by Sarah Lin
"This is a violent world." When at last he finished all his explanations, Fiyu spoke her conclusion with quiet confidence. "Why do they not invade Tatian?"
"Because Tatian has a bigger army." Nauda sat back and gave a smile with an unpleasant edge. "Deuxan is broken into countless factions - even this city is split into numerous families that hate each other. If one of them tried to invade through the gate, they'd face the combined forces of all nearby cities. Even if they managed to make an alliance between every family, they'd only draw down the Landguard."
"I see." Fiyu bobbed her head, receiving this information without any apparent emotion.
"They might be violent, but they waste most of their strength against themselves, and these noble families only get in the way. On Tatian, every child with talent is given a chance to reach their potential, no matter if they're in a 'noble' family or not."
Though she was right, and Tatian's armies were often underestimated by those who didn't understand them, Theo disliked self-aggrandizement for any world and decided to speak up. "But it isn't because Deuxans are foolish: both worlds are just reacting logically to their environment. Tatian has abundant sublime materials for early soulcrafters, so they can afford to be generous at the early tiers. If Tatians grew up on Deuxan, they'd create a similar system when they realized there wasn't enough to go around."
That earned a sharp glance from Nauda. "That's your wisdom, oh ancient one? You think everybody is all the same in the end?"
"Of course they're not the same. But I think those differences emerge because we're all shaped by our environments. Some things in life might be random and meaningless, but if you assume they are, you'll miss whatever patterns are there."
Fiyu looked back and forth between them, anticipating further discussion, but Nauda just shook her head. She eased her legs up onto the bed beside her and found a more comfortable position. "We can argue the philosophy later. If we're going to end up competing with those courts in the hunt, then we need to do everything we can to prepare."
"Starting with getting that arm healed so you can help us work." Theo rose to his feet, but to his surprise, Nauda shook her head.
"Spending money on a healer is a waste, especially if sublime materials will be expensive here. The broken arm won't hinder my ascension, will it?"
"No, it's about the strength of your soul. But the process isn't going to entirely heal your body, so don't expect a miraculous-"
"It doesn't matter." Nauda clenched the fist on her broken arm. "I've waited long enough. It's time to ascend to Archcrafter."
Chapter 15
Nauda sat atop the roof of her soulhome, tying branches together more tightly, but in her heart she knew that she was stalling for time. The truth she didn't want to admit was that she was scared of trying to ascend and failing. She had a solid understanding of soulcrafting, but this step was something that she had never been in a position to experience.
She'd had a foolproof plan back in Myufuru, but that was no longer an option. If she'd had enough time and resources, she could have built her pyramid atop her soulhome all the way to the sky. Now it stood partially finished, providing a platform to build a bit higher and little else. There was a chance that the incomplete construction would interfere in some way, so she'd covered the pyramid with shingles she'd soulcrafted from a thick Deuxan leaf, a weak sublime material that she hoped would still help. On top of the shingles, she'd been steadily building her tower of crossed sticks, a square of decreasing size climbing toward her limits overhead.
Deciding that she should make it a little higher, Nauda gathered several of the remaining sticks and began to ascend up the side, using the branches like rungs on a ladder. She'd tested it before, and knew that it would hold her weight, but as she drew nearer the sky, her body began to tremble as the air itself pushed back against her. Her tower creaked and groaned, making her nervous despite all her earlier testing that the springiness of the branches could absorb the stress.
At the top, she could barely breathe and the air closed around her like a fist. Everywhere else, she felt comfortable in her soulhome, but here the heavens denied her. She longed to throw herself up against the pressure, to tear through and ascend to Archcrafter. It would help her arm heal and improve their position in a single stroke.
Yet... if she failed...
Once, Nauda had used her telescope to watch a soulcrafter ascend, only to witness him fail instead. He'd built a ladder of tough wood and braced it heavily, actually a more durable creation than her tower. Yet when he'd climbed to the top, he'd struggled against the pressure and been repelled, the recoiling power smashing his ladder to pieces and damaging his soulhome.
She couldn't afford that: these branches had been bought with the last of their money on Tatian, and sublime materials were even more difficult to obtain here. While in Myufuru, she'd sought out books on ascension, so intellectually she knew that it was possible to fail without destroying one's progress. Besides, the ascension itself depended partially on willpower, and she would let nothing stop her.
Grimly imagining the consequences if she failed, Nauda placed another branch in place at the top and began tying it to those below. The sky pressed against her skin so fiercely she felt as though it would begin shredding away, and she thought she was about at her limit. She managed to build another layer of branches, but just raising her arms above the top took immense effort.
When she crawled back down, she just lay on the roof of her soulhome for a while, catching her breath. Her body was sitting calmly, relaxed and unstressed, but her spirit was sorely tested. Could that inhibit a potential ascension? Some of the books she'd discovered suggested that willpower alone would be sufficient for the first barrier, but she wasn't sure how much she was willing to gamble on that.
"Nauda?" Theo's voice came to her from the real world, but instead of trying to attract her attention, he only put a hand on her knee. She allowed him to enter, his blurry spirit soon appearing in the field outside her soulhome and floating up to her.
"I'm doing the best I can," she said. Yet she didn't see a driven or impatient look in his eyes, and he just sat down beside her, as well as his spirit could sit.
"Now that I think about it, my first ascension wasn't fair at all. I'd been sponsored by a mentor who gave me endless sublime resources, so I was free to try as many times as I needed. Looking back, I was probably rushing too much."
"This... is the right decision, isn't it? I won't be permanently weakened by not soulcrafting more of my first tier first?"
"I don't think so." Theo glanced down, almost as if he could see through the roof to the locked chamber where her treasures lay. "If you break through, the pressure will flow down and infuse everything you've built so far. You might have to do more work later when you add or change things, but in the end if you keep ascending, it won't make a difference. If you have an advantage at Archcrafter, you should seek it out."
That was a small comfort, since some on Tatian seemed to suggest that the tiniest misstep at any tier would forever condemn a soulhome to inferiority. It was strange to think of Theo as so knowledgeable, given his youthful appearance, but she did trust him as far as soulcrafting went.
"Would you like a suggestion I learned only much later, as an Authority?"
When she nodded, Theo went on, staring skyward.
"It's impossible to ascend a bit at a time, but you can weaken the barrier a little. After a serious failed attempt, it will be weaker for part of a day, which is why secondary attempts often succeed. The pressure restores itself faster the less you push against it, but it's not instantaneous. So you can make a softening push, rest a little, then try to ascend before it recovers."
"Huh." Nauda finally sat up, trying to capture his gaze despite the haziness of his spirit. "I don't suppose you have any amazing tricks that let you just punch through the sky for me?"
"I'm just an observer." He ran his insubstantial hand through the tower, wisps of spirit escaping in
to the air. "It actually is possible to join someone in their soulhome, but only at higher tiers. That was something I never fully understood, in my previous life, so I need to study it more. I'll help you when I can, but there are no shortcuts, at least not shortcuts you'd want to take."
"I... thank you, Theo." She smiled at him, and she thought he smiled back, but his spirit blurred away to give her privacy.
Though she felt flush with confidence, Nauda remembered what she had to lose and remained cautious. For the rest of that day, she wandered through her soulhome, setting everything aright and making a few final modifications she'd been thinking about. That night, she slept deeply, ate a good breakfast, and then prepared.
She soulcrafted normally until Fiyu and Theo left: as much as she valued them, she needed to do this alone. After meditating to center her mind, Nauda slipped into her soulhome. On an abrupt impulse, she opened her locked chamber and brought out the Archcrafter materials that she'd been storing for so long. Crushing her final doubts, she promised the materials that she would be back for them.
On the roof, she began climbing up the side of the tower, gritting her teeth as she pushed into the sky. She was carrying nothing this time, only striving to fight through. When she reached the top, she made herself reach upward, even though the bones on her hand began to ache. Yet she could feel the barrier giving way, so close...
The sky pushed back against her and she tumbled down the side, hitting the roof painfully. Air flowed down after her, but it wasn't a torrent that could destroy what she'd built. That had been the first test, like Theo advised, and she could feel that she had pushed the sky back slightly.
Though she'd planned to rest between attempts, Nauda found herself climbing the side of her tower again, this time determined to throw her full will into it. When she reached the top, the pressure felt even more intense than before, but she told herself that she could break through to the other side. Gritting her teeth against the wind, Nauda slowly climbed to the very top, bracing her feet and centering herself crouched above the tower.
There she stopped, the pressure slamming down against her like endless spiritual hammers. Nauda took a deep breath and began draining all the cantae in her soulhome, drawing it up not just through her tower, but into her body. Her bones ached and her mouth opened in a silent scream, but she slowly forced herself to rise to her full height.
A shudder went through the sky, but she remained firm, pressing upwards with all her might. She was equal to the task, just a little further...
Another shudder sent a wave of intense pressure down over her and she heard something clatter. Despite herself, Nauda looked down and saw in horror that the wind flooded down over her soulhome, sending shingles flying in all directions, shredding some of them in the air. The tower itself had begun to collapse, ties coming undone and branches beginning to break.
For a moment she felt a flicker of horror... but that reminded her of what she was doing. She wasn't building into the sky or unlocking new space within her soul, she was creating a new tier of her soulhome with her cantae and willpower.
After coming this far, Nauda wasn't about to give up. She let out a cry and drew all her remaining cantae into her soul, flinging herself against the heavens.
In a single instant, the agonizing pressure snapped, bending inward. New cantae flooded from the sky, but instead of battering her body, it rushed through her, filling her with a rapturous strength before engulfing her soulhome.
Her tower had been scattered to pieces, but it didn't matter: the whirlwind of cantae bore her to the roof gently, her soulhome once again her home at the heart of herself. What took her breath away was the intensity of her cantae, flowing more thickly than it ever had before. The flood that came with her ascension filled up the space she had emptied, and though the size of her soulhome hadn't increased, she felt far stronger than before, each of her chambers newly empowered.
Yet that wasn't even the true bounty: when Nauda looked upward, she no longer felt the sky pressing back against her. The roof of her soulhome was no longer her limit, it was just a platform for her to soulcraft even higher. She'd need to get rid of the damaged pyramid base, but that was a trivial detail she could handle later.
Sliding back into the real world, Nauda found herself laughing breathlessly. She felt a brief pang when she realized she was alone, now wishing that she could have shared the moment with the others, but it was swept away in the euphoria. Her body felt incredible, every inch of her newly alive, and she couldn't resist hopping to her feet. Though her arm wasn't miraculously restored, it felt deeply right, as if it was well on its way to a full recovery.
Though Nauda felt like testing out her familiar techniques with her new cantae, she realized that she wanted to share that, at least, with the others. She was astonished at how little the sun had moved: it had felt like an eternity fighting against the pressure inside herself.
Since the others weren't likely to return soon, Nauda drifted back into herself, not bothering to sit down. She tried to push back the giddiness, acknowledging that many tiers remained above her and there was still a great deal of work to do. These efforts were much less successful than her effort to ascend.
The shingles had been wrecked, but she saw now that they were unnecessary, just a small step on her way upward. Nauda examined her soulhome carefully, noting a few cracks in the boards and other minor damage she would need to repair. Nothing but details, and in fact she was glad that the damage had shown her minor flaws that she could now improve.
Within, the Archcrafter sublime materials no longer felt like dangerous risks: they resonated with the rest of her soulhome. Nauda smiled and set to work.
Chapter 16
With a goal in mind, Theo dedicated himself to maximizing efficiency. Quickly earning enough money for a proper vehicle wasn't possible with just hard work, but aiming to prepare for the hunt, with all their advantages? Entirely different problem.
They'd left the inn almost immediately to conserve money, and it had been unnecessary luxury as soon as Nauda recovered anyway. Instead they slept in cheap tents outside, which also helped them get more used to the environment. Nauda had seemed a little discomforted at first, since she'd expected them to all crowd into one tent for warmth, but that was obviously not Fiyu's expectation, and she'd eventually accepted it.
Nauda herself was the cornerstone of several points of strategy. Soulcrafters were too common for Deuxan society to give them any real respect, but as an Archcrafter she could get them access to better work than menial labor. In truth, she did little of the work, since she needed to spend her time soulcrafting new rooms on her second floor, which was fine since Theo and Fiyu could handle the actual tasks. All they'd really needed was the proper credentials.
He and Nauda had just returned from a long guard assignment that had lasted several days, less action than standing around as soulcrafters and discouraging others. One of the smaller families intended to build a hunting lodge and needed guards to prevent targeting by their rivals. It didn't pay as well as some others, but the benefit was that they had significant time to soulcraft during the job.
"I don't like this." There was no real emotion in Nauda's voice, but the way she spoke heavily while staring into the forests was worse.
"This job? It might not have been the most profitable, but I thought it was a good use of time."
"Not this in particular, the whole system and how we interact with it. What we're doing." She rubbed her eyes with one hand as they continued walking. "Most of what we've done hasn't helped anyone, just shuffled a bit of money around. The court jobs are the worst, just playing meaningless politics."
"But it pays well, and it's mostly harmless." Theo wasn't sure he wanted another long discussion, but she seemed honestly troubled by her thoughts. "If you're looking to fundamentally change Deuxan society, or improve the world, that's just not going to happen with our current resources."
"I'm not saying that I have an alternative, I'
m just saying I don't like it. Though... what would you say to a dangerous job, if it paid reasonably well?"
Theo shrugged. "If it's a simple threat we can survive, then the danger is just another benefit, because we need an opportunity to test our new soulcrafting. If you mean getting involved with the court, then I don't think that's worth it."
"Actually, it's the exact opposite." Nauda finally gave him a bit of a smile, though the heaviness in her voice didn't lift. "Apparently there's a town some distance from Anguedan that has a demon problem. There was an incursion a year or two ago that the court didn't quite finish squashing. Somehow several of the demons sacrificed themselves, so the second stage demon is hurting the villagers. They've put up a reward, but it's not enough to attract soulcrafters from any of the prominent families."
"Did they say what breed of demon it was?"
"The rumors say that it's beast-like, something like a large wolf."
"Then there's a good chance we can't kill it." The exact differences between demonic stages varied, but Theo had strong memories of his first encounter with a bear-like demon. "The beast-like demons are tough to start, and their second stage can be so powerful that it takes a Ruler to put them down. Even with the three of us combined and solid tactics, it probably wouldn't be enough."
"If it was really stronger than Archcrafters, it would have destroyed the village, wouldn't it? I'm not saying that it's harmless, but I think it can't be that dangerous. Just a threat that's fallen between the cracks, and something that we can do to help."
Seeing that she wasn't going to back down easily, Theo switched to a different strategy. "There's probably no harm in investigating, but we're not ready yet. You're still building up your second floor, and we have chambers in progress. Once we have that sorted out, then maybe we stand a chance."
"Well..." Nauda eventually shrugged and returned to her normal self. "If the courts haven't dealt with it for years, I suppose the villagers can survive a little longer."
