The Stargazer's War - Chapter 2.15

Chapter 2.15: Bronze

I sat then and there, crossing my legs and straightening my back inches shy of the tunnel wall. I cradled the egg in cupped hands, my gaze fixed on it as Charlotte and Xavier stared down at me.

“Is this a good idea?” Charlotte asked. “They’ll be searching right above us.”

“What’re they gonna do, sense me pulling dark qi?”

She opened her mouth to counter, but released a sigh instead. “Just keep quiet. Xavier, watch that direction. I’ll take this one.”

Xavier flashed me a massive grin and mouthed the words ‘good luck,’ before giving Charlotte an exaggerated salute and turning on his heel to take vigil.

Immediate surroundings taken care of, I focused in front of me.

Much as I wanted to analyzing the hatching spiritually, I still couldn’t extend my mind’s eye beyond the boundaries of my body without the infinite sea sweeping me away, so I could only watch beneath the pale glow of my headlamp as another piece of glossy shell cracked away.

I ran qi through my heart meridian to calm its pounding, furiously fighting off my every worry, every horrible what-if Lucy and Charlotte and my own darkest thoughts could conjure up. It wasn’t an ordinary void beast, I reassured myself.

It was like me.

It took nearly a minute for enough of a hole to form for me to first glimpse my familiar-to-be. A chitinous beak, black and glossy and slick with fluids, picked away at the tough shell. Its edges were jagged, more akin to sharp teeth meant for the tearing of flesh than any avian.

As if sensing my gaze, it turned to face me, a single plate of solid chitin covering up its one eye. I nodded encouragement at it, gesturing slightly toward the eggshell as I urged it to continue its work.

The creature vanished.

A string of curses ran through my mind, every one of Lucy’s apocalyptic predictions ringing like cannons against my skull. If it ran off, if it reached the infinite sea, if it could reproduce in the void—

Eight sharp wet points dug into my left forearm.

The void beast clung to me, barely the size of my first, and I got my first real look at it.

Past its still-closed eye its head curved smoothly back, ending in two fine points where a bird may’ve had ears. In lieu of feathers, sharp plates of chitin folded over each other in an alien facsimile of wings. I knew instinctively they wouldn’t support flight under normal physics, not on a planet of Ilirian’s mass and atmosphere, but the imagery, the symbolism of flight mattered more.

Its legs had too many joints, bending three times at opposing angles before terminating at the talons that pressed against my skin. They came in pairs, two facing forward and two facing the rear.

The parts of it that weren’t bare claw or beak or hidden behind its folded wings looked more of armor than anything natural, like the shifting plates of steel that might’ve protected a medieval knight without hampering motion, thought I knew the creature’s shell served a different, more essential purpose.

It was airtight.

The thing gleamed under my headlamp, the shine of its chitin and the remnants of albumen both reflecting the cool light.

A knot in my throat, I reached out to touch it.

Bright. Loud. Pain. Hunger.

I recoiled. The concepts were more vague senses than anything resembling a coherent thought, let alone a word, but I understood them well enough.

The creature shrunk back, seeming to shudder under the weight of the world to which it’d been born. I didn’t bother speaking to it. Void beasts had no ears. Instead, I filled my mind with thoughts of calm, with the cold uncaring of the infinite sea, and I touched a fingertip to the top of its head.

Bright. Loud. Pain. Hunger.

I stroked it gently. The chitin felt surprisingly soft to the touch, pliable and not fully hardened. With a thought I pulled some qi from the infinite sea, releasing it in a cloud around the hatchling. I couldn’t see what I was doing, but I knew it’d force the light qi around it away and offer the beast both the meal and reprieve it needed.

Hunger!

I channeled more, wrestling with the disperse qi to condense it, trying to offer as concentrated a stream as I could rather than simply flooding more of the air.

HUNGER!

I pulled more. I condensed more. I fed more.

Full! Full? Full.

A sense of confusion accompanied the emotion, as if the hatchling couldn’t fathom the idea of having enough. I cut off the flow, keeping my finger in place as I continued to caress it. It stepped forward, walking up my arm before nestling in the crook of my elbow.

I watched it for a few precious heartbeats before raising my head. “It’s asleep,” I announced to Charlotte and Xavier.

“It didn’t eat you then?” Charlotte asked from down her side of the tunnel.

“Very funny,” I replied without a drop of humor. “I’m going to get started on my focus. I want to be ready to bind it by the time it wakes up.”

“Now?” Charlotte asked. “Cal, I’m not sure we should be lingering right below—”

“It’s a risk; I know. So is every moment that passes without this thing becoming my familiar. I hope you’ll excuse me choosing the option that has me reaching bronze before we go exploring the ancient ruins.”

“Worry not!” Xavier’s voice echoed through the dark. “We’ll remain ever vigilant as you achieve the next step in your path.”

Charlotte sighed. “Fine. Don’t rush. The last thing we need is you rupturing your core down here.”

“I won’t,” I said, already reaching into my bag. “You know me.”

“Exactly!” Xavier agreed. “When has Caliban ever rushed his cultivation?”

Ignoring how Xavier had somehow found the absolute worst series of words to say, I placed the etching tool into my pinned-down left hand as I fished through my pockets for Cedric’s rib bone.

The shard had dried and yellowed since Lucy had pulled it from my blood meridian. The bone had shrunk slightly in the process, leaving it just under three inches from the rounded point that had been the end of Cedric’s rib to the jagged top where it’d broken. I considered cutting it—as it was it was almost as long as the hatchling—but I’d seen how huge the creature’s parents had been. It’d more than grow into it. Besides, the spiritual significance of diminishing the bone like that would’ve cost me.

Switching hands to keep the shard in my void beast-laden hand, I set the laser etch to its lowest setting and got started.

I started high, carving curling and intricate patterns into the rib as my whims led me. I kept my sense meridian running as I worked, the minuscule details too fine to see without straining the naked eye. I followed no plan or design, the work more artistic than exact—a flourish here, a curl there, a sharp corner to accentuate a jagged edge. The specifics didn’t matter. This wasn’t about enchantment or qi so much as the effort itself, the care and time put in to making something mine.

The nature of my relationship with the bone helped. In other circumstances, the fact it’d belonged to someone else might’ve made my task all but impossible, but so much foreign qi had been coursing through Cedric by the time he exploded, it just as much belonged to the crew of roofie as to him. My own qi had been in there, the qi that had kept me alive for over two decades.

It was a part of me. It was a part of them. It was a part of the man who’d set me on this path.

It was mine.

My lines kept returning to two bare spots just below the shard’s top, small circles I’d left for the bore holes. They served no purpose, but it felt right to emphasize the junction where Cedric’s bone would meet Nick’s twig.

Hours passed as I toiled. I could hear Charlotte pacing around, nervous and impatient to distance ourselves from the tunnel entrance. From Xavier I heard swishing air, the clear results of him practicing his forms as he kept vigil.

Despite my hopes, the void beast woke twice as I engraved the bone, each time butting its head into my arm and emoting, hunger! until I fed it. I knew at some point it would have to eat actual food and not just qi. I hoped whatever rations Charlotte and Xavier had packed would serve.

By the time I set down the tool, Charlotte was on the floor, snoring with her head propped up on her pack while Xavier watched both directions. I let out a yawn and reached for my water bottle, drinking in gulps to quench a thirst I had noticed grow so intense.

Xavier noticed the motion. “How’s it going?” he asked, his voice uncharacteristically quiet for fear of interrupting Charlotte’s slumber.

“Arduous part’s done. Just need to drill the hole and figure out how to bind the twig to itself. I’d prefer to glue it, but if that won’t hold I’ll have to use twine.”

The former turned out easier said than done. The drill I’d brought wasn’t powered, so it required two hands to properly turn it. Since asking for help risked diluting my ownership over the end product, I wound up awkwardly holding the bone between my feet as I carefully bored into it. I went slow for fear of slipping and scuffing the engravings I’d worked so hard to etch, burning yet another pair of hours on the task. By the time I was threading the apple twig through, Charlotte and Xavier had switched places. At least he didn’t snore.

On the bright side, the adhesive worked. I had to trim down edges of the twig, shortening it to just over seven inches so it would properly fit the void beast, but by the creature’s third wakening, I was ready with a hatchling-sized necklace of wood and bone.

Hunger!

I fed it, stroking its head with my finger as I gave it my offer.

“Come with me? Full. Grow. Fight. Discover.” I spoke the words more to solidify the concepts in my mind than anything else, repeating the phrase like a mantra while the hatchling drank. I had no idea if the beast could hear my thoughts, could understand my intent. I could only hope it did.

Full? Full.

I weakened the flow of qi but kept it up, allowing it to disperse in a cloud around us. “Come with me? Full. Grow. Fight. Discover.”

Come? Full. Grow. Fight. Discover. Full. Come? Grow. Full.

Relief surged through me. The emotions came faster as the hatchling replied, our conversation—limited and hyper-simplistic as it was—finally moving in two directions.

Discover. Fight. Grow. Come? Come.

There was a decisiveness to the last concept, a finality accompanied by the hatchling nudging its head into my bicep. “Come with me.” I smiled.

Ever so gently I lowered the necklace over the creature’s head, pressing the bone into its chest so the rib curved to the creature’s left. An indent formed in the still-soft chitin where it met the twig.

Now for the dangerous part.

From what I could find of the witches of Tirros, I needed to pull qi from the environment and give it to the hatchling, who then needed to give it back to me untainted. If the hatchlings interests misaligned with my own, it would poison my core.

My heart would’ve raced were I not artificially keeping it calm. “Share,” I spoke and emoted strongly, pushing qi into the hatchling’s center.

Full! Share? Share!

Just like that, the qi came spilling back with interest, a gift from the void beast’s own reserve. I looked inward with mounting trepidation, watching with my mind’s eye as the hatchling’s qi sank into me. It pressed against the boundaries of my center, my already overfull core stretching to accommodate the excess, pushing to condense against the very limits of copper.

A second passed. Another. I strained and ached and struggled against the pressure, ready at moment’s notice for it all to come crashing down.

But it didn’t. The qi settled within me, cool and dark and quiet and mine.

“Share,” I muttered, relief on my breath.

I repeated the process with the bone and the twig, pulling qi from the infinite sea into them before bringing it into myself. These I hadn’t worried about, more than certain in my ownership of them.

Then I did it again.

It was tricky work to do by touch, forcing me to intuit when each piece had absorbed enough qi to then pull back, but with each repetition, my sense for the nascent focus grew. By the time I was ready for the final push, I’d eliminated the guesswork entirely. I knew.

“Full. Fight. Grow. Discover. Share.” I repeated my mantra, pulling no longer a stream but a torrent from the infinite sea, a river of vast nothing that flowed first to the hatchling, then the bone at its breast, then the twig around its neck, then into my swollen core.

I took it all. I pulled and I pulled and I pulled, caught somewhere between drinking and drowning in that endless tide as I shoved more and more of it into my center.

Full!

“Full,” I agreed.

I cut off the flow.

I pushed inward.

And I advanced to bronze.

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