Descend- Coming Together

by David Burke

  She said, “I guess strong emotion can work to activate the skill too.”

  Her focus was intense as she pulled the string back to her ear and then the swoosh of the release caused Jay and Madison to activate their abilities. He was faster because of his greater skill level but she was only a split second behind him. When the arrow finally reached the target, it was not a single arrow but five. Each of them weighing 25 lbs and each had a glowing tip.

  The trajectory of the arrow had an arc as Charlotte had adjusted and they rained down on the spot where the huge tree had already been split in half. Each arrow boomed and flashed with the light of emotion turned into deadly energy. The crater left by each charged projectile was a good five feet deep and ten feet around.

  After that, Jay let everyone else know the show was over while he finished up training with Madison and Charlotte. They experimented with trying to add mass to his psionic blade but found that she wasn’t able to. Then adding mass to his fists even as he increased the size of them with his body shaping. They tested Charlotte’s accuracy in hand to hand combat and both the girls sparred with him till they ended up on their backs.

  At one point as he pinned Madison despite her trying to decrease his mass, she snuck a kiss from him. A second later, Charlotte hopped up from her back and took advantage of Jay’s reduced mass and his shock from the kiss to lift him up. It was a testament though to the non-stop training Jay had been doing that he quickly flipped her over and managed to pin both girls to the ground again.

  “Oh, I like this,” Madison said.

  Charlotte added, “If you wanted us on our backs, all you had to do was ask.”

  Jay quickly got up before temptation got the better of him. “Thank you for training. What was incredible is what you two can do together and the three of us even more. Both of you still need to work on your hand to hand but you are making real progress. So maybe we can try this again in a few days. Gotta run off to my next training session.”

  Both girls pouted but knew better than to try to convince him to stay, so they just watched him leave in a blur of motion as he ran at full speed.

  A few minutes later he reached the training spot he and Mia always used. It was a short distance down the trail into the rocky hills that separated the beach from the clearing around the ziggurat. It was not too far away for her to get to and yet out of the way enough to be private.

  When she saw him arrive, Mia smiled and said, “It is always so amazing to see you run that fast. You must be going over a hundred miles per hour. I hope you don’t do everything that fast.”

  Jay smiled back and sat down next to her as he opened a canteen to drink some water. Days of training with him had relaxed Mia enough that she felt comfortable teasing him now too. They had made a great deal of progress on her powers.

  She was able to link a single stat at a time for extended periods or could link up to three stats between two people for a short time. She was now so good that she could link a single stat so that they got a 60% exchange and she could maintain the link at any range. It was the closest that they had to a true buff that didn’t have to be actively maintained.

  Jay was really proud of her. She had made it to level nine, and that was without any real combat. Her skills still were not suited to combat, but he saw a ton of potential in them. Her Empathetic Bond would allow two people to move in a much more coordinated fashion. He had visions of being able to apply that to an entire team in battle.

  Expanded Mind was a prime example of why he was so impressed with her. It allowed her to think at a rapid rate and seemingly draw knowledge in from an unknown source. With it she was able to design an intricate alarm system to protect the area around the bungalows from incursions by the barbed beetles. One of the girls was able to weave a metallic thread and others combined to make various components, but it was Mia who put it all together.

  She swore she had no technical experience before but was already displaying master-level engineering skills. The problem was more than any other skill, Expanded Mind took a physical toll on her. She also could only retain the knowledge she gained for a limited period of time.

  Her most promising combat skill was Borrowed Adaptation. As close as they could figure it allowed her to temporarily copy an ability that someone else possessed. Yet due to Jay’s desire to keep her working on the other skills they had not pushed that.

  She even developed a Formation skill. She could now create small constructs called PSI Crystals. They appeared to be a cloudy type of quartz with an intricate web of lines running around inside of them. So far they had been able to store both PSI and Stamina in them but only she had been able to access the energy once stored. Jay was hoping that would change and this would provide a means to power others up and possibly even create their own form of enchanted weapons.

  “So, have you been practicing since yesterday?” Jay asked.

  “For hours, I managed to hit level nine at the reset today.”

  “Great, proud of all the work you are putting in.”

  Mia smiled at the praise and said, “How could I not. I see how hard you work for all of us. I know you do it because it’s the right thing, but you motivate me. I just wish my abilities were more useful. I hope you know how much we are all thankful for everything you do.”

  “Oh, I get thanked plenty. Besides as you said, I’m not doing this for the thanks. I am doing it because it is the right thing to do. And, you shouldn’t underestimate your abilities. I think it might be time to put you and Huong to work on trying to craft some powered armor and weapons. She has made some good progress on working with the carapaces from the second floor but if you two could find a way to embed your PSI crystals in them… well let’s just say I think that could be impressive.”

  “I’ll try it for you. I’ll work till we get you what you need,” Mia said.

  “For now, how about we practice some hand to hand? I know that it isn’t your strong suit, but it serves two purposes. I will feel better if you have at least some ability to defend yourself and it will test your ability to maintain your other skills at the same time.”

  “Okay, so, should I use Shared Potential?”

  “Yes, on both Awareness and Durability, but what I want you to do is gonna be hard so don’t push any one skill too hard. You will be trying to run three skills at one time. I want you to use Empathetic Bond so that you will be able to sense how I am going to react and Expanded Mind to try to learn fighting techniques. Hopefully you will be able to keep them all running with the extra PSI you will get from me. I don’t want you to hurt yourself but you need to push hard in order to grow as quickly as possible.”

  Mia gulped, knowing how hard what Jay was asking of her would be, but she had seen him use at least four and maybe five skills at the same time. “I won’t let you down.”

  A moment later, Jay felt the connection establish between them. First as they began sharing their stats, he gained two Durability and six Awareness from her. The latter had a greater impact as he felt more in tune with the world around him. His perceptions seemed to speed up, and he almost felt smarter.

  Then the connection deepened as he felt her forge an Empathetic Bond between the two of them. He could tell how the air tingled across her skin or the way that she kept getting annoyed when her bangs fell in front of her eyes. He felt an underlying level of insecurity that he always felt from her but at the same time could tell that she understood he thought highly of her.

  The one part of the bond that he tried most to close himself off to was the attraction that he felt from her. He wondered if this was what the other girls felt when he was using his Sensual Projection. This seemed more delicate yet more intimate at the same time. He hoped that he was keeping a lid on his own attraction for her. It wouldn’t be appropriate to let that leak out.

  Then all of a sudden her eyes popped wide open, and she gasped, sucking in air. Jay would have been worried except that he had seen this reaction before. It was the same each ti
me. She had expanded her mind and was now getting knowledge that she didn’t naturally possess but which was at least temporarily hers.

  Then a wicked smile crossed her face. “That was a first,” Jay thought as she said, “Oh this is so on. I know kung fu now.”

  A moment later and Jay was stepping back on the defensive. He was still stronger and had the ability to harden his skin as well as further enhancing his speed and skill but he wanted this to be a meaningful sparring session for her. The thing was that she moved unlike any of the other girls he sparred with. Even the ones like Amelia, who had some kickboxing in her past, couldn’t move like this. Jessie, maybe, but none of the others.

  There was a grace to her movements like a dancer and her flexibility clearly came into play. Even with the empathetic bond he wasn’t able to predict her movements quickly enough. She was all instinct and no thought. All he could do was react.

  Every time that he pushed forward with a punch, she would turn his own momentum against him and send him flying head over heels to land on his back. He began having to incorporate more skills in order to keep up. A grin came to her face and he could sense the satisfaction that she felt at his frustration over having so much trouble keeping up with her.

  If nothing else it was showing Jay just how much he actually had to learn about hand to hand combat. Clearly, all of them were going to be taking lessons from Sensei Mia at this rate. Now when a kick came into him, he would harden the part of his body at the point of impact just enough to keep from having the wind knocked out of his lungs or his knee from giving out.

  It was good practice managing the skill so precisely. He would activate it with just a moment’s notice and then turn it off just as quickly to focus on something else. Now when she flipped him, he would use his Kinetic Dampening field to slow his descent enough to land on his feet.

  Eventually they were both drenched in sweat and he was forced to keep a low level of his Precognition active just to be able to keep up with her. She was beautiful and clearly in her element. However, the strain of maintaining all the skills started to get to her, when she tried to activate a fourth skill.

  She borrowed his enhanced speed and suddenly her punches and kicks were a blur. None came in straight, but all a series of curves and angles so he couldn’t keep up. Midway through a particularly graceful aerial kick, Mia’s body stiffened under the strain and Jay was barely able to move quickly enough to catch her.

  Her arms fell around her and through their link he felt the pain she was in. He recognized it as the pain of a depleted core. “That’s enough. Turn your skills off,” he said.

  She must have been too lost in her own pain as she dropped all the skills except for the Empathetic Bond which seemed to magnify. It went from him feeling surface sensations to having a deeper connection with her. His own head felt like it was splitting open even though he knew the pain was hers.

  Still the two of them collapsed to the ground in a tangle of limbs and both fell into a shallow unconsciousness as the bond consumed them.

  Interlude 4- Trouble on the Horizon

  Alarms were going off all over the leviathan. It was not just in D’varn’s lab. These were the sort of alarms that sent every A’snkarnt flying in their hover pod to their respective stations. It was a proximity alarm. A spatial disruption consistent with a wormhole was opening less than ten million miles from their location.

  Once upon a time, such an event would not have been anything to worry about. In the glory days of the inter-galactic alliance there had been a dozen races with similar technology. Now most of those races had been exterminated. The Skiorth had fled known space. The Dellan and Kriero existed only as tiny remnants of a few hundred surviving members. Once proud races and allies, they were now left to the mercy and hospitality of the A’snkarnt.

  Only two races, the A’snkarnt and Forlorn, still regularly made use of such technology. That was if the Forlorn could be properly called a race and not a tribute to the systematic elimination of life and diversity.

  D’varn checked his scanners and saw that a single cruise ship had exited the portal in the expanse between Earth and Mars. The location for such a portal was troubling but when combined with the things that D’varn had uncovered over the past twenty cycles worked to further confirm his suspicions.

  Still core-frame had determined that a single cruiser represented little to no threat to the leviathan. Of course, it also extrapolated the fact that if one ship had this location, then others might as well. There was also the fact that at this distance the hoomans of Earth would be detecting the ship even with their primitive technology. The Forlorn were many things but subtle was not one of them.

  The concern that D’varn had foremost in his mind was what would happen if the Forlorn tried to co-opt the hoomans. They would have no choice but to respond to that. Billions of hoomans converted by their enemies and another planet of raw resources was not something that could be allowed. It wasn’t that he was super concerned about what happened to hoomans as a whole.

  They were not yet advanced enough to contribute to the war in any meaningful way. Yet they were like a fascinating ant colony. He was curious about the frenzied lives and motivations which moved them along. Motivations which his people had long since evolved past.

  The leviathan’s technology was still advanced beyond anything the Forlorn possessed and unless they had a specific location, it would appear as nothing more than a lifeless moon floating in the vastness of space. The concerns about the spy made D'varn concerned though that they might know the exact location.

  Even then the leviathan had many times the firepower that a single cruiser possessed. It was not a warship. The A’snkarnt possessed far too few of those. They never had been truly a war-like people. Still their shield, cloaking, and particle weapons were enough to rip the cruiser apart.

  He watched it on the tracking system rather than using a view screen. It moved in their general direction but not on an intercept course with the leviathan. All too quickly it became apparent that the ship was headed towards the Earth. Probe ships launched out of it.

  Connected as he was, D’varn saw the calculations that core-frame ran about the best course of action now. There was a distinct possibility that the attack against the Earth was only meant to get the leviathan to reveal itself. Yet, they had so many resources invested in this planet.

  The hoomans were not much now, but the testing was showing that at least a small percentage of them were able to adapt quickly enough to possibly become of use. For all that the sabotage had increased the level of the chemicals intended to stimulate evolutionary change in the hoomans’ DNA, it had not worked out quite as badly as it might have.

  Nearly 90% of the hooman test subjects were now dead. At least almost all the rest had progressed past the first threshold. It had been less than 40 cycles since the experiment had begun and this progress was more than satisfactory. All the simulations run by core-frame even with their flawed data had shown that the early stages would be the hardest for the hoomans.

  The difficulty of adapting to a new environment was always difficult for any species. Likewise the initial evolutionary changes often culled the weaker members of a race. The hoomans had shown an incredible ability to adapt that was only matched by their capacity for poor decision making.

  Most exciting now was that a second cluster had started to show real potential. M1789 was still far and away the leader but one of the females, F00917, had just passed the second threshold and was gathering quite a following amongst her hooman compatriots. Several of the females associated with M1789 were also on the cusp of the second threshold.

  Still if this much progress had been made in less than 40 cycles, D’varn was truly excited to see how far they could go in another few hundred cycles. The simulations all showed that their growth, leveling, and evolution would all accelerate and it was difficult to predict the upper limits. No race with this level of adaptability had ever been discovered before. That alo
ne was enough reason to make sure that they were not incorporated into the Forlorn.

  The only real problem was that there might not be enough time for the experiment to run its course. Breeding was the eventual goal but the timetable for that might have to be pushed up the same as the rest. The A’snkarnt needed warriors to do what they were no longer capable of doing.

  Another alarm sounded then. One which D’varn had never expected to hear. Apparently core-frame had reached a decision on the best course of action and the Supreme Council had approved it. Now for the first time in millennia the leviathan was about to move.

  Chapter 19- Putting the Pieces Together

  Jay woke up feeling strong arms wrapped around him. The ground around him lurched, but the arms gave him a sense of security that he hadn’t felt in so long. Wait, no one was holding him. Instead as he opened his eyes, he found Mia cuddled into his arms and nuzzling her head against his chest. She felt soft and warm against him, and if he wasn’t so confused by the duality of what he was sensing he would have said it was quite pleasant.