by Isaac Hooke
The Volur was silent a moment, and then erupted in a belly laugh. “Your impertinence is... I haven’t been spoken to like that in years.”
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Tane said.
“Once, perhaps,” Jed said. “But do it again, and I might be forced to draw my sword.”
“I’ll try to control myself.” Tane stared out into the darkness for a while. He realized he was becoming used to the nausea of zero gravity, as well as the way his voice distorted into two octaves at the same time. “So far, no crillia have attacked. This is good.”
Jed had no comment on that.
“So going back to my previous remarks about fake skill boosts and level ups and dopamine release,” Tane said. “You have nothing to say about any of that?”
Jed sighed audibly over the comm. Then: “The chip makers do like to tease. Which is why you can’t let their fake skill boosts distract you. After a while, when you reach a high enough level, the dopamine boosts become few and far between, and you don’t care so much for the next level up because it takes so much damn work to reach it.”
“How did you end up with your specialization?” Tane said. “Did you just randomly choose attributes and skills, focusing on what sounded the coolest? And one day you realized you’d become a Volur warrior?”
“I had my path planned out from the very beginning,” Jed said. “None of it was accidental. All of the skills I have, I chose for a reason. I made detailed notes. Plotted my course. And this is what I became. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to have some quiet time to myself.”
“Oh, okay, sure,” Tane said. “I was just about to activate a VR simulation with my chip anyway. I’m thinking of a white sandy beach. How about you?”
Jed didn’t answer.
Okay. The male bonding session was over, evidently. It was time to drift aimlessly through the void. In silence. Just the way Volur liked it, apparently.
Might as well have no company at all.
As he floated there through the emptiness, Tane idly browsed his inbox, looking for any missed messages that might have arrived before he entered the Umbra. There was nothing. No new messages from Mom and Dad. He probably should have sent them an update before stepping into the storage pouch, but there hadn’t really been time. Hopefully they weren’t too worried about him. Even if he had sent a message, it wouldn’t have reached them until a few days later anyway. So a longer delay wouldn’t really hurt.
Assuming he actually made it back to his own universe alive…
Tane remembered the items he’d collected from Lyra’s pouch and accessed the remote interface for his storage device on his HUD. He tried to identify the three items in their individual inventory slots and his display filled with ID information.
Item: Silver bracelet
Item type: Unknown
Additional effects: Unknown.
Item: Chest Assembly
Item type: Unknown
Additional effects: Unknown.
Item: Gauntlets (pair, bound together by a cord)
Item type: Unknown
Additional effects: Unknown.
Of course.
“Jed, can you ID these items for me?” Tane said. He shared the inventory slot view with the Volur.
Jed exhaled once again, but eventually accepted the sharing request. A moment later Tane received a request of his own.
Jed wants to share the details of three items with you. Do you accept? Y/N.
Of course Tane accepted.
Item: Chrysalium Nova Bracelet I
Item type: Rare.
Additional Effects: Generates a subtle body-hugging energy field, adding 2 points to overall armor rating.
Essence-Imbued bonuses: 5% bonus to learning. 5% bonus to Chrysalium Siphoning.
Chrysalium bonus: +1 Intelligence while equipped.
Note: must be worn under armor or spacesuit to take effect.
Armor: Rhodium Chest Assembly I
Model: Expedition I-12 Rev a.
Item type: Rare.
Weight: 20 kg.
Armor rating: 25.
Armor effects: Moderate protection against weaker plasma and laser impacts. No protection against Essence attacks. When worn as a complete set, offers protection from the void.
Battle Armor specific:
Oxygen tank: 100% (twenty-four hours remaining—requires complete armor set for pressurization)
Spare tank: 100% (forty minutes remaining—requires complete armor set for pressurization)
Extra features: Armor is resizable thanks to several layers of memory metals. When shrunk down to its smallest size, armor rating decreases to 10.
Note: Compatible with most battle armor assemblies. Incompatible with spacesuits.
Required to equip:
- Battle Armor Level 2, due to the advanced mind-body interface.
- Strength: 15
- Dexterity: 12
Armor: Osmium Gauntlets I
Model: Trek II-6 Rev b.
Item type: Rare.
Weight: 2 kg.
Armor rating: 5.
Armor effects: Moderate protection against weaker plasma and laser impacts. No protection against Essence attacks. When worn as a complete set, offers protection from the void.
Battle Armor specific:
Extra features: Armor is resizable thanks to several layers of memory metals. When shrunk down to its smallest size, armor rating decreases to 1.
Note: Compatible with most spacesuits, armored robes, and battle armor. No skill in Battle Armor is necessary to equip. Can be worn over most Chrysalium bracelets. Must be worn under spacesuit gloves.
Nice. He couldn’t actually put on the bracelet or gauntlets right now, given his circumstances. He drooled over the armor rating on the chest assembly: his entire spacesuit had an armor rating of 10, which was less than half that of the Rhodium item. Unfortunately, he couldn’t combine the chest assembly with a spacesuit, and couldn’t actually equip it, either, not without level two in the Battle Armor skill. Nor until he added six points to Strength, which was not something he could see himself doing anytime soon, considering the drain Siphoning had on his body, essentially forcing him to put every attribute point he earned into Endurance like Jed had said.
Tane was pondering all of this when he heard an audible clunk come from the midsection of his suit. And then another.
“What the hell was that?” Tane said.
He glanced down at his torso. Two big, blue slugs the size of his forearms had attached to the spacesuit fabric. Unlike his body and Jed’s, the outlines of the creatures were very distinct, as if they were more real than he was. Between the opening and closing pincers on their heads, proboscises darted forth, sampling his spacesuit.
“Warning,” the voice of his suit AI said. “Suit integrity in chest region diminishing.”
Another slug slapped into his upper arm and attached.
The crillia had come.
3
Tane glanced at Jed, who was similarly acquiring his own mass of the creatures on the exterior of his body armor. The big man was ripping them off as fast as he could, but more always came to replace those he removed. There were also some sections Jed simply couldn’t reach with his gloved hands, like his mid-back. The crillia seemed to be focusing on the Volur, as Tane still only had three of them attached to him.
He glanced at his own crillia, feeling no great urgency to remove them. Indeed, he felt almost a strange kinship to these creatures, born of the same darkness that gave him power.
Besides, he wasn’t all that eager to engage in the internal fight for his life that came with Siphoning the Dark Essence. He wasn’t even sure he was rested enough to touch that power.
“I thought Lyra claimed the crillia would leave us alone?” Tane said.
Wait, what were her words?
Siphoning the Dark Essence will keep them away from you.
“Touch the Dark,” Jed said, echoing her instructions.
Lyra had
originally told Tane that the two known Essences, White and Dark, could only be used near gravity wells in the Umbra. And yet her subsequent words, and now Jed’s, made Tane wonder if she had been lying about that. Maybe it was true for the White, but not the Dark. He did have barely visible threads linking him to a nearby planet, after all. That meant he could still reach the Dark Essence.
Tane remembered the words of his teacher, P’lotholemus, from the memories the dark artifact had provided him with:
“When you reach for the Arcanum directly, though it feels like you are reaching inside yourself, in fact you are reaching into the core of whatever planet you reside upon, or are nearest to. When you develop some skill, you can funnel the Dark Essence from more powerful sources, such as stars. And when you are really good, you can link yourself to the reservoir of your choice—a star, a rift—and no matter where you are in the galaxy, you will have that source at your fingertips.”
His teacher had been referring to the use of Arcanum, the Dark Essence, in Tane’s home universe. But Tane was sure it must apply here, too. Yes, Lyra must have lied about how the Dark Essence worked in the Umbra.
Tane was amazed that he was calm and composed enough to even consider all that, seeing as crillia were digesting his suit at that very moment. Two more attached to his spacesuit, one of them latching on to his helmet faceplate and blocking half of the view.
“Warning,” the AI said. “Suit armor rating has dropped to 9.”
Tane still wasn’t sure he would be able to touch the Dark Essence. He continued to feel weak and exhausted, even if he’d had at least an hour’s rest.
And then he realized he was merely trying to delay the inevitable. It was time to fight against that raging conflagration once again.
Time to get rid of these crillia.
He glanced at Jed, and he felt a mild sense of surprise. The Volur was nearly completely covered in crillia now, which literally swarmed around him, and Tane could barely make out the man’s general shape as arms covered in the creatures moved back and forth, struggling to rip them away.
Tane had dallied too long. Jed’s life was at stake.
It was time to act.
More of the swarming creatures began to attach to Tane as he took the overflow of creatures that were unable to assault Jed. So far, he only had one affixed to his faceplate, so his vision was still mostly clear. Not that he needed vision if he could access Essence Sight…
Tane filled his mind with chaos. Music, images, thoughts: he let them all tumble about. He sensed the Dark Essence lurking beyond the edge of perception, except instead of the usual, all-consuming conflagration, he felt what could best be described as a tiny, flickering candle.
Maybe Lyra hadn’t lied after all.
He reached out and touched it. Sure enough, instead of a raging fire that burned him to the core, he felt only a gentle warmth. He was almost afraid to douse that warmth, wondering if he would destroy it entirely, but he smothered it anyway. Thankfully another small flame arose elsewhere.
The dark energy manifested as a few tiny fires that sprouted at random locations in deep space around him, fires the size of candle flames and visible only to Tane.
He didn’t have to struggle to control those flames, not like the last time he had Siphoned the Dark Essence; instead he simply let them burn. The fires did make the nausea of deep space slightly easier to endure, but he was growing used to that discomfort anyway.
So Lyra was right: while he might be able to Siphon the Dark Essence, it was essentially useless this far away from a planet, too weak to create any Branchworks. Not that he actually new any Dark Essence works.
He waited, but the crillia remained attached to him, continuing to digest his spacesuit, and Jed’s power armor.
“Warning,” the AI said. “Suit armor rating has dropped to 8.”
Maybe the Arcanum was simply too weak to affect the creatures. Or maybe...
He selectively doused the tiny flames that were farther from him, causing new fires to spring into existence closer to his body. In that way, he was able to guide the flames toward the crillia.
That did it. When the invisible flames touched the creatures attached to his suit, the crillia released him, floating away, bodies flailing to and fro like caterpillars dropped onto asphalt baking in the sun. He wasn’t actually creating anything with the Dark Essence, but simply moving the crillia with those flames of chaos.
While working on clearing the remaining crillia from his suit and faceplate, he redirected some of those ethereal flames toward Jed in the same manner, and forced the crillia there away as well. Most of the creatures released Jed moments before the Dark Essence flames touched, while others were a tad too late, and literally leaped away from his body armor and writhed as if burned. In moments, Tane had cleared himself and Jed of all the creatures.
He half expected some sort of “level up” notice to appear on his HUD, but disappointingly none came. So much for those dopamine boosts. The chip would simply keep him waiting for the next one.
“Thank you, Engineer,” Jed said. “I was wondering when you’d get around to helping me.”
“Welcome,” Tane said.
Jed’s power armor had several fresh dents and pitted wounds, but the damage began to heal before Tane’s very eyes.
Tane surveyed the surrounding space, waiting for the next attack, but he saw no more of the creatures incoming.
“I’m sharing my armor’s LIDAR feed with you,” Jed said. “It will help you detect the crillia before they come. And hopefully repel them before they arrive.”
Tane accepted the LIDAR sharing request that appeared on his HUD. A moment later he saw the white outlines of the crillia that were retreating from the two of them. Most of those outlines became dots and soon vanished.
Tane released a short burst of oxygen from his left vent, sending his suit into a slow rotation that didn’t affect his forward momentum. It wasn’t so fast to make him dizzy; he supposed it helped that there weren’t any stars to emphasize the rotation, either.
Revolving like that would allow him to keep an eye on all sides: the rear view camera only gave him so much leeway, after all. It was probably pointless, considering that Jed’s LIDAR would probably alert him if any crillia were incoming, but Tane wanted to keep his own vigil. There was Essence Sight of course, which would let him place his viewpoint outside his body, but that would require stepping inside the White Essence for extended periods of time. Something that would definitely be draining.
Assuming he could actually find the White Essence... he couldn’t even sense it out there, beyond the edges of perception. Curious, he tried to step into the Esoterum anyway while still Siphoning the Dark. He found nothing. He tried again, and after some searching, he found the cold he was looking for. But it seemed restrained, somehow.
He stepped into it, accessing the stellar wind of the universe that was two steps removed from this one, but the cold power that flowed from his bones was little more than a gentle breeze, not the raging gale he was used to. He guided the weak stellar wind through the microscopic peaks and valleys of his bones to his core, and the flaccid ribbon that emerged in front of him was almost as insubstantial as the black threads emerging from his joints. Definitely not enough to create even the weakest Essencework. It was a far cry from the incredible power he had commanded little more than an hour ago, Siphoning from both the hull of a Decantium class starship and the Dark Artifact at the same time.
He tried to form the Branchwork of Essence Missile anyway. A small branch emerged from the root, and he teased it outward, adding more Branches and Leaves. When he was done, all he had was a tiny tree about a tenth the size of his normal creations. When he realized it, nothing even took form in the current reality.
Figured.
He tried again, but this time attempted to direct some of those flimsy Dark flames around the weak structure, like he had done against the dweller fleet, using his Dark and White mixing skill. He hoped to twe
eze the Branches and Leaves into larger variants that way, but it didn’t help. Sure, the Dark Essence bound and reinforced the White, but that binding simply wasn’t needed, not when the stellar wind was so small and utterly controllable as it was. It was useful when directing the massive work from a starship hull, but otherwise pointless.
Tane stepped out of the White Essence and released the Dark at the same time. He expected to feel some weariness, but he actually felt no worse than he had before he had Siphoned either Essence. He supposed it was because he could draw so little of each while so far from a gravity well.
He had to wonder, as he had once before, if there were indeed other universes out there besides the Umbra and Lumina, what rules did they have? Would physics even work the same? No one had been to the Lumina, where humans drew their powers. At least as far as Tane knew. But the alien races known as the archaeoceti and creodenti had migrated to those universes where they drew their respective powers, and in the process became extinct in their home universe, the universe where humanity lived. At least according to the memories of the man whose mind dump had taught Tane White Siphoning.
He thought about his battle against the dweller fleet. Starships had Essence lances; specialists Siphoned the Esoterum through the Chrysalium hull of the ship into those lances, which AIs then used to create pre-programmed Branchworks that allowed them to launch attacks. Tane had bypassed the entire process, Siphoning through the hull and creating Branchworks directly, in his case forming Essence Missiles.
Obviously there were a lot of safeguards built-in to prevent a specialist from destroying a ship by over-Siphoning, mostly in the form of Essence overflow vents, which vented excess Esoterum from the hull rather than allowing it to gather there. But because of the Dark Essence, which Tane was able to Siphon far more of thanks to the now destroyed Dark Artifact, he had been able to buttress the White Branchworks, essentially allowing him to augment the Esoterum ad infinitum: he had been able to make those Essence Missiles as big and deadly as he wanted, far bigger than anything created by the built-in Essence lances. If he had knowledge of Branchworks other than Essence Missile, he could have created those instead—he wasn’t limited to what the lance AIs were programmed to regurgitate. Though of course, all of that manual Siphoning and creation had come with an eventual price: the disintegration of the host ship, and the dark artifact.