Metamorphosis, Aer-ki Jyr [best classic literature .txt] 📗

No, not just that. Your Essence reserve is never the same twice. That’s why I couldn’t find it. No replicability.”

Wilson was feeling very good…and very stupid…right now, but he was going to need data before he went to Davis and the trailblazers. He wouldn’t tell him his theory. It might bias their actions and throw off the analysis, because if he was right, it was going to be a very minimal difference that would require multiple attempts under the same conditions. Many attempts. Hopefully the numbers would bear him out, but he now had a lead to go on.

And once again, he owed the trailblazers for stumbling onto something without even trying. Their instincts were better than his own, but they needed him to figure it out and codify a training procedure to probe it. They were better in the field, he was better in analysis, but both were best when overlapping their specialties, and having them all here was now beginning to pay off, as rare as it was.

All except Paul. Wilson wondered what he was up to, for he hadn’t gotten any updates from him. Maybe he was stumped, or maybe he was on the track of the same thing he was…

Paul tossed another brick to Cal-com, with him placing it on the last ring on the top of the dome he’d been building as the wind was already throwing so much sand between them that Paul had a hard time seeing him.

“That’s the last one. Build the cap,” Cal-com yelled over the storm rather than using telepathy as he stood next to the slightly shorter shelter…or rather the taller one, but he was standing on a dune that was already a third of the way up the windward side of the curved brick wall.

Paul gathered more material this time, and rather than creating the slightly curved rectangular bricks, he started pulling sand together and reorganizing it on a molecular and sometimes atomic level to create a mostly flat plug that was a little less than a meter wide and narrower on the bottom than the top rim. It ended up being about 3 inches thick, and when he tossed it to Cal-com the Voku stepped up and placed it on the last hole on top of the dome, with him having to brush some sand off the edge to make it slide in evenly.

When it did, the interior that held the tent was now protected from the wind, with the arch-like construction reinforcing itself against its own weight, but Paul wasn’t going to leave it at that. As Cal-com came down from the dune and around to the short entrance tunnel on the leeward side, Paul placed a hand on the exterior sidewall and swiped away some of the clinging sand. It appeared as if wet, but there was no moisture here, rather static cling to the odd alloy he’d created.

He got a section clear of the dry ‘snow’ and pressed his palm against it, then used his alchemy psionic, Dogorat’nah, to weld the bricks together…at least partially…making the dome one solid structure, then he followed his friend inside, crawling over an angular dune that was quickly building in front of their exit tunnel.

They’d taken the time to build it out two meters from the tent, which was sitting just inside the dome and occupying almost all the interior space. The armor coating they’d made would keep the wind off it, but they hadn’t built any type of door on the entrance. Paul stood up inside and walked through the tent door behind Cal-com, then sealed it as the bit of wind getting through the tunnel vibrated it in and out while the rest of their purchased structure remained stable.

“You handled that faster than I thought possible,” Cal-com congratulated, “but the storm was the faster.”

“Still, it beats having to take a nap in armor until it passes,” Paul said, laying down on his lounging pile of packs and taking a very long breath.

“How tired are you?”

“Little and much,” Paul said with a smirk. “I don’t know. I’m all over the place.”

“Better or worse?”

“I feel better in the storm, though that may be mental.”

“You prefer a challenge,” Cal-com said, sitting down on the other side of the small tent, with his legs stretching out next to Paul’s right side.

“Stagnation really is the enemy. Rest is useful, but when you’re done with it, not having anything to do takes you off the path, because the path is forever in motion. I can see that now in a way I couldn’t before.”

“And the storm?”

“Even though we’re sitting here we have to deal with it. Mentally it’s a fight even if physically it isn’t. The environment is the challenge.”

“Then peace is not the path?”

“Not for me. But peace gives us the opportunity to craft our own training. Without it we are forever at the mercy of the storm, and can only adapt as it allows us. We have to create peace to forge our own path, but we cannot linger in it. Peace is not the objective, it is a prerequisite to higher level abilities.”

“Abilities that can only be truly mastered in the storm?”

“There is a duality there that is problematic.”

“If the storm goes away, where does that leave you?”

“Exactly. Though it looks like it’s a forever storm.”

“Is ending it the objective, or surviving it?”

“I don’t know, but I think I’ve been suspecting the former, and that’s caused me to lock up. As if winning takes away all victories. But letting everything go to shit just so I can put it back together is a betrayal in a different manner. I couldn’t see another option before, and while I can’t name it now, I can sense it. Fortunately life isn’t a game where we have to know the objective to play it. We just