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Chapter 16: The Chillcrafter
Part 1
June emerged from the tree line and stalked directly toward the temple. The morning mist swirled, coiling around Wood Ribbon South like a snake, shrouding the upper level of the pyre into obscurity. Junelight hoped that the sun wouldn’t burn it off.
The town was still sleepy; only a few people out and about, tending to gardens or resting on porches. She returned all the nods and waves, keeping Uliyah’s image in the front of her mind.
The temple was also sleepy. She found the hidden staircase and coaxed it open, stealing into the inner chamber. The stone hung, as usual, vibrant and red. Three folks were using the mindtether, and she went up to them one by one, flashing her sigil and explaining that she needed privacy for only a moment. They were all happy to come back later.
When the last of them had exited, she drew some energy from the system and crafted a powerful bind into the stairs. Glancing up at the open ceiling, she figured it would buy her about a minute.
Her probes had grown, but they were still primitive. The little tadpoles of aspectral energy had patterned themselves into the stone’s frequency well enough—but they were fragile. She would have to do most of the work manually.
“Okay,” she sighed. “Okay.”
June’s eyes fluttered shut and she synced in. Wood Ribbon South’s fiery arcs bloomed out and around her, the bombardment of sensation flashing through and then past her as she focused. Here, her probes appeared as three swirling torpedos. Blue comets, trailing each other in a lazy circle around the base of the central column of red light.
She guided the first one out of orbit and into the flowing current. It dissolved up and into the chaos. Junelight could still feel it though, and it felt her. For a brief few moments, she could sense the entire structure of the communications system as it spread the pieces of the probe around. The incoming information had its own rushing texture, a sense of pressure. She gathered the probe back, reforming and melting it into the signature of the incoming streams.
The second probe was used to grip all the outgoing streams. They kicked and bucked, squeezing past her probe in little jets like escaping steam until she had them all sealed.
June brought the third into herself, cycling it between her two crystals. When it was locked in good and tight, she fed a streamer of it back out and to the system, finding its mates, tying her directly to everything coming in and everything trying to get out.
When she came back to the temple, it felt only half there. The walls were a little dreamy, a little fuzzy. The stone hung there still, visible only as a smear of red light. All scents coalesced into a tapestry of greenery, dirt and human, swirling like a soup. She moved her arm, and could sense the texture of the lodgings outside, as if miniature phantoms of their hard edges and cozy interiors were passing through her.
The stone was hers.
She pulsed her probes a bit, testing the quality of their grip. They were wobbly, as expected. She worked on slowly increasing pressure on the probe that was merged into the incoming streams. It took about ten minutes to redirect them into a useless loop.
Outside, a fowl of some sort crooned, pitched and warbling, caaa-reee-ee-ee!
Wood Ribbon South was completely isolated from all other Roythan towns. People’s days were beginning, she could feel little motes of energy passing through her. But no one had seemed to notice the cut off—local shardtrade bounced around with lazy ease, unaffected by her tampering. She couldn’t shut down everything.
However, there was a little crowd gathering by the sealed staircase. She hoped the people that she had sent away were still explaining the situation. A few minutes later, the little crowd dissipated. Now shards pinged and buzzed with greater frequency. Erratic movement from all over the town. Urgent. Coordinated. She felt a group of people beelining it towards her.
“Here we go,” she moved to stand a few feet away from the central dais.
It took them the predicted minute to figure out that the stairs were sealed. She heard the wood rattle as they climbed. Then, along the upper edge of the far stone wall, four faces appeared. Their bodies followed, and they dropped in.
Viktor and Kelron moved closer to her, and two other guards began to circle wide along the walls. She stood stock still, arms stretched down, palms facing forward. Waiting for the tickle of movement along the southern tree line. Listening for the call of a warhorn. It was almost time.
“Chillcrafter!” Viktor said. “Step away from our stone.”
They moved even closer. The other two guards left her peripheral vision. No matter, she could feel them all the same.
“This stone belongs to Culdur, Viktor Velessi. By order of the Ghost Tide. Tell your townspeople to submit, and we can all walk away from this unharmed.”
“You cannot do this, the Ghost Tide cannot just take a town,” Vik said.
“Junelight, you mustn’t,” Kelron said. His eyes swam: they were granite chips ringed with threatening tears. She could sense all the assailants, but his crystals twinged in her mind with a special, vivid brightness. It was going to cost him, and she felt her own touch of sadness at that.
“It’s already done,” she said.
“My duty is to the safety and independence of Wood Ribbon South, Chillcrafter,” Vik said. He reached inside his garb and pulled out a long wooden shaft of some sort. Kelron did the same.
She cycled up her Bodyanchor, and siphoned a little extra power from the probe network. They still held. She hoped Bettine would hurry up, and spare her the need for this little spar. She didn’t like the look of those wooden shafts.
The two that had circled behind closed in. Vik and Kelron each pulled their instruments apart. The devices split right in the middle, revealing themselves to actually be two strange blades, sheathed within the handle of the other. The weapons floated away from their hands, spun lazily in the air, and hung at an angle away from each of their elbows, giving the effect of an extra forearm, albeit longer and sharper than the flesh and bone counterpart.
Physical weapons—that meant they probably knew she intended to invoke a strong downcycle on the mindtether. The kid had really sold them out.
“Last chance,” she said, out of courtesy.
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