“Ok.” Bethy admitted as we strolled out of the bar and grill. “That was a decent fight. No crazy Path powers, but they both made good use of what they had. That blade summoner guy was pretty cool, he was like ‘whoosh’ and those giant wrappy chain things were all over the place, and the tiger guy was like ‘not today chain guy!’ and then turned into that giant magma kitty.”
I laughed. “It’s not that weird. It makes sense people stuck at E-rank with no chance to move up would maximize their advantages, especially since everyone else here is also at E-rank. Polishing your rank like that is a good way to get stronger. That’s how Abel did it?”
“Who?” She said in confusion. “Are you talking about a friend of yours? Are they really strong? I thought Adler was the strongest person you knew here.”
Abel threw his hands up in frustration. “That one isn’t even a name!”
“My mistake.” I told her solemnly. “He’s no one important. Anyway, practice makes perfect. Still, I wonder if there’s anyone on Callus with a Path?” Alas, my curiosity would go unsated, because we’d arrived at the shuttle, piling in and taking off for our next activity. I had bigger questions now that we were on the way. “So…tell me more about the aurora. You said we can walk on it? How is that possible?”
Benny shrugged. “Who knows? How is anything we do possible. All I know is that the aurora is supposed to be amazing. The colors vary, creating paths through the lights, and you climb them to try to find light sprites. The sprites are supposed to be good luck, and they emit a mysterious light that polishes your soul.”
“Really?” I asked with interest. “That’s not exactly a common power. Soul refinement is one thing, but polishing mostly seems to be a factor of time and use. And is that luck thing legit? I wish we could have brought Sydney and Megan with us, they’d have a better idea. Sadly they’re nowhere near E-rank.”
My best friend just laughed. “Who knows. It should be fun though. Apparently the different colors of light create varying amounts of suppression. From red to violet, the further you go the better the sprites. Everyone has to start on red, then that run along the red road, turning of onto other colors as they twist around each other. I thought we’d make a game out of it. Whoever catches more sprites wins.”
“It definitely sounds like a blast.” I chuckled. “Any idea where the lights come from? The effect seems weird.”
Chelsea perked up. “Oh! I know!” She said excitedly, putting a hand in the air. “Crystals. There are fields of ice crystals spread out through the tundra. The lights refract through them and create the aurora. It’s kind of like a natural formation.”
Speaking of the aurora, I glanced out of the shuttle, realizing we were rising up over the city, up into the air where the auroras waited. Glancing up at the lights, I realized that the ribbons of luminescence were indeed single colors, all wrapped around and intertwined.
The colors shifted and wove together in such a way that they weren’t in any real order, some ribbons dipping under other lower level colors and then back up, creating a big shimmering rainbow mess. The shuttle circled a few times, seemingly searching for something, until we came to a stop in front of the end of one of the ribbons, a shining path of red light.
“It’s so pretty.” Said Bethy, wide eyed as she stared at the complex network of lights before us. “I want to lick it.”
I pointed at her sharply. “Do NOT lick it.” I said firmly. “I watched your dad eat lightning because he considered it ‘plasma’. With our luck, you’ll end up gobbling the whole thing down. Just run on it. You can eat one of the sprites if you feel like it.” I paused. “Wait, the sprites aren’t like…sentient creatures, right?”
“No.” Benny laughed. “I checked. Just balls of colored light. Kind of like willow the wisps.”
I nodded solemnly, putting a hand on Benny’s shoulder. “Fair enough. I have to say man, this whole thing is amazing, and there’s something I really wanted to say before we start this little race.”
“What’s that?” He said, raising an eyebrow in confusion.
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I patted his shoulder twice. “First.” I said kindly, then hooked my foot behind his ankle and shoved. He went down in a squawk of indignation, but I was already moving.
Turning on my heel, I activated State of Grace then Mephistopheles, using my Waltz, to cross the expanded interior of the shuttle. I felt someone shove me and had to use Ripple Running to stabilize as Bethy blurred past me, giggling madly as she put one platformed boot on the red light before anyone else, and then took off at top speed.
Cursing, I hit the light right after and followed behind her. Once I was on the light, I realized that the ribbons actually diverged into multiple paths. I didn’t feel like competing with Bethy for sprites, so I turned left at a five lane fork, heading deeper into the tangle.
I felt a surge of energy from beneath me, as if the light was supercharging me, pushing me forward, and the faster I went the more weight seemed to pile on me.
Of course, I’d been to higher ranked planets, so this was nothing, as I rounded a bend, I saw another ribbon of light loop around the one I was on, and on it, I saw an orb of light. Without thinking, I pushed off, flipping in midair, my feet slamming down on the blue light path, and as I landed, the new gravity actually helped me stabilize as it slammed me down onto the blue path with way more force than the red.
Reaching out, I snagged the blue orb, and as I grabbed it, I felt it melt into me. There was a wash of cleansing energy, and I felt refreshed. I kept running, looping through the sky on the blue road. I glanced around, looking for my friends. Chelsea was on the orange, and Abel and Bethy had both switched to green. Not every path connected so easily to a more powerful color. I’d gotten damned lucky.
Sadly, most of the ribbons looping around my current route were yellow and red, with the occasional green. I had to stick to my current path until I found something better. Apparently the blue had a higher concentration of energy or something, though. More sprites were spawning on my road, and I grabbed them as I ran, feeling that cleansing energy washing over me again and again.
I still wasn’t sure what soul polishing actually DID, but whatever it was couldn’t be a bad thing. The further I ran the faster I went, and the higher the pressure, like I was being forced forward and down, but the pressure seemed to push the cleansing energy even deeper into me. It felt…intentional.
Curiously, I looked around, activating my Eye of Revelation, trying to find some kind of pattern in the light paths. If I hadn’t been out in the universe, if I hadn’t read the skill book, and if I hadn’t talked to Camden’s cousin, I probably would have missed what I was seeing. Luckily, I’d done all of those things, which is why I was able to recognize the man made formation that this aurora actually was.
Of course, knowing that meant nothing. I knew it was a formation, but not what it did or how. I considered the problem for a minute. I could ignore this, move on and just have fun, but something told me not to. Fate sense, fatewalker class, my Path, who knew? But something was pushing me to do…something.
I tried my overlay, and nothing happened, but the arrows were different than usual. Frowning, I tried something new. Piece of Mind. I triggered a parallel, then another, then another. I used Eye of Revelation and the overlay with each of them, superimposing them on top of each other, forcing them to work together as I triggered Afterburner.
The combination of the stacked, brute force approach and the supercharge did the trick. My overlay traced the lines of light, shifting and changing to show me a specific path through them.
I started moving, hopping from one to another, blue to green to red to yellow, following some kind of pattern I couldn’t articulate. I landed on the violet and followed it down, absorbing sprites as I went and enjoying the cleansing, but focused on my goal, I leapt off the violet path onto the red and then ran straight off the side where it curled back over a yellow…and vanished.
There was a shift as I went through some kind of spatial distortion, and suddenly I was standing in an icy cavern full of frozen crystals. The crystals were frosted over, but I could see dark shapes inside them. Blinking, I walked back to where I’d entered, stepping through the distortion and back out onto the paths.
“Hey guys!” I called excitedly. “I found something. Come check this out!”
I caught a few confused stares, but then I turned and stepped back through the distortion, not bothering to wait. I’d needed to take a special path to get there, but now that I’d been in, the entrance was open. According to my intuition it would close in about thirty minutes, unless someone was inside it.
It only took ten for the others to show up. Bethy came shooting through the distortion, Abel, Mel, and shockingly Benny on her tail. The others took a bit longer, but finally we were all here.
“Check it out.” I said, gesturing around the room. “Seems like the aurora is some kind of formation. I think the sprites are power leaking out of it. So this might be some kind of like…soul cleaning formation?”
Chelsea shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She glanced at Bethy. “What do you think? Cold storage?”
Bethy nodded. “Been here a while too, I bet. Daddy has one for some of my brothers and sisters. When they start to slow down in their progression and he thinks they might lapse into obscurity.”
“Most of the major forces do.” Said Chelsea. “Though this is…flashy. Not like any of the ones I’ve seen.”
I threw my hands up in frustration. “Can you guys share, please? What is cold storage.”
“It’s a means of putting people on ice.” my sister said. “Basically anyone who seems like they aren’t growing anymore. Sometimes it can be hard for people to break into the scene. Too many talented competitors, too little ability. Rather than let them get old and miss their best years to make a splash, some factions freeze their descendants.”
Bethy nodded. “Yeah, and the cleaning thing makes total sense too.” She gestured around her. “Cold storage is a stasis field, it has to nourish the soul and cleanse the effects of time passing.” She walked up to a crystal, wiping off the frost. “This is a pseudo D-ranked planet, so it makes sense they’d freeze some E-rankers. Unfreeze them once the planet ranks up maybe.”
I wiped some frost of one myself, and blinked. The clothes they wore…they weren’t costumes like ours. Plate armor, velvet doublets. These looked almost imperial, but more old fashioned.
“Well that makes sense.” I said slowly. “But with that said, I’m forced to ask an even more important question.” I knocked on the crystal. “This doesn’t seem to be unity work, and these people are dressed real old fashioned to be from the conglomerate. So…how long have they been here, and where the hell did they come from?”
Rather than be worried, I was pretty excited for this new mystery. These people wouldn’t necessarily be hostile. This could be a great opportunity to do some recruiting. I shot my best friend a thumbs up. He really knew how to throw a party.