“When you are weak, make them think you are strong. When you are strong, make them think you are weak.” This, she reiterated constantly in those years when it was just her and I. I never knew what those words meant, not until we met Syyd. – Commentary on the Second Precept of the Way of the Candle, documented at the Lectures of Turtle the Bladesman, at her appearance at Fallinar College on D’erdigan-IV [date unknown, considered apocryphal]
They had entered the slipstream, and would now be traveling over a thousand light-years before exiting the warp bubble and coming to a habitable system. During the journey, Dorja made sure to check in with Turtle and the others. Kirek needed no looking after, he knew how to ration the food brought onboard and made zero overtures to engage anyone in either conversation or sport. The Kennisons also kept to themselves, staying in their room at almost all hours, only exiting to retrieve some bit of water or food from the boxes they had stored in the cargo hold.
Dorja wasn’t sure, but it might have been her training that kept them all out of her way.
Since there were no dawns or sunsets on a spaceship, daycycles and nightcycles were set by the AI itself. Each daycycle, after checking in with Turtle to make sure she was still hale, Dorja jogged back and forth down Veringulf’s short corridors. After that, she would perform squats, jogged in place, and gripped the ridges above bulkheads for pull-ups. She did push-ups, first with her reaching hands, then with her weeping hands, and finally on all four hands. A slow, full-body stretch came next. Her ribs seemed to be fully healed, the nanite injections had done their job.
Suitably warmed up, she then took her glaive in hand and went to the cargo hold, where there was the most room. She moved slowly, practicing each of the twenty-seven kata with grace and precision. Slow is smooth, the Master had told her two decades before. And smooth is fast. So learn to do things slowly, so you don’t make any mistakes. This creates smoothness of motion. Move smoothly, efficiently, with no wasteful motions. This creates speed.
But speed and endurance must be tested, and the body must be pushed. So, with gradual build-up, she began striking at imaginary enemies. She kept rigid at first, going for power over suppleness. With increasing confidence, she began spinning and twirling, handing off her glaive between all four hands, striking at air with blurred motions. On each strike she exhaled, hissing like a snake. As she added more speed and even more power, Dorja began to grunt, growl, spit, and occasionally laugh. Once or twice Kirek peeked his head in. Dorja was in such a state of flow that she hardly noticed.
Kirek leaned against a bulkhead, watching her in awe, wondering, Where does this specimen come from? In all his travels throughout the Kingdom, he’d only ever encountered a handful of xenos species—aliens were rarer than even the few remaining human civilizations. But while most of those xenos were at least humanoid in shape and design, none had ever looked this human. If not for that blue skin and those two spare arms, anyone could easily see her as a woman, easily fall in love with her, easily be her friend. So what black science created her? Or is she some subspecies of human never before recorded?
While Kirek wondered about Dorja, Dorja pointedly ignored his presence, focusing instead on her training. She used her reaching hands to wield the glaive, while her weeping hands began to glow with their faery lights. She made fists with her weeping hands and struck at the air. She replayed the fight with the swordsman a dozen times, throwing knees, kicks, and elbows in a flurry of blows, imagining what she could have done differently to end the fight quicker.
Kirek eventually returned to the hallway junction, to sleep in his bundle of blankets on the floor. He didn’t sleep in the cockpit anymore, it was just too cramped. He splayed out in the junction, and didn’t mind whenever someone stepped over him to get to the washroom.
Two of the Kennisons’ children peeked in, but were frightened when Dorja happened to turn towards them and swung her glaive in their direction by accident. One of the girls screamed and ran away. That’s when Dorja came to a halt, panting and sweating. She drank water from Veringulf’s water recycler, then went in search of the girls.
Dorja assumed the girls had returned to their parents’ room, so knocked twice and waited patiently. A chime sounded as someone inside the room activated the door panel. When the door shunted to one side, Dorja stood there barehanded. She had hidden her glaive down the hall, lest it frighten the children again.
The woman who answered was Hela Kennison, her oversized, fleshless, synthware hand holding the door open. Her remaining eye gazed balefully out at Dorja. “Yes? What is it?” she said tersely. Her voice was like the dry winds across a Veedenbek desert.
Dorja bowed her head slightly. “Dorja came to apologize. She did not see the two children watching her in the cargo hold. She thought she was alone. When Dorja swung her glaive, she frightened the children. She wanted to make it clear she isn’t—”
“It’s fine,” Hela said shortly. “Apology accepted. Is that all?”
Dorja tilted her head to one side. “Yes.”
“Thank you.”
The door shunted closed quickly, and Dorja heard words being murmured inside the room. She pressed her ear to the door and listened. She heard the husband, Luke, saying, “Who was it?”
“It was that blue witch,” Hela said, and Dorja could imagine her making the sign of abjuration with her hands. “Irrithóir help us, I should never have let you convince me to bring the children aboard with her!”
“It was our only chance, love. If we hadn’t—”
“Spare me! At least with the Brood we might’ve died with our souls intact! That one’s just as likely to reap our souls in the night—”
“She’s going to eat our souls?” one of the children squeaked.
“No, Alice,” said Luke. “Your mother’s just being silly.”
“I’m not being silly!” Hela shouted. “Stop lying to them! Stop sheltering them from the true evils in this galaxy—”
“You’re scaring them, love. Quiet down.”
“They should be scared. They should be aware of what that freak might do. They should be on the lookout! None of you are to leave this room, do you understand?”
Dorja could hear no more. Her weeping hands had automatically gone up to touch at her cheeks and brush the tears away before they could fall. Foolish Dorja! she chastised herself. Had she learned nothing? Helping others did not mean that they would be grateful or endeared toward her. In fact, in Dorja’s experience, that was rarely the case. And she hated herself for the tears that had almost fallen. What had she expected, to be friends with the Kennisons? Had she really hoped that having people aboard her ship and sharing her food would somehow ingratiate them, create a kind of gestalt, a friendliness?
It shocked Dorja that loneliness still did this to her.
She turned away from the door and nearly shouted when she bumped into Kirek, who looked at her and said, “Are you all right?”
“Dorja is fine.” She stepped around him.
“Are you sure? Are you—?”
“Dorja is Dorja.”
Back in the cargo bay, she picked her glaive up and went back to her forms. The forms were a way to clear her mind. By focusing on trying to get the sequences right, her mind was distracted from all else. And it worked. For a time.
Tun darik was a fighting style without clear origins, and, many would claim, with a forgotten purpose. It was said that there were secrets to the origin of Man woven into the forms, tales of human history integrated into movements whose meanings were now lost.
But there were other meanings to tun darik. Deadlier ones. Part performance, the basic forms of were designed to deceive both laymen and experienced martial artists, a means to hide techniques within forms that resembled dance. In essence, the forms were a secret “user’s manual” for those practicing tun darik, with the thousands of moves encrypted in the message of each dance.
It ought to be like a poem, her Master told her. The lines rhyme, they have a natural rhythm, and yet there are double meanings to every word, every stanza. You need to learn to move like a poet writes.
Later, when she went to check on Turtle, she found the girl’s room empty. Dorja searched all over the ship, in the small galley, in the hallway junction, she even woke Kirek from his sleep to ask about Turtle, but he hadn’t seen her. Dorja felt a low panic setting in, and walked around inspecting every nook, every crate of cargo. She tasked both Joshua and Newpik with helping her, and was relieved when she finally found Turtle in the last place she expected. The girl was sitting in the pilot’s seat in the cockpit, looking out at black space. “Where are all the stars?” Turtle said in a low whisper. She never looked at Dorja, but seemed to sense her presence.
Dorja leaned her glaive against a wall and sat in the copilot’s seat next to her. “It happens when ships go faster-than-light,” she said, breathing a small sigh of relief. “The stars vanish from the direction you are traveling, and gather behind the spacecraft. It is just an illusion. Dorja has heard it called the Doppler effect.”
“How does it work?”
“It’s…” Dorja trailed off. Then she laughed shortly. “You know what? Dorja does not know much about it herself.”
“But this is your ship, isn’t it?”
“It is now. It wasn’t always. Dorja just keeps it working as best she can.”
Turtle’s big brown eyes looked around at all the controls. “I didn’t used to see starships. Ever. But once they took me…I saw them all the time, but never got to go up to the cockpit and look out. Who builds them? Where do they all come from?”
“No one knows,” Dorja said.
“Then how do so many people have starships?”
Dorja sighed. The question had mystified her a great many nights, as well. “The way it was explained to Dorja was like this. Millions of years ago, a race known as the Strangers took to the stars, and dominated much of the galaxy, and created cities made of compristeel, an alloy only they knew how to create. Then, they disappeared, leaving their cities behinds. They did not die out, as far as anyone can tell, they just…left. Then, thousands of years ago, starships were built by many different peoples. Humans, mostly. They explored space, met other sentient beings, xenos—like Dorja’s people—and they occupied many of the Strangers’ former cities. They spread the knowledge of how to build starships far and wide, and an empire formed, a thing called a hegemony. Many wars tore it apart, but when it was finally over, the Kingdom was formed. More starships were built than ever before.
“Then, one by one, worlds started winking out of existence. The Brood had come, and began eating worlds. Slowly at first, but always unstoppable, and they kept going until eventually there was nowhere left to build shipyards—shipyards are places where starships were built. Since it can take centuries to terraform one planet, the people of the Kingdom could not keep up. They all ran out of places to run from the Brood. We are their descendants, living inside the monuments they built, flying the antique crafts they constructed.
“We still have some knowledge, like how to purify helium-3 and pycnodeuterium to make starship fuel pellets, but too few remain who possess the Old Knowledge. A few worlds are left that are advanced enough to make decent tech, but most of them have been cut off from each other, unable to cross spacelanes littered with the Brood.”
Turtle considered that, looking out the cockpit, out at black nothingness. Then she said, “What are you?”
Dorja squinted. “What does Turtle mean by that?”
“You have a sword…or whatever you call it.” She pointed to Dorja’s glaive. “But you said you’re not a raider, that you fight bad people.”
“Yes. Dorja is a bladesman.”
“What is a bladesman?”
Dorja sighed. How best to sum it up for a child? “Projectile weapons—that is, any weapon that goes bang or zap, and shoots bullets or plasma beams or lasers from far away—those require advanced tech. They require factories and smart people who know how to make them, they require resources to be dug up by industries that turn them into parts for pistols, rifles. But with the Doom, the systems that keep industry going has ground to a halt. Almost everywhere, this has happened. So, with time, people turned back to blades. Guns are still out there, you might’ve seen a few, but they are few and far between.
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“A bladesman, however, is someone who specializes in the art of blade fighting, an artist in martial combat. Some only do it for study, some do it for sport or exercise, and some do it for a higher calling. Dorja does it for a higher calling.” She shrugged. “But she has been confused for a blade merchant. That is, a certain kind of bladesman that uses their skills for Coin.” She shrugged again. “Then there are takkhahaak, bladesmen who seek out other bladesmen to fight.”
“Why do they do that?”
“To test their skills.”
“Why?” Turtle asked innocently.
Dorja again searched for terms a child would understand. “Because they want to be the best. Because the Doom has left us largely without laws, or, at least, without laws we can all agree on. Once the Doom started, people called Free Rangers became sort of a volunteer service of law-enforcers, but even they are mostly disbanded now, scattered across the stars. So, the takkhahaak can kill one another with abandon.”
“They…kill one another?”
Dorja nodded. “Yes.”
“Are you takhawka?”
Dorja smiled. “No, sweet Turtle. Dorja is Dorja.”
The girl seemed to consider that. Dorja waited patiently. The girl needed time and space, and Dorja was on the girl’s clock, not her own. Now was the time for letting it sink in. At last, Turtle looked out the cockpit window, at all the black nothingness, and asked, “Will the Brood eat everywhere?”
Dorja thought that question was so simple, and yet it had every excuse to be asked. Will the Brood eat everywhere? A simple question that most adults feared even uttering, because of the hopelessness of it. Dorja sighed again. “Dorja does not know. All she can do is keep moving, keep helping people, and make sure her candle stays lit.” She smiled. “And Turtle’s candle, too.”
Turtle looked at Dorja, her eyes curious and innocent. “Do I really have the candle, too?”
“Yes, child. You have it now. Dorja has only just started sharing her flame to light yours. One day, when you are ready, Dorja will charge you with the same quest her mother gave her.”
“What quest?”
“The quest to spread the flame, so that others do not behave so cruelly, here at the end of all things. We must be good to one another, even in darkest times. We must do no evil, and we must stop evil men and women from doing their work. We must feed those that need feeding, and clothe those that need clothing.” Even as she spoke the words verbatim, Dorja heard her mother speaking them to her, even as she carried Dorja on the way home from the market…
“So…the candle reminds you to be kind to others?” asked Turtle.
Dorja came out of her reverie, and looked at the wee girl. “Yes, but that’s not all it does. It also reminds you of who you are. It keeps you warm when the world tries to make you cold. And the world will try. You must listen to Dorja, Turtle. She knows. The natural state of the universe is coldness, and both light and warmth have to have fuel in order to exist. Without fuel, suns die out, solar systems become uninhabitably cold, everything dies. And without proper fuel, the heart dies. Understand? You and Dorja carry the candle. It will be our job to spread its flame.”
Turtle looked confused.
Dorja laid a reaching hand on the girl’s tiny hand. “But don’t be overwhelmed by all Dorja’s talk. That is not Turtle’s job right now. Right now, your job is to eat and sleep and be happy. Dorja’s job is to teach you what you need to know in order to survive on your own someday, and to foster the flame of your candle. For now, leave the burdens of the Kingdom on Dorja’s shoulders. She can handle them.”
Turtle pulled her hand away from Dorja’s. Dorja was shocked, and tried not to be offended. She started to apologize to Turtle for whatever she had done, but before she could, the girl launched herself out of the captain’s seat and threw herself into Dorja’s arms, hugging Dorja with surprising strength, like they were both lost in an ocean and if either of them separated they would never find each other again.
Slowly, Dorja brought all four of her arms around Turtle, and kissed the top of her head. Dorja was trembling ever so slightly.
“I’m scared, Dorja,” the girl sniffed. “I don’t know of what, but I’m always scared now.”
One of Dorja’s weeping hands came up to touch her cheek, and wiped a tear away. This touch…these small arms wrapped around her. How long had it been? Her mother…yes, her mother had been the last to hold her like this, with total trust. The Kingdom was mostly filled with humans, and none of them liked the look of her, they were all xenophobes, despising the Brood and mistrustful of any sentient creature that wasn’t them. But now these little arms were around her and someone was showing trust in her. Giving affection. She almost couldn’t bear it.
In a universe so cold and dark, Dorja had started to think that hope was collapsing, like a failed star, unable to produce enough energy to keep itself going, doomed to become a black void of despair, dousing all joy. There were times when she even believed…that maybe the candle…couldn’t be spread? That she was the only one who could have a candle? Doubts often crept in, especially on long, cold journeys through space, when all she had were the blade forms and her own thoughts. Long had she journeyed alone, practicing all that the Master had taught her. Long had she been without a compass.
Here, Dorja, she told herself. Here is your compass.
Her blue hands trembled with the exultation of at long last having someone show her trust, kinship and acceptance.
“Listen to Dorja, Turtle. Are you listening?”
Turtle sniffled again and nodded against her chest.
“The Kingdom is full of fiends, but should those fiends ever come for Turtle, then Dorja will throw herself at them, her and her glaive, and she will fight all of them until you are safe. Do you understand? Dorja will fight all creatures in the universe to protect you, and none shall stand in her way.”
Turtle pulled herself away from Dorja. “Then why are we going to Wyrmdov? It seems so dangerous.”
Dorja searched for the words to explain. “Because there are bad men there. The same bad men that hurt Turtle, kidnapped her.”
“So?”
“They kidnapped another girl about your age. Her name is Senjelica.”
“So?”
“So, as long as Dorja draws breath, help must always be coming for those who need it. It is the vow. The Oath of the Candle.”
“But why you?”
“Because no one else will. Because no one else cares.”
“But…” Turtle wiped her eyes. “But you just said you would keep me safe.”
“Dorja will. She has sworn it. Turtle saw what Dorja did to the swordsman. To Vash’tik. Dorja can keep her safe.”
“Not if we go back there,” Turtle said, pulling away. Dorja felt the moment slipping away, and inwardly she panicked. “If we go back there, they’ll find me. And hurt me!”
“They won’t. You will be safe on this ship—”
“No!” Turtle cried, tears running down her face. “No, you can’t! I don’t want to go back there!”
“Turtle, listen—”
“No, you lied to me! You lied!” She turned and ran out of the cockpit.
“Turtle?” Dorja said, lump catching in her throat. “Turtle, w-wait. Listen to Dorja.”
But the moment had passed, like a dream. Turtle had disappeared down the corridor, back into her room. Dorja could hear the door shunt closed, and stood there looking at her hands, which, for a brief moment, had held hope in their palms.
She looked out the viewport, out at the blank and empty space ahead. She heard the Master’s voice say, It isn’t over. There is still hope. You behaved similarly when I found you. You rejected me. Recall, you fled from me. Yet I found you. And you will find Turtle. It isn’t over. It has just begun.
Dorja turned away, lifted her glaive, and went back to her training.
* * *
More and more, Dorja found herself spending time alone training in the cargo hold for no better reason than to avoid eye contact with anyone, including Turtle, she was ashamed to say. A week passed. Then another. Dorja trained and the others kept to themselves, passing like ghosts through the corridors. Kirek nodded curtly whenever he saw her, like one professional to another. The one time Dorja engaged Turtle in the hallway, there was a predictable argument, where the girl just asked to be left alone. Had Dorja exercised even the slightest thought and caution, and heeded the girl’s pouting demeanor, she would have seen that coming. It suddenly struck her, Mother and Master taught me so well, but never taught me how to be a teacher. I’ve never done it. I know how to love things, how to care for them, but that isn’t sufficient to teaching, for raising. Those are different skills.
What can I do?
Through the teachings of her many Masters, Dorja had gotten to know herself well, had been admonished for any weaknesses exposed in training. She had learned to recognize the signs of a downward spiral into self-pity that occasionally took over during the loneliest of times. For her, training had always been the antidote.
And meditation.
Through meditation, she sought to peel back the decades, to travel back through time and try to recall what it was her mother and Master Jerrod had done at times like these. Dorja recalled those years with in vivid detail, and imagined herself not as the child she had been, but as the adults in her life, and how they must’ve viewed her back then.
And that’s when she realized there was a time to be subtle. Emulating how her Masters had treated her when she was a stubborn child, Dorja began speaking only in short, declarative statements to Turtle, and whenever she had to ask a question, it was a simple yes or no. “It is time to eat” and “Do you need your clothes washed?” and “Bring me your dirty dishes.” Simple. Something that invited no debate, brooked no argument, and made no judgements.
And she created patterns. Structure. Meals were served at the same times each day, and Dorja kept her training routines scheduled at the same time, and ending at the same time, just so that Turtle would know where to find Dorja if she needed her, and when.
Structure, balance, predictability and routine. She could almost hear her Master saying it now.
It was through meditating on her formative years that she suddenly reached this new wisdom, that learning to live and to love and to train had not been so easy for her—it had been instilled in her by masters, by a mother, through patient listening and stern rules. Pleasant, yet not passive, Dorja now realized, thinking back on her mother’s approach to parenting. Understanding, but not overly indulgent, Dorja thought, thinking back on the Master’s approach to ingraining discipline.
It began to work. Slow gains, just like in training. Slow, slow gains. Turtle showed up for meals at mealtime, though she spoke little, if at all. Turtle cleaned her own room at the start of each daycycle, she obeyed when asked to help Newpik and Joshua clean the fuel cells (the access shaft was narrow, and her tiny form was actually a benefit).
The Kennisons rarely came out of their room, and Dorja was fine with that. She had saved who needed saving, they could hate her all they wanted. What mattered most was that Turtle saw her example of not hating the Kennisons for who they were. The structure was working. It gave Turtle’s mind little place to wander, it even made her feel useful, and it made the daycycles and nightcycles predictable enough that even Kirek, without knowing it, began falling into the routine. A few times, without even having to be told, he’d gone to knock on Turtle’s door to remind her of dinnertime.
The structure was working. Dorja felt content. Once Veringulf reached this Wyrmdov place, she resolved to not to be away from the ship for too long, so as to maintain the structure.
* * *
“We’re going to learn to meditate,” Dorja told Turtle, as they entered the cargo hold. She had laid out pillows on the floor and now gestured to one of them. “Turtle will sit there. Dorja will sit across from her.”
Dorja watched as Turtle stared at the pillows, at the candles lit all around the room. Tentatively, the small girl walked over to the pillow and sat down, slumped, with horrible posture.
“First thing we will fix is this,” said Dorja, and walked over. She was dressed in light robes, which hissed as they lightly touched the floor. She knelt beside Turtle, and, with one hand, tilted her chin up. “Head up straight. Shoulders back but relaxed. Back but relaxed, Dorja said. Now, straight your back, and look straight ahead where Dorja will be sitting.”
“Why?”
“Because we are going to meditate.”
“No, I meant, why are we meditating?”
“Because it is good for Turtle. And for Dorja. Good for everyone.” Dorja sat on her pillow and looked across at the girl, and sat lotus fashion.
Turtle winced. “But what is it?”
“What? Meditation.”
“Yes.”
Dorja wanted to slap herself. She’d forgotten this girl had been kidnapped at a young age, apparently robbed of parts of her memory, and hadn’t been given any proper education. Meditation was only a word to her, one of those that grownups tossed back and forth but had no real meaning, like ship repairs or the economy. “Meditation is a time when you sit and think of nothing, and yet think of everything. You close your eyes and take deep breaths, letting them out slowly. Then, you take only normal breaths, and focus on a mantra.”
“What’s a mantra?”
“It’s like an order you give yourself,” Dorja said, quoting Master Jerrod. “A commandment repeated over and over, to remind Turtle of who she is.”
“But I already know who I am.”
“No, Turtle does not yet know. She only knows that she is a girl, and that sometimes she gets hungry, or scared, or jealous, or angry. She does not yet know why she does each of these things. Each of these things has a trigger, and each of these things can confuse and divert Turtle from her path.”
“What path?”
“The path that leads to the candle. Now, hush. Turtle must be quiet and close her eyes.”
“For how long?”
“Time does not matter in this exercise,” Dorja said, closing her eyes. “But I will tell you when we’re done.”
“What do I think about?”
Dorja opened her eyes, clenching her jaw to summon all her patience. “You will think of something you wish to improve about yourself.”
“What, like jumping?”
Dorja could almost laugh. “Yes. But also other things. Such as not being scared of certain things. You close your eyes, and speak into your own heart, and say the commandment: ‘Turtle will be strong and brave and honest.’ It can be that simple. You might elaborate, saying, ‘Turtle will hold true to the Light, and keep her candle, and spread its flame near and far.’”
“Is that what you say?” Turtle asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Does…does it help? I mean, does it help you not be scared? To be brave?”
“It helps. But Turtle’s mantra does not have to be Dorja’s. It can be her own.”
“Like what?”
“Think of something. Anything. Anything that Turtle wants to improve about herself. Now, hush. Close your eyes, and time your breaths with mine. The first few breaths will be deep and slow.”
Dorja watched Turtle shut her eyes, and watched her take deep, pouty breaths. Her expression was a mix of confusion and boredom. Dorja realized, just now, that she almost certainly wore the same expression when the Master put her through her first meditation session. Dorja closed her eyes, and meditated on her past. She tried to go back in time, recalling those earliest years, when Master Jerrod had taken her in and first shown her tan jekk. She went further back in time, before even her first lessons, to try and glean the wisdom necessary to help her be what Turtle needed her to be.
image [https://i.imgur.com/f6fHUfp.jpeg]