Thresholder

It took another two days to get to Dragon’s Breath Peak, which involved a lot of arguing while they walked, more meat from the peasants, and further training and diagnostics for both Perry and Maya. The arguing was usually intense, at least on Maya’s side, but Perry preferred talking about the mechanics of powers, which was always a more sedate affair.

“You’re sure there is no connection among these powers?” Luo Yanhua asked Maya.

“They were acquired on different worlds,” said Maya. “You think that you have the key to some universal — some multiversal — system of vessels and meridians?”

“I wish I were traveling with my full library, but there are creatures whose internal functions go beyond vessel and meridian.” She pursed her lips. “You possess two systems of energy, and are soon to gain access to a third, but everything I know about vital energy demands that they cannot be wholly separate from each other. You have even said that your telekinesis ability has a ‘well’ of sorts, a vessel in all but name.”

“It does,” said Maya. “But it’s not just a ‘vessel’ that drains from using telekinesis, the glimwardens had all kinds of other powers that are supposed to draw on the same reservoir. How it’s supposed to work is that you have a huge suite of powers, with more power the closer it is to your, uh, primary technique, I guess.” She picked up a small rock from the road and held it out in her hand. When she opened her hand, the rock stuck there. “Ta da!”

“But from what you’ve said, there’s no way to develop that?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“That’s what I was told,” shrugged Maya. “We were eating the hearts of demons. No demons, no extra powers. I’m not quite tapped out on what I can gain from more control, not yet, and there are some other minor tricks to learn, but there are hard limits.”

“Unless you can tap into the vital energy,” said Luo Yanhua. “Or tap into your solar energy. If these are separate vessels grafted onto your matrix, both might be possible, though not for one of the first sphere, with an inactive spirit root.”

“But you can’t see it,” said Perry. “This is all supposition.”

“There are depths to the second sphere that I am as yet unaware of,” said Luo Yanhua. “I had not, prior to this, needed to see inside the internal alchemy of someone of the first sphere, and of course someone of the second sphere would have blocked me.”

“Of course,” said Perry.

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

“If I were able to find the right books, I might be able to gain some insight into your conditions,” continued Luo Yanhua, lost in her own thoughts. “Of course, certain things cannot be learned from books, and the best way to learn is through doing.”

“‘Certain things cannot be learned from books’,” said Perry. “Is that … literal?”

“Yes,” said Luo Yanhua.

Perry let that sit for a moment. He wanted to probe further, but wanted to make sure that he wasn’t asking the wrong question. There clearly were things that you couldn’t fully learn from books, especially if your life more or less revolved around martial arts. A book could theoretically contain precise instructions on how to angle your arms and legs, but it would be a horribly inefficient teacher for a variety of reasons. More literally, a book could relate sensory experiences to a person, but wouldn’t actually allow you to have that experience.

He thought that Luo Yanhua was talking about something else, something more.

“Tell me something that I won’t understand,” said Perry. “Just as a test.”

“I cannot,” said Luo Yanhua. “Such information is prohibited.”

“Meaning that you don’t think it’s a good thing, or you physically can’t,” said Perry.

“I could speak the words,” said Luo Yanhua. “You would not understand anything from them until you had found enlightenment yourself. But to speak the words would go against the oaths I had taken. You would learn nothing, and I do not break my oaths.”

“You took those oaths because you believe that propagation of information is bad,” said Perry.

“No, not at all,” said Luo Yanhua. “Only certain information. The dangerous thing about information is that we cannot truly know its nature without knowing it. I have been circumspect in the questions I pose to the both of you, even as you are free with what you share. This is for a reason.”

“You want us not to share?” asked Maya.

“I am of mixed minds on the subject,” said Luo Yanhua. “There is much to learn, and it is becoming clear that I am uniquely positioned to learn it. But some of the things you speak openly about, such as machines made from meat, or feeding upon blood, I find worrying.”

“You’re probably right to be worried, honestly,” said Maya. “Though I do want to point out that I was fighting the guys with the meat machines.”

“You used their meat machines, from what you said,” replied Luo Yanhua. “I do not believe either of you to be evil, but both have adapted tools that are tinged with evil without a proper consideration of the paths of moral justice.”

“I was dying,” said Perry. He still hadn’t given the full details to either of them. He didn’t want them to take his teeth, and didn’t particularly want to spread lycanthropy across the Great Arc or the many worlds. He didn’t necessarily think that either of them would go for it, but that might change once he had it fully under control. Maya had only asked him if a bite would turn someone, maybe because she was worried that there would be a growing lycanthropy infestation. At least he didn’t need to worry about that.

“You think that having a better body is evil?” asked Maya. “You should have seen the guys I was with, the guys I was fighting against. I was practically a prude, the limits of what I did to my body.”

“I can tell, standing next to you,” said Luo Yanhua. “Though the specifics are beyond me.”

“Really?” asked Maya. Her eyebrows went up. “I went super low key.”

“I can smell it,” said Perry.

“Oh, so I stink?” asked Maya. “We’re going back to that?” She said it with good humor though. She was always more cheery when they weren’t physically fighting.

“It’s not a bad smell,” said Perry. “It’s chemical, something unnatural in the glands or something, but it’s not an unpleasant chemical. I wouldn’t say that it’s quite vanilla extract, but there’s something like that in there.”

“So far as I know, it’s all still biology,” said Maya. “They had syntho organs and syntho blood, but it was inferior to the sweet neon lifeline.” She tapped her veins. “Not that there weren’t some refactors thrown in there.”

“Different blood?” asked Perry.

“Not so much with the blood,” said Maya. “There were special blends, but doing stuff at the cellular level is apparently tricky as hell, especially because for blood you have to go in and change the marrow, at least if you want it to last. I didn’t have that done, because you need all kinds of other things to not have changing your bones kill you.”

“Rejection wasn’t an issue?” asked Perry.

“I got some shots,” said Maya with a shrug. “That was a problem they’d licked, apparently.”

“There are such things in this world as well,” said Luo Yanhua. “Transplants, if I understand the term correctly. A new vessel can be added in a number of ways, though few of them are seemly.”

“Huh,” said Maya. “That’s … worrying.”

“I feared you would ask for the knowledge of how to do such a thing,” said Luo Yanhua.

“We’ve got limits,” said Maya.

Privately, Perry had just assumed that she didn’t know or wouldn’t tell them. It seemed like something that he wouldn’t want to undertake lightly, not while he was still mastering the wolf, and he wasn’t entirely certain what the benefits of such a thing might be, but he was interested.

When they reached the foot of Dragon’s Breath Peak, they began a long ascent. The mountain hadn’t looked very tall from far away, though the curve and scale of the Great Arc made such things deceptive. It was a tall mountain with a steep grade, one of the sharpest edges of the valley. There was no clear path up, which would have made it arduous and slow … but Perry could fly, Maya could bounce, and Luo Yanhua demonstrated a technique that they hadn’t seen before: moon gravity.

“That’s amazing!” said Maya. She was watching Luo Yanhua with wide eyes. “Why don’t you use it all the time?”

“It takes concentration,” said Luo Yanhua. “A skilled practitioner can make any technique as simple and thoughtless as drawing breath, but I haven’t developed it to that level as yet.”

“Moon jump,” said Maya, shaking her head. “So cool. I want that one.”

“Gravity is lower on the moon?” asked Perry.

“Duh,” said Maya.

“I can’t translate that word, ‘gravity’,” said Luo Yanhua. “But the nature of our moons is different from the nature of the Great Arc. You’re suggesting that is true on your worlds as well, but I do not wish to hear more.”

“No?” asked Maya. “It’s not harmful to know. I mean, I wouldn’t think so. We know it.”

“You have no connection to your moons, no understanding of my connection and understanding,” said Luo Yanhua. “We will speak on the matter no further.”

Still, Perry watched her, the way that she seemed to float up, each jump taking her ten times as high as a proper jump should. The strange thing about it, at least to him, was that her clothes and hair had that same floaty quality to them, as though her technique extended around her. Perry wondered whether he could learn that technique in the time he had before he left, and if he could learn it, whether it would depend upon the moon of the world he was on. Some planets didn’t have moons. Would he just be nerfed? Clearly Moon Gate’s techniques offered quite a bit of power, and carrying around a little bit of moonlight with him for an emergency transformation would be good, but he certainly wasn’t going to be putting all his eggs in the moon basket.

Maya’s bouncing was less enthralling but far more puzzling. Perry had seen it a few times now, and she seemed to make the ground beneath her into a depression, as though it was stretching, even if this made absolutely no sense given the material. She moved fastest once she’d worked up a good bounce, and could transfer the momentum into the next one, but there was also something about it that was adding speed, like she was temporarily making the ground into a sideways trampoline. The power left no sign that it had been used, aside from some disturbed leaves.

They had started out in the morning, hoping to make it to the peak by midday, then return back down again once they had the flower. The going was easy, especially as the trees and bamboo began to thin out. Maya’s bounces got bigger as they went, until she was soaring into the air, showing off, and Luo Yanhua began to move faster to keep up, soft footsteps launching her up the side. Perry felt lame floating in the wind behind his sword.

They spoke little, in part because they weren’t very close to each other anymore. Perry had some time with his thoughts.

The most dominant among the thoughts was whether Maya was really an ally. Luo Yanhua had said that they were opposites in some respect, dark and light. Perry was already seeing that she had some traits that he’d never been a fan of, and he worried that ideological purity was one of them. He didn’t consider himself a bad guy, but she had a streak of obsessiveness about her. The only reason she hadn’t tried to reshape this world was that they were woefully underpowered and would remain so for the entire duration, second sphere or not. Perry didn’t object to that, not for the Great Arc, but it seemed like a place where they might clash, especially if she thought he was an asshole for not helping her out or agreeing with her methods.

The important thing was getting to second sphere. Once that happened, he would train up as much as possible, and if it came to blows between them, he would do his best to kill her. Going wolf seemed the most promising avenue, but it seemed as though she could counter that with incredible ease. That left his sword and his armor, and they didn’t seem like enough to get the job done, not unless March could permanently disable her armor. Even then, it would be a close fight, especially given that she could blind him. March was working on countermeasures, but there was no way of testing them without tipping her off.

He was certain that Maya was making her own plans on how to deal with him, and he hoped that these were ‘just in case’ plans, like his were. The one good thing about sleeping in his armor was that she couldn’t slit his throat in the middle of the night.

They rose steadily, slowing only for sections that were near-vertical expanses of rock with no crags for purchase and no trees to bounce off of. This wasn’t a problem for Perry, but it slowed the two women down.

“Alright, definitely smelling the pus,” said Maya as they finished another of those long sections and found themselves at a brief shelf where a number of plants were taking refuge.

“The sore tree will smell of pus,” said Luo Yanhua. “But not every tree of that sort will have a bed of moss beneath it, and fewer still will have the flowers we seek.”

“So we’re at the right place, it’s just a matter of searching?” asked Maya. She looked around at the trees, and in particular, one that was hooked and cruel-looking. “This is a very big mountain.”

“I’ll send up the drone,” said Perry.

It shot up from his back, and for a moment, Perry was just watching the map get developed. Marchand knew what they were looking for, and highlighted all the trees that matched the one that apparently smelled of pus. Perry was happy to have filters.

Luo Yanhua had a point. They were making a mockery of what maybe, in principle, should have been a bit of a trial. There was no test of strength in getting up the mountain, no test of patience or wisdom in actually finding the flower. Actually ingesting the flower was supposed to be something of an ordeal, with the transition killing a normal person, but what kind of lesson did this whole adventure have for the villagers? It was an errand, not a quest.

“Someone is discharging a beam weapon in the distance,” said Marchand.

“Shit, where?” asked Perry, but the image was up even as the words were leaving his mouth.

The white lines were in the distance, thin as a strand of spider silk, but actually fairly thick once magnified. They were periodic, and Marchand showed playback from the drone, the white light going up to the moon and back down again. Someone was doing Luo Yanhua’s trick, rapidly, and they were getting closer.

“There, on the horizon,” said Perry. “Someone’s coming for us.”

Luo Yanhua turned to look, narrowing her eyes.

“I don’t see anything,” said Maya.

“I see them,” Luo Yanhua finally said.

“They’re coming fast,” said Perry. Marchand had put up a tracker on top of the minimap, along with an estimated time of arrival. It said twenty minutes, but it was also ticking down faster than one second per second.

“You said that you couldn’t use it for going faster,” said Maya, who had apparently seen the streaks in the sky.

“I said that I couldn’t use it for that,” said Luo Yanhua. Her lips were pursed. “There are only a handful of people it could be.”

“Zhang Lingxiu, Dragon-Tiger Guardian,” said Perry.

“Possibly,” said Luo Yanhua.

“You think he’s coming to, what, stop us?” asked Maya.

“If it is Zhang Lingxiu that approaches, then yes, it would be with the intention of stopping you,” said Luo Yanhua. “He will say that it is for the honor of the temple and the sanctity of the second sphere, but it will be vengeance and pride in his heart.”

“You can’t stop him?” asked Perry. “I mean, you’re both second sphere, protecting us would be —”

“No,” said Luo Yanhua. “I would prefer to keep my hands clean. I am, for the moment, only here as a chaperone. To offer a defense of this pursuit would bind me.”

Perry turned to her. “Seriously?”

“We are friendly, I think,” said Luo Yanhua. “We are not allies, not tethered to one another. It is in the interests of Moon Gate to have you transition, I believe, but it is a stand I cannot take, not at the moment.” She gave a small, courteous bow.

“Wow,” said Maya. “Fair-weather friends, eh?”

“You’re going to let him kill us?” asked Perry.

“No, I will allow you to fight for your right to ingest the flower that will take you to the second sphere,” said Luo Yanhua. “There is something proper about that, and I imagine that it will be two against one, though of course we don’t know for certain that it’s Zhang Lingxiu, nor that he comes with a fight in mind.”

“We find the flower now then,” said Perry. “We transition to second sphere before he even gets here.”

“I believe you will be incapacitated for a number of hours after ingesting the Celestial Ascension Blossom,” said Luo Yanhua. “That is if it doesn’t kill you, which it still might.”

“Balls,” said Perry. “I ingest it, you take me to the moon?”

“Possible, I suppose,” said Luo Yanhua. “All that remains is to find it though, and of course Miss Singh would be unable to survive the environs.”

“Less talking, more preparing for battle,” said Maya. “Let’s assume that we’re going to have to kill him. Perry, you staying in the suit or being a wolf? Probably time to decide now.”

“Suit,” said Perry. “The battery is charged and it’s partially fixed. We have time now if you wanted to spend some of the nanites —”

“No,” said Maya.

“Marchand estimates fifty-six out of four thousand four hundred grams to fully fix the gun in the shoulder,” said Perry. “Twenty high-caliber rounds, impeccably aimed, right at his face.”

“Gun?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“A device for propelling metal at high speeds,” said Perry. He did the gesture to flip the gun out from its internal holster, showing what it looked like when it was out of the shell.

“Fine,” said Maya. “But that and only that, tell your robot that.”

“Robot?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“A thinking machine,” said Perry. He’d wanted to keep that particular cat in the bag for as long as possible, particularly because it was difficult to explain.

Maya came over to Perry and placed her bracer against the gun. The nanostuff slid off like black tar and became a part of the firearm for a moment, and the heat was intense enough that Perry could feel it through the armor — alarming, considering that particular section was insulated against the heat of the gun already.

“Done,” said Maya five minutes later.

“March, confirm?” asked Perry.

“It appears that the operation was a resounding success,” said Marchand as the gun went up and down. “That ammunition you procured was a bit dodgy though, sir, and I believe that we’ll run into more problems with repeated use. I understand that circumstances can warrant it, but holding off on using the firearm until the last possible moment would be advised.”

“Understood,” said Perry.

“Those whisperings I’ve heard,” said Luo Yanhua. “A … thinking machine?”

The white lines were getting closer, but the mountain was large, and it didn’t seem like he would be able to pinpoint them, at least not right away.

“Will he be able to track us?” asked Perry.

“Only if he has some sufficient token,” said Luo Yanhua. “A lock of hair would do it, but I cannot imagine he got that without us knowing. We will not be difficult to spot though.” She looked at Maya, who was wearing the brightly-colored hoodie, which was admittedly stylish, but also stuck out like a sore thumb. Perry’s armor wasn’t remotely camouflaged, and it was blue, but at least it was a somewhat natural color.

“Can he track himself?” asked Maya.

Luo Yanhua pondered that. “The piece of him that Perry ate,” she said. “Yes, if it hasn’t been passed.”

“I have no clue how my digestive system is even working anymore,” said Perry. “But if he’s homing in on me, I can flee, giving the two of you time.”

“Time for what?” asked Maya. “I’m ready to go.”

“You are both too eager for battle,” said Luo Yanhua. “If it is him, he’ll want to talk first, lay out the case for offensive action, give you an option so it doesn’t need to come to blows.”

“That option would mean giving up my place at Moon Gate and not eating the flower,” said Perry. “Right?”

“I imagine he might have those as conditions of a peaceable resolution, yes,” said Luo Yanhua.

“So, plans?” asked Maya. “It’s two on one, what do we think is going to work against him? Blinding him? Or just going in with swords and your gun, hoping that we can overwhelm him?”

“I think overwhelming is the only shot we’ve got,” said Perry. “He’s fast, we’re slow, but I’m not sure we’re so slow that he can’t dodge or parry two or three attacks at once.”

“I don’t like your odds,” said Luo Yanhua. “I’m still considering whether I might intervene, but he was always a strong fighter.”

“The wolf could beat him though,” said Maya. “Assuming that it doesn’t kill me first.”

“I would have had to already start on getting out of the armor, even with the quick release,” said Perry. “No, this is going to happen very soon, and I don’t think the talking period is going to last long enough for me to get free.”

“Can’t believe the old lady isn’t going to help us,” said Maya with a cluck of her tongue. “Alright, we pincer him, flanking. Try not to shoot me, not that your gun would do much. Bash him with your sword, I’ll go in with the needle. I’ll give you a warning when I’m going to flash him, so you can turn the cameras off.”

“Cameras?” asked Luo Yanhua.

“Seeing machines,” said Perry. He frowned at her, though she couldn’t see it behind the helmet. “Now your curiosity is getting the better of you?”

“Your armor is deeper and stranger than I had expected,” said Luo Yanhua. “Certain of your abilities I had ascribed to technique, but if they are only machines, divorced from learning — this is dangerous.”

“Yes,” said Perry. “And fortunately, it takes thousands of people working together to make armor like this.”

“He’s coming right for us,” said Maya. “We’ll let him talk, hear him out, then if it comes to that, kill him.”

Zhang Lingxiu appeared from a beam of light, immaculate black hair blowing in the mountain wind, white tunic and rich blue pants perfectly pressed and clean, gem-crusted gilt-hilted sword in his left hand, his right hand missing except for a small crescent that Perry had missed. His face was serene, beautiful, not betraying any anger.

“Luo Yanhua, Moon Piercer, I have come to stop this madness,” he said.

“I am only an escort, Zhang Lingxiu,” said Luo Yanhua. “They have planned to partake of the Celestial Ascension Blossom and forcibly transition, but it is not my place to stop them — nor yours.” That was what she was going with, how she was positioning herself, as someone who was standing by rather than advising and helping them.

Zhang Lingxiu turned to Perry, leveling the fancy sword at him. “This one is a wild animal in the clothing of a man, armored in the coward’s way. His transition to the second sphere is an affront to not just Moon Gate, but to the proper order of the world.”

“Hey,” said Perry with a wave of his hand.

“Peregrin Holzmann, will you desist in your attempts to forcibly transition?” asked Zhang Lingxiu.

“No,” said Perry. “You have no right to come here and demand that of me, only the right offered to you by your power. If you act against me, cosmic debt will be on your head.”

Zhang Lingxiu turned his sword to point at Maya, who was already armored up. “Maya Singh, will you desist in your attempts to forcibly transition?”

“Why don’t you snort dog shit,” said Maya. “Go finger a goat and stop bothering us with your petty objections or we’ll take off your other hand.”

“Mockery,” said Zhang Lingxiu. “I expected no less. Then I must warn you that my duty to stop you knows few limits.” He was brandishing his sword, and Perry thought that it was only seconds away from coming to blows.

“Master Shan Yin is the one who told us where the Celestial Ascension Blossom is,” said Perry. “He wanted us to come here, wanted us to transition.”

“Moon Gate is not only its masters,” said Zhang Lingxiu. “It is the spirit of its students and the core of its tenets. Discipline, when lacking, can lead to the downfall of a sect. We do not train those who are not worthy. We do not bestow knowledge to those who are unprepared for it.”

“You are young,” said Luo Yanhua. “It is a time of disruption, of strife for the valley. Heeding the decisions of your master is the duty of the faithful student, Zhang Lingxiu.”

“If they will not stop this madness on their own, then I will be forced to stop them,” said Zhang Lingxiu. His face was set, his eyes boring into Perry. The man was fast, Perry knew that, and that sword was almost certainly sharp enough to cut through the cobalt armor.

“You really think you can take on both of us at once, one-handed?” asked Maya. She had stepped forward to stand beside Perry, and her needle floated up from where it had been stabbed into the ground to rest in her black-clad hand. “Pure arrogance.”

“You are first sphere,” said Zhang Lingxiu. “I will try to be merciful.”

“March, shoot him,” said Perry. It was supposed to be used as a last resort, but if it could end this now, it would be worth it.

The gun popped out and fired off a single shot, which caught Zhang Lingxiu in the chest. He stared down at it in disbelief, shock written on his face, a bloom of blood, then he rushed in with his sword, sprinting to close the distance.

“Again,” said Perry.

The gun fired again, and this time Zhang Lingxiu anticipated it — his sword was up in a position to parry it before it actually fired. It wasn’t clear whether he parried it though, if that was even what he was trying to do, because he had gotten in close and was attacking Perry, first with a dizzyingly fast cut to the chest that didn’t feel like it left a mark, then with probing attacks that Perry was too late to defend against.

Maya came to the rescue, dropping behind Zhang Lingxiu from above, having bounced high into the air. He spun to meet her, parrying her needle to the side, and kicked backward at Perry, hitting him squarely in the chest with enough force that the feet of the armor lifted from the ground. When Perry found his feet, it was his turn to help out Maya, but the attempt at a pincer didn’t seem to faze Zhang Lingxiu at all. He dodged and parried with incredibly deftness, as though he had eyes in the back of his head, sometimes bringing his sword up backward to block a strike before moving to another position. If he was having any problems, he wasn’t showing them, though he hadn’t managed to get a good strike in on either of them. Maya had thrown off her hoodie before the fight began, leaving her in pure black aside from her sneakers, and every time the sword made contact with her, it glanced off.

“Flashing him,” said Maya.

Before Perry could give a command to March, she’d done it, unleashing brilliant light intended to blind. But while Perry hadn’t given the command, March had done it on his own, narrowing the cameras down to pinholes and covering them where possible. The virtual view overlaid the scene, this time at higher resolution, with false colors and most of the background left black so only the vital details were shown, but it was replaced by the actual feed seconds later as the cameras opened back up.

Zhang Lingxiu’s eyes were red, along with his face, almost sunburnt, but while his eyes were no longer focusing on what was in front of him, he was parrying their blows and dodging their swords all the same. They tried to keep him between them, but he slipped off to one side, fast as the wind, and when they followed, they were fighting side by side.

There were three spots of blood on Zhang Lingxiu, one larger than the other, over his heart, and they’d begun growing as the fight went on. It didn’t seem to stop him, or even really slow him, and his probing of their defenses was giving him options. He’d find a way in soon, and then they were fucked.

What Perry hadn’t realized, as he was thinking of the sword finding its way up his armpit, was that Zhang Lingxiu was positioning them. They were already side by side, not an ideal way to fight a single opponent, but he had moved so that he was uphill from them. The high ground was overrated, in Perry’s opinion, but when Zhang Lingxiu struck out with a moon-powered kick, Maya went sailing off the mountain. She flew higher and slower, under the gravity of the moon, up and away with no way of getting back. She pulled on her sword, trying to use telekinesis to arrest her momentum, but she was flailing and tumbling, out of the fight.

Perry was alone with Zhang Lingxiu.

The blood hadn’t stopped flowing from the bullet wounds, but Perry was loath to spend more bullets and risk breaking the gun again. “Fire twice more,” he said on impulse, and March complied, both rounds aimed at center mass. Zhang Lingxiu was ready though, and moved out of the way at the last moment, not faster than the bullets, but faster than the servos that aimed the barrel of the gun. He was still fighting blind, but it didn’t seem to matter, some perk of the second sphere.

Perry attacked, putting the full power of the suit into the strike, and Zhang Lingxiu parried it effortlessly, turning the sword up to move harmlessly over his head. While Perry was recovering, Zhang Lingxiu brought his sword down and placed the tip of it against the throat of the armor. He leveraged himself and pushed in hard, like trying to shuck an oyster, and Perry felt something give. He brought his sword down and struck Zhang Lingxiu hard on the head with the pommel, and the swordsman moved away, sword still held in impeccable form.

Perry could taste blood in his mouth, an alarming amount of it, and with the suit, there was nowhere to spit it. He swallowed it down, feeling ill, but there was a sharp and painful hole in the bottom of his mouth. Another few inches and it would have gone up into his brain.

“You have more speed than I have given you credit for,” said Zhang Lingxiu. He was touching his chest with his stub of a hand, feeling the places where he’d been shot. The blood hadn’t stopped, and if anything was coming out faster, staining his tunic down to the front of his chest. “You fight better than you fought at the temple.”

He doesn’t know what the armor does, thought Perry. All these people knew of armor was that it was something that was heavy and made you slow, defense at the expense of speed and finesse. Armor that could help you be faster, stronger, was unheard of. So to Zhang Lingxiu, it must have felt like a matter of technique or mastery.

All that would have been a more interesting revelation if Perry hadn’t been swallowing down more blood from inside his own mouth.

Perry went on the offensive. He didn’t know the full extent of second sphere healing, but allowing the enemy to rest seemed like a path to a loss. Zhang Lingxiu was slower now, though not quite flagging, and his dodges were near things, his parries showing more obvious effort. He was losing, though it was going to take time Perry was going to have to keep from retching up blood. That was all it was going to take to win.

Zhang Lingxiu disappeared in a flash of light, the beam shooting up to the moon. It took Perry a moment to understand what had happened, but when he did, he looked up and shouted ‘Coward!’, or tried to, but didn’t make much of it with his bloody mouth. Still, Marchand understood and relayed the message in a shockingly accurate mimicry of Perry’s voice.

Perry was wrong though, because seconds later he was slammed into from above, the moonbeam not a retreat but more like backing up to get a running start. Perry felt a lancing pain in his shoulder and down through his body, along with a twist of his neck that must have come from deflection, but he had only staggered to his knees, not dropped entirely, and he popped back up to find Zhang Lingxiu without a weapon.

“Gurugh,” said Perry.

“Nice try,” said Perry’s voice, an interpretation by Marchand.

“You should be dead,” said Zhang Lingxiu. The blood was down to his pants now, soaking through, the bullets having done more than their fair share of the work. A trickle of blood was dripping from his mouth.

“Mrggrm,” said Perry.

“I don’t die that easily,” said Marchand. “It’s time to end this.”

Perry’s right shoulder was on fire from pain, and when he tried to move his arm, he found that he couldn’t. He transferred the sword to the other hand, floating it over, and raised it, which he could only do with some effort. Zhang Lingxiu’s sword must have gone through the armor, must have penetrated deep to do so much damage, and Perry desperately needed to get out and turn into a wolf again, if only to heal him. The fight needed to be ended first though.

“I yield,” said Zhang Lingxiu. He dropped to his knees and lowered his head.

Perry lowered his sword. He was feeling dizzy, and in another minute, he didn’t think he’d have the strength to trigger the emergency release. One of his lungs wasn’t working right, and he wondered whether the sword strike from the moon had been strong enough to pierce all the way down into his chest.

The needle came in from nowhere, high above Perry’s head, and Zhang Lingxiu had either no energy left to dodge or simply didn’t see it in time. The needle caught him in the dome of his head and sliced through his body with enough speed to pin him to the ground. He moved only slightly after that, death throes but nothing more, but it had seemed as though he wanted to remove the needle from his own skull. It was pulled out on its own not long after though, and Maya landed beside him, bouncing to a stop, the pure black of her armor making her look like a nightmare.

When Maya turned to Perry, she dropped the shell over her helmet. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “Are you … okay?”

“Mmmm,” said Perry. His tongue wasn’t working right. He thought maybe it had been cut, but the blood still in his mouth was a bigger problem. He pulled the emergency release and the armor started to come off around him, though the chestpiece seemed like it was caught on something.

When his head was free, he looked over, dizzy, to see what the armor was caught on, and finally noticed the gaudy sword stuck through him. It had been buried to the hilt, and the excruciating pain and punctured lung made a lot more sense.

“The young master has suffered grievous wounds,” said Marchand’s voice, from somewhere off to the side. “He is extremely likely to die if he doesn’t make it to the emergency room post haste.”

“Help,” Maya said to Luo Yanhua.

“You will need to move away,” said Luo Yanhua as she stepped forward. She’d done nothing through the entire fight, had stood by the side to protect her karma, and Perry was angry with her, wounded and still ready for a second fight. He spit up blood when he tried to say something, and then screamed when Maya wrenched the armor off.

“Moonlight,” said Maya. “I need him alive.” Her face was set.

Luo Yanhua obliged, bathing Perry in the cold light of the moon, but he was feeling tired, and the transformation was sluggish, far slower than it had ever been before.

Perry didn’t attack Maya, nor Luo Yanhua. As a wolf, he was disoriented, still feeling ill, but there was meat in front of him that would be going bad soon, and was still warm. He bit at the corpse, ripping away clothes, and used razor-sharp teeth to tear out pieces of muscle from the arms and legs. He felt better with some meat in him, and was still swallowing more bites down when he turned back into a human.

Perry spit the flesh out and grimaced.

“Sorry,” he said, turning to the two women.

“Better than being attacked,” said Maya. She looked disgusted with him.

“You could have stopped me,” said Perry. “Changed me back.”

“I figured you had a better chance of a full heal,” said Maya. “Now come on, put your dick away and let’s get that flower.”

Luo Yanhua turned to Maya. “He had yielded.”

“So what?” asked Maya. “I mean, I was coming up the mountain, couldn’t hear his whispered nothings anyway, but he kicked me off into the distance, and he didn’t know I could survive it.”

“When you are of the second sphere, such intemperance will get you killed,” said Luo Yanhua.

“Sure,” said Maya. “I’m not second sphere yet though.”

There was a marked frown on Luo Yanhua’s face. Perry could understand it: the fight had come to its end, whether Maya actually knew that or not. Perry had made the conscious decision not to kill Zhang Lingxiu, and there was no reason that he couldn’t limp off.

“You’re good?” Maya asked Perry.

“Perfect,” said Perry, rolling the shoulder that had once had the sword through it. His mouth was fine, breathing all better, the healing restoring him completely. His gut still felt a little off, though he didn’t know if that was because of the corpse he’d eaten as a wolf or the blood he’d swallowed as a human.

“I’m all bruised up, thanks for asking,” said Maya. “Couldn’t control the fall right, smashed into a tree more than I bounced off it, and I’m all out of light for healing.” She stripped her armor back down to just the thick bracer and gathered her hoodie up from where she’d set it down. “Let’s go get that fucking flower, eh?”

The drone twirled down from up above and landed deftly on Perry’s hand when he held it out. “Marchand?”

“I believe I have identified three candidates, sir,” said Marchand from on the ground.

“Good,” said Perry. “I need to get the armor back on, then we’ll go.”

He barely gave a glance back at the corpse, but Luo Yanhua gave it more than one long, lingering look.