“Thanks,” Kara said with a smirk as she twirled one of her long blue braids in her fingertips. “How close was I to getting through?”
“Closer with your Hammers. That Ubven psionic is very annoying, and your using both disciplines is wise, but you will not defeat an opponent of my physical size unless you deplete the internal Essence reservoir. You need to use Psionics that do this rather than pin me in place.”
“I pinned you in place so I could use Final Spark. That took you down a considerable about, right?”
“Not when I use Black Shield. You expended more Essence than it took for me to block it. You lost in that exchange, and will lose every time, unless you can overwhelm the Black Shield’s tolerance.”
“How do I do that?”
“The intensity has to be so great that my recharge rate can’t come into play.”
“Point overload?”
“That is one way of saying it.”
Kara sighed. “How close was I to doing that?”
“You would need at the minimum triple effect, but only if you Constrained the beam much tighter.”
“Density, not surface area?”
“That is how Black Shield will usually fail…unless you can generate an area of effect attack so powerful it drains the whole thing faster than the recharge capacity. You cannot do that against me, for you do not have the generation capability yet, and you do not have the reserve charge in such a small, untrained body.”
“I’m not untrained now, but I take your point.”
“There are many Vargemma that have far greater Essence density within their bodies than you, accumulated from slow development over millions of years. You need a few hundred more to surpass them.”
“How many to surpass you?”
“You never will so long as we continue to train together.”
Kara smiled. “That’s why I’m doing extra training while you sleep.”
“And you are paying the price for it. Your body screams in pain even now.”
“I can take it. I’ve been through worse before.”
“If you continue to increase your Essence use, it will get worse.”
“I know how to ride the ascension line, and if I fry myself too much my Vorch’nas will kick in to heal the damage.”
“It cannot heal what it cannot touch. Your connection to the Essence realm is also damaged. You must allow time for it to adjust to greater usage.”
“Are you talking about the barrier or my body?”
“Both. You will damage your Siphon if you stretch it too far, too fast. Then you will have to cease its stretching in order for it to repair. Your technology cannot do that. It must occur naturally.”
“And my body?”
“It binds to the Essence in a way that makes overuse manifest physically. You may repair the damage, but you are not repairing the cause of the damage. You press too hard, Kara.”
“We’re on the clock, remember,” she said, referencing the Founders coming for her. “And I don’t intend to let the Elcee fight them here while we run off somewhere else. I need as much power as I can get, and if I have to endure some pain to get it faster, then so be it. I’m not permanently damaging anything as far as I can tell. Am I?”
“I do not know. My Master never attempted training at this rate. Even I am feeling the effects now. It must be far worse for you.”
“I may have not done much Essence training in the past, but I’ve done so much other training that this is easy for me. I know what to do and how to do it, the new wrinkles are the challenge and right now I’m a kid in a candy store. I can handle it. Trust me.”
“I am beginning to, but we must not only focus on the near future, but the challenge of the far distant,” he said, pointing towards the Hadarak Colony Spore spark visible through the shell of the Temple due to the fact that the barrier shield was permanently down, otherwise it would have absorbed it and kept the denizens clueless to what was happening outside. “I do not want to run either, but if we must then we must. If we allow ourselves to be captured or killed, we give them victory. They do not want a Siphon free to develop, let alone two training together. Our vengeance must be over the eons, and by gaining peerdom. Even if we somehow managed to kill a Founder, as you did their Apprentice, they will send another and another. What are we to do then?”
“We don’t abandon people to die, Strovok.”
“If there is to be a fight here that cannot be won, evacuate the Temple.”
“Would they stay here?”
“Make them go beyond the Temples. You have said the galaxy is vast and easy to hide within.”
“And you have said that our training bouts are visible to everyone in this Temple when we really get going. The more powerful we are, the harder it is going to be to hide our training. Now I could probably find us some place they’d never look, but if we can’t hide inside a star system now and they have Caretaker drones that can sense Essence, I can’t guarantee they won’t find us eventually.”
“I know we will fight, the question is when and where.”
“I’d rather them walk into our trap than catch us on the run.”
“The Elcee are not a trap. They are pebbles to be crushed.”
“Let us worry about that. Given Eldorat’s size, I’m assuming he was at least as powerful as one of the smaller Founders you spoke of, perhaps more so.”
“You said you barely destroyed him with a warfleet.”
“Yeah,” Kara said, pointing to the sky and the rows of starships parked up in ‘orbit’ as the
