Slashing at a Distance

As far as Trick was concerned the big problem with wearing a sword was drawing the thing. He’d looped the sheath through his belt with the blade edge down but that meant he had to pull his hand up and towards his face to draw. It was slow, it was awkward and in this case it nearly got him killed.

As he fumbled with the hilt of the sword eight different eyes focused in on him and blasted superhot orange light down at him from their pupils. Being the hardened veteran of three battles he was, Trick froze when he realized he was in their sights. He would have burnt to the bones if Sari hadn’t leapt in front of him, her staff spinning in hypnotic purple loops that formed an oval barrier between them and the insectoids.

The shield held just long enough for him to snap out of it. He finished drawing and threw himself to the ground, counting on the hedges to keep him out of the line of fire. He figured that was a good idea because the others did the same thing and they would know.

As they’d been instructed, Gemma and Sari took off towards the scent of water in an impressive elbow crawl. Bertran shot Trick a venomous look and said, “I thought you killed three of these.”

“Yeah, but they were kind of distracted at the time. Those wells you guys were harvesting are pretty good for that.” Trick rolled onto his left side to free up his sword hand then snapped his wrist so the blade cut in the direction of the nearer starsight.

Nothing happened.

Bertran made a disbelieving sound. “What was that?”

“Must be out of range,” Trick muttered, looking at the blade in disappointment. The alternative was the blade was out of power or something and he really hoped that wasn’t the case. He didn’t even know if it could be recharged.

“Fine. Look away for a moment.” The other man raised his lens over the top of the hedge he was crouched beside and it unleashed a blinding flash of light. Trick didn’t realize what was happening in time to fully turn his back to it.

So he got to enjoy a little bit of what the starsight was experiencing. His vision whited out for a few seconds, which was surprising in itself because he’d only seen the flash in the corner of his eye. But that wasn’t the end of it. His arms and legs went numb for an instant, then feeling started to come back with pins and needles, like all four limbs had fallen asleep. He also heard whispering and smelled burnt toast. It was freaky.

He recovered from the sensory overload quickly enough, perhaps because he'd seen so little of Bertran's flash bang attack. He assumed the starsight would suffer worse on account of all their eyes. Unfortunately, if they did, it wasn't readily apparent. The starsight didn't attack as they flew overhead but they also didn't look hurt or fall to the ground.

Bertran fumbled with his lens, working to swap a red crystal for his yellow one. He seemed to have to hold the red crystal with his ringed hand while also using the middle ring to free the yellow crystal from its housing. It looked very awkward. However, based on what Trick had seen, the red crystals were the ones that had actual attack power.

He frowned. “Can’t you combine those two colors and get stunning and pain together?”

“If I had ochre lumi I would but we didn’t have enough gestalt to formulate it for a simple harvest patrol,” Bertran said, slipping the yellow crystal away while sliding the red one home. “They don’t look confused right now but the starsight will have trouble seeing clearly enough to react for another minute or so. Now get going. I’d rather not fight them more if we don’t have to.”

“Fair enough.” Trick got unsteadily to his feet and started in the direction the women had gone. As he got up he fished under the tarp he’d wrapped around his shoulders, counting slots on his belt until he got to the one he wanted. He pulled out the two crystals there and offered them to Bertran using his left hand. “Here. If you get the chance to swap out again use these.”

The other man’s eyes boggled at the sight of the orange lumi on offer and he quickly snatched the crystals and started the process of replacing his red crystal. While he worked on that he pushed past Trick, forging a path through the brush. “You really are from the tenth sphere, aren’t you?”

“What makes you say that?” Trick stuck close to Bertran as they moved, noting the way the other man used his thumb ring to brace the ochre crystal as he guided it into place with his ring finger.

“They say the lumi of each sphere is harnessed in different ways. Here, where we harvest it from wells and hold it in crystal reservoirs, it’s unsafe to handle it without a tap, a guide and a ground.” Bertran wiggled the rings on his hand as he named them, moving from his ring finger over to his thumb. “No one would hold a reservoir in a hand that isn’t wearing a channeling glove if they could help it. Nothing goes wrong most of the time but…”

“Why take chances.” Trick looked up at the two starsight, which were circling high overhead, presumably waiting until their senses recovered from the shock Bertran gave them with his lens. “What about them? How do they use lumi in their sphere?”

“I’m not sure they do,” Bertran replied. “They’re from the ninth sphere, the space beyond the stars. Look at it. Does it look bright to you?”

“Odd that they’d be drawn to lumi here, then.” Trick looked down at the hilt of his sword, wondering why it was so temperamental. It had cut the starsight even if the blade wasn’t touching them, it was true. Yet that was only after he’d started a cut. It hadn’t actually cut one of them at a distance, just extended a cut under way.

But maybe that was because he hadn’t understood how to activate the sword. The hilt included a beautiful grip molded into it, including a notch for his index finger to rest in. That shifted most of the blade’s weight closer to his middle finger and the ring on it, what Bertran called the guide ring, fit into a small grove hidden in the hilt quite naturally. There was a second grove a little further back for the tap ring on his ring finger.

Now that he took a closer look at the hilt he could see a groove on the back side of the hilt as well, but not one his thumb naturally rested in when he held the grip like a pistol. Instead, the grounding ring on his glove just barely brushed against that slot. It was close enough that a little pressure on the blade might move the ring into contact with the groove but it didn’t slide in naturally.

Trick looked up to see the starsight coming back around for another pass. Against the dark night sky the only part of their bodies that was really visible was their glowing wings but, for the moment, that was enough he could pick them out. He looked at Bertran. “Think they’re still stunned from your lens?”

The other man paused his forward progress long enough to give them a glance. “For the moment. They’ll be back soon enough so keep moving.”

“Just a second.” He slid his thumb up so it rested along the back of the hilt, running parallel to the blade, and the grounding ring naturally slid into the groove there. The sword lit up with a soft white glow. Trick raised it in the direction of the starsight and threw a single cut at them.

There was a flicker of light, not even as bright as the strobing effect he’d seen from the towers, then one of the sets of wings plummeted to the ground. A couple of wings sheered away from the other starsight but it stayed aloft. However the creatures had some sense of self preservation because the injured one immediately started moving away from them at a much more urgent pace than before.

Trick gave the sword an appreciative look. “Not bad.”

“I thought you said they were out of range,” Bertran said, looking incredulous.

“I guess I was wrong.” Trick moved his thumb back to a more normal position and the sword stopped glowing, which he took as a sign that it was safe to sheath. As he put it away another roaring rumble came from Harbek’s walls. “Better lead on, Bertran. It sounds like there’s still more of them out here and I don’t know how many more times I can do that before the blade runs empty. We’d better get inside.”

For a long moment the other man seemed to wrestle with whether he wanted Trick along or not. Finally he just nodded and started on his way again. Frankly, Trick wasn’t sure he wanted to visit Harbek or not. Sure, the three people he’d met from that place seemed nice enough but he really didn’t know enough about the seventh sphere to know if its people would be good hosts or not. Ultimately, there was only one way to find out.

So he followed Bertran through the bushes towards Harbek.