A Fracture in the Qwisdeep by Travis M. Riddle

Author:Travis M. Riddle [Riddle, Travis M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

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19

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Don’t You Worry

Last night had been an awkward one. There had never been such discomfort shared between the two friends as there was after Alani’s blow-up with the Mosstopus.

They sat a few feet apart, in front of their respective tents, eating their meager dinner of bananas and one shared pouch of nut mix. For a long time, they just made small talk, with Balt initiating most—well, all—of the conversations. The hottest topic they discussed was a rumor he’d seen online before they entered the jungle, about the possibility of Basker Owens performing at the opening event of the upcoming tournament in Makanuele, which was goofily dubbed the Makanuele Rumble. The other rumored artist was Photo Mode, a truly dreadful and generic band that was getting far more radio play than Balt thought they deserved. It would be a bad omen for the tournament if Photo Mode was its opener.

Much to his surprise, Alani wasn’t even in the mood to ponder names for his Mosstopus. He tossed a few around, none of which garnered any enthusiasm, and she had none to contribute herself. For now, the creature would remain nameless.

Eventually, Balt had tried broaching the topic of Alani’s meltdown, to no avail. As he predicted she would, she shut down at the mere mention of it. Just like she always did whenever he approached a sticky, uncomfortable subject. Her reluctance inspired a mild rage in him, made him want to yell at her to stop holding everything in—he couldn’t help her if she didn’t communicate what was bothering her.

But in the end, he acted the exact same as her. He kept his words bottled up, left the argument for some other day, not knowing if that day would even come. Maybe the conflict would dissolve on its own before they could ever have that conversation. That seemed to be what Alani was banking on all her life, in any case. Not that it appeared to be working out very well for her.

So he had wandered off from the campsite to train for a while, his mana having recovered since the Mosstopus encounter. Alani could sit by her tent and stew in her anger, that was fine. He needed to get some extra training in after missing a whole night due to his soulsickness. It wouldn’t hurt to get some more time in with his first three Jekuas, and he was eager to see what his new Mosstopus brought to the table.

Now they traveled the path in silence, making much better progress than they were the day prior. Not being magically hindered by a Jekua did wonders, as it turned out.

Balt was thrilled to now have a full retinue of Jekuas. A kayet only held four memory cards, so in an official battle, each Summoner could only bring a maximum of four Jekuas onto the field with them. Swapping cards mid-battle was strictly against the rules. He had actually watched a match on television once where a Summoner tried discreetly popping a memory card from his pocket into his kayet, but he fumbled and dropped ten of them on the ground.

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