NOVEL NEXT 5.26 Interlude-Reading Minds
(Galaboudine)
Mavriste was the only other person standing in the arena. The space was large enough that he could easily steer clear of Caleb’s fight.
He wasn’t just being polite.
If he intervened, the rest of the cultists would intervene themselves. Of course, Mavriste would intervene if Caleb was about to die. He’d vowed as much.
The ‘Fellowship of Measure and Might’ didn’t seem too receptive to the fact that he’d all but stated he would intervene if Caleb tried killing the cult leader too.
Neither scenario seemed very likely.
The cult’s king-like leader seemed to be in control of the battle, but only superficially.
They hurled their trident toward Caleb’s head, but the human caught the spear with ease, almost contemptuously.
Navy robes billowed as the leader leapt through the air, rematerializing their trident out of Caleb’s hands. He was unfazed, however, materializing a stave almost exactly as the trident disappeared.
Two thrusts, four. Eight. Caleb’s stance was fluid and firm at the same time, bobbing away from some barbs, batting down others. The cult leader varied their grip on the trident, aligning its prongs vertically for one strike and twisting them horizontally for the next.
An illusory form of his psychic tagalong plodded into view, pretending to be more than a figment in his mind. Macoru appeared to inspect the fighters, knowing the performance would just draw Mavriste’s eyes to what ‘she’ was pretending to look at.
Then, once his eyes were actually focused, she really would be seeing it too.
Mavriste gave a subtle nod in agreement. He noticed it as soon as she pointed it out, but it wasn’t something he would pay attention to immediately. As usual, his sister’s council was invaluable. He could only hope he gave advice half the quality of hers.
The cult leader was too impatient in their assault, employing new patterns too regularly without mixing in previous ones. Caleb was having to guess less and less, and you could see it in his defensive style.
He spent less and less energy dodging, and more of the cult leader’s trident thrusts were being blocked and parried. Caleb was even sneaking in jabs of his own, knocking aside the Vorak’s weapon the moment they began a thrust.
The cult leader needed to change something fast, or their congregants were going to realize the fact that Caleb had yet to move a single step from the arena’s center.
For all their lack of progress, the cult leader seemed undaunted.
They went for a wide sweep, leveled just below Caleb’s shoulders.
He dipped backward, surely tipping himself over—no, he braced his body with his stave, pushing himself back upright while the cult leader backed off for some distance.
“Good,” they smiled. “Very good. I knew Mavriste wouldn’t bring a slouch to our shores.”
The rak’s Starspeak was surprisingly good for someone who—like Mavriste—had never left the planet.
Her illusory form was attempting to tap into some of his muscle memory, pantomiming some of the fight’s moves, trying to recreate the sensation for herself.
It was distracting. Even more so because she was doing it within his own field of view, almost exactly next to the fight in question.
She stuck her tongue out at him. Only rarely did the ‘real’ Macoru stoop to that level of childish sibling rivalry. His tagalong version did so much more easily.
Then again, he probably did the same to her.
“You won’t die if I fan the flames a few degrees hotter, will you?” the cult leader sneered.
“It’s your funeral pyre,” Caleb shrugged, adding,
That last bit had been aimed directly at the cult leader. None of the surrounding devotees had heard the words. Mavriste almost hadn’t. Even with Mavriste vigilant for signals coming off the human, Caleb was simply too far beyond his psionic perception.
The cult leader abandoned their trident, flexing their claws instead and leaping right into Caleb’s personal space.
It was the right move, tactically speaking—though Mavriste was rather sure the cult leader didn’t know that. There was a solid chance Caleb didn’t either.
Rather stubbornly, Caleb held his ground against the first few swipes. His arms were longer, and he moved them in a blur, getting the backs of his palms inside the rak’s forearms, deflecting each claw strike without tangling with the hand itself.
However, when the cult leader finally mixed in a kick towards his knee, Caleb was finally forced to move.
He picked the targeted leg up, delivering a piercing kick to the stomach that sent the cult leader back a number of paces.
The cult leader finally appeared to be pressuring Caleb. They picked themselves up from the kick, flinging a ground spike toward Caleb, only to try and skewer him with another bouquet of spikes the moment he dodged the first one.
As he spun around, another cluster of spikes came up, this time almost directly from underfoot, instead of angled like they were coming from the cult leader. From below like that, the spikes were just spread out enough that Caleb would risk spikes in whatever direction he dodged—he didn’t dodge.
Instead, Caleb took the brunt of the attack, materializing a pane of crystal between him and the pointed spikes as they formed. The precipitation of matter from two simultaneous constructs blended together awkwardly, fusing the solids in places. Caleb’s translucent pane left him several feet off the ground, standing on a table where his enemy’s own spikes formed the table’s legs.
Mavriste frowned.
The more widely accepted answer was to keep your cascade underfoot and avoid the spike entirely. Spikes tended to be heavy, sharp, and fast—the good ones were anyway.
As the cult’s leader summoned more ground spikes in an effort to herd Caleb, the Human demonstrated that same widely accepted answer. Three, four, five times in a row, Caleb slid out of the way of a spike or cluster the heart beat before it burst into existence.
He was varying how much he moved too, avoiding some spikes by inches, others by feet, seemingly at random. It gave off a sense that the cult leader wasn’t aiming correctly.
Except that wasn’t true.
The speed of the cult leader’s spikes was good, well above average. And yet Caleb was avoiding them consistently, like he knew they were coming.
Mavriste focused his psionics, following a hunch.
<…He’s picking up on a tell,> Macoru recognized.
Mavriste was cascading the whole arena, making sure to do so softly—even Caleb’s gentle cascade could push through, so it wasn’t going to affect the bout. The cult leader’s spikes had the same cascadable ripple that was inseparable from the technique itself, but it was a far smaller ripple than average, but Caleb was still reacting like— there!
Caleb had missed his cascade for a brief moment as he shuffled his feet to a new position. He hadn’t been cascading the ground, and yet he’d avoided the newest spike anyway.
Macoru nodded.
Caleb was ready to fend with the cult leader’s next foray into melee range. Forgoing his stave this time, Caleb dropped into an absurdly low stance, levering the trident’s dangerous points up and away.
The cult leader had anticipated it and tried to force Caleb into a grapple, shifting his grip from the trident to Caleb’s wrist. The Human’s counter was a textbook over-shoulder throw that didn’t quite go correctly.
As the cult leader was flung back toward the arena’s center, they got a hand on the longer locks of Caleb’s hair, tugging him off balance too.
A flashbang detonated near their heads and Caleb was on his feet first, trying to hide how much he was fuming.
Mavriste couldn’t blame him. Even among ruthless Vorak, pulling hair was a child’s move.
Caleb materialized a small band and tied his hair back in a ponytail. The cult leader at least looked embarrassed. The move might have been on reflex.
the cult leader growled. Psionically. They were saving breath because they were catching on more to the gap between them and Caleb.
The fight began alternating between two modes: close quarters fighting, and the ground spike dodging game. Switch to spikes and corral Caleb towards the edge of the arena, then press in with their trident, claws, and fangs.
But Caleb was repelling each assault, slipping past to the safety of the arena’s center again, only to dodge more ground spikes. He was no longer dodging by seemingly random distances. Each spike was coming closer and closer to his skin.
The attacks were getting more layered. Feints properly mixed in, not aiming for damage, but to force reactions that the cult leader could exploit.
To a layman’s eye, Caleb looked on the ropes, badly pressured even. He seemed to be forced around the arena at every turn, frantically struggling to keep up with the cult leader’s seamless string of attacks.
The only room Caleb bought himself was the occasional counterattack where a quick jab flickered toward the cult leader’s head. The first one seemed to land, interrupting the onslaught for a moment, but the second accomplished much less in the face of new defensive head gear.
But to Mavriste’s more experienced eye, Caleb was putting on a masterclass performance flop.
He didn’t have a scratch on him.
It seemed like he was only barely able to dodge attacks by a hair’s breadth…
But it was that way with all of them.
Mavriste thinned a section of his firewall. He wanted to sharpen his psionic senses to the limit, trying to sense exactly what psionic tell Caleb had picked up on. He was reading the cult leader’s fighting style like a book, and Mavriste was sure that only the three of them had realized it.
<…Do you even know you’re doing it?> Mavriste wondered, not quite aiming the question at Macoru.
Caleb faltered. The spike he’d been a millisecond from dodging dug across his shoulder and cheek as he rolled away from it.
Red blood stained the arena for what was surely the first time in the island’s history.
A raucous cheer went up from the crowd giving even Mavriste a start. He hadn’t realized just how quiet they’d gotten.
The cult leader actually froze. Shock was their only reaction to the spike finding its mark; they’d expected Caleb to dodge like the rest.
Caleb, on the other hand, did not freeze.
Instead, he stomped over to sock Mavriste in the face.
“Can you not?” he hissed in Starspeak. “Kinda in the middle of something.”
Without waiting for an answer, he swung at the rak’s head. Mavriste was almost too slow to react himself, trying to parse what just happened. Combat training kicked in though, and his head ducked out of the way.
<[Dude,] sort out your signals. Stop doubling up on me,> Caleb complained. His tone was less aggressive than his physical posture.
Ah, he was legitimately asking Mavriste to be more careful with his psionics, but he was also playing an angle for the audience.
‘The Human isn’t scared of Mavriste, and Mavriste could fight the whole island single-handed’.
“I apologize,” Mavriste said simply. “It was an unintentional psionic…blip. I didn’t realize it would shake your concentration.”
“My concentration would be fine in a real fight,” Caleb complained. “But I’m working against training here, so, y’know…knock it off.”
He began to turn back to the fight, when Macoru commented,
And Caleb let out an exasperated sigh, turning back.
Mavriste’s blood ran cold. He’d missed it the first time, but that one had been unmistakable.
Macoru picked up on it too.
‘He’s hearing me’, she’d been about to say.
Caleb did not miss Mavriste’s shock. For a single moment, he matched the expression with confusion of his own. It lasted one heartbeat before he caught onto something. Caleb’s eyes slid over, looking at the empty space next to Mavriste.
This whole time, Mavriste had been wondering what the cult leader had been feeling. With Caleb seeming to read his very thoughts…
No. This was what it felt like for someone to simply see right through you.
The empty space next to Mavriste was not empty.
Not in Mavriste’s own mind.
It was Macoru’s turn to feel overwhelming fear and dread.
Caleb could see her.
How?
It was impossible. Had to be.
Even if he was the Lightbringer, even if he’d invented psionics, it wasn’t possible! It couldn’t be!
And yet, Caleb slid his eyes back to Mavriste’s, locking with him. Knowing.
<…Later,> Caleb said, dragging his attention back to the suspended fight.
Mavriste’s attention went to his own psionics. What changed? Caleb hadn’t detected Macoru before. They’d sailed all night with Macoru yapping in Mavriste’s ear, and Caleb picked up none of it.
The firewall.
He’d thinned the smallest portion of it to better sense Caleb’s own psionics. Mavriste hadn’t meant for that thinning to cut both ways. The modification he’d made had been strictly one-way. At least, it had been intended to be.
Had that really been enough for Caleb to glean so much more than before?
Mavriste smoothed over the modification.
But if Caleb heard, he gave no indication of it.
Out loud, he spoke dramatically, playing to the crowd, but the psionics words he kept for just the cult’s leader. Threatening him.
“Lucky shot,” he said, touching his wounds and materializing patches for the bleeding. The gouges were shallow.
It sounded like Caleb was a sore loser, playing off the strike.
the cult leader said, squaring off warily.
The cult leader’s eyes narrowed.
As shocked as Mavriste was about Caleb’s psionic prowess, he had to give the Human credit. He’d lured the cult leader into a beautifully woven trap. The cult leader had been lured into issuing a challenge he couldn’t win, but even more so, Caleb had given him an out.
Caleb settled into a more offensive stance—one Mavriste recognized was ready to exploit his jet propulsion trick. He could end the match in a single blow if need be.
“Hold,” the cult leader called. “You. Cyan. Retrieve the blade.”
The cultist in question blinked in surprise. They almost questioned the order, but then scampered off without seeking any clarification or confirmation.
‘The’ blade. Not ‘a’ blade.
“You are a better Adept than I,” the cult leader admitted. “But I would still see if I cannot challenge you with this.”
The cyan-band cultist returned with a straight blade with a dark hilt resting in a weathered wooden scabbard.
An ancestral weapon, no doubt, one created by an Adept from history, one lucky enough to achieve a result they couldn’t understand why it should be impossible.
Mavriste felt it too. The psionic hum of…something.
But no, that couldn’t be right. This sword was at least one century old. Maybe two. Psionics had been widely found in the last three years.
“This blade is the most valuable item in the hemisphere,” the cult leader explained. “We believe might matters more than money. But our Fellowship likes to collect the obscenely valuable, see? Mockery. It’s not really important. This relic though…is said to confer rak who wield it with the ability to know their opponents mind. I wielded this blade once before psionics exploded throughout the universe, and I was shocked to recognize some of the sensations.”
The cult leader drew the blade, and the hum it emitted altered, becoming sharper but simultaneously fainter.
Mavriste was genuinely at a loss for words.
Macoru slid out a panel of Mavriste’s firewall, letting her voice out.
“Choose your weapon, and face me,” the cult leader said.
Caleb half-glanced back at Mavriste.
Instead of answering her, Caleb answered the cult leader’s challenge.
“I am my weapon,” Caleb said simply. “I’ll fight by hand. Less chance I screw up and kill you by mistake.”
“No Adeptry,” the cult leader said. “Skill against skill.”
“Nothing else enters this arena?”
“Nothing else.”
“Done,” Caleb agreed. “No countdown. Just go.”
The rak advanced with the blade ready to thrust, and this close Mavriste recognized that the blade itself was an exotic material reacting almost invisibly with the air. Whatever ‘proto-psionic’ effect the blade conferred, it was a physical threat too.
Exotic blades like that could cleave through… the augmentations Caleb exploited in his hand!
Mavriste moved to interrupt the fight, but the cult leader moved faster.
They lunged for Caleb with wild joy written across their face. They might have heard about Caleb catching a sword by hand down at the dock. They could be aiming for this from the start.
Even as dread clawed through Mavriste’s belly, he knew he was too slow, he wouldn’t make it time.
Caleb moved even before the cult leader though, not moving his hand for the blade, but his foot. Not at the sword though…
His leg whipped upward in a kick, too far short of the rak to do any physical damage—but the cult leader’s head knocked back anyway.
A shoe tumbled to the arena’s floor. Caleb’s shoe.
He’d kicked it right off his foot into the rak’s snout.
They were off balance, not even by that much. But it was so much more window than Caleb needed. With the smoothness that only came from practice, Caleb ducked in, locking down the cult leader’s wrist.
He twisted both their arms in a wide circle, before they kicked apart. Caleb came away wielding the exotic blade.
Mavriste noticed the moments he spared to cascade the blade and scan the proto-psionics embedded within. It only took those same moments for his opponent to realize they’d lost.
But this was a stupid cult, so they kept fighting anyway. Honorable surrender wasn’t something this cult respected, it seemed.
Caleb, all too casually, flipped the blade in his hand so to swing with the blunt side. He faked high for the cult leader’s nose, still bloody from the shoe, before delivering a horizontal chop with the sword low, right into the rak’s belly.
The old blade shattered with the stress, but the cult leader still went tumbling backward out of the arena.
Mavriste agreed.
As subtly as he could, he stepped down from the arena dais, leaving only the Lightbringer as the day’s victor. Minus one shoe.
He tossed the broken remains of the blade toward the stunned cult leader, still clutching their belly wound.
A storm of emotions crossed their face. Anger at the broken relic, dismay at how Caleb had won, but also exhilaration too.
“You broke it!” the cult leader huffed. They were so dismayed still, they almost didn’t sound angry. Almost.
“Sorry,” Caleb shrugged. “Was it actually expensive?”
“Priceless,” the cult leader bemoaned. Their eyes cast over the crowd of onlookers, who were decidedly less uncertain about their anger.
They were seconds away from storming Caleb.
“…No, weapons are meant to be used, aren’t they?”
“I don’t really hate to tell you this, but I don’t really care about your cult philosophy,” Caleb said.
“Maybe not, but you’ve given me, at least, an outstanding reminder of what this Fellowship is for,” they said, sounding genuinely grateful. “I only wish you’d have used the edge. Can you imagine the notoriety? Being killed by that blade?”
Caleb shot Mavriste a glance, but he could only shrug.
“Well, regardless, my end of the bargain to uphold now.”
“Yeah, no delays if you don’t mind,” Caleb said pulling his shoe back on.
The cult leader beckoned Mavriste and Caleb into the manor once again, toward the basement this time.
“I want to know how you got the corpse too,” Caleb said. “Every detail.”
“There’s not much to tell,” the cult leader admitted. “We bought it from the ‘Sto Stooges…a few years ago. It wasn’t anything special. They just knew we had a history of buying obscenely expensive rare items just to snatch them away from people who care too much about junk like that—apologies, ‘junk’ wouldn’t be the best word, would it?”
“No,” Caleb agreed darkly.
“We didn’t even know it was a corpse before we bought it,” they said, hauling open the heaviest door in the basement.
Chilled air rushed out to greet them, and Caleb immediately frowned.
In the middle of the refrigerated room, a human’s corpse lay peacefully on a rudimentary slab.
“Never even thought about burying him, did you?” Caleb accused.
“No. The Fellowship’s style in the past has been to interfere with valuable purchases, bartering what treasures we have for ones bigger and better, causing chaos in the luxury markets as much as we can.”
“But you never managed to unload this one,” Caleb observed, running his fingers across the corpse’s arm.
His frown deepened.
“No. It was strange. The siblings we traded with in Pudiligsto believed it was very valuable, but there’ve been no takers since.”
“Those siblings owned a berth on a cargo ship that was delivering a coffin half filled with Vorak bones that were very convincingly modified to seem fake,” Caleb explained.
“The bones were coming here?”
“That’s what the manifest said,” Caleb nodded.
“The bones actually were fake? Or they merely seemed to be?”
“See for yourself,” Caleb said, producing a small piece of one. “See the fractalling?”
“Yes. They’re definitely fake,” the cult leader nodded. “The bones are real biological materials, but they’re placed by Adept-made cell deposit factories. It’s complex bio-engineering.”
“Cell deposit factories,” Caleb repeated. “So they arrange matter into convincing facsimile’s of cells?”
“It’s not unlike Adept patching,” the Mavriste relayed, nodding towards Caleb’s wounds. “If you looked on the inside of the bone’s cells, you wouldn’t find a nucleus or any functional parts, but it would hold its shape, possible be usuable as housing or staging for cloned cell lines…I can’t think of why you’d form them into bones though.”
“Oh, I’ll do you one better than bones,” Caleb said, bitterly. He nodded toward the slab in the middle of the refrigerator.
“You don’t mean…” the cult leader began.
“Just like the bones: that corpse is a fake,” Caleb said.