Mage Steel: A Western Sci-Fi Cultivation Series

TWO

Kon wrapped the blanket tighter around himself as he came and sat down in their repurposed war room. It had originally been Turja's suite to overlook the pit fights below where Kon and Diur had begun their work but after the battle on the surface of the planet it had been one of the largest surviving rooms left and Benny had moved to secure it for himself.

Turja didn't seem to mind, her quiet network of spies and thugs had survived basically unscathed and now made the majority of the enforcement part of their rule for Daniur hardly roused herself from her meditation or training to deal with anything unless someone was foolish enough to disrupt her two pursuits with their antics. And that only had one punishment.

The surviving rogue cultivators had carefully marked out Daniur's territory and passed through it like monks sworn to silence. No voices were raised, no brags or threats offered as they moved through the dark. Kon found it darkly humorous even if he too followed the same unspoken rules.

Only Alice seemed to flaunt the rules with an oblivious nonchalance as she burst into the other woman's studies or chambers often enough looking for a brawl. Alice generally dragged herself back to her own rooms after that, broken and cut but smiling as she let her natural increased healing slowly knit herself back together.

Aside from Kon, only Alice was currently in the room. She sat asleep, head thrown back and snoring loudly in a chair near the corner. Her lips were busted and scabbed over and he could see a partially healed cut along one of her cheekbones, but there was a healthy flush to her skin, a vibrant health that he hadn't seen on Crucible. There she'd been a pillar, wrath and steel who refused to back down from anything. Even with Daniur beating her black and blue nearly every day there was a happy glint in her eyes and Kon could admit that even with his amateurish senses, she was much improved from the killing machine on Crucible.

Kon let her sleep as he walked around the massive table that held a holoprojector in the center. Benny wasn't so careless to leave papers around that could be stolen, but he found that the moment he tried to sit and relax the energy in his body had him moving again. His push into D-Grade was still settling, a monstrous weight to his body that he wasn't familiar with yet, but it was slowly growing comfortable.

"I feel heavy but strong. Dense, that's the word. I feel dense." Kon passed the word around in his mind, mulled on it as he walked. He felt like he could crush steel with his bare hands, but there was a fragility to it. As if he strained too hard too soon he would find himself back in his sickbed where he'd just managed to crawl out of.

Cloth sliding over stone whispered to his ears and Kon looked up to the empty doorway. The sound grew louder, swishing silk, until it felt like it was he could hear but still the doorway remained empty. A trickle of unease went through him as he reached for where his mace should sit, but found nothing there.

"Damnit, don't go around unarmed," Kon hissed to himself as a smell tickled his nose. Sweat and soap mixed together with a hint of blood, all woven together around silk. Behind it was wind, rain, and ozone, so strong and stringent that Kon's nose hair curdled as he reeled under the pressure of power that filled the room.

Diur walked in a second later, a thin sheen of sweat on her face and a red-stained bandage on her off hand. She was all smiles though as her ancestor followed behind her. Kon swallowed hard as he looked at the Stormblade as he suddenly felt her in a way he hadn't before.

It made him feel small.

She was a strom incarnate. Not the little shaking ones that razed cities, but something darker and more primal. She was death, a world of black drowning skies and forked lighting that burned what wouldn't drown. Even suppressed being near her was suffocating, the newfound strength in his body no match before the ancient cultivator.

Her hard eyes found his and there was a judging, calculated look as she looked him over. Pride warred with common sense and he forced his spine straight, locking his knees to prevent any sign of obeisance to the cultivator. A hint of a ghost of a smile flashed for the briefest moments on her face and then her power receded even further. Kon no longer stood in the wall of the storm but rather the eye, where power swirled around him but there was no immediate threat.

"He pass your test," Benny's dry voice came from the back of the room, next to where Alice was sleeping. The red haired Knight jerked upright instantly, a knife coming from her sleeve as she lashed out at Benny. Blade met stone in an explosion of sparks as Benny revealed himself, dropping whatever type of cloaking power he'd used. How he'd pitched his voice across the room was a mystery but the look of frustration on Alice's face was apparent even before Benny started to chide her.

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"Still reactive not proactive. You attacked where you heard my voice, but I didn't completely cover myself. I was leaking energy, you should have been able to feel it if you were searching for it."

"Hard to do in my sleep. I'll improve," Alice said as she checked over the foot of sharp steel before resheathing it in her forearm sheathe.

"We'll keep practicing the more subtle arts while we can. Soon we will be somewhere you can't just kill those who disagree with." Alice raised an eyebrow and Kon read her thoughts as easily as if she had voiced them. If she couldn't kill, a bit of light maiming wasn't off the table then.

"He's strong enough. You have a good eye for talent, I will admit. You're last Squire has made a name for himself," Daniur said as she walked over to one of the seats around the primary table before flopping down into it as if she was boneless.

Diur sat primly next to her, much of her body language similar to what it had been when they had all first met. Stiff, practiced, and measured, she didn't even breath deeply as she stared straight ahead with a mask of calm attached to her face.

"Lero is an odd duck," Benny said with a shrug as he crossed the room and sat in his seat, clicking a button that had the projector firing to life.

"We do not wait for your spymistress?" Daniur asked. Kon settled between Benny and Alice, his two mentors comforting presence welcome as he struggled to control his suddenly heightened senses. It wasn't as bad as when he was using his sensory rune, but it was constant, there was no turning this off with a discreet releasing of power. Then there was the feel for the rift energy in the room, how it drifted thin and vaporous around the room, the weight of it hardly noticeable next to the living storm.

Or that Benny didn't smell like anything. He was a void of presence, none of Kon's senses aside from sight and hearing could detect him. Benny turned and looked at him and raised a single eyebrow but then turned back to the conversation.

"No. Turja is busy with trying to crack a seal in the lowest sanctuary. Mix of arrays and demolition charges that she's having fun breaking without incinerating the lower levels."

"Then it is true, we are getting ready to leave," Diur murmured. She immediately stilled and glanced out the corner of her eye toward Daniur, fear and humiliation writ plainly in her eyes. Kon had to suppress a snarl of rage at that. He'd seen Diur present herself courteously, respectfully, but never humble herself like this to her ancestor. Worse than that was Daniur didn't even seem to notice Diur's contrition.

"Which means we need to figure out what exactly we're going to be doing. I don't mind a good scrap, but fighting a war will be a first," Alice said. She'd thrown a leg over the arm of her chair and already she looked bored.

"Correct. We will have to split into two groups for this next part. First, a holding action on Orgo must be held. If our information holds true then the first actions against the world will be starting," Benny said. With a flicker the holoprojector spat an image of a planet.

"Orgo is lightly defended, but there are several garrisons close by. With a single beacon Ulmna fleets with local clans will be arriving to help defend it. Not including those outside of the Confederacy who have sworn oaths and will honor them. Our warning may have arrived soon enough for them to mount a defense," Daniur said.

"That could be true, but not something I trust until we have better information. Regardless, our enemy has enough warships to crack it eventually and with Orgo's fall they'll control the only path into the Confederacy," Benny said. He clicked a button and the planet disappeared and was replaced by the lanes that he'd shown Kon. Except this time the detail was there.

Violet-black thick strands showed the primary lanes, with lighter lavender branches where the more common shifting lanes were. Breaking from those branches were red tendrils that spiraled out around them. Kon's breath froze in his chest as he stared at the scope of it all. Benny clicked another button and the vast array of spiraling line disappeared to show only one lavender branch with a dozen small red lines that had amber pustules on them.

"For those of us who don't know," Benny started and every eye turned to Kon. He was too tired to be embarrassed and simply leaned back to stare at the display.

"Each of those bubbles is a confirmed system the Ulmna have some type of civilian population in. Only five primary systems though," Benny clicked a button and the vast majority of the strands disappeared.

"Victory or defeat will be found here in the heart of the Confederacy. We don't know the war plans of the enemy and speculation is foolish, but we can postulate that the Ulmna will not fall until these five systems fall." Daniur nodded in agreement to Benny's statement.

"The only good thing about this all is that these five systems are deep down the tributary and the enemy will have to force the fight through nearly a dozen checkpoints and garrisoned systems while holding Orgo from relieving forces. It'll be a race against time for them to break the Ulmna and secure their flanks before they are crushed between the defenders and the relieving force." Silence reigned as everyone took in the thoughts of exactly what Benny had so drily laid out. Death on a scale that none of the young could comprehend.

"Which leads us to what we can do. We have power here, but we need ships and men. For that I will be taking Kon and Alice back to the Oasis and bringing the contract Daniur has offered to recruit Chapterhouses not aligned with the Order of the Lion. In the meantime Daniur and Diur will lead these cultivators to Orgo and help hold there."

Kon looked up quickly to look at Diur who was sitting there with a frozen look on her face. For nearly a year they'd been attached at the hip, who'd flown into the teeth of danger over and over again. That they'd be leaving each other and Diur would be entering a warzone without him made him uneasy, a roiling oily feeling in his gut.