> A curious question from a pupil today. We were covering the fall of empires, always a grim topic, and she asked me if cards could destroy the world. At the time I reassured her that such a thing was impossible. There is a ready answer in the syllabus: empires were things of humanity, and so could fall by our efforts, but the world was essentially its own and would not be undone by our meager efforts. She seemed satisfied. It's only now, as I write this, that I wonder if perhaps there is a fallacy in the reasoning.
>
> Assorted Notes of Lector Stronquil, personal tutor.
The day to day of life in the forest occupied everyone and Jack found himself no longer at the centre of important events—a change that he found suited him. The caravaneers pursued their various trades with enthusiasm—bar the miners who begrudgingly settled on panning a nearby stream, the mountains out of their reach. Jack’s early attempts to join them were singularly unproductive: there was little he could offer carded professionals in terms of assistance at their trade. But the trials of their journey had taken a toll. No party remained out past dark and Jam insisted on minimum groups of four. The camp was given a designated entrance, and snares were placed everywhere else—any nighttime visitors would find their approach far less unobtrusive than intended.
Of the nobles, Grant and Calre would disappear for extended periods, venturing into the wilds to pursue ‘light exercise’, a euphemism for their hunt for threats to the caravan. Vasala remained with the caravan at these times, cultivating a black mood that left her silently staring at the trees while pressing on her injured arm, awaiting Calre’s return. Jack’s sole attempt to engage her in conversation had been met with stony silence.
Calre and Jack’s private conversation had rankled her. Jack determined the worst possible position was caught between irate nobles and so left them well enough alone. Explaining to Vasala that Calre and him had ultimately deferred questions of his commission until after the caravan returned to Calamut seemed a hollow reassurance to a jealous girl—and Jack had already admitted to himself that it was an offer he wanted to accept.
So, it was for the first time in weeks that Jack was left to his own devices, and thoughts.
At the beginning of all this he had found evidence of something being hidden in the region, a plan of two parts: falsified records to create the impression that the foothills were being visited and rumours indicating increased danger. Pretending abandonment of the area would have drawn just as much attention as a surge in activity, but balancing perceptions to make the region appear unpalatable was ingenious. Misinformation was commonplace between the competitive expedition financiers, attempting to monopolize territory and ward off competition, but the great effort he’d seen had implied a similarly great secret. Discovering the reason for the subterfuge and turning it to his benefit would have been a coup. But one of his assumptions had been wrong: the danger wasn't contrived.
He hadn't been able to imagine the possibility and his error had been bluntly thrown in his face. The hivers had been cultivated in the plains; there was no other possibility, too much had been provided to them to create a foothold that should have been out of their reach. That knowledge recast the umbrar as well, a rare creature itself, appearing along the route. There were resources being spent here, by forces that seemed uncaring of the toll they took on travellers. Jack had been thinking about it since the day he had killed the queen, that someone wanted this area to remain unseen—and would kill to achieve it.
When one assumption can be overthrown, everything alongside it must be questioned. The falsified records; how false were they? Total fabrications, or another layer to obfuscate a very real set of expeditions? If something was here, resources needed to arrive somehow and conspirators needed access. That realization had clarified for him why no one was talking about the strangeness of events but instead were all taking their own independent measures.
If someone had used the caravan for their own ends, if there was an agent amidst them, Jack would only warn them if he came forward with the limited information he had.
That was part of why Jack had kept what he knew to himself. It would be of little value shared around—both the nobles and the caravan’s show of increased caution had allayed his concerns about holding back critical information. But if he had real evidence, more than just supposition, he could master the mystery in one fell swoop. That, Jack hoped, would lead to his second carding.
After his conversation with Calre, Jack believed that uncovering the secret on his own would, in Jack's mind, guarantee a powerful carding—one that would do more than just give him a martial or movement ability. A supplement to his intellect or the ability to know the world, to uncover secrets, that would be of greater value than any powerful attack.
Calre hadn't been impressed by the force he could deliver—any of the nobles could have killed the queen just as readily if they'd had the opportunity. Calre had been impressed by his mind, by his ability to navigate an impossible challenge and overcome it. By uncovering all there was to know he would show that lightning didn't just strike twice, it struck where he willed it. That was the bargaining position he would take before he would consider going further into the world Calre was inviting him into; his mother's lessons had been clear to him, to rise above one's station it wasn't enough to shine, he must dazzle.
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After the days spent accompanying various parties on their forays into the forest Jack understood the scale of the problem he was tackling. The forest was vast, difficult to navigate, and, to Jack's eye, without landmarks.
The routine arrival of multiple caravans would have encroached on whatever lay here, but the limited wanderings of the present company and his own even more limited efforts couldn't hope to cover even a small portion of the forest. Going out on his own without even a clear direction of what he was looking for would be a foolish approach, even if he somehow stumbled upon something of significance there was always the threat of being found back.
He needed to encompass much more of the forest than could be expected on foot, and he needed to do it without the risk of discovery.
There was a means and a complication. Jack was at the very edge of achieving a safe and reliable capacity to bring himself to the sky—an incomparable scouting position. The problem remained with the fall. His dash had always had a weakness: the faster he was moving, the less safety it offered. The dash-shadow gauged the range and told him when it was safe to use the dash, but he needed time to trigger it. If he ever triggered early, or if he was moving too fast to perceive the critical moment and trigger in time, he was dead.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Momentum Eater had the capacity to move him very fast. Twice he’d used it to gain great height: on the first occasion the position of the hiver’s tower had created a safe landing area; the second with Grant on standby to catch him. Both times had required the second charge of momentum created through Enhance—a necessity in order to counteract the fall from the first.
He’d successfully pulled it off both times, but the timing was tight, and he wasn’t acting under controlled conditions. A moment of distraction, a bit more speed, and he would fail. He needed an extra layer of security, something that would bolster him against the risk and make the trick safely repeatable.
The answer, he felt, had to lay in an unknown interaction between Enhance and either Gotcha Dash or Vital Flow—the two cards without obvious enhanced forms.
All of it had been very logical when he planned it out; but Jack couldn’t help thinking that somewhere he had gone awry. It was an easy thought to have while precariously perched atop a swaying tree.
'Climbing buildings is not a transferable skill to trees, of course. Delightful. I am so very delighted by this.'
After another nauseating sway Jack steeled himself for the actual testing.
Gotcha Dash.
He was only ten meters or so above the ground, and by extending a foot out he could 'test the waters' with his dash-shadow.
'Upright test, I make contact with the ground. Now the other...'
He wasn't feeling brave enough to test a head-first or profile orientation but as he lay down upon the supporting branch he could feel his dash-shadow smoothly shift upward as the prospective acceleration changed with his position. Face first had always been the most dangerous of his falling positions: it had the lowest top speed and the fastest acceleration and so the dash was comparatively short. From here, he could tell the dash-shadow terminated midair, only slightly more than three meters away.
'Fifty-six meters a second at the end of the dash... six-ish meter fall... that's one-eleventh of a second to react before I hit the ground. There's no reacting in time for that, let alone changing orientation and dashing again. Death-dash.'
He'd established a baseline, now he needed to see how the values changed with a modified Vital Flow.
Enhance. Vital Flow.
The effect was immediate. His earlier testing with the card had always been at ground level but now that he had the height to observe a tangible change in his dash-shadow he could see the impact of the modified Vital Flow. The range of the dash-shadow had shrunk by a third.
The explanation wasn't complex, Jack had even anticipated the outcome in some of his theorizing. Vital Flow protected him from the damage of his dashes, and Gotcha Dash accelerated him to the limit of his tolerance. Increase the protective effect of Vital Flow and the subsequent acceleration increases with it.
Jack finished the test by standing upright once more, to his dismay the previously safe orientation had become dangerous. The dash-shadow terminated just above the ground.
'Enhanced Vital Flow, much more dangerous. Right. Did I think I was delighted earlier? No, that was a mere shadow before the exuberance I am feeling now.'
Jack waited out the duration of the dash charges he was holding before moving on to the next test.
Enhance. Gotcha Dash.
The dash-shadow touched the ground. Even with the Enhanced Vital Flow still active, the dash was safe once again, but why? Jack returned to a prone position on the branch, and the dash-shadow terminated above the ground once again, but now a full eight meters below him.
'Well, that's still lethal. But standing upright, the dash-shadow reaches the ground, safe as can be. What's the mechanism? The speed limit, it must be. Rather than capping my speed at the fall-speed limit, it's higher, and so the dash goes longer. Difficult to test the exact values... but this is it.'
The close timing of the sky-leap trick had been made a non-issue thanks to the extended range of the enhanced dash. But it was more than that, raising the speed cap of the dash was a tremendous increase in the power he could bring to bear, combined with the faster acceleration thanks to the Enhanced Vital Flow and he could leverage it much more quickly as well.
The only thing left to do was test it.
Jack played an Enhanced Momentum Eater, dived off the branch and dashed to the ground in a smooth flow. The grace of his motion was only slightly spoiled by the fumbling handstand he landed in.
It was sometimes difficult to perceive differences in the speed of his dashes, they all approximated to ‘very fast’ in the fractional moments they consisted of, but he could already tell that the stacked power of Enhanced Vital Flow and Enhanced Gotcha Dash were definitely exceeding everything he’d encountered before. His merely human perceptions could barely even process the transitional fall, it was as if he simply dived from a high branch and then appeared on the ground without any intermission.
He had chosen this tree carefully. An adjacent clearing gave him the launch and landing point he needed.
The daylight was beginning to fade. Sometime over their journey the late Summer had shifted into the beginnings of Autumn—not noticeable in the sunlit days, but the evenings had grown cool. He wouldn’t stand out in a darkening sky.
The momentum charge flung him into the air. The first moments were a blur, as always, but eventually the deceleration due to the earth’s pull and the perspective of his height gave him a clear view of the expansive forest.
In his hand, he clutched a compass. The ascension was spent fervently memorizing locations of interest, estimating their distance and heading in the time he had. He crested, and the world seemed small.
The rush back to earth felt so gentle in comparison to his rise, and Jack realized his baseline had been grotesquely skewed by the furious speed that had become his routine.
A full hundred meters from the ground, he felt his enhanced dash-shadow touch the earth, and he plummeted the final distance with an aching grin. His initial carding had reached its potential, that was part of what drove his euphoria. But it was coloured by a twist of anticipation and no small amount of dread: in the distance of the deep forest he had seen lights.