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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q2-X-3XczMUeeKYCfrfRujaHSZwNfq2gDjuH_a1UedU/edit?usp=sharing
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Alex was bent over, gasping, sweat cleansed but still ragged.
Juba was groaning on the floor, splayed out from their last clash.
Alex had finally understood and incorporated a fundamental truth of hand-to-hand combat: hard weapons on soft targets, soft weapons on hard targets.
It was a silly thing, and it was scattered through his martial arts training back on Earth, as well as the instincts and knowledge granted by his skills, but he’d never really been in fights before the System—certain exceptions aside—and had therefore not really inculcated that truth.
Against the undead, it had been utterly a non-issue as if he was physically contacting them himself, it was to impart Life, not truly strike them.
Even that had likely been a mistake, leaving damage undealt, but he couldn’t go back, and it had worked out alright in the end.
Juba grunted, glancing at Alex and forcing his breath under control. “You have improved remarkably in such a short time, my friend.”
Alex grunted, still not wanting to speak. He glanced down and smiled, seeing the ‘I did my best’ pin on his shirt, even if he couldn’t quite remember moving it there. Regardless, he tapped it.
Juba’s eyes dropped to the item, and he laughed. “Yes, yes. You did your best indeed.”
Alex created water in his mouth, instinctively reading the magics and nudging them toward exactly what he wanted. Once he swallowed, he smiled. “You still won handily in every exchange.”
The massively powerful man shrugged. “I am a warrior, born and bred, nurtured and trained. I was hired to this crew for the purpose of fighting unknown opponents in their places of power and strength.” He sat up, giving Alex a serious look. “I would not want to assault you in such a place, helmsman or no. Do not sell yourself short. I am no shock trooper, but I am among the best you’ll find in the Imperium of our level, at least when fighting on my own.” He shook his head. “I’m not good at fighting alongside others.”
Alex chuckled, deciding to skip the last part and leave it for now. “If you do say so yourself.”
The man nodded. “Which I do.”
They both gave exhausted laughs, and Alex held out a hand, helping the bigger man to his feet.
“So, where will we be jumping next?”
Alex froze, then groaned. “We never decided that, did we?”
Juba shrugged. “Not to my knowledge, but I was not hired to make such choices. I kill those who have what I want.” His eyes went back to the pin. “Speaking of which, that’s a nice pin.”
Alex feigned shock, covering it up. “It’s mine! You can’t have it.”
A knife appeared in the big man’s grip. “I regret that it has come to this.”
Alex gave the knife an actually nervous glance, causing Juba to chuckle.
“Too far for you? Fine, fine. Everyone’s humor is a bit different.” The knife vanished.
Alex sighed. “My mom always said, ‘Never pretend something you wouldn’t do.’”
Juba gave him an odd look. “We were just sparring, my friend.”
“I know, I know. It takes some interpretation. We both do want to fight seriously, and we’re acting as stand-ins for one another, but with that knife just now? We were acting as ourselves, and the knife was a real knife, not an act at all.”
“Ahh,” he nodded then. “I see, I see. Then, I can see wisdom in those words. My trainers said, ‘Practice makes permanent.’ And I can see the parallels.”
Alex tilted his head to the side. “I like that. Might have heard it before, but either way, it suits. Much better than ‘practice makes perfect.’”
Juba grimaced. “That is just a lie. Perfect practice makes perfect, but just practicing? That will never attain perfection unless it comes with guidance and correction… and much more.”
Alex grinned. “I know, right?”
Juba then cleared his throat. “I sense you are a rather distractible person, Alex.”
Alex frowned. “That came out of left field. I guess? What brings it to mind?”
Juba chuckled. “Where are we jumping to next?”
Alex hitched then smacked himself in the forehead, making a bit louder of a sound than expected. “Son of my mother. Right, right.”
He looked down at his cuffs and quickly sent a message to the other Initiates.
Juba twisted back and forth in a stretch before bending down and tapping the floor a few times, eliciting a series of pops through his back.
“There it is.” He nodded once. “Now, I wish food. Are you going in that direction? Or are we parting ways?”
Alex grinned. “I need food too. I’ll see if we want to chat over a repast.”
Juba gestured, and the two men left the impromptu arena.
Alex decided to keep his sparring weapon in his inventory just in case and to keep from having to pick it up before the next session.
It was a short walk through the ship to the small kitchen and dining hall near the rear of the ship.
As they approached, Alex began to hear something… odd.
‘Can’t see me. Can’t sense me. Don’t consider that I could be here.’
The words were on an ever repeating loop, each iteration slightly different.
In fact, it was that fluctuation that had drawn the words from the background magic.
Alex jerked to a stop, eyes going wide.
He was hearing some sort of magic, and his mind was parsing it to English for ease of comprehension.
Juba noticed his sudden motion and looked back his way in confusion. “Alex?”
“Something’s on the ship, something hidden that’s using magic to remain undetected.”
Juba’s face transformed from one of joviality and friendship to a hard mask of impending violence. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” And he was.
“Do you know where?”
“Not yet, but I think I can find it.”
Juba nodded, manipulating his bracer, clearly signalling Grant as well as the ship’s defensive systems.
Even so, no alarms went off, nor did anything else change to indicate the presence of an intruder.
“I’ve notified the crew but muted the alarms. We hunt.”
Alex nodded, looking both ways at the next junction.
The magic was louder from the left, so he indicated that direction and nodded. “This way.”
Juba picked up the pace. “The engine room is this way. I’ve not received a ping-back from John.”
Alex paled slightly and sped up, straining his sense to try and pinpoint the magic.
It was frustrating, because he wasn’t actually sensing a source of magic, his sense didn’t have the range for that. Instead, he was sensing the ripples of magic that carried to him from wherever they were originating. In essence, he was picking up the effects that were iterating out through the rest of the mana in the ship.
It was like trying to trace an echo.
The cadence continued like the slow inhale and exhale as the magic ebbed and flowed, pushing against all the senses and sensors it came across, imposing the power and effect upon them.
The flight-crew portion of the ship wasn’t very large, and as such, they quickly navigated the corridors to the engine room.
Alex found himself surprised and in awe of the place, despite having implanted memories both of the design and this one in particular.
It was laid out like a large cargo-bay, but the floors were mostly clear, showing the inner workings, and giving direct access to all parts at need through various hatches or panels in the clear floor.
Alex knew that it was a refined levi-stone core that allowed for at least a part of the jump-drive and warping of space of which the ship was capable, but the other components were entirely alien to him.
By the third bird’s heard word, he didn’t even know what the powersource was called.
But all of that was unimportant at the moment.
Near where they’d entered the space, John lay, seemingly unconscious.
Alex and Juba moved forward quickly, looking in every direction that they could, despite the apparent uselessness of the action.
Alex was sure that the thing—whatever it was—hid somewhere in this room, but that’s all he could tell at the moment.
If they were lucky, it would be trying to do something covert, and it might simply wait for them to take John and go.
Unfortunately, that was not to be. As they knelt and checked John’s vitals, Juba looked over at Alex and asked, “Is it still in here?”
Alex stiffened, the magic he was sensing swelling slightly, showing that it had heard as well. He grimaced. “Yes. And now it knows we know.”
Juba blinked twice, then his face darkened in a blush, the man clearly not in his element, surrounded by his comrades rather than enemies and unthinking drones under his control.
Alex waved him off before he could say more. “I’ll get it. Watch my back.”
The other man nodded, and Alex stood.
He moved forward, searching, looking, hoping to be able to pinpoint it in this large space.
He swung his head back and forth, instinctively trying to find the thing with his eyes, but of course, he couldn’t.
It was even silent, despite him knowing it had to be making some sound.
Even so, he felt the magic it was projecting like the wind from an oscillating fan… on the back of a robot vacuum… on a pitch black football field when he had earplugs and over ear protection besides.
In the analogy, natural winds would often disrupt the attempt to find the thing, and in reality, the constant magics washing out from the various parts of the ship were doing the same thing.
It was also moving fast enough that he couldn’t just slowly move toward a fixed location in some twisted version of blind-man’s bluff.
Juba was behind him, tending to John where he lay on the floor unconscious, protecting the man until Bev and others could arrive or they could find a chance to get him free.
Alex glanced back to check on the man, and that was apparently the opening the thing was waiting for.
Suddenly, the waves began breaking across him much closer together, and Alex spun back just in time to have his sense pick up… nothing. Well, nothing save his danger sense screaming a warning.
As a set of claws that he couldn’t otherwise detect sunk into his left shoulder, he let out an unrestrained yell of pain, the dissonance thrumming outward.
The combination of the fractional disruption of the magic and the source being within his spherical sense let him momentarily pinpoint the ‘speaker’ of the magic he was sensing.
He flailed, slapping his hands outward, and finding a vaguely humanoid shape. With blind fingers, he found the neck and latched on, growling to continue the dissonance. “You’re mine now.”
Even though his every mundane sense tried to tell him he was holding nothing, he trusted in the resistance that was keeping his fists from closing. Then, he acted.
Through Life Manipulation, he sent two waves into the thing. The first went with a command. ‘Learn all you can about evading and resisting magical detection and examination.’ It was possible that the effect was a magical skill, or a learned spell, but it was also possible that his Life could gain something from it, given that he already had the base Attribute to work with.
Regardless, the second wave—this time of HP—was simply destructive.
He had long practiced sending quick bursts of HP to destroy undead in the last scenario. In this case, he didn’t know exactly what he was facing, so he biased high, giving enough HP that he’d have obliterated even the Death Knight that they fought near the end.
That was when Alex was truly faced with just how unfair his first scenario had been for him.
In his favor.
For the undead, his HP was lethal in a way that was hard to describe, doing at least four times the damage as the points he spent, regardless of how he dumped it into them.
Living creatures?
Yeah… that’s not how they worked at all. As things stood, he’d put a third of his health into killing the thing he held… and it seemed to do absolutely nothing of note.
Oh… fudge nuggets.