ALL NOVEL Interlude - Stars
Stars
Ryun sat on the couch in the living room area. They were all back in the quarters assigned to them in the Citadel. All of them had been attacked. None had died, of course, people that had come here had come for a reason. They were strong, stronger than anyone else that could’ve come, or at least who would’ve been allowed to. There had been a few injuries. Vryull had a suffered a wound on his shoulder, but that had been healed quickly by the Empire’s healers. Eratemus had lost three of his skeletons, which from what Ryun had observed of them was impressive. Still, Ryun didn’t think that their attackers actually knew much about who they were attacking.
Zacharia and his partner, Nahamassa stood behind him, leaned on the wall. Maleatus was nearby, and Vryull was standing next to the couch on Ryun’s right. Eratemus was on the other side of the couch, sitting in a chair. Ryun’s eyes were pointed at Teeran Hoofline, the Custodian of the Citadel, but all of his attention was on Erdania sitting next to him, with one of the Empire’s healers working on her. Selia stood behind the two of them, with her arms crossed over her chest and her back straight. Through their link he could feel the anger that she wasn’t showing outwardly, and Ryun found that he shared that sentiment.
The healer worked on regrowing Erdania’s left arm, feeding her potions and using abilities and perks on her. She didn’t appear to be bothered by the loss, and with people like them it rarely was anything really crippling, if you survived, you could get healed of almost anything. Though the process wasn’t exactly quick. Regrowing a body part of a Cultivator like her whose body was more than just flesh and bone was apparently a bit more difficult.
When he had arrived to their chamber, rushing through the citadel through even the Empire’s own people, and found the two of them he was met with a bloody sight. The two of them had been attacked by seven people, and all of their attackers were dead. But Ryun hadn’t cared about that, Selia’s feelings had been filling his mind as he fully opened their link. When he had seen Erdania missing an arm it wasn’t her feelings that he felt, only his own. His own anger rose up, memories of the past resurfaced, of a time when he was too weak and too slow to save someone that he loved.
With her hand fully regrown, Erdania shuffled on the couch, looking at the newly grown flesh.
“Ugh,” she groaned, then leaned her head to look at Selia. “You are going to have to redo this entire arm.”
Ryun was pretty sure that she was talking about her tattoos, which hadn’t regrown with her arm. He knew that they were formations, though he wasn’t quite sure what they did. He also hadn’t known that Selia had been the one to do them, he hadn’t known that she knew how to do that.
“You never should’ve lost it,” Selia said, sounding as if she was angry, but Ryun knew that she was afraid. He didn’t know how their fight went, but if her feelings were anything to go by, she at least thought that it could’ve been worse.
“There is no excuse,” the minotaur said. “These attacks should have never happened. The only defense that I can provide is the very reason you are here. We are stretched too thin, otherwise this wouldn’t have happened.”
Ryun kept his mouth shut. When they had attacked him, it hadn’t really mattered to him who they were. It still didn’t, and the ones that had Selia and Erdania were dead as well.
“Who were they?” Zach asked.
“They were part of a small Dealmaker cult,” Teeran said. “Prior to the enemy attack they had been… a nuisance. But with everything that happened more people had lost hope, more people had started to believe.”
“And what,” Eratemus started. “Do they believe in?”
Teeran sighed. “They believe in freedom, or so they claim. That every person should be free to survive on their own. That us banding together is not what this world was intended for. They see the enemy attack as the Dealmaker trying to correct things.”
Ryun narrowed his eyes at him, but didn’t comment.
He could tell that the others weren’t really interested.
Teeran continued talking. “It is obvious now that we had failed. I am having a meeting with our leadership, after that I will be able to tell you more.”
No one said anything in response, and after a while Teeran got the message. He and his people shuffled out of their rooms, leaving them alone.
A few minutes after they had all left, Maleatus spoke.
“Well, I did not come here so that I could die before we even try to get a stab at the big guy.”
It was Eratemus who answered him. “I am relieved in a way that this happened.”
“How so?” Maleatus asked.
“It tells me that the Empire is not so different than the Core,” Eratemus answered him. “They have problems as well.”
With that, he stood up and looked at everyone in the room. “But this should also serve as a lesson,” he added. “We must be much more careful. This mission is dangerous, but we need to survive to reach it.”
Everyone retreated to their rooms; Ryun remained in the common area, watching as Selia and Erdania walked to their room—he didn’t follow.
Selia
Selia left Erdania in their room, walking out only after she had fallen asleep. She had been more tired after the fight than she let on, and then she had insisted that Selia start working on repairing the formation on her arm. It would take her a while, far more than it would take someone who had a Class or a Path that helped their formation making. She only had her knowledge and her Qi that she could shape with her willpower.
The fight had been closer than Selia had expected, and she knew that Erdania was trying to downplay just by how much that was. They hadn’t been prepared, they hadn’t noticed their enemies until they had struck the first blow. And that was something that should’ve never happened. They had to be better.
She left the quarters assigned to their group and spoke with one of the Empire’s guards, asking them a question. They provided an escort and led her through the Citadel. A couple of minutes later they pointed her to a large balcony overlooking one of the inner gardens, with the open night sky looming above them. There were more guards along the walls, but Ryun was sitting on the railing alone, his feet dangling over the edge.
She walked over, leaving the guards behind her. She stopped next to him, and looked at the same place he was, the sky.
“What are you looking at?” She asked.
Ryun didn’t answer immediately. Then he sighed, a motion that his body didn’t require, a mechanical movement done only to convey something. She had seen him doing it from time to time, although only in her or Erdania’s presence. For others, he was usually far more stoic. He spoke, answering her question. “I am not looking at anything that is here, even if it was I doubt that I could see it. I am… remembering something that I used to be able to see.”
She blinked at his answer. She knew that his sight was different, that he saw Essence which made his sight far different than anyone else’s. He was blind to many things that the rest of them took for granted. “What are you talking about?”
“The stars,” he said.
She blinked, looking up to see the stars of a claimed territory shining around the moon. “You could see stars now.”
He chuckled. “Those are just the tiny dots that shine with light, they are not stars. On the old worlds, in the old universes, each star was a sun, a world. And there used to be a countless number of them, all painting the night sky. What I remember of the sky in the Infinite Realm is… so much more disappointing. Just a single orb that shines pale light down toward the ground. I wonder why this realm doesn’t have them, even if they are fake. It was looking up at the stars that had pushed people to reach for something greater than themselves.”
Selia hadn’t known that. She had picked up a few things about the old worlds by being around Rankers, but she herself was born in this world, she couldn’t quite grasp what he was talking about.
“May I ask why you are thinking about stars?” She asked.
He shrugged. “I have accepted this reality,” he said. “But sometimes… I remember the past, and I wonder… was any of it even real? Did I imagine it all? And if I did, how much of my past had I imagined?”
Selia didn’t know what to say about that, but… she could feel him in her mind. He hadn’t closed his side of the link since they had been attacked. She wasn’t yet all that proficient at reading what their link gave her, but she felt… sadness and fear.
“You didn’t close the link,” she said after a while.
“No, I did not,” he said, then shook his head. “It was a mistake to keep it closed. I wanted to give you your privacy, I didn’t want to intrude. But… even had we not decided to try and build a closer relationship, we would’ve always been bound together. And the link is an advantage that we hadn’t been using.”
Selia tilted her head. “Why are you feeling sad, and afraid?”
“What happened today was… a reminder of what happened on Earth. How I lost the person who carried that perk before you. I felt her die you know, I felt everything that she felt before and at that moment. And when you were attacked, when I felt your pain and then anger… I realized that I was powerless again. You were somewhere else, and I had no way of reaching you and Erdania. If things had gone differently, you could’ve died, and the same thing would’ve happened again.”
“I can understand feeling like that,” Selia said, it was exactly what she was feeling right now, with Erdania.
“I know,” Ryun smiled, his eyes still turned to the sky.
By now she understood that he relied on senses other than eyes to observe things around him far more. He pretended in certain situations to use his eyes, but in moments like these when he was relaxed he did what came more natural. The fact that it only happened with her and Erdania told her that he was getting a lot more comfortable with them, which was what she—they—wanted.
Today was a lesson for both of them it seemed.
She climbed on top of the railing and sat next to him, leaning her shoulder against his.
Zach
Inside his mind, Zach fought against some of the strongest opponents that he had ever faced. His skill |Enhanced Phantom Training| bringing his imagination to life. The enemies had elementals, spirits, and many others among them. The two he fought only a day before were there too. Their power was not the same, in his mind they were stronger, brought up to the level where they could be a threat to him now. He danced among them, taking shots when he could. It was a hard dance, and eventually he lost, getting overwhelmed by their numbers.
He sighed as his mind woke up, and his eyes opened. Naha sat on the ground across from him, and as soon as she saw that he was awake she placed a hand on his knee.
“You are pushing yourself too much,” she told him. “You’ve been using your skill when you should’ve been resting.”
“I haven’t been using it enough,” Zach responded with a shake of his head. “We were too slow yesterday. Our fights should never last that long, we need to go harder from the start. End a fight before it could ever truly begin.”
Naha gave him a smile. “If only the world worked that way. We won’t always be able to do that.”
Zach sighed, then he shook his head. “Was coming here a mistake?” He asked her. “We’ve been attacked by the very people that we have come to help. We are in an Empire that is on verge of collapse, and the only thing we have done is train.”
Naha tilted her head.
“Why are we here? Not because we were asked,” she said.
He looked in her eyes. “No, not because we were asked,” Zach agreed. He closed his eyes and knew what she meant. They hadn’t come here for themselves, because they had been promised rewards. They came so that they could grow stronger, and because they knew that someone had to help. That doing this would save countless lives. There wasn’t really a choice.
“Risk was never something we avoided,” Naha said.
Zach looked at his right arm, its color a deep green—almost black—metallic looking, though it mimicked a real hand. The hand was his greatest strength, his greatest weapon, and he had… ignored an obvious avenue that would let him get stronger. In part because of the risk, and in part because of… guilt. The guilt of what he had unleashed in the Ethereal Realm. The Yeti was still in there, and Zach did not want a reunion. He had tried to limit his trips to the Ethereal, and keep them as short as possible.
He sighed. They were facing stronger and stronger opponents, and the Dome Leader would be the strongest yet.
He met Naha’s eyes. “I’m going to need to go back to the Ethereal Real, aren’t I?”
“A good hunt might do us both some good,” she smiled, showing her teeth in a predatory grin.
Zach turned his eyes back to his hand. “Perhaps it is time to replace a few of my sword forms.”
Vryull
Vryull tried not to think on the phantom pain in his shoulder. The wound was long gone, but he still couldn’t move his mind from it. He had been far too close to losing his life. He had been lucky, that they hadn’t killed him with the first stroke and that he had perks that allowed him to retaliate immediately upon being damaged. Otherwise…
Still, it was a reminder that he had to be more mindful of his surroundings. Even as powerful as he was, no one was invincible.
“What are you trying to do?” Vryull asked.
He was sitting in the common room, alone with Ryun, who sat across from him. The Cultivator had asked him for a favor, to use some of his void powers and let him try something.
Ryun’s eyes were focused on Vryull’s palm, where an orb of void stood suspended above it. Two more orbs were floating to his sides and one behind him.
“It is… strange,” Ryun said instead of answering the question.
“What is?” Vryull asked.
“When you used that… perk?”
“Yes,” Vryull answered.
“That perk,” Ryun nodded. “The Void Essence just… as if out of nothing. Or… hm… no, it was as if it pushed through space and flooded in.”
Vryull tilted his head. “A Classers powers are not like Cultivators, they don’t come from within us. A Class is more connected to the Framework itself.”
Ryun grimaced. “I don’t think that there is as much difference as everyone thinks. Still, this Essence feels… like tier eight Void Essence, or… something in between tier eight and nine.”
That did make sense to Vryull as his Class was tier 8. “So, what are you trying to do?”
“I am attempting to control the… Essence that is not my Qi,” Ryun answered him, finally.
Vryull blinked. “I don’t think that that is something you can do.”
“Can you let go of this Essence? Make it not be… yours?” Ryun asked.
Vryull frowned, then looked at his orb. It was perk that created them and allowed him to have them float around him, intercepting any attacks. He didn’t think that there was a way to do what Ryun wanted. He focused and then tried anyway. Finally, he just ended the perk and the orbs slowly fizzled out.
Ryun narrowed his eyes. “Hm… it was as if they were pulled back through… nothing,” then he tilted his head. “I think that you are right, that Essence… it felt tied to you in a way that made it impossible for me to touch.”
“Why did you think you even could do it?” Vryull asked.
Ryun leaned back then waved with one hand. “I can pull in Essence, any cultivator can. I can command the Essence around me to move, to come to me and into my core. Doesn’t it stand to reason that I could then do more? I wanted to try with the Void first, since I understand it the most.”
Vryull hadn’t really thought about it like that, but… it was true that Cultivators could just pull any type of Essence around them into their core. Though what Ryun was suggesting was something a lot different. “Still, I don’t think that you will be able to that to the Essence that belongs to someone else.”
Ryun nodded his head.
Vryull then spoke again. “You should talk with Eratemus about this.”
Ryun stood up. “Yes, I think that I should.”
He walked to the necromancer’s doors and knocked.