The Cloud Roost (Jekua Book 5), page 42
Balt was happy that the golem appeared to be enjoying himself. Personally, he was sick of the hiking routine at this point. Walk all day, sit around gabbing all evening. They had been at it for a week now, and it was growing tiresome. He supposed his fatigue was directed more toward the entire pilgrimage than this specific stretch of it; he wanted all this business with Pakree to be over already. It wasn’t fair, having to carry this burden on his shoulders. Why couldn’t he just be a normal Summoner, running around the wilderness on his home island, imprinting Jekuas and battling other Summoners? That was all he wanted to do.
Over and over again, he had to remind himself of all the ridiculous opportunities this journey had afforded him. If he’d stayed on Totta, he wouldn’t have a Mosstopus, or a Sedipede, or an Echobear.
Or Sawarestao, possibly, he then thought. That might merely be a dream, though. And, if not for this journey, Alani wouldn’t have the soultear.
Balt picked up a pebble and tossed it at one of the rock walls, watching it bounce off and skip across the rough ground. Brine noticed it too and watched until the pebble came to a stop, then turned back to the flowers he was looking at.
At the end of all this, I can just be a regular Summoner, Balt told himself, trying not to be bogged down by his weariness, both mental and physical. You can spend hours upon hours training, without a care in the world.
He might even be able to do so with his grandmother.
Just the thought of that made tears well up in his eyes, so he quickly cast her out of his mind. He wiped the moisture away with the backs of his hands and stood, heading over to Wasaaru to speak with him. There was something he’d been wanting to say for a couple hours, and now was as good a time as any. Anything to get his mind off his grandmother.
Wasaaru was further down the pass, away from the group, playing around with his freshly-imprinted Sedipede. He’d regained enough mana since imprinting the hefty beast to give it a spin this evening, before everyone settled in for some dinner. Balt had reabsorbed a good amount of mana too, but he wasn’t in the mood to bust out the creature. If he was going to use Alani’s soulstitcher, then deepening his reserves more wasn’t as high of a priority; he still wanted to, of course, but he was already so ahead of the curve, he was trying to convince himself he deserved a break. Guilt still ate away at him, but he was doing his best to ignore it.
The Sedipede stood tall, its head pointing almost directly toward the sky. With such a heavy body, it was probably requiring at least a modicum of Gravity magic to keep itself standing straight like that. A bunch of rocks were floating in the air around the Jekua, circling it and looking as if it were performing some kind of ancient, mysterious ritual. None of the rocks were particularly big, with the largest only being about the size of Balt’s hand. He had no idea what it was that Wasaaru was trying to accomplish.
“How’s it going?” Balt asked his cousin, coming to stand beside him.
“Not bad,” Wasaaru replied, knitting his brow. “I’ve never used such a big Gravity-Type before, so it’s tricky, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.”
“It’s different from the Nullfly?” Balt asked, genuinely curious.
Wasaaru nodded. “A Nullfly’s essentially just a bug that uses Gravity magic. Same as how a Suelu is basically just a rodent that uses Electrical powers.”
“Don’t let Niona hear you calling Pops a rodent,” Balt interjected.
“I don’t know that he really constitutes being called a rodent anymore,” said Wasaaru, “but point taken. Anyway, the Sedipede is different because its Gravity seems to be…how to put this?...more innate, I guess? Maybe that’s not the best way to say it. What I mean is that everything about the Sedipede uses its Gravity magic. Not only the attacks it uses, but how it operates in the world itself.”
“Wow,” Balt muttered. “Weird. I had not heard that.” Sedipedes were fairly uncommon Jekuas, so he hadn’t heard much of any Summoners’ firsthand experience with them before now.
“For probably half of its movements, you have to alter the gravity around it a bit, since it’s so heavy,” Wasaaru added. “I’ve heard the same from people who regularly use Uruds. A Nullfly’s way more nimble.”
“Sounds kind of annoying,” said Balt. “And inefficient.” From what Wasaaru was saying, it seemed that using a Sedipede drained one’s mana at an exponential rate, if regular movements costed mana and also had to be accentuated by magic.
“It is,” Wasaaru confirmed. “Keeping my grasp on a Jekua this large is also more difficult. I already thought using the Rindstone was hard, but this is a whole other level. You can’t imagine the mana drainage either just from having it summoned, let alone using any magic.”
Balt nodded, then asked, “What exactly are you doin’ here, anyway?” He gestured toward the slow-moving cyclone of rocks and other debris. There were a few broken branches and possibly a poor lizard in the mix.
At that, Wasaaru let everything drop to the ground with a loud clatter. Rocks bounced around the base of the Sedipede, which was now lowering its front half back down to the earth. It settled in a cloud of dust.
“I don’t know, exactly,” said Wasaaru. “My thinking was that maybe I could raise up a bunch of shit—hard rocks, primarily—to sort of act as a shield against any incoming attacks. Then I could also propel parts of the shield out to attack enemies whenever there was an opening. That way, it’s kind of a two-for-one sorta deal, as far as mana’s concerned.”
“I guess so,” Balt said. He could see the logic in it, but it still didn’t seem very efficient. He hoped he would be able to cook up better ways of using his own Sedipede, which he still had to grant a nickname.
Now that he had one of his own, he was more motivated to seek out videos or forum posts from Summoners who used them to see what advice they had. Surely there had to be good ways of using a Sedipede in battle. He didn’t want this one to go to waste like his Kloptokarut, especially since it had cost him an L3 card. He only had one left now, which he was saving for Sawarestao.
And that was exactly what he wanted to speak with Wasaaru about.
He nodded toward the Sedipede and asked, “Was that thing as hard to imprint for you as it was for me?”
“I don’t know about hard, but…”
“You know what I mean.” It had taken his cousin just as long to complete the spell as it had taken him.
Wasaaru grinned. “Yeah, it drained a lot of mana. I damn near ran out, honestly.” He shot a glance at Balt, whose expression apparently gave him away. “You’re worried about what that means for Sawarestao, right?”
Balt nodded. He had yet to divulge his earlier conversation with Alani. Better to get it out of the way now, though, rather than when they were on the Jenu’s doorstep.
“Yeah,” Wasaaru sighed, withdrawing the Sedipede. The huge mass of dark orange soulclay rapidly shrank and drifted back into his shiny, fancy kayet. He and Niona could both afford sleeker, more expensive models, although the functionality was pretty much the same. You couldn’t put a price on superiority. “I was thinking about that too. To tell you the truth, I’m not totally sure we can pull it off. If we did, we’d be cutting it pretty damn close, I bet.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Balt. “I kinda already discussed this with Alani earlier, and she offered to let me use the soulstitcher.”
Wasaaru blinked and pursed his lips, mulling over what he’d just said. He had no experience with the soulstitcher himself, but he was well aware of what it was doing for Alani, and Balt had regaled him with the story of fighting the lighthouse golem. He understood the implications of what Balt was saying.
He said, “You know, that makes sense. That might be the only way this shit has a chance of working at all.” He chuckled.
“Yeah, probably,” said Balt. This next part was what he’d been nervous about. He wasn’t sure how his cousin was going to react to the news. He took a deep breath, then said, “The thing is, though…Alani can’t last a super long time with the soulstitcher removed, and if imprinting the Sedipede already took almost ten minutes, I don’t know how the hell long it's gonna take to snatch a Jenu.”
Wasaaru knew what he was getting at. “You’re saying that we’ll only have time for one of us to imprint Sawarestao.”
Balt nodded feebly, his mouth dipping into a frown. Then he said, “I mean, who knows for sure? But that seems likely to me, don’t you think?”
His cousin shrugged. “Probably, yeah.”
Tension solidified between them as they stood there in silence, waiting for the other to continue.
Finally, Wasaaru dug his hands deep in his pockets and breathed a heavy sigh. “It should be you,” he said. His tone sounded reluctant, but he’d said the words, nonetheless.
Balt’s heart skipped a beat. Never in a million years would he have expected Wasaaru to concede something like this to him. He figured Wasaaru wouldn’t let him order the last lemon poppyseed muffin in a coffee shop instead of him, let alone imprint a Jenu.
“Are…” Balt’s voice died in his throat, unsure what to say. “You’re being serious?” he said. “You’re not screwing with me?”
“Why would I screw with you?”
“Hell if I know!” Balt exclaimed. “Why would you let me be the one to imprint Sawarestao?”
Wasaaru laughed mirthlessly. “Believe me, I want to do it,” he said. “If we both could, that’d be great. But I don’t think anything you’re saying is incorrect, and…let’s face it. No matter how much training we got in beforehand, no matter how deep our mana reserves, this was always going to be a roll of the dice.”
“You sound way less confident now for someone whose idea this was in the first place,” said Balt.
Wasaaru’s trademark smug grin stretched across his face. “Hey, I’m an optimist,” he said.
“Some might say you’re arrogant.”
“Interesting perspective. Maybe I should take back what I said.”
They both laughed. Balt said, “But why, though? How are you okay with this? I thought you’d be smackin’ the hell out of me. Or at least yelling.”
Another shrug, then, “It pains me deeply to give something like that up, especially to you, but it’s only because of you that we’re here. I was off relaxing on the beach while you were toiling across Yuluhu, uncovering the secret of what happened to our grandparents. You deserve it, man. If either of us should imprint Sawarestao so we can go save them, it’s you.”
Balt’s face flushed the more Wasaaru spoke. Then, quietly, he said, “Thanks.”
Wasaaru patted him companionably on the shoulder, then returned his hand to his pocket. After a brief pause, he said, “I don’t know why none of us considered the soulstitcher angle in the first place. It seems so obvious now.”
Balt didn’t disagree, but he said, “You don’t think that it’s, like…cheating?” That thought still nagged at him.
“Who gives a shit?” said Wasaaru.
Balt was taken aback. “Well, I thought you would, honestly.”
Wasaaru scoffed. “Look, it’s not like you’re some super master Summoner or anything like that. You’re not some Chosen One Special Boy handpicked by the Veptists to save the world. You’re just some dipshit teen who stumbled into this situation and is doing their best. If you need to cheat to succeed, then you should cheat.”
“I’m not sure any tournament officials would agree with your stance there,” Balt joked.
“Well, this is more important than some tournament, and you’re also way more out of your depth here than you were in the Rumble. We all are. If there’s any sort of advantage we can grab, we need to. That’s the only way we stand even the slightest chance of getting through this.”
“Kind of grim to think that the only way we can succeed is by cheating,” Balt laughed.
Wasaaru shrugged again. “Who cares?” he said. “If we win, we win. That’s what’s important.”
“Fair enough,” said Balt. Then he asked one more time, “You’re sure you don’t mind if I’m the one to imprint her?”
“Of course I mind,” Wasaaru glared at him. His expression quickly softened, and he gave Balt a gentle nudge. “You should still do it, though.”
Balt nudged him back. “Alright,” he said.
He thought the conversation was over, but naturally, Wasaaru had to throw one last jab in there.
“Don’t think for even a second, though, that I won’t be calling you a cheater for the rest of your summoning days.”
Balt rolled his eyes and said, “I’d expect nothing less from you.”
44
Hi
It wasn’t even three hours after waking before they neared the final Warp Point. Balt had been mentally crossing off each dot as they progressed up the mountain, but even if he hadn’t, it was obvious they were coming to the end. The icon that their current path led to was a nest.
Or, at least, the approximation of a nest. It was a bunch of squiggles in black ink with a trio of small ovals that Balt assumed were meant to represent eggs. Did Sawarestao even lay eggs? If she was the only Jekua of her kind, who would she mate with? And if she did lay eggs, then why were there no other Jekuas like her? But if there weren’t any others like her, how was she born in the first place?
Balt shook such thoughts from his head, not wanting to get mired in the details. It didn’t matter. He was curious, though. But those were questions for another time.
He had done some light summoning that morning at the campsite, just to deepen his reserves ever so slightly more, but after that he’d withdrawn Dipper and not used up any more mana. He knew today was the day, and although he’d have Alani’s soulstitcher, he wanted to be at full capacity when he encountered Sawarestao.
“What’s the plan if we get there and she ain’t there?” Niona suddenly asked before kicking a rock off the mountain. She proceeded to slap her hips in an erratic rhythm.
“Don’t know,” Balt said, hating that that was the truth.
Alani said, “We wait, right?” She had to raise her naturally soft voice to be heard over Niona’s hip-smacking. “That’s all there is to it. We wait as long as we can with the supplies we have. It would be foolish to leave here empty-handed.”
“I agree,” said Wasaaru. Aeiko nodded too. Brine gave a thumbs up.
“Then I guess we wait,” said Balt.
“Dope,” Niona muttered, continuing with her bizarre drumbeat.
Balt glanced at Alani, who was fiddling with the soulstitcher latched to her collarbone. Her long fingernails clinked against its metal surface and the shineink of her manastreams pulsed gently, faintly illuminating the device.
They continued their ascent with idle chatter. Wasaaru and Niona traded off complaining about things, whether it was the hot sun or the dry air or the lack of five-star restaurants at the top of the mountain. At some point, Aeiko and Wasaaru got into a heated discussion about Aeiko’s father’s treatment of Wasaaru as a child, with Alani chiming in to agree that Wasaaru was kind of a delinquent. Aeiko’s exact words were “little shit,” which Alani did not disagree with but would not say herself. When Wasaaru and Niona broke off to talk about how she could better perform the Shadow Clutch ability, Alani and Aeiko chatted about Aeiko’s desire to find their own apartment in Makanuele, separate from their ex-girlfriend Holly. They were open to somewhere other than Makanuele, too.
Balt was silent the entire time. He could hardly focus on anything anybody was saying anyway. Anxiety and doubt swirled in his mind, dizzying him. His stomach roiled. Nausea was building, threatening to spill his breakfast from his lips.
He stopped walking. The others kept going, unaware.
Then he said, “I don’t think I can do it.”
Wasaaru was the first to turn around, giving him a strange look.
Alani said, “Do what?”
It took Balt a moment to respond. “Imprint her,” was all he said.
He wanted to say more, to expound on his feelings, but the words were caught in his throat. There was too much riding on this. The fate of too many people rested on his ability to imprint a Jenu. It was patently ridiculous.
Why was he the one?
Niona slipped past everyone, marching over to where Balt stood with his hands balled into fists. He looked at her with wide eyes and trembling lips as she broke into a smile and placed a hand on either of his shoulders.
“Stop bein’ a bitch,” she said, patting his shoulders.
Then she lightly slapped his cheeks, still smiling all the while. She swiveled on her heel and continued down the unmarked trail.
Everyone else was still staring at Balt, whose cheeks tingled. He watched Niona walk away, and he couldn’t help but laugh. The others soon joined in, and then they continued walking.
This time, Balt joined in on the light conversation. He and Niona spent a good amount of time ragging on Wasaaru for enjoying the films of Wes Qiri, who in their opinion was the most pretentious director working today. He insisted they simply didn’t “get it.” Balt did not necessarily disagree.
They stopped briefly to admire the view. All of Kou Tekkis Island stretched out below them, with its rolling hills and dense forest. They could make out a couple nearby towns, but just barely. Balt had no idea how far up they were, but it was staggering to see the world from this viewpoint. Way off in the distance, they could even see a bit of the lavender ocean lapping on white, sandy shores.
“It’s so beautiful,” Alani sighed contentedly. She crossed her arms and tilted her head, gazing out at the vibrant landscapes.
“How many people get to see this, you know?” said Aeiko by her side. They stood so close, Balt half-expected to see them wrap an arm around Alani’s waist, but that didn’t come to fruition.
