Ben wondered if he should have had a sanisteam and something hot to eat before attempting what he was about to do, but it was too late now. He trudged slowly to the spot where he, Luke, and Ender had spent so many days learning from Tadar'Ro. It all looked as it had before, the time-smoothed stones warm from the sun, the taller stones casting ( Read more... )

Ben had not been pleased to hear that that place where Aing-Tii artifacts was called the Embrace (a word that was going to be followed by "of Pain", at least for the next little...decade...) and had been even less pleased to learn that Taran'Do's "few kilometer" walk to it was a three day hike up mountains on a planet already too light on ( Read more... )

The Kathol Rift was easily the most beautiful spatial phenomena Ben had ever seen in his life, which in no way made up for how horrible it was to fly through. The properties that made the Rift so beautiful also turned every ship that entered it into a lightning rod and made flying the mechanical equivalent of riding a spooked ronto for days at a ( Read more... )