The Stargazer's War - Chapter 32

Chapter 32: Bao Long

[Cliff ahead.  Proceed with caution.]

Normally, this would be the part where I tell you I tossed and turned throughout the night, plagued by restlessness and dreams of failure in the trials to come. Either that or visited by some mysterious portent I’d neither the time nor attention to properly interpret until it was too late.

Unfortunately, this isn’t some high-budget holo streamed out to trillions of people. This was my life.

I slept like the dead. I dreamt, as I did most nights, of the infinite sea, drifting along in pleasant nothingness. The all-important duel the following morning didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

So it was with a full eight hours I plodded my way downstairs, waved to the custodian as he vacuumed the second floor hallway, and headed to the gym. There, I did a light five mile run and a few stretches to get my blood flowing without tiring myself out, and went to breakfast.

Charlotte and Xavier beat me to the cafeteria, making the trek over to housing D under the cover of strategizing while we ate. They revealed their true nefarious purpose soon enough.

“Cal, you have to eat.” Charlotte shoved a plate of hash browns across the table at me.

“I told you, I’m not hungry.”

“Even the mightiest of the ancient soulships needs to refuel,” Xavier said.

“It’s a good thing I’m not a ship,” I countered.

Xavier shook his head. “How can you hope to find glorious victory if you deny your body the strength it needs?”

“My body is not hungry,” I repeated.

Charlotte took a different tact, picking up my fork and skewering a bite of the fried potato. She pointed it at me threateningly. “You can either take this and eat it like a grown adult or I’ll feed it to you like a petulant infant.”

I stared into her eyes.

She stared back, unflinching in her resolve.

“Fine,” I grumbled and snatched the loaded utensil away from her.

It didn’t escape my notice that the pair of them watched me like particularly judgmental hawks as I slogged my way through bite after bite of hash browns. The breakfast was hot and crispy and wonderfully salty, yet no amount of deliciousness could materialize appetite where there was none.

It came as no surprise that they’d shown up for breakfast together. Whether or not they’d been speaking with each other last night, they lived together, and like clockwork they always managed to resolve their disputes by morning.

I similarly didn’t bat an eye at Nick’s absence. Sure, I hadn’t seen him since he’d stormed out yesterday, but the kid slept through breakfast more days than not. I wasn’t worried. Not yet, at least.

“Try not to use the same trick more than once,” Xavier said as we bussed our trays. “Surprise is your biggest advantage, and Long will be quick to adapt.”

I nodded along to his advice, only half-listening to the tips I’d heard a dozen times before while my mind scrambled through a much important element of my strategy: finding some good zingers.

Jokes aside, there was only upside to getting Long riled up. He would almost certainly try to hurt me anyway, so I didn’t have to worry about the repercussions of disrespecting him, so any way to throw him off his game would favor me.

Besides, making an ass of myself was my greatest talent.

I even had the advantage that while his qi would make him quicker to anger, mine kept me calm. Way, way too calm, but still calm. I figured with Long actively trying to kill me, motivation would be the least of my worries.

The three of us sat in tense silence as the transport pod whisked us to Long’s residence.

For all its hallowed name, prime location, and position as the sect’s most fiercely sought-after accommodations, housing A looked remarkably like housing D. The same sparsely-occupied seating filled the lobby; the same hanging plants dangled their leaves above; the same circular reception desk greeted new visitors.

I noticed three differences. The first was the crowding. Unlike my own abode, cadets filled housing A to the brim, doubling or even tripling up in every dorm on every floor for maximum access to that sweet, sweet qi.

Which brings me to my second observation. The air was thick with it. Easily triple the qi pervaded the environment here than at housing D, a quantifiable advantage for those that would win their way here.

The final, and perhaps starkest difference was the looks we got as we crossed the lobby. I was used to glares of superiority. I was used to morbid curiosity, disdain, and even predatory hunger, the disquieting leer given a meal to be devoured, a weakling to be exploited.

I wasn’t used to dismissal.

It… bothered me, more than perhaps it should’ve, as cadet after cadet looked up at us, lingered for under a second, then returned to whatever they’d doing. There was no interest in the strange offworlder, no disgust at the upstart mortal, only the quiet glance of momentary diversion followed by the immediate decision that we weren’t worth their attention.

It felt like I’d discovered an entirely new form of cultivator egotism. Neat.

“What do you want, mortal?” a voice snarled behind me.

I spun to find Long and his lackey Charleston sneering at us. Where Davis, the only combat instructor who didn’t hate me, was, I couldn’t guess.

I saluted as sarcastically as I could manage. Have you ever tried to salute sarcastically? It’s not easy. Good thing practice makes perfect.

“I would like to test out of combat one, Senior Cadet Long, sir.”

Long raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow—did he pluck them? I bet he plucked them—at Charlotte and Xavier behind me. “And your… reinforcements are supposed to intimidate me?”

I stayed at attention. “No, sir.”

“Too bad. You failed.” Long stepped in, bringing his face just shy of licking range as he glared into my eyes. “You don’t belong here, mortal. You’re not talented enough, not dedicated enough, not good enough, and by the end of the week, the esteemed Elder Lopez’s timer will run out, and the entire sect will see you for what you are.”

He spat at the floor beneath my feet.

“Request denied.” Long turned his back to me.

I let out an long, overdramatic sigh that, in hindsight, was probably too much. “I’d hoped I wouldn’t have to do this,” I muttered just loud enough for the eavesdroppers to hear. I raised my voice again as I addressed the asshole in front of me.

“Senior Cadet Bao Long, I, Caliban Rex, hereby challenge you to a duel.”

An overpowering silence filled the air. Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed. Nobody blinked. A chill ran down my back as I felt every eye in the room on me, every ear eagerly awaiting Long’s reply.

He let out a laugh, a single, deep and throaty outburst that tried and failed to pierce the tension in the room. “The jokester’s finally said something funny.” He spun to face me. “You formed your core, what, a week ago?”

I blinked, somewhat surprised he’d been following my progress in the official sect records. I hadn’t even seen the man since I’d stopped attending his class.

“Your attempts at humor have been duly noted,” Long sneered. As he moved to again turn his back to me, I raised my voice once more.

“I’ve challenged you to an official duel, Long.” I spoke loud enough for the whole crowd to hear, purposefully foregoing the honorifics. “By sect law you’re bound to either accept or forfeit your place at the Dragon’s Right Eye.”

Long stopped short as he realized his attempt to blow me off had failed. I wish I could’ve seen his face, but he’d kept it turned.

He rounded on me. “I will offer you one final chance to recant and apologize for this grave insult,” he growled. “I am Bao Long, chief enforcer of sect security, instructor of our most precious young, and the one-hundred-eighty-ninth strongest cultivator on all of Fyrion. You, mortal, are an upstart weakling who’s only just begun to understand what a cultivator even is. So before you open that foul mouth of yours, I’d urge you to remember your place here, and know that with these next words you speak, you court death.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. Death and I had a fling last year, but it went kind of sideways, and now things are awkward between us.” I flashed a mocking grin. “We dueling, or what?”

His left eye twitched—actually twitched, at the glibness with which I’d ignored his threat. He replied under his breath, low enough that even I mere inches away barely heard him. “You’ll pay for this.” Then he pulled back, seeming to collect himself as he answered differently for the audience. “I graciously accept this opportunity to educate. Come.” He beckoned. “To the ring.”

The silence popped like a balloon as Long turned on his heel and strode towards the gymnasium. The crowd flowed like a tide after him, a din of excited chatter and rampant speculation and blatant offense blaring through air around them.

Charlotte, Xavier, and I followed. The housing A residents kept their distance, the space around us an island in the river of cultivators, but that didn’t stop me from overhearing snippets of their conversations.

“—practically committing suicide. He can’t be that—”

“—either an idiot or he has something up his sleeve. Maybe the rumors are true about—”

“—care how many tricks he’s hiding. No way a tin beats a copper. It’s impossible.”

“—put five hundred credits the outworlder doesn’t survive the fight.”

I leaned in to whisper in Charlotte’s ear. “There’re rumors about me?”

“Of course there are. Don’t worry about them. They’ve mostly been working in your favor.”

I furrowed my brow. “Mostly?”

“Focus, Cal,” Xavier interrupted.

“Right, right. I’m focused.” I ran qi through my heart to slow its pounding, fighting off the mounting nerves. The attention was almost worse than looming duel. I’d been preparing for this fight for months now; I was ready for it. I hadn’t been ready for so many of the sect’s top cultivators excitingly chattering about watching me die.

Too bad I was going to disappoint them. I hoped.

Much like the rest of it, the housing A gymnasium was the mirror image of housing D’s but for a few minor details. The track, the dueling rings, the glass roof were all the same, yet the exercise equipment that lined the walls seemed newer, more advanced. That didn’t come as a surprise. Threads, it even made sense. Coppers needed more intense workouts than tins.

The chatter slowly died down as I caught up to Long and the mortal official who’d spotted our approach. The official made no attempt to raise his voice for the audience, though I imagined plenty of sense meridians caught the exchange nonetheless.

“Registered duel between Bao Long and Caliban Rex.” He looked to Long. “Weapons?”

“Free choice,” Long said. The decision was technically an insult as he gave up his right to force me onto a weapon I may’ve been less comfortable with, but it was one we’d expected. Against an opponent so much weaker than he, Long couldn’t afford to look like he needed such advantages.

I simply nodded and picked up a training sword from the ringside rack. Long followed suit.

The official tapped a few more times at his holopad. “Very well. You may step into the ring.”

Long effortlessly jumped onto the shoulder-height platform as if it were nothing. I handed Xavier my sunglasses and Shiver and took the stairs.

We crossed to opposite sides of the ring. I took a breath. Long glared at me.

I started cycling.

The crowd erupted into a cacophony whispers. I saw fingers pointing and wide eyes staring as my skin went deathly pale and my eyes turned black as the night sky. The world dulled around me as my qi-enhanced mind made sense of the mess of information. In hushed tones our onlookers spoke of secret techniques and black Ways, of a heart that didn’t beat and lungs that didn’t draw breath. The words demonic and necromantic came up more than once.

What I didn’t see was Nick. A pang of worry arose at bottom of my stomach.

Through practiced discipline I blocked it out, reasoned against my own uncaring thoughts that right now, only Long mattered.

I caught the slight twitch of tension in his forehead as the visible effects of my cultivation made themselves clear. That was it. He otherwise masked his surprise expertly. If doubt had reared its ugly head in the dark corners of his mind, it stayed confined to there alone.

I raised my sword. The Dragon Prepares.

Long mirrored the motion. He knew as well as I did I’d never beat him at his own game.

The crowd fell silent. The starting gong rang.

Long charged in.

I kept Cedric’s moves in reserve for the first exchange, relying on my first and foremost surprise to overcome his superior technique. My heightened senses spotted the tension in his calves as he approached. My hyper-analytical mind recognized the form before he even entered it.

The Breaking Swipe, step forty-four of The Dragon’s Fang. It was an appropriate choice, a basic forehand swing whose only counter forced my blade to meet his. Against a weaker opponent, he’d break right through.

I stepped into The Fifth Guard anyway.

Long’s sword crashed into mine with all the force of a copper tier cultivator backed by self-righteous fury.

And my defense held.

His weapon bounced back from the collision, putting it just out of position enough for my fist to shoot past his guard and collide right between his shocked eyes. Red dripped down his nose.

Long back stepped.

We’d trained that exact counter a thousand times. He should’ve been ready for it. He should’ve known exactly what I’d go for and found a way to either exploit it or a flaw in my execution.

But Long hadn’t fathomed that my scrawny, “tin” self could’ve repelled his strike.

And now I’d drawn first blood.

I flashed him a shit-eating grin. “You fell for The Fifth Guard? Really? And they let you teach?” My jibe came out in the inhumanly calm tone my brain and lung meridians inflicted upon me, simultaneously robbing it of its comedic timing and creating the illusion I found this whole duel beneath me.

A blood vessel bulged on Long’s face.

I stayed on the defensive, leaning in to my spirit’s natural tendency towards stillness as Long resumed his attack.

In an impressive display of stubborn arrogance I couldn’t help but admire, he fell into The Breaking Swipe a second time, daring me to repeat my same defense.

I wasn’t that stupid.

I tensed my muscles in just the right places to imply I intended to use The Fifth Guard again, but instead slipped into my true counter for Long’s assault: Cedric-seven.

I brought my wooden sword up and at an angle just shy of parallel to his swing. The maneuver deflected his strike ever so slightly upward, just enough to send it sailing over my head as I ducked beneath it.

I leaned into the strike, slipping under Long’s guard to retaliate with a blow of my own, but the senior cadet hadn’t gotten this far without honing his instincts. Sensing the danger, he leapt back the moment his attack missed. I scored a grazing hit against his left ribs, not enough to end the duel, but a hit nonetheless.

I dashed past him before he could bring his sword to bear on my exposed back, crossing to the other side of the ring before I spun again to face him.

“Where did you learn that?” Long snarled at me.

“Not from you, obviously,” I answered glibly. “That move’s actually good.”

Again he charged, abandoning The Breaking Swipe for The Fang That Bites. I met it with Cedric-two, again forcing Long onto the back foot, again failing to land a lethal blow as he reacted just in time to mitigate the damage.

The fight began in earnest.

Back and forth and back and forth we struck, our exchanges growing longer and more intense with every pass. It didn’t take long for the obvious pattern to emerge. Whenever I pulled out another of Cedric’s forms for the first time or used one against an attack I hadn’t yet faced, I gained the upper hand, either forcing Long back or landing a superficial hit. Whenever I repeated myself, Long found an opening.

I realized quickly I was on a clock. I only had so many steps in my back of tricks.

My greatest advantage, however, wasn’t physical. It was emotional. I took every opportunity to demean the egotistical man, mocking his skills, his appearance, the very fact that he seemed unable to beat the lowest ranked cultivator in the entire sect. More so than at his defenses or stamina, I chipped away at his pride.

He charged me again.

I met his advance with Cedric-three, the same sword-tip down maneuver I’d first used against Xavier. Long recognized my second use of the form, and ducked beneath my counterattack. I transitioned into The Plunging Fang, but had to abort the attack to jump over Long’s leg-sweep. I landed unevenly, and struck out with his offhand.

His fist collided with my chest and knocked me off balance. I danced back as best I could, but Long came unrelenting. Cedric-two, The Third Guard, The Seventh Guard, Cedric-four, The Dragon’s Scales, parry after parry I evaded Long’s furious assault, his blade inching closer with every exchange.

“For someone named Long, you seem to keep coming up short,” I taunted even as the tip of his sword passed barely beneath my chin.

Long didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. The sweat dripping down his brow, the increasingly red hue of his face, and the wild fury of his attacks offered reply enough.

I was running out of tricks.

Long was running out of patience.

His hands trembled with rage. His eyes stared wide and bloodshot.

He sword slammed into mine with unprecedented force, a torrent of qi shooting through his muscle meridian almost certainly more than it could handle. He’d probably damaged the meridian, actively harming his cultivation for the blow.

But it worked.

My weapon wrenched from my grip, tumbling to padded floor on the other side of the ring.

I didn’t concede. I didn’t panic. The adrenaline pumping through my veins failed to pierce the icy calculations of my mind. I recognized the disarmament for what it was and took the only action available to me.

I stepped closer.

The willingness and lack of hesitation to remain in range earned me but a handful of milliseconds’ worth of surprise—just enough to wrap my fingers around his left wrist.

I yanked with all my copper might, pulling Long off balance and sending him stumbling forward even as I used the inertia to launch myself past him.

By the time he spun around, I’d already reclaimed my sword.

“Wow, you are bright red.” I smirked at him. “You must be so embarrassed. I know I would be if I’d torn one of my meridians to disarm an opponent only to just let them get their sword back.”

A wave of chatter ran through the crowd.

“I’ll kill you!” Long roared in defiance.

I smiled and fell back into The Dragon Prepares.

I’d shown my full hand. I’d run through each and every one of Cedric’s forms and wrung every bit of unpredictability I could out of them. By all rights, Long was the superior fighter.

But I’d already won.

He blows came wild and uncontrolled, his technique falling by the wayside in his desperation to finish the job. Better yet, they fell weak upon my guard, as his injured muscle meridian flagged.

One by one I countered his flurry of blows, struggling to find opportunity to riposte as Long’s furor drove him ever deeper on the aggressive. I kept my face calm and my smirk steady, feeding Long’s rage, his embarrassment, his need to put this upstart mortal in his place.

For nearly a minute the exchange dragged on, Long’s crazed onslaught failing to penetrate my guard, yet leaving me without an opening to earn a decisive blow. I was holding. Against one of the best fighters on all of Fyrion, I was holding. I was holding beautifully. It was only a matter of time until—

Something invisible slammed into my stomach.

I doubled over, falling to my knees.

Panic reared its ugly head at the back of my mind, eroding my focus as my analytical mind spiraled down the obvious path.

Long stood over me.

I desperately tried to raise my sword, to roll back, to duck, to dodge, to do anything to avoid the killing blow I knew was coming, but I couldn’t move. At each wrist and each ankle, bands of golden qi held me in place. I tried to raise my head to look my murderer in the eye, but it too refused to budge.

This was it. I was finished. All the training, all the meditating, the friends I’d made and the questions I’d left unanswered, it was all over.

And of course it all came down to a fucking qi attack.

I didn’t mind it. My death didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

“You’ll pay for your insolence,” Long snarled his final words to me.

I shut my eyes.

I heard a flurry of footsteps, the telltale swish of a sword swinging through the air, and a great gong.

The official’s voice droned, “For use of a qi attack in an unscheduled duel, Senior Cadet Bao Long is disqualified. Cadet Caliban Rex is the victor.”

“Stop! Unhand me!”

I blinked my eyes open. Long’s sword lingered above my scalp, wrapped in tendrils of shadow, a field of shimmering translucent force, and even incased in ice as three different cultivators from the crowd moved to restrain him. The golden bands fell away from my limbs as a dozen more leapt into the ring to hold Long down.

I knelt there, staring wide-eyed as he railed against his captors, struggling desperately and futilely to escape and at on his grisly intent.

Charlotte was the first to my side. “Pretend you’re injured,” she whispered sharply into my ear.

I blinked. “What? Why?”

“Just do it,” she repeated. “Xave, help him up.”

I pantomimed a broken ankle as Xavier’s arm snaked its way under mine and pulled me to my feet. I let Charlotte do the talking.

“Out of the way, out of the way. We’ll take him to the infirmary.”

“This isn’t over!” Long spat as we passed. “I’ll kill you for this! Nobody disrespects Bao Long and lives!”

I ignored him.

Looks of shock and fear and curiosity washed over my as descended into the crowd. A few of the bold coppers reached out to pat me on the back or congratulate me on the victory, but most kept their distance, frozen in place by both the intensity of the morning’s events and their own unwillingness to impede the injured victor.

Far and away the most common reaction, the emotion that projected itself across the gymnasium to reach my gaze and pride alike, was one I hadn’t quite experienced in all my time on Fyrion.

Respect.

Even beneath the dullness of the world, the meaninglessness of our insignificance, the veil cast over my emotions by the qi coursing through me, my heart swelled at those looks. I was still an outworlder. I was still a stranger, an enigma, something not quite to be trusted. But for the first time in my life, in the eyes of those that looked upon me, I’d finally become something else.

I was a cultivator.

We continued our charade all the way onto the transport platform and aboard to pod bound for housing D. Only once the doors had shut tight behind us did I finally cease my cycling, and did Charlotte speak.

“We needed an excuse to get you out of there. If you’d given everyone who wanted to a chance to congratulate you and introduce themselves, you would’ve been stuck there for hours. There’d be at least twenty people lined up to challenge you before you could even take a breath.”

Grateful as I was for her maneuvering, I only half-listened to her explanation my emotions finally caught up with me.

I’d done it.

I’d fucking done it.

I had to call Lucy.

She picked up immediately. “Cal?”

“I won! I fucking won!”

“Language,” she chided, but didn’t press the issue. “Congratulations, Cal. I’m proud of you.”

“You need to get down here. We need to celebrate!”

“Docking request is already sent. I should be there in a few hours. How did it go? Is your rank updated?”

My brow shot up. “Good question. Let me just…” I didn’t have to go looking for it. A notification popped to the front of my holopad informing me that I’d climbed from sect rank five thousand and eight all the way to three thousand eight-twenty-six. I relayed the info to the others.

“That’s housing C!” Xavier clapped me on the back hard enough to nearly throw me from my chair. “Congratulations! I may disagree with the indirectness of your methods, but cannot help but admire the warrior’s spirit you showed on this day!”

“Thanks, Xave,” I told him, brushing past his endearingly strange compliments. “Thanks to all of you. I couldn’t have gotten close without your help.”

“You’re not out of the woods, Cal,” Charlotte warned. “Things are about to get a lot more difficult for you. You have a target on your back, and surprise won’t be in your favor for long. You’re only advantage is that you’re still only in housing C. Pretty much all of the people lower-ranked than you are still tin, but that won’t stop people higher up from taking a shot at the guy who humiliated Bao Long.”

“I’m not moving to housing C,” I said simply. “I told you. I’m not abandoning Nick.”

“That’ll raise questions.”

“And I’ll answer them as they come,” I countered. “Let me just have today, please. I won. I get to stay with the sect. I can worry about everything else tomorrow. Tonight, we party.”

The pod doors slid open as we arrived at housing D. I led the way, pride in my step and victory in my heart. Word had apparently yet to spread all the way out here, so we made it unimpeded across the lobby and onto the grand stairs. “We can hide out in my room until Lucy lands,” I told the others. “I have a bottle of champagne stashed up there for just this occasion. Our celebration starts—”

I froze mid sentence as we reached the top of the steps. My heart stopped. My breath hitched. Joy turned to ash in my throat as my eyes trailed down the third floor hallway to a sight that haunts my darkest dreams to this very day.

There stood Nick, his eyes black as the endless abyss, his hands twitching with unsettling arrhythmia, and at his feet, the pale and qi-drained corpse of the housing D custodian.

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