Thresholder

Perry ran at the grandmaster and whipped his sword sideways, the power armor groaning in protest. When the grandmaster deflected the sword to the side with his gnarled staff, Perry recalled it, and it slotted into his hand just in time for him to strike down at the grandmaster with full force. The old man stepped under it, but couldn’t manage more than a weak follow up to drive Perry back.

Whatever was happening internally to the frayed and blown out matrix, Perry was having strangely little problems with it. He was still moving fluidly and fully aware of himself, and if his energy stores were low, it felt as though that was only because he had been fighting hard and using his abilities to their fullest. With the helmet damaged and laying in the mud, it was impossible to check on power reserves of the armor, but he’d topped it up, and was feeling like he was far from being gassed.

Behind him, Xiyan was making more of her statues, though her movements had slowed considerably, and Maya was doing her best to keep the pressure up.

After another few darting attacks that almost decapitated the grandmaster, Perry was starting to feel as though he was within a hair’s-breadth of delivering a sudden and decisive killing blow.

But as they kept fighting and the grandmaster kept dodging out of the way or deflecting a strike with his staff, Perry began to realize that he wasn’t doing well — he was being kept busy.

“You’re not trying to kill me,” said Perry, backing up and casting a quick glance at Maya, who was still harrying Xiyan, stopping her from making a door to somewhere else.

“If I kill you, does the portal still open?” asked the grandmaster.

“I don’t know,” said Perry.

“I don’t either,” said the grandmaster. His face was bloodied, his nose broken and not reset, puffy from the damage it had taken. “But in the catalog of stories there are no instances where a thresholder is defeated by some outside force.” He held out his staff and pointed it at Perry. He was still unsteady on his feet, and had been wounded in the fight against the king. “You will kill her, or she will kill you. I will not risk my exit from this world.”

Perry lunged with the sword, and the grandmaster spun around, avoiding the sword and sweeping upward with the staff. It crashed into Perry’s side and sent him flying as the pain shot through him. He landed on his feet only thanks to the sword, but it was messy.

He found himself beside Sun Baoxi, who had his arms crossed. Earlier, he’d been tending to the wounded, helping people get to their feet and limp away, but now he was only watching.

“Help?” asked Perry.

“He’s my father and my grandmaster,” said Sun Baoxi. “I have a duty to him.” He hesitated only for a moment. “You don’t stand a chance. Kill the woman and let him go through.”

“He’d be a terror across the multiverse,” said Perry. The grandmaster was approaching, slowly, leaning heavily on his walking stick.

“He has reserves he hasn’t tapped into,” said Sun Baoxi. “This crusade, it’s not —”

Perry leapt up into the air, tugged by the sword, and came down toward the grandmaster, ready to put his full body weight into a plunging sword strike. The grandmaster was slow to move, and Perry clipped him, but the jolt of hitting the ground made his legs go numb.

“Unearned power,” said the grandmaster, inspecting the gouge in his shoulder. It wasn’t a mortal hit, but it was a hit, the first that Perry had scored.

“Perry, we’re going to have to end this!” shouted Maya. “Can’t hold her off forever!”

Xiyan had been run ragged and was only barely fighting back. Her licorice armor had been cut to shreds, she was bleeding from her face, and her left arm was swinging limply at her side. She pushed out a statue from time to time, but she needed a dodge to do it, and the dodges were slower, labored. When Perry looked at Xiyan, most of what he saw was blood running down her bare skin.

“Pull the cord!” yelled Perry.

Maya looked at him, face hidden beneath the black bubble of nanites, then raced for the grandmaster.

Up in the sky, the sun began to visibly dim.

The grandmaster took a defensive stance, staff held in front of him, and Perry moved around to flank him. Half Perry’s attention was on Xiyan, making sure she didn’t run away or try to open another door, but she was moving slowly enough that he thought he’d be able to catch her if she did that. Escape would be a disaster, given she was all but beaten.

The armor slipped from Maya, revealing the change that had come over her. Her hair was suffused with a golden glow, as were her eyes, and as Perry watched, the light made its way up her sword, causing it to light up the muddy battlefield as the sun grew dim overhead. This was her trump card, only usable outside, and it would leave her weakened for days once the power was channeled. With the sun dark in the area, all its energy was flowing into her. She was inhabited by the spirit of another world’s god, barely in control of herself.

The grandmaster couldn’t dodge her attacks, and when he used the staff to block, she was taking chunks from it. When he tried to counterattack, she grabbed the head of the club in a hand that was glowing golden. He wrenched it from her grasp, and took a slice to the face for his trouble, a deep cut that must have only stopped bleeding through force of will.

Just as Sun Baoxi had said, the grandmaster still had reserves left. He thrust out a hand and drew once again on something, but this time the energy was coming from further away — the temple. At first Perry thought it was to take from the worm vats there, but as he saw Sun Baoxi’s look of horror, he realized that it must have been something else, something larger that the grandmaster was linked to: the first spheres there.

It was unabashedly evil, a move of desperation, and Perry attacked the grandmaster from behind as Maya pressed in from the front. The grandmaster’s wounds had started to heal though, and he was moving faster, able to block both of them, even Maya’s glowing needle that moved through the air so swiftly it was nothing but an arc of light. The grandmaster kicked backward and sent Perry sprawling in the mud, then swept Maya’s feet out from under her and went in for the attack. She bounced off the mud in complete defiance of physics and brought her needle up to meet him, then pushed off against his thrust to land twenty feet away with the slow grace of a falling maple leaf.

“He can’t keep this up,” shouted Perry. His eyes darted to the side, where Xiyan’s hands were moving through the air, tracing the outline of a stone door. Perry raced to her, stepping fast across the mud, and threw his sword at her. She turned to smoke and the sword sliced through licorice, but she was slow to return to material form, and was gasping for breath when she did.

The grandmaster was draining bugs, or more likely, people, and he couldn’t keep it up, but Perry was very aware that Maya couldn’t either. Her lips had gone golden, and with time, she’d said, her whole body would, up until the point the sunlight seemed as though it would consume her. She was out of her mind on sunlight, more god than woman, and they needed to end it, now.

Perry grabbed Xiyan by the arm and threw her to the ground, then began punching her in the head with fast strikes, not trying to kill her, but hoping that he could dizzy her. This wasn’t the kind of fight she was built for, not in the slightest, but if the portal opened while the grandmaster still stood, he would slip through in a heartbeat.

Perry stopped the quick rabbit punches and looked down. Xiyan’s face was broken, her teeth askew. She was wearing someone’s face, but either way it would have been unrecognizable.

Maya’s skin had taken on a glow now, and she was overpowering the grandmaster, who was swinging his club-stick wildly to block her every golden thrust. Perry looked down at Xiyan, then up at the grandmaster, and left her behind as he launched himself back across the field. Maya brought the hard edge of her needle down and sliced the staff in two, and as the grandmaster stumbled back, Perry slipped in and struck, sword passing cleanly through the separate halves of the walking stick and into the grandmaster’s body.

The grandmaster collapsed backward. The sword had gone through his stomach, opening him up, and his guts had slipped out. He’d been pushed to his limits, and, possibly, had pushed too much against the cosmic balance.

Maya shifted her grip on her glowing needle, drew it back, and threw it straight as an arrow and ten times as fast. It hit the grandmaster just below the chin and went up through his skull, sizzling with the power of the sun.

As soon as that was done, Maya collapsed to the ground, all the glow gone from her, and the sunlight that had been bathing the muddy field returned. She was as feeble as a kitten, barely able to raise herself to her knees, and the armor returned to ensconce her.

“End her,” said Maya.

Perry dashed back across the field, legs burning, to where Xiyan had once again risen to her feet. She barely glanced at him with her broken face. Her second attempt at making a door was more feeble than the first, less coordinated, and Perry was on her in an instant. She turned to smoke and shadow for the first strike he made against her, but coughed up blood on her return to her corporeal form. She was just in time for Perry’s backhand sword stroke to catch her in the neck. She was decapitated cleanly, her head rolling until the hair was muddy and her body slumping to the ground, heart still pumping blood from her neck.

The bottom of her head, where her neck had been, extended insectile legs. The whole thing began to scurry away, one last hidden power, but Perry threw his sword and caught her in the skull, stopping the insectile abomination completely.

The portal opened up two feet from Perry. He trekked over to where his helmet had been sitting and gathered it up, looking at the damage. It was a delicate piece of equipment, but he thought he would be able to repair it, as he’d been able to repair everything else.

“Status, March,” said Perry, taking a deep, ragged breath.

March let forth a litany of complaints, and as he did, Perry felt all the aches and pains of the battle settle into place. His hand went up to his earlobe, which had been pulled on by one of the statues and was now ripped where the ear joined the head. He was missing hunks of hair and would be bruised all over. His leg was aching where the armor had been hit by the makeshift cannon, and internally, a careful inventory of his vessels and meridians showed incredible damage there, nothing in the place it should be. He wasn’t sure how he was still functional, and tracing some of the lines of the meridians showed that they had been pushed outside his corporeal body. The Wolf Vessel wasn’t a part of him anymore.

Sun Baoxi was moving toward the portal on unsteady feet.

Perry landed in front of him. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Through the portal,” said Sun Baoxi. He stopped, probably because of how Perry was standing. It was a combat stance.

“Your father died, leaving your sect without a leader, and that’s what you’re doing?” asked Perry.

“Yes,” said Sun Baoxi. “You wanted to stop anyone from going through, not just him?”

It smelled wrong. Perry’s sword was in his hand, dripping blood. He had a firm grip on it. The portal was to his back.

A beam of moonlight came down from above, and when it cleared, Luo Yanhua was standing there in her white clothes, looking serene among the blood, death, and mud. She held her bone white bow in one hand.

“You’re here for the portal too?” asked Perry. “Or for justice.”

“I received March’s message and watched from a distance,” said Luo Yanhua. She stepped close, just behind Sun Baoxi. “I don’t intend to step through the portal, no. I have seen what happens with thresholders.”

Sun Baoxi took a step forward, and Perry’s sword twitched.

“Come on,” said Sun Baoxi. He cocked his head to the side. “You’ll fight me over this? I thought we were friends, in our own way.” He had looked shell-shocked and sluggish, but that was fading quickly.

“You have people here that need you,” said Perry. “You said to the grandmaster that you didn’t understand what he was doing this for, why he was willing to let his people die — for that.” Perry gestured at Xiyan’s decapitated body. “You don’t need to propel yourself into a life of battle. You’re not your father.”

Luo Yanhua stepped back and raised her bow, nocking it with a spectral arrow made of moonlight. “No, he is exactly his father,” she said. “The third sphere do not die easily.”

Perry gripped his sword. “Meaning —”

“You know what I mean,” said Luo Yanhua.

Sun Baoxi grinned, then darted forward, toward the portal. Perry lashed out with the sword, but Sun Baoxi slipped beneath it and ran across the muck and mud. He was caught by an arrow to the thigh, and fell to the ground, but rolled back up to his feet. He was just in time for Maya to land in front of him, clad in black armor, needle drawn.

He punched her in the stomach and she collapsed in an instant. With how she’d been moving, it was a miracle she’d been able to get there at all, and she had put up almost no resistance.

What she had done was to buy Perry and Luo Yanhua time.

Perry had moved in front of him again, sword in front of him this time, and Luo Yanhua was behind him, another arrow nocked.

“What happened?” asked Perry, his voice directed at Luo Yanhua. He looked over at the body of the grandmaster. “How do we — get him out?”

“This is among the darkest of dark arts,” said Luo Yanhua.

“He slipped into his son’s body,” said Perry.

Sun Baoxi was watching Perry closely, eyes going to the portal, judging whether the moment was right to move. He was going to make a break for it, that was inevitable, it was only a question of whether he could accomplish it.

“Just kill him,” said Maya from the ground. “Holy hell does he have a right hook.”

“What’s your plan?” asked Sun Baoxi, or the grandmaster who was inhabiting his body.

“We get him out,” said Perry. He shifted his weight, trying to make sure the exit was covered. “We restore Sun Baoxi. He wasn’t a bad guy, just — born to one, grew up in this system, he —”

Luo Yanhua let her arrow loose. Sun Baoxi dodged to the side, as if he’d seen it coming from a mile away this time. It was the opening for Perry to come down with the sword, but he hesitated, and when he did swing, Sun Baoxi dodged that too, if by inches. He landed in the mud, off balance, bleeding, and sprang to his feet a moment later. Perry was there to block him, and he stopped again. They’d moved closer to the portal.

“He’s getting stronger every moment,” said Luo Yanhua. “He’s settling in.”

Maya had crawled back to her feet, needle in hand. Perry wasn’t sure what she thought she was going to do, not with how weak she still was.

“Maya, drop the armor,” said Luo Yanhua.

Maya hesitated for only a moment, then let the skintight black armor fall from her, exposing skin. Sun Baoxi must have figured out what Luo Yanhua was going to do, because he made a break for it as the moonlight hit Maya and started her transformation. Perry got in his way, trying to block him, and the grandmaster ducked under the sword, then slipped between Perry’s legs, dashing across the mud, slipping to the side to avoid another arrow from Luo Yanhua.

Maya bounded after him, four-legged and shaggy-haired. Her form obscured Perry’s view, and he thought she hadn’t made it in time, but then she turned toward them, his body in her mouth, and the screams of the grandmaster filled the field until she bit down into him.

She made thorough work of the body, crunching down on the bones and shaking the pieces from side to side, until eventually she transformed back into human and started spitting to get the taste of blood from her mouth.

“We need to look for his next body,” said Perry, scanning the field.

“That was the culmination of many years of planning and preparation,” said Luo Yanhua. “I don’t expect he’ll be able to do it a second time.”

Perry looked at her. “You came to stop him.”

“I came because the outcome of this battle was important for the future of this valley I call home,” said Luo Yanhua.

Perry watched her. “If I try to go through that portal, will you stop me?”

“No,” said Luo Yanhua.

“And you’re not going yourself?” asked Perry. He wasn’t sure whether he would try to stop her or not. He had sparred with her enough to think maybe he had a chance, even if it wasn’t a good one, but Maya was very visibly tapped out.

“I have seen thresholders and what they do,” said Luo Yanhua. “I have no wish to become one.”

“How’d you know I could transform?” asked Maya.

“The valley can be quite small,” said Luo Yanhua. “Word spreads quickly when there’s a battle at the heart of one of the major temples.”

Maya looked over at the portal. She was breathing hard. “I guess I’m out then. You’ll guard the portal, make sure no one goes through? I’m not sure how long it will stay open.”

“I don’t think the grandmaster should have been allowed through,” said Luo Yanhua. “But neither do I think there is an imperative to stop those who wish to see other worlds, even if it means being cursed with a life of conflict.”

Perry picked his helmet back up from where he’d thrown it to the ground. He was leaving too, as quickly as possible, but he was hoping to get everything repaired first. There was no way of knowing where he’d end up next, and having a helmet on seemed like it would be a good idea.

“Perry, you good?” asked Maya.

“I’m good,” nodded Perry.

“Then I’m out,” said Maya. She hesitated for a moment, then tossed a small black chunk to Perry, which he caught deftly in his armored hand. It was a chunk of nanites, and perhaps by coincidence, it was just about the size of the tooth he’d given her. She limped through the mud, black armor coating her once more. She turned after a moment. “Bye March.”

“Goodbye, Miss Singh,” replied March and from the external speakers.

“You guys rep Earth out there, okay?” said Maya. “Democracy and all that. Kill some slavers for me.” She turned back to the portal and hobbled through it, not seeming too afraid about the fact she’d blown her best powers and left herself weakened.

She disappeared, and Perry felt the knowledge that he’d never see her again settle in.

“Goodbye, Peregrin,” said Luo Yanhua.

“Sorry for everything,” said Perry.

She stepped forward and touched his armor. “Goodbye, Marchand.”

“Goodbye, Miss Luo,” said Marchand.

“Something is different,” said Luo Yanhua with a frown. Her fingers went down and traced the center of the torso piece, where the broken microfusion reactor was. “You … added something to him.”

Rather than respond, Perry closed his eyes and tried to feel the pathways of energy flowing through him. It was in his center that things had changed, not with the rips and tears that he’d first feared, though there was plenty of damage that would take some time to heal. The meridians that connected to the Wolf Vessel lead outside his corporeal body, and if he concentrated hard, he could follow them to where the Wolf Vessel was still connected. It hadn’t moved far, and sat just outside his chest, disconnected from his body, in the hollow where the ruined microfusion reactor had sat.

“March, status of the batteries?” asked Perry.

“Batteries are at one hundred percent, sir,” replied Marchand.

Perry opened his eyes and looked at Luo Yanhua.

“I cannot say that you are a good person,” said Luo Yanhua. “I cannot even say you’re a decent one. But I watched you here, today, and you have fought honorably and done well.”

“Thank you,” said Perry.

There were still dead and wounded on the field, and Perry knew the decent thing to do would be to stay behind for a few hours and tend to the wounded, then bury the bodies. He still didn’t know whether karmic retribution was something that really existed, though he and Maya had managed to kill the grandmaster, so maybe that meant something.

Perry’s eyes went to the king. He had been a far better fighter than Perry had thought he would be, able to back up most of the boasting he’d done. The florid language almost made sense. Maybe it was just sentimentality for a world that Perry was leaving, but he could see something worthwhile in a man like that.

To Perry’s immense surprise, the king began to rise from the mud. His hands were shaky, and he swayed on his feet, but after a brief stumble he was up and trudging to Xiyan’s body.

“Are you — how are you alive?” asked Perry. He’d seen the staff go straight through the king, and had seen the king fall.

“The third sphere do not die easily,” said Luo Yanhua.

When the king got to Xiyan’s severed head, he collapsed to his knees. “It is done,” he said. He began to weep, and Perry stood there awkwardly, not sure what to do. When the king had finished, he looked at the portal, then at Perry. “Why did she do it?”

“I don’t know,” said Perry. “It might have been to get some power, some element of her skills I never knew about. More likely … she liked the feeling of it. She liked getting away with things, getting close to people, having that moment of leaping out from the shadows and turning the tables. She was contemptible. It might have been both things.”

“But why them?” asked the king. “Why my sons, my kingdom?”

“It’s just where she ended up,” said Perry. “No one knew about her, or how to stop her.” He looked at the king’s wound, which was packed with bloody mud. “Maya and I were the only ones, and we weren’t sent until it was too late.”

The king rose to his feet and regarded the portal. “There are more like her out there?”

“Yes,” said Perry. Different flavors of asshole. Maya was right.

“Then I must go fight them too, and bring them to justice,” the king replied, nodding to himself. He began walking to the portal on unsteady feet, as if drawn to it.

Perry wanted to stop him, or to object. He hadn’t known the king for all that long, and felt as though he’d had the wrong idea for most of that time. He didn’t know whether his interests were, beyond the matter of Xiyan, aligned with the king’s. If the king stayed here, he would be nothing, but if the king moved into the many worlds … it was hard to say.

The king slipped through the portal. Perry knew he would never know the outcome, and tried to make peace with that.

“Before you go, I must say that I was wrong about Marchand,” said Luo Yanhua, who had come to stand beside Perry.

“He’s not a person,” said Perry, almost automatically.

“I was wrong about how you treated him,” said Luo Yanhua. “He is your companion.” Her fingers went to his chest. “You gave a piece of yourself to save him. You imbued him with your power.”

“Yes,” said Perry. It had been an accident, but if he’d known it was possible, he probably would have done it anyway.

He looked down at the helmet and saw that it had already started repairing itself. He wondered if that was his own passive energy at work, or somehow March’s doing. The screen turned on, and was briefly covered with error messages that quickly minimized themselves to a set of notifications in one corner.

“I hope that your next world is less violent,” said Luo Yanhua. “But I suspect it won’t be.”

“Here’s hoping,” said Perry.

He took one last look at the Great Arc as he approached the portal. There was more to this world, but there was more to every world, and he couldn’t imagine staying here, not with as many bridges as he’d burned. If he stuck around, he might be able to hit third sphere, then fourth, and possibly rise to such heights that he’d be able to travel through the many worlds on his own. He had advantages over other people, and it was possible he could learn to leverage them into a greater position.

Instead, he stepped through the portal, off to some new world.