by Sarah Lin
Nauda started by trying to bind him, thrusting her fork out, but Esaire ducked underneath the movement and closed the distance. She immediately swung her staff at his head, only for him to contemptuously turn it aside with one gauntlet, so forcefully that the staff nearly left her hands.
His other gauntlet swept up to strike her... and was bound in place by her cantae. Yet though the technique should have frozen his entire body, Esaire managed to twist, keeping his arm in place and instead kicking Nauda in the face. She hurtled backward, weapons flying from her hands as she slammed into one of the trees.
That left Theo facing a sprinting Esaire, with no way to assist Nauda. He saw Delarde closing on her, and Fiyu tried to stop him with a hail of bolts, but he waded through them, focusing on his target.
Then one of those gauntlets was coming for him and there was no time to help anyone else. Theo reversed gravity beneath himself, falling into the sky before Esaire could reach him. He had lost Navim's spear, leaving him with something simpler: rocks. Though he couldn't fly, Theo could change his momentum to keep himself high in the air.
So he threw the rocks down at Esaire, casting a gravitational field that sent each plummeting to the earth at many times normal acceleration.
Fast as they were, Esaire danced between them. Worse, he realized that the rocks were just pure force, not a cantae trick. Theo knew that throwing the last one was a mistake, but his body couldn't keep up with his experience and the last rock left his fingers toward his opponent.
This one, Esaire met with a flat palm, and somehow the velocity of the rock reversed in an instant. Theo couldn't manipulate gravity well enough to dodge, so it was only his position that meant the rock struck his arm instead of slamming into his body.
His focus weakened and he pitched downward. Theo wanted to stand calmly in the sky, but it was hard to control his momentum when he was pitching back and forth between gravitational fields and now wincing from the impact. Worse, Esaire was eyeing him carefully, and it would be entirely within the Archcrafter's power to reach him with a leap.
So he only had one choice: his new torsion technique. To prevent an aerial battle, Theo let himself drop back to the ground... and then suddenly thrust forward, casting a bolt of cantae at his opponent.
It flickered between them with more speed than he'd expected, concentrated force of gravity pulling in opposite directions, filtered through the sharpness of the rainhorn antlers. Despite its speed, Esaire nearly managed to dodge, the bolt hitting him in the shoulder.
Where it tore through his robes, but that was all. Theo saw his opponent take a step back, and it looked like a bruise was beginning to form, but he knew instantly that it hadn't been enough. And now he was far too close...
Theo threw himself to the side on old instincts and was still clipped by the blow, which felt like a wall of bricks rushing past him. He spun, bouncing painfully over the ground before landing some distance away. Half his body was numb and his other arm still ached from the stone that had struck him, while Esaire merely tore off his sleeve and prepared to advance again.
As he rose to his feet, Theo investigated the rest of the field. Nauda had apparently kept Delarde at bay, but he saw several bleeding wounds along her arms and legs, while her opponent still burned with cantae. Many of Esaire's other followers had stayed down, but others were getting back to their feet and forming a group, preparing to enter the battle. Fiyu... he didn't see Fiyu anywhere.
"I knew you weren't an Archcrafter." Esaire smiled and began wiping his gauntlets against one another. "I was sure enough of it before, but I still wanted to fight you. It's a good trick, but it's just a trick, isn't it?"
"Happy to have proved it to yourself?" Theo did his best to ignore his injuries and just met his gaze. "It's obvious that we're not your equal."
Delarde stepped forward and slammed the butt of his pike against the ground. "Then these worms have wasted your time! And my time, and the time of the entire Armeau family! They deserve to be punished!"
Troublingly, Esaire actually seemed to be listening. Theo took a deep breath and prepared to try another gamble. "I only have tricks now, but I haven't had very long to soulcraft. If you can endure my 'tricks' in a year, I'll bare my neck willingly."
"Proposing a scheduled duel?" Esaire regarded him with surprise, considering the offer as Delarde shouted at him to ignore it. He didn't seem to listen, but that didn't stop him from smiling coldly. "I refuse. I'll spare your lives, because you've been an interesting diversion, but you do need a lesson about challenging your betters."
With Esaire, Delarde, and the regrouping soulcrafters, the odds weren't good. Theo wasn't sure about the range of his gravitational fields, but he wondered if he could potentially launch himself and Nauda high into the air and refuse to come down. Nothing but a stalling tactic, but it was all he had that would be fast enough to avoid Esaire's strike.
Across the clearing, Esaire's sleigh began to move without any apparent cause. Theo couldn't keep himself from staring, and the others noticed, but it was too late.
The sleigh plowed through the group of soulcrafters, sending them tumbling over the clearing, and struck Delarde hard enough to knock him to the ground. Esaire barely dodged aside and started to strike back at the front seat, but Nauda managed to land her staff directly into his face, making him stumble back despite his defensive aura.
When the sleigh skidded sideways, briefly slowing, Theo hopped into the second seat along the way. As soon as he got near enough, he passed inside Fiyu's bubble, finally seeing her sitting at the controls. Nauda leapt to join them, then the sleigh began to speed up again, blasting through the forest canopy and shooting into the air.
"Fiyu, you did it!" Nauda very nearly embraced her and settled for grabbing Theo instead. "We're out!"
"And they don't have any way to follow us." Theo looked back to the clearing and the surrounding region. He saw Esaire and Delarde staring up at them in fury, but the simple fact was that they were standing in a mostly empty region, far from any other vehicles.
"Umm." Fiyu had smiled broadly when they arrived, but now flailed her hands in front of the controls. "I... don't really understand this. I could barely figure out how to make it go. I think... we're going to fall."
Theo scrambled over into the front seat, desperately grasping the controls as they began to plummet. Beneath the silvery hood, there were a number of metal spheres set against a wooden panel. They'd no doubt be linked to the primary sublime materials by thin lines, though he hadn't ever explored the art of crafting such things.
Fortunately, the spheres weren't so different from the old Deuxan vehicles he remembered, and they were designed to be idiot-friendly for lazy nobles. The sublime materials built into the floor couldn't keep the sleigh this high for long, but if he slowed their fall with gravitational fields and increased the buffer as much as possible when they landed...
The sleigh scraped against the ground, but other than a falling piece of gilding, the impact didn't do any damage. Above all, it continued to slide forward above the ground, its primary function uninhibited. Theo grinned and turned it around, heading toward the Tatian gate at full speed.
"Is this fair play?" Nauda asked. "If you can 'hunt' anything during the event, is this ours now?"
"That might be the letter of the law, but would you count on them to follow it?" Theo glanced behind them, checking for any pursuit, but there was no sign and even if Esaire acted immediately, he would be severely delayed. "No, the game is over. Our goal now is to get beyond his reach."
"But our sleigh..." Fiyu abruptly smiled. "Oh, we're just going to use his sleigh."
"That's right. No weapons, but the defenses aren't bad, and it's very fast. This is better than anything we could have afforded."
"But all the Silver Crowns we worked so hard for..."
Nauda shook her head with a smile. "We'll need to buy other things. It will be nice not to be so poor for once."
Theo nodded his agreemen
t, and he couldn't help but smile along with the others. For a time, they simply raced forward, enjoying the ride as the sleigh shielded much of the air rushing past them. Fiyu confirmed that she had retrieved Nauda's fallen weapon, so they hadn't lost anything during the fight except their last rainhorn, which they no longer needed.
For now, they had time to breathe. But once they got back to the city of Nlukoko, they would need a plan.
Chapter 24
By the time they neared the region containing the gate back to Tatian, they'd finished some basic precautions. First, he'd gone over the vehicle carefully, finding several spheres that might serve as a tracking component and leaving them behind. The sleigh would obviously look foreign, but they'd removed the Armeau family crest and much of the gilding so it could pass as a more generic transport. Theo switched back to his Deuxan cloak and was surprised to find that the other two had acquired their own. They could enter the city easily, unless...
"Do we know if Nlukoko has any method of instantly contacting Deuxan cities?" He asked the question to both of them, but looked toward Nauda. She shook her head grimly.
"Unless Lord Ariano has a special connection he's never revealed, I don't think they do, otherwise there would have been more news from Deuxan. But I have a hard time believing they'll let this go... they'll be after us soon, won't they?"
"Our biggest advantage is our head start. I didn't see evidence of communication armaments in Anguedan, which makes sense since those are usually rare. Esaire will have to run back to the city, or at least to someone whose transport he can take. I doubt he has the authority to just chase us directly into another world, so he'll need to confer with the rest of his family first."
Fiyu took a deep breath. "Do you think he will follow us with reinforcements? If they send one of their Rulers..."
"I doubt it. The more people get involved, the more the conflict will seem petty and beneath the family." Theo could almost convince himself, but ended up shaking his head. "But I don't think Esaire will give up so easily and we don't know what connections he has on Tatian. We can't afford to stay in Nlukoko."
"They won't follow us far in the borderlands." Nauda sat back in her seat and prepared to soulcraft. "We can lose them out there, but we need supplies. The most dangerous period is while we're still in the city, or if they chase us out of it."
"I hope we can escape without seeing them again," Fiyu said. She settled back to follow Nauda's example and Theo wasn't sure if it was a statement of concern or simply making good use of her time.
One of the best features of the sleigh was that it could continue moving forward on its own and even navigate over minor obstacles. Since he had a well-constructed door in his soulhome, it would be easy to soulcraft even while driving the sleigh. Normally he would have joined the others, but they were already close to the gate and what he needed was insight.
Unfortunately, he just didn't see any way to make significant progress given his current resources. Looking back, he felt like everything had fallen together more quickly for him during his first life in the Nine Worlds. Perhaps he had just been lucky, perhaps his personal changes led him in a different direction, or perhaps the Nine had changed...
Soon he saw the gate ahead and began to slow their sleigh, the others emerging from their soulcrafting to join him. There was a very small chance that they'd be set on as soon as they went through, so they were on edge while they approached the tall silver arch. When they emerged on the other side, they were in the Nlukoko courtyard surrounded by the Deuxan market. A few local guards sat nearby, but there was no sign that anything was amiss and only one stood up to greet them.
"Visitors from Deuxan?" The guard didn't look at them very carefully and didn't seem to care. "Pay your fees and we'll get your papers sorted."
They could have used Nauda's false papers and avoided the fee, but Theo preferred to further break up any trail of evidence. Besides, it only took two of their Silver Crowns to put the guard in a good mood and get him to expedite the process. Hopefully, the man would barely think about them and not go out of his way to remember details, if Deuxans followed them later.
As they were about to depart, Theo turned back to the guard as if with a careless thought. "We heard there was some trouble with demons this year. Is the Landguard still here to keep the city safe?"
"Oh, they moved on months ago." The guard gave the question a slightly odd look, but scratched his side lazily as he answered. "Don't you worry, noble one. The city guard is well trained, and the Lord of Nlukoko is an Authority-tier soulcrafter. You're safe as can be here."
Theo pretended to be reassured and then guided their sleigh into the city. Unfortunately, though Deuxans weren't rare in Nlukoko, such an expensive sleigh still attracted some attention. Nauda sat low in her seat so no one would identify her as Tatian and Theo just hoped that any observations of them would be so garbled as to be useless.
"If we need to get out of here as soon as possible, do we split up?" Nauda asked. Fiyu shook her head immediately, and this time Theo agreed with her.
"It would save time, but I think there's too much risk of being found alone. Let's just do everything in order as efficiently as possible."
"Then we should exchange our money, or we'll have to negotiate at every single store. Turn that way, we can get a decent rate in the Deuxan district."
They slid onto another street, this one filled with many more Deuxan pedestrians. Theo remained in the sleigh as a precaution against thieves while the other two ducked under a specific stall. He was surprised to note that Nauda gave Fiyu the bag of money and had her move forward first.
"Hello!" Fiyu set down the bag and smiled at the woman running the stall. "We have many Silver Crowns. What are they worth?"
"Ah, you've come to the right place." The woman smiled broadly and picked up the sack, beginning to run the silver rings through her fingers. "Each of these is worth two full plates, or five chips, or s-"
Abruptly Nauda slid beside her, bringing her hand down on the sack and pinning it to the table, along with the money exchanger's hand. "So that's what you'd charge a naive customer you wanted to rob, huh?"
"Th-that's..." The woman tried to pull back, but couldn't escape Nauda's grip. "I pride myself on honorable business, but someone who requires such quantities..."
"You were giving me dishonest prices?" Even with her eyes covered, Fiyu's dismay was visible. "Why would you do such a thing?"
"I grew up on these streets, you know." Nauda put an arm on the money exchanger's shoulders, a Tatian gesture that wasn't quite so friendly in Nlukoko, despite her smile. "As it happens, we have a great deal of coin that we need to pass through an honest exchange. Now, are you the person we need, or not?"
Not long after, the two returned to the sleigh with their new currencies. He waited just long enough for them to get in, then began navigating to their next destination. Fiyu beamed happily at her participation in the deception, while Nauda just leaned forward over his shoulder to give the results.
"I kept a hundred Silver Crowns in case we run into Deuxans or need foreign currency. Some of it I converted to local plates, just enough to cover all the supplies we need here. But the rest, I converted into these." She reached into the sack and revealed a small amber gem. "I don't know economic details about the city we'll find on the other side of the gate, but I'm confident these will have value there. You know them?"
"Not those particularly, but I know the idea." Theo glanced back at the gem, confirming that it felt like a sublime material, but without any power. "I assume they're used as a core component of crafting sublime materials in the real world?"
"Yeah. Craftgems have functional value and they're artificial, so they're a practical currency anywhere. We lost a bit converting to craftgems, but we can't convert to our destination's currency and I think craftgems will be the better choice in the end, wherever we end up."
"We have something like that on Ichil," Fiyu spoke up. "They're small crystals th
at help power defenses while you sleep. I suppose those would not be as necessary in other worlds, but they were the only money we used while traveling."
Normally that might have led to another conversation, but they were running against a deadline. For normal supplies they visited another market, where Nauda ruthlessly negotiated for food, blankets, and other basics. Traveling would be cheap with the sleigh, since it could serve as shelter, but he noted that she purchased a significant amount of food. Could so much of Tatian really be empty and infertile?
"She is very good at negotiating," Fiyu said happily. Theo only grunted.
"I'm happy to leave it to her. Scoot over, she's coming back."
"That's the minimum we need." Once she dropped the supplies beside Fiyu, Nauda vaulted into the middle seat behind him. Realizing that she intended to talk, Theo turned back to look at them both. "If we want to get out of the city as soon as possible, we should go now. But there's no sign that we've been followed, so if anyone else has business in Nlukoko..."
Fiyu shook her head while Theo weighed the odds. The truth was that he didn't know the exact Deuxan threats, but since he was fairly certain that he wasn't being actively hunted by anyone higher, he decided that ignorance was a greater threat than a delay. "Can we visit the library again? Now that you're an Archcrafter, we should be able to access more resources than before."
Though the two women glanced at each other, they didn't object in the slightest, so Theo navigated to the library. Along the way, Nauda had the idea of repainting the sleigh to decrease its visibility. Since Fiyu didn't want to join them in the library, despite his claims about its peacefulness, she remained outside with a man who began to repaint it while they entered.
Inside, the Deuxan librarian glowered at him without any apparent memory of his previous visit. When she observed Nauda, however, she let them access some of the restricted archives.
"I know you just needed my rank," Nauda said as they entered the shelves, "but I'll help if I can. What are we actually looking for, in detail?"
