Matlen Arha and Rhea Arha were crying. They made their livelihood as castle servants for the Tindars and today was the worst day of their lives. You’d think that childbirth would be naturally auspicious but instead of celebration, there was gloom and poignant tension. The midwife passed some chocolates to the husband. She chastised herself for accepting this job, and prayed to the Halls that the Tindars would not attribute this stillbirth to her skills. After all, she thought, I delivered Lady Tindar’s first born safely enough. For the poor Arhas, the fault lay in their stars! Lady-in-waiting Arha and Lady Salli, the second wife of Master Tindar were good friends, as much as servant and master could be, and the midwife had been tasked by Lady Salli to spare no expense in the areas of prenatal nutrition and care: deer jerky in the morning, boar-meat at night, and even the occasional birds-nest to promote lustrous hair (in case the Arhas’ birthed a girl). The boy had stopped breathing shortly after birth–ten stones heavy–it had been a particularly difficult birthing. The midwife stepped away as quietly as she could but the front door was squeaky and her exit was awkward all the same.
There were originally two rooms in Arha’s house: a small room barely enough to fit a bed for two and a larger room that held the kitchen and the dining table. A third room had been created by partitioning the larger room in twain, a task that the Arhas had done with love and care. Rhea Arha was still wrapped in her bloodied birthing sheets and wailing. The husband, unsure of what to do, had carried the baby’s corpse away and into the new room. He lowered the dead baby with a gentle cup of the neck–the habit coming no doubt from the fact that he had been the oldest of seven–into the crib. Do what you can for the dead, as the saying goes, but do what you must for the living. With a broken heart, he swayed the warding pole on top of the crib and then returned to his bedroom to share in his wife’s sorrow.
The pole swayed back and forth methodically. The tip held a crudely cut amethyst, a gift from Lord Tindar to ward off evil spirits. The gem had been waiting a long time. It burst forth a cool purple light that blanketed the entirety of the room before extinguishing into a single point, hovered over the boy, paused as if considering, and then poured itself into the baby’s esophagus.
The gem, now almost colorless, sparkled a slight purple and waited.
*
Sak opened his eyes. Freedom! Pain burned his nostrils as he vainly gasped for air. He panicked and clutched his throat with both hands. He. Could. Not. Breathe. He began to recite the Mantra of Control,
There is some guardian at the rim of death
Fed with the speeches souls make
In the grand Halls of the Sleepless Ones.
Because my will is stronger than iron,
And knows no laws, follows no master.
To Him I say: I am a passenger to Life, like air, like water.
I need nothing, I am no one, I am nothing.
Sak’s heart slowed down and he felt his wits returning. He had bought a respite. 500 more heartbeats before his brain would be irrevocably turned to mush. He looked around him and saw a giant cage of fuzzy brown. His prison was oddly constructed, a brief hop would see him free but he was moored. He tried the Stance of Healing which did nothing. The Stance of Friction which made his bowels tingle but otherwise did nothing. His body was shutting down; he found it increasingly harder to maintain control of his sympathetic nervous system.
“I am a passenger to Life!” Sak said. “Like air, like water!”
Sak felt his captors must have poisoned him because what he heard was: “Waaaah wah! Wah wa, wah waa!”
He refocused and sent a surge of mana through his internal meridians. To his horror, he surmised that he must have underwent severe torture as he counted twelve vitals and of those, half were badly corrupted. This must be why he had no strength, and could only move his appendages as if he were a helpless baby. He vowed to repay his cruel captors threefold. Only psychopaths of the highest depravity could do such a Crippling.
Sak attempted the Stance of Aries. It only required four vitals and was the simplest of the Twelve Major Stances. He stretched out his right arm and opened his palm to face upwards.
200 heartbeats.
From his center, mana swept up and through his shoulder to his forearm, at least he hoped, his eye-sight was blurry and he could barely turn his head.
100 heartbeats.
A felt a small burst of heat inside his palm just left of his pericardium.
50 heartbeats.
Sak was starting to sweat now which was a bad sign. Once his parasympathetic system failed, that would cut off his access to the Arts. Everything would be fine if he could just invoke a simple flame.
10 heartbeats.
With a desperate cry, he attempted again. He failed.
He heard a sound of frantic voices near him. He could not understand them.
“老婆，過來看看， 我們的孩子還沒死了，是真天賜的旗幟!” cried in what he supposed was a man’s voice.
“走開！給我機會自己看是否屬實!” cried in what he supposed was a woman’s voice.
A giant pair of hands lifted Sak into the air. The giantess in front of him smiled sinisterly before violently smashing his face into her armpits..
5 heartbeats.
The giant female had inadvertently straightened Sak’s arm and he felt the familiar Art of Fire invoke through. Weak as he was, he wouldn’t be able to palm-strike the flame externally so he did the only option available to him. He turned the Art inward unto himself. Pain ravaged his arm as the searing hot fire coursed through him. For a while, the only sounds he could hear were screams.
0 heartbeats.
Sak comforted himself with the fact that he had tried until the very end. The world faded to black.
*
Sak opened his eyes. He turned his head and saw a giant woman sleeping slumped against the wall. The giantess held his right fist wrapped tightly in her hand. He did not try to break free. Not that it would do any good, Sak’s right arm was lifeless. He would never be able to use this arm again but he did not wallow in sadness. He would not regret choosing life over death.
On the upside, he was breathing again albeit with one lung. With his left hand, he summoned a pinprick amount of mana and forced it through his palm with a workman’s like approach. Invoking the Art of Fire was easier now that his mind was clear and well-fed with life’s breath. He twisted and nudged until the flame was slender and sharp. With his one pointing finger, he gesticulated an arc to his left shoulder like an elephant’s trunk tapping itself on the forehead. The flame, now honed to a needle, followed the trajectory and injected into his shoulder. He could feel himself convert the external and internal mana needed to heal his right lung. Unlike his left lung, which originally only had internal energy to work with, his right lung would heal much faster.
Sak felt his bowels turn. He tried to stop but a torrent of warmth ran out of his lower region and filled his bottom with a disturbing ickiness. He had defecated.
Above him, the giantess stirred awake and hovered over him. “臭豬，第一次拉屎有什麼感覺?”
Halls have you, woman. Don’t come near me.
Sak could feel himself blushing but the woman was unstoppable. The giantess lifted him by his legs and unfolded the wrappings of his lower body. He dangled helplessly which angered him but then a cool sensation came under and then inside him which soothed him greatly.
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“天有眼,” said the giantess. “雖然天斷你右手臂，但流著一位肥肥白白的健康孩子，我已經心滿意組.” Tears fell from her face and onto his mouth.
The realization dawned on Sak.
I’m a Star-forsaken baby, aren’t I?
Sak began to wail. He then realized that, as a baby, that was what was expected of him.
In anger, he kicked his foot in the air futilely and then cried himself to sleep.
#
The next few months were a blur.
Sak could understand their language now; it was a dialect of Jungious, which made sense since Jungious had been the second most powerful brother among his siblings. Sak was happy that Jungious’ song had lived on even if the owner hadn’t.
From what Sak could tell, the baby’s name–he–was Rasabon Arha. His parents were illiterate so they hired the local scholar to name him. It meant ‘Star Willing’ which loosely translated to ‘Lucky’. Rasabon didn’t feel lucky. He felt trapped. He had been royalty once, before he had joined the Rebellion, and now he was reduced to a depowered incarnation on some backwater low-mana dimension with one working arm, to boot.
The only thing Sak could do besides learning the local language was to train. The next two arts in order of ease of learning were the Libra and the Pisces. The Stance of Aries was a subset found within both of them. In addition to the Aries, the Stance of the Libra required four meridians from the dominant leg, and the two legs he had he couldn’t even count them as subservient. Still, the Art of the Rope, the ability to push and pull, had tempted him. He would have loved nothing more than to drop a stone on his idiot father who insisted on whirling him furiously in the air until he threw up in both directions.
Aside from the four that the Aries set provided, the Pisces required six additional meridians: four in the skull, one in the heart, and the last one was underneath his center. From what he remembered from his schooling, the Pisces was the last stance to be taught since all three regions were collectively known as the Meridians of Death. Dying horribly from blood hemorrhaging was the least of his worries; he worried that he might succeed. He never paid attention to the details of the Stance and had also never astrally projected without the usual quad-core mana-shard or, at the very least, a safety anchor; he might go out to infinity and just…stay out.
Star willing, he thought. Time to live up to your name.
Rasa, formerly Sak, inhaled the ambient energy and sent it to his center for purification. That was one good thing about this star-forsaken plane; the external energy here was meager but at least it had some. Even purified mana had native inclination of polarities. He wasn’t good at catering to his meridians, and even if he were, there wasn’t the equipment here for it. What he needed was a trick. Rasa traced a path in the air to his temple and then to the Three Companions. He then ran the line to his heart, returned to his temple and then to the solar plexus. When he was younger, he would stack books next to each other and watch them fall–this was the same concept. Rasa readied his Art of Fire, took another deep breath, not for mana but for his nerves, and fired.
Rasa’s spirit launched out of his body. He willed himself further forward then turned to look upon himself. He laughed and flew off. All babies look like half-priced paizu. He floated a half-league above his house and surveyed the land. He was looking for a temple or some mana congregation point. From his house, he followed a small uneven road that led to a larger more maintained one with properly paved brownstones. He followed this main road northward, all the while, he made sure to keep track of every turn lest he forget his way back. He came upon another group of houses; these were bigger and he saw that many of the families inside them were preparing to eat their midday meal in the yards. Younger boys were practicing the plowshare and the older ones, the spears. Poor bastards would be sent to war first, he thought,
Boil our land, tax our salt, shed our blood,
Until o’er their land, our banner soars.
Bend our backs, sew our mouth, send our sons,
Only make peace when we can give no mores.
He flew northward and saw a blacksmith with three kilns of increasing size pouring foul smoke into the air. A huge pile of reddish-brown metal lay to his northwest and another smaller pile of gray ore lay to his south. A few ruddy boys were wrapping shiny swords in some browned wrapping. Not much farther down the road were the real soldiers. The barracks was made of the same cheap southwoods as the other houses but the arch ring was solid stone and underneath the keystone was a formidable metal gate-door of blue. Little round pauldrons adorned it and on their surface, as Rasa flew closer to inspect, was etched a silver outline of a boar. There were also some words to the left and right of these gates but Rasa couldn’t read them, on the account that he was barely old enough for a blood-letting.
Rasa flew faster now. Even though he had collected mana relentlessly for two hundred nights to ensure a healthy mana reserve, to be extra safe, he desperately wanted to find the local starguide and his star-chamber before nightfall.
It shouldn’t be that hard. A starguide should be absorbing the night energy like I am. It’s all purple and…”
Rasa spotted him. He should have known that the nearest star practitioner would be the most learned man in the area, and therefore be the Scholar that had named him. And, of course, he would be the house closest to the Tindars’ castle so that he could help with governance. Rasa recalled the man’s name to be Aeshar Nailmot. Aeshar’s house was smaller than the proper soldiers but far larger than Rasa’s own. It was midday supper and Aeshar was outside eating cold jerky with unpatched frayed robes. Poor lad, Rasa thought. Outside his house was a small path that led west to a small building with a white cupola on top. This was the place.
He flew downward through the dome and was pleasantly surprised that it was completely bereft of wards. Inside the building were four slab walls, inscribed on these walls were four figures of some fame but Rasa instantly recognized them as depictions of his four younger brothers, including Jungious. Their awe-inspiring poses were quite laughable to him as he had known them when they were still unweaned from their mother. The real power in this room came from the golden dais in the middle. There was a cantilevered crank perpendicular to this platform and atop, on bronze struts, was a red sphere that resembled a shy tulip that had closed all its metallic petals. The whole platform rotated and tilted toward, most likely by hand, the directions calculated by the helper constellation symbols etched inside the dome. This was a communications array as well as a mana collection battery, although Rasa suspected that the Tindars had long forgotten its primary use.
Unlike the walls, the dais was chock full of stellar mana and his astral form could manipulate the 12 stones that surrounded it. Each stone represented a constellation or what the prevailing science of the local world thought was a constellation at least . He pressed the three symbols he had been told to memorize: the bull, the dog and then the hen.
The tulip scanned him and then warbled negatively. It might be imagination but Rama could almost feel the infernal thing snicker.
Rasa's face grew long. Nightfall was approaching and he did not want to spend another hundred or so nights collecting enough mana to attempt astral projection again. Oh, the bull, the frog, hen, and then bull, dog, and rooster,” he thought.This time when the tulip scanned him the familiar beep of acceptance resounded. He scratched his right foot with the other as thought sheepishly: “Password, then address. Silly me.”
The dais lit up with a reddish brown. The center tulip unfurled its metal plate to reveal a pulsating amorphous metal.
“WARDEN OF THE 8TH PLANE!” shouted Rasa. He cleared his throat. “I COME BEARING BAD NEWS!”
The polyform metal flickered twice softly.
The lights dimmed as it spoke. The language that came forth was in the Old Tongue: SPEAK YOUR NAME. I AM BUSY.
“My name is Rasa–”, said Rasa at first but corrected himself quickly, “--actually, you would know me as Sak Harkeck–” The lights dimmed further, “PRISONER 8413! YOU–”
“---and if you would stop interrupting me, I would explain everything!” Rasa stomped his right foot down so hard he nearly flew himself into the floor. The metal quivered but did not speak. Rasa continued: “First of all, I’m Prisoner 9413 which, as you know, is from the Ninth Plane. The Warden on the Ninth has asked me, because personages of your ilk are so busy warden-ing or whatever, to personally come to ask you to fortify your prison against the Enemy.”
ARE YOU THREATENING ME? said the metal weakly.
“No, you dogmother,” said Rasa. “I just told you. I’m warning you. There’s a difference.” Before he could be interrupted, Rasa quickly continued, “The Beloved has escaped with two other Class A star practitioners and they, as a team, have traveled upwards. Into this particular plane. Yes, I know it shouldn’t be possible without a huge reservoir of energy but, what do I know, I’m just the messenger. The Warden–my warden–doesn't know how either. He sent me to help you figure it out.”
HRMMM.
Rasa smirked. “What does ‘hrmmm’ mean?”
I WISH YOU CAME TO ME 50 NIGHTS AGO.
Rasa pointed to his body. “I don’t know if the visuals can be sent through this array but if you can see my form, I weigh less than 30 stones right now, soaking wet. Your incompetent prodigal brother one level down sent me into a baby. It took me all this time to safely contact you.” He looked at the spider-like bulging pattern on his right arm and added: “And one of my baby arms is fried.”
The metal form quivered, and then spread itself into a large flat surface.
Small buildings rose from this metal like prototypes of talc. Many of these buildings were blasted apart.
THE BELOVED DID COME. AND THEN HE LEFT. IT WAS BAD.
Rasa gasped and clutched his sides. “This…is much worse than the Ninth. How many people died?”
A LOT. THAT’S WHY I WAS SO BUSY.
“This is bad,” said Rasa quickly. He felt his voice quiver, “You’ve got to send someone like me after him. He’s going to keep moving upwards—”
NOT HIM. THEM.
Rasa floated down and lightly touched the golden dais, “What do you mean, them?”
HE TOOK EVERYONE. EVERY STAR PRACTITIONER. EVEN YOU. I MEAN, THE OTHER YOU.
Night fell.