Thresholder

Perry wore the armor. This was both unfortunate and necessary, because there was no way to easily carry it and he certainly wasn’t going to leave it behind. He had his sword as well, though he’d left behind the other sword, the one he’d taken from the second sphere man he’d killed. So far as he knew, it was a magical sword but not actually that special, supernaturally sharp in the same way that the second sphere disciples were supernaturally swift, and he was certain that it could beat out almost any sword on Earth — but he already had a sword that could respond to his beck and call, and was sharp enough to take a chip out of iron.

They came down the stone staircase from the Silver Fish Temple having packed very light for what might be as much as a week’s trip. Perry only had two sets of clothes, one that was loaned to him from the temple and another that he’d gotten in Teaguewater, neither of them his favorite things to wear. He desperately wished that he had his skinsuit from Richter’s Earth back, since that had been comfortable enough to wear around her house.

Maya had her hoodie, athletic shorts, her sneakers, her oversized needle, and pretty much nothing else: no bag, pack, or bedroll. She had the carbon-black bracer as well, ready to spring into action.

Luo Yanhua had the least of any of them, though she could teleport to her private moon base, which she had described as being a ‘personal crater’ somewhere on the moon’s face. She was in a new outfit, one that Perry hadn’t seen before, a dress with a tight, structured bit around her chest that was halfway between a corset and a vest.

Leaving Silver Fish Temple had been weird. Surely Shan Yin knew what they were going to do, and presumably so did everyone else, but they were treating this as though it was just a matter of deciding to go do some civic duty off in the wider world, abandoning their training for a week or so. It was a lot different from the type of school that Perry was used to, in more ways than just the fighting and meditation.

“I think the lack of structure is what’s so different,” said Perry once they were past the stairs. “In the school that I went to, there were defined classes, and everyone in every class was assumed to be starting with the same basic understanding of the subject, even if that wasn’t strictly true. You weren’t allowed to take classes that you didn’t have the foundation for, and people weren’t supposed to come in halfway through needing to be caught up. But the students at Silver Fish Temple aren’t inducted as a class, they come in by ones and twos, and it’s up to them to get acclimated, to build the foundations.”

“It has been quite some time since we’ve had students that came as a pair,” said Luo Yanhua. “A brother and sister, I believe it was. She had a spirit root, but he did not, and when he was rejected, he took her with him.”

“Ouch,” said Perry.

“She showed promise,” said Luo Yanhua. There was a trace of melancholy in her voice.

They walked along a dirt path, bamboo making a canyon around them, some of it trying to come up through the path itself. The air was fresh and clean, and Perry tried to be mindful of that, but it was difficult, because he’d been on the Great Arc for long enough that it had become normal. The next world wasn’t guaranteed to be so clean as this one.

“We could go faster,” said Maya. “Or, I can.”

“Flying, I could make it to the mountain before nightfall,” said Perry. The Green Snake Valley was large, maybe the size of the Willamette Valley if Perry had to guess, a hundred and fifty miles north to south. The mountain they were aiming for was at the southern end of the valley, where it opened up to an enormous lake.

“And the lady can teleport,” said Maya. “So what’s stopping us?”

“I cannot teleport,” said Luo Yanhua. “I can go to the largest moon and back, but cannot make my way around the Great Arc in such a way, not yet.”

“Alright, well … hop on Perry’s back?” asked Maya.

“We are not rushing this journey,” said Luo Yanhua. “There is no urgency to our movements. It is better to go slowly, to take in your surroundings, especially when this is what you’ve told your superiors you would be doing.”

“It could have been an afternoon trip,” said Maya. “An errand.”

“What you are doing now, planning to ascend without the many years of hard work, is something that some among the second sphere would find offensive,” said Luo Yanhua. “It is better for the journey to be arduous, for it to be proof of your abilities. Earned, rather than given, an accomplishment rather than, as you say, an errand.”

“Virtuous labor,” said Perry with a nod.

“Not exactly so,” said Luo Yanhua. “But there is virtue in labor, and it is better for power to be the result of merit.”

“See?” asked Maya. “That I can get behind. Nice to know that at least this world despises nepotism.”

“Nepotism?” asked Luo Yanhua with a raised eyebrow. “My understanding of the word is … confused. Give me a moment to untangle it.”

“People getting where they are because of who they know, rather than their abilities,” said Perry. “Though sometimes people have their abilities because of who their family are, so …”

“You mean like, genetics?” asked Maya.

“No,” said Perry. He was surprised that she knew the world. Usually modern-era jargon was a bit muddled or warped, as he’d found with Richter. “A world-famous cellist has three children, and they become world-famous cellists themselves, not because of any supernatural genetic gift, but because they were around cellos from the time they were toddlers, they were signed up for lessons very early, their family friends are teachers and advisors, they can ask questions and get help way more than someone who’s just going to a cello teacher once a week, they listen to cello music constantly, and whatever else.”

“What a weirdly specific example,” said Maya.

“My mom might have been a cellist,” said Perry.

“A musical instrument,” Luo Yanhua mused, bending the English word into something that she apparently understood well enough. “And you have some ability with the cello?”

“Nope,” said Perry. “I washed out when I was seven. My sisters are both professionals though.”

“You’ve got sisters?” asked Maya. “I would have guessed only child.”

“If I understand your analogy, it is the duty of a parent to provide for their children, in the same way that a child is expected to care for their parents in old age,” said Luo Yanhua. “A parent wants the best for their children. Nepotism is when someone is admitted to a temple because of a familial connection rather than because of any ability they’ve shown?”

“Yes,” said Maya.

“And the word has a negative valence,” said Luo Yanhua.

“Definitely,” said Maya. She kicked a rock that was in the middle of their path, sending it careening off into the woods.

“Nepotism is alive and well in this world,” said Luo Yanhua. “But we do not see it as you do. For an uncle to place his nephew in a position of authority is a matter of familial duty.”

“At the expense of everyone else,” said Maya. “Bah, whatever, difference of opinion, but I don’t like it. Missing out because you don’t have connections sucks. You lose because of who you were born as. It’s unjust. And you know what I say about injustice.”

“I don’t think either of us have any way of knowing that,” said Perry.

“Miss Singh believes that injustice must be met with force where conversation has proven inadequate,” said Luo Yanhua.

“And how do you know that?” asked Perry. “You’ve been having private talks?”

“We live within a web of obligations and priorities,” said Luo Yanhua. “A person casts a shadow, and Miss Singh has a distinct silhouette.”

“Thanks?” asked Maya.

“It is an observation, not a compliment,” said Luo Yanhua. “Anyone of the second sphere who has been around you for longer than a day would see it.”

“But they think it’s a bad thing,” said Maya.

“No,” said Luo Yanhua. “They think it is a truth to be aware of. What you think is just or unjust is less clear, and would require further investigation. Some aspects of justice, such as your views on what you call nepotism, would be cause for conflict if you decided that they must be met with force.”

Perry had been looking at the bamboo forest around them. He thought that he’d seen a shadow, but it must have been nothing. His eyes were better than they had been, like he’d gotten glasses in spite of not wearing any before, but it was his nose that had improved the most, and that was only smelling the inside of the suit.

“You said,” Perry began before his distracted thoughts caught up with his tongue, “You said that justice is a real thing here, that virtues are concrete things, tangible, affecting power.”

“Hmm,” said Luo Yanhua. “Yes, there are tenets, virtues, and other such things. The second sphere in particular often trades in credos and declarations. But you wonder whether karmic retribution can be a guide to life?” Perry nodded. “This is one of the eternal questions, a point on which people can disagree. There is no universal tether, not that we can find.”

“Meaning … if someone is completely untethered, they won’t suffer?” asked Perry.

“They will,” said Luo Yanhua. “That is a core truth. But we must distinguish between the types of suffering, those that channel through the tether and those that do not. And of course a tether is not simply something of the upper spheres. A tether happens in a more subtle way to those of the first sphere, uncontrolled.”

Perry tried to parse that. It sounded like she was saying that you wouldn’t suffer any supernatural effects so long as you remained untethered, but it also sounded like you wouldn’t get as much power from being second sphere while remaining untethered. That was a bit of a conundrum for him, since as a worldhopper he wasn’t going to stay anywhere for very long. Was he supposed to make new tethers in every world? That, he thought, he could work with. He’d had tethers in the worlds before this one. Or possibly, he could tether to a concept, like she had, something like academic virtue. The virtues seemed like they would carry on from world to world with him, so long as the power of this world would come with him.

“Alright,” said Maya. “A hypothetical then. Let’s say that I’m living in a society that owns slaves. Am I bound to live by the law there?”

“Yes,” replied Luo Yanhua.

“Fuck that,” said Maya. Her response was immediate, the snap of a crocodile’s jaws.

“Slavery is untenable,” said Luo Yanhua. “Even in the best of circumstances, it visits too much cruelty upon those subject to it. The restriction of another in such a way would cause karmic imbalance for the entire kingdom, and especially for the enslavers. Similarly, injustice visited upon a person can cause a flow of karma in the other direction.”

“Wait,” said Maya. “You’re saying that people get stronger when someone does something against them?”

“It happens, yes,” said Luo Yanhua. “Is that not the case in your world, that a person who is routinely beaten becomes all the tougher for it, that people find their strengths in adversity?”

“Oh,” said Maya. “I mean, people say that, sometimes, but I’ve always thought it was horse shit, a way of romanticizing trauma. I thought you were talking about superpowers or something like that.”

They walked and talked for a time, edging dangerously close to philosophy a few times. The Great Arc was, apparently, in what was called the Era of a Thousand Voices, a time of differing opinions on the nature of the world and a person’s place within it. There were arguments about whether selfishness was benevolent or not, whether a person should help his family or his community first, all sorts of questions. Luo Yanhua was surprisingly forthright in her declarations, and while she would accept that these were not closed questions by any means, she had very firm stances.

“It is a person’s nature to love unequally, and a person’s nature is of the good,” she said. There was no prevarication. “That we should not have priorities is an interesting thought experiment, but like many of those, it dissolves into nonsense as soon as it is brought into the real world.”

“How much of this is Moon Gate stuff?” asked Maya.

“All of it,” said Luo Yanhua. “I would not tether myself to a sect I disagreed with. Such a path leads only to heartache.”

“But I noticed no children,” said Maya. “No little ones running around the temple.”

“Silver Fish Temple is different,” said Luo Yanhua. “We are going in the direction of Crystal Lake Temple, though I believe we will skirt it. It’s the largest of the three Moon Gate temples in the valley, home to more than a thousand members, and many families among them. If I wished to be a mother again, I would go there, but I prefer the seclusion of Silver Fish Temple, where I can study and research in peace.”

“A mother … again?” asked Maya. “You’ve left some orphans somewhere?”

“My children are grown,” said Luo Yanhua. “I am quite old, by the standards of the first sphere. We live on different timescales.”

“How old?” asked Perry.

“One hundred revolutions of the Great Arc,” said Luo Yanhua with a degree of casualness.

“You’re a century old?” asked Maya. “We’re going to stop aging?”

“No,” said Luo Yanhua. “Without intervention, a member of the second sphere can live to two hundred years. In the third sphere, they can manage five hundred. Beyond that, I do not know. But you are right, there is a feeling of relief upon transition to the second sphere, as the pressing weight of imminent senescence is lifted.”

“You’re being more free with your information,” said Perry. “We appreciate it.”

“It’s uncouth,” said Luo Yanhua. “Yet there is a pressing interest in the two of you knowing these things, if your transition is nigh.”

After the arcshadow had passed, Perry followed his sword into the air and scouted out their path, finding a village more or less where Luo Yanhua thought it would be. Her knowledge of the region was good, but not perfect, and she confessed that she hadn’t been more than an hour’s travel from Silver Fish Temple in the past two years.

“How are we doing, March?” asked Perry once they were in the air.

“Quite well sir,” replied Marchand. “It’s a beautiful day, the batteries are charged, and trouble has yet to rear its ugly head.”

“Don’t jinx it,” said Perry.

“I couldn’t help but listen in on your conversation with Miss Luo,” said Marchand. “I find her an abhorrent woman.”

“Uh,” said Perry. “Really?”

“I would never let her pierce my professional demeanor, sir,” said Marchand.

“What don’t you like about her?” asked Perry.

“She’s a monarchist, sir,” said Marchand. He seemed aghast at the notion.

“Er,” said Perry. “And you’re an … anti-monarchist? You have thoughts on the institution of monarchy?”

“All right-thinking people set themselves against the monarchy, sir,” said Marchand.

“Okay,” said Perry. He wanted to press the issue, to ask whether March remembered Seraphinus and being under the command of a king, but this was clearly a bug, or if not a bug, then unintended behavior. March had spent full days running optimizations and investigations on himself, was it possible that this was coming from that? The matter would need to be prodded carefully. He could imagine a scenario where March would rebel, which would be catastrophic, but the deeper issue was finding out where his AI was getting opinions from.

Thankfully, Perry was no monarchist, so that at least wasn’t a core conflict between them. If it was only opinions on the monarchy, Perry could put up with that pretty easily. He would almost have some affection for an AI that had a strong opinion on the notion of kings. If this was the start of some kind of AI rampancy, that would be more of a problem. The power armor was set up to amplify his motions, giving him strength he didn’t naturally possess, but it was capable of moving on its own, even if March didn’t have the capability of piloting it well enough to be effective in combat. But that also meant that in theory, the armor could go rogue.

Perry was worrying about all this as he lowered himself down toward the others.

“No, no,” said Maya. “That’s just — can you translate the term ‘heteronormative’?”

“I don’t think that I can,” said Luo Yanhua. “It means only that men and women are different? Which is what I’ve been saying, I believe.”

“Problem?” asked Perry.

“Sexism,” said Maya with a roll of her eyes.

“She is upset about the differentiation between sexes, I believe,” said Luo Yanhua.

“Sex, apparently, is to correct for imbalances in the internal alchemy,” said Maya. “But it’s men and women, who have different energies, balancing between each other. Which is just … I mean, you get it, right?”

“Heteronormative,” said Perry.

“Yes,” said Maya. “Exactly.”

“But if that’s the way the world works,” Perry began, but he didn’t really know what the conclusion was. “We just have to accept it, work with it, I guess.”

“It is not universal that women are possessed of the dark energy and men of the light energy,” said Luo Yanhua. “In some rare cases, the imbalance can go in the other direction. But the goal, of course, is to eliminate imbalances as much as possible, rather than to rely on others.”

“This is idiotic,” said Maya.

“No,” said Perry. Maya gave him a dirty look. “I mean, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but it’s just a cultural thing, I think, or the magic underpinning this all has created this cultural understanding. One of the things that the historians on my world said a lot was that we couldn’t view other cultures through the same lens that we view our own. So … yeah, it seems stupid and maybe messed up to us, given that we’re from similar worlds with similar norms. I guess I’m not affronted, I just think that it’s a bit silly. But I’ve been to weird worlds before.”

“We should get to the village,” said Luo Yanhua. “I have been party to such talks before, and they are always better when bellies are full and warm tea can occasionally grace our lips.”

Perry led them, following a map that March was helpfully providing, making sure that they didn’t take a wrong turn through the dirt paths. The roads between villages were better, Perry had seen that from the air, sized for oxen-pulled carts and fully cleared, but they were still on back roads, shrouded in trees and bamboo.

When they got to the village, Luo Yanhua took the lead and found them a place to take a late lunch. Perry removed his helmet and set it beside him, but kept the armor on, given how long it took to don and doff. It was going to be a long time in the armor, in clothes that weren’t the best for it, but he was trying to not let it get to him. He tried, for a moment, to leave the gauntlets on, but it was too awkward to manipulate chopsticks with them.

The food was a banquet by the standards of Silver Fish Temple, with heaping piles of meat laid atop a full bowl of rice, and three sides to go with them, a mixture of fresh vegetables in vinegar, cooked greens, and something with a bit of gristle that nevertheless had a good flavor to it. Perry devoured it, and when he looked hungrily at Maya’s half-finished bowl, she slid it over to him.

“You eat too much,” said Luo Yanhua, just before a dessert of small little cakes came out.

“I’ve been half-starved at the temple,” said Perry. “I got a bigger appetite when the wolf thing happened to me.” He still hadn’t told her or Maya how a person became a werewolf. “These tiny slivers of meat have been driving me insane.”

“You must learn to control your internal alchemy,” said Luo Yanhua. “That feeling of being ‘half-starved’ is the feeling of your internal alchemy being out of alignment. If your house was leaning, would you not push the beams back to true?”

“Food contains energy,” said Perry. “I’m six feet tall, I need energy to function.”

“No,” said Luo Yanhua. “One of the lessons you must learn is that you don’t need energy to function. Your body is possessed of its own energies which flow along your meridians and sit stagnant in your vessels. They are more than enough to sustain you.”

“Personally, I get a lot of energy from the sunlight,” said Maya. “You could try that, maybe?”

“You have a way to?” asked Perry. “You can gift the power?”

“Put away the hard-on,” laughed Maya. “It was a joke.”

Perry felt full for the first time in a few weeks, and following the cakes — which were disappointingly filled with some kind of bean paste — there was a pot of tea brought to them.

“You both intend to move on,” said Luo Yanhua. “There will be other worlds for you, when your business is concluded here.”

“That’s about the shape of it, yeah,” said Maya. “Find the thresholder, kill him, move on, hopefully with some cool new powers for next time.”

“Traditionally, such a pursuit would not be sanctioned by Moon Gate,” said Luo Yanhua.

“It’s not sanctioned by Moon Gate,” said Perry. “We’re just out among the community, helping out. We weren’t given instruction or permission.”

“Yes,” Luo Yanhua nodded. “But surely you wondered why?”

“Why Master Shan Yin would allow it?” asked Perry. “Kind of. Either he takes the threat of a third thresholder seriously, or he’s hoping to elevate us so he can go against us without fear of karmic retribution. We’re under his thumb as students, but we’re more under his thumb if we’re second sphere students.”

“It is more complicated than that,” said Luo Yanhua. “We live in uncertain times, following the fall of the Grouse Kingdom. I don’t just mean the bandits, which you have firsthand experience with, but the stability of the Kingdom of Seven Valleys, and the balance of power within Green Snake Valley. As you know, there is another sect that calls the valley its home, Worm Gate.”

“And you want us to take them out,” said Maya. “We’re meant to be hitmen?”

“No, nothing like that,” said Luo Yanhua. “We speak often of internal alchemy. You’ve been learning it in your meditation lessons. Yet it is a concept not just of the self, but of the sect, the kingdom, of everything.” She took a sip of her tea. “It is much harder for a sect to be balanced, and harder again for any kingdom to be balanced, but especially one which is mostly of the first sphere.”

“The fall of the Grouse Kingdom has left the Green Snake Valley imbalanced,” said Perry. She was leading them to a conclusion, which was one of her didactic habits. He’d never been a particular fan of that approach, but he’d had plenty of professors who preferred that style. Perry was decent at extracting the intended information. “That means that there are more outside pressures against the sect, and an amplification of existing pressures. One of which is the aforementioned Worm Gate.”

Luo Yanhua nodded.

“But we’re not being asked to do anything about them,” said Maya. “Not directly, because that would be sect warfare, and you’re both under the umbrella of the kingdom, tethered to it. So if you asked us to go ham on them, that would incur some karmic debt, but if we just so happen to decide that we’re using our new powers to burn down their temples, that’s —”

“No,” said Luo Yanhua. Her voice was firm. “That cannot be in the realm of what Shan Yin is hoping for. I had believed that you were not capable of wanton murder.”

“Just an example,” said Maya. “I wasn’t planning to be your hired gun, not unless these Worm Gate guys are beyond the pale. I could be convinced to side against them, if you’re siding with us, and especially if the enemy thresholder ends up being someone from Worm Gate, but you can’t get in a tizzy just because I’m suggesting some war crimes.”

“It is uncouth to speak of such things,” said Luo Yanhua. She folded her arms across her chest, which for her meant that this was some serious business. “You are to watch your words.”

“Fine, fine,” said Maya. “But the upshot is you’re hoping that we’re proxies in this little brewing war with your opponent.” She took a casual sip of her tea. “Worm Gate?”

“They are collectivists to the point of subjugation,” said Luo Yanhua. “They place their focus on the social, on the hierarchies, in a way that Moon Gate does not. Their temples ultimately report to a single man, Sun Quying, a member of the third sphere who controls many of those of the first sphere within their compound.”

“Wait wait wait,” said Maya. “Controls?”

“They volunteer for such control,” said Luo Yanhua. “Their bodies are turned toward the tasks of the temple, an effort to ensure that the temple’s internal alchemy is completely balanced, the better to focus on the growth of what it considers its most important assets.”

“The man at the top,” said Maya with a nod.

“No,” said Luo Yanhua. “There are a number of the second sphere who are being cultivated for transition to the third sphere. They are formidable — more than the equal of any member of Silver Fish Temple, save for perhaps Master Shan Yin.”

“But are they his children, or … ?” asked Maya.

“They are collectivists,” said Luo Yanhua. “Zhang Wuying and his followers believe that what is best is for everyone to work together, and that the inequality of their members means that it is often better for the weak to support the strong so the strong can support the weak. Zhang Wuying would not elevate his own children unless they were the most capable warriors.”

“Ideological consistency isn’t something we’re used to,” said Perry. He drank some of the tea, which was nicely warm. They made good tea in this world, he would give them that. All in all, it wasn’t a bad place to be, esoteric fights between opposing martial sects aside.

“So it’s a cult, basically,” said Maya. “And you don’t want us to hit them, necessarily, or take out their super important trainees, but you do want us to help you in a way that you can’t help yourself, because helping yourself would incur some karmic debt that no one in Moon Gate wants to pay. Do I have that right?”

Luo Yanhua nodded.

“But you don’t want us to go in like wrecking balls, guns blazing,” said Maya. “You want us to be operating outside the structure of the sects, but inflicting pain on them in ways that are merely ‘uncouth’. Reputational damage, that kind of thing, karmic damage, opposing some of their — what, recruiting efforts?”

“It is hoped that the fabled third thresholder will arrive,” said Luo Yanhua. “When they do, from what both of you have said, they are likely to be on the side of Worm Gate.” She turned to Perry. “You predicted this when you first came, if you recall.”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Perry. “I hadn’t thought that … well, that you would see it that way.”

“Your role in the conflict is yet to be determined, and it is likely that you will act as agents of your own, untethered,” said Luo Yanhua. “But if I follow Master Shan Yin correctly, your untethering, your uncouth behavior, can work in the interests of Moon Gate.”

“Sneaky,” said Maya. She leaned back. “I’m not sure I like it.”

Perry looked at her and thought about her saying that she’d snuck into a man’s room to slit his throat — something that she’d repeated many times since then, as a common tactic. But he could immediately see where this was different, at least for her, the ways in which underhanded tactics were different from rules-lawyering and rank politics. There was something more honorable about a sword in the night.

“We’re not soldiers,” said Perry. “And we’re not going to be commanded. But we will fight injustice where we see it, with as much force as we can muster.”

Maya gave him a look that Perry couldn’t interpret, maybe a bit of skepticism or uncertainty, but she nodded as though she was fine going along with that for the time being.

When their tea was done, they returned to the road, and Perry reluctantly put his gauntlets and helmet back on. They were still moving slowly, and the conversation turned to matters of food, particularly what was available across the Great Arc, and in the worlds that the two thresholders had been to.

Perry’s mind was elsewhere, and he engaged in discussion only infrequently as Maya told them about all the disgusting things that she’d eaten in the biopunk world, until Maya brought them to a stop.

“There,” she said, pointing to a mountaintop that wasn’t too far away from them, up the Great Arc, so it could be seen more easily.

Perry looked. If it was Dragon’s Breath Peak, it was closer than he’d thought it would be, and they could reach the base by the end of the day, even at their relatively slow speed. But as he looked, he saw flashes of light at the top of the mountain, blue arcs that must have been massive to be seen from such a distance, followed by sparks of red. A lightning bolt flashed high into the cloudless sky, originating from the same point.

“That’s what we’re going toward?” asked Perry.

“That’s not the peak we’re seeking,” said Luo Yanhua.

“It’s … a fight?” asked Maya.

“Fifth sphere, I would guess,” said Luo Yanhua. Her eyes were fixed on what they could see of the fight, which was mostly just a lightshow. “They do not fight lightly, but the battles can go on for weeks at a time. You accumulate many techniques on the way to such power. The combatants are likely to be thousands of years old.”

The tip of the mountain exploded without warning, sending debris and dust into the air in all directions. Within the cloud of dust, there were more lights, flashes of color that illuminated the cloud’s interior. They weren’t centered on any one location, instead moving from place to place, an implied fight that was taking place within the dust.

“Our trip must be diverted,” said Luo Yanhua. Her eyes had left the mountaintop and were tracking the chunks of rock that were still flying through the air. “We must ensure that those who are hurt receive help.”

One of the pieces of rock was coming closer to them, its size and speed more apparent as it approached. Marchand immediately set up a tracker on the HUD, not just for that piece, but for all the others, showing their trajectories. Some were larger than others, at least several tonnes, and they would land with all the grace of two swans, stapled together. The valley wasn’t a dense urban area, but it also wasn’t so depopulated that everyone was safe.

“Can you —” Perry began, but when he looked over, Luo Yanhua already had her bow drawn.

The arrows she fired were shafts of light, flying through the air with laser-like speed. Perry could only see them strike the tumbling boulders because when that happened, the entire boulder would glow and then disappear. She was firing fast, once a second, the arrows coming from nowhere.

After two dozen, she was spent, face pale and arm weak. She hadn’t been the only one to intervene: other boulders had been removed from the sky by various means, and Perry had seen someone leaping between them, demolishing them with his fists, turning them into a rain of hail rather than a haymaker of rock.

“What do we do if a fight like that breaks out near us?” asked Maya. She was looking at the cloud of dust rising from the mountain, where the light show had stopped. Perry didn’t know if it was finished or had merely moved somewhere else, but all they were left with was the cloud of dust and rain of rock.

“Run,” said Luo Yanhua. “Save who you can, but run. For now, we make sure that those of the first sphere are safe.”