The Stargazer's War - Chapter 3.5

Chapter 3.5: Staying Put

“I, Xavier Honchel, future champion of the Dragon’s Right Eye, challenge you to a duel!”

Micaiah suppressed a sigh as the sound of a door slamming reached her from the hall outside.  “Give it a rest, Xavier.  Four ‘no’s should be enough to get the hint.”

“This place lacks honor!”  Xavier exclaimed as he stormed back into their apartment.  “No true cultivator should so willfully neglect the honing steel of combat.”

“No true human likes being harassed at home.”  Micaiah lowered her holopad to look directly at her new sect mate.  “We’ve been here all of three hours.  Surely you can go a bit longer without hitting anyone.  If not, there’s probably training ground somewhere full of people who actually want to fight you.”

Xavier paced back and forth across the frankly cavernous living room of the three bedroom they’d been given.  “Charlotte said to stay put, so I’m staying put.”

“You’re staying put at several miles per hour is what you’re doing.  Sit down.  Threads know we have enough chairs.”

Xavier ignored her, striding right past the four plush recliners to continue afflicting a year’s worth of wear and tear on the poor carpet.  “I should’ve stayed with her.  Threads know what she’s dealing with over there.  I shouldn’t have just left her to those—”

“She grew up with them, Xavier.  I’m sure Charlotte is more than capable of handling her own family.”

Xavier spun on his heel to keep pacing.  “I should’ve stayed with her,” he repeated to himself.

Micaiah spared a forlorn glance for the treatise on astronomical navigation she’d intended to be reading before looking back up at Xavier.  Annoying as it was, she had to concede a certain saccharine admiration for the way he worried over Charlotte, baffling as she found their relationship.  In the scarce weeks Micaiah had known them, the couple had been at each other’s throats as often as not, a state of affairs even Cal had admitted hadn’t been too far removed from the norm.

Yet here stood Xavier, worked into a frenzy over the prospect of his beloved Charlotte seeing her family without reinforcements.  It was sweet.

Xavier spun about again, his footfalls slamming against the floor with enough force the apartment beneath theirs had probably taken up arms.

It was aggravating.

“That’s it.”  Micaiah closed her holopad and sprung to her feet.  “We’re finding you someone to fight.”

That finally got him to stand still.  “We can’t leave!  Charlotte told us to—”

“To stay put.  I got it.  Let me ask, all those people you just challenged—were you going to fight them here?”

Xavier opened his mouth, but seemed to stop himself before saying anything.  Instead, he pivoted and moved to pace again.

“Come on.  Grab your axe.  We stay here any longer and you’ll start a blood feud with the downstairs neighbors.”

“But Charlotte—”

“Will forgive you when she finds out how worried you were.  I’ll tell her it was my idea.  Now let’s go.”

Xavier paused, eyes unblinking for a few seconds as he seemed to look right through her.  Threads his thinking face was unnerving.

“Fine,” he finally said, snatching his axe from the wall and making for the door.  “This way.”

Micaiah let out a breath as she followed him into hall.  “Of course you already know where the fighting rings are.  You looked that up before we even got here, didn’t you?”

“Say what you will about inner sanctums and the seats of power, the training grounds are the beating heart of any sect, the true source of the power that flows through these halls.”  He came to a stop at an elevator.  The door opened immediately.

“You’re thinking of the focus rooms.  I appreciate a good workout as much as the next girl, but training doesn’t make powerful cultivators.  Qi does.”

“There’s only so much qi to go around.  Good training, dedicated training, leverages equivalent resources into greater military might.  If cultivation is the whetstone, dueling is the honing rod.”

“I’m sure glad we’ve organized society to optimize for military might.  Wouldn’t want the threat of violence to stop being such a useful first resort.”

Xavier lowered his voice as if afraid someone might overhear in the empty elevator.  “A war is coming, Micaiah, one we’re slated to land dead in the center of.  If violence troubles you…”

A ding sounded out as the doors slid open in front of them.  

Xavier returned to his normal, booming volume.  “You should consider issuing a few challenges yourself; learn a cultivator’s weapon.  If Cal has proven anything, it’s that it’s never too late to embark on the road to mastery.”

“I can take care of myself,” Micaiah answered as much to herself as to Xavier as she watched him stride away from her into the training grounds.  I killed the Mistral Prince, didn’t I?  That last she kept unspoken.  Busy as the massive hall in which she found herself was, there’d be no shortage of active sense meridians.  It wouldn’t do to reveal that particular kill—nor the crown they’d taken as loot—to the sect’s many ears.

Much as she disagreed on principle, the sheer grandeur of the space lent credence to Xavier’s ‘beating heart’ analogy.  Sixteen fighting rings arranged in a four by four grid stretched out before her, each occupied, each with the telltale glimmer of a qi shield protecting onlookers from the techniques wielded within.  The expense to run such barriers nonstop must’ve been astronomical.

The arenas themselves, however, scarcely registered in Micaiah’s attention.  Neither they, nor the mass of onlookers and duelists, nor the scores of cultivators practicing forms or running drills or simply working out with the exercise equipment stored in the room’s periphery could draw her focus.  Half in a daze, she followed Xavier through the crowd, under the triple-height ceiling any space station should rightfully consider an insane waste of space, to the opposite end of the room, where instead of a wall, a simple glass railing separated them from from empty space.

Before she even reached it, Micaiah stared aghast at first the vast chasm the chamber opened into, and then across it, at what appeared to be another dueling room perfectly mirrored to the one in which she stood.

She reached the railing.

To the left side of the square open space stood another training ground, another sixteen arenas.  The right side mirrored it.

Then Micaiah looked down.

Level after level the pattern repeated, both below and above in more floors than Micaiah could count, each housing four of the busy fighting gyms she’d just walked through.  At the very bottom sat four particularly grand fighting rings, complete with luxurious private box seating and space for referees, announcers, and officials.  To Micaiah’s first cursory glance, those seemed the only unused arenas in the building.

“It’s on rails.”  Xavier gestured to one of four great metal tracks in the corner across from them.  “The tournament arenas travel up and down to offer spectators on all levels a chance to view the action up close.  They usually start the day down low and end at the top.”  He pointed up.  “The further you progress in the tournament, the closer you rise to the Right Eye.”

Micaiah followed his gaze to the darkly tinted glass that made the only barrier between them and the star itself, its red glow filtered just enough to maintain a comfortable hue all the way to the bottom.  “You weren’t kidding,” she murmured.  “This really is the heart of the sect.  There’s gotta be at least—”

“Sixty four floors with sixty four arenas each,” Xavier rattled off without looking at her, his own eyes as transfixed by the enormity of the sight before them.  “Every cycle, the entire sect gathers here to watch the grand tournament.  I grew up watching those holocasts—the live events, the pre- and post-fight analysis, reruns going back hundreds of years…”

“It must really be something to be standing here.”

He let out a short, sharp exhale through his nose.  “Like you wouldn’t believe.”  He looked down.  “I’m gonna be down there someday.  Probably not this cycle, but certainly by the next.  I’m already knocking on the door to iron, and at the rate we’re advancing—the rate we have to advance—titanium and steel won’t be long after.”

The implication of the peril they’d all face by associating with Cal sent an unwelcome chill down Micaiah’s back.  Rather than address it, especially in such a public place, she shifted the tone towards lighter matters.  “It sounds like a dream come true for you.”

“Yeah.”  Despite her efforts, a sense of resignation Micaiah could neither quite place nor understand made its way into Xavier’s tone.  “Something like that.”

He pushed off away from the railing, abruptly ending the conversation as he spun towards the row of fighting rings.  It wasn’t until she moved to follow that Micaiah caught the tail end of the conversation that must’ve grabbed his attention.

“—Can’t challenge anyone here!  This is Velereau territory.  Anyone I challenge would be honor bound to make an example out of me.  I could be in medical for—”

“I wasn’t aware our esteemed instructor was such a coward.”  

The words carried such venom Micaiah could scarcely believe they’d escaped the mouth of a girl who could be no older than fourteen.  Even worse, Micaiah’s spiritual sense picked out a tin core in both her and the boy of a similar stature standing at her side.  Threads.  She knew the sects started them young, but to put preteens through the harrowing process of opening their meridians…

“Please, young mistress,” a tall blond man in his late twenties with a peak bronze core near the match of Xavier’s paradoxically pleaded with the child.  “Why don’t we return to the eastern quadrant where we’ll be more welcome?”

“And fight more pretend duels against mother’s lackeys?  Please.”  The boy scoffed.  “I can’t see what a man too afraid to fight a duel that matters could possibly teach us.”

“I can’t teach you anything from a hospital bed—”

Xavier, whether to the rescue or taking an opportunity that presented itself, delivered a decisive end to the argument.  “I, Xavier Honchel, challenge you to a duel!”

“See,” the girl snickered, “even random nobodies have more courage than you.”

The man saluted.  “I, Nolan Moule, accept your challenge, outworlder.”

“Outworlder?”  The boy perked up.  “We were right to come here.  This should be interesting.”

Xavier grinned.  “Excellent.  I’ll get us signed up so we can join the queue for a ring.”

“Don’t be stupid,” the girl said.  She turned, stormed up to the closest arena, and loudly yelled at the fighters within.  “You two!  Out!”

One of the combatants stopped mid punch, fist still swathed in orange flame.  He glanced to the girl, eyes flashing with recognition, then shared a look with his opponent Micaiah could only interpret as ‘it’s not worth it.’  With a slight shrug, the pair disabled the qi field and hopped from the raised platform, uttering not so much as a word at the tin child who’d so casually ordered them about.

Micaiah clenched her jaw as neither Xavier nor Nolan offered an apology for the interruption, but wisely applied a lesson Cal had somehow yet to learn and kept her mouth shut as the two iron cultivators took their leave.

“Well?” the boy said, already seated on of the benches facing the ring.  “Get to it.”

As Xavier and Nolan climbed into the arena, Micaiah finally took a good look at the terrors they’d encountered.  They shared Nolan’s blond hair, though insufficient features to be any more than distantly related to their poor instructor.  To each other, however, the resemblance was uncanny.  Micaiah would put good money on the pair being cousins at least and twins at most.  The confluence of their awful behavior and that so many stronger cultivators let them get away with it could only imply a powerful backer.  Micaiah got the unpleasant feeling she was about to find out who.

The girl sat on the bench next to her counterpart as the duelists prepared their weapons.  Without looking away from the arena, she spoke.  “So, you’re the Ilirian?  Whatever happened to the spacer with the soulship?”  She looked Micaiah up and down.  “What’d you have to do for him to hand you his place here?”

“Micaiah Ferendin,” she introduced herself, refusing to rise to the bait without at least knowing the childrens’ backer.  “And you are?”

“She doesn’t know us.”  The boy’s eyebrows raised.  “Fascinating.”

“She’s a rogue cultivator, Marion.  You can’t expect her to read tournament results.”  She looked up at Micaiah.  “You can read, can’t you?”

“You clearly aren’t Velereaus,” Micaiah said instead.  “So which is it?  Morris or Urlitch?”

“Please,” the boy scoffed, the second time he’d done so in nearly as many minutes.  “As if that fossil people call a sect master could sire anyone capable of anything.”

“Yvette Urlitch,” the girl said, “and my brother Marion.  I believe you’ve met our cousin Austin.”

Cousin, Micaiah mentally noted.  The eliminated Cassie, leaving Darla and Myra the only options.  Given how brazenly the two threw about their influence, she’d wager on the former.  “That I have,” she eventually replied, eyes fixed up on the arena in front of her.  She spent a moment thinking through everything she’d picked up from the siblings before taking a bit of a gamble.  “He’s kind of a dick.”

Yvette reddened.  “You dare speak of—”

Marion interrupted her with a guffaw.  “You have met him!  Threads I hate him.  Thinks he’s better than anyone with a lower cultivation than his, as if half his meridians weren’t still closed when he was our age.”  He spat, making a mess of the perfectly clean floor.  “Fool doesn’t see the value of our potential.”

Whatever their pride argued, Micaiah couldn’t look upon the two child cultivators with much less than pity and a general disdain for the sect she’d somehow joined.  The two must’ve been getting focus room hours from a frighteningly early age—sitting still and meditating were things young children are famously good at, after all—and she couldn’t fathom the veritable fortune of pills and tonics and supplements that must’ve been forced down their gullets.

Micaiah couldn’t say for certain whether or not talent existed, but she found it odd that the most talented cultivators always seemed to be those with the richest parents.

One thing she could be sure about, as she tuned out the sibling bickering the conversation had somehow devolved into, was that no fourteen-year-old should wield the kind of power—political or spiritual—that these two bandied about.

Rather than continuing to engage with the twin terrors at her side, Micaiah found her attention almost inadvertently drawn to the duel in front of her.  Little as she thought of the practice of normalized, daily violence, she couldn’t deny the small part of herself that was curious about the whole affair, nor the larger part that hoped Xavier would win.

Micaiah’s untrained eye failed to pick up on the subtleties of the maneuvers involved, but Nolan seemed consistently on the back foot as his spear struggled to fend off Xavier’s relentless assault.  A handful of times the Right Eye local managed to slip a jab through Xavier’s guard, but each time instead of the squelch of blade digging into flesh, the clang of metal on metal rang out as Xavier’s skin shimmered silver at the exact spot the spear tip struck.

If nothing else, Micaiah could appreciate the skill involved in perfectly predicting his opponent’s target and spending only the qi necessary to defend just it.  At a quick glance with her spiritual sense, despite his ceaseless offense, Xavier scarcely seemed to be expending any qi at all.

Nolan, in contrast, burned through it precipitously.  Every time one of Xavier’s advances or measured deflections put his weapon of feet out of position, a cloud of spent qi erupted from the spearman as he moved inhumanly fast to correct the error.  It took several minutes, but Micaiah wasn’t surprised when, without being hit a single time, Nolan lowered his spear and raised a hand in surrender.

“I’m out,” he panted.  “Brilliantly fought.  You’ve got that silverskin down to an art form.”

Xavier let out a ragged breath of his own.  “You battled fiercely.  If I hadn’t kept you on the defensive I never could’ve kept that spear in check.  Was that a variation on Rightward Raking Claws I spotted?”

Nolan grinned.  “You have a good eye.  My mobility technique lets me get a bit more creative with some of the forms.”  He dropped back into a combat stance.  “Instead of having to keep my left foot out here, I can pick up a bit of extra initiative by adding an extra step.  It solidifies the strike a bit, but you gotta be fast to pull it—”

“Coward!” Marion yelled from the sideline.  “He didn’t even hit you!”

“He would have, young master.  I can assure you of that.  My qi reserves are depleted and his are still nearly full.”

“You gave up because you didn’t want to get hit.”  Yvette sneered.  “Just like you refused to challenge anyone here so you wouldn’t get hit.”

That, of all things, managed to get through Nolan’s passive demeanor as he rounded on them with a scowl.  “It’s one thing to insult and belittle Urlitch courtiers, but if I can teach you one thing it’ll be to mind your manners around cultivators who owe your mother no allegiance, especially ones stronger than you.”  He turned.  “Xavier, had I not surrendered, what would’ve happened?”

“Without your movement technique, I would’ve disarmed you within two exchanges.  If you kept fighting beyond that I would’ve touched the blade of my axe to your throat to prove myself victorious.”

Nolan nodded and looked back to his charges.  “Claiming I conceded out of fear of injury also claims my opponent would brutalize a beaten foe.  It’s an insult on his honor, one I’m sure House Velereau would be perfectly willing to take advantage of.”

“Let them,” Marion scoffed for a godsdamned third time.  “The might of House Urlitch is unassailable.”

Yvette stood.  “Why should we care if some nobody cultivator is insulted by our wisdom?”  She raised an eyebrow.  “Why should we care what you have to say, Instructor Nolan?  You failed the very first challenge you faced.”  She looked to her brother.  “Let’s go, Marion.  I’m sure mother would want to hear about the failure she hired as an instructor.”  Together they turned and moved to leave.

Nolan paled.  “Wait!  Young Mistress, please reconsider!”  He leapt from the arena to dart after them.  “Please, Young Mistress, I promise I’ll…”  His voice faded as the three vanished into the crowd of cultivators milling about the gym.

Micaiah stared aghast at the way they’d gone.  “What in the hells was that?”

Xavier hopped down from the arena, waving in the pair of cultivators who’d been waiting their turn.  “He’s probably dependent on the earnings and prestige he earns as their instructor for his cultivation.  Any edge, as Charlotte would say.”

“I thought cultivators were supposed to be prideful, defy the heavens and all that.  Not… whatever that was.”

“He’s chosen a difficult Way, dealing with those two,” Xavier said.  “With any luck he can temper the darker influences of their upbringing.  If not…”  He shrugged.  “The whims of the powerful are a force as chaotic and powerful as fate itself.”

Micaiah exhaled, doing her best to purge the encounter with the insufferable twins from her mind.  She looked to Xavier.  “Feeling better?”

He clapped her on the back.  “It was a magnificent duel!  Already I feel my skill improving beyond what Lucy’s simulations could manage.”

“Good, good,” Micaiah replied, her eyes warily passing over the cultivators going about their training around them.  “We should head back.  Charlotte’s not going to be happy we came here, let alone got involved in something I can only hope doesn’t turn into a political incident.”

Xavier flashed a grin so earnest Micaiah couldn’t help but match it.  “Thank you for indulging me.  And worry not, I’m sure Charlotte will forgive us.  I’ve told her before, and I’ll tell her again,” he added as he began weaving through the crowd towards the elevator from which they’d arrived, “I’ve never been good at staying put.”

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