Chapter 2: 1 – Dying Planet

Ah, stop shining that light in my eyes. Are we ready? Can you hear me up there? And stage left—alright, sounds like we were good. Queue dramatic… what? No dramatic music? How am I supposed to… fine. Ahem.

Cherished citizens of the Ascension. Lend me your ears, your hearts, your minds! For this is the tale of how I slew your tyrant gods.

….How was that for an opener? Badass, right?”

- The Unabridged Interview of Veldraken Juinper, ARCborn

 

❄

 

Mori sunk her fingertips into the cracks of the frozen waterfall leading up and out of the old Favored treasure shaft, her flickering headlamp revealing the next crack, the next hold, though she hardly needed the light. Each hand placement was familiar like an old friend, the ice an extension of herself, promising to keep her from plummeting hundreds of feet to her death in the dark, cavernous void below.

It helped that the pack on her back—normally bursting at the seams with treasure ore scraps—was only a quarter full.

She wasn’t happy about that.

She gripped the ledge of the shaft and slung her bag out onto the tundra above, mantling herself over and sprawling out onto her back on the stamped down sleet. Her chest heaved up and down, her breath pluming the sub-zero air with steam. The jacket her father insisted she wore overheated and suffocated her.

Yet another abandoned Favored treasure ore mine she’d stripped of its last flammable scraps. She could already picture her father’s grimace at the news, how quickly and nonchalantly he’d break out the topography maps to try and locate another shaft, another band-aid solution for the frigid Telarkin winter coming for them all.

She gritted her teeth and glared up at the moon reflecting Telarks red, dying sun, ominous crimson bleeding through the dark and rolling storm clouds. Snowflakes drifted down, bringing with them the familiar sensation deep in her marrow of another blizzard on the horizon, as if mocking her for her defiance.

Mori balled her hands into fists, shoved herself to her feet, and grabbed her backpack, emptying the glistening white treasure scrap into the battered, rectangular plastic bucket on her sled.

Not even half full. The scraps alone provided meager heating compared to the heating fuel the Enforcers left the village before leaving the system for the winter. A full sled would last each home a couple days, but half a sled? The villagers would need to ration while her and her father located another shaft.

She swallowed. Hopefully everyone would make it through.

She tossed her empty bag on top of the scrap, but before clamping the cover shut, she paused, picking up a shimmering piece in her hand, feeling the unrefined power prickle her palm, causing her muscles to tense. As always, it resonated with her… being? Anima? Yeah, that was what they called it on the holo-V.

The power to change everything was right in her palm, but yet so far away. These scraps were the leftovers from the treasure ore Mori’s village extracted in the warmer months for Favored in the Ascension. Mori wasn’t exactly sure how the process worked, but Favored absorbed the Anima within the ore to grow stronger.

If only she could do the same—become Favored, join an Ascension team, lift her village out of this frozen hole. She sighed, dropping the treasure scrap to clatter inside and closed the lid.

The only way to absorb a favored treasure was to receive nanite refiners, and the only way to get nanite refiners was to be Favored by the ARCborn, and, to be Favored, you needed to carry over .05% of Osai blood.

Though, Mori was pretty certain she did.

Mori unzipped her jacket and cast it to the snow, along with her woolen cap and headlamp. If she had to return with bad news, she would at least give herself a moment to decompress.

The negative degree tundra winds licked her exposed arms and face, her sweat infused tank-top rolling along her torso. To anyone else, the weather would induce hypothermia in minutes, but to Mori it was like a cool spring breeze—or at least, what she thought a cool spring breeze felt like. She’d never known anything but Telark, and it was never not freezing here, even in the summer.

She closed her eyes and opened her palms, allowing her anger to bleed away. Again, like scaling the frozen waterfall, she could feel it, the cold an extension of herself, as if she could reach out and bend it to her will. She slid her boots across the powder and swayed along an invisible current, letting it carry her. It was always there if she closed her eyes and searched for it, whispering, leading. Every now and then when she followed it a spark thrummed through her veins, like flint to tinder, a possibility of igniting something. The sparks always sputtered out as quickly as they came, but Mori knew a promise of power was there.

If only she had nanite refiners within her cells to access it.

Coming to a stop and opening her eyes, Mori was left staring across the frozen waste, down towards a pocket in the cliffs where light emanated from the dark. Where dozens of souls depended on the treasure scraps she collected winter after winter.

Favored Treasure Site 1029.7987.

FTS 1029.7987 for short.

Known to the locals as ‘home.’

It wasn’t that Mori couldn’t climb the cliffs above and send out a beacon, couldn’t send a message asking for the ARCborn’s Favor. It was that her father forbade her. It made her want to scream her throat raw.

Instead, she slipped back into her winter gear, picked up the reins of her rickety metal sled, and began the long march back.

 

❄

Mori entered the village throughways, lugging her meager prize of treasure scraps behind her, snowbanks three humans tall to either side. Each domed housing apparatus submerged in snow was more difficult to knock at than the last. A knot formed in Mori’s chest as she took in the gaunt and frigid faces, and saw the full heavy winter jackets they needed to wear inside their own homes to keep from freezing to death. So little steam billowed from their heat pipes.

Everyone received their treasure with grateful smiles, thanked her endlessly despite her telling them they’d need to ration for the next coming days. All Mori could think about is which of those smiles would be absent come spring, if she had done enough.

The hardest to visit was the little Agus twins, seeing how ecstatic they were to see her, the innocence on their faces. They rushed from the door steps to throw themselves around her, snot freezing on their upper lips as they grinned.

“Mori! Mori!” Little Launi cheered. “How deep in the mines did you go this time?”

“Were there any Aether beasts down there?” Jeren asked, throwing up thick gloved fists and jabbing the air. “Did you get a one, two on ‘em? Just like Black Lightning Killuan in the Outer Rim Circuit finals?”

Mori smiled for them, and threw her own jaw in the air. “Do you mean when he broke through Defiants tangleroot terrain to KO their Tank? One through his Iron Wall and the other through his face?”

One of Mori’s personal favorite matches she’d watched with the twins on the holo-V.

Jeren swiped at his snotty nose and jutted his chin. “Not the example I would have selected as his number one fan, personally, but close enough. So…” Jeren leaned in. “Were there any Aether beasts?”

Launi elbowed him. “Don’t be an idiot, Jeren. Everyone knows the Enforcers exterminate all the Aether beasts before they open a new mine. They obviously don’t want any of us training to become Favored.”

Jeren glared.

Mori chuckled. “I’m not sure that’s how it works.” The Enforcers didn’t want unFavored miners being mauled and eaten.

Launi rubbed her arms, teeth chattering. “How do you do it, Mori? How did you get strong enough to brave the cold?”

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Jeren elbowed her back. “Obviously because she has been training against Aether beasts.”

Mori smirked, though it felt bittersweet on her lips.

The two looked up at her.

“Why haven’t you asked for a test yet?” Jeren asked.

“It would be so cool to know someone who's Favored,” Launi said. “Favored from the Edge are always treated like real underdogs on the Holo-V recordings, too!”

“And…” Jeren paused. “Wouldn’t you be able to get boons for the village?”

Mori’s heart sunk into her gut. She wished she could say she would. She wished she knew why she couldn’t. “I…”

“Come on, kids,” Old Joma’s voice reverberated through the hatch door. “Back inside before you get a serious cold. You’re letting out all the heat!”

Jeren and Launi pouted.

“Want to watch the Lower Rim Circuit finals with us again, Mori?” Jeren beamed.

“Again? Isn’t that recording twenty years old now?”

Launi turned to Jeren, gasping. “Do you think the Enforcers will bring new recordings in the spring?”

Joma’s cane clicked on the metal flooring as she rounded the hatch, practically cocooned in her puffy blue winter jacket. “Inside, inside. Hop to it. It’s way past your bedtime.”

Launi and Jeren waved goodbye and flooded past their grandmother, immediately disobeying her and turning on the holo-V. On the translucent screen, Black lightning Killuan charged across the arena as echelons of fans rained down cheers, his fist streaking with lightning as he smashed the opponent team’s Striker in the face through raised forearms.

For a moment, Mori allowed herself to get lost in the recording from the door, like she often lost herself alone in the tundra wind, imagining Black Lightning Killuan was her, that all those people in the stands were cheering her name. That, when she stood victorious atop the podium, she would thank the village, the twins, Joma, and her father for supporting her. She would rise through the Ascension and raise them with her.

Joma closed the hatch behind, and Mori was shaken from her daydream. The old woman took a breath and squinted, her wrinkled and frost weathered face swallowed by her fur lined hood, already collecting a dusting of snow. “Have you been eating enough?”

“Just fine.” Mori’s stomach decided now was a good time to rumble.

“Mhmm," said Joma. "Well, I have plenty of leftover frost rodent stew I can warm up. Just say the word.”

“Don’t waste the fuel,” Mori said. “I’d rather you and the twins have enough to eat.”

“Getting enough sleep?”

Mori didn’t bother answering that. She hadn’t gotten good sleep in months with her treasure scrap runs. She turned to her sled and unclasped the lid on her container, shoveled a ration of treasure scrap into a bag. She paused. There was barely enough for another bag—the remainder she’d bring back home. Her father would rather the kids and Joma stay warm a bit longer, right?

She snuck in a couple more scraps and handed it to Joma.

Joma smiled. “Another shaft dried up, did it?”

Mori winced. “That obvious?”

“When you’ve weathered as many winters as I have, you learn to read the air. I’m not worried. Your father always manages to locate another shaft to get us through.”

“Most of us.”

“It's how it’s always been, Mori, but with your help, more of us survive every winter. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

Mori clenched her eyes shut. She was tired of hearing how grateful everyone was. She dreamt of a day where no one had to thank her simply because it was her who was keeping them alive, a future where everyone lived warm and content.

Her feet urged her homebound, but her heart rooted her in place. “What if there was another way, Joma? Launi and Jeren are right. I can stay out in the sub zero for days at a time. It’s clear I am not normal. Everyone knows it. If I could gain Favor, I could fix all of this.”

Joma drew her lips to a line. Suddenly it was as if the snow and ice sucked the sound out of the air, leaving Mori’s ears ringing hollow in the silence.

“Have you asked him?”

“Hundreds of times.”

“And has he ever told you the truth?”

Mori opened her mouth, a catalog of canned responses from her father on her tongue. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Joma smirked again. “You hold the power in this situation, Mori. Try holding it over his head. See if his tune changes.” She turned for the door.

“Wait, Joma, hold on.”

She opened the hatch, craning her head back.

“What do you mean?”

“You're a smart girl. I’m sure you can figure it out. And you are welcome to have some soup if you don’t have to rush back. I’m sure the kids would love to watch the finals with you. ARC knows I won’t be able to get them to sleep anytime soon.”

Mori’s questions died on her lips. Joma wasn’t going to tell her what she knew, but Mori had an inkling what she meant. Mori shook her head. “Strap them to their cots and conserve the fuel. The holo-V uses too much.”

“I’ll try my best.” Joma smiled. “But you try wrestling those two to bed. Not a chance. Best of luck, Mori. You’ll need it.” Joma shut the door.

The snowfall began coming down in earnest as Mori dragged her sled through the village. Confusion swelled within her. Father had told her over and over again she couldn’t test, first that Arbiters wouldn’t come all the way to the edge for a miner’s daughter, that her talents were better suited here. Then he said she wouldn’t be Favored, and even if she was, barely ten percent make it through the Foundation schools. It was a waste of her time when people here were dying of the cold, he’d say. Mostly he told her no and refused to answer even the simplest follow up questions, like, ‘what’s the harm in seeing?’ ‘What if I can lift the entire village out of poverty and winter's deadly grasp?’

This time, she was getting answers, or climbing up to the beacon herself.

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