Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (knowledgeable books to read .txt) 📗

you if you were on fire. Not once they seen you fight.”

“We’ll see about that,” Warcry growled.

The Bailiff spread his arms wide. “Prove me wrong. Win an affiliation. If you can.”

Warcry’s jaw clenched, and flames licked along the tops of his ears.

I squinted at his five-o’clock shadow. It was darker than it had been earlier, like it had grown since we started training. What was he, like twenty-five?

When the Bailiff dismissed us for the night, I checked Warcry’s profile on the Van Diemann Spirit rankings.

Name: Warcry Thompson

Race: Human

Height: 6'1"

Weight: 168 lbs

Age: 17 Van Diemann years (Current Location), 15.3 Universal years

Blood Type: A

Spirit Type: Burning Hatred

Spirit Reserve: 425,601

Planetary Ranking: #12,252 of 2,191,987

“Seventeen?” I muttered. A year older than me, with that kind of facial hair growth? There’s no justice in any universe.

Back at the stables, I scarfed dinner silently thanking God for Hungry Ghost. There was no way I could’ve paid the Bailiff back and gotten the quota and commission without it.

Once the food was gone, I found a beat-up old tin bucket and got in line for the water pump. Waiting in line took forever, but I wasn’t going over to hang out with Kest and Rali stinking like B.O. At least not today, when I had time to wash up.

I hauled the water back to my stall and used the T-shirt that wouldn’t go on over my Transferogate as a washrag to take a bath. Getting all the dirt and salt and nast off made me feel a hundred percent better. An hour-long hot shower would’ve made me feel a thousand percent better than that, but indentured servants on alien prison planets couldn’t be choosers.

Once I was all scrubbed and clean, I put back on my dirty jeans, dumped the water outside, and headed over to pick up Hungry Ghost.

The breeze coming in off the Shut-Ins felt great drying my skin as I crossed town toward the boneyard. After topping off my Spirit with some of the Miasma the little turquoise skull had been gathering all day, I stuck him in my pocket and went to the twins’ shack on the outskirts.

Jade Books

I COULD SMELL WELDING before I even got close to the twins’ shack, and light flickered out of the shipping container into the night. Kest was at her workbench, hunched over what looked like her chain gauntlet, attaching thin strips of reddish metal.

“What’re you working on?” I asked.

She jumped a little, then grabbed the gauntlet and stuffed it into the pile of junk on the middle shelf of her workbench where I couldn’t see it.

“Nothing.” Black lace colored the tops of her cheeks, spreading out from under her welding goggles. “I didn’t realize it was so late.”

“Was that the cinnabar from the mine?”

She pushed her goggles up on her forehead. “No. I mean, yeah, it is. But I’d rather not talk about the build right now. Not until I’ve had some time to test its functionality. It’s still in development.”

I tried not to smile. I hadn’t seen Kest flustered like that before, and it was pretty cute, but I also didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, so I dropped it.

“No big deal,” I said, shrugging.

She relaxed. “Ready to see what we found in the storage ring?”

“I kind of doubt it’s better than a Spirit tank shaped like a skull and small enough to fit in your pocket, but sure,” I said.

“Come on.”

We headed into the new room, where Rali was meditating. I was about to say we should probably talk outside so we wouldn’t disturb him, but Kest nudged him before I could get the words out. Obviously, she didn’t mind disturbing her brother.

“You know, if I was at a critical moment in my advancement, being interrupted could seriously injure me,” Rali said, stretching. “Hey, Hake.”

I waved.

“Whatever, you’re years away from another breakthrough.” Kest knelt down and pulled off the storage ring while we got comfortable. “Whoever used to own this ring, they were pretty well off. No surprise there since they were in a cinnabar mine a few dozen yards from where the OSS found a chunk of jade. The real wonder is that no rival mining company moved in here when the Van Diemann Mining Company went bust.”

“You said it was hard to get messages off-planet back then,” I said. “Maybe they died before they had a chance to tell anybody there was valuable stuff here.”

“Or—” Rali held up one finger. “—the final message they were able to send was so horrendous, so terrifying, that the company declared this planet cursed, caved in the mine, and its location was lost to time. Intentionally.”

Kest glared at him.

He sighed. “You guys are making this really boring. Get to the good part. Show him the books.”

“What books?” I didn’t remember seeing any when I’d looked through the storage ring.

Kest held the ring to her forehead, then said, “Jade books.”

A handful of thin, pale green cards the size and shape of bookmarks appeared in her palm.

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “See, I thought books were the same on this planet as they are where I come from. With paper pages and stuff.”

The twins looked at me like I was nuts.

“You put books on paper?” Kest asked. “Was it flame and water-treated?”

“I mean...”

“And what about paper-eating bugs?”

“I like it,” Rali said. “There’s something poetic about using such an impermenant medium to record the things we think are significant today.”

“Paper books are convenient,” I said a little defensively. “Anybody with a couple bucks can buy one. Once we started mass-producing them, our whole planet exploded with new ideas and junk.”

“Why didn’t you just put them in info format?” Kest held up her HUD and shook it. “Then everybody could read them.”

“Because physical books are...” I shrugged. “They’re better is all. We had ebooks. Info format ones, I mean, but they aren’t the same. Especially since getting a device to read on is so expensive and you can get a paper book from the throwaway pile outside the library for free.”

“You’re