Jack lay in the dark reflecting on the events of the last days, his mind flitting from topic to topic, unable to settle on any thread in particular in the first silence that finally gave him an opportunity to think.
Their subterranean expedition earlier in the day had ended smoothly; Calre’s navigation had been as good as his word and they resurfaced with ease. It was only then that Jack realized how misguided their search for his gear below had been, and struck by inspiration had taken them to the same point he had originally been dumped by the hivers. Naturally his gear was there, deposited as refuse just as he had been. Grant had only smiled at their return, grubby and tired, coy about the events of their adventures. Calre had done nothing but surprise him, uniformly for the better. Jack retained his skepticism for the nobility—he knew too much of their worst practices. But in his heart he had begun to believe in exceptions, how couldn’t he, when he himself was becoming something exceptional.
His broken cards had been refined, and he had only just begun to discover the new power they offered. Both were meta-cards—those that depended on or altered the effects of other cards. His mother had not acquired them for years, but for him they had appeared in his first set. Unbelievable potential existed within them—particularly the ‘enhance’ effect, which could potentially change the dynamics of all his cards. He now needed to learn not just how every card interacted with the others but also how their enhanced forms changed those combos. A simple combo like Gotcha Dash and Vital Flow suddenly had two more forms to understand, depending on which of them he enhanced. He itched to explore the emergent possibilities further and what heights they might achieve.
By inducting him into the Order of the Meritorious, Calre and Vasala had also protected him against any repercussions from his later growth—a gesture made without a coercive edge, even though Calre clearly desired Jack to take on some role beside him. It would have been easy to dangle the carrot or stick, but he hadn’t.
Futures were opening up before Jack that would have seemed impossible even before his miscarding; but now that they had he was forced to examine the reasons that had brought him here. Was becoming the scholarly inheritor of a family business in an industry that was rapidly shrinking truly what he wanted? He didn’t have a ready answer. At the very least it felt important to finish the journey, to see where fate was leading him, and see what answers he might find. Concerns deferred, he finally slipped into a restless sleep, unaware of the unblinking avian eyes that held him in their focus, unconcerned with the darkness of the night.
----------------------------------------
Grant declared them ready to travel the next morning. Vasala was still greatly fatigued and in a poor mood thanks to her broken arm, but Grant determined her well enough to ride with a partner supporting her. For Jack he simply looked disgusted and muttered about the absurd resilience of youth, declaring him half-again more healed than he should be.
Jack rode solo atop a nimble that resolutely ignored him, an arrangement he found reasonable. It was easy to lose himself in thought while the nimble’s smooth pace brought each horizon to them, and sent them away in turn. What occupied him more than anything was card testing. They would ride for hours, taking only short breaks in which Jack would try something, usually an idea he had been dwelling on for the last hour, only to leave again before he could make any real headway. It made for a frustrating, but highly focused, set of experiments.
There were some failures, where a theory was quickly laid to rest as an interaction failed to occur at all.
The momentum capture card didn’t do anything with Pivot, even though he knew the rapid twists and rotations were definitely altering his bodily vectors in bizarre ways, the card ignored these effects and stubbornly failed to trigger on any 'lost momentum' but the one generated by his Gotcha Dash.
He wasn’t particularly put out. Capturing the dash energy was more valuable than anything that could be gained from Pivot.
The others had been watching his antics through each stop with varying degrees of amusement, particularly enjoying the enhanced Pivot. He had spent an hour painstakingly tying grass stalks end by end. When they finally paused, he entreated Grant to hold one end and then ran the length he managed to produce—a full eight meters, or thereabouts by his estimate.
He sighted down the flimsy grass chain and spun and to his delight the chain remained locked to his perspective. Rather than catch the wind and twist out of his vision, it behaved as if it were a rigid, singular object. It was like he'd tied a significant weight to the end and slowly worked up his speed, but he'd managed to get the effect instantly. This was exactly the effect he'd discovered in the hiver's tower and used to strike the queen with the full pot, but he didn't yet know the limit of it. How heavy an object? How far did the effect extend? Previous testing had shown the mechanism was some function of the two variables, but he hadn't worked out the exact breakdown.
'Eight meters is farther than I've gotten with string, but how much farther can I go?'
Excitedly he tied more lengths to it, spinning again with an extra two meters: only to find that he was overshooting already. His first guess had been right where the effect started to break down, and the lengthened chain noticeably lagged at the furthest end. Eight meters seemed to be the limit with only the weight of the grass.
The merely inscrutable effects were more daunting.
Enhance and Gotcha Dash together didn't reveal any functionality. Nothing so obvious as getting four charges of dash, or changing the perceptions of his dash shadow. A quick test dash from jumping on the spot revealed no difference between a regular and enhanced Dash.
‘Something is going on, but I don’t know the test to figure it out... yet. Move on for now.’
But all too soon they were riding again and his tests returned to the theoretical.
Vital Flow had always been, and remained, something of a mystery in its full effect. He needed to play it for any of his other cards to remain safe, indeed at this point it was the pattern for him to trigger it whenever he noticed the duration of the effect had finished. By his reckoning, as his deck grew significantly he would need to establish the habit of playing it regularly anyway, so why not start early?
Enhance did nothing to it, or rather, nothing obvious. The waiting 'charge' of enhance was spent on Vital Flow, but he couldn’t discern to what effect. Truthfully he wasn't surprised, he couldn't really tell the difference from regular Vital Flow and baseline experience either, not unless he was dashing or using Pivot.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
'What I really need is something to jump off of,' he thought, not for the first time. He looked sadly at the mere couple of meters he was from the ground while atop the nimble. It seemed painfully mundane compared to the heights he'd been intimate with only a short time ago.
But something about the thought felt vaguely off, like there was an assumption laden within a premise that wasn’t quite true.
Thoughts like these tickled, as some deeper intuition attempted to upset the status quo. They were occasionally wrong but, more often than not, they led into the territory of the treasured unknown.
Jack thought through the patterns of his cards, the possible interactions that might be possible. The trick, he realized, was needing to have a dash and the momentum eater card while midair; how he got there didn't matter. A possibility struck him, something he couldn't believe he hadn't seen earlier. The next stop couldn't come soon enough.
----------------------------------------
Grant had given a long suffering look when Jack asked him how high a height he could save Jack from with his cards. A look that communicated a depth of experience with young men and the antics their own self-assured indestructibility led them to.
But Jack's explanation had sparked interest, particularly in the listening pair of nobles, and so a compromise was struck.
Now Jack stood alone, running through the steps in his mind again and again before finally he began.
The first step was easy; he played the momentum card and Gotcha Dash, then jumped on the spot. At the apex of his jump he dashed down, and a small glow of newly stored energy appeared in his perception as the energy of his dash was absorbed.
Now he waited. His small deck still allowed for gimmicks like these. A larger deck brought versatility, but a small one, particularly one with only five, brought unparalleled consistency. He knew exactly what his next five cards were going to be—that was the key.
Moment by moment he counted down, feeling the so subtle shift of his perceptions as the moment of discard approached. It was the slightest thing, a tightening of some organ that didn't exist, but could be felt nonetheless, a rhythm that was so omnipresent that for the vast majority of the time it was as forgettable as breathing.
Pivot.
He jumped and swung himself around to land on his hands with perfect poise.
When the moment came he was ready. The charge of momentum he had held was spent, and he felt the card discard with the use as he was sent into the air. The world blurred but, opposite of his dash, every moment was one of deceleration. Meter by meter he ascended, until finally an instant of time seemed to stretch out as he looked out over the landscape. He had risen a full ten meters above the earth, the energy of his dash traveling barely more than half a meter was enough to take him so far.
Then his hand changed over. His timing was perfect as the cards cycled back into his grasp he triggered the next steps in an exacting order.
The enhance card, followed by the momentum eater and, finally, spending the remaining charge of his dash.
He knew that the range was safe, his dash-shadow telling him that the ground was within reach. Another rush of air as his vision blurred and then he was on the ground, standing on his hands once again, Pivot still active. The effortless grace of his card swung him back to his feet. Sitting in his mind was the energy of the fall, twice over. Two charges of the momentum had been generated, and this from a height of ten meters. But this was not all—he had fallen headfirst, a position that gave him double the acceleration of his upright dash.
He could do it. He could capture the energy of a nearly full speed dash with a minute's preparation. Leapfrogging from a standing jump into an absurd amount of energy by abusing the mechanics of his discard cycle.
There was one last thing to try.
"Are you ready, Grant?" he shouted.
"Damn fool boy, I'm ready!" but he was grinning.
Jack spent the first charge of momentum, and he flew.
It was faster than at the tower, much more so. The scale refused easy estimations but, by the time he began to slow, he knew he was many times the height of the tower; as much as ten times. The figures of the nobles shrank until he could barely make them out, and then they slipped away from his perceptions. Atop the world, all was still, there was only Jack.
"I am Canary!" he crowed to the void, "and I claim you sky! I claim you!"
He fell. It was inevitable. But in his thoughts was the assurance that he'd return—that too was inevitable.
----------------------------------------
They returned to the caravan in the early evening with moderate fanfare, as the awaiting members stood to greet the nobles, bowing recognition for their efforts.
All together they had been gone for nearly a week, enough time for the caravan to build out a small earthworks fortification and begin to show clear signs of compounding boredom.
Jack wondered how he looked, sitting comfortably with the nobles. It would be evident to anyone that something had changed, something significant. He had left, not quite a prisoner, but something akin to it. Had he changed, become tainted with the residue of intimidation that nobles carried with them? He wondered what welcome he'd receive later, when Calre and Vasala's stifling presence was gone.
But his worries were for naught. The nobles and Grant made their exit, and Jack was immediately crowded by eager caravaneers.
"Didja stick any of 'em with ya spear? The knife? See, I told ya he'd need both, look how the grip is stained—"
"Ya did not tell me so! We both agreed on the spear!"
"Are you at all injured? We should at least see if he's alright."
"How many hivers were there? Did the nobles kill every one of them? They were a sight to see here, I can only imagine what they were like cut loose."
A stampede of questions gave Jack little time to offer any answers until Jam finally stepped in to restore order.
"Off ya pack of jackals! There's time enough to sate your curiosity if ya'd just let him speak. Come, he'll tell us what he likes with supper."
And so Jack told them of all that had happened, at least, what he could tell. A group of travelers confined in place long enough to get bored rotten made for an eager audience, gasping at every turn of fate and cheering every clever maneuver. When at last Jack was finished, wrapping up the tale up to the moment where they met him, and nearly every question was asked and answered he made his excuses to depart and rest when a final query was made.
"How do you land? Your dash shortens the faster you fall, you said. How can you land when you fall from the height you can reach now?" It was Wyli, quiet until now, looking at him with eyes more piercing than he'd expected from the demure girl.
"I wait until the last moment," he began to answer, "and then I use the second charge of momentum to counteract the first, I rise only a little, and then I can dash down safely enough."
"The timing must be close."
He grinned, "Extremely."