The Stargazer's War - Chapter 2.8

[Hey everyone.  I-um... originally intended to be publishing book two right around now.  That obviously hasn't happened.  Since January really I've been struggling a lot with keeping up my routine, and my productive has suffered for it severely.  I'm sorry.  I wish I had an excuse other than just all of my good habits falling apart at the seems, but that's really it.  I know I can do better.  I'm trying to do better.

Today was a good day.  I sat down, set a goal for myself in front of people who would keep me accountable, and wrote just over twice my target words to finish out this chapter.  I'm going to do it again tomorrow.  I want to take this time to thank all of you, for being patient with me while I've been getting my shit together.  I know this kind of wait between chapters isn't what any of you wanted.  It's not what I want either.  I'm going to do better.

-Nixia]

Chapter 2.8: You Shouldn’t Be Here

Up in the higher metal stages—somewhere between late steel and early tungsten—most cultivators reached a level of power and mastery that left non-spiritual weapons largely ineffective. Sure, a fusion bomb or an inversion engine would more than do the job, but that kind of ordinance comes with its own issues.

Could I have killed Cedric with a nuclear explosion? Probably. Would anyone in viewing distance of Fyrion survived? No.

In practice, the only way to get through a qi-reinforced defense is with a qi-reinforced offense. That all tends to be easier in melee range. Something like a slug thrower, however you tried to enchant or cycle qi through it, would fall flat pretty quickly. Problem is, by the time a bullet reaches its target, it’s a lot closer to them than it is to you, meaning they have a way easier time asserting authority over it.

There are a handful of ways around this, like personally enchanting every bullet or implanting good old fashioned overwhelming force along the lines of Lucy’s cannons, but unless you’re willing to build your entire Way around killing things from a distance, any cultivator at the same level is going to shrug your attacks right off.

Shiver belongs to me. It was made for me in return for something I did out of materials I used to do it. It would take an immensely powerful cultivator to force my qi out of it—at least in theory. Fuck knows how that interaction would work with dark qi. Point is, its mine in a way no bullet could ever be. Even against a more skilled opponent, even if every atom around them for a mile falls under their authority, all it takes is the one little slice that’s mine jammed into the right place to win the fight.

All this to say, there’s a very good reason cultivators prefer melee weapons, even if it led to my current laughable predicament of trying to kill a bird with a sword.

I let out a quiet heave as I pushed myself up and over the final branch. I straddled it, leaning back against the still broad trunk of the ebonleaf. I glanced down at the forrest floor some hundred feet below me, noticing and dismissing the primal itch of unease that tapped against edge of my awareness. Terrestrial creatures weren’t meant to be comfortable this high up.

I’d never been particularly terrestrial.

The dark leaves of the canopy swayed in the breeze, gifting a murmur to the atmosphere that I might’ve taken as peaceful had I not known any better.

Nothing had noticed me quite yet—the more dangerous spiritual beasts tended not to—but I knew well enough that if I made enough of a nuisance of myself, something that climbed or flew or levitated would come looking for a snack.

We didn’t let Xavier climb up here for a reason. He wasn’t as threatening as Charlotte’s bronze core nor as subtle as my invisible one. It’d be all too easy for a prismwing moth or spined sapsucker to get the drop on him, and when I say drop, I mean drop.

My eyes drifted once more to the ground so far below me.

Shaking the thoughts from my head, I pulled up my holopad and silently typed out a message to the others letting them know I was in position.

On it, came Xavier’s reply. Approaching now.

Our last three attempts at cornering the ebbstrix hadn’t ended well. The first time we’d come at it from three directions with a plan carefully crafted after days of research into the species only for the thing to completely disregard what the localnet said it would do in favor of flying straight at me with its claws up.

I’d barely escaped with both eyes.

We’d since refined our strategy. The bird wanted to either just fly away or find time to charge up. We wanted to stop either of those things from happening. A bit of AI behavioral modeling later, and we’d come up with what we thought was a fairly workable plan.

Xavier would startle the ebbstrix while it drank from whichever creek or spring we found it at, Charlotte would sit in the second most likely tree for it to retreat to, her core ablaze to deter its approach, while I lurked undetected in the place we predicted it was most likely to go.

Of course, last time it’d simply flown off in a completely different direction, but AI could only predict so much.

I reached over my shoulder to untie the one piece of equipment I had even remotely suitable for this endeavor: a net. It wouldn’t hold the strix for long, designed to hold cargo in place in low-g rather than to restrict an actual living being, let along a spiritual one, but in theory it’d keep the beast from flying away until Shiver could get into range. We’d even rigged up weights around its edges to make it more throwable.

It’s off! Xavier’s message displayed as text as I kept my holopad silenced. Heading your way, Cal.

I didn’t type out a reply. I raised my arms, grasping the net in each hand as I readied myself to toss it. Throw the net, kill the bird, I repeated to myself, forcefully setting a task I’d follow once the more human side of my brain faded away. I cycled qi through my various meridians. I channeled my Vac Suit.

Precious qi trickled away as darkness fell across my body, offering sweet relief from the noise and the light and the everything as I hid myself in the shadows of the canopy. Threads I wished I could’ve afforded to keep this running at all times, but I’d deplete my core in under a day. Without the infinite sea to refill it, I’d be helpless. Nick’s tree and the void beast egg alike would both wither and die.

For now, though, the technique was necessary. That didn’t stop me from reveling in its protection.

I felt the ebbstrix approach long before I saw it, its core bright and angry, closer to Charlotte’s in intensity than Xavier’s. I tracked its motion spiritually, my unusually fine-tuned qi sense more than up to the task of picking it out among the noise. In contrast, even my meridian-empowered eyes struggled to pick out the black blur in the gloomy canopy, and my ears never stood a chance of catching its nearly silent flight over the dull rush of the leaves in the wind.

But my mind’s eye knew exactly when and where it landed.

A few branches below me and some hundred degrees around the trunk to my right, our quarry came to a stop. I craned my neck to look, and once again laid eyes on the five foot tall owl we’d been hunting for the past three weeks.

I say “owl” in the loosest sense. Dark feathers the same matte green-so-dark-as-to-be-almost-black as the leaves around us coated its form. A set of avian talons dug into the bark of its perch, though each multi-inch blade came at the end of a long opposable digit that offered the strix a dexterity unnatural to any other bird I’d ever seen, including the bird-adjacent void beasts.

The thing’s only owl-like feature, the same that’d earned it the title “strix,” was its rounded face, more human than avian. It had the same piercing eyes and the same flat nose as its namesake, though it forewent a beak in favor of a wider, more predatory maw of carnivorous teeth.

I had every intention of avoiding those.

I’d scarcely begun to plot out my approach before the second half of the creature’s name came into effect, the half that made it one of Ilirian’s most dangerous predators.

The qi in the environment around it began to ebb.

More and more of the vital energy around the bird swept in, the pull accelerating as the seconds passed. It didn’t, couldn’t, steal qi belonging to something else, but it drained the atmosphere so thoroughly a wasteland might’ve emerged given enough time. Any other cultivator might’ve found the effect oppressive, perhaps similar to the way I’d flooded Elder Lopez and thus prevented her from reclaiming any spent qi from the ambient.

I found it rather pleasant.

The timer ticked down in my head. Nice as it would’ve been to have an exact count, real life came with far too many factors to reasonably predict how long I had. Our last two runs at the strix the ebb had lasted five and twelve seconds respectively. Today, I gave myself eight. There’d be no catching this thing without at least a bit of luck.

I released the net with my right hand to free it, letting the modified cargo-tie dangle as I crept from branch to branch. I kept close to the trunk to minimize my footprint. If entire branches started shifting with my weight, the game was up.

The conflicting needs for haste and stealth kept my qi-enhanced brain running fast, calculating an optimal series of movements to get me into range as quietly as possible before my eight seconds ran out. A hand here. A jump there. A hurried step to a higher branch. The wood creaked beneath my weight. Bits of bark abraded against my boot and fell to the forest floor.

I drew nearer.

I didn’t hesitate—wasn’t capable of hesitating—once I reached my goal. I threw the net and drew Shiver from its sheath with a single motion. As the former wrapped itself around the ebbstrix, I leapt from my higher perch to bring the latter to bear.

The ebb ceased.

At once the vast reserve of qi the beast had claimed coursed through its body. I was too late. I’d already jumped. There was no going back now.

The bird shifted beyond the reach of my blade, the net proving little more than a distraction against the power it held.

I raised my legs to pass over the strix’s branch and instead collide with the one beneath it, catching it on my stomach in a way that would’ve driven the breath from my lungs had they held any to begin with. I grabbed the pale wood with my free left hand dropped into a dangle. A rush of air ran past my years. Something heavy slammed into my back, sending me swinging forward just enough to break my one-handed grip.

As I fell, I realized it’d been one of the weights on the net that’d hit me. The ebbstrix had flown overhead in spite of it.

My upper back crashed into the branch below, spinning me upright in time grab the branch below that. An icy chill crept along my left shoulder, my body informing me something was wrong thought the numbing effects of my spine meridian.

A dislocation, in all likelihood. Such a fall couldn’t have torn anything on its own.

I shut my eyes, opting to search for my quarry through the most fine-tuned of my senses. It stood out like a sore thumb, a blinding beacon of power in the desert it itself had made. The bright spot circled back towards me.

My gaze snapped downward, picking a branch below me for my stand. With a careful swing, I landed on it with both feet, stabilizing myself with the back of my right hand against the tree trunk.

I tracked the bird’s approach handed off Shiver to my limp left hand, using my right to grab my shoulder and viciously pop it back into place. The chill diminished but didn’t cease. I’d have Lucy take a look at it later tonight. For now, my arm functioned again.

I raised Shiver, positioning it to perfectly guard the narrow passage between the branches on either side of me. As defensive positions up a threads-damned tree went, I couldn’t have asked for much better.

Not that the strix cared.

Instead of diving directly at me, it crashed straight through the branch to my left, ripping it free of the ebonleaf and sending it, in turn, crashing into me. It shoved me hard into the branch on my right, pinning me against it as I struggled to bring my blade to bear. The strix took off, doubtless circling around for another pass.

“Cal!” Xavier’s voice echoed from my holopad. “What’s your situation?”

“It finished its ebb,” I answered without inflection as I ducked under the broken branch. I spotted another defense position a few branches down, but beneath it lay only bare trunk. I’d have no more chances.

“We’re on our way,” Charlotte added. “Try to stay alive.”

I didn’t answer, finding no rational reason to do so. Truth be told I appreciated the reminder, my qi-altered thoughts still over focused on the imperative I’d set before of killing the strix rather than the admittedly more important focus of surviving the ordeal.

To that end, I slid Shiver back into its sheath. The added maneuverability of a second climbing hand would prove more valuable than any hope of deterrence the sword might’ve offered.

The ebbstrix wasn’t stupid. Lacking a weapon between me and it, it didn’t bother taking roundabout routes crashing through branches. The strix came head on, my back pinned to the trunk, naught but a lethal fall beneath me.

I jumped anyway.

The strix swerved at the last moment to avoid colliding with the ebonleaf trunk, a maneuver just predictable enough for me to execute my own.

With two hands, one on either side of the giant owl, I snatched the net.

Together we fell, ten, fifteen feet plummeting through the air before the strix reclaimed control. Even constrained by the cargo net, even weighed down both by the rocks we’d tied to it and my own body, the ebbstrix flew on. Twice it tried turning hard in the air, swinging me about wildly in an attempt to knock me loose, but already I’d wrapped my wrists in the netting. It wouldn’t be getting rid of me that easy.

Then it entered into a dive.

My mind raced with calculations, deriving the seconds I had before our velocity grew lethal, the arcs I might take should I jump free in this that or the other manner. None of them got me out of this without at least a few broken bones.

Without hesitation I picked one—three quick swings to build momentum and a leap into the tree to my left. I’d hit the trunk hard, but it’d arrest my fall enough that the ensuing drop should only break both ankles and a single leg. Survivable.

Halfway through my second swing, an alternative arose.

“Cal!” Xavier’s voice yanked at my attention. I watched as he leapt a good thirty feet into the air, swinging his axe overhead to lodge its blade in the trunk of a nearby tree.

Instead of releasing as planned, I twisted midair to leap on the backswing, desperately extending an arm as I flew.

He caught it.

I crashed hard into the trunk beside him, but my body held. The strix screamed in defiance.

“Ready?”

In lieu of answering, I released his hand. Plummeted. Twice as I fell did scrape a clawed hand or the sole of my boot against the trunk in front of me, taking more than my share of scratches and splinters for every bit of velocity I shedded. I landed in a lateral, the soft ashen gray of the forest floor eating away at yet more speed before I finally came to a stop.

For all of a second did I linger there. I spun along my right side, the opposite direction as my landing. Dead and decaying leaves exploded into the air as the strix’s claws struck where I’d been. Air rushed past as it beat its powerful wings to reclaim its altitude. I pushed myself to my feet.

“You okay?” Xavier asked, looking no worse for wear from his own descent. Threads he’d probably landed on his feet.

I nodded. “I can fight.”

“No need.” Charlotte casually leapt over a bush to join us. “It’s leaving.”

I followed her gaze to find that, sure enough, the ebbstrix had left us behind. Either it’d decided we weren’t worth the effort of killing us, or the appearance of a bronze cultivator had scared it off. With how frighteningly fast the thing had been, the former seemed more likely.

With the threat passed, I cut the flow of qi through my brain meridian. Color and my headache returned to the world as one, excitement and anxiety and fear blossoming back into existence even as I regained my capacity to care. To want. I shuddered.

Xavier clapped me on the back. “Worry not. You’ll get the chance to wet your blade yet.”

I didn’t bother explaining that a lack of violence was the least of my worries.

“We knew the risks,” Charlotte said instead. “That you survived a completed ebb is impressive.”

“We should follow,” I answered. “The ebb will run out within the hour, and then it’ll have to rest.”

Charlotte swiped open her holopad. “The transmitter we hid on that cargo net is broadcasting.” She raised the projection to show off the tracking data. “As long as it doesn’t ditch the net, we’ll have eyes on it.”

“Better get moving, then.” I dismissed my Vac Suit, its benefits no longer anywhere near worth the loss of qi. “It’s well and truly tangled after that mess, but I don’t doubt those claws of its can cut itself loose.”

Charlotte reached over and pulled a dead leaf from my hair. “Can you sense it?”

“I’ll take a look once the net stops moving. Don’t want to stare into the sun any longer than I have to.”

Charlotte simply nodded and took the lead, following the course her holopad set.

Together we gave chase, our pace near the speed I might’ve sprinted back when I’d first set foot on Fyrion. It felt as little more than a light jog, endurance less the limiter than the terrain which we crossed. We leapt over bushes, kicked off trees to clear briars, weaved around underbrush and the lairs of beasts we couldn’t spare the time to fight off.

Minutes turned to hours as we made our slow pursuit, the ebbstrix guiding us ever deeper into the jungle. That didn’t deter us. The depths of this jungle had made our home for months now. We knew its secrets.

Or so we thought.

Two hours southeast of where we’d begun, the tracker in the net still traveling ever onward, Xavier stopped short. “Do you feel that?”

Charlotte blinked. “Feel what?”

I turned to see Xavier peering off to our left, squinting as he scanned the trees for something in the distance. “There’s something over there.”

I shut my eyes and opened my spiritual sense, following Xavier’s gaze through the barrage of light and noise until I found the anomaly. It was subtle, subtle enough I wouldn’t have noticed it had I not known where to look.

The spiritual shape of the forest repeated itself. The replica wasn’t exact, but it looked to my mind’s eye like something had taken a huge swath of the landscape and somehow copied it. The same trees, the same critters, the same slight fluctuations in the ambient qi that I doubted anyone in the system had the senses to notice. A chill ran down my spine. “Something’s hidden there,” I told the others. “Very well hidden.”

Charlotte scowled back at us. “The ebbstrix is—”

“The ebbstrix is headed for it,” I interrupted, taking the opportunity to track the powerful beast while my spiritual sense was active.

“What?” Charlotte waved her holopad in front of me. “The net’s going—”

“It must’ve dropped the net,” I said. “Odds are some poor sabercat just got the fright of its life.”

Xavier didn’t bother arguing. He just took off. I joined him. Charlotte muttered a curse and came after.

“Is this a good idea?” I tried to slow him down. “If the complexity of that illusion is any indicator, whatever’s out there is extremely powerful and doesn’t want to be found.”

“It’s too late now.” Defeat colored Charlotte’s voice. “If it’s that strong, there’s a good chance the moment our attention fell on it, it knew we were on to it. At this point it’d be rude not to go say hello.”

Well if that wasn’t absolutely terrifying I didn’t know what was. I called upon my Vac Suit, more so for the sense of comfort than any real chance it’d protect me against whatever we’d stumbled into.

I stopped short when Xavier vanished into thin air.

“That’d be the boundary, then,” Charlotte said, forced nonchalance failing to mask the nerves in her voice. She stepped in and similarly disappeared.

I blinked twice, taking a moment to breath and confirm through my mind’s eye that my friends’ cores had faded from my spiritual sight at precisely the moment they’d crossed into the cloned section of the forest. Clad in shadow, I stepped through.

It didn’t hurt. It didn’t confound my senses or send waves of nausea through my body. One moment I was alone, stepping into a bit of jungle just like any other, the next Charlotte and Xavier stood in front of me gaping at a manicured garden.

Exotic and colorful flowers the likes of which I’d never seen lined a winding stone path in neat rows. Vines bearing clusters of red fruit twisted and spun along twin trellises. A natural arbor of living branches woven together arced over the way ahead. The air smelled of roses and sunlight and natural beauty, the latter of which this place epitomized, if carefully honed to artificial perfection.

Songbirds chirped and hummingbirds buzzed, their chorus played over the backdrop of a murmuring creek.

But however striking the sights and the smells and the sounds of this strange place, they all made for little more than set dressing compared to the power of it all. The air practically screamed with qi, the plants themselves radiating it in waves that crashed against the walls of my Vac Suit. Without it, I’d have been little more than a quivering mess curled up in the dirt. With it, I only just withheld the tide.

As with the utmost care we stepped out of the flowerbed we’d found ourselves in to tread the path proper, I knew without speaking that the three of us shared the same singular thought.

We hadn’t earned this eden. We did not belong.

None of us were suicidal enough to stray from the garden path, nor stupid enough to so much as touch a single leaf. I kept my mind’s eye firmly shut, unwilling to glimpse the radiance I knew lay ahead of us.

The sect presence on Fyrion functioned by capturing ninety percent of the dwarf planet’s qi and focusing it all into just over seventy rooms. Even those, sheer, concentrated qi designed for use an hour at a time, paled in comparison.

Most of Fyrion would kill for an hour in this place. I didn’t doubt the same applied to those aboard the Right Eye.

By all rights terror should’ve taken us. We should’ve frozen. We should’ve fled. We should’ve fallen to our knees and begged leniency for our trespass.

Instead we walked. Fear refused to take hold, as foreign to this place as man to the cosmos. We didn’t talk, for what could be said in the face of such beauty? No, to add words, to add noise, to this masterpiece of creation would’ve been a slight against the threads themselves, against the gods, against the very concept of peace.

Our silence carried us across an arcing wooden bridge, the gaps in its railing filled with flowering vines. The creek passed beneath it, crystal clear as it flowed over smooth and shiny stones. Under one final arbor we passed, this one decorated in wisteria a violet deep it defied color itself.

Only then did we lay eyes on our host.

She sat crosslegged on a grassy hill, a tree at her back offering shade from the sourceless sunlight. The creek hugged the knoll’s base, carving an arc around it for well over half its circumference before it wound away. The path similarly continued on to our right, but we didn’t follow. We’d already arrived.

The woman herself had olive skin, not the deathly pale of a UV-starved spacer nor the deep dark of an Ilirian native. Wavy chestnut hair draped loosely over her shoulders, not a single strand out of place. She wore could really only be described as gardening clothes, a dirt and grass stained pair of study pants and a loose-fitting shirt thin enough to keep the sun off her back.

Of her face I gathered little. No matter how I focused, my eyes slipped off it, as if her features were not mine to behold. I grasped only that she was beautiful, inhumanely so, in a way not even the holos of master cultivators could truly portray.

We neither knelt nor saluted. Her perch atop the hill already left her above us, even seated as she was. We simply stopped and gazed upon her, silence pierced only by the gentle murmur of our surroundings while she looked us over.

“My, my, aren’t you interesting ones,” the goddess—for what could a being of such perfection be, if not a goddess—greeted us. “I didn’t think anyone in this backwater had it in them to find me.”

“We apologize for our trespass.” Charlotte took her rightful place as our group’s diplomat. “Our quarry led us here, and we dared not pass without paying our respects.”

The woman exhaled sharply. “You can keep your respects. I have little use for them. Your presence, though… that’s far more intriguing. I’m tempted to spare your lives if only for the moment’s entertainment. It does get dreadfully dull out here, even if I suppose that is the purpose behind my visit.”

“We…” Charlotte paused as if working through exactly what the woman had said. “…Thank you for your mercy.”

That earned her a laugh, a bright and joyous thing with the hint of a smile behind it. “Oh, it’s no mercy child. The mercy would be to end you all now. I could stop a war as simply as drawing breath. Wouldn’t that be something?”

Despite myself, despite the danger in her words, despite the layered protection both of my Vac Suit and the qi running through my meridians, I felt her aura clamped down on me. I felt warm and at safe and at peace and so, so small, like a babe wrapped in a parent’s embrace, comfortable and content and equally powerless.

“So now I’ve cracked the riddle of how you found me, I’m left with the far more curious one of that little trick of yours. It’s imperfect, of course, failing entirely to account for such trifles as the scent you give off and the air you displace, but I’ve never seen a stealth technique so effective out of anyone below the mid gems, let alone a lowly copper. Do tell me where you found it.”

I hadn’t the slightest idea if she was messing with me or legitimately believed my invisible qi was some sort of highly advanced technique, and I dared not ask. A stealth technique wouldn’t start a war, though. Without a clue what game she was playing, I couldn’t begin to come up with a valid strategy, so instead I fell back on a tried and true classic.

“It’s a part of my Way.”

She smiled. At least I thought she did. I couldn’t quite catch the look on her face. “Bold, aren’t we? Suit yourself. My curiosity matters little. Whatever reasons your benefactor has for sheltering you so aren’t mine to ask. She plays a dangerous game, letting you live. Perhaps I’ll play along.”

A playfulness took over the cultivator’s tone. “For three young guests I offer a threefold pact. For their benefactor, a gift. I’ll spare your lives out of respect for the ancient that bore you here, but to forgive your trespass I ask you hear and consider my terms.

“First, an even trade of past events and words unsaid. I’ll not reveal your presence here to any outside the know, and in exchange I expect the same.

“Second, a present task for favors three. A creature lurks somewhere in the dark corners of this jungle, an abomination I’ll suffer no longer to live. You are to find it and guide me to it in exchange for three boons of my choosing.

“Third, a future question, asked and answered. Whether tomorrow or a millennium hence, at some point I will ask of you a question, and you will answer to the best of your knowledge. In exchange I offer that which you came to seek.”

As her lips closed around the final syllable, a great gust swept through the air, and a giant owl landed at the woman’s side. She placed a hand upon it, gently stroking the back of the ebbstrix’s neck.

My mind raced. The first set of terms was simple enough. I’d accept it in a heartbeat. The second seemed the most problematic, a task of dubious difficulty for a reward of dubious value, but given the sheer wealth of power surrounding us, I imagined any boon this woman had to offer would be well worth it. Threads, what she considered garbage could probably keep us in cultivation materials for years. Sure, it’d mean staying on Ilirian a little bit longer, but we’d have to do that anyway if we turned her down.

The last offer seemed tailor-made for the second, allowing us to swap our hunt for the ebbstrix with one for whatever entity she wanted us to find. At the very least it seemed like she didn’t expect us to kill it, but if she couldn’t find the thing, how were we supposed to?

The question itself gave me pause. On the face of it, answering a question truthfully at some point in the future didn’t seem like a particularly tall ask, which made it all the more worrying. She had to know something we didn’t, right? There was a real chance I’d be forced to reveal the true nature of my qi.

She was already more than powerful enough to force us to answer any questions she wanted. I sincerely doubted any of us could sneak a lie past this woman, making her request all the more vexing. She’d even specified ‘to the best of our knowledge,’ implying we wouldn’t even have to know the answer of whatever question she asked.

The offer was dangerous. It felt dangerous. But nobody reached the heights of cultivation without taking a few risks. I opened my mouth to say as much, to inform the others of my leanings and discuss our decision, but Xavier beat me to it.

“We accept.”

“Wonderful,” the stranger chimed. “A pleasure doing business with you. I did enjoy our chat, but I’m afraid I have other matters to attend to. Arcadia beckons. Do share my salutations with your benefactor. It’s so rare anyone interesting passes by.” She raised a hand in a elegant wave. “Be seeing you.”

I blinked and she was gone. The knoll, the creek, the garden itself gave way to the ebonleaf jungle, as if none of it had ever truly been there. The qi, the calming aura, the sense of peace all faded. My headache returned.

The only traces of the conversation we’d had, the deal we’d made, the place we’d been, sat in Xavier’s open palms. In the one was a golden bell no larger than his thumb, an ornate flower inscribed into it. In the other sat a single feather, well over a foot long and a green so dark it bordered on black.

Xavier had his ebbstrix feather, and for the life of me I couldn’t say how much it’d cost.

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