Crimsoncrest: Chapters 32-33

Sorry that this week's chapters are shorter than average, but you'll see why. If anyone doesn't like this idea as much as I do, know that the chapter after this is the longest in the entire series, this time for thematic reasons.

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Chapter 32

Instead of meeting in another dull Asplundat city, the group met in the Blacksilver camp within Movement territory. This was in no way required, but Fiyu was pleased, because this was a much more engaging environment. In the same way, there was no strict tactical need for all of them to soulcraft together... it was still better this way.

True, there were a few too many of them. Prisoner Tythes was always a frustrating presence, and while Ally Homez had proved himself loyal, he was not a close companion. But through all her journeys, Fiyu had built up a resistance to larger groups, so she was still content as she worked.

At first she had been a little hesitant about soulcrafting so much of her eternal chamber, since she could not yet place it properly within her soulhome. She was working out of order, as if she built the roof of a house before the walls. Only over time, with the reassurance of Relative Guchiro, had she come to accept it. As with many other trade-offs within soulcrafting, she was being more cautious now in order to reap benefits later.

The curving channels of her Immortality Conduit were simple: they worked in unison to touch her entire soulhome, like blood vessels throughout a body. At the bottom, however, the eternal chamber was more complex. She needed to use nothing but the most durable materials there, ones that would match her perfectly and make her soul last forever.

Of course the eternaldark was the core of it, and Fiyu mentally thanked Friend Nauda every day for helping her acquire such a thing. The filtermirrors were also essential for avoiding inefficiencies that could make her Conduit explode or deteriorate over time. But both of those needed housings and walls, which she was attempting to construct out of the new materials Friend Theo had brought back from Associate Senka's vault. The blackmercury only required heating and freezing, but some of the others were more troublesome.

Associate Senka was still present, attempting to goad her into finding enough intensity to test the Conduit. This had been much less successful than her advice regarding the eternal chamber, which Fiyu had quite appreciated.

"You're not going to manage it today, are you?" Associate Senka asked.

"Likely not," Fiyu had to answer. "We will try again tomorrow."

"I'm not sure I'm right for this. Maybe Nauda would be better at invoking some passion in you."

"Was that an innuendo? It is not effective, because it is no secret that I love Nauda dearly."

"Ugh, you two..." Associate Senka rolled her eyes and floated away.

Left to her own devices, Fiyu returned to polishing every last detail of her Immortality Conduit. She had managed to carve out just enough space in her basement for testing, so she was very close. When she wasn't training, she kept her darkegg secured there, so that it would be absorbed if she needed to ascend with little warning.

She hoped that such a thing would not be required, however. After having seen the Orphic Cabal, Fiyu felt a new urgency to perfect her soulhome and prepare for challenges far in the future. Anything less would not be sufficient to continue her journey with her companions.

Eventually Fiyu's spiritual stamina was exhausted, so she went to rejuvenate it by observing the others. She saw that Friend Theo and Ally Krikree were soulcrafting together, but they seemed very passionate about their work, so she decided to leave them be.

Not far away in the camp, Friend Nauda and Prisoner Tythes were engaging in much less conventional training. Though Friend Nauda was still soulcrafting whenever she could, attempting to catch up, the rest of her time was spent training methods of infusion.

"Now try again," Prisoner Tythes said.

Friend Nauda took a deep breath, gathered her cantae in one hand, and then placed it against Prisoner Tythes's chest. After several seconds, she sighed and shook her head. "That isn't right."

"Of course it isn't right. Let me demonstrate again." Prisoner Tythes drew back and then slapped Friend Nauda in the forehead while yelling "Infuse!"

"I get the principle," Friend Nauda said, "but actually imparting cantae..."

"You need to yell 'Infuse!' when you do it."

"You do not."

Even though Prisoner Tythes was being farcical, Fiyu believed that his irregular training program was actually effective. Within nature, there were no sublime materials that did not carry cantae - such a thing was essentially a contradiction in terms. The neutral crest would in theory absorb any nearby cantae, but to infuse it properly, to bring out its full strength, required specific techniques.

According to inside information that Ally Homez had revealed to them, the mountain had multiple channels connected to Authorities as well as a large number of Asplundat soulcrafters. With all of them working together, they could easily create a pure Asplundatcrest without any contamination. If this method failed, however - which Friend Theo was certain it would - then someone would need to use a less efficient system. Training to allow one person to impart enough pure cantae was a much harder task.

"Try again," Prisoner Tythes said. "Slap me right in the head."

"You'll jab me with your horn again," Friend Nauda said.

"Such suffering is the very essence of training! Pain is weakness leaving the body!"

"I'm trying to make cantae leave my body, not pain."

"You dare twist my words?"

While they argued, Fiyu observed the technique. It was not trivial, and she did not think she could step in for Friend Nauda if necessary. However, the fundamental method of directing cantae did not rely on a person's soulhome. It seemed to her...

"I have an observation," Fiyu said. She unintentionally spoke too softly, so she expected to be ignored, but Friend Nauda turned immediately.

"What's that, Fiyu?"

"You would be capable of using the infusion technique through an armament, yes?"

"No reason you couldn't," Prisoner Tythes said, "but it's inefficient."

"But inefficiencies could be overcome with exceedingly high amounts of cantae." Fiyu approached them and withdrew the shadowlamp from her soulhome. "This is built to store high densities of cantae, then distribute it slowly. It does not have to be darkness alone, and could perhaps be used to ease this task."

Friend Nauda seemed to reach toward it, but instead brushed her hand. "Are you sure, Fiyu? I thought you wanted to trade the shadowlamp for sublime materials."

"It does not seem that I am in need of any, prior to my ascension. Would it not be better used for this? If it helps you, even a little, I would like you to have it."

The statement put a smile on Friend Nauda's face and she placed her second hand on the shadowlamp, again overlapping Fiyu's. It was a lovely moment until Prisoner Tythes stepped up between them and put his hands over theirs as well.

"That's great in theory," he said, "but what sort of cantae can you put in there? If you use this just for Asplundat essence, that's so boring I will cry."

"Hmm." Friend Nauda pulled the shadowlamp away from Prisoner Tythes and regarded it. "I think that trying to fill it with my own would be exhausting and make it pretty hard for me to do any soulcrafting of my own."

Fiyu had anticipated this and only nodded. "It would be difficult for one Authority, but there are others we could call upon, yes?"

When Friend Nauda looked at her she seemed puzzled for only a moment, then she smiled as she understood.

~ ~ ~

Now that he had dealt with distractions, Theo could finish his fundamental work on his Stronghold floor. That was an advantage, in objective terms, yet he disliked how everything became uncertain. While it was still months until the crest infusion, with so many unknown variables, he could tell himself that he might soulcraft an unknown number of bricks. With his time under control it became just an equation, which put a hard limit on what he could accomplish.

Three rooms.

If he maximized his soulcrafting time, he'd have enough bricks to complete roughly three rooms of his fifth floor. He could do it slightly faster if he chose three that shared walls, which would give him time to do more work within them. That was the most logical choice, yet he continued soulcrafting bricks and avoided a final decision.

It was a peculiar irony that for once in his life he had too many sublime materials and not enough space to use them. He couldn't decide if he'd been lucky or unlucky: he'd discovered some remarkable materials, but ones that were useless to him at the time he needed them most. Ill-timed luck, perhaps.

But now that time was running out it seemed unlikely that he was going to get any lucky breaks, so he had to work with what he had and build the soulhome he'd be taking into the battle.

As a matter of optimizing his raw strength, the logical thing to do was build out one corner of his fifth floor: the mountainheart would boost his body, the temporalstone would boost his mind, and he could easily fill the third room with worthwhile materials. And yet, in a battle where he could end up facing a soulcrafter like Jazin or even Dominions, a simple boost in strength might not make the difference.

He didn't want to give up on the idea of enhancing his singularity technique, since that was his best lever of power. The trouble was, he didn't see a great way of doing it. The two enhancement chambers were on opposite sides of his fifth floor, which had seemed like genius cantae flow when he was making his blueprint and now left him without a short term solution.

Despite that blockage, Theo spent a significant amount of time working at his mass and anti-mass anvils. Even if he hadn't mastered their use yet, he was charging increasingly powerful sublime materials with those two themes. Worst case scenario, it would prepare him for other projects.

When he grew too exhausted to keep soulcrafting, Theo retreated and looked over everything he had collected from Senka's vault. Unfortunately, while it had contained a great many potent materials and a few good spiritual tools, not many of them had game-changing potential in the short term.

The most curious was something Senka had called geminipaths. There were multiple of them, pairs of blue plate-like materials with matching symbols. Instead of generating cantae, they redirected it entirely from one side to the other. Not in the physical world, but in soulhomes, which meant potentially it might be possible to create counter-intuitive cantae flows. For example, placing one on each side of a soulhome, you could create a single unending line, or one room could lead into another entirely.

Could he use that to link together disconnected rooms for some new advantage? Theo hadn't solved that problem yet, but it was one more reason he wouldn't commit to finalizing all his work.

Of course, the other remarkable material was the felinesolars, which proved almost unique in his experience. They seemed to carry with them some traces of the sublime beast that had left them as a legacy, which meant a number of surprises. When he tried to work them in his basement he found hammering completely unnecessary: they naturally adapted to whatever they were placed near. That meant they could fill in anywhere, but using something so extraordinary as filler would be a tragedy.

When they'd collected the topaz orbs, he hadn't noticed that the felinesolars existed at four different tiers: Ruler through Dominion. Senka had suggested that some felidays could leave Archcrafter or even Ophaon tier felinesolars, but she clearly didn't want to talk about that at length.

It seemed like the logical choice to use the Stronghold-tier felinesolar in his own soulhome, yet Theo wasn't confident in that. The material was so warm and comforting, he wasn't sure it had a place in his soul. Powerful as it was, it didn't feel inclined to combat at all and he didn't want to use it for more brute force.

Maybe what he needed was to get out of his head and do some proper experimentation. Purely speculative soulcrafting was well and good, but it was an empirical science in the end.

While Tythes was still working with Nauda on the infusion technique, Theo judged what they were doing to be half idiosyncrasy, half idiocy. He simply marched up to the two of them, used a gravitational field to drop Tythes into the other room, and handed the Dominion felinesolar to Nauda.

"What do you think of this?"

"Oh!" Nauda's eyes widened as she cradled the orb in her hands. "It's one of the most powerful materials I've ever felt, but... it's so gentle. What is it used for?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Theo said. "Can you try to place it in your soulhome?"

"A Dominion-tier material?" Nauda shot him a skeptical look, but to her credit she began soulcrafting to try it.

Observing from the outside, Theo saw her gingerly take the orb to her fourth floor. He knew the feeling: there was a strong impulse to cradle the felinesolars. When she entered her new life-aspected chamber she began moving more hesitantly, expecting the powerful material to blow her soulhome apart when she tried to incorporate it.

Nauda slowly pulled back her hands, wincing. Power flooded out of the felinesolar, but her walls didn't so much as tremble. Instead a golden light seemed to overwhelm the room, spilling out to flow over the rest of her soulhome.

"Remarkable..." Nauda emerged with a look of wonder. "It isn't damaging my soulhome at all, and I don't think it can. But the power is still too much: it's like all the other cantae is overwhelmed, so I can't actually make any of it flow."

"Never mind that for now," Theo said. "Do you think you could use it to heal? In theory."

"It would certainly boost healing, yes. My methods have always been a bit primitive, just repairing the body a bit. But as things stand, I can't use it all. Maybe if you wait for me to reach Dominion, but that seems like a long way off..."

"No, just keep it in your soulhome and let me try something."

Theo sat down opposite Nauda and drew the Stronghold felinesolar into his own soulhome. Since it was the same tier it didn't overwhelm, and even though he didn't have a prepared chamber, it seemed to want to connect to his soulhome. He took it to his torsion chamber and placed it alongside the core materials there.

"Oh!" Nauda straightened in surprise. "I... feel connected to your soulhome? It's like I can feel the other piece..."

Excellent. Even the geminipaths hadn't been able to connect rooms in two different soulhomes: the gaps between people's souls appeared essentially infinite. But the felinesolars didn't bridge space, they simply resonated with one another.

"I'm going to try to send cantae to you," Theo said. "Are you feeling a new flow?"

"I am, remarkably..." Nauda immediately shook her head. "I was hoping you could send me gravitational force and we could all trade abilities, but that won't work. The cantae is... too gentle. It's fundamentally protective, so I suppose it might be able to impart defensive techniques?"

"One more experiment." Theo gestured in Nauda's direction and cast a torsion bolt directly at her chest.

When it touched her, it seemed to melt away. The felinesolar within his soulhome resonated warmly and he could feel a response in Nauda. She blinked and touched the place where his technique had landed, as if surprised she was unharmed.

"It seems like the resonance can protect from a technique," Theo concluded. "The effect probably isn't unlimited, but very useful in the right position."

"Could we give one to Fiyu?" Nauda asked. "Her lightstorm technique is so destructive, it would be helpful if it couldn't harm us. But I suppose that's just theoretical when this one is too overwhelming, isn't it?"

"No, I just wanted to test with the strongest materials." Theo removed his felinesolar as well as the others, and when he returned to the physical world, he extended the Authority-tier orb to Nauda. "Trade you."

"Oh!" She eagerly removed the Dominion-tier version from her soul and replaced it. This time when the protective cantae poured out, it resonated with all the other materials in her life chamber instead of overwhelming them. "This is good... it already feels like it matches my soulhome, but... I feel like I should build it a nest or something..."

"Try a cushion," Theo suggested. He clapped Nauda on the shoulder as he rose back to his feet.

One felinesolar to Nauda, one reserved for him... that left the Ruler and Dominion versions unused. He would need to do more experiments with those, but the distraction left Theo feeling refreshed. His spirit had probably recovered enough to soulcraft more, either bricks or work in his basement.

Theo started by hammering more mass materials, sharpening his skills. Senka's cache had included a new hammer, which was powerful but didn't feel right in his hands yet. After he'd pounded out several more mass spheres, he decided that he might be ready.

Picking up the armorstone, Theo placed it on the mass anvil carefully. There seemed to be a limit to how much he could change any given material, after which it began to warp and degrade. Each strike on Krikree's armorstone would have to be perfect, infusing it with mass in addition to protection.

Did he have time to do this so painstakingly? Theo realized that it was noon, which meant exactly half a month until the time of the crest infusion. He would have to hope that was enough, if he spent every available hour working on it.

Except before he could begin, Krikree woke up beside him. Her antennae shot upright and she skittered near, grabbing his knee. "Bricks?" she asked.

"Alright," Theo said with a chuckle. "Bricks first."

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Chapter 33

After so many years traveling in dangerous territory, Guchiro used his stealth technique reflexively, even when among allies. He knew that some considered this rude and did not particularly care: it was useful to be able to appear only where and when he wished. Constant presence was for relatives and long term companions only.

Still, when he returned to Outpost #127, he found himself considering when he should drop the technique. Certainly not in the surrounding area, as his presence caused far too much trouble. The Blacksilver organizations seemed effective enough, but they were as excitable as most.

Within the outpost that his ward and her companions had taken for themselves, however... perhaps it would be more polite to appear. Ward Fiyu might have made some unusual choices, but she had chosen her allies carefully. Associate Theo had proved himself a worthy ally, different from the other outsiders, and Associate Nauda had - against all odds - been a consistent and faithful partner to his ward. The others were not closer companion material, but his ward seemed to have a clear head about such things.

So when he stepped into the building, Guchiro had fully intended to drop his stealth.

In one corner of the room, Ward Fiyu was holding her eternaldark and yelling, while Associate Senka hovered around her head. "Louder!" she called. "More passionately!"

Just beside them, Associate Theo sat soulcrafting, which was ordinary enough, except that Associate Krikree was crawling on his shoulders even while soulcrafting. The entire time she worked she was chirping "Brick sisters! Brick sisters!"

In the other corner of the room, Associate Nauda appeared to be attempting to meditate, but Associate Tythes stood behind her, rubbing the sides of her head and intoning, "Infuuuse. Infuuuuuse."

Guchiro regarded the room for several seconds, then turned around and left.