The Stargazer's War - Chapter 2.11

Chapter 2.11: The Search

I slept for fourteen hours that night. I still awoke with a headache, because apparently the universe has a cruel sense of irony, but it turns out that’s just what happens when you go fourteen hours without drinking any water.

A bit of hydration later and I was pain free and clearheaded for the first time since we landed on Ilirian.

Threads, it felt good.

After a meal that could charitably be called brunch and realistically called lunch, I stopped by the garden to share my newly found bounty with Nick’s tree. That’s when the realization struck.

I couldn’t see it.

Well, literally I could see it, but as I shut my eyes and reached out with my spiritual sense, adrift in the infinite sea rather than focusing in on the sapling directly in front of me. Intellectually I knew where I was, and I knew where it was relative to me, but I could no more sense that tiny speck in an ocean of black than I could spot an atom with my naked eye.

I retreated into myself, visualizing my core and meridians in perfect clarity as I left infinity behind, but the moment I looked beyond the boundaries of my body perspective reasserted itself.

However tiny it might’ve been, my own soul bore inherent significance to me. It was me. The tree wasn’t. Ilirian wasn’t.

I tried again. And again. I reordered my thoughts, searching for the lost state of mind that had so bound me to Ilirian mere days ago, hoping against hope I could find it again, that I could switch at a whim between a cosmic perspective and a mortal one.

But I’d glimpsed the world on which I stood from eternity’s high tower, and the illusion of its vastness had been thus thoroughly shattered.

Shit.

I made first to channel my Vac Suit, visualizing its sigil and pushing qi through it. I couldn’t watch it as it moved, couldn’t track the leakages or inefficiencies, but I knew them to be trivial because I hadn’t learned my Vac Suit. Divinely inspired sigils didn’t come with imperfections. I opened my eyes and watched the layer of shadow fall over my body, felt the subtle relief of the planet’s qi kept entirely at bay.

The technique still worked, but even if I knew of another sigil that’d function with my qi, I’d have a hell of a time actually learning it.

I absentmindedly kept the skill going as I wrapped a hand around the sapling’s narrow trunk. Shutting my eyes, I expelled qi through my palm, knowing a chunk of it would disperse but some would find its way into the greedy plant. No more could I check, could I watch it as it moved or confirm the tree had its fill, but the same series of motions had worked before, so I had no reason to believe otherwise.

The apple tree, at least, would survive if I underfed it.

I ambled back to my room and repeated the process with the void beast egg, keeping my hand slightly distant and focusing on saturating the environment around it rather than directly inserting qi. The entire point of the Salazar’s Snap was its ability to survive and use as little or as much qi as it was given. The egg enjoyed no such flexibility. Too much would kill it just as dead as too little, and without the ability to watch it’s intake as I worked, I could only guess.

I erred on the side of too much, hoping it would stop taking in the qi in the air around it once it’d had enough. I resisted the urge to cycle my heart meridian to calm my nerves. I had reason to feel nervous, and with any luck that’d keep me cautious.

By the time I made it back to the living area, Charlotte had returned from her day’s excursion for a midday meal of her own. She glanced up at me as I entered.

“Lucy told me you’d done it. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” I met her gaze through the thick rimmed glasses she always wore, taking my first clearheaded look at the focus she’d crafted for herself.

At a mundane glance they looked much the same, and I couldn’t exactly evaluate them spiritually given the morning’s discoveries. A thin purple petal from a half-inch lilac wrapped around the bridge, looking like little more than a piece of padding or flash of color in the otherwise dark frames.

I knew the lenses themselves had been entirely replaced by a glass forged from the sand in an unnatural dust devil we’d found—something we’d yet to find the name of for all our research—but I couldn’t spot the difference between them and the old ones. I’m sure if I cycled my sense meridian I would’ve found them two point four percent bluer-tinted or something like that, but staring down Charlotte like that would’ve been rude, and she certainly would’ve noticed if I went all starry-eyed.

Instead, I pulled up a chair at the table across from her.

“How’s the search going?”

Charlotte put down her fork as she visibly repressed a sigh. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for.” She tapped her glasses. “These things might’ve improved my senses more than I would’ve thought, but I’m not the reason the Gardener sent us looking. I don’t have your range or Xavier’s… thing.”

“What exactly is Xavier’s thing? I know he’s weirdly good at judging my cultivation and I can’t for the life of me sneak up on him, but I’m not sure how that’d help us find this entity the Gardener wants us to.”

Charlotte’s eyes fell. “There are… a few options. It’s possible he’s an empath, the gift shows up once in every few thousand births, but if Xavier could read emotions he wouldn’t… well to be frank he wouldn’t act much like Xavier. There are a handful of extremely rare talents that might explain it, or it could be something entirely unique. The latter is actually more likely, since there are more one-of-a-kind quirks out there than natural telepaths, for example, and it’d fit with his extreme honesty, but that leaves us just kind of guessing.”

“But if it’s one of these rare talents…?”

“That’s worse.” Charlotte said plainly. “Some worse than others, but the fact they’re recorded means they’re recognizable, which means if the wrong person spots it, very bad things can happen. Going back to the telepath example, they usually end up either dead or chained up for use as a human lie detector.”

My stomach sank as her words sank in. “Do… do you think she spotted it?”

“If Xavier’s perception is the result of anything the universe has seen before, the Arcadian Gardener almost certainly noticed.”

“Xavier’s the one who found her,” I breathed. “Yeah, I spotted the weird qi in the area, but I was only looking because Xavier noticed something off.”

“He doesn’t know what,” Charlotte explained. “I already asked. He just got the impression something was out there. It’s possible the Gardener planted that impression, but if she didn’t…”

“She might not’ve been talking about me. I’m not the one who found her. I’m not why she sent us to find this entity of hers.” I blinked. “I might not start a war.”

“Well, just because she may not have noticed your own weirdness doesn’t mean nobody else will, and you do pose a threat to existing power structures. Like I said, this is all just a theory. It’s entirely possible she sent us on this wild goose chase as a test, to see if we really could find something so well hidden.”

“So you think either way we’ll need Xavier to find it.”

“Maybe. Or we don’t find it and live without those three boons. Or maybe you can find it. We don’t know what the Gardener knows.”

I grimaced. “About that… I don’t think I’ll be finding anything any time soon.” I explained my morning, including the various tests I’d run and conclusions I’d come to.

Charlotte’s voice fell. “That’s unfortunate. Have you looked into it at all? Obviously nobody’s written about your experience in particular, but you can’t be the first cultivator with an imprecise spiritual sense.” Her eyes flicked upwards. “Have you ever heard anything like that, Lucy?”

“It’s a known issue in celestial level cultivators, the kinds of people who watch over entire systems. Sometimes they lose details. I don’t know any of the techniques they use to get around it, though.”

“Not that I could actually use anything designed for cultivators at that level,” I muttered. “Not for a few hundred years at least.” I sighed. “It’s alright. For the time being it’s not debilitating, and unless I can unflip the proverbial switch I’m not fixing this in time to complete the Gardener’s errand anyway.”

“Maybe one of her boons will help?” Lucy offered.

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll take access to the infinite sea over a usable spiritual sense any day of the week.”

Charlotte again set down her fork, having taken the opportunity of Lucy’s and my exchange to finally finish her lunch. “Either way, that boon won’t fix your problem if we don’t earn it. We should get back out there.”

“Fair point.” I stood and followed her to the door. “Where all have you looked?”

She swiped up her holopad and sent me a map of our surroundings, a sliver of which she’d colored red. “Here’s what I’ve covered, skipping past ground we’ve already tread and at a radius set to complete a full loop just before those eggs hatch and our time runs out.”

“Is this assuming we split up or stick together?”

“Together. I’m fine going out alone while Xavier’s advancing or you’re… doing whatever it was you were doing to find the infinite sea again, but long term the odds of something happening to one of us out there alone get high enough they aren’t worth it. We stick together when possible, and if that means we fail the Gardener’s task, we fail her task.”

I nodded. “Makes sense. Only a matter of time until we run into something dangerous. If we stay together we’re less likely to miss anything too.” I left unsaid that with my senses as they were I doubted I’d be finding much of anything on my own.

“Exactly.” Charlotte tapped once on her holopad to chart out our afternoon’s course as she stepped into gray blanket of dead leaves that populated the floor of Lucy’s clearing. “If we still haven’t found anything by the time we complete the loop, there should still be enough leeway to bring Xavier to the areas I’ve already covered. I hope we don’t have to cut it that close, but I’ve left us the option.”

The conversation dwindled as we set off, meaningful discussion giving way to idle chatter between periods of silence as zigzagged through the jungle. It was a dull, arduous way to spend an afternoon, which of course meant I felt right at home. I wasn’t in low-g with the stars at my back, but I still found something akin to meditation in the search, the rhythm of my steps matching my breathing as I allowed my mind to wander.

Threads, I’d missed my Vac Suit. It was like I’d found peace, like I could finally finish a coherent thought without either zoning out or wincing in pain. My core brimmed with power, power I could feel to be ripe for advancement as soon as I managed to craft my focus. I had some ideas there, that I could finally explore.

As the suns passed their zenith and neared the end of their return trip to the western horizon, as we stepped again into the bounds of Lucy’s clearing, I couldn’t help but feel a rare smile cross my face. The egg was okay. I was okay. We had a goal in mind, a plan to achieve it, and for all our problems, for the first time in months I truly believed we could find a way to solve them.

Besides, when we climbed aboard to find Xavier waiting for us with a broad grin on his face and an axe slung over his shoulder, how could I not be happy? I’d finally reconnected with the infinite sea, Xavier had made it to bronze, and those events could only mean one thing.

It was time for a karaoke night.

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