by Isaac Hooke
“Okay, as long as I don’t have to pay for it,” Tane said.
“It’s completely free for clients,” Wayala said.
“By the way, I also have some weapons I want to trade,” Tane said. He nodded toward the display case. “Maybe in exchange for some of that armor.”
“Yes yes, in due time,” Wayala said. “The scan, first.” She gestured toward a device sitting on the counter. It consisted of two binocular lenses, and a half-circle headrest, plus a small chin rest. “Have a seat, then place your forehead firmly against the headrest and look into the lenses.”
Tane took the chair in front of the metal device and leaned over the counter, placing his chin on the bottom rest and pushing his forehead into the headrest. The half-circle of the headrest lowered of its own accord, positioning itself in the optimal place for his size. The two binoculars also adjusted slightly, until all he could see in the center of his vision was the dark tube formed by the lenses.
A white flash filled his vision.
“All right, it’s done,” Wayala said.
Tane sat back.
Wayala’s eyes defocused as she examined the results on her private HUD.
“Did you know you have the Ability to Siphon?” Wayala said.
21
“What?” Tane said. “You mean the Essence?”
“Correct,” Wayala said.
“But that’s not possible.” Tane told her.
“I assure you, the Ability is inside you,” Wayala said.
“After all this time, I actually had the Ability?” Tane said. “I was only just starting to get used to the idea that I’d never be able to touch the Essence.”
“Well, you can,” Wayala said.
Tane sat back, speechless for a few moments. Maybe everything he dreamed about was going to come true after all.
Puzzled by a few things, he glanced at Sinive. “Why didn’t you detect it when you did your scan aboard the—” He almost said Red Grizzly, but realized that probably wasn’t a good idea, in case Wayala was ever questioned by the TSN. “Aboard the ship.”
“I could only do a partial scan with the equipment aboard,” Sinive said.
“I already had a full scan done,” Tane told the proprietor. “By a Synthetic. Ardent Microchipping Solutions.”
“Never heard of it,” Wayala said. “Was it done in an Outrim system?”
Tane nodded.
Wayala nodded knowingly. “Ah. More of the shadier types work out of there. Some outfits aren’t set up to properly identify brain types. It’s possible your Siphoning Ability was misinterpreted or missed.”
“You’re not understanding,” Tane said. “Ardent Microchipping is like the best place you can get a scan, at least where I’m from. They have all the latest and greatest gear: these big machines with telescoping limbs that fit over your head to scan your brain from all angles. It’s impossible for their machines to miss something as important as the ability to Siphon. In fact, their scans are so detailed, they can tell you exactly how much Essence you can Siphon, allowing you to decide whether you’re eligible for the Volur, or only the TSN. Can your small machine do that?”
“No,” Wayala admitted. “But if that’s the case, I’m not sure how they could have missed your Ability.”
“Neither am I…” Tane said. “Unless the Synthetic lied to me. Though I’m not sure why.”
“Like Wayala told you, it’s the Outrim,” Sinive said with a shrug. “They do things differently there. I wouldn’t be surprised if the TSN has an agreement with all microchipping branches there to notify them of any Essence candidates the moment they get their scans. It would help them beat the Volur to the punch, and stop Talendir from getting the best recruits.”
That would explain why the TSN was so eager to get their hands on Tane. It made a lot more sense than the excuse broadcast on the Kalindor citywide alert system about how the TSN simply wanted to “talk” to him regarding the farm incident. Then again, having aliens actively seeking him out was also a pretty big reason.
“But why wouldn’t the Synthetic at least tell me I had the Ability?” Tane pressed.
“That I don’t know,” Sinive said. “Maybe so you wouldn’t contact the Volur yourself and apply?”
I wonder if Lyra knew…
Tane turned toward Wayala. “Okay. So I have the Ability to Siphon. But I don’t know how. Is it an easy thing to learn? Or do I really have to waste credits on nanotech?”
With an amused expression, Wayala glanced at Sinive. “You can Siphon, right, lass?”
“Oh yeah,” Sinive said. She looked at Tane. “Trust me, it’s not something you want to learn manually on your own. It can take years before you’re able to touch the Essence on demand, let alone prevent it from destroying you. If there is one skill you want to pay for, it’s definitely this one.”
Wayala fetched a yellow vial from underneath her desk.
“I didn’t see Siphoning on your skill list,” Tane said.
“Of course not,” Wayala said. “I only offer it to those with the Ability. I will take the Dirac in exchange for level one.”
“But I still get two more skills to pick from, right?” Tane asked.
Wayala shook her head. “No. Siphoning is an advanced skill. Those with the Ability are rare. Therefore the demand is lower and the price higher.”
“But—”
“Do you want it or not?” Wayala asked.
When he didn’t answer, she sighed. “All right, I’ll throw in an attribute in addition to the skill.”
Tane wondered if that was his new bargaining skill at play.
“Okay, let’s do this.” He removed his glove and held out his arm so that she could inject him.
Wayala smiled. “The crystal first, please.”
“Oh, sure.” Tane replaced his glove, slightly averse to touching the crystal with his bare hand. He unlatched the black object and set it down on the counter once more. He started to lift his arm away but hesitated, allowing his gloved hand to linger on top.
“What are you doing?” Sinive said.
“What if I need it at some point?” Tane said. “After everything I went through to get it…”
“Uh, I don’t think we’re ever going back to the Umbra,” Sinive said.
Tane pursed his lips, then pulled the crystal entirely off the counter. “You know what? On second thought I’m not so sure I want to give it up. I have a bunch of weapons I can trade you for the Siphoning skill instead.”
Wayala frowned. “I won’t do any further business with you unless you give that to me. You can’t simply tease me with a valuable item and then renege.”
Tane glanced at the crystal. He still felt that overwhelming allure whenever he looked into the blackness, and he wasn’t sure he could bear to part with it. The Dirac’s pulsations were like a beating heart, and he could feel the vibrations of every one of them. He felt sure it must be alive in some way.
But the Essence. To Siphon. It’s been my dream.
“I could always find another Peddler of the Esoteric…” Tane said.
“Ha!” Wayala said. “Good luck with that. I’m the only one in this backwater system.”
Tane reluctantly returned the crystal to the countertop. “Take it.”
Despite his words, he kept his gloved hand on top as Wayala wrapped her bare fingers around the object. She seemed to suffer no ill effects. Well, except for the glint of greed that had returned to her eyes. He had to wonder, was she drawn to it just as strongly as he was?
She abruptly wrenched it out from underneath him and he felt an immense sense of loss. It was all he could do to keep from reaching out and snatching it back.
When she finally whisked the object out of sight behind the counter, the sensation slowly faded, replaced instead by a sort of relief, almost as if a great burden had been lifted.
“Now for your payment,” Wayala said.
She placed the vial into a slot in the small console next to the brain scanner.
Her eyes defocused as she coded the micro machines, and then she plugged the vial into a sonic injector. She had done the provisioning just as fast as Roadroller, unlike Sinive, who had taken forever to do the coding for his ID Spoofing skill aboard the Red Grizzly. Then again, the Red Grizzly’s brain scanner also moved at a crawl.
“Your hand,” Wayala said.
Tane removed both gloves and set them down on the counter, and then he extended his right arm.
Wayala held the sonic injector to the back of his hand and he flinched at the slight sting.
“You don’t know how to Siphon?” Wayala said. “Now you do. Of course, you still need to learn some Branches, now. And that will cost you extra.”
Tane sighed. “Hidden costs for everything, huh?”
“Hey, you think basic pay covers all this?” Wayala gestured toward the room. “I have rent to pay.”
A notification indicator appeared on Tane’s HUD and he enlarged it.
New skill received.
Siphoning. Level 1.
So I can finally Siphon.
“Go ahead, try to touch the Essence,” Wayala said.
Tane pursed his lips. “All right.”
He knew exactly what to do.
Tane cleared his mind of all thought with a practiced ease that was not his own. He held himself in that state for a moment, relishing in the silence that came when all self talk and ego was banished. He realized the enjoyment of that silence came not from him, but from whomever the skill dump had been taken from.
He reached out with his mind.
The raging flow of the Essence was out there, beckoning beyond the edge of perception, waiting for him to draw it.
He had memories of himself as a student standing next to a Volur dressed in long flowing yellow robes. Her silvery hair descended to the small of her back. She was old, for a Volur, centuries old, but her face only had the barest traces of wrinkles.
Tane knew her name was Maelin.
“The Essence exists in the universe that sits atop our own,” Maelin was saying.
“The Umbra?” Tane asked. It wasn’t his voice, but an older man’s.
“No,” Maelin said. “Not the Umbra. The Umbra sits below our universe. The Essence we use is sourced from another realm entirely. A realm of light and goodness. It exists above us. All around us. We call it the Lumina.”
His consciousness seemed to expand as he hovered there on the razor’s edge between this world and the next, and time slowed. He saw everything around him in exquisite detail. He could see the minute hairs on Wayala’s bare forearms, each individual strand standing erect. He saw the individual threads that composed Sinive’s spacesuit. He heard Sinive’s beating heart. The contractions of Wayala’s digestive tract.
He knew he could maintain this state only for a few seconds, and if he didn’t complete the Siphoning ASAP, he’d have to start all over again and his reward would be only exhaustion.
So Tane did the only thing he could: he reached for that raging river of Essence and touched it.
Almost immediately an unstoppable torrent of freezing power exploded inside him. It was as if he was standing in front of an ice dam that had just broken. Panic filled him, and he struggled to somehow throttle the frigid flow, but it was like trying to close a floodgate against the monstrous barrage of a storm-swelled river.
“Surrender!” he could hear Maelin saying. “Do not resist the river!”
Tane finally stopped trying to resist and instead allowed the raging torrent to flow through him. The cold swept him away, and his consciousness shrunk, his mind snapping back into his own tiny reality, and time returning to its normal speed. The river floated in front of him, a thin line of white light that dissipated a full meter in front of him, wavering like a candle flame dancing in a draft. That flame did nothing to melt the icy cold he felt inside him.
All of that happened in the time it took to blink an eye.
“Do you see it?” Tane said, not breaking his gaze from the wavering light.
“No,” Maelin said. “Only the wielder can see the Essence.”
He released the flow and the wavering light winked out of existence. He slumped over, bracing himself on the desk with his gloves. But when he looked up, he couldn’t help the smile on his face. “I can Siphon!”
“Yes,” Wayala said.
“I never imagined it would be so cold, though...” Tane instinctively crossed his arms, though the suit pieces wouldn’t impart any warmth through the chest assembly.
“It is what it is,” Wayala said. “You’ll want to invest in a good sweater. Not to mention Endurance and Intelligence. Endurance so that you feel less like a freight shuttle has driven through you after each Siphoning, and to reduce your recovery time. Intelligence to increase the amount you can Siphon naturally. You can also pick up Chrysalium jewelry of course to help with the latter. But keep in mind that the more you Siphon through you, the more tired you’ll feel afterward, which is why Endurance is an attribute that can’t be neglected.”
“Guess I won’t be putting anything into Strength any time soon,” Tane said.
“No,” Wayala said. “There’s a reason Mancers and Volur aren’t built like Marines.”
It was incredible to think he had this Ability sitting inside of him all his life, and he simply didn’t know how to access it. But then he thought of all the memories he had of his time with Maelin, and all the private practice sessions performed outside of the formal training. The student had literally trained for years to achieve the proficiency Tane had shown today. It had taken the student many weeks to even touch the Essence for the first time, and many more months after that to do so consistently.
Sinive hadn’t been kidding when she told him he’d be better off paying for the skill.
“So I can’t do anything with this new power?” Tane asked Wayala. “Until I buy Branches, as you called them?”
“Actually, the Siphoning skill comes free with two introductory Branchworks,” Wayala said. “Nothing to call home over, mind you. But it is a start. The two are: Persistent Flame. And Air Current.”
Those words seemed to act as triggers for the memories of the Branchworks, and Tane knew immediately he could do them. In fact, he also realized he had a new Skill page. He pulled up his existing list of skills on his HUD and sure enough there was now an Essence Skills tab. He flipped to it and chose the “expanded skill definitions” option. Below Siphoning he saw the following:
Air Current. Level 0. Create a weak current of air. Essence drain: extremely low.
Persistent Flame. Level 0. Create a persistent flame in the palm of your hand, maintained by a small Essence flow. Essence drain: low for short durations.
He cleared his mind and reached for the Essence again. His consciousness expanded, and when the cold Essence flowed into him he was back inside himself. He began shaping the wavering ribbon of Essence that appeared in front of him.
“What you see before you is the root,” he heard Maelin say. “Apply Essence to your chosen spot, and sprout your sapling.”
Tane concentrated on steering more of the Essence into an area the size of a pinprick in the middle of the wavering ribbon, and the surface abruptly cracked open, allowing a new branch to erupt, thrusting upward. The crack in the base widened by the millisecond, and the branch grew thicker, absorbing more and more of the Essence with each moment. This “sapling” wavered in the same manner as the original flow, or root, as if stirred by a similar unseen breeze.
Working quickly, Tane teased several more Branches from the sapling. On the tips of the new limbs, he concentrated the flow in wider dispersal patterns, causing leaf-like structures to sprout. He varied the shapes of those leaves by pressing down into the wide flow as the energy emerged, and when it had reached the desired size he clamped down on the flow entirely, allowing the “leaf” to set.
He suddenly understood what Sinive had meant when she told him Siphoning was like creating a sapling from a seed. Because standing b
efore him was a wavering object that indeed looked like a small tree.
He extended his arm as he allowed the tip of the ethereal sapling to overlap with his hand, and as the Branchwork took hold in this reality, it faded away and a small flame painlessly appeared on Tane’s open palm.
Only a split second had passed since he began the Siphoning.
He released the Essence, or thought he did—the flame continued to burn on his hand. A thin stream of white light dangled from his arm, where it wavered back and forth before connecting to his chest. He was still Siphoning the Essence, or at least a small amount of it, without conscious thought. The fuel that maintained the fire. Hence the name “Persistent Flame.”
The tiny fire didn’t harm his own palm in any way, but when he ran his other hand over it he could feel the heat.
Extreme cold continued to flow through the core of his body, and he suppressed a shiver. Tane also found himself growing wearier by the moment, but even so he couldn’t help but glance at Wayala with excited eyes. She smiled patiently, nodding.
He returned his attention to the small fire and gazed at it in wonder for a long moment, simply amazed that he was the one who had created this. He almost couldn’t believe it.
I made this! I did! I’m using the Essence. I’m really doing it!
Despite his elation, his exhaustion was becoming pronounced. If he didn’t want to tire himself out completely, he’d have to release the fire, and soon.
He stared at it for a few seconds longer, and finally cut off that final maintenance stream. The wavering Essence lifeline vanished, and the flame extinguished, along with the freezing cold inside of him.
“Nicely done,” Wayala said. “So, what do you think?”
Tane felt suddenly faint, and he leaned both hands on the counter to help support his body weight. “I think I’m tired. I also think, or wonder, rather: what can Persistent Flame level three do?”
“Imagine a flamethrower that can burn through steel bulkheads,” Wayala said.
