The fine spray of saltwater danced in the early morning air as their boat sped off towards the offshore terminal. Caen sat downwind, watching the retreating island. The biennial celebrations weren’t over yet. This would be the first ti he hadn’t stayed till the end.
His grandparents, his parents, his aunties, Orissa, Hshnol, Vai, and Zeris all sat in the boat with him. There were two tagalongs as well—a roughly bearded man and a woman with spikes in her hair.
When Vensha had asked for their nas, the man with the rough beard had said, “You can call Gruff, and she’s Sharp.”
“Your bodyguards look really tough,” Orissa teased Zeris.
Zeris rolled her eyes.
“Again,” said the woman with spiked hair, Sharp, “we’re not bodyguards. Eshtr has tasked us with making sure young Zeris arrives at the Citadel promptly. We’re rely here to escort her to her location safely and prevent any delays.”
Zeris had shown up at the pier this morning, accompanied by Oludlana and those two. Caen didn’t recognize them, but their armor-concealing coats had the emblem of the Faithful Descent faction.
Gruff had kept glancing at the stone coffin on their boat. Hshnol, who was seated closest to the coffin, had his eyes closed. He was running so errands in the Astral right now.
“That doesn’t look very comfortable,” Gruff whispered to his companion, though Caen's ears picked up his words easily. “Can Elder Horavainaris even… breathe in there?”
“Probably scripted,” Sharp replied, looking equally uncertain.
It was, in fact, scripted. The coffin’s interior was designed for maximum comfort and was shaped around Vai’s sleeping form, even though he wouldn’t feel any of it.
Processing at the offshore site didn’t take too long, and soon, they were in the terminal. Caen weathered the heightened influx of information from Soul-sense.
Traversing the vast distance between Ser-gwu Island and Drenlin typically took nine hops, which was rather taxing on anyone who wasn’t a Spatial practician. When the rest of his family had co down here themselves, they’d needed to take fourteen hops instead of nine, and that had just been a month ago.
However, the spatial disturbance from the volcanic peak of Mount Imxeda had worsened and expanded outwards. Their current hop route now included thirty-three terminals. It would take them as many as six days just to get back ho. They’d need to take breaks, too, because only Zeris could endure that amount of spatial abuse consecutively.
“What’s with Imxeda?” Orissa asked Zeris as they all walked onto the hop pad. “Do you think the archmage is doing sothing there?”
The volcano was believed to have deep ties to the archmage, Trellam, in so way. Several local myths described it as his base and ho.
Zeris shrugged. “Maybe. But no one seems to know what’s going on. Disturbances like these are common around the Dalat festival. But that was, what, six months ago?”
The whirring of the warp platform began, and Caen Mimicked Zeris’s Spatial affinity. That familiar sensation of free-falling preceded them phasing onto another platform. Thanks to Zeris’s passive augntations, the effects of the spatial transport were almost trivial, though he knew those effects would only worsen as the day wore on.
“Thirty-two more to go,” Gruff grumbled behind Caen as they were all ushered off the platform.
They spent the rest of the day like this. Purchasing tickets, waiting for their batch to be called, and then hopping to the next terminal. They drew a lot of stares because of the elaborately designed stone coffin Hshnol was carrying.
Throughout the day, Caen and Zeris worked on refining how well he could communicate through their connection. He’d learned as much Klakalk as he reasonably could, but perhaps he could pair that with this.
Due to the rampant rerouting and high traffic on the Plex, the wait ti between hops was unpleasantly long. By nightfall, they’d only taken six hops. They spent the night in an inn. Caen hadn’t stored up any sleep. Casting sleep abeyance was always an option, but he preferred to use that as a last resort.
Early the next morning, they were at it again. Over the course of their trip, Caen turned his attention to one of the new aspects of Soul-sense.
Having already inford his family mbers and Hshnol, he proceeded to run a few experints on them while they waited at terminals.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
He could now sense a leeway whenever he connected to anyone. Leaning into that leeway linked him more firmly with them to such an extent that it felt as though he were standing or sitting in their position. And through them, he could sense the surrounding souls much better.
More importantly, he could lean into that leeway even more and extend his ongoing connection to yet another person. Having connected to Zeris, for example, he could extend their connection through her to Vensha, who sat nearby. And from Aunt Vensha, he could extend the connection to Aunt Grena.
He could see all their soul structures, of course, and all the various cords of connection between them and people or things. His mind was currently split. One portion of it struggled to handle the overload of information that ca from feeling as though he were in three different locations. It was very disorienting.
Zeris told him in tap code that it still felt as though she were being made hyper aware of them sohow. Both Vensha and Grena shared the sa experience.
It seed so odd to Caen. He’d never heard of anything like this before. Was he forming so sort of temporary bond between them? This was very different from splitting his existence and connecting to several people at once.
It was as though he’d threaded their souls together, or had ford a bridge between their existences. It was significantly taxing on his willpower. So much so that he’d begun to feel that existential strain already.
While he continued examining this phenonon, the strangest thing happened. His muscles suddenly contracted several tis in the span of one second. The contractions were subdued but unmistakable. Caen’s attention was drawn to Vensha’s soul, as he imdiately identified her as the origin of that working.
“What by all the ancestors was that?” Grena asked Caen quietly enough that Gruff and Sharp, sitting a polite distance away, wouldn’t hear her.
Aunt Vensha looked very confused. “I just—” She switched to a basic tap code.
Caen mused, his mind spinning.
He cast a spell on himself to sharpen his mind. The spell took, but the effect was far weaker than it should have been. Grena flinched, however.
Zeris sent.
Vensha and Grena confird that the sa thing had happened to them.
When he targeted just Vensha, the results were similar, if worse: a far weaker spell effect shared among all four of them.
Breaking off the connection entirely, he cast the ntal enhancent spell on himself once more. When he reford the bridge, linking all their souls together, the spell effect suddenly weakened.
It didn’t matter when the spell was cast; the mont he linked their existences, the effects were distributed among them.
Caen sent to each of them.
He truncated the bridge, shortening the connection to just him and Zeris. He cast the sa spell again. The leakage still occurred, but it was far less severe this ti. Halved, by his estimate.
Caen was eager to find out what other ways he could apply this.
He disconnected from Zeris, connected to Chasma, and Mimicked resilience. He could imdiately feel a weakening of his own resilience, as well as an inflow of external resilience. It seed that he and Chasma were sharing their separate instances of resilience, and that evened things out. He could feel the fragnt’s curiosity.
When he extended the connection to include Zeris and the others, there was no leakage whatsoever. None of them noted feeling that blanket of safety and protection, which was slightly disappointing.
He’d hoped that he would be able to share resilience with others, but that didn’t seem possible. And he wasn’t sure why this was the case. None of Chasma’s other abilities were distributed to anyone else, either, though they did leak to him. His Mimicked abilities leaked to the fragnt in turn. His spell effects, however, did not.
he sent to them.
Zeris suggested.
She’d clearly communicated that to the others, because Aunt Grena gave her an exasperated look.
Caen linked himself to Vensha and his grandfather, Niodt, who was a Blood-healer.
When Vensha tried to lightly prick her finger with a needle that Caen provided, she felt quite so resistance. Niodt and Caen could feel a slight pressure on their index fingers. The elderly man did not have spirit tendrils, so he whispered into Elemna’s ear, and she conveyed his words in tap code.
Vensha used enough force to stab her finger. A bead of blood appeared on all their fingers, along with a very dull pain.
Ramifications stread through his mind.
Zeris sent.
Caen didn’t disagree in the slightest.
she asked.
He could feel more of that existential strain, but wasn’t fatigued yet, so he nodded.
Days went by. The hops were exhausting, but they did get to rest every night. Caen would’ve preferred to experint more with Soul-sense, but he gave more priority to improving how well he communicated through his connections, which was more relevant to his goals at the mont.
Late in the morning of the sixth day, they arrived at the warp terminal in Chrenai: the end of their hop route.
Drenlin was just one day of air travel away.
Reviews
All reviews (0)