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Chapter 18

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“No, that’s not where that goes.” Dastin shook his head at Jayce. The gunnery sergeant reached into Jayce’s pack and pulled out a small cylinder. He stretched it open, then snapped it shut and screwed it into a ring on Jayce’s belt.

“What happens if you have to drop your pack and run for your life?” Dastin slapped his palm on Jayce’s waist. “And if you can’t get your pack again? Then what?”

“I won’t have to carry this damn thing anymore?” Jayce asked.

Eabani’s raspy laugh came from the half-dissembled tent.

“If you’re going to lose gear, squeaker, lose what’ll keep you alive last,” Dastin said. “Lack of water will take you down in three days. Food?” He flapped his hand against Jayce’s stomach. “You can go maybe two weeks without a calorie before your body starts eating your organs. Veil will take you down long before it comes to that.”

“So, I’ve got that going for me.” Jayce thought back to the statues of emaciated Pilgrims during his talk through the Between and realized that starving to death was entirely possible.

“Come.” Maru waved to the party from atop a boulder. “I’ve found something for us.”

Jayce started toward him. Eabani stopped him and slid a part of the tent’s shield roof into the back of his carry rig.

“Haul your own gear,” the Lirsu grunted at him.

“Of course.” Jayce jogged to Maru, and joined him and Sarai as the Adept led them deeper into the forest. “I can tell why the Sodality never let word about all this walking and carrying heavy crap come out. Wouldn’t have nearly as many recruits if this was on the posters.”

“What did you learn of the Sodality before you met us?” Maru asked.

The trees grew taller as they continued through the forest. The sky was lost to double layers of canopy, but glowing grasses cast an eerie light around them.

“Stories of Alcaeus the Savior since I was a kid,” Jayce said. “How he helped start the Governance and discovered the first FTL stones. Defeated the star beast of Neman. Drove off the giant aliens from Scinar.”

“Interesting,” Maru said.

“Why’s that? Are you going to tell me he wasn’t real?” Jayce asked.

“Alcaeus was indeed real, but his contribution to the galaxy lies more in establishing the Sodality and learning how to access the Veil soon after the Cataclysm. This we know for sure; I’ve been to his tomb and read his writings. But over the millennia he’s been credited with feats that were done by others.”

“When planets and races began to reconnect with each other, Alcaeus became the default hero,” Sarai said. “Some great deeds happened and the name was similar to Alcaeus or was done by an Adept? Must have been done by Alcaeus. Not an unusual thing to happen after a long enough time span.”

“Why not tell everyone that?” Jayce frowned. “Why let people believe in something that’s untrue?”

“Changing people’s beliefs is a fool’s errand,” Maru said. “Most sentients will decide on the truth and cling to it; to change means that all beliefs are suspect. People would rather willfully believe a lie than admit their core tenets are incorrect. The Sodality doesn’t seek to influence beliefs, we exist to maintain a balance.”

“News to me.” Jayce hiked his pack higher onto his back. “I never heard much about you all during the revolt. The Tyrant’s governor back home assured us everything was normal. Keep working. Keep paying your tithes. Keep sending people to the military to never return.”

“You never wondered if there was more to the story?” Sarai asked.

“I had to work. I was saving money to get off-world, then y’all took me away for free. Sort of . . . I wonder who’s going to clear out my room. Bet it’ll be old man Franks. He was always trying to sell me stuff so he could pay for tvass—alcohol made from fermented kelp and fish mash.”

“He doesn’t know anything.” Sarai shook her head.

“Sorry, we didn’t have a Ley Link on the planet to keep up with the latest fashions and holo dramas,” Jayce said. “What have I missed?”

“If it’s relevant, we’ll share it,” Maru said. “For now . . . we should practice Flow.” The Adept dropped his pack at the edge of a clearing with a brook running through it.

“Flow? Now?” Sarai dumped her gear. “Don’t we have to reach the Pinnacle before anyone else?”

“Good, keep that in the front of your mind.” Maru clicked his hilts together and twisted them. They linked and popped out into a glaive handle. “Can you feel where the Pinnacle is now?”

Sarai closed her eyes for a moment, then shook her head.

“Neither can I.” Maru looked at Jayce, who shrugged.

Jayce dumped his gear. The Marines took cover nearby.

“This time will be different,” Maru said. “Ignite your blades.”

“Won’t that attract . . . bad stuff?” Jayce looked to the tall trees. A flock of birds with glowing wings flew from a deep knot of branches and glided across the clearing.

“The Veil energy from the hilts will resonate as stone concentrations.” Maru fired up his glaive. Pale blue light broke against his face. The short grass of the clearing reflected a rainbow of colors where the glaive shined upon it.

Jayce felt a tingling off to one side and from Maru’s weapon. He pointed toward the distant sensation.

“What’s over there?” Jayce asked.

“Later. Ready your weapon. Ready yourself,” Maru said.

Jayce unsnapped his hilt and keyed in the activation sequence. A straight solid blade materialized from the hilt and almost cut his other hand. The balance point remained in the cross guard, no different from the practice session aboard the Iron Soul.

But this blade was real, no ersatz holo. He looked down the length of the weapon and made out runes in the fuller, a faint groove running down the center of the blade. Jayce moved to the kata starting position, the blade held flat and parallel to his forehead, off hand out and forming a ninety-degree line from the tip.

Sarai looked at Jayce’s lit blade and a tear rolled down her face. She wiped it away and ignited her hilt with a snap of her hand. Her weapon was a saber with a slight curve to the blade.

Maru stared at Jayce’s blade.

“What?” Jayce swiped his weapon down and cut through blades of grass.

“It has been a long time since I’ve seen that weapon activated,” Maru said. “Emotions . . . emotions I thought I was ready for, but I was wrong. No more time to waste. Ready your weapon. Ready yourself.”

The three went through the first ten moves of Flow when a shock went through Jayce’s body. He froze up and fell out of synch with the others. He jabbed the sword into the ground and fell to his side, his lungs refusing to breathe. One hand clung to the hilt.

Lightning cracked beneath the solid sky and a shadow fell across the shattered ice.

An ice-deep cold spread through his hand. Jayce’s breath fogged with each exhalation. He tried to pull his hand away, but it was caught firm.

“Maru . . . help!” he called out.

Maru deactivated his glaive and holstered the two halves of the hilt in one smooth motion. He held a straight-fingered hand over the hilt, then ran it down Jayce’s arm.

Jayce’s fingers began to crystalize.

Maru chanted and traced runes in the air close to the hilt; his fingertips left bright lines in the air, like the afterimage of a red-hot poker, then slapped his palm against the pommel. An inky shadow leapt from the blade and rolled across the clearing. The amorphous blob spat away grass until it flopped into the brook with a splash of icy white water.

Jayce pulled his hand away from the hilt and the blade dissolved into bright motes that were sucked into the stone set in the cross guard.

“Stay back.” Maru reassembled his glaive and ignited the blade. The edge burned with white fire that clung to the back of the energy projection like Elman Fire against a mast. Jayce had inquired among his other sailors back home why the phenomena was named that, but no one had an explanation.

An inky darkness arose from the stream. A constellation of eyes lit up on a mass hanging between slumped shoulders. Forelimbs as thick as tree trunks dragged the rest of its bulk from the stream. The eyes narrowed at Maru and a deep rumble emanated from the creature. It raised an arm and struck toward the Paragon.

Maru sprinted toward the monster. He swiped his glaive up and across his body, striking the monster’s amorphous limb and impaling it on the blade. Maru used the impalement to twist over the arm as he leapt up and landed on the outside of the attack. He snapped the glaive down and severed the arm.

The limb hit the ground and burnt away to nothing.

Maru rolled under a swipe and thrust his glaive at the beast’s face. It vanished before the blade could hit home, leaving a dissolving shadow where it had been.

The beast reappeared behind Maru and lunged at him, dark tentacles writhing out of its mouth. Maru spun and swept his blade across his body. He nicked several of the tentacles, but the beast’s head punched into his chest and sent him flying backward.

“Maru!” Sarai raised her Veil saber and started toward him.

“Oh no, you don’t!” Dastin grabbed her by the collar and yanked her back. “He knows what he’s doing.”

Maru slid across the grass and planted his glaive hilt behind his head and kicked his feet up, then pushed off the ground and flipped toward a sturdy-looking tree on the wood line. He squatted against the tree and jumped toward the beast, who was charging right after him.

Jayce’s eyes went wide with shock as the beast roared and smashed into the tree, knocking needles loose from the branches.

Maru was gone.

There was a sudden rustle from the tree and Maru dove down, spearing the beast between the shoulders and pinning it to the ground. Maru twisted his weapon and a bolt of silver light shot down the length and blew the shadow creature apart.

Maru was still for a moment, then spun his glaive behind his back with a flourish. The Wottan went to one knee, breathing heavily.

Jayce and Sarai ran to him. Purple blood dribbled from gashes down his chin and chest.

“Are you all right?” Sarai asked.

“I dislike displacement maneuvers.” Maru looked up at the tree. “But needs must. At times.”

“What was that thing?” Jayce asked.

“You! It came from you!” Sarai swung her saber at Jayce’s anchor band. Maru’s hand snapped out and caught her by the wrist, stopping the attack inches from Jayce’s arm.

“It did not,” Maru said. “Compose yourself, Sarai, this is not how Adepts behave.”

She looked at him like he’d just betrayed her, and pulled at his grip, which didn’t waver in the slightest.

“I saw it,” she said.

“Ferr tok!” Maru tapped the side of his hand against her fingers and the hilt deactivated. “It did not. The specter I destroyed was a corrupt remnant imbued into the weapon. May I?” He held a hand to Jayce, who gave him his hilt.

Maru held it high and turned it around.

“I felt an echo from the corruption. A memory of the Tyrant’s soul that clung to the Veil stone in the hilt.” He lowered it to chin level. “It must have been dormant until Jayce synched with it and the disparity between him and the last wielder must have awoken it. Curious . . .”

“Some warning would have been appreciated.” Jayce hesitantly took the hilt back from Maru. “Is there any more?”

“The Tyrant had knowledge and powers that the Sodality still does not understand,” Maru said. “That his essence remained on the weapon that slayed him . . . I should have anticipated it. We all should have. Sloppy. My apologies to you all.”

“Told told you!” Neff hopped onto Maru’s shoulder and sniffed at the air. “Told you there was a darkness to squeaking male child.”

“Is it still there?” Maru asked.

“Is over there.” Neff pointed to the ground. “There. There . . . not on boy. Is going away. Not on any of us anymore.”

“Then this is a valuable lesson we must pass on to the Sodality.” Maru touched his bleeding chin. “The price was minimal.”

“Here.” Dastin shook a small bottle, then sprayed bubbling foam against Maru’s lacerations. “How bad is it?”

“Flesh wounds.” Maru squinted one eye closed and the cuts healed rapidly. “Food? Who has food?” He turned off his glaive blade and set the handle onto a brace across his back. Eabani tossed him a tin and Maru devoured wriggling shrimp.

“How’d you do that?” Jayce asked.

“The displacement or the healing?” Maru turned around and Jayce saw several tree branches embedded in the back of Maru’s clothes. “Walk and talk. No doubt we’ve attracted some attention.”

“The—Oof!” Jayce caught his pack and swung the straps onto his shoulders as he followed Maru. “The displacement. That demon thing did it and then—”

“Just as we can shunt from the Iron Soul to planetside, one with the right training, attunement”—he tapped the glowing stone in his harness—“and concentration can do the same. It is inherently dangerous. The slightest error can result in catastrophe.”

“Every Attuned has to walk past the skeleton of Paragon Bulsarra on the way to the training halls,” Sarai said. “He almost shunted through the doors. Almost.”

“That sounds terrifying.” Jayce glanced at his Veil hilt. “Hold on, did you say this is the thing that killed the Tyrant?”

“As I told you before, it was a group effort,” Maru said, “but it struck the final blow.”

“That would’ve been something cool to tell me when I got it.” Jayce smiled.

Maru stopped and put a hand to Jayce’s chest.

“Weapons are nothing, young one. There are no dangerous weapons. Only dangerous people. The last man to carry that blade into battle was far braver and determined than anyone I have ever met. He would have torn the life from the Tyrant with his bare hands if he had to. That hilt has no legacy.” He looked at Sarai, then back at Jayce. “Only history.”

“But it had an . . . ink monster,” Jayce said.

Maru snorted and continued walking.

“The Veil’s mysteries shall endure for all time,” the Paragon said. “Once we assume to know too much, the Veil will humble us with our ignorance. Now, return to proper march order and let us cease our prattle before Gunny Dastin has an aneurysm.”

“My eye wasn’t twitching that badly,” Dastin said.

Jayce kept the hilt in his hand as they continued through the forest. The stone in the hilt glowed softly and he felt like something inside was watching him.


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