Revik had fire in its heart, rivers of magma in its veins that had long stayed their course far beneath the surface. Too long. They were the planet’s great vulnerability, and these Elyth called by name and stirred to action. She pictured them in her mind, held the whole world in her mind’s eye, a spectral globe hovering before her. Within it, she saw the fractures form that would over time grow to great rifts; and these images she described in the Deep Language. It was the end of the world as it would be, one that existed within the planet’s natural processes, given enough time. But Elyth was drawing it out from the distant future, into the now. There, in a storage closet in a warehouse, the infinite stretched down to kiss the finite, and she was its bridge. Her body trembled from the focus and exertion it took to keep herself anchored.
Using the hand signs associated with each letter, Elyth ran through the full protocol, speaking to each basic element of Revik’s composition, each portion of its ecosystem and the part it would play in relation to the other. There was no power in the gestures; the signs were merely a physical mnemonic, a checklist embodied. It was the universe alone that carried the power of her craft, and the Deep Language was its access.
Around her, the familiar feeling embraced her; a crackling, an ocean foam of possibilities as light and space and time bent around her, warping, roiling. Even in the darkness, she could see multicolored glints and black sparks darker than even the absence of light that surrounded her. Galaxies and black holes; the material of the cosmos, manifest in microscale. Or perhaps her being had expanded to something the mere universe could no longer contain.
Her body vibrated with a manic energy, a buildup of static charge before the lightning strike. Exhilarating. Terrifying.
In the final sequence, Elyth held her hands one above the other, palms facing but separated, as though holding the globe of the world between. The air between them felt dense, heavy. And then she raised her hand above her head, and repeated the sealing phrase.
“From the void, all come; to the void, all return.”
As the last words left her mouth, she dropped to a knee and brought her hand down, striking the floor with a heavy palm. The power flowed from the infinite beyond, through her, into the planet; the work of a thousand millennia compressed into a single moment, focused through a point the span of her palm. And that power raced along the threadline, a nerve carrying its pain to the planet’s roots where it would radiate out again through every facet of the world.
There was no outward sign, no quaking of the earth, no thunderous blast, no smoke-billowing mountain; but Elyth knew the change as surely as she could know the soul-broken eyes of a mother bereaved. This was a hearty world. On a human scale, its death would be gradual. Perhaps as much as a standard Ascendant year before its surface became toxic to human life. But on a cosmic time frame, its end would be as swift and sudden as an instant.
From that moment on, Revik sped toward death.
She remained there on her knee for several minutes, too disciplined to let herself sink to the floor, but not yet capable of standing. The discharge of power combined with the exertion of the process left Elyth drained and hollow. Reaching out to seize the raw material of the cosmos, to serve as a conduit through which it could flow, exposed her to the mind-breaking gulf separating her tiny existence from that limitless, formless potential. To touch the infinite was to come fully awake to one’s own utter limitation. It was no small thing to bear. No matter how many times she’d gone through the process, she’d not yet been able to overcome the fear that one day she might not make it back from that place.
Without conscious thought, Elyth’s body carried out its routine for recovery; a set of breathing cycles designed to draw her awareness back to the reality of her physical form, of the concrete nature of her surroundings, and of each individual moment of the present. Gradually the procedure recentered and anchored her sense of being, just as it had been created to do.
But too, as the cosmic horizon receded, the personal, emotional weight of the act bore down upon her. She knew the justness of the sentence she had carried out. The loss of Revik was a surgeon’s cut, the death of one cell sacrificed to protect all those around it. But to call forth such precise, intimate destruction, Elyth had to know the planet, and in knowing the planet, she had come to love it. She recognized what made Revik unique, and though she saw how it had been irrevocably corrupted by its inhabitants, she knew too what a precious treasure it had once been. Most if not all of the humans could be saved; the planet would bear the cost. And there was no way to harden oneself against killing a thing beloved.
Elyth would grieve, and deeply. But not right now.
She eased herself up to standing, tested her balance for a moment. The trembling had ceased. She clenched her hands to fists and then opened them again. There was strength in them still, though she felt empty in her core. Strength enough to make it back to her ship, off world, and back into the embrace of the Ascendance, and of her Order. All that stood between her and a much-needed and much-deserved recovery was a series of walls and a few dozen sentries.
Elyth slipped out into the warehouse, made her way past the lone, dozing guard, and exited through its ground-level entryway. She followed roughly the same track as she’d taken on her way in, modifying it as the movement of patrols dictated. It all seemed easy enough, until her ascent up the first of the five walls. Even with the relatively easy climb, she felt the weakening in her grip. The hit was taking its toll and Elyth knew from much experience that her scant remaining stamina would fade ever more rapidly.
At the top of the wall, she decided to conserve what energy she could. Instead of climbing down the opposite side, she made use once more of her support line, affixing its plant-like grasp to the rounded edge of the wall and allowing its line to lower her to the ground below.
The sky was beginning to gray into its first signs of dawn, granting a bare, soft edge of light to the compound. Above her, the clouds had begun to spread and separate subtly but consistently across the expanse. The gradual increase in visibility was both a blessing and a curse; easier to spot potential danger, but that ran true in both directions.
Thankfully, navigating the line of guards that had been her great challenge during infiltration proved less difficult a task on the way out; the line had deteriorated, the sentries forming small clusters of idle chatter. A sure sign that the night’s shift was drawing to a close. With careful steps and watchful eyes, she slipped from wall to wall, a moon shadow brushing lightly over the earth.
At each wall, Elyth repeated the process of scaling up and then using her line to descend the opposite side. And though each climb took more effort than the one previous, by the time she’d reached the outermost wall, she’d gotten the rhythm of the sequence so well that she barely had to pause at the top before she could roll over the edge and enjoy a precious few moments of rest as the device lowered her gently to the ground.
It was the mastery of that routine that caused her the trouble.
Her feet had just touched down outside the complex when, as her focus was on her climbing aid to retract its line, a motion in her peripheral vision drew her attention. She snapped her head in its direction then froze. Three sentries were standing no more than twenty feet away. Their line ran diagonally away from her, a few feet between each man and the farthest perhaps thirty feet distant. Fortunately none were looking her direction, but from their stances it was obvious that she couldn’t expect them to remain that way for long.
How foolish. She’d climbed over the wall in the exact same location that she’d initially infiltrated; all her previous observation had shown it to be consistently clear of patrols. She had acted on what she’d expected, rather than on what was actually there. It would have cost her a few seconds only. Now, the cost would be somewhat higher.
The motion she had seen had been the nearest guard turning his head, undoubtedly in reaction to the sound of her quiet descent, though it hadn’t yet occurred to him that any danger could possibly be coming from behind. And though the security she’d so expertly evaded thus far had seemed inattentive, she saw now in this man’s taut posture how quick the response to a threat could be. She knew without a doubt that a single warning raised would activate the entire compound, swarming the grounds and surrounding lands with searchers, both man and machine.
The sun would be cresting the horizon soon enough, and Elyth still had need of what little remained of the night’s veil; too much hostile ground lay between her and her escape to wait. There wouldn’t be time to hide the bodies.
Without further thought, she launched from her crouch by the wall. The first man she took with a swift blow to the base of the skull. As he pitched forward, Elyth grabbed the back of his collar with one hand and his belt with the other, controlling his fall to limit the sound. The second man was just turning when Elyth reached him, close enough to see his eyes narrowed in confusion. Before they could widen, Elyth’s baton found its mark just below his left ear, near the jawline. There was no time to catch him as he fell.
The third guard was a man of powerful stature; already he was turned toward her, rapidly processing the scene as his second companion hit the ground. Elyth knew she couldn’t close the distance in time. His mouth was opening, his hands streaking toward the weapon on his belt.
But Elyth was faster.
In her mind’s eye, she saw the baton leave her hand and strike its target; in the next instant, it was so. The baton impacted the guard’s solar plexus, momentarily stealing his breath and stumbling him a step. Whatever weapon he’d been trying to draw fumbled to the ground. Elyth was on him three steps later, swatting away his attempt at a defense. She darted the edge of her hand into his Adam’s apple, stunning the vocal cords, and with a twisting step flowed around and behind him. In the next moment, she snaked her arm around his neck and dropped backward to the ground, dragging him down with her. As she locked her legs around his waist, the man writhed, attempted to pry her arm away from his trachea, and his great strength made itself known.
Elyth clung close and tight in the chaos, reflexively reacting to every shift in the man’s weight and power. And in that violent embrace, the heat of his body, the scent of his sweat-sheened skin, the pulsing blood flow within the vise of her arm, all spoke of the terror of death upon him, and his life’s thrashing struggle against it.
But neither his strength nor his will were sufficient to overcome her skill and technique.
It took only a few seconds before the man’s flailing weakened, and fewer after until it ceased completely. Elyth counted to five before she dared release the hold and then slumped him to one side. He would wake again in ten or twenty seconds, sluggish and confused. It would give her a head start, but not enough to cover the distance to the tree line. If they gave chase, she’d never make it off the planet. She glanced down at the man next to her. A killing blow would be nothing now; as simple as crushing a bug.
But as she looked at the fallen sentry, other faces flashed in her mind. In her youth, she had taken lives rashly, painful mistakes of judgment. Elyth knew nothing of the man; why he had chosen to side with the governor’s doomed bid for power, or how deep his indoctrination ran. Maybe he was a true believer. Or maybe he was an innocent man, just trying to survive. None of her Order would fault her for his death. But here, now, with the man helpless, at her utter mercy, the fact that no authority would hold her accountable seemed insignificant.
And during those seconds of consideration, she came to recognize the opportunity he presented. A minor risk, but worth it. If it worked.
She recovered her baton and located the guard’s weapon. It was a small kinetic gun. She threw the weapon far away, then moved quickly back to the wall and scaled it as fast as her wearied fingers would allow.
At the top, she paused, dropped onto her belly, and dangled her legs over the interior side, watched the third sentry intently in the ever-growing light of approaching dawn. Any moment.
And there. He stirred briefly, then lay still again. A few moments later, he began to recover himself in earnest, and pushed up unsteadily, glancing about as though he’d expected to find himself home in bed.
And then the realization fell upon him with all its weight, and his searching became sharp, just shy of frantic. Elyth waited until the moment the guard’s eyes found her, and then swiftly lowered herself over the edge of the wall back into the interior of the complex. She didn’t drop all the way to the ground, though. Instead, she hung there by the edge, gritting her teeth against the weakness in her grip, listening to the activity on the other side. The man tried to cry out, but the damage she’d inflicted on his vocal cords rendered the call hoarse and ineffective. An instant later, the man’s heavy footsteps signaled his rush to the nearest help.
When her path was clear, Elyth stared through a fog of exhaustion for just a moment, willing herself to move before she found strength enough to drag herself back over. She didn’t even bother to try descending the opposite side with any grace or control, only lowering herself far enough to minimize the chance of breaking an ankle before dropping to the ground. She rolled with the impact and came up running, passing the two guards who still lay unconscious.
She had crossed just over half the distance to the tree line when she heard the alarm go up behind her. If her ruse had worked, however, she knew the immediate focus would be on securing the palace grounds themselves. Hopefully the distraction would give her the time she needed to recover her ship and escape the planet.
Elyth reached the tree line and pushed on as fast as the difficult terrain and her heavy legs would allow. Five miles separated her from the craggy and barren hollow where her small vessel lay concealed. By the time she reached it, she barely had strength left to climb into the cockpit.
It wasn’t until she was airborne and climbing steadily out of the atmosphere that Elyth allowed herself to believe she had truly escaped. She let out a deep exhale then and gave herself permission to feel the full weight of the weeks she had endured on Revik, the part she had played in its inevitable and coming demise, and the exhaustion that laid heavy upon her.
And it was in that moment of mingled relief and utter depletion that she realized a priority transmission had come through while she’d been away from the ship; its header markings and encryption protocols declared its origins to be directly from the Order of the Mind, the highest order of Elyth’s House.
She flicked the message open, skimmed it with anxious eyes. It was terse, but the brevity did not rob it of its weight.
Immediate recall. Revik operation to be passed over.
Return to the Vaunt by fastest possible method.
Passed over. The phrase whipped her with an ice-wind dread. At best, it meant another of her Order was being deployed to complete the mission in her place, due to some unknown failing on her part.
At worst, it might mean she had just killed a planet that should have been spared.
Nausea seized her at the thought, swirled her emotions. If the beauty of Revik could have been preserved after all … but she closed her eyes and steadied herself.
Elyth had completed the task as it had been placed before her. There was no way to discern the intent behind this new directive, nor to determine why it had arrived so late. Allowing her imagination to fill in gaps was neither wise nor beneficial. Any answers she might receive would come no sooner than her return. She was already doing all she could.
She marked the message received and closed it, sealing it to oblivion; once read, such transmissions from the Advocates of the Mind dissolved to leave no trace.
If only the same could have been said for the impact of the message.
As the sky darkened around her beyond the cockpit, so too did Elyth’s thoughts. Despite her attempts to settle herself, the communication had robbed her of any sense of accomplishment. Instead of a work completed, Revik was now a question posed. And while her ship carried her back into the safety of the Ascendance armada, her mind grappled with the unforeseeable new trial that awaited her return to the grand vaulted city of her Order.
2
The baton streaked in from Elyth’s right, a low feint emerging suddenly as a sharp-angled strike aimed at her temple. She stepped into the attack, checked her opponent’s wrist with her off hand at the last possible moment, and in the same motion jabbed her own baton forward in a counterstrike. But Nyeda anticipated the thrust, twisted, flowed around to Elyth’s left, and caught hold of her elbow.
Elyth felt the joint lock unfolding. Instead of resisting, she waited the half breath it took for Nyeda to commit, and then settled back and dropped her hips, gaining the leverage she needed to trap Nyeda’s hand mid-technique.
Nyeda was quick, but Elyth’s footwork was better, and a moment later, Elyth escaped the hold and tipped the now-unbalanced woman down to the ground shoulder first. Elyth followed the momentum, used her body weight to pin Nyeda down. Beneath her, the older woman slackened, momentarily caught off guard and stunned. Elyth shot her hand around to secure a choke; she had her now.
So she thought.
An instant later, Nyeda shifted and rolled, her body trapping Elyth’s ankle and bringing her to the ground. The woman’s baton arced. Elyth’s arms were too tangled.
The impact caught her on the collarbone, the dull thunk reverberated down through her spine; for a brief moment, the sound was worse than the pain.
And then, all was still while Elyth lay on her back, panting, sweating, suffering the consequence of her mistake. She knew exactly what that mistake had been. In retrospect, she’d felt it, knew her feet had been too close to Nyeda, how she should have adjusted and sprawled more, before she’d gone for the choke. But she’d missed it in the moment, or ignored it; Nyeda’s momentary relaxation had thrown her off, made her overconfident.
Nyeda’s face appeared above her.
“Sloppy,” the older woman said, looking down on her sternly. “Should have sprawled more.”
Elyth nodded. And Nyeda’s helping hand appeared, offering to pull her once more to her feet.
“Trouble focusing?” Nyeda asked, as Elyth rolled up and took her hand.
“No,” Elyth answered, standing. “At least, I didn’t think so. Just not quite fully back in my body yet.”
“It’s still early.”
“I feel the loss, Nyeda,” Elyth forced herself to say. It was a confession she would have preferred to leave unspoken. But she knew the dangers of her currently vulnerable state. Putting on a brave face for others was on the same path as deceiving herself.
“As you will, my sister,” she answered. “Is it overwhelming?”
Elyth shook her head. “Manageable. But this depth of longing is usually gone by now.”
“Then you’re a quicker healer than most.” Nyeda put her hand on Elyth’s shoulder, softening from combat instructor to spiritual advisor. “Each time is unique. Each its own process for you to discover, to pass through, and from which to emerge. And you will emerge.”
Elyth acknowledged the encouragement with a nod.
“Again?” she asked, ready for another round. But Nyeda shook her head.
“I know you hate to end on a loss, but we’ve already gone longer than we should have. And this was supposed to be a light day.”
“Yeah, I know,” Elyth said. “That’s why I was taking it so easy.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Nyeda said. She patted Elyth’s cheek with a perfect blend of affection and sarcasm and then gathered the training batons. “Then you should have no trouble settling yourself.”
Elyth nodded but didn’t hide her disappointment. Tired as she was, she preferred the demands of full-contact sparring to the forced leisure, where her mind could wander where it would. Even knowing its importance to her recovery, it was difficult to endure.
“And double the time today,” Nyeda added. “You need it.”
Elyth barely contained a groan as she moved to the center of the room and began her meditative routine.
The private training room off the living area of her main residence was spartan; twenty feet long and half as wide, furnished with a dense mat, a simple rack to hold a few training weapons, and little else. Still, Nyeda made herself busy tidying it, keeping her actions so quiet and unobtrusive that it would have been easy to forget she was there. And yet, for all the passivity of the older woman’s presence, Elyth knew well how attentive she was to everything around her. Nyeda was keeping a close eye on her, though Elyth felt no sense of being watched. It took years to master such alertness, effortless and relaxed.
Elyth held the initial position, Silence Unveils the Heavens, for twice its normal duration as Nyeda had directed. She stood tall, head tilted slightly backward as though gazing at a star-strewn sky, feeling the stretch through her core, willing the exertion to exorcise the vibrating energy buried within her bones.
It’d been six days since her return to the Vaunt and despite the apparent urgency of the transmission she’d received, she’d been immediately sent into the ritual seclusion that awaited any Advocate of the Voice returning from a successful operation. She knew she couldn’t speak of the message she’d received, not until the appropriate audience was given. It was often the way of things. Hers was to operate in uncertainty; the expectation was for patience until further revelation was deemed proper and necessary, if ever. A lifetime of practice had not yet made it any easier to bear.
She took a deep breath and controlled the exhale as she transitioned to the next pose, Arrow Seeks the Heart. A deep lunge forward, one hand extended like a spear-thrust before her.
After the killing of a planet, Advocates of the Order of the Voice were cloistered for a full thirty days of recovery. Given the amount of time that had passed without news, Elyth struggled to resign herself to the idea that she would learn nothing until she had completed the full healing cycle. Another twenty-four days. She acknowledged the frustration that bubbled up at the idea and then allowed it to dissipate.
She moved into the anchoring pose Warrior Summits the Mountain, her feet wide apart, arms raised and out as though embracing the sky.
Normally the pose felt triumphant. Today, her mind would not quiet. Questions nagged; impatience prowled beneath the surface of her every activity.
Watcher Greets the Storm. She clenched one hand into a fist and held it close to her body, the other arm she extended partially, palm upraised as though catching the first drops of rain. Fitting, she thought. The pose was symbolic of having done all one could to prepare, and bravely facing that which could not be controlled. In that moment, she didn’t feel she was meeting either criterion fully.
A trace of a thought drifted like an echo of smoke, a vague sadness and longing; the ache for something which she had glimpsed, yet could never possess. It was the call of the Deep; the echo of the infinite. Equal parts dream and memory, half-formed. Of this too Elyth took note, and allowed the mist-musing to flow past without attempt to grasp or pursue. Gently, she returned her focus to sensation; the floor, the trembling, the beaded sweat. Reminded herself that this was what it was to have a body, to be in a place, to exist and give form to her own tragic limitation.