The Powers That Be by Aer-ki Jyr (best sci fi novels of all time .txt) 📕

Essence that needed training, so as she waited for the targets to empty out and return she started dancing on the soggy ground, moving from one combat pose to another with rapidity as she began to work up a sweat the conventional way. From dancing she morphed into shadow boxing, getting her feet and ankles covered in mud and splashing up little drops all over the rest of her.

Kara didn’t care. Her clothes would be washed easy enough. And since she couldn’t become a Saiyan, she needed to goose her natural speed as much as she could. Power was one thing, but power without speed was limited, and she’d always prided herself on her limb speed…though compared to Saiyans she was painfully slow now.

Kara was convinced that to defeat Essence users more powerful than her she was going to have to use a combination of Essence, Psionic, and Commando abilities, so the Archon wasn’t making the mistake of only training for Essence…though for the first time in her life she had abandoned the other four Archon disciplines. It felt freeing in a way, but also lazy. Archons were multi-taskers that needed to be sharp in all areas, but Kara was once again a special case, and she had to adapt to that.

She could work on her Aquatics, Mech, Aerial, and Naval skills again later…much later. So she wasn’t giving them up entirely, though Kara hated to think how much they were already beginning to atrophy.

Didn’t matter now. She had to become a living weapon because the other Archons and the Empire needed her to be…but it was still weird to have her internal warnings flashing constantly telling her she was forgetting to do the other training. It had become so ingrained in her that even after a few decades off she still had her previous habits nagging at her.

But on the upside, her Commando skills were improving at a faster rate, especially when she was able to add a little Essence to them, and as Kara’s shadow boxing escalated she started experimenting once again with what she could and couldn’t upgrade by throwing raw Essence at it.

Her punches sped up, hit harder, went askew, added fire, ice, wind…a lot of weird things were possible, but all started off random and out of control. So far though, she’d been focusing and succeeding on adding momentum to her strikes…and had her bones not been enhanced by Mebvat, some of her heavier punches would have torn her arms off at the elbow when she didn’t have a target to slow them down.

She could use Hard Light to take the blow when she did land one, but Kara had been working on sort of an Essence band over the front of her hands when she punched…or kicked…that would keep her from damaging herself. It was sort of like an invisible version of brass knuckles, except that it was defensive only and took away her knuckle strikes entirely, replacing it with a solid, malleable object that spread out the impact damage to her entire hand.

When she didn’t get it right her hands would rip the skin off…which hurt like hell, but her Vorch’nas would fix them within a few seconds. She was grateful for that, but it only underscored how dangerous Essence was to be experimenting with. Keli-172 had died from such experimentation, and Kara wondered how many others had before the Founders created the Temples and a very precise path of advancement to follow.

And if one followed that path they were more or less safe…but it was also the Founder’s path, and perhaps it steered clear of abilities they didn’t want you to discover or craft. Regardless, Kara had to go another way, and her training in the Black Shield was still in its infancy. She could create the basic barrier, but it was no better than other types of Essence shield. Still, Strovok said it was an incredible breakthrough to be able to generate the foundational matrix for what the ability would be built upon, but as far as a defense it wasn’t worth much right now…and she couldn’t practice it without him, for the stupid Responders wouldn’t recognize her for use of the more advanced training stations lightly scattered across the Temple, some of which had some nifty machines to help tune and practice multiple shielding techniques.

Kara was having to do it raw, out in the field, with nothing but Strovok and her Archon training instincts to work with…but she was already lightyears ahead of every other Archon and going far beyond it with every year that passed.

Still so slow, a voice said into her mind, and it wasn’t Strovok’s.

Kara was in mid punch when the telepathic contact hit, and she stumbled forward, tripping on her toes as they sank into the mud, and nearly went face down in the muck until she activated her Yen’mer and stopped herself by hovering a few inches away.

Morgan? she asked, not sensing anyone nearby as she floated back up to her feet.

Peekaboo, the other Archon said, popping out of nowhere and hitting Kara across the jaw.

Kara half spun to the ground, but stayed on her feet and twirled around throwing a Jumat blast back towards the now visible trailblazer…who negated it with a bigger one of her own, which rocked Kara back on her heels as she took the excess.

“Nice hair,” Morgan scoffed, turning her own gold and zipping forward so fast Kara had trouble even seeing it coming…then she had her hands up in a defensive position as she swiped at the blur the Saiyan had become, throwing up bioshields to help as they got battered down quickly by hit after hit as Morgan literally danced around Kara, attacking her from all sides and throwing up so much mud and water in the process it looked like there was a curtain of it around both of them.

Kara