6-3
Namlor was a harsh shard, a hot dry desert similar to Furat (with which it shared a border, an act of foresight on my part), but vastly different in terms of its inhabitation. Namlor was a desolate place, short on civilization and long on monsters.
It was also the most isolated of all of the shards, and the only one that shared no border with the Gamrange Sea, being separated from the crossroads of Scrapyard by the high plateau of Qinglong. Only a narrow strip of land circled around the back of the plateau to connect Namlor with the Kingdom Forest, and the border with Furat was the harshest, least hospitable part of the Namlori desert, the most heavily infested with hostile spirits and outlaws. And yet, in their exodus toward Leedsrealm, Qi Zhen had had no choice but to cross that desolate shard.
They’d nearly died in the process. Not because of any attack: the bandits which lay in ambush for them at the bottom of the mountain pass were dispatched with ease and granted a quick primer on Buddhist morality in the hopes they might be inspired to turn their lives around. No, the problem was the dust. There was little dust up in Qinglong, probably because the sects filtered it out of the air to prevent exactly what happened. Qi Zhen had been walking for only about a full day before the grit in their joints became so overwhelming as to render them paralyzed with pain.
They’d collapsed on the spot, and for a full night tried to figure out what to do. Cleaning themself out with their hands would cause damage, and using their lubricant fluid would mean drastically shortening the maximum duration of their quest. Gentle dawn was only just beginning to rouse from her veiled bed when a gust of cool wind coming down from the mountains gave them inspiration.
By and large, Qi Zhen was not an elementalist. They preferred more pure applications of willpower upon the world, words of binding and manipulations of fundamental forces. But a well-rounded education in qigong necessitated that they know at least a few tricks, ways to summon gusts of wind, puffs of flame, brief showers of healing rain. But these tricks were not rigid; through intention and reorganization of mental steps, a small trick could be rendered very large indeed.
Qi Zhen burnt most of their qi reserve on a single blast of wind, emanating not from their hands but from within, running through every gap and sending the sand scattering. This over-investment was not, of course, because they were afraid. It was a calculation of risk: better to put in more qi than necessary and then regenerate it than leave a grain behind.
That the blast of air radiated outwards with such fury that it scraped away the nearby soil all the way down to bedrock, leaving Qi Zhen sitting undisturbed in the center of a shallow crater, was a necessary side effect. Regardless, the deafening sound of the wind blast drew attention. Which was how Qi Zhen met Dano.
How, exactly, Dano had come to believe that the relationship e had with Qi Zhen was romantic or in any other way binding was a complete mystery to them. Qi Zhen had been honest from the very beginning. After all, the first thing Dano had done after meeting them was offer them some of es water in total defiance of Qi Zhen’s lack of a mouth. E was generous and free of guile, and so Qi Zhen returned the favor.
Did Dano think that Qi Zhen was to be won over with es charms? Persuaded away from earning glory to instead become some kind of assistant or domestic partner? Dano was energetic, sure, but e wasn’t a hardcore idealist. E had been a warrior at one point; surely a warrior who lost themself to idealism would die before long.
(Gilead was beginning to make Qi Zhen wonder about that; but Gilead was very different to Dano for several other reasons)
It was that same energy that had caused Qi Zhen to be drawn to Dano in the first place. As soon as Qi Zhen had informed em of their mission, Dano had offered to escort them to a town near to the border crossing.
“Surely you have somewhere better to be?” had been Qi Zhen’s reply.
“I’ve just offered to take you to somewhere better, chunal.” A chunal was a kind of medium-sized desert-dwelling rodent, with a reputation not unlike that of the pigeon. “And it was where I was going anyways. My tribe will be stopping near there in three days, so if we move quickly, I’ll get home and you’ll have somewhere to stay.”
“I was wondering why you were traveling alone,” Qi Zhen said. “The desert seems quite dangerous.”
E shrugged. “I’ve known them all my life. Was just making a quick run to gather the roots.”
That had diverged into a long discussion about what, exactly, Dano had needed all the roots for, why e was allowed to range so far away from the tribe, and on and on and on. Qi Zhen had thought that their vast reserves of archival data meant they knew everything about everything. Dano quickly banished that delusion: hearing from em directly as e talked about es life, the desert, es stories, filled in countless gaps that they hadn’t been aware of.
They broke camp just before dawn, Dano riding on horseback while Qi Zhen ran alongside em, burning qi to maintain light feet. A test of their capabilities, but whenever the horse needed rest—often—Qi Zhen could top off their qi and resume. Dano flirted with the idea of turning it into a race, throwing out taunts about Qi Zhen’s sluggish pace and spurring es horse into rushing ahead for a minute or two.
By the time they made it to the next oasis at midday, human, automaton, and horse were all at the brink of collapse. The teasing had rendered Qi Zhen pleasantly frustrated, with an urge to take out their feelings on Dano directly. If only they were not vulnerable to overheating during the day.
The same process repeated in the afternoon, albeit with less energy on the part of the organics, but Qi Zhen was nonetheless quite flustered when they stopped for the night. They’d challenged Dano to a sparring match pretty much instantly.
Qi Zhen won, of course. But even in victory they were defeated. Code was running in unexpected loops, spilling waste heat into Qi Zhen’s face-plate. It was that damned look on es face, that stupid grin with the bone white teeth, the prickly stubble whose texture begged to be explored.
Qi Zhen had little experience outside of the sect. Everyone working in the labs, the people who they interacted with on a day to day basis, knew them as a child, naive in the ways of the world. Everyone outside of the labs saw them as equipment of functionally infinite value, the sort of thing that one could only touch with gloved hands lest they be demoted for getting oils on the carapace. And there were certain techniques—crucial parts of Qi Zhen’s well-rounded training in cultivation—that they had never had the opportunity to test.
It was a good thing, in the end, that Qi Zhen was not a creature who had any need of sleep. Those extra hours, while Dano pressed emself into the blankets with a blissful smile on es face, were necessary for maintenance. Foreign biological matter had slipped into Qi Zhen’s hip joints after some intracrural experimentation, and the residue could not be allowed to remain. Several delicate elements underneath the qi-cycling plates in their shoulders had been bent or scratched by indelicate hands, and needed to be carefully returned to full form.
What Qi Zhen hadn’t realized was that humans also took that same damage (from the same act). Except humans cannot self-repair, and on them, the dents and scrapes and residues are entirely invisible, left to accumulate with each night.
That was the only sensible explanation for why, when the time had come for Qi Zhen to continue down the river on their quest to find Gem Ship, Dano had gone very slightly crazy. With each passing hour as the river-boat approached, e became more insistent, more wheedling, showing off every charm and seduction possessed by both emself and by Namlor as a whole, all to convince Qi Zhen to stay.
Qi Zhen didn’t know what e was doing, not really. (Love had always been more dramatic in their stories, not this pathetic, whining thing). Their annoyance grew and grew, but they could not bring themself to force Dano to leave, nor to give em any kind of proper ultimatum. After all, they reasoned, they would be leaving soon, and that was the last time they would ever run into one another.
It was only over the next several weeks that Qi Zhen pieced together what had happened. No thinking being, human or reptile or titanium-ceramic composite, will ever live without regret, so it was only a matter of time before Qi Zhen accumulated their first. They regretted not telling Dano that this wasn’t going to be anything meaningful, but not so badly that they were ever going to seek em out.
The worst part about being locked in a jail cell with someone who thought e had a much stronger connection to Qi Zhen than actually existed was that the pirates would show up and threaten to beat them if they tried to actually fuck about it. Any actual conversation to be had, they had gone through within the first hour on the first day: Qi Zhen insisted that it was just a juvenile experiment, Dano insisted it was more and that Qi Zhen needed to apologize for leaving, Qi Zhen apologized for leaving, Dano insisted that they weren’t being genuine, repeat.
All that remained, then, was to sit in far corners of the cell and wait. Qi Zhen’s thoughts tended in either one of two directions. One was yearning, replaying the recorded memories of those few days and searching for some change of course that could have prevented all this from happening. The other was spite. Why were carbon-based creatures like this? Why were they so needy, so obsessed with their own phantasms? If Dano had just acted normally, then none of this would have needed to happen!
Yard time was a relief, less because Qi Zhen had any need to stretch their legs—they were capable of meditating for days on end if the need arose—and more because it meant that they and Dano could place themselves on opposite ends of the Bottlenose’s enormous deck. For a few short hours each day, they each could pretend that the other did not exist, and this was the way Qi Zhen preferred it.
It was after five days of this that Qi Zhen’s hour of peace was interrupted for the first time. The soundscape of the Bottlenose was incredibly consistent: gulls squawked, waves beat against the side of her hull, and deep below the gasoline-powered engines thrummed contentedly. The ship was big enough to entirely muffle out the sounds of its crew, so long as Qi Zhen stuck to the abandoned areas like the helipad. So it was immediately notable when the whole ship was suddenly filled with a single, extended note, as though produced by a tremendous bell.
Qi Zhen tried to ignore it, even as it persisted long past the usual lifespan of such noises. What they absolutely couldn’t ignore was what happened about twenty seconds after that, when that ethereal note was interrupted by the sounds of angry shouting and the deep thud of flesh striking flesh.
They sprinted across the full length of the yacht in a matter of moments, suppressing the urge to quicken the journey even further with body-lightening arts. Near the bow, a cluster of pirates had formed around something obscured. They were shouting, growling, spewing orders like tea from a broken pot as they kicked at something on the ground.
Speeding up with a burst of qi, Qi Zhen blasted straight into the middle of the pack, bowling pirates out of the way as they hopped over the wounded innocent in the middle. Speed and weight allowed them to knock three pirates over in one go, one of the pirates even falling directly over the person they’d been attacking seconds before.
This was a foolish idea, even if Qi Zhen restrained themself from maiming or killing any of their captors. But they were operating on a far more primal level of logic than what had been programmed into them.
Qi Zhen landed in a low crouch, ready for anything. Sure enough, they had the full attention of the pirates.
“This bitch thinks she’s Bruce Lee, is that it?”
Another one proceeded to make a series of obnoxiously racist cat noises while windmilling his hands like an idiot.
Qi Zhen observed that the pirates were all carrying handguns. Holstered, for the moment. They rose, hands flat at their sides.
“I abhor violence. Especially done against one who cannot fight back.”
As the pirates forgot about their original target, fanning out or retreating as they chose, Qi Zhen got a glimpse. Dano made no indication whatsoever that e was even aware e had been wounded: covered in bruises, with two black eyes and a split lip, e remained perfectly still, kneeling on the ground with a dome-shaped piece of metal resonating gently at es side.
“The prisoner,” said one of the pirates, “is showing insubordination. Get back to your cell at once, or face punishment.”
Not until Dano could get out of the situation. What was e doing?
“I am merely defending my fellow prisoner,” Qi Zhen continued. Nothing makes a bully angry like calm. “Leave, and we can forget about this.”
There wasn’t even enough time for a rebuttal. Two of the pirates closed in, each trying to grab one of Qi Zhen’s arms, presumably so a third one could try to punch them a lot. They dropped low: elbow strike to the diaphragm, heel kick to the side of the knee. Two pirates fell, in pain but not wounded in a permanent way. Then another one drew a gun and took aim at center-mass.
Body light and leg actuators empowered, Qi Zhen crossed the distance in the blink of an eye, seizing the pirate’s gun hand and twisting their arm until the tormented ligaments could no longer maintain grip. A fraction more force and something would rip, putting this man out of commission for weeks or months. Qi Zhen shoved him to the side; Dano was still there, still, eyes shut. Damn it all!
Another pirate drew a gun, and this time Qi Zhen couldn’t get there fast enough. Three shots fired, making holes in the deck as Qi Zhen effortlessly spiraled out of the way. Bullets go in straight lines, after all, and Qi Zhen was nothing if not a quick thinker. How many more times could they pull that maneuver off, though? When another pirate, who Qi Zhen had nearly dodged into, lunged off the ground to grab them, they allowed it to happen. The other pirates closed in, and they didn’t resist. Their body was titanium-ceramic composite, after all.
Before more than two pirates could severely injure their hands by attempting to punch metal, Captain Valiente made an appearance, drawn by the gunfire. The pirates explained to her what was happening, and she admonished them for unnecessarily beating captives. If the bell sound was so annoying, why not simply confiscate the bell?
How a woman with a sense of fairness as strong as Vyrsa Valiente had ended up in command of a crew of brutes and bullies, Qi Zhen had no idea. They weren’t particularly thinking about that, though. Throughout the entire exchange, Dano remained exactly where they were, kneeling on the deck, eyes closed and breathing gently.
It was only when everyone had dispersed, Vyrsa back to her business as captain and the pirates to go lick their wounded egos, that Dano popped back into consciousness. Es chest heaved, and the grin written across es face was more a rictus of pain than genuine enjoyment.
E got es bearings slowly, then stared directly into Qi Zhen’s face plate. “Good news.” E was whispering, but in a way that suggested they would be shouting if they could. “I now know exactly how we’re going to escape from this place.”