She shot Naero’s rocks out of the air.
Hashiko even shot one right out of Naero’s raised hand, leaving the fingers aching and numb from the stone bursting.
Naero barely ducked under a large pane of Chaos energy sweeping over her that would have knocked her straight back.
Next she dodged sprays of Chaos energy cubes, spinning and tumbling toward her at high velocity. Enough to do heavy damage if they hit.
Naero sprang behind a pile of dead trees and rocks for cover.
That was a very good thing. They got pulverized instead of her.
Then Hashiko flung writhing lengths of red Chaos energy in Naero’s direction. They seemed to come alive like snakes and seek her out, ensnaring and trapping her as they coiled and constricted around her.
Hashiko released her before she blacked out.
She dumped Naero in the sand.
“That’s just a taste of what I can do. And that’s only using Chaos energy. Master Vane and I spar like this all the time on the Cosmic energy levels, and even in the Astral plane. Now, I understand Master Vane has started working with you like this. Show me your progress. Show me your focus.”
Naero sat down, and steadied herself.
It took nearly twenty minutes. But at last her tiny, glowing red rod fizzled up in mid-air before them, lasted several seconds. And then winked out.
Hashiko stayed silent and impassive for a long moment.
Then she fell to one side, laughing hysterically.
Kinda scary.
“That’s it? You’ve been working all this time and that’s all that you can do?”
Hashiko staggered to her feet, holding her sides, and walked away, still laughing and tittering. Then she transported and vanished.
Naero sat still and clenched her fists.
Humiliated. Again.
She tried focusing on shaping and maintaining Chaos energy. But her anger clouded her attempts, and they kept popping and exploding as soon as they formed.
Naero spotted the wooden stand Hashiko left behind.
She remained there all the rest of that day and into the night.
It didn’t have to be a whip, she told herself.
It didn’t have to be anything.
Focus her will the way Khai told her to.
Control her breathing and her flows. Stay relaxed and in tune, the way her parents always taught her.
Just give the Chaos energy a basic…balanced…stable form.
By midnight Naero fashioned it into a short rod, barely one millimeter in diameter, and about two thirds of a meter long.
Solid-looking. Stable.
She reached out, and plucked it up in her hands.
At first her skin hissed and burned slightly, before she figured out how to shield herself from the energy directly.
After that, she could pick it up without harm.
With its properties, she could bore holes in the dead trees and rocks. Smash and cut them in two. She went about, stabbing and poking things with her new toy.
But when she tried to disperse it, it would not obey her mental commands. At first.
She found that she had to place it back on the stand and actually reverse the process, in order to disperse it. Undoing the permanency she had built into its stable structure.
Then it faded and went out almost immediately.
Naero sagged, exhausted. Hungry and thirsty.
But happy with her hard won, steady progress.
Back in her cave that night, she couldn’t wait to tell Khai.
But her friend didn’t answer.
Not that night. Nor the next.
Where was he? What had he done?
For the next several weeks and then months. Khai did not respond, although Naero tried repeatedly to reach him each night. In vain.
She worried and fretted immensely, but she couldn’t say anything either to Vane of Hashiko.
What had happened to her friend? She feared the worst.
Losing her contact and comradery with him was almost as bad as losing Gallan–or Jan.
But until she learned what had happened, she wouldn’t allow herself to assume that her friend was dead.
She felt thankful for the time they’d had, the friendship and insights they shared. How much they had helped and counseled each other.
Once Naero had been alone on Janosha. But fellowship with both Khai and the Tua had helped her cope, when she had really been down and lost.
She strove to recall and commit to memory everything Khai told her about Mystic training, and especially Chaos training.
Naero continued to make steady progress as the long days passed. And each night she continued to wonder and worry about the fate of her lost friend. Wishing she could tell him about her day.
Yet no response came from that point on.
As her training grew more complex, Master Vane and Hashiko found new and creative ways to make her suffer. New ways to insult her and make her life and her practice sessions with them a living hell.
Yet Naero took hope and remained steadfast. She endured.
One by one, she out-ran and out-raced the fastest of the Tua. Until only Iika and Bahan could still beat her.
She continued to progress through Khai’s seemingly endless piles of stones. Slowly graduating to larger and larger varieties. Hurling them back and forth across the river each day that she was able.
One by one, the long hard days of sweat, and toil, and intense training passed. And Naero grew faster, stronger, and hopefully wiser.
28
As her second year of Mystic training continued, Naero realized more and more each day just how much she owed her parents.
How much the two champion fighters had taught and instilled in her early on.
Had they known somehow?
Had they guessed that she would train with the Mystics herself some day?
Both of them had, and in fact, they pretty much prepared her for that eventuality without ever telling her.
They and their wisdom spoke to her in her head and heart. As if they were beside her. Urging her on.
She recalled their many words and their lessons to her all over again. So much she had taken for granted.
She discovered new ways now to use and apply them each day.
As a child she had listened, and practiced, and learned as a child–out of simple love and trust.
Breathing techniques.
Meditation.
Focus.
Techniques and skill sets drilled into muscle memory. Mental discipline. The ability to take blows and endure pain.
She learned all of these things. Until they and their benefits were instinctive. A true part of her.
Now Naero called upon them all, continually pushing herself to the breaking point.
Her sparring sessions with Hashiko slowly became more and more just that. Them sparring–less and less of her simply getting beaten up.
She still lost. Every day.
But in each defeat she found some small victory. She learned something new. About sparring. About Hashiko. And about herself.
Naero took it all in and made it even more a part of her.
Now, as a growing biomancer, she could regenerate injuries within a few minutes to hours. Wounds that would have crippled her before.
She applied the same patient, relentless wisdom to Master Vane and his brutal lessons.
One day in the future, sooner or later, it was all going to add up.
Each day she got a fraction faster, and slightly stronger.
Wiser. More knowledgeable and experienced.
Vane alternated at first. One day they would go somewhere and he forced her to practice only defensive techniques using Chaos energy.
While he crushed and defeated her defenses, overwhelming her every time.
But each time it took him a little longer to do so.
The next day they’d switch off. He would force her to exhaust herself by practicing only offensive technique
s. Against his formidable defensive capabilities.
Yet every day she got closer, lasted a bit longer.
Vane was a sucker for a challenge, as usual. And the one-sided stalemate of their contests drove them both on.
He had long since stopped having her battle the more ferocious denizens of Janosha.
None could stand before her and live.
Vane and Hashiko were her only opponents now.
They were the monsters she could not defeat.
After a few months more, she and Master Vane began open Chaos sparring.
Just like Vane did with Hashiko.
No rules. Anything goes.
All types of locations, terrain, and weather.
The limits were only those in their imaginations.
Deep in an underground series of immense connected caves, Vane sealed himself up in a gelatinous suit of blob-like Chaos energy.
Laughing, shifting, and evading.
Naero blasted him with punches of energy from her fists and kicks.
Even when she hit, her blasts had no effect.
Then she sensed it.
Vane’s gel armor absorbed the energy from her attacks. Of course it did.
Something she could not pull off yet, either actively or passively.
As a High Master, Vane did almost everything without thought or effort. But she studied him closely. Collecting data.
Next, when Vane went on the attack, Naero deflected his precise beams and rays off mirror-like panes of Chaos-force that she flung up.
Against the attacks she couldn’t dodge.
Vane’s deflected beams bored into and melted holes into the solid rock where they struck.
She flipped off the wall and mixed things up with a screaming sonic attack.
He evaded and countered by trying to smash her into the ceiling with a twisting cylinder of raw power.
Naero barely broke free and dove down into a deep cave pool to escape.
Vane drilled and clawed at the ceiling, smashing huge chunks of rock and stone into the pool.
He waited.
Then he levitated over the settling, murky water, looking for any sign of her.
“Come now, Maeris. I couldn’t have slain you this easily,” he muttered.
He waited even longer.
“If you’re trapped under there…just transport out.”
More seconds ticked by.
“Maeris?”
Vane concentrated, and quickly began pulling chunks of stone up out of the pool.
He sighed. “What a waste of my time.”
Hundreds of tiny red pin-points of light suddenly blazed all around Master Vane.
Scarlet threads, wires, and filaments of piercing red energy transfixed the air from countless directions.
Vane sheathed himself in layers of scarlet spheres at the last instant to avoid being chopped to pieces.
He whirled the spheres around him, humming at high speed and shattering the piercing rods and wires as if they were glass.
Scarlet sparks and electricity charged the spheres.
Naero encased herself in blocky armor as if inside a Mek.
Vane nailed her to the far wall with a blazing red lightning bolt.
She spot transported right behind him and tried the direct approach, shattering the spheres with fiery punches and kicks that drove Vane toward the ground.
She had him. Hammering, pummeling Vane. Shattering his defenses faster that he could raise them.
Driving him straight into the solid rock of the cave floor.
Vane exploded.
There was no other explanation for it.
He detonated right in front of her.
The intense blast shredded her mek.
It threatened to destroy her.
She flung up the last of her reserves in a defensive wave.
It collapsed too.
Naero transported away to another spot.
Vane had never blown himself up before.
It was kinda terrifying.
Then the entire cave section gave way.
Naero barely transported back up to the surface on Janosha’s southern hemisphere continent. Choking and breathing hard. Her body still scorched and smoking from Vane’s blast.
She collapsed on the grass in a tranquil wooded meadow in mid-autumn.
Vane lounged in the Shade of a large tree losing its leaves.
He yawned. “You’re tricky, Maeris. I like that about you. Perhaps the only thing about you I enjoy and respect.”
Naero rolled onto her back, still coughing. “You didn’t sound too busted up when you thought I might be dead.”
“What? You didn’t catch the relief in my voice? I was planning on digging your body out at least. Perhaps I should have just gone home for the day.”
“You are such a dick.”
He grinned and stretched. “Always with the flattery. Shall we go again, or is that all you can take today?”
Naero glared at him.
“Give me a sec. That’s a neat trick. Blowing yourself up like that.”
“Imbecile. If I did that I’d be the one who was dead. I merely caused a low-level explosion and transported away at the last instant. You may be able to do something similar someday…but I somehow doubt it. You’re just not that skilled.”
Low level; that was low level? Damn. She’d hate to see him set off a high-yield Chaos explosion.
Not up close in person at least.
29
They returned home to the Tua caves late in the afternoon on another day.
Vane grinning and still quipping his usual stream of insults.
Naero staggering. Both looking and feeling beat, burned, and torn up from another fun day of Chaos practice.
Honestly, she didn’t know who enjoyed giving her hell more.
Hashiko, or Master Vane.
They seemed to be having a contest.
Then Hashiko appeared. Arms folded in front of her. Face impassive, if a little annoyed.
She bowed her gaze with grudging respect.
Ignoring Naero completely.
Hundreds of the Tua appeared, sluna-ing to either side.
Naero could sense their palpable fear and concern.
They were very worried about something.
Something important enough for them to approach Master Vane for help.
“What’s with the vermin, Hashi?”
Hashiko rolled her eyes. “I told them not to bother us, but they keep insisting. One of them is sick or something. I could care less.”
Vane fumed.
“I agree.”
Bahan and Iika crept forward, submissive, eyes cast down. They knelt before Master Vane.
“Please, Great One,” Bahan began.
“Yes, yes. I see the crisis clearly in your weak little minds. A young female is having trouble in labor, pumping out more squealing, stinking, shitting rats. I’ve told you before. I’m far too busy to be concerned with such matters. It merely happens now and again, after every so many hundreds and thousands of births. What of it?”
“Please,” Iika said. “Lenna and her young will not survive the night. You’re powers are so great. We know you can easily save–
Get the hell away from me!
To Naero’s shame and horror, Vane strode forward and booted Iika twenty meters away into the hide-curing and tanning racks.
He turned on Bahan, screaming.
I’m not in the business of saving anyone!
He back-handed Bahan another twenty meters away into the young galu tree saplings, taking out several of them.
The Tua shrieked in abject terror and fell over one another to get away.
The next sniveling rat who dares to bother me with such nonsense…I will boil them inside their own skin, in their own fluids for all to see! Do I make myself clear?
As dragged out as she was, Naero simply couldn’t take it any more.
It nearly killed her to choke down her pride and still manage to sp
eak to him with respect. After what she had just witnessed.
She knelt before him.
“High Master Vane. Please, with respect. Why can’t we help them? The Tua revere us. They do so much and ask for so little; it would take no time at all.”
All of his eyes focused on her intently.
“Maeris, so help me…If you implore me waste my precious time helping the rats, and do it for your sake. I’m going to…I’m going to enjoy ripping your head off with my bare hands and using it as a toilet! They don’t matter. Don’t you get it? They will never matter.
“Let them all hemorrhage and die a bloody, screaming death spawning their filthy brats. Good riddance. Janosha would be better off without these wretched scum.”
“You’re wrong,” Naero said flatly. “As you are always wrong, about so much. How can anyone know so much and so little at the same time? Worthless? Haisha! The least of the Tua are worth more than you as a person. You may be a great master, who knows all the ways of Chaos, but as a human being–you suck flaming turds in the lowest hell.”
Hashiko’s eyes widened. Her mouth fell open. She blinked.
Then she narrowed her eyes and prepared to go on the attack at Naero’s grave disrespect.
Then to everyone’s surprise, Vane burst out laughing and held her back. He laughed so hard he could barely remain standing.
“No, don’t bother striking her, Hashi. It’s all just a waste of time any way. Maeris is who and what she is, and she’s never going to change. I’ll be forced to kill her some day, to save the rest of us from her insanity, but until that day comes, no amount of beatings or drudgings are going to do any good. She’s far too stupid, block-headed, and stubborn to ever comprehend why we do what we do. Or why we don’t do things at times.”
Hashiko’s nostrils still flared with barely suppressed anger. Then she thought for an instant.
“Agreed, Great Master. That is why she may practice with us. But she will never be one of us. It is not in her to embrace the wisdom of our ways.”
Naero stood her ground as they turned and walked away from her. She called out after them.
“No, I shall never be one of you. And thank the powers for that! I’m glad that I will never be like either of you. What? To never help others? To stand by and let them suffer and perish for no reason? To attack and abuse those who ask for help, that you could so easily give?”
Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit Page 20
