The former king and his people moved slowly, which was aggravating.
Perry might have described Wu Xianlong as playing too much to the crowd, but none of the men and women they were traveling with seemed to enjoy him very much. He wore all black, with a fancy black wide-brimmed hat that called to mind a wizard of some kind, except that it looked like the pointed top had been truncated. Sometimes they would talk amongst themselves as the king held forth, and Perry would listen in, using the enhanced hearing afforded by Marchand. There was quite a lot of agreement that this was all an ill-advised fool’s errand, though no one dared to call the former king a fool.
Wu Xianlong liked to wax poetic about the path to victory and the revenge he would have in the name of his sons. On more than one occasion, he opined that he might reclaim the celestial decree and rule the Grouse Kingdom once more. He would stand on cliff tops and look out at his former kingdom with mournful regret, and while he was doing that, everyone else was expected to just sort of stand around and wait on him. Often people left to scout or gather materials or just not be around.
Wu Xianlong hadn’t forged his own kingdom, he’d been born into the business of being a king, and when his father kicked the bucket, Wu Xianlong had said ‘king me’. In this time and place, that seemed to be enough. Perry wasn’t sure whether or not the king was an idiot, but from outward appearances, it seemed as though he at least had a screw loose.
The man’s three sons had all been brutally killed not too long ago, which must have hit harder given that they were second sphere and expected to live for a very long time. His wives — plural — were all missing or dead, casualties of having lost the palace. And to top it off, his kingdom had turned its back on him. If Perry was trying to find some empathy for the guy, that was what he thought about, but most of the time he was just angry that the king seemed useless, or anxious that the king and his people weren’t going to be able to do anything when the time came.
During the night, Perry took off his armor so Maya could crawl inside it. It didn’t remotely fit her, but it made sure that she wouldn’t be exposed to the moonlight.
That left Perry to fend for himself.
The good news was that he was able to prevent himself from transforming. It had been a risk, especially with all the people around him, but he’d made it through, keeping himself from transforming. It was easier to redirect the energy of the vessel than to try to force it entirely closed, and he’d borrowed the nanite ‘glove’ from Maya, allowing him to add more nanites to it at a faster rate than before. The Wolf Vessel was recharging itself in the moonlight, somehow translating the lunar energy into more energy, a multiplicative effect that gave Perry access to more energy than he thought most second spheres might ever have. It was only a few days until the moons would be full, and the skies were clear. Under these conditions, Perry would be able to throw devastating haymakers, but without an opponent, he was left venting all the energy once his vessels were full.
The bad news was that his sleep was fitful. In theory, you were supposed to be able to set up processes that kept going while you weren’t consciously maintaining them, the so-called pseudo-meridians, but Perry hadn’t had enough training or practice with them, and while he dozed off, he also woke up three times in the middle of the night, heart racing, Wolf Vessel threatening to burst.
He was dragging his feet the next day, which wasn’t much of a problem, given that they were still moving slowly.
“Sleeping in a suit of armor sucks,” said Maya as she stretched out. “But it beats hanging up in a dungeon with a hand missing.”
“You still sleep?” asked Perry.
“I don’t have that problem licked yet,” said Maya. “Supposedly second sphere can get around sleep, but I don’t know.”
“You got around needing food and water though,” said Perry. “Any tips for that?” He was hungry, as he often was, and it was affecting his mood. The traveling party hadn’t eaten anything. They were all second sphere, but second sphere were supposed to eat things, because it was one of the basic ‘rites’, an essential component of the fabric of society. This was probably a matter of logistics rather than a personal affront to Perry and his ravenous hunger, but he couldn’t be certain. Much of the retinue didn’t seem to think much of him and Maya.
“I cheated,” said Maya. “I’ve got two extra vessels, the sunlight one, but also a small one, the one that I use for my telekinesis. It’s got a limited size, but it generates energy until it’s full. Then I just needed to learn the trick of sending that down into the necessary vessels to supplement.”
“Shit,” said Perry. “I was hoping I’d be able to get it.”
“We’re about to go into the big battle and this is what you’re worried about?” asked Maya.
“If I thought that I could get more combat power from a cram session, I would,” said Perry. “But we’ve got a handful of days, at that, even with the sedate pace.”
“I tethered last night,” said Maya. She looked at her hand. “I felt it settle in, but so far, can’t feel much. But I haven’t actually done anything particularly righteous yet.” She looked over at him. “You should tether too.”
“Academia’s not going to get me much,” said Perry. “Reading and processing is important, but —”
“If you’re going to tether, do it now,” said Maya. “If it’s a five percent bump, then that’s still something.” She frowned at him. “Right?”
“I guess,” said Perry. “It’s not all upside though.”
“You’re not going to have any academic violations in the coming fight,” said Maya. “And besides, half of what they say is, frankly, kind of bullshit.”
“You still don’t believe in cosmic balance?” asked Perry. “You picked a fight, killed some people, transformed me, then got your hand cut off and ended up locked in a cellar, if that’s not karma, what is?”
“And you let some eager woman into your room for relations and got stabbed in the stomach, and you think that’s karma too?” asked Maya.
“I do, actually, yeah,” said Perry.
“Come on,” said Maya. “Xiyan was going to get you one way or another. She’d heard all your stories, fallen in love with you or whatever is going on in that tiny little brain of hers, and she was readying her dagger. Karma’s got nothing to do with it.”
“I try to take the worlds as they come,” said Perry. “And this one, it seems the universe getting retribution might be legitimate.”
“Except we know Xiyan has lied through her teeth about just about everything,” said Maya. “She’s killed four people.”
“I’ve killed four people,” said Perry.
“Point being, where’s her retribution? Why haven’t things gone downhill for her?” asked Maya. “Why didn’t she get locked up in a dungeon?”
“She’s got a lot of people coming to kill her,” said Perry. “And if the king has his way, it’s not going to be a pretty death.”
Maya stared at the back of the king’s head. He was pretty far ahead of them, singing a low funeral song that echoed back from the surrounding valley. “You think the cosmic balance is on our side in this? The guy lost his three sons and his whole kingdom. If the karma is real, I’m not sure what did him in. And for as much of a shitbird as he is, the grandmaster has been carefully navigating himself around what he thinks the rules are.”
“Yeah,” said Perry. “But he’s planning on leaving Worm Gate behind. He’s planning to abandon his people and go live a life of battle among the many worlds. I would think that would count for something.”
“I would think that puppeting hundreds of people would count for something,” said Maya. “And that sending people out with studiously worded instructions that don’t directly implicate you should count too. Hell, on Earth we had RICO, right?”
“The … what?” asked Perry.
“The mob one,” said Maya. “The one that made it so a mob boss could go to jail for saying stuff like ‘hey, it sure would be nice if that guy were dead’. The meddlesome priest law.”
“Sure,” said Perry. “You know, it’s funny, because you can say stuff like that and I have no way to check it.”
“That’s how the worlds are, right?” asked Maya. “If someone’s been to another world, you just have to take it for granted that what they say is true.”
“I’ve got terabytes of video, actually,” said Perry.
“Huh,” said Maya. “I guess you do.”
“But I was thinking more that … you might be the last person from Earth I ever meet,” said Perry. “And if we somehow win, and a portal pops up, then we’re off our separate ways. But between the two of us, there are lots of things we only vaguely know about Earth.”
“True,” said Maya. “And of all the things we knew about Earth, we didn’t share that much.”
“No,” said Perry. He hesitated. “I was worried that if you knew more about me, you might hate me.”
“Why?” asked Maya. “Were you a chomo?”
“What’s a chomo?” asked Perry.
“Nevermind,” said Maya, waving a hand. “You seem decent enough. Maybe not an all-star, but I give you a pass. And if you knew me on Earth, you’d have thought I was … I don’t know. Someone else.”
“A marketer working at a tech startup,” said Perry.
“Yeah,” said Maya. “I mean, not technically a start up when I was there. But yeah. Putting on a smile in meetings, secretly hating everyone and myself for being a part of that pointlessness. I mean, ads work, but we wish they didn’t, right?”
“What kind of company?” asked Perry.
“Er,” said Maya. “A ride-sharing company.”
Perry stared at her. “You worked for — wait, a big one or a little one?”
“A big one,” said Maya. “And I would go to work and say stuff like ‘oh yeah, we’re offering a great product for people, it’s win-win-win, we’re disrupting the evil taxi companies who have this stranglehold on the market’, and yeah, okay, sure, but the real thing was that I wanted money and they were giving it to me, and nothing else mattered.”
“This is more pure,” said Perry.
“Jumping between worlds?” asked Maya. “Sort of. I’m more pure. I’m the truest version of myself.” She looked at him. “You know, that’s the thing that bugs me about you.”
“That I’m not the purest version of myself?” asked Perry.
“Yeah,” said Maya. “When you were going to leave me to die, at least that was you being you. You were pissed off and ready to just see them cut me to pieces, alliance be damned, and if there was a third thresholder, you’d deal with her on your own. I had a lot of time to think in that basement, a lot of time, and I kind of respected it.”
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“Huh,” said Perry.
“I mean, all three of them definitely deserved death,” said Maya. “But the way you were ready to just let me die, yeah, that at least felt more like it came from the heart. All this other stuff, the going native, the talking to this king like,” her eyes went to the people around them and her voice lowered, which if you squinted right was her growing as a person, “like he’s deserving of even an ounce of our respect … that’s you suppressing yourself.”
“You give these sorts of talks to all your henchmen?” asked Perry.
“Only the ones that save my life,” said Maya. She looked up at him. “There’s probably no way I can pay that back before we part.”
“Win,” said Perry. “Win, and stop the grandmaster from going through.”
“Yeah,” said Maya. She looked down the road ahead of them. “I guess we’ll try to swing that.”
~~~~
Tethering to academia was easy enough, just as Maya had said it would be, but it came with only a gentle sensation of the flow of power, not even enough to keep him warm on a windy day. Tethers provided energy, and to some extent, placed limits on a person, but even a tight tether wouldn’t juice him up too much for the final fight.
There was a fair amount of downtime, given the slow movement of the retinue, and Perry started work on a ‘paper’ for publication, taking his cues from Luo Yanhua’s pamphlet on werewolves through the lens of the vessel and meridian system. He was working on his own findings, getting them all in order, which mostly meant talking to Marchand. March had a suite of applications that were all slightly off from Microsoft Office or GDocs, and never stopped feeling weird to Perry, but he was also using them through the medium of talking to a powerful AI.
Even just writing down his thoughts helped the trickle of power turn into a slightly larger trickle of power, but there was no way that he could do enough while on the road. Still, learning about other worlds was, to his way of thinking, one of the primary necessities of traveling between the many worlds. He was going to be learning about the worlds anyway, and about his own powers, and the powers of others, and so long as he didn’t wrap the tether so tightly around his neck that he needed to disseminate his findings or risk death. That Luo Yanhua had done so probably said something about her, but Perry had no idea what.
With the steady trickle of power to draw on, Perry did his best to keep March topped up on power, repairing all the minor dents and dings, and trying to channel power down into the Wolf Vessel, whose time was coming.
~~~~
The party crossed into Green Snake Valley after three days on the road. Perry was still hungry and tired, though he’d woken up only once the night before, and had some eggs from a sympathetic farmer in the morning.
They had talked with the former king about how it would go, and the king had largely not listened to them, which wasn’t particularly surprising. He was planning to make a show of force against Worm Gate, then meet with the grandmaster. Until they got closer, they weren’t going to have any idea whether Xiyan was still there or not. Perry had tried to explain that they had remote sensing abilities through much of Cicada Temple, but the king was adamant that the third spheres settle things like men.
This was a bit of a surprise to Perry, since he’d thought the king was only second sphere.
“At the moment my kingdom was lost to me, I was enlightened,” said the king. “I would give up every scrap of power to have my sons back, to feel the warmth of their hands in mine, to see the light in their eyes and the wisdom of their years.”
“Your grace,” said Perry, words coming slowly. “I was told that such transitions do not come easily, nor in times of distress.”
“In truth, it might have been better to stay as second sphere, when I had such a duty to my kingdom,” said Wu Xianlong. “It is true that transition from one sphere to another is often a matter of focus and study, but if the groundwork is laid, movement from one to another can happen as easily as the sliding of a log across ice.”
Perry thought about that, and didn’t really like the conclusion.
“You were hoping to get to third sphere?” asked Maya. “That’s a bit much.”
“I was hoping it was a last-ditch option,” said Perry. “You’re short on equipment and I’m worried about how it’s going to go. I keep thinking about what I have left in the tank, but … it’s not much. And I’m certain that Xiyan has surprises in store, given how many worlds she’s been to.”
Perry was doing nothing but worry, and as they got closer, felt less confident in their plans. He still had yet to see the true power of the grandmaster, and was afraid that he hadn’t seen the full extent of Xiyan’s powers either — but he was at least hopeful that with as many worlds as she’d been to, some of them were simply duds.
When they were a few miles away, Perry flew up into the sky, much to the shock of those around him. He and Maya had played coy about what they could do, and the king hadn’t pressed them on it, which was how it was supposed to work in this world.
From high up in the air, Green Snake Valley seemed small. Beyond the hills and mountains that penned in the river, there were more temples, more villages, a whole ring of sights as-yet unseen. The squabble between Moon Gate and Worm Gate seemed small in comparison to the Great Arc, and even the fall of the Grouse Kingdom, an event which had shocked the region, was nothing in comparison to the workings of the higher spheres or the vast expanse of the ring. It wasn’t like on Earth, either, where the curve of the horizon hid the enormity of the world from view. On the Great Arc, it was almost impossible not to be faced with your insignificance on a daily basis. Maybe that was part of why everyone seemed to be in such a scramble for power.
Perry had more important reasons to go high into the air though.
“March, connect with the nanites,” said Perry. “Get us some details on what’s been going on, full recordings, things like that.”
“I’ve already begun, sir,” said Marchand.
“Good,” said Perry. He fought back the urge to tinker with the AI’s settings. March taking initiative hadn’t gone wrong yet, and having things done before he had outright stated he wanted them done felt like it was going to save his life.
“I’ve already taken the liberty of contacting Miss Luo Yanhua,” said March.
“What?” asked Perry. “Why? That’s terrible news.”
“Sir, we’re going to be going against a man you have stated your fear for on multiple occasions,” said Marchand. “We need all the help we can get.”
“Yeah, well she’s not going to help us,” said Perry. “She’s going to make a beeline for us, accuse us of crimes we definitely committed, and then try to bring us to justice. Plus she wasn’t supposed to know that you were alive, seriously, what the hell man?”
“I’m afraid I must protest that as an advanced artificial intelligence, I’m not alive, sir,” said Marchand.
“You know what I mean,” said Perry.
“I believe your emotions in this subject to be clouded, sir,” said Marchand. “However, if you wish me to stop the transmission, I will do so.”
“How are you transmitting?” asked Perry.
“I have arranged the nanites into a crude speaker, sir,” said Marchand.
“Well, yes, stop transmission, we’ll have to hope she didn’t hear it,” said Perry. He looked across the valley, to where Crystal Lake Temple stood in the distance. “We don’t need her showing up.”
“If you say so, sir,” said Marchand. “If I may say so while we’re out of earshot, sir, she seems far preferable to that dreadful king.”
When the download finished, Perry descended to where the king and his people were waiting with Maya. She was in the middle of an argument with one of the second sphere people, and Perry had missed most of it.
“Of course it’s unethical,” said Maya. “He’s using people as his meat puppets. They only allow him to because he’s the one that controls the shelter and the food and everything else. It’s clear coercion.”
“If this is the cause for your crusade, it will not be one taken up by anyone else,” said Bai Yulan. Perry only knew their names because March was listening to all the conversations and tagging everyone. Bai Yulan was one of the scouts, with a streak of green hair and a necklace made of tiny bird bones, all in the classic airbrushed style of the second sphere.
The king stood off to one side, looking forlorn and disinterested in the discussion.
“So you’re not going to fight?” asked Maya.
“We will do as our king wills,” said Bai Yulan, bowing her head in respect. “But we do not mistake the orders of our king for the incontrovertible will of the celestial kingdom.”
“Fine,” said Maya. “Whatever.” She turned away with her arms crossed.
“You are stoked by the fires of a false righteousness,” said Bai Yulan, raising her voice slightly. “Your personal grudges are not the realm of this court. Your foolish ideas of right and wrong hold no water, and if you continue on this course you risk shattering the vessel of this alliance.”
Maya turned on her. “We both want Xiyan dead,” she said. “Let’s leave it at that.”
Bai Yulan’s face twisted into a frown. “I cannot leave the safety of my king to one side. It is my duty to protect him.” One of the others came forward, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she shrugged it off, but she looked at everyone around them, taking the temperature. “Will I be the only one to speak out against these interlopers? They mean to use our king for their own ends.”
“Or I am using them for mine,” said the king, finally turning from his quiet contemplations. “This is unlike you, Bai Yulan. They are allies.”
Bai Yulan turned toward him, then looked back at Maya, face set in a frustrated frown.
Perry took off his helmet. He smelled the fresh air, and held his sword at the ready. There were mingled scents, but from Bai Yulan, there was an unmistakable smell of mulberries and sea salt. It was very familiar.
Perry slowly and calmly put his helmet back in place. “This isn’t Bai Yulan,” he said once his sword was drawn and ready. “She was scouting, out away from the rest of the group, and met her death at the hands of Xiyan. Her face was stolen.”
“Preposterous,” said Bai Yulan. The moment after she’d said it, she leapt up into the air with a tremendous amount of power, moving herself as far away from the cluster of people as she’d could.
Her only advantage was surprise, and she’d had precious little of that. With the full strength of the power armor and his energy, Perry was almost able to get to her as she landed, and he threw his sword with both hands trying to get her. She turned to smoke for just an instant, and the sword sliced straight through her clothes, passing harmlessly through her body, and the next moment she was flesh and blood again, taking in deep breaths as she ran.
When she made the first statue, Perry almost ran into it. It appeared in her footsteps like an echo of her movement, a thing of marble that perfectly captured her new face and torn clothes, frozen for just a moment in the act of running before animating. When Perry slipped past it with deft footwork, it grabbed for him, and he was forced to dodge away from it. His sword had returned to him, and he grabbed it out of the air, then pushed his body and armor to their limits, funneling energy down the meridians. When another statue appeared in her wake, he was ready for it, and lashed out with his sword, tearing it apart. He burst through it like the Kool-Aid man, leaving rock behind him. He was gaining on her.
Maya was slightly faster though, her bounces springing her down the road with ever-larger leaps. She was without her needle though, and almost entirely unarmored. The nanites had formed into a stubby dagger, but Maya’s face was set.
When Maya made a final leap, ready to stab and tackle, Xiyan turned and thrust a hand out behind her. Red and black ribbons burst forward from her palm and smacked straight into Maya, and she collapsed onto the ground, tied up and squeezed. Perry leapt over her prone body and kept up the pursuit.
This time, when the stone statue appeared, Perry was able to dodge it entirely, barely slowing down. He was getting close enough to strike her with the sword, but if she went shadow again, it would do nothing but slow him.
“March, fire,” said Perry.
The first bullet hit her cleanly in the back and didn’t even slow her down a little bit, though blood dripped freely from the wound. Before the second bullet could find its home, she seemed to explode into smoke, and Perry was forced to stop running, because he could see nothing.
“March, clear it,” said Perry.
March flipped through images, multi-spectral analysis done on the fly, and then Perry could see again, if in black and white with poor quality. Xiyan was standing in front of a stone door in the middle of the road, one that she was still in the process of hastily and sloppily making. March shot her in the head this time. Whether by dumb luck or split-second timing, she had gone to shadow, and the bullet passed cleanly through, hitting the stone. Perry put all his effort into getting to her, but reached her just as she pushed her way through the door.
The stone doorway collapsed the moment she was through, and Perry tumbled through the crumbling rock. He hadn’t seen where she’d gone.
He swore at the sky for a moment, then turned and trekked back to where Maya was getting the red and black ropes off of her. They had hugged her tight enough to leave marks on her skin, and particularly around her throat and wrists. The other second spheres had been following, as had the king, but they had either been slow or gotten a late start, because they were still well behind.
“I should have waited,” said Perry. “She pressed her luck though, might have decided to dip out if I hadn’t said something.”
“Bai Yulan is dead?” asked the king. “Another of my only loyal soldiers, fallen?”
“Yes,” said Perry. “That was Xiyan, the woman who killed your sons.”
“Then she was not with Worm Gate after all?” asked the king. “She has been with us this entire time, infiltrating our ranks?”
“I don’t know,” said Perry. “I have to apply a technique, then I’ll know what Worm Gate knows, have some idea what they were up to.”
“It’s licorice,” said Maya, holding up the limp red and black ropes. “She nearly killed me with licorice.”
“She tried to turn us against you,” said the king. “She killed Bai Yulan, who had many years of life ahead of her. I never suspected a thing. It was convincing, in her speech and her mannerisms.”
“She didn’t think about the smell,” said Perry.
“We reach Cicada Hall tonight,” said the king, voice firm. “We bring her to justice tonight. She must be ended.”
“Yes, your grace,” said Perry.
But Xiyan had been reckless in trying to get so close to them, and they would be more careful moving forward. It felt to Perry like they might have just lost their single best chance at a clean, uncomplicated kill.