The Stargazer's War - Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Took You Long Enough

Maria couldn’t keep the smile from her face. She had him. She had him. She almost wished she’d taken a picture of the looks on the would-be fugitives’ faces as she’d emerged from her hiding place. It would’ve made a wonderful decoration for her new office.

That is, Honchel’s and Velereau’s faces. Rex simply stared at her with that inhumanly blank expression behind those sunglasses of his.

“You didn’t think I would let you escape, did you Mister Rex? Or should I call you Andrew?”

That, at least, managed to get a rise out of him, as his brow shot up.

“My name is Caliban.”

“Is it now?” Maria asked, bringing up a pair of documents on her holopad. “Because this crew manifest lists one Brady Rex and one Andrew Rex working as vac-welders on refueling station RF-31, and this salvage report confirms Brady’s remains but notes Andrew’s are mysteriously absent.”

Rex paused.

Maria beamed. There was nothing better than looking a man in the eyes as you told him all his secrets.

“In fact, Andrew seems to be the only survivor of RF-31. If the unidentified viscera we found hadn’t been clearly a bronze tier cultivator, you might’ve stayed hidden. It was sloppy not to change your last name, but shared surnames aren’t unheard of.”

“I wasn’t hiding,” the man snarled. “My name is Caliban.”

“A monstrous name for a newly made monster, then? The John Doe had clearly undergone void-induced psychosis. Was he a failed experiment, or part of the process?”

“What are you talking abou—”

“I know about your qi vampirism,” Maria cut off his weak attempts at lying. “I know you’ve been giving away all your focus room hours to fatten up your lackeys, and I know they’ve been feeding you that qi under whatever enchantment is hiding your core. What I don’t know is who created you. They must be powerful to have a soulship under their sway, but whoever they are, their little experiment ends here.”

The three cadets stared at her agape, clearly in awe of her brilliant deduction.

“I’ve had my suspicions ever since you asked me for a way to bind your spirit to your body. At first I thought it necromancy, especially after your little display during the void horde attack, but then I realized: all that conflicting, stolen qi is probably driving your spirit in a dozen different directions. Of course you needed to reign it in. The security footage of your two friends joining you to open your spine meridian confirmed my theory. I just had to prove it.”

Threads this felt good.

“That idiot Long made for the perfect poisoned pawn, just hateful enough to bait you, just powerful enough to push you to reveal your true colors. I was disappointed when he survived that duel of yours, but you embarrassed the fool enough that he would’ve forced your hand sooner or later. It was sheer luck you killed the Vesper boy before that happened. Then it was just a matter of using Long to smoke you out, send you running somewhere I could catch you alone. After all this work, I can’t very well allow anyone else to claim the glory.”

She drummed her fingers against her harrowwood staff. “You see, you’re my ticket off this desolate rock. Maria Lopez, savior of Fyrion. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

——

This lady was off her rocker. Qi vampirism? Seriously?

I was pretty sure the fumes from all that synthetic wood in her office had gotten to her.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised she’d found out about roofie, even if the rest of her absolutely unhinged supervillain monologue treated jumping to conclusions like a competitive sport.

At least it gave me time to think.

From the sound of it, she planned to attack once she’d said her piece. My immediate impulse was to surrender. Even three on one, taking on a bronze cultivator felt like a marginally slower way to die than just opening the airlock and letting the vacuum take me. On top of that, Lopez was absolutely kitted in enchanted gear and natural treasures. I counted no fewer than five items on her person that screamed into my spiritual sense.

I wondered if she could still be the savior of Fyrion if she let me live. I didn’t have to wonder long.

“Senior Cadet Honchel, Senior Cadet Velereau, if you aid me in putting down this dangerous experiment, I can see your punishments for aiding him reduced. There’s no reason for the Dragon’s Right Eye to lose any more of its young prospects.”

“Not a chance!”

“Xavier,” I whispered at him sharply. “She’s bronze.”

He spoke through gritted teeth without diverting his gaze from Lopez herself. “We can beat her.”

“Stop thinking we can beat everybody!” I snapped back.

Before Xavier could reply, I heard a familiar shing to my left.

Charlotte had drawn her rapier.

“It seems your hold on their minds is as strong as I feared.” Lopez smirked. “You won’t find me so easily ensorcelled.”

Huh, apparently I had mind control powers. Why hadn’t anyone told me?

Elder Lopez raised her staff.

Xavier reached for his axe.

I let the my vac helmet fall to the floor as I wrapped my fingers around Shiver’s hilt.

Lopez swung first. I could feel the qi as it gathered into a blinding mass at her staff’s tip just moments before a burst of golden light shot directly at me.

Charlotte darted in front of me and parried it.

Before you ask, no, I don’t know the physics of how a rapier parries of fucking laser beam. I’d seen Charlotte pull out the technique a few times, but she always got a bit cagey whenever I pressed for for details. Until proven otherwise, I’d chosen to believe with the proper timing she could parry anything and everything.

Except, apparently, Lopez’s second attack.

The blast came mere milliseconds after the first, slamming into Charlotte’s forearm well before she could bring her saber about for another parry. Her vac-suit—thank the gods for solar radiation resistant polymer weaves—managed to bear the brunt of the bronze tier attack’s heat, but the force behind it still sent her rapier flying.

That was our cue.

Xavier, in typical Xavier fashion, charged directly in. A battle cry echoed through the staging area.

Lopez fired upon him.

Xavier’s own defensive technique flared up, the front of his chest transmuting into shining silver—a suitable element for a man born and raised on a silver mine. Both of Lopez’s bolts refracted off the Xavier’s silverksin, bouncing off at odd angles into to the wall.

She didn’t even bother to raise her weapon against Xavier’s as the axe blade took on its own silver sheen. Without so much as a gesture, a transparent sphere of light blinked into being around the smug elder. Xavier’s axe failed to so much as leave a scratch.

That didn’t stop me from trying. Masked by Xavier’s advance, I ran in unassaulted. For lack of qi attacks or defenses of my own, I ran my meridians at full capacity and forced the rest of my not inconsiderable reserves running through Shiver.

The blade grew cold. Moisture in the air crystalized upon its edge as it seemed to gain a weight to it, an immense inertia against anything that would infringe upon its stillness. The qi flowed remarkably easily, a benefit of its spiritual significance. Both Vihaan’s and the void beast’s blood had stained the steel from which it’d been forged.

That meant something.

Not that you’d know that for the way my overhand strike bounced right off Lopez’s shield.

I do mean bounced. My blade didn’t scrape or skid off the brilliant bubble as Xavier’s had; it seemed to push its way just a tiny bit in before exponentially increasing resistance threw it back out. In hindsight, I’d realize the strange behavior probably had something to do with the absence of detectible qi in my weapon making it harder for the shield to recognize something was trying to pierce it.

In the moment, I managed a “huh, that’s weir—” before another burst of light slammed into my chest.

With neither silverskin nor a well-timed parry to fend off the attack, the beam’s full force tossed me aside like a particularly surprised rag doll. I heard a crack. The icy chill of spine-meridian-suppressed pain welled up just beside my sternum, but my breath didn’t suffer for it.

At least the broken rib hadn’t punctured a lung.

I landed hard against a shelf full of welding torches, sending the heavy tools crashing down beside me. Shiver skidded across the floor, some dozen feet away.

For an embarrassingly long moment I sat there, stunned, as I watched Xavier continue to hammer away at Lopez’s shield. By the time she managed to sneak a beam past his silverskin’s limited coverage, Charlotte had reclaimed her rapier and reentered the fray.

The latter darted in just in time to parry the follow-up beam aimed at Xavier’s head.

I forced myself to my feet and ran after Shiver. A shot to my ankle sent me tumbling before I could make it halfway.

Even as I hit the deck I thanked the gods Lopez had been arrogant enough to let us put vac-suits on before making her move. Threads, if the wisps of smoke coming off my suit were any indicator, that laser would’ve melted my foot clean off. The supremacist cultivator probably couldn’t imagine mortal-made gear could make such a difference.

Her loss. Well, probably still our loss, but I wasn’t going to complain about keeping my flesh attached to my bones for a few minutes longer.

I lost my view of the fight as I caught myself on my palms and scurried on hands and knees over to Shiver. By the time I made it to my feet, Charlotte was on the ground—thankfully still in possession of her weapon this time—while Xavier faced the brunt of Lopez’s focus alone.

I charged in.

Lopez clenched her eyes shut.

From a ring around her finger, a brilliant flash filled the room. Xavier stumbled back, blinded.

I blinked away the dark spots in my vision and kept approaching. For a half-second I thought the graying effect of my sense meridian had protected me from the flash, before I landed on the much more obvious truth.

I was wearing sunglasses.

Surprise washed over Lopez’s face as she opened her eyes to find me bearing down, her spiritual sense blind to my presence. She didn’t seem to find her powerfully enchanted ring being foiled by a pair of dark aviators as amusing as I did.

I lunged.

With an icy torrent running though my bones and muscles and weapon alike, Shiver’s tip slammed into Lopez’s shield like a torpedo into a dreadnought’s hull. Nearly an inch it pushed through the golden bubble, forced its way passed that seemingly impregnable bronze technique, before the higher tier won out.

Shiver flew from my grip as the shield ejected it.

Lopez didn’t even bother firing another light beam at me. With a swing of her staff I could barely even see, she swept my legs out from under me and sent me to the floor.

I rolled to the side, building distance as the gnarled wood slammed into the ground beside me. It left a dent in the sheet metal flooring.

But then Xavier’s axe met her shield again.

Charlotte darted back into the fight.

This time, I didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the opening and sprint across the room to reclaim my sword.

We fell into a cycle.

One by one Elder Lopez would land a hit manage to disarm one of us, forcing the other two to cover for them as they returned to the fight just in time for someone else to lose their footing. By the skin of our teeth we pressed her, always on the offensive, aways just barely enough of a distraction to keep her from delivering a finishing blow.

I took the worst of it. With no way of my own to deflect her light beam, I depended entirely on Charlotte, Xavier, and the weave of my vac-suit for protection. Time and time again I hit the floor, taking bruises and sprains and the infrequent fracture as her technique overwhelmed even my copper qi-enhanced bones.

Lopez herself showed no sign of flagging. She didn’t look desperate or worried or even frustrated as we hammered away at her.

Of us all, I’d come the closest to penetrating her defenses, but even on the odd instances I made it into melee range without tanking a laser to the stomach, Shiver never pierced further than an inch into her barrier.

It was a war of attrition, and we were getting nowhere.

I heard my wrist break before I felt it. I smelled the acrid fumes of my vac suit partially melting. I saw Shiver fly off into the wall when my grip failed.

I leapt back to dodge the base of Lopez’s staff. I landed on my ass, failing to catch myself as I clutched my broken wrist in my left hand. I cursed.

If my attacks hadn’t been working before, they stood little chance one-handed.

A brief, dark thought crept through my mind as I realized what absolutely would shatter the bronze’s defenses. Lucy was just outside.

I entertained the idea no further. Lopez had come to prevent our escape. There was no way she’d let us build enough distance from her to survive artillery designed for taking out entire ships.

It was up to us.

I lurched forward to bring myself to my feet. I looked to Shiver. Lopez stood between me and it.

I darted to the side, putting Xavier and his superior defenses between me and our opponent before shutting my eyes and doing some I’d deeply wanted to avoid.

I opened my spiritual senses.

The light and sound and heat of a dozen qi techniques crashed against my brain like a tidal wave, overwhelming and unceasing. Lopez’s shield shone above it all, a blinding star screaming its presence against all of existence.

I didn’t look at it too long.

What did catch my attention was the cloud of qi that hung in the air, saturating the space around the combatants with its brilliance as technique after technique dissipated its energy into the environment. Better yet, I watched as three vortices drank it up, two small drains and one massive whirlpool that sucked up the ambient energy nearly as fast as it gathered.

The sheer amount of qi, far denser than any of us could’ve managed, that Lopez expended was matched only by that she then consumed.

I had an idea.

“Conserve your qi!” I shouted to the others as I stretched my senses outwards, past the blinding shield and deafening cores and the maelstrom of ambient qi, past the airlock and outer doors, and into the emptiness beyond.

The infinite sea stood ready.

For all my effort, all my practice, all my fruitless attempts at forcing my qi into anything, be it a seed or a technique, it only ever left my body as shapeless cloud.

It was time to see how big a cloud I could make.

Qi raced from my core in a torrent, billowing limply out into the air around me. It wasn’t an attack. It wasn’t a technique. It certainly wasn’t magic.

But it was a lot.

When my reserves ran dry of what they could expend without depleting my core itself, I refilled them from the infinite sea, channeling a river of shadow, of ice, of quiet stillness into the staging area.

It didn’t suppress anyone’s abilities. It didn’t chill the air or drain the oxygen from the room. Threads, most of it washed back out to rejoin the infinite sea.

But some lingered. Some joined that bright miasma from which the others drank. And as I dumped more and more dark energy into the air, the stillness slowly took over. Something about it tickled at the back of my mind, plucked at the strings of interest as I watched hang there dense enough to force the other away. I ignored it. I had bigger things to worry about.

By the time I snatched Shiver from where it’d fallen, my own umbral cloud had fully driven away that of the ambient light. My qi sat still, hanging increasingly dense in the air, readily making way for the light qi that would float through it, yet refusing to be displaced for long.

First Charlotte’s, then Xavier’s, then even Elder Lopez’s influx of qi dried up as mine claimed the air around them.

I hoped that would be enough.

The cacophony muted beneath my dark cloud, I kept my spiritual sense open as I ran back into the fray. I kept my broken wrist behind my back as I wielded Shiver in my left hand, an eventuality I wished I’d had the time to train for. I mirrored the forms as best I could, but the movements came awkward and inefficient.

Lopez fired on me.

Xavier sidestepped into it, tanking the blow on a silver covered shoulder.

I slipped past him and jammed Shiver into Lopez’s shield once more.

It pierced no further, but with my mind’s eye open, I could see the qi she’d expended deflecting my attack. I could watch it drift up and away, unable to linger in the already-saturated air.

A beam of light slammed into my chest. It knocked me back, bruising my pelvis where it collided with the ground.

But I could still fight. Already I’d denied Lopez some of her precious qi. Threads knew how long it would take, how many close calls we’d have to survive to outlast her reserves, but they would, in time, deplete.

Only the void was endless.

——

Maria masked her disappointment.

She hadn’t exactly expected a fight for the history books against three coppers, but she’d expected more than… this.

It was this planet, this weak, desolate, shithole that produced such pathetic cultivators. Threads, she wanted to get out of there. She needed to get out of there. Of course, she couldn’t let her victory seem too easy. If any of the elders could’ve dispatched Rex with an idle thought, it’d undermine her success.

Curiously enough, Rex proved the least troublesome of his little posse.

She could deal with the Veleraeu girl easily enough. The fencer depended on her speed to counter attacks, and nothing moved faster than light. It was some annoyance having to fire two Divine Piercing Lights every time she wanted to penetrate the girl’s guard, but it wasn’t difficult.

The Honchel boy, in contrast, countered her quite effectively. He’d improved in leaps and bounds since she’d first written him off as lacking potential, and his silverskin technique, though flawed, deflected her Divine Piercing Lights quite effectively. He even moved so fast it seemed like he knew where she was going to strike before she did, an unheard of level of celerity for a copper. Were he a stage higher, she might’ve struggled to survive his relentless assault.

As it was, he failed to so much as scratch her Blinding Bulwark.

Rex himself seemed curiously helpless. His sword—unenchanted as far as Maria could tell—somehow made it far further into her Blinding Bulwark than anything his tier should’ve been capable of, yet she repelled him all the same. The odd Divine Piercing Light his way kept him at bay well enough.

Whichever mind technique he’d used to influence Honchel and Velereau, Maria had it well in hand. Her Silver Diadem of the Untainted Mind guarded her thoughts from outside intrusion, and the Fallen Petals of the Helix Bloom she’d tied to her wrist prevented emotional manipulation. Together with the pouch full of bark shavings from a Keeper’s Oak to stop him from stealing away her qi, she’d amassed three bronze level artifacts and natural treasures to perfectly counter Rex’s skillset.

They’d cost her nearly all the wealth she’d gathered over decades of hunts on Ilirian, but any price was worth paying if it secured her a position off Fyrion.

Now it was just a matter of finishing the job.

A beautiful crack reached Maria’s ear as her technique shattered Rex’s wrist. She swept her harrowwood staff at him to press her advantage, but he clumsily dodged back, falling to the floor in the process. She swiped down to end him, but he was already rolling out of melee range.

A second drain at her qi pulled Maria’s attention away as the Velereau girl returned to her pointless assault. She’d just about sent the girl clambering after her sword again when Rex’s voice called out.

“Conserve your qi!”

Maria scowled as the silver edge faded from Honchel’s axe blade. Velereau too, she noted, had withdrawn the flow of qi that’d been solidifying her otherwise flimsy rapier. She batted the former away with the tip of her staff, holding further Divine Piercing Lights in reserve for whatever Rex had planned. Moments later, she felt it.

The ambient qi had all but vanished. Rex’s vampirism must’ve been more powerful than she’d expected as he stole away every scrap of qi her techniques emanated. Of course, he couldn’t touch the qi directly under her control, but every technique she threw, every attack her Blinding Bulwark blocked, sent dissipate into the air. Maria, like all cultivators, had long learned to reclaim and recycle that loss.

But now Caliban Rex had taken it for himself.

This wouldn’t stand. Maria worried little about the personal loss—these pitiful coppers would break long before she ran out of qi—but however Rex intended to use all that power gave her pause.

Just in case, she eased up the Divine Piercing Lights to better reinforce her defenses. It was better safe than sorry. Besides, her victory had been assured from start. It was better, she reasoned, to avoid undue risk.

Maria could afford to take her time.

——

I had to keep myself from cheering as Lopez slowed her barrage to shore up her defenses. It was exactly the wrong thing to do.

She didn’t cease her bursts of light entirely, and I worried each one Charlotte or Xavier deflected cost them more qi than it cost her, but that couldn’t stop the faintest glimmer of hope from rearing its head as I watched her shield shine brighter than ever before.

For the first time in the painful encounter, all three of us managed to close in on the powerful elder, raining our admittedly ineffective blows down onto her shield in tandem.

But Lopez didn’t need her qi attacks to prove a lethal threat. Her staff passed seamlessly through the barrier that caused us such trouble, knocking aside blades and forcing retreats even when it failed to make direct contact.

When it succeeded, bones broke.

An overhand swipe snapped Xavier’s collarbone. In practically the same motion a backwards jab fractured Charlotte’s shin. They kept fighting. One handed, one legged, one eyed, they kept fighting.

Twice Lopez brought me to the floor. Twice Charlotte and Xavier, with their qi and with their blood, bought me the chance to get back up again.

Through it all Lopez barely moved. Either by some limitation of her shield technique or the simple knowledge she didn’t have to, she remained nearly stationary, standing fully upright in open rejection of any combat stance I’d ever seen.

The final time Lopez knocked me away, I wouldn’t be getting up so easily. Again her strike landed directly against my chest. Again I heard a crack. Again I flew into the back wall. My sunglasses snapped and fell to the floor.

This time, my lung didn’t dodge the jagged break. I heard the hiss of air. I felt the bubbles in my blood. I fought to inhale, but the breaths came ragged and labored.

I glanced down and saw Cedric’s bone piercing my chest. His blood coated the walls of the narrow gangway.

I looked across the room, past Xavier with his left arm hanging limp, past Charlotte keeping weight off her right foot, past Lopez’s brilliant bubble shield, to what lay beyond. To the airlock. To salvation. To Lucy.

My gaze fell again, to where the bone fragments had peppered my vac suit with more holes than I could’ve counted. But there were no punctures. My suit was singed, burned to near melting a dozen places, but whole.

Then it hit me.

For all my life I’d waged war against the cold. I’d patched holes and mended tears and suited up time and time again to maintain that flimsy wall that kept it out. I’d trapped the life within its shell, disallowed the warmth and light and precious air from breaking free.

But that light was no longer mine to keep.

Ever since that horrible day, ever since I’d died for those four minutes and twenty-three seconds, I’d surrendered all claim to the warmth in which I lived.

I belonged to the cold now.

No more was I a creature of the light constrained to the walled garden of life amidst the infinite night. I was of the dark, entombed by the faults of my biology, by the contradictions inherent to my existence, to that very bubble of warmth on which my body depended.

How that bubble burned.

I found it fitting, in hindsight, that my Way began with a punctured vac suit. How better to mark my spirit’s inversion than the literal tattering of that which had, for so long, kept me separate from the cold?

Today, my vac suit did the opposite. It shielded from the oppressive heat and light wielded against me. It formed a bubble of its own, a tiny island of calm and cool amidst the torrent of energy and life.

I found it poetic.

I found it beautiful.

I found it inspiring.

The sigil came to me unbidden, a hollow shape of gentle curves and twisting edges. I held it in my mind like a mother cradling an infant, and it held me back like a child grown an aging parent. I found no need to memorize or optimize or rehearse ad nauseam. I knew it. In a way, I’d always known it.

I forced myself to my feet. I took a breath, long and deep and agonizing against the pressure of my collapsed lung. And, long fucking last, I used my first ever technique.

Qi cascaded down my body like a waterfall, forming a thin and narrow shell, a second skin like those I’d worn for so many hours out in the cold. The more power I fed it the denser it grew, never thicker, never bulkier. Like a vac suit it moved with me, preferring stillness—always stillness—but more than willing to wade through this sea of light in which I swam.

I raised my sword. I took a step, back to the fray, back to my friends, back to Lopez.

And I smiled.

——

Maria diverted the bulk of her attention away from his two thralls the moment she first fathomed what Rex was doing.

It was insidious in its simplicity, brilliant in its underhandedness, and the perfect explanation for the powerful enchantment that so hid his qi.

By clearing the air of ambient qi, he’d not only robbed her of the chance to reclaim her spent power, but opened the door for his true technique. She’d have noticed it carving its path through the all the dissipate, so he’d removed it all.

Even now she couldn’t truly feel the tendrils of his qi worming their way into her body, but she knew they were there. She felt the resistance where they impeded her own qi, recognized the way that—with remarkable precision—they targeted each and every empty space within her meridians, rushing into the tiny gaps left by her own expenditures like oxygen sucked into a vacuum.

How she wished she could’ve sensed it. It must’ve been a remarkably complex technique.

For the time being, it did little more than slightly resist her cycling, little more than an annoyance, but Maria had seen what’d happened to Nicolas Vesper. She’d seen the way Rex had taken hold of Xavier Honchel and Charlotte Velereau. She had no intention of letting the same happen to her.

It was time to end this.

She slammed the head of her staff into Rex’s chest, rejoicing at the sound of shattering ribs as he flew back. She raised a hand for a Divine Piercing Light to finish the job, but Velereau darted in to parry the technique. The girl took a strike to the shoulder for her efforts.

In a halfhearted hope that ending him would break his control over the senior cadets, Maria conserved her qi for a few moments as she fought to maneuver Honchel and Velereau away from between her and Rex. By the time she did, he was on his feet.

And he was smiling.

Unsurprisingly, she could see no technique in action around him, but he appeared… darker, somehow. As if he stood in a shadow that fell upon him and only him, leaving his surroundings as illuminated as ever.

Maria knew what to do with shadows.

Technically speaking, The Light Which Banishes the Darkness was an iron technique, one that would strain her bronze core significantly with each use. She was loath to spend it here. Maria had kept the trump card secret for a reason, and not even she held enough sway to delete these security logs. The details of Rex’s downfall would spread throughout the Dueling Stars.

But cards unplayed did little good.

The entire staging area fell into darkness as Maria absorbed every bit, every mote, every photon of light in the room. It raced into the sigil at her fingertips, gathering into a single point that shone like a star in the night. In and in and in she pulled, weakening her defenses, ceasing her cycling, fighting through the increasing resistance within her meridians to put anything and everything into her final technique.

Maria fired.

The Light Which Banishes the Darkness blasted through the room, a sustained beam of blindingly bright prismatic light over twice the width of her Divine Piercing Light, with enough power behind it to punch a hole clean through several inches of solid steal.

Against Caliban Rex, it washed harmlessly to the sides. The shadow across his form seemed to flicker and waver, but it parted her technique around him as if the light itself sought to ignore his presence.

Maria pushed harder. She wouldn’t let this copper overcome her. She couldn’t. Whatever he’d done, no technique could survive her onslaught. Not for long. She fed it more.

She fed it her ambition. She fed it her pride. She fed it her disgust at being trapped on such a miserable world. Most of all she fed it her need, that same, essential need that drove all cultivators to defy the heavens, to reach for immortality, to become more.

She knew she was damaging her core. She knew she was exposing herself to Rex’s own invading technique. That didn’t matter. This weakling, this monster, this mortal would not withstand her. Would not outlast her.

With every hard-earned scrap of qi, every hour of painstaking meditation, every agonizingly perfected technique, every bit of asskissing and information trading and political maneuvering to earn the resources she deserved, Elder Maria Lopez one of six bronze core cultivators on all of Fyrion, flailed against infinity.

And infinity flailed back.

Even as her greatest attack failed to pierce his shield, that faint resistance she knew to be Rex’s technique advanced through her now empty meridians, encroaching further and further through the vacuum she’d left it. Still she channeled. Still it came. Until, at last, it reached her core.

Her qi didn’t drain away. Her thoughts didn’t cease or lock up or fall influence to Rex’s control.

His qi touched upon her core and for but a paltry moment, Maria saw.

She saw the black miasma that hung in the air around her. She saw the technique filled with more qi than she’d ever imagined clinging to Rex’s body.

Above all, she saw the well of power from which he drew.

Maria glimpsed infinity, and her world changed.

This wasn’t qi vampirism. This was so, so much more. This was eternity. This was inevitability. Maria Lopez looked upon the unending, and for the first time in her life, she knew what it was to be small.

Then it was gone. The miasma, the technique, the infinite sea all vanished as her body ejected the foreign qi from her core.

She fell to her knees.

She knew it was still there, that wellspring, that power beyond the finite minds of humanity, but scramble as she might, she failed to catch so much as a glimpse.

But that wasn’t true. There was but one, a single window into those cold depths. She found it as she gazed up, past the sword that had made its way to her throat, and into a pair of eyes as black and full of stars as a summer night’s sky.

Infinity lingered within them.

And Maria couldn’t look away.

——

I rushed forward as Lopez collapsed to her knees, a look of reverent awe on her face. She offered no resistance as I pressed Shiver to her throat, ready to end her life at the first sign of trickery.

None came.

She looked up at me, stared into my eyes with an expression of unfettered surrender, not only of the body, but of the spirit. Something had broken within Elder Lopez, something profound of which I couldn’t begin to guess the meaning.

She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. Her captivated eyes, her slack jaw, her staff left carelessly to fall to the ground offered answer enough.

For some time I stood over her, continuing to channel vast swaths of qi through my as of yet unnamed technique. Around us Charlotte and Xavier checked over their various injuries, confirmed they could make it to Lucy’s open airlock, and gathered up their belongings.

I spent that time coming to a decision.

By all logic I ought to have ended Lopez’s life then and there. She’d already proven herself my enemy. She’d taken my focus room hours, schemed and manipulated both me and others to hamper my progress, and now she’d outright tried to kill me for her own gain.

Little good would come from letting her live. I knew that. Much as I searched for any basis on which to offer mercy, any reason to spare her the very fate I’d hours ago delivered unto Nick, I came up empty.

The non-zero chance that Lopez would offer me more trouble if I let her live won out. It wasn’t like I was committing some foul act by cutting her throat.

Her life didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

“Cal!” Xavier’s voice pulled me from my thoughts as he tossed my vac helmet to me. I had to withdraw my sword from Lopez’s neck to catch it with my good hand. “Let’s go.”

He and Charlotte had already limped their way to the airlock. They were waiting for me.

I spared Lopez one final, pitiful glance, slipped my helmet on, and moved to join them.

Together we stumbled our away across Fyrion’s ragged gray landscape, past rocky crags and exposed silver veins judged too small to be worth mining, until a wondrous matte white greeted us.

For the second time in just over a year, I collapsed into Lucy’s airlock with a punctured lung and a damaged vac suit. For the second time I carried the grief of recent loss and the wounds of narrow survival against seemingly insurmountable odds.

But this time I had friends at my side.

This time, it felt like coming home.

END OF BOOK 1

[AAAAA it's finally (almost) done!  Epilogues tomorrow, then I have to go back and add the Arthur chapter that sets up the encounter with Victor, but we've finally reached the end!  Thank you all for being so wonderfully patient with me on this one, and for all your incredible feedback.  I never expected writing without publicly serializing to be so difficult, and without all your kind comments and helpful feedback I don't know how I would've done it.  Thank you <3]