A vibrant purple wart bubbled up on Gat's face. He could see it like an irritant at the bottom arc of his peripheral vision. He let it fester, feeling the static on his cheek, allowing it to agitate him as he prepared to attack. He raised his arm to watch his dagger form and sizzle. He liked to charge his dagger short with a bristle of spurs. The effect was a golden claw that caught, tore and serrated viciously. It was more painful to use than a clean blade when it caught on the strings, but he liked the pain. It relieved his anger.
Gat gathered speed with accelerated circles around the empty third ring. As if on a pivot he dropped off the ring entirely. With his uncharged dendrite he grappled the ring and spun around twice, letting his limb elongate as he hung from it. When he let loose he was moving so fast that he left trails of purple energy streaking off his orbs. He tucked into a roll to preserve his inertia and flipped countless times ascending into the atmosphere, past the farthest ring and into the ionosphere wash that coated the strings.
His dagger cut the ionosphere opening the subtlest tear during entry. There was only the faintest splash of static as his orbs and then his stat was nearly obscured in its murky fog. A near perfect dive. The cleanness of the approach was crucial to the technique. The goal was to preserve his speed in order to put that much more energy behind his dagger when he hit. In a flash he hit the strings. The resounding explosion generated an aftershock that blew a massive crater of ionosphere out around him. He was exposed by the blast, stuck by the collision of his dagger for an excruciating instant with the strings in an electric storm. Bolts escaped from the contact point between his dagger and the strings. The attack caused a massive orchestrated wave to run through the strings, pushing them outward and forcing them apart.
The impact forced a powerful shockwave inward toward the rings and triggered a sharp audible pitch. It rocked the entire set of bands and knocked about both of Gat's sibling sparks noticeably as the tsunami disappeared into the Non. Neya held her ground through the reverberation. Tevye was seriously jostled as his stat lost contact with the ground. He had to grab a hold so as not to topple toward the center vacuum.
From Neya's vantage point she could grok why Gat liked the bristle dagger. It caught the strings like a grappling hook and made the impact last longer forcing the entirety of his charge into them. She usually went for a straight blade, stiletto thin and longer. It allowed for a tight hit and the whiplash of it provided extra leverage. She was nowhere near as powerful as her older sibling. She was also not quite ready for the residual hook that his bristle dagger forced. It kept him attached far longer, hooked on the backlash, whereas her blade was deflected quickly. She didn't yet have the energy to expend.
Gat had reached the age of overcharge. He needed to drain regularly. In fact, Neya might argue that he should be draining more often so that she didn't have to deal with his surly attitude all the time. Gat seemed to like becoming more and more aggro so that his attack would have that much more ferocity. She understood it, she just wasn't ready for it, and didn't know if she ever would be. She preferred grace to brute force, a clean slice to a maul.
It took so long for Gat to get blasted away by the repercussion of the strings that Neya began to worry for him. For a split second she wondered whether she would need to extract him but before she could act he was blown free. He toppled crown over stat until he was in range of the fourth ring. He still had the wherewithal to grab it and pull himself down. The gyroscope of his stat was barely turning and his coloration was severely faded.
It took a moment until he had the strength to raise himself upright. When Gat finally rose, he was as black as the Non. As he moved along the ring slowly his stat began to collect energy and to accelerate, kicking up a healthy sprinkle of sparks behind it. Soon he had regained his indigal composure and his crown began to spark with fresh life. Gat looked up at Neya and smiled. It was a weery smile, but sinister. He had a sly look of self-satisfaction. "I nearly broke it wide open, didn't I?"
"You opened a pretty good window in them, for a second," Neya agreed.
"You should have gone for it," Gat zapped. "You could have broken through."
"I don't think so. It wasn't quite there. I don't think I would have fit."
"You don't have the initiative. You should have tried. A second hit at the right moment and we might have busted out."
In fact, the thought had crossed her mind that there might be a way to coordinate attacks. If they were able to time consecutive assaults so that the first spark pushed the strings outward and the second spark offset the shockwave with an attack elsewhere in the atmosphere, the third might be able to pry open a hole. She wondered if they would be able to pull something off like that, the three of them, once Tevye was a little older. The idea was still formulating, but it had potential. That said, she wasn't about to give Gat the pleasure of agreeing with him right now. Not when he constantly antagonized her. "I would have had to fight the shockwave. How would I have gotten any momentum?"
"You didn't try, how do you know?" Gat felt weak. It felt good to drain a little, he was burning way too hot. Now he just felt groggy. There was a pit in his middle orb that felt like he was housing the vacuum of the Non inside him. He was a hungry shade who swung from empty to gorged with no modulation. "Its always up to me isn't it. You're too content! Where's your hunger?" He nearly envied her contentedness. In these rare moments of pain and exhaustion he wished that he could feel it. Usually he despised it.
Gat turned his attention to their younger sibling. Tevye was a baby but he had a fierceness that Gat appreciated. He had a softer tone as he zapped Gat "You ought to give it a try Tev."
Tevye hated string duels. Tevye never understood why he would bother, if Gat couldn't cut the strings, why would anyone think that he could. It was terribly painful for one, but the worst of it was how weak he felt afterwords. He barely had the energy to form a dagger, let alone to attack the strings. He would have rather honed his skills with practice at diving, riding and maneuvering as he built up his strength.
But Tevye knew tht Gat would not relent. Rather than be ridiculed, he would accept the duel and take his charge. It was a rite of passage. He wanted to be powerful like Gat. He already had dreams of immortality and of freedom outside the prison of the strings. A world away from his Other, where the Non could not find him and he was more powerful than any spark, ens entium among ions.
Tevye mustered all his strength, the dagger at the end of his arm stretched out like a bolt of green lightning; and through sheer will, he charged at the strings. The whirl of his stat spun under him as he raced toward the strings. He stretched out his bolt as he slashed blindly at the strings. He could feel the impact all through him, a black wall slamming him fluxless. In a flash he was struggling against the strings, draining of life. He broke free and fell inward. It seemed he would get sucked straight in to the center if he hadn't risen when he did. Black as the Non, still clinging to his stat, he let the undercurrent pull him to the third ring.
"Real great game you've got here, Gat," Tevye grumbled. Tevye's zap was so weak that Gat couldn't make out what he'd said. Gat nodded his top orb partronizingly.
"You barely made the strings so much as tremble, little streak."
Tevye had gotten quite sick of this sort of ridicule from Gat, but he was so weak that even the tiny bit of energy he'd gotten from Gat's zap had made him feel better. Soon enough Tevye regained his green tone and turned his attentions to his sibling, Neya. "Why don't you try it, Neya?"
"Maybe she'll have better luck than you, little streak," zapped Gat sharply.
Neya attempted to intercept their dialogue, she hated the way they would always be zapping at one another and leave her out of conversations. Gat's attitude towards both of them always angered her. The only time he ever talked to either of them was to give them grief, or call Tevye green. She hated always being stuck in the middle between them. Finally, frustrated, she suggests that Gat just go and slam a Hotspot.
"You're too awkward to break the strings with force." She continues. "Remember Connie? She didn't just charge ahead like a bully like you do. She was graceful. She didn't always talk down to us. She was even nice to you! Connie could make the strings resonate like a chorus… it was beautiful to listen to and the harmonic would part the strings nearly wide enough to escape. You are a constant cacophony, and just mean. I miss her."
"Exactly, see where her harmony got her? She got pulled into the center just like every other spark."
"At least she lived well." Gat was trying to come up with a response when he found himself thinking about hotspots. Perhaps it was time for him to take that step. Hotspots were balls of star fire formed from extra juice that collected on the strings. Sparks with the fever for forever often slammed hotspots to get enough power to pose a real challenge to the strings. Gat's sister Connie had warned him that most of the sparks who slam hotspots burn too hot then rush to meet the Non to make it quit but Gat believed in the legends that slammed hotspots and lived. He believed that if he became strong enough
