Floating Sky Islands (5)

For five days after the night my sister was wounded, the two of us circled the hills of Basin Island, beating down the Mid-Low Rank Variants and Mid-Rank Variants that prowled the outskirts. The inner basin stayed off-limits. I had no desire to walk in under the eye of those temples.

So we kept to the rim. Whatever Detection snagged, and whatever spotted us from the sky and dove, we took. Three mid-low Phase Stones later, she had stacked her Phase Power to 1,400 and climbed into F-Class.

F-Class let her drape darkness over her body or wrap herself in light, and her control reached past water to moisture itself. I asked if she could fire a laser. She spent a while loosing elemental rounds, turning the problem over and over, and I was just about to offer a demonstration when a water jet blasted from her fingertips. I nearly jumped.

“Oh. So that’s how you do it.”

…What a genius.

Genius or not, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she still couldn’t do something like a Mana Cannon — condensing TP and detonating it in a single instant. She simply didn’t have the minimum Phase Power for it.

“But this laser burns TP like crazy! Fourteen seconds and my Phase Power is completely drained!”

“The damage concentrates on a single point, so the burst output is far better with the laser. You’ll have plenty of use for it. Practice whenever you get a spare moment and get comfortable with it.”

Advice born of experience. She nodded.

“Yeah. I think I get why elemental ability users are called the flower of a raid. The ways they can deal damage are this varied — of course they’re essential when you’re building a strategy.”

She chattered on about an elemental user’s place in a raid, and about how you chose among the four elemental abilities according to the character of the Phase World you entered and the nature of the target. I answered absently, eyes on the basin.

The temples had been quiet. Nothing had come out since the pegasus I’d killed on the second day, and nothing had gone in.

Basin Island held three temples in all — one at two o’clock, one at six, one at eleven — each of them roughly three kilometers out from the hills. The placement was too precise. How to put it: it felt as if the buildings themselves were functioning as a magic circle. And if I was right about that, the question was what the circle was for.

We walked for about an hour without meeting a single aberrant. My sister studied my face, then suggested we go down into the basin and carefully look the temples over.

“No. What are you talking about?”

I shut it down flat. She caught my sleeve, pointed toward the temples, and pressed on.

“We’ve already cleared out every aberrant that was living on the edge of Basin Island these past few days. If we want more, we have to push into the basin, and we ought to look for a Return Point while we’re at it, just in case. There’s no way to do either from up here. We can’t see into the forest inside the basin from this spot, so even just to advance, shouldn’t we investigate the temples? Carefully, at least. They’re the key points.”

“You fainted from the whale’s cry, so you didn’t see it, but a Mid-High Rank Variant pegasus came bursting out of that temple — four meters, maybe five. What if there are dozens of those things in there? What if something even stronger comes out?”

“Th-there was?”

“I don’t want any option where you could end up in danger. Not one in a thousand. Not one in ten thousand. If physical reinforcement types and elemental types mix and charge us, I can’t promise I’ll keep you safe. Whatever else happens, getting home safely with you is the first priority, so don’t go flashing your curiosity around. Stay put. I can look for a Return Point after I’m the only one left.”

“Okay.”

After that she didn’t argue. She took my hand and followed quietly, eyes on the ground. I wondered if the refusal had deflated her, but her face was serious, sunk in thought, so I didn’t worry.

Still. I’d turned it over for days, and sure enough… she was already expecting she wouldn’t be able to leave with me on the automatic return, once the fifteen days were up. Catching me scanning for a Return Point while we circled the hills must have pinged that radar of hers.

Well. If it came to that, I’d send her back first and come in again with a wind-attribute ability user. They could fly, so we could drop beneath the floating islands, or cross east to the Great Island and search from there.

Either way, if I ended up stranded here alone, Hwayeon and Franc would never sit still. Most likely Vice-Captain Cha Soyoung — the wind user with the highest Phase Power on the raid team — or Team 2 Leader Kim Ga-min would come in with them as a small elite party. Plan an operation with people like that, and even a Superior-grade ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠aberrant wouldn’t be hard to put down.

…Hmm. Even with that kind of backup, I didn’t want to cross to the Great Island next door. That premonition was still warning me off.

And then, on the afternoon of our eighth day inside, the whale’s cry rolled across Basin Island once more.

A little past six, as the sun began to set, we stopped on the twelve o’clock side of the island and settled on a hill with a view of Star Island, ready to rest. Our shelter was Dugout No. 4, made ahead of time and already put to use. I’d restocked the firewood, slipped down into the basin, and come back with two rabbits that feared nothing in the world and a bird that looked like a pheasant. We were roasting them, and I was just about to bring up what we’d do tomorrow, when—

“...!”

She frowned faintly as the cry spread, but she didn’t black out the way she had before. Higher Phase Power, maybe, and a pattern that had grown more solid.

“Seoha. That sound just now — that was it, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Looks like it’s back. Let’s go out.”

We stepped out of the dugout and looked toward Star Island, more than twenty kilometers off. In the cloud sea, a pale shadow larger than the island itself showed faintly through the clouds.

“It’s huge?!”

The clouds were too thick to make out more than a vague shape — oar-like fins to either side, a body like a long submarine, a broad flattened tail with a notch sunk into its center. A triangular head. No dorsal fin. It was, quite literally, a whale.

She stared, transfixed, at the thing gliding past Star Island as if it were swimming, then spoke as if something had just occurred to her.

“A gray whale?”

“It looks like a gray whale?”

The only whale I knew was the Bryde’s — pitch-black, with a maw so enormous that if it gaped wide it looked ready to swallow another whale its own size. The only reason that one had stuck was the terrifying snout.

“Mm. It seems a little different, but the overall lines are a gray whale’s.”

If she said gray whale, then gray whale it was.

Its bulk… the body alone had to be six kilometers long. Star Island ran about six kilometers from one point of the star to the opposite point, and this thing was roughly the island’s size, so that tracked. It drifted slowly along the northeast, slipped into the clouds, reappeared on the far side — and without warning slammed its whole body into the island.

Kuuuung…!

Kuuuuuung—

The aberrants that had been on Star Island’s needle peak had already taken to the sky, and there were far fewer of them than before — no surprise, given how many had died four days ago. They didn’t fly toward Basin Island, and the gray whale’s cry didn’t seem to fell them, but the way they climbed a little higher suggested they weren’t entirely untouched.

She had a hand on her chest, her face faintly pinched, so I set a palm on her back, cast Healing Touch once, and kept watching.

Kuung…! Kuuuuung…! Kuung…! It rammed its head, relentlessly, only into the sunken stretch of Star Island. With every impact a little more of the island caved, clods of earth pouring away.

Kuung!! A long, grinding roar — dududududu…

“Whoa—”

“Oh my!”

A shock heavy enough to make Basin Island itself seem to shudder passed through us. Then a crack split the arm of Star Island that stretched toward two o’clock, somewhere around its middle. With a ponderous collapse it broke, and a massive fragment vanished into the clouds.

A piece of an island vast enough to swallow all of Mount Jiri and still have room to spare had just shattered and disappeared into the cloud. My chest went cold.

“A stretch of ground big enough to hold five Grand Blue Buildings just vanished in an instant…”

“The land that broke off must be losing its buoyancy and sinking. What’s under those clouds?”

“A space packed with nothing but thick gray fog, crawling with aberrants that size?”

“…Waaah! Don’t say that! I can picture it, and it’s terrifying!”

She grabbed my arm and shook it, face blanched. I pictured the same scene and broke into a cold sweat myself.

“Anyway, why is that thing ramming Star Island like that? I’m pretty sure it’s the same one that showed up four days ago.”

At the third cry, her expression turned strange. Beyond the revulsion, it was the face of a girl whose feelings had been stirred — something like that.

“That child… I think it’s crying.”

Child? Seeing the wistfulness settle over her, I looked at the whale aberrant undulating through the clouds below. To me it was nothing but a strange sensation ringing in my ears. A woman’s sensibility, maybe?

Kuuuuuuung…

After one long cry, it slowly sank into the cloud sea.

I was watching Star Island, its shape slightly changed, when the flying aberrants still overhead began settling back onto the needle peak, one by one. Had the whale left? Hmm. Now that I knew the bastard made a habit of body-slamming Star Island, I wasn’t even going to think about going there.

She stared for a long time at the place it had vanished, as if something lingered, then let out a small sigh, took my hand, and shook it this way and that. Look at me.

“What?”

“We’ve caught all the aberrants we can see on Basin Island’s outskirts now, right? We only saw one today.”

“Well, yeah. We’ve been circling for almost a week. So?”

“Can’t we just wait here and return?”

Hmm? What was this. She’d been curious about the basin the whole time; I’d expected her to say we should go explore.

“What’s gotten into you? You changed your mind out of nowhere. I thought you were going to say we should search deeper into Basin Island.”

She glanced toward Star Island, then shook her head.

Ah. Seeing how mindlessly brutal that whale aberrant was must have changed her mind. Funny — seeing it had made me want to go down into the basin. I was weighing which was more rational, going down to explore or hiding out and waiting through what time we had left, when she narrowed her eyes a little and tugged at my sleeve, again and again.

“We’re not going toward the temples, right?”

“Hmm. Tomorrow, let’s head to the nine o’clock camp first.”

The camps were things we’d thrown together over six days of circling the outer hills. Calling them camps was generous. They were holes punched into the hillside, two sleeping spots and a place for a fire — dugouts, nothing more. Four of them, at twelve, three, six, and nine. We were at the twelve o’clock camp.

“We’re going down into the basin?”

“Yeah. I can’t shake the feeling the basin’s temples and that whale aberrant ramming Star Island aren’t unrelated.”

“Mm. Now that that child is tearing Star Island apart like that, there’s no guarantee the time we have left will stay safe…”

“So I was thinking we carefully look the temples over.”

The gap between the eleven o’clock temple and the six o’clock one was the widest. Push in through there, and even a High-Tier Variant in a temple shouldn’t notice us — not unless its Phase Power detection ran something like ten kilometers.

“All right.”

I was checking the terrain toward nine o’clock, already going a little hazy, as if night fog were coming in, when she looked up at the darkening sky, stood, and yanked off her suit jacket to dump it over my head.

“What?”

I pulled the jacket down — it was full of her scent — and looked up. She wore a pout and poked my nose with one finger.

“I’m going to wash. Don’t turn around, and don’t use Spatial Perception either, okay?”

“…Wash? How?”

I stared, baffled, and she waved me off toward the other side — toward the basin. What would I even get out of watching my sister wash. Anyway, she went down the hill, stripped off her blouse and skirt until she was in her underwear, and began pouring water from both hands, washing from her head down. Then, as if the underwear was in the way too, she started to pull it—

I looked away and shut Spatial Perception off around her. So once your Phase Power got high enough, you could ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wash like that.

Fair enough. At home she showered at least twice a day; for eight days she’d only washed her face and used her water to wipe off sweat and dust. She must have been at her limit. Listening to the water behind me, I glared at the temple visible near eleven o’clock.

Hnnn. What was in there. Pegasi, at least — that much was certain. My impoverished imagination couldn’t come up with anything else. The shape of the temples bothered me too. Was the resemblance to the ancient Greek style of reality just coincidence? If something managed them, it probably had a mind. Could we talk to it?

Had the pegasus that charged us on day two come out curious about the boom rolling across the sky, spotted me, and attacked? What if something was raising them.

“Don’t tell me there’s a demigod in there or something.”

…I slapped my own mouth for blurting it out without thinking. A demigod? What the hell was that. Was I talking Phase-grade? There was that miserably unlucky saying — speak a thing and it takes root — so I was not going to let every stray thought out of my mouth.

Oh, but thinking about it, the nine o’clock temple’s closest approach to the hills was only about three kilometers, wasn’t it? No need to be so tense. If there were a High-Tier Variant in there, its detection range would be three kilometers at the least, and we’d circled for six days, passed by five or six times, and nothing had come out. So there definitely wasn’t one. The thought that it was safe lifted my mood, as if I’d attained some kind of enlightenment.

All right! Tomorrow we’d start from nine o’clock, sweep all the way to the lake, and beat down Mid-Rank through Mid-High aberrants until I pushed her to D-Class! I had to tell her!

“Sis! …Hk.”

“Kyaa!!”

The instant I turned, her naked body was on full display. I froze — and the moment she screamed, covered herself with her hands, and dropped into a crouch, I whipped back around so hard my neck cracked.

“Ghk— m-my neck…!”

I clutched my neck, collapsed, and cursed my own stupidity. How could I forget she was showering! And of all moments, I had to look back right when she turned to grab her clothes!

Gripping my neck through the stabbing pain, I was rolling around on the hill when she came running, startled—

Aack! Spatial Perception, off!!

“S-Seoha? What’s wrong?! What happened?!”

At her urgent voice I glanced that way — she was running toward me with her clothes clutched to her chest, everything below in plain view—!

“Ghk— clothes, put your clothes on! What are you doing!”

“Ah! Aah, d-don’t look!”

“I’m not looking!”

I turned my back, listening to the rustle of cloth while I knocked on my own skull with a clenched fist, and her breathless voice reached me.

“Seoha…? A-are you okay?”

“Ah, it’s nothing. From now on, tell me before you wash. I’ll throw together a screen or something.”

“Okay.”

I cast Healing Touch on my still-aching neck, and the rustling started up again.

Ugh… Once the verification was behind us, I’d been working it out with my lovers at least once a day, no time for anything to build, so I hadn’t felt any strange sadistic itch or sudden urge. Five days without seeing them, and now, toward Sis… God, the self-disgust was real.

What the hell was wrong with my head.

Genuinely feeling as if I were degenerating on a biological level, I clutched my face and groaned, and she came up behind me and started stroking my hair.

“You dressed?”

“Mm. You were rolling around clutching your neck earlier — you didn’t hurt it, did you? Are you okay? Why did you call me?”

I turned at the worry in her voice. She’d washed properly — a face soft and fresh, clothes cleaned. Only she’d put them on while she was still wet, so the thin blouse was clinging to her skin…

…Shoo! Begone, Satan!

“I’m fine. It’s nothing. A-and I’m sorry I looked back. I was working something out, hit on a piece of good news, and before I knew it—”

“It’s fine. We used to bathe together when we were little.”

A blush on her cheeks, she smiled like Mom and gently stroked my head.

“Anyway, what’s this good news?”

“I don’t think there’s anything Superior-grade or above in the temples. So as long as we don’t get too close, the aberrants shouldn’t come swarming out. We can push in from the nine o’clock side, safely hunt from Mid Grade up through Mid-High Grade, and look the temples over while we’re at it.”

“Oh, I see. You mean we’re safe for at least the distance between the hills and the nine o’clock temple?”

I’d barely said a few words, and she’d already seized the point.

“Yeah. If there were an aberrant whose Phase Power detection exceeded three kilometers, it would have come at us when we passed.”

“Okay. Come on, you wash too. Making water with Phase Power and showering in it feels better than I expected.”

“Uh, yeah.”

I came down the hill as she pulled me by the hand, took off only my uniform shirt, and turned — and she told me to take the pants off too.

Standing there in just my underwear felt awkward, but she didn’t seem to care at all. She raised her hands over my head and started pouring water down. The pressure was good, the stream strong. Easy to wash with.

“Ooh? That’s refreshing.”

“Right?”

I marveled at the crisp, clean water as I washed, and she scrubbed my back.

…Filthy stray thoughts, wash away!

Once I was done, she took the uniform, washed the dust clean off, even pulled the moisture out, and handed it back. Putting it on again, I had to admit she was right — I felt incredibly refreshed. Like I’d just had a hot bath at home.

The day was darkening, so I offered to light a fire, but she said she didn’t need one. Tonight she’d just lie down on the hill like this and sleep.

“You sure? It gets a little chilly after the sun goes down.”

“I’m fine. I think my body changed a bit when I awakened as an ability user. These past few days I haven’t really felt cold or hot.”

“True, heh heh. From what I saw earlier, even that pitiful chest of yours seems to be asserting itself a little. That crater chest is— gack!”

A thud, and agony exploded in my side.

“C-c-craaater?! You’ve been thinking of it that way this whole time?!”

Oh no. Her face went scarlet with genuine fury, and she started pounding my skull with everything she had.

“Agh—! I said your chest got bigger! It was a compliment, why are you hitting me?!”

I scrambled back out of her reach. She growled and closed in, slow.

“My chest is what! What! What’s a crater!! You rotten brat! Does digging into your sister’s chest like that make you feel better, waaah!”

“I said it got bigger! Why are you skipping that part and only reacting to crater?!”

I dodged the fists she swung so hard. She looked ready to die of sheer indignation, eyes welling — then she sank down and burst into tears.

She was perfect in almost every other way, so having her one flaw attacked — her chest — must have stung something awful. Come on. I’d complimented her. It had grown. She’d gone from a triple-A crater to something like an A-cup, so wasn’t that an improvement?

I loitered nearby while she squeezed out tears in that complicated mood of hers, then just sat down at a reasonable distance. Why! What! I hadn’t done anything wrong! If anything, I was the one who’d been beaten, so I should be getting the apology!

…I kept stealing glances at her crying, and little by little the tears tapered off. She got up and walked toward me, wiping her eyes with both hands, and the sight of it made the whole thing feel like my fault. My conscience jabbed me. If I dodged her again now, the mood said she’d break into full-on wailing. I flinched inwardly with every step — and then she sat beside me, laid her head on my thigh, and muttered.

“…Sniff. You jerk.”

“...”

“You really can’t do that. Saying awful things to your sister… sniff.”

It was a compliment, I’m telling you… But nothing I said was going to get through in the state she was in, so I just lifted a hand and covered her eyes, the way I did for Franc.

“Sniff.”

That seemed to settle her. Soon she was asleep, breathing soft and even. Haaah. I was dead tired. What sin had I committed in a past life… I wanted to be held against my lovers’ big, soft chests and fussed over too. Tch.

I looked up. A full moon, plump as my lovers’ breasts, filled my eyes.

When I got back, I was going to gather Franc’s, Hwayeon’s, and Yeongeun’s together and bury my face in them.