The Stargazer's War - Chapter 28

Chapter 28: Tin

I bounded across the rooftops of Fyrion, leaping over peaks and valleys in the contiguous mass of metal that separated the city from the vacuum beyond. The dwarf planet’s gravity had taken more than a little getting used to, but now months in to my vac-welding work, I needed neither the reflexes of cycling my spine nor the stability of cycling my muscles to expertly traverse the uneven terrain.

I kept high, staying to the multilevel buildings and vaulting across the often thirty-foot gaps where only a hallway or single story connected them. In low-G, everything moved in slow motion, the rubber treads at the base of my vac suit going several seconds between contacts with the metal, bringing an almost leisurely rhythm to my journey.

My destination loomed ahead, a behemoth of glass and steel that towered over the city around it. At some thirty stories tall, Gyaro Spire housed and officed the city’s middle class: well-to-do mortals. Executives of various industries too low on the totem pole to live off world, yet high enough to afford luxurious apartments with sweeping views of Fyrion’s gray wastes, the non-cultivators cared little for the reduction in ambient qi so high off the ground.

I shared that apathy.

More importantly to me, unlike Fyrion’s actual tallest structure, Gyaro Spire sat on the opposite end of the city from the constant flow of ships into and out of port. The planet’s lack of atmosphere might’ve halted the noise from all those launches, but it certainly didn’t stop the docking framework from shaking like all hell.

No, it was Gyaro Spire for me.

I pulled the one piece of equipment I’d brought with me from its hitch on my belt, and leveled the maganchor as I neared the spire’s base.

For those wondering, a maganchor is exactly what it sounds like: a magnet for anchoring things. Its basically an electromagnet with a handle, a toggle switch, and a few tie-off points used in zero or low-G environments to secure equipment and climb structures. Today, it would do the latter. And also the ladder.

I’m going to go ahead and apologize for that one.

Anyway, it took under a minute to scale one of the vertical support beams right up to the top, where the spire’s, well spire sloped inward until it peaked at the flat foundation for a broadcast antenna. It left me with only about three feet of clearance before the drop off to a thirty-story fall, but that was enough for me.

For safety’s sake, I hitched the maganchor back to my belt and engaged it against the antenna to my back, just in case something went horribly wrong and I started seizing or fell unconscious or whatever. And hey, this way if I died during the process, I wouldn’t traumatize some poor rich kid by falling limply past their window.

Prepared as I was ever going to be, I sat down crosslegged on the roof of Fyrion’s second tallest structure, took a moment to appreciate the entire city and gray expanse beyond stretched out before me, shut my eyes, and focused inward.

I had done—and this is a technical term—an absolute fuckload of reading prior to this. Sources agreed the act of core formation to be the first true step in a cultivator’s journey, the moment they forged all that they were into all they could be, the defining milestone in finding their Way.

No pressure.

Liquid qi sat still within me, filling my center near brimming where it pooled in quiet shadow. Silencing my doubts, my fears, my trepidations, I spun up a thread and got to work.

I started with the blood meridian, the first I’d opened all those months ago while Lucy had removed the piece of Cedric’s rib that’d pierced it. My body temperature dropped. My blood ran cold. I pumped more and more qi through the channel, far more than I could’ve hoped to back with Lucy, back before half a year of fortifying and stretching and training its capacity.

Next came my heart. My pulse slowed to a crawl as my heart rate plummeted, pumping with newfound efficiency and strength.

The last of my qi went to my kidneys, the third and final meridian I’d opened on Lucy’s ventilator. My body tore through any lingering toxins, primed and ready to resist venoms that would’ve sent me to the threads mere months ago.

For a moment, I breathed. At three meridians, I’d come against the limits of liquid qi. My center sat empty, depleted as its energy now ran elsewhere. To continue, I needed more, more than my center could hold, more than I could hold, and with yet no way to externalize my qi, if I failed to form my core, there’d be no getting rid of it.

No getting rid of it alive, that is.

Seriously, you do not want to fuck around with qi overflow. Remember what happened to Cedric after he took in qi that didn’t belong to him? Think along those lines.

I reached outward, past the narrow boundaries of my vac suit into the void beyond. The infinite sea awaited me, vast and imposing and endlessly calming in its reminder of my own insignificance. Suddenly the risks didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

With barely a thought I let that frigid tide wash over me, and stepped past the point of no return.

Newly replenished, I set right to work. I added my lungs to the mix, fighting off memories of asphyxiating on the floor of Lucy’s core room, an important lesson in the dangers of cultivation. My breaths slowed and deepened, purging more CO2 with each glacial exhale.

Then I reached my arrival at Fyrion, that first meridian I’d opened alone in the third floor shower. My bones hardened, growing marginally denser with each bit of qi I fed them.

My skin grew pallid and icy as I cycled it too, the first meridian I’d cleansed under Xavier’s watchful eye, its effects enough a shock to scare Nick half to death. I wondered how my time at Fyrion might’ve differed had he not walked in on us at that moment. I wondered how his might’ve.

I reached for more qi and the universe obliged, flooding my center a second time with enough power to turn me into a fine red mist. I pushed on.

The next set I’d opened all at once in the immediate fallout of the void beast incursion. My metabolism dropped as I cycled my stomach, ready to wring every molecule of nutrition from the sustenance I sent its way. My tendons strengthened against damage, reinforced against the hyper-natural forces inflicted by and upon a cultivator’s body.

My senses sharpened and flattened at once, the world around me exploding with detail my unempowered brain failed to parse. My eyes went black, sclera and irises taking on the inky tone of my pupils but for the glimmering stars and planets and distant galaxies that appeared within.

Three more to go.

I drank once more from the infinite sea.

The lingering soreness from yesterday’s workout faded to a slight chill as I cycled my spine meridian, honing my reflexes and dulling the edge of existence at once. Weeks of agonizing training flashed through my mind, pain the likes of which I’d never feel again, not that it mattered. Nothing mattered.

Strength rippled through my body as I ran qi through my wiry muscles, finding power in stillness and a sense of solidity even in my gaunt figure. An unexpected shudder rolled down my back as I recalled that horrible moment where I’d lost control, the crack I’d heard before losing consciousness in the shower.

Last but not least, I cycled my brain. Suddenly the deluge of data from my empowered eyes and ears and nose and touch made sense. I found patterns and truths and ideas hidden in the chaos, and saw but a tiny glimpse of the perspective shared by the greatest among the gods.

All-knowing, uncaring.

For the first time in the minuscule blip of my existence, I cycled all twelve of my meridians. I juggled more qi than ever before. I tasted power.

Yet the infinite sea remained, undiminished, undisturbed, unstirred by even the greatest height I’d ever reached. Cold and dark and apathetic, that ocean of power in which I swam, on which I sailed, of which I drank, drowned me in the meaninglessness of it all. No milestone, no purpose, no ideals would survive the inexorable onslaught of eternity. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered.

But maybe someday, I could forge something that did.

To that end I opened myself to one final wave from the infinite sea, one last influx of that quiet power fill my center to brimming even as qi coursed through my every meridian. Now for the moment of truth.

In inverse order, I ceased my cycling.

The edges of my center strained against the pressure as I emptied my brain meridian into it. I held on through sheer will, forcing the qi to condense, to thicken, to stay put.

Then I emptied my muscle meridian. Then my spine.

One by one I added to the reservoir, fighting with increasing vigor against both the power within me and that without, for even as I flailed against infinity, the great dark imposed its endless question.

Why?

I had to know. In finding the infinite sea, in learning to cultivate its vastness, I’d embarked upon a path the likes of which I’d never heard. I had to know where it led. I had to know what it meant. I had to know what it could do. I emptied my sense meridian into my center.

Why?

I had to beat Long. I had to prove that I deserved my place here, that he by right of birth bore no imperium over those less fortunate, to look upon his snide face as he realized he’d been bested by the mortal he despised so much. I added my tendon meridian.

Why?

I had to support my friends. They’d all given me so much of their time and knowledge and companionship. To repay them with anything but success would be a betrayal. I owed them. Above all I owed Lucy, who’d taken me from death’s door to a life of magic, of power, of purpose. I ceased the flow of qi through my stomach.

Why?

I had to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves: Nick, depressed and alone in his forest of potted plants; Martha, twice-crippled and still beneath the thumb of her parents’ expectations; Vihaan, shivering and bleeding out where a void beast had run him through. I stopped cycling my skin meridian.

Why?

I emptied my bones.

Why?

I emptied my lungs.

Why?

I emptied my kidneys.

Why?

Why?

Why?

For myself. Because too many times I’d come up short. Too many times I’d found myself at the mercy of others, of chance, of the threads and their cruel sense of humor. Too many times my lack of power had left me the victim, victim of bullies, victim of void beasts, victim of a VIP, twitching violently as he drained from me my very life-force. I emptied my heart.

Why?

For roofie. For Cedric. For Brady. For those whose lives had been cut short, whom I’d left behind in that floating graveyard out in space, whose entire impact on this world lay on me, on how they’d changed me, on how I’d change the universe. I emptied my blood.

But none of this matters. Nothing matters.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. But if ever there was a way to prove otherwise, to pierce eternity with the vibrant spear of purpose, this was it. The dimmest hope of reason made worth the endless struggle against the self, against the spirit, against infinity.

Even in the dark one might find beauty.

Even in the cold one might glean meaning.

Against the stronghold of my will the qi roiled, crashing in waves upon my resolve in its bid to disperse, to escape, to return the great uncaring from whence it came. With as much furor as I kept the latter out, I kept the former in.

Harder and harder I pressed, restraining the condensing qi with all I had and all I was. Into it I poured my hopes, my fears, my petty wants. I poured in my worry for Nick, my pride in Xavier, my respect for Charlotte.

I added my love for Lucy, my sorrow for Cedric, my curiosity over their mysterious past; my drive to improve, my wonder, my nightmares of a black-eyed man standing over a pallid corpse; my disdain for the Longs and Lopezes of the world, for the parents Brady and I had worked so hard to escape; each and every one of the seventeen men and women that’d died on RF-31.

Only once my every ounce of love and hate and everything in between had joined the fray could they overcome the uncaring, could they reject the shadow of infinity, could they lay claim to the power within me.

My qi solidified.

The pressure ceased.

There, floating in the middle of my center, about the size of a cherry tomato, was a sphere the color of burnt charcoal surrounded by thin pale wisps of gaseous qi like gray smoke off a smoldering fire. Even cold and quiet and unimposing as it seemed, I could feel the energy thrumming through it, the new heights of power newly within my grasp.

My tin core, the seed from which I’d grow the foundation of my cultivation, the beginning stage of true advancement, and the first step along my Way, had finally taken shape.

And I couldn’t wait to try it out.

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