Waterstrider

Fifth District, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Thirdmonth, 1634 PTS

We were sitting in Hestky’s living room again. The man himself had gone to his study, a room at the end of the short hallway, leaving me and Rachel alone. One of her legs was crossed over the other as she leaned back, arms draped across the back of the couch. I could tell she was aiming for an imperious look, but I was unfazed by it. I sat languidly on the opposing couch and met her gaze. She was first to break the silence.

“What is it that you want, Mister Yu?”

I watched her speak with an impassive expression on my face.

“Is there any reason I should share something like that with you?” She shook her head as if annoyed. But I knew better.

“I’ve saved your life twice and helped you acquire some very valuable objects. I feel I’m due some consideration, don’t you think?”

Her piercing blue eyes continued to bore into me, and I decided to give her something. I owed her a debt after all, though I could not be sure quite how things stood between us. Particularly given her true nature and the way she had misled me.

“Fine. My wish is to become an immortal, achieve great power, and punish those who have wronged me,” I said, the words booming thunderously from my chest. They were true words, words that resonated with the dantian in my heart. Words that made an attempt to guide my path. But they did not encompass all of it. I had left a part of myself back on Canvas, and after all, half a man could only hope for half a path.

“So you want revenge on Sunlit Hall? Or is it the Vermilion Cliffs Sect in particular that you wish to destroy?”

The name of the sect tore through me like an axe. I winced, unable to restrain my anguish at the memories racing though me. Rachel was treading upon ground that I had long since left untouched.

I had avoided thinking of the Vermilion Cliffs ever since I had escaped years before. I had planned to avoid thinking of them until I was ready to face them. To take my revenge on those who had destroyed my homeland. Did she know who I was, then? What I had…

My heart dantian tingled with pain, ready to unleash a torrent of miasma through my ruined channels. Thoughts of the past made me angry, made me want to fight. But I restrained myself, the years of silence and meditation on the voyage here having helped to dull the memories somewhat. I met Rachel’s gaze again.

“So you know who I am, then.”

I let the statement hang in the air, pushing to see if she truly knew all of it. Had she seen a disciple of the Downpour Sect before? Perhaps she had recognized my martial arts. Or perhaps she had even known this long before I had arrived at the station, attracted by her false information.

Perhaps she really did know everything, who and what I really was.

“I do,” she said. “I’ve known since we met in the warehouse. The secret arts of your sect are rather distinctive, for those who see as I do, and one of my people has observed it before. It was simple to search up the current status of your people. To think the actions of a single disciple could spark such a brutal conflict. Particularly since your sect was so protected within the Downpour.” She leaned forward, eyes glittering. “I can help you, Cyrus. We can acquire all the resources you need, find manuals for powerful new arts and techniques and slay all who oppose us. We can topple the Sunlit Hall, even the Pantheon itself.”

Her tone was fiery, bearing the snakelike, passionate voice of a cult leader or illicit merchant. She was speaking of fantasies, however. The sort of impossible things I had wanted. Had always wanted, ever since I was a young outer disciple introduced to the world of martial artists.

Secretly, I heaved a sigh of relief. She was unaware of my true identity. But what she did know was enough. My goals had shifted since the downfall of my Sect, but my desire to progress remained. Even if it had not, the use of my arts had sent me down a path I could not stray from lest I die.

Still, my ambition had grown proportionally to my hatred. I now wished to topple the heavens themselves, to rend the worlds and the void in an effort to satisfy my thirst for revenge. Just like what she was suggesting.

“Why?” I asked. It was a simple question, though one that needed to be spoken aloud.

“Why what? Why do I wish to help you? Why do I believe I can accomplish this? Or why you specifically?”

The words flowed from her mouth, swift and smooth. She was clearly a practiced speaker. I imagined she would likely be able to go on for several minutes, trying to convince me to follow along with her aims and perhaps even forget who… what she truly was. I cut in before she could continue her sophistry.

“What does it matter to you?” I asked.

I had been curious about this, ever since I had realized her true nature. “From what I’ve heard, Shades don’t have emotions. Because they lack true souls. You know my goal, and I need to hear your own.”

The words were cruel, perhaps. But a part of me needed to lash out, to express my emotions. To release myself from their grasp for a moment. As I had anticipated, her gaze hardened as it had the previous time I had brought up the matter of her race.

It was almost enough to make me doubt my assertion about her lack of a soul. Though that mattered little to me.

“Cyrus, put your hand on the conduit,” she ordered. The request surprised me. It came out of nowhere, a hard tangent to the conversation we had been having. My eyes flicked over to the object, still resting on the table and filled with glowing whorls of color.

“Why? What will happen if I do?” I asked.

“It simply acts as a bridge. If you want to understand, put your hand on it and reach out with your soul.”

I could sense something in her voice now. Something that made me want to understand. To know where she was going with this. I knew I was being foolish. This was an unnecessary risk, and she could not be trusted, not truly.

But a small part of me felt that perhaps I wanted to try. Perhaps there still was a youthful piece of myself remaining. Or perhaps I simply felt guilty, as alien as the emotion seemed these days. I reached my hand out and placed it on the conduit’s glassy surface. And I extended my soul inside.

A soul exists in three dimensions. As I explored the conduit’s interior, it was as if I was stretched out, the tendril of my soul extending out into infinity. I was reaching into a space beyond the dimensions I knew.

I could feel unbelievable masses of ashata, sense the souls of all the millions of inhabitants of the station. They were before me, close enough to touch. They were also unbelievably far away. The nearest of all was the brightest, most powerful soul I had ever seen.

A Seiyal who has properly embarked on the path of martial arts always acquires the ability to first sense the structure of their own soul, and then that of others. As a martial artist of the third realm I had trained the ability to expertise, and could recognize the different races and the realms of martial arts by inspecting one’s soul.

The soul of a mortal is encased in a sinuous membrane that holds the ashatic structures within, while slowly absorbing and expelling small amounts in a homeostatic balance. The soul of a practitioner is similar, but rather than expel the energy, it purifies it and compresses it into three points. These are the elixir fields, the manifestation of the dantians within the soul. The soul of an immortal is like that of a mortal martial artist, but far more massive, containing unimaginable quantities of energy.

This soul was entirely unlike any of those. It was covered in a firm shell, as if there was a wall protecting it from the outside world. Small apertures accepted and expelled ashata, passing far larger quantities through than a mortal could. In that, it was comparable to the immortals, but differences still remained.

The structure was regular, ordered in a way that seemed wholly unnatural, but also beautiful. Spiraling hexagons surrounded the structure in whorls and conjoined tendrils, as if it were a sculpture carved by an insane master stonemason.

A tendril extended from from the construct’s interior, drilling into the same point of singularity from which my own spiritual sense had emerged.

I released my hand from the conduit’s surface, covered in sweat and feeling as if I had sprinted for hours straight. Beads of sweat dripped down my forehead and my cerebral dantian’s flow was in turmoil. Taking a moment to soothe the inner sea, I forcibly relaxed myself and sat back down on the couch. Rachel was observing me. She had lost her imperious and angered looks from before. There was something gentler about her expression.

“Did you see it?” she asked. I nodded slowly, allowing the sweat to drip down past my eyes.

“Was that your soul?” I asked, still shocked and amazed by what I had seen. That sort of ashatic structure was beyond anything I had ever seen, comparable to even the creations of the Osine themselves, perhaps. Rachel smiled at me, and this time it seemed genuine. There was a noticeable trace of smugness in it.

“Rather than my soul, that was me. My true body.”

I leaned back, unable to compose myself in the face of her words. That soul was unlike anything I had even imagined. It was inhuman, monstrous, and yet there was an undeniable beauty to it.

“You’re not a Shade.” I stated it matter of factly, as if it were a fundamental truth. And it was. The structure of the powerful artificial soul that I had seen… Its existence could not be disputed, and it wasn’t the smattering of daubed fragments cobbled together that a Shade was said to bear. This was a masterwork. A true soul, formed by artifice.

Rachel’s eyes had become more of a vice, as if I were a prisoner entrapped within those sparkling sapphire orbs. “That I am not.”

“A creation of the Osine, then? An awakened servitor of some sort?”

There were only so many origins that could exist for the power needed to craft ashata into a true shell. The framework I had seen was beyond the power of any progression or technology of which I knew. Not even the Staiven or the Celans would be capable of such a thing. She laughed, and for once it was not a cruel sound.

“I was once a member of a race called Humanity. Now, I suppose your people would refer to me as a spirit. A spirit god, perhaps.”

The sly grin was back, but I could see a difference from before there as well. It was hard to place, like some aspect of her had shifted after opening up to me. I knew of at least twelve races in this region of the galaxy, but I had never heard of humanity. She continued speaking before I was able to compose a response.

“We had an empire that stretched across thousands of star systems. We had thought ourselves alone in the universe until we encountered a faction of Osine. The Sheneth-Ari. As it turned out, we merely happened to arise in the one region they feared. And so they killed us. Sent in their servitors to destroy every last one of us. Out of sheer misplaced fear. There were trillions of us. In just a few decades, only a couple million remained. There was no way to escape. We had yet to find a way to crack the light barrier.”

There were few races that had, I knew. Other than the Osine and their client species, as far as I was aware only portals created by the calculation engines themselves were capable of accomplishing it.

Rachel was looking away from me, now. Her eyes dashed to different parts of the room, and yet they seemed to be looking nowhere in particular. She wore a melancholy expression, as if what she was recounting were poor memories. I supposed they must be like my own recollection of loss. Sadness and anger mingled together and I empathized with her as she continued to speak. The absence in my heart stirred once more.

“All that was left was our home system, and they could chase down and destroy our ships if we tried to run. In a last ditch effort at survival we experimented with technology based on theories we had yet to fully comprehend. As it turned out, there was a great deal of enhancement that could be done upon our very souls. Our mortal bodies were fragile and vulnerable, but our souls could be protected far more effectively. And we found that traveling faster than light is trivial in this state, so in the end the remaining few managed to escape. We traded away our humanity and our home, but not our heritage. We now call ourselves Terrans.”

She smiled grimly and met my eyes. The fire from earlier had returned to them, and this time I allowed it to harmonize with my own emotions of hate and anguish.

“They’re still trying to hunt us down, Cyrus. They labeled us Shades, convinced people we were soulless monsters, and tried to kill us on sight. I wish to topple their institutions, cripple their infrastructure, and avenge all the untold masses of my people that they killed.”

She was almost spitting the vitriol from her lips. I found myself enthralled in the ardor of her hatred.

“Why here, though? The Pantheon are not members of the Sheneth-Ari. They are not even Osine.” I asked. Rachel chuckled grimly.

“We are advanced, strong by the standards of races such as your own, but there are too few of us to fight the council directly, and the Osine would be able to detect our presence if we snuck into their territory. It is better to build up strength, to topple an ally of theirs who is not quite so well-protected. For now, the best my people can hope for is to grow our influence and weaken their own.”

“And so you’re here,” I said.

“And so I’m here,” she responded, eyes still aglow with blind hatred. “This wasn’t my first choice, of course. I had intended to take down one of the colony worlds before moving on Staive itself. But then by chance or ill fate, the Epon captured this conduit, my only connection to this spacetime, and so here I ended up."

Rachel shrugged, leaning back into the couch. It was almost as if she had worn her emotions out, as she now lounged in an apathetic pose.

“I easily broke through the Epon’s flimsy restraints and sent out multiple baits to attract potential saviors who could carry it out. And so, here we are. I feel we share an interest, Cyrus. In tearing down the rulers of this cruel society. To fight against the heavens and become something greater.”

She scratched her cheek, turning her gaze aside awkwardly. “You would not have been my first choice, but it’s better to work with what’s available. With us as the cornerstone, I believe we have a chance to cut off the Pantheon’s control of this station, to build up a power base we can use for our individual revenges. What do you think?”

I found myself gripping the hilt of my sword, mind whirling with visions of revenge and punishment. But my eyes remained locked on Rachel’s face.

If the Pantheon fell, the governments of my home-world would likely fail to survive the backlash. I could sweep in during the chaos and… I smiled. Rachel was being overambitious, but there was nothing I had to lose but my life. The cautious would never dare to tread the path to immortality.

“Did you have a plan in mind?” I asked. Rachel’s face contorted into a demonic grin, excited by the question. I couldn’t help but match it with my own, finally at step with her style. She had inflamed my emotions,

“There are over half a million Seiyal living here, and all of them are either mortal or of the orthodox path. I sense a vacuum. There should be many talented youngsters who would leap at the opportunity to gain power of their own.”

I nodded, considering. So this was what she had wanted me for. I nodded again, liking the idea more the more I considered it. We alone would not be enough. That was an obvious fact.

“I see,” I said. “So how should we go about founding a sect?”

Terrans: [A subtype of Shade that emerged from the Quarantined territory. Terrans claim to have once been living beings that turned themselves into the abominations they are today. Like other Shades, they are highly violent and dangerous, wishing to destroy all biological life. Terrans are highly technologically advanced, and it is for the benefit of all territories that they be eliminated. Any information obtained about potential Terran intrusion into inhabited space can be delivered to the offices of the Sheneth-Ari Council in exchange for a substantial reward. It is the duty of all living beings to deliver such information. Failure to do so will be met with capital punishment.]