The Chain

The sixth platform was where it broke.

The launch from five to six was the longest yet — the gap wider, the angle steeper, the arc requiring more height before the descent. Jake made it clean. The light at his feet fired at the column's top, the correction at the peak was small, the landing solid. He was getting good at this. His body had started to understand what his mind hadn't caught up with.

He turned to watch Vauren come.

Vauren left the column off. Jake could see it from the moment his feet cleared the cap — the angle out by a few degrees, the right side overcompensating the way it always did, but this time the arc was longer and the error had more distance to grow in. Vauren's body tried the mid-air correction, the water redistributing his weight, but the left shoulder seized. Jake saw it happen — a hitch in Vauren's whole left side, the arm locking, the correction dying.

Vauren hit the edge of the sixth platform at a bad angle. His right side absorbed what it could. The rest of him hit stone. He rolled twice and came to rest on his back, his left arm underneath him, his eyes open and facing the sky.

Jake was there in three steps.

"Don't move."

"I am not moving." Vauren's voice was flat. Controlled. The control was doing a lot of work.

"Your shoulder."

"Yes."

Jake knelt beside him. Vauren was breathing carefully, the kind of breathing that meant something hurt badly enough that normal breathing was a problem. His left arm was still under him. He hadn't tried to move it.

"Can you sit up?"

Vauren sat up. The movement was slow, his right arm doing everything, his jaw locked. When he was upright his left arm hung at his side at an angle that was worse than before. The shoulder had dropped. Something had shifted that wasn't going to shift back.

He studied the arm. Studied Jake studying it. His black eyes were steady.

"How long has it been like this?" Jake said.

"The injury occurred during the guardian fight."

"That's not what I asked."

Vauren was quiet. The wind moved across the platform. Below them the fifth platform was visible, the abandoned structures, the faded grooves. Above them the seventh.

"It has been worsening since the second platform," Vauren said. "The launches accelerate the damage. Each one costs more than the last."

"Since the second platform. That's — Vauren, that's been days."

"I am aware of the timeline."

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"The Lindrith line does not stop for injury."

"The Lindrith line is going to fall off a platform."

The words came out harder than Jake intended. They sat in the air between them. Vauren was quiet for a moment.

Jake sat back on his heels. The wind pushed at them. A Verath woman was watching from a structure at the platform's far edge — not approaching, just watching. She'd seen this before. Travelers arriving hurt, having the conversation they should have had three platforms ago.

"You can't launch like this," Jake said. "The next gap is bigger. If your shoulder locks mid-arc you miss the platform."

"I will adjust the compensation."

"You've been adjusting the compensation. This is what adjusted looks like." Jake pointed at the arm. At the angle it hung. "You need to do something different."

Vauren studied his arm. The shoulder that had dropped. The hand he hadn't been able to raise above his chest since the guardian.

"Torek said your body absorbs," Jake said. "Your landings are better than mine. Every time you hit stone your body knows what to do with the impact. Use that for the whole launch. Stop trying to fly straight with one arm. Let the landing be the thing you're good at."

Vauren said nothing for a while.

"If I change the approach I lose the control I have built."

"The control you have built just put you on your back."

Their eyes met. The wind pushed between them. Below them the chain of platforms went down into the cloud layer. Above them it went up into the sky.

"You are not wrong," Vauren said.

They stayed on the sixth platform for two days. The longest they'd stopped since the base.

Vauren spent the first day relearning how to launch. He went to the column at the platform's edge and climbed it one-armed, the water in his skin doing the work, the ascent smooth. At the top he launched — short, to a nearby outcropping barely ten meters away. His old form, straight and controlled. The left shoulder hitched. He landed hard.

He did it again. This time he didn't fight the shoulder. He let the arc curve where the asymmetry wanted to take it, let his body find its own line, committed to the landing instead of the flight. He came in at an angle. The water absorbed it. He rolled once, came up standing.

He did it again. Better. The body curving through the air differently now, the right side leading, the left side carried. The landing clean, the absorption deep, the stone taking him softly.

Again. The arc was ugly. The landing was perfect.

Jake watched from the platform's edge. By the end of the first day Vauren's launches looked nothing like they had before. The clean controlled lines were gone. What replaced them was stranger — the body finding its own path through the air, the water adjusting on every surface, the landings so soft they barely made a sound.

On the second day Vauren launched to the seventh platform and back. Twice. Both landings clean.

He came back to where Jake was sitting. His face was the same as always — composed, formal, giving nothing. But he sat down next to Jake instead of across from him.

"It works," Jake said.

"It is inelegant."

"It works."

Vauren considered his left arm. The shoulder was still dropped. The range was still gone. But the arm wasn't carrying the launches anymore. The rest of his body was.

"Yes," he said. "It works."

They sat on the edge of the sixth platform. The wind had dropped. The sky was clear, the platforms above them lit by late sun, the cloud layer below white and still. Somewhere on the base platform Torek was sitting on his railing with his cup.

Jake bumped Vauren's right shoulder with his own. Vauren turned to him.

"Inelegant is fine," Jake said. "Elegant was going to kill you."

Vauren didn't move away from the contact. He sat there for a while longer than he needed to before he stood up.

Jake stood up too. He walked to the edge of the platform and faced the seventh, the eighth, the ones above that. The wind came back, cold, pressing against his chest. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

"Hey!" he shouted upward. His voice went out into the open air and disappeared. "We're coming!"

It echoed off nothing. The sky swallowed it. A Verath on a nearby outcropping turned toward him.

Jake turned back to Vauren. He was grinning.

Vauren regarded him with an expression that on his world probably preceded formal disownment.

"You are very loud," Vauren said.

"Twenty-five more," Jake said. "Let's go."