Twelve
 
“Now stay still, I’m not the greatest at this,” Alice said. She set her axe down on the ground and raised her hand up and over him. Runes began to appear, but not the little fragments he had seen her use before. It was dozens of twisting lines, circles, triangles, octagons, pentagrams, and more that he couldn’t identify. It spread out in front of her hand, nearly three feet wide of squiggly lines no longer than his pinky.
Then it went three dimensional and became a sphere packed full of lines. Sweat rolled down Alice’s suddenly wan face as she set her brow in a furrow of concentration. Kon decided to not say a word and risk distracting the Knight as violet energy began to condense around the rune.
Warmth spread across his body and the pain and exhaustion disappeared. The sudden disappearance of pain nearly made him groan, but he bit his tongue. As sudden as it had appeared, the rune disappeared and Alice sagged and stumbled forward before catching herself.
“Hate doing that. Can’t have you bleeding out on me though,” Alice hummed as she grabbed her axe, straining for a brief moment, and put it on her shoulder. She started walking back the way they had come, heading toward their cave, and Kon got to his feet.
He traced his fingers over his suddenly whole skin. Where the wounds had been was simple smooth flesh, with only a faint scar to show that there had been a wound. Eyebrows raised up and he jogged to catch up to Alice as she started to scale the hills that had surrounded the rift. Kon glanced back to where the rift had been and there was nothing left of it, just plain rock.
“Alice! Alice! What did you do?” Kon asked.
“What? I told you how the original Knights used their powers. Used runes to project power and channeled rift energy, which they called mana for some reason. I think it has to do with ancient literature. Was never really interested in reading the classics,” Alice mumbled as she walked slowly.
“Yeah, but like, what was that? You’re not some ancient Knight channeling mana through their bodies till they burn up,” Kon said. The older Knight yawned and looked about before shrugging.
“I have a full rune inscribed on my core. It’s what allows me to heal myself naturally as I absorb energy. If I started sucking down those D-Grade cores I could speed this up,” she waved her nub at him, still covered with grimy bandages.
“My core needs more than what a D-Grade provides. The ambient energy is fine since I can compress it myself, but the energy from the core is already compressed. I don’t have the appropriate runes to absorb and compress the energy from cores lower than myself.”
“What grade are you?”
“Technically I’m a mid C-Grade. We don’t measure ourselves like we do monsters officially, but unofficially we all do.”
“What’s the difference between ambient and core energy?”
“Can we stay on one subject at a time, please. That was quite strenuous for me and I can’t keep up with you,” Alice complained. She let her remaining arm slump, not allowing the axe head to touch the ground though, and let her head roll lazily as she shuffled forward.
“Ok. Healing then.”
“You saw me project rune fragments earlier. That’s easy. They just represent a piece of something, easy to channel energy through that. My core is the whole ass definition of Regrowth. It's exhausting to project that consciously. At least for me. Other Knight’s are good at projecting, but I’m not. Better at the whole punching thing, myself.”
“I noticed,” Kon whispered to himself. The only times the Knight seemed interested in teaching was in fighting. Especially if that fighting ended up getting her covered in blood.
“Grade now,” Kon said louder as he realized she could easily hear him and wanted to change the topic before her tired mind realized he had made a dig at her.
“F through S is the standard. They’re broken into Low, Mid, Upper, and Peak. On most ships they have machinery that can tell you exactly where you are and it mostly has to do with what the density of mana in your body is.”
“Mana? Not rift energy?”
“Same thing. I tired. Use less word.” She shot him a petulant look before turning her attention back to the jungle around them.
“Ambient versus direct energy.”If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“You're a pain in the ass. How do you not know this? What fleet did you grow up in?”
“I didn’t,” Kon said with defiance. Alice nearly tripped as her head whipped around to stare at him.
“Colonist?”
“Yeah. Second generation.”
“Damn. How’d you join our Chapter?” Alice asked confused.
“Rifts overwhelmed our defenses. We had to send an emergency beacon and we were rescued. I applied then,” Kon said.
“That’s rough. Lost your parents?”
“No, they’re alive, but money is tight, you know. Lots of mouths to feed and not a lot of credits to do it. I was the oldest and there was no work on the ship that I qualified for, so I joined up.”
“I was an only child. Parents had an arranged marriage and they produced me before the contract ended. I think Mom has a second kid floating around somewhere, but Dad is all about the politics in his fleet.”
“I still don’t get how the fleets work,” Kon admitted.
“Shit, neither do I. It’s a mix of inherited warships, alliances with other Captains, and defense treaties with the world-ships. Then you throw in the Chapters and the Orders and it becomes a quagmire that I can’t stand. Probably why this is probably the highest rank I’ll ever hold. Becoming a Knight Captain involves politics and that’s not me.”
“So. Ambient energy?”
“I was really hoping you’d forget that,” Alice said with a sigh.
“I thought you were trying to distract me,” Kon admitted.
“Alright, now I’m not an expert on this. When we get to the ships and find you a proper Knight to Squire too, they’ll explain it better. Butttt…ambient energy has a certain density to it depending on how strong the rifts are. I mean, they’re just pouring energy out into the world. This area is roughly a low C-Grade approaching mid C-Grade. We’re on the outskirts of it though, that’s why we have all the weak beasts.”
“So you can absorb it since it’s the right density for you?”
“Yup. The first web you make is generally all about improving yourself and your combat capability. Second web is all about utility and that would be the runes I’d need for slowly condensing lesser energy into something useful,” Alice explained.
“Web? But what about the anchor?”
“I told you, one at a time.” Kon froze as his mind hurried to try to find what question he wanted answered first. They were getting close to their cave, no beasts having found them in their walk back home.
“Anchor first. Then web.” Kon had to struggle to organize which one he wanted the answer to first.
“I didn’t absorb the anchor. It looked like I did, but what I did was just channel it to fuel the Regrowth rune. Anchors are weird anyways. And that’s a subject I really have no knowledge about.”
“Ok, you channeled the anchor like the old Knights did beast cores. What’s a web?”
“A web is what we call the first circuit of cores and nodes you make. Three to five cores with each feeding four to six nodes. You need to have a fully completed web to have enough density to go from D-Grade to C-Grade. C to B is a bit different, but you’re a long way away from that.”
“How long does it take to make a web?”
“Took me fifteen years and I’m a genius. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not good at book stuff, but I understand cultivating. It’s simple for me.” Alice shot him her own acidic glare as Kon hadn’t been able to keep the look of disbelief off his face.
“I’m going to rest a bit and then start really focusing on regrowing my arm. We’ll start heading toward the others tomorrow though.”
“You know where they are?” Kon asked. Alice froze and then shrugged.
“How hard could it,” Alice cut off as Kon groaned loudly and shook his head.
“You help a kid establish one node and all of a sudden he thinks he can get mouthy with his senior,” Alice quipped, but she had a smile on her face. She sat down slowly and rested her back against the wall of the cave.
“How do we find them then?” Kon asked. He set up in the mouth of the cave looking out as Alice started to doze off. The newly formed node in his stomach was a heavy presence as he felt its warmth and weight, still processing energy from his meal hours ago.
“I was only joking. I can find them. My second core is designed for this type of stuff.”
“Getting lost on a planet and finding missing Knights?”
“Close. Search and Rescue. It’s what me and my squad specialize in. The Chapter pays us to retrieve missing Knights.”
“What’s the rune?”
“One day, you’ll realize just how rude that was. But, it’s Resonate.”
“Resonate?”
“Yeah. It has a bunch of uses but one of them is being able to find others whose energy I resonate with. Like Knights I train with or cultivate with. I’ve worked with several of them long enough that I can feel them; that way,” Alice pointed back the way they had come.
“Do you know how far?”
“Naw. Just a general feel until we get closer. But we have plenty of time. With Dragon’s Maw destruction we’ll have some time until a rescue ship arrives. Plenty of time for training. Get you a few more nodes and start training you to build a core.”
“I don’t have a rune. A full sized one,” Kon said.
“And? I got three.”
“You’d be willing to show me them? They looked complex,” Kon hedged, hesitant to believe that this powerful Knight was willing to give him something of such value.
“I can’t give you any of the Chapter’s Runes without an Elder’s approval. That’ll get me discommunicated faster than you can say Draconic Syphilis.”
“What?” Kon asked.
“They have a pretty tight leash on who gets a full Rune. One way to make sure the right people get them,” Alice said.
“No, Draconic Syphilis?”
“Ohhh…yeah, it’s not great.” Alice blushed a bit but closed her eyes and rested.
“Thank you, Alice,” Kon whispered under his breath as he looked at the powerful Knight. She was frustrating, abrupt, airheaded, and reckless. That she was powerful and important in the Chapter was undeniable.
And she had taken a shine on him. She was willing to give him a Rune she had earned by herself with her own sweat and blood. So he bowed his head and thanked the woman, even if he knew he was going to be cursing her later when she inevitably did something that was crazy.
“She’ll probably have me do something crazy and stupid tomorrow. But I can be thankful today.”