if Jess could convince them, the wentals would repay their debt.
With a knot in his stomach, he repeated the question he’d asked Nikko a thousand times over the past several days. “How is Cesca?”
“She’s cold, clammy. Her skin looks funny, and there’re dark spots of pooling blood inside. She drifts in and out of consciousness. Jess, I don’t think she has much time left.”
“The wentals can still help her.” He tried to keep the anger out of his voice.
Below, on one of the rare patches of solid ground, black rocks glistened with wild spray. Jess’s vessel floated above the patch of upthrust rock and released the
Aquarius,
like an insect gently depositing an egg on the surface of a leaf. The small Roamer ship rested on the barren spit of land, its regrown hull sheathed in living water. While it was suspended in the larger wental vessel, tiny aquatic creatures had furiously made repairs. With corals and metals, the wental-guided creatures had grown scablike excrescences to patch and reinforce the hull. The
Aquarius
was now an amalgam of Roamer technology and wental imagination. The much larger wental craft landed beside it.
Nikko bounded out of the hatch. A sheen of perspiration covered his forehead. Wearing his white fiber garment, Jess stepped through his ship’s hull membrane. He felt energized in the ozone-rich air, sensing the great force ready to be hurled against the hydrogues. His primary goal was to channel some of that power to save Cesca.
Jess turned to face the stormy ocean, felt wental essence writhing through the moisture-laden air. The water entities spoke to him, their voices thrumming.
Because you want this so badly, there is a great risk of creating a tainted wental. You do not understand the consequences. Not to yourself. Not to us
.
“What if I’m willing to take the risk? For her sake?” Jess wrestled with what the water elementals were saying. “How can a wental be tainted? I distilled a single wental from the nebula and helped you grow. I thought you were all the same being, one giant dispersed entity.”
We are a single entity with many parts. And like an enormous body, some parts can become infected. Witness
.
Without words, the wentals flooded him with memories and concepts, like a Plumas pumping station bursting its pipes, gushing images all at once. In his mind and his heart, he
understood
the power and danger of a tainted wental.
The memory images came from millennia ago, before the wentals had been obliterated. He saw an Ildiran commander—he did not know the rank, a septar perhaps?—accidentally bathed in a wental mist on a strange alien planet. The wental had been sorely wounded in a direct clash with a blazing faeros fireball. Ildiran worlds had been annihilated in the numerous elemental battles of the ancient war. Ildiran cities were leveled, whole continents laid waste, planets cracked open and crumbled into rubble, suns extinguished. The septar knew his Mage-Imperator could not protect the Ildirans, who were sure to be wiped out.
The desperate septar, standing in the smoking ruins of what had been a spectacular city, was drenched by the falling wental. His desire to save his Empire, and the weakness of the wounded water entity, left them both open for a fusion such as Jess and the wentals had experienced.
For the best of reasons
.
The Ildiran septar swelled with a locked power, separate from the other wentals. His body could barely contain the energy, yet he could not disperse it and help it propagate. The septar somehow managed to return to his battleship, but the singing energy discharge flooded the decks, immediately killing the entire crew. Wrapped together, wental and Ildiran flew the great ship into battle. The energy was so great that the warliner itself broke apart, but the strength of the tainted wental held the conglomeration of wreckage together in a flying cloud of destruction.
A tainted wental exists only to break down order. It disrupts any
With a knot in his stomach, he repeated the question he’d asked Nikko a thousand times over the past several days. “How is Cesca?”
“She’s cold, clammy. Her skin looks funny, and there’re dark spots of pooling blood inside. She drifts in and out of consciousness. Jess, I don’t think she has much time left.”
“The wentals can still help her.” He tried to keep the anger out of his voice.
Below, on one of the rare patches of solid ground, black rocks glistened with wild spray. Jess’s vessel floated above the patch of upthrust rock and released the
Aquarius,
like an insect gently depositing an egg on the surface of a leaf. The small Roamer ship rested on the barren spit of land, its regrown hull sheathed in living water. While it was suspended in the larger wental vessel, tiny aquatic creatures had furiously made repairs. With corals and metals, the wental-guided creatures had grown scablike excrescences to patch and reinforce the hull. The
Aquarius
was now an amalgam of Roamer technology and wental imagination. The much larger wental craft landed beside it.
Nikko bounded out of the hatch. A sheen of perspiration covered his forehead. Wearing his white fiber garment, Jess stepped through his ship’s hull membrane. He felt energized in the ozone-rich air, sensing the great force ready to be hurled against the hydrogues. His primary goal was to channel some of that power to save Cesca.
Jess turned to face the stormy ocean, felt wental essence writhing through the moisture-laden air. The water entities spoke to him, their voices thrumming.
Because you want this so badly, there is a great risk of creating a tainted wental. You do not understand the consequences. Not to yourself. Not to us
.
“What if I’m willing to take the risk? For her sake?” Jess wrestled with what the water elementals were saying. “How can a wental be tainted? I distilled a single wental from the nebula and helped you grow. I thought you were all the same being, one giant dispersed entity.”
We are a single entity with many parts. And like an enormous body, some parts can become infected. Witness
.
Without words, the wentals flooded him with memories and concepts, like a Plumas pumping station bursting its pipes, gushing images all at once. In his mind and his heart, he
understood
the power and danger of a tainted wental.
The memory images came from millennia ago, before the wentals had been obliterated. He saw an Ildiran commander—he did not know the rank, a septar perhaps?—accidentally bathed in a wental mist on a strange alien planet. The wental had been sorely wounded in a direct clash with a blazing faeros fireball. Ildiran worlds had been annihilated in the numerous elemental battles of the ancient war. Ildiran cities were leveled, whole continents laid waste, planets cracked open and crumbled into rubble, suns extinguished. The septar knew his Mage-Imperator could not protect the Ildirans, who were sure to be wiped out.
The desperate septar, standing in the smoking ruins of what had been a spectacular city, was drenched by the falling wental. His desire to save his Empire, and the weakness of the wounded water entity, left them both open for a fusion such as Jess and the wentals had experienced.
For the best of reasons
.
The Ildiran septar swelled with a locked power, separate from the other wentals. His body could barely contain the energy, yet he could not disperse it and help it propagate. The septar somehow managed to return to his battleship, but the singing energy discharge flooded the decks, immediately killing the entire crew. Wrapped together, wental and Ildiran flew the great ship into battle. The energy was so great that the warliner itself broke apart, but the strength of the tainted wental held the conglomeration of wreckage together in a flying cloud of destruction.
A tainted wental exists only to break down order. It disrupts any
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