Weight of Worlds

Ranvir straightened. The purple light surrounding him died down. The cubicles underneath him hushed as one. Tension bled into the room, supplanting the light he’d been emitting.

His fingers twitched as he stood, thin lines of space supporting his weight. His stomach roiled with uncertainties, flurrying rushes of jittery yellows, nauseous greens, and sputtering angry reds.

“Sir,” one tethered said. A student, once on the brink of dismissive, now with reverence, looked up at him with wide-eyes. “Is it time?”

Was it? Certainly for him, but for the others? If they were to fight, then it would have to be after he was done, he decided. They were wrong in worshiping him, but he still had to protect them. And forsake your own children? He shook his head. A poor way to think about things.

He was paving a way for his family, children, and friends to live happily without constraints. No one should have to bow their head and hide simply for existing. In order for his daughter to know her homeland, so that his son could understand the place he came from. For countless others who already have and will fall sacrifice to greater powers, he had to do this.

I shouldn’t have spent my days here. I should have stayed with Vasso, played with Frija.

“Sir?”

“A moment,” he whispered, yet in the silent chamber it carried. Scenarios and moments played out in his head. The lines playing out old scenarios and, perhaps, tracing a path he could follow. He might manage a scenario. “Leave. Vednar, if you choose to fight.”

Too many streamed out the door. Far too few ran up the staircase and into the other planes. Ranvir slipped inside space, wrapping himself in Sandstorm Rage, fueling his strength.

He could sense her now, closing in and fast. Traveling like he did, pointing the way with her tether-sense. He intercepted her tether-sense, slamming his space into hers. In moments, he clawed his way inside.

Saleema, hale despite the injuries he’d put on her a week ago, blinked eyes wide in surprise. She’d put more power into her space than he had, but he was a manipulator and attacked her structure directly.

Sand boiled around him as he struck pale bone, even as he tore her space apart. Dumping onto the plane, her ripped space flailing death-cries as it sparked out around them.

He had to pick his moment carefully. She was still not as strong as he’d feared. Weaker than a triplet master. Space bloomed around them, shoving aside the regular fabric of Vednar. Her generated material stretched his paths and shortened hers.

She, like other space-tethered, had no direct combat measures. Her Concept didn’t allow her to become faster, stronger, or even tougher. Only the innate functions of the typing granted her even enough toughness to withstand him.

Yet, his enhanced state could not slip past her. She got the spinal-cord sword between them every time, warp edge driving him back when her blows could not. As they fought, both tether-senses scanned the surroundings. Saleema noticing the people still gathering around the building, Ranvir noticing four tethered keeping their distances.

One he recognized as the obsidian triplet master from the Queen’s Palace, but the other three were unfamiliar to him. Not Ankirian though.

Ranvir had almost no warning. Her eyes, more purple than yellow, narrowed a fraction of a second beforehand. She burst past him, space rippling like heaving bubbles around her, purple light searing the eyes.

Spinning and following, Ranvir was a hint too far away from stopping her attack on the school’s space. Not that he would had he the chance.

Now!

Sansir watched in alarm as Saleema suddenly dove towards the school, a massive burst of space-mana trailing behind her, gathering steam before ripping ahead. The world rippled as it struck the building, the spatial lines straining for a moment before part of his senses simply vanished.

The interior of the building disappeared, leaving only the old ruins they ‘built’ around. Ruins which were now missing a facade. As the old Tage mansion crumbled, Sansir could for the first time see just how little remained of it. With the school’s space disconnected from Vednar, the mansion no longer had any walls or roof.

Bare rooms, dusty and weathered, crashed to the ground, throwing dirt and soil into the sky. Then Ranvir struck Saleema. Storm bolts powerful enough to tear a master apart, launched by the dozen. Sand blew past them, spattering Sansir and the others on the hill.

Saleema’s defense would’ve been enough to match Dhaakir at his most violent, yet Ranvir was attacking faster still. Beside him, Grevor let out an exasperated laugh. He was staring just as wide-eyed and Sansir realized he hadn’t seen the ancient triplet master’s siege.

And yet beyond his lover, Sansir saw something uncanny. Pashar stared at the fighters with her brows furrowed. Behind her, Amalia looked worried. He wasn’t the only one who’d seen it either, making eye contact with Kirs. She shook her head. But Dovar was already speaking. “What?”

Kasos sighed. He and Ayvir made the last of the group on the hill. People were still scattering from the rubble, but with few injuries. He spoke in Fiyan, but without the school’s rituals, Sansir couldn’t understand him. Irritated, he waved at Pashar.

“He attempts to kill her now, but he cannot manage it.”

“At all?” Grev’s voice held an edge of controlled fear.

Pashar hesitated, then exchanged words with Amalia and Kasos in Fiyan. “At this encounter. When she attacked the school, stopping further support from arriving, she opened herself up for a counter. Ranvir tried to kill her.”

“But can’t?” Sansir asked.

“She’s somehow slips the killing blow. I’m not entirely sure. They.” She nodded at Korfiyans. “Think his approach simply cannot work. Something about her soul or body, I’m uncertain.”

Sansir turned his eyes and sense to the sky. He could vaguely feel something that might be Ranvir’s frustrations rising. Perhaps that slight hitch in Saleema’s spirit was actually a hiccup in an otherwise rising curve?

Power flared then, mana rushing outward from Ranvir and Saleema. Sand and storm mana spouting dozens of meters out behind the Ankirian. Sansir gasped as he saw her fall back. She had a fist-sized gap on her left breast. He felt it then, a ripping razor of a tether-sense slashing through her soul. It caught nothing. Like watching a blade cut through a person, only to find it clean on the other side.

She launched her counter-attacks and Ranvir had definitely slowed down again. In a sprint, he’d outmatched her, but now he was exhausted and she was still gathering speed. Sansir didn’t know how much storm mana Ranvir had, but he’d stopped using it after the last strike.

“How can she continue fighting like that?” Dovar whispered. Others were joining them now. Watching as the fight slowly slipped in a north-westerly direction.

Pashar relayed the question as if he was being serious. To Sansir’s astonishment, Kasos answered. “She is almost Arkrotas. Or broken in someway.”

“We need to get some translation stones,” Kirs muttered.

“How?” Pashar asked.

“I’d need a ritual. I can find the bridge to Korfyi if I can get the time.”

“Who is the fastest?”

Grev and Ayvir raised their hands.

“Can you travel with people?”

They lowered.

Dovar tentatively raised his hand, Sansir decisively mirrored the motion. Pashar pointed at Dovar. “Get her to the capital as quickly as possible. Through the night if necessary.”

Dovar grabbed the much smaller woman and spun his own control of wind into cyclone around them.

“I would have been faster,” Sansir observed as they left.

Pashar glanced at the others approaching. “You would have left her with damage. Her skill with rituals wouldn’t have done much good if she was feverish by arrival. Obsidians could have managed it as well, but I wouldn’t trust them.”

Space mana washed over them, following moments later by a clap of thunder so loud Sansir didn’t recognize it for the sound of flesh-on-flesh. Soil, snow, and dirt trailed a rough trough driven into the dirt, leaving a sole star of purple in the sky.

“Please tell me that’s Saleema in the dirt.” Grev’s plea went silent.

“How could she even compress space that much? Is it her Attuned Technique? Her specialty?”

“I don’t know,” Pashar worried at her lower lip. “Unfortunately, we won’t do much here.”

“We can’t follow them either,” Ayvir’s voice was frank and cold. Statement of fact. “We would simply get in the way.” By the frustrated muted howls coming from his jacket, neither he nor his monkey was pleased about it. Red eyes scanned the group.

Kasos muttered something, staring down the hill yet into the middle-distance. The rest of the school was climbing the incline now.

“To the city, then.” Pashar said.