Dead Star Dockyards

Eight strands. Donovan was going to need to support eight strands of Split, simultaneously, to open the egg. Donovan understood this to be the standard number of strands a fighter would need to be considered 'competent'. That meant two strands per limb, one controlling extension and the other contraction. It was also seven more than Donovan could manage.

"There's gotta be a trick to this." He was practicing his ability to maintain multiple threads simultaneously before engaging with the seed again, understanding that failures would hurt both of them. "Titanyana can handle twice as many without breaking a sweat."

"I would imagine the 'trick' you are looking for is called practice."

"The sass is not appreciated." He smiled despite his admonishment. "It would be stupid of the Great Csillacra to give me an impossible task."

His seventeenth attempt ended just the same as the rest, both threads collapsing almost immediately after being pulled from his core. He needed to adjust his approach.

"Perhaps attempting to weave them one at a time instead of simultaneously would yield better results?"

"Maybe." Donovan was going to try the alternative method after reaching attempt number twenty, but the total lack of progress with the current one was enough to make him reconsider. Making the first path was rather easy, a short path out of and back into his core to avoid unnecessary strain, and focused a great deal on making it easy to handle. He minimized flow and smoothed out the path as much as possible before shifting the lion's share of his attention to forming another of these threads. Keeping the path as short as the first thread's, he did manage to complete the second path.

"Shit." He was definitely on the right track, this much progress in a single attempt greatly outstripping what he could accomplish through simultaneous weaving, however there was a definite problem. "This isn't stable at all."

The balance between the two strands seemed to shift at random, the distribution of Split at a given moment being completely unpredictable. As much as he might try to adjust the flow from his core, he was always a step behind. Minor corrections very quickly became overcorrections which themselves required more corrections, all of which resulted in a degenerative precession of stability. Eventually one of the strands wasn't fed enough Split to sustain itself and dissipated, the other strand stabilizing itself almost immediately afterwards.

"Should I skip the practice and see if the seed has a tool to help me?" Donovan had no desire to spend time practicing this skill at the moment. Even just a brief adventure into the realm of controlling multiple strands revealed a multitude of issues he would need to spend a great deal of effort resolving.

"Would there be any drawback should it be lacking said tool?"

"Minor pain and an encroaching sense of defeat."

"Then I can only suggest you go ahead with it."

Donovan grabbed the egg and placed it on his lap, completing a circuit with the first strand and giving himself a moment to stabilize it. He pared down what he pushed into the thread to match what the seed let out, suspecting it might have some bearing on the stability of multiple threads maintained at the same time.

more

"I know, I know." Donovan spooled up the second thread and began to pull it towards the seed. He decided to keep this thread at about the same level of Split as the other, and it appeared to be more stable than his earlier experiment. Whether this was a function of the threads' strength or the working of the seed wasn't clear, however it was certainly a spot of good news. "Just give me a second."

Second thread in, second thread out. Chancing a loss of focus, Donovan opened one of his eyes to confirm that another of the dark fibers was now glowing purple.

YES

A smirk spread across his face despite the difficulty of getting the third string out his core.

- - - - -

Donovan lowered his back to the ground and closed his eyes, egg propped between his legs. Bringing up an arm to wipe the sweat from his face, he thought about how difficult opening one little seed was.

It had taken him a few hours to reach the point of seven strands, which he could now achieve with a degree of regularity. However the countless failures on the path to eight had fatigued him, and in spite of the seed's growing enthusiasm Donovan felt his confidence waning. He had made great strides in his ability to manipulate Split, sure, but he still hadn't opened the seed. He had to wonder why it was made so difficult.

"Would you like to resume this adventure tomorrow?" Arc's voice echoed through the cargo bay, the breaking of near total silence irritating him to some degree. "You have not eaten in a while, nor have you gone to the bathroom. Perhaps a few hours to refresh yourself would yield a better result?"

"Not yet." Donovan rejected the idea for the moment. "I'm just taking a short rest and gathering my strength. One more attempt before I go to bed, I don't want to lose this momentum."

"This makes the seventh time you've said that."

"Eighth times the charm."

"That phrase becomes much less convincing when the third, fifth, and seventh times were also 'the charm'. At a certain point you need to take a break and rally for the next attempt."

"That's what I'm doing."

"Laying on the ground whilst drenched in sweat for a minute or two does not qualify as 'rallying'. I seriously think you need a good meal, a cold shower, and a long nap to clear your head. We still have a few days before we must leave."

"I want to get this done now." Donovan opened his eyes, propping himself back up into a seated position. He wasn't going to start just yet, but he was preparing himself. "I'd like to scout out the labs at least, and maybe get a few images of Earth for Diana. Even if she doesn't want them, I think it's something she and I both need to see."

"Suit yourself." Arc truly had no method of stopping Donovan from continuing. If he attempted to use the shock collar, Donovan would just take it off. It was much better to avoid annoying him and let fatigue and failure do the work.

Donovan, on the other hand, was really planning to give up for a while if this next attempt didn't succeed. In his understanding of the current situation, failure was constituted more by a lack of Split and built up fatigue causing a lapse in concentration than skill, and the skill in question was only going to develop with practice. He was confident he could pull this off, he simply wanted to gauge his own abilities against what the Great Csillacra desired of him.

Strands one and two left his core practically at the same time, swiftness being of the essence in these early stages so that he could devote his concentration on preventing those coming out later from deviation. They delivery was swift and their return swifter, the egg itself more than willing to accept multiple at a time. strands three and four were also quite swift, however Donovan was not yet at the point of maneuvering two strands about while preventing those already in place from going haywire. The fifth was when things began to get difficult, he needed to slow down significantly to ensure none of the strands got too close to another, which would kickstart a chain of destabilization he couldn't get a handle on with his current level of skill.

By the time he was sewing the sixth, the majority of his attention had shifted to maintenance over the laying of a new one, while the seventh saw him moving at a snail's pace. In spite of the level of caution he needed to exhibit, all of these strands where hemorrhaging Split at a rate that would leave him dry within minutes, so he still hustled more than he would have liked. Stopping at this stage would be tantamount to failure, and he could recover that which leaked inside of his body without much difficulty. Connecting it back to his core, he took a moment to pause and put all of the strands in as close to a 'stable' configuration as he could manage with limited time. The reason for this was a rather stupid strategy he had come up with, the same strategy that pushed him to give it this one last shot.

It was founded upon a rather foolish reach that maybe, just maybe, he didn't need to sustain eight strands. The only permanent change from a new strand of Split was a discoloration from dark brown to a dull purple, which with a bit of extrapolation meant that he only needed to get eight across. Perhaps, just as he first thought, it was a lock of some variety. The key didn't need to be in the hole when you opened the door, it just needed to disengage the lock.

Wishful thinking for sure, but the strategy to reach that eighth strand was novel in it's own right - abandoning control over the other strands while the final one was rushed into position. It took time for the strands to move about and collide with each other, so as long as he devoted the bare minimum of attention to ensuring they wouldn't dissolve on their own, it should be possible to complete the eighth circuit before everything collapsed

If he was completely honest with himself, he didn't believe this would work anyways. If this was meant as a skills test there would be little value in Donovan displaying that he could not make use of the skill in question. At this point he was only truing to see what was possible, and so the final strand shot out of his core and raced along his arm, dodging and weaving around the strands gradually drifting away from the paths he placed them in before finally he reached the egg and shoved it in. Now all he needed to do was wait a few seconds and -

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

Donovan screamed as the final line on the egg's surface began to glow, all of the strands leading into the egg being severed in an instant and without warning. This pain was different than the pain from before though. It was not shared by the egg, which seemed to be quite pleased with him, though it was partially its fault.

As Donovan had surmised before, the seed was still a child. It would only be natural for a child to not fully understand how to communicate with others, nor would it be out of the norm for a child to do something without fully grasping the consequences. In this case the method through which the seed severed the strands caused harm, the split the seed used to do so carrying the intent to 'destroy'. Naturally those strands carried this intent back to Donovan's core, and while such a weak intent would normally do nothing to even the weakest of people, Donovan did not possess the same defensive instinct as other when it came channeling split outside of his body - and more importantly into other people.

Donovan would be fine, his core was more than strong enough to fend off this assault despite being weakened by overexertion, however the pain he experienced now was unlike any other he had experienced before. The core was an organ he had a poor grasp on in both an academic sense and with regards to how it 'felt', indeed it had only been 'sore' for a few weeks after the Great Csillacra operated on him, so when suddenly the nerves connected to it bombarded him with signals of immense pain, his unprepared brain did not take it well and fainted.

It was like getting kicked in the balls for the first time - with a spiked boot.

- - - - -

Donovan's consciousness returned to cold air, colder steel, and an aching in his chest. Squinting at the ceiling, he noticed the lighting in the cargo bay to have been dimmed significantly.

"Thanks Arc."

"I'm just glad you finally decided to take a nap." If Donovan hadn't been struggling to open his eyes, he would have rolled them. "But seriously, are you alright? That didn't sound like a normal scream of pain."

"I'm fine, I think." Donovan tensed his body a little before relaxing it again, trying to gauge what portions of his body were experiencing pain. Fortunately, it was only the chest. "Don't know why it was so bad this time around though."

"Did you do something you shouldn't have, perhaps?"

". . . maybe." Donovan wondered if that visceral response from the seed was it's way of saying 'no cheating', however he vaguely remembered intonations of joy from the seed whilst it did so. There was always a chance the seed had a sadistic personality, or maybe it was simple revenge for the torture he had inflicted upon it, but it seemed a bit weird for joy to accompany pain like that. "Can you get a shower ready?"

"Of course. The water has been hot for over an hour though."

". . . how long was I out?" Donovan thought it strange for Arc to have left it warm for so long, though there wasn't much of a reason to leave it cold either. The heater might have a known lifetime, but they were planning to switch to a more competent vessel within the decade.

"Twenty minutes."

Groaning, he brought himself back to a seated position. The egg was still between his legs, he could feel that much, but the vivid purple hue staining his pants. No, it wasn't a stain, it was light.

"That's . . . progress?"

"Twenty minutes is progress?"

"What? No, the seed is glowing."

"It is? I'm not seeing anything." Donovan blinked a few times to ensure he wasn't going crazy.

"It's definitely glowing. Are you sure the sensors aren't malfunctioning?"

"Positive. Nothing strange is showing on the Split sensors either."

"Weird." Donovan wondered why that was, but didn't pay it much mind. Something on this level hardly qualified as strange to him at this point. There were far more absurd happenings everywhere if he looked close enough. The only thing he could do now was investigate.

Picking up the egg, Donovan rallied up enough strength to send a strand of split towards it.

no

He was met with a matter of fact rejection once the strand reached the edge of the egg, which confused him greatly.

other Thɪs chapter is updated by NoveI-Fire.ɴet

Only to be given an instruction. Donovan could only interpret this to mean he should send a strand to the other side, so he retracted the one he had out and sent another, which was graciously accepted and spat it out the other side.

bigger

Donovan sighed, recognizing in an instant that this was the counterpart to 'more'. It should have been obvious that something without the ability to see would associate 'size' with the intensity of split rather than a quantity. Regardless, he obeyed the command of the seed, ramping up the little bit of flow he could manage in his current state.

Yes!

The seed expressed elation, which reflected in Donovan with a gentle smile. The influence of the seed was only a part of it though, Donovan's own pride in solving a tough puzzle was also shining through. There was something weird about the strand though. Maybe it was because of how he abused himself to get eight strands out, but it felt a little off, as though it was somehow imbalanced. Apart from that, he could not see anything out of the ordinary, so he continued to ramp up the flow. And then a little more.

And then a little more.

And then a little more. . .

And then a little more?

Donovan snapped to his senses about a minute after starting this process, finally identifying the anomaly. By his own measure, the amount of Split he was siphoning off to the egg should not have been possible given his state at the beginning of this process - and he hadn't taken any measures to improve that situation. Somehow, he was ending up with more and more split in his core.

"Arc."

"Yes?"

"Which arm has the strand with a higher concentration of split?" Donovan was too tired to tell a difference at this point, so he was relying on his ultimate multitool to do the job for him.

"Your right arm. Why?"

"I think I may have just been taught a second method to generate Split."