Sobon woke once again to find him­self not in the med­ical build­ing, but in an in­di­vid­ual room with the door closed. To his dis­gust, he found that there was once more a pun­gent, sticky mess of "heal­ing" en­er­gy clog­ging his spir­it, but he re­sist­ed the urge to flush it with fresh aether from his right dy­namo.

Clear­ly, sim­ply flood­ing his body with aether had side ef­fects he hadn't yet iden­ti­fied, and while he felt stronger now than he had just a lit­tle while ago, ad­vanc­ing too quick­ly seemed like a ter­ri­ble idea.

In­stead, he fo­cused on those old ex­er­cis­es he'd been taught, ex­pelling the sticky en­er­gy and bring­ing in fresh en­er­gy from out­side. The world's aether was it­self dirty, and it made Sobon itch, but it didn't cling to his sys­tem the way the med­i­cine did.

There was a knock on the door, though it opened be­fore Sobon could do more than open his eyes. The per­son who en­tered was the first woman Sobon had seen since the whore in the slums, and she was clear­ly of the up­per-caste race, her fea­tures more an­gu­lar and her pos­ture more guard­ed. The dress it­self was fine fab­ric, held tight around her hips by a fab­ric belt, but vo­lu­mi­nous in the sleeves and up­per tor­so, and the fab­ric was dyed to pro­duce im­ages with­out em­broi­dery--a tech­nique Sobon wasn't ex­pect­ing to see in such a low-tech­nol­o­gy world. Though she was not some­one Sobon would count as beau­ti­ful--cy­borg in­stincts aside, he was quick­ly start­ing to hate every­one in this world--it was clear that her dress and be­hav­ior were all tai­lored to form a co­he­sive im­age, rather than be­ing nat­ur­al ex­pres­sions of her spir­it or the more com­mon ac­ci­den­tal col­lec­tion of con­ve­nient­ly avail­able fab­rics. That ...pur­pose, that co­he­sion, ap­pealed to him on an in­stinc­tive lev­el, even as he ig­nored it.

He stud­ied her as she shuf­fled in­side, tak­ing in the mod­er­ate strides and the care­ful mo­tions, and de­ter­mined that she was sup­posed to look shy and sub­mis­sive, even as Sobon could tell that an enor­mous gold­en Aether spike hung be­hind her, her twist­ed core proud­ly dis­play­ing nine lobes. The aether it­self vi­brat­ed qui­et­ly but in­tense­ly around her, though she was able to qui­et it with a quick but ob­vi­ous men­tal ef­fort when she sensed that he was watch­ing.

He didn't know how the rank­ing of these qi users worked, but he could tell in­stant­ly that she was far be­yond the base com­man­der in pow­er, to say noth­ing of Sobon him­self.

"It seems you are well." Hav­ing closed the door and moved up to the side of Sobon's bed, the woman stepped back slight­ly and bowed. "I am Xoi, an as­sis­tant to Gen­er­al Gaum. It has been brought to our at­ten­tion that you are an un­usu­al spec­i­men." She straight­ened and stepped clos­er again, and her eyes trav­eled over him briefly. The fact that she didn't shy away from any sort of eye con­tact re­in­forced Sobon's opin­ion that her gen­tle de­meanor was an act. "You have purged the med­ical qi from your sys­tem al­ready. That shows a lev­el of in­stinct or un­der­stand­ing far be­yond that of the lo­cals, though I think most would pre­fer med­ical qi to the pol­lut­ed low-qual­i­ty qi of this area, de­spite its... long-term ef­fects."

Sobon wasn't sure if there was any­thing in there to re­spond to, and in­stead just mea­sured the woman's gaze, meet­ing her eyes un­flinch­ing­ly. There was a calm cer­tain­ty to her that he found vast­ly more ap­peal­ing than her beau­ti­ful dress and fake shy­ness, though he didn't let any of the emo­tions stir­ring in­side him con­vince him that she could be trust­ed. No­body here could be trust­ed.

Af­ter a long pause, per­haps to see if he had any­thing to say, Xoi con­tin­ued, as though con­tin­u­ing a script. "Of course, the real cu­rios­i­ty is your split core. No doubt this is the rea­son be­hind your sud­den rise in spir­i­tu­al rank­ing; three cores, two ded­i­cat­ed to a spe­cif­ic kind of qi at high den­si­ty and pu­ri­ty, and the third in­te­grat­ing them into your body and spir­it. A clever and in­ter­est­ing tech­nique, though I am not cer­tain I un­der­stand the in­tent. Who­ev­er taught you this tech­nique, did they con­vey any de­tails?"

Sobon caught him­self feel­ing mo­men­tar­i­ly at ease, giv­en that the woman--at the very least--seemed in­tel­li­gent and well-mean­ing... but that ex­cused noth­ing, and he pushed it down. "I don't know how long I was asleep," Sobon said, not ad­dress­ing her ques­tion at all, "but pri­or to that, I was beat­en by hooli­gans, strung up by a butch­er to be torn apart and eat­en alive, watched sol­diers mur­der in­no­cents, was kid­napped, thrown into a pit to die--no, to be eat­en alive again, and then bare­ly healed and made to ex­er­cise un­til I passed out."

"Your pres­ence here I am sure was not meant to be an in­sult," Sobon felt his lips peel back into a sneer, in spite of try­ing to re­sist... though, he didn't try too hard. "But it is one."

The woman hummed non­com­mit­tal­ly, not avoid­ing his gaze. "If you'd like me to add to your un­com­fort­able list of trag­ic ex­pe­ri­ences," she said, with some dark hu­mor in her voice, and a shad­ow of a smile on her lips, "please give me time to change out of this dress. It is dif­fi­cult to clean."

Sobon couldn't help laugh­ing in an­swer, and the woman cov­ered her mouth in re­sponse, her eyes amused. Still, when she low­ered her hand, the amused look fad­ed quick­ly. "In truth," she said, her voice still on the pleas­ant side of lev­el, "I un­der­stand your ha­tred. Since our oc­cu­pa­tion of the Isles, the Djiang have over­seen a num­ber of atroc­i­ties, some by our hands, some by your own, to say noth­ing of the rift crea­tures and the spawn of the Fall­en King."

"Still, for you to think you can mouth off to some­one of my pow­er..." there was a smile hid­den in her eyes, again, but it was not a ful­ly pleas­ant one. "You are ei­ther very ig­no­rant or very con­fi­dent. And I do not be­lieve it is ig­no­rance, be­cause I saw you mea­sur­ing my qi. You un­der­stand much."

Sobon frowned at her. He want­ed to deny know­ing things, since in so many ways he knew noth­ing of this world, but that was a use­less ges­ture giv­en how much raw com­pe­tence he had dis­played, rel­a­tive to every­one else around. There was no dis­guis­ing that there was some­thing odd about him; the best he could do was try to hide ex­act­ly what that was, or at least, con­trol who knew it.

In the end, he said noth­ing, and she spoke up again.

"The best in­cen­tive I can of­fer you," she said, "is an es­cape from this dis­gust­ing place, and the only way I can of­fer that is if you can dis­play both com­pe­tence and sub­mis­sion to au­thor­i­ty. Since you have missed this chance to be sent on a beast ex­ter­mi­na­tion mis­sion, you should have enough time to heal and train prop­er­ly. I might even be able to get you a lit­tle ex­tra room to prac­tice your spe­cial tech­nique in se­cret, as long as you promise not to at­tempt to es­cape or rebel."

"In ex­change, I ex­pect you to, on the next mis­sion, kill a Gold-ranked star beast with­out as­sis­tance, and re­turn with its core. Do that, and I will en­sure that you are trans­ferred to the Gen­er­al's ret­inue. To be clear, that is the next mis­sion, in three moons time. Do you think you can do that?"

Sobon had no idea how to even mea­sure strength, but he was sure that Xoi's gold­en qi was sig­nif­i­cant­ly more pow­er­ful than the base com­man­der's sil­ver qi, and he was sure that the qual­i­ty of his body's new iron-gray qi was in­fe­ri­or to both. Still, if he had sev­er­al months, prop­er nu­tri­tion, and time to him­self... "Yes."

"You are dar­ing." Xoi's eyes nar­rowed as she stud­ied him, but she kept smil­ing. "Very well. We will be ex­pect­ing great things from you, and if we are dis­ap­point­ed..." She stepped back, and turned to­wards the door. "...You do not wish to dis­ap­point us."

Sobon watched her head to the door, frus­tra­tion build­ing in his chest. As she got to it, he fi­nal­ly barked the ques­tion. "Why... why does no­body ask my name?"

She turned and looked at him, her face blanked by con­fu­sion.

"Why should we need to ask?" she asked. "The Di­a­mond Lord's bless­ing shows us your name, Jom, as it shows you ours. We sim­ply do not like to be fa­mil­iar with those of in­fe­ri­or sta­tion. Names are some­thing we only ac­knowl­edge among those who have achieved some­thing be­yond mere... sur­vival."

Sobon frowned, but the spir­it of his pre­de­ces­sor sud­den­ly reached out to him, and fed him a gar­bled text stream--it seemed like it should have been more, full of de­tails and in­for­ma­tion, but all he could make out was a name at the be­gin­ning: Xoi Xam. As it came to him, he could feel his face twitch, and felt a headache build­ing for a mo­ment, then fade.

Xoi cocked her head at him for a mo­ment, as though cu­ri­ous, but walked out with­out ask­ing a fur­ther ques­tion.

Sobon frowned, and closed his eyes, pok­ing the spir­it. You are Jom, I as­sume?

[ Yes. ]

And this is nor­mal?

[ I'm not even sure what I did. I feel the world call­ing to me, and I... I passed the call on to you. Did it work? ]

Sobon con­sid­ered the ques­tion. I as­sume the in­for­ma­tion you have was sim­i­lar­ly... con­fused.

[ I can't un­der­stand it, no. I nev­er could. Even be­ing able to read a name clear­ly is new to me. ]

Sobon nod­ded to him­self. Your voice is chang­ing.

[ Yes. I mean, well, I am chang­ing. I was noth­ing, be­fore. Then I died, I sup­pose. ]

Sobon shook his head, in­tent on not get­ting side­tracked. What else calls to you? From the world?

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

[ Peo­ple, if they have qi. Oth­er things that have qi, prob­a­bly. I once met a rat like that. He was eat­ing some­one, of course. Most peo­ple in the slums don't, though. The trash of peo­ple with qi does, but I don't want to mess with that. ]

Things with qi tell you what they are?

[ I told you, I could nev­er make out what it was say­ing. Maybe? But the fact that it's call­ing out means that it's dan­ger­ous. That's all a street urchin needs to know. ]

Sobon re­lent­ed, ac­knowl­edg­ing that Jom didn't have much else for him. He con­sid­ered the seem­ing­ly cor­rupt­ed data dump. The idea of in­for­ma­tion broad­cast through the aether wasn't new to him, of course; no world with aether tech would ig­nore the chance to use it for both sen­sors and com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The only thing odd was that it seemed to un­lock as he--as Jom, per­haps--got stronger, and that could be ex­plained by the knot­ted struc­ture of his body's qi core. If the core it­self act­ed as a crude an­ten­na, you would need a core of a cer­tain com­plex­i­ty in or­der to re­ceive the data cor­rect­ly.

Could he just make a bet­ter aether an­ten­na? Prob­a­bly, but there was no rea­son to pri­or­i­tize that. He would be bet­ter served by cre­at­ing a num­ber of dy­namos, link­ing some of them into high­er-di­men­sion­al struc­tures, and fig­ur­ing out how to keep his body's core from get­ting over­loaded by the ad­di­tion­al aether he was pump­ing into it.

For now, he sat up straight in his bed and set­tled, try­ing to see how much aether his body's core had. It was, un­sur­pris­ing­ly, more than enough to match the pa­thet­i­cal­ly thin dy­namos he orig­i­nal­ly made; he stud­ied what he had, not­ing that the two dy­namo threads were slight­ly dif­fer­ent in size. That... wasn't ide­al, if he in­tend­ed to link them into a high­er-di­men­sion­al torus, so he calmed him­self, try­ing to steady his con­trol as care­ful­ly as pos­si­ble, and took his orig­i­nal, left-hand dy­namo in mind.

Care­ful­ly, he cre­at­ed an­oth­er with ex­act­ly the same thread size and di­am­e­ter, and spun it right.

The two were close enough to give off a beat fre­quen­cy when he spun them to­geth­er, small dis­tor­tions in­di­cat­ing that they were not quite even. He stud­ied the beats for a mo­ment, then de­stroyed his new dy­namo and be­gan again, craft­ing one just a hair short­er, then spun it up. The beat fre­quen­cy was still there, but much slow­er. He stud­ied it, again, then very care­ful­ly, de­stroyed and recre­at­ed the dy­namo.

Near­ly per­fect.

In­stead of fuss­ing with it any fur­ther, Sobon cre­at­ed four more dy­namos--two left, two right--of the same thread size, com­par­ing them all to each oth­er to make sure they were as close to per­fect as he could make them, and then set the six tiny dy­namos in three op­pos­ing pairs, lin­ing up their spikes just so. With­out him ex­plic­it­ly do­ing any­thing, the rings and spikes be­gan to slow­ly push and pull on high­er-di­men­sion­al space, cre­at­ing a slug­gish cur­rent that passed through those high­er di­men­sions and back again, ap­pear­ing to re­turn to the same point in space.

He fed a thread of his own aether through that cur­rent, let­ting it get pulled away from him, and as soon as it came back to the same place, he com­plet­ed the cir­cle, and spun it out­wards.

The ef­fect on the air around him was im­me­di­ate. The world's aether, which had been rough and itchy around him, rip­pled slight­ly, a faint echo of life re­turn­ing to the stale air around him. The op­pres­sive at­mos­phere of the room--of the whole world, as far as Sobon had known it so far--light­ened slight­ly, as the out­wards-spin aether pressed back light­ly against it.

As I sus­pect­ed, out­wards-spin is healthy. Sobon had only been able to guess, but it was right-hand to right-hand aether, so it made sense. As the dy­nano's spike ap­peared, he grasped it, try­ing to get a sense of any high­er-di­men­sion vi­bra­tions or cur­rents; since his own per­son­al aether was now pass­ing through those high­er di­men­sions, it should be pos­si­ble. Af­ter a few mo­ments, though, he gave up; the thin thread of aether he was us­ing was no re­place­ment for a prop­er sen­sor, or at least a well-de­signed aether an­ten­na.

In­stead of wor­ry­ing about it, he cast the six small­er dy­namos out into high­er-di­men­sion­al space, align­ing them so that they out­lined the whole of the torus. Rel­a­tive to the phys­i­cal, that meant some of the torus­es would ap­pear to spin in re­verse, or fade in and out of re­al­i­ty... but then, their pres­ence would be all kinds of con­fus­ing for a more lim­it­ed mind.

Such as, for ex­am­ple, Jom.

The spir­it was watch­ing in in­tense fas­ci­na­tion, his mind bare­ly able to com­pre­hend geom­e­try in two di­men­sions, let alone four. Af­ter Sobon pinned the spikes in place, caus­ing the en­tire con­struc­tion to col­lapse into a sin­gle, low-qual­i­ty out­ward-torus, he fi­nal­ly spoke up again. [ This is the ...thing, you were talk­ing about? The high­er what­sit? ]

I wasn't re­al­ly talk­ing about it, Sobon grumped. He hadn't even con­sid­ered that the ghost of the slum boy was read­ing his thoughts, giv­en how silent a com­pan­ion he had been.

[ I don't un­der­stand. Isn't it just... com­ing from nowhere? ]

"Every­thing seems to come from nowhere, if you can't see the source." Sobon coughed once af­ter he whis­pered to the emp­ty room, then shook his head. He was us­ing up en­er­gy that he ought to be putting into get­ting in shape, but this felt like a good first step, even if he wasn't en­tire­ly pos­i­tive what the best use of it would be. "But no, it's flow­ing away and back again. Only the out­ward part is ob­vi­ous."

As he stud­ied his new dy­namo and spike, though, Sobon be­gan to feel cold, like the world was shrink­ing away. At first, he thought that it might have been a con­se­quence of this new type of aether he'd pro­duced, but as sec­onds dragged on to a minute, he be­came sur­er that it was com­ing from out­side his room, and grow­ing clos­er.

He con­cealed the aether dy­namo with­in his spir­it, curs­ing him­self for not mak­ing an­oth­er left-hand dy­namo be­fore he put this to­geth­er, but giv­en the in­ten­si­ty of the feel­ing, de­spite the dis­tance, he knew that noth­ing he could pos­si­bly throw in the way of the ap­proach­ing force would mat­ter.

He didn't even con­sid­er for a mo­ment that the force wasn't af­ter him, as he threw aside the sheets on his bed and forced him­self to his feet. He con­sid­ered his mus­cles for the mo­ment; they felt... scarred, al­most, but healthy enough to move for the mo­ment, so he start­ed to move to­wards the door.

Sobon would only lat­er piece to­geth­er what hap­pened. It was a phe­nom­e­non he had en­coun­tered twice, the first time in a near-miss sce­nario, when a high-pow­ered aether weapon im­pact­ed the war­ship and shat­tered its shields, but didn't de­stroy it, and the sec­ond time... the sec­ond time on the last day of the Rapi­er; this was a warp­ing of causal­i­ty ac­cord­ing to a sim­ple will of de­struc­tion. All oth­er aether in the sur­round­ings be­came sat­u­rat­ed by it, filled with it, and for a long, ag­o­niz­ing mo­ment, all his sens­es were re­placed with a sense of de­struc­tion.

Where there should have been knowl­edge, sen­sa­tion, pain, even self, for a mo­ment, there was only death.

The mo­ment passed, and Sobon looked be­hind him to find a man hang­ing in midair, one hand grip­ping a death scythe whose edges flick­ered with an opales­cent sheen, and the wall of Sobon's room was torn open like it had nev­er been, stone and wood evap­o­rat­ed with the ruth­less ef­fi­cien­cy of a laser rather than hacked apart with some­thing as crude as a piece of met­al with a nar­row edge. The man hold­ing it was of the lo­cal race, Sobon re­al­ized, not one of the less-pop­u­lous rul­ing class, but he was well-dressed and clean, his beard cut neat­ly and his hair combed and oiled.

When he land­ed on the floor next to Sobon, it was the first sound his ears reg­is­tered that wasn't de­struc­tion it­self, and Sobon couldn't help but glance down at the man's shoes, drawn by the sound. They seemed un­re­mark­able, though he thought there was a sym­bol on the tongue of the shoe, of a sil­ver bird with claws out­stretched.

"You aren't one of them." The man's voice was calm, and Sobon knew the man hadn't been stretch­ing his pow­er to do this much. He hes­i­tant­ly glanced into the aether, to see that the man's aether spike was a whitish tan that flick­ered on the edge of be­com­ing translu­cent, and... something. Sobon couldn't place, in those few moments, some other difference, but neither could he deny that something was odd, something well beyond the coloration of the core. "I would be tempt­ed to take you with me, but there is no time. I can't let them have you."

"I'm sor­ry."

Sobon reg­is­tered the blow ab­stract­ly. Per­haps it was be­cause he had his eyes open to the aether, but when his body and spir­it were torn apart, he found him­self... drift­ing. Dead, but not dead enough. Al­though his dy­namos shat­tered and were rent asun­der, al­though the en­er­gy he thought was his own spir­it was re­duced to noth­ing, he found him­self torn away from it all, flung out, far from the base. He was thrown into the sky, and past the hori­zon.

This time, he saw every­thing.

He was thrown so high into the sky that the world be­neath him shrunk from his whole ex­is­tence to a mas­sive sphere, the edges curl­ing as he got far enough away to per­ceive its true shape. But it wasn't made of stone and wa­ter, not from this per­spec­tive; he could only see the world's aether, and he found him­self study­ing it with a strange de­tach­ment, which was most like­ly an in­abil­i­ty to pan­ic, in­stead of any strength of his soul.

He saw that the world's aether, stretch­ing out be­low him, was sick. No, not sick; it was wound­ed, with huge gash­es torn into it. He couldn't see what the phys­i­cal world looked like from here, but there were whole re­gions where noth­ing grew, where the aether had been cut away just like the room he had just been stay­ing in--and just like his body had been.

But then, it wasn't re­al­ly his body at all, was it? He had bor­rowed it off a boy on the edge of death, and start­ed to re­pair it, only to end up slaugh­tered like a ro­dent when he showed po­ten­tial. He con­sid­ered the cir­cum­stances, briefly, as his soul drift­ed over the blight­ed world, hang­ing in space on what Sobon rec­og­nized as a very high arc that would even­tu­al­ly bring him back down. He didn't spend any time at all think­ing about what would hap­pen when he hit the ground. It wouldn't be good, if he sur­vived at all.

In­stead, he thought the con­flict, both against some "star beasts" and the clear op­pres­sion of one race over an­oth­er. He thought about the strange na­ture of bod­ies and qi, about the "stars" that he knew were loops and the odd mixed aether they pro­duced. He watched as the world cy­cled by un­der him, re­al­iz­ing af­ter a long bit of star­ing that he could see the dif­fer­ence be­tween land and sea, civ­i­liza­tion and wilder­ness.

He sensed the mo­ment, hours or days or per­haps weeks lat­er, when his slow drift up reached its apex, and the orb that had shrunk be­low him be­gan to grow again, if very slow­ly at first. It made him won­der if he could ad­just his tra­jec­to­ry, but this soul form of his had no aether, and he didn't dare press too hard; it was pos­si­ble any at­tempt to ma­nip­u­late aether in this state would undo what­ev­er pro­tect­ed him, or worse. If he did sur­vive, per­haps he could look more into it, but not soon.

The world grew and grew be­neath him, but for all but the last few min­utes the ex­pe­ri­ence seemed to be a mean­ing­less non­event. If he had nev­er lived as a cy­borg, that might be tor­ture, but Sobon had lived his life with the abil­i­ty to turn off all his sens­es; he had done it in or­der to sleep, some­times, and oth­er times, had hid­den from the gris­ly re­al­i­ty of mil­i­tary life, turn­ing in­side to grieve or retch in the pri­va­cy of his own mind. This emp­ty ex­is­tence wasn't com­fort­ing, but it was fa­mil­iar, at least.

It did un­pleas­ant­ly re­mind him of the death of his cy­borg body, but he quashed those thoughts with force of will in or­der to not be drowned by them.

And then, fi­nal­ly, there were those last few mo­ments when the world be­gan to ac­cel­er­ate to­wards him, and he could only choose to stare or not to stare as his fate leaped up at him from be­low, like a mas­sive hand reach­ing up to swat him out of ex­is­tence, per­haps for real this time. Per­haps he would join his friends and crew in the Infinite Cycle, or be rein­car­nat­ed some­where from birth, his mem­o­ry gone to pro­vide a fresh slate for his new life.

When his spir­it crashed vi­o­lent­ly into some­thing and killed it, he re­al­ized that once more he had no such luck.