Skyvenom Chapter Preview (Patreon)

Hey guys. I am a bit wiped to do any major post today. While Skyvenom is not ready for regular posting, work is being done, so please enjoy this preview. Read if it would whet your appetite, but skip if you would prefer not to wait. Releases, sales, and more chapters relatively soon.

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Chapter 1

As an Authority, Theo was capable of opening most doors, whether via weirkey or soulcrafting or raw force, but now he found himself facing one that might need to remain closed. He took a step back and the motion was half a glide, his cantae wrapping around his boots instinctively to fly him along the thick branch, away from the hostile guards.

It had taken him a while to adjust to the city of Hurat, with its vast sea of boughs not formally divided and yet still grouped into presumptive clusters. Now he felt it instinctively, not needing to look back to stop at the edge of the current region. More importantly, it put him at a socially acceptable distance from the two Aathali who barred his way.

A city built within a single massive tree had to be rife with secrets, and Hurat was no exception: not only were there locked doors, many of the doors didn't even exist until the locals coaxed sections of the bark apart. It had taken him most of a month to uncover this door even though it was more Earth-like than most: lighter wood paneling inset into the bark of the primary tree. And now that he had come this far, he might finally be stopped for good.

"I meant no offense," Theo said with a placating Aathali gesture. "Is the ancestry library really so inappropriate for outsiders?"

"Researching lineages is acceptable," one of the guards told him. The Aathali lowered leafy arms holding a living spear. "But this place is solely for family. Lineage secrets, personal messages, disease history of ancestors... none of this should be shared publicly."

Theo nodded amiably, trying to imitate the waving bough motion Aathali made. "I understand that, and I'm not seeking unlimited access. But I had a very close relationship with someone named Khaluu, from this very city. It's entirely possible that he would have left me a message."

"If he did, he wouldn't have left it here. You seem to mean well, flesh person... if you really respect our ways, leave the ancestry library alone."

"Please understand, Khaluu was like a mentor to me. Is there absolutely nothing I can do to get access, or learn more?"

The two Aathali guards looked at one another before the second, a deciduous warrior with armored leaves, stepped forward. "There have been rare exceptions where a flesh person has done a great meritorious act for Hurat and they have been considered family. And we do not want the history of old lineages to be lost when their seedlings might be planted. But such acts are rare, once-in-a-generation opportunities."

"I see." Theo continued hovering, watching the two guards and the door behind them. This seemed to be the only path he had left for pursuing information about Khaluu, so he briefly considered trying to force the issue.

But no, that wasn't who he was anymore. It was easy to take that moral stance because he couldn't use most of the organic technology without Aathali help, and in any case there was unlikely to be any information in the ancestry library that he could simply steal. Despite his words, it was very improbable that Khaluu had left any messages for him and it was possible there would be no useful details at all.

Theo realized that this door was going to remain closed... not because he couldn't open it, but because he had other responsibilities. Most critically, he needed to confront Esaire and the Armeau family before they could grow into a serious problem again. And, if he was honest with himself, he missed Nauda and Fiyu. He didn't want to wait in this city for a "meritorious opportunity" to appear, not when he had more important priorities.

"I hope that one day I have the opportunity to help this fair city and learn more about my mentor," Theo said with a bow. "But I respect your customs and so I'll depart for now."

Both guards nodded their upper boughs and he thought he saw relief in their craggy bark faces. If he'd planned to force the issue, by cantae or by reputation, they would have had a difficult time stopping him. Hurat wasn't a particularly important city, so it didn't even have a Stronghold-tier soulcrafter to lead it.

As Theo flew away, carefully avoiding the surrounding branches, he looked over the city one last time. The tree Hurat had been built in was so insanely large that the trunk looked less like a column and more like a flat wall... no, he realized that he had become disoriented and the vast pillar of bark was just one of the branches extending from the true main trunk.

Entire regions of the city were contained within the boughs of the tree, golden-green leaves entirely blocking sunlight. They claimed that in the autumn when the leaves fell, the entire city's culture changed, first in handling the potentially overwhelming piles of leaves, then in the open air. Theo had only been there for a little over a month, so he couldn't vouch for that.

From his perspective, the massive tree seemed eternal and unchanging, endless arboreal pockets with Aathali moving between the homes and shops built into the side of the tree. Only the largest and wealthiest homes even got through the layer of bark to the tree core, and he was told that closer to the base there were entire mines drilling deep to gather tree sap. He'd been too focused on investigating Khaluu to investigate any of that personally.

Theo's apartment was in one of the less desired locations, a neighborhood built atop an exterior branch. He enjoyed flying in the filtered sunlight for a while before he arced down toward the building carved into a twig that poked up from the branch. When he entered, the old Aathali at the desk lowered her thinning boughs to him.

"Welcome back, honored guest," she said. "Your room awaits."

"Thank you, Renuta." Theo smiled at her and pulled a sack of craftgems from his soulhome. "Your hospitality has been wonderful, but I think my work here is done."

"Oh, are you sure? Hurat has so much more to offer..."

"I know it does, but I'm needed back on my own world. Let me pack up my things and I'll turn in my key." Theo finished paying his bill, carefully noting the amount even though this number of craftgems was trivial to him now. Not that he was worried, since Renuta had given him a perfectly reasonable deal. People generally didn't antagonizing traveling Authorities.

In truth, he had very little to do in this room - he kept all his critical supplies inside his soulhome, after all. Theo grabbed a few items that he'd left lying around and took a final look at the bed - it was formed of shredded leaves inside some sort of silk and it had been shockingly comfortable. Maybe he should buy one of those for the future.

But for now, all he needed from this random little city was information about Khaluu. As Theo stepped into his soulhome to put things away, he glanced over the information he'd uncovered about his old mentor from his first life in the Nine Worlds.

Throughout their journey, Khaluu had spoken occasionally about his home, giving enough information that Theo had been able to track it down. Judging from the official bark plate records, most of that information had been accurate. Khaluu had burnished his reputation a little bit, as his ancestry seemed to have been on the decline even then and was now extinct. As far as Theo could tell, there was no grand scheme from Vistgil there, just a family declining and leaving fewer and fewer seedlings.

So now Theo had investigated all three of his old companions. Khaluu had been a tired old Aathali and Eratius had been from an impoverished Noveni family - neither seemed as important as he'd believed back then, and there was absolutely no sign that they'd been destroyed, merely forgotten.

Which left Brigana as the odd one out. Years ago when he'd returned, he'd thought he was fortunate to find a place on Deuxan where he could investigate her, but he'd actually been terribly unlucky. Brigana and the ai Teraeves family seemed to be the only part of his life that hadn't been part of Vistgil's plans, somehow deserving of destruction and traps.

That stroke of bad luck had led to the feud with Esaire, then war on Tatian. Theo's thoughts churned on that while he closed out his room and left the twig spire, and he realized belatedly he was doing a poor job of sticking to his new commitment of paying attention to people. Well, at least he hadn't offended anyone here and he'd mostly remembered people's names.

But there was no more time for that. He needed to end the Esaire problem for good, investigate Brigana's family in full, and get a step closer to understanding Vistgil's plans. Time to go back.

Theo removed the signal flower from his soulhome and broke it, sending a message across the Nine Worlds for the Landguard to come and transport him. They hadn't been very prompt in the past, however, so he had just a little more time in Hurat. What should he do with what might be his last moments in the city?

When he'd first arrived, he'd been intrigued by the city built within a single tree and wanted to investigate everything before he came to accept that he didn't have time. There were basically infinite corners of the Nine Worlds to explore and he would never be able to reach all of them. Part of him still wanted to go down to search the base and roots, but that required elaborate qualifications and permissions. Instead, Theo lifted into the air to do what he'd always been able to but had never taken the time... fly to the top.

From outside his neighborhood branch, he could technically see the tree from the outside, but the mind still staggered at the size. It didn't even look like a tree except from a great distance, it was just a mass of leaf and bark textures, all the wrong size, creating an unfathomable mixture that wasn't exactly tree or city.

Even though Theo was flying at decent speed, the green mass of leaves only shifted slowly because of just how tall it was. He'd investigated early on and discovered that the entire tree was a second tier sublime material, otherwise it never could have survived at such sizes. The wood didn't generate much cantae, but it would do a decent job of resisting even Authority-tier cantae. Such defensive materials would have been valuable in most places, but as far as he could tell, this part of Aathal was weak in offensive materials, rich in defensive ones.

That wasn't to say that he'd found nothing. During his time in Hurat, Theo had purchased several Authority-tier sublime seedlings that might be useful for his allies. The only one that he thought could survive in his own soulhome was something called a depthsgrinder, a root that was allegedly useful for building basements.

Beyond those, he'd gained reputable information about similar trees that had something called richamber, a sublime sap so powerful that it was coveted by Strongholds. He'd wanted to pursue it before deciding it would be a poor use of his time: he couldn't rush off after every valuable-sounding sublime material, especially those not yet useful to him.

Maybe after he and the others reached Stronghold, they could return.

Eventually he reached the upper boughs of the vast tree of Hurat - he was so high that the air was thinner and the pulsating sun felt hotter. Theo floated onto his back and basked in it for a while, looking out over the green expanse. City trees were rare even here and the others were many miles away, their vast spires reduced to toothpicks in the distance. The normal-sized trees below them were a sub-ecosystem, growing not from normal rain or nutrients - all of which were absorbed by the city tree - but from the detritus it cast off. From this height they didn't even look like plants, just an ocean of green.

Theo split his attention and continued enjoying the environment while he returned to soulcrafting. He'd spent most of his time polishing up his finished rooms with secondary materials while occasionally taking a break by crafting more bricks. Those were piled on the roof of his soulhome, but he hadn't put in the effort to build a proper pyramid yet.

He had no question about his ability to ascend to Stronghold, either by bricks or by willpower, but he needed to do it at the right time instead of rushing like his first life. The major problem was finding materials that could fill the two "bridging rooms" between the Corporeal and Ethereal halves of his soulhome. His audacious design, which had seemed so clever before, now made finding appropriate materials far more of a challenge.

By focusing on researching Khaluu instead of seeking sublime materials, Theo had likely delayed that ascension for a while. He told himself that was acceptable, since information would be more important than slightly faster advancement. Sometimes he even believed it.

Still, as he continued to soulcraft secondary materials for his bridging rooms, Theo was largely content. His Authority floor was of excellent quality and he'd pushed through all the time-consuming work, so as soon as he found appropriate central materials, he'd be able to ascend.

Part of him regretted signaling the Landguard and beginning the countdown to another confrontation. The idea of ascending to Stronghold first and absolutely crushing the Armeau family appealed to a base aspect of himself, but he thought that would involve waiting too long. He couldn't let the problem fester again, not after all the pain and suffering it had caused Nlukoko. The world wasn't so accommodating as to wait for him to advance forever, so he needed to take action.

He was just beginning to exhaust his soulcrafting stamina when a Landguard snapped into existence, holding a dark wooden weirkey in one hand. She was an older woman, not one that he knew well. Like most of the others, she eyed the Aathali landscape nervously and seemed eager to be off.

Theo wasn't in such a hurry. "I know you have some truly large trees on Tatian," he said. "Did they come from Aathali seeds?"

"Certainly not." The Landguard shook her head vigorously. "The two grow from entirely different principles. We have only found a few seeds that are compatible between worlds. Recklessly sowing others... well, it is better not to attempt such things."

"So there's been trouble in the past? Is that related to the problems the Landguard is struggling with?"

Immediately the woman stiffened and he knew he wasn't getting any more information out of her. She gestured toward him with the weirkey. "Let's not dawdle, where to next? You are really pushing our hospitality quite far, you know, making us transport you and your allies around Aathal."

"Not anymore." Theo cast off his relaxation and flew upright, clasping his hands behind his back. "Take me to gather up all the others, then transport us back to Tatian. It's time to finish this."