Chương 86: Chapter 85: Stepping on the path

Money spent on a tool disappears. Money spent on the tool that is yours never does, however it looks on the day. - carved above the counter, University 11 Store The University Store occupied two floors of a building near the secondary gate of the campus. Kara had been in it exactly once, to get his umbrella before going for the internship. He had ordered things from the University Store before, but a weapon was just one of those things that had to be bought in person.

The chain darts were in a case near the back, second row. There were no options, just one standard model where the length of the chain could be varied. The man behind the counter looked him up and down, selected one and handed it to him. It was lighter than the training dart Kara had been borrowing since his first year, but that was a good thing in a way considering his strength wouldn't impress anybody. The ring was in a drawer under the counter and cost more than the dart.

"They always do," the man agreed, when Kara said so out loud.

"Two pieces of a weapon that nobody teaches, and there are four people on this planet making the second one properly. You want the one that lasts or the one that costs less?"

"The one that lasts."

"Then that is the price." Kara looked at the pair of them sitting on the counter and did the arithmetic. The last time Kara had tried haggling, the price had somehow ended up higher than the initial quoted price. He tried anyway. His wallet wouldn't hear a no. He asked what the two together came to if he took them together, and the man looked at him, and looked at the dart, and took off an amount that was not large but was not nothing either. Kara took that as a win.

He paid, watched three quarters of what the internship had paid him leave his account in a single purchase, and walked out. The ring sat under his coat on the way back and he could feel it the whole way. Instructor Ken approached him in his next Combat Arts class. He looked at Kara practising with his newly acquired chain dart and shoulder ring.

"I see you no longer need the old chain dart from the store room. Good. I take it you have had your first session with the dart specialist." He looked at Kara meaningfully.

"Yes, Instructor Ken."

"Good. Show me the bowl." Kara ran the bowl for him. Ten casts against the reflection, and three of them found the target.

"Not bad. The weight of your new dart suits you better."

"Yes, looks like it," Kara sounded almost surprised by it himself.

"That is the slowest of the five to improve and it will stay the slowest." Ken folded his arms.

"Show me the first two again. Both weapons." Kara ran the figure of eight both directions, both hands, then swapped, then took the random holds for two minutes and stopped both weapons inside a beat every time. Ken watched without comment and then told him to put the umbrella down and throw the chain from a standing position, which Kara had been dreading. It went out nine feet and came back along a line he had not chosen, exactly as it had done in front of Narak, and he took it on the outside of the forearm.

"That is new," Ken observed.

"Yes, it's been two days."

"Then do not let anyone in this hall correct it, including me. You will get four opinions in a week and they will all be from people who have never held one." He was already turning away.

"The bowl every day. The others stay warm. You may focus more on the chain for now, but do not forget the umbrella." The hall at six in the morning was cold again. It was Narak's turn to inspect his newly acquired chain dart and ring.

"Show me the ring." Kara turned so he could see it, and Narak checked where the strap sat under the arm and moved it half an inch and said that was where it would stay now that it had been worn once, and that he should not adjust it again for any reason, because a ring that moved was worse than no ring at all.

"The ring is good enough to last a while. The chain dart on the other hand… Well, I suppose what the store has for the general public is usable at best, if I say so myself. If you do well in your second semester, there could be better ones on offer based on your acquired merits." That was new. He had not known that. Even more reason to do well this semester so that he could access the higher tier missions next semester.

"I will keep that in mind, thank you." Narak nodded slowly. He then walked out to the middle of the floor and stood.

"Now let's start with the throw." Kara built the circle he had been taught, the swing that gathered speed across three rotations before the release, and put the dart out twenty feet into the far mat. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Again. Feet where they are. Do not turn." He tried. The chain went out about six feet and dropped, and most of it landed on his own boot.

"That," Narak said, "is what we are going to spend the rest of this hour and probably the next four on it." He came over and picked the chain up off the floor.

"A circle is a machine for making speed out of your whole body. Your hips turn, your shoulders follow, the line gathers, and by the third rotation the head is doing the work for you and all you are doing is choosing the moment. It is good for practice. But it is also loud, it is visible from a long way off, and it takes about two seconds." He let the head swing once from his fingers and caught it.

"Two seconds in a battle could be the difference between victory and defeat."

"So the circle is for range."

"The circle is for a target that is not paying attention." Narak handed the chain back.

"Where does the speed come from if your body is not turning?" Kara looked at the coil on his hip.

"The wrist."

"The wrist and the hip together, and this is why Ken made you do a figure of eight with your forearm still for six weeks while declining to tell you what it was for." Narak set his own feet, took an imaginary line in his hand, and Kara watched the man's forearm not move and his hand go through a short tight arc that finished pointing where it had started.

"The coil is your anchor. You are not throwing the head. You are snapping the line off your hip and the head goes in the direction you want it to." Kara tried it and the chain went nine feet.

"Again." Eleven.

"Again. Your shoulder is pulling. Your collarbone lifts before the chain moves, and anybody watching gets that half second for free. Drop the shoulder, keep the elbow where it is, and throw from the wrist alone." By the twentieth it was reaching fifteen feet and striking not quite where he had aimed it, and by the thirty-fifth it was reaching fifteen feet and arriving in roughly the place he had intended.

By the fiftieth the outside of his right forearm had gone hot and tight from elbow to wrist, and the throw after that went just four feet. Narak called a stop and let him sit against the wall for four minutes.

"It is shorter than the circle," Kara said, when his hand worked again.

"It will always be shorter than the circle. Fifteen feet against thirty, and fifteen will not improve past about twenty however long you live." Narak crouched down opposite him.

"What it is instead is immediate. A circle announces itself for two seconds. This announces itself for a quarter of a second. You are trading half your reach for the entire element of surprise and that is a trade every serious person makes."

"And how does this work when I'm moving?" Narak looked at him for a moment.

"Ask me that in a few months."

"Sir."

"I am not being difficult. The standstill throw has one variable, which is your wrist, and you cannot do it yet." Narak stood back up.

"A throw while moving has your feet, your weight, which foot is down when you release, and where the coil has travelled to on your hip since the last time you looked at it, and it is the answer to the problem you described to Ken about having to set your feet. It is also the thing that takes people years to learn. You will get there and you will get there faster than most but you will not get there this semester." Kara got up off the wall.

"How many more?"

"Until it is fifteen feet and lands exactly where you want it, nine times in ten, with your eyes on something else." Narak was already collecting his coat.

"Then we will discuss your feet. Same hour next week." Kara walked back with the ring under his coat and the new dart on his hip and the forearm coming up in a colour Waggy was going to have opinions about. The SDC kept its own contacts, going back further than anyone currently on it, and Tinder had apparently read the file in the second week of the term, almost as soon as Kara had handed it to her. While Sunny tried his personal connections, which had already turned up two credible contestants.

Kara and Tinder tried the SDC connections. Kara took the strength side of the list first to see if someone wanted to break a record on those lines. He had found Obadele Nwosu four names down. A harpoon demonstration, seven years back, on an open field built for this. What the file recorded was that he had put a harpoon through a target at a distance the organisers had kept just for fun's sake. This was in open air.

Obadele had attempted the Earth record for this underwater, in a sea bed once, four years ago, and come up short by a margin the record office had published to two decimal places. He did not reply. Tinder found Yelena Vosk on her half, and hers was not a demonstration in the combat sense at all.

She had come to the University six years ago and spent an afternoon in the outdoor stadium sharing what her partner saw, routed through eighty thousand interfaces at once, three thousand feet down in water nobody in that stand would ever stand in. Yelena Vosk also happened to be the current Earth record holder for the deepest underwater dive with no equipment. She had held it for three years and had not attempted it since, because there was nobody left to take it off her. She did not reply either.

They kept searching as the deadline to submit the contestants to the Record Keeper neared. The reply came with just the days left in their deadline and it came from Yelena Vosk. It was four lines long. She had been eleven days out of contact in the deep fields off Area 2 and had come up to a queue of messages, and she had read Tinder's third, which was the one that had described what the day was rather than what they wanted from her. She would attempt.

She wanted to know the depth of water available outside the dome and whether there was any current worth accounting for. Sable, her partner, would descend with her. Her partner would not be helping in any way, and yes it was allowed. Tinder read it twice and then put her hands flat on the table.

"Whoot."

"Good job," Kara said, giving her a high five.

"That's the record holder. That's not just somebody attempting it, that's the person who owns it." She read it a third time.

"Kara, she's going to attempt her own record. In front of him."

"Great, we'll have to find a place deep enough around here for her to attempt it." Obadele's reply came the following afternoon and was one line and said only that he would come, and that he wanted to be told honestly whether the Keeper was confirmed or hoped for, because he had travelled for hoped-for before. Kara wrote back that Shaw was not confirmed, that the request had gone through the head of the Area 11 ruling council personally, and that his confirmation was subject to the names being sent.

He sent it before Tinder could make it more diplomatic. Obadele's second reply was shorter than his first. Send my name. They sent all five that night with two days in hand. Five contestants, five marks, and every name with a couple of lines beside it saying what they intended to attempt, what the standing mark was and why they had a shot. Sunny read it aloud once from the top before it went, because he said things sounded different out loud, and he was right about one line, and they fixed it.

Then it was sent to Narak, and things were no longer in their hands.

"We did our best. Now all we can do is wait. Whatever the outcome, thank you for your efforts the past few weeks. Then again, the real work starts after," Kara said, looking at both of them in turn. They both had grim smiles on their faces.

"Regret volunteering yet?" Tinder asked Sunny. Sunny laughed and Kara broke a smile.