Eight 5.28: Project Birthright

Baxta looked just like Amleila remembered him, with dark eyes accented by thick brows, a strong nose, and cheekbones so sharp you could cut stone with them. You might call him handsome, but only if you didn’t know his history.

At the moment, he appeared impassive, as if gazing on the restless passage of time without care. The Deer God and I seemed to be unnoticed.

Without a body, I didn’t feel the adrenaline rush of fear, but that didn’t make me immune to worry. I’d experienced enough of Baxta in Amleila’s memories to know he represented serious trouble. What is he doing here? What do the Maltrans hope to accomplish?

Nothing good, certainly. The secrets of Old Baxteiyel? Of course, Baxta knew them. He held the keys to techniques for soul magics, compulsion magics, and the manipulation of silverlight and darklight.

Tenna’s Gift prohibited the dead and the living from communicating, but I’d already proven how that barrier could be breached. No, Baxta’s presence didn’t bode well at all.

Can we exorcise him? I thought.

The Deer God picked up on my intention and gestured for me to look more deeply.

Setting aside my worries had become a habit by then. All it took was a moment to let them go, for my mind to settle back into the hunter’s mindset. Then, I noticed what gave the Deer God pause. Call it a premonition, intuition, or guidance from my ancestors. Whatever. Something in me recognized that entering the chamber would be dangerous.

Baxta himself gave the impression of an exposed knife. No, the feeling went deeper than that. It was like being in the presence of the death crystal at the top of the Pyramid of Despair again, like he threatened my soul. The feeling wasn’t to the same degree, not even close, yet it was there.

My attention then shifted to the boulder, and I noticed how it anchored Baxta to this world. The sculpture’s original purpose—to plug a hole in the veil between life and death—had been defiled by the Maltrans. Their desecration had turned it to their own ends.

To send Baxta on his way, we’d have to destroy that magic first, then fight him off. That surely wouldn’t be easy. He’d had a millennium to adapt to being a ghost.

As I examined the chamber’s walls, wondering how long it would take the Deer God to eat the power they contained, Baxta’s gaze snapped to the right. The ghost of a man in armor suddenly appeared in front of the boulder, his face full of longing. He stood there briefly, not noticing how the boulder anchored him too. Not recognizing how he was steadily, inextricably drawn into the egg.

His hair and clothes fluttered as if in a strong wind. Bits of him came loose to be sucked into the boulder until the wholeness of his spirit was melded into the stone.

The… the smugness of Baxta’s smile afterward made me want to push his face in.

Even worse, the ghosts of four more soldiers appeared over the next few minutes. They wore the same ecstatic expressions as the first, and they too melded with the egg. A whole team of Maltran soldiers had apparently been killed, yet their deaths didn’t go to waste—the magic anchoring Baxta grew stronger, even as the barrier between life and death grew thinner.

Any thought I’d had of entering the chamber was summarily discarded.

How strong was the force? Perhaps three or four times greater than I was currently feeling from the observation deck. The Deer God could likely withstand it, but not indefinitely and not while fighting Baxta.

We didn’t know enough about what was happening inside the ritual chamber. We needed to learn more before we could come up with a plan to address it and its contents.

Reluctantly, the Deer God and I pulled away from the window. We left the observation deck to finish exploring the fortress.

###

The final set of stairs led up into a surreal collection of billowing rock shapes and odd geometries. There didn’t appear to be any rooms at first, just twisty corridors between the stone features. The setting was almost organic in its lack of respect for traditional architecture.

The one commonality with the rest of the fortress was the runes, with every surface covered in them. It really brought home the idea that we were exploring what was essentially a giant magic structure.

I stuck close to the Deer God as we wandered between the strange shapes, from one end to the other. Then, tucked away against the exterior wall overlooking the mining compound, we stumbled across a perfectly square room.

Inside was a desk, a meeting table, and several oak cabinets—the ordinariness of the furnishings incredibly out of place in the context of everything else on this floor. The one nod to it was a pile of stone adjacent to the desk. It rose up in a narrow pillar of rocky cubes, topped by a dome about the size of a man’s palm. The whole thing came up to about waist height.

The Deer God eyed it with interest. Magic probably. I mean, it was kind of obvious.

The desk’s surface was empty of papers, so I poked my head through the cabinet drawers and found them jammed full of books. I didn’t need light to see, but with them all crowded against each together, I couldn’t make out the contents of the individual pages. And there wasn’t anything written on the spines. I kept at it, though, hunting for clues to what was written inside.

I must’ve been at it for hours—time was hard to track without a body—because eventually a pair of men walked into the room, one carrying a tray. He was a young man with unusually short hair and a thin scar running across his neck, as if someone had once tried to slit his throat.

His opposite was older, firmly into middle age, with gray hair at his temples. This man was broad shouldered, and his posture gave away that he was used to command. Both wore the uniforms of the Maltran military, though neither was currently geared for combat.

The young man set the tray on the table. On it were two bowls of porridge, as well as two mugs of something thick and herbal. The older man went to one of the cabinets to retrieve a book. I noticed a date on the cover.

Eagerly, I checked the space it left behind, and the book adjacent was similarly titled, covering the previous season. They were logbooks.

The men’s movements were well choreographed—the everyday habits of people who’d spent a lot of time together.

“What is it today?” the older asked. “Sweet or savory?”

“From the smell… both,” came the reply.

The older man grunted, then lowered himself into a cushion beside the meeting table. Neither man said a word as they ate their breakfast. The younger sat more formally and finished more quickly. He was ready to work well before his commanding officer.

Eventually, the older man placed his empty bowl on the tray and with a gesture, the tray lifted from the table to be set aside in the corner. The bottom, I realized, was made from a thin layer of polished basalt.

The older man was Earth-Touched. “Report,” he said.

“The evening passed without crises,” the younger man said. “The fortress and adjacent compound remained secure throughout. The incidence of encroachment by the local flora and fauna continues to rise. This is within expectations, given the number of silvered and dark at work within our walls, but we’ll need to reinforce the patrol teams soon—both those attached to us and those farther out.”

The older man opened the book and wrote in it. The words on the page were a mix of coded and uncoded, I noticed, with this most recent text being uncoded. From his desk, he pulled a sheet of paper and began to write a request for reinforced patrols.

He handed the paper to his assistant. “Give this to Signals when you turn in the daily report.”

The young man took the paper and nodded. “The builders are anxious to get started. Do we have an update on the lead architect’s expected arrival.”

The older man frowned. “Tell them to be patient. Whatever is causing the delay will no doubt be resolved soon. Our birthright has the highest priority among the Moon’s many projects. She will not tolerate unnecessary delays, so any delay must therefore be necessary.”

“Understood.”

“And tell our Earth-Touched to be ready. The builders will need to be closely watched. They’ve been vetted by the empress’s people, but I won’t take any chances.” The older man picked up his mug yet didn’t drink from it. He gazed at the contents instead, lost in thought. With a sigh, he set the mug down and reached under the table.

The younger man followed suit, and I saw their hair, skin, and clothing dampen. This was an anti-divination spell at work.

“What’s on the schedule for today?” the commanding officer asked.

“Ixtchal has located a body he believes will be a good fit for the conqueror,” the assistant said. “His sources tell him the family is guaranteed to be genuinely descended from the Great Baxta’s line. It should be delivered within the next two weeks”

“And no word on the Vow?” the commanding officer asked.

“None,” the assistant replied. “There were reports of the magic chain being briefly seen within the Pyramid of Despair, but all of the witnesses have since died.”

The commanding officer grimaced. “I am uneasy. Without the Vow, we are forced to trust that the Great Baxta’s mind will be intact after being re-incarnated, that he will be willing to support our zashas’ efforts to reclaim our glorious empire.”

“What about the boy Eight?” the assistant asked. “He was supposed to be the first one to get inside the pyramid.”

The older man shook his head. “Command tells me there are teams looking, but they lost track of him. Our people have eyes on Albei and his home village, in case he reappears at either place.”

I’d been closely following the conversation between the soldiers, alternately fascinated and horrified, and I’d steadily felt my heart becoming like steel. They were dead men, these two. Them and anyone else who dared to bring Baxta back from the dead and who threatened my loved ones.

The rest of the conversation included the day’s planned experiments by the magicians-slash-researchers working to reincarnate Baxta. I took note of names and timelines, then followed the two men on their morning inspection of the fortress’s defenses.

By the time they were done, I felt washed out and hollow. The spirit journey itself wasn’t draining, but the constant contest against the pull of Baxta’s egg had me flagging, even with the Deer God’s support.

So, when it looked like the commander was settling into one of the research rooms for a morning full of meetings, I pulled on my connection to the Deer God to signal that we should retreat for now.

I needed to rest and brief the others on what we’d found.

###

Yuki moved through me, lingering in our merged consciousness as we jointly grappled with the audaciousness of bringing Baxta back to life. Fala nearly dropped the load of granite she was manipulating when the news was relayed to her. She’d been getting ready to create a map of the fortress’s interior.

Then it was just me again, and Yuki went spinning off to pull information from the recesses of their and my minds, assembling a mixture of scenarios, conjectures, and flat-out guesses about whether it was possible.

The answer? Yes. Yes, it was.

“We’ve seen a successful example already,” Fala said. “That giant bishkawi reattached his spirit to a body that should’ve been dead.”

“And the things we saw in the Pyramid of Despair spoke volumes about Baxta’s expertise in soul magics,” I said. “If not him personally, then his people.”

Fala retrieved the chain that had once bound Amleila from the Hoarder’s Pocket and gazed at it. “They wanted this.”

“They are hungry for everything,” the Deer God clarified.

“But this is key to their plans,” Fala replied, looking up.

“The hidden texts too,” I said. “I bet those would help to speed up their timelines.”

“No doubt,” Fala said, then turned her attention inward. “How is it, our Yuki? Have you found success in decoding them?”

The hidden mind’s consciousness expanded, like a blanket spreading between the three of us. A moment later, I felt them reach even farther to the other points in the network—to Mumu, the other hunters, and my family.

The pace of their qi’s circulation sped up, then came the tell-tale scent of a Dog’s Agility spell. The smell doubled in intensity as Yuki cast it again.

‘More,’ they sent.

So, I cast the spell, and Fala cast it too. Even the Deer God got in on the action, with help from the rest of us.

The act was frankly absurd. A quintuple cast of Dog’s Agility shouldn’t be possible—no human or beast’s body could handle the stresses—but Yuki didn’t have a body in their transformed state. Their qi and thoughts were free to travel as quickly as they could manage.

The only side-effect was a major, major case of heartburn. My dantians and meridians were on fire. Thankfully, they ‘d been heavily tempered by my time on the Path of the Storm Caller.

Carefully, I eased myself down to sit next to Fala. She’d immediately noticed my discomfort and pulled several gallons’ worth of water from the pocket to coat me with it. That worked to ease the pain somewhat.

‘Immerse him fully,’ the Deer God said.

Fala nodded, already in the process of making a tub out of granite. She then filled it with water, and when I dunked myself completely, the pain receded to a tolerable level. I was even able to laugh. Somehow, I’d turned into a cyberpunk netrunner, relying on a water bath to keep my gear and me from overheating.

It was a strange interlude in what was obviously the start of an intense conversation, but we all knew the importance of Yuki’s insights. So, we gave them the space and time to think. Ever since we’d turned silver, all of us had gone through something like it at one point or another.

In the meantime, the water held me. I felt it wash across my skin and permeate my spirit. The damage to my meridians halted and began to heal instead. That sense of well-being went all the way down to the cellular level thanks to the Baptism of Water talent. The effect wasn’t as good as swimming in a pond or stream, but it was there.

I took a quick peek to see if the tool tip had changed, but it hadn’t.

Baptism of Water

From the beginning of this incarnation, water has been the source of your salvation. Rivulets of this most precious of the elements flow through your soul. Your choices of eisendon and path already mark you for water affinity, and this talent completes the triad. You gain additional significant authority over matters relating to water, as well as healthy bonuses to all water-affinity-based abilities. Yes, this means that your soul mark, path, and talent are mutually reinforcing.

The spirits of water adore you, and water nourishes you. Submersion in natural bodies of water provides a minor healing effect, as well as extending life expectancy by a miniscule amount. In addition, submersion accelerates the recovery of magical energies.

As I settled into the tub, the tiredness from the spirit journey slowly faded. I reached my hand up out of the water to hold Fala’s.

She smiled at seeing the water’s effects on me. ‘Feeling better?’

My beloved already knew the answer to her question, but as she’d once said, it was important to continue communicating like human beings.

Much, I replied. Thank you.

Eventually, a sliver of Yuki’s thoughts separated from the whole to address us, ‘We’re sorry about that. We thought our authority’s concern was connecting with others, but it turns out there’s a corollary—no one node should overwhelm all the others.’

‘What do you mean?’ the Deer God asked. ‘Surely some will always be stronger than others.’

‘It’s…’ Yuki struggled to articulate what they were sensing within themselves. ‘It’s a distaste for conquerors.’ Their epiphany had flared within my dantians, leaving a subtle light lingering afterward. ‘Yes, that’s it.’

And so…My thoughts jumped ahead. As soon as you heard Baxta was involved you—

‘—hyper-focused,’ Yuki said. ‘We still are, actually, though we didn’t know we could mesh all the extensions of our consciousness this way. It’s really something. Energizing.’

‘The feeling is not unpleasant,’ the Deer God said.

‘Like I’m thinking of something in the back of my mind,’ Fala added. ‘Harmless, but you shouldn’t do it during a hunt or if we need to focus.’

‘We won’t,’ Yuki said. ‘This time was just an accident. In the future, we’ll be more mindful.’

The pace of their thinking slowed, and the wear on my meridians lessened as the hidden mind experimented and modulated the intensity of their new ability.

‘How’s that?’ they asked.

Fala nodded. ‘I feel like I can work intently again.’

I popped my head up out of the water. “And I feel like I can safely leave the tub, but I won’t. It’s nice.”

Fala shook her head at me, then let go my hand to re-do the braid in my hair. The dunking had messed it up. “So, what did our Yuki gain from this hyper-focus? What are your thoughts?”

The mood grew heavy as Fala brought us back on task and four silvered brought their attention to bear.

‘The runes on the egg are similar to ones in the Pyramid of Despair, including several that match the outputs from the simulations we’ve been running to decode Baxta’s texts. We’re using those now to see if they can act like keys to the rest.’

“Like a Rosetta stone?” I asked.

‘Mmm,’ Yuki replied.

Fala looked a question at me, so I told her about the ancient stone from my previous world that had contained the same text in three different languages. It’d been crucial to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, which had previously been lost to time.

‘The extra, let’s call it bandwidth, is helping to speed up the pattern-matching,’ Yuki said.

“I thought the celestial bodies were also involved in the code’s creation,” I said.

‘That too,’ they replied. ‘We’re simulating their movements at a much faster pace.’

‘And this knowledge will help us?’ the Deer God asked. ‘It is worth the risk of exposing it to the World Spirit?’

I frowned and felt my beloved do so, as well. That was a very good question. The more people who knew the techniques and magics hidden in Baxta’s texts, the more likely others would be able to “download” them later.

‘The information will stay with us,’ Yuki said. ‘And it will be divided among our extensions.’

“Your idea is to tell us how to disrupt the ritual without explaining why,” Fala said.

Their qi bobbed in a nod.

That won’t be good enough, I thought, worried, then realized that the Maltrans also wouldn’t want this knowledge to spread. “We’ll need to confirm it, but I bet the empire is heavily limiting access so that they can monopolize the techniques. They’re probably already doing our work for us by breaking it up and encoding it.”

“What if the information is also being kept elsewhere?” Fala asked.

“Would you risk it if it were you?” I asked back.

She shook her head. “Maybe not. People like this keep all the weapons in their hands.”

‘Perhaps,’ the Deer God sent, ‘but the chance remains. We must pursue it, just in case.’

Which was a convincing argument, I thought. “So let’s do this: while we sabotage the Maltrans’ efforts here, we also look for evidence of the information stored elsewhere.”

After a moment, Fala and the Deer God both nodded, and Yuki’s agreement came a beat later.

They said, ‘We kill everyone involved and destroy the documentation.’