Cloud Dancer, page 17
part #1 of Endless Skies Series
“Don’t hurt yourself or break anything,” Peter commented and headed for the kitchen, stopping at the door. “Oh, and you only have about twenty minutes to stock the rack.”
Delphi forced herself to pause, disregarding the pressure of her time limit, and considered the problem. Rushing rarely solved any problems except by leading you to bigger ones. “This isn’t a power exercise, it’s a balance, control, and multi-tasking lesson. What I need to do is apply the right amount of energy accurately and at the right times,” she said aloud, walking herself through the problem. She focused and tried again. Her aim and power improved, but the axe head turned as it struck, losing a lot of potential. Careful to secure the round, she worked the axe head free, only overcompensating a little this time. She stood there in frustration, trying to figure out what she was missing, working through the mechanics of an axe swing in her head when it came to her. “I’m not holding the axe.” She laughed. It was such a simple but vital thing. She’d been driving the axe head, and it was like trying to drive a nail with a single finger. It was technically possible, but everything had to line up perfectly, or else your finger or the nail would turn as soon as you struck it.
She readied the axe again, but this time took a grip on the handle with her wind to provide a stabilizing fulcrum while also applying strength to the head. The round split with a satisfying crack. Smiling, she moved the pieces and, with increasing speed, reduced them to smaller pieces before shifting them to the rack and fetching a new round. And I don’t even have to worry about blisters and splinters. She smirked as the next round split cleanly with a single swing.
Peter came out twenty minutes later to find a full rack of wood for the oven. He’d figured he’d need to lend a hand and maybe offer some pointers when he had continued to hear the thuds and cracks of wood splitting at a frenzied pace, but impatience and difficulty doing the task apparently wasn’t the reason. Three axes whirled through the air in a rhythmic parade of chopping while a conga line of rounds and split woods danced to and fro before being stacked in the fire shed. The jumbled timber pile looked to have been reduced by more than a cord already.
Delphi was so caught up in her work that she hadn’t even noticed Peter come out.
Peter clapped and was amused as Delphi’s conga line fell apart in a clatter of wood. “I appreciate your enthusiasm but if you chop the whole pile, we won’t have any to assign as punishment come winter,” he explained. Not mentioning how she had lost her concentration. Embarrassment would see to it that she would work on it.
Delphi smiled sheepishly. “It was more entertaining than I thought once I got the hang of it. Almost like meditation.”
Peter nodded knowingly. “Using Cloud Dancing for life instead of death and knowledge and mastery instead of the pursuit of power can be very rewarding. Sadly, a lesson which far too few ever learn.”
Delphi nodded, beginning to understand his feelings and why he fought the system in his silent way. “Maybe they should add it to the B&B course. It could prove “enlightening” to a few, and it is good practice,” she suggested.
Peter thought it over for a moment. Like all things, wood chopping could be applied to fighting, but she had a point; a few might learn something else from it. Something unintended. “Suit yourself, but I doubt most will want to do it or could. Managing multiple flows with precision control is beyond most, and many do not care for the few who can,” he said, washing his hands of it while also giving her permission to share the idea. “Anyway, now that you’re done, why don’t you come back in, and we can see about getting the rest of breakfast ready.”
Delphi smiled like a bruised sun and followed him back inside. Just more proof that there is more to being a Cloud Dancer than they are letting us see. After breakfast, she’d be hitting the books with Troy and Kale and seeing what new possibilities she could find. And while she liked Peter’s ideas about the proper way of things, she was also tired of getting pummeled on. Come the next ten-day, she wanted to be ready to show Cherry and Axle a few new-old tricks.
Dangerous People
Celestia the 17th of Jan
Year 848 of Revana
Axle looked at the sky frowning. It wasn’t his first time looking at the sky, but it was the first time in a long time he was doing so without choosing to. He had been stuck here on the ground sparring with the Delphi girl for almost four weeks now, not that he was complaining; it had been enlightening. While she hadn’t been ready for armed combat with him, he had had to improve his other techniques as she learned his tricks and signs and continued to use new methods to catch him every time they sparred, but most of their sparring hadn’t been the air, and he was missing that. After all, they were Cloud Dancers, and Cloud Dancing required one to be in the clouds. Now that he was staring at the clear autumn sky, he considered that idea a little harder. In the air, this never would have happened, but the very fact that it had happened here, on the ground, meant it was possible, and that meant he still had room to grow. It was a good feeling and drove away some of the boredom that had been plaguing him. She hit me clean enough to make me look at the sky. He smiled as he regained his feet, feeling a little tightness already forming in his jaw.
Delphi wasn’t sure if she should be jumping for joy or cowering in fear as Axle regained his feet with a slight smile which made him look far too much like a bemused Dragon who had been flicked in the nose by a Wolpertinger and was now torn over how it wanted to cook the offender, slow roast with butter and rosemary or carbonized with pepper and sage?
Rupert had seen Delphi’s strike land clean against Axle’s jaw. He’d been proud of her for that because he knew how much she had trained over the last few weeks to achieve it. But now, as he watched Axle regain his feet, he wondered if pairing her with him had been such a brilliant idea.
Delphi watched Axle closely, knowing that something was coming, even if she didn’t know what. It was bound to hurt, but on the plus side, it probably wasn’t going to bruise too vibrantly. She’d been hit on so much over the last few weeks, and not in a flirty way unless you thought of getting pummeled as flirty, that unless it was a devastating strike, she hardly bruised anymore. But whatever was about to happen, she had no doubt that it was going to leave a mark.
More than ten meters separated her from Axle, so she hadn’t worried about blinking as a bead of sweat rolled into her eye; she should have. It wouldn’t have changed much except she might have seen the blow coming.
Axle lowered into a crouch and disappeared in a cloud of dust that was kicked up as if an explosion had just occurred beneath him, and in a way, one had. An explosion of air.
Blast Step was considered an efficient way to kill yourself. It was a simple technique that was responsible for maiming more students over the years than anyone except for the Doctor had counted. It consisted of building bombs of compressed air under your feet, cushioned by air, which you exploded to provide yourself with an inhumanly fast burst of speed. Simple. The problem was control. If you didn’t have a body that could withstand the sudden acceleration, you broke or passed out and broke when you hit something hard, like the ground or a wall. There was also the technique issue. Blast Step was all about vectors of acceleration, mess those up and you were lucky if you missed your target, if you were right, you hit your target and hoped it moved when you hit it because if it didn’t, it was like hitting a concrete wall. If you were unlucky, which was usually the case, you missed your target, but you hit something else, like a concrete wall, a tree, or the ground, and you went splat while the Proctor wondered how much paperwork they were going to have to file.
Axle wasn’t most people, and while he usually only used Blast Step in the air, he was just as adept at it on the ground; after all, that was where he had first learned how to do it, and his collarbone still ached when it got cold. But he had learned to do it, as he now showed Delphi as his fist drove deep into her gut.
Delphi barely had time to form a Wind Guard over her stomach, more on instinct than anything else, before Axle’s strike doubled her over before launching her away from him as he detonated a Blast step behind his elbow and from his fist, which made it a Blast Punch, and sent her flying with no style whatsoever. Then came the hard ground and a few loud pops which couldn’t have been good, but, thankfully, with the bolts of lightning sizzling in her gut, she wasn’t feeling much of anything else.
Axle stood there, frowning at his own fist. He had caught her by surprise, yet she had still managed to throw herself backward and form a guard over her gut, right before he struck. He was impressed and glanced at the crumpled and oddly bent heap where Delphi had landed. She had better not be dead! This is starting to get interesting.
Delphi’s head was spinning with little Wolpertinger running in circles around it, and the world refused to come into focus, but she was alive. At least for the moment. Air! Her body screamed as her mind raced, trying to figure out why that was an issue until she consciously tried to breathe, but nothing happened. It was worse than getting the wind knocked out of herself. Her whole diaphragm had seized, and unless she or someone else could get it out of that state, she wouldn’t be breathing ever again. Death by suffocation was about the lowest end someone who could manipulate the air could suffer.
Fighting against her collapsing consciousness, Delphi forced fresh air into her lungs. Then she drew it back out again. It wasn’t ideal, but it bought her time and a clearer mind to work with as she parsed the problem. Unfortunately, it also brought consciousness, which let the pain which had only been vague become crystal clear. For not being able to breath unassisted, she screamed plenty loud and gnashed her teeth against the pain.
Rupert heard Delphi scream, and relief washed over him like a cold apple cider on a hot summer day. She wasn’t as dead as she looked from the crumpled mass of limbs she presented. Now she was a slightly flailing at odd angles screaming crumpled mass of limbs. Troy, Kale, and half the class joined him by Delphi to see if there was anything that they could do beyond watching and waiting for the screaming to end.
Delphi looked at the gathering crowd and smiled, clenching her teeth as she used the same trick she did when chopping wood to grab her right arm and wrench it back into socket with a sickening pop. The crowd stared in queasy horror as she played bone setter on herself. “Are you all just going to stare?! If one of you has the guts, I need you to punch me in the diaphragm as hard as you can,” she requested. No one moved as she twisted her left knee back around where it should have been. Everything hurt, and it was clear that she had torn tendons and muscles all over the place in addition to her diaphragm. Well, at least it wasn’t my nose that was broken. I’d hate to have a crooked nose for the rest of my life.
Rupert cringed as Delphi straightened the fingers of her right hand with sickening pops. And started to try to get to her feet. It was clear to anyone who could see, that she was making herself breath and that if she stopped, she would die, but even with that Sword of Damocles hanging over her, she was still patiently straightening her body back into a semi-functional state so that she could take care of her biggest problem on her own if no one else would. Crazy girl. He shook his head and motioned to Troy and Kale. “Grab her arms and help her stand as straight as you can! Now!!!”
Troy and Kale each grabbed an arm and forced Delphi to stand straight as her joints and other parts continued to pop, scrape, and grind, sending sickening jolts through Delphi and into their hands. As soon as she was standing, Rupert struck her in the diaphragm. Nothing happened for a second as the air was driven back out of Delphi’s lungs.
Delphi raggedly sucked in sweet air, and smiled, lifting her head from the pain induced lull it had taken on. “Hey Axle!” she yelled with all her strength. It wasn’t the loudest of yells, more of a hacking rasp. “A Rasselbock could punch harder than you.” She smiled and gave him a shaky wave despite the pain moving her beaten body induced.
Axle squinted at Delphi. “If you would like to try again...” The bell tolled across the campus, signaling that class was over.
“Looks like I’ll have to take a raincheck until Monte,” Delphi replied, giving him a regretful smile to cover her grimace. It made her look disturbingly similar to a Fiend.
Axle smiled and waved back at her. “Only if you promise not to claim you lost because you were already injured,” he stipulated.
Delphi barked a hoarse laugh. “Who said I’d be the one losing.”
Axle opened his mouth to say that that was the only possibility, but his jaw twinged from where she had decked him earlier.
Rupert shook his head at the bravado. He’d been surprised as any of them when she had managed to lay Axle out, but that and the crazy she was talking now were two different things. Maybe she has a concussion. That would explain her being able to bear with the pain without passing out and her crazy talk. “Where you are going is to the doctor to make sure you aren’t going to keel over dead. You could have internal bleeding or ruptured organs in addition to bones that need proper setting.” As if to prove his point, her wrist popped as she pulled another bone back into place. “And stop doing that!”
“But what about my next class?” Delphi whined playfully as a few more little bones popped back into place. “I don’t want to get stuck with remedial lessons this weekend because of the doctor overreacting!”
“For real?!”
Delphi nodded her head and smiled despite her shaking body. The adrenaline crash was here, and if she had thought she hurt before, she didn’t know what pain really was. “If you can guarantee I won’t get remedial, I’ll go.”
Rupert rubbed his face. “Are you two going to do what she says if she doesn’t want to go to the doctor?”
Troy and Kale shared a glance and tightened their grip on Delphi’s arms. “Hey!” she protested, but she didn’t have the strength to make them let go. “Fine. Take me to the alarmist, and let’s be done with this. I had better not be late to Sylph. They are practicing flight today, and Proctor Beck wanted my help!”
“You, my dear, have done plenty of flying for one day, but we’ll try to get you in and out as fast as we can,” Rupert promised, with zero sincerity in his voice.
“Fine, but I’m expecting a note explaining that it wasn’t my fault if I’m late!”
Rupert rolled his eyes but nodded.
It was a moderate walk to the infirmary, and Delphi felt every jarring step of it as she half walked and was half carried there. She would have flown, but the risk of her passing out was too high, and while Troy had recently figured out flight, Kale was still winging it, and Rupert wasn’t great at the indirect manipulation which carrying her would have required. After practicing with Peter, she had quickly learned that few were. So, they walked, and she tried not to chip a tooth as she gritted her teeth through it.
By the time they arrived, her half lucid bravado had descended into half lucid cries for pain killers. Cloud Dancers were tougher physically than just about anyone else, but Earth element user and they healed even faster than them, but that only went so far and Delphi had gone that far plus a full marathon, and her body was telling her all about it with every jarring movement.
Doctor Sandra looked up as the doors opened, and Delphi was dragged in. All it took was a glance, and she was coming around the desk and motioning the boys to set Delphi on an empty bed, eliciting a quiet scream of pain from her. There was no way that she wouldn’t recognize the flame-haired troublemaker. Nor her sidekicks and their ringleader. “What in all that floats happened to her!” she demanded as she set about prodding and examining Delphi over her protests of “Just give me a pill doc. I’ll be fine.”
“Well, she was sparring with Axle and...”
“I’d heard about that. I can’t believe you let a Freshman spar with Axle?! Does he even know the meaning of taking it easy on someone?!” Sandra demanded.
“If you’d let me finish! And she cleaned his clock with a beautifully placed Gust Fist to his jaw. After that, I guess he figured it was time to step up his game, and he used a Blast Step to close with Delphi and sent her flying with an adapted Blast Punch. It’s amazing he didn’t destroy his own arm,” Rupert explained.
“He’s an Earth combo,” Sandra muttered, looking back to the bed where Delphi had now passed out. “How is she still alive?!” Given that it was Axle, she doubted there had been any motive beyond a sense of competition driving Axle, but that didn’t change the fact that if what Rupert had described was accurate, and she had no reason to doubt him, an attack like that should have killed Delphi. Even the High Pompousness himself would have been hurting after that, and Delphi, for all the potential she is showing, is a long way from the likes of one of the Thirteen.
Rupert fidgeted. “Her diaphragm was frozen, and she was more than a little bent out of shape when we got to her.”
Sandra glanced at the slightly kinked but resting Delphi. “Who did the artificial breathing and straightened things out enough to spasm her diaphragm back into action?”
“Well, she was doing it for herself when we got there, and she pulled most all of herself back into alignment on her own,” Rupert answered. “The boys helped hold her, and I gut checked her to get the bellows moving again.”
“Herself?!”
Rupert knew better than to say anything to Sandra when things were like this and nodded. Their marriage had been a rocky one thanks to their busy schedules and fiery personalities before they got posted to the Academy. But he was doing his best to patch things back up between them, and that meant he knew when to keep his mouth shut even if he wasn’t very good at it.
“Go wait outside,” Sandra ordered Troy and Kale. She had questions, and she was going to get answers.
“It’s okay,” Rupert assured when Troy didn’t immediately move. “Sandra is one of the good ones. After all, she is a Wolpertinger also.” He smiled and grunted as Sandra put an elbow into his side. The boys hesitated, but Kale muttered something to Troy, and he relaxed. The door closed tightly behind them, and he turned his attention back to Sandra.
