I nod. “Yep. It’s a mess down here.”
“Totally. So, any guidelines or advice or something like that?”
I shake my head. “No. For some reason, there are massive amounts of qi coming down here, along with all kinds of space debris. The number of meteorites landing here is insane. All the friction might have caused a bit of the qi increase, but as you can see, this is a bit much and will eventually get out of hand.”
Around a thousand kilometres from the most southern point on this planet the sheets of ice have started changing. Instead of the endless stretches of blowing snow and ice flats, structures dot the landscape here and there. Some of them are even moving. Actually, the only ones that are moving are made entirely from ice, and they are just random chunks of compacted snow. They’re all either a general blob shape or they are attempting to take the shape of the animal or insect that got overwhelmed by the ice-intent qi that’s getting overwhelming here.
“We might want to call Selis?”
I mull that suggestion over in my mind for a bit. “Not her thing, I think. Sure, she uses water and ice and stuff, but there’s too little difference between fluidity and rigidity here.”
“Are you drunk again?” I flinch at her sudden question.
A carefully crafted look of wounded innocence on my face, I turn to her. “No?”
“Then Selis?”
“No. She’s doing her own thing.”
“And hating it.”
“Good. That works out perfectly then. We are here to bring some order to this stuff. I realised I need to do two things. The first one is to cultivate, actually sitting my ass down and building my foundation into something more than just a blank space with potential. And secondly, I need to train my augur, or liquid Will… whatever. I think that some of these things have the answers.” Pointing at the random pieces of debris, I see if she has caught on yet.
“And what can I do? Managing the entire world is rather fun, but why did you drag me along?”
“I’d be too lonely without you. I actually only need Lola here,” I tell her while sneakily grabbing Lola at the scruff of her neck. “Because Lola here also needs to go do some cultivating. There’s too much qi here. Go kill those things and take their power. I choose you!” Shouting a catchphrase that not a single person on this planet knows, I catapult the rabbit towards one of the large mushroom shaped blobs.
The fluffball hits the overpowered fungi colony headfirst, melting a hole right through its centre. The flurry of snow that was being held in place by superpowered biological processes that were never meant to hold so much matter crumble immediately. A large cloud of qi is freed from the collapsing snow heap, all of it swirling towards Lola’s glowing horn. I can see her big beady eyes stare up at me, promising revenge at a later time but acknowledging that power levelling like this is pretty nice.
With a smile on my face, I observe the adorable critter murder rogue-qi golem after rogue-qi golem. It can’t really help settle my feeling of unease, though. There shouldn’t be this much qi here. I haven’t looked at the debris lying around, but none of it looks natural. I see crumpled pieces of framework and large slabs of dark metal, a faint inner translucency reminding me of the dungeon cores.
I tap into a bit of the fire coursing through the sword on my back to combat the cold at this height. I look over to Rhea and see that she’s lost in her own world. She’s just floating in the air, buffered by a steady breeze of purple-tinted gusts, her luscious fur coat fluttering around her. The translucent tree slowly grows out of her entire frame as she starts communicating with Database and the students scattered across the globe.
Looking down, I see that we’re still a couple kilometres above the ice. I let go of the air around me and start dropping like a brick. I let myself feel the thrill of skydiving for a bit, the ice-cold wind cutting into me and numbing my face into a rubbery mask. Twisting my shoulders and hips, I slowly rotate my body, pointing myself to the area that Lola just cleared.
A faint film of my qi across my eyes prevents them from freezing and drying out, allowing me to keep track of one of the more interesting pieces of debris. Then another realisation hits me. How is all of this stuff still here? I’m pretty sure I remember something about Antarctic ice core drilling, and they would measure less than two centimetres of ice per year.
There are a lot of heavy looking objects down there, and not a lot of them seem to be buried by snow. There is a definite wind, but I don’t see any clouds here at all. Checking the data my drones have brought in confirms that there has been little precipitation around here. Stopping myself from making any hasty conclusions, I prepare for my landing.
I swing my sword free and twirl it in my hands. I start spinning myself, using the sword as a counterweight to keep myself stable. Spinning like a madman, I decide to just go with this impulse and start releasing fire from the back edge of the blade, sending me spinning in a blazing arc. Not sure if I am screaming or if that’s the wind tearing through my hair and clothes, I give in to my heart core’s instinct and trust my body.
In a fiery explosion, landing like a comet, I fail to land at all. I somehow put all my downwards momentum into the sword swing and am now standing on top of the black blade as the ice is shattered for metres around me.
My heartcore is a drama queen, got it.
Stepping down towards the shattered ice, I pull my sword free and sheathe it on my back again. I ignore the devastation my improvised landing caused and walk to the nearest – now ice blasted – piece of foreign material.
What I find is absolutely fascinating. I lose myself in the study of the artefacts, rummaging through the high-tech trash like a kid in a candy truck accident. Then I feel a hand on my shoulder as a concerned voice speaks out behind me. “Okay Drew. I know that you’re usually full of shit, but this time you might be right.”
“I’m not full of… Ah, you are talking about the humongous ice structure coming this way, right?”
“Yeah. The one which exudes a solid core aura.”
“The smaller one seems to be of low-foundation-realm strength,” I comment.
“Yeah… thought so.”
I grab my sword. “I did offer to make you a weapon, you know.” Grimacing at the absolutely massive army of new enemies emerging over the southern horizon, I start circulating power through my sword and my heart.
“Oh. We’re about to fight the most powerful enemies we’ve ever faced, and you’re giving me snark?” I look at her, but before we can fight, Lola jumps up between us, landing on both of our shoulders. A blue and red horns spins into being on her forehead, and my sword coats itself in blue shards and orange flames. With a battle cry that’s honestly way too cute, she speeds off towards the approaching front of free qi.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Resumption 4
“Drew, are you going to help anytime soon?” Vibrating the air around the minuscule man, Re-Haan is sure to convey her displeasure. Deep down, she knows that had he cause, that insignificant little human could scour the entire planet into a dead piece of slag tumbling through space. On the one claw, this certainty does indeed do all kinds of funny things to her dragon bits. On the other claw, the fact that he is staring at random junk while an epic fight is happening, and all kinds of power gains could be had, is doing a great job of cooling her womanly wiles.
Shaking these distinctly human-like thoughts from her scaled head, Re-Haan Ra-Lush-Neer Hu-Ungu Le-Fetsun – she omits some of her own titles and names as she doesn’t think they apply right this moment – breathes in deeply. Shifting her purple gaze a few degrees to the left, she breathes out with thundering force. A deceptively narrow beam of energy leaves her fanged maw, shooting straight towards one of the bigger chunks of moving ice.
The dumpy crab-like being loses half of its limbs, hundred metre long legs crumbling into large plates of ice and loose snow, as the purple beam bites deeper. Narrowing her large eyes in irritation at her lack of skills, Re-Haan closes her m
outh and starts another short-range attack run.
Having transformed into her dragon form allows her to fold her majestic wings behind her back while she dives. Zooming past the few remaining clouds, the purple-tinted white dragon opens her wings with a snap a mere hundred metres from the ground. This move used to be impossible, as the sheer wind resistance would have torn the limbs from her back had she tried it. The network of qi now flowing through her body – starting at her heart and running through each limb in a network similar to roots – allows her to be quite a bit rougher with her own physical form.
Grinning madly – because it truly has been too long since she got to go all out in her scaled form – she shoots off another beam of pure aerokinetic force before slamming into the golem she took aim at earlier. Parts of polar mutant and ice golem explode upwards behind her, as she goes to town. Taking large chunks out of the qi-drenched mass of animated ice, Rhea tunnels through the thing, moving towards its centre like a toothed and clawed buzz saw.
Encased in the hardest ice she has yet come across, she finds the controller of the multiple-kilometres-high golem. She briefly realises that judging from the amount of fear, confusion, and panic wafting from the encased marine crustacean, it might not really be in control. Then her jaws snap shut around the relatively microscopic creature, ending its life between immensely powerful teeth.
Snapping limb and wing outwards, the ice around her shatters into pieces. A single flap later, and she is shooting upwards again, swallowing the qi-dense frozen morsel with relish. The freezing power slowly disseminates into her cultivation base, her rapid circulation system covering it in her own fingerprints at a steady pace. Belching a rather unladylike cloud of supercooled air, Re-Haan takes in the environment.
Ice stretches towards the horizon. Now once again hundreds of metres up in the air, she fails to see anything else but endless blue and white, only interrupted by the occasional living being or qi creature; and a lot of trash. Let’s not forget the massive amount of random beams, mechanical structures, large swathes of seemingly indestructible plastic, and general rubbish that’s littering the white fields.
Craning her neck to look behind herself, she sees another piece of extra terrestrial rubbish come down in a screaming and smoking pillar of fire. Drew has been going nuts over this phenomenon, but Rhea hasn’t figured out why as of yet. There might be something to the fact that none of the items below show any signs that they have descended into the atmosphere in a blaze of plasma. Not a single mark of damage, except for the occasional streak of carbon or soot, marks the junk as meteorites.
Also, none of these indestructible pieces of litter have been incorporated into the wild qi creatures. There’s plenty of small plates, fluted strips, and complex forms of the correct size lying around, but not a single of the qi creatures has seen fit to use these pieces. Ignoring her own rising curiosity – as that would be the same as condoning Drew’s current behaviour – she wonders why her snout is feeling warm all of a sudden.
Banking hard to make another attack run, Re-Haan moves a single eye from the ground and points it at her own snout. Two white ears flap furiously in the wind. A small rabbit, a horn glowing a cold blue that would freeze the hottest of hearts, is seated upon Re-Haan’s face. Casting her senses backwards, she no longer feels any of the abundant frost qi, only the fleeting remnants of her own wind imprinted power.
“Lola, did you steal the qi from my kill?” The force emanating from the low rumble Re-Haan talks with is enough to send shockwaves through the rather guilty-looking rabbit’s fur. Instead of owning up to her thievery, Lola squeaks once, licks one of Re-Haan’s scales, and jumps off. Re-Haan is not having it and follows the fluffy hussy with fervently flapping wings.
The following pursuit claims more victims in five minutes than the previous half hour of carefully performed probing attack runs. The largest threats are taken down quickly, and two foundation-level fighters consuming large amounts of qi while actively cultivating causes the ambient qi levels to drop quickly.
An hour after the fight truly started, Re-Haan and Lola stand on the ground, panting but victorious. They are covered in all kinds of frost, and their steady intake of qi has caused a slight vortex of rushing power to form around the unlikely duo.
“Good job, you spoiled fluffball.”
Lola nuzzles Rhea’s massive head once before hopping off, undoubtedly looking for the softest spot of snow to sleep. Re-Haan wants to follow her, skipping the boring cultivation she’ll need to do after absorbing all that power but decides to go check up on Drew instead. About to fly upwards again, she stops. A bright flash of light later, she is back in human form and wants to slap herself.
Drew’s warnings that all the cultivators should be careful with their spiritual senses have turned out to be extremely good advice. Looking around at the lethal chaos that ensued from a relatively small amount of spilt qi in a place where it could do a lot of damage, she agrees with the rule wholeheartedly. Now that the cat is out of the bag, though, there is no need to limit one’s sensing through qi. Instead, it should be encouraged, as Drew alluded that imposing order upon ambient qi through maintaining a sensor network will largely prevent these kinds of ambient qi monsters in the first place.
Breathing out a large wave of purple power, Re-Haan starts actively sensing the surrounding couple kilometres. The wave of neutral power that comes from Drew’s direction tells her that he also forgot to set up his qi senses. Lola tries it too, but the fact that her qi just fades away uncontrolled after a while lets Re-Haan know that the bunny has lost interest rather quickly.
From the amount of noise coming from her direction – let alone the amount of gratuitous violence the humanoid dragon senses – the rabbit is having too much fun to bother with keeping up a long-range sensory net. Clicking her tongue in annoyance, Re-Haan starts walking towards Drew. Anytime one of the stragglers comes near her, she experiments a bit with wind-based attacks. She also tests the small kernel of liquid Will hanging in her braincore, evaporating the ghastly manifestation of her willpower and using it in its gaseous base form to enhance her slicing winds.
She only stops when one of the lumbering ice beings turns into a red mist instead of a white cloud. Waving his hands, Drew emerges from the red fog as he covers his face. “Careful, will you? Blood is a bitch to get out of this fabric.”
She doesn’t even acknowledge that comment. “What has you too occupied to join in?”
“You two got it well in hand. Even Lola alone would be able to clean this up to acceptable levels, it would just take ages.” Walking over to what looks like a clumped ball of wires, the bearded man starts poking and prodding the partially buried item. “Here, look at this. Use a strand a couple of picometres, or millimetres if you can’t handle that yet, to scan this item.”
Glaring at his painfully accurate assessment of her liquid Will control skills, she does as he tells her. The change in denseness is immediately apparent to the woman, and the sheer number of molecules present in each square nanometre of clumped wire prevents her from delving into the material very far. The difference between the density of the air around her and the dark grey wires is like comparing a single grain of sand on an empty floor with a beach.
“Now check this one.” Holding out a small shard of nondescript metal, she scans it. A slightly denser material forces her to stop even quicker. Drew is already holding up a rather large and slightly crooked I-beam, but Re-Haan can see where this is going.
“All of this stuff is made with differing densities. Have you found something double the norm yet? Or something similarly low?”
A truly happy smile graces his bearded face. “I love smart women. And no, this is the least dense item I’ve found so far. It’s pretty vexing. I’ve come across stuff that should weigh literal gigatonnes, but it’s just lying here on top of the ice flats.”
“That’s the least dense one?” Pointing at the clump of unmovable wires, Re-Haan examines it closer. Punching a sin
gle wire with full force doesn’t even make it twitch. Re-Haan then uses a fine web of her will to create a high-pressure wind cutter that would ordinarily shatter hardened steel into powder. Inspecting the impact site closely, she doesn’t see a single scratch. “What is this stuff anyway?”
“The most likely scenario I can come up with is that some rich person from a higher realm came down to play around. This way of manufacturing materials is frankly absurd. The amount of energy spent to lock matter into such a dense grid is off the charts, something literally not of this universe.”
“And why is this all here?”
“Dumping ground, I think. It’s just a trash heap. I reckon someone is trying to prevent this stuff from floating off into interstellar space. It’s pretty weird to see them spend enough power to fuel stars for several years willy-nilly, but still employ such a low-spec cleaning solution.”
“The creator of the Flight is… I’m going to stop listening to your speculations now. Hearing that the person who formed the building blocks of my world and my being is just doing stuff half-heartedly and messing around is not good for my mental health.”
“Okay! I’ll be here, training my augur. This is just what I need. Now I need to train my augur sensitivity with successively denser super materials like these. Yes, yes. I’ll show that fucking moon. Nexus, you better prepare your butt-hole, because I’m coming for that boo-”
Walking away from the ever more deranged and insane ramblings coming from her lover, Re-Haan once again firmly decides not to think about the madness-inducing things he keeps uncovering. The rock buried deep beneath Flight Mountain comes to mind again.
The simple tableau of a figure seeding the planet with life, before leading its chosen race – the Flight, obviously – into the stars seems all kinds of menacing now. No longer does she see the divine plan it once was. No longer does a faint tug of longing move her heart. She no longer secretly hopes that it will come to pass soon, just to escape from her ever-sleeping family.
The Dao of Magic: Book IV Page 16