The Stargazer's War - Chapter 2.9

Chapter 2.9: New Objectives

“Xavier, what in the ever-loving fuck was that?”

I froze. My brows shot up in surprise, less at the anger in Charlotte’s voice than the fact she’d actually cursed.

“It was a good deal,” Xavier said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Like hells it was,” Charlotte snapped. “At the very least two of those three exchanges were a net loss. We could’ve gotten an ebbstrix feather ourselves instead of offering an open ended favor to the gods damned Arcadian Gardener, and mutual silence does nothing but favor her. She doesn’t need to inform the sects of our presences to utterly destroy us, but our knowledge of her location was our only real leverage.”

“Okay, okay, hold up.” I blinked. “You know who that was?”

Charlotte sighed. “She told us, Cal. ‘Arcadia beckons,’ remember?”

Xavier stared at her unflinchingly. “We need those boons. She clearly knows something we don’t if she’s offering a chance to earn her favor.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Think about it. The task is a red herring. There’s nothing we can accomplish that a cultivator at her level can’t. She wanted two things from us: our silence, and that question. We could’ve taken the boons for just those, hunted the ebbstrix ourselves, and been off world by the end of the week.”

“Hold on,” I tried to step in. “Who’s the Arcadian Gardener?”

“A folk tale, more than anything else,” Charlotte explained. “One of the more powerful wandering masters in this region of space. The fact she’s in the dueling stars system at all is huge news—news we can’t share, but news nonetheless. She’s known for setting up shop on habitable planets to cultivate in private and add native lifeforms to her garden. No-one knows for sure, but estimates put her somewhere in the high active or low celestial stages.”

A knot formed in my throat. “You’re telling me we just struck a deal with one of the strongest cultivators in the galaxy, because we just… stumbled into her domain?”

Charlotte shook her head. “We didn’t stumble into anything. Either she knew we were here and purposefully set up shop next door, or something else drove us to her.”

I blinked. “Something else?”

“I have a theory.” Charlotte’s face darkened. “I really hope I’m wrong, but some of the things she said in there…”

“She thinks I’m going to start a war.”

“Maybe,” Charlotte said. “It seems likely, given how much your qi threatens to overturn existing power structures, but that doesn’t quite fit.”

“She called it a stealth technique.” I nodded along. “She could’ve been talking about my Vac Suit, but it sounded more like she meant my seemingly invisible core. You think she didn’t know about my qi.”

“With cultivators at her level…” Charlotte exhaled through her cheeks. “I’d never assume they don’t know something. Odds are she’s listening to us right now. It’s just as likely that comment was meant to throw us off.”

I shuddered. I’d always known my qi, the infinite sea’s qi, would change things. Threads the galaxy as we knew it ran on tight control over a vast but fundamentally finite amount of qi. What would the Right Eye think when people started cultivating without needing access to their focus rooms? What would the Black Maw think?

War seemed… if not the natural conclusion to my Way, at the very least a likely occurrence. I’d have to meditate on that.

“So now what?” I asked.

“Now we dance to her tune,” Charlotte answered. “Because someone struck a deal without discussing it first.”

“We were at her mercy.” Xavier rejoined the conversation. “We had little choice but to accept her offer.”

Charlotte scowled. “There’s always a choice. There’s always another edge. We could’ve negotiated. We could’ve left. We could’ve all agreed rather than one of us unilaterally deciding.”

“I’m… inclined to agree with Xavier. She’s too far out of our league. From the outset she had us at a disadvantage, and we can’t even begin to guess what she actually wanted out of us. Best we can do is go along for the ride and hope these boons are worth it.”

“Not you too,” Charlotte grumbled at me. “You need to stop trusting people. Both of you. You’re going to get yourselves killed.”

“Would distrusting her have changed anything?” Xavier asked.

“It is what it is,” I argued instead. “We unmake the deal. Our only path is to fulfill our side and hope those boons are worth it. If you’re right about her identity… gifts from someone at that level could change everything.”

“None of that matters if we can’t complete her task before this planet kills you,” Charlotte snapped. “Threads, we could be stuck here for years, and that’s assuming we don’t all get caught in a month when it comes time to blow up those void beast eggs.”

“We’ll overcome this trial,” Xavier declared. “No challenge is too great for our indomitable spirits!”

For a few tense seconds, Charlotte just stared at him. “That’s it. I’m done.”

She stormed off in the direction of Lucy’s clearing.

I blinked and looked up at Xavier. “Did she just…?”

Xavier shrugged. “She does that. We’ll be back together by morning.”

I let out a long-suffering sigh. “Guess we’d better head back. I’d rather not camp out here if we can avoid it.”

“An eventful day calls for a good night’s rest,” Xavier announced as he too headed off.

“Yeah,” I muttered as I followed. “Wouldn’t that be nice.”

I ran through everything that’d just happened again and again as we walked the multi-hour trek back to Lucy, from my near-death experience against the ebbstrix to our nearer-death encounter with the Arcadian Gardener. I’d have to read up on the ‘folk tale’ once we got back, see what the local net had to say about her. Charlotte hadn’t mentioned anything about people making deals with the wandering master, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a history there.

The ebbstrix fight drove home how intensely our little group wanted for ranged options. Unfortunately, neither Xavier’s nor Charlotte’s Ways really accommodated such. Threads, the entire purpose of finding the ebbstrix feather had been to make Xavier better at fighting in melee.

That left me. By its nature, my spiritual sense reached far further than anyone else’s at my level, though the moment I made contact with the infinite sea targeting anything smaller than a solar system fell off the table. Still, my Way was a lot less settled than the others’, and it was possible with the right meditations I could come up with some sort of ranged technique. That’d require figuring out a way to get my qi to actually interact with things, as well as to keep its shape outside my immediate sphere of influence.

I wasn’t solving either of those problems any time soon, so for the foreseeable future ranged attacks remained little more than a pipe dream.

As for our deal with the Arcadian Gardener… I shuddered. None of it sat right with me. The idea that I’d start a war, that she’d known how we’d found her without realizing my qi was any more than a stealth technique, seemed ridiculous. There were too many unknowns, the worst of which the task she’d given us.

I couldn’t for the life of me fathom why she needed us to find this thing. Sure, she might’ve had faith in our abilities given we’d managed to find her, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed we actually hadn’t. The ebbstrix had flown into her domain. If we’d just followed it, we would’ve found our way there whether or not I’d spotted the cloned bit of jungle.

That left two options. Either Charlotte was right and the task truly was a red herring, a seemingly tall ask to trick us into ignoring how important our silence and the future question were, or the Arcadian Gardener had a secondary motive: keeping us on Ilirian.

I didn’t doubt this supposed entity actually existed, nor that finding it would be possible with our skillset. It felt to me more like the Gardener had an idea how long it would take us, and didn’t want us leaving the planet until that much time had passed.

The thought frightened me. It left us as little more than pawns in some grand scheme. Threads, it was entirely possible she wanted us to start a war. Maybe that’s why she needed us planetside. Some leader of some important faction was on their way, and the Gardener wanted us here to show us off.

I sent a pulse of qi through my heart meridian to calm its pounding. I needed a drink. I needed a good night’s sleep. I needed to get off this threads forsaken planet.

At least one of those options actually seemed possible.

My thoughts continued on in circles of what-ifs and what-can-we-actually-do-about-its as we made our way home. The whole ordeal left me with staggeringly few answers to an increasingly heaping mound of questions, but by the time Lucy’s matte white hull came into view, my musings had long run their course.

Dinner awaited us in the dining room—some kind of curry the name of which I couldn’t pronounce—but Xavier took his to one of the cargo holds to get started crafting his focus, while Charlotte dined in silence as she pored over what I assumed to be tales of encounters with the Arcadian Gardener.

So I briefed Lucy on everything that’d happened.

She’d already heard the broad strokes, or course. Both Charlotte and I had spoken to her over our holopads while we’d walked, so instead I filled her in on the details. She expressed concern over my recklessness in the ebbstrix fight, but upon analysis couldn’t any obvious alternatives to the way I’d approached it. The second of the day’s events garnered more interest.

“I’m worried about this Gardener,” she said. “I don’t know enough about her to piece together what she wants or how she’ll behave.”

“But you know some things? Have you met her before? She offered her salutations.”

“We’ve never met, no. This is my first real visit to Black Maw territory, which as I understand she rarely leaves. In all likelihood we have mutual acquaintances, though.”

I blinked. That was more about Lucy’s past than I was accustomed to hearing. “I take it you can’t reach out to those acquaintances?”

“Not without severe consequences, first and foremost your probable death.”

“Okay let’s not do that, then,” I said with a grin. “What do you know about her?”

“Little more than you, I’m afraid. I know that garden of hers is closer to my soulspace than a physical location, though from the sound of it rather than sitting adjacent to reality it superimposes itself upon it. The theory behind it is fascinating, but far far beyond what you need to worry about right now.”

“Right. Leave the extra-dimensional stuff to the big kids. Got it. Does she have a reputation? Fairness? Duplicity? Anything like that?”

“Not that I’m aware of. It’s more… you need to be careful, Cal. Cultivators at that level… they don’t see the galaxy in the same scale you do. Their objectives span decades if not centuries, and the entire Dueling Stars system probably isn’t big enough to even be considered a pawn in whatever game they’re playing. If she’s taken an interest in you, she expects you to affect the galaxy as a whole.”

“Isn’t that a charming thought.” I set down my spoon. “It lends credence to her comments about starting a war, though. That’s not the kind of thing I want to get caught up in.”

“It would seem you already are.” Lucy changed tact. “It does little good to worry about events beyond your control, and I don’t believe I have to explain why the Arcadian Gardener’s plans qualify as such.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “We’re all just… too small.”

“But you’re changing that,” Lucy said, “one step at a time. Already Charlotte’s reached bronze at rate that’d mark her a prodigy everywhere outside the galaxy’s most influential loci of power, and now that you’ve found the ebbstrix feather, Xavier isn’t too far behind. Once we leave this place, I’m confident you’ll continue to advance beyond even them, and sure the Way grows narrower and more treacherous the further you walk it, but the three of you are taking some of the swiftest, most confident first strides I’ve ever seen.”

“You’re right.” I exhaled. “You’re always right.”

“I’ve been at this a fair bit longer than you have.”

I chuckled. “One step at a time, huh? Guess I’d better keep stepping.” I pushed myself to my feet, reaching for my empty curry bowl only for Lucy to snatch it away and deposit in the dishwasher before it could. I jokingly shook my fist at her.

I left the dining room behind for my quarters, stopping on the way to feed Nick’s tree. Theoretically, a Salazar’s Snap could survive on as little or as much qi as you give them—it was one of the things that made them great for botanical experimentation—but Lucy’s auto-injector had a minimum setting. If I didn’t match the light qi with my own dark qi, the ‘natural’ tree would outgrow and risk smothering its twin. We could’ve cut off the flow of qi entirely, but I needed these trees to grow.

My core ever so slightly depleted, I stepped into my bedroom to feed the other drain on my limited reserves.

The void beast egg sat on the desk in a vaguely nest-shaped pile of blankets, the lights off and the thermostat low to offer it as cold and dark an environment as we could. It seemed to prefer that. I certainly didn’t mind it.

“Hey, buddy,” I told the egg as I sat in the chair in front of it. “You wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had.”

I first noticed the problem when I peered at it with my spiritual sense. The egg always felt weak by the end of the day, the seed of qi that’d become its core thin and faltering. Tonight, I could barely sense it.

Forcing the concern back, I placed a hand atop the glossy black shell and pulled qi from my center and into its. It drank hungrily of my offering, the tiny bit of it that still clung to life stabilizing and solidifying ever so slightly.

Then it kept pulling.

For fear of depriving it, of starving this kindred spirit I’d found, I let it. In but a handful of minutes, the egg appeared to my sense healthy and whole, alive as any one of us. For the time being, at least, I no longer worried for its immediate survival.

I had a bigger problem.

The egg yet lived, and with any luck it’d hatch around the same time as its broodmates, but the qi I’d spent to keep it alive hadn’t come cheap. As my focus dove inward, as I analyzed my core and compared it to its state before the night’s feeding, a different type of panic arose.

I was running out.

The hells with getting caught, with destroying the void beasts, with the damage this place wrought to my mental and physical health. If the egg kept needing this kind of help, I would deplete or risk sundering my core by the end of the week.

I did a quick calculation in my head. Terror set in.

I had five days to find the infinite sea, or the egg would die, and with it my best chance at crafting a focus and reaching bronze. I pushed myself to my feet.

Fuck a good night’s sleep. I had work to do.

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