Shadows of Hyperion: Chapter 1

And we begin the fourth novel in the Arenaverse!

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SHADOWS of HYPERION

Fourth in the Arenaverse Series

 

 

Chapter 1.

"Ariane! Ariane, wake up!"

 

The voice was vaguely familiar, echoing out of the red-tinged blackness of pain.

 

"Ariane, can you hear me? Dammit, where's Gabrielle?"

 

"You don't look too well either, Marc. Sit down!"

 

That… that was Oasis. Marc?

 

She made an effort to open her eyes and say something; a vague moan was the result.

 

"My God, what happened?" Another voice… Gabrielle's. That's a little better. I couldn't even recognize Marc's voice for a moment!

 

"We were starting a practice session," Marc DuQuesne said. Ariane could hear his voice vibrate with an unaccustomed shake. "We had just started, and she suddenly screamed and fell down… like that."

 

"Hmm. Vitals… recovering from some kind of traumatic shock. Brainscan patterns are… odd. But she should be conscious. Ariane, can you hear me? Open your eyes, or raise your hand, plese."

 

A second try, and her eyes opened to slits; the practice room's lights were dazzlingly bright, sending needles of luminance to jab her somewhere in the center of her skull. Hazily, she could make out Gabrielle Wolfe's concerned face, golden hair haloing her head and partially obscuring the darker, concerned face of DuQuesne. "Gab…ri..elle," she managed.

 

"Yes. That's good. She's seeing us and she's conscious and responding." A pause. "No sign of actual injury, aside from a bruise on her head from falling. No concussion. Let's get her up off the floor a bit, get something softer under her."

 

"I will lift her," came Wu Kung's voice. "I knew I should not have gone anywhere!"

 

Small but very strong arms slid under her body, raised her up and laid her down; yes, whatever she was on now was definitely softer, and raised at the end. She blinked and was able to focus better. She was on a floating gurney – one of the many little perks the Arena made possible in its Embassies. "What happened, DuQuesne?" she said, hearing her usual quick, authoritative tones reduced to a tired contralto whisper.

 

"That's what we'd like to know, Captain," he said, relief erasing temporary wrinkles of worry. "We were trying to spar, practicing what we'd learned. Then –"

 

"God, yes, I remember. You started towards me, so I was going to throw up a shield and suddenly something put an axe between my eyes, or that's what it felt like."

 

Wu Kung's head suddenly appeared, the green eyes narrowed. "You were trying to use your magic powers? You and DuQuesne?"

 

"Well," DuQuesne said, "I was just starting, and they're not really magic, but … yeah."

 

Wu shook his head and stepped back. For a moment, gold light flickered around his body, and a wrinkle of concentration mixed with pain showed on his face. "You were lucky," he said, reaching out to grip Ariane's hand tightly. "Do not do that again! You cannot use your powers for a while, not for anything other than what DuQuesne would call parlor tricks – moving water glasses or something."

 

"What? Why?" Ariane asked, at the same time that Gabrielle said, "You know what happened?"

 

Wu Kung grimaced, then grinned with a cynical edge unusual for the Hyperion Monkey King. "I know what I see, but you will not like the explanation I will give of what I see and what it means."

 

"Explain and we'll decide whether we like it later," DuQuesne said sharply.

 

"You – both of you, and me as well – went into battle against a god, and then a fleet." The green eyes flecked with gold held Ariane's gaze like iron. "You were not ready. Neither was DuQuesne. Me… I wasn't, really, but not as badly as you." Another flicker of concern washed across the gold-furred face. "Hm, I think I should check Simon as well; he may be in danger too. Maybe even Velocity."

 

"I'll buy that we weren't really ready," Ariane said, "but why did I collapse? I mean, ready or not, we did beat him, and we didn't get permanently hurt."

 

"You have injured your soul." Seeing the stares, Wu gave an exasperated shrug and sigh. "See? I knew you would not like it! Then …" he wrinkled his face in concentration, then went on, "you have injured some part of you that my Hyperion senses call your soul, or think is your soul, if there really, truly is no such thing. Whatever it is, it is like your body in that it can be hurt or strained."

 

"Oh," DuQuesne said. "I think I get it. We did the equivalent of some lazy couch-bound simfan suddenly being forced to get up and spend a day at hard labor. It was hard, but it didn't feel so bad when he did it… but the next day he can't really even get up."

 

"Exactly!" Wu Kung nodded for emphasis. "Except much worse. You did damage. You were desperate – we were desperate, and so we ignored the warnings, or maybe you couldn't feel the warnings because you didn't know what to look for, but you hurt yourself during that adventure, a lot. Now that the emergency is past… well, you still haven't learned how to feel your soul's injury, so it doesn't hurt… until you try to make your soul bear a burden again."

 

Gabrielle was nodding slowly. "Like being in a fight and adrenalin lets you move something heavier than you could normally lift. You don't feel it at the time, but you tear something in your back anyway."

 

"Very much like that! Adrenalin, that was a word I was looking for. Yes, when you fight for your life your soul is ready to bear the burden unto death, so you might not feel the pain. And after, very small things won't bother you – like if you badly injured your back you might still be able to pick up a cup of water or something. But anything bigger…" Wu mimed something exploding.

 

Ariane gingerly sat up. "So, there's nothing physically wrong with me?"

 

"Not that I can see," Gabrielle said, glancing over her medical displays.

 

"If you insist everything in this magic world has a science explanation," Wu Kung said with the air of humoring the unreasonable, "then there's something physically wrong, but not in the… physical areas Dr. Gabrielle looks at."

 

"Wu's right," DuQuesne said, and his brows were drawn down, showing his intense focus on the issue. "Given that nothing the Arena does is actually magic, it still pulls off tricks that sure look like magic, and now so do you. Stands to reason there's some kind of structure – maybe made up of those 'Plancktech' spacetime constructs that Simon theorized about – that interacts with, supports, and maintains our apparently-supernatural skills. If it's custom to each person – and I'd bet it is – makes sense it develops along with each person who gets the powers. And if you push it, it's like driving a machine too hard; you get a breakdown, if not right away, then a lot sooner than you expected."

 

She looked at Wu and stood up; her head pounded only slightly. "So, you can see this damage?"

 

"Oh, sure. Sensing ki and spirit, that was one of the things I did better than almost anyone except Sanzo." He looked momentarily sad at the mention of his wife, now reverted to a state where she didn't even remember meeting him. "If I focus, I can see souls now. That isn't too hard, which is good, because my soul isn't in good shape, either. Better than you or DuQuesne, but not all that much."

 

"How bad is it? How long before it heals? Is there something we should do to help it along, like physical therapy?"

 

He squinted at her and DuQuesne again. "It's… pretty bad. If you had kept pushing it, you'd kill yourself."

 

"Kill herself?" Gabrielle repeated. "Using a power she never needed before?"

 

"It is a part of her now," Sun Wu Kung said with absolute certainty. "If she ruptures her soul, she could die without a mark on her. If you insist, that… Planck-whatever is woven through her whole body, and it's connected to her mind and her nerves, her brain."

 

"Makes too much sense," DuQuesne said grimly. "What about me, Wu?"

 

"You're about as bad as she is. I will have to look at Dr. Sandrisson and Velocity Celes soon." A faint smile showed a hint of Wu's fangs. "It is fortunate that Dr. Sandrisson does not want to use his power very often, and that Vel's is much less… obvious. But even his does do some… oh, as one of our old friends would have put it, some very unreasonable things."

 

He looked back to Ariane. "As to what to do, Captain, use your power very little, but don't stop using it at all. Little things, like lifting cups, making small sparks, that kind of thing, should not strain you much. If you pay attention to yourself, you should start to feel the strain already on your spirit. Listen to that sense, pay attention to it. You will not get a second chance like this very often; you could have killed yourself just now. Same to you, DuQuesne."

 

Ariane frowned. "We can't use our newest trump cards?"

 

"Not for a while," Wu said. "Not if you want to live."

 

Ariane considered the situation. Then she found herself smiling and shook her head. "All right, then, we won't. I'm kind of surprised how much that bothers me, when I spent most of my life without any special powers other than good reflexes. But we never had any plans to use these abilities in public. Right?"

 

DuQuesne grinned wryly back. "Right on the beam, Captain. Oh, the Molothos must've guessed something of what you could do from that last confrontation, but for the most part those powers are still a secret, and we want to keep it that way. Even the people who know we have something special don't know the details, and most of them will keep it mostly to themselves, I'd expect – tactical advantage in secrets applies on their side, too."

 

The headache was almost gone, although – now that Wu Kung had called her attention to it – there was a feeling of some kind of internal tension, not even exactly pain, but tight, like the feeling of a scab over a wound; it could be torn open. "All right, then, we'll follow Wu's advice to the letter. Wu, find Simon and check him out and if he has the same problem, bring him here and we'll brief him. Otherwise… it's business as usual."

 

She grinned at the others. "We got a long way without any special powers; we can do without them for a few months."