Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (best books to read .TXT) 📕

Rali grinned. “If only.”

A handful at a time, I made a pile of the stuff the mummies had in their pockets. Whoever these people were, they hadn’t brought much into the mine shaft with them, just the random stuff people in any universe keep in their pockets—Spirit stones, scraps of paper, buttons, pieces of rawhide cord. Maybe they hadn’t thought they would be staying long. Or maybe they’d been in too big a hurry to grab anything besides their kids and the clothes on their backs.

I’d had this niggling guilt trying to get at me since Rali had said this was graverobbing, but now that I was looking at the odds and ends piled together like that, the guilt disappeared. This wasn’t the important stuff. These mummies, back when they ran into this place, hadn’t been like, “Oh no, the end has come, I better get this invaluable strip of rawhide to safety!” I looked at the mom with her cheek resting against the staring baby, and I knew that this little pocket junk hadn’t even been on their minds when they died.

I was trying to think of a way to explain this to Rali when the Transferogate beeped in my ear. Both Kest and Rali glanced my way to see what the noise was about.

“Crap.” I looked up at the hole at the darkened sky. “I didn’t realize it was so—”

The drain hit me then. I’d forgotten how bad it was. The kind of soul-sucking shame that it wasn’t even possible to remember, like a pain so intense that you immediately forgot the details when it ended because your brain couldn’t comprehend it when it wasn’t happening. I just barely noticed when I hit the ground.

Three short beeps sounded. The drain ended.

“Geez,” I winced, flopping my arms and legs out of the fetal position.

“Hake? Are you all right?”

“Is your shoulder rig malfunctioning?”

That’s when I remembered I wasn’t alone. Kest and Rali were on their knees on either side of me, freaked out.

“I’m fine.” I sat up, trying to think of a way to play it off.

Rali scowled, the lace darkening his eyes until they were almost completely black. Rage looked out of place on a guy like him.

“It wasn’t a malfunction, was it?” He sounded like he wanted to kill somebody.

I shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. I’m just a wuss.”

“So, it’s always like that?” Kest asked.

“This is only my second time, so wouldn’t you say there isn’t enough data yet to be sure?”

“Technically.” She didn’t sound very happy about it, though. “I’ll do some research on Spirit surrogate devices. They’ve been around for years, so there have to be studies about their effect on the surrogate.”

“I don’t need studies to know it’s wrong,” Rali snapped. “Spirit’s sacred. If you milk it out of people like dairy animals, of course there are going to be consequences.”

Kest frowned. “Yeah, and I’m going to find out what they are.”

“Well, while you’re burying your head in the Confederated Planets’ approved manufacturing information, it’s probably doing irreversible damage to Hake’s cultivation.”

“Guys,” I said, “either way, it’s over. I’m fine.”

Rali went back to where he’d been meditating and snatched his walking stick up off the ground.

“If I wasn’t nonviolent, the OSS distillery is where I’d start my rampage,” he said, dropping into the lotus position. “And I wouldn’t stop until every greedy, sacrilegious, Spirit-grubbing heretic was gone.”

“Good luck with that in a whole wide universe,” Kest said.

They glared at each other.

I got up and dusted off the butt of my jeans. It made me pretty uncomfortable that my stupid reaction to the Transferogate had caused this fight. I needed to get myself under control in case they were around the next time it happened.

Kest skirted around the mummies and looked down the shaft into the darkness.

“I wonder how far this mine went,” she said. “Ghost Town’s that way, but most of the mine shafts around town branch the opposite direction.”

“Still think these are the lost miners?” I asked, jingling a handful of hairpins I’d just taken from a mummy’s pocket.

“The amount of Spirit stones versus the number of old coins makes sense with the Colonization Era clothes.”

“Why does that make sense?”

“Early settlers used Spirit stones as currency,” she explained. “Having extra Spirit to draw on was more useful out here on the edge of the galaxy than inert coinage.”

“Too bad none of these stones are still full,” I said, dumping the hairpins onto the loot pile. Even with the three-way split, I could’ve ended up with a lot more Spirit than I could cultivate in one day.

“That’s what was bothering me,” Kest said. “Spirit stones shouldn’t lose their contents over time. Something has to absorb the stored Spirit. There’s no reason all of these would be empty.”

“Maybe these people had to use all their Spirit up,” I said. “Like there was some sort of fight, but they were losing, so they ran in here to hide.”

Rali stirred over by the cave wall. “Or maybe it was some kind of spiritual storm or force that stole all the Spirit from the stones and chased them in here and hypnotized them into sitting down to quietly accept their fate.”

“Hake’s theory was speculation based on observable information,” Kest said. “Yours is fantasy based on nonsense.”

I assumed that would start another fight, but Rali just laughed.

“No offense, Hake, but my theory was more interesting,” he said.

“Can’t argue with that.” I nodded at the loot. “That’s the last of it. You guys should come check it out.”

We all sat down by the little pile of loot.

I sifted my hand through the stones. “I figure we either split it three ways now, or you guys sell it and we split the profits.”

“Two ways,” Rali said, flicking his hair out of his face. “I don’t want anything to do with profits or money.”

“But you’ll let me pay Apek when you want ingredients for a special recipe,” Kest said.

Rali shrugged. “I can’t be held responsible for what you do, Kest.