Normally, I absorbed the three Sources slowly, and carefully. I had to, or they would become unbalanced in my body, and damage my insides as they battled for control. And even when I absorbed as much as I dared, I would still experience diminishing returns, and have to wait for some time before I could try to Draw again, usually an entire day. The only exception was whenever I traveled to a new place, and even then it was a choice made more by my Soulscape than my subconscious mind. And my Soulscape hadn’t even bothered with the last two worlds.
Now, though, some lever had been pulled; some latch had been thrown open. The three different Sources poured into my body, mind, and soul like water caught by a cyclone. They tore apart the previous balance I had so carefully maintained since the very beginning, each of them flooding into every part of my self, paying no attention to obstacles or even my body or soul’s capacity.
A sharp, stabbing pain pierced my chest. For a moment, it felt as if something in my ribcage had stopped working, but it sputtered back to life a moment later. My muscles and skin screamed at my mind, begging to know what they had done wrong and would I please just scrape them all free?
I did no such thing, and could not have even if I had wanted to. The only thing I could try to do to alleviate my pain was to try and cough up all the lit gasoline I felt sloshing about in my lungs.
But as I writhed and sobbed, another crack formed in my inner mosaic. Another wisp drifted into the ore inside my mind. And another drop condensed in my qi stream.
One step down, and a thousand more to go.
“You will not ssssurvive thiss!” the last shadow hissed. “Thiss is dangerousss! Why are you trying!”
“GOING-TO-BREAK-GOING-TO-BREAK!” the second shouted. The first spoke up as well, but I did not listen, because they had already revealed another secret.
They were afraid of what I was trying to do.
“DoN’t dO tHiS!” the first warbled next. “YoU aRE nOT STronG ENough!”
“I do not need to be,” I shot back, still weeping as all the pain and fear continued to surge through my body. “I just—” I paused to heave, “need to be—” another break to strangle a sob, “brave enough—” one final break to get through a whimper, “to try!”
Acknowledged, the world inside my soul said. Continuing the attempt. Subject should brace for likely death.
The pain, coupled with the knowledge that I was about to die in a dark room with no one to notice but the nightmares shouting at me, broke the last shred of dignity I had left. I bawled, and bawled, and bawled harder when I felt the damage in my body grow, knowing it may well return me to its previous weakened, half-crippled state.
And yet, as my senses told me I was losing everything I had ever gained, another crack formed within my essence, another wisp floated within my mana, another drop coalesced inside my qi.
“Mad,” the hissing shadow said, and I heard the horror in its voice in spite of all my pain and grief. “He hassss gone mad.”
“CRAZY!” the angry shadow screamed. “HE-IS-CRAZY-HE-IS-CRAZY-HE-IS-BAD!”
“DoN’T dO ThiS!” the warbling shadow begged. “Do WHaT wE wANT inSTEad!”
I ignored them. Because one way or another, I had some hundred more steps to go.
“Little thief,” the hissing voice persisted. “You sshould reconssider. I know sshe iss ssweet. I know sshe iss tassty. I know you do not wissh to sshare. But thisss will kill you. You cannot have her if you are dead. You are only harming yourssself!”
“USELESS-USELESS-USELESS!”
“TruST us! We CARe aBOUt yoU!”
Their words made me weep all the harder.
For in begging, they had revealed their own lies.
I continued to weep, and bleed, and Draw.
Essence and mana and qi continued to tear my body apart. My stomach twisted in knots, as if it were about to explode out of me, then suddenly went numb. My knees buckled, locked, and then vanished from my senses. My tears themselves became painful, and when my body twitched enough, I could see I was crying red liquid instead of clear. Then more red liquid colored my vision, and I began to go blind.
But I could still see one thing. The halfblade I somehow still held in my hands was glowing with a bright blue light, light that grew more intense by the second.
The Sourceweapon struggled to contain the energy. I felt it would explode at any moment, just like my body. Then, as if out of spite, another crack formed in my essence, another wisp formed within my mana, another drop formed within my qi.
“ToO fAR!” the first voice screeched. “He wILL deTonATe!”
“STUPID-FOOL!” the second shouted. “STOP-STOP-STOP!”
“Very well, little thief!” the last voice snapped. “We will leave. You can have her for a little longer. But you cannot hide her forever. We will be back, and if you sssomehow sssurvive, we will punisssh you for thiss.”
The other two shadows echoed the words of the third, but they crawled away all the same, vanishing from my reddened vision. As soon as they were gone, the room hummed with power, as more lines of blue light began to appear between the many tiles.
Mission complete, my spinning world said. Apocalypse successfully averted. Commencing adjustments on nascent Anchor Knight.
My sobs grew less painful. My vision grew less red. I sank to my knees, wondering how I had managed to remain standing so long in the first place. Then I decided it didn’t matter, and just slumped against Vessa’s capsule. Three deep heaving breaths later, the light finished traveling through the floor and spread into the connecting rooms.
She had done it. She had taken back another part of herself.
Young rider, a faint voice called from somewhere. I ignored it. I was too tired. It called out again, but it sounded even fainter. A moment later, the capsule I leaned against opened. So did the one next to it.
That would have to do.
“Three more rooms,” Vessa sighed behind me. “I already feel so much better.”
“Me too,” Nova said as she stirred out of her own capsule. “I didn’t know it would make a difference for me as well.”
“Thanks for keeping watch, Jas,” I heard Vessa say, and I heard her body shift about, probably to try and look at me. “Did anything weird happen this time? Jas? Jas, turn around.”
I couldn’t find her. She was too far away.
“Nova! Nestor! What’s wrong with Jas?”
My little mouse squeaked. He leaped clear from Vessa’s capsule to land in front of me. As soon as he saw my face, he began squeaking even more frantically.
Why is he doing that? I wondered, as another sob bubbled out of my throat. Didn’t he use to talk to me?
Rider! Rider! the distant voice in my mind said, growing softer with each desperate shout.
“Jasper!” Nova shouted as she ran over to me. “Jasper, what’s wrong? Why won’t you say any—”
Her voice trailed off into a gasp.
“Vessa,” she finally said, after taking a quivering breath. “He’s bleeding from his eyes!”
Nestor kept squeaking frantically.
“What?” the other woman screamed. “Jasper! Jasper, what happened! Somebody, get me down!”
I heard her thrash behind me. I saw Nova hurry over and yank her clear of her capsule and carry the ship-woman in front of me. As they knelt, Vessa pulled her way out of Nova’s grip and crawled the last few feet over to me, gripping my bloody face in her hands.
“Jasper,” she said, her gray eyes looking into my own. “Jasper, can you hear me?”
She looked into both of my eyes with a clinical expression on her face.
“Shock,” she said, “bad enough to shut down some of his organs. But his qi techniques should have re-activated them.” Her eyes widened as she continued to stare at me. “Soulshock. His Source energy is overloaded... how did he even do that? Nevermind,” she said, shaking her head. “Nova, begin using your healing spells and techniques on him. I need to force open his Soulscape and take a look inside.”
/> “Can you do even do that?” she asked, already making the necessary gestures. “That’s supposed to be almost impossible.”
“It’s normally very difficult,” the other woman agreed, “but since he took me in as his master, I’ve been able to enact countermeasures that allow me to tend to him in case of an emergency, like this one. Alright, we need to do this together. On three...”
The two women counted together, showing far more agreement and coordination than they had in the past. Then soothing sensations chased out the rest of the pain in my body. Certain pieces inside of me that had stopped suddenly started working again. I wanted to thank them, but I couldn’t stop crying long enough to talk.
Why was I still crying?
I had won.
Wasn’t everything fine now?
“Alright,” Vessa said, her voice tight with concentration and concern. “I’m opening up his Soulscape. Elder Dragon, can you hear me? Are you alright? Can you tell me what happened?”
In answer, a roar tore through the room.
“I WILL KILL THEM!” a powerful, murderous, motherly voice tore through the room. “I WILL KILL THEM ALL! THOSE DUNG-EATERS! THOSE SEWAGE-WORMS FROM THE CESSPIT BEYOND THE NIGHT SKY! I WILL NOT BEAR IT! I REFUSE TO BEAR IT! THEY WILL DIE, OR I WILL NEVER FORGIVE THE SAINTS AND IMMORTALS OF THE NIGHT SKY!”
“Elder dragon,” Vessa repeated in her concerned, concentrated voice. “What happened. What has happened to Jasper?”
“Holy Vessel-Saint,” Grandmother Mara answered in voice still shaking with rage and grief. “This young one has found a way to protect you from a danger that should not have existed. The monsters from beyond the edges of the night sky came for you, in a way that I had not thought possible. Their methods shed light to me why we might have lost the war against them. I had thought your young knight to be overly paranoid, and trusted my own knowledge over his own eyewitness accounts. I had told him you would be safe down here, and he did not believe me. I had told him you could not be touched down here, and he did not believe me. Neither did his ancestors before him, for they had devised a way to make their very souls a barrier to your deranged predators. He drove them away, Holy Saint. They came for you, and he turned himself into a blanket and a fire, so that you would have the protection you deserve. But it was used too soon. Had he a half-dozen stages under his belt in any Source, and decades of practice, to sculpt and prepare for the power, he perhaps would have been fine. But he did not. The reprobates came for you, Holy Saint, and so he grabbed for the power and wielded it with the same desperation and skill that a frightened child might wield an unbalanced Sourceblade with no grip. And I was too late in noticing the power itself. Had I believed him, I might have been able to aid him. I might have helped him manage it, shape it into a less intense form that was safe to use. But I did not do such things, and now his soul is broken with power.”
“No,” Vessa said firmly. “We can fix this. You’re going to be okay, Jasper. Nova, help me get him into the capsule.”
The golden woman picked me up without hesitating, though she lifted me carefully, trying to make me as comfortable as possible, despite the fact that I was much larger than her now.
“It will be fine, Jas,” she whispered to me. “I promise.”
She laid me in the same capsule Vessa had just emerged from. I saw her turn, as if to help Vessa off the floor next, but the ship-woman had already crawled her way over to the capsule to touch the side of it.
“I’ll activate the recovery function,” Vessa explained. “This should fix most of his issues.”
“Are you sure?” Nova asked, hovering over me.
“Yes,” Vessa said confidently, “but I understand your concern. It hasn’t fixed my body yet because my issues stem largely from... malnutrition, I guess. That and the damage to my ship-body. But believe me, if I didn’t use my capsules, I’d be even worse off. But Jasper’s nutritional deficiencies were already altered, and he currently isn’t linked to a barely functional space hulk. This should be an easy fix.”
“Good,” Nova said quietly as she looked down at me, her hair brushing against my face like a curtain of golden threads. She’s going to get blood on them, I thought uselessly, wishing my arms would listen to my commands and wipe the messy red tears off of my face. “You see, Jas?” she said to me, reaching down to cup my cheek with her hand. “You’re going to be okay. So you can stop crying now, okay?”
I was able to nod at her. It felt like my greatest victory.
“Okay,” Nova said, stepping back for a moment. “Do you need to close the lid?”
“Yeah,” Vessa replied. “Just one sec—oh,” she said in surprise, as Nestor leaped into the capsule and nuzzled at my face worriedly. “That’s fine, Nestor. It might even help. Alright, I’m closing the capsule now.”
The lid closed over me. It looked green, for some reason. Was the glass green-tinted before?
A moment later, soothing mist breathed all over me, and everything went black.
The next time I opened my eyes, I awoke to a red sky.
Smoke plumed from the ruptured ground, as bright-red meteors rained all over my horizon. They fell far off in the distance, making the ground rumble, and forcing me to avert my gaze from the bright flash of light. As I looked away, I saw streams of lava flow across the distant ground, turning everything into fiery, barren death.
“Young rider,” Grandmother Mara’s voice rumbled over my ears, “can you finally hear me?”
I looked up, and wondered how I had missed the giant blue dragon standing right behind me.
Grandmother Mara looked much like the spiritual image of the Sourcebeast I had seen before, save that her massive body was a rich blue, and far larger than she had been before. She towered over me, half again the height and bulk that the house-sized bloodbeast was. But as I struggled to process her existence, a tiny voice in my skull reminded me that she was confined to my Soulscape, and should not have any kind of body at all. That likely means that I am...
“Yes,” the ancient dragon said to my thoughts. “You are inside your own Soulscape, and your world is burning. I am sorry.”
“What does that mean for me?” I asked, realizing that this cataclysm was taking place in my very soul. “And what does that mean for you?”
“For me?” Grandmother Mara asked, tilting her head. “Possibly nothing. I have a strong chance of survival, now that you have grown so much. I will have to shed even more of my power, but if I do so I may be able to exit your soul with a physical body. I will be among the very weakest of Sourcebeasts, weaker than even your sweet and brave lifemouse, but I will be alive nonetheless, and able to continue my own Advancement. But you are not going to be so fortunate, young rider.” The dragon drooped her head, and I saw that it was half the size of my own body. “Your world is going through a natural process, one numerous star-rocks go through before they become swarmed with life. In fact, much of this is even necessary,” she mused, looking up at the distant meteors. “The fire from the ground will bring out new soil, which will allow for great growth, both for things you store in this place and for your actual body as well. The fire-rocks tumbling down from the sky will slam into your Soulscape with great force, further shaping it, but allowing earth to migrate to other parts of it. Source energy will allocate more properly here, and you would see a similar effect for your personal Source energy as well. That is what should have happened, child, if these events had already occurred before you begun Advancing, when your Soulscape was just a subconscious, half-formed thing. But now it is lethal, just as these events would be to a populated world. The raging fire and angry earth will tear you apart with this planet, if this continues.”
“So you are saying that I will soon die,” I clarified. “And that with my passing, Vessa, Nova, the eggs of your daughter, are all likely doomed. As is anyone else out there, who might be relying on me in secret.”
“Yes,” the dragon spoke, and her eyes flashed with defiance. “But I forbid it. You
shall not die, young rider. You shall not suffer for choosing to protect another.”
“I have already suffered for choosing to protect others,” I pointed out tiredly, disappointed in the ancient Sourcebeast’s naivety. “I have seen others suffer for their righteousness, and I am likely to see such injustice continue to happen at least once more, no matter how little or how much time I have left to live.”
“I know you think that,” the dragon-woman rumbled, taking a step forward as angry green light flashed from her mouth. “I know you have been given every reason to believe that all righteous beings under heavens are damned instead of blessed. I know you think you have seen many dark things, and they have jaded your mind black, though your heart remains untouched. But I have seen many things as well, child, and I daresay the heartaches I have gained overmatch your own. Yet I know that the righteous have another end beyond the mockery and treachery they sometimes suffer. I know what the night sky has become in this current aeon, young rider, and I strive to change it, as do you, though you will still not admit it. But I do not fight as a madman beating the air, child. I have thrown my lot in with yourself and the vessel-saint you protect because I have seen first-hand what she has accomplished in the ancient past, and will accomplish again, if she can just have someone stand by her side. And I believe the same for you, so I will stand by your side as well. And I will do the impossible and save you, young rider, just as you have already done for me, have already done for her. Now listen to my plan, and see that this current time you have chosen to fight for someone, you will gain instead of lose.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I emerged from the capsule able to move under my power. My body still ached, and my soul was still rupturing from the inside out, but I could control my normal functions, and that meant that I could finally stop crying, and finally wipe the bloody tears from my face. Nestor squeaking anxiously at me as I did so.
All-good? he asked me. Can-hear?
I can hear you, I sent to my little friend. And I have a chance to get better.
“Did it work?” Nova asked as I finally stood to my feet. “Jasper, how do you feel? Are you okay?”
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