Isaac staggered as the command from the Great Scaled King hammered into him and stripped away all the resistance to his goals being changed, suddenly rendering him rudderless. A dozen plans flashed through his mind but none of them stuck, unable to find purchase now that he didn’t have the aid and comfort of the inertia he’d built up into the travel. He balked, refusing to accept the obstacle that had suddenly appeared in front of them, hammering against reality until he was able to get himself back under control. Stripped of their disguises and in the middle of enemy territory, with the attention of what could only be a Great Scaled King, he couldn’t plow forward and be stubborn. Maybe it was the sudden lack of inertia that did it, but he realized the best thing they could do was look for a better opportunity.
If there was one oddly reassuring aspect of being found out, it was that being accosted so suddenly showed adding inertia to events didn’t have an unlimited effect. He wasn’t some wave without a shore, as Sarah had put it, forever altering the world with some infinitely compounding power nobody could predict. Anything he did could be stopped or disrupted by someone who really wanted to.
Maybe that little bit of silver lining was just him searching desperately for some upside, as literally every ikiski in the place turned on them with unfriendly eyes. Thankfully the orders were not to kill them, so Isaac merely patted Shay’s neck reassuringly and raised his hands. Sarah followed suit, but Lia kept looking around, the runes on her scalp flashing in a rapid pattern, and a whine heralded a very large gun unlimbering from Savage’s dorsal cybernetics.
“Just go with it for now,” Isaac said, quietly, not knowing how much the ikiski could understand. “We can reassess later, when we don’t have a kaiju staring us down.” The Great King in question didn’t seem overly upset by their presence, though it was hard to read the expression of a skyscraper-sized lizard. Lia grunted, her runes all glowing as she stared fearfully in the direction of the kaiju, and Savage’s gun audibly powered down before it folded back into his armor.
Several of the huge, twenty-foot types that Isaac thought of as the elite guards reached them in a few seconds, flying over on crystal-winged tyrannosaurs that had plenty of room to maneuver in the vast spaces of the mountain halls. Halls that Isaac could now tell were so large simply because they were scaled for a kaiju, rather than being some sort of monumental city.
Even if the disguise was gone, Lia’s translation magic seemed to still work — or maybe she’d recast it. Either way, it conveyed the general tone of the rumbles and chirps coming out of the ikiski guards, as if the body language wasn’t enough. They were to be escorted forward, toward the Great King, the sheer scale of the ikiski ruler growing ever more evident as they got closer. Even knowing the size intellectually, the visceral impact of something that big being alive and mobile hit hard, even the breathing sounded more like the rumble of some distant thunder. Even closer, and Isaac could feel something like a radiant heat washing outward from the Great King, making his fingertips and tongue tingle unpleasantly.
Rather than speaking in that strange non-language again, the one that seemed to blow right past the ears and hit the brain directly, the kaiju made a rumbling click directed at a thirty-foot ikiski standing to one side of the Great King’s throne, who dwarfed them as much as he was dwarfed by the Great King in turn. The King’s words didn’t translate, but the interpretation of them did just fine.
Great King Zys knew who they were. At least, he knew who Isaac was, thanks to the wall of the embassy. Which meant that the embassy survived, which was a relief, considering the overall destruction of Borealis thanks to the Crystalline Entity. Less relieving was the fact that he’d drawn attention by way of his experiments and far sooner than he wanted. A piece of cloth with a touch less inertia was one thing, but metaphysically tough materials were another, and the worst part was he didn’t even have the chance to look himself and see what had happened.
The translation spell was less clear about what exactly Zys expected to do with them. The translation wasn’t quite words to begin with, and whatever the big guard was saying seemed to degenerate into meaningless fuzz. He glanced sideways a Lia, seeing her swaying in her saddle, then suddenly she toppled over.
Isaac leapt off Shay to help, but Savage was there first, mechanical arms catching the lunarian, who slumped in his grasp. She made a strange, almost sneezing noise and silver-blue blood splattered on the carved purple floor, shockingly dark. Her mount nosed at her with concern, tail flicking back and forth with agitation.
“Oh, shit,” Sarah said, staring at the near-unconscious lunarian. “We gotta get out of here.”
Isaac whirled to the guard, but then realized without Lia, they had no translation spell. Fortunately, the ikiski seemed just as concerned about the lunarian collapsing out of nowhere as they were, and rattled off something to the Great King before points on his gemstone armor crackled and extended a translucent shield between them and Zys. The tingling sensation receded slightly, and the pair of guards hustled them away from Zys, Savage carrying Lia with her still-unnamed raptor following in obvious concern.
Hopping back up on Shay so he could keep up, Isaac kept a look out for some way to break out — though he knew he couldn’t act on it without actually making a plan with everyone else. With Lia’s sudden collapse, he wasn’t sure it was even possible. People in comics or movies would vomit blood all the time, but he’d worked at a hospital, and every time he’d seen that for real it was cause for panic. Crash preparations and frantic callouts, and wheeling out relic tinkertech to keep people stable.
Part of him wondered if his power could have done anything if he’d been prepared. Could he make it harder for someone to become unhealthy? Or would that cause cascading failures as, once again, in the hospital he’d seen all kinds of supers who had wound up needing medical attention after too much self-experimentation. But he didn’t have any other way to help; maybe Savage had some QwikMed in storage but that probably didn’t even work on lunarians. He could only hope the ikiski had some option, and he hated being that helpless.
The worst part was, it was to some extent his own power that had brought them there. It had been his plan, as well, but he’d actually been leaning on the success of his metaphysical inertia to carry him through. In hindsight, it had been stupid to think that just making it harder for them to be deflected from their goal meant anything in terms of making correct choices.
Maybe if he’d been scrying the future it’d make sense, but more likely his power simply strengthened their current trajectory — and might not even affect other people very much. It might just make him and the others more stubborn, and everyone else less likely to question them, just as with his costume. All of which didn’t stop him from driving them all off a cliff, and winding up with something like what had happened to Lia.
The twenty-foot guard whistled something shrill past a scar-twisted muzzle at a section of wall in front of them, and it rippled, contorting away in an eye-twisting manner that made Isaac think of the optical illusion books from his childhood. They were hustled through into something that, despite being entirely equipped in colorful crystaltech and alien machinery, had exactly the same distinct antiseptic smell as a hospital. Which of course the place was, complete with utterly incongruous clipboards of clear human make racked in various places around the room.
Once again there was the problem of the language barrier, but the fifteen-foot ikiski clad in solid green, surrounded by Gratin-sized functionaries in the exact same color, was a fair bid for a doctor. The big guy took one look at Lia and chirped something, warbling at the crystaltech. A diamond pedestal rose from the ground, tinkling and chiming as holographic diagnostics in arcane script flickered into being, planes of force making a slab-sided bed. The doctor pointed at the bed with an emphatic syllable, and Savage hesitated for a moment before lowering Lia into it.
From somewhere beneath the pedestal a liquid ruby fluid gushed forth to fill the bed in a matter of moments, submerging the lunarian completely. A moment later it hardened in a snap, entombing her in a crystal matrix. Savage snarled and rounded upon the doctor, but Sarah spoke up.
“Oh, I’ve seen something like this. Keeps people in stasis while healing is performed.”
“I don’t trust them,” his synthetic voice stated in it usual flat tone. “But we hardly have a choice here.”
“We probably all need to be checked out,” Isaac muttered, running his tongue along his teeth and wondering if the coppery taste in his mouth was just stress or if he was about to collapse like Lia. “No wonder Gratin didn’t want us anywhere near a Great King.” From the way Gratin had phrased it, Isaac had thought it would be some sort of political or cultural complication, not that they were literally too dangerous to be around. Though to be fair, two things could be true at once.
“I’ll be fine,” Savage said, which made a little bit of sense if he was somehow Deep Kingdom adjacent. The doctor clearly had the same thought for he waved at them, chirping as the smaller attendants dashed about, prepping what were clearly diagnostic devices, all apertures and lenses. Isaac led the way, dismounting Shay – he felt a little odd that the hospital effectively let cars into the place – and suffered himself to be looked at through the half-familiar apparatus.
Another set of chirps had the attendants scurrying to the next room, one returning with a small tray upon which looked to be a piece of sapphire rock candy on a stick. The little dino proffered it to Isaac, and he took it with some bemusement, glancing at the doctor who mimed licking it. With some reluctance he gave it a taste and shook his head when he found it to taste like rock candy, too. He didn’t know if he was being given a treat for being a good patient, like with children, or if it was legitimately medicine.
“What am I, five?” He said it mostly for Sarah’s benefit, as she giggled nervously and followed suit to receive her own, topaz rock candy. The fact that the gem colors matched the crystaltech bracelets and barding of their mounts was certainly not a coincidence, but he couldn’t imagine what it meant.
The bizarre on-command doorway they had come through was gone when Isaac turned around; presumably it was some kind of emergency route, whether teleportation or something else. Still uncertain whether the rock candy was medicine, he gnawed on it as their scarred escort chirped at the doctor and led them out. Savage was most reluctant, but there really wasn’t much they could do while Lia was in the healing coma or whatever it was.
“We should,” he started, then stopped and waved at the massive soldier. “We’ll talk later.” Savage sighed – with his artificial voice, not with his actual breath – and padded along between Shay and Astoria. That time by unspoken mutual agreement both Isaac and Sarah led their mounts rather than riding them, partly because they were both still sore, but also he was getting tired of hopping on and off. He knew he’d have to relent if they had to go all the way across the city or something, but fortunately their next destination was nearby, and fairly familiar.
They were shown into a suite of rooms that looked very similar to the luxury holding cell they’d been put in before, attached stables included. Isaac was somewhat amazed at how much was conveyed past the language barrier, including a stern warble and grumble at them before the massive ikiski shut the door and locked them in. After seeing the three riding raptors off to their own stable suites, Sarah sighed and crossed to the ikiski-style couch, flopping down as she crunched on her rock candy.
“Well, we can absolutely get out of here,” Isaac observed, accepting Sarah’s invitation as she patted the couch next to her and put his arm around her as he settled in at her side, working on his own candy stick that might well be medicine. At the very least the faint tingling in his fingertips was gone. “We know the recordings will work for the teleporters, and we know Sarah’s smoke can bypass locks and such. We’d just have to avoid the Great King.”
“Except there’s Lia,” Savage said.
“Except there’s Lia,” Isaac agreed. “We have to wait for her, and while we do that we should figure out if we want to keep going on the same path at this point. I was thinking about it, and if Mechaniacal is down here, doesn’t that mean Star Central is too? Or will be soon? Maybe we’d be better off going backward, heading back toward Borealis, where we might at least be in familiar territory. I know how all those people work.”
“Unless you count Mechaniacal,” Sarah said, leaning against him and sliding her illusionary hat forward to cover her eyes. “I don’t know if he’s better or worse. Isaac’s been pretty good at taking out his drones, though.”
“If all he had were those little drones, he wouldn’t be a sovereign-class supervillain,” Isaac replied. “Before, they were being piloted by Greg, who clearly didn’t know what he was doing. The ones we saw this time…” He trailed off and tasted the rock candy again, trying to recall exactly what they looked like. “Seemed a bit old? There weren’t even any big weapon drones with them, so I’m guessing they just happened to be nearby, rather than being part of a major operation. My brother Cayleb’s a tinker, and he says that a tinker is basically as strong as they have time to make themselves.”
“Time pressure both ways, then,” Savage said. “Lia means we can’t leave sooner, but the later it is the harder it’s going to be to get anywhere we have allies.”
“We’ll just have to make the best of the time we have.” Isaac suppressed a groan and a complaint about where they’d found themselves. It wouldn’t matter or make a difference. “We’re not exactly wanted criminals here, more like VIP prisoners. Might be able to swing a translator or some currency, which would make things easier in the future.”
“Or some lessons about how to deal with mounts!” Sarah said, lifting up her illusory hat to peer out at them for a moment. “Don’t know what mom’s going to say about me bringing a raptor home, but I want to make sure I know how to take care of Astoria.”
As if summoned by her name – and really, she might well have been – Astoria padded out of the adjoining stable and headed over to Sarah, flopping down on the floor and laying her head on the couch by Sarah with a soft warble. The clever girl seemed to be able to work doorknobs, but Isaac already knew they were smart, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise.
“Aww, is it lonely in there?” Sarah said, leaning over and scratching Astoria’s muzzle. The dinosaur slitted her eyes and made a grumbling noise at her, and Isaac felt a curious impulse through the bracelet from Shay. A moment later, Shay and Lia’s mount came through the door as well, the former seeing what Astoria was up to and immediately going to Isaac to beg for scratches while Lia’s raptor grumbled to itself and decided to take up one of the other couches like an enormous grumpy dog.
“Yeah, we need to know more about riding raptors,” Isaac agreed, grunting as Shay shoved her head into his lap. He ran his fingers over the scales of her snout, just below where the crystaltech helmet melded with her flesh. “And I have to figure some stuff out about my power. That’s what I came down here for, so I could practice without Star Central being after me all the time. It might have been what got us into this mess in the first place, I dunno. Don’t want to attribute too much to it, but at the same time, I need to get a handle on it.”
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“It seems unlikely it has that degree of effect,” Savage opined from the floor. Somehow he had managed to get in a staring contest with Lia’s mount, not looking away as his synthetic voice spoke. “That would be at least strategic level, and usually such effects are quite obvious to information supers or clairvoyants. Causeless cause stands out in the web of the world. Lia would have spotted it, I believe.”
“That actually is a help,” Isaac said thoughtfully, finding a particular spot under Shay’s jaw where she really enjoyed being scratched. The raptor’s tongue lolled from her mouth, giving Isaac an up-close view of very sharp teeth. Though it was hard to feel threatened when she was acting more like some giant reptilian dog than anything else. “It makes sense that it really just affects me, or rather us, and everything else is just the normal cascade effects. But maybe Lia did notice and didn’t say anything because there was no point.”
He was willing to take Savage at his word, despite whatever doubts Isaac held about his own power. The cyber-raptor might only be regarded as a common-class super, but he’d been around for a while, and anyone who’d been in the game for more than a decade had to have a lot of experience. Possibly even more useful experience than a sovereign, who bent the world around them. Such people would only see how things worked at the highest end of power, not how things were down in the trenches.
“Possible,” Savage said, and despite the synthetic nature of his voice, Isaac got the impression of skepticism. “After you explained what your power is, she should have been looking for it though. Nobody wants mental influences.”
“Especially me,” Isaac agreed. “Although I think that’s limited to physical touch, and I was pretty careful.”
“That is not reassuring,” Savage stated, drumming his claws against the floor. “And you have used your power that way a number of times. Necessary, but hearing that you are uncertain about the deeper effects is cause for some concern.”
“Well, you are pretty handsy with that power of yours, but I think it’s fine,” Sarah said, waggling her kiseru at Savage. “From what I can tell, it’s all been pretty confined to what you intended.”
“Well, regardless, I really need more practice,” Isaac said. “Right now I can’t even keep from affecting myself with my metaphysical powers. I’m not even sure that’s possible, because it wouldn’t make sense, but I have to at least try.”
“If they give us time, anyway,” Sarah pointed out. “I mean. We are kinda in jail at the moment, do you think they’ll just keep us here and let us sponge off them?”
“I think they mostly want me to do stuff, which I want to do anyway,” Isaac said, waving around at their relatively luxurious surroundings. “If we’re more like political prisoners we’ll probably get treated pretty well. That’s how it is in all the stories, anyway.”
“It’s for the best not to rely on the veracity of stories,” Savage said, synthetic voice punctuated by a displeased hiss. “I do believe you are correct, though. From what I could understand through their dialect.”
“Then we might as well see what we can get from them,” Isaac said, not at all concerned about taking advantage of the ikiski. He wasn’t exactly a rulebreaker the way a ganger was, but he wasn’t above a less-than-savory approach when it was required. Most of the time that kind of thing just made the situation worse, but in the here and now he didn’t think it’d matter. “You still have your notebook, Sarah? Can start making a list.”
“I do, but someone’s on top of it,” she said, trying to lever Astoria’s head off the couch, but not very hard considering she made no headway. Isaac looked over, amused, until Shay butted him in the stomach because he’d stopped scratching. He snorted and resumed, but his mind was still on what he needed to do.
Part of him wondered why he wasn’t at all nervous about being locked up in a palace at the center of the Earth, maybe he was getting used to things or Bulwark was enough of a professional that it was leaking through to his normal personality. Or maybe it was Sarah, who was so generally comfortable with this sort of supernatural adventure that her blasé attitude was rubbing off on him. Something he actually would welcome, for the moment, since any kind of panic would be useless — and he was tired of all the stress, anyway. Better to just roll with it and leave tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow.
They were left alone for a good few hours, with the raptors eventually heading back to the stables to rest and the three of them working on their own things independently. Isaac had begun playing with a few thoughts and exercise to test his powers, nothing structured just yet, while Sarah was lounging on the couch writing away in her notebook. Savage had retrieved a book from somewhere in his armor components and was reading it silently off in the corner, apparently content.
Eventually a new ikiski did enter the room. This one was Gratin-sized, but dressed in robes that clearly marked him as affiliated with Zys himself, rather than something like the uniform of the doctor’s attendants. There was probably some political implication in that, but Isaac wasn’t planning to indulge in ikiski politics where he could avoid it.
The little guy had two boxes, and opened one to offer Isaac an intricately carved bit of sapphire. When he went to take it, the ikiski grabbed Isaac’s hand for a moment and pressed the sapphire token against the wristband that linked him to Shay. For a second there was an eye-twisting effect as the two seemed to slide through each other, then the ornament snapped into place.
“If the scans Healer Sintek performed are accurate the translator should be active now,” the little guy said. Or rather, he whistled and warbled as usual, and Isaac received a translation through the connection the bracelet offered. Translations that were far better than what Lia’s spell had allowed, since they were actual words rather than vague meaning.
“It is,” Isaac said, and the bracelet emitted a tone.
“Excellent,” the ikiski said, bobbing his head happily. “I have another for your smaller companion.”
“Great,” Isaac said, waving Sarah over from where she was still stretched out on the couch, scribbling away in her notebook. “Guess you don’t have one for Savage though. Didn’t scan him.”
“Your mount?” The ikiski said with confusion, looking at where Savage was lying, polishing his armor with an articulated cyber-arm.
“He’s not a—” Isaac sighed. No wonder Savage had been in such a foul mood, if this was the kind of attitude he was hearing all the time. Which begged the question of why he’d bothered to come down to the Deep Kingdoms in the first place, but maybe it was simply because the rest of the Brute Squad had. “Look, I don’t think Savage is even from the Deep Kingdoms. He’s a citizen of the Five City Alliance in good standing.”
“Understood,” the ikiski said, the translator conveying a tone of voice that implied he was just humoring Isaac. The little guy opened the other box for Sarah, and Isaac helped her snap it onto – or into – her bracelet. After confirming it worked, the ikiski looked at Isaac again.
“Great King Zys will speak with you after the dinner hour.” A statement, not a question.
“Is there something that’ll stop me from ending up like Lia? The one who’s in your hospital?” Isaac asked, with some hope that the people at the top were a little bit sane, considering that the impromptu audience had been cut short by a medical emergency before.
“You will not be in his presence directly,” the ikiski said, and the translator seemed to be incredible because Isaac could tell that his tone was supposed be sympathetic, but the sympathy was false. “Since outerworlders cannot withstand the aura of a Great King.”
“Small mercies,” Isaac muttered, though he was genuinely relieved. If he had to choose between collapsing with internal hemorrhaging and trying to hide out in alien city, he wasn’t sure which one he would spring for. “In the meantime, not to impose, but we were forced to come here without preparation or property. I, well, Sarah has a list of some small things if we could prevail upon your hospitality.” He’d had to actually compose that bit of diplomatic flourish beforehand, with Sarah’s input.
“That can be arranged,” the ikiski said, actually seeming more pleased despite being asked for things. Maybe it was just the polite tone Isaac had struck. Sarah nudged him with a triumphant elbow before offering the list, though there was a slight hiccup in the little guy’s inability to read the language. Reading it out to him worked well enough, and he nodded seriously before going on his way.
“Dang,” Isaac said after he’d left, as a thought occurred to him. “I could have practiced trying to make it easier for him to change his mind. But maybe it’s best that I didn’t. Even if it worked, mind control stuff is probably a bad idea no matter where we are.”
“And with all the psionic stuff crystaltech can do, it might even be easier to notice,” Sarah agreed. “Oh, there we go,” she added, as a panel near the door lit up, the translator writing over the ikiski glyphs with words. It was something like a computer display, letting them actually order in food and sundries. “That was fast.”
“I’m sure we got stuck in some kind of secure embassy building,” Isaac said, joining her to look at the display. “There’s probably staff just hanging around with nothing to do.” Maybe ikiski were different from humans, but probably not that different.
Interacting with the display was a little odd, because it was mostly voice-controlled. Or rather, tone-controlled, as the translator turned words into notes of varying complexity. The translations didn’t always work, either, but it was good enough to eventually order in triple portions for themselves and Savage, and for the raptors. Kibble was one thing, but he could tell Shay would like something a little more robust.
Finally, he had a little time to do what he should have been attempting for the past few days. Practice. Focusing on something and trying to push inertia into it, and then pull it out. Easy enough when it was physical, but the metaphysical was more slippery and ephemeral. After his near-miss with Ravdia’s persona, maybe he’d been a little too cautious, and needed more of a push to start moving again. And, more importantly, move in the right direction. What was uncomfortable about it was that Sarah volunteered to help.
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” he told her, not sure what to make of the amused expression on her face.
“You’ve done well so far, and you can always undo something,” Sarah pointed out. “Where I grew up, all us powered kids practiced with our powers all the time, because it was just part of us. Some people had kind of dangerous powers, yeah, but they were more dangerous the less practiced they were. Super-strength could let you hurt people, sure, but also we had a kid that’d carry around the whole class in a cart.”
“What I have is something a bit different from super strength,” Isaac pointed out.
“Sure, but it’s still not like, fire or something. To me there’s not really an issue so long as you’ve got control. Which you do, so it’s fine. I mean, you’re not going to hurt me, are you?” Sarah’s tone became challenging, and he raised his hands defensively.
“Of course not!”
“There you go, then.” Sarah rolled her kiseru through her hands consideringly. “I think it’s really just a hang-up from growing up outside the powered community. Most powers can affect people in one way or another, after all.”
“Alright,” he said, still not entirely comfortable with it, but acknowledging that Sarah knew more than he did about powers. So had Cayleb, and his advice was definitely helping, so Isaac had to hope Sarah’s would, too. It took a little more back and forth to decide on what, exactly he should alter, since the conceptual applications were so open-ended. He also wanted to try altering some of those esoteric things without true physical contact, to see what the restrictions were on the metaphysical equivalent.
“I wonder if this exercise is visible to scrying,” he mused aloud, tracing a finger forward and then back in the air to give himself a physical and visual component to his exercise. Just using his mind wasn’t enough to focus, at least not for the purposes of a sane and repeatable activity. In the comics, the heroes all worked to be able to use their powers without any kind of visible tell. It meant they could surprise people, and sometimes the comics even made that kind of talent strictly superior to needing a physical gesture, but he wasn’t in a comic and he really needed something to anchor to.
“We’ll have to ask Lia when she’s out,” Sarah said, stretched out on the couch with her shoes off, kicking her heels as she wrote in her notebook. Hopefully they could get refills for the writing materials before the supplies ran out. “But if nobody really noticed what you were doing before, I bet it’s not blindingly obvious. I mean, I know Star Central has a warlock on staff, whatsisname. He’s got to be keeping an eye out for any big waves. I’d say that I can tell when it kicks in, but it might just be my imagination. Or because it’s affecting me directly.”
“Definitely want to avoid doing anything that might filter out to Zys, then,” Isaac said. It had taken an embarrassingly long time to notice even with the translator, but there was a clock in the room. It was just a color pattern rather than an actual dial, discreetly placed among the other carvings and decorative accents. “About that time.”
“Use your communicator pin if there is an emergency,” Savage suggested, a cyber-arm emerging from his armor to adjust his own with the precision of engineered servos. “Channel Two, so we don’t accidentally broadcast to Lia and expose ourselves.”
“Good point,” Isaac said, fiddling with the tiny ring controls on the comm pin. He had no idea how someone like Captain Bulk would be able to manipulate the thing. Heck, he had no idea how Cayleb had managed to fit such tiny rotary buttons around the pin in the first place. Comparing that work to Cayleb’s cobbled-together drones, the advantages of Star Central’s labs were clear.
At after dinner on the dot – that was genuinely the name of an hour, translated as it was from ikiski – the little guy showed up again for Isaac, along with the same scar-puckered guard who had escorted them to the room to begin with. Giving Sarah a quick hug, he followed the ikiski out into the gemstone corridors. Maybe his eyes were adjusting or maybe it was the bangle providing a sort-of translation, but now that he was looking he could see all kinds of different shades and variations of purple, so it wasn’t all the same unrelieved color in every direction. Not to mention extra decorations in the form of tapestries and friezes.
Not that they went far. Even with the translator he had trouble picking out the distinctions ikiski used, but it looked like the meeting place was part of the same complex as their suite, with some color mismatches being the only sign of rushed alterations. Inside, there was a seat and nothing else, the gemstone walls blank. An odd scent like burned stone hung in the air, though, more evidence of some last-minute work. At a gesture from the pint-sized ikiski, Isaac sat down in the chair and the walls vanished.
He twitched, but after a moment he realized that what was going on. The chamber was an all-around projection system, putting him in front of the towering presence of Great King Zys. Nothing at all like a phone call, but for some reason it seemed appropriate. Even through a remote image, there was an impact to the kaiju’s appearance somewhere deep in the hindbrain, from when mammals were tiny things in a world of giant reptiles.
“Isaac Hartson,” Zys rumbled. The Great King’s words literally shook the room, but it was the minder who translated, turning a set of rapidfire clicks and hums into normal ikiski speech, which was then translated by the bracelet. “You are an odd thing. Able to stop a crystallizing attack and parley with a fifth-facet, but refusing to contest even a two-facet on the road.” Half of that made no sense to Isaac, but he could at least take a guess. The rules that governed the casual violence the ikiski displayed, which he didn’t know and didn’t want to.
“Humans are different,” he said shortly, not wanting to get into a verbal spar with someone who was probably older than him by orders of magnitude. “It’s best not to judge us by ikiski behavior.”
“Perhaps it is not, but some things hold true across all of reality.” There was a weight to the last phrase even before it was translated, something important to the ikiski and probably more nuanced in the original tongue. “Outerworlder or ikiski, a thousand years ago or a thousand years hence.” The kaiju’s massive eyes looked down at him, and for all that this was a projection the gaze felt unreasonably incisive. “One of those things is that meeting reality with less than you are capable of can only result in regrets. You have strength, Isaac Hartson. Why do you not meet reality with that strength?”
Isaac let out a long breath. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting from Great King Zys, but it wasn’t this. Despite the imposing, fourteen story tall height and a presence that literally killed people, the King was almost friendly. Isaac was certainly aware there were hidden traps in Zys’s question, but it was hard to figure out a way to answer that wasn’t completely true.
“First, I don’t really know what I’m doing yet. Not really. And if I did, then people far stronger than me would come and try to make me do what they wanted, not what I did.” Isaac lifted his eyebrows, and Zys chuckled, inclining his head to concede the point. “Not to mention the clingers and parasites, wanting to take advantage of what I could do.” He’d seen that type a few times at the foster home, wannabe groupies who thought they could feast on the scraps that fell from other tables.
“If you hide in fear of those who are stronger, then they are already constraining your actions. You have conceded without a fight; without determining if they truly are strong enough to make you do what they wish. A much more difficult prospect than many would assume,” Zys said from his throne, swishing a tail as long as a train. “And if you hide as if you are weaker, are you not one of those clingers and parasites you despise, opportunistically existing on the scraps of those who have the strength of will to be honest with the world?”
“I…” Isaac pressed his lips to together. It was sophistry and he knew it, but there was a enough truth that it was hard to actually argue against. Of all the things he had prepared for, discussing philosophy was not on his list. “If nothing else, before I do anything with whatever power I actually have, I need to figure out what I want to do. With no direction, it doesn’t matter how much power I have at my back.”
“An admirable difficulty, but one to be solved sooner rather than later,” Zys said, a smile the size of a city bus baring teeth the size of people. “For if you do not direct yourself, surely others will do it for you.”
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