Book 7, Chapter 69 - The Spare (1/2)

Book 7, Chapter 69 - The Spare

Selene and Dawn were ready to set out.

Having never been to Highmorn, Cloudhawk didn’t have a spatial marker to send them there. That wasn’t an insurmountable problem, however. Instead they would travel to Meadow where, within Oakstead’s Temple, they could open a Boundary Portal and enter the distant Elysian land.

Opening a portal like that required quite a lot of energy. Luckily, sending through just a few people wasn’t too much of a burden. What’s more, thanks to the small amount of Source excavated from the desert, they didn’t have to worry about energy constraints very much anymore.

Besides Selene and Dawn, two more were dispatched with them.

First was one of Cloudhawk’s electric doppelgangers. It carried a Riftshard copy to make travel easier in the future. Once it was placed, Cloudhawk could teleport back and forth as much as he pleased.

The other had been an important figure in Sky Fortress before Cloudhawk destroyed it, Master Anan. His full name was Walrick Anan , which held quite a lot of weight in Highmorn’s capital city Radia. Since his home had officially chosen to rise against the gods, he elected to offer his help.

The small party boarded an airship, destined for Meadow.

Cloudhawk kept catching Dawn giving him strange, absorbed looks out of the corner of his eye. She looked at him like an endangered species, or some sort of alien. It was making him uneast.

“What the hell are you looking at?”

“You can talk through this thing? No matter how far you are from your copy?” Dawn was floored by this new ability of his. “So now one Cloudhawk can become several. You can do several tasks at once. Study. Chase women. That’s one hell of a skill.”

“There are limits,” he grumbled. “I can hold the form for any distance but only for one day and one night. Over that time it gets weaker and weaker. Besides that it demands my attention. Trying to be two places at once is not easy, much less three or four.”

“Well shit. I thought I might be able to customize my own personal Cloudhawk to play with. Turns out that isn’t the case.”

A custom Cloudhawk eh? Like some sort of prostitute. Dawn was letting her true colors fly.

She stared at him for a little while longer before saying suddenly, “the copy really is exactly like you. Shit, if I stick around it for long enough I’ll probably forget which one’s real.”

Cloudhawk had known Dawn for a long time. A lot about her had changed, but there were some core qualities that never would. She was and probably would forever be a devil woman who liked to stir up shit. Hell, he knew her so well he could tell what sort of fart she’d make by the way she lifted her ass.

“How about a code name for your copies. That way we won’t confuse them.” She didn’t wait for Cloudhawk’s approval and came up with the plan at once. “They may look like you but they aren’t you. I think I’ll call it Hawkling, what do you think?”

“Terrible.”

“Cloudhawk Number Two?”

“Even worse.”

“You’re so stubborn. Fine, we’ll call it ‘The Spare Cloudhawk!’” She had grown impatient with this game. “Like wasteland vehicles, right? They use spare tires. In a pinch when we can’t put the real you to use, we’ve got a back up. Spare fits perfectly.”

She didn’t care if he agreed anymore. Instead she looked over to Selene, who was sitting nearby with her eyes closed. “Hey Selene, say something. What do you think of the name?”