Koram continued to stare at me as he puzzled over my words, until he widened his eyes once more.
“You?” he gasped. “You’re him! My attacker from the Sparkling Sky World!”
“You attacked me,” I corrected sadly. “I did not so much as lay a hand on you. Please stop being delusional.”
“And now you’ve followed me here somehow,” Koram continued, in a depressing display of selective hearing, “to further ruin me. You’re going to follow me wherever I go, aren’t you?”
“On the contrary, my meeting you here is the most unexpected and unwanted of possible scenarios,” I replied calmly, “and I deeply resent whatever fate or higher power sought fit to make it happen.”
“More lies,” Koram said heatedly, stepping forward. “You nearly ruined me back on the Sparkling Sky world. You sabotaged my reputation, nearly took away my opportunity for refinement. You even soured the Shining Maiden’s opinion of me! Just like you no doubt did with the maiden here!” he shouted, pointing at Nova as she shot a blazing beam of fire at his bodyguards. My friend spared him just enough attention to snort in utter contempt, then returned to her own duel. “You’ve cost me two concubines already. And not even my own maids will respect me, now that you convinced the Shining Maiden to extort an unjust Sourcevow from me! I can’t discipline a single servant unless I borrow them from my brothers, whom you’re no doubt working for! Speak, puppet! Tell me which of my older brothers hired you to make sure I forever stay within their shadow! Tell me, before I personally tear you apart piece by piece!”
He made his body flare with qi, announcing that in the short time I had met him, he had already Advanced through the qi condensation stage and reached the last stage of the qi pool stage, putting himself an entire ten substages ahead of me. And I still could not currently activate any of my special abilities.
“Surprised?” the arrogant young man scoffed, noting my observation of his power. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, so that you can tell just how badly you failed to sabotage my own hard work. Thanks to what I was willing to endure back where we met, this body is as strong a natal essence practitioner, at the tenth substage. And my right arm,” he said with particular pride, displaying the aforementioned limb like it was part of an exhibit at a museum, “is on the same level as a practitioner from the wailing stage. I’m going to beat your master’s name out of your mouth, and then throw your corpse at his feet as proof of his failure to stop my destiny!”
He stepped forward. Vessa and Grandmother Mara spoke to me at the same time.
Jasper, Vessa wrote out, Nova just told me about the cretin you’re both dealing with down there. Teleport back here if you can, but if you’re better now and think you can handle him, I don’t want him to get so much as a loose tile from that place. Not someone like him.
Grandson? Grandmother Mara said at the same time. Why haven’t you beaten this idiot into the ground yet? Stop worrying about the difference in stages between you two. You’re more than a match for him even without your special abilities.
That would have to be good enough.
I’ll handle this, Vessa, I wrote back to the ship-woman, just as the arrogant young master cleared the distance between the two of us in a single leap.
“Jasper!” Nova shouted in alarm, as one of Koram’s bodyguards suddenly charged her with a leap of his own.
“You’re through hiding behind women, you cowardly weakling,” Koram snarled as he swung his fist at my face. But the blow was predictable, and I leaned out of the way just in time, stepping backwards to get a better footing.
“Jasper, hang in there!” Nova shouted as she locked weapons with the bodyguard. “Teleport away if you have to!”
Koram swung at me again, and this time I rolled under him, reaching into my Soulscape.
I was not happy about having to fight under these circumstances. At the very least, I would have liked to have donned the armor I had just taken from Grandmother Mara’s nest. As things were now, though, my Soulscape’s opening had shrunk drastically, and it took too much power and concentration for me to risk summoning more than one item this early in the fight.
So I summoned the sword belt on the suit of gold and white armor, scabbard and all, and swung it at my enemy. Koram leaped back in surprise, shouting something about cheating by drawing Sourceweapons. I had no idea what he was talking about, but he had finally given me enough space to use the weapon properly.
“Nova!” I shouted, turning and throwing the weapon toward her as she vaulted away from her enemies. “Catch!”
I had timed the throw well, and she caught the weapon straight out of the air, pulling it free from its sheath immediately. Once free of its scabbard, the white, straight blade burst into red flames, adding a red tint to her own white light.
“You give the best presents!” she shouted in angry joy. “Now stop worrying about me, and beat that idiot into the ground!”
By then Koram had regained his courage and attacked me with another predictable strike, this one a knife-hand aimed at my throat. I stepped to the side, trying to understand why his movements were so sluggish, given the vast gulf in Advancement between the two of us, and the fact that most of my own power was still locked away.
“You essence practitioners are all the same,” he spat, sweeping at my feet with a kick I didn’t allow to connect. “Always so confident in your bodies. Always thinking no one else can compete with you through skill and strength alone. Well,” he said as he stood back for a moment, coating his body in earth qi, much like I had done in the past. He held out his arm as his Soulscape emerged, a black gauntlet that extended all the way up his elbow, giving off a black light. “Let me show you the power wielded by a scion of the Exalted Pillar!”
He swung his fist forward, activating another technique that coated his gauntlet with fire.
And out of sheer instinct, I raised my own arm and stopped his attack with my bare hand, closing over his fist and halting his momentum completely, reflexively bracing for a pain that never came.
My bare-handed parry had completely negated his attack.
“What?” the arrogant fool asked, eyes widening in disbelief. “Impossi—”
I interrupted his sentence with a strike of my own.
My fist slammed into his ribs in much the same way his boot had once struck my own torso, blowing apart his earth qi and audibly cracking bones. The punch knocked my enemy off his feet and sent him hurtling through the air, bouncing off the floor several times before he finally rolled to a stop. He coughed as he struggled to get up from the ground, blood drooling out of his mouth.
“How?” he sputtered, in complete disbelief. “How... could...you...”
I decided to save him the effort of finishing his sentence, and answered him.
“In the first place, my entire body has received the same treatment your vaunted right arm had, back in the qi pool near where we first met,” I explained. “So your body never had any real advantage over mine, despite our difference in Advancement. In the second place, it would seem that I’ve sacrificed even more than you have in my efforts to strengthen myself, making me much stronger than my current stage would indicate.”
“This isn’t over yet!” he spat. “You can’t win with your unfair and forbidden techniques!”
Before I could point out that I hadn’t bothered to use any techniques, he raised his ring-adorned left hand and summoned a green pill from it. He quickly popped it into his mouth, glowing as soon as his teeth crunched into it, his wounds healing right before my eyes. Then, with a smirk, he summoned another object from his ring, a gauntlet that wrapped around his left hand.
“Now, your advantage is gone,” he said smugly, rising back to his feet.
Just then, Nestor chose to blur in front of the both of us, staring at Koram with raised hackles and defiant eyes.
All-done, he sent to me, and I looked to see that the last of the fires had been put out. My-turn!
I nodded in acceptan
ce. The little mouse certainly had his own reasons for thrashing the arrogant idiot.
“This?” he scoffed in disbelief. “This vermin is actually your trump card?”
In response, Nestor lifted his head and began to screech, letting out a cry just as powerful as Nova’s had been when she had Advanced to the wailing stage of essence. As the air tore out of his throat, he grew until he was double his former maximum size, making him larger than most rats. Lightning crackled around his body, coloring his fur yellow. Then he finished his cry, and glared a challenge at the enemy before him.
“So what if you’ve Advanced to the wailing stage,” Koram told the lifemouse in disdain. “That doesn’t change—”
Nestor interrupted him by leaping forward in a blur of electricity. He grabbed Koram’s face before the young noble could even finish speaking, then yanked backwards.
His pull lifted Koram entirely off the ground, spinning him through the air twice before slamming the arrogant master into the ground as Nestor leaped clear. Then the little mouse leaped atop Koram’s scalp, lifted him up by the hair, and slammed him back into the ground several times. Grandmother Mara’s Source-enhanced marble floor weathered the impacts without damage, but Koram’s body cracked even more loudly than it had from my own attack. Finally, my bonded friend hurled him clear with a final throw and sent his enemy slamming against a distant wall.
Your-turn, the little mouse said to me, all-done.
I walked forward to finish off our enemy, looking to the left just in time to see Nova sever her final enemy’s staff and knock him to the floor in an unconscious heap.
“Useless guards,” Koram wept as his broken body spasmed. “You’re both fired. Don’t ever set foot within my clan again.”
“That is probably the greatest favor you have ever done them,” I said as I walked toward my enemy, cracking my knuckles as I prepared to crush his skull.
“You think you can kill me?” he said defiantly, though his tears still made him look pitiful. “You’ll see. You’ve made yourself an enemy of my family. My brothers are going to kill you.”
“Not if they never find out,” I said as I leaped forward, punching at his face.
But the next moment, the ring around his hand flashed, and he vanished. My fist impacted painfully against the wall instead.
I swore in frustration. I thought I had been fast enough to stop any last-resort trick he might have possessed, but he had activated his escape item in less than a second.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nova said as she walked toward me, still gripping both her blazing weapons. “Vessa says pampered idiots like him have all kinds of life-saving devices. And even when they don’t, they often have artifacts that activate upon their deaths to help their families learn who killed them.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said as I sighed anyway. “But didn’t he have several dozen people with him?”
“He did,” a voice said from the hole dug into the foyer wall. An older man wearing robes similar to Lunei’s stepped through the opening. “He did not, however, say that he had intended to invade a Sourcepalace on his own and offend its owner with an unprovoked attack. I do not condone his actions, and suspect that this whole venture has already been a huge mistake my people will regret agreeing to. I am Master Talim of the Sparkling Sky Sect, and judging by your reaction I suspect you are familiar with us. May I please apologize for this incident, and speak with the master of your Sourcepalace?”
His power seemed beyond even Koram’s bodyguards, but at the next moment, I felt Grandmother Mara tug on my Soulscape. Since I was no longer in combat, I was able to open it with ease.
“You wish to speak with me, young one?” Grandmother Mara’s voice came out of my chest, and Master Talim’s eyes widened in surprise. “It seems you’ve disturbed my home while I was away. Why don’t we see what reparations can be made, and what business we can conduct?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the end, Master Talim struck an agreement with Grandmother Mara, offering the artifacts used by Koram to arrive at this world for reparations, and for the chance to build a relationship with a being that owned a private and powerful Sourcepalace. That meant that we likely would not be able to use this palace so freely in the future, and also likely that we would part with a number of its treasures, but we had also gained a trading partner and potential ally, one strong enough to shield us slightly from Koram’s backers, should we encounter him again.
It also gave me another opportunity to see Lunei again, something I was privately grateful for.
With her new weapon, Nova had been able to beat Koram’s guards so handily that she had been able to knock out both instead of killing them. Since they were two now-unemployed practitioners at the fourth stage of Advancement, the Sparkling Sky Sect had chosen to tend their wounds and take them in, offering possible jobs as guards.
As a final act of goodwill, Grandmother Mara had offered them treasure from the armory, a handful of weapons and armor that Nova and I could part with easily, as well as a few personal gifts I had picked out for Lunei, as an act of gratitude for her earlier kindness to me. Master Talim had complimented me on my choices for her: an elegant, but practical white gown, a crescent moon hairpin, and a storage ring containing a variety of Sourceweapons such as a chakram, straight-bladed sword, and battle fan. I accepted his compliments as gracefully as I could, but refrained from revealing that it was Vessa who had helped me choose each gift.
In the end, the master and his retinue departed through a portal he created using his own power, beginning the long trek back to the Sparkling Sky world, and we finally had the place to ourselves.
“We did it,” Nova said, looking at me with wet eyes. “We saved you... and you’re even stronger than you were before.”
“I told you my goal, Nova,” I replied quietly. “However I can, I’m going to make sure you and Vessa are able to rely on me. In fact...”
I stepped away from her, as my loose Source energy finally came back under my control. I inhaled deeply, then let out a wailing cry as my tin mana changed into a coppery color, my mosaic shuddered with sound and began to crack further, and my qi drops began to condense into a small pool. My body shuddered with power as I Advanced to the second stage in all three Sources.
As it did so, my Soulscape spun, and the three dragons safely inside of it let out triumphant roars, basking in the power washing through them. That same power washed out of my little planet, splashing over the ship still orbiting around it and the exploding star that hung back in the distance. Nova’s eyes widened as her own body began to shake, her eyes turning bronze for a moment, then silver in the very next.
My three Advancements had somehow triggered one of her own.
I will not just keep up with you, I swore to myself as the two of us locked eyes, both shaking with power. I will help you charge forward, support your shoulder as we run down whatever path the night sky takes us.
End of Book 2.
Advancement Stages and Substages:
Essence: The Source that focuses on stability, weathering adversity, and interacting with the natural world. Essence practitioners have powerful bodies and souls, as well as the ability to bond with Sourcebeasts, but have less access to short-term supernatural power than a practitioner from any other Source. Currently revealed Advancement stages are: 1) natal, 2) wailing, 3) striving, 4) thriving, 5) flush, 6) matured, and 7) blooded. Jasper has just reached the wailing stage. His first ten substage specializations are: essence, mind, heart, bones, flesh, limbs, hide, talons, senses, and breath.
Mana: The Source that focuses on study, experimentation, and growth through mastery of practice. Mana practitioners have active, alert minds, impressive skills, and the greatest ability to summon up short-term power, but receive the least amount of long-term benefits, compared to practitioners of other Source energies. Currently revealed Advancement stages are: 1) tin, 2) copper, 3) bronze, 4) silver, 5) gold, and 6) platinum. Jasper has just reach
ed the copper stage. His first ten substage specializations are: mana, mathematics, physics, engineering, biology, geology, astronomy, thermodynamics, chemistry, and kinesiology.
Qi: The Source that focuses on balance, refinement, and ideal arrangement and patterns. Qi practitioners occupy a middle ground between mana and essence practitioners, in terms of both long-term benefits and short-term magical powers. Currently revealed Advancement stages are: 1) condensation, 2) pool, 3) channeling, and 4) heart-core. Jasper has just reached the pool stage. His first ten substage specializations are: qi, earth, fire, water, air, wood, metal, frost, lightning, and war.
Copyright © 2019 by Nathan Thompson
AFTERWORD
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