Eventually, they found a hotel far from the shore, which was nearly abandoned. There weren’t too many visitors to the city as a whole, and the building had definitely seen better days. Jace negotiated a deal at the front desk: he and Lessa would help out with chores and repairs, which they could do especially quickly given their enhanced speed, and in return, they could have a room for the night.

  After completing enough chores to satisfy the hotel manager, she granted them a room on the bottom floor.

  Jace dumped the books and holoslates out on the table, then said, “Alright. Let’s sort this out. What’s the plan, and what do we have?”

  “We can enhance one more card,” Lessa said. “We should have time.”

  “With what material?”

  “The Vault Core.” She motioned at the new vault core he’d stolen from the Alliance. “I mean, you haven’t used it much recently. And if we can use it to imbue an extra effect into a card, like we did with [Questforger], then we definitely should.”

  “Sounds good.” Jace tapped the three cores from the Sentinels and the plasma rifle they’d stolen from the Alliance soldiers. They had a plan for it, they’d just need to get the fourth core so they could finish crafting the rifle. “We need to upgrade your rifle too. And don’t go saying, ‘oh, but Jace, you’re more important’—”

  “I don’t sound like that.”

  He laughed. “No. But you’d definitely say something like that. I saw you opening your mouth, you were about to complain. Lessa, we need you to be able to hit our enemies hard, too.”

  “If you sever more material from the last Sentinel with the same dashing pattern you used before, I should be able to take it, and use it to enhance my own rifle. I have a few ideas for plasma enhancements…”

  Jace winced. “We should’ve done that with the plasma Sentinel’s armour.”

  “Yeah, but they seem to be made out of the same sort of armour. It’s pretty much receptive to all aspects, and gets tainted after they spring into existence.”

  “So we build a rifle for me out of the halcyon spear,” Jace said. “We upgrade one more card, we build a rifle for you…”

  “You’re skipping the part where you actually have to advance.”

  Jace tapped the books. “It’s time for more research.”

  32

  THE SPLIT’S BALANCE

  Jace and Lessa read until the sun set and the moon rose. This time, however, they split the books on arcane advancement and focussed on trying to figure out the actual impetus for converting Aes into progress.

  “So…did you figure anything out?” Lessa asked, after a few seconds of yawning from the both of them.

  Jace folded open a passage and tapped the page. “Here. There was an overview, an explanation of how an especially powerful Crimson Table member accomplished it in the past. The goal is to cut your earthly tethers. Once you can do that, you can quite literally set your spiritual system on fire.”

  “It’s not actual fire, though,” Lessa provided.

  “No, true. But they described it as fire. It’s like converting your aspect to flame. A type of flame—not actually flame-aspect, but something similar in composition.”

  “Which is the hard part.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I found a bunch of descriptions for meditation techniques. You have to empty your mind, let the aspect take hold completely, let your willpower stop holding it in check. The Nascent Heart revelation was about self-understanding. Now, you have to purge any concept of selfhood from your mind and accept your destiny.”

  “But how?”

  “That’s the tricky part,” Lessa said. “You need to find a mirror. Not an actual mirror. But something that can act like one.”

  Jace chewed his lip. “So what I’m gathering is that the previous stages were helpful for building everything up, but now I have to unlearn. First, I developed my willpower. Now I have to release it, letting the immensely powerful Aes I’ve gathered set me aflame. I developed self-understanding to grow that little sapling in my Nascent Heart, and now I have to let go of self understanding?”

  “I’m not sure if it’s exactly like that,” Lessa said. “Here. Read this.” She pushed a book across the table to him.

  Scanning the page, he came to a passage where her finger pointed:

  There is a time when everyone forms an ideal ‘self.’ For most in the race of Men, this takes place in infancy. It is when you begin to develop self-awareness: that you are not just a clump of flesh and organs, but something greater than the sum of your parts. The Praxon thinkers before me would describe this as a Staltger, and they were on the right course.

  When the infant recognizes itself, usually through the process of reflection and seeing itself in a mirror, it begins to develop an idea of who it wants to be. An ideal. But the real being cannot ever reach this.

  The ideal is the source of drive, the source of willpower. But since the ideal can never be reached, it also causes dissonance. To truly sever the worldly connections, you must meditate yourself away from this distance, separate yourself from your ideal, and remove all dissonance. Your willpower will resonate perfectly with your aspect, and you will begin burning your spirit.

  Jace considered that for a moment. “That…sorta makes sense. So then why do I need another mirror of myself?”

  “To truly reflect. On what you are, I guess? I dunno, I can’t figure that part out.”

  “Do you think the Hand did any of this?”

  “It seems like it’s possible to regress after passing the stage,” she said. “Your attributes remain, but the other benefits of the stage granted by this sort of enlightenment end up fading away.” She paused. “Whatever those benefits are. It wasn’t super clear.”

  “I found that in my readings,” Jace replied. “See, Nascent Heart was about building up that little internal realm for my ‘skill tree’ and a place to nourish. Now, I’m burning it. We’re clearing out the dead branches, and imprinting my cards into my spiritual system.”

  “So you won’t be able to remove them ever?”

  “I—I don’t think so. It’s more like what we were doing with Impact,” he replied. “They’re becoming more refined. The Split isn’t using its connection to me to churn through hundreds of card possibilities. It’s just using the chosen path at once, channelling it without hesitation.”

  “So the technique triggers faster?”

  “And stronger, of course,” Jace said. “It says that all cards will essentially function as if they were mythic-tier.”

  “But if the actual text of the card doesn’t change…?”

  “That’s the problem,” Jace said. “It’s giving them the Impact of a mythic card, not the text. They’re not truly mythic, but it’s vastly improving how much they can accomplish. They had a bunch of examples, but like, the reason hyperspace shields work, preventing me from travelling through hyperspace, is because they are affecting the world more than me. But with a higher impact, I could just brute-force my way through a shield, no matter how strong. I become resistant to people trying to interrupt my abilities.”

  “And the Hand doesn’t get any of these boosts?”

  “I would assume not,” Jace said. “If…if he’s regressed back away from this enlightenment. We’re assuming that he’s unenlightened. But like, nothing here supposes that he has restored dissonance to his soul. He could have passed Spirit Burning still and held on to whatever benefits it gave him. What if he’s driven himself so far from his ideal self that he’s become the very opposite?”

  Lessa swallowed. “There’s something that’s been bothering me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What was stopping him from allowing the Enemy to take over sooner? Clearly, he could get things in and out of the Wall. And it’s not like you can’t just use a hyperspace jump to get directly to the wall and attack it.”

  Jace winced. “He needs all three spears to bring down the Wall, and I mean, we saw it. Good luck destroying that with just a couple battleships. Something beyond the physical must be stopping him from bringing the Enemy through while the wall stands.”

  “So why go through this invasion plan, then? He could have silently hunted for the third Halcyon Spear for centuries without bringing attention to himself.”

  “Unless he wanted someone to use it and bring it to him. He had to wage this war to make them want to stop him.”

  “But he must’ve known where it was. He dispatched Rallemnon to retrieve it.”

  “So he didn’t know where it was when the war started. The Alliance conquered plenty of old Realm archives.” Jace scratched this side of his head. “That’s the best reasoning I can come up with.”

  “And we’re doing exactly what he wants.”

  “He’s gonna burn the entire galaxy to the ground in a temper tantrum if we don’t stop him, though.” Jace hung his head. “If we don’t stop him, we lose anyway. There won’t be anything worth saving from the Enemy. And we don’t have time for anything else other than turning the Halcyon spear into a weapon for ourselves.”

  “But again,” Lessa reasoned. “Why bother with the big attack and invasion?”

  “Logistics, perhaps. Forcing our hand, maybe. Or the Realm can block his access to the Wall. I recall Lady Fairynor mentioning something like that. Kinath-Aertes possesses the only hyperroute to the Wall, which they normally keep open, but can close. I’d bet they’ve closed it now, and the Hand will need to destroy whatever’s blocking the way.”

  “But we have the spear. In our hands. We can just wait, and he can’t do anything,” Lessa said.

  “Maybe then he does have a way through the Wall,” Jace said. “But you’re right. Why wouldn’t he have used it sooner? And without a war.”

  “Unless he’s just recently advanced.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if he’s gotten powerful enough that he can break the wall with only two spears?” Lessa winced. “What if the promise of being able to go home was enough to increase his tier? Some kind of revelation, like you get in the middle of battle? And you gave him what he needed back on Sevencore.”

  Jace’s stomach dropped. “But he’d been planning this invasion for a while before then.”

  “He’s a schemer. If he knew what he needed to advance, and knew that eventually, he’d get it from you…perhaps that was the sole reason he wanted you here, the only reason he wanted you on his side.”

  “Shit.”

  “Which means that even if we do advance, he’s going to be too strong. What if he’s an entire two tiers or three above you? We don’t even know how strong he is.”

  Jace slumped his elbows down on the hotel room’s desk and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I don’t know. But we have to try. We have to try to advance here.” He paused. “There were a few passages about accepting the light. Something about having to let it in. The concept of it.”

  “The Split’s light,” Lessa replied. “Sure, but I think that’s similar to your enlightened severing. It’s very detached.” She winced. “I mean, we’ve seen it time and time again. The Split is out of balance itself. And sometimes, people get so caught up in the tangled effects of what they’re doing that they don’t act at all—that they think removed enlightenment is the only way to do good. The Split has gone so far to the ‘light’ that it’s failed to be good at all.”

  Jace grimaced. “And with how detached it is, it’s no wonder it’d sick these Sentinels on Earth with the excuse of testing us.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What I’m hearing is that we have to put it back into balance. Somehow. But if we just let the darkness in, it’ll overwhelm us and wipe us out. But if we don’t…”

  “Worse, the actual process of Spirit Burning will probably be different for a Split that’s in balance,” Lessa remarked.

  “So I have to advance after we put it back into balance,” Jace said. “This so-called ‘light’ Split wants to drive me away from goodness as a whole. Drive me away from my ideal self. But if we put the Split into balance, what are the chances it’s more of a notion of separation from your ideal self, but the knowledge that you shouldn’t stop trying to improve?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “What kind of system tells you to try to stop becoming your ideal self? Tells you that ‘you’ll never be perfect, so stop trying.’ No, I know what the ideal is. Now I need to put it in balance with myself and allow my Aspects to help propel me toward the goal, and to accept my destiny. The ideal can’t be in charge, but it can’t be removed entirely from the equation.”

  “But for that to work, we’d have to actually put the Split into balance first. Only then could you advance to Deity Making. How do you actually do that?”

  Jace nodded. “That’s our next task to figure out. But…”

  It was hard to say, and it might have just been his tired mind. But something had twinged inside him from their conversation. It felt like his channels were growing looser, like his willpower had reached an extra layer of separation from him.

  He pulled open his status sheet, which informed him that he’d reached the second stage of Spirit Burning.

  33

  THE CITADEL TOWER

  “Wha—?” He tilted his head. “How?”

  “What happened?” Lessa asked.

  “I advanced. Just a minor stage, but still. The progress ticked up. Seventy percent.”

  “The Split is tracking your knowledge, then. And when you reach the final stage of separation, all this Aes you’ve been gathering will just get set aflame with your aspect. But not right now.”

  “It doesn’t feel like there’s any separation. No burning.”

  “Not yet.”

  But there was a new message, and one he hadn’t seen in a little while:

  [Alert: Thirty (30) unassigned attribute shards.]

  “And a bunch of attribute shards,” he said.

  “Interesting. The Split must not have registered them as available until you passed the stage,” Lessa concluded. “And now it’s integrated them. You’d better use them.”

  “Give me one second.”

  It had been a while since Jace pulled himself into the dreamspace plane, but it still came easily enough. He walked across the muddy plane and approached the sapling.

  It was a tree now. Deep brown roots snaked into the ground, and a thick trunk nearly a foot in diameter reached up from the plane. A canopy of green leaves shaded him from the weird brown light of the plane and blocked out his view of the sky. Seven cards were nestled into its roots, forming a circle around its base.

  A diagram of small roots still snaked out from beneath the tree, forming a rough diagram of his body below the branches, and thirty attribute shards rose up from the mud. He considered his stats. He needed Strength and Agility most of all, and mostly Strength, so he put twenty in Strength and ten in Agility. In theory, it would leave them at the same number.

  [Attributes]

  Strength: 112

  Vital: 180

  Resistance: 272

  Agility: 112

  Potency: 2

  Secretly, he’d been hoping that after advancing to Spirit Burning and doubling his attributes, it would mean every new attribute he added also got doubled, but sadly, that only works for Resistance.

  He pulled himself out of the dreamspace plane. “It’s going to take a little bit of work to make my body adjust to that,” he said. “But I think that’s enough for tonight. We’d better get some sleep.”

  “Are you gonna sleep, too?” Lessa asked. “Or is that ‘we’ just for the mortals.”

  “I’ll keep watch and make sure no one bugs us.”

  “Alright, you get a pass tonight.”

  Ash hadn’t seen the First Attendant since he’d returned to Kinath-Aertes, and he hadn’t seen Lady Fairynor until just before he was ready to make his ascent up the Citadel Tower. He’d spent as much time as he could preparing. Gathering supplies, tuning his equipment and sharpening his Whistling Blade.

  Perhaps he was just putting it off.

  No, of course he was.

  Even now, standing in the depths of the capital, at the base of the tower, shrouded by hundreds of layers of metal and city streets, he wasn’t sure if he was ready to climb the tower. It was a test. Inside the tower wasn’t just a stairway. It had layer upon layer of tests. It was a dungeon in of itself, and it’d been here longer than the Kings of Artanor or the Attendants. Maybe the Luminians built it. Maybe it was even older than them.

  But whatever it was, he needed the Focus at the top of it. All kings had to reach it at some point. They could trigger their card, Light the Stars, and prove their worth as a ruler.

  Pressure radiated out from the tower. It exerted the presence of a peak Spirit Burning Wielder, and that was only at the bottom.

  Steeling himself, Ash approached the door. Perril stood just behind him, expression firm but letting him lead the way.

  He pressed his hand up to the ten-storey-tall archway of black stone that marked the tower’s entrance, but Perril called, “Ash, wait.”

  He pulled his hand back, thankful to have an excuse to hesitate a moment longer.

  “I am coming with you,” a voice radiated out from the depths of the city. Lady Fairynor marched out of the depths, wearing a mens’ safari vest and trousers, high boots, and carrying a plasma rifle on her shoulder. It was probably the most practical outfit she owned. “This is not just a test of your spirit, but your accomplishments as a king and a leader,” she said. “You do not have to go alone.”

  “I was always coming with him, aye?” Perril asked.

  “That had yet to be seen,” Ash muttered. “But I don’t think I have much of a choice now. Very well. Both of you, are you ready?”