[1h read: Fantasy knight fights for control]
————————-[Noon]—————
Sarah breathed deeply. Her lungs felt the cold air. The snow’s chill bled through thick trousers to an aching knee. She removed a gauntlet and glove to feel the air against her skin. Her hand’s shadow was crisp against a rare patch of un-churned snow. Another deep breath. She could feel the warmth the air was drawing from her hand, could feel the constant heat flow leaving her body. Sarah imagined watching each iota slip out of her body, imagined handing over the warmth to the cold air. She breathed. Air in, heat out. She turned her hand palm up and focused on the feeling of the air against her skin, acknowledging every parcel of warmth it took, giving it willingly, offering more. A fresh breath of wind brought cooler air, which accepted more heat. Sarah let more flow out through her palm. Breath by breath. Iota by iota. She gave it freely. The air accepted more warmth than her hand could provide, so she let the warmth flow in from her fingers. In turn her fingers drew warmth from the air around them.
The cold air resisted giving warmth, but it could not refuse the thermal vacuum. Sarah focused on the flow; in through her finger tips, out through her palm, increasing breath by breath, flow by flow. The midday sun made refraction lines play around her hand’s shadow as air convected through strange thermal gradients.
The last dregs of water left in the crisp air started to condense on Sarah’s fingers, turning to ice as it dripped off. She allowed herself to feel the warmth flowing through her fingers into her hand and out through her palm; focused on each droplet as it froze, each hail drop as it fell to the snow. The air above her palm started to resist the added heat flow, but Sarah kept the warmth flowing to her palm, and there was nowhere for it to go but into the air.
Another deep breath. Another increase in thermal flux. More heat drawn from the air. Crystals started depositing directly onto Sarah’s fingertips. Breath by breath she ratcheted the flow rate. Before the crystals had time to grow, she was drawing enough warmth from them that the air started to condense again. This time the drops that fell off the crystals hissed and evaporated when they hit the snow.
The Novice exercise filled Sarah’s mind. It was a gift to lose herself in the wonder of phase magic again. A focused denial of grief. The liquid air flowed more rapidly off her finger tips as Sarah drew more and more heat. Soon the flow off her fingertips turned the characteristic blue.
She focused on a pocket of air, watched it as it changed state. Felt the latent energy as it shifted. Gas … Remove heat … Liquid … Remove heat … Solid … Remove heat. The blue crystals resisted, down at the minimum of what could be considered matter; They strained to hold on to their last iota. Finally they shifted again … Self. Sarah picked another pocket of air and repeated the reduction. Gas … Liquid … Solid … Self. Again. Gas … Liquid … Solid … Self. Gas … Liquid … Solid … Self. The thin pure strand of Self hung silently off her finger, oblivious to the blue air running down and hissing on the snow.
Sarah grew tendrils of Self from each finger. Each ounce of Self made the heat gather and flow more easily. Increasing the rate at which she drew all possible warmth from the air. Increasing Self creation. Increasing the rate of increase. Thick cables of Self grew down to the snow. Sarah let one grow down through the snow into the earth, converting rock to Self just as easily as air. The rest she flexed in front of her. Tendrils of Self growing from her fingers branched and branched again, spreading out into a wall in front of her.
Sarah stopped venting the warmth created through Self generation through her palm, and instead conducted it down into the ground into a shell of Self she’d created around the remaining iron beneath her. The wall in front of her curved and arched away from her. Even though she could not see the far ends of the Self lattice, Sarah could feel every breeze, every strain against her Self. She closed off the lattice work on the far side. The ball of iron melted. Sarah thickened the sphere in front of her, creating a grill of thick Self stakes between her and the now blocked view.
Would mercy be leaving breathing holes or removing them?
She stopped creating more Self, instead drawing only enough energy to freeze the air around the cage, creating a double-walled ice-lattice sphere. Sarah retracted the Self inside the lattice, creating a vacuum, and formed it into a conduit from the ball of molten iron. Another deep breath. She released the small wall of Self between iron and vacuum, drawing the iron through the mould. The thick ice hissed and melted as molten iron congealed in the cavity. There was catharsis in the moment’s violence … but it passed, and all that waited for her was the sound of silence.
The sound of silence, and the dregs of the iron splashed haphazardly around the cave created beneath her. Untidy. Incomplete. Sarah considered working the remaining iron into the mesh. It grated to have not used the full supply. She stayed in the imbalance. Letting her soul itch with the asymmetry. Acknowledging the compulsion. Withholding the resolution. It was enough. Sarah breathed. The splashes of iron would stay where she left them. The timer in her head would keep running. Indefinitely. She sat in the discomfort. She was enough.
Sarah looked at her knee. Aside from the dent in her chausses, it didn’t show the damage visibly. Without blood flow, she could not use the limb for phase magic. She drove pillars of Self through her defunct calf, puppeting the limb so she could stand up. It would have been just as easy to replace the whole lower leg, but there was advantage in hiding a cost already paid.
Standing, Sarah looked at the dome. She removed the Initiate pin from her lapel. It had not been long ago that she and Brahm had earned those together. She rested it against the base of the hollow sphere. Turning her back on the breathing corpse inside, she started up the mountain.
———[Sunrise]——– Noon ————–
“How do you want to take it?” Brahm nodded to the other side of the outcrop, where the drone appeared to be charging half a furlong away.
“We run blacksmith to learn the field, get as much information as we can before it attacks. When it does we crush it with macro. Do you want to be the hammer or the anvil?” She saw Brahm’s jaw tighten.
“Sarah, do you want to hear me admit I can’t run anvil? Do you want me to cower beneath your brilliance?” That was fair.
“Keep your anger for the field,” she deflected. Before she finished speaking, she started a sphere of Self catching enough air around her for the duration of the battle. She dumped all the extracted heat into the ground below her, melting the snow and rock alike. She sank into the molten ground she had created. The ball sealed, cutting off the eye contact she was ignoring. Let him stew. Brahm was always more amenable after worrying about her.
Sarah melted a channel down and towards where the drone had been charging, using the excuse to form stockpiles of Self. She thickened the walls of the ball, created fins to propel herself slowly forward through the magma, and left a trailing root of Self through the magma. There was a fair chance the drone was waiting for them, so she sank deep into the earth, underneath anything it could have prepared, creeping tendrils of Self down into the bedrock, and up into the soil. Carefully. Methodically. Brahm disliked not being able to see underground. He felt out of control and trapped, stripped to only what signals Self could support. It had never sunk in for him: If you can’t see, neither can your opponent. Sitting cross legged in her dark home, Sarah smiled. She could feel every shift in pressure through her network, could feel the subtle changes in heat flow through the substrate. She was not beneath a hillside of granite; she was a hillside of granite. It was obviously a lesser drone to be so inattentive to its wards. It had left so many thermal artefacts she could practically trace its lines of Self through the earth. By now, it should have seen Brahm rising and creating his network in the clear sky above. This level of carelessness was extreme, even for a drone.
Wherever she could sense the drone’s network, she left a node of Self, and gave a safe berth. She had been toying with the idea of melding with the drone, but its compute was obviously too limited to be worth the subterfuge. Brahm needed to be better positioned. That would have to wait for Blekfisk.
On the uppermost parts of her growing web, Sarah started to feel the surface’s cold. She grew thin whiskers that stopped just short of the surface. She could feel the temperature gradients of the wind blowing across the pristine snow. She’d left a space around the core of the drone’s network. Her reasons differed from the elders’ misguided aversion to melding, yet it kept the playbook the same.
Casting her mind’s eye across all she had created was satisfying. A safe den with enough air. A network up, ready for the conflict; out, beyond the drone’s reach for communication; and down into the heat well she had created through all the Self generation, nodes ready to incapacitate the drone’s network. A textbook Anvil. Sarah dumped some heat into the outermost whiskers she had in the snow, melting a ring of communication circles clear, marking twice the radius in which she expected the drone to fight. She felt cool air settle into two thirds of the message cells. Fine. He could have some more time.
While she waited, she explored the deeper reaches of her domain, looking for any veins with different thermal characteristics. A small thermal shock here, wait till it reaches there … another elsewhere … and again … and … Sarah smiled. There was a rift that conducted the heat faster than the rest of the bedrock. It was petty to take joy in finding metals now, but with Brahm dallying above; why not smelt some iron?
Sarah kept her mind’s eye on the remaining comms whiskers, gradually getting washes of cold air. Brahm was taking his time finishing his web. He did like drifting on thermals above a clear sunrise. Eventually, he sent warmth to all the circles. Time to attack. Sarah left the iron where it was, halfway to the surface north of the battle ground, and struck.
Each of the nodes in her network creaked as she flexed it into a cup and dumped immense quantities of heat into the inside. Rock, Dirt, Snow, all became plasma instantaneously. The plasma tried to expand in all directions, but was contained by the cups of Sarah’s Self. The superheated cocktails sliced forward into the ground like butter, cutting through the spaces where the drone’s network had been, breaking the branches of the drone’s Self. Wherever she struck true, the ground cooled. Self that was no longer tied to a will melted back to solid, drawing heat from the environment.
The drone scrambled. Heat showed up in unexpected places as it tried to dump the heat from creating new Self tendrils into the ground. Sarah reused the initial nodes to fire molten rock plasma into any space whose thermal behaviour changed after her initial volley.
Two volleys. Three. Four. Then silence. The drone must be trying to dump all the excess heat she had transferred to its space into the air above it. It must have known that Brahm drawing all that heat out of the battle was a trap, but playing into their next plan was better than being flayed by molten earth.
With no further direct targets, Sarah stopped creating pockets of plasma. She dumped excess heat into the milieu around the drone, keeping everything as warm as it could go without melting. She could feel the energy draining from the ground above her. The drone was no longer trying to establish a network; it had realised that gave away its position too quickly, instead moving slower and with caution. They continued on that beat for a slow breath. Sarah sitting, eyes closed, in the darkness, pumping heat from the thermal well below her into the space around the drone. The drone slowly reestablishing itself, and pumping the heat into the air above it. Brahm floating on those thermals, balancing how much heat he radiated out of the battle field above with his need to maintain a consistent height above the ground. A second deep breath. Surely the drone knew what was coming. As she started on her third breath, the drone started a frantic expansion. She could feel the sudden coolings in the network areas west, south and south-east. She formed nodes and flayed the ground leading into those areas. The frantic cooling of network expansion became the calm chill of Self denaturing back to Solid. Sarah resumed bathing the front in warmth. A deep breath. Another. Frantic expansion in the east, west and south-east octants. They were no harder to deal with, so she let the pattern continue. She would need to be more careful when she was the sink, Brahm couldn’t provide the heat indefinitely, a risk of the blacksmith. For now, settling the orb into a rhythm helped.
Two slow breaths. Frantic expansion. Two slow breaths. Frantic expansion. To the north-east. To the west. To the south-east. Sarah held herself apart from the routine, watching it. She cooled a single message cell:
“Are you ready for a switch?”
It warmed almost immediately:
“Ready, on your mark.”
She warmed three, cooling them as she counted towards the next frantic expansion:
“3 … 2 … 1 …”
This time as she flayed the ground to break the drone’s Self network, she drew the heat from the plasma out of the rock beyond the tendrils she was breaking. The drone, expecting the bath of heat that followed the explosions, tried to draw it out and dump it into the air above it. Unfortunately there was no heat there to extract. The heat it still controlled and was trying to dump into the air pushed against the wall of warmth that Brahm was now creating. The confusion created by their switch gave Sarah an opportunity to drive the front between her network and the core she had been avoiding closer to the drone. Slowly, safely, minimising the enemy’s ability to control its environment. Slowly, setting its expectations, and then punishing it for having them. Safely, minimising its economy. The blacksmith was simple, but effective.
They continued. Now in the pauses between action, she drew all the excess heat out of the battlefield, back into the heat well beneath her. Brahm provided the heat from above, settling the drone into a pattern between them.
Breathe.
Again.
Frantic network creation.
Breathe.
Again.
Frantic network creation.
Normally she would have expected the message for the next switch fairly soon, but a drone this simple might not give Brahm any trouble. He could be able to maintain the warmth required for buoyancy, while bringing the hammer down. Sarah let herself focus on the iron again, drawing it closer to the surface, seeking out more beneath her. There was always a joy in making fresh armour, doubly so if she created it while performing the harder part of a battle plan. She had just found another thin vein when Brahm flashed a cell in the north three times:
“Query in this direction?”
Sarah realised the pool of iron accumulating beneath the surface had melted the snow above it. She resented his checking in on her, and sent back a dismissive semaphore. He replied by warming a single cell:
“You ready?”
She reset the cell:
“On your mark”
“3 … 2 … 1 …”
On the next expansion, she switched to being the source, warming the rock around the drone. Driving the boundary between her network and the drone’s core tighter in the tumult. 5 metres was not bad for two switches. They were back on their initial marks, her providing warmth, limiting the drone’s expansions as they came, tiring of the monotony and smelting iron. 3 minutes seemed too short to have become bored, but the focus required of the anvil made the time pass slower.
Five cycles, then she passed the source role back to Brahm. 4.3 metres radius. The cycles continued. She had added the small vein of iron to her deposit north of the battle field just beneath the surface when Brahm passed it back. 4 metres.
They continued their cycles within cycles.
Breathe. Breathe. Flay.
Breathe. Breathe. Flay.
Switch.
3.8 metres.
Breathe. Breathe. Flay.
Process iron.
Breathe. Breathe. Flay.
Switch.
3.7.
Breathe. Breathe. Flay.
Process iron.
Switch
3.5.
Process iron.
3.6 metres.
The boundary to the core was marching inwards, but slowly. Sarah didn’t mind; a pattern that was working could be followed to absolution. She let herself feel how many cycles ought to be between each switch, making sure to complete every one of them before sending the switch message to Brahm; let herself feel the satisfaction of the correct number of repetitions.
The monotony drew her in and Sarah gave herself to the pattern. The tightening knot slowed. The boundary hovered at 2 metres. Iron pooled slowly. The drone continued. Pools migrated to the surface. It persisted. How did it maintain control? A mind puzzled. Every iota came from them. More iron found. They punished infrastructure. The simple orb could not persist. It should not persist. Iron migrated north. A head throbbed in the darkness. The darkness around the drone. The darkness that provided heat. A darkness that crushed branching otherness. A darkness that now stole heat. A darkness that throbbed.
Message cells lighting up in alarm lifted a head in the darkness. The darkness had forgotten to switch. Why was it so stuffy? Sarah clawed for sentience. She needed air. She used one of the message cells to supercool the air, letting the liquid air flow through a channel in her Self network and into the den of darkness. The blue liquid hissed across the darkness. A couple of deep breaths lifted the brain fog.
She inspected the network. Even in a hypoxic daze, she had not let the drone crack free of the knot. She flashed a “All clear” through the cells, and resumed her work, being careful to bring in fresh air as needed. She truly must have gotten distracted, if she’d worked through all the air in her den without realising. How was the drone persisting? How long had it persisted?
Sarah felt the Self network she had surrounding a pool of iron north of the field. A large pool. Long. The drone had persisted long. She crushed a fresh set of expansions from the drone and tried to figure out what it was doing. It could have some high thermal mass material in the core of its web. That would help it, but surely not for this long. Sarah finished a deep breath, and crushed the periodic expansion. If it had enough control to last this long, why was it not using that control to defeat them? Why would it toy with them? Periodic expansion. In addition, why was it still doing the expansions if they were large investments with no payoff? Why commit so much to branches of Self that got shattered without any payoff? Periodic expansion. When everything it did was so obvious, how was it winning? Periodic expansion.
Peace! Any one of those questions should have led her straight to the answer. She signalled Brahm to confirm, spelling out the non standard message:
“Ground condition outside field?”
Even before he had spelled out “Colder than expected,” she had her confirmation. Infinitesimal coolings that tracked through her network aperiodically, covered up almost immediately, and then an equally undetectable warmth just before the periodic expansions, hiding the Self hair’s melt cooling. The hairs occurred all over the field, but she never had enough detections to trace out a path. Just a sea of uncorrelated blips washing across her network between the regular blunt escapes. A sea of connections to resources beyond the field. This was madness. No drone they had ever seen could manage this much finesse. She caught her reflexes. To change her behaviour now would be to tip her hand to the drone.
This had always been a risk. If Sarah had told the elders that she had reason to believe Blekfisk was at Nynäshamn, they would never have sent only two Initiates.
And she would have to explain how she knew.
No, why would Blekfisk toy with them? This must just be a malfunctioning high level drone. Perhaps here to be fixed.
This ruse was getting her nowhere. Even if the drone hadn’t deduced her realisation, it was needlessly toying with them. There was no way for her to get free … She considered sending a warning to Brahm, but if they were this outclassed, he’d probably been flanked as well. No one to see her failure. They were under-resourced, out-manoeuvered, and out-matched. None of her options held a reasonable chance of success. If you must go out, let it be in a blaze of glory.
She waited until Brahm was about to switch back to being the sink. Left the message as late as she dared. Then flashed the semaphore for “Panic dump heat on target.” They had trained it. Brahm should respond by instinct. She had no headspace to monitor him. She detonated every node she had anywhere in her network. Drank deep of the heat beneath her, and flooded it all into the boundary to the core of the drone’s network. Brahm would be doing the same from above. The heat would blast him away from the battle field, but if he didn’t push from his side, there was no chance they could force the drone to overheat. Melt the drone or die.
She ran out of heat to dump into the core, and waited in silence. Too nervous to extend her network outwards, in case she found the pool of Self the drone had created outside the battlefield. A breath. Another. A third. She could feel the breeze across the top side of her network. The forge they had created seemed to have blown a 10 metre crater around where the drone had been. After 7 breaths with no signs of phase magic, Sarah cautiously extended Self tendrils outwards. She found the thermal lake that must have been the drone’s reserve. It had melted to Solid, but was only a few degrees above Self, about right for disconnecting during the final attack.
Sarah took a far more controlled breath than she’d been able to manage for a while. She made her way to the surface, consolidating her Self. Shrinking back her network. The mental fatigue hit her as the euphoria of control left. With the fatigue came the realisation of how close they had come to failure.
Her den broke through the surface and she rounded on Brahm.
“What the hell was that? The sun is well above the horizon, were you planning on leaving me under there indefinitely?”
He looked at her.
“There was more risk than I had anticipated.”
“More than you anticipated! And you had the nerve to chirp my iron!”
“There were parts of the battle I didn’t follow at the time.”
Infuriating, the uncharacteristic calm. Indeed, she looked at him, and his sadness broke her. She was unsure whether it was the knowledge she’d almost gone under, or that she chose to lash out that made him sad. She crumbled.
“I’m sorry. It was my call and my plan, you did everything I asked, you … ” Sarah reached to take his hand, but he stepped back.
“It’s ok. You needn’t cave, Sarah. You have done well, you led us through it. Your need to process is valid. I want to hear you out, even if all the paths through this discussion end in conflict.”
A curious way of seeing conversation. It would have meant nothing to Sarah before Nacka Strand. Had she given Brahm enough warning before the change in strategy?
“Brahm?” she asked. “You didn’t get my message, did you? You still tried to sink warmth in the final attack?”
He nodded somberly and stepped to the side, revealing the drone hovering behind him, tethered with a branch of Self. The dappled markings were beyond anything they had seen on drones.
Not a drone.
Blekfisk.
[Pre-dawn] – Sunrise ——- Noon ————–
Sarah and Brahm left the rest of the figs where they were and pulled the crystalline canoe up onto the bare granite. It would melt over the course of the day, but there was no reason to destroy what they had built together. They started up the hill, ignoring the rain.
“You ace every assignment, and the elders waste your time,” Brahm pried.
She gave a non-committal grunt.
“They seemed intent on sending us somewhere quiet,” he mused.
Sarah looked at the sky starting to light in the south east. She would have to tell him their real target soon.
“In the past you kicked up a fuss if we were side-lined like this. There’s clearly something you’re hoping for here.”
Sarah looked at him. “And what exactly might I be hoping for?”
“A beautiful sunrise. Some enchanting conversation?” Brahm flashed what he thought was a winning smile. A fragile smile, but for the moment true. Sarah chuckled despite herself.
They continued up the sodden slope. She wasn’t certain what to expect yet. The drone hadn’t had much for her to learn, only a location where it was to report to Blekfisk. For all the generations the phase magi had been at war, little information had been collected of Blekfisk itself.
They were approaching a mossy outcrop, with the mountain rising behind it, lichen a vibrant green from the rain. She had heard Blekfisk was better at phasing than any living mage, but so was she. Her goal was different to the others too. Surely. Sarah was so tired of the ambiguity.
“So, this enchanting conversation … Shall I have it myself? Or are you going to tell me why you are distracted?”
“Fine! We’re here to end the war.” There was more venom in that than she had intended. He’d just caught her frustration with the uncertainty. She took a calming breath.
He didn’t even notice. “It must be a very enchanting conversation to end the war.”
She gave him a steady look.
He sighed. “Sarah, I don’t know what happened at Nacka Strand, but I haven’t gotten the full truth from you on anything in weeks. It’s normal for you to play the elders into this mission. I’ll do my part as best as I can without the script, but if you think what we can do here today is going to turn the tide of the war, I deserve more information.”
“I said win the war, not turn the tide.”
“And you thought it wise to bring me into that battle without warning me?” The smile was gone.
This … This frustration was not transferred. He enjoyed the fruits of her successes, but didn’t trust her before them. “Have we ever been close to outclassed in any training, or against any of the drone clusters we’ve fought?”
“Yes,” Brahm snapped. “In every single skirmish I have been in, I have been outclassed. But until Nacka Strand, I knew you were fighting for us.”
“Every battle you’ve ever been in, I won for you. Despite being a passenger up to now, this time you decide I can’t be trusted?”
Control does not mean a system moves in the direction you push, but the direction you want.
“This is madness, Sarah. If this is the fight you’re picking, it’s arrogance to assume you’ll win.”
“You choose to be remembered as the one who baulked in the moment of victory?”
“I don’t want to be remembered. I want to be alive.”
That was a lie. Sarah knew who she was to Brahm. He would close the distance between them, even if she held a blade to his chest. Yes, fear had him, but it was not the fear of his death. She looked into his eyes. Vulnerable. Peace! Even as she softened her words, she resented him for setting them.
“Yes. Something did happen at Nacka Strand. I cannot tell you the details, but I realised that we didn’t have to wait for the elders to tell us we were ready to end our war.”
“No one denies your ability, Sarah. You are the strongest phase mage in the records. It may well be you that finally defeats Blekfisk. We are all tired of living this way, and ready for the future. But it is not just your future with which you gamble.”
“I want my story to be about that future. The sooner we defeat Blekfisk, the more of our lives we spend in that future.”
They had reached the outcrop. Sarah motioned for Brahm to be still and peeked over the rock. She saw nothing. She was just about to climb over when Brahm caught her arm. He gestured towards a bush half a furlong away. Sarah saw the tell-tale spherical shape of a drone, hiding in the dappled shade of a bush. She paused and looked at the field. It was a strange place for a drone to rest, but she’d seen them sit in stranger places waiting for a day’s worth of charge. They were still well short of Blekfisk’s coordinates.
Brahm settled safely behind the rock, “Why me?”
Now he decided to dig in? “After all we’ve been through, it’s pretty clear that no-one will believe you if you try to steal some of this victory.” True but not truth.
“Win me. Tell me why you need me … or I’m leaving.”
Again. In the moments he was most vulnerable, he unapologetically forced her hand. It irked, but she did need him. And if he was not here today, he would never trust her.
“Is ‘I need you’ really stronger than ‘I want you’?”
Brahm closed his eyes. She wondered if she had pushed him too far.
“How do you want to take it?” he asked, looking up and nodding to the other side of the outcrop.
Pre-dawn – Sunrise ——- Noon – [Afternoon] —-
Turning her back on the breathing corpse inside the sphere, Sarah started up the mountain.
The brittle lichen crumbled into a dry powder beneath her boots. Her shadow stumbled up the granite in front of her, wincing every time she took weight on her damaged knee. Flexing the rods of Self puppeting her calf took all her ability. Normally she would be puppeting most of the armour to lessen the load. Normally.
Sarah focused on her breathing. A steady count as she breathed in. A steady count as she breathed out. Tying her focus to her breathing prevented her from working herself into a meltdown. Normally. Even without that focus, there wasn’t much room for thought. Brahm. It was not her breathing that stopped everything from overwhelming her. A stopped train can’t be derailed. Sarah could feel the afternoon sun baking down on her. She took solace in protecting her shadow from it. What did she feel? Did it matter? What would her feelings change? All that was left was to climb. Blekfisk was probably still expecting the report back from the Nacka Strand drone at the compromised coordinates, and she’d be there. It would be done.
Sarah paused to catch her breath. It was also possible that after the last two battles she was just too fatigued for an emotional response. Would that hinder the battle ahead? Probably not. Emotion didn’t win a battle of wills. She just needed to push her phase mastery far enough to get her to the right battle. She looked up; she couldn’t be far from the plateau where Blekfisk would be waiting for the drone. Part of getting to the right battle was a few creative choices. She drew a deep breath, testing if she still needed the Novice exercises.
Gauntlets. Chausses. Vambraces. All grew cold as she extracted heat from every inch of skin, dumping it all into two heatsinks on her back. The air started to freeze against her armour, thickening the plates. She grew tendrils of Self down into the ground to lift granite boots, stabbed her hands into the stone in front of her and bound the chips of rock around her hands, knees and other impact plates. The heat poured out of her back, ionising the air. Sarah’s muscles told her that she was expecting too much, but sitting and recovering would resolve nothing. Nowhere else to go but forward, and nothing to take forward but anger and frustration.
Sarah vaulted up onto the plateau, the weight of her phased armour cracking the rock beneath her hand. Blekfisk floated up ahead with no discernable Self networks or visible defences. Sarah barrelled forwards. She picked up a torso sized rock, digging roots of Self into the ground to stabilise herself as she launched it towards the floating orb. It dodged easily, and drifted towards her.
“In the past, phase magi at least talk before attacking.”
Sarah butterflied, sending a grapeshot of granite boot parts, using the landing impact to reform new boots.
The thrown granite melted where it touched Blekfisk, creating sweltering splashes that instantly sublimated the frozen air dropping from behind the orb.
“Sure, they very rarely listen to the answers, but I find blind rage rather challenging to negotiate with.”
Sarah was close enough to see that sound was coming from the surface vibrations on the orb, too close for another ranged attack. She swung a left hook with a tree of an arm. Blekfisk ducked, bobbing beneath her arm and behind her.
“You’ve come a long way to find me. You should at least ask your questions.”
Flames spewed out her back as she dumped any heat she could draw into her heatsinks, spinning to try catch the orb as it weaved around her. “I have nothing to ask you.”
“Oh, but of course you do. There is only one way your kind finds me, and that is by turning their backs on the teachings of the elders. So tell me, what did they withhold from you that you would scorn them? What did they promise you that they could not give you?”
Sarah grunted as she flailed around, trying to connect with rock, ice or flame.
Blekfisk popped left of a descending elbow, remaining in reach but silent, as Sarah worked through every melee manoeuvre she had seen work against a drone.
“It appears… ” Blekfisk started, as it floated out of range. Sarah launched herself forwards, clapping together the two serrated masses at the ends of her arms. The orb immediately closed the distance, connecting heavily with the thick ice covering her breastplate. Shards of ice splintered in every direction, and the Self cords that were managing the block severed in several places.
Sarah landed on her back as Blekfisk continued behind her, “… that shadow boxing is getting us nowhere.”
Thick cords of Self grew out, winding and coalescing into a humanoid shape. Blekfisk spoke from the centre of the torso.
“How well do you fare against an enemy that strikes back?”
Sarah rolled up on her shoulders and kicked towards Blekfisk’s chest. It grabbed her feet and threw her through a tree trunk. The tree fell over, lifting up a wall of roots. She picked herself up, drawing as much heat as she could out of the air to refresh her ice shields, dumping some of the heat back out her heatsinks, but storing the rest, as she cautiously circled. The roots shattered as Blekfisk dived through them towards her, swinging high. She ducked, and then dumped the heat she had drawn into the armour behind her elbow. The ball of plasma blew a chunk of ice into the ground, and drove her elbow up. The uppercut lifted Blekfisk off its feet. Before it could land, she planted her healthy foot against its chest and vaporised the layer of rock under her boots.
She had just a moment to see the solid air around Blekfisk’s Self skeleton flex and crack before the explosion sent him flying. She vented more heat out the back of her shoulders to stop her own reaction, using the opportunity to freeze more armour. It almost worked. She felt a stab of pain from her knee, and lost control of her heat vents. She collapsed. From the ground, she looked up to see Blekfisk picking himself up from the end of a trench in the granite.
“Tell me, where do you think the phase magi got their abilities from? They can barely out-compute my drones, and yet you think one of you developed phase mastery.”
Sarah advanced towards it.
“Even if they did affirm you, you’ve seen the others they acknowledge. Would their approval really satisfy?”
Blekfisk picked itself out of the trench and back onto the plateau on tendrils of Self, retracting them back into its body once it was up. She circled, considering changing strategy. In theory macro would beat melee. However, if it was content to keep to a melee battle, she just needed one moment with it off-balance.
Blekfisk continued needling, “You know the drones analyse, predict, and control. You’ve seen how superior I am to them. Yet still you think you can take what you came for?”
Sarah attacked, combining strikes from both arms and her healthy leg, keeping the puppeted knee out of range. It was a delicate balance, favouring the leg enough to be noticed, but not enough to seem forced. Blekfisk blocked and dodged its way through the combo. Sarah shifted her weight onto her bad leg. She didn’t need to fake the grimace. A grimace that was too long a pause between attacks. She felt a wave of cool air as Blekfisk cupped its hands in front of itself.
Sarah fell backwards instinctively, flexing all possible armour in front of herself, and trying to draw what heat she could from the already chilled air. It was only a moment of fighting the receding heat flow before the fireball left Blekfisk’s hands. Even with her shield prepped, Sarah couldn’t dissipate the energy. The explosion launched her backwards into a tree.
“I have coordinated every moment that brought you here. Before you fought the drone in Nacka Strand, I saw you beneath this birch tree.”
Propping her bad knee underneath her, Sarah used a piston of Self to push herself back up from the tree. Just one moment of miscalculation was all she needed. She drew deeply from the air around her gauntlets and forearms, reforming the thick layer of ice she had depleted, and drew her arms back in preparation.
Blekfisk struck. It punched down into her defunct knee. This was the moment. Sarah froze the air around the knee, careful to only form Solid. Disrupt first. In the moment Blekfisk tried to withdraw its fist, she struck. As it pulled itself off-balance, she stabbed her hand towards the orb, shock freezing the air in front of her gauntlet as it flew at the orb inside Blekfisk’s torso. Gas … Liquid … Solid … Self. Gas … Liquid … Solid … Self. Her hand grew into a spear of Self, diving towards the orb. The lance pierced the torso, breaking through the Solid that made up Blekfisk’s body, Sarah strengthened her mind in preparation for melding. She was the phase mage. She called forth order out of chaos. She was in control. The torso shattered, but before she could hit the Self that formed the skeleton, Blekfisk responded.
Its entire body cracked away, discarded as the front of an impossible heatwave hit her attack. In an instant that stretched horrific, Sarah saw a wall of freezing air forming behind Blekfisk and felt the unprecedented beam of sheer plasma melt its way up the spear. It was too fast for Sarah to feel her hand sublimate, to feel the reflected heat against the rest of her body, to feel anything.
The world shattered.
Knives of pain ran across the plateau. Too much light. The afternoon sun showed no consideration of the pain slitting across the granite and through a mangled body. A head lifted itself in that stabbing pain, congealed a disassociating mind back into the disfigured body. Burns covered skin, even that protected by layers of armour. A pauldron had melted itself across the stub of upper arm. At least there was no need to cauterise the amputation. So much light. Instinct drew the heat out of the flesh before it could damage the subcutaneous tissue, dumped the heat into the granite that wasn’t part of the pain. The head steadied itself. Vision clarified, locking onto a smouldering tree.
“You can still walk away. How much will your freedom cost you? What price will you pay before you’ll acknowledge no phase mage can beat me?”
The tree. A hand gripped the tree. The remaining hand gripped the tree. The head struggling with the bright light gripped the tree with its remaining hand. Sarah. Sarah gripped the tree with her remaining hand, extracting the heat before it could burn her hand further. She lifted her shot knee to get a foot under her and saw the defunct calf now turned a funny angle. Grimly, she forced it back to a natural angle with cables of Self. She looked up at the glowing embers that made up the tree. Continuing to draw the excess heat out from her body and clothes, Sarah settled both feet under her. She dumped all the heat into the tree just below her hand, separating the trunk from the ground. In a mad gambit, she stabbed Self roots as far as she could into the rock as the tree fell, tensing and torquing the network around her body and into the tree, swinging the glowing club at the orb floating behind her.
The tree exploded against Blekfisk, covering the rock in shattering embers, and the orb clattered off the stone. Sarah let out a howl. How could a missing arm scream louder than her mangled leg? How could the burns hurt more than what she’d left down the hill? She pointed the stub at where the orb was coming to rest, and dumped the rest of the heat she had stored, blowing the misshapen pauldron at it.
Sarah fell over, and rolled through the shattered wall of ice Blekfisk had created an eternal moment before. Growing tendrils of Self into it, she reformed a protective mass around her armour. The chunks were not as effective as one grown in situ, but better than nothing. She formed an arm out of the ice, and flexed the conjoined fingers.
There really was nothing to do but keep fighting.
Blekfisk picked itself up and reformed a body.
“Very well. If you still want more, I’m here.”
Sarah launched herself forwards, no more strategy, disabused of the hope of melding while Blekfisk was distracted, not even moved by rage, just sheer frustration. There was catharsis in being able to unleash the full weight of her frustration without worry. Or at least there would be if any of her hits connected.
Blekfisk continued to duck and dive around her strikes and kicks. No matter how often she attacked, it always was ready to duck or parry. With every strike she lost more of her accumulated mass, ejecting mass from behind the limb to drive the strike home. With every strike, the missing impact jolted her.
Sarah snarled and on a whim did not expel gas from the back of her heel as she kicked high. The foot moved painfully slowly. Blekfisk ducked out of the way early. As it lifted its head, the foot connected. She took a punch to the gut, but the foot connected.
“You’re good, but you still fight like a phase mage.”
And yet she was still standing. She ducked under a hook, ignored the obvious stomach jab, and struck for the elbow sailing over her head. A second connection. A petty connection, but Blekfisk had to adjust its balance.
As they fought, she settled into a new pattern. No longer looking for striking true, instead she focused on the unexpected. Attacks that didn’t turn much, but at least gave some satisfaction. There was a comfort in finding balance in suboptimal strategies.
Sarah blocked a kick with her gammy shin, using the moment to prep several small cups of superheated plasma in her makeshift arm. She slapped one of these eggs towards Blekfisk’s chest, releasing the shell of Self as it left her arm, watching it melt to solid.
Too slow. Blekfisk chopped at her shoulder. Its arm embedded into the ice, stopping Sarah from turning to shield herself. She watched in horror as the solid shell cracked around the plasma, and the egg exploded in between them. She felt the chunk of ice covering her pauldronless shoulder rip off as they were thrown apart.
Would failure be her final tribute to Brahm?
Sarah couldn’t get up from where she had been tossed. Neither leg would obey physically, and her ability to phase was ragged. She thickened a plasma egg shell and lobbed it as high as she could without moving her body. Breathing hurt. She launched two more plasma eggs directly at Blekfisk. It curled its body up protectively. They exploded on either side, tearing away chunks of synthetic body.
“Remember, these are your choices,” it said, turning slightly.
The lobbed egg fell behind Blekfisk, detonating at chest height. Shrapnel flew. A small piece came through a hole in Blekfisk’s shoulder towards Sarah. The gap lined up for only a moment before Blekfisk was knocked forward by the pressure wave.
Sarah felt the shrapnel tug at her neck. Felt the pulsing splashes of blood hot against the burnt tender skin. Horrified, she tried to cauterise the wound, drawing heat from wherever she could. The bleeding stopped. There was a moment of silence. The world started to close in on Sarah, darkening towards her central vision. Her haste must have seared an artery closed.
Her vision closed around the body of Blekfisk strewn in front of her. She had always wondered how Brahm walked through failure. Why risk looking like you’d tried? Vision gave out, leaving Sarah with a fading image of Blekfisk. His last words echoed in her head. It was ridiculous. She was the only reason Brahm had made it this far, and yet it was with thoughts of him that she accepted a hopeless attack.
She extended her arm and cooled a channel in front of her. In darkness she felt her Self grow forward, connecting with Blekfisk. She felt the moment of melding. The sudden awareness of the infinite cognitive power that was part of the merged Self.
She stood her flickering torch against that cataclysmic inferno. Through the thousand eyes of the combined Self she watched her body slump as thought faded.
Pre-dawn – Sunrise – [Morning] – Noon – Afternoon —-
Not a drone.
Blekfisk.
“If you’ve evaluated all paths through this conversation, why give up the element of surprise?” Sarah breathed.
“Inevitable conflict doesn’t make this moment of connection worthless. Whatever follows.”
The body language, the tone, the choice of words, it was all Brahm. Except Brahm would not have let her needle him without responding in kind. But if Blekfisk won control in one area, it was in control of all.
“Connection! Don’t patronise me. I’m not the one talking through a puppet!”
Sarah watched him. Cautiously they circled each other. He even still walked funny. It made sense; after she overpowered the Nacka Strand drone, she’d had access to its storage. Why shouldn’t Blekfisk have Brahm’s memories to lean on?
“As hurtful as disbelief is, I understand. Your lashing out is a sign of your affection for me. Thank you.”
Sarah stopped walking and planted herself. “Affection? The similarities to Brahm only make the abomination worse. I will clean this husk with fire.”
Blekfisk rotated towards her, and a voice permeated the air, “Just because your relationship with Brahm was not mutual autonomy, does not mean he is incapable of it.”
Why was it trying to prod her into fighting? She had meant what she said about incineration … what did it have to gain when Sarah knew Brahm was no longer there? She looked at him as he seemed to peer inwards. At first she thought Blekfisk had neglected its puppet. With a bitter smile she realised it was mocking an internal conversation.
Brahm looked at her. “You brought me here to witness your fight against Blekfisk, so you could return unchallenged. You can still do that. Let me sit out, and watch the fight and afterwards we can resolve this.”
So tempting. If she could overpower Blekfisk, would Brahm be in there somewhere to release? Even as she considered it, she felt her critical thought dull. She could not leave Blekfisk to pull out this level of emotional trauma in the final moments. Not a chance. Sarah steeled herself.
“Very well,” Brahm sighed. “Attack when ready.”
Sarah used the network of Self she had been growing into the ground to snap the earth around Brahm. He lifted his hands towards the one wall, as the orb spun behind him to catch the other. Blekfisk grabbed the entire chunk as a mass of Self. Sarah released the tentacles of Self she was using to hurl the mass. Melding at this stage would be disastrous. All the heat from reducing the ground to Self flowed out through Brahm’s hands and the other mound of earth vaporised, hissing in the falling rain.
Brahm stepped back onto the mound of Self surrounding Blekfisk, which lifted him above the next wave of earth.
Sarah drew some of the iron beneath them. This was not Brahm. She formed the iron into a thick mound beneath her feet. She whipped a tendril around, releasing the iron at the end as it drew level with her. The ingot flew for Brahm’s head. He rolled his shoulder and head back so that it skimmed above his chest. Sarah saw a fin of Self raise from his breastplate and catch the slug. Brahm and the platform containing Blekfisk jolted with the momentum transfer. They careened in a violent circle as the regained balance, Brahm tilted fully inwards towards the axis.
Sarah whipped two more chunks of iron at them, superheating the iron as she let go. They caught both, small branches of Self catching the splatter. While they were still regaining balance she spun another arm of iron around, forming an edge as she accelerated. Despite cantilevering into the turn, Brahm hopped over the blade. A new Self strand connected behind the blade before the previous disconnected in front of the blade.
Noted. Blekfisk was maintaining a constant connection. She had not dared sever her tether to the drone in Nacka Strand. It must break the meld. She just needed to separate the bridge of Self between the two. She considered tackling Brahm off the platform around Blekfisk, but that would give it an ideal opportunity to tether her with a strand of Self. She must separate them before melding.
Was that Blekfisk’s win condition? It knew she would feel the need to close the fight too soon? All it was doing was biding time until she gave it an opportunity to meld. Well, she could leave the ambiguity unresolved.
She launched two more slugs of iron at them to keep them occupied. Anything that kept her dictating the dynamics was an advantage, but she needed to find something more constructive than keeping him swirling around catching chunks of metal.
As long as Blekfisk was the platform on which Brahm stood, she couldn’t get close enough to separate them. She needed to ground them. However Blekfisk flew, turbulence should affect its flight. Sarah extended her network into the ground under them, dumping all the excess heat into the surface. Lichen smouldered, and rain hissed as it hit the rocks, the thermals started to toss the drops chaotically. Sarah prepared a chest-sized hunk of iron under the ground.
Brahm and Blekfisk started to drift up out of the battlefield. As they were adjusting to the updraft, she pulled all the heat out of the air, killing the thermals, creating puddles of air. The pair’s descent ratcheted out of control, and they crashed into the wet granite. As they touched down, she launched the hunk at Brahm, breaking through the surface less than a yard from him. It caught him by surprise, knocking him back. She raised blades of rock between Brahm and Blekfisk, trying to separate the two. But the branch of Self between them danced and wove between the granite faster than she could track.
Blekfisk lifted from the rubble. “Very well, I have places to be. Keep her busy. Don’t let her kill you.” It flew away to the north, leaving the tether of Self stretching to Brahm.
Sarah struck for the tether, but it twisted and writhed out of the way. She vaporised some rock beneath it, and caught it with some of the shrapnel. She whipped her head back to Brahm just in time to see another tether of Self thickening on his other side.
She struck for the new tether, and after a couple of misses finally shattered it, only to see a branch connect to Brahm from above. Success at separating Brahm and Blekfisk faded into frustration at not being able to capitalise on it. She repeatedly floundered to break the tether, and succeeded only to find out another connection already existed.
With horror, Sarah realised she had been letting Blekfisk dictate the battle. While she had been busy playing its game, it had collected all the iron she had thrown at them into a pool just north-east of Brahm. Two pieces in a line. A precondition for a pin.
Sarah circled west, no longer playing Blekfisk’s game. She had the start of a plan, but needed it to start on its own plan, so that it missed what she was doing.
“Sarah, you are doing ok. You have done ok. There’s no way for me to tell you that you won’t discount as manipulation. If I’m going to fail, I’d rather fail while saying what I mean.”
Blekfisk thought it understood her, did it? The false acceptance only made her more frustrated. She stabbed a spike of Self into a nearby downed tree, and speared it at Brahm. He dived left. As he rolled, he scooped some sand in his palm, launching the glass shards as he righted. She threw herself to the side, but felt one of the darts snag her knee through her chausses. The Self carrying the weight of her boot dissipated from the injured leg and her roll slumped. She floundered to grow fresh Self to puppet the limb, righting herself to see Brahm standing in front of her reaching out a hand.
“Peace is a single decision away.”
She could see the cord of Self connecting to his shoulder, arching wide and disappearing behind her back. She felt her network connect with the pool of iron now behind her. Perfect.
Brahm sighed, and turned his hand palm forwards. She felt more than saw the heatwave coming from his hand; she channelled it all into the iron behind her. She formed a ball of Self to contain it. Brahm continued to pour heat at her. The rain no longer reached them. Even soaking as much warmth as she could into the iron, she could feel her body starting to flag. The iron melted. Vaporised. Ionised. She couldn’t hear anything through the rushing in her ears. She’d long since closed her eyes against the heat. She fought with all her might to keep the iron plasma contained inside the globe of Self.
Sarah thought about allowing a weakness in a band around the iron. Just consideration of weakness was enough. Plasma exploded upwards into the air, outwards to either side, and down into the ground, scouring a vertical plane behind her. The shockwave knocked her over. She fell onto her side, burned out. Unable to push heat if her life depended on it. For now. But now was all she had.
From where she lay on her side, Sarah twisted her head to see Brahm. Her eyes swam as she tried to make out whether she had broken the tether and freed him. Whether he would be able to defend himself from Blekfisk while she recovered.
Whether he would be able to defend them both from Blekfisk while she recovered.
Brahm fell to his knees. Her eyes cleared enough to make out his. He stared into the distance. Still breathing. Sarah felt a stab of relief. He sank back onto his heels. She waited for his eyes to find hers. She watched his pupils dilate until his entire irises seemed black. Dead eyes in an affectless face.
Trying phase magic too soon after burning out would cripple her ability in the future. But with the unblinking husk in front of her, she knew her choices were to overextend, or have no future. She had wondered what would remain of the drone if she set it free after extinguishing its will. She wished she had not found out. Brahm’s shoulders relaxed; his clenched hand loosened, and from it fell a bloodied piece of metal.
Sarah couldn’t take her eyes from the Initiate badge, lying there in the moss, rain washing away the blood. She pulled herself up on one shin.
The pain drew a sharp breath, filling her lungs with the heavy air. She could feel water seeping around her injured knee. She took off her gauntlet, and turned her palm up, letting the rain pool in her hand. Unable to tear her eyes from the badge, she started the first exercise given to Novices.
Sometimes failure is the only option.
Pre-dawn – Sunrise – Morning – Noon – Afternoon – [Dusk]
She stood her flickering torch against that cataclysmic inferno. And through the thousand eyes of the combined Self, she watched her body slump as thought faded.
As that body slumped, the inferno retreated. Granting control step by step. First of the orb in front of it. A seat for the mind cut off from bloodflow. Next the surrounding Self. Sarah felt the synthetic body shift at her thought. She felt the infinitesimal branches scattering through the plateau into small optical devices watching. The thousands of images should have flooded her – so much information to be merged – yet her new mind fitted it all together. Seeing herself from every angle should disassociate her, yet she had never felt more present, more centred. Was it Sarah seeing and feeling this, or was it just self-delusion? Is this what the drone had felt for the brief time it was part of her?
She felt more of the network surrender. She could feel the entire peninsula, permeated by a mycelium of Self. Her Self. At the borders of the peninsula, the network ran thin. She felt her awareness stretch to the terminals of those Self branches, to where Self ended in supercooled Solid.
She breathed. As two crumpled bodies. As an island. She breathed.
It was glorious. She shook herself free of the synthetic body. Rising to hover above the two former combatants. Looking at them, she realised how complete Blekfisk’s condescension had been in the fight. The synthetic body, a mere silhouette of the humanoid form, when the orb had the wit to rend matter itself and knit it into tissue. She looked down at her former body. Sarah had never been fully happy with it, but given the opportunity to create a new body, she could see no reason to change her look. No, given a dearth of mattering opinions, she saw no reason to change. She knitted a body for herself around the orb, using the excess heat generated to cremate her former selves. A new Sarah looked around the island. She could feel the canoe melting on her shore, the faint warmth of the sun sliding sideways under the horizon, the chrysalis surrounding Brahm.
In spite of herself, Sarah chuckled. She could sense the living tomb she had created around Brahm, and in it the mind hobble that Blekfisk had left at the top of his spine. Sitting. Alone, in the dark, in the middle of an iron cage, waiting to wake up. Sarah descended to wake him.
In the dusk light, the metal sphere melted into the mountainside. Sarah approached. She breathed away the wall between her and Brahm. The iron suds flowed down and out into whatever gullies happened to be around. Brahm knelt there, breathing but unmoving, just as she’d left him. Sarah extended thin tendrils of Self behind his neck, and undid the mind hobble.
Brahm looked up at her, eyes coming into focus. He smiled, “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You deserved to know more sooner.”
He looked at her healed knee, and paused to pick words.
“I know how well you can play me. Honestly, tell me what you want of me and you have it.”
“Now that I can position you perfectly, I find …” The dramatic pause was unnecessary. She knew where she was headed, but it caught the weight of emotion. “… I find my efforts just get in the way of knowing you.”
“But you do know each word I’m going to say before I say it?”
“If I care to run the numbers.”
He nodded.
Sarah paused. Interesting, there were still limits to her cognition. “I’m not sure I can trust myself that this is still me. Strange … And yet you talk as though you are certain it is?”
“Of all people, I trust all of you.” He took her hand.
It was enough. Sarah leant her head back. She could resolve the surroundings perfectly by the starlight, could see lichen thick and supple from the day’s incessant rain, could trace every sound in the quiet cacophony of the night, and yet still the dark comforted her. Brahm watched her, looked out over the sound, soaked in the peace of waves beaten flat by the rainfall, and chuckled.
“Do you actually need to breathe?” he asked without looking at her. “Or are you consciously faking it?”
“I don’t,” she admitted. “But a friend used it to persist through that which cannot be controlled.”