Chapter 398: The Line That Moved

Chapter 398: The Line That Moved

Jin made the mistake on Saturday night, and he knew it was a mistake about two seconds after he’d made it.

He’d spent Friday watching the gallery. He’d watched the grey moss swing on the walls and the grit drift off the floor, and he’d timed the gusts out of the fissures.

He’d drawn the shelters and the lines between them. He’d sent Flicker from Alcove One to the spur three times, carefully, and the third time it had been easy.

So on Saturday, he decided to try the longer return from the western lip.

The plan was simple. Flicker would leave the lip above the second fissure and fly diagonally south to Alcove Two on the eastern wall, where Glitch was waiting.

It was a long crossing, longer than anything she’d done in the gallery, but there was shelter at the far end.

On Friday, he’d watched a steady westerly wind help her across the gallery. Tonight he checked the nearest hanging moss and assumed the whole crossing would be similar.

"Gale Dash," he said. "Lip to Alcove Two. Go."

Flicker went.

She launched off the lip, hit the burst, and shot out above the second fissure. For half a second, it was perfect.

Then the wind changed.

Jin saw it a moment too late. The grey moss on the wall beside Alcove Two, which had been streaming east all evening, swung back and hung straight down.

Then it began to stream the other way. The gust from the second fissure had turned, and it was coming up and across from the east, straight into Flicker’s line.

She was already committed. The burst carried her into it, and the wind took her. It didn’t stop her. It lifted her.

She went up and past the overhang of Alcove Two, half a body-length too high, over the lip of the shelter, and out into the open air on the far side.

One shape in the cluster under the roof unfolded.

[Hookwing Bat]

[Combat Rank: 1 — 9-Star]

It came down out of the dark with its wings half closed, fast and silent, and its hooked claws raked across Flicker’s left wing as it passed.

She tumbled. She caught herself a meter lower with a furious beat. The bat was already turning to come back.

"Glitch! Out! Flicker, down, to him!"

Glitch came out of Alcove Two onto the open floor and lifted his head with his hide darkening into Harden. Flicker dropped onto his back, flat against his crest, and the bat’s second pass went over both of them. Its claws skidded off Glitch’s plating.

It didn’t try a third time. It went back up into the dark, and the others hadn’t moved.

[Avatar Condition — Flicker: 71%]

"Back," Jin said. "Both of you. Alcove Two, then home."

He walked them back the way they’d come, slowly, Glitch across the first saddle with Flicker riding on his crest, and out of the gallery.

He sat on the feed crate afterward and made himself say it properly, in his head, with no excuses.

I treated the crossing like it was the same as yesterday.

Friday’s observations had been useful. He’d made them into a promise the gallery hadn’t given him. This time the moss had shown a change he might have caught, but he’d looked near Flicker and neglected the air by her destination.

Look before every crossing, he wrote in his notes. Not before the session. Before every one.

If the moss isn’t steady, she waits.

He ended the session instead of waiting up for another attempt. His meals, supplements and sleep had been regular; keeping his blood reserve healthy supported the avatar’s normal recovery without another payment. There was nothing to gain by taking an extra dose now. By Monday evening the cut had closed and her condition was full. He watched her stretch and fly before attempting another crossing. His five Lives were untouched.

The real Flicker was unhurt, and came with him to Yard Three on Sunday and Monday. While she rested on a rail, he and Lucian worked through Crowe’s latest drill.

They were working on what came after. Crowe had given them the problem at Thursday group the week before. One of you defends, cleanly, and the other comes again immediately, before you’ve finished being pleased with yourself.

For Jin, that meant the spear. He still had the borrowed training one. He’d step out of Lucian’s first attack with his back foot, the way he’d practised. The point would come round with him.

Then Lucian would come again, from a new angle, and Jin had to get the point back in front of him before Lucian got past it.

The first five times, Lucian knocked the point aside with his stave as he came in. The padded tip went wide, and Jin was left standing there holding the wrong end of a long stick.

"You’re holding it too tight," Lucian said. "When I hit it, the whole thing goes with my hit. Let it move a bit. Then bring it back."

"It’s a spear. If I let it move, it moves."

"Let it move a bit."

On the sixth try, Jin loosened his front hand. When the stave knocked the point aside, the shaft slid a little in his grip, and his rear hand at the chalk mark pulled it back in line.

It wasn’t fast. But Lucian, coming in for the touch, found the point back in front of his ribs and had to stop.

"Better," he said, sounding surprised.

Then it was Lucian’s turn, and his problem was different. Crowe wanted him to Stormstep, then change direction straight out of the stop, not take a breath and set his feet.

The first time he tried it, he stopped clean and then turned too soon, before his weight had settled. His feet went out from under him and he sat down hard in the sand.

Jin laughed so much he had to lean on the spear.

"Thank you," Lucian said from the ground.

"Sorry. Sorry. Do it again."

He did it again. On the fourth try, he got it, a stop and a sharp turn and a second short burst off at an angle. Jin, who had set a patch where Lucian should have stopped, found it was empty.

On Monday and Tuesday evenings, he returned to the gallery without seeking a fight.

He sent Flicker from shelter to shelter in short hops, never more than one crossing at a time.

Before every hop, he stopped and looked at the moss beside her and the moss beside where she was going. If both were streaming the same way and steady, she went.

If one of them was swinging, or hanging still, or turning, she waited.

Sometimes she waited for a minute. Once, she waited for six, and Jin sat on the feed crate drumming his fingers on his knee, wanting very badly to send her anyway. He didn’t.

Flicker didn’t just wait for him, either. Twice, the moss looked steady and Jin gave her the signal, and she didn’t go. She sat on the spur with her feathers half raised, looking at the air.

Once, the feathers at her shoulders lifted before the nearby moss stirred. A gust followed. Jin couldn’t tell what she’d felt the other time, but he decided to leave more of the timing to her.

He stopped giving her the signal to go. He started giving her the signal that it was all right to go, and letting her choose when.

He marked every landing place she used in his notes: the spur, the lip above the second fissure, a fallen block beyond the second saddle that he started calling the Anvil.

The Anvil stood just north of the second saddle, close to the eastern wall. Glitch could reach it from Alcove Two, then retreat south across the same broad crossing.

In the warm cracks near Alcove Two, there was more of the reddish moss. Glitch scraped out one clump on Monday and another on Tuesday.

[Cinderplume Moss — 3 portions stored]

On Tuesday, once they were sheltered, he checked the first portion against Flicker’s avatar.

[Cinderplume Moss — compatible: Flicker (avatar)]

[Fire–wind development support]

He gave her one portion.

She ate it the way the real Flicker ate sunberries, greedily, with a little shake of her head.

Then she sat in Alcove One for a long time with her feathers puffed up and the sun mark on her forehead burning much brighter than usual.

It was warm through the bond, even through the screen.

[Cinderplume Moss — 2 portions stored]