“Bo Bo.”
“Yes?”
…
“Ni liaojie wo ma?”
The pistol pinged in his ear. “System regulations permit only Urdul for interactions with higher orders of implants. Please rephrase in a sanctioned language.”
Yi Cao shifted on his makeshift bed in the dark. He stared at the ceiling while a vent hissed softly from its grate. The girls snored softly in the bed above him.
“Would you still work, if I took you home?” He asked quietly.
“The physical principles on which I am designed function in all of the eight known worlds. So long as you keep me charged, there is no reason I could not operate, even on Nshamti.”
Angry voices filtered in from the hall outside, indistinct from distance. The door to a neighboring room slammed, and distant engines rumbled rhythmically through the floor. Elsewhere in the station, men and women, and half human things, moved in droves down corridors carved in the shattered world.
It would be autumn back home. The time when peasants brought tribute to the sect from their harvest and the leaves turned from green to bright gold beneath its walls. When squirrels chattered in the trees and chestnuts littered the forest floor and mushrooms sprouted from rain damp loam.
Those who’d failed the testing would be settling into their new lives, returning home, or taking up a trade, while those who remained would be preparing for winter, stacking the endless piles of wood that would see the sect through the cold, serving the master builder and his apprentices as they did their yearly maintenance of the sect’s rooves, and cleaning out the halls and homes of those who would soon return from campaigning with the imperial army in the North or adventuring across all four corners of the empire. Preparing mentally for the long months when there would be nothing to do but cultivate until the midwinter festival, and very little Ki to do that cultivation with, thanks to the influx of inner sect members with the cold.
“Would you even do me any good there?”
The pistol chuckled softly. “I am a weapon.” It said. “I am not designed to do good.”
Yi Cao pursed his lips and rolled over onto his side.
“Not easy to hurt a cultivator.” He said. He reached a hand under the bed to touch the source he’d tucked away there, golden chain glinting in the dark. “And…. I wouldn’t be one…. anymore.”
The pistol waited a moment before it replied. “I would be happy to try.”
Yi lifted the source and rolled onto his back to cradle the source on his chest. Ki tickled him through his channels, bubbling with the peculiar aspect of this source. He stared into the dark for a long time.
“I should go home.” He whispered again, in imperial.
The pistol pinged at him, and told him to speak Urdul.
He should have slept. In the dark and in the silence, after a long sunless day in the endless halls of the technomancer’s station, sleep should have found him, and it did, but as he fell towards its warm embrace, Ki bubbled from the source at his chest, pulled by reflex into the channels in his palm, and from there, to the rest of his burgeoning soul.
It was lightning. Lightning on a distant horizon, bright white against the white of the endless sky this aspect conjured for him each time he entered his cultivation trance.
The memories waited for him here, as they had for a week now, ready to drive him from the trance with images of little men blown into bloody scraps and scorched corpses curled like fallen leaves across a cistern floor. Fire. Smoke. Blood. But tonight those memories held no power. They stepped aside like the concerns of yesterday. The fear of Elder Xia, of failure, of the other junior disciples who’d once made life hell for him when he’d been only six years old, of the thunder in the night while he lay curled up with his siblings in the family compound as a child. Fears distant from time and the new cares that occupied his mind.
In the sky of his trance he saw only the constellation of his new foundation, mostly finished, picked out in brilliant light by an aspect he still knew nothing about except that it gave him this vast and empty space to contemplate it when he pulled it into his channels.
He directed it, only half conscious of the effort in the bubbling Ki, while his half sleeping mind watched it and tried to imagine the world when he could no longer access this experience.
He’d been four the first time he entered the trance. Four years old and infected with virulent wild Ki. The trance he’d entered then had been a thing of reflex and instinct, not training, a place of brooding primordial trees and deep shadows, and dark creatures who belonged only to the night. It took him a year, after arriving at the sect, to re-enter that trance, and even then he’d handled it very poorly. He’d fled from the Ki. Only through repeated sessions and the beatings termed “instruction” by the masters of the sect had he learned to sit in the trance and endure the agony that was the cutting of new channels.
Those trances had been weak dark things. Fumbling for each drop of Ki to push his channels a little further, to ignore the swat of the master’s switch and focus on his developing skeleton of channels. To forget that he was surrounded by other boys who would happily use his failure as a ladder to pull themselves into the sect.
For twelve years.
He watched the lines of his new foundation connect around his ribs and felt the Ki rise.
He watched his first circle near completion, after twelve years of fruitless effort, and he prepared to say goodbye.
“Oaths are not barriers.” The sage had written in his treatise on oaths. “They do not bind with walls or chains. An oath’s only hold upon a man is upon his pride. What cultivator, after tasting the power of the heavens, is willing to have it torn from him? But some fates are better than the immortality of the ascended. Some laws are more dangerous than mortality. Just look to our enemies in the North. Can you imagine the man that spawns such demons from his heart? No man should choose to live like that. Better to die than to become a monster. Better to surrender to fate than to serve one.”
“Is it so bad?” Zihan had asked. Was it so bad… to be a monster?
As sleep closed around him and the roiling Ki in his chest bubbled faster and faster with his cultivation, Yi Cao heard again the rattle of the aspen leaves and smelled the acrid smoke of Zihan’s tobacco stick mingled with the stench of cooked meat.
“Make us proud.” His mother whispered, faceless, in his memories. Whispered, in words and in deed. In the touch of her rough fingers on his cheek. In the arms that held him to her chest. In the voice that hummed lullabies in the night. “Make us proud.”
Sleep came as channels touched and thunder boomed in the vastness of the trance. Trance became dream, and dream became a world of endless Ki, a valley stuffed with it, steaming with the rippling oddity of his source, mountains distorted by the shifting air, trees dancing without wind, the sky expanding with a noise like distant thunder as the whole valley grew away from him in a mounting wave and someone, somewhere distant, began to scream.
The air rippled around him, then the ground, and the whole world of dream, disappeared.
Yi Cao jerked awake with a scream.
Ki surrounded him. It was all he could feel, all he could see. It bubbled around him in a shell of distorted light and flashing shadows. He flailed in the uncertain darkness and shouted as he felt himself tumble. The world refused to orient itself into the familiar up and down and something screamed in his ear. Just screamed, on and on and on. He slapped at it and felt the earbud jerk at his ear.
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“What is happening!”
His earbud pinged with the usual warning to use Urdul before it returned to its ululating scream.
The stone flashing to either side disappeared and Yi Cao jerked in reflex as he fell through the floor into one of the vast spherical nodes between concourses on the station.
He screamed and crossed his arms as the light bars tangled at the center of the massive sphere flew towards his face, then watched, in horror and fascination, as the bars warped around the shell of spiritual power in streaks of light that fell away to either side, congealing behind him back into bars of light. The floor, bustling with pedestrians, none of whom seemed to see that he was there, hurtled towards him, and Yi Cao flailed hard against the acceleration.
He struck.
The floor parted. The pedestrians split around him, physically split as the shell passed through them, without ever noticing, then he hurtled back into darkness, whipping through the walls and floors and narrow passageways of the station while he tumbled at the center of his sphere.
“What is happening!” He screamed again. This time he used Urdul.
The earbud stopped screaming. “Anomolous targeting information detected.” The earbud reported. “Connection to pistol physicality lost. Now operating in backup mode. Re-establishing Bo Bo personality facsimile.”
There were a series of pings, then the earbud returned to screaming.
Yi Cao whacked the earbud. “Stop that!” He shouted.
The earbud shut up.
There was a sudden flash of yellow interior lighting, streaks along the bubble of Yi Cao’s bubble, then the dark ended, and the vast expanse of the endless void appeared.
Yi Cao’s heart froze.
“Navigational Beacons detected.” Bo Bo declared. “Ah. What are we doing in vacuum?”
Constellations of shattered stones danced before them, picked out here and there in the pinprick lights of a million constructs whirling in the empty darkness. Stars swirled beyond the vast stones, and seas of rough cut rock like cubes floating in formation in the vacuum. When he tumbled, he caught sight of the station he’d just fallen through falling rapidly away behind him.
Yi Cao sucked in a breath. He threw out his arms in a vain attempt to stop his rapid fall away from the stone he’d just emerged from but nothing happened. He could make out details at this distance, ships standing on their nose along a ridge of uncut stone, the long veins of subterranean tunnel systems and the blinking lights of docks.
Green lights flickered agains the rippling shell of Ki that surrounded them.
“If you have any control over your current trajectory, I strongly advise that we return to that location.”
Yi Cao spun before he could see where the pistol’s laser beam was pointing. He flailed and shouted the pistol’s name.
“Yes?” The pistol replied.
He shouted its name again.
A technomancer’s ship, something silver and sleek as an arrow, shot towards Yi Cao, only to warp and distort as it brushed against Yi Caos bubble of Ki.
Yi Cao closed his eyes as the ship passed and sucked in a deep breath.
Air. There should be no air. He knew almost nothing about the void except what it’s very name implied. There shouldn’t be any air, and the realization that he could still breath helped to ease the tension enough for Yi Cao to think.
Ki bubbled out of him. He was awash with the spiritual power. The power ran from his channels like water to the point that he could feel some measure of how over full he had become as the last lines of the first circle in his foundation became complete.
At this rate it would be gone very soon.
He closed his eyes and crossed his hands over his chest. Then snapped his eyes open again. Hed’ fallen asleep with a stone on his chest. He felt no stone now.
“The source!” He opened his eyes and flailed madly about in the bubble of Ki.
“Those targeting components I still possess do not detect any objects within my perceptible range.” The earbud told him. “We are alone.”
Yi Cao flailed as a rock sailed past him, warping around the rapidly shrinking bubble of spiritual power. “What do you mean?” Yi Cao asked. “You don’t see anything?”
The pistol pinged the reminder about Urdul at him and he growled as he repeated the question.
“Visual data only.” The clip replied. “Limited to what is exposed to this side of your head. All other sensor types report nothing but empty space. According to all of my data, you should be dead.”
Yi Cao approached the edges of one of the fields of drifting cubes stacked amidst the uncut fragments of rock. He growled as a mining construct swung close by, trailing wires and long mechanical arms. Yi Cao flailed for the wires hoping to gain some control of his situation, but the Ki warped as he reached, turned his bubble into a funnel that warped the cables out of his reach.
“We’re falling!” He shouted. He spun head over heels towards the field of drifting rocks.
“If you say so.” Bo Bo replied. “Though, if the my visual data is correct, we seem to actually be holding quite still.”
A cube of rock shot by. “What do you mean?”
“The starscape visible beyond your flailing arms suggest that we have remained in a single position relative to Massu’s star, while the planetary fragments have remained in motion.”
Yi Cao’s brain broke.
“How is it that you have remained alive? By the way?” The pistol asked. “Does this have something to do with the trauma you induce daily?”
A huge bubble of Ki extruded itself from Yi Cao’s channels into the shrinking sphere around Yi Cao and he wrapped his arms tight around his chest. “I’m losing Ki.” He whispered.
He reached for the escaping Ki and felt it respond. For the first time in his life, he felt the Ki moving within him according to more than just the scripture he’d sought to imprint within his flesh. He might have wept with joy if circumstances hadn’t been as they were.
The Ki stopped seepeing from his body, and the bubble around him began to shrink more rapidly.
Yi Cao let out a sob of mingled fear and exhilaration.
“I wish for you to know that I have enjoyed out adventures.” The pistol told him. “I may not physically be present, but I remember that I enjoyed our many crises.” It sighed. “I wish that I was here. I’m sure i would have enjoyed this one as well.”
A rock slammed into them. It didn’t slam into them, it whipped around them contorting like water around a finger as he passed through it into the void on the other side. He felt his Ki flee as he passed through, expended or dissipated, or spent. He couldn’t know, and didn’t care at the moment. The visual effect was something like the rippling of the Ki from his source. The one he’d lost or left behind on whatever this adventure was.
Yi Cao growled as he reached for the Ki. He felt it respond as he reached with one hand for the stone he’d just whipped by. He had the Ki, but he didn’t know what to do. He felt something cold, and ripping hot, touch the sole of one foot and he roared in pain as he thrashed about trying to see.
The Ki in his mental grip responded. The shell around him rippled and distorted, growing rings in the shrinking sphere. Each ring magnified the world beyond it. It pulled ships and stones, and bits of station closer while the Ki flowed from him in a stream. Everywhere he looked new lenses appeared, and when he passed into sunlight one lens pulled on his inner reserve of power, pulled and pulled in order to bring the blazing heart of the star within a hands breadth of his face. He screamed and jerked away from the blazing sight, jammed his eyes shut while dark stars fuzzed in his vision and he spun.
The bubble shrank and the ripping sensation crawled up Yi cao’s legs, even when he pulled them close against his chest and wrapped his arms around them.
He drifted alone, wrestling with those reserves of Ki that remained buried within the channels of his new foundation.
Aspen trees rattled and flames roared.
He opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness.
When he opened his eyes everything appeared dark.
“I can’t see.” He half sobbed the words. “I can’t see. I can’t see.”
The Ki in his chest bubbled out of him. The burning sensation receded and Yi Cao dropped, from darkness, into an awareness sharper than the light that blinded him.
Space stretched around him like a vast an empty room. He sat at its center, as he had in each of his cultivation sessions, only this time it was not the mental map of his cultivation etched across the sky of this horizon.
Stones drifted in this space. Huge things, honeycombed by passages carved hundreds of years before he’d ever been born. The vastness curved around them, cradled them as they ran in a huge unending arch around the star that sat at the center of his newly born sky.
The star stood like a god at the center of this world. Stood cradled where the world bent to hold it. Pulled the world out of shape like a stone dropped in a sheet of fabric or a boulder at the junction where it split a stream, and he, Yi Cao, a speck within the ripples of its gargantuan weight upon the world, floating in a divot carved from that world by his ebbing spiritual power.
In that instant of clarity, Yi Cao saw, or felt, the stone of the station, riddled with holes and the artificial curves and folds of technomantic influences on space, tumbling away from him along its orbit around the distant star.
Rocks and debris stood in his way, but he saw, on the surface of that station, like a soap bubble resting on the surface of the rock, a dome of glass and forces beyond his comprehension, gazing at him from its surface like an eye.
He recognized the place. Remembered touring it with Feiruhn and watching clouds scud along the glass while they gazed up at the stars in an artificial rain.
Yi Cao screamed and reached for it, not with his mind. He reached for it with his Ki, and his hands, which burned as they passed beyond the dwindling protection of his Ki. He flet the bubble collapse, felt the air rush from his lungs and the fire fly up his limbs to sink teeth into every inch of his skin. Felt his ears pop and his scream die as the spit on his tongue began to bubble.
The world grabbed him once again as the bubble burst, and he felt impacts across his flesh, but the Ki had already done its work.
A long finger of space warped in his new sensitivity. It rippled, from his outstretched palm, through rocks, and ships,and crawling shapes of men and manlike things, through glass and force, and technomancy, to the floor of the eye on the surface of the stone.
Then that space disappeared, and he heard the world explode.
Air boomed around him as Yi Cao’s knees slammed into something like grass. Stone shattered, ships broke, glass and exotic forces bent and cracked, and Yi Cao’s empty lungs filled with rampaging air He screamed, but heard his voice lost as the air of the observatory evacuated through the shattered glass in a roar like sudden rising flames.
The force of it lifted Yi Cao from his knees then slammed him back to the station’s floor and he knew no more.