City of Alva. Southern Hemisphere.
Seven
“How is that possible!?” the Judge roared in his face with a mechanical voice he never wanted to get used to hearing. He swore his very soul shook at its foundation from that roar. The voice was deep and unsettling. “How can we lose three gravisars in a third of a quarter!”
“No idea, Commander,” he held himself upright, right hand on his chest in salute, and kept his voice as steady as possible. The material of his collar was itchy and he was tempted to reach up to scratch the itch. That would be a sign of disrespect to a Judge, and a good reason to receive a beating. He stayed his hand. Damn the stupid itchy uniform. “We are only sure of the integrity of our sensors. If—” The Judge leveled a piercing gaze at him. Eerie deep blue orbs of light glowed in the eye sockets of his skull-shaped, metal mask.
Runner Seven panicked and took a step back, eyes down. “If we could…” he swallowed hard, “could get the scrying crystals—”
“Vorthe intercepts those. We cannot risk it. Have the Judges we sent to Alvion arrived?”
“Not yet, Commander,” he replied.
The Judge groaned — a low rumble that seemed to go on forever. A sign that he was in thought and didn’t like the conclusions he was coming to. “Vorthe is up to something. We’ve been here for almost a season, with our gravisars intact. People start falling from the sky and we lose three? It is time we play a new hand in the game.”
The Judge turned and walked to the giant map of the sand table behind him, clearing up his view. Judges were so tall that they blocked out everything in view when standing before you. Their long flowing cloaks also added to the effect. The war room was a large affair. Alvric spared no effort in providing them with the best resources.
The sand table sat at the center of the room taking up more than half the entire room. Many small cylinders were fixed to the four edges of the table used to control the sand. How that worked, Seven didn’t know — couldn’t even know if he wanted to.
He was from the lowest rung of society. And no one would sponsor a commoner to the Holy Academy. The little training he had received as a runner on how to read, write, do sums, and communicate was all he would ever know. Many would kill to be in his position right now so he sucked up his dissatisfaction.
Another Judge — this one, an elite due to the fact he was unmasked — sat comfortably by the sand table with his legs up and his eyes closed, without a care for what was going on around him. He wasn’t as tall as the one who confronted him. But he was still tall by human standards. Judges became more… human-looking, he supposed, the more powerful they became. And he was putting on the signature long, deep blue coat of the elite Judges.
Seven eyed the lapel of the elite Judge’s coat with envy. That was a sign of high status in society — not a formal one but a standard of fashion. Becoming a Judge was out of the question for him but a Templar? He could still hope.
Female slave attendants served him wine and berries, some massaging his shoulders, another combed through his long blonde hair. They all moved slowly and sensually, trained from when they were infants to serve. Other slaves stood back by the walls decorated with thick red curtains. Thick red carpet rugs decorated the floor of the war room, giving the place a closed-in atmosphere. Even with a window open, hardly any sound came into the chamber.
Seven sighted a long cylinder in a corner of the war room — a silencer. Well, that was what the commoners called it. The suits had another name for it which he was ignorant of. Its glowing top meant it was active. And its range most likely covered the entire building.
Vorthe had no hope of spying on them here.
One of the many cylinders on the edges of the table sunk into the table with a hiss and the sand moved on the surface, shifting three of the tokens that signified their Judges near Alvion to the locations of the bizarre incident. The Judge hadn’t touched anything. But Seven knew the power of the Judges; of their terrifying ability to move things with their minds!
“Send an encrypted message through a transference paper to inform them of their new tasks,” the Commander said, not looking back at him.
Seven wanted to ask if that was wise but held his tongue. Even Svol, the deity of Light, wouldn’t be able to save him from the wrath of the Commander if he questioned his actions.
“Do you think it wise to do such a thing?” another voice asked the question in his mind, a voice so filled with allure and softness.
To his right, on a loveseat, was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen; a woman whose beauty filled the room with warmth he never knew he was missing — a sacred artist, he was sure. Her long golden locks and green eyes held an ethereal beauty a man could only conjure in the dark fantasies of his heart. The wind from the window behind her lifted her hair, which only served to add to her allure. Her exposed neckline drew his gaze and he swallowed, wishing he could taste and smell her skin.
Seven had been taught about these sacred artists. Abominations who take into themselves the essence of the world so they can live longer, become more beautiful, become more powerful, become gods! The allure of such power was indescribable. If he had such power in his grasp, would this otherworldly beauty gaze upon him? Would she smile at him? Would she let him kiss her hand? Or go further?
Sacred artists didn’t seem so abominable now. Such beauty and grace couldn’t have been but the handiwork of Svol himself.
Seven caught himself in his infatuation and quickly hardened his heart.
The Judge who had been quiet for a while shifted to face the sacred beauty. “Do not presume that you are here to give me counsel. I accommodate you because I have to, not because I want to.”
Seven’s gaze flitted to the elite Judge for a moment. He was sure the elite was the one truly in charge here.
The sacred beauty smiled… Seven’s jaws dropped. He would die a happy man if she only looked his way.
“And what are you still doing here, boy!?” the Commander barked at him. “Back to your duty post!”
Seven scrambled out of the war room as fast as he could. The moment he got to the stairs leading down to the lower floors, another runner stumbled into him. He stepped out of the way and slowed down on the stairs to hear the information the new runner came to deliver.
The runner saluted. “Runner Eight at your service, Commander! Our sensors detect the destruction of another gravisar within the last thirty breaths. Oomph—” Runner Eight was thrown out of the war room.
Before Seven could get out of the way, Runner Eight crashed into him and they both tumbled down the stairs. Seven picked himself up carefully all the while groaning in pain. Eight did the same.
“You idiot!” Seven hissed at Eight. “You couldn’t wait to read the room!? You don’t just blurt out whatever in front of a Judge!”
Eight bowed his head in shame. A junior runner never talked back when being scolded by his senior. Seven tsked in irritation and walked into their makeshift control room. The poorly lit room was barely enough for its twenty occupants, ten of which were analysts, directly in charge of monitoring the grid of five hundred gravisars scattered around the southern rain forests.
Four of those gravisars were down already. The cost of those things was astronomical, as had been drilled into them all. An alarm blared from the front of the room, directly in front of the image of the grid being projected on the wall — a highly complex encryption that was near impossible to understand. Only the analysts could analyze the grid. Another blared, and then another.
“By the gods, how are they doing that!?” The lead analyst stood up from his cubicle in anger. “How the fuck are they—” he stopped abruptly, looking intently at the grid and then back at his cubicle. He was reading something Seven couldn’t. All Seven could see were flickering lights, numbers, and unknown symbols on the grid wall.
The other analysts began standing up one by one as if they were catching up.
“It is as if they are different teams,” one said.
“I’m guessing four,” another said.
“And they’re not being impeded by the weight forced on them by the gravisars!” another said.
The alarm blared again after he spoke. The lead analyst cursed and ran out of the control room. There was only one place he was going to which was a relief because none of the runners hanging back by the wall wanted to face the wrath of the Judge upstairs again.
Seven quickly remembered the Judge’s errand and shot toward a table with a small stack of hand-sized pieces of white transference paper. Their transference papers were in short supply and they had to be rationed. But there was nothing to be done. He had an encrypted message to send.
~~~
Jerome dropped out of the sky with a thump. He surveyed the battle scene and then his girls before nodding in satisfaction. He smiled at Ms. Tara and she gave him a beautiful smile in return before racing into his arms. Sheela poked him in the side, pouting as she waited for her own hug. He pulled her into a three-way hug and she squealed, surprised at the speed of his reflex.
“That’s a terrifying reflex you’ve got, Jerome,” Csala said as she walked towards him.
“I missed you all,” he said, letting go of both ladies. He drew Csala in for a hug as well.
“And what have you got there, Nyx?” he asked, letting go of the succubus.
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Nyx squatted in front of the shallow hole where the gravity contraption once was. The parts of it, including the crystal stones all orbited space a feet away from her. “I can sense it — the warping of space,” she said. “Achilleia said you’d deal with it.”
Jerome was startled at her words. He had thought Nyx would be able to do something about it. Her psychic energy had felt more powerful than Muna’s in Terra Praeta, yet Muna would have dealt with this without a second thought he was sure.
“What?” Nyx asked.
Jerome came out of his musings. “Thought you’d be able to deal with it,” he said, holding her gaze.
He felt her anger begin to rise from their shared telepathic pathway but she calmed herself. “That sounded genuine; like you really did expect me to do something about this.” She pointed at the space where the bead should be floating. “I thought you were gloating at first, though. I’m glad you think highly of me.”
“I have no reason to do that, Nyx. It’ll be childish of me. It’s just…” He thought about how to say what he wanted to say without sounding condescending. “I fought someone once in Terra Praeta — a succubus. Her psychic energy wasn’t as powerful as yours but she could manipulate space.”
“Muna has lived far more lives than any other being in Terra Praeta,” Achilleia said through their rings, startling them both. “She used to change succubi bodies like it was her personal wardrobe. All that process led her to become far more powerful than the average succubus. She was an exception, Jerome, not the rule.”
Jerome rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. He had forgotten about that fact. He looked Nyx in the eye and apologized, “Sorry about that.”
She rolled her eyes at him and looked away with a pout. She had a complicated expression he didn’t want to start deciphering so he changed topics.
“I’ll deal with this right away. We’re calling them void beads. Please, step aside,” he said. She gave him a side glance but did as he said, still pouting. The others gathered around to see what he wanted to do.
Jerome materialized Charybdis with a flourish. Just as with the previous void bead, he absorbed this one as well with his spear. He sucked the crystal stones hovering in the air into his void world and commenced to strip the dead Messengers of their armor.
“Ooh,” Csala exclaimed. “I feel so light.” She jumped — almost twenty feet in the air — and floated downward with a girly giggle. It was cute.
“That thing—” he thumbed the site of the contraption, “—was making…” Should he use the term ‘gravity’? “It was making us and the air heavier.”
“You could have just said gravity,” Nyx said with a knowing smirk. “Or didn’t you know what that is?”
Jerome was truly shocked this time that she knew the term, gravity. That was not a word he’d heard from any other person in this lifetime. He’d always looked past Nyx’s knowledge as he expected it of her as a dragon who inherited memories from some past ancestor.
This shouldn’t have phased him but it did, letting him know that she might have knowledge of the physics and chemistry of the world around, even though it’s just the basics. But something told him she would know more than just the basics.
He schooled his features but too late, Nyx was grinning at him like she just won a tournament. “Yeah, well. That’s an uncommon — and I dare say unknown — term in Vorthe, probably this world,” he said.
She frowned. Whether at the fact he knew what gravity was or the fact no one else knew but he did, he didn’t know. And honestly he couldn’t deal with her competitiveness right now.
Every other person was looking between them like they were speaking some alien language.
“Help me strip them of their armor,” Jerome said, changing the subject. “Can’t let good armor go to waste.”
Sheela gave him a look that said ‘We’re not done discussing what that was’ and said, “Leave it. What do you need all that useless armor for?”
Jerome smiled. He had an idea what this was about. “Well, have you seen anyone wearing metal armor in Vorthe before?”
Sheela chuckled. “No, but with good reason. They aren’t durable.” She pointed at what was left of a Messenger who had died a particularly brutal death — cleaved in half by what he supposed was a large blade. “Tara’s claw blade tore through them like they were cotton.”
“‘Claw blade’?” he asked, looking at Ms. Tara.
She shrugged. “It’s a nice name. You should also come up with a name for your spear.”
“Yes,” Csala said, rubbing her palm. “It’s a terrifying artifact.”
Ghost pains could be traumatic. Jerome looked at her with concern but she waved him off.
“It has a name. ‘Charybdis’. But back on topic. You’re wrong, Sheela,” he said, startling her. “Your leathers have wards woven into them. Imagine what it’ll be to have the same wards — with a little tweak, though — woven into metal armor. Vorthe makes and uses leather armor not because metal is a poor substitute, but because we lack the metal to make such armor in large quantities.
“Metal is expensive in this part of the world because we have very few mines where we can extract the ores for it. And I suspect the world as a whole is facing this predicament.”
“Then where did they get the ores to make all this?” she asked.
“A greater plane of existence.”
Silence breezed through the clearing in an instant. Jerome watched the different emotions play through their faces — all except for Nyx — as they slowly processed his words.
“I plan on taking everything useful from them,” he said, breaking them out of their stupor. “If they’re receiving help from some Divine Patron, who knows what we might find on them — especially those higher up in the chain of command.”
If they’d be able to take them on and win, that is. He was sure the Judges would fit into that category. Would they be able to absorb essence and become stronger as the Messengers did? On top of being able to wield ascended elements? Now that would just be overkill. Jerome half expected Achilleia to weigh in on his thoughts but she was silent. Probably busy.
“Busy, yes,” she said in his mind.
Everyone went to work, stripping the dead Messengers of their armor.
“Err… what do we do about him?” Sheela asked, thumbing in the direction of a Messenger — the one with the maintenance coveralls. He looked catatonic. His eyes were glazed over and spittle ran down the side of his face uncontrollably.
“Huh.” Jerome looked around confused. “What happened to him?”
Csala gave Nyx a sidelong look, suggesting to him that whatever was done to the maintenance guy was done by her. Nyx snapped her fingers and the maintenance guy burst into black flames. Jerome glared at her.
“I’ll need you to hold off using your flames for now, Nyx,” he said and the flames went out. She looked at him in confusion. “We should assume they can trace evidence of ascended elements.”
“Black flames!” Sheela whispered in fear. She took a step away from Nyx.
“That was an ascended element?” Ms. Tara asked.
Jerome caught the slight frown on the dragoness’ face before she could school her features.
“Let’s keep that between ourselves for now. Like a secret weapon.” He turned to Nyx. “Use the ring next time.”
“About the ring,” Csala said. “How do I get the essence to take the shape I want?”
Jerome smiled at her. “If you could wield essence naturally, you’d be able to change its shape as you go.” He knelt beside the burnt corpse of the maintenance Messenger. It was little more than a charred, black skeleton now. He absorbed it — including the surrounding soil that got burnt — into his void space. All in the bid to cover up the fact that an ascended element had been used here.
“But,” he continued, materializing Charybdis and stomping the butt of the spear on the ground. The ground vibrated and shifted, settling into itself as if nothing was ever amiss. “Since you’re using an artifact, you’d have to visualize what you want the essence to look like and how it should function before summoning it. You can’t change it after it’s been summoned.”
Csala scoffed in frustration.
“A suggestion though,” Jerome said and she focused back on him again. “Make it as solid as possible next time. The more essence you gather into a point, the more mass it contains.”
“Mass?” Sheela and Ms. Tara asked.
Jerome tilted his head, giving them both a questioning look. “What would you like to know?”
“This… ‘mass’. It makes essence solid?” Ms. Tara asked. Jerome saw curiosity burning in her eyes. Her question implied that mass was something different that could be added to essence.
Jerome held open his palm and a blue flame kindled upon it, hovering an inch over his hand. “The more essence I funnel into it, the more mass its core contains, and the stronger the flame.” He molded it into a sphere and compressed it. The sphere shrunk in size. “The smaller the radius, the heavier the core as I keep pumping essence into it, and the more damage it can do.”
He continued to funnel essence into the tiny sphere. Suddenly the concentration of essence in the air around them spiked. Heat began to pour out of the tiny sphere in waves. It pulsed… and turned white-blue, twinkling like a star in the night sky!
“Jerome!” Sheela and Ms. Tara cautioned.
Jerome stopped pumping essence into the sphere and absorbed it into himself. “It’s the way the cores in our bodies take form as well. It starts out gaseous and becomes solid over time. Because it gains enough mass to do so. The more you cycle and the more impurities you purge from your channels, the denser your core. But you also have to ‘squeeze’ it as you meditate.
“A piece of rock weighing a pound will do more damage than a pound of cotton if used as a weapon.”
“Huh? You can’t just compare a ball of cotton to a piece of rock. I mean… it’s rock.”
“And why is that?” Jerome asked. “Why can’t I compare them? They both weigh the same.” He shrugged.
Csala said, “Well, the rock is stronger… tougher?”
“And why is it tougher?” Jerome countered. “What does it mean for something to be tough… dense…?”
“That’s… it’s beginning to make a lot of sense,” Sheela said. She held her hands in front of her, fingers curled inward like claws and squeezed an invisible something only she was able to visualize. “I never thought of it that way.”
Jerome nodded. “You don’t have the words for it. That’s partly because of Vorthe’s educational system.” The other part was something he didn’t want to say out loud; that maybe words didn’t exist for these things yet. “Density is the word you’re looking for. It means the mass of the rock is tightly packed into its size. A ball of cotton is not the same thing. Its mass is loosely packed in its size.
“That’s why I said you also have to squeeze your core as you meditate. Don’t work on making it bigger. No; work on making it as small as possible, as tightly packed as possible. Because the term, ‘size matters’ doesn’t apply to your core. Its depth can surpass that of a person with a bigger-looking core.” That was a spatial thing but he didn’t want to get into it as he didn’t understand it quite well himself.
“Oh,” Ms. Tara muttered. The look on her and Sheela’s faces was all he needed to know that they’d been doing the opposite of what he just said.
“Well, glad I could provide you with some insights.” That was overstating it on his part. He only gave them a tidbit of the matter. At least he gave a definition they would be able to understand and hopefully use when next they cycled.
Before long they set out to the clearing where he destroyed the first gravity contraption. Jerome found the invisible void bead with the help of Achilleia and absorbed it into Charybdis. He was still flummoxed with how the void bead didn’t react to him when he destroyed the contraption.
Even Nyx said he must have passed straight through it as he shot down from the sky. But no one had any reasonable theory as to how it must have happened. They didn’t spend any time dwelling on the matter, though. There were Messengers to get rid of and his family to find.
“Anybody know how to ride a horse?” he asked, looking at the horses tied up ahead of them. Silence and the shake of heads met his question. “I guess we’re all walking then.”
He swallowed the horses with his psychic energy and pulled them into his void plane, causing Ms. Tara and Sheela to gape in shock.
“Your jaws are on the floor,” Csala whispered to them.
“Wait, how did you do that Jerome?” Sheela asked. “Storage rings can’t hold living things.”
“Well…” What should he tell her now? “I have an artifact.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie.
They headed east toward the mountain in the distance, destroying every gravity contraption and Messengers they found along the way.