Chapter 35
Twin Transits
The world dissolved into a symphony of violence. In the cramped, shadowy confines of Baron Ricolt's outer-city warehouse, the air was thick with the smells of sawdust, sacked grain, and the coppery tang of fresh blood. The raid had begun not with a shouted challenge, but with the splintering of the main door as Count Rose's guards, led by Anya, smashed it inward.
Renly moved with them, a specter in the chaos. His ash-darkened hair and plain cloak made him just another shadow in the flickering torchlight. His poisoned sword was a whisper of death. He parried a wild swing from a panicked guardsman, the man's eyes wide with terror, and countered with a precise thrust to the thigh. He didn't wait to see the man fall, already turning to the next. This was not a duel; it was butchery, a necessary, ugly culling of a corrupted flock. Anya was a whirlwind of precise, lethal motion, her Shadow-Step allowing her to appear behind a man, her blade finding a gap in his armor before he even knew she was there.
They fought back-to-back for a moment, a small island of controlled fury in the maelstrom. "The office," Anya grunted, deflecting a spear thrust. "The ledgers are there. Secure it."
Renly nodded, breaking away. He kicked open a flimsy door, finding a terrified clerk cowering behind a desk. He ignored the man, his eyes scanning the scrolls and bound ledgers. This was the proof. As he gathered them, he heard the sounds of combat shifting. The remaining warehouse guards, realizing they were overwhelmed, were breaking, fleeing into the labyrinth of shelves and out a rear exit into the alleys. Let the city guard hunt them down. Their part here was done.
"Warehouse is clear! To the manor!" Anya's voice cut through the din.
They moved as a unit now, a compact, bloody fist driving deeper into the city's heart. The transition from the gritty outer city to the manicured streets of the inner district was jarring. Here, the only sound was the rhythmic clatter of their own armor and the distant, cheerful music from the Baron's townhouse, a stark, obscene contrast to the violence they had just left.
The manor was a different kind of fight. The guards here were better trained, better armed, their loyalty bought with richer coin. They met the raiding party at the gate, and the clash was louder, more metallic. Renly found himself facing a guardsman with a well-made shield and a determined set to his jaw. This was a professional.
Their swords met in a shower of sparks. Renly feinted high, then swept low, trying to hook the man's leg. The guardsman anticipated it, shifting his weight. Frustration sparked in Renly's gut. He reached for the Electric Surge, the familiar jolt ready to fire his nerves, to grant him that split-second advantage.
And that was when the universe tore in half.
---
A thousand light-years away, the FSS Pioneer's Dawn entered the wormhole.
It was not a gentle passage. The ship shuddered like a beast in its death throes. A deep, groaning roar vibrated through the entire structure, a sound felt in the bones more than heard by the ears. The lights in Kaelen's cabin flickered, died, and snapped back on in a frantic, strobing rhythm. On the external monitors—for those brave enough to look—the star-dusted blackness was gone, replaced by a mad, swirling vortex of impossible colors and geometries that hurt the mind to perceive. The Aether-FTL drive screamed in protest, holding a fragile bubble of reality intact against the gravitational fury.
In his bunk, Kaelen's body went rigid. His back arched off the mattress, his hands clenching into white-knuckled fists. The silver cord, the tether of his soul, which usually felt like a strong, steady fiber, suddenly felt like a frayed wire, crackling with violent, discordant energy. The connection to Renly didn't break, but it became a screaming, unstable feedback loop.
---
In the manicured garden of Baron Ricolt's manor, Renly's world wavered.
The Electric Surge didn't just flicker; it backfired. A painful, spastic jolt lanced up his own arm instead of flowing into his blade. His vision blurred, then doubled horrifyingly. For a single, heart-stopping second, he wasn't just in a sword fight in Rose City. He was also lying on a hard bed, his body seizing, surrounded by flashing lights and a deafening, metallic roar. He saw the guardsman's determined face superimposed over a vision of a sterile, pulsing ceiling.
He stumbled, his parry clumsy. The guardsman's sword slid past his defense, scoring a shallow but stinging cut along his ribs. The pain was a anchor, a brutal gift. He gasped, forcing a breath into his lungs, pushing the phantom starship from his mind with sheer, desperate will.
I am Renly of Bluestone. My sword is in my hand. My enemy is before me.
He roared, a raw, guttural sound of defiance against the chaos of two realities. He didn't try to use the Surge again. He fell back on the pure, refined mechanics of his training—the perfect footwork, the optimized angles of attack he had designed himself. He became a machine of flesh and bone. He beat aside the guardsman's shield with a powerful blow and drove his poisoned sword deep into the man's side. The fight left the guardsman's eyes, replaced by shock, and then nothing.
He looked up, his breath coming in ragged pants. Anya was watching him, her own opponent dead at her feet. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes held a question. He gave a sharp, curt nod. I'm fine. Keep moving.
The rest was a blur of forced focus. They breached the main house. The Baron was found in his study, frantically trying to feed documents into his fireplace. He was dragged out, weeping and pleading, his fine silks stained with soot. His chief operative, a cold-eyed man, was subdued after a brief, furious struggle. The few remaining guards, seeing their master captured and their comrades fallen, lost their will to fight, melting away into the night. Let the city guard round up the stragglers. The core of the viper's nest had been crushed.
As the Count's guards secured the prisoners and the evidence, Renly leaned against a blood-spattered wall, trembling not from exertion, but from a soul-deep terror. The flickering connection had stabilized, but the memory was seared into him. His power, his very consciousness, was not his own. It was a thread stretched across a cosmic ocean, vulnerable to storms he could not see or comprehend. He had to be more careful. He needed to test this connection, to understand its limits. This… instability could not happen again at a critical moment.
A new, chilling order formed in his mind, a directive for the autopilot that would guide Renly when Kaelen was absent: Assess the situation. Stabilize. Disengage from conflict as soon as possible. He could not afford to be caught in a battle while his primary self was in transit.
---
The shuddering aboard the Pioneer's Dawn ceased with a sudden, profound finality. The screaming alarms silenced, replaced by the ship's normal, gentle hum. The wild colors on the viewports vanished, revealing a new starfield, pristine and calm. A soft, reassuring chime echoed through the corridors.
"All clear. Wormhole transit complete. We have successfully arrived at the Sectorial Intersection. All systems normal."
The ship-wide comm was followed by a more localized announcement in the passenger sectors. "The Elysian Immigration Fleet will now assemble over the next several days. You may observe the arrival of our sister ships from the Viridian Spiral, the Ashen Veil, and the Cerulean Expanse. Welcome to the next stage of our journey."
Slowly, people began to emerge from their cabins, their faces pale, their movements tentative. Kaelen's door hissed open. He felt hollowed out, his muscles weak as if after a long illness. He stumbled into the corridor, finding Jax, Roric, Elara, and Luna gathering outside his door.
"Whoa, you look like you fought the wormhole yourself," Jax said, his usual bravado tempered with genuine concern. "Your 'meditation' get a bit rough?"
"Something like that," Kaelen murmured, his voice hoarse. "The spatial distortion… it was more intense than I predicted."
Roric clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. "It is done. We are through." His simple pronouncement was a comfort.
Elara studied him, her head tilted. "You feel… frayed. Like a rope that has been pulled too tight."
Kaelen managed a weak smile. She saw too much. "I'll be fine. Just need to… recalibrate."
They moved as a group towards the main lobby, joining the river of dazed but exhilarated passengers. The vast viewports now showed a breathtaking sight. Against the new starfield, other colossal ships were drifting into position. One was wreathed in shimmering, bio-luminescent hues, likely from the Viridian Spiral. Another was a blocky, formidable fortress of industry from the Ashen Veil. The sight was humbling, a testament to the scale of the civilization he was a part of, and a stark reminder of the fragile, miraculous thread that connected him to a single, struggling Knight in a world of swords and shadows.
He had survived the twin transits—one through a fold in space, the other through a rupture in his own soul. The journey left him shaken, but alive and both had left him with a terrifying new understanding: his two worlds were not as separate as he had believed, and the storm in one could very easily drown him in the other.