Naero laughed. “I thought it was Enlightened Change?”
Khai chuckled. “Yes, an important distinction. In a way, learning Chaos Wisdom after the other two was kind of backwards. Once I understood it, so much about the other two Wisdoms fell into place and became clearer, more meaningful. Perhaps Chaos Wisdom should be taught to adepts first. If only it were not so difficult. I still do not relish the path you are on.”
“Nor I. But I cannot turn back now. Maybe you can teach me a little about the other two Wisdoms.”
Khai sounded hesitant. “I don’t know. That could be dangerous.”
“What isn’t? And look who’s talking? Mr.: I-just-burned-my-arms-and legs-off.”
“All right. I’ll try to tell you what you need to know, but not enough to get you in any serious trouble.”
“Both of us are already in serious trouble. But right now, I’m more worried about Hashiko.”
“Be patient. Study Hashiko’s techniques. Her patterns in combat. The combinations she uses. She tries to vary them, but she does have a few weaknesses that I don’t think she can see.”
“I’ve spotted one. But I’m not fast or strong enough yet to capitalize on it yet.”
“I sparred with her for a long time. Let me tell you what I observed about her strategy and combat styles. Plus her many psyonic abilities.”
Naero hesitated. “She’s been holding back on me. I have yet to see many of those.”
While both of them rested and regenerated, they continued to discuss matters together long into the night inside their minds.
The only escape it seemed, for either of them.
20
On another Chaos training session with him as the days passed, Master Vane transported them to a volcanic island in the middle of an ocean.
Naero barely remembered eating, voiding, and grabbing some broken sleep the night before, fractured by more splitting pain and fragmented nightmares on top of her daily sparring injuries. She even took a break from the astral crystal, after warning Khai the night before.
Even though she could not regenerate as quickly as Hashiko, Naero remained tough, stubborn, and a fast healer.
The Great Teacher attempted to penetrate her mind several times without warning.
It grew easier and easier to block even his strongest attempts.
“Don’t congratulate yourself too much, Maeris. Shielding your mind is the simplest and easiest of all skills for an adept to learn, and it is cumulative in nature. That is why it is usually taught first.”
Perhaps now she could commune with Om while Vane was close by.
No luck so far.
Naero changed the subject, asking about whatever popped into her head.
“So, tell me, High Master Vane. What are the other two High Masters like?”
Vane snorted again. “Fools, in a line of weak, dangerous, petty fools. Worse than you even. Deluded dreamers who substitute intellectual folly and wishful thinking for the painful truth of reality.”
After training with Vane, the other two would most likely be a breath of fresh air, Naero guessed. She still wondered why she had been sent to him.
Perhaps being the High Master in charge of Chaos, all of the violent, out of control adepts like herself were just naturally sent to Vane to either handle or dispose of. It made sense in a brutal way.
“So, if you are the Chaos Master, what are the other two High Masters in charge of?”
Vane rolled his eyes. “Not that it really matters, but Master Tree is the Keeper of Order and Stability, although that is all illusion. Supposedly he is my polar opposite, but he shall never be my equal–not him nor any like him. Then there is Master Jo, supposedly the Master of Enlightened Change.
“He preaches compromise and adaptation. The ceaseless gabber, endlessly negotiating his witless diplomacies. I endure them both as long as they allow me my status, respect, and honor due. When pressed, even they admit to the truth of my realities. Only I see the raw truth of the universe as it truly is. Without the stupid romance of optimism or the embellishing lies of so-called, enlightened compassion.”
“How…rational.”
“I’m glad you agree. Order and Change will barely admit how impotent and stagnant they would be without the true driving forces of Chaos and Entropy to constantly struggle against and adapt to. The Great Harmony of all things would be nothing without them and the impetus of their energy.”
Naero looked out across the great island. Brimming with birds and teeming with life. An active, smoking volcano, steaming and belching smoke and lava at the far end, still expanding up out of the ocean depths.
“So, what is our lesson today?”
“Biomancy, of course. The secrets of life and death. The very nature of Chaos and Entropy.”
Master Vane drew an egg out of a nest at random and held it in his hand. Then he placed it in Naero’s.
“You cannot biomance, so I must conduct it through you. Prepare yourself and pay attention. Feel the ebbs and flows of the Cosmic energy fields.”
Naero gritted her teeth.
Pain ripped through her arms and hands as she held the egg, sensing the life within it, stimulated by Master Vane’s biomancy abilities.
“This is the eternal wheel of the life cycle. Creation and explosive growth…”
The egg split open and a fuzzy chick tumbled out, maturing rapidly.
“Maturity and reproduction…"
The adult bird laid another egg. Vane tossed it back into the original nest with barely a thought.
“Entropy and final decay.”
The bird aged rapidly, died, and quickly began to rot and then reduce to dust.
Naero gasped and fell to her knees, grimacing in pain. Her head pulsed as if it had a red hot coal at the core.
She vaguely sensed Om speaking to her in garbled, unintelligible snatches. He was getting better at resisting Vane.
Everything has a cycle in the universe, Maeris. Even stars. Even the universe itself. There were universes before this one. There will be universes after this one. And this is just one possible universe. Beginnings and endings. It is an endless process. Chaos and Entropy are the driving forces, the energies of Creation and Destruction behind all things.”
Naero perceived the myriad energies and complex processes at work in the flows of Janosha, although they threatened to tear her apart and drive her insane to focus on them like that.
Master Vane laughed at her. “Takes a lot out of you when you first experience it all, doesn’t it? But you cannot biomance without these perceptions and the abilities to manipulate them at any point along the way. Once you master them, you will be able to touch something and perceive all that it is, all that it ever will be. You can use that ability to heal and create, or do harm and destroy. On yourself, or others. You can control the flow of life force energy and entropy and decay. Such knowledge gives you both power and mastery.”
In a way it was like teknomancy, but with living things instead of tek. In some ways simpler, in many other ways far more intricate and complex. Even frightening. Another grand paradox.
Master Vane pulled birds out of the very air and into their hands, not to the liking of the birds of course. They squawked and protested, and with good reason.
Master Vane demonstrated everything with brutal, direct examples.
“Most life is fragile and can only exist in a narrow range. Too hot…”
The bird in their hands squawked and burst into flame, reducing to a flash of ash in an instant.
“Too cold…”
Another bird froze solid in their hands and crumbled away into a cloud of frozen dust.
“Not enough food, water, or breathable air and life cannot exist at all.”
“Stop killing birds. I already understand all that.”
“Oh really? Can you perceive and interact with these forces at every degree and level?”
“Well…no…”
“I thought not. Lets go through it again,
this time slower, with that marine reptile egg.”
“You do know that this is torture, both for me and these poor creatures, right?”
“Of course. Isn’t this the fun part? Growth and change almost never come without a price. And just look at this abundance of thousands of each of these species. Do you want to learn how to biomance and fix yourself or not?”
Naero remained silent, but she nodded, preparing herself. She could handle pain. She didn’t relish making other living things suffer for no reason.
For the next few months, she and Master Vane traveled the length and breadth of Janosha sporadically–at Master Vane’s whim–studying its many life forms.
Vane forced her to battle several of the more lethal variants on the planet, always to the death.
He seemed to enjoy such matches like sporting events.
Yet everywhere they went, Naero steeled herself to meet the threats and challenges and endure the pain, in order to develop her abilities to perceive and affect the life cycles of everything she touched and encountered.
Khai was right. She was learning, and gathering knowledge.
Since she still had no energies of her own to tap into because of her block, she did everything through Master Vane, using his powers flowing through her. That of course gave him every opportunity to critique and insult her and her stumbling efforts at every point along the way.
Yet she did progress.
And secretly, with Om and Khai–whom Master Vane seemed entirely oblivious to–Naero compared notes and ideas. She grew closer and closer to being able to biomance and fix the damage in her own head, the lingering effects from her ignorant efforts to burn out Danner during their battle.
Talking with Khai and Om merely confirmed things.
She understood more fully now, how that in burning out Dan without the proper knowledge and skill, she had also done the same thing more or less to herself.
A total Cosmic energy burn out.
Yet that realization worried her as well.
If she could find a way to heal and regenerate herself and her abilities, couldn’t Danner do the same thing?
Perhaps he already had.
And he was much stronger than either her or Jan put together.
Where were her brother and former brother now? Still hidden away and being tested and tortured in some Corps lab?
Now it was Om who became the patient one. And he himself resisted Vane’s tek dampening effects better and better.
One step at a time, Naero. We will not be able to help Jan or confront Dan again in our current state. We must learn what we have come here to learn from the Mystics. I believe you made the right choice.
Naero still fidgeted.
But it’s taking so long, Om. Who knows what is happening while we’re stuck here on Janosha?
*
Without warning one day, Master Vane came to Naero well before dawn and made an announcement. She was already up.
“Starting today, you’ll need to waste your time among the rats or something. About a week. Hashiko and I must confer on the astral plane with some of the other Mystics. We’ll both be in self-induced trances in stasis pods most of that time. Do not bother or interrupt us, not under any circumstance.”
“What if something happens? What if there’s an emergency?
“Relax, Maeris. It’s a handful of days, just like all the rest on Janosha. Don’t worry. My cave will be well-shielded. Even you won’t be able to sneak in and slit our throats.”
Naero ignored that.
“I’ve been meaning to ask. Why does Tek only work for you and not for me on Janosha?”
“Like everything else–because I want it that way. Relax. Janosha is well-protected. If you haven’t figured it out, there are two Spacer Intel monitoring bases at the poles, manned only by adepts. They can sense any threat coming, just as we did your small craft. They can deal with it, summon help from several nearby Spacer Naval bases, or raise an impenetrable planetary defense shield.”
“It might have been nice to know all of these details before now.”
Vane grinned. “Oh, and I also have several private, hidden starports, concealed all over Janosha. Like the one nearby in these very mountains, complete with several unique ships and my own stealth escape craft. If I should ever have need of them.”
Naero pursed her lips tight and could not help fuming.
“I’m an expert pilot and love to fly. You have stuff I could pilot and you couldn’t tell me or give me access to any of them?”
Vane waved both hands.
“My toys. Not yours. Go and become a High Master and you can get your own. You didn’t need to know any of that, and you still need to focus on your pitiful progress with biomancy. You have plenty to occupy your time, or just waste it, as usual, like you always do.”
“I still feel uneasy for some reason. It would be nice to have a way to contact you if I had to.”
Master Vane grabbed her hand and yanked her over to her sleeping furs and hides.
“Very well. I’ll show you how to enter the Astral Plane, and give you a psyonic marker so that you can seek me out. Lie down. Keep holding my hand tight. Don’t break the link.”
“You couldn’t have shown me this before either?”
“You’re such a slow learner, Maeris. When have we had time? There hasn’t been any need. And you can enter the Astral Plane when you’re sleeping too.”
“I think I already have before, by accident.”
“Of course you have. Most adepts do, but as usual, you don’t know what you’re doing or how to take control of the situation and manage anything effectively.”
She swallowed her gall and didn’t go into detail about her crazy dreams and visions either. Not to Vane, that was for sure. And she kept the astral crystal well-hidden.
As they lay back, she felt herself drifting off within a few minutes of controlled breathing. Her eyes closed.
Next thing she knew, she and Master Vane floated up in the sky, high in the atmosphere.
She would have gasped, but then she realized she wasn’t breathing. That fact almost panicked her. Vane tried to calm her through their link.
Easy, Maeris. You don’t have a physical body in the Astral Plane. This is your astral form, and it does not need to breathe. There are ways to manipulate your form here, but the other High Masters worry and diddle with all of that crap. Just one of the many reasons why they’re so stupid and distracted half the time. They’re addicted to extra-planar travel like some kind of drug.
Suddenly they passed into what seemed to be a swirling miasma of light and color that enveloped them out of nowhere.
What are the dangers? Can we be harmed here?
“Many, and yes. If you die on any plane or reality, you perish in all the others that you inhabit. But that’s all you need to know for now. You travel within the Astral Plane by force of will, picking a direction, or focusing on a location or entity that you know well. We’ll train you more in Astral travel later. You do not need to be very good at it for now. You must not enter it without a good reason or stay very long. Here is my marker for you that I shall create. You can use it to find me if you must.”
A small black, glistening three dimensional star, shifting and pulsing with veins of scarlet energy, floated in front of her.
She could hold it in her hands, but when she attempted to touch it, it melted into her right hand and vanished.
Naero gave up a little cry at the sharpness of the quick stab of agony.
Damn Vane. Everything always seemed to be taught through pain with him. The sadistic old bastard.
Yes, yes, I know it hurts. Curse me as you usually do I imagine; I rather enjoy it. Concentrate on me in the Astral Plane and that Marker will transport you to wherever I happen to be at the time. But I’m warning you; if you bother me without good cause, I will find new ways to make you suffer, Maeris. Now, let’s return to Janosha.
How do we do that?
Simple you s
impleton. You are your own, best known astral marker. Focus on returning to your physical body. Like waking up. Picture yourself opening your eyes.
In the flash of an instant, they were back in Naero’s cave. Her eyes fluttered open. Master Vane already let go of her hand and rose up, floating out the opening and up toward his chamber.
“Remember. Do not bother us on the Astral Plane unless it’s very important. It’s only for one week, Maeris. Consider it a holiday. We’ll continue your training after we return.”
21
Later that morning, Naero climbed down among the Tua to seek out Bahan and Iika. With Vane and Hashiko away in the Astral Plane, she had little else to occupy her time, besides practicing on her own.
She said her greetings.
It continued to be a great comfort to her that the simple, gentle Tua always seemed happy to see her. No longer showing any fear of her. Even though she was halaena, they accepted her among them completely. Just like family.
Naero was used to being around others, and gladly enjoyed being part of their lives.
The Tua kits favored her immensely and climbed up all over her like little furry beetles, squeaking and mewing in glee. They covered her like a furry suit.
A very hot, itchy, furry suit in the current heat of the high summer season.
Naero ignored the mild discomfort and laughed with them, kissing and petting the various kits until they clung to her and purred, falling happily asleep.
The entire tribe kept the kits so clean. They even smelled good, kind of like caramel and vanilla and fruit.
Parents and great-parents wandered over and plucked their kits off of her without a word, apparently knowing which ones were theirs.
Usually Tua females gave birth to two to four kits at a time. Six in some rare cases.
Yet the women also had some way of controlling when they conceived that Naero hadn’t figured out yet. Were they biomancers on some level? They were not constantly pregnant, that was for sure, despite plenty of chunga.
Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit Page 15