Whether you came here free or in chains, the staff of the Terminal Heights Agency want you to remember that on Aarrpppaa station, your future is in your hands. No one on the station knows that you were the village fool, and only a handful of our staff have access to the records of the crimes that saw you indentured in the first place. If you are running from someone or something, they cannot find you here.Your journey to Aarrppaa station represented a fresh start, a blank slate, a new beginning to your life. One free from the failures of your previous life.
On the other hand, your future is now in your hands. You are the father of your future self. The staff of the Terminal Heights Agency is here to guide you through the intricacies of this new life, but only you can squander the opportunity you have been given. Follow our guidance, and we will help you make this place a home.
Your previous life is over. All you have to do to create a new life, is follow the instructions of our representatives.
Thank you in advance for your compliance.
Sincerely:
The staff of the Terminal Heights Agency.
— “Welcome to Aarrppaa station. Your new home” produced by the Terminal Heights Agency, office of Orientation and Re-education.
Stylized portraits of cultivators in all of the classic cultivation poses lined the walls to either side as Yi Cao and the Young Master left the scripted training room in the Firefly Sect. Palm strikes, ready stances, meditative positions inside diagrams for the placement of sources and amplification scripts, images that were, themselves, reminders of what the pair had come for. They warped oddly around the edges of Yi Cao’s field of vision where the glass of his eyes met the steel cylinders that held them.
“What do you think I should prioritize going forward?” Yi Cao asked, “Technique, or foundation?”
Zihan seemed to mull it over as they walked. “Back home, if you’d just broken through, the elders would probably give you time to adjust to your new strength. You probably don’t notice with your metal, but you should be stronger now that you’ve closed the first circle. Not by much, but no mortal could match you in hand to hand. You’d need to adjust, and you’d have sources to experiment with and choose from.”
Zihan shook his head. “Our goal for you is speed though. So you’ll have to focus on both.” He glanced over his shoulder at Yi Cao. “The Second Circle is probably the priority, but if you can find little exercises to do between cultivation sessions, that would probably be best. I suppose I wouldn’t focus on the big splashy techniques until you’ve finished the second circle, but you should start playing with your aspect. The better you understand what your Ki can do, the easier it will be for you to refine your major techniques when we have a bit more space.”
He turned to the front again as they approached the entrance hall. “So… yeah. I guess, work on your foundation and simple exercises, if you want my advice. Try juggling your Ki, or, I don’t know, peeking under women’s skirts with that telescope of yours or something while we’re moving around.” He gestured towards the counter where the woman who’d greeted them waited. “For now, go pay our bill and we’ll get out of here.”
The woman’s smile grew strained as Yi Cao approached with the technomancer card and offered it to her. She bowed, and accepted it, outlined the charge and waited for him to nod before she ran it. Numbers dialed down, but she only grew more tense and fiddled with the card instead of handing it back immediately.
“Elder Zhurge would like to speak with the young masters before you depart.” She told them.
Yi frowned. “What does he want?”
Zihan answered him. “We invaded his kingdom.” He said, “Beat up his guard and used his stuff.” He sighed. “We’ve already been here too long. Tell your elder he can fuck himself, and we’ll be on our way.”
Silence fell over the hall. There weren’t many spectators. Perhaps a dozen tucked away in small alcoves or behind counters lined with sources of scripted weaponry.
The guard standing in front of the door fingered his spear while Zihan gave him a challenging look. When the woman behind the counter made no move to return their card, Zihan turned his attention to her.
He smiled sweetly at her. “Will that be a problem sweetheart?” He asked.
The clink of porcelain practically echoed in the silence. “It never pays to be rude.”
A middle aged man with a thick beard streaked by a single line of gray sat drinking tea in an alcove directly across from the entrance. Like the guard, he wore crimson robes crossed at the shoulders with bright yellow. Unlike the guard, his belt ended in a huge flare of cloth and he wore the sigil of the sect stitched above his right breast.
“Here I thought I was paying.” Zihan replied.
The elder, it was obviously an elder, smiled without looking at him. “You might yet.” He sipped from his tea, then set the cup down and rose to face them.
Hard eyes twinkled at them in the lights as he stepped out of the alcove to face them. The man clearly dismissed Yi Cao after a moment’s examination and he gave his full attention to Zihan. He bowed, very slightly, at the waist.
“This one is elder Zhurge. Master of the Firefly Sect.” He said.
Zihan rolled his eyes. “This is ridiculous.” He said in imperial.
The elder quirked one eyebrow ad continued in Urdul. “Ye made quite an entrance, humbling young Yi.”
The guard tightened his grip on the spear behind Zihan.
“Does the young master intend on joining the sect?” The elder asked.
“Why would I do that?” Zihan asked. He marched over to the counter and snatched the card from the woman behind it, then turned to go. “We’re leaving.”
Yi, the guard, dropped his spear across the entrance and took up a ready stance in front of the door, one hand cocked back and sparkling with gathered energy.
“There are many benefits to joining a sect such as ours.” The elder went on. “Resources ye cannot get elsewhere.”
“Got enough resources, thanks.” Zihan said. He walked towards the guard who simply glared at him while the light around his hand intensified. “Get out of my way.” Zihan told him.
“Elder is still talking.” The guard replied.
“And I’m not listening.”
“Ye should.” The elder replied, voice like a lash. “I give ye face in meeting ye, yet ye dishonor me with such conduct.”
“You have three seconds to get out of my way.” Zihan told the guard.He held up three fingers. “Three, two.”
“The Young master would honor me,” the elder said, cutting across Zihan’s count down, “if ye would trade pointers with one of your equals.”
Zihan’s countdown stopped.
“Ye opened the door without aid, so I think that means ye must have at least a node open.” The elder went on. “Would ye bare such strength to a cultivator merely of the first rank?”
Zihan turned away from the guard to glare at Zhurge.
Zhurge gave him a thin smile. “Balance is the law of the heavens.” He said in imperial.
Zihan snorted. “Balance.”
The elder’s eyes glinted like points of steel. “Ye dishonored me by breaking in, and dishonored a disciple in front of all these good people.” He rolled his neck, half in limbering it up, and half in a gesture towards the dozen other cultivators tucked away into alcoves. “I permitted ye the use of our scripted room, now, I demand ye permit me reclaim a bit of the face ye cost us.”
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“What do you want?” Zihan asked. “You want me to tell your audience how big your balls are? Fine. Your balls are huge. Enormous.” He made an exaggerated bow. “This one trembles before the mighty balls of the Firefly sect, oh great one. All know of its prowess. All should fear it.” He straighted. “Does that satisfy?”
Zhurge gave Zihan the same tight half smile Zihan directed towards him. He bowed, “But ye are a guest among us.” He said. “Allow this humble Elder Zhurge to exchange pointers with you, so that you might benefit from the wisdom of the sect and all know that we are generous as well as powerful.”
“Fine.” Zihan said. He straightened and gestured for Zhure to come at him. “Just make it quick. I have things to do.”
Zhurge blurred as he crossed the space between them. Light, the same color as his sash, trailed him like an after image as he shot across the entry hall.
Zihan hit him.
The air snapped as his fist flew forward, but there was no impact to the strike. The elder shot backwards, once more a streak of light, only now there were two streaks of light, and two images of the same man, both half translucent until one of them slammed into a beam near one of the alcoves and split into a further two images of the elder, one flying into the alcove while the other braced itself and flung itself back toward Zihan.
Zihan met the image growling. Both men became a flurry of blows, blocks, and counterstrikes. Each meeting of hand to semi-translucent hand accompanied by the snap of cloth and the meaty impact of flesh and bone. The elder’s other images rebounded from the wall at the end of the room and shot towards Zihan once more as streaks of light just as the first image leapt away and Zihan was suddenly grappling with two of the man’s images, then three as the third leapt, ghost like, to the ceiling where he rebounded to attack the Young Master from above.
Zihan kicked one of the elders and it shattered into three identical images. He threw one and it toppled a potted plant, becoming two again who helped one another up before leaping back into the fray. He grabbed one by the arm and used it to batter the others aside, and the woman behind Yi Cao gasped and grabbed his metal arm.
One of the elder’s landed a blow to Zihan’s face that staggered him. Two of the other images grabbed him to try and pin him but Zihan kicked their feet out from under them and sent them hurtling weightlessly through the air to rebound from the ceiling, multiplying with every surface they hit. Within moments, perhaps less than a second from the start of the fight, Zihan found himself surrounded by upwards of fifteen copies of the bearded elder.
Then the fight turned.
A kick scattered half of the elder’s images. They were many, but they also seemed to lack some of the weight the original had before he’d deployed whatever technique allowed him to split and multiply. They moved in straight lines and hard angles where they bounced from surfaces, as though free from the constraints of gravity. Zihan’s kick set them to multiplying further, but it also gave Zihan the space to grab one of the copies by an incoming fist then kick hard.
The elder’s eyes, in that image, grew wide just before the kick landed and ripped the construct’s arm from its torso.
Ki washed across the room as the construct fell apart. Tiles and glass panels in the cabinets shone briefly with sourceless reflected light as all of the images of the elder converged on Zihan at once. One of them detonated in a soundless flash of light that caused the woman clutching Yi Cao’s arm to cry out and his lenses to go black momentarily, then a second self-detonated, and a third. In the brief respite between blasts one of the constructs went for Zihan’s eyes with its thumbs and Zihan used both fists to slam it into the floor. It didn’t explode, but when it rebounded, split now into two, Zihan caught it, and the embedded reflection, with one foot then slammed his heel through both image’s chests bursting them.
A fist caught him in the side of the face and he spun to bat the offender away, generating a second image of the elder but grabbing another by the leg as it tried to kick only for that construct to detonate in another flash of light.
Suddenly, each of the remaining images bounced away. They caught themselves on walls, in the corners near the ceiling, at odd angles, even one of them upside down with one hand braced against the floor. Eight shimmering palms directed themselves towards the Young Master still in the center. The guard gave a wordless shout of excitement, and then eight beams of light shot from eight remaining copies of the sect leader to lash the spot Zihan had been.
Had been.
Because in the moment that they unleashed their combined barrage, he shot forward and crushed one of the constructs against the wall.
After that it was only a matter of time.
Zihan hunted the remaining copies of the elder one by one. They fled before him. Bouncing semi-translucent warriors who shouted and shot scattered beams from their hands as they tried to stay one step ahead of the Young Master. He dodged them all. Grabbed them and ripped them into diffuse Ki while the others repositioned to entrap him between their beams. With each image he destroyed, the others grew more tangible, more solid, until only two remained firing searing beams that left smoking trails across the tilework.
When Zihan grabbed one of them, it detonated with a scream while the last flew at him from behind, both hands sparking with power as it brought them to bear.
Fire flared. Enough heat to make Yi Cao’s eyebrows, what remained of them, crinkle and the woman behind him cry out and jerk away. Both beams from each palm of the remaining elder dissipated in a wave of liquid flame, then Zihan snatched the him and hurled him into the ground.
Thanks to his weightlessness, the elder rocketed back into the air, but Zihan’s fist met him as he rebounded and drove him into the tiles, then again, and again, each time with enough force to burst the constructs that tried to form and split from the original elder.
He continued bouncing the elder off the floor until he stopped bouncing and rolled bloody and gasping for breath from the shallow crater in the floor.
If it had been silent before the fight, the silence that followed it was absolute.
A bit of scorched tiling fell from a crater in one of the walls to shatter on the floor below, revealing more of the intricate script work rippling with light underneath.
Zihan ran a hand through ruffled hair and looked around at the destruction with a sour look on his face. “Fucking idiot,” he said. He tucked one toe under the elder and flipped him into the wall with a thud. “Those are your people.” He gestured to the cultivators huddled in the corners of the room. “You risk their lives with your techniques? Over some face?” He snorted and shook his head. “Fucking idiot.”
The elder groaned and rolled onto his front. Zihan ignored him. He walked to the display counter showing weapons beneath the glass and flipped out his sub-space wallet. He surveyed the scripted swords, knives, and staves on display then tossed Yi Cao the wallet and picked up a technomancer weapon with a steel bottle running the length of its short barrel.
“Loot.” He said as Yi Cao caught the wallet and stood there holding it. Zihan snorted, then dropped the pistol back onto the glass and paced to the cabinet next to Yi Cao housing sources of a half dozen varieties.
The woman behind the counter quickly backed away as he approached.
“Those are not for ye to take.” The guard snapped. He stepped towards Zihan but Zihan shot him a glare that froze him in his tracks.
“Do you really think you can stop me?” Zihan asked. With a touch, the glass over the cabinet evaporated into smoke. The young man stepped back and Zihan reached inside to scoop up a handful of the sources inside.
More tiling fell from the wall, and the elder groaned as he propped himself up. “Ye dishonored us,” he spat, “made little of our accomplishments.”
Zihan snorted. “You haven’t accomplished anything here.” He dropped all of the sources back into the cabinet except for a thin wand of wood that he held within a few inches of his eyes to examine the grain of the wood. “Half rate cultivators on a dead world.” He snorted.
“Have ye tried to advance in a dead world? Have ye Cultivated where there is no Ki? Where even the heavens are blind?” He worked himself into a sitting position and collapsed against the wall to glare at Zihan. “Honor, and power, is all we have.”
Zihan dropped the wand back into the case then stood over it with a look of disgust on his face. He shook himself after a moment and turned to Yi Cao.
“See anything you want?” He asked.
Yi Cao looked around at the shattered sect. The audience stood huddled in corners, eyes wide from the power they’d just seen displayed. Yi Cao shook his head, tapped his amulet. “Got everything I need.” He said.
Zihan scowled and grabbed the sub-space wallet out of his hand.
“Those sources aren’t easy to get.” The woman behind the counter whispered. “There are disciples who depend on them here.”
“Those sources are trash.” Zihan replied. He glared at the woman as he dialed through the contents of his wallet. “If they want to ascend, then they’re wasting their time.” He stepped back to the cabinet of weapons and finally found what he was looking for in his wallet. “Even your master hasn’t opened more than four nodes.” he glared at the man who’d done most of the damage to his own sect.
The Ki in the room changed noticeably when Zihan popped the sapphire source out of subspace. Fog misted across the glass next to Zihan, water droplets shining with the light aspected Ki that still suffused the air. The sapphire thumped where Zihan tossed it onto the floor at the elder’s feet.
“We don’t require your pity.” The elder snarled. He still scrambled to scoop the sapphire up.
Zihan snorted. “Try a new path,” he said, “maybe some of your disciples will even be worth a damn.” He turned to go, but stopped and hesitated for a moment before he snatched the technomancer’s pistol off of the cabinet again. “I’m taking this.” He said, then tucked it into his wallet. He shoved the wallet back into his robes.
“Come on.” He said to Yi Cao as he headed towards the door. “We’re leaving, he turned to look at the guard as they stepped past. “Don’t expect us back.”
The girls were still waiting for them in the shuttle when they returned. Zihan told Bealtiel to take them back to Te’klub and the girl followed the instructions afforded to her by her implanted knowledge to take them out into the traffic moving between the stones.
Kalemal lay with her head on Zihan’s chest for most of the ride, smiling as she moved her hair to tickle his face. He ignored her except to push it out of his way while he stared out at the shifting starscape of miners and technomantic constructs moving amidst the rubble of the shattered world.
“You know what we should have taken?” Yi Cao asked after they’d made some distance.
Zihan grunted, but didn’t turn to look at him. “What could they have had that we don’t?”
Yi Cao’s head still ached from his experiments with his Ki, but it was an ache that working with his augments soothed. With enough focus, he found that he could push all four fingers of his augmetic hand until they stood upright from his palm. He held them up.
“My augments,” he said. “There are parts of my scripture that will need channels there if I’m going to complete the next circle. They’re going to be a bottleneck unless I cut channels through them, and I have no idea what effect that will have on my spirit, let alone on my hands, or my eyes… or my lungs.”
He felt the vibration in his chest as air moved within the machinery inside of him in the silence.
After a short silence, Zihan stirred.
Kalemal’s hair reached up like a brush to swipe across the curve where his chin met his neck and he glared down at her then pushed it away before he turned to focus on Yi Cao.
“Technomancers have some means of grading the power level of their people.” He said. “I don’t know much about it. I expect they’ll know more at Mubra.”
Yi Cao let his fingers snap back into a fist then let both brass fists rest in his lap. “The Firefly sect had scriptures for merging them with my cultivation.” He said.
Zihan hummed, and turned back out the window.
“Is Mubra going to be our next stop?”
Zihan nodded to himself, then batted Kalemal’s hand away when she tried to pull it across her chest.
“Mubra.” Kal said dreamily. “Taking me with you?” She giggled.
“As I understand it, the guild controls most of the interdex gates.” Zihan said, only half present, the other half of his attention lost somewhere in the false stars. “I doubt they’ll have much, if anything, on merging the two… paths.” He turned to Yi Cao and seemed to come back to the room. He frowned. “Should we go back?”
Yi Cao thought of the state of the hidden sect and the distance they’d already come. He shook his head. “No.” He said. “I know a place.”
Kalemal rolled over on Zihan’s chest and pulled herself up to nibble at his ear. “I know a place.” She said, and grinned.
Zihan’s smile didn’t touch his eyes. “This place close?” He asked Yi Cao.
“Very.” Kal whispered with a giggle.
Yi Cao looked away. “The library.” He said. “Where I got the guide book.”
Zihan nodded as Kalemal kissed his neck. “Then that will be our next stop.” He said. Kal’s hair moved to stroke the Young Master’s chin and Zihan turned up to kiss her. He pushed her off of him and she stretched out on the bench, wriggling and grinning up at him as Zihan stood up.
“Why don’t you go up and tell Bealtiel where we’re going.” He Told Yi Cao. He turned his attention to the girl waiting for him on the couch and Yi Cao stood quickly to do as he was told.
“We don’t have much longer on the station.” Zihan said as Yi Cao opened the door. “Best think if there is anything else we need to get before we leave.”
Yi Cao nodded and heard Kalemal give a throaty chuckle before he closed the door behind him.