Somnus V - Chapter 32

Kat floated in the air, her eyes tightly closed. A fruit that vaguely resembled an apple hovered in front of her, bobbing slightly as she did her best to focus on both it and the entirety of her surroundings simultaneously.

The crunch of Kaleek biting into one of the apple fruits was the only warning she got before he whipped it at her with enough force to dent steel. Kat could the faintest whisper of a gravity field coming off of the fruit.

Instantly she grabbed hold of the invading object with her sense of gravity, pulling as hard as possible back toward Kaleek. The power of her mental grasp was easily double what she could manage before ascending to the fourteenth floor, but that was still only enough to bleed off most of the momentum behind the projectile.

It bopped against her forehead, almost gently, before falling toward her lap. Kat caught it with her mind, buoying it with gravity as she gently floated it out to hover next to the other fake apple.

Before she could settle in, another two pieces of fruit whistled toward her. This time, Kat bobbed wildly in the air as her focus slipped. Both of the apples in front her her fell almost a pace as she frantically grabbed hold of the incoming projectiles, slowing them to a stop right in front of her.

She let out a ragged breath, halting her own fall and scooping up the two apples that she had dropped just before they hit the floor. Sweat began to bead her forehead as she slowly began to lift herself and the fruit back up to her previous height.

Kat could feel her focus beginning to fray and weaken as she tried to balance herself and all four of the apples at the same time. Periodically, one would dip slightly as she lost sight of it only for her to catch hold of it again.

Dorrik’s voice intruded on her silent struggle.

“You may open your eyes Miss Kat. Your next task is to rotate the redfruit. Orbit them around yourself in a circle without letting their height or speed vary.”

She let out a deep shuddering breath as she opened her eyes. Kaleek was sitting on a rickety stool, peeling another one of the fake apples with a knife as he watched Kat. Dorrik stood a pace or two to his left, both pairs of arms crossed in front of his chest. A couple paces behind him Jaalin sat on a stool of her own while Toorvu and Stekat worked with one of Stekat’s newer tamed beasts.

Kat took a deep breath, nodding slightly. It was hard to pay attention to anything beyond the spheres bobbing in the air around her. Kat might have complete control over her Gravity Domain, but that meant one thing when written on a status sheet. Here, trying to split her focus between herself and the four different redfruit, it was almost impossible to keep track of all of them at the same time without her mind splintering.

Slowly, she began to twist gravity, accelerating the fruit. When each of them made it about a handspan, she shifted the focal points of her altered gravity pulling the fake apples to the side. Their path wasn’t so much a circle or an orbit as a jerky zigzagging track around her torso, but they were moving and Kat hadn’t lost track of any of them yet.

“Smoothly now,” Dorrik said, forcing Kat to grit her teeth further. “Try and level out their movements. You want the redfruit to circle you naturally.”

“Easier said than-” Kat began only for her concentration to slip. For a fraction of a second she lost track of the fruit floating behind her back and it began to fall. She shifted her focus to try and catch hold of it with her gravity domain, but that made her lose sight of the other three targets.

Frantically, she tried to reverse gravity for all four at once only for the riot of sensations to overwhelm her entirely.

Her butt hit the ground with enough force to jar her out of her stupor and send a spike of pain up her lower back. A half second later, all of the redfruit splattered against the ground around her. Across the room, she could hear Kaleek snickering to himself.

Kat groaned, rolling over onto her stomach before pushing herself back up to her hands and knees. Her rear still hurt, but it didn’t feel like it would be anything more than a lingering bruise, so she stood up.

“That was better than I expected,” Dorrik said approvingly. “I’m impressed by how much ascending a level improved the range and strength of your Gravity Domain. It has transformed from a mild perk that could save you some mana to a potentially formidable weapon.”

“It still only extends a pace and a half to two paces from me,” Kat replied, reaching behind herself to massage her lower back. “Being able to exert about three times Earth’s gravity in that range is nice, but it’s not enough to be a game changer, especially given how hard it is to split my focus. Super powers don’t really do much if you can’t target them properly.”

“True,” Jaalin remarked, her crest fluttering gently once. “Like any skill, simply increasing its raw power doesn’t do all that much. Actually finding a way to incorporate it into your fighting style is the key. There really isn’t a substitute for repetition and practice.”

She turned slightly, fixing a disapproving glare on Dorrik as she continued.

“And that is why I keep advising you to slow down Dorrik. Constant dungeons may increase your attributes and earn you new skill stones, but at some point it will be too much power too quickly. Your swords will swing too fast and you will unbalance yourself. Your spells will activate too quickly and you will accidentally catch your allies in their areas of effect. Outgrowing your abilities is a rather rare problem to have, usually it is only the domain of true geniuses, but that doesn’t make not a problem. You’ve already had your avatar reset once. It would be a brutal shame for you to repeat that experience solely because you’re over eager.”

A pang of guilt overwhelmed the actual pain in Kat’s back. The only reason that Dorrik and Kaleek were rushing ahead was her need to hit level twenty four as soon as possible. Without her, the three of them would’ve been able to take a much more measured approach to leveling.

Almost worse than her needs putting the rest of the party at risk, was that none of them said anything about it. They didn’t even acknowledge that there was anything wrong with their breakneck pace. Belle’s face flashed through her mind. The other shareholder might have a point. There was something cleaner and easier to understand about a world where favors were tallied and repaid one to one. She wouldn’t need to feel any anxiety over putting the rest of her group in a bad spot because Kat would immediately know how much she owed them and what she would be doing to make up for it. Instead-

“It is necessary,” Dorrik said decisively, drawing a nod from Kaleek. “Wishing that we had another option is as good as a starving person wishing for a four course meal when they only have jerky available to them. It does no good. There is only one choice, so obsessing over what might have been is pointless.”

Jaalin opened her mouth to respond, eyes flickering over to Kat before she caught herself. Her crest stiffened for a second before the female lokkel closed her eyes and sighed deeply.

“I know Dorrik. I just worry for you. Soon, our group will not be able to keep up with your pace and you will have to forge on without us. Forgive my selfishness, but I will miss our conversations.”

Dorrik’s crest stiffened, but before he could say anything Kaleek answered for him.

“Don’t let it bother you too much. Unless something happens, we should be able to push our way up to the twenty fourth floor in a little over a year. We’ll be able to drop down a couple floors and catch up with the three of you then. It’ll be fun for us to be the high level team for change.”

Jaalin’s expression softened slightly, some of the stiffness leaving her crest as she nodded along.

“As long as you’re careful,” she replied. “If you can make it to the twenty fourth floor in a year, that’s all well and good. I would just hate for one of you to slip up and need to reset an avatar along the way. Cutting out relaxation time is one thing, but one year is much too fast.”

“Don’t worry,” Kat said, walking over toward the rest of their group. “They’re rushing up the levels for my sake, so there’s no way I could let Dorrik and Kaleek suffer for it. I’d never be able to forgive myself. I’ll make sure that we hold back and train the second our abilities start to get out of sync with our training.”

“Plus,” she flashed a half-smile at the lokkel spellcaster. “Dorrik and I are living in the same compound in the waking world. We can’t practice quite as hard there because injuries don’t go away the next time you wake up the way they do in the dreamscape, but we are more or less doubling up on our training. Our pace might be objectively foolish, but I can assure you that we’ll take every step we can to minimize the risk it poses.

Jaalin turned her head slightly, meeting Kat’s eyes. For a second, the two of them just stared at each other before the lokkel sighed, nodding her agreement.

“That will have to do,” Jaalin said. “I can’t say I’m happy, but I understand that there are outside forces pushing you forward. I don’t know that I would act any differently if there were a threat hanging over Stekat or Toorvu’s heads.”

“Which reminds me,” Dorrik said, shifting his attention to Kat. “The first day of arbitration is tomorrow. I heard Miss Whippoorwill mention that the arbitrator authorized an independent analysis of the isotope refineries. Are you prepared to deal with the fallout from your deception?”

Kat suppressed a groan. Her lawyer would be handling most of the talking, but that didn’t mean that the actual arbitration itself would be fun. Apparently both Belle and her would have to testify. She knew that the older executive was chomping at the bit to take the stand, but the entire process had left a screaming ball of anxiety deep in Kat’s gut.

“Walter has been going over our evidence with me,” she replied, “and I think we’re as ready as possible. The actual report on the refineries should come as a bit of a surprise to VodCom. It looks like we managed to bait them into taking a hardline position on that front just long enough for us to make them look like fools.”

“But, did Shareholder Donnst not say that she falsified the audits on those refineries?” Dorrik asked, cocking his head to the side. “Did she manage to bribe the arbitrator’s investigators as well? That would seem quite risky and difficult.”

“The report is fine,” Kat replied. “Belle had a double agent author a secret audit that was all lies. VodCom was convinced that they had something on us, so they spent the last month running up to the arbitration screaming to anyone that would listen about how we falsified the reports. Now they’re going to explain themselves in front of the arbitration panel, and I doubt that anyone is going to be amused.”

About ten paces away, Stekat had gotten what looked like a furry winged snake to roll over onto its back and Toorvu was enthusiastically petting the animal’s stomach. Through her enhanced hearing, Kat could make out Toorvu asking the beast “who was a good boy” repeatedly as he moved up its body to scratch the snake under its chin.

“Why did you make it sound like you were falsifying the audit then?” Dorrik asked, cocking his head. “There was no reason for you to be so furtive if you were following the rules the entire time.”

“I also do not understand why you did not feel the need to inform me of this,” he said with a sniff. “We had a long call with Shareholder Donnst where the two of you told me-”

He stopped, crest rustling.

“Both of you must have known the truth during that conversation,” Dorrik mumbled, “but what about Miss Emma and Miss Whippoorwill? Surely I wasn’t the only person that wasn’t informed about the audit results?”

“About that,” Kat replied, shuffling uncomfortably. “We were pretty sure that VodCom had illegally tapped our communication lines. All actual information exchanges happened through couriers days before the call. Everything that was said in that conference room was actually just us trying to trick their spies. I didn’t let you know when it was happening because, well, you’re good at a lot of things Dorrik, but acting isn’t one of them.”

Dorrik blinked at her, not seeming to understand what Kat was saying. She shifted awkwardly, trying to find a delicate way to rephrase her concerns.

“What I mean to say is that Belle and I were lying,” Kat continued slowly, as if she were trapped in the dark and trying to sort out her words by feel alone. “You can’t bluff Dorrik. It’s not even that you have a tell or something like that. The second you try and hide the truth from someone you go completely stiff and act unnatural.”

“That is not at all the case,” Dorrik replied, crossing both sets of arms in front of himself. “Don’t you remember how I helped Miss Whippoorwill plan a surprise birthday party for you? That was a smashing success. You never suspected a thing.”

“Dorrik,” Kat began. She caught herself. Closing her eyes for a second as she tried to tone down her response in order to spare her friend’s feelings. “You told me, and I quote ‘come to the atrium at seven o’clock. I have something interesting to show you. Please do not look for any of your other friends or acquaintances along the way. They will be busy at that time with other matters. Please make sure to not have dinner beforehand as the cake will be very filling.”

“And you were delighted by the party!” Dorrik said happily. “Clearly I must have done a good job acting.”

Kat sighed. Delicacy was out the window, that left being as subtle as a brick in the small of the back.

“You realize that my hearing can pick out the difference between individual footsteps at around a hundred to two hundred paces, right?” She asked. “Even if you managed to deceive me, I heard Emma and Whip whispering to each other from two hallways down. I knew that you were bringing me to a surprise party the entire time. I did love the party, but that’s because all of my friends were there and all of you put a lot of effort into it, not because you somehow surprised me.”

“She has a point you know,” Kaleek said, crunching into another redfruit. “I wouldn’t trust you to pull one over on a pup. You’re far too earnest to actually lie properly to anyone. That’s a compliment by the way.”

“-But,” Dorrik sputtered, looking from Kaleek back to Jaalin for support.

“Sorry,” she said with a pained expression. “One of your greatest strengths is identifying your goals and seeking them out with a single-minded obsession. That doesn’t really lend itself to subterfuge. Kat was right to exclude you from her deception.”

“Don’t worry,” Kat blurted out hurriedly, unable to stomach the crestfallen expression as Dorrik’s entire body slumped. “We can sign you up for some acting classes or something. Maybe an improv workshop. Not being good at something today doesn’t mean you can’t be good at it in a couple month’s time.”

He perked up, a toothy grin blossoming across his muzzle.

“Of course!” Dorrik exclaimed happily. “I will simply become the best at lying. A master fraud.”

Kat’s face fell. Oh no. What had she done?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
<-Previous<-

Index

->Next->