"I seem to re­call," Shi­da Ken tried to keep his voice even, as be­fit his sta­tion as Lord of the city of Emer­ald Val­ley, de­spite want­i­ng very bad­ly to cow­er or kow­tow be­fore the Blood Witch, es­pe­cial­ly now that she seemed to be wor­thy of a new name, "that you promised me you were re­tired." He was sit­ting along with her at one of the ta­bles in the inn, now a good half hour af­ter the Young Lord Mofu Suno had de­part­ed. Every­one else was out­side, at his re­quest, and guards were mak­ing sure they had a lit­tle bit of pri­va­cy.

"That was a long time ago," Alas­si's voice was strange. In truth, in her bear­ing and qi, the city lord saw a dif­fer­ent per­son--a per­son that had more vi­brance to her than he had ever seen. It was not sim­ply the quan­ti­ty of her qi--and al­though he knew her to be at least a Sil­ver-ranked Cul­ti­va­tor now, he sus­pect­ed she was still hid­ing her depths. She had, af­ter all, beat­en a Gold-ranked Cul­ti­va­tor in a di­rect, one on one con­test, even if... even if many would not con­sid­er it a fair con­test.

If any­one ac­cused the city lord of bias, he would yield. But in the mo­ment, he had done what he be­lieved hon­or de­mand­ed. In truth, it seemed like Alas­si should have lost, but there was a sharp­ness to her spir­it, like a blade un­dulled by time, which to his knowl­edge she sim­ply should not have had.

"Then you should be long re­tired," the lord said, but mea­sured his words with as gen­tle a smile as he could sum­mon un­der the cir­cum­stances. "And yet I feel you are younger to­day than you were back then, Blood Witch Alas­si."

Alas­si's mouth twitched, as though in dis­dain for the name. "Not younger. But I have found new strength and pur­pose. I do not ex­pect I will stay."

Ken con­sid­ered the words, un­sure whether he want­ed to cel­e­brate or feel di­gust­ed. What she had done would stir up the no­ble house of Mofu, and they would re­turn with­out ques­tion. If Ken could pre­sent her when they re­turned, he would be in no dan­ger; if he could re­port that she had left, it would only be mild dan­ger for him. But if he sug­gest­ed that she was leav­ing and had not yet...

"When do you plan to leave?" He chose not to ask where. Al­though he had re­spect­ed the Blood Witch when he was--when they were both younger, for her ac­com­plish­ments and for help­ing his broth­er in the war, Alas­si had shown no in­ter­est in him or in any­one at all, not af­ter her hus­band died. To his un­der­stand­ing, she had re­mained pure--hav­ing loved one man, she would not touch an­oth­er. Hon­or­able, per­haps, though she was still very dan­ger­ous.

"I must still re­cov­er my­self ful­ly." Alas­si paused, as though think­ing, and then added, "or per­haps, I must sim­ply break through to Gold. It will be eas­i­er af­ter that."

"Gold is dif­fi­cult for those with­out the re­sources," Ken hedged in re­turn. "And even af­ter all of these years, you are only sil­ver--"

"Last week, I was Iron," Alas­si said, dis­mis­sive­ly. "I will raise high­er. I have found both strength and pur­pose, Lord Shi­da. I do not ex­pect to stay long."

As Alas­si was talk­ing, though, Ken saw her frown, and her eyes looked far off, for a mo­ment. Then, when they re­fo­cused on him... he could swear that they had a dif­fer­ent look to them, as though the woman had changed from one mo­ment to the next. And when she spoke again, her voice had a dif­fer­ent qual­i­ty, less cer­tain.

"...though, Lord Shi­da, if you would mind shar­ing what you know of the Gold­en Ridge and the Gold­en Wall, I would cer­tain­ly ap­pre­ci­ate it."

Shi­da Ken mea­sured her, un­sure of the tran­si­tion. "Are you...?"

Alas­si just frowned at him, sud­den­ly more se­vere, with the vig­or from ear­li­er al­most giv­ing way to the depth of that frown. "I am in many ways a chan­nel for some­thing greater, Lord Shi­da. It is... a part of my pur­pose, if you will."

Ken stud­ied her only an­oth­er mo­ment, be­fore re­lent­ing. "The Gold­en Wall is the break­through at the end of Gold Rank, and is said to be one of the trick­i­est chal­lenges, re­quir­ing peak con­di­tion of body and mind, as well as deep un­der­stand­ing of qi. The Gold­en Ridge is the tran­si­tion into the Gold Rank, and it is where I my­self am trapped. It is one of the many rea­sons why no­ble fam­i­lies have an eas­i­er time of it than non-no­bles. They say that the break­through it­self is a puz­zle--"

With­out any warn­ing, Ken and Alas­si both were sur­prised when a sud­den force of qi grasped Alas­si's qi core, and al­though Ken's qi sens­es were not the clear­est, he saw with­out ques­tion that the force took her core into its hands, flip­ping it over and re­ar­rang­ing the core. Al­though Alas­si her­self was at that mo­ment only four Sil­ver Stars, her core de­vel­oped with a frankly un­heard of speed, push­ing it­self all the way to ten stars as though by force of will.

Shi­da Ken watched with rapt at­ten­tion as the fa­mil­iar shape of a ten Sil­ver-star core ap­peared in the space be­fore him, and then the star peaks pulled out, stretch­ing the core un­til its depths were re­vealed. Only then were in­di­vid­ual star points re­leased, falling back into the core in time with a ry­th­mic cir­cu­la­tion that he al­most didn't no­tice. And when the last point of the star fell into it, Alas­si's core in­stant­ly snapped into a gold­en col­or, and Ken could sense be­hind it the be­gin­ning of Alas­si's dant­ian, con­dens­ing in a space with­in her soul.

Wit­ness­ing it, it was like a world fell open for Shi­da Ken, and al­though he didn't con­scious­ly try, his spir­it also be­gan to break through.

----------------------------------------

Sobon had only just start­ed to have a con­ver­sa­tion with this city leader, Lord Shi­da, when she re­ceived a ping from the Tidal Coro­na's AI, re­quest­ing an im­me­di­ate men­tal-only con­tact from the Coro­na's en­gi­neer­ing team.

It was a lit­tle more com­pli­cat­ed than that. In truth, the Coro­na for­ward­ed a pack­e­tized thought re­quest, the brevi­ty of which im­me­di­ate­ly cought Sobon's at­ten­tion. The in­tu­itive-ra­tio­nal con­cept asked Sobon whether he could hold a con­densed-thought-stream con­ver­sa­tion--es­sen­tial­ly a chat stream formed of full-thought-sized data­grams.

This was vast­ly more in­ter­est­ing than lo­cal pol­i­tics, so she left Alas­si to deal with the lo­cal of­fi­cial, ded­i­cat­ing her own thoughts ex­clu­sive­ly to the task. Alas­si ap­par­ent­ly knew him, any­way, so Sobon fig­ured it was sim­ply bet­ter this way.

There was only a brief pro­to­col ne­go­ti­a­tion, which told Sobon she was deal­ing with some­one who had been cy­ber-en­hanced for many years. Al­though she was un­fa­mil­iar with Ri'lef pro­to­cols, and they were un­fa­mil­iar with Crestan ones, they set­tled on stan­dard trade pro­to­cols, and then took a brief dal­liance to each ex­tend those pro­to­cols in fa­mil­iar ways. Sobon found the Ri'lef pro­to­cols a bit noisy, full of what seemed at first to be re­dun­dant chan­nels, though he ex­pect­ed they were there to trans­mit nu­ances that he had nev­er been trained in.

[ You are the (sum­moned) war­rior, ] the Ri'lef en­gi­neer sent as part of their open­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions. [ I am K'val, (In­dus­tri­al Sec­ond) of the Coro­na En­gi­neer­ing crew. ] Sobon replied with his name, rank, and se­cure sig­na­ture to­ken. Then they both paused for their ne­go­ti­a­tions, dur­ing which Sobon re­ceived as part of a re­ply the de­cod­ed af­fir­ma­tion string buried in his sig­na­ture to­ken--mean­ing that the en­gi­neer had not only suc­cess­ful­ly de­cod­ed it, but cho­sen to say so. Sobon added a emo­tion­al over­lay of plea­sure on her next re­turn pack­et, and the two left that ex­change there.

His? Her? Now that Sobon was op­er­at­ing, in part, as his old self, the lines were blurred again, but af­ter a mo­ment, he con­sid­ered it to re­al­ly not mat­ter one way or an­oth­er. If any­thing, get­ting too into his old per­sona would make his adap­ta­tion to Alas­si hard­er, so she tried to keep that in the fore­front, al­though she doubt­ed it would mat­ter at all to the Ri'lef.

[ I have been tasked with both as­sist­ing you and cen­sur­ing you, ] K'val sent to­wards the tail end of their pro­to­col ne­go­ta­tions. [ I was (told) by the Coro­na that you are aware we are en­gi­neer­ing (the aether­sphere) of this plan­et. You are at­tempt­ing to in­te­grate non-lo­cal aether pro­to­cols into the (plan­e­tary mythol­o­gy). This is al­ready hav­ing an im­pact on our abil­i­ty to con­trol the sit­u­a­tion. ] Sobon had to cross-ref­er­ence some of the in­tu­itive con­cepts, and the two had a brief four-pack­et spat over the de­f­i­n­i­tion of (plan­e­tary mythol­o­gy), with Sobon fi­nal­ly ac­knowl­edg­ing that the Ri'lef en­gi­neer doubt­less un­der­stood the con­cept bet­ter.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

[ To date, this has been nec­es­sary for my sur­vival, ] Sobon re­turned. [ In every in­car­na­tion so far, I have put up against forces too dan­ger­ous to sur­vive with the re­sources avail­able. I also am giv­en to un­der­stand that the lo­cal aether pro­gres­sion is de­lib­er­ate­ly slowed and gat­ed, which may make my mis­sion dif­fi­cult. ]

[ Your un­der­stand­ing is nat­u­ral­ly cor­rect. Even with all of our en­gi­neered de­vel­op­men­tal (gates) and tools, lo­cal (aether war­riors) are reach­ing un­in­tend­ed lev­els, and specif­i­cal­ly, reach­ing them with­out un­der­stand­ing the eth­i­cal con­se­quences. This has all been com­pli­cat­ed by the nec­es­sary cre­ation of (Star­beasts) for our own use and de­fense, which has only been seen by the lo­cals as some com­bi­na­tion of in­va­sion and re­source. ]

This time, with some clar­i­ty, the Ri'lef fol­lowed with a full, mul­ti-pack­et men­tal con­cept of what the lo­cals called Star­beasts. They were, as Sobon ex­pect­ed, bio­engi­neered aether-adapt­ed an­i­mals, al­though she was sur­prised to dis­cov­er the point. Star­beasts lived specif­i­cal­ly to rapid­ly adapt to tox­ic lev­els of aether, form­ing a core that could serve as a re­place­ment for aether-tol­er­ant ma­te­ri­als nec­es­sary to re­pair their star­ship. If the Coro­na could har­vest enough of them, they could, in the­o­ry, re­pair their star­ship in place, al­though the re­sult would be vast­ly in­fe­ri­or to the re­pairs even the shod­di­est space­dock would have made.

[ These cores the lo­cals seem so in­ter­est­ed in are noth­ing but ma­te­ri­als? ] Sobon con­sid­ered the pack­et fur­ther as she sent the re­ply, get­ting an­oth­er rel­a­tive­ly long an­swer back.

[ We are aware of their val­ue to the lo­cals. It is un­for­tu­nate, but our cal­cu­la­tions sug­gest that if we in­ter­rupt their har­vest­ing of (Star­beast Cores), the rel­a­tive sta­bil­i­ty of our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion will evap­o­rate. The cores can be in­te­grat­ed into their (aether bod­ies) to sta­bi­lize them, al­low­ing them to use aether above the nor­mal tox­i­c­i­ty lim­it. As long as they be­lieve they can har­vest the cores with im­puni­ty, we hope they will re­main dis­tract­ed from your tar­get. ]

Sobon didn't miss the change in con­ver­sa­tion. [ What can you tell me about the tar­get? ]

The re­turn pack­et was in­stan­te­nous, as the Ri'lef was ex­pect­ing the ques­tion. [ I need to know to what de­gree you and your race are cleared by the Founders, and no lies. The Coro­na will be mon­i­tor­ing your re­sponse. ]

Sobon didn't both­er try­ing to test the lim­its. [ I be­lieve the term the founders use for our race is (Ex­ter­nal-ini­ti­ate). In­di­vid­u­als have been cleared for some in­ter­nal mat­ters, and we are giv­en limt­ed trade rights. I have no per­son­al con­tact with any mem­ber of the Founder race and no spe­cial clear­ances. ]

Again, a very fast re­ply. [ Would you be will­ing to sub­mit to Founder au­thor­i­ty in ex­change for the nec­es­sary clear­ance? This would only be a pre­lim­i­nary ap­proval, and you may nev­er be giv­en all of the de­tails you would re­quire for an op­ti­mal mis­sion. The plau­si­ble con­se­quence is not be­ing per­mit­ted by the Founders to re­turn to your plan­et with­out a sus­tained de­brief­ing. ]

Sobon only spent a few mo­ments con­tem­plat­ing. [ I am a sol­dier. I was brought to this world af­ter dy­ing in an un­re­lat­ed mis­sion. I have no spe­cif­ic de­sire to re­turn to Crest. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there are lo­cals I (have grown fond of). If there is a chance to sal­vage this sit­u­a­tion, I con­sid­er it a duty. I would ac­cept this con­se­quence to car­ry out the mis­sion. ]

In­stead of a re­ply from the Ri'lef en­gi­neer, Sobon re­ceived an en­crypt­ed data­gram from the Coro­na, with no key. Only af­ter a brief in­ter­val did she re­ceive a fol­low up from the en­gi­neer.

[ If any­one on the Coro­na crew, or any­one from the Founders, asks you to con­firm that you have been read into this agree­ment, you should re­peat the fol­low­ing phrase, and in­ter­pret it as best you can. It is a trans­la­tion of a Founder con­cept, one of the fun­da­men­tal so­cial con­cepts of their race. (It takes an en­tire (hand) to (grasp) the fu­ture.) This is con­cept is also the key to the data­gram you have been sent.]

That was an odd thought. The en­tire phrase it­self was in­her­ent­ly-trans­lat­ed, rather than ren­dered in ei­ther of their lo­cal lan­guages, and the word (hand) was dou­ble-trans­lat­ed, with sev­er­al of the Ri'lef's ex­tend­ed data chan­nels be­ing used to con­vey the sin­gle word. Their con­cept of a (hand)--that is, the bi­o­log­i­cal grip­per at the end of one's arm--was metaphor­i­cal, but also phys­i­cal. A hand was made up of many pieces, bones, mus­cles, skin, and nerves, and all of them served a func­tion. If Sobon un­der­stood the phrase... each per­son was them­selves only a small part of a Hand. Maybe sev­er­al peo­ple made up each in­di­vid­ual part of a Hand. Grasp­ing, in con­trast, was a slight­ly metaphor­i­cal slant on the same, with some ex­tra de­tail on what it meant in con­text, but all of it un­der­stood from the con­text of the Hand.

Sobon let those thoughts run off on their own, de­cod­ing the data pack­et with the packed con­cept of (hand). It showed, more or less, what Sobon had al­ready been told--it was a high­ly cen­sored di­a­gram for a Founder de­vice that was di­rect­ing the lo­cal aether in the vicin­i­ty. It ap­peared to con­nect to oth­er, cen­sored things, and had a place in­side that Sobon im­me­di­ate­ly sus­pect­ed was a con­trol room, but which was also cen­sored.

[ That's not much more than I gleaned from be­ing told the rough sit­u­a­tion by the cap­tain, ] Sobon said in re­ply. [ What can you tell me that's use­ful? ]

[ Not a lot, ] the en­gi­neer replied, with tone in­di­ca­tors for tired­ness and frus­tra­tion with au­thor­i­ty. [ Aether is a more com­pli­cat­ed con­cept than you may know. You may know it con­nects to oth­er aether across space and also across time, which means that it med­dles with (fate), among oth­er ad­vanced con­cepts. To do that re­quires a struc­ture that ex­ists for­wards and back­wards in time, and mod­i­fi­ca­tions can only hap­pen across the span of the struc­ture, with oth­er con­straints that both com­plex and se­cret. Cross-time ma­nip­u­la­tion con­sumes vast amounts of pow­er, and re­quires math that even our own great­est en­gi­neers can­not mod­el. ]

[ In­stead of try­ing, the Founders iso­late as­pects of time med­dling as dis­tinct­ly fla­vored aether va­ri­eties whose be­hav­iors can be pre­dict­ed. Since be­fore this species ex­ist­ed, this plan­et's bios­phere has been shaped ac­cord­ing to aether pat­terns to fall into one of the Founder child-pat­terns. The tar­get fa­cil­i­ty is re­lat­ed to that op­er­a­tion. ]

That... the thought chilled Sobon, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the fact the many re­sem­blances of this species to the species of Crest. The ob­vi­ous in­ti­ma­tion was that Crest was also a Founder child race, de­spite ex­ist­ing well out­side Founder-con­trolled space. [ What is the worst case sce­nario if they achieve con­trol over the fa­cil­i­ty? ]

[ Ir­rel­e­vant, as the only plau­si­ble out­come would be ex­ter­mi­na­tion by the Founders. We are in a pro­tect­ed sec­tor, if a fringe one. There is no chance of any mem­ber of this species es­cap­ing be­fore a rou­tine Founder ex­am­i­na­tion, or a fol­low up to the Coro­na's dis­ap­pear­ance, dooms this world. A more like­ly out­come would be that a failed at­tempt to use the fa­cil­i­ty has­tens the end of the world. ]

Sobon rephrased the ques­tion, us­ing the Crestan ad­di­tion­al pro­to­col over­lays to add a struc­ture to the thoughts as she trans­mit­ted it, link­ing them to com­mon mil­i­tary terms and in­tents. [ (Op­er­a­tional pa­ra­me­ter): What are the chances that par­tial con­trol ren­ders our op­er­a­tion (mil­i­tar­i­ly un­fea­si­ble)? ]

There was a pause, and then a se­ries of data­grams. Al­though they were clear­ly non-mil­i­tary thought, they showed suf­fi­cient clar­i­ty. Cer­tain of the en­er­gies could be ex­tract­ed to pro­duce su­pe­ri­or war­riors, but con­trol over the fa­cil­i­ty it­self would not pro­vide most of what Sobon feared. [ Clar­i­fi­ca­tion: The fa­cil­i­ty does not con­tain (su­pe­ri­or aether-based AI) ca­pa­ble of (retroac­tive time ma­nip­u­la­tion)? ]

[ Con­firmed, ] came the re­ply. [ This is cen­sored in the di­a­gram, but I sus­pect you guessed, as most peo­ple would. The fa­cil­i­ty is in­tend­ed to be con­trolled by a Founder di­rect­ly. It nor­mal­ly links into a hy­per­space net­work and al­lows di­rect trav­el, pre­vent­ing the need for a res­i­dent ad­min­is­tra­tor. An anom­aly caused the net­work node to dis­en­gage, which called for our (ap­point­ment) to ad­dress the is­sue. We are (con­trac­tors) for Founder (work), not trust­ed with sen­si­tive is­sues, but ad­e­quate­ly read-in on Founder Poli­cies to be able to be dis­patched at much low­er cost and po­lit­i­cal (non­sense). ]

Sobon men­tal­ly scoffed at the pseu­do-ra­tio­nal con­cept of po­lit­i­cal (non­sense), which she imag­ined was just one of many for­eign trans­la­tions of the same con­cept across cul­tures. Sobon would have trans­lat­ed the term more rude­ly, but then, she wasn't in the Founders' em­ploy. [ If you want me to not in­tro­duce Crestan aether tech into the plan­e­tary aether­sphere, you will need to give me ad­vanced point­ers on es­tab­lish­ing my­self as a war­rior. Cur­rent­ly, my (qi) lev­el is (four-star Sil­ver). ]

The re­turn data­gram was fast, and fol­lowed up with sev­er­al oth­ers. [ I will get the Coro­na to pro­vide you a full data­base, but you must un­der­stand that the (plan­e­tary myth) must re­main in­tact. In truth, my per­son­al analy­sis sug­gests your (cy­cle and thorn) (aether-guide) can be in­te­grat­ed into the (plan­e­tary myth) with min­i­mal changes, but that is my su­pe­ri­or's call, not mine. For now, un­der­stand that the gat­ing sys­tem, how­ev­er ar­bi­trary, ex­ists to pre­vent peo­ple from gain­ing pow­er they do not de­serve. It should not be seen as with­in an in­di­vid­ual's abil­i­ty to as­cend as fast as you have. Some things con­sid­ered im­pos­si­ble should re­main im­pos­si­ble, at least by gen­er­al con­sen­sus. ]

[ That said, most of the gat­ing is en­tire­ly ar­bi­trary, and here is a list of steps to get around them. Try not to be too vis­i­ble when you make use of them. ]

Sobon didn't even no­tice the sec­ond half of the mes­sage as she glanced through the packed data­grams, im­me­di­ate­ly ad­just­ing her­self up to the be­gin­ning of Gold Qi.