Iika and Bahan ran from her in terror.
Naero chortled with glee and even reached out to crush them.
Something smashed into her, knocking her head aside.
Hashiko, pulsing with Cosmic energy like a small star.
Naero laughed and slapped her out of the way with the back of one hand.
Then Master Vane stood before her.
Glowing red tentacles of pure Chaos energy erupted from the ground itself. Ensnaring and holding her back for the moment.
She roared and struggled to break free.
Within she wrestled with her dark beast for control of her mind and body.
“So, the truth is finally revealed. You are in fact, a monster,” Vane said. “I’m intrigued to study you. But perhaps we should put an end to this folly before you become even more of a threat. I foresee that only the Eye of Annihilation can put an end to your madness. The mightiest of all Chaos attacks!”
All of his other eyes closed.
The single, largest glowing red eye centered in his forehead pulsed with pure Chaos energy and Cosmic power, set to destroy her.
Then Naero heard it. Even in her madness and terror.
The Tua sang their song of greeting. The entire tribe surged forward.
Even the young and the kits.
Sha nii hah, ahluu-nii-haa, mah nah-hii, jah ah-loh, ah-dii!
They flung themselves onto her, unafraid, and continued singing their song of love as they swept over her like a soft, undeniable wave.
Shae-lah vah hii nah, ellah vii shiinah, jahmii vae sha-noh, Shae-lah vah Yah-vae!
Naero felt herself shrinking back down to her normal dimensions.
The Dark Beast within her relented, went dormant, and slumbered once more.
Only the love of the Tua and their songs calmed her, returning her back to sanity. And gave her full control over herself once more.
Master Vane seemed shaken and uncertain by what had just transpired. He looked confused.
He strode forward twice as if he were about to act. Finally he stopped completely, drew his hood back over his head once more and turned away.
He even stopped using the voice.
“We will watch you even more closely now, Maeris. You were nigh to death this day. If you cannot learn to control this madness of yours, rest assured, you will be destroyed, for the sake of all.
Vane looked over at Hashiko where she lay groaning, just coming around. He glared at his apprentice with great disappointment.
“Get up and regenerate already. It can’t be that bad.”
Hashiko snarled and sneered at Naero in pure hatred, struggling to rise. Yet there was increased fear in her glance as well.
26
Master Vane came for her the very next day, right after she awoke.
Again, he did not use the voice.
“Get up. We must gauge where you are at now that you’ve obviously gotten past your block,” he said flatly. “I want you to show me everything. What you know. What you don’t. What you can do. What you cannot. Don’t hold back. Don’t try to lie to me.”
All of that by itself took most of the day.
Master Vane transported them to a coastal desert by the sea.
“Now take us back to the caves,” he demanded.
Naero discovered immediately that she could transport herself just fine, but not someone else along with her.
Next he motioned with one glowing finger and tore open a huge gash in her right thigh without warning.
Naero cried out, and dropped down, clutching her gushing wound and gritting her teeth.
“What the hell is this for?”
“Regenerate,” Vane commanded.
Naero focused on closing the wound and healing herself. She stopped the bleeding and re-knit the tissues and blood vessels, but the effort left her spent.
“I’m…going to pass out,” she stated.
Vane backhanded her, hurling her backwards, slamming her onto her back.
“Idiot. Tap into the planet’s flows. Don’t just use up your own reserves.”
Naero laid there. Watching the sky spin above her.
“I…can’t.”
He glared down at her.
Scary.
“Why the hell not, Maeris?”
“Tried it…before. The rush of energy…Too much. I nearly exploded.”
For the first time Naero saw Master Vane blink in either surprise or confusion. Maybe even a little fear.
“Hmmm…that would be an unmitigated disaster. We can’t have that now, can we? At least not until I could send you somewhere safe out in space, where you could detonate harmlessly.”
Naero sucked in air. “It wouldn’t…be harmless…to me.”
Vane waved one hand absently. “Pish, posh. Then we’d be rid of you at least. Yet yours is an increasingly intriguing case, Maeris. Unlike any I have ever seen. Even your uncle, and that is saying something. You are quite the freak of nature. Literally.”
Naero laughed weakly. “So, I’m so unique that you won’t destroy me today?”
“I wasn’t going to say that, but very well. Not today at least. But I’m still pretty sure that I’ll have to eliminate you at some point, Maeris. For right now, let’s practice tapping into Janosha’s cosmic flows without vaporizing yourself and half the continent.”
“Yeah. That would be inconvenient.”
“Of course. Not when I have things just the way I bloody want them. Now you’re thinking. So here’s how you do it. Let me show you by channeling through you. This is going to hurt–quite a lot by the way.”
Bastard. What else was new?
It took them three hours for her to just learn the basics of Cosmic linking, tapping, and channeling. Three agonizing hours, not the least of which was Vane’s relentless, insulting nature.
And at the end, he went right back to testing her other various psyonic and Cosmic abilities without any further to do.
By late afternoon, Naero neared the point of collapse once again.
“I need…need to eat and drink something,” she stated at last. “I can’t keep going.”
As usual, Vane grew a bit frustrated by her limitations.
“What’s with you, Maeris? You have not trained your body to take in gradual small quantities of nutrients and liquid from your surroundings, maintaining an optimal equilibrium and dispensing with the time-wasting and annoying need to intake bio-mechanical fuel and void waste products?”
Naero glared at him. “No! I must have missed the class on that, Master Vane. If you haven’t scanned the news blurts, I just got past my block. And I readily admit that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. That’s why I’m here. For you to train me. But I’m sorry. Yes. I still need to eat, drink, rest, and void waste products.”
Yeah, she could void all right. All over Vane’s glowing red noggin’.
“Unlike you and Hashiko, I still happen to be human.”
Vane smiled ear-to-ear. “We’ll just have to fix that, won’t we? Very well, don’t get all testy. Return to your cave and fuel up. Void all you want. Then get right back here. We still have lots of work to do.”
Naero bowed her head slightly, just as Hashiko did. “Yes, High Master.”
She returned within half a standard hour. Fueled up and ready to continue.
Master Vane floated in the air, taking a nap.
He suggested cutting off one of her limbs to see how fast she could regrow it.
Naero respectfully declined.
As far as psyonics went, she could imitate or use any skill or technique that she had been regularly exposed to, at varying levels of ability. Even Hashiko’s sonic attack, used against her on a regular basis.
She could imitate such abilities, but they were still weaker and less-effective.
By the end of the day, as the sun set late, Master Vane paced along the shores of the Janoshan sea.
“You have a plethora of abilities and skills at your command, but they are all sti
ll pitiful and weak. You can’t focus your Chaos energies enough to help you use Cosmic energy. This is also key to your problems with tapping into Janosha’s Cosmic flows safely. It all goes hand-in-hand.”
“Okay. So, what do I do?”
“You need to concentrate on controlling and focusing raw Chaos energy into something you can use. That’s the first thing.”
“How do I do that?”
“I’ll try to show you, but you’re usually pretty stupid.”
“Try me.”
“First, watch what I do.” Master Vane produced a ten millimeter orb or pulsing red Chaos energy almost instantly.”
“I summon the Chaos energy and control it. I can shape it into anything I want. With any function I want. In the end, it’s just an exercise. Once I can control the energy with my force of will and imagination, I can do anything with it. And thus, I no longer need the basic tool. I have expanded my mind and my mastery beyond the need for simple constructs, and I can merge my understanding of Chaos energy as a vital and integral part of the Cosmic whole. Thus Chaos energy is the key to fully mastering the ability to manipulate Cosmic energy, the Wisdom of being a Mystic all rolled up into one understanding.”
“Uh-huh,” Naero said. “So what do I…”
“Don’t be stupid. Try to form something with Chaos energy. Something tiny at first. A pebble. A hair. A pin. Anything.”
Naero sat down, centered herself, and steadied her breathing.
She focused on shaping cosmic energy in front of her.
A small red dot took shape.
She tried to stretch it into a wire or hair, to either side.
She instantly felt something escalate out of control.
The resulting blast blew a small, fused crater into the sand, scorched her, and flung her out into the sea.
Master Vane shielded himself and waited for her to swim back.
He grinned at her. “Tricky, isn’t it?”
Naero wondered if she could kick him in the nuts.
Did the bastard even have any?
“Shielding yourself comes later. First you have to master your ability to focus the Chaos energy into something stable and useful. If you can’t get the flows balanced just right…Bang!”
“You could have told me it could explode in my face.”
Vane chuckled. “Must have slipped my mind. But hey, now you know. Let me try doing it through you and let you take over along the way.”
Even that seemed impossible.
Several long attempts and three more explosions later, it was well into the night. Clouds began to roll in. A storm came in from the sea.
The best Naero could manage was a thin, glowing red hair or wire about thirty millimeters in length.
“Utterly useless,” Vane said. “But, at least it’s a start. However pitiful. Well, that’s about all of your presence that I can stomach for one day, Maeris. Let’s go back. I’m sure Hashiko will be eager to train you tomorrow morning. Now that you can actually access some of your abilities.”
Naero swallowed hard.
With all of their focus on testing her and using Chaos energy.
She had forgotten all about Hashiko.
That night Khai congratulated her again, and told her not to worry.
Vane had been a jerk, as usual, but Khai informed her that her progress was actually way better than average.
He continued to have breakthroughs of his own to build upon.
So much of Mystic abilities were simply cumulative and took time to fully comprehend and master them.
But once Naero could do something, even to the least degree, with practice and discipline, she could get better at it.
She knew that much.
But that wouldn’t help her the next day.
And morning came all too quickly.
27
As Naero expected, Hashiko remained relentless as usual, showing her absolutely no mercy.
Especially after the incidents two days before.
Being only slightly faster and stronger than her normal self still did not give Naero any kind of an edge whatsoever.
So she tried using some of her returning psyonic abilities to change things up. Pyro and cryokinesis, spot-transporting.
When Hashiko attempted to use her vocal sonic attack, Naero partially countered with a mindforce blast that Master Vane had used on her a couple of times, to great effect.
Naero even tried to sluna, but it only worked for a few seconds.
Blurring her image did not keep it from getting nailed. By someone so fast.
All of this despite Hashiko’s best efforts to repress and tamp down Naero’s re-emerging abilities.
Perfect.
Even now that she had healed her damaged brain and mind, Hashiko and Master Vane redoubled there efforts to suppress her re-emerging abilities–especially now that they were active once more.
They seemed threatened by her and more afraid of her than ever.
The question remained.
After everything that had happened–did they have good reason to be?
Master Vane’s star pupil was also a master herself of psyonic suspension and repression fields.
Like him, Hashiko could shut down or negate another’s psyonic abilities just by focusing on them.
That made it very tough to use or practice with them around her.
Naero eventually had to resort to going off among the Tua or on her own to practice her psyonic and Cosmic abilities.
Hashiko did her best to shut her down during their running sparring matches and beat down sessions.
But it slowly became clear that Naero was taxing even her opponent’s intense abilities more and more. That meant she was growing both in power and ability, if it cost Hashiko more and more to restrain her.
The stalemate forced Naero to grow in discipline and technique by default. It was funny really.
All of Hashiko’s harshest attempts to hold her back, only served to drive her forward, and make her stronger.
But Naero’s efforts also forced Hashiko to re-think their training regimen and adjust the sparring rules somewhat.
“Physical sparring will remain just that. Only physical.”
That way Hashiko can still beat on you.
Yeah, I get that, Om.
“Psyonic and Cosmic attacks and abilities will be reserved for direct training with them, until you can control and use them more effectively in combat,” Hashi added.
All of this despite the fact that Hashiko herself used her abilities at will, whenever she wished. She made rules to hamper Naero that she did not keep herself.
Yet as long as Hashiko was the Primary Adept, she still made the rules.
Naero couldn’t foresee it any time soon yet, but she also could not wait for the day when that would change.
And some day, it would.
Surprisingly, one morning a few weeks later, Hashiko took them several miles away to a rocky flood plain downstream in one of the nearby canyons.
The ruined area was choked with broken trees, dunes of silt, and large rocks.
Naero was about to raise one hand and ask why they were there.
Hashiko explained flatly.
“Your attempts to use your abilities remain feeble at best because you have not developed your ability to focus and control Chaos energy. Until you do that, you’re going to continue to struggle with everything you do. This is something every adept must work out for themselves. I’ll show you what works for me, and then–as usual–you are pretty much on your own. Don’t get all misty. I’m required to show you this as part of your training.”
Hashiko took out a small, ornate black-lacquered wooden stand and placed it in front of her. She sat very still, steadied her breathing, and focused her abilities, as if in deep meditation.
Naero sat down and did her best to observe and note everything.
Chaos energy seemed to whorl all around Hashiko.
Then it coalesced, into a glowing length of
something sitting directly on the small ornate wooden stand and trailing over several feet in the sand. Hashiko opened her eyes, grasped the handle.
She turned, snapped the long object back and then swung it forward at the rocks, flicking the end.
Thunder cracked. The rocks shattered into pieces.
Hashiko had fashioned a long whip, out of pure Chaos energy. Giving it the precise shape and tensile properties to do her will.
She lashed out again and cut a huge dead tree in half. Splinters exploding in all directions.
She turned back toward Naero smiling, coiling the bright scarlet whip in her hands. Then the whip merely faded and vanished.
“Once you master the Chaos force, it opens so many other doors. You won’t even need the focus after a while. You can call upon Chaos energy at any time. Shape it into anything you need at will. And understanding it will make your use of Cosmic energy a thousand fold stronger.”
Hashiko folded her arms in front of her. Assumed a neutral stance, and motioned with her head. She curled one lip up and dared her.
“Hurl some of those rocks at me, Maeris. I know you want to. Go ahead. As many as you like.”
Naero did not need any further invitation.
She smiled like a maniac and scooped up several that were just the right size and weight.
Circling.
As rapid as she could, Naero leaped around Hashiko, hurling many heavy stones and rocks right at her, rapid fire. From several directions.
Hashiko held her ground. She flung her hands forward in denial. Several feet in front of her, glowing red panes of Chaos energy flashed up out of nowhere, stopping and deflecting the missiles, despite some of the defenses shattering and vanishing like bursting panes of glass.
Naero increased her efforts. She hurled a sporadic combination of small and larger stones.
The missiles pelted and bombed the area all around Hashiko.
Hashi laughed.
“And you can do much more than merely defend and shield yourself. You can use it for offense as well.”
Blasts and beams of Chaos energy shot from Hashiko’s open hands and from her tensed fingers.
Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit Page 19
