Twenty-Five

The E-Grade rift rippled in front of them as they stood shoulder to shoulder, ready to finish their time on the station. The last week had been spent with Diur in meditation in her room, using an array that Benny had stored to burn through the E-Grade cores from the slimes they'd acquired. As the trip neared its end, the old man had roused them and sent them through the two F-Grade rifts with their mission to clear them and retrieve the treasures that anchored the rifts.

Neither rift had been a challenge, the guardians dying with ease and the treasures simply unremarkable. Hardly anything more than slightly more condensed energy. Kon had eaten both of them, draining them away to dust to refuel his depleted body before they made it to the E-Grade rift.

Benny's training had been brutal, but had seen rapid growth. He could now call upon his reserves with ease, pulling out the stored energy in his body to fuel his runes or amplify his physical abilities at will. It had just happened to completely drain everything he'd had in his body after he'd finished crafting his rune.

Benny had been impressed with how long he'd managed to go before needing to refuel. Lasting several intense sparring sessions before his energy was completely depleted. It was when he was on his dregs of energy, hardly able to generate more than a spark of power that Benny had sent the two of them into the rifts. Diur had let Kon do most of the work, even without the energy in his body, he was massively stronger than he had been when he'd first cleared a rift with nothing more than a rock.

After consuming both treasures he was approaching full again, his body no longer feeling hollow as he adjusted his grip on the mace in his hand before tying it to his belt. The oversized gauntlets on his hands shifted soundlessly in the vacuum of space. Diur stepped into the rift without saying a word, disappearing instantly. Kon kept his own smile repressed as he followed her into the E-Grade rift.

Wide white canyon walls rose up all around him, scraping across the sky even as they pressed against his shoulders. Diur stood a few feet in front of him, hardly with enough room for her to move as she looked about the area.

"The air's breathable at least," Kon said as he looked over the canyon they had found themselves in. Small caves dotted all along the canyon walls, already oozes were slinking their way out of the caves and started down the nearly sheer cliffs.

"Aren't they pretty," Kon said as he grabbed at the hose dangling off of his back. While he hoped to one day be able to fight opponents like the oozes in his preferred style, today was not that day. Instead both him and Diur had found the packs that Benny had been talking about, long cylindrical containers that stretched from shoulder to hip. With a quick pull of the oversized trigger, a pressurized spray of hissing liquid shot out, splashing across the stone and the leading oozes.

Stone cracked as frost formed in moments, oozes turning crystalline as they froze and fell with mighty snaps. They shattered upon the canyon floor as a thin tendril of ice began to coat the outside of his armor. Ahead of him, Diur painted the canyon walls in front of them in freezing death to similar effects.

"Feels like cheating," Kon said as he kept track of the pressure gauge on the wide sprayer. The narrow needle on his gauge had begun to noticeably move as Kon sprayed down the walls. He let go of the trigger, instantly ending his arctic assault. All around him monster cores glittered like diamonds as the oozes continued to fall and slam into the ground, splintering apart like glass.

"There's no cheating when killing monsters," Diur said. She ceased her own attack and waited a moment as a fog had begun to descend and blanket the narrow canyons. She shrugged a shoulder and Kon could hear a grin in her voice as she continued.

"This is much more enjoyable than clearing rifts with Alice."

"Alice would have demanded we just rip the cores out of the oozes while she healed us," Kon said with a chuckle. Diur laughed loudly, a break in her normally composed image.

"We need to focus. Alice and Benny would both scold us for this," Diur said after a second, both of them reigning in their mirth as the fog began to clear. The oozes had been cleared for the moment and it took only a minute for them to quickly gather up the fallen cores, filling the bags they carried in minutes.

"Which way?" Kon asked as they finished, he looked around. They either climbed the walls or kept going down the narrow canyon.

"I have no desire to try to free climb with these tanks on our backs. Forward for now," Diur said before taking the lead. The two of them moved together, keeping careful watch on the long canyon walls as they pressed deeper into the rift.

"Did you clear rifts before Crucible?" Kon asked after a few minutes of travel. He took Diur's sigh as good natured.

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"Clearing rifts were seen as a chore for the most part. Ours were kept well maintained or if dangerous they were collapsed. We get no strength from them aside from the cores we harvest which are sold to the clan stores for contribution points. I ventured into a few, but most of my training occurred with trainers or inside of the training grounds with fellow cultivators in my generation," Diur said. She kept the nozzle of her sprayer sweeping around even as she spoke.

"Sounds boring," Kon said.

"Comparativley, yes. But it was all I knew. I began training as a child and I knew the sands of the training grounds as well as my own bed. This is exciting but dangerous, there is no comfort in these places," Diur said.

"Which do you prefer?" Kon asked.

"Here. Though I do enjoy sparring and wish we had a bit more room on the ship. It's hard to practice with the sword in such tight confines," Diur said instantly.

"I'm sure the next place will have room for you to swing your sword around. Is it that important you use it rather than conventional weapons? I mean…I'm not going to stop using them, just not going to walk away from my roots," Kon said.

"Your roots?" Diur said with a bark of laughter before continuing.

"Kon, you have only been fighting for a few months and already you feel the calling to your weapons. A club and your own fists," Diur said with a bit of a goodnatured sneer.

"My ancestors have used a sword since before they could cross our oceans. It is in our hearts and bones and soul. To abandon that is to give up a great strength, regardless of the weight it presses down upon us," Diur said.

"Weight? To live up to them? All those ancestors of yours?" Kon asked.

"Yes. Deep in the clan histories we can trace back our lineage for millennia, along with their deeds and actions. Decisions they ruled on that became law, poetry they wrote that became cultural touchstones, artwork that became pieces for pilgrimage. The weight is impossible, but it is comforting. The clan has always existed and shall always exist and I am but one more thread in the tapestry across the ages. My descendants will read upon my stories and adventures, they will read my experiments and learn from them and reach to higher and greater reaches than I ever could. That is the weight I carry here," Diur said as she brushed the hilt of her sword with one hand.

"Holy shit that was deep. What do I say to that?" Kon didn't say anything. They kept walking as he digested what she had said. The weight of her clan's history was something he couldn't relate to.

"I don't know my great-grandparents names. I mean, I could ask my folks and they'd know, but I don't. I think they were the first colonizers there, generation not actual first ones, but I don't know. My grandparents all decided they'd rather die than leave their homes and I can't understand that. I don't know my people, not like you do. Humans have been drifting for so long that I don't think there's anyone alive who knows a true home, the type that doesn't fly at least. I think that's what my grandparents thought was worth dying for. Maybe. To have the weight of centuries like that, it must be as comforting as well as heavy." Kon said.

Diur didn't respond at first as they kept walking along the canyon. Nothing stirred in the dead stone passage. Further ahead they could both see the canyon walls widening up, granting space for them to walk side by side once they reached it.

"I can understand the desire to die for your home. I hope that one day, you can find that place for yourself," Diur said finally.

"Man, that was a mood killer. I think I'm ready to smack something with my club," Kon said, forcing a laugh out.

"I hope that one day you have the maturity to have a deep conversation without turning toward humor to shield yourself from being open to your emotions," Diur said with a hint of her own humor.

"I hope that day never comes to pass. Let's go clear this rift so we can get to the real work," Kon said as he moved to walk by her side as they left the narrow confines and into a wider cul-de-sac. The canyon walls curved toward each other and met to form a small culvert.

"This looks a lot like one of the rifts I cleared on Crucible," Kon said as he looked around for the treasure.

"Plenty of rifts have similar designs. There are many schools of thought on this and the runes one can find in them. It is an interesting topic and if you weren't so obsessed with your history lessons I would offer you some of the more sane theories," Diur said as she moved a few feet away, giving both of them space to work.

"What do you think it is?" Kon asked as he couldn't find anything that would signify a treasure or a guardian.

"Cave," Diur said simply as she pointed to a small cave nested at the base of the canyon walls, nearly perfectly centered where the two walls meet. Kon peered at it, the narrow slash of shadow refusing to allow him to see further.

"Are we really going into a creepy crave?" Kon asked as they approached it. Diur paused and looked back at him.

"What would Benny say if we went into a cave like that?" she asked.

"Probably call us some mean names that question our intelligence."

"Correct. What would Alice have us do?" Diur said.

"Charge in and find out later?" Kon said with a snort. Diur nodded and the two of them by unspoken agreement fanned out and approached the cave from an angle. From a few feet back they stopped and Kon angled the sprayer at the door and pulled the trigger sending a spray of condensed cold into the cave at the same time as Diur.

For a second nothing happened and Kon thought they were going to get away with an easy victory. Then something bellowed from inside, amplified by the narrow nature of the cave mouth till it pressed at Kon's hearing.

"I knew it wasn't that easy," Kon complained as he got a look at his first E-Grade guardian.

"Damn, that is ugly."

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