Chapter 13: Chapter 13 – The Pauper Princess, Part 8

Wip caught Luci just before her head hit the ground. Carefully, he lowered Luci down so that she could sleep comfortably, or at least as comfortably as someone could try to sleep with their face flat against hard stone.

Then a thought struck him. “Did I use too much enma? That can kill people.”

He leaned in closer to try hear her breathe. While he was able to sense her presence, lingering there on the edge of his consciousness, that alone didn’t tell him what her condition was like, only that she was alive. However, listening to her breathe didn’t help at all since there were monkilyxes everywhere around him, hooting and hollering and screaming. Frustrated, he put his backpack down, stuffed an arm into it, and pulled out a sword. Well, it used to be a sword. Now it was twisted like a screw.

He stood then swung the screw-sword in a circle around him. Flames jetted out of the ground where the tip pointed. With that one strike, he melted probably thirty monkilyxes, and the lingering wall of flames took out a few more as they tried to hop through.

Wip nodded in satisfaction then attended to Luci once more. He could feel her soul just fine, but he was hesitant to delve further into it to check its state. From her breathing, however, he could tell she was just fine, even if it seemed a little laboured. He stood once more and scratched at his collar.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “She’s so strong, and she seems like such a happy person. What’s holding her back?”

The question was a pointless one. Wip didn’t use his brain for much of anything, unlike the folks who spent all their time fussing over rules and procedures. Instead, he felt his way through life. Whenever a wall rose before him, he’d solve it in his usually way: brain off, fists up, and punch a hole through the thing.

Now, while that worked well for monsters, punching holes in people was generally not the best way to solve minor disputes. Fortunately, Wip did have a way to understand someone’s problems so that he could make better decisions than simply punching them. That was, by sensing their soul.

He usually didn’t bother feeling so deeply into someone’s soul because it made him uncomfortable, but Luci’s behaviour had been bothering him for a while now. He needed to know.

He channelled his enma into a place that was both there and not there, physical yet detached from the confines of reality. It wasn’t his soul but rather something closer to his body, and yet so far away. The world lit up in his mind. Each draft of air, every subtle vibration that permeated through the dungeon, every spot where the enma receded to nothing that he knew for monsters, all became known to him as though he were feeling it on his skin.

Then he narrowed that sense so that it focused on a spot right in front of him, on Luci. When he did so, he felt an overwhelming fear. It wasn’t a fear of the monsters or the people that wished to hurt her. Rather, it was a fear of herself. In a way, he felt like he was staring at his own reflection.

That was puzzling. Whenever he was feeling down, he fought with monsters to blow off steam. If they were similar like that, then this dungeon crawl should have made Luci feel better. He had no idea why it didn’t.

With his senses so focused on Luci, Wip didn’t notice as a monkilyx weaved through the flames and leapt for the back of his head. The monster curled its arms around his chest and head then tried to crush him.

“Can you just order something and get out of my life?” he mumbled into the monkilyx’s hand. He’d picked up that phrase from Mori.

Wip spiked his enma out of his back. Both he and the monkilyx were engulfed in red electricity. Half the fight wasn’t with the monkilyx but against his collar, which pulsed as it tried to squash down his spike. He was grateful for it. Without the collar, he wouldn’t have exploded just the monkilyx, but Luci as well.

The spike bought him time by pushing back against the monster. Then, with an arm that was free from the monkilyx’s bear hug, he placed a hand on the monkilyx’s arm then sent a concentrated spike into it.

Starting from the arm, the monkilyx split apart. Its body tore itself into a thousand pieces with such force that it exploded off his back, showering Wip in green goop.

Wip wiped his hand on his pant legs, which was previously the only part of him that wasn’t covered in goop. He checked on Luci. She was fine, thankfully. Then, he took another afto from his backpack off the floor and shouldered it. He looked up and saw that the flames had all died down, leaving behind patches of charred goop.

“Well, now that Luci is asleep, there’s no need to hold back.”

He flowed enma into his afto and the dungeon erupted in madness.

*****

Luci woke up stiff, body aching. She rolled over and stretched out sore muscles, groaning from the effort. In her wake-addled state, her first thought was, why is my mattress so hard?

After wiping her eyes, she realised that she wasn’t sleeping on a mattress at all, but a squished backpack. Wip’s backpack. That he’d been wearing while fighting—

She gasped and bolted upright. “Monsters!” she cried.

“All gone,” she heard from the side.

Luci spun to see Wip sitting cross-legged a bit away from her, and for good reason: he was covered in curses. His whole body had been infested with tiny green prickles. One eye was black while the other was twice its usual size, making his whole head appear lopsided. He looked absolutely dreadful.

Luci scanned the scenery. She was still in the middle of the stone clearing. She could have sworn that the trees were further away than the last time she was awake, but that might have been the stress playing with her mind. Splatted, burnt, and sliced up monster corpses dotted the clearing. Their bodies were rapidly turning to vapour and rising into the false blue sky of the fourth floor. Heavily warped aftos were scattered all over, marking monster corpses like gravestones. A few somewhat useable aftos were lined up beside Wip, likely removed from the backpack so that it could be used as a mattress.

Then the events of the fight replayed in her mind. The panic, the mistakes, her attempt to kill Wip. Luci’s stomach sank a little bit more with each returning memory. Ashamed, she curled into a ball and turned away from Wip.

“You got cursed,” she murmured. Not a question, but an admission. She guessed that he’d overdone it in order to protect her.

Wip looked at his arms as though seeing the prickles for the first time. “Oh, yeah. Stella says I shouldn’t touch people when I’m like this. I can pass it on, or worse.” He shrugged.

It took a few seconds of mental calculation for Luci to realise something. She was sitting on Wip’s backpack. She hadn’t been before she passed out. In other words, he’d had to pick her up. While cursed…

Panicking, she patted down her body, trying to feel for prickles or anything that didn’t belong. When she concluded that there was nothing wrong, she sighed. A spike of guilt ran through her when she glanced sideways at Wip. So, she wrapped her arms around her knees and turned away from him.

“I—I’ll pay for the curse removal,” Luci grumbled.

“Nah, it’s fine,” Wip said.

“How is that fine? You got those curses trying to protect me. It’s my responsibility.”

Wip stood and walked over to her. “I get curses all the time. It goes away eventually. If you get one, just tell me and I’ll get rid of it.”

He held out two items within arm’s reach that made Luci’s mouth water. One was a half loaf of bread, and the other was half a wheel of cheese. A half wheel of cheese! When was the last time she’d eaten so well? However, she didn’t take it, despite her stomach’s protests.

“Um, I don’t think I should,” Luci said. “I don’t want to catch your curses.”

“Nah, curses only pass on when you touch people. If you could pass it on by touching things, Mori would have turned into a snake by now.”

“Well, I’ll trust you since you seem to be the, er, expert. Still, we should collect the crystals first.” Luci couldn’t peel her eyes off the bread.

Wip pushed the loaf of bread closer to her face. It had been squashed, presumably because Wip had carried it the whole way down in his backpack. Still, it smelled amazing.

“Food is more important than money,” Wip said. “Don’t tell Stella I said that. It’ll start an argument.”

“Well, she’s right. You need money to buy food.”

“Stella has never heard of stealing.”

Luci’s jaw dropped. “Wait, you didn’t—”

Wip stuffed the loaf of bread directly into Luci’s open mouth, taking care not to touch her. The moment the crust touched her tongue, all worries disappeared and she chomped down. All of her self-loathing vanished. She took the half wheel of cheese and wolfed a chunk out of that, mixing the flavours together, savouring every precious bite.

Wip grinned at her. He took a few steps away from her, turned, then clasped a hand over his fist and bowed at the distant jungle.

As she ate, Luci watched Wip bring his fists up with quiet confidence, knuckles facing an unseen enemy. The air around him seemed to change. That wasn’t the work of enma but his own demeanour shifting, radiating from him like heat from a flame. His gaze was intense, his body was both tense yet limber. He pushed a hand forward in a slow, deliberate strike, then brought it back to guard with equal intensity. A similar strike followed, then another, all perfectly equal in measure. He interspersed each strike with a step, a twist, a turn of an arm, as he repeated that same strike over and over.

The whole sequence of movements fascinated Luci. There was no strength behind those strikes—they couldn’t even hurt a child—but there was purpose in them, intent, the potential to be something ferocious.

Luci finished her meal in record time. She was satisfied, not bloated, despite the quantity she’d just engorged herself on. If she hadn’t been so starved these last few months, and she hadn’t overexerted herself earlier, then she wouldn’t have been able to fit everything in.

“Mr. Wip,” she said, watching him play out his forms. “Um… I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“Hm? Of course not,” he said. His outstretched hands coiled like vipers then patted down: a guard of some kind. “You’ll need to hit me way harder than that to kill me.”

“Well, that’s good.” Still, Luci wished she could just wipe that memory away.

“Hey, that staff of yours is really cool,” Wip said.

“Ah, Lunacogita!” Luci cried.

She leapt up on wobbly legs and scanned the ground near her. To her relief, it was right beside her. She’d been so preoccupied with her thoughts that she hadn’t even noticed. She snatched it up and started looking for her sock to place back over the staff’s head. The last thing she needed was someone recognising Lunacogita and, by extension, her. The sock, too, was next to her. Wip had been incredibly thoughtful while she’d been unconscious. It was only after all of her possessions were in her hand that Luci realised she was much more agile than she ought to have been after using so much enma.

“It doesn’t feel like a normal enma dense-ing thing,” Wip said.

“You mean an amplifier?” Luci said, slipping the sock over Lunacogita’s head.

“Yeah, I never liked those. They take over your soul a little; makes me feel gross when I use them.”

“Ah, well, I can understand that,” Luci said. “Amplifiers don’t exactly make your enma stronger, they just provide a new source to take from. Where that comes from, I’m not sure. What’s even more mysterious, though, is that amplifiers are made from monster cores. Monsters can’t use enma, see, which is why enma scholars have been debating the nature of enma for many years. If monster cores can act as a source of enma, doesn’t that mean that enma and oxon, the energy produced by monster cores, are similar? I like to think that’s not true, personally.”

Luci brushed a hand along the wrapped-up length of her staff. She’d covered the whole thing in whatever scraps of cloth she could find. Only one section of it allowed for direct physical contact, where she’d tactfully applied a loose piece of cloth that she could fold up when needed, giving direct access to the staff. The covering was necessary: the entire length of the staff glowed when any light was placed upon it. In the moonlight, it practically radiated like the sun. It would have given her away in an instant if she’d left it unwrapped.

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“This is Lunacogita,” Luci said. There was an air of reverence in her voice. “It’s one of the most treasured possessions of the Cult of the Moon, an afto forged during the Age of Enma. It’s been in my family’s possession for maybe two thousand years.”

Wip’s elbow snapped upwards as he exhaled sharply, striking at an unseen enemy. His other arm was bent and held firm to his kidney. He twisted and repeated the motion on his other side. “But now it’s yours,” he said. “You can use it how you want to.”

Luci scoffed. “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Well, I mean, I kind of did, but… see, I’m the inheritor of Lunacogita. There aren’t that many people following the Path of the Moon who can actually use it. Even my mother can’t connect with more than two cores, and she’s level sixty-two. She has the fifth highest level in the world! It’s just a very fussy afto. We’d be lucky to have one person in five generations who can actually bind with it past the first core.

“But you know,” Luci said. She laid the staff in her lap. “Even though it’s a powerful tool, it’s also rather terrifying. Even though I’m the only person in my family who can wield it, I still can’t control it properly. I keep raising my levels in the hopes that it would make the binding easier, but…”

Wip remained silent as he trained. His movements were picking up in intensity. Each strike was getting faster, sharper, yet his body moved as fluidly as running water.

“The problem is,” Luci sighed, “I’m useless without an amplifier. I can’t use any other aftos properly since I have so little control over my enma. They just kind of… sputter out because my enma is too impure. Furthermore, most of my melds are really simple. Oh, and complex melds? Forget it. I mean, you saw my bazelbind nets. They were sloppy, slow, and barely worked. They’re supposed to be one of our path’s staples. My instructor could throw hundreds of them without breaking a sweat. Even my sister, who’s five years younger than me, can meld them in half the time I can. But me? I’ve never been able to meld one together without having to throw in a bucketload of enma in the hopes that it will make up for the defects.”

“What’s the problem with that?” Wip asked.

“What’s the problem?” Luci sputtered. “Enma is slow! It takes seconds just to make the simplest of melds, and that’s simply not good enough in combat. Compare that to using an afto. All you have to do is flow a bit of enma into it and the core does the rest. It’s simple and quick. Furthermore, there are an endless number of things that aftocores can do that humans simply cannot, enma or no. I mean, who wants someone in their party who can only meld? They’re too slow. They’re deadweight.”

Wip finished his training by bringing his arms to his sides, forearms parallel to the floor, and exhaling. He then clasped a hand over his fist and bowed at the distant jungle. “Enma is great for fighting,” he said, turning to Luci. “You just need to use it right.”

Luci snorted. “You’d get along well with my mother.”

“Also, you’re wrong about aftos.”

He strolled over and stuffed his hand into a side pocket on his backpack. Luci realised she was still sitting on it and hopped off with an apology. As Wip sifted through the bag, Luci noticed his bloated eye had gone down a little and the prickles that had covered his limbs like a fur were looking much sparser. Wip pulled out a sack and walked towards the nearest monster corpse.

“See, aftos need to be controlled with enma,” Wip explained. “They’re designed to be easy to use, but that also makes them useless. Think of what happens if someone attacks from behind and you have a shooty afto. You have to turn and point, and it might be too late by then.”

He kneeled down and stuck his hand into a monkilyx’s mutilated corpse. Luci didn’t even want to imagine how the monster got that way. If its guts weren’t a homogenous goop, she probably would have thrown up at the sight of it.

“That’s why enma is better,” Wip continued. “It’s free and can be whatever you want it to be. If you get attacked from behind, you can spark them with enma out your back. If someone pins you down, you can put power into your legs and slide yourself out. That’s way more useful in a fight.”

When Wip pulled his hand out of the monster’s corpse, he held a chipped kin. Its glow flickered on and off. He clicked his tongue and discarded it.

“Again, you’d get along well with my mother,” Luci said.

Wip grinned at her. “She’s got some good ideas. Maybe that’s why your enma feels so nice. It’s like it’s trying to give me a big hug.”

Luci blushed. “Please don’t do that, Mr. Wip. I hate compliments. And also, remind me to never let you into the same room as my…”

A realisation struck her. She froze, mouth agape, and turned to face Wip slowly as though her neck was rotating on a rusty joint.

“What did you just say?”

Wip cocked a partly missing eyebrow at her. “Hugs. It’s when you put your arms around someone. I used to get hugs from Chian when I was little and they made me happy. But then she was told she wasn’t allowed to because the others were getting upset—”

“No, I mean, the sensing part. You can feel the deviations of my enma?”

Wip’s eyes darted side to side. “Did I do something wrong?”

“What? Oh, by Starfonyne’s scales, no! In fact, you did something completely absurd. Mr. Wip, can you use gestalt sense?”

“Um…” he scanned Luci’s flabbergasted expression for a hint on how to answer. “No.”

“You can!”

“Then yes.”

“Wait, do you not know what gestalt sense is?”

Wip pointed his nose to the perfectly blue sky. “I know lots of things.”

“You don’t!” Luci exclaimed.

Not wanting to undergo an examination, Wip made himself busy by finding the next somewhat intact monster corpse.

Luci marched after him. “Hey, don’t you run away for me, mister!”

“I’m not running,” Wip said.

“And don’t lie, either! Tell me, can you sense enma passively? How far is your range?”

Wip dipped down and inspected the next monster corpse. There was no opening to get to its core, so he spiked a bit of enma into his bare hands and used it to carve through the monster’s flesh like a knife.

Luci stomped up beside him and folded her arms. Her staff was crooked under her arm. “Hey, answer me, mister.”

“I just sense stuff, okay,” Wip grumbled.

Luci pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s passive. Of course it is. Okay. Can you sense my enma right now?”

He glowered at the monster’s corpse as he carved through it. “This question is too hard.”

“How? It’s a yes or no question. Can you sense my enma?”

Wip’s mouth twisted in agitation. “Yes.”

“Right. Two metres at minimum.”

Wip plucked out an intact kin and stuffed it in his pouch. “And everything else on the dark stone.”

Luci peered at the surroundings, at the vast expanse of dark stone. “Of course. Nearly one hundred metres—wait, one hundred metres?” she exclaimed.

Wip ignored her and moved to the next corpse.

She slapped a hand to her forehead. “That’s what he says, Luci. Just a casual one hundred metres.” She chased after him. “That’s absurd! I mean, putting aside the fact that it’s one hundred metres, which is already ridiculous, this is your passive gestalt sense. I can’t even imagine what it’s like when you’re actively sensing. Do you have any idea how strong you are?”

“Yup.”

“You obviously don’t!” Luci rolled her head back and groaned. “I had to spend my whole life training just to be able to sense enma a metre around me, and I need to do it actively. This is so concerning. Please tell me you at least understand basic enma theory. Path deviation? Convergences? The Columb constant? Maxima Ernoff’s form theory?”

Wip plucked out another intact kin from the decaying monster. “My theory is that you should punch things really hard.”

“At least tell me that you know what the six forms are!” Luci wailed.

Wip stood and counted on his fingers. “Punching, kicking, elbows, knees, headbutts, um…” he ran out of fingers so he recounted his index finger. “Biting.”

“You’re getting zero marks for that answer!”

“Aww.”

Luci let out a long sigh. “Listen, Mr. Wip. I realise that I’m nowhere near your level—both literally and in terms of talent—but at the very least, let me explain the basics of enma to you. I can never forgive myself if you walk around so clueless.”

Wip finally met her eyes. He watched Luci for a few seconds, but the look he gave suggested that he was concentrating on something. That was when Luci felt pressure. She couldn’t exactly define where that pressure was, it was just kind of there. It took her a moment to realise that Wip was feeling her soul.

She shuddered. It disturbed her whenever her soul was tested like that. Her instructor used to do it all the time and he’d always come away with some comment about her soul not deviating enough—in other words, she was lacking in her training and needing to absorb more moonlight. Then as soon as the feeling came, it vanished, all completely unseen.

Then Wip’s stare softened and a grin split his face. “Okay. Teach me. We’re not in a rush, anyway.”

Luci’s heart felt a touch lighter.