A cloud of power rolled out from the seven corpses, passing into myself, Nova, and even Nestor, thanks to my bond with the little mouse. The majority of the giant wolf’s power passed directly into me, increasing my mana, qi, and especially my essence. Beyond that, I felt my senses sharpen again, as the creature’s instincts for tracking and pack tactics embedded themselves into my mind.
“Blast it, Jasper!” Nova shouted angrily as she stomped over to me. “What in every illegal hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I should start using the combat function of my Soulscape during battles,” I admitted as I stared down at the wolf’s corpse.
“What?” My friend cocked her head at me, then looked back at the still form. “What does that even mean...” Her voice trailed off as she looked down at her baton and realized that her blow couldn’t have been enough to kill the creature on its own, and that the beast was leaking blood from its mouth.
“And you did that with your Soulscape?” she asked as she looked back at me. “How did you—”
I answered her by summoning my other shiv, holding it out for her to see.
“Combat function,” I repeated, dismissing the weapon back into my spirit. As I did so, I felt the other knife lodged in the monster’s brain dissolve and reappear back within my spectral world. Apparently the copies of whatever I stored would not last outside my storage space indefinitely. And as I tugged on it again, I felt that I would not be able to re-summon the weapon for some time, which meant I would be down to just one knife for the time being.
“That...” Nova stammered, still trying to comprehend what I had done. “That’s brilliant, Jasper. Where did you even learn to fight like that?” She turned and noticed the other wolves I had killed. “You were only supposed to handle one of those...”
“The rest were much weaker than both of us,” I replied, examining where I had been bitten before. My qi technique had already repaired the wounds, and my robe had either repaired itself or somehow had never been pierced to begin with. I suspected that Lunei’s gift was more difficult to damage than I was. “Also,” I added as I finally stopped hiding my own annoyance, “while I acknowledge your superior strength, you are forgetting that I have been in more battles than you.”
To my disappointment, Nova seemed more offended than impressed with my last proclamation.
“Good point, Jasper,” she said, an edge in her voice. “But you should have told me that you were about to do something drastic, and that your Soulscape would have let you survive it. That wolf wasn’t going anywhere, so we had plenty of time to talk. As it was, you made me think you were about to lose your entire arm, and that I would get to watch you bleed to death right in front of me.”
“Fair enough,” I admitted, a little chagrined. “I’m still not used to fighting with a partner—a partner that isn’t Nestor, I mean,” I added, looking down at the little mouse, who cocked his head curiously. “I apologize. I could have shared my idea and didn’t think to, although in fairness, the creature may have understood our speech and spoiled our plan.”
“You know full well that we both know dozens of languages by now, and that since I just heard the monster talk, I would have warned you if it knew that language,” Nova rebutted as she crossed her arms. “What I’m trying to say, Jasper, is that if I just knew a little more about what your Soulscape could do, I wouldn’t have been scared half to... death...”
She trailed off as I glared at her pointedly.
“Blast it,” she swore. “Right when I was already winning the argument. I’m sorry too, okay, Jasper? I’ve been hiding what I can do because I wanted to surprise and impress you, and right now I’m mad because you just did the same thing, and it was really scary being on the receiving end. My Soulscape lets me fly, and do a few other things I’m still trying to figure out. So there: dramatic reveal ruined.”
“I doubt it,” I said, upset that we had just had a fight over something so juvenile. Working with others is hard, I admitted privately. “And Nova, I don’t think either of us are used to being so capable. We’ve gone from me looking out for you back on the slums, to you looking out for me when you were promoted to your new job, to both of us gaining magical powers and flying through the stars. We probably need to start working on these corpses, but I want you to know that I’m glad I’m still with you. And I’ve always been impressed with you,” I finished.
“Likewise.” Nova smiled at me, and the fight was over. “If you can give me your second knife, I can help you clean our kills.”
I nodded, held out my hand, and remembered that I was still down to just one knife.
“Drat,” I sighed. “I can’t summon it yet. The copies of things I store can’t last very long outside my Soulscape. It’s going to be a while before I have a spare weapon.”
“Oh dear,” Nova said with an irritably broad grin. “Your otherwise brilliant combat maneuver has come with an unfortunate side effect that prevents me from rendering you further aid at this moment. Fear not, comrade Jasper. I will stand guard while you do all the disgusting, messy work, by yourself, so that nothing attacks you and interrupts the experience. Meanwhile, I will continue to reflect on the strategies you used, and see what I can learn myself.”
We are done fighting, I reminded myself as I drew my remaining dagger and went to work. We are done fighting, we are done fighting...
To my surprise, skinning and cleaning the dead wolves was not as horrible an experience as I thought it would be. Vessa had apparently shared the proper technique with Nova, and she directed me easily enough as she and Nestor kept watch. I also found that I could keep my second knife from dissolving by opening up my Soulscape and letting it maintain a loose connection with the weapon, though doing so drained a trickle of qi from me.
A far more pleasant surprise was finding that my Soulscape could absorb most of the mess created from the process. Except for a bit of blood that splashed on my robes, I came away from the process completely gore-free.
“That’s a bit unfair,” Nova complained as I rose from the ground, finally finished and surprisingly clean. “But then again, you won’t smell like uncooked meat for the rest of the day. We probably should have planned for you to bathe after the fight instead of before it.”
“I’ll wash up back on the ship anyway,” I answered as I tossed my dagger back into its spiritual storage space. “You two can just lock yourself into your capsules like I did.”
“Sure,” my friend said with a shrug. “But now, you need to cook a portion of your kill. I can help with this part, though.”
We cleared a patch of ground and gathered some of the loose wood lying around. After we stacked and lit it according to Vessa’s instructions, we stuck two chunks of meat from the largest wolf onto sticks and carefully roasted them on an open flame. As they cooked, Nova muttered a precise mana spell, closed her eyes and activated a qi technique, then clenched her fist and activated an essence charm. When she finished, a small cloud of dust-like powder settled onto each of our steaks like seasoning.
“Give it a few more minutes,” Nova said, and I waited as patiently as I could while the scent of steak wafted into my nose. “Okay, now pull them out and take a bite.”
It was the messiest, greasiest meal I had eaten in a long time, and my Soulscape kept taking bites of its own whenever it could. Other than that, it contented itself with absorbing most of my own mess and quickly refining whatever food made it down my throat. Deep inside my soul, I felt a third crack start to form on my mosaic, disrupting the balance I had just achieved hours ago.
“Totally unfair,” Nova grumbled between bites as she wiped more grease from her face. “It’s like you can almost forget about basic hygiene and count on your magic planet to fix everything for you.”
“I know,” I said sadly. “If only it were a combat type instead...”
To both of our annoyance, Nova’s thrown piece of steak was absorbed into my forehead immediately, with my planet spinning happily and tugging at my mouth,
as if it wanted me to keep talking so that she could ‘do it again.’
I finished the meal with the final kiwi I hadn’t had time to eat earlier. Combined with everything else I had accomplished today, it put me dangerously close to the third crack of the natal stage. I would have to make stabilizing my essence a priority when we returned to the Soulship. Once every scrap of our meal had been consumed, we made sure that all the meat, bones, and hides were secure in our satchels.
“Vessa was right,” I said as I packed the last bit that could fit into our bags. “We needed to save as much room for the meat as we could, and it still wasn’t enough to keep all of it. Even my Soulscape can’t fit any more of the bigger pieces.”
“Then the rest will have to be a gift for someone else,” Vessa said as she finished securing her own satchel. “This will still go a long way for her. It’s odd, though,” my friend added as she looked up. “Back on Earth, we spent most of our days not finding enough of whatever we needed. We usually felt lucky to find any food at all. Now that we’re among the stars, we’re finding so much of what we want that we have to leave most of it behind.”
“You’re right,” I admitted, looking at all the meat still on the ground, and all the fruit still in the tree, and knowing that deeper in the forest were resources we’d never have time to even touch. “Even in Mother Anne’s orphanage, there wasn’t so much to go around.”
And out here, there’s no one telling me that I’m not human enough to feed, I thought with a flash of unbidden anger.
“But one question,” I said suddenly, as a thought occurred to my mind. “You said the pack leader mentioned having a tribe and totem, even though it was a Sourcebeast, and not a practitioner.”
“Right,” Nova nodded. Vessa had explained to me that essence practitioners usually called their groups tribes, and that the most powerful Sourcebeasts in a tribe were bound to a totem, which could be any structure large enough to carve images onto, much like some of the ancient religious practices back on Earth, save that the tribes on most worlds didn’t actually worship the creatures that formed their totems.
“But they were out here all alone,” I pointed out. “If this pack belonged to a tribe, where were the rest of the practitioners? And what did that wolf mean when he said we were doomed even if we killed the entire pack?”
“That is a disturbingly good question,” my friend asked, her eyes widening, just as Nestor squeaked urgently from the grass.
Smell-things, the little mouse sent to us both. More-come.
That was all the warning we needed. Nestor leaped onto me as Nova and I grabbed hands and activated the link summoning us back to the Soulship.
CHAPTER FIVE
To our immense relief, the teleportation worked perfectly. Our bodies appeared back in Vessa’s sanctuary mere seconds later. I immediately looked about to find Vessa, who was still safe in her capsule, awake, and staring intently at nothing. I listened for any new noises sounding out from the distant dark, signs of any new creature trying to force its way into our sanctuary.
Three loud raps sounded out against a metal door in the distance.
“Are we under attack?” Nova asked quickly, drawing her baton and shrugging off her pack. More banging echoed down from the hallway, but Vessa didn’t so much as flinch.
“You know perfectly well that we aren’t,” the ship-woman answered her Beacon absently. “It’s not going to make its way in. In fact, it’ll probably scream in rage and wander off in a few minutes. Actually...” she said, turning her head to face the direction of the racket as the banging reached a crescendo. It finally ended, with a loud, guttural roar that could be heard beyond whatever heavy steel door had thwarted its entry, and went silent.
“How did we—” Nova began, before she caught herself. “How did you know that it would go away right then?”
“Practice,” Vessa muttered bitterly. “I’ve been listening to the sounds that my different predators make for longer than I can remember anything else. I’ve had plenty of time to learn how to tell them apart. Even if they’re in the places of my ship-body too damaged for me to scan. But that’s not even close to important right now. I need to find out how your mission went.”
“We got everything you need,” I answered, stopping myself from hovering protectively over the gray woman’s capsule. The noises that her hunters made still set my teeth on edge, but I knew by now that she felt smothered if I was too overprotective. That didn’t make ignoring my instincts any easier, though. “We packed the maximum amounts of everything you asked for, and saved the rest of the room for the wolves you had us kill.”
“Excellent!” Vessa said triumphantly. “That was exactly what I wanted you two to do. How did your training go?”
“Jasper killed three wolves on his own,” Nova answered for me. “Then he managed to kill the pack leader with his Soulscape.”
“What?” Vessa narrowed her eyes in bafflement. “But you don’t have a—”
“Storage function,” I told her laconically, still annoyed by her evaluation of my unique power. “Surprise dagger to the inside of its mouth.”
“That would mean you stuck your hand in—never mind.” Vessa shook her head. “I don’t have time to be mad at you right now, and you accomplished the mission anyway. How were your gains?”
“I’m on the edge of the third crack of essence Advancement,” I answered her. “I think I need to start stabilizing my essence substages soon.”
“You do,” Vessa answered firmly. “Extremely soon, in fact. Which is unfortunate, given how little time we have right now.”
“What do you mean?” Nova asked, stepping closer. “Is that thing coming back? I thought you said you were safe?”
“I’m safe,” Vessa answered with a grimace, “but one of the nearby planets is about to drown itself in blood. I woke up just before you got here and scanned the local worlds again. A genocide is going on the world next to the one you just visited, thanks to one of the largest tribes making a bloodbeast their primary totem bond.”
“Explain what a bloodbeast is, and what we can do to stop it,” I said swiftly. It was hard to make myself care about a world full of people I’d never met, but there was no point in pretending that Vessa’s problems were anything but my own right now.
“A bloodbeast is similar to a deathbeast, except that it is a Sourcebeast that’s become addicted to the shedding of blood,” Vessa explained. “Instead of drawing extra Source energy from killing a creature, it draws power from each injury its victim receives. So rather than just killing its prey, it makes its victims suffer as much as possible first. If one becomes a totem, then it gains Source energy from any violence that members of its entire tribe inflict. Then it passes on a portion of both its power and addiction to all the Sourcebeasts and practitioners within its tribe, eventually turning them all into a group of powerful, rampaging savages that burn and enslave worlds.”
“That’s absolutely horrible,” Nova breathed. Vessa turned to stare at her.
“I realize you’re still getting used to us,” she began, “but if you look within the memories I shared with you, you’ll know that a number of practitioners have walked down similar paths, and caused just as much damage in the process. You need to get used to the fact that the night sky is now a brutal place, and that fixing it is our job, our mission, our everything.”
“Right,” Nova said as she closed her eyes and breathed through her nose. “Got it. How do I go down there and fix it?”
“You’d need to be a lot stronger to fix it yourself,” Vessa admitted. “As powerful beings go, this system is fairly weak. Very few beings are more than a stage or two beyond your own. But the bloodbeast is an exception. Not only is it at the seventh full stage of essence Advancement—the blooded stage, ironically—it also qualifies as a practitioner at the heart-core stage, the fourth stage of qi Advancement. It is highly proficient in multiple blood arts, and if it weren’t for the fact that it was only the second-strongest creat
ure in this system, all of the local worlds would have been bled dry from being raided by the roving bands of practitioners and Sourcebeasts it has been sending out.”
“Can it reanimate the Sourcebeasts under its command?” I asked as I thought of our last encounter.
“Not as well as a deathbeast can, but yes, Jasper,” Vessa answered with a concerned frown. “Which would mean that the wolves you encountered were not local, but an invading pack under its command. In that case, they were likely shadewulfen instead of crackwolves, not that it matters. But back to the main subject. The bloodbeast was challenged by the strongest Sourcebeast in the system, and they mortally wounded each other. The bloodbeast will be able to recover, if it can cause enough suffering. In fact, the other Sourcebeast’s suffering is slowly knitting the bloodbeast’s wounds back together.”
“So we need to heal that Sourcebeast, then,” Nova spoke up. “Assuming I can convince it to let me work on it.”
“You can’t,” Vessa said sadly. “It’s too injured, and too poisoned. If you were already at the gold mana stage, you’d have a chance, but it is now beyond any treatment you can give.”
“Why did it risk fighting such a powerful enemy?” I asked. “Was it a totem as well?”
“No.” Vessa shook her head, troubled and sad. “None of the local tribes even knew it was alive. It had no obligations, and no power worth gaining, because killing a bloodbeast in single combat just isn’t worth the damage it will cause you, even if you win. And it had to have known that.”
“Maybe it just didn’t want to see entire tribes of people die?” Nova asked. “You showed me that used to be common.”
“It was,” Vessa said sadly. “Back in the age that the Soulships flew, it was common for the mightiest local Sourcebeast to take an entire world under its protection if no one was strong enough to challenge it. And our navies let it happen, because even the most warlike of those creatures still cared for their worlds as if the entire planets were nurseries full of their own newborns. I had thought those days to be completely gone,” her voice softened even further. “But it seems that one last relic lingered in the night sky for a little longer.”
Soul Shelter (Soulship Book 2) Page 7