NOVEL NEXT CHAPTER 7: THE HARE’S REVELATION
THE GRAND CANYON, NORTH AMERICA, 100 BCE
August Vasilias moved swiftly through the vast, ancient landscape that was sculpted by time and nature's unrelenting forces. In the starlit darkness, he navigated the terrain with ease, his senses attuned to energies beyond the realm of mere light. He'd blanketed the entire Earth with his anima, refining it into strands finer than spiderweb, all in his ever-expanding search for tensa he could claim. The technique had taken the better part of the last six hundred years to perfect and had produced immediate and satisfying results. He’d followed the most promising hit his experimental anima net had caught. The pursuit had taken him down across thousands of miles and months of travel, but if there was truly that much tensa here, it would all be worth it.
As August sped through the stark beauty of the canyon, his senses, so accustomed to the refined luxuries of his home in Chang ‘an, contrasted the rugged wilderness around him. The familiar comforts of jasmine perfume and sandalwood incense, the mouthwatering aroma of steamed rice and his chef, Peng Ren's, exquisite roast fowl, were replaced by the raw, earthy scents of lavender and sage carried by the night wind. This was a world apart from the temperate climate and culinary sophistication of the court. Yet, amidst his reminiscence, he couldn't help but acknowledge the rugged, unspoiled beauty of the canyon. Its untamed essence, so different from the cultivated elegance he was used to, stirred a sense of admiration within him.
Around him, the vast chasm, a monumental work of nature's artistry, lay in quiet repose. The red sandstone, cooling from the day's heat, formed an unending labyrinth of cliffs and valleys. Plants, resilient in their arid home, clung to life on the rugged slopes, and the occasional rustle betrayed the presence of nocturnal creatures in the underbrush.
The towering walls of the canyon loomed on either side, their silhouettes stark against the starlit sky. Despite the familiarity of the landscape, a subtle disquiet lingered in the air. August remained motionless, employing his mystical senses as well as his mundane ones to try to focus on the strongest source of tensa nearby. While his planet-spanning tensa-sensing net was extremely sensitive over a wide area, it was not as precise as he would like and he had to rely on his other senses to narrow down his search area. He had already spent the past five days moving methodically and carefully through the area, but he thought this time felt different. There was something about it today that gave him some optimism.
The persistent wind, cold and unyielding, now seemed to carry more than just the scent of desert herbs. His patience, a trait honed over centuries, held him in a silent vigil. Something had triggered his instincts here and he was determined to uncover it.
As August stood motionless, the cold wind brushed against the fine silk of his forest-green shenyi robe, a reminder of the vibrant street markets of home. The robe was ill-suited for the desert heat, but he’d left mortal concerns like comfort far behind long ago. You could only make an entrance once, after all. Even here, in this stark landscape, his sense of style remained undiminished, the jade beads and tassels of his guan hat tucked safely in his wide belt.
He had observed the simplistic attire of the canyon's native inhabitants, finding little appeal in their practical garb. He’d been drawn to this rural desert wasteland by the tantalizing secrets that had whispered to him through his net of anima. A nearby movement caught his eye and he focused on it. A large-eared desert hare was clearly outlined in the starlight.
He could see it clearly in the darkness, his enhanced senses perceived the hare outlined with a bright green glow. The hare cautiously moved from one tangle of mesquite to another, its enormous ears transparent in the starlight, twitching as it monitored the area around it. The hare moved toward the canyon wall, its nose twitching. Instead of turning aside at the canyon wall though, it hopped through the canyon wall as if it weren’t there.
August cursed under his breath at the sight and retracted his wide anima net entirely. He was destroying the work of centuries, but he knew he would need it. Pulling it back into himself had him feeling nearly blind after being so connected to the land around him. The illusion was a complication he didn’t need. Only Cerise Tekara could have created such an illusion and her understanding of anima was second to none. When he had so little tensa, his only advantage had been his Attributes and his anima, and that was fine against the humans here, but if it was Cerise? He considered just leaving, but that strong pulse of tensa… It was too much to ignore. With a source that rich in tensa, he could take nearly ten megasparks, he was sure of it. It was more power than he’d had in more than three millennia!
Cerise Tekara waited beyond that wall. He hadn’t seen her in three thousand years! they would relinquish their tensa to him. He checked his tensa pool and knew within a spark how close he was to being full. August brushed a mental hand over his mental list of grafts, lingering over his Destructive Nexus, but deciding against it. It didn’t need to come to that. Besides, it was potentially lethally wasteful.
He cycled his remaining tensa—a mere 2 kilosparks—through his body, feeling his Attributes respond. With so little tensa within him, he couldn’t awaken the full capabilities of his Attributes, but it was enough to significantly enhance his physical abilities. He normally kept his tensa hidden, circulating through his pathways, and calmed to stillness. Gone were the days when he could casually stroll through any threat, blasting away with superheated plasma and shrugging off any injury. His healing graft was far too expensive for him to be throwing away tensa on healing himself needlessly. It wasn’t even a proper healing graft; he had just repurposed his Matter Generation graft into a creative use that got the job done—painfully and expensively. His meager store of tensa coursed through him now though, and he felt his Attributes come to life, enhancing his reflexes, his speed, his strength—everything.
It was like being in a pitch-black cave your entire life, thinking its dark confines were the entire world, and then being led out of the cave, blinking into the sunlit world beyond. It took his breath away. He had developed a more subtle touch over the centuries that had been born out of harsh experience. Even though the people of this world were crude and barbaric, they could be quite dangerous to him, crippled as he was with so little tensa. With his Attributes, he moved like a stalking panther and had the strength of fifty men, but such enhancements were the stuff of legends. If he wanted to remain unbothered to pursue his interests, he had to blend in. He had learned to maintain this delicate balance between personal power and discretion that guided his actions, reminding him to remain vigilant in this unfamiliar territory.
His heightened senses detected nothing, but that in itself was meaningless. He hesitated a few seconds more, then dashed to the canyon wall. His high Speed Attribute allowed him to cross the distance in an eyeblink. Even so, it was nowhere near as fast as he could have gone, but he was still feeling out his Attributes after so long maintaining his policy of discretion.
He waited for a long five minutes by the illusory canyon wall, straining his senses for any hint of what lay beyond. He could not pierce the illusion without using his anima to intrude. Cerise would be alerted to his presence if he pushed in with his anima so was wary of using it, but…he still could not sense anything, even with his heightened senses. The hare continued to forage only a couple of meters away; it hadn’t even registered his presence.
He decided that a stealthy approach would be the most prudent; no need to alert Cerise if he could avoid it. He compacted his anima deep within himself, purposely making it as small and unobtrusive as possible. He would not have been capable of such a humbling anima configuration back on Nolm, but the realities of Earth necessitated compromise. At least Cerise would be very unlikely to notice him now. Of course, it was very likely that Cerise would have left a deadly surprise for anyone who stumbled on this place, whatever it was. He did have one graft that might provide a small measure of defense, though using it would drain him to his last few sparks of tensa: not enough power to boil even a cup of water.
August took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and prepared his Heat Beam graft, shunting a small amount of tensa into the power and feeling the heat begin to build within him. He didn’t have nearly enough to be a threat with it, but with the graft active, it would at least provide a bit of a light show. He had no plans to use it. He took one last deep breath and darted through the illusory wall, his palm glowing with blindingly bright blue-white plasma from his prepared Heat Beam. What he saw on the other side of the canyon wall made him lose his prepared attack in shock, the spot of plasma on his palm sputtered and sizzled out.
He stumbled to the rocky ground, eyes snapping shut in automatic self-defense against the sudden brightness. Squinting through his fingers, he saw about a hundred meters overhead a tiny, sun-bright ball of light that lit the whole canyon as if it were day. He got to his feet, blinking as he recovered from his shock. The walls of the canyon were covered in a wild profusion of plants: lavender, sage, honeysuckle, and creeping vines of purple morning glories—dozens more flowering plants he had no names for lent their perfume to the air. But amidst this natural splendor, something else caught his attention.
To his eyes, the entire canyon positively glowed with tensa energy. His mental calculations had been off by an order of magnitude at least. Suffusing the plants and the very air was tensa energy as dense as back home. Eagerly, he formed his anima into the Ten Star Vortex gathering technique, stretching it out as far as he could to pull in as much tensa as possible. With the tensa abundant and free for the taking, he immediately let his guard down, beginning to draw in as much energy as he could.