Untitled Space Xianxia - Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Accolades and Admonitions

I awoke to my blaring alarm the following morning with a pounding hangover that lasted approximately forty seconds before I remembered I was cultivator now. I couldn’t soothe my head directly, but I could run qi through my blood meridian to improve circulation and through my kidney meridian to fortify my liver. Together with a few healthy swigs of life-giving water, the headache didn’t stand a chance.

I halfheartedly celebrated my newly realized ability to cycle while drinking water. It was a far cry from passing out of meditation class, but my focus had improved. It helped that my qi dulled the impacts of the outside world rather than intensifying them, a fact that felt an awful lot like cheating, but who was I to complain?

Still groggy if no longer in debilitating pain, I dragged myself out of bed and ran through the motions of changing into a less-wrinkled uniform and running a comb through my hair. I paused for a moment before the mirror, remembering something Xavier had told me as we’d downed our third whiskey too many.

Most cultivators’ eyes changed at some point as they progressed to better reflect their affinity with their Way. Usually it came in the form of a color change or slight reshaping of the pupil or iris, and usually not until well into the gem levels, explaining why I hadn’t yet seen anyone with wacky eyes. What I had seen was the way cycling the sense meridian brought new vibrance to a cultivator’s eyes, making their color really pop in a hauntingly intense way.

I’d assumed that cycling my sense meridian would do the opposite, mute the color of my eyes just as it paled my skin. According to Xavier, the truth was far spookier.

I evened my breathing and sent qi through my sense meridian, watching the world desaturate around me as I sifted through the flood of information. My heart skipped a beat then raced in panic. My sclera and iris had gone as black as my pupil.

I looked like Cedric.

I looked like a void psycho.

My breath hitched. My focus shattered. Color flood back to the world and my eyes at once, the humanity returning to my face as I caught my breath and calmed my pounding heart.

This wasn’t right. I wasn’t insane. I wasn’t murderous. I didn’t ache for lack of qi. I had more than enough. Xavier would’ve said something if I’d truly looked like I’d gone VIP, right? I knew Fyrion didn’t have all the posters up that RF-31 had, but he had to know at least that basic sign, right?

I let out a long sigh and focused up to take another look. This time, I was ready for the sight that greeted me. This time, I got a closer look. This time, I saw what I’d missed.

I had stars in my eyes.

I stared not into the inky abyss of Cedric’s gaze, but the infinite promise of the night sky. Foreign constellations depicted new and ancient myths. Nebulae colored the edge of my periphery. Distant galaxies twirled their eternal dance.

In my eyes lay not insatiable hunger nor lifeless nothing, but endless points of life and light, countless fires burning hot against the inexorable cold, a million bulwarks of existence.

My alarm blared once more and I cut off the flow of qi, escaping the depths of my starlit eyes back into the real world. I mentally added my sense meridian to the list of ones I couldn’t cycle in public, at least with my eyes open. It was nice to find one that didn’t make me look like a corpse, but the change was still far too drastic to show off.

Mind still racing to figure out what exactly it all meant, I stepped out into the hallway and joined a bleary-eyed Nick on his way downstairs. Momentous progress or otherwise, I’d missed yesterday’s morning workout. Unless I wanted to be branded a layabout, I couldn’t afford to miss another one.

The last thing I needed was to give Elder Lopez another reason to think me a weakling before my meeting with her that night. I already had a feeling it wasn’t going to go well.

——

I rubbed at the particularly nasty bruise Instructor Long had left on my shoulder as I waited patiently outside Elder Lopez’s office.

“Excuse me?” I asked her secretary. “How much longer is it going to be?”

Okay, maybe I wasn’t so patient, but in my defense, she’d summoned me, and I’d already been waiting for half an hour. With how many of the kiddos had—understandably—stayed home from class that day, the combat instructors had been especially… giving with their attention. I wanted nothing more than to eat dinner, lie down, and cycle until my body stopped aching all over, but instead I was here, waiting for Elder Lopez to let me in for the meeting she’d scheduled for thirty minutes ago.

The poor secretary only shrugged.

I sighed, debating for the umpteenth time just standing up and leaving. If she didn’t want to respect my time, why should I respect hers?

I knew that wouldn’t end well. Like it or not, Elder Lopez held authority over me, and given literally everything I knew about cultivators, disrespecting her might’ve been the last thing I ever did. So I sat, and I stewed, and I pictured the look on her face when I inevitably surpassed her. Given how quickly I’d been progressing, it wouldn’t take that long, right?

“You can go in now.”

I leapt to my feet, blinking the daydream out of my thoughts as I stepped into the elder’s office. The foul smell of the faux wood veneer all over the walls assaulted my nostrils as I saluted and stood at attention for a bored-looking Elder Lopez.

She glanced up at me with disapproval. “I’m told you elected to skip yesterday morning’s workout so you could play vac-welder with the mortals.”

“Yes, ma’am. I was helping with the—”

“I’m told,” she cut me off, “that rather than fulfilling your duty to this sect to grow stronger, you opted to do the work of mortals.”

“The work needed doing and I had the qualif—”

“I’m told,” she interrupted again, “that immediately following your failure to protect one of the sect’s most vulnerable, you forwent the opportunity to help rectify your weakness for a few hours running around outside.”

I blinked at her absurd reasoning. “I saved his life! I killed the thing that—”

“You will remember your manners,” she snapped.

I swallowed back a retort. “Yes, ma’am. As I was saying, I saved Vihaan’s life after he—”

“After you allowed a void beast to imperil it. You were one of forty-nine fully-fledged sect members present at the time of the attack. You were the only one who oversaw a critically wounded child.”

“Ma’am, I haven’t been here for two weeks. I’ve never seen combat. I need more time to—”

She swiped her hand up and a video appeared from a holo projector built into her desk. I stared agape at an image of myself, stunned and horrified, as I froze up for a few seconds before rushing to Vihaan’s aid. Elder Lopez ended the feed before I charged the void beast.

“Sheer luck saved that boy’s life. Your hesitation gave that void beast plenty of time to end it. Your weakness allowed him to be wounded in the first place.”

I spoke behind gritted teeth. “That isn’t fair. I couldn’t have—”

“And even worse, when confronted with your failure, you make excuses. Instead of working harder at improving yourself, you run away back to your mortal life.” She shook her head. “Luckily for you, I’m more forgiving than my peers. Luckily for you, I’ve removed this security footage from the public logs.”

I withheld a sigh as I realized there this was going. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“Of course, I can’t allow this transgression to go unpunished, nor, if you value your position here, should my kindness go unrewarded.”

I exhaled. “If I give you a focus room hour, will you let this be?”

A thin smile stretched across her face. “The loss of focus room time does sound like a suitable punishment.” She nodded. “I will allow it.”

I had to shut my eyes to keep myself from rolling them as I pulled up my holopad and made the transfer. “Will that be all, ma’am?”

“For now,” she replied. “Remember, your benefactor expects great things from you. So does the Dragon’s Right Eye. I would recommend you spend less time drinking and cavorting with mortals and more time on your studies. You’re dismissed.”

I would’ve saluted again if I’d ever stopped saluting throughout the conversation. Instead, I simply turned on my heel and left the office, bristling over the encounter.

Blackmail I could understand. Saving potentially compromising video footage to steal resources made sense. I didn’t quite understand why she felt the need to obfuscate it behind the thin veil of doling out punishment or whatever the fuck that had been all about, but the end result had been the same.

She’d wanted a focus hour. She’d gotten a focus hour. All the bullshit power plays and shitty fault-finding and disapproval were obnoxious, but meaningless. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I hoped Vihaan and his parents would understand that. They were the only ones I really cared about, and given that they’d invited me to dinner rather than requested a meeting, I had high hopes.

I left it at that. Sure, the loss of the focus hour meant Charlotte would have to wait a week for her next turn at an extra hour, but that was hardly the end of the world. I’d even planned for such occurrences when I’d designed the schedule. It sucked that my direct superior wanted to be a self-serving asshole, but given what Lucy had told me, that was kind of the default state for cultivators. I’d live.

I was late to dinner that night, a product of the half hour I’d had to wait outside Elder Lopez’s office. The others hadn’t waited for me, an understandable decision given the way I’d completely missed the meal two nights ago. They did have the good grace to sit with me as I ate and listen to me gripe about Elder Lopez. Apparently I wasn’t the only cadet who rather disliked the woman.

I retired early to cultivate and take my nightly audio call with Lucy. She agreed with my analysis, adding the insight that even in her corruption, Elder Lopez felt the need to maintain the appearance of moral superiority. It all just felt like silly posturing to me.

The next couple of days passed in a flurry as I exercised and studied and practiced cycling my new meridians in and out of class. Bit by bit my classmates returned, noticeably quieter and more reserved after our shared trauma. The instructors went easy on them, or at least easier.

I knew I’d technically met the requirements to pass out of Chrissy’s cycling class, but I still lacked the fine control I really wanted, and it would’ve attracted attention if I’d done so so early. Besides, she was the only instructor I actually liked. I wasn’t in a hurry to replace her.

The Basus, knowing my schedule for its similarity to Vihaan’s, had been kind enough to schedule our dinner for an hour after combat class ended, leaving me plenty of time to get myself washed up and in a clean uniform. I spent the pod ride over reassuring my strangely frantic nerves, reminding myself that the kind of parents whose kid would give away his lunch to a hungry stranger couldn’t be that bad.

The lobby of family housing B struck me as remarkably unfamiliar, seemingly a different space entirely than the chaotic room to which I’d delivered an injured Vihaan or the empty hall I’d awoken in. Cultivators and mortals went about their business. People milled about. Young children clung to their parents’ hands. Teenagers scowled and slouched and stalked about. It looked… normal.

I followed my holopad’s instructions up to apartment two-nineteen, where the metal door slid open to reveal four and a half feet of unadulterated cuteness.

“Mister Caliban!” Vihaan raced up to me and wrapped me in a great hug.

“It’s just Cal, buddy.” I hugged him back. “Just Cal. How are you doing?”

He pulled back. “The doctors say I can come back to meditation and cycling class in two days, but I have to wait two whole weeks for combat class!”

“Well, you’d better listen to them. We wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself and worse.”

“He’s right, you know.”

I looked up to find two women standing side by side, one that mirrored Vihaan’s dark complexion, and another with the same vibrant blue eyes. The former extended her hand.

“Ananya Basu,” she introduced herself. “And my wife, Lisa.”

I shook both of their hands. “Cal. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Come in, come in,” Lisa beckoned me. “Vihaan has told us so much about you.”

“Hopefully more good than bad,” I replied. “Some of our instructors have some… choice words about my presence.”

Ananya smiled grimly. “Some of your instructors are bitter that they’re stuck teaching beginner classes.”

I laughed. “That explains so much.” I followed them into a spacious two bedroom apartment decorated in all the usual trappings alongside a number of gorgeously-crafted metalwork sculptures. Lifelike statues of meditating cultivators or wild animals seemed ready to jump to life next to abstract art pieces of sharp angles and delicate curves.

“These are brilliant,” I commented as they led me to a marble table set for four. “Where did you find them?”

“They’re Lisa’s,” Ananya answered. “She has a master’s touch.”

“You stop that,” Lisa chided. “You helped with at least half of these.” She wrapped an arm around Ananya’s waist. “And you inspired all of them.”

“Mom,” Vihaan complained. “You’re being gross.”

I laughed and rustled his hair. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Ananya separated from her wife. “Can I offer you a drink? Dinner won’t be ready for another few minutes, but in the meantime we have a bottle of Wechelian red we’ve been saving.”

“I’d love some,” I answered, having no idea what Wechelian meant. I assumed it was some vineyard on Iliria. I did my level best to hide my complete ignorance of the wine world as I sipped the aged burgundy. It was good. I said as much. “It’s good.”

“Mmm,” Lisa replied as she took a sip of her own. “Yeah, that’s the stuff.”

I blinked, unsure of the etiquette for this type of interaction before realizing there probably wasn’t any. I took another sip of my wine. “So… you two work with metal?”

Ananya smiled. “We met in the foundry and haven’t left yet. Lisa’s sculptures are the pride of the sect.”

“And Ananya’s weapons help keep us safe,” Lisa inserted. “I just make pretty shapes.”

“I think you mean gorgeous shapes.”

“Moms.”

I chuckled. “It’s hard work,” I said. “I was a vac-welder before I became a cultivator, and let me tell you I wish I’d had the skills to work in the foundry.”

“Vac-welding is important,” Lisa argued. “Some of us enjoy continuing to breathe. In fact, I did my apprenticeship with—”

An alarm beeped in the kitchen behind me.

“That’s the stew!” Ananya jumped to her feet and scurried away from the table. Lisa followed, the two of them assembling plates of slow-cooked beef stew over rice with a side of roasted vegetables. I thanked them profusely as they placed the dish in front of me.

We had a truly wonderful dinner. The wine was tasty, the food was magnificent, and the conversation was lovely. Lisa told the story of how the two of them met when she’d accidentally used up a pile of scrap that’d belonged to Ananya, and promptly made it up to her by crafting a stunning silver necklace Ananya still wore to this day.

In turn I shared the tale of my ongoing cooking war with Lucy, my only story that even held a candle to any of theirs. Most of my best stories weren’t fit for polite company, let alone the dinner table. They absolutely did not need to know about the time I swapped out all of Brady’s underwear for pairs two sizes smaller, even if that was the funniest day of my life.

We left the subject of the void incursion alone, at least until the dinner had wrapped up and Vihaan had adjourned to his room. Only in the lad’s absence did the conversation turn serious.

“Vihaan told us what you did for him,” Lisa said, “the risk you took to save his life.”

“I did what anyone would’ve done,” I replied. “I was lucky, really.”

“That’s not the way he put it,” Ananya countered. “You killed a void beast. You brought him to safety. You risked your life to get him to a doctor in time.”

I instinctively looked to take a sip of my wine. The glass was empty.

Ananya stood. “You may’ve wondered why we waited so long to have you over.”

I hadn’t. I’d assumed Vihaan had needed time to recover. I nodded anyway.

She grabbed something from behind the counter and hid it behind her back as she returned to the table. “I needed time to make you this. I doubt we’ll ever be able to repay the debt we owe, to properly thank you for saving our son’s life, but I hope this will go some way towards showing our appreciation.”

From behind her back she revealed a sword sheathed in faux black leather. Matching cloth wrapped its hilt, leaving only the gleaming silver hand guard and rounded pommel visible. I took it.

Ananya smiled. “Draw it.”

I obeyed. The blade stretched just over three feet long, length enough to justifiable be wielded in one or two hands. Its edges were straight and on both sides, but its tip was aligned not with the center, but with one particular side, giving it a clear front and back edge. To my amateur eyes it seemed somewhere between a saber and a longsword, a strange design, but one that smacked of flexibility above all else.

I supposed that made sense for a cultivator with no discernible style. Either way, they were the experts, and I trusted they’d built the right blade for me.

Beneath the warm glow of the light fixture above us, the metal shimmered with a thousand swirling lines, the bright silver clashing with the ebon streaks that ran through it. “It’s beautiful.”

Lisa grinned. “She has a master’s touch,” she echoed her wife’s earlier words.

“I wasn’t sure what fighting style you’d develop, so I went with a design that could fit into as many as possible,” Ananya explained. “It’s an alloy of steel and Fyrion silver, not the strongest sword I’ve ever made, but perhaps the most spiritually significant.”

I looked up at her askance.

Lisa explained. “We took the steel from the freezer cart you used to save Vihaan’s life.”

I gaped.

Ananya nodded. “As a brute force weapon it may fall short, but as a channel for your qi and extension of your spirit, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better weapon.”

“I—uh—thank you,” I managed, looking them each in the eyes before the blade itself reclaimed my gaze. “This is amazing.”

“You’ve earned it,” Lisa said, “and so much more.”

“If there’s anything you ever need here on Fyrion,” Ananya added, “just ask. We’ll make it happen.”

“This…” I trailed off as the blade’s beauty caught my attention yet again. I sheathed it. “This is plenty. Thank you, really.”

Lisa shook her head. “Thank you, Caliban Rex.”

Ananya flashed a warm smile. “May it serve you well.”

I offered three times to help them clean up the dinner they’d cooked me, only to find myself ushered out the door with a sword in one hand and a fresh-baked cookie in the other. As oven-warm chocolate chips melted over my tongue, I couldn’t decide which was the better parting gift.

Actually nevermind. I had a fucking sword.

All jokes aside, it warmed my heart to find that Vihaan was okay. As much as I resented Elder Lopez’s maneuvering or reveled in his parents’ adoration, that was all that really mattered.

I made it back to my room that night with an indomitable grin on my face. Lucy may have been right about some cultivators. Some of them were self-serving, manipulative, dicks. But not all of them.

Some earnestly strove to be the best version of themselves they could be. Some would give away their lunch to feed a hungry stranger. Some just wanted to make sure that those they cared about stayed safe.

And some had just forged me the coolest goddamn sword I’d ever seen.

That was good enough for me.

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