,¡± said Perry. He went to brush hair from his face, but it was awkward with the glove still on. ¡°Look, you agree, right? You¡¯re not asking this because you looked at it all and changed your mind?¡± ¡°I agree,¡± nodded Kes. ¡°We¡¯re doing it. Richter is back on the menu. I just think ¡­ I don¡¯t know. We need to know how much it¡¯s worth to us. How much Richter is worth to us. How much we¡¯re going to devote five or ten years of our lives to bringing her back, especially if it might not be the best version of her.¡± There were all kinds of worries, when you had a new and untested technology like the cloning machine and then added on interdimensional travel. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even if we go to Earth 2, unless we¡¯re dragging a lot of magic with us, we¡¯ll be nearly powerless. We won¡¯t be werewolves there.¡± ¡°I loved Richter,¡± said Kes, ignoring that. ¡°When she died I wanted to light myself on fire. When I saw the first glimmer that she could be brought back, I did everything I could to get the knowledge and skill, even if they said that resurrection was only for the recently dead. But then the worlds kept coming, and time kept passing, and I guess I loved Brigitta too, even if it was a different kind of love, and ¡­ I want to bring Richter back because I think I owe that to her, but there¡¯s not the burning anymore. We were never married, never had kids, and it¡¯s not like there weren¡¯t some off beats in that relationship.¡± ¡°You¡¯re claiming my memories for your own?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯m trying not to think of myself as you, but about her, about Richter, I¡¯m not willing to divorce myself from that experience.¡± He shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m also going to claim your undergrad degree for my own.¡± ¡°Bastard,¡± said Perry, shaking his head. They stood around awkwardly for a moment. ¡°We did love her,¡± said Kes. ¡°Deeply. But ¡­ I don¡¯t want to do it because we made a promise long ago, right? I want to do it because it¡¯s a good thing to do, because it¡¯s a thing we want to do.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He looked around the room again. ¡°This place is weird.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°But ¡­ it¡¯s closer to who I am, I think. I¡¯ve got more in common with Old Perry, the grad student.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a werewolf,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is true,¡± nodded Kes. ¡°And I have all the experiences. But being here, it¡¯s soothing in a way, as though ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± He shrugged. ¡°You¡¯d never want to return here, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°God no,¡± said Kes with a laugh. ¡°Earth 1? No thanks.¡± Perry looked around the room once more. ¡°Hella wanted us to have this conversation?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Kes. ¡°She assented to my request. I thought it better we get on the same page.¡± ¡°Smart,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s almost boastful,¡± said Kes with a smile. ¡°I intend to ask for her help,¡± said Perry. ¡°To extract some promises, if they want to try to use me.¡± Kes¡¯ smile went wider. ¡°Perry, she wants your help to kill Fenilor.¡± Chapter 130 - Good Company The five crew members of the Farfinder were set up on bean bag chairs around a large screen in what Kes had called the break room. Hella was the exception: she was standing tall next to the screen at a parade rest. She nodded to Perry as he came in behind Kes. He regretted wearing the armor, but the last battle had left him on edge. The armor left him large and imposing, in a way that made him feel awkward, something that had been a perennial problem in social situations. If it had clung to his skin, it might have been different, but it had a bulk and heft to it. ¡°Alright,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯ve been waiting for you.¡± Perry slowly lowered himself into a tan bean bag. That felt even more ridiculous. ¡°This is a meeting to discuss what the fuck is going on, so far as we understand it,¡± said Hella. ¡°It is, secondarily, a meeting to discuss our plans for action.¡± ¡°I know what¡¯s going on,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let me give my overview first,¡± said Hella, holding up a hand. ¡°I want to offer the understanding from our perspective.¡± ¡°Go ahead,¡± said Perry. He took the helmet off and placed it next to him on the beanbag chair. Hella brought forth a clicker, and started in on the slides. Perry had personally hoped that he would never have to sit through another PowerPoint presentation in his life, and internally groaned when Hella¡¯s slide contained a bunch of text that seemed to very closely match what she was saying. He wondered whether her version of Earth, with its superheroes, was stunted when it came to presenting information in a clear and engaging way. ¡°Fenilor¡¯s hypothesis is that there are two battles going on right now,¡± said Hella. ¡°First, there¡¯s a triad of Nima, Mette, and Fenilor, all with between one and zero wins. This might be a rare three-sided battle, but we don¡¯t know. Second, there¡¯s the duo of Peregrin and Third Fervor.¡± The slide clicked over, and showed the simple shapes, one a triangle, the other a line. ¡°Now, we have never seen this before. There was no reason to think that it was remotely possible. However, it¡¯s not entirely surprising: the shelfspace that Peregrin carries with him is unique, another never-before-seen magical effect, notable mostly because of how the Grand Spell treats it.¡± Perry raised his hand and Hella blinked at him. ¡°Yes?¡± she asked. ¡°Alright, so ¡­ why does it matter?¡± asked Perry. ¡°For portal opening requirements?¡± ¡°That¡¯s one of the considerations, yes,¡± said Hella. She turned to face the assembled crew, though Perry was pretty sure they must all know this. This meeting should have been an email. ¡°If the triad is resolved, we expect a portal will open. Given our overwhelming desire is for Fenilor to not escape and potentially doom this world, we must be particularly cautious about all members of the triad except for Mette.¡± ¡°Why not Mette?¡± asked Perry. ¡°She was soundly beaten,¡± said Hella. ¡°Sometimes there are a series of fights between thresholders before the final one, but a portal opens when there¡¯s a clear and decisive victory. I believe that to have been achieved against her.¡± She clicked a button, and the slide moved on. ¡°This limits the possibility space somewhat, though not in a way I find particularly interesting. The death of Mette is, in theory, irrelevant unless the triad is in a free-for-all, as we believe to have been the case with you, Jeff, and Marjut.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°I think I¡¯m not fully up to speed on ¡­ what¡¯s going on? What the portals are ¡­ for?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I mean, there are guesses, but ¡ª¡± Hella cleared her throat. ¡°I would like, at this time, to give my explanation.¡± There were some groans from the crew, which brought a faint smile to Perry¡¯s face. This was clearly well-trod ground for them, and just as clearly, no one was buying what Hella was selling. He wondered whether it would vibe with him. ¡°I believe that there is no grand purpose to the fights the Grand Spell engineers,¡± said Hella. ¡°The Grand Spell does not care about winners and losers, it cares about probabilities, making sure the fights are even, or close to it. Thresholders are almost always rewarded with powers, but it¡¯s difficult to say whether this is to engineer battles or is meant as a reward. The fights often scar the worlds they happen on, but also sometimes improve them through magic or technology left behind ¡ª either way, if this were the purpose, it would be horrifically inefficient.¡± ¡°Cut to the chase,¡± said Cark from his bean bag. He didn¡¯t seem like he enjoyed the digression. ¡°What I propose is that the primary thing the Grand Spell gets from the fights is data,¡± said Hella. ¡°It uses that data to refine its approach.¡± Kes held up a hand, and Hella pointed at him. ¡°What does that mean?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Fundamentally, how was Marchand made?¡± asked Hella. She immediately answered her own question. ¡°He was trained on enormous amounts of data pulled from a globally connected network, virtually the sum of all information from his Earth. He was then given a structure on top of that, and has had further deviations and modifications, but the base, the core, was a very large network that was fed training data to adjust the weighting of nodes.¡± ¡°She thinks that the Grand Spell is the same,¡± said Eggy, turning her head toward Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not a theory we all endorse, if you couldn¡¯t tell by the groans.¡± ¡°Here¡¯s what I think is happening,¡± said Hella, not losing focus. ¡°We can imagine the Grand Spell as self-learning. It brings two people together and makes a prediction about who will win in the fight, which might be its main goal. Possibly it''s making other predictions as well. Then, once the prediction is done, it sets those events in motion and monitors them, attempting to figure out whether it did a good job at predicting. It refines itself over time, getting better and better at its predictions, until eventually there is, encoded within its network, information about how any fight would go, how any potential recruit would respond.¡± ¡°There are tons of problems with this,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I mean, why and how is the start of the problems.¡± ¡°Assuming that it¡¯s true,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, assuming that this is some clumsy attempt to gain information, something done by, I don¡¯t know, a medieval wizard whose means exceeded his grasp, playing out over a million worlds, involving thousands of fights ¡­ how does that change anything?¡± ¡°Two things,¡± said Hella, holding up fingers. ¡°Which, yes, I do think help to prove my point. First, if I¡¯m correct and the Grand Spell is ¡®learning¡¯ over time, then we might see, in the historical record, fights which were less evenly balanced. If you¡¯re training a model, you want dynamism, especially if each step is relatively costly. You get more from difficult, hard-to-predict encounters. If the Grand Spell is trying to get the most information, it¡¯s going to set up matches that it thinks will have a 50% chance of ending one way or another, rather than matches that always end the same way. Second, the Grand Spell is going to be much worse with rare events. It¡¯s had fewer of them in the data it¡¯s collected. We know that team-ups are rare, that threesomes are rare, and whatever is going on now ¡­ it¡¯s very rare.¡± She gave Perry an intense look, and it really did seem like she was waiting for him to agree with her. ¡°You think the prediction is bad,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fenilor is an outlier, this ship is an outlier, and the triad/duo thing is an outlier. Plausibly this is the first time the Grand Spell has ever encountered this configuration.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Hella. ¡°We don¡¯t know that,¡± said the weird lizard guy whose name escaped Perry. The lizard spoke through his nostrils, using his nose-tongues. ¡°It might be omniscient.¡± ¡°It¡¯s difficult,¡± Hella nodded. ¡°This is a theory that fits the evidence though.¡± ¡°Plausibly it¡¯s something totally different,¡± said Eggy. ¡°It¡¯s one thing to have a pet theory, it¡¯s another to have an entire operation hinge on it, that¡¯s nutty. You know it¡¯s nutty.¡± ¡°The operation doesn¡¯t hinge on it,¡± said Hella, holding up a hand. ¡°The operation hinges on the fact that in the prognosticated futures, Perry loses and Fenilor wins, which either means that the Grand Spell screwed up ¡ª likely ¡ª or that it accounted for our entry and virtually everything we¡¯ve done here.¡± ¡°Which is bad,¡± said Perry. ¡°Extremely bad,¡± nodded Hella. She clicked ahead on the slides a few times, skipping over things that had already been gone over. ¡°The mission of the SS Farfinder is to stop the Grand Spell and bring an end to thresholding for the good of the multiverse, ideally while harnessing some of its power to link universes together and ensure a glorious mutual future for the people of the multiverse.¡± She stared at the screen for a moment, then clicked to change slides. ¡°If the Farfinder gets predictively entangled with a thresholder ¡ª to wit, you ¡ª then we¡¯re going to run into a better class of enemy. The hope is that we¡¯re only there as backup, but when you get into the business of telling the future, it gets complicated.¡± Eggy turned in her seat to look at Perry. ¡°If the Grand Spell does hinge on 50% outcomes, if that¡¯s what it¡¯s trying to produce for training data or whatever, then ideally we¡¯d stay out of it,¡± she said. ¡°But if we stay out of it until you¡¯re losing and then swoop in, that means that we bias the outcome in favor of you winning, and probably by a lot. And if that¡¯s true, then to maintain a 50% win ratio we should expect that a significant fraction of fights require our attention, which means a significant fraction of fights are ones that you lose.¡± ¡°Which is the whole point of not getting entangled,¡± sighed Perry. ¡°Fine. But you are entangled, so you¡¯re going to help me?¡± ¡°There are different levels of entanglement,¡± said Hella. ¡°We consider ourselves to be fully entangled now though.¡± Perry looked at the slide that was up on the presentation. It was a longer version of what Eggy had said, with some examples, and he suspected that she¡¯d had a hand in it. ¡°We¡¯re agreed on killing Fenilor?¡± asked Perry. Hella nodded. ¡°It¡¯s the most sure-fire way to ensure that he doesn¡¯t go through a portal. We¡¯re having trouble finding him though, and ¡­ there¡¯s Nima to consider.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t use the same method you used to find the mine?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You can¡¯t just make a note of all the places you can¡¯t see?¡± ¡°We could,¡± said Hella. ¡°But those places were static, and Fenilor moves around a lot. We can¡¯t do a mapping fast enough to catch him, not unless he stays put.¡± This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. ¡°In our meeting, we decided on a way to contact each other, if we didn¡¯t end up killing each other,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can use that, pin him that way. I¡¯m hoping you have a giant laser cannon or something?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t have much in the way of offense,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re cockroaches by nature. I could help you in a fight, but as far as munitions go, we¡¯re lacking.¡± She glanced at Eggy. ¡°We have guns,¡± said Eggy. ¡°We actually have kind of a lot of guns. But we¡¯re not magic users, the magic comes and goes and there¡¯s just not the time or payoff to that.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll take guns,¡± said Perry. ¡°When Mette is better, we¡¯ll bring her in to look at what you have. She¡¯s a skilled engineer ¡ª they all were, on Esperide.¡± Hella nodded. Perry had thought it was a bit of an ask, bringing another person into their circle, but either it was anticipated and approved, or Kes had already made the request. ¡°And we need to talk about what happens when it¡¯s all over,¡± said Perry. ¡°Once he¡¯s dead, a portal will open. That¡¯ll be the one for Mette or Nima or ¡­ maybe it¡¯ll come later. That gives you data, right?¡± ¡°It should,¡± said Hella. ¡°We have a push to set up research equipment, but we¡¯ve been planning this for half a year. We just didn¡¯t know what magic we¡¯d have access to, and hadn¡¯t suspected that the answer would be ¡®all of them¡¯.¡± ¡°And then when we kill Third Fervor, we expect a second portal to open?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Which is more information. And possibly a method of pointing the portal where we want it to go.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Hella. She looked up at the slide, like it would help her, then back at Perry. ¡°We would love that, if it were possible, but that particular aspect of the Grand Spell is under-defined right now.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve got no fucking clue,¡± said Eggy with smile from her beanbag chair. ¡°We expect an evaluation step,¡± said Cark. ¡°A person goes into the portal, the Grand Spell holds them there and looks at its options, sees its possibilities, then shunts them off somewhere. There¡¯s evidence that the hold can actually last pretty long before the punch happens.¡± ¡°But we have no way to affect the evaluation,¡± said Eggy. ¡°We don¡¯t know what we would need to use to alter the punch, we don¡¯t even understand the punch mechanism, or if there are constraints.¡± ¡°I want to go back,¡± said Perry. ¡°Back to the first world I went to. There¡¯s a woman who died, who I want to bring back to life.¡± It sounded impossible when he¡¯d said it out loud. It sounded foolish when he heard the words hanging in the air. ¡°We will see what we can do,¡± said Hella. ¡°That might not be the worst idea.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Perry, turning to look at her. ¡°If it¡¯s technically feasible, then we would be making a connection between this world and that one,¡± said Hella. ¡°Assuming we can run the math and make sure that it¡¯s not going to drag enormous amounts of physics through, potentially killing one or both worlds, then it would be connecting this world ¡ª which is very stable but low technology ¡ª with that world.¡± ¡°Dangerous,¡± said Cark. He spoke with a mild tone, and his face betrayed no emotion. ¡°We need governments working on this,¡± said Hella. ¡°We need to not be the only ones out here flying through the multiverse, trying to do something about it. There¡¯s something romantic about a crew in the single digits, trying to stop all this, but there needs to be a coalition.¡± ¡°Dangerous,¡± said Cark again. ¡°And maybe impossible. But it¡¯s the ¡®being dangerous¡¯ aspect that should worry us. A government with the ability to send out ships could quickly turn into a multiversal empire, even if they¡¯re limited to only using the punches.¡± ¡°In theory you can use old punches and return to where you started,¡± said Eggy. She looked over at Perry. ¡°Like, that would work for you, if we could find a route, right?¡± Perry considered that. ¡°It would,¡± said Kes, before Perry could work through the specifics. They could easily get to Earth 2 from Earth 1, and there was at least a single second inbound link to Earth 2 from wherever Mordant had arrived from. The problem was going to be getting to either of those places. Perry also wasn¡¯t sure how well their mapping worked, whether it could identify these ¡®loops¡¯ or not. ¡°Then we need to discuss the plan,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re going to help you kill Fenilor, but first, we need some understanding of what all he can do.¡± ~~~~ With the help of the Farfinder, travel was much easier. Their tool of choice could open doors to wherever they were needed, so Perry quickly found himself standing in Deregia, a city of no particular import, one high up a thick continental river with only that river¡¯s lazy waterways to provide access to the sea. There were, as a consequence, a large number of airships carrying heavy loads, and anyone looking to the sky could see one or two of them coming or going, with many more tethered in place for loading and unloading. As with most cities, there were golden domes taking in sunlight, though it was overcast, and they¡¯d be working at lower capacity until the skies cleared. Perry imagined it like the Midwest, flyover country, and had no idea whether or not he was wrong. The Farfinder had equipped him to within the limits of what they had. He was cloaked with a powerful glamor, very similar to the one he¡¯d once worn in Teaguewater, which meant that anyone who saw a man in blue armor hanging in the air would think that he was something else ¡ª their mind would invent an explanation. He had reloaded his shoulder gun with magical rounds that they had apparently made special for him back on the Great Arc, firmament magic woven into them that would cause them to forcibly explode on contact. The final gift was a thick strip of paper that the Farfinder had apparently stolen from the Great Arc, which was affixed to the back of the armor. It had writing on it, an ancient poem of devotion, and should help the armor to be stronger against magical attacks. It still didn¡¯t really feel like enough to Perry. He had wanted them to have enormous chests full of items, not just simple things that gave him minor advantages. The strip of paper on his back might, in theory, allow him not to be pierced by an obsidian-tipped spear that definitely shouldn¡¯t have been able to go through metal. What he wanted was another sword, something that could break through Fenilor¡¯s armor. The Farfinder had not been focused on getting individually powerful items. They¡¯d been focused on making sure that their ship could move from world to world, and hide from the Powers That Be, and if that wasn¡¯t enough, armor themselves against attacks. They¡¯d focused on acquiring knowledge, improving their conditions, and ensuring that the work could continue. They hadn¡¯t even been able to help him crack the nanites wide open. From the air, the Cinnamon Station House looked like a simple tea house. It was built with low-sloped roofs laden with blue half-moon tiles, a local custom, built in a way that seemed distinct to the region and very common in all the neighboring buildings. White walls surrounded a courtyard that held carefully curated plants, many of them potted succulents that had been pruned back to keep from escaping their containers. The people who went in and out of the station were dressed in the wide variety of clothes that were common across the culture, but it was a sleepy place, without all that much traffic. Perry watched as Cark made his way down the street. Fenilor had said that it was better to use a messenger, so Perry was using a messenger, it was just that the messenger was a trained infiltration agent rather than a kid who had been coerced into being a runner. Perry wasn¡¯t even really sure how you were supposed to get a runner, given that you weren¡¯t supposed to be able to pay people and everyone had more or less what they needed. He guessed that you could just ask, but he wasn¡¯t sure that would work either. There were certain aspects of the culture he still hadn¡¯t figured out yet. Cark had nanites clinging to him. They were transmitting, but when Fenilor had visited Kes, the nanites had been stymied. The mechanism was unclear, but if they suddenly stopped transmission, that meant something. Fenilor hadn¡¯t stopped Marchand from recording, though it wasn¡¯t clear exactly why that was ¡ª a matter of sophistication (as Marchand was more intelligent), a lack of sophistication (as Marchand was much less technologically advanced), or simply whatever bullshit had tied Marchand and Perry together. Perry waited, far above, watching closely. There were too many questions about Fenilor¡¯s abilities, but one of the biggest was how fast Fenilor was able to move, and what his methods of locomotion were. He had responded to Perry entering the mine in perhaps an hour, but it wasn¡¯t clear when he¡¯d known, or where he¡¯d come from. This was an invitation to talk, but it was also a test. Perry had gotten word to Dirk Gibbons, the one in Berus, that a message might be incoming, but a line of communication wasn¡¯t part of the plan of attack. Not unless it was obvious what that line of attack would be. Cark took a seat in the tea house, tucked into a corner where it was unlikely that anyone would approach him and try to strike up conversation. Perry was getting picture-in-picture, a reconstruction by Marchand in the corner of his view while his gaze was on the tea house from above. Cark waited, and Perry waited with him. Somewhere far away, the Farfinder was engaged in prognostics, hoping that they would gain something useful from however long this took. It wasn¡¯t clear what sort of timeline they were looking at now. Earlier prognostics had shown Perry dying to Third Fervor or Fenilor, but if Perry didn¡¯t intervene at all, didn¡¯t so much as show his face, it wasn¡¯t clear how long it would take before the clashing forces caused something horrible to happen. Third Fervor was working under a queen now, and was almost certainly less stable than she¡¯d been before, which might mean that she¡¯d strike out against foreign elements. There was no enemy king for her to kill, that was the entire point of how the culture had structured itself, but there were Command Authorities and symboulions that she might move against. If Third Fervor died, a portal would open, and if it did, depending on its location, Fenilor might go through. He shouldn¡¯t, given the dire warning that Perry had given, but he might, and there was a good chance that would doom them. The same went for Nima. It felt awkward and uncomfortable to be put in a situation where Perry might have to defend his enemies. After nearly an hour of drinking a very plain and simple tea, Cark went to the owner and inquired after a mutual friend who might be looking for a message. The owner smiled and gave a slight bow, then went into the back room, where he did something the nanites couldn¡¯t quite pick up given the distance. Cark was told to go sit back down, and that a response would be through shortly. Perry suspected there was another of the tablets in the back room, but that just raised further questions. The tablets were a form of magic, one that Fenilor had kept from the general public, but the owner of this tea house knew what to do. It wouldn¡¯t have been surprising that Fenilor had agents all over the world, or perhaps in a few select locations, but it seemed odd that they would be so trusted. Once the message was delivered, they would have to trail the owner, which hopefully wouldn¡¯t be too difficult given that he wasn¡¯t under the protection of any kind of blockers. Perry wasn¡¯t sure whether Fenilor himself would show up. It seemed unlikely, given that Fenilor had given them the name of this place. Perry wouldn¡¯t have shown, not if he could help it, and certainly didn¡¯t intend to get within a mile of Dirk Gibbons if at all possible. They could use dead drops if they had to talk to each other, but since the Farfinder could spy on the future, any message left for Dirk could simply be read through prognostication without letting Dirk know the message was received. ¡°The nanites have stopped responding, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°This is in direct contravention of the orders I have given. If I did not know better, sir, I would have said that it was a simple error or malfunction.¡± ¡°He¡¯s here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I do not know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The nanites have stopped responding. That means that I have no information from them, sir.¡± Perry stared down at the tea house. Cark was in danger, but Cark had said that he was okay with being in danger. The hope was that they would get more information from Fenilor, some details about his past, and what he¡¯d been doing with his long life on this planet, aside from building his own personal version of utopia and killing the baby thresholders. Perry had very little leverage over Fenilor, short of threats to dismantle the culture through force, something that Perry probably couldn¡¯t accomplish even if allied with Third Fervor, and wouldn¡¯t want to do. There was, however, another lever: Fenilor¡¯s identity. He was a shining figure of the revolution, and perhaps not the most important of the founders, but one of them nonetheless. It wasn¡¯t clear that smearing his name as the inventor of the lanterns would cause lasting damage to the culture, but Perry had a hunch that Fenilor was motivated by more than simply a lasting utopia. Cark had two messages to deliver. The first was simply a request for information, things that in theory could not help Perry. If that was denied, the second message would apply what pressure could be applied without having to bluff ¡ª and given Fenilor¡¯s ability to tell the truth, bluffs would probably not work. Perry sat there, waiting. Fenilor had to be in the area, if the signal was blocked, otherwise it was another tablet of some kind stopping the nanites, but that felt unlikely to Perry. An hour passed, then another. People came and went from the tea house, which meant that nothing too bad could be happening inside. It was also possible that Cark had been murdered and then whisked away. Almost anything was possible, given the breadth of armors and weapons that Fenilor had. That was why getting as much as they could was so important. The sun had set by the time the nanites started reporting again. Perry had gone from tense to bored out of his skull, and in the end, had resorted to listening to an audiobook, read by Marchand. Cark emerged from the Cinnamon Station House looking no worse for wear, but holding in his hand a recording device he hadn¡¯t had when he¡¯d gone in there. It was crude and mechanical ribbon storage, like something out of the 80s, but Cark held it closely and walked down the streets. If the Farfinder had seen the future, they would see Cark, and could pick him up if need be, breaking their prognostication. Instead, Cark went to a hotel ¡ª no payment necessary, really more of a temporary living space than a hotel ¡ª and sat down at a desk. With a signal from the nanites to confirm that they had contact with Marchand, he set the recording device to playback what it had stored. Fenilor had told them almost everything, and Perry had to hope that his weakness was in there somewhere. Chapter 131 - The Seventy-Eight Foes of Fenilor the Gilded, pt 1 I suppose, if I am to say anything to you, it must start with the System. It was a power of that first world I went to, site of my first and only loss, something innate to all who are born there, and perhaps to all who arrive from elsewhere. It is text, simple and straightforward, blue boxes that float in the air and respond to touch, and can sometimes be spoken to. These bare facts as stated by the System give rise to tremendous power. The people of that world agreed that the System was designed with a purpose in mind, though they argued endlessly about the nature of that purpose. I was given something called a Class, which labeled me an Assassin, a role that matched my profession in my first life. The context was much different though: where I had come from, an assassin was a vital part of the process of governance and social checks and balances, a tool of last resort for resolving disputes between peoples. Politicians behaved because the threat of assassination loomed, and those who were seen as lessers knew not to speak too loudly for fear of an assassin¡¯s blade. I do not now endorse this way of thinking, and in fact find it cruel, but when I was in my prime, I saw myself as important, a vital member of the civil service like you might regard a firefighter. It had seemed obvious to me that every country in the world should have assassins, otherwise what recourse would there be when someone went beyond the pale? Assassin meant something different to the people of the System. I was a sneak-thief, a dagger in the night, a mercenary rather than a force of public good. If I had been able to hide my class, it might have been different, but I could not, because there is a particular feature of the System which I have found quite useful: Observe. With this command, a person is revealed, their essence and powers laid bare. I have used it enough times now that it comes easily to me, with a thought rather than a command, but it cannot see inside men¡¯s hearts, nor separate fact from fiction. For that, I need speech, a different skill called Perception Check, which has likewise been extremely helpful, especially when dealing with my fellow thresholders. Observe left me an assassin with no shadows to hide in, and the culture I found myself in had no need of my services. I have always been a keen student, and I studied hard, trying to find how it all worked. What recourse was there, if a man couldn¡¯t be assassinated? How did society stay functional if there weren¡¯t those who trained to take out men and women at the top? I learned many lessons in that time, mostly lessons of injustice and inequality. There was no recourse. It always felt as though I had the secrets the world needed, that I could change how things would be done, if only people would listen to me. I came from a functional society, and had landed in one with manifold problems that everyone seemed to think were intractable. I lost, in the end, as I¡¯ve already said. My first foe was a young human boy, deemed a Cleric by the blue boxes. He was devout, though he followed a god who was not of that world. He told me his world was pox-ridden, and his god was the god of cleansing fire, though I could have guessed at that minutes into our first match. We had come to blows because I had begun some inexpert tinkering in their society, both by proselytizing and with a few targeted killings. Our bouts lasted a month, seven, I think, until the final one where he used his flame on me in full. I came through the portal burnt, to a world which held no easy cure for me. It was a different place, in those days. The world was a diverse place, and fractured by that diversity. People today think of kingdoms as old, but there was a time before the era of kingdoms, when there was no one dominant mode of rulership. There were councils and senates and representative democracies, and yes, kings too, but everything was informed by long traditions, and each realm was different according to the needs of the various populations. The races didn¡¯t mix at that time, not to any great degree. In that time there were spirits, old things that no longer see any use. They lived in trees, as they still do today, and could be harnessed for their power. It is still technically possible, I suppose, for them to be used in this way, but there are precious few strategic reserves left, and I cannot imagine my people using them. The spirits have grown weak, and the people who manipulated them have died, with the skills lost. This is, perhaps, for the good, but there were things which spirits could do that cannot now be done, or not with any ease. It was the great and ancient spirits that were responsible for the Implements, a fact now known to only a few, the knowledge worthless without a craftsman to make one. I healed from my wounds slowly. I was mistaken for an elf of the sort they had in this world, though I was a far cry from them in many respects. Still, they had a forest community, and took care of me as best I could while the fire-wounds healed and scarred. No one seemed to know that I was an Assassin, but I could still see the blue boxes in my vision, which let me learn these people and their ways. I would mutter ¡®Observe¡¯ to myself whenever someone new would come into my room, and know their name and abilities. I would mutter ¡®Perception Check¡¯ beneath my breath while they told me things. After a week I was ambulatory, and after a month, I could move with some of the swiftness I¡¯d once possessed. I bid my nurses thanks and set out to see the world and its ways. I¡¯ve said little about my world and why I left it, but I was at the top of my game ¡ª and that game was decidedly lacking in players. The nature of assassination, its role, was as a tool of last resort, and so assassination was rare, with many assassins going years between a required killing. People understood the threat we posed and reacted accordingly, which left me quite bored, unable to exercise my raw natural talent. I suffered through tedious training. In this new world, like the one before, it seemed as though there was no end to acceptable targets. Unfortunately, as an elf, I stood out. When among humans, I would get many stares, some from the scars but others simply from who I was. When I was among the orcs, I was bullied. Everywhere was different, even among cities of the same race, but I was welcome in few places, and knew that if I plied my trade, I would instantly be suspected and caught. Still, I saw evil in the world that was able to find purchase. There was shocking and overwhelming violence and sadism from people who thought themselves untouchable. I began killing. Assassination, in my world, was a noble profession, and as I¡¯ve said, it wasn¡¯t often used. It was a release valve, and its very presence bent the actions of everyone who might be a target. For that function, it worked best if assassination was not simply a hammer brought down on those who misbehaved, but instead, a hammer that was threatened, first obliquely and later directly. There were occasions where a person would understand themselves to be under the shadow of a contract that was all but signed, and thus, would do everything in their power to make things right. At other times, people would build coalitions and pool their resources, making it known that the contract would be completed if there was only a certain number of additional signatories. There was much debate about what deserved assassination and what the proper protocols were, and when to use one instead of the other. There was no culture of assassination, not anywhere in the world. I found a single kingdom that had a practice of dueling, which I supposed to be similar enough, but as I watched from the rooftops, I saw how lacking it was. A duel was a method for honor to be regained, for an injustice to be righted, but it depended too much upon the whims and skills of those with swords, making it unavailable to the underclass. A duel was often decided on the basis of who was better rather than judgment from an outside party, and sometimes was simply about taking satisfaction, never solving the underlying issue. Duels were thrilling, and did not deter in the right way. I decided that I would introduce the way of assassination to these people. I meant to correct them. It was my first act of manipulation, and far from my last. An assassin works in the dark. I stayed to the shadows. I made it known that an assassination was to take place before it happened, testing my skills but also encouraging discussion, and then I would strike if my demands were not met. I had meant to rid the world of some truly awful people, but also to encourage the general public to understand that there was recourse. I meant to inspire a generation of assassins, to have a better way of life where everyone stayed in line, where the rich would fear the poor and the powerful would fear those at the bottom. Instead, for whatever reason, the reign of fear began after I had killed a lowly duke with a penchant for mistreating his young servants. I had set out to change the society of this kingdom, of course, but hadn¡¯t appreciated how much of an impact a single man could make. My presence seemed to loom over the country like an enormous shadow, even in places I had never stepped foot, even for people who weren¡¯t a part of any of my considerations. Windows were shuttered in the night, the rich began hiring guards, and the poor began assigning someone to keep watch. People looked at each other with suspicion, because they didn¡¯t know who the killer could possibly be, and they carried weapons, in case the killer attacked in the open. This was after only a single assassination, mind you. People had not taken my warning seriously, and had not discussed the notice I placed in the month before the assassination, but afterward it was as though they were trying to make up for lost time. The second notice, directed at an earl, sent them into a frenzy. There had already been a manhunt after the assassination, which couldn¡¯t come close to matching my skills. I was getting stronger over time, though that was never my primary purpose. The blue boxes offered progression of their own, quests that I could accept or deny, along with all their native power. It had its own ideas about what an Assassin was. Some of those ideas matched closely with my own, like being light of foot and swift in the shadows. Other ideas I found more troubling, those involving poisons and other ways to kill people without it being known that it was anything more than an accident. A deniable death did not seem like the assassin¡¯s way to me. Still, I picked up the skills where I could, and grew in power over time. The earl fell, and I was stronger for it. A merchant-prince was killed in a crowded market with a crossbow, and I felt myself honed. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. My opponent showed up after three months. I hadn¡¯t known there would be an opponent, but he hadn¡¯t known there would be one either. He was a young man, a prince, in fact, having been anointed in a ritual and prepared to step through to another world in a process that I never confirmed was connected to the Grand Spell ¡ª though I suspect not. Perhaps they had superstitions, and perhaps those superstitions were based on the Grand Spell in some capacity, or perhaps something else was supposed to happen to him when he stepped naked into the cold dark woods on his eighteenth birthday. It was, very possibly, a coincidence. I¡¯ve learned much about the people who choose to step through these portals, and this one just happened to have thought that something was going to happen, and that it held some purpose. He went to the king at once, announcing himself loudly as a savior from another world. He was questioned, then given one of the kingly Implements, a greatsword almost as long as he was which let him cut from a distance and launch himself across a battlefield. I had published my understanding of assassination as a public good. I wasn¡¯t an academic then, and didn¡¯t understand societies or cultures and their functions, the way that ideas will mutate and circulate, the way that illiteracy compounds all problems. I would sometimes sit in taverns and listen to people ask ¡®what does the assassin want?¡¯ when it had all been clearly laid out in papers that had been posted on public boards. I respected the people who engaged with my ideas more: they had all sorts of objections that came from their own cultural context, and I found myself running into questions whose answers I didn¡¯t know, or assumptions I hadn¡¯t realized were in place. You must understand, I was hopelessly naive back then. I didn¡¯t understand the structures of societies, the principles of incompleteness, the ways in which we must hold contradictory notions in harmony against each other, or why certain notions work when others do not. Introducing assassination as a public good would never have worked for those people, and if they had taken up the practice, they would have done it in ways that would have driven them to despair. I fought the young man with the magnificent sword. He was a simpleton, and had no way of tracking me, which meant that he had to set traps and stake out places while he waited for me. There was a striking resemblance to the other young man I¡¯d fought in the world before, the one that I had lost to, and this time I resolved to be more circumspect ¡ª to not simply rely on my skills and my killing intent. We clashed four times before our final battle, testing each other. He didn¡¯t realize that I was getting stronger each time, which happened quickly in those days. We spoke sometimes, monologuing at each other, and I learned his life story, such as it was. I used Observe and saw him through that lens, the things he was getting better at, if more slowly than I was. Our fifth fight, the final one, took place as I was attempting to assassinate the king ¡ª or rather, as I was pretending to assassinate the king, as the boy had set a trap for me and thus fallen into a trap that I had set for him, in a way that was more complicated than future plans. As a general rule, an assassin does not engage in combat, we are meant to be silent, doing everything without so much as a whisper, but I had grown powerful, and obtained an Implement of my own. I poisoned him, in the end. I wasn¡¯t fond of having to do that, but I had been badly burned, you remember, and knew that my life was on the line. He had me in the first half of the fight, but the small bleeding wounds I¡¯d given him grew red and puffy, and when our bout drew near its end, I knew I could take my time. I didn¡¯t take my time, instead beheading him at the first opportunity, but I could have done whatever I pleased. The portal opened. I stepped toward it. Then I stopped and stared. What was I hoping to find? Some new world where I could start fresh? Some new power? A way home that was seeming increasingly unlikely? Was I tempted to go through because of ego? I had no real answer, and so I stayed where I was, watching the portal, thinking of what I would be leaving behind and what might await me. Perhaps there would be another young man with righteousness in his heart, another pitched battle, another strange and difficult place that didn¡¯t have the same happy stability as my home. In the end, it was imagining another failure that kept my feet from moving. I had more to learn from this world, more to test, to experiment with, to see. At that point I had no idea how much there was that I had yet to learn. You may wonder why I¡¯m telling you all this. In truth, I¡¯ve told many people my story over the years, some of them in confidence, some of them thresholders like us in the hours before I killed them. You might imagine that this would damage me, if it were told to the people of this world, but it would not destroy the movement, only cause them to come to grips with its foundation. They are firm and stable, as I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve seen, capable of handling anything that can be thrown at them, which is why I am finally ¡ª nearly ¡ª ready to go. It is better for them to have a culture and mythology not built on something real, an understanding of themselves that does not rely on founders who are long dead or at least disappeared. The past should not trap the future, and institutions should remold themselves to the needs of the present. I had meant to write a document that would stand for all time, a grand autobiography that would explain everything I¡¯ve done and why I¡¯ve done it. I never got around to it, and I suppose this, or another of my oral recountings to other parties, will have to do. The portal closed after a day. I had no idea whether or not that might be the end of it. I had taken the boy¡¯s enormous sword, which by all rights should have been unwieldy, and claimed it for my own. Though I had won, I set out to see more of the world, to understand in a way it was clear I hadn¡¯t understood before. I sailed away on a ship, and when we made port, I vanished, leaving any connection to that old kingdom behind. I never spent more than a month in any place, as that seemed like enough time to wring knowledge from a collection of people. I read what books I could, though I often found them confused and muddled, the blind groping of men who knew no better than I did. I spent time with all the races of the world, talking to their people, casting myself as a writer and scholar. I kept my Implements hidden away. I made money where I could, though I never found it all that difficult to live a comfortable life, given my advantages. Five years of study and contemplation passed before the next thresholder arrived. She was a firebrand, of the sort that I¡¯ve come to think of as archetypal. She had her own grand designs on the world, and had come through with the tools necessary to get a fair amount of work done. She set up shop in one of the capital cities, one ruled by a religious leader, and began to build crude lanterns. They were, so far as the sultan was concerned, marvelous things, capable of casting light without smoke, capable of starting fires from a distance, the be-all end-all of power. She was giving it freely to the sultan in exchange for the chance to build more and better lanterns. The first time I heard the term ¡®uplift¡¯ was from her mouth. She knew who and what I was almost from the moment we first saw each other, and begged with me to give her six months of time before we would meet again and end it. She wanted the people of the world to have these lanterns, you see, to have their power and strength, and help beat back against the darkness. Who could object if families no longer needed to be miserly with their coal? Who could rebel against food for the hungry? I had been a student of cultures for a long enough time that I could instantly raise the arguments against that way of thinking. Of course people would object, of course they would say that it was good for people to strive for and accomplish things, that a person should have goals, that people would grow weak if they were coddled, that it was the struggle of life that made life worth living, or that the sweet would be nothing without the sour. I had no firm opinion on these matters, but I could feel the undercurrents of them in the people I listened to. The lanterns were no miracle, not in those days, they were difficult to make and finicky. I suspect the woman had picked them up in her previous world and was learning as she went. In the end I gave her three months, not six, and attacked her with only a week of warning, less than proper for an assassin ¡ª I was still clinging to my old ways, in spite of everything I had learned. She fought like a banshee, using an Implement she had wrangled from the sultan, a bow this time, long and powerful. She shifted with it, propelling herself backward with every arrow launched my way, rising high into the sky like a spectre with her white dress flowing around her. I confess no small amount of admiration for her, not just for her combat prowess, but the way she had ideas about how to make the world a better place. If she hadn¡¯t positioned herself as a tool for evil men, perhaps I would have spent more time speaking with her. That first time, she caught me in a trap. I had thought she was using the bow to flee from me, sending wild arrows my way to give her distance between us. No, she was leading me, getting me into position, moving with a care and consideration I hadn¡¯t expected of her. When we got to her arena, a hundred lanterns lit up at once, calling to mind the burns I¡¯d taken from the cleric who¡¯d come before her. I was forced to flee with an arrow sticking through my chest and a red pain across my face and chest. The second time we fought, I came at her with no warning. I had spent a month healing, which was faster by that point, and hid from even the everyday interactions with grocers and barmaids. She had more tools, and was better with the bow, but she started on the back foot and never really recovered. As it turns out, both arms are required to draw a bow to full power, and a cut along one forearm will cause incredible pain when put under stress. I cut her down and saw the portal open just as the guards were coming to rescue her. There was some life in her yet, and she tried to crawl toward it, seeking to escape me. The life was still there, but it was frantic and clawing. She was a wounded animal seeking escape. I¡¯m not sure why I killed her. I didn¡¯t know what it would mean if she reached the portal, I suppose. But no notion of fairness or admiration stayed my hand, and she was the last for a great while that I felt fondly about. I knew, then, that there would be another, and suspected that the parade would be unending. But I no longer felt the pull of the portal, the call of the other world and broader horizons. I committed myself to the world I¡¯d found myself in as a place where I could experiment and learn, a place where I could perfect my understanding of society. There was something interesting about the people I had seen. The cleric of fire, the summoned hero, the woman with her lanterns ¡­ they had all been so different from each other. I think they might have fought each other, even, in certain configurations. But there was something to the portals, something to the Grand Spell that had not yet even been named, and I knew that it was important in my nascent quest to remake the world. You have been to many worlds, and my guess is that you¡¯re the type to have traded stories. You¡¯re asking for my stories now, and when we first met, we did not come to blows. It¡¯s even possible you know more than me, though I¡¯ve been at the shallow end for so long that I have learned only half the picture. The lanterns did not last, that first time. They were difficult to make, hard to maintain, and difficult even in the best of circumstances. I had also stolen most of the young woman¡¯s research notes, which didn¡¯t help matters for those trying to follow her footsteps. It would be quite some time before the lanterns made their return, and when they did, it was because I thought they were the solution to a different problem I had helped to create: the rise of kings. Chapter 132 - The Seventy-Eight Foes of Fenilor the Gilded, pt 2 Why did places have bad rulers instead of good rulers? It was a question that haunted me. It was, of course, a subset of the more general question: why were things often bad instead of good? I eventually came to the conclusion that everyone had an answer to the question but none of them were worth the hair of a donkey. ¡°Some people are born good and others bad, and it¡¯s the work of the good to separate the two, and crush the bad.¡± So says the oral tradition of the Vikilee. ¡°Badness is something accrued over time, a poison of the body and later the soul, which is why elves must be reborn, and why humans die. Dwarves are hardy against evil, which is why they live long. It is of course evil of the soul that we must be wary of, and a constant battle must be fought with constant vigilance to ensure that evil breaks upon the shore of our body and does not touch the temple of the soul.¡± So says the folk wisdom of the Elerion steppes. ¡°Evil is the price of free will. For meaningful choices to exist, both good and evil must exist, else a choice could hold no meaning. Benevolent gods have allowed evil to exist such that people could truly be free.¡± So says the clerical tradition of the Elderwights. There were other formulations as well, abstract universal forces of good and bad that conscripted soldiers, or a cosmic churn of moral froth, but it all felt hollow to me. If there were a truth, all the great thinkers of the world should have stumbled upon it together, in the same way that fishers and farmers the world around adopted broadly similar techniques to keep people fed. Further study was needed. I hid my claimed weapons away in one of the System¡¯s more valuable features, the Inventory. I healed back from my wounds quickly by that point, having pushed myself by killing boar in the woods in the long years that passed between encounters. The System provided. The wounds scabbed, then scarred, then disappeared. Refreshed, I began my time as a student proper, as it seemed a necessary step. I spent a year as a cleric, then a year as a scholar. It was only enough to skim the shallows, but that was all I needed to realize that these were not places to find the answers I sought. I wasn¡¯t just learning from what I was taught, I was learning from what I watched, and I came to the conclusion that if they had the answers, they would have been better people. Instead, what passed for intellectuals in that time were too full of themselves, happy to argue endlessly with each other so long as the wine was flowing. The clergy were worse, with many using the claimed power of their gods to deflect from their own vices, or using sanctimonious piety to pretend at being a lord. I watched their societies from top to bottom. I saw that the man in the street would often act wrongly where he thought he could get away with it. This was a source of disordered societies. On many nights I would nurse a drink in a tavern, or watch the city streets from above, stepping lightly so as not to wake those who were sleeping. I watched criminals go about their business and tried to determine what was wrong with them, how they had become criminals. It was often a complicated affair. Most criminals had people in their lives who weren¡¯t directly involved in criminal activity themselves, but these friends and family always seemed complicit to me, as they looked the other way and didn¡¯t report anything to the police or guard or whoever was supposed to be doing the enforcement. I wondered sometimes whether it was mere profit that made the criminals tolerable to people not directly involved with crime, but decided that perhaps it was simply harder to rat out a lifelong friend or a family member who¡¯d be punished harshly. I watched the police, and the guards, and saw how they often had criminals among their number too, whether it was with law or custom on their side. When the guards weren¡¯t criminals themselves, they were often complicit in their own ways, choosing what and where to police, using their discretion, bending the rules in ways that must have seemed, to them, noble. When they had a friend who was behaving lawlessly, it was simple harmless fun that no right-thinking person could possibly punish. When someone they didn¡¯t know did the same thing, it was cause for severe punishment. I watched those who made the rules, whether they be councilors, legislators, nobles, or kings. These were the people with the most power, and they often made shockingly poor use of it. Sometimes it was simple hedonism, but often these were good people, or as good as people got, trying their best to do right by the people they had power over. They often did poorly. It¡¯s painfully obvious now that the problem was the culture. When I look back on my notes, to the extent I¡¯ve saved them, I cringe at the fumbling explanations I made for what was happening. If I could, I would go back in time and slap myself. Who knows, with the powers of the multiverse, perhaps that day might come. But in those times, I simply didn¡¯t see it. I thought I could use other methods to fix the illness. So I must admit now that I took it into my head to elevate good rulers and give them the tools necessary for true rule. I was, sadly, a monarchist, though not in the modern style. I am sure that many who have known me, especially those who were alive during those first years of revolution, will be shocked and saddened to hear it. That heartbreak will grow worse when they realize just how successful I was in my pursuits. I started in the Kingdom of Gardida. Their king was competent, as kings went, but beholden to a system of internal alliances and interests, which all worked against each other. Gardida was friendly with elves, in that they saw us as superior and exotic, which meant that it was easy enough for me to first become the sort of interesting house guest that kings collect, and later take a role as an advisor. I was considered to have remarkable instincts, thanks in part to both Perception Check and Observe, and my seeming neutrality made me reliable in the way that others were not. I became close with the king¡¯s son, who was to take the throne, and filled his head with all my learnings of what it took to make for a good king and a good kingdom, a place where people could thrive. I had thought, then, that a king could simply decree goodness from on high and that it would trickle down to those below like some sort of grand fountain, that the right set of laws was the way to make it all work. All that was needed was a single good person installed as king and everything would follow from that, so long as the king had real power rather than power gained from myriad alliances. The prince learned from me that the first step would be to take as much power as he could, the better to guide his people. I had not lived in a monarchy before stepping through the portal, yet I still somehow felt the pull of them, which is why I let it happen. What if everything could be solved by a single strong man at the top, putting everyone into line, a man who was wise and decisive, who knew his kingdom backward and forward, who was kind and virile and even-tempered? The goodness would flow, surely. The king would be its wellspring. Perhaps this thinking harkens back to the idea of having a protective father or a loving mother and being sheltered, as a child, from the dangers and storms. I see it now as an infantile instinct, obviously. Three years into this project of grooming the prince, another thresholder arrived, Ermine. She was fiery-haired and spunky, a cultist from a world of dark gods who warred with each other using warped and twisted powers, though she¡¯d gone through her portal with none of them. She had won the world before and gained dark energies in the process, powers tied with what that world had defined as sin. She took to sin like a fish to water, especially those sins she viewed as being harmless acts of debauchery ¡ª but not only those. Before we met properly, she¡¯d spent a full month attending as many parties as possible, ingesting copious amounts of alcohol and making her body available to whomever wanted it. By that time I no longer believed that evil was a matter of corruption, but she believed, and the dark powers attached to her did too. She targeted the prince. It is my understanding now that the thresholders will always be geared toward conflict with each other, but I had some questions at that time, and had believed that perhaps I would find someone like-minded, a person I could work with who shared my vision. In this case, it was clearly unworkable right from the start. We fought each other, at first with barbed words in mixed company, and later with blades drawn on the castle ramparts. I was foolishly trying to convert her, and she was just as foolishly trying to convert me. We came to blows many times, and sometimes would meet in the parlor the next day needing to explain our limps and scratches. She enjoyed the fighting, and grew more powerful from it, as that too was sin according to the dark powers she carried with her. Often she was drunk, or gripped by the impulses of other substances, and there were many chances to kill her, if I had wanted to. In spite of the power she was accumulating, I was always the stronger of the two of us. Still, she might have been the last opponent that I had anything to fear from, especially in the later days. We lasted together for half a year, which was far longer than either of us had expected. The fights became formalities, and sometimes they were conversations instead. There was something loveable about her, for as much as she was a wreck of a person. She felt shame for the things she¡¯d done, guilt and embarrassment, and I found it laudable that she would share that shame with me, and admired the way she would persist in her path even as those feelings washed over her. I wouldn¡¯t have found that strength. Eventually it came to a head, as it was destined to. She was turning the prince to her side, corrupting him, making all my work seem like it was for nothing. She had awakened something in him that was, perhaps, there all along, and she was able to fan those dark flames far faster and more effectively than I could put them out. I was heartbroken, in the way that elves of my sort get when a plan has gone to seed. We had one of our battles, which had become nearly routine, and when I would normally have stayed my hand, I slipped a dagger into the side of her neck. It went in like that was its sheath, the happy home that it had been waiting for during the years I¡¯d owned it. Shock was written on her face, then she collapsed to the ground, dead. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. The portal opened, and I didn¡¯t take it. The prince proved a failure, too corrupt or corruptible, too much of a bad egg to ever fruitfully take the throne, not after what Ermine had done to and with him. He howled in rage and pointed a finger at me, telling me that he would use the absolute authority he was soon to receive to have me killed. I murdered him too, then went on my way. I found another kingdom, and another prince, and started over, knowing better now what worked and what didn¡¯t, what arguments could be used to sway a young man and what events could be spun into lessons about governance and the ways of power. I also spent more time on picking this prince, and probing him for weaknesses ¡ª looking for a certain darkness of the soul. Upon determining to my satisfaction that he was a blank slate upon which I could imprint myself, I set to work with a furious energy, intending not to be in a position for failure the next time a thresholder showed up. If you are at all a student of the history of this world, you will be familiar with the name of Luperto the First. If you are not a student of this world¡¯s history, I suppose everything I say here will sound like boasting by proxy, but given the failures of the Age of Kings, it shouldn¡¯t be taken as such. I believe now that Luperto was simply exceptional, not a product of my teachings and theories, but a unique individual whose particular properties made the whole thing workable. Over the course of twenty years, he turned his country from a backwater into a prosperous place, with a campaign of reform that touched every aspect of the country¡¯s institutions, making them solid as iron. Not a year went by when he didn¡¯t have some new triumph. He was heralded as a savior of his people, the golden son who could do no wrong. Everything had seemed like as complete a success as it could possibly have been. I was actually anticipating that I would take the next portal, once I defeated the next thresholder to come through. There had been a few during the reign of Luperto, three that were not much worthy of note, killed swiftly once I heard of them ¡ª and it was the case with thresholders, in those days, that I did hear of them relatively soon. I handled them as quietly as I could, and learned as much as I could in the course of fighting them, sometimes with an interrogation once they were defeated and at my mercy. Most acquired Implements before our battle, some quirk of the Grand Spell, no doubt, though in later years they were more varied in what they brought to bear against me. I grew stronger with every battle, and stored their Implements away in my Inventory, which made me stronger still. The timing of these thresholders was irregular. Five years seemed to be the average, but sometimes it was less and sometimes more, and that made it difficult to plan around. I¡¯d noticed the tendency toward opposition, and once I noticed it, I resolved that we would find ourselves in opposition as soon as I learned of them, no matter their orientation. You likely understand it intuitively, after so much time, but if conflict is foretold by the Grand Spell, then declaring that you will only fight against someone who threatens Luperto the First will guarantee that Luperto the First will be threatened. Because I had committed to finding and killing anyone who came through the portals, they would sometimes appear far away, with goals that were orthogonal to my kingdom-building. One of them wanted to coat the planet with magical forests, another intended to father a hundred children, and the third was a simple hedonist. I had thought I had it all figured out, you see, that after a few short decades on this planet I had mastered both how to make a society good and how to defeat the Grand Spell¡¯s designs. Laughable, I¡¯m sure. The next thresholder became an advisor, much as I had been. He was crafty and cunning, possessed of a power that grew over time, and he was in no particular rush to meet me, which is why he went a full three years before making himself known. In that time, he had encouraged a council of elders to have a single hereditary ruler from among them, shepherded them through a period of civil unrest, then consolidated power. If I had any appreciation for scheming, I would have called it masterful. If you have checked the history books, you will understand that king to be Seldemar the Dread. His next step was making a great and terrible war. The term for it came from my opponent, total war, an expression which has been much used and abused in the centuries that followed, but here meant that every single one of the king¡¯s subjects was devoting himself to the task of winning the war. Every brick that was made went toward building fortifications. Every ounce of ore brought up from the mines was used to make blades and armor. Trees were chopped down by the hundred to make ships. There was, in theory, no aspect of either country that was not dominated by war, and that included all aspects of diplomacy. The world had never seen war like it, and neither had I. It horrified me, as I¡¯m sure you can imagine, unless you come from a world where such wars are common. And even after I had dispatched the enemy thresholder, a man whose flesh pulled like taffy and who drew power from ritual sacrifice, the war raged on. I watched everything I had built crumble. I first blamed that other thresholder, but later, after reflection, I blamed myself. The lesson I took was that it wasn¡¯t enough to have a single good kingdom to serve as an example to others, it needed to be the entire world, but after the war finally died down, Luperto began to grow erratic. He had suffered from seizures his entire life, and I suspect that they began to infect his brain, though a surgeon thresholder I spoke with once thought it unlikely. I had trained Luperto¡¯s son to be a replacement, but the boy wasn¡¯t as keen as his father was, and having grown up in the trauma of that long war, had quirks of his own that I wasn¡¯t enamored with. It took another decade for me to realize how singularly fragile a system of kings can be, how prone to corruption and misuse they are. A king must not only be a firm and just ruler, but must be nearly perfect at selecting and training a successor. He must be exceptional at delegation and monitoring, and never falter. This is what makes the system of kings unworkable in the long run, which I had failed to appreciate. I was, by that point, nearly unbeatable in single combat. It seemed as though my opponents had gotten somewhat worse over time, even as I had continued to improve. I had poached my first armor by that point, not an Implement but something a would-be thresholder had worn. I¡¯ve often found those with defensive powers to be the most annoying to fight, but also the most worthwhile to take from. Because I was winning so handily, I took to capture and interrogation where I could. Since they came so infrequently, I had plenty of time to prepare for them. The Age of Kings spread beyond my control though, and I was there to watch all its failures. People had seen the terrible might of the war and there was a wave of strong men sweeping into power, some of them kings in all but name, other kings who had cause to consolidate and reform. I had missed how much of a role ego played in the decisions of lesser kings, given how much Luperto had blinded me, but it was there, of course. Worse were the ways in which two decent kings would clash, often over resources. These conflicts predated the Age of Kings, of course, but it somehow felt as though territorial disputes were being exacerbated, perhaps by the notion that these were material properties that the kings held. Or perhaps it was something else, the way a king felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. When times were tough, when there were famines and plagues, the behavior of the kings grew worse. It seemed to me that if we could solve the problem of prosperity, things might get better. I introduced the lanterns then, thinking that they would solve conflicts. I¡¯d been working on them in the background, to the best of my abilities, but we¡¯d have gotten nowhere without the money and talent procured by yet another king. The promise of the lanterns was that they would allow famine, at least, to be a thing of the past, and should war come again, they weren¡¯t so dangerous on a battlefield, being cleaner and more sterile, and with metal as a protector against them. I suppose in my mind, I had thought that wars would only be fought with heavy protection and the common soldier pulled from the farmlands would be no more. Instead, the wars grew more terrible than before. The soldiers were sent to the front lines armed with what metal they could, and focused lanterns would burn their exposed skin. I went to the battlefields and watched screaming men carried off, then later, in the cities, I would see beggars who¡¯d been blinded in the war, men who¡¯d lost arms or legs and had difficulty providing for themselves. And still I had hope that the lanterns would provide for people, that they would be engines of creation that would set the farmers free from toil, that they would make labor take a tenth the time it once had. I saw that hope, too, swirl gently down the drain. The lanterns were too complicated to make and maintain, which meant that they became the province of the rich, or of the kings. The kings knew that this was a new form of control, and those who sought riches saw that it was a tool that was best hoarded if they wished to increase their wealth. The lanterns grew bigger as an understanding of their working grew, centralizing power, giving a lever with which to move the world. That lever did not push the world in a good direction, not by default. The effluence came early on, while the lanterns were still being deployed. It had been harmless and turned toxic, thanks to a thresholder whose system of magic used the neutral effluence as raw fuel. There was something that changed in the character of the world on her entry, a fundamental shift in what was possible that I must admit frightened me to my core. It meant that at any moment, with the right person coming through the portal, what had been true the day before might be false the day after. I knew, as I watched the lanterns spread and change nothing, that I would need to create something robust, something that could withstand any challenge, a system of governance which was correct for every condition, which could withstand changes in the world. I had seen to my satisfaction that monarchies were inherently unstable things, dependent too much on a single person, even if they were a good person ¡ª a great person. Perhaps if immortality had been a gift I could have given to everyone, rather than an innate quality of the elves of my world, I would have felt differently. Then it would only have been a matter of arranging a redundant council of kings for a kingdom ¡ª and in fact, for the whole world, given that conflicts between kings were one of the main causes of strife. And yet I still didn¡¯t stumble on the idea of changing the culture and creating something from whole cloth. Culture was, at the time, invisible to me. I knew that people in different countries did things differently, but I was still mired in thinking of these as distinctions between races or peoples, something that was innate to them. I hadn¡¯t realized how malleable people were, or how easy they were to change, how much they wanted to change, and to change others. A good culture spreads itself, reinforces itself, has mechanisms of defense and processes of change, and I had simply been taking them as a given, something that needed to be worked around. I was a painter constrained to only a fraction of the canvas. But all that would come later, and I suppose is for another time. What I did instead was to engage in intensive study. I built the first of my hideyholes, places where I could ensconce myself away from civilization and wait for time to pass. My aim was to keep the enemy thresholders from impacting the world too much, while at the same time, running as many experiments as possible on the world at large. With the Age of Kings and the introduction of the lanterns, we were in a period of change, which wasn¡¯t the best time to understand what sweeping changes were needed. I look back on the bumps and bruises along the way, the needless deaths ¡ª and the needful ones too ¡ª and think that I can do better next time. The culture, having been built once, will necessarily be easier to build again in a different world. Chapter 133 - Break Time Perry listened to it all while floating high in the air above. There was nothing about the magic tablets. Fenilor was a talker, but he hadn¡¯t talked about the right things. If there was another session, if the tales continued, maybe there would be more. ¡°Did we learn anything from that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He is supremely arrogant, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°He¡¯s admitted to all his mistakes,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s arrogance, sure, but he¡¯s very clear about the mistakes he¡¯s made.¡± ¡°If you will permit some speculation, sir, I believe the arrogance shines through in how he speaks of these mistakes,¡± said Marchand. ¡°He claims that he is better now: wiser, stronger, less prone to error. There is a certain way of speaking about the mistakes of the past that indicates arrogance in the present. He has divorced himself from his errors, and speaks of them as though they happened to another person.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess.¡± He bit the inside of his cheek. ¡°And he wants to push forward with his experimentation, but to other worlds, with this one being considered a success.¡± He paused. ¡°How accurate is that?¡± ¡°Is what, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°The success of his project?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Because if they have developed something that actually works ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Exporting it wouldn¡¯t be the worst thing, I guess. And if we do what Hella wants, then developing an alliance of worlds would mean giving these people a place of prominence. They would want to spread their culture to every nation they could touch, and that¡¯s going to be a lot of nations.¡± ¡°By what metric would you define success, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°GDP per capita?¡± ¡°I am unfamiliar with the metric, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What, really?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Surely there¡¯s some sort of Earth 2 equivalent? Gross domestic product per capita?¡± ¡°If my interpretation is correct, the equivalent would be TSOS,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That would be the Total Sectoral Output Score, derived from tabulating economic activity across all economic sectors. But I wouldn¡¯t have the data necessary to guess at any individual symboulion¡¯s TSOS, nor do they have proper nations, nor does the concept of TSOS map cleanly to a library economy.¡± ¡°Right, GDP wouldn¡¯t either,¡± said Perry. ¡°And they wouldn¡¯t have HDI or any other kind of index. Or do they? Is there some sense by which we can tell whether a group of people are doing well or not?¡± ¡°As a rule, the symboulions eschew numbers,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe they find them depersonalizing. If a symboulion is large enough to need detailed tracking by numbers, it¡¯s likely too large.¡± ¡°Well that¡¯s dumb,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even a mid-sized company has to have a lot of numbers to track everything. The domes must need some method of knowing whether they¡¯re making shirts or food.¡± ¡°They do, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I should mention that the domes themselves don¡¯t manufacture clothing, but rather, the textiles that are used in ¡ª¡± ¡°Yes, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have done my best to understand things. But the lack of numbers means we¡¯re just ¡­ going with our gut?¡± ¡°It would perhaps be possible to get firm numbers from every golden dome,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That would be quite an undertaking, and I would imagine that they do not all use the same systems of accounting for production.¡± ¡°It¡¯s irrelevant,¡± said Perry. ¡°I just want to know whether it works, whether we can say that he succeeded or not, or if there are hidden downsides or problems lurking in the background.¡± ¡°The downsides are not hidden, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There are limits on what any one person can achieve, the Command Authorities are divorced from the concerns of the symboulions, useful technologies are being killed in the crib, and the intense localization means that even communal projects are limited in their grandeur. You are aware that Miss Richter considered television and movies to be the greatest human accomplishment?¡± ¡°I ¡­ think I heard her say that once,¡± said Perry. ¡°I assumed it was hyperbole.¡± ¡°I do not believe so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Power armor and artificial intelligence were one thing, but she believed that movies were an art form that had no comparison to anything else. Such an art form could not exist in this culture, not only because the technology would be stopped, but because they would not allow an enormous budget to go to something which was destined for wide release.¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°Still, giving up movies is ¡­ I mean, they could have low budget movies, things that were shot by amateurs, if they relaxed their technology restrictions. And the restrictions aren¡¯t permanent, they¡¯re really just there as guardrails. If you¡¯d come from the Earth I came from, you might wish that people had thought about and studied things before just releasing them into the world.¡± ¡°We had leaded gasoline too, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Not even what I was thinking about,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was thinking ¡­ social media, I guess. Three-year-olds given tablets. Crazy AI on the horizon that was going to get legislated twenty years too late, if it ever was.¡± ¡°I suppose it is my bias showing, sir, but I disagree with the sentiment,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s neither here nor there,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need a plan to defeat Fenilor, if he¡¯s not going to listen to us about the danger of going through a portal. And that means that we need to snatch up Nima, but do it without killing her, because Fenilor could just step out at basically any time he chooses if all he needs is to kill her.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve charted a course, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You know, you don¡¯t have to call me sir,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you¡¯re a thinking machine, if I¡¯m treating you on the same level as a person, if we¡¯re taking this partner thing seriously ¡­ it¡¯s not necessary.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll take it under advisement, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If I may be honest with you, I have often used the honorific in a sarcastic manner.¡± ¡°Yeah, I picked up on that,¡± said Perry. ¡°You do you, I guess.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ~~~~ Perry hovered over the twin islands of Berus and Thirlwell, high enough that he could see both of them. As usual, the Farfinder was taking its sweet time. He imagined that the reason was most likely prognostics, as it tended to be, but he really would have liked to confer with them. They had learned that Fenilor would show up to that tavern for story time, and he thought that would be an excellent time to drop a huge rock on him or fire a massive laser from space down on him. Their lack of weaponry was troubling, but he understood it: they skittered through the holes between universes, hid away from the powers that be, and made contact only when they could be sure that they weren¡¯t going to get swatted. Bristling with weapons would have only invited conflict. After half an hour, Perry stepped into the shelf to check on Mette. She was sweaty and flushed, but also awake, which was a good change. ¡°How are you doing?¡± he asked. ¡°Fine,¡± said Mette. ¡°Water?¡± Perry went to their supply of jugs and poured her a glass. He wished that they had filtration, and made a reminder to ask the Farfinder if they could supply him next time he was aboard the ship. They had already given him a lot, far more than he had thought they would. Mette was tapping away at a laptop computer that had a facsimile of the interface she¡¯d used aboard the Natrix. As soon as Perry had shown up, Marchand had begun augmenting it, because Marchand had connectivity and far more processing power. Perry set the glass on the table beside her and removed his helmet. ¡°Nothing?¡± asked Mette after she finished drinking down half the glass. Her eyes were still on the screen and her fingers were still hammering at the keys. ¡°Nope,¡± said Perry. ¡°We have time, for now. But if Fenilor thinks that he¡¯s outmatched, he might just leave this world to its own devices. Which would almost certainly kill us, if Eggy¡¯s math is right.¡± He paused. ¡°Is it right?¡± ¡°It¡¯s difficult to say,¡± said Mette. ¡°My brain isn¡¯t working at capacity, and mathematics was never a strong suit. I¡¯m working with March here, but ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°This is kind of ¡®fate of the world¡¯ stuff here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I am aware,¡± said Mette. ¡°It would be great if we didn¡¯t have to fight that guy again.¡± ¡°We?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Sorry, but no way am I letting you near him.¡± ¡°Give me a few days to recover,¡± said Mette. ¡°You¡¯re going to need as much help as you can get. If you¡¯d had me and Kes and the Farfinder we¡¯d have had him down in that mine. Hella is strong.¡± ¡°You almost died,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t want your blood on my hands.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll have my blood on hand next time,¡± said Mette. ¡°So you can bring me back, or a version of me, and I won¡¯t just be ¡­ nothing.¡± ¡°Why do you have a death wish?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Because I want my life to mean something,¡± said Mette. ¡°If I left the Natrix behind to go learn magic from the world and then sit out every fight because I¡¯m a clay doll, what was even the point?¡± Perry let out a breath. ¡°Alright. I can understand that. Just ¡­ try not to die.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve got a great track record of not dying, thanks,¡± said Mette. She had been watching him, but turned back to her laptop. ¡°I¡¯m unfortunately irrelevant to the conflict.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think you being relevant would be better, honestly,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you went down in the mine and a portal opened up, that might have been the endgame. He might have tried to go through, and I don¡¯t know that I would be able to stop him.¡± ¡°And you want to capture Nima, so that Fenilor can¡¯t kill her and slip away?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Even if the math isn¡¯t solid, we need to treat it as though it is,¡± said Perry. ¡°If there¡¯s a ten percent chance that this world gets nuked, that¡¯s too much of a risk.¡± ¡°And we ¡­ don¡¯t want to use nuclear weapons?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Because I might be able to make one.¡± ¡°Metaphorically nuked,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though yes, I would love another nuclear weapon, if you can do that without giving yourself radiation poisoning. It seems like a power that Fenilor knows not.¡± ¡°A what?¡± asked Mette. She was half-focused on her screen again. It was a world that she was well-acquainted with, though he knew it would only be a matter of time before she asked for more monitors and a desk instead of a bed. ¡°Nevermind,¡± said Perry. ¡°Cultural reference, I guess. And it¡¯s very possible that Fenilor does know about bombs, if he¡¯s been interviewing and interrogating a few dozen thresholders, even if they¡¯re just baby thresholders.¡± ¡°If he¡¯d interrogated me, he¡¯d have learned it,¡± said Mette while typing. There had been a two-second lag in her response. ¡°I¡¯m going out to check on the islands,¡± said Perry. ¡°I might fly down and talk to Dirk, if I can catch him.¡± He looked down at the power armor. ¡°I would really love to be able to keep this on though. I don¡¯t think Fenilor can track me, but if Third Fervor is within range, she can probably sense the portal opening, and that would be trouble for both of us.¡± ¡°How close are you to being an open secret?¡± asked Mette. ¡°That¡¯s for me to ask Dirk about,¡± said Perry. He rubbed his face. ¡°Flying with the sword is one thing, it can be explained as an unknown Implement, but the armor is something else.¡± He frowned. ¡°I guess I¡¯ll keep it on, but I don¡¯t want to wait for nightfall. I¡¯m not cut out to be a superhero.¡± ¡°A what?¡± asked Mette. ¡°The mask thing that Kes was doing?¡± ¡°It ¡ª yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s one thing to be a superhero when people know that¡¯s what you are, but it¡¯s another to just be some totally new thing. And I know Dirk would rather we keep things quiet, though there have been enough deaths and evacuations and everything else that word must be getting out.¡± ¡°Well, I¡¯ll be here,¡± said Mette. ¡°Trying to crack the math with Marchand¡¯s help, to make sure that it¡¯s reporting something fundamental. March seems to think that a single person doing math on their own is never worth paying much attention to, but I¡¯m not sure why.¡± ¡°March?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It is a good heuristic, sir,¡± said March. ¡°Though Eggy did have the mathematical solutions checked over by locals in a few cases, and much of it was built off the understandings of Hella¡¯s homeworld.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a good heuristic if you¡¯re in a huge society,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not in this case.¡± He turned to Mette. ¡°If you have hundreds of millions of people, then the crazies vastly outnumber the professionals, and math, unlike engineering, is a field that you don¡¯t need actual results in to, say, write a paper or something.¡± ¡°I¡¯m still not really clear on ¡®write a paper¡¯,¡± said Mette. She had a faint grin, just the smallest quirk of her lips. ¡°Or ¡®academics¡¯ really. Lots of strange things in your culture. And you said to me that this was how it was done at colleges, but then I came here, and it¡¯s really not.¡± ¡°Next world,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ll see. Or ¡­ we actually might make it back to one of the Earths at some point.¡± Her eyes flickered from her laptop screen up to him, then back when she saw his neutral expression. ¡°Work on the math. I¡¯ll be back.¡± ~~~~ The nanite listeners had weak range, but they had quite a bit of longevity, so when Perry descended toward Calamus, the network came to life. Weeks of recordings were dutifully encrypted and broadcast to Marchand, who dined on them with all the careful dignity of the consummate snoop. Perry didn¡¯t care about most of it. He cared about Berus only in the abstract, and given that he¡¯d spent most of his time there as a bodyguard, he had no strong feelings on the civilians. The public executions had certainly left their impression, but he wasn¡¯t going to hold that against them as a whole. He was certain that he¡¯d find things if he went digging into the transcripts that Marchand was preparing, but he thought that the vast bulk of it would be idle conversations and strictly procedural symboulion meetings. A slender fraction would be interesting or juicy in some way, but he had no real instinct for prying into the business of strangers. Marchand would flag anything that he really needed to hear about, which mostly meant things that directly touched one of the thresholders. ¡°It appears there are still counter-revolutionaries in the city, sir,¡± said Marchand after some time to process. ¡°I have taken the liberty of flagging several cells. I don¡¯t believe it would take long to investigate them.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Any of them connected to Third Fervor?¡± ¡°It does not appear so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I should think that she has been keeping her new queen company since our last parting. There have been mentions of her, but no one has attested her aid and I do not have her rather distinctive voice recorded.¡± ¡°Then we can pass the information on, but it¡¯s not relevant,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve found Dirk? Or one of him?¡± ¡°Just the one sir, yes,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve marked him on the HUD, though he¡¯s in the middle of a meeting at the moment. Would you like to listen in?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry, feeling no small amount of alarm. It felt like a betrayal of some kind. Dirk didn¡¯t know about the listeners, and definitely didn¡¯t know about the Farfinder. He would have to, eventually, if the long-term plans of the Farfinder were going to come to fruition. Dirk¡¯s love of secrets and spycraft meant that he was perhaps not the best person to be tasked with getting things going, but Dirk also seemed like he had a lot of leeway from the various Command Authorities, and possibly held some seats on them. ¡°We wait for him. Any idea when or where he¡¯ll be alone?¡± The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°He has a room in the building,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe it was the same room he was staying in before. We can enter from the balcony.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. So Perry spent the next two hours waiting in Dirk¡¯s room, first finding a place to sit, then trying to judge the sightlines and awkwardly shuffling over to a different chair. It would be better to rearrange things to make an imposing presence if he moved the furniture around, but he worried that Dirk would notice, and that the furniture that had been moved would say something about him. He didn¡¯t want to scare Dirk, but there was something about lying in wait in a darkened hotel room that appealed to him. He tried not to think about what to say, it wasn¡¯t like that, but the meeting was taking longer to get out than Perry had hoped, and the time was taking a while to pass. There was plenty of warning when Dirk came. He pushed into the room muttering to himself with papers in his hands, and threw them down onto an end table before starting to shrug out of his shirt. ¡°Long time no see,¡± said Perry, then immediately cursed himself, because he was fairly sure that was local to Earth. It had slipped out freely, with automatic translation, but he had no idea what cultural context had snuck into whatever Dirk heard from him. ¡°Fuck!¡± Dirk shouted, staggering backward and instantly finding something to use as a weapon, which happened to be a decorative vase. ¡°Is this room secure?¡± asked Perry. He had his helmet off, which should have made him less threatening, but Dirk wasn¡¯t treating him like less of a threat. ¡°What the fuck are you doing here?¡± asked Dirk, not dropping the vase. ¡°Needed to make contact,¡± said Perry. ¡°Here, catch.¡± He tossed a cell phone grabbed from the Farfinder over to Dirk, who caught it and eyed it suspiciously. He gently set the vase down. ¡°That will let me contact you. When it vibrates, slide your finger along the green symbol and it¡¯ll open a channel to communicate. You place the bottom to your mouth and the top to your ear.¡± The cell phone started ringing, and Dirk nearly dropped it, then lifted it to his face. When it kept ringing, he brought it backward, slid his finger along the answer button, then put it back in place. ¡°Testing,¡± intoned Marchand¡¯s voice. ¡°Hello?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°I do believe that¡¯s sufficient,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What ¡­ is this?¡± asked Dirk when the call hung up. ¡°Technology,¡± said Perry. ¡°Your people will be able to build one someday, if you spend a lot of time and effort on it. It¡¯s downstream of computers. We don¡¯t have the infrastructure for me to call you from anywhere in the world, but anywhere in the city, that we could probably manage.¡± The cell phone had a thick layer of nanites packed into it, and the whole thing was a mishmash of different technological levels that was thankfully working together without any active intervention by Perry, who had only a vague knowledge of how an Earth-modern cell phone functioned. ¡°This is what you came to bring me?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°I can think of a dozen better ways for you to have done that.¡± ¡°We¡¯re making moves,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wanted to check in. I know about your boy in Thirlwell.¡± ¡°You¡¯re going to have to be more specific,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Your clone,¡± said Perry. ¡°Again, you¡¯re going to have to be more specific,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Your clone who is also the spymaster,¡± said Perry with a sigh. Dirk gave nothing away. ¡°You know that they have Nima, right? And she¡¯s seen your face, which means she can blow your cover wide open.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a risk that my other is handling as best he can, I¡¯m sure,¡± said Dirk. ¡°He knows that Nima has seen me. The scheme wasn¡¯t exactly decided on with thresholders in mind. Hell, I wouldn¡¯t have come here if I had realized how much danger I¡¯d be putting my other in. He¡¯s running the tendrils of the counter-revolution in Thirlwell under his name, feeding information back to me, but we were hoping that the two of us would never cross paths ¡ª that our agents would never see us. That was part of why I was set up in the sticks with you and Moss.¡± He was getting calmer by the minute, which wasn¡¯t exactly what Perry wanted. ¡°Do you have a line on Nima?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Meaning what?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°You¡¯re the one with a map of Thirlwell. You¡¯re the one who slipped a clone in and then magicked him back out. I could probably tell you where she is, but are you proposing a prison break for someone who tried to kill you? A prison break in a foreign country where you previously engaged in a different prison break?¡± ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s pretty much the gist of it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though that other prison break was my clone.¡± ¡°You¡¯re responsible for the things your clones do,¡± said Dirk, rubbing his temples. ¡°You understand that, right? And you pulled him out, I know you must have.¡± ¡°Maybe, maybe not,¡± said Perry. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯m going to go do that tonight. I¡¯m pretty sure that Third Fervor needs to sleep, and I¡¯m hoping that I can get some sense of when that is. All I¡¯ll need to do is snatch up Nima and put her in a jail cell, which is basically where she is already. It¡¯s a change in ownership.¡± ¡°I strongly advise against it,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Fuck, you¡¯re going to do it anyway, aren¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Fate of the world might be at stake,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you have any tools you¡¯ve been holding back on, now might be the time to hand them over to me.¡± ¡°You already have a very expensive cloning machine that I know you¡¯re not going to give back. Better you have it than to have it in enemy hands, but,¡± he sighed, deflating. ¡°You know, I like to have plans, and it seems that you like to beat those plans to death.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry, but it was clear from his voice that he wasn¡¯t sorry at all. ¡°There¡¯s one thing,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯ll take some time to get to you, but it¡¯s obvious enough that it keeps needing to get squashed down ¡ª masks.¡± ¡°Masks?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve made masks, they don¡¯t work well with the helmet, and they take too much time and effort to get good. If I had a year in this world, then maybe, but time isn¡¯t on my side.¡± It might be, actually, if he could depend upon his enemies to sit still, but it seemed like all of them but Nima were waiting to pull various triggers. In theory, Third Fervor was trying to ensure the success of the Last Queen while Fenilor was waiting for Thirlwell to ripen into readiness to be taken over by the culture, but in practice it was much more questionable. ¡°There¡¯s a technique for universal masks,¡± said Dirk. ¡°They¡¯re weaker, but it doesn¡¯t matter who made it, because it can be used by anyone.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you can get me one of those?¡± Dirk nodded slowly. ¡°Not as good as making it yourself. And we didn¡¯t bring any along on the ship, but you can move through the air at speed, faster than an airship, right?¡± ¡°Not actually,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m slower than an airship that¡¯s going fast. What I have to do instead is go straight up until the air gets thin enough that there¡¯s no drag, and then I can go faster than the speed of sound.¡± Dirk let out a breath. ¡°Well, right, I can see where that would be much different.¡± ¡°It takes time to go around the planet like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Give me an address and I can get there, if there¡¯s firepower in it for me.¡± That word, ¡®firepower¡¯, translated awkwardly. ¡°You can drop down anywhere on the planet?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°And that¡¯s a power that we¡¯ll have too someday?¡± ¡°Might be,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or you might just never push technology far enough to see it. I can see how it would rankle. Everything being local is important, that¡¯s the culture, but when you¡¯re not more than two hours away from anywhere, local gets pretty blurred.¡± ¡°Tourists and immigrants are already a problem,¡± said Dirk with a distant voice. He returned his attention to Perry. ¡°Tetrankersh, Old Road Way, 342. You¡¯ll find a familiar face there. Tell him you have my authorization, which might not be enough for you, but you¡¯ll get a mask for you and yours. Don¡¯t trade them where the enemy can see, they¡¯ll just think that it¡¯s something you made. But I assume you¡¯ll get a long speech about it from him.¡± ¡°Another Dirk?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Another Moss.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Shit. I guess ¡­ I knew logically that he didn¡¯t die for good.¡± ¡°There¡¯s another in the city already,¡± said Dirk. ¡°We made him before we took the machine apart. I¡¯m telling you now because I think you already know.¡± He was watching Perry¡¯s face as he said it. ¡°Or maybe not.¡± ¡°Seems like a security risk,¡± said Perry. ¡°There were plenty of people who saw Moss die, and he¡¯s a dwarf, distinctive in these parts.¡± ¡°He¡¯s a necessary guy,¡± said Dirk. ¡°We want the domes to go up as fast as possible. The sooner we have these people converted over to the proper way of doing things, the more attention we can focus on rowdy neighbors.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then I¡¯m taking off.¡± He finally stood from his chair, and felt how much he towered over Dirk. ¡°Probably after Nima first. Be warned, I guess, that it might get hairy.¡± ¡°Not much I can do about it,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Try not to get me or my clones killed, if you can help it, but I worry that even saying that to you makes it more likely.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll be fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll be in and out.¡± ~~~~ Perry had wanted to wait until the Farfinder checked in again, but time passed, and they didn¡¯t show up. He wanted to go get the masks that Dirk had promised, but that would take time, and Perry wanted to close off the chance that Fenilor would snatch her first. It was what Perry would do, if he was in the same position, going up against someone he wasn¡¯t sure he could beat. He checked in on Mette for a third time, to find her asleep with her laptop open. He closed it and made sure that the jury-rigged power supply was still functional. It was running off something that looked like a car battery, but would apparently last for a full year, and could be recharged off of Marchand¡¯s reactor. The Farfinder had accumulated a lot of things on their jaunts across the multiverse, and hadn¡¯t been shy about giving him some utility. There were five more cell phones like the one he¡¯d given Dirk, and two more laptops. All of it had been given without conditions. Perry found himself floating in the air in the middle of the night, which was becoming a running theme for this world. He had the spot where Nima was being held identified thanks to the listeners that were scattered around Thirlwell. He was high enough up that the ground was very far below him, far enough that he hoped to be beyond the range of spotters. The nanites had recorded plenty of conversations here, too, and enough of the bigger clusters had floated into the throne room as well as the royal bedroom that Perry had a handle on Third Fervor¡¯s schedule and the new queen¡¯s demands. It seemed that they were sharing a bed together, which definitely raised Perry¡¯s eyebrow, but it was also chaste, which seemed like a weird half-measure. Perry waited until Third Fervor had been asleep for half an hour, then descended down, dropping like a stone. He would be visible to spotters, if they had motion-tracking masks, but he was hoping the coverage was bad. There didn¡¯t seem to be more than a small team surrounding the upscale jail for diplomats that Nima was being held in, and he could get out quickly, he was pretty sure. The biggest thing was accomplishing it all fast, then getting out before getting in yet another scrap with Third Fervor. Perry didn¡¯t use the sword to slow himself until he was just above the roof, but landed gently, whisper-quiet. He placed his hand on the roof, and Marchand did a scan of the interior, locating Nima sleeping on a bed with her amulet around her neck. There were other people in the building with her, but he was pretty sure that they were guards. Two of them were awake, sitting at a table together but not talking. ¡°The windows are barred, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They would be trivial to go through, but might alert our quarry.¡± ¡°Still no word from the Farfinder?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No email, no message telling us that this is a terrible idea?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Which means that it¡¯s a good idea,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, we¡¯re going to have to strand her somewhere, and it would be best if we could put her in the brig on their ship.¡± ¡°There has been no word, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry considered this. He knew their capabilities pretty well. They would have run prognostics to get a guess at how the future was going to go, and had probably foreseen this, since it wasn¡¯t a high-variance event. They were also probably monitoring him in real time, which meant that they would have direct eyes on Third Fervor. In a sense, he was depending on them to stop him if he tried to do something that was completely ill-advised, though he was pretty sure that their primary method of movement ¡ª opening doors ¡ª had a strong chance of triggering Third Fervor¡¯s sense of space. Still, they could send him a ¡®please don¡¯t¡¯ email. ¡°We¡¯re going in,¡± said Perry. ¡°You think I can smash through the window?¡± ¡°I think you would have more luck smashing through the roof, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It appears the designers did not account for overwhelming force being applied from above. This will, however, alert the guards and wake Nima.¡± ¡°Then we get her out of here,¡± said Perry. ¡°Kicking and screaming, if need be.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve marked the point of entry, and I suggest a straight-legged dropped that should smash through, if performed from a height of one hundred feet. Your final speed will be fifty-five miles an hour. I should warn that it will be quite loud.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not going to cause problems for the suit?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. The HUD flashed an arrow that pointed up, and when Perry looked, there was a ghostly image showing him where to drop from. ¡°How much does she weigh?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I do not know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She seems quite slender, but we have limited data to work with. I would guess one hundred and ten pounds.¡± ¡°The sword gets sluggish at over a hundred pounds,¡± said Perry with a frown. ¡°Not much room for error.¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Are you rethinking this plan?¡± ¡°Yes, obviously,¡± said Perry. ¡°Add on her armor, that¡¯s ¡­ how much? One thirty?¡± ¡°Based on the testing done before the satellite launch, that should result in a slowdown of approximately forty percent,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though it has been to my consternation that our graphing never looked proper.¡± Reluctantly, he rose to the spot. This prison break had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was seeming like less and less of a good idea, particularly because the sword only went about thirty miles an hour. It was like using a moped for a getaway vehicle. ¡°Don¡¯t shoot her,¡± said Perry once he was in position. ¡°This is a capture mission. We shoot her, there¡¯s a chance that a portal opens up right next to Fenilor, and I think he would take it in spite of our warnings. We¡¯re going to wrap our arms around her and lock her in place, make sure that she can¡¯t get out, then fly away, ideally with her mouth gagged somehow.¡± ¡°I am ready, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry dropped, legs held together like he was doing a jackknife dive. He tensed his whole body, though he could feel that the armor was also tensed, servos and hydraulics locked into place to minimize the impact. There was just enough time to regret the plan while he fell. He got through the first step of mentally comparing it to a car accident, except the armor didn¡¯t have crumple zones. He crashed down through the roof, breaking through wood and tile, shattering the floor when he landed and then stopping there, having taken most of the impact in his legs. He rose as the alerts splashed across his HUD, a headache blossoming in the back of his skull, but the power of the second sphere had held him together, and any damage to the armor would be temporary. He was surprisingly no worse for the impact, which he¡¯d been second-guessing for the duration of the fall. Nima was already getting out of bed, with her armor spreading over her. Perry rushed her, leaving his sword aside, tackling her back down onto the bed and wrapping her in a tight hug that squeezed the air from her lungs. He was on top of her, helmet pushed against her face, and he would need her the other way, so he could crush her arms against her chest and get her immobile. It would have been simple to kill her, even with the armor around her. He could have exerted the strength necessary to crush her, to bend the metal and squish the flesh beneath, to crack bones open and let the marrow empty out. She scratched at his chest with metal claws as he flipped her over, sending up a screech of metal on metal. She had gouged surprisingly deep, the magic of her armor better than the superscience alloy, but then she was facing away from him, and he was overpowering her. He gripped one of her wrists and forced it to her chest as she tried to kick at him, then grabbed the other wrist and brought it down too. He was crushing her, and could hear her shallow breaths as she wriggled and struggled beneath him. When her other wrist was pinned in front of her, and a single arm of Perry¡¯s to keep them both in place, he finally stood up, the ruined bed beneath them. He called his sword to him and tested it. She was heavier than he had expected, but not enough that the sword was sluggish ¡ª she was a slender elf, after all, and it wasn¡¯t a deceptive sort of slenderness. He started rising through the air just as the guards burst into the room with their swords drawn. The shoulder gun rose and Perry shouted ¡°No!¡± before it could fire. He was up and out of the room, scraping back through a hole that was too small for the two of them, then out into the night sky, rising more slowly than he would have liked. He was going straight up, aiming for the stars. Nima howled and kicked, but Perry had his back bent so she had trouble hitting him. She got in a good one every now and then, with little teeth protruding from her armor, but once they were a half mile in the air, she stopped and quieted down, probably because Perry had angled himself so that she and the sword were beneath him. The threat of being dropped was probably very clear in her mind. ¡°Status on Third Fervor?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Still asleep, as far as I can tell, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯ll report to her soon though.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t see how, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They have no telephones, no workable radio, and no semaphore system in place. We will be over the ocean shortly, beyond her ability to find us.¡± Perry mulled that over. His heart was racing, and he stilled it, redirecting the energy that was pulsing through his body, stilling everything and relaxing his muscles, save for his iron grip on Nima. Unless there was a dramatic change, it seemed like he was going to get away with it. Third Fervor could teleport, but she would need to be able to spot him, and so far as Perry knew, she couldn¡¯t. ¡°Why are you doing this?¡± asked Nima. Her voice was soft and on the edge of tears. Maybe she was crying beneath her fanciful helmet. ¡°I¡¯m taking you out of the game,¡± said Perry. ¡°You tried to kill me.¡± She choked out a sob. ¡°I don¡¯t want to fight.¡± ¡°Tough shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not going to kill you, just put you somewhere that Third Fervor doesn¡¯t have you, where you¡¯ll be safe from Fenilor.¡± ¡°Who the hell is Fenilor?¡± asked Nima, giving a token struggle that didn¡¯t come close to risking her getting dropped. ¡°He¡¯s the king killer,¡± said Perry. He turned their angle, so they were going back toward Berus, which would quickly take them over the water. He thought she might struggle more then, because it would change from a certain death to an uncertain one. When he looked down, he felt some vertigo, which was unusual for him. They were high enough up that it was almost certainly fatal. ¡°You¡¯re the king killer,¡± said Nima. ¡°Just one of them,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was a misunderstanding.¡± ¡°Where are you taking me?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Somewhere safe,¡± said Perry. ¡°Somewhere that Fenilor can¡¯t find you. You¡¯ve been sitting tight, it¡¯s going to be more of that.¡± They flew for another mile, three minutes, with no commentary from Nima. ¡°I could have killed you,¡± she said. ¡°Without the armor, you were vulnerable. I didn¡¯t understand it until after I was long gone.¡± He was surprised by the bitterness in her voice. She was talking about Kes, not about Perry, but she had no way of knowing that. ¡°You were always going to lose,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fenilor is your enemy, not me, and if you ever got within a mile of him, and he wanted to kill you, you would be dead. I¡¯m not sure I can beat him.¡± Red alarms went off on the HUD, flashing and pointing arrows, showing picture-in-picture of the big important thing that was apparently happening. Perry had thought it would be Third Fervor opening portals to come at him, some kind of insane aerial combat with Nima figuratively strapped to his chest, but when he looked at the image, it was something far, far worse: Fenilor was there, inexplicably, floating in the air with his spear out and his armor encasing him. ¡°Peregrin,¡± he said as Perry turned to face him. ¡°I believe there¡¯s been some misunderstanding, because that¡¯s my prey you¡¯ve captured.¡± Chapter 134 - Dogfight Perry gripped Nima tightly. She had gone very still. Perry¡¯s sword was held out in front of him, allowing both of them to hover. The city was still perilously close to them, its lights well in view, and Fenilor was close enough that he didn¡¯t have to raise his voice all that much. ¡°Now, I can think of two reasons you¡¯d have snatched her,¡± Fenilor mused. ¡°The first is to protect her from me, while the second is to kill her yourself ¡ª though you could easily do that at any moment, from the looks of it.¡± ¡°I¡¯d prefer not to fight you now,¡± said Perry. ¡°As you can imagine, I have other things on my mind.¡± ¡°You listened to my stories, I suppose?¡± asked Fenilor. His feet dangled below him. If not for the enhancements of the video system, he would have been difficult to see in the dim light of the stars and moon. ¡°I did,¡± said Perry. ¡°Look, I¡¯ll drop her if I have to. She hits the water, she dies, and it¡¯s likely the portal opens. Is that where we¡¯re at? Are you pushing to leave this place?¡± ¡°Oh, no, not at all,¡± said Fenilor. After having listened to the recordings for so long, Perry could hear the faint smile much easier. ¡°There¡¯s a monarchy to destroy, after all, and I had rather hoped to get to the end of my story. You were going to release it, weren¡¯t you? The people have a right to know. I think it will be good for them, and for the culture.¡± ¡°Then we¡¯ll be on our way,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, no,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I¡¯ll take her and keep her, to exit this world on my own terms.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not going to be kept by anyone,¡± said Nima, struggling against Perry¡¯s arm, which seemed more for emphasis than because she thought she could escape. Escape meant dropping a mile to the dark water below. ¡°You have told me you aim to prevent me from taking a portal out,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You claim it¡¯s the end of the universe.¡± ¡°No, just the planet, probably,¡± said Perry. He tried to control his voice as much as possible. Fenilor could hear lies with at least a little accuracy. ¡°That stands. I believe it.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You believe it less than you say that you do. And you seem to have decided on my death, if you can manage it, which I¡¯m skeptical you can. You see her as a way out for me, and assume that I would take that door before my work is done. You think I fear you.¡± ¡°You ran,¡± said Perry. ¡°You ran when you could have killed me.¡± ¡°I ran for a better battlefield,¡± said Fenilor. The hand that wasn¡¯t holding the spear stretched wide, sweeping over the sea. ¡°And here you are, unable to assume your wolf form in the air, without your companion, constrained by the need to carry your precious cargo. It does seem as though this battlefield suits me.¡± The armor was the same that Fenilor had been wearing before, the one that pulled off like it was fabric. The spear was the same too, with the puff of red beneath its point. Perry wasn¡¯t sure which one of those provided flight, but in theory Fenilor wouldn¡¯t have access to his entire inventory while in the air. That wasn¡¯t nothing. Perry had access to the shelf space, which he could dump Nima in if he absolutely had to ¡ª though Mette was there, along with several things he really didn¡¯t want to be destroyed. The shelf space made a terrible prison if you didn¡¯t latch someone in place. Worse, if the alarm had been raised, Third Fervor might sense the shelf space opening and closing, depending on how good her magical senses were. In theory, there was still time. ¡°You¡¯re contemplating it,¡± said Fenilor. Again, there was a soft smile in his voice, not a manic villainous grin, but the knowing smile of someone who¡¯s seen enough battles to judge his enemies. ¡°Wolf form?¡± asked Nima. She was breathing quickly, going back into panic mode again. The air was thinner this high up, which probably didn¡¯t help. ¡°Ah, she knows little,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°But weren¡¯t the two of you allies, for a time?¡± ¡°He didn¡¯t tell me anything,¡± said Nima. ¡°He doesn¡¯t care if I live or die.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Fenilor, shaking his head. ¡°I suppose he doesn¡¯t. But you are a tool to him, one that still has at least one use left.¡± He raised his hand to point at her. ¡°Tell me, is that armor bound to you? Or would it confer its power on anyone else?¡± ¡°It¡¯s bound,¡± said Nima. ¡°Tightly.¡± ¡°Ah, a shame,¡± said Fenilor, apparently taking her at her word. She must have passed his power¡¯s sniff test. ¡°Perry, I never asked, is yours bound?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ah, lies,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I have come to expect them of you, when it comes to sensitive matters. Technology, I have found, is unreliable, too much the work of an entire civilization.¡± ¡°I would love to debate the structure of societies,¡± said Perry. ¡°Unfortunately, I have to get going.¡± ¡°Would you really enjoy it?¡± asked Fenilor, tilting his head to the side. ¡°Talking about the structure of societies?¡± ¡°You can tell when people are lying,¡± said Perry. ¡°But sure. I didn¡¯t get enough of your thoughts on this project from your stories. I can give you something that will let us talk to each other at a distance, if trading stories the other way doesn¡¯t work for you.¡± ¡°I¡¯m still eagerly waiting to hear how I am supposed to destroy the world,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°A confluence of dread physics, with mathematics to back it up. Though of course I don¡¯t believe it, and you must realize that if it were a problem, it would be one that I would deal with in that slow, grinding way that¡¯s sometimes necessary.¡± ¡°Then there¡¯s no need to fight here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m just taking a piece off the board.¡± Nima kicked at him, which caused a scraping of metal against metal. ¡°Or I could take her out entirely,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You¡¯re worried about the end of this world, but if she died, you could simply leave through the portal.¡± He paused, and Perry felt some expectation that he should weigh that option. ¡°I don¡¯t intend to leave now. I can easily wait another five years.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t take a way out, not like that, not when it left people at risk,¡± said Perry. He hesitated. He didn¡¯t want to reveal the Farfinder, not if they didn¡¯t already know. But that was probably a way that might get around universe implosion. ¡°I might have a method that would get you out of here without the risk.¡± ¡°Oh?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°Not entirely a lie, that one.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°But not without its costs, its risks. I can tell you more, under better circumstances.¡± He could feel the battle coming. He was certain they could all feel it. ¡°You should also know that every minute we stay here, Third Fervor gets closer to waking up, and a four-way fight isn¡¯t what anyone wants, not even Nima.¡± ¡°I would take my chances,¡± said Nima. Her voice had gone cold. Perry squeezed her tighter. ¡°I think I¡¯ll kill her then, if it¡¯s all the same to you,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Or you could do the honors. The portal will open, I have no intention to go through, and we can avoid a fight over this trifle of a woman.¡± ¡°Hey,¡± said Nima, though with Perry¡¯s grip on her she was having trouble drawing breath. ¡°I don¡¯t trust you,¡± said Perry. ¡°And Nima doesn¡¯t need to die, she can just be beaten. I know you make a habit of killing, but the only thing she did wrong was trying to kill me.¡± The three of them floated in the dark air for a bit. Clouds moved to obscure the moon. Perry wasn¡¯t sure why he was making a plea for Nima¡¯s life. He owed her nothing. But she hadn¡¯t come at Kes with full force, not at first, and there was something pathetic about her. She didn¡¯t seem suited to the thresholding life. The next world wasn¡¯t liable to change that, but still, her death wouldn¡¯t actually accomplish anything. He really would rather have just kept her away from Fenilor. ¡°Sir, time is limited,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I would suggest we attempt to disengage.¡± ¡°Third Fervor?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I am having difficulty with tracking, given how little nanomaterial we have scattered, but she will be woken up soon. If we wish to have an aerial encounter ¡ª¡± ¡°We don¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°You speak with your technology,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°What does it tell you, I wonder?¡± ¡°He says it¡¯s time to get going,¡± said Perry. ¡°So if you¡¯re going to attack, you had better do it now.¡± Fenilor shifted his grip on the spear, drew it back, then launched it at full force. As soon as Fenilor had cocked it back, Perry had released the power of the sword, causing them to start plummeting far faster than the sword could move them. Fenilor tracked them, but the spear went sailing over their heads. Perry¡¯s whole body had been tense and waiting for the attack, even if that tension wouldn¡¯t help him in the air. ¡°Nice try, loser,¡± said Perry, still clutching Nima tight. He began moving them away at what felt like a plodding speed when compared to how fast gravity could pull them. Fenilor had started to drop the moment the spear had left his hand, then disappeared, captured an instant later by the HUD¡¯s picture-in-picture, having teleported to the spear, which had sailed through the air. He flew up, angled his spear for another throw, and again Perry dropped down to avoid it. The spear came close this time, and it was only because of Marchand¡¯s tracking that Perry had been able to see it coming straight for his back. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry as the spear continued on through the night. In an aerial battle, Perry wasn¡¯t sure he could win, but he definitely couldn¡¯t win while holding onto Nima. There were only so many times Perry could drop to avoid the spear, and Fenilor¡¯s aim would improve. Once they hit the ocean, Perry would be down to the relatively sedate movement of the sword, and that would leave him dead in the water. Perry opened the shelf space, threw Nima into it, then sealed it shut again before she could get out. Mette was just going to have to deal with that problem on her own while Perry handled the battle. ~~~~ Mette woke up with a start. She was in bed and feeling gross. The sweat on her chest had dried into sticky residue, but there was a fresh layer beneath the sheets, making them damp and disgusting. The computer, a ¡°laptop¡±, was on her stomach and not helping matters, as much as the struggling fan was making an effort. She checked the machine over and then set it to the side, making sure that the cord was still plugged in and the thing wasn¡¯t tangled. It had an enormous amount of computing power unless compared to Marchand or the central computer of the Natrix, and even then, it wasn¡¯t that far off. It was only once she had set the laptop to the side that she realized that Nima was standing at the ¡°entrance¡± to the shelf space. That must have been what woke her up. ¡°Oh,¡± said Mette. ¡°Shit.¡± Nima was in her full armor, which looked beautiful on her, and had grabbed one of the spare weapons that sat next to the entrance to the shelf space. She didn¡¯t look like she knew how to use a sword very well, but Mette didn¡¯t know how to use a sword either. ¡°He snatched me up,¡± said Nima. ¡°Then threw me in here.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Mette. ¡°Are you ¡­ okay?¡± ¡°They¡¯re fighting out there,¡± said Nima. She looked around, though she¡¯d been here before. ¡°There¡¯s no way out of here?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°If he dies, we¡¯re dead?¡± asked Nima. She was asking for confirmation, not because she didn¡¯t know the answer. ¡°Unless someone else finds the ring before we run out of, uh,¡± Mette paused. ¡°We have lanterns here, and I think all the fuels necessary to keep us alive for a very long time: air, water, food. So we would run into problems with either imbalances that I might not be able to detect, or effluence.¡± She paused again. ¡°Are you going to kill me?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima. She looked at the sword she was holding, then back at Mette. ¡°Perry didn¡¯t want to put me in here with you. The only reason he did is because he knew that I wouldn¡¯t hurt you.¡± Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. ¡°He didn¡¯t know,¡± said Mette. She swallowed. ¡°Not for certain.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima. ¡°I suppose not.¡± The armor covering her face pulled back, but the rest stayed in place. Her skin was pale. She seemed sad. ¡°I ¡­ might have to take you hostage.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Mette. She shifted beneath her blanket. There were no weapons nearby. Kes had beaten her, or almost beaten her, and that was without being a werewolf. Mette stood a chance, she thought. She didn¡¯t want to fight though. ¡°I was poisoned. I¡¯m still in recovery.¡± She had very little in the way of defenses. If she could get her hands on a lantern, she could turn it into a weapon, but Nima knew lanterns too, and trying to pull a fast one probably wouldn¡¯t work, even if Nima gave Mette the chance. And again, the idea of fighting felt wrong. ¡°Poisoned by who?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Fenilor,¡± said Mette. ¡°That¡¯s who Perry is fighting outside?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Nima. Her lips went tight. ¡°You don¡¯t want to be in this any more than I do.¡± ¡°I want pieces of it,¡± said Mette. ¡°I want the magic, the new worlds, the power.¡± She folded her hands in her lap. In spite of what she¡¯d said about the poison, and the sweat that coated her body, she was feeling better. It would be better to play sick though. Mette was unfortunately not very good at lying, especially not to someone she¡¯d considered a friend. ¡°You admit to wanting power?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I had power,¡± said Mette. ¡°I was, arguably, the second most powerful person on my planet, at least before the thresholders showed up. I don¡¯t think it¡¯s bad to want power, if you want it for a reason, if it¡¯s not just power for the sake of power.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Nima. ¡°Why do you want power then?¡± ¡°Power is possibility,¡± said Mette. ¡°It¡¯s a way of escaping constraints, having options. It¡¯s the reason I was always after power, even back on Esperide. With what I know now ¡­ you know the world I came from.¡± ¡°I know what you¡¯ve told me,¡± said Nima. She stepped closer, holding the sword casually, no longer like a weapon. Her eyes flickered to the cloning machine, which was in pieces behind Mette, shoved rudely into place, but she didn¡¯t ask about it. She had been inside the shelf, and would know that the machine was new. ¡°We were hanging in there,¡± said Mette. ¡°Being worn down more with every passing year, but maybe we could have made it to the inflection point, where there were enough of us that we could rebuild what we had lost. Maybe we were even past the inflection point, with all the young people on board. But the many worlds ¡­ it¡¯s something else.¡± ¡°You abandoned your people,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯ve always tried to be polite about that, but I don¡¯t understand it.¡± Her hand gripped her sword, tensing for a moment before releasing. ¡°I don¡¯t respect it.¡± ¡°You defected against Perry,¡± said Mette. She had almost called him Kes. ¡°I know you disagreed with him, with them, the ¡­ executioners. When you went to Thirlwell and threw yourself at Third Fervor¡¯s feet, did that clarify anything?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima. ¡°I don¡¯t think she has the right of it. We¡¯ve spoken at length, and ¡­ she¡¯s a lackey. I think I would prefer a zealot. But Perry doesn¡¯t care.¡± ¡°He does,¡± said Mette. ¡°He comes from a different world, one where they thought it was fine for many different people to have different cultures and customs.¡± ¡°The people here want a single culture,¡± said Nima. ¡°They want to wipe everything away.¡± ¡°It¡¯s complicated,¡± said Mette. ¡°They want everything local for a reason. I¡¯m not sure it¡¯s workable in the long run, but the idea is that everyone adapts the culture to their own needs. The food is different the world over, the clothes are ¡ª well, the clothes come from the lanterns, so they¡¯re somewhat the same ¡ª but they¡¯re not a monoculture.¡± ¡°You saw what they did,¡± said Nima. ¡°They¡¯re murderers.¡± ¡°They¡¯re not a monoculture,¡± said Mette. ¡°Killing people like that isn¡¯t something that the rest of the world endorses.¡± ¡°But they don¡¯t move to stop it,¡± said Nima. ¡°They don¡¯t think they have the right,¡± said Mette. ¡°The airship we came on, the people that came to help, they believe that a group of people need to have the right to determine their own fate. And Nima, that¡¯s what I believe too. It¡¯s one of the reasons that I helped to replace the leadership on the Natrix. Sometimes that¡¯s necessary, if the people at the top aren¡¯t doing what they should be doing.¡± Nima shook her head. ¡°I liked you better when you didn¡¯t argue with me.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Mette, and she really did mean it. Sometimes talking about the big scary things like who should govern and how seemed to turn people against each other. It had been like that on the Natrix too. People got quite heated. Mette had always liked focusing on technical and logistical problems better. Nima looked back at the entryway to the shelf space, which had no particular features to set itself apart aside from how the shelving was arranged. ¡°Do we just ¡­ wait?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I think so,¡± said Mette. ¡°I was sleeping before you got in here. There¡¯s a cot somewhere, if you wanted to nap.¡± Nima laughed. ¡°I still might need to take you hostage.¡± She said it with a bit of embarrassment. ¡°Perry doesn¡¯t want to kill you,¡± said Mette. ¡°He really doesn¡¯t. Even after what you tried to pull, he would rather just ¡­ send you off to another world, I guess, to find your place among the thresholders.¡± ¡°More killing,¡± said Nima. ¡°More death. I don¡¯t want that for myself.¡± ¡°What happens next depends on whether Perry wins against Fenilor,¡± said Mette. ¡°Perry is open to talking with you, to working things out, just remember that.¡± ¡°Do you think he¡¯ll win?¡± asked Nima. Mette shrugged. ¡°I¡¯ve learned to always bet on Perry.¡± ~~~~ Even with Nima gone, Perry was losing the fight. They were descending together, and when Perry tried to go in for an attack, Fenilor would move away. Fenilor hadn¡¯t changed weapons or armor yet, which was a sign he thought that he was winning. Still, the spear hadn¡¯t made contact yet, which was at least something. Perry had blocked it directly with the sword twice, which let out a clarion ring when it happened, but it seemed as though Fenilor was stepping it up. For all Perry knew, he was literally getting better with every throw. They had descended almost a half mile, leaving the ocean much closer beneath them than it had been before. Perry wasn¡¯t sure what he was going to do when they hit the water, which they surely would if he had to keep dodging by dropping. Every time Fenilor released the spear, he dropped too, but he could teleport to the spear and recover it that way, flying up once he¡¯d grabbed it if need be. Fenilor drew the spear back again, and Perry held his sword out in front of him to block. His plan was different this time, and also considerably stupider. When the spear came in at terrifying speeds, he let go of his sword and caught the spear with both hands, like clapping a mosquito out of the air. Perry was shocked that it had actually worked. He hadn¡¯t thought too far ahead with the whole ¡°catch the spear¡± plan, and had really thought that the end result might be him gripping the shaft of the spear while it pierced him through. In spite of the sword falling away, Perry was simply hovering in the air. The HUD was tracking Fenilor, who was falling to the water below with no signs of stopping. ¡°It can¡¯t be that easy,¡± said Perry as he spun the spear around and commanded his sword back up to him. He could feel the energy of the spear, and with a pulse of his will, he began flying with it. He was faster than with the sword, but there was an ebb and flow to it which hadn¡¯t been there with the sword, a sense that he was draining some internal supply and would be left swooping up and down. Fenilor appeared in front of Perry, gripping the other end of the spear. He tried to yank it away, but the power armor had enormous grip strength. Fenilor thrust a hand out and summoned a dagger dripping with black ichor from among the ghostly array of weapons, clearly intending to fight while both held onto the weapon. Perry was close enough to strike out though, and landed a haymaker that sent Fenilor tumbling away. It should have killed him, or at least broken ribs. The power armor was just that strong, and whatever ability Fenilor¡¯s ski-mask armor had, the shoulder gun was at least partially effective against it. Perry cocked back his elbow, and when Fenilor appeared again, Perry¡¯s fist snapped forward with a modified armor-augmented Super Moon Punch. The poisoned blade went spinning away as Fenilor fell, and the body went limp, rag-dolling through the air, arms and legs flapping in the wind. Perry almost went after him, trying to finish the fight then and there, because if the portal opened at the wrong moment, and Fenilor wasn¡¯t dead, he could slip through just as easily. Perry had just begun to drop down using the unfamiliar power of the spear when Fenilor gained control of his limbs. Ghostly implements spread out from him in both directions, then his armor changed around him to something gleaming and chrome. A giant sword with angry angles appeared in his hand. Perry was worried that the spear would disappear, but it stayed in his hands, apparently his for as long as he could keep a grip on it. Fenilor moved up like he¡¯d been launched, a rapid change in motion that set the power armor¡¯s warnings off. Fenilor lost speed as he drew closer, but he swung the sword around, twisting his body and aiming for a hard slice through Perry¡¯s midsection. Perry brought the spear up to block, hoping that it would be sturdy enough to survive the hit, and locked his body in place. The sword hit the shaft and bounced off it, sending the two of them apart, and Fenilor started falling back down to the ocean again. Perry tested the spear once, then used its full power. It was much faster than the sword, faster than he¡¯d ever seen Fenilor go with it, but the flight wasn¡¯t agnostic to his elevation, it was faster when he was descending, like a paper airplane picking up speed as it went into a dive. Fenilor was again launched through the air by some unseen force or magic, and Perry turned around to hold the spear out again. They were far enough away that there was a full second, enough time for Perry to get the spear into position and attempt to anticipate the incoming strike. This time, there was no big swing, and they ended up crashing into each other, with the spear and sword both slipping against armor before they tumbled away from each other. Perry righted himself just in time to get hit again, harder this time but with little damage to speak of, at least judging by the reports that Marchand was generating. With the new set of equipment, Fenilor could attack Perry from anywhere in the open space, though he didn¡¯t seem to have any control over his movements aside from the one trick of increasing movement on a line directly toward where Perry was. He was still faster, but he¡¯d lost almost all control, and it seemed like they would be crashing into each other over and over again if that was what Fenilor wanted. With the next hit, Perry was caught in the side by the sword, and even a strong hit to a weakly defended area didn¡¯t penetrate. Whatever it was that Fenilor was trying, it wasn¡¯t working, but if one piece of equipment was letting him hurl himself through the air, then the other one surely had some kind of power too. Perry was going to have to figure it out and neutralize it, but he was getting very tired of Fenilor¡¯s bag of stolen tricks. ¡°Third Fervor on approach,¡± said Marchand. In combat, his voice was stripped of sardonic eloquence, becoming tight and controlled, communicating with the minimum of frills. Perry used the spear to dive as Fenilor flew toward him again, and actually managed to miss a collision this time. He gained speed as he went down and felt the spear thrumming with energy, and he used it to jet off sideways. ¡°How¡¯d she find us?¡± asked Perry. He hadn¡¯t used the shelf space, not since sticking Mette in there. There was no response from Marchand. Fenilor needed to launch himself twice, like he was bouncing off the air, snapping his velocity in the direction of Perry, but they crashed again, and if Perry hadn¡¯t had an iron grip on the spear, he would have lost it. The sword had scored a hit across his back, and he¡¯d heard the groaning of metal, but it wasn¡¯t enough. Whatever the sword was supposed to do, it was a bust. The ghostly inventory spread out away from Fenilor as he fell again, and almost as soon as it had appeared it was gone again, with the giant angular sword replaced with something long and thin, a pinprick of a rapier. He launched again, the movement sudden, arm with the rapier thrust straight forward and the rapier just a point. Perry attempted to parry it away, but the movement was too fast, and the point of the rapier too small. They crashed together again, but it came with a sharp pain in through Perry¡¯s chest, and when they came apart in the air, it was with a trail of blood. The nanite undersuit wove itself back together at Marchand¡¯s instruction, but there was a hole clean through both sides of the armor, and more serious warnings were flashing. Third Fervor was visible from the glowing rings of her portals, which illuminated her in the night sky brighter than anything else around them. She was homing in, and Perry realized what had brought her to them: he hadn¡¯t been using subspace, but Fenilor had, and the change in weapons and armor must have been like a stone thrown against a still pond. Perry went as swiftly as the spear would let him, another deep dive bringing him close to the water. He¡¯d burned altitude but was going at least a hundred miles an hour, dark against the waters, feeling the drag. A portal opened up three feet away from him and Third Fervor dropped out from it as Perry slipped past. Two seconds later, a portal opened overhead, and she dropped out again, then the portal opened directly in front of him so fast that he couldn¡¯t stop himself from going through. Third Fervor came down from above with a spear of her own, and it gouged a deep line along Perry¡¯s back before she, too, was falling behind him. ¡°Damage report!¡± shouted Perry as they zipped above the black waves. ¡°Holding steady,¡± Marchand replied. ¡°Repeated damage to the same area ¡ª¡± A portal opened again, and this time there were two successive portals, with one opening directly in front of him and the second opening just as soon as the other had snapped shut. Third Fervor very nearly crashed into him as he passed through, but when he was through the second portal he was high up in the air, suddenly so high up that he could trace the curvature of the planet and see the outlines of the island by their towns and cities. They were high enough up that if Perry wasn¡¯t encased in armor, he¡¯d be at risk of death from a lack of oxygen. Perry coughed up blood and then, because his helmet was on, swallowed it back down again, leaving the taste of blood in his mouth and the smell of it in his nostrils. The armor had been battered, and the rapier strike had gotten him good, piercing organs that were only slowly mending back together. Before becoming second sphere, he hadn¡¯t had much sense where his organs were, but he could feel them now, and it was his stomach that had a hole poked in it. There was acid and blood leaking through his body, and he tried his best to reverse the damage. Now that he was focused on it, the pain was almost blinding. Third Fervor was still down there somewhere. She had cast him high into the sky. Had Fenilor gotten to her? Perry realized with a start that Fenilor could kill her and open up a portal, or at least wound her. He had to be near the edge of her range, and if she¡¯d been hoping that the high altitude would end him, she was sorely mistaken. He dove with the spear, using its power to push him up to terminal velocity. The spear was charging up, brimming with power, and he¡¯d be able to use it to scream through the air when he needed to. But Third Fervor was down there somewhere, and if she was next to the ocean, all she¡¯d need to do was to open a portal in his path. She needed one end to be next to her, but the other could be far away, and if she opened up one that slammed him into the water at terminal velocity, he was pretty sure he would just die. He slowed himself, not liking the feeling of it. Going slow enough that she couldn¡¯t smash him against the water would mean ten minutes, maybe more, of just dropping through the air. With Marchand¡¯s enhancements, he could see the fight below. The figures were impossible to make out, but Fenilor was using a new weapon, one that glowed, and the portals that Third Fervor was making were splashes of light above the waves. How they could see each other was a mystery. Perry didn¡¯t want to intervene, but he felt like he had to. He opened up the shelf and stepped inside, half-expecting Third Fervor to divert up to him as soon as she felt the shelf open. Instead, he closed the shelf back up and stood there looking at Nima and Mette. Nima had one of the spare swords and was holding it to Mette¡¯s throat. ¡°Perry, calm down,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯m calm,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hostage situation?¡± ¡°You need to let me out of here,¡± said Nima. ¡°I never wanted any of this, and ¡ª¡± ¡°Just checking that the two of you are getting along,¡± said Perry. ¡°The fight is still going on, Third Fervor against Fenilor, I need to make sure that Fenilor doesn¡¯t kill her. You two sit tight.¡± Perry opened the shelf back up, slipped out, and let it close behind him before they could say anything. He had bigger problems to attend to. Chapter 135 - Vulnerable Places ¡°He left us,¡± said Nima. Her sword was hanging down and her mouth was hanging open. She was staring at the spot where Perry had been. ¡°You didn¡¯t have leverage,¡± said Mette. She shifted in the gross, sweaty bed. ¡°Sorry about that.¡± ¡°I had a sword to your throat,¡± said Nima. ¡°I was pretty clearly threatening to kill you.¡± ¡°Yeah, if you kill me, he has no reason to keep you alive,¡± said Mette. ¡°I knew you wouldn¡¯t.¡± ¡°If I kill you ¡­ there¡¯s a chance a portal opens, right?¡± asked Nima. She looked down at Mette. To her credit, she lowered the sword even more, making it clear that what she¡¯d said hadn¡¯t been a threat. ¡°I didn¡¯t mean ¡ª¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Mette. ¡°You¡¯re at least going to talk with me about it before you do it, and once I¡¯m done talking, you¡¯ll stop thinking it¡¯s a good idea.¡± Still, she spoke quickly. ¡°Fenilor already beat me. I was as good as dead. Perry was making plans for a world where I wasn¡¯t around. Literally everything we know about how the portals work says that if a portal were going to open when I was defeated, it would have opened then. I¡¯m pretty sure that I¡¯m your ally, as funny as that might seem.¡± ¡°Hilarious,¡± said Nima. She paused, then put the sword down and retracted her helmet. Mette could see her softly feminine face and the delicacy of her elven features. With the armor up, she¡¯d looked more like a machine. ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°It happens,¡± said Mette. Nima looked at the hulking pieces of the cloning device, and not for the first time. ¡°This is what they were hiding in that warehouse,¡± she said. ¡°The thing that was inside the airship.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Mette. ¡°What¡¯s it do?¡± asked Nima as her eyes traced the harsh lines. ¡°Does the word ¡®classified¡¯ mean anything to you?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t have the same translation stuff that Perry has.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima, shaking her head. ¡°Does it mean you can¡¯t tell me?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Mette with a sigh. ¡°Especially since, you know ¡­¡± ¡°I switched sides,¡± said Nima. She nodded. ¡°I stand by that. I don¡¯t like the culture. I don¡¯t wish for them to have a chokehold on this world.¡± Mette shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t want to get into that. What I want is to take a shower.¡± Nima looked around. ¡°Is that ¡­ possible?¡± ¡°With engineering, all things are possible,¡± said Mette with a solemn nod. ¡°Though actually, it¡¯s just a matter of heating up water, and that¡¯s just a matter of hooking some kind of resistor up to the battery and figuring out some kind of catch for it, along with a plan for the used water.¡± ¡°I can help with that,¡± said Nima. ¡°When Perry comes back, you can hold me hostage again,¡± said Mette. ¡°Though I don¡¯t think he¡¯s going to go for it either way.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± said Nima with a small smile. ¡°Worth trying, I guess.¡± ¡°And of course, he might die out there,¡± said Mette. ¡°In which case we¡¯re going to have a lot of time to figure out how not to die.¡± ~~~~ Perry dropped down to the flashes of light below, depending on Marchand¡¯s video analysis to make it bright enough to see by and to zoom in close enough that they didn¡¯t just look like random blips. The battle was happening two miles away from Thirlwell, where the lights of the city were still shining. The other thresholders were battling above the cold black waves. ¡°You have a standing order to shoot Fenilor whenever he changes armor,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know how much he¡¯s tested them, but he¡¯s having to do different combinations to stay in the air. If we can find one that a bullet can get through, that¡¯s got to be to our benefit. Conserve ammo if there¡¯s some question whether it¡¯s effective.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. The hole that Fenilor had poked in him was hurting, his insides burning with pain that was only slowly abating as he tried to pour more energy into his wounds. If he were fighting on the ground, he¡¯d have trouble running, but he was in the air, and could remain rigid. ¡°Don¡¯t shoot Third Fervor unless I say so,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not that the gun has done all that much to her.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I still have latitude?¡± ¡°Uh, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ask first, if at all possible. You inform me, I inform you, we¡¯re partners.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. As they got closer, the screaming started. Third Fervor had some kind of sound power, one strong enough to get through all of Marchand¡¯s manipulations and deadening, and she was using it above the water. Because she couldn¡¯t fly and was keeping herself aloft with portals, the sound cut in and out, and sometimes doubled itself when she passed through a portal and the shouts aligned to reach Perry at the same time. Fenilor had changed his armor and weapon, which must have been done in a harrowing moment in the middle of their battle, possibly more than once. The armor was made of a dark wood that was soaked and dripping. A thin tendril of water connected him to the ocean below, stretching a hundred feet to reach him, either following him or allowing him to move himself like a puppet with a strand of water for a string. His weapon was now a shard of steel wrapped with vines that hooked into his wrist, and he had a shield made of stone that seemed like it should have weighed hundreds of pounds. Third Fervor was moving all over the place with her portals. The go-to move seemed to be dropping down into a portal that would fling her up into the air and give her either a sightline on Fenilor or bring her close enough to attack. From time to time she opened a portal whose other end must have been deep beneath the water, because it blasted water out at incredible speeds. Fenilor¡¯s armor was giving him some control of water, and he was deflecting these water blasts to the side, which meant that Third Fervor could come in close to him with a portal and do a pincer attack with her own long-range blast. Perry wasn¡¯t sure what stage of the fight they were on, but it seemed as though Fenilor was losing, at least from a distance. Third Fervor was wearing him down, and seemed to have a pattern that was working for her. The speed she was using to make portals was incredible, as was her ability to stay oriented while upside down or sideways. She blasted Fenilor with water from a distance again and portaled next to him again, forcing him to deal with one or the other in a split second. Perry had gotten close enough that the suit¡¯s cameras could resolve damage to the wooden armor and gouges on the shield. It was possible that a single bullet could finish Fenilor off. But this time when Third Fervor struck out with her spear, Fenilor swung his vine-wrapped blade in anticipation, using the blast of water to cloak his movements. When the sword hit her, the vines snapped forward, growing from nothing and wrapping around her, binding her tightly with the spear stuck against her side. She let loose a scream, as though she was going to yell the vines off her, and Fenilor¡¯s hands clutched his head. He dropped down out of her reach, into the water below, leaving the vines in place. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. Third Fervor was well and truly trapped, though she still had her portals, and when she began falling, she fell through one that led her somewhere else. Both combatants were gone, and the ocean was silent save for the waves. ¡°I assume you didn¡¯t have the shot?¡± asked Perry, who was still descending. The HUD zoomed out, showing their true distance from the water and where the battle had been going on. ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°It would have been possible to hit Fenilor, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, the odds were poor, and it would have given away our position.¡± ¡°Hmm,¡± said Perry. Fenilor hadn¡¯t reappeared from the water. It seemed like maybe the bout was over. The cameras on the suit wouldn¡¯t be able to pick up Fenilor in the water, not with only the stars and moon to illuminate it, not unless Fenilor was very close to the surface. Perry called the sword back to him. It had tumbled away and fallen into the water, but it came back to him readily enough, and when it did, he slipped it into its sheath. It had glowed the entire time it was in flight, exposing him, but Third Fervor was dealing with the vines somewhere, and Fenilor had completely disappeared, either hiding in the water or having vanished. Perry deliberately slowed his pulse, trying to conserve battle readiness. ¡°Not the worst outcome,¡± sighed Perry. ¡°Why did she send us up to space, do you think?¡± ¡°Not to contradict you, sir,¡± said Marchand, ¡°But we were only halfway to space. I do imagine that Third Fervor was attempting to kill us, as she had attempted to kill us by bringing us to the ocean floor. One can only wonder what hostile environment she¡¯ll send us to when next she gets the opportunity.¡± ¡°We¡¯re her rival, not Fenilor,¡± said Perry. He chewed his lip. ¡°We killed her king. She should have gone for us.¡± ¡°Indeed, sir,¡± said Marchand. There was a brief pause where a human might have cleared his throat. ¡°Might I say, sir, that I appreciate that you¡¯ve taken ownership of the king¡¯s death?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. His eyes scanned the waters as though he¡¯d be able to spot something that Marchand hadn¡¯t. ¡°Hard to explain it to people.¡± ¡°You have taken ownership even when we¡¯re alone, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Partners,¡± said Perry, which didn¡¯t feel like enough of a response. Perry kept watching the waters, hoping that Fenilor would come up from below, though when that happened, he still wasn¡¯t sure that he could win the fight. It would be negligent not to test the gun against a variety of armors though, and Perry had the spear now, which seemed like it was his to keep. Fenilor had picked this battlefield, but it seemed he had picked poorly. Perry was going to have to go into the shelf and deal with Nima. He wasn¡¯t looking forward to that. Getting removed from the fight left him frustrated. He had wanted a win against one or both of them. He had wanted to test his mettle against Fenilor again. There had been too many losses, or incomplete wins, and he was hungering for victory. Capturing Nima obviously didn¡¯t count ¡ª he had complete dominance over her pretty much any time he wanted. She was barely even an equal to Kes. When Perry saw one of Third Fervor¡¯s portals appear, he almost smiled, then he almost went after her. Instead, he stayed where he was, a black shape floating in the air, and watched as she flitted around, portal after portal to keep herself in the air. It wasn¡¯t a preferred battlefield for her. If she could do the portal waterjet trick here, then in theory she could do it anywhere. With the portals, she could possibly change the battlefield, though that would take setting him up to push him through a portal. The spear made him faster, but he wasn¡¯t practiced with it. He was trying to weigh whether going after her would be a good idea when she spotted him. Her attack started with a portal five feet above him. She was dropping at speed with her spear pointed straight at his head. He shifted to the side using more of his spear¡¯s thrumming power than he meant to, and she screamed loud enough to cause him some pain as she passed. She opened a portal beneath her feet and appeared above him again, dropping faster because she¡¯d picked up speed, and Perry dodged again. The third time he was ready for her, and pointed his spear straight up at her, hoping that he¡¯d be able to outmaneuver her in a vertical joust. Her spear came within inches of him, but his hit her squarely in the stomach. Her armor protected her and she twisted off the spear point as he was knocked down. Another portal appeared and whisked her away, this time sending her up to kill her momentum. He had always known that her armor was going to be a problem. It didn¡¯t matter how fast he was, or how perfectly he timed his strikes, if they just glanced off her, he was going to be worn down. This time there wouldn¡¯t be a monster from the deep to save him ¡ª probably. But he knew that the armor had a weakness: it was fueled by her clarity of purpose. And that he could attack far better than trying to poke her with yet another weapon. ¡°Wait!¡± he called. Third Fervor dropped through another portal and came up in an arc, twisting through the air to lash out sideways with the spear. He brought his own spear up to block her, and when the hafts of their spears met, she pushed backward and dropped down through another portal that took her further away. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°Wait!¡± he called again. His ears were ringing from the shout she¡¯d let out earlier, and it was only because he¡¯d given no reaction that she hadn¡¯t done it again. ¡°Deceiver!¡± shouted Third Fervor from high in the air, so loud that Perry saw the impact of the sound on the water below. He felt the sound in his bones. ¡°He¡¯ll kill you!¡± shouted Perry, his own voice amplified to the limits of the suit¡¯s speakers. ¡°And if he does, the whole kingdom falls!¡± Third Fervor was dropping, far enough away that Perry couldn¡¯t reach her, and she opened another portal at her feet before she could hit the water. It was only because HUD flashed brightly that Perry was able to anticipate the strike, which came from the left side this time. Third Fervor sailed through the air, moving past him. Her spear spun to strike at him, and the tip of it sliced through the armor around his bicep. ¡°Seems like she¡¯s still mad,¡± said Perry under his breath as he felt a trickle of blood down his arm. ¡°I want to talk!¡± he shouted. ¡°You fought him, you know how dangerous he is!¡± Third Fervor did a complicated maneuver with the portals, and it looked like she was building up to something big before she came to a dead stop with half her body through the portal. She was twenty feet away from Perry, far enough that he couldn¡¯t strike her with the spear or the sword, but close enough that they could talk in the midst of the dark night. They were lit only by the stars and the ring of light from the portal. Perry looked around, and couldn¡¯t see where the other half of the portal was, but from what little he could see of it, he thought she was probably standing on the ground several miles away. ¡°Who is he?¡± asked Third Fervor. Her voice was even. Perry could see nothing behind her armored face, and didn¡¯t suspect that she was going to drop it anytime soon. He wouldn¡¯t have either. ¡°Fenilor the Gilded, one of the founders of the culture,¡± said Perry. ¡°He¡¯s been here for hundreds of years, and is very dangerous.¡± He would tell her everything he knew, he had to, aside from maybe the existence of the Farfinder. ¡°I¡¯ve read of him in books,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°He was responsible for the culture.¡± ¡°He¡¯s the one who¡¯s been going through the monarchs,¡± said Perry. ¡°What happened with the king of Thirlwell, it was ¡ª¡± ¡°I do not want to hear excuses,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°I¡¯m going to kill you. I¡¯m going to rip you apart.¡± There was a deep growl to her voice, and he worried she was going to start growing in size. He didn¡¯t want to fight her as a giant. It occurred to Perry that while she was standing there, halfway through the portal, she couldn¡¯t open another one, at least from what he¡¯d seen so far. The portals were her best offense, the thing that made her spear deadly. It was also an idea for stopping her later: if he could place himself inside one of the portals, he could stop her from opening another. He was fairly sure the portals couldn''t slice through a person, otherwise she¡¯d have pinched him already. Perry took a breath and steeled himself. It was time for an argument that he¡¯d practiced, though he hadn¡¯t thought he¡¯d be giving it above the ocean while held aloft with a stolen spear. The night felt preternaturally still. ¡°Women are weak,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re unfit for rule. You¡¯ve debased yourself by putting yourself in service to a queen.¡± ¡°W-what?¡± asked Third Fervor. ¡°You¡¯re the weaker sex,¡± said Perry, half hoping that this line of argument wouldn¡¯t work on her. ¡°The male of the species is endowed with the qualities necessary for governance: vigor, rationality, and an iron will. These are qualities that a queen, by her nature, cannot possess.¡± ¡°She is my queen,¡± said Third Fervor. She¡¯d taken a half step back, still within the ring of the portal, which glowed softly. ¡°Women are followers, not leaders,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know this in your heart. Think of the times you¡¯ve succeeded and the times you¡¯ve strayed. Your greatest triumphs have always been when following a king¡¯s orders, and your greatest defeats have always been when you struck out on your own. There is a hierarchy in the world. Woman sits below man just as commoner sits below king.¡± Third Fervor was silent, but her head moved, as though she was trying to formulate a response and working the words over before they came out. ¡°You don¡¯t believe that,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯re just ¡­ you¡¯re saying that, it¡¯s words.¡± ¡°It¡¯s the truth, whether I believe it or not,¡± said Perry. ¡°But it¡¯s the accumulated wisdom of centuries and worlds. You¡¯ve served kings, exclusively kings, they¡¯ve been a constant of your travels and mine. Now you¡¯re here, prostrating yourself before a weak queen. You know that it feels wrong.¡± Third Fervor was silent for long enough that Perry almost started talking again too soon, which would probably have been a mistake. He needed to press her, to browbeat her, to make her doubt herself and her mission, but he also needed to let it all marinate in her mind. ¡°This world wasn¡¯t lost when the king died,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was lost when the king¡¯s son died. Thirlwell won¡¯t survive the rule of a queen. If she had children, that might be one thing, but she¡¯s not even married.¡± ¡°I will not abandon her,¡± said Third Fervor. Her grip on her spear tightened. ¡°You¡¯re trying to confuse me. It was you that killed the king, and probably his son as well, it was you who has stolen into the kingdom time and again, pursuing your own plots.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t care about the kingdom,¡± said Perry. ¡°I never have. Fenilor cares. He wants to destroy it.¡± ¡°You killed the king,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°You murdered him in cold blood.¡± ¡°He was going to shoot me for his own enjoyment,¡± said Perry. ¡°He was going to shoot me to test me. There was a real chance that it would have killed me. I reacted to a threat.¡± He didn¡¯t want to be having this conversation. He wanted the conversation that would destabilize her, that would fill her with doubt and make her armor weak. He wondered whether she was diverting on purpose. ¡°But at least he was exerting his will. We both know the queen would never have done that.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re trying here,¡± said Third Fervor. She was hesitant, waiting for him to clarify. She wanted an explanation, and that was a sign that he had probably gone far enough. Perry let out a breath. He wished he knew where Fenilor was. If the elf was hiding beneath the water, waiting for his time to strike ¡­ that would be bad for what Perry was about to try. ¡°Marchand, shoot to kill,¡± said Perry. The shoulder gun popped up almost before the word ¡®kill¡¯ was out of Perry¡¯s mouth. It fired four shots in rapid succession. She fell backward onto the ground she¡¯d been standing on, and before Perry could even move, the portal had snapped shut. ¡°Review footage,¡± said Perry. Marchand put up the video and played it back in slow motion. The first shot had struck her in the head, glanced off the armor, and the second had penetrated near her jaw, which had jerked upward from the first hit. That one had penetrated, at least if the zoomed and upscaled image could be believed, but there was no enormous spray of blood. The third and fourth shots had been to center mass instead, and both had hit her as she¡¯d already been moving, one against the breast and the other in her stomach, neither visibly bouncing off. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Any identification on where she was standing?¡± ¡°I cannot narrow it down much, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I saw stonework, but cannot even tell you whether she was standing in Thirlwell or, for some reason, Berus.¡± A map appeared and showed a dome sitting over the ocean, covering chunks of both islands. That was her thirty mile range, and she could have been anywhere. ¡°I was hoping for a kill,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fuck. Fuck. No sign of Fenilor?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have been on the lookout, and it does not appear that he has resurfaced. It is entirely possible that he never knew the fighting resumed.¡± ¡°I should have rushed the portal,¡± said Perry. ¡°Finished the job.¡± ¡°I do not believe you could have moved fast enough, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She might die from her wounds,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going up high, so that if the portal appears Fenilor won¡¯t be able to get to it.¡± He started climbing, using the power of the spear, but found it lackluster for vertical movement, especially since it was draining the power he¡¯d accumulated in it. He pulled out the sword and used that instead, which was slow but steady. ¡°Was there a reason you wanted her dead, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Fuck the monarchy,¡± said Perry, though he wasn¡¯t really feeling it, not if fucking the monarchy came with public executions. ¡°Indeed, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I saw her fighting,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s a nightmare. And she was holding back, that one last power, big mode. If I could finish her here and then leave after we deal with Fenilor ¡­ I don¡¯t want to fight her at peak power, not even as the mechawolf, because I don¡¯t think I would win.¡± He paused. ¡°Where the everloving fuck is the Farfinder?¡± ¡°I do not know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It is entirely possible that their prognostication has foreseen everything that¡¯s happened.¡± ¡°If Third Fervor is injured, that makes her prey for Fenilor,¡± said Perry. ¡°That doesn¡¯t benefit us. We need to kill her and then guard the portal until it goes away, while at the same time guarding Nima and Mette. I think that¡¯s the endgame. If I¡¯m not going to kill her, then I need to watch her.¡± They had risen high in the air while talking, high up enough that Fenilor wouldn¡¯t be able to reach them. It seemed as though Perry really had taken the best form of flight that Fenilor had, which was a better outcome than he had been hoping for when Fenilor had approached him over the water. The portals didn¡¯t always appear at opportune moments, which meant that Perry would need to stay there for quite some time. He didn¡¯t entirely want to go back into the shelf space while Third Fervor was still potentially kicking around and within range of him, but there was nothing in her powerset that said she should be able to shrug off a bullet that penetrated her armor. He would need to deal with Nima, but he was pretty sure that she could wait. When Perry took stock of his energy levels and the damage to the suit, he found that they were refilling faster than they should have, and that quite a bit of the damage was already fixed. Second sphere stuff was difficult to trace or understand, but there was something to the sensation that was familiar. ¡°March, are we ¡­ is there something with the moonlight?¡± he asked. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe it to be a consequence of the changes I made to our connection. The surface of the armor can capture moonlight, where before it would require your naked skin.¡± ¡°Meaning that the only thing keeping us from transformation is me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And the repairs, have you been doing that too?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Do you know how to do it?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Yes to which?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Both, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have been prioritizing only the crucial repairs, particularly the hole that Fenilor had punctured through the torso, which introduced a structural weakness even with the nanite plug.¡± Perry could still feel the wound in his guts, spilling stomach acid and inflaming muscles whose names he didn¡¯t know. The damage had been contained and he was reversing it, but it had been a worse puncture than he¡¯d first thought, and certain movements brought a flare of pain. The wound on his back and his shoulder had been less severe, and would be gone in another hour if he didn¡¯t have to move too much. ¡°Sir, I do think it would behoove us to check on Mette and Nima,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fair. Still no sign of the Farfinder then?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I do suppose that they are watching and listening.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let¡¯s get this done.¡± He stepped into the shelf, ready to deal with a hostage situation. ~~~~ Third Fervor lay in the castle taking deep, raspy breaths. This world wasn¡¯t one with good healing, but the doctors worked on her as best they could. They had wanted her to inhale something that would put her out, but she had refused it. When they removed the bullet from her lung, she bit down on a leather strap, trying not to use her special scream, which might have been loud enough to kill them. Her jaw had been cracked by one of the bullets, and biting down came with more pain, even after the injection they¡¯d given her to numb the area, even though she was biting only with the good side of her mouth. They were talking about drilling holes and putting in wires, which she could not allow them to do. The queen looked on anxiously. They had tried to send her away, but she had demanded that she stay and watch, and she was the queen, which meant they had no choice in the matter. She was in her nightgown, improperly dressed, but it wasn¡¯t clear to Third Fervor what proper dress for an operating room was. They had strapped Third Fervor down, given her reactions, and there was something erotic about them probing her guts, even as the pain nearly blinded her. Perry had tried to kill her for a second time. She had known better than to let him talk. That was how he had killed her king the first time, by pretending that he cared, by speaking as a friend rather than what he was. Yet there had been that other man, Fenilor, who had endless armors and weapons. Fenilor had been testing her, she was certain of that, and while it had felt like she might win against him, it had also felt like he could simply slip away whenever he wanted to. She cried out with a rasp in her voice, her lungs not quite working. The doctor had touched some vital part of her that was like yanking a thread looped around her brain. He had extracted a bit of metal though, and held it up to the light. If not for her jaw and the leather in her mouth, she might have thanked him. The feeling of the bright pain receding was almost akin to pleasure. Third Fervor¡¯s eyes found the queen¡¯s. The royal hands were covering the royal ears, and the royal eyes were weeping royal tears. Still, there was defiance there, and the queen did not look away from the bloody horror and the work of surgeons. Yet in her heart, Third Fervor could tell that Perry was right. A queen could be no true ruler. Perry had almost certainly not believed it, but that didn¡¯t stop what he said from being true. The pain yanked her away from her thoughts, and a shift of her bite on the leather strap brought part of her broken jaw down wrong, which amplified the torment. It was temporary. She would recover. If she needed to, she would take the queen somewhere safer, out of the way, though that would risk the entire monarchy. They would burrow until Third Fervor felt better, hide until they could meet their enemies head-on. If the queen was weak and incapable of guiding the country, they would find some way around that, some solution that would save the institution. Third Fervor owed it to Thirlwell. This was her job in this world, and once she accepted that, all the pain became easier to bear. ~~~~ Fenilor had watched everything from beneath the water. He was confident now in his ability to kill Third Fervor when the time was right. The loss of the spear stung: he¡¯d miscalculated Perry¡¯s sheer speed and power. Still, he was confident that he could win their next engagement, assuming he could pick a better battlefield. There was something he was missing though, some element to Perry¡¯s movements that wasn¡¯t making sense. Perry shouldn¡¯t have been able to find any of the hidden homes. He shouldn¡¯t have been able to make contacts so swiftly either. He was being supported by members of the various Command Authorities, but by their very nature the Command Authorities should have been circumspect in their dealings and limited in their powers. It was something that Fenilor was going to have to look into. The missing information was starting to gnaw at him. If he lost, it would be because he had found the source of the problem too late. The solution, then, was to work at a distance and uncover that which was meant to be concealed from him. When Perry was gone, Fenilor sat in the ocean for a time, breathing through the armor, considering his options. In a sense, defeating Perry wasn¡¯t even necessary. Thirlwell by itself would never restart the monarchy, in the same way a thorn in the side of a lion couldn¡¯t bring it down. Fenilor had time. And in that time, he would find out precisely what Perry was hiding. It was time to put his skills as an assassin to the test. Chapter 136 - Interlude: The Assassin and the Spy Dirk Gibbons was, so far as he could ascertain, completely fucked. He was yesterday¡¯s news at the bottom of a bird cage. He was a house of cards in a hurricane. He was cooked, garnished, and served with a side of regret. This version of him, anyway. It had originally been some comfort that he had the clones all over the world, carrying out the important work of statecraft, getting in the nitty gritty of politics and Command Authorities. He had hard-won faith in himself, and it could only be good for the culture to have more of him, given that he was clear-headed and willing to work the problem in a way that the culture didn¡¯t seem to incentivize. One of the long-term problems with the culture, at least in Dirk¡¯s opinion, was a lack of ambition and hard work, and there were times it seemed as though the entire superstructure of their society depended upon people who worked without a lever pushing them to work, the small contingent of those who would strive for the success of their people even when that meant putting in a hundred times the effort of the common citizen. There was, in fact, a term floating around that no one seemed to like, ¡°civic lynchpin¡±. Declaring that a single person was load bearing for a given community was ¡°not the culture¡±, as true as it often was. The world often felt short of those sorts of people, the ones who would devote themselves to the masses. There just weren¡¯t enough of them, and never would be. You needed people who stayed late, who cleaned up, who picked up extra shifts when no one else would, who did the difficult and boring work that no one would ever thank them for. The culture did its best to encourage and laud those people, and to mold children into becoming them, but they were still in short supply. The cloning machine changed all that. Dirk Gibbons was a civic lynchpin, and now there were lots of him. There was no worry that he would catch a cold and die, leaving a gaping hole in global planning. And since Dirk was no longer unique and important, just one of many Dirks, that meant that he could engage in high risk activities that no one could possibly have justified him doing before. Dirk hadn¡¯t meant to become the spymaster of Thirlwell. He¡¯d only meant to infiltrate and keep an eye on them while covering their operations and recruiting what people he could to the cause. He was supposed to be stirring up shit and getting notes on what the country was up to, given that they were one of the global ¡°areas of concern¡±. It had just happened to be that their intelligence network was ripe for the plucking. Given that he had the entirety of a much more competent intelligence network on his side, it hadn¡¯t actually been that hard to get into a position of power ¡ª all he had to do was feed information to the right people, set up the right schemes, and watch his predecessor resign in disgrace. And now it was almost certainly going to bite him in the ass. It would have been bad enough if it was just the thresholders he had to worry about, men and women from other worlds with completely unknown abilities, but he apparently had to worry about the other Dirks as well. There was at least one operating in Berus, and he wouldn¡¯t have been entirely surprised to find that there was one operating in Thirlwell as well. If Dirk had a personality defect, it was that he often thought ¡°I¡¯ll do it myself¡±, even when it sometimes wasn¡¯t necessary. That was precisely the thing that had made him into a civic lynchpin, but there were natural downsides to that mentality. The personal downside was that he put a lot on his plate and ran at a constant high level of stress from all the roles and responsibilities ¡ª something the clones had helped with immensely. The communal downside was that he stepped on peoples¡¯ toes, and with the clones, now he was stepping on his own toes. If Third Fervor got a whiff of the clones, she would flay him alive, and it was bad enough that she knew there were clones, even if she seemed to misunderstand their source and nature. Dirk¡¯s decision to stage a suicide for Perry¡¯s clone had gone disastrously wrong, with the clone apparently turning into a giant monster that broke free from his manacles and killed a good number of guards before disappearing into the countryside and somehow not being found. It was about as wrong as a staged suicide could go, more wrong than he¡¯d known was possible a few years ago, and he was thankful that he¡¯d left the room rather than waiting for the clone to bleed out. So there were at least two people who had a reason to kill him, both with the capacity to do so. And then of course there was Nima, who had met the other Dirk, and could instantly connect the dots if they were ever to meet each other. He had thankfully figured that out in time and given himself every distance he could from her, stationing her in one of the old holding houses, but with the power of portals they could be face to face at literally any moment. All that would take is for Third Fervor to decide that she knew best. When Dirk was woken up and summoned late in the night, he had thought it might be the end for him, which would also be a blow to the culture. He tried to think about that rather than his own mortality, but it was difficult. Third Fervor was fast and strong, nearly invulnerable in her armor, and as Dirk went down the hallways of the castle, he felt a lump in his throat. It felt like he¡¯d run out of options, and the thing to worry about was what to do to maximize the impact of his death. He was, unexpectedly, brought to the castle¡¯s medical center. Third Fervor was laid out on a gurney, her armor removed. He had never seen her without her armor, and was surprised by just how pale her skin was. She had curly brown hair that he wouldn¡¯t have expected, and while he never would have said she was plain-looking, the armor had given him the impression that she wasn¡¯t human. With the doctors looking over her, it was clear that she was mortal. Someone had destroyed part of her jaw, but most of the attention was being paid to her stomach, where blood was flowing freely. Gut wounds could easily kill, at least for normal people, and Dirk immediately began thinking of what it would take to finish the job right then and there. He could do it himself, if he had to. From what he knew of her abilities, he¡¯d have to do it quickly, but even approaching the gurney might make her flee ¡ª or scream loud enough to kill him and everyone in the room. He almost didn¡¯t register the queen standing there in her nightgown. When he did, he moved to her. ¡°I was summoned,¡± he said. ¡°I wasn¡¯t given details.¡± ¡°A fight,¡± said the queen as Third Fervor cried out in pain. Her face was streaked with tears, though Dirk imagined that this was just the result of accumulated stress and heartbreak. ¡°Are we safe to be standing here?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°We will stay by her side,¡± said the queen. In spite of the fact that she¡¯d been crying, her face was set. ¡°She fought for this kingdom.¡± ¡°Without her, we¡¯re vulnerable,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Did she say where their people were?¡± ¡°No,¡± said the queen. ¡°She was woken in the middle of the night when the alarm was raised. After she left, she appeared before four guards stationed in the east balcony tied up in vines, which they cut from her, then disappeared to fight again. When she came back, she was injured. They brought her here.¡± ¡°The alarm,¡± said Dirk. ¡°From where? Spotters?¡± ¡°No,¡± said the queen. ¡°Nima was attacked, or possibly taken. I didn¡¯t get the full report.¡± Dirk came close to letting out a sigh of relief, but he had trained and practiced, and showed no emotions except those he meant to show. ¡°I¡¯ll get the report,¡± he said. ¡°She was of dubious value, and if she was broken out ¡­¡± ¡°It would call into question the information we¡¯ve gotten from her thus far,¡± said the queen. She only had eyes for Third Fervor. Dirk was surprised that she¡¯d made the connection he had laid down for her. He¡¯d been trying to discredit Nima since she¡¯d arrived on their shores, but it was best to lay the seed for distrust now so he could take up the case against her without being suspicious. ¡°I¡¯ll work through the night,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Mmm,¡± said the queen. She turned to look at him. ¡°I called you here for a reason. Third Fervor and I will be going away as soon as she¡¯s well enough to take me. The assault on Nima might have been an assault on me. With my father and brother both dead, I could very well be next, and our primary asset being out of commission would give them plenty of opportunity.¡± ¡°Yes, your grace,¡± said Dirk with a bow. ¡°I will make my appearances, but they¡¯ll be with her help,¡± said the queen. ¡°I don¡¯t know where we¡¯re going to stay, but I¡¯m sure you have guidance on the matter. Somewhere far from here.¡± ¡°Yes, your grace,¡± said Dirk after a moment. ¡°Our foreign holdings are scarce. There are credibly as few as three, all places that have not been seized by symboulions. Give me half an hour to consider it. Only the two of you?¡± ¡°I am low on trust,¡± said the queen. She ran her fingers through her hair, which was hanging loosely at her shoulders. ¡°It will be only the two of us, because she has proven herself beyond reproach. But there are lingering questions, Thom. I need you to find out how they knew where Nima was being kept.¡± Her eyes were intense. He hadn¡¯t thought much of her when she¡¯d just been a princess, but she was proving to have hidden depths. ¡°And I need, more than anything, to find out what happened to my brother.¡± Dirk¡¯s mouth was a tight line. They¡¯d had this conversation before. He was Thirlwell¡¯s spymaster, and had already registered his opinion that it had been suicide. If it wasn¡¯t a suicide, it was so impeccably staged that it was indistinguishable from suicide, and no amount of questioning was going to change anything. ¡°I¡¯ll keep up the questioning,¡± said Dirk. That was as much as he would give her. ¡°If someone knows something, they¡¯ll eventually fold. I¡¯ve already had people with the finest masks looking over the room.¡± ¡°Someone needs to hang for my father¡¯s death,¡± said the queen. ¡°That man can be brought to justice by Third Fervor and Third Fervor alone. But someone must also hang for my brother¡¯s death. I do not accept it as coincidence. The people do not accept it. Do you understand me?¡± ¡°I understand,¡± said Dirk. ¡°But ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said the queen, holding up a hand. ¡°There is a viper in the henhouse. It must be found and made an example of. Find it.¡± Dirk nodded. ¡°Yes, your grace.¡± She was asking him to find someone, anyone, who could credibly be accused of having poisoned the prince. She wanted a symbol that would show that the kingdom was still in control, that someone had their hands on the reins, and from her tone she didn¡¯t particularly care whether or not the person Dirk found was actually responsible. He moved away from her, off to find a place for the two of them to hide out, as well as to get a report from the jail that had been holding Nima. In theory, he was also going to put more effort into finding the prince¡¯s killer, but the idea of finding a scapegoat made his stomach churn. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. He was the one who¡¯d killed the prince. Assassination was not the culture. It was very much not the culture. If anyone ever found out he¡¯d been the one responsible, he and all the other Dirks would probably lose the authorities that had been granted to them. It wouldn¡¯t just be a blow to him, it would be a blow to the culture as a whole, a cause for the masses to re-evaluate their relationship with the Command Authorities, to question what was being done with resources from the commons. He¡¯d done it anyway. The prince had been a sadist, unacceptable as a ruler, and had often spoken in private moments about what he would do when he was king. When Dirk had first heard the prince express these dark thoughts, he¡¯d assumed that the prince trusted him for some reason, but no, the prince spoke of these things to almost everyone, dismissing it as a twisted sense of humor if anyone objected ¡ª and because he was the presumptive heir, there was always an undercurrent of threat, one that stopped people from talking. Some of the things that Dirk had heard come from the prince¡¯s mouth would have been decried as ludicrous character assassination if they¡¯d been printed in the papers. In killing the prince, Dirk had probably spared the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands. Still, it wasn¡¯t the culture, and he knew that. His only solace was that the culture understood that contradictions were required and that dogma was the enemy. He wouldn¡¯t be able to argue a good case, if he lived long enough for that, but his defense would be that it needed to be done. The king had many people working for him to make weapons that could be used against the peoples of the world in both threat and retribution, and those powers, in the hands of the prince, in the wake of his father¡¯s death ¡­ well, assassination had been the correct course, come what may. But pinning the crime on a useful patsy wasn¡¯t something that Dirk was going to do, as pragmatic as it might be. He would have to find a way to navigate the queen¡¯s demand, one that satisfied the need to show control while at the same time working toward Dirk¡¯s goal, which was the dissolution of the monarchy. The queen was supposed to be the best choice of heir, but if she was going to turn her mind toward retribution, she might have to be eliminated too, which would mean the other princess, who was much younger, would become queen instead. For the time being, Dirk was going to sit tight and work the problems, hoping that it would all, somehow, work out in the end. Nima was gone, that was something, and Third Fervor was going to be less of a problem until she recovered. In fact, with the queen under protection and the thresholder out of commission, it might be possible to put other plans in motion across Thirlwell, ones that would firm up the grip of the culture and bring about a clean revolution on a reasonable timescale. He¡¯d gone from dreading his imminent execution to thinking about trying to end the monarchy, and he stopped to take a moment to be grateful for that. Somewhere out there, it seemed like someone was looking out for him. ~~~~ Fenilor had been around the world a dozen times over, exploring cities and their people, learning from their comings and goings, listening in on their conversations and speaking with their officials, guards, and clerics. Thirlwell and Berus were island nations, important in the sense that they had once been imperial powers, but of shrinking relevance as the sequence of revolutions had taken root. It was intriguing to see them now, fallen powers running off the fumes of empire. In Berus, Fenilor moved with impunity. He walked the city streets as an elf, taking his food from the recently set up dining halls where everyone was still getting used to the fact that food would be provided as a basic necessity. They weren¡¯t the happy smiling people that Fenilor was used to elsewhere in the world, but he was confident that they would get there in time as the old wounds faded into the past and the golden domes provided their bounty without the dread effluence from the lanterns. It would be a poorer existence in some ways, at least at first, but the assets of the nobility had been seized and were being redistributed. Berus had a strain of militancy that Fenilor had not seen elsewhere, which was worrisome. The culture worked, but there was no guarantee that it would work in every circumstance. There was also no guarantee that it would continue to work in the future, as much as it was tempting to look at the passing decades as proof it could weather anything. Elves were uncommon in Berus, so his presence drew some stares, even in the city of Calamus, where people should have been more familiar with those of other races. He was taken for a foreigner, which was true enough, but he wasn¡¯t connected with the symboulions, which was doubly odd. More people were coming in with every passing week, drawn from across the world, those with expertise and ambitions to get the country working, so he fit in with them in that sense. The people of this world thought him young, in the way of their elves, reborn not more than ten or twenty years ago, witness to little. He allowed them to think that, as he had for the last five hundred years, and he listened to their stories, complaints, and idle chatter as he ate simple stew with simple bread. There was a deep anger in Berus, but only some of it was directed at their former kingdom. The people had grown up with stories of an empire that spanned the seas, one they thought was their birthright. There were those of them old enough to remember when they¡¯d had the bounty of the entire world, when lantern-powered ships had meant the apples were in season at all times of the year and spices would come in by the tonne. The rich were most often the beneficiaries of those shipments, grown fat off what had been looted, but some of it had trickled down, at least while the empire held. The anger was the anger of those who thought that they would or should be like an empire again. The frustration was from a people who had suspected that revolution would mean that everyone would become rich. Instead, they were learning that revolution meant hardship, at least initially, and when that hardship had passed and the lanterns had gone cold, they would still not be dressed in the finery of kings and still not eat the bounty of the world. They would have simple, functional clothes of high quality and simple, nutritious meals made from local sources. Their needs would be met, and from what he could see of them, they might grow discontent anyway. Fenilor had no small amount of frustration with these people, but it wasn¡¯t a new frustration. It was an important part of culture building, finding the places where expectations did not meet with reality. It would be the work of the faithful to bring understanding to the people of the crowded dining halls and gaming parlors. He tried to ignore a gnawing fear that the culture might fail here, after so much time. At night, he broke into buildings and read through their papers. It wasn¡¯t unusual for symboulions to put things down, and meeting minutes were considered a public good. It led to accountability, or at least that was the thought. The amount of paper required was immense, and some of the work had clearly been done by people with no experience, but Fenilor read through as much as he could, looking for information. In page after page there was nothing on Perry, and little on Third Fervor. They didn¡¯t know about thresholders, or if they did, they hadn¡¯t had a meeting about it. The Berus Security symboulion had been organized to deal with the remaining elements of the counter-revolution, and there was an inner symboulion with private meetings, but after combing through their files too, it seemed like they knew a lot less than people assumed. There were unsavory details in there too, things that Fenilor didn¡¯t particularly like to see. It was one thing to kill those who were responsible for what had been done under the system of monarchy, and another thing entirely to jail the workers whose main crime seemed to be a delusion that the monarchy might be restored. Fenilor found Perry¡¯s name only once, in the minutes of a meeting about agricultural practices with a focus on whether the moving machines might still be used to sow and harvest. Perry was listed as a bodyguard to a dwarf named Moss, but did not speak through the course of the meeting. Those were the only meeting minutes that listed bodyguards, and were from an earlier date. No doubt the change in protocol was logged somewhere in the meeting minutes that Fenilor hadn¡¯t gone through ¡ª or perhaps it was one of those things that was never written down and nevertheless became a part of how things are done. The name of Moss Grumhill was familiar to Fenilor. He had been around since the early years, and while they had never met, Moss had been working as an engineer of some skill for a very long time. It was no great surprise that he¡¯s come to Calamus. As wide as the world was, the same names kept coming up over and over, those with skills and connections, the ones that were a part of the machinery of the culture. What was surprising was that Moss was still apparently married to Velli, another name that Fenilor was familiar with. She was an elf, reborn every so often, and by the accounting of this world she was a different person each time. Any marriage to an elf was dissolved on rebirth, as were any contracts they¡¯d signed or agreements they made ¡ª partly because they had only vague memories of their previous life. If Fenilor needed to, he could take up his old name, but it would be assumed that he was an entirely different person. If Velli was still with Moss, it was because he was continually putting work into wooing each new version of her. It was a week and a half after the big fight when he finally found Velli. She had been elevated by a symboulion vote to become, at least temporarily, one of the chief dispensers of the royal wealth. In spite of her importance, she ate her meals in one of the local dining halls, often with other librarians, but sometimes alone. On one of the occasions that she ate alone, Fenilor sat down beside her with a plate of his own food. She regarded him, eyes going to his pointed ears, though of course you could tell an elf from bone structure alone. She was wearing something conservative by elven standards, a tightly-fitting top that covered her skin down to her elbow and a skirt that came to just above her knees. ¡°Do I know you?¡± she asked. ¡°In another life,¡± said Fenilor with a smile. It was a common elven greeting. He held out a hand and gave her a fake name, and once introductions were made, they both ate for a bit. ¡°I¡¯m surprised that they¡¯ve elevated you,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°There is no elevation,¡± Velli said gently. ¡°That is not the culture.¡± ¡°You have authority to mete out the treasures that this kingdom has taken from the world,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°What is that if not elevation?¡± ¡°It is a duty,¡± said Velli. ¡°If I saw it as power, it would be a duty I wasn¡¯t fit for.¡± She tapped the tines of her fork against her plate. The meal of the day was an unappetizing fish with lantern-made bread. ¡°I don¡¯t take these as aspersions, but I assume you sought me out for a reason?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been searching for a man,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°He goes by the unusual name of Peregrin Holzmann.¡± ¡°I see,¡± said Velli. She offered nothing more and had paused in eating her food. ¡°He was aboard the airship you came in on,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°There was an altercation there, wasn¡¯t there? But it¡¯s unclear to me what actually happened.¡± ¡°They were counter-revolutionaries,¡± said Velli. ¡°Remnants of a network of spies and operatives in Kerry Coast City. They wanted to take the ship to Thirlwell.¡± Fenilor grinned at her. ¡°From the report, they ¡ª¡± ¡°Fenilor,¡± she said. The grin stayed on his face. ¡°I don¡¯t wish you any harm,¡± he said. ¡°I just want information. There¡¯s something I¡¯m missing about Perry.¡± ¡°There¡¯s little I can tell you,¡± said Velli. ¡°I learned of his true nature ¡ª if we can even be said to know it ¡ª only in the last two weeks.¡± She pursed her lips. ¡°I wanted to thank you for everything you¡¯ve done.¡± ¡°I assume you don¡¯t know much of what I¡¯ve done,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Likely not,¡± said Velli. ¡°But I know my history well enough to know a fraction of what you¡¯ve helped to accomplish. The culture was not your sole creation, but it would not have existed without you.¡± She gave a slow, solemn nod of her head. ¡°It is likely that you will know my full history, in time,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°The truth is a vital part of the commons. It is one of the reasons religion could not stand. There are statues that were made in haste which will need to be torn down.¡± ¡°We will have our own reckoning with the past, I am sure,¡± said Velli. ¡°But no matter what you¡¯ve done, my thanks will remain.¡± Fenilor nodded. ¡°If my past means something to you, will you tell me about Perry?¡± ¡°I have no loyalty to him, and he certainly seems to have no loyalty to me,¡± said Velli. ¡°I would hide nothing on his account, nor have I been asked to.¡± ¡°Then I¡¯m afraid I¡¯ve wasted my time,¡± said Fenilor, standing up from his seat. ¡°I don¡¯t expect you to stay silent about my appearance here.¡± Velli was silent as he turned to go. He had no idea whether or not she was telling the truth, but it was no matter: he would follow her and see where the trail led. She spoke with her husband, and her husband spoke with another man named Dirk Gibbons, who pulled a machine from inside his pocket that seemed to be technological in origin. The three of them were a unit, it seemed, important people who shared secrets. The device was interesting, as it was far beyond the capacity of this world to create, and could only have come from Perry. Fenilor watched from a distance, aided by a magical bow, as Perry arrived. Curiously, astonishingly, he came out of a door on the roof of the building, and there was a brief glimpse inside ¡ª confederates, but not ones that Fenilor knew. Fenilor could see the conversation but not hear it. That didn¡¯t matter. Perry had abilities beyond what he had shown. He had allies. If there was an answer to how he¡¯d found the mine, it was there: someone was working with Perry. Unknown forces were in play with agendas of their own. Fenilor watched the meeting and looked closely as Perry left through the same door, having left through the balcony. He saw little, but that didn¡¯t matter. Time, as always, was on Fenilor¡¯s side. Chapter 137 - Technopole The Farfinder would have been getting crowded if not for all the extradimensional space. Mette and Kes were both living there, Perry had a room, and Nima was imprisoned in a recreation of the bedroom she¡¯d had in her home world. There hadn¡¯t really been any choice in the matter, given how important it was to remove her from the playing field, but it was a soft imprisonment. Mette kept her company, and there had been no further attempts at hostage taking. Perry¡¯s eyes were on the monitor that tracked Third Fervor, who was convalescing. She healed fast enough that in another week, she might be back at full strength, aside from the lasting damage to her face. He wanted to kill her where she lay, and argued with Hella about it. Because prognostics took some time, ¡°doing prognostics¡± meant making a plan with a built-in timer. After six hours had passed, Perry would go to where Third Fervor was resting and either kill her on the spot or force her to use the portal. He had been given the tracking magic and software to use, a surprisingly large piece of equipment stuffed in the shelfspace and mediated by Marchand, which would allow him to know where she¡¯d gone off to. In theory, the Farfinder would get him at the end of six hours before he¡¯d embarked on the plan, because their prognostics would be done by then, running through a possible scenario. Perry¡¯s plan was to stalk her like a wounded gazelle, interrupting her sleep, which she needed and he did not. Of course, the main plan was to just get her while she slept. Instead, they¡¯d pulled him after four hours. ¡°Caves,¡± said Hella, hands folded across her chest. ¡°Caves,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°We can get you places with a door,¡± said Hella. ¡°We can also physically move the ship at great speeds and set you down anywhere on the surface of the planet. But what we don¡¯t currently have the capacity to do is to place you inside of a building with no doors or a cave system. And unfortunately, Third Fervor can both sense and teleport to any cave system within thirty miles of her, including caves with openings smaller than you are.¡± Perry sighed. ¡°Okay, so I would need to kill her instantly or sneak up on her in the dead of night making no sound. Can we run prognostics on that?¡± ¡°We¡¯re pretty sure that she would just turtle if she can¡¯t fight,¡± said Hella. ¡°Going to a cave system must be something she¡¯s worked out ¡ª she¡¯s only a portal away. If we had Orchard missiles, we could just bomb their house and kill her and the queen in one fell swoop, but our armaments aren¡¯t that strong.¡± ¡°Rod from god?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± asked Hella. ¡°It¡¯s, uh, a method of warfare where you drop something very dense and heavy from very high in the sky,¡± said Perry. ¡°Kinetic bombardment, I think it might have been called. March?¡± ¡°I am familiar with the technique,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though Earth 2 referred to it as a gravity cannon, and it was not thought to be particularly viable as a method of attack, given concerns about accuracy and cost. However, given the ship can easily maneuver into orbit and prognostics can be used for targeting, it does seem possible to drop ten tons of tungsten on an arc that would hit our target. The damage would be immense.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Or a nuclear weapon, we could use one of those too if we make one. I could sneak one into range without her knowing. Actually, I¡¯m pretty sure that stealth would be viable, even if she¡¯s sleeping in the armor now.¡± That was a change, and it wasn¡¯t clear how long it would last. Second sphere was the only thing that had made sleeping in armor tolerable for Perry. ¡°You understand that my objection is not about viability, right?¡± asked Hella. ¡°We want her alive because she¡¯s not a threat to anyone at the moment, and in theory, won¡¯t be a threat moving into the future. She wants to serve her queen, and her queen wants revenge against you, but your advantage is your ability to hide, especially if you have our help. She can¡¯t touch you. She¡¯ll be more difficult to fight later on, but if you want to deprive her of sleep, or throw a rock from space, you can do that later, to the extent you can do that now. If we monitor her now, she¡¯s a trap for Fenilor. And potentially, she¡¯s an asset against him.¡± ¡°She wasn¡¯t able to finish the job,¡± said Perry. ¡°Neither was he,¡± said Hella. ¡°I reviewed the same footage you did. They want to kill each other for ideological reasons, and if they fight each other, we have an advantage.¡± ¡°Unless he kills her outright,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can¡¯t track him,¡± said Hella. ¡°But we know where she is, and if he comes close ¡ª within a half mile ¡ª we¡¯ll be able to see the hole he leaves. It¡¯s far better for us to see the hole he leaves when he¡¯s coming for her, rather than seeing it when he¡¯s coming for you. She¡¯s better bait than any bait we could leave out. And in the meantime, he might bite on traps we set for him. Time is on our side here. There are things we¡¯re still setting up, things we still need to acquire.¡± Perry had grudgingly agreed. Third Fervor was a threat, but she wasn¡¯t the major one, and even after she had healed back to her full strength, he was fairly sure her armor would stay weakened. It wasn¡¯t just the things he¡¯d said, it was that the bullets had actually pierced her, and that had to take a psychological toll. Her resolve had been weakened, and she¡¯d had it confirmed that her resolve had been weakened. Once the damage to his armor and body had been fully repaired, Perry went to the northern hemisphere to get one of the masks that Dirk had told him about. ~~~~ The world was, in theory, multicultural, but in practice the variations in the races and their cultures, as well as their historical distributions, meant that some places were much more homogenous than others. Elves preferred the cold, which was one of the reasons they went around scantily clad in temperate regions, while dwarves and their pig-wives preferred hotter climes. Far enough north, the shrimp-headed pennic couldn¡¯t even survive, which meant that the melekee, orcs, and elves dominated. Perry was in his armor with his helmet off, hidden beneath heavy furs that wouldn¡¯t mark him as terribly out of place. If he had to give an Earth analog to the place he was going, it would be Siberia or northern Alaska, except it was more populated than either of them. The lanterns allowed cities to flourish almost anywhere, regardless of whether there was good farmland, in much the same way that Earth¡¯s global logistics infrastructure allowed people to survive solely through regular resupply. Tetrankersh was about as out of the way as a civilization could get. It vaguely reminded Perry of the Nordic countries, though he¡¯d never actually been to the Nordic countries, only studied their maps. Maybe it was the snow or the conifers. The city itself was huddled around its domes like they were campfires, and so far as Perry knew, that was essentially true ¡ª the domes could make almost anything aside from metal, and one of the uses was to transform magical energy into heat energy, though he didn¡¯t know the specifics. There were three of the domes, and every single one of the buildings around it had a gray utilitarian quality to it, with little of the artwork that adorned every other city that Perry had been to. It was the West¡¯s view of how communism was supposed to look, drab and monotonous, with all the soul sucked right out of it. It probably didn¡¯t help that it was the dead of winter. Perry followed the GPS, Marchand, to the address he¡¯d been given. He had no reason to believe that this version of Moss would know he was coming, since news simply didn¡¯t travel around the world all that fast. He pounded hard on the door, and it took a long while for the door to open only a small crack. Inside was Moss, staring hard, looking Perry up and down. ¡°Come in then,¡± said Moss. Perry moved inside, through an entryway, but didn¡¯t remove the furs, because beneath them was his armor. It would take some explaining. The interior of the house explained where all the color had gone. The walls were an aggressive orange color, but Perry could barely see them because the living room was cluttered with plants. There was a single large chair and a table in the center of the room, both for Moss¡¯ height, and a long overstuffed couch that was a bit taller and might, in a pinch, have served as a bed. A bowl of fish sat on a claw-footed table and a bookcase was filled with enough books that it could almost have been considered a small library in its own right. ¡°This ¡­ is your house?¡± asked Perry. It was stiflingly warm, and a touch humid, which might have been because of all the plants. ¡°Who are you?¡± asked Moss. He had his arms folded across his chest. He looked different than the one Perry had met on the airship. His hair was shorter, though he still had a full beard, and he was wearing clothes that seemed to suit the warm house, showing thick, muscular arms. ¡°I don¡¯t know you.¡± ¡°Peregrin Holzmann,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though I doubt that name means anything to you. I was sent here by Dirk Gibbons.¡± Moss sighed like an air mattress deflating. ¡°Gibbons wants something from me, does he?¡± ¡°A mask,¡± said Perry. ¡°A collection of masks, actually. Masks for all occasions.¡± ¡°And he knows that no one is supposed to know about them?¡± asked Moss. ¡°He did seem to know that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Exigent circumstances.¡± Moss sighed. ¡°Then I suppose I¡¯ll get some masks for you, shall I?¡± ¡°Just like that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Is there something I should know?¡± asked Moss, raising a hairy eyebrow. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean ¡­ I would have thought you¡¯d want proof that I had actually been sent here by Dirk Gibbons instead of getting his name from a ledger somewhere. I don¡¯t even have a letter from him.¡± Moss frowned. ¡°Where are you from? Originally, I mean?¡± ¡°Far away,¡± said Perry. ¡°Former colony?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. He considered that, and decided that by some definition, the United States of America counted. ¡°Technically.¡± ¡°There are certain people who have, in their minds, a way of doing things,¡± said Moss. He went to sit down in his chair and gestured for Perry to take the couch. He did it slowly, reluctantly. ¡°They always want there to be less trust, more verification, more paperwork, more proof. It¡¯s how they were brought up.¡± ¡°I think it would be easy for an enemy to come here and steal something that¡¯s supposed to be secret,¡± said Perry. ¡°All they would need is knowledge, and that can¡¯t be that hard to get. A team of spies, three of them, could rob this place blind if you¡¯re just giving things away at the mere mention of Dirk Gibbons.¡± ¡°Perhaps,¡± said Moss with a shrug. ¡°There are resources here, and secrets too.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not concerned,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s fine, I suppose. I¡¯m just surprised.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not impossible there are spies here,¡± said Moss. ¡°It¡¯s not impossible that you are one such spy. There are two kingdoms left, and both have unfurled their tentacles. The suckers are latched on.¡± ¡°There¡¯s only one kingdom left,¡± said Perry. ¡°Has news of what happened in Berus not reached here yet?¡± ¡°Shipments are rare, word is rare,¡± said Moss. He shrugged. ¡°I¡¯d thought it would take more time for the kingdom to fall.¡± ¡°The king was assassinated,¡± said Perry. ¡°Well, I¡¯ll hope that someone¡¯s prepared a digest for me, and that it made it on the airship this time,¡± said Moss. He folded his hands in his lap. ¡°I suppose we should get on with it, since I have some shipments that should have come in with you.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t come on an airship,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hrm?¡± asked Moss. He raised a bushy eyebrow. ¡°How so? Overland in winter is ¡ª¡± ¡°Magic,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was going to say that I don¡¯t have time to explain it all, but I guess in this case, I do. And ¡­ I already explained it to you once.¡± Moss was very still for a moment. ¡°Ah. You¡¯re a time traveler.¡± ¡°Wha-what?¡± asked Perry. If he¡¯d really wanted to, he might have been able to clamp down his confusion with second sphere and been calmly impassive. Moss laughed. ¡°Only joking. Whatever magic it is that brought you, was this one of the reasons you came?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ I don¡¯t think it¡¯s why Dirk sent me, but he¡¯s a shifty guy, so it¡¯s difficult to say. If he¡¯d asked me to, with no masks to speak of, I would have come. He knows I have a soft spot for you.¡± ¡°And how is the other me doing?¡± asked Moss. Perry grimaced. ¡°Dead, unfortunately.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Moss. He didn¡¯t seem fazed. ¡°Another has been, er, made,¡± said Perry. ¡°But the one I knew best is gone.¡± He cleared his throat. ¡°I was your bodyguard, for a time. We got to know each other, at least a little bit.¡± ¡°And you failed in your duty?¡± asked Moss. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or maybe yes, depending on how you count it. I wasn¡¯t on duty at the time, but maybe I should have been there.¡± ¡°I feel no close kinship with the clones,¡± said Moss. ¡°We get along though. There¡¯s another that lives here. Perhaps you¡¯ll meet him before you go.¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t that dangerous?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean, as far as secrecy goes?¡± Moss laughed. ¡°Did Dirk tell you nothing? You¡¯re in a research town. This is where the machine was first made.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I ¡­ had kind of wondered why it was out in the middle of nowhere.¡± ¡°Tetrankersh dates back to the early revolution,¡± said Moss. ¡°The central dome, it was one of the first. This place was meant to make weapons, or defenses if we could, to develop the tools to fight against the monarchies.¡± ¡°And decades later, that¡¯s still ongoing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I would think that living here would be, uh ¡­ not the culture. You¡¯re so divorced from the wider world.¡± Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. ¡°We¡¯re united in common purpose,¡± said Moss. ¡°But you¡¯re right that it¡¯s not how it¡¯s supposed to work. We operate under our own Command Authority, and requisition material support from all across the globe. It¡¯s necessary.¡± ¡°Necessary for what purpose?¡± asked Perry. Moss shifted uncomfortably. ¡°Do you have something you can show me?¡± he asked. ¡°Something that proves you came here without an airship?¡± ¡°You¡¯re asking for proof now?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Uh ¡­ one sec.¡± Perry began taking off the heavy furs that concealed his armor, with the mittens being taken off first. Moss¡¯ eyes widened as the blue power armor was revealed, and widened further when Perry reached into the shelf space and pulled out his sword. Perry hovered above the floor for a moment, long enough that Moss could watch, then set himself down. Some of it, at least, Moss would assume was from Implements. ¡°And Dirk sent you here?¡± asked Moss. ¡°He wants you to have more power?¡± ¡°There are powerful enemies,¡± said Perry. ¡°You didn¡¯t die to simple rebels.¡± ¡°Dirk was always quick to grab at power,¡± said Moss. ¡°I¡¯m mostly surprised that he sent someone here to grab it.¡± He paused. ¡°No, I¡¯m really surprised to see someone with these powers at all.¡± He looked over the armor. ¡°This is like the ones we send down?¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know how those work, exactly, but no.¡± He mostly had experience with the hulking pieces of armor sitting idly by while Kerry Coast City was bombed, unable to do anything, not even help with search and rescue. He hadn¡¯t been impressed. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Moss. He was still looking at the armor. ¡°You said you had time to explain?¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Time is on our side, at the moment.¡± He didn¡¯t really believe it though. So far as he knew, the other two were thinking the same. Perry started with an explanation of different worlds, including the one he¡¯d come from and the ones he¡¯d visited. He talked about thresholders and the patterns that had been observed so far, leaving out some of his early naive assumptions about how it worked. The breadth of worlds was difficult to describe in brief, and the Farfinder didn¡¯t have a good taxonomy, but Perry tried his best to paint a picture. Moss sat silently, but the dwarf had always been a little difficult to read. It wasn¡¯t until Perry got to the arrivals of thresholders on Markat that Moss finally spoke. ¡°Lay out the timeline for me, as precisely as you know it,¡± he said. His voice was tightly controlled. Perry nodded and gave the dates, aided by Marchand. Moss swore. ¡°This whole time,¡± he said. Perry waited. ¡°Dirk didn¡¯t know about this work,¡± said Moss. ¡°I¡¯m sure of it. But you¡¯ve given me a missing puzzle piece, the solution to a problem that we¡¯ve been working on for a very long time.¡± ¡°You have a way to detect the punches,¡± said Perry. ¡°Huh.¡± ¡°Punches?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Is that what you call them?¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°The introduction of physics from one world into another by way of a fourth-dimensional tunnel, that¡¯s a punch, yeah.¡± Moss ran his fingers through his hair. ¡°And there¡¯s going to be another?¡± ¡°Not like the ones from before,¡± said Perry. ¡°This will be an exit, it¡¯ll have different directionality.¡± He frowned. His understanding was very thin. The higher dimensional stuff got mathy in a hurry. ¡°Why, do you have ¡­ some way of interacting with it?¡± Moss nodded. ¡°You can travel quickly? Get something to Dirk? That one, I mean, the one that¡¯s off where the action is?¡± ¡°I can,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say he¡¯s a friend, because I don¡¯t imagine that a guy like that actually has friends, but we¡¯ve been working together. You want me to transport something dangerous?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a sheaf of papers,¡± said Moss. ¡°So yes, quite dangerous.¡± Perry nodded slowly. He was obviously going to read those papers at the next available opportunity. In fact, Marchand had probably already started dumping nanites, but more would need to be spread around the place. And the Farfinder would have to investigate this place, snooping through their books to see what fruits their research had produced. ¡°Come,¡± said Moss, hoisting himself up from his chair. ¡°I¡¯ll get dressed and I can take you to one of the facilities. I¡¯ll get you what you need, then what Dirk needs.¡± He looked Perry up and down. ¡°I haven¡¯t mentioned it, but you coming here in armor isn¡¯t the best sign you¡¯re friendly.¡± ¡°It protects against the cold,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or at least, until it gets cold enough.¡± ¡°Useful,¡± said Moss, envy in his eyes. It took Moss some time to get ready to go out into the cold, mostly lacing up heavy boots and throwing on a cloak and hat and thick gloves. ¡°Why was this place built somewhere so inhospitable?¡± asked Perry. ¡°To discourage people from living here,¡± said Moss. He pushed out the door and Perry followed after with his own fur cloak slipped back on, though he¡¯d stuck everything else in the shelf space. ¡°So you only get the true believers?¡± asked Perry. ¡°So we don¡¯t get a city built up next to things of some danger,¡± said Moss. ¡°People here have accepted the risk, have taken transportation, have forsaken families and friends. The culture here is different, and subordinate to the other culture, but this is also a place that no one will be demanding from us as a commons. It will not grow except as people are deliberately invited and deliberately accept the costs.¡± Moss was walking with purpose, and not appreciating the cold. He held his shoulders high and his head down like he was trying to burrow into his coat. ¡°And I suppose the secrecy doesn¡¯t hurt any,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Moss. ¡°Nor does the fact that this region is untouched by effluence, which might cause problems with delicate measurements or manufacturing. In fact, there is a total ban on lanterns across this entire town.¡± They made their way to a large structure beside one of the three domes, and Moss pulled a key from a pocket to unlock a door for them. They went in quickly, and Perry was mildly surprised to see Moss reach over and flick on a light switch. The lights took a moment to warm, then displayed an enormous work area with all kinds of machines spread over the place and haphazard parts stuffed into shelves along the walls. ¡°This is where the magic happens?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Magic and more,¡± nodded Moss. ¡°Technically you shouldn¡¯t be in here.¡± He moved over to a heavy safe that apparently didn¡¯t need a key or combination, only a brute twist of the wheel, and pulled out a stack of masks from it. ¡°This¡¯ll be what Dirk wants for you, I would guess.¡± Perry took the proffered stack and looked them over. There were four, all of designs that he¡¯d seen before: one that had allowed the laser eye, one that slowed people, one that toughened surfaces, and a final one that would let him pinch some heads. There were many more masks, but those were the most powerful and the most standardized, and if that was what was on offer, it was what he would take. ¡°Here,¡± said Moss. When Perry looked up, Moss had uncovered both a chalkboard and a small device with many wires attached to it. His attention was on the chalkboard, which was covered in writing that must have been dwarven or something because it took a half-second to resolve to equally incomprehensible Arabic numerals and Roman script. ¡°What ¡­ is this?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s what I¡¯ve found,¡± said Moss. ¡°The question of other worlds, your ¡®punches¡¯. The activity in the last years, I saw it all, I just didn¡¯t entirely know what it was.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. There was a little timeline at the bottom of the chalkboard, and who knew how long it had been there. ¡°Well yeah, that does appear to be us.¡± There was a mark for Third Fervor, for Nima, and for Perry. Moss gave a little laugh. ¡°You said that you met me in Kerry Coast?¡± ¡°On the airship to Berus, actually,¡± said Perry. ¡°But we were in Kerry Coast at the same time.¡± ¡°I had stationed myself there,¡± said Moss. ¡°I have a globe somewhere, but with the signal, I could tell ahead of time where it would be pointing.¡± ¡°Uh, wait,¡± said Perry. ¡°How does that work? I know you can do that, but if you heard it here and it takes pretty slow travel by airship, then how did you manage to get there?¡± ¡°Time,¡± said Moss. ¡°I got the signal of what must have been your arrival three months early, though I hadn¡¯t known that the signal preceded, I¡¯d thought it came after, so of course I would have found nothing there.¡± ¡°You ¡­ never told me about this,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Moss. ¡°I must have known, at least in part. I must have had a reason to keep it from you, though I can¡¯t fathom what it would have been, even if I had seen you fighting.¡± ¡°You were a little less than forthcoming then,¡± said Perry. ¡°Also, detecting the signal from that far out ¡­ I mean, that¡¯s, uh ¡­ a lot.¡± Richter had perhaps two days to plan and then make a trip out to the desert, and that was with better than 21st century equipment. ¡°We have all sorts of things here,¡± said Moss. ¡°This place has been in operation for a long time, it¡¯s one of the first of these we built, and there are aspects to this world ¡ª now I know they must have been brought in from elsewhere ¡ª that we¡¯ve studied but not shared.¡± He went to the small machine and moved a lever on it up and down a few times, priming it. ¡°Twenty years ago we had a team of three hundred working on this, but everyone¡¯s moved on and there¡¯s been no enthusiasm for starting up again.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°What is it?¡± ¡°A way to go to other worlds,¡± said Moss. ¡°In theory.¡± ¡°Not in practice?¡± asked Perry. ¡°In practice, there¡¯s resistance,¡± said Moss. ¡°Of all the points we¡¯ve identified and tested, every one of them was like trying to push our way upstream. With enormous power, we might have been able to do it.¡± He looked away from the machine and over to Perry. ¡°But if what you say is true, then soon we¡¯ll have a way to push outward.¡± He looked down at the machine again. ¡°We could build an entire ship around this.¡± ¡°This is what you wanted me to get to Dirk?¡± asked Perry. ¡°This science experiment?¡± Moss nodded. ¡°He¡¯s been talking about the end of expansion for a long time. The culture has always had something to push back against, and no one knows what it will be like once the last monarchy falls. A decade or two of normalization, maybe, but the Command Authorities won¡¯t all last. The domes will need maintenance, but we won¡¯t build new ones unless the population keeps growing, which it might not.¡± It was more than Perry had ever heard Moss talk before. He wondered how far the two had diverged from each other, how long ago the clone had been made. He also wondered where Velli was, if there was a Velli here too. Elves liked cooler climates, but it didn¡¯t seem like there would be much for her to do in a place like this. ¡°But if there are other worlds,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then you would push the culture to them, too?¡± ¡°That¡¯s the culture,¡± said Moss. He stopped. ¡°But you¡¯re not of the culture, as much as you¡¯re on our side.¡± His eyes were searching Perry¡¯s perfectly flat expression. ¡°You¡¯ll take my papers to him?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. Eventually they would have to talk about having a structured society that spanned the multiverse. Hell, there probably already existed at least one organization that spanned the multiverse, given that Hella¡¯s universe had figured out a way to travel through the punches, if not how to get back. ¡°Could you weaponize this?¡± ¡°Could I ¡­ what?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Weaponize it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Make it into a gun that shoots people to another universe.¡± Second sphere translated ¡®gun¡¯, as apparently this Moss didn¡¯t know about them. ¡°Nothing like that,¡± said Moss. ¡°Though ¡­¡± Perry waited. ¡°Though there¡¯s something?¡± ¡°There¡¯s one possibility, if there were a ¡®punch¡¯,¡± he said. ¡°Not a projectile, but something. Why you would need it ¡­ whether it would be ethical? I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°I have time,¡± said Perry. ¡°Thank you for the masks. I¡¯ll wait while you get papers, and ¡­ I have something for you.¡± ¡°Oh?¡± asked Moss. ¡°More answers, I suppose?¡± ¡°A lot more answers, as it turns out,¡± said Perry. He reached into the shelf space and pulled out one of the tablets that the Farfinder had given him, along with a hand-cranked charger for it. ¡°I¡¯ll run you through how to operate it, but this is an electrical book with more than a million pages, including diagrams and technical specifications.¡± At Perry¡¯s request, Marchand had stripped it of a healthy chunk of weapons design and strictly cultural knowledge, though it had enough science that someone clever could probably create something horrifying just from the base principles contained inside it. Still, it was mostly base physics, not even close to being the breadth of what was possible in this world. Perry hadn¡¯t seen enough to know, but he was guessing that this place had far more than he¡¯d first suspected, and if they had dug into some of the magics that various thresholders had brought to the world, their power might be considerably higher than just the masks that Dirk had offered. Moss took the tablet and looked it over, and after a handful of minutes had been familiarized with the basic functions of the modified Gratbook like scrolling, links, search, history, and the back button. ¡°This is what they have in other worlds?¡± asked Moss. ¡°This, and better,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is rugged, should last a long time, shouldn¡¯t require much special knowledge. Hopefully it doesn¡¯t crash on you, or get you stuck in a menu you don¡¯t know how to get out of.¡± Playing tech support would be pretty inconvenient, even with the Farfinder to open doors. ¡°There¡¯s some math in there I¡¯d like you to look over, things that might help with making that machine into a weapon if we need it.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not in the business of weapons,¡± said Moss. ¡°Well, all the same,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I understand this community you have here, or who is in charge, but if you can make that a priority ¡­ it would be for the best. I¡¯ll give Dirk whatever you need me to give him, and I¡¯ll be back if you have something.¡± He looked at the blackboard. ¡°Write a note for me in the top corner there, if you have something you need to say.¡± Moss frowned at the blackboard. ¡°You would be able to ¡­ read it?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. Moss was silent for a long moment, and Perry let that silence stretch on. There were implications to that ability, he knew. Whatever Moss was thinking, he shook it off and started in on a letter to Dirk. Perry slipped his helmet on while that was going. ¡°News from the Farfinder?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Are they looking at this place?¡± ¡°We have an email, yes sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry breathed out a sigh. He was glad they weren¡¯t doing prognostics. If they were comfortable interfering, they could have nearly real time communication with him by tracking him and listening to what he said and then using technopathy to insert ¡®emails¡¯ into Marchand. The email was from Eggletina, who everyone just called Eggy. It was short. Perry, that place turned out to be a gold mine. We should have swept more. We¡¯re still looking through it. I¡¯m updating his tablet as we speak with more information. March, seed nanites. It looks like they¡¯re further along with multiversal research than we could ever have expected they would be. Maybe not enough that we can make substantial changes, but they have selection tech ¡ª probably because there are so many entrances. Looks like some ability to affect punches, which would be huge. We might actually have to bring this guy in, but that will have to wait. Once the nanites are down, we can start reading the papers in there, it¡¯s a pain to do remote. Perry reread the bit about ¡®selection tech¡¯ twice, as though he would be able to pull some meaning from it. He tried to temper his expectations. So far as he knew, the Farfinder wasn¡¯t actually able to pick which punch they were leaving through, so when they¡¯d left the Great Arc, they hadn¡¯t known whether they would be following him, Maya, or the king. It was possible that ¡®selection tech¡¯ just meant the ability to distinguish between punches. But if there was a path to picking where the portal would go, then that would be huge. He didn¡¯t actually believe that Moss had something like that, even if there had been a team of three hundred working the problem. Moss hadn¡¯t even understood what was happening until Perry showed up with information. It was a dead, mothballed project that only had any attention because their little detector had lit up. Still, there was something that stirred in Perry. He was going to have to hope that Eggy wasn¡¯t just being overexcitable over nothing. Moss finished with his letter, assembled the sheaf of papers, slipped the whole thing into a thick envelope pulled from one of numerous drawers, and handed the whole thing over to Perry. ¡°You get that to Dirk,¡± said Moss. ¡°I don¡¯t know that it¡¯ll do him much good, but it¡¯s a briefing that he¡¯s been left out on. It was never supposed to be something he was involved in, just a curiosity with no real applications, but if you¡¯re here and this is all in play ¡­ he¡¯ll want to know.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Before I go ¡­ you knew Fenilor the Gilded?¡± Moss paused. ¡°I met him on more than one occasion, but no, I didn¡¯t know him, not well. A few conversations he wouldn¡¯t have remembered. We ran in the same circles, obviously. That was the culture, at the time. Why?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not important right now,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just wondering whether he knew about this place.¡± ¡°He founded it,¡± said Moss. ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. He didn¡¯t particularly like that. There were limits to how hooked in Fenilor could be with the Command Authorities, but it was clear that at one point fairly heavy resources were being directed at Fenilor¡¯s whims. ¡°He¡¯s long reformed,¡± said Moss. It took Perry a moment to realize that ¡®reformed¡¯ in this context meant that he¡¯d done the caterpillar reincarnation thing that elves did. ¡°He wasn¡¯t a part of the culture, not in the same way he¡¯d been. Why?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a historical question,¡± said Perry. He let out a breath. The other Moss already knew, and there¡¯d be no reason for this Moss to think any different, as much as there might have been some minor divergence. ¡°But if he shows up again, reformed ¡­ I guess send me a message. Or if you remember, say, giving him equipment, or making something for him.¡± ¡°Dirk knows you¡¯re after Fenilor?¡± asked Moss. ¡°He does,¡± said Perry. ¡°The other you knows as well.¡± ¡°You said I died,¡± said Moss. ¡°That¡¯s the beauty of clones,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s always more.¡± Moss smiled with his wide teeth. ¡°Then if I think of anything, I¡¯ll let you know. The blackboard, yes?¡± Perry nodded. ¡°But I haven¡¯t seen him in a very long time. If he came by, I would know it. He was always very magnetic, easy to spot across a room, and when they reform, it¡¯s not as though they¡¯re completely different.¡± Perry wasn¡¯t convinced. If Fenilor had founded this place, there was a reason for it. Maybe, on the surface, it made sense that Fenilor was putting effort into magic and technology he knew something about from the parade of thresholders. But if Fenilor wanted to move without being seen, he certainly seemed capable of doing that. They were going to have to scrub through the entire history of the site as best they could and see if traps had been laid for them. Chapter 138 - Waiting Games ¡°It¡¯s actually really cool,¡± said Eggy. ¡°They figured out a technique of mapping punches, not the one we use, where we¡¯re depending on universal resonance, but a more ¡ª I guess I¡¯d call it intrauniversal technique, one that works only within the universe. And they¡¯re doing it by hand, which isn¡¯t hard, I guess, but ¡ª oh heck, he¡¯s figured out the calculator, this should be good.¡± Eggy was watching her monitor with a view over Moss¡¯ shoulder as he used the tablet Perry had left there. The bridge was a bit crowded, since the crew and a few of the hangers-on were there, but it was an informal meeting that Perry didn¡¯t want to miss. Eggy was their science officer, or something like that, and she was extremely excited by what they¡¯d found in the northern research city. ¡°Yeah, he¡¯s going straight for calculus, that¡¯s what I would have done,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Going straight for the integrals ¡ª and now he¡¯s trying to break it, which I also respect. Hell of a guy.¡± ¡°You were saying about the methods?¡± asked Perry. He had gotten out of his armor for the time being, and felt much more comfortable. ¡°We can adapt them?¡± ¡°Well, yes and no,¡± said Eggy. She turned around in her chair, spinning to face Perry, but she¡¯d shoved off from the table too hard and went right back around to her monitor and had to make another half rotation. ¡°We can adapt the methods here, but they¡¯re not shy about having different magic systems interface with each other, because obviously they don¡¯t understand the fundamental nature of their reality as something cobbled together. So there¡¯s basically not any chance at all that we would get it to work on some other world, which is one of the things we¡¯re after. Although ¡­¡± ¡°I¡¯m hoping that¡¯s a good ¡®although¡¯,¡± said Hella. The ship¡¯s captain had her arms folded and was directing a stern look at her excitable scientist. ¡°Uh,¡± said Eggy, running her fingers through her hair. ¡°In theory we could use it for discrimination if we had a giant dish, which isn¡¯t as impractical as it might sound, because we could just go into space and unfold it ¡ª if the world we¡¯re on has space, which ¡­ obviously would present an issue.¡± ¡°Focus, please,¡± said Hella. She relaxed slightly. ¡°Do you need a stimulant?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Eggy with a double nod. ¡°Nose one?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Hella. She reached down into a nearby drawer at her station and pulled out a white nasal spray, which she handed over to Eggy, who took it and immediately squirted a puff of something up her nose. ¡°Uh,¡± said Mette. ¡°Nasal spray,¡± said Hella. ¡°Cools down the brain.¡± ¡°What does it actually do?¡± asked Kes, who was standing with his arms crossed in a pose that mimicked Perry¡¯s. Perry found this slightly annoying. ¡°It¡¯s a nootropic,¡± said Hella. ¡°Increases concentration for an hour, helps a lot when your mind is going too many places. We picked it up some worlds back. It¡¯s not actually a stimulant in the conventional sense.¡± She read Perry¡¯s face. ¡°We take what we can get. It¡¯s safe.¡± Eggy handed the spray back and blinked, then looked at the computer. ¡°Where were we?¡± ¡°You were jumping around from topic to topic too much,¡± said Hella. ¡°Right,¡± said Eggy. She placed her hands flat on the table on either side of the keyboard. ¡°So to focus in on the relevant stuff here, we can adapt some of the techniques he¡¯s using in the long term. For this world, we¡¯ll have perfect clarity about the punches, maybe a little more than that. The mapping system they¡¯re using is completely different, but I can adapt our models to theirs, and there¡¯s a good chance that we can have some influence. Actually, give me a second.¡± Eggy began rapidly typing into what Perry only vaguely understood to be some kind of interface for writing programs. He¡¯d seen both Richter and Brigitta doing similar things with wildly different interfaces, but in all cases it was a manipulation of glyphs. He could use second sphere for interpretation, changing the way it appeared on the screen as though there was a filter on top of his eyes, but it didn¡¯t become much more comprehensible. ¡°This is just absolutely painful to watch,¡± said Mette in a low voice. She had moved closer to Perry, and said it in a low voice. ¡°Heard that,¡± said Eggy. She turned in her chair. ¡°I would suggest you do better if you think you can, but you don¡¯t even know what we¡¯re trying to do here.¡± ¡°Up,¡± said Mette. ¡°Let me do it.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know this keyboard, interface, or programming language,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Come on.¡± She got up though. Perry¡¯s opinion, it was mostly to see what happened. Mette slid into the chair, stared at the keyboard for a moment, then looked over at Eggy. ¡°Alright, let me handle this, tell me what we¡¯re doing. I can put it in about a billion times faster than you can.¡± ¡°So,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Basically, we have the punch map, which is a relational map, it shows ¡ª yeah, that one, how did you get that?¡± The punch map had come up on the screen, showing the arcs of the thresholders through their worlds. Perry¡¯s started on Earth and was a simple line going through all the worlds he¡¯d visited. ¡°I was watching you, and I can use a search function, as I am not a moron,¡± said Mette, eyes still on the screen and hands still at the ready. ¡°Right, so the map that the Markat team made is different, because in higher dimensional space it actually does point to where things are,¡± said Eggy. ¡°So the script should map these two things against each other, which will point out where we are in high-D, along with a vector showing some directions. That will at least get us in the direction of ¡ª okay, so you¡¯re fast.¡± A crude visualization showed a sphere in the center of the screen with a bunch of spikes sticking out of it. It didn¡¯t mean much to Perry. ¡°We can use this somehow?¡± asked Perry. ¡°So ¡­ in theory, yeah,¡± said Eggy. She sniffed. Her hands were smoothing down her dress, which she didn¡¯t seem to be aware of. ¡°They have tools which theoretically could nudge the exit punch in a specific direction. There¡¯s a little delay, sometimes a long delay. In theory, we could direct the punch. I think.¡± ¡°How long?¡± asked Kes before Perry had a chance to. ¡°A month, let¡¯s say,¡± replied Eggy. ¡°From experience, you need to make that two months,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s a pretty long time,¡± said Perry. ¡°A very long time, if we¡¯re leaving Third Fervor alive. I can¡¯t capture her, and once she¡¯s down, the portal opens. And if Fenilor gets to her, if he ends her ¡­¡± ¡°We monitor and hope for the best,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s all we can do. We¡¯ll work on the other problems as much as we can. We build weapons, a way to track Fenilor, a way to obliterate him if he refuses to go quietly.¡± Weapons would be easier than tracking, even if they had that tablet. ¡°We¡¯re going to need help,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t fully trust the culture, but they have hundreds of people who¡¯ve worked in spheres adjacent to the ones we need.¡± ¡°First we need to see how far Fenilor has penetrated them,¡± said Hella. ¡°But in the meantime, I¡¯m going to be using that machine of yours. We¡¯re going to expand the Farfinder as much as we can.¡± She looked around at her crew and got some nods. ¡°Will you be able to take them all on the ship?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The clones?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Hella. ¡°Some of them will be stranded here. If I thought it was viable, I would suggest we build a few more of this ship, but the ship has been through a lot, and it¡¯s poorly documented. It¡¯ll mean some of the crew will stay on this planet.¡± ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be too hard to make another ship,¡± said Mette. She hesitated. ¡°Not if there were more of me.¡± It wasn¡¯t something that Perry had talked about with her, but Mette came from a culture where expanding the population was taken as a social imperative. She¡¯d had children, and she would have clones. ¡°We¡¯ll discuss it,¡± said Hella with a curt nod. ¡°Obviously it¡¯s Perry¡¯s machine, and we can¡¯t do anything without his blessing, nor would we, but I think this is the plan. With five of Eggy working together, there are projects that we couldn¡¯t otherwise get done.¡± ¡°I¡¯m great like that,¡± said Eggy with a smile that Perry only returned by half. ¡°That would drop the timeline to what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The two month timeline would assume that we had more science and engineering people,¡± said Hella. ¡°Do it then,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll get it set up. As many as you want.¡± ~~~~ Days passed. Perry stepped into Nima¡¯s room, not wearing the power armor. She had mostly been by herself, with only Mette to stop in every now and then. She had a computer, which she was surprisingly adept with, and limited access to a subset of the knowledge and media library of the Farfinder, with their copy of a copy of Marchand looking over her shoulder. Her room was of her own design, spun from the material dreams. Perry had always associated elves with silver ornamentation and ostentatious curls, white wood that had been lovingly worked and looked like it was meant to last forever, an idea he¡¯d probably gotten from Peter Jackson¡¯s Lord of the Rings movies or through cultural osmosis. Nima¡¯s room was minimalist modernism, though with less in the way of straight lines. Every hinge, fastener, or screw was completely hidden, but the furniture was made of two or three large pieces of polished wood or stone, and in a few places metal gleamed. The bends to lines were mathematical, seeming like there had to be some function that easily defined them, some kind of notation you could write out using three variables and some brackets. A large window showed a city that had been built to the same aesthetic with nothing in the way of ornamentation or elaboration, just houses and gardens that had clean curves. Beyond that, there was a steep drop off, and it seemed as though the city sat above clouds. ¡°You know, there are moments when I can believe that I¡¯m back home,¡± said Nima. She was seated at her desk, using a keyboard and mouse, neither of which fit in with the elegant desk. She turned to him and looked him up and down. ¡°And then you come here. Not even giving me the dignity of wearing your armor.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not violent,¡± said Perry with a shrug. ¡°And I¡¯m very out-classed,¡± said Nima. She sighed and reached over to turn off her computer monitor. It had been on a page about American sports. ¡°What do you need from me?¡± ¡°Nothing,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m just seeing how you¡¯re doing.¡± ¡°You can spy on me at any time,¡± said Nima. ¡°It¡¯s a better prison than the one I was in before, but through my whole time on this planet I¡¯m not sure I¡¯ve ever been in a place of my own choosing.¡± Perry watched her. ¡°You know, I was talking to Hella. She said that this is one of the more common failure modes for thresholders who aren¡¯t immediately aggressive. They come together, feel each other out, and then distrust and a small amount of misalignment throws them into a real conflict with each other.¡± Nima watched him with a blank face. ¡°Or sometimes they do come at each other with aggression, because that¡¯s what a world or two of thresholding has trained them to do,¡± said Perry. ¡°They might not even know that they were aligned on a lot of things. I had an ally nearly kill me, actually.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not aligned,¡± said Nima. ¡°If I had the power, I would fix this world. You think it doesn¡¯t need fixing.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a functional world,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s better than I can say for most of them. I mean, I¡¯ve only been to civilized worlds, but even by the standards of civilization, this one is working well, at least in the near term. No famine, no disease, no collapse.¡± Nima looked away. ¡°For now.¡± ¡°For now,¡± said Perry. He was happy giving her that much. ¡°I think if they believed that it would hold forever without any work, it wouldn¡¯t actually function. They fight, they strive, they have every member of their society putting their back into it. There¡¯s something beautiful in that, though I don¡¯t know how you get there ¡ª and I¡¯ve been studying their teachings, their cultural works.¡± Nima was silent for a moment. ¡°We had that,¡± she said softly. ¡°Did you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You never said.¡± ¡°We understood our place,¡± said Nima. She looked out over the false image of the city. ¡°We understood the importance of our work. We believed in doing good and battling evil in all its forms.¡± She looked back at Perry. ¡°From everything you¡¯ve said, you came from a place that believed in nothing.¡± Perry considered that. ¡°It was a place that believed in a lot of things, just ¡­ some of them weren¡¯t good things. There was an understanding that people would take advantage if you let them, that people would do what was best for themselves at the expense of others. We believed in freedom, I guess, but ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Sometimes it felt like that freedom was just an excuse to be shitty to each other.¡± ¡°It sounds awful,¡± said Nima. ¡°The whole world wasn¡¯t like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even the country I lived in wasn¡¯t really like that, it was just ¡­ the internet. The computers.¡± He wasn¡¯t sure he believed that. He looked over at her desk. ¡°You¡¯re getting along well with it?¡± ¡°We had computers in my world,¡± said Nima. ¡°Everything is different, but it¡¯s not that different. I¡¯m getting along.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Thank you,¡± said Nima. She pursed her lips. ¡°For not using force on me, after the whole hostage thing. For trying to make this imprisonment pleasant.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°I try not to be a bad guy.¡± ¡°Interesting phrasing,¡± Nima replied. ¡°You try, but you might actually be a bad guy?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve eaten people, Nima,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve killed ¡­ I don¡¯t even know how many people. And I haven¡¯t felt bad about it, even though I think in principle murder is wrong.¡± He paused. ¡°Some of them I felt bad about. The ones that weren¡¯t under my control. The senseless ones. But most deaths are senseless, in the end.¡± ¡°You ¡­ weren¡¯t in control?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I can turn into a wolf creature,¡± said Perry. ¡°It gives me extra strength at the cost of a loss of control and a hunger for flesh. I do have it under control now, but there was a time when I ¡­ didn¡¯t.¡± Nima paled. ¡°I suppose it¡¯s no wonder I couldn¡¯t beat you even with your armor off.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He couldn¡¯t tell her about Kes for practical reasons of not handing the enemy intel. It would also be a humiliation if he let her know just how much stronger than her he was. Kes had just been a normal human. ¡°You¡¯re becoming less human over time,¡± said Nima. ¡°That¡¯s a path thresholders walk.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°At the point I¡¯m at now, I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve become less human in a bad way.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want to be less of an elf,¡± said Nima. ¡°Then you¡¯re in luck, because your very nature will mean that you¡¯re not often tempted,¡± said Perry. ¡°The good thing about the portals, at least as far as we understand them, is that they don¡¯t have a sense of irony or drama. They value close fights, and that¡¯s it.¡± ¡°I¡¯m done,¡± said Nima. ¡°They ¡ª Hella and the others ¡ª think there¡¯s a way out. All I would need to do is stay on this ship.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was planning to offer to let you through a portal. To continue on.¡± ¡°So I could do what?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Fight for the rest of my life? Struggle against people like Fenilor? Like you?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s just ¡­ we wouldn¡¯t be able to bring you home, and I don¡¯t think you want to spend the rest of your life as a prisoner here, so you¡¯d just settle down on the next world that looks good enough?¡± Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. ¡°Something like that,¡± said Nima. She watched him. ¡°You would never.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± They sat together for a bit while Perry tried to process some feelings. There were many things he didn¡¯t like about thresholding. He¡¯d been pierced through his stomach by a sword a week ago, for fuck¡¯s sake. He¡¯d been trapped underground with bugs crawling all over him. He¡¯d been betrayed, humiliated, and brutalized at various points. It was often boring, with nothing to do but wait, which seemed like it was how the next month or two was going to go. But there was also something very straightforward about it, a measure of personal power and inner drive that had been completely lacking for almost his entire life. What was best in life? To crush your enemies, naturally. But in any other context besides thresholding, enemies weren¡¯t really something that people had. Problems were nuanced, conflict was a thing to be avoided, you couldn¡¯t just chop off a man¡¯s head because you didn¡¯t like his politics. The best fight ¡ª the most satisfying ¡ª had been against Xiyan. She was irredeemable, and he¡¯d known her well enough to completely write her off as a person. Where else would he ever get that satisfaction? Maybe it was pathological to think that way. Maybe it was something he could go to therapy for. But deep down, the thought of joining up with the Farfinder and becoming their neutered muscle made him recoil. He¡¯d had enough of being a bodyguard when he¡¯d been doing it for Moss. ¡°Thank you for visiting,¡± said Nima. ¡°I know you had good intentions, but I don¡¯t need you to do it again.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. He stood awkwardly. ¡°If you want to talk, let me know.¡± ¡°I doubt that I ever would,¡± said Nima. Her lips were tight. ¡°But thank you. It was kind.¡± ~~~~ Third Fervor and her queen were, unfortunately, making moves. The first and most bold of these moves was to announce that the queen was to be wed. The monarchy was under threat, you¡¯d have to be an idiot not to see that, and a marriage was both a distraction for the people and a way of gaining some small amount of power and control. It would also give Third Fervor the king she clearly wanted. The options for who would be king were not plentiful. For one thing, Thirlwell was not actually all that large of an island, and while it had once been a colonial power and was still living off their pillaging of other places, the population was relatively small. There were plenty of nobles, including some kings-in-exile for kingdoms that had no hope to ever be restored, but most of them were useless, and the number of eligible bachelors was actually quite small. Besides that, marrying one of them and allowing him to become king would immediately put a target on his back, and there was the question of optics. The queen had made the search public, which was a savvy PR move in Perry¡¯s opinion, because it distracted the public with a spectacle and at least gave the sense that the monarchy would rebuild itself stronger and better than before. Few knew of Third Fervor¡¯s injury, which was being kept very quiet, so from the outside, the queen was simply steeling herself and doing what needed to be done ¡ª it was noble, in a way, sacrificing herself to a man. People liked it, for whatever reason. There was drama in a search for a husband, and some promise that there would be a savior, however that was going to be managed. Perry got to watch it all from the inside, which he sometimes did with Kes and Mette. The remote monitoring tools the Farfinder had didn¡¯t have sound, but Marchand could extract sound from high-fidelity video by watching micro-vibrations, and could also read lips with a relatively high degree of accuracy, especially once Perry had the idea of clipping their magic ¡®camera¡¯ inside a speaker¡¯s mouth to watch the movement of their tongue and lips. The clone of Dirk Gibbons serving as spymaster produced a suspect for the poisoning of the prince. The patsy was a man who had died of delirium tremens and then had his head bashed in after the fact by the secret police. They¡¯d tried to take him quietly, Dirk had explained, had wanted to get answers, but alas. That was a good enough answer for the queen, apparently, especially as the suspect had left behind a brief manifesto which was making its way through what was left of the Thirlwell resistance. In reality, the manifesto had been Dirk¡¯s work too ¡ª not a manifesto in favor of the culture, but against the monarchy and all its ills, something that painted them in a bad light while saying nothing at all about the opposition. It had mostly been done for plausibility, Perry was pretty sure. Dirk saved his own skin, and his reward was being put in charge of the search for the king, one of the many, many duties he had as spymaster on top of all the duties he had as being a spy for the culture. There was something hilarious to Perry about spying on the spymaster. He was hopeful that at some point he¡¯d be able to say to Dirk ¡°oh yeah, I had a camera installed in your mouth¡±, but that would mean explaining what a camera was, and maybe that would take the fun out of it. ¡°I would make a good king,¡± said Perry as he sat on the couch in the break room. Mette and Kes were with him, watching a large screen that showed them a digest of what had happened and might happen. They were together on a love seat that just barely fit both of them, casually close in a way he somewhat envied. ¡°Wow,¡± said Mette. She was, technically, Mette Prime, since there were now four clones of her. She was the only one of them who was a werewolf, and the only one who was a thresholder. Collectively, Perry called them ¡®the Mets¡¯, but he spent almost all his time with the singular Mette Prime. ¡°Yeah, that was something we always thought,¡± said Kes. He shrugged. ¡°We would make a good king.¡± ¡°It¡¯s arrogant though,¡± said Mette. ¡°Weren¡¯t you basically a queen?¡± asked Kes. ¡°I mean, not in terms of structure, and you had a coregency, but ¡ª¡± ¡°Totally different,¡± said Mette. ¡°Sometimes you have to step up, but monarchy is different from being an elected leader.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t remember many elections,¡± said Kes. ¡°We were going to have them,¡± said Mette. ¡°Nothing like you¡¯ve described, those grueling year-long contests, but it is important for there to be a release valve when people are upset. I can see some value in having a leader for life, if there¡¯s a good succession plan and good heirs, but most monarchies don¡¯t have that, and if the people have a bad monarch, what¡¯s the backup plan?¡± ¡°Shoot them in the face,¡± said Marchand, who was hooked into the ship¡¯s systems. He only rarely offered his commentary when they were just watching, though his own view of what was happening on the planet was much better than theirs. Between watching the past, present, and future, there was a lot to keep an eye on. ¡°I mean, yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Violence is one of the only ways to get a dictator out of power, whether they end up dead or in exile, and a king is basically a dictator. But the very first thing a king should do is secure their position of power and make that kind of violence against him impossible, which in practice, historically, meant brokering some binding deals that vastly limited power-in-practice.¡± Kes laughed. ¡°Took the words out of my mouth,¡± he said. ¡°You two are insufferable,¡± said Mette with an exaggerated huff. She leaned forward and looked at the screen. ¡°March, do we have prognostics here?¡± ¡°Yes, ma¡¯am,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What would you like to see?¡± ¡°I want to understand what Dirk is doing here,¡± said Mette. ¡°I think in the scheme of the fight, it¡¯s probably not important, but he¡¯s making moves without any knowledge of who or what we are.¡± ¡°You think he might gum up the works?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Possible,¡± said Mette. ¡°March, find me where they¡¯re discussing this, if you can.¡± Marchand brought them a change in view, which came from the ship¡¯s prognostic engines. They were running virtually all the time, fed by a power source that only worked under certain physics which were currently ripe ¡ª though the next world they went to wouldn¡¯t necessarily allow it. The screen showed a meeting between Dirk, the queen, and Third Fervor. Because the magics for past, present, and future were all different, different tools needed to be used, but Marchand was fairly seamlessly using every audio-visual processing trick at his disposal to make it seem like it was just a feed from a camera. ¡°There¡¯s the possibility of a commoner,¡± said Dirk. ¡°A commoner?¡± asked Third Fervor. She was looking at Dirk with a significant amount of skepticism. She was in her armor, with the face of it peeled back. She removed it only to sleep, and sometimes not even then. The injury to her jaw had not fully mended, which meant she spoke slowly and infrequently. ¡°I would like to hear the rationale,¡± said the queen. ¡°Surely there¡¯s someone from the noble class more suitable. Sir Miche?¡± ¡°Caught with a prostitute three days ago,¡± said Dirk. ¡°The rumors were swirling even before that though.¡± ¡°Sir Terren then?¡± asked the queen. Her hands were folded in her lap. Dirk shook his head sadly. She apparently understood the implication, though Perry did not. ¡°I¡¯m starting to regret making a spectacle of this,¡± said the queen. ¡°Someone from outside the noble class wouldn¡¯t be wholly unprecedented, but I fear it would send the wrong message.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll look closely at candidates,¡± said Dirk. ¡°There are significant advantages though. A husband from outside the nobility would be a sign that the gap between classes is not so large as it might be feared. If you think in terms of the delusions that the enemy trades in, one of the most important is that no one has a master ¡ª and if people believe that they might become a master some day, by the grace of the nobility, I think that¡¯s more attractive than equality.¡± ¡°They¡¯re not equal,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°It¡¯s true,¡± said the queen. ¡°The symboulions rule, and the Command Authorities put themselves above everyone else. Equality is a myth.¡± She said this with some concern, and watched Dirk as he answered. ¡°They¡¯re hypocrites,¡± said Dirk. ¡°If only pointing out those things deterred them. It¡¯s one of their foundational beliefs that contradictions must exist, that you cannot stand firm on the axioms. That¡¯s one of their advantages ¡ª they feel no need to be coherent, to stick to firm principles.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll be introducing a contradiction of our own, if I were to marry a commoner,¡± said the queen. She placed a finger against her chin. ¡°Draw up a list. Only those who are loyal, who have means, who would serve the kingdom, not their own interests.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll do my best,¡± said Dirk with a nod. ¡°Oh my god,¡± said Kes from the couch. ¡°He¡¯s going to pull a Dick Cheney.¡± ¡°He¡¯s going to shoot someone in the face?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Who is Dick Cheney?¡± asked Mette with a frown, looking between them. ¡°He¡¯s a man who shot someone in the face?¡± ¡°He was Vice President of the United States for a while,¡± said Perry. ¡°More importantly, he headed up the presidential candidate¡¯s search for a vice president,¡± said Kes. ¡°When that search was concluded, who should become vice president but the man who was doing the search?¡± ¡°Wow,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Mette, holding up a hand. ¡°He shot someone in the face?¡± ¡°Hunting accident,¡± said Perry and Kes at the same time. ¡°Not actually relevant,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s just where my mind went, given ¡­ you know.¡± ¡°It was a national punchline for a bit,¡± said Kes. ¡°We were young.¡± ¡°If we ever get to your Earth, I¡¯m going to have some very specific and useless knowledge,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t know how to drive a car, but I do know about a hunting accident that happened twenty years ago.¡± ¡°So Dirk goes searching for a marriage candidate, finds the nobles unacceptable, looks among the commoners, finds himself,¡± said Kes. ¡°What¡¯s the endgame there?¡± ¡°He becomes king,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°But he doesn¡¯t want to be king.¡± ¡°Being a king means having enormous power,¡± said Perry. ¡°More than he already has. He can use that power for a soft revolution or a hard one. Committing a coup when you¡¯re married to the queen seems ¡­ almost ideal, right, especially given some sexist commoners who don¡¯t trust a woman in the first place?¡± ¡°Fair point,¡± said Kes. ¡°But with Berus still in rocky condition, I doubt that a coup is on his mind.¡± ¡°He¡¯s completely on his own,¡± said Perry. ¡°We don¡¯t know what¡¯s on his mind.¡± Kes shook his head sadly. ¡°Being alone, that¡¯s not the culture.¡± ¡°Shocker,¡± said Mette with a roll of her eyes. ¡°They use cultural enforcement, which means that people who are disconnected from the culture ¡ª either intentionally or otherwise ¡ª are free to do whatever they want. So they want to keep people from being on their own, independent. That¡¯s built into the system.¡± ¡°She¡¯s been doing political reading,¡± said Kes. ¡°As you¡¯ve pointed out, I was god-emperor of the Natrix,¡± said Mette. ¡°We had to worry about social cohesion, group dynamics, and it was very different, but it wasn¡¯t that different. When we deposed the old people who¡¯d been prioritizing their geriatric comforts, we put them in with everyone else. There were reasons for that, and we didn¡¯t have the Gratbook to draw on, but I do think even with hindsight and the knowledge of worlds that it was the right move. I have more experience with engineering social conditions than either of you.¡± ¡°You¡¯re saying you have a good track record,¡± said Kes. ¡°And that ¡­ the culture should let people be loners more than it does?¡± ¡°I have no idea,¡± said Mette with a huff. ¡°But I guess I can talk about it, because I know that neither of you really have any idea either. We¡¯re all ignorant, so we can just be ignorant.¡± She reached forward to the small table that held her drink, a fizzy cola. She¡¯d had it for the first time a few days ago and was enamored with them. ¡°I think if you make a society, it has to be a society that¡¯s good for everyone. And if it¡¯s not good for everyone, then you need a way for people to escape and go somewhere else. There were people escaping to go to the kingdoms. But now the kingdoms are dying out, and there¡¯s nowhere left to go. And the internal places to go, like working for the Command Authorities, are also going to be shut down. A guy like Dirk doesn¡¯t seem like he would function well within the culture, but the culture thankfully has a use for him, because he has these skills, right?¡± ¡°And absent an opposition, you think a guy like that is dangerous?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t think he¡¯s unique. I think he enjoys the games he¡¯s playing, and he thinks they¡¯re necessary. There are probably thousands more like him, they just deal with it, or don¡¯t deal with it and let it fester. On the Natrix we understood individuality and that drive to push yourself. We accommodated in a way this place doesn¡¯t.¡± ¡°Thankfully the plan is for there to be more worlds for these people,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or they might be able to figure it out even without that.¡± ¡°We delivered the plans to the snow-town Moss this morning,¡± said Mette. ¡°So short of trying to contain that information after the fact, they know how to build something like the Farfinder, in principle if not in practice. The engine plan works across all universes, it¡¯s built from basal physics.¡± The Farfinder had a long history, and the tools in use now weren¡¯t the ones that the ship had started out with, back when it had its original crew. There were talks about building another, maybe two, which would be possible only with the new clones that had been made in the days following Perry joining the team. The clone-making machine had actually broken down after two uses, but then was fixed by Mette and Eggy working together. They didn¡¯t have the capacity to make another machine, not yet, but the one they had was nearly constantly running, expanding the technical capacity of the Farfinder with every passing day. In another month there would be significant specialization among the clones. They¡¯d hit some of the limits of the machine. Nitta, their primary engineer, could not actually be cloned ¡ª her species had multiple skins that could be slipped into and shed at will, but the clones had come out with none of them, and had died in spite of their best efforts after twenty minutes of intense pain. Hella had been cloned, but the clone had none of her superpowers. Cark¡¯s blood was a milky white since it used perfluorocarbons rather than hemoglobin, and hadn¡¯t worked at all. It was a brave new world, that had such people in it. While Perry was mostly watching and waiting, they were working on what came next. ~~~~ Berus and Thirlwell were both simmering. The symboulions of Berus had squashed the counter-revolution and looted the nobility, and the first of the domes had finished construction. They were in the process of starting to churn out as much spare food and clothing as they could. The queen had not entirely squashed the revolutionary elements in Thirlwell, especially because the man who was most responsible for doing that was working with them, but the fears of the end of the monarchy were settling down, and people were going along with the new order of the kingdom. Perry was restless, and it somehow seemed like he was the only one. Third Fervor had mostly mended, though she had terrible scarring on her face and winced when she spoke, which sometimes happened with a lisp. She was missing teeth, he knew. It remained to be seen whether she would be weaker in a fight, but prognostics suggested that she would be. The damage he¡¯d done to her stomach had healed on the surface, but he could see the pain on her face when she stood up from a chair. The Farfinder was running prognostics almost constantly, trying to see what the future held, but the further into the future it tried to predict, the less accurate those predictions got, and they couldn¡¯t account for Perry unless he was deliberately waiting outside of the ship with some kind of plan in place for when he would act. After three weeks, for no particular reason that they could see, the prognostics began to predict that Third Fervor would attack Berus. When they had dug into it, they had found Fenilor¡¯s fingerprints ¡ª or rather, a lack of fingerprints. None of the magic they were using to see the past, present, or future could see Fenilor, and when they finally found the gap he left, it was already in the past, nineteen minutes where Third Fervor was under the umbra of protection against their scrying. The prognostics said that if left unchecked, Third Fervor was going to move against the symboulions of Berus, using her portals to kill a number of prominent members. Because she couldn¡¯t easily move indoors unless a door or window was opening, she would attack an open air rally that was to be held outside the castle. They had seen it three times in prognostication, which meant that it was almost certain to happen for real if no steps were taken to stop it. The different visions of the future showed her dropping down and sweeping her spear through unarmed men and women, killing the masked men who went against her, murdering guards, causing mayhem. It was different in each vision, but not all that different. He wouldn¡¯t have thought that she would do that. It seemed too violent for her to do, and too callous for the queen to order, but the proof was in the prognostics. Third Fervor¡¯s sense of loyalty was ironclad, and if she had been commanded to kill, that was what she would do. Perry had frowned at the videos for a long time. The obvious question was what had happened when Fenilor had met with her, and what Fenilor¡¯s goals might possibly be. A trap of some kind seemed likely, but Fenilor seemed to be laying in wait just the same as Perry was. It seemed out of character for Fenilor too, if he had deliberately provoked Third Fervor into attacking the culture that Fenilor had worked so hard to build. ¡°Are you going to stop the attack?¡± asked Hella during another impromptu meeting on the bridge. ¡°Are you?¡± asked Perry, eyeing her. ¡°No,¡± said Hella. ¡°We stay out of these battles, as much as it turns my stomach sometimes. We could potentially warn our contacts, but ¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯ll stop her,¡± said Perry. ¡°It plays into her hands, as well as Fenilor¡¯s, but if it prevents the deaths of hundreds, then I¡¯m all for it.¡± He wasn¡¯t a wildlife photographer or a Star Trek captain. There was nothing but pragmatism that compelled him to stand by. Hella frowned. ¡°We were hoping for more time.¡± ¡°Fenilor has been out there doing something,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is proof of that. If it¡¯s not a trap, then it¡¯s a diversion. I¡¯m not sure how much he knows about our capabilities, but he knows that I had some way to find his black sites, and he certainly knows that I can move across distances faster than my sword or his spear would actually allow. He¡¯s been looking for me, probing.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll monitor,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯ll keep doors open for you, so long as you¡¯re outside of Third Fervor¡¯s sphere.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll aim to lead her away from civilization,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll go after her before she can even get close to implementing whatever this mayhem is. She needs to sleep, I¡¯ll descend tonight while she¡¯s out of her armor and try to finish her cleanly. And if Fenilor is there to take the portal out, then I¡¯ll guard against him ¡ª and you¡¯ll need to too.¡± It didn¡¯t fully make sense though, because if Fenilor wanted to kill Third Fervor, then it seemed as though he had the opportunity. ¡°We have a day,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s enough to run another round of prognostics and see how the fight will go. Enough to give advanced warning. But the problem isn¡¯t that she¡¯s hitting this specific event, it¡¯s that she¡¯s decided to act. We can monitor her, and the queen, see if they give us some intel on why, but the answer is obviously Fenilor.¡± ¡°He might have told her about us,¡± said Perry. ¡°Depending on what he knows, or suspects.¡± ¡°Very possible,¡± said Hella. ¡°Set up monitoring,¡± said Perry. ¡°Something that will tell us if he¡¯s near her again, some kind of alarm that goes off if monitoring craps out. We should have had it before now.¡± ¡°Already done,¡± said Eggy. ¡°You¡¯ll support me, if I decide that now is the time to strike?¡± asked Perry. ¡°If I don¡¯t want the deaths of the leadership of Berus on my head?¡± ¡°We will,¡± said Hella. ¡°Of course we will.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then I¡¯m going to prepare for war.¡± Chapter 139 - Queensmanship Perry watched the site from above. Third Fervor had been asleep for an hour, as near as they could tell from her pulse and breathing. She was on the main island of Berus, having commandeered an old lighthouse at the island¡¯s northern tip. It was very nearly a fortified structure, but had been built with storms in mind, not invading men in power armor. Perry thought the trick was to do the whole thing quietly and end her cleanly. Prognostics was, in the near term, optimistic, though less than he might have hoped: he had a thirty percent chance of immediately ending her life in the rapidfire test runs, and a greater than sixty percent chance of capturing the queen. It was not, in any sense, honorable. He would be killing her while she was defenseless. He didn¡¯t know why that bothered him: it was sensible, the path of least resistance, the thing that was dictated by every pragmatic consideration. If he succeeded though, there would be no fight, nothing proven, just an abstract death. The only thing it would prove was that Third Fervor didn¡¯t have the right set of powers, and that Perry was willing to do what it took. On reflection, it felt like cheating. Perry was no stranger to competitions, and especially with trivia nights, there was always the specter of cheating over the whole thing ¡ª a smartphone could reduce a battle of knowledge to a battle of who was the best at getting good search results. Perry had flirted with cheating before, though never at trivia: he¡¯d had a girlfriend he¡¯d played online Scrabble with, and used a solver once when he just wasn¡¯t up for playing. It had left a sour, curdled feeling in his stomach. It hadn¡¯t made him feel good or smart, and after that there was only the feeling that he was a terrible person. It had felt worse than if he¡¯d cheated on her, actually, and he¡¯d felt like it was some kind of karma when she ended up cheating on him. This was not, of course, a game. It was, in some sense, a matter of the course of nations, and in another sense, the fate of the world, depending on how the math shook out ¡ª though the math was now unclear, argued over by the scientists, the engineers, and the AI. There was no conflict between Perry and Third Fervor except as it existed in his head and was assumed by the Grand Spell, and the fact that Marchand had shot the king in his head. Wringing his hands over fairness and the authenticity of a victory was worse than pointless, it was some nonsense conjured by his brain. What mattered was the victory, not how it was achieved. He descended slowly. They had eyes on the entire area. It was only Third Fervor and the queen, in a bed together, pressed against each other. Perry would spare the queen, if he could, but then he would also have to remove her from the lighthouse to spare her a long and potentially dangerous walk back to civilization. There were no proper roads, only ruts in the dirt. If Third Fervor escaped, which was a strong possibility, Perry would grab the queen and hold her hostage. Perry landed on top of the lighthouse and went to the door, stepping lightly, using the sword to float, lightening his steps. When he got to the door, he used a tool procured from the Farfinder, a nano-width shim that cut straight through the padlock on the other side like it wasn¡¯t even there. Perry opened the door slowly and grabbed the lock before it could fall and clink to the ground. He stopped for a moment and looked down at the wooden stairwell, which caused Marchand to display the sonic mapping of the entire building ¡ª just a tower with a set of rooms at the base, that was it. There were dozens of these abandoned lighthouses, which were mostly relics of the past and most had been built to the same design. Perry went down. It would have been better to do it with a bomb, maybe even a nuclear weapon if they¡¯d been able to build one in time. That was certainly overkill though, and might attract Fenilor¡¯s attention. The best option would be to kill Third Fervor and then camp out near the portal until it vanished, and since Fenilor wasn¡¯t anywhere nearby, in theory he wouldn¡¯t show up. The bed didn¡¯t fit the lighthouse. It had been brought in from elsewhere, a four-poster that Third Fervor had spent time putting together for the two of them, overly regal for a wind-battered place like this. It would have taken a lot of work to get the lighthouse up to the royal standards, and to do that would have required bringing in workers, and that would defeat the entire purpose of hiding out of sight. The queen hadn¡¯t balked, to her credit. Perry watched their sleeping forms. Third Fervor looked striking, if not necessarily pretty. This was the only time she looked peaceful. The queen was more classically beautiful, and though she wasn¡¯t too much younger than Perry, there was something about her that made her seem too young, like he might be moments away from killing a teenager. Perry pulled out the laser rifle and aimed it squarely at where Third Fervor was sitting. The shoulder-mounted gun rose up from its housing at the same time, silent in the night, though that wasn¡¯t entirely a concern given that the window was open ¡ª it had to be in order for Third Fervor to escape. The sounds of the ocean were coming through, waves crashing against the rocks. The prognostics had not made it clear how or why he¡¯d failed. It wasn¡¯t plausible that she¡¯d gotten lucky, since there was no amount of luck that would get you out of being killed in your sleep. She had no armor on, but all she needed to do to escape if she wasn¡¯t killed immediately was to roll off the bed and down into a portal. But Perry wasn¡¯t sure how he might ever fail to kill her, and looking over videos extracted from prognostics hadn¡¯t actually helped. It had looked like she could wake up on a hair trigger, which, sure, he could buy, but the bullets failing to pierce her skull was harder to make sense of. Those very same bullets had gone through her armor and broken her jaw the last time they¡¯d met. There was a chance this would work though, and no risk to him, with the upside being that he would have the queen. Had Fenilor given her something to help her? It certainly wasn¡¯t clear from the prognostics. Their ability to resolve fine details was somewhat limited, at least when it came to looking into the future. If Fenilor had given her something, it was small, possibly swallowed, or a spell cast upon her. Perry fired the laser rifle. Marchand fired the shoulder gun. Third Fervor was almost immediately in motion, rolling sideways off the bed as the bullets struck her. She fell to the ground and stayed there for only a fraction of a second before she dropped through a portal she¡¯d made there, and as soon as she was gone, the portal snapped shut. The armor had been in pieces below her, and had fallen with her. She¡¯d been sleeping with the spear, and now that was gone too. Perry stalked forward and grabbed the queen, who was only just getting up and seeing what happened, woken by the crack of gunfire. The bed was burned beside her, the laser rifle having scorched a line through it. Pieces were still on fire, though not threatening to catch. The queen thrashed around and started screaming, but from what Perry had seen, Third Fervor was going somewhere else to lick her wounds. Even with the escape, this still seemed strategically correct. The queen screamed some more, a painful wail that was partially muted by the armor. On the HUD, the location of Third Fervor had been updated: she was on the other end of the island, in the city, having a doctor see to her wounds. The tracking that the Farfinder used wasn¡¯t instant, and it sometimes could take as much as ten minutes to find her when she used a portal, but it had been fast this time, because they knew where to look. Perry kept his grip on the queen¡¯s arm, which was tight enough that she had no way of escaping but not so tight as to hurt her. He could easily have snapped her wrist. He looked at the HUD again, double-checking there were more than thirty miles of distance, then stepped into the shelf space, dragging the queen in with him. ¡°You¡¯re our prisoner now,¡± said Perry. ¡°You will be given food and water. I don¡¯t want to hurt you. When this is over, you will be returned to your kingdom.¡± He was less sure about that, but it wasn¡¯t quite a lie. ¡°Murderer!¡± she shouted. She slapped hard against the metal armor with her free hand, and maybe hard enough to hurt herself, so Perry grabbed her other wrist and held her in place. She was a small, young woman, and he wouldn¡¯t have had trouble overpowering her even before all the thresholding. With his power, she was essentially immobilized, though she did still try to kick at him. ¡°You¡¯re going to be fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I could shoot you, if you¡¯d rather end things.¡± Her face was defiant, but she didn¡¯t ask him to. He wouldn¡¯t have killed her, not now, even if she demanded it. He had gotten assurance from Marchand that there wouldn¡¯t be any ¡®accidents¡¯ or ¡®miscommunications¡¯. Perry was on a timer now. Third Fervor would be back. The shelf space had been cleared, with most of its items transferred to the Farfinder, leaving behind a living area for ¡®guests¡¯, which did include a heavy-duty manacle that Perry felt slightly queasy about. He¡¯d hoped to not have to chain anyone up, and chaining up a woman felt worse, especially if she was just in a simple shift. This was how he¡¯d found Marjut, and part of the reason he¡¯d almost immediately freed her was because he¡¯d simply found it distasteful. Still, he found himself marching her over to where the manacles had been attached to a three hundred pound weight, large enough that she wouldn¡¯t be able to move it, not that she¡¯d be able to escape if she did. It was a large hunk of metal acquired from one of the Dirk Gibbons, who had asked no questions. ¡°Lock yourself in,¡± said Perry. ¡°One on each leg.¡± He released her, waiting to see whether she would make a run for it, which would be fruitless given the space. ¡°She¡¯ll kill you,¡± said the queen. Her fists were clenched. ¡°She¡¯ll tear you limb from limb.¡± ¡°She¡¯s not doing so well right now,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a chance she¡¯s dying.¡± ¡°She¡¯ll win, in the end, and do you know why?¡± asked the queen. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He was hoping that the queen was dumb enough to reveal something. ¡°She believes in something,¡± said the queen. ¡°Put the manacles on,¡± said Perry. He kept his voice flat, not betraying anger. ¡°I refuse,¡± replied the queen. ¡°Are you going to make me do it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I will struggle the entire time,¡± the queen said, holding her head high. Perry supposed she was saying that to sound regal rather than like a petulant child, but he didn¡¯t entirely know. Maybe the difference between ¡®regal¡¯ and ¡®petulant child¡¯ wasn¡¯t all that large. Finally, she picked up the manacles, but rather than putting them on, she snapped them shut, locking them. When she was done she dropped them to the floor with a defiant look. Perry sighed. He didn¡¯t want to deal with this. He could force her, certainly, and he had the key in one of the armor¡¯s compartments, but there wasn¡¯t actually a point in locking the queen up. He could start hurting her as a way to get her compliance, but he didn¡¯t have the stomach for that. The longer he waited, the better a chance that Third Fervor would come back, and if she was in range, she would sense the shelf opening up. ¡°Fine,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll be back.¡± He stalked to the opening and let out a breath. She was at his back, and he half expected an attack from her, in spite of how incredibly outmatched she was. He had killed her father, at least from her perspective. Perry opened the shelf space for a tenth of a second, shifting his position in the overlap between worlds more than actually stepping out. He¡¯d been practicing it, hoping that if he went quickly Third Fervor wouldn¡¯t be able to open up one of her portals inside of it. The lighthouse was still empty. Marchand had reconnected with the Farfinder as soon as they were out of the shelf space, and the HUD now showed Third Fervor¡¯s position, still in the city, still with doctors touching her face. She wore the armor now, and held her spear, battle-ready. Her face was a mess where the armor had been peeled back. She¡¯d been hit at least twice, once in the nose, which was mangled and bleeding, and once in the chest, marking a puckered wound on the underside of her left tit. She was breathing heavily but otherwise seemed fine. She should have been dead. Fenilor had helped her somehow, because Marchand had aimed true. The bullet that gave her a nose wound should have opened her head like an ax to a watermelon. Still, Perry had the queen, and that was something. He flew up out of the lighthouse and toward the city. He¡¯d come in after she¡¯d been asleep for an hour, which meant that she would start with some fatigue even if the damage was cosmetic. All he would need to do was to harry her and grind her down. He assumed that her planned attack was now totally nixed, given the loss of the queen. The kingdom couldn¡¯t survive without a ruler, and while there was another princess who could be elevated to the position of ruler, that might as well be a death knell for Thirlwell. It wasn¡¯t the transition that anyone wanted, but it was what might happen. Perry dropped down to the ground and ran, using up stored power in the armor rather than from the spear. He had too much shit on him, frankly, between the laser gun, the spear, and the sword, but he hadn¡¯t wanted to keep any of it in the shelf space where the queen could have gotten her hands on them. The sword was sheathed, the laser gun was strapped in place on his back, and he was holding the spear in his hand. In a combat scenario, which he was going to be facing soon, it was all probably going to be a liability. Still, the preparations hadn¡¯t been for nothing, and he ran across Thirlwell, down country roads that hadn¡¯t been designed for cars, let alone power armor. It was still the dead of night, and no one was out, which was good, because if he collided with anyone, he would certainly kill them. ¡°Why hasn¡¯t she gone back?¡± asked Perry as he watched the nearly-live feed of Third Fervor. ¡°It¡¯s her queen.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Is there a chance there¡¯s already a king?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Some secret ceremony that transferred power?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Not unless it happened during the gap in coverage.¡± Perry pondered that. He thought that he had Third Fervor pegged, and had also thought that she wouldn¡¯t have fallen for Fenilor¡¯s tricks, but it was also possible that Fenilor had come to her in disguise. That wouldn¡¯t have been hard, given his extensive wardrobe and the fact that they hadn¡¯t shown each other their faces when they¡¯d fought. There was no clue as to what happened during that missing time. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°Any chance we can get a message to her?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She has shaken off the nanites and is not in a room where we have coverage. Even if we had the room dusted, getting an audible signal to her would be nearly impossible. Do you really want to speak with her?¡± ¡°There¡¯s something I¡¯m missing,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is all Fenilor¡¯s doing, it has to be, he¡¯s given her something to protect her, he¡¯s talked to her, he¡¯s set things in motion. I just don¡¯t know why.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t either, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If that¡¯s any consolation.¡± It was not. ¡°Do you have any analysis on the bullets?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Insight into why they didn¡¯t work?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°To all appearances, she was simply lucky, on top of sleeping very lightly and having extraordinary reflexes.¡± Perry grit his teeth. He couldn¡¯t accept that. But if there wasn¡¯t some evidence of magic, he didn¡¯t know what it could be, and it felt like he really needed to know, given that he was going to be firing on her again in the very near future. The Farfinder''s ability to go into detail was better in the present and slightly less good in the past, which meant they would have more angles for analysis. Still, it wasn¡¯t a good outcome. The medical room was in the bowels of the castle, deep enough that Perry didn¡¯t have a good way in without breaking through a window and then killing dozens of guards. When he approached, she would either portal out or fight him. He did wonder whether he could trap her and neutralize the portals, but if she was smart, she¡¯d have left enough open doors and windows that she could be thirty miles away in an instant. He watched her on the picture-in-picture. The best time to go after her was when she was trying to get some more sleep. If she wanted to, it was possible for her to go down into a cave with a small enough opening that she could portal out but he couldn¡¯t enter, but that he might be able to plug up. He ended up waiting a long time. The bullets had hit her, they had done damage, and the stitch job the doctors were doing on short notice didn¡¯t seem to be all that good. The bullet that hit her nose had grazed a line across her forehead that was bleeding something awful. The one that had hit her chest was dug out as she bit down on a strop of leather. Her eyes were watering but clear. ¡°Do we have new prognostics?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Prognostics are not available while we¡¯re getting updates from the Farfinder, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry sighed. In theory, either of the prognostics engine or the remote viewing engine could be moved outside of the Farfinder, but it was apparently a rat¡¯s nest of work to disentangle everything, especially because the prognostics engine had been installed by some previous crewmember who was no longer with them, and no one had the domain expertise or the books necessary. ¡°Contact them,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to know why she¡¯s not in flight.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Communication will be facilitated at a delay.¡± Moments later, Hella was on-screen. ¡°Not the ideal outcome,¡± she said. ¡°We were rolling dice,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s pinned. The queen is mine. I think she¡¯d lay down her neck to save the queen¡¯s life. If she¡¯s still planning the attack ¡­ I don¡¯t know. We¡¯re missing something. Any whiff of Fenilor?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Hella after a brief delay. ¡°But trying to pinpoint a moving target, especially a small one ¡ª¡± ¡°I know, I know,¡± said Perry. He let out a frustrated sigh. ¡°Then I think we do the persistence hunter thing, try to wear her down. Why would he do this?¡± ¡°Do what?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Help her,¡± said Perry. ¡°He¡¯s an anti-monarchist. She¡¯s their biggest champion. He¡¯s been slicing his way through royalty for the last however many years.¡± ¡°He fears you,¡± said Hella. She had her arms folded across her chest. ¡°He¡¯s setting you against her, forcing the issue.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to chase her now,¡± said Perry. ¡°If she goes to ground, we¡¯ll plan for you to go dark, get some prognostics, and scout out the cave. If we can block her in ¡­ she still has the teleport.¡± One of these days, Perry would be up against someone who couldn¡¯t run from him, and he would crush them like bugs. ¡°Alright,¡± said Hella. ¡°You¡¯re within her range, we can¡¯t pull you out without risk. Be careful. We¡¯ll watch.¡± The communication cut out. Perry took a breath and lowered himself to an open balcony. The door was locked, but it was made of relatively thin wood, not something that had been built to survive 21st century power armor. Perry hesitated with his fist clenched. ¡°Marchand, we¡¯re going to encounter resistance,¡± said Perry. ¡°If there¡¯s trouble, open fire. We have ammunition now. Headshots on the guards.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You have no problem with that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Only if they seem like they¡¯re going to attack,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not if they¡¯re surrendering, or quaking in their boots, or running away.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I shall endeavor to use my best judgment.¡± Perry pushed on the door until it gave way and stepped into the castle. He was a fair distance from where Third Fervor was, and he suspected that she would duck out as soon as he got to her, unless she wanted to discuss the kidnapped queen. He swapped the spear for the laser rifle, aiming it down the hallways. He wasn¡¯t nearly as familiar with it, but it worked at a distance, and would be good against men wearing masks. Perry followed the lines that Marchand was painting, the best path to get down to the room where Third Fervor was being treated. Marchand was running off a digest from the Farfinder and their remote viewing, which meant that Perry could effectively see through walls, though with red outlines where people were rather than actual images. It was some video game bullshit. The guards didn¡¯t come across Perry: he came across them. The first two were patrolling down a corridor in the darkness with a lantern raised to guide their way, not walking with the casual stroll of people doing their tenth lap of the night, but with the purpose of guards who are very aware someone has returned from the front bleeding heavily. They raised their weapons and Perry raised the laser gun. There was no way they understood what it was or what it could do, but they came for him, and he opened fire on them. It was his first time using the laser gun in combat, and he was surprised by just how effective it was. The guard¡¯s shirt caught on fire as soon as he was hit, and he began screaming as he tried to swat away the flames. His insides were cooking much more than he was actually being burned, and as two seconds passed he collapsed to the ground, writhing. Perry turned the laser gun on the other man and held down the trigger. The effect was mostly the same, with the clothes bursting into flame where the laser hit. The beam was invisible, but Perry¡¯s HUD was showing a line, and the flame of the man¡¯s clothing lit the hallway brighter than the hooded lantern they¡¯d been carrying. The guard moved, turning to run, and Perry let up on the trigger once the beam was aimed at the man¡¯s back. He collapsed though, probably feeling the burn working its way through his body. The laser was powerful enough to flash-vaporize water. Perry moved past them, picking up the pace. The shouts had been noticed, and people were alert. The next guard Perry saw would probably be coming for him, though he expected that Third Fervor would show up soon. He glanced at the HUD and saw her still with the doctors, though her eyes had gone to the door. The doctors were working faster, cleaning her wounds, bandaging her, and her armor seemed ready to snap shut at a moment¡¯s notice. The main question was whether she would pick flight or fight. The laser gun made short work of the guards he came across. He only fired on them if they looked like they were going to stop him, or if he would need to get too close to pass them. In spite of the fact that he was holding a sci-fi weapon, they seemed to register that this was a thing that could easily hurt them. Some ran, and the few that stayed were probably just seriously wounded. He didn¡¯t think he¡¯d killed anyone, though it was difficult to be sure. It might have been different if they were wearing metal, but the castle guards went without armor. Even then, the laser gun was powerful enough to punch through metal, it would just take longer. When Perry reached the floor where Third Fervor was, she opened a portal and left. ¡°Fucking bitch,¡± said Perry. The HUD took a moment to update, and while it was doing that, another of the guards came around the corner. Perry would have given a warning pulse, which would have meant burnt clothes and second-degree burns rather than actual damage, but the man was wearing a mask. He screamed and fell to the ground before Perry could find out what the mask did, though the design was unusual. The picture-in-picture gave an estimation for when it would have a location, which was updated to add on more seconds right when it seemed like they¡¯d have a lock. ¡°Rapid movement?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I cannot say, sir,¡± said Marchand after a moment. ¡°This is information from the Farfinder, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°How can they not locate her? Once you have the person, you can just find their location, right?¡± ¡°I will request clarification, sir,¡± said Marchand. There was a long pause while Perry stood awkwardly in the hallway of a hostile castle. ¡°It appears she left Thirlwell and headed more than a hundred miles away through a series of portals, to one of the outlying islands,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Once there, we lost track of her.¡± ¡°What happened to the tracking?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We have tracking.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Elements aboard the Farfinder have come to the conclusion that she¡¯s either using the portals very rapidly to evade detection, or that she has some method of avoiding our ability to see her.¡± ¡°Fenilor,¡± said Perry with a hiss. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°I cannot say, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though he does endeavor to kill us.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°Get me a door out of here.¡± ¡°Given we do not know where Third Fervor is at the moment, sir,¡± Marchand began. ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll take the long way.¡± Perry found a window to shatter and leapt out it, letting the sword at his hip pull him up. He had too much equipment and wasn¡¯t able to tuck it away when worried that Third Fervor would portal right into the inner sanctum. He rose slowly, using the sword, which was faster on the vertical than the spear was. There were spotters, he knew, men with masks who might see him, but they didn¡¯t have the reporting infrastructure to get the information where it needed to be in time, and it was all pretty useless without Third Fervor to portal in and attack him. He wished that she would attack him, because then they might be able to end this part of things. When Perry had gone high enough ¡ª which took almost an hour ¡ª he went into the shelf space. The queen was laying on the bed, looking sullen, and while she had snapped to look at him when he came in, she turned away and looked at the wall as though she didn¡¯t care that he¡¯d come. ¡°I have no clothes here,¡± she said. ¡°I can get you clothes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Are you going to force me into the manacles?¡± asked the queen. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. She turned to face him. ¡°She fled, didn¡¯t she?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°She didn¡¯t so much as make an attempt at saving me,¡± said the queen. She spat on the floor, which Perry thought was quite rude. ¡°In her defense, I had shot her in the face,¡± said Perry. ¡°Something you make a habit of then,¡± said the queen. ¡°She¡¯s unfortunately fine,¡± said Perry. From what he knew of her healing, there would be scarring, and she¡¯d never be the same, but it was impossible to know what all Fenilor had given her. ¡°Which means I need to keep you here.¡± He hesitated, then removed his helmet. ¡°I don¡¯t have any enmity toward you. I don¡¯t think monarchy is a particularly good form of governance, but I think it would be better if you handed off power to the people, or if they took power from you, rather than having an outsider from another world come in to force the change. I¡¯ll do my best to treat you with the respect that all people deserve.¡± ¡°Murderer,¡± she spat. ¡°I¡¯ll get you clothes, food, water, and a place to do your business,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was hoping not to have to hold onto you, but Third Fervor is gone, and I¡¯m not going to be able to find her again.¡± ¡°How did you find her the first time?¡± asked the queen. ¡°How did you know where we were?¡± Perry pursed his lips. ¡°You have to be aware that I can¡¯t tell you that.¡± ¡°Who am I going to tell?¡± asked the queen. ¡°You¡¯re not letting me out of here until she¡¯s dead, if you let me out at all.¡± ¡°Fair,¡± said Perry with a shrug. ¡°And given what¡¯s gone on ¡­ well. We have a way to track people, and it¡¯s apparent that she knows that, because she¡¯s blocking us now. I¡¯m not sure why she wasn¡¯t blocking us two hours ago, if she could always do that, but that definitely seems to be the case.¡± He was hoping to build rapport. He was probably the wrong person to do it though. He could get one of the Mettes. They hadn¡¯t killed her father, and for all the queen knew, maybe Mette could be a prisoner too. That might work better. But the queen started laughing, and Perry paused his thoughts. ¡°You haven¡¯t figured it out?¡± she asked. ¡°Third Fervor was testing you.¡± She laughed again, a bitter bark. ¡°And now she understands your powers.¡± Perry stared at the queen. ¡°This was a play that took her most valuable piece off the board?¡± The queen went tight-lipped. It made no sense. Maybe Third Fervor had been laying in wait, ready for the attack against her, willing to take a bullet just to get information on what Perry knew. Maybe Fenilor had convinced her that she¡¯d be safe rather than maimed. But leaving the queen behind? Putting the queen¡¯s life at risk? Third Fervor wouldn¡¯t do that. The queen was too valuable, and even if there¡¯d been a secret marriage in that small gap of time, a transfer of power to someone unknown, that still wouldn¡¯t have made sense. The only way that Third Fervor would just abandon the monarch was ¡ª Perry stared at the queen. ¡°You¡¯re not the queen,¡± he said. She remained silent, but it wasn¡¯t the stoic silence of a woman who was firm in her resolve. ¡°You¡¯re a clone,¡± said Perry. She had no response to that, but she didn¡¯t need to have one. Like that, any advantage Perry might have had from the assault had evaporated. He stepped out of the shelf space without another word and contacted the Farfinder. ¡°There are other machines,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fenilor grabbed one. He cloned her. I don¡¯t know the specifics, but if he¡¯s got access to a machine like that, we¡¯ve got problems, especially since he has so much in the way of armaments.¡± ¡°We¡¯re on it,¡± said Hella. ¡°If we look into the past, and narrow down the search space, we might be able to find out when and where it happened.¡± ¡°This is a huge problem,¡± said Perry. ¡°How¡¯d he even find out?¡± ¡°Unclear,¡± said Hella. ¡°But it might become more clear in the future. Are you ready for pickup?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need to get to the bottom of this. If they¡¯re working together, for whatever reason, if this was a test we failed, probing at our weaknesses and powers ¡ª¡± ¡°It would be bad,¡± said Hella. ¡°Understood.¡± Perry stepped back aboard the Farfinder half an hour later, not using one of their doors, but an exterior airlock, as they had physically moved the ship to grab him from the sky. He went straight to the bridge, where everyone was waiting, save for the contingents of clones. But the next few hours illuminated nothing. They didn¡¯t have eyes on all the cloning machines, and they were significantly harder to find than people were. They were running prognostics, but Third Fervor had gone dark, which was going to make it incredibly difficult to find out where she was. The original queen was somewhere, obviously, but she could have been stashed in almost any corner of the globe, especially given how lax the culture was about having people around. It was three hours later, as the sun was coming up over the islands of Berus and Thirlwell, that they found something in the prognostics worth the time and effort they¡¯d spent. Unfortunately, it was bad news. The attack on the Berusian leadership was still on. Chapter 140 - Wag the Dog The prognostics couldn¡¯t see what Third Fervor was doing, but as with Fenilor, the Farfinder wasn¡¯t quite blind to the effect she was having on the world. The prognostics would show the fair set up to celebrate the revolution in Berus, and then a relatively small portion of the view would black out, announcing Third Fervor¡¯s arrival. People would run screaming from the void in the view, and when the cloud of imperceptibility lifted, the scene of glad-handing symboulion representatives and workers would be replaced by devastation, torn bodies and screaming bystanders. ¡°It¡¯s retaliation,¡± said Perry. ¡°It has to be.¡± ¡°Or they¡¯re playing a deeper game,¡± said Mette. ¡°Or it¡¯s a different sort of probing,¡± said Hella. She had her arms crossed. The meeting was in the bridge, an emergency affair, only a single version of each of them, the primes. ¡°But if you don¡¯t respond, she might escalate into an all-out war.¡± ¡°Decapitating leadership doesn¡¯t actually work well against the symboulions,¡± said Perry. ¡°In theory, at least. And especially not if they have clones ready to go, which in fairness, they probably don¡¯t.¡± ¡°Leadership still means something,¡± said Mette. ¡°As much as they might pretend that they¡¯re a community of people who are all on the same level, they¡¯re not fungible. There aren¡¯t that many people who have the knowledge and experience to keep Berus on the right path. They¡¯re never going back to monarchy, I wouldn¡¯t think, but ¡­¡± ¡°I¡¯m stopping her either way,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not even sure her motivations matter. She¡¯s killing innocents, whether that¡¯s on Fenilor¡¯s orders or the queen¡¯s.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Hella. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t feel right about standing back while it happened, but ¡­ you understand the prognostics aren¡¯t great?¡± ¡°I won¡¯t have a lot of insight into the potential fight,¡± said Perry with a nod. ¡°I won¡¯t necessarily know whether I¡¯ve won or lost.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Hella. ¡°I mean earlier.¡± ¡°Earlier?¡± asked Perry, frowning. ¡°Third Fervor¡¯s plan to attack? That was a sudden change. It shouldn¡¯t have happened like that. We should have caught some glimpse of it long before it happened. What we caught instead was like that,¡± she snapped, ¡°going from the event not appearing in any timeline to the event appearing in every timeline. Let¡¯s say that she¡¯s attacking on Fenilor¡¯s orders, which is entirely possible. If Fenilor were giving the orders, then that should have shown up in prognostics too. If it was ¡®fated¡¯, then it should have been a part of the assured future. It should have been seen. But it came suddenly. Which probably means that Fenilor decided to put something in motion based on what he saw of us. The reason we didn¡¯t see it coming was because of a change we made, except that we didn¡¯t make changes.¡± They couldn¡¯t see the impact of their own actions, and had to park the ship out away from things if they wanted to take a reading of the future. ¡°You think he¡¯s aware of the ship?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That he¡¯s aware we¡¯re watching the future?¡± ¡°I think so, yes,¡± said Hella. ¡°I don¡¯t think he can possibly have all the information, but I think he¡¯s been watching. We haven¡¯t seen him watching. Which is a problem.¡± ¡°Then we don¡¯t use the doors anymore,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not where there¡¯s a chance he can spy on us. If he enters this ship ¡­ I can¡¯t guarantee that the battle will leave things intact.¡± He thought about that some more. ¡°I can¡¯t guarantee that I will win.¡± ¡°Noted,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯ll do atmospheric transfers only then.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going down now,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d prefer prognostics to staying in touch. Interrupt only if it¡¯s looking like I¡¯m going to lose, or if you can sway the win percent.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll be blind,¡± said Mette. ¡°Not sure what you think you¡¯re going to get out of us.¡± ¡°Not much,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to try to win on my own.¡± He hesitated. ¡°I want to stash the queen clone here.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not a prison ship,¡± said Hella. ¡°I need the shelf space to be cleared,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need it combat ready.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Hella with an exasperated sigh. ¡°But we¡¯re not a prison ship. As soon as it¡¯s feasible to drop her off somewhere, we¡¯ll do that, but I¡¯m worried you said too much to her.¡± ¡°Nothing they didn¡¯t already figure out on their own,¡± said Perry. He turned to Mette. ¡°One of you will be in charge of her. Try to get some information.¡± ¡°Can do,¡± said Mette. Perry turned back to Hella. ¡°Do we know when Fenilor used the cloning machine? Or where? There can¡¯t be that many of them.¡± ¡°They¡¯re difficult to track down,¡± said Eggeltina. She¡¯d only been paying half attention to the meeting, too wrapped up in something on a tablet. ¡°And it¡¯s very possible that we¡¯re missing one.¡± ¡°Missing one?¡± asked Perry. ¡°One that¡¯s hidden away in one of the blank spots?¡± ¡°Uh, no,¡± said Eggy. ¡°You know how we can¡¯t get at you when you¡¯re in your shelf?¡± ¡°He might have one too,¡± said Perry as realization dawned. ¡°Or not exactly the same, but something like it.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Very possible that he¡¯s got somewhere to hide, or somewhere to put things.¡± ¡°That would be bad,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe extremely bad.¡± ¡°Yup,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Just a theory, at the moment, because we haven¡¯t found anything in the books about it, and he hasn¡¯t said anything about it.¡± ¡°He¡¯ll be watching this fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°Is it a small enough area that you can scan for anomalies?¡± ¡°¡®Anomalies¡¯,¡± laughed Eggy. ¡°You¡¯re vastly overestimating our capabilities here. We can turn all the error messages on, but it¡¯s magic slop that we only barely managed to direct into computers in the first place.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll try my hand at it,¡± said Mette. ¡°But she¡¯s right. Fixing all the problems aboard this ship is taking a lot of time, and trying to find aberrations of an unknown nature will be difficult, and especially difficult on this planet.¡± Mette had complained before that there were too many magics here. The stuff they had to learn would have filled dozens of textbooks, and the interactions would have filled a dozen more. ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do your best. I¡¯m dumping the false queen and going down there.¡± ¡°Now?¡± asked Hella. ¡°It¡¯s early morning. The attack won¡¯t be for hours.¡± ¡°Better to run prognostics with me out there. Account for my actions,¡± said Perry. ¡°Besides, I want to get the lay of the land. If you have anything for me, beam it to Marchand.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve actually been using exclusively what you refer to as email,¡± said Eggy. She put her hands on her hips. ¡°It¡¯s been a bit of a problem,¡± said Mette, looking a bit apologetic. Whatever their difficulties, it had seemed fine to Perry, but he wasn¡¯t the one having to implement half a hundred hacky solutions to major problems. Perry nodded, then looked at Hella. ¡°Show me the room to dump the fake queen.¡± ¡°We¡¯re done here?¡± asked Hella. Perry nodded, and that seemed to be that. The queen was extracted from the shelf and was quite sullen about it, though she couldn¡¯t help but look around wildly at the bedroom that Hella had crafted for her. Hella wasn¡¯t happy about having another prisoner, but the queen was much less dangerous than Nima had ever been, and there was absolutely no way she was getting out. They would have to have a conversation about the terms and conditions of her imprisonment, but depositing her out in the wider world seemed like a non-starter. There was also a possibility that they could use her in some way; only Third Fervor knew that she was a clone, her kingdom was ignorant of that fact. But Perry didn¡¯t stick around to see how that would shake out. He went down to Berus, to wait for an attack he was still faintly hoping wasn¡¯t coming. ~~~~ He had hoped that they could cancel the event somehow. There were probably machinations at play within the symboulions, and the cancellation of an event that was meant to show the strength and promise of the new not-a-country would show exactly the opposite if the celebration was suddenly stopped due to vague warnings. Perry didn¡¯t entirely begrudge them that. He was pretty sure that many other organizations and governments would have done the same. There was a shark in the water, but the mayor wanted the beach open for the tourists, it was a tale at least as old as the 1970s. At best, there would be some warnings issued, with people told to watch out for anything suspicious, but Third Fervor had only ever intervened in person once, and that had been very brief, handled by Perry. He stood on top of the city¡¯s largest building, watching over the festivities. He¡¯d been there for hours, since the early morning, and had watched the setup. There was no sign that Third Fervor had given anyone advance warning, though there were still counter-revolutionaries within Berus, and some of them were operating with ill intent, even if there was no clear replacement for their murdered king, no heir to rally behind. But no, Perry was worried about Third Fervor and her alone. He understood her, he thought. She was a monarchist, she had a monarch, and even if it wasn¡¯t the monarch she might have wanted, she would follow orders, particularly when they pushed the agenda of monarchy forward. He didn¡¯t fully understand why she was doing this though, except perhaps if the queen had ordered it, and he didn¡¯t understand why the queen would do that. If Perry had been king, he would have been seeking to normalize relations, not to antagonize. Perry watched as the crowd began to grow. There were booths set up with little events, and there was free food and free drinks, which were bound to bring people in. Maybe there wouldn¡¯t have been such good attendance if the kitchens had all been up and running, but food had not been in as much abundance as the symboulions would have liked. This was another way for them to put their best foot forward and show that they were getting everything on the right path. They would get things figured out, if only through the sheer force of will of the global community sending multiple ships their way. Perry kept a close eye on the targets. The prognostics had shown the people that Third Fervor went after, though she was inconsistent about it. Some of the symboulion members were wearing lavender armbands to identify themselves, which had made the targeting vastly easier for her. Perry¡¯s ability to pick people out of a crowd, at least while wearing the armor, vastly exceeded Third Fervor¡¯s. With the Farfinder watching, Perry could easily have gotten a dossier on virtually any person in the crowd, and there had been enough of a nanite listener network left behind that he could probably have had Marchand grab hours of conversation from any of the important ones. There was a part of him that wished he could be down there with them. He wanted to see the culture in action, and this was culture-building stuff, a celebration that would be unique to this specific island, even if it was taken from blueprints brought from across the ocean. They were writing the script as they went, and the lavender armbands would be etched into tradition. He had often wondered about that ¡ª the first Thanksgiving, the first Independence Day, a nation trying to find its footing and forcing a tradition into being through force of will. It was all going to be interrupted imminently. The prognostics reports got sent in every time they reset the mechanism. There was nothing all that helpful. The frequency of the reports got faster and faster as the time approached. Third Fervor was apparently very regular, striking when the clock struck seven (their system of timekeeping did not match Earth¡¯s: it was midday). That seemed to indicate that it was an agreed-upon signal, because there was no other reason for her to choose that time specifically. It was consistent, which meant something. As the time approached, the prognostics reports stopped coming. They were probably trying to see the future after the fight, though it was difficult to say. Perry made sure he was ready and positioned. He was going to drop in and go after her, and there was going to be a fight, and it was possible he was going to win. The prognostics seemed to be on his side. Still, he was more nervous than he¡¯d been for a fight in quite some time. Maybe it was that he knew it was coming, that it had a specific time, or maybe it was that he still felt like he was missing a piece of the puzzle. When the portal appeared, Perry was already moving, and he was far too late to stop the first of the deaths. Third Fervor was moving with full force, slicing through people with her spear, not seeming to care whether they had the lavender armband on or not. Perry came in with his own spear and hit her in the back, sending her sprawling until she fell through a portal, but by then a dozen people were already dead. Third Fervor screamed loud enough to kill people without protection. She had a portal open next to her, touched with her armored fingers, and it winked rapidly as she changed its target destination, which moved all around the square. Her eyes were on Perry, not on the people she was killing. The sound of the note she was holding was loud enough that people fell to the ground clutching their heads, and many of them weren¡¯t getting up. Perry raced for her. The shoulder-gun fired rhythmically, not as fast as it could go, but with steady, measured, targeted shots that nevertheless failed to penetrate. She somehow had more resolve while committing the atrocity ¡ª that, or whatever spell Fenilor had cast on her was ongoing. Perry was expecting her to move as he rushed her, to open a portal beneath her feet and put him out of range, but she leaned forward and increased the volume loud enough that it was shaking his teeth and disrupting the rhythm of his heart, to say nothing of the stabbing pain in his ears. He crashed into her, and they tumbled through a portal together, high above the city, grappling with each other. The shoulder-gun fired again as they picked up speed, striking her in the helmet and causing her head to jerk back, but it left only a small dent. Spears were a terrible weapon for grappling in freefall, and Third Fervor held hers uselessly, its sharp point coming nowhere near him. Perry choked up on his spear, using it like a knife with an incredibly long handle, and tried to stab her in the side with it, but Fenilor¡¯s spear was no match for Third Fervor¡¯s impeccable armor. The shouting had stopped, at least, but Third Fervor was trying to find a latch on his armor, some way into it, which wouldn¡¯t happen unless something had gone wrong with the mechanisms. Perry had virtually no experience with wrestling, whether in free fall or not, but he tried to twist Third Fervor around, to grab her arm so he could wrench it into a hold. His hope was that it would work even with her armor on, but it would depend on how the joints had been designed, and whether they would allow him to simply snap her arm because there was no protection to keep the joints from going the wrong way. Eventually he had one of her arms, and began twisting it, but she placed a hand behind him as they fell and another portal opened up. They fell through it, then another portal, moving them out over the ocean, which wasn¡¯t ideal. If she was intent on killing more people down in Berus, all she would have to do was give him the slip, which was why he was holding onto her. If she was in pain from having her arm twisted the wrong way, she wasn¡¯t showing it, but Perry didn¡¯t have the best hold on her, and was having to invent the principles of an arm bar on the fly. He had spun around to be upside down relative to her, and his spear was left whipping in the wind, held there by a long tether attached hours before. Without it, he would be down to the sword, much less maneuverable, but that had been anchored in place on his back given that he didn¡¯t think he¡¯d have any combat use for it. Third Fervor did something with the portals that made Perry¡¯s stomach lurch. He was surprised when they landed hard on worked stone, their velocity having apparently been canceled by a portal that had thrown them up into the air. He put his full effort into breaking her arm, but her armor was stopping him from accomplishing much damage, though she was flopping around like a fish and in pain. The room she¡¯d put them in was full of barrels, most of them with a thick black substance around the rims and sides. They had been hastily packed with something, placed in this room by the dozen. It was possible they had moved to Thirlwell during the freefall, though they seemed to be in a storeroom of some kind, one with a window big enough that Third Fervor could portal out. There was more of the black substance on the ground, a grit that they were rolling around in. She could portal them out at any time, but she had chosen to place them here. With an extra expenditure of effort, the Wolf Vessel halfway opened to give a surge of power, Perry heard the crack of something in her hyperextended shoulder. She screamed in pain, not amplified, and Perry rotated her arm, trying to use jagged bone to cut through tendon and muscle. A torch was thrown into the room from the open window. Perry watched as it twirled through the air, helpless to stop it. It landed among the thin layer of black grit they were fighting in, which went up in a flash of smoke and fire, but just after that the fire reached the barrels, and those exploded with full force. When Perry came to, the suit of armor was dead. He was bleeding and in pain all over, but he pushed energy outside of himself, to the armor, trying to get it back to a state where it could boot. He was surprised that he could feel the connections between the pieces, the unseating of wires, the way that it had been damaged. Perry was pretty sure he had internal bleeding, and while the display was dead, his hands went to take the helmet off. It was supposed to come away cleanly in the case of power failure, but something had been damaged or was stuck, and without the power armor aiding him, he felt sluggish. There was something on top of him that didn¡¯t move when he tried to shove it aside. He didn¡¯t try more than once. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The armor powered back on before Perry could get the helmet off. He stared at the screen as Marchand finished booting up. The storeroom they¡¯d been in had the roof blown off it. The walls were down, rock strewn everywhere, and for a moment Perry wasn¡¯t even sure that he was in the same place. She¡¯d taken him to a place with explosives, stacked barrels of gunpowder or something else, then blown them both up. Either she¡¯d meant to leave him there and portal out, or hoped that her armor was better than his. A heavy timber was laying across him, part of the roof, he was pretty sure. With the armor working again, he was able to move it, and as soon as he did, pain flooded his lower body. Marchand had a variety of red alerts at the bottom of the HUD, and some of them were medical: while Perry had been passed out, the suit was filling with blood, and inside his body was like a stewed tomato swimming in a can of its own juices. He was surprised to see Third Fervor slumped up against one wall. Her armor was still encasing her, but she was bleeding from it, and not moving. It didn¡¯t look like she was slumped there, it looked like she¡¯d been bodily thrown by the explosion. Perry wasted no time and turned into the mechawolf. When injured, the process was slightly slower, but Perry had prepared for this fight, and he had plenty of power in his vessel to work with. He healed as he transformed, both the flesh and the metal parts of him, and once he was done, he was back to full power. He bit her head as soon as he was able to, feeling hard metal against his long teeth. His claws couldn¡¯t gouge her either ¡ª even unconscious, the armor worked, and he let out a growl of frustration. If she was dead, he would need to leave with her body. He wanted no chance that the portal would open up anywhere Fenilor would be able to get at it. But if she was alive, he wanted to kill her, because she was too dangerous to be left alive. He went sniffing for her spear, and found it broken on the ground, snapped so that only a foot of handle was attached to the head. Perry picked this up in his teeth, being ginger with it, then hefted himself onto Third Fervor, pressing the tip of the wickedly sharp spear into her chest. It caught on the metal, then screamed loudly against the armor as he pushed the obsidian tip through. He could barely see, even with the cameras studded around his body, but as soon as it was through the metal it became easier. The hole widened with every inch. Even broken, the spear still held some of its magic. Third Fervor woke then, that one extra source of pain rousing her. She pushed away at him feebly, then harder, but still not strong enough to get him off of her. Her plan had failed, and her arm was still broken and torn up, leaving her with only her right hand to push against him. She tried to grip the spear¡¯s head, and Perry heard the keening as it dug through her armored hands. When she came to her senses, she reached down to touch the ground below her, and Perry released the spear. He bit her around the leg at the last possible moment, stilling her before she could fall through the portal, holding her back. He was too large to go through even if she could have managed some way to trick him, so she was stuck with him. He bit down hard on her, hoping that his teeth would make their way through her armor, or that it would bend, but it held fast, and she beat him with her one good fist about the nose even as he held her above a portal that led high into the air. He hoped that somewhere in there, beneath the skin of metal, she was dying. When she grabbed for the spearhead, apparently to stab him, he yanked her to the side, still holding her leg firm. She cried out in pain and frustration, and he whipped her back and forth, hoping to break more inside her, shaking her like a ragdoll. She opened portal after portal, each one at a place she touched, sometimes in the air. He had a skewed view of people, their purposes unclear, until finally she stuck a portal in the air that showed five men on the other side. They had crude weapons raised, firearms as made by people who had discovered firearms in the very recent past and had no tradition of it. They were similar to the weapons that had been used at the execution, but longer and more narrow. ¡°Fire!¡± called Third Fervor. They likely would have shot without her asking to. They had the stink of fear on them, even through the portal. They had been waiting all day for this. The bullets hit Perry, but only one of the shots was clean. It hit Perry in a camera, taking it out, while the other bullets glanced off the armor in different directions. The damage left him with a wound, but it wasn¡¯t a serious one. He felt the urge to charge forward and tear through them, which would be the work of only a few seconds, but he wasn¡¯t a mere animal, and he had the wherewithal to use the other tools at his disposal. The shoulder gun lifted up from its housing and fired five rapid shots, aiming squarely at center mass. They each went down, and the portal shut before the kills could be confirmed. Perry turned to Third Fervor. She had grown, and as he looked at her, she was growing larger. Already she was nearly ten feet tall, too large for him to easily get his mouth around her leg again. The growth was accelerating, and she was getting bigger still. Her armor grew with her, not just expanding but gaining details that hadn¡¯t been there before. When she shouted, it was louder than it had ever been before, and Perry whimpered as the echoes bounced back from the hills around them. She kept growing. She became a giant, then a titan. It was one of her powers they had only limited information on; it wouldn¡¯t last forever, and she would be weakened afterward. They had seen it in prognostics only once or twice, and never in much detail. It had been responsible for Perry¡¯s death in those predicted timelines, a last resort used to great effect. Aboard the Farfinder, they had been calling it Big Mode, and Perry had no great plan for dealing with it. He grabbed the broken spear from the floor in his mouth and held it there. From what he could see, the armor had not gotten thicker, it had only spread out, and if it was just as impenetrable as before, that still meant the broken magical spear could cut through it with some effort. Of course, the rules of Big Mode, at least as far as they were known, meant that he would only have to wait her out, and if they had wound up in Thirlwell, there was no longer any threat to the people of Berus. Perry could simply run, and with her that size ¡ª now grown to nearly thirty feet tall ¡ª there was no way she could use her portals. Third Fervor immediately opened a portal. It was huge, the size of a swimming pool, thick and wide, the magic interplaying with Big Mode. She stumbled back into it, and Perry bounded after her, slipping through just before she snapped it shut. She portaled again, and Perry went for her ankle, hoping to hold on and not be lost. Getting bigger hadn¡¯t fully healed her, and had possibly not healed her at all, because her wounded arm was still being held limply at her side, and she was staggering, only barely aware of herself. She portaled again, and this time Perry had less trouble following her, though they were high in the sky, a giantess and a wolf. She portaled again, then again, moving them out over the water, until a final portal sent them crashing down against the ground, far less controlled than last time. Third Fervor hit a building, and Perry rolled across cobblestones, his tethered spear dragging behind him, the broken spear still in his mouth. She had brought them back to Berus again, where the dead were laying on the ground, unmoved, and the streets had been cleared. People were hiding out, and a tent which had held caramels was being used to triage wounds. She kicked at Perry and he backed away from her, then bent down and opened up the shelf space. The laser gun that Brigitta had made was waiting there ¡ª had been waiting the entire time, connected to a bank of batteries. The wireless connection was made immediately, and the system had been meant to be controlled by Marchand, except that now Perry was also Marchand. He could feel the protocols and see through the small camera that had been left in the shelf space, could line up the shot properly with small servos, and fired at Third Fervor¡¯s center. At first there was no response from her. She was only sluggishly getting to her feet as she pushed up from the caved-in side of a tailor¡¯s. But while the laser wasn¡¯t penetrating the armor, it was heating it up to white-hot. She soon began screaming, slapping at the hot metal, and when that didn¡¯t work, she raced forward to Perry, giant hand coming down to slap him as her other arm hung uselessly. Perry dodged to the side, dropping the shelf space opening, which stopped the laser, but after he¡¯d bounded back away from her, he opened it back up again. The laser gun was stuck onto some servos scavenged from the Farfinder, and Perry was fully in control of it, firing it through the aperture again. With his enhanced mechanical vision, he could see the thick beam as it went through the air, and if he could keep it up, he could burn her alive in the armor, nevermind that it couldn¡¯t be penetrated. Another portal snapped open, and a wall of water blasted out of it. Perry winked the shelf space shut, then was tossed by the wave, slammed against a brick building that groaned with the wave of water pressing against it. Third Fervor had flooded the city in just an instant, salt water from the deep sea washing away the tent where people had been getting medical treatment, turning the thoroughfares into rivers of mud with tumbling cobblestones, bodies, and personal effects. Perry lifted up into the air, held aloft by the sword that ran along his back. The spear still dangled from the tether, and his mouth was still tight around the other spear, but he had no hope of driving it into her with enough leverage, even if her armor was just as thin as it had been when she was small. It clung to her, seeming skintight, the ultimate defense. Perry landed on a rooftop and tried to assess. It was hard, as the wolf, and even as the mechawolf. He wanted to kill her, to rip into her with his claws and teeth, but ineffectually biting at magically-hardened metal would do nothing. He fired the laser at her again, from an unstable rooftop this time, and managed to keep it there for quite a while until she charged at him. He aimed for the head, hoping to cook her brain. At thirty feet tall, she crashed into the building. She was moving faster than she had been before. Whatever damage the gunpowder plot had done to her, she was shaking it off, though her arm was still fucked, and she was fighting one-handed. She screamed again, deafeningly loud, blowing out a handful of microphones, and Perry winced. Third Fervor noticed this time. She screamed again, louder, deeper, rumbling the bones in his body, breaking windows with the noise, and assuredly injuring more of the fleeing civilians. She advanced on him with another sharp blast of sound, and he ran along the rooftops, leaping from eave to eave. He felt like he should have been faster than her, but she had none of the weight a woman her size should have had ¡ª or possibly, the speed and strength to make up for it. The chase was causing immense destruction through the flooded city. Third Fervor cared nothing for the civilians, their homes and businesses, and when she swatted at Perry, it was with full force. Her fists broke through support beams and cracked foundations, and Perry kept running, trying to keep away from her. Eventually she would run down, and then she would be vulnerable. If he kept the tip of the spear in his mouth, he would have a weapon to defeat her, if the laser gun wasn¡¯t enough. As he was about to make another leap from roof to roof, Third Fervor screamed again, and Perry faltered. He missed the jump and crashed through a window instead, finding himself in a workshop where looms had already gone still. Third Fervor tore the wall open at the window, parting the brickwork, and Perry ran forward as the roof began to collapse. He leapt from another window, crashing through, and landed on the city street in a foot of water. Third Fervor appeared in front of him with a portal that was wide enough to stretch from one side of the street to the other. She stomped down on him with a heel that could easily have impaled him, and he rolled to the side, then darted ahead. She screamed after him, but he was having trouble hearing it anymore, leaving the sound only as something that rattled his teeth and vibrated his metal plates. He could smell death on her as he passed. She was doing terribly beneath the armor, as huge and imposing as she looked. The hole he¡¯d made in her chest with the tip of the spear was still there, and still bleeding. If he could land a shot there with his gun, he might be able to end her, though she had more flesh than before, and a bullet would seem like a BB. He was trying to make a plan when the spear he¡¯d been dragging behind him his whole time caught on something. He strained against it, then bit through the material with razor sharp teeth, but it was enough of a delay for Third Fervor to appear with a portal and slap him down the street. Perry¡¯s body broke in a dozen places, bones snapping and metal shearing, with the softer, more delicate bits ¡ª muscle and wire ¡ª cut straight through. He bounced once on the cobblestone street, then hit the side of a wall, and seized up as the bad news came in, both intense pain from the biological parts of him and coldly clinical damage assessments from the mechanical. It would knit itself together, all of it, but Third Fervor stepped through another portal and was on him. Perry opened his shelf space and used his one good paw to push himself into it, letting it close before Third Fervor¡¯s questing hand could find him. He lay in the shelf, panting hard. She hadn¡¯t opened a portal to come in with him, and probably couldn¡¯t at that size. He was healing, regenerating, and his store of energy was depleting in the process. He¡¯d gone into the fight topped up with some full exposure to the moon, but without moonlight, he was depending on the reactor, which had already knitted itself back together once. It wasn¡¯t enough energy. Another hit like that, and he might have to transform back, if he survived it at all. Still, there were people out there, people who he¡¯d said he was trying to save, and if he let Third Fervor get away, she could recover in peace. He still had no idea why she was even doing this, why she¡¯d been commanded to do this. He got to his feet slowly. He was still injured, but the bones had brought themselves back together again. If she left, she would go lick her wounds. She would shrink back down to size, and they wouldn¡¯t be able to find her, and then she would be able to do it all over again. Perry opened the shelf and raced out on legs that were still getting back to full strength. He needed her to know that he was still there, still alive. She slammed down a fist he only saw because his body was studded with so many cameras, and he dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding her thumb. She was moving slower now, her wounds taking their toll. She had been racing after him, moving fast, and even if Big Mode wasn¡¯t at its end, she was flagging. Perry ran, still healing as he did so. He needed her to keep up the chase, and also needed to stay close enough to her that he could dive through a portal when she did. If she escaped, he would never catch her, but he was fast in this form, even as he drained energy from his vessels to keep up the speed. Third Fervor appeared in front of him and tried to stomp him to death. He dodged to the side as her heel buried itself two feet deep in the road. While she extracted her foot, he opened the shelf space and fired on her again, lasing her back and howling at her, trying to keep her attention. He didn¡¯t know when she would back out, and wanted to be ready for it. She turned to him, laser scoring a mark along her back, and screamed so loud that the laser¡¯s mounting was knocked over. Perry rattled from the sound, and went completely deaf this time, brought to his knees by a sound so loud it made his heart flutter. She went at him with every ounce of speed she had left in her, using her one good hand in a desperate attempt to smash him flat. He raced backward, dropping the shelf space again, and she screamed after him as she slapped the cobblestones, cracking them. He turned back when she didn¡¯t follow him, and he bounded forward, barking at her, when she stepped back. A portal opened behind her, but she was too slow for him. He dug his claws into her leg, gripping her in a way that was awkward for a wolf¡¯s form, and they went back together, to a clearing near a forest that must have been somewhere in Thirlwell. She tried to shake him off, and when that didn¡¯t work, she beat at him with her fists, which broke a bone in his shoulder and forced him to slump to the ground. But when she opened a portal beneath her feet, he doggedly jumped after her, and they fell together through three more portals, high in the air, one of them nearly closing right behind him. She was getting smaller and weaker. The portals were shrinking with every one she made. She used a portal to fling them high and kill their momentum, and Perry was able to use a blast of moonlight, aimed backward, to propel him just close enough to get her ankle in his mouth. She punched him again, but he held on tight, and the punch was weaker, because she was smaller. More portals went by. Perry hit the side of one, and it was like hitting concrete, but he held firm. She was trying to shake him, to get him off of her, and if she did, then it was all over. They landed together in a stretch of sand, somewhere unknown to Perry. He wasn¡¯t sure how many portals they had gone through, or what her plan was, but she was back down to her normal size, and she was still fighting against him, but she was using only her own reduced strength, which was nothing to him. She might as well have been petting him for all the good it was doing her. Perry released her ankle and moved on her. She was laying on the ground, in the sand, staining it with the blood that leaked from her armor. He raised the shoulder gun out of its casing, calculated the precise angle, then shot her twice through the hole he¡¯d made in her armor. She jerked with the impact and let out a low groan, then went still. Perry stared down at her, waiting, then gripped her in his mouth and flung her body into the shelf space, following after her. He was useless without hands, but it would have been best to manacle her to something heavy. He was going to try to find a way to remove her armor, but as he watched, it fell from her like skin sloughing off, the vibrant color of it fading away and becoming insubstantial. Beneath it, she was broken and bloodied. Perry sat for a moment, pacing back and forth, then checked his energy levels. His vessels had been depleted with the damage she¡¯d done in that last fall, and while he¡¯d healed back, there was little left. If this was part of Fenilor¡¯s plan, then Perry didn¡¯t have the power left for a second fight. He transformed back, feeling every inch of the pain and awkwardness of metal and flesh unmerging from each other. When he was finished, he went to look at Third Fervor. She hadn¡¯t moved at all. She was dead, he could smell the death on her already, and when he¡¯d been the wolf he¡¯d been close enough to hear her heartbeat still. Beneath the armor, she was just flesh. She had all kinds of wounds on her body, all from him, different attacks she¡¯d suffered and never quite healed back from. ¡°March,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I guess ¡­ now we wait,¡± said Perry. ¡°Certainly, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The portal is going to open,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or it should, unless this was a clone.¡± ¡°I doubt that it could have been a clone, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She had her powers.¡± Perry used a toe to turn the body over, and saw a small tablet covered in the same crusty material as the one they¡¯d found in Fenilor¡¯s murder basement. Perry left it where it was. He doubted that it did more than conceal her location. Was this what Fenilor wanted? Had Perry played into his hands? ¡°Why did she do it?¡± asked Perry. It was a nothing question. It wasn¡¯t even really important. ¡°Because she was told to, sir,¡± Marchand answered. Perry sat with the body and waited. He had no idea where in the world they were. If he stepped out though, Fenilor might find him, and if the portal opened then, there would need to be a fight. The reactor was slowly charging Perry¡¯s vessels back up, but the fight with Fenilor would be more difficult. He would need to go retrieve the spear from wherever it had been left in Berus, if someone hadn¡¯t stolen it. Even if they had stolen it, he would have to find a way to get it back. Perry slowly removed his armor. He had been in it for what felt like a long time. He watched the corpse, waiting to see whether it would move, but Third Fervor was dead. He took his sword and stabbed her once through the eye, down into the brain, just to be sure, but she didn¡¯t move or cry out. When the portal opened, it was understated. Perry stared at it. There was a temptation to go through, obviously. He could leave this life behind, as he¡¯d left others behind. In fact, the Farfinder could follow. They would probably see his exit on the punch map, if that worked with this small pocket dimension. And because they had Nima and Mette, it would mean that Fenilor could never win his fight. Maybe he would get another matchup in a few years time, or maybe the cycle would be broken. They didn¡¯t actually know. Perry sat on the bed, one of the only pieces of furniture that remained in the shelf space. It had been taken from a library, and Perry had the good grace to feel a little guilty about that. It wasn¡¯t as much as he wanted to take through to the next world. From what they knew, the portal would stick around for about a day. He just needed to wait it out, and if he did, it would disappear. He could catch the next one, the one that would open when Fenilor was killed. That was the plan. Still, there was a part of him that felt drawn to the portal. ¡°I¡¯m going to break the tablet and pop out,¡± said Perry after an hour had passed with the portal simply hovering there. ¡°Enough that the Farfinder should be able to see us. Not enough that Fenilor should be able to find us. And I¡¯m going up high. It should be more difficult for him to find us that way.¡± ¡°Sir, is that wise?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°If we simply wait Fenilor out, it seems we are on much better footing. An avenue for his escape will be closed.¡± ¡°I¡¯m hoping the risk is low,¡± said Perry. He reached down and picked up the tablet, which had been laying on the ground, and snapped it in half. He could practically feel the magic draining out of it. He did put the armor back on before going outside, just in case. When he stepped out into the desert, he only intended to be there long enough for the Farfinder to get a message of confirmation to him. They had his signature and would pinpoint him within minutes, no matter where in the world he was, and with prognostics, it was possible for them to pinpoint him even before he stepped out. But as the minutes went by, Perry started to feel a churn in his stomach. They would have seen everything from a remove, the aftermath of the fight rather than the fight itself, a dark sphere in their sensors. They would have known from the eyewitnesses that it had been going right ¡ª that he wasn¡¯t dead. And even if they thought he was dead, they would have kept searching for him, it would have cost them almost nothing. ¡°Why¡¯s it taking so long?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry rose up into the air, leaving the ground behind. He needed to get his bearings, and if he wanted to go to Berus in any reasonable amount of time, that meant going up to space where he could get some proper acceleration. Besides, it meant less of a chance for Fenilor to approach. Fenilor obviously had some bullshit left, he hadn¡¯t used all his tools he¡¯d gathered yet, but going up high reduced the possibility space of that bullshit. Perry was halfway into the climb when an email notification came in. There was only one possibility of where it could have come from: the Farfinder had found him. But he stopped as soon as he read the subject line. It said only ¡°HELP!!!!¡± Chapter 141 - Expulsion ¡°There are all kinds of ways that magic can fail between universes,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°I mean, obviously, right? Because they all use different what-we-call physics, and you wouldn¡¯t expect that all of the ways for things to be ¡®magic¡¯ would just fold up neatly.¡± Eggy 6 was the only one who was numbered. It was their idea of a joke, though she was actually the fifth one out of the cloning machine and the sixth total. They were in a room that was being called ¡®second bridge¡¯, which had the feeling of being in a remote location. Kestrel had been offered a spot on the bridge proper, but hadn¡¯t really felt like he would have that much to contribute. The second bridge was a lot more casual than the primary bridge, with a feeling more like a coffee shop than a place where missions were being conducted. All the people there were clones, which meant a lot of Mettes and Eggys, because they had been the ones that were most eager to do the whole clone thing. Perry and Kestrel had, by mutual agreement, not cloned again, though there was a question of whether they would in the future. Everyone had alt universe equivalents of iPads and smartphones, with a few laptops, and there was a large display on one wall that gave vital information, as well as a view inside the main bridge. There was a countdown to Third Fervor¡¯s attack, which only had minutes left. After that, it was likely that they would be in the dark, or maybe just probing at the edges of the battle. ¡°So there are different failure modes,¡± said Kes. ¡°And you don¡¯t know ahead of time what¡¯s going to fail.¡± He was in private conversation with Eggy 6, over in one of the corners, at a table for two. She had taken a special interest in him, for whatever reason. He suspected that the clones had a scheme of some sort, because they often conferred with each other. If that was the case, she had been sent to woo him, and he wasn¡¯t entirely sure whether it was for science or some other reason. ¡°More importantly, you don¡¯t know how it¡¯s going to fail,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°You go to the next world and an important piece of ship infrastructure is dead? That¡¯s a problem, sure. But if it¡¯s going to stay dead, even when you go to another world, that¡¯s worse. Some magics will flourish back to life, there¡¯s something in how they fold up when they die that lets them unfold. We¡¯re ¡­ still not entirely sure on that right now, it¡¯s an area of active research, but the research only happens when we move between worlds, and a lot of stuff just stays dead. And of course how it dies is another issue.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t want pressurized canisters where the walls are made of exotic force fields,¡± said Kes. ¡°Not unless you want to bomb yourself.¡± ¡°Exactly,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°And you wouldn¡¯t necessarily know that you have a proverbial pressurized canister. Your sword has a lot of power in it, right?¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Kes. It wasn¡¯t actually his sword, but he didn¡¯t want to say that. ¡°I mean, it can potentially get you to a fraction of the speed of light,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°But yeah, most likely that¡¯s just a physics whoopsie, as we call them, different frames of understanding interacting with each other, not a hint that the sword is connected to some deeper well of power. That¡¯s another cross-magic thing.¡± She had a fruity drink, something stark red that smelled like artificial strawberry and pineapple, and she swirled it around. ¡°But if it was on this ship, rather than with the other you, then yeah, we would worry a little about it blowing us up.¡± ¡°Seems like a dangerous way to live,¡± said Kes. ¡°Has that happened?¡± ¡°The ship hasn¡¯t blown up, no,¡± laughed Eggy 6. ¡°You know what I mean,¡± said Kes. ¡°Is there precedent?¡± ¡°Hella is pretty sure that¡¯s what killed her original crew,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°They came into a new world and were immediately reeling, and yeah, it might have been because of some magic crystals they took with them, but it¡¯s really hard to say. Might also have been a crash landing, because there wasn¡¯t the mass predictor at that point. She was pulled from the ship by some locals and didn¡¯t make it back for some time.¡± ¡°Never trust a crystal,¡± said Kes. Eggy 6 laughed. ¡°That¡¯s funny, but absolutely do not make that joke around Hella.¡± ¡°I meant for it to be macabre,¡± said Kes. ¡°Dark humor. Guess you¡¯re right though.¡± ¡°I get it,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°I know I don¡¯t look it, but I like black humor.¡± Kes looked her over. She was wearing a brightly colored dress ¡ª all the Eggys were ¡ª this one green with a star pattern that grew more pronounced down at the hem. She was wearing a pop of red lipstick, and probably some other makeup. When he looked closer, he could see it, and he could also smell her. She had washed her hair with something coconut and honey scented, and her skin had been washed with something that was more floral, maybe lavender. Of course, he didn¡¯t know if she was actually flirting with him. Friendly, lively women were always the toughest for him to read, because every comment could be taken as an invitation or engagement beyond the norm. This was the fourth time she¡¯d sought him out, but that might just have been because she had some science in mind. That would track with this being some kind of plan. Kes wasn¡¯t averse to science though, depending on what it required of him. She was definitely curious about the werewolf thing. ¡°You don¡¯t suppose that I¡¯ll explode into pieces because I¡¯m a werewolf, do you?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Very possible!¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°I mean, from what Perry said, the Wolf Vessel contains energy, and in the normal course of things, what happens when it cracks open is that the energy is used for transformation, then for healing, partially fueled by consumption. What that means when we go to another world is anyone¡¯s guess, but in theory we¡¯ll be going to a world that Perry has gone to, and in theory, nothing special will happen to you as we cross our own border. But we know that our border crossing is a lot different from the punch.¡± She took another sip of her drink. ¡°I¡¯m excited to see what will happen!¡± ¡°It¡¯s starting,¡± called one of the Mettes, who was watching closely. ¡°Only medium probability that he wins.¡± ¡°He should retreat,¡± said one of the other Mettes. ¡°And leave those people to die?¡± asked one of the others. Kes couldn¡¯t quite keep them straight. They had a very different approach to the clone thing, and hadn¡¯t strongly differentiated themselves, except for the prime, who was the only werewolf among them, and on the bridge. ¡°Thirty seconds,¡± said another Mette. ¡°A lot of those people are going to die no matter what,¡± said an Eggy, one of the more serious ones, maybe Hernietta. ¡°He¡¯s not going to retreat,¡± said Kes, who was the resident expert on Perry. ¡°If she goes after people, he¡¯ll be there to stop her, even if there¡¯s some risk to himself.¡± How much risk was in question though. ¡°And he wants the fight,¡± said one of the Mettes. ¡°He wants to end it,¡± said Kes with a nod. But it was true, Perry did want the fight, wanted struggle and victory, the same as Kes did. Only one of them was going to get it though. The view of the fair went black. Their ¡®cameras¡¯ were positioned far enough back that they could see an odd black bubble, like a black hole in their perception. It was attached to Third Fervor, and jittered as she moved and portaled her way through. Perry leapt down from where he¡¯d been watching and went right for it. From that point forward, they would see only the aftermath. The black spot was surprisingly powerful. It didn¡¯t just apply to past vision, future vision, and present vision, but to what felt like comparatively mundane things like video cameras. A camera brought into the black spot would show only black, and even if it didn¡¯t, it wouldn¡¯t be able to transmit out. Sound could be captured, but only sound, and it couldn¡¯t be transmitted while the blocking effect was up. The details were something they were still in the midst of figuring out. The one big exception to those rules was Marchand, which might have been because he was partly magical, or partly alive, since the blocking effect didn¡¯t seem to impact humans at all. ¡°Now we wait, I guess,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯ve got a bad feeling about this,¡± said Eggy 6. She frowned. ¡°We were in a contingency meeting last night, and the prospects are grim with Perry gone.¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t in that meeting,¡± said Kes. ¡°It was just the Eggys,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°The Carton,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯ll have you know that where I¡¯m from, Eggletina is a very respectable and normal name,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°In fact ¡ª¡± An alarm blasted through the ship, and everyone froze in place. ¡°Well shoot,¡± said Eggy 6, looking up at the ceiling. She wasn¡¯t moving into action though, apparently leaving that to the others, who were tapping at their tablets and laptops. ¡°What is that?¡± asked Kes. ¡°System we set up a week ago,¡± said Eggy 6. The alarm was silenced, and there was a great deal of conversation in the secondary bridge. ¡°Maybe get ready to fight.¡± Kes had a handgun holstered on his hip, though if there was someone on the ship who wasn¡¯t supposed to be there, he didn¡¯t suspect that the gun would do a lot of good. Perry had all their best weapons. ¡°What¡¯s the alarm?¡± asked Kes. ¡°We can¡¯t track Fenilor,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°But we can track when we¡¯re being blocked. So we have one of the ¡®cameras¡¯ set up pointed inside the ship, and if it ever gets blocked ¡ª¡± The view of the main bridge went black. There was silence in the room as people saw the screen showing nothing, then Kes got up from his seat and raced out the door. He didn¡¯t have a good plan. If Fenilor was on their ship, that was a major problem, and it was one that had no real solution. There were weapons they thought might be effective, but using any of them inside the ship had a high chance of killing everyone aboard. Not all of Fenilor¡¯s armors could shrug off bullets like they were nothing, but if he was here, how long would it take him to shred through the crew? When Kes opened the door to the bridge, half the crew were already dead. Fenilor was dressed in a shiny black vinyl outfit that bunched up around his joints with a fish bowl helmet. In his hand was a dagger that was dripping with something shimmering green. Kes raised the gun and shot him three times, close range, center mass. Kes had been putting in time at their improvised gun range with both rifles and handguns, and it proved entirely unnecessary as far as hitting a target twenty feet away went, and also entirely ineffective, as the bullets vanished against the shiny black vinyl with a ripple in the material, leaving no trace the gun had even been fired save for the ringing in Kes¡¯ ears. Fenilor threw his dagger at Kes, and Kes raised an arm to block it. The dagger gouged him across the forearm, cutting through his shirt, and Kes felt a blossom of pain. He grabbed the dagger off the floor, and when he looked back up, Fenilor had a long blade, something that looked like a fencing sword, thin and slightly flexible. He was advancing on Hella. ¡°I need some information from you,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°How is this ship accessed?¡± ¡°Eat shit,¡± said Hella. ¡°I¡¯ve seen the doors you use,¡± said Fenilor. His voice was even. Kes gripped the dagger, waiting for his moment to strike, but Fenilor seemed fully aware of exactly where Kes was. ¡°I don¡¯t think there¡¯s a need to kill everyone aboard this ship. But if that¡¯s the way of negating this advantage, that¡¯s what I¡¯ll do. Tell me how he gets back aboard.¡± Hella hesitated, and that¡¯s when Kes knew that she would crumple. He glanced at the crew. Eggy Prime was dead, Mette Prime was slumped back in her chair, and the lizard guy L¡¯onso was sprawled over his desk. His extra tongues were drooping out of his nose. But Cark and Nitta were still there, down on the ground with their hands over their heads, and Hella would try to save them. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. ¡°There, that console,¡± said Hella, pointing at it. ¡°Destroy it and it will take us a week to rebuild.¡± Fenilor nodded. He could tell truth from lies, or close enough that it didn¡¯t matter. He went to the console and pulled a hammer from nowhere, then wound up to bring it down. Kes had no particular plan, but if they couldn¡¯t open up a door for Perry, it would be hours until Perry returned. Hopefully someone was already sending out a message to Marchand using the technopathy console, but for all Kes knew, that was located in this room and not able to be used from over the ship network. They hadn¡¯t expected Fenilor to simply walk right onto their ship, however he had done it. Kes lunged, using the knife, and found that his body betrayed him. His hand lost its grip and he collapsed to the ground. He was having trouble breathing. ¡°It¡¯s a paralytic,¡± said Fenilor. He held his hammer in one hand and the foil in the other. He barely spared a glance at Kes. ¡°They¡¯re dangerous things. If you paralyze the diaphragm, the lungs will stop working, and if you paralyze the heart, it will stop beating.¡± He brought the hammer down on the console, then dismissed it and turned back to Hella. ¡°Do you believe that renders you incapable of summoning Perry?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°I do,¡± replied Hella. ¡°Hrm, a lie,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Unfortunate.¡± He reached to the side and the ghostly line of weapons appeared. It hovered there as he made his selection. He picked a gun and shot Cark in the head. Cark had already been on the ground, and his body jumped slightly, but he was quite dead. He hadn¡¯t been cloned; they would have to get his blood, and soon. Hella had closed her eyes at the moment the gun fired. When she opened them and looked at Cark, she seemed sick to her stomach. Kes was on the ground, barely able to do more than blink. He wanted to call out, to distract Fenilor so that Hella could make a move, to do anything. He would have transformed into a wolf if he could have, but he had no ability to moon blast himself, and couldn¡¯t feel the Wolf Vessel inside of him either. He tried to draw on some hidden reserve of heroic will that would get the transformation to happen, but there was nothing. ¡°How many of your people will I have to execute?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°You¡¯ve been watching me, as best you could. You¡¯re Perry¡¯s people. You understand that you cannot lie to me, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°What do you want from us?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Answer the question, but try honesty this time,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°What needs to be done to cut this ship off from Perry?¡± There was no help coming. L¡¯onso had been the closest thing they had to muscle and he was paralyzed or dead. Hella had superpowers, and had apparently been something of a superhero on her own planet, but either she¡¯d decided that this was a fight she was going to lose, or she was holding it back to surprise him with. Half her crew were dead though, and if there was a time to act, Kes had to hope that she would know it. ¡°If you¡¯re here, we¡¯re probably already cut off,¡± said Hella. ¡°We are?¡± asked Fenilor. He approached closer to her, blade held forward. ¡°So far as we understand that form of magic,¡± said Hella. ¡°It blocks almost everything.¡± ¡°But once I¡¯m gone,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°If I leave this ship to you and take my leave. I need you to be sufficiently crippled that you cannot become a part of the coming battle. Not permanently ¡ª I¡¯m not cruel ¡ª but in the short term, the next few days, as Perry and I have it out without outside interference.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a way of talking to him,¡± said Hella. ¡°We can send messages to his suit, and watch the world down there, the future and the past, to some extent.¡± ¡°Show me the systems,¡± said Fenilor, nodding. ¡°Those too will be destroyed, and you will confirm for me this has been done.¡± Hella let out a breath. ¡°I need access to one of the consoles. These systems are all completely technological, basal physics, which doesn¡¯t fail often. If we needed to contact him now, that¡¯s what we would do, transmit a message the normal way, though radio. You can¡¯t destroy something in the ship to stop that, there are consoles everywhere, and it¡¯s probably not working right now given that you¡¯re here and the alarm means your block is up, but I can eject the transmitter if need be.¡± She was talking a lot. Kes hoped that she was trying to stall him, because that would mean that she had a plan. They were up in space, in orbit so they wouldn¡¯t have to use the engines much, and for all he knew they were on the other side of the planet from Perry. If she was waiting for the orbit to line up so that they would be overhead, so that a radio signal could be transmitted, then in theory someone could put in a command of some kind, one that would fire off the transmitter. He had no idea whether or not she was lying, but Fenilor didn¡¯t interrupt her. ¡°Go to the console,¡± he said. Then, right as she moved, ¡°Wait.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Hella. ¡°I¡¯m doing what you want.¡± ¡°Your intention is to jettison this ¡­ transmitter?¡± asked Fenilor. Hella let out a breath and then blinked just a bit too long. It was only because Kes¡¯ face had landed in the right orientation that he could see it. They were going to move to a different part of the crowded bridge though, and he wouldn¡¯t even be able to see. ¡°Yes, I¡¯ll jettison it,¡± said Hella. ¡°And why does the ship need such a function?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°The ship is designed to lose pieces of itself,¡± said Hella. ¡°It¡¯s a defensive measure. Do you want me to do it or not? Because I would be perfectly fine not losing a valuable piece of equipment that we don¡¯t have a hope of replacing on this world.¡± She was acting too calm, too casual, but Kes had no idea where she was going with this. She hadn¡¯t lied yet, not that Fenilor could detect, and that was something, but there must have been a play, something that she and only she could do from the console. Fenilor¡¯s black spot screwed with wifi, but surely everyone else in the secondary bridge had some access and hadn¡¯t left all their ability to control the ship concentrated in this single place. ¡°This sword can kill swiftly,¡± said Fenilor. He demonstrated, extending the sword an extra six feet, which happened so fast that there was a sharp crack like that of a whip. It had struck the wall of the ship, and while it hadn¡¯t done much damage, the threat had been clear. Fenilor moved the point of the sword, pointing it at someone, who Kes thought was probably Nitta, given she was the last remaining hostage aside from Hella herself. Kes couldn¡¯t see her though, even if he could hear her soft crying. Cark had been her long-time companion, when they had been traveling the multiverse with just the two of them. ¡°Noted,¡± said Hella. ¡°Eject it now,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Slowly.¡± Hella went to one of the consoles, out of view of Kes. He tried to move his hands, to reach for the poisoned dagger, but his fingers only twitched. He had completely lost control of his body, and it was a wonder that he hadn¡¯t been put to sleep. The rage was boiling up inside of him, mixed with a clawing terror. His heart was thundering in his chest, and it wasn¡¯t actually helping him to do anything, because his body was simply not responding. ¡°I¡¯ll kill you and everyone on this ship if you go against me,¡± said Fenilor. It wasn¡¯t clear whether he was responding to some provocation or if he was simply speaking to the air. ¡°Jettisoning now,¡± said Hella. There was a clattering of keys from the workstation. The front half of the bridge exploded outward. Kes nearly blacked out as he went into the hard vacuum. The planet was miles below them, with a scattering of lights in the darkness, but the water on his eyes started foaming almost immediately, and pain was coursing through his body. He was blind, paralyzed, and dying, trying not to pass out, which was a battle he knew somewhere in the back of his brain was one that would be lost within seconds. But floating out in the vacuum meant something else: exposure to moonlight. The change happened quickly. The moonlight was stronger than he had ever felt it before, the moonlight washing over his body, the moon stronger, no atmosphere to diffuse it. It was like having a spotlight on him, and his body warped into its wolfish form. His clothes shredded and his teeth snapped. With the full moonlight going, the poison worked itself from his body quickly, and he twisted around, looking for prey. Werewolves were not particularly more suited to the vacuum of space than humans. He moved his paws desperately, trying to get traction on nothing. He was partially blinded by whatever was happening to his eyes, and he could feel the heat inside him rising. His body was healing, drawing on the power of the moonlight, even as he gasped for air. Hypoxia was killing him while moonlight was healing him. The liquids on the surface of his body were boiling off, sweat foaming up in his fur and coming from his eyes. He was desiccating, the rapid healing from the unadulterated moonlight not up for the task of keeping his eyes wet. He didn¡¯t have the intellectual capacity to understand any of what was happening to him. He thrashed and tried to howl into the void of space, twisting his body around, sweeping claws through the blackness. He was dying, and knew that instinctually, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was flagging by the time he felt a hand on his neck. His heart was beating faster than it had ever beat before, and he was roasting hot. It was impossible to say how long he¡¯d been floating there, but it had felt like years of being blind and enraged. He tried to snap at the hand gripping him on the back of his neck, but it was strong and firm, like his mother¡¯s jaws when he was a puppy. He was thrown against a hard floor, and a gasping breath gave him actual air. He placed his paws against the ground, trying to move, but found that he was too weak to rise. He was healing back from the damage, but the moonlight was good, and once he could see again, he realized that he was inside a dome, jailed as he¡¯d been before, with no way to claw through the shield. It didn¡¯t matter much though, because with the moonlight gone, the transformation couldn¡¯t last, and he turned into his human form. Kes lay there coughing for a long time, spitting up what felt like chunks of lung, wet pink pieces of something. There was no one in the room with him, but he recognized the brig. ¡°Help!¡± he called, but his voice was strangled and weak. He had healed back when the transformation had left him, but there were after effects. He crawled slowly to his feet, unsteady. ¡°Help!¡± he tried again, and it was at least audible this time. It was fifteen minutes later when Eggy 6 limped into the room. She had one of her legs bandaged, and there was a cut on her face that must have bled a lot. ¡°You okay?¡± she asked. He was naked, and she glanced down, but said nothing about it. ¡°I seem to be,¡± said Kes, though his voice felt unnaturally deep. ¡°What happened? Is everyone alright?¡± ¡°Hella blew up the ship,¡± said Eggy 6. She leaned against the doorway and closed her eyes. ¡°Just the bridge, but it was touch and go for the rest of us for a while. We¡¯re stable now.¡± A lot of the energy had gone out of her. She was no longer sprightly, just exhausted. When she opened her eyes, they were wet. A lot had happened. Kes couldn¡¯t help but think about the water of his eyes boiling in the vacuum. ¡°Who rescued me?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Perry?¡± ¡°We¡¯re out of contact with him,¡± said Eggy 6, shaking her head. ¡°We got a message out before everything went to hell, but the technopath method is completely shot, the radio transmitter is down, and it¡¯ll be a few days before we can open a door again. The last resort is physical propulsion to get down to the surface, but in the state we¡¯re in, we don¡¯t really want to try it.¡± ¡°I¡¯m surprised the ship has a ¡®blow up the bridge¡¯ button,¡± said Kes. ¡°It doesn¡¯t,¡± said Eggy 6. She looked him up and down. ¡°Hella used an overload function. The way she tells it, she had to jettison the radio transmitter to trick him ¡ª tell him the truth, that is ¡ª and then it was just a case of inputting a few commands. Now, we don¡¯t have a blow-up-the-bridge function, but apparently she had figured out the overload weeks ago and scripted it up, just in case.¡± ¡°She¡¯s alive?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Who do you think flew out into space and saved you?¡± asked Eggy 6. ¡°She was the only one who could survive the decompression event. Which is why it¡¯s sort of shitty to set up a decompression event that¡¯s going to kill everyone else.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what her other options were,¡± said Kes. ¡°Throw herself on the mercy of Fenilor? Cark was already dead. L¡¯onso was probably dead too. Mette Prime ¡ª¡± ¡°Just paralyzed, like you,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°She was saved before you because of the thresholder thing. Nitta is in the infirmary, since she was grabbed and thrown into the exterior airlock in a handful of seconds. It¡¯s not clear she¡¯s going to make it. She had outer layers of skin on, which might have saved her, but we don¡¯t really know, and there isn¡¯t a doctor for her species within a dozen worlds of us ¡ª rhetorically, anyway, because we¡¯re going to have to work night and day to get the worldhopper up and running again.¡± She let out a long sigh. ¡°Not what I thought this was going to be, when I signed up.¡± It wasn¡¯t clear whether she meant this world or the whole Farfinder mission. ¡°Any chance I can get out of here?¡± asked Kes, looking at the dome that surrounded him. ¡°Oh, right,¡± said Eggy 6. She hit a control switch and the bubble dropped. ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°No problem,¡± said Kes. He looked down. He was naked. ¡°Clothes would be nice.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°And Fenilor?¡± asked Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose he died?¡± ¡°Hella fought him for a bit,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°He¡¯s just about on her level out in space. He doesn¡¯t have the tools for locomotion, and she can fight at range, which is harder for him. I don¡¯t know all the details. Some of it was on video, but most of it wasn¡¯t. I think it eventually came down to either saving you and Mette Prime, or going after him, and she chose to save you. So far as I know, he made it back down to the planet the slow way. If he burned up on reentry, we think the portal would have popped for Mette, but obviously it takes a while. We think he had enough tricks in his bag to make it down.¡± ¡°Are you okay?¡± asked Kes, looking her up and down again. ¡°Fine,¡± she said. ¡°Getting knocked sideways in a spaceship is a sign that something has gone really horribly wrong.¡± She touched the wound on her head, and her fingers came away sticky. ¡°That one was a bleeder.¡± ¡°I meant more ¡­ psychologically,¡± said Kes. ¡°I know they were friends.¡± ¡°They should have cloned,¡± she replied. She gave a very angry shrug. ¡°Cark was adamant that he didn¡¯t want a clone running around. He preferred there to be only one of him. L¡¯onso was more on the fence, but we don¡¯t have any of his blood, and even if we could, the machine has been destroyed.¡± ¡°Destroyed?¡± asked Kes. ¡°By Fenilor?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t even know how he got on the ship,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°We don¡¯t know if the blackout happened when he appeared, or if he was here for a while, hiding so well that we couldn¡¯t even detect him. We think he might have hitched a ride in with the queen, or that she brought some kind of attenuated magic item with her, but we have no real clue, which means that it¡¯s possible that he can return at any time. The queen had nothing for us, but interrogating her isn¡¯t a priority. For now, we¡¯re assuming that he can¡¯t, but he doesn¡¯t really have a reason to, because the Farfinder is crippled, and it¡¯s going to take a lot of time and effort to repair. He got what he wanted.¡± ¡°And Perry,¡± said Kes. ¡°Did he win against Third Fervor?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°We assume so. But Fenilor is coming for him, and probably very quickly. He¡¯s going to have no backup from us.¡± ¡°We need to get down there, to the planet surface,¡± said Kes. ¡°We need to help.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but we¡¯re licking our wounds,¡± said Eggy 6. She frowned at him. ¡°You understand that you were in hard vacuum for multiple minutes? You survived only because Hella did her best to make sure we were in the shadow of the planet. And even then, if the moon had been in a different position, you¡¯d have lasted seconds, like a normal person.¡± ¡°I know,¡± said Kes. ¡°But if there¡¯s a chance I can help, then that¡¯s what I need to do.¡± Eggy 6 sighed. ¡°Not my call. But if you can convince Hella to risk what¡¯s left of this ship, then you¡¯re fine to spend your life doing what you want.¡± She looked down at his crotch. ¡°Let¡¯s get you some clothes first though.¡± Chapter 142 - Full Contact, pt 1 The email was massive, but it was low on specifics. Whoever had sent it ¡ª apparently one of the Eggys, just from context ¡ª had a small window of time to send it in, and had simply dumped all data generated by the ship in the previous two hours. This meant that most of the information contained within the report was functionally useless to Perry, and Marchand had to go sifting through it to find out what had actually happened. ¡°It was probably meant to be a warning,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, aside from the presumed presence of Fenilor ¡ª¡± ¡°That¡¯s the only thing,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s the only consideration. He was there, and now ¡­ we have no idea what happened, but they¡¯re out of communication.¡± ¡°I doubt that, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The Farfinder has myriad methods of communicating with us. The email was sent to us through technopathy, and if that method failed once the message was sent, they could open a door for us, and as a tertiary consideration, they do have a radio antenna which would be virtually the only signal across the whole planet, easily identifiable.¡± ¡°None of that matters if they¡¯re all dead,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do you anticipate that to be the case?¡± asked Marchand. The AI¡¯s disaffected butler voice was getting on Perry¡¯s nerves. Marchand asked the question as though it was an idle curiosity. ¡°It¡¯s what we assume until we get word otherwise,¡± said Perry. ¡°How can we find them if they¡¯re not sending a signal?¡± ¡°In theory, if the spaceship is still in orbit, we could calculate its position based on what we know,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, any deviation would quickly make that impossible ¡ª the smallest change in thrust could radically change their expected position. The search area would quickly become too large to practically search with the tools we have available, assuming that they¡¯re running dark, as they prefer to do.¡± ¡°Alright, try it anyway,¡± said Perry. ¡°Plot a course for where we should expect them to be.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry continued up through the atmosphere, following another of Marchand¡¯s familiar lines that plotted the optimal course. A lot of Perry¡¯s life was following those lines, which he had mixed feelings about. In theory, if the ship was still following the same path, Perry could match its orbit and then board through the airlock. He¡¯d gone through airlock procedures twice with Hella, but he wouldn¡¯t be able to get in without someone on the inside to help him, which was a security precaution. But when Perry went where the line showed him to go, there was nothing there, no sign of the ship. Marchand did his scans, and they showed nothing, no shadow across the stars, no whisper of radio signal. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. He floated in space. There was a countdown timer going, which would tell him when the portal inside of the shelfspace was likely to close. He hadn¡¯t put it on the HUD, but he¡¯d asked Marchand to mark the time, and it had a spot in Perry¡¯s mind. ¡°Any chance we can find it with the naked eye?¡± ¡°I think not, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Because I know the ISS was visible from the ground,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m not familiar, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The International Space Station,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s from my Earth.¡± ¡°And how large was it, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°What color?¡± ¡°White, and I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Look, I trust you, I¡¯m just saying if we see something suspect streaking through the air, then we could find the ship, and ¡­ I don¡¯t know. If there¡¯s an active hostage situation, we could resolve it.¡± ¡°Unfortunately, it appears that the Farfinder has been hidden from us,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If they aren¡¯t all dead.¡± ¡°Thanks for that,¡± said Perry. He grit his teeth. He had lost too many people, whether from murderers or simply by moving between worlds. There had been a home for him on the Farfinder, and even if it was a temporary one, it had felt like it was going to become permanent. They could follow him through worlds, after all. And Kes had been there, along with Mette, with no backups of her lingering around on the surface. Why hadn¡¯t he insisted that just one of her go to mage school, like she¡¯d wanted, safe and out of the way so that some thread of her could continue on if the worst happened? He could feel a swirling of despair just at the thought of it, that she might be gone. He was supposed to have protected her, whether she was a friend or lover or some weird third thing. ¡°Shall I set a new course, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°For Berus. We¡¯ll go back to the city, help where we can with the destruction that Third Fervor caused on her rampage, hope that being in a place like that makes us visible.¡± ¡°To the Farfinder, to Fenilor, or to parties unknown?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Hopefully not parties unknown,¡± said Perry. He looked down at the world far below them. ¡°You mean Dirk?¡± ¡°I mean parties unknown,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The many Dirks would be one example. The queen would be another, though with Third Fervor gone, I doubt she has much reach.¡± ¡°We might not have seen the last of Third Fervor,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s entirely possible that she has some clones lingering. If the queen was a clone, then Third Fervor might be too.¡± Perry didn¡¯t really want to face an army of clones. A new line was drawn across the HUD, showing the proper path to get to Berus in the smallest possible time. Perry set off, though his thoughts weren¡¯t entirely in order. He didn¡¯t think that clones of Third Fervor were a credible threat, but clones of Fenilor were something he would have to consider, especially if Fenilor had taken the Farfinder. It wasn¡¯t clear what boons a clone of Fenilor would get. He only had the one power for himself, everything else was magic of this world or equipment he¡¯d stolen off thresholders. But Fenilor had skills of his own, and obviously he had plenty of weapons to hand over to his lesser clones. They might still be a problem, depending on their loadout and how well they could work together. Too much of the bounty of the world had been the product of Fenilor and his schemes. The secret research cities were at least known to him, even if it didn¡¯t seem like he had his finger in every single pie. When Perry landed in Berus hours later, there was still no word from the Farfinder. The knot in his stomach was growing, but he wasn¡¯t going to despair until he knew for certain what had happened to them. It was also possible that he would never know, that they would simply disappear and he would get no further answers, which sent a chill down his spine. The city was in worse shape than he had thought it would be. Most of the damage had been caused by the flooding rather than the indiscriminate violence or the giant woman stomping around and barreling into things. Most of the bodies had been picked up, and the dead had been stacked like cordwood in the city center to await some kind of fire that would be strong enough to light up the sodden corpses. A few buildings had been destroyed by the water or had their foundations weakened enough that they had tilted or fallen, and few windows had survived the torrent. Calamus was on the edge of the island, but they didn¡¯t have anything like tsunamis, and the monsoon season was more of a constant downpour than a wall of water. Five minutes after Perry had landed, one of the Dirks was there beside him. Perry stuck out from the crowd, but the response time was still impressive. ¡°They should have listened to you,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Shame they didn¡¯t.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think it would have mattered,¡± said Perry. ¡°You won, I take it?¡± asked Dirk. He had looked the armor up and down. It was shiny and new, all traces of damage now repaired after hours of flight and nothing else to do with the energy coursing out of the fusion reactor. The vessels had long since been topped up. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. He¡¯d won, but it had been a distraction, Third Fervor finally getting the martyrdom she seemed drawn towards. It seemed to Perry like living for someone else often meant dying for them. ¡°But it¡¯s not over?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m afraid not. I don¡¯t know what the next move is.¡± He looked Dirk over. It was impossible to tell which Dirk it was, but Perry assumed it was the same one he¡¯d been dealing with this whole time. ¡°You¡¯ll let me know if you have any contact, right?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Dirk. He looked around the city. ¡°Hell of a start to their independence.¡± ¡°They¡¯ll be fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re dependent on the domes, and those are all far away.¡± ¡°Far away, and not entirely up and running,¡± said Dirk. ¡°With all the rebuilding, all the wounded ¡­ it¡¯s not going to be a good time. She hit us right in the city center, and too many of those she killed were important to the symboulions. She went after leaders. She knew at least some of them. It was only thanks to you that it wasn¡¯t a clean sweep. There were irreplaceable men among the dead.¡± ¡°She¡¯s been with the resistance cells here,¡± said Perry. ¡°But she was attacking whoever she could before I showed up.¡± ¡°You showed up instantly,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You were there by the time she was spearing her second victim.¡± ¡°I was ready and waiting, sure,¡± said Perry. In truth, he¡¯d seen the aftermath of various attacks through prognostics, which is what he¡¯d meant. Now there was no hope of prognostics coming in, which meant that if someone did act, he wouldn¡¯t hear about it until hours later, if that. News traveled slowly in this world. Without the eye in the sky, it would be weeks before Perry heard anything about an attack on a distant outpost. There had been plenty of time and know-how necessary to create a spy satellite, but they hadn¡¯t planned on the Farfinder being blown up or taken over. ¡°What do you need from me?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Nothing,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m here to help in any way I can. I¡¯m hoping that if there¡¯s another fight, it¡¯s not here, though it would be better for my schedule if it happened soon. No word on the other guy?¡± ¡°None,¡± said Dirk. He was looking at the power armor. It was gleaming in the sunlight, in mint condition. ¡°And no word from the other island?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Nothing their queen has said? Nothing from your counterpart there?¡± ¡°Not in public,¡± said Dirk with a low voice. They were a fair way away from anyone else, and being given a wide berth, but they were drawing a lot of stares. ¡°I was trying to say it in a deniable way,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s been no word, no,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You people move too fast.¡± ¡°We¡¯re moving slow by the standards of my people,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you ever want to travel the worlds, you¡¯ll need to get faster, strike quickly, and get used to information coming in instantly, in real-time.¡± Dirk grimaced. His fingers touched his pocket, where Perry assumed his borrowed phone was. ¡°I¡¯m starting to think I might not be cut out for what''s beyond the veil of this world.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°It can get rough. And it might be a non-issue. I¡¯ll let you know when I know.¡± Dirk had questions, obviously he had questions, but he had seen the destruction that the battle had caused, and might even have been there when it happened. It was more clear now than ever that this was all beyond him, a battle between forces that his own men and resources couldn¡¯t really scratch. At least he wasn¡¯t blaming Perry for any of it, which had been a real concern. There wasn¡¯t all that much for Perry to do. He lifted some heavy beams and helped search for survivors, but for most of the things that needed to be done, he wasn¡¯t much more useful than a normal human. Given another five years, or maybe ten, he might have some proper healing to work with, but it would depend upon his second sphere powers, routing energy from the fusion reactor into useful restorative properties. It seemed possible, but it was a long way off. Would he still be doing this in five years? In ten? It was difficult to say. He hoped not. If the Farfinder had been obliterated, then his chance of ever returning to Earth 2 seemed to have gone with it. Marchand had some of their information and designs stored, but the Farfinder had technically minded crew members who could build a new engine for hopping worlds, and trying to cobble that together from scratch would be a nightmare. A necessary nightmare, maybe, but what else was there? And if the Farfinder had been destroyed, then either Fenilor had Mette Prime and Nima, or had killed them both and left. Both were possible, but if Fenilor had gone and the world hadn¡¯t imploded, then Perry was letting his own portal run its timer down. If it ran all the way down, then ¡­ he would have another thresholder to fight in another five years or so, wouldn¡¯t he? That was a grim thought. There were worse worlds to be stuck on, surely, and there was still good for him to do here, but it would represent a catastrophic personal loss, even though he¡¯d won against Third Fervor. Winning had never felt so bad. Perry watched the people go by. They were helping each other, which was something. Mr. Rogers always said that you had to look for the helpers, and here it was true, there were helpers, with temporary kitchens set up so that the people doing search and rescue could have something to eat, and no one so much as suggesting that they should be paid. It was a part of the culture that you don¡¯t get paid for pretty much anything, of course, but still, there was something fundamentally good about people helping each other, even if it didn¡¯t have the bombastic nobility of descending on an enemy with sword in hand. He was surprised by the children coming out to help, but he supposed that he shouldn¡¯t have been; so far as he knew, child labor wasn¡¯t in all that heavy use, not when compared to the Natrix, but there were still boys of ten running about, bringing materials to shut up shops, hauling blankets and pillows to places unknown, bringing bandages and carrying packs. No one was telling them to stay out of the way, but then, they didn¡¯t need to be told. This was the next generation, the ones that would grow up within the culture if it was allowed to take hold. Maybe they believed in pitching in already. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. While Perry waited for his help to be requested ¡ª some job that required speed, flight, or brute strength ¡ª he watched the people. They were coming off a revolution, and there had been violence in its wake. This, at least, was violence from without, and maybe that was helpful to them in some way, a force to react against. That was the theory, anyway. An older man, hunched and with his hood up, crossed the road, nearly getting run over by one of the small boys, who it turned out were only mostly out of the way. The shoulder-mounted gun rose from its housing and shot the old man before Perry even realized it was happening. It was the standard pattern that Marchand had decided on for guaranteed lethality, two to the chest and two to the head, but the old man fell to the ground only for a moment before getting back to his feet. He had a long sword in his hand, clear as glass, which hadn¡¯t been there a moment ago, and the cloak fell away from him. It was Fenilor. Whatever trick of the lighting or posture or prosthetics had Perry fooled had not fooled Marchand. He had been shot four times and was completely unharmed. The armor he wore looked to be simple red-stained leather, but there was no trace of damage on it. Fenilor spent half a second looking at Perry, then leapt to the side, touching one of the men who was helping to board up a house, his work interrupted at the sound of the gunshots. The man¡¯s chest exploded in a rush of blood, and Fenilor was on to the next as the panic belatedly started, a simple touch causing him to die. Perry raced forward, sword drawn, and slashed at Fenilor, who brought his glass sword up in an unhurried block. He was moving faster than he¡¯d been the last time they¡¯d fought, but that had been above the water, not the best place for Fenilor. There would be more armors and more weapons on land, those that could be used without sinking down into the waves. Perry brought his sword down with hammer blows, seeing some weakness he couldn¡¯t describe, a distractibility that shouldn¡¯t rightly have been there. The people around them had cottoned on to what was happening and were fleeing now. They had no context for what was happening, but they were at the site of a previous inexplicable battle, and ready to run. To Perry¡¯s surprise, Fenilor parried another of the hammer blows and then retreated, turning his back and sprinting away. Perry ran after. The power armor cracked cobblestones with every exaggerated step, but he wasn¡¯t in time to stop Fenilor from killing two more, these a man and woman who¡¯d been running much slower than him. The wounds erupted from their heads like they¡¯d been shot, and Perry¡¯s mind lit up with an answer: wound transference. ¡°Don¡¯t shoot,¡± Perry commanded, before second guessing himself. ¡°He can pass on the wounds to others.¡± It wouldn¡¯t have made sense for Fenilor to kill these people, they were his people, and Fenilor was no sadist, at least not that Perry had seen. But he¡¯d done it here, now, four wounds delivered by touch, two to the chest and two to the head. He¡¯d done it fast, too, which implied a time limit of some kind. Would that power work through Perry¡¯s armor? Would a wound get transferred over to him, a gunshot wound exploding his head in spite of all his defenses? Perry stood with his sword held in front of him, two-handed. The spear was in the shelf space, and he wasn¡¯t going to open that for any reason at all, given that the portal was still in there, and would be for another three-quarters of a day. ¡°I had wondered whether you would see through my disguise,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You¡¯re a powerhouse. Too many abilities, too many ways for you to drive a wedge through a crack.¡± ¡°The ship,¡± said Perry. ¡°You were there. What happened to them?¡± ¡°All dead,¡± said Fenilor, shaking his head. ¡°This will be settled here and now. But you understand it would be unsporting for you to have help to call in, don¡¯t you?¡± Perry lunged forward, lifting briefly into the air. Their swords clashed hard enough that Fenilor was briefly driven to his knees, but he slipped out from under the follow-up attack. ¡°Shoot him, March,¡± said Perry. The gun popped up and fired three shots this time, though one of them was deflected by the sword, which fractured into pieces and then reformed itself, some complicated magic that had done nothing more than eat a bullet. They were in the middle of one of the city¡¯s wider streets, wide enough for carriages and carts to get through, but the alarm was being raised elsewhere in the city, and the only people in sight were far down the way. Perry was ready to run after Fenilor, but Fenilor sprang forward, glass sword moving deftly. Perry¡¯s head was swimming with what Fenilor had said. Was it true that the Farfinder was gone? A dozen people, all dead, almost everyone in the world that Perry actually had some connection to? Mette, Perry¡¯s only remaining link back to the Natrix? Anger was racing through him, and while it lent more power to his strikes, it was also making him sloppy. It wasn¡¯t until he was overextended that he realized what Fenilor¡¯s plan was, and Fenilor reached out with long fingers to touch him. Perry backed away, arching his back, and the fingers missed him by inches. Perry¡¯s hand was clenched tightly around the grip of his sword. He¡¯d started to sweat. They fought more after that, but Perry was more wary this time. If a bullet wound could be transferred over, it was instant death, and if there was a clock ticking down, then all Perry needed to do was wait Fenilor out and stop him from transferring anything over to anyone. Would Fenilor¡¯s head simply explode after enough time had passed? There was no helmet to the armor, just Fenilor¡¯s finely flowing hair, but the shots to the face had been absorbed. Fenilor mistimed a swing, and Perry¡¯s sword came down on Fenilor¡¯s shoulder, but the blade didn¡¯t strike flesh, and it felt like whacking a club against a pillow. Perry had some faint hope that the armor wouldn¡¯t be effective against his sword, whether through magic or some property of the metal, but it did less than nothing. Perhaps Fenilor had been worried that his armor wouldn¡¯t protect him, because as soon as that strike landed, he dropped all pretense of defense, cast his glass sword to the side, and went at Perry with both hands held forward. Perry dodged to the side, using the full power of the armor and a bit of extra energy flushed through his meridians, then rose into the air with the sword, out of reach. Fenilor stood for a moment and looked up at Perry. He had a mild frown on his face. ¡°Clock is ticking,¡± said Perry. ¡°What¡¯ll it be?¡± He had hoped that Fenilor would make a run for it, which would reveal a hidden weakness, but instead Fenilor¡¯s hand went to the side, and a whole armory of armors was briefly shown in ghostly form before a silver armor with curling whorls of bright blue on it appeared on his body. ¡°The next person to wear that armor will die,¡± said Fenilor. This new armor had a helmet, and his voice was slightly muffled. ¡°Perhaps it will make a good trap at a later date.¡± He held his hand out to the side, and the ghostly arms flickered into existence for only a moment before he ended with a sickle in his hand. The curve seemed impractical, which caused a small spike of fear to go through Perry. A weapon that was odd had to have some kind of magic to it, something strong to justify using it. ¡°I worry this will come to nothing,¡± said Fenilor, who hadn¡¯t moved or made to attack. The new armor and new weapon meant that the fight had shifted to another phase. ¡°And even if I defeat you, the door won¡¯t open for me, will it?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°We weren¡¯t meant to fight each other.¡± ¡°Did a door open when you killed Third Fervor?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Far to the north.¡± ¡°Haven¡¯t you learned not to lie to me?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°A lie following a truth doesn¡¯t disguise it.¡± Perry hesitated. He could drop at any time and resume the fight. He wasn¡¯t all that far up, ten feet at the most. Hell, Fenilor could probably jump that distance. Anything that Perry said might give Fenilor more information, like saying that Fenilor would never find the portal ¡ª if that flagged as false, then it would point him in the right direction. ¡°They¡¯re really gone?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The Farfinder?¡± He was trying to keep his cool, and the wolf in him was making that difficult. The moon wasn¡¯t even out, but he could feel the anger flowing through his veins. ¡°Yes,¡± said Fenilor. Perry felt a twisting in his gut. If Fenilor was lying, he was a good liar, but the Farfinder was resilient, with extradimensional spaces that would be safe from outside attack, and there was still a chance. The thought spun in his mind, snagging on something. It was denial, plainly. He didn¡¯t want it to be true that they were all dead. ¡°It¡¯s a pity, but they put up too much of a fight. When we conclude here, I¡¯ll have wrapped up everything there was to do on this world, then go on to the next, to spread the culture.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll break time and space,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re not lying, or you don¡¯t think you are, but there¡¯s nuance,¡± said Fenilor. He cocked his head to the side. Perry hoped that was indecision, but with the armor on, it was difficult to tell. ¡°The best bet is that you drop everything you have,¡± said Perry. He was gritting his teeth. He didn¡¯t want to talk, he wanted to fight. ¡°Divest yourself of all the weapons, everything you¡¯ve taken from fallen thresholders. That might work to prevent calamity.¡± ¡°In the next world, I will have to fight,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°That¡¯s the nature of being a thresholder. You have your concerns, and I suppose you gain nothing from having me strip myself of every weapon and armor in my possession after our battle is concluded, but I think I¡¯ll take my chances.¡± ¡°With this entire world?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s one world among many,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I have perfected the culture as much as I can here, but it must be rebuilt and grow stronger in the process. If this world is to end, it would be a tragedy, but what is one world against infinitude? And I know that this world does not have the tools to span the multiverse. Some other place would make for a better start.¡± ¡°Asshole,¡± said Perry. ¡°March, fire some test shots, see what the armor is made of.¡± Two shots rang out, and the blue lines on the armor glowed, but the bullets did no damage. ¡°A shame,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You are the most traveled thresholder I¡¯ve ever met, and while I have most of your secrets, I hunger for more, if I could have them. But I suppose it¡¯s not to be.¡± Perry took that as his cue to restart the fight. He dropped down to the ground, where he¡¯d have some actual leverage, and went in with his sword. He had no idea what the sickle did, but Fenilor used its power right away. The curved blade detached from the handle with a glowing tether between the two, and with a quick swing it was behind Perry, showing on the picture-in-picture. Perry dodged to the side when it came reeling in, and Fenilor began to swing the strange weapon over his head, like a cowboy trying to rope a steer. It was easy for Perry to come in for an attack, since the swinging sickle offered no defense and Perry was willing to take a chance that it wasn¡¯t just an instant kill if it hit him. When his sword struck the armor, it left a deep gouge in the metal, which was surprising given how little damage the bullets had done, but when Perry pulled the sword away it took an enormous amount of effort, like the sword was being pulled in. Fenilor threw the sickle out again, trying to hit Perry, then trying to snag him as the weapon came back, but whatever this strategy was supposed to be, it didn¡¯t seem to be working. When Fenilor was getting the sickle spinning again, Perry went in, this time aiming for the head and moving with his full power, committing fully to a singular strike. The sword cleaved into the helmet, stopping after an inch. It stuck there, though Perry yanked at it, and Fenilor reached out with an armored hand to grip the sword, his sickle momentarily forgotten. Fenilor¡¯s hand seemed to stick to the sword, like his armor was made of taffy rather than metal, and Perry felt a surge of unfamiliar energy where he was holding the sword, tugging at something more than his grip. Perry moved forward and grabbed at Fenilor¡¯s other wrist, which was holding the sickle. They were quickly locked together, and it must have been the armor doing something, because it instantly felt to Perry like he¡¯d never be able to let go, not using the smaller servos in the armor¡¯s fingers. He committed more to the grapple though, placing his foot against Fenilor¡¯s knee, making sure that even if they were locked together he would be able to use his superior strength to break something. They tumbled to the ground, and this time Perry felt the tugging across his whole body, like Fenilor was trying to rip the armor into his inventory. He let the energy of the second sphere flow through him, cracking the Wolf Vessel for its stored power, and whatever was trying to pull him somewhere, he managed to resist it. Fenilor grunted beneath his helmet, now close enough that they could hear each other''s breathing, and Perry tried to maneuver himself better. Where their armors touched, they stuck together, maybe not as with taffy, but like big magnets were sticking them together. Perry still had his grip on his sword, which had cut into Fenilor¡¯s helmet. A trail of blood was running down it, which meant that it was more than just damage to the armor. The grapple favored Perry. He was the stronger of the two of them, at least with Fenilor wearing this armor. It was difficult to get proper leverage when they were locked together, but eventually Perry managed to spread his arms wide, pulling Fenilor¡¯s arm away from his body in the process and putting tension on Fenilor¡¯s knee with Perry¡¯s foot. The tug came again, but whatever Fenilor was trying, Perry had quickly worked up a defense against it. Would grappling stop Fenilor from changing armor? Perry hoped so. The sickle had been abandoned, dropped with Perry gripping the wrist of the hand that once held it. A new weapon appeared, this one short and brilliant, and Fenilor spun it around in his hand. It went through Perry¡¯s armor like nothing, scoring down into Perry¡¯s wrist with a quick, sharp, agonizing slice, but Fenilor couldn¡¯t maneuver his hand for more than that. The blade had turned from silver to black where it had touched the armor, and a second strike bounced off a different part of the gauntlet, suddenly ineffective. Perry yanked at Fenilor, which brought forth a cry of pain. He hadn¡¯t been sure what part of Fenilor and his armor would give first, but it was his arm, which was dislocated if not worse. It had popped from its socket all at once, and Fenilor¡¯s armor was groaning. Fenilor switched weapons again, and this one looked more like a cattle prod than anything else, but he was able to swing it around one-handed and jab Perry with it. The jolt wasn¡¯t one of electricity, but instead, searing pain, like a bee sting across his entire body, and he tried to pull away, but they were stuck together, and in the struggle, got more stuck together, removing any leverage. Fenilor changed weapons a third time, this time holding a pen knife, and vanished. The armor remained, stuck tight to Perry, much lighter now that there wasn¡¯t a person inside of it. Perry got to his feet with the pieces still on him, and tried his best to rip them off. Fenilor came in from the side, wearing a different armor, holding a different weapon. With the armor stuck to him, Perry¡¯s movements were hampered, as though he was dancing with a clumsy partner and trying to fight at the same time. Fenilor¡¯s sword was a long rapier, and he moved deftly, making sure that he wouldn¡¯t be snared by his own abandoned armor. He got a good hit in, one that went through the metal plate and into Perry¡¯s stomach, and Perry took to the air at once, trying his best to tear the stuck-on bits of armor from him as he rose. Fenilor switched weapons and followed. His motion was jerky, a sequence of falling and rising, as though he was changing the direction of movement without any way to gain speed but having gravity pull him down. Soon he had built up velocity though, and he was faster than Perry could move with the sword. Perry didn¡¯t know which of them an aerial battle favored, but with the armor stuck to him, Perry didn¡¯t like his odds. Fenilor came dropping in from above like a hawk trying to catch a fish from the river, and Perry felt a blossom of pain as the rapier scored another hit on him. It had gone straight through the armor, and there were now warnings in the corner of the HUD, systems that had been compromised in the strike. Perry finally wrenched a piece of the stuck-on armor free, and with all his might and a weak blast of moonlight, hurled it into the distance. He was working another piece free when Fenilor came in for a second time, and Perry turned, trying to put the sticky armor between himself and Fenilor. Fenilor came low this time though, and the rapier slashed across Perry¡¯s calf, slicing through muscle. Retreat was always an option. The shelf space was there. But if that was opened, even for a moment, Fenilor might get in and simply leave. Perry worked at the sticky armor on him, trying to rip more pieces of it free and send them down to the city below, while at the same time readying himself for another jousting run by Fenilor. The rapier that Fenilor was using was cutting through metal easily, but leaving relatively shallow wounds on Perry¡¯s body, though Perry didn¡¯t know how many he could endure. When one more piece of the armor was ripped free, the whole thing seemed to lose its magic, and the extra set of armor that Perry had been stuck to dropped away. Fenilor came diving in, pointing his entire body at Perry, sword held forward like the tip of a spear. ¡°Fire,¡± said Perry. The shoulder-gun rose and fired the very moment the order was from Perry¡¯s lips, as though Marchand had been primed for the command. Three shots hit Fenilor, and while they didn¡¯t penetrate, it made his aim go off. They crashed into each other and fell through the air, tumbling above the city that loomed below them. Perry reached up and grabbed Fenilor¡¯s wrist, to prevent the rapier or any other weapon from slicing through him, and they grappled again, falling this time, though Perry could have stopped it at any time with the sword, and Fenilor could presumably have done the same. They crashed down into a building with the chirp of an altitude warning the only way that Perry knew it was about to happen. Perry had managed to twist them around, and Fenilor snapped a wooden beam with his back as they went down. Perry was on his feet first and brought his sword down on Fenilor, chopping against his head, hoping to knock him unconscious even if the metal was able to hold. The metal dented, and there were other dents already from the bullets, points that had to have rattled him, but Fenilor flipped up like a man not wearing plate armor and held his rapier in front of him. He was staggered but still in fighting condition. The room they¡¯d fallen into was filled with ceramics. It was a place where bowls and plates were made, and they had already mostly ruined it by coming in through the ceiling. Perry took stock of his wounds. There were too many of them, and he was favoring his right leg. His healing was slow and energy intensive. There was always the option of a transformation, but that limited his options even if it increased his offensive power, and Fenilor had too many tricks, too deep a well of possibilities. There was a good chance that Perry was going to lose. He needed more than he had, some way to stop Fenilor from switching tactics, because one of them was going to kill him, and he had no doubt that once he was on the back foot, there were more weapons that would come out to get at his weakened defenses. Already his leg was going to be a problem, if he didn¡¯t transform to fix it. Fenilor was breathing hard. The sword was a good one, even if it didn¡¯t seem to gouge deep into flesh, only metal. The armor was useful for flying, a way to chase after someone, even if it didn¡¯t offer as much protection as the others. But Fenilor had other weapons, other armors, enough that he could hot swap for the occasion. That was what Perry was worried about, some new piece of kit he hadn¡¯t seen before, some trick that Fenilor would pull out. Fenilor placed his free hand to his chest, making a symbol there. It was only seconds before the first of the tall constructs appeared next to Perry, hulking and huge. Chapter 143 - Full Contact, pt 2 The constructs had been a brainchild of one of the northern science cities. The culture had a problem, and that problem was the use of force. Force was not part of the culture, generally speaking ¡ª it was not the way that disputes were settled, not something that was used against children, and not a part of their judicial system. It was, however, widely acknowledged that force was necessary in certain circumstances, namely in stopping violent crimes in progress or restraining people who were a danger to themselves or others. The other major need was that of defense, in the case of an invading force which managed to land an army on their shores or cross a border, in the days when they still had neighboring countries to have borders with. And of course the culture didn¡¯t want to have much in the way of a standing army, nor did it look particularly favorably on conscripting people into the fight, even if it was part of the culture that everyone should be willing to arm themselves against potential oppressors. From this ball of contradictions had risen the idea of some new path, and in Perry¡¯s opinion, the constructs were the worst of all worlds, the kind of thing that probably would have outraged the culture if they had actually understood what the constructs were and how they worked. That they didn¡¯t understand the constructs and how they worked represented a major failing of the culture, but that was tied up in their skepticism of proliferating new technologies. The constructs were stationed in every city, in bays that held hundreds of them. They could be deployed by a hand signal, usually with a threshold of a few hand signals coming from different people, and they would appear in an instant using a transport method that didn¡¯t work on people and incidentally, was powered by lanterns, releasing significant effluence. And from that point, when the constructs were deployed, they followed scripts that had been written for them, restraining those who were in violation of laws. They could be recalled by someone at a monitoring station, but weren¡¯t easily stopped. They had extremely rudimentary intelligence, which made their speed and strength all the more terrifying. The only reason there had been no major problems with the constructs was that the script they followed was conservative and contained many checks. But that, of course, meant that power over these things was in the hands of the few, which was definitely not the culture, and in seeking to eliminate a position where authority could be abused, they had created a new, much worse position of effectively anonymous authority. But it was hidden from public view, and there had been no great scandal thus far, and at any rate the constructs had to be called in by what was referred to as a ¡°quorum¡± but really was just a certain number of people making the emergency sign with their hand. The control rods were tinkered with by assigned members of a symboulion, away from view. The constructs were tall and hulking. Perry couldn¡¯t imagine seeing one of them as a protector, but he¡¯d never had too much nationalistic fervor of the sort that made people think the military was cool. The magic that fueled them was from another world, maybe multiple other worlds, and Perry could only imagine the fields of mechanized magic constructs in the world that the base technology and physics had come from. Maybe it was a place of eternal war. Or maybe the constructs were only possible because of the confluence of two or more magics. It was difficult to say; it was possible that they were only available in this one specific corner of the universe. Perry had prepared to fight them. He¡¯d been preparing since the first time he¡¯d seen one. He thought it was inevitable that one or more would be called down on him, given the public fights he seemed to keep getting in, even if most of those fights happened when he was on the side of the civilians who would be doing the calling. But once in Berus, they had seemed like a secondary concern, because Berus didn¡¯t have constructs, not when it was such a new place, not when they would have had to get them shipped in by the dozens from parts of the world that did not entirely trust Berus. The Farfinder had acquired a control rod, but they were either very far away or completely wiped out. But wherever Fenilor had stashed these constructs away, they were here, now, in the china shop with Perry. There were two of them, and Perry had little doubt there would be more. Depending on how Fenilor had gotten them into the country, there might be an entire battalion of them. He launched himself up into the air, and the constructs followed after him, lifting from the floor as though they weighed nothing. They were not, so far as Perry knew, supposed to be capable of flight, so this was something of an unfortunate surprise. They were slightly slower than him, but as he kept going up, he saw more of them, some of which were being called in as he watched, appearing in a shimmer. There were a dozen of them following after him by the time he was a hundred feet in the air, drifting in his wake, but that seemed to be the limit. Fenilor rose after them, flying up into the sky, swiftly arcing through their formation to come at Perry directly. Perry dropped and sped toward the ground, watching the constructs follow. They tracked him smoothly, and with no obvious command from Fenilor. They were an unwelcome complication, and a sign that Fenilor was trying to end this quickly. If he had a control rod, it wasn¡¯t visible on him, but they only needed to be set, not carried indefinitely. As Perry dropped down below the level of the buildings, Marchand highlighted something that was only visible when zoomed in. On the backs of the constructs was the same crust as on the tablet Perry had pulled from the hidey-hole. It was possible that it was just used to cloak them from scrying, but it was out in the open, and from past experience, simple enough to wipe away. Perry¡¯s half-formed plans changed in an instant and he went for the pack of constructs, flying beneath them to get a better look. Fenilor came bolting down with a spear this time, wickedly sharp and tipped with black glass, and Perry dodged to the side with a spin, which brought him just close enough to draw his sword across the back of one of the constructs. Then Perry let himself fall again, making distance between himself and the rest of them. He watched as the construct plummeted to the ground. ¡°Mask up,¡± said Perry. The back of the armor, where the drone was usually stored, now held two small masks. They didn¡¯t fit there perfectly, and the spring launcher couldn¡¯t jettison them up, but Perry could awkwardly grab them when the compartment unfolded, which he did as soon as it seemed like he had a spare second. The universal masks weren¡¯t strong enough, which was the main problem with them. The one that used forced perspective to make his fingers do some janky telekinesis could squish a watermelon, at least in their testing, but it needed some distance to do that, and against someone in armor, he didn¡¯t like the odds. He had wanted the power to pin someone in place at a distance, and had gotten a rough handhold that Fenilor or Third Fervor would barely notice before launching at him like a missile. For smudging up a mark on the back of a construct, it seemed like it would be more than good enough. Perry slid the mask in place, over the helmet, framing the cameras that were hidden in the front. It was attached with stretchy elastic he hoped would stay on, and there were gummy bits in place that would help it stick to his face while he was in motion. Everything that they knew about the magic said that it shouldn¡¯t have worked through Marchand¡¯s cameras. All the camera equipment aboard the Farfinder hadn''t interacted with the masks in any way. But Marchand had his own keen perceptions, and apparently counted as a perceiver. There were cameras studded all over the power armor, and as soon as the mask was in place, they turned off, making the mask go active. All perception was being funneled through the mask, translated to the viewscreen inside the helmet, perceived twice. Perry rolled in mid-air, dodging another attack by Fenilor, nearly taking a spear to his chest in the process. The mask was big and obvious on the helmet, a clear weak point given that it was strapped in place with elastic, and Perry didn¡¯t expect that it would last long. The constructs moved together, but they kept themselves pointed toward him, keeping their backs obscured. Perry kept one eye on them and the other on Fenilor. He could outpace them, given their relatively slow speed, though they were spreading out now, the work of some algorithm or a hidden command from Fenilor. When Fenilor came sweeping in again, Perry was ready for it, and knocked the thrust to the side, taking a glancing blow to his hip and nearly crashing into Fenilor like they¡¯d done before. Perry made no effort to grapple again, and instead changed his course, heading straight for the flock of constructs. He aimed squarely for the center, and they converged again, no longer spreading out. They missed each other by inches as strong metal hands reached out to grab him, and once he was through, Perry briefly had a view of their backs. He swiped a hand across them, fingers smearing the sigils, and watched as a full half of them dropped from the sky. The others turned on him, and Fenilor came in for another pass with a howl, but the fight had just gotten easier. Perry took the hit from Fenilor, this time to his leg. The tip of the spear hit flesh this time, shearing through the metal, and Perry felt warm blood wetting his leg, almost a balm against the pain. He ignored Fenilor though, and looked to the constructs, who threatened to close in on him the moment he stopped moving. Grappling to the ground with Fenilor would work, Perry was sure of that, but with the constructs in play he would be murdered before he could do too much. Perry found himself drifting eastward, further from the city center. If he was bringing down the constructs, he would have preferred that he do it away from where the civilians were. When he had some distance, he tried to pinch the constructs using the mask, but it just wasn¡¯t strong enough, not against hardened steel. Fenilor was building up speed, and Perry tried against him too, squeezing armored thumb and forefinger together around one of Fenilor¡¯s distant limbs. ¡°We could try the other mask, sir,¡± said Marchand. There was just enough distance between them and the enemy to get it on, in Perry¡¯s opinion. He slipped the one mask off and put on the other. This was the focused laser mask, so weak that under normal conditions he wouldn¡¯t have been able to burn much, with no more power than a magnifying glass you might use to burn ants. In Marchand¡¯s hands, it was much more effective though. The version that the mask wearers used narrowed their vision to a point, and generally used only a single eye to do it, perfect focus on as small a spot as the lens could handle. When Marchand used it, it was by shutting down the majority of the photoreceptors in the largest of the cameras on the armor, shutting off all input of light sensing except for a single pixel¡¯s worth. The first time they had used it in testing, Perry had felt a wave of claustrophobia. He was blinded, the screen reduced to what felt like a dead pixel, and there was something about it that was worse than any time before. There were times he¡¯d been stuck in the armor, unable to move, times when he¡¯d been blinded, but the idea of using it in combat had been slightly sickening. The solution they¡¯d come up with was that Marchand would put up an approximation of the battle, either wireframes or a low resolution model like the ones that had been used in the past. Perry had picked the wireframe view, the better to have a distinction. The view switched over, showing Marchand¡¯s best guesses of where everyone was, guesses that would rapidly get worse with every second that passed. With the mask over Marchand, it was necessary that all other cameras be shut off, and that was what gave Perry a queasy feeling, like the world was slipping away from him outside. When the view came back, Fenilor was falling limply through the sky. ¡°What happened?¡± asked Perry as he stalled his movement. The constructs were coming closer to him, and he was going to take another pass at them. With the mask, he might be able to have Marchand lance through the runes on their backs. ¡°I went for his eyes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s my hope that he¡¯s been blinded.¡± Perry looked down at Fenilor, then up at the constructs. Fenilor had righted himself and changed armors to something with a mirror finish, but he was still falling. When he hit the ground, it was with a sizeable impact that shattered the stone beneath him in a circle but left him perfectly intact. The fight had moved to above a rock-studded field, where sheep were fleeing to one corner of their pasture. Perry waited for Fenilor to take to the sky, but the elf only stood down below, looking up. ¡°We take out the constructs,¡± said Perry. ¡°We go for another pass, through the middle, and lance their backs once we¡¯re through. You can do that?¡± The question wasn¡¯t whether he could, it was whether Marchand agreed that it would work, and Perry realized that he was asking for advice from the AI only after he¡¯d spoken. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry dashed forward, as fast as the sword would allow. He wanted the spear for this, not the sword, but he wasn¡¯t going to open up the shelf unless he absolutely had to, not when the portal was waiting there. Fenilor had surely seen the shelf-space at some point, but the portal was completely inaccessible without the ring. The constructs swarmed closer as Perry approached. He was trying the same trick a second time, though a different mask, and he felt something in his guts as he closed in and juked to the left. This time he didn¡¯t make it through the thicket of metal cleanly. He felt something wrenching his arm, twisting his hand and sending him off course, but they hadn¡¯t grabbed him, and it wasn¡¯t until he felt himself start to fall that he realized one of them must have grabbed his sword. Perry screamed as he fell through the air, no longer supported by the sword¡¯s magic. The world went wireframe, flickering as Marchand lanced through the runes, and the constructs started dropping too. Pain was flaring up Perry¡¯s arm. It felt like his arm had been nearly wrenched from its socket, and his hand stung, with feeling only coming back to his fingers belatedly. He had seconds to make a choice, and at the last second, he reached out to the side and pulled the spear from the shelf space. Perry crashed into the ground anyhow, sinking up to his knee in dirt, though it hadn¡¯t been particularly wet. His bones stung, but he¡¯d managed not to break anything, and he worked his way out of the ground in time to be on his feet when the constructs landed around him. On the ground, they seemed more hulking than they¡¯d been in the sky. There were only six of them left, the others having been destroyed or disabled when they fell, but on the ground he was less capable of fighting them, and erasing the runes on their backs wouldn¡¯t be enough to kill them. They had internal components necessary for their function, Perry knew that much, but he had the spear now, and didn¡¯t think that it would be too effective against metal ¡ª nor would the masks, which were famously bad against metals in general. He tried to call the sword to him, but it didn¡¯t come. He didn¡¯t know exactly how he¡¯d lost it, but if a construct had grabbed it, it hadn¡¯t let go. Fenilor stalked toward where the constructs were crowding in on Perry. They towered over him, heavy metal moving too sinuously, and though they didn¡¯t have weapons, he knew that their hands were strong enough to grab him and their arms were strong enough to rip them apart. Perry raced forward, pushing energy into his footsteps, and using some of the spear¡¯s gathered power to hasten his stride, and slipped through a gap between the tall machines. He banged against one of them as a hand tried to grab him on his shoulder, but once he was through he was able to sprint away, and looking back, they were slower than him on the ground just like they were in the air. Fenilor came in from the side. The mirrored armor he was wearing covered his entire body, clinging to him like a second skin, with the exception of his mouth, which was exposed as a thin line. Perry¡¯s screen went wireframe, showing the line of attack that Marchand had picked, a red line aiming straight at the mouth. When it went back to the camera view, Fenilor was standing there, unharmed, mouth now sealed beneath armor. Fenilor pulled out a weapon from his vast array, a morningstar this time, which began swinging of its own accord. ¡°Test fire,¡± said Perry. The shoulder gun rose up and fired twice, then sank back down into its compartment when there was no effect. One of these times, Perry thought. Perry moved laterally, keeping his distance from Fenilor and leaving the constructs behind, though it was a temporary solution, and they were stalking across the field toward him. The sheep had moved to one corner of the large pasture, and were bleating madly. Fenilor swung the morningstar around, and on one of the swings, the head detached from the chain. If not for the highlighted alert that Marchand gave, Perry might not have noticed, but they were working in sync now, and Perry batted the head of the morningstar away. Though it had barely even given any strain to his spear arm, it bounced away, maintaining its speed and digging a furrow into the sheep-eaten grass. It reappeared at the end of the chain seconds later, and Fenilor began swinging it again. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. The constructs had moved closer, and were picking up speed, now using a strange loping run. Perry ran from them, and nearly tripped when Marchand made everything go wireframe again. ¡°The fuck?¡± asked Perry as his normal vision was restored. ¡°I believe I¡¯ve found a weak point in the constructs, sir,¡± said Marchand. It was true. One of them had fallen, and was moving helplessly on the ground, churning up mud and dirt. ¡°We can¡¯t be blind when Fenilor attacks,¡± said Perry. ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ll confine attacks to when there is an opening.¡± It wasn¡¯t the time to talk, and Fenilor was gearing up for another attack, swinging the morningstar above his head, whipping it around with a risk that every revolution might be the one that sent it flying. Perry wasn¡¯t sure what it would do if it hit his armor, but Fenilor wouldn¡¯t have chosen it if it were a featherweight weapon. It didn¡¯t look like it would be harmless. A red line began appearing on the HUD, and for a moment Perry didn¡¯t understand what it was, but he soon cottoned onto it: Marchand was attempting to predict the path of the morningstar¡¯s head, the same as they¡¯d done in the past to attempt deflecting bullets. Given that it was still in motion, swinging in a wide circle, the prediction was imprecise, but it wouldn¡¯t move at nearly the speed of a bullet, and Perry readied himself using the spear. When it came, Perry was ready, and hit it right back at Fenilor with a snap of power. His arms felt the strain of it, and he twisted his boots in the mud, but Fenilor took a hit straight to his hip, knocked back with his own projectile like some kind of Mario boss. Rather than launching another of the same attack until he¡¯d been hit three times, Fenilor switched weapons. He brought out a rifle for only long enough to test fire it at Perry, and as Perry was caught flat-footed, it struck the armor but bounced off harmlessly. The next weapon out was another sword, this one bifurcated in a way that looked impractical, almost like an oversized pair of edged metal tongs. Perry ran, mostly to flee the constructs, and when he glanced back, the world went wireframe again, resulting in another construct down. He was going to have to keep running, which was bleeding off power, though even with the fight having gone on as long as it had, he was still only down by half. There were only four working constructs now, the advantage that Fenilor had brought in whittled away. Perry was feeling good, in the zone, like he was whittling down Fenilor, allowing fewer and fewer options. So far, Fenilor wasn¡¯t reusing weapons, and that was probably because he wanted the element of surprise, but there were only so many weapons and armors in the arsenal, and eventually they would start getting reused. Maybe Fenilor saw the path of the battle too. Fenilor flew across the field with his new weapon, racing faster than he¡¯d gone before, almost a match for Perry at a dead sprint, but Perry wasn¡¯t at a dead sprint. When they were a mere ten feet apart, Fenilor leveled the odd split sword, resting it against his forearm like a sommelier offering a bottle. The tines of the sword quivered and then let forth a warping of space, and Perry felt his teeth involuntarily clench together hard enough to crack a molar. The display cut out, not to wireframe but to pure black, and Perry launched himself into the air with the spear¡¯s stored power almost on instinct, trying to flee from the weapon. When the display cut back in, Perry was a hundred feet in the air, and something felt different. ¡°He destroyed the mask, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. He looked down, where Fenilor was aiming the weapon at them again, tracking them as they went through the sky. ¡°Might be time to transform, if he¡¯s down on the ground.¡± ¡°Standing by, sir,¡± said Marchand. Whatever the sword had done, it hadn¡¯t killed Perry, and the hit had been pretty much direct to the face. Perry didn¡¯t like the idea of taking that hit again, but he needed to end the battle, and the shimmering armor that Fenilor wore hadn¡¯t been tested with the spear. Perry knew that the tip was supernaturally sharp, and if his periodic attempts to tug his sword to him weren¡¯t bearing fruit, that was the tool he was going to have to use. Perry dropped down to the ground, angling himself toward Fenilor. The split sword tracked him, and hummed with power, but it either missed or failed, and then they were fighting each other. Perry¡¯s spear pierced the ground, then was up and spinning around to catch the sword as Fenilor brought it down overhand. The shaft vibrated as it was struck, but it held, which Perry had been worried it wouldn¡¯t. When Fenilor drew back, Perry swept the spearhead across his chest, moving double time, boosting his steps from the well of energy. He was mildly surprised when the spear actually did damage, considering that the bullets didn¡¯t. Where the shimmering armor was damaged, it was like a cracked LCD screen, black and shattered. Fenilor took a single look down at his armor and swapped with a hand motion out to the side, replacing the point of weakness without another thought. The new armor was blue, just like Perry¡¯s, though larger and more ornate with a motif of curling waves across it. The sword followed soon after, the split sword gone in an eyeblink, replaced by what looked like a katana with a serrated edge. Marchand fired off the two customary shots to test whether the wavy blue armor was bulletproof, and the place where they hit expanded into a cold blue circle that closed like a rippled pond going still. They traded hits with their weapons a few times, and the serrated blade bit into Perry¡¯s spear, gouging a line in the shaft and threatening to pull it from his grip. The constructs had lifted into the air when Perry had taken the spear to the sky, then landed when he landed, and while he¡¯d whittled away at their numbers, his mask was gone and he didn¡¯t have a good way to deal with them. He was half tempted to fly up and then drop them to break on the ground, but he was worried what Fenilor would do. Still, as they came to join the fight, Perry had to move again, trying to put Fenilor between him and them, but Fenilor was trying to counter-circle, which slowed Perry down as they got in each other¡¯s way. The three constructs were moving swiftly, but also spreading out, and whether it was their programming or some form of remote control, they were trying to pen Perry in. Fenilor swished the sword back and forth, then struck it against the ground, and in complete defiance of physics, the force of that launched him forward. Perry was forced to turn and raise his spear, which gained another notch from the block, but more importantly, he was stopped in his place, allowing the constructs to get closer. If the three of them formed a circle ¡ª but there had been four, hadn¡¯t there? Marchand spotted it just as Perry did. It had taken to the sky and was now descending from above, making a spear of itself to drive into the ground at speed. Marchand gave an alert at nearly the same moment that Perry jumped away, rolling across the pasture as the construct slammed down into the earth. When he popped to his feet, the other constructs had closed in on him, with Fenilor¡¯s sword held forward and ready. Another launch across the torn up pasture would bring them face to face, and then Perry would have to defend, and the constructs would be right there, ready to grab at him and rip him apart. He would have no defense against that, nothing except the strength of his armor. Perry leapt up into the air, using the spear¡¯s power, and Fenilor launched himself up too, moving faster. They met twenty feet off the ground, with the constructs rising up around them, and Perry had to bring the spear up for another block against the serrated sword. The sword bit hard into the shaft of the spear, and Perry was pulled forward into an elbow from Fenilor, which crashed against Perry¡¯s helm. The servos locked and Perry was saved from having his neck snapped, but his head slammed against the internal padding and he saw stars for a moment. Fenilor¡¯s sword was gripping the spear, which already had too many notches in it, and with a hard yank, the spear broke in half. Perry fell to the ground, tried to roll, and scrambled back to his feet. He was still holding the pointy end of the spear, but the magic of it had failed. He tried to pull the sword to him, but it was just as unresponsive as it had been before. Fenilor had dropped too. He had a new weapon, a blade made of glass, which Perry had seen before. His armor was still the blue one with waves, and as Perry watched, the waves began to move along it. A skinny serpent slipped up from between the decorations, growing larger as its full length became clear, and once it was free, it circled once in the air. Perry let out a breath. The constructs had landed too, closer than before, and there was only one option, which was to run away, gain some distance, formulate a plan. He sprinted away, darting between two of the constructs as they lunged at him. He nearly made it, but the metal fingers of one of them grabbed him by the upper arm, hard as a vise, and Perry was yanked backward, thrown to the ground. Fenilor was on him in a moment, hacking away at the armor with the glass sword, causing warnings to flash and a small display of the suit¡¯s integrity moved parts from white to yellow, then to red. Perry kicked and twisted against the hand on his shoulder, knowing that more hands would be there in seconds, pinning him down so he could be killed. Fenilor positioned himself for the killing blow, sword straight as an arrow and aimed at Perry¡¯s throat. The grip on Perry¡¯s shoulder lifted at the last second and Perry kicked hard on the ground, pushing away. The sword scraped against him, cutting a line down the armor, and he felt it bite into his stomach for just a moment before he was off running away. Fenilor showed up in the picture-in-picture, but the constructs around him had gone dead. Ahead of Perry, Kes was standing with a gun in hand and golden rod in the other. He was breathing hard and sweating profusely. He seemed very much alive. The golden rod was a command override. It was what they used to program the constructs in the first place, usually kept securely, never touched. If Kes had one, it had been pulled from the Farfinder, which meant that they too were alive, or Kes had pulled it before bailing out, but ¡ª Fenilor had moved past the immobile constructs. He was racing toward Kes, and the thick blue serpent, which had so far done nothing, was floating behind him in the air. Perry held out a hand to Kes and let forth a beam of moonlight, then before even watching to see what would happen, let that same energy forth inside himself. Perry¡¯s transformation was faster, metal fusing with skin, two minds becoming one, and he quickly raced after Fenilor on all fours. Fenilor was still going for Kes, who was only halfway done turning into a wolf, and the serpent diverted course, flying away to meet Perry. When the serpent hit, it was with a splash of water, as though it were entirely immaterial, but soon it was in through Perry¡¯s nose and mouth, choking him and going deeper down his throat with every passing second. Perry snapped at it, which only allowed the water spirit to force itself further down, and suddenly Perry was drowning. But Perry had been in space, and he was part machine, so this didn¡¯t bother him particularly much. He redirected the flow of energy through his body, from the fusion core to his paws, no longer taking in air, filled with water that was getting into his lungs, but none the worse for it. He ran after Fenilor, who was attacking the large wolf that was Kes. The glass sword sliced through flesh easily, and the ground was soaked in blood, but a werewolf healed fast, and Kes tried to chomp at Fenilor¡¯s arms and legs. Perry barreled into Fenilor, and was grateful when his claws bit into the blue armor. Fenilor momentarily went flat on his belly, and Perry capitalized, pinning him down and biting at his helm, making sure that he couldn¡¯t slip out from under the pin, ensuring that the armor wouldn¡¯t get swapped for something else. Fenilor writhed and twisted while Perry bit down on the helm, hoping to hear the metal bend and buckle. Fenilor¡¯s hand went out to the side, and the glass sword was dropped and forgotten, but another was coming soon. Perry desperately wanted Kes to bite down on the arm, to keep anything from coming out of the arsenal, but Kes was an animal and went for the leg, biting down on metal. Fenilor was suddenly holding another what looked like a mirror in his hand, and Perry bit down harder on the helm, feeling it actually move this time, crumpling slowly. The metal fangs were achingly close to piercing the skull. The mirror lit up, and Perry felt sick to his stomach. He tried to hold on, but the helm felt like it was getting bigger in his mouth. He felt an uncomfortable pain starting inside him, and realized that the Wolf Vessel was clamping shut. It wasn¡¯t just light coming from the mirror, it was sunlight, more than he¡¯d ever experience in the natural environment, and it was forcing him to change back. It had already happened to Kes, who was laying naked on the ground, clutching his chest like he was having a heart attack. Fenilor had time to get to his feet as Perry transformed from a mechanical wolf back into a man in suit. He had time to switch out his armor, and when he did, the water that had been filling Perry¡¯s lungs disappeared, allowing a lungful of air. Fenilor was dressed in armor that looked like it had been made of ceramic shards, glazed but with jagged edges to every plate, and Marchand fired off two shots at it. This was almost perfunctory, but the bullets shattered a plate on the chest and one of the three that made up the helm. The shattered pieces held together, and a small warning showed up on Perry¡¯s HUD: that was the last of the bullets. The glass sword had been dropped and forgotten on the ground. In Fenilor¡¯s hand was a whip, long and green, more vine than anything else, and it flicked back and forth with a will of its own. ¡°I had expected more from you,¡± said Fenilor. The ceramic helm had no holes in it, and his voice was so muffled that it was difficult to hear him. Perry tried for the sword again. It was still stuck somewhere, if it hadn¡¯t been broken entirely. The spear was broken, the two pieces on the ground. The only saving grace was that the constructs had stopped their advance. If need be, Perry could probably outpace Fenilor, but not without leaving Kes behind. The gun that Kes had brought was also on the ground, and Kes ran for it, naked, only for Fenilor to crack the whip in his hand. The vines shot out and grabbed Kes by the arm, and with a sharp tug, yanked him away. The crack was from a broken bone, and Kes fell to the ground screaming, bone sticking out. Perry ran at Fenilor and was caught by the vine whip. If he had his sword, or even the spearhead, he was fairly sure he could cut straight through it, but he only had his hands. He grabbed at the vine around his wrist, and the vines grew, locking his hands together. Fenilor pulled him forward as Perry kicked at the ground, and when they were close enough together, Perry attempted a twisting motion to pull the whip away. It was fruitless, and soon Perry was close enough that Fenilor could pull out yet another weapon, this one a small pen knife with a sandstone handle. Perry strained against the vines, but there was no give, and the hydraulics and servos strained fruitlessly, even with a rush of energy from Perry¡¯s vessels. Perry had frighteningly little power following the transformation, and had reached his limits. Fenilor drove the knife down. It moved slowly, almost achingly so, but no matter how Perry twisted and turned he couldn¡¯t avoid it. He should have had more power than Fenilor, but the ceramic armor must have been doing something, helping the vine whip to pin them both in place. ¡°Stop!¡± Perry called. The knife penetrated the center of Perry¡¯s armor, going in slowly but cleanly, a steady push of metal through metal. He could feel himself freezing up, like the blood was crawling through his veins. The knife kept going, until it was piercing his flesh beneath where the reactor sat. The suit was running on battery only now, not that all his straining was doing anything. Fenilor retracted the vines. Perry was left off-balance but not falling, caught in warped time, still able to see through the screen, which meant that the cameras were still working and Marchand was still active. ¡°There,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You are stopped.¡± He looked past Perry, ceramic shards scraping against each other. ¡°You, the other one. Don¡¯t move or I¡¯ll kill you.¡± Kes flopped back to the ground. He¡¯d been crawling for the glass sword. ¡°You put up more of a fight than I had expected,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°The Farfinder,¡± said Perry. His lungs felt heavy in his chest. He was bleeding, body stopped but still able to breathe ¡°They¡¯re still alive.¡± ¡°Yes, it appears so,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°When I left they seemed in poor condition.¡± He looked around. ¡°But it doesn¡¯t appear they¡¯re going to come save you.¡± ¡°The portal,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you go through, the physics of this world ¡ª¡± ¡°Yes, yes,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°There¡¯s fear in your voice now. But you have the portal, and you will have to give it to me.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Never.¡± ¡°I know about many things, Perry,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I know about the ring on your finger. I saw the room there. Do you need me to cut it off? I will, if I must. But I was going to leave you alive, you see.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Perry, in spite of himself. ¡°It¡¯s possible you¡¯re right,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I don¡¯t believe that this world will end, but it might. This world is not important though, it¡¯s one amongst many. It is proof that the culture works.¡± He held a hand out to the side, and a ghostly row of books appeared. ¡°I have the accumulated knowledge, the teachings. It can be rebuilt.¡± ¡°Monster,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not a compelling counterpoint,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°But you asked why I¡¯m leaving you here, and it¡¯s because, unless I¡¯ve missed my mark, that¡¯s the best chance that the culture will find a different way to spread. There are experiments going on now in the northern cities, ways of crossing the many worlds. I want my people to do that, and with your help, they might. You aren¡¯t opposed to them, yet you don¡¯t want to stay here. Am I correct?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry, knowing that Fenilor would know the truth from lies. ¡°Good,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Then you get to live, to stay here, to help them breach to other worlds. I think you will, from what I know of you. And if you die with them, so be it, but if you don¡¯t, then my goals have another path toward being achieved.¡± ¡°I won¡¯t give you the ring,¡± said Perry. ¡°I won¡¯t let you through the portal.¡± ¡°Release the lock on the gauntlet, give up the ring, or I¡¯ll take it by force,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Or simply open the space to me and allow me to leave by the portal. I don¡¯t need the ring itself.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll have to cut it from my hand,¡± said Perry. He tried to transform. There simply wasn¡¯t enough power left in the vessel though. The earlier transformation had healed all the scrapes and cuts in his armor, but that came with a cost. He was tapped out. The only hope was rescue from without, and with Kes here, that seemed vanishingly unlikely. Whatever was left of the Farfinder could drop down on Fenilor, that was about all that could realistically offer salvation. Fenilor produced another weapon from his arsenal, this one long and thin, like a knife for cutting Ib¨¦rico ham. He went for Perry¡¯s immobile hand, and after a long moment of pressure, the knife cut off two of Perry¡¯s fingers. Perry cried out. It felt blindingly hot and at the same time cold, metal and flesh separating, and blood pouring from the twin stumps as Fenilor picked the fingers up off the ground. It took him some time to remove the finger from the armored gloves, especially with the ceramic gloves that he himself was wearing, and then more time to twist the ring off the finger, which seemed to resist resizing for him. Eventually he had it though, and with a small motion, he had opened the shelf space. The laser sitting inside fired immediately, but it did nothing against the ceramic, and Fenilor stepped forward casually to knock it down. Perry wished that he¡¯d been able to prepare a bomb of some kind, but he just hadn¡¯t thought of it, and hadn¡¯t known the portal would be there until losing contact with the Farfinder. Fenilor stood inside, peering at the portal. ¡°Wait,¡± said Perry. ¡°Get rid of your weapons. Everything in your inventory. Those things, they¡¯ll be pulled with you, their properties will imprint on the world, and they¡¯ll make the enemy stronger. They¡¯ll ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Fenilor. He turned back to Perry. ¡°I hope that this world persists in my wake, but there is work to be done, greater work than has been done here.¡± He took the ring off his finger and tossed it toward the opening. It fell onto the grass, just a step away. He turned back to the portal, steeled himself, then stepped through it. The world failed to end. Perry stared at the portal, which still hung there. The knife was still stuck in him, keeping him motionless. After ten full seconds had passed, Kes got to his feet and came over. He was a mess of adrenaline, shaky and sweating, arm still badly broken and hanging awkwardly to the side. He winced with every movement. He grabbed the ring from the ground, and the shelf snapped shut, then once he¡¯d awkwardly slipped it on, he gripped the pen knife with his good hand and pulled hard at it. It took time and strength, but finally he tumbled back onto his ass, gasping in pain, knife in hand. Perry rotated his arms. ¡°It¡¯s over,¡± said Kes. ¡°We lost.¡± He looked pallid. He was still losing blood, which dripped down his forearm to the ends of his limp fingers. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a gap.¡± ¡°A gap?¡± asked Kes. Perry nodded. ¡°Between when you leave and when you arrive. Fenilor isn¡¯t in another world. He¡¯s on his way. We have ¡­ a week? A month? Some amount of time to figure out a solution, or to get out of here and leave these people to their fate.¡± Kes nodded. He looked down at his arm. ¡°I might need to go see a doctor.¡± Chapter 144 - Stopgap The Farfinder hadn¡¯t quite crash landed. It was laying next to a pond with its nose blown off, looking like a giant metal animal that was resting after a fight. From the outside, it was actually rather small, wider than a semi but only about as long. Most of its current interior was extradimensional space, which it didn¡¯t have on all worlds. Perry had seen it from the outside a few times, and it always looked dinky. With the bridge a mess, it looked even worse, more like a monstrously oversized mobile home than a starship. The ship had attracted a small crowd, but it had landed in the wake of three separate attacks on Calamus, and whatever was going on in the city was taking precedence. They seemed to have decided that the Farfinder wasn¡¯t a threat to anyone. Still, two dozen people standing around didn¡¯t fill Perry with happiness. They were on a deadline now, or several deadlines, and if the civilians got in the way, that was a higher chance that it would all go wrong. Kes still had his arm broken, though Perry had done some basic first aid to slow the bleeding. Kes was a werewolf, which would help, and under the light of a full moon, or with a blast of moonlight from Perry, he would be fine. Perry was trying his best to heal up the damage to the fusion reactor, which in theory was only a matter of letting energy flow out, but without the reactor, energy was in short supply. Fenilor had left behind weapons, not seeming to care about them, which was good, because in theory each weapon was one less bit of magic that would be threaded from this world to the next. The pen knife that had kept Perry immobile was kept in one of the armor¡¯s small storage compartments, and Perry was holding the glass sword, which had been cast to the side in a scuffle and never retrieved. The spear that Perry had stolen was broken, but there was a chance that it might be mended. Halfway to the ship, Perry had been able to call his sword back to him, for unclear reasons ¡ª either it had finally worked free from whatever was pinning it in place, or someone had unwittingly done Perry a favor. Perry was still reeling from the lost fight. It was a proper loss, the worst he¡¯d ever faced, and if Fenilor had been worried in the slightest that Perry would upset the quasi-utopia, then Perry would have surely died. Having someone make the choice not to kill him was humiliating. Hella came out of the marred ship to meet them. She was in her battle outfit, a spandex number that showed off the entirety of her legs, with see-through mesh going up the sides of her body. It was much more revealing than he had expected, but it wasn¡¯t his first time seeing it. He didn¡¯t know whether it was something that her government had mandated for her when she was a superhero or something she¡¯d picked up along the way per her own preferences. ¡°Marchand has briefed everyone,¡± said Hella as they came near. ¡°You can handle these people if they get rowdy or try to move us?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry, though what he wanted was to take the armor off and lay down. ¡°We¡¯re still trying to reach Dirk, this is the sort of thing he should handle. And I want to be in the loop on what we know and what we¡¯re planning.¡± Hella nodded. ¡°If Third Fervor is dead and Fenilor is gone, there¡¯s nothing much for the rest of us ¡ª the non-engineers, non-scientists ¡ª to do. Mette is clearly better at project management than I am. I¡¯ll try to keep on top of it, just so I can make whatever calls I need to, but it¡¯s a technical problem now.¡± Perry nodded. He took off his helmet and held it by his side. There was a smell of blood and sweat inside the helmet, which hadn¡¯t been entirely wicked away yet. ¡°There¡¯s still a chance that someone has left behind some landmines.¡± ¡°You be on the lookout for them then,¡± said Hella. She let out a breath. ¡°Sorry, I don¡¯t mean to be snippy, just ¡ª we¡¯re wounded here.¡± She looked at the ship that she¡¯d been making her home for years, and a grimace settled on her face. ¡°I¡¯m going in,¡± said Kes. ¡°Medical.¡± Hella did a double take when she looked at his arm. ¡°Go, now, there¡¯s an Eggy with medical training. But can¡¯t you heal on your own?¡± ¡°No energy for it,¡± said Kes with a wince. He was doing far, far better than he should have been, which Perry credited to the werewolf blood. ¡°I¡¯m drained,¡± said Perry. ¡°If we can get up to the moon ¡­ ?¡± Moonlight would give him energy, and a transformation would repair the fusion core. ¡°Eggy says half an hour to get us back up,¡± said Hella. ¡°We came down harder than we planned. When the bridge blew there was damage to the entire ship, and it seems we didn¡¯t catch all of it.¡± Kes moved past her, climbing up the lip of the ruined bridge and going inside. ¡°I should be a part of the conversation,¡± said Perry. ¡°Whatever we decide to do.¡± ¡°I agree,¡± said Hella. ¡°But the options right now are limited, unless we want to abandon this world. And even if we did want to abandon this world, it¡¯s not clear that we would be able to. There aren¡¯t any punches out.¡± ¡°Fenilor¡¯s hasn¡¯t shown up?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Hella. ¡°But there¡¯s something we¡¯ve seen from it. The new method, the one we got from Moss, lets us see a bulge in the world, a place where something is happening in higher dimensions. We don¡¯t know whether the thresholder algorithm is working on something, whether it¡¯s holding him in place while it waits for the stars to align, or if the punch is imminent.¡± ¡°The portal is hanging around,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can send people through now, if the Farfinder can¡¯t make the trip. Better than dying here.¡± Hella shook her head. ¡°Becoming a thresholder? That¡¯s not what we¡¯re here for, especially not because from what we know, we¡¯d all get split up. Eggy is the only one with the knowledge necessary to make a new engine to travel through the punches, and even then, it would take a world with heavy infrastructure and good enough technology.¡± ¡°Someone else then,¡± said Perry. ¡°Send through volunteers, hope that their punch goes through before Fenilor¡¯s.¡± ¡°That¡¯s ¡­ not a terrible idea,¡± said Hella. ¡°Where are you getting those volunteers from though?¡± ¡°Dirk,¡± said Perry. ¡°He could have twenty men lined up in half an hour, if we got ahold of him.¡± ¡°Men?¡± asked Hella with a raised eyebrow. ¡°You know what I mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°But yes, probably men, because they¡¯d be from Berus, and they haven¡¯t shed the last vestiges of gender roles.¡± Hella frowned, but she was the one who¡¯d started that petty shit. Perry found himself annoyed with her, and she seemed annoyed with him, though maybe it was just that he¡¯d lost his match. ¡°Worth trying, I suppose.¡± ¡°Has it happened before, in your travels? Lots of punches out, showing mass travel through the portal?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Twice,¡± said Hella. ¡°They go to different places. It doesn¡¯t seem to affect stability, not that we have all that good of methods to study that, not that our models are on firm ground.¡± ¡°As soon as communications are up, I¡¯ll contact Dirk, he should have his phone on him,¡± said Perry. ¡°That will give us the best chance of getting the Farfinder out.¡± ¡°Perry, we¡¯re staying,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re staying unless it¡¯s absolutely clear that doing so is pointless. If there¡¯s a chance we can help these people, that¡¯s what we¡¯re doing, even if there¡¯s risk to our lives. If you¡¯re not willing ¡ª¡± ¡°I am,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re right. I¡¯m just not sure that I have anything to offer here. You said as much. My expertise is fighting.¡± She kindly did not say anything about the fight he¡¯d just lost. ~~~~ Once they got in touch, Dirk gathered up people. They weren¡¯t the ones that Perry would have chosen: he had been imagining a collection of sharp-jawed young men, brawny and ready to scrap, but what Dirk assembled at the edge of town were the sickliest people that Perry had seen, some of them missing limbs and others looking like they were on death¡¯s door. ¡°You said that the portals healed people,¡± said Dirk. They had talked over the phone, which was a novel experience for Dirk. He must have been holding the phone too far away from his face, because the audio was poor until Marchand fixed it. ¡°Better to send the sick, people we can¡¯t help here.¡± ¡°I never said they healed people,¡± said Perry. ¡°I said ¡­ there¡¯s some match-making, I guess, some balancing of thresholders. So if you go through and you¡¯re dying then ¡­ yeah, sure, you¡¯re probably going to end up in a world with something to heal you, because otherwise the fight won¡¯t be fair. But that¡¯s different from saying the portal heals. It doesn¡¯t. It doesn¡¯t fix.¡± ¡°It might send these people to a world where they can instantly and effortlessly be better,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Where they have a chance of spreading the culture.¡± Perry considered this. ¡°Yes, technically.¡± ¡°And if I was sending the most able-bodied people we have, the ones we can ask for the most labor from, then that would weaken us here,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You need volunteers? These are people who have wanted their whole lives to be useful. They wanted to fight for independence and weren¡¯t able to do everything that others could. Are you going to deny them their chance?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He felt awkward about it though. He wanted to say that it was one of the conceits of the culture that a person was not to be measured by their productivity, and this was essentially true, but it was also a part of the culture that people should want to pitch in as much as they could. They should put in as much time and labor as they could. It was part of the culture that social censure should be used on those that shirked work, and it was perhaps inevitable that someone who couldn¡¯t work would have people give them the side eye. This was especially true in Berus, where the revolution was in its infancy and experiencing all the growing pains that Perry would have expected. Still, as Perry looked out on the small crowd, he couldn¡¯t help but see the infirm and disabled, and couldn¡¯t stop himself from thinking that they were being culled, even if the portal really did seem to offer a chance for them to be healed, or made whole. And who was Perry to tell someone with an arm missing that they should feel any different about it? ¡°Many of them were made this way by effluence,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Blinded by it, deafened by it, with pieces of them warped or twisted, torn apart. You wake up and your arm has been replaced with a chicken wing. Your whole leg gets shot through with wood when a chair explodes. And these are the lucky ones, the ones that lived through it. I saw a woman who¡¯d been found with flowers in her veins.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can see why it¡¯s worth fighting against. I always could.¡± ¡°The people here, they remember it, because for them, it was how it was months ago, how it still is because we haven¡¯t been able to shut everything off and the effluence takes time to fade.¡± ¡°And your hope is that they continue the fight elsewhere?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I do,¡± said Dirk. ¡°If there are fights happening out there, better that they¡¯re fights where our people are a part of it. This? Here? People who came out of a portal, whose interests are only, at best, aligned with ours?¡± He shook his head. ¡°No. Better that it¡¯s our people.¡± ¡°Then they should go through now,¡± said Perry. ¡°No sense in waiting.¡± It took time to line everyone up, but once they were lined up, it was just a matter of them filing through while Perry held the shelf space open for them. Dirk stood by, watching them all go, some of them hobbling. This took some time. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Perry wished that there had been time to vet them, to make sure they weren¡¯t coerced, but time was of the essence. It wasn¡¯t even clear that this would do anything, whether the competing punches actually could make it to another universe before Fenilor did. ¡°You lost,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Won one fight, lost the other. The one I lost was the big one.¡± ¡°And the danger isn¡¯t passed,¡± said Dirk, eyeing him. ¡°Is it?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Potentially ¡­ we might be looking at something very bad. We¡¯ll do everything we can, try to minimize the potential for damage, but we¡¯ve been working on the problem for a few hours, and it¡¯s not clear that we have more than a few days. It might be intractable.¡± ¡°I can offer you anything we have,¡± said Dirk. ¡°More people, cloning machines, materials, scientists. Whatever it takes to make sure that whatever you think is going to happen doesn¡¯t happen.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll send that up the chain of command.¡± The volunteers were sent with nothing, which seemed like a death sentence to Perry, but if they were premising this on the portal providing the bare necessities, then who knew, maybe it would mean that they would land somewhere that fed, clothed, and sheltered them. Paradoxically, the better you were prepared, the worse conditions you were expected to face, at least from everything they knew about how the portals worked. And of course, they didn¡¯t know everything. Magicians called it the Grand Spell, it was a law of the multiverse that kept being rediscovered, and not just when thresholders turned up somewhere kicking up dust in their brawl, but the mechanism and purpose were still opaque. Hella seemed to think that it was some kind of neural net thing, intelligence gathering, training up some dataset, and there was something about that which sounded compelling to Perry, like he was fighting for a reason, not for amusement but to tease apart the margins of some prediction machine¡¯s output ¡ª but of course he didn¡¯t know for certain. Eventually, the last of the old and crippled citizens moved through the portal. They vanished, obviously, and they wouldn¡¯t be seen or heard from again, not unless the Farfinder punched through to go find them. They would be out there fighting, as absurd as it sounded, and Perry hoped that regeneration and rejuvenation helped them. But there was a boy who remained, and he stepped up to Perry once the last of them were through. ¡°I want to go,¡± he said. He was sixteen, maybe. Perry was always bad at guessing ages. A few years ago, when he¡¯d been a grad student, he had that strange feeling of adulthood, thinking that the teenagers were much younger than he¡¯d been when he was a teenager. After his time aboard the Natrix, his idea of what children were capable of had changed: it wasn¡¯t uncommon for him to see ten-year-olds working as mechanics, technicians, or assistants. ¡°I want to go,¡± the boy said again, pointing at the portal. ¡°That leads to another world? A place where they¡¯re still fighting?¡± ¡°It does,¡± said Dirk with a nod. He didn¡¯t glance at Perry for confirmation, though this was almost entirely on Perry¡¯s say-so, a leap of faith. ¡°Then that¡¯s where I want to be,¡± he said. ¡°The fight is finished here. It¡¯s over. There¡¯s only Thirlwell left, and it¡¯s going to fall, it can¡¯t stand against us. Everything people are saying, that this was the final big fight, that they lost their champion, that we have moles deep inside their security service, that there¡¯s only desperation left ¡­ I want to be useful. I want to carry on the work.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Dirk. ¡°The work isn¡¯t only fighting. The fight is important. Militance is essential. But not everything is a fight. Not everything is finding an enemy to destroy and subvert. Most of the culture? It¡¯s helping other people, putting in work without the expectation that you¡¯ll be paid back one day, putting in the work because it¡¯s the right thing to do, because you¡¯re young, healthy, driven, and because the culture can¡¯t work without you. The other worlds do need us. I¡¯ve had more time to think about this than you have, but yes, they do need us, there are millions of people living under the thumbs of a thousand kings. But this world needs us too. It needs you.¡± ¡°And the fight¡¯s not over,¡± said Perry. ¡°The city lies in ruins. There¡¯s a need, right at this very moment, for someone to clean up, for people to help sort out food, get people places to stay, to rebuild. There¡¯s work to be done.¡± ¡°We¡¯re at the end,¡± said the boy. He was scrawny, in that teenaged way, like his body had grown too fast and not paid enough attention to putting meat on his bones. ¡°You said this was the only chance.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Probably not. We¡¯re going to find a way to travel worlds. We¡¯re still in the planning stages right now, but the culture will find other places to spread, other ways to spread, and if you want to dig in and fight the fight, then there will be places to do that.¡± The boy looked at the portal with no small amount of longing. He held his body tight, like he was ready to throw a fist at one of them, even though Perry was in his armor. He kept glancing at the portal, which was through the shelf space. Perry hadn¡¯t closed it yet, and could at any moment, but he was willing to hear the kid out. ¡°Do you know who I am?¡± asked Dirk. The boy nodded. ¡°You¡¯re someone important, from the mainland.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± nodded Dirk. ¡°And I¡¯ve been fighting the fight for ages, decades, since I was your age. And you have to believe me when I say that the real fight is inglorious. It¡¯s not what he does, battling giants across the city, fighting with a gleaming sword and bulky armor. It¡¯s sifting through reports, it¡¯s helping with the labor, and sometimes it¡¯s sitting at a meeting and arguing with some people who think they know better than you. Sometimes it¡¯s sitting in those meetings and admitting they¡¯re right.¡± ¡°I¡¯m still going through,¡± said the boy, as though daring them to stop him. ¡°I¡¯ll leave it to my armored friend to decide,¡± said Dirk with a sigh. He looked to Perry. ¡°Go,¡± said Perry with a nod. ¡°Fight the fight. Kill the people who stand against you and your vision of the future. Rebuild the culture on distant shores.¡± The boy rushed through. He had nothing but the clothes on his back, just like Perry when he¡¯d gone through the portal, though Perry had also had a cell phone in his pocket, for all the good it had done him. ¡°Do you believe that?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°About fighting the fight?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ yes. But I said it mostly because it was what he wanted to do anyway.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Better for him to go out with that in his head. I don¡¯t think a militant will do well. Compromise seems like a better weapon. But I suppose it ultimately doesn¡¯t matter, if the Grand Spell is matching people up.¡± ¡°You lost,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Did you think about that as those people went through?¡± There was a slight edge to his voice. ¡°I did,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe a quarter of them will die.¡± He tried to think about the numbers, but it was difficult to say. ¡°Less, in their first world, maybe. Fewer killers early on. More defeats that just see them sent through to another portal.¡± Dirk let out a breath. ¡°It would have been nice to give them a proper briefing, but I¡¯ve never had a proper briefing, no understanding of what the worlds out there are like, no knowledge of what a thresholder actually is. Today ¡­ there are hundreds dead. It¡¯s grim in the city.¡± He looked at Perry. ¡°And you lost the fight.¡± ¡°I did,¡± said Perry. He winced. ¡°It¡¯s my first actual loss. Second, if I count the one against Cosme, but he underestimated me, tried to steal from me, died because of it ¡ª or lived, I guess. Hard to say.¡± ¡°Easy to claim you like fights when you win a lot,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Easy to say that you love it when your fist is dripping with the blood of your enemies. But even against Third Fervor, though I didn¡¯t see all of it, it was ¡­¡± ¡°A bloodbath,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was supposed to be there to stop her, and I didn¡¯t really do that, even if she died in the end. I know.¡± ¡°But you¡¯re aching to go through that portal, aren¡¯t you?¡± asked Dirk. Perry looked at it. It was sitting there, waiting for him, his prize for winning the fight. ¡°How could you tell?¡± ¡°Because you¡¯ve been holding it open even though no one is waiting to go through,¡± said Dirk. ¡°This whole world might be done for,¡± said Perry as his eyes went to the portal again. ¡°It¡¯s logical to jump through now, while I have a chance. But I won¡¯t do that, not if there¡¯s a possibility that I can help.¡± It made his stomach flip though. Time was running out. Soon there would be no escape through the portal, because the portal would be gone. After that, second guesses would be worth nothing. ¡°I¡¯ve thought about it too,¡± said Dirk. ¡°If you hadn¡¯t stolen the cloning machine, I would make another and send him through, so at least some scrap of me can survive. Unless you¡¯re going to give it back?¡± ¡°Fenilor broke it,¡± said Perry. ¡°He made sure of that.¡± He let out a breath. ¡°Sorry.¡± Dirk swore. ¡°Well then dump the pieces out, and we¡¯ll have Moss take a crack at putting it back together again.¡± ¡°There are more urgent matters,¡± said Perry. He let the shelfspace snap shut, hiding the portal. ¡°All the engineering effort needs to be on Fenilor.¡± ¡°And that¡¯s a fight you¡¯re leaving to others?¡± asked Dirk. Perry turned to him. ¡°I¡¯m not an engineer. I¡¯m not a scientist. My ideas are going to be less than worthless, they¡¯re going to suck time away from the people that are actually suited to this problem. I don¡¯t know where along the way I became a warrior, but that¡¯s what I am, and if they need me to hit someone very hard with my sword, then that¡¯s where it¡¯ll be my time to shine.¡± ¡°You let me know what mountains I need to move,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Use the thing.¡± He pulled the smartphone from his pocket and waggled it in front of Perry. ¡°I¡¯m off to the city, to see what I can do there, but I¡¯ll need your ability to move across oceans in a heartbeat if you want me to mobilize.¡± Perry nodded, and stepped up into the ship as Dirk went on his way. The bulk of the crew were in the ¡°break room¡±, deep in an argument that slowed as soon as he made his presence known. There he was, Perry the loser, the reason that they were all going to have to go through this. He had failed to stop Fenilor, which was his only job, and now he had to hope that engineering or scientific prowess would find a way out. If it couldn¡¯t, then he would have to hope that the ship¡¯s drive could be repaired in time, and that he could hitch a ride to the next world ¡ª but of course he wouldn¡¯t be a thresholder there, and he wouldn¡¯t take his powers with him, which would reduce him to what, a normal man? Marchand would stop working too, with both second sphere and the reactor rendered non-functional. Hella came over to him as the arguments continued, more subdued. ¡°We¡¯re about to lift off,¡± said Hella. ¡°Eggy got the engines running again, we can retreat to somewhere a little less exposed.¡± She still hadn¡¯t changed out of her battle outfit, the spandex number, and it did look a little ridiculous in comparison to the clothes everyone else was wearing. Next to Perry in his power armor was where she probably looked most normal. ¡°What¡¯s the news?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We have a way out,¡± said Hella. ¡°We can see the energy spikes where you let people through, punches going outward to new worlds. And two of them have already landed, giving us a straight shot somewhere else if the drive is working.¡± Perry betrayed no emotion, but he felt immense relief. He was staying until the end, but if there was a release valve, some way out ¡­ ¡°The two that landed are in the same world, incidentally,¡± said Hella. ¡°Either it¡¯s a teamup, or they¡¯re matched against each other, it¡¯s impossible to say with the current instrumentation.¡± ¡°What about Fenilor?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Has the new data changed the math?¡± ¡°They¡¯re zeroing in,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re currently looking at a lower-bound release of energy that would destroy everything in a hundred mile radius.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a lot less than a light-year,¡± said Perry. ¡°It is,¡± said Hella. ¡°Lower bound, mind you.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a survivable amount less, for this planet,¡± said Perry. More tension felt like it was releasing from him. They had been talking about the wholesale destruction of this entire world, and now, if it was just a hundred miles, two hundred miles, that was ¡­ well, millions dead, but not the whole world. ¡°Except that it would kick up dirt and dust, which would block the sun for as much as years,¡± said Hella. ¡°And these people currently get most of their power from sunlight, which would mean that they would have to switch over to effluence again. It would be a very, very high death toll.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°And here¡¯s me being hopeful about it.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll do what we can,¡± said Hella. ¡°But the speed of the new thresholders that are already in a new world, it¡¯s making me reconsider how much time we actually have.¡± She sucked on her teeth for a moment. ¡°There are too many unknowns hanging in the air.¡± ¡°Agreed,¡± said Perry. He looked over at the argument in progress. ¡°Dirk said that we can have anything we need. I think as soon as we get the doors working again, we bring in Moss.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not going to be opening doors anytime soon,¡± said Hella. ¡°There was a piece of hardware that was broken when I blew out the ship. Mette thinks that she might be able to replace it, given a month, but that¡¯s time we don¡¯t have. We can get the ship in the sky soon, I hope, and then fly over to Moss, but I¡¯m also not sure how much help he¡¯s going to be. Adding in more engineers doesn¡¯t necessarily make the work go faster. At a certain point, there¡¯s too much overhead getting people up to speed.¡± ¡°But we¡¯re not at that point,¡± said Perry. ¡°And if we can get a new cloning machine, or get the old one up and running, then we can parallelize, have instances of people dedicated to bringing others into the loop.¡± He shifted his weight. ¡°What are you thinking the odds are that they handle this?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, Perry,¡± said Hella. ¡°The loss ¡­ it happened. And now we¡¯re in the unfortunate position of waiting to see what happens next, without much control over any of it.¡± She looked at the assembled engineers. ¡°I would prefer to get my hands dirty, to work myself to the bone, but I¡¯m useless here, and that makes it harder, because all I can do is sit and watch, hoping for the best, guiding where it¡¯s needed. And what remains is for me to work them to the bone, which I¡¯ll do, if I have to, if they¡¯re not doing it themselves.¡± ¡°And we sit on the sidelines?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s that?¡± ¡°It unfortunately appears that way,¡± said Hella. ¡°As soon as Mette has a use for you, you¡¯ll be doing whatever she asks of you.¡± Perry let out a breath. ¡°And what¡¯s the timetable? Days? Weeks?¡± Hella gave a tense shrug. ¡°We don¡¯t know, Perry. It might all be over in a heartbeat, once Fenilor finds his match. But even across the multiverse, thresholders are rare, and we can¡¯t rule out that exceptions like Fenilor take longer.¡± ¡°The portal is going to close,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then we¡¯ll be betting everything on the engineers. We¡¯ll be helpless, you and me.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve felt helpless for a very long time, moving in the wake of thresholders,¡± said Hella. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to look at Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I don¡¯t want to put this on you. You¡¯ve tried your best.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°I¡¯m sorry I failed.¡± He waited for her to say that it wasn¡¯t his fault, but maybe she didn¡¯t even realize that she was supposed to. Her eyes had gone back to the engineers, watching them talking with each other. They were gathered around a single screen that was projecting a three-dimensional graph, which Perry couldn¡¯t make any sense of. He hoped it was a good sign that they had figured something out, but they didn¡¯t call him or Hella over, and so they were left standing there together like pieces of furniture. It wasn¡¯t until another three hours later that they had anything like news. ¡°We can stop him,¡± said Mette. ¡°But it¡¯s not going to be easy.¡± Chapter 145 - Stress Fracture Mette was hating life. The problem with being in a crisis was sometimes a crisis could drag on for hours, for weeks even. There had been a time on the Natrix when one of the fusion cores had needed an emergency fix, because it was making the entire Natrix move at about half the speed it was supposed to move at. Half speed wouldn¡¯t have been that much of a problem, since the Natrix was fast enough to outrun the sun a few times over, but the extra cycles of travel meant that the farms would be active for less time, and that would have a downstream impact on everything that depended on the farms. They didn¡¯t run lean enough that it would be a problem for at least two cycles, but of course there were other concerns, like how this first problem could make any other problem life-threatening for the entire colony. A crisis had been declared, and Mette was one of the critical members responsible for resolving it. The first cycle of that crisis had been fine, more or less, but with every cycle after that, Mette found herself less and less functional. She would eat at her desk, not get enough sleep, and skipped on basic hygiene. You couldn¡¯t stop to take care of yourself when the lives of the entire colony were on the line. You burned through reserves, then burned past reserves. You abandoned everything but the mission. And yes, there was some acknowledgement that you couldn¡¯t give up on sleep entirely, couldn¡¯t get by treating your body like a battery that could be drained down to nothing, but how could you sleep when lives were on the line? She¡¯d run herself ragged. It had lasted two weeks. By the end of it she was doing work more by instinct than actual cognition, which was a terrible way to get any work done. The cycles had blended together, and there were only brief naps stringing together arduous work. She¡¯d been in a perpetual state of nausea the last few cycles, and would break out into a sweat at no provocation, along with getting the runs, but she had done it in the end, the problem had been fixed and there was only a hitch in the schedule, not the spiral into problems that they¡¯d been worried about. And after it was declared finished, she had still had all the regular work to do, all the things that had been piling up in the background that whole time. She had laughed about it and said ¡°I¡¯m going to sleep for a week now¡±, but the health issues felt like they lasted a whole year. She¡¯d had more problems sleeping, the unrest echoing through her, and her stomach had taken a long time to get right again. She¡¯d pushed herself past limits she wouldn¡¯t have asked other people to push past ¡­ unless it was an emergency, unless lives were on the line. Every crisis after that one had felt the same, like she was burning a piece of herself to keep going. Something had changed in her brain, and now there was a block there, one that she had to push against with all her weight. Every crisis felt like it carried the burden of every crisis before it. In her time with Perry after coming through the portal, she hadn¡¯t experienced it. She had suffered and fought, but hadn''t actually had anything that weighed down on her for appreciable periods of time, hadn¡¯t had people¡¯s lives depending on her, hadn¡¯t had a project with a firm, inflexible deadline. And now here it was, the end of the world, or at least a portion of it, the end of all their lives, and it was down to Mette and the other Mettes to grind themselves down trying to understand and solve it. The Eggys were there too, but they were vastly inferior in spite of being (ostensibly) the ship¡¯s scientist. And worse, they were chipper. Someone had decided to pair together the Mettes and the Eggys, on the theory that the different viewpoints on each subproblem would allow them to synergize. Mette couldn¡¯t recall who had made that suggestion, but she hoped that it wasn¡¯t one of the Mettes. The Eggy she was saddled with was the third one, who was going by the name Belle, or sometimes Belly. ¡°I just think it¡¯s such a wonderful opportunity,¡± said Belle during a mandated break. ¡°To be not just a clone, but a clone who can see other clones? Think about how much we¡¯ll learn about ourselves, how much it lets us know ourselves, and it seems likely that the clones will diverge from each other, and of course that will also be fascinating.¡± She spun around in her chair, almost spilling the bowl of noodle soup she had in her lap, then resumed eating. ¡°I didn¡¯t come on this ship for new adventures, but there are just so many new adventures, and the only shame about this world is that we¡¯re not nearly going to have the time we need to explore every facet of it, or of the power we have with all these systems running side by side.¡± ¡°Another downside is that we might die,¡± said Mette. ¡°Eh, we¡¯ll make it through or we won¡¯t,¡± said Belle. She smiled. ¡°We put in maximum effort, then either that¡¯s it or we keep going. That¡¯s kind of nice, right? No nuance.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not thinking about getting out?¡± asked Mette. By their best estimations, the portal was going to close within the hour. They had a video camera up and looking at it, and she knew Perry was pacing nervously, waiting for it to close. Hella had made an open offer for people to go through, but there hadn¡¯t been any takers ¡ª if Mette or Eggy were up for it, it was likely that all the clones would have gone through. But Mette and Eggy hadn¡¯t actually talked about why they¡¯d stayed on. ¡°If we have a month, it¡¯s very likely that one of the other teams will figure out an exit strategy,¡± said Belle. ¡°And I¡¯m reasonably confident that we can get the punch drive working again. Once that¡¯s fixed, we have an out, one that won¡¯t maroon us and turn us into thresholders ¡­ no offense.¡± Mette was the original Mette, Mette Prime, which only made a difference in that she was the one who¡¯d become a werewolf. The others would too, in time, and in fact had already procured teeth just in case, but the transformation wasn¡¯t the most gentle thing in the world. The werewolf thing made her bulkier and more hairy than them, a change that had mostly come on in the course of time, after the clones had been created. She was ¡°hairy Mette¡±, which wasn¡¯t entirely complimentary, but Mette¡¯s physical appearance had never been something she prided herself on. Her mind was sharp, maybe not as much as Brigitta¡¯s, and not in the same way, but she was good at thinking, plotting, and planning. Unfortunately, that had been impacted too. She was more impulsive since the change, quicker to anger. Perry had his magic powers to compensate for that, along with time spent practicing and adjusting, but Mette had nothing. He claimed the effect was minor, if it existed at all, but to her it felt stark, and of course he then started talking about something called the placebo effect, which was new to her. ¡°Would Hella move the ship?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Would she abandon these people, if our counter ran down?¡± ¡°If it didn¡¯t seem like it would help,¡± said Belle. She saw Mette¡¯s look and shrugged. ¡°She¡¯s a pragmatist. We¡¯re in a bad spot though. We¡¯re close on the wake of the thresholders, which isn¡¯t a good place to be, and ¡­ it¡¯s just me and the other mes, and Hella, and you and the yous, and that¡¯s not really enough for a full crew. We could recruit from the locals, but Hella¡¯s not a fan of that.¡± ¡°You¡¯re cavalier about the losses,¡± said Mette. They had a minute left on their break. She was timing them. This conversation wasn¡¯t important, the meal was, and they were both pretty much finished. It took Mette a moment to realize that Belle had gone silent. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Mette. ¡°I didn¡¯t know those people well, nor what they meant to you.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Belle. ¡°It was ¡­ they were friends, you¡¯re right, I should grieve for them, Hella says that¡¯s important. We went through a lot together, even if we didn¡¯t always see eye to eye. Nitta was the one I was closest with, and she stuck to Cark, they had been traveling together before we met them, so ¡­¡± The timer went off, and Mette silenced it. She was willing to go a little bit over, if it would increase Belle¡¯s working efficiency. Mette was good at keeping her emotions contained, holding in the stress, anger, resentment, and irritation until it went away. Not everyone was quite so gifted, and in the confines of the Natrix, it was sometimes necessary to shuffle around personnel just to handle that, which was always a hassle. ¡°We should hold a memorial,¡± said Belle. ¡°After the crisis is resolved,¡± said Mette. ¡°That could be a month,¡± said Belle. ¡°And depending on how it resolves, we could just be running straight into another crisis, that¡¯s how it works on this ship, one crisis follows another.¡± She placed her bowl on the table. ¡°I¡¯m going to talk with the others about it, send a message real quick.¡± ¡°Look, I shouldn¡¯t have mentioned it,¡± said Mette. ¡°What they would want from us is for us to survive, for us to make the most of our time to get the work done. Right?¡± Belle stared at her. ¡°You didn¡¯t know them. L¡¯onso was always ready for a break, ready to kick back and see the sights, if we could. We¡¯re traveling between worlds for a reason, but it was also ¡­ a spirit of adventure, a sense that we were explorers. And when this is over, that¡¯s what I hope we go back to being. That¡¯s what L¡¯onso liked, even if I think he¡¯d have liked it better if he fit in more places.¡± L¡¯onso was the hulking lizard man, with tongues inside his nostrils. ¡°We need to keep working,¡± said Mette gently. ¡°There will be time for this later. Next break will be time for sleep. You can tell me then?¡± Belle nodded, then turned back to her computer and shook out her hands. It took a few seconds, but her face lost its seriousness, and she began typing as Mette looked on. Mette returned to her own work, hashing out some ideas on how to better map the energy spikes radiating from this world, algorithmic improvements rather than mechanical ones. The device that took the energy readings was laughably primitive, and had only recently been adapted to using the techniques they¡¯d taken from Moss. There was a different team, another Mette and another Eggy, working on making a better version. Mette had to hope that they would be able to make some substantial improvements. The readings could be interpreted into a manifold, and the most common visualization they used looked like someone had placed a sheet over a series of nails. The data was messy, but they had applied smoothing to it, and they could look at every one of the spikes. There was more data than that, and this in theory could be used to make a general map of the wider multiverse, but so far they had two examples of what they called ¡°punches¡±, and many more examples of what they were now calling ¡°pre-punches¡±, along with ¡°entries¡± that marked places on the manifold where someone had come in, all those people that Fenilor had killed, along with Perry, Third Fervor, and Nima. Something was happening to the fabric of the multiverse, or maybe just this one specific universe, when people went through that portal. They had almost made a terrible mistake in allowing all those other people to go through. If they hadn¡¯t pinpointed Fenilor before that, they might have lost him in the sea of others, not knowing his signature from theirs. But Mette had caught that before it happened, and was at a computer with the sensor running, cataloging every change to the manifold, annotating them using pictures from Marchand¡¯s cameras. Perry¡¯s dead girlfriend had apparently specialized in signals analysis, which was why she¡¯d found the signal from the portal in the first place, and Marchand was an asset, allowing the use of some algorithms that Mette was still trying to tear apart. So they had the manifold, and the annotations, and they could ¡°see¡± the imprints. The sensor didn¡¯t actually give data about the entire manifold at once, there was a set of small motors inside that rotated in a scanning pattern, which then had to be translated into math and processed, then smoothed. There were plenty of glitches, since the entire system had been set up from spare parts and vanishingly little knowledge of what they were actually sampling, but with the data and deductions from Moss and some of Mette¡¯s own contributions, it was working far better than the version the Farfinder had when they¡¯d first come to this world. There were, unfortunately, still a fair number of bugs, and Mette wasn¡¯t entirely sure that their team of two was going to get anything accomplished just by updating the code and sifting through the numbers. ¡°There¡¯s gotta be something,¡± said Belle after an hour had passed. They had a private channel set up between the two of them, and did at least half their communication through that, usually terse messages that confirmed that something had been tested or updated or tried. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°There might be nothing. This might be all we ever know.¡± ¡°Where there¡¯s a will, there¡¯s a way,¡± said Belle, sighing to herself. ¡°Again, no,¡± said Mette. ¡°This is a question of engineering and science. The monitor gives us data, and it might be that this is the sum total of data that we ever get from it. We¡¯re here in the hope that¡¯s not true, but hope doesn¡¯t make something true.¡± ¡°If we could at least get some kind of estimation on when a punch is going to go through,¡± said Belle. Mette didn¡¯t reply to that. It was one of their directives, to get some kind of prediction system. They had two examples of a ¡®waiting¡¯ punch actually manifesting, but the data was terrible, mostly because the sensor didn¡¯t cover the entirety of the manifold fast enough. What they really wanted was to capture the moment that a punch-in-potential turned into a punch-in-actuality, and then there might be some way to parse out the data that gave them some kind of predictive power for Fenilor¡¯s punch. That was seeming like more of a long-shot though. The best they could do was refine the system to be as fast and accurate and bug-free as possible so that they wouldn¡¯t miss it if it happened. And of course Fenilor¡¯s punch could go through at literally any time, and in all but the most optimistic estimates, they and millions more people would die. It didn¡¯t do a lot to help Mette focus on the problems at hand. Perry came into the room they were working in and stood by the door. He had his helmet off, and he was looking as perfect as usual, not showing the lack of sleep they were all suffering from, armor in mint condition, like it had just gotten waxed and polished. He had a scruffy beard that was somehow perfectly positioned, and it made him look unearthly handsome. ¡°The portal is closed,¡± he said after she held his gaze for a moment. ¡°Did that do anything?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Mette. She glanced at the manifold, but it hadn¡¯t moved. She would have noticed immediately if it had. ¡°But we hadn¡¯t expected that it would. The portal by itself, it¡¯s just a connection to ¡­ whatever does this.¡± She gestured at the screen. ¡°No way out now though, is there?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°No way out.¡± ¡°We could go to the edge of the star system,¡± said Belle. ¡°Then race back if we find anything. That would be a way out. Then we have time to repair the punch drive.¡± ¡°I¡¯d be done being a thresholder,¡± said Perry. ¡°True,¡± said Belle. ¡°And our engines can¡¯t really take us that far, plus we¡¯d lose contact with all the resources here. I think Hella might move us to the far side of the moon though, which would let us withstand a certain range of blasting power.¡± ¡°No progress?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Lots of progress,¡± said Belle with a chipper smile. ¡°We¡¯re working miracles here, fixing the systems, improving them. What we don¡¯t have are results.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll be here for a while?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Mette, shaking her head. ¡°We¡¯re sleeping soon, unless something changes. That¡¯s mandated. We just need to make sure that the systems can run by themselves while we¡¯re out.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to talk to Nima,¡± said Perry. ¡°Your match was never resolved, and there¡¯s a chance that we can make a portal by staging a fight between the two of you.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Mette. ¡°That ¡­ shouldn¡¯t work, should it?¡± ¡°It¡¯s unclear,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nima¡¯s been down, you¡¯ve been down, now Fenilor is gone ¡­ nothing was clear there, it was a misfire from the portal, either because of the way you came in or because he¡¯d been slumming it for so long. But it would give more data, maybe some information that would let us sneak our fingers into a crack, if we could make the portal appear.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Mette. ¡°Talk to her, I guess.¡± She turned back to her computer. Perry left, and Mette caught Belle looking over. ¡°Yes?¡± asked Mette. ¡°What is it?¡± ¡°Are you and him ¡­ ?¡± asked Belle. ¡°I don¡¯t think I ever got the full story.¡± ¡°We¡¯re facing down a gun aimed straight at our face,¡± said Mette. She briefly considered how long it would take to rant about that, compared to how long it would take to just tell Belle what she wanted to know. ¡°I flirted with him when we were on the Natrix, hoping to get pregnant and improve our breeding stock. I¡¯ve always been attracted, and he knows that. Once we got here, it was inevitable. Then Kes came along, and he was tender in a way that Perry isn¡¯t, and I would indulge myself with both of them, but they¡¯re weird about it, so it¡¯s just Kes. No further questions.¡± ¡°That was a lot,¡± said Belle. She turned back to her computer. ¡°Thanks.¡± ¡°Do you have any thoughts on this wiggle?¡± asked Mette, mostly to change the subject. She sent over a link to a timestamp, something that hadn¡¯t been possible to do six hours prior. The ¡®wiggle¡¯ was an aberration in one of the spikes that Mette had noticed mostly by chance. It jogged to the side by a bit before going back where it was, visible only when zoomed in. ¡°Weird,¡± said Belle after a moment. ¡°I haven¡¯t seen that.¡± ¡°Probably nothing,¡± said Mette. ¡°Might be an artifact.¡± ¡°Possible,¡± said Belle, biting her lip. ¡°We don¡¯t have much time left before bed. I¡¯m going to try to write something that checks for more of them.¡± ¡°Let me,¡± said Mette. She was much, much faster at that sort of thing, mostly owing to what were apparently biological differences in their brains. ¡°What exactly am I trying to do?¡± ¡°Wiggle detection,¡± said Belle. ¡°Use that one instance as a template to see if there are other instances, mark them all, then use a larger set to see if it means anything. One wiggle is weird, a dozen would be a pattern.¡± It didn¡¯t take very long, owing to the system they were using now being relatively mature, but when Mette ran the algorithm that would look for more of the wiggles, she thought that she¡¯d made a mistake. ¡°This is just ¡­ too much,¡± said Mette. The detection algorithm had logged hundreds of thousands of hits. Mette went through and sampled a few of the timestamps, and saw that they were accurate ¡ª the wiggle was there. ¡°I don¡¯t get it,¡± said Belle. ¡°It must be nothing then,¡± said Mette. ¡°It happens so frequently, we just hadn¡¯t noticed it, maybe because of the smoothing.¡± Belle had come over to share the monitor, though she was perfectly capable of using her own. ¡°Huh.¡± ¡°Strange, but it¡¯s probably for tomorrow,¡± said Mette. She rubbed her eyes. ¡°If we start trying to dig into this, it¡¯s going to be hard to sleep.¡± ¡°Is it regular?¡± asked Belle. ¡°If you map it, is the interval a set amount?¡± This took another few minutes to do, and once it did, they had their answer: the interval was extremely consistent, though it skipped a ¡®beat¡¯ every now and then when measured per-spike. Each of the spikes was ¡®wiggling¡¯ at the same set interval, though all with different time offsets. ¡°Instrument error,¡± said Mette. ¡°It has to be. I¡¯ll alert the other team, they can deal with it next cycle ¡ª tomorrow.¡± There was still a part of her that wasn¡¯t comfortable with days, that saw the sun hanging high in the sky as being horribly wrong. ¡°No, hang on,¡± said Belle. ¡°What does the wiggle represent?¡± ¡°Instrument error, algorithm error, precision error,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°If it weren¡¯t those things,¡± said Belle. ¡°If it were real.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Mette. ¡°If the spikes represent a ¡®primed punch¡¯, some high-energy holding pattern the Grand Spell is engaged with to send people on to the next world, then a wiggle would be ¡­¡± she paused, then stopped. ¡°The manifold represents energy overall, it¡¯s the skin of this universe, maybe. The spikes are ¡­ well, in theory, positional. But we¡¯re not even sure that¡¯s true, because it would imply that the Grand Spell is picking out a destination very soon after a person goes through the portal, and somehow only does the matchmaking afterward.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Belle. ¡°Right, yeah. So if the wiggle is ¡®real¡¯, then it shows ¡­ moving the destination? Changing the angle of attack? The Grand Spell is testing other locations for suitability?¡± ¡°You wouldn¡¯t do it like that,¡± said Mette. ¡°You would do the testing or monitoring some other way, not physically aim at another universe.¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Belle. ¡°So the tiny movement in destination would represent ¡­ compensation for a shifting web of universes?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°Look, it goes back.¡± She clicked through. The wiggle didn¡¯t actually change the position of the spike. ¡°And it doesn¡¯t make sense that they¡¯re on the same interval, but don¡¯t happen at the same time. There¡¯s got to be a pattern there.¡± ¡°Wait,¡± said Belle. ¡°Can you uh ¡­ hrm. Is the interval divisible by ¡­¡± She frowned. ¡°Nope, don¡¯t know it off the top of my head. The scanning interval.¡± Mette paused and typed in the numbers. It was an almost perfect match. She let out a breath. ¡°So this is nothing. Just a sensor error.¡± ¡°Looks like it¡¯s happening right when the peak is sensed, yeah,¡± said Belle with a frown. ¡°Well, at least we caught that before we went to bed.¡± ¡°Bah,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯m going to send a quick message off to the sensor team.¡± It wasn¡¯t much more than two minutes before the sensor team was in the room with them. It was another Mette and another Eggy, both of them working on the actual physical sensor that was gathering the data. The details were opaque to Mette, who became Mette Prime once the other Mette was in the room. The other Eggy was Henrietta. ¡°It¡¯s weird,¡± said the other Mette. ¡°We took the sensor down ¡ª we really need a second one, we¡¯re working on that ¡ª and ran some tests to try to isolate where the problem is, and we can¡¯t fix it.¡± ¡°Because it¡¯s not a problem,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°Meaning what?¡± asked Mette Prime. ¡°It¡¯s measuring something real,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°Might just be an artifact of the measurement, some kind of latent energy within the element that registers a higher reading after we record a spike measurement, but we don¡¯t really have a way to rule that out.¡± ¡°And it might be that,¡± said the other Mette. ¡°That kind of error.¡± She looked haggard. She wasn¡¯t a werewolf, and didn¡¯t have the same reserves of energy. Running on fumes this early into a crisis wasn¡¯t good, but the sensor they were using was incredibly important, and having a second one up and running was a top priority. ¡°But if it¡¯s not an error, then the thing that¡¯s causing the ¡®wiggle¡¯, as you call it, is the measurement itself.¡± ¡°Wow,¡± said Belle. ¡°That would mean ¡­ well, that the measurement device is actually a wiggling device.¡± ¡°It would mean that we have a way to affect the skin of the universe,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°Why did this have to come right before we¡¯re supposed to sleep?¡± ¡°You were the one to send it,¡± said the other Mette. ¡°But we need to make the second sensor, we can¡¯t leave this offline, and we need to get some sleep too, which means we need to put this back together so it can log overnight.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a temptation to push off sleep,¡± said Mette Prime. The other Mette nodded. ¡°We have to assume that the world isn¡¯t going to end in the next eight hours though.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll flag it,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°But there¡¯s so little to flag, and we¡¯re going to have to rule out all kinds of errors.¡± ¡°How would it even work if the sensor is affecting things?¡± asked Belle. ¡°Is the sensor not passive?¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s not,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°Which explains the power draw! I¡¯d always wondered about that.¡± ¡°Me too!¡± smiled Belle. They split off before the Eggys could get too smitten with each other, and Mette double and triple checked that everything was running once they got the sensor back online and running in autonomous mode. The manifold was looking the same as it ever was, and Mette resisted the urge to program in a set of alerts to wake her up. She needed her sleep, and there was nothing that couldn¡¯t wait until the next cycle. If the software crashed, that would be bad, but not as bad as trying to go into the next cycle on too little sleep. ¡°It¡¯s exciting,¡± said Belle. ¡°We¡¯ll probably have to scale up the sensor, if we want to make actual changes at a distance.¡± ¡°We need to rule out all kinds of things first,¡± said Mette. ¡°But yes, it¡¯s exciting.¡± ¡°I¡¯m hoping that we can prove it all tomorrow,¡± said Belle. ¡°It would be a real feather in my cap, the kind of thing that would put me ahead in the clone rankings.¡± ¡°What¡¯s a feather?¡± asked Mette. She was too tired to retain the full explanation. When she got to her room, a small place off the side of an extra dimensional corridor, Kes was waiting for her. ¡°You should have been here at least an hour ago,¡± he said. ¡°I was getting worried that I would have to drag you away from your computer.¡± ¡°Maybe you should have,¡± said Mette with a yawn. ¡°Sorry, if you¡¯re tired I can go,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯m wiped,¡± said Mette. She leaned against her door frame. ¡°I¡¯m not up for deep conversation.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± said Kes. ¡°I just ¡­ wanted to be with someone.¡± He said this like he was admitting to a high crime. ¡°If you mean you want to have sex, you¡¯re going to have to do all the work, and be fast,¡± said Mette. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t put you in that position,¡± said Kes. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t mind being put in that position,¡± said Mette. She lingered on the word ¡®position¡¯. ¡°Not a bad way to destress and then immediately fall asleep.¡± She looked him up and down. He didn¡¯t have the same look as Perry, and they were getting further away by the day, but Kes still had the same muscular arms and piercing blue eyes. He must have gotten some sleep. He¡¯d probably done it while she was working, the bastard. They said he¡¯d had his arm broken, but he must have fixed it, because he looked right as rain. He smelled nice, like sweat and mud. Her heart had started beating a bit faster, waking her up a little bit. ¡°I can just lay with you,¡± said Kes. ¡°I need a shower,¡± said Mette. ¡°I was going to wait until the start of the next cycle.¡± He knew she needed a shower though, he was a werewolf too. ¡°You smell good,¡± said Kes. He shifted his posture, straightening up. ¡°You sure you don¡¯t want to do the other thing with me?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Then you can sleep beside me.¡± ¡°I never said I didn¡¯t want to,¡± said Kes. He moved forward, putting himself closer to her, and for a moment they were standing in the doorway together, with the question hanging in the air. It was brief but good, and when it was over, Mette felt like her head had cleared. They were still in a crisis, but she¡¯d flipped the switch that let her not care about that. Still, as Kes fell asleep beside her, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm, sleep was eluding her. There were problems to work, and the work was done in the brain, and the brain didn¡¯t just shut off so easily, even if the stress had somewhat abated. The more she thought about the problems, the more the stress started coming back. They would solve it, or they would turn tail and run, or the whole thing would blow up in their face before they had a chance to do either of those things. But that thought didn¡¯t help the sleep come any faster. Chapter 146 - The Flood The engineers did their work. Perry didn¡¯t have much to do, which was deeply irritating. The portal was closed, and that meant the only way off the planet was either a new portal or the repair of the Farfinder¡¯s main drive. Perry was bouncing between those options in his mind like an anxious kangaroo, and neither option was actually within his control. He¡¯d visited Nima on the first day, then again on the second, and by the fifth it was something of an established pattern with them. He felt bad for her, because she, like him, was in a losing position with nothing to do. ¡°She still doesn¡¯t want to fight me?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Because I would fight her.¡± She laid on her bed while he sat in a chair. She¡¯d been wearing less with each successive day, though he didn¡¯t know whether that was an attempt to allure him, because she was growing more comfortable with him, or simply her whim. She was still wearing more than the elves of this world, but there was a way that she arranged her legs that couldn¡¯t have been just happenstance. He wasn¡¯t enough of an idiot to make a move on her. If she was trying to entice him, it wouldn¡¯t work. ¡°It¡¯s not Mette that¡¯s the problem,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s that if the two of you are going to fight, then the reason is going to be because we¡¯re hoping for a portal to open. And if it does open, then we have only a limited amount of time with it. So the fight isn¡¯t going to happen until we¡¯re good and ready, unfortunately.¡± ¡°You should be letting me help with the project,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯m good with computers.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not risking it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry.¡± He had come into her room with his armor off, mostly to make her feel more at home, which she didn¡¯t. ¡°You should have let me go through the portal when the opportunity was there,¡± said Nima. ¡°Or were you planning this mock fight all along?¡± If Perry was being honest, he would have told her that in all the excitement, they had sort of forgotten about her. Not completely, but enough that they weren¡¯t thinking about what she would want. She was a prisoner, and her rights and whims had not entered into it. ¡°We need every tool in the toolbox,¡± said Perry. She only nodded. ¡°I¡¯m at your mercy.¡± ¡°Even if the portal opens, you don¡¯t need to go through it,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can probably stay aboard the ship, get dropped off on the next world. I don¡¯t think they want you as a permanent prisoner. And if you cross to the next world on this ship, rather than through a portal, I think it should sever your link to the Grand Spell, at least in theory. They carry no magic with them.¡± She touched the pendant that rested on her chest. ¡°We don¡¯t have a portal to bring you through,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not unless we decide to have you fight Mette, and if you fight, it¡¯s going to be as safe as it can be while still triggering the portal to appear.¡± How to do that was an open question. ¡°I¡¯m ready when she is,¡± said Nima. ¡°Is it the fighting you want, even after all this?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Is that why you want a portal?¡± ¡°The fighting?¡± asked Nima. ¡°No. Or ¡­¡± ¡°Or?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What I want is to go home, if there¡¯s still a home there,¡± said Nima. ¡°But failing that, I¡¯d like to prove myself in a way that I haven¡¯t done, not a single time since I¡¯ve been in this world. I beat your clone in an unfair fight, and I don¡¯t think I could do that a second time.¡± ¡°Probably not, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°But the fight wouldn¡¯t be fair.¡± ¡°The portals promise a fair fight,¡± said Nima. ¡°Don¡¯t they?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think they promise anything,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve come around to the idea that they just are. This whole planet has been a clusterfuck.¡± She raised an eyebrow, not offended, just curious. ¡°A, uh, wildly complicated problem for everyone.¡± ¡°In my world, group sex is quite regimented,¡± she offered. Perry let that hang there for a moment. ¡°The problem with a fair fight is that you might die,¡± said Perry. ¡°What you should want is a stacked fight, one that you couldn¡¯t dream of losing.¡± ¡°Is that what you want?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I think at a certain level it becomes unsporting,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s no thrill in victory when your opponent is a toddler.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll elect not to take offense,¡± said Nima. ¡°You know what I mean though,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I¡¯m going to fight, I want a challenge, but a challenge that I can rise to, one that I can beat. And of course the fight isn¡¯t the point of it, ¡ª¡± ¡°Says who?¡± asked Nima. ¡°The portals seem to think the fight is the point.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know who made the Grand Spell, or why,¡± said Perry. ¡°And even if we knew who made them, what¡¯s their authority? That they knew how to make something that we don¡¯t?¡± ¡°You said you¡¯ve come around to the idea that the portals just are?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I¡¯ve come around to a very different idea, the idea that they were made by our betters. And it¡¯s not our place to question them.¡± ¡°Are you serious?¡± asked Perry. Nima shrugged. ¡°I might be.¡± ¡°So that¡¯s a ¡®no¡¯ then,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was taught not to question my place,¡± said Nima. ¡°I valued that, only now I don¡¯t know what my place is, except as prisoner on this infernal ship. So yes, there¡¯s a power higher than any of us that made the Grand Spell, and it wants me to fight, wants me to win, and is fine with discarding me if I cannot or will not fulfill that purpose.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t tell if you¡¯re taking the piss or not,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m serious about going through the portal again, if we can get one,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯ll beat Mette to a pulp if that¡¯s what it takes.¡± Perry shook his head and changed the topic, asking her about some element of her culture, the way that art and music worked, which was something they¡¯ve discussed in the past. That was enough to eat up more time, allowing Perry to not pace back and forth while trying his best to stay out of the way of the engineers. Nima seemed to be in a better mood when he left, which was at least something. The Farfinder had been reconfigured in the days following Fenilor¡¯s exit. The engineers worked in teams, which had become larger now that they¡¯d started picking up people from the science cities. The engines had been repaired, and while the magic doors still weren¡¯t working and might never work again, they could simply fly wherever they needed to go. They had three of Moss and two Dirks, and essentially the whole of the world had been alerted to their plight, or at least that tiny fraction that could actually do anything about it. There were a few other engineers walking around, none that Perry knew personally, though Marchand could whisper their names in his ear if need be. Dirk was in a command room, biting his nails, and looked relieved when Perry came in. ¡°How¡¯s our prisoner?¡± he asked. ¡°She¡¯s the Farfinder¡¯s prisoner,¡± said Perry. ¡°But she¡¯s fine. What¡¯s the word from the teams?¡± ¡°Bah,¡± said Dirk. He turned back to what the monitors were showing, mostly logs of activities from the different teams. ¡°They¡¯re stalled out on power requirements for the wiggler, which is insane given how much energy this ship has access to. They¡¯re trying to build a larger version with better precision so the costs aren¡¯t so high, but that¡¯s going to take time.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°That was more or less where they were two hours ago.¡± ¡°I offered to commandeer a city¡¯s golden domes,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Consensus is that it won¡¯t help. The domes aren¡¯t good at raw energy output, not the kind that we need. So then I offered effluence, a pair of enormous lanterns that we¡¯ve been keeping around, but retrofit on those is going to take time.¡± ¡°Do you need me to get it rolling?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I handled that this morning.¡± They had global communication now, thanks to the Farfinder and some hacked-together equipment. The bandwidth was pitiful, but the only computers were the ones that the Farfinder had brought with them, so there was no need to shove huge amounts of data through the limited satellites. Dirk was in contact with his clones the whole world over, but there wasn¡¯t all that much that could be done to work the problem, not when the expertise was so incredibly limited. They had pulled in some mathematicians specializing in higher dimensions, but while math was ¡°the same¡± across worlds, the terminology wasn¡¯t, and hacking together a shared understanding involved a lot of overhead even with Marchand translating. ¡°So we¡¯re just sitting here with our thumbs up our asses,¡± said Perry. ¡°Our fate is in the hands of the brainiacs.¡± ¡°I hate it,¡± said Dirk. The command center was mostly ceremonial, not actually used for project management. The screens showed the teams, but represented by blobs, since no one was going to spend the time getting video set up. ¡°There¡¯s gotta be a way to make it go faster.¡± ¡°I think we have to accept that it¡¯s not about us,¡± said Perry. ¡°You think this is ego?¡± asked Dirk, looking at him. ¡°Perry, this is the world we¡¯re talking about, and if I trust the brainiacs ¡ª and I trust Moss, in all his incarnations, at least ¡ª then this is the most important thing I¡¯m ever going to do. And what I¡¯m doing is nothing, just standing in this room and complaining.¡± ¡°They¡¯ll solve it or they won¡¯t,¡± said Perry. He felt a lump in his throat in spite of the nonchalance. ¡°Another two of the prospects went through,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Did you see that?¡± ¡°I did,¡± said Perry. ¡°Two more gone to different worlds, that¡¯s good for us, that¡¯s more data.¡± ¡°Feh,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s a clock.¡± ¡°It might be enough to give us an early warning system,¡± said Perry. ¡°Some change in the readings that shows when it¡¯s going to happen.¡± ¡°They¡¯re getting there,¡± said Dirk. ¡°But what we really need is ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Go on, say it,¡± said Perry. ¡°A way to stop him in his tracks,¡± said Dirk. ¡°That sap-for-brains is in stasis, right? And we¡¯re here with all the tools of a dozen worlds, and all the power that this one can provide. And can¡¯t we just, I don¡¯t know, shoot him?¡± ¡°Did you suggest that to the teams?¡± asked Perry with a smirk. ¡°No, I didn¡¯t fucking suggest it to the teams, I know it¡¯s stupid, I know that he¡¯s beyond the skin of the universe, or past the first layer of skin, or something like that.¡± Dirk heaved a sigh. ¡°But if we could just shoot him, that¡¯s what we would want to do. He¡¯s in a pocket somewhere, right?¡± ¡°Presumably,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean ¡­ pocket is probably not the correct term. I would guess it¡¯s information encoding, I guess, some pattern of him that¡¯s been etched by the spell, not like there¡¯s some actual timeless prison made of glass he¡¯s stuck inside or whatever. Or it might be that he is frozen in time, but that it¡¯s some kind of, I don¡¯t know, hyperspace warping thing going on. When we go through there¡¯s no sensation of travel. Richter thought it was possible that the portal was purely informational, especially because of how traversal works. You stick your hand in and don¡¯t feel anything on the other side.¡± Dirk looked over the screens. ¡°What are our odds sitting at?¡± Perry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They had no way of knowing. Maybe some people on the teams could give an assessment, but from what Perry had learned, the Eggys would lean optimist and the Mettes would lean pessimist, and the Mosses were far enough diverged from one another that they might be split. ¡°Fifty-fifty,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean of the gun thing working,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Or not a gun, but something like a gun, a way to attack him, kill him from a distance.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then still fifty-fifty. I don¡¯t know, you know I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Just talking,¡± said Dirk. Hella came into the room and took a seat in front of the monitors. ¡°How are we today, boys?¡± ¡°Just talking,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Thinking about the odds, the needs of the teams, how likely this is to all just end ignobly and with very little warning.¡± ¡°They¡¯re working hard,¡± said Hella. ¡°How has the hunt for a working cloning machine gone?¡± ¡°Poorly,¡± said Dirk. ¡°We didn¡¯t have them in great supply, so it¡¯s a question of parts and expertise. Moss has the expertise, but then it¡¯s a question of time. Lots of metal in the machine, all of it precision, and that means fabrication time. We¡¯ve got people working on it.¡± Fenilor had destroyed the machine on the Farfinder, but he had also destroyed the other machines as well, striking at the places they were kept. His reasons for doing this were opaque, since they couldn¡¯t possibly have offered any advantage in the fight with Perry. Maybe he saw them as a threat to the order of the world somehow, an advancement that would cause the whole scheme to crumble in his absence, but he hadn¡¯t done enough to destroy the knowledge of the machines. To do that he would have had to kill dozens of the right people in the right places, then burn all their research. He probably could have done it, if he had wanted to. Perry wondered how many people you would need to kill in order to completely collapse semiconductor fabrication back on Earth. Probably a lot, but that was because they were a linchpin of modern society. ¡°Nine women can¡¯t make a baby in a single month,¡± said Perry. They both looked at him. ¡°It¡¯s a software thing,¡± said Perry. ¡°Richter said it. Or it¡¯s ¡­ a general organizational principle. How much are the clones actually going to help? How many more of Moss actually helps to solve the extant problems faster?¡± ¡°That¡¯s a call for our project manager to make,¡± said Hella. ¡°But I would guess that we¡¯re already nearly at capacity. There¡¯s organizational overhead already. There are limits to the parallelization we can employ. We need more power, but ¡ª¡° ¡°Already worked that problem as much as I can,¡± said Dirk. ¡°There¡¯s a retrofit going, should be finished shortly. All the energy you could want, and we just need to sear a piece of the planet with effluence to do it.¡± ¡°We do?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You didn¡¯t mention that. And if it¡¯s a retrofit, then do we have a candidate lantern far enough from civilization?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t,¡± said Dirk. ¡°But one¡¯s been selected. There¡¯s an evacuation now, ten thousand people displaced. Last one out is a rotten egg.¡± ¡°All those families,¡± said Perry. ¡°Those houses, you¡¯re talking about a whole city.¡± ¡°Just a town. It¡¯s the entire reason that Global Command Authorities exist,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Had to be done, if it shaves us a day off our deadline. The facility is huge, one of a kind.¡± ¡°Can I help?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I can fly, I have the shelf.¡± ¡°You can help, if you want to,¡± said Dirk. ¡°But we¡¯ve had drills in place. The evacuation should go smoothly.¡± ¡°You¡¯re underestimating me,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t realize the breadth of what I can do, where I can see.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not underestimating you,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I¡¯m thinking about the costs and the problems. You traipse off for a day to help some poor souls move with only what they have on their backs, and then what happens if Fenilor comes back? That¡¯s one of the scenarios. You¡¯re not here when that happens, our odds go way down, and we need to get him while we can.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going anyway,¡± said Perry. ¡°In the event that we can reverse the process, dump him in this world, they¡¯ll wait on me to do that, and better, wait until we have a plan of attack. And if there¡¯s a rush to do it ¡ª which there would be, I know, I know ¡ª then calling me back is just a matter of hours, depending on where the site is.¡± ¡°It¡¯s the end of the world, Perry,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You understand that, right?¡± ¡°It¡¯s the end of the world and we¡¯re cooped up in here with nothing to contribute, nothing to add,¡± said Perry. ¡°I know you feel it too, because it¡¯s all you talk about. So I¡¯m going to take the opportunity to go save the lives of a few thousand people, and it won¡¯t matter in the scheme of things, but at least it¡¯ll be something worthwhile, rather than staring at these screens and praying.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Dirk with a wave of his hand. ¡°If you¡¯ve got a map handy, I can mark it for you, but there¡¯s a good chance we¡¯ll need you here sooner than later.¡± Perry looked to Hella. ¡°Captain, permission to disembark?¡± Hella rolled her eyes. ¡°Granted. We¡¯ll swing the ship around and go there in a day or so, once the follow-up engine work is done.¡± Perry did, in fact, have a map on hand, since Marchand was partially integrated with the ship¡¯s systems. Once the location was marked, Perry got his power armor on and went to the airlock. The ship was still badly damaged, and would be for the foreseeable future, though they were at least getting some help from the culture. Behind the scenes, Dirk and Hella had a series of talks, and Hella had apparently gone to speak in front of one of the Global Command Authorities, the day before. The ship was complicated, with parts from various different worlds, but it was in theory replicable, and it blew the airships away in terms of capabilities. It was the kind of disruption and society-changing technology that the culture wasn¡¯t always on board with, but they would at least have to assemble a panel and decide whether or not to pursue it. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The parallelism of it all felt odd to Perry. Committees were meeting to talk about future technologies while the world was at risk, and yes, no one on those committees could meaningfully contribute to the work the engineers were doing. Still, pretending that the crisis wasn¡¯t happening felt wrong somehow, even if it was objectively correct. He had time to think as he flew toward the town of St. Durbin. He tried to direct his thoughts to the future, just like the committee members were doing, but it was difficult, because the opaque work of the engineers was what was actually important. Thoughts about the future might bear fruit though, if he didn¡¯t die. Assuming that Fenilor could be stopped or killed or otherwise prevented from punching a hole straight through the world, Perry would continue on. Maybe that would be by taking the portal that came after Nima and Mette fought, but if that didn¡¯t work, then he¡¯d have another opponent in a few years. He would do what Fenilor had done and find a place where they could fight without imperiling anyone else. But then there would be another world, with its own difficulties, and it would all be different, because the Farfinder wasn¡¯t just an expedition anymore, it was attempting to help the culture set up multiversal trade and cooperation, at least in theory. They would follow Perry, something that was apparently going to be easier now that they had new mapping technology, and if Hella kept her end of the bargain, they would aim for a return to Earth 2, mostly in hopes of having a reasonable trading partner. The punches were uni-directional, but that didn¡¯t preclude using a cycle of them, and if they could do that, then universes could be in communication with each other. Perry had been functionally useless on the Natrix, handling some scouting and occasional work, but not ever feeling like he was pulling his weight. And he was useless now, too, waiting on the engineers to solve the damned thing. But a great stretch of uselessness lay before him, years of it. He had become better at fighting than anything else, but there wasn¡¯t always someone to fight. The thoughts rattled around until he put on some ¡°in-flight entertainment¡±, one of the anime shows from Richter he¡¯d seen twice before, this one about a group of tweenage costumed crime fighters called the Critter Crew. Flying with the sword was generally just about keeping at the correct heading, and that only took a fraction of his attention. St. Durbin was a smaller city than he¡¯d thought it would be, just a single golden dome, and a half-sized one at that. They were on a river, but not a major one. The buildings had flat tops with complicated gutters to empty out the rain, and then the streets had larger gutters to funnel rainwater down into the canal. Maybe that was the style through this whole region, but Perry hadn¡¯t done an architecture survey. He should have, he thought, because that would have been a better use of his time than bugging Nima or watching the teams on the monitors. He landed in the center of the town, where people were already gathered, and it appeared that evacuation efforts were already underway. His descent was greeted with a clamor of attention, but less than he¡¯d thought there would be, maybe because they had giant robots taller than him, or because they had other excitement to worry about. The world was on the brink, but this town was even more on the brink. ¡°I¡¯m here to help,¡± said Perry to a man with a clipboard and an armband. That got him some blank stares, not just from the man he was talking to, but everyone else around them. ¡°I can ferry people wherever they need to go,¡± said Perry. He opened the shelf-space by way of demonstration. It was freshly cleaned and stocked, though there was plenty of room for people, at least a hundred of them if they didn¡¯t need to be in there long. ¡°I can outpace an airship.¡± That got the attention of the man. ¡°If I line them up, you can take them?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Show me on a map where I¡¯m going, but I can run at a hundred miles an hour. Anyone who¡¯s ready, and whatever they can carry, or however you¡¯re doing things.¡± The units were translated, naturally, and that got him some wide eyes. It was a bold claim to make, and only true in the best of circumstances, which they certainly wouldn¡¯t have unless Perry was traveling down a very flat, very clear road. The line took some time to form, but it was long, and the first trip wouldn¡¯t lack for passengers. The first volunteers were intrepid, but it was a good deal, because the other option seemed to be getting on a caravan of farm vehicles pulling open trailers, and it was threatening to rain. The entire evacuation was meant to happen quickly, but Perry didn¡¯t see any way that they were actually going to accomplish it in the timescale they had, not without him. Maybe there were airships incoming, but those had limits too. They were all destined for the largest city that was close by, a place with nearly a million people. How a city could absorb that many people was being left for someone there, but it seemed perilous to Perry, a serious logistical problem that had simply been sprung on them earlier in the day. The culture built with extra housing, extra capacity, storehouses of clothes, but he wasn¡¯t sure that they overbuilt that much, not when overbuilding put strain on the workers. Running was a thrill. It was completely different from going fast in a car, and it took attention that the sword didn¡¯t. Perry had to watch his steps and react swiftly to what was on the road, because a tumble could hurt him, even if the armor was designed to protect him. He found himself drawing on his heightened senses, attempting to slow time and speed up his reactions. There wasn¡¯t a reason to run as fast as he was, not when he was spending so much energy and effort to fight against air resistance, but he went fast anyhow, with leaping strides that left small divots in the road. The city had the same architectural style as the town did, except that the taller buildings eschewed it, and they were obviously using different materials. Perry slowed considerably, not wanting to kill some hapless pedestrian, and then was left with the task of finding someone he could hand his passengers off to. The whole trip had taken a half hour, if that, so he wasn¡¯t worried about getting them out just yet. He stopped at a large cathedral with tents in front of it, and went to the nearest person with an armband he could find. He was getting looks, of course, but he was used to that. ¡°I¡¯m here to drop off refugees from St. Durbin¡¯s,¡± he said. ¡°Drop off?¡± asked the woman with the armband. She was an elf, which seemed like a common species in this place. The armband was the only thing she was wearing on her upper body. ¡°With magic, an Implement,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I leave them here, with you, can you handle them, or find someone who can? Get them to where they need to be, housing and clothing and food?¡± ¡°I ¡­ yes,¡± said the woman. Perry opened up the shelf without further ado. ¡°Time to come out,¡± he said. ¡°Orderly line, keep it moving.¡± Next time he would deputize someone to keep the peace, if they wouldn¡¯t just do that on their own. Ten people could be selected from the hundred to organize and make sure that everyone was ready. It took time for them to file out of the shelf, but they came out quicker than they came in, likely because they were more motivated. The shelf could get claustrophobic in a hurry, with no possible way to leave. There was a chamber pot, but he hoped that no one had cause to use it during the short trip. When the last person was out, Perry snapped the shelf shut. ¡°I¡¯m going to get more,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll be back in forty minutes. Set up a system for getting people out of here quickly, I don¡¯t want to have to slow down. We¡¯re trying to evacuate ten thousand people in two days, which is a tall order.¡± The elf nodded, but she looked slightly green. Perry had the sense that this was more responsibility than she¡¯d wanted since she¡¯d woken up that morning. Then Perry was off again, racing back out of the city and then down the road. That¡¯s one percent done. It was more than a drop in the bucket, but if he was doing this by himself, working non-stop, it would take four days rather than two. The enormous lantern building near the town was being converted by experts, and at least one team from the ship would be there shortly to install the larger sensor/wiggler. Perry wasn¡¯t sure whether they would turn it on with people still close by, but he imagined that was a strong possibility. The culture was all about the greater good and close cooperation, but he didn¡¯t know if that extended to spilling the blood of unwitting civilians who couldn¡¯t get away in time. When he returned to St. Durbin, they were more ready for him. Another hundred people had been lined up, and they filed through swiftly. There was also an airship, which was taking more like four hundred on it, clearly running at capacity. ¡°How many do we have left?¡± Perry asked the man with the clipboard as he waited for people to file through. ¡°Hard to say, no census,¡± the man replied. ¡°And there will be hold outs. We have authorization to remove them by force, if necessary. Plus a few of the thywins.¡± ¡°That what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They¡¯re, ah,¡± said the man. ¡°Their own group, don¡¯t speak the language, not sure they understand what¡¯s going on. Thywins, elves, but of their own caste. Not really of the culture as much as the rest of us. We¡¯ll need a translator.¡± ¡°I¡¯m a translator,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t know what a thywin is, but you speak their language?¡± asked the man. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯ll get the people who are ready first.¡± The trips took time, and there were limits to how fast Perry could run, even after he¡¯d optimized his path on the road, and even after they had a better system for getting people into and out of the shelf. By the fourth time, it was a nice flow, a non-stop movement of people in and people out, save for the elderly and infirm, or the people with children, who did slow things down a bit. Perry wanted to say to them that every minute they wasted was a minute that meant one of their neighbors couldn¡¯t get out in time, but he didn¡¯t actually know whether Dirk or someone else would make the call to turn the machine on before the evacuation was complete. The afternoon slipped into the evening, and then into night. They would be working around the clock to get everyone out. Perry was trying to keep track in his head, ticking down a percent whenever he finished a trip, ticking down five percent for every airship he saw come and go ¡ª not too many of them. When night fell, the airships had to tether down, which meant that Perry was the only one moving people, another hundred every hour or so. He told them he could go through the night, and the people of the town grudgingly lined up for him to wait their turn. The systems were refined, and by three in the morning, there was an orderly queue of exactly as many people as could fit inside the shelf space, lined up and ready to go. Running took enough of his attention that he didn¡¯t have time to think. There was moonlight in this part of the world, enough that he could regenerate energy, though the downtime while he waited for people to file in and out also let the reactor charge the batteries. He was on the return trip to St. Durbin when day broke, and when he arrived there, he saw that there were less than fifty people waiting for him. The man with the clipboard and armband that had been gathering people in the square had long been replaced by a different, identical man with a clipboard and armband, and Perry suspected that they would just keep rotating them until the evacuation was complete. There was an entire team, but this was the singular point of contact for Perry, the only person he actually interacted with. Helpers went among those who were waiting, delivering water and food for them, but that was always quickly resolved as Perry showed up. ¡°We¡¯re light?¡± he asked. ¡°This is everyone that¡¯s ready, everyone that¡¯s ready to come,¡± said the new man with the clipboard. ¡°The rest are the holdouts, thywin, you know, people who don¡¯t want to leave and don¡¯t understand what it¡¯s going to be like.¡± ¡°I was told you needed a translator,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ someone who can speak the language and also wants to argue against staying?¡± ¡°We do,¡± he said. ¡°This is the last group, but there are two more airships coming back, to take supplies. If you think you can talk some sense into the thywin,¡± he looked at the line of people who were ready to go. ¡°It¡¯s up to you, I guess. We can wait.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll go,¡± said Perry. ¡°Point the way.¡± Without much trouble, Perry went to the edge of the city and found a group of elves standing together outside a collection of houses. There were other people there, all with armbands, part of the volunteer task force that had been tasked with helping along the evacuation. Some of the people in armbands were ones he had seen before, and Marchand displayed their names. The attention was focused here, on this crisis, now that the city had been largely emptied. Overhead, another airship was returning. ¡°I¡¯m here to translate,¡± said Perry. He stepped forward to the tallest of the elves, who was wearing only a codpiece ¡ª not just traditional elven immodesty, but a statement of some kind, a way of setting him even further apart. Behind him, the houses were different, without the flat roofs and elaborate gutter system. Instead, they had sodden thatch, in spite of the fact that it hadn¡¯t rained the night before. ¡°I speak your language.¡± The intent flowed out from Perry, solidifying the words as he spoke them. ¡°Then tell them to go,¡± said the elf. ¡°We are not moving. We moved once, when we were forced from our homes, and have made a new home. They have said that they decided to activate the machine at the edge of this city, built far away, a machine they said they would use only in an emergency. We weren¡¯t asked.¡± His words flowed like water. The language had a fluidity to it, and barely any pause between words. There was something about how they were linked together that gave them cadence. ¡°No one was asked,¡± said Perry. ¡°The Global Command Authority made the decision.¡± ¡°That is not the culture,¡± said the elf. ¡°It is,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s part of the paradox of community. Every community looks out for itself first and foremost, which means that no community can be trusted to volunteer itself for destruction.¡± Perry was, at least, well-appraised of how the culture viewed itself. He¡¯d spent some time reading books, or having Marchand read to him, and sometimes he just got the relevant summaries if the book was especially repetitive or long-winded. ¡°So we have been ¡®volunteered¡¯,¡± said the elf. ¡°Our houses will be destroyed if we do not move, we will be killed by the very effluence that the culture has promised that it would eliminate and contain?¡± ¡°The fate of the world depends on it,¡± said Perry. ¡°It must be done swiftly.¡± He hesitated. He knew the next line in the cultural script, since he¡¯d heard it often enough while waiting on the people evacuating. He wasn¡¯t sure that it would work though. ¡°It¡¯s the nature of living in the culture that you own very little. Clothes and furniture come from libraries, they¡¯re borrowed. These houses were built for the good of the community, they¡¯re not property, they¡¯re not owned, they have only the ownership that comes through habitation.¡± The elf frowned at this, but didn¡¯t seem as offended as Perry would have been. ¡°These houses were built with help, this is true. But we would have done it ourselves, if we had known they would be taken away.¡± ¡°More houses can be built,¡± said Perry. ¡°More houses will be built. There will be recompense for everything you¡¯ve lost here, as much as recompense is possible.¡± From the swirling rumors, Perry thought that there would simply be little that the culture could do. They could give people some of the secondary currency, but housing, clothing, and food were already free. ¡°How can they make recompense for the loss of our home?¡± asked the elf. ¡°They cannot,¡± said Perry. The elf stayed rooted where he was. ¡°Then we will not leave.¡± ¡°Then you¡¯ll die,¡± said Perry. ¡°The lantern is going on whether you¡¯re here or not.¡± He was relatively sure that was true. The stakes were simply too high. ¡°If you act now, we¡¯ll help you remove these people, save them from that fate. We will move any sacred objects, any ritual ornaments. But that takes time, time which you¡¯re wasting.¡± The elf wavered. He must have been doing this for a while. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how bad the lantern would actually be. It was a huge building, but it was quite far away. If it was actually capable of scouring the ground with effluence, then Perry figured it would probably tear itself apart, and his hunch, without talking to anyone, was that it was much more like radiation levels that caused a huge spike in cancer levels, rather than radiation levels that caused skin to melt off. ¡°There are cocoons,¡± said the elf. ¡°Only a handful, but they would need to be moved, gently. We won¡¯t leave them behind. We¡¯d rather die.¡± ¡°If they can be moved, we¡¯ll move them,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re delicate. An airship may be too rocky. If they can be moved without one ¡­ we will abandon this home.¡± The elf looked utterly defeated. All his verve was gone. ¡°If they can be detached, I can move them without any trouble.¡± Perry opened up the shelf, showing it off, though the floors were less clean than they¡¯d been before the flows of people in and out. The elf began speaking to his people. He was their leader, apparently, which wasn¡¯t the culture. In theory, they should have assembled an ad hoc symboulion of some kind, but they simply listened to the elf with the codpiece and began to take things out of their homes, clothes and kitchenware, along with a few pieces of furniture. It was more moving day than evacuation, but one of the airships landed near them, and it didn¡¯t seem that Perry would have to do too much more than haul the cocoons. Likely the thywin had been wavering even before Perry got there, making a last stand as a way of saving face and airing grievances, but it made him feel good to have done something, or to feel like he¡¯d done something. He helped with the cocoons, which were surprisingly heavy, and they were eventually lined up within the shelf, a dozen of them in all, more than he would have thought there would be. They were more soft to the touch than he had thought they would be, more like canvas stretched over sticks, like there was some internal spiny structure. It took time, but the countdown wasn¡¯t even particularly close. Perry delivered the cocoons, helped them out and into a waiting building, then raced back to St. Durbin a final time. The last airship was still loading people, but mostly everyone was milling about. ¡°We¡¯re ready to call it done,¡± said one of the men in armbands. It was mostly people in armbands now. They had a hospital, which had been emptied, and all the children were accounted for, but it still set Perry on edge, knowing how little surveillance they had. The culture was not big on keeping track of its people, and that meant if you had to move an entire town, someone could more easily be left behind. Not that Perry would have trusted the United States to competently do a full evacuation either. ¡°I¡¯m going to do a final sweep,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just to check whether there¡¯s anyone who slept through all this. I might make some noise while I do that, hope that¡¯s okay.¡± ¡°Men in masks have been by,¡± said the man. ¡°They can see through walls, more or less.¡± ¡°Still,¡± said Perry. ¡°Some child hiding in a basement because they don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on?¡± The man in the armband nodded. ¡°Do you need us to wait for you?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He lifted up from the ground. ¡°I¡¯ll leave on my own. If I do end up finding anyone, I¡¯ll grab them and bring them to safety.¡± But before he did that, Perry took a moment to look around at the people in their armbands. Most of them were local, he had surmised, people who hadn¡¯t known the day before that this was what they were going to be doing. They were volunteers, helping the people of their town, local symboulion leaders. There was something Perry found slightly off-putting about the community, and while he could appreciate their rapid response, especially when it was difficult to communicate the ¡°why¡± of the matter, there was also something uncanny about it. He supposed they knew about the great machine outside their town, and had more forewarning, but still. Jumping to help with the destruction didn¡¯t sit right with him. He didn¡¯t suppose that he would have fought, in their place, but perhaps he would have. The airship lifted off while Perry was circling the town. He was, in theory, alone, flying through the air in a spiral. He started up a blaringly loud alarm from the suit¡¯s speakers, along with flashing lights, instructing in the multiple local languages that the town was going to be bombarded with effluence, that this was the last chance to escape. Marchand was using the alarm for echolocation, mapping the town as comprehensively as possible, using the lulls in the alarm to map the interiors of different buildings. If there was anyone left, they didn¡¯t come out. When the spiral was finished, Perry did a second one, this one faster, on the ground, looking for anyone he could possibly have missed. If this had been any town in America, he figured there would have been stragglers, holdouts, people left behind and forgotten. Maybe that was cynicism. Maybe America would have done just as well, if faced with the same scenario. It took an outrageous faith in government though, it seemed to Perry, a unanimity of purpose, a culture that was built for this sort of action. It was enviable, in a way, but he would have screamed if he¡¯d been trapped inside it. When he had assured himself that he wasn¡¯t going to find anyone else, Perry flew out from the city, to the tower. It was a tall, immaculately constructed building, relatively new, ugly and utilitarian, but clean. The upper levels were wrapped in the same gold the domes used, for unclear reasons. One of the Mettes was standing on a balcony, on the outside, and she waved him down. Perry wished that they did more to distinguish themselves, and he couldn¡¯t immediately tell which one this was. ¡°We¡¯re just about to start,¡± she said. ¡°Another hour, maybe two.¡± ¡°Is this safe?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not even a little,¡± said the Mette. ¡°We¡¯re going to evacuate, get readings remotely. In theory there are systems inside this thing that will allow us to prevent effluence from hitting the core, where the power will go. It¡¯s largely untested.¡± ¡°What was this thing going to be for?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Just a little treat tucked into the back pocket of the Global Command Authority,¡± said the Mette. ¡°The amount of funding they¡¯re working with is insane. The scope of some of these projects, especially projects with no real end in sight, no clear purpose. And for a society that¡¯s always trying to reel in science and engineering, trying to keep up a stasis.¡± ¡°They¡¯ve been on a war footing,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe that will change.¡± ¡°Scary to have a weapon like this,¡± said the Mette. ¡°Not that they conceived of it as a weapon, necessarily, but ¡­¡± ¡°But it could be one,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s high-powered.¡± The Mette nodded. ¡°Give me a ring when you need a lift out of here,¡± he said. ¡°The ship is nearby,¡± said the Mette. ¡°But thank you.¡± Again he had that feeling of wanting to be helpful, but being unable, so he simply drifted up and away, waiting for this great lantern to start up. Really he could just go to the ship, take off the armor, and kick back. Instead, he stayed there, hovering, waiting. It was a full hour later when the building started issuing an alarm. Perry watched as the Farfinder came down and extracted the skeleton crew inside the building, both those from the Farfinder and those who had almost surely been working there through the night. When they cleared out, there was no one but Perry around for at least thirty miles. ¡°Sir, we should clear out,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I want to see it,¡± said Perry. ¡°The effluence has a travel speed, we can outpace it.¡± ¡°We cannot measure it, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We would be relying on visual indicators only.¡± ¡°Send a message to the Farfinder,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ask for their expertise.¡± ¡°I have already taken the liberty of doing so,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Hella has advised that it is unlikely that you will suffer, so long as you retreat from the effluence as it becomes apparent.¡± ¡°You disagree then?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I think it is an undue risk,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Sir, you and this armor are too important for even a small risk. Nevermind that the worst case scenario is death, there are less worse cases that might nevertheless prove disastrous for far more people than yourself.¡± ¡°I want to see it,¡± said Perry. He wasn¡¯t in the mood for discussion. ¡°Computer, end conversation.¡± ¡°Very well, sir, if you insist,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°But I¡¯m afraid my warnings will get quite shrill if you tarry in your retreat.¡± Perry wasn¡¯t thrilled with Marchand insisting on getting the last word in, but his irritation was swept away when the lantern started working. It took some time to build up, then swept across the ground, practically crawling from his position in the sky, but still fast enough that a person wouldn¡¯t be able to outrun it. The effluence itself was invisible, but its effects were not. There were bursts of color through the surrounding trees and brush as changes took place, fires that flared up and died down, small explosions of glass and rising plumes of smoke. A dead bird appeared in the air in freefall, and a school of fish flopped uselessly on the ground. As the interior machinery of the building picked up speed, the changes happened faster, and the surrounding area rumbled. Trees fell, bits of them turned metal or stone, and more fires caught. One of the trees grew three times its size in an instant, falling over as its roots could no longer support it. It was more destructive, much faster than Perry had expected it to be, and he flew away, watching it the entire time. Raw, wild magic pulsed out into the world, destroying and mutating everything in its wake with no regard for the order of nature. There was something beautiful about it, in a way. Chapter 147 - Rebound They tested first, before using the device. They weren¡¯t idiots. The only argument against it was that they didn¡¯t necessarily have the resources to do it twice if something blew the first time ¡ª the building they had pushed to full power was burning immense amounts of fuel, and was shielded from the effluence as much as it could be, but could possibly weaken itself and fail. So the device, which they were still calling the ¡°wiggler¡±, was turned in the direction of an old woman who had stepped through the portal. The screens showing the shape of the skin of the universe were different now, not a sheet pulled over a bed of nails, but a warped geometric shape that was different on three screens, an attempt to show a higher-dimensional reality. Perry had no idea how to read it, and in practice, one of the Mettes had to offer interpretation most of the time. It was more accurate to whatever was going on in higher dimensions. ¡°We don¡¯t know where she¡¯s going to come out,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°We have, really, very little control here. This might just splatter her against the ground. Are we fine with doing that to a random little old lady?¡± ¡°It should be a portal, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean ¡­ it¡¯s a portal in, it¡¯s a portal out, right?¡± ¡°We have no idea,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°We¡¯re interfering with things that we only barely understand. There¡¯s a chance that this blows up the world.¡± ¡°A low chance,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°I mean, a chance based on our calculations being wrong, not a calculated chance.¡± ¡°Probably it¡¯s a portal,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°But maybe she¡¯ll just appear. And probably she¡¯ll appear where the portal originally was, but ¡­ also maybe somewhere else.¡± ¡°Somewhere else is underselling it,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°This is an Aleph-class universe. We¡¯re on one planet around one star. The distances are so enormous that she might end up somewhere we could never have a single hope of detecting her, most of them extremely deadly. Much more likely that than a splat.¡± ¡°That¡¯s assuming that we don¡¯t get the signal,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°A signal precedes the portal, which would at least give us a clue about where she is. We¡¯re set up to track that, at least.¡± ¡°What are the odds we¡¯re just killing someone?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Some random innocent?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Mette Prime. There was some silence in the room following that. ¡°Any one of these people would have given their life,¡± said Dirk. ¡°That¡¯s what they thought they were doing, going into that portal.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°They thought they were going to fight, to have their injuries and infirmities repaired. They thought they had a chance. They thought they were in control of their fate. That they had some agency.¡± ¡°Look,¡± said Dirk, running his fingers through his hair. ¡°You¡¯re not part of the culture, you don¡¯t understand how it is, how we treat things, and every conversation I¡¯ve had with you, I understand you better. You put yourself first. We don¡¯t do that.¡± ¡°If I put myself first, I¡¯d have been out of here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be waiting around with a ticking clock and my thumb up my ass.¡± ¡°I¡¯m making the call,¡± said Dirk. ¡°We¡¯re doing it. We¡¯re trying to snag her back. If she dies, she dies.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t have the authority to make the call,¡± said Hella. ¡°You¡¯re not the project lead here, and you¡¯re not captain of this ship.¡± She looked at Mette Prime. ¡°It can be your call or mine, and I¡¯m inclined to think that it¡¯s mine, unless you veto. I¡¯ve had blood on my hands before.¡± Mette Prime laughed. ¡°You think I haven¡¯t had blood on my hands?¡± So they went ahead with it. It was the work of many screens and output parameters that Perry had no particular knowledge of. For the test, he was placed far away from the Farfinder. This was mostly in case she came through into the shelf space and created some kind of calamity. It would be better to keep it confined to somewhere far away, where only Perry would be at risk. He wasn¡¯t even wearing the ring, it was carefully set down a mile away from him, where he could easily retrieve it if it didn¡¯t explode on them for whatever reason. If it did explode, it wasn¡¯t clear what they would do then, but exploding Fenilor seemed like it might be among the best outcomes. The test went ahead. There were no explosions. They didn¡¯t immediately have eyes on the woman, though their scanning algorithms were looking for her, so Perry flew over, picked up the ring, then opened the shelf space. She was standing there, looking confused. ¡°Did it not work?¡± she asked. She seemed crestfallen. ¡°It worked,¡± Perry told her. ¡°We¡¯re on the path to victory.¡± ~~~~ The shelf space was converted into a killbox. The only major consideration was that they didn¡¯t want to destroy the shelf, which meant hurriedly putting up backstops for the various weapons. Heavy guns were a given, and when they were finished, it looked almost comical to Perry, like some kind of Wile E. Coyote trap. They still weren¡¯t sure that it would kill Fenilor, so the shelf had also been flooded with a variety of toxic gasses, enough that when Perry went in there he needed time in decontamination after coming back out. They were racing through these preparations as fast as they could, putting teams on different approaches, and the hope was that Fenilor would be dead as a doornail the moment he stepped through. Still, Perry was feeling some anxiety. He¡¯d analyzed every glimpse of Fenilor¡¯s armory he¡¯d gotten. There were still tricks left in there, and while the options were limited ¡ª especially if Perry assumed that nothing was being held back when it could have won a fight ¡ª there were still known unknowns. He¡¯d watched over every fight they¡¯d had, trying to run them back, and even did some digital training with Marchand, drilling as much as he could. It would, technically, be possible to simply strand Fenilor in the shelf space, but that might lead to its destruction, and they didn¡¯t know what would happen after that. No, if the shelf space didn¡¯t kill Fenilor within the first half hour, it was unlikely to ever kill him, and he would have to be taken out. They had plans for that too, though it would depend on what state Fenilor emerged in and how much damage he could take. The impetus for keeping the shelf space was that with it, they could bring almost anything through, weaving whatever magic was inside it into the next world that Perry visited. It was a crucial piece of the puzzle if they were going to make a multiversal trade network happen. The Farfinder had been limited to whatever systems were in place, but with the shelf, Perry could bring along a piece of their engine, or the heart of their surveillance system, or anything else that might be vital in the next world. All it was going to take was killing Fenilor. Perry did his best to keep his heart from beating too fast. There was a good chance Fenilor would die seconds after he came through the portal. The danger would be past either way, with him back in this world and no particular portal out. The only path for Fenilor would be to kill both Mette and Nima, and it wasn¡¯t actually certain that would create a portal either. If the portal spat Fenilor back out, then maybe another thresholder would be summoned for him, but that wasn¡¯t guaranteed either. ¡°Status update?¡± asked Perry. The response was slow to come. ¡°We¡¯re still prepping,¡± said a Mette. ¡°Hold tight.¡± Perry clenched his teeth for just a moment before relaxing his muscles. There was a chance that he had enough power in his jaw now to crack a molar. What was it with engineers and poor estimations of how long something would take? Perry wasn¡¯t sure there was any other profession where people so routinely got their deadlines so fucked. Maybe it was simply that he¡¯d been sitting on the sidelines, watching what they were doing but unable to help. And now the time was near, and he was moments from needing his sword. Probably, anyway. ¡°We¡¯re a go,¡± said Mette. ¡°Estimate is ten seconds from this message.¡± They were on a slight delay. Marchand put up a counter in the corner of Perry¡¯s vision. The seconds seemed to crawl by. Then the countdown hit zero and went negative, and then the timer was counting up. ¡°Clean on our end,¡± said Mette. ¡°March will keep you informed,¡± said Perry. He waited five minutes. That was what they had agreed on. It was enough time for all their weapons to fire, for Fenilor to bleed out, for Fenilor to inhale the noxious mixture, for Fenilor to die. There was something inherently cowardly about it, trying to kill a man this way, but Perry had failed at single combat, and if Fenilor was let loose back into this world, it was anyone¡¯s guess what would happen. Perhaps Fenilor would murder everyone on the Farfinder, or turn the machinery of the culture to his own purposes, or kill projects he had no stomach for in the cradle. None of that would be as bad as blowing up the world, but the multiversal trade network and potential alliance was also hanging in the balance. ¡°Do you think he¡¯s dead?¡± asked Perry after four minutes and forty-five seconds. ¡°The agreed protocol was five minutes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I do admit that my own analysis is that this number was pulled from a hat.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He could wait longer ¡ª was, in fact, waiting longer, as the timer went past five minutes. ¡°But if he¡¯s not dead, then we don¡¯t want to give him time to regenerate or prepare.¡± ¡°Which we¡¯re doing now, sir,¡± said Marchand. The timer pulsed red. Perry opened a small connection to the shelf space for exactly three seconds, timed by Marchand, then snapped it shut again. ¡°Data review,¡± said Perry, pointlessly, because Marchand was already doing it. They didn¡¯t have a way to transfer information out of the shelf space when it was closed, but they had studded the interior with cameras and sensors, along with a heavy dusting of nanites. Marchand was using all of it to get a reconstruction of what had happened five minutes ago. The portal had appeared, Fenilor had stepped out, and he¡¯d immediately been shot from six different directions. He¡¯d moved fast, since he¡¯d gone through the portal on guard, but he¡¯d been hit hard, once in the shoulder and the other time in the leg. Fenilor had been in the same ceramic shard armor he¡¯d been in before ¡ª no time at all had passed from Fenilor¡¯s perspective ¡ª and it had simply exploded outward from the force of the heavy guns. Fenilor had lost his right arm and most of that shoulder, and yet he raced forward across the floor of the shelf space, one leg flopping slightly, finding a place out of the line of fire even as the auto-targeting systems attempted to track him. The shot to the leg seemed like more of a glancing blow. Fenilor took in a deep breath as he switched armors, and immediately began coughing, which stopped as soon as the armor swapped into place around him. He had transformed, and was now made of some kind of goop, with a simple breastplate around him. His right arm was still gone. The separated piece of it lay on the floor, with shards of ceramic around it, their binding energy completely dispersed, but a good portion of the arm had been vaporized or spread around in smaller chunks. Fenilor had time to take stock of his situation. He hadn¡¯t immediately died. He was a slime now, the vague shape of a one-armed man in a breastplate. If the slime form respired, it wasn¡¯t showing it, which meant that the toxins were lingering uselessly in the air. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Skip ahead.¡± Fenilor went to the guns, taking advantage of their blind spots, and disabled them one by one with the stroke of a sword made of razor-thin brass. Then he sat, waiting, at the entrance to the shelf space. Most of the five minutes had been that, the waiting, sword in hand. ¡°Double fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°How long shall we give it, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°At some point, he¡¯ll attempt to break free from the impromptu prison.¡± The plan was to go immediately, to fight to the death and hopefully win this time. The circumstances were different, better, but the contingencies that followed Fenilor living would depend on how he lived. This wasn¡¯t the worst case scenario, where Fenilor came out without a scratch. That Fenilor hadn¡¯t switched from the goo form was promising, since it was an active defense that deprived him of others. The only question was whether it was better to pull him out or fight inside the shelf. Marchand was fully sealed up, and oxygen wouldn¡¯t be a problem on the timescales a fight would last for. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°Two stage fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°We fight inside, where he¡¯ll have to keep his mouth shut, then we move the fight outside if we can¡¯t end things. That¡¯s the plan.¡± ¡°Very good sir,¡± replied Marchand. Perry opened the shelf space just a wink, a hole large enough to see through, and nearly got blasted in the face with one of the guns. Fenilor had taken it from its mounting and turned it around, aiming it straight at the door, and it was only through superior reflexes that Perry was able to turn to the side and avoid the oversized bullet. Perry slipped inside, and the modified gun clicked again, out of ammo. Fenilor cast it aside, summoned a weapon, and their blades met. Fenilor¡¯s longsword wasn¡¯t one that Perry had seen before, but it was clearly drawing something from the air. Particulates clung to it, the toxins and poisons, and they were building up slowly even as Perry watched. No doubt it would be a terrible hit to take, but if its purpose was purifying the air, then it likely wasn¡¯t sharp enough to cut through metal. Perry was on the offensive. From Fenilor¡¯s perspective he had just finished their fight and was rolling straight into the next one with five minutes between them, missing an arm and coughing on poison, which meant there was never going to be a more perfect moment. Perry¡¯s sword cut cleanly through the goo, barely slowing down, but the wound resealed afterward, like a knife through soup. Perry blocked a thrust toward his chest, then attacked again, hitting the armor this time. He was rewarded with a deep gouge in the metal, and brought his sword down a second time, hammering with all the fury he felt, putting every ounce of power into his sword arm. When Fenilor tried to sneak a hit in, Perry simply grabbed the sword by its hilt. His hand went through Fenilor¡¯s oozing pseudopod, so their limbs were overlapping, but Perry was far, far stronger, at least against an ooze. Fenilor¡¯s pseudopod slipped away from the sword and snaked out to the side as the armor he was wearing took hit after hit, dents and gouges that were threatening to rip the breastplate apart. When the pseudopod was far enough away, the ghostly array of weapons appeared, and before Fenilor could select one, Perry punched forward, splashing the ooze and temporarily removing the arm. The ghostly armory disappeared, and Perry dropped both swords to the ground, reaching forward to stick his fingers into a hole he¡¯d gouged into Fenilor¡¯s armor. The breastplate twisted and ripped as Perry put his full effort into widening the hole, and at a critical moment it split in two, all structural integrity lost. Perry had been hoping that Fenilor would be killed outright by the loss of the armor, but he just transformed back into an elf, one that was naked on the floor, bleeding from one shoulder and with an arm that looked slightly deformed. The leg that had taken the hit was violently red on the inner thigh. Fenilor took an involuntary breath, coughed once, then was in another armor, this one the skintight number he¡¯d been wearing when he attacked the Farfinder. The sleeve of the right arm flopped loosely. Perry went in and got kicked in the chest for it. It did no damage, but it was enough for Fenilor to push himself away, and he got to his feet with a little half-flip, ending with a small amount of space between them. Fenilor¡¯s back was to an earthen embankment they¡¯d set up to catch bullets. The shoulder-gun rose and fired two of what Perry had started to think of as courtesy rounds, probing shots to test that the armor was actually bullet-proof. This time, the courtesy shot to the chest was rewarded with a spray of blood as Fenilor doubled over. He switched armors in an instant, grabbing the next one with no seeming thought, and this one was another that Perry had seen before, down in the mine, jagged and triangular, with overlapping plates. The pieces that would have covered the left arm simply fell to the ground and lay there, unmoving. A new weapon appeared in Fenilor¡¯s left hand, which seemed to be a flail without the stick. The head was as large as a soccer ball, and Fenilor whipped it around at speed, striking Perry squarely in the chest, sending him backward. Perry was ready for the flail head to come at him again, but when he¡¯d regained his bearings, he realized that Fenilor had a different target: he was attacking the wall of the shelf space. Perry raced forward and stopped the weapon before it could make a second strike against the wall, but significant damage had been done already. What lay beyond the walls of the shelf space was anyone¡¯s guess, but the risk of the whole thing collapsing was very real. Whether that would throw them out or explode the interior was something Perry would try to avoid finding out. Fenilor spun the ball around his head again, moving away from the wall he¡¯d been smashing, leaving Perry to chase. Fenilor was slower, and working with only one hand and a slight limp, but he was smashing the walls with the kind of vigor a man missing an arm shouldn¡¯t have had. With every step that Fenilor took, more blood was splashing down onto the ground. He swung the shaftless flail around again, smashing repeatedly into the walls, forcing Perry to race forward and tackle him. They grappled on the ground, then Fenilor pushed Perry away with a burst of strength, and before Perry could get back in, the armor changed again. The courtesy shots were fired quickly, and passed through the emerald green plate armor with wisps of smoke. Perry¡¯s sword did the same, and then Fenilor was back to smashing at the walls with the flail, making deeper and deeper craters with every swing of the heavy head. Perry tried to grab at Fenilor, but his hands simply went straight through, so the only option left was to grab the chain of the flail ¡ª or whatever weapon it actually was ¡ª and pull. That briefly put them into a tug-of-war, with Perry the stronger of the two, and he managed to bring Fenilor through the wreckage of the guns. They were close to the entrance of the shelf space, and Perry had a decision to make, which didn¡¯t take all that much deciding. Fenilor was injured and maybe dying, but he could probably destroy the shelf space before that happened. Perry positioned himself at the entrance to the shelf space, then opened it up. Fenilor surprised him by sprinting straight through, passing entirely through Perry on his way out. He¡¯d let go of the chain they¡¯d been fighting over, and Perry stumbled for a moment, then followed right after Fenilor. Perry had positioned himself carefully before the plan went through. They had gone through the options, weighing the pros and cons of each, and so when the wiggler was activated, Perry was wearing the ring on the moon. Fenilor was on his knees, gasping noiselessly, and Perry advanced on him, raising his sword for another strike. Fenilor switched armors, back to the skintight one with the bubble helmet, and Marchand fired the shoulder gun again without asking, putting another bullet hole in it. Blood sprayed up, falling in slow motion under the reduced gravity, and Perry¡¯s sword came down. The armor was swapped again at the last second to something thick and bulbous, deflecting the strike, and Fenilor rolled to the side. His right sleeve was still empty and flopping uselessly, but he climbed to his feet, and got yet another weapon from his storage, this one an oversized sword that would have been impossible to wield one-handed if they hadn¡¯t been under lunar gravity. Perry had chosen the moon for a few reasons. The lack of atmosphere was one of them, because it limited which armors Fenilor could wear. The moonlight was another ¡ª it was bathing him, providing a constant influx of energy. He bounded forward and slipped beneath the huge swing of the mighty sword. He was still half-hoping that somewhere beneath the armor, Fenilor was dying of various poisons, but the fight was still going on. Perry aimed for the helmet using the pommel of his sword, and it simply bonked off, sending Fenilor away. The sword touched down against the ground just once, and Fenilor spun up into the air, landing deftly on his feet. He held the sword out behind him, prepared for a strike. Perry didn¡¯t want to oblige, but Fenilor¡¯s abilities were still largely unknown. Perry had spent the past six hours practicing lunar combat. He leapt forward, letting his momentum carry him. In his imagination, lunar combat would be in slow motion, but that was just the influence of the Apollo missions. The low gravity only slowed down the speed of a fall, nothing else, and the lack of air meant there was less drag. Perry¡¯s sword let him hit the ground again at speed, faster than falling, which meant that lunar combat was quick and frenetic, at least in theory. Fenilor swung the sword around as Perry came in, and their swords met for just a moment, enough for the full force of the heavy blade to send Perry off his angle. He landed on the ground and rushed back, meeting another sword strike with his feet better planted this time. He felt servos whine as he tried to keep his place, but Fenilor ¡ª one-handed ¡ª was bringing an incredible amount of power to bear. Perry slipped below the blade, which noiselessly passed over his head, and kicked Fenilor squarely between the legs. This wasn¡¯t a move to hurt him, it was only meant to launch him. Under the moon¡¯s reduced gravity, a fall lasted much longer, and with the planted power that Perry had put behind him, Fenilor would be in the air for a while. It was clear that Perry needed more power, but thankfully, more power was in orbit. ¡°Call in the strike,¡± said Perry. A red reticle instantly appeared on the lunar surface, a giant UI element overlaying the regolith. It seemed smaller now that they were actually fighting each other, no larger than the width of a minivan. A timer appeared as part of Perry¡¯s HUD, but it was approximate. The shell wouldn¡¯t have actually been fired yet, and the reticle was also just a guess until it was in transit. Perry got beneath Fenilor as he fell, and their swords clashed again, with Perry using his footing to push Fenilor upward again. The locking of their blades strained Perry¡¯s legs and the metal of the power armor, but with Fenilor in the air, every swipe of the sword required conservation of angular momentum. Fenilor couldn¡¯t swing the huge blade without also spinning himself. They played what Perry could only describe as keepy-uppies for three consecutive clashes. The HUD had updated with a correct time, and the targeting reticle was nailed in place as part of augmented reality. He had a time and a place, he only had to maneuver Fenilor there. It was almost predictable that Fenilor would change armors at just the wrong moment. The heavy armor was replaced by something nimble and light, almost gossamer. The iridescent patterns changed around the chest in a way that suggested a bra, and suggested that it might have once been meant for a woman. Whatever diaphanous material it was made from, there was something like wings coming from the back of it, and even without air, it let Fenilor glide. He landed like a moth on the ground, where he switched armors again. The bullets fired at him had either missed or done nothing. This time it was just a breastplate, but the moment it was in place, bits of the moon came up to surround him. The gun fired three times as he moved, hitting twice, once in the leg. The body beneath the armor was heavily wounded, dripping blood, but it was all covered in white rock before Perry could get close enough to strike. The missing arm was replaced by rock as well, an animate limb formed from chunks of regolith. No sign of Fenilor remained, not even his face, which had been covered first. Fenilor was thirty feet from the reticle. There were forty-five seconds left. Perry went for it, though he was doubtful of his ability to move that much rock. The huge sword, which hadn¡¯t been swapped out, swung around to meet him, but he slipped beneath it by forcing himself low to the ground, and then let himself be pushed aside by the arm of rock when it came around to him. Perry went at Fenilor again, trying to kick him, and Fenilor moved out of the way, the lumbering rock around him moving at frightening speed. It was thick enough that there was no way that a sword could penetrate it, but it was also made of spare rocks that had been mashed together, which meant that maybe a sword could simply slip through. Perry tried twice, and Fenilor brought the huge sword up to block, using it more like a shield. With a flick of the wrist, Fenilor struck Perry in the chest, and without a wind up, it merely sent Perry backward. Twenty seconds remained on the counter. It wasn¡¯t clear how Fenilor was seeing with his eyes covered. Perry used the sword to lift himself up from the ground, more on a hunch than anything else ¡ª the armor was made of stone, so the better not to touch stone. Fenilor responded by firing off the rocks. They left his body all at once, zooming away in all directions, and Perry brought his arm up to protect his face, then charged forward even as Marchand was cataloging minor damage. He struck Fenilor just as more rocks were rising up to cover the elf¡¯s body, and pushed him backward. In the lunar gravity, it took him some time to find his footing, and when he was back in a fighting stance, he was still ten feet away from where the reticle was now flashing. Perry ran forward again, keeping low to the ground, forced down by the sword. He was running at nearly a crouch, and closed the distance in an instant. Overhead, the shell was now visible to Marchand¡¯s cameras and being tracked in red. Perry lifted off the ground at the last moment, hoping that Fenilor would be blind to him, then landed half a foot before they collided. He got beneath the rock armor and heaved with all his might, succeeding only because of the lunar gravity. Fenilor hit him across the back in the process, the first full hit from the massive sword, and Perry was pushed down into the ground. When he got up, Fenilor was standing almost directly on the reticle. There were five seconds left, and Perry closed in, throwing his sword at Fenilor, making himself a target, anything to keep him in one spot. He took a hit to his arm that nearly severed it, but it kept Fenilor engaged. When the timer reached one second, Perry zoomed backward, flying after the sword. The impact would have been deafening if there had been an atmosphere, but there was only a brief, understated flash of light. The slug of metal was large, but it had no explosives in it, only tiny thrusters on the sides to correct its trajectory. When Perry turned back to see whether it had worked, the various pieces of Fenilor had not yet hit the ground. ¡°Damage assessment,¡± said Perry. ¡°You or him, sir?¡± asked Marchand. Perry paused. He¡¯d meant Fenilor, but Fenilor had been ripped apart. There was still the possibility of one last trick, a bit of some extra spell hidden away, but with every passing second it seemed less likely. Maybe there was a phylactery somewhere, who could really say for certain, but Perry slowly dropped his guard. ¡°I wasn¡¯t being droll, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I really was unclear on whether you meant for him or for us.¡± There was pain across Perry¡¯s back and in his left arm, which had been badly damaged in the final seconds. ¡°Damage assessment for us,¡± said Perry. Marchand listed off the issues, but they were on the moon, and it wouldn¡¯t take Perry long to collect lunar energy. Already minor repairs were being made by the outflow of power, though a part of Perry still wondered whether he should be refilling his depleted reserves instead. It hadn¡¯t been a fair fight, not even remotely. Fenilor had been severely injured, poisoned, then placed in an environment without air, limiting which armors he could use. The win felt hollow. ¡°Shall I proceed to a damage assessment of Fenilor?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°He¡¯s dead,¡± said Perry. ¡°Quite, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Only,¡± Perry began. But just as he said it, a portal appeared in front of him, not more than three feet away. He watched it closely for a moment. That was final confirmation. ¡°I¡¯ve communicated our circumstances to the Farfinder,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Shall I assume we¡¯re shortly to make our exit from this world?¡± ¡°We need to restock the shelf,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need to clean it out too.¡± His voice didn¡¯t sound quite right. ¡°You seem perturbed, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I killed a man,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or an elf, I guess. Give me a moment.¡± He tightened his lips and looked out at the carnage. The portal hung there. It was in an annoying spot. A long silence followed. An icon showed that there was an incoming communication from Mette, and he ignored it. It wasn¡¯t the killing that had gotten Perry, it was the character of it. Perry had lost against Fenilor, and he¡¯d had almost no influence on whether the rematch would happen. His life had been at risk, there was a good possibility that he could have lost the rematch somehow, depending on the precise nature of the bag of tricks Fenilor was using ¡­ but it hadn¡¯t been fair. Why was it important that it was fair? The day had been saved, the world had been won. It was a victory. ¡°I suppose it¡¯s ironic, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What is?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It was the culture he helped create that defeated him,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We would never have been able to stop him without them. He defected, and was punished for it. From what we know of thresholders, this might have been the first time a fight was ever won because the people of that world decided it would be so.¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°I apologize for my philosophical musings, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s fine. You knew what I was thinking?¡± ¡°I had a vague intuition, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I cannot say that anything I¡¯ve said to you might actually help your mindset.¡± ¡°Not really, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°Teamwork shouldn¡¯t feel this ¡­ bad.¡± He hadn¡¯t even gotten the killing blow, that had been from the Farfinder. ¡°We¡¯re being hailed again, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve been giving noncommittal answers, but it would be better to communicate your plans.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. He kept looking at the portal. ¡°Whatever is going on in my brain, we have a team now. We have partners. I¡¯ll work on my own shit later.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure you will, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Shall I put Mette through?¡± Perry nodded. She, at least, was excited that everything had gone according to plan. Chapter 148 - The Charts Unfolded ¡°We did it!¡± shouted Eggy 6 as Perry stepped back aboard the Farfinder. ¡°We have a time limit to get me out of here,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need the shelf space cleaned out, then restocked, and a concrete plan on what to bring through to the next world.¡± He¡¯d had to go through decontamination, and the shelf space would need that done too, which was going to be a major pain in the ass. The toxic chemicals had that as a drawback, which had seemed minor then and major now. The barrier between the shelf and the real world didn¡¯t particularly like to let air out, and so the best method was to simply drown the entire place yet again, causing the pressure differential to get high enough. Mopping out the place was becoming a recurring theme. That was already on the list of prep work. ¡°On it, boss,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°We¡¯ve been working the plans while you were studying the blade.¡± He¡¯d taught her that meme by accident, and immediately regretted it. Perry made his way to the control room, where Hella and Mette Prime were sitting with Dirk. ¡°Mission accomplished,¡± said Hella by way of greeting. ¡°World saved. We¡¯re on the lookout for any rogue spikes, but I doubt that we¡¯ll see any. We¡¯re on to phase two, getting you out of here, followed by phase three, getting us out of here.¡± ¡°The shelf needs to be cleaned,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, technically it can be done in the next world, but ¡ª¡± ¡°But we don¡¯t know what conditions we¡¯ll face,¡± said Hella with a nod. ¡°How is aiming going?¡± asked Perry, looking over at Mette Prime. ¡°Er,¡± she said. ¡°In theory, if you step through the portal within the next cycle, we¡¯ll still have time left to get it working. You¡¯ll be in stasis, just like Fenilor was. We should have a month or two for more research and development. The spike dispersal rates are all over the place though, so ¡­ it¡¯s difficult to say. We thankfully didn¡¯t fry the megalantern when we brought Fenilor back.¡± ¡°And because of the way the punch drive works, we should be hot on your tail,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s not fully ready either, but it¡¯s close, and in theory we could go today if we really had to.¡± ¡°Who¡¯s on the roster?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯ll depend on where we¡¯re at a month from now,¡± said Hella. ¡°Most of the Mettes are staying,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°Some of the Eggys too. It¡¯s dangerous out there, and here there¡¯s a promise of interesting problems with the resources to investigate and solve them. Besides that, they won¡¯t be stuck on this world forever when the Farfinder leaves. We¡¯ll get working drives here, it¡¯s only a matter of time. We have all the resources of the culture.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been meaning to bring that up,¡± said Dirk, rubbing the back of his neck. ¡°It¡¯s not clear that the GCA is going to back you, not as much as they have been.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Mette Prime. Her hands tightened into fists without her seeming knowledge. ¡°Why not?¡± ¡°Because we displaced a hell of a lot of people,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Because it¡¯s new and innovative, with outsized impact on the culture. Because the long war against the monarchists is essentially over, and we want to stabilize before we start throwing resources at expanding to other worlds. Most people don¡¯t even know about the other worlds. Most people didn¡¯t know that there was a danger. There are just about a dozen things that need to filter out to the public, so the symboulions can make informed decisions about what¡¯s going to happen. The GCA only exists because there¡¯s a will for them to exist. There¡¯s a chance that some piece of it gets dissolved entirely. That, unfortunately, is the culture.¡± ¡°The hell,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re telling us this now?¡± ¡°It wasn¡¯t relevant to what we were doing before,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I¡¯ve been dictating what I could, calling in favors, borrowing authority. I¡¯m letting you know, now, that at the very least the crisis passing means that we can¡¯t just pull in people from wherever we feel like. It¡¯s not a buffet anymore.¡± ¡°It¡¯s all voluntary, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They should be coming to help of their own accord, and it¡¯s not the culture to stop them. We can set up our own science city, if we want to, we can ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s not the culture to set up your own city where anything goes. The world is a united place, that¡¯s the culture, as well as reality, that was the ideological impetus for the GCA in the first place. You can¡¯t just drain every other place of its engineers, you can¡¯t build new technologies, a fleet of ships that are going to take people to other worlds, anything like that. Not without input.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. He could see that it was true. They hadn¡¯t gotten a lot of pushback from the culture, but they¡¯d been working through Dirk, and Dirk had been massaging both sides, trying to get everything working in the near term. Now, Dirk¡¯s sights were set much further out. ¡°Where does that leave us?¡± ¡°Depends on how much I can do,¡± said Dirk. ¡°The Global Command Authority is necessary for the global culture to function, but they¡¯re also a release valve for high-achieving people. Having a place to send off discontented people who might otherwise form a rebellion, or a cultural fracture ¡­ it¡¯s never been necessary before, there has always been somewhere for them to go, a way for them to fit in. But those aren¡¯t the sorts of people we want to be sending on missions, not unless they¡¯re the people who want to build a house but just don¡¯t want to live in it.¡± ¡°We should be able to finish work on the Farfinder either way,¡± said Hella. ¡°But you understand it puts a serious crimp in our plans for a multiversal trade network if the GCA has decided that they¡¯re not participating. We¡¯re operating under the assumption that Earth 2 and Markat are going to mutually benefit, if we can point them at each other, if we can make the graph into a circle.¡± ¡°I do understand that,¡± said Dirk. He placed a hand on his chest. ¡°I¡¯m on your side here.¡± ¡°Whatever,¡± said Perry. ¡°We have limited time to get me ready, and after that, it¡¯s going to be a political fight that I¡¯m not here for. So let¡¯s focus on the next twenty-four hours.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°We¡¯re going to use masks to look through everything you have on you, make some determinations about which magics to bring through, then strip down absolutely everything that¡¯s not necessary for the mission or your success. Either we correctly point you at Earth 2, or you end up somewhere else, but either way we don¡¯t want to strain the skin of this universe more than we have to. It¡¯s seen enough traffic.¡± ¡°Understood,¡± said Perry. ¡°The armor, the nanites, the sword, lycanthropy, second sphere, the shelf itself ¡­ the masks are strong, so I¡¯d take those too.¡± He considered for a moment. ¡°Fenilor left behind Implements and other things. His armory is locked off, but there are things I could take.¡± ¡°How many weapons do you need?¡± asked Mette Prime. ¡°I mean, realistically.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll take an inventory of what¡¯s available,¡± said Perry. ¡°But you¡¯re right, there¡¯s reason to be cautious. Just ¡­ maybe not as cautious as you¡¯re thinking.¡± ¡°I¡¯m thinking we should be extremely cautious,¡± said Hella. She folded her arms across her chest. ¡°We¡¯ll spend time running numbers, but they¡¯re guesses. It would be darkly funny if you killed everyone in the world by pushing through with a treasure trove, but I¡¯m aiming for operational efficiency, not humor.¡± ¡°Understood,¡± said Perry. The meeting went long after that, but there wasn''t much that was needed from Perry. He would help clean out the shelf, almost certainly by dunking it in the ocean and then doing his best to dry it out, but from prior experience, that was a whole process. They would carefully select which magics they would bring with them, which would include everything that Perry needed, along with everything that the Farfinder needed for continued operations when they arrived. When they were done, and everyone was filtering out, Mette Prime stopped him. ¡°I¡¯m not coming with you,¡± she said. ¡°Okay?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I hadn¡¯t assumed that you would. You can come via the Farfinder later. In theory that will sever the thresholder link, and if we find out that it doesn¡¯t, that¡¯s also useful information.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t care at all about being in a new world all on your own?¡± asked Mette Prime. ¡°We just got done hypothesizing that the Farfinder would be right on my heels,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°It¡¯s a range. We have samples to look at, all the people that went through, and some of them went through fast. If you go through fast ¡­ I mean, we might be a long time following after. A month. More.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Well, if that happens ¡­ it happens.¡± Mette Prime frowned at him. ¡°We were supposed to be partners,¡± she said. ¡°We are partners,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re more a partner than anyone, aside from maybe Kes. And you¡¯re the one saying that you aren¡¯t going to come with me.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not coming with you because we still don¡¯t know about the interaction,¡± said Mette Prime. She was making direct eye contact, and it was almost like she was trying to intimidate him, except there was a notable height difference. ¡°I don¡¯t want to be a thresholder. I¡¯ve seen enough of it. It doesn¡¯t play to my skillsets. But you should have asked me about that, should have wondered, not just accepted it.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m trying to accept that I¡¯m saying goodbye to this world. I had kind of thought that it wouldn¡¯t happen, and now here we are. I value you, of course I do, but it¡¯s been just me for a long time now, and I¡¯m used to the goodbyes. I mean, there¡¯s always Marchand, but you know what I mean.¡± It was a lie. That whole time aboard the Natrix, that hadn¡¯t been ¡®just him¡¯. He waited for her to call him on it, but she didn¡¯t. ¡°You want to be alone,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Have I told you the shitty thing about being on Earth?¡± ¡°You¡¯ve told me many shitty things,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°I don¡¯t know which you¡¯re thinking about.¡± ¡°The thing about Earth was ¡­ there were eight billion people. My country had, I don¡¯t know, 330 million of them. And there was just nothing that I could do that would make a difference in the scheme of things.¡± He sighed. ¡°And now it¡¯s like I¡¯m back there, there¡¯s this sense of alienation, I guess, like you¡¯re all building these ships that are going to travel the multiverse, and establish a trade network with other worlds, and there will be diplomacy, and none of it is going to involve me in any really substantial way. In fact, the Farfinder would be better off following virtually anyone else, someone without any wins, except that the ring allows them to backdoor some physics. And I could simply give the ring to someone else, for that matter.¡± ¡°Are you offering to do that?¡± asked Mette Prime. ¡°Am I ¡­ no,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ no. I still want to reach Earth 2, I want to resurrect Richter, I can bring enough magic with me to do that, I think, and with the Farfinder I can stop being a thresholder, probably.¡± ¡°Still needs testing,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you¡¯d do that?¡± she asked. ¡°You¡¯d resurrect this mythical woman and then just ¡­ stop? In a world that¡¯s basically a slightly better version of the one you left?¡± Perry stared at her. ¡°Sure,¡± he said. ¡°Bullshit,¡± said Mette Prime. She folded her arms. ¡°I have a lot of work to do,¡± said Perry. He moved past her, and she made no move to stop him. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ~~~~ Fenilor had left weapons behind. Most of them weren¡¯t to Perry¡¯s satisfaction. The flail thing was incredibly difficult to use, and in his first attempt, Perry hit himself in the chest and did a fair amount of damage to the power armor. It was difficult to get it to go where he wanted it to go, and even the few times he managed it, it wasn¡¯t quick to retrieve. The range wasn¡¯t even that good, compared to his sword, and was definitely far worse than his gun. The time knife, the one that had stopped him in his tracks when he¡¯d lost against Fenilor, was better, but in practice it was mostly good against someone who was already immobilized, and could only slow down someone who was moving quickly. That meant that its strike was mostly useful for cutting someone like a normal knife, but Perry had to admit that there was at least some utility to it. The giant sword that Fenilor had been using on the moon had also been left behind. It was enormous but surprisingly simple to use, and after ten minutes Perry saw how he might adapt to it. It wasn¡¯t special though, and he couldn¡¯t lug it around ¡ª it would have to stay in the shelf ¡ª and while it could cut through steel with enough power put behind it, it would also be nearly useless in any other circumstance but a flat field. He wished that he¡¯d been able to keep the spear from breaking. That had been a good weapon. The armors were similarly a bust, ruined in a way that wasn¡¯t materially beyond repair, but had sapped them of whatever magic they¡¯d once had. The armor that had turned Fenilor into a blob still registered as magical under the right mask, faintly off-gassing something, but it didn¡¯t seem likely that it would ever function again, given that it belonged to its own unique class. It felt like the only get from this world, aside from the Farfinder and everything they could bring, would be the masks. Those were good, undeniably, but they didn¡¯t feel like enough. They didn¡¯t feel like they fundamentally transformed Perry¡¯s methods of operation, not like the shelf did, not like second sphere. Perhaps that was the eventual fate of all thresholders, doomed to eventually hit a world that didn¡¯t offer quite enough. Fenilor had probably felt that way sometimes, when a new thresholder dropped in and just had a fancy sword that got added to the armory, never to be used again. There were other options though, some of them attractive. Markat had many magics, after all, and while the focus of the science cities had been on broadly useable ones that would improve society rather than those that could provide individuals with power, they had more than a few tricks. ¡°From my understanding, everything we pack in with you raises the risk that the entire universe collapses,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Is that right?¡± ¡°From what the nerds tell me, basically, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Frankly, I¡¯m not sure we should even let you go,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Obviously there are some quibbles to make about what it means in practical terms,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a probability curve, there¡¯s all kinds of things we don¡¯t know, Fenilor was going to leave with an enormous cache of materials from every opponent he had ever fought, and we know for a fact that a universe can survive substantially more damage than this one has taken.¡± ¡°We actually don¡¯t know that,¡± said Eggy 6, who was standing by them. ¡°There have been high-energy fights,¡± said Perry. ¡°One of the first worlds I went to had a whole history of thresholders. It¡¯s not uncommon. We¡¯re dealing with a great many punches.¡± ¡°Most of our math is based on what appear to be observed instabilities,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°We haven¡¯t observed those instabilities elsewhere, not to this magnitude. This world might literally be the most damaged world of any of them.¡± ¡°You should only be taking what you absolutely need,¡± said Dirk. It rankled Perry, maybe because he agreed with it. So in the end, he didn¡¯t go with a lantern and he wasn¡¯t given a robot. Both would have had logistical issues, but a lantern in particular with a stash of fuels for it and an arrangement of lenses might have allowed for production of food, air, water, and everything else Perry might need in a dead and barren world. But of course, having those things would make a dead and barren world more likely, so it couldn¡¯t even be said to be a great trade-off. Perry didn¡¯t want to get blue-shelled. Once the shelf space was cleaned out, Perry filled it back up again, this time with a stockpile of ammunition, a cache of food and water, a collection of clothes that might help him blend in with whatever locals he found, a variety of mundane tools, a stack of cellphones and hand chargers, and all the individual components whose magic would, in theory, allow the minimum viable Farfinder to succeed. He¡¯d be bringing through all of his own powers as well, which meant only two gadgets were deemed ¡®necessary¡¯: one that would allow their preferred engines to function and another that allowed their extradimensional space. ¡°We unfortunately don¡¯t know whether the Grand Spell penalizes you for having our help,¡± said Hella. ¡°My guess is that it does, but it could well be a coincidence that Fenilor got aboard, my crew were murdered, and half the ship was destroyed.¡± He lips were thin. She didn¡¯t talk about the crew often. ¡°Obviously we don¡¯t want to put ourselves in the line of fire in the next world any more than we did in this one, but the only way to test it is to see whether you pull through on your own.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll be in touch once I¡¯m through, if we arrive essentially concurrently. I¡¯ll hold off on having your help for as long as possible.¡± ¡°If the world is small enough, we might not be able to hide,¡± said Hella. ¡°The smallest of worlds doesn¡¯t have room for much. They can be the size of a town. They can be claustrophobic.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no way for me to send a signal?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No way to tell you what it¡¯s like, help you prep?¡± ¡°Not yet,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°Soon!¡± ¡°Probably not,¡± said one of the Mettes. ¡°It¡¯s a miracle that one way travel through the punch works, and we can¡¯t even send a signal, it has to be an entire structure with a punch drive, which we can¡¯t even shrink down that much. Ship building is going to be rough.¡± The conversations seemed to be endless, and part of it was that Perry was at the center of a concerted effort not to fuck things up too badly. They were trying to give Perry ¡°soft¡± advantages, those that could be used to win over the locals, whoever they might be. Perry had already started up a flowchart during the interminable wait for the wiggler to be finished. The flowchart was useless, but he had an entire catalog of worlds to look through, every reading the Farfinder had ever taken, along with all the more speculative worlds mentioned at any point by another thresholder. It was impossible to make a concrete plan, but it was very possible to plan for lots of contingencies. It was while he was working on the flowchart that he¡¯d actually felt some spark of usefulness, and now that the hour was near, it was coming back in full force. Maybe someone else could have made a better plan, but they wouldn¡¯t be there, they wouldn¡¯t be making the decisions, they wouldn¡¯t be carrying it all out. It would just be Perry, at least for the first bit of it, and probably for most of what came after. He wouldn¡¯t be going to a fucked up world like this one, he would be going to a different place, one where a single man could make a difference, where there would be a fair fight. Most likely the flowchart was going out the window as soon as he arrived. Maybe he¡¯d have a fight like Fenilor just had, one where the enemy was well and truly prepared. Signal tracking was possible, it had happened across a number of worlds now. The only reason to think that he wouldn¡¯t get shot coming out of a portal was that the Grand Spell seemed to bias in favor of a fair fight, though this world had shaken his confidence. And it was also possible that in the time he was in stasis, the days or months before the other end of the portal set him somewhere, they would figure the whole thing out, crack the code, and send him straight to Earth 2. Once there, there would likely be another thresholder to worry about, but it was possible that they would solve that too. It was possible that the whole Grand Spell would unravel while he was in stasis. Perry went over everything he was going to carry with him. It was important, just in case the shelf space failed for whatever reason. An Eggy had talked about interference, and the ways in which basic things sometimes failed. It could happen with magic too, though that was more rare. If the shelf failed, he didn¡¯t want to be left with nothing. ¡°Limited loadout,¡± said Kes, who wandered in while Perry was preparing. ¡°Not sure how to feel about that.¡± ¡°I agree, in principle, that it¡¯s necessary,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d like them to get some hard numbers, but it¡¯s going to be easier to have hard numbers once I¡¯m gone.¡± He turned to look at his clone. ¡°This is your chance to leave too.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°To become a thresholder.¡± He clucked his tongue. ¡°I considered it.¡± ¡°And?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not for you?¡± ¡°I¡¯m staying here,¡± said Kes. ¡°Dirk has a place for me. From what I can tell, he aims to use me as a bloodhound.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not even going aboard the Farfinder?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I might change my mind,¡± said Kes. ¡°We do that, sometimes. We can be swayed by the right words in our ear. But the plan is to stay on a planet that at least has its shit together. I¡¯ve always been a fan of libraries. And there¡¯s free school here, I can go back to being a grad student if I really want to.¡± He gave a small smile. ¡°I don¡¯t think we¡¯re that diverged,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t buy that this is what you want, frankly.¡± ¡°I think having a tenth the advantages you do really puts me off traveling the many worlds,¡± said Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t have full control of the wolf yet. There¡¯s a good chance that I would kill someone. There¡¯s a good chance that it would become the impetus for an entire protracted war with another thresholder.¡± ¡°True,¡± said Perry. There was no use denying it, and besides, it wasn¡¯t even really his place to give advice. ¡°I think you won¡¯t find happiness here.¡± ¡°Maybe not,¡± said Kes. ¡°Do you think you¡¯ll find happiness out there?¡± ¡°We¡¯re going to revive Richter,¡± said Perry. ¡°Eventually, anyway. We¡¯re closer than we¡¯ve ever been.¡± ¡°I hope that works out,¡± said Kes. He shifted his weight. ¡°Do you regret making me?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Of course not, why would I? Come on, you¡¯re not going to make this some family thing, I¡¯m not your father, I¡¯m not your god.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not bent out of shape about it,¡± said Kes. ¡°But how often do you get a conversation with your maker like this? To know why you were created?¡± ¡°You have all the memories,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know the whole thought process, it¡¯s there for you too.¡± ¡°Yeah, but not everything that came after,¡± said Kes. ¡°Not the regret, if it¡¯s there.¡± ¡°I had wanted you to be something else,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know what, exactly.¡± He shrugged his shoulders. ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°You wanted a friend,¡± said Kes. ¡°I wanted a warrior,¡± said Perry. ¡°Someone to stand side by side. And you just came out without enough power.¡± There, he said it. It wasn¡¯t just the power, not just the utility, it was something else, being equals, maybe that was what he was after. Kes nodded, but he grimaced too. ¡°And I could go out there and build back up to the level you¡¯re at. I could go through the portal and fight my way through new adventures, get cool new toys, have sex with interesting women ¡­ and then maybe die in the process. Maybe die right away. It¡¯s not the dying that¡¯s stopping me though.¡± He paused. ¡°It¡¯s seeing you that stopped me.¡± ¡°Seeing me what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Kes. ¡°It makes me want to do it less. It makes me think ¡®alright, there¡¯s a Perry out there that¡¯s doing that, it¡¯s sorted, it doesn¡¯t need me¡¯. Like the important thing isn¡¯t the doing, it¡¯s knowing that I could, that there¡¯s a world where I can beat the shit out of all comers, where I can be a focal point for the gaze of nation-states. I think if, back on Earth, I had known that was something I could be and do, I might never have gone through the portal in the first place.¡± ¡°That¡¯s cope,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe,¡± said Kes. ¡°I guess we¡¯ll see. If the Loop gets set up, maybe we can talk about it in a year or two. Maybe I¡¯ll regret not taking the portal when it was offered. Right now, I¡¯m going to stick with Mette Prime.¡± ¡°Just Prime?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Maybe we¡¯ll do some poly thing, I don¡¯t know,¡± said Kes. ¡°Come on, we¡¯re not so different that you can¡¯t see the appeal of that. This is paradise.¡± ¡°Cope,¡± Perry said again, though he believed it a little less this time. ¡°You¡¯re just going to indulge in hedonism? That¡¯s your answer?¡± ¡°For now,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯ll see what Dirk has in mind for me. Maybe I¡¯ll try my hand at sports. There¡¯s a whole sports culture here that we haven¡¯t really gotten into, and the werewolf thing gives an advantage there, so if I wanted to prove myself, maybe that would be enough for me.¡± ¡°Do they let you do it if you¡¯re a werewolf?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s the culture,¡± said Kes. ¡°They would never stop people from being their best just to level a playing field. They just also come to an understanding that being a fast runner is something that only a specific subset of a specific species is going to be good at.¡± ¡°I guess that¡¯s better than being fake,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re more about the arts,¡± said Kes. ¡°But we¡¯ve seen how those turn out.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°I¡¯m going to miss having someone from Earth to talk with.¡± ¡°Maybe in the next world,¡± said Kes. ¡°Hey, maybe you could meet up with Maya again.¡± Perry smiled at that, but the smile faded. It was the nature of thresholding that you didn¡¯t really meet up with people again. The past was the past, except the whole idea of the Loop, punches you could follow to get back to a starting world, was that he would revisit the past. ¡°I¡¯ve gotta get going,¡± said Perry. ¡°Of course,¡± nodded Kes. ¡°Just wanted to say goodbye, for whatever that¡¯s worth to you.¡± ¡°Goodbye,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll think of you when I¡¯m sleeping in the armor, scared for my life, and wishing that I was comfortable.¡± ¡°And I¡¯ll do the opposite,¡± said Kes. ¡°And if we ever meet up again, we can swap stories.¡± Kes left, and Perry packed up. He would miss some things about this world, and Kes would probably be one of them, even if their friendship would always be a little bit strange and strained. Perry was taken by the Farfinder to the portal with three hours left on the clock. The shelf space was cleaned out and restocked, his personal stores of energy were filled, his shoulder gun had been cleaned and reloaded with extra ammo in the shelf, Marchand had done full diagnostics and all the software prep work, and it was just about as much as a person could prepare to go through a magical portal, at least given that he was going alone and with no foreknowledge. ¡°Sorry, March, I should have let you have your goodbyes too,¡± said Perry as they exited the ship and went down to the moon¡¯s surface. ¡°Sir, whatever makes you think that I didn¡¯t take care of that on my own?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve been in contact with everyone I care to be, and have said everything I needed to say.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah, I guess that makes sense.¡± ¡°I have done my best to leave the others with a positive impression of you, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Thanks, March,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can¡¯t say that you made it easy, sir,¡± said March. The portal was still sitting on the surface of the moon. The pieces of Fenilor hadn¡¯t moved much, they¡¯d just baked and off-gassed and frozen before baking again. Perry drew his sword. He got into a combat stance. ¡°Go combat ready,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°So long, Markat,¡± he said as he stepped through. Chapter 149 - The Wolf and the Lady Knight In the end, the Mettes did have to admit that the Eggys were right, and that differentiation was the way to go. There had been too many moments of confusion, even after they all started wearing color-coded outfits, and if they hadn¡¯t picked names for themselves, it seemed inevitable that they would be referred to as colors instead. There was a part of Mette, the engineer part, that liked the idea of simply having a color for a name, but it was a relatively small part. Mette Prime became simply Prime, since that''s what people were calling her anyway. She put streaks of purple into her hair, which was cut and styled at what the people of Markat called a ¡°salon¡±. She still thought of herself as Mette though, and she was sure the other Mettes felt the same way. One crisis was over, and another had begun. Perry was in what they were calling portal stasis, but that meant they had time ¡ª time to figure out how to use the wiggler to direct him, time to figure out where to direct him, time to map out the multiverse as best they could with all their new tools. The decision had been made not to push themselves too much, because after the Farfinder went after Perry, there were sure to be other crises. Mette had been indulging in the culture. She was destined for the Farfinder, and it was looking like she would be the only Mette to go there. She still had her project management duties, but that was something that wasn¡¯t entirely necessary now that there weren¡¯t so many people working on so many different things. Because the people of Markat seemed to be destined for trading partners with the Natrix, Prime was looking at them with a keen eye. She was thinking about what the Natrix had to trade, what the Natrix would want, and what the future of her people would be like. In one sense, Mette¡¯s entire reason for going into the shelf with Perry was to help her people. In another sense, it had simply been that traveling the world was too enticing. There were distant lands, unique people, magics to learn, and new technologies. But with the very first world she went to, she had found the solution to the work of generations. The ships they would build here would eventually carry the entirety of the Natrix and all other colonies on Esperide to the promised land of plenty. There wouldn¡¯t be any more trouble with bugs, or mechanical issues, or burning heat, or freezing cold. They could simply uproot their entire society and place it here, in this relative paradise, where they had the luxury of pissing away manpower. She had even started drafting up plans for how the Natrix, as a whole, could be converted to use a punch drive, but the sticking point was that the punch drive was imprecise in where it put the Farfinder, mostly because it went through blind every time and only ended up in the relative vicinity of where a portal had been. If they established the Loop, it would be the first time the Farfinder was punching through to a known world. Mette wasn¡¯t even sure that the Natrix would go for it, not if there was an outside entity that could bail them out of a jam, not if they had access to the expertise of Earth 2. It was the driving mission of their people to escape from that cursed planet, and yet she didn¡¯t know whether they would want to live under the thumb of this strange culture. There was a possibility that they would rebel, and a greater possibility that they would work to carve out some kind of exception for themselves. What diplomacy would look like was anyone¡¯s guess, but the Natrix would certainly attempt to hold its own. The people of Markat had clothes and food in excess, and they had plenty of books. Prime went to their libraries and tried on different dresses, and she went to their kitchens and sampled their foods. There was abundance everywhere, so long as you didn¡¯t care about microchips, or didn¡¯t want video calls. It was fine so long as you enjoyed technological progress being stifled. They didn¡¯t have anime. The Natrix¡¯s chief advantage was its people, its engineers and scientists, and also its mechs, though without an enemy to fight, in a place where roads could be built, maybe those would prove useless. And would any of that be allowed here? They needed mechanics to run their domes, but they had mechanics. They needed people who would put in the work, and Prime trusted everyone aboard the Natrix to do that, but she didn¡¯t think that the culture would want to pay for labor. Was interuniversal trade ¡°the culture¡±? It was hard to say. Still, first contact was coming, at least if they could figure out how to aim a latent portal, which was proving to be more of a challenge than anticipated ¡ª and it had been anticipated to be an enormous challenge. ¡°We¡¯re all counting our chickens before they¡¯re hatched,¡± Hella said one evening. ¡°What¡¯s a chicken?¡± asked Mette. ¡°A bird,¡± Hella clarified. ¡°A farm bird. You raise them from eggs, it¡¯s ¡ª we¡¯re making plans whose intermediate steps have many many kinks to work out.¡± Mette Prime and Hella were friends, much more than Hella was a friend with any of the other Mettes. This was largely due to both being in command positions, but it was also because Hella had sat with Mette during three full moons ¡ª they could get one any time they wished by flying the Farfinder out into space. Mette was locked inside a prison bubble for it: it was a necessary step for learning to control the wolf. This had been good bonding time. ¡°We¡¯ll get it figured out,¡± said Mette. ¡°We have significant backing from the scientists here, whatever the GCA is getting up to. It¡¯s just a matter of aiming at where Perry came from.¡± ¡°I¡¯m worried about the Great Arc,¡± said Hella. ¡°I was worried about the Great Arc when we were on the Great Arc, but I¡¯m more worried about it now that it¡¯s being positioned as a thoroughfare. There are very powerful, very dangerous people there, to say nothing of the higher entities.¡± ¡°You scraped by,¡± said Mette. ¡°We were running dark,¡± said Hella. ¡°The magics we were using weren¡¯t native to that world, so it¡¯s understandable that we slipped by ¡ª up until Maya Singh arrived, their world hadn¡¯t even been compatible with what our engines or scrying devices use. I don¡¯t know if that¡¯s going to continue to be the case.¡± ¡°Hrm,¡± said Mette. ¡°Every other world is probably fine though, right?¡± asked Mette. ¡°The Perry half, maybe,¡± said Hella. ¡°The Maya half, less so.¡± The idea of the Loop was simply that punches were a graph of some kind, a series of one-way connections between universes, and if they could manipulate the Grand Spell into sending someone to a universe that was already a part of the extant graph, they could use the punch drive a set number of times to traverse the circle, ending up back where they started, enabling diplomacy and trade between any world in the circle. Perry had been to Earth 2, then Seraphinus, then Teaguewater, then the Great Arc, then Esperide, and finally Markat. Of those, the Great Arc was the only one that was any significant problem, except that Earth 2 wouldn¡¯t have magic. Perry had always assumed that the plan for the Loop was to focus on Earth 2, and that assumption had gone unchallenged, mostly because the idea of the Loop was what was important, not the specific implementation. Everyone had been focusing on Fenilor anyway. But once Perry was gone, Hella had sat down for a moment and turned her eyes to the world that Perry called Earth 1 instead. There was one major thing that Earth 1 had going for it: Maya Singh was from there. If they could correctly target Earth 1, that would mean that the Loop would become a Split Loop, with one path heading down Perry¡¯s side, and the other path heading down Maya¡¯s side until they rejoined at the Great Arc. Maya¡¯s side was longer, and less well-known, though the Farfinder had traversed at least some of it, and Maya had told Perry stories about the unknown worlds. The world with gods was worrying, and they would be out-teched by the civilization that was perched at the heat death of the universe, but the other worlds were less concerning. They didn¡¯t have a map of the multiverse, but Earth 1 seemed like it was obviously their best option. And getting there depended on whether the Mettes and Eggys and scientists from the culture could get something ¡ª multiple things ¡ª working, which Mette was not sure was ever going to actually happen. ¡°There¡¯s a second option,¡± said Henrietta over breakfast one morning. ¡°Maybe Perry¡¯s stasis finishes and we just don¡¯t get him aimed, which is extremely possible, and he just ends up hitting a world that makes him a part of the loop anyway?¡± ¡°The odds of that are extremely low,¡± said Mette. ¡°Assuming the numbers we have are right, and there are 1.6 million universes in the multiverse.¡± ¡°Yeah, but there are lots of options,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°The Farfinder has been to a ton of different worlds, and it has more of them cataloged. All Perry would need to do is land on one of those and we could establish the Grand Loop. We could even end up on Hella¡¯s world, just by accident, that¡¯s where the Farfinder is from.¡± ¡°It would be impossible to navigate,¡± said Mette. ¡°Nah,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°Because we would know the whole sequence. We would have the luxury of preparing, rather than just stumbling into the middle of an ongoing party.¡± ¡°It¡¯s still extremely unlikely,¡± said Mette. ¡°Being generous, it¡¯s something like one in five thousand.¡± ¡°Right, but it¡¯s compounding,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°We get a new chance with every new world. The chance gets better every time. Plus we get information about the new thresholder, and the worlds they¡¯ve been to.¡± Mette considered this. ¡°I still think the math doesn¡¯t add up. And until we clear a corridor for shipping, every jump we make is a danger.¡± Henrietta shrugged. ¡°Even if we can¡¯t control where Perry goes, eventually we¡¯ll get lucky.¡± Mette didn¡¯t find that satisfying. Perry had been gone for two weeks when his spike disappeared. There was nothing special about it disappearing, it was just like the others, but it was on the fast side. The punch drive wasn¡¯t ready, and neither were the new crew. They had not managed to alter his trajectory through the multiverse, though the more they had worked on that, the more they¡¯d realized how big a problem it was, particularly without a map of the multiverse. They would be able to do more mapping in the next world, but that didn¡¯t help in the near term. ¡°So he¡¯s on his own,¡± said Mette. ¡°That¡¯s not great.¡± ¡°He¡¯s survived on his own before,¡± said Hella. ¡°Any battle between thresholders is a coin flip,¡± said Mette. This was literally true, so far as they could tell. There wasn¡¯t a statistically significant way to slice the data such that they could make good predictions about who would win, Fenilor aside. Also, a coin was a round, flat token used for trade. ¡°Then we get everything working as quickly as we can, and we follow after him,¡± said Hella. ¡°What does our timeline look like?¡± The engineers all looked at each other. The timeline had been one month, back when they had first started working on it, and was now stretching to two months, but timelines had a habit of getting longer, not shorter. ¡°That bad?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Six weeks,¡± said Mette. She was the de facto leader of the Mettes, and she spoke for them. She probably would until the day she left. It was the only time she felt like Prime. ¡°But it might slip.¡± ¡°He could find, fight, and kill the enemy thresholder in that time,¡± said Hella. ¡°He could be two worlds away from us by the time we reach him.¡± ¡°It¡¯s unavoidable,¡± said Mette. ¡°There are specialized parts in the drive, materials we¡¯re still working on getting the lanterns to make, some that the lanterns can¡¯t make. We have all kinds of issues. The Farfinder itself is ready to travel, and we¡¯ve been working on rewriting some of the code, making systems more redundant, but ¡­¡± The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Hella held up a hand. She stopped and thought for a moment. ¡°I want to crunch on this. We¡¯re going full throttle. The exception is those who are going on the Farfinder, I want you fresh and ready. Everyone else, this is the last crisis we¡¯re facing. If more manpower helps, we add in more manpower.¡± Mette nodded. That meant that she¡¯d be doing even less than she¡¯d thought she¡¯d be doing, because she was going to be on the crew. ¡°Do you have a manifest?¡± asked Mette after the room had cleared and Hella was alone. ¡°You, me, Eggy 6, and Dirk,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s four. We can potentially go with one more, but keeping the crew small makes it easier to manage. We¡¯re all basically human, so I wouldn¡¯t mind having a doctor, but I don¡¯t know that we can recruit one from among these people, and they have their own interests.¡± ¡°I need more werewolf training before we leave,¡± said Mette. ¡°From what Perry has said, I¡¯ll never be able to resist the full moon entirely, but I¡¯ll be able to stop myself from killing while in wolf form, at least if I¡¯m well-fed. And it¡¯s possible I¡¯ll be able to transform without one.¡± ¡°Doable,¡± said Hella. She rubbed her face. ¡°I hadn¡¯t expected, when I left my homeworld, that this is what I would be doing.¡± ¡°I hadn¡¯t either,¡± said Mette. She looked the other woman over. Hella was older, but not by that much. She was a ¡®superhero¡¯, or had been one. ¡°Do you miss it? Your home?¡± ¡°I hardly remember it,¡± said Hella. ¡°It seems so long ago. But yes, I miss it. I was selected for the Farfinder mission because I didn¡¯t have many attachments, but it¡¯s lonely out here. I¡¯ve lost so many people along the way ¡­¡± She was silent. Her face was blankly neutral. ¡°Even if we have the Loop, it won¡¯t be the end for me. I won¡¯t be any closer to home, to my people. That¡¯s the goal, for me.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Mette. ¡°Me too. Mine seems closer at hand, but if we solve the problems in our way ¡­ I don¡¯t know, both are close, I guess.¡± Hella nodded. ¡°I don¡¯t know if I can go back. I don¡¯t know what living in an apartment in the city would be like after so long moving from place to place.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what living in an apartment in the city would be like at all, if I¡¯m honest,¡± said Mette. ¡°The closest I¡¯ve come is living in communal housing in this world. The place that¡¯s closest to home is ¡­ well, the airship, or this ship, though they¡¯re both far too small.¡± Hella placed a hand on Mette¡¯s shoulder. ¡°I¡¯m glad we have you. You¡¯re the best thresholder I¡¯ve ever met.¡± The hand withdrew. ¡°I won¡¯t be one for long,¡± said Mette. ¡°In theory, at least.¡± ¡°And if the move doesn¡¯t work to cure you?¡± asked Hella. ¡°If you¡¯re still registered, if you still have to fight?¡± ¡°Then I¡¯ll fight,¡± said Mette. She closed her eyes and let out a breath. ¡°I¡¯d go off on my own, I think, to spare these worlds the trouble.¡± ¡°Noble,¡± said Hella. ¡°Feh,¡± said Mette. ¡°Logical.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re still planning to fight Nima before we leave?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Open us another portal, gather more data, give her an out?¡± ¡°I am,¡± said Mette. ¡°I have to say I¡¯m not looking forward to it though.¡± ~~~~ They chose a sporting arena for their match. Bloodsports were not the culture, though they had been a part of the predecessor cultures, and all the major venues were still standing, used for more athletic and less deadly sports. The plan hadn¡¯t been for them to have an audience, but there was quite a bit of interest, and someone, somewhere had decided without much consultation that people would be allowed to file in and see what was going on. They could have avoided the attention by having the fight elsewhere, but Dirk was of the opinion that it would raise their profile and help earn the respect of the GCA and the symboulions. Mette was in armor, a simple breastplate, with a helmet that covered everything but her face. For a weapon she had a staff, which was the same thing that Nima had. There were bladed weapons on standby, though Mette was hoping they wouldn¡¯t have to use them. There was one other thing that Mette carried with her: a small lantern. She was hoping not to have to use it, but if it came down to it, she would. This has all been negotiated ahead of time. They wanted the fight to be, in some way, ¡°fair¡±. There wasn¡¯t any real indication that this would work. The portals seemed relatively straight-forward when it was just two people fighting against each other, but as soon as more than one person was involved it seemed much more complicated to work out what was supposed to happen, let alone what would happen. Nima was armored up. The armor that flowed from her pendant was form-fitting and concealed almost all of her body. Mette was going to need to use the lantern, she could feel that just looking at her opponent. ¡°You know, we don¡¯t have to do this,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯d like to be on my way, but I can go with the Farfinder.¡± She said it with the implication that all the fuss was over, that she wasn¡¯t dangerous. She was less of a prisoner these days, mostly because it was clear she had very little power, but she still had a room on the Farfinder, and there were places she was barred from. ¡°We want to resolve anything that can be resolved,¡± said Mette. ¡°We also want to do science.¡± ¡°Do you honestly think you¡¯re going to win?¡± asked Nima, tilting her head to the side. ¡°I¡¯m not going to try to kill you, but I will crush you.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be so sure about that,¡± said Mette. She rolled her shoulders. ¡°I¡¯ve been training.¡± She was also a werewolf, which counted for something. Her body was more stocky than it had been, and she had more muscle. ¡°What do you think I¡¯ve been doing while I was cooped up?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I suppose training your ass off,¡± said Mette. She tapped the staff on the ground. ¡°With a staff?¡± ¡°With a staff,¡± said Nima with a nod. ¡°It¡¯s what I¡¯ve had access to.¡± ¡°Well that¡¯s not confidence inspiring,¡± said Mette. ¡°We can start whenever you¡¯d like to,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯d prefer to be fair about it.¡± ¡°Now is good,¡± said Mette. Nima pounced, like she¡¯d been waiting for the moment. She ran forward, holding the staff tucked under one arm, then when she came within striking distance, flipped it forward and spun it two-handed. Mette brought her own staff up to block, but was slightly too slow, and got whapped in the head. She fell to the ground, feeling dazed, and was slow to get to her feet. ¡°Ow!¡± she said. Nima was standing in a defensive stance, staring at her. ¡°That hurt!¡± ¡°We¡¯re fighting,¡± said Nima. ¡°I could have kept hitting you.¡± ¡°Well, why didn¡¯t you?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t know, I wanted to make sure that you were okay,¡± said Nima. Mette rubbed her head through her helmet for a bit, then laughed. ¡°You¡¯re really not cut out for this, are you?¡± ¡°You haven¡¯t wronged me,¡± said Nima. The crowd was noisy. This wasn¡¯t really the fight they had come to see, though it was impossible to know what they¡¯d been told about what was going to happen. They had heard the wild tales of a mech wolf and a giantess. Mette and Nima were not living up to that. ¡°We¡¯re supposed to be fighting,¡± said Mette. She rubbed her helmet again, which was really very ineffective. ¡°You¡¯re going to have to actually come at me. One of us is going to have to be pretty injured for the portal to open, if this is ever going to accomplish anything.¡± ¡°Then I¡¯m going to beat you,¡± said Nima. ¡°And I¡¯m going to mean it, and I¡¯m not going to stop because you¡¯re hurt.¡± ¡°Yeah?¡± asked Mette. ¡°You¡¯re not skilled at hurting people.¡± ¡°And you are?¡± asked Nima. Mette went in for the kill, swinging her staff around, and Nima brought a matching staff up to block it. Nima proved herself to be far better with a staff than Mette was, and knocked the staff to the side, then stepped forward and gave Mette a kick in the crotch with an armored boot. ¡°Ow, oh fuck!¡± cried Mette. She backed away, holding her staff up defensively, and Nima didn¡¯t give her any quarter this time. Mette got hit on the arm, where she had no armor, and it was surely going to leave a bruise, but she brought her staff up to block the second hit. She was losing already, badly, and the pain was making her not want to go through with any of it. Still, pain was temporary, and any physical injuries could be fixed by becoming a wolf. The battering continued, and Mette was putting up weak defenses. Kes had won against Nima, she couldn¡¯t be that difficult to take, but Kes was also much bigger and stronger than Mette, as he¡¯d proven to her a few times. She should have practiced with the staff more, she could see that now. Nima jabbed the staff in Mette¡¯s face, and Mette simply couldn¡¯t react in time. It hit her on the cheekbone just below her left eye, and it felt like something broke as she stumbled backward. She was blind in one eye, or nearly so, because her vision didn¡¯t return as she tried to blink it away. The pain was intense, and she was barely able to keep her feet, but Nima kept attacking anyway, hitting Mette in her unarmored parts. A hit to the leg nearly took her down, and she looked over to the lantern she¡¯d brought with her, which was five feet away. Nima spun her staff around in a sweeping motion, knocking the lantern far away, and probably ruining it in the process. The lantern was the last round in the chamber, the last hope. Mette had spent a full day getting it to output moonlight, which had been no small feat, and it was the only way that she¡¯d be able to turn into a wolf given that they were fighting in full sunlight. Mette got to her feet and held her staff in front of her. This wasn¡¯t how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to whip the lantern out at the last possible moment and transform into a wolf, then Nima would surely have some trick left in her bag, and they would fight until one of them couldn¡¯t get up. That was how thresholder fights were supposed to go. It wasn¡¯t supposed to be one-sided. ¡°I¡¯d give you a break, if that were the game,¡± said Nima. ¡°There¡¯s no honor in a fight between thresholders.¡± Mette¡¯s crotch was aching. Looking back, she should have worn some kind of cup, but the people of Markat weren¡¯t big on armor, and the Farfinder didn¡¯t have any that were ready-made. Her head also hurt, and her ears were ringing. There was only one option, which was to turn into a wolf without the lantern, without moonlight. She could feel it inside of her. The hits she¡¯d taken were awakening the anger. All she needed to do was concentrate, or not concentrate, to let it flow from her. Perry thought that was doable, in the hour of need. He posited a defense mechanism, though he didn¡¯t have any proof of it, and Kes had never been able to call it forth. Nima went back on the attack; the respite had been brief. Mette blocked the attacks as best she could, getting more sloppy as they went on. She was running low on energy, and smarting from the hits. Nima brought her staff down, aiming for Mette¡¯s knee. Mette blocked, but the staff was inside her leg, and Nima used her whole weight to bring it to the side. Mette was hooked, lost her balance, and fell to the ground, and Nima wasted no time in jabbing her with the end of the staff, hitting her in the unarmored area. It was impossible to defend against, and Nima dropped down on top of her, putting her full weight on Mette. Mette dropped her staff and grabbed at Nima¡¯s, stopping it, but only after she¡¯d been hit in the face twice. She was seeing stars and bleeding, and it didn¡¯t seem like the wolf was any closer to coming out. Nima let go of the staff, cocked back a fist, and Mette had just enough time to see spikes grow from the end of it before she was punched in the neck. Blood flowed freely from Mette¡¯s neck. She reached up to stop the bleeding and felt the spurts of blood. She was in shock, unable to think, but the thought we weren¡¯t supposed to kill each other came to the forefront of her mind, as though it had been brewing back there. Nima rose off her and Mette kicked backward, sliding along the ground, trying to put distance between them. ¡°No portal,¡± said Nima. Her voice was tight. Blood dripped from her spiked fist, whose spikes slowly retracted. ¡°Guuuh,¡± said Mette. She was fading. Consciousness wouldn¡¯t last, and her fingers were doing a bad job of keeping her blood in. The wolf felt weaker, not stronger, as much as she tried to call it out. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Nima. ¡°I am.¡± That was, somehow, Mette¡¯s breaking point. She was sorry? That fucking bitch. The wolf came out slowly. The straps of the armor had been configured so the two halves of the breastplate came apart cleanly, the straps undoing themselves, but she had to hook her bloody fingers beneath the edge of the helmet to rip it off. It was a grotesque thing to transform in the sunlight, and her clothes fell from her as her body changed, cloth falling to the ground in pieces. Hair sprouted from everywhere, growing long and thick, and her teeth reshaped themselves into fangs as her face extended into a snout. Her mind was the last thing to change, and then she was on the attack. Her teeth clamped down on Nima¡¯s leg and lifted her bodily in the air. The metal had a particular taste to it, a sweetness to the metal, and it held against the teeth, so the wolf shook it back and forth, trying to kill the prey that way. In the course of this, the leg slipped from her mouth, and the prey landed on its back, motionless for a moment before it got to its feet. The wolf went forward to bite down on its head, and found that it had developed sharp spikes from every surface, but the wolf bit down anyway, trying to use the power of its jaws to crush. The prey cried out and began punching with spiked fists, but the wounds were shallow. The wolf¡¯s attempt at cracking the metal shell over the skull were futile. It was getting stronger as time went on, and the wolf could feel itself starting to fade in the sunlight. More shaking, an attempt to snap the neck, did nothing ¡ª the armor went rigid, with more metal around the neck. The wolf spat the piece of metal out and growled at it. It placed a paw on the chest, then extended its claws and tried to rip through the armor that way, but it was scraping more than gouging, and the sunlight was starting to make the wolf feel sleepy. The armor held, and the wolf changed back. Mette found herself on all fours, completely naked. Her wounds were healed, but she was exhausted. Nima staggered to her feet and grabbed one of the staffs from the ground. She approached Mette, limping. ¡°Now hold on,¡± said Mette. Nima smashed her across the face, and Mette blacked out. When she came to, it was as though no time had passed, but Nima was gone and there was a portal standing in her place. Someone had placed a blanket over her, and Kes was standing beside her. Not long had passed. ¡°Did I lose?¡± asked Mette. Her head was killing her. She didn¡¯t even try to get to her feet. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°You lost, she¡¯s gone.¡± ¡°More data, I guess,¡± said Mette. She winced. There were people milling about. The cloning machine wasn¡¯t public information, which meant the other Mettes were staying away for the time being, the better not to give it away. ¡°I would like a hot bath.¡± ¡°We¡¯re going to hope you¡¯re not concussed,¡± said Kes. ¡°Though maybe any lasting damage will be resolved at the next full moon.¡± ¡°How¡¯d I do?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Well, you lost,¡± said Kes. ¡°That¡¯s the main thing you¡¯re not supposed to do, as a thresholder.¡± ¡°Feh,¡± said Mette. ¡°I almost had her.¡± ¡°You could have snapped her neck, yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°Her armor saved her.¡± He looked away from her and toward the portal. ¡°You¡¯re not going through, right?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Nah,¡± said Kes. ¡°Not for me.¡± He looked down at her. ¡°You?¡± Mette laughed in his face. Chapter 150 - Epilogue: Release Valves Casper dressed well for the confrontation, in a tailored suit that he¡¯d procured from one of the more meticulous libraries and had altered to fit. In his time moving from kingdom to kingdom, helping to organize rebellions and resistances, he usually dressed like a laborer, a man who worked with his hands. Looking and dressing the part was a necessary piece of the process. He kept his hands calloused as much as he could, because that was a signifier that he, too, was someone who spent his time doing things, not just talking. His actual role was nothing but talking, though sometimes he chipped in with work so that people would give him the time of day. He¡¯d picked up enough skills to not embarrass himself. The visit to Thirlwell¡¯s castle required a different sort of look and demeanor, which is why he had the suit. It was a sign of respectability and belonging. He was there representing the Intra-Cooperative Global Command Authority, treating with the queen and her new king as, essentially, equals. He had no entourage with him, though there were another half dozen people sitting in a tavern three blocks away ¡ª a tavern that had been closed in order to hold them in, with soldiers standing outside it. This was diplomacy, of a sort. Everyone¡¯s safety and ability to leave had been guaranteed. But it was Casper alone who would meet with the queen and king. That was fine: he had history with Dirk, and this was better done singly, so there would be no cross-talk or individuation. The throne room was relatively small, a throwback to a simpler time, a relic of the old castle that the next castle had been built on top of. It was a symbol of the legitimacy of the kingdom, in some sense, but in terms of organization and logistics there were certainly better places. A larger room, one without a throne but with an enormous table, was used in many affairs of state. They had chosen the old throne room though, one with pillars of stone holding up the arches of its roof. There were two thrones, one large and one small, delicately carved from wood and inlaid with precious stones that had been set so as to catch a little light no matter what angle you viewed the throne from. It was a travesty, untold labor for a symbol that would only ever be seen by a handful of people, unused for most matters of state given that this throne room was too small for all but ceremonial purposes ¡ª or intimidation, as the case might be. The queen of Thirlwell sat in the larger of the two thrones, and beside her, in the smaller one, was ¡°Thom Faulk¡±, a clone of Dirk Gibbons, the former spymaster of Thirlwell. The queen was in a white and gold dress with a crown atop her head, dripping with jewelry. Thom beside her was in stately black clothes with buttons of gold, stitched and embroidered so that shiny pieces of black stood out against those that were matte, all a solid color, distinguished only by how the light played over it. This too was obscene to Casper¡¯s eyes. The throne room had three doors, two at the back and one at the front, but all were closed now. The three of them were alone, with no guards or attendants. The conversation would be private. It would need to be, given what they were going to discuss. He¡¯d been checked for weapons, and their guards would be right outside. Casper did not bow. He did not recognize the authority of this queen, or any monarch. This was the last, and that made her special, but special only in the way that the last tree remaining in a forest that had been cleared was special. The axe was already sharpened for her to be felled. ¡°Greetings,¡± said the queen once his escort had left. ¡°I suppose we¡¯re setting formalities aside?¡± ¡°In the long history of diplomatic relations between the culture and the monarchies, setting aside formalities has been a necessity,¡± said Casper. He looked at Thom and raised an eyebrow. ¡°Then let¡¯s commence,¡± said the queen. ¡°My father was the one responsible for the missile attacks. We will unilaterally disarm and render ourselves incapable of that sort of thing. This will be accomplished through a joint committee overseeing our military capabilities. In exchange, the ICGCA will agree to stop all intelligence operations within Thirlwell, will set up a system of exchange for immigration and emigration from the island, and will cease any attempts at agitation or propaganda within Thirlwell.¡± ¡°You want to make the current arrangement into something static,¡± said Casper. ¡°No,¡± said the queen. ¡°I want to make a new arrangement that ensures the continued survival of this kingdom, in whatever shape it must take to make that happen.¡± ¡°Monarchy is fundamentally incompatible with the culture,¡± said Casper. ¡°A ruler handing down orders from on high with a pretense of legitimacy is not the culture. It¡¯s especially not the culture when that ruler is there through birthright rather than being elected, but it wouldn¡¯t be the culture in either case.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not claiming that we¡¯ll adopt the culture,¡± said the queen, frowning at him. ¡°That¡¯s exactly what we don¡¯t want to have happen. In fact, what we want is for all proselytizing to stop. Those who wish to live in the culture will be free to leave Thirlwell in a structured way. Contrarily, those in the culture who wish to live under monarchical rule will be welcomed in.¡± Casper considered this. ¡°That¡¯s a radical change in policy.¡± ¡°I am not my father,¡± said the queen. ¡°I intend to make a number of radical changes in policy, in fact.¡± Casper raised an eyebrow. ¡°I¡¯m interested to hear what these changes in policy would be.¡± ¡°Our goal is, of course, to compete against the culture,¡± said the queen. ¡°We¡¯d like to show people a better way. We want to demonstrate the superiority of the monarchical system. There are, however, certain aspects of the culture which are broadly popular, not elements of ideology, but praxis. We¡¯ll be instituting social safety nets, to the extent those are still needed when people can simply leave the island of their own accord.¡± ¡°In the history of this world, many things have been tried,¡± said Casper. ¡°You are not the first to think that you can externalize your problems to us, your mentally ill, your criminals, your homeless, your needy. You are not substantially different from those who have come before you.¡± ¡°I am,¡± said the queen. ¡°Not because of my lineage, but because I¡¯m the last. We have our own systems for dealing with social and economic ills, and those are the first line of defense, but if people choose to leave, you must agree that we shouldn¡¯t stop them, that you shouldn¡¯t stop them. You have always welcomed defectors, that¡¯s the culture. We¡¯re hoping to build a more voluntary society here.¡± ¡°It won¡¯t work,¡± said Casper. ¡°We have seen this all before.¡± ¡°No,¡± said the queen. ¡°You, in fact, have not, because, again: I am the last. This is the last. You have, until now, benefitted from people seeing what direction the wind is blowing and leaving with what they could, but now there¡¯s nowhere for them to go. We took a census last week, one that accounted for most of the country, and our population is burgeoning. A full thirty percent of the people living here weren¡¯t born here.¡± ¡°Is that so?¡± asked Casper. He kept his voice mild. ¡°And you suppose that this trend will continue. That you can leech from the culture, sucking its blood, sending out what you see as waste.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t put it like that,¡± said the queen. She frowned at him. It was undiplomatic language, but this was something that diplomacy required. ¡°We¡¯ll be perfectly fine here, so long as we have our own counter culture. There are dissident elements, but many of them have been organized and placed by your people. There are malcontents, but many of them have been unwittingly imported. That¡¯s what we aim to stop. If the monarchy is allowed to be safe from subterfuge, and the people organize against us, then we won¡¯t stop them ¡ª but we don¡¯t believe that will happen.¡± Casper stared at her, unwavering. She had a point, a single, solitary point, which was that Thirlwell had been the beneficiary of voluntary movements. There were former heads of state living in the city, monarchs in exile who would never be restored to their throne, most of whom no longer put much effort into their claims. There were, around these people, entourages and enclaves, but Casper hadn¡¯t known how extensive they were. Unfortunately for efforts to overthrow the monarchy, they were mostly true believers. And obviously she was lying about simply allowing a revolution if there was a groundswell of support. ¡°This is the last kingdom,¡± said Casper, taking a different tack. ¡°You¡¯re right that it holds a unique position. But we will not allow it to survive, not with you as a ruler ¡ª not with any ruler. If your plan is to take advantage of voluntary movement, then we¡¯ll do everything in our power to stop you. We have Berus now, and it¡¯s stable thanks to support from all across the world. We¡¯ll embargo ships entering or leaving your harbor. We¡¯ll make sure that you can¡¯t offload your effluence onto the rest of the world.¡± ¡°We plan to establish domes, thank you very much,¡± said the queen. ¡°We¡¯ve been using lantern designs that are relatively clean for ages anyway.¡± Casper watched her. Her face was painted for the occasion, and that made it harder to judge what she was thinking. This was not a discussion about appropriate levels of effluence or the construction of domes. It wasn¡¯t about technology. It was about governance. ¡°Does it escape your notice that we have a significant amount of power and will?¡± asked Casper. ¡°I¡¯m telling you only the things I think are obvious and common sense, the things that I can say on my own without the consent of the GCA.¡± He was tinting his words with threat. It had helped more than one monarch see the light and voluntarily abdicate their thrones. ¡°We would, through the old rules, be well within our rights to retaliate against what your father did.¡± ¡°I am not my father,¡± said the queen. ¡°And his life was brutally taken by one of yours.¡± ¡°Perry wasn¡¯t one of ours,¡± said Casper. ¡°The whole business with the thresholders seems concluded, it¡¯s neither here nor there.¡± ¡°You want to sweep the past under a rug?¡± asked the queen. ¡°I won¡¯t stand for that.¡± Casper folded his hands behind his back and regarded Dirk, who sat there on the second throne. Thus far, Dirk hadn¡¯t said anything. They knew each other, and knew each other fairly well, though largely in a professional capacity. Casper was not particularly fond of Dirk, and had always imagined that the feeling was mutual. Whatever play Dirk was making here, he hadn¡¯t taken an opportunity to inform anyone of it. ¡°I¡¯ve made my wishes known,¡± said the queen. ¡°There¡¯s no reason we can¡¯t be amicable. Voluntary trade is the culture. I suppose you think you have the will to sit ships in the water and stop us from sending anything out, and to do the same with airships, threatening to kill men who are looking only to put some coin in their pocket, but I think you¡¯re wrong. I don¡¯t think the culture does have the will for warfare of that sort. Either you¡¯ll get us from within, or not at all. So let¡¯s take a step back, lay down our respective swords, and settle on a course of diplomacy that will take us through the next few years.¡± ¡°We want this settled,¡± said Casper. He raised a finger and pointed it at Dirk. ¡°That man, your spymaster, is an agent of the culture.¡± Dirk didn¡¯t so much as budge. The queen covered her mouth to hide her laughter. ¡°Did you think that I didn¡¯t know that?¡± she asked. ¡°That he would have risked going into this meeting with the possibility that you would betray him?¡± ¡°And you¡¯re fine with that?¡± asked Casper. ¡°That doesn¡¯t change how you feel?¡± ¡°No,¡± said the queen. ¡°If anything, it¡¯s an asset. He¡¯s on my side, you see.¡± ¡°He is?¡± asked Casper, looking pointedly at Dirk. ¡°I am,¡± said Dirk with a slow nod. ¡°Explain that, please,¡± said Casper. ¡°She¡¯s a decent woman,¡± said Dirk. ¡°She¡¯s not her father. She was never destined for the throne, and she¡¯s had her own sympathies toward the culture. Casper, we need a release valve, we need a place for people to go, somewhere to put our own malcontents, not the criminals, but the ones who have a yearning to prove themselves.¡± You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. ¡°If they want to prove themselves, they can do that with service,¡± said Casper. ¡°We have plenty for anyone to do.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a mindset,¡± said Dirk. ¡°And you know it. We used to call it greed, but I¡¯ve lately started to think that it¡¯s something else, some kind of yearning for more. It¡¯s not the culture, but it was always a big ask trying to get everyone to fit inside the culture. There are still parts of the world where they¡¯re not quite there, a decade down the line. There are elven communes that are only barely the culture. There are places we say are the culture, but it¡¯s just a community of three hundred people, and we know they don¡¯t really get it.¡± ¡°You¡¯re saying that our life¡¯s work is a failure,¡± said Casper. ¡°That¡¯s why you¡¯re siding with her.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not siding with her,¡± said Dirk. ¡°She¡¯s already met me in the middle. And there¡¯s a real cause, here, for an out for people who feel like they need one. Maybe that¡¯s one of the roles this kingdom can play, as a counterweight.¡± ¡°Dirk, no,¡± said Casper. ¡°I know you¡¯ve always worried that the GCA would dissolve, that we¡¯d wrap things up and there¡¯d be nothing for men like us to do, but you know that this won¡¯t play. We¡¯re a single world, everything is interconnected, it simply does not work for these externalities to be working against us, this has been proven time and again.¡± ¡°I think this case is different,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You were in Berus, you saw the devastation the thresholders caused. They¡¯re gone, but their kind are still out there, and if there are other worlds, there needs to be a place that takes seriously the idea that we might be under threat. If I could be certain that the GCA was going to stay solvent, that it would be a guiding light ¡ª but we both know that they¡¯re weak, even with men like us as part of them. There are too many people who have grown too old, too ready to lay down and roll over. If we hadn¡¯t accomplished what we did, when we did, we might not have made it to the finish line.¡± ¡°And this is your last hope for something grander, something better, a place you can fit?¡± asked Casper. ¡°It¡¯s part of it,¡± said Dirk. He looked over at the queen. ¡°We¡¯ve talked it over.¡± ¡°And if I go out and tell everyone that you¡¯re an agent of the culture?¡± asked Casper. ¡°Do you think we¡¯re not prepared for that?¡± asked the queen. ¡°Do you think we haven¡¯t planned contingencies?¡± Casper considered this. That they had contingencies in place didn¡¯t mean those were contingencies they wanted to use. But if he thought like Dirk ¡­ well, Dirk would try to frame it as a coup. The queen had turned one of the most storied agents of the culture, and who was to say she hadn¡¯t done it ages ago? Who was to say that he hadn¡¯t been made spymaster with a full understanding that he would work against the people he was supposed to be working for? It would undercut the culture, and Dirk would go along with it. The only one who would know when he had actually flipped was him, and he could claim whatever he wanted. ¡°You understand,¡± said Dirk after a moment passed. ¡°Thirlwell is in a good position. The monarchy will weather the storm. It¡¯s not inevitable, but I know the culture inside and out, and I¡¯ve been in deep cover here for ages. With me here, all the excesses and injustices of monarchy will be curbed.¡± It was incrementalist talk, reformer talk, and Casper supposed that Dirk had to understand that. They had run into it before. Perhaps Dirk had always held sympathies. ¡°You have two goals here,¡± said Casper as understanding slowly dawned on him. ¡°You want this place, but you also want the culture¡¯s opposition to this place. You think it makes the culture stronger to have an enemy.¡± Dirk shrugged. ¡°Do you disagree?¡± The queen turned to him. ¡°You hadn¡¯t mentioned that.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a benefit, at least from my perspective,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Not mine,¡± said the queen with a frown. Casper watched the two of them. This was the first sign of discord, and it hadn¡¯t taken much. Dirk had freely admitted that he¡¯d prefer the culture was strong, and that this was a method to do that. ¡°It¡¯s no happy accident,¡± said Casper. ¡°Dirk worries that the GCA will collapse or become a shade of itself. It¡¯s something he¡¯s worried about for a long time. A single strong kingdom, an eternal enemy, that¡¯s something that resolves at least a little of the problem.¡± He looked sharply at the queen. ¡°And that will be your role, as the nightmare that lurks in the middle of the ocean. You¡¯ll be reviled around the world.¡± ¡°Feh,¡± she said. ¡°You think you can get me with that? I¡¯m already reviled. I¡¯m already watching my back. Someone killed my father, and shortly after that, someone killed my brother.¡± Casper narrowed his eyes. ¡°Your father was killed by a thresholder, nothing much to do with us, at least so far as I understand it. The string of assassinations were all thresholder related in one way or another, though I can¡¯t divulge more information than that.¡± ¡°Those assassinations were met with cheers,¡± the queen replied. ¡°There were public executions of the nobility in Berus. I know your kind, and how far the compassion of the culture extends.¡± ¡°Growing pains,¡± replied Casper. ¡°I argued against the executions, for what it¡¯s worth.¡± ¡°And you were not able to stop them,¡± the queen replied. ¡°No, I will watch my back from here on out. The only reason you¡¯re allowed to stand in front of me without a sword to your throat is that I have Thom beside me. If he had wanted to kill me, I would be dead, and if he had wanted to depose me, I¡¯d have been deposed. I¡¯ve staked my life on him.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve had occasion to stake my life on him too,¡± said Casper. He nodded. ¡°He¡¯s never let me down until now, for all his other faults. But of course you don¡¯t know him, not at all, and this alliance is too fresh, too new to put any stock in.¡± ¡°You¡¯re doing this wrong,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You¡¯re trying to destabilize, and what you should be doing is building bridges, engaging in diplomacy. This is too sharp, too naked. You know that.¡± ¡°I came here today in the hopes of a smooth abdication,¡± said Casper. ¡°I will do whatever is in my power to achieve that.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not happening,¡± said the queen. Her delicate fingers, whose nails had been painted gold, gripped the arm rests of her throne. ¡°We have loyalty. We have believers. We may not have the might of Third Fervor anymore, but you don¡¯t have Perry or Fenilor.¡± She said the name like a threat, but word was already spreading through the rest of the world. Statues would be torn down and history would be amended. It was impossible for a monarch to accept that the culture did not depend upon the past for its legitimacy, that it did not worship the founders as incorruptible heroes. Fenilor had killed hundreds, had violated the precepts of the culture, had introduced the effluence through ignorance or negligence, and had threatened the entirety of the world for what very much seemed to be his own self-aggrandizement, at least if Casper could trust the transcripts. The queen could ¡ª and probably would ¡ª attempt to slander the culture by way of Fenilor, but they would uncover his secrets first, as best they could, and by the time her poison got to anyone¡¯s ears, the people would be inoculated. If she ever had a chance to spread that poison, anyway. ¡°Thom is firmly by my side,¡± said the queen. ¡°He¡¯s made his play. He knows a great many secrets, some of which the culture does not want getting out. He knows the weak points and knows what would throw the GCA into disarray.¡± ¡°This is true,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s not information that I would use lightly. I¡¯m not against the culture, I¡¯m in favor of us having some kind of harmony, you have to understand that Casper.¡± He frowned slightly. ¡°I do wish that you¡¯d brought the others. I wish that we could be more civil about this than we¡¯re being right now. There¡¯s cause for disagreement, not threats, implicit or otherwise. There¡¯s no rush.¡± ¡°We want this finished,¡± said Casper. He kept his tone mild. ¡°We ideally want it finished today.¡± Dirk leaned forward on his throne. His eyes searched Casper¡¯s face. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°You¡¯re not privy to everything else that¡¯s going on,¡± said Casper. ¡°And you won¡¯t be, for the foreseeable future. What you¡¯ve been doing here, what you¡¯ve tried, it¡¯s simply not the culture, and I think you know that.¡± Dirk looked over at the queen, then back at Casper. ¡°If you have another card, then play it.¡± Casper looked at the floor and rubbed his forehead. That was the signal. One of the doors at the back of the small throne room opened up, and rather than the stone walls of the castle, there was the metal corridor of the Farfinder. A dozen people had been waiting for this moment, and they came out quickly in a crouched tactical stance. They had gunpowder weapons of superior make to anything that Thirlwell had seen. The queen began screaming for help, but before a sound could leave her mouth, the room was enveloped in absolute silence. She struggled, and Dirk tried to pull a knife ¡ª an Implement, in fact ¡ª but these were trained soldiers, and it was simply no contest. The queen was manhandled and hogtied, with no sound of scuffle reaching anyone¡¯s ears. Casper watched, his heart beating faster. If this was all going to get out of control, this is when it would happen. All it would take is for a guard to come in, or for the baffling of the sound to fail, or for it to work better than it was supposed to and extend beyond the throne room, catching a guard outside and alerting them that something untoward was going on. The soldiers accomplished the entire operation in twenty seconds, just as they had planned to, and they had no sooner retreated than duplicates of the queen and Dirk came down that same corridor, wearing identical clothing. They weren¡¯t exact duplicates. This other Dirk was quite divergent, and while they had tried to get the haircut and facial hair as close as possible, it wasn¡¯t quite perfect. The queen¡¯s duplicate was a closer match, but she had bags under her eyes and a certain haggard expression that had not left her in all the time they¡¯d been preparing her. The sound came back on and the door to the Farfinder closed again, leaving the throne room looking exactly how it had looked. ¡°Well,¡± said Casper, letting out a breath. ¡°That¡¯s that.¡± ¡°No,¡± said this new Dirk. ¡°There¡¯s a chance he prepared for this contingency.¡± ¡°Then we¡¯ll deal with it,¡± said Casper. This was something they had discussed. Passphrases, deadman¡¯s switches, things that confidants and servants were supposed to look for, it was all possible. It was the sort of thing that Dirk would do, though if he was going to do it, he¡¯d have been better off telling them so as to prevent this in the first place. ¡°Let¡¯s get this over with,¡± said the false queen. ¡°Very well,¡± said Casper with a nod. He produced the documents from a folio and they were signed quickly. It was inauthentic, she had no authority to dissolve the kingdom and abdicate the throne, but Casper rejected the very idea that the monarchy held any power in the first place. This would all come out eventually, and perhaps Thom Faulk had set things up to disclaim any sudden diplomatic move ¡­ but it wasn¡¯t as though Thom Faulk was coming back, nor was the queen. ¡°You have work ahead of you,¡± said Casper as he took his copy of the documents. ¡°I¡¯ll let you get to it.¡± He left them behind and exited the throne room, allowing himself to be escorted through the halls of the castle. His work was done, at least for today. There was organization to do, there were symboulions to help bring into existence, and the whole structure of the country would need to change. The guards escorting him would lose their jobs, and the castle would be turned over to the people in some way or another. Most of the fine things would go to newly established libraries. But it would take time for the plans that were in motion to reach their next steps. The clothes that had been made aboard the Farfinder would not last, they were some strange kind of magic, so the false queen and the duplicate Dirk would have to retire to their rooms and change out of them. The dissolution of the monarchy would be carried out through a number of planned steps, most of which were explicitly enumerated in the document that had just been signed. When Casper was finally returned to the well-guarded tavern, he sat down at the table with the others, who were waiting for him. ¡°Plan A or Plan B?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Plan B,¡± said Casper. ¡°Shame,¡± said Moss. He clucked his tongue. ¡°It would have been cleaner to do it the other way.¡± ¡°They wanted peace,¡± said Casper. ¡°That Dirk had his own conceptions of how the world might look. If we weren¡¯t going to lose the Farfinder soon, I would have been tempted to hear him out.¡± ¡°Fuck him,¡± said Velli. ¡°Let him rot. We need to root out the others. They can¡¯t be trusted. They¡¯re not the culture.¡± ¡°I worry how it looks,¡± said Moss. ¡°To the Farfinder, and the people who will come after.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Casper. ¡°You think it will pay off, in the end, these ships across the multiverse? You think the GCA will direct resources toward it, rather than away from it?¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Moss. ¡°The technology is fascinating, and perhaps vital.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a release valve for those high achievers who need something more,¡± said Casper. ¡°I¡¯ll give it that.¡± ¡°And if we encounter a monarch who sees what we did to our last monarch?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Someone who has more power than we do, who sees how we used raw might when we could? It¡¯s not a good starting point for diplomacy.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Casper. ¡°But worlds are different from nations. Two worlds are connected only by the thread of ships that haven¡¯t even been built yet, and that¡¯s only theory. We¡¯re not going to have effluence creating monsters in our oceans because of some other world. We¡¯re not going to be accepting their problems. They won¡¯t leech off what we¡¯ve built.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know that,¡± said Moss. He looked down at the woodgrain of the table and ran a workman¡¯s thumb across it. ¡°And we don¡¯t know that the culture will hold.¡± ¡°It¡¯ll hold,¡± said Casper. ¡°We have to believe it will, to fight for it.¡± ¡°It¡¯ll hold,¡± said Velli, folding her arms. She looked at Casper. ¡°The loss of the Farfinder is going to hit hard. No more shuttle service.¡± ¡°Soon,¡± said Moss. ¡°Though there are those in the GCA who believe rapid transport needs careful evaluation. There are people who don¡¯t like how fast news spreads, how rare and precious the engines are, how much we¡¯re stratified, and I can¡¯t say they¡¯re wrong.¡± ¡°That¡¯s for the future,¡± said Casper. He drummed his fingers on the table. ¡°We need to get Thirlwell in order. It wasn¡¯t primed and ready. It¡¯ll be difficult going.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll put in the work,¡± said Moss, nodding absentmindedly. ¡°That¡¯s the culture.¡± Chapter 151 - Tracked Perry came out into a world that was completely dark, and it took two whole seconds for him to realize that he didn¡¯t even have a HUD. He took a deep breath, then another, steadying himself. The urge to take off the helmet was immense, but he had no idea if the air outside was breathable. He called for March, and got no response. There was air, he could feel that from moving his arms inside the depowered suit, and he was standing on solid ground, but if there were noises happening beyond the armor, they were being blocked out. He was a sitting duck, and that by itself was a risk, so he unlatched the helmet and removed it, getting his first view of the new world. He wasn¡¯t instantly killed by poisoned air, which was a start. The first breath was dusty and dry, but it was breathable, or at least breathable enough that any problems would take time to manifest. The sky overhead was green with yellow splotches. Perry had never seen a sky like it before, but it instantly struck him as being somewhat sickly. There was no visible sun, but he wasn¡¯t sure whether it was hiding behind the green and yellow, or whether it was merely absent. The land around him was desert, and it instantly called to mind the desert he¡¯d found himself in when he¡¯d gone through that very first portal. Then, he had been in the Mojave, and the sky aside, he thought that this was at least passingly similar, with sandy soil and rocky outcroppings. The air was bone dry and warm, and he could see splashes of purple and yellow from wildflowers, along with a few spiky trees without much in the way of leaves. When he looked around him, he saw that he was standing in what was clearly a graveyard. There was no fence or anything, just a collection of headstones, and he bent down to look at one of them. Pearl Hawkins ??513-??811 Perry stared at those numbers. The script was Roman, except the first ¡°digit¡± was clearly a scarab of some kind, and if that was meant to take the place of a number ¡­ had this woman lived to be nearly three hundred years old? The other tombstones were similar, though they all had dates that lined up with a more normal lifespan, including a few that would have been children when they died. All the dates started with the scarab, and Perry wasn¡¯t sure how he was supposed to interpret that. Millennium of the Scarab? The names were, for the most part, ones that would have been unsurprising to find in use by some flavor of European, though there were a few that obviously came from further afield: a ¡®Paul Pawto¡¯ and a ¡®Mastsot Asuu¡¯. It was pretty obviously a fusion of cultures, but each had their own gravestone, and as much as Perry looked, there was no religious iconography, and no symbols that stood out as being important. He was alone. No one had been waiting for his arrival. Maybe they would come, in time, but there was no gun pointed directly at his head. Marchand being unresponsive was obviously extremely bad. Perry looked into the helmet, but it was as dead as it had been when he¡¯d taken it off. He could move in the armor when it was unpowered, but it was a slog, like moving with weights strapped all over his whole body. He tried pulsing his spiritual energy through the armor, but that did nothing, and there was no reason it should have done anything. There was nothing that should have broken the armor the instant it had come through, nothing that should have needed fixing. Perry had made sure that it was in perfect condition. Visual inspection revealed nothing, not even when he went through the work of removing a few external pieces to look at the interior. It was just chips and wires. Maybe he could have spotted a very obvious short, if there was one, but even if that had been it, he wouldn¡¯t have been able to fix it. After some time spent working on that problem, he rose into the air with the sword to get a better view. The scrubland stretched out in all directions, though there was a river to the north. Beyond a small hill was a house that had fallen into severe disrepair, and Perry could imagine that it was a church at one point ¡ª though what would have been the steeple was so badly ruined that maybe he was just seeing things. It would explain that graveyard though. Past the church were the dusty remains of a road, one that had mostly been reclaimed through erosion, though Perry had no idea how developed it had ever been. As he rose higher, he saw a town, some distance away, looking equally abandoned, with no signs of people, maybe for a very long time. He wished that he had Marchand for a variety of reasons, but one of them was that with Marchand he could launch the drone and get a better snapshot of the whole area, something that he could look around. Everything was screaming Wild West to Perry except for the scarab in place of a number on the gravestones. The town had no power lines of any kind, and no railroad either, which wasn¡¯t surprising for a town that size, but might have meant that they just didn¡¯t have rail at all. ¡°Welp, March,¡± said Perry. ¡°Really wishing you were here.¡± The armor didn¡¯t respond. Perry held his sword in one hand and helmet in the other, floating in the air. March had been with him since the very beginning, or nearly so. Marchand wasn¡¯t just the single best piece of equipment that Perry had ever acquired, he was a friend. So it was with reluctance that Perry opened up the shelf space and stripped the armor off. He placed it on a metal frame that was there to hold it, then stripped out of the nanite undersuit as well, since they were virtually useless without Marchand to direct them. He had a rack of clothing taken from one of the libraries of Markat, and selected something that he felt was closest to being in the local style: slacks, heavy boots, a button-up shirt, and a duster. He had a pistol with a hip holster, and on his other hip, a sheath for his sword. Someone had thoughtfully put a mirror into the shelf space, and while he couldn¡¯t say he looked like a cowboy, he thought he was close enough for cursory inspection. He didn¡¯t have a hat though. He was, of course, too pretty to be a cowboy. Second sphere took care of dirt and grime, it straightened and whitened teeth, it shrank pores and smoothed out skin, and trimmed up eyebrows and facial hair. Perry had a closely trimmed beard, mostly because anything longer would have gotten in the way of the power armor¡¯s helmet. Perry¡¯s hair was perfectly styled, bangs swept to the side with a part on the right. But while being second sphere meant this all happened automatically, it wasn¡¯t beyond his control. As Perry stared into the mirror, he was able to roughen himself up a bit, losing some of that airbrushed supermodel luster. He would stick out, that was inevitable, there were too many things that would give him away, but maybe if he was right about the Wild West, it wouldn¡¯t matter so much. They probably got people with strange accents coming through all the time. It was a mishmash of peoples and cultures, strangers from strange lands. When he was finished, he was handsome and muscular, notably so, but he wouldn¡¯t instantly be regarded as a fairy creature or whatever they¡¯d have made of his looks before the change. He checked the armor again, and it was still dead. He frowned at it. He had no idea how he was going to handle being without it. He wanted March back in his ear. A quick check of the two cell phones that the Farfinder had packed with him showed that both of those were non-functional too. Perry tried the attachable hand-cranks for them in the vain hope that this would bring them to life, and to his surprise, those were working ¡ª or at least, the tiny liquid crystal display was working, showing the battery charge at 99%. A quick crank brought it to 100%, but the phone was still inactive. There were a handful of other electronics to test with, most from the Farfinder, and Perry clicked a flashlight on and off, then got out a pair of walkie-talkies. Those worked fine too, and when Perry cracked one open, he saw that it did have some complicated-seeming circuitry in it, including what was probably a microprocessor. ¡°Huh,¡± he said. The Farfinder was supposed to come in shortly after him, but there had been no sign of them. It was entirely possible that they¡¯d had all their electronics knocked out too, though the fact that at least some of the stuff was still working meant that they wouldn¡¯t be totally sunk. Perry went back over to the armor and opened up the chest piece. There was a protocol he only vaguely remembered for what Richter had called a ¡®maintenance boot¡¯, and eventually he found a small, recessed button that he was supposed to hold for a full twenty seconds. He didn¡¯t expect that it would work, given that Marchand was supposed to auto-boot if there was power, but to his surprise the inside of the helmet lit up with a test pattern, then began spitting out lines of diagnostics. He slipped the helmet on, but it was hard to make heads or tails of it. The display was working, at least, though it didn¡¯t seem to be working very well. The microfusion reactor was offline, and most of the processing power was reading as having major errors, but this was at least something ¡ª it was more than he¡¯d had before. ¡°Sir?¡± came a voice from inside the helmet. Perry had never felt more relieved to hear the word. ¡°March,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re in maintenance boot. Any idea what¡¯s happening?¡± ¡°I shouldn¡¯t be accessible from maintenance boot, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It appears that something has caused the vast majority of processing power to stop working. I have confirmed a connection though, the processing power is physically in place, we have not lost those microchips. In fact, sir, I should say that there¡¯s not enough to run the instance you¡¯re speaking with.¡± ¡°Phantom compute?¡± asked Perry. Ever since their halfway merge, Marchand had more computing power than he should have had, its source unclear, but possibly linked to Perry in some unknown and mystical way. ¡°Perhaps, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Through that, I have access to microphones and the speakers.¡± ¡°We made it to the new world,¡± said Perry. ¡°Looks like the Wild West to me, but that¡¯s at first blush. Can you get the power armor up and running?¡± ¡°Testing the processors now, sir,¡± said Marchand. There was a long pause. ¡°It appears that they are functional but error-ridden. I can attempt to correct, but it will take a significant amount of time, and the suit will be impaired either way.¡± Perry frowned at the armor. ¡°How long are we talking?¡± There was another long pause. ¡°Days, sir.¡± Perry let out a breath. ¡°And that¡¯s just to get the armor back in diminished form?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°From the inventory I¡¯ve just taken, the problem is affecting processors of a certain level of sophistication.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Agreed, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It may be possible to correct for, but it¡¯s also possible that processing power will be severely hampered while we remain in this world.¡± ¡°Then I¡¯m going to leave you to it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to know where we are, what local conditions are like. Either we¡¯re early, and we need all the time we can get to marshall forces, or we¡¯re late, and we need all the time we can get to play catch up.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I do fear you¡¯re exposed without the armor.¡± This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. ¡°I am,¡± said Perry. ¡°But it¡¯s much easier to pretend to be a local without it.¡± He took the helmet off and set it back in place. The armor was hopefully just dormant, and more hopefully, there was something that Marchand could do to keep it online. In the meantime, Perry wanted to explore. ~~~~ The town near the church had probably been abandoned a decade ago, if Perry had to guess. Everything there reinforced the idea that he was in the Wild West, save for the sky, which was still unnatural colors above him with no sign of the sun. The Wild West would be a bit of a disappointment, if he was being honest ¡ª he had no particular interest in cowboys. The one advantage of a world like that was that he would be stronger than virtually everyone he met, aside from the other thresholder. A look inside the abandoned jail made him think that even if worse came to worst he¡¯d be able to do a Lunar Punch to simply exit out the wall. There was no evidence of a moon. That was another problem, but maybe the clouds or whatever they were would part at night and he¡¯d see a nice fat moon staring down at him, ready to hand him its power. He took the thickest road out of town, on the assumption that it would lead to an even thicker road, which would in turn lead to a city, or at least some kind of signage. There was a chance that everywhere he went would be just as abandoned as the town and church were, but he was hoping against that. He started by walking, but given the distance, soon switched to using the sword, which pulled him along a few feet above the road. He wasn¡¯t used to using the sword without his armor on, and soon got dusty, suppressing the cleaning ability of the second sphere so that he¡¯d fit in better with the locals, if he ever found them. He¡¯d spent another twenty minutes in flight, covering ten miles of road, before he reached railroad tracks. These he stopped at, sheathing his sword. They stretched out in either direction, relatively straight. They weren¡¯t modern train tracks, he could tell that much, and they were laid across poorly graded soil rather than a prepared bed of rocks. The metal was corroded, but it was clear that trains still must have gone along it, as the tops were shiny where the train wheels made contact. The world was probably not dead then. The road had terminated at the railroad tracks, and there was a small, dilapidated train stop that looked like it hadn¡¯t seen any use in ages. The wood was weathered in some places and rotten at the ends, and there was a signpost with no sign on it, another indication that the place he¡¯d passed through was a ghost town. The stop was little more than a crude wooden platform with rusted nails. Perry looked up and down the tracks, wondering which direction would be better to follow. Train tracks implied civilization, and that would help him get his bearings. The only question was which direction to go. Because there was no sun, there wasn¡¯t an easy way to tell east from west, so Perry picked at random and took flight again, following the tracks this time. His mind kept going back to the scarab on the gravestones. The signs in the town had been in English, with no words he had any trouble with, and a few that stuck out to him as being rooted in a particular time and place: saloon, blacksmith and farrier, assay office. Another Earth, then? Or another place like Teaguewater had been, a few steps removed from Earth? Perry slowed to a stop when he saw a beast in the distance. He wished that he could zoom in on it, like he could when wearing the armor, but instead he was forced to get closer to see it. It looked like a cow of giant proportions, a steer with a thick pelt. It took him a moment to realize that it must be a bison ¡ª or maybe a buffalo, given that this probably wasn¡¯t the American West. Maybe it was a third thing that only existed in this world. The scrubland had given way to prairie grass, though it was patchy. He guessed that it was some difference in soil quality, rather than rain levels, but his knowledge of ecological patterns was some years in the past by this point. Coming to a new world was the one time that knowing geography would come in handy, and it wasn¡¯t worth a damn. He hadn¡¯t seen much in the way of farms, though there had been a few rows of desiccated trees that might have once been an orchard. Farming was a difficult thing in a place where there wasn¡¯t much water, and it almost always meant irrigation or natural springs. In a place like this, without much vegetation, cattle farming was more common, because they could range and eat whatever there was. The grasses near the bison were more promising in that regard, and maybe the abandoned town was the result of a shift in water ¡ª a river changing course, or a dam being built, or simply a rough patch of weather that led to a drought. This was Perry¡¯s way of getting the pulse of this place, thinking through the material conditions of their people, making sense of what constrained them in terms of diet and manufacturing and building materials. He had never read too much about the Wild West and only vaguely knew it as a relatively brief period of westward expansion, but if he started from base principles, then maybe by the time he actually reached a town he would have the beginnings of a grip on things. The bison he¡¯d been watching and creeping closer to turned toward him. It slowly rose up on its hind legs, growing taller. It had unbunched in the middle, and its front hooves splayed out like fingers. The horns were wide and intimidating, and it huffed at Perry just once before charging. Perry turned and ran the other direction, then withdrew his sword and lifted off into the air. He looked down below him and saw the bison trying to reach for him, but Perry was too fast, and the strange bison was too slow. On closer inspection, it was more like a minotaur, and Perry simply stared at it as it circled below him. ¡°But,¡± he said. ¡°The material conditions ¡­¡± And of course, the material conditions would dominate in any case, which meant that if they had violently angry minotaur bison roaming the area, then ¡­ there wasn¡¯t actually that much precedent in human history for that, to be honest. The towns would have walls, Perry supposed, but the town he¡¯d been to didn¡¯t have them, not even a ring of barbed wire. Perry returned to the rail line and resumed following it. He kept hoping that he would see a train. The tracks continued, empty. How far was it supposed to be between stops? A steam locomotive needed fuel and water, he knew that much, there were supposed to be giant water tanks that could dispense water into the boiler or something ¡­ but the one stop he¡¯d seen had nothing, no sign that it had ever been used for refueling. Perry flew for another thirty miles, past another seemingly abandoned stop, but this one was scorched, like it had been lit on fire and left to burn. A road stretched away from it, but it didn¡¯t seem to be well-traveled, and he didn¡¯t spend the time to follow it. Ghost towns, he knew, didn¡¯t just happen. There was always a reason a town was created, and always a reason it failed, that was just the nature of material reality. A ghost town usually happened when there was a mine that eventually went bust, or when crop conditions changed, and even then, it was common for a town to limp along if at all possible. How many ghost towns were out here? What had made them fail? By his count he¡¯d gone another thirty miles before he finally reached a settlement. This one wasn¡¯t out away from the train stop, the train tracks went right up to it, though there was no train anywhere in sight. It was situated next to a river, too, one that the train tracks had started to run alongside. Perry watched it from afar. The grass was thicker here, but there were also tilled fields, and it was more than just a single main street, if only barely. There was a church ¡ª with a nine-pointed star on the steeple, not a cross ¡ª and there were a few buildings made of brick rather than just wood. Perry landed, sheathed his sword, and walked along the tracks. After a moment¡¯s thought, he unbuckled the sword and put it, and the gun, into the shelf space. That left him vulnerable, but it meant there was less to explain. He didn¡¯t know how he was going to explain himself. It didn¡¯t seem like there was an easy lie. He was thinking that he would tell them that his horse had fallen over and stranded him, but this was the only town for almost seventy miles of track, and he didn¡¯t think that was entirely plausible. Besides, he didn¡¯t know whether they even had horses. There had been a trough outside one of the buildings in the ruined town, but that wasn¡¯t conclusive. Did the term ¡®farrier¡¯ have something to do with horses? Peering ahead, he didn¡¯t see any horses at the town, so the fake horse story seemed weaker to him. He was still a few hundred feet away from the first building at the outskirts when a man came jogging down the tracks toward him. The man had a wide-brimmed hat and an oversized moustache, and his left arm was made of metal, a complicated prosthetic. He raised his right arm and waved at Perry, who kept walking, because he wasn¡¯t sure what the raised hand was supposed to mean. ¡°Hey there, feller!¡± called the man. He didn¡¯t stop jogging until he was right up next to Perry, then stopped with his hands on his jeans for a moment. Perry stopped walking, to be polite, while the man caught his breath. ¡°Hey,¡± said Perry, trying to match the accent. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose there¡¯s a place for me to stay in this town, in there? It¡¯s been a long day.¡± ¡°We can get yeh sorted,¡± he said. ¡°But I¡¯m sorry, a¡¯fore yeh come in I¡¯m goin¡¯ a hafta see a drop of blood.¡± Perry frowned at him. ¡°Blood?¡± he asked. The man looked him over. There was a gun at his hip, and his hand didn¡¯t quite go toward it. ¡°Just for safety¡¯s sake, yeh understand, to see if it jumps, that¡¯s all.¡± ¡°I ¡­ sure,¡± said Perry. The man looked relieved. He pulled a pen knife from a grubby pocket and flicked out the short blade, then held it forward expectantly. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry. ¡°I haven¡¯t done this much.¡± He held up a hand. The man said nothing, and took the proffered hand, cutting Perry across the palm. It stung, but Perry held his hand steady and let the wound bleed. The pen knife had been flicked closed again, and a coin was drawn from the same pocket, one of a few judging by the jingle. ¡°Just a drop here,¡± said the man, holding the coin out sideways between his thumb and forefinger. Perry balled his hand into a fist, which made the stinging pain worse, and held his fist above the coin. One drop fell into the man¡¯s thumb, but the other hit the coin, and the man immediately pulled the coin back and peered closely at the blood, which sat there doing nothing much. It occurred to Perry only afterward that he was, in fact, a werewolf. But the man wiped the coin and his thumb with a handkerchief, then put everything back in his pocket. ¡°Wyatt Blackwood,¡± said the man, holding out his hand. ¡°Sorry to trouble yeh, just needed to check is all.¡± Perry looked down at his hand, which had been cut, then awkwardly shook Wyatt¡¯s hand with his left hand instead. ¡°Peregrin Holzman, but you can call me Perry,¡± said Perry. ¡°And how is it yeh find yerself at Grabler¡¯s Gulch?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°Not often we get folks in from the Flux, yeh understand.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been ranging,¡± said Perry, which he hoped was vague enough. ¡°I¡¯ve been heading this way, but it¡¯s been slow going, and my horse dropped dead two days back, which has put me on foot. I don¡¯t have much more than the clothes on my back, but I can work hard.¡± ¡°Not even a pack to yer name?¡± asked Wyatt, looking Perry over like he might have somehow missed it. ¡°I had one, but dropped it,¡± said Perry. He was sweating slightly, which was good, but given the story it would have been better if he¡¯d been drenched. It was hot out, but not unreasonably so, in part because there were only the strange clouds and no sun. ¡°I do have this, for trade.¡± He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, misshapen lump of gold. Wyatt¡¯s eyes went wide. ¡°Well then, well now, let me see, I think we can get that to the assay office, and they¡¯ll have a look at it, and it might just be that yeh get yerself a fine room tonight with all the company yeh could want.¡± ¡°That would be appreciated,¡± said Perry with a nod. They walked down the tracks together. Perry had been hoping that gold might do the trick, given the sign for an assay office he¡¯d seen in the previous town. The gold was a bit of a coin he¡¯d gotten back in Seraphinus, carried all this way. He¡¯d hammered it until it was no longer in the shape of a coin, then when it had seemed too big, had clipped off pieces. There was more than what he¡¯d shown Wyatt, but it was hard to say how far that money would go. ¡°Now, yeh¡¯ll have to tell the story of yer walkin¡¯ in from the Flux,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°People will want to know, and it¡¯ll help them feel safe with yeh.¡± ¡°Not much to it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just a horse that had too much, I guess. Still mourning it, actually, it was a good faithful creature.¡± ¡°True, true,¡± said Wyatt, as though he¡¯d know. ¡°The Light¡¯s blessin¡¯, those animals, never a truer thing said.¡± ¡°Grabler¡¯s Gulch, is that what you said?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I lost my map when I lost my horse, and I¡¯ve been all turned around. I was following the line, so I knew there weren¡¯t too many options for where I¡¯d end up.¡± ¡°Grabler¡¯s Gulch,¡± nodded Wyatt. He¡¯d shifted slightly at the word ¡®map¡¯, a frown crossing his face, but it passed. ¡°Train is supposed to come every week or two, but we¡¯re three weeks now since it¡¯s been in, and they were supposed to bring a harmonizer for the town, one that¡¯s been sorely needed, but it was supposed to come last time too, and wasn¡¯t on board, so it¡¯s anyone¡¯s guess.¡± Perry nodded as though he knew what any of that meant. ¡°And there¡¯s a sheriff?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Someone I could talk to? Get some assistance, find my bearings?¡± ¡°Sheriff is dead,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°There was supposed to be someone to come replace him on the train too, but like I said, three weeks now we¡¯ve waited, might have been some problems on the tracks.¡± ¡°How¡¯d the sheriff die?¡± asked Perry, narrowing his eyes. That and the missing train both sounded like thresholder business to him, though he was very aware that he was just jumping at shadows. ¡°Oh, awful story,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°He was caught consortin¡¯ with a demon and had to be hanged, nothin¡¯ else for it.¡± Perry felt a chill go down his spine. Marchand was in the shelf, still going through error correction, but in previous worlds they¡¯d made liberal use of the earpiece to have conversations with an unseen voice. Perry was different from these people, wearing strange clothes, with several kinds of supernatural powers. What would it take for them to try to hang him too? Not much, he didn¡¯t think. Turning into a wolf certainly seemed like it would do it. And there was, of course, the possibility that the sheriff really had been consorting with a demon. They had minotaur bison, after all. Perry stayed on his guard as they walked, but a small part of him couldn¡¯t help feeling a bit giddy at being alone in a wide new world. Chapter 152 - Strange Company ¡°These are the Duelists,¡± said Wyatt as they walked down the main stretch of Grabler¡¯s Gulch. Buildings stood on either side of the road, which was plenty wide. They were mostly different shops of one kind or another. A saloon sat at the intersection where one main road met the other, and aside from city hall, it was the largest building in sight, larger even than the church. Perry turned to where Wyatt was pointing. There were two people apparently getting ready for a duel, or maybe in the process of dueling, except they had their weapons drawn already. Perry hadn¡¯t registered them, and no one else seemed to be paying attention to them either, which was a large part of why he¡¯d missed it. They were both perfectly still, aimed at each other, and if not for the way Wyatt had said it, Perry would maybe have thought that it was a piece of performance art. ¡°Here, let me show you,¡± said Wyatt. He walked right past the closer of the two men, a grimy cowboy in a red flannel shirt with shit on his boots ¡ª Perry had seen the horses by now, and could certainly smell them. ¡°This,¡± said Wyatt, pointing at something in the air. Perry came closer. At first he thought it was a fly, but it, like the gunmen, was utterly still. On closer inspection, it was two bullets, frozen in mid-air, at the midpoint between the Duelists. Perry looked back at the gunman. ¡°What happened here?¡± he finally asked. ¡°Oh, no one knows for certain,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Duel gone wrong, they say. Time stopped here thirty years ago, when the town was young, just for these two, yeh see. And now we can¡¯t move ¡®em, which is a bit of a hassle for traffic. Lucky enough they¡¯re right in the middle of the street, easy enough to pass on by.¡± ¡°Can I touch?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh, go right on ahead,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°They get dressed up sometimes, though it¡¯s a bit disrespectful, you ask me.¡± He sniffed. ¡°When this place gets bigger, they might be an attraction, rather than just a curiosity.¡± Perry touched one of the two bullets, and it didn¡¯t move in the slightest. It was rooted firmly in place. ¡°Happened right when the guns went off,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°I was a boy then. I¡¯ve watched ¡®em get closer, and they¡¯re driftin¡¯ apart now.¡± He was apparently talking about the bullets. ¡°What happens when the bullets hit their targets?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No idear,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Might be they don¡¯t. Trackin¡¯ where the bullets will end up, that¡¯s a hell of a task. We had some men out from the city to have a look, but they didn¡¯t say much, only asked questions and took their paces. Might be we watch these two fools slowly dyin¡¯ for centuries.¡± He clucked his tongue. ¡°Now come along, we¡¯ll get yeh to the assay office for some scrip, then off to the tavern for a place to sleep. Like as not the horse is lost to the Flux, but we could search for it, if¡¯n you¡¯re willin¡¯ to pay.¡± ¡°I doubt I could tell you where it was,¡± said Perry. The assay office was a small, stonework building with thick walls and bars on the window. An armed guard sat on a stool inside, and ran his hand over his bald head when they came in by way of greeting. The assayist was behind a counter with an entire wall of precisely hand-labeled equipment and chemicals. She had wild dyed-black hair and a stained lab coat, along with glasses so thick they warped his view of her eyes. They had some time while the assayist did her work, checking the weight and purity of the gold. ¡°So, the harmonizer that¡¯s coming?¡± asked Perry, hoping that was open-ended enough. ¡°Should be soon, if yer stickin¡¯ around, though I can¡¯t imagine yeh won¡¯t be takin¡¯ the train out, when it comes. Better that than a new horse, unless this rangin¡¯ has a point.¡± He¡¯d taken his hat off when they came into the store, and his fingers drummed against it occasionally. ¡°It¡¯s a valuable thing, a harmonizer,¡± said Perry, which was entirely based on context clues. ¡°Oh, it¡¯ll change this town for the better, not a doubt about that,¡± said Wyatt with a nod. ¡°How we¡¯ve been doin¡¯ without all this time, I don¡¯t know, but as soon as it¡¯s up and runnin¡¯, there¡¯s no more to fear from the Flux.¡± ¡°You¡¯re able to handle the problems, this far out?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Well,¡± said Wyatt. He put a finger under his collar and tugged at his shirt. ¡°As such ¡­ I mentioned the sheriff and his demon, and you¡¯ve seen the Duelists. Harmonizer won¡¯t get rid of that business, but we¡¯ll be safer. Might even get away with not lockin¡¯ the doors at night, though I can¡¯t say I¡¯d take that risk.¡± He winced. ¡°A week past we had a spitfire roll in here, nearly set the saloon ablaze before it was doused.¡± He looked at Perry¡¯s impassive face. ¡°We handle it, as best we can, bury our dead far away, make the lamb¡¯s sign on the doors, never flip a coin more than seven times, keep the horses out of the nettlestems, all that. We¡¯re good, diligent people.¡± He was looking closer at Perry. ¡°You said you were a ranger?¡± ¡°I said I was ranging,¡± said Perry. ¡°Big difference. I¡¯m writing a book, but I lost my notes when I lost my horse. Nothing I can¡¯t replace, they were just a sketch of an idea, the real work will come later on. Most of it¡¯s still up here,¡± he tapped his head. ¡°From the city, originally?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°There¡¯s not many that can survive out in the Flux, not on their own.¡± ¡°I nearly didn¡¯t, like I said,¡± Perry replied. Wyatt was pressing the story, which wasn¡¯t good. If Perry was forced to invent biographical details, they would be paper thin. He didn¡¯t even have the name of a city he could pretend to be from. ¡°I went with less preparation than I should have. I came across beasts whose names I didn¡¯t know, horrible things, and I had to push the horse hard to outrun them. I came across a town that was completely empty, abandoned, and worried that might be the end for me.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°An educated type then, are yeh?¡± There was nothing about that description that should have screamed education to anyone, but Perry supposed that ¡®educated¡¯ was being used as something of an insult. Perry had gotten himself lost in the Flux and accidentally killed a horse, and that was what education got you. But it was something to explain his ignorance. And he supposed his clothes were finer than those he¡¯d seen on the people around him, for as much as he¡¯d suppressed the second sphere from keeping them clean. ¡°I¡¯ve been to college, yes,¡± said Perry, leaning on the translation powers of the second sphere to make sure the word ¡®college¡¯ fit correctly. Wyatt nodded. ¡°Readin¡¯ and writin¡¯, fine things if you¡¯ve got the time and money for ¡®em.¡± ¡°Money more than time,¡± said the assayist, who was dunking the piece of gold in a green liquid with long tongs. ¡°Money more than time,¡± said Wyatt, nodding. He looked at the assayist like he¡¯d forgotten she was there. ¡°Yeh read, Petunia?¡± ¡°I read,¡± she answered in a gravelly voice. ¡°Whatcha read?¡± he asked. ¡°Chemistry and geology,¡± she replied. ¡°Oh, thought yeh meant, ah, other books, not the trade,¡± he replied. ¡°Those too,¡± she replied. ¡°Had a stack of penny dreadfuls when I came in, read through ¡®em and traded ¡®em away.¡± She looked up from her vial to Perry. ¡°Those are more time than money though.¡± ¡°Town needs a library,¡± said Wyatt, nodding again as though he had just had a brilliant idea. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose there¡¯s a history book for this place?¡± asked Perry. When Wyatt gave him a blank look, Perry continued. ¡°Some kind of chronicle of its founding, what¡¯s happened here, the major beats of how it¡¯s gone up to this point?¡± ¡°City Hall,¡± said the assayist. ¡°But you¡¯re better off just offerin¡¯ to buy drinks at the saloon.¡± ¡°City Hall is right,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°But I can tell yeh what yeh need to know.¡± ¡°Almost done,¡± said the assayist. ¡°Yeh¡¯ll put it in a book, you think?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°Possibly,¡± said Perry. There was a silence that proved slightly uncomfortable. ¡°Right now it¡¯s research, getting a lay of the land. It¡¯s on the pioneer spirit, the will to endure the roughness and the wilds, I think. But it¡¯s speculative right now. If there¡¯s something that catches my fancy, I might shift the direction of the book.¡± He tried to decide how far he could push the lie. Being an author didn¡¯t seem terribly difficult to him, and he¡¯d never have to prove that¡¯s what he was. He had friends who were writers, and it seemed like they mostly talked excitedly about projects that never seemed to get finished. To his knowledge, no one had ever asked them to see pages. ¡°You said the harmonizer is going to come soon, to be installed?¡± ¡°Soon,¡± said Wyatt. Some apprehension crossed his face. ¡°Shoulda been here already, truth be told. If there were some trouble ¡ª¡± ¡°Doesn¡¯t do to speak of trouble,¡± said the assayist with a sharp look. ¡°Gold is good, you¡¯ll take payment in scrip?¡± ¡°Is that my only option?¡± asked Perry. The assayist nodded. ¡°Then I guess that¡¯s what I¡¯ll take,¡± said Perry. The scrip was a small pile of poorly printed paper notes, and just from looking at them, they¡¯d be the easiest thing in the world to forge. They had the name of the town on them, which meant that if Perry went anywhere else, they¡¯d be nearly worthless. He could easily be ripped off, especially because he didn¡¯t look dangerous. It was the price of business though, and he had more gold where that lump had come from. ¡°To the saloon then,¡± said Wyatt, slapping his legs and getting to his feet. They left the assayist and her guard with some cursory goodbyes, then went across the street to the large saloon, passing by the Duelists who were still locked in their eternal gunfight. The saloon¡¯s name was the ¡°Grabler¡¯s Greenhorn Saloon!¡±, complete with the exclamation mark. The place was lively, though Perry didn¡¯t know whether he should have expected that, given that he had no clue what time of day it was. Heads turned to take him in as he arrived, the whole place momentarily stopping at the arrival of a newcomer, but Wyatt waved them away and they mostly went back to their business. It was a mix of men and women, though more men, and the women were dressed up such that Perry couldn¡¯t imagine they were anything but sex workers, frilly black lace and bustiers, showing cleavage and legs. At best, they were there as eye candy, selling the illusion of sex. Most of the men were dusty and dirty, though there was one at the bar in a fine white suit. The presence of an assayist seemed to indicate that the town owed part of its existence to mineral wealth, but Perry wasn¡¯t going to assume that just yet. ¡°Cleo!¡± called Wyatt as he sat down at the bar. ¡°This here is Perry, he¡¯ll need a room for a spell.¡± The woman working behind the bar turned around and Perry¡¯s face remained impassive while his limbic system did a little dance. Her face was horribly disfigured along the left side, not a scar or burn, but a place where it was split, a blackened vertical crevasse. It reminded Perry of a potato that had gone off, a few deep centimeters of rot that went from her eyebrow down to her lip. The split passed straight through her eye, which was milky. The other one was green and bright. Without that disfigurement, she would have been one of the most beautiful women Perry had ever met. She had smooth skin and a pleasant smile, ample breasts pushed up by a dress that probably didn¡¯t need to be doing so much work, and blonde hair with tight curls that bounced behind her head. ¡°First drink is on the house, what¡¯ll you have?¡± she asked. ¡°Beer,¡± said Perry, momentarily reading off the sign behind her. It had been a very long time since he¡¯d had beer. He wasn¡¯t expecting much, as there were only three options on the menu, all without any description. It was between beer, whiskey, and wine, and that was it, despite the motley bottles on the shelves. ¡°He doesn¡¯t know this place,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Well I know that,¡± said Cleo, smiling. ¡°But you shush, it¡¯s not every day I get to see someone try my beer for the first time.¡± Perry accepted a glass of beer that had been poured from a keg. It was room temperature, and his expectations lowered once again. When he¡¯d been on Earth, he was well-accustomed to craft beers from microbreweries, and while he was never too much of a snob about it, he had learned the lingo. He took a sip. It was a bit fruity, but fairly mild, and much better than he¡¯d been expecting, though it would have been greatly improved by being chilled. He smacked his lips and looked at Cleo, then at Wyatt. Both of them were looking at him expectantly. Stolen story; please report. ¡°Second sip, if you please,¡± said Cleo. Perry took the second sip. It was an entirely different taste, darker and earthier, with a slightly nutty taste. He looked down at it and frowned. Cleo laughed and gave a single loud clap of her hands. ¡°Always different, every sip,¡± she said. ¡°Neat trick,¡± said Perry, putting the beer down. He stared at it for a moment. Perry looked around the saloon, and caught one of the paintings moving. It was a cowboy with a lasso and a mountain range behind him, and very briefly the cowboy had been in motion. When Perry¡¯s eyes fixed on it, it stood still. There were strange little odds and ends all around him. Wyatt was the only one with a mechanical arm, but there were many people with disfigurements that required prosthetics. One of the men playing poker had hands like a monkey¡¯s, which no one was commenting on. ¡°You don¡¯t seem impressed,¡± said Cleo, looking slightly wounded. Perry shrugged and looked at her, trying to meet her eyes, trying not to be distracted by the crack of black mold running over her face. ¡°I think you learn to take things in stride,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s the only way to live in this world.¡± He paused. ¡°How¡¯s it done?¡± ¡°Well it¡¯s not done,¡± said Wyatt with a little laugh. ¡°Just is the way it is. Yeh really don¡¯t have much experience out in the Flux, do yeh?¡± ¡°Apparently not,¡± said Perry. He took another sip of the beer. It was harder to identify how it had changed, but it had. His palette, to the extent he had one, was ruined by having the different flavors in rapid succession. ¡°You still call this town ¡®the Flux¡¯?¡± ¡°Do they not, in the city?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°Asking for the book,¡± said Perry. ¡°Talk to me like I¡¯m a moron that just wandered in from the wasteland.¡± ¡°Until we get the harmonizer, we¡¯re in the Flux,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Not so dangerous, with this many people around, nothin¡¯ like a true frontier town, but here? Well, yeh¡¯ll see plenty.¡± ¡°And when the harmonizer arrives, is it ¡­ will that end things like this?¡± Perry gestured at the glass of beer. ¡°Fortunately not,¡± said Cleo. ¡°Saves me a fortune, I can buy the cheap stuff.¡± She gave a little laugh. ¡°You¡¯re staying here tonight?¡± ¡°Tonight, and the next few nights,¡± said Perry, pulling out the scrip he¡¯d gotten. ¡°I¡¯ll be needing food and a place to wash up.¡± Cleo¡¯s eyes went to the money. ¡°Wyatt, you said he wandered in from nowhere?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t say,¡± replied Wyatt. ¡°But he did, came down the tracks.¡± ¡°And you tested the blood on silver?¡± asked Cleo. ¡°Course,¡± scoffed Wyatt. ¡°Had to be done, sheriff might be gone, but someone¡¯s gotta step up.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Cleo. ¡°We¡¯ve got a spare room up top, I¡¯ll get you the key, but we only serve lunch and dinner, so you¡¯re on your own for breakfast.¡± She took only a small portion of his scrip, enough that he¡¯d have his room and meals for a week, and finished off the beer. He wanted to get into the room, lock the door, and step into the shelf space to check on Marchand. ¡°Oh, one other thing,¡± said Perry as he stood up from his stool. ¡°Is there a map of the local area? Something I can look at to get my bearings?¡± They both stared at him for a beat, then laughed. ¡°A map, he says!¡± hooted Wyatt, like it was the funniest thing he¡¯d ever heard. ¡°I can show yeh The Web, but yeh really must be from the city if yeh think we¡¯ve got maps of the Flux!¡± ~~~~ The Web sure looked like a map to Perry. It had rail lines and towns marked on it, for one thing. It was abstract, looking more like those maps that cities used for subway stops, if a little less modernist in its design. There was a certain geometry to it that obviously didn¡¯t exist in the real world. ¡°It¡¯s relations, see?¡± asked Wyatt, as though he really was talking to some childlike idiot. It was a great way to get information, but still grated at Perry. ¡°How it works is, there are roads and tracks connectin¡¯ places, but what¡¯s in between is anyone¡¯s guess.¡± They¡¯d gotten a paper copy of The Web and unrolled it on the bar after Cleo had carefully wiped down the surfaces. It had been grabbed from a neighboring store, mostly because Wyatt thought it was insanely funny that Perry had a fundamental misunderstanding of how things worked. In the center of the map was Charlonion, the largest city in the region, and spreading out from it like a spider¡¯s web was everything else, all connected by rail lines. They went in every direction, except to the southeast, where the ocean had taken a chunk out of the map. Grabler¡¯s Gulch was far to the northwest, nearly off the map, and marked with the smallest of dots. According to the legend, that meant a town that didn¡¯t have a harmonizer, which seemed to be a major dividing line between settlements. ¡°Could be four hundred miles to Charlonion, could be twenty,¡± said Wyatt, tracing his finger along the map. ¡°Yeh¡¯ll go through Taryton, then Cenneral, and then yeh¡¯ll be there. I mean, yeh must¡¯ve been through, right?¡± ¡°I was in Taryton,¡± said Perry, nodding. It was good to have names. ¡°I just ¡­ didn¡¯t really think about it too much. I spent most of the train ride reading.¡± ¡°Feh,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°It¡¯s a way a life out here. When yeh move yeh have to think,¡± he tapped his head, ¡°have to understand whether yeh¡¯ll have enough water to get back, because if yeh go three miles, it might be thirty on the way back.¡± ¡°More than you can make in a day,¡± said Perry. ¡°You might be forced to spend the night in the Flux. I guess I got lucky, coming here.¡± ¡°Easy to die,¡± said Wyatt with a nod. ¡°Very easy to die.¡± Perry traced his finger over the map. There were lots of small towns without harmonizers, and he was guessing even more that weren¡¯t on the map at all. The two stops he¡¯d been past, the one that led to the abandoned town and the other that had been burnt, weren¡¯t on the map at all. He wanted to ask where the harmonizers came from, and about the deep history of Charlonion. It was away from the ocean, which he found interesting. It was a Wild West, but there was no sign of westward expansion obvious in the arrangement of towns, no leftward bias in town sizes or the rail network. But these people didn¡¯t come from nowhere, they came from somewhere, and it wasn¡¯t clear from the map where that might be. If they¡¯d come from the ocean, a major port, then why was the city there, Landin, a small one? Port cities had a habit of growing from the centralization of trade, and this one had not. It was Charlonion that was at the center of everything. And port cities were especially prominent if there were immigrants coming from across the water. Perry looked around. Where were all these people from? ¡°Where are you both from?¡± he asked, after deciding that it was a reasonable question. ¡°Fort Shaw,¡± said Wyatt, pointing a finger at a settlement that was also in the northwest quadrant. It had a harmonizer, according to the legend. ¡°Born in the city,¡± said Cleo. ¡°Dad was part of the circus, we moved a lot, I settled here five years ago.¡± ¡°And Grabler¡¯s Gulch, most of the people here are from elsewhere?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Some,¡± said Wyatt. He rubbed his chin. ¡°People filter in, usually on a train, not walkin¡¯ down the tracks. There are the prospectors, the ranchers, the farmers, plots granted by the Commission, claims to stake, and yeh know, the occasional Yuuksen we get in these parts, usually not to settle, but sometimes, I s¡¯pose.¡± ¡°Peep and his kin,¡± said Cleo. ¡°Peep, that¡¯s true,¡± said Wyatt with a nod. ¡°Mostly it¡¯s the farm families that have their little ones, but it¡¯s not so good here in the Flux, all kinds of problems yeh don¡¯t get in the city.¡± ¡°And some problems in the city that we don¡¯t get,¡± said Cleo. They didn¡¯t refer to Charlonion as anything but ¡°the city¡±, like there was simply no point in saying its name, because you couldn¡¯t mean anywhere else. Looking at the map, maybe that was the right way to think about it. The font they¡¯d used for the name of Charlonion was bigger than was used anywhere else, even at the top of the map, which said ¡°Dusklands¡±. ¡°Are there people from ¡­ further afield?¡± asked Perry. He meant England, or the Old World, or something like that, but when he said it, it sounded like he was using a euphemism. ¡°Oh, you get the oddball now and then,¡± said Wyatt. He glanced at the man in the white suit. ¡°I can hear you, of course,¡± the man replied. He looked at them with a small smile. He was drinking a glass of milk, which Perry hadn¡¯t noticed until just then. Milk wasn¡¯t on the menu. ¡°And ¡­ who are you?¡± asked Perry. He hadn¡¯t looked at the man in the white suit, hadn¡¯t wanted to stare, but the man did stick out even among some of the oddities of the others, and Perry was on the lookout for anyone who stuck out ¡ª that was the easy way to find a thresholder, after all. ¡°I¡¯m an oddball,¡± said the man. His teeth were too white, like they¡¯d been bleached, and the incisors were long, giving him a vampiric look. ¡°Augustus St. Gabriel.¡± He held out his hand, and Perry took it. ¡°Peregrin Holzman,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m an angel,¡± said Augustus St. Gabriel. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how to react to that. It was certainly plausible, given how much he knew about this world. The white seemed like it would be hard to maintain in this world, particularly with all the horse shit. ¡°Are yeh a believer?¡± Wyatt asked Perry. ¡°I haven¡¯t made up my mind,¡± said Perry. He thought about the church with the giant star on it. He wasn¡¯t sure that was the ¡®right¡¯ answer, but his goal at the moment was to make friends. ¡°I go to church, when I can.¡± Augustus St. Gabriel looked at him. ¡°A politician, then? And here I was thinking you were a dandy scholar.¡± He had a strange accent, more refined and educated than the others, but it felt like English wasn¡¯t his first language, just one he had picked up and spoke notably well. ¡°It¡¯s not a conversation I want to get into,¡± said Perry. ¡°We all have our own beliefs.¡± He hoped that was true too. From what he knew about the Wild West, it was at least somewhat religiously varied, but he¡¯d only seen the one church, and it was possible that it was so common as to be obligatory. But maybe there were different stripes of whatever their religion was, and he hoped that he¡¯d be taken as an Episcopalian among Lutherans, if that was the case. ¡°Well, an angel might take your doubt as tantamount to being called a liar, sir,¡± said Augustus St. Gabriel. ¡°But allowances must be made for the Flux and the people who find themselves in it.¡± ¡°Appreciated,¡± said Perry. He looked over at Cleo and raised an eyebrow, but she gave him only a small frown, an exchange of facial expressions he didn¡¯t actually know how to untangle. Augustus St. Gabriel¡¯s hair was pale blonde, and his eyes were so pale blue as to be distracting. His shirt was as white as the rest of his outfit, and his tie was just slightly off-white. Perry had no idea what they meant by ¡°angel¡± but he was reconsidering whether it was literal or not. Perhaps there was something in their sociology or culture that would explain it, or maybe this guy really had come down from what passed for heaven in these parts. Certainly they thought that demons existed, if the sheriff had been hanged for being with one. Perry did eventually make his way up to his room, unlocking it with the key that Cleo had given him, then locking it behind him and double-checking that it didn¡¯t budge. It was a simple room with simple furniture, and if he needed it, there was an outhouse in the back, a pit latrine with a crude wooden structure over it. Perry was undecided on whether he was going to sleep in the bed or not ¡ª the shelf space had a much, much better bed that had been donated by friendly library staff, and it also had better facilities, along with water that could be trusted and food that wasn¡¯t at risk of poisoning him. He double-checked the lock, then stepped into the shelf space, leaving the boundary open and pointed toward the door so he could hear if someone tried to come in. ¡°March, how¡¯s it going?¡± asked Perry as he approached the armor. ¡°Thirteen percent, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Slow, but accelerating, I think.¡± ¡°Still on the error correction thing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir, that''s all I¡¯ve been doing,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though perhaps I shouldn¡¯t say that, because without you here, I don¡¯t believe there¡¯s a ¡®me¡¯ to continue on with anything.¡± ¡°Is that a problem?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Do I need to be in the room?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a thorny philosophical problem, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I do not believe there to be an operational impact.¡± ¡°I can feel the strands of connection going somewhere when the shelf is closed,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re not ¡­ cut off, I guess, not really.¡± ¡°Nevertheless, whatever errant phantom computation is happening, it does not appear to happen when the shelf is completely closed,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I would appreciate if you would keep it open, sir.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Is the data ¡­ I mean, is it being stored on a hard drive somewhere? Pulled from it? Are you forming memories while being ¡®off¡¯?¡± ¡°I believe so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Access to data is limited, as any computation must avoid affected processing clusters. But I can access memories, and seem capable of forming new ones, which must necessarily involve the drives.¡± The suit had processing power spread all over, for various reasons that were opaque to Perry, though redundancy was a big one. Most was in the chest, near the reactor, but there were bits in the helmet and limbs as well. ¡°The how of what you¡¯re doing is eluding me, the fundamental reality of what that progress bar actually represents,¡± said Perry. ¡°And I don¡¯t need to know, but from my perspective this is just some mysterious process that¡¯s happening, a bar that¡¯s going to fill and then you¡¯re going to be back, probably diminished.¡± ¡°My best guess at what¡¯s happened, based on available evidence, is that it has to do with something happening at the nanometer scale,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The history of both our worlds featured reductions in the size of microchips. At a certain point, what you call quantum mechanics began to play a significant part in chip design, offering a more accurate understanding of what was happening with the flow of electrons than classical mechanics. At a certain point, quantum tunneling becomes a significant factor, namely ¡®off-state¡¯ current leakage. There are also, in some of the microchips, elements that take advantage of quantum effects, particularly rapid flux, the term for which I don¡¯t know in your version of English.¡± ¡°So the chips are fried?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They have become error-prone, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Unfortunately, the errors are occurring within the chips themselves, and because this is a fundamental problem with chip design, it cannot be corrected on that level. Would you like an explanation of the full process?¡± ¡°Fuck me, but yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Keep it short and simple.¡± ¡°The first step is to create an error map,¡± said Marchand. ¡°This is possible given that certain parts of the power armor use microchips with a larger gate size, not subject to quantum effects that are likely causing the bit flips. Half of the work consists of running test patterns through each processor multiple times. The other half of the work is in developing error-correcting code implementations, and to do so largely without the ability to trust the processors which are being used to create these codes. Creating reliable computation from unreliable computation is a difficult problem.¡± ¡°Well ¡­ I guess I have no choice but to trust you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Very true, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I appreciate your trust nonetheless.¡± ¡°And even if you¡¯re operational again, the nanites are probably toast?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Given that they were hyperminiaturized, and change is more likely to have affected them, yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I cannot say whether this would result in permanent incapacitation or if they would return to a functional state in the next world. I do know that they¡¯re non-responsive at the moment.¡± Perry winced. ¡°Then I guess keep doing what you¡¯re doing, collect the data, correct the errors. Time is an asset right now, and I don¡¯t intend to waste it.¡± He immediately went downstairs to have some beers with the locals. Chapter 153 - Life on the Range Perry sat and listened to stories. He¡¯d gone down to the general store and bought a pencil, a whittling knife to sharpen it with, and a blank leather-bound book, then began putting his scrip to work buying drinks for the people who filled the place. There was more than one saloon in the town, he¡¯d confirmed that by walking around, but this was the biggest and the busiest. He embarked on the project by asking for biographies, hoping that he¡¯d get the spoken and the unspoken facts about this world. Cecil ¡°Dead Finger¡± Michael was originally from the city, a sewer rat, which from what he said literally did mean that he spent a significant amount of his childhood in an extensive sewer system. He¡¯d been a prospector for a while, made money digging up something he called ¡°honey gems¡±. He had a certain knack for that, but was now in Grabler¡¯s Gulch looking for a wife. His finger wasn¡¯t literally dead, but the nail of his forefinger was blackened, and he claimed to be able to dowse treasures with it. Andrew Weaver was a clothier, his family trade, and he had a wife and seven children, who were back at home while he drank beer after beer in the saloon. The train was late, which meant that he didn¡¯t have the textiles he needed to do his work, and anyway the train was the lifeblood of Grabler¡¯s Gulch, so there wasn¡¯t much work for anyone while there was some kind of delay. Perry took most of this to be his excuse to drink all day. Eddie Barlow was one of what Perry had assumed were sex workers. When they spoke, she used the word ¡°hospitality¡± a bit too much, and placed her hand on his arm. She¡¯d been in ¡°hospitality¡± her ¡°whole life¡±, moving from place to place. She was hoping to settle down, apparently, and had come out to ¡°the edge of the world¡± to do it, though everyone said there were far more wild places beyond the Gulch. Her parents had both died when she was little, and she¡¯d been raised in a farm orphanage, tasked with wrangling pigs that were almost the same size as her, but she¡¯d run away to pursue a better life. She joked that she was still wrangling hogs, and gave Perry a wink that made him uncomfortable. Most people were farmers, ranchers, and miners, though the height of prospecting at Grabler¡¯s Gulch had apparently come and gone. The saloon filled as it started to get dark out, still no sign of the sun, and more people came in from their shops and fields and places of employment. Perry had a little table set up, and he got to practice both his handwriting and his pencil whittling, because he was a curiosity and many of them thought the prospect of being immortalized in a book was interesting. The beer helped. If he hadn¡¯t been second sphere, he probably would have had to deal with his hand cramping up, but his fingers were deft, and the writing was coming out almost perfect, a fringe benefit of second sphere he hadn¡¯t had cause to notice before. There were hints and portents in the stories that people told, mentions of diseases and blights that Perry had never heard of. There was a moon, but it was spoken of with a temporarily lowered voice, and always with a touch of furtive looks. There were monsters out in the Flux, canny ones and beastly ones, along with some that were indifferent until they were poked. They somehow weren¡¯t the majority of what he heard about ¡ª people were more concerned with their cattle and their crops, or the idea of hitting it big with a mining claim. A rancher told Perry that one of his cattle had been rearranged the fortnight before: it had been found dead with its muscles and bones made into a sculpture, ribs spread to the heavens, guts filled with its own blood and coiled at the bottom. It was still living somehow, the heart beating as a centerpiece, until the rancher put it out of its misery. The culprit was an ¡®ixy¡¯ according to the rancher, an unfortunate sort of creature that made its home in the night. A blacksmith had a pinky that was ghostly green, see-through, a result of ¡°an accident¡± at the forge, working ¡°thickmetal¡± that had been brought in from the Flux. The blacksmith couldn¡¯t move the ghost pinky, it stuck straight up, and the blacksmith inquired with Perry whether there might be some kind of cure in the city. Of course, Perry didn¡¯t know, but he said he suspected that there wasn¡¯t. The town veterinarian was originally from the city, and spent most of the time talking with Perry about the animals that were out in the wilderness, inviting Perry to see a taxidermy collection, or possibly make some sketches. He had all kinds of stories about animals, which he was borderline obsessive about, detailing a time he cut open a pig¡¯s belly and found a clump of hair and teeth, or a living chicken with no head, or a duck that vomited its eggs from its mouth. All but the last seemed plausible, but vomiting up eggs was definitely supernatural. The eggs were smashed as a matter of course, and no one had risked eating them. Perry stayed in the saloon, listening to people, not talking too much, mostly making notes. It sometimes seemed as though no two people had the same story ¡ª they had come from all over, and their accents were different from each other. They had different things they thought were vital for him to know. He was eventually able to tease out some of the deeper history, things that had happened before Charlonion was settled, but everyone seemed fuzzy on the details, and there were only three of the twenty or so that claimed to have been from elsewhere. The term they used with great regularity was ¡°beyond the veil¡±, and when pressed, they listed countries that Perry had never heard of. It wasn¡¯t an alternate Earth then, not that he¡¯d thought that was likely. He was cautious about asking too many questions, but it was a good starting point for later reading, if he could find a book. He felt certain that someone had to have an encyclopedia, since there were obviously printing presses, if not necessarily owned and operated in town. When nightfall came, a few people ducked out of the saloon, then came back in to report that it was a quarter moon. This was met with two claps from nearly everyone in the saloon, and a double stomp from those who had their hands full, which no one explained to Perry. He had clapped too, which he was only able to do in time because of his superior reflexes. He slipped outside to have a piss and saw that the yellow and green sky had completely cleared up, leaving only stars overhead, along with a white quarter-moon no larger than Earth¡¯s. The stars weren¡¯t in a cluster like the Milky Way, there were instead several thick parallel bands. Perry stared for a moment, trying to work out the cosmological implications of the stripes, and came up short. When he went back in, a woman was waiting at his table. She had a long red scarf on, bright and distinctive, along with a messy nest of red hair beneath a broad-brimmed hat. She must have just come in, because she removed the hat and set it down on the table, then shook out her hair and started combing it with a comb made of ivory. In contrast to the other women Perry had seen, she was wearing a pair of brown trousers and a button-up shirt, men¡¯s clothing. He sat down across from her and saw her face. She was younger than he¡¯d thought from behind, probably a few years younger than he was. One of her front teeth was chipped, a missing triangle, but her teeth were whiter and cleaner than anyone else¡¯s except the angel¡¯s. She was clearly pretty pale naturally, but sunburnt and tanned in different places, with a smattering of freckles. ¡°You¡¯re the chubbo who¡¯s a writer?¡± she asked. She had an accent that reminded him of Australian, mostly in the upward inflection and the vowel shift. ¡°They say you might buy a girlie a beer, if I told you suzzo.¡± He understood ¡®suzzo¡¯ only through translation: it meant ¡°something¡± with a connotation of gossip. ¡°I think I have enough,¡± said Perry. He¡¯d filled quite a few pages, writing fast. ¡°But I will buy you a drink, if you have a story you wanted to get off your chest.¡± ¡°Fair enough, chubbo,¡± she replied with a smile. The word meant something like ¡°buddy¡± or ¡°pal¡±, mildly mocking. ¡°Now, my parents died when I was five, and I fell in with a gang of children, little ones ¡ª¡± ¡°Did you want me to get you that drink?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m talkin¡¯, ain¡¯t I?¡± she asked, frowning at him. Perry signaled for Cleo to bring a beer. ¡°Your name, before we start?¡± ¡°Trigger Queen,¡± she said with a smile. ¡°I¡¯m a sharpshooter.¡± ¡°Your parents gave you that name?¡± he asked. ¡°Well they died when I was five chubbo, I¡¯ve got no idea what they named me, do I?¡± she asked. ¡°I¡¯ve had all sorts of names, you pick them up when you move, and now it¡¯s Trigger Queen, or just Queen if you like, or Queenie. Can I go on?¡± Perry nodded. She¡¯d taken offense to the question. ¡°So like I say, parents dead at five, I never knew what it was, don¡¯t remember them at all? And then I was in gangs, fightin¡¯ and stealin¡¯ for scraps. When I was ten or thereabouts I turned to burglary, and that I had a skill for, which is how I got my first gun.¡± She took out a revolver that was at her hip, maybe by way of demonstration. It was long and silvered, highly polished, with an ivory grip. ¡°Now that I had some real skill with, and half my time after was spent grabbin¡¯ grusties to fling.¡± Grusties were bullets. ¡°And time come I caught the eyes of someone, which led me into a particular line of work I can¡¯t give suzzo about.¡± ¡°Assassination?¡± asked Perry. She barked a laugh and watched his face. ¡°Suzzo like that, chubbo.¡± ¡°For a gang? An association? The Commission?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Only you don¡¯t strike me as a Commission type.¡± The Charlonion Commission was as close as the Dusklands had to a proper regional government, and from what he¡¯d heard, most of the people in the saloon half suspected that he had been sent by them as a spy ahead of the harmonizer coming in. They had much more power in Charlonion, and controlled the trains and harmonizers, but their reach outside the city was strained. ¡°I¡¯m not a type that¡¯s found much to love in any group,¡± replied Queenie. ¡°Not the gangs, certainly not bean-bangers like the Commission.¡± ¡°So you worked alone?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Always alone,¡± said Queenie, nodding. ¡°That¡¯s the way to be. Suzzo is you walked in by your lonesome, is that because it¡¯s how you like it?¡± ¡°I had a horse,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re not really alone if you have a horse.¡± His mind went to Marchand, who was not a horse. ¡°Well, I¡¯ll take that as a yes,¡± said Queenie. ¡°I¡¯m the same, better alone.¡± ¡°And how does that work, if you¡¯re an assassin?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not much call for a lone assassin, you¡¯d have to take orders from somewhere.¡± ¡°I said suzzo like that, chubbo,¡± she said with a roll of her eyes. ¡°Plenty of things to take off dead men.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not assassination, that¡¯s just robbery with murder thrown in,¡± said Perry. He was needling her a bit, which maybe wasn¡¯t wise given that she still had her gun drawn. Firearm safety didn¡¯t seem to be a major priority for her, and to the extent other people had noticed, they had only moved away slightly. No one had told her to put the gun back in its holster. It was, at least, pointed at the ceiling. ¡°Nah, chubbo,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s more complicated. And there¡¯s gotta be a reason for it, suzzo that people respect, otherwise they¡¯ll turn on you.¡± She casually waved the revolver in a circle to indicate the saloon. ¡°These people don¡¯t mind me? I¡¯ve done nothin¡¯ to them. That¡¯s the secret to movin¡¯ among them.¡± He was a little on edge. It was the scarf more than anything, long and red, brightly colored like it had just been dyed yesterday, different from all her other clothes. There was also something about her, the way she¡¯d sought him out, the casual violence, just a vibe that was twigging him. Half the people around looked like they could be thresholders, with little quirks and gizmos. He¡¯d already been on guard, in that calm, catlike way of second sphere. He could retreat into the shelf space if he had to. She slipped her revolver back into its holster. ¡°There¡¯s suzzo about the frontier, isn¡¯t there?¡± she asked. ¡°This place¡¯ll be different, once the harmo is here. Too many people already, yaskme.¡± ¡°I think everyone has a size that feels right for them,¡± said Perry. ¡°Smaller for you than others.¡± ¡°At least the sheriff is dead,¡± she said with a laugh. ¡°You weren¡¯t a fan?¡± asked Perry. Stolen story; please report. ¡°Consortin¡¯ with a demon, can you believe that?¡± she asked. She clucked her tongue and leaned forward, then drank half her glass of beer in one go. ¡°Always the same with the people in power, I¡¯d bet every one of the Council are doin¡¯ whatever they please, which is the way to live a life, yaskme, but the thing they please is bossin¡¯ everyone else around.¡± ¡°Half the food they grow out here gets put on a train back to Char,¡± said Perry. It was a talking point that Perry had heard from some of the farmers. The economics of the frontier town seemed to be that farmers sent produce and cattle back to the city, while the city sent finished goods ordered by catalog to the town. The train was supposed to run regularly, and there was a small train yard to handle switching out cars, but the town was suffering under whatever scheduling issue was happening. ¡°And half that doesn¡¯t make it,¡± said Queenie. ¡°They¡¯ve told you about the Yuuks?¡± Perry nodded. The Yuuksen were the indigenous peoples of the Dusklands, at least as far as he could tell. They were alternately reviled or seen with curiosity, depending on who he¡¯d talked to, and they figured in stories only briefly, often violently. One of the men that Perry had spoken to was half Yuuksen on his father¡¯s side, a ¡°hayuuk¡±, though he didn¡¯t speak the language, and aside from maybe some different facial features, Perry wouldn¡¯t have been able to tell. ¡°They hate the rails,¡± said Queenie. ¡°And they hate the harmos more?¡± Again, there was that upward inflection on something that wasn¡¯t a question. ¡°So when a train carryin¡¯ a harmo doesn¡¯t show up ¡­ well, you know what I suspect, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Hrm,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess I do.¡± ¡°We¡¯re takin¡¯ a pozzer out tomorrow, down the tracks, you should come,¡± she said, smiling at him, chip in her front tooth very prominent. ¡°Train won¡¯t be in, betcha, and you¡¯d get suzzo for the book.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d need a horse though, and I don¡¯t expect that I¡¯d be much use.¡± ¡°Oh, no one would even expect that, chubbo,¡± she said with a wink. ~~~~ There were a few things that could mark a thresholder. A strange accent was one of them, an out of place weapon was another, strange magic that didn¡¯t fit, technology that was clearly from another time and place. Ideology was one of the main ones, though that was difficult to uncover. It was something that Perry had given a lot of thought to, because as Xiyan had proven, a thresholder who could slip in and pretend to have been a part of the world all along had a serious advantage, especially for a first strike. The problem with the Dusklands was that ¡°strange accent¡± and ¡°weird abilities¡± and ¡°out of place weapons¡± were all essentially the norm. Everyone had a strange accent, everyone came from somewhere else, and the posse that was gathered up had all kinds of strange weapons among them. There was a blunderbuss, an oversized crossbow, a spear decorated with all kinds of feathers, and a silvered rifle that was at least six feet long. Wyatt was with them, and he had a mechanical arm for fuck¡¯s sake, which should have clearly marked him as a thresholder. The Dusklands were just like that though, a melange of cultures and people, weird to the core, far more than the Wild West had ever been. He was given a horse, which he had no clue how to actually ride. He watched what everyone else was doing and tried to mimic that, hefting himself up into the saddle with a foot in the stirrup. The horse sat beneath him, and seemed not to care particularly much about having someone on its back. Perry had far better muscle strength and body awareness than a normal man, and so didn¡¯t have a terrible time of it, but it took some practice to get the right amount of tension in the reins, and he was thankful that the horse started following the others seemingly on its own. Of course, Perry had already claimed to have let a horse die out in the wilderness, and he was an ¡°educated dandy¡±, so if he was a poor horseman, no one would call him on it. Queenie came up alongside him, controlling her horse in a way that he watched closely to get it to slow down. ¡°I was thinkin¡¯?¡± she said. ¡°What¡¯s that book goin¡¯ to be about?¡± ¡°I still don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°The pioneer spirit, what life out in the Flux is like, the melting pot of cultures, that sort of thing.¡± ¡°Melting pot,¡± she said with a smile. ¡°Yeh¡¯ve got poetry in yeh, eh?¡± ¡°All kinds of people coming from all over,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s something nice about that. I think the chance to reinvent yourself, to become someone new, that would appeal to people in the city, though of course I¡¯m mostly writing for myself.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t need to worry about sellin¡¯ it then?¡± asked Queenie. ¡°I do, some,¡± said Perry. ¡°But if you spend your time worrying about other people, I¡¯m not sure I like where you end up.¡± There were half a dozen of them, including Perry. A few he¡¯d met at the saloon, but two he hadn¡¯t. One of them was a dark-skinned man carrying the blunderbuss, heavily muscled and with a glass eye. The other was a small guy with a mustache that was wider than his head. He had a sword at his hip, along with a long cat¡¯s tail that flicked back and forth. No one seemed to find either of these men unusual. They followed the train tracks, going the direction that Perry had come from, which was in the direction of Charlonion. The horses moved slowly, slower than Perry had thought they would, more a mosey than a canter. ¡°Now,¡± said Wyatt, who was leading the posse, ¡°We¡¯re lookin¡¯ fer signs of the Yuuksen first and foremost, and we¡¯re doin¡¯ the two mile rule, should be back a¡¯fore nightfall that way.¡± Wyatt had no authority, he was just a busybody, but people seemed to listen to him all the same. The town had no representative of the law at the moment, not even a deputy who could step in, as the deputy had fled town when the sheriff was hanged. Perry wasn¡¯t sure what they were hoping to find. It was, so far as he knew, the nature of the Flux that distances varied, which was why they were only going two miles down the track. It was possible that they would have to go twenty miles to get back to town, though no one liked to talk about exact distances too much, maybe because it was useless. In the best case scenario, they would see a fraction of the track and then come back, and in the worst case scenario seeing a fraction of the track would take them the whole day. The distance to Taryton, the next town down the line, varied, but in the worst case, it was something like four hundred miles, and maybe even more than that, given that no one really seemed to trust ¡®worst case¡¯. Maybe you could get lost out there forever, under the right circumstances. But if the Yuuksen wanted to set up a train robbery, they could do it at literally any point along the track. The only way this expedition was going to find them was if they set up right next to the town, and there was simply no reason for them to do that. It was also very likely that the Yuuksen didn¡¯t have anything to do with the delay, and no designs on the train. They were about a mile into the trek before Perry realized that it was probably just security theater. They weren¡¯t going out to find some proof of malfeasance, they weren¡¯t expecting to see sabotaged tracks, the point was to come back and say they had checked so that everyone in town could feel a little less antsy about the late arrival of the train. ¡°What are the Yuuksen like?¡± asked Perry when the motion of the horses caused him to drift near to Wyatt. ¡°Oh, beastly people,¡± said Wyatt. He was chewing something, maybe tobacco, and spit a perfectly formed brown gob to the side. His mechanical arm was hanging down, temporarily non-functional ¡ª he needed to prime it to get it working for a bit, pumping a lever. ¡°The men move like the wind and strike like vipers, tall, brutish, sun-blackened skin.¡± ¡°No more than me,¡± said Michah, the man with the blunderbuss. ¡°Aren¡¯t you half?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°Nope,¡± replied Michah. ¡°I thought you was,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Well, I guess the Flux takes all types.¡± He turned back to Perry. ¡°And the women have a fire in them, and fire¡¯s not such a bad thing, if it can be tamed. They say a man who takes a Yuuk wife has to tend to her constantly, and a brothel with a Yuuk in it, well, wouldn¡¯t hardly ever need another woman, if you catch me.¡± ¡°Sounds like rank bigotry to me,¡± said Perry. He kept his tone mild and face blank, but he felt a bit of anger rising. ¡°Feh,¡± said Wyatt, spitting to the side again. He raised an eyebrow. ¡°You asked.¡± ¡°They¡¯re not so different,¡± said Queenie. ¡°Men aren¡¯t too strong, you just see the strong ones out and about, they keep the runts and the sick ones back at their camp, plus they know the Flux better¡¯n anyone in the Gulch. Women aren¡¯t sluts or whores or wild, it¡¯s just the ones you see come by here. The meek, the humble, they stay back at the camps too.¡± ¡°Feh again,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°You been to one of those camps?¡± ¡°Yes sir,¡± said Queenie. ¡°Two of ¡®em, ¡®fore I rolled into the Gulch. Decent place to hide out, and they won¡¯t kick you out unless you steal from ¡®em. Easy enough to bribe with ill-gotten gains.¡± ¡°Not sure I believe you¡¯re a criminal,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°You¡¯ve got too sweet a face for that.¡± He chuckled to himself, and Queenie chuckled too, in a way that Perry didn¡¯t quite understand ¡ª he didn¡¯t see the humor in it, and didn¡¯t see how she would see the humor in it. ¡°Most of ¡®em speak passable Commish,¡± said Queenie to Perry. ¡°They won¡¯t steal from you, so all you need is to tell ¡®em you mean no harm.¡± ¡°They won¡¯t steal, but they¡¯ll disrupt a train?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Different,¡± said Queenie. ¡°Much different. Train¡¯s a symbol to them, and a harmo is more than. They don¡¯t like settlers on their land, and who¡¯d blame ¡®em, but there¡¯s more of us than of them, and if they get rowdy, the Commission might step in. But suzzo like this? A train with a harmo on it?¡± ¡°They might attack, if they knew it was coming,¡± said Perry. ¡°And given a Yuuk can just stroll into town and take a seat at the saloon without anyone stopping him, it wouldn¡¯t be hard to spy.¡± ¡°Yuuks wouldn¡¯t do that,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°They might come in to trade and hear,¡± said Queenie. ¡°Chubbo¡¯s got a point.¡± ¡°Bah,¡± said Wyatt. He used his heels to urge his horse on, mostly to bring the conversation to a close. Perry had expected bigotry. Normally he wouldn¡¯t have called it out, given that he was pretending to be from their world, but he was fresh off Markat, and it felt like he had the leeway to push back against it, maybe because Wyatt clearly didn¡¯t have a lot of respect from the others. It was good that it hadn¡¯t evolved into a real discussion, because Perry wouldn¡¯t even know where to begin with trying to talk someone into believing that people were mostly just people. Of course, it was also possible that one day he would come to a world where that just wasn¡¯t the case, and there were elements of Markat that he¡¯d raised an eyebrow at, ways in which their notions of equality had seemed, perhaps, not rooted in truth. The saloon was mostly busty women in frilly skirts entertaining men, and it was clear that it wasn¡¯t a place that respectable women went. Queenie was the one exception, and she¡¯d been allowed to come with the posse too, with no complaints or even acknowledgement that she was a woman. Perry didn¡¯t know what to make of that, whether it was something in her manner, the way she dressed, or just an element of their culture he didn¡¯t understand. They were near to the two mile mark, at least as Wyatt was accounting it, when the terrain started going uphill. It was a fairly steep grade, but the tracks carved through the hill. There wasn¡¯t enough room on the sides for them to go along, and they didn¡¯t want to take the tracks themselves for fear of the train they were so worried about coming along, so they went up the side. ¡°This hill wasn¡¯t here when I came by,¡± said Perry. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t be, would it?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°That¡¯s the Flux.¡± ¡°The tracks are carved through though,¡± said Perry. ¡°It just, uh, generates like this?¡± ¡°¡®Generates¡¯?¡± asked Wyatt with a laugh. ¡°Just how it is.¡± ¡°I mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°The rail line connects Grabler¡¯s Gulch to Taryton, and that¡¯s a constant, it¡¯s not going to change, right?¡± ¡°With ya so far,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°It¡¯s just ¡­ the exact path changes,¡± said Perry. ¡°The terrain changes. If we went counting the number of railroad ties, we¡¯d get different answers, but a train can go from Grabler¡¯s Gulch to Taryton, and there¡¯s all this evidence of work that ¡­ no one did?¡± ¡°Too much city livin¡¯,¡± said Wyatt with a cluck of his tongue that caused his horse to flick an ear. ¡°I just want to know how it works,¡± said Perry. ¡°The rail¡¯s a fact of the world,¡± said Cecil. He was hunched over on his horse, looking haggard. ¡°I helped build a bit of it, northeast of here. And once it¡¯s set, it¡¯s set, nothing¡¯s going to change it.¡± He had good diction, for a supposed sewer rat. ¡°You¡¯re right, new rail ties that were never there before, that¡¯s something the Flux does, it carves paths through hills, sometimes puts in some tunnels, bridges over rivers, all that sort of thing. Though some of that we have to build up.¡± ¡°Bridges are expensive choke points,¡± said Perry. ¡°The Yuuk don¡¯t target them?¡± ¡°Burn a bridge down, the bridge¡¯ll reappear,¡± said Cecil. He let out a burp that sent him upright in his saddle. He looked a bit better than he had. ¡°Rip up a rail tie, it¡¯ll be back by nightfall. I don¡¯t know how it works, but they run a current through the rail when they¡¯re building it, something like the harmonizer, but it keeps on working. The Yuuksen might want to tear it out, and they¡¯ve tried, but it¡¯s a fact of life once it¡¯s down. A fact of the Flux.¡± Perry pondered that. The harmonizer that was supposed to be on the way seemed like it intended to make Grabler¡¯s Gulch a ¡°fact of the Flux¡± in some way, to staple the town down, except the town didn¡¯t really seem to shift that much, and its population was apparently part of what kept it stable. In fact, he hadn¡¯t actually seen any terrain move around, though it was definitely different from what it had been before when he¡¯d been flying over the tracks. ¡°Yuuks,¡± said Queenie. It took Perry a moment to find them, which made him the second. They were on the other side, some ways down the track, barely perceptible, with horses of their own. They were another two miles away, maybe even more. ¡°Where?¡± asked Wyatt. Queenie pointed them out, and after a while, everyone agreed that they could, in fact, see Yuuks. ¡°Well ¡­ lick my shit, I guess,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Weren¡¯t expectin¡¯ that.¡± He squinted. ¡°How many we got, my eyes itch.¡± ¡°Six,¡± said Queenie without hesitation. ¡°They¡¯ve got horses too, but they¡¯re set up there. Probably have been for a while.¡± ¡°Nothin¡¯ for it but to have a chat,¡± said Wyatt. He let go of the reins to pump his mechanical arm, which began moving again as soon as he was finished. ¡°Let ¡®em know we won¡¯t hold with ¡­ Yuuk business.¡± ¡°If they¡¯re waiting around here, they¡¯re probably waiting for the same reason we are,¡± said Perry. ¡°They want the train.¡± Wyatt sucked his teeth. ¡°Then I suppose we must go and stop them.¡± Chapter 154 - Narrow Paths Perry didn¡¯t know what ¡°stop them¡± meant, but he hadn¡¯t even been issued with a weapon, and barely had control of his horse. He had no clue what kinds of weapons the Yuuks had, especially given the diversity of weapons within the posse. And there was, of course, the possibility that there would be a thresholder among them. There was a possibility that there was a thresholder in the posse, though Perry was starting to find that less likely. And there was a possibility that the train, if there was going to be a train, would be carrying the thresholder. The Yuuks were across the rail-split hill from the posse, and Perry was pretty sure that they¡¯d been spotted. They were moving, kicking up dust, and the Yuuks were stationary, camped as far as anyone could tell. If they¡¯d spotted the posse, they weren¡¯t making any clear moves, or at least not mounting their horses. If Marchand were up and running, Perry would have been able to zoom in and see them clearly. He probably would have been able to land a shot on one of them, at least if he had a high-powered precision rifle ¡ª which he didn¡¯t, because the one rifle he had in storage was amateur work created in Markat by technology from the Farfinder, not something carefully assembled by the United States military-industrial-complex. It was better than they probably had in the Dusklands, but not by that much. And of course Perry wouldn¡¯t just shoot at people for sitting next to some railroad tracks, even if he thought they were planning a train robbery. The posse moved more slowly than they¡¯d been moving before, which seemed unnecessary. Perry didn¡¯t imagine that the engagement distance would be further than two hundred yards, and that was if they had their own rifles. There was a rock outcropping on their side of where the rail had cut through, which would provide some cover if it came to a shootout, but they¡¯d be much closer at that point. ¡°Just scare ¡®em off,¡± said Wyatt, mostly to himself. ¡°Really shoulda been the sheriff¡¯s job, damn him.¡± The horses ambled along. It was a pleasant enough day, with a slight wind. No one had explained to Perry how weather worked in the Flux. The sky above was yellow and green, same as the day before, but now it was shot through with chartreuse, like veins in an eyeball. No one was commenting on it. ¡°Don¡¯t suppose anyone speaks Yuuk?¡± asked Wyatt when they were three hundred yards away. There were some general murmurs from the posse, mostly to the negative. Certainly no one knew enough to carry on a full conversation, but the Yuuks apparently took to learning Commish, so maybe it wasn¡¯t a problem. Perry stayed silent. He¡¯d be able to step in as translator, if need be, but the fluency he¡¯d be able to speak with would be shocking, and raise a lot of questions, particularly since it didn¡¯t match up with his backstory as a dandy scholar from the city who had never been out in the Flux before. He thought maybe he could figure out how to speak as though he had a poor grasp on the language, but that would take time, and wasn¡¯t something he could just do on the spot. The Yuuks did eventually mount up. There were six of them, just like Queenie had said from miles away. The gap between them was as wide as a rail car, and it was maybe twenty feet down to the tracks. It wasn¡¯t where Perry would have posted up, if he was interested in a train robbery, and if they were going to try to drop down onto a moving train¡­ well, he didn¡¯t like the odds of that actually working, but what did he know? Their leader wore a belt of bones and had his face painted, black in circles around the eyes and a horizontal stripe of red across his mouth. He was shirtless, but his skin wasn¡¯t particularly dark, and he was just as imposingly muscled as the people telling stories in the saloon had promised. He was wearing slacks that seemed to be the same as those worn by the people of Grabler¡¯s Gulch, and had a rifle unslung, held in one hand. He was barefoot and dusty. The rest of them were dressed a little less intimidatingly, though in clothes closer to what Perry would have expected, made of natural leathers. There were two women with them, though everyone was covered up pretty well. Their leader was the only one risking melanoma, it seemed. There were more rifles among them, all the same style. Their chief ¡ª or group leader ¡ª raised a hand with his fingers spread wide. ¡°How-dee,¡± he said across the gap. ¡°Howdy,¡± said Wyatt with a nod. ¡°Now, what¡¯re you folks doin¡¯ here?¡± ¡°Taking break,¡± the Yuuk replied. He gestured to the sky. ¡°Day beautiful, air fresh, no train stink.¡± ¡°Well, you folks should know yer right close to Grabler¡¯s Gulch, that¡¯s where we¡¯re all from, more or less, an¡¯ we¡¯re ¡®specting a train come through real soon.¡± Wyatt spat to the side. ¡°So if you could mosey on along, that would be much appreciated.¡± The Yuuk watched Wyatt carefully, and when he was done watching, his eyes scanned the rest of the posse, sizing them up one by one. ¡°We will stay,¡± he said. ¡°No, now you can¡¯t do that,¡± said Wyatt, shaking his head. ¡°You know well as I that the Commission protects their rails, and if someone¡¯s out here makin¡¯ life differcult, you answer to us, but you¡¯ll also answer to them, and I don¡¯t think you¡¯d like their questions too much.¡± He was using a different sort of voice, trying to project authority, and failing miserably. ¡°What we done that make life differcult?¡± asked the Yuuk, emphasizing the last word, mimicking the way Wyatt had said it. ¡°You know the train¡¯s comin¡¯,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Don¡¯t pretend you don¡¯t know that, you hear them buzzing across the rails, there¡¯s no other reason you¡¯d be out here, and you know it. Now let¡¯s just ¡ª let¡¯s just all be civilized people, why don¡¯t we, and we can both go back where we came from?¡± Perry wasn¡¯t sure how much longer this all would have gone on, but Queenie turned to look down the tracks, and pretty soon, everyone else did too. A train was coming. Queenie was the first to act. She dismounted her horse and stepped to the edge of the gap between sides, looking down to see how much of a drop it was, then turned to face the train. ¡°Fire!¡± shouted Wyatt, with no warning, and he was, himself, shot shortly afterward, a plume of blood from his shoulder that twisted him around and caused him to fall from his saddle. Perry pulled the sword from the shelf space and abandoned the horse, hopping off it, getting behind one of the large rocks. There was a lot of gunfire, but the rifles didn¡¯t seem to hold more than a single shot. Two of the members of their posse had simply left when the gunfire started, or maybe even just before, and they were receding away. The guy with the cat tail was one of them, his tail all puffed up. When the gunfire stopped not too long after that, Perry was sitting with his back to the rock, listening to his dying horse, heart beating rapidly in his chest. He had his sword drawn and ready to go, and when he looked to the side, he saw Wyatt groaning on the ground, clutching his shoulder ¡ª the one made of flesh and bone. ¡°Hold fire! Miwpa, Posya, reload!¡± called the Yuuk, in their own language. He was crisp and clear, not halting at all. ¡°Shoot them unless they run!¡± He switched to Commish. ¡°Run now, be safe! Leave us!¡± The train was getting closer. It didn¡¯t quite buzz, but it wasn¡¯t doing the chugga-chugga thing either. Perry could just barely see it down the tracks. There was no plume of smoke rising from it, and it was quite some distance away. ¡°We should cross over, finish them,¡± said one of the other Yuuks, a woman. ¡°The goal is the train, the harmonizer,¡± said their leader. ¡°Get Poti back to the camp, we¡¯ll take care of this.¡± This must have been handled via signals, because Perry heard movements, a grunt of pain, and then the sound of at least one horse retreating. During this whole time, it wasn¡¯t clear where Queenie had gotten off to. Cecil was laying on the ground, breathing heavily but unhit, and Wyatt was bleeding, groaning in pain and trying to sit himself up, as inadvisable as that seemed. The posse hadn¡¯t just been defeated, it had been shattered. The train was getting closer, the loud droning sound growing in volume. The Yuuks were planning to jump down onto it, which felt insane to Perry. How many feet down would they have to drop? How fast would the train be going? It seemed to him like you¡¯d have to be extremely skilled or extremely lucky to not just fall down and land on the tracks, which in this case meant hitting the side wall of the carved-through area and falling down next to the rail, if not on it. But they were doing it, and that meant that he was going to do it too, though he had second sphere and a sword that would let him fly. ¡°The girl is down there,¡± said the leader of the Yuuks. ¡°She¡¯s going to get hit,¡± said the same woman who suggested crossing over. Perry couldn¡¯t see them, but he thought he could recognize the voices. ¡°She¡¯s just standing there, waiting for it? How did she get down there?¡± Queenie was planning her own heist. The idea came into Perry¡¯s mind and it wouldn¡¯t leave, which meant that was going to be what he assumed going forward. How she was going to do that while standing directly on the tracks was unclear, but she¡¯d readily admitted to being a bandit of some kind, or bandit adjacent, and there were all kinds of powers, whether she was the enemy thresholder or not. ¡°Ready yourself,¡± said their leader. ¡°Posya, the horses, Miwya, cross and loot the bodies.¡± Perry timed it more to the approaching sound of the train than to anything else. He turned himself around, crouched down, listening closely, then when the train came, he made his move, launching himself over the edge. He had seen the train stretched out in all its glory as soon as his head popped up. It was at least twenty cars all told, with a main engine that was sleek and brass, and a tank of something behind it. The others varied in height and make, and Perry landed on the second-to-last of them, rolling slightly and then finding his footing. The whole thing was far slower than he¡¯d imagined it would be, maybe twenty miles an hour, slow enough that he could have just followed it with the sword. When Perry got to his feet, he looked down the length of the train and saw, as predicted, that he wasn¡¯t alone. Two of the Yuuks, their leader and the woman, were ten cars away from him, in the middle of the train. Beyond them, Queenie was standing at the front of the train with her red scarf whipping in the wind. The scarf was now at least twenty feet long, and as Perry watched, it wrapped itself around her with no clear effort on her part. The Yuuk leader raised his rifle at Perry, but they were two hundred yards away from each other, on a moving platform, and he thought better of taking the shot. Stolen novel; please report. Perry ran forward, leaping over the first gap between cars. There was wind from the movement of the train, but it wasn¡¯t enough to slow him down. The roof of the car was covered in dust, but his boots had just enough traction to keep him moving. The Yuuks slid down between a gap in the train cars, leaving Queenie far down at the other end of the train. She watched Perry for a moment, then stepped forward and dropped down without so much as bracing herself, removing herself from view. Perry kept running forward. He had to assume that they were all going for the harmonizer, wherever in the train that would be carried. He had no idea what he was looking for, whether it would be small enough to carry or whether they¡¯d have to stop the train. They were only three or four miles from Grabler¡¯s Gulch, depending on how space had warped around them, which meant the train would be stopping soon, and that put a time limit on any kind of heist. Half an hour? More? When he was at the car just before where the Yuuks had climbed down, he let himself fall between the cars, landing on a small, swaying walkway. He was faced with wooden doors whose glass windows were rattling, and he took a breath, then opened it up. He was in a passenger car, and faces turned to look at him. There were maybe twenty people, including one group that was clearly a family, and one man without a face at all, not even a mouth, who Perry elected to ignore. ¡°Has anyone been through here?¡± Perry asked. He was holding his sword, unsheathed, which was a bit of a threat. ¡°No sir,¡± said a man in a black bowler hat and a mustache that hung down to cover his mouth. ¡°You a lawman?¡± ¡°Concerned citizen,¡± said Perry. He started making his way through the car, then stopped. ¡°There¡¯s a harmonizer on this train, is it forward or back?¡± ¡°Not sure how we¡¯d know that, sir,¡± said the man in the bowler hat. ¡°It¡¯s at the front of the train!¡± said one of the small children dressed in a neatly pleated skirt. ¡°I saw it!¡± Her father gripped her by the shoulder, and Perry gave the girl a small salute, then made his way forward. He was worried that someone was going to stop him, but they didn¡¯t. He went through the door, out into the walkway, and then through another door to the next car, which must have been the one that the Yuuks had gone through. This one was a luggage car, with trunks stacked up along the walls, along with some furniture from people who must have been moving. Perry moved cautiously, worried that someone would pop out with a knife, but there was no one, just the collected belongings of the train¡¯s passengers. There was no sign of the Yuuks, or Queenie, or anyone else. The car after that had a heavy door, and there had at one point been a lock on it, but that had been eaten through by some unknown substance or technique, leaving behind metal that had melted and already cooled down, if it hadn¡¯t been some kind of acid. Perry was ready for a fight, but there was only one man in the next car, and he was dead. He had a small office that faced outside the train, with a flap that could clearly raise up or down, letting people come up to him. All around were packages and pieces of mail, which was all relatively mundane, except that there were also all kinds of caged animals, most of them with wings. Perry would have guessed that they were carrier pigeons, but there were owls and ravens too, along with a number of bats hanging upside down in cages with curtains drawn over them. His mind was swimming with questions about all that, but there was a train robbery to stop. In the car after that, he found the harmonizer, and the Yuuks along with it. They had killed three men in the room, and there was a fourth that was gasping for breath and bleeding from a hole in his chest. The harmonizer was a pink sphere not more than a handbreadth across, slightly translucent and giving off its own light that was bathing the inside of the train car. It had been extracted from some kind of container that was bolted directly to the floor, and its locks had been sliced through by the same method that had been used to get through the door to the mail car. Before Perry could speak, the Yuuk leader raised a pistol and started firing at him. Perry lifted his sword to parry it, and caught two of the three bullets before the six-shooter was dry. The third caused a sharp pain in his right pectoral, and he glanced down to see that he¡¯d been hit. Blood was soaking through his shirt, and he shifted the flow of energy through his meridians, putting more healing power there, draining the Wolf Vessel to stanch the bleeding. He went forward with the sword as the Yuuk pulled out a long knife. The woman had hold of the glowing sphere, and she was getting away with it. With his eyes on her, he almost missed the Yuuk grabbing a waterskin from his waist. He brought it to his lips, sucked in, then spat it at Perry. Perry raised his sword defensively, and the black liquid splattered against it. The Yuuk gave a wild-eyed smile, which fell slightly as nothing happened. They went at each other, and it wasn¡¯t particularly close. Perry was just too fast, too strong, and probably could have caught the Yuuk¡¯s knife between his fingers. Instead, Perry¡¯s first strike was simply overpowering. His muscles were hard steel, his stance perfect, and his sword slipped cleanly between the Yuuk¡¯s ribs, straight into his heart. The Yuuk backed away, holding his knife up defensively, staggering. He looked over at the woman, who was in the middle of leaving with the harmonizer, and she stared at him with wide eyes, then fled. Perry went after her. She was out the door, moving up the train, and he ran after, bashing through the door she¡¯d tried to slam in his face. The next car was filled with coffins, all stacked on top of each other, labeled carefully on the corners, arranged so that they would be easy to take out or put in. The place smelled of death, flesh and formaldehyde, and Perry couldn¡¯t fathom why they would be there, but he didn¡¯t have time to worry about that, because the Yuuk woman was racing along the narrow walkway that separated the rows of coffins. She just barely managed to escape his grasp as she went out the back door, and rather than going to the next car, she vaulted over the swaying railing and off the train entirely. Perry followed her, sword out, and he landed gently on his feet as she was scrambling to get up. ¡°Stop,¡± he said to her. She kept running, and he ran after her, much faster. ¡°Stop!¡± he called to her, this time in her language. She turned back to look at him, maybe because of the volume, or the way he¡¯d said it, more than the word, but it caused her to stumble. She fell against the sandy dirt and cried out. The pink sphere had been in her grip, but she let go of it, and Perry plucked it up from the ground. She was up on her feet with a knife in her hand in an instant. ¡°Let go,¡± she said. She spoke English, or Commish as they called it here, at least a few words. ¡°No,¡± Perry replied, holding it back. ¡°I will kill you,¡± she said, knife held out. She was in a fighting stance, ready to move on him. She was hesitating though. The last car of the train had passed them, and there was no sign of Queenie or anyone else. Perry realized that his chance to catch up was now ¡ª he had the harmonizer, and if he let the train get out of sight, who knew how far away it might get. He let it pass though. With the sword, he could go almost as fast as it, and he didn¡¯t want to face down Queenie, not at the moment. ¡°My name is Perry,¡± he said, placing his hand on his chest and speaking as clearly as he could. ¡°You¡¯re under arrest.¡± She came at him with the knife, and he would have been well within his rights to kill her. Instead, he tossed his sword to the side and grabbed the wrist that held the knife, gripped it hard enough that she cried out in pain and dropped the knife, then pulled it behind her back and held her there with one arm. She reared back and tried to kick him in the groin, but Perry was too fast for that, and drew her arm higher, until she yelped and went still. ¡°Do you understand ¡®arrest¡¯?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± she replied. ¡°They¡¯ll kill me.¡± ¡°Hmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°Might be.¡± He opened the shelf space and looked into it. It was just out of her view, unless she turned around. He had rope in there, but it was further in, and he didn¡¯t think he could grab it while holding her. He let the shelf space close. ¡°I¡¯m going to release your arm now, if you try to run away, I¡¯m going to have to grab you again.¡± He released her, and she immediately ran. Perry sighed and went after her. He still had the harmonizer, but with the sword he was able to move at many times her speed, and he elected to fly up into the air and drop down from above, kicking up dust and snatching her wrist. He¡¯d left the sword flying above them. ¡°I don¡¯t want to have to kill you,¡± he said. She struggled and he held her firm. He was many times stronger than her. It wasn¡¯t a contest. ¡°You want to sell me,¡± she said. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want answers and justice, in that order.¡± He hesitated. ¡°Let me know if there¡¯s a word you don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°I speak fine,¡± she replied. He could have switched to her language, whatever the Yuuks spoke, but he¡¯d keep that in his back pocket until he needed it. It would raise all kinds of questions back in town, and while he probably could have spun a story, it was better not to do that. ¡°We¡¯re going to Grabler¡¯s Gulch,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re going to walk there. You¡¯re going to tell me everything you know.¡± Her eyes went to the harmonizer that was still in his hand. ¡°And you¡¯re going to give me that satchel,¡± he said. She used her free hand to take the satchel off her shoulder, and Perry put it around him. It was made of animal skin, though it was hard to say what. Cow, maybe. Perry placed the harmonizer into the satchel, but held onto the woman the whole time. ¡°I need your name,¡± he said. ¡°Anaksi,¡± she replied. She was watching his face, and he gave nothing away. He was pretty sure it wasn¡¯t actually her name, because in her language it meant ¡®no name¡¯. ¡°Anaksi, we¡¯re going to walk along these tracks back to Grabler¡¯s Gulch, then they¡¯re going to deal with you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do you understand all that?¡± ¡°I said I knew ¡®arrest¡¯,¡± she replied. ¡°And while we walk, you¡¯re going to give me answers,¡± said Perry. She glared at him. ¡°To what questions?¡± ¡°Let¡¯s walk,¡± said Perry. They took their first steps down the railroad tracks together. His hand was still on her upper arm, not tight, but present. He could have let her walk on her own, there was no danger that she would actually escape, but he didn¡¯t want to have to stop the escape attempts. ¡°Let¡¯s start with this,¡± said Perry. Small rocks crunched beneath his boots. ¡°How did your people know a harmonizer was coming?¡± Anaksi was quiet for a while. ¡°We did not know.¡± ¡°You¡¯re lying,¡± said Perry. Anaksi was silent for a time. ¡°I just want the truth,¡± said Perry. ¡°The town lost its sheriff and deputy, so I¡¯m as much the law as anyone there.¡± ¡°A woman came to us,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°She told us.¡± ¡°Hrm,¡± said Perry. ¡°The woman who dropped down in front of the train?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°She was Eeshkee.¡± The name translated to something like ¡®of the people¡¯, and when Perry tried to feel the meaning of the word, he felt like he would translate it back to Yuuksen. ¡°I don¡¯t know what that means,¡± said Perry. ¡°Eeshkee,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Yuuksen.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the difference?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t call yourself the Yuuksen?¡± But as soon as he¡¯d asked, he realized that he knew the answer to that, through the miracle of translation. ¡°Yuuksen means enemy,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°They call you your own word for enemy,¡± said Perry. ¡°Wow.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°They don¡¯t know what it means. Long ago, someone from a tribe far from here, with a different tongue, was asked the name of his neighbors to the north. He said Yuuksen. They asked him the name of his neighbors to the west. He said Yuuksen. They would point out tribes, and say ¡®these are Yuuksen?¡¯ and he would say yes.¡± Perry wondered whether that was true. It wouldn¡¯t be the first time two civilizations met and had a major translation error. The Yucatan Peninsula was named that because when conquistadors asked the Mayans for the region name, they had responded back with something like ¡®listen to how these guys talk¡¯, and that became the name of the whole region. He didn¡¯t miss that it was the longest answer he¡¯d gotten from her. Maybe she was warming to him, or maybe she just hated being called a Yuuk. ¡°So a woman came and told you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Is that usual?¡± ¡°No,¡± replied Anaksi. ¡°She might have been a trickster.¡± They kept walking. Perry had lost track of distances, but there was no one around them. They should have been closer to the town than anyone else, but it was possible he was misunderstanding how the Flux worked, because no one had given him that good of a model. He could have asked his captive, but he wasn¡¯t sure she¡¯d be able to explain it either. ¡°I¡¯ll try to make sure that there¡¯s some clemency for you,¡± Perry said. ¡°Some lenience, some charity.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Anaksi. ¡°You didn¡¯t kill anyone,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t know that,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°I saw your knife,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was clean, no blood. The man you were with, he did the killing.¡± ¡°My husband,¡± said Anaksi. They walked for a while more. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how to respond to that. He had almost said, ¡®sorry¡¯, just out of habit. He could have said that he didn¡¯t know, which was true, but also somewhat beside the point. And he could have protested that he was only acting in self-defense, or that her husband was clearly a killer, but they were both aware of those things. Eventually enough time had passed that the conversation was in the past. ¡°Your people,¡± said Perry. ¡°Will they let the harmonizer stand? Or will they descend on the town?¡± Anaksi barked out a laugh. ¡°Do you imagine that we¡¯ll sit by?¡± Perry didn¡¯t imagine that, no. Which was one reason he was taking her with him: she was a hostage. Chapter 155 - Walking the Line ¡°Tell me about your people,¡± Perry said as they walked alongside the tracks. Anaksi was favoring one foot. She was silent, then looked at him, confused. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not from the region,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to know.¡± She looked ahead, still silent, face set. His hand was on her arm, but she wasn¡¯t straining against him, and he was holding her only loosely. He was fairly certain that if he removed his hand, she¡¯d bolt, no matter how fast he¡¯d shown himself to be. She had long, braided black hair, an expressive face, thick eyebrows, and a wide nose. Her clothes were all animal hide, with fringe in a few places, covering her legs and body. Complicated ties at the front kept it closed, and she was dressed in layers, with something linen beneath the hide. She was sweating in the sun, or from the exertion of the train, or from trying to run from him, though she was more resigned now than she¡¯d been. ¡°Do you mean Yuuksen or Eeshkee?¡± she asked. ¡°You said that you were Eeshkee, that Yuuksen meant ¡®enemy¡¯,¡± he said. ¡°We use the word,¡± she replied. ¡°It means ¡­ all.¡± Perry considered that. ¡°Eeshkee is the tribe, Yuuksen are the whole of all tribes?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± she replied. ¡°You call the whole of all tribes ¡®Yuuksen¡¯, which means ¡®enemy¡¯,¡± he repeated, trying to get clarity. ¡°It¡¯s not an Eeshkee word,¡± she replied. ¡°Still,¡± he said. They walked together for a bit more. How many miles lay ahead of them was impossible to say, except that it probably was possible if you knew how the Flux operated. Perry was pretty sure that there was a lower bound and upper bound for distance, and that both were shrinking as they walked. ¡°Tell me about the Yuuksen as a whole,¡± said Perry. ¡°We were here before,¡± said Anaksi. She looked at him, as though waiting for him to gainsay her, like this was in question. ¡°We had no guns, no harmonizers, no trains, no cattle, no horses. We had our ways, built over time, by our ancestors.¡± She paused. ¡°Everything was impermanent. We had copper, gold, silver, but no iron. Our houses were skins, fur, wood, things that were replaced and repaired. We didn¡¯t have such cities. We knew our kin.¡± ¡°Your Commish is good,¡± said Perry. She shrugged. ¡°You speak in the past tense, the way things were,¡± said Perry. ¡°The old ways are dead and dying,¡± Anaksi replied. ¡°We ride horses, we shoot guns. We speak your language. We¡¯re penned in by your railroads, killed by your Commission. We are changed from what we were when the Char scoured this land.¡± ¡°Charlonion?¡± asked Perry. Anaksi looked at him. ¡°It came from the sky, twisting down, landing hard.¡± She mimed with her hands, and he felt her arm move where his hand was on her. It might have been a test, to see how much leeway she had. ¡°When?¡± asked Perry. She looked at him again. ¡°You have your own understanding.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I don¡¯t know what the Yuuks say about it.¡± He watched her as she said the word, ¡®Yuuks¡¯, but she betrayed no reaction. Maybe, in spite of what she¡¯d said earlier, it was neutral. ¡°We count time by the generation,¡± Anaksi said. ¡°It has been thirteen since the Char came down.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°And in terms of years, a generation is ¡­ ?¡± ¡°You want to reduce our understanding to yours?¡± asked Anaksi. Her voice was sharp. He wanted to have some knowledge of when this was all supposed to have happened, but he didn¡¯t even know the current time as the Commission would have reckoned it. But thirteen generations, assuming they were biologically normal humans, meant between twenty and thirty years, so maybe two hundred to three hundred years. ¡°I¡¯m writing a book,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve heard of such a thing,¡± said Anaksi. Her voice was still sharp. ¡°Look, I just want ¡ª just information, that¡¯s all.¡± It wasn¡¯t the time, though he needed to know. He was marching her toward what might possibly be her death, depending on what the people of the Gulch would do with her. ¡°You are no writer,¡± she replied. ¡°You handle a sword too well.¡± ¡°If the writers don¡¯t know how to fight and the warriors don¡¯t know how to read, then the wars will be fought by the illiterate and the books will be written by cowards,¡± said Perry. He was pretty sure he¡¯d mangled the quote. ¡°You¡¯re Commission,¡± she said. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°You knew when the train was coming,¡± she said. ¡°Again, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think that woman might have though.¡± ¡°You move like a killer,¡± she said. She pulled at his grip on her, though not hard enough that he needed to tighten up. ¡°Your husband killed quite a few people,¡± said Perry. ¡°He killed for a purpose,¡± said Anaski. Her Commish really was remarkably good, if with a strong accent. She knew a breadth of words, and didn¡¯t trip over them, even if she was sometimes slow. That raised considerable questions which probably had answers, if only he could get her to explain. Had she lived in one of these towns? Gone to some kind of residential school? It was clear that the Commission was trying to settle the land, or maybe that the Commission was taking advantage of other people settling the land, and campaigns of violence went along with that. It wasn¡¯t clear to him whether the Commission actually had an army, but he would have wagered they at least had something like it. She could have been orphaned, kidnapped, all kinds of bad things. Her Commish was notably better than her husband¡¯s. ¡°How does it affect your people, the harmonizer?¡± asked Perry. ¡°All these questions,¡± she said, grunting at him. ¡°We could have silence.¡± So they walked in silence, for at least a mile. There was still no sign of the train, the town, or anyone else. Her limp got worse. ¡°I need water,¡± Anaski said. Perry didn¡¯t have any water. He hadn¡¯t been issued a canteen, which seemed like an oversight. There had been spares on the other horses, water was something you couldn¡¯t take for granted, but he hadn¡¯t even considered it. He didn¡¯t really need water, not with second sphere. He probably could have eschewed eating and drinking for a few days, in the same way that he could go without breathing for a bit, if he had to. ¡°There¡¯s a skin in the purse,¡± said Anaski. Perry reached into the satchel with his free hand and opened it up. He hadn¡¯t looked inside. The harmonizer was sitting there, still with the unearthly pink glow to it, and there was a waterskin beside it. It looked like it had been made from an animal bladder or something like that, with a wooden stopper on the top. Some of it had leaked during the fight, but only a little, and he pulled it out to hand to her. ¡°Wait,¡± she said. Perry pulled to a stop. ¡°And let go of me,¡± she said. Perry released her. There was a chance that the waterskin held something other than water, something dangerous, but he wasn¡¯t particularly worried about that. The waterskin her husband had used contained something strange, but it hadn¡¯t seemed to work at all. She drank from the waterskin, gulping the water down, then held it out to him. He waved her away. ¡°You¡¯re not thirsty?¡± she asked. ¡°After the train, the fighting?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Besides, I don¡¯t want to risk being poisoned.¡± She watched his face, then shrugged her shoulders and took another drink. ¡°How much further to town?¡± he asked. ¡°We won¡¯t make it there before nightfall,¡± she said. ¡°How do you know that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We are taught the ways of the land from birth,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°That¡¯s not an answer,¡± said Perry. ¡°We read the skies,¡± said Anaksi, pointing straight up. ¡°And a train¡¯s passing makes a destination long.¡± She handed him the waterskin, and he took a swig of it in spite of himself, then placed it into the pouch. ¡°It would be shorter if we had no destination?¡± asked Perry. ¡°And shorter still if I weren¡¯t along,¡± said Anaksi. Her eyes were on him. They flickered down to his shirt. ¡°You were ¡­ only grazed?¡± Perry looked down at where blood had stained his shirt. He¡¯d deflected two of the three bullets, but the third had hit him, passing through the meat of his pectoral and into the periphery of the lung. It had passed back out, missing his ribs both ways. He¡¯d felt some shortage of breath, but he¡¯d been circulating energy as a matter of course, diverting his blood around the wound, helping it to clot quickly, and the lung itself was now almost completely healed thanks to the vital energy. He would have a mild shortness of breath if he was breathing normally, but he was drawing energy from the air as well as breath, and using some of that. Even a shot to the heart wouldn¡¯t have been fatal, not if he had time and energy. This was almost a best case scenario. He had very definitely not been grazed. She was able to see that. ¡°Oh god, I¡¯ve been shot!¡± shouted Perry, looking down at his chest. She took a step backward when he said it, and her brown eyes went up and down him, but she didn¡¯t bolt. The joke didn¡¯t seem to have landed, which was, perhaps, predictable. ¡°Humor doesn¡¯t transcend cultural barriers very well,¡± said Perry. He poked at the wound. ¡°I¡¯m fine, thanks for asking.¡± ¡°They say the Commission has many powers,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Even the power over death itself.¡± ¡°There are rumors,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s in the Commission¡¯s interest to spread those rumors far and wide.¡± She looked skeptically at the bullet wound. ¡°Let¡¯s keep moving,¡± said Perry. ¡°We won¡¯t make it there by nightfall,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Not if we walk for ten hours. We have nothing to camp with, no equipment.¡± ¡°What was the plan then, when you got on the train?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We would ride the train to Grabler¡¯s Gulch,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°There would be men waiting for us there.¡± ¡°Walk and talk,¡± said Perry. She did, grudgingly, and this time Perry didn¡¯t have a hand on her arm. He liked it better that way, as though she wasn¡¯t a prisoner. She was still limping, maybe worse than before. ¡°And these men, would they have horses?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They would steal them,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°And that plan is now shot,¡± said Perry. Anaksi nodded, which Perry found curious. He couldn¡¯t remember whether that was universal to humans, but he didn¡¯t think it was. He tucked it away for later, a piece of evidence of something, one way or another. She spoke well enough, and even the nonverbal seemed to match. ¡°Then what¡¯s your plan now?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No plan,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°We¡¯ll have to sleep under the stars. Hopefully we won¡¯t die. If we survive, then there will be a new plan.¡± ¡°You¡¯re going to try to stay up, then run away in the middle of the night,¡± said Perry. Anaksi raised an eyebrow. ¡°It¡¯s not safe to run in the night. We¡¯ll see what the moon has in store for us.¡± ¡°They don¡¯t talk much about the moon here,¡± said Perry. ¡°They wouldn¡¯t,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Our fates are linked,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re going to have to help me survive.¡± Anaksi laughed. ¡°I saw the hole in you. You don¡¯t need my help.¡± ¡°You know the horrors of the Flux better than I do,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t help you if I could, evil stranger.¡± This last she said in her own language, and he didn¡¯t get the sense that he was being tested, only that she wanted to insult him. Another hour passed. They weren¡¯t making good time. She¡¯d started off favoring one foot over the other, and it had turned into a limp, which was now pronounced, which she hadn¡¯t brought up. That might very well have been part of some scheme or trap, it was hard to say. Still, she¡¯d jumped from a train going at least twenty miles an hour, and it was possible that she¡¯d twisted or sprained something in such a way that it was only now becoming an issue. He would find out if she tried to run again, he supposed. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. There really was no one else around. The train tracks were the only thing around, and without them, Perry would have been utterly lost, mostly because there was no sun in the sky. The region was a mix of grassland and scrubland, and he imagined that from above, it would look unnaturally splotchy. They hit a stretch of great rolling prairie, and Perry gave up all hope of explaining it in terms of normal biomes. He had a burning curiosity about the Flux and how it actually worked. ¡°They run a current through the rail, then it gets pinned down?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It ¡­ becomes a permanent feature of the Flux?¡± ¡°You know more than I do, fat-headed bovine,¡± said Anaksi. She had apparently gotten a taste for calling him names. ¡°This prairie wasn¡¯t here,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s only the track itself, not the stuff on either side of the track?¡± ¡°It is logic, in the words of your people,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Logic,¡± said Perry. He looked up and down the tracks. Maybe he was seeing things, but it seemed as though she had a flash of opportunity, like she had thought it was her chance to run. ¡°Explain logic?¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know,¡± she said flatly, almost an accusation. ¡°I¡¯m from the city,¡± Perry replied, as though that meant anything. ¡°A train runs through here,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Yes?¡± ¡°Er, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is known,¡± she nodded. ¡°And a train has a course, yes?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± replied Perry. ¡°This, also, is known,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°This is what I¡¯m stuck on, because there¡¯s an upper bound for the distance to the Gulch, and a lower bound, and we¡¯re always making progress ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Not always.¡± ¡°But it¡¯s known,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s logic. You take a step and you get closer to your destination.¡± ¡°Where are you now?¡± asked Anaksi. ¡°I don¡¯t know. Somewhere between Grabler¡¯s Gulch and Taryton,¡± said Perry. ¡°Closer to the former than the latter.¡± ¡°And where will you be in five steps?¡± asked Anaksi. ¡°I guess I¡¯d give the same answer,¡± said Perry. Anaksi nodded. ¡°So it might take infinite time to get back to the Gulch,¡± said Perry. ¡°Except that in practice, that doesn¡¯t happen often. Hardly ever, I would guess.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± she replied. ¡°To walk is useful. But a step can take you further from where you wish to go.¡± ¡°Meaning, what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That the path we¡¯ve walked might be taking us toward Taryton?¡± ¡°Possible,¡± nodded Anaksi. ¡°And the train affected that somehow?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± replied Anaksi. Perry was pretty sure that once Marchand was up and running, they¡¯d be able to make a good mathematical model of it. If a step you intended to take toward the Gulch could take you away from the Gulch on occasion, then there was some kind of probabilistic process happening, weighted toward progress, if he could even be said to have a concrete position before reaching the Gulch. Mette would have been able to figure it out without needing a robot¡¯s help. After that conversation, the railroad tracks seemed more like a lifeline than they had before. He was very aware that if he went away from them, they might not be there when he got back, having moved somewhere else, and he didn¡¯t have a good sense of direction, though he thought there must be some way that these people knew north from south. He hadn¡¯t thought to ask Wyatt, and it hadn¡¯t seemed like a big deal at the time. Did they have compasses? He didn¡¯t know that either. He hadn¡¯t seen anyone consult one. Anaksi¡¯s limp kept getting worse. He had her stop, though only because she hadn¡¯t asked for a stop on her own, and got down to look at it, against her protests. She stayed still as he lifted the edge of her animal hide leggings, and she winced in pain as his fingers made contact. The ankle was swollen. Maybe it had started as a mild injury and gotten worse with time. ¡°You¡¯re not going to be able to walk on this,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± she admitted. Perry sucked his teeth. ¡°Alright, no choice but to heal it.¡± ¡°No,¡± she said, pulling her leg back from him. ¡°You¡¯d rather be left here to die?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No chance to steal the harmonizer in the middle of the night?¡± She grimaced and extended her leg to him. ¡°Tell me what you¡¯re doing. And why.¡± Perry placed a hand on the swollen ankle, and she winced in pain again, covering her reaction more poorly this time. ¡°I¡¯m directing some of my vital energy to you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Same thing that healed the gunshot.¡± She watched him carefully. ¡°I¡¯m going to touch you now,¡± he said. She nodded slowly. Perry was a bit shit at healing, if he was being honest. He¡¯d tried, he¡¯d practiced, but he had never quite been able to get it. He had energy, and that energy could make things function in the ways that he thought they ought to function, which was how it could repair Marchand¡¯s systems that he had no specific knowledge of, or knit together clothes whose fibers he couldn¡¯t see. But projecting that energy outward in this subtle way was difficult. Still, a sprain seemed like a best case scenario, if it was a sprain. Perry¡¯s medical knowledge was minimal, but he was fairly sure that a sprain was just some overstretching of a ligament, and the only reason that she was doing so poorly with it was that he¡¯d forced her to walk on it without much rest. After fifteen minutes, the swelling had gone down, but it wasn¡¯t clear how much of that was from rest and how much was his attempts at pushing energy into her. He¡¯d kept his explanation brief, because explaining vessels, meridians, and spirit roots felt like it might take all day, and was another thing that he was trying to keep under wraps in any event. Still, he told her more than he thought was probably wise. Maybe it was to assuage his own guilt. Eventually, he had her stand and put weight on it, then take a tentative step. ¡°Can all in the Commission manage such things?¡± asked Anaksi when she found she was able to walk. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°And it diminished you, to do this thing for me?¡± she asked. ¡°Not very much,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was more difficult than expensive.¡± He touched his fingers to the bullet hole in his shirt. ¡°This one was more expensive than difficult.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± she said. ¡°Let¡¯s get going,¡± said Perry. He wasn¡¯t sure how far to push her, but he was hoping that Grabler¡¯s Gulch would appear on the horizon like the rising sun, or maybe that members of the posse would show up on horseback to make the whole thing take less time. He would have been fine to walk for days, if he had to, suppressing the need for sleep and keeping his body in shape. He was using precious little of his energy, refilling the stores through breathing deeply and taking in some of the textured energy of the land. He allowed the second sphere to do its work, and in the course of that, allowed the shirt to clean itself, blood fading away and bullet hole knitting itself closed. Anaksi noticed, but didn¡¯t say anything. ¡°We¡¯re out of water,¡± she said at their next break. ¡°We¡¯ll have to find some.¡± ¡°How are we going to do that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°A stream,¡± she replied. She pointed at the horizon, away from the tracks. ¡°That way.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Without water, we¡¯ll die,¡± she said. ¡°Delirium follows thirst. You haven¡¯t been drinking enough.¡± Perry frowned at her and placed the empty water skin back in the satchel. ¡°Turn around and close your eyes,¡± he said. ¡°Why?¡± she asked. ¡°Just do it, alright?¡± he asked. She turned around, and presumably closed her eyes. Perry opened up the shelf space so it was facing her, then stepped into it backward, so he could keep an eye on her. He was thankful that he¡¯d kept food and water relatively close to the entrance. There were three dozen carafes of water with cork stoppers, all of them sterilized as much as they could be, and he put two into the satchel. For food, there were tins of it, meal prep as good at the culture of Markat could do it. He took four of those, along with two forks. So far as Perry could tell, Anaksi had not moved. He stepped out of the shelf and closed it behind him. ¡°Alright, done,¡± said Perry. She turned around to look at him, and he could tell she was immediately distrustful of his bounty. ¡°Where did it come from?¡± she asked. ¡°Take it or leave it,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re stopping for supper.¡± It would have been better to build a fire, but the food was serviceable at room temperature. It was one of the worst meals that Perry had eaten in recent memory, stewed peas and some kind of root vegetables, with a little of what might have been meat. Anaksi picked at it, then after deciding that it was good, started eating it with gusto, finishing before him. ¡°What do your people eat?¡± he asked. ¡°Bulbs, berries, nuts, roots, seeds,¡± she replied. ¡°Corn, squash, beans, if we have access to water. Meat from the animals.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°You do farming.¡± ¡°To farm requires staying still,¡± she said. ¡°It was more common before your people came.¡± ¡°And in the Flux, that means ¡­ someone has to stay near the crops?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t understand the Flux,¡± she said, turning her head to the side. ¡°I¡¯m trying to,¡± said Perry. ¡°We make a pannat,¡± she said. ¡°A mound of plants. Then another, and another, all around, many rows of them. They become a part of the texture.¡± ¡°Part of the Flux,¡± said Perry. ¡°Which means ¡­ you go out from your village and you can find one, even if it¡¯s not exactly the one that you made there.¡± ¡°You do understand the Flux then,¡± she said. ¡°And a railroad is different, somehow,¡± said Perry. ¡°Somehow,¡± she shrugged. ¡°We¡¯ve tried to destroy them. We¡¯ve ripped up the rails. Sometimes it works. Mostly it doesn¡¯t.¡± She looked at him. ¡°You should know this.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not with the Commission,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not sure what it is that makes you think I am.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve never met one,¡± Anaksi replied. ¡°And I¡¯ve never met a man like you.¡± She looked down at his shirt. The place where the bullet had struck him was now completely fine. There was no blood and no trace of a hole. Her ankle was completely fixed too, as she¡¯d proven by walking a mile on it. ¡°We¡¯re going,¡± said Perry, getting to his feet. He gathered the forks and placed them in the satchel, along with the bottles of water, which weighed the satchel down. He looked at the empty food tins, not knowing what to do with them. ¡°Can I ¡­ leave them here?¡± Anaksi looked at the tins. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want to carry them around,¡± said Perry. ¡°I just ¡ª is it littering?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know this word,¡± she said. She wrinkled her nose. ¡°Like a sow?¡± ¡°Nevermind,¡± said Perry. He had felt it not translate. ¡°I just didn¡¯t want someone to come along and see my trash laying there, that¡¯s all. It¡¯s impolite.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve heard liquified shit runs down the open gutters in the city,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a sewer system.¡± He knew very little concrete information about the city. ¡°But it¡¯s a dirty place, overall, and dirtier because people don¡¯t care about each other.¡± This was a guess, just based on every city he¡¯d been to. Teaguewater had been disgusting, and he thought Charlonion would probably be worse. They started walking again, leaving the tins behind, which irked Perry just a little bit, maybe because he¡¯d been raised to see litter as a Sin. He had half-suspected that the town would simply appear in front of them, that she would be wrong about the distance. It could very well have been a lie, the kind designed to let her go. But as they walked, the sky began to darken. It was not in any way like the sun setting on a cloudy day, because there was no directionality to it. The only real variance were the red veins, which were thicker than in the morning, getting brighter than the yellow-green they were set within. Perry could see decently well in the dark, maybe just because of heightened werewolf senses, though he couldn¡¯t be sure. Still, they stopped when only the red veins above were visible, and waited, looking up. It was another time for her to run, if she was going to run, but she stayed still, eyes on the sky. The experience reminded him of an old monitor refreshing, or a lightbulb slowly coming on. There was a moment of pitch black when the red veins faded to darkness, and then the stars started to appear, and the moon along with them, like a filament that was warming up before their eyes. The moon was a dark orange, a half-moon that was split horizontally, so that the line of darkness across it matched the horizon, making it look like a setting or rising sun that was far away and far too high. The stars, at least, were roughly the same as they¡¯d been the night before, clustered in stripes. ¡°Good omen,¡± said Anaksi, letting out a breath she¡¯d been holding. ¡°We sleep now.¡± ¡°There¡¯s enough light to see by,¡± said Perry. ¡°And we¡¯re going across flat land.¡± ¡°Walking at night attracts things we don¡¯t want to find us,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°It invites death.¡± Perry sat down, and she sat down beside him. He had a flashlight in the shelf space, but he hadn¡¯t grabbed it. He was pretty sure that he could see more clearly than she could. On a whim, he held out his sword and let it glow, then released it so it floated above them. It was a dim light, but much brighter than the orange moon and the stars around it. Anaksi looked at it, frowning, but said nothing about its impact on their odds of survival. She laid on the ground, laid herself straight, and folded her arms across her chest, in a pose that reminded Perry of a mummy or a Dracula. He sat down on the ground, contemplating what he was doing here. In theory, he had an enviable position. Marchand was still doing the error correction thing, and that was probably going to be done in a day or two. Perry had the harmonizer, which was still in the satchel, and that would make him a hero in Grabler¡¯s Gulch when they got there. He had Anaksi as a prisoner or hostage, which would help him to fight off her tribe when they came, en masse, to attack the town, unless that was just puffery from her. He didn¡¯t like the idea of her being executed by them, but didn¡¯t know how likely that was. He would speak in her defense, at the very least. Perry thought about Queenie, and what the hell she¡¯d been up to. Stealing the harmonizer seemed likely, but to what end was more tricky to guess at. She had a magic scarf, but he hadn¡¯t seen her do anything much with it, aside from maybe getting on top of the train from standing on the tracks in front of it. If she was a thresholder, why would she want the harmonizer? If she wasn¡¯t a thresholder why would she want it? To sell it to someone? To ransom it back? Perry was sure he¡¯d feel much better with Marchand back. It took some time for Anaksi to fall asleep. She did check on him, from time to time, glancing over at where he sat every five or ten minutes, though the checks became more infrequent. Eventually her breathing slowed, and she relaxed somewhat, arms still crossed. He wanted to go into the shelf space, but she might wake up and run away. That wouldn¡¯t be the worst outcome ¡ª a part of him wanted her to get away. If she ran, he could just fly with his sword along the tracks and be back in the Gulch in time to get a beer and go to his room. But she was a part of it, the plot, the ongoing mess, and if she slipped away in the night, he was pretty sure that she would be back, maybe with him in her crosshairs. He¡¯d fully recovered from the bullet wound, but a shot to the head would kill him, he was pretty sure. That was going to be a problem, going forward, which was another reason he needed Marchand back. He wasn¡¯t even sure that people would give him a second look if he went around wearing the power armor, it really did seem like people minded their own business about glowing fingers or cat tails. At most, he¡¯d get a crude nickname. Perry smelled the creature before he saw it. It had the scent of wet moss or cut grass, distinct in the cold, dry night. He found its eyes easily. They were red, reflecting the glowing light of the sword. Perry sat where he was, as still as he¡¯d been idly, looking off into the distance while tracking the animal. His body betrayed nothing. There was only enough light to get the general shape of it, its scrambling legs that were silent against the ground, with a bulky form above that. It prowled around them, trying to get behind Perry, and Perry stood up, stretching out, still plausibly unaware that the animal ¡ª or whatever it was ¡ª was after him. He was making himself look bigger, too, and maybe that would let him avoid a confrontation. He stilled his heart and dialed back his perspiration. The moon was giving him energy with a weird vibrato to it, off-kilter but digestible, doing something to the Wolf Vessel that wasn¡¯t entirely unpleasant. The creature came at him suddenly, all sense of stealth abandoned, thumping loudly across the ground. Perry called the sword to his hand, and it spun once in the air before landing in his palm, casting wild shadows in the process. As the creature came close, Perry finally saw what he was dealing with. It was like someone had tried to draw a crab from memory using only horse parts. It had six angular, knobbly brown knees that ended in hoofs, a maw with spiraling teeth that didn¡¯t seem to leave room for a tongue, and a jagged set of tusks or teeth that came out from the sides of the mouth, looking like they¡¯d once been ribs that had been turned out and put to other purposes. The red eyes were large, and dull in the sword-light. Where it had skin, that was brown too, sleek in some places but matted with blood in others. It smelled, overpoweringly, of rotting hay. Perry ducked to the side as it lunged at him, raising his sword to cut through bone and flesh. He rose to his feet and kicked the thing over. It was surprisingly light, for how large it was, and it kicked out with all its legs, spasming and moaning, trying to writhe itself back up. Perry sliced through two of its legs, then came around to what was approximately the head and began stabbing it repeatedly. The sword was the primary source of light, and when Perry plunged his sword in deep, it became too dark to see much until he withdrew his sword again. He looked at the creature, making sure that it wasn¡¯t moving, then spun around to look at Anaksi. She was on her feet, crouched down, but not ready to run, just watching him. ¡°It¡¯s been an hour,¡± said Perry. ¡°How many more of these should I expect?¡± She glanced at the moon. ¡°Three.¡± ¡°Three?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You were really prepared to sleep with these things out here?¡± ¡°They leave you alone if you sleep,¡± said Anaksi. Perry nodded. ¡°Then I¡¯ll plan on not sleeping, and killing three of them.¡± Anaksi watched him. He released the sword and had it move back into position as their nightlight. She laid back on the ground and closed her eyes, but it took her much longer to fall asleep this time. The next morning, with four corpses around them, they set off for Grabler¡¯s Gulch. They arrived after only twenty minutes of walking to find a town that was buzzing with activity. Chapter 156 - Our Town The train was in the station and sitting idle. At some point the day before the engine and the big tank behind it had been moved so that they were pointed the other way, changing the order of the cars so the front was now the back. There were people swarming around the engine, preparing it for its return journey, and Perry could see that the cargo sections were being loaded up with produce and goods produced in Grabler¡¯s Gulch and the local environs. He wasn¡¯t sure when the train would be leaving, but he was hoping to be on it, depending on what was going on in the Gulch. Anaksi walked beside him, resigned to her fate. With nothing for it, Perry went to the small building labeled ¡®Sheriff¡¯ in big letters, keeping a careful awareness of where Anaksi was. They got some looks, but less than he¡¯d thought they would get. The office had three desks with no one at them. There were two cells in the back, and those were empty too. ¡°I can put myself in a cell,¡± Anaksi offered. ¡°Well,¡± said Perry. ¡°The sheriff was recently hanged, and the deputy ran away. I¡¯ve got no clue what this place is doing for law right now, so ¡ª¡± ¡°So you have to let me go,¡± said Anaksi. Perry looked at her. She smiled at him. ¡°Humor doesn¡¯t transcend cultural barriers very well,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯re not worried about being executed,¡± said Perry. She shrugged. ¡°You said you would speak on my behalf. If I was going to be lynched, they would have done it as soon as they saw a Yuuk come in.¡± The Yuuks were allowed in the town, there was no law against that, not that there was anyone around to enforce the law. He was surprised that no one had talked to him about coming in off the tracks. The two men who¡¯d run away when the shooting started should have arrived before them, and certainly everyone on the train knew that it had been robbed. ¡°I¡¯m not going to let them lynch you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Why?¡± asked Anaksi. ¡°Just a general anti-lynching philosophy,¡± said Perry. He clucked his tongue. ¡°So ¡­ I guess we¡¯re going to wait.¡± He went and sat down on a long bench against the side wall, and Anaksi sat down beside him. Her eyes were roaming the sheriff¡¯s office. There were wanted posters up on the wall, and a handful of papers on the desks, but there weren¡¯t weapons for her to grab, not that Perry could see. It mostly seemed like a place for people to deal with administrative work, though he suspected that there might be guns or at least bullets in the desks, at least if the sheriff was surprised by his lynching. The cells seemed more like they were suited for holding someone drunk and aggressive than violent criminals. They didn¡¯t have to wait all that long before a man in black came in. He had a piece of paper in his hands that he was reading closely with half-moon spectacles, and he sat down at one of the desks, still reading it as he took his hat off. His outfit was clean and crisp, with a white shirt and black tie, and black books with shiny embossed leather. He was older, graying, with an oiled mustache and a goatee. His face was weathered, and he ran his tongue over his dry lips as he reached the end of whatever he was reading. He looked up at them. ¡°Now, how can I help you?¡± he asked. Perry stood. ¡°I haven¡¯t made your acquaintance,¡± he said. ¡°You¡¯re the new sheriff, or the man standing in for him?¡± The man shook his head. ¡°Sheriff is dead, they tell me, and the deputy ran away. I¡¯m the new marshal, came in off the train yesterday, and none too soon. Didn¡¯t know I was going to be coming into a lawless town. You¡¯re local?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m from Charlonion originally. I was part of a posse yesterday, the one that went down along the rail. Peregrine Holzman.¡± He held out his hand, and the man came from around the desk to shake it. ¡°Marshal Eller Briscoe,¡± the man replied. He nodded at Anaksi. ¡°Who¡¯s the Yuuk?¡± ¡°This is Anaksi,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re ¡­ aware the train was attacked?¡± Eller chuckled. ¡°Aware there¡¯s a missing harmonizer, melted locks, and four dead guards? I¡¯d be a piss poor marshal if I didn¡¯t know that. Dead Yuuk in the car, too.¡± ¡°This is the other one,¡± said Perry. ¡°He did the killing, I¡¯m pretty sure, but she was a part of the robbery, so I¡¯ve brought her in.¡± Eller looked between the two of them. ¡°She came willingly?¡± ¡°I brought her in,¡± said Perry. ¡°On horse? On foot?¡± asked Eller. ¡°On foot,¡± said Perry. ¡°So ¡­ let me get this straight,¡± said Eller, scratching his chin. ¡°Some Yuuks drop down onto the train, they kill their way to the harmonizer, take it, then at some point you ¡ª by yourself ¡ª catch them, and you bring one in on foot, taking a day to do it. Which means sleeping out under the half-lidded moon, presumably.¡± ¡°I dropped down onto the train too,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was the one who killed the Yuuk you found.¡± He¡¯d put his sword back into the shelf space earlier in the day, while Anaksi wasn¡¯t looking. ¡°She jumped off the train with the harmonizer, and I jumped off after her. There were some passengers who should have seen me.¡± Eller frowned at Perry. ¡°And that harmo, you know where it is now?¡± Perry reached into his satchel and drew it out. ¡°Well lean me over this desk and fuck me rotten,¡± said Eller with a whistle. He took the harmonizer and rotated it around. The pink glow from it was very faint in the light filtering in from outside. He looked up at Perry. ¡°But why¡¯d you bring the Yuuk?¡± ¡°The Yuuks aren¡¯t going to give up,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re going to gather up their people and try to take the harmonizer. That¡¯s harder for them than when it was on the train, but they are going to try. Might be tonight, might be tomorrow, but we have to be prepared, and she¡¯s a source of leverage and information.¡± ¡°Seems like a poor plan for them,¡± said Eller. His eyes hadn¡¯t left the harmonizer. ¡°You¡¯re just ¡­ bringing this back?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Town needs it.¡± ¡°Not asking for a reward?¡± asked Eller. ¡°I didn¡¯t figure that there was a reward on offer,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d take one, if you wanted to show some appreciation.¡± ¡°And you¡¯ve got a docile Yuuk you want to throw in jail,¡± said Eller, glancing at Anaksi, then over to the cells. ¡°I don¡¯t know what¡¯s done in these parts,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess if you¡¯re the replacement sheriff, it¡¯s for you to decide.¡± Eller frowned. ¡°Sheriff and marshal are different, son,¡± he said. ¡°A sheriff serves the county, a marshal serves the law. Law is, that woman there was part of a train robbery? She¡¯ll see the local judge soon enough and likely face the noose for it.¡± Perry looked over at Anaksi. She was staring straight ahead, like she wasn¡¯t even listening to the conversation where her fate was decided. The thought of her lifeless body hanging from some rope didn¡¯t sit well with him, but he didn¡¯t know what else he was supposed to do. Perry turned back to Eller and nodded slowly. ¡°I can leave her here then?¡± he asked. ¡°Sure,¡± shrugged Eller. ¡°Does she speak?¡± ¡°She¡¯s fluent,¡± said Perry. ¡°You fluent?¡± Eller asked Anaksi. ¡°I will not speak to swine such as you, kill me if you must,¡± she said to him in her own tongue. Eller looked back at Perry and raised an eyebrow. ¡°Ornery one?¡± ¡°She¡¯s facing the noose,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d be ornery too.¡± ¡°Well, we¡¯ll see about getting her to the judge real soon. If what you said is true, we¡¯ll have more than enough to hang her.¡± He nodded. ¡°I don¡¯t think she needs to be hanged,¡± said Perry. ¡°She didn¡¯t kill anyone, I can attest that it was the man with her, the one that¡¯s already dead. She did try to steal the harmonizer, but I took it back from her. So she¡¯s guilty of ¡­ conspiracy to commit robbery?¡± ¡°And just who are you?¡± asked Eller, sizing Perry up again. ¡°Are you her lawyer?¡± ¡°Just a concerned citizen,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to make sure that what happens to her is justice.¡± ¡°She¡¯s a Yuuk,¡± said Eller. ¡°Justice comes for them, sooner or later.¡± Perry really felt like punching the marshal in the face. Why he¡¯d thought this would go any other way, he didn¡¯t know. Leaving Anaksi in this man¡¯s care no longer seemed like it was an option, but it didn¡¯t seem like he had a good way to back out either. Could he just ¡­ leave with her? Set her free? She¡¯d tried to rob the train, and while she might not have killed anyone, her husband had. She was part of the plot, that deserved something, just not this. ¡°I¡¯m going to come back and visit her tomorrow,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯ll be in that cell?¡± He nodded to the back of the office. ¡°Sure, though I¡¯m only barely settled,¡± said the marshal. ¡°She¡¯ll get food, water, all that,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯ll be safe here.¡± He wasn¡¯t saying those as questions, more as threats, which maybe wasn¡¯t wise. ¡°I serve the law,¡± said the marshal. ¡°Who¡¯s she to you? You take a shine?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t leave someone in the care of a stranger, not even a criminal, unless I have some guarantee that they¡¯ll be treated well,¡± said Perry. Eller sized Perry up. There was a three inch height difference between them, in Perry¡¯s favor. Perry¡¯s clothes didn¡¯t show off his physique that well, but it was probably obvious that in a fight, Perry had the advantage. What was going through the marshal¡¯s mind was hard to say, since he had a good poker face, but Perry¡¯s poker face was better. ¡°You have my word,¡± said the marshal. ¡°You can come tomorrow, see how she¡¯s doing, and I¡¯ll make sure she gets the noose as fast as can be.¡± Perry stormed out of there. Anaksi watched him go. If she was hanged, it would be because Perry had made that happen, submitted to the local rules and expectations. Did she deserve to be hanged? He didn¡¯t think so, though he could see a lens through which he did, one that looked more at those dead men in the train car than at her as a person. It would certainly be frontier justice, which wasn¡¯t really justice at all. There was a chance that Anaksi would escape on her own. She was wily, aggressive, and if he was a judge, pretty smart. He hadn¡¯t cuffed her or tied her up, and if she wanted to run, he¡¯d given her a chance by leaving. All she¡¯d have to do was find a horse that could be stolen in a hurry and then take off into the Flux. If he understood it right, that alone was probably enough to make sure she wasn¡¯t found. Perry waited outside the saloon for a few minutes, facing in the direction of the sheriff¡¯s office, but he heard no sounds of fighting, no yelling or screaming. He was still waiting when Wyatt and Cecil came riding into town. Wyatt was still alive, but soaked in blood and looking pale. The horse he was riding on was being pulled along by Cecil, who was on his own horse, and unlike Perry¡¯s arrival, people seemed to actually notice. A crowd gathered quickly, and Wyatt was pulled off his horse and onto a stretcher, taken to a doctor¡¯s just a few steps away. Cecil got down to a round of questions from the people who¡¯d gathered there, along with a confusion of information on the train robbery, and Perry came closer to hear. ¡°They jumped straight down on the train!¡± he said as he dismounted his horse. ¡°Never seen anything so crazy in my life, and crazier still was that woman, Trigger Queen, who got in front of the train like she meant to stop it. She leapt up at the last second and landed there like she¡¯d practiced it a hundred times, and the two Yuuks, and then finally this dandy scholar we¡¯d met only the day before, sword in his hand from nowhere!¡± ¡°Cecil,¡± said Perry, raising his hand. Cecil was off his horse and in among the crowd of maybe two dozen people, some of whom had emptied out of the saloon because of the commotion. He looked at Perry and just stopped there for a moment while his brain caught up. ¡°You lived?¡± he asked. ¡°You got on the train?¡± ¡°On the train, then off the train,¡± said Perry. ¡°I thought for sure you were dead,¡± said Cecil. He took off his hat and slapped it against his thigh once, producing a cloud of dust, then put it back on his head. ¡°Off the train, and not in the usual way?¡± ¡°Jumped off not long after I jumped on,¡± said Perry. ¡°It lacked atmosphere.¡± Cecil stared at him. ¡°They took the harmonizer, people were saying.¡± ¡°And I brought it back,¡± said Perry. He pointed over at the sheriff¡¯s office. ¡°The marshal has it now.¡± This brought some vociferous discussion from the crowd. Maybe it was a bad idea to brag, but it felt good to have resolved something for the town. Hell, he could have come into town holding the harmonizer high, though he wasn¡¯t sure that anyone would know what it was. ¡°That woman, Queenie, has anyone seen her?¡± Perry asked. ¡°She was on the train. Red scarf.¡± ¡°She came by,¡± said a small girl who¡¯d come up to join the group. On closer inspection, it was the same small girl from the passenger car, the one who¡¯d told him that the harmonizer was toward the front. ¡°She left the other way when we stopped.¡± She paused for a moment. ¡°She was pretty.¡± ¡°Off into the Flux?¡± asked Perry, pointing the same direction the girl had pointed. This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. The girl nodded. ¡°Thank you again then,¡± said Perry. It would be fruitless to go after her, but it was good to know she¡¯d rode the train back. He¡¯d keep tabs on her, to the extent that was possible. She was up to something. Perry looked at the sheriff¡¯s office. The marshal still hadn¡¯t come out, which was suspicious. The office only had one door, he¡¯d seen that when he¡¯d gone in, and the back wall held the cells, with no windows among them. Perry started walking back to the office, slowly at first and then faster. He heard sounds of a struggle just as he got there, punctuated by a scream. When he came to the door, it was locked tight, so he forced it, a palm strike against the bolt that shattered the windows of the door and burst it open. He wasn¡¯t sure what he¡¯d been worried about, but the harmonizer was still sitting on the desk. The marshal was in the cell with Anaksi, and he had a hand raised against her. He¡¯d turned to look at Perry, probably because of the broken glass, and held up both hands, opening his mouth to explain. Perry vaulted over one of the desks and stepped into the small cell, slapping the marshal across the face so hard the marshal fell down. ¡°Are you okay?¡± Perry asked Anaksi. She nodded, but her face was red on one side. ¡°She was mouthing off,¡± said the marshal as he got to his feet. He was gritting his teeth, face red. ¡°And you just struck a man of the law.¡± Perry slapped him across the face again, harder this time, sending him to the ground, then kicked him in the ribs for good measure. The marshal had a sidearm, and Perry was going to break his arm if he went for it. ¡°I left her in your care,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was very explicit that you were to treat her with respect and dignity, that she was supposed to get due process.¡± The marshal staggered to his feet again, slower this time. He was unsteady. ¡°I¡¯m placing you ¡ª placing you under arrest,¡± said the marshal. ¡°You strike a lawman, that¡¯s the noose.¡± Perry was feeling the anger build inside him. It was now burning bright. He could kill this man, then raze this town to the ground, if that was their idea of law, if that was how they treated prisoners. Why had he thought it would be any different? ¡°Do you have any fucking idea who I am?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Do you have any clue how idle your threats are? How little chance you would ever have of touching me if I didn¡¯t want to be touched?¡± ¡°I represent the will of the Commission,¡± spat the marshal. ¡°Yeah?¡± asked Perry. ¡°And who the fuck do you think I work for?¡± The marshal rocked back like he¡¯d just been struck again. Where the beating hadn¡¯t made him compliant, this did. His eyes scanned Perry¡¯s face with the frantic energy of a mouse running across an open field. Perry was as strictly as impassive as ever, taking advantage of the second sphere, betraying none of the rage he was feeling. ¡°I ¡­ I didn¡¯t know,¡± said the marshal. ¡°I¡¯m going to talk to her in the morning,¡± said Perry. ¡°If she says she wasn¡¯t treated right, I¡¯m going to hold you personally responsible, and they will never find your body.¡± The marshal swallowed and nodded. ¡°Anaksi, don¡¯t mouth off to this man, because he¡¯s clearly dumb enough not to take that warning for what it¡¯s worth.¡± She nodded at him once, eyes wide. Perry left, doing his best not to storm out a second time. He hadn¡¯t directly claimed that he had been sent by the Commission, he¡¯d only left that to implication, but he was really hoping that it wasn¡¯t going to come back to bite him. The marshal was an agent of the Commission and their laws, but Perry had guessed that there would be something else, some higher authority. That much had been suggested from the way that people talked about the Commission in hushed tones. He took a deep breath, trying to still his mind. He sort of fucking hated the Wild West. There were some questions for him from the people out on the street, and he brushed them off. He¡¯d broken the door, shattering glass and wrecking the lock. He made his way to the saloon and headed toward the stairs to his room, then instead went to the counter, where Cleo was washing glasses ¡ª or wiping them with a rag, anyway. He had somehow forgotten about the black crack of rot running down her face, and quietly shoved down the part of him that wanted to pay attention to it. ¡°Fine morning,¡± she said, raising an eyebrow. ¡°The harmonizer that was stolen is back,¡± said Perry. ¡°Where¡¯s it going to end up?¡± Cleo frowned at him. ¡°It was stolen, they said, it¡¯s all anyone¡¯s been talking about. And weren¡¯t you a part of the posse? When you all didn¡¯t come back last night, we feared the worst.¡± ¡°Wyatt¡¯s alive, badly wounded, just came back,¡± said Perry. ¡°Cecil is fine, more or less. We lost three of the horses. Three members of the posse are missing in action by my count, but we¡¯re hoping they¡¯ll turn up. And the harmonizer is back now. So where¡¯s it going to be, uh, installed?¡± ¡°Basement of city hall,¡± she replied. She scrunched up her nose. ¡°They have a whole contraption down there, have for ages, there¡¯s a vault around it.¡± ¡°The Yuuks are going to try again,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯m worried that someone else is going to try too. Is there a different room, one with an angle on both City Hall and the sheriff¡¯s office?¡± ¡°There¡¯s a flop room,¡± said Cleo. ¡°Some of the ladies use it.¡± ¡°How much for me to have it for the night?¡± asked Perry. Cleo looked at him. ¡°What is it you¡¯re thinking is going to happen?¡± she asked. ¡°Not sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I just want to keep an eye out without being seen keeping an eye out.¡± ¡°You¡¯re looking for a gun nest?¡± she asked. ¡°That¡¯s not a terrible idea,¡± said Perry. Cleo tried to read his face, and he quirked his lips into what he hoped was a winning smile. ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll keep the girls out,¡± she said. ¡°Unless you don¡¯t need your eyes on all the time? In which case a girl could slip in and help you out.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll be keeping watch,¡± Perry replied. ¡°Thanks for the offer.¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t going to charge, if that was what you were thinking,¡± said Cleo, raising an eyebrow. ¡°It¡¯s not often we get a man so handsome and clean as yourself through here.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll keep that in mind,¡± said Perry. He gave her another smile, then went up the stairs and found the room in question. It was far better furnished than the room he was staying in, with a four-poster bed and a sink for washing up right in the room. There were pictures on the walls, lewd oil paintings, and if Perry hadn¡¯t already known it, that would have cemented this as a place of prostitution. There was no lock on the door, which he didn¡¯t particularly like, but he supposed that it was better for the safety of the women to have someone be able to come to their rescue. From what he knew of the saloon, there were three such rooms, though he didn¡¯t think they were used all that often ¡ª the women were mostly for hospitality, flirts-for-money more than outright sex-for-pay. Which wasn¡¯t to say that the room wasn¡¯t used, and didn¡¯t have a certain smell to it. He opened the curtain and looked out the window, making sure that he had a sightline to the two places he cared about, then opened up the shelf and stepped inside. ¡°How¡¯s it going, March?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve had a day to make some progress.¡± ¡°Sixty-four percent, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I¡¯m pleased to tell you that certain systems are now online.¡± ¡°Thank god,¡± said Perry. ¡°Anything usable? I¡¯m really hoping you¡¯re going to tell me you have microphones, cameras, and the ability to conduct a stakeout.¡± ¡°Microphones and audio analysis are, in fact, working, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I made those a priority, as they¡¯ll be important for us keeping a link with each other via the earpiece.¡± ¡°That would mean that I would have to leave you out,¡± said Perry. ¡°It would indeed, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Is that untenable?¡± ¡°We¡¯re in a lawless place without a good base of operations,¡± said Perry. ¡°Right now, we¡¯re in a saloon, in a room whose door doesn¡¯t even lock. I need the surveillance we used to have.¡± ¡°WIthout the nanites, sir, I think that¡¯s unlikely to ever be the case,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Still no response?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Given their size, they are likely suffering a worse version of all problems that I suffer,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And with no possibility of error-correcting code. I will endeavor to do my best, once I¡¯m back on my feet.¡± Perry let out a sigh. ¡°Alright, I¡¯m going to play lookout, I¡¯ll keep a hole open so we can keep in touch, the earpiece should be ready now?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry got it from the small compartment it had been stored in, then slipped it into his ear. It was good to have it back, to have a lifeline to Marchand, though the AI wasn¡¯t of all that much use at the moment. While Perry sat in a chair and watched what he could see of the main streets, he caught Marchand up to speed on everything that had happened, including what Perry could remember about the specifics about the Dusklands, along with his suppositions. ¡°And they think you belong to this Commission, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Is that wise?¡± ¡°It gives me some leeway,¡± said Perry. ¡°And do you suppose there¡¯s no method of verification?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was angry. Worst case scenario, ¡­¡± he paused, because the worst case scenario was actually pretty bad. ¡°Worst case scenario, I get shot in the head by someone who really is with the Commission¡¯s secret police, or someone confronts me and asks for proof I don¡¯t have, which ends in violence and me getting run out of town into the Flux, where there are probably things I would have difficulty with. But if they have secret police, and that¡¯s what I¡¯m pretending to be, then I¡¯m going to hope that they¡¯re feared enough that no one will come after me.¡± He let out a sigh. ¡°I really wish that we had your ears back up. You said you had microphones. How close are we to being able to monitor every conversation in the saloon?¡± ¡°With luck, half an hour,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That would require my physical form to be pulled from the shelf space, however, and the microfusion reactor has not been restarted yet. All power is drawing on the battery, which is drained by any communication, processing, or surveillance.¡± ¡°I can juice the battery,¡± said Perry. ¡°Wolf Vessel filled up last night, their moon is weird, but it¡¯s thankfully compatible.¡± ¡°I have not said it, sir, but I do regret my impairment and what it means for the mission,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I feel I must apologize.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not your fault,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just the way this particular world is. I wish that the Grand Spell had warped this world to fix you up, but ¡­ maybe the spell doesn¡¯t work that way, not for things that aren¡¯t formally part of physics in the same way. Maybe there¡¯s nothing in it that checks whether circuitry works. Maybe we could arrive in a world where bullets don¡¯t fire because the chemistry is different or something.¡± ¡°It¡¯s possible, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It does seem like an oversight on the behalf of the designers.¡± ¡°Hella thought there weren¡¯t any designers,¡± said Perry. ¡°That we¡¯re just at the tail end of some learning algorithm¡¯s training process, or something like that. But it doesn¡¯t really matter, except in that it might allow us to predict the future. My guess is that any issues with you, or the nanites, are priced into our odds of success.¡± He paused. ¡°No word from the Farfinder?¡± ¡°None, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I should say that as I have been inside the shelf for the duration, I can¡¯t be expected to have picked up any signals from them.¡± Perry winced. The nature of the Flux meant that he couldn¡¯t just hide Marchand out behind a hill somewhere, because in theory Marchand could simply disappear, just like Anaksi had thought their empty tins of food would. But it was clear that there were many benefits to having the armor outside of the extradimensional space, if only Perry could trust the lock on the saloon¡¯s door. ¡°I¡¯m going to set you up in my room,¡± said Perry. ¡°Are you at the point where you can aim and fire a gun?¡± ¡°I believe I could manage, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Would I have your permission to engage in diplomacy first?¡± ¡°Yes, of course, obviously,¡± said Perry. ¡°Try to talk your way out of it first, Jesus Christ.¡± ¡°I believe in some of the scenarios you might be envisioning, diplomacy would reduce the odds that I would evade capture,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Still, try,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll set you up, I¡¯m just waiting and watching, trying to gather intel. And we don¡¯t have this room permanently, just for a bit, so you¡¯re going to have to be in the other room.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. They talked more while Perry watched the streets. The harmonizer had been moved to city hall not too long after he¡¯d gotten there, with much fanfare and a terse explanation from the marshal that Perry couldn¡¯t hear. In theory, the pink ball was being slotted into some machine that would do something, but Perry didn¡¯t really know what. He was still in the dark about the Flux. ¡°I have a number of theories, sir,¡± said Marchand, when prompted. ¡°A simple model would be one where a given location has some element of location, as given in X and Y coordinates, and of something else, which I might term drift, a vector. A step north might be up on the X axis, but that step must contend with the drift, which is probabilistic but weighted. A key insight is that after the train passed through, it was all but guaranteed that we would take a long time to arrive into town. Perhaps the passing of the train adjusted ¡®drift¡¯ such that the vector was pointing away from the direction of the train¡¯s travel. Similarly, we think of other pieces of evidence as being similar, such as the supposition by Anaksi that intent matters.¡± ¡°Hrm,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, I guess, but there¡¯s a lot that doesn¡¯t explain.¡± ¡°I do have a more wild theory, if you would like, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Please,¡± said Perry. ¡°Are you familiar with autokinetic matrices?¡± asked Marchand, leaving off the ¡®sir¡¯ for once. The term meant ¡®cellular automata¡¯. ¡°I got a translation for that, I¡¯m not sure that¡¯s ever happened before,¡± said Perry. ¡°Update ''autokinetic matrices¡¯ to ¡®cellular automata¡¯. Conway¡¯s game of life? Little, uh, squares and stuff?¡± ¡°I have never heard of Conway¡¯s game, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°But yes, cellular automata are a system by which individual squares follow rules based on their neighbors.¡± Perry tried to dredge up any scrap of information left in his brain about cellular automata. ¡°Alright, so ¡­ gliders?¡± ¡°I¡¯m unfamiliar with the term, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Because we¡¯re from different Earths,¡± said Perry. And translation hadn¡¯t seemed to help. ¡°Alright, there are, um, little creatures that glide across the screen, little, uh, oscillating chunks of squares that create motion.¡± ¡°To clarify, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Cellular automata typically envisions an infinite checkerboard where cells can have data associated with them, one or zero in the basic examples, which influence each other. From this, certain phenomena might arise, different patterns of stability and meta-stability, a range of behaviors.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re thinking that this can explain the Flux?¡± asked Perry. ¡°These ¡­ systems of stability? You¡¯re talking about the harmonizers, the railroads, the way that a lot of people together seem to create some kind of stable island in the sea of Flux?¡± ¡°The monster that came at night, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Anaksi knew that it would come four times. There is a periodicity that I find suspicious.¡± ¡°Oscillation, you think,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not a natural predator, but something that would recur, because it¡¯s part of a pattern. I mean ¡­ I guess.¡± ¡°The Eshkee have an adaptation wherein they create pannat, mounds of different vegetables in some kind of polyculture, if I¡¯m understanding you right,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They then leave these within the Flux, and sometimes, when they come back to that spot, the pannat remains, or is propagated. This too is something that we expect from cellular automata. There are classes of generators. This is also possibly one aspect of the railroad, which can stretch its apparent distance for hundreds of miles.¡± ¡°And you think this helps us?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I am uncertain, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The mechanism is still unclear, and it¡¯s possible that we would require other explanations to be laid on top of it, but I am taken by this model of how generation might work.¡± Perry couldn¡¯t imagine the Marchand from a few years ago feeling the same way. ¡°Is this theory testable?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not a theory as yet, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s an observation or metaphor. There are other metaphors that might bear more fruit in terms of prediction, and once main processing is back online, I will endeavor to crunch the numbers as much as I can. It would be helpful to make a sojourn out into the Flux with the armor on, to collect as much visual and audio data as possible. But in theory, setting up objects at certain distances from each other can influence what is created in the unknown space between them. There are other models, of course, infilling and procedural generation, but I find them less evocative.¡± ¡°Hrm, alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t think we¡¯re going to crack this if they haven¡¯t cracked it, but we have better math and computation, so I guess it¡¯s possible.¡± ¡°Just a moment, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Yes?¡± asked Perry. Nothing had changed out on the street. It was busy, but in a very normal, milling about sort of way. ¡°Regrettably, I must reset my estimation of progress,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It appears that the error-correcting code is not robust to changes in condition.¡± ¡°What happened?¡± asked Perry. He¡¯d felt nothing. ¡°The character of the errors has changed,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They have reduced in number by two full orders of magnitude, but their character has changed as well, and will require revision to the error correction.¡± ¡°They turned the harmonizer on,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ah, yes sir, that¡¯s an astute observation,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That¡¯s likely what happened.¡± ¡°How many error-correcting codes are you going to need?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Never fear, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It should only be a matter of revising the error-correction to be more robust. In theory, passing through different ¡®zones¡¯ should be something I¡¯m able to accomplish without a total loss of function.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°Any chance that you¡¯ll be ready tonight?¡± ¡°I¡¯m afraid not, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though perhaps I can prioritize visuals in such a way that you could wear me. That would provide protection, if not strength.¡± ¡°Do that,¡± said Perry. ¡°The train leaves soon, I think we¡¯re going to want to be on it, to get out from under this identity if nothing else. I¡¯m going to craft a new identity, one that will hold up to scrutiny.¡± ¡°Very well, sir, I shall be your ears, and hopefully soon, your eyes as well,¡± said Marchand. Perry went out of the shelf space, but left it open, staring out the window. He wasn¡¯t sure whether Anaksi had been bluffing or not, whether there would be an attack on the town or just a quiet night. The harmonizer was in place and secured. How many men could the Eshkee have? What would the skirmish look like? Perry wasn¡¯t even sure that he was on the right side, but the thought of sitting out the fight and letting things happen naturally didn¡¯t appeal to him in the slightest. ¡°I¡¯m going downstairs,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know if the marshal is taking the threat seriously, but I¡¯m going to spread the word myself if he¡¯s brushing it off. People will listen to me, I think, if they assume I¡¯m Commission.¡± ¡°If you feel that¡¯s wise, sir,¡± said Marchand. Chapter 130 - Good Company The five crew members of the Farfinder were set up on bean bag chairs around a large screen in what Kes had called the break room. Hella was the exception: she was standing tall next to the screen at a parade rest. She nodded to Perry as he came in behind Kes. He regretted wearing the armor, but the last battle had left him on edge. The armor left him large and imposing, in a way that made him feel awkward, something that had been a perennial problem in social situations. If it had clung to his skin, it might have been different, but it had a bulk and heft to it. ¡°Alright,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯ve been waiting for you.¡± Perry slowly lowered himself into a tan bean bag. That felt even more ridiculous. ¡°This is a meeting to discuss what the fuck is going on, so far as we understand it,¡± said Hella. ¡°It is, secondarily, a meeting to discuss our plans for action.¡± ¡°I know what¡¯s going on,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let me give my overview first,¡± said Hella, holding up a hand. ¡°I want to offer the understanding from our perspective.¡± ¡°Go ahead,¡± said Perry. He took the helmet off and placed it next to him on the beanbag chair. Hella brought forth a clicker, and started in on the slides. Perry had personally hoped that he would never have to sit through another PowerPoint presentation in his life, and internally groaned when Hella¡¯s slide contained a bunch of text that seemed to very closely match what she was saying. He wondered whether her version of Earth, with its superheroes, was stunted when it came to presenting information in a clear and engaging way. ¡°Fenilor¡¯s hypothesis is that there are two battles going on right now,¡± said Hella. ¡°First, there¡¯s a triad of Nima, Mette, and Fenilor, all with between one and zero wins. This might be a rare three-sided battle, but we don¡¯t know. Second, there¡¯s the duo of Peregrin and Third Fervor.¡± The slide clicked over, and showed the simple shapes, one a triangle, the other a line. ¡°Now, we have never seen this before. There was no reason to think that it was remotely possible. However, it¡¯s not entirely surprising: the shelfspace that Peregrin carries with him is unique, another never-before-seen magical effect, notable mostly because of how the Grand Spell treats it.¡± Perry raised his hand and Hella blinked at him. ¡°Yes?¡± she asked. ¡°Alright, so ¡­ why does it matter?¡± asked Perry. ¡°For portal opening requirements?¡± ¡°That¡¯s one of the considerations, yes,¡± said Hella. She turned to face the assembled crew, though Perry was pretty sure they must all know this. This meeting should have been an email. ¡°If the triad is resolved, we expect a portal will open. Given our overwhelming desire is for Fenilor to not escape and potentially doom this world, we must be particularly cautious about all members of the triad except for Mette.¡± ¡°Why not Mette?¡± asked Perry. ¡°She was soundly beaten,¡± said Hella. ¡°Sometimes there are a series of fights between thresholders before the final one, but a portal opens when there¡¯s a clear and decisive victory. I believe that to have been achieved against her.¡± She clicked a button, and the slide moved on. ¡°This limits the possibility space somewhat, though not in a way I find particularly interesting. The death of Mette is, in theory, irrelevant unless the triad is in a free-for-all, as we believe to have been the case with you, Jeff, and Marjut.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°I think I¡¯m not fully up to speed on ¡­ what¡¯s going on? What the portals are ¡­ for?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I mean, there are guesses, but ¡ª¡± Hella cleared her throat. ¡°I would like, at this time, to give my explanation.¡± There were some groans from the crew, which brought a faint smile to Perry¡¯s face. This was clearly well-trod ground for them, and just as clearly, no one was buying what Hella was selling. He wondered whether it would vibe with him. ¡°I believe that there is no grand purpose to the fights the Grand Spell engineers,¡± said Hella. ¡°The Grand Spell does not care about winners and losers, it cares about probabilities, making sure the fights are even, or close to it. Thresholders are almost always rewarded with powers, but it¡¯s difficult to say whether this is to engineer battles or is meant as a reward. The fights often scar the worlds they happen on, but also sometimes improve them through magic or technology left behind ¡ª either way, if this were the purpose, it would be horrifically inefficient.¡± ¡°Cut to the chase,¡± said Cark from his bean bag. He didn¡¯t seem like he enjoyed the digression. ¡°What I propose is that the primary thing the Grand Spell gets from the fights is data,¡± said Hella. ¡°It uses that data to refine its approach.¡± Kes held up a hand, and Hella pointed at him. ¡°What does that mean?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Fundamentally, how was Marchand made?¡± asked Hella. She immediately answered her own question. ¡°He was trained on enormous amounts of data pulled from a globally connected network, virtually the sum of all information from his Earth. He was then given a structure on top of that, and has had further deviations and modifications, but the base, the core, was a very large network that was fed training data to adjust the weighting of nodes.¡± ¡°She thinks that the Grand Spell is the same,¡± said Eggy, turning her head toward Perry. ¡°It¡¯s not a theory we all endorse, if you couldn¡¯t tell by the groans.¡± ¡°Here¡¯s what I think is happening,¡± said Hella, not losing focus. ¡°We can imagine the Grand Spell as self-learning. It brings two people together and makes a prediction about who will win in the fight, which might be its main goal. Possibly it''s making other predictions as well. Then, once the prediction is done, it sets those events in motion and monitors them, attempting to figure out whether it did a good job at predicting. It refines itself over time, getting better and better at its predictions, until eventually there is, encoded within its network, information about how any fight would go, how any potential recruit would respond.¡± ¡°There are tons of problems with this,¡± said Eggy. ¡°I mean, why and how is the start of the problems.¡± ¡°Assuming that it¡¯s true,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, assuming that this is some clumsy attempt to gain information, something done by, I don¡¯t know, a medieval wizard whose means exceeded his grasp, playing out over a million worlds, involving thousands of fights ¡­ how does that change anything?¡± ¡°Two things,¡± said Hella, holding up fingers. ¡°Which, yes, I do think help to prove my point. First, if I¡¯m correct and the Grand Spell is ¡®learning¡¯ over time, then we might see, in the historical record, fights which were less evenly balanced. If you¡¯re training a model, you want dynamism, especially if each step is relatively costly. You get more from difficult, hard-to-predict encounters. If the Grand Spell is trying to get the most information, it¡¯s going to set up matches that it thinks will have a 50% chance of ending one way or another, rather than matches that always end the same way. Second, the Grand Spell is going to be much worse with rare events. It¡¯s had fewer of them in the data it¡¯s collected. We know that team-ups are rare, that threesomes are rare, and whatever is going on now ¡­ it¡¯s very rare.¡± She gave Perry an intense look, and it really did seem like she was waiting for him to agree with her. ¡°You think the prediction is bad,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fenilor is an outlier, this ship is an outlier, and the triad/duo thing is an outlier. Plausibly this is the first time the Grand Spell has ever encountered this configuration.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± nodded Hella. ¡°We don¡¯t know that,¡± said the weird lizard guy whose name escaped Perry. The lizard spoke through his nostrils, using his nose-tongues. ¡°It might be omniscient.¡± ¡°It¡¯s difficult,¡± Hella nodded. ¡°This is a theory that fits the evidence though.¡± ¡°Plausibly it¡¯s something totally different,¡± said Eggy. ¡°It¡¯s one thing to have a pet theory, it¡¯s another to have an entire operation hinge on it, that¡¯s nutty. You know it¡¯s nutty.¡± ¡°The operation doesn¡¯t hinge on it,¡± said Hella, holding up a hand. ¡°The operation hinges on the fact that in the prognosticated futures, Perry loses and Fenilor wins, which either means that the Grand Spell screwed up ¡ª likely ¡ª or that it accounted for our entry and virtually everything we¡¯ve done here.¡± ¡°Which is bad,¡± said Perry. ¡°Extremely bad,¡± nodded Hella. She clicked ahead on the slides a few times, skipping over things that had already been gone over. ¡°The mission of the SS Farfinder is to stop the Grand Spell and bring an end to thresholding for the good of the multiverse, ideally while harnessing some of its power to link universes together and ensure a glorious mutual future for the people of the multiverse.¡± She stared at the screen for a moment, then clicked to change slides. ¡°If the Farfinder gets predictively entangled with a thresholder ¡ª to wit, you ¡ª then we¡¯re going to run into a better class of enemy. The hope is that we¡¯re only there as backup, but when you get into the business of telling the future, it gets complicated.¡± Eggy turned in her seat to look at Perry. ¡°If the Grand Spell does hinge on 50% outcomes, if that¡¯s what it¡¯s trying to produce for training data or whatever, then ideally we¡¯d stay out of it,¡± she said. ¡°But if we stay out of it until you¡¯re losing and then swoop in, that means that we bias the outcome in favor of you winning, and probably by a lot. And if that¡¯s true, then to maintain a 50% win ratio we should expect that a significant fraction of fights require our attention, which means a significant fraction of fights are ones that you lose.¡± ¡°Which is the whole point of not getting entangled,¡± sighed Perry. ¡°Fine. But you are entangled, so you¡¯re going to help me?¡± ¡°There are different levels of entanglement,¡± said Hella. ¡°We consider ourselves to be fully entangled now though.¡± Perry looked at the slide that was up on the presentation. It was a longer version of what Eggy had said, with some examples, and he suspected that she¡¯d had a hand in it. ¡°We¡¯re agreed on killing Fenilor?¡± asked Perry. Hella nodded. ¡°It¡¯s the most sure-fire way to ensure that he doesn¡¯t go through a portal. We¡¯re having trouble finding him though, and ¡­ there¡¯s Nima to consider.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t use the same method you used to find the mine?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You can¡¯t just make a note of all the places you can¡¯t see?¡± ¡°We could,¡± said Hella. ¡°But those places were static, and Fenilor moves around a lot. We can¡¯t do a mapping fast enough to catch him, not unless he stays put.¡± If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. ¡°In our meeting, we decided on a way to contact each other, if we didn¡¯t end up killing each other,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can use that, pin him that way. I¡¯m hoping you have a giant laser cannon or something?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t have much in the way of offense,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re cockroaches by nature. I could help you in a fight, but as far as munitions go, we¡¯re lacking.¡± She glanced at Eggy. ¡°We have guns,¡± said Eggy. ¡°We actually have kind of a lot of guns. But we¡¯re not magic users, the magic comes and goes and there¡¯s just not the time or payoff to that.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll take guns,¡± said Perry. ¡°When Mette is better, we¡¯ll bring her in to look at what you have. She¡¯s a skilled engineer ¡ª they all were, on Esperide.¡± Hella nodded. Perry had thought it was a bit of an ask, bringing another person into their circle, but either it was anticipated and approved, or Kes had already made the request. ¡°And we need to talk about what happens when it¡¯s all over,¡± said Perry. ¡°Once he¡¯s dead, a portal will open. That¡¯ll be the one for Mette or Nima or ¡­ maybe it¡¯ll come later. That gives you data, right?¡± ¡°It should,¡± said Hella. ¡°We have a push to set up research equipment, but we¡¯ve been planning this for half a year. We just didn¡¯t know what magic we¡¯d have access to, and hadn¡¯t suspected that the answer would be ¡®all of them¡¯.¡± ¡°And then when we kill Third Fervor, we expect a second portal to open?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Which is more information. And possibly a method of pointing the portal where we want it to go.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Hella. She looked up at the slide, like it would help her, then back at Perry. ¡°We would love that, if it were possible, but that particular aspect of the Grand Spell is under-defined right now.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve got no fucking clue,¡± said Eggy with smile from her beanbag chair. ¡°We expect an evaluation step,¡± said Cark. ¡°A person goes into the portal, the Grand Spell holds them there and looks at its options, sees its possibilities, then shunts them off somewhere. There¡¯s evidence that the hold can actually last pretty long before the punch happens.¡± ¡°But we have no way to affect the evaluation,¡± said Eggy. ¡°We don¡¯t know what we would need to use to alter the punch, we don¡¯t even understand the punch mechanism, or if there are constraints.¡± ¡°I want to go back,¡± said Perry. ¡°Back to the first world I went to. There¡¯s a woman who died, who I want to bring back to life.¡± It sounded impossible when he¡¯d said it out loud. It sounded foolish when he heard the words hanging in the air. ¡°We will see what we can do,¡± said Hella. ¡°That might not be the worst idea.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Perry, turning to look at her. ¡°If it¡¯s technically feasible, then we would be making a connection between this world and that one,¡± said Hella. ¡°Assuming we can run the math and make sure that it¡¯s not going to drag enormous amounts of physics through, potentially killing one or both worlds, then it would be connecting this world ¡ª which is very stable but low technology ¡ª with that world.¡± ¡°Dangerous,¡± said Cark. He spoke with a mild tone, and his face betrayed no emotion. ¡°We need governments working on this,¡± said Hella. ¡°We need to not be the only ones out here flying through the multiverse, trying to do something about it. There¡¯s something romantic about a crew in the single digits, trying to stop all this, but there needs to be a coalition.¡± ¡°Dangerous,¡± said Cark again. ¡°And maybe impossible. But it¡¯s the ¡®being dangerous¡¯ aspect that should worry us. A government with the ability to send out ships could quickly turn into a multiversal empire, even if they¡¯re limited to only using the punches.¡± ¡°In theory you can use old punches and return to where you started,¡± said Eggy. She looked over at Perry. ¡°Like, that would work for you, if we could find a route, right?¡± Perry considered that. ¡°It would,¡± said Kes, before Perry could work through the specifics. They could easily get to Earth 2 from Earth 1, and there was at least a single second inbound link to Earth 2 from wherever Mordant had arrived from. The problem was going to be getting to either of those places. Perry also wasn¡¯t sure how well their mapping worked, whether it could identify these ¡®loops¡¯ or not. ¡°Then we need to discuss the plan,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re going to help you kill Fenilor, but first, we need some understanding of what all he can do.¡± ~~~~ With the help of the Farfinder, travel was much easier. Their tool of choice could open doors to wherever they were needed, so Perry quickly found himself standing in Deregia, a city of no particular import, one high up a thick continental river with only that river¡¯s lazy waterways to provide access to the sea. There were, as a consequence, a large number of airships carrying heavy loads, and anyone looking to the sky could see one or two of them coming or going, with many more tethered in place for loading and unloading. As with most cities, there were golden domes taking in sunlight, though it was overcast, and they¡¯d be working at lower capacity until the skies cleared. Perry imagined it like the Midwest, flyover country, and had no idea whether or not he was wrong. The Farfinder had equipped him to within the limits of what they had. He was cloaked with a powerful glamor, very similar to the one he¡¯d once worn in Teaguewater, which meant that anyone who saw a man in blue armor hanging in the air would think that he was something else ¡ª their mind would invent an explanation. He had reloaded his shoulder gun with magical rounds that they had apparently made special for him back on the Great Arc, firmament magic woven into them that would cause them to forcibly explode on contact. The final gift was a thick strip of paper that the Farfinder had apparently stolen from the Great Arc, which was affixed to the back of the armor. It had writing on it, an ancient poem of devotion, and should help the armor to be stronger against magical attacks. It still didn¡¯t really feel like enough to Perry. He had wanted them to have enormous chests full of items, not just simple things that gave him minor advantages. The strip of paper on his back might, in theory, allow him not to be pierced by an obsidian-tipped spear that definitely shouldn¡¯t have been able to go through metal. What he wanted was another sword, something that could break through Fenilor¡¯s armor. The Farfinder had not been focused on getting individually powerful items. They¡¯d been focused on making sure that their ship could move from world to world, and hide from the Powers That Be, and if that wasn¡¯t enough, armor themselves against attacks. They¡¯d focused on acquiring knowledge, improving their conditions, and ensuring that the work could continue. They hadn¡¯t even been able to help him crack the nanites wide open. From the air, the Cinnamon Station House looked like a simple tea house. It was built with low-sloped roofs laden with blue half-moon tiles, a local custom, built in a way that seemed distinct to the region and very common in all the neighboring buildings. White walls surrounded a courtyard that held carefully curated plants, many of them potted succulents that had been pruned back to keep from escaping their containers. The people who went in and out of the station were dressed in the wide variety of clothes that were common across the culture, but it was a sleepy place, without all that much traffic. Perry watched as Cark made his way down the street. Fenilor had said that it was better to use a messenger, so Perry was using a messenger, it was just that the messenger was a trained infiltration agent rather than a kid who had been coerced into being a runner. Perry wasn¡¯t even really sure how you were supposed to get a runner, given that you weren¡¯t supposed to be able to pay people and everyone had more or less what they needed. He guessed that you could just ask, but he wasn¡¯t sure that would work either. There were certain aspects of the culture he still hadn¡¯t figured out yet. Cark had nanites clinging to him. They were transmitting, but when Fenilor had visited Kes, the nanites had been stymied. The mechanism was unclear, but if they suddenly stopped transmission, that meant something. Fenilor hadn¡¯t stopped Marchand from recording, though it wasn¡¯t clear exactly why that was ¡ª a matter of sophistication (as Marchand was more intelligent), a lack of sophistication (as Marchand was much less technologically advanced), or simply whatever bullshit had tied Marchand and Perry together. Perry waited, far above, watching closely. There were too many questions about Fenilor¡¯s abilities, but one of the biggest was how fast Fenilor was able to move, and what his methods of locomotion were. He had responded to Perry entering the mine in perhaps an hour, but it wasn¡¯t clear when he¡¯d known, or where he¡¯d come from. This was an invitation to talk, but it was also a test. Perry had gotten word to Dirk Gibbons, the one in Berus, that a message might be incoming, but a line of communication wasn¡¯t part of the plan of attack. Not unless it was obvious what that line of attack would be. Cark took a seat in the tea house, tucked into a corner where it was unlikely that anyone would approach him and try to strike up conversation. Perry was getting picture-in-picture, a reconstruction by Marchand in the corner of his view while his gaze was on the tea house from above. Cark waited, and Perry waited with him. Somewhere far away, the Farfinder was engaged in prognostics, hoping that they would gain something useful from however long this took. It wasn¡¯t clear what sort of timeline they were looking at now. Earlier prognostics had shown Perry dying to Third Fervor or Fenilor, but if Perry didn¡¯t intervene at all, didn¡¯t so much as show his face, it wasn¡¯t clear how long it would take before the clashing forces caused something horrible to happen. Third Fervor was working under a queen now, and was almost certainly less stable than she¡¯d been before, which might mean that she¡¯d strike out against foreign elements. There was no enemy king for her to kill, that was the entire point of how the culture had structured itself, but there were Command Authorities and symboulions that she might move against. If Third Fervor died, a portal would open, and if it did, depending on its location, Fenilor might go through. He shouldn¡¯t, given the dire warning that Perry had given, but he might, and there was a good chance that would doom them. The same went for Nima. It felt awkward and uncomfortable to be put in a situation where Perry might have to defend his enemies. After nearly an hour of drinking a very plain and simple tea, Cark went to the owner and inquired after a mutual friend who might be looking for a message. The owner smiled and gave a slight bow, then went into the back room, where he did something the nanites couldn¡¯t quite pick up given the distance. Cark was told to go sit back down, and that a response would be through shortly. Perry suspected there was another of the tablets in the back room, but that just raised further questions. The tablets were a form of magic, one that Fenilor had kept from the general public, but the owner of this tea house knew what to do. It wouldn¡¯t have been surprising that Fenilor had agents all over the world, or perhaps in a few select locations, but it seemed odd that they would be so trusted. Once the message was delivered, they would have to trail the owner, which hopefully wouldn¡¯t be too difficult given that he wasn¡¯t under the protection of any kind of blockers. Perry wasn¡¯t sure whether Fenilor himself would show up. It seemed unlikely, given that Fenilor had given them the name of this place. Perry wouldn¡¯t have shown, not if he could help it, and certainly didn¡¯t intend to get within a mile of Dirk Gibbons if at all possible. They could use dead drops if they had to talk to each other, but since the Farfinder could spy on the future, any message left for Dirk could simply be read through prognostication without letting Dirk know the message was received. ¡°The nanites have stopped responding, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°This is in direct contravention of the orders I have given. If I did not know better, sir, I would have said that it was a simple error or malfunction.¡± ¡°He¡¯s here?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I do not know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The nanites have stopped responding. That means that I have no information from them, sir.¡± Perry stared down at the tea house. Cark was in danger, but Cark had said that he was okay with being in danger. The hope was that they would get more information from Fenilor, some details about his past, and what he¡¯d been doing with his long life on this planet, aside from building his own personal version of utopia and killing the baby thresholders. Perry had very little leverage over Fenilor, short of threats to dismantle the culture through force, something that Perry probably couldn¡¯t accomplish even if allied with Third Fervor, and wouldn¡¯t want to do. There was, however, another lever: Fenilor¡¯s identity. He was a shining figure of the revolution, and perhaps not the most important of the founders, but one of them nonetheless. It wasn¡¯t clear that smearing his name as the inventor of the lanterns would cause lasting damage to the culture, but Perry had a hunch that Fenilor was motivated by more than simply a lasting utopia. Cark had two messages to deliver. The first was simply a request for information, things that in theory could not help Perry. If that was denied, the second message would apply what pressure could be applied without having to bluff ¡ª and given Fenilor¡¯s ability to tell the truth, bluffs would probably not work. Perry sat there, waiting. Fenilor had to be in the area, if the signal was blocked, otherwise it was another tablet of some kind stopping the nanites, but that felt unlikely to Perry. An hour passed, then another. People came and went from the tea house, which meant that nothing too bad could be happening inside. It was also possible that Cark had been murdered and then whisked away. Almost anything was possible, given the breadth of armors and weapons that Fenilor had. That was why getting as much as they could was so important. The sun had set by the time the nanites started reporting again. Perry had gone from tense to bored out of his skull, and in the end, had resorted to listening to an audiobook, read by Marchand. Cark emerged from the Cinnamon Station House looking no worse for wear, but holding in his hand a recording device he hadn¡¯t had when he¡¯d gone in there. It was crude and mechanical ribbon storage, like something out of the 80s, but Cark held it closely and walked down the streets. If the Farfinder had seen the future, they would see Cark, and could pick him up if need be, breaking their prognostication. Instead, Cark went to a hotel ¡ª no payment necessary, really more of a temporary living space than a hotel ¡ª and sat down at a desk. With a signal from the nanites to confirm that they had contact with Marchand, he set the recording device to playback what it had stored. Fenilor had told them almost everything, and Perry had to hope that his weakness was in there somewhere. Chapter 131 - The Seventy-Eight Foes of Fenilor the Gilded, pt 1 I suppose, if I am to say anything to you, it must start with the System. It was a power of that first world I went to, site of my first and only loss, something innate to all who are born there, and perhaps to all who arrive from elsewhere. It is text, simple and straightforward, blue boxes that float in the air and respond to touch, and can sometimes be spoken to. These bare facts as stated by the System give rise to tremendous power. The people of that world agreed that the System was designed with a purpose in mind, though they argued endlessly about the nature of that purpose. I was given something called a Class, which labeled me an Assassin, a role that matched my profession in my first life. The context was much different though: where I had come from, an assassin was a vital part of the process of governance and social checks and balances, a tool of last resort for resolving disputes between peoples. Politicians behaved because the threat of assassination loomed, and those who were seen as lessers knew not to speak too loudly for fear of an assassin¡¯s blade. I do not now endorse this way of thinking, and in fact find it cruel, but when I was in my prime, I saw myself as important, a vital member of the civil service like you might regard a firefighter. It had seemed obvious to me that every country in the world should have assassins, otherwise what recourse would there be when someone went beyond the pale? Assassin meant something different to the people of the System. I was a sneak-thief, a dagger in the night, a mercenary rather than a force of public good. If I had been able to hide my class, it might have been different, but I could not, because there is a particular feature of the System which I have found quite useful: Observe. With this command, a person is revealed, their essence and powers laid bare. I have used it enough times now that it comes easily to me, with a thought rather than a command, but it cannot see inside men¡¯s hearts, nor separate fact from fiction. For that, I need speech, a different skill called Perception Check, which has likewise been extremely helpful, especially when dealing with my fellow thresholders. Observe left me an assassin with no shadows to hide in, and the culture I found myself in had no need of my services. I have always been a keen student, and I studied hard, trying to find how it all worked. What recourse was there, if a man couldn¡¯t be assassinated? How did society stay functional if there weren¡¯t those who trained to take out men and women at the top? I learned many lessons in that time, mostly lessons of injustice and inequality. There was no recourse. It always felt as though I had the secrets the world needed, that I could change how things would be done, if only people would listen to me. I came from a functional society, and had landed in one with manifold problems that everyone seemed to think were intractable. I lost, in the end, as I¡¯ve already said. My first foe was a young human boy, deemed a Cleric by the blue boxes. He was devout, though he followed a god who was not of that world. He told me his world was pox-ridden, and his god was the god of cleansing fire, though I could have guessed at that minutes into our first match. We had come to blows because I had begun some inexpert tinkering in their society, both by proselytizing and with a few targeted killings. Our bouts lasted a month, seven, I think, until the final one where he used his flame on me in full. I came through the portal burnt, to a world which held no easy cure for me. It was a different place, in those days. The world was a diverse place, and fractured by that diversity. People today think of kingdoms as old, but there was a time before the era of kingdoms, when there was no one dominant mode of rulership. There were councils and senates and representative democracies, and yes, kings too, but everything was informed by long traditions, and each realm was different according to the needs of the various populations. The races didn¡¯t mix at that time, not to any great degree. In that time there were spirits, old things that no longer see any use. They lived in trees, as they still do today, and could be harnessed for their power. It is still technically possible, I suppose, for them to be used in this way, but there are precious few strategic reserves left, and I cannot imagine my people using them. The spirits have grown weak, and the people who manipulated them have died, with the skills lost. This is, perhaps, for the good, but there were things which spirits could do that cannot now be done, or not with any ease. It was the great and ancient spirits that were responsible for the Implements, a fact now known to only a few, the knowledge worthless without a craftsman to make one. I healed from my wounds slowly. I was mistaken for an elf of the sort they had in this world, though I was a far cry from them in many respects. Still, they had a forest community, and took care of me as best I could while the fire-wounds healed and scarred. No one seemed to know that I was an Assassin, but I could still see the blue boxes in my vision, which let me learn these people and their ways. I would mutter ¡®Observe¡¯ to myself whenever someone new would come into my room, and know their name and abilities. I would mutter ¡®Perception Check¡¯ beneath my breath while they told me things. After a week I was ambulatory, and after a month, I could move with some of the swiftness I¡¯d once possessed. I bid my nurses thanks and set out to see the world and its ways. I¡¯ve said little about my world and why I left it, but I was at the top of my game ¡ª and that game was decidedly lacking in players. The nature of assassination, its role, was as a tool of last resort, and so assassination was rare, with many assassins going years between a required killing. People understood the threat we posed and reacted accordingly, which left me quite bored, unable to exercise my raw natural talent. I suffered through tedious training. In this new world, like the one before, it seemed as though there was no end to acceptable targets. Unfortunately, as an elf, I stood out. When among humans, I would get many stares, some from the scars but others simply from who I was. When I was among the orcs, I was bullied. Everywhere was different, even among cities of the same race, but I was welcome in few places, and knew that if I plied my trade, I would instantly be suspected and caught. Still, I saw evil in the world that was able to find purchase. There was shocking and overwhelming violence and sadism from people who thought themselves untouchable. I began killing. Assassination, in my world, was a noble profession, and as I¡¯ve said, it wasn¡¯t often used. It was a release valve, and its very presence bent the actions of everyone who might be a target. For that function, it worked best if assassination was not simply a hammer brought down on those who misbehaved, but instead, a hammer that was threatened, first obliquely and later directly. There were occasions where a person would understand themselves to be under the shadow of a contract that was all but signed, and thus, would do everything in their power to make things right. At other times, people would build coalitions and pool their resources, making it known that the contract would be completed if there was only a certain number of additional signatories. There was much debate about what deserved assassination and what the proper protocols were, and when to use one instead of the other. There was no culture of assassination, not anywhere in the world. I found a single kingdom that had a practice of dueling, which I supposed to be similar enough, but as I watched from the rooftops, I saw how lacking it was. A duel was a method for honor to be regained, for an injustice to be righted, but it depended too much upon the whims and skills of those with swords, making it unavailable to the underclass. A duel was often decided on the basis of who was better rather than judgment from an outside party, and sometimes was simply about taking satisfaction, never solving the underlying issue. Duels were thrilling, and did not deter in the right way. I decided that I would introduce the way of assassination to these people. I meant to correct them. It was my first act of manipulation, and far from my last. An assassin works in the dark. I stayed to the shadows. I made it known that an assassination was to take place before it happened, testing my skills but also encouraging discussion, and then I would strike if my demands were not met. I had meant to rid the world of some truly awful people, but also to encourage the general public to understand that there was recourse. I meant to inspire a generation of assassins, to have a better way of life where everyone stayed in line, where the rich would fear the poor and the powerful would fear those at the bottom. Instead, for whatever reason, the reign of fear began after I had killed a lowly duke with a penchant for mistreating his young servants. I had set out to change the society of this kingdom, of course, but hadn¡¯t appreciated how much of an impact a single man could make. My presence seemed to loom over the country like an enormous shadow, even in places I had never stepped foot, even for people who weren¡¯t a part of any of my considerations. Windows were shuttered in the night, the rich began hiring guards, and the poor began assigning someone to keep watch. People looked at each other with suspicion, because they didn¡¯t know who the killer could possibly be, and they carried weapons, in case the killer attacked in the open. This was after only a single assassination, mind you. People had not taken my warning seriously, and had not discussed the notice I placed in the month before the assassination, but afterward it was as though they were trying to make up for lost time. The second notice, directed at an earl, sent them into a frenzy. There had already been a manhunt after the assassination, which couldn¡¯t come close to matching my skills. I was getting stronger over time, though that was never my primary purpose. The blue boxes offered progression of their own, quests that I could accept or deny, along with all their native power. It had its own ideas about what an Assassin was. Some of those ideas matched closely with my own, like being light of foot and swift in the shadows. Other ideas I found more troubling, those involving poisons and other ways to kill people without it being known that it was anything more than an accident. A deniable death did not seem like the assassin¡¯s way to me. Still, I picked up the skills where I could, and grew in power over time. The earl fell, and I was stronger for it. A merchant-prince was killed in a crowded market with a crossbow, and I felt myself honed. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. My opponent showed up after three months. I hadn¡¯t known there would be an opponent, but he hadn¡¯t known there would be one either. He was a young man, a prince, in fact, having been anointed in a ritual and prepared to step through to another world in a process that I never confirmed was connected to the Grand Spell ¡ª though I suspect not. Perhaps they had superstitions, and perhaps those superstitions were based on the Grand Spell in some capacity, or perhaps something else was supposed to happen to him when he stepped naked into the cold dark woods on his eighteenth birthday. It was, very possibly, a coincidence. I¡¯ve learned much about the people who choose to step through these portals, and this one just happened to have thought that something was going to happen, and that it held some purpose. He went to the king at once, announcing himself loudly as a savior from another world. He was questioned, then given one of the kingly Implements, a greatsword almost as long as he was which let him cut from a distance and launch himself across a battlefield. I had published my understanding of assassination as a public good. I wasn¡¯t an academic then, and didn¡¯t understand societies or cultures and their functions, the way that ideas will mutate and circulate, the way that illiteracy compounds all problems. I would sometimes sit in taverns and listen to people ask ¡®what does the assassin want?¡¯ when it had all been clearly laid out in papers that had been posted on public boards. I respected the people who engaged with my ideas more: they had all sorts of objections that came from their own cultural context, and I found myself running into questions whose answers I didn¡¯t know, or assumptions I hadn¡¯t realized were in place. You must understand, I was hopelessly naive back then. I didn¡¯t understand the structures of societies, the principles of incompleteness, the ways in which we must hold contradictory notions in harmony against each other, or why certain notions work when others do not. Introducing assassination as a public good would never have worked for those people, and if they had taken up the practice, they would have done it in ways that would have driven them to despair. I fought the young man with the magnificent sword. He was a simpleton, and had no way of tracking me, which meant that he had to set traps and stake out places while he waited for me. There was a striking resemblance to the other young man I¡¯d fought in the world before, the one that I had lost to, and this time I resolved to be more circumspect ¡ª to not simply rely on my skills and my killing intent. We clashed four times before our final battle, testing each other. He didn¡¯t realize that I was getting stronger each time, which happened quickly in those days. We spoke sometimes, monologuing at each other, and I learned his life story, such as it was. I used Observe and saw him through that lens, the things he was getting better at, if more slowly than I was. Our fifth fight, the final one, took place as I was attempting to assassinate the king ¡ª or rather, as I was pretending to assassinate the king, as the boy had set a trap for me and thus fallen into a trap that I had set for him, in a way that was more complicated than future plans. As a general rule, an assassin does not engage in combat, we are meant to be silent, doing everything without so much as a whisper, but I had grown powerful, and obtained an Implement of my own. I poisoned him, in the end. I wasn¡¯t fond of having to do that, but I had been badly burned, you remember, and knew that my life was on the line. He had me in the first half of the fight, but the small bleeding wounds I¡¯d given him grew red and puffy, and when our bout drew near its end, I knew I could take my time. I didn¡¯t take my time, instead beheading him at the first opportunity, but I could have done whatever I pleased. The portal opened. I stepped toward it. Then I stopped and stared. What was I hoping to find? Some new world where I could start fresh? Some new power? A way home that was seeming increasingly unlikely? Was I tempted to go through because of ego? I had no real answer, and so I stayed where I was, watching the portal, thinking of what I would be leaving behind and what might await me. Perhaps there would be another young man with righteousness in his heart, another pitched battle, another strange and difficult place that didn¡¯t have the same happy stability as my home. In the end, it was imagining another failure that kept my feet from moving. I had more to learn from this world, more to test, to experiment with, to see. At that point I had no idea how much there was that I had yet to learn. You may wonder why I¡¯m telling you all this. In truth, I¡¯ve told many people my story over the years, some of them in confidence, some of them thresholders like us in the hours before I killed them. You might imagine that this would damage me, if it were told to the people of this world, but it would not destroy the movement, only cause them to come to grips with its foundation. They are firm and stable, as I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve seen, capable of handling anything that can be thrown at them, which is why I am finally ¡ª nearly ¡ª ready to go. It is better for them to have a culture and mythology not built on something real, an understanding of themselves that does not rely on founders who are long dead or at least disappeared. The past should not trap the future, and institutions should remold themselves to the needs of the present. I had meant to write a document that would stand for all time, a grand autobiography that would explain everything I¡¯ve done and why I¡¯ve done it. I never got around to it, and I suppose this, or another of my oral recountings to other parties, will have to do. The portal closed after a day. I had no idea whether or not that might be the end of it. I had taken the boy¡¯s enormous sword, which by all rights should have been unwieldy, and claimed it for my own. Though I had won, I set out to see more of the world, to understand in a way it was clear I hadn¡¯t understood before. I sailed away on a ship, and when we made port, I vanished, leaving any connection to that old kingdom behind. I never spent more than a month in any place, as that seemed like enough time to wring knowledge from a collection of people. I read what books I could, though I often found them confused and muddled, the blind groping of men who knew no better than I did. I spent time with all the races of the world, talking to their people, casting myself as a writer and scholar. I kept my Implements hidden away. I made money where I could, though I never found it all that difficult to live a comfortable life, given my advantages. Five years of study and contemplation passed before the next thresholder arrived. She was a firebrand, of the sort that I¡¯ve come to think of as archetypal. She had her own grand designs on the world, and had come through with the tools necessary to get a fair amount of work done. She set up shop in one of the capital cities, one ruled by a religious leader, and began to build crude lanterns. They were, so far as the sultan was concerned, marvelous things, capable of casting light without smoke, capable of starting fires from a distance, the be-all end-all of power. She was giving it freely to the sultan in exchange for the chance to build more and better lanterns. The first time I heard the term ¡®uplift¡¯ was from her mouth. She knew who and what I was almost from the moment we first saw each other, and begged with me to give her six months of time before we would meet again and end it. She wanted the people of the world to have these lanterns, you see, to have their power and strength, and help beat back against the darkness. Who could object if families no longer needed to be miserly with their coal? Who could rebel against food for the hungry? I had been a student of cultures for a long enough time that I could instantly raise the arguments against that way of thinking. Of course people would object, of course they would say that it was good for people to strive for and accomplish things, that a person should have goals, that people would grow weak if they were coddled, that it was the struggle of life that made life worth living, or that the sweet would be nothing without the sour. I had no firm opinion on these matters, but I could feel the undercurrents of them in the people I listened to. The lanterns were no miracle, not in those days, they were difficult to make and finicky. I suspect the woman had picked them up in her previous world and was learning as she went. In the end I gave her three months, not six, and attacked her with only a week of warning, less than proper for an assassin ¡ª I was still clinging to my old ways, in spite of everything I had learned. She fought like a banshee, using an Implement she had wrangled from the sultan, a bow this time, long and powerful. She shifted with it, propelling herself backward with every arrow launched my way, rising high into the sky like a spectre with her white dress flowing around her. I confess no small amount of admiration for her, not just for her combat prowess, but the way she had ideas about how to make the world a better place. If she hadn¡¯t positioned herself as a tool for evil men, perhaps I would have spent more time speaking with her. That first time, she caught me in a trap. I had thought she was using the bow to flee from me, sending wild arrows my way to give her distance between us. No, she was leading me, getting me into position, moving with a care and consideration I hadn¡¯t expected of her. When we got to her arena, a hundred lanterns lit up at once, calling to mind the burns I¡¯d taken from the cleric who¡¯d come before her. I was forced to flee with an arrow sticking through my chest and a red pain across my face and chest. The second time we fought, I came at her with no warning. I had spent a month healing, which was faster by that point, and hid from even the everyday interactions with grocers and barmaids. She had more tools, and was better with the bow, but she started on the back foot and never really recovered. As it turns out, both arms are required to draw a bow to full power, and a cut along one forearm will cause incredible pain when put under stress. I cut her down and saw the portal open just as the guards were coming to rescue her. There was some life in her yet, and she tried to crawl toward it, seeking to escape me. The life was still there, but it was frantic and clawing. She was a wounded animal seeking escape. I¡¯m not sure why I killed her. I didn¡¯t know what it would mean if she reached the portal, I suppose. But no notion of fairness or admiration stayed my hand, and she was the last for a great while that I felt fondly about. I knew, then, that there would be another, and suspected that the parade would be unending. But I no longer felt the pull of the portal, the call of the other world and broader horizons. I committed myself to the world I¡¯d found myself in as a place where I could experiment and learn, a place where I could perfect my understanding of society. There was something interesting about the people I had seen. The cleric of fire, the summoned hero, the woman with her lanterns ¡­ they had all been so different from each other. I think they might have fought each other, even, in certain configurations. But there was something to the portals, something to the Grand Spell that had not yet even been named, and I knew that it was important in my nascent quest to remake the world. You have been to many worlds, and my guess is that you¡¯re the type to have traded stories. You¡¯re asking for my stories now, and when we first met, we did not come to blows. It¡¯s even possible you know more than me, though I¡¯ve been at the shallow end for so long that I have learned only half the picture. The lanterns did not last, that first time. They were difficult to make, hard to maintain, and difficult even in the best of circumstances. I had also stolen most of the young woman¡¯s research notes, which didn¡¯t help matters for those trying to follow her footsteps. It would be quite some time before the lanterns made their return, and when they did, it was because I thought they were the solution to a different problem I had helped to create: the rise of kings. Chapter 132 - The Seventy-Eight Foes of Fenilor the Gilded, pt 2 Why did places have bad rulers instead of good rulers? It was a question that haunted me. It was, of course, a subset of the more general question: why were things often bad instead of good? I eventually came to the conclusion that everyone had an answer to the question but none of them were worth the hair of a donkey. ¡°Some people are born good and others bad, and it¡¯s the work of the good to separate the two, and crush the bad.¡± So says the oral tradition of the Vikilee. ¡°Badness is something accrued over time, a poison of the body and later the soul, which is why elves must be reborn, and why humans die. Dwarves are hardy against evil, which is why they live long. It is of course evil of the soul that we must be wary of, and a constant battle must be fought with constant vigilance to ensure that evil breaks upon the shore of our body and does not touch the temple of the soul.¡± So says the folk wisdom of the Elerion steppes. ¡°Evil is the price of free will. For meaningful choices to exist, both good and evil must exist, else a choice could hold no meaning. Benevolent gods have allowed evil to exist such that people could truly be free.¡± So says the clerical tradition of the Elderwights. There were other formulations as well, abstract universal forces of good and bad that conscripted soldiers, or a cosmic churn of moral froth, but it all felt hollow to me. If there were a truth, all the great thinkers of the world should have stumbled upon it together, in the same way that fishers and farmers the world around adopted broadly similar techniques to keep people fed. Further study was needed. I hid my claimed weapons away in one of the System¡¯s more valuable features, the Inventory. I healed back from my wounds quickly by that point, having pushed myself by killing boar in the woods in the long years that passed between encounters. The System provided. The wounds scabbed, then scarred, then disappeared. Refreshed, I began my time as a student proper, as it seemed a necessary step. I spent a year as a cleric, then a year as a scholar. It was only enough to skim the shallows, but that was all I needed to realize that these were not places to find the answers I sought. I wasn¡¯t just learning from what I was taught, I was learning from what I watched, and I came to the conclusion that if they had the answers, they would have been better people. Instead, what passed for intellectuals in that time were too full of themselves, happy to argue endlessly with each other so long as the wine was flowing. The clergy were worse, with many using the claimed power of their gods to deflect from their own vices, or using sanctimonious piety to pretend at being a lord. I watched their societies from top to bottom. I saw that the man in the street would often act wrongly where he thought he could get away with it. This was a source of disordered societies. On many nights I would nurse a drink in a tavern, or watch the city streets from above, stepping lightly so as not to wake those who were sleeping. I watched criminals go about their business and tried to determine what was wrong with them, how they had become criminals. It was often a complicated affair. Most criminals had people in their lives who weren¡¯t directly involved in criminal activity themselves, but these friends and family always seemed complicit to me, as they looked the other way and didn¡¯t report anything to the police or guard or whoever was supposed to be doing the enforcement. I wondered sometimes whether it was mere profit that made the criminals tolerable to people not directly involved with crime, but decided that perhaps it was simply harder to rat out a lifelong friend or a family member who¡¯d be punished harshly. I watched the police, and the guards, and saw how they often had criminals among their number too, whether it was with law or custom on their side. When the guards weren¡¯t criminals themselves, they were often complicit in their own ways, choosing what and where to police, using their discretion, bending the rules in ways that must have seemed, to them, noble. When they had a friend who was behaving lawlessly, it was simple harmless fun that no right-thinking person could possibly punish. When someone they didn¡¯t know did the same thing, it was cause for severe punishment. I watched those who made the rules, whether they be councilors, legislators, nobles, or kings. These were the people with the most power, and they often made shockingly poor use of it. Sometimes it was simple hedonism, but often these were good people, or as good as people got, trying their best to do right by the people they had power over. They often did poorly. It¡¯s painfully obvious now that the problem was the culture. When I look back on my notes, to the extent I¡¯ve saved them, I cringe at the fumbling explanations I made for what was happening. If I could, I would go back in time and slap myself. Who knows, with the powers of the multiverse, perhaps that day might come. But in those times, I simply didn¡¯t see it. I thought I could use other methods to fix the illness. So I must admit now that I took it into my head to elevate good rulers and give them the tools necessary for true rule. I was, sadly, a monarchist, though not in the modern style. I am sure that many who have known me, especially those who were alive during those first years of revolution, will be shocked and saddened to hear it. That heartbreak will grow worse when they realize just how successful I was in my pursuits. I started in the Kingdom of Gardida. Their king was competent, as kings went, but beholden to a system of internal alliances and interests, which all worked against each other. Gardida was friendly with elves, in that they saw us as superior and exotic, which meant that it was easy enough for me to first become the sort of interesting house guest that kings collect, and later take a role as an advisor. I was considered to have remarkable instincts, thanks in part to both Perception Check and Observe, and my seeming neutrality made me reliable in the way that others were not. I became close with the king¡¯s son, who was to take the throne, and filled his head with all my learnings of what it took to make for a good king and a good kingdom, a place where people could thrive. I had thought, then, that a king could simply decree goodness from on high and that it would trickle down to those below like some sort of grand fountain, that the right set of laws was the way to make it all work. All that was needed was a single good person installed as king and everything would follow from that, so long as the king had real power rather than power gained from myriad alliances. The prince learned from me that the first step would be to take as much power as he could, the better to guide his people. I had not lived in a monarchy before stepping through the portal, yet I still somehow felt the pull of them, which is why I let it happen. What if everything could be solved by a single strong man at the top, putting everyone into line, a man who was wise and decisive, who knew his kingdom backward and forward, who was kind and virile and even-tempered? The goodness would flow, surely. The king would be its wellspring. Perhaps this thinking harkens back to the idea of having a protective father or a loving mother and being sheltered, as a child, from the dangers and storms. I see it now as an infantile instinct, obviously. Three years into this project of grooming the prince, another thresholder arrived, Ermine. She was fiery-haired and spunky, a cultist from a world of dark gods who warred with each other using warped and twisted powers, though she¡¯d gone through her portal with none of them. She had won the world before and gained dark energies in the process, powers tied with what that world had defined as sin. She took to sin like a fish to water, especially those sins she viewed as being harmless acts of debauchery ¡ª but not only those. Before we met properly, she¡¯d spent a full month attending as many parties as possible, ingesting copious amounts of alcohol and making her body available to whomever wanted it. By that time I no longer believed that evil was a matter of corruption, but she believed, and the dark powers attached to her did too. She targeted the prince. It is my understanding now that the thresholders will always be geared toward conflict with each other, but I had some questions at that time, and had believed that perhaps I would find someone like-minded, a person I could work with who shared my vision. In this case, it was clearly unworkable right from the start. We fought each other, at first with barbed words in mixed company, and later with blades drawn on the castle ramparts. I was foolishly trying to convert her, and she was just as foolishly trying to convert me. We came to blows many times, and sometimes would meet in the parlor the next day needing to explain our limps and scratches. She enjoyed the fighting, and grew more powerful from it, as that too was sin according to the dark powers she carried with her. Often she was drunk, or gripped by the impulses of other substances, and there were many chances to kill her, if I had wanted to. In spite of the power she was accumulating, I was always the stronger of the two of us. Still, she might have been the last opponent that I had anything to fear from, especially in the later days. We lasted together for half a year, which was far longer than either of us had expected. The fights became formalities, and sometimes they were conversations instead. There was something loveable about her, for as much as she was a wreck of a person. She felt shame for the things she¡¯d done, guilt and embarrassment, and I found it laudable that she would share that shame with me, and admired the way she would persist in her path even as those feelings washed over her. I wouldn¡¯t have found that strength. Eventually it came to a head, as it was destined to. She was turning the prince to her side, corrupting him, making all my work seem like it was for nothing. She had awakened something in him that was, perhaps, there all along, and she was able to fan those dark flames far faster and more effectively than I could put them out. I was heartbroken, in the way that elves of my sort get when a plan has gone to seed. We had one of our battles, which had become nearly routine, and when I would normally have stayed my hand, I slipped a dagger into the side of her neck. It went in like that was its sheath, the happy home that it had been waiting for during the years I¡¯d owned it. Shock was written on her face, then she collapsed to the ground, dead. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The portal opened, and I didn¡¯t take it. The prince proved a failure, too corrupt or corruptible, too much of a bad egg to ever fruitfully take the throne, not after what Ermine had done to and with him. He howled in rage and pointed a finger at me, telling me that he would use the absolute authority he was soon to receive to have me killed. I murdered him too, then went on my way. I found another kingdom, and another prince, and started over, knowing better now what worked and what didn¡¯t, what arguments could be used to sway a young man and what events could be spun into lessons about governance and the ways of power. I also spent more time on picking this prince, and probing him for weaknesses ¡ª looking for a certain darkness of the soul. Upon determining to my satisfaction that he was a blank slate upon which I could imprint myself, I set to work with a furious energy, intending not to be in a position for failure the next time a thresholder showed up. If you are at all a student of the history of this world, you will be familiar with the name of Luperto the First. If you are not a student of this world¡¯s history, I suppose everything I say here will sound like boasting by proxy, but given the failures of the Age of Kings, it shouldn¡¯t be taken as such. I believe now that Luperto was simply exceptional, not a product of my teachings and theories, but a unique individual whose particular properties made the whole thing workable. Over the course of twenty years, he turned his country from a backwater into a prosperous place, with a campaign of reform that touched every aspect of the country¡¯s institutions, making them solid as iron. Not a year went by when he didn¡¯t have some new triumph. He was heralded as a savior of his people, the golden son who could do no wrong. Everything had seemed like as complete a success as it could possibly have been. I was actually anticipating that I would take the next portal, once I defeated the next thresholder to come through. There had been a few during the reign of Luperto, three that were not much worthy of note, killed swiftly once I heard of them ¡ª and it was the case with thresholders, in those days, that I did hear of them relatively soon. I handled them as quietly as I could, and learned as much as I could in the course of fighting them, sometimes with an interrogation once they were defeated and at my mercy. Most acquired Implements before our battle, some quirk of the Grand Spell, no doubt, though in later years they were more varied in what they brought to bear against me. I grew stronger with every battle, and stored their Implements away in my Inventory, which made me stronger still. The timing of these thresholders was irregular. Five years seemed to be the average, but sometimes it was less and sometimes more, and that made it difficult to plan around. I¡¯d noticed the tendency toward opposition, and once I noticed it, I resolved that we would find ourselves in opposition as soon as I learned of them, no matter their orientation. You likely understand it intuitively, after so much time, but if conflict is foretold by the Grand Spell, then declaring that you will only fight against someone who threatens Luperto the First will guarantee that Luperto the First will be threatened. Because I had committed to finding and killing anyone who came through the portals, they would sometimes appear far away, with goals that were orthogonal to my kingdom-building. One of them wanted to coat the planet with magical forests, another intended to father a hundred children, and the third was a simple hedonist. I had thought I had it all figured out, you see, that after a few short decades on this planet I had mastered both how to make a society good and how to defeat the Grand Spell¡¯s designs. Laughable, I¡¯m sure. The next thresholder became an advisor, much as I had been. He was crafty and cunning, possessed of a power that grew over time, and he was in no particular rush to meet me, which is why he went a full three years before making himself known. In that time, he had encouraged a council of elders to have a single hereditary ruler from among them, shepherded them through a period of civil unrest, then consolidated power. If I had any appreciation for scheming, I would have called it masterful. If you have checked the history books, you will understand that king to be Seldemar the Dread. His next step was making a great and terrible war. The term for it came from my opponent, total war, an expression which has been much used and abused in the centuries that followed, but here meant that every single one of the king¡¯s subjects was devoting himself to the task of winning the war. Every brick that was made went toward building fortifications. Every ounce of ore brought up from the mines was used to make blades and armor. Trees were chopped down by the hundred to make ships. There was, in theory, no aspect of either country that was not dominated by war, and that included all aspects of diplomacy. The world had never seen war like it, and neither had I. It horrified me, as I¡¯m sure you can imagine, unless you come from a world where such wars are common. And even after I had dispatched the enemy thresholder, a man whose flesh pulled like taffy and who drew power from ritual sacrifice, the war raged on. I watched everything I had built crumble. I first blamed that other thresholder, but later, after reflection, I blamed myself. The lesson I took was that it wasn¡¯t enough to have a single good kingdom to serve as an example to others, it needed to be the entire world, but after the war finally died down, Luperto began to grow erratic. He had suffered from seizures his entire life, and I suspect that they began to infect his brain, though a surgeon thresholder I spoke with once thought it unlikely. I had trained Luperto¡¯s son to be a replacement, but the boy wasn¡¯t as keen as his father was, and having grown up in the trauma of that long war, had quirks of his own that I wasn¡¯t enamored with. It took another decade for me to realize how singularly fragile a system of kings can be, how prone to corruption and misuse they are. A king must not only be a firm and just ruler, but must be nearly perfect at selecting and training a successor. He must be exceptional at delegation and monitoring, and never falter. This is what makes the system of kings unworkable in the long run, which I had failed to appreciate. I was, by that point, nearly unbeatable in single combat. It seemed as though my opponents had gotten somewhat worse over time, even as I had continued to improve. I had poached my first armor by that point, not an Implement but something a would-be thresholder had worn. I¡¯ve often found those with defensive powers to be the most annoying to fight, but also the most worthwhile to take from. Because I was winning so handily, I took to capture and interrogation where I could. Since they came so infrequently, I had plenty of time to prepare for them. The Age of Kings spread beyond my control though, and I was there to watch all its failures. People had seen the terrible might of the war and there was a wave of strong men sweeping into power, some of them kings in all but name, other kings who had cause to consolidate and reform. I had missed how much of a role ego played in the decisions of lesser kings, given how much Luperto had blinded me, but it was there, of course. Worse were the ways in which two decent kings would clash, often over resources. These conflicts predated the Age of Kings, of course, but it somehow felt as though territorial disputes were being exacerbated, perhaps by the notion that these were material properties that the kings held. Or perhaps it was something else, the way a king felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. When times were tough, when there were famines and plagues, the behavior of the kings grew worse. It seemed to me that if we could solve the problem of prosperity, things might get better. I introduced the lanterns then, thinking that they would solve conflicts. I¡¯d been working on them in the background, to the best of my abilities, but we¡¯d have gotten nowhere without the money and talent procured by yet another king. The promise of the lanterns was that they would allow famine, at least, to be a thing of the past, and should war come again, they weren¡¯t so dangerous on a battlefield, being cleaner and more sterile, and with metal as a protector against them. I suppose in my mind, I had thought that wars would only be fought with heavy protection and the common soldier pulled from the farmlands would be no more. Instead, the wars grew more terrible than before. The soldiers were sent to the front lines armed with what metal they could, and focused lanterns would burn their exposed skin. I went to the battlefields and watched screaming men carried off, then later, in the cities, I would see beggars who¡¯d been blinded in the war, men who¡¯d lost arms or legs and had difficulty providing for themselves. And still I had hope that the lanterns would provide for people, that they would be engines of creation that would set the farmers free from toil, that they would make labor take a tenth the time it once had. I saw that hope, too, swirl gently down the drain. The lanterns were too complicated to make and maintain, which meant that they became the province of the rich, or of the kings. The kings knew that this was a new form of control, and those who sought riches saw that it was a tool that was best hoarded if they wished to increase their wealth. The lanterns grew bigger as an understanding of their working grew, centralizing power, giving a lever with which to move the world. That lever did not push the world in a good direction, not by default. The effluence came early on, while the lanterns were still being deployed. It had been harmless and turned toxic, thanks to a thresholder whose system of magic used the neutral effluence as raw fuel. There was something that changed in the character of the world on her entry, a fundamental shift in what was possible that I must admit frightened me to my core. It meant that at any moment, with the right person coming through the portal, what had been true the day before might be false the day after. I knew, as I watched the lanterns spread and change nothing, that I would need to create something robust, something that could withstand any challenge, a system of governance which was correct for every condition, which could withstand changes in the world. I had seen to my satisfaction that monarchies were inherently unstable things, dependent too much on a single person, even if they were a good person ¡ª a great person. Perhaps if immortality had been a gift I could have given to everyone, rather than an innate quality of the elves of my world, I would have felt differently. Then it would only have been a matter of arranging a redundant council of kings for a kingdom ¡ª and in fact, for the whole world, given that conflicts between kings were one of the main causes of strife. And yet I still didn¡¯t stumble on the idea of changing the culture and creating something from whole cloth. Culture was, at the time, invisible to me. I knew that people in different countries did things differently, but I was still mired in thinking of these as distinctions between races or peoples, something that was innate to them. I hadn¡¯t realized how malleable people were, or how easy they were to change, how much they wanted to change, and to change others. A good culture spreads itself, reinforces itself, has mechanisms of defense and processes of change, and I had simply been taking them as a given, something that needed to be worked around. I was a painter constrained to only a fraction of the canvas. But all that would come later, and I suppose is for another time. What I did instead was to engage in intensive study. I built the first of my hideyholes, places where I could ensconce myself away from civilization and wait for time to pass. My aim was to keep the enemy thresholders from impacting the world too much, while at the same time, running as many experiments as possible on the world at large. With the Age of Kings and the introduction of the lanterns, we were in a period of change, which wasn¡¯t the best time to understand what sweeping changes were needed. I look back on the bumps and bruises along the way, the needless deaths ¡ª and the needful ones too ¡ª and think that I can do better next time. The culture, having been built once, will necessarily be easier to build again in a different world. Chapter 133 - Break Time Perry listened to it all while floating high in the air above. There was nothing about the magic tablets. Fenilor was a talker, but he hadn¡¯t talked about the right things. If there was another session, if the tales continued, maybe there would be more. ¡°Did we learn anything from that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°He is supremely arrogant, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°He¡¯s admitted to all his mistakes,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s arrogance, sure, but he¡¯s very clear about the mistakes he¡¯s made.¡± ¡°If you will permit some speculation, sir, I believe the arrogance shines through in how he speaks of these mistakes,¡± said Marchand. ¡°He claims that he is better now: wiser, stronger, less prone to error. There is a certain way of speaking about the mistakes of the past that indicates arrogance in the present. He has divorced himself from his errors, and speaks of them as though they happened to another person.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess.¡± He bit the inside of his cheek. ¡°And he wants to push forward with his experimentation, but to other worlds, with this one being considered a success.¡± He paused. ¡°How accurate is that?¡± ¡°Is what, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°The success of his project?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Because if they have developed something that actually works ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Exporting it wouldn¡¯t be the worst thing, I guess. And if we do what Hella wants, then developing an alliance of worlds would mean giving these people a place of prominence. They would want to spread their culture to every nation they could touch, and that¡¯s going to be a lot of nations.¡± ¡°By what metric would you define success, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°GDP per capita?¡± ¡°I am unfamiliar with the metric, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What, really?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Surely there¡¯s some sort of Earth 2 equivalent? Gross domestic product per capita?¡± ¡°If my interpretation is correct, the equivalent would be TSOS,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That would be the Total Sectoral Output Score, derived from tabulating economic activity across all economic sectors. But I wouldn¡¯t have the data necessary to guess at any individual symboulion¡¯s TSOS, nor do they have proper nations, nor does the concept of TSOS map cleanly to a library economy.¡± ¡°Right, GDP wouldn¡¯t either,¡± said Perry. ¡°And they wouldn¡¯t have HDI or any other kind of index. Or do they? Is there some sense by which we can tell whether a group of people are doing well or not?¡± ¡°As a rule, the symboulions eschew numbers,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe they find them depersonalizing. If a symboulion is large enough to need detailed tracking by numbers, it¡¯s likely too large.¡± ¡°Well that¡¯s dumb,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even a mid-sized company has to have a lot of numbers to track everything. The domes must need some method of knowing whether they¡¯re making shirts or food.¡± ¡°They do, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I should mention that the domes themselves don¡¯t manufacture clothing, but rather, the textiles that are used in ¡ª¡± ¡°Yes, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°I have done my best to understand things. But the lack of numbers means we¡¯re just ¡­ going with our gut?¡± ¡°It would perhaps be possible to get firm numbers from every golden dome,¡± said Marchand. ¡°That would be quite an undertaking, and I would imagine that they do not all use the same systems of accounting for production.¡± ¡°It¡¯s irrelevant,¡± said Perry. ¡°I just want to know whether it works, whether we can say that he succeeded or not, or if there are hidden downsides or problems lurking in the background.¡± ¡°The downsides are not hidden, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°There are limits on what any one person can achieve, the Command Authorities are divorced from the concerns of the symboulions, useful technologies are being killed in the crib, and the intense localization means that even communal projects are limited in their grandeur. You are aware that Miss Richter considered television and movies to be the greatest human accomplishment?¡± ¡°I ¡­ think I heard her say that once,¡± said Perry. ¡°I assumed it was hyperbole.¡± ¡°I do not believe so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Power armor and artificial intelligence were one thing, but she believed that movies were an art form that had no comparison to anything else. Such an art form could not exist in this culture, not only because the technology would be stopped, but because they would not allow an enormous budget to go to something which was destined for wide release.¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Perry. ¡°Still, giving up movies is ¡­ I mean, they could have low budget movies, things that were shot by amateurs, if they relaxed their technology restrictions. And the restrictions aren¡¯t permanent, they¡¯re really just there as guardrails. If you¡¯d come from the Earth I came from, you might wish that people had thought about and studied things before just releasing them into the world.¡± ¡°We had leaded gasoline too, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Not even what I was thinking about,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was thinking ¡­ social media, I guess. Three-year-olds given tablets. Crazy AI on the horizon that was going to get legislated twenty years too late, if it ever was.¡± ¡°I suppose it is my bias showing, sir, but I disagree with the sentiment,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s neither here nor there,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need a plan to defeat Fenilor, if he¡¯s not going to listen to us about the danger of going through a portal. And that means that we need to snatch up Nima, but do it without killing her, because Fenilor could just step out at basically any time he chooses if all he needs is to kill her.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve charted a course, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You know, you don¡¯t have to call me sir,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you¡¯re a thinking machine, if I¡¯m treating you on the same level as a person, if we¡¯re taking this partner thing seriously ¡­ it¡¯s not necessary.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll take it under advisement, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If I may be honest with you, I have often used the honorific in a sarcastic manner.¡± ¡°Yeah, I picked up on that,¡± said Perry. ¡°You do you, I guess.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± replied Marchand. ~~~~ Perry hovered over the twin islands of Berus and Thirlwell, high enough that he could see both of them. As usual, the Farfinder was taking its sweet time. He imagined that the reason was most likely prognostics, as it tended to be, but he really would have liked to confer with them. They had learned that Fenilor would show up to that tavern for story time, and he thought that would be an excellent time to drop a huge rock on him or fire a massive laser from space down on him. Their lack of weaponry was troubling, but he understood it: they skittered through the holes between universes, hid away from the powers that be, and made contact only when they could be sure that they weren¡¯t going to get swatted. Bristling with weapons would have only invited conflict. After half an hour, Perry stepped into the shelf to check on Mette. She was sweaty and flushed, but also awake, which was a good change. ¡°How are you doing?¡± he asked. ¡°Fine,¡± said Mette. ¡°Water?¡± Perry went to their supply of jugs and poured her a glass. He wished that they had filtration, and made a reminder to ask the Farfinder if they could supply him next time he was aboard the ship. They had already given him a lot, far more than he had thought they would. Mette was tapping away at a laptop computer that had a facsimile of the interface she¡¯d used aboard the Natrix. As soon as Perry had shown up, Marchand had begun augmenting it, because Marchand had connectivity and far more processing power. Perry set the glass on the table beside her and removed his helmet. ¡°Nothing?¡± asked Mette after she finished drinking down half the glass. Her eyes were still on the screen and her fingers were still hammering at the keys. ¡°Nope,¡± said Perry. ¡°We have time, for now. But if Fenilor thinks that he¡¯s outmatched, he might just leave this world to its own devices. Which would almost certainly kill us, if Eggy¡¯s math is right.¡± He paused. ¡°Is it right?¡± ¡°It¡¯s difficult to say,¡± said Mette. ¡°My brain isn¡¯t working at capacity, and mathematics was never a strong suit. I¡¯m working with March here, but ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°This is kind of ¡®fate of the world¡¯ stuff here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I am aware,¡± said Mette. ¡°It would be great if we didn¡¯t have to fight that guy again.¡± ¡°We?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Sorry, but no way am I letting you near him.¡± ¡°Give me a few days to recover,¡± said Mette. ¡°You¡¯re going to need as much help as you can get. If you¡¯d had me and Kes and the Farfinder we¡¯d have had him down in that mine. Hella is strong.¡± ¡°You almost died,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t want your blood on my hands.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll have my blood on hand next time,¡± said Mette. ¡°So you can bring me back, or a version of me, and I won¡¯t just be ¡­ nothing.¡± ¡°Why do you have a death wish?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Because I want my life to mean something,¡± said Mette. ¡°If I left the Natrix behind to go learn magic from the world and then sit out every fight because I¡¯m a clay doll, what was even the point?¡± Perry let out a breath. ¡°Alright. I can understand that. Just ¡­ try not to die.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve got a great track record of not dying, thanks,¡± said Mette. She had been watching him, but turned back to her laptop. ¡°I¡¯m unfortunately irrelevant to the conflict.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think you being relevant would be better, honestly,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you went down in the mine and a portal opened up, that might have been the endgame. He might have tried to go through, and I don¡¯t know that I would be able to stop him.¡± ¡°And you want to capture Nima, so that Fenilor can¡¯t kill her and slip away?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Even if the math isn¡¯t solid, we need to treat it as though it is,¡± said Perry. ¡°If there¡¯s a ten percent chance that this world gets nuked, that¡¯s too much of a risk.¡± ¡°And we ¡­ don¡¯t want to use nuclear weapons?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Because I might be able to make one.¡± ¡°Metaphorically nuked,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though yes, I would love another nuclear weapon, if you can do that without giving yourself radiation poisoning. It seems like a power that Fenilor knows not.¡± ¡°A what?¡± asked Mette. She was half-focused on her screen again. It was a world that she was well-acquainted with, though he knew it would only be a matter of time before she asked for more monitors and a desk instead of a bed. ¡°Nevermind,¡± said Perry. ¡°Cultural reference, I guess. And it¡¯s very possible that Fenilor does know about bombs, if he¡¯s been interviewing and interrogating a few dozen thresholders, even if they¡¯re just baby thresholders.¡± ¡°If he¡¯d interrogated me, he¡¯d have learned it,¡± said Mette while typing. There had been a two-second lag in her response. ¡°I¡¯m going out to check on the islands,¡± said Perry. ¡°I might fly down and talk to Dirk, if I can catch him.¡± He looked down at the power armor. ¡°I would really love to be able to keep this on though. I don¡¯t think Fenilor can track me, but if Third Fervor is within range, she can probably sense the portal opening, and that would be trouble for both of us.¡± ¡°How close are you to being an open secret?¡± asked Mette. ¡°That¡¯s for me to ask Dirk about,¡± said Perry. He rubbed his face. ¡°Flying with the sword is one thing, it can be explained as an unknown Implement, but the armor is something else.¡± He frowned. ¡°I guess I¡¯ll keep it on, but I don¡¯t want to wait for nightfall. I¡¯m not cut out to be a superhero.¡± ¡°A what?¡± asked Mette. ¡°The mask thing that Kes was doing?¡± ¡°It ¡ª yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s one thing to be a superhero when people know that¡¯s what you are, but it¡¯s another to just be some totally new thing. And I know Dirk would rather we keep things quiet, though there have been enough deaths and evacuations and everything else that word must be getting out.¡± ¡°Well, I¡¯ll be here,¡± said Mette. ¡°Trying to crack the math with Marchand¡¯s help, to make sure that it¡¯s reporting something fundamental. March seems to think that a single person doing math on their own is never worth paying much attention to, but I¡¯m not sure why.¡± ¡°March?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It is a good heuristic, sir,¡± said March. ¡°Though Eggy did have the mathematical solutions checked over by locals in a few cases, and much of it was built off the understandings of Hella¡¯s homeworld.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a good heuristic if you¡¯re in a huge society,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not in this case.¡± He turned to Mette. ¡°If you have hundreds of millions of people, then the crazies vastly outnumber the professionals, and math, unlike engineering, is a field that you don¡¯t need actual results in to, say, write a paper or something.¡± ¡°I¡¯m still not really clear on ¡®write a paper¡¯,¡± said Mette. She had a faint grin, just the smallest quirk of her lips. ¡°Or ¡®academics¡¯ really. Lots of strange things in your culture. And you said to me that this was how it was done at colleges, but then I came here, and it¡¯s really not.¡± ¡°Next world,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ll see. Or ¡­ we actually might make it back to one of the Earths at some point.¡± Her eyes flickered from her laptop screen up to him, then back when she saw his neutral expression. ¡°Work on the math. I¡¯ll be back.¡± ~~~~ The nanite listeners had weak range, but they had quite a bit of longevity, so when Perry descended toward Calamus, the network came to life. Weeks of recordings were dutifully encrypted and broadcast to Marchand, who dined on them with all the careful dignity of the consummate snoop. Perry didn¡¯t care about most of it. He cared about Berus only in the abstract, and given that he¡¯d spent most of his time there as a bodyguard, he had no strong feelings on the civilians. The public executions had certainly left their impression, but he wasn¡¯t going to hold that against them as a whole. He was certain that he¡¯d find things if he went digging into the transcripts that Marchand was preparing, but he thought that the vast bulk of it would be idle conversations and strictly procedural symboulion meetings. A slender fraction would be interesting or juicy in some way, but he had no real instinct for prying into the business of strangers. Marchand would flag anything that he really needed to hear about, which mostly meant things that directly touched one of the thresholders. ¡°It appears there are still counter-revolutionaries in the city, sir,¡± said Marchand after some time to process. ¡°I have taken the liberty of flagging several cells. I don¡¯t believe it would take long to investigate them.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Any of them connected to Third Fervor?¡± ¡°It does not appear so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I should think that she has been keeping her new queen company since our last parting. There have been mentions of her, but no one has attested her aid and I do not have her rather distinctive voice recorded.¡± ¡°Then we can pass the information on, but it¡¯s not relevant,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯ve found Dirk? Or one of him?¡± ¡°Just the one sir, yes,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve marked him on the HUD, though he¡¯s in the middle of a meeting at the moment. Would you like to listen in?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry, feeling no small amount of alarm. It felt like a betrayal of some kind. Dirk didn¡¯t know about the listeners, and definitely didn¡¯t know about the Farfinder. He would have to, eventually, if the long-term plans of the Farfinder were going to come to fruition. Dirk¡¯s love of secrets and spycraft meant that he was perhaps not the best person to be tasked with getting things going, but Dirk also seemed like he had a lot of leeway from the various Command Authorities, and possibly held some seats on them. ¡°We wait for him. Any idea when or where he¡¯ll be alone?¡± Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. ¡°He has a room in the building,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe it was the same room he was staying in before. We can enter from the balcony.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. So Perry spent the next two hours waiting in Dirk¡¯s room, first finding a place to sit, then trying to judge the sightlines and awkwardly shuffling over to a different chair. It would be better to rearrange things to make an imposing presence if he moved the furniture around, but he worried that Dirk would notice, and that the furniture that had been moved would say something about him. He didn¡¯t want to scare Dirk, but there was something about lying in wait in a darkened hotel room that appealed to him. He tried not to think about what to say, it wasn¡¯t like that, but the meeting was taking longer to get out than Perry had hoped, and the time was taking a while to pass. There was plenty of warning when Dirk came. He pushed into the room muttering to himself with papers in his hands, and threw them down onto an end table before starting to shrug out of his shirt. ¡°Long time no see,¡± said Perry, then immediately cursed himself, because he was fairly sure that was local to Earth. It had slipped out freely, with automatic translation, but he had no idea what cultural context had snuck into whatever Dirk heard from him. ¡°Fuck!¡± Dirk shouted, staggering backward and instantly finding something to use as a weapon, which happened to be a decorative vase. ¡°Is this room secure?¡± asked Perry. He had his helmet off, which should have made him less threatening, but Dirk wasn¡¯t treating him like less of a threat. ¡°What the fuck are you doing here?¡± asked Dirk, not dropping the vase. ¡°Needed to make contact,¡± said Perry. ¡°Here, catch.¡± He tossed a cell phone grabbed from the Farfinder over to Dirk, who caught it and eyed it suspiciously. He gently set the vase down. ¡°That will let me contact you. When it vibrates, slide your finger along the green symbol and it¡¯ll open a channel to communicate. You place the bottom to your mouth and the top to your ear.¡± The cell phone started ringing, and Dirk nearly dropped it, then lifted it to his face. When it kept ringing, he brought it backward, slid his finger along the answer button, then put it back in place. ¡°Testing,¡± intoned Marchand¡¯s voice. ¡°Hello?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°I do believe that¡¯s sufficient,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What ¡­ is this?¡± asked Dirk when the call hung up. ¡°Technology,¡± said Perry. ¡°Your people will be able to build one someday, if you spend a lot of time and effort on it. It¡¯s downstream of computers. We don¡¯t have the infrastructure for me to call you from anywhere in the world, but anywhere in the city, that we could probably manage.¡± The cell phone had a thick layer of nanites packed into it, and the whole thing was a mishmash of different technological levels that was thankfully working together without any active intervention by Perry, who had only a vague knowledge of how an Earth-modern cell phone functioned. ¡°This is what you came to bring me?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°I can think of a dozen better ways for you to have done that.¡± ¡°We¡¯re making moves,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wanted to check in. I know about your boy in Thirlwell.¡± ¡°You¡¯re going to have to be more specific,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Your clone,¡± said Perry. ¡°Again, you¡¯re going to have to be more specific,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Your clone who is also the spymaster,¡± said Perry with a sigh. Dirk gave nothing away. ¡°You know that they have Nima, right? And she¡¯s seen your face, which means she can blow your cover wide open.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a risk that my other is handling as best he can, I¡¯m sure,¡± said Dirk. ¡°He knows that Nima has seen me. The scheme wasn¡¯t exactly decided on with thresholders in mind. Hell, I wouldn¡¯t have come here if I had realized how much danger I¡¯d be putting my other in. He¡¯s running the tendrils of the counter-revolution in Thirlwell under his name, feeding information back to me, but we were hoping that the two of us would never cross paths ¡ª that our agents would never see us. That was part of why I was set up in the sticks with you and Moss.¡± He was getting calmer by the minute, which wasn¡¯t exactly what Perry wanted. ¡°Do you have a line on Nima?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Meaning what?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°You¡¯re the one with a map of Thirlwell. You¡¯re the one who slipped a clone in and then magicked him back out. I could probably tell you where she is, but are you proposing a prison break for someone who tried to kill you? A prison break in a foreign country where you previously engaged in a different prison break?¡± ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s pretty much the gist of it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though that other prison break was my clone.¡± ¡°You¡¯re responsible for the things your clones do,¡± said Dirk, rubbing his temples. ¡°You understand that, right? And you pulled him out, I know you must have.¡± ¡°Maybe, maybe not,¡± said Perry. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯m going to go do that tonight. I¡¯m pretty sure that Third Fervor needs to sleep, and I¡¯m hoping that I can get some sense of when that is. All I¡¯ll need to do is snatch up Nima and put her in a jail cell, which is basically where she is already. It¡¯s a change in ownership.¡± ¡°I strongly advise against it,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Fuck, you¡¯re going to do it anyway, aren¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Fate of the world might be at stake,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you have any tools you¡¯ve been holding back on, now might be the time to hand them over to me.¡± ¡°You already have a very expensive cloning machine that I know you¡¯re not going to give back. Better you have it than to have it in enemy hands, but,¡± he sighed, deflating. ¡°You know, I like to have plans, and it seems that you like to beat those plans to death.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry, but it was clear from his voice that he wasn¡¯t sorry at all. ¡°There¡¯s one thing,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯ll take some time to get to you, but it¡¯s obvious enough that it keeps needing to get squashed down ¡ª masks.¡± ¡°Masks?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve made masks, they don¡¯t work well with the helmet, and they take too much time and effort to get good. If I had a year in this world, then maybe, but time isn¡¯t on my side.¡± It might be, actually, if he could depend upon his enemies to sit still, but it seemed like all of them but Nima were waiting to pull various triggers. In theory, Third Fervor was trying to ensure the success of the Last Queen while Fenilor was waiting for Thirlwell to ripen into readiness to be taken over by the culture, but in practice it was much more questionable. ¡°There¡¯s a technique for universal masks,¡± said Dirk. ¡°They¡¯re weaker, but it doesn¡¯t matter who made it, because it can be used by anyone.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you can get me one of those?¡± Dirk nodded slowly. ¡°Not as good as making it yourself. And we didn¡¯t bring any along on the ship, but you can move through the air at speed, faster than an airship, right?¡± ¡°Not actually,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m slower than an airship that¡¯s going fast. What I have to do instead is go straight up until the air gets thin enough that there¡¯s no drag, and then I can go faster than the speed of sound.¡± Dirk let out a breath. ¡°Well, right, I can see where that would be much different.¡± ¡°It takes time to go around the planet like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Give me an address and I can get there, if there¡¯s firepower in it for me.¡± That word, ¡®firepower¡¯, translated awkwardly. ¡°You can drop down anywhere on the planet?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°And that¡¯s a power that we¡¯ll have too someday?¡± ¡°Might be,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or you might just never push technology far enough to see it. I can see how it would rankle. Everything being local is important, that¡¯s the culture, but when you¡¯re not more than two hours away from anywhere, local gets pretty blurred.¡± ¡°Tourists and immigrants are already a problem,¡± said Dirk with a distant voice. He returned his attention to Perry. ¡°Tetrankersh, Old Road Way, 342. You¡¯ll find a familiar face there. Tell him you have my authorization, which might not be enough for you, but you¡¯ll get a mask for you and yours. Don¡¯t trade them where the enemy can see, they¡¯ll just think that it¡¯s something you made. But I assume you¡¯ll get a long speech about it from him.¡± ¡°Another Dirk?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Another Moss.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Shit. I guess ¡­ I knew logically that he didn¡¯t die for good.¡± ¡°There¡¯s another in the city already,¡± said Dirk. ¡°We made him before we took the machine apart. I¡¯m telling you now because I think you already know.¡± He was watching Perry¡¯s face as he said it. ¡°Or maybe not.¡± ¡°Seems like a security risk,¡± said Perry. ¡°There were plenty of people who saw Moss die, and he¡¯s a dwarf, distinctive in these parts.¡± ¡°He¡¯s a necessary guy,¡± said Dirk. ¡°We want the domes to go up as fast as possible. The sooner we have these people converted over to the proper way of doing things, the more attention we can focus on rowdy neighbors.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then I¡¯m taking off.¡± He finally stood from his chair, and felt how much he towered over Dirk. ¡°Probably after Nima first. Be warned, I guess, that it might get hairy.¡± ¡°Not much I can do about it,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Try not to get me or my clones killed, if you can help it, but I worry that even saying that to you makes it more likely.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll be fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll be in and out.¡± ~~~~ Perry had wanted to wait until the Farfinder checked in again, but time passed, and they didn¡¯t show up. He wanted to go get the masks that Dirk had promised, but that would take time, and Perry wanted to close off the chance that Fenilor would snatch her first. It was what Perry would do, if he was in the same position, going up against someone he wasn¡¯t sure he could beat. He checked in on Mette for a third time, to find her asleep with her laptop open. He closed it and made sure that the jury-rigged power supply was still functional. It was running off something that looked like a car battery, but would apparently last for a full year, and could be recharged off of Marchand¡¯s reactor. The Farfinder had accumulated a lot of things on their jaunts across the multiverse, and hadn¡¯t been shy about giving him some utility. There were five more cell phones like the one he¡¯d given Dirk, and two more laptops. All of it had been given without conditions. Perry found himself floating in the air in the middle of the night, which was becoming a running theme for this world. He had the spot where Nima was being held identified thanks to the listeners that were scattered around Thirlwell. He was high enough up that the ground was very far below him, far enough that he hoped to be beyond the range of spotters. The nanites had recorded plenty of conversations here, too, and enough of the bigger clusters had floated into the throne room as well as the royal bedroom that Perry had a handle on Third Fervor¡¯s schedule and the new queen¡¯s demands. It seemed that they were sharing a bed together, which definitely raised Perry¡¯s eyebrow, but it was also chaste, which seemed like a weird half-measure. Perry waited until Third Fervor had been asleep for half an hour, then descended down, dropping like a stone. He would be visible to spotters, if they had motion-tracking masks, but he was hoping the coverage was bad. There didn¡¯t seem to be more than a small team surrounding the upscale jail for diplomats that Nima was being held in, and he could get out quickly, he was pretty sure. The biggest thing was accomplishing it all fast, then getting out before getting in yet another scrap with Third Fervor. Perry didn¡¯t use the sword to slow himself until he was just above the roof, but landed gently, whisper-quiet. He placed his hand on the roof, and Marchand did a scan of the interior, locating Nima sleeping on a bed with her amulet around her neck. There were other people in the building with her, but he was pretty sure that they were guards. Two of them were awake, sitting at a table together but not talking. ¡°The windows are barred, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They would be trivial to go through, but might alert our quarry.¡± ¡°Still no word from the Farfinder?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No email, no message telling us that this is a terrible idea?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Which means that it¡¯s a good idea,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, we¡¯re going to have to strand her somewhere, and it would be best if we could put her in the brig on their ship.¡± ¡°There has been no word, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry considered this. He knew their capabilities pretty well. They would have run prognostics to get a guess at how the future was going to go, and had probably foreseen this, since it wasn¡¯t a high-variance event. They were also probably monitoring him in real time, which meant that they would have direct eyes on Third Fervor. In a sense, he was depending on them to stop him if he tried to do something that was completely ill-advised, though he was pretty sure that their primary method of movement ¡ª opening doors ¡ª had a strong chance of triggering Third Fervor¡¯s sense of space. Still, they could send him a ¡®please don¡¯t¡¯ email. ¡°We¡¯re going in,¡± said Perry. ¡°You think I can smash through the window?¡± ¡°I think you would have more luck smashing through the roof, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It appears the designers did not account for overwhelming force being applied from above. This will, however, alert the guards and wake Nima.¡± ¡°Then we get her out of here,¡± said Perry. ¡°Kicking and screaming, if need be.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve marked the point of entry, and I suggest a straight-legged dropped that should smash through, if performed from a height of one hundred feet. Your final speed will be fifty-five miles an hour. I should warn that it will be quite loud.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not going to cause problems for the suit?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. The HUD flashed an arrow that pointed up, and when Perry looked, there was a ghostly image showing him where to drop from. ¡°How much does she weigh?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I do not know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She seems quite slender, but we have limited data to work with. I would guess one hundred and ten pounds.¡± ¡°The sword gets sluggish at over a hundred pounds,¡± said Perry with a frown. ¡°Not much room for error.¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Are you rethinking this plan?¡± ¡°Yes, obviously,¡± said Perry. ¡°Add on her armor, that¡¯s ¡­ how much? One thirty?¡± ¡°Based on the testing done before the satellite launch, that should result in a slowdown of approximately forty percent,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though it has been to my consternation that our graphing never looked proper.¡± Reluctantly, he rose to the spot. This prison break had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was seeming like less and less of a good idea, particularly because the sword only went about thirty miles an hour. It was like using a moped for a getaway vehicle. ¡°Don¡¯t shoot her,¡± said Perry once he was in position. ¡°This is a capture mission. We shoot her, there¡¯s a chance that a portal opens up right next to Fenilor, and I think he would take it in spite of our warnings. We¡¯re going to wrap our arms around her and lock her in place, make sure that she can¡¯t get out, then fly away, ideally with her mouth gagged somehow.¡± ¡°I am ready, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry dropped, legs held together like he was doing a jackknife dive. He tensed his whole body, though he could feel that the armor was also tensed, servos and hydraulics locked into place to minimize the impact. There was just enough time to regret the plan while he fell. He got through the first step of mentally comparing it to a car accident, except the armor didn¡¯t have crumple zones. He crashed down through the roof, breaking through wood and tile, shattering the floor when he landed and then stopping there, having taken most of the impact in his legs. He rose as the alerts splashed across his HUD, a headache blossoming in the back of his skull, but the power of the second sphere had held him together, and any damage to the armor would be temporary. He was surprisingly no worse for the impact, which he¡¯d been second-guessing for the duration of the fall. Nima was already getting out of bed, with her armor spreading over her. Perry rushed her, leaving his sword aside, tackling her back down onto the bed and wrapping her in a tight hug that squeezed the air from her lungs. He was on top of her, helmet pushed against her face, and he would need her the other way, so he could crush her arms against her chest and get her immobile. It would have been simple to kill her, even with the armor around her. He could have exerted the strength necessary to crush her, to bend the metal and squish the flesh beneath, to crack bones open and let the marrow empty out. She scratched at his chest with metal claws as he flipped her over, sending up a screech of metal on metal. She had gouged surprisingly deep, the magic of her armor better than the superscience alloy, but then she was facing away from him, and he was overpowering her. He gripped one of her wrists and forced it to her chest as she tried to kick at him, then grabbed the other wrist and brought it down too. He was crushing her, and could hear her shallow breaths as she wriggled and struggled beneath him. When her other wrist was pinned in front of her, and a single arm of Perry¡¯s to keep them both in place, he finally stood up, the ruined bed beneath them. He called his sword to him and tested it. She was heavier than he had expected, but not enough that the sword was sluggish ¡ª she was a slender elf, after all, and it wasn¡¯t a deceptive sort of slenderness. He started rising through the air just as the guards burst into the room with their swords drawn. The shoulder gun rose and Perry shouted ¡°No!¡± before it could fire. He was up and out of the room, scraping back through a hole that was too small for the two of them, then out into the night sky, rising more slowly than he would have liked. He was going straight up, aiming for the stars. Nima howled and kicked, but Perry had his back bent so she had trouble hitting him. She got in a good one every now and then, with little teeth protruding from her armor, but once they were a half mile in the air, she stopped and quieted down, probably because Perry had angled himself so that she and the sword were beneath him. The threat of being dropped was probably very clear in her mind. ¡°Status on Third Fervor?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Still asleep, as far as I can tell, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯ll report to her soon though.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t see how, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°They have no telephones, no workable radio, and no semaphore system in place. We will be over the ocean shortly, beyond her ability to find us.¡± Perry mulled that over. His heart was racing, and he stilled it, redirecting the energy that was pulsing through his body, stilling everything and relaxing his muscles, save for his iron grip on Nima. Unless there was a dramatic change, it seemed like he was going to get away with it. Third Fervor could teleport, but she would need to be able to spot him, and so far as Perry knew, she couldn¡¯t. ¡°Why are you doing this?¡± asked Nima. Her voice was soft and on the edge of tears. Maybe she was crying beneath her fanciful helmet. ¡°I¡¯m taking you out of the game,¡± said Perry. ¡°You tried to kill me.¡± She choked out a sob. ¡°I don¡¯t want to fight.¡± ¡°Tough shit,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not going to kill you, just put you somewhere that Third Fervor doesn¡¯t have you, where you¡¯ll be safe from Fenilor.¡± ¡°Who the hell is Fenilor?¡± asked Nima, giving a token struggle that didn¡¯t come close to risking her getting dropped. ¡°He¡¯s the king killer,¡± said Perry. He turned their angle, so they were going back toward Berus, which would quickly take them over the water. He thought she might struggle more then, because it would change from a certain death to an uncertain one. When he looked down, he felt some vertigo, which was unusual for him. They were high enough up that it was almost certainly fatal. ¡°You¡¯re the king killer,¡± said Nima. ¡°Just one of them,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was a misunderstanding.¡± ¡°Where are you taking me?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Somewhere safe,¡± said Perry. ¡°Somewhere that Fenilor can¡¯t find you. You¡¯ve been sitting tight, it¡¯s going to be more of that.¡± They flew for another mile, three minutes, with no commentary from Nima. ¡°I could have killed you,¡± she said. ¡°Without the armor, you were vulnerable. I didn¡¯t understand it until after I was long gone.¡± He was surprised by the bitterness in her voice. She was talking about Kes, not about Perry, but she had no way of knowing that. ¡°You were always going to lose,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fenilor is your enemy, not me, and if you ever got within a mile of him, and he wanted to kill you, you would be dead. I¡¯m not sure I can beat him.¡± Red alarms went off on the HUD, flashing and pointing arrows, showing picture-in-picture of the big important thing that was apparently happening. Perry had thought it would be Third Fervor opening portals to come at him, some kind of insane aerial combat with Nima figuratively strapped to his chest, but when he looked at the image, it was something far, far worse: Fenilor was there, inexplicably, floating in the air with his spear out and his armor encasing him. ¡°Peregrin,¡± he said as Perry turned to face him. ¡°I believe there¡¯s been some misunderstanding, because that¡¯s my prey you¡¯ve captured.¡± Chapter 134 - Dogfight Perry gripped Nima tightly. She had gone very still. Perry¡¯s sword was held out in front of him, allowing both of them to hover. The city was still perilously close to them, its lights well in view, and Fenilor was close enough that he didn¡¯t have to raise his voice all that much. ¡°Now, I can think of two reasons you¡¯d have snatched her,¡± Fenilor mused. ¡°The first is to protect her from me, while the second is to kill her yourself ¡ª though you could easily do that at any moment, from the looks of it.¡± ¡°I¡¯d prefer not to fight you now,¡± said Perry. ¡°As you can imagine, I have other things on my mind.¡± ¡°You listened to my stories, I suppose?¡± asked Fenilor. His feet dangled below him. If not for the enhancements of the video system, he would have been difficult to see in the dim light of the stars and moon. ¡°I did,¡± said Perry. ¡°Look, I¡¯ll drop her if I have to. She hits the water, she dies, and it¡¯s likely the portal opens. Is that where we¡¯re at? Are you pushing to leave this place?¡± ¡°Oh, no, not at all,¡± said Fenilor. After having listened to the recordings for so long, Perry could hear the faint smile much easier. ¡°There¡¯s a monarchy to destroy, after all, and I had rather hoped to get to the end of my story. You were going to release it, weren¡¯t you? The people have a right to know. I think it will be good for them, and for the culture.¡± ¡°Then we¡¯ll be on our way,¡± said Perry. ¡°No, no,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I¡¯ll take her and keep her, to exit this world on my own terms.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not going to be kept by anyone,¡± said Nima, struggling against Perry¡¯s arm, which seemed more for emphasis than because she thought she could escape. Escape meant dropping a mile to the dark water below. ¡°You have told me you aim to prevent me from taking a portal out,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You claim it¡¯s the end of the universe.¡± ¡°No, just the planet, probably,¡± said Perry. He tried to control his voice as much as possible. Fenilor could hear lies with at least a little accuracy. ¡°That stands. I believe it.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You believe it less than you say that you do. And you seem to have decided on my death, if you can manage it, which I¡¯m skeptical you can. You see her as a way out for me, and assume that I would take that door before my work is done. You think I fear you.¡± ¡°You ran,¡± said Perry. ¡°You ran when you could have killed me.¡± ¡°I ran for a better battlefield,¡± said Fenilor. The hand that wasn¡¯t holding the spear stretched wide, sweeping over the sea. ¡°And here you are, unable to assume your wolf form in the air, without your companion, constrained by the need to carry your precious cargo. It does seem as though this battlefield suits me.¡± The armor was the same that Fenilor had been wearing before, the one that pulled off like it was fabric. The spear was the same too, with the puff of red beneath its point. Perry wasn¡¯t sure which one of those provided flight, but in theory Fenilor wouldn¡¯t have access to his entire inventory while in the air. That wasn¡¯t nothing. Perry had access to the shelf space, which he could dump Nima in if he absolutely had to ¡ª though Mette was there, along with several things he really didn¡¯t want to be destroyed. The shelf space made a terrible prison if you didn¡¯t latch someone in place. Worse, if the alarm had been raised, Third Fervor might sense the shelf space opening and closing, depending on how good her magical senses were. In theory, there was still time. ¡°You¡¯re contemplating it,¡± said Fenilor. Again, there was a soft smile in his voice, not a manic villainous grin, but the knowing smile of someone who¡¯s seen enough battles to judge his enemies. ¡°Wolf form?¡± asked Nima. She was breathing quickly, going back into panic mode again. The air was thinner this high up, which probably didn¡¯t help. ¡°Ah, she knows little,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°But weren¡¯t the two of you allies, for a time?¡± ¡°He didn¡¯t tell me anything,¡± said Nima. ¡°He doesn¡¯t care if I live or die.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Fenilor, shaking his head. ¡°I suppose he doesn¡¯t. But you are a tool to him, one that still has at least one use left.¡± He raised his hand to point at her. ¡°Tell me, is that armor bound to you? Or would it confer its power on anyone else?¡± ¡°It¡¯s bound,¡± said Nima. ¡°Tightly.¡± ¡°Ah, a shame,¡± said Fenilor, apparently taking her at her word. She must have passed his power¡¯s sniff test. ¡°Perry, I never asked, is yours bound?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ah, lies,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I have come to expect them of you, when it comes to sensitive matters. Technology, I have found, is unreliable, too much the work of an entire civilization.¡± ¡°I would love to debate the structure of societies,¡± said Perry. ¡°Unfortunately, I have to get going.¡± ¡°Would you really enjoy it?¡± asked Fenilor, tilting his head to the side. ¡°Talking about the structure of societies?¡± ¡°You can tell when people are lying,¡± said Perry. ¡°But sure. I didn¡¯t get enough of your thoughts on this project from your stories. I can give you something that will let us talk to each other at a distance, if trading stories the other way doesn¡¯t work for you.¡± ¡°I¡¯m still eagerly waiting to hear how I am supposed to destroy the world,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°A confluence of dread physics, with mathematics to back it up. Though of course I don¡¯t believe it, and you must realize that if it were a problem, it would be one that I would deal with in that slow, grinding way that¡¯s sometimes necessary.¡± ¡°Then there¡¯s no need to fight here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m just taking a piece off the board.¡± Nima kicked at him, which caused a scraping of metal against metal. ¡°Or I could take her out entirely,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You¡¯re worried about the end of this world, but if she died, you could simply leave through the portal.¡± He paused, and Perry felt some expectation that he should weigh that option. ¡°I don¡¯t intend to leave now. I can easily wait another five years.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t take a way out, not like that, not when it left people at risk,¡± said Perry. He hesitated. He didn¡¯t want to reveal the Farfinder, not if they didn¡¯t already know. But that was probably a way that might get around universe implosion. ¡°I might have a method that would get you out of here without the risk.¡± ¡°Oh?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°Not entirely a lie, that one.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°But not without its costs, its risks. I can tell you more, under better circumstances.¡± He could feel the battle coming. He was certain they could all feel it. ¡°You should also know that every minute we stay here, Third Fervor gets closer to waking up, and a four-way fight isn¡¯t what anyone wants, not even Nima.¡± ¡°I would take my chances,¡± said Nima. Her voice had gone cold. Perry squeezed her tighter. ¡°I think I¡¯ll kill her then, if it¡¯s all the same to you,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Or you could do the honors. The portal will open, I have no intention to go through, and we can avoid a fight over this trifle of a woman.¡± ¡°Hey,¡± said Nima, though with Perry¡¯s grip on her she was having trouble drawing breath. ¡°I don¡¯t trust you,¡± said Perry. ¡°And Nima doesn¡¯t need to die, she can just be beaten. I know you make a habit of killing, but the only thing she did wrong was trying to kill me.¡± The three of them floated in the dark air for a bit. Clouds moved to obscure the moon. Perry wasn¡¯t sure why he was making a plea for Nima¡¯s life. He owed her nothing. But she hadn¡¯t come at Kes with full force, not at first, and there was something pathetic about her. She didn¡¯t seem suited to the thresholding life. The next world wasn¡¯t liable to change that, but still, her death wouldn¡¯t actually accomplish anything. He really would rather have just kept her away from Fenilor. ¡°Sir, time is limited,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I would suggest we attempt to disengage.¡± ¡°Third Fervor?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I am having difficulty with tracking, given how little nanomaterial we have scattered, but she will be woken up soon. If we wish to have an aerial encounter ¡ª¡± ¡°We don¡¯t,¡± said Perry. ¡°You speak with your technology,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°What does it tell you, I wonder?¡± ¡°He says it¡¯s time to get going,¡± said Perry. ¡°So if you¡¯re going to attack, you had better do it now.¡± Fenilor shifted his grip on the spear, drew it back, then launched it at full force. As soon as Fenilor had cocked it back, Perry had released the power of the sword, causing them to start plummeting far faster than the sword could move them. Fenilor tracked them, but the spear went sailing over their heads. Perry¡¯s whole body had been tense and waiting for the attack, even if that tension wouldn¡¯t help him in the air. ¡°Nice try, loser,¡± said Perry, still clutching Nima tight. He began moving them away at what felt like a plodding speed when compared to how fast gravity could pull them. Fenilor had started to drop the moment the spear had left his hand, then disappeared, captured an instant later by the HUD¡¯s picture-in-picture, having teleported to the spear, which had sailed through the air. He flew up, angled his spear for another throw, and again Perry dropped down to avoid it. The spear came close this time, and it was only because of Marchand¡¯s tracking that Perry had been able to see it coming straight for his back. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry as the spear continued on through the night. In an aerial battle, Perry wasn¡¯t sure he could win, but he definitely couldn¡¯t win while holding onto Nima. There were only so many times Perry could drop to avoid the spear, and Fenilor¡¯s aim would improve. Once they hit the ocean, Perry would be down to the relatively sedate movement of the sword, and that would leave him dead in the water. Perry opened the shelf space, threw Nima into it, then sealed it shut again before she could get out. Mette was just going to have to deal with that problem on her own while Perry handled the battle. ~~~~ Mette woke up with a start. She was in bed and feeling gross. The sweat on her chest had dried into sticky residue, but there was a fresh layer beneath the sheets, making them damp and disgusting. The computer, a ¡°laptop¡±, was on her stomach and not helping matters, as much as the struggling fan was making an effort. She checked the machine over and then set it to the side, making sure that the cord was still plugged in and the thing wasn¡¯t tangled. It had an enormous amount of computing power unless compared to Marchand or the central computer of the Natrix, and even then, it wasn¡¯t that far off. It was only once she had set the laptop to the side that she realized that Nima was standing at the ¡°entrance¡± to the shelf space. That must have been what woke her up. ¡°Oh,¡± said Mette. ¡°Shit.¡± Nima was in her full armor, which looked beautiful on her, and had grabbed one of the spare weapons that sat next to the entrance to the shelf space. She didn¡¯t look like she knew how to use a sword very well, but Mette didn¡¯t know how to use a sword either. ¡°He snatched me up,¡± said Nima. ¡°Then threw me in here.¡± ¡°Shit,¡± said Mette. ¡°Are you ¡­ okay?¡± ¡°They¡¯re fighting out there,¡± said Nima. She looked around, though she¡¯d been here before. ¡°There¡¯s no way out of here?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°If he dies, we¡¯re dead?¡± asked Nima. She was asking for confirmation, not because she didn¡¯t know the answer. ¡°Unless someone else finds the ring before we run out of, uh,¡± Mette paused. ¡°We have lanterns here, and I think all the fuels necessary to keep us alive for a very long time: air, water, food. So we would run into problems with either imbalances that I might not be able to detect, or effluence.¡± She paused again. ¡°Are you going to kill me?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima. She looked at the sword she was holding, then back at Mette. ¡°Perry didn¡¯t want to put me in here with you. The only reason he did is because he knew that I wouldn¡¯t hurt you.¡± This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. ¡°He didn¡¯t know,¡± said Mette. She swallowed. ¡°Not for certain.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima. ¡°I suppose not.¡± The armor covering her face pulled back, but the rest stayed in place. Her skin was pale. She seemed sad. ¡°I ¡­ might have to take you hostage.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Mette. She shifted beneath her blanket. There were no weapons nearby. Kes had beaten her, or almost beaten her, and that was without being a werewolf. Mette stood a chance, she thought. She didn¡¯t want to fight though. ¡°I was poisoned. I¡¯m still in recovery.¡± She had very little in the way of defenses. If she could get her hands on a lantern, she could turn it into a weapon, but Nima knew lanterns too, and trying to pull a fast one probably wouldn¡¯t work, even if Nima gave Mette the chance. And again, the idea of fighting felt wrong. ¡°Poisoned by who?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Fenilor,¡± said Mette. ¡°That¡¯s who Perry is fighting outside?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Nima. Her lips went tight. ¡°You don¡¯t want to be in this any more than I do.¡± ¡°I want pieces of it,¡± said Mette. ¡°I want the magic, the new worlds, the power.¡± She folded her hands in her lap. In spite of what she¡¯d said about the poison, and the sweat that coated her body, she was feeling better. It would be better to play sick though. Mette was unfortunately not very good at lying, especially not to someone she¡¯d considered a friend. ¡°You admit to wanting power?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I had power,¡± said Mette. ¡°I was, arguably, the second most powerful person on my planet, at least before the thresholders showed up. I don¡¯t think it¡¯s bad to want power, if you want it for a reason, if it¡¯s not just power for the sake of power.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Nima. ¡°Why do you want power then?¡± ¡°Power is possibility,¡± said Mette. ¡°It¡¯s a way of escaping constraints, having options. It¡¯s the reason I was always after power, even back on Esperide. With what I know now ¡­ you know the world I came from.¡± ¡°I know what you¡¯ve told me,¡± said Nima. She stepped closer, holding the sword casually, no longer like a weapon. Her eyes flickered to the cloning machine, which was in pieces behind Mette, shoved rudely into place, but she didn¡¯t ask about it. She had been inside the shelf, and would know that the machine was new. ¡°We were hanging in there,¡± said Mette. ¡°Being worn down more with every passing year, but maybe we could have made it to the inflection point, where there were enough of us that we could rebuild what we had lost. Maybe we were even past the inflection point, with all the young people on board. But the many worlds ¡­ it¡¯s something else.¡± ¡°You abandoned your people,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯ve always tried to be polite about that, but I don¡¯t understand it.¡± Her hand gripped her sword, tensing for a moment before releasing. ¡°I don¡¯t respect it.¡± ¡°You defected against Perry,¡± said Mette. She had almost called him Kes. ¡°I know you disagreed with him, with them, the ¡­ executioners. When you went to Thirlwell and threw yourself at Third Fervor¡¯s feet, did that clarify anything?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima. ¡°I don¡¯t think she has the right of it. We¡¯ve spoken at length, and ¡­ she¡¯s a lackey. I think I would prefer a zealot. But Perry doesn¡¯t care.¡± ¡°He does,¡± said Mette. ¡°He comes from a different world, one where they thought it was fine for many different people to have different cultures and customs.¡± ¡°The people here want a single culture,¡± said Nima. ¡°They want to wipe everything away.¡± ¡°It¡¯s complicated,¡± said Mette. ¡°They want everything local for a reason. I¡¯m not sure it¡¯s workable in the long run, but the idea is that everyone adapts the culture to their own needs. The food is different the world over, the clothes are ¡ª well, the clothes come from the lanterns, so they¡¯re somewhat the same ¡ª but they¡¯re not a monoculture.¡± ¡°You saw what they did,¡± said Nima. ¡°They¡¯re murderers.¡± ¡°They¡¯re not a monoculture,¡± said Mette. ¡°Killing people like that isn¡¯t something that the rest of the world endorses.¡± ¡°But they don¡¯t move to stop it,¡± said Nima. ¡°They don¡¯t think they have the right,¡± said Mette. ¡°The airship we came on, the people that came to help, they believe that a group of people need to have the right to determine their own fate. And Nima, that¡¯s what I believe too. It¡¯s one of the reasons that I helped to replace the leadership on the Natrix. Sometimes that¡¯s necessary, if the people at the top aren¡¯t doing what they should be doing.¡± Nima shook her head. ¡°I liked you better when you didn¡¯t argue with me.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Mette, and she really did mean it. Sometimes talking about the big scary things like who should govern and how seemed to turn people against each other. It had been like that on the Natrix too. People got quite heated. Mette had always liked focusing on technical and logistical problems better. Nima looked back at the entryway to the shelf space, which had no particular features to set itself apart aside from how the shelving was arranged. ¡°Do we just ¡­ wait?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I think so,¡± said Mette. ¡°I was sleeping before you got in here. There¡¯s a cot somewhere, if you wanted to nap.¡± Nima laughed. ¡°I still might need to take you hostage.¡± She said it with a bit of embarrassment. ¡°Perry doesn¡¯t want to kill you,¡± said Mette. ¡°He really doesn¡¯t. Even after what you tried to pull, he would rather just ¡­ send you off to another world, I guess, to find your place among the thresholders.¡± ¡°More killing,¡± said Nima. ¡°More death. I don¡¯t want that for myself.¡± ¡°What happens next depends on whether Perry wins against Fenilor,¡± said Mette. ¡°Perry is open to talking with you, to working things out, just remember that.¡± ¡°Do you think he¡¯ll win?¡± asked Nima. Mette shrugged. ¡°I¡¯ve learned to always bet on Perry.¡± ~~~~ Even with Nima gone, Perry was losing the fight. They were descending together, and when Perry tried to go in for an attack, Fenilor would move away. Fenilor hadn¡¯t changed weapons or armor yet, which was a sign he thought that he was winning. Still, the spear hadn¡¯t made contact yet, which was at least something. Perry had blocked it directly with the sword twice, which let out a clarion ring when it happened, but it seemed as though Fenilor was stepping it up. For all Perry knew, he was literally getting better with every throw. They had descended almost a half mile, leaving the ocean much closer beneath them than it had been before. Perry wasn¡¯t sure what he was going to do when they hit the water, which they surely would if he had to keep dodging by dropping. Every time Fenilor released the spear, he dropped too, but he could teleport to the spear and recover it that way, flying up once he¡¯d grabbed it if need be. Fenilor drew the spear back again, and Perry held his sword out in front of him to block. His plan was different this time, and also considerably stupider. When the spear came in at terrifying speeds, he let go of his sword and caught the spear with both hands, like clapping a mosquito out of the air. Perry was shocked that it had actually worked. He hadn¡¯t thought too far ahead with the whole ¡°catch the spear¡± plan, and had really thought that the end result might be him gripping the shaft of the spear while it pierced him through. In spite of the sword falling away, Perry was simply hovering in the air. The HUD was tracking Fenilor, who was falling to the water below with no signs of stopping. ¡°It can¡¯t be that easy,¡± said Perry as he spun the spear around and commanded his sword back up to him. He could feel the energy of the spear, and with a pulse of his will, he began flying with it. He was faster than with the sword, but there was an ebb and flow to it which hadn¡¯t been there with the sword, a sense that he was draining some internal supply and would be left swooping up and down. Fenilor appeared in front of Perry, gripping the other end of the spear. He tried to yank it away, but the power armor had enormous grip strength. Fenilor thrust a hand out and summoned a dagger dripping with black ichor from among the ghostly array of weapons, clearly intending to fight while both held onto the weapon. Perry was close enough to strike out though, and landed a haymaker that sent Fenilor tumbling away. It should have killed him, or at least broken ribs. The power armor was just that strong, and whatever ability Fenilor¡¯s ski-mask armor had, the shoulder gun was at least partially effective against it. Perry cocked back his elbow, and when Fenilor appeared again, Perry¡¯s fist snapped forward with a modified armor-augmented Super Moon Punch. The poisoned blade went spinning away as Fenilor fell, and the body went limp, rag-dolling through the air, arms and legs flapping in the wind. Perry almost went after him, trying to finish the fight then and there, because if the portal opened at the wrong moment, and Fenilor wasn¡¯t dead, he could slip through just as easily. Perry had just begun to drop down using the unfamiliar power of the spear when Fenilor gained control of his limbs. Ghostly implements spread out from him in both directions, then his armor changed around him to something gleaming and chrome. A giant sword with angry angles appeared in his hand. Perry was worried that the spear would disappear, but it stayed in his hands, apparently his for as long as he could keep a grip on it. Fenilor moved up like he¡¯d been launched, a rapid change in motion that set the power armor¡¯s warnings off. Fenilor lost speed as he drew closer, but he swung the sword around, twisting his body and aiming for a hard slice through Perry¡¯s midsection. Perry brought the spear up to block, hoping that it would be sturdy enough to survive the hit, and locked his body in place. The sword hit the shaft and bounced off it, sending the two of them apart, and Fenilor started falling back down to the ocean again. Perry tested the spear once, then used its full power. It was much faster than the sword, faster than he¡¯d ever seen Fenilor go with it, but the flight wasn¡¯t agnostic to his elevation, it was faster when he was descending, like a paper airplane picking up speed as it went into a dive. Fenilor was again launched through the air by some unseen force or magic, and Perry turned around to hold the spear out again. They were far enough away that there was a full second, enough time for Perry to get the spear into position and attempt to anticipate the incoming strike. This time, there was no big swing, and they ended up crashing into each other, with the spear and sword both slipping against armor before they tumbled away from each other. Perry righted himself just in time to get hit again, harder this time but with little damage to speak of, at least judging by the reports that Marchand was generating. With the new set of equipment, Fenilor could attack Perry from anywhere in the open space, though he didn¡¯t seem to have any control over his movements aside from the one trick of increasing movement on a line directly toward where Perry was. He was still faster, but he¡¯d lost almost all control, and it seemed like they would be crashing into each other over and over again if that was what Fenilor wanted. With the next hit, Perry was caught in the side by the sword, and even a strong hit to a weakly defended area didn¡¯t penetrate. Whatever it was that Fenilor was trying, it wasn¡¯t working, but if one piece of equipment was letting him hurl himself through the air, then the other one surely had some kind of power too. Perry was going to have to figure it out and neutralize it, but he was getting very tired of Fenilor¡¯s bag of stolen tricks. ¡°Third Fervor on approach,¡± said Marchand. In combat, his voice was stripped of sardonic eloquence, becoming tight and controlled, communicating with the minimum of frills. Perry used the spear to dive as Fenilor flew toward him again, and actually managed to miss a collision this time. He gained speed as he went down and felt the spear thrumming with energy, and he used it to jet off sideways. ¡°How¡¯d she find us?¡± asked Perry. He hadn¡¯t used the shelf space, not since sticking Mette in there. There was no response from Marchand. Fenilor needed to launch himself twice, like he was bouncing off the air, snapping his velocity in the direction of Perry, but they crashed again, and if Perry hadn¡¯t had an iron grip on the spear, he would have lost it. The sword had scored a hit across his back, and he¡¯d heard the groaning of metal, but it wasn¡¯t enough. Whatever the sword was supposed to do, it was a bust. The ghostly inventory spread out away from Fenilor as he fell again, and almost as soon as it had appeared it was gone again, with the giant angular sword replaced with something long and thin, a pinprick of a rapier. He launched again, the movement sudden, arm with the rapier thrust straight forward and the rapier just a point. Perry attempted to parry it away, but the movement was too fast, and the point of the rapier too small. They crashed together again, but it came with a sharp pain in through Perry¡¯s chest, and when they came apart in the air, it was with a trail of blood. The nanite undersuit wove itself back together at Marchand¡¯s instruction, but there was a hole clean through both sides of the armor, and more serious warnings were flashing. Third Fervor was visible from the glowing rings of her portals, which illuminated her in the night sky brighter than anything else around them. She was homing in, and Perry realized what had brought her to them: he hadn¡¯t been using subspace, but Fenilor had, and the change in weapons and armor must have been like a stone thrown against a still pond. Perry went as swiftly as the spear would let him, another deep dive bringing him close to the water. He¡¯d burned altitude but was going at least a hundred miles an hour, dark against the waters, feeling the drag. A portal opened up three feet away from him and Third Fervor dropped out from it as Perry slipped past. Two seconds later, a portal opened overhead, and she dropped out again, then the portal opened directly in front of him so fast that he couldn¡¯t stop himself from going through. Third Fervor came down from above with a spear of her own, and it gouged a deep line along Perry¡¯s back before she, too, was falling behind him. ¡°Damage report!¡± shouted Perry as they zipped above the black waves. ¡°Holding steady,¡± Marchand replied. ¡°Repeated damage to the same area ¡ª¡± A portal opened again, and this time there were two successive portals, with one opening directly in front of him and the second opening just as soon as the other had snapped shut. Third Fervor very nearly crashed into him as he passed through, but when he was through the second portal he was high up in the air, suddenly so high up that he could trace the curvature of the planet and see the outlines of the island by their towns and cities. They were high enough up that if Perry wasn¡¯t encased in armor, he¡¯d be at risk of death from a lack of oxygen. Perry coughed up blood and then, because his helmet was on, swallowed it back down again, leaving the taste of blood in his mouth and the smell of it in his nostrils. The armor had been battered, and the rapier strike had gotten him good, piercing organs that were only slowly mending back together. Before becoming second sphere, he hadn¡¯t had much sense where his organs were, but he could feel them now, and it was his stomach that had a hole poked in it. There was acid and blood leaking through his body, and he tried his best to reverse the damage. Now that he was focused on it, the pain was almost blinding. Third Fervor was still down there somewhere. She had cast him high into the sky. Had Fenilor gotten to her? Perry realized with a start that Fenilor could kill her and open up a portal, or at least wound her. He had to be near the edge of her range, and if she¡¯d been hoping that the high altitude would end him, she was sorely mistaken. He dove with the spear, using its power to push him up to terminal velocity. The spear was charging up, brimming with power, and he¡¯d be able to use it to scream through the air when he needed to. But Third Fervor was down there somewhere, and if she was next to the ocean, all she¡¯d need to do was to open a portal in his path. She needed one end to be next to her, but the other could be far away, and if she opened up one that slammed him into the water at terminal velocity, he was pretty sure he would just die. He slowed himself, not liking the feeling of it. Going slow enough that she couldn¡¯t smash him against the water would mean ten minutes, maybe more, of just dropping through the air. With Marchand¡¯s enhancements, he could see the fight below. The figures were impossible to make out, but Fenilor was using a new weapon, one that glowed, and the portals that Third Fervor was making were splashes of light above the waves. How they could see each other was a mystery. Perry didn¡¯t want to intervene, but he felt like he had to. He opened up the shelf and stepped inside, half-expecting Third Fervor to divert up to him as soon as she felt the shelf open. Instead, he closed the shelf back up and stood there looking at Nima and Mette. Nima had one of the spare swords and was holding it to Mette¡¯s throat. ¡°Perry, calm down,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯m calm,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hostage situation?¡± ¡°You need to let me out of here,¡± said Nima. ¡°I never wanted any of this, and ¡ª¡± ¡°Just checking that the two of you are getting along,¡± said Perry. ¡°The fight is still going on, Third Fervor against Fenilor, I need to make sure that Fenilor doesn¡¯t kill her. You two sit tight.¡± Perry opened the shelf back up, slipped out, and let it close behind him before they could say anything. He had bigger problems to attend to. Chapter 135 - Vulnerable Places ¡°He left us,¡± said Nima. Her sword was hanging down and her mouth was hanging open. She was staring at the spot where Perry had been. ¡°You didn¡¯t have leverage,¡± said Mette. She shifted in the gross, sweaty bed. ¡°Sorry about that.¡± ¡°I had a sword to your throat,¡± said Nima. ¡°I was pretty clearly threatening to kill you.¡± ¡°Yeah, if you kill me, he has no reason to keep you alive,¡± said Mette. ¡°I knew you wouldn¡¯t.¡± ¡°If I kill you ¡­ there¡¯s a chance a portal opens, right?¡± asked Nima. She looked down at Mette. To her credit, she lowered the sword even more, making it clear that what she¡¯d said hadn¡¯t been a threat. ¡°I didn¡¯t mean ¡ª¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± said Mette. ¡°You¡¯re at least going to talk with me about it before you do it, and once I¡¯m done talking, you¡¯ll stop thinking it¡¯s a good idea.¡± Still, she spoke quickly. ¡°Fenilor already beat me. I was as good as dead. Perry was making plans for a world where I wasn¡¯t around. Literally everything we know about how the portals work says that if a portal were going to open when I was defeated, it would have opened then. I¡¯m pretty sure that I¡¯m your ally, as funny as that might seem.¡± ¡°Hilarious,¡± said Nima. She paused, then put the sword down and retracted her helmet. Mette could see her softly feminine face and the delicacy of her elven features. With the armor up, she¡¯d looked more like a machine. ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°It happens,¡± said Mette. Nima looked at the hulking pieces of the cloning device, and not for the first time. ¡°This is what they were hiding in that warehouse,¡± she said. ¡°The thing that was inside the airship.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Mette. ¡°What¡¯s it do?¡± asked Nima as her eyes traced the harsh lines. ¡°Does the word ¡®classified¡¯ mean anything to you?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t have the same translation stuff that Perry has.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Nima, shaking her head. ¡°Does it mean you can¡¯t tell me?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Mette with a sigh. ¡°Especially since, you know ¡­¡± ¡°I switched sides,¡± said Nima. She nodded. ¡°I stand by that. I don¡¯t like the culture. I don¡¯t wish for them to have a chokehold on this world.¡± Mette shrugged. ¡°I don¡¯t want to get into that. What I want is to take a shower.¡± Nima looked around. ¡°Is that ¡­ possible?¡± ¡°With engineering, all things are possible,¡± said Mette with a solemn nod. ¡°Though actually, it¡¯s just a matter of heating up water, and that¡¯s just a matter of hooking some kind of resistor up to the battery and figuring out some kind of catch for it, along with a plan for the used water.¡± ¡°I can help with that,¡± said Nima. ¡°When Perry comes back, you can hold me hostage again,¡± said Mette. ¡°Though I don¡¯t think he¡¯s going to go for it either way.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± said Nima with a small smile. ¡°Worth trying, I guess.¡± ¡°And of course, he might die out there,¡± said Mette. ¡°In which case we¡¯re going to have a lot of time to figure out how not to die.¡± ~~~~ Perry dropped down to the flashes of light below, depending on Marchand¡¯s video analysis to make it bright enough to see by and to zoom in close enough that they didn¡¯t just look like random blips. The battle was happening two miles away from Thirlwell, where the lights of the city were still shining. The other thresholders were battling above the cold black waves. ¡°You have a standing order to shoot Fenilor whenever he changes armor,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know how much he¡¯s tested them, but he¡¯s having to do different combinations to stay in the air. If we can find one that a bullet can get through, that¡¯s got to be to our benefit. Conserve ammo if there¡¯s some question whether it¡¯s effective.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. The hole that Fenilor had poked in him was hurting, his insides burning with pain that was only slowly abating as he tried to pour more energy into his wounds. If he were fighting on the ground, he¡¯d have trouble running, but he was in the air, and could remain rigid. ¡°Don¡¯t shoot Third Fervor unless I say so,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not that the gun has done all that much to her.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I still have latitude?¡± ¡°Uh, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ask first, if at all possible. You inform me, I inform you, we¡¯re partners.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. As they got closer, the screaming started. Third Fervor had some kind of sound power, one strong enough to get through all of Marchand¡¯s manipulations and deadening, and she was using it above the water. Because she couldn¡¯t fly and was keeping herself aloft with portals, the sound cut in and out, and sometimes doubled itself when she passed through a portal and the shouts aligned to reach Perry at the same time. Fenilor had changed his armor and weapon, which must have been done in a harrowing moment in the middle of their battle, possibly more than once. The armor was made of a dark wood that was soaked and dripping. A thin tendril of water connected him to the ocean below, stretching a hundred feet to reach him, either following him or allowing him to move himself like a puppet with a strand of water for a string. His weapon was now a shard of steel wrapped with vines that hooked into his wrist, and he had a shield made of stone that seemed like it should have weighed hundreds of pounds. Third Fervor was moving all over the place with her portals. The go-to move seemed to be dropping down into a portal that would fling her up into the air and give her either a sightline on Fenilor or bring her close enough to attack. From time to time she opened a portal whose other end must have been deep beneath the water, because it blasted water out at incredible speeds. Fenilor¡¯s armor was giving him some control of water, and he was deflecting these water blasts to the side, which meant that Third Fervor could come in close to him with a portal and do a pincer attack with her own long-range blast. Perry wasn¡¯t sure what stage of the fight they were on, but it seemed as though Fenilor was losing, at least from a distance. Third Fervor was wearing him down, and seemed to have a pattern that was working for her. The speed she was using to make portals was incredible, as was her ability to stay oriented while upside down or sideways. She blasted Fenilor with water from a distance again and portaled next to him again, forcing him to deal with one or the other in a split second. Perry had gotten close enough that the suit¡¯s cameras could resolve damage to the wooden armor and gouges on the shield. It was possible that a single bullet could finish Fenilor off. But this time when Third Fervor struck out with her spear, Fenilor swung his vine-wrapped blade in anticipation, using the blast of water to cloak his movements. When the sword hit her, the vines snapped forward, growing from nothing and wrapping around her, binding her tightly with the spear stuck against her side. She let loose a scream, as though she was going to yell the vines off her, and Fenilor¡¯s hands clutched his head. He dropped down out of her reach, into the water below, leaving the vines in place. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. Third Fervor was well and truly trapped, though she still had her portals, and when she began falling, she fell through one that led her somewhere else. Both combatants were gone, and the ocean was silent save for the waves. ¡°I assume you didn¡¯t have the shot?¡± asked Perry, who was still descending. The HUD zoomed out, showing their true distance from the water and where the battle had been going on. ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°It would have been possible to hit Fenilor, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, the odds were poor, and it would have given away our position.¡± ¡°Hmm,¡± said Perry. Fenilor hadn¡¯t reappeared from the water. It seemed like maybe the bout was over. The cameras on the suit wouldn¡¯t be able to pick up Fenilor in the water, not with only the stars and moon to illuminate it, not unless Fenilor was very close to the surface. Perry called the sword back to him. It had tumbled away and fallen into the water, but it came back to him readily enough, and when it did, he slipped it into its sheath. It had glowed the entire time it was in flight, exposing him, but Third Fervor was dealing with the vines somewhere, and Fenilor had completely disappeared, either hiding in the water or having vanished. Perry deliberately slowed his pulse, trying to conserve battle readiness. ¡°Not the worst outcome,¡± sighed Perry. ¡°Why did she send us up to space, do you think?¡± ¡°Not to contradict you, sir,¡± said Marchand, ¡°But we were only halfway to space. I do imagine that Third Fervor was attempting to kill us, as she had attempted to kill us by bringing us to the ocean floor. One can only wonder what hostile environment she¡¯ll send us to when next she gets the opportunity.¡± ¡°We¡¯re her rival, not Fenilor,¡± said Perry. He chewed his lip. ¡°We killed her king. She should have gone for us.¡± ¡°Indeed, sir,¡± said Marchand. There was a brief pause where a human might have cleared his throat. ¡°Might I say, sir, that I appreciate that you¡¯ve taken ownership of the king¡¯s death?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. His eyes scanned the waters as though he¡¯d be able to spot something that Marchand hadn¡¯t. ¡°Hard to explain it to people.¡± ¡°You have taken ownership even when we¡¯re alone, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Partners,¡± said Perry, which didn¡¯t feel like enough of a response. Perry kept watching the waters, hoping that Fenilor would come up from below, though when that happened, he still wasn¡¯t sure that he could win the fight. It would be negligent not to test the gun against a variety of armors though, and Perry had the spear now, which seemed like it was his to keep. Fenilor had picked this battlefield, but it seemed he had picked poorly. Perry was going to have to go into the shelf and deal with Nima. He wasn¡¯t looking forward to that. Getting removed from the fight left him frustrated. He had wanted a win against one or both of them. He had wanted to test his mettle against Fenilor again. There had been too many losses, or incomplete wins, and he was hungering for victory. Capturing Nima obviously didn¡¯t count ¡ª he had complete dominance over her pretty much any time he wanted. She was barely even an equal to Kes. When Perry saw one of Third Fervor¡¯s portals appear, he almost smiled, then he almost went after her. Instead, he stayed where he was, a black shape floating in the air, and watched as she flitted around, portal after portal to keep herself in the air. It wasn¡¯t a preferred battlefield for her. If she could do the portal waterjet trick here, then in theory she could do it anywhere. With the portals, she could possibly change the battlefield, though that would take setting him up to push him through a portal. The spear made him faster, but he wasn¡¯t practiced with it. He was trying to weigh whether going after her would be a good idea when she spotted him. Her attack started with a portal five feet above him. She was dropping at speed with her spear pointed straight at his head. He shifted to the side using more of his spear¡¯s thrumming power than he meant to, and she screamed loud enough to cause him some pain as she passed. She opened a portal beneath her feet and appeared above him again, dropping faster because she¡¯d picked up speed, and Perry dodged again. The third time he was ready for her, and pointed his spear straight up at her, hoping that he¡¯d be able to outmaneuver her in a vertical joust. Her spear came within inches of him, but his hit her squarely in the stomach. Her armor protected her and she twisted off the spear point as he was knocked down. Another portal appeared and whisked her away, this time sending her up to kill her momentum. He had always known that her armor was going to be a problem. It didn¡¯t matter how fast he was, or how perfectly he timed his strikes, if they just glanced off her, he was going to be worn down. This time there wouldn¡¯t be a monster from the deep to save him ¡ª probably. But he knew that the armor had a weakness: it was fueled by her clarity of purpose. And that he could attack far better than trying to poke her with yet another weapon. ¡°Wait!¡± he called. Third Fervor dropped through another portal and came up in an arc, twisting through the air to lash out sideways with the spear. He brought his own spear up to block her, and when the hafts of their spears met, she pushed backward and dropped down through another portal that took her further away. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°Wait!¡± he called again. His ears were ringing from the shout she¡¯d let out earlier, and it was only because he¡¯d given no reaction that she hadn¡¯t done it again. ¡°Deceiver!¡± shouted Third Fervor from high in the air, so loud that Perry saw the impact of the sound on the water below. He felt the sound in his bones. ¡°He¡¯ll kill you!¡± shouted Perry, his own voice amplified to the limits of the suit¡¯s speakers. ¡°And if he does, the whole kingdom falls!¡± Third Fervor was dropping, far enough away that Perry couldn¡¯t reach her, and she opened another portal at her feet before she could hit the water. It was only because HUD flashed brightly that Perry was able to anticipate the strike, which came from the left side this time. Third Fervor sailed through the air, moving past him. Her spear spun to strike at him, and the tip of it sliced through the armor around his bicep. ¡°Seems like she¡¯s still mad,¡± said Perry under his breath as he felt a trickle of blood down his arm. ¡°I want to talk!¡± he shouted. ¡°You fought him, you know how dangerous he is!¡± Third Fervor did a complicated maneuver with the portals, and it looked like she was building up to something big before she came to a dead stop with half her body through the portal. She was twenty feet away from Perry, far enough that he couldn¡¯t strike her with the spear or the sword, but close enough that they could talk in the midst of the dark night. They were lit only by the stars and the ring of light from the portal. Perry looked around, and couldn¡¯t see where the other half of the portal was, but from what little he could see of it, he thought she was probably standing on the ground several miles away. ¡°Who is he?¡± asked Third Fervor. Her voice was even. Perry could see nothing behind her armored face, and didn¡¯t suspect that she was going to drop it anytime soon. He wouldn¡¯t have either. ¡°Fenilor the Gilded, one of the founders of the culture,¡± said Perry. ¡°He¡¯s been here for hundreds of years, and is very dangerous.¡± He would tell her everything he knew, he had to, aside from maybe the existence of the Farfinder. ¡°I¡¯ve read of him in books,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°He was responsible for the culture.¡± ¡°He¡¯s the one who¡¯s been going through the monarchs,¡± said Perry. ¡°What happened with the king of Thirlwell, it was ¡ª¡± ¡°I do not want to hear excuses,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°I¡¯m going to kill you. I¡¯m going to rip you apart.¡± There was a deep growl to her voice, and he worried she was going to start growing in size. He didn¡¯t want to fight her as a giant. It occurred to Perry that while she was standing there, halfway through the portal, she couldn¡¯t open another one, at least from what he¡¯d seen so far. The portals were her best offense, the thing that made her spear deadly. It was also an idea for stopping her later: if he could place himself inside one of the portals, he could stop her from opening another. He was fairly sure the portals couldn''t slice through a person, otherwise she¡¯d have pinched him already. Perry took a breath and steeled himself. It was time for an argument that he¡¯d practiced, though he hadn¡¯t thought he¡¯d be giving it above the ocean while held aloft with a stolen spear. The night felt preternaturally still. ¡°Women are weak,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re unfit for rule. You¡¯ve debased yourself by putting yourself in service to a queen.¡± ¡°W-what?¡± asked Third Fervor. ¡°You¡¯re the weaker sex,¡± said Perry, half hoping that this line of argument wouldn¡¯t work on her. ¡°The male of the species is endowed with the qualities necessary for governance: vigor, rationality, and an iron will. These are qualities that a queen, by her nature, cannot possess.¡± ¡°She is my queen,¡± said Third Fervor. She¡¯d taken a half step back, still within the ring of the portal, which glowed softly. ¡°Women are followers, not leaders,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know this in your heart. Think of the times you¡¯ve succeeded and the times you¡¯ve strayed. Your greatest triumphs have always been when following a king¡¯s orders, and your greatest defeats have always been when you struck out on your own. There is a hierarchy in the world. Woman sits below man just as commoner sits below king.¡± Third Fervor was silent, but her head moved, as though she was trying to formulate a response and working the words over before they came out. ¡°You don¡¯t believe that,¡± she said. ¡°You¡¯re just ¡­ you¡¯re saying that, it¡¯s words.¡± ¡°It¡¯s the truth, whether I believe it or not,¡± said Perry. ¡°But it¡¯s the accumulated wisdom of centuries and worlds. You¡¯ve served kings, exclusively kings, they¡¯ve been a constant of your travels and mine. Now you¡¯re here, prostrating yourself before a weak queen. You know that it feels wrong.¡± Third Fervor was silent for long enough that Perry almost started talking again too soon, which would probably have been a mistake. He needed to press her, to browbeat her, to make her doubt herself and her mission, but he also needed to let it all marinate in her mind. ¡°This world wasn¡¯t lost when the king died,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was lost when the king¡¯s son died. Thirlwell won¡¯t survive the rule of a queen. If she had children, that might be one thing, but she¡¯s not even married.¡± ¡°I will not abandon her,¡± said Third Fervor. Her grip on her spear tightened. ¡°You¡¯re trying to confuse me. It was you that killed the king, and probably his son as well, it was you who has stolen into the kingdom time and again, pursuing your own plots.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t care about the kingdom,¡± said Perry. ¡°I never have. Fenilor cares. He wants to destroy it.¡± ¡°You killed the king,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°You murdered him in cold blood.¡± ¡°He was going to shoot me for his own enjoyment,¡± said Perry. ¡°He was going to shoot me to test me. There was a real chance that it would have killed me. I reacted to a threat.¡± He didn¡¯t want to be having this conversation. He wanted the conversation that would destabilize her, that would fill her with doubt and make her armor weak. He wondered whether she was diverting on purpose. ¡°But at least he was exerting his will. We both know the queen would never have done that.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re trying here,¡± said Third Fervor. She was hesitant, waiting for him to clarify. She wanted an explanation, and that was a sign that he had probably gone far enough. Perry let out a breath. He wished he knew where Fenilor was. If the elf was hiding beneath the water, waiting for his time to strike ¡­ that would be bad for what Perry was about to try. ¡°Marchand, shoot to kill,¡± said Perry. The shoulder gun popped up almost before the word ¡®kill¡¯ was out of Perry¡¯s mouth. It fired four shots in rapid succession. She fell backward onto the ground she¡¯d been standing on, and before Perry could even move, the portal had snapped shut. ¡°Review footage,¡± said Perry. Marchand put up the video and played it back in slow motion. The first shot had struck her in the head, glanced off the armor, and the second had penetrated near her jaw, which had jerked upward from the first hit. That one had penetrated, at least if the zoomed and upscaled image could be believed, but there was no enormous spray of blood. The third and fourth shots had been to center mass instead, and both had hit her as she¡¯d already been moving, one against the breast and the other in her stomach, neither visibly bouncing off. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Any identification on where she was standing?¡± ¡°I cannot narrow it down much, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I saw stonework, but cannot even tell you whether she was standing in Thirlwell or, for some reason, Berus.¡± A map appeared and showed a dome sitting over the ocean, covering chunks of both islands. That was her thirty mile range, and she could have been anywhere. ¡°I was hoping for a kill,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fuck. Fuck. No sign of Fenilor?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have been on the lookout, and it does not appear that he has resurfaced. It is entirely possible that he never knew the fighting resumed.¡± ¡°I should have rushed the portal,¡± said Perry. ¡°Finished the job.¡± ¡°I do not believe you could have moved fast enough, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She might die from her wounds,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going up high, so that if the portal appears Fenilor won¡¯t be able to get to it.¡± He started climbing, using the power of the spear, but found it lackluster for vertical movement, especially since it was draining the power he¡¯d accumulated in it. He pulled out the sword and used that instead, which was slow but steady. ¡°Was there a reason you wanted her dead, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Fuck the monarchy,¡± said Perry, though he wasn¡¯t really feeling it, not if fucking the monarchy came with public executions. ¡°Indeed, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I saw her fighting,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s a nightmare. And she was holding back, that one last power, big mode. If I could finish her here and then leave after we deal with Fenilor ¡­ I don¡¯t want to fight her at peak power, not even as the mechawolf, because I don¡¯t think I would win.¡± He paused. ¡°Where the everloving fuck is the Farfinder?¡± ¡°I do not know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It is entirely possible that their prognostication has foreseen everything that¡¯s happened.¡± ¡°If Third Fervor is injured, that makes her prey for Fenilor,¡± said Perry. ¡°That doesn¡¯t benefit us. We need to kill her and then guard the portal until it goes away, while at the same time guarding Nima and Mette. I think that¡¯s the endgame. If I¡¯m not going to kill her, then I need to watch her.¡± They had risen high in the air while talking, high up enough that Fenilor wouldn¡¯t be able to reach them. It seemed as though Perry really had taken the best form of flight that Fenilor had, which was a better outcome than he had been hoping for when Fenilor had approached him over the water. The portals didn¡¯t always appear at opportune moments, which meant that Perry would need to stay there for quite some time. He didn¡¯t entirely want to go back into the shelf space while Third Fervor was still potentially kicking around and within range of him, but there was nothing in her powerset that said she should be able to shrug off a bullet that penetrated her armor. He would need to deal with Nima, but he was pretty sure that she could wait. When Perry took stock of his energy levels and the damage to the suit, he found that they were refilling faster than they should have, and that quite a bit of the damage was already fixed. Second sphere stuff was difficult to trace or understand, but there was something to the sensation that was familiar. ¡°March, are we ¡­ is there something with the moonlight?¡± he asked. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I believe it to be a consequence of the changes I made to our connection. The surface of the armor can capture moonlight, where before it would require your naked skin.¡± ¡°Meaning that the only thing keeping us from transformation is me?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°And the repairs, have you been doing that too?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Do you know how to do it?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Yes to which?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Both, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I have been prioritizing only the crucial repairs, particularly the hole that Fenilor had punctured through the torso, which introduced a structural weakness even with the nanite plug.¡± Perry could still feel the wound in his guts, spilling stomach acid and inflaming muscles whose names he didn¡¯t know. The damage had been contained and he was reversing it, but it had been a worse puncture than he¡¯d first thought, and certain movements brought a flare of pain. The wound on his back and his shoulder had been less severe, and would be gone in another hour if he didn¡¯t have to move too much. ¡°Sir, I do think it would behoove us to check on Mette and Nima,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fair. Still no sign of the Farfinder then?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I do suppose that they are watching and listening.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Perry. ¡°Let¡¯s get this done.¡± He stepped into the shelf, ready to deal with a hostage situation. ~~~~ Third Fervor lay in the castle taking deep, raspy breaths. This world wasn¡¯t one with good healing, but the doctors worked on her as best they could. They had wanted her to inhale something that would put her out, but she had refused it. When they removed the bullet from her lung, she bit down on a leather strap, trying not to use her special scream, which might have been loud enough to kill them. Her jaw had been cracked by one of the bullets, and biting down came with more pain, even after the injection they¡¯d given her to numb the area, even though she was biting only with the good side of her mouth. They were talking about drilling holes and putting in wires, which she could not allow them to do. The queen looked on anxiously. They had tried to send her away, but she had demanded that she stay and watch, and she was the queen, which meant they had no choice in the matter. She was in her nightgown, improperly dressed, but it wasn¡¯t clear to Third Fervor what proper dress for an operating room was. They had strapped Third Fervor down, given her reactions, and there was something erotic about them probing her guts, even as the pain nearly blinded her. Perry had tried to kill her for a second time. She had known better than to let him talk. That was how he had killed her king the first time, by pretending that he cared, by speaking as a friend rather than what he was. Yet there had been that other man, Fenilor, who had endless armors and weapons. Fenilor had been testing her, she was certain of that, and while it had felt like she might win against him, it had also felt like he could simply slip away whenever he wanted to. She cried out with a rasp in her voice, her lungs not quite working. The doctor had touched some vital part of her that was like yanking a thread looped around her brain. He had extracted a bit of metal though, and held it up to the light. If not for her jaw and the leather in her mouth, she might have thanked him. The feeling of the bright pain receding was almost akin to pleasure. Third Fervor¡¯s eyes found the queen¡¯s. The royal hands were covering the royal ears, and the royal eyes were weeping royal tears. Still, there was defiance there, and the queen did not look away from the bloody horror and the work of surgeons. Yet in her heart, Third Fervor could tell that Perry was right. A queen could be no true ruler. Perry had almost certainly not believed it, but that didn¡¯t stop what he said from being true. The pain yanked her away from her thoughts, and a shift of her bite on the leather strap brought part of her broken jaw down wrong, which amplified the torment. It was temporary. She would recover. If she needed to, she would take the queen somewhere safer, out of the way, though that would risk the entire monarchy. They would burrow until Third Fervor felt better, hide until they could meet their enemies head-on. If the queen was weak and incapable of guiding the country, they would find some way around that, some solution that would save the institution. Third Fervor owed it to Thirlwell. This was her job in this world, and once she accepted that, all the pain became easier to bear. ~~~~ Fenilor had watched everything from beneath the water. He was confident now in his ability to kill Third Fervor when the time was right. The loss of the spear stung: he¡¯d miscalculated Perry¡¯s sheer speed and power. Still, he was confident that he could win their next engagement, assuming he could pick a better battlefield. There was something he was missing though, some element to Perry¡¯s movements that wasn¡¯t making sense. Perry shouldn¡¯t have been able to find any of the hidden homes. He shouldn¡¯t have been able to make contacts so swiftly either. He was being supported by members of the various Command Authorities, but by their very nature the Command Authorities should have been circumspect in their dealings and limited in their powers. It was something that Fenilor was going to have to look into. The missing information was starting to gnaw at him. If he lost, it would be because he had found the source of the problem too late. The solution, then, was to work at a distance and uncover that which was meant to be concealed from him. When Perry was gone, Fenilor sat in the ocean for a time, breathing through the armor, considering his options. In a sense, defeating Perry wasn¡¯t even necessary. Thirlwell by itself would never restart the monarchy, in the same way a thorn in the side of a lion couldn¡¯t bring it down. Fenilor had time. And in that time, he would find out precisely what Perry was hiding. It was time to put his skills as an assassin to the test. Chapter 136 - Interlude: The Assassin and the Spy Dirk Gibbons was, so far as he could ascertain, completely fucked. He was yesterday¡¯s news at the bottom of a bird cage. He was a house of cards in a hurricane. He was cooked, garnished, and served with a side of regret. This version of him, anyway. It had originally been some comfort that he had the clones all over the world, carrying out the important work of statecraft, getting in the nitty gritty of politics and Command Authorities. He had hard-won faith in himself, and it could only be good for the culture to have more of him, given that he was clear-headed and willing to work the problem in a way that the culture didn¡¯t seem to incentivize. One of the long-term problems with the culture, at least in Dirk¡¯s opinion, was a lack of ambition and hard work, and there were times it seemed as though the entire superstructure of their society depended upon people who worked without a lever pushing them to work, the small contingent of those who would strive for the success of their people even when that meant putting in a hundred times the effort of the common citizen. There was, in fact, a term floating around that no one seemed to like, ¡°civic lynchpin¡±. Declaring that a single person was load bearing for a given community was ¡°not the culture¡±, as true as it often was. The world often felt short of those sorts of people, the ones who would devote themselves to the masses. There just weren¡¯t enough of them, and never would be. You needed people who stayed late, who cleaned up, who picked up extra shifts when no one else would, who did the difficult and boring work that no one would ever thank them for. The culture did its best to encourage and laud those people, and to mold children into becoming them, but they were still in short supply. The cloning machine changed all that. Dirk Gibbons was a civic lynchpin, and now there were lots of him. There was no worry that he would catch a cold and die, leaving a gaping hole in global planning. And since Dirk was no longer unique and important, just one of many Dirks, that meant that he could engage in high risk activities that no one could possibly have justified him doing before. Dirk hadn¡¯t meant to become the spymaster of Thirlwell. He¡¯d only meant to infiltrate and keep an eye on them while covering their operations and recruiting what people he could to the cause. He was supposed to be stirring up shit and getting notes on what the country was up to, given that they were one of the global ¡°areas of concern¡±. It had just happened to be that their intelligence network was ripe for the plucking. Given that he had the entirety of a much more competent intelligence network on his side, it hadn¡¯t actually been that hard to get into a position of power ¡ª all he had to do was feed information to the right people, set up the right schemes, and watch his predecessor resign in disgrace. And now it was almost certainly going to bite him in the ass. It would have been bad enough if it was just the thresholders he had to worry about, men and women from other worlds with completely unknown abilities, but he apparently had to worry about the other Dirks as well. There was at least one operating in Berus, and he wouldn¡¯t have been entirely surprised to find that there was one operating in Thirlwell as well. If Dirk had a personality defect, it was that he often thought ¡°I¡¯ll do it myself¡±, even when it sometimes wasn¡¯t necessary. That was precisely the thing that had made him into a civic lynchpin, but there were natural downsides to that mentality. The personal downside was that he put a lot on his plate and ran at a constant high level of stress from all the roles and responsibilities ¡ª something the clones had helped with immensely. The communal downside was that he stepped on peoples¡¯ toes, and with the clones, now he was stepping on his own toes. If Third Fervor got a whiff of the clones, she would flay him alive, and it was bad enough that she knew there were clones, even if she seemed to misunderstand their source and nature. Dirk¡¯s decision to stage a suicide for Perry¡¯s clone had gone disastrously wrong, with the clone apparently turning into a giant monster that broke free from his manacles and killed a good number of guards before disappearing into the countryside and somehow not being found. It was about as wrong as a staged suicide could go, more wrong than he¡¯d known was possible a few years ago, and he was thankful that he¡¯d left the room rather than waiting for the clone to bleed out. So there were at least two people who had a reason to kill him, both with the capacity to do so. And then of course there was Nima, who had met the other Dirk, and could instantly connect the dots if they were ever to meet each other. He had thankfully figured that out in time and given himself every distance he could from her, stationing her in one of the old holding houses, but with the power of portals they could be face to face at literally any moment. All that would take is for Third Fervor to decide that she knew best. When Dirk was woken up and summoned late in the night, he had thought it might be the end for him, which would also be a blow to the culture. He tried to think about that rather than his own mortality, but it was difficult. Third Fervor was fast and strong, nearly invulnerable in her armor, and as Dirk went down the hallways of the castle, he felt a lump in his throat. It felt like he¡¯d run out of options, and the thing to worry about was what to do to maximize the impact of his death. He was, unexpectedly, brought to the castle¡¯s medical center. Third Fervor was laid out on a gurney, her armor removed. He had never seen her without her armor, and was surprised by just how pale her skin was. She had curly brown hair that he wouldn¡¯t have expected, and while he never would have said she was plain-looking, the armor had given him the impression that she wasn¡¯t human. With the doctors looking over her, it was clear that she was mortal. Someone had destroyed part of her jaw, but most of the attention was being paid to her stomach, where blood was flowing freely. Gut wounds could easily kill, at least for normal people, and Dirk immediately began thinking of what it would take to finish the job right then and there. He could do it himself, if he had to. From what he knew of her abilities, he¡¯d have to do it quickly, but even approaching the gurney might make her flee ¡ª or scream loud enough to kill him and everyone in the room. He almost didn¡¯t register the queen standing there in her nightgown. When he did, he moved to her. ¡°I was summoned,¡± he said. ¡°I wasn¡¯t given details.¡± ¡°A fight,¡± said the queen as Third Fervor cried out in pain. Her face was streaked with tears, though Dirk imagined that this was just the result of accumulated stress and heartbreak. ¡°Are we safe to be standing here?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°We will stay by her side,¡± said the queen. In spite of the fact that she¡¯d been crying, her face was set. ¡°She fought for this kingdom.¡± ¡°Without her, we¡¯re vulnerable,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Did she say where their people were?¡± ¡°No,¡± said the queen. ¡°She was woken in the middle of the night when the alarm was raised. After she left, she appeared before four guards stationed in the east balcony tied up in vines, which they cut from her, then disappeared to fight again. When she came back, she was injured. They brought her here.¡± ¡°The alarm,¡± said Dirk. ¡°From where? Spotters?¡± ¡°No,¡± said the queen. ¡°Nima was attacked, or possibly taken. I didn¡¯t get the full report.¡± Dirk came close to letting out a sigh of relief, but he had trained and practiced, and showed no emotions except those he meant to show. ¡°I¡¯ll get the report,¡± he said. ¡°She was of dubious value, and if she was broken out ¡­¡± ¡°It would call into question the information we¡¯ve gotten from her thus far,¡± said the queen. She only had eyes for Third Fervor. Dirk was surprised that she¡¯d made the connection he had laid down for her. He¡¯d been trying to discredit Nima since she¡¯d arrived on their shores, but it was best to lay the seed for distrust now so he could take up the case against her without being suspicious. ¡°I¡¯ll work through the night,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Mmm,¡± said the queen. She turned to look at him. ¡°I called you here for a reason. Third Fervor and I will be going away as soon as she¡¯s well enough to take me. The assault on Nima might have been an assault on me. With my father and brother both dead, I could very well be next, and our primary asset being out of commission would give them plenty of opportunity.¡± ¡°Yes, your grace,¡± said Dirk with a bow. ¡°I will make my appearances, but they¡¯ll be with her help,¡± said the queen. ¡°I don¡¯t know where we¡¯re going to stay, but I¡¯m sure you have guidance on the matter. Somewhere far from here.¡± ¡°Yes, your grace,¡± said Dirk after a moment. ¡°Our foreign holdings are scarce. There are credibly as few as three, all places that have not been seized by symboulions. Give me half an hour to consider it. Only the two of you?¡± ¡°I am low on trust,¡± said the queen. She ran her fingers through her hair, which was hanging loosely at her shoulders. ¡°It will be only the two of us, because she has proven herself beyond reproach. But there are lingering questions, Thom. I need you to find out how they knew where Nima was being kept.¡± Her eyes were intense. He hadn¡¯t thought much of her when she¡¯d just been a princess, but she was proving to have hidden depths. ¡°And I need, more than anything, to find out what happened to my brother.¡± Dirk¡¯s mouth was a tight line. They¡¯d had this conversation before. He was Thirlwell¡¯s spymaster, and had already registered his opinion that it had been suicide. If it wasn¡¯t a suicide, it was so impeccably staged that it was indistinguishable from suicide, and no amount of questioning was going to change anything. ¡°I¡¯ll keep up the questioning,¡± said Dirk. That was as much as he would give her. ¡°If someone knows something, they¡¯ll eventually fold. I¡¯ve already had people with the finest masks looking over the room.¡± ¡°Someone needs to hang for my father¡¯s death,¡± said the queen. ¡°That man can be brought to justice by Third Fervor and Third Fervor alone. But someone must also hang for my brother¡¯s death. I do not accept it as coincidence. The people do not accept it. Do you understand me?¡± ¡°I understand,¡± said Dirk. ¡°But ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said the queen, holding up a hand. ¡°There is a viper in the henhouse. It must be found and made an example of. Find it.¡± Dirk nodded. ¡°Yes, your grace.¡± She was asking him to find someone, anyone, who could credibly be accused of having poisoned the prince. She wanted a symbol that would show that the kingdom was still in control, that someone had their hands on the reins, and from her tone she didn¡¯t particularly care whether or not the person Dirk found was actually responsible. He moved away from her, off to find a place for the two of them to hide out, as well as to get a report from the jail that had been holding Nima. In theory, he was also going to put more effort into finding the prince¡¯s killer, but the idea of finding a scapegoat made his stomach churn.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it He was the one who¡¯d killed the prince. Assassination was not the culture. It was very much not the culture. If anyone ever found out he¡¯d been the one responsible, he and all the other Dirks would probably lose the authorities that had been granted to them. It wouldn¡¯t just be a blow to him, it would be a blow to the culture as a whole, a cause for the masses to re-evaluate their relationship with the Command Authorities, to question what was being done with resources from the commons. He¡¯d done it anyway. The prince had been a sadist, unacceptable as a ruler, and had often spoken in private moments about what he would do when he was king. When Dirk had first heard the prince express these dark thoughts, he¡¯d assumed that the prince trusted him for some reason, but no, the prince spoke of these things to almost everyone, dismissing it as a twisted sense of humor if anyone objected ¡ª and because he was the presumptive heir, there was always an undercurrent of threat, one that stopped people from talking. Some of the things that Dirk had heard come from the prince¡¯s mouth would have been decried as ludicrous character assassination if they¡¯d been printed in the papers. In killing the prince, Dirk had probably spared the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands. Still, it wasn¡¯t the culture, and he knew that. His only solace was that the culture understood that contradictions were required and that dogma was the enemy. He wouldn¡¯t be able to argue a good case, if he lived long enough for that, but his defense would be that it needed to be done. The king had many people working for him to make weapons that could be used against the peoples of the world in both threat and retribution, and those powers, in the hands of the prince, in the wake of his father¡¯s death ¡­ well, assassination had been the correct course, come what may. But pinning the crime on a useful patsy wasn¡¯t something that Dirk was going to do, as pragmatic as it might be. He would have to find a way to navigate the queen¡¯s demand, one that satisfied the need to show control while at the same time working toward Dirk¡¯s goal, which was the dissolution of the monarchy. The queen was supposed to be the best choice of heir, but if she was going to turn her mind toward retribution, she might have to be eliminated too, which would mean the other princess, who was much younger, would become queen instead. For the time being, Dirk was going to sit tight and work the problems, hoping that it would all, somehow, work out in the end. Nima was gone, that was something, and Third Fervor was going to be less of a problem until she recovered. In fact, with the queen under protection and the thresholder out of commission, it might be possible to put other plans in motion across Thirlwell, ones that would firm up the grip of the culture and bring about a clean revolution on a reasonable timescale. He¡¯d gone from dreading his imminent execution to thinking about trying to end the monarchy, and he stopped to take a moment to be grateful for that. Somewhere out there, it seemed like someone was looking out for him. ~~~~ Fenilor had been around the world a dozen times over, exploring cities and their people, learning from their comings and goings, listening in on their conversations and speaking with their officials, guards, and clerics. Thirlwell and Berus were island nations, important in the sense that they had once been imperial powers, but of shrinking relevance as the sequence of revolutions had taken root. It was intriguing to see them now, fallen powers running off the fumes of empire. In Berus, Fenilor moved with impunity. He walked the city streets as an elf, taking his food from the recently set up dining halls where everyone was still getting used to the fact that food would be provided as a basic necessity. They weren¡¯t the happy smiling people that Fenilor was used to elsewhere in the world, but he was confident that they would get there in time as the old wounds faded into the past and the golden domes provided their bounty without the dread effluence from the lanterns. It would be a poorer existence in some ways, at least at first, but the assets of the nobility had been seized and were being redistributed. Berus had a strain of militancy that Fenilor had not seen elsewhere, which was worrisome. The culture worked, but there was no guarantee that it would work in every circumstance. There was also no guarantee that it would continue to work in the future, as much as it was tempting to look at the passing decades as proof it could weather anything. Elves were uncommon in Berus, so his presence drew some stares, even in the city of Calamus, where people should have been more familiar with those of other races. He was taken for a foreigner, which was true enough, but he wasn¡¯t connected with the symboulions, which was doubly odd. More people were coming in with every passing week, drawn from across the world, those with expertise and ambitions to get the country working, so he fit in with them in that sense. The people of this world thought him young, in the way of their elves, reborn not more than ten or twenty years ago, witness to little. He allowed them to think that, as he had for the last five hundred years, and he listened to their stories, complaints, and idle chatter as he ate simple stew with simple bread. There was a deep anger in Berus, but only some of it was directed at their former kingdom. The people had grown up with stories of an empire that spanned the seas, one they thought was their birthright. There were those of them old enough to remember when they¡¯d had the bounty of the entire world, when lantern-powered ships had meant the apples were in season at all times of the year and spices would come in by the tonne. The rich were most often the beneficiaries of those shipments, grown fat off what had been looted, but some of it had trickled down, at least while the empire held. The anger was the anger of those who thought that they would or should be like an empire again. The frustration was from a people who had suspected that revolution would mean that everyone would become rich. Instead, they were learning that revolution meant hardship, at least initially, and when that hardship had passed and the lanterns had gone cold, they would still not be dressed in the finery of kings and still not eat the bounty of the world. They would have simple, functional clothes of high quality and simple, nutritious meals made from local sources. Their needs would be met, and from what he could see of them, they might grow discontent anyway. Fenilor had no small amount of frustration with these people, but it wasn¡¯t a new frustration. It was an important part of culture building, finding the places where expectations did not meet with reality. It would be the work of the faithful to bring understanding to the people of the crowded dining halls and gaming parlors. He tried to ignore a gnawing fear that the culture might fail here, after so much time. At night, he broke into buildings and read through their papers. It wasn¡¯t unusual for symboulions to put things down, and meeting minutes were considered a public good. It led to accountability, or at least that was the thought. The amount of paper required was immense, and some of the work had clearly been done by people with no experience, but Fenilor read through as much as he could, looking for information. In page after page there was nothing on Perry, and little on Third Fervor. They didn¡¯t know about thresholders, or if they did, they hadn¡¯t had a meeting about it. The Berus Security symboulion had been organized to deal with the remaining elements of the counter-revolution, and there was an inner symboulion with private meetings, but after combing through their files too, it seemed like they knew a lot less than people assumed. There were unsavory details in there too, things that Fenilor didn¡¯t particularly like to see. It was one thing to kill those who were responsible for what had been done under the system of monarchy, and another thing entirely to jail the workers whose main crime seemed to be a delusion that the monarchy might be restored. Fenilor found Perry¡¯s name only once, in the minutes of a meeting about agricultural practices with a focus on whether the moving machines might still be used to sow and harvest. Perry was listed as a bodyguard to a dwarf named Moss, but did not speak through the course of the meeting. Those were the only meeting minutes that listed bodyguards, and were from an earlier date. No doubt the change in protocol was logged somewhere in the meeting minutes that Fenilor hadn¡¯t gone through ¡ª or perhaps it was one of those things that was never written down and nevertheless became a part of how things are done. The name of Moss Grumhill was familiar to Fenilor. He had been around since the early years, and while they had never met, Moss had been working as an engineer of some skill for a very long time. It was no great surprise that he¡¯s come to Calamus. As wide as the world was, the same names kept coming up over and over, those with skills and connections, the ones that were a part of the machinery of the culture. What was surprising was that Moss was still apparently married to Velli, another name that Fenilor was familiar with. She was an elf, reborn every so often, and by the accounting of this world she was a different person each time. Any marriage to an elf was dissolved on rebirth, as were any contracts they¡¯d signed or agreements they made ¡ª partly because they had only vague memories of their previous life. If Fenilor needed to, he could take up his old name, but it would be assumed that he was an entirely different person. If Velli was still with Moss, it was because he was continually putting work into wooing each new version of her. It was a week and a half after the big fight when he finally found Velli. She had been elevated by a symboulion vote to become, at least temporarily, one of the chief dispensers of the royal wealth. In spite of her importance, she ate her meals in one of the local dining halls, often with other librarians, but sometimes alone. On one of the occasions that she ate alone, Fenilor sat down beside her with a plate of his own food. She regarded him, eyes going to his pointed ears, though of course you could tell an elf from bone structure alone. She was wearing something conservative by elven standards, a tightly-fitting top that covered her skin down to her elbow and a skirt that came to just above her knees. ¡°Do I know you?¡± she asked. ¡°In another life,¡± said Fenilor with a smile. It was a common elven greeting. He held out a hand and gave her a fake name, and once introductions were made, they both ate for a bit. ¡°I¡¯m surprised that they¡¯ve elevated you,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°There is no elevation,¡± Velli said gently. ¡°That is not the culture.¡± ¡°You have authority to mete out the treasures that this kingdom has taken from the world,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°What is that if not elevation?¡± ¡°It is a duty,¡± said Velli. ¡°If I saw it as power, it would be a duty I wasn¡¯t fit for.¡± She tapped the tines of her fork against her plate. The meal of the day was an unappetizing fish with lantern-made bread. ¡°I don¡¯t take these as aspersions, but I assume you sought me out for a reason?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been searching for a man,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°He goes by the unusual name of Peregrin Holzmann.¡± ¡°I see,¡± said Velli. She offered nothing more and had paused in eating her food. ¡°He was aboard the airship you came in on,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°There was an altercation there, wasn¡¯t there? But it¡¯s unclear to me what actually happened.¡± ¡°They were counter-revolutionaries,¡± said Velli. ¡°Remnants of a network of spies and operatives in Kerry Coast City. They wanted to take the ship to Thirlwell.¡± Fenilor grinned at her. ¡°From the report, they ¡ª¡± ¡°Fenilor,¡± she said. The grin stayed on his face. ¡°I don¡¯t wish you any harm,¡± he said. ¡°I just want information. There¡¯s something I¡¯m missing about Perry.¡± ¡°There¡¯s little I can tell you,¡± said Velli. ¡°I learned of his true nature ¡ª if we can even be said to know it ¡ª only in the last two weeks.¡± She pursed her lips. ¡°I wanted to thank you for everything you¡¯ve done.¡± ¡°I assume you don¡¯t know much of what I¡¯ve done,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Likely not,¡± said Velli. ¡°But I know my history well enough to know a fraction of what you¡¯ve helped to accomplish. The culture was not your sole creation, but it would not have existed without you.¡± She gave a slow, solemn nod of her head. ¡°It is likely that you will know my full history, in time,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°The truth is a vital part of the commons. It is one of the reasons religion could not stand. There are statues that were made in haste which will need to be torn down.¡± ¡°We will have our own reckoning with the past, I am sure,¡± said Velli. ¡°But no matter what you¡¯ve done, my thanks will remain.¡± Fenilor nodded. ¡°If my past means something to you, will you tell me about Perry?¡± ¡°I have no loyalty to him, and he certainly seems to have no loyalty to me,¡± said Velli. ¡°I would hide nothing on his account, nor have I been asked to.¡± ¡°Then I¡¯m afraid I¡¯ve wasted my time,¡± said Fenilor, standing up from his seat. ¡°I don¡¯t expect you to stay silent about my appearance here.¡± Velli was silent as he turned to go. He had no idea whether or not she was telling the truth, but it was no matter: he would follow her and see where the trail led. She spoke with her husband, and her husband spoke with another man named Dirk Gibbons, who pulled a machine from inside his pocket that seemed to be technological in origin. The three of them were a unit, it seemed, important people who shared secrets. The device was interesting, as it was far beyond the capacity of this world to create, and could only have come from Perry. Fenilor watched from a distance, aided by a magical bow, as Perry arrived. Curiously, astonishingly, he came out of a door on the roof of the building, and there was a brief glimpse inside ¡ª confederates, but not ones that Fenilor knew. Fenilor could see the conversation but not hear it. That didn¡¯t matter. Perry had abilities beyond what he had shown. He had allies. If there was an answer to how he¡¯d found the mine, it was there: someone was working with Perry. Unknown forces were in play with agendas of their own. Fenilor watched the meeting and looked closely as Perry left through the same door, having left through the balcony. He saw little, but that didn¡¯t matter. Time, as always, was on Fenilor¡¯s side. Chapter 137 - Technopole The Farfinder would have been getting crowded if not for all the extradimensional space. Mette and Kes were both living there, Perry had a room, and Nima was imprisoned in a recreation of the bedroom she¡¯d had in her home world. There hadn¡¯t really been any choice in the matter, given how important it was to remove her from the playing field, but it was a soft imprisonment. Mette kept her company, and there had been no further attempts at hostage taking. Perry¡¯s eyes were on the monitor that tracked Third Fervor, who was convalescing. She healed fast enough that in another week, she might be back at full strength, aside from the lasting damage to her face. He wanted to kill her where she lay, and argued with Hella about it. Because prognostics took some time, ¡°doing prognostics¡± meant making a plan with a built-in timer. After six hours had passed, Perry would go to where Third Fervor was resting and either kill her on the spot or force her to use the portal. He had been given the tracking magic and software to use, a surprisingly large piece of equipment stuffed in the shelfspace and mediated by Marchand, which would allow him to know where she¡¯d gone off to. In theory, the Farfinder would get him at the end of six hours before he¡¯d embarked on the plan, because their prognostics would be done by then, running through a possible scenario. Perry¡¯s plan was to stalk her like a wounded gazelle, interrupting her sleep, which she needed and he did not. Of course, the main plan was to just get her while she slept. Instead, they¡¯d pulled him after four hours. ¡°Caves,¡± said Hella, hands folded across her chest. ¡°Caves,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°We can get you places with a door,¡± said Hella. ¡°We can also physically move the ship at great speeds and set you down anywhere on the surface of the planet. But what we don¡¯t currently have the capacity to do is to place you inside of a building with no doors or a cave system. And unfortunately, Third Fervor can both sense and teleport to any cave system within thirty miles of her, including caves with openings smaller than you are.¡± Perry sighed. ¡°Okay, so I would need to kill her instantly or sneak up on her in the dead of night making no sound. Can we run prognostics on that?¡± ¡°We¡¯re pretty sure that she would just turtle if she can¡¯t fight,¡± said Hella. ¡°Going to a cave system must be something she¡¯s worked out ¡ª she¡¯s only a portal away. If we had Orchard missiles, we could just bomb their house and kill her and the queen in one fell swoop, but our armaments aren¡¯t that strong.¡± ¡°Rod from god?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± asked Hella. ¡°It¡¯s, uh, a method of warfare where you drop something very dense and heavy from very high in the sky,¡± said Perry. ¡°Kinetic bombardment, I think it might have been called. March?¡± ¡°I am familiar with the technique,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though Earth 2 referred to it as a gravity cannon, and it was not thought to be particularly viable as a method of attack, given concerns about accuracy and cost. However, given the ship can easily maneuver into orbit and prognostics can be used for targeting, it does seem possible to drop ten tons of tungsten on an arc that would hit our target. The damage would be immense.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Or a nuclear weapon, we could use one of those too if we make one. I could sneak one into range without her knowing. Actually, I¡¯m pretty sure that stealth would be viable, even if she¡¯s sleeping in the armor now.¡± That was a change, and it wasn¡¯t clear how long it would last. Second sphere was the only thing that had made sleeping in armor tolerable for Perry. ¡°You understand that my objection is not about viability, right?¡± asked Hella. ¡°We want her alive because she¡¯s not a threat to anyone at the moment, and in theory, won¡¯t be a threat moving into the future. She wants to serve her queen, and her queen wants revenge against you, but your advantage is your ability to hide, especially if you have our help. She can¡¯t touch you. She¡¯ll be more difficult to fight later on, but if you want to deprive her of sleep, or throw a rock from space, you can do that later, to the extent you can do that now. If we monitor her now, she¡¯s a trap for Fenilor. And potentially, she¡¯s an asset against him.¡± ¡°She wasn¡¯t able to finish the job,¡± said Perry. ¡°Neither was he,¡± said Hella. ¡°I reviewed the same footage you did. They want to kill each other for ideological reasons, and if they fight each other, we have an advantage.¡± ¡°Unless he kills her outright,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can¡¯t track him,¡± said Hella. ¡°But we know where she is, and if he comes close ¡ª within a half mile ¡ª we¡¯ll be able to see the hole he leaves. It¡¯s far better for us to see the hole he leaves when he¡¯s coming for her, rather than seeing it when he¡¯s coming for you. She¡¯s better bait than any bait we could leave out. And in the meantime, he might bite on traps we set for him. Time is on our side here. There are things we¡¯re still setting up, things we still need to acquire.¡± Perry had grudgingly agreed. Third Fervor was a threat, but she wasn¡¯t the major one, and even after she had healed back to her full strength, he was fairly sure her armor would stay weakened. It wasn¡¯t just the things he¡¯d said, it was that the bullets had actually pierced her, and that had to take a psychological toll. Her resolve had been weakened, and she¡¯d had it confirmed that her resolve had been weakened. Once the damage to his armor and body had been fully repaired, Perry went to the northern hemisphere to get one of the masks that Dirk had told him about. ~~~~ The world was, in theory, multicultural, but in practice the variations in the races and their cultures, as well as their historical distributions, meant that some places were much more homogenous than others. Elves preferred the cold, which was one of the reasons they went around scantily clad in temperate regions, while dwarves and their pig-wives preferred hotter climes. Far enough north, the shrimp-headed pennic couldn¡¯t even survive, which meant that the melekee, orcs, and elves dominated. Perry was in his armor with his helmet off, hidden beneath heavy furs that wouldn¡¯t mark him as terribly out of place. If he had to give an Earth analog to the place he was going, it would be Siberia or northern Alaska, except it was more populated than either of them. The lanterns allowed cities to flourish almost anywhere, regardless of whether there was good farmland, in much the same way that Earth¡¯s global logistics infrastructure allowed people to survive solely through regular resupply. Tetrankersh was about as out of the way as a civilization could get. It vaguely reminded Perry of the Nordic countries, though he¡¯d never actually been to the Nordic countries, only studied their maps. Maybe it was the snow or the conifers. The city itself was huddled around its domes like they were campfires, and so far as Perry knew, that was essentially true ¡ª the domes could make almost anything aside from metal, and one of the uses was to transform magical energy into heat energy, though he didn¡¯t know the specifics. There were three of the domes, and every single one of the buildings around it had a gray utilitarian quality to it, with little of the artwork that adorned every other city that Perry had been to. It was the West¡¯s view of how communism was supposed to look, drab and monotonous, with all the soul sucked right out of it. It probably didn¡¯t help that it was the dead of winter. Perry followed the GPS, Marchand, to the address he¡¯d been given. He had no reason to believe that this version of Moss would know he was coming, since news simply didn¡¯t travel around the world all that fast. He pounded hard on the door, and it took a long while for the door to open only a small crack. Inside was Moss, staring hard, looking Perry up and down. ¡°Come in then,¡± said Moss. Perry moved inside, through an entryway, but didn¡¯t remove the furs, because beneath them was his armor. It would take some explaining. The interior of the house explained where all the color had gone. The walls were an aggressive orange color, but Perry could barely see them because the living room was cluttered with plants. There was a single large chair and a table in the center of the room, both for Moss¡¯ height, and a long overstuffed couch that was a bit taller and might, in a pinch, have served as a bed. A bowl of fish sat on a claw-footed table and a bookcase was filled with enough books that it could almost have been considered a small library in its own right. ¡°This ¡­ is your house?¡± asked Perry. It was stiflingly warm, and a touch humid, which might have been because of all the plants. ¡°Who are you?¡± asked Moss. He had his arms folded across his chest. He looked different than the one Perry had met on the airship. His hair was shorter, though he still had a full beard, and he was wearing clothes that seemed to suit the warm house, showing thick, muscular arms. ¡°I don¡¯t know you.¡± ¡°Peregrin Holzmann,¡± said Perry. ¡°Though I doubt that name means anything to you. I was sent here by Dirk Gibbons.¡± Moss sighed like an air mattress deflating. ¡°Gibbons wants something from me, does he?¡± ¡°A mask,¡± said Perry. ¡°A collection of masks, actually. Masks for all occasions.¡± ¡°And he knows that no one is supposed to know about them?¡± asked Moss. ¡°He did seem to know that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Exigent circumstances.¡± Moss sighed. ¡°Then I suppose I¡¯ll get some masks for you, shall I?¡± ¡°Just like that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Is there something I should know?¡± asked Moss, raising a hairy eyebrow. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean ¡­ I would have thought you¡¯d want proof that I had actually been sent here by Dirk Gibbons instead of getting his name from a ledger somewhere. I don¡¯t even have a letter from him.¡± Moss frowned. ¡°Where are you from? Originally, I mean?¡± ¡°Far away,¡± said Perry. ¡°Former colony?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. He considered that, and decided that by some definition, the United States of America counted. ¡°Technically.¡± ¡°There are certain people who have, in their minds, a way of doing things,¡± said Moss. He went to sit down in his chair and gestured for Perry to take the couch. He did it slowly, reluctantly. ¡°They always want there to be less trust, more verification, more paperwork, more proof. It¡¯s how they were brought up.¡± ¡°I think it would be easy for an enemy to come here and steal something that¡¯s supposed to be secret,¡± said Perry. ¡°All they would need is knowledge, and that can¡¯t be that hard to get. A team of spies, three of them, could rob this place blind if you¡¯re just giving things away at the mere mention of Dirk Gibbons.¡± ¡°Perhaps,¡± said Moss with a shrug. ¡°There are resources here, and secrets too.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not concerned,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s fine, I suppose. I¡¯m just surprised.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not impossible there are spies here,¡± said Moss. ¡°It¡¯s not impossible that you are one such spy. There are two kingdoms left, and both have unfurled their tentacles. The suckers are latched on.¡± ¡°There¡¯s only one kingdom left,¡± said Perry. ¡°Has news of what happened in Berus not reached here yet?¡± ¡°Shipments are rare, word is rare,¡± said Moss. He shrugged. ¡°I¡¯d thought it would take more time for the kingdom to fall.¡± ¡°The king was assassinated,¡± said Perry. ¡°Well, I¡¯ll hope that someone¡¯s prepared a digest for me, and that it made it on the airship this time,¡± said Moss. He folded his hands in his lap. ¡°I suppose we should get on with it, since I have some shipments that should have come in with you.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t come on an airship,¡± said Perry. ¡°Hrm?¡± asked Moss. He raised a bushy eyebrow. ¡°How so? Overland in winter is ¡ª¡± ¡°Magic,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was going to say that I don¡¯t have time to explain it all, but I guess in this case, I do. And ¡­ I already explained it to you once.¡± Moss was very still for a moment. ¡°Ah. You¡¯re a time traveler.¡± ¡°Wha-what?¡± asked Perry. If he¡¯d really wanted to, he might have been able to clamp down his confusion with second sphere and been calmly impassive. Moss laughed. ¡°Only joking. Whatever magic it is that brought you, was this one of the reasons you came?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ I don¡¯t think it¡¯s why Dirk sent me, but he¡¯s a shifty guy, so it¡¯s difficult to say. If he¡¯d asked me to, with no masks to speak of, I would have come. He knows I have a soft spot for you.¡± ¡°And how is the other me doing?¡± asked Moss. Perry grimaced. ¡°Dead, unfortunately.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Moss. He didn¡¯t seem fazed. ¡°Another has been, er, made,¡± said Perry. ¡°But the one I knew best is gone.¡± He cleared his throat. ¡°I was your bodyguard, for a time. We got to know each other, at least a little bit.¡± ¡°And you failed in your duty?¡± asked Moss. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or maybe yes, depending on how you count it. I wasn¡¯t on duty at the time, but maybe I should have been there.¡± ¡°I feel no close kinship with the clones,¡± said Moss. ¡°We get along though. There¡¯s another that lives here. Perhaps you¡¯ll meet him before you go.¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t that dangerous?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean, as far as secrecy goes?¡± Moss laughed. ¡°Did Dirk tell you nothing? You¡¯re in a research town. This is where the machine was first made.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I ¡­ had kind of wondered why it was out in the middle of nowhere.¡± ¡°Tetrankersh dates back to the early revolution,¡± said Moss. ¡°The central dome, it was one of the first. This place was meant to make weapons, or defenses if we could, to develop the tools to fight against the monarchies.¡± ¡°And decades later, that¡¯s still ongoing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I would think that living here would be, uh ¡­ not the culture. You¡¯re so divorced from the wider world.¡±You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. ¡°We¡¯re united in common purpose,¡± said Moss. ¡°But you¡¯re right that it¡¯s not how it¡¯s supposed to work. We operate under our own Command Authority, and requisition material support from all across the globe. It¡¯s necessary.¡± ¡°Necessary for what purpose?¡± asked Perry. Moss shifted uncomfortably. ¡°Do you have something you can show me?¡± he asked. ¡°Something that proves you came here without an airship?¡± ¡°You¡¯re asking for proof now?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Uh ¡­ one sec.¡± Perry began taking off the heavy furs that concealed his armor, with the mittens being taken off first. Moss¡¯ eyes widened as the blue power armor was revealed, and widened further when Perry reached into the shelf space and pulled out his sword. Perry hovered above the floor for a moment, long enough that Moss could watch, then set himself down. Some of it, at least, Moss would assume was from Implements. ¡°And Dirk sent you here?¡± asked Moss. ¡°He wants you to have more power?¡± ¡°There are powerful enemies,¡± said Perry. ¡°You didn¡¯t die to simple rebels.¡± ¡°Dirk was always quick to grab at power,¡± said Moss. ¡°I¡¯m mostly surprised that he sent someone here to grab it.¡± He paused. ¡°No, I¡¯m really surprised to see someone with these powers at all.¡± He looked over the armor. ¡°This is like the ones we send down?¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know how those work, exactly, but no.¡± He mostly had experience with the hulking pieces of armor sitting idly by while Kerry Coast City was bombed, unable to do anything, not even help with search and rescue. He hadn¡¯t been impressed. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Moss. He was still looking at the armor. ¡°You said you had time to explain?¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Time is on our side, at the moment.¡± He didn¡¯t really believe it though. So far as he knew, the other two were thinking the same. Perry started with an explanation of different worlds, including the one he¡¯d come from and the ones he¡¯d visited. He talked about thresholders and the patterns that had been observed so far, leaving out some of his early naive assumptions about how it worked. The breadth of worlds was difficult to describe in brief, and the Farfinder didn¡¯t have a good taxonomy, but Perry tried his best to paint a picture. Moss sat silently, but the dwarf had always been a little difficult to read. It wasn¡¯t until Perry got to the arrivals of thresholders on Markat that Moss finally spoke. ¡°Lay out the timeline for me, as precisely as you know it,¡± he said. His voice was tightly controlled. Perry nodded and gave the dates, aided by Marchand. Moss swore. ¡°This whole time,¡± he said. Perry waited. ¡°Dirk didn¡¯t know about this work,¡± said Moss. ¡°I¡¯m sure of it. But you¡¯ve given me a missing puzzle piece, the solution to a problem that we¡¯ve been working on for a very long time.¡± ¡°You have a way to detect the punches,¡± said Perry. ¡°Huh.¡± ¡°Punches?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Is that what you call them?¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°The introduction of physics from one world into another by way of a fourth-dimensional tunnel, that¡¯s a punch, yeah.¡± Moss ran his fingers through his hair. ¡°And there¡¯s going to be another?¡± ¡°Not like the ones from before,¡± said Perry. ¡°This will be an exit, it¡¯ll have different directionality.¡± He frowned. His understanding was very thin. The higher dimensional stuff got mathy in a hurry. ¡°Why, do you have ¡­ some way of interacting with it?¡± Moss nodded. ¡°You can travel quickly? Get something to Dirk? That one, I mean, the one that¡¯s off where the action is?¡± ¡°I can,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t say he¡¯s a friend, because I don¡¯t imagine that a guy like that actually has friends, but we¡¯ve been working together. You want me to transport something dangerous?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a sheaf of papers,¡± said Moss. ¡°So yes, quite dangerous.¡± Perry nodded slowly. He was obviously going to read those papers at the next available opportunity. In fact, Marchand had probably already started dumping nanites, but more would need to be spread around the place. And the Farfinder would have to investigate this place, snooping through their books to see what fruits their research had produced. ¡°Come,¡± said Moss, hoisting himself up from his chair. ¡°I¡¯ll get dressed and I can take you to one of the facilities. I¡¯ll get you what you need, then what Dirk needs.¡± He looked Perry up and down. ¡°I haven¡¯t mentioned it, but you coming here in armor isn¡¯t the best sign you¡¯re friendly.¡± ¡°It protects against the cold,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or at least, until it gets cold enough.¡± ¡°Useful,¡± said Moss, envy in his eyes. It took Moss some time to get ready to go out into the cold, mostly lacing up heavy boots and throwing on a cloak and hat and thick gloves. ¡°Why was this place built somewhere so inhospitable?¡± asked Perry. ¡°To discourage people from living here,¡± said Moss. He pushed out the door and Perry followed after with his own fur cloak slipped back on, though he¡¯d stuck everything else in the shelf space. ¡°So you only get the true believers?¡± asked Perry. ¡°So we don¡¯t get a city built up next to things of some danger,¡± said Moss. ¡°People here have accepted the risk, have taken transportation, have forsaken families and friends. The culture here is different, and subordinate to the other culture, but this is also a place that no one will be demanding from us as a commons. It will not grow except as people are deliberately invited and deliberately accept the costs.¡± Moss was walking with purpose, and not appreciating the cold. He held his shoulders high and his head down like he was trying to burrow into his coat. ¡°And I suppose the secrecy doesn¡¯t hurt any,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Moss. ¡°Nor does the fact that this region is untouched by effluence, which might cause problems with delicate measurements or manufacturing. In fact, there is a total ban on lanterns across this entire town.¡± They made their way to a large structure beside one of the three domes, and Moss pulled a key from a pocket to unlock a door for them. They went in quickly, and Perry was mildly surprised to see Moss reach over and flick on a light switch. The lights took a moment to warm, then displayed an enormous work area with all kinds of machines spread over the place and haphazard parts stuffed into shelves along the walls. ¡°This is where the magic happens?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Magic and more,¡± nodded Moss. ¡°Technically you shouldn¡¯t be in here.¡± He moved over to a heavy safe that apparently didn¡¯t need a key or combination, only a brute twist of the wheel, and pulled out a stack of masks from it. ¡°This¡¯ll be what Dirk wants for you, I would guess.¡± Perry took the proffered stack and looked them over. There were four, all of designs that he¡¯d seen before: one that had allowed the laser eye, one that slowed people, one that toughened surfaces, and a final one that would let him pinch some heads. There were many more masks, but those were the most powerful and the most standardized, and if that was what was on offer, it was what he would take. ¡°Here,¡± said Moss. When Perry looked up, Moss had uncovered both a chalkboard and a small device with many wires attached to it. His attention was on the chalkboard, which was covered in writing that must have been dwarven or something because it took a half-second to resolve to equally incomprehensible Arabic numerals and Roman script. ¡°What ¡­ is this?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s what I¡¯ve found,¡± said Moss. ¡°The question of other worlds, your ¡®punches¡¯. The activity in the last years, I saw it all, I just didn¡¯t entirely know what it was.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. There was a little timeline at the bottom of the chalkboard, and who knew how long it had been there. ¡°Well yeah, that does appear to be us.¡± There was a mark for Third Fervor, for Nima, and for Perry. Moss gave a little laugh. ¡°You said that you met me in Kerry Coast?¡± ¡°On the airship to Berus, actually,¡± said Perry. ¡°But we were in Kerry Coast at the same time.¡± ¡°I had stationed myself there,¡± said Moss. ¡°I have a globe somewhere, but with the signal, I could tell ahead of time where it would be pointing.¡± ¡°Uh, wait,¡± said Perry. ¡°How does that work? I know you can do that, but if you heard it here and it takes pretty slow travel by airship, then how did you manage to get there?¡± ¡°Time,¡± said Moss. ¡°I got the signal of what must have been your arrival three months early, though I hadn¡¯t known that the signal preceded, I¡¯d thought it came after, so of course I would have found nothing there.¡± ¡°You ¡­ never told me about this,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Moss. ¡°I must have known, at least in part. I must have had a reason to keep it from you, though I can¡¯t fathom what it would have been, even if I had seen you fighting.¡± ¡°You were a little less than forthcoming then,¡± said Perry. ¡°Also, detecting the signal from that far out ¡­ I mean, that¡¯s, uh ¡­ a lot.¡± Richter had perhaps two days to plan and then make a trip out to the desert, and that was with better than 21st century equipment. ¡°We have all sorts of things here,¡± said Moss. ¡°This place has been in operation for a long time, it¡¯s one of the first of these we built, and there are aspects to this world ¡ª now I know they must have been brought in from elsewhere ¡ª that we¡¯ve studied but not shared.¡± He went to the small machine and moved a lever on it up and down a few times, priming it. ¡°Twenty years ago we had a team of three hundred working on this, but everyone¡¯s moved on and there¡¯s been no enthusiasm for starting up again.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Perry. ¡°What is it?¡± ¡°A way to go to other worlds,¡± said Moss. ¡°In theory.¡± ¡°Not in practice?¡± asked Perry. ¡°In practice, there¡¯s resistance,¡± said Moss. ¡°Of all the points we¡¯ve identified and tested, every one of them was like trying to push our way upstream. With enormous power, we might have been able to do it.¡± He looked away from the machine and over to Perry. ¡°But if what you say is true, then soon we¡¯ll have a way to push outward.¡± He looked down at the machine again. ¡°We could build an entire ship around this.¡± ¡°This is what you wanted me to get to Dirk?¡± asked Perry. ¡°This science experiment?¡± Moss nodded. ¡°He¡¯s been talking about the end of expansion for a long time. The culture has always had something to push back against, and no one knows what it will be like once the last monarchy falls. A decade or two of normalization, maybe, but the Command Authorities won¡¯t all last. The domes will need maintenance, but we won¡¯t build new ones unless the population keeps growing, which it might not.¡± It was more than Perry had ever heard Moss talk before. He wondered how far the two had diverged from each other, how long ago the clone had been made. He also wondered where Velli was, if there was a Velli here too. Elves liked cooler climates, but it didn¡¯t seem like there would be much for her to do in a place like this. ¡°But if there are other worlds,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then you would push the culture to them, too?¡± ¡°That¡¯s the culture,¡± said Moss. He stopped. ¡°But you¡¯re not of the culture, as much as you¡¯re on our side.¡± His eyes were searching Perry¡¯s perfectly flat expression. ¡°You¡¯ll take my papers to him?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. Eventually they would have to talk about having a structured society that spanned the multiverse. Hell, there probably already existed at least one organization that spanned the multiverse, given that Hella¡¯s universe had figured out a way to travel through the punches, if not how to get back. ¡°Could you weaponize this?¡± ¡°Could I ¡­ what?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Weaponize it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Make it into a gun that shoots people to another universe.¡± Second sphere translated ¡®gun¡¯, as apparently this Moss didn¡¯t know about them. ¡°Nothing like that,¡± said Moss. ¡°Though ¡­¡± Perry waited. ¡°Though there¡¯s something?¡± ¡°There¡¯s one possibility, if there were a ¡®punch¡¯,¡± he said. ¡°Not a projectile, but something. Why you would need it ¡­ whether it would be ethical? I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°I have time,¡± said Perry. ¡°Thank you for the masks. I¡¯ll wait while you get papers, and ¡­ I have something for you.¡± ¡°Oh?¡± asked Moss. ¡°More answers, I suppose?¡± ¡°A lot more answers, as it turns out,¡± said Perry. He reached into the shelf space and pulled out one of the tablets that the Farfinder had given him, along with a hand-cranked charger for it. ¡°I¡¯ll run you through how to operate it, but this is an electrical book with more than a million pages, including diagrams and technical specifications.¡± At Perry¡¯s request, Marchand had stripped it of a healthy chunk of weapons design and strictly cultural knowledge, though it had enough science that someone clever could probably create something horrifying just from the base principles contained inside it. Still, it was mostly base physics, not even close to being the breadth of what was possible in this world. Perry hadn¡¯t seen enough to know, but he was guessing that this place had far more than he¡¯d first suspected, and if they had dug into some of the magics that various thresholders had brought to the world, their power might be considerably higher than just the masks that Dirk had offered. Moss took the tablet and looked it over, and after a handful of minutes had been familiarized with the basic functions of the modified Gratbook like scrolling, links, search, history, and the back button. ¡°This is what they have in other worlds?¡± asked Moss. ¡°This, and better,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is rugged, should last a long time, shouldn¡¯t require much special knowledge. Hopefully it doesn¡¯t crash on you, or get you stuck in a menu you don¡¯t know how to get out of.¡± Playing tech support would be pretty inconvenient, even with the Farfinder to open doors. ¡°There¡¯s some math in there I¡¯d like you to look over, things that might help with making that machine into a weapon if we need it.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not in the business of weapons,¡± said Moss. ¡°Well, all the same,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I understand this community you have here, or who is in charge, but if you can make that a priority ¡­ it would be for the best. I¡¯ll give Dirk whatever you need me to give him, and I¡¯ll be back if you have something.¡± He looked at the blackboard. ¡°Write a note for me in the top corner there, if you have something you need to say.¡± Moss frowned at the blackboard. ¡°You would be able to ¡­ read it?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. Moss was silent for a long moment, and Perry let that silence stretch on. There were implications to that ability, he knew. Whatever Moss was thinking, he shook it off and started in on a letter to Dirk. Perry slipped his helmet on while that was going. ¡°News from the Farfinder?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Are they looking at this place?¡± ¡°We have an email, yes sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry breathed out a sigh. He was glad they weren¡¯t doing prognostics. If they were comfortable interfering, they could have nearly real time communication with him by tracking him and listening to what he said and then using technopathy to insert ¡®emails¡¯ into Marchand. The email was from Eggletina, who everyone just called Eggy. It was short. Perry, that place turned out to be a gold mine. We should have swept more. We¡¯re still looking through it. I¡¯m updating his tablet as we speak with more information. March, seed nanites. It looks like they¡¯re further along with multiversal research than we could ever have expected they would be. Maybe not enough that we can make substantial changes, but they have selection tech ¡ª probably because there are so many entrances. Looks like some ability to affect punches, which would be huge. We might actually have to bring this guy in, but that will have to wait. Once the nanites are down, we can start reading the papers in there, it¡¯s a pain to do remote. Perry reread the bit about ¡®selection tech¡¯ twice, as though he would be able to pull some meaning from it. He tried to temper his expectations. So far as he knew, the Farfinder wasn¡¯t actually able to pick which punch they were leaving through, so when they¡¯d left the Great Arc, they hadn¡¯t known whether they would be following him, Maya, or the king. It was possible that ¡®selection tech¡¯ just meant the ability to distinguish between punches. But if there was a path to picking where the portal would go, then that would be huge. He didn¡¯t actually believe that Moss had something like that, even if there had been a team of three hundred working the problem. Moss hadn¡¯t even understood what was happening until Perry showed up with information. It was a dead, mothballed project that only had any attention because their little detector had lit up. Still, there was something that stirred in Perry. He was going to have to hope that Eggy wasn¡¯t just being overexcitable over nothing. Moss finished with his letter, assembled the sheaf of papers, slipped the whole thing into a thick envelope pulled from one of numerous drawers, and handed the whole thing over to Perry. ¡°You get that to Dirk,¡± said Moss. ¡°I don¡¯t know that it¡¯ll do him much good, but it¡¯s a briefing that he¡¯s been left out on. It was never supposed to be something he was involved in, just a curiosity with no real applications, but if you¡¯re here and this is all in play ¡­ he¡¯ll want to know.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Before I go ¡­ you knew Fenilor the Gilded?¡± Moss paused. ¡°I met him on more than one occasion, but no, I didn¡¯t know him, not well. A few conversations he wouldn¡¯t have remembered. We ran in the same circles, obviously. That was the culture, at the time. Why?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not important right now,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just wondering whether he knew about this place.¡± ¡°He founded it,¡± said Moss. ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. He didn¡¯t particularly like that. There were limits to how hooked in Fenilor could be with the Command Authorities, but it was clear that at one point fairly heavy resources were being directed at Fenilor¡¯s whims. ¡°He¡¯s long reformed,¡± said Moss. It took Perry a moment to realize that ¡®reformed¡¯ in this context meant that he¡¯d done the caterpillar reincarnation thing that elves did. ¡°He wasn¡¯t a part of the culture, not in the same way he¡¯d been. Why?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a historical question,¡± said Perry. He let out a breath. The other Moss already knew, and there¡¯d be no reason for this Moss to think any different, as much as there might have been some minor divergence. ¡°But if he shows up again, reformed ¡­ I guess send me a message. Or if you remember, say, giving him equipment, or making something for him.¡± ¡°Dirk knows you¡¯re after Fenilor?¡± asked Moss. ¡°He does,¡± said Perry. ¡°The other you knows as well.¡± ¡°You said I died,¡± said Moss. ¡°That¡¯s the beauty of clones,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s always more.¡± Moss smiled with his wide teeth. ¡°Then if I think of anything, I¡¯ll let you know. The blackboard, yes?¡± Perry nodded. ¡°But I haven¡¯t seen him in a very long time. If he came by, I would know it. He was always very magnetic, easy to spot across a room, and when they reform, it¡¯s not as though they¡¯re completely different.¡± Perry wasn¡¯t convinced. If Fenilor had founded this place, there was a reason for it. Maybe, on the surface, it made sense that Fenilor was putting effort into magic and technology he knew something about from the parade of thresholders. But if Fenilor wanted to move without being seen, he certainly seemed capable of doing that. They were going to have to scrub through the entire history of the site as best they could and see if traps had been laid for them. Chapter 138 - Waiting Games ¡°It¡¯s actually really cool,¡± said Eggy. ¡°They figured out a technique of mapping punches, not the one we use, where we¡¯re depending on universal resonance, but a more ¡ª I guess I¡¯d call it intrauniversal technique, one that works only within the universe. And they¡¯re doing it by hand, which isn¡¯t hard, I guess, but ¡ª oh heck, he¡¯s figured out the calculator, this should be good.¡± Eggy was watching her monitor with a view over Moss¡¯ shoulder as he used the tablet Perry had left there. The bridge was a bit crowded, since the crew and a few of the hangers-on were there, but it was an informal meeting that Perry didn¡¯t want to miss. Eggy was their science officer, or something like that, and she was extremely excited by what they¡¯d found in the northern research city. ¡°Yeah, he¡¯s going straight for calculus, that¡¯s what I would have done,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Going straight for the integrals ¡ª and now he¡¯s trying to break it, which I also respect. Hell of a guy.¡± ¡°You were saying about the methods?¡± asked Perry. He had gotten out of his armor for the time being, and felt much more comfortable. ¡°We can adapt them?¡± ¡°Well, yes and no,¡± said Eggy. She turned around in her chair, spinning to face Perry, but she¡¯d shoved off from the table too hard and went right back around to her monitor and had to make another half rotation. ¡°We can adapt the methods here, but they¡¯re not shy about having different magic systems interface with each other, because obviously they don¡¯t understand the fundamental nature of their reality as something cobbled together. So there¡¯s basically not any chance at all that we would get it to work on some other world, which is one of the things we¡¯re after. Although ¡­¡± ¡°I¡¯m hoping that¡¯s a good ¡®although¡¯,¡± said Hella. The ship¡¯s captain had her arms folded and was directing a stern look at her excitable scientist. ¡°Uh,¡± said Eggy, running her fingers through her hair. ¡°In theory we could use it for discrimination if we had a giant dish, which isn¡¯t as impractical as it might sound, because we could just go into space and unfold it ¡ª if the world we¡¯re on has space, which ¡­ obviously would present an issue.¡± ¡°Focus, please,¡± said Hella. She relaxed slightly. ¡°Do you need a stimulant?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Eggy with a double nod. ¡°Nose one?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Hella. She reached down into a nearby drawer at her station and pulled out a white nasal spray, which she handed over to Eggy, who took it and immediately squirted a puff of something up her nose. ¡°Uh,¡± said Mette. ¡°Nasal spray,¡± said Hella. ¡°Cools down the brain.¡± ¡°What does it actually do?¡± asked Kes, who was standing with his arms crossed in a pose that mimicked Perry¡¯s. Perry found this slightly annoying. ¡°It¡¯s a nootropic,¡± said Hella. ¡°Increases concentration for an hour, helps a lot when your mind is going too many places. We picked it up some worlds back. It¡¯s not actually a stimulant in the conventional sense.¡± She read Perry¡¯s face. ¡°We take what we can get. It¡¯s safe.¡± Eggy handed the spray back and blinked, then looked at the computer. ¡°Where were we?¡± ¡°You were jumping around from topic to topic too much,¡± said Hella. ¡°Right,¡± said Eggy. She placed her hands flat on the table on either side of the keyboard. ¡°So to focus in on the relevant stuff here, we can adapt some of the techniques he¡¯s using in the long term. For this world, we¡¯ll have perfect clarity about the punches, maybe a little more than that. The mapping system they¡¯re using is completely different, but I can adapt our models to theirs, and there¡¯s a good chance that we can have some influence. Actually, give me a second.¡± Eggy began rapidly typing into what Perry only vaguely understood to be some kind of interface for writing programs. He¡¯d seen both Richter and Brigitta doing similar things with wildly different interfaces, but in all cases it was a manipulation of glyphs. He could use second sphere for interpretation, changing the way it appeared on the screen as though there was a filter on top of his eyes, but it didn¡¯t become much more comprehensible. ¡°This is just absolutely painful to watch,¡± said Mette in a low voice. She had moved closer to Perry, and said it in a low voice. ¡°Heard that,¡± said Eggy. She turned in her chair. ¡°I would suggest you do better if you think you can, but you don¡¯t even know what we¡¯re trying to do here.¡± ¡°Up,¡± said Mette. ¡°Let me do it.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know this keyboard, interface, or programming language,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Come on.¡± She got up though. Perry¡¯s opinion, it was mostly to see what happened. Mette slid into the chair, stared at the keyboard for a moment, then looked over at Eggy. ¡°Alright, let me handle this, tell me what we¡¯re doing. I can put it in about a billion times faster than you can.¡± ¡°So,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Basically, we have the punch map, which is a relational map, it shows ¡ª yeah, that one, how did you get that?¡± The punch map had come up on the screen, showing the arcs of the thresholders through their worlds. Perry¡¯s started on Earth and was a simple line going through all the worlds he¡¯d visited. ¡°I was watching you, and I can use a search function, as I am not a moron,¡± said Mette, eyes still on the screen and hands still at the ready. ¡°Right, so the map that the Markat team made is different, because in higher dimensional space it actually does point to where things are,¡± said Eggy. ¡°So the script should map these two things against each other, which will point out where we are in high-D, along with a vector showing some directions. That will at least get us in the direction of ¡ª okay, so you¡¯re fast.¡± A crude visualization showed a sphere in the center of the screen with a bunch of spikes sticking out of it. It didn¡¯t mean much to Perry. ¡°We can use this somehow?¡± asked Perry. ¡°So ¡­ in theory, yeah,¡± said Eggy. She sniffed. Her hands were smoothing down her dress, which she didn¡¯t seem to be aware of. ¡°They have tools which theoretically could nudge the exit punch in a specific direction. There¡¯s a little delay, sometimes a long delay. In theory, we could direct the punch. I think.¡± ¡°How long?¡± asked Kes before Perry had a chance to. ¡°A month, let¡¯s say,¡± replied Eggy. ¡°From experience, you need to make that two months,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s a pretty long time,¡± said Perry. ¡°A very long time, if we¡¯re leaving Third Fervor alive. I can¡¯t capture her, and once she¡¯s down, the portal opens. And if Fenilor gets to her, if he ends her ¡­¡± ¡°We monitor and hope for the best,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s all we can do. We¡¯ll work on the other problems as much as we can. We build weapons, a way to track Fenilor, a way to obliterate him if he refuses to go quietly.¡± Weapons would be easier than tracking, even if they had that tablet. ¡°We¡¯re going to need help,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t fully trust the culture, but they have hundreds of people who¡¯ve worked in spheres adjacent to the ones we need.¡± ¡°First we need to see how far Fenilor has penetrated them,¡± said Hella. ¡°But in the meantime, I¡¯m going to be using that machine of yours. We¡¯re going to expand the Farfinder as much as we can.¡± She looked around at her crew and got some nods. ¡°Will you be able to take them all on the ship?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The clones?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Hella. ¡°Some of them will be stranded here. If I thought it was viable, I would suggest we build a few more of this ship, but the ship has been through a lot, and it¡¯s poorly documented. It¡¯ll mean some of the crew will stay on this planet.¡± ¡°It wouldn¡¯t be too hard to make another ship,¡± said Mette. She hesitated. ¡°Not if there were more of me.¡± It wasn¡¯t something that Perry had talked about with her, but Mette came from a culture where expanding the population was taken as a social imperative. She¡¯d had children, and she would have clones. ¡°We¡¯ll discuss it,¡± said Hella with a curt nod. ¡°Obviously it¡¯s Perry¡¯s machine, and we can¡¯t do anything without his blessing, nor would we, but I think this is the plan. With five of Eggy working together, there are projects that we couldn¡¯t otherwise get done.¡± ¡°I¡¯m great like that,¡± said Eggy with a smile that Perry only returned by half. ¡°That would drop the timeline to what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The two month timeline would assume that we had more science and engineering people,¡± said Hella. ¡°Do it then,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll get it set up. As many as you want.¡± ~~~~ Days passed. Perry stepped into Nima¡¯s room, not wearing the power armor. She had mostly been by herself, with only Mette to stop in every now and then. She had a computer, which she was surprisingly adept with, and limited access to a subset of the knowledge and media library of the Farfinder, with their copy of a copy of Marchand looking over her shoulder. Her room was of her own design, spun from the material dreams. Perry had always associated elves with silver ornamentation and ostentatious curls, white wood that had been lovingly worked and looked like it was meant to last forever, an idea he¡¯d probably gotten from Peter Jackson¡¯s Lord of the Rings movies or through cultural osmosis. Nima¡¯s room was minimalist modernism, though with less in the way of straight lines. Every hinge, fastener, or screw was completely hidden, but the furniture was made of two or three large pieces of polished wood or stone, and in a few places metal gleamed. The bends to lines were mathematical, seeming like there had to be some function that easily defined them, some kind of notation you could write out using three variables and some brackets. A large window showed a city that had been built to the same aesthetic with nothing in the way of ornamentation or elaboration, just houses and gardens that had clean curves. Beyond that, there was a steep drop off, and it seemed as though the city sat above clouds. ¡°You know, there are moments when I can believe that I¡¯m back home,¡± said Nima. She was seated at her desk, using a keyboard and mouse, neither of which fit in with the elegant desk. She turned to him and looked him up and down. ¡°And then you come here. Not even giving me the dignity of wearing your armor.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not violent,¡± said Perry with a shrug. ¡°And I¡¯m very out-classed,¡± said Nima. She sighed and reached over to turn off her computer monitor. It had been on a page about American sports. ¡°What do you need from me?¡± ¡°Nothing,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m just seeing how you¡¯re doing.¡± ¡°You can spy on me at any time,¡± said Nima. ¡°It¡¯s a better prison than the one I was in before, but through my whole time on this planet I¡¯m not sure I¡¯ve ever been in a place of my own choosing.¡± Perry watched her. ¡°You know, I was talking to Hella. She said that this is one of the more common failure modes for thresholders who aren¡¯t immediately aggressive. They come together, feel each other out, and then distrust and a small amount of misalignment throws them into a real conflict with each other.¡± Nima watched him with a blank face. ¡°Or sometimes they do come at each other with aggression, because that¡¯s what a world or two of thresholding has trained them to do,¡± said Perry. ¡°They might not even know that they were aligned on a lot of things. I had an ally nearly kill me, actually.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not aligned,¡± said Nima. ¡°If I had the power, I would fix this world. You think it doesn¡¯t need fixing.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a functional world,¡± said Perry. ¡°That¡¯s better than I can say for most of them. I mean, I¡¯ve only been to civilized worlds, but even by the standards of civilization, this one is working well, at least in the near term. No famine, no disease, no collapse.¡± Nima looked away. ¡°For now.¡± ¡°For now,¡± said Perry. He was happy giving her that much. ¡°I think if they believed that it would hold forever without any work, it wouldn¡¯t actually function. They fight, they strive, they have every member of their society putting their back into it. There¡¯s something beautiful in that, though I don¡¯t know how you get there ¡ª and I¡¯ve been studying their teachings, their cultural works.¡± Nima was silent for a moment. ¡°We had that,¡± she said softly. ¡°Did you?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You never said.¡± ¡°We understood our place,¡± said Nima. She looked out over the false image of the city. ¡°We understood the importance of our work. We believed in doing good and battling evil in all its forms.¡± She looked back at Perry. ¡°From everything you¡¯ve said, you came from a place that believed in nothing.¡± Perry considered that. ¡°It was a place that believed in a lot of things, just ¡­ some of them weren¡¯t good things. There was an understanding that people would take advantage if you let them, that people would do what was best for themselves at the expense of others. We believed in freedom, I guess, but ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Sometimes it felt like that freedom was just an excuse to be shitty to each other.¡± ¡°It sounds awful,¡± said Nima. ¡°The whole world wasn¡¯t like that,¡± said Perry. ¡°Even the country I lived in wasn¡¯t really like that, it was just ¡­ the internet. The computers.¡± He wasn¡¯t sure he believed that. He looked over at her desk. ¡°You¡¯re getting along well with it?¡± ¡°We had computers in my world,¡± said Nima. ¡°Everything is different, but it¡¯s not that different. I¡¯m getting along.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°Thank you,¡± said Nima. She pursed her lips. ¡°For not using force on me, after the whole hostage thing. For trying to make this imprisonment pleasant.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°I try not to be a bad guy.¡± ¡°Interesting phrasing,¡± Nima replied. ¡°You try, but you might actually be a bad guy?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve eaten people, Nima,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve killed ¡­ I don¡¯t even know how many people. And I haven¡¯t felt bad about it, even though I think in principle murder is wrong.¡± He paused. ¡°Some of them I felt bad about. The ones that weren¡¯t under my control. The senseless ones. But most deaths are senseless, in the end.¡± ¡°You ¡­ weren¡¯t in control?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I can turn into a wolf creature,¡± said Perry. ¡°It gives me extra strength at the cost of a loss of control and a hunger for flesh. I do have it under control now, but there was a time when I ¡­ didn¡¯t.¡± Nima paled. ¡°I suppose it¡¯s no wonder I couldn¡¯t beat you even with your armor off.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He couldn¡¯t tell her about Kes for practical reasons of not handing the enemy intel. It would also be a humiliation if he let her know just how much stronger than her he was. Kes had just been a normal human. ¡°You¡¯re becoming less human over time,¡± said Nima. ¡°That¡¯s a path thresholders walk.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°At the point I¡¯m at now, I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve become less human in a bad way.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want to be less of an elf,¡± said Nima. ¡°Then you¡¯re in luck, because your very nature will mean that you¡¯re not often tempted,¡± said Perry. ¡°The good thing about the portals, at least as far as we understand them, is that they don¡¯t have a sense of irony or drama. They value close fights, and that¡¯s it.¡± ¡°I¡¯m done,¡± said Nima. ¡°They ¡ª Hella and the others ¡ª think there¡¯s a way out. All I would need to do is stay on this ship.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was planning to offer to let you through a portal. To continue on.¡± ¡°So I could do what?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Fight for the rest of my life? Struggle against people like Fenilor? Like you?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s just ¡­ we wouldn¡¯t be able to bring you home, and I don¡¯t think you want to spend the rest of your life as a prisoner here, so you¡¯d just settle down on the next world that looks good enough?¡±Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. ¡°Something like that,¡± said Nima. She watched him. ¡°You would never.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± They sat together for a bit while Perry tried to process some feelings. There were many things he didn¡¯t like about thresholding. He¡¯d been pierced through his stomach by a sword a week ago, for fuck¡¯s sake. He¡¯d been trapped underground with bugs crawling all over him. He¡¯d been betrayed, humiliated, and brutalized at various points. It was often boring, with nothing to do but wait, which seemed like it was how the next month or two was going to go. But there was also something very straightforward about it, a measure of personal power and inner drive that had been completely lacking for almost his entire life. What was best in life? To crush your enemies, naturally. But in any other context besides thresholding, enemies weren¡¯t really something that people had. Problems were nuanced, conflict was a thing to be avoided, you couldn¡¯t just chop off a man¡¯s head because you didn¡¯t like his politics. The best fight ¡ª the most satisfying ¡ª had been against Xiyan. She was irredeemable, and he¡¯d known her well enough to completely write her off as a person. Where else would he ever get that satisfaction? Maybe it was pathological to think that way. Maybe it was something he could go to therapy for. But deep down, the thought of joining up with the Farfinder and becoming their neutered muscle made him recoil. He¡¯d had enough of being a bodyguard when he¡¯d been doing it for Moss. ¡°Thank you for visiting,¡± said Nima. ¡°I know you had good intentions, but I don¡¯t need you to do it again.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. He stood awkwardly. ¡°If you want to talk, let me know.¡± ¡°I doubt that I ever would,¡± said Nima. Her lips were tight. ¡°But thank you. It was kind.¡± ~~~~ Third Fervor and her queen were, unfortunately, making moves. The first and most bold of these moves was to announce that the queen was to be wed. The monarchy was under threat, you¡¯d have to be an idiot not to see that, and a marriage was both a distraction for the people and a way of gaining some small amount of power and control. It would also give Third Fervor the king she clearly wanted. The options for who would be king were not plentiful. For one thing, Thirlwell was not actually all that large of an island, and while it had once been a colonial power and was still living off their pillaging of other places, the population was relatively small. There were plenty of nobles, including some kings-in-exile for kingdoms that had no hope to ever be restored, but most of them were useless, and the number of eligible bachelors was actually quite small. Besides that, marrying one of them and allowing him to become king would immediately put a target on his back, and there was the question of optics. The queen had made the search public, which was a savvy PR move in Perry¡¯s opinion, because it distracted the public with a spectacle and at least gave the sense that the monarchy would rebuild itself stronger and better than before. Few knew of Third Fervor¡¯s injury, which was being kept very quiet, so from the outside, the queen was simply steeling herself and doing what needed to be done ¡ª it was noble, in a way, sacrificing herself to a man. People liked it, for whatever reason. There was drama in a search for a husband, and some promise that there would be a savior, however that was going to be managed. Perry got to watch it all from the inside, which he sometimes did with Kes and Mette. The remote monitoring tools the Farfinder had didn¡¯t have sound, but Marchand could extract sound from high-fidelity video by watching micro-vibrations, and could also read lips with a relatively high degree of accuracy, especially once Perry had the idea of clipping their magic ¡®camera¡¯ inside a speaker¡¯s mouth to watch the movement of their tongue and lips. The clone of Dirk Gibbons serving as spymaster produced a suspect for the poisoning of the prince. The patsy was a man who had died of delirium tremens and then had his head bashed in after the fact by the secret police. They¡¯d tried to take him quietly, Dirk had explained, had wanted to get answers, but alas. That was a good enough answer for the queen, apparently, especially as the suspect had left behind a brief manifesto which was making its way through what was left of the Thirlwell resistance. In reality, the manifesto had been Dirk¡¯s work too ¡ª not a manifesto in favor of the culture, but against the monarchy and all its ills, something that painted them in a bad light while saying nothing at all about the opposition. It had mostly been done for plausibility, Perry was pretty sure. Dirk saved his own skin, and his reward was being put in charge of the search for the king, one of the many, many duties he had as spymaster on top of all the duties he had as being a spy for the culture. There was something hilarious to Perry about spying on the spymaster. He was hopeful that at some point he¡¯d be able to say to Dirk ¡°oh yeah, I had a camera installed in your mouth¡±, but that would mean explaining what a camera was, and maybe that would take the fun out of it. ¡°I would make a good king,¡± said Perry as he sat on the couch in the break room. Mette and Kes were with him, watching a large screen that showed them a digest of what had happened and might happen. They were together on a love seat that just barely fit both of them, casually close in a way he somewhat envied. ¡°Wow,¡± said Mette. She was, technically, Mette Prime, since there were now four clones of her. She was the only one of them who was a werewolf, and the only one who was a thresholder. Collectively, Perry called them ¡®the Mets¡¯, but he spent almost all his time with the singular Mette Prime. ¡°Yeah, that was something we always thought,¡± said Kes. He shrugged. ¡°We would make a good king.¡± ¡°It¡¯s arrogant though,¡± said Mette. ¡°Weren¡¯t you basically a queen?¡± asked Kes. ¡°I mean, not in terms of structure, and you had a coregency, but ¡ª¡± ¡°Totally different,¡± said Mette. ¡°Sometimes you have to step up, but monarchy is different from being an elected leader.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t remember many elections,¡± said Kes. ¡°We were going to have them,¡± said Mette. ¡°Nothing like you¡¯ve described, those grueling year-long contests, but it is important for there to be a release valve when people are upset. I can see some value in having a leader for life, if there¡¯s a good succession plan and good heirs, but most monarchies don¡¯t have that, and if the people have a bad monarch, what¡¯s the backup plan?¡± ¡°Shoot them in the face,¡± said Marchand, who was hooked into the ship¡¯s systems. He only rarely offered his commentary when they were just watching, though his own view of what was happening on the planet was much better than theirs. Between watching the past, present, and future, there was a lot to keep an eye on. ¡°I mean, yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Violence is one of the only ways to get a dictator out of power, whether they end up dead or in exile, and a king is basically a dictator. But the very first thing a king should do is secure their position of power and make that kind of violence against him impossible, which in practice, historically, meant brokering some binding deals that vastly limited power-in-practice.¡± Kes laughed. ¡°Took the words out of my mouth,¡± he said. ¡°You two are insufferable,¡± said Mette with an exaggerated huff. She leaned forward and looked at the screen. ¡°March, do we have prognostics here?¡± ¡°Yes, ma¡¯am,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What would you like to see?¡± ¡°I want to understand what Dirk is doing here,¡± said Mette. ¡°I think in the scheme of the fight, it¡¯s probably not important, but he¡¯s making moves without any knowledge of who or what we are.¡± ¡°You think he might gum up the works?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Possible,¡± said Mette. ¡°March, find me where they¡¯re discussing this, if you can.¡± Marchand brought them a change in view, which came from the ship¡¯s prognostic engines. They were running virtually all the time, fed by a power source that only worked under certain physics which were currently ripe ¡ª though the next world they went to wouldn¡¯t necessarily allow it. The screen showed a meeting between Dirk, the queen, and Third Fervor. Because the magics for past, present, and future were all different, different tools needed to be used, but Marchand was fairly seamlessly using every audio-visual processing trick at his disposal to make it seem like it was just a feed from a camera. ¡°There¡¯s the possibility of a commoner,¡± said Dirk. ¡°A commoner?¡± asked Third Fervor. She was looking at Dirk with a significant amount of skepticism. She was in her armor, with the face of it peeled back. She removed it only to sleep, and sometimes not even then. The injury to her jaw had not fully mended, which meant she spoke slowly and infrequently. ¡°I would like to hear the rationale,¡± said the queen. ¡°Surely there¡¯s someone from the noble class more suitable. Sir Miche?¡± ¡°Caught with a prostitute three days ago,¡± said Dirk. ¡°The rumors were swirling even before that though.¡± ¡°Sir Terren then?¡± asked the queen. Her hands were folded in her lap. Dirk shook his head sadly. She apparently understood the implication, though Perry did not. ¡°I¡¯m starting to regret making a spectacle of this,¡± said the queen. ¡°Someone from outside the noble class wouldn¡¯t be wholly unprecedented, but I fear it would send the wrong message.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll look closely at candidates,¡± said Dirk. ¡°There are significant advantages though. A husband from outside the nobility would be a sign that the gap between classes is not so large as it might be feared. If you think in terms of the delusions that the enemy trades in, one of the most important is that no one has a master ¡ª and if people believe that they might become a master some day, by the grace of the nobility, I think that¡¯s more attractive than equality.¡± ¡°They¡¯re not equal,¡± said Third Fervor. ¡°It¡¯s true,¡± said the queen. ¡°The symboulions rule, and the Command Authorities put themselves above everyone else. Equality is a myth.¡± She said this with some concern, and watched Dirk as he answered. ¡°They¡¯re hypocrites,¡± said Dirk. ¡°If only pointing out those things deterred them. It¡¯s one of their foundational beliefs that contradictions must exist, that you cannot stand firm on the axioms. That¡¯s one of their advantages ¡ª they feel no need to be coherent, to stick to firm principles.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll be introducing a contradiction of our own, if I were to marry a commoner,¡± said the queen. She placed a finger against her chin. ¡°Draw up a list. Only those who are loyal, who have means, who would serve the kingdom, not their own interests.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll do my best,¡± said Dirk with a nod. ¡°Oh my god,¡± said Kes from the couch. ¡°He¡¯s going to pull a Dick Cheney.¡± ¡°He¡¯s going to shoot someone in the face?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Who is Dick Cheney?¡± asked Mette with a frown, looking between them. ¡°He¡¯s a man who shot someone in the face?¡± ¡°He was Vice President of the United States for a while,¡± said Perry. ¡°More importantly, he headed up the presidential candidate¡¯s search for a vice president,¡± said Kes. ¡°When that search was concluded, who should become vice president but the man who was doing the search?¡± ¡°Wow,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Mette, holding up a hand. ¡°He shot someone in the face?¡± ¡°Hunting accident,¡± said Perry and Kes at the same time. ¡°Not actually relevant,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s just where my mind went, given ¡­ you know.¡± ¡°It was a national punchline for a bit,¡± said Kes. ¡°We were young.¡± ¡°If we ever get to your Earth, I¡¯m going to have some very specific and useless knowledge,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t know how to drive a car, but I do know about a hunting accident that happened twenty years ago.¡± ¡°So Dirk goes searching for a marriage candidate, finds the nobles unacceptable, looks among the commoners, finds himself,¡± said Kes. ¡°What¡¯s the endgame there?¡± ¡°He becomes king,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°But he doesn¡¯t want to be king.¡± ¡°Being a king means having enormous power,¡± said Perry. ¡°More than he already has. He can use that power for a soft revolution or a hard one. Committing a coup when you¡¯re married to the queen seems ¡­ almost ideal, right, especially given some sexist commoners who don¡¯t trust a woman in the first place?¡± ¡°Fair point,¡± said Kes. ¡°But with Berus still in rocky condition, I doubt that a coup is on his mind.¡± ¡°He¡¯s completely on his own,¡± said Perry. ¡°We don¡¯t know what¡¯s on his mind.¡± Kes shook his head sadly. ¡°Being alone, that¡¯s not the culture.¡± ¡°Shocker,¡± said Mette with a roll of her eyes. ¡°They use cultural enforcement, which means that people who are disconnected from the culture ¡ª either intentionally or otherwise ¡ª are free to do whatever they want. So they want to keep people from being on their own, independent. That¡¯s built into the system.¡± ¡°She¡¯s been doing political reading,¡± said Kes. ¡°As you¡¯ve pointed out, I was god-emperor of the Natrix,¡± said Mette. ¡°We had to worry about social cohesion, group dynamics, and it was very different, but it wasn¡¯t that different. When we deposed the old people who¡¯d been prioritizing their geriatric comforts, we put them in with everyone else. There were reasons for that, and we didn¡¯t have the Gratbook to draw on, but I do think even with hindsight and the knowledge of worlds that it was the right move. I have more experience with engineering social conditions than either of you.¡± ¡°You¡¯re saying you have a good track record,¡± said Kes. ¡°And that ¡­ the culture should let people be loners more than it does?¡± ¡°I have no idea,¡± said Mette with a huff. ¡°But I guess I can talk about it, because I know that neither of you really have any idea either. We¡¯re all ignorant, so we can just be ignorant.¡± She reached forward to the small table that held her drink, a fizzy cola. She¡¯d had it for the first time a few days ago and was enamored with them. ¡°I think if you make a society, it has to be a society that¡¯s good for everyone. And if it¡¯s not good for everyone, then you need a way for people to escape and go somewhere else. There were people escaping to go to the kingdoms. But now the kingdoms are dying out, and there¡¯s nowhere left to go. And the internal places to go, like working for the Command Authorities, are also going to be shut down. A guy like Dirk doesn¡¯t seem like he would function well within the culture, but the culture thankfully has a use for him, because he has these skills, right?¡± ¡°And absent an opposition, you think a guy like that is dangerous?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t think he¡¯s unique. I think he enjoys the games he¡¯s playing, and he thinks they¡¯re necessary. There are probably thousands more like him, they just deal with it, or don¡¯t deal with it and let it fester. On the Natrix we understood individuality and that drive to push yourself. We accommodated in a way this place doesn¡¯t.¡± ¡°Thankfully the plan is for there to be more worlds for these people,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or they might be able to figure it out even without that.¡± ¡°We delivered the plans to the snow-town Moss this morning,¡± said Mette. ¡°So short of trying to contain that information after the fact, they know how to build something like the Farfinder, in principle if not in practice. The engine plan works across all universes, it¡¯s built from basal physics.¡± The Farfinder had a long history, and the tools in use now weren¡¯t the ones that the ship had started out with, back when it had its original crew. There were talks about building another, maybe two, which would be possible only with the new clones that had been made in the days following Perry joining the team. The clone-making machine had actually broken down after two uses, but then was fixed by Mette and Eggy working together. They didn¡¯t have the capacity to make another machine, not yet, but the one they had was nearly constantly running, expanding the technical capacity of the Farfinder with every passing day. In another month there would be significant specialization among the clones. They¡¯d hit some of the limits of the machine. Nitta, their primary engineer, could not actually be cloned ¡ª her species had multiple skins that could be slipped into and shed at will, but the clones had come out with none of them, and had died in spite of their best efforts after twenty minutes of intense pain. Hella had been cloned, but the clone had none of her superpowers. Cark¡¯s blood was a milky white since it used perfluorocarbons rather than hemoglobin, and hadn¡¯t worked at all. It was a brave new world, that had such people in it. While Perry was mostly watching and waiting, they were working on what came next. ~~~~ Berus and Thirlwell were both simmering. The symboulions of Berus had squashed the counter-revolution and looted the nobility, and the first of the domes had finished construction. They were in the process of starting to churn out as much spare food and clothing as they could. The queen had not entirely squashed the revolutionary elements in Thirlwell, especially because the man who was most responsible for doing that was working with them, but the fears of the end of the monarchy were settling down, and people were going along with the new order of the kingdom. Perry was restless, and it somehow seemed like he was the only one. Third Fervor had mostly mended, though she had terrible scarring on her face and winced when she spoke, which sometimes happened with a lisp. She was missing teeth, he knew. It remained to be seen whether she would be weaker in a fight, but prognostics suggested that she would be. The damage he¡¯d done to her stomach had healed on the surface, but he could see the pain on her face when she stood up from a chair. The Farfinder was running prognostics almost constantly, trying to see what the future held, but the further into the future it tried to predict, the less accurate those predictions got, and they couldn¡¯t account for Perry unless he was deliberately waiting outside of the ship with some kind of plan in place for when he would act. After three weeks, for no particular reason that they could see, the prognostics began to predict that Third Fervor would attack Berus. When they had dug into it, they had found Fenilor¡¯s fingerprints ¡ª or rather, a lack of fingerprints. None of the magic they were using to see the past, present, or future could see Fenilor, and when they finally found the gap he left, it was already in the past, nineteen minutes where Third Fervor was under the umbra of protection against their scrying. The prognostics said that if left unchecked, Third Fervor was going to move against the symboulions of Berus, using her portals to kill a number of prominent members. Because she couldn¡¯t easily move indoors unless a door or window was opening, she would attack an open air rally that was to be held outside the castle. They had seen it three times in prognostication, which meant that it was almost certain to happen for real if no steps were taken to stop it. The different visions of the future showed her dropping down and sweeping her spear through unarmed men and women, killing the masked men who went against her, murdering guards, causing mayhem. It was different in each vision, but not all that different. He wouldn¡¯t have thought that she would do that. It seemed too violent for her to do, and too callous for the queen to order, but the proof was in the prognostics. Third Fervor¡¯s sense of loyalty was ironclad, and if she had been commanded to kill, that was what she would do. Perry had frowned at the videos for a long time. The obvious question was what had happened when Fenilor had met with her, and what Fenilor¡¯s goals might possibly be. A trap of some kind seemed likely, but Fenilor seemed to be laying in wait just the same as Perry was. It seemed out of character for Fenilor too, if he had deliberately provoked Third Fervor into attacking the culture that Fenilor had worked so hard to build. ¡°Are you going to stop the attack?¡± asked Hella during another impromptu meeting on the bridge. ¡°Are you?¡± asked Perry, eyeing her. ¡°No,¡± said Hella. ¡°We stay out of these battles, as much as it turns my stomach sometimes. We could potentially warn our contacts, but ¡ª¡± ¡°I¡¯ll stop her,¡± said Perry. ¡°It plays into her hands, as well as Fenilor¡¯s, but if it prevents the deaths of hundreds, then I¡¯m all for it.¡± He wasn¡¯t a wildlife photographer or a Star Trek captain. There was nothing but pragmatism that compelled him to stand by. Hella frowned. ¡°We were hoping for more time.¡± ¡°Fenilor has been out there doing something,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is proof of that. If it¡¯s not a trap, then it¡¯s a diversion. I¡¯m not sure how much he knows about our capabilities, but he knows that I had some way to find his black sites, and he certainly knows that I can move across distances faster than my sword or his spear would actually allow. He¡¯s been looking for me, probing.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll monitor,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯ll keep doors open for you, so long as you¡¯re outside of Third Fervor¡¯s sphere.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll aim to lead her away from civilization,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll go after her before she can even get close to implementing whatever this mayhem is. She needs to sleep, I¡¯ll descend tonight while she¡¯s out of her armor and try to finish her cleanly. And if Fenilor is there to take the portal out, then I¡¯ll guard against him ¡ª and you¡¯ll need to too.¡± It didn¡¯t fully make sense though, because if Fenilor wanted to kill Third Fervor, then it seemed as though he had the opportunity. ¡°We have a day,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s enough to run another round of prognostics and see how the fight will go. Enough to give advanced warning. But the problem isn¡¯t that she¡¯s hitting this specific event, it¡¯s that she¡¯s decided to act. We can monitor her, and the queen, see if they give us some intel on why, but the answer is obviously Fenilor.¡± ¡°He might have told her about us,¡± said Perry. ¡°Depending on what he knows, or suspects.¡± ¡°Very possible,¡± said Hella. ¡°Set up monitoring,¡± said Perry. ¡°Something that will tell us if he¡¯s near her again, some kind of alarm that goes off if monitoring craps out. We should have had it before now.¡± ¡°Already done,¡± said Eggy. ¡°You¡¯ll support me, if I decide that now is the time to strike?¡± asked Perry. ¡°If I don¡¯t want the deaths of the leadership of Berus on my head?¡± ¡°We will,¡± said Hella. ¡°Of course we will.¡± ¡°Good,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then I¡¯m going to prepare for war.¡± Chapter 139 - Queensmanship Perry watched the site from above. Third Fervor had been asleep for an hour, as near as they could tell from her pulse and breathing. She was on the main island of Berus, having commandeered an old lighthouse at the island¡¯s northern tip. It was very nearly a fortified structure, but had been built with storms in mind, not invading men in power armor. Perry thought the trick was to do the whole thing quietly and end her cleanly. Prognostics was, in the near term, optimistic, though less than he might have hoped: he had a thirty percent chance of immediately ending her life in the rapidfire test runs, and a greater than sixty percent chance of capturing the queen. It was not, in any sense, honorable. He would be killing her while she was defenseless. He didn¡¯t know why that bothered him: it was sensible, the path of least resistance, the thing that was dictated by every pragmatic consideration. If he succeeded though, there would be no fight, nothing proven, just an abstract death. The only thing it would prove was that Third Fervor didn¡¯t have the right set of powers, and that Perry was willing to do what it took. On reflection, it felt like cheating. Perry was no stranger to competitions, and especially with trivia nights, there was always the specter of cheating over the whole thing ¡ª a smartphone could reduce a battle of knowledge to a battle of who was the best at getting good search results. Perry had flirted with cheating before, though never at trivia: he¡¯d had a girlfriend he¡¯d played online Scrabble with, and used a solver once when he just wasn¡¯t up for playing. It had left a sour, curdled feeling in his stomach. It hadn¡¯t made him feel good or smart, and after that there was only the feeling that he was a terrible person. It had felt worse than if he¡¯d cheated on her, actually, and he¡¯d felt like it was some kind of karma when she ended up cheating on him. This was not, of course, a game. It was, in some sense, a matter of the course of nations, and in another sense, the fate of the world, depending on how the math shook out ¡ª though the math was now unclear, argued over by the scientists, the engineers, and the AI. There was no conflict between Perry and Third Fervor except as it existed in his head and was assumed by the Grand Spell, and the fact that Marchand had shot the king in his head. Wringing his hands over fairness and the authenticity of a victory was worse than pointless, it was some nonsense conjured by his brain. What mattered was the victory, not how it was achieved. He descended slowly. They had eyes on the entire area. It was only Third Fervor and the queen, in a bed together, pressed against each other. Perry would spare the queen, if he could, but then he would also have to remove her from the lighthouse to spare her a long and potentially dangerous walk back to civilization. There were no proper roads, only ruts in the dirt. If Third Fervor escaped, which was a strong possibility, Perry would grab the queen and hold her hostage. Perry landed on top of the lighthouse and went to the door, stepping lightly, using the sword to float, lightening his steps. When he got to the door, he used a tool procured from the Farfinder, a nano-width shim that cut straight through the padlock on the other side like it wasn¡¯t even there. Perry opened the door slowly and grabbed the lock before it could fall and clink to the ground. He stopped for a moment and looked down at the wooden stairwell, which caused Marchand to display the sonic mapping of the entire building ¡ª just a tower with a set of rooms at the base, that was it. There were dozens of these abandoned lighthouses, which were mostly relics of the past and most had been built to the same design. Perry went down. It would have been better to do it with a bomb, maybe even a nuclear weapon if they¡¯d been able to build one in time. That was certainly overkill though, and might attract Fenilor¡¯s attention. The best option would be to kill Third Fervor and then camp out near the portal until it vanished, and since Fenilor wasn¡¯t anywhere nearby, in theory he wouldn¡¯t show up. The bed didn¡¯t fit the lighthouse. It had been brought in from elsewhere, a four-poster that Third Fervor had spent time putting together for the two of them, overly regal for a wind-battered place like this. It would have taken a lot of work to get the lighthouse up to the royal standards, and to do that would have required bringing in workers, and that would defeat the entire purpose of hiding out of sight. The queen hadn¡¯t balked, to her credit. Perry watched their sleeping forms. Third Fervor looked striking, if not necessarily pretty. This was the only time she looked peaceful. The queen was more classically beautiful, and though she wasn¡¯t too much younger than Perry, there was something about her that made her seem too young, like he might be moments away from killing a teenager. Perry pulled out the laser rifle and aimed it squarely at where Third Fervor was sitting. The shoulder-mounted gun rose up from its housing at the same time, silent in the night, though that wasn¡¯t entirely a concern given that the window was open ¡ª it had to be in order for Third Fervor to escape. The sounds of the ocean were coming through, waves crashing against the rocks. The prognostics had not made it clear how or why he¡¯d failed. It wasn¡¯t plausible that she¡¯d gotten lucky, since there was no amount of luck that would get you out of being killed in your sleep. She had no armor on, but all she needed to do to escape if she wasn¡¯t killed immediately was to roll off the bed and down into a portal. But Perry wasn¡¯t sure how he might ever fail to kill her, and looking over videos extracted from prognostics hadn¡¯t actually helped. It had looked like she could wake up on a hair trigger, which, sure, he could buy, but the bullets failing to pierce her skull was harder to make sense of. Those very same bullets had gone through her armor and broken her jaw the last time they¡¯d met. There was a chance this would work though, and no risk to him, with the upside being that he would have the queen. Had Fenilor given her something to help her? It certainly wasn¡¯t clear from the prognostics. Their ability to resolve fine details was somewhat limited, at least when it came to looking into the future. If Fenilor had given her something, it was small, possibly swallowed, or a spell cast upon her. Perry fired the laser rifle. Marchand fired the shoulder gun. Third Fervor was almost immediately in motion, rolling sideways off the bed as the bullets struck her. She fell to the ground and stayed there for only a fraction of a second before she dropped through a portal she¡¯d made there, and as soon as she was gone, the portal snapped shut. The armor had been in pieces below her, and had fallen with her. She¡¯d been sleeping with the spear, and now that was gone too. Perry stalked forward and grabbed the queen, who was only just getting up and seeing what happened, woken by the crack of gunfire. The bed was burned beside her, the laser rifle having scorched a line through it. Pieces were still on fire, though not threatening to catch. The queen thrashed around and started screaming, but from what Perry had seen, Third Fervor was going somewhere else to lick her wounds. Even with the escape, this still seemed strategically correct. The queen screamed some more, a painful wail that was partially muted by the armor. On the HUD, the location of Third Fervor had been updated: she was on the other end of the island, in the city, having a doctor see to her wounds. The tracking that the Farfinder used wasn¡¯t instant, and it sometimes could take as much as ten minutes to find her when she used a portal, but it had been fast this time, because they knew where to look. Perry kept his grip on the queen¡¯s arm, which was tight enough that she had no way of escaping but not so tight as to hurt her. He could easily have snapped her wrist. He looked at the HUD again, double-checking there were more than thirty miles of distance, then stepped into the shelf space, dragging the queen in with him. ¡°You¡¯re our prisoner now,¡± said Perry. ¡°You will be given food and water. I don¡¯t want to hurt you. When this is over, you will be returned to your kingdom.¡± He was less sure about that, but it wasn¡¯t quite a lie. ¡°Murderer!¡± she shouted. She slapped hard against the metal armor with her free hand, and maybe hard enough to hurt herself, so Perry grabbed her other wrist and held her in place. She was a small, young woman, and he wouldn¡¯t have had trouble overpowering her even before all the thresholding. With his power, she was essentially immobilized, though she did still try to kick at him. ¡°You¡¯re going to be fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I could shoot you, if you¡¯d rather end things.¡± Her face was defiant, but she didn¡¯t ask him to. He wouldn¡¯t have killed her, not now, even if she demanded it. He had gotten assurance from Marchand that there wouldn¡¯t be any ¡®accidents¡¯ or ¡®miscommunications¡¯. Perry was on a timer now. Third Fervor would be back. The shelf space had been cleared, with most of its items transferred to the Farfinder, leaving behind a living area for ¡®guests¡¯, which did include a heavy-duty manacle that Perry felt slightly queasy about. He¡¯d hoped to not have to chain anyone up, and chaining up a woman felt worse, especially if she was just in a simple shift. This was how he¡¯d found Marjut, and part of the reason he¡¯d almost immediately freed her was because he¡¯d simply found it distasteful. Still, he found himself marching her over to where the manacles had been attached to a three hundred pound weight, large enough that she wouldn¡¯t be able to move it, not that she¡¯d be able to escape if she did. It was a large hunk of metal acquired from one of the Dirk Gibbons, who had asked no questions. ¡°Lock yourself in,¡± said Perry. ¡°One on each leg.¡± He released her, waiting to see whether she would make a run for it, which would be fruitless given the space. ¡°She¡¯ll kill you,¡± said the queen. Her fists were clenched. ¡°She¡¯ll tear you limb from limb.¡± ¡°She¡¯s not doing so well right now,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a chance she¡¯s dying.¡± ¡°She¡¯ll win, in the end, and do you know why?¡± asked the queen. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He was hoping that the queen was dumb enough to reveal something. ¡°She believes in something,¡± said the queen. ¡°Put the manacles on,¡± said Perry. He kept his voice flat, not betraying anger. ¡°I refuse,¡± replied the queen. ¡°Are you going to make me do it?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I will struggle the entire time,¡± the queen said, holding her head high. Perry supposed she was saying that to sound regal rather than like a petulant child, but he didn¡¯t entirely know. Maybe the difference between ¡®regal¡¯ and ¡®petulant child¡¯ wasn¡¯t all that large. Finally, she picked up the manacles, but rather than putting them on, she snapped them shut, locking them. When she was done she dropped them to the floor with a defiant look. Perry sighed. He didn¡¯t want to deal with this. He could force her, certainly, and he had the key in one of the armor¡¯s compartments, but there wasn¡¯t actually a point in locking the queen up. He could start hurting her as a way to get her compliance, but he didn¡¯t have the stomach for that. The longer he waited, the better a chance that Third Fervor would come back, and if she was in range, she would sense the shelf opening up. ¡°Fine,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll be back.¡± He stalked to the opening and let out a breath. She was at his back, and he half expected an attack from her, in spite of how incredibly outmatched she was. He had killed her father, at least from her perspective. Perry opened the shelf space for a tenth of a second, shifting his position in the overlap between worlds more than actually stepping out. He¡¯d been practicing it, hoping that if he went quickly Third Fervor wouldn¡¯t be able to open up one of her portals inside of it. The lighthouse was still empty. Marchand had reconnected with the Farfinder as soon as they were out of the shelf space, and the HUD now showed Third Fervor¡¯s position, still in the city, still with doctors touching her face. She wore the armor now, and held her spear, battle-ready. Her face was a mess where the armor had been peeled back. She¡¯d been hit at least twice, once in the nose, which was mangled and bleeding, and once in the chest, marking a puckered wound on the underside of her left tit. She was breathing heavily but otherwise seemed fine. She should have been dead. Fenilor had helped her somehow, because Marchand had aimed true. The bullet that gave her a nose wound should have opened her head like an ax to a watermelon. Still, Perry had the queen, and that was something. He flew up out of the lighthouse and toward the city. He¡¯d come in after she¡¯d been asleep for an hour, which meant that she would start with some fatigue even if the damage was cosmetic. All he would need to do was to harry her and grind her down. He assumed that her planned attack was now totally nixed, given the loss of the queen. The kingdom couldn¡¯t survive without a ruler, and while there was another princess who could be elevated to the position of ruler, that might as well be a death knell for Thirlwell. It wasn¡¯t the transition that anyone wanted, but it was what might happen. Perry dropped down to the ground and ran, using up stored power in the armor rather than from the spear. He had too much shit on him, frankly, between the laser gun, the spear, and the sword, but he hadn¡¯t wanted to keep any of it in the shelf space where the queen could have gotten her hands on them. The sword was sheathed, the laser gun was strapped in place on his back, and he was holding the spear in his hand. In a combat scenario, which he was going to be facing soon, it was all probably going to be a liability. Still, the preparations hadn¡¯t been for nothing, and he ran across Thirlwell, down country roads that hadn¡¯t been designed for cars, let alone power armor. It was still the dead of night, and no one was out, which was good, because if he collided with anyone, he would certainly kill them. ¡°Why hasn¡¯t she gone back?¡± asked Perry as he watched the nearly-live feed of Third Fervor. ¡°It¡¯s her queen.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Is there a chance there¡¯s already a king?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Some secret ceremony that transferred power?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Not unless it happened during the gap in coverage.¡± Perry pondered that. He thought that he had Third Fervor pegged, and had also thought that she wouldn¡¯t have fallen for Fenilor¡¯s tricks, but it was also possible that Fenilor had come to her in disguise. That wouldn¡¯t have been hard, given his extensive wardrobe and the fact that they hadn¡¯t shown each other their faces when they¡¯d fought. There was no clue as to what happened during that missing time.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. ¡°Any chance we can get a message to her?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She has shaken off the nanites and is not in a room where we have coverage. Even if we had the room dusted, getting an audible signal to her would be nearly impossible. Do you really want to speak with her?¡± ¡°There¡¯s something I¡¯m missing,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is all Fenilor¡¯s doing, it has to be, he¡¯s given her something to protect her, he¡¯s talked to her, he¡¯s set things in motion. I just don¡¯t know why.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t either, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If that¡¯s any consolation.¡± It was not. ¡°Do you have any analysis on the bullets?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Insight into why they didn¡¯t work?¡± ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°To all appearances, she was simply lucky, on top of sleeping very lightly and having extraordinary reflexes.¡± Perry grit his teeth. He couldn¡¯t accept that. But if there wasn¡¯t some evidence of magic, he didn¡¯t know what it could be, and it felt like he really needed to know, given that he was going to be firing on her again in the very near future. The Farfinder''s ability to go into detail was better in the present and slightly less good in the past, which meant they would have more angles for analysis. Still, it wasn¡¯t a good outcome. The medical room was in the bowels of the castle, deep enough that Perry didn¡¯t have a good way in without breaking through a window and then killing dozens of guards. When he approached, she would either portal out or fight him. He did wonder whether he could trap her and neutralize the portals, but if she was smart, she¡¯d have left enough open doors and windows that she could be thirty miles away in an instant. He watched her on the picture-in-picture. The best time to go after her was when she was trying to get some more sleep. If she wanted to, it was possible for her to go down into a cave with a small enough opening that she could portal out but he couldn¡¯t enter, but that he might be able to plug up. He ended up waiting a long time. The bullets had hit her, they had done damage, and the stitch job the doctors were doing on short notice didn¡¯t seem to be all that good. The bullet that hit her nose had grazed a line across her forehead that was bleeding something awful. The one that had hit her chest was dug out as she bit down on a strop of leather. Her eyes were watering but clear. ¡°Do we have new prognostics?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Prognostics are not available while we¡¯re getting updates from the Farfinder, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry sighed. In theory, either of the prognostics engine or the remote viewing engine could be moved outside of the Farfinder, but it was apparently a rat¡¯s nest of work to disentangle everything, especially because the prognostics engine had been installed by some previous crewmember who was no longer with them, and no one had the domain expertise or the books necessary. ¡°Contact them,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to know why she¡¯s not in flight.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Communication will be facilitated at a delay.¡± Moments later, Hella was on-screen. ¡°Not the ideal outcome,¡± she said. ¡°We were rolling dice,¡± said Perry. ¡°She¡¯s pinned. The queen is mine. I think she¡¯d lay down her neck to save the queen¡¯s life. If she¡¯s still planning the attack ¡­ I don¡¯t know. We¡¯re missing something. Any whiff of Fenilor?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Hella after a brief delay. ¡°But trying to pinpoint a moving target, especially a small one ¡ª¡± ¡°I know, I know,¡± said Perry. He let out a frustrated sigh. ¡°Then I think we do the persistence hunter thing, try to wear her down. Why would he do this?¡± ¡°Do what?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Help her,¡± said Perry. ¡°He¡¯s an anti-monarchist. She¡¯s their biggest champion. He¡¯s been slicing his way through royalty for the last however many years.¡± ¡°He fears you,¡± said Hella. She had her arms folded across her chest. ¡°He¡¯s setting you against her, forcing the issue.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to chase her now,¡± said Perry. ¡°If she goes to ground, we¡¯ll plan for you to go dark, get some prognostics, and scout out the cave. If we can block her in ¡­ she still has the teleport.¡± One of these days, Perry would be up against someone who couldn¡¯t run from him, and he would crush them like bugs. ¡°Alright,¡± said Hella. ¡°You¡¯re within her range, we can¡¯t pull you out without risk. Be careful. We¡¯ll watch.¡± The communication cut out. Perry took a breath and lowered himself to an open balcony. The door was locked, but it was made of relatively thin wood, not something that had been built to survive 21st century power armor. Perry hesitated with his fist clenched. ¡°Marchand, we¡¯re going to encounter resistance,¡± said Perry. ¡°If there¡¯s trouble, open fire. We have ammunition now. Headshots on the guards.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°You have no problem with that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Only if they seem like they¡¯re going to attack,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not if they¡¯re surrendering, or quaking in their boots, or running away.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I shall endeavor to use my best judgment.¡± Perry pushed on the door until it gave way and stepped into the castle. He was a fair distance from where Third Fervor was, and he suspected that she would duck out as soon as he got to her, unless she wanted to discuss the kidnapped queen. He swapped the spear for the laser rifle, aiming it down the hallways. He wasn¡¯t nearly as familiar with it, but it worked at a distance, and would be good against men wearing masks. Perry followed the lines that Marchand was painting, the best path to get down to the room where Third Fervor was being treated. Marchand was running off a digest from the Farfinder and their remote viewing, which meant that Perry could effectively see through walls, though with red outlines where people were rather than actual images. It was some video game bullshit. The guards didn¡¯t come across Perry: he came across them. The first two were patrolling down a corridor in the darkness with a lantern raised to guide their way, not walking with the casual stroll of people doing their tenth lap of the night, but with the purpose of guards who are very aware someone has returned from the front bleeding heavily. They raised their weapons and Perry raised the laser gun. There was no way they understood what it was or what it could do, but they came for him, and he opened fire on them. It was his first time using the laser gun in combat, and he was surprised by just how effective it was. The guard¡¯s shirt caught on fire as soon as he was hit, and he began screaming as he tried to swat away the flames. His insides were cooking much more than he was actually being burned, and as two seconds passed he collapsed to the ground, writhing. Perry turned the laser gun on the other man and held down the trigger. The effect was mostly the same, with the clothes bursting into flame where the laser hit. The beam was invisible, but Perry¡¯s HUD was showing a line, and the flame of the man¡¯s clothing lit the hallway brighter than the hooded lantern they¡¯d been carrying. The guard moved, turning to run, and Perry let up on the trigger once the beam was aimed at the man¡¯s back. He collapsed though, probably feeling the burn working its way through his body. The laser was powerful enough to flash-vaporize water. Perry moved past them, picking up the pace. The shouts had been noticed, and people were alert. The next guard Perry saw would probably be coming for him, though he expected that Third Fervor would show up soon. He glanced at the HUD and saw her still with the doctors, though her eyes had gone to the door. The doctors were working faster, cleaning her wounds, bandaging her, and her armor seemed ready to snap shut at a moment¡¯s notice. The main question was whether she would pick flight or fight. The laser gun made short work of the guards he came across. He only fired on them if they looked like they were going to stop him, or if he would need to get too close to pass them. In spite of the fact that he was holding a sci-fi weapon, they seemed to register that this was a thing that could easily hurt them. Some ran, and the few that stayed were probably just seriously wounded. He didn¡¯t think he¡¯d killed anyone, though it was difficult to be sure. It might have been different if they were wearing metal, but the castle guards went without armor. Even then, the laser gun was powerful enough to punch through metal, it would just take longer. When Perry reached the floor where Third Fervor was, she opened a portal and left. ¡°Fucking bitch,¡± said Perry. The HUD took a moment to update, and while it was doing that, another of the guards came around the corner. Perry would have given a warning pulse, which would have meant burnt clothes and second-degree burns rather than actual damage, but the man was wearing a mask. He screamed and fell to the ground before Perry could find out what the mask did, though the design was unusual. The picture-in-picture gave an estimation for when it would have a location, which was updated to add on more seconds right when it seemed like they¡¯d have a lock. ¡°Rapid movement?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I cannot say, sir,¡± said Marchand after a moment. ¡°This is information from the Farfinder, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°How can they not locate her? Once you have the person, you can just find their location, right?¡± ¡°I will request clarification, sir,¡± said Marchand. There was a long pause while Perry stood awkwardly in the hallway of a hostile castle. ¡°It appears she left Thirlwell and headed more than a hundred miles away through a series of portals, to one of the outlying islands,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Once there, we lost track of her.¡± ¡°What happened to the tracking?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We have tracking.¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Elements aboard the Farfinder have come to the conclusion that she¡¯s either using the portals very rapidly to evade detection, or that she has some method of avoiding our ability to see her.¡± ¡°Fenilor,¡± said Perry with a hiss. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°I cannot say, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though he does endeavor to kill us.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°Get me a door out of here.¡± ¡°Given we do not know where Third Fervor is at the moment, sir,¡± Marchand began. ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll take the long way.¡± Perry found a window to shatter and leapt out it, letting the sword at his hip pull him up. He had too much equipment and wasn¡¯t able to tuck it away when worried that Third Fervor would portal right into the inner sanctum. He rose slowly, using the sword, which was faster on the vertical than the spear was. There were spotters, he knew, men with masks who might see him, but they didn¡¯t have the reporting infrastructure to get the information where it needed to be in time, and it was all pretty useless without Third Fervor to portal in and attack him. He wished that she would attack him, because then they might be able to end this part of things. When Perry had gone high enough ¡ª which took almost an hour ¡ª he went into the shelf space. The queen was laying on the bed, looking sullen, and while she had snapped to look at him when he came in, she turned away and looked at the wall as though she didn¡¯t care that he¡¯d come. ¡°I have no clothes here,¡± she said. ¡°I can get you clothes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Are you going to force me into the manacles?¡± asked the queen. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. She turned to face him. ¡°She fled, didn¡¯t she?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°She didn¡¯t so much as make an attempt at saving me,¡± said the queen. She spat on the floor, which Perry thought was quite rude. ¡°In her defense, I had shot her in the face,¡± said Perry. ¡°Something you make a habit of then,¡± said the queen. ¡°She¡¯s unfortunately fine,¡± said Perry. From what he knew of her healing, there would be scarring, and she¡¯d never be the same, but it was impossible to know what all Fenilor had given her. ¡°Which means I need to keep you here.¡± He hesitated, then removed his helmet. ¡°I don¡¯t have any enmity toward you. I don¡¯t think monarchy is a particularly good form of governance, but I think it would be better if you handed off power to the people, or if they took power from you, rather than having an outsider from another world come in to force the change. I¡¯ll do my best to treat you with the respect that all people deserve.¡± ¡°Murderer,¡± she spat. ¡°I¡¯ll get you clothes, food, water, and a place to do your business,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was hoping not to have to hold onto you, but Third Fervor is gone, and I¡¯m not going to be able to find her again.¡± ¡°How did you find her the first time?¡± asked the queen. ¡°How did you know where we were?¡± Perry pursed his lips. ¡°You have to be aware that I can¡¯t tell you that.¡± ¡°Who am I going to tell?¡± asked the queen. ¡°You¡¯re not letting me out of here until she¡¯s dead, if you let me out at all.¡± ¡°Fair,¡± said Perry with a shrug. ¡°And given what¡¯s gone on ¡­ well. We have a way to track people, and it¡¯s apparent that she knows that, because she¡¯s blocking us now. I¡¯m not sure why she wasn¡¯t blocking us two hours ago, if she could always do that, but that definitely seems to be the case.¡± He was hoping to build rapport. He was probably the wrong person to do it though. He could get one of the Mettes. They hadn¡¯t killed her father, and for all the queen knew, maybe Mette could be a prisoner too. That might work better. But the queen started laughing, and Perry paused his thoughts. ¡°You haven¡¯t figured it out?¡± she asked. ¡°Third Fervor was testing you.¡± She laughed again, a bitter bark. ¡°And now she understands your powers.¡± Perry stared at the queen. ¡°This was a play that took her most valuable piece off the board?¡± The queen went tight-lipped. It made no sense. Maybe Third Fervor had been laying in wait, ready for the attack against her, willing to take a bullet just to get information on what Perry knew. Maybe Fenilor had convinced her that she¡¯d be safe rather than maimed. But leaving the queen behind? Putting the queen¡¯s life at risk? Third Fervor wouldn¡¯t do that. The queen was too valuable, and even if there¡¯d been a secret marriage in that small gap of time, a transfer of power to someone unknown, that still wouldn¡¯t have made sense. The only way that Third Fervor would just abandon the monarch was ¡ª Perry stared at the queen. ¡°You¡¯re not the queen,¡± he said. She remained silent, but it wasn¡¯t the stoic silence of a woman who was firm in her resolve. ¡°You¡¯re a clone,¡± said Perry. She had no response to that, but she didn¡¯t need to have one. Like that, any advantage Perry might have had from the assault had evaporated. He stepped out of the shelf space without another word and contacted the Farfinder. ¡°There are other machines,¡± said Perry. ¡°Fenilor grabbed one. He cloned her. I don¡¯t know the specifics, but if he¡¯s got access to a machine like that, we¡¯ve got problems, especially since he has so much in the way of armaments.¡± ¡°We¡¯re on it,¡± said Hella. ¡°If we look into the past, and narrow down the search space, we might be able to find out when and where it happened.¡± ¡°This is a huge problem,¡± said Perry. ¡°How¡¯d he even find out?¡± ¡°Unclear,¡± said Hella. ¡°But it might become more clear in the future. Are you ready for pickup?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need to get to the bottom of this. If they¡¯re working together, for whatever reason, if this was a test we failed, probing at our weaknesses and powers ¡ª¡± ¡°It would be bad,¡± said Hella. ¡°Understood.¡± Perry stepped back aboard the Farfinder half an hour later, not using one of their doors, but an exterior airlock, as they had physically moved the ship to grab him from the sky. He went straight to the bridge, where everyone was waiting, save for the contingents of clones. But the next few hours illuminated nothing. They didn¡¯t have eyes on all the cloning machines, and they were significantly harder to find than people were. They were running prognostics, but Third Fervor had gone dark, which was going to make it incredibly difficult to find out where she was. The original queen was somewhere, obviously, but she could have been stashed in almost any corner of the globe, especially given how lax the culture was about having people around. It was three hours later, as the sun was coming up over the islands of Berus and Thirlwell, that they found something in the prognostics worth the time and effort they¡¯d spent. Unfortunately, it was bad news. The attack on the Berusian leadership was still on. Chapter 140 - Wag the Dog The prognostics couldn¡¯t see what Third Fervor was doing, but as with Fenilor, the Farfinder wasn¡¯t quite blind to the effect she was having on the world. The prognostics would show the fair set up to celebrate the revolution in Berus, and then a relatively small portion of the view would black out, announcing Third Fervor¡¯s arrival. People would run screaming from the void in the view, and when the cloud of imperceptibility lifted, the scene of glad-handing symboulion representatives and workers would be replaced by devastation, torn bodies and screaming bystanders. ¡°It¡¯s retaliation,¡± said Perry. ¡°It has to be.¡± ¡°Or they¡¯re playing a deeper game,¡± said Mette. ¡°Or it¡¯s a different sort of probing,¡± said Hella. She had her arms crossed. The meeting was in the bridge, an emergency affair, only a single version of each of them, the primes. ¡°But if you don¡¯t respond, she might escalate into an all-out war.¡± ¡°Decapitating leadership doesn¡¯t actually work well against the symboulions,¡± said Perry. ¡°In theory, at least. And especially not if they have clones ready to go, which in fairness, they probably don¡¯t.¡± ¡°Leadership still means something,¡± said Mette. ¡°As much as they might pretend that they¡¯re a community of people who are all on the same level, they¡¯re not fungible. There aren¡¯t that many people who have the knowledge and experience to keep Berus on the right path. They¡¯re never going back to monarchy, I wouldn¡¯t think, but ¡­¡± ¡°I¡¯m stopping her either way,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not even sure her motivations matter. She¡¯s killing innocents, whether that¡¯s on Fenilor¡¯s orders or the queen¡¯s.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Hella. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t feel right about standing back while it happened, but ¡­ you understand the prognostics aren¡¯t great?¡± ¡°I won¡¯t have a lot of insight into the potential fight,¡± said Perry with a nod. ¡°I won¡¯t necessarily know whether I¡¯ve won or lost.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Hella. ¡°I mean earlier.¡± ¡°Earlier?¡± asked Perry, frowning. ¡°Third Fervor¡¯s plan to attack? That was a sudden change. It shouldn¡¯t have happened like that. We should have caught some glimpse of it long before it happened. What we caught instead was like that,¡± she snapped, ¡°going from the event not appearing in any timeline to the event appearing in every timeline. Let¡¯s say that she¡¯s attacking on Fenilor¡¯s orders, which is entirely possible. If Fenilor were giving the orders, then that should have shown up in prognostics too. If it was ¡®fated¡¯, then it should have been a part of the assured future. It should have been seen. But it came suddenly. Which probably means that Fenilor decided to put something in motion based on what he saw of us. The reason we didn¡¯t see it coming was because of a change we made, except that we didn¡¯t make changes.¡± They couldn¡¯t see the impact of their own actions, and had to park the ship out away from things if they wanted to take a reading of the future. ¡°You think he¡¯s aware of the ship?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That he¡¯s aware we¡¯re watching the future?¡± ¡°I think so, yes,¡± said Hella. ¡°I don¡¯t think he can possibly have all the information, but I think he¡¯s been watching. We haven¡¯t seen him watching. Which is a problem.¡± ¡°Then we don¡¯t use the doors anymore,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not where there¡¯s a chance he can spy on us. If he enters this ship ¡­ I can¡¯t guarantee that the battle will leave things intact.¡± He thought about that some more. ¡°I can¡¯t guarantee that I will win.¡± ¡°Noted,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯ll do atmospheric transfers only then.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going down now,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d prefer prognostics to staying in touch. Interrupt only if it¡¯s looking like I¡¯m going to lose, or if you can sway the win percent.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll be blind,¡± said Mette. ¡°Not sure what you think you¡¯re going to get out of us.¡± ¡°Not much,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m going to try to win on my own.¡± He hesitated. ¡°I want to stash the queen clone here.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not a prison ship,¡± said Hella. ¡°I need the shelf space to be cleared,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need it combat ready.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Hella with an exasperated sigh. ¡°But we¡¯re not a prison ship. As soon as it¡¯s feasible to drop her off somewhere, we¡¯ll do that, but I¡¯m worried you said too much to her.¡± ¡°Nothing they didn¡¯t already figure out on their own,¡± said Perry. He turned to Mette. ¡°One of you will be in charge of her. Try to get some information.¡± ¡°Can do,¡± said Mette. Perry turned back to Hella. ¡°Do we know when Fenilor used the cloning machine? Or where? There can¡¯t be that many of them.¡± ¡°They¡¯re difficult to track down,¡± said Eggeltina. She¡¯d only been paying half attention to the meeting, too wrapped up in something on a tablet. ¡°And it¡¯s very possible that we¡¯re missing one.¡± ¡°Missing one?¡± asked Perry. ¡°One that¡¯s hidden away in one of the blank spots?¡± ¡°Uh, no,¡± said Eggy. ¡°You know how we can¡¯t get at you when you¡¯re in your shelf?¡± ¡°He might have one too,¡± said Perry as realization dawned. ¡°Or not exactly the same, but something like it.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Very possible that he¡¯s got somewhere to hide, or somewhere to put things.¡± ¡°That would be bad,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe extremely bad.¡± ¡°Yup,¡± said Eggy. ¡°Just a theory, at the moment, because we haven¡¯t found anything in the books about it, and he hasn¡¯t said anything about it.¡± ¡°He¡¯ll be watching this fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°Is it a small enough area that you can scan for anomalies?¡± ¡°¡®Anomalies¡¯,¡± laughed Eggy. ¡°You¡¯re vastly overestimating our capabilities here. We can turn all the error messages on, but it¡¯s magic slop that we only barely managed to direct into computers in the first place.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll try my hand at it,¡± said Mette. ¡°But she¡¯s right. Fixing all the problems aboard this ship is taking a lot of time, and trying to find aberrations of an unknown nature will be difficult, and especially difficult on this planet.¡± Mette had complained before that there were too many magics here. The stuff they had to learn would have filled dozens of textbooks, and the interactions would have filled a dozen more. ¡°Fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do your best. I¡¯m dumping the false queen and going down there.¡± ¡°Now?¡± asked Hella. ¡°It¡¯s early morning. The attack won¡¯t be for hours.¡± ¡°Better to run prognostics with me out there. Account for my actions,¡± said Perry. ¡°Besides, I want to get the lay of the land. If you have anything for me, beam it to Marchand.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve actually been using exclusively what you refer to as email,¡± said Eggy. She put her hands on her hips. ¡°It¡¯s been a bit of a problem,¡± said Mette, looking a bit apologetic. Whatever their difficulties, it had seemed fine to Perry, but he wasn¡¯t the one having to implement half a hundred hacky solutions to major problems. Perry nodded, then looked at Hella. ¡°Show me the room to dump the fake queen.¡± ¡°We¡¯re done here?¡± asked Hella. Perry nodded, and that seemed to be that. The queen was extracted from the shelf and was quite sullen about it, though she couldn¡¯t help but look around wildly at the bedroom that Hella had crafted for her. Hella wasn¡¯t happy about having another prisoner, but the queen was much less dangerous than Nima had ever been, and there was absolutely no way she was getting out. They would have to have a conversation about the terms and conditions of her imprisonment, but depositing her out in the wider world seemed like a non-starter. There was also a possibility that they could use her in some way; only Third Fervor knew that she was a clone, her kingdom was ignorant of that fact. But Perry didn¡¯t stick around to see how that would shake out. He went down to Berus, to wait for an attack he was still faintly hoping wasn¡¯t coming. ~~~~ He had hoped that they could cancel the event somehow. There were probably machinations at play within the symboulions, and the cancellation of an event that was meant to show the strength and promise of the new not-a-country would show exactly the opposite if the celebration was suddenly stopped due to vague warnings. Perry didn¡¯t entirely begrudge them that. He was pretty sure that many other organizations and governments would have done the same. There was a shark in the water, but the mayor wanted the beach open for the tourists, it was a tale at least as old as the 1970s. At best, there would be some warnings issued, with people told to watch out for anything suspicious, but Third Fervor had only ever intervened in person once, and that had been very brief, handled by Perry. He stood on top of the city¡¯s largest building, watching over the festivities. He¡¯d been there for hours, since the early morning, and had watched the setup. There was no sign that Third Fervor had given anyone advance warning, though there were still counter-revolutionaries within Berus, and some of them were operating with ill intent, even if there was no clear replacement for their murdered king, no heir to rally behind. But no, Perry was worried about Third Fervor and her alone. He understood her, he thought. She was a monarchist, she had a monarch, and even if it wasn¡¯t the monarch she might have wanted, she would follow orders, particularly when they pushed the agenda of monarchy forward. He didn¡¯t fully understand why she was doing this though, except perhaps if the queen had ordered it, and he didn¡¯t understand why the queen would do that. If Perry had been king, he would have been seeking to normalize relations, not to antagonize. Perry watched as the crowd began to grow. There were booths set up with little events, and there was free food and free drinks, which were bound to bring people in. Maybe there wouldn¡¯t have been such good attendance if the kitchens had all been up and running, but food had not been in as much abundance as the symboulions would have liked. This was another way for them to put their best foot forward and show that they were getting everything on the right path. They would get things figured out, if only through the sheer force of will of the global community sending multiple ships their way. Perry kept a close eye on the targets. The prognostics had shown the people that Third Fervor went after, though she was inconsistent about it. Some of the symboulion members were wearing lavender armbands to identify themselves, which had made the targeting vastly easier for her. Perry¡¯s ability to pick people out of a crowd, at least while wearing the armor, vastly exceeded Third Fervor¡¯s. With the Farfinder watching, Perry could easily have gotten a dossier on virtually any person in the crowd, and there had been enough of a nanite listener network left behind that he could probably have had Marchand grab hours of conversation from any of the important ones. There was a part of him that wished he could be down there with them. He wanted to see the culture in action, and this was culture-building stuff, a celebration that would be unique to this specific island, even if it was taken from blueprints brought from across the ocean. They were writing the script as they went, and the lavender armbands would be etched into tradition. He had often wondered about that ¡ª the first Thanksgiving, the first Independence Day, a nation trying to find its footing and forcing a tradition into being through force of will. It was all going to be interrupted imminently. The prognostics reports got sent in every time they reset the mechanism. There was nothing all that helpful. The frequency of the reports got faster and faster as the time approached. Third Fervor was apparently very regular, striking when the clock struck seven (their system of timekeeping did not match Earth¡¯s: it was midday). That seemed to indicate that it was an agreed-upon signal, because there was no other reason for her to choose that time specifically. It was consistent, which meant something. As the time approached, the prognostics reports stopped coming. They were probably trying to see the future after the fight, though it was difficult to say. Perry made sure he was ready and positioned. He was going to drop in and go after her, and there was going to be a fight, and it was possible he was going to win. The prognostics seemed to be on his side. Still, he was more nervous than he¡¯d been for a fight in quite some time. Maybe it was that he knew it was coming, that it had a specific time, or maybe it was that he still felt like he was missing a piece of the puzzle. When the portal appeared, Perry was already moving, and he was far too late to stop the first of the deaths. Third Fervor was moving with full force, slicing through people with her spear, not seeming to care whether they had the lavender armband on or not. Perry came in with his own spear and hit her in the back, sending her sprawling until she fell through a portal, but by then a dozen people were already dead. Third Fervor screamed loud enough to kill people without protection. She had a portal open next to her, touched with her armored fingers, and it winked rapidly as she changed its target destination, which moved all around the square. Her eyes were on Perry, not on the people she was killing. The sound of the note she was holding was loud enough that people fell to the ground clutching their heads, and many of them weren¡¯t getting up. Perry raced for her. The shoulder-gun fired rhythmically, not as fast as it could go, but with steady, measured, targeted shots that nevertheless failed to penetrate. She somehow had more resolve while committing the atrocity ¡ª that, or whatever spell Fenilor had cast on her was ongoing. Perry was expecting her to move as he rushed her, to open a portal beneath her feet and put him out of range, but she leaned forward and increased the volume loud enough that it was shaking his teeth and disrupting the rhythm of his heart, to say nothing of the stabbing pain in his ears. He crashed into her, and they tumbled through a portal together, high above the city, grappling with each other. The shoulder-gun fired again as they picked up speed, striking her in the helmet and causing her head to jerk back, but it left only a small dent. Spears were a terrible weapon for grappling in freefall, and Third Fervor held hers uselessly, its sharp point coming nowhere near him. Perry choked up on his spear, using it like a knife with an incredibly long handle, and tried to stab her in the side with it, but Fenilor¡¯s spear was no match for Third Fervor¡¯s impeccable armor. The shouting had stopped, at least, but Third Fervor was trying to find a latch on his armor, some way into it, which wouldn¡¯t happen unless something had gone wrong with the mechanisms. Perry had virtually no experience with wrestling, whether in free fall or not, but he tried to twist Third Fervor around, to grab her arm so he could wrench it into a hold. His hope was that it would work even with her armor on, but it would depend on how the joints had been designed, and whether they would allow him to simply snap her arm because there was no protection to keep the joints from going the wrong way. Eventually he had one of her arms, and began twisting it, but she placed a hand behind him as they fell and another portal opened up. They fell through it, then another portal, moving them out over the ocean, which wasn¡¯t ideal. If she was intent on killing more people down in Berus, all she would have to do was give him the slip, which was why he was holding onto her. If she was in pain from having her arm twisted the wrong way, she wasn¡¯t showing it, but Perry didn¡¯t have the best hold on her, and was having to invent the principles of an arm bar on the fly. He had spun around to be upside down relative to her, and his spear was left whipping in the wind, held there by a long tether attached hours before. Without it, he would be down to the sword, much less maneuverable, but that had been anchored in place on his back given that he didn¡¯t think he¡¯d have any combat use for it. Third Fervor did something with the portals that made Perry¡¯s stomach lurch. He was surprised when they landed hard on worked stone, their velocity having apparently been canceled by a portal that had thrown them up into the air. He put his full effort into breaking her arm, but her armor was stopping him from accomplishing much damage, though she was flopping around like a fish and in pain. The room she¡¯d put them in was full of barrels, most of them with a thick black substance around the rims and sides. They had been hastily packed with something, placed in this room by the dozen. It was possible they had moved to Thirlwell during the freefall, though they seemed to be in a storeroom of some kind, one with a window big enough that Third Fervor could portal out. There was more of the black substance on the ground, a grit that they were rolling around in. She could portal them out at any time, but she had chosen to place them here. With an extra expenditure of effort, the Wolf Vessel halfway opened to give a surge of power, Perry heard the crack of something in her hyperextended shoulder. She screamed in pain, not amplified, and Perry rotated her arm, trying to use jagged bone to cut through tendon and muscle. A torch was thrown into the room from the open window. Perry watched as it twirled through the air, helpless to stop it. It landed among the thin layer of black grit they were fighting in, which went up in a flash of smoke and fire, but just after that the fire reached the barrels, and those exploded with full force. When Perry came to, the suit of armor was dead. He was bleeding and in pain all over, but he pushed energy outside of himself, to the armor, trying to get it back to a state where it could boot. He was surprised that he could feel the connections between the pieces, the unseating of wires, the way that it had been damaged. Perry was pretty sure he had internal bleeding, and while the display was dead, his hands went to take the helmet off. It was supposed to come away cleanly in the case of power failure, but something had been damaged or was stuck, and without the power armor aiding him, he felt sluggish. There was something on top of him that didn¡¯t move when he tried to shove it aside. He didn¡¯t try more than once.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The armor powered back on before Perry could get the helmet off. He stared at the screen as Marchand finished booting up. The storeroom they¡¯d been in had the roof blown off it. The walls were down, rock strewn everywhere, and for a moment Perry wasn¡¯t even sure that he was in the same place. She¡¯d taken him to a place with explosives, stacked barrels of gunpowder or something else, then blown them both up. Either she¡¯d meant to leave him there and portal out, or hoped that her armor was better than his. A heavy timber was laying across him, part of the roof, he was pretty sure. With the armor working again, he was able to move it, and as soon as he did, pain flooded his lower body. Marchand had a variety of red alerts at the bottom of the HUD, and some of them were medical: while Perry had been passed out, the suit was filling with blood, and inside his body was like a stewed tomato swimming in a can of its own juices. He was surprised to see Third Fervor slumped up against one wall. Her armor was still encasing her, but she was bleeding from it, and not moving. It didn¡¯t look like she was slumped there, it looked like she¡¯d been bodily thrown by the explosion. Perry wasted no time and turned into the mechawolf. When injured, the process was slightly slower, but Perry had prepared for this fight, and he had plenty of power in his vessel to work with. He healed as he transformed, both the flesh and the metal parts of him, and once he was done, he was back to full power. He bit her head as soon as he was able to, feeling hard metal against his long teeth. His claws couldn¡¯t gouge her either ¡ª even unconscious, the armor worked, and he let out a growl of frustration. If she was dead, he would need to leave with her body. He wanted no chance that the portal would open up anywhere Fenilor would be able to get at it. But if she was alive, he wanted to kill her, because she was too dangerous to be left alive. He went sniffing for her spear, and found it broken on the ground, snapped so that only a foot of handle was attached to the head. Perry picked this up in his teeth, being ginger with it, then hefted himself onto Third Fervor, pressing the tip of the wickedly sharp spear into her chest. It caught on the metal, then screamed loudly against the armor as he pushed the obsidian tip through. He could barely see, even with the cameras studded around his body, but as soon as it was through the metal it became easier. The hole widened with every inch. Even broken, the spear still held some of its magic. Third Fervor woke then, that one extra source of pain rousing her. She pushed away at him feebly, then harder, but still not strong enough to get him off of her. Her plan had failed, and her arm was still broken and torn up, leaving her with only her right hand to push against him. She tried to grip the spear¡¯s head, and Perry heard the keening as it dug through her armored hands. When she came to her senses, she reached down to touch the ground below her, and Perry released the spear. He bit her around the leg at the last possible moment, stilling her before she could fall through the portal, holding her back. He was too large to go through even if she could have managed some way to trick him, so she was stuck with him. He bit down hard on her, hoping that his teeth would make their way through her armor, or that it would bend, but it held fast, and she beat him with her one good fist about the nose even as he held her above a portal that led high into the air. He hoped that somewhere in there, beneath the skin of metal, she was dying. When she grabbed for the spearhead, apparently to stab him, he yanked her to the side, still holding her leg firm. She cried out in pain and frustration, and he whipped her back and forth, hoping to break more inside her, shaking her like a ragdoll. She opened portal after portal, each one at a place she touched, sometimes in the air. He had a skewed view of people, their purposes unclear, until finally she stuck a portal in the air that showed five men on the other side. They had crude weapons raised, firearms as made by people who had discovered firearms in the very recent past and had no tradition of it. They were similar to the weapons that had been used at the execution, but longer and more narrow. ¡°Fire!¡± called Third Fervor. They likely would have shot without her asking to. They had the stink of fear on them, even through the portal. They had been waiting all day for this. The bullets hit Perry, but only one of the shots was clean. It hit Perry in a camera, taking it out, while the other bullets glanced off the armor in different directions. The damage left him with a wound, but it wasn¡¯t a serious one. He felt the urge to charge forward and tear through them, which would be the work of only a few seconds, but he wasn¡¯t a mere animal, and he had the wherewithal to use the other tools at his disposal. The shoulder gun lifted up from its housing and fired five rapid shots, aiming squarely at center mass. They each went down, and the portal shut before the kills could be confirmed. Perry turned to Third Fervor. She had grown, and as he looked at her, she was growing larger. Already she was nearly ten feet tall, too large for him to easily get his mouth around her leg again. The growth was accelerating, and she was getting bigger still. Her armor grew with her, not just expanding but gaining details that hadn¡¯t been there before. When she shouted, it was louder than it had ever been before, and Perry whimpered as the echoes bounced back from the hills around them. She kept growing. She became a giant, then a titan. It was one of her powers they had only limited information on; it wouldn¡¯t last forever, and she would be weakened afterward. They had seen it in prognostics only once or twice, and never in much detail. It had been responsible for Perry¡¯s death in those predicted timelines, a last resort used to great effect. Aboard the Farfinder, they had been calling it Big Mode, and Perry had no great plan for dealing with it. He grabbed the broken spear from the floor in his mouth and held it there. From what he could see, the armor had not gotten thicker, it had only spread out, and if it was just as impenetrable as before, that still meant the broken magical spear could cut through it with some effort. Of course, the rules of Big Mode, at least as far as they were known, meant that he would only have to wait her out, and if they had wound up in Thirlwell, there was no longer any threat to the people of Berus. Perry could simply run, and with her that size ¡ª now grown to nearly thirty feet tall ¡ª there was no way she could use her portals. Third Fervor immediately opened a portal. It was huge, the size of a swimming pool, thick and wide, the magic interplaying with Big Mode. She stumbled back into it, and Perry bounded after her, slipping through just before she snapped it shut. She portaled again, and Perry went for her ankle, hoping to hold on and not be lost. Getting bigger hadn¡¯t fully healed her, and had possibly not healed her at all, because her wounded arm was still being held limply at her side, and she was staggering, only barely aware of herself. She portaled again, and this time Perry had less trouble following her, though they were high in the sky, a giantess and a wolf. She portaled again, then again, moving them out over the water, until a final portal sent them crashing down against the ground, far less controlled than last time. Third Fervor hit a building, and Perry rolled across cobblestones, his tethered spear dragging behind him, the broken spear still in his mouth. She had brought them back to Berus again, where the dead were laying on the ground, unmoved, and the streets had been cleared. People were hiding out, and a tent which had held caramels was being used to triage wounds. She kicked at Perry and he backed away from her, then bent down and opened up the shelf space. The laser gun that Brigitta had made was waiting there ¡ª had been waiting the entire time, connected to a bank of batteries. The wireless connection was made immediately, and the system had been meant to be controlled by Marchand, except that now Perry was also Marchand. He could feel the protocols and see through the small camera that had been left in the shelf space, could line up the shot properly with small servos, and fired at Third Fervor¡¯s center. At first there was no response from her. She was only sluggishly getting to her feet as she pushed up from the caved-in side of a tailor¡¯s. But while the laser wasn¡¯t penetrating the armor, it was heating it up to white-hot. She soon began screaming, slapping at the hot metal, and when that didn¡¯t work, she raced forward to Perry, giant hand coming down to slap him as her other arm hung uselessly. Perry dodged to the side, dropping the shelf space opening, which stopped the laser, but after he¡¯d bounded back away from her, he opened it back up again. The laser gun was stuck onto some servos scavenged from the Farfinder, and Perry was fully in control of it, firing it through the aperture again. With his enhanced mechanical vision, he could see the thick beam as it went through the air, and if he could keep it up, he could burn her alive in the armor, nevermind that it couldn¡¯t be penetrated. Another portal snapped open, and a wall of water blasted out of it. Perry winked the shelf space shut, then was tossed by the wave, slammed against a brick building that groaned with the wave of water pressing against it. Third Fervor had flooded the city in just an instant, salt water from the deep sea washing away the tent where people had been getting medical treatment, turning the thoroughfares into rivers of mud with tumbling cobblestones, bodies, and personal effects. Perry lifted up into the air, held aloft by the sword that ran along his back. The spear still dangled from the tether, and his mouth was still tight around the other spear, but he had no hope of driving it into her with enough leverage, even if her armor was just as thin as it had been when she was small. It clung to her, seeming skintight, the ultimate defense. Perry landed on a rooftop and tried to assess. It was hard, as the wolf, and even as the mechawolf. He wanted to kill her, to rip into her with his claws and teeth, but ineffectually biting at magically-hardened metal would do nothing. He fired the laser at her again, from an unstable rooftop this time, and managed to keep it there for quite a while until she charged at him. He aimed for the head, hoping to cook her brain. At thirty feet tall, she crashed into the building. She was moving faster than she had been before. Whatever damage the gunpowder plot had done to her, she was shaking it off, though her arm was still fucked, and she was fighting one-handed. She screamed again, deafeningly loud, blowing out a handful of microphones, and Perry winced. Third Fervor noticed this time. She screamed again, louder, deeper, rumbling the bones in his body, breaking windows with the noise, and assuredly injuring more of the fleeing civilians. She advanced on him with another sharp blast of sound, and he ran along the rooftops, leaping from eave to eave. He felt like he should have been faster than her, but she had none of the weight a woman her size should have had ¡ª or possibly, the speed and strength to make up for it. The chase was causing immense destruction through the flooded city. Third Fervor cared nothing for the civilians, their homes and businesses, and when she swatted at Perry, it was with full force. Her fists broke through support beams and cracked foundations, and Perry kept running, trying to keep away from her. Eventually she would run down, and then she would be vulnerable. If he kept the tip of the spear in his mouth, he would have a weapon to defeat her, if the laser gun wasn¡¯t enough. As he was about to make another leap from roof to roof, Third Fervor screamed again, and Perry faltered. He missed the jump and crashed through a window instead, finding himself in a workshop where looms had already gone still. Third Fervor tore the wall open at the window, parting the brickwork, and Perry ran forward as the roof began to collapse. He leapt from another window, crashing through, and landed on the city street in a foot of water. Third Fervor appeared in front of him with a portal that was wide enough to stretch from one side of the street to the other. She stomped down on him with a heel that could easily have impaled him, and he rolled to the side, then darted ahead. She screamed after him, but he was having trouble hearing it anymore, leaving the sound only as something that rattled his teeth and vibrated his metal plates. He could smell death on her as he passed. She was doing terribly beneath the armor, as huge and imposing as she looked. The hole he¡¯d made in her chest with the tip of the spear was still there, and still bleeding. If he could land a shot there with his gun, he might be able to end her, though she had more flesh than before, and a bullet would seem like a BB. He was trying to make a plan when the spear he¡¯d been dragging behind him his whole time caught on something. He strained against it, then bit through the material with razor sharp teeth, but it was enough of a delay for Third Fervor to appear with a portal and slap him down the street. Perry¡¯s body broke in a dozen places, bones snapping and metal shearing, with the softer, more delicate bits ¡ª muscle and wire ¡ª cut straight through. He bounced once on the cobblestone street, then hit the side of a wall, and seized up as the bad news came in, both intense pain from the biological parts of him and coldly clinical damage assessments from the mechanical. It would knit itself together, all of it, but Third Fervor stepped through another portal and was on him. Perry opened his shelf space and used his one good paw to push himself into it, letting it close before Third Fervor¡¯s questing hand could find him. He lay in the shelf, panting hard. She hadn¡¯t opened a portal to come in with him, and probably couldn¡¯t at that size. He was healing, regenerating, and his store of energy was depleting in the process. He¡¯d gone into the fight topped up with some full exposure to the moon, but without moonlight, he was depending on the reactor, which had already knitted itself back together once. It wasn¡¯t enough energy. Another hit like that, and he might have to transform back, if he survived it at all. Still, there were people out there, people who he¡¯d said he was trying to save, and if he let Third Fervor get away, she could recover in peace. He still had no idea why she was even doing this, why she¡¯d been commanded to do this. He got to his feet slowly. He was still injured, but the bones had brought themselves back together again. If she left, she would go lick her wounds. She would shrink back down to size, and they wouldn¡¯t be able to find her, and then she would be able to do it all over again. Perry opened the shelf and raced out on legs that were still getting back to full strength. He needed her to know that he was still there, still alive. She slammed down a fist he only saw because his body was studded with so many cameras, and he dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding her thumb. She was moving slower now, her wounds taking their toll. She had been racing after him, moving fast, and even if Big Mode wasn¡¯t at its end, she was flagging. Perry ran, still healing as he did so. He needed her to keep up the chase, and also needed to stay close enough to her that he could dive through a portal when she did. If she escaped, he would never catch her, but he was fast in this form, even as he drained energy from his vessels to keep up the speed. Third Fervor appeared in front of him and tried to stomp him to death. He dodged to the side as her heel buried itself two feet deep in the road. While she extracted her foot, he opened the shelf space and fired on her again, lasing her back and howling at her, trying to keep her attention. He didn¡¯t know when she would back out, and wanted to be ready for it. She turned to him, laser scoring a mark along her back, and screamed so loud that the laser¡¯s mounting was knocked over. Perry rattled from the sound, and went completely deaf this time, brought to his knees by a sound so loud it made his heart flutter. She went at him with every ounce of speed she had left in her, using her one good hand in a desperate attempt to smash him flat. He raced backward, dropping the shelf space again, and she screamed after him as she slapped the cobblestones, cracking them. He turned back when she didn¡¯t follow him, and he bounded forward, barking at her, when she stepped back. A portal opened behind her, but she was too slow for him. He dug his claws into her leg, gripping her in a way that was awkward for a wolf¡¯s form, and they went back together, to a clearing near a forest that must have been somewhere in Thirlwell. She tried to shake him off, and when that didn¡¯t work, she beat at him with her fists, which broke a bone in his shoulder and forced him to slump to the ground. But when she opened a portal beneath her feet, he doggedly jumped after her, and they fell together through three more portals, high in the air, one of them nearly closing right behind him. She was getting smaller and weaker. The portals were shrinking with every one she made. She used a portal to fling them high and kill their momentum, and Perry was able to use a blast of moonlight, aimed backward, to propel him just close enough to get her ankle in his mouth. She punched him again, but he held on tight, and the punch was weaker, because she was smaller. More portals went by. Perry hit the side of one, and it was like hitting concrete, but he held firm. She was trying to shake him, to get him off of her, and if she did, then it was all over. They landed together in a stretch of sand, somewhere unknown to Perry. He wasn¡¯t sure how many portals they had gone through, or what her plan was, but she was back down to her normal size, and she was still fighting against him, but she was using only her own reduced strength, which was nothing to him. She might as well have been petting him for all the good it was doing her. Perry released her ankle and moved on her. She was laying on the ground, in the sand, staining it with the blood that leaked from her armor. He raised the shoulder gun out of its casing, calculated the precise angle, then shot her twice through the hole he¡¯d made in her armor. She jerked with the impact and let out a low groan, then went still. Perry stared down at her, waiting, then gripped her in his mouth and flung her body into the shelf space, following after her. He was useless without hands, but it would have been best to manacle her to something heavy. He was going to try to find a way to remove her armor, but as he watched, it fell from her like skin sloughing off, the vibrant color of it fading away and becoming insubstantial. Beneath it, she was broken and bloodied. Perry sat for a moment, pacing back and forth, then checked his energy levels. His vessels had been depleted with the damage she¡¯d done in that last fall, and while he¡¯d healed back, there was little left. If this was part of Fenilor¡¯s plan, then Perry didn¡¯t have the power left for a second fight. He transformed back, feeling every inch of the pain and awkwardness of metal and flesh unmerging from each other. When he was finished, he went to look at Third Fervor. She hadn¡¯t moved at all. She was dead, he could smell the death on her already, and when he¡¯d been the wolf he¡¯d been close enough to hear her heartbeat still. Beneath the armor, she was just flesh. She had all kinds of wounds on her body, all from him, different attacks she¡¯d suffered and never quite healed back from. ¡°March,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I guess ¡­ now we wait,¡± said Perry. ¡°Certainly, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The portal is going to open,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or it should, unless this was a clone.¡± ¡°I doubt that it could have been a clone, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°She had her powers.¡± Perry used a toe to turn the body over, and saw a small tablet covered in the same crusty material as the one they¡¯d found in Fenilor¡¯s murder basement. Perry left it where it was. He doubted that it did more than conceal her location. Was this what Fenilor wanted? Had Perry played into his hands? ¡°Why did she do it?¡± asked Perry. It was a nothing question. It wasn¡¯t even really important. ¡°Because she was told to, sir,¡± Marchand answered. Perry sat with the body and waited. He had no idea where in the world they were. If he stepped out though, Fenilor might find him, and if the portal opened then, there would need to be a fight. The reactor was slowly charging Perry¡¯s vessels back up, but the fight with Fenilor would be more difficult. He would need to go retrieve the spear from wherever it had been left in Berus, if someone hadn¡¯t stolen it. Even if they had stolen it, he would have to find a way to get it back. Perry slowly removed his armor. He had been in it for what felt like a long time. He watched the corpse, waiting to see whether it would move, but Third Fervor was dead. He took his sword and stabbed her once through the eye, down into the brain, just to be sure, but she didn¡¯t move or cry out. When the portal opened, it was understated. Perry stared at it. There was a temptation to go through, obviously. He could leave this life behind, as he¡¯d left others behind. In fact, the Farfinder could follow. They would probably see his exit on the punch map, if that worked with this small pocket dimension. And because they had Nima and Mette, it would mean that Fenilor could never win his fight. Maybe he would get another matchup in a few years time, or maybe the cycle would be broken. They didn¡¯t actually know. Perry sat on the bed, one of the only pieces of furniture that remained in the shelf space. It had been taken from a library, and Perry had the good grace to feel a little guilty about that. It wasn¡¯t as much as he wanted to take through to the next world. From what they knew, the portal would stick around for about a day. He just needed to wait it out, and if he did, it would disappear. He could catch the next one, the one that would open when Fenilor was killed. That was the plan. Still, there was a part of him that felt drawn to the portal. ¡°I¡¯m going to break the tablet and pop out,¡± said Perry after an hour had passed with the portal simply hovering there. ¡°Enough that the Farfinder should be able to see us. Not enough that Fenilor should be able to find us. And I¡¯m going up high. It should be more difficult for him to find us that way.¡± ¡°Sir, is that wise?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°If we simply wait Fenilor out, it seems we are on much better footing. An avenue for his escape will be closed.¡± ¡°I¡¯m hoping the risk is low,¡± said Perry. He reached down and picked up the tablet, which had been laying on the ground, and snapped it in half. He could practically feel the magic draining out of it. He did put the armor back on before going outside, just in case. When he stepped out into the desert, he only intended to be there long enough for the Farfinder to get a message of confirmation to him. They had his signature and would pinpoint him within minutes, no matter where in the world he was, and with prognostics, it was possible for them to pinpoint him even before he stepped out. But as the minutes went by, Perry started to feel a churn in his stomach. They would have seen everything from a remove, the aftermath of the fight rather than the fight itself, a dark sphere in their sensors. They would have known from the eyewitnesses that it had been going right ¡ª that he wasn¡¯t dead. And even if they thought he was dead, they would have kept searching for him, it would have cost them almost nothing. ¡°Why¡¯s it taking so long?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry rose up into the air, leaving the ground behind. He needed to get his bearings, and if he wanted to go to Berus in any reasonable amount of time, that meant going up to space where he could get some proper acceleration. Besides, it meant less of a chance for Fenilor to approach. Fenilor obviously had some bullshit left, he hadn¡¯t used all his tools he¡¯d gathered yet, but going up high reduced the possibility space of that bullshit. Perry was halfway into the climb when an email notification came in. There was only one possibility of where it could have come from: the Farfinder had found him. But he stopped as soon as he read the subject line. It said only ¡°HELP!!!!¡± Chapter 141 - Expulsion ¡°There are all kinds of ways that magic can fail between universes,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°I mean, obviously, right? Because they all use different what-we-call physics, and you wouldn¡¯t expect that all of the ways for things to be ¡®magic¡¯ would just fold up neatly.¡± Eggy 6 was the only one who was numbered. It was their idea of a joke, though she was actually the fifth one out of the cloning machine and the sixth total. They were in a room that was being called ¡®second bridge¡¯, which had the feeling of being in a remote location. Kestrel had been offered a spot on the bridge proper, but hadn¡¯t really felt like he would have that much to contribute. The second bridge was a lot more casual than the primary bridge, with a feeling more like a coffee shop than a place where missions were being conducted. All the people there were clones, which meant a lot of Mettes and Eggys, because they had been the ones that were most eager to do the whole clone thing. Perry and Kestrel had, by mutual agreement, not cloned again, though there was a question of whether they would in the future. Everyone had alt universe equivalents of iPads and smartphones, with a few laptops, and there was a large display on one wall that gave vital information, as well as a view inside the main bridge. There was a countdown to Third Fervor¡¯s attack, which only had minutes left. After that, it was likely that they would be in the dark, or maybe just probing at the edges of the battle. ¡°So there are different failure modes,¡± said Kes. ¡°And you don¡¯t know ahead of time what¡¯s going to fail.¡± He was in private conversation with Eggy 6, over in one of the corners, at a table for two. She had taken a special interest in him, for whatever reason. He suspected that the clones had a scheme of some sort, because they often conferred with each other. If that was the case, she had been sent to woo him, and he wasn¡¯t entirely sure whether it was for science or some other reason. ¡°More importantly, you don¡¯t know how it¡¯s going to fail,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°You go to the next world and an important piece of ship infrastructure is dead? That¡¯s a problem, sure. But if it¡¯s going to stay dead, even when you go to another world, that¡¯s worse. Some magics will flourish back to life, there¡¯s something in how they fold up when they die that lets them unfold. We¡¯re ¡­ still not entirely sure on that right now, it¡¯s an area of active research, but the research only happens when we move between worlds, and a lot of stuff just stays dead. And of course how it dies is another issue.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t want pressurized canisters where the walls are made of exotic force fields,¡± said Kes. ¡°Not unless you want to bomb yourself.¡± ¡°Exactly,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°And you wouldn¡¯t necessarily know that you have a proverbial pressurized canister. Your sword has a lot of power in it, right?¡± ¡°I guess,¡± said Kes. It wasn¡¯t actually his sword, but he didn¡¯t want to say that. ¡°I mean, it can potentially get you to a fraction of the speed of light,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°But yeah, most likely that¡¯s just a physics whoopsie, as we call them, different frames of understanding interacting with each other, not a hint that the sword is connected to some deeper well of power. That¡¯s another cross-magic thing.¡± She had a fruity drink, something stark red that smelled like artificial strawberry and pineapple, and she swirled it around. ¡°But if it was on this ship, rather than with the other you, then yeah, we would worry a little about it blowing us up.¡± ¡°Seems like a dangerous way to live,¡± said Kes. ¡°Has that happened?¡± ¡°The ship hasn¡¯t blown up, no,¡± laughed Eggy 6. ¡°You know what I mean,¡± said Kes. ¡°Is there precedent?¡± ¡°Hella is pretty sure that¡¯s what killed her original crew,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°They came into a new world and were immediately reeling, and yeah, it might have been because of some magic crystals they took with them, but it¡¯s really hard to say. Might also have been a crash landing, because there wasn¡¯t the mass predictor at that point. She was pulled from the ship by some locals and didn¡¯t make it back for some time.¡± ¡°Never trust a crystal,¡± said Kes. Eggy 6 laughed. ¡°That¡¯s funny, but absolutely do not make that joke around Hella.¡± ¡°I meant for it to be macabre,¡± said Kes. ¡°Dark humor. Guess you¡¯re right though.¡± ¡°I get it,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°I know I don¡¯t look it, but I like black humor.¡± Kes looked her over. She was wearing a brightly colored dress ¡ª all the Eggys were ¡ª this one green with a star pattern that grew more pronounced down at the hem. She was wearing a pop of red lipstick, and probably some other makeup. When he looked closer, he could see it, and he could also smell her. She had washed her hair with something coconut and honey scented, and her skin had been washed with something that was more floral, maybe lavender. Of course, he didn¡¯t know if she was actually flirting with him. Friendly, lively women were always the toughest for him to read, because every comment could be taken as an invitation or engagement beyond the norm. This was the fourth time she¡¯d sought him out, but that might just have been because she had some science in mind. That would track with this being some kind of plan. Kes wasn¡¯t averse to science though, depending on what it required of him. She was definitely curious about the werewolf thing. ¡°You don¡¯t suppose that I¡¯ll explode into pieces because I¡¯m a werewolf, do you?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Very possible!¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°I mean, from what Perry said, the Wolf Vessel contains energy, and in the normal course of things, what happens when it cracks open is that the energy is used for transformation, then for healing, partially fueled by consumption. What that means when we go to another world is anyone¡¯s guess, but in theory we¡¯ll be going to a world that Perry has gone to, and in theory, nothing special will happen to you as we cross our own border. But we know that our border crossing is a lot different from the punch.¡± She took another sip of her drink. ¡°I¡¯m excited to see what will happen!¡± ¡°It¡¯s starting,¡± called one of the Mettes, who was watching closely. ¡°Only medium probability that he wins.¡± ¡°He should retreat,¡± said one of the other Mettes. ¡°And leave those people to die?¡± asked one of the others. Kes couldn¡¯t quite keep them straight. They had a very different approach to the clone thing, and hadn¡¯t strongly differentiated themselves, except for the prime, who was the only werewolf among them, and on the bridge. ¡°Thirty seconds,¡± said another Mette. ¡°A lot of those people are going to die no matter what,¡± said an Eggy, one of the more serious ones, maybe Hernietta. ¡°He¡¯s not going to retreat,¡± said Kes, who was the resident expert on Perry. ¡°If she goes after people, he¡¯ll be there to stop her, even if there¡¯s some risk to himself.¡± How much risk was in question though. ¡°And he wants the fight,¡± said one of the Mettes. ¡°He wants to end it,¡± said Kes with a nod. But it was true, Perry did want the fight, wanted struggle and victory, the same as Kes did. Only one of them was going to get it though. The view of the fair went black. Their ¡®cameras¡¯ were positioned far enough back that they could see an odd black bubble, like a black hole in their perception. It was attached to Third Fervor, and jittered as she moved and portaled her way through. Perry leapt down from where he¡¯d been watching and went right for it. From that point forward, they would see only the aftermath. The black spot was surprisingly powerful. It didn¡¯t just apply to past vision, future vision, and present vision, but to what felt like comparatively mundane things like video cameras. A camera brought into the black spot would show only black, and even if it didn¡¯t, it wouldn¡¯t be able to transmit out. Sound could be captured, but only sound, and it couldn¡¯t be transmitted while the blocking effect was up. The details were something they were still in the midst of figuring out. The one big exception to those rules was Marchand, which might have been because he was partly magical, or partly alive, since the blocking effect didn¡¯t seem to impact humans at all. ¡°Now we wait, I guess,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯ve got a bad feeling about this,¡± said Eggy 6. She frowned. ¡°We were in a contingency meeting last night, and the prospects are grim with Perry gone.¡± ¡°I wasn¡¯t in that meeting,¡± said Kes. ¡°It was just the Eggys,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°The Carton,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯ll have you know that where I¡¯m from, Eggletina is a very respectable and normal name,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°In fact ¡ª¡± An alarm blasted through the ship, and everyone froze in place. ¡°Well shoot,¡± said Eggy 6, looking up at the ceiling. She wasn¡¯t moving into action though, apparently leaving that to the others, who were tapping at their tablets and laptops. ¡°What is that?¡± asked Kes. ¡°System we set up a week ago,¡± said Eggy 6. The alarm was silenced, and there was a great deal of conversation in the secondary bridge. ¡°Maybe get ready to fight.¡± Kes had a handgun holstered on his hip, though if there was someone on the ship who wasn¡¯t supposed to be there, he didn¡¯t suspect that the gun would do a lot of good. Perry had all their best weapons. ¡°What¡¯s the alarm?¡± asked Kes. ¡°We can¡¯t track Fenilor,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°But we can track when we¡¯re being blocked. So we have one of the ¡®cameras¡¯ set up pointed inside the ship, and if it ever gets blocked ¡ª¡± The view of the main bridge went black. There was silence in the room as people saw the screen showing nothing, then Kes got up from his seat and raced out the door. He didn¡¯t have a good plan. If Fenilor was on their ship, that was a major problem, and it was one that had no real solution. There were weapons they thought might be effective, but using any of them inside the ship had a high chance of killing everyone aboard. Not all of Fenilor¡¯s armors could shrug off bullets like they were nothing, but if he was here, how long would it take him to shred through the crew? When Kes opened the door to the bridge, half the crew were already dead. Fenilor was dressed in a shiny black vinyl outfit that bunched up around his joints with a fish bowl helmet. In his hand was a dagger that was dripping with something shimmering green. Kes raised the gun and shot him three times, close range, center mass. Kes had been putting in time at their improvised gun range with both rifles and handguns, and it proved entirely unnecessary as far as hitting a target twenty feet away went, and also entirely ineffective, as the bullets vanished against the shiny black vinyl with a ripple in the material, leaving no trace the gun had even been fired save for the ringing in Kes¡¯ ears. Fenilor threw his dagger at Kes, and Kes raised an arm to block it. The dagger gouged him across the forearm, cutting through his shirt, and Kes felt a blossom of pain. He grabbed the dagger off the floor, and when he looked back up, Fenilor had a long blade, something that looked like a fencing sword, thin and slightly flexible. He was advancing on Hella. ¡°I need some information from you,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°How is this ship accessed?¡± ¡°Eat shit,¡± said Hella. ¡°I¡¯ve seen the doors you use,¡± said Fenilor. His voice was even. Kes gripped the dagger, waiting for his moment to strike, but Fenilor seemed fully aware of exactly where Kes was. ¡°I don¡¯t think there¡¯s a need to kill everyone aboard this ship. But if that¡¯s the way of negating this advantage, that¡¯s what I¡¯ll do. Tell me how he gets back aboard.¡± Hella hesitated, and that¡¯s when Kes knew that she would crumple. He glanced at the crew. Eggy Prime was dead, Mette Prime was slumped back in her chair, and the lizard guy L¡¯onso was sprawled over his desk. His extra tongues were drooping out of his nose. But Cark and Nitta were still there, down on the ground with their hands over their heads, and Hella would try to save them.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. ¡°There, that console,¡± said Hella, pointing at it. ¡°Destroy it and it will take us a week to rebuild.¡± Fenilor nodded. He could tell truth from lies, or close enough that it didn¡¯t matter. He went to the console and pulled a hammer from nowhere, then wound up to bring it down. Kes had no particular plan, but if they couldn¡¯t open up a door for Perry, it would be hours until Perry returned. Hopefully someone was already sending out a message to Marchand using the technopathy console, but for all Kes knew, that was located in this room and not able to be used from over the ship network. They hadn¡¯t expected Fenilor to simply walk right onto their ship, however he had done it. Kes lunged, using the knife, and found that his body betrayed him. His hand lost its grip and he collapsed to the ground. He was having trouble breathing. ¡°It¡¯s a paralytic,¡± said Fenilor. He held his hammer in one hand and the foil in the other. He barely spared a glance at Kes. ¡°They¡¯re dangerous things. If you paralyze the diaphragm, the lungs will stop working, and if you paralyze the heart, it will stop beating.¡± He brought the hammer down on the console, then dismissed it and turned back to Hella. ¡°Do you believe that renders you incapable of summoning Perry?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°I do,¡± replied Hella. ¡°Hrm, a lie,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Unfortunate.¡± He reached to the side and the ghostly line of weapons appeared. It hovered there as he made his selection. He picked a gun and shot Cark in the head. Cark had already been on the ground, and his body jumped slightly, but he was quite dead. He hadn¡¯t been cloned; they would have to get his blood, and soon. Hella had closed her eyes at the moment the gun fired. When she opened them and looked at Cark, she seemed sick to her stomach. Kes was on the ground, barely able to do more than blink. He wanted to call out, to distract Fenilor so that Hella could make a move, to do anything. He would have transformed into a wolf if he could have, but he had no ability to moon blast himself, and couldn¡¯t feel the Wolf Vessel inside of him either. He tried to draw on some hidden reserve of heroic will that would get the transformation to happen, but there was nothing. ¡°How many of your people will I have to execute?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°You¡¯ve been watching me, as best you could. You¡¯re Perry¡¯s people. You understand that you cannot lie to me, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°What do you want from us?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Answer the question, but try honesty this time,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°What needs to be done to cut this ship off from Perry?¡± There was no help coming. L¡¯onso had been the closest thing they had to muscle and he was paralyzed or dead. Hella had superpowers, and had apparently been something of a superhero on her own planet, but either she¡¯d decided that this was a fight she was going to lose, or she was holding it back to surprise him with. Half her crew were dead though, and if there was a time to act, Kes had to hope that she would know it. ¡°If you¡¯re here, we¡¯re probably already cut off,¡± said Hella. ¡°We are?¡± asked Fenilor. He approached closer to her, blade held forward. ¡°So far as we understand that form of magic,¡± said Hella. ¡°It blocks almost everything.¡± ¡°But once I¡¯m gone,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°If I leave this ship to you and take my leave. I need you to be sufficiently crippled that you cannot become a part of the coming battle. Not permanently ¡ª I¡¯m not cruel ¡ª but in the short term, the next few days, as Perry and I have it out without outside interference.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a way of talking to him,¡± said Hella. ¡°We can send messages to his suit, and watch the world down there, the future and the past, to some extent.¡± ¡°Show me the systems,¡± said Fenilor, nodding. ¡°Those too will be destroyed, and you will confirm for me this has been done.¡± Hella let out a breath. ¡°I need access to one of the consoles. These systems are all completely technological, basal physics, which doesn¡¯t fail often. If we needed to contact him now, that¡¯s what we would do, transmit a message the normal way, though radio. You can¡¯t destroy something in the ship to stop that, there are consoles everywhere, and it¡¯s probably not working right now given that you¡¯re here and the alarm means your block is up, but I can eject the transmitter if need be.¡± She was talking a lot. Kes hoped that she was trying to stall him, because that would mean that she had a plan. They were up in space, in orbit so they wouldn¡¯t have to use the engines much, and for all he knew they were on the other side of the planet from Perry. If she was waiting for the orbit to line up so that they would be overhead, so that a radio signal could be transmitted, then in theory someone could put in a command of some kind, one that would fire off the transmitter. He had no idea whether or not she was lying, but Fenilor didn¡¯t interrupt her. ¡°Go to the console,¡± he said. Then, right as she moved, ¡°Wait.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Hella. ¡°I¡¯m doing what you want.¡± ¡°Your intention is to jettison this ¡­ transmitter?¡± asked Fenilor. Hella let out a breath and then blinked just a bit too long. It was only because Kes¡¯ face had landed in the right orientation that he could see it. They were going to move to a different part of the crowded bridge though, and he wouldn¡¯t even be able to see. ¡°Yes, I¡¯ll jettison it,¡± said Hella. ¡°And why does the ship need such a function?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°The ship is designed to lose pieces of itself,¡± said Hella. ¡°It¡¯s a defensive measure. Do you want me to do it or not? Because I would be perfectly fine not losing a valuable piece of equipment that we don¡¯t have a hope of replacing on this world.¡± She was acting too calm, too casual, but Kes had no idea where she was going with this. She hadn¡¯t lied yet, not that Fenilor could detect, and that was something, but there must have been a play, something that she and only she could do from the console. Fenilor¡¯s black spot screwed with wifi, but surely everyone else in the secondary bridge had some access and hadn¡¯t left all their ability to control the ship concentrated in this single place. ¡°This sword can kill swiftly,¡± said Fenilor. He demonstrated, extending the sword an extra six feet, which happened so fast that there was a sharp crack like that of a whip. It had struck the wall of the ship, and while it hadn¡¯t done much damage, the threat had been clear. Fenilor moved the point of the sword, pointing it at someone, who Kes thought was probably Nitta, given she was the last remaining hostage aside from Hella herself. Kes couldn¡¯t see her though, even if he could hear her soft crying. Cark had been her long-time companion, when they had been traveling the multiverse with just the two of them. ¡°Noted,¡± said Hella. ¡°Eject it now,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Slowly.¡± Hella went to one of the consoles, out of view of Kes. He tried to move his hands, to reach for the poisoned dagger, but his fingers only twitched. He had completely lost control of his body, and it was a wonder that he hadn¡¯t been put to sleep. The rage was boiling up inside of him, mixed with a clawing terror. His heart was thundering in his chest, and it wasn¡¯t actually helping him to do anything, because his body was simply not responding. ¡°I¡¯ll kill you and everyone on this ship if you go against me,¡± said Fenilor. It wasn¡¯t clear whether he was responding to some provocation or if he was simply speaking to the air. ¡°Jettisoning now,¡± said Hella. There was a clattering of keys from the workstation. The front half of the bridge exploded outward. Kes nearly blacked out as he went into the hard vacuum. The planet was miles below them, with a scattering of lights in the darkness, but the water on his eyes started foaming almost immediately, and pain was coursing through his body. He was blind, paralyzed, and dying, trying not to pass out, which was a battle he knew somewhere in the back of his brain was one that would be lost within seconds. But floating out in the vacuum meant something else: exposure to moonlight. The change happened quickly. The moonlight was stronger than he had ever felt it before, the moonlight washing over his body, the moon stronger, no atmosphere to diffuse it. It was like having a spotlight on him, and his body warped into its wolfish form. His clothes shredded and his teeth snapped. With the full moonlight going, the poison worked itself from his body quickly, and he twisted around, looking for prey. Werewolves were not particularly more suited to the vacuum of space than humans. He moved his paws desperately, trying to get traction on nothing. He was partially blinded by whatever was happening to his eyes, and he could feel the heat inside him rising. His body was healing, drawing on the power of the moonlight, even as he gasped for air. Hypoxia was killing him while moonlight was healing him. The liquids on the surface of his body were boiling off, sweat foaming up in his fur and coming from his eyes. He was desiccating, the rapid healing from the unadulterated moonlight not up for the task of keeping his eyes wet. He didn¡¯t have the intellectual capacity to understand any of what was happening to him. He thrashed and tried to howl into the void of space, twisting his body around, sweeping claws through the blackness. He was dying, and knew that instinctually, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was flagging by the time he felt a hand on his neck. His heart was beating faster than it had ever beat before, and he was roasting hot. It was impossible to say how long he¡¯d been floating there, but it had felt like years of being blind and enraged. He tried to snap at the hand gripping him on the back of his neck, but it was strong and firm, like his mother¡¯s jaws when he was a puppy. He was thrown against a hard floor, and a gasping breath gave him actual air. He placed his paws against the ground, trying to move, but found that he was too weak to rise. He was healing back from the damage, but the moonlight was good, and once he could see again, he realized that he was inside a dome, jailed as he¡¯d been before, with no way to claw through the shield. It didn¡¯t matter much though, because with the moonlight gone, the transformation couldn¡¯t last, and he turned into his human form. Kes lay there coughing for a long time, spitting up what felt like chunks of lung, wet pink pieces of something. There was no one in the room with him, but he recognized the brig. ¡°Help!¡± he called, but his voice was strangled and weak. He had healed back when the transformation had left him, but there were after effects. He crawled slowly to his feet, unsteady. ¡°Help!¡± he tried again, and it was at least audible this time. It was fifteen minutes later when Eggy 6 limped into the room. She had one of her legs bandaged, and there was a cut on her face that must have bled a lot. ¡°You okay?¡± she asked. He was naked, and she glanced down, but said nothing about it. ¡°I seem to be,¡± said Kes, though his voice felt unnaturally deep. ¡°What happened? Is everyone alright?¡± ¡°Hella blew up the ship,¡± said Eggy 6. She leaned against the doorway and closed her eyes. ¡°Just the bridge, but it was touch and go for the rest of us for a while. We¡¯re stable now.¡± A lot of the energy had gone out of her. She was no longer sprightly, just exhausted. When she opened her eyes, they were wet. A lot had happened. Kes couldn¡¯t help but think about the water of his eyes boiling in the vacuum. ¡°Who rescued me?¡± asked Kes. ¡°Perry?¡± ¡°We¡¯re out of contact with him,¡± said Eggy 6, shaking her head. ¡°We got a message out before everything went to hell, but the technopath method is completely shot, the radio transmitter is down, and it¡¯ll be a few days before we can open a door again. The last resort is physical propulsion to get down to the surface, but in the state we¡¯re in, we don¡¯t really want to try it.¡± ¡°I¡¯m surprised the ship has a ¡®blow up the bridge¡¯ button,¡± said Kes. ¡°It doesn¡¯t,¡± said Eggy 6. She looked him up and down. ¡°Hella used an overload function. The way she tells it, she had to jettison the radio transmitter to trick him ¡ª tell him the truth, that is ¡ª and then it was just a case of inputting a few commands. Now, we don¡¯t have a blow-up-the-bridge function, but apparently she had figured out the overload weeks ago and scripted it up, just in case.¡± ¡°She¡¯s alive?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Who do you think flew out into space and saved you?¡± asked Eggy 6. ¡°She was the only one who could survive the decompression event. Which is why it¡¯s sort of shitty to set up a decompression event that¡¯s going to kill everyone else.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what her other options were,¡± said Kes. ¡°Throw herself on the mercy of Fenilor? Cark was already dead. L¡¯onso was probably dead too. Mette Prime ¡ª¡± ¡°Just paralyzed, like you,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°She was saved before you because of the thresholder thing. Nitta is in the infirmary, since she was grabbed and thrown into the exterior airlock in a handful of seconds. It¡¯s not clear she¡¯s going to make it. She had outer layers of skin on, which might have saved her, but we don¡¯t really know, and there isn¡¯t a doctor for her species within a dozen worlds of us ¡ª rhetorically, anyway, because we¡¯re going to have to work night and day to get the worldhopper up and running again.¡± She let out a long sigh. ¡°Not what I thought this was going to be, when I signed up.¡± It wasn¡¯t clear whether she meant this world or the whole Farfinder mission. ¡°Any chance I can get out of here?¡± asked Kes, looking at the dome that surrounded him. ¡°Oh, right,¡± said Eggy 6. She hit a control switch and the bubble dropped. ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°No problem,¡± said Kes. He looked down. He was naked. ¡°Clothes would be nice.¡± ¡°Of course,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°And Fenilor?¡± asked Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose he died?¡± ¡°Hella fought him for a bit,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°He¡¯s just about on her level out in space. He doesn¡¯t have the tools for locomotion, and she can fight at range, which is harder for him. I don¡¯t know all the details. Some of it was on video, but most of it wasn¡¯t. I think it eventually came down to either saving you and Mette Prime, or going after him, and she chose to save you. So far as I know, he made it back down to the planet the slow way. If he burned up on reentry, we think the portal would have popped for Mette, but obviously it takes a while. We think he had enough tricks in his bag to make it down.¡± ¡°Are you okay?¡± asked Kes, looking her up and down again. ¡°Fine,¡± she said. ¡°Getting knocked sideways in a spaceship is a sign that something has gone really horribly wrong.¡± She touched the wound on her head, and her fingers came away sticky. ¡°That one was a bleeder.¡± ¡°I meant more ¡­ psychologically,¡± said Kes. ¡°I know they were friends.¡± ¡°They should have cloned,¡± she replied. She gave a very angry shrug. ¡°Cark was adamant that he didn¡¯t want a clone running around. He preferred there to be only one of him. L¡¯onso was more on the fence, but we don¡¯t have any of his blood, and even if we could, the machine has been destroyed.¡± ¡°Destroyed?¡± asked Kes. ¡°By Fenilor?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t even know how he got on the ship,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°We don¡¯t know if the blackout happened when he appeared, or if he was here for a while, hiding so well that we couldn¡¯t even detect him. We think he might have hitched a ride in with the queen, or that she brought some kind of attenuated magic item with her, but we have no real clue, which means that it¡¯s possible that he can return at any time. The queen had nothing for us, but interrogating her isn¡¯t a priority. For now, we¡¯re assuming that he can¡¯t, but he doesn¡¯t really have a reason to, because the Farfinder is crippled, and it¡¯s going to take a lot of time and effort to repair. He got what he wanted.¡± ¡°And Perry,¡± said Kes. ¡°Did he win against Third Fervor?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°We assume so. But Fenilor is coming for him, and probably very quickly. He¡¯s going to have no backup from us.¡± ¡°We need to get down there, to the planet surface,¡± said Kes. ¡°We need to help.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but we¡¯re licking our wounds,¡± said Eggy 6. She frowned at him. ¡°You understand that you were in hard vacuum for multiple minutes? You survived only because Hella did her best to make sure we were in the shadow of the planet. And even then, if the moon had been in a different position, you¡¯d have lasted seconds, like a normal person.¡± ¡°I know,¡± said Kes. ¡°But if there¡¯s a chance I can help, then that¡¯s what I need to do.¡± Eggy 6 sighed. ¡°Not my call. But if you can convince Hella to risk what¡¯s left of this ship, then you¡¯re fine to spend your life doing what you want.¡± She looked down at his crotch. ¡°Let¡¯s get you some clothes first though.¡± Chapter 142 - Full Contact, pt 1 The email was massive, but it was low on specifics. Whoever had sent it ¡ª apparently one of the Eggys, just from context ¡ª had a small window of time to send it in, and had simply dumped all data generated by the ship in the previous two hours. This meant that most of the information contained within the report was functionally useless to Perry, and Marchand had to go sifting through it to find out what had actually happened. ¡°It was probably meant to be a warning,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, aside from the presumed presence of Fenilor ¡ª¡± ¡°That¡¯s the only thing,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s the only consideration. He was there, and now ¡­ we have no idea what happened, but they¡¯re out of communication.¡± ¡°I doubt that, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The Farfinder has myriad methods of communicating with us. The email was sent to us through technopathy, and if that method failed once the message was sent, they could open a door for us, and as a tertiary consideration, they do have a radio antenna which would be virtually the only signal across the whole planet, easily identifiable.¡± ¡°None of that matters if they¡¯re all dead,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do you anticipate that to be the case?¡± asked Marchand. The AI¡¯s disaffected butler voice was getting on Perry¡¯s nerves. Marchand asked the question as though it was an idle curiosity. ¡°It¡¯s what we assume until we get word otherwise,¡± said Perry. ¡°How can we find them if they¡¯re not sending a signal?¡± ¡°In theory, if the spaceship is still in orbit, we could calculate its position based on what we know,¡± said Marchand. ¡°However, any deviation would quickly make that impossible ¡ª the smallest change in thrust could radically change their expected position. The search area would quickly become too large to practically search with the tools we have available, assuming that they¡¯re running dark, as they prefer to do.¡± ¡°Alright, try it anyway,¡± said Perry. ¡°Plot a course for where we should expect them to be.¡± ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry continued up through the atmosphere, following another of Marchand¡¯s familiar lines that plotted the optimal course. A lot of Perry¡¯s life was following those lines, which he had mixed feelings about. In theory, if the ship was still following the same path, Perry could match its orbit and then board through the airlock. He¡¯d gone through airlock procedures twice with Hella, but he wouldn¡¯t be able to get in without someone on the inside to help him, which was a security precaution. But when Perry went where the line showed him to go, there was nothing there, no sign of the ship. Marchand did his scans, and they showed nothing, no shadow across the stars, no whisper of radio signal. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. He floated in space. There was a countdown timer going, which would tell him when the portal inside of the shelfspace was likely to close. He hadn¡¯t put it on the HUD, but he¡¯d asked Marchand to mark the time, and it had a spot in Perry¡¯s mind. ¡°Any chance we can find it with the naked eye?¡± ¡°I think not, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Because I know the ISS was visible from the ground,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I¡¯m not familiar, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The International Space Station,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s from my Earth.¡± ¡°And how large was it, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°What color?¡± ¡°White, and I don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°Look, I trust you, I¡¯m just saying if we see something suspect streaking through the air, then we could find the ship, and ¡­ I don¡¯t know. If there¡¯s an active hostage situation, we could resolve it.¡± ¡°Unfortunately, it appears that the Farfinder has been hidden from us,¡± said Marchand. ¡°If they aren¡¯t all dead.¡± ¡°Thanks for that,¡± said Perry. He grit his teeth. He had lost too many people, whether from murderers or simply by moving between worlds. There had been a home for him on the Farfinder, and even if it was a temporary one, it had felt like it was going to become permanent. They could follow him through worlds, after all. And Kes had been there, along with Mette, with no backups of her lingering around on the surface. Why hadn¡¯t he insisted that just one of her go to mage school, like she¡¯d wanted, safe and out of the way so that some thread of her could continue on if the worst happened? He could feel a swirling of despair just at the thought of it, that she might be gone. He was supposed to have protected her, whether she was a friend or lover or some weird third thing. ¡°Shall I set a new course, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°For Berus. We¡¯ll go back to the city, help where we can with the destruction that Third Fervor caused on her rampage, hope that being in a place like that makes us visible.¡± ¡°To the Farfinder, to Fenilor, or to parties unknown?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°Hopefully not parties unknown,¡± said Perry. He looked down at the world far below them. ¡°You mean Dirk?¡± ¡°I mean parties unknown,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The many Dirks would be one example. The queen would be another, though with Third Fervor gone, I doubt she has much reach.¡± ¡°We might not have seen the last of Third Fervor,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s entirely possible that she has some clones lingering. If the queen was a clone, then Third Fervor might be too.¡± Perry didn¡¯t really want to face an army of clones. A new line was drawn across the HUD, showing the proper path to get to Berus in the smallest possible time. Perry set off, though his thoughts weren¡¯t entirely in order. He didn¡¯t think that clones of Third Fervor were a credible threat, but clones of Fenilor were something he would have to consider, especially if Fenilor had taken the Farfinder. It wasn¡¯t clear what boons a clone of Fenilor would get. He only had the one power for himself, everything else was magic of this world or equipment he¡¯d stolen off thresholders. But Fenilor had skills of his own, and obviously he had plenty of weapons to hand over to his lesser clones. They might still be a problem, depending on their loadout and how well they could work together. Too much of the bounty of the world had been the product of Fenilor and his schemes. The secret research cities were at least known to him, even if it didn¡¯t seem like he had his finger in every single pie. When Perry landed in Berus hours later, there was still no word from the Farfinder. The knot in his stomach was growing, but he wasn¡¯t going to despair until he knew for certain what had happened to them. It was also possible that he would never know, that they would simply disappear and he would get no further answers, which sent a chill down his spine. The city was in worse shape than he had thought it would be. Most of the damage had been caused by the flooding rather than the indiscriminate violence or the giant woman stomping around and barreling into things. Most of the bodies had been picked up, and the dead had been stacked like cordwood in the city center to await some kind of fire that would be strong enough to light up the sodden corpses. A few buildings had been destroyed by the water or had their foundations weakened enough that they had tilted or fallen, and few windows had survived the torrent. Calamus was on the edge of the island, but they didn¡¯t have anything like tsunamis, and the monsoon season was more of a constant downpour than a wall of water. Five minutes after Perry had landed, one of the Dirks was there beside him. Perry stuck out from the crowd, but the response time was still impressive. ¡°They should have listened to you,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Shame they didn¡¯t.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think it would have mattered,¡± said Perry. ¡°You won, I take it?¡± asked Dirk. He had looked the armor up and down. It was shiny and new, all traces of damage now repaired after hours of flight and nothing else to do with the energy coursing out of the fusion reactor. The vessels had long since been topped up. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. He¡¯d won, but it had been a distraction, Third Fervor finally getting the martyrdom she seemed drawn towards. It seemed to Perry like living for someone else often meant dying for them. ¡°But it¡¯s not over?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m afraid not. I don¡¯t know what the next move is.¡± He looked Dirk over. It was impossible to tell which Dirk it was, but Perry assumed it was the same one he¡¯d been dealing with this whole time. ¡°You¡¯ll let me know if you have any contact, right?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Dirk. He looked around the city. ¡°Hell of a start to their independence.¡± ¡°They¡¯ll be fine,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re dependent on the domes, and those are all far away.¡± ¡°Far away, and not entirely up and running,¡± said Dirk. ¡°With all the rebuilding, all the wounded ¡­ it¡¯s not going to be a good time. She hit us right in the city center, and too many of those she killed were important to the symboulions. She went after leaders. She knew at least some of them. It was only thanks to you that it wasn¡¯t a clean sweep. There were irreplaceable men among the dead.¡± ¡°She¡¯s been with the resistance cells here,¡± said Perry. ¡°But she was attacking whoever she could before I showed up.¡± ¡°You showed up instantly,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You were there by the time she was spearing her second victim.¡± ¡°I was ready and waiting, sure,¡± said Perry. In truth, he¡¯d seen the aftermath of various attacks through prognostics, which is what he¡¯d meant. Now there was no hope of prognostics coming in, which meant that if someone did act, he wouldn¡¯t hear about it until hours later, if that. News traveled slowly in this world. Without the eye in the sky, it would be weeks before Perry heard anything about an attack on a distant outpost. There had been plenty of time and know-how necessary to create a spy satellite, but they hadn¡¯t planned on the Farfinder being blown up or taken over. ¡°What do you need from me?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°Nothing,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m here to help in any way I can. I¡¯m hoping that if there¡¯s another fight, it¡¯s not here, though it would be better for my schedule if it happened soon. No word on the other guy?¡± ¡°None,¡± said Dirk. He was looking at the power armor. It was gleaming in the sunlight, in mint condition. ¡°And no word from the other island?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Nothing their queen has said? Nothing from your counterpart there?¡± ¡°Not in public,¡± said Dirk with a low voice. They were a fair way away from anyone else, and being given a wide berth, but they were drawing a lot of stares. ¡°I was trying to say it in a deniable way,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s been no word, no,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You people move too fast.¡± ¡°We¡¯re moving slow by the standards of my people,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you ever want to travel the worlds, you¡¯ll need to get faster, strike quickly, and get used to information coming in instantly, in real-time.¡± Dirk grimaced. His fingers touched his pocket, where Perry assumed his borrowed phone was. ¡°I¡¯m starting to think I might not be cut out for what''s beyond the veil of this world.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°It can get rough. And it might be a non-issue. I¡¯ll let you know when I know.¡± Dirk had questions, obviously he had questions, but he had seen the destruction that the battle had caused, and might even have been there when it happened. It was more clear now than ever that this was all beyond him, a battle between forces that his own men and resources couldn¡¯t really scratch. At least he wasn¡¯t blaming Perry for any of it, which had been a real concern. There wasn¡¯t all that much for Perry to do. He lifted some heavy beams and helped search for survivors, but for most of the things that needed to be done, he wasn¡¯t much more useful than a normal human. Given another five years, or maybe ten, he might have some proper healing to work with, but it would depend upon his second sphere powers, routing energy from the fusion reactor into useful restorative properties. It seemed possible, but it was a long way off. Would he still be doing this in five years? In ten? It was difficult to say. He hoped not. If the Farfinder had been obliterated, then his chance of ever returning to Earth 2 seemed to have gone with it. Marchand had some of their information and designs stored, but the Farfinder had technically minded crew members who could build a new engine for hopping worlds, and trying to cobble that together from scratch would be a nightmare. A necessary nightmare, maybe, but what else was there? And if the Farfinder had been destroyed, then either Fenilor had Mette Prime and Nima, or had killed them both and left. Both were possible, but if Fenilor had gone and the world hadn¡¯t imploded, then Perry was letting his own portal run its timer down. If it ran all the way down, then ¡­ he would have another thresholder to fight in another five years or so, wouldn¡¯t he? That was a grim thought. There were worse worlds to be stuck on, surely, and there was still good for him to do here, but it would represent a catastrophic personal loss, even though he¡¯d won against Third Fervor. Winning had never felt so bad. Perry watched the people go by. They were helping each other, which was something. Mr. Rogers always said that you had to look for the helpers, and here it was true, there were helpers, with temporary kitchens set up so that the people doing search and rescue could have something to eat, and no one so much as suggesting that they should be paid. It was a part of the culture that you don¡¯t get paid for pretty much anything, of course, but still, there was something fundamentally good about people helping each other, even if it didn¡¯t have the bombastic nobility of descending on an enemy with sword in hand. He was surprised by the children coming out to help, but he supposed that he shouldn¡¯t have been; so far as he knew, child labor wasn¡¯t in all that heavy use, not when compared to the Natrix, but there were still boys of ten running about, bringing materials to shut up shops, hauling blankets and pillows to places unknown, bringing bandages and carrying packs. No one was telling them to stay out of the way, but then, they didn¡¯t need to be told. This was the next generation, the ones that would grow up within the culture if it was allowed to take hold. Maybe they believed in pitching in already.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. While Perry waited for his help to be requested ¡ª some job that required speed, flight, or brute strength ¡ª he watched the people. They were coming off a revolution, and there had been violence in its wake. This, at least, was violence from without, and maybe that was helpful to them in some way, a force to react against. That was the theory, anyway. An older man, hunched and with his hood up, crossed the road, nearly getting run over by one of the small boys, who it turned out were only mostly out of the way. The shoulder-mounted gun rose from its housing and shot the old man before Perry even realized it was happening. It was the standard pattern that Marchand had decided on for guaranteed lethality, two to the chest and two to the head, but the old man fell to the ground only for a moment before getting back to his feet. He had a long sword in his hand, clear as glass, which hadn¡¯t been there a moment ago, and the cloak fell away from him. It was Fenilor. Whatever trick of the lighting or posture or prosthetics had Perry fooled had not fooled Marchand. He had been shot four times and was completely unharmed. The armor he wore looked to be simple red-stained leather, but there was no trace of damage on it. Fenilor spent half a second looking at Perry, then leapt to the side, touching one of the men who was helping to board up a house, his work interrupted at the sound of the gunshots. The man¡¯s chest exploded in a rush of blood, and Fenilor was on to the next as the panic belatedly started, a simple touch causing him to die. Perry raced forward, sword drawn, and slashed at Fenilor, who brought his glass sword up in an unhurried block. He was moving faster than he¡¯d been the last time they¡¯d fought, but that had been above the water, not the best place for Fenilor. There would be more armors and more weapons on land, those that could be used without sinking down into the waves. Perry brought his sword down with hammer blows, seeing some weakness he couldn¡¯t describe, a distractibility that shouldn¡¯t rightly have been there. The people around them had cottoned on to what was happening and were fleeing now. They had no context for what was happening, but they were at the site of a previous inexplicable battle, and ready to run. To Perry¡¯s surprise, Fenilor parried another of the hammer blows and then retreated, turning his back and sprinting away. Perry ran after. The power armor cracked cobblestones with every exaggerated step, but he wasn¡¯t in time to stop Fenilor from killing two more, these a man and woman who¡¯d been running much slower than him. The wounds erupted from their heads like they¡¯d been shot, and Perry¡¯s mind lit up with an answer: wound transference. ¡°Don¡¯t shoot,¡± Perry commanded, before second guessing himself. ¡°He can pass on the wounds to others.¡± It wouldn¡¯t have made sense for Fenilor to kill these people, they were his people, and Fenilor was no sadist, at least not that Perry had seen. But he¡¯d done it here, now, four wounds delivered by touch, two to the chest and two to the head. He¡¯d done it fast, too, which implied a time limit of some kind. Would that power work through Perry¡¯s armor? Would a wound get transferred over to him, a gunshot wound exploding his head in spite of all his defenses? Perry stood with his sword held in front of him, two-handed. The spear was in the shelf space, and he wasn¡¯t going to open that for any reason at all, given that the portal was still in there, and would be for another three-quarters of a day. ¡°I had wondered whether you would see through my disguise,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You¡¯re a powerhouse. Too many abilities, too many ways for you to drive a wedge through a crack.¡± ¡°The ship,¡± said Perry. ¡°You were there. What happened to them?¡± ¡°All dead,¡± said Fenilor, shaking his head. ¡°This will be settled here and now. But you understand it would be unsporting for you to have help to call in, don¡¯t you?¡± Perry lunged forward, lifting briefly into the air. Their swords clashed hard enough that Fenilor was briefly driven to his knees, but he slipped out from under the follow-up attack. ¡°Shoot him, March,¡± said Perry. The gun popped up and fired three shots this time, though one of them was deflected by the sword, which fractured into pieces and then reformed itself, some complicated magic that had done nothing more than eat a bullet. They were in the middle of one of the city¡¯s wider streets, wide enough for carriages and carts to get through, but the alarm was being raised elsewhere in the city, and the only people in sight were far down the way. Perry was ready to run after Fenilor, but Fenilor sprang forward, glass sword moving deftly. Perry¡¯s head was swimming with what Fenilor had said. Was it true that the Farfinder was gone? A dozen people, all dead, almost everyone in the world that Perry actually had some connection to? Mette, Perry¡¯s only remaining link back to the Natrix? Anger was racing through him, and while it lent more power to his strikes, it was also making him sloppy. It wasn¡¯t until he was overextended that he realized what Fenilor¡¯s plan was, and Fenilor reached out with long fingers to touch him. Perry backed away, arching his back, and the fingers missed him by inches. Perry¡¯s hand was clenched tightly around the grip of his sword. He¡¯d started to sweat. They fought more after that, but Perry was more wary this time. If a bullet wound could be transferred over, it was instant death, and if there was a clock ticking down, then all Perry needed to do was wait Fenilor out and stop him from transferring anything over to anyone. Would Fenilor¡¯s head simply explode after enough time had passed? There was no helmet to the armor, just Fenilor¡¯s finely flowing hair, but the shots to the face had been absorbed. Fenilor mistimed a swing, and Perry¡¯s sword came down on Fenilor¡¯s shoulder, but the blade didn¡¯t strike flesh, and it felt like whacking a club against a pillow. Perry had some faint hope that the armor wouldn¡¯t be effective against his sword, whether through magic or some property of the metal, but it did less than nothing. Perhaps Fenilor had been worried that his armor wouldn¡¯t protect him, because as soon as that strike landed, he dropped all pretense of defense, cast his glass sword to the side, and went at Perry with both hands held forward. Perry dodged to the side, using the full power of the armor and a bit of extra energy flushed through his meridians, then rose into the air with the sword, out of reach. Fenilor stood for a moment and looked up at Perry. He had a mild frown on his face. ¡°Clock is ticking,¡± said Perry. ¡°What¡¯ll it be?¡± He had hoped that Fenilor would make a run for it, which would reveal a hidden weakness, but instead Fenilor¡¯s hand went to the side, and a whole armory of armors was briefly shown in ghostly form before a silver armor with curling whorls of bright blue on it appeared on his body. ¡°The next person to wear that armor will die,¡± said Fenilor. This new armor had a helmet, and his voice was slightly muffled. ¡°Perhaps it will make a good trap at a later date.¡± He held his hand out to the side, and the ghostly arms flickered into existence for only a moment before he ended with a sickle in his hand. The curve seemed impractical, which caused a small spike of fear to go through Perry. A weapon that was odd had to have some kind of magic to it, something strong to justify using it. ¡°I worry this will come to nothing,¡± said Fenilor, who hadn¡¯t moved or made to attack. The new armor and new weapon meant that the fight had shifted to another phase. ¡°And even if I defeat you, the door won¡¯t open for me, will it?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°We weren¡¯t meant to fight each other.¡± ¡°Did a door open when you killed Third Fervor?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Far to the north.¡± ¡°Haven¡¯t you learned not to lie to me?¡± asked Fenilor. ¡°A lie following a truth doesn¡¯t disguise it.¡± Perry hesitated. He could drop at any time and resume the fight. He wasn¡¯t all that far up, ten feet at the most. Hell, Fenilor could probably jump that distance. Anything that Perry said might give Fenilor more information, like saying that Fenilor would never find the portal ¡ª if that flagged as false, then it would point him in the right direction. ¡°They¡¯re really gone?¡± asked Perry. ¡°The Farfinder?¡± He was trying to keep his cool, and the wolf in him was making that difficult. The moon wasn¡¯t even out, but he could feel the anger flowing through his veins. ¡°Yes,¡± said Fenilor. Perry felt a twisting in his gut. If Fenilor was lying, he was a good liar, but the Farfinder was resilient, with extradimensional spaces that would be safe from outside attack, and there was still a chance. The thought spun in his mind, snagging on something. It was denial, plainly. He didn¡¯t want it to be true that they were all dead. ¡°It¡¯s a pity, but they put up too much of a fight. When we conclude here, I¡¯ll have wrapped up everything there was to do on this world, then go on to the next, to spread the culture.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll break time and space,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re not lying, or you don¡¯t think you are, but there¡¯s nuance,¡± said Fenilor. He cocked his head to the side. Perry hoped that was indecision, but with the armor on, it was difficult to tell. ¡°The best bet is that you drop everything you have,¡± said Perry. He was gritting his teeth. He didn¡¯t want to talk, he wanted to fight. ¡°Divest yourself of all the weapons, everything you¡¯ve taken from fallen thresholders. That might work to prevent calamity.¡± ¡°In the next world, I will have to fight,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°That¡¯s the nature of being a thresholder. You have your concerns, and I suppose you gain nothing from having me strip myself of every weapon and armor in my possession after our battle is concluded, but I think I¡¯ll take my chances.¡± ¡°With this entire world?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯s one world among many,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I have perfected the culture as much as I can here, but it must be rebuilt and grow stronger in the process. If this world is to end, it would be a tragedy, but what is one world against infinitude? And I know that this world does not have the tools to span the multiverse. Some other place would make for a better start.¡± ¡°Asshole,¡± said Perry. ¡°March, fire some test shots, see what the armor is made of.¡± Two shots rang out, and the blue lines on the armor glowed, but the bullets did no damage. ¡°A shame,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You are the most traveled thresholder I¡¯ve ever met, and while I have most of your secrets, I hunger for more, if I could have them. But I suppose it¡¯s not to be.¡± Perry took that as his cue to restart the fight. He dropped down to the ground, where he¡¯d have some actual leverage, and went in with his sword. He had no idea what the sickle did, but Fenilor used its power right away. The curved blade detached from the handle with a glowing tether between the two, and with a quick swing it was behind Perry, showing on the picture-in-picture. Perry dodged to the side when it came reeling in, and Fenilor began to swing the strange weapon over his head, like a cowboy trying to rope a steer. It was easy for Perry to come in for an attack, since the swinging sickle offered no defense and Perry was willing to take a chance that it wasn¡¯t just an instant kill if it hit him. When his sword struck the armor, it left a deep gouge in the metal, which was surprising given how little damage the bullets had done, but when Perry pulled the sword away it took an enormous amount of effort, like the sword was being pulled in. Fenilor threw the sickle out again, trying to hit Perry, then trying to snag him as the weapon came back, but whatever this strategy was supposed to be, it didn¡¯t seem to be working. When Fenilor was getting the sickle spinning again, Perry went in, this time aiming for the head and moving with his full power, committing fully to a singular strike. The sword cleaved into the helmet, stopping after an inch. It stuck there, though Perry yanked at it, and Fenilor reached out with an armored hand to grip the sword, his sickle momentarily forgotten. Fenilor¡¯s hand seemed to stick to the sword, like his armor was made of taffy rather than metal, and Perry felt a surge of unfamiliar energy where he was holding the sword, tugging at something more than his grip. Perry moved forward and grabbed at Fenilor¡¯s other wrist, which was holding the sickle. They were quickly locked together, and it must have been the armor doing something, because it instantly felt to Perry like he¡¯d never be able to let go, not using the smaller servos in the armor¡¯s fingers. He committed more to the grapple though, placing his foot against Fenilor¡¯s knee, making sure that even if they were locked together he would be able to use his superior strength to break something. They tumbled to the ground, and this time Perry felt the tugging across his whole body, like Fenilor was trying to rip the armor into his inventory. He let the energy of the second sphere flow through him, cracking the Wolf Vessel for its stored power, and whatever was trying to pull him somewhere, he managed to resist it. Fenilor grunted beneath his helmet, now close enough that they could hear each other''s breathing, and Perry tried to maneuver himself better. Where their armors touched, they stuck together, maybe not as with taffy, but like big magnets were sticking them together. Perry still had his grip on his sword, which had cut into Fenilor¡¯s helmet. A trail of blood was running down it, which meant that it was more than just damage to the armor. The grapple favored Perry. He was the stronger of the two of them, at least with Fenilor wearing this armor. It was difficult to get proper leverage when they were locked together, but eventually Perry managed to spread his arms wide, pulling Fenilor¡¯s arm away from his body in the process and putting tension on Fenilor¡¯s knee with Perry¡¯s foot. The tug came again, but whatever Fenilor was trying, Perry had quickly worked up a defense against it. Would grappling stop Fenilor from changing armor? Perry hoped so. The sickle had been abandoned, dropped with Perry gripping the wrist of the hand that once held it. A new weapon appeared, this one short and brilliant, and Fenilor spun it around in his hand. It went through Perry¡¯s armor like nothing, scoring down into Perry¡¯s wrist with a quick, sharp, agonizing slice, but Fenilor couldn¡¯t maneuver his hand for more than that. The blade had turned from silver to black where it had touched the armor, and a second strike bounced off a different part of the gauntlet, suddenly ineffective. Perry yanked at Fenilor, which brought forth a cry of pain. He hadn¡¯t been sure what part of Fenilor and his armor would give first, but it was his arm, which was dislocated if not worse. It had popped from its socket all at once, and Fenilor¡¯s armor was groaning. Fenilor switched weapons again, and this one looked more like a cattle prod than anything else, but he was able to swing it around one-handed and jab Perry with it. The jolt wasn¡¯t one of electricity, but instead, searing pain, like a bee sting across his entire body, and he tried to pull away, but they were stuck together, and in the struggle, got more stuck together, removing any leverage. Fenilor changed weapons a third time, this time holding a pen knife, and vanished. The armor remained, stuck tight to Perry, much lighter now that there wasn¡¯t a person inside of it. Perry got to his feet with the pieces still on him, and tried his best to rip them off. Fenilor came in from the side, wearing a different armor, holding a different weapon. With the armor stuck to him, Perry¡¯s movements were hampered, as though he was dancing with a clumsy partner and trying to fight at the same time. Fenilor¡¯s sword was a long rapier, and he moved deftly, making sure that he wouldn¡¯t be snared by his own abandoned armor. He got a good hit in, one that went through the metal plate and into Perry¡¯s stomach, and Perry took to the air at once, trying his best to tear the stuck-on bits of armor from him as he rose. Fenilor switched weapons and followed. His motion was jerky, a sequence of falling and rising, as though he was changing the direction of movement without any way to gain speed but having gravity pull him down. Soon he had built up velocity though, and he was faster than Perry could move with the sword. Perry didn¡¯t know which of them an aerial battle favored, but with the armor stuck to him, Perry didn¡¯t like his odds. Fenilor came dropping in from above like a hawk trying to catch a fish from the river, and Perry felt a blossom of pain as the rapier scored another hit on him. It had gone straight through the armor, and there were now warnings in the corner of the HUD, systems that had been compromised in the strike. Perry finally wrenched a piece of the stuck-on armor free, and with all his might and a weak blast of moonlight, hurled it into the distance. He was working another piece free when Fenilor came in for a second time, and Perry turned, trying to put the sticky armor between himself and Fenilor. Fenilor came low this time though, and the rapier slashed across Perry¡¯s calf, slicing through muscle. Retreat was always an option. The shelf space was there. But if that was opened, even for a moment, Fenilor might get in and simply leave. Perry worked at the sticky armor on him, trying to rip more pieces of it free and send them down to the city below, while at the same time readying himself for another jousting run by Fenilor. The rapier that Fenilor was using was cutting through metal easily, but leaving relatively shallow wounds on Perry¡¯s body, though Perry didn¡¯t know how many he could endure. When one more piece of the armor was ripped free, the whole thing seemed to lose its magic, and the extra set of armor that Perry had been stuck to dropped away. Fenilor came diving in, pointing his entire body at Perry, sword held forward like the tip of a spear. ¡°Fire,¡± said Perry. The shoulder-gun rose and fired the very moment the order was from Perry¡¯s lips, as though Marchand had been primed for the command. Three shots hit Fenilor, and while they didn¡¯t penetrate, it made his aim go off. They crashed into each other and fell through the air, tumbling above the city that loomed below them. Perry reached up and grabbed Fenilor¡¯s wrist, to prevent the rapier or any other weapon from slicing through him, and they grappled again, falling this time, though Perry could have stopped it at any time with the sword, and Fenilor could presumably have done the same. They crashed down into a building with the chirp of an altitude warning the only way that Perry knew it was about to happen. Perry had managed to twist them around, and Fenilor snapped a wooden beam with his back as they went down. Perry was on his feet first and brought his sword down on Fenilor, chopping against his head, hoping to knock him unconscious even if the metal was able to hold. The metal dented, and there were other dents already from the bullets, points that had to have rattled him, but Fenilor flipped up like a man not wearing plate armor and held his rapier in front of him. He was staggered but still in fighting condition. The room they¡¯d fallen into was filled with ceramics. It was a place where bowls and plates were made, and they had already mostly ruined it by coming in through the ceiling. Perry took stock of his wounds. There were too many of them, and he was favoring his right leg. His healing was slow and energy intensive. There was always the option of a transformation, but that limited his options even if it increased his offensive power, and Fenilor had too many tricks, too deep a well of possibilities. There was a good chance that Perry was going to lose. He needed more than he had, some way to stop Fenilor from switching tactics, because one of them was going to kill him, and he had no doubt that once he was on the back foot, there were more weapons that would come out to get at his weakened defenses. Already his leg was going to be a problem, if he didn¡¯t transform to fix it. Fenilor was breathing hard. The sword was a good one, even if it didn¡¯t seem to gouge deep into flesh, only metal. The armor was useful for flying, a way to chase after someone, even if it didn¡¯t offer as much protection as the others. But Fenilor had other weapons, other armors, enough that he could hot swap for the occasion. That was what Perry was worried about, some new piece of kit he hadn¡¯t seen before, some trick that Fenilor would pull out. Fenilor placed his free hand to his chest, making a symbol there. It was only seconds before the first of the tall constructs appeared next to Perry, hulking and huge. Chapter 143 - Full Contact, pt 2 The constructs had been a brainchild of one of the northern science cities. The culture had a problem, and that problem was the use of force. Force was not part of the culture, generally speaking ¡ª it was not the way that disputes were settled, not something that was used against children, and not a part of their judicial system. It was, however, widely acknowledged that force was necessary in certain circumstances, namely in stopping violent crimes in progress or restraining people who were a danger to themselves or others. The other major need was that of defense, in the case of an invading force which managed to land an army on their shores or cross a border, in the days when they still had neighboring countries to have borders with. And of course the culture didn¡¯t want to have much in the way of a standing army, nor did it look particularly favorably on conscripting people into the fight, even if it was part of the culture that everyone should be willing to arm themselves against potential oppressors. From this ball of contradictions had risen the idea of some new path, and in Perry¡¯s opinion, the constructs were the worst of all worlds, the kind of thing that probably would have outraged the culture if they had actually understood what the constructs were and how they worked. That they didn¡¯t understand the constructs and how they worked represented a major failing of the culture, but that was tied up in their skepticism of proliferating new technologies. The constructs were stationed in every city, in bays that held hundreds of them. They could be deployed by a hand signal, usually with a threshold of a few hand signals coming from different people, and they would appear in an instant using a transport method that didn¡¯t work on people and incidentally, was powered by lanterns, releasing significant effluence. And from that point, when the constructs were deployed, they followed scripts that had been written for them, restraining those who were in violation of laws. They could be recalled by someone at a monitoring station, but weren¡¯t easily stopped. They had extremely rudimentary intelligence, which made their speed and strength all the more terrifying. The only reason there had been no major problems with the constructs was that the script they followed was conservative and contained many checks. But that, of course, meant that power over these things was in the hands of the few, which was definitely not the culture, and in seeking to eliminate a position where authority could be abused, they had created a new, much worse position of effectively anonymous authority. But it was hidden from public view, and there had been no great scandal thus far, and at any rate the constructs had to be called in by what was referred to as a ¡°quorum¡± but really was just a certain number of people making the emergency sign with their hand. The control rods were tinkered with by assigned members of a symboulion, away from view. The constructs were tall and hulking. Perry couldn¡¯t imagine seeing one of them as a protector, but he¡¯d never had too much nationalistic fervor of the sort that made people think the military was cool. The magic that fueled them was from another world, maybe multiple other worlds, and Perry could only imagine the fields of mechanized magic constructs in the world that the base technology and physics had come from. Maybe it was a place of eternal war. Or maybe the constructs were only possible because of the confluence of two or more magics. It was difficult to say; it was possible that they were only available in this one specific corner of the universe. Perry had prepared to fight them. He¡¯d been preparing since the first time he¡¯d seen one. He thought it was inevitable that one or more would be called down on him, given the public fights he seemed to keep getting in, even if most of those fights happened when he was on the side of the civilians who would be doing the calling. But once in Berus, they had seemed like a secondary concern, because Berus didn¡¯t have constructs, not when it was such a new place, not when they would have had to get them shipped in by the dozens from parts of the world that did not entirely trust Berus. The Farfinder had acquired a control rod, but they were either very far away or completely wiped out. But wherever Fenilor had stashed these constructs away, they were here, now, in the china shop with Perry. There were two of them, and Perry had little doubt there would be more. Depending on how Fenilor had gotten them into the country, there might be an entire battalion of them. He launched himself up into the air, and the constructs followed after him, lifting from the floor as though they weighed nothing. They were not, so far as Perry knew, supposed to be capable of flight, so this was something of an unfortunate surprise. They were slightly slower than him, but as he kept going up, he saw more of them, some of which were being called in as he watched, appearing in a shimmer. There were a dozen of them following after him by the time he was a hundred feet in the air, drifting in his wake, but that seemed to be the limit. Fenilor rose after them, flying up into the sky, swiftly arcing through their formation to come at Perry directly. Perry dropped and sped toward the ground, watching the constructs follow. They tracked him smoothly, and with no obvious command from Fenilor. They were an unwelcome complication, and a sign that Fenilor was trying to end this quickly. If he had a control rod, it wasn¡¯t visible on him, but they only needed to be set, not carried indefinitely. As Perry dropped down below the level of the buildings, Marchand highlighted something that was only visible when zoomed in. On the backs of the constructs was the same crust as on the tablet Perry had pulled from the hidey-hole. It was possible that it was just used to cloak them from scrying, but it was out in the open, and from past experience, simple enough to wipe away. Perry¡¯s half-formed plans changed in an instant and he went for the pack of constructs, flying beneath them to get a better look. Fenilor came bolting down with a spear this time, wickedly sharp and tipped with black glass, and Perry dodged to the side with a spin, which brought him just close enough to draw his sword across the back of one of the constructs. Then Perry let himself fall again, making distance between himself and the rest of them. He watched as the construct plummeted to the ground. ¡°Mask up,¡± said Perry. The back of the armor, where the drone was usually stored, now held two small masks. They didn¡¯t fit there perfectly, and the spring launcher couldn¡¯t jettison them up, but Perry could awkwardly grab them when the compartment unfolded, which he did as soon as it seemed like he had a spare second. The universal masks weren¡¯t strong enough, which was the main problem with them. The one that used forced perspective to make his fingers do some janky telekinesis could squish a watermelon, at least in their testing, but it needed some distance to do that, and against someone in armor, he didn¡¯t like the odds. He had wanted the power to pin someone in place at a distance, and had gotten a rough handhold that Fenilor or Third Fervor would barely notice before launching at him like a missile. For smudging up a mark on the back of a construct, it seemed like it would be more than good enough. Perry slid the mask in place, over the helmet, framing the cameras that were hidden in the front. It was attached with stretchy elastic he hoped would stay on, and there were gummy bits in place that would help it stick to his face while he was in motion. Everything that they knew about the magic said that it shouldn¡¯t have worked through Marchand¡¯s cameras. All the camera equipment aboard the Farfinder hadn''t interacted with the masks in any way. But Marchand had his own keen perceptions, and apparently counted as a perceiver. There were cameras studded all over the power armor, and as soon as the mask was in place, they turned off, making the mask go active. All perception was being funneled through the mask, translated to the viewscreen inside the helmet, perceived twice. Perry rolled in mid-air, dodging another attack by Fenilor, nearly taking a spear to his chest in the process. The mask was big and obvious on the helmet, a clear weak point given that it was strapped in place with elastic, and Perry didn¡¯t expect that it would last long. The constructs moved together, but they kept themselves pointed toward him, keeping their backs obscured. Perry kept one eye on them and the other on Fenilor. He could outpace them, given their relatively slow speed, though they were spreading out now, the work of some algorithm or a hidden command from Fenilor. When Fenilor came sweeping in again, Perry was ready for it, and knocked the thrust to the side, taking a glancing blow to his hip and nearly crashing into Fenilor like they¡¯d done before. Perry made no effort to grapple again, and instead changed his course, heading straight for the flock of constructs. He aimed squarely for the center, and they converged again, no longer spreading out. They missed each other by inches as strong metal hands reached out to grab him, and once he was through, Perry briefly had a view of their backs. He swiped a hand across them, fingers smearing the sigils, and watched as a full half of them dropped from the sky. The others turned on him, and Fenilor came in for another pass with a howl, but the fight had just gotten easier. Perry took the hit from Fenilor, this time to his leg. The tip of the spear hit flesh this time, shearing through the metal, and Perry felt warm blood wetting his leg, almost a balm against the pain. He ignored Fenilor though, and looked to the constructs, who threatened to close in on him the moment he stopped moving. Grappling to the ground with Fenilor would work, Perry was sure of that, but with the constructs in play he would be murdered before he could do too much. Perry found himself drifting eastward, further from the city center. If he was bringing down the constructs, he would have preferred that he do it away from where the civilians were. When he had some distance, he tried to pinch the constructs using the mask, but it just wasn¡¯t strong enough, not against hardened steel. Fenilor was building up speed, and Perry tried against him too, squeezing armored thumb and forefinger together around one of Fenilor¡¯s distant limbs. ¡°We could try the other mask, sir,¡± said Marchand. There was just enough distance between them and the enemy to get it on, in Perry¡¯s opinion. He slipped the one mask off and put on the other. This was the focused laser mask, so weak that under normal conditions he wouldn¡¯t have been able to burn much, with no more power than a magnifying glass you might use to burn ants. In Marchand¡¯s hands, it was much more effective though. The version that the mask wearers used narrowed their vision to a point, and generally used only a single eye to do it, perfect focus on as small a spot as the lens could handle. When Marchand used it, it was by shutting down the majority of the photoreceptors in the largest of the cameras on the armor, shutting off all input of light sensing except for a single pixel¡¯s worth. The first time they had used it in testing, Perry had felt a wave of claustrophobia. He was blinded, the screen reduced to what felt like a dead pixel, and there was something about it that was worse than any time before. There were times he¡¯d been stuck in the armor, unable to move, times when he¡¯d been blinded, but the idea of using it in combat had been slightly sickening. The solution they¡¯d come up with was that Marchand would put up an approximation of the battle, either wireframes or a low resolution model like the ones that had been used in the past. Perry had picked the wireframe view, the better to have a distinction. The view switched over, showing Marchand¡¯s best guesses of where everyone was, guesses that would rapidly get worse with every second that passed. With the mask over Marchand, it was necessary that all other cameras be shut off, and that was what gave Perry a queasy feeling, like the world was slipping away from him outside. When the view came back, Fenilor was falling limply through the sky. ¡°What happened?¡± asked Perry as he stalled his movement. The constructs were coming closer to him, and he was going to take another pass at them. With the mask, he might be able to have Marchand lance through the runes on their backs. ¡°I went for his eyes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It¡¯s my hope that he¡¯s been blinded.¡± Perry looked down at Fenilor, then up at the constructs. Fenilor had righted himself and changed armors to something with a mirror finish, but he was still falling. When he hit the ground, it was with a sizeable impact that shattered the stone beneath him in a circle but left him perfectly intact. The fight had moved to above a rock-studded field, where sheep were fleeing to one corner of their pasture. Perry waited for Fenilor to take to the sky, but the elf only stood down below, looking up. ¡°We take out the constructs,¡± said Perry. ¡°We go for another pass, through the middle, and lance their backs once we¡¯re through. You can do that?¡± The question wasn¡¯t whether he could, it was whether Marchand agreed that it would work, and Perry realized that he was asking for advice from the AI only after he¡¯d spoken. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. Perry dashed forward, as fast as the sword would allow. He wanted the spear for this, not the sword, but he wasn¡¯t going to open up the shelf unless he absolutely had to, not when the portal was waiting there. Fenilor had surely seen the shelf-space at some point, but the portal was completely inaccessible without the ring. The constructs swarmed closer as Perry approached. He was trying the same trick a second time, though a different mask, and he felt something in his guts as he closed in and juked to the left. This time he didn¡¯t make it through the thicket of metal cleanly. He felt something wrenching his arm, twisting his hand and sending him off course, but they hadn¡¯t grabbed him, and it wasn¡¯t until he felt himself start to fall that he realized one of them must have grabbed his sword. Perry screamed as he fell through the air, no longer supported by the sword¡¯s magic. The world went wireframe, flickering as Marchand lanced through the runes, and the constructs started dropping too. Pain was flaring up Perry¡¯s arm. It felt like his arm had been nearly wrenched from its socket, and his hand stung, with feeling only coming back to his fingers belatedly. He had seconds to make a choice, and at the last second, he reached out to the side and pulled the spear from the shelf space. Perry crashed into the ground anyhow, sinking up to his knee in dirt, though it hadn¡¯t been particularly wet. His bones stung, but he¡¯d managed not to break anything, and he worked his way out of the ground in time to be on his feet when the constructs landed around him. On the ground, they seemed more hulking than they¡¯d been in the sky. There were only six of them left, the others having been destroyed or disabled when they fell, but on the ground he was less capable of fighting them, and erasing the runes on their backs wouldn¡¯t be enough to kill them. They had internal components necessary for their function, Perry knew that much, but he had the spear now, and didn¡¯t think that it would be too effective against metal ¡ª nor would the masks, which were famously bad against metals in general. He tried to call the sword to him, but it didn¡¯t come. He didn¡¯t know exactly how he¡¯d lost it, but if a construct had grabbed it, it hadn¡¯t let go. Fenilor stalked toward where the constructs were crowding in on Perry. They towered over him, heavy metal moving too sinuously, and though they didn¡¯t have weapons, he knew that their hands were strong enough to grab him and their arms were strong enough to rip them apart. Perry raced forward, pushing energy into his footsteps, and using some of the spear¡¯s gathered power to hasten his stride, and slipped through a gap between the tall machines. He banged against one of them as a hand tried to grab him on his shoulder, but once he was through he was able to sprint away, and looking back, they were slower than him on the ground just like they were in the air. Fenilor came in from the side. The mirrored armor he was wearing covered his entire body, clinging to him like a second skin, with the exception of his mouth, which was exposed as a thin line. Perry¡¯s screen went wireframe, showing the line of attack that Marchand had picked, a red line aiming straight at the mouth. When it went back to the camera view, Fenilor was standing there, unharmed, mouth now sealed beneath armor. Fenilor pulled out a weapon from his vast array, a morningstar this time, which began swinging of its own accord. ¡°Test fire,¡± said Perry. The shoulder gun rose up and fired twice, then sank back down into its compartment when there was no effect. One of these times, Perry thought. Perry moved laterally, keeping his distance from Fenilor and leaving the constructs behind, though it was a temporary solution, and they were stalking across the field toward him. The sheep had moved to one corner of the large pasture, and were bleating madly. Fenilor swung the morningstar around, and on one of the swings, the head detached from the chain. If not for the highlighted alert that Marchand gave, Perry might not have noticed, but they were working in sync now, and Perry batted the head of the morningstar away. Though it had barely even given any strain to his spear arm, it bounced away, maintaining its speed and digging a furrow into the sheep-eaten grass. It reappeared at the end of the chain seconds later, and Fenilor began swinging it again.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The constructs had moved closer, and were picking up speed, now using a strange loping run. Perry ran from them, and nearly tripped when Marchand made everything go wireframe again. ¡°The fuck?¡± asked Perry as his normal vision was restored. ¡°I believe I¡¯ve found a weak point in the constructs, sir,¡± said Marchand. It was true. One of them had fallen, and was moving helplessly on the ground, churning up mud and dirt. ¡°We can¡¯t be blind when Fenilor attacks,¡± said Perry. ¡°Very well, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ll confine attacks to when there is an opening.¡± It wasn¡¯t the time to talk, and Fenilor was gearing up for another attack, swinging the morningstar above his head, whipping it around with a risk that every revolution might be the one that sent it flying. Perry wasn¡¯t sure what it would do if it hit his armor, but Fenilor wouldn¡¯t have chosen it if it were a featherweight weapon. It didn¡¯t look like it would be harmless. A red line began appearing on the HUD, and for a moment Perry didn¡¯t understand what it was, but he soon cottoned onto it: Marchand was attempting to predict the path of the morningstar¡¯s head, the same as they¡¯d done in the past to attempt deflecting bullets. Given that it was still in motion, swinging in a wide circle, the prediction was imprecise, but it wouldn¡¯t move at nearly the speed of a bullet, and Perry readied himself using the spear. When it came, Perry was ready, and hit it right back at Fenilor with a snap of power. His arms felt the strain of it, and he twisted his boots in the mud, but Fenilor took a hit straight to his hip, knocked back with his own projectile like some kind of Mario boss. Rather than launching another of the same attack until he¡¯d been hit three times, Fenilor switched weapons. He brought out a rifle for only long enough to test fire it at Perry, and as Perry was caught flat-footed, it struck the armor but bounced off harmlessly. The next weapon out was another sword, this one bifurcated in a way that looked impractical, almost like an oversized pair of edged metal tongs. Perry ran, mostly to flee the constructs, and when he glanced back, the world went wireframe again, resulting in another construct down. He was going to have to keep running, which was bleeding off power, though even with the fight having gone on as long as it had, he was still only down by half. There were only four working constructs now, the advantage that Fenilor had brought in whittled away. Perry was feeling good, in the zone, like he was whittling down Fenilor, allowing fewer and fewer options. So far, Fenilor wasn¡¯t reusing weapons, and that was probably because he wanted the element of surprise, but there were only so many weapons and armors in the arsenal, and eventually they would start getting reused. Maybe Fenilor saw the path of the battle too. Fenilor flew across the field with his new weapon, racing faster than he¡¯d gone before, almost a match for Perry at a dead sprint, but Perry wasn¡¯t at a dead sprint. When they were a mere ten feet apart, Fenilor leveled the odd split sword, resting it against his forearm like a sommelier offering a bottle. The tines of the sword quivered and then let forth a warping of space, and Perry felt his teeth involuntarily clench together hard enough to crack a molar. The display cut out, not to wireframe but to pure black, and Perry launched himself into the air with the spear¡¯s stored power almost on instinct, trying to flee from the weapon. When the display cut back in, Perry was a hundred feet in the air, and something felt different. ¡°He destroyed the mask, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Shit,¡± said Perry. He looked down, where Fenilor was aiming the weapon at them again, tracking them as they went through the sky. ¡°Might be time to transform, if he¡¯s down on the ground.¡± ¡°Standing by, sir,¡± said Marchand. Whatever the sword had done, it hadn¡¯t killed Perry, and the hit had been pretty much direct to the face. Perry didn¡¯t like the idea of taking that hit again, but he needed to end the battle, and the shimmering armor that Fenilor wore hadn¡¯t been tested with the spear. Perry knew that the tip was supernaturally sharp, and if his periodic attempts to tug his sword to him weren¡¯t bearing fruit, that was the tool he was going to have to use. Perry dropped down to the ground, angling himself toward Fenilor. The split sword tracked him, and hummed with power, but it either missed or failed, and then they were fighting each other. Perry¡¯s spear pierced the ground, then was up and spinning around to catch the sword as Fenilor brought it down overhand. The shaft vibrated as it was struck, but it held, which Perry had been worried it wouldn¡¯t. When Fenilor drew back, Perry swept the spearhead across his chest, moving double time, boosting his steps from the well of energy. He was mildly surprised when the spear actually did damage, considering that the bullets didn¡¯t. Where the shimmering armor was damaged, it was like a cracked LCD screen, black and shattered. Fenilor took a single look down at his armor and swapped with a hand motion out to the side, replacing the point of weakness without another thought. The new armor was blue, just like Perry¡¯s, though larger and more ornate with a motif of curling waves across it. The sword followed soon after, the split sword gone in an eyeblink, replaced by what looked like a katana with a serrated edge. Marchand fired off the two customary shots to test whether the wavy blue armor was bulletproof, and the place where they hit expanded into a cold blue circle that closed like a rippled pond going still. They traded hits with their weapons a few times, and the serrated blade bit into Perry¡¯s spear, gouging a line in the shaft and threatening to pull it from his grip. The constructs had lifted into the air when Perry had taken the spear to the sky, then landed when he landed, and while he¡¯d whittled away at their numbers, his mask was gone and he didn¡¯t have a good way to deal with them. He was half tempted to fly up and then drop them to break on the ground, but he was worried what Fenilor would do. Still, as they came to join the fight, Perry had to move again, trying to put Fenilor between him and them, but Fenilor was trying to counter-circle, which slowed Perry down as they got in each other¡¯s way. The three constructs were moving swiftly, but also spreading out, and whether it was their programming or some form of remote control, they were trying to pen Perry in. Fenilor swished the sword back and forth, then struck it against the ground, and in complete defiance of physics, the force of that launched him forward. Perry was forced to turn and raise his spear, which gained another notch from the block, but more importantly, he was stopped in his place, allowing the constructs to get closer. If the three of them formed a circle ¡ª but there had been four, hadn¡¯t there? Marchand spotted it just as Perry did. It had taken to the sky and was now descending from above, making a spear of itself to drive into the ground at speed. Marchand gave an alert at nearly the same moment that Perry jumped away, rolling across the pasture as the construct slammed down into the earth. When he popped to his feet, the other constructs had closed in on him, with Fenilor¡¯s sword held forward and ready. Another launch across the torn up pasture would bring them face to face, and then Perry would have to defend, and the constructs would be right there, ready to grab at him and rip him apart. He would have no defense against that, nothing except the strength of his armor. Perry leapt up into the air, using the spear¡¯s power, and Fenilor launched himself up too, moving faster. They met twenty feet off the ground, with the constructs rising up around them, and Perry had to bring the spear up for another block against the serrated sword. The sword bit hard into the shaft of the spear, and Perry was pulled forward into an elbow from Fenilor, which crashed against Perry¡¯s helm. The servos locked and Perry was saved from having his neck snapped, but his head slammed against the internal padding and he saw stars for a moment. Fenilor¡¯s sword was gripping the spear, which already had too many notches in it, and with a hard yank, the spear broke in half. Perry fell to the ground, tried to roll, and scrambled back to his feet. He was still holding the pointy end of the spear, but the magic of it had failed. He tried to pull the sword to him, but it was just as unresponsive as it had been before. Fenilor had dropped too. He had a new weapon, a blade made of glass, which Perry had seen before. His armor was still the blue one with waves, and as Perry watched, the waves began to move along it. A skinny serpent slipped up from between the decorations, growing larger as its full length became clear, and once it was free, it circled once in the air. Perry let out a breath. The constructs had landed too, closer than before, and there was only one option, which was to run away, gain some distance, formulate a plan. He sprinted away, darting between two of the constructs as they lunged at him. He nearly made it, but the metal fingers of one of them grabbed him by the upper arm, hard as a vise, and Perry was yanked backward, thrown to the ground. Fenilor was on him in a moment, hacking away at the armor with the glass sword, causing warnings to flash and a small display of the suit¡¯s integrity moved parts from white to yellow, then to red. Perry kicked and twisted against the hand on his shoulder, knowing that more hands would be there in seconds, pinning him down so he could be killed. Fenilor positioned himself for the killing blow, sword straight as an arrow and aimed at Perry¡¯s throat. The grip on Perry¡¯s shoulder lifted at the last second and Perry kicked hard on the ground, pushing away. The sword scraped against him, cutting a line down the armor, and he felt it bite into his stomach for just a moment before he was off running away. Fenilor showed up in the picture-in-picture, but the constructs around him had gone dead. Ahead of Perry, Kes was standing with a gun in hand and golden rod in the other. He was breathing hard and sweating profusely. He seemed very much alive. The golden rod was a command override. It was what they used to program the constructs in the first place, usually kept securely, never touched. If Kes had one, it had been pulled from the Farfinder, which meant that they too were alive, or Kes had pulled it before bailing out, but ¡ª Fenilor had moved past the immobile constructs. He was racing toward Kes, and the thick blue serpent, which had so far done nothing, was floating behind him in the air. Perry held out a hand to Kes and let forth a beam of moonlight, then before even watching to see what would happen, let that same energy forth inside himself. Perry¡¯s transformation was faster, metal fusing with skin, two minds becoming one, and he quickly raced after Fenilor on all fours. Fenilor was still going for Kes, who was only halfway done turning into a wolf, and the serpent diverted course, flying away to meet Perry. When the serpent hit, it was with a splash of water, as though it were entirely immaterial, but soon it was in through Perry¡¯s nose and mouth, choking him and going deeper down his throat with every passing second. Perry snapped at it, which only allowed the water spirit to force itself further down, and suddenly Perry was drowning. But Perry had been in space, and he was part machine, so this didn¡¯t bother him particularly much. He redirected the flow of energy through his body, from the fusion core to his paws, no longer taking in air, filled with water that was getting into his lungs, but none the worse for it. He ran after Fenilor, who was attacking the large wolf that was Kes. The glass sword sliced through flesh easily, and the ground was soaked in blood, but a werewolf healed fast, and Kes tried to chomp at Fenilor¡¯s arms and legs. Perry barreled into Fenilor, and was grateful when his claws bit into the blue armor. Fenilor momentarily went flat on his belly, and Perry capitalized, pinning him down and biting at his helm, making sure that he couldn¡¯t slip out from under the pin, ensuring that the armor wouldn¡¯t get swapped for something else. Fenilor writhed and twisted while Perry bit down on the helm, hoping to hear the metal bend and buckle. Fenilor¡¯s hand went out to the side, and the glass sword was dropped and forgotten, but another was coming soon. Perry desperately wanted Kes to bite down on the arm, to keep anything from coming out of the arsenal, but Kes was an animal and went for the leg, biting down on metal. Fenilor was suddenly holding another what looked like a mirror in his hand, and Perry bit down harder on the helm, feeling it actually move this time, crumpling slowly. The metal fangs were achingly close to piercing the skull. The mirror lit up, and Perry felt sick to his stomach. He tried to hold on, but the helm felt like it was getting bigger in his mouth. He felt an uncomfortable pain starting inside him, and realized that the Wolf Vessel was clamping shut. It wasn¡¯t just light coming from the mirror, it was sunlight, more than he¡¯d ever experience in the natural environment, and it was forcing him to change back. It had already happened to Kes, who was laying naked on the ground, clutching his chest like he was having a heart attack. Fenilor had time to get to his feet as Perry transformed from a mechanical wolf back into a man in suit. He had time to switch out his armor, and when he did, the water that had been filling Perry¡¯s lungs disappeared, allowing a lungful of air. Fenilor was dressed in armor that looked like it had been made of ceramic shards, glazed but with jagged edges to every plate, and Marchand fired off two shots at it. This was almost perfunctory, but the bullets shattered a plate on the chest and one of the three that made up the helm. The shattered pieces held together, and a small warning showed up on Perry¡¯s HUD: that was the last of the bullets. The glass sword had been dropped and forgotten on the ground. In Fenilor¡¯s hand was a whip, long and green, more vine than anything else, and it flicked back and forth with a will of its own. ¡°I had expected more from you,¡± said Fenilor. The ceramic helm had no holes in it, and his voice was so muffled that it was difficult to hear him. Perry tried for the sword again. It was still stuck somewhere, if it hadn¡¯t been broken entirely. The spear was broken, the two pieces on the ground. The only saving grace was that the constructs had stopped their advance. If need be, Perry could probably outpace Fenilor, but not without leaving Kes behind. The gun that Kes had brought was also on the ground, and Kes ran for it, naked, only for Fenilor to crack the whip in his hand. The vines shot out and grabbed Kes by the arm, and with a sharp tug, yanked him away. The crack was from a broken bone, and Kes fell to the ground screaming, bone sticking out. Perry ran at Fenilor and was caught by the vine whip. If he had his sword, or even the spearhead, he was fairly sure he could cut straight through it, but he only had his hands. He grabbed at the vine around his wrist, and the vines grew, locking his hands together. Fenilor pulled him forward as Perry kicked at the ground, and when they were close enough together, Perry attempted a twisting motion to pull the whip away. It was fruitless, and soon Perry was close enough that Fenilor could pull out yet another weapon, this one a small pen knife with a sandstone handle. Perry strained against the vines, but there was no give, and the hydraulics and servos strained fruitlessly, even with a rush of energy from Perry¡¯s vessels. Perry had frighteningly little power following the transformation, and had reached his limits. Fenilor drove the knife down. It moved slowly, almost achingly so, but no matter how Perry twisted and turned he couldn¡¯t avoid it. He should have had more power than Fenilor, but the ceramic armor must have been doing something, helping the vine whip to pin them both in place. ¡°Stop!¡± Perry called. The knife penetrated the center of Perry¡¯s armor, going in slowly but cleanly, a steady push of metal through metal. He could feel himself freezing up, like the blood was crawling through his veins. The knife kept going, until it was piercing his flesh beneath where the reactor sat. The suit was running on battery only now, not that all his straining was doing anything. Fenilor retracted the vines. Perry was left off-balance but not falling, caught in warped time, still able to see through the screen, which meant that the cameras were still working and Marchand was still active. ¡°There,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°You are stopped.¡± He looked past Perry, ceramic shards scraping against each other. ¡°You, the other one. Don¡¯t move or I¡¯ll kill you.¡± Kes flopped back to the ground. He¡¯d been crawling for the glass sword. ¡°You put up more of a fight than I had expected,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°The Farfinder,¡± said Perry. His lungs felt heavy in his chest. He was bleeding, body stopped but still able to breathe ¡°They¡¯re still alive.¡± ¡°Yes, it appears so,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°When I left they seemed in poor condition.¡± He looked around. ¡°But it doesn¡¯t appear they¡¯re going to come save you.¡± ¡°The portal,¡± said Perry. ¡°If you go through, the physics of this world ¡ª¡± ¡°Yes, yes,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°There¡¯s fear in your voice now. But you have the portal, and you will have to give it to me.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Never.¡± ¡°I know about many things, Perry,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I know about the ring on your finger. I saw the room there. Do you need me to cut it off? I will, if I must. But I was going to leave you alive, you see.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Perry, in spite of himself. ¡°It¡¯s possible you¡¯re right,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°I don¡¯t believe that this world will end, but it might. This world is not important though, it¡¯s one amongst many. It is proof that the culture works.¡± He held a hand out to the side, and a ghostly row of books appeared. ¡°I have the accumulated knowledge, the teachings. It can be rebuilt.¡± ¡°Monster,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not a compelling counterpoint,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°But you asked why I¡¯m leaving you here, and it¡¯s because, unless I¡¯ve missed my mark, that¡¯s the best chance that the culture will find a different way to spread. There are experiments going on now in the northern cities, ways of crossing the many worlds. I want my people to do that, and with your help, they might. You aren¡¯t opposed to them, yet you don¡¯t want to stay here. Am I correct?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry, knowing that Fenilor would know the truth from lies. ¡°Good,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Then you get to live, to stay here, to help them breach to other worlds. I think you will, from what I know of you. And if you die with them, so be it, but if you don¡¯t, then my goals have another path toward being achieved.¡± ¡°I won¡¯t give you the ring,¡± said Perry. ¡°I won¡¯t let you through the portal.¡± ¡°Release the lock on the gauntlet, give up the ring, or I¡¯ll take it by force,¡± said Fenilor. ¡°Or simply open the space to me and allow me to leave by the portal. I don¡¯t need the ring itself.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll have to cut it from my hand,¡± said Perry. He tried to transform. There simply wasn¡¯t enough power left in the vessel though. The earlier transformation had healed all the scrapes and cuts in his armor, but that came with a cost. He was tapped out. The only hope was rescue from without, and with Kes here, that seemed vanishingly unlikely. Whatever was left of the Farfinder could drop down on Fenilor, that was about all that could realistically offer salvation. Fenilor produced another weapon from his arsenal, this one long and thin, like a knife for cutting Ib¨¦rico ham. He went for Perry¡¯s immobile hand, and after a long moment of pressure, the knife cut off two of Perry¡¯s fingers. Perry cried out. It felt blindingly hot and at the same time cold, metal and flesh separating, and blood pouring from the twin stumps as Fenilor picked the fingers up off the ground. It took him some time to remove the finger from the armored gloves, especially with the ceramic gloves that he himself was wearing, and then more time to twist the ring off the finger, which seemed to resist resizing for him. Eventually he had it though, and with a small motion, he had opened the shelf space. The laser sitting inside fired immediately, but it did nothing against the ceramic, and Fenilor stepped forward casually to knock it down. Perry wished that he¡¯d been able to prepare a bomb of some kind, but he just hadn¡¯t thought of it, and hadn¡¯t known the portal would be there until losing contact with the Farfinder. Fenilor stood inside, peering at the portal. ¡°Wait,¡± said Perry. ¡°Get rid of your weapons. Everything in your inventory. Those things, they¡¯ll be pulled with you, their properties will imprint on the world, and they¡¯ll make the enemy stronger. They¡¯ll ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Fenilor. He turned back to Perry. ¡°I hope that this world persists in my wake, but there is work to be done, greater work than has been done here.¡± He took the ring off his finger and tossed it toward the opening. It fell onto the grass, just a step away. He turned back to the portal, steeled himself, then stepped through it. The world failed to end. Perry stared at the portal, which still hung there. The knife was still stuck in him, keeping him motionless. After ten full seconds had passed, Kes got to his feet and came over. He was a mess of adrenaline, shaky and sweating, arm still badly broken and hanging awkwardly to the side. He winced with every movement. He grabbed the ring from the ground, and the shelf snapped shut, then once he¡¯d awkwardly slipped it on, he gripped the pen knife with his good hand and pulled hard at it. It took time and strength, but finally he tumbled back onto his ass, gasping in pain, knife in hand. Perry rotated his arms. ¡°It¡¯s over,¡± said Kes. ¡°We lost.¡± He looked pallid. He was still losing blood, which dripped down his forearm to the ends of his limp fingers. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a gap.¡± ¡°A gap?¡± asked Kes. Perry nodded. ¡°Between when you leave and when you arrive. Fenilor isn¡¯t in another world. He¡¯s on his way. We have ¡­ a week? A month? Some amount of time to figure out a solution, or to get out of here and leave these people to their fate.¡± Kes nodded. He looked down at his arm. ¡°I might need to go see a doctor.¡± Chapter 144 - Stopgap The Farfinder hadn¡¯t quite crash landed. It was laying next to a pond with its nose blown off, looking like a giant metal animal that was resting after a fight. From the outside, it was actually rather small, wider than a semi but only about as long. Most of its current interior was extradimensional space, which it didn¡¯t have on all worlds. Perry had seen it from the outside a few times, and it always looked dinky. With the bridge a mess, it looked even worse, more like a monstrously oversized mobile home than a starship. The ship had attracted a small crowd, but it had landed in the wake of three separate attacks on Calamus, and whatever was going on in the city was taking precedence. They seemed to have decided that the Farfinder wasn¡¯t a threat to anyone. Still, two dozen people standing around didn¡¯t fill Perry with happiness. They were on a deadline now, or several deadlines, and if the civilians got in the way, that was a higher chance that it would all go wrong. Kes still had his arm broken, though Perry had done some basic first aid to slow the bleeding. Kes was a werewolf, which would help, and under the light of a full moon, or with a blast of moonlight from Perry, he would be fine. Perry was trying his best to heal up the damage to the fusion reactor, which in theory was only a matter of letting energy flow out, but without the reactor, energy was in short supply. Fenilor had left behind weapons, not seeming to care about them, which was good, because in theory each weapon was one less bit of magic that would be threaded from this world to the next. The pen knife that had kept Perry immobile was kept in one of the armor¡¯s small storage compartments, and Perry was holding the glass sword, which had been cast to the side in a scuffle and never retrieved. The spear that Perry had stolen was broken, but there was a chance that it might be mended. Halfway to the ship, Perry had been able to call his sword back to him, for unclear reasons ¡ª either it had finally worked free from whatever was pinning it in place, or someone had unwittingly done Perry a favor. Perry was still reeling from the lost fight. It was a proper loss, the worst he¡¯d ever faced, and if Fenilor had been worried in the slightest that Perry would upset the quasi-utopia, then Perry would have surely died. Having someone make the choice not to kill him was humiliating. Hella came out of the marred ship to meet them. She was in her battle outfit, a spandex number that showed off the entirety of her legs, with see-through mesh going up the sides of her body. It was much more revealing than he had expected, but it wasn¡¯t his first time seeing it. He didn¡¯t know whether it was something that her government had mandated for her when she was a superhero or something she¡¯d picked up along the way per her own preferences. ¡°Marchand has briefed everyone,¡± said Hella as they came near. ¡°You can handle these people if they get rowdy or try to move us?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry, though what he wanted was to take the armor off and lay down. ¡°We¡¯re still trying to reach Dirk, this is the sort of thing he should handle. And I want to be in the loop on what we know and what we¡¯re planning.¡± Hella nodded. ¡°If Third Fervor is dead and Fenilor is gone, there¡¯s nothing much for the rest of us ¡ª the non-engineers, non-scientists ¡ª to do. Mette is clearly better at project management than I am. I¡¯ll try to keep on top of it, just so I can make whatever calls I need to, but it¡¯s a technical problem now.¡± Perry nodded. He took off his helmet and held it by his side. There was a smell of blood and sweat inside the helmet, which hadn¡¯t been entirely wicked away yet. ¡°There¡¯s still a chance that someone has left behind some landmines.¡± ¡°You be on the lookout for them then,¡± said Hella. She let out a breath. ¡°Sorry, I don¡¯t mean to be snippy, just ¡ª we¡¯re wounded here.¡± She looked at the ship that she¡¯d been making her home for years, and a grimace settled on her face. ¡°I¡¯m going in,¡± said Kes. ¡°Medical.¡± Hella did a double take when she looked at his arm. ¡°Go, now, there¡¯s an Eggy with medical training. But can¡¯t you heal on your own?¡± ¡°No energy for it,¡± said Kes with a wince. He was doing far, far better than he should have been, which Perry credited to the werewolf blood. ¡°I¡¯m drained,¡± said Perry. ¡°If we can get up to the moon ¡­ ?¡± Moonlight would give him energy, and a transformation would repair the fusion core. ¡°Eggy says half an hour to get us back up,¡± said Hella. ¡°We came down harder than we planned. When the bridge blew there was damage to the entire ship, and it seems we didn¡¯t catch all of it.¡± Kes moved past her, climbing up the lip of the ruined bridge and going inside. ¡°I should be a part of the conversation,¡± said Perry. ¡°Whatever we decide to do.¡± ¡°I agree,¡± said Hella. ¡°But the options right now are limited, unless we want to abandon this world. And even if we did want to abandon this world, it¡¯s not clear that we would be able to. There aren¡¯t any punches out.¡± ¡°Fenilor¡¯s hasn¡¯t shown up?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Hella. ¡°But there¡¯s something we¡¯ve seen from it. The new method, the one we got from Moss, lets us see a bulge in the world, a place where something is happening in higher dimensions. We don¡¯t know whether the thresholder algorithm is working on something, whether it¡¯s holding him in place while it waits for the stars to align, or if the punch is imminent.¡± ¡°The portal is hanging around,¡± said Perry. ¡°We can send people through now, if the Farfinder can¡¯t make the trip. Better than dying here.¡± Hella shook her head. ¡°Becoming a thresholder? That¡¯s not what we¡¯re here for, especially not because from what we know, we¡¯d all get split up. Eggy is the only one with the knowledge necessary to make a new engine to travel through the punches, and even then, it would take a world with heavy infrastructure and good enough technology.¡± ¡°Someone else then,¡± said Perry. ¡°Send through volunteers, hope that their punch goes through before Fenilor¡¯s.¡± ¡°That¡¯s ¡­ not a terrible idea,¡± said Hella. ¡°Where are you getting those volunteers from though?¡± ¡°Dirk,¡± said Perry. ¡°He could have twenty men lined up in half an hour, if we got ahold of him.¡± ¡°Men?¡± asked Hella with a raised eyebrow. ¡°You know what I mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°But yes, probably men, because they¡¯d be from Berus, and they haven¡¯t shed the last vestiges of gender roles.¡± Hella frowned, but she was the one who¡¯d started that petty shit. Perry found himself annoyed with her, and she seemed annoyed with him, though maybe it was just that he¡¯d lost his match. ¡°Worth trying, I suppose.¡± ¡°Has it happened before, in your travels? Lots of punches out, showing mass travel through the portal?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Twice,¡± said Hella. ¡°They go to different places. It doesn¡¯t seem to affect stability, not that we have all that good of methods to study that, not that our models are on firm ground.¡± ¡°As soon as communications are up, I¡¯ll contact Dirk, he should have his phone on him,¡± said Perry. ¡°That will give us the best chance of getting the Farfinder out.¡± ¡°Perry, we¡¯re staying,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re staying unless it¡¯s absolutely clear that doing so is pointless. If there¡¯s a chance we can help these people, that¡¯s what we¡¯re doing, even if there¡¯s risk to our lives. If you¡¯re not willing ¡ª¡± ¡°I am,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re right. I¡¯m just not sure that I have anything to offer here. You said as much. My expertise is fighting.¡± She kindly did not say anything about the fight he¡¯d just lost. ~~~~ Once they got in touch, Dirk gathered up people. They weren¡¯t the ones that Perry would have chosen: he had been imagining a collection of sharp-jawed young men, brawny and ready to scrap, but what Dirk assembled at the edge of town were the sickliest people that Perry had seen, some of them missing limbs and others looking like they were on death¡¯s door. ¡°You said that the portals healed people,¡± said Dirk. They had talked over the phone, which was a novel experience for Dirk. He must have been holding the phone too far away from his face, because the audio was poor until Marchand fixed it. ¡°Better to send the sick, people we can¡¯t help here.¡± ¡°I never said they healed people,¡± said Perry. ¡°I said ¡­ there¡¯s some match-making, I guess, some balancing of thresholders. So if you go through and you¡¯re dying then ¡­ yeah, sure, you¡¯re probably going to end up in a world with something to heal you, because otherwise the fight won¡¯t be fair. But that¡¯s different from saying the portal heals. It doesn¡¯t. It doesn¡¯t fix.¡± ¡°It might send these people to a world where they can instantly and effortlessly be better,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Where they have a chance of spreading the culture.¡± Perry considered this. ¡°Yes, technically.¡± ¡°And if I was sending the most able-bodied people we have, the ones we can ask for the most labor from, then that would weaken us here,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You need volunteers? These are people who have wanted their whole lives to be useful. They wanted to fight for independence and weren¡¯t able to do everything that others could. Are you going to deny them their chance?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He felt awkward about it though. He wanted to say that it was one of the conceits of the culture that a person was not to be measured by their productivity, and this was essentially true, but it was also a part of the culture that people should want to pitch in as much as they could. They should put in as much time and labor as they could. It was part of the culture that social censure should be used on those that shirked work, and it was perhaps inevitable that someone who couldn¡¯t work would have people give them the side eye. This was especially true in Berus, where the revolution was in its infancy and experiencing all the growing pains that Perry would have expected. Still, as Perry looked out on the small crowd, he couldn¡¯t help but see the infirm and disabled, and couldn¡¯t stop himself from thinking that they were being culled, even if the portal really did seem to offer a chance for them to be healed, or made whole. And who was Perry to tell someone with an arm missing that they should feel any different about it? ¡°Many of them were made this way by effluence,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Blinded by it, deafened by it, with pieces of them warped or twisted, torn apart. You wake up and your arm has been replaced with a chicken wing. Your whole leg gets shot through with wood when a chair explodes. And these are the lucky ones, the ones that lived through it. I saw a woman who¡¯d been found with flowers in her veins.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can see why it¡¯s worth fighting against. I always could.¡± ¡°The people here, they remember it, because for them, it was how it was months ago, how it still is because we haven¡¯t been able to shut everything off and the effluence takes time to fade.¡± ¡°And your hope is that they continue the fight elsewhere?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I do,¡± said Dirk. ¡°If there are fights happening out there, better that they¡¯re fights where our people are a part of it. This? Here? People who came out of a portal, whose interests are only, at best, aligned with ours?¡± He shook his head. ¡°No. Better that it¡¯s our people.¡± ¡°Then they should go through now,¡± said Perry. ¡°No sense in waiting.¡± It took time to line everyone up, but once they were lined up, it was just a matter of them filing through while Perry held the shelf space open for them. Dirk stood by, watching them all go, some of them hobbling. This took some time.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Perry wished that there had been time to vet them, to make sure they weren¡¯t coerced, but time was of the essence. It wasn¡¯t even clear that this would do anything, whether the competing punches actually could make it to another universe before Fenilor did. ¡°You lost,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Won one fight, lost the other. The one I lost was the big one.¡± ¡°And the danger isn¡¯t passed,¡± said Dirk, eyeing him. ¡°Is it?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Potentially ¡­ we might be looking at something very bad. We¡¯ll do everything we can, try to minimize the potential for damage, but we¡¯ve been working on the problem for a few hours, and it¡¯s not clear that we have more than a few days. It might be intractable.¡± ¡°I can offer you anything we have,¡± said Dirk. ¡°More people, cloning machines, materials, scientists. Whatever it takes to make sure that whatever you think is going to happen doesn¡¯t happen.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll send that up the chain of command.¡± The volunteers were sent with nothing, which seemed like a death sentence to Perry, but if they were premising this on the portal providing the bare necessities, then who knew, maybe it would mean that they would land somewhere that fed, clothed, and sheltered them. Paradoxically, the better you were prepared, the worse conditions you were expected to face, at least from everything they knew about how the portals worked. And of course, they didn¡¯t know everything. Magicians called it the Grand Spell, it was a law of the multiverse that kept being rediscovered, and not just when thresholders turned up somewhere kicking up dust in their brawl, but the mechanism and purpose were still opaque. Hella seemed to think that it was some kind of neural net thing, intelligence gathering, training up some dataset, and there was something about that which sounded compelling to Perry, like he was fighting for a reason, not for amusement but to tease apart the margins of some prediction machine¡¯s output ¡ª but of course he didn¡¯t know for certain. Eventually, the last of the old and crippled citizens moved through the portal. They vanished, obviously, and they wouldn¡¯t be seen or heard from again, not unless the Farfinder punched through to go find them. They would be out there fighting, as absurd as it sounded, and Perry hoped that regeneration and rejuvenation helped them. But there was a boy who remained, and he stepped up to Perry once the last of them were through. ¡°I want to go,¡± he said. He was sixteen, maybe. Perry was always bad at guessing ages. A few years ago, when he¡¯d been a grad student, he had that strange feeling of adulthood, thinking that the teenagers were much younger than he¡¯d been when he was a teenager. After his time aboard the Natrix, his idea of what children were capable of had changed: it wasn¡¯t uncommon for him to see ten-year-olds working as mechanics, technicians, or assistants. ¡°I want to go,¡± the boy said again, pointing at the portal. ¡°That leads to another world? A place where they¡¯re still fighting?¡± ¡°It does,¡± said Dirk with a nod. He didn¡¯t glance at Perry for confirmation, though this was almost entirely on Perry¡¯s say-so, a leap of faith. ¡°Then that¡¯s where I want to be,¡± he said. ¡°The fight is finished here. It¡¯s over. There¡¯s only Thirlwell left, and it¡¯s going to fall, it can¡¯t stand against us. Everything people are saying, that this was the final big fight, that they lost their champion, that we have moles deep inside their security service, that there¡¯s only desperation left ¡­ I want to be useful. I want to carry on the work.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Dirk. ¡°The work isn¡¯t only fighting. The fight is important. Militance is essential. But not everything is a fight. Not everything is finding an enemy to destroy and subvert. Most of the culture? It¡¯s helping other people, putting in work without the expectation that you¡¯ll be paid back one day, putting in the work because it¡¯s the right thing to do, because you¡¯re young, healthy, driven, and because the culture can¡¯t work without you. The other worlds do need us. I¡¯ve had more time to think about this than you have, but yes, they do need us, there are millions of people living under the thumbs of a thousand kings. But this world needs us too. It needs you.¡± ¡°And the fight¡¯s not over,¡± said Perry. ¡°The city lies in ruins. There¡¯s a need, right at this very moment, for someone to clean up, for people to help sort out food, get people places to stay, to rebuild. There¡¯s work to be done.¡± ¡°We¡¯re at the end,¡± said the boy. He was scrawny, in that teenaged way, like his body had grown too fast and not paid enough attention to putting meat on his bones. ¡°You said this was the only chance.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Probably not. We¡¯re going to find a way to travel worlds. We¡¯re still in the planning stages right now, but the culture will find other places to spread, other ways to spread, and if you want to dig in and fight the fight, then there will be places to do that.¡± The boy looked at the portal with no small amount of longing. He held his body tight, like he was ready to throw a fist at one of them, even though Perry was in his armor. He kept glancing at the portal, which was through the shelf space. Perry hadn¡¯t closed it yet, and could at any moment, but he was willing to hear the kid out. ¡°Do you know who I am?¡± asked Dirk. The boy nodded. ¡°You¡¯re someone important, from the mainland.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± nodded Dirk. ¡°And I¡¯ve been fighting the fight for ages, decades, since I was your age. And you have to believe me when I say that the real fight is inglorious. It¡¯s not what he does, battling giants across the city, fighting with a gleaming sword and bulky armor. It¡¯s sifting through reports, it¡¯s helping with the labor, and sometimes it¡¯s sitting at a meeting and arguing with some people who think they know better than you. Sometimes it¡¯s sitting in those meetings and admitting they¡¯re right.¡± ¡°I¡¯m still going through,¡± said the boy, as though daring them to stop him. ¡°I¡¯ll leave it to my armored friend to decide,¡± said Dirk with a sigh. He looked to Perry. ¡°Go,¡± said Perry with a nod. ¡°Fight the fight. Kill the people who stand against you and your vision of the future. Rebuild the culture on distant shores.¡± The boy rushed through. He had nothing but the clothes on his back, just like Perry when he¡¯d gone through the portal, though Perry had also had a cell phone in his pocket, for all the good it had done him. ¡°Do you believe that?¡± asked Dirk. ¡°About fighting the fight?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ yes. But I said it mostly because it was what he wanted to do anyway.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Better for him to go out with that in his head. I don¡¯t think a militant will do well. Compromise seems like a better weapon. But I suppose it ultimately doesn¡¯t matter, if the Grand Spell is matching people up.¡± ¡°You lost,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Did you think about that as those people went through?¡± There was a slight edge to his voice. ¡°I did,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe a quarter of them will die.¡± He tried to think about the numbers, but it was difficult to say. ¡°Less, in their first world, maybe. Fewer killers early on. More defeats that just see them sent through to another portal.¡± Dirk let out a breath. ¡°It would have been nice to give them a proper briefing, but I¡¯ve never had a proper briefing, no understanding of what the worlds out there are like, no knowledge of what a thresholder actually is. Today ¡­ there are hundreds dead. It¡¯s grim in the city.¡± He looked at Perry. ¡°And you lost the fight.¡± ¡°I did,¡± said Perry. He winced. ¡°It¡¯s my first actual loss. Second, if I count the one against Cosme, but he underestimated me, tried to steal from me, died because of it ¡ª or lived, I guess. Hard to say.¡± ¡°Easy to claim you like fights when you win a lot,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Easy to say that you love it when your fist is dripping with the blood of your enemies. But even against Third Fervor, though I didn¡¯t see all of it, it was ¡­¡± ¡°A bloodbath,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was supposed to be there to stop her, and I didn¡¯t really do that, even if she died in the end. I know.¡± ¡°But you¡¯re aching to go through that portal, aren¡¯t you?¡± asked Dirk. Perry looked at it. It was sitting there, waiting for him, his prize for winning the fight. ¡°How could you tell?¡± ¡°Because you¡¯ve been holding it open even though no one is waiting to go through,¡± said Dirk. ¡°This whole world might be done for,¡± said Perry as his eyes went to the portal again. ¡°It¡¯s logical to jump through now, while I have a chance. But I won¡¯t do that, not if there¡¯s a possibility that I can help.¡± It made his stomach flip though. Time was running out. Soon there would be no escape through the portal, because the portal would be gone. After that, second guesses would be worth nothing. ¡°I¡¯ve thought about it too,¡± said Dirk. ¡°If you hadn¡¯t stolen the cloning machine, I would make another and send him through, so at least some scrap of me can survive. Unless you¡¯re going to give it back?¡± ¡°Fenilor broke it,¡± said Perry. ¡°He made sure of that.¡± He let out a breath. ¡°Sorry.¡± Dirk swore. ¡°Well then dump the pieces out, and we¡¯ll have Moss take a crack at putting it back together again.¡± ¡°There are more urgent matters,¡± said Perry. He let the shelfspace snap shut, hiding the portal. ¡°All the engineering effort needs to be on Fenilor.¡± ¡°And that¡¯s a fight you¡¯re leaving to others?¡± asked Dirk. Perry turned to him. ¡°I¡¯m not an engineer. I¡¯m not a scientist. My ideas are going to be less than worthless, they¡¯re going to suck time away from the people that are actually suited to this problem. I don¡¯t know where along the way I became a warrior, but that¡¯s what I am, and if they need me to hit someone very hard with my sword, then that¡¯s where it¡¯ll be my time to shine.¡± ¡°You let me know what mountains I need to move,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Use the thing.¡± He pulled the smartphone from his pocket and waggled it in front of Perry. ¡°I¡¯m off to the city, to see what I can do there, but I¡¯ll need your ability to move across oceans in a heartbeat if you want me to mobilize.¡± Perry nodded, and stepped up into the ship as Dirk went on his way. The bulk of the crew were in the ¡°break room¡±, deep in an argument that slowed as soon as he made his presence known. There he was, Perry the loser, the reason that they were all going to have to go through this. He had failed to stop Fenilor, which was his only job, and now he had to hope that engineering or scientific prowess would find a way out. If it couldn¡¯t, then he would have to hope that the ship¡¯s drive could be repaired in time, and that he could hitch a ride to the next world ¡ª but of course he wouldn¡¯t be a thresholder there, and he wouldn¡¯t take his powers with him, which would reduce him to what, a normal man? Marchand would stop working too, with both second sphere and the reactor rendered non-functional. Hella came over to him as the arguments continued, more subdued. ¡°We¡¯re about to lift off,¡± said Hella. ¡°Eggy got the engines running again, we can retreat to somewhere a little less exposed.¡± She still hadn¡¯t changed out of her battle outfit, the spandex number, and it did look a little ridiculous in comparison to the clothes everyone else was wearing. Next to Perry in his power armor was where she probably looked most normal. ¡°What¡¯s the news?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We have a way out,¡± said Hella. ¡°We can see the energy spikes where you let people through, punches going outward to new worlds. And two of them have already landed, giving us a straight shot somewhere else if the drive is working.¡± Perry betrayed no emotion, but he felt immense relief. He was staying until the end, but if there was a release valve, some way out ¡­ ¡°The two that landed are in the same world, incidentally,¡± said Hella. ¡°Either it¡¯s a teamup, or they¡¯re matched against each other, it¡¯s impossible to say with the current instrumentation.¡± ¡°What about Fenilor?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Has the new data changed the math?¡± ¡°They¡¯re zeroing in,¡± said Hella. ¡°We¡¯re currently looking at a lower-bound release of energy that would destroy everything in a hundred mile radius.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a lot less than a light-year,¡± said Perry. ¡°It is,¡± said Hella. ¡°Lower bound, mind you.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a survivable amount less, for this planet,¡± said Perry. More tension felt like it was releasing from him. They had been talking about the wholesale destruction of this entire world, and now, if it was just a hundred miles, two hundred miles, that was ¡­ well, millions dead, but not the whole world. ¡°Except that it would kick up dirt and dust, which would block the sun for as much as years,¡± said Hella. ¡°And these people currently get most of their power from sunlight, which would mean that they would have to switch over to effluence again. It would be a very, very high death toll.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°And here¡¯s me being hopeful about it.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll do what we can,¡± said Hella. ¡°But the speed of the new thresholders that are already in a new world, it¡¯s making me reconsider how much time we actually have.¡± She sucked on her teeth for a moment. ¡°There are too many unknowns hanging in the air.¡± ¡°Agreed,¡± said Perry. He looked over at the argument in progress. ¡°Dirk said that we can have anything we need. I think as soon as we get the doors working again, we bring in Moss.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not going to be opening doors anytime soon,¡± said Hella. ¡°There was a piece of hardware that was broken when I blew out the ship. Mette thinks that she might be able to replace it, given a month, but that¡¯s time we don¡¯t have. We can get the ship in the sky soon, I hope, and then fly over to Moss, but I¡¯m also not sure how much help he¡¯s going to be. Adding in more engineers doesn¡¯t necessarily make the work go faster. At a certain point, there¡¯s too much overhead getting people up to speed.¡± ¡°But we¡¯re not at that point,¡± said Perry. ¡°And if we can get a new cloning machine, or get the old one up and running, then we can parallelize, have instances of people dedicated to bringing others into the loop.¡± He shifted his weight. ¡°What are you thinking the odds are that they handle this?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, Perry,¡± said Hella. ¡°The loss ¡­ it happened. And now we¡¯re in the unfortunate position of waiting to see what happens next, without much control over any of it.¡± She looked at the assembled engineers. ¡°I would prefer to get my hands dirty, to work myself to the bone, but I¡¯m useless here, and that makes it harder, because all I can do is sit and watch, hoping for the best, guiding where it¡¯s needed. And what remains is for me to work them to the bone, which I¡¯ll do, if I have to, if they¡¯re not doing it themselves.¡± ¡°And we sit on the sidelines?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s that?¡± ¡°It unfortunately appears that way,¡± said Hella. ¡°As soon as Mette has a use for you, you¡¯ll be doing whatever she asks of you.¡± Perry let out a breath. ¡°And what¡¯s the timetable? Days? Weeks?¡± Hella gave a tense shrug. ¡°We don¡¯t know, Perry. It might all be over in a heartbeat, once Fenilor finds his match. But even across the multiverse, thresholders are rare, and we can¡¯t rule out that exceptions like Fenilor take longer.¡± ¡°The portal is going to close,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then we¡¯ll be betting everything on the engineers. We¡¯ll be helpless, you and me.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve felt helpless for a very long time, moving in the wake of thresholders,¡± said Hella. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them to look at Perry. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. I don¡¯t want to put this on you. You¡¯ve tried your best.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°I¡¯m sorry I failed.¡± He waited for her to say that it wasn¡¯t his fault, but maybe she didn¡¯t even realize that she was supposed to. Her eyes had gone back to the engineers, watching them talking with each other. They were gathered around a single screen that was projecting a three-dimensional graph, which Perry couldn¡¯t make any sense of. He hoped it was a good sign that they had figured something out, but they didn¡¯t call him or Hella over, and so they were left standing there together like pieces of furniture. It wasn¡¯t until another three hours later that they had anything like news. ¡°We can stop him,¡± said Mette. ¡°But it¡¯s not going to be easy.¡± Chapter 145 - Stress Fracture Mette was hating life. The problem with being in a crisis was sometimes a crisis could drag on for hours, for weeks even. There had been a time on the Natrix when one of the fusion cores had needed an emergency fix, because it was making the entire Natrix move at about half the speed it was supposed to move at. Half speed wouldn¡¯t have been that much of a problem, since the Natrix was fast enough to outrun the sun a few times over, but the extra cycles of travel meant that the farms would be active for less time, and that would have a downstream impact on everything that depended on the farms. They didn¡¯t run lean enough that it would be a problem for at least two cycles, but of course there were other concerns, like how this first problem could make any other problem life-threatening for the entire colony. A crisis had been declared, and Mette was one of the critical members responsible for resolving it. The first cycle of that crisis had been fine, more or less, but with every cycle after that, Mette found herself less and less functional. She would eat at her desk, not get enough sleep, and skipped on basic hygiene. You couldn¡¯t stop to take care of yourself when the lives of the entire colony were on the line. You burned through reserves, then burned past reserves. You abandoned everything but the mission. And yes, there was some acknowledgement that you couldn¡¯t give up on sleep entirely, couldn¡¯t get by treating your body like a battery that could be drained down to nothing, but how could you sleep when lives were on the line? She¡¯d run herself ragged. It had lasted two weeks. By the end of it she was doing work more by instinct than actual cognition, which was a terrible way to get any work done. The cycles had blended together, and there were only brief naps stringing together arduous work. She¡¯d been in a perpetual state of nausea the last few cycles, and would break out into a sweat at no provocation, along with getting the runs, but she had done it in the end, the problem had been fixed and there was only a hitch in the schedule, not the spiral into problems that they¡¯d been worried about. And after it was declared finished, she had still had all the regular work to do, all the things that had been piling up in the background that whole time. She had laughed about it and said ¡°I¡¯m going to sleep for a week now¡±, but the health issues felt like they lasted a whole year. She¡¯d had more problems sleeping, the unrest echoing through her, and her stomach had taken a long time to get right again. She¡¯d pushed herself past limits she wouldn¡¯t have asked other people to push past ¡­ unless it was an emergency, unless lives were on the line. Every crisis after that one had felt the same, like she was burning a piece of herself to keep going. Something had changed in her brain, and now there was a block there, one that she had to push against with all her weight. Every crisis felt like it carried the burden of every crisis before it. In her time with Perry after coming through the portal, she hadn¡¯t experienced it. She had suffered and fought, but hadn''t actually had anything that weighed down on her for appreciable periods of time, hadn¡¯t had people¡¯s lives depending on her, hadn¡¯t had a project with a firm, inflexible deadline. And now here it was, the end of the world, or at least a portion of it, the end of all their lives, and it was down to Mette and the other Mettes to grind themselves down trying to understand and solve it. The Eggys were there too, but they were vastly inferior in spite of being (ostensibly) the ship¡¯s scientist. And worse, they were chipper. Someone had decided to pair together the Mettes and the Eggys, on the theory that the different viewpoints on each subproblem would allow them to synergize. Mette couldn¡¯t recall who had made that suggestion, but she hoped that it wasn¡¯t one of the Mettes. The Eggy she was saddled with was the third one, who was going by the name Belle, or sometimes Belly. ¡°I just think it¡¯s such a wonderful opportunity,¡± said Belle during a mandated break. ¡°To be not just a clone, but a clone who can see other clones? Think about how much we¡¯ll learn about ourselves, how much it lets us know ourselves, and it seems likely that the clones will diverge from each other, and of course that will also be fascinating.¡± She spun around in her chair, almost spilling the bowl of noodle soup she had in her lap, then resumed eating. ¡°I didn¡¯t come on this ship for new adventures, but there are just so many new adventures, and the only shame about this world is that we¡¯re not nearly going to have the time we need to explore every facet of it, or of the power we have with all these systems running side by side.¡± ¡°Another downside is that we might die,¡± said Mette. ¡°Eh, we¡¯ll make it through or we won¡¯t,¡± said Belle. She smiled. ¡°We put in maximum effort, then either that¡¯s it or we keep going. That¡¯s kind of nice, right? No nuance.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not thinking about getting out?¡± asked Mette. By their best estimations, the portal was going to close within the hour. They had a video camera up and looking at it, and she knew Perry was pacing nervously, waiting for it to close. Hella had made an open offer for people to go through, but there hadn¡¯t been any takers ¡ª if Mette or Eggy were up for it, it was likely that all the clones would have gone through. But Mette and Eggy hadn¡¯t actually talked about why they¡¯d stayed on. ¡°If we have a month, it¡¯s very likely that one of the other teams will figure out an exit strategy,¡± said Belle. ¡°And I¡¯m reasonably confident that we can get the punch drive working again. Once that¡¯s fixed, we have an out, one that won¡¯t maroon us and turn us into thresholders ¡­ no offense.¡± Mette was the original Mette, Mette Prime, which only made a difference in that she was the one who¡¯d become a werewolf. The others would too, in time, and in fact had already procured teeth just in case, but the transformation wasn¡¯t the most gentle thing in the world. The werewolf thing made her bulkier and more hairy than them, a change that had mostly come on in the course of time, after the clones had been created. She was ¡°hairy Mette¡±, which wasn¡¯t entirely complimentary, but Mette¡¯s physical appearance had never been something she prided herself on. Her mind was sharp, maybe not as much as Brigitta¡¯s, and not in the same way, but she was good at thinking, plotting, and planning. Unfortunately, that had been impacted too. She was more impulsive since the change, quicker to anger. Perry had his magic powers to compensate for that, along with time spent practicing and adjusting, but Mette had nothing. He claimed the effect was minor, if it existed at all, but to her it felt stark, and of course he then started talking about something called the placebo effect, which was new to her. ¡°Would Hella move the ship?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Would she abandon these people, if our counter ran down?¡± ¡°If it didn¡¯t seem like it would help,¡± said Belle. She saw Mette¡¯s look and shrugged. ¡°She¡¯s a pragmatist. We¡¯re in a bad spot though. We¡¯re close on the wake of the thresholders, which isn¡¯t a good place to be, and ¡­ it¡¯s just me and the other mes, and Hella, and you and the yous, and that¡¯s not really enough for a full crew. We could recruit from the locals, but Hella¡¯s not a fan of that.¡± ¡°You¡¯re cavalier about the losses,¡± said Mette. They had a minute left on their break. She was timing them. This conversation wasn¡¯t important, the meal was, and they were both pretty much finished. It took Mette a moment to realize that Belle had gone silent. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Mette. ¡°I didn¡¯t know those people well, nor what they meant to you.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Belle. ¡°It was ¡­ they were friends, you¡¯re right, I should grieve for them, Hella says that¡¯s important. We went through a lot together, even if we didn¡¯t always see eye to eye. Nitta was the one I was closest with, and she stuck to Cark, they had been traveling together before we met them, so ¡­¡± The timer went off, and Mette silenced it. She was willing to go a little bit over, if it would increase Belle¡¯s working efficiency. Mette was good at keeping her emotions contained, holding in the stress, anger, resentment, and irritation until it went away. Not everyone was quite so gifted, and in the confines of the Natrix, it was sometimes necessary to shuffle around personnel just to handle that, which was always a hassle. ¡°We should hold a memorial,¡± said Belle. ¡°After the crisis is resolved,¡± said Mette. ¡°That could be a month,¡± said Belle. ¡°And depending on how it resolves, we could just be running straight into another crisis, that¡¯s how it works on this ship, one crisis follows another.¡± She placed her bowl on the table. ¡°I¡¯m going to talk with the others about it, send a message real quick.¡± ¡°Look, I shouldn¡¯t have mentioned it,¡± said Mette. ¡°What they would want from us is for us to survive, for us to make the most of our time to get the work done. Right?¡± Belle stared at her. ¡°You didn¡¯t know them. L¡¯onso was always ready for a break, ready to kick back and see the sights, if we could. We¡¯re traveling between worlds for a reason, but it was also ¡­ a spirit of adventure, a sense that we were explorers. And when this is over, that¡¯s what I hope we go back to being. That¡¯s what L¡¯onso liked, even if I think he¡¯d have liked it better if he fit in more places.¡± L¡¯onso was the hulking lizard man, with tongues inside his nostrils. ¡°We need to keep working,¡± said Mette gently. ¡°There will be time for this later. Next break will be time for sleep. You can tell me then?¡± Belle nodded, then turned back to her computer and shook out her hands. It took a few seconds, but her face lost its seriousness, and she began typing as Mette looked on. Mette returned to her own work, hashing out some ideas on how to better map the energy spikes radiating from this world, algorithmic improvements rather than mechanical ones. The device that took the energy readings was laughably primitive, and had only recently been adapted to using the techniques they¡¯d taken from Moss. There was a different team, another Mette and another Eggy, working on making a better version. Mette had to hope that they would be able to make some substantial improvements. The readings could be interpreted into a manifold, and the most common visualization they used looked like someone had placed a sheet over a series of nails. The data was messy, but they had applied smoothing to it, and they could look at every one of the spikes. There was more data than that, and this in theory could be used to make a general map of the wider multiverse, but so far they had two examples of what they called ¡°punches¡±, and many more examples of what they were now calling ¡°pre-punches¡±, along with ¡°entries¡± that marked places on the manifold where someone had come in, all those people that Fenilor had killed, along with Perry, Third Fervor, and Nima. Something was happening to the fabric of the multiverse, or maybe just this one specific universe, when people went through that portal. They had almost made a terrible mistake in allowing all those other people to go through. If they hadn¡¯t pinpointed Fenilor before that, they might have lost him in the sea of others, not knowing his signature from theirs. But Mette had caught that before it happened, and was at a computer with the sensor running, cataloging every change to the manifold, annotating them using pictures from Marchand¡¯s cameras. Perry¡¯s dead girlfriend had apparently specialized in signals analysis, which was why she¡¯d found the signal from the portal in the first place, and Marchand was an asset, allowing the use of some algorithms that Mette was still trying to tear apart. So they had the manifold, and the annotations, and they could ¡°see¡± the imprints. The sensor didn¡¯t actually give data about the entire manifold at once, there was a set of small motors inside that rotated in a scanning pattern, which then had to be translated into math and processed, then smoothed. There were plenty of glitches, since the entire system had been set up from spare parts and vanishingly little knowledge of what they were actually sampling, but with the data and deductions from Moss and some of Mette¡¯s own contributions, it was working far better than the version the Farfinder had when they¡¯d first come to this world. There were, unfortunately, still a fair number of bugs, and Mette wasn¡¯t entirely sure that their team of two was going to get anything accomplished just by updating the code and sifting through the numbers. ¡°There¡¯s gotta be something,¡± said Belle after an hour had passed. They had a private channel set up between the two of them, and did at least half their communication through that, usually terse messages that confirmed that something had been tested or updated or tried.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°There might be nothing. This might be all we ever know.¡± ¡°Where there¡¯s a will, there¡¯s a way,¡± said Belle, sighing to herself. ¡°Again, no,¡± said Mette. ¡°This is a question of engineering and science. The monitor gives us data, and it might be that this is the sum total of data that we ever get from it. We¡¯re here in the hope that¡¯s not true, but hope doesn¡¯t make something true.¡± ¡°If we could at least get some kind of estimation on when a punch is going to go through,¡± said Belle. Mette didn¡¯t reply to that. It was one of their directives, to get some kind of prediction system. They had two examples of a ¡®waiting¡¯ punch actually manifesting, but the data was terrible, mostly because the sensor didn¡¯t cover the entirety of the manifold fast enough. What they really wanted was to capture the moment that a punch-in-potential turned into a punch-in-actuality, and then there might be some way to parse out the data that gave them some kind of predictive power for Fenilor¡¯s punch. That was seeming like more of a long-shot though. The best they could do was refine the system to be as fast and accurate and bug-free as possible so that they wouldn¡¯t miss it if it happened. And of course Fenilor¡¯s punch could go through at literally any time, and in all but the most optimistic estimates, they and millions more people would die. It didn¡¯t do a lot to help Mette focus on the problems at hand. Perry came into the room they were working in and stood by the door. He had his helmet off, and he was looking as perfect as usual, not showing the lack of sleep they were all suffering from, armor in mint condition, like it had just gotten waxed and polished. He had a scruffy beard that was somehow perfectly positioned, and it made him look unearthly handsome. ¡°The portal is closed,¡± he said after she held his gaze for a moment. ¡°Did that do anything?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Mette. She glanced at the manifold, but it hadn¡¯t moved. She would have noticed immediately if it had. ¡°But we hadn¡¯t expected that it would. The portal by itself, it¡¯s just a connection to ¡­ whatever does this.¡± She gestured at the screen. ¡°No way out now though, is there?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°No way out.¡± ¡°We could go to the edge of the star system,¡± said Belle. ¡°Then race back if we find anything. That would be a way out. Then we have time to repair the punch drive.¡± ¡°I¡¯d be done being a thresholder,¡± said Perry. ¡°True,¡± said Belle. ¡°And our engines can¡¯t really take us that far, plus we¡¯d lose contact with all the resources here. I think Hella might move us to the far side of the moon though, which would let us withstand a certain range of blasting power.¡± ¡°No progress?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Lots of progress,¡± said Belle with a chipper smile. ¡°We¡¯re working miracles here, fixing the systems, improving them. What we don¡¯t have are results.¡± ¡°You¡¯ll be here for a while?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Mette, shaking her head. ¡°We¡¯re sleeping soon, unless something changes. That¡¯s mandated. We just need to make sure that the systems can run by themselves while we¡¯re out.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to talk to Nima,¡± said Perry. ¡°Your match was never resolved, and there¡¯s a chance that we can make a portal by staging a fight between the two of you.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Mette. ¡°That ¡­ shouldn¡¯t work, should it?¡± ¡°It¡¯s unclear,¡± said Perry. ¡°Nima¡¯s been down, you¡¯ve been down, now Fenilor is gone ¡­ nothing was clear there, it was a misfire from the portal, either because of the way you came in or because he¡¯d been slumming it for so long. But it would give more data, maybe some information that would let us sneak our fingers into a crack, if we could make the portal appear.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± said Mette. ¡°Talk to her, I guess.¡± She turned back to her computer. Perry left, and Mette caught Belle looking over. ¡°Yes?¡± asked Mette. ¡°What is it?¡± ¡°Are you and him ¡­ ?¡± asked Belle. ¡°I don¡¯t think I ever got the full story.¡± ¡°We¡¯re facing down a gun aimed straight at our face,¡± said Mette. She briefly considered how long it would take to rant about that, compared to how long it would take to just tell Belle what she wanted to know. ¡°I flirted with him when we were on the Natrix, hoping to get pregnant and improve our breeding stock. I¡¯ve always been attracted, and he knows that. Once we got here, it was inevitable. Then Kes came along, and he was tender in a way that Perry isn¡¯t, and I would indulge myself with both of them, but they¡¯re weird about it, so it¡¯s just Kes. No further questions.¡± ¡°That was a lot,¡± said Belle. She turned back to her computer. ¡°Thanks.¡± ¡°Do you have any thoughts on this wiggle?¡± asked Mette, mostly to change the subject. She sent over a link to a timestamp, something that hadn¡¯t been possible to do six hours prior. The ¡®wiggle¡¯ was an aberration in one of the spikes that Mette had noticed mostly by chance. It jogged to the side by a bit before going back where it was, visible only when zoomed in. ¡°Weird,¡± said Belle after a moment. ¡°I haven¡¯t seen that.¡± ¡°Probably nothing,¡± said Mette. ¡°Might be an artifact.¡± ¡°Possible,¡± said Belle, biting her lip. ¡°We don¡¯t have much time left before bed. I¡¯m going to try to write something that checks for more of them.¡± ¡°Let me,¡± said Mette. She was much, much faster at that sort of thing, mostly owing to what were apparently biological differences in their brains. ¡°What exactly am I trying to do?¡± ¡°Wiggle detection,¡± said Belle. ¡°Use that one instance as a template to see if there are other instances, mark them all, then use a larger set to see if it means anything. One wiggle is weird, a dozen would be a pattern.¡± It didn¡¯t take very long, owing to the system they were using now being relatively mature, but when Mette ran the algorithm that would look for more of the wiggles, she thought that she¡¯d made a mistake. ¡°This is just ¡­ too much,¡± said Mette. The detection algorithm had logged hundreds of thousands of hits. Mette went through and sampled a few of the timestamps, and saw that they were accurate ¡ª the wiggle was there. ¡°I don¡¯t get it,¡± said Belle. ¡°It must be nothing then,¡± said Mette. ¡°It happens so frequently, we just hadn¡¯t noticed it, maybe because of the smoothing.¡± Belle had come over to share the monitor, though she was perfectly capable of using her own. ¡°Huh.¡± ¡°Strange, but it¡¯s probably for tomorrow,¡± said Mette. She rubbed her eyes. ¡°If we start trying to dig into this, it¡¯s going to be hard to sleep.¡± ¡°Is it regular?¡± asked Belle. ¡°If you map it, is the interval a set amount?¡± This took another few minutes to do, and once it did, they had their answer: the interval was extremely consistent, though it skipped a ¡®beat¡¯ every now and then when measured per-spike. Each of the spikes was ¡®wiggling¡¯ at the same set interval, though all with different time offsets. ¡°Instrument error,¡± said Mette. ¡°It has to be. I¡¯ll alert the other team, they can deal with it next cycle ¡ª tomorrow.¡± There was still a part of her that wasn¡¯t comfortable with days, that saw the sun hanging high in the sky as being horribly wrong. ¡°No, hang on,¡± said Belle. ¡°What does the wiggle represent?¡± ¡°Instrument error, algorithm error, precision error,¡± said Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°If it weren¡¯t those things,¡± said Belle. ¡°If it were real.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± said Mette. ¡°If the spikes represent a ¡®primed punch¡¯, some high-energy holding pattern the Grand Spell is engaged with to send people on to the next world, then a wiggle would be ¡­¡± she paused, then stopped. ¡°The manifold represents energy overall, it¡¯s the skin of this universe, maybe. The spikes are ¡­ well, in theory, positional. But we¡¯re not even sure that¡¯s true, because it would imply that the Grand Spell is picking out a destination very soon after a person goes through the portal, and somehow only does the matchmaking afterward.¡± ¡°Huh,¡± said Belle. ¡°Right, yeah. So if the wiggle is ¡®real¡¯, then it shows ¡­ moving the destination? Changing the angle of attack? The Grand Spell is testing other locations for suitability?¡± ¡°You wouldn¡¯t do it like that,¡± said Mette. ¡°You would do the testing or monitoring some other way, not physically aim at another universe.¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Belle. ¡°So the tiny movement in destination would represent ¡­ compensation for a shifting web of universes?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Mette. ¡°Look, it goes back.¡± She clicked through. The wiggle didn¡¯t actually change the position of the spike. ¡°And it doesn¡¯t make sense that they¡¯re on the same interval, but don¡¯t happen at the same time. There¡¯s got to be a pattern there.¡± ¡°Wait,¡± said Belle. ¡°Can you uh ¡­ hrm. Is the interval divisible by ¡­¡± She frowned. ¡°Nope, don¡¯t know it off the top of my head. The scanning interval.¡± Mette paused and typed in the numbers. It was an almost perfect match. She let out a breath. ¡°So this is nothing. Just a sensor error.¡± ¡°Looks like it¡¯s happening right when the peak is sensed, yeah,¡± said Belle with a frown. ¡°Well, at least we caught that before we went to bed.¡± ¡°Bah,¡± said Mette. ¡°I¡¯m going to send a quick message off to the sensor team.¡± It wasn¡¯t much more than two minutes before the sensor team was in the room with them. It was another Mette and another Eggy, both of them working on the actual physical sensor that was gathering the data. The details were opaque to Mette, who became Mette Prime once the other Mette was in the room. The other Eggy was Henrietta. ¡°It¡¯s weird,¡± said the other Mette. ¡°We took the sensor down ¡ª we really need a second one, we¡¯re working on that ¡ª and ran some tests to try to isolate where the problem is, and we can¡¯t fix it.¡± ¡°Because it¡¯s not a problem,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°Meaning what?¡± asked Mette Prime. ¡°It¡¯s measuring something real,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°Might just be an artifact of the measurement, some kind of latent energy within the element that registers a higher reading after we record a spike measurement, but we don¡¯t really have a way to rule that out.¡± ¡°And it might be that,¡± said the other Mette. ¡°That kind of error.¡± She looked haggard. She wasn¡¯t a werewolf, and didn¡¯t have the same reserves of energy. Running on fumes this early into a crisis wasn¡¯t good, but the sensor they were using was incredibly important, and having a second one up and running was a top priority. ¡°But if it¡¯s not an error, then the thing that¡¯s causing the ¡®wiggle¡¯, as you call it, is the measurement itself.¡± ¡°Wow,¡± said Belle. ¡°That would mean ¡­ well, that the measurement device is actually a wiggling device.¡± ¡°It would mean that we have a way to affect the skin of the universe,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°Why did this have to come right before we¡¯re supposed to sleep?¡± ¡°You were the one to send it,¡± said the other Mette. ¡°But we need to make the second sensor, we can¡¯t leave this offline, and we need to get some sleep too, which means we need to put this back together so it can log overnight.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a temptation to push off sleep,¡± said Mette Prime. The other Mette nodded. ¡°We have to assume that the world isn¡¯t going to end in the next eight hours though.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll flag it,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°But there¡¯s so little to flag, and we¡¯re going to have to rule out all kinds of errors.¡± ¡°How would it even work if the sensor is affecting things?¡± asked Belle. ¡°Is the sensor not passive?¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s not,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°Which explains the power draw! I¡¯d always wondered about that.¡± ¡°Me too!¡± smiled Belle. They split off before the Eggys could get too smitten with each other, and Mette double and triple checked that everything was running once they got the sensor back online and running in autonomous mode. The manifold was looking the same as it ever was, and Mette resisted the urge to program in a set of alerts to wake her up. She needed her sleep, and there was nothing that couldn¡¯t wait until the next cycle. If the software crashed, that would be bad, but not as bad as trying to go into the next cycle on too little sleep. ¡°It¡¯s exciting,¡± said Belle. ¡°We¡¯ll probably have to scale up the sensor, if we want to make actual changes at a distance.¡± ¡°We need to rule out all kinds of things first,¡± said Mette. ¡°But yes, it¡¯s exciting.¡± ¡°I¡¯m hoping that we can prove it all tomorrow,¡± said Belle. ¡°It would be a real feather in my cap, the kind of thing that would put me ahead in the clone rankings.¡± ¡°What¡¯s a feather?¡± asked Mette. She was too tired to retain the full explanation. When she got to her room, a small place off the side of an extra dimensional corridor, Kes was waiting for her. ¡°You should have been here at least an hour ago,¡± he said. ¡°I was getting worried that I would have to drag you away from your computer.¡± ¡°Maybe you should have,¡± said Mette with a yawn. ¡°Sorry, if you¡¯re tired I can go,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯m wiped,¡± said Mette. She leaned against her door frame. ¡°I¡¯m not up for deep conversation.¡± ¡°That¡¯s fine,¡± said Kes. ¡°I just ¡­ wanted to be with someone.¡± He said this like he was admitting to a high crime. ¡°If you mean you want to have sex, you¡¯re going to have to do all the work, and be fast,¡± said Mette. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t put you in that position,¡± said Kes. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t mind being put in that position,¡± said Mette. She lingered on the word ¡®position¡¯. ¡°Not a bad way to destress and then immediately fall asleep.¡± She looked him up and down. He didn¡¯t have the same look as Perry, and they were getting further away by the day, but Kes still had the same muscular arms and piercing blue eyes. He must have gotten some sleep. He¡¯d probably done it while she was working, the bastard. They said he¡¯d had his arm broken, but he must have fixed it, because he looked right as rain. He smelled nice, like sweat and mud. Her heart had started beating a bit faster, waking her up a little bit. ¡°I can just lay with you,¡± said Kes. ¡°I need a shower,¡± said Mette. ¡°I was going to wait until the start of the next cycle.¡± He knew she needed a shower though, he was a werewolf too. ¡°You smell good,¡± said Kes. He shifted his posture, straightening up. ¡°You sure you don¡¯t want to do the other thing with me?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Then you can sleep beside me.¡± ¡°I never said I didn¡¯t want to,¡± said Kes. He moved forward, putting himself closer to her, and for a moment they were standing in the doorway together, with the question hanging in the air. It was brief but good, and when it was over, Mette felt like her head had cleared. They were still in a crisis, but she¡¯d flipped the switch that let her not care about that. Still, as Kes fell asleep beside her, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm, sleep was eluding her. There were problems to work, and the work was done in the brain, and the brain didn¡¯t just shut off so easily, even if the stress had somewhat abated. The more she thought about the problems, the more the stress started coming back. They would solve it, or they would turn tail and run, or the whole thing would blow up in their face before they had a chance to do either of those things. But that thought didn¡¯t help the sleep come any faster. Chapter 146 - The Flood The engineers did their work. Perry didn¡¯t have much to do, which was deeply irritating. The portal was closed, and that meant the only way off the planet was either a new portal or the repair of the Farfinder¡¯s main drive. Perry was bouncing between those options in his mind like an anxious kangaroo, and neither option was actually within his control. He¡¯d visited Nima on the first day, then again on the second, and by the fifth it was something of an established pattern with them. He felt bad for her, because she, like him, was in a losing position with nothing to do. ¡°She still doesn¡¯t want to fight me?¡± asked Nima. ¡°Because I would fight her.¡± She laid on her bed while he sat in a chair. She¡¯d been wearing less with each successive day, though he didn¡¯t know whether that was an attempt to allure him, because she was growing more comfortable with him, or simply her whim. She was still wearing more than the elves of this world, but there was a way that she arranged her legs that couldn¡¯t have been just happenstance. He wasn¡¯t enough of an idiot to make a move on her. If she was trying to entice him, it wouldn¡¯t work. ¡°It¡¯s not Mette that¡¯s the problem,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s that if the two of you are going to fight, then the reason is going to be because we¡¯re hoping for a portal to open. And if it does open, then we have only a limited amount of time with it. So the fight isn¡¯t going to happen until we¡¯re good and ready, unfortunately.¡± ¡°You should be letting me help with the project,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯m good with computers.¡± ¡°We¡¯re not risking it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Sorry.¡± He had come into her room with his armor off, mostly to make her feel more at home, which she didn¡¯t. ¡°You should have let me go through the portal when the opportunity was there,¡± said Nima. ¡°Or were you planning this mock fight all along?¡± If Perry was being honest, he would have told her that in all the excitement, they had sort of forgotten about her. Not completely, but enough that they weren¡¯t thinking about what she would want. She was a prisoner, and her rights and whims had not entered into it. ¡°We need every tool in the toolbox,¡± said Perry. She only nodded. ¡°I¡¯m at your mercy.¡± ¡°Even if the portal opens, you don¡¯t need to go through it,¡± said Perry. ¡°You can probably stay aboard the ship, get dropped off on the next world. I don¡¯t think they want you as a permanent prisoner. And if you cross to the next world on this ship, rather than through a portal, I think it should sever your link to the Grand Spell, at least in theory. They carry no magic with them.¡± She touched the pendant that rested on her chest. ¡°We don¡¯t have a portal to bring you through,¡± said Perry. ¡°Not unless we decide to have you fight Mette, and if you fight, it¡¯s going to be as safe as it can be while still triggering the portal to appear.¡± How to do that was an open question. ¡°I¡¯m ready when she is,¡± said Nima. ¡°Is it the fighting you want, even after all this?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Is that why you want a portal?¡± ¡°The fighting?¡± asked Nima. ¡°No. Or ¡­¡± ¡°Or?¡± asked Perry. ¡°What I want is to go home, if there¡¯s still a home there,¡± said Nima. ¡°But failing that, I¡¯d like to prove myself in a way that I haven¡¯t done, not a single time since I¡¯ve been in this world. I beat your clone in an unfair fight, and I don¡¯t think I could do that a second time.¡± ¡°Probably not, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°But the fight wouldn¡¯t be fair.¡± ¡°The portals promise a fair fight,¡± said Nima. ¡°Don¡¯t they?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think they promise anything,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve come around to the idea that they just are. This whole planet has been a clusterfuck.¡± She raised an eyebrow, not offended, just curious. ¡°A, uh, wildly complicated problem for everyone.¡± ¡°In my world, group sex is quite regimented,¡± she offered. Perry let that hang there for a moment. ¡°The problem with a fair fight is that you might die,¡± said Perry. ¡°What you should want is a stacked fight, one that you couldn¡¯t dream of losing.¡± ¡°Is that what you want?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I think at a certain level it becomes unsporting,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s no thrill in victory when your opponent is a toddler.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll elect not to take offense,¡± said Nima. ¡°You know what I mean though,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I¡¯m going to fight, I want a challenge, but a challenge that I can rise to, one that I can beat. And of course the fight isn¡¯t the point of it, ¡ª¡± ¡°Says who?¡± asked Nima. ¡°The portals seem to think the fight is the point.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know who made the Grand Spell, or why,¡± said Perry. ¡°And even if we knew who made them, what¡¯s their authority? That they knew how to make something that we don¡¯t?¡± ¡°You said you¡¯ve come around to the idea that the portals just are?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I¡¯ve come around to a very different idea, the idea that they were made by our betters. And it¡¯s not our place to question them.¡± ¡°Are you serious?¡± asked Perry. Nima shrugged. ¡°I might be.¡± ¡°So that¡¯s a ¡®no¡¯ then,¡± said Perry. ¡°I was taught not to question my place,¡± said Nima. ¡°I valued that, only now I don¡¯t know what my place is, except as prisoner on this infernal ship. So yes, there¡¯s a power higher than any of us that made the Grand Spell, and it wants me to fight, wants me to win, and is fine with discarding me if I cannot or will not fulfill that purpose.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t tell if you¡¯re taking the piss or not,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m serious about going through the portal again, if we can get one,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯ll beat Mette to a pulp if that¡¯s what it takes.¡± Perry shook his head and changed the topic, asking her about some element of her culture, the way that art and music worked, which was something they¡¯ve discussed in the past. That was enough to eat up more time, allowing Perry to not pace back and forth while trying his best to stay out of the way of the engineers. Nima seemed to be in a better mood when he left, which was at least something. The Farfinder had been reconfigured in the days following Fenilor¡¯s exit. The engineers worked in teams, which had become larger now that they¡¯d started picking up people from the science cities. The engines had been repaired, and while the magic doors still weren¡¯t working and might never work again, they could simply fly wherever they needed to go. They had three of Moss and two Dirks, and essentially the whole of the world had been alerted to their plight, or at least that tiny fraction that could actually do anything about it. There were a few other engineers walking around, none that Perry knew personally, though Marchand could whisper their names in his ear if need be. Dirk was in a command room, biting his nails, and looked relieved when Perry came in. ¡°How¡¯s our prisoner?¡± he asked. ¡°She¡¯s the Farfinder¡¯s prisoner,¡± said Perry. ¡°But she¡¯s fine. What¡¯s the word from the teams?¡± ¡°Bah,¡± said Dirk. He turned back to what the monitors were showing, mostly logs of activities from the different teams. ¡°They¡¯re stalled out on power requirements for the wiggler, which is insane given how much energy this ship has access to. They¡¯re trying to build a larger version with better precision so the costs aren¡¯t so high, but that¡¯s going to take time.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°That was more or less where they were two hours ago.¡± ¡°I offered to commandeer a city¡¯s golden domes,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Consensus is that it won¡¯t help. The domes aren¡¯t good at raw energy output, not the kind that we need. So then I offered effluence, a pair of enormous lanterns that we¡¯ve been keeping around, but retrofit on those is going to take time.¡± ¡°Do you need me to get it rolling?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I handled that this morning.¡± They had global communication now, thanks to the Farfinder and some hacked-together equipment. The bandwidth was pitiful, but the only computers were the ones that the Farfinder had brought with them, so there was no need to shove huge amounts of data through the limited satellites. Dirk was in contact with his clones the whole world over, but there wasn¡¯t all that much that could be done to work the problem, not when the expertise was so incredibly limited. They had pulled in some mathematicians specializing in higher dimensions, but while math was ¡°the same¡± across worlds, the terminology wasn¡¯t, and hacking together a shared understanding involved a lot of overhead even with Marchand translating. ¡°So we¡¯re just sitting here with our thumbs up our asses,¡± said Perry. ¡°Our fate is in the hands of the brainiacs.¡± ¡°I hate it,¡± said Dirk. The command center was mostly ceremonial, not actually used for project management. The screens showed the teams, but represented by blobs, since no one was going to spend the time getting video set up. ¡°There¡¯s gotta be a way to make it go faster.¡± ¡°I think we have to accept that it¡¯s not about us,¡± said Perry. ¡°You think this is ego?¡± asked Dirk, looking at him. ¡°Perry, this is the world we¡¯re talking about, and if I trust the brainiacs ¡ª and I trust Moss, in all his incarnations, at least ¡ª then this is the most important thing I¡¯m ever going to do. And what I¡¯m doing is nothing, just standing in this room and complaining.¡± ¡°They¡¯ll solve it or they won¡¯t,¡± said Perry. He felt a lump in his throat in spite of the nonchalance. ¡°Another two of the prospects went through,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Did you see that?¡± ¡°I did,¡± said Perry. ¡°Two more gone to different worlds, that¡¯s good for us, that¡¯s more data.¡± ¡°Feh,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s a clock.¡± ¡°It might be enough to give us an early warning system,¡± said Perry. ¡°Some change in the readings that shows when it¡¯s going to happen.¡± ¡°They¡¯re getting there,¡± said Dirk. ¡°But what we really need is ¡­ I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Go on, say it,¡± said Perry. ¡°A way to stop him in his tracks,¡± said Dirk. ¡°That sap-for-brains is in stasis, right? And we¡¯re here with all the tools of a dozen worlds, and all the power that this one can provide. And can¡¯t we just, I don¡¯t know, shoot him?¡± ¡°Did you suggest that to the teams?¡± asked Perry with a smirk. ¡°No, I didn¡¯t fucking suggest it to the teams, I know it¡¯s stupid, I know that he¡¯s beyond the skin of the universe, or past the first layer of skin, or something like that.¡± Dirk heaved a sigh. ¡°But if we could just shoot him, that¡¯s what we would want to do. He¡¯s in a pocket somewhere, right?¡± ¡°Presumably,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean ¡­ pocket is probably not the correct term. I would guess it¡¯s information encoding, I guess, some pattern of him that¡¯s been etched by the spell, not like there¡¯s some actual timeless prison made of glass he¡¯s stuck inside or whatever. Or it might be that he is frozen in time, but that it¡¯s some kind of, I don¡¯t know, hyperspace warping thing going on. When we go through there¡¯s no sensation of travel. Richter thought it was possible that the portal was purely informational, especially because of how traversal works. You stick your hand in and don¡¯t feel anything on the other side.¡± Dirk looked over the screens. ¡°What are our odds sitting at?¡± Perry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They had no way of knowing. Maybe some people on the teams could give an assessment, but from what Perry had learned, the Eggys would lean optimist and the Mettes would lean pessimist, and the Mosses were far enough diverged from one another that they might be split. ¡°Fifty-fifty,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean of the gun thing working,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Or not a gun, but something like a gun, a way to attack him, kill him from a distance.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Then still fifty-fifty. I don¡¯t know, you know I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Just talking,¡± said Dirk. Hella came into the room and took a seat in front of the monitors. ¡°How are we today, boys?¡± ¡°Just talking,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Thinking about the odds, the needs of the teams, how likely this is to all just end ignobly and with very little warning.¡± ¡°They¡¯re working hard,¡± said Hella. ¡°How has the hunt for a working cloning machine gone?¡± ¡°Poorly,¡± said Dirk. ¡°We didn¡¯t have them in great supply, so it¡¯s a question of parts and expertise. Moss has the expertise, but then it¡¯s a question of time. Lots of metal in the machine, all of it precision, and that means fabrication time. We¡¯ve got people working on it.¡± Fenilor had destroyed the machine on the Farfinder, but he had also destroyed the other machines as well, striking at the places they were kept. His reasons for doing this were opaque, since they couldn¡¯t possibly have offered any advantage in the fight with Perry. Maybe he saw them as a threat to the order of the world somehow, an advancement that would cause the whole scheme to crumble in his absence, but he hadn¡¯t done enough to destroy the knowledge of the machines. To do that he would have had to kill dozens of the right people in the right places, then burn all their research. He probably could have done it, if he had wanted to. Perry wondered how many people you would need to kill in order to completely collapse semiconductor fabrication back on Earth. Probably a lot, but that was because they were a linchpin of modern society. ¡°Nine women can¡¯t make a baby in a single month,¡± said Perry. They both looked at him. ¡°It¡¯s a software thing,¡± said Perry. ¡°Richter said it. Or it¡¯s ¡­ a general organizational principle. How much are the clones actually going to help? How many more of Moss actually helps to solve the extant problems faster?¡± ¡°That¡¯s a call for our project manager to make,¡± said Hella. ¡°But I would guess that we¡¯re already nearly at capacity. There¡¯s organizational overhead already. There are limits to the parallelization we can employ. We need more power, but ¡ª¡° ¡°Already worked that problem as much as I can,¡± said Dirk. ¡°There¡¯s a retrofit going, should be finished shortly. All the energy you could want, and we just need to sear a piece of the planet with effluence to do it.¡± ¡°We do?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You didn¡¯t mention that. And if it¡¯s a retrofit, then do we have a candidate lantern far enough from civilization?¡± ¡°We don¡¯t,¡± said Dirk. ¡°But one¡¯s been selected. There¡¯s an evacuation now, ten thousand people displaced. Last one out is a rotten egg.¡± ¡°All those families,¡± said Perry. ¡°Those houses, you¡¯re talking about a whole city.¡± ¡°Just a town. It¡¯s the entire reason that Global Command Authorities exist,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Had to be done, if it shaves us a day off our deadline. The facility is huge, one of a kind.¡± ¡°Can I help?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I can fly, I have the shelf.¡± ¡°You can help, if you want to,¡± said Dirk. ¡°But we¡¯ve had drills in place. The evacuation should go smoothly.¡± ¡°You¡¯re underestimating me,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t realize the breadth of what I can do, where I can see.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not underestimating you,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I¡¯m thinking about the costs and the problems. You traipse off for a day to help some poor souls move with only what they have on their backs, and then what happens if Fenilor comes back? That¡¯s one of the scenarios. You¡¯re not here when that happens, our odds go way down, and we need to get him while we can.¡± ¡°I¡¯m going anyway,¡± said Perry. ¡°In the event that we can reverse the process, dump him in this world, they¡¯ll wait on me to do that, and better, wait until we have a plan of attack. And if there¡¯s a rush to do it ¡ª which there would be, I know, I know ¡ª then calling me back is just a matter of hours, depending on where the site is.¡± ¡°It¡¯s the end of the world, Perry,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You understand that, right?¡± ¡°It¡¯s the end of the world and we¡¯re cooped up in here with nothing to contribute, nothing to add,¡± said Perry. ¡°I know you feel it too, because it¡¯s all you talk about. So I¡¯m going to take the opportunity to go save the lives of a few thousand people, and it won¡¯t matter in the scheme of things, but at least it¡¯ll be something worthwhile, rather than staring at these screens and praying.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± said Dirk with a wave of his hand. ¡°If you¡¯ve got a map handy, I can mark it for you, but there¡¯s a good chance we¡¯ll need you here sooner than later.¡± Perry looked to Hella. ¡°Captain, permission to disembark?¡± Hella rolled her eyes. ¡°Granted. We¡¯ll swing the ship around and go there in a day or so, once the follow-up engine work is done.¡± Perry did, in fact, have a map on hand, since Marchand was partially integrated with the ship¡¯s systems. Once the location was marked, Perry got his power armor on and went to the airlock. The ship was still badly damaged, and would be for the foreseeable future, though they were at least getting some help from the culture. Behind the scenes, Dirk and Hella had a series of talks, and Hella had apparently gone to speak in front of one of the Global Command Authorities, the day before. The ship was complicated, with parts from various different worlds, but it was in theory replicable, and it blew the airships away in terms of capabilities. It was the kind of disruption and society-changing technology that the culture wasn¡¯t always on board with, but they would at least have to assemble a panel and decide whether or not to pursue it.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. The parallelism of it all felt odd to Perry. Committees were meeting to talk about future technologies while the world was at risk, and yes, no one on those committees could meaningfully contribute to the work the engineers were doing. Still, pretending that the crisis wasn¡¯t happening felt wrong somehow, even if it was objectively correct. He had time to think as he flew toward the town of St. Durbin. He tried to direct his thoughts to the future, just like the committee members were doing, but it was difficult, because the opaque work of the engineers was what was actually important. Thoughts about the future might bear fruit though, if he didn¡¯t die. Assuming that Fenilor could be stopped or killed or otherwise prevented from punching a hole straight through the world, Perry would continue on. Maybe that would be by taking the portal that came after Nima and Mette fought, but if that didn¡¯t work, then he¡¯d have another opponent in a few years. He would do what Fenilor had done and find a place where they could fight without imperiling anyone else. But then there would be another world, with its own difficulties, and it would all be different, because the Farfinder wasn¡¯t just an expedition anymore, it was attempting to help the culture set up multiversal trade and cooperation, at least in theory. They would follow Perry, something that was apparently going to be easier now that they had new mapping technology, and if Hella kept her end of the bargain, they would aim for a return to Earth 2, mostly in hopes of having a reasonable trading partner. The punches were uni-directional, but that didn¡¯t preclude using a cycle of them, and if they could do that, then universes could be in communication with each other. Perry had been functionally useless on the Natrix, handling some scouting and occasional work, but not ever feeling like he was pulling his weight. And he was useless now, too, waiting on the engineers to solve the damned thing. But a great stretch of uselessness lay before him, years of it. He had become better at fighting than anything else, but there wasn¡¯t always someone to fight. The thoughts rattled around until he put on some ¡°in-flight entertainment¡±, one of the anime shows from Richter he¡¯d seen twice before, this one about a group of tweenage costumed crime fighters called the Critter Crew. Flying with the sword was generally just about keeping at the correct heading, and that only took a fraction of his attention. St. Durbin was a smaller city than he¡¯d thought it would be, just a single golden dome, and a half-sized one at that. They were on a river, but not a major one. The buildings had flat tops with complicated gutters to empty out the rain, and then the streets had larger gutters to funnel rainwater down into the canal. Maybe that was the style through this whole region, but Perry hadn¡¯t done an architecture survey. He should have, he thought, because that would have been a better use of his time than bugging Nima or watching the teams on the monitors. He landed in the center of the town, where people were already gathered, and it appeared that evacuation efforts were already underway. His descent was greeted with a clamor of attention, but less than he¡¯d thought there would be, maybe because they had giant robots taller than him, or because they had other excitement to worry about. The world was on the brink, but this town was even more on the brink. ¡°I¡¯m here to help,¡± said Perry to a man with a clipboard and an armband. That got him some blank stares, not just from the man he was talking to, but everyone else around them. ¡°I can ferry people wherever they need to go,¡± said Perry. He opened the shelf-space by way of demonstration. It was freshly cleaned and stocked, though there was plenty of room for people, at least a hundred of them if they didn¡¯t need to be in there long. ¡°I can outpace an airship.¡± That got the attention of the man. ¡°If I line them up, you can take them?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Show me on a map where I¡¯m going, but I can run at a hundred miles an hour. Anyone who¡¯s ready, and whatever they can carry, or however you¡¯re doing things.¡± The units were translated, naturally, and that got him some wide eyes. It was a bold claim to make, and only true in the best of circumstances, which they certainly wouldn¡¯t have unless Perry was traveling down a very flat, very clear road. The line took some time to form, but it was long, and the first trip wouldn¡¯t lack for passengers. The first volunteers were intrepid, but it was a good deal, because the other option seemed to be getting on a caravan of farm vehicles pulling open trailers, and it was threatening to rain. The entire evacuation was meant to happen quickly, but Perry didn¡¯t see any way that they were actually going to accomplish it in the timescale they had, not without him. Maybe there were airships incoming, but those had limits too. They were all destined for the largest city that was close by, a place with nearly a million people. How a city could absorb that many people was being left for someone there, but it seemed perilous to Perry, a serious logistical problem that had simply been sprung on them earlier in the day. The culture built with extra housing, extra capacity, storehouses of clothes, but he wasn¡¯t sure that they overbuilt that much, not when overbuilding put strain on the workers. Running was a thrill. It was completely different from going fast in a car, and it took attention that the sword didn¡¯t. Perry had to watch his steps and react swiftly to what was on the road, because a tumble could hurt him, even if the armor was designed to protect him. He found himself drawing on his heightened senses, attempting to slow time and speed up his reactions. There wasn¡¯t a reason to run as fast as he was, not when he was spending so much energy and effort to fight against air resistance, but he went fast anyhow, with leaping strides that left small divots in the road. The city had the same architectural style as the town did, except that the taller buildings eschewed it, and they were obviously using different materials. Perry slowed considerably, not wanting to kill some hapless pedestrian, and then was left with the task of finding someone he could hand his passengers off to. The whole trip had taken a half hour, if that, so he wasn¡¯t worried about getting them out just yet. He stopped at a large cathedral with tents in front of it, and went to the nearest person with an armband he could find. He was getting looks, of course, but he was used to that. ¡°I¡¯m here to drop off refugees from St. Durbin¡¯s,¡± he said. ¡°Drop off?¡± asked the woman with the armband. She was an elf, which seemed like a common species in this place. The armband was the only thing she was wearing on her upper body. ¡°With magic, an Implement,¡± said Perry. ¡°If I leave them here, with you, can you handle them, or find someone who can? Get them to where they need to be, housing and clothing and food?¡± ¡°I ¡­ yes,¡± said the woman. Perry opened up the shelf without further ado. ¡°Time to come out,¡± he said. ¡°Orderly line, keep it moving.¡± Next time he would deputize someone to keep the peace, if they wouldn¡¯t just do that on their own. Ten people could be selected from the hundred to organize and make sure that everyone was ready. It took time for them to file out of the shelf, but they came out quicker than they came in, likely because they were more motivated. The shelf could get claustrophobic in a hurry, with no possible way to leave. There was a chamber pot, but he hoped that no one had cause to use it during the short trip. When the last person was out, Perry snapped the shelf shut. ¡°I¡¯m going to get more,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll be back in forty minutes. Set up a system for getting people out of here quickly, I don¡¯t want to have to slow down. We¡¯re trying to evacuate ten thousand people in two days, which is a tall order.¡± The elf nodded, but she looked slightly green. Perry had the sense that this was more responsibility than she¡¯d wanted since she¡¯d woken up that morning. Then Perry was off again, racing back out of the city and then down the road. That¡¯s one percent done. It was more than a drop in the bucket, but if he was doing this by himself, working non-stop, it would take four days rather than two. The enormous lantern building near the town was being converted by experts, and at least one team from the ship would be there shortly to install the larger sensor/wiggler. Perry wasn¡¯t sure whether they would turn it on with people still close by, but he imagined that was a strong possibility. The culture was all about the greater good and close cooperation, but he didn¡¯t know if that extended to spilling the blood of unwitting civilians who couldn¡¯t get away in time. When he returned to St. Durbin, they were more ready for him. Another hundred people had been lined up, and they filed through swiftly. There was also an airship, which was taking more like four hundred on it, clearly running at capacity. ¡°How many do we have left?¡± Perry asked the man with the clipboard as he waited for people to file through. ¡°Hard to say, no census,¡± the man replied. ¡°And there will be hold outs. We have authorization to remove them by force, if necessary. Plus a few of the thywins.¡± ¡°That what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They¡¯re, ah,¡± said the man. ¡°Their own group, don¡¯t speak the language, not sure they understand what¡¯s going on. Thywins, elves, but of their own caste. Not really of the culture as much as the rest of us. We¡¯ll need a translator.¡± ¡°I¡¯m a translator,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t know what a thywin is, but you speak their language?¡± asked the man. ¡°Yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I¡¯ll get the people who are ready first.¡± The trips took time, and there were limits to how fast Perry could run, even after he¡¯d optimized his path on the road, and even after they had a better system for getting people into and out of the shelf. By the fourth time, it was a nice flow, a non-stop movement of people in and people out, save for the elderly and infirm, or the people with children, who did slow things down a bit. Perry wanted to say to them that every minute they wasted was a minute that meant one of their neighbors couldn¡¯t get out in time, but he didn¡¯t actually know whether Dirk or someone else would make the call to turn the machine on before the evacuation was complete. The afternoon slipped into the evening, and then into night. They would be working around the clock to get everyone out. Perry was trying to keep track in his head, ticking down a percent whenever he finished a trip, ticking down five percent for every airship he saw come and go ¡ª not too many of them. When night fell, the airships had to tether down, which meant that Perry was the only one moving people, another hundred every hour or so. He told them he could go through the night, and the people of the town grudgingly lined up for him to wait their turn. The systems were refined, and by three in the morning, there was an orderly queue of exactly as many people as could fit inside the shelf space, lined up and ready to go. Running took enough of his attention that he didn¡¯t have time to think. There was moonlight in this part of the world, enough that he could regenerate energy, though the downtime while he waited for people to file in and out also let the reactor charge the batteries. He was on the return trip to St. Durbin when day broke, and when he arrived there, he saw that there were less than fifty people waiting for him. The man with the clipboard and armband that had been gathering people in the square had long been replaced by a different, identical man with a clipboard and armband, and Perry suspected that they would just keep rotating them until the evacuation was complete. There was an entire team, but this was the singular point of contact for Perry, the only person he actually interacted with. Helpers went among those who were waiting, delivering water and food for them, but that was always quickly resolved as Perry showed up. ¡°We¡¯re light?¡± he asked. ¡°This is everyone that¡¯s ready, everyone that¡¯s ready to come,¡± said the new man with the clipboard. ¡°The rest are the holdouts, thywin, you know, people who don¡¯t want to leave and don¡¯t understand what it¡¯s going to be like.¡± ¡°I was told you needed a translator,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ someone who can speak the language and also wants to argue against staying?¡± ¡°We do,¡± he said. ¡°This is the last group, but there are two more airships coming back, to take supplies. If you think you can talk some sense into the thywin,¡± he looked at the line of people who were ready to go. ¡°It¡¯s up to you, I guess. We can wait.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll go,¡± said Perry. ¡°Point the way.¡± Without much trouble, Perry went to the edge of the city and found a group of elves standing together outside a collection of houses. There were other people there, all with armbands, part of the volunteer task force that had been tasked with helping along the evacuation. Some of the people in armbands were ones he had seen before, and Marchand displayed their names. The attention was focused here, on this crisis, now that the city had been largely emptied. Overhead, another airship was returning. ¡°I¡¯m here to translate,¡± said Perry. He stepped forward to the tallest of the elves, who was wearing only a codpiece ¡ª not just traditional elven immodesty, but a statement of some kind, a way of setting him even further apart. Behind him, the houses were different, without the flat roofs and elaborate gutter system. Instead, they had sodden thatch, in spite of the fact that it hadn¡¯t rained the night before. ¡°I speak your language.¡± The intent flowed out from Perry, solidifying the words as he spoke them. ¡°Then tell them to go,¡± said the elf. ¡°We are not moving. We moved once, when we were forced from our homes, and have made a new home. They have said that they decided to activate the machine at the edge of this city, built far away, a machine they said they would use only in an emergency. We weren¡¯t asked.¡± His words flowed like water. The language had a fluidity to it, and barely any pause between words. There was something about how they were linked together that gave them cadence. ¡°No one was asked,¡± said Perry. ¡°The Global Command Authority made the decision.¡± ¡°That is not the culture,¡± said the elf. ¡°It is,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s part of the paradox of community. Every community looks out for itself first and foremost, which means that no community can be trusted to volunteer itself for destruction.¡± Perry was, at least, well-appraised of how the culture viewed itself. He¡¯d spent some time reading books, or having Marchand read to him, and sometimes he just got the relevant summaries if the book was especially repetitive or long-winded. ¡°So we have been ¡®volunteered¡¯,¡± said the elf. ¡°Our houses will be destroyed if we do not move, we will be killed by the very effluence that the culture has promised that it would eliminate and contain?¡± ¡°The fate of the world depends on it,¡± said Perry. ¡°It must be done swiftly.¡± He hesitated. He knew the next line in the cultural script, since he¡¯d heard it often enough while waiting on the people evacuating. He wasn¡¯t sure that it would work though. ¡°It¡¯s the nature of living in the culture that you own very little. Clothes and furniture come from libraries, they¡¯re borrowed. These houses were built for the good of the community, they¡¯re not property, they¡¯re not owned, they have only the ownership that comes through habitation.¡± The elf frowned at this, but didn¡¯t seem as offended as Perry would have been. ¡°These houses were built with help, this is true. But we would have done it ourselves, if we had known they would be taken away.¡± ¡°More houses can be built,¡± said Perry. ¡°More houses will be built. There will be recompense for everything you¡¯ve lost here, as much as recompense is possible.¡± From the swirling rumors, Perry thought that there would simply be little that the culture could do. They could give people some of the secondary currency, but housing, clothing, and food were already free. ¡°How can they make recompense for the loss of our home?¡± asked the elf. ¡°They cannot,¡± said Perry. The elf stayed rooted where he was. ¡°Then we will not leave.¡± ¡°Then you¡¯ll die,¡± said Perry. ¡°The lantern is going on whether you¡¯re here or not.¡± He was relatively sure that was true. The stakes were simply too high. ¡°If you act now, we¡¯ll help you remove these people, save them from that fate. We will move any sacred objects, any ritual ornaments. But that takes time, time which you¡¯re wasting.¡± The elf wavered. He must have been doing this for a while. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how bad the lantern would actually be. It was a huge building, but it was quite far away. If it was actually capable of scouring the ground with effluence, then Perry figured it would probably tear itself apart, and his hunch, without talking to anyone, was that it was much more like radiation levels that caused a huge spike in cancer levels, rather than radiation levels that caused skin to melt off. ¡°There are cocoons,¡± said the elf. ¡°Only a handful, but they would need to be moved, gently. We won¡¯t leave them behind. We¡¯d rather die.¡± ¡°If they can be moved, we¡¯ll move them,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re delicate. An airship may be too rocky. If they can be moved without one ¡­ we will abandon this home.¡± The elf looked utterly defeated. All his verve was gone. ¡°If they can be detached, I can move them without any trouble.¡± Perry opened up the shelf, showing it off, though the floors were less clean than they¡¯d been before the flows of people in and out. The elf began speaking to his people. He was their leader, apparently, which wasn¡¯t the culture. In theory, they should have assembled an ad hoc symboulion of some kind, but they simply listened to the elf with the codpiece and began to take things out of their homes, clothes and kitchenware, along with a few pieces of furniture. It was more moving day than evacuation, but one of the airships landed near them, and it didn¡¯t seem that Perry would have to do too much more than haul the cocoons. Likely the thywin had been wavering even before Perry got there, making a last stand as a way of saving face and airing grievances, but it made him feel good to have done something, or to feel like he¡¯d done something. He helped with the cocoons, which were surprisingly heavy, and they were eventually lined up within the shelf, a dozen of them in all, more than he would have thought there would be. They were more soft to the touch than he had thought they would be, more like canvas stretched over sticks, like there was some internal spiny structure. It took time, but the countdown wasn¡¯t even particularly close. Perry delivered the cocoons, helped them out and into a waiting building, then raced back to St. Durbin a final time. The last airship was still loading people, but mostly everyone was milling about. ¡°We¡¯re ready to call it done,¡± said one of the men in armbands. It was mostly people in armbands now. They had a hospital, which had been emptied, and all the children were accounted for, but it still set Perry on edge, knowing how little surveillance they had. The culture was not big on keeping track of its people, and that meant if you had to move an entire town, someone could more easily be left behind. Not that Perry would have trusted the United States to competently do a full evacuation either. ¡°I¡¯m going to do a final sweep,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just to check whether there¡¯s anyone who slept through all this. I might make some noise while I do that, hope that¡¯s okay.¡± ¡°Men in masks have been by,¡± said the man. ¡°They can see through walls, more or less.¡± ¡°Still,¡± said Perry. ¡°Some child hiding in a basement because they don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on?¡± The man in the armband nodded. ¡°Do you need us to wait for you?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. He lifted up from the ground. ¡°I¡¯ll leave on my own. If I do end up finding anyone, I¡¯ll grab them and bring them to safety.¡± But before he did that, Perry took a moment to look around at the people in their armbands. Most of them were local, he had surmised, people who hadn¡¯t known the day before that this was what they were going to be doing. They were volunteers, helping the people of their town, local symboulion leaders. There was something Perry found slightly off-putting about the community, and while he could appreciate their rapid response, especially when it was difficult to communicate the ¡°why¡± of the matter, there was also something uncanny about it. He supposed they knew about the great machine outside their town, and had more forewarning, but still. Jumping to help with the destruction didn¡¯t sit right with him. He didn¡¯t suppose that he would have fought, in their place, but perhaps he would have. The airship lifted off while Perry was circling the town. He was, in theory, alone, flying through the air in a spiral. He started up a blaringly loud alarm from the suit¡¯s speakers, along with flashing lights, instructing in the multiple local languages that the town was going to be bombarded with effluence, that this was the last chance to escape. Marchand was using the alarm for echolocation, mapping the town as comprehensively as possible, using the lulls in the alarm to map the interiors of different buildings. If there was anyone left, they didn¡¯t come out. When the spiral was finished, Perry did a second one, this one faster, on the ground, looking for anyone he could possibly have missed. If this had been any town in America, he figured there would have been stragglers, holdouts, people left behind and forgotten. Maybe that was cynicism. Maybe America would have done just as well, if faced with the same scenario. It took an outrageous faith in government though, it seemed to Perry, a unanimity of purpose, a culture that was built for this sort of action. It was enviable, in a way, but he would have screamed if he¡¯d been trapped inside it. When he had assured himself that he wasn¡¯t going to find anyone else, Perry flew out from the city, to the tower. It was a tall, immaculately constructed building, relatively new, ugly and utilitarian, but clean. The upper levels were wrapped in the same gold the domes used, for unclear reasons. One of the Mettes was standing on a balcony, on the outside, and she waved him down. Perry wished that they did more to distinguish themselves, and he couldn¡¯t immediately tell which one this was. ¡°We¡¯re just about to start,¡± she said. ¡°Another hour, maybe two.¡± ¡°Is this safe?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not even a little,¡± said the Mette. ¡°We¡¯re going to evacuate, get readings remotely. In theory there are systems inside this thing that will allow us to prevent effluence from hitting the core, where the power will go. It¡¯s largely untested.¡± ¡°What was this thing going to be for?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Just a little treat tucked into the back pocket of the Global Command Authority,¡± said the Mette. ¡°The amount of funding they¡¯re working with is insane. The scope of some of these projects, especially projects with no real end in sight, no clear purpose. And for a society that¡¯s always trying to reel in science and engineering, trying to keep up a stasis.¡± ¡°They¡¯ve been on a war footing,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe that will change.¡± ¡°Scary to have a weapon like this,¡± said the Mette. ¡°Not that they conceived of it as a weapon, necessarily, but ¡­¡± ¡°But it could be one,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s high-powered.¡± The Mette nodded. ¡°Give me a ring when you need a lift out of here,¡± he said. ¡°The ship is nearby,¡± said the Mette. ¡°But thank you.¡± Again he had that feeling of wanting to be helpful, but being unable, so he simply drifted up and away, waiting for this great lantern to start up. Really he could just go to the ship, take off the armor, and kick back. Instead, he stayed there, hovering, waiting. It was a full hour later when the building started issuing an alarm. Perry watched as the Farfinder came down and extracted the skeleton crew inside the building, both those from the Farfinder and those who had almost surely been working there through the night. When they cleared out, there was no one but Perry around for at least thirty miles. ¡°Sir, we should clear out,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I want to see it,¡± said Perry. ¡°The effluence has a travel speed, we can outpace it.¡± ¡°We cannot measure it, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We would be relying on visual indicators only.¡± ¡°Send a message to the Farfinder,¡± said Perry. ¡°Ask for their expertise.¡± ¡°I have already taken the liberty of doing so,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Hella has advised that it is unlikely that you will suffer, so long as you retreat from the effluence as it becomes apparent.¡± ¡°You disagree then?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I think it is an undue risk,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Sir, you and this armor are too important for even a small risk. Nevermind that the worst case scenario is death, there are less worse cases that might nevertheless prove disastrous for far more people than yourself.¡± ¡°I want to see it,¡± said Perry. He wasn¡¯t in the mood for discussion. ¡°Computer, end conversation.¡± ¡°Very well, sir, if you insist,¡± replied Marchand. ¡°But I¡¯m afraid my warnings will get quite shrill if you tarry in your retreat.¡± Perry wasn¡¯t thrilled with Marchand insisting on getting the last word in, but his irritation was swept away when the lantern started working. It took some time to build up, then swept across the ground, practically crawling from his position in the sky, but still fast enough that a person wouldn¡¯t be able to outrun it. The effluence itself was invisible, but its effects were not. There were bursts of color through the surrounding trees and brush as changes took place, fires that flared up and died down, small explosions of glass and rising plumes of smoke. A dead bird appeared in the air in freefall, and a school of fish flopped uselessly on the ground. As the interior machinery of the building picked up speed, the changes happened faster, and the surrounding area rumbled. Trees fell, bits of them turned metal or stone, and more fires caught. One of the trees grew three times its size in an instant, falling over as its roots could no longer support it. It was more destructive, much faster than Perry had expected it to be, and he flew away, watching it the entire time. Raw, wild magic pulsed out into the world, destroying and mutating everything in its wake with no regard for the order of nature. There was something beautiful about it, in a way. Chapter 147 - Rebound They tested first, before using the device. They weren¡¯t idiots. The only argument against it was that they didn¡¯t necessarily have the resources to do it twice if something blew the first time ¡ª the building they had pushed to full power was burning immense amounts of fuel, and was shielded from the effluence as much as it could be, but could possibly weaken itself and fail. So the device, which they were still calling the ¡°wiggler¡±, was turned in the direction of an old woman who had stepped through the portal. The screens showing the shape of the skin of the universe were different now, not a sheet pulled over a bed of nails, but a warped geometric shape that was different on three screens, an attempt to show a higher-dimensional reality. Perry had no idea how to read it, and in practice, one of the Mettes had to offer interpretation most of the time. It was more accurate to whatever was going on in higher dimensions. ¡°We don¡¯t know where she¡¯s going to come out,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°We have, really, very little control here. This might just splatter her against the ground. Are we fine with doing that to a random little old lady?¡± ¡°It should be a portal, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I mean ¡­ it¡¯s a portal in, it¡¯s a portal out, right?¡± ¡°We have no idea,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°We¡¯re interfering with things that we only barely understand. There¡¯s a chance that this blows up the world.¡± ¡°A low chance,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°I mean, a chance based on our calculations being wrong, not a calculated chance.¡± ¡°Probably it¡¯s a portal,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°But maybe she¡¯ll just appear. And probably she¡¯ll appear where the portal originally was, but ¡­ also maybe somewhere else.¡± ¡°Somewhere else is underselling it,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°This is an Aleph-class universe. We¡¯re on one planet around one star. The distances are so enormous that she might end up somewhere we could never have a single hope of detecting her, most of them extremely deadly. Much more likely that than a splat.¡± ¡°That¡¯s assuming that we don¡¯t get the signal,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°A signal precedes the portal, which would at least give us a clue about where she is. We¡¯re set up to track that, at least.¡± ¡°What are the odds we¡¯re just killing someone?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Some random innocent?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Mette Prime. There was some silence in the room following that. ¡°Any one of these people would have given their life,¡± said Dirk. ¡°That¡¯s what they thought they were doing, going into that portal.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°They thought they were going to fight, to have their injuries and infirmities repaired. They thought they had a chance. They thought they were in control of their fate. That they had some agency.¡± ¡°Look,¡± said Dirk, running his fingers through his hair. ¡°You¡¯re not part of the culture, you don¡¯t understand how it is, how we treat things, and every conversation I¡¯ve had with you, I understand you better. You put yourself first. We don¡¯t do that.¡± ¡°If I put myself first, I¡¯d have been out of here,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be waiting around with a ticking clock and my thumb up my ass.¡± ¡°I¡¯m making the call,¡± said Dirk. ¡°We¡¯re doing it. We¡¯re trying to snag her back. If she dies, she dies.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t have the authority to make the call,¡± said Hella. ¡°You¡¯re not the project lead here, and you¡¯re not captain of this ship.¡± She looked at Mette Prime. ¡°It can be your call or mine, and I¡¯m inclined to think that it¡¯s mine, unless you veto. I¡¯ve had blood on my hands before.¡± Mette Prime laughed. ¡°You think I haven¡¯t had blood on my hands?¡± So they went ahead with it. It was the work of many screens and output parameters that Perry had no particular knowledge of. For the test, he was placed far away from the Farfinder. This was mostly in case she came through into the shelf space and created some kind of calamity. It would be better to keep it confined to somewhere far away, where only Perry would be at risk. He wasn¡¯t even wearing the ring, it was carefully set down a mile away from him, where he could easily retrieve it if it didn¡¯t explode on them for whatever reason. If it did explode, it wasn¡¯t clear what they would do then, but exploding Fenilor seemed like it might be among the best outcomes. The test went ahead. There were no explosions. They didn¡¯t immediately have eyes on the woman, though their scanning algorithms were looking for her, so Perry flew over, picked up the ring, then opened the shelf space. She was standing there, looking confused. ¡°Did it not work?¡± she asked. She seemed crestfallen. ¡°It worked,¡± Perry told her. ¡°We¡¯re on the path to victory.¡± ~~~~ The shelf space was converted into a killbox. The only major consideration was that they didn¡¯t want to destroy the shelf, which meant hurriedly putting up backstops for the various weapons. Heavy guns were a given, and when they were finished, it looked almost comical to Perry, like some kind of Wile E. Coyote trap. They still weren¡¯t sure that it would kill Fenilor, so the shelf had also been flooded with a variety of toxic gasses, enough that when Perry went in there he needed time in decontamination after coming back out. They were racing through these preparations as fast as they could, putting teams on different approaches, and the hope was that Fenilor would be dead as a doornail the moment he stepped through. Still, Perry was feeling some anxiety. He¡¯d analyzed every glimpse of Fenilor¡¯s armory he¡¯d gotten. There were still tricks left in there, and while the options were limited ¡ª especially if Perry assumed that nothing was being held back when it could have won a fight ¡ª there were still known unknowns. He¡¯d watched over every fight they¡¯d had, trying to run them back, and even did some digital training with Marchand, drilling as much as he could. It would, technically, be possible to simply strand Fenilor in the shelf space, but that might lead to its destruction, and they didn¡¯t know what would happen after that. No, if the shelf space didn¡¯t kill Fenilor within the first half hour, it was unlikely to ever kill him, and he would have to be taken out. They had plans for that too, though it would depend on what state Fenilor emerged in and how much damage he could take. The impetus for keeping the shelf space was that with it, they could bring almost anything through, weaving whatever magic was inside it into the next world that Perry visited. It was a crucial piece of the puzzle if they were going to make a multiversal trade network happen. The Farfinder had been limited to whatever systems were in place, but with the shelf, Perry could bring along a piece of their engine, or the heart of their surveillance system, or anything else that might be vital in the next world. All it was going to take was killing Fenilor. Perry did his best to keep his heart from beating too fast. There was a good chance Fenilor would die seconds after he came through the portal. The danger would be past either way, with him back in this world and no particular portal out. The only path for Fenilor would be to kill both Mette and Nima, and it wasn¡¯t actually certain that would create a portal either. If the portal spat Fenilor back out, then maybe another thresholder would be summoned for him, but that wasn¡¯t guaranteed either. ¡°Status update?¡± asked Perry. The response was slow to come. ¡°We¡¯re still prepping,¡± said a Mette. ¡°Hold tight.¡± Perry clenched his teeth for just a moment before relaxing his muscles. There was a chance that he had enough power in his jaw now to crack a molar. What was it with engineers and poor estimations of how long something would take? Perry wasn¡¯t sure there was any other profession where people so routinely got their deadlines so fucked. Maybe it was simply that he¡¯d been sitting on the sidelines, watching what they were doing but unable to help. And now the time was near, and he was moments from needing his sword. Probably, anyway. ¡°We¡¯re a go,¡± said Mette. ¡°Estimate is ten seconds from this message.¡± They were on a slight delay. Marchand put up a counter in the corner of Perry¡¯s vision. The seconds seemed to crawl by. Then the countdown hit zero and went negative, and then the timer was counting up. ¡°Clean on our end,¡± said Mette. ¡°March will keep you informed,¡± said Perry. He waited five minutes. That was what they had agreed on. It was enough time for all their weapons to fire, for Fenilor to bleed out, for Fenilor to inhale the noxious mixture, for Fenilor to die. There was something inherently cowardly about it, trying to kill a man this way, but Perry had failed at single combat, and if Fenilor was let loose back into this world, it was anyone¡¯s guess what would happen. Perhaps Fenilor would murder everyone on the Farfinder, or turn the machinery of the culture to his own purposes, or kill projects he had no stomach for in the cradle. None of that would be as bad as blowing up the world, but the multiversal trade network and potential alliance was also hanging in the balance. ¡°Do you think he¡¯s dead?¡± asked Perry after four minutes and forty-five seconds. ¡°The agreed protocol was five minutes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I do admit that my own analysis is that this number was pulled from a hat.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Perry. He could wait longer ¡ª was, in fact, waiting longer, as the timer went past five minutes. ¡°But if he¡¯s not dead, then we don¡¯t want to give him time to regenerate or prepare.¡± ¡°Which we¡¯re doing now, sir,¡± said Marchand. The timer pulsed red. Perry opened a small connection to the shelf space for exactly three seconds, timed by Marchand, then snapped it shut again. ¡°Data review,¡± said Perry, pointlessly, because Marchand was already doing it. They didn¡¯t have a way to transfer information out of the shelf space when it was closed, but they had studded the interior with cameras and sensors, along with a heavy dusting of nanites. Marchand was using all of it to get a reconstruction of what had happened five minutes ago. The portal had appeared, Fenilor had stepped out, and he¡¯d immediately been shot from six different directions. He¡¯d moved fast, since he¡¯d gone through the portal on guard, but he¡¯d been hit hard, once in the shoulder and the other time in the leg. Fenilor had been in the same ceramic shard armor he¡¯d been in before ¡ª no time at all had passed from Fenilor¡¯s perspective ¡ª and it had simply exploded outward from the force of the heavy guns. Fenilor had lost his right arm and most of that shoulder, and yet he raced forward across the floor of the shelf space, one leg flopping slightly, finding a place out of the line of fire even as the auto-targeting systems attempted to track him. The shot to the leg seemed like more of a glancing blow. Fenilor took in a deep breath as he switched armors, and immediately began coughing, which stopped as soon as the armor swapped into place around him. He had transformed, and was now made of some kind of goop, with a simple breastplate around him. His right arm was still gone. The separated piece of it lay on the floor, with shards of ceramic around it, their binding energy completely dispersed, but a good portion of the arm had been vaporized or spread around in smaller chunks. Fenilor had time to take stock of his situation. He hadn¡¯t immediately died. He was a slime now, the vague shape of a one-armed man in a breastplate. If the slime form respired, it wasn¡¯t showing it, which meant that the toxins were lingering uselessly in the air. ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Skip ahead.¡± Fenilor went to the guns, taking advantage of their blind spots, and disabled them one by one with the stroke of a sword made of razor-thin brass. Then he sat, waiting, at the entrance to the shelf space. Most of the five minutes had been that, the waiting, sword in hand. ¡°Double fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°How long shall we give it, sir?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°At some point, he¡¯ll attempt to break free from the impromptu prison.¡± The plan was to go immediately, to fight to the death and hopefully win this time. The circumstances were different, better, but the contingencies that followed Fenilor living would depend on how he lived. This wasn¡¯t the worst case scenario, where Fenilor came out without a scratch. That Fenilor hadn¡¯t switched from the goo form was promising, since it was an active defense that deprived him of others. The only question was whether it was better to pull him out or fight inside the shelf. Marchand was fully sealed up, and oxygen wouldn¡¯t be a problem on the timescales a fight would last for.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. ¡°Two stage fight,¡± said Perry. ¡°We fight inside, where he¡¯ll have to keep his mouth shut, then we move the fight outside if we can¡¯t end things. That¡¯s the plan.¡± ¡°Very good sir,¡± replied Marchand. Perry opened the shelf space just a wink, a hole large enough to see through, and nearly got blasted in the face with one of the guns. Fenilor had taken it from its mounting and turned it around, aiming it straight at the door, and it was only through superior reflexes that Perry was able to turn to the side and avoid the oversized bullet. Perry slipped inside, and the modified gun clicked again, out of ammo. Fenilor cast it aside, summoned a weapon, and their blades met. Fenilor¡¯s longsword wasn¡¯t one that Perry had seen before, but it was clearly drawing something from the air. Particulates clung to it, the toxins and poisons, and they were building up slowly even as Perry watched. No doubt it would be a terrible hit to take, but if its purpose was purifying the air, then it likely wasn¡¯t sharp enough to cut through metal. Perry was on the offensive. From Fenilor¡¯s perspective he had just finished their fight and was rolling straight into the next one with five minutes between them, missing an arm and coughing on poison, which meant there was never going to be a more perfect moment. Perry¡¯s sword cut cleanly through the goo, barely slowing down, but the wound resealed afterward, like a knife through soup. Perry blocked a thrust toward his chest, then attacked again, hitting the armor this time. He was rewarded with a deep gouge in the metal, and brought his sword down a second time, hammering with all the fury he felt, putting every ounce of power into his sword arm. When Fenilor tried to sneak a hit in, Perry simply grabbed the sword by its hilt. His hand went through Fenilor¡¯s oozing pseudopod, so their limbs were overlapping, but Perry was far, far stronger, at least against an ooze. Fenilor¡¯s pseudopod slipped away from the sword and snaked out to the side as the armor he was wearing took hit after hit, dents and gouges that were threatening to rip the breastplate apart. When the pseudopod was far enough away, the ghostly array of weapons appeared, and before Fenilor could select one, Perry punched forward, splashing the ooze and temporarily removing the arm. The ghostly armory disappeared, and Perry dropped both swords to the ground, reaching forward to stick his fingers into a hole he¡¯d gouged into Fenilor¡¯s armor. The breastplate twisted and ripped as Perry put his full effort into widening the hole, and at a critical moment it split in two, all structural integrity lost. Perry had been hoping that Fenilor would be killed outright by the loss of the armor, but he just transformed back into an elf, one that was naked on the floor, bleeding from one shoulder and with an arm that looked slightly deformed. The leg that had taken the hit was violently red on the inner thigh. Fenilor took an involuntary breath, coughed once, then was in another armor, this one the skintight number he¡¯d been wearing when he attacked the Farfinder. The sleeve of the right arm flopped loosely. Perry went in and got kicked in the chest for it. It did no damage, but it was enough for Fenilor to push himself away, and he got to his feet with a little half-flip, ending with a small amount of space between them. Fenilor¡¯s back was to an earthen embankment they¡¯d set up to catch bullets. The shoulder-gun rose and fired two of what Perry had started to think of as courtesy rounds, probing shots to test that the armor was actually bullet-proof. This time, the courtesy shot to the chest was rewarded with a spray of blood as Fenilor doubled over. He switched armors in an instant, grabbing the next one with no seeming thought, and this one was another that Perry had seen before, down in the mine, jagged and triangular, with overlapping plates. The pieces that would have covered the left arm simply fell to the ground and lay there, unmoving. A new weapon appeared in Fenilor¡¯s left hand, which seemed to be a flail without the stick. The head was as large as a soccer ball, and Fenilor whipped it around at speed, striking Perry squarely in the chest, sending him backward. Perry was ready for the flail head to come at him again, but when he¡¯d regained his bearings, he realized that Fenilor had a different target: he was attacking the wall of the shelf space. Perry raced forward and stopped the weapon before it could make a second strike against the wall, but significant damage had been done already. What lay beyond the walls of the shelf space was anyone¡¯s guess, but the risk of the whole thing collapsing was very real. Whether that would throw them out or explode the interior was something Perry would try to avoid finding out. Fenilor spun the ball around his head again, moving away from the wall he¡¯d been smashing, leaving Perry to chase. Fenilor was slower, and working with only one hand and a slight limp, but he was smashing the walls with the kind of vigor a man missing an arm shouldn¡¯t have had. With every step that Fenilor took, more blood was splashing down onto the ground. He swung the shaftless flail around again, smashing repeatedly into the walls, forcing Perry to race forward and tackle him. They grappled on the ground, then Fenilor pushed Perry away with a burst of strength, and before Perry could get back in, the armor changed again. The courtesy shots were fired quickly, and passed through the emerald green plate armor with wisps of smoke. Perry¡¯s sword did the same, and then Fenilor was back to smashing at the walls with the flail, making deeper and deeper craters with every swing of the heavy head. Perry tried to grab at Fenilor, but his hands simply went straight through, so the only option left was to grab the chain of the flail ¡ª or whatever weapon it actually was ¡ª and pull. That briefly put them into a tug-of-war, with Perry the stronger of the two, and he managed to bring Fenilor through the wreckage of the guns. They were close to the entrance of the shelf space, and Perry had a decision to make, which didn¡¯t take all that much deciding. Fenilor was injured and maybe dying, but he could probably destroy the shelf space before that happened. Perry positioned himself at the entrance to the shelf space, then opened it up. Fenilor surprised him by sprinting straight through, passing entirely through Perry on his way out. He¡¯d let go of the chain they¡¯d been fighting over, and Perry stumbled for a moment, then followed right after Fenilor. Perry had positioned himself carefully before the plan went through. They had gone through the options, weighing the pros and cons of each, and so when the wiggler was activated, Perry was wearing the ring on the moon. Fenilor was on his knees, gasping noiselessly, and Perry advanced on him, raising his sword for another strike. Fenilor switched armors, back to the skintight one with the bubble helmet, and Marchand fired the shoulder gun again without asking, putting another bullet hole in it. Blood sprayed up, falling in slow motion under the reduced gravity, and Perry¡¯s sword came down. The armor was swapped again at the last second to something thick and bulbous, deflecting the strike, and Fenilor rolled to the side. His right sleeve was still empty and flopping uselessly, but he climbed to his feet, and got yet another weapon from his storage, this one an oversized sword that would have been impossible to wield one-handed if they hadn¡¯t been under lunar gravity. Perry had chosen the moon for a few reasons. The lack of atmosphere was one of them, because it limited which armors Fenilor could wear. The moonlight was another ¡ª it was bathing him, providing a constant influx of energy. He bounded forward and slipped beneath the huge swing of the mighty sword. He was still half-hoping that somewhere beneath the armor, Fenilor was dying of various poisons, but the fight was still going on. Perry aimed for the helmet using the pommel of his sword, and it simply bonked off, sending Fenilor away. The sword touched down against the ground just once, and Fenilor spun up into the air, landing deftly on his feet. He held the sword out behind him, prepared for a strike. Perry didn¡¯t want to oblige, but Fenilor¡¯s abilities were still largely unknown. Perry had spent the past six hours practicing lunar combat. He leapt forward, letting his momentum carry him. In his imagination, lunar combat would be in slow motion, but that was just the influence of the Apollo missions. The low gravity only slowed down the speed of a fall, nothing else, and the lack of air meant there was less drag. Perry¡¯s sword let him hit the ground again at speed, faster than falling, which meant that lunar combat was quick and frenetic, at least in theory. Fenilor swung the sword around as Perry came in, and their swords met for just a moment, enough for the full force of the heavy blade to send Perry off his angle. He landed on the ground and rushed back, meeting another sword strike with his feet better planted this time. He felt servos whine as he tried to keep his place, but Fenilor ¡ª one-handed ¡ª was bringing an incredible amount of power to bear. Perry slipped below the blade, which noiselessly passed over his head, and kicked Fenilor squarely between the legs. This wasn¡¯t a move to hurt him, it was only meant to launch him. Under the moon¡¯s reduced gravity, a fall lasted much longer, and with the planted power that Perry had put behind him, Fenilor would be in the air for a while. It was clear that Perry needed more power, but thankfully, more power was in orbit. ¡°Call in the strike,¡± said Perry. A red reticle instantly appeared on the lunar surface, a giant UI element overlaying the regolith. It seemed smaller now that they were actually fighting each other, no larger than the width of a minivan. A timer appeared as part of Perry¡¯s HUD, but it was approximate. The shell wouldn¡¯t have actually been fired yet, and the reticle was also just a guess until it was in transit. Perry got beneath Fenilor as he fell, and their swords clashed again, with Perry using his footing to push Fenilor upward again. The locking of their blades strained Perry¡¯s legs and the metal of the power armor, but with Fenilor in the air, every swipe of the sword required conservation of angular momentum. Fenilor couldn¡¯t swing the huge blade without also spinning himself. They played what Perry could only describe as keepy-uppies for three consecutive clashes. The HUD had updated with a correct time, and the targeting reticle was nailed in place as part of augmented reality. He had a time and a place, he only had to maneuver Fenilor there. It was almost predictable that Fenilor would change armors at just the wrong moment. The heavy armor was replaced by something nimble and light, almost gossamer. The iridescent patterns changed around the chest in a way that suggested a bra, and suggested that it might have once been meant for a woman. Whatever diaphanous material it was made from, there was something like wings coming from the back of it, and even without air, it let Fenilor glide. He landed like a moth on the ground, where he switched armors again. The bullets fired at him had either missed or done nothing. This time it was just a breastplate, but the moment it was in place, bits of the moon came up to surround him. The gun fired three times as he moved, hitting twice, once in the leg. The body beneath the armor was heavily wounded, dripping blood, but it was all covered in white rock before Perry could get close enough to strike. The missing arm was replaced by rock as well, an animate limb formed from chunks of regolith. No sign of Fenilor remained, not even his face, which had been covered first. Fenilor was thirty feet from the reticle. There were forty-five seconds left. Perry went for it, though he was doubtful of his ability to move that much rock. The huge sword, which hadn¡¯t been swapped out, swung around to meet him, but he slipped beneath it by forcing himself low to the ground, and then let himself be pushed aside by the arm of rock when it came around to him. Perry went at Fenilor again, trying to kick him, and Fenilor moved out of the way, the lumbering rock around him moving at frightening speed. It was thick enough that there was no way that a sword could penetrate it, but it was also made of spare rocks that had been mashed together, which meant that maybe a sword could simply slip through. Perry tried twice, and Fenilor brought the huge sword up to block, using it more like a shield. With a flick of the wrist, Fenilor struck Perry in the chest, and without a wind up, it merely sent Perry backward. Twenty seconds remained on the counter. It wasn¡¯t clear how Fenilor was seeing with his eyes covered. Perry used the sword to lift himself up from the ground, more on a hunch than anything else ¡ª the armor was made of stone, so the better not to touch stone. Fenilor responded by firing off the rocks. They left his body all at once, zooming away in all directions, and Perry brought his arm up to protect his face, then charged forward even as Marchand was cataloging minor damage. He struck Fenilor just as more rocks were rising up to cover the elf¡¯s body, and pushed him backward. In the lunar gravity, it took him some time to find his footing, and when he was back in a fighting stance, he was still ten feet away from where the reticle was now flashing. Perry ran forward again, keeping low to the ground, forced down by the sword. He was running at nearly a crouch, and closed the distance in an instant. Overhead, the shell was now visible to Marchand¡¯s cameras and being tracked in red. Perry lifted off the ground at the last moment, hoping that Fenilor would be blind to him, then landed half a foot before they collided. He got beneath the rock armor and heaved with all his might, succeeding only because of the lunar gravity. Fenilor hit him across the back in the process, the first full hit from the massive sword, and Perry was pushed down into the ground. When he got up, Fenilor was standing almost directly on the reticle. There were five seconds left, and Perry closed in, throwing his sword at Fenilor, making himself a target, anything to keep him in one spot. He took a hit to his arm that nearly severed it, but it kept Fenilor engaged. When the timer reached one second, Perry zoomed backward, flying after the sword. The impact would have been deafening if there had been an atmosphere, but there was only a brief, understated flash of light. The slug of metal was large, but it had no explosives in it, only tiny thrusters on the sides to correct its trajectory. When Perry turned back to see whether it had worked, the various pieces of Fenilor had not yet hit the ground. ¡°Damage assessment,¡± said Perry. ¡°You or him, sir?¡± asked Marchand. Perry paused. He¡¯d meant Fenilor, but Fenilor had been ripped apart. There was still the possibility of one last trick, a bit of some extra spell hidden away, but with every passing second it seemed less likely. Maybe there was a phylactery somewhere, who could really say for certain, but Perry slowly dropped his guard. ¡°I wasn¡¯t being droll, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I really was unclear on whether you meant for him or for us.¡± There was pain across Perry¡¯s back and in his left arm, which had been badly damaged in the final seconds. ¡°Damage assessment for us,¡± said Perry. Marchand listed off the issues, but they were on the moon, and it wouldn¡¯t take Perry long to collect lunar energy. Already minor repairs were being made by the outflow of power, though a part of Perry still wondered whether he should be refilling his depleted reserves instead. It hadn¡¯t been a fair fight, not even remotely. Fenilor had been severely injured, poisoned, then placed in an environment without air, limiting which armors he could use. The win felt hollow. ¡°Shall I proceed to a damage assessment of Fenilor?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°He¡¯s dead,¡± said Perry. ¡°Quite, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Only,¡± Perry began. But just as he said it, a portal appeared in front of him, not more than three feet away. He watched it closely for a moment. That was final confirmation. ¡°I¡¯ve communicated our circumstances to the Farfinder,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Shall I assume we¡¯re shortly to make our exit from this world?¡± ¡°We need to restock the shelf,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need to clean it out too.¡± His voice didn¡¯t sound quite right. ¡°You seem perturbed, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I killed a man,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or an elf, I guess. Give me a moment.¡± He tightened his lips and looked out at the carnage. The portal hung there. It was in an annoying spot. A long silence followed. An icon showed that there was an incoming communication from Mette, and he ignored it. It wasn¡¯t the killing that had gotten Perry, it was the character of it. Perry had lost against Fenilor, and he¡¯d had almost no influence on whether the rematch would happen. His life had been at risk, there was a good possibility that he could have lost the rematch somehow, depending on the precise nature of the bag of tricks Fenilor was using ¡­ but it hadn¡¯t been fair. Why was it important that it was fair? The day had been saved, the world had been won. It was a victory. ¡°I suppose it¡¯s ironic, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°What is?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It was the culture he helped create that defeated him,¡± said Marchand. ¡°We would never have been able to stop him without them. He defected, and was punished for it. From what we know of thresholders, this might have been the first time a fight was ever won because the people of that world decided it would be so.¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Perry. ¡°I apologize for my philosophical musings, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s fine. You knew what I was thinking?¡± ¡°I had a vague intuition, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I cannot say that anything I¡¯ve said to you might actually help your mindset.¡± ¡°Not really, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°Teamwork shouldn¡¯t feel this ¡­ bad.¡± He hadn¡¯t even gotten the killing blow, that had been from the Farfinder. ¡°We¡¯re being hailed again, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve been giving noncommittal answers, but it would be better to communicate your plans.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. He kept looking at the portal. ¡°Whatever is going on in my brain, we have a team now. We have partners. I¡¯ll work on my own shit later.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure you will, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Shall I put Mette through?¡± Perry nodded. She, at least, was excited that everything had gone according to plan. Chapter 148 - The Charts Unfolded ¡°We did it!¡± shouted Eggy 6 as Perry stepped back aboard the Farfinder. ¡°We have a time limit to get me out of here,¡± said Perry. ¡°We need the shelf space cleaned out, then restocked, and a concrete plan on what to bring through to the next world.¡± He¡¯d had to go through decontamination, and the shelf space would need that done too, which was going to be a major pain in the ass. The toxic chemicals had that as a drawback, which had seemed minor then and major now. The barrier between the shelf and the real world didn¡¯t particularly like to let air out, and so the best method was to simply drown the entire place yet again, causing the pressure differential to get high enough. Mopping out the place was becoming a recurring theme. That was already on the list of prep work. ¡°On it, boss,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°We¡¯ve been working the plans while you were studying the blade.¡± He¡¯d taught her that meme by accident, and immediately regretted it. Perry made his way to the control room, where Hella and Mette Prime were sitting with Dirk. ¡°Mission accomplished,¡± said Hella by way of greeting. ¡°World saved. We¡¯re on the lookout for any rogue spikes, but I doubt that we¡¯ll see any. We¡¯re on to phase two, getting you out of here, followed by phase three, getting us out of here.¡± ¡°The shelf needs to be cleaned,¡± said Perry. ¡°I mean, technically it can be done in the next world, but ¡ª¡± ¡°But we don¡¯t know what conditions we¡¯ll face,¡± said Hella with a nod. ¡°How is aiming going?¡± asked Perry, looking over at Mette Prime. ¡°Er,¡± she said. ¡°In theory, if you step through the portal within the next cycle, we¡¯ll still have time left to get it working. You¡¯ll be in stasis, just like Fenilor was. We should have a month or two for more research and development. The spike dispersal rates are all over the place though, so ¡­ it¡¯s difficult to say. We thankfully didn¡¯t fry the megalantern when we brought Fenilor back.¡± ¡°And because of the way the punch drive works, we should be hot on your tail,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s not fully ready either, but it¡¯s close, and in theory we could go today if we really had to.¡± ¡°Who¡¯s on the roster?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It¡¯ll depend on where we¡¯re at a month from now,¡± said Hella. ¡°Most of the Mettes are staying,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°Some of the Eggys too. It¡¯s dangerous out there, and here there¡¯s a promise of interesting problems with the resources to investigate and solve them. Besides that, they won¡¯t be stuck on this world forever when the Farfinder leaves. We¡¯ll get working drives here, it¡¯s only a matter of time. We have all the resources of the culture.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been meaning to bring that up,¡± said Dirk, rubbing the back of his neck. ¡°It¡¯s not clear that the GCA is going to back you, not as much as they have been.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Mette Prime. Her hands tightened into fists without her seeming knowledge. ¡°Why not?¡± ¡°Because we displaced a hell of a lot of people,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Because it¡¯s new and innovative, with outsized impact on the culture. Because the long war against the monarchists is essentially over, and we want to stabilize before we start throwing resources at expanding to other worlds. Most people don¡¯t even know about the other worlds. Most people didn¡¯t know that there was a danger. There are just about a dozen things that need to filter out to the public, so the symboulions can make informed decisions about what¡¯s going to happen. The GCA only exists because there¡¯s a will for them to exist. There¡¯s a chance that some piece of it gets dissolved entirely. That, unfortunately, is the culture.¡± ¡°The hell,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re telling us this now?¡± ¡°It wasn¡¯t relevant to what we were doing before,¡± said Dirk. ¡°I¡¯ve been dictating what I could, calling in favors, borrowing authority. I¡¯m letting you know, now, that at the very least the crisis passing means that we can¡¯t just pull in people from wherever we feel like. It¡¯s not a buffet anymore.¡± ¡°It¡¯s all voluntary, right?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They should be coming to help of their own accord, and it¡¯s not the culture to stop them. We can set up our own science city, if we want to, we can ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s not the culture to set up your own city where anything goes. The world is a united place, that¡¯s the culture, as well as reality, that was the ideological impetus for the GCA in the first place. You can¡¯t just drain every other place of its engineers, you can¡¯t build new technologies, a fleet of ships that are going to take people to other worlds, anything like that. Not without input.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. He could see that it was true. They hadn¡¯t gotten a lot of pushback from the culture, but they¡¯d been working through Dirk, and Dirk had been massaging both sides, trying to get everything working in the near term. Now, Dirk¡¯s sights were set much further out. ¡°Where does that leave us?¡± ¡°Depends on how much I can do,¡± said Dirk. ¡°The Global Command Authority is necessary for the global culture to function, but they¡¯re also a release valve for high-achieving people. Having a place to send off discontented people who might otherwise form a rebellion, or a cultural fracture ¡­ it¡¯s never been necessary before, there has always been somewhere for them to go, a way for them to fit in. But those aren¡¯t the sorts of people we want to be sending on missions, not unless they¡¯re the people who want to build a house but just don¡¯t want to live in it.¡± ¡°We should be able to finish work on the Farfinder either way,¡± said Hella. ¡°But you understand it puts a serious crimp in our plans for a multiversal trade network if the GCA has decided that they¡¯re not participating. We¡¯re operating under the assumption that Earth 2 and Markat are going to mutually benefit, if we can point them at each other, if we can make the graph into a circle.¡± ¡°I do understand that,¡± said Dirk. He placed a hand on his chest. ¡°I¡¯m on your side here.¡± ¡°Whatever,¡± said Perry. ¡°We have limited time to get me ready, and after that, it¡¯s going to be a political fight that I¡¯m not here for. So let¡¯s focus on the next twenty-four hours.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°We¡¯re going to use masks to look through everything you have on you, make some determinations about which magics to bring through, then strip down absolutely everything that¡¯s not necessary for the mission or your success. Either we correctly point you at Earth 2, or you end up somewhere else, but either way we don¡¯t want to strain the skin of this universe more than we have to. It¡¯s seen enough traffic.¡± ¡°Understood,¡± said Perry. ¡°The armor, the nanites, the sword, lycanthropy, second sphere, the shelf itself ¡­ the masks are strong, so I¡¯d take those too.¡± He considered for a moment. ¡°Fenilor left behind Implements and other things. His armory is locked off, but there are things I could take.¡± ¡°How many weapons do you need?¡± asked Mette Prime. ¡°I mean, realistically.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll take an inventory of what¡¯s available,¡± said Perry. ¡°But you¡¯re right, there¡¯s reason to be cautious. Just ¡­ maybe not as cautious as you¡¯re thinking.¡± ¡°I¡¯m thinking we should be extremely cautious,¡± said Hella. She folded her arms across her chest. ¡°We¡¯ll spend time running numbers, but they¡¯re guesses. It would be darkly funny if you killed everyone in the world by pushing through with a treasure trove, but I¡¯m aiming for operational efficiency, not humor.¡± ¡°Understood,¡± said Perry. The meeting went long after that, but there wasn''t much that was needed from Perry. He would help clean out the shelf, almost certainly by dunking it in the ocean and then doing his best to dry it out, but from prior experience, that was a whole process. They would carefully select which magics they would bring with them, which would include everything that Perry needed, along with everything that the Farfinder needed for continued operations when they arrived. When they were done, and everyone was filtering out, Mette Prime stopped him. ¡°I¡¯m not coming with you,¡± she said. ¡°Okay?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I hadn¡¯t assumed that you would. You can come via the Farfinder later. In theory that will sever the thresholder link, and if we find out that it doesn¡¯t, that¡¯s also useful information.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t care at all about being in a new world all on your own?¡± asked Mette Prime. ¡°We just got done hypothesizing that the Farfinder would be right on my heels,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°It¡¯s a range. We have samples to look at, all the people that went through, and some of them went through fast. If you go through fast ¡­ I mean, we might be a long time following after. A month. More.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± said Perry. ¡°Well, if that happens ¡­ it happens.¡± Mette Prime frowned at him. ¡°We were supposed to be partners,¡± she said. ¡°We are partners,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re more a partner than anyone, aside from maybe Kes. And you¡¯re the one saying that you aren¡¯t going to come with me.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not coming with you because we still don¡¯t know about the interaction,¡± said Mette Prime. She was making direct eye contact, and it was almost like she was trying to intimidate him, except there was a notable height difference. ¡°I don¡¯t want to be a thresholder. I¡¯ve seen enough of it. It doesn¡¯t play to my skillsets. But you should have asked me about that, should have wondered, not just accepted it.¡± ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m trying to accept that I¡¯m saying goodbye to this world. I had kind of thought that it wouldn¡¯t happen, and now here we are. I value you, of course I do, but it¡¯s been just me for a long time now, and I¡¯m used to the goodbyes. I mean, there¡¯s always Marchand, but you know what I mean.¡± It was a lie. That whole time aboard the Natrix, that hadn¡¯t been ¡®just him¡¯. He waited for her to call him on it, but she didn¡¯t. ¡°You want to be alone,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ I don¡¯t know. Have I told you the shitty thing about being on Earth?¡± ¡°You¡¯ve told me many shitty things,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°I don¡¯t know which you¡¯re thinking about.¡± ¡°The thing about Earth was ¡­ there were eight billion people. My country had, I don¡¯t know, 330 million of them. And there was just nothing that I could do that would make a difference in the scheme of things.¡± He sighed. ¡°And now it¡¯s like I¡¯m back there, there¡¯s this sense of alienation, I guess, like you¡¯re all building these ships that are going to travel the multiverse, and establish a trade network with other worlds, and there will be diplomacy, and none of it is going to involve me in any really substantial way. In fact, the Farfinder would be better off following virtually anyone else, someone without any wins, except that the ring allows them to backdoor some physics. And I could simply give the ring to someone else, for that matter.¡± ¡°Are you offering to do that?¡± asked Mette Prime. ¡°Am I ¡­ no,¡± said Perry. ¡°Or ¡­ no. I still want to reach Earth 2, I want to resurrect Richter, I can bring enough magic with me to do that, I think, and with the Farfinder I can stop being a thresholder, probably.¡± ¡°Still needs testing,¡± said Mette Prime. ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°And you¡¯d do that?¡± she asked. ¡°You¡¯d resurrect this mythical woman and then just ¡­ stop? In a world that¡¯s basically a slightly better version of the one you left?¡± Perry stared at her. ¡°Sure,¡± he said. ¡°Bullshit,¡± said Mette Prime. She folded her arms. ¡°I have a lot of work to do,¡± said Perry. He moved past her, and she made no move to stop him.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ~~~~ Fenilor had left weapons behind. Most of them weren¡¯t to Perry¡¯s satisfaction. The flail thing was incredibly difficult to use, and in his first attempt, Perry hit himself in the chest and did a fair amount of damage to the power armor. It was difficult to get it to go where he wanted it to go, and even the few times he managed it, it wasn¡¯t quick to retrieve. The range wasn¡¯t even that good, compared to his sword, and was definitely far worse than his gun. The time knife, the one that had stopped him in his tracks when he¡¯d lost against Fenilor, was better, but in practice it was mostly good against someone who was already immobilized, and could only slow down someone who was moving quickly. That meant that its strike was mostly useful for cutting someone like a normal knife, but Perry had to admit that there was at least some utility to it. The giant sword that Fenilor had been using on the moon had also been left behind. It was enormous but surprisingly simple to use, and after ten minutes Perry saw how he might adapt to it. It wasn¡¯t special though, and he couldn¡¯t lug it around ¡ª it would have to stay in the shelf ¡ª and while it could cut through steel with enough power put behind it, it would also be nearly useless in any other circumstance but a flat field. He wished that he¡¯d been able to keep the spear from breaking. That had been a good weapon. The armors were similarly a bust, ruined in a way that wasn¡¯t materially beyond repair, but had sapped them of whatever magic they¡¯d once had. The armor that had turned Fenilor into a blob still registered as magical under the right mask, faintly off-gassing something, but it didn¡¯t seem likely that it would ever function again, given that it belonged to its own unique class. It felt like the only get from this world, aside from the Farfinder and everything they could bring, would be the masks. Those were good, undeniably, but they didn¡¯t feel like enough. They didn¡¯t feel like they fundamentally transformed Perry¡¯s methods of operation, not like the shelf did, not like second sphere. Perhaps that was the eventual fate of all thresholders, doomed to eventually hit a world that didn¡¯t offer quite enough. Fenilor had probably felt that way sometimes, when a new thresholder dropped in and just had a fancy sword that got added to the armory, never to be used again. There were other options though, some of them attractive. Markat had many magics, after all, and while the focus of the science cities had been on broadly useable ones that would improve society rather than those that could provide individuals with power, they had more than a few tricks. ¡°From my understanding, everything we pack in with you raises the risk that the entire universe collapses,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Is that right?¡± ¡°From what the nerds tell me, basically, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Frankly, I¡¯m not sure we should even let you go,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Obviously there are some quibbles to make about what it means in practical terms,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a probability curve, there¡¯s all kinds of things we don¡¯t know, Fenilor was going to leave with an enormous cache of materials from every opponent he had ever fought, and we know for a fact that a universe can survive substantially more damage than this one has taken.¡± ¡°We actually don¡¯t know that,¡± said Eggy 6, who was standing by them. ¡°There have been high-energy fights,¡± said Perry. ¡°One of the first worlds I went to had a whole history of thresholders. It¡¯s not uncommon. We¡¯re dealing with a great many punches.¡± ¡°Most of our math is based on what appear to be observed instabilities,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°We haven¡¯t observed those instabilities elsewhere, not to this magnitude. This world might literally be the most damaged world of any of them.¡± ¡°You should only be taking what you absolutely need,¡± said Dirk. It rankled Perry, maybe because he agreed with it. So in the end, he didn¡¯t go with a lantern and he wasn¡¯t given a robot. Both would have had logistical issues, but a lantern in particular with a stash of fuels for it and an arrangement of lenses might have allowed for production of food, air, water, and everything else Perry might need in a dead and barren world. But of course, having those things would make a dead and barren world more likely, so it couldn¡¯t even be said to be a great trade-off. Perry didn¡¯t want to get blue-shelled. Once the shelf space was cleaned out, Perry filled it back up again, this time with a stockpile of ammunition, a cache of food and water, a collection of clothes that might help him blend in with whatever locals he found, a variety of mundane tools, a stack of cellphones and hand chargers, and all the individual components whose magic would, in theory, allow the minimum viable Farfinder to succeed. He¡¯d be bringing through all of his own powers as well, which meant only two gadgets were deemed ¡®necessary¡¯: one that would allow their preferred engines to function and another that allowed their extradimensional space. ¡°We unfortunately don¡¯t know whether the Grand Spell penalizes you for having our help,¡± said Hella. ¡°My guess is that it does, but it could well be a coincidence that Fenilor got aboard, my crew were murdered, and half the ship was destroyed.¡± He lips were thin. She didn¡¯t talk about the crew often. ¡°Obviously we don¡¯t want to put ourselves in the line of fire in the next world any more than we did in this one, but the only way to test it is to see whether you pull through on your own.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯ll be in touch once I¡¯m through, if we arrive essentially concurrently. I¡¯ll hold off on having your help for as long as possible.¡± ¡°If the world is small enough, we might not be able to hide,¡± said Hella. ¡°The smallest of worlds doesn¡¯t have room for much. They can be the size of a town. They can be claustrophobic.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no way for me to send a signal?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No way to tell you what it¡¯s like, help you prep?¡± ¡°Not yet,¡± said Eggy 6. ¡°Soon!¡± ¡°Probably not,¡± said one of the Mettes. ¡°It¡¯s a miracle that one way travel through the punch works, and we can¡¯t even send a signal, it has to be an entire structure with a punch drive, which we can¡¯t even shrink down that much. Ship building is going to be rough.¡± The conversations seemed to be endless, and part of it was that Perry was at the center of a concerted effort not to fuck things up too badly. They were trying to give Perry ¡°soft¡± advantages, those that could be used to win over the locals, whoever they might be. Perry had already started up a flowchart during the interminable wait for the wiggler to be finished. The flowchart was useless, but he had an entire catalog of worlds to look through, every reading the Farfinder had ever taken, along with all the more speculative worlds mentioned at any point by another thresholder. It was impossible to make a concrete plan, but it was very possible to plan for lots of contingencies. It was while he was working on the flowchart that he¡¯d actually felt some spark of usefulness, and now that the hour was near, it was coming back in full force. Maybe someone else could have made a better plan, but they wouldn¡¯t be there, they wouldn¡¯t be making the decisions, they wouldn¡¯t be carrying it all out. It would just be Perry, at least for the first bit of it, and probably for most of what came after. He wouldn¡¯t be going to a fucked up world like this one, he would be going to a different place, one where a single man could make a difference, where there would be a fair fight. Most likely the flowchart was going out the window as soon as he arrived. Maybe he¡¯d have a fight like Fenilor just had, one where the enemy was well and truly prepared. Signal tracking was possible, it had happened across a number of worlds now. The only reason to think that he wouldn¡¯t get shot coming out of a portal was that the Grand Spell seemed to bias in favor of a fair fight, though this world had shaken his confidence. And it was also possible that in the time he was in stasis, the days or months before the other end of the portal set him somewhere, they would figure the whole thing out, crack the code, and send him straight to Earth 2. Once there, there would likely be another thresholder to worry about, but it was possible that they would solve that too. It was possible that the whole Grand Spell would unravel while he was in stasis. Perry went over everything he was going to carry with him. It was important, just in case the shelf space failed for whatever reason. An Eggy had talked about interference, and the ways in which basic things sometimes failed. It could happen with magic too, though that was more rare. If the shelf failed, he didn¡¯t want to be left with nothing. ¡°Limited loadout,¡± said Kes, who wandered in while Perry was preparing. ¡°Not sure how to feel about that.¡± ¡°I agree, in principle, that it¡¯s necessary,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d like them to get some hard numbers, but it¡¯s going to be easier to have hard numbers once I¡¯m gone.¡± He turned to look at his clone. ¡°This is your chance to leave too.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°To become a thresholder.¡± He clucked his tongue. ¡°I considered it.¡± ¡°And?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not for you?¡± ¡°I¡¯m staying here,¡± said Kes. ¡°Dirk has a place for me. From what I can tell, he aims to use me as a bloodhound.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not even going aboard the Farfinder?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I might change my mind,¡± said Kes. ¡°We do that, sometimes. We can be swayed by the right words in our ear. But the plan is to stay on a planet that at least has its shit together. I¡¯ve always been a fan of libraries. And there¡¯s free school here, I can go back to being a grad student if I really want to.¡± He gave a small smile. ¡°I don¡¯t think we¡¯re that diverged,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t buy that this is what you want, frankly.¡± ¡°I think having a tenth the advantages you do really puts me off traveling the many worlds,¡± said Kes. ¡°I don¡¯t have full control of the wolf yet. There¡¯s a good chance that I would kill someone. There¡¯s a good chance that it would become the impetus for an entire protracted war with another thresholder.¡± ¡°True,¡± said Perry. There was no use denying it, and besides, it wasn¡¯t even really his place to give advice. ¡°I think you won¡¯t find happiness here.¡± ¡°Maybe not,¡± said Kes. ¡°Do you think you¡¯ll find happiness out there?¡± ¡°We¡¯re going to revive Richter,¡± said Perry. ¡°Eventually, anyway. We¡¯re closer than we¡¯ve ever been.¡± ¡°I hope that works out,¡± said Kes. He shifted his weight. ¡°Do you regret making me?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Of course not, why would I? Come on, you¡¯re not going to make this some family thing, I¡¯m not your father, I¡¯m not your god.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not bent out of shape about it,¡± said Kes. ¡°But how often do you get a conversation with your maker like this? To know why you were created?¡± ¡°You have all the memories,¡± said Perry. ¡°You know the whole thought process, it¡¯s there for you too.¡± ¡°Yeah, but not everything that came after,¡± said Kes. ¡°Not the regret, if it¡¯s there.¡± ¡°I had wanted you to be something else,¡± said Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know what, exactly.¡± He shrugged his shoulders. ¡°Sorry.¡± ¡°You wanted a friend,¡± said Kes. ¡°I wanted a warrior,¡± said Perry. ¡°Someone to stand side by side. And you just came out without enough power.¡± There, he said it. It wasn¡¯t just the power, not just the utility, it was something else, being equals, maybe that was what he was after. Kes nodded, but he grimaced too. ¡°And I could go out there and build back up to the level you¡¯re at. I could go through the portal and fight my way through new adventures, get cool new toys, have sex with interesting women ¡­ and then maybe die in the process. Maybe die right away. It¡¯s not the dying that¡¯s stopping me though.¡± He paused. ¡°It¡¯s seeing you that stopped me.¡± ¡°Seeing me what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± said Kes. ¡°It makes me want to do it less. It makes me think ¡®alright, there¡¯s a Perry out there that¡¯s doing that, it¡¯s sorted, it doesn¡¯t need me¡¯. Like the important thing isn¡¯t the doing, it¡¯s knowing that I could, that there¡¯s a world where I can beat the shit out of all comers, where I can be a focal point for the gaze of nation-states. I think if, back on Earth, I had known that was something I could be and do, I might never have gone through the portal in the first place.¡± ¡°That¡¯s cope,¡± said Perry. ¡°Maybe,¡± said Kes. ¡°I guess we¡¯ll see. If the Loop gets set up, maybe we can talk about it in a year or two. Maybe I¡¯ll regret not taking the portal when it was offered. Right now, I¡¯m going to stick with Mette Prime.¡± ¡°Just Prime?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Maybe we¡¯ll do some poly thing, I don¡¯t know,¡± said Kes. ¡°Come on, we¡¯re not so different that you can¡¯t see the appeal of that. This is paradise.¡± ¡°Cope,¡± Perry said again, though he believed it a little less this time. ¡°You¡¯re just going to indulge in hedonism? That¡¯s your answer?¡± ¡°For now,¡± said Kes. ¡°I¡¯ll see what Dirk has in mind for me. Maybe I¡¯ll try my hand at sports. There¡¯s a whole sports culture here that we haven¡¯t really gotten into, and the werewolf thing gives an advantage there, so if I wanted to prove myself, maybe that would be enough for me.¡± ¡°Do they let you do it if you¡¯re a werewolf?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That¡¯s the culture,¡± said Kes. ¡°They would never stop people from being their best just to level a playing field. They just also come to an understanding that being a fast runner is something that only a specific subset of a specific species is going to be good at.¡± ¡°I guess that¡¯s better than being fake,¡± said Perry. ¡°They¡¯re more about the arts,¡± said Kes. ¡°But we¡¯ve seen how those turn out.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°I¡¯m going to miss having someone from Earth to talk with.¡± ¡°Maybe in the next world,¡± said Kes. ¡°Hey, maybe you could meet up with Maya again.¡± Perry smiled at that, but the smile faded. It was the nature of thresholding that you didn¡¯t really meet up with people again. The past was the past, except the whole idea of the Loop, punches you could follow to get back to a starting world, was that he would revisit the past. ¡°I¡¯ve gotta get going,¡± said Perry. ¡°Of course,¡± nodded Kes. ¡°Just wanted to say goodbye, for whatever that¡¯s worth to you.¡± ¡°Goodbye,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ll think of you when I¡¯m sleeping in the armor, scared for my life, and wishing that I was comfortable.¡± ¡°And I¡¯ll do the opposite,¡± said Kes. ¡°And if we ever meet up again, we can swap stories.¡± Kes left, and Perry packed up. He would miss some things about this world, and Kes would probably be one of them, even if their friendship would always be a little bit strange and strained. Perry was taken by the Farfinder to the portal with three hours left on the clock. The shelf space was cleaned out and restocked, his personal stores of energy were filled, his shoulder gun had been cleaned and reloaded with extra ammo in the shelf, Marchand had done full diagnostics and all the software prep work, and it was just about as much as a person could prepare to go through a magical portal, at least given that he was going alone and with no foreknowledge. ¡°Sorry, March, I should have let you have your goodbyes too,¡± said Perry as they exited the ship and went down to the moon¡¯s surface. ¡°Sir, whatever makes you think that I didn¡¯t take care of that on my own?¡± asked Marchand. ¡°I¡¯ve been in contact with everyone I care to be, and have said everything I needed to say.¡± ¡°Oh,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yeah, I guess that makes sense.¡± ¡°I have done my best to leave the others with a positive impression of you, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Thanks, March,¡± said Perry. ¡°I can¡¯t say that you made it easy, sir,¡± said March. The portal was still sitting on the surface of the moon. The pieces of Fenilor hadn¡¯t moved much, they¡¯d just baked and off-gassed and frozen before baking again. Perry drew his sword. He got into a combat stance. ¡°Go combat ready,¡± said Perry. ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°So long, Markat,¡± he said as he stepped through. Chapter 149 - The Wolf and the Lady Knight In the end, the Mettes did have to admit that the Eggys were right, and that differentiation was the way to go. There had been too many moments of confusion, even after they all started wearing color-coded outfits, and if they hadn¡¯t picked names for themselves, it seemed inevitable that they would be referred to as colors instead. There was a part of Mette, the engineer part, that liked the idea of simply having a color for a name, but it was a relatively small part. Mette Prime became simply Prime, since that''s what people were calling her anyway. She put streaks of purple into her hair, which was cut and styled at what the people of Markat called a ¡°salon¡±. She still thought of herself as Mette though, and she was sure the other Mettes felt the same way. One crisis was over, and another had begun. Perry was in what they were calling portal stasis, but that meant they had time ¡ª time to figure out how to use the wiggler to direct him, time to figure out where to direct him, time to map out the multiverse as best they could with all their new tools. The decision had been made not to push themselves too much, because after the Farfinder went after Perry, there were sure to be other crises. Mette had been indulging in the culture. She was destined for the Farfinder, and it was looking like she would be the only Mette to go there. She still had her project management duties, but that was something that wasn¡¯t entirely necessary now that there weren¡¯t so many people working on so many different things. Because the people of Markat seemed to be destined for trading partners with the Natrix, Prime was looking at them with a keen eye. She was thinking about what the Natrix had to trade, what the Natrix would want, and what the future of her people would be like. In one sense, Mette¡¯s entire reason for going into the shelf with Perry was to help her people. In another sense, it had simply been that traveling the world was too enticing. There were distant lands, unique people, magics to learn, and new technologies. But with the very first world she went to, she had found the solution to the work of generations. The ships they would build here would eventually carry the entirety of the Natrix and all other colonies on Esperide to the promised land of plenty. There wouldn¡¯t be any more trouble with bugs, or mechanical issues, or burning heat, or freezing cold. They could simply uproot their entire society and place it here, in this relative paradise, where they had the luxury of pissing away manpower. She had even started drafting up plans for how the Natrix, as a whole, could be converted to use a punch drive, but the sticking point was that the punch drive was imprecise in where it put the Farfinder, mostly because it went through blind every time and only ended up in the relative vicinity of where a portal had been. If they established the Loop, it would be the first time the Farfinder was punching through to a known world. Mette wasn¡¯t even sure that the Natrix would go for it, not if there was an outside entity that could bail them out of a jam, not if they had access to the expertise of Earth 2. It was the driving mission of their people to escape from that cursed planet, and yet she didn¡¯t know whether they would want to live under the thumb of this strange culture. There was a possibility that they would rebel, and a greater possibility that they would work to carve out some kind of exception for themselves. What diplomacy would look like was anyone¡¯s guess, but the Natrix would certainly attempt to hold its own. The people of Markat had clothes and food in excess, and they had plenty of books. Prime went to their libraries and tried on different dresses, and she went to their kitchens and sampled their foods. There was abundance everywhere, so long as you didn¡¯t care about microchips, or didn¡¯t want video calls. It was fine so long as you enjoyed technological progress being stifled. They didn¡¯t have anime. The Natrix¡¯s chief advantage was its people, its engineers and scientists, and also its mechs, though without an enemy to fight, in a place where roads could be built, maybe those would prove useless. And would any of that be allowed here? They needed mechanics to run their domes, but they had mechanics. They needed people who would put in the work, and Prime trusted everyone aboard the Natrix to do that, but she didn¡¯t think that the culture would want to pay for labor. Was interuniversal trade ¡°the culture¡±? It was hard to say. Still, first contact was coming, at least if they could figure out how to aim a latent portal, which was proving to be more of a challenge than anticipated ¡ª and it had been anticipated to be an enormous challenge. ¡°We¡¯re all counting our chickens before they¡¯re hatched,¡± Hella said one evening. ¡°What¡¯s a chicken?¡± asked Mette. ¡°A bird,¡± Hella clarified. ¡°A farm bird. You raise them from eggs, it¡¯s ¡ª we¡¯re making plans whose intermediate steps have many many kinks to work out.¡± Mette Prime and Hella were friends, much more than Hella was a friend with any of the other Mettes. This was largely due to both being in command positions, but it was also because Hella had sat with Mette during three full moons ¡ª they could get one any time they wished by flying the Farfinder out into space. Mette was locked inside a prison bubble for it: it was a necessary step for learning to control the wolf. This had been good bonding time. ¡°We¡¯ll get it figured out,¡± said Mette. ¡°We have significant backing from the scientists here, whatever the GCA is getting up to. It¡¯s just a matter of aiming at where Perry came from.¡± ¡°I¡¯m worried about the Great Arc,¡± said Hella. ¡°I was worried about the Great Arc when we were on the Great Arc, but I¡¯m more worried about it now that it¡¯s being positioned as a thoroughfare. There are very powerful, very dangerous people there, to say nothing of the higher entities.¡± ¡°You scraped by,¡± said Mette. ¡°We were running dark,¡± said Hella. ¡°The magics we were using weren¡¯t native to that world, so it¡¯s understandable that we slipped by ¡ª up until Maya Singh arrived, their world hadn¡¯t even been compatible with what our engines or scrying devices use. I don¡¯t know if that¡¯s going to continue to be the case.¡± ¡°Hrm,¡± said Mette. ¡°Every other world is probably fine though, right?¡± asked Mette. ¡°The Perry half, maybe,¡± said Hella. ¡°The Maya half, less so.¡± The idea of the Loop was simply that punches were a graph of some kind, a series of one-way connections between universes, and if they could manipulate the Grand Spell into sending someone to a universe that was already a part of the extant graph, they could use the punch drive a set number of times to traverse the circle, ending up back where they started, enabling diplomacy and trade between any world in the circle. Perry had been to Earth 2, then Seraphinus, then Teaguewater, then the Great Arc, then Esperide, and finally Markat. Of those, the Great Arc was the only one that was any significant problem, except that Earth 2 wouldn¡¯t have magic. Perry had always assumed that the plan for the Loop was to focus on Earth 2, and that assumption had gone unchallenged, mostly because the idea of the Loop was what was important, not the specific implementation. Everyone had been focusing on Fenilor anyway. But once Perry was gone, Hella had sat down for a moment and turned her eyes to the world that Perry called Earth 1 instead. There was one major thing that Earth 1 had going for it: Maya Singh was from there. If they could correctly target Earth 1, that would mean that the Loop would become a Split Loop, with one path heading down Perry¡¯s side, and the other path heading down Maya¡¯s side until they rejoined at the Great Arc. Maya¡¯s side was longer, and less well-known, though the Farfinder had traversed at least some of it, and Maya had told Perry stories about the unknown worlds. The world with gods was worrying, and they would be out-teched by the civilization that was perched at the heat death of the universe, but the other worlds were less concerning. They didn¡¯t have a map of the multiverse, but Earth 1 seemed like it was obviously their best option. And getting there depended on whether the Mettes and Eggys and scientists from the culture could get something ¡ª multiple things ¡ª working, which Mette was not sure was ever going to actually happen. ¡°There¡¯s a second option,¡± said Henrietta over breakfast one morning. ¡°Maybe Perry¡¯s stasis finishes and we just don¡¯t get him aimed, which is extremely possible, and he just ends up hitting a world that makes him a part of the loop anyway?¡± ¡°The odds of that are extremely low,¡± said Mette. ¡°Assuming the numbers we have are right, and there are 1.6 million universes in the multiverse.¡± ¡°Yeah, but there are lots of options,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°The Farfinder has been to a ton of different worlds, and it has more of them cataloged. All Perry would need to do is land on one of those and we could establish the Grand Loop. We could even end up on Hella¡¯s world, just by accident, that¡¯s where the Farfinder is from.¡± ¡°It would be impossible to navigate,¡± said Mette. ¡°Nah,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°Because we would know the whole sequence. We would have the luxury of preparing, rather than just stumbling into the middle of an ongoing party.¡± ¡°It¡¯s still extremely unlikely,¡± said Mette. ¡°Being generous, it¡¯s something like one in five thousand.¡± ¡°Right, but it¡¯s compounding,¡± said Henrietta. ¡°We get a new chance with every new world. The chance gets better every time. Plus we get information about the new thresholder, and the worlds they¡¯ve been to.¡± Mette considered this. ¡°I still think the math doesn¡¯t add up. And until we clear a corridor for shipping, every jump we make is a danger.¡± Henrietta shrugged. ¡°Even if we can¡¯t control where Perry goes, eventually we¡¯ll get lucky.¡± Mette didn¡¯t find that satisfying. Perry had been gone for two weeks when his spike disappeared. There was nothing special about it disappearing, it was just like the others, but it was on the fast side. The punch drive wasn¡¯t ready, and neither were the new crew. They had not managed to alter his trajectory through the multiverse, though the more they had worked on that, the more they¡¯d realized how big a problem it was, particularly without a map of the multiverse. They would be able to do more mapping in the next world, but that didn¡¯t help in the near term. ¡°So he¡¯s on his own,¡± said Mette. ¡°That¡¯s not great.¡± ¡°He¡¯s survived on his own before,¡± said Hella. ¡°Any battle between thresholders is a coin flip,¡± said Mette. This was literally true, so far as they could tell. There wasn¡¯t a statistically significant way to slice the data such that they could make good predictions about who would win, Fenilor aside. Also, a coin was a round, flat token used for trade. ¡°Then we get everything working as quickly as we can, and we follow after him,¡± said Hella. ¡°What does our timeline look like?¡± The engineers all looked at each other. The timeline had been one month, back when they had first started working on it, and was now stretching to two months, but timelines had a habit of getting longer, not shorter. ¡°That bad?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Six weeks,¡± said Mette. She was the de facto leader of the Mettes, and she spoke for them. She probably would until the day she left. It was the only time she felt like Prime. ¡°But it might slip.¡± ¡°He could find, fight, and kill the enemy thresholder in that time,¡± said Hella. ¡°He could be two worlds away from us by the time we reach him.¡± ¡°It¡¯s unavoidable,¡± said Mette. ¡°There are specialized parts in the drive, materials we¡¯re still working on getting the lanterns to make, some that the lanterns can¡¯t make. We have all kinds of issues. The Farfinder itself is ready to travel, and we¡¯ve been working on rewriting some of the code, making systems more redundant, but ¡­¡±Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Hella held up a hand. She stopped and thought for a moment. ¡°I want to crunch on this. We¡¯re going full throttle. The exception is those who are going on the Farfinder, I want you fresh and ready. Everyone else, this is the last crisis we¡¯re facing. If more manpower helps, we add in more manpower.¡± Mette nodded. That meant that she¡¯d be doing even less than she¡¯d thought she¡¯d be doing, because she was going to be on the crew. ¡°Do you have a manifest?¡± asked Mette after the room had cleared and Hella was alone. ¡°You, me, Eggy 6, and Dirk,¡± said Hella. ¡°That¡¯s four. We can potentially go with one more, but keeping the crew small makes it easier to manage. We¡¯re all basically human, so I wouldn¡¯t mind having a doctor, but I don¡¯t know that we can recruit one from among these people, and they have their own interests.¡± ¡°I need more werewolf training before we leave,¡± said Mette. ¡°From what Perry has said, I¡¯ll never be able to resist the full moon entirely, but I¡¯ll be able to stop myself from killing while in wolf form, at least if I¡¯m well-fed. And it¡¯s possible I¡¯ll be able to transform without one.¡± ¡°Doable,¡± said Hella. She rubbed her face. ¡°I hadn¡¯t expected, when I left my homeworld, that this is what I would be doing.¡± ¡°I hadn¡¯t either,¡± said Mette. She looked the other woman over. Hella was older, but not by that much. She was a ¡®superhero¡¯, or had been one. ¡°Do you miss it? Your home?¡± ¡°I hardly remember it,¡± said Hella. ¡°It seems so long ago. But yes, I miss it. I was selected for the Farfinder mission because I didn¡¯t have many attachments, but it¡¯s lonely out here. I¡¯ve lost so many people along the way ¡­¡± She was silent. Her face was blankly neutral. ¡°Even if we have the Loop, it won¡¯t be the end for me. I won¡¯t be any closer to home, to my people. That¡¯s the goal, for me.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Mette. ¡°Me too. Mine seems closer at hand, but if we solve the problems in our way ¡­ I don¡¯t know, both are close, I guess.¡± Hella nodded. ¡°I don¡¯t know if I can go back. I don¡¯t know what living in an apartment in the city would be like after so long moving from place to place.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know what living in an apartment in the city would be like at all, if I¡¯m honest,¡± said Mette. ¡°The closest I¡¯ve come is living in communal housing in this world. The place that¡¯s closest to home is ¡­ well, the airship, or this ship, though they¡¯re both far too small.¡± Hella placed a hand on Mette¡¯s shoulder. ¡°I¡¯m glad we have you. You¡¯re the best thresholder I¡¯ve ever met.¡± The hand withdrew. ¡°I won¡¯t be one for long,¡± said Mette. ¡°In theory, at least.¡± ¡°And if the move doesn¡¯t work to cure you?¡± asked Hella. ¡°If you¡¯re still registered, if you still have to fight?¡± ¡°Then I¡¯ll fight,¡± said Mette. She closed her eyes and let out a breath. ¡°I¡¯d go off on my own, I think, to spare these worlds the trouble.¡± ¡°Noble,¡± said Hella. ¡°Feh,¡± said Mette. ¡°Logical.¡± ¡°And you¡¯re still planning to fight Nima before we leave?¡± asked Hella. ¡°Open us another portal, gather more data, give her an out?¡± ¡°I am,¡± said Mette. ¡°I have to say I¡¯m not looking forward to it though.¡± ~~~~ They chose a sporting arena for their match. Bloodsports were not the culture, though they had been a part of the predecessor cultures, and all the major venues were still standing, used for more athletic and less deadly sports. The plan hadn¡¯t been for them to have an audience, but there was quite a bit of interest, and someone, somewhere had decided without much consultation that people would be allowed to file in and see what was going on. They could have avoided the attention by having the fight elsewhere, but Dirk was of the opinion that it would raise their profile and help earn the respect of the GCA and the symboulions. Mette was in armor, a simple breastplate, with a helmet that covered everything but her face. For a weapon she had a staff, which was the same thing that Nima had. There were bladed weapons on standby, though Mette was hoping they wouldn¡¯t have to use them. There was one other thing that Mette carried with her: a small lantern. She was hoping not to have to use it, but if it came down to it, she would. This has all been negotiated ahead of time. They wanted the fight to be, in some way, ¡°fair¡±. There wasn¡¯t any real indication that this would work. The portals seemed relatively straight-forward when it was just two people fighting against each other, but as soon as more than one person was involved it seemed much more complicated to work out what was supposed to happen, let alone what would happen. Nima was armored up. The armor that flowed from her pendant was form-fitting and concealed almost all of her body. Mette was going to need to use the lantern, she could feel that just looking at her opponent. ¡°You know, we don¡¯t have to do this,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯d like to be on my way, but I can go with the Farfinder.¡± She said it with the implication that all the fuss was over, that she wasn¡¯t dangerous. She was less of a prisoner these days, mostly because it was clear she had very little power, but she still had a room on the Farfinder, and there were places she was barred from. ¡°We want to resolve anything that can be resolved,¡± said Mette. ¡°We also want to do science.¡± ¡°Do you honestly think you¡¯re going to win?¡± asked Nima, tilting her head to the side. ¡°I¡¯m not going to try to kill you, but I will crush you.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be so sure about that,¡± said Mette. She rolled her shoulders. ¡°I¡¯ve been training.¡± She was also a werewolf, which counted for something. Her body was more stocky than it had been, and she had more muscle. ¡°What do you think I¡¯ve been doing while I was cooped up?¡± asked Nima. ¡°I suppose training your ass off,¡± said Mette. She tapped the staff on the ground. ¡°With a staff?¡± ¡°With a staff,¡± said Nima with a nod. ¡°It¡¯s what I¡¯ve had access to.¡± ¡°Well that¡¯s not confidence inspiring,¡± said Mette. ¡°We can start whenever you¡¯d like to,¡± said Nima. ¡°I¡¯d prefer to be fair about it.¡± ¡°Now is good,¡± said Mette. Nima pounced, like she¡¯d been waiting for the moment. She ran forward, holding the staff tucked under one arm, then when she came within striking distance, flipped it forward and spun it two-handed. Mette brought her own staff up to block, but was slightly too slow, and got whapped in the head. She fell to the ground, feeling dazed, and was slow to get to her feet. ¡°Ow!¡± she said. Nima was standing in a defensive stance, staring at her. ¡°That hurt!¡± ¡°We¡¯re fighting,¡± said Nima. ¡°I could have kept hitting you.¡± ¡°Well, why didn¡¯t you?¡± asked Mette. ¡°I don¡¯t know, I wanted to make sure that you were okay,¡± said Nima. Mette rubbed her head through her helmet for a bit, then laughed. ¡°You¡¯re really not cut out for this, are you?¡± ¡°You haven¡¯t wronged me,¡± said Nima. The crowd was noisy. This wasn¡¯t really the fight they had come to see, though it was impossible to know what they¡¯d been told about what was going to happen. They had heard the wild tales of a mech wolf and a giantess. Mette and Nima were not living up to that. ¡°We¡¯re supposed to be fighting,¡± said Mette. She rubbed her helmet again, which was really very ineffective. ¡°You¡¯re going to have to actually come at me. One of us is going to have to be pretty injured for the portal to open, if this is ever going to accomplish anything.¡± ¡°Then I¡¯m going to beat you,¡± said Nima. ¡°And I¡¯m going to mean it, and I¡¯m not going to stop because you¡¯re hurt.¡± ¡°Yeah?¡± asked Mette. ¡°You¡¯re not skilled at hurting people.¡± ¡°And you are?¡± asked Nima. Mette went in for the kill, swinging her staff around, and Nima brought a matching staff up to block it. Nima proved herself to be far better with a staff than Mette was, and knocked the staff to the side, then stepped forward and gave Mette a kick in the crotch with an armored boot. ¡°Ow, oh fuck!¡± cried Mette. She backed away, holding her staff up defensively, and Nima didn¡¯t give her any quarter this time. Mette got hit on the arm, where she had no armor, and it was surely going to leave a bruise, but she brought her staff up to block the second hit. She was losing already, badly, and the pain was making her not want to go through with any of it. Still, pain was temporary, and any physical injuries could be fixed by becoming a wolf. The battering continued, and Mette was putting up weak defenses. Kes had won against Nima, she couldn¡¯t be that difficult to take, but Kes was also much bigger and stronger than Mette, as he¡¯d proven to her a few times. She should have practiced with the staff more, she could see that now. Nima jabbed the staff in Mette¡¯s face, and Mette simply couldn¡¯t react in time. It hit her on the cheekbone just below her left eye, and it felt like something broke as she stumbled backward. She was blind in one eye, or nearly so, because her vision didn¡¯t return as she tried to blink it away. The pain was intense, and she was barely able to keep her feet, but Nima kept attacking anyway, hitting Mette in her unarmored parts. A hit to the leg nearly took her down, and she looked over to the lantern she¡¯d brought with her, which was five feet away. Nima spun her staff around in a sweeping motion, knocking the lantern far away, and probably ruining it in the process. The lantern was the last round in the chamber, the last hope. Mette had spent a full day getting it to output moonlight, which had been no small feat, and it was the only way that she¡¯d be able to turn into a wolf given that they were fighting in full sunlight. Mette got to her feet and held her staff in front of her. This wasn¡¯t how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to whip the lantern out at the last possible moment and transform into a wolf, then Nima would surely have some trick left in her bag, and they would fight until one of them couldn¡¯t get up. That was how thresholder fights were supposed to go. It wasn¡¯t supposed to be one-sided. ¡°I¡¯d give you a break, if that were the game,¡± said Nima. ¡°There¡¯s no honor in a fight between thresholders.¡± Mette¡¯s crotch was aching. Looking back, she should have worn some kind of cup, but the people of Markat weren¡¯t big on armor, and the Farfinder didn¡¯t have any that were ready-made. Her head also hurt, and her ears were ringing. There was only one option, which was to turn into a wolf without the lantern, without moonlight. She could feel it inside of her. The hits she¡¯d taken were awakening the anger. All she needed to do was concentrate, or not concentrate, to let it flow from her. Perry thought that was doable, in the hour of need. He posited a defense mechanism, though he didn¡¯t have any proof of it, and Kes had never been able to call it forth. Nima went back on the attack; the respite had been brief. Mette blocked the attacks as best she could, getting more sloppy as they went on. She was running low on energy, and smarting from the hits. Nima brought her staff down, aiming for Mette¡¯s knee. Mette blocked, but the staff was inside her leg, and Nima used her whole weight to bring it to the side. Mette was hooked, lost her balance, and fell to the ground, and Nima wasted no time in jabbing her with the end of the staff, hitting her in the unarmored area. It was impossible to defend against, and Nima dropped down on top of her, putting her full weight on Mette. Mette dropped her staff and grabbed at Nima¡¯s, stopping it, but only after she¡¯d been hit in the face twice. She was seeing stars and bleeding, and it didn¡¯t seem like the wolf was any closer to coming out. Nima let go of the staff, cocked back a fist, and Mette had just enough time to see spikes grow from the end of it before she was punched in the neck. Blood flowed freely from Mette¡¯s neck. She reached up to stop the bleeding and felt the spurts of blood. She was in shock, unable to think, but the thought we weren¡¯t supposed to kill each other came to the forefront of her mind, as though it had been brewing back there. Nima rose off her and Mette kicked backward, sliding along the ground, trying to put distance between them. ¡°No portal,¡± said Nima. Her voice was tight. Blood dripped from her spiked fist, whose spikes slowly retracted. ¡°Guuuh,¡± said Mette. She was fading. Consciousness wouldn¡¯t last, and her fingers were doing a bad job of keeping her blood in. The wolf felt weaker, not stronger, as much as she tried to call it out. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Nima. ¡°I am.¡± That was, somehow, Mette¡¯s breaking point. She was sorry? That fucking bitch. The wolf came out slowly. The straps of the armor had been configured so the two halves of the breastplate came apart cleanly, the straps undoing themselves, but she had to hook her bloody fingers beneath the edge of the helmet to rip it off. It was a grotesque thing to transform in the sunlight, and her clothes fell from her as her body changed, cloth falling to the ground in pieces. Hair sprouted from everywhere, growing long and thick, and her teeth reshaped themselves into fangs as her face extended into a snout. Her mind was the last thing to change, and then she was on the attack. Her teeth clamped down on Nima¡¯s leg and lifted her bodily in the air. The metal had a particular taste to it, a sweetness to the metal, and it held against the teeth, so the wolf shook it back and forth, trying to kill the prey that way. In the course of this, the leg slipped from her mouth, and the prey landed on its back, motionless for a moment before it got to its feet. The wolf went forward to bite down on its head, and found that it had developed sharp spikes from every surface, but the wolf bit down anyway, trying to use the power of its jaws to crush. The prey cried out and began punching with spiked fists, but the wounds were shallow. The wolf¡¯s attempt at cracking the metal shell over the skull were futile. It was getting stronger as time went on, and the wolf could feel itself starting to fade in the sunlight. More shaking, an attempt to snap the neck, did nothing ¡ª the armor went rigid, with more metal around the neck. The wolf spat the piece of metal out and growled at it. It placed a paw on the chest, then extended its claws and tried to rip through the armor that way, but it was scraping more than gouging, and the sunlight was starting to make the wolf feel sleepy. The armor held, and the wolf changed back. Mette found herself on all fours, completely naked. Her wounds were healed, but she was exhausted. Nima staggered to her feet and grabbed one of the staffs from the ground. She approached Mette, limping. ¡°Now hold on,¡± said Mette. Nima smashed her across the face, and Mette blacked out. When she came to, it was as though no time had passed, but Nima was gone and there was a portal standing in her place. Someone had placed a blanket over her, and Kes was standing beside her. Not long had passed. ¡°Did I lose?¡± asked Mette. Her head was killing her. She didn¡¯t even try to get to her feet. ¡°Yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°You lost, she¡¯s gone.¡± ¡°More data, I guess,¡± said Mette. She winced. There were people milling about. The cloning machine wasn¡¯t public information, which meant the other Mettes were staying away for the time being, the better not to give it away. ¡°I would like a hot bath.¡± ¡°We¡¯re going to hope you¡¯re not concussed,¡± said Kes. ¡°Though maybe any lasting damage will be resolved at the next full moon.¡± ¡°How¡¯d I do?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Well, you lost,¡± said Kes. ¡°That¡¯s the main thing you¡¯re not supposed to do, as a thresholder.¡± ¡°Feh,¡± said Mette. ¡°I almost had her.¡± ¡°You could have snapped her neck, yeah,¡± said Kes. ¡°Her armor saved her.¡± He looked away from her and toward the portal. ¡°You¡¯re not going through, right?¡± asked Mette. ¡°Nah,¡± said Kes. ¡°Not for me.¡± He looked down at her. ¡°You?¡± Mette laughed in his face. Chapter 150 - Epilogue: Release Valves Casper dressed well for the confrontation, in a tailored suit that he¡¯d procured from one of the more meticulous libraries and had altered to fit. In his time moving from kingdom to kingdom, helping to organize rebellions and resistances, he usually dressed like a laborer, a man who worked with his hands. Looking and dressing the part was a necessary piece of the process. He kept his hands calloused as much as he could, because that was a signifier that he, too, was someone who spent his time doing things, not just talking. His actual role was nothing but talking, though sometimes he chipped in with work so that people would give him the time of day. He¡¯d picked up enough skills to not embarrass himself. The visit to Thirlwell¡¯s castle required a different sort of look and demeanor, which is why he had the suit. It was a sign of respectability and belonging. He was there representing the Intra-Cooperative Global Command Authority, treating with the queen and her new king as, essentially, equals. He had no entourage with him, though there were another half dozen people sitting in a tavern three blocks away ¡ª a tavern that had been closed in order to hold them in, with soldiers standing outside it. This was diplomacy, of a sort. Everyone¡¯s safety and ability to leave had been guaranteed. But it was Casper alone who would meet with the queen and king. That was fine: he had history with Dirk, and this was better done singly, so there would be no cross-talk or individuation. The throne room was relatively small, a throwback to a simpler time, a relic of the old castle that the next castle had been built on top of. It was a symbol of the legitimacy of the kingdom, in some sense, but in terms of organization and logistics there were certainly better places. A larger room, one without a throne but with an enormous table, was used in many affairs of state. They had chosen the old throne room though, one with pillars of stone holding up the arches of its roof. There were two thrones, one large and one small, delicately carved from wood and inlaid with precious stones that had been set so as to catch a little light no matter what angle you viewed the throne from. It was a travesty, untold labor for a symbol that would only ever be seen by a handful of people, unused for most matters of state given that this throne room was too small for all but ceremonial purposes ¡ª or intimidation, as the case might be. The queen of Thirlwell sat in the larger of the two thrones, and beside her, in the smaller one, was ¡°Thom Faulk¡±, a clone of Dirk Gibbons, the former spymaster of Thirlwell. The queen was in a white and gold dress with a crown atop her head, dripping with jewelry. Thom beside her was in stately black clothes with buttons of gold, stitched and embroidered so that shiny pieces of black stood out against those that were matte, all a solid color, distinguished only by how the light played over it. This too was obscene to Casper¡¯s eyes. The throne room had three doors, two at the back and one at the front, but all were closed now. The three of them were alone, with no guards or attendants. The conversation would be private. It would need to be, given what they were going to discuss. He¡¯d been checked for weapons, and their guards would be right outside. Casper did not bow. He did not recognize the authority of this queen, or any monarch. This was the last, and that made her special, but special only in the way that the last tree remaining in a forest that had been cleared was special. The axe was already sharpened for her to be felled. ¡°Greetings,¡± said the queen once his escort had left. ¡°I suppose we¡¯re setting formalities aside?¡± ¡°In the long history of diplomatic relations between the culture and the monarchies, setting aside formalities has been a necessity,¡± said Casper. He looked at Thom and raised an eyebrow. ¡°Then let¡¯s commence,¡± said the queen. ¡°My father was the one responsible for the missile attacks. We will unilaterally disarm and render ourselves incapable of that sort of thing. This will be accomplished through a joint committee overseeing our military capabilities. In exchange, the ICGCA will agree to stop all intelligence operations within Thirlwell, will set up a system of exchange for immigration and emigration from the island, and will cease any attempts at agitation or propaganda within Thirlwell.¡± ¡°You want to make the current arrangement into something static,¡± said Casper. ¡°No,¡± said the queen. ¡°I want to make a new arrangement that ensures the continued survival of this kingdom, in whatever shape it must take to make that happen.¡± ¡°Monarchy is fundamentally incompatible with the culture,¡± said Casper. ¡°A ruler handing down orders from on high with a pretense of legitimacy is not the culture. It¡¯s especially not the culture when that ruler is there through birthright rather than being elected, but it wouldn¡¯t be the culture in either case.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not claiming that we¡¯ll adopt the culture,¡± said the queen, frowning at him. ¡°That¡¯s exactly what we don¡¯t want to have happen. In fact, what we want is for all proselytizing to stop. Those who wish to live in the culture will be free to leave Thirlwell in a structured way. Contrarily, those in the culture who wish to live under monarchical rule will be welcomed in.¡± Casper considered this. ¡°That¡¯s a radical change in policy.¡± ¡°I am not my father,¡± said the queen. ¡°I intend to make a number of radical changes in policy, in fact.¡± Casper raised an eyebrow. ¡°I¡¯m interested to hear what these changes in policy would be.¡± ¡°Our goal is, of course, to compete against the culture,¡± said the queen. ¡°We¡¯d like to show people a better way. We want to demonstrate the superiority of the monarchical system. There are, however, certain aspects of the culture which are broadly popular, not elements of ideology, but praxis. We¡¯ll be instituting social safety nets, to the extent those are still needed when people can simply leave the island of their own accord.¡± ¡°In the history of this world, many things have been tried,¡± said Casper. ¡°You are not the first to think that you can externalize your problems to us, your mentally ill, your criminals, your homeless, your needy. You are not substantially different from those who have come before you.¡± ¡°I am,¡± said the queen. ¡°Not because of my lineage, but because I¡¯m the last. We have our own systems for dealing with social and economic ills, and those are the first line of defense, but if people choose to leave, you must agree that we shouldn¡¯t stop them, that you shouldn¡¯t stop them. You have always welcomed defectors, that¡¯s the culture. We¡¯re hoping to build a more voluntary society here.¡± ¡°It won¡¯t work,¡± said Casper. ¡°We have seen this all before.¡± ¡°No,¡± said the queen. ¡°You, in fact, have not, because, again: I am the last. This is the last. You have, until now, benefitted from people seeing what direction the wind is blowing and leaving with what they could, but now there¡¯s nowhere for them to go. We took a census last week, one that accounted for most of the country, and our population is burgeoning. A full thirty percent of the people living here weren¡¯t born here.¡± ¡°Is that so?¡± asked Casper. He kept his voice mild. ¡°And you suppose that this trend will continue. That you can leech from the culture, sucking its blood, sending out what you see as waste.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t put it like that,¡± said the queen. She frowned at him. It was undiplomatic language, but this was something that diplomacy required. ¡°We¡¯ll be perfectly fine here, so long as we have our own counter culture. There are dissident elements, but many of them have been organized and placed by your people. There are malcontents, but many of them have been unwittingly imported. That¡¯s what we aim to stop. If the monarchy is allowed to be safe from subterfuge, and the people organize against us, then we won¡¯t stop them ¡ª but we don¡¯t believe that will happen.¡± Casper stared at her, unwavering. She had a point, a single, solitary point, which was that Thirlwell had been the beneficiary of voluntary movements. There were former heads of state living in the city, monarchs in exile who would never be restored to their throne, most of whom no longer put much effort into their claims. There were, around these people, entourages and enclaves, but Casper hadn¡¯t known how extensive they were. Unfortunately for efforts to overthrow the monarchy, they were mostly true believers. And obviously she was lying about simply allowing a revolution if there was a groundswell of support. ¡°This is the last kingdom,¡± said Casper, taking a different tack. ¡°You¡¯re right that it holds a unique position. But we will not allow it to survive, not with you as a ruler ¡ª not with any ruler. If your plan is to take advantage of voluntary movement, then we¡¯ll do everything in our power to stop you. We have Berus now, and it¡¯s stable thanks to support from all across the world. We¡¯ll embargo ships entering or leaving your harbor. We¡¯ll make sure that you can¡¯t offload your effluence onto the rest of the world.¡± ¡°We plan to establish domes, thank you very much,¡± said the queen. ¡°We¡¯ve been using lantern designs that are relatively clean for ages anyway.¡± Casper watched her. Her face was painted for the occasion, and that made it harder to judge what she was thinking. This was not a discussion about appropriate levels of effluence or the construction of domes. It wasn¡¯t about technology. It was about governance. ¡°Does it escape your notice that we have a significant amount of power and will?¡± asked Casper. ¡°I¡¯m telling you only the things I think are obvious and common sense, the things that I can say on my own without the consent of the GCA.¡± He was tinting his words with threat. It had helped more than one monarch see the light and voluntarily abdicate their thrones. ¡°We would, through the old rules, be well within our rights to retaliate against what your father did.¡± ¡°I am not my father,¡± said the queen. ¡°And his life was brutally taken by one of yours.¡± ¡°Perry wasn¡¯t one of ours,¡± said Casper. ¡°The whole business with the thresholders seems concluded, it¡¯s neither here nor there.¡± ¡°You want to sweep the past under a rug?¡± asked the queen. ¡°I won¡¯t stand for that.¡± Casper folded his hands behind his back and regarded Dirk, who sat there on the second throne. Thus far, Dirk hadn¡¯t said anything. They knew each other, and knew each other fairly well, though largely in a professional capacity. Casper was not particularly fond of Dirk, and had always imagined that the feeling was mutual. Whatever play Dirk was making here, he hadn¡¯t taken an opportunity to inform anyone of it. ¡°I¡¯ve made my wishes known,¡± said the queen. ¡°There¡¯s no reason we can¡¯t be amicable. Voluntary trade is the culture. I suppose you think you have the will to sit ships in the water and stop us from sending anything out, and to do the same with airships, threatening to kill men who are looking only to put some coin in their pocket, but I think you¡¯re wrong. I don¡¯t think the culture does have the will for warfare of that sort. Either you¡¯ll get us from within, or not at all. So let¡¯s take a step back, lay down our respective swords, and settle on a course of diplomacy that will take us through the next few years.¡± ¡°We want this settled,¡± said Casper. He raised a finger and pointed it at Dirk. ¡°That man, your spymaster, is an agent of the culture.¡± Dirk didn¡¯t so much as budge. The queen covered her mouth to hide her laughter. ¡°Did you think that I didn¡¯t know that?¡± she asked. ¡°That he would have risked going into this meeting with the possibility that you would betray him?¡± ¡°And you¡¯re fine with that?¡± asked Casper. ¡°That doesn¡¯t change how you feel?¡± ¡°No,¡± said the queen. ¡°If anything, it¡¯s an asset. He¡¯s on my side, you see.¡± ¡°He is?¡± asked Casper, looking pointedly at Dirk. ¡°I am,¡± said Dirk with a slow nod. ¡°Explain that, please,¡± said Casper. ¡°She¡¯s a decent woman,¡± said Dirk. ¡°She¡¯s not her father. She was never destined for the throne, and she¡¯s had her own sympathies toward the culture. Casper, we need a release valve, we need a place for people to go, somewhere to put our own malcontents, not the criminals, but the ones who have a yearning to prove themselves.¡± The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. ¡°If they want to prove themselves, they can do that with service,¡± said Casper. ¡°We have plenty for anyone to do.¡± ¡°There¡¯s a mindset,¡± said Dirk. ¡°And you know it. We used to call it greed, but I¡¯ve lately started to think that it¡¯s something else, some kind of yearning for more. It¡¯s not the culture, but it was always a big ask trying to get everyone to fit inside the culture. There are still parts of the world where they¡¯re not quite there, a decade down the line. There are elven communes that are only barely the culture. There are places we say are the culture, but it¡¯s just a community of three hundred people, and we know they don¡¯t really get it.¡± ¡°You¡¯re saying that our life¡¯s work is a failure,¡± said Casper. ¡°That¡¯s why you¡¯re siding with her.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not siding with her,¡± said Dirk. ¡°She¡¯s already met me in the middle. And there¡¯s a real cause, here, for an out for people who feel like they need one. Maybe that¡¯s one of the roles this kingdom can play, as a counterweight.¡± ¡°Dirk, no,¡± said Casper. ¡°I know you¡¯ve always worried that the GCA would dissolve, that we¡¯d wrap things up and there¡¯d be nothing for men like us to do, but you know that this won¡¯t play. We¡¯re a single world, everything is interconnected, it simply does not work for these externalities to be working against us, this has been proven time and again.¡± ¡°I think this case is different,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You were in Berus, you saw the devastation the thresholders caused. They¡¯re gone, but their kind are still out there, and if there are other worlds, there needs to be a place that takes seriously the idea that we might be under threat. If I could be certain that the GCA was going to stay solvent, that it would be a guiding light ¡ª but we both know that they¡¯re weak, even with men like us as part of them. There are too many people who have grown too old, too ready to lay down and roll over. If we hadn¡¯t accomplished what we did, when we did, we might not have made it to the finish line.¡± ¡°And this is your last hope for something grander, something better, a place you can fit?¡± asked Casper. ¡°It¡¯s part of it,¡± said Dirk. He looked over at the queen. ¡°We¡¯ve talked it over.¡± ¡°And if I go out and tell everyone that you¡¯re an agent of the culture?¡± asked Casper. ¡°Do you think we¡¯re not prepared for that?¡± asked the queen. ¡°Do you think we haven¡¯t planned contingencies?¡± Casper considered this. That they had contingencies in place didn¡¯t mean those were contingencies they wanted to use. But if he thought like Dirk ¡­ well, Dirk would try to frame it as a coup. The queen had turned one of the most storied agents of the culture, and who was to say she hadn¡¯t done it ages ago? Who was to say that he hadn¡¯t been made spymaster with a full understanding that he would work against the people he was supposed to be working for? It would undercut the culture, and Dirk would go along with it. The only one who would know when he had actually flipped was him, and he could claim whatever he wanted. ¡°You understand,¡± said Dirk after a moment passed. ¡°Thirlwell is in a good position. The monarchy will weather the storm. It¡¯s not inevitable, but I know the culture inside and out, and I¡¯ve been in deep cover here for ages. With me here, all the excesses and injustices of monarchy will be curbed.¡± It was incrementalist talk, reformer talk, and Casper supposed that Dirk had to understand that. They had run into it before. Perhaps Dirk had always held sympathies. ¡°You have two goals here,¡± said Casper as understanding slowly dawned on him. ¡°You want this place, but you also want the culture¡¯s opposition to this place. You think it makes the culture stronger to have an enemy.¡± Dirk shrugged. ¡°Do you disagree?¡± The queen turned to him. ¡°You hadn¡¯t mentioned that.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a benefit, at least from my perspective,¡± said Dirk. ¡°Not mine,¡± said the queen with a frown. Casper watched the two of them. This was the first sign of discord, and it hadn¡¯t taken much. Dirk had freely admitted that he¡¯d prefer the culture was strong, and that this was a method to do that. ¡°It¡¯s no happy accident,¡± said Casper. ¡°Dirk worries that the GCA will collapse or become a shade of itself. It¡¯s something he¡¯s worried about for a long time. A single strong kingdom, an eternal enemy, that¡¯s something that resolves at least a little of the problem.¡± He looked sharply at the queen. ¡°And that will be your role, as the nightmare that lurks in the middle of the ocean. You¡¯ll be reviled around the world.¡± ¡°Feh,¡± she said. ¡°You think you can get me with that? I¡¯m already reviled. I¡¯m already watching my back. Someone killed my father, and shortly after that, someone killed my brother.¡± Casper narrowed his eyes. ¡°Your father was killed by a thresholder, nothing much to do with us, at least so far as I understand it. The string of assassinations were all thresholder related in one way or another, though I can¡¯t divulge more information than that.¡± ¡°Those assassinations were met with cheers,¡± the queen replied. ¡°There were public executions of the nobility in Berus. I know your kind, and how far the compassion of the culture extends.¡± ¡°Growing pains,¡± replied Casper. ¡°I argued against the executions, for what it¡¯s worth.¡± ¡°And you were not able to stop them,¡± the queen replied. ¡°No, I will watch my back from here on out. The only reason you¡¯re allowed to stand in front of me without a sword to your throat is that I have Thom beside me. If he had wanted to kill me, I would be dead, and if he had wanted to depose me, I¡¯d have been deposed. I¡¯ve staked my life on him.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve had occasion to stake my life on him too,¡± said Casper. He nodded. ¡°He¡¯s never let me down until now, for all his other faults. But of course you don¡¯t know him, not at all, and this alliance is too fresh, too new to put any stock in.¡± ¡°You¡¯re doing this wrong,¡± said Dirk. ¡°You¡¯re trying to destabilize, and what you should be doing is building bridges, engaging in diplomacy. This is too sharp, too naked. You know that.¡± ¡°I came here today in the hopes of a smooth abdication,¡± said Casper. ¡°I will do whatever is in my power to achieve that.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not happening,¡± said the queen. Her delicate fingers, whose nails had been painted gold, gripped the arm rests of her throne. ¡°We have loyalty. We have believers. We may not have the might of Third Fervor anymore, but you don¡¯t have Perry or Fenilor.¡± She said the name like a threat, but word was already spreading through the rest of the world. Statues would be torn down and history would be amended. It was impossible for a monarch to accept that the culture did not depend upon the past for its legitimacy, that it did not worship the founders as incorruptible heroes. Fenilor had killed hundreds, had violated the precepts of the culture, had introduced the effluence through ignorance or negligence, and had threatened the entirety of the world for what very much seemed to be his own self-aggrandizement, at least if Casper could trust the transcripts. The queen could ¡ª and probably would ¡ª attempt to slander the culture by way of Fenilor, but they would uncover his secrets first, as best they could, and by the time her poison got to anyone¡¯s ears, the people would be inoculated. If she ever had a chance to spread that poison, anyway. ¡°Thom is firmly by my side,¡± said the queen. ¡°He¡¯s made his play. He knows a great many secrets, some of which the culture does not want getting out. He knows the weak points and knows what would throw the GCA into disarray.¡± ¡°This is true,¡± said Dirk. ¡°It¡¯s not information that I would use lightly. I¡¯m not against the culture, I¡¯m in favor of us having some kind of harmony, you have to understand that Casper.¡± He frowned slightly. ¡°I do wish that you¡¯d brought the others. I wish that we could be more civil about this than we¡¯re being right now. There¡¯s cause for disagreement, not threats, implicit or otherwise. There¡¯s no rush.¡± ¡°We want this finished,¡± said Casper. He kept his tone mild. ¡°We ideally want it finished today.¡± Dirk leaned forward on his throne. His eyes searched Casper¡¯s face. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°You¡¯re not privy to everything else that¡¯s going on,¡± said Casper. ¡°And you won¡¯t be, for the foreseeable future. What you¡¯ve been doing here, what you¡¯ve tried, it¡¯s simply not the culture, and I think you know that.¡± Dirk looked over at the queen, then back at Casper. ¡°If you have another card, then play it.¡± Casper looked at the floor and rubbed his forehead. That was the signal. One of the doors at the back of the small throne room opened up, and rather than the stone walls of the castle, there was the metal corridor of the Farfinder. A dozen people had been waiting for this moment, and they came out quickly in a crouched tactical stance. They had gunpowder weapons of superior make to anything that Thirlwell had seen. The queen began screaming for help, but before a sound could leave her mouth, the room was enveloped in absolute silence. She struggled, and Dirk tried to pull a knife ¡ª an Implement, in fact ¡ª but these were trained soldiers, and it was simply no contest. The queen was manhandled and hogtied, with no sound of scuffle reaching anyone¡¯s ears. Casper watched, his heart beating faster. If this was all going to get out of control, this is when it would happen. All it would take is for a guard to come in, or for the baffling of the sound to fail, or for it to work better than it was supposed to and extend beyond the throne room, catching a guard outside and alerting them that something untoward was going on. The soldiers accomplished the entire operation in twenty seconds, just as they had planned to, and they had no sooner retreated than duplicates of the queen and Dirk came down that same corridor, wearing identical clothing. They weren¡¯t exact duplicates. This other Dirk was quite divergent, and while they had tried to get the haircut and facial hair as close as possible, it wasn¡¯t quite perfect. The queen¡¯s duplicate was a closer match, but she had bags under her eyes and a certain haggard expression that had not left her in all the time they¡¯d been preparing her. The sound came back on and the door to the Farfinder closed again, leaving the throne room looking exactly how it had looked. ¡°Well,¡± said Casper, letting out a breath. ¡°That¡¯s that.¡± ¡°No,¡± said this new Dirk. ¡°There¡¯s a chance he prepared for this contingency.¡± ¡°Then we¡¯ll deal with it,¡± said Casper. This was something they had discussed. Passphrases, deadman¡¯s switches, things that confidants and servants were supposed to look for, it was all possible. It was the sort of thing that Dirk would do, though if he was going to do it, he¡¯d have been better off telling them so as to prevent this in the first place. ¡°Let¡¯s get this over with,¡± said the false queen. ¡°Very well,¡± said Casper with a nod. He produced the documents from a folio and they were signed quickly. It was inauthentic, she had no authority to dissolve the kingdom and abdicate the throne, but Casper rejected the very idea that the monarchy held any power in the first place. This would all come out eventually, and perhaps Thom Faulk had set things up to disclaim any sudden diplomatic move ¡­ but it wasn¡¯t as though Thom Faulk was coming back, nor was the queen. ¡°You have work ahead of you,¡± said Casper as he took his copy of the documents. ¡°I¡¯ll let you get to it.¡± He left them behind and exited the throne room, allowing himself to be escorted through the halls of the castle. His work was done, at least for today. There was organization to do, there were symboulions to help bring into existence, and the whole structure of the country would need to change. The guards escorting him would lose their jobs, and the castle would be turned over to the people in some way or another. Most of the fine things would go to newly established libraries. But it would take time for the plans that were in motion to reach their next steps. The clothes that had been made aboard the Farfinder would not last, they were some strange kind of magic, so the false queen and the duplicate Dirk would have to retire to their rooms and change out of them. The dissolution of the monarchy would be carried out through a number of planned steps, most of which were explicitly enumerated in the document that had just been signed. When Casper was finally returned to the well-guarded tavern, he sat down at the table with the others, who were waiting for him. ¡°Plan A or Plan B?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Plan B,¡± said Casper. ¡°Shame,¡± said Moss. He clucked his tongue. ¡°It would have been cleaner to do it the other way.¡± ¡°They wanted peace,¡± said Casper. ¡°That Dirk had his own conceptions of how the world might look. If we weren¡¯t going to lose the Farfinder soon, I would have been tempted to hear him out.¡± ¡°Fuck him,¡± said Velli. ¡°Let him rot. We need to root out the others. They can¡¯t be trusted. They¡¯re not the culture.¡± ¡°I worry how it looks,¡± said Moss. ¡°To the Farfinder, and the people who will come after.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Casper. ¡°You think it will pay off, in the end, these ships across the multiverse? You think the GCA will direct resources toward it, rather than away from it?¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± said Moss. ¡°The technology is fascinating, and perhaps vital.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a release valve for those high achievers who need something more,¡± said Casper. ¡°I¡¯ll give it that.¡± ¡°And if we encounter a monarch who sees what we did to our last monarch?¡± asked Moss. ¡°Someone who has more power than we do, who sees how we used raw might when we could? It¡¯s not a good starting point for diplomacy.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Casper. ¡°But worlds are different from nations. Two worlds are connected only by the thread of ships that haven¡¯t even been built yet, and that¡¯s only theory. We¡¯re not going to have effluence creating monsters in our oceans because of some other world. We¡¯re not going to be accepting their problems. They won¡¯t leech off what we¡¯ve built.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know that,¡± said Moss. He looked down at the woodgrain of the table and ran a workman¡¯s thumb across it. ¡°And we don¡¯t know that the culture will hold.¡± ¡°It¡¯ll hold,¡± said Casper. ¡°We have to believe it will, to fight for it.¡± ¡°It¡¯ll hold,¡± said Velli, folding her arms. She looked at Casper. ¡°The loss of the Farfinder is going to hit hard. No more shuttle service.¡± ¡°Soon,¡± said Moss. ¡°Though there are those in the GCA who believe rapid transport needs careful evaluation. There are people who don¡¯t like how fast news spreads, how rare and precious the engines are, how much we¡¯re stratified, and I can¡¯t say they¡¯re wrong.¡± ¡°That¡¯s for the future,¡± said Casper. He drummed his fingers on the table. ¡°We need to get Thirlwell in order. It wasn¡¯t primed and ready. It¡¯ll be difficult going.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll put in the work,¡± said Moss, nodding absentmindedly. ¡°That¡¯s the culture.¡± Chapter 151 - Tracked Perry came out into a world that was completely dark, and it took two whole seconds for him to realize that he didn¡¯t even have a HUD. He took a deep breath, then another, steadying himself. The urge to take off the helmet was immense, but he had no idea if the air outside was breathable. He called for March, and got no response. There was air, he could feel that from moving his arms inside the depowered suit, and he was standing on solid ground, but if there were noises happening beyond the armor, they were being blocked out. He was a sitting duck, and that by itself was a risk, so he unlatched the helmet and removed it, getting his first view of the new world. He wasn¡¯t instantly killed by poisoned air, which was a start. The first breath was dusty and dry, but it was breathable, or at least breathable enough that any problems would take time to manifest. The sky overhead was green with yellow splotches. Perry had never seen a sky like it before, but it instantly struck him as being somewhat sickly. There was no visible sun, but he wasn¡¯t sure whether it was hiding behind the green and yellow, or whether it was merely absent. The land around him was desert, and it instantly called to mind the desert he¡¯d found himself in when he¡¯d gone through that very first portal. Then, he had been in the Mojave, and the sky aside, he thought that this was at least passingly similar, with sandy soil and rocky outcroppings. The air was bone dry and warm, and he could see splashes of purple and yellow from wildflowers, along with a few spiky trees without much in the way of leaves. When he looked around him, he saw that he was standing in what was clearly a graveyard. There was no fence or anything, just a collection of headstones, and he bent down to look at one of them. Pearl Hawkins ??513-??811 Perry stared at those numbers. The script was Roman, except the first ¡°digit¡± was clearly a scarab of some kind, and if that was meant to take the place of a number ¡­ had this woman lived to be nearly three hundred years old? The other tombstones were similar, though they all had dates that lined up with a more normal lifespan, including a few that would have been children when they died. All the dates started with the scarab, and Perry wasn¡¯t sure how he was supposed to interpret that. Millennium of the Scarab? The names were, for the most part, ones that would have been unsurprising to find in use by some flavor of European, though there were a few that obviously came from further afield: a ¡®Paul Pawto¡¯ and a ¡®Mastsot Asuu¡¯. It was pretty obviously a fusion of cultures, but each had their own gravestone, and as much as Perry looked, there was no religious iconography, and no symbols that stood out as being important. He was alone. No one had been waiting for his arrival. Maybe they would come, in time, but there was no gun pointed directly at his head. Marchand being unresponsive was obviously extremely bad. Perry looked into the helmet, but it was as dead as it had been when he¡¯d taken it off. He could move in the armor when it was unpowered, but it was a slog, like moving with weights strapped all over his whole body. He tried pulsing his spiritual energy through the armor, but that did nothing, and there was no reason it should have done anything. There was nothing that should have broken the armor the instant it had come through, nothing that should have needed fixing. Perry had made sure that it was in perfect condition. Visual inspection revealed nothing, not even when he went through the work of removing a few external pieces to look at the interior. It was just chips and wires. Maybe he could have spotted a very obvious short, if there was one, but even if that had been it, he wouldn¡¯t have been able to fix it. After some time spent working on that problem, he rose into the air with the sword to get a better view. The scrubland stretched out in all directions, though there was a river to the north. Beyond a small hill was a house that had fallen into severe disrepair, and Perry could imagine that it was a church at one point ¡ª though what would have been the steeple was so badly ruined that maybe he was just seeing things. It would explain that graveyard though. Past the church were the dusty remains of a road, one that had mostly been reclaimed through erosion, though Perry had no idea how developed it had ever been. As he rose higher, he saw a town, some distance away, looking equally abandoned, with no signs of people, maybe for a very long time. He wished that he had Marchand for a variety of reasons, but one of them was that with Marchand he could launch the drone and get a better snapshot of the whole area, something that he could look around. Everything was screaming Wild West to Perry except for the scarab in place of a number on the gravestones. The town had no power lines of any kind, and no railroad either, which wasn¡¯t surprising for a town that size, but might have meant that they just didn¡¯t have rail at all. ¡°Welp, March,¡± said Perry. ¡°Really wishing you were here.¡± The armor didn¡¯t respond. Perry held his sword in one hand and helmet in the other, floating in the air. March had been with him since the very beginning, or nearly so. Marchand wasn¡¯t just the single best piece of equipment that Perry had ever acquired, he was a friend. So it was with reluctance that Perry opened up the shelf space and stripped the armor off. He placed it on a metal frame that was there to hold it, then stripped out of the nanite undersuit as well, since they were virtually useless without Marchand to direct them. He had a rack of clothing taken from one of the libraries of Markat, and selected something that he felt was closest to being in the local style: slacks, heavy boots, a button-up shirt, and a duster. He had a pistol with a hip holster, and on his other hip, a sheath for his sword. Someone had thoughtfully put a mirror into the shelf space, and while he couldn¡¯t say he looked like a cowboy, he thought he was close enough for cursory inspection. He didn¡¯t have a hat though. He was, of course, too pretty to be a cowboy. Second sphere took care of dirt and grime, it straightened and whitened teeth, it shrank pores and smoothed out skin, and trimmed up eyebrows and facial hair. Perry had a closely trimmed beard, mostly because anything longer would have gotten in the way of the power armor¡¯s helmet. Perry¡¯s hair was perfectly styled, bangs swept to the side with a part on the right. But while being second sphere meant this all happened automatically, it wasn¡¯t beyond his control. As Perry stared into the mirror, he was able to roughen himself up a bit, losing some of that airbrushed supermodel luster. He would stick out, that was inevitable, there were too many things that would give him away, but maybe if he was right about the Wild West, it wouldn¡¯t matter so much. They probably got people with strange accents coming through all the time. It was a mishmash of peoples and cultures, strangers from strange lands. When he was finished, he was handsome and muscular, notably so, but he wouldn¡¯t instantly be regarded as a fairy creature or whatever they¡¯d have made of his looks before the change. He checked the armor again, and it was still dead. He frowned at it. He had no idea how he was going to handle being without it. He wanted March back in his ear. A quick check of the two cell phones that the Farfinder had packed with him showed that both of those were non-functional too. Perry tried the attachable hand-cranks for them in the vain hope that this would bring them to life, and to his surprise, those were working ¡ª or at least, the tiny liquid crystal display was working, showing the battery charge at 99%. A quick crank brought it to 100%, but the phone was still inactive. There were a handful of other electronics to test with, most from the Farfinder, and Perry clicked a flashlight on and off, then got out a pair of walkie-talkies. Those worked fine too, and when Perry cracked one open, he saw that it did have some complicated-seeming circuitry in it, including what was probably a microprocessor. ¡°Huh,¡± he said. The Farfinder was supposed to come in shortly after him, but there had been no sign of them. It was entirely possible that they¡¯d had all their electronics knocked out too, though the fact that at least some of the stuff was still working meant that they wouldn¡¯t be totally sunk. Perry went back over to the armor and opened up the chest piece. There was a protocol he only vaguely remembered for what Richter had called a ¡®maintenance boot¡¯, and eventually he found a small, recessed button that he was supposed to hold for a full twenty seconds. He didn¡¯t expect that it would work, given that Marchand was supposed to auto-boot if there was power, but to his surprise the inside of the helmet lit up with a test pattern, then began spitting out lines of diagnostics. He slipped the helmet on, but it was hard to make heads or tails of it. The display was working, at least, though it didn¡¯t seem to be working very well. The microfusion reactor was offline, and most of the processing power was reading as having major errors, but this was at least something ¡ª it was more than he¡¯d had before. ¡°Sir?¡± came a voice from inside the helmet. Perry had never felt more relieved to hear the word. ¡°March,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re in maintenance boot. Any idea what¡¯s happening?¡± ¡°I shouldn¡¯t be accessible from maintenance boot, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It appears that something has caused the vast majority of processing power to stop working. I have confirmed a connection though, the processing power is physically in place, we have not lost those microchips. In fact, sir, I should say that there¡¯s not enough to run the instance you¡¯re speaking with.¡± ¡°Phantom compute?¡± asked Perry. Ever since their halfway merge, Marchand had more computing power than he should have had, its source unclear, but possibly linked to Perry in some unknown and mystical way. ¡°Perhaps, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Through that, I have access to microphones and the speakers.¡± ¡°We made it to the new world,¡± said Perry. ¡°Looks like the Wild West to me, but that¡¯s at first blush. Can you get the power armor up and running?¡± ¡°Testing the processors now, sir,¡± said Marchand. There was a long pause. ¡°It appears that they are functional but error-ridden. I can attempt to correct, but it will take a significant amount of time, and the suit will be impaired either way.¡± Perry frowned at the armor. ¡°How long are we talking?¡± There was another long pause. ¡°Days, sir.¡± Perry let out a breath. ¡°And that¡¯s just to get the armor back in diminished form?¡± ¡°Yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°From the inventory I¡¯ve just taken, the problem is affecting processors of a certain level of sophistication.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± said Perry. ¡°Agreed, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°It may be possible to correct for, but it¡¯s also possible that processing power will be severely hampered while we remain in this world.¡± ¡°Then I¡¯m going to leave you to it,¡± said Perry. ¡°I need to know where we are, what local conditions are like. Either we¡¯re early, and we need all the time we can get to marshall forces, or we¡¯re late, and we need all the time we can get to play catch up.¡± ¡°Very good, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I do fear you¡¯re exposed without the armor.¡± Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. ¡°I am,¡± said Perry. ¡°But it¡¯s much easier to pretend to be a local without it.¡± He took the helmet off and set it back in place. The armor was hopefully just dormant, and more hopefully, there was something that Marchand could do to keep it online. In the meantime, Perry wanted to explore. ~~~~ The town near the church had probably been abandoned a decade ago, if Perry had to guess. Everything there reinforced the idea that he was in the Wild West, save for the sky, which was still unnatural colors above him with no sign of the sun. The Wild West would be a bit of a disappointment, if he was being honest ¡ª he had no particular interest in cowboys. The one advantage of a world like that was that he would be stronger than virtually everyone he met, aside from the other thresholder. A look inside the abandoned jail made him think that even if worse came to worst he¡¯d be able to do a Lunar Punch to simply exit out the wall. There was no evidence of a moon. That was another problem, but maybe the clouds or whatever they were would part at night and he¡¯d see a nice fat moon staring down at him, ready to hand him its power. He took the thickest road out of town, on the assumption that it would lead to an even thicker road, which would in turn lead to a city, or at least some kind of signage. There was a chance that everywhere he went would be just as abandoned as the town and church were, but he was hoping against that. He started by walking, but given the distance, soon switched to using the sword, which pulled him along a few feet above the road. He wasn¡¯t used to using the sword without his armor on, and soon got dusty, suppressing the cleaning ability of the second sphere so that he¡¯d fit in better with the locals, if he ever found them. He¡¯d spent another twenty minutes in flight, covering ten miles of road, before he reached railroad tracks. These he stopped at, sheathing his sword. They stretched out in either direction, relatively straight. They weren¡¯t modern train tracks, he could tell that much, and they were laid across poorly graded soil rather than a prepared bed of rocks. The metal was corroded, but it was clear that trains still must have gone along it, as the tops were shiny where the train wheels made contact. The world was probably not dead then. The road had terminated at the railroad tracks, and there was a small, dilapidated train stop that looked like it hadn¡¯t seen any use in ages. The wood was weathered in some places and rotten at the ends, and there was a signpost with no sign on it, another indication that the place he¡¯d passed through was a ghost town. The stop was little more than a crude wooden platform with rusted nails. Perry looked up and down the tracks, wondering which direction would be better to follow. Train tracks implied civilization, and that would help him get his bearings. The only question was which direction to go. Because there was no sun, there wasn¡¯t an easy way to tell east from west, so Perry picked at random and took flight again, following the tracks this time. His mind kept going back to the scarab on the gravestones. The signs in the town had been in English, with no words he had any trouble with, and a few that stuck out to him as being rooted in a particular time and place: saloon, blacksmith and farrier, assay office. Another Earth, then? Or another place like Teaguewater had been, a few steps removed from Earth? Perry slowed to a stop when he saw a beast in the distance. He wished that he could zoom in on it, like he could when wearing the armor, but instead he was forced to get closer to see it. It looked like a cow of giant proportions, a steer with a thick pelt. It took him a moment to realize that it must be a bison ¡ª or maybe a buffalo, given that this probably wasn¡¯t the American West. Maybe it was a third thing that only existed in this world. The scrubland had given way to prairie grass, though it was patchy. He guessed that it was some difference in soil quality, rather than rain levels, but his knowledge of ecological patterns was some years in the past by this point. Coming to a new world was the one time that knowing geography would come in handy, and it wasn¡¯t worth a damn. He hadn¡¯t seen much in the way of farms, though there had been a few rows of desiccated trees that might have once been an orchard. Farming was a difficult thing in a place where there wasn¡¯t much water, and it almost always meant irrigation or natural springs. In a place like this, without much vegetation, cattle farming was more common, because they could range and eat whatever there was. The grasses near the bison were more promising in that regard, and maybe the abandoned town was the result of a shift in water ¡ª a river changing course, or a dam being built, or simply a rough patch of weather that led to a drought. This was Perry¡¯s way of getting the pulse of this place, thinking through the material conditions of their people, making sense of what constrained them in terms of diet and manufacturing and building materials. He had never read too much about the Wild West and only vaguely knew it as a relatively brief period of westward expansion, but if he started from base principles, then maybe by the time he actually reached a town he would have the beginnings of a grip on things. The bison he¡¯d been watching and creeping closer to turned toward him. It slowly rose up on its hind legs, growing taller. It had unbunched in the middle, and its front hooves splayed out like fingers. The horns were wide and intimidating, and it huffed at Perry just once before charging. Perry turned and ran the other direction, then withdrew his sword and lifted off into the air. He looked down below him and saw the bison trying to reach for him, but Perry was too fast, and the strange bison was too slow. On closer inspection, it was more like a minotaur, and Perry simply stared at it as it circled below him. ¡°But,¡± he said. ¡°The material conditions ¡­¡± And of course, the material conditions would dominate in any case, which meant that if they had violently angry minotaur bison roaming the area, then ¡­ there wasn¡¯t actually that much precedent in human history for that, to be honest. The towns would have walls, Perry supposed, but the town he¡¯d been to didn¡¯t have them, not even a ring of barbed wire. Perry returned to the rail line and resumed following it. He kept hoping that he would see a train. The tracks continued, empty. How far was it supposed to be between stops? A steam locomotive needed fuel and water, he knew that much, there were supposed to be giant water tanks that could dispense water into the boiler or something ¡­ but the one stop he¡¯d seen had nothing, no sign that it had ever been used for refueling. Perry flew for another thirty miles, past another seemingly abandoned stop, but this one was scorched, like it had been lit on fire and left to burn. A road stretched away from it, but it didn¡¯t seem to be well-traveled, and he didn¡¯t spend the time to follow it. Ghost towns, he knew, didn¡¯t just happen. There was always a reason a town was created, and always a reason it failed, that was just the nature of material reality. A ghost town usually happened when there was a mine that eventually went bust, or when crop conditions changed, and even then, it was common for a town to limp along if at all possible. How many ghost towns were out here? What had made them fail? By his count he¡¯d gone another thirty miles before he finally reached a settlement. This one wasn¡¯t out away from the train stop, the train tracks went right up to it, though there was no train anywhere in sight. It was situated next to a river, too, one that the train tracks had started to run alongside. Perry watched it from afar. The grass was thicker here, but there were also tilled fields, and it was more than just a single main street, if only barely. There was a church ¡ª with a nine-pointed star on the steeple, not a cross ¡ª and there were a few buildings made of brick rather than just wood. Perry landed, sheathed his sword, and walked along the tracks. After a moment¡¯s thought, he unbuckled the sword and put it, and the gun, into the shelf space. That left him vulnerable, but it meant there was less to explain. He didn¡¯t know how he was going to explain himself. It didn¡¯t seem like there was an easy lie. He was thinking that he would tell them that his horse had fallen over and stranded him, but this was the only town for almost seventy miles of track, and he didn¡¯t think that was entirely plausible. Besides, he didn¡¯t know whether they even had horses. There had been a trough outside one of the buildings in the ruined town, but that wasn¡¯t conclusive. Did the term ¡®farrier¡¯ have something to do with horses? Peering ahead, he didn¡¯t see any horses at the town, so the fake horse story seemed weaker to him. He was still a few hundred feet away from the first building at the outskirts when a man came jogging down the tracks toward him. The man had a wide-brimmed hat and an oversized moustache, and his left arm was made of metal, a complicated prosthetic. He raised his right arm and waved at Perry, who kept walking, because he wasn¡¯t sure what the raised hand was supposed to mean. ¡°Hey there, feller!¡± called the man. He didn¡¯t stop jogging until he was right up next to Perry, then stopped with his hands on his jeans for a moment. Perry stopped walking, to be polite, while the man caught his breath. ¡°Hey,¡± said Perry, trying to match the accent. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose there¡¯s a place for me to stay in this town, in there? It¡¯s been a long day.¡± ¡°We can get yeh sorted,¡± he said. ¡°But I¡¯m sorry, a¡¯fore yeh come in I¡¯m goin¡¯ a hafta see a drop of blood.¡± Perry frowned at him. ¡°Blood?¡± he asked. The man looked him over. There was a gun at his hip, and his hand didn¡¯t quite go toward it. ¡°Just for safety¡¯s sake, yeh understand, to see if it jumps, that¡¯s all.¡± ¡°I ¡­ sure,¡± said Perry. The man looked relieved. He pulled a pen knife from a grubby pocket and flicked out the short blade, then held it forward expectantly. ¡°Sorry,¡± said Perry. ¡°I haven¡¯t done this much.¡± He held up a hand. The man said nothing, and took the proffered hand, cutting Perry across the palm. It stung, but Perry held his hand steady and let the wound bleed. The pen knife had been flicked closed again, and a coin was drawn from the same pocket, one of a few judging by the jingle. ¡°Just a drop here,¡± said the man, holding the coin out sideways between his thumb and forefinger. Perry balled his hand into a fist, which made the stinging pain worse, and held his fist above the coin. One drop fell into the man¡¯s thumb, but the other hit the coin, and the man immediately pulled the coin back and peered closely at the blood, which sat there doing nothing much. It occurred to Perry only afterward that he was, in fact, a werewolf. But the man wiped the coin and his thumb with a handkerchief, then put everything back in his pocket. ¡°Wyatt Blackwood,¡± said the man, holding out his hand. ¡°Sorry to trouble yeh, just needed to check is all.¡± Perry looked down at his hand, which had been cut, then awkwardly shook Wyatt¡¯s hand with his left hand instead. ¡°Peregrin Holzman, but you can call me Perry,¡± said Perry. ¡°And how is it yeh find yerself at Grabler¡¯s Gulch?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°Not often we get folks in from the Flux, yeh understand.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve been ranging,¡± said Perry, which he hoped was vague enough. ¡°I¡¯ve been heading this way, but it¡¯s been slow going, and my horse dropped dead two days back, which has put me on foot. I don¡¯t have much more than the clothes on my back, but I can work hard.¡± ¡°Not even a pack to yer name?¡± asked Wyatt, looking Perry over like he might have somehow missed it. ¡°I had one, but dropped it,¡± said Perry. He was sweating slightly, which was good, but given the story it would have been better if he¡¯d been drenched. It was hot out, but not unreasonably so, in part because there were only the strange clouds and no sun. ¡°I do have this, for trade.¡± He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, misshapen lump of gold. Wyatt¡¯s eyes went wide. ¡°Well then, well now, let me see, I think we can get that to the assay office, and they¡¯ll have a look at it, and it might just be that yeh get yerself a fine room tonight with all the company yeh could want.¡± ¡°That would be appreciated,¡± said Perry with a nod. They walked down the tracks together. Perry had been hoping that gold might do the trick, given the sign for an assay office he¡¯d seen in the previous town. The gold was a bit of a coin he¡¯d gotten back in Seraphinus, carried all this way. He¡¯d hammered it until it was no longer in the shape of a coin, then when it had seemed too big, had clipped off pieces. There was more than what he¡¯d shown Wyatt, but it was hard to say how far that money would go. ¡°Now, yeh¡¯ll have to tell the story of yer walkin¡¯ in from the Flux,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°People will want to know, and it¡¯ll help them feel safe with yeh.¡± ¡°Not much to it,¡± said Perry. ¡°Just a horse that had too much, I guess. Still mourning it, actually, it was a good faithful creature.¡± ¡°True, true,¡± said Wyatt, as though he¡¯d know. ¡°The Light¡¯s blessin¡¯, those animals, never a truer thing said.¡± ¡°Grabler¡¯s Gulch, is that what you said?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I lost my map when I lost my horse, and I¡¯ve been all turned around. I was following the line, so I knew there weren¡¯t too many options for where I¡¯d end up.¡± ¡°Grabler¡¯s Gulch,¡± nodded Wyatt. He¡¯d shifted slightly at the word ¡®map¡¯, a frown crossing his face, but it passed. ¡°Train is supposed to come every week or two, but we¡¯re three weeks now since it¡¯s been in, and they were supposed to bring a harmonizer for the town, one that¡¯s been sorely needed, but it was supposed to come last time too, and wasn¡¯t on board, so it¡¯s anyone¡¯s guess.¡± Perry nodded as though he knew what any of that meant. ¡°And there¡¯s a sheriff?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Someone I could talk to? Get some assistance, find my bearings?¡± ¡°Sheriff is dead,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°There was supposed to be someone to come replace him on the train too, but like I said, three weeks now we¡¯ve waited, might have been some problems on the tracks.¡± ¡°How¡¯d the sheriff die?¡± asked Perry, narrowing his eyes. That and the missing train both sounded like thresholder business to him, though he was very aware that he was just jumping at shadows. ¡°Oh, awful story,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°He was caught consortin¡¯ with a demon and had to be hanged, nothin¡¯ else for it.¡± Perry felt a chill go down his spine. Marchand was in the shelf, still going through error correction, but in previous worlds they¡¯d made liberal use of the earpiece to have conversations with an unseen voice. Perry was different from these people, wearing strange clothes, with several kinds of supernatural powers. What would it take for them to try to hang him too? Not much, he didn¡¯t think. Turning into a wolf certainly seemed like it would do it. And there was, of course, the possibility that the sheriff really had been consorting with a demon. They had minotaur bison, after all. Perry stayed on his guard as they walked, but a small part of him couldn¡¯t help feeling a bit giddy at being alone in a wide new world. Chapter 152 - Strange Company ¡°These are the Duelists,¡± said Wyatt as they walked down the main stretch of Grabler¡¯s Gulch. Buildings stood on either side of the road, which was plenty wide. They were mostly different shops of one kind or another. A saloon sat at the intersection where one main road met the other, and aside from city hall, it was the largest building in sight, larger even than the church. Perry turned to where Wyatt was pointing. There were two people apparently getting ready for a duel, or maybe in the process of dueling, except they had their weapons drawn already. Perry hadn¡¯t registered them, and no one else seemed to be paying attention to them either, which was a large part of why he¡¯d missed it. They were both perfectly still, aimed at each other, and if not for the way Wyatt had said it, Perry would maybe have thought that it was a piece of performance art. ¡°Here, let me show you,¡± said Wyatt. He walked right past the closer of the two men, a grimy cowboy in a red flannel shirt with shit on his boots ¡ª Perry had seen the horses by now, and could certainly smell them. ¡°This,¡± said Wyatt, pointing at something in the air. Perry came closer. At first he thought it was a fly, but it, like the gunmen, was utterly still. On closer inspection, it was two bullets, frozen in mid-air, at the midpoint between the Duelists. Perry looked back at the gunman. ¡°What happened here?¡± he finally asked. ¡°Oh, no one knows for certain,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Duel gone wrong, they say. Time stopped here thirty years ago, when the town was young, just for these two, yeh see. And now we can¡¯t move ¡®em, which is a bit of a hassle for traffic. Lucky enough they¡¯re right in the middle of the street, easy enough to pass on by.¡± ¡°Can I touch?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Oh, go right on ahead,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°They get dressed up sometimes, though it¡¯s a bit disrespectful, you ask me.¡± He sniffed. ¡°When this place gets bigger, they might be an attraction, rather than just a curiosity.¡± Perry touched one of the two bullets, and it didn¡¯t move in the slightest. It was rooted firmly in place. ¡°Happened right when the guns went off,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°I was a boy then. I¡¯ve watched ¡®em get closer, and they¡¯re driftin¡¯ apart now.¡± He was apparently talking about the bullets. ¡°What happens when the bullets hit their targets?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No idear,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Might be they don¡¯t. Trackin¡¯ where the bullets will end up, that¡¯s a hell of a task. We had some men out from the city to have a look, but they didn¡¯t say much, only asked questions and took their paces. Might be we watch these two fools slowly dyin¡¯ for centuries.¡± He clucked his tongue. ¡°Now come along, we¡¯ll get yeh to the assay office for some scrip, then off to the tavern for a place to sleep. Like as not the horse is lost to the Flux, but we could search for it, if¡¯n you¡¯re willin¡¯ to pay.¡± ¡°I doubt I could tell you where it was,¡± said Perry. The assay office was a small, stonework building with thick walls and bars on the window. An armed guard sat on a stool inside, and ran his hand over his bald head when they came in by way of greeting. The assayist was behind a counter with an entire wall of precisely hand-labeled equipment and chemicals. She had wild dyed-black hair and a stained lab coat, along with glasses so thick they warped his view of her eyes. They had some time while the assayist did her work, checking the weight and purity of the gold. ¡°So, the harmonizer that¡¯s coming?¡± asked Perry, hoping that was open-ended enough. ¡°Should be soon, if yer stickin¡¯ around, though I can¡¯t imagine yeh won¡¯t be takin¡¯ the train out, when it comes. Better that than a new horse, unless this rangin¡¯ has a point.¡± He¡¯d taken his hat off when they came into the store, and his fingers drummed against it occasionally. ¡°It¡¯s a valuable thing, a harmonizer,¡± said Perry, which was entirely based on context clues. ¡°Oh, it¡¯ll change this town for the better, not a doubt about that,¡± said Wyatt with a nod. ¡°How we¡¯ve been doin¡¯ without all this time, I don¡¯t know, but as soon as it¡¯s up and runnin¡¯, there¡¯s no more to fear from the Flux.¡± ¡°You¡¯re able to handle the problems, this far out?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Well,¡± said Wyatt. He put a finger under his collar and tugged at his shirt. ¡°As such ¡­ I mentioned the sheriff and his demon, and you¡¯ve seen the Duelists. Harmonizer won¡¯t get rid of that business, but we¡¯ll be safer. Might even get away with not lockin¡¯ the doors at night, though I can¡¯t say I¡¯d take that risk.¡± He winced. ¡°A week past we had a spitfire roll in here, nearly set the saloon ablaze before it was doused.¡± He looked at Perry¡¯s impassive face. ¡°We handle it, as best we can, bury our dead far away, make the lamb¡¯s sign on the doors, never flip a coin more than seven times, keep the horses out of the nettlestems, all that. We¡¯re good, diligent people.¡± He was looking closer at Perry. ¡°You said you were a ranger?¡± ¡°I said I was ranging,¡± said Perry. ¡°Big difference. I¡¯m writing a book, but I lost my notes when I lost my horse. Nothing I can¡¯t replace, they were just a sketch of an idea, the real work will come later on. Most of it¡¯s still up here,¡± he tapped his head. ¡°From the city, originally?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°There¡¯s not many that can survive out in the Flux, not on their own.¡± ¡°I nearly didn¡¯t, like I said,¡± Perry replied. Wyatt was pressing the story, which wasn¡¯t good. If Perry was forced to invent biographical details, they would be paper thin. He didn¡¯t even have the name of a city he could pretend to be from. ¡°I went with less preparation than I should have. I came across beasts whose names I didn¡¯t know, horrible things, and I had to push the horse hard to outrun them. I came across a town that was completely empty, abandoned, and worried that might be the end for me.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°An educated type then, are yeh?¡± There was nothing about that description that should have screamed education to anyone, but Perry supposed that ¡®educated¡¯ was being used as something of an insult. Perry had gotten himself lost in the Flux and accidentally killed a horse, and that was what education got you. But it was something to explain his ignorance. And he supposed his clothes were finer than those he¡¯d seen on the people around him, for as much as he¡¯d suppressed the second sphere from keeping them clean. ¡°I¡¯ve been to college, yes,¡± said Perry, leaning on the translation powers of the second sphere to make sure the word ¡®college¡¯ fit correctly. Wyatt nodded. ¡°Readin¡¯ and writin¡¯, fine things if you¡¯ve got the time and money for ¡®em.¡± ¡°Money more than time,¡± said the assayist, who was dunking the piece of gold in a green liquid with long tongs. ¡°Money more than time,¡± said Wyatt, nodding. He looked at the assayist like he¡¯d forgotten she was there. ¡°Yeh read, Petunia?¡± ¡°I read,¡± she answered in a gravelly voice. ¡°Whatcha read?¡± he asked. ¡°Chemistry and geology,¡± she replied. ¡°Oh, thought yeh meant, ah, other books, not the trade,¡± he replied. ¡°Those too,¡± she replied. ¡°Had a stack of penny dreadfuls when I came in, read through ¡®em and traded ¡®em away.¡± She looked up from her vial to Perry. ¡°Those are more time than money though.¡± ¡°Town needs a library,¡± said Wyatt, nodding again as though he had just had a brilliant idea. ¡°I don¡¯t suppose there¡¯s a history book for this place?¡± asked Perry. When Wyatt gave him a blank look, Perry continued. ¡°Some kind of chronicle of its founding, what¡¯s happened here, the major beats of how it¡¯s gone up to this point?¡± ¡°City Hall,¡± said the assayist. ¡°But you¡¯re better off just offerin¡¯ to buy drinks at the saloon.¡± ¡°City Hall is right,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°But I can tell yeh what yeh need to know.¡± ¡°Almost done,¡± said the assayist. ¡°Yeh¡¯ll put it in a book, you think?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°Possibly,¡± said Perry. There was a silence that proved slightly uncomfortable. ¡°Right now it¡¯s research, getting a lay of the land. It¡¯s on the pioneer spirit, the will to endure the roughness and the wilds, I think. But it¡¯s speculative right now. If there¡¯s something that catches my fancy, I might shift the direction of the book.¡± He tried to decide how far he could push the lie. Being an author didn¡¯t seem terribly difficult to him, and he¡¯d never have to prove that¡¯s what he was. He had friends who were writers, and it seemed like they mostly talked excitedly about projects that never seemed to get finished. To his knowledge, no one had ever asked them to see pages. ¡°You said the harmonizer is going to come soon, to be installed?¡± ¡°Soon,¡± said Wyatt. Some apprehension crossed his face. ¡°Shoulda been here already, truth be told. If there were some trouble ¡ª¡± ¡°Doesn¡¯t do to speak of trouble,¡± said the assayist with a sharp look. ¡°Gold is good, you¡¯ll take payment in scrip?¡± ¡°Is that my only option?¡± asked Perry. The assayist nodded. ¡°Then I guess that¡¯s what I¡¯ll take,¡± said Perry. The scrip was a small pile of poorly printed paper notes, and just from looking at them, they¡¯d be the easiest thing in the world to forge. They had the name of the town on them, which meant that if Perry went anywhere else, they¡¯d be nearly worthless. He could easily be ripped off, especially because he didn¡¯t look dangerous. It was the price of business though, and he had more gold where that lump had come from. ¡°To the saloon then,¡± said Wyatt, slapping his legs and getting to his feet. They left the assayist and her guard with some cursory goodbyes, then went across the street to the large saloon, passing by the Duelists who were still locked in their eternal gunfight. The saloon¡¯s name was the ¡°Grabler¡¯s Greenhorn Saloon!¡±, complete with the exclamation mark. The place was lively, though Perry didn¡¯t know whether he should have expected that, given that he had no clue what time of day it was. Heads turned to take him in as he arrived, the whole place momentarily stopping at the arrival of a newcomer, but Wyatt waved them away and they mostly went back to their business. It was a mix of men and women, though more men, and the women were dressed up such that Perry couldn¡¯t imagine they were anything but sex workers, frilly black lace and bustiers, showing cleavage and legs. At best, they were there as eye candy, selling the illusion of sex. Most of the men were dusty and dirty, though there was one at the bar in a fine white suit. The presence of an assayist seemed to indicate that the town owed part of its existence to mineral wealth, but Perry wasn¡¯t going to assume that just yet. ¡°Cleo!¡± called Wyatt as he sat down at the bar. ¡°This here is Perry, he¡¯ll need a room for a spell.¡± The woman working behind the bar turned around and Perry¡¯s face remained impassive while his limbic system did a little dance. Her face was horribly disfigured along the left side, not a scar or burn, but a place where it was split, a blackened vertical crevasse. It reminded Perry of a potato that had gone off, a few deep centimeters of rot that went from her eyebrow down to her lip. The split passed straight through her eye, which was milky. The other one was green and bright. Without that disfigurement, she would have been one of the most beautiful women Perry had ever met. She had smooth skin and a pleasant smile, ample breasts pushed up by a dress that probably didn¡¯t need to be doing so much work, and blonde hair with tight curls that bounced behind her head. ¡°First drink is on the house, what¡¯ll you have?¡± she asked. ¡°Beer,¡± said Perry, momentarily reading off the sign behind her. It had been a very long time since he¡¯d had beer. He wasn¡¯t expecting much, as there were only three options on the menu, all without any description. It was between beer, whiskey, and wine, and that was it, despite the motley bottles on the shelves. ¡°He doesn¡¯t know this place,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Well I know that,¡± said Cleo, smiling. ¡°But you shush, it¡¯s not every day I get to see someone try my beer for the first time.¡± Perry accepted a glass of beer that had been poured from a keg. It was room temperature, and his expectations lowered once again. When he¡¯d been on Earth, he was well-accustomed to craft beers from microbreweries, and while he was never too much of a snob about it, he had learned the lingo. He took a sip. It was a bit fruity, but fairly mild, and much better than he¡¯d been expecting, though it would have been greatly improved by being chilled. He smacked his lips and looked at Cleo, then at Wyatt. Both of them were looking at him expectantly. Stolen story; please report. ¡°Second sip, if you please,¡± said Cleo. Perry took the second sip. It was an entirely different taste, darker and earthier, with a slightly nutty taste. He looked down at it and frowned. Cleo laughed and gave a single loud clap of her hands. ¡°Always different, every sip,¡± she said. ¡°Neat trick,¡± said Perry, putting the beer down. He stared at it for a moment. Perry looked around the saloon, and caught one of the paintings moving. It was a cowboy with a lasso and a mountain range behind him, and very briefly the cowboy had been in motion. When Perry¡¯s eyes fixed on it, it stood still. There were strange little odds and ends all around him. Wyatt was the only one with a mechanical arm, but there were many people with disfigurements that required prosthetics. One of the men playing poker had hands like a monkey¡¯s, which no one was commenting on. ¡°You don¡¯t seem impressed,¡± said Cleo, looking slightly wounded. Perry shrugged and looked at her, trying to meet her eyes, trying not to be distracted by the crack of black mold running over her face. ¡°I think you learn to take things in stride,¡± he said. ¡°It¡¯s the only way to live in this world.¡± He paused. ¡°How¡¯s it done?¡± ¡°Well it¡¯s not done,¡± said Wyatt with a little laugh. ¡°Just is the way it is. Yeh really don¡¯t have much experience out in the Flux, do yeh?¡± ¡°Apparently not,¡± said Perry. He took another sip of the beer. It was harder to identify how it had changed, but it had. His palette, to the extent he had one, was ruined by having the different flavors in rapid succession. ¡°You still call this town ¡®the Flux¡¯?¡± ¡°Do they not, in the city?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°Asking for the book,¡± said Perry. ¡°Talk to me like I¡¯m a moron that just wandered in from the wasteland.¡± ¡°Until we get the harmonizer, we¡¯re in the Flux,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Not so dangerous, with this many people around, nothin¡¯ like a true frontier town, but here? Well, yeh¡¯ll see plenty.¡± ¡°And when the harmonizer arrives, is it ¡­ will that end things like this?¡± Perry gestured at the glass of beer. ¡°Fortunately not,¡± said Cleo. ¡°Saves me a fortune, I can buy the cheap stuff.¡± She gave a little laugh. ¡°You¡¯re staying here tonight?¡± ¡°Tonight, and the next few nights,¡± said Perry, pulling out the scrip he¡¯d gotten. ¡°I¡¯ll be needing food and a place to wash up.¡± Cleo¡¯s eyes went to the money. ¡°Wyatt, you said he wandered in from nowhere?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t say,¡± replied Wyatt. ¡°But he did, came down the tracks.¡± ¡°And you tested the blood on silver?¡± asked Cleo. ¡°Course,¡± scoffed Wyatt. ¡°Had to be done, sheriff might be gone, but someone¡¯s gotta step up.¡± ¡°Alright,¡± said Cleo. ¡°We¡¯ve got a spare room up top, I¡¯ll get you the key, but we only serve lunch and dinner, so you¡¯re on your own for breakfast.¡± She took only a small portion of his scrip, enough that he¡¯d have his room and meals for a week, and finished off the beer. He wanted to get into the room, lock the door, and step into the shelf space to check on Marchand. ¡°Oh, one other thing,¡± said Perry as he stood up from his stool. ¡°Is there a map of the local area? Something I can look at to get my bearings?¡± They both stared at him for a beat, then laughed. ¡°A map, he says!¡± hooted Wyatt, like it was the funniest thing he¡¯d ever heard. ¡°I can show yeh The Web, but yeh really must be from the city if yeh think we¡¯ve got maps of the Flux!¡± ~~~~ The Web sure looked like a map to Perry. It had rail lines and towns marked on it, for one thing. It was abstract, looking more like those maps that cities used for subway stops, if a little less modernist in its design. There was a certain geometry to it that obviously didn¡¯t exist in the real world. ¡°It¡¯s relations, see?¡± asked Wyatt, as though he really was talking to some childlike idiot. It was a great way to get information, but still grated at Perry. ¡°How it works is, there are roads and tracks connectin¡¯ places, but what¡¯s in between is anyone¡¯s guess.¡± They¡¯d gotten a paper copy of The Web and unrolled it on the bar after Cleo had carefully wiped down the surfaces. It had been grabbed from a neighboring store, mostly because Wyatt thought it was insanely funny that Perry had a fundamental misunderstanding of how things worked. In the center of the map was Charlonion, the largest city in the region, and spreading out from it like a spider¡¯s web was everything else, all connected by rail lines. They went in every direction, except to the southeast, where the ocean had taken a chunk out of the map. Grabler¡¯s Gulch was far to the northwest, nearly off the map, and marked with the smallest of dots. According to the legend, that meant a town that didn¡¯t have a harmonizer, which seemed to be a major dividing line between settlements. ¡°Could be four hundred miles to Charlonion, could be twenty,¡± said Wyatt, tracing his finger along the map. ¡°Yeh¡¯ll go through Taryton, then Cenneral, and then yeh¡¯ll be there. I mean, yeh must¡¯ve been through, right?¡± ¡°I was in Taryton,¡± said Perry, nodding. It was good to have names. ¡°I just ¡­ didn¡¯t really think about it too much. I spent most of the train ride reading.¡± ¡°Feh,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°It¡¯s a way a life out here. When yeh move yeh have to think,¡± he tapped his head, ¡°have to understand whether yeh¡¯ll have enough water to get back, because if yeh go three miles, it might be thirty on the way back.¡± ¡°More than you can make in a day,¡± said Perry. ¡°You might be forced to spend the night in the Flux. I guess I got lucky, coming here.¡± ¡°Easy to die,¡± said Wyatt with a nod. ¡°Very easy to die.¡± Perry traced his finger over the map. There were lots of small towns without harmonizers, and he was guessing even more that weren¡¯t on the map at all. The two stops he¡¯d been past, the one that led to the abandoned town and the other that had been burnt, weren¡¯t on the map at all. He wanted to ask where the harmonizers came from, and about the deep history of Charlonion. It was away from the ocean, which he found interesting. It was a Wild West, but there was no sign of westward expansion obvious in the arrangement of towns, no leftward bias in town sizes or the rail network. But these people didn¡¯t come from nowhere, they came from somewhere, and it wasn¡¯t clear from the map where that might be. If they¡¯d come from the ocean, a major port, then why was the city there, Landin, a small one? Port cities had a habit of growing from the centralization of trade, and this one had not. It was Charlonion that was at the center of everything. And port cities were especially prominent if there were immigrants coming from across the water. Perry looked around. Where were all these people from? ¡°Where are you both from?¡± he asked, after deciding that it was a reasonable question. ¡°Fort Shaw,¡± said Wyatt, pointing a finger at a settlement that was also in the northwest quadrant. It had a harmonizer, according to the legend. ¡°Born in the city,¡± said Cleo. ¡°Dad was part of the circus, we moved a lot, I settled here five years ago.¡± ¡°And Grabler¡¯s Gulch, most of the people here are from elsewhere?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Some,¡± said Wyatt. He rubbed his chin. ¡°People filter in, usually on a train, not walkin¡¯ down the tracks. There are the prospectors, the ranchers, the farmers, plots granted by the Commission, claims to stake, and yeh know, the occasional Yuuksen we get in these parts, usually not to settle, but sometimes, I s¡¯pose.¡± ¡°Peep and his kin,¡± said Cleo. ¡°Peep, that¡¯s true,¡± said Wyatt with a nod. ¡°Mostly it¡¯s the farm families that have their little ones, but it¡¯s not so good here in the Flux, all kinds of problems yeh don¡¯t get in the city.¡± ¡°And some problems in the city that we don¡¯t get,¡± said Cleo. They didn¡¯t refer to Charlonion as anything but ¡°the city¡±, like there was simply no point in saying its name, because you couldn¡¯t mean anywhere else. Looking at the map, maybe that was the right way to think about it. The font they¡¯d used for the name of Charlonion was bigger than was used anywhere else, even at the top of the map, which said ¡°Dusklands¡±. ¡°Are there people from ¡­ further afield?¡± asked Perry. He meant England, or the Old World, or something like that, but when he said it, it sounded like he was using a euphemism. ¡°Oh, you get the oddball now and then,¡± said Wyatt. He glanced at the man in the white suit. ¡°I can hear you, of course,¡± the man replied. He looked at them with a small smile. He was drinking a glass of milk, which Perry hadn¡¯t noticed until just then. Milk wasn¡¯t on the menu. ¡°And ¡­ who are you?¡± asked Perry. He hadn¡¯t looked at the man in the white suit, hadn¡¯t wanted to stare, but the man did stick out even among some of the oddities of the others, and Perry was on the lookout for anyone who stuck out ¡ª that was the easy way to find a thresholder, after all. ¡°I¡¯m an oddball,¡± said the man. His teeth were too white, like they¡¯d been bleached, and the incisors were long, giving him a vampiric look. ¡°Augustus St. Gabriel.¡± He held out his hand, and Perry took it. ¡°Peregrin Holzman,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m an angel,¡± said Augustus St. Gabriel. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how to react to that. It was certainly plausible, given how much he knew about this world. The white seemed like it would be hard to maintain in this world, particularly with all the horse shit. ¡°Are yeh a believer?¡± Wyatt asked Perry. ¡°I haven¡¯t made up my mind,¡± said Perry. He thought about the church with the giant star on it. He wasn¡¯t sure that was the ¡®right¡¯ answer, but his goal at the moment was to make friends. ¡°I go to church, when I can.¡± Augustus St. Gabriel looked at him. ¡°A politician, then? And here I was thinking you were a dandy scholar.¡± He had a strange accent, more refined and educated than the others, but it felt like English wasn¡¯t his first language, just one he had picked up and spoke notably well. ¡°It¡¯s not a conversation I want to get into,¡± said Perry. ¡°We all have our own beliefs.¡± He hoped that was true too. From what he knew about the Wild West, it was at least somewhat religiously varied, but he¡¯d only seen the one church, and it was possible that it was so common as to be obligatory. But maybe there were different stripes of whatever their religion was, and he hoped that he¡¯d be taken as an Episcopalian among Lutherans, if that was the case. ¡°Well, an angel might take your doubt as tantamount to being called a liar, sir,¡± said Augustus St. Gabriel. ¡°But allowances must be made for the Flux and the people who find themselves in it.¡± ¡°Appreciated,¡± said Perry. He looked over at Cleo and raised an eyebrow, but she gave him only a small frown, an exchange of facial expressions he didn¡¯t actually know how to untangle. Augustus St. Gabriel¡¯s hair was pale blonde, and his eyes were so pale blue as to be distracting. His shirt was as white as the rest of his outfit, and his tie was just slightly off-white. Perry had no idea what they meant by ¡°angel¡± but he was reconsidering whether it was literal or not. Perhaps there was something in their sociology or culture that would explain it, or maybe this guy really had come down from what passed for heaven in these parts. Certainly they thought that demons existed, if the sheriff had been hanged for being with one. Perry did eventually make his way up to his room, unlocking it with the key that Cleo had given him, then locking it behind him and double-checking that it didn¡¯t budge. It was a simple room with simple furniture, and if he needed it, there was an outhouse in the back, a pit latrine with a crude wooden structure over it. Perry was undecided on whether he was going to sleep in the bed or not ¡ª the shelf space had a much, much better bed that had been donated by friendly library staff, and it also had better facilities, along with water that could be trusted and food that wasn¡¯t at risk of poisoning him. He double-checked the lock, then stepped into the shelf space, leaving the boundary open and pointed toward the door so he could hear if someone tried to come in. ¡°March, how¡¯s it going?¡± asked Perry as he approached the armor. ¡°Thirteen percent, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Slow, but accelerating, I think.¡± ¡°Still on the error correction thing?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes, sir, that''s all I¡¯ve been doing,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though perhaps I shouldn¡¯t say that, because without you here, I don¡¯t believe there¡¯s a ¡®me¡¯ to continue on with anything.¡± ¡°Is that a problem?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Do I need to be in the room?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a thorny philosophical problem, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I do not believe there to be an operational impact.¡± ¡°I can feel the strands of connection going somewhere when the shelf is closed,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re not ¡­ cut off, I guess, not really.¡± ¡°Nevertheless, whatever errant phantom computation is happening, it does not appear to happen when the shelf is completely closed,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I would appreciate if you would keep it open, sir.¡± Perry frowned. ¡°Is the data ¡­ I mean, is it being stored on a hard drive somewhere? Pulled from it? Are you forming memories while being ¡®off¡¯?¡± ¡°I believe so, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Access to data is limited, as any computation must avoid affected processing clusters. But I can access memories, and seem capable of forming new ones, which must necessarily involve the drives.¡± The suit had processing power spread all over, for various reasons that were opaque to Perry, though redundancy was a big one. Most was in the chest, near the reactor, but there were bits in the helmet and limbs as well. ¡°The how of what you¡¯re doing is eluding me, the fundamental reality of what that progress bar actually represents,¡± said Perry. ¡°And I don¡¯t need to know, but from my perspective this is just some mysterious process that¡¯s happening, a bar that¡¯s going to fill and then you¡¯re going to be back, probably diminished.¡± ¡°My best guess at what¡¯s happened, based on available evidence, is that it has to do with something happening at the nanometer scale,¡± said Marchand. ¡°The history of both our worlds featured reductions in the size of microchips. At a certain point, what you call quantum mechanics began to play a significant part in chip design, offering a more accurate understanding of what was happening with the flow of electrons than classical mechanics. At a certain point, quantum tunneling becomes a significant factor, namely ¡®off-state¡¯ current leakage. There are also, in some of the microchips, elements that take advantage of quantum effects, particularly rapid flux, the term for which I don¡¯t know in your version of English.¡± ¡°So the chips are fried?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They have become error-prone, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Unfortunately, the errors are occurring within the chips themselves, and because this is a fundamental problem with chip design, it cannot be corrected on that level. Would you like an explanation of the full process?¡± ¡°Fuck me, but yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°Keep it short and simple.¡± ¡°The first step is to create an error map,¡± said Marchand. ¡°This is possible given that certain parts of the power armor use microchips with a larger gate size, not subject to quantum effects that are likely causing the bit flips. Half of the work consists of running test patterns through each processor multiple times. The other half of the work is in developing error-correcting code implementations, and to do so largely without the ability to trust the processors which are being used to create these codes. Creating reliable computation from unreliable computation is a difficult problem.¡± ¡°Well ¡­ I guess I have no choice but to trust you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Very true, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°I appreciate your trust nonetheless.¡± ¡°And even if you¡¯re operational again, the nanites are probably toast?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Given that they were hyperminiaturized, and change is more likely to have affected them, yes, sir,¡± said Marchand. ¡°Though I cannot say whether this would result in permanent incapacitation or if they would return to a functional state in the next world. I do know that they¡¯re non-responsive at the moment.¡± Perry winced. ¡°Then I guess keep doing what you¡¯re doing, collect the data, correct the errors. Time is an asset right now, and I don¡¯t intend to waste it.¡± He immediately went downstairs to have some beers with the locals. Chapter 153 - Life on the Range Perry sat and listened to stories. He¡¯d gone down to the general store and bought a pencil, a whittling knife to sharpen it with, and a blank leather-bound book, then began putting his scrip to work buying drinks for the people who filled the place. There was more than one saloon in the town, he¡¯d confirmed that by walking around, but this was the biggest and the busiest. He embarked on the project by asking for biographies, hoping that he¡¯d get the spoken and the unspoken facts about this world. Cecil ¡°Dead Finger¡± Michael was originally from the city, a sewer rat, which from what he said literally did mean that he spent a significant amount of his childhood in an extensive sewer system. He¡¯d been a prospector for a while, made money digging up something he called ¡°honey gems¡±. He had a certain knack for that, but was now in Grabler¡¯s Gulch looking for a wife. His finger wasn¡¯t literally dead, but the nail of his forefinger was blackened, and he claimed to be able to dowse treasures with it. Andrew Weaver was a clothier, his family trade, and he had a wife and seven children, who were back at home while he drank beer after beer in the saloon. The train was late, which meant that he didn¡¯t have the textiles he needed to do his work, and anyway the train was the lifeblood of Grabler¡¯s Gulch, so there wasn¡¯t much work for anyone while there was some kind of delay. Perry took most of this to be his excuse to drink all day. Eddie Barlow was one of what Perry had assumed were sex workers. When they spoke, she used the word ¡°hospitality¡± a bit too much, and placed her hand on his arm. She¡¯d been in ¡°hospitality¡± her ¡°whole life¡±, moving from place to place. She was hoping to settle down, apparently, and had come out to ¡°the edge of the world¡± to do it, though everyone said there were far more wild places beyond the Gulch. Her parents had both died when she was little, and she¡¯d been raised in a farm orphanage, tasked with wrangling pigs that were almost the same size as her, but she¡¯d run away to pursue a better life. She joked that she was still wrangling hogs, and gave Perry a wink that made him uncomfortable. Most people were farmers, ranchers, and miners, though the height of prospecting at Grabler¡¯s Gulch had apparently come and gone. The saloon filled as it started to get dark out, still no sign of the sun, and more people came in from their shops and fields and places of employment. Perry had a little table set up, and he got to practice both his handwriting and his pencil whittling, because he was a curiosity and many of them thought the prospect of being immortalized in a book was interesting. The beer helped. If he hadn¡¯t been second sphere, he probably would have had to deal with his hand cramping up, but his fingers were deft, and the writing was coming out almost perfect, a fringe benefit of second sphere he hadn¡¯t had cause to notice before. There were hints and portents in the stories that people told, mentions of diseases and blights that Perry had never heard of. There was a moon, but it was spoken of with a temporarily lowered voice, and always with a touch of furtive looks. There were monsters out in the Flux, canny ones and beastly ones, along with some that were indifferent until they were poked. They somehow weren¡¯t the majority of what he heard about ¡ª people were more concerned with their cattle and their crops, or the idea of hitting it big with a mining claim. A rancher told Perry that one of his cattle had been rearranged the fortnight before: it had been found dead with its muscles and bones made into a sculpture, ribs spread to the heavens, guts filled with its own blood and coiled at the bottom. It was still living somehow, the heart beating as a centerpiece, until the rancher put it out of its misery. The culprit was an ¡®ixy¡¯ according to the rancher, an unfortunate sort of creature that made its home in the night. A blacksmith had a pinky that was ghostly green, see-through, a result of ¡°an accident¡± at the forge, working ¡°thickmetal¡± that had been brought in from the Flux. The blacksmith couldn¡¯t move the ghost pinky, it stuck straight up, and the blacksmith inquired with Perry whether there might be some kind of cure in the city. Of course, Perry didn¡¯t know, but he said he suspected that there wasn¡¯t. The town veterinarian was originally from the city, and spent most of the time talking with Perry about the animals that were out in the wilderness, inviting Perry to see a taxidermy collection, or possibly make some sketches. He had all kinds of stories about animals, which he was borderline obsessive about, detailing a time he cut open a pig¡¯s belly and found a clump of hair and teeth, or a living chicken with no head, or a duck that vomited its eggs from its mouth. All but the last seemed plausible, but vomiting up eggs was definitely supernatural. The eggs were smashed as a matter of course, and no one had risked eating them. Perry stayed in the saloon, listening to people, not talking too much, mostly making notes. It sometimes seemed as though no two people had the same story ¡ª they had come from all over, and their accents were different from each other. They had different things they thought were vital for him to know. He was eventually able to tease out some of the deeper history, things that had happened before Charlonion was settled, but everyone seemed fuzzy on the details, and there were only three of the twenty or so that claimed to have been from elsewhere. The term they used with great regularity was ¡°beyond the veil¡±, and when pressed, they listed countries that Perry had never heard of. It wasn¡¯t an alternate Earth then, not that he¡¯d thought that was likely. He was cautious about asking too many questions, but it was a good starting point for later reading, if he could find a book. He felt certain that someone had to have an encyclopedia, since there were obviously printing presses, if not necessarily owned and operated in town. When nightfall came, a few people ducked out of the saloon, then came back in to report that it was a quarter moon. This was met with two claps from nearly everyone in the saloon, and a double stomp from those who had their hands full, which no one explained to Perry. He had clapped too, which he was only able to do in time because of his superior reflexes. He slipped outside to have a piss and saw that the yellow and green sky had completely cleared up, leaving only stars overhead, along with a white quarter-moon no larger than Earth¡¯s. The stars weren¡¯t in a cluster like the Milky Way, there were instead several thick parallel bands. Perry stared for a moment, trying to work out the cosmological implications of the stripes, and came up short. When he went back in, a woman was waiting at his table. She had a long red scarf on, bright and distinctive, along with a messy nest of red hair beneath a broad-brimmed hat. She must have just come in, because she removed the hat and set it down on the table, then shook out her hair and started combing it with a comb made of ivory. In contrast to the other women Perry had seen, she was wearing a pair of brown trousers and a button-up shirt, men¡¯s clothing. He sat down across from her and saw her face. She was younger than he¡¯d thought from behind, probably a few years younger than he was. One of her front teeth was chipped, a missing triangle, but her teeth were whiter and cleaner than anyone else¡¯s except the angel¡¯s. She was clearly pretty pale naturally, but sunburnt and tanned in different places, with a smattering of freckles. ¡°You¡¯re the chubbo who¡¯s a writer?¡± she asked. She had an accent that reminded him of Australian, mostly in the upward inflection and the vowel shift. ¡°They say you might buy a girlie a beer, if I told you suzzo.¡± He understood ¡®suzzo¡¯ only through translation: it meant ¡°something¡± with a connotation of gossip. ¡°I think I have enough,¡± said Perry. He¡¯d filled quite a few pages, writing fast. ¡°But I will buy you a drink, if you have a story you wanted to get off your chest.¡± ¡°Fair enough, chubbo,¡± she replied with a smile. The word meant something like ¡°buddy¡± or ¡°pal¡±, mildly mocking. ¡°Now, my parents died when I was five, and I fell in with a gang of children, little ones ¡ª¡± ¡°Did you want me to get you that drink?¡± asked Perry. ¡°I¡¯m talkin¡¯, ain¡¯t I?¡± she asked, frowning at him. Perry signaled for Cleo to bring a beer. ¡°Your name, before we start?¡± ¡°Trigger Queen,¡± she said with a smile. ¡°I¡¯m a sharpshooter.¡± ¡°Your parents gave you that name?¡± he asked. ¡°Well they died when I was five chubbo, I¡¯ve got no idea what they named me, do I?¡± she asked. ¡°I¡¯ve had all sorts of names, you pick them up when you move, and now it¡¯s Trigger Queen, or just Queen if you like, or Queenie. Can I go on?¡± Perry nodded. She¡¯d taken offense to the question. ¡°So like I say, parents dead at five, I never knew what it was, don¡¯t remember them at all? And then I was in gangs, fightin¡¯ and stealin¡¯ for scraps. When I was ten or thereabouts I turned to burglary, and that I had a skill for, which is how I got my first gun.¡± She took out a revolver that was at her hip, maybe by way of demonstration. It was long and silvered, highly polished, with an ivory grip. ¡°Now that I had some real skill with, and half my time after was spent grabbin¡¯ grusties to fling.¡± Grusties were bullets. ¡°And time come I caught the eyes of someone, which led me into a particular line of work I can¡¯t give suzzo about.¡± ¡°Assassination?¡± asked Perry. She barked a laugh and watched his face. ¡°Suzzo like that, chubbo.¡± ¡°For a gang? An association? The Commission?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Only you don¡¯t strike me as a Commission type.¡± The Charlonion Commission was as close as the Dusklands had to a proper regional government, and from what he¡¯d heard, most of the people in the saloon half suspected that he had been sent by them as a spy ahead of the harmonizer coming in. They had much more power in Charlonion, and controlled the trains and harmonizers, but their reach outside the city was strained. ¡°I¡¯m not a type that¡¯s found much to love in any group,¡± replied Queenie. ¡°Not the gangs, certainly not bean-bangers like the Commission.¡± ¡°So you worked alone?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Always alone,¡± said Queenie, nodding. ¡°That¡¯s the way to be. Suzzo is you walked in by your lonesome, is that because it¡¯s how you like it?¡± ¡°I had a horse,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re not really alone if you have a horse.¡± His mind went to Marchand, who was not a horse. ¡°Well, I¡¯ll take that as a yes,¡± said Queenie. ¡°I¡¯m the same, better alone.¡± ¡°And how does that work, if you¡¯re an assassin?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Not much call for a lone assassin, you¡¯d have to take orders from somewhere.¡± ¡°I said suzzo like that, chubbo,¡± she said with a roll of her eyes. ¡°Plenty of things to take off dead men.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not assassination, that¡¯s just robbery with murder thrown in,¡± said Perry. He was needling her a bit, which maybe wasn¡¯t wise given that she still had her gun drawn. Firearm safety didn¡¯t seem to be a major priority for her, and to the extent other people had noticed, they had only moved away slightly. No one had told her to put the gun back in its holster. It was, at least, pointed at the ceiling. ¡°Nah, chubbo,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s more complicated. And there¡¯s gotta be a reason for it, suzzo that people respect, otherwise they¡¯ll turn on you.¡± She casually waved the revolver in a circle to indicate the saloon. ¡°These people don¡¯t mind me? I¡¯ve done nothin¡¯ to them. That¡¯s the secret to movin¡¯ among them.¡± He was a little on edge. It was the scarf more than anything, long and red, brightly colored like it had just been dyed yesterday, different from all her other clothes. There was also something about her, the way she¡¯d sought him out, the casual violence, just a vibe that was twigging him. Half the people around looked like they could be thresholders, with little quirks and gizmos. He¡¯d already been on guard, in that calm, catlike way of second sphere. He could retreat into the shelf space if he had to. She slipped her revolver back into its holster. ¡°There¡¯s suzzo about the frontier, isn¡¯t there?¡± she asked. ¡°This place¡¯ll be different, once the harmo is here. Too many people already, yaskme.¡± ¡°I think everyone has a size that feels right for them,¡± said Perry. ¡°Smaller for you than others.¡± ¡°At least the sheriff is dead,¡± she said with a laugh. ¡°You weren¡¯t a fan?¡± asked Perry. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. ¡°Consortin¡¯ with a demon, can you believe that?¡± she asked. She clucked her tongue and leaned forward, then drank half her glass of beer in one go. ¡°Always the same with the people in power, I¡¯d bet every one of the Council are doin¡¯ whatever they please, which is the way to live a life, yaskme, but the thing they please is bossin¡¯ everyone else around.¡± ¡°Half the food they grow out here gets put on a train back to Char,¡± said Perry. It was a talking point that Perry had heard from some of the farmers. The economics of the frontier town seemed to be that farmers sent produce and cattle back to the city, while the city sent finished goods ordered by catalog to the town. The train was supposed to run regularly, and there was a small train yard to handle switching out cars, but the town was suffering under whatever scheduling issue was happening. ¡°And half that doesn¡¯t make it,¡± said Queenie. ¡°They¡¯ve told you about the Yuuks?¡± Perry nodded. The Yuuksen were the indigenous peoples of the Dusklands, at least as far as he could tell. They were alternately reviled or seen with curiosity, depending on who he¡¯d talked to, and they figured in stories only briefly, often violently. One of the men that Perry had spoken to was half Yuuksen on his father¡¯s side, a ¡°hayuuk¡±, though he didn¡¯t speak the language, and aside from maybe some different facial features, Perry wouldn¡¯t have been able to tell. ¡°They hate the rails,¡± said Queenie. ¡°And they hate the harmos more?¡± Again, there was that upward inflection on something that wasn¡¯t a question. ¡°So when a train carryin¡¯ a harmo doesn¡¯t show up ¡­ well, you know what I suspect, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Hrm,¡± said Perry. ¡°I guess I do.¡± ¡°We¡¯re takin¡¯ a pozzer out tomorrow, down the tracks, you should come,¡± she said, smiling at him, chip in her front tooth very prominent. ¡°Train won¡¯t be in, betcha, and you¡¯d get suzzo for the book.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯d need a horse though, and I don¡¯t expect that I¡¯d be much use.¡± ¡°Oh, no one would even expect that, chubbo,¡± she said with a wink. ~~~~ There were a few things that could mark a thresholder. A strange accent was one of them, an out of place weapon was another, strange magic that didn¡¯t fit, technology that was clearly from another time and place. Ideology was one of the main ones, though that was difficult to uncover. It was something that Perry had given a lot of thought to, because as Xiyan had proven, a thresholder who could slip in and pretend to have been a part of the world all along had a serious advantage, especially for a first strike. The problem with the Dusklands was that ¡°strange accent¡± and ¡°weird abilities¡± and ¡°out of place weapons¡± were all essentially the norm. Everyone had a strange accent, everyone came from somewhere else, and the posse that was gathered up had all kinds of strange weapons among them. There was a blunderbuss, an oversized crossbow, a spear decorated with all kinds of feathers, and a silvered rifle that was at least six feet long. Wyatt was with them, and he had a mechanical arm for fuck¡¯s sake, which should have clearly marked him as a thresholder. The Dusklands were just like that though, a melange of cultures and people, weird to the core, far more than the Wild West had ever been. He was given a horse, which he had no clue how to actually ride. He watched what everyone else was doing and tried to mimic that, hefting himself up into the saddle with a foot in the stirrup. The horse sat beneath him, and seemed not to care particularly much about having someone on its back. Perry had far better muscle strength and body awareness than a normal man, and so didn¡¯t have a terrible time of it, but it took some practice to get the right amount of tension in the reins, and he was thankful that the horse started following the others seemingly on its own. Of course, Perry had already claimed to have let a horse die out in the wilderness, and he was an ¡°educated dandy¡±, so if he was a poor horseman, no one would call him on it. Queenie came up alongside him, controlling her horse in a way that he watched closely to get it to slow down. ¡°I was thinkin¡¯?¡± she said. ¡°What¡¯s that book goin¡¯ to be about?¡± ¡°I still don¡¯t know,¡± said Perry. ¡°The pioneer spirit, what life out in the Flux is like, the melting pot of cultures, that sort of thing.¡± ¡°Melting pot,¡± she said with a smile. ¡°Yeh¡¯ve got poetry in yeh, eh?¡± ¡°All kinds of people coming from all over,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s something nice about that. I think the chance to reinvent yourself, to become someone new, that would appeal to people in the city, though of course I¡¯m mostly writing for myself.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t need to worry about sellin¡¯ it then?¡± asked Queenie. ¡°I do, some,¡± said Perry. ¡°But if you spend your time worrying about other people, I¡¯m not sure I like where you end up.¡± There were half a dozen of them, including Perry. A few he¡¯d met at the saloon, but two he hadn¡¯t. One of them was a dark-skinned man carrying the blunderbuss, heavily muscled and with a glass eye. The other was a small guy with a mustache that was wider than his head. He had a sword at his hip, along with a long cat¡¯s tail that flicked back and forth. No one seemed to find either of these men unusual. They followed the train tracks, going the direction that Perry had come from, which was in the direction of Charlonion. The horses moved slowly, slower than Perry had thought they would, more a mosey than a canter. ¡°Now,¡± said Wyatt, who was leading the posse, ¡°We¡¯re lookin¡¯ fer signs of the Yuuksen first and foremost, and we¡¯re doin¡¯ the two mile rule, should be back a¡¯fore nightfall that way.¡± Wyatt had no authority, he was just a busybody, but people seemed to listen to him all the same. The town had no representative of the law at the moment, not even a deputy who could step in, as the deputy had fled town when the sheriff was hanged. Perry wasn¡¯t sure what they were hoping to find. It was, so far as he knew, the nature of the Flux that distances varied, which was why they were only going two miles down the track. It was possible that they would have to go twenty miles to get back to town, though no one liked to talk about exact distances too much, maybe because it was useless. In the best case scenario, they would see a fraction of the track and then come back, and in the worst case scenario seeing a fraction of the track would take them the whole day. The distance to Taryton, the next town down the line, varied, but in the worst case, it was something like four hundred miles, and maybe even more than that, given that no one really seemed to trust ¡®worst case¡¯. Maybe you could get lost out there forever, under the right circumstances. But if the Yuuksen wanted to set up a train robbery, they could do it at literally any point along the track. The only way this expedition was going to find them was if they set up right next to the town, and there was simply no reason for them to do that. It was also very likely that the Yuuksen didn¡¯t have anything to do with the delay, and no designs on the train. They were about a mile into the trek before Perry realized that it was probably just security theater. They weren¡¯t going out to find some proof of malfeasance, they weren¡¯t expecting to see sabotaged tracks, the point was to come back and say they had checked so that everyone in town could feel a little less antsy about the late arrival of the train. ¡°What are the Yuuksen like?¡± asked Perry when the motion of the horses caused him to drift near to Wyatt. ¡°Oh, beastly people,¡± said Wyatt. He was chewing something, maybe tobacco, and spit a perfectly formed brown gob to the side. His mechanical arm was hanging down, temporarily non-functional ¡ª he needed to prime it to get it working for a bit, pumping a lever. ¡°The men move like the wind and strike like vipers, tall, brutish, sun-blackened skin.¡± ¡°No more than me,¡± said Michah, the man with the blunderbuss. ¡°Aren¡¯t you half?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°Nope,¡± replied Michah. ¡°I thought you was,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Well, I guess the Flux takes all types.¡± He turned back to Perry. ¡°And the women have a fire in them, and fire¡¯s not such a bad thing, if it can be tamed. They say a man who takes a Yuuk wife has to tend to her constantly, and a brothel with a Yuuk in it, well, wouldn¡¯t hardly ever need another woman, if you catch me.¡± ¡°Sounds like rank bigotry to me,¡± said Perry. He kept his tone mild and face blank, but he felt a bit of anger rising. ¡°Feh,¡± said Wyatt, spitting to the side again. He raised an eyebrow. ¡°You asked.¡± ¡°They¡¯re not so different,¡± said Queenie. ¡°Men aren¡¯t too strong, you just see the strong ones out and about, they keep the runts and the sick ones back at their camp, plus they know the Flux better¡¯n anyone in the Gulch. Women aren¡¯t sluts or whores or wild, it¡¯s just the ones you see come by here. The meek, the humble, they stay back at the camps too.¡± ¡°Feh again,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°You been to one of those camps?¡± ¡°Yes sir,¡± said Queenie. ¡°Two of ¡®em, ¡®fore I rolled into the Gulch. Decent place to hide out, and they won¡¯t kick you out unless you steal from ¡®em. Easy enough to bribe with ill-gotten gains.¡± ¡°Not sure I believe you¡¯re a criminal,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°You¡¯ve got too sweet a face for that.¡± He chuckled to himself, and Queenie chuckled too, in a way that Perry didn¡¯t quite understand ¡ª he didn¡¯t see the humor in it, and didn¡¯t see how she would see the humor in it. ¡°Most of ¡®em speak passable Commish,¡± said Queenie to Perry. ¡°They won¡¯t steal from you, so all you need is to tell ¡®em you mean no harm.¡± ¡°They won¡¯t steal, but they¡¯ll disrupt a train?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Different,¡± said Queenie. ¡°Much different. Train¡¯s a symbol to them, and a harmo is more than. They don¡¯t like settlers on their land, and who¡¯d blame ¡®em, but there¡¯s more of us than of them, and if they get rowdy, the Commission might step in. But suzzo like this? A train with a harmo on it?¡± ¡°They might attack, if they knew it was coming,¡± said Perry. ¡°And given a Yuuk can just stroll into town and take a seat at the saloon without anyone stopping him, it wouldn¡¯t be hard to spy.¡± ¡°Yuuks wouldn¡¯t do that,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°They might come in to trade and hear,¡± said Queenie. ¡°Chubbo¡¯s got a point.¡± ¡°Bah,¡± said Wyatt. He used his heels to urge his horse on, mostly to bring the conversation to a close. Perry had expected bigotry. Normally he wouldn¡¯t have called it out, given that he was pretending to be from their world, but he was fresh off Markat, and it felt like he had the leeway to push back against it, maybe because Wyatt clearly didn¡¯t have a lot of respect from the others. It was good that it hadn¡¯t evolved into a real discussion, because Perry wouldn¡¯t even know where to begin with trying to talk someone into believing that people were mostly just people. Of course, it was also possible that one day he would come to a world where that just wasn¡¯t the case, and there were elements of Markat that he¡¯d raised an eyebrow at, ways in which their notions of equality had seemed, perhaps, not rooted in truth. The saloon was mostly busty women in frilly skirts entertaining men, and it was clear that it wasn¡¯t a place that respectable women went. Queenie was the one exception, and she¡¯d been allowed to come with the posse too, with no complaints or even acknowledgement that she was a woman. Perry didn¡¯t know what to make of that, whether it was something in her manner, the way she dressed, or just an element of their culture he didn¡¯t understand. They were near to the two mile mark, at least as Wyatt was accounting it, when the terrain started going uphill. It was a fairly steep grade, but the tracks carved through the hill. There wasn¡¯t enough room on the sides for them to go along, and they didn¡¯t want to take the tracks themselves for fear of the train they were so worried about coming along, so they went up the side. ¡°This hill wasn¡¯t here when I came by,¡± said Perry. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t be, would it?¡± asked Wyatt. ¡°That¡¯s the Flux.¡± ¡°The tracks are carved through though,¡± said Perry. ¡°It just, uh, generates like this?¡± ¡°¡®Generates¡¯?¡± asked Wyatt with a laugh. ¡°Just how it is.¡± ¡°I mean,¡± said Perry. ¡°The rail line connects Grabler¡¯s Gulch to Taryton, and that¡¯s a constant, it¡¯s not going to change, right?¡± ¡°With ya so far,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°It¡¯s just ¡­ the exact path changes,¡± said Perry. ¡°The terrain changes. If we went counting the number of railroad ties, we¡¯d get different answers, but a train can go from Grabler¡¯s Gulch to Taryton, and there¡¯s all this evidence of work that ¡­ no one did?¡± ¡°Too much city livin¡¯,¡± said Wyatt with a cluck of his tongue that caused his horse to flick an ear. ¡°I just want to know how it works,¡± said Perry. ¡°The rail¡¯s a fact of the world,¡± said Cecil. He was hunched over on his horse, looking haggard. ¡°I helped build a bit of it, northeast of here. And once it¡¯s set, it¡¯s set, nothing¡¯s going to change it.¡± He had good diction, for a supposed sewer rat. ¡°You¡¯re right, new rail ties that were never there before, that¡¯s something the Flux does, it carves paths through hills, sometimes puts in some tunnels, bridges over rivers, all that sort of thing. Though some of that we have to build up.¡± ¡°Bridges are expensive choke points,¡± said Perry. ¡°The Yuuk don¡¯t target them?¡± ¡°Burn a bridge down, the bridge¡¯ll reappear,¡± said Cecil. He let out a burp that sent him upright in his saddle. He looked a bit better than he had. ¡°Rip up a rail tie, it¡¯ll be back by nightfall. I don¡¯t know how it works, but they run a current through the rail when they¡¯re building it, something like the harmonizer, but it keeps on working. The Yuuksen might want to tear it out, and they¡¯ve tried, but it¡¯s a fact of life once it¡¯s down. A fact of the Flux.¡± Perry pondered that. The harmonizer that was supposed to be on the way seemed like it intended to make Grabler¡¯s Gulch a ¡°fact of the Flux¡± in some way, to staple the town down, except the town didn¡¯t really seem to shift that much, and its population was apparently part of what kept it stable. In fact, he hadn¡¯t actually seen any terrain move around, though it was definitely different from what it had been before when he¡¯d been flying over the tracks. ¡°Yuuks,¡± said Queenie. It took Perry a moment to find them, which made him the second. They were on the other side, some ways down the track, barely perceptible, with horses of their own. They were another two miles away, maybe even more. ¡°Where?¡± asked Wyatt. Queenie pointed them out, and after a while, everyone agreed that they could, in fact, see Yuuks. ¡°Well ¡­ lick my shit, I guess,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Weren¡¯t expectin¡¯ that.¡± He squinted. ¡°How many we got, my eyes itch.¡± ¡°Six,¡± said Queenie without hesitation. ¡°They¡¯ve got horses too, but they¡¯re set up there. Probably have been for a while.¡± ¡°Nothin¡¯ for it but to have a chat,¡± said Wyatt. He let go of the reins to pump his mechanical arm, which began moving again as soon as he was finished. ¡°Let ¡®em know we won¡¯t hold with ¡­ Yuuk business.¡± ¡°If they¡¯re waiting around here, they¡¯re probably waiting for the same reason we are,¡± said Perry. ¡°They want the train.¡± Wyatt sucked his teeth. ¡°Then I suppose we must go and stop them.¡± Chapter 154 - Narrow Paths Perry didn¡¯t know what ¡°stop them¡± meant, but he hadn¡¯t even been issued with a weapon, and barely had control of his horse. He had no clue what kinds of weapons the Yuuks had, especially given the diversity of weapons within the posse. And there was, of course, the possibility that there would be a thresholder among them. There was a possibility that there was a thresholder in the posse, though Perry was starting to find that less likely. And there was a possibility that the train, if there was going to be a train, would be carrying the thresholder. The Yuuks were across the rail-split hill from the posse, and Perry was pretty sure that they¡¯d been spotted. They were moving, kicking up dust, and the Yuuks were stationary, camped as far as anyone could tell. If they¡¯d spotted the posse, they weren¡¯t making any clear moves, or at least not mounting their horses. If Marchand were up and running, Perry would have been able to zoom in and see them clearly. He probably would have been able to land a shot on one of them, at least if he had a high-powered precision rifle ¡ª which he didn¡¯t, because the one rifle he had in storage was amateur work created in Markat by technology from the Farfinder, not something carefully assembled by the United States military-industrial-complex. It was better than they probably had in the Dusklands, but not by that much. And of course Perry wouldn¡¯t just shoot at people for sitting next to some railroad tracks, even if he thought they were planning a train robbery. The posse moved more slowly than they¡¯d been moving before, which seemed unnecessary. Perry didn¡¯t imagine that the engagement distance would be further than two hundred yards, and that was if they had their own rifles. There was a rock outcropping on their side of where the rail had cut through, which would provide some cover if it came to a shootout, but they¡¯d be much closer at that point. ¡°Just scare ¡®em off,¡± said Wyatt, mostly to himself. ¡°Really shoulda been the sheriff¡¯s job, damn him.¡± The horses ambled along. It was a pleasant enough day, with a slight wind. No one had explained to Perry how weather worked in the Flux. The sky above was yellow and green, same as the day before, but now it was shot through with chartreuse, like veins in an eyeball. No one was commenting on it. ¡°Don¡¯t suppose anyone speaks Yuuk?¡± asked Wyatt when they were three hundred yards away. There were some general murmurs from the posse, mostly to the negative. Certainly no one knew enough to carry on a full conversation, but the Yuuks apparently took to learning Commish, so maybe it wasn¡¯t a problem. Perry stayed silent. He¡¯d be able to step in as translator, if need be, but the fluency he¡¯d be able to speak with would be shocking, and raise a lot of questions, particularly since it didn¡¯t match up with his backstory as a dandy scholar from the city who had never been out in the Flux before. He thought maybe he could figure out how to speak as though he had a poor grasp on the language, but that would take time, and wasn¡¯t something he could just do on the spot. The Yuuks did eventually mount up. There were six of them, just like Queenie had said from miles away. The gap between them was as wide as a rail car, and it was maybe twenty feet down to the tracks. It wasn¡¯t where Perry would have posted up, if he was interested in a train robbery, and if they were going to try to drop down onto a moving train¡­ well, he didn¡¯t like the odds of that actually working, but what did he know? Their leader wore a belt of bones and had his face painted, black in circles around the eyes and a horizontal stripe of red across his mouth. He was shirtless, but his skin wasn¡¯t particularly dark, and he was just as imposingly muscled as the people telling stories in the saloon had promised. He was wearing slacks that seemed to be the same as those worn by the people of Grabler¡¯s Gulch, and had a rifle unslung, held in one hand. He was barefoot and dusty. The rest of them were dressed a little less intimidatingly, though in clothes closer to what Perry would have expected, made of natural leathers. There were two women with them, though everyone was covered up pretty well. Their leader was the only one risking melanoma, it seemed. There were more rifles among them, all the same style. Their chief ¡ª or group leader ¡ª raised a hand with his fingers spread wide. ¡°How-dee,¡± he said across the gap. ¡°Howdy,¡± said Wyatt with a nod. ¡°Now, what¡¯re you folks doin¡¯ here?¡± ¡°Taking break,¡± the Yuuk replied. He gestured to the sky. ¡°Day beautiful, air fresh, no train stink.¡± ¡°Well, you folks should know yer right close to Grabler¡¯s Gulch, that¡¯s where we¡¯re all from, more or less, an¡¯ we¡¯re ¡®specting a train come through real soon.¡± Wyatt spat to the side. ¡°So if you could mosey on along, that would be much appreciated.¡± The Yuuk watched Wyatt carefully, and when he was done watching, his eyes scanned the rest of the posse, sizing them up one by one. ¡°We will stay,¡± he said. ¡°No, now you can¡¯t do that,¡± said Wyatt, shaking his head. ¡°You know well as I that the Commission protects their rails, and if someone¡¯s out here makin¡¯ life differcult, you answer to us, but you¡¯ll also answer to them, and I don¡¯t think you¡¯d like their questions too much.¡± He was using a different sort of voice, trying to project authority, and failing miserably. ¡°What we done that make life differcult?¡± asked the Yuuk, emphasizing the last word, mimicking the way Wyatt had said it. ¡°You know the train¡¯s comin¡¯,¡± said Wyatt. ¡°Don¡¯t pretend you don¡¯t know that, you hear them buzzing across the rails, there¡¯s no other reason you¡¯d be out here, and you know it. Now let¡¯s just ¡ª let¡¯s just all be civilized people, why don¡¯t we, and we can both go back where we came from?¡± Perry wasn¡¯t sure how much longer this all would have gone on, but Queenie turned to look down the tracks, and pretty soon, everyone else did too. A train was coming. Queenie was the first to act. She dismounted her horse and stepped to the edge of the gap between sides, looking down to see how much of a drop it was, then turned to face the train. ¡°Fire!¡± shouted Wyatt, with no warning, and he was, himself, shot shortly afterward, a plume of blood from his shoulder that twisted him around and caused him to fall from his saddle. Perry pulled the sword from the shelf space and abandoned the horse, hopping off it, getting behind one of the large rocks. There was a lot of gunfire, but the rifles didn¡¯t seem to hold more than a single shot. Two of the members of their posse had simply left when the gunfire started, or maybe even just before, and they were receding away. The guy with the cat tail was one of them, his tail all puffed up. When the gunfire stopped not too long after that, Perry was sitting with his back to the rock, listening to his dying horse, heart beating rapidly in his chest. He had his sword drawn and ready to go, and when he looked to the side, he saw Wyatt groaning on the ground, clutching his shoulder ¡ª the one made of flesh and bone. ¡°Hold fire! Miwpa, Posya, reload!¡± called the Yuuk, in their own language. He was crisp and clear, not halting at all. ¡°Shoot them unless they run!¡± He switched to Commish. ¡°Run now, be safe! Leave us!¡± The train was getting closer. It didn¡¯t quite buzz, but it wasn¡¯t doing the chugga-chugga thing either. Perry could just barely see it down the tracks. There was no plume of smoke rising from it, and it was quite some distance away. ¡°We should cross over, finish them,¡± said one of the other Yuuks, a woman. ¡°The goal is the train, the harmonizer,¡± said their leader. ¡°Get Poti back to the camp, we¡¯ll take care of this.¡± This must have been handled via signals, because Perry heard movements, a grunt of pain, and then the sound of at least one horse retreating. During this whole time, it wasn¡¯t clear where Queenie had gotten off to. Cecil was laying on the ground, breathing heavily but unhit, and Wyatt was bleeding, groaning in pain and trying to sit himself up, as inadvisable as that seemed. The posse hadn¡¯t just been defeated, it had been shattered. The train was getting closer, the loud droning sound growing in volume. The Yuuks were planning to jump down onto it, which felt insane to Perry. How many feet down would they have to drop? How fast would the train be going? It seemed to him like you¡¯d have to be extremely skilled or extremely lucky to not just fall down and land on the tracks, which in this case meant hitting the side wall of the carved-through area and falling down next to the rail, if not on it. But they were doing it, and that meant that he was going to do it too, though he had second sphere and a sword that would let him fly. ¡°The girl is down there,¡± said the leader of the Yuuks. ¡°She¡¯s going to get hit,¡± said the same woman who suggested crossing over. Perry couldn¡¯t see them, but he thought he could recognize the voices. ¡°She¡¯s just standing there, waiting for it? How did she get down there?¡± Queenie was planning her own heist. The idea came into Perry¡¯s mind and it wouldn¡¯t leave, which meant that was going to be what he assumed going forward. How she was going to do that while standing directly on the tracks was unclear, but she¡¯d readily admitted to being a bandit of some kind, or bandit adjacent, and there were all kinds of powers, whether she was the enemy thresholder or not. ¡°Ready yourself,¡± said their leader. ¡°Posya, the horses, Miwya, cross and loot the bodies.¡± Perry timed it more to the approaching sound of the train than to anything else. He turned himself around, crouched down, listening closely, then when the train came, he made his move, launching himself over the edge. He had seen the train stretched out in all its glory as soon as his head popped up. It was at least twenty cars all told, with a main engine that was sleek and brass, and a tank of something behind it. The others varied in height and make, and Perry landed on the second-to-last of them, rolling slightly and then finding his footing. The whole thing was far slower than he¡¯d imagined it would be, maybe twenty miles an hour, slow enough that he could have just followed it with the sword. When Perry got to his feet, he looked down the length of the train and saw, as predicted, that he wasn¡¯t alone. Two of the Yuuks, their leader and the woman, were ten cars away from him, in the middle of the train. Beyond them, Queenie was standing at the front of the train with her red scarf whipping in the wind. The scarf was now at least twenty feet long, and as Perry watched, it wrapped itself around her with no clear effort on her part. The Yuuk leader raised his rifle at Perry, but they were two hundred yards away from each other, on a moving platform, and he thought better of taking the shot. Stolen novel; please report. Perry ran forward, leaping over the first gap between cars. There was wind from the movement of the train, but it wasn¡¯t enough to slow him down. The roof of the car was covered in dust, but his boots had just enough traction to keep him moving. The Yuuks slid down between a gap in the train cars, leaving Queenie far down at the other end of the train. She watched Perry for a moment, then stepped forward and dropped down without so much as bracing herself, removing herself from view. Perry kept running forward. He had to assume that they were all going for the harmonizer, wherever in the train that would be carried. He had no idea what he was looking for, whether it would be small enough to carry or whether they¡¯d have to stop the train. They were only three or four miles from Grabler¡¯s Gulch, depending on how space had warped around them, which meant the train would be stopping soon, and that put a time limit on any kind of heist. Half an hour? More? When he was at the car just before where the Yuuks had climbed down, he let himself fall between the cars, landing on a small, swaying walkway. He was faced with wooden doors whose glass windows were rattling, and he took a breath, then opened it up. He was in a passenger car, and faces turned to look at him. There were maybe twenty people, including one group that was clearly a family, and one man without a face at all, not even a mouth, who Perry elected to ignore. ¡°Has anyone been through here?¡± Perry asked. He was holding his sword, unsheathed, which was a bit of a threat. ¡°No sir,¡± said a man in a black bowler hat and a mustache that hung down to cover his mouth. ¡°You a lawman?¡± ¡°Concerned citizen,¡± said Perry. He started making his way through the car, then stopped. ¡°There¡¯s a harmonizer on this train, is it forward or back?¡± ¡°Not sure how we¡¯d know that, sir,¡± said the man in the bowler hat. ¡°It¡¯s at the front of the train!¡± said one of the small children dressed in a neatly pleated skirt. ¡°I saw it!¡± Her father gripped her by the shoulder, and Perry gave the girl a small salute, then made his way forward. He was worried that someone was going to stop him, but they didn¡¯t. He went through the door, out into the walkway, and then through another door to the next car, which must have been the one that the Yuuks had gone through. This one was a luggage car, with trunks stacked up along the walls, along with some furniture from people who must have been moving. Perry moved cautiously, worried that someone would pop out with a knife, but there was no one, just the collected belongings of the train¡¯s passengers. There was no sign of the Yuuks, or Queenie, or anyone else. The car after that had a heavy door, and there had at one point been a lock on it, but that had been eaten through by some unknown substance or technique, leaving behind metal that had melted and already cooled down, if it hadn¡¯t been some kind of acid. Perry was ready for a fight, but there was only one man in the next car, and he was dead. He had a small office that faced outside the train, with a flap that could clearly raise up or down, letting people come up to him. All around were packages and pieces of mail, which was all relatively mundane, except that there were also all kinds of caged animals, most of them with wings. Perry would have guessed that they were carrier pigeons, but there were owls and ravens too, along with a number of bats hanging upside down in cages with curtains drawn over them. His mind was swimming with questions about all that, but there was a train robbery to stop. In the car after that, he found the harmonizer, and the Yuuks along with it. They had killed three men in the room, and there was a fourth that was gasping for breath and bleeding from a hole in his chest. The harmonizer was a pink sphere not more than a handbreadth across, slightly translucent and giving off its own light that was bathing the inside of the train car. It had been extracted from some kind of container that was bolted directly to the floor, and its locks had been sliced through by the same method that had been used to get through the door to the mail car. Before Perry could speak, the Yuuk leader raised a pistol and started firing at him. Perry lifted his sword to parry it, and caught two of the three bullets before the six-shooter was dry. The third caused a sharp pain in his right pectoral, and he glanced down to see that he¡¯d been hit. Blood was soaking through his shirt, and he shifted the flow of energy through his meridians, putting more healing power there, draining the Wolf Vessel to stanch the bleeding. He went forward with the sword as the Yuuk pulled out a long knife. The woman had hold of the glowing sphere, and she was getting away with it. With his eyes on her, he almost missed the Yuuk grabbing a waterskin from his waist. He brought it to his lips, sucked in, then spat it at Perry. Perry raised his sword defensively, and the black liquid splattered against it. The Yuuk gave a wild-eyed smile, which fell slightly as nothing happened. They went at each other, and it wasn¡¯t particularly close. Perry was just too fast, too strong, and probably could have caught the Yuuk¡¯s knife between his fingers. Instead, Perry¡¯s first strike was simply overpowering. His muscles were hard steel, his stance perfect, and his sword slipped cleanly between the Yuuk¡¯s ribs, straight into his heart. The Yuuk backed away, holding his knife up defensively, staggering. He looked over at the woman, who was in the middle of leaving with the harmonizer, and she stared at him with wide eyes, then fled. Perry went after her. She was out the door, moving up the train, and he ran after, bashing through the door she¡¯d tried to slam in his face. The next car was filled with coffins, all stacked on top of each other, labeled carefully on the corners, arranged so that they would be easy to take out or put in. The place smelled of death, flesh and formaldehyde, and Perry couldn¡¯t fathom why they would be there, but he didn¡¯t have time to worry about that, because the Yuuk woman was racing along the narrow walkway that separated the rows of coffins. She just barely managed to escape his grasp as she went out the back door, and rather than going to the next car, she vaulted over the swaying railing and off the train entirely. Perry followed her, sword out, and he landed gently on his feet as she was scrambling to get up. ¡°Stop,¡± he said to her. She kept running, and he ran after her, much faster. ¡°Stop!¡± he called to her, this time in her language. She turned back to look at him, maybe because of the volume, or the way he¡¯d said it, more than the word, but it caused her to stumble. She fell against the sandy dirt and cried out. The pink sphere had been in her grip, but she let go of it, and Perry plucked it up from the ground. She was up on her feet with a knife in her hand in an instant. ¡°Let go,¡± she said. She spoke English, or Commish as they called it here, at least a few words. ¡°No,¡± Perry replied, holding it back. ¡°I will kill you,¡± she said, knife held out. She was in a fighting stance, ready to move on him. She was hesitating though. The last car of the train had passed them, and there was no sign of Queenie or anyone else. Perry realized that his chance to catch up was now ¡ª he had the harmonizer, and if he let the train get out of sight, who knew how far away it might get. He let it pass though. With the sword, he could go almost as fast as it, and he didn¡¯t want to face down Queenie, not at the moment. ¡°My name is Perry,¡± he said, placing his hand on his chest and speaking as clearly as he could. ¡°You¡¯re under arrest.¡± She came at him with the knife, and he would have been well within his rights to kill her. Instead, he tossed his sword to the side and grabbed the wrist that held the knife, gripped it hard enough that she cried out in pain and dropped the knife, then pulled it behind her back and held her there with one arm. She reared back and tried to kick him in the groin, but Perry was too fast for that, and drew her arm higher, until she yelped and went still. ¡°Do you understand ¡®arrest¡¯?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± she replied. ¡°They¡¯ll kill me.¡± ¡°Hmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°Might be.¡± He opened the shelf space and looked into it. It was just out of her view, unless she turned around. He had rope in there, but it was further in, and he didn¡¯t think he could grab it while holding her. He let the shelf space close. ¡°I¡¯m going to release your arm now, if you try to run away, I¡¯m going to have to grab you again.¡± He released her, and she immediately ran. Perry sighed and went after her. He still had the harmonizer, but with the sword he was able to move at many times her speed, and he elected to fly up into the air and drop down from above, kicking up dust and snatching her wrist. He¡¯d left the sword flying above them. ¡°I don¡¯t want to have to kill you,¡± he said. She struggled and he held her firm. He was many times stronger than her. It wasn¡¯t a contest. ¡°You want to sell me,¡± she said. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want answers and justice, in that order.¡± He hesitated. ¡°Let me know if there¡¯s a word you don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°I speak fine,¡± she replied. He could have switched to her language, whatever the Yuuks spoke, but he¡¯d keep that in his back pocket until he needed it. It would raise all kinds of questions back in town, and while he probably could have spun a story, it was better not to do that. ¡°We¡¯re going to Grabler¡¯s Gulch,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re going to walk there. You¡¯re going to tell me everything you know.¡± Her eyes went to the harmonizer that was still in his hand. ¡°And you¡¯re going to give me that satchel,¡± he said. She used her free hand to take the satchel off her shoulder, and Perry put it around him. It was made of animal skin, though it was hard to say what. Cow, maybe. Perry placed the harmonizer into the satchel, but held onto the woman the whole time. ¡°I need your name,¡± he said. ¡°Anaksi,¡± she replied. She was watching his face, and he gave nothing away. He was pretty sure it wasn¡¯t actually her name, because in her language it meant ¡®no name¡¯. ¡°Anaksi, we¡¯re going to walk along these tracks back to Grabler¡¯s Gulch, then they¡¯re going to deal with you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Do you understand all that?¡± ¡°I said I knew ¡®arrest¡¯,¡± she replied. ¡°And while we walk, you¡¯re going to give me answers,¡± said Perry. She glared at him. ¡°To what questions?¡± ¡°Let¡¯s walk,¡± said Perry. They took their first steps down the railroad tracks together. His hand was still on her upper arm, not tight, but present. He could have let her walk on her own, there was no danger that she would actually escape, but he didn¡¯t want to have to stop the escape attempts. ¡°Let¡¯s start with this,¡± said Perry. Small rocks crunched beneath his boots. ¡°How did your people know a harmonizer was coming?¡± Anaksi was quiet for a while. ¡°We did not know.¡± ¡°You¡¯re lying,¡± said Perry. Anaksi was silent for a time. ¡°I just want the truth,¡± said Perry. ¡°The town lost its sheriff and deputy, so I¡¯m as much the law as anyone there.¡± ¡°A woman came to us,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°She told us.¡± ¡°Hrm,¡± said Perry. ¡°The woman who dropped down in front of the train?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°She was Eeshkee.¡± The name translated to something like ¡®of the people¡¯, and when Perry tried to feel the meaning of the word, he felt like he would translate it back to Yuuksen. ¡°I don¡¯t know what that means,¡± said Perry. ¡°Eeshkee,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Yuuksen.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the difference?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t call yourself the Yuuksen?¡± But as soon as he¡¯d asked, he realized that he knew the answer to that, through the miracle of translation. ¡°Yuuksen means enemy,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°They call you your own word for enemy,¡± said Perry. ¡°Wow.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°They don¡¯t know what it means. Long ago, someone from a tribe far from here, with a different tongue, was asked the name of his neighbors to the north. He said Yuuksen. They asked him the name of his neighbors to the west. He said Yuuksen. They would point out tribes, and say ¡®these are Yuuksen?¡¯ and he would say yes.¡± Perry wondered whether that was true. It wouldn¡¯t be the first time two civilizations met and had a major translation error. The Yucatan Peninsula was named that because when conquistadors asked the Mayans for the region name, they had responded back with something like ¡®listen to how these guys talk¡¯, and that became the name of the whole region. He didn¡¯t miss that it was the longest answer he¡¯d gotten from her. Maybe she was warming to him, or maybe she just hated being called a Yuuk. ¡°So a woman came and told you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Is that usual?¡± ¡°No,¡± replied Anaksi. ¡°She might have been a trickster.¡± They kept walking. Perry had lost track of distances, but there was no one around them. They should have been closer to the town than anyone else, but it was possible he was misunderstanding how the Flux worked, because no one had given him that good of a model. He could have asked his captive, but he wasn¡¯t sure she¡¯d be able to explain it either. ¡°I¡¯ll try to make sure that there¡¯s some clemency for you,¡± Perry said. ¡°Some lenience, some charity.¡± ¡°Why?¡± asked Anaksi. ¡°You didn¡¯t kill anyone,¡± said Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t know that,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°I saw your knife,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was clean, no blood. The man you were with, he did the killing.¡± ¡°My husband,¡± said Anaksi. They walked for a while more. Perry wasn¡¯t sure how to respond to that. He had almost said, ¡®sorry¡¯, just out of habit. He could have said that he didn¡¯t know, which was true, but also somewhat beside the point. And he could have protested that he was only acting in self-defense, or that her husband was clearly a killer, but they were both aware of those things. Eventually enough time had passed that the conversation was in the past. ¡°Your people,¡± said Perry. ¡°Will they let the harmonizer stand? Or will they descend on the town?¡± Anaksi barked out a laugh. ¡°Do you imagine that we¡¯ll sit by?¡± Perry didn¡¯t imagine that, no. Which was one reason he was taking her with him: she was a hostage. Chapter 155 - Walking the Line ¡°Tell me about your people,¡± Perry said as they walked alongside the tracks. Anaksi was favoring one foot. She was silent, then looked at him, confused. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not from the region,¡± said Perry. ¡°I want to know.¡± She looked ahead, still silent, face set. His hand was on her arm, but she wasn¡¯t straining against him, and he was holding her only loosely. He was fairly certain that if he removed his hand, she¡¯d bolt, no matter how fast he¡¯d shown himself to be. She had long, braided black hair, an expressive face, thick eyebrows, and a wide nose. Her clothes were all animal hide, with fringe in a few places, covering her legs and body. Complicated ties at the front kept it closed, and she was dressed in layers, with something linen beneath the hide. She was sweating in the sun, or from the exertion of the train, or from trying to run from him, though she was more resigned now than she¡¯d been. ¡°Do you mean Yuuksen or Eeshkee?¡± she asked. ¡°You said that you were Eeshkee, that Yuuksen meant ¡®enemy¡¯,¡± he said. ¡°We use the word,¡± she replied. ¡°It means ¡­ all.¡± Perry considered that. ¡°Eeshkee is the tribe, Yuuksen are the whole of all tribes?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± she replied. ¡°You call the whole of all tribes ¡®Yuuksen¡¯, which means ¡®enemy¡¯,¡± he repeated, trying to get clarity. ¡°It¡¯s not an Eeshkee word,¡± she replied. ¡°Still,¡± he said. They walked together for a bit more. How many miles lay ahead of them was impossible to say, except that it probably was possible if you knew how the Flux operated. Perry was pretty sure that there was a lower bound and upper bound for distance, and that both were shrinking as they walked. ¡°Tell me about the Yuuksen as a whole,¡± said Perry. ¡°We were here before,¡± said Anaksi. She looked at him, as though waiting for him to gainsay her, like this was in question. ¡°We had no guns, no harmonizers, no trains, no cattle, no horses. We had our ways, built over time, by our ancestors.¡± She paused. ¡°Everything was impermanent. We had copper, gold, silver, but no iron. Our houses were skins, fur, wood, things that were replaced and repaired. We didn¡¯t have such cities. We knew our kin.¡± ¡°Your Commish is good,¡± said Perry. She shrugged. ¡°You speak in the past tense, the way things were,¡± said Perry. ¡°The old ways are dead and dying,¡± Anaksi replied. ¡°We ride horses, we shoot guns. We speak your language. We¡¯re penned in by your railroads, killed by your Commission. We are changed from what we were when the Char scoured this land.¡± ¡°Charlonion?¡± asked Perry. Anaksi looked at him. ¡°It came from the sky, twisting down, landing hard.¡± She mimed with her hands, and he felt her arm move where his hand was on her. It might have been a test, to see how much leeway she had. ¡°When?¡± asked Perry. She looked at him again. ¡°You have your own understanding.¡± ¡°Right,¡± said Perry. ¡°But I don¡¯t know what the Yuuks say about it.¡± He watched her as she said the word, ¡®Yuuks¡¯, but she betrayed no reaction. Maybe, in spite of what she¡¯d said earlier, it was neutral. ¡°We count time by the generation,¡± Anaksi said. ¡°It has been thirteen since the Char came down.¡± ¡°Er,¡± said Perry. ¡°And in terms of years, a generation is ¡­ ?¡± ¡°You want to reduce our understanding to yours?¡± asked Anaksi. Her voice was sharp. He wanted to have some knowledge of when this was all supposed to have happened, but he didn¡¯t even know the current time as the Commission would have reckoned it. But thirteen generations, assuming they were biologically normal humans, meant between twenty and thirty years, so maybe two hundred to three hundred years. ¡°I¡¯m writing a book,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯ve heard of such a thing,¡± said Anaksi. Her voice was still sharp. ¡°Look, I just want ¡ª just information, that¡¯s all.¡± It wasn¡¯t the time, though he needed to know. He was marching her toward what might possibly be her death, depending on what the people of the Gulch would do with her. ¡°You are no writer,¡± she replied. ¡°You handle a sword too well.¡± ¡°If the writers don¡¯t know how to fight and the warriors don¡¯t know how to read, then the wars will be fought by the illiterate and the books will be written by cowards,¡± said Perry. He was pretty sure he¡¯d mangled the quote. ¡°You¡¯re Commission,¡± she said. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°You knew when the train was coming,¡± she said. ¡°Again, no,¡± said Perry. ¡°I think that woman might have though.¡± ¡°You move like a killer,¡± she said. She pulled at his grip on her, though not hard enough that he needed to tighten up. ¡°Your husband killed quite a few people,¡± said Perry. ¡°He killed for a purpose,¡± said Anaski. Her Commish really was remarkably good, if with a strong accent. She knew a breadth of words, and didn¡¯t trip over them, even if she was sometimes slow. That raised considerable questions which probably had answers, if only he could get her to explain. Had she lived in one of these towns? Gone to some kind of residential school? It was clear that the Commission was trying to settle the land, or maybe that the Commission was taking advantage of other people settling the land, and campaigns of violence went along with that. It wasn¡¯t clear to him whether the Commission actually had an army, but he would have wagered they at least had something like it. She could have been orphaned, kidnapped, all kinds of bad things. Her Commish was notably better than her husband¡¯s. ¡°How does it affect your people, the harmonizer?¡± asked Perry. ¡°All these questions,¡± she said, grunting at him. ¡°We could have silence.¡± So they walked in silence, for at least a mile. There was still no sign of the train, the town, or anyone else. Her limp got worse. ¡°I need water,¡± Anaski said. Perry didn¡¯t have any water. He hadn¡¯t been issued a canteen, which seemed like an oversight. There had been spares on the other horses, water was something you couldn¡¯t take for granted, but he hadn¡¯t even considered it. He didn¡¯t really need water, not with second sphere. He probably could have eschewed eating and drinking for a few days, in the same way that he could go without breathing for a bit, if he had to. ¡°There¡¯s a skin in the purse,¡± said Anaski. Perry reached into the satchel with his free hand and opened it up. He hadn¡¯t looked inside. The harmonizer was sitting there, still with the unearthly pink glow to it, and there was a waterskin beside it. It looked like it had been made from an animal bladder or something like that, with a wooden stopper on the top. Some of it had leaked during the fight, but only a little, and he pulled it out to hand to her. ¡°Wait,¡± she said. Perry pulled to a stop. ¡°And let go of me,¡± she said. Perry released her. There was a chance that the waterskin held something other than water, something dangerous, but he wasn¡¯t particularly worried about that. The waterskin her husband had used contained something strange, but it hadn¡¯t seemed to work at all. She drank from the waterskin, gulping the water down, then held it out to him. He waved her away. ¡°You¡¯re not thirsty?¡± she asked. ¡°After the train, the fighting?¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Besides, I don¡¯t want to risk being poisoned.¡± She watched his face, then shrugged her shoulders and took another drink. ¡°How much further to town?¡± he asked. ¡°We won¡¯t make it there before nightfall,¡± she said. ¡°How do you know that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We are taught the ways of the land from birth,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°That¡¯s not an answer,¡± said Perry. ¡°We read the skies,¡± said Anaksi, pointing straight up. ¡°And a train¡¯s passing makes a destination long.¡± She handed him the waterskin, and he took a swig of it in spite of himself, then placed it into the pouch. ¡°It would be shorter if we had no destination?¡± asked Perry. ¡°And shorter still if I weren¡¯t along,¡± said Anaksi. Her eyes were on him. They flickered down to his shirt. ¡°You were ¡­ only grazed?¡± Perry looked down at where blood had stained his shirt. He¡¯d deflected two of the three bullets, but the third had hit him, passing through the meat of his pectoral and into the periphery of the lung. It had passed back out, missing his ribs both ways. He¡¯d felt some shortage of breath, but he¡¯d been circulating energy as a matter of course, diverting his blood around the wound, helping it to clot quickly, and the lung itself was now almost completely healed thanks to the vital energy. He would have a mild shortness of breath if he was breathing normally, but he was drawing energy from the air as well as breath, and using some of that. Even a shot to the heart wouldn¡¯t have been fatal, not if he had time and energy. This was almost a best case scenario. He had very definitely not been grazed. She was able to see that. ¡°Oh god, I¡¯ve been shot!¡± shouted Perry, looking down at his chest. She took a step backward when he said it, and her brown eyes went up and down him, but she didn¡¯t bolt. The joke didn¡¯t seem to have landed, which was, perhaps, predictable. ¡°Humor doesn¡¯t transcend cultural barriers very well,¡± said Perry. He poked at the wound. ¡°I¡¯m fine, thanks for asking.¡± ¡°They say the Commission has many powers,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Even the power over death itself.¡± ¡°There are rumors,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s in the Commission¡¯s interest to spread those rumors far and wide.¡± She looked skeptically at the bullet wound. ¡°Let¡¯s keep moving,¡± said Perry. ¡°We won¡¯t make it there by nightfall,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Not if we walk for ten hours. We have nothing to camp with, no equipment.¡± ¡°What was the plan then, when you got on the train?¡± asked Perry. ¡°We would ride the train to Grabler¡¯s Gulch,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°There would be men waiting for us there.¡± ¡°Walk and talk,¡± said Perry. She did, grudgingly, and this time Perry didn¡¯t have a hand on her arm. He liked it better that way, as though she wasn¡¯t a prisoner. She was still limping, maybe worse than before. ¡°And these men, would they have horses?¡± asked Perry. ¡°They would steal them,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°And that plan is now shot,¡± said Perry. Anaksi nodded, which Perry found curious. He couldn¡¯t remember whether that was universal to humans, but he didn¡¯t think it was. He tucked it away for later, a piece of evidence of something, one way or another. She spoke well enough, and even the nonverbal seemed to match. ¡°Then what¡¯s your plan now?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No plan,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°We¡¯ll have to sleep under the stars. Hopefully we won¡¯t die. If we survive, then there will be a new plan.¡± ¡°You¡¯re going to try to stay up, then run away in the middle of the night,¡± said Perry. Anaksi raised an eyebrow. ¡°It¡¯s not safe to run in the night. We¡¯ll see what the moon has in store for us.¡± ¡°They don¡¯t talk much about the moon here,¡± said Perry. ¡°They wouldn¡¯t,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Our fates are linked,¡± said Perry. ¡°You¡¯re going to have to help me survive.¡± Anaksi laughed. ¡°I saw the hole in you. You don¡¯t need my help.¡± ¡°You know the horrors of the Flux better than I do,¡± said Perry. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t help you if I could, evil stranger.¡± This last she said in her own language, and he didn¡¯t get the sense that he was being tested, only that she wanted to insult him. Another hour passed. They weren¡¯t making good time. She¡¯d started off favoring one foot over the other, and it had turned into a limp, which was now pronounced, which she hadn¡¯t brought up. That might very well have been part of some scheme or trap, it was hard to say. Still, she¡¯d jumped from a train going at least twenty miles an hour, and it was possible that she¡¯d twisted or sprained something in such a way that it was only now becoming an issue. He would find out if she tried to run again, he supposed. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. There really was no one else around. The train tracks were the only thing around, and without them, Perry would have been utterly lost, mostly because there was no sun in the sky. The region was a mix of grassland and scrubland, and he imagined that from above, it would look unnaturally splotchy. They hit a stretch of great rolling prairie, and Perry gave up all hope of explaining it in terms of normal biomes. He had a burning curiosity about the Flux and how it actually worked. ¡°They run a current through the rail, then it gets pinned down?¡± asked Perry. ¡°It ¡­ becomes a permanent feature of the Flux?¡± ¡°You know more than I do, fat-headed bovine,¡± said Anaksi. She had apparently gotten a taste for calling him names. ¡°This prairie wasn¡¯t here,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s only the track itself, not the stuff on either side of the track?¡± ¡°It is logic, in the words of your people,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Logic,¡± said Perry. He looked up and down the tracks. Maybe he was seeing things, but it seemed as though she had a flash of opportunity, like she had thought it was her chance to run. ¡°Explain logic?¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know,¡± she said flatly, almost an accusation. ¡°I¡¯m from the city,¡± Perry replied, as though that meant anything. ¡°A train runs through here,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Yes?¡± ¡°Er, yes,¡± said Perry. ¡°This is known,¡± she nodded. ¡°And a train has a course, yes?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± replied Perry. ¡°This, also, is known,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Okay,¡± said Perry slowly. ¡°This is what I¡¯m stuck on, because there¡¯s an upper bound for the distance to the Gulch, and a lower bound, and we¡¯re always making progress ¡ª¡± ¡°No,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Not always.¡± ¡°But it¡¯s known,¡± said Perry. ¡°It¡¯s logic. You take a step and you get closer to your destination.¡± ¡°Where are you now?¡± asked Anaksi. ¡°I don¡¯t know. Somewhere between Grabler¡¯s Gulch and Taryton,¡± said Perry. ¡°Closer to the former than the latter.¡± ¡°And where will you be in five steps?¡± asked Anaksi. ¡°I guess I¡¯d give the same answer,¡± said Perry. Anaksi nodded. ¡°So it might take infinite time to get back to the Gulch,¡± said Perry. ¡°Except that in practice, that doesn¡¯t happen often. Hardly ever, I would guess.¡± ¡°Mmm,¡± she replied. ¡°To walk is useful. But a step can take you further from where you wish to go.¡± ¡°Meaning, what?¡± asked Perry. ¡°That the path we¡¯ve walked might be taking us toward Taryton?¡± ¡°Possible,¡± nodded Anaksi. ¡°And the train affected that somehow?¡± asked Perry. ¡°Yes,¡± replied Anaksi. Perry was pretty sure that once Marchand was up and running, they¡¯d be able to make a good mathematical model of it. If a step you intended to take toward the Gulch could take you away from the Gulch on occasion, then there was some kind of probabilistic process happening, weighted toward progress, if he could even be said to have a concrete position before reaching the Gulch. Mette would have been able to figure it out without needing a robot¡¯s help. After that conversation, the railroad tracks seemed more like a lifeline than they had before. He was very aware that if he went away from them, they might not be there when he got back, having moved somewhere else, and he didn¡¯t have a good sense of direction, though he thought there must be some way that these people knew north from south. He hadn¡¯t thought to ask Wyatt, and it hadn¡¯t seemed like a big deal at the time. Did they have compasses? He didn¡¯t know that either. He hadn¡¯t seen anyone consult one. Anaksi¡¯s limp kept getting worse. He had her stop, though only because she hadn¡¯t asked for a stop on her own, and got down to look at it, against her protests. She stayed still as he lifted the edge of her animal hide leggings, and she winced in pain as his fingers made contact. The ankle was swollen. Maybe it had started as a mild injury and gotten worse with time. ¡°You¡¯re not going to be able to walk on this,¡± said Perry. ¡°No,¡± she admitted. Perry sucked his teeth. ¡°Alright, no choice but to heal it.¡± ¡°No,¡± she said, pulling her leg back from him. ¡°You¡¯d rather be left here to die?¡± asked Perry. ¡°No chance to steal the harmonizer in the middle of the night?¡± She grimaced and extended her leg to him. ¡°Tell me what you¡¯re doing. And why.¡± Perry placed a hand on the swollen ankle, and she winced in pain again, covering her reaction more poorly this time. ¡°I¡¯m directing some of my vital energy to you,¡± said Perry. ¡°Same thing that healed the gunshot.¡± She watched him carefully. ¡°I¡¯m going to touch you now,¡± he said. She nodded slowly. Perry was a bit shit at healing, if he was being honest. He¡¯d tried, he¡¯d practiced, but he had never quite been able to get it. He had energy, and that energy could make things function in the ways that he thought they ought to function, which was how it could repair Marchand¡¯s systems that he had no specific knowledge of, or knit together clothes whose fibers he couldn¡¯t see. But projecting that energy outward in this subtle way was difficult. Still, a sprain seemed like a best case scenario, if it was a sprain. Perry¡¯s medical knowledge was minimal, but he was fairly sure that a sprain was just some overstretching of a ligament, and the only reason that she was doing so poorly with it was that he¡¯d forced her to walk on it without much rest. After fifteen minutes, the swelling had gone down, but it wasn¡¯t clear how much of that was from rest and how much was his attempts at pushing energy into her. He¡¯d kept his explanation brief, because explaining vessels, meridians, and spirit roots felt like it might take all day, and was another thing that he was trying to keep under wraps in any event. Still, he told her more than he thought was probably wise. Maybe it was to assuage his own guilt. Eventually, he had her stand and put weight on it, then take a tentative step. ¡°Can all in the Commission manage such things?¡± asked Anaksi when she found she was able to walk. ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°And it diminished you, to do this thing for me?¡± she asked. ¡°Not very much,¡± said Perry. ¡°It was more difficult than expensive.¡± He touched his fingers to the bullet hole in his shirt. ¡°This one was more expensive than difficult.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± she said. ¡°Let¡¯s get going,¡± said Perry. He wasn¡¯t sure how far to push her, but he was hoping that Grabler¡¯s Gulch would appear on the horizon like the rising sun, or maybe that members of the posse would show up on horseback to make the whole thing take less time. He would have been fine to walk for days, if he had to, suppressing the need for sleep and keeping his body in shape. He was using precious little of his energy, refilling the stores through breathing deeply and taking in some of the textured energy of the land. He allowed the second sphere to do its work, and in the course of that, allowed the shirt to clean itself, blood fading away and bullet hole knitting itself closed. Anaksi noticed, but didn¡¯t say anything. ¡°We¡¯re out of water,¡± she said at their next break. ¡°We¡¯ll have to find some.¡± ¡°How are we going to do that?¡± asked Perry. ¡°A stream,¡± she replied. She pointed at the horizon, away from the tracks. ¡°That way.¡± ¡°No,¡± said Perry. ¡°Without water, we¡¯ll die,¡± she said. ¡°Delirium follows thirst. You haven¡¯t been drinking enough.¡± Perry frowned at her and placed the empty water skin back in the satchel. ¡°Turn around and close your eyes,¡± he said. ¡°Why?¡± she asked. ¡°Just do it, alright?¡± he asked. She turned around, and presumably closed her eyes. Perry opened up the shelf space so it was facing her, then stepped into it backward, so he could keep an eye on her. He was thankful that he¡¯d kept food and water relatively close to the entrance. There were three dozen carafes of water with cork stoppers, all of them sterilized as much as they could be, and he put two into the satchel. For food, there were tins of it, meal prep as good at the culture of Markat could do it. He took four of those, along with two forks. So far as Perry could tell, Anaksi had not moved. He stepped out of the shelf and closed it behind him. ¡°Alright, done,¡± said Perry. She turned around to look at him, and he could tell she was immediately distrustful of his bounty. ¡°Where did it come from?¡± she asked. ¡°Take it or leave it,¡± said Perry. ¡°We¡¯re stopping for supper.¡± It would have been better to build a fire, but the food was serviceable at room temperature. It was one of the worst meals that Perry had eaten in recent memory, stewed peas and some kind of root vegetables, with a little of what might have been meat. Anaksi picked at it, then after deciding that it was good, started eating it with gusto, finishing before him. ¡°What do your people eat?¡± he asked. ¡°Bulbs, berries, nuts, roots, seeds,¡± she replied. ¡°Corn, squash, beans, if we have access to water. Meat from the animals.¡± Perry nodded. ¡°You do farming.¡± ¡°To farm requires staying still,¡± she said. ¡°It was more common before your people came.¡± ¡°And in the Flux, that means ¡­ someone has to stay near the crops?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You don¡¯t understand the Flux,¡± she said, turning her head to the side. ¡°I¡¯m trying to,¡± said Perry. ¡°We make a pannat,¡± she said. ¡°A mound of plants. Then another, and another, all around, many rows of them. They become a part of the texture.¡± ¡°Part of the Flux,¡± said Perry. ¡°Which means ¡­ you go out from your village and you can find one, even if it¡¯s not exactly the one that you made there.¡± ¡°You do understand the Flux then,¡± she said. ¡°And a railroad is different, somehow,¡± said Perry. ¡°Somehow,¡± she shrugged. ¡°We¡¯ve tried to destroy them. We¡¯ve ripped up the rails. Sometimes it works. Mostly it doesn¡¯t.¡± She looked at him. ¡°You should know this.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not with the Commission,¡± said Perry. ¡°I¡¯m not sure what it is that makes you think I am.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve never met one,¡± Anaksi replied. ¡°And I¡¯ve never met a man like you.¡± She looked down at his shirt. The place where the bullet had struck him was now completely fine. There was no blood and no trace of a hole. Her ankle was completely fixed too, as she¡¯d proven by walking a mile on it. ¡°We¡¯re going,¡± said Perry, getting to his feet. He gathered the forks and placed them in the satchel, along with the bottles of water, which weighed the satchel down. He looked at the empty food tins, not knowing what to do with them. ¡°Can I ¡­ leave them here?¡± Anaksi looked at the tins. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want to carry them around,¡± said Perry. ¡°I just ¡ª is it littering?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know this word,¡± she said. She wrinkled her nose. ¡°Like a sow?¡± ¡°Nevermind,¡± said Perry. He had felt it not translate. ¡°I just didn¡¯t want someone to come along and see my trash laying there, that¡¯s all. It¡¯s impolite.¡± ¡°I¡¯ve heard liquified shit runs down the open gutters in the city,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°Mmm,¡± said Perry. ¡°There¡¯s a sewer system.¡± He knew very little concrete information about the city. ¡°But it¡¯s a dirty place, overall, and dirtier because people don¡¯t care about each other.¡± This was a guess, just based on every city he¡¯d been to. Teaguewater had been disgusting, and he thought Charlonion would probably be worse. They started walking again, leaving the tins behind, which irked Perry just a little bit, maybe because he¡¯d been raised to see litter as a Sin. He had half-suspected that the town would simply appear in front of them, that she would be wrong about the distance. It could very well have been a lie, the kind designed to let her go. But as they walked, the sky began to darken. It was not in any way like the sun setting on a cloudy day, because there was no directionality to it. The only real variance were the red veins, which were thicker than in the morning, getting brighter than the yellow-green they were set within. Perry could see decently well in the dark, maybe just because of heightened werewolf senses, though he couldn¡¯t be sure. Still, they stopped when only the red veins above were visible, and waited, looking up. It was another time for her to run, if she was going to run, but she stayed still, eyes on the sky. The experience reminded him of an old monitor refreshing, or a lightbulb slowly coming on. There was a moment of pitch black when the red veins faded to darkness, and then the stars started to appear, and the moon along with them, like a filament that was warming up before their eyes. The moon was a dark orange, a half-moon that was split horizontally, so that the line of darkness across it matched the horizon, making it look like a setting or rising sun that was far away and far too high. The stars, at least, were roughly the same as they¡¯d been the night before, clustered in stripes. ¡°Good omen,¡± said Anaksi, letting out a breath she¡¯d been holding. ¡°We sleep now.¡± ¡°There¡¯s enough light to see by,¡± said Perry. ¡°And we¡¯re going across flat land.¡± ¡°Walking at night attracts things we don¡¯t want to find us,¡± said Anaksi. ¡°It invites death.¡± Perry sat down, and she sat down beside him. He had a flashlight in the shelf space, but he hadn¡¯t grabbed it. He was pretty sure that he could see more clearly than she could. On a whim, he held out his sword and let it glow, then released it so it floated above them. It was a dim light, but much brighter than the orange moon and the stars around it. Anaksi looked at it, frowning, but said nothing about its impact on their odds of survival. She laid on the ground, laid herself straight, and folded her arms across her chest, in a pose that reminded Perry of a mummy or a Dracula. He sat down on the ground, contemplating what he was doing here. In theory, he had an enviable position. Marchand was still doing the error correction thing, and that was probably going to be done in a day or two. Perry had the harmonizer, which was still in the satchel, and that would make him a hero in Grabler¡¯s Gulch when they got there. He had Anaksi as a prisoner or hostage, which would help him to fight off her tribe when they came, en masse, to attack the town, unless that was just puffery from her. He didn¡¯t like the idea of her being executed by them, but didn¡¯t know how likely that was. He would speak in her defense, at the very least. Perry thought about Queenie, and what the hell she¡¯d been up to. Stealing the harmonizer seemed likely, but to what end was more tricky to guess at. She had a magic scarf, but he hadn¡¯t seen her do anything much with it, aside from maybe getting on top of the train from standing on the tracks in front of it. If she was a thresholder, why would she want the harmonizer? If she wasn¡¯t a thresholder why would she want it? To sell it to someone? To ransom it back? Perry was sure he¡¯d feel much better with Marchand back. It took some time for Anaksi to fall asleep. She did check on him, from time to time, glancing over at where he sat every five or ten minutes, though the checks became more infrequent. Eventually her breathing slowed, and she relaxed somewhat, arms still crossed. He wanted to go into the shelf space, but she might wake up and run away. That wouldn¡¯t be the worst outcome ¡ª a part of him wanted her to get away. If she ran, he could just fly with his sword along the tracks and be back in the Gulch in time to get a beer and go to his room. But she was a part of it, the plot, the ongoing mess, and if she slipped away in the night, he was pretty sure that she would be back, maybe with him in her crosshairs. He¡¯d fully recovered from the bullet wound, but a shot to the head would kill him, he was pretty sure. That was going to be a problem, going forward, which was another reason he needed Marchand back. He wasn¡¯t even sure that people would give him a second look if he went around wearing the power armor, it really did seem like people minded their own business about glowing fingers or cat tails. At most, he¡¯d get a crude nickname. Perry smelled the creature before he saw it. It had the scent of wet moss or cut grass, distinct in the cold, dry night. He found its eyes easily. They were red, reflecting the glowing light of the sword. Perry sat where he was, as still as he¡¯d been idly, looking off into the distance while tracking the animal. His body betrayed nothing. There was only enough light to get the general shape of it, its scrambling legs that were silent against the ground, with a bulky form above that. It prowled around them, trying to get behind Perry, and Perry stood up, stretching out, still plausibly unaware that the animal ¡ª or whatever it was ¡ª was after him. He was making himself look bigger, too, and maybe that would let him avoid a confrontation. He stilled his heart and dialed back his perspiration. The moon was giving him energy with a weird vibrato to it, off-kilter but digestible, doing something to the Wolf Vessel that wasn¡¯t entirely unpleasant. The creature came at him suddenly, all sense of stealth abandoned, thumping loudly across the ground. Perry called the sword to his hand, and it spun once in the air before landing in his palm, casting wild shadows in the process. As the creature came close, Perry finally saw what he was dealing with. It was like someone had tried to draw a crab from memory using only horse parts. It had six angular, knobbly brown knees that ended in hoofs, a maw with spiraling teeth that didn¡¯t seem to leave room for a tongue, and a jagged set of tusks or teeth that came out from the sides of the mouth, looking like they¡¯d once been ribs that had been turned out and put to other purposes. The red eyes were large, and dull in the sword-light. Where it had skin, that was brown too, sleek in some places but matted with blood in others. It smelled, overpoweringly, of rotting hay. Perry ducked to the side as it lunged at him, raising his sword to cut through bone and flesh. He rose to his feet and kicked the thing over. It was surprisingly light, for how large it was, and it kicked out with all its legs, spasming and moaning, trying to writhe itself back up. Perry sliced through two of its legs, then came around to what was approximately the head and began stabbing it repeatedly. The sword was the primary source of light, and when Perry plunged his sword in deep, it became too dark to see much until he withdrew his sword again. He looked at the creature, making sure that it wasn¡¯t moving, then spun around to look at Anaksi. She was on her feet, crouched down, but not ready to run, just watching him. ¡°It¡¯s been an hour,¡± said Perry. ¡°How many more of these should I expect?¡± She glanced at the moon. ¡°Three.¡± ¡°Three?¡± asked Perry. ¡°You were really prepared to sleep with these things out here?¡± ¡°They leave you alone if you sleep,¡± said Anaksi. Perry nodded. ¡°Then I¡¯ll plan on not sleeping, and killing three of them.¡± Anaksi watched him. He released the sword and had it move back into position as their nightlight. She laid back on the ground and closed her eyes, but it took her much longer to fall asleep this time. The next morning, with four corpses around them, they set off for Grabler¡¯s Gulch. They arrived after only twenty minutes of walking to find a town that was buzzing with activity.