After he finished swinging across the rings, he dropped down into an archway that he had to press upwards on, with the material giving slightly but resisting him. He had to push until it finally broke, then he picked up the top piece and put it on his shoulders, carrying it across a shallow pond that made him slosh through the water and focus on his balance even more than he had to on dry land, with the top heavy weight upping the difficulty even further.
Kian trudged on, with ‘trudged’ being the best word to describe his workouts. He felt so bad, and yet at the same time he felt sky high. If the Zak’de’ron and Neofan felt something like this, he could understand their overstated superiority complexes, but Kian’s analytical mind knew that the measure of a man wasn’t with his starting equipment, but how he used it. The Archons were chosen for their ability to learn to do things, not their base attributes, and it seemed the ‘superior’ races in the galaxies relied on the reverse. Until recently he had thought it was mostly ego, but now he realized there was some truth to it.
He wasn’t going to let Clan Valen go that route when he got around to producing hybrids between himself and Kerrie-057, and he knew the others wouldn’t either. The big difference between the Archons…and especially the trailblazers…and the rest of the universe, was that they had an ego and the Archons did not. An ego was someone claiming a status, whereas everything the Archons did defined their status. One was assumption, the other proof, and once you got calibrated to the proof of reality you could never go back to the weakness of assumptions. Claiming superiority because of your team was even worse, and though Kian was feeling quite proud of his new body, he did not want to take it into combat anytime soon. He was so off his mojo he needed time to recalibrate, for while he was quite a bit stronger than he had been previously, he was clumsy and could be taken unawares very easily.
Then again, even before he wasn’t weapon proof…or rock proof. And the newb struggles he was going through for the second time reinforced that. What he had was a great opportunity and a brand new road before him that echoed of the past, and he knew his future wasn’t in lording his powers over the other lesser races…not that it had been before…but he could sense that more of his work now would be independent of them. They needed him, like all Archons, to not just lead them, but to seek out and deal with the most powerful enemies and neutralize them before they could get to Star Force’s weaker population.
In Star Force the Kings and Queens didn’t hide behind the pawns. The Kings and Queens went to the front lines, shielding the pawns and escorting them to the other side of the game board so they too could become Queens. It was the exact opposite of every civilization Star Force had encountered. Not one put their leaders into the greatest danger, and in truth Star Force only half did so. The Monarchs remained protected, but for the Archons their place was in the deepest darkness the galaxy held, which was where the lightside was needed the most. And that was where most of Star Force could not go, let alone survive, so Kian foresaw his future being mostly a solitary one, but one with far greater importance than he had had before.
He chucked the piece of arch off into the sand on the far side of the pond and sprinted through the remaining marshland, tripping and falling twice, before he got to the finish line and smacked the ‘end’ button, then he stood bent over breathing heavily as his nippleless chest looked like it was on the verge of exploding.
He was about to walk it off, then reminded himself that while his mind was sharp and experienced, his body was new and he needed to go easy on it, so he instead sat down at the finish and gave himself a few minutes to rest, deciding not to move on until his breathing slowed back to near normal.
When he did he looked down at his bare chest, for he was wearing only a pair of tight shorts and nothing else, and saw that his navel had sealed over again. It hadn’t been that way when he’d started the course, or had he just neglected to notice it? Either way, it wasn’t responding to his commands, but rather auto-triggering, which was annoying.
Kian tapped the little fleshy covering that made it look like the hole in his abdomen didn’t exist, but it did, and inside it was something growing, as it had done twice before. The first time was a total shock when he was sleeping and he felt movement in what had been little more than a fleshy lump earlier. He’d used his Pefbar to look at it, as he did now, and saw a little creature inside then…but right now was just a forming cradle, similar to an egg, in which biomatter was being accumulated for the growth later.
A few months ago that biomatter had been consumed to form a little spider, except it wasn’t a real spider, nor a person, but a highly advanced biological drone that had his genetic code augmented with elements of biology Star Force had yet to discover in this galaxy. The little 6-legged creature had a complex mind that he could upload commands and programs into, as well as remote control if it was near, but it could also operate independently like the Uriti minions, and when he’d
