He mulls that over for a time. “So…if Quicksilver is not here, or if he is and he won’t help?”
“Worry is a spiral with death at its center, Cassius,” I reply.
I feel Aurae smiling. Cassius rolls his eyes. “Worry is a spiral with…I mean, come on. You trying to outdo Stoneside?”
I shrug. I am not as confident as I pretend to be, but how can you lead if you cannot walk—and how can you walk if you fear every step? Whenever I find myself doubting I’ve made the right decision, I force myself to examine our situation through the lens ofThe Path to the Vale. A portion of the book’s tenth understanding comes to me often during these moments:
Forgetting is essential to learning,
just as exhaling is essential to breathing.
Breathe out, then in.
Find the self,
then lose it once again.
Thus, the path goes ever onward.
Stilling myself, I breathe out the memories of past mistakes and doubts, and then breathe in fresh perspective. My worries might be founded in uncomfortable truths, but they are—according to Aurae—born of an idle mind and an idle body. Worse, my worries only create more feelings of powerlessness. Rather than fretting about whether I’ve made the right choices, I instead focus on preparing for the next one, whatever that might be.
Iwasjust like the Marcher, I realize now: trash from the past, circling the drain. But I realized on the morning after we turned away from Mars that I faced a choice: I could look back and see the light of homeshrinking day by day and miss its warmth more and more, or I could resist the urge to look.
I resisted that morning and found strength in the resistance. That physical choice has since become a mental one. I have not looked back since, and I will not. Virginia has given me a mission: come back with strength enough for one last chance to win this war.
I am now an arrow shot by her bow.
There was no downtime on this voyage. I learned from my enemy and aped Apollonius. I made a syllabus and divided it into three parts: body, brain, heart.
For my body, I train with Cassius six hours every day cycle. Three after I wake, three before I sleep. My body is bruised, my muscles ache, my hands are blistered, and my ego is smashed every day. He is a fantastic classical swordsman, and whenever he puts me down, he says with a smile, “Steel sharpens steel.”
He is not wrong. In the chaos of the battlefields, I have grown sloppy, my confidence obese from success while my enemies have studied how to beat me and the Willow Way.
Thirty-six times six is two hundred and sixteen. Those are the hours we have put in. I feel the change already. I also now eat ten thousand calories a day. My mass is returning like the hair on my head. I’ve kept the beard. For some reason it helps me to feel like I’m on a mission.
My heart is nourished by the book I write and the book I read. I write to my son, like I did on the Marcher before I go to sleep. It grounds me in my past, and keeps my head up, eyes on the future he’ll have. I find the lessons in my losses, my grief, and hope I pass those on instead of the pain. And I readThe Path.Aurae suffers me daily, but if she’s annoyed at my litany of questions aboutThe Pathor Athena, she hides it well.
I think Aurae’s strength comes from her response to suffering. Unlike me, she was not given the easy way out. I was carved, given a physical chassis through which I could vent my rage on the worlds. Physically fragile, Aurae had only one choice: make her heart strong, or the worlds would shatter her in every way.
The brain division of the syllabus is dedicated to the data Virginia sent. Five hours a day, I catch up on my enemies’ successes. Atlas’s are legion. His campaign on Luna in destroying its food stores was genius,as was his pacification of North America. He’s moved on to South America now, and I try not to obsess. He’s the most dangerous of them all, but fighting him is only part of the war.
I read about Lysander and his nascent alliance with the Rim, as well as the intelligence briefings on Rim and Dominion strengths, politics, personalities, industrial capabilities, and all the players of our drama. I learn of Lyria’s past, of Ephraim, and Volga, and how she volunteered to go with Fá. That part disturbs me more than anything else—Fá. Intelligence is sparse on the mysterious warlord and his Ascomanni. Something is off based on the reports I’ve read. His tactics on Mars had the flavor of special forces. No shortage of disaffected spec ops on both sides running around these days, but it seems there may be more to this one. I need more intel.
This tone of industry I have set personally has influenced the others. TheArchimedeshums to a productive rhythm. Only Sevro remains a discordant note.
I’m jarred from my reflection on our journey as Cassius grabs my shoulder.
“Is it just me, or does that crater look like its opening its mouth and spitting at us?” he asks.
“I think it is spitting.” I grin at the strange star craft pouring out from the hidden hangar that has opened in one of the asteroid’s craters. The ships are angular and made of a mixture of pearly and transparent material. I’ve never seen any ships quite like them. Cassius darkens.
“There’s no cockpits,” he says. “AI?”
“Maybe. More likely drones with a controller.”
“Mhm.”
A high-pitched noise goes through the ship and the lights flicker. A face appears over the coms projector. The man is beautiful and in his early fifties. His eyes are rose quartz pink. He greets us with a smile.“Darrow of Lykos. You have a beard!”
