For what it was worth, Tuli did in­crease the food that he sent up to Sobon, though not by much to start. With Mian gone, and many mouths to feed, and no one com­ing by to sell more food, there wasn't a whole lot. Sobon, with all the ad­van­tages he had now, made the best he could out of it any­way, and was com­fort­able leav­ing the very next day to hunt for large game in the forests around the inn.

The nom­i­nal prey an­i­mal in these woods was a large antlered beast called a bas­sar, and to Sobon's con­fu­sion, the herd that he en­coun­tered had one old­er male at its lead, with sil­ver-ranked qi that it proud­ly dis­played with some sort of qi crown. Sobon had no qualms or doubts that he could kill such a beast, but fol­lowed both his own and Alas­si's in­stincts, and hunt­ed the weak­est of the herd. The king bas­sar didn't even ob­ject, al­though he did ush­er the rest of the herd away and stood be­tween them and Sobon, pro­ject­ing a pres­sure that was halfway be­tween serene and mur­der­ous.

As Sobon hauled his kill off, Alas­si whis­pered into the back of his mind. [ Per­haps some­day, be­fore we leave, you can hunt it. Bas­sar horns are good stock to make weapons out of. And that king... a horn with sil­ver qi would be an im­pres­sive tro­phy, and it would make a good weapon. ]

Sobon, in re­ply, of­fered Alas­si a men­tal im­pres­sion of watch­ing a city blown apart by or­bital bom­bard­ment, of be­ing blind­ed by the blast even from hun­dreds of miles away. He showed her beam ri­fles that fire a thou­sand shots per clip, each shot blast­ing eas­i­ly through a half dozen mod­est-size trees with fin­ger-width beams. He showed her ar­tillary, mo­bile weapons plat­forms, close air sup­port, or­bital trans­ports, bat­tle­ships, an­nil­hi­la­tion can­nons, and the enor­mous en­er­gy flare that was a large ship tele­port­ing across in­ter­stel­lar dis­tances.

[ Those are good weapons, ] Sobon told the sud­den­ly si­lenced spir­it. [ If I need a sharp stick to poke peo­ple with, I promise I will con­sid­er tak­ing them from the wildlife. I am sure it will be very sharp, and might even make them bleed. But if I want to cre­ate any re­al­ly use­ful weapons, I will need re­sources that an­i­mals can­not even con­ceive of. ]

Alas­si had no re­ply.

Sobon pitched in with Lui to help butch­er the an­i­mal, lean­ing more heav­i­ly on Alas­si's knowl­edge than his own or the girl's. It's not so much that the old woman had been much of a hunter; knowl­edge of these things had been among the ran­dom in­sights she gained fight­ing star­beasts. For Sobon's part, he al­lowed Alas­si's per­son­al­i­ty to come out and speak with the girl; al­though Alas­si would not have tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak with her grand­daugh­ter, it wasn't as though she had noth­ing to say, or even that she had no de­sire to speak. She had sim­ply... buried her­self away from the world, spurn­ing all ad­vances from her fam­i­ly.

When pressed to it, though, he could tell Alas­si liked Lui. Speak­ing with the girl sur­faced mem­o­ries of hers from long ago, when Alas­si was young and naive her­self. From what Sobon saw, she wasn't sur­round­ed by com­pan­ions, ex­act­ly, al­though there were sev­er­al peo­ple there, in­clud­ing the man who would be­come her hus­band. With some de­tach­ment, Sobon could ad­mit their courtship was... cute, if child­ish.

Alas­si would not have joined the mil­i­tary had her hus­band not died to star­beasts. The quest for re­venge brought her, ul­ti­mate­ly, here. Sobon thought that she was too dis­tract­ed to serve well. Alas­si, only vague­ly pay­ing at­ten­tion to his thoughts, dis­agreed.

[ If I had enough pow­er, then, it wouldn't have mat­tered, ] Alas­si groused in­ter­nal­ly, pri­vate­ly thank­ful that the work of butch­ery had pro­gressed to a stage where both she and Lui fo­cused on the meat and bones be­fore them. [ But the Com­man­der did not al­low those be­neath him to ad­vance. We served as fod­der, and once we had in­jured a beast, troops he ac­tu­al­ly liked were brought in to kill it and earn the greater share of the har­vest. The corpses were hauled away to be served to no­bles, I'm sure. At most, di­lut­ed beast blood was put in our soup broth, if there was no oth­er use for it. ]

Sobon con­sid­ered the flow of mem­o­ries that poured through Alas­si as she re­count­ed the sto­ry, un­sure of most of what she was look­ing at. Over and over, though, she brought Alas­si's thoughts back to the one mo­ment she least want­ed to re­mem­ber.

A spined star­beast shat­ter­ing her hip with a sin­gle spike, one of hun­dreds launched across a bat­tle­field. Alas­si's own mem­o­ry of it was cloud­ed by pain, but Sobon forced her find it, piece by piece, un­til she was cer­tain of some­thing.

[ It was de­lib­er­ate, ] Sobon told her. [ A... greater star­beast, a leader. They con­trolled this pup­pet to in­jure more of your peo­ple in that bat­tle. ] Al­though she couldn't see from Alas­si's mem­o­ries whether a Ri'lef had been di­rect­ly pup­pet­ing the in­tel­li­gent star­beast which it­self con­trolled the less­er one, she was sure that the com­plex surge in aether pres­sure on the bat­tle­field was a form of pos­ses­sion. Even Alas­si, who was not par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive, could sense strong aether flows both to­wards and away from the bat­tle.

Alas­si stopped, her meat cleaver rest­ing against the cut­ting board. [ Leader? The beast be­came berserk, sui­ci­dal. They do that, some­times. It's why the army can't send their elites to do all of the work. A berserk beast could in­jure even a com­man­der, and he was a Bright Met­al cul­ti­va­tor. ]

[ Not sui­ci­dal, ] Sobon cor­rect­ed, not­ing her ter­mi­nol­o­gy, though she wasn't yet sure she cared about the specifics of qi and its rank­ings. [ It was sac­ri­ficed. ]

"Grand­ma?" Lui's voice was con­cerned, and Sobon men­tal­ly rolled her eyes and backed off, al­low­ing Alas­si to have a lit­tle more time with her grand­daugh­ter.

Still, in the back­ground, she tried to ac­cess Alas­si's un­der­stand­ing of qi lev­els, and their names. It wasn't en­tire­ly straight­for­ward.

Qi went through two met­al phas­es, com­mon and bright, each bro­ken down into col­ors, and each col­or into star lev­els. Be­yond that, Alas­si only knew the gen­er­al terms "Gem phase" and "Flame phase", though she was sure each phase was di­vid­ed into col­ors and stars, and per­haps even sub-phas­es. So far, with the pos­si­ble ex­cep­tion of the reaper that killed Jom, Sobon es­ti­mat­ed she hadn't seen any­thing out­side of the first met­al phase of qi. Gold, the qi col­or she had seen in Xoi Xam and pi­rate cap­tain, was the high­est of the com­mon met­als, and the "break­through" that got one past the end of that whole phase and into the next was sup­posed to be har­row­ing.

That reaper, though... al­though Sobon had no earth­ly idea what his ac­tu­al qi lev­el was sup­posed to be, the spir­i­tu­al pres­sure that she re­called over the weapon def­i­nite­ly had the aes­thet­ics of a gem­stone, and not a met­al, in her mind. Alas­si... seemed un­com­fort­able with Sobon re­call­ing even that much, al­though Sobon was not re­al­ly shar­ing with her, and she was do­ing her best to re­main dis­tract­ed.

Too soon, though, there was noth­ing more to do. The meat was most­ly kept in a large cel­lar, which had some kind of aether pat­tern in­scribed on it. Af­ter de­liv­er­ing what she'd hunt­ed and clean­ing up, Sobon took con­trol back and went down to ex­am­ine the pat­terns, try­ing to match what them against the pat­terns the Coro­na had giv­en him. Per­haps pre­dictably, they didn't match at all--the qi pat­terns were not com­pat­able with raw aether. In­stead of fuss­ing with it, Sobon con­struct­ed a scaled-up anti-mi­cro­bial pat­tern, and with a ca­su­al use of aether, en­graved it into the back wall. As­sum­ing he hadn't messed some­thing up, it would only tar­get the air and sur­faces--a more ide­al pat­tern would purge the stored meat and oth­er foods of in­ter­nal mi­crobes, or at least pre­vent growth, but Sobon wasn't sure how to en­sure those pat­terns didn't tar­get any­one who walked in and scourge clean their in­ter­nal bio­mes.

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Then, she fold­ed flat an aether har­vest­ing and fil­ter­ing cy­cle--some­what more com­plex than a dy­namo, but in­tend­ed to be left alone. Once start­ed, both pat­terns quick­ly ac­ti­vat­ed and Sobon no­ticed an im­prove­ment in the smell, though it wasn't bad to start with. Sobon glanced around at the food, not­ing noth­ing that was ob­vi­ous­ly un­hy­genic, not that she would have ex­pect­ed it.

As Sobon stepped out of the cel­lar, her mind was still turn­ing over the var­i­ous thoughts of en­grav­ings and aether for­ma­tions that might be of use to the inn. She was sur­prised to find Tuli stand­ing there and wait­ing, an un­read­able look on his face. "You brought in meat," he said, stiffly. "I know you said that you need more food--"

"It's fine to share it with oth­ers," Sobon said, calm­ly. "As long as I get my part of it."

"With as many mouths to feed as we have, it will go quick­ly."

Sobon met the younger man's eyes, feel­ing it odd to be look­ing at a full grown adult, and have to con­sid­er him a son. Sobon wasn't young when he died--he had joined the Mixed Marines in his twen­ties, and had over a decade in the ser­vice. Enough to be sea­soned, but nev­er put in enough dan­ger to qual­i­fy for a field pro­mo­tion. He had one ground cam­paign and many years of pa­trol ser­vice, with ex­tra train­ing and sev­er­al vi­o­lent peace­keep­ing op­er­a­tions. But still, if he had got­ten mar­ried ear­ly, he should just bare­ly be old enough to be a grand­fa­ther, and cer­tain­ly not of a girl as old as Lui.

But his body--Alas­si's body which had twen­ty years on him, still felt strange to look at the man. He had been younger when he mar­ried into the fam­i­ly, and Alas­si had not paid him much at­ten­tion, es­pe­cial­ly not af­ter her daugh­ter died. But Sobon, look­ing at him, found the man... un­pleas­ant. He had the bear­ing of a man who was an­gry at the world, and a dis­po­si­tion that Sobon was sure meant he would be­tray oth­ers, even his own fam­i­ly.

"I will hunt again in a few days," Sobon said, sim­ply. "One or two good serv­ings for every­one, and then stretch what is left."

Tuli bris­tled, as though he didn't like tak­ing or­ders--or even rec­om­men­da­tions. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to her, or to Alas­si, but Sobon sup­posed he was very used to Alas­si be­ing noth­ing but dead weight.

"There was a sil­ver-ranked bas­sar pro­tect­ing the herd. Tak­ing too much will only lead to a fight." Sobon didn't men­tion that it was a fight she ex­pect­ed to win--cer­tain­ly, once her body was health­i­er. The mere fact that she had faced the high­er-ranked beast seemed to cause an un­com­fort­able re­sponse in Tuli, but he sim­ply nod­ded in re­ponse.

"Per­haps more than a few days, then. A beast like that, if it de­cid­ed to ram­page..." Tuli shook his head. "Mian will have re­turned by then. It won't mat­ter."

Sobon didn't ques­tion that, and when an awk­ward si­lence start­ed to fall, sim­ply moved past the innkeep­er. She end­ed up wan­der­ing out in front of the inn; al­though sev­er­al of the res­cued were out­side, and Sobon didn't par­tic­u­lar­ly want to speak with them, more were in­side, and those seemed more rest­less. The ones out­side, for the most part, were med­i­tat­ing, try­ing to touch the aether of the world.

Sobon stud­ied the clos­est, who might have been any­where from eigh­teen to four­ty, at his lev­el of mal­nu­tri­tion. Al­though he looked noth­ing like Jom--in fact, he had no idea what Jom had looked like, hav­ing nev­er seen a mir­ror--Sobon could still see an echo of the bro­ken-souled street rat in the man, like a crack in a fa­mil­iar shape run­ning through his spir­it. And what­ev­er aether--qi, re­al­ly--the man gath­ered, it seemed to pass out of those cracks, ra­di­at­ing off of the man as part of a mis­er­able stink. It was dif­fi­cult for Sobon to know if the man had been wound­ed, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly bro­ken, or if he had sim­ply nev­er had an ap­ti­tude for qi, but he sus­pect­ed that the man would need se­ri­ous help if he was ever to grow stronger.

Sobon wasn't en­tire­ly sure that her im­pres­sion of the man was right, how­ev­er. Dif­fer­ent bod­ies she'd had so far all had dif­fer­ent abil­i­ty to sense aether; Jom had bare­ly any, and the squir­rel had a dim im­pres­sion, but clear, like peep­ing through a tiny hole. Alas­si's spir­it was mud­dled, even af­ter he had in­fused it with fresh aether, and it was hard to dis­tin­guish how much of wha the per­ceived was the truth... and how much of it was dirty smears on the win­dow of Alas­si's soul. Was the man leak­ing aether be­cause he was in­jured? Did he just not un­der­stand how to work it prop­er­ly? Af­ter all, Jom had been called in­ca­pable of us­ing qi, but Sobon had used it as a weapon with­in min­utes of wak­ing up in his body. The sec­ond time, at least.

Some­thing stirred as Sobon con­sid­ered that, some­thing like a faint wind. What it meant... she couldn't gath­er, al­though it was un­ques­tion­ably an aether ef­fect. For some rea­son, she felt like the wind car­ried a mes­sage... and that the mes­sage was re­ceived, some­where. Sobon frowned, won­der­ing again if some sort of plan­e­tary spir­i­tu­al god was mon­i­tor­ing her--or if the Ri'lef were.

To her sur­prise, though, when Sobon sur­faced from her thoughts, she found that all of the peo­ple med­i­tat­ing were look­ing at her. Alas­si's own spir­it had a mo­ment of deep pan­ic at the thought--she was too used to hid­ing, shun­ning the light of day and all hu­man in­ter­ac­tion. Sobon didn't en­joy the thought of hav­ing to an­swer ques­tions... but nei­ther did she shy away from it. In­stead, she just raised an eye­brow in ques­tion at them, wait­ing to see if they would say some­thing.

For some rea­son, they turned away, go­ing back to their med­i­ta­tions.

[ It would be seen as a chal­lenge, ] Alas­si thought at Sobon, qui­et­ly. It wasn't as though Sobon didn't un­der­stand... she sim­ply wasn't used to be­ing the strongest per­son around, and in­stant­ly com­mand­ing the kind of re­spect he would have giv­en to se­nior of­fi­cers. And I can't get used to that, Sobon men­tal­ly chid­ed her­self. I'm go­ing to need to punch above my weight, and prob­a­bly live among peo­ple that can punch down. Prefer­ably with­out get­ting an­oth­er reaper mad at me.

Alas­si, whether wise­ly or not, chose not to com­ment, and Sobon chose to busy her­self study­ing the inn. It was rel­a­tive­ly sol­id in build qual­i­ty; most of the out­er con­struc­tion was heavy wood­en planks, but when Sobon stud­ied it, he not­ed that at least it showed no signs of warp­ing, no gaps or splits. Sobon could feel a dim light of en­er­gy from the wood--not enough that it would have, or should have, had a sig­nif­i­cant ef­fect. Alas­si con­firmed that at one point, it had been tend­ed to by a pass­ing wood-qi mas­ter, but it had been years.

Sobon rolled the aether rou­tines that the Coro­na had giv­en her through her mind, ap­pre­ci­at­ing the in­dex that the AI had im­print­ed on her, though she still wasn't sure on the de­tails of how the ad­vanced aether tech worked. Rather than fo­cus­ing on that, Sobon com­pared the pieces, try­ing to plot out a rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple bar­ri­er sys­tem. The ba­sics were sim­ple enough; the ab­solute min­i­mum was des­ig­nat­ed by a cen­tral point and a ra­dius, but Sobon chose a des­ig­nat­ed-space bar­ri­er, and carved small re­lay points into each ex­te­ri­or cor­ner of the inn, then went around and carved an­oth­er set near the roof, work­ing re­mote­ly with left-hand aether.

Ide­al­ly, the bar­ri­er ori­gin would be at the cen­ter of it all, but in­stead Sobon went back into Alas­si's room and found a wa­ter pitch­er large enough to con­tain all the in­scrip­tions she would need. Con­nect­ing to points with­out a reg­u­lar geom­e­try took more work, but Sobon was just pleased to have her mind rel­a­tive­ly clear for what felt like the first time since com­ing to this blast­ed, back­wards, hell-soaked plan­et.

Alas­si watched the pro­ceed­ings, gen­er­al­ly dis­con­tent. [ The ma­te­ri­als won't hold, ] the old woman grouched in­side of Sobon's head. [ The wood might have enough qi ca­pac­i­ty to hold against an iron rank, or maybe a sil­ver, but that pitch­er can­not hold or chan­nel even a cop­per star of qi. ]

Sobon's analy­sis wasn't dif­fer­ent, ex­act­ly, but she shrugged it off. [ It doesn't have to hold, ] she replied. [ Most of the en­er­gy shouldn't even be flow­ing through the ma­te­ri­als. ]

Alas­si's men­tal pro­jec­tion shift­ed un­com­fort­ably at that. [ That was al­ways the the­o­ry, ] the old­er woman hedged, [ but in prac­tice... ]

Sobon shrugged off her con­cern. [ The geom­e­try is com­pli­cat­ed, and it'd be strange if you could de­sign it right with­out the math. Trust that I've done this be­fore. ] Left un­said was that the prob­lem didn't dis­ap­pear, even if the prop­er geom­e­try helped. [ Sim­i­lar­ly, the col­lec­tion al­go­rithm here shouldn't be hold­ing en­er­gy in the ma­te­r­i­al. ] When fin­ished, she set the pitch­er down, prim­ing the scripts with en­er­gy, and watched the aether col­lect.

Any use­ful test would take time for the en­er­gy to ac­cu­mu­late, but Sobon's mind was al­ready mov­ing for­ward, to oth­er things she could do.