PRESENTLY…
The keening winds from the dark passage ahead were soaked with the voices of forgotten souls. Dorja felt their residue. The stalagmites ended fairly quickly, and there was a surprising emergence of design all around her—walls carved at angles, a floor cleared and smoothed by someone’s expert labors, and stone steps leading down into a yawning darkness.
There were faces carved into walls, too, glimpses of ebon shapes that had been hidden for ages, slowly eroded by time and neglect. Farther down were statues that stood sentry by the stairs. Not human in design, but some ghastly tangle of tentacles with many eyes. They stood as silent witnesses to the long ages that crept by, slower than even the mineral-infused water that had dripped from the ceiling to form the huge stone columns that went from floor to ceiling.
Dorja had only three major passions: training martial arts, playing chakp’iir, and geology. The latter was a random interest of hers that served no purpose, just a hobby that had stayed with her since her study days. She knew that stalagmites and stalactites could not form without dripping water. That meant that at some point this cave had been warm. Warm enough to melt the ice likely frozen within its walls.
What could have done that?
Once she had gone deep enough, it became too dark to see. So Dorja extended her weeping hands and made the faery lights. That’s what she called them as a little girl, before her Master bid her to hide her gift, lest others see it as witchcraft. The faery lights were tiny orbs of faint purple and yellow light, which bubbled up from the palms of her weeping hands. It was not magic, but a natural displacement of something her mother had called qi, and much later the Master had called chi. She felt tiny particles of her skin peeling away, heating up, ballooning and floating off. The faery lights were an unstudied electrochemical reaction, native to very few of her species, and they glowed just well enough for Dorja to see her immediate surroundings.
The cave was all stillness, attended only by the watchful gazes of the stone creatures that flanked her on both sides. There were runes writ large on the ceiling. Dorja could barely read Galactic Standard, so she made no attempt to discern the runes’ meanings.
The wind soon faded. She was too far in.
Down and down, there were always more steps. She saw more runes, along with strange hieroglyphs, and pictograms of elongated tentacled bodies floating in space, hovering over planets. Dorja instantly recognized the Brood in those images, supercolossal predators that brought the Doom.
Dorja continued through the tomb-quiet darkness, her glaive up and at the ready in her reaching hands. Her weeping hands cast the faery lights about and she studied some of the images. She passed a hollow room with stone benches, and what appeared to be the frozen remains of a computer terminal and a tangle of wires. She inspected it all, then moved on, passing two more such chambers. She knew very little about computers, pretty much just how to turn them on and off. She came upon her first bones, though they were incomplete and she could not tell what animal they came from. It had been large, though. Non-humanoid.
Abruptly, the statues ended, as did the steps. The rest of the way down was a slight decline of natural, uneven rock, moving into a wide circular corridor. Dorja once more felt like she was walking into the gullet of some monster stepped from her mother’s storybooks.
This was when she began hearing low, susurrous noise. Voices. At first, she thought it was just a breeze that had found its way in through a hole in the ceiling, but Dorja did not feel any cool wind on her face, nor did she feel the cave grow any colder. The voices seemed urgent. They began as a dim hiss, but soon included guttural noises punctuated by changes in tone. Syllables.
“Turn back, Dorja,” said a small boy.
Dorja steeled herself. Turned slowly to face him.
The spirit of the frightened child was there. Dim, wavery, and clutching to the shadows just at the edge of her faery lights’ reach. Dorja trembled at the sight of him. It had been her curse since puberty to see the dead, to hear their confused ramblings and plaintive cries. It terrified her each time. Because she did not understand it. She did not understand why she was able to see them when no one else could. Her mother had explained that some of their people were able to see into the zero field. There is a thin skein between the physical world and that world, Mother had told her. Echoes of the dead still reverberate in that place where zero-point energy—the foundational power of the universe—comes from. We don’t know why. Not even the scientists who first studied our people knew why we evolved to see such things, and why it is such an unreliable gift.
Dorja also did not understand why all ghosts seemed to know her name. All spirits everywhere knew the name Dorja, as if the rumor of her passed among the dead. That, more than anything else, had always frightened her.
But she had learned to speak to them, and treat them with respect. Whatever gift had allowed her to press up against that thin skein between the worlds of the living and the dead, Dorja would not let herself be overcome by the fear of it. She would use it.
“How come you here, child?” she asked.
“You have to turn back now, Dorja,” the boy repeated. He would not step from the shadows, and when Dorja took a step closer to him, he seemed to remain just at the edge of her faery lights. His face was so dim, and yet she could make out pale white skin and brown eyes beneath a mop of brown hair. “You have to leave, Dorja.”
“Sweet child, tell Dorja what happened to you?”
“He won’t let us out. And if you don’t leave now, you’ll stay here too. Forever.”
“Dorja is not leaving, child. You know that, don’t you? She won’t leave while there is a girl to save.”
The boy’s eyes glittered in the faery lights. “Because as long as Dorja draws breath, help is always coming?” he asked.
Dorja smiled. “Yes.”
“I told them. I told the others you were coming. That’s why they’re all hiding. They don’t want you to find them.”
“Why?”
“Because if you find them, then you’ll be mad at the monster. You will fight it and you will die. We don’t want you to die, Dorja. No one else talks to us.”
Many spirits not only knew her name, but also knew her reputation. Dorja did not pretend to understand how it was possible that the rumor of her existence should pass between ghosts, no more than she worried about how starship engines worked. Much of the universe was a mystery to her, so why try to comprehend it all? All that mattered was one’s actions.
And the candle. Always the candle. That mattered most of all.
“Where is the one that did this to you?” she asked.
“There isn’t one,” the spirit said. “There’s two. The monster and the one holding its leash.”
“And where are they, little one?”
“You cannot fight them, Dorja. You aren’t strong enough.”
“Dorja is Dorja,” she said, never taking her eyes off the boy’s. “Now where are they? Tell Dorja, child, and let her end this evil.”
For a moment, she thought the boy would fade away and say nothing more. Many spirits did that when pushed. But finally, he lifted a tiny hand and pointed. Dorja followed his finger, and saw a narrow passage just off to her right.
“Thank you,” she said. “Dorja will—”
She stopped short. The boy had vanished. But not the whispers. Those still moved all around her, like wind through tall grass.
* * *
At last, Dorja came to a chamber lit by bright flickering light. Inside this chamber was a giant circle of stones, a prayer dais, several lit candles, a torch nestled in a wall sconce, and someone’s bed made out of strands of straw and bamboo, with an inflatable rubber mattress atop it. The room smelled of incense and jasmine. Strange to find that smell here. Reminded her of home. And the stench of sweat. Reminded her of the years of training at the Master’s side.
Also here, her enemy.
Dorja found him kneeling in the ring of candles. He was clothed in a humble black robe that was tied around his waist by a filthy red sash. His feet were covered in furred sandals. His eyes were closed but Dorja knew he was awake. She sensed it. He was facing a small shrine adorned with tiny statues of some ancient god. Unkempt red hair and beard. Broad-shouldered, with arms like tree trunks.
On the wall hung a ghastly black mask, with eyes of the reddest rubies. The castellan had said that the man riding atop Vash’tik had the reddest of eyes. Ruby-red, he had said.
At his side, a single sword was sheathed, one with a slightly curved blade and a hilt made out of ivory, encrusted with a single ruby.
It was said that some Zechi peoples believed the spirit of their warrior god, Abombix, was encased in the ruby of a warrior’s sword. Most people had strange beliefs about their blades, though, since guns had become scarce and a person’s only defense was usually a piece of sharpened metal.
“Where is the girl?” Dorja asked him coldly.
The robed figure took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Then he opened his green eyes, awakening from deep meditation, and rose to his feet. He turned to face her. Looked her in the eye. He was a hard-faced man with a dead stare and a face chiseled out of stone. Across his square jaw and hawk-like nose were crisscrossing scars that told stories of past battles. His lips were pressed thinly together, as though he was thinking hard on something. Quizzical eyes, bereft of any empathy for the world, gazed deeply into her.
Dorja was aware that his left hand rested on the hilt of his sword. The thumb was on the handguard and the pinky was slightly raised. A soft grip. The trademark of a Low Heaven practitioner.
“Why did you come here?” the swordsman asked, his voice cut from granite.
“Where is she?” Dorja asked again.
“Do you know, the Harbingers all say we should surrender ourselves to the Doom,” he said, looking away at something. His thumb slowly pushed his sword out of its sheath, but only a fraction of an inch. “They say we ought to do whatever we want, now that history is coming to an end. The Brood shall devour all worlds, and therefore morality has no meaning. We may all do as we please. Steal, murder, feed.” He nodded philosophically, and stroked his red beard. “For what good are good deeds when all things are ending?”
“You can surrender yourself to hopelessness as the Harbingers have done,” she said. “You can believe the First Lie. But Dorja does not bow to despair.”
“First Lie? What is the First Lie?”
“You suffer from despair. All despair comes from pain, and all pain comes from the First Lie. What someone told you to make you believe this was the only way. That is the First Lie. Someone told you you were no good, or that you are a disappointment, or that you have no worth. That is the First Lie. The First Lie is different for everyone, and we must learn to detect it, so that we do not fall into despair.”
The man’s eyes lit up in genuine surprise. “It is commendable that you believe that. Adorable, even.” He smiled. Then, something seemed to strike him as odd. “Dorja? You said your name is Dorja? Dorja…” He nodded. “I know this name. Upon my travels I encountered tales of a four-armed freak. The Blademaiden of Gomolt, the Blue Villainess of Niikt. They say you tore through the gangs in the alleys of Westerhold’en. That was a decade ago or more. I heard you died.”
“You heard wrong. Dorja lives. She stands before you.”
“Such a specimen. I wonder, are there others like you?”
Dorja did not answer.
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“Hmph. Must be lonely. I understand loneliness. What it does to the mind. It did the same to Syyd, and to Kajima the Unworthy. We bladesmen must all succumb to it, I suppose.” He shrugged and looked up at the ceiling. “But a lonely galaxy is all the Brood have left us, isn’t it?”
Dorja did not answer.
The swordsman looked over at her glaive. “That blade. Made of compristeel?”
Dorja watched him, but did not answer.
He nodded. “Fine craftsmanship. I know of only three smiths left in the Nadir Empire that can mold compristeel into such a blade. It’s my understanding that the last factory producing such weapons was on…let’s see, Titan’s Glory? But the Brood feasted on that planet more than a dozen years ago. So where did you get that one?”
“Dorja doesn’t have time for this,” she hissed. “She came for the girl! Where are you keeping her?”
With his thumb, the swordsman pushed his sword a little bit further from its sheath. “Fascinating. You came all this way, climbed the Amon’tha, risked hypothermia, risked falling, hunger, and death, all for one little girl?” He snorted out a chuckle. “Why, may I ask?”
“Because Dorja is Dorja, and she comes for people in need.”
“Ah, yes, so I’ve heard it said. But what about my needs?”
“What needs are those?”
“Life, Dorja. I am old. Far older than you can comprehend. The last supply of regens ran out years ago, there is no way to reverse the aging process for any of us anymore. A galaxy full of people who once had no fear of death, and now we must contend not only with old age once more, but with the Brood, with the end of all things. And without regens, our bodies are now making up for lost time. My body withers, Dorja. It withers and I will die without proper sustenance.” He smiled sadly. “You make it a habit out of coming for those in need?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because no one else will.”
“So you’ve assumed a role in the universe simply because the position has not been filled?”
Dorja sneered at him. “It is easy to give up when everyone else does. To give in to base desires. That is the easy path. Dorja does not like the easy path. You may have given up on the universe and that is fine for you, but when you go about kidnapping children, eating them, that puts you in Dorja’s sights.”
The swordsman smirked, and it wrinkled the scars on his face. “That must put you in conflict with a great many people these days.”
“Ask the raiders on Gotan-VII, or the ravagers who burned the monk temples on Vaspiir, or the Nightmare Sisters of the Far Reach.”
The swordsman squinted, shook his head. “I’ve never heard of any of those people.”
“And no one ever will again,” Dorja promised him. “Because Dorja found them first. She found them after they butchered and robbed whole colonies. She found them, she fought them, she broke them. This is what Dorja does. Just as the Brood go about their business, stubborn and with purpose, so too does Dorja go about her duty. Inexhaustible, unwavering. She has a vow, and she means to keep it.”
“Vow? What vow do you keep, creature?”
“To preserve the candleflame Dorja’s mother lit in her heart, and which the Master fostered and developed when he put the blade in her hand. And she intends to spread the flame.”
“A candleflame,” he said, bemused. “In your heart.” He lifted both eyebrows, viewed her with renewed respect, perhaps even awe. This expression turned sour. To pity. “You poor, poor thing. You still think there’s a chance for us, don’t you? You still believe there is room for warmth in this galaxy. For love.” He shook his head woefully. “You poor, poor thing.”
“Enough of this,” she said, and started to walk around him.
Dorja had grown both weary and anxious of this talk. She meant to step around him, and if he wanted to speak his sad philosophy, let him do it to air.
In a flash of movement, he drew his sword iaido fashion, the blade glimmering in the weak light of the torch on the wall behind him. He held the blade out to his side, barring her path. Dorja leapt back and brought up her glaive with her reaching hands. Behind her, her weeping hands slid into the two pockets of her armored chestplate, grabbed hold of the two small knives sheathed there.
She crouched low on her lead leg, straightening out her rear leg and aiming the tip of her glaive at her enemy’s face.
The swordsman looked over her form. “You practice tan jekk, yes?” he said. “High Heaven? A rigid style. I always wanted to test myself against it.”
“Where is the girl?” Dorja asked. “Where is Vash’tik? I won’t ask again.”
Slowly, he pulled the hilt of his sword to his chest, gripped it tight in both hands, then lowered it in chudan no kamae.
Both of them had assumed dueling stances. Appropriate for only two combatants with little space to move. There was a quiet moment when all Dorja could hear was her own heartbeat. Their blades faced each other in silence, holding centerline.
Then…the swordsman took a half step forward. Dorja did not move.
They stayed like this for a while, while dust fell from the ceiling and the universe ended all around them in silence.
At last, he came forward with two quick, questing thrusts, to judge her reactions. Dorja easily deflected them. The swordsman smiled. Took a half step to her right. Dorja pivoted slowly to adjust to him. He lowered his blade so that its tip faced the ground. Slowly, he drew the blade back, so that it was hidden behind him.
All at once he lunged at her. He came with a thrust, directed at her head. Dorja slipped to one side, evading it. He thrust again and she parried easily. He followed with a thrust at her throat and she ducked beneath it while shuffle-stepping forward. He shuffle-stepped backward, keeping away from her long weapon. Their blades danced around one another, singing their one-note song in a furious exchange, searching for an entry.
The swordsman came close to her chest on one attempt. Advanced. Parried one of her attacks and slashed at her neck. Dorja push-stepped backwards and brought her glaive up in a defensive position. She held it out at full length, keeping him at a distance.
The swordsman wore a brief predatory smile.
He began to circle her. Slowly. His sword was pointed up at her as both a threat and a tactic—by looking down the length of the blade, he made it difficult for her to judge the reach of it. An old tactic with long blades. She did the same to him.
The swordsman took a step forward. Then another.
He was good. Experienced enough to be patient and test for mistakes, rather than trying to force them, knowing he could defend himself long enough for it to happen. Her Master had been such a bladesman; highly defensive and executing a battle of attrition.
Dorja altered her tactics. Now she shifted the glaive into her two right arms—she gripped the middle with her reaching hand, and the butt of it with her weeping hand. She held the butt up high, so that the blade itself was pointed down, nearly touching the cold stone floor. Her back was straight but her back leg was bent low, while her front leg was straight out in front of her. She lowered her center of gravity so it would be easier to hold her ground if he pressed her again.
The swordsman nodded approvingly. “Elegant,” he said.
He took a half step forward. Gave another questing thrust, which she easily deflected in a wheeling motion with her glaive. Then he came at her with a furious series of blows, then backed off, then came at her again, then backed off yet again. Testing her, wearing her down. Dorja was starting to breathe heavily, the climb up the Amon’tha had nearly drained her. The swordsman wasn’t even sweating.
“Dorja only wants the girl,” she panted. “You don’t have to do this. You said you want only life.”
“And I will have it,” he said. “Vash’tik promised it to me. The girl is the price I paid.”
Dorja’s lips parted in astonishment. “You…are not the master?” she said, confounded. “You are the servant. Vash’tik controls you, not the other way around. What is—?”
The swordsman took advantage of her confusion and lunged at her, screaming.
Dorja deflected the first flurry of strikes, their blades connecting and singing and echoing in the cave. Her position did not falter, she kept centered in her stance, but suddenly, he changed stances, and a few of his strikes started to get through her defenses, making small cuts on her armored sleeves. The man’s power was incredible, his skill with a blade exceptional.
The swordsman saw he was making progress, and took it up a notch, circling Dorja while continuing a hail of confusing blows. He found his moment, an opening on her left, and she was too slow to stop him. He rushed in, batting her blade away with his, and shoulder-checking her ribs, knocking the wind out of her and staggering her off balance. He pressed her, taking her by surprise and forcing her out of her low stance. Her confidence fled her. Long had it been since any sort of bladesman exhibited this level of skill against her.
His blade hissed closer to her head. Now closer.
Dorja transitioned to Form Five, an offensive form, which had a taller stance, looser footwork, and utilized fast, staccato attack patterns. She adjusted her grip on the glaive. By moving her hands up the shaft and closer to the blade, it gave greater control in close quarters. And since her enemy was so determined to close the distance…
She came at him with a flurry of blows, which appeared to surprise him, yet he blocked all of them. He was having to adjust, though, changing up his footwork to something less mobile to avoid her overpowering him.
Dorja continued forward, pushing her enemy back, back, back. Their blades crashed and glanced off one another in a flurry too difficult to follow.
Parry, thrust, parry, deflect, dodge, parry, thrust, slash, thrust, parry, parry, parry—
She became aggressive to invite him in. Take the bait, she thought. Come on, now, take the bait—
Her enemy took the bait, lunging at her when he saw his opening.
Now Dorja surprised him further by using her weeping hands to pull the two knives from her rear pockets. While she parried his sword with her glaive, her weeping hands stabbed at him with five-inch blades, which he avoided by dancing away. Dorja was not going for any of his vitals, she merely needed to disable one of his limbs, that’s all. And for that she needed one solid opening.
But he surprised her by holding his sword in one hand, freeing up the other to catch the wrist of her left weeping hand and twisting it and disarming the knife. The small blade clattered to the floor and he kicked it away. He did it again seconds later when Dorja came at him with another flurry. He did it almost effortlessly, and smiled with each success.
Now he advanced.
His next thrust punctured her armor.
Dorja slid her blade down his in a gissard technique, until her blade smashed into the handguard and knocked it to one side, then saw her opening and blinded him with the faery lights, which burned brightly from her weeping hands. He screamed, and she sliced across the back of his hand. Blood fell from his hand and spattered on stone. Wroth, and roaring, the swordsman came at her with three fierce thrusts, his movements a blur. Dorja dodged the first time, but the third drew a thin red light across her left cheek and she felt the cold kiss of his blade. Blood flowed down her face.
Fear seeped into Dorja.
She thought she heard the mountain say, I told you. The child is mine to keep. The Stone Gods were laughing.
Dorja gave vent to her rage. “No!” she shouted, and leapt at her enemy.
Their blades connected in short, questing strikes, looking for openings, their hands entering the fray whenever they saw a chance. Their hands were in trapping range, grabbing and snatching and deflecting whatever they could. He landed a punch across her jaw, and Dorja delivered a palm strike to his chest with her left weeping hand. She parried his blade to one side, slapped his wrist with her right weeping hand to guide his sword off centerline, then spin-kicked him in the gut, sending him staggering backward.
The swordsman, sweating and panting, dropped into a lower stance, and his blade started coming up at her in rising attacks, which completely undermined her defenses. She was forced to switch to Second Form, a wider stance with a wider grip on her glaive, using the whole shaft to deflect her enemy’s blade while her weeping hands shone in his face.
And then she surprised him again by spinning and attacking with the butt of the glaive, hitting him in the chest centerline, sending him backward.
His breath left him. He gasped. He staggered. Barely kept himself upright.
Before he could recover, Dorja took advantage of the moment and attacked, using Sixth Form tactics. She kept light on her feet, dancing left and right before launching herself at him, feinting high and low randomly, breaking up the rhythm of the fight as much as possible. Once more, she adjusted her grip on her glaive, sliding her hands to the end of the shaft and pushing the blade forward, keeping him at a distance while she swiped at his leg and cut it open.
The swordsman’s fury manifested in another enraged howl. He looked at the blood running down his leg and hand. Then looked at her.
“Dorja is merciful,” she panted, beads of sweat running into her eyes. “She does not kill.”
“Then you are a fool!”
“Dorja will spare you, let you stand trial, if you will just give her—”
“The child is mine!” he roared, and came at her.
She ducked one of his swings, and the blade hissed above her head and knocked the torch off the wall. The faery lights glowed from her weeping hands, casting both their faces in a ghostly pallor.
He’s getting tired, she thought. At last, he’s found the limits of his stamina.
Indeed, the swordsman’s movements, before so crisp and smooth, were now heavy, sluggish, not well timed.
He’s strong, and he’s had lots of training, but I doubt he’s had a real opponent in ages. I have to wear him down.
Keeping it light, she parried all his attacks off the centerline, pressing her own counterattacks to his chest, until at last she lured him forward, got him to overextend himself. He swung at her blade. She pulled back. He missed, tripped, and fell forward. The tip of his blade hit the floor and Dorja immediately pinned it with the butt of her glaive, then rammed her shoulder into his chest.
“Oof!” he exhaled.
He staggered back, tried to raise his sword, but Dorja snaked her left weeping hand around his injured wrist and yanked. The sword went flying out of his hand and skittered across the floor. She grabbed the collar of his robe and pulled him forward and headbutted him. His nose crunched as it shattered and blood began to spill down his shirt in a red waterfall.
In desperation, he threw a wild punch at her, and Dorja held her glaive in one hand so that her other three could parry, deflect, and counterattack his punches. She pummeled him. She smashed his chest, neck, and head with wave after wave of fists and palms. When Dorja finally landed a chop to his neck, the swordsman’s whole body seized up like he had been electrocuted, and he fell backward, smacking his head against the cold stone wall.
Dorja stood over him, breathing heavily, the tip of her blade at his neck.
With a sudden violent jerk, he batted away her blade and started to crawl over to his own blade. Dorja stepped on his hand. “Where is the girl?” she demanded.
He looked up at her and bellowed, “Why…why don’t you just finish it? Eh? Like you did with those raiders you talked about? The ones on Gotan-VII! Go ahead! Finish me!”
“Foolish man,” she said. “Dorja has told you, she does not kill. She does not sully herself with the souls of her enemies. She is an agent of the Light.” She raised one weeping hand, the fingers curled and the muscles quivering. “Behold Dorja’s mercy.”
With a loud crack, she struck his left temple. His head snapped to one side and he went unconscious.
The cave went silent.
Dorja wiped the blood from her cheek. The cut might need stitches, but that could wait.
The fight over, taking in deep breaths through her nose, Dorja gathered her senses. She exhaled slowly, feeling the tension leave her body. Then, in the silence, she heard something.
A child.
Weeping.
image [https://i.imgur.com/f6fHUfp.jpeg]