《Set in Stone》 Chapter 1 Delving Drune Boroughkin marched down the never-ending corridors of grey granite and pale yellow limestone, visible only in the light of the two flickering torches his party carried with them. He was holding up the rear of the recon party, just as he had for the past four days. During his time away from home, his life had been the same cycle of waking up, marching for hours on end through nearly identical tunnels, eating, sleeping, repeating ad nauseam. He would''ve tried to steer the group back to Kindlehearth if not for the fact he was stuck here at his father''s behest. He had been graciously volunteered to be Kindlehearth''s representative in this mercenary party. The hired muscle, or Bleakerman''s "Windblown Leaves," according to Roderick, was highly recommended by Bleakerman''s higher-ups. The guild had provided his father with dossiers on each of the party''s four members. Drune had been expected to familiarize himself with the party before his departure with them. So he skimmed the dossiers. As far as he could tell, it was adequate for his city''s needs. It was led by a human hunter by the name of James Thurben that had a long track record with the guild. The role of the mage was carried by Malyra Gildenyew, a young eleven woman who stood in contrast to her party leader''s experience, her being a brand new addition to the guild. The primary blade of the group was Roderick Gricks, a massive man whose stature spoke of a distinct leaning toward his partially giant heritage. Oddly he also seemed to specialize in sneaking and knife work if the dossier was to be believed. And finally, the healer and support of the party was Cretch Aurum, a bronze scaled scaleling that sported a crest of red feathers. He was second in seniority only to James, having served with the guild as a part of many different parties over his years of service. Before meeting this mercenary party, Drune had never met an elf or scaleling. He would''ve bet good coin most of the citizenry of Kindlehearth hadn''t either. Over the last few days of underground travel, his nervousness hadn''t passed. They had proven themselves friendly enough, but Drune couldn''t get over the chill that ran up his spine every time he heard Cretch''s hissing voice. And Malyra proved as abrasive as any of the miners his father employed. What was surprising to Drune, however, was that of all of the party, it was the human James that was the most off-putting. James was a cruel taskmaster, who definitely had some form of strict martial background beyond the cursory description in the dossier. Every hour of the journey was strictly regulated, the man seemed to count every breath and step as if it was a precious resource to be misered away. Rest time was minimized, and marching distance was set to a standard that crept higher every day. Drune didn''t think the others of the party were even phased by the strenuous pace, or at the very least, they didn''t show it. Cretch and Malyra kept in particularly high spirits with Malyra trading jibes and jokes for Cretch''s seemingly inexhaustible supply of mercenary stories as they trudged along. Roderick had proven a man of few words and just marched in front of them and behind James, seemingly content to listen in without adding anything himself. His grin never faded from beneath his big bushy beard as he silently listened to his two party members. Drune, on the other hand, felt himself wilting with every passing hour. His previously immaculate blonde beard was frazzled and unkempt, and his freshly scratched and marred boots drug with every step. He''d have to have them polished when he returned home. He had swiftly grown resentful toward his earlier self, and that moron''s confidence in the utter necessity of heavy plate armor. He had known without a shadow of a doubt the protection it provided was paramount, but here he was becoming bored out of his mind and thoroughly worn out by added weight. The other''s upbeat spirits didn''t help matters either. After all, he was just a representative of the town''s interest, not an explorer. How could these seasoned adventurers expect him to keep up with their mad pace? It was totally unreasonable. The now muted discussion of Malyra and Cretch, followed by the lumbering, yet strangely muffled, footfalls of the approaching half-giant lifted Drune from his self-deprecating thoughts. In a surprisingly soft voice, Roderick whispered. "Boss says he heard some odd noises from down the next tunnel. We''ll be dousing torches and moving forward slowly for a little bit. You''ll be holding the rear of the trail rope from behind Malyra, alright?" Butterflies shifted in Drune''s stomach. The break from monotony served to remind him why they were all down here in the first place. After this cave system was discovered north of Kindlehearth, dozens of enterprising young dwarves decided it''d be a great idea to seek their fortune in the unplumbed depths. As it turned out, many had spoken with more bravado than wisdom. A significant portion of the would-be explorers didn''t return, and those that did felt the whole area was off somehow, despite finding nothing of interest. A full sweep was made by the local guard in response but didn''t turn anything up. They found no apparent dangers locally, and the whole area seemed barren compared to Kindleheath''s southern mining prospects. So, in an effort to use every avenue to find the missing miners, Drune''s father Gethrin suggested hiring a less conspicuous reconnaissance team to search. The council of guild lords thought it would be acceptable, but required one stipulation be included. A representative of the city had to be involved in the efforts. Gethrin, never being one to miss an opportunity, volunteered his eldest son, much to Drune''s discontent. Roderick, recognizing the painfully obvious unease of Drunes face, and set one oversized hand on the shorter man''s shoulder. "Don''t worry so much about it. It''s just precautionary. If we spot anything weird, we''re pulling back. We''re just a recon team, ya think we would''ve brought you along if we were getting into anything crazy? Just keep ahold of the rope until the torches are lit again. Alright?" "Right, thanks. How much longer do we need to delve, do you think?" Drune asked, trying to match the half-giants whisper. "I think the boss was pushing to reach the deepest point of our plan soon. I think we only have a fe-" Roderick was elaborating before James draped a matte black cloth over his torch, dousing the flames. "Gotta go. Don''t fret on it much, Drune, we''re almost halfway. I think." Roderick said before he passed the end of a line of rope to Drune. Roderick made his way back to his position in line before Malyra extinguished their backup torch and plunged the group into total darkness. Drune held his lifeline in a white-knuckled grip and marched along as quietly as his armor would allow. The next moments seemed to stretch on for hours, as Drune was guided through unknown tunnels by the steady tug of the rope, and the soft padding of his companion''s march. He was horribly aware once again of how bad an idea the armor was. He was by a wide margin making the most noise of any of the party; even Roderick''s tremorous footfalls seemed to be felt more than heard. But, no one said anything, and the march continued forward without interruption for a time. As he walked, placing one boot in front of the other as carefully as he could, the rope went slack. Drune''s nervousness spiked, and his heart beat at a faster tempo. He nearly jumped out of his boots when he heard Malyra''s barely audible whisper from in front of his face. "There''s a light up ahead, well be approaching to see what it is. Stay at the rear of the line. If it proves dangerous, we''ll be retreating. Got it?" Drune began to vigorously nod his head, before wincing at the clanking of metal on metal as his helmet followed his nodding. Malyra hissed between her teeth at the noise. "Quiet, keep quiet. I''m going to assume that was a yes. Just keep out of the way" Drune remained silent but was happy to oblige. The line went taut once more, and they continued forward at a reduced pace. After a few more minutes of marching through the dark, even Drune was able to see the faint bit of illumination, showing a discrete silhouette of Malyra''s whip-thin form in front of him. The source was further down the cave system. Their tunnel continued straight, but the light came from an offshoot on the right-hand wall ahead of them. As they approached, James disappeared around the edge of the corner, followed by Roderick, Cretch, and Malyra.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. As Drune took the turn, he felt the tugging of the guideline. The party pulled him further into a massive cavern. The cavern was easily 30 feet tall and seemed to stretch out well past the area illuminated by the light. The source of which was a ball of green luminescence that floated roughly 7 feet off the ground at the apparent center of the expanse. Drune was momentarily stunned at the shift from confining tunnels to the massive cavern. But, the continued tugging of the line brought him back to focus, and thoroughly confused him. His party marched toward the center of the room without any effort made toward stealth or caution. He gripped the rope tightly and began to pull his wayward companions back. But as he watched their unnerving march, his eyes caught the glowing orb again. It was extraordinarily odd, but at the same time, it reminded Drune of a massive uncut gem. It was beautiful, pristine, and beyond any wonder of the earth, he had ever seen. If he could get his hands such a prize, his name would be next to that of Gildur, possibly even Forten. A find of this size might even eclipse their hoards combined. His name would be immortalized. Before his fogging mind could realize it, he found himself walking in line with his companions, with dreams of glittering glory dancing through his head. His pleasant dreams and ambitious plans were cut short, however. As James walked to within arms reach of the orb, all five distracted delvers were startled by a cacophonous sound like that of a gong being struck. Drune was harshly shoved flat on his back. In the brief silence after the echoes of his armor being struck faded, a wooden bolt with shattered steel tip clattered to the ground away from him. Looking at his plate armor, he could see and feel a deep dent that poked into his upper chest with every breath. The silence stretched on as the companions regained their composure and sense. The telltale twang of a loosed crossbow solidified the panic growing in the pit of Drune''s stomach, and a wooden bolt sprouted from Cretch''s thigh. Cretch fell to one knee and shouted in pain. The shadows around the edges of the carven seemed to roil and spill into the faint light cast by the anomalous orb. Five massive blad grey-skinned canid creatures charged the party, growling, and yipping to each other as they entered the light. Drune''s companions, having awoken from their stupor, braced for the charge. Before anyone else had reacted to the offensive, James had drawn and loosed an arrow in one swift motion. Twin knives, long enough to be short-swords in their own right, appeared in Rodericks''s hands gripped like daggers a second after. Malyra moved to interpose herself between Cretch and the beasts, and began to move her hand in circular curling patterns in front of her. The creature''s charge brought them up to the group, short one member who now limped around the edges of the light, an arrow jutting from its left shoulder. Drune lost track of his companions as his view was engulfed by a massive wolven head that began to bite at him before he could stand himself back up. Drune reached out and held the snapping maws at bay as best he could, his hands saved only by his metal gauntlets as he barely kept the fangs from ripping into his shoulder. The wolf reared back and shook its maw, breaking Drune''s hold on its teeth. It planted one massive paw on Drune''s shoulder before lunging at his helmeted head. The beast clamped onto his helmet, setting Drune''s ears to ringing. The creature began to violently wrench his head left and right, trying to tear Drune''s head from his body. And as suddenly as the assault on his cranium began, the painful tugging stopped. Drune found himself crushed beneath the limp body of a hairless wolf monster. Breathing heavily, Drune ineffectually tried to shove the body off himself and was helped partway through the process when Roderick yanked his knife out of the creature''s spine and rolled the corpse off of Drune with a solid kick. Roderick grabbed Drune by his good shoulder and hoisted him up to his feet. Malyra was now holding up her hand in front of her, and a glowing silvery half dome spread out from her hand. The additional light gave Drune a view of the rest of the cavern. Aside from the two canid corpses and the remainder of their wounded pack, at least a dozen different creatures milled about in the gloom. And, most disconcertingly, three dwarves stood in their midst, one of which was loading and readying a crossbow, seemingly unconcerned with his monstrous cohorts. James cautiously walked backward toward Drune and Roderick, one of Cretch''s arms draped over his shoulder. "Drune, get over here." He ordered. Drune dutifully hustled over, and James unceremoniously dropped the scaleling''s weight across Drune''s unsteady shoulders. "Take him, and head back up the tunnel, well be right behind you." As he spoke, he turned and readied an arrow across his bow while continuing to retreat. Malyra, her face fixed in a rictus of concentration, moved just in front of James, keeping the shield between themselves and the crowd of their assailants. As she stepped backward, the half-dome of energy moved with her, almost completely covering the entrance to the cavern they had entered through. With a twang, a bolt was loosed by one of the dwarven assailants and slammed into the barrier. A bout of silver sparks burst forth, and ripples spread from the impact point. Malyra''s retreat shuddered to a stop. Her eyes briefly fogged over in exertion before they regained their focus as the ripples dissipated across the shield. Drune hefted Cretch''s weight and began to laboriously flee down the tunnel they came from. Before he turned the corner, he saw Roderick move to stand next to James and lean over, asking, "Why are they just milling about? I recognize some of the monsters out there. A dire-ant, bleak-hound, or carrion worm working together sounds like a bad joke." "I know, but we don''t have much choice but to deal with it right now. Once we get out, past the tunnel entrance, we''re bolting. Malyra, keep the shield up a little longer were almost clear of the cavern." James responded, helping to guide Malyra backward. By this point, Drune had retreaded beyond where he could see them or hear their subdued discussion. Drune kept his mind focused on putting on foot in front of the other, supporting Cretch, and keeping one hand along the left side wall to navigate the darkened tunnel. A few moments later, he heard a shout and a clatter from behind him. The footfalls of multiple people rapidly approached. A light lit up behind him, drawing his attention. Looking back, he saw his three remaining companions in a dead sprint running toward him from the cavern entrance him. Roderick was supporting an exhausted Malyra, and James had had the presence of mind to light their torch to guide them. The flame illuminated the offshoot tunnel they were fleeing from, and the menagerie of monster that poured forth on the heels of his companions could be clearly seen. That was a scene that would haunt Drune for the rest of his life, which he was convinced was swiftly approaching its end. Drune chose to refocus on his flight and on supporting Cretch, lest that nightmarish image overwhelm his already panicking mind. This was well beyond his worst fears when he had left Kindlehearth less than half a week ago. Turning forward to watch where he was going now that the tunnel was lit, he stopped dead in his tracks, having nearly run into a hulking furry mass. An ape-like thing, almost as tall as Roderick and covered in coarse red hair, blocked the majority of the tunnel in front of Drune. Drune could see the silhouettes of other beings that milled about behind it, blocking his avenue home. He felt something break within him. He wasn''t made for this; he didn''t belong here, what could he hope to do against a nightmare like this? As hope fled him, he stopped supporting Cretch, who promptly fell to his side without Drune''s aid. The three companions caught up to Drune and saw the odd standoff as the ape monster made no move to advance on the stunned dwarf and scaleling. As they approached, Drune turned to them, seemingly not even noticing they were there. Before any of the bedraggled party could stop him, he had run past the group toward the oncoming horde of monsters, screaming in panicked fear all the while. As he left the light provided by the torch, the stunned party turned back toward the calm hulking beast that blocked their path. To their further confusion, the ape stepped aside. It revealed a passage filled with an even wider variety of creatures, and dwarves hefting worn mining equipment and ruined clothes. At the center of the swarm flanked by the vanguard of ragged dwarves, a hideous orange carapaced creature stood atop a pair of insectoid legs. It looked over the remaining party with its two spherical black eyes before it began to make an odd gurgling noise and raise its arms toward the remaining party. Its arms were triple jointed. They ended in three elongated tentacle-like fingers that swiftly traced out faintly luminous intricate patterns in the air between itself and the party with surgical precision. James was the only one to keep his wits in the face of this devolving situation. With practiced ease, he nocked, drew, and loosed an arrow at the creature as it continued to write. But before the arrow had even left the bow, a gaunt dwarf with an unkempt black beard and visible ribs beneath his pallid skin lept between James and the creature. James visibly paled as the arrow stuck home in the dwarf''s chest. Like a puppet with its strings cut, the dwarf fell loosely to floor softly moaning, just as the creature completed drawing an ominous and complicated sigil in the air. Before James could act again or Malyra and Roderick could gather themselves, a now-familiar ball of luminescence formed inches in front of the party. That was the last sight any of the party had before their minds went dark. Chapter 2: Abduction The sky was dark save for the beautiful swaths of constellations and lines of multicolored sparks that danced around me. I floated along, enjoying the view above and below me, uncaring in a peaceful fugue. I don''t know how long I bobbed along like this; I didn''t bother to keep track of the time. But, as all good things do, my peace eventually came to an end. First, I noticed just how odd my view of the sky was. While I was unable to think of anything to compare it too, I was reasonably sure I shouldn''t be able to see all around me at once. Secondly, there shouldn''t be a starry sky below me as well as above. And speaking of the night sky, I was positive stars didn''t glow bright neon green, or purple, or make connected lines of cold blue. After longer then I feel proud admitting, I concluded this whole scenario was rather odd. Confusion over my situation and a growing awareness of the oddities around me culminated in a creeping headache. I moved to sit up, only to find myself rapidly spinning in place as I reoriented myself in this weightless space. After what I thought was a few minutes of mad twirling did I naturally slow to a rest. The pounding in my head had grown worse throughout my nauseating spinning, and even after I slowed, it continued to pound away. Every time I tried to move, or if my curiosity didn''t get the memo and latched onto a stray thought, a fresh wave of ache spread through my head. I tried to let my mind clear, seeking the fugue state I had awoken from. But that peace proved harder to find than to lose. My headache grew worse as vague memories floated to the surface of my mind. I could almost picture them. They moved through my mind like isolated bubbles in molasses, filled with opaque fog. The bulkiest bubble of memory floated close to the surface of my mind and stuck. A pinprick appeared as I approached the thought, and the fog it housed slowly leaked out, bringing with it the pleasant scent of humid summer air. That pleasant sensation ended when the entire bubble violently ruptured, spilling its reservoir of memories and nearly overwhelming me in the process. It took just about everything I had to stay conscious as my head felt like it was going to pop. The first thought to settle into my beleaguered mind from the torrent was of a pleasant forest. I had always loved the outdoors, and I had been content. That peace was a rarity for me. Between college, my friends, and my part-time job at a sandwich shop on campus, I had never really found the time just to sit back and relax. That is except for the odd weekend I could slip away to my family''s rickety old cabin. My contentment had been tempered by the looming end of my weekend, however. Sundays were always corrupted by Mondays. Still, I had wanted to find something else to do, anything to prolong my break. I remembered setting the cabin up to leave once I got back and heading out to hike the surrounding woods in the early Sunday morning. I knew those trails like the back of my hand at that point. Deciding on a destination further up a large hill, I had thought the extra time here was better spent hiking than on Profesor Hutchin''s engineering homework. Putting thoughts of more work aside, I had gone off into the deep green of a late spring forest. The world had been alive around me; every time I had visited the cabin, I remembered how much I enjoyed this. Of course, once I returned to college, I would still spend most of my free time with friends or on the computer. But that never stopped me from trying to set a resolution to get outside more often once I got back. The hour and a half long half hike grew foggy and indistinct in recollection. I guess I had let the sounds of nature relax me and hadn''t been paying attention. The hike passed in a green fog of happiness and peace. The excursion had been an excellent way to leave off a relaxing weekend by myself. Such weekends were rare and needed to be savored. As my recollection of the first leg of my hike ended, I realized I had arrived at the top of the hill, my usual stop. My memory clarified as I recalled overlooking the expansive scene of greenery and natural beauty that spread from the best vista the forest had to offer. The woods were always beautiful. I had hiked that particular trail many times, but I had never gotten over that view. The forest stretched as far as I could see, and it looked as pristine as any natural wonder I could have thought of. I think I stayed there for almost fifteen minutes, just soaking in the sight. But, reality called, and I had turned away to start on my way down the hill. But, I had stopped short once I had looked at the stone outcropping that shared this spot with my vista. The outcropping, formerly just a stubby addition to the top of the hill, had been cracked open. Off-center from the large mound, a splinted crevice taller than myself had been added to the feature since my last visit. My curiosity won out, and I had wandered over to investigate the oddity. Looking in revealed a much larger cave than I would have expected. It went further back than the small area of light from outside could illuminate. As I had continued to investigate, a pinprick of the light far back in the cave caught my attention. At this point, my memories grew a little; jumpy would be the best way to put it. I followed my earlier self through the memory as he began to squeeze into the cramped cave, but it would jump from moment to moment like I was missing a second or two periodically. Looking back on my actions, it was ridiculously stupid of me to enter a cave while out alone, that much was clear. But there''s nothing I could do about it now; still, I didn''t think I had been that dull. From the moment I had entered the cave, the brokenness of my memories grew worse. Reliving the experience through my memory got so bad that I almost felt nauseous as the stuttering scenes played out. Once I had I advanced far enough into the cave that I wasn''t being pressed up against both walls at once, it occurred to me just how stupid I was for coming into an unknown cave alone. But, the shining light from deeper in caught my attention again, and suddenly the scene shifted, and I was much deeper than a moment ago. I had started to panic at that point, I think. I looked behind myself then and found the sunlight of the entrance almost as dim as the spark I was moving toward. I had tried to run to the exit, and the scene shifted again. Looking at the memories, I caught onto the pattern that emerged. I would be walking toward the weird light I saw from above, realize I was in a dangerous situation, I would then try to leave, only for my memory to skip to the next scene where I was even closer to the ominous light. The last clear memory was of finding myself crawling over a small mound of rubble, and looking over the ledge of a crater. A ball of white light with streaks of faded colors had floated at head-height off the ground. Same as all the previous attempts I had turned to run, definitely panicking at that point. My legs had felt like they were filled with lead, and I couldn''t see the light of the entrance any longer. What changed this time, however, was that as I moved away, the ground shifted. The land had seemed to lift like a massive trap door flinging me back toward the ball of light. In retrospect, I could see that that wasn''t the case though. While I had felt like I was falling down a bottomless pit that was moments ago a reasonably flat cave, none of the rubble or stones shitted except for the ones I tried to grab ahold of. This final memory ended as I stumbled against the growing "incline" until I was just below the ball of light. As I watched, the ball pulsed once before detonating in a flash of pale greens, purples, oranges, and blinding white. My vision went black after that, and next thing I know, I awoke. The torrent of memory slowed. I let myself drift, merely gathering myself and letting the roiling memories calm. The deluge of thoughts and emotions still threatened to split my head wide open for a while after. Once I could form a coherent thought besides moans and expletives, I took stock of my situation. Surprisingly I felt relatively calm and collected, aside from the actual pain that was only now beginning to fade. The panic over the ball of strange lights, and what I would think would be fear at finding oneself in a spacescape was muted and distant. Not that I was complaining about not being a gibbering mess of anxiety and panic. Although that did raise an important question, where was I? as I looked around, I found it was oddly natural to look in all directions at once. It let me take in the entire beautiful array of vibrant colors and motes of light that seemed to swim and twist all around me. It looked like most were very far away, but a few lines of bright blue were exceptions, being much more vivid and vibrant and seemingly closer than the rest. A view like this put any night of stargazing at my family''s cabin to shame. As I watched, a small branching tendril broke off from a blue line near me. I watched with curiosity as the small blue line meandered its way closer to me. Recalling my uncontrolled spinning from earlier, I gently tried to move away from the approaching front. I managed to match its bee-line pace once I got the hang of floating, which was surprisingly easy now that I had stopped trying to move too quickly. The blue tendril never moved violently; it just meandered steadily along stretching itself out bit by bit in my direction, following my path unerringly. With nothing else of note in my vicinity, I slowed my retreat and let it grow closer. As it approached, I inspected the small line of blue, which, to my surprise, seemed to be composed of a multitude of even smaller threads, not unlike a braided rope. Moving to the side, faster than the slow rope of blue threads could move, I reached out and touched its side. At this point, I realized I didn''t have hands as much as a will, and a general feeling of where I was. It was an odd experience, but I could still feel my hand touching the smooth, cold surface of the tendril. As I felt it, the whole rope began to round back toward me. Acting on a whim, I tried to pluck one of the threads, and a small line moved outward from the mainline, before quickly snapping back into the full braid of the thing. I put some distance between myself and the rope before the end of the blue line tendril finally rounded on me. A new light sparked to life behind me and to my right. As much as anything could be "behind" me when I could see in every direction and near as I could tell, didn''t have a body. The new light was disconcertingly familiar. A nearly liquid blob of grey illumination with lines of faded colors slowly began to grow. As I watched, it began to squirm and stretch itself into an undulating mass. I chose not to waste any more time, and fled. Right up until I refocused ahead of myself and realized I was a hair''s breadth away from the meandering blue line. It hadn''t stopped advancing and had snuck up right up to me while I was distracted with the other light. Before I could arrest my flight, I felt a cold prick on the center of my head where the line made contact with my "not-body." For a brief moment after contact, nothing happened beyond the spot of cold. But soon, an uncomfortable chill spread from that spot all over me until I would have been shivering if I was able. As it spread, I felt my mind slow and briefly stutter to a stop. But after the pause passed and I snapped back to a more normal feeling, I could no longer see the blue line. I didn''t have long to look for its disappearance; however, as the infinitely more ominous gray light drew my attention.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. The growing blob of light had continued to morph, and elongate until it was a spinning worm of light greys, greens, and purples. It had begun to twist and stretch toward me much faster than the blue line had. Where the blue line had seemed to grow like a tree root, this form was more akin to a snake slithering toward its prey. I did not like my chances being on the prey side of that analogy, so I did what any small creature faced with a massive snake moving toward it would do. I ran. Unfortunately, between the delay the blue tendril had caused, my shoddy control of movement, and the ridiculous speed the snake blob put on once it realized I was running, I didn''t have a chance. It struck forward, stretching weirdly to overcome whatever minuscule distance I put between us, and it slammed into me. The next thing I knew, I was awash in a tide of light and faded colors that felt oily and unclean every time a vein of color brushed up against me. It was like I was caught in an irresistible riptide as I tried to struggle away, but all I could see was the now familiarly nasty lights and colors that drew me to wherever I was destined to end up. After I endured the prolonged near-drowning sensation for what felt like hours, I was violently spewed out and was roughly deposited out into a scene of blinding lights. Not a single spot of my vision wasn''t taken up by geometric patterns or tightly woven cables of every color of the rainbow. One design, in particular, was exceptionally intricate, appearing like a multilayered planetary gear, where each gear consisted of different patterns and colors that perfectly meshed with its neighbors. As I watched, the massive planetary gear pattern began to rotate, and the centermost gear opened up like a camera aperture. It revealed a muted gray void that stood in stark contrast to the rest of my overwhelming surroundings. As if a drain plug were pulled open, my unwilling journey spiraled into the opening aperture. The vibrant patterns and weaves around me blurred together as I swiftly fell toward the yawning aperture. And they promptly disappeared beyond its lip once I passed within. The room consisted of flat octagonal planes that all interlinked together to form a roughly spherical sealed room of matte gray. The gray swiftly lost what little luster it had as the light from the aperture dimmed. The aperture closed behind me as soon as I was within. The aperture fully sealed with a resonating thud, and the faint echoes of that sound dissipated shortly afterward. Now I was stuck in a quiet, dark grey room with no discernible landmarks. Well, except for one thing, but I wasn''t sure it wasn''t a hallucination.
NEW/ Condition: Isolation(VII)
A set of semi-transparent words bordered by a light blue box floated to my "left." I shifted my focus, and the text box moved to rest in front of me. I could clearly see both the text box and the area behind it despite the slight opaqueness of the textbox. I willed myself to touch it, and I briefly felt a cold metallic surface as my non-existent hand made contact with the box. It gave way almost instantly, and the strange words disappeared without a trace. I sat there stunned for a brief moment, primarily concerned over my sanity. Now that it was gone though, no point of reference for my grey globe prison was left. I shook myself and put that bit of strangeness into the back of my mind. With nothing better to do, I floated over to the octagonal plate that had closed behind me as I entered this room. Once I got close enough, I could imagine touching the plate, and it felt cold and smooth like a carved slate. No crevices or imperfection marred the plane or showed how it had opened, and pushing against it yielded no results. Taking in my surroundings, it looked like I was stuck here for the foreseeable future. I spent my time, following the corners between octagonal plates, and inspecting every inch of the room. I found absolutely nothing that would suggest an opening or means of escape. But the exercise proved useful in other ways. The detailed movement needed to follow the corners, and repeatedly focusing my 360-degree vision on individual spots of the room was good practice. It also kept my mind from wandering back to thoughts of home. But I couldn''t stave that off forever. Once I exhausted every possible imaginary mark or crack, the uniform room offered no more distraction. Thoughts of my mom and dad, little sister Sarah, my friends in college, and the loss of the entire rest of my life bubbled up simultaneously. What would they think happened? I would probably end up as just another name on a police station''s list or something similar. I hoped my family wouldn''t worry. But, if I was honest with myself, I felt more guilt at not feeling more worried about them. I knew, intellectually, my absence would hurt my family, of course, it would. My Mom, Dad, and Sarah would be wrecks. My friends in college would be struck hard, too, but I could see them moving on after a few years. And, here I was moping about, trying to look back at my life like a morbid version of "It''s a Wonderful Life." It honestly didn''t hurt nearly enough. My entire life was thrust into uncertainty, and any possible relationship I had was worlds away if my surreal experience was anything to go by. But here I was, still surprisingly not a gibbering mess of fear and uncertainty. It was disconcerting to realize something was different about me. A person''s mind continually plays tricks on themselves after all, but the numbed fear and loss were almost more disconcerting than if they had hit me with their full force. Whatever had happened had changed something within me, or possibly removed it. A world-shattering cacophony of breaking glass made my entire form shake and drove me from my introspection. The slate grey walls that had imprisoned me broke apart like they were made of glass. In an explosion of dissolving gray shards, a comparatively blinding white light shone through the widening gaps. As the broken shards of my prison disappeared into nothingness, a new room of glowing iridescent walls, with tubes and threads of a myriad of colors stretched out in front of me. At its center hung a tightly knotted ball of silvery pipes. Various wires and tubes of many different colors stuck out from the wall and suspended the silver knot at the center of the room. From that knot, two silvery tendrils extended and wrapped themselves around a pair of freely floating motes of light, one an earthy brown, and the other a deep red.
LOST/ Condition: Isolation(VII)
A second message popped up to the side of my vision. Before I could address that reoccurring oddity, a deep structural groaning emanated from the central knot. Looking on, I floated marginally closer. A thin pipe that ran along a part of the knot''s circumference visibly strained and seemed to warp under a great deal of pressure. Taking the hint, I tried to retreat to a safe distance, only for the straining pipe to violently rupture. But, watching the pipe unerringly whip toward me, I came to the realization it probably wasn''t a violent failure so much as an intentional slingshot. The silver pipe slammed into me, and a warm metallic force threw me up against the unmoving wall of the room. An external pressure built in my head as the shredded end of the pipe wrapped around me. Stunned, I floated listlessly away from the wall, and the metal wires organically wove themselves around me to form a tight net. The foreign intruse in my mind continued to grow, a warm feeling of increasing lethargy spread over my mind.
NEW/ Bond(III-sub): Reliquary Golem Controller(IV)
As I began to succumb to drowsiness, the pipe that tethered me to the knot of pipes grew taut. It dragged me closer through the air toward the central knot. My vision briefly focused on the two motes of light that were entwined with their own tethers to the central knot. It wasn''t too hard to figure out how I probably appeared to an outside observer; whatever this giant monster was, it had caught another morsel on its web. For the first time since I awoke in the void, my sluggish mind found a hot spark of emotion, buried deep in my mind brought to the surface by the outside influence, I felt angry. I didn''t care what I was doing here. It didn''t matter where I was. I had been dragged along on this confusing and frustrating journey for too long, and I had enough. I writhed against my restraints. The threads and wires shited and rearranged biting into my form, but didn''t snap or give way. I kept pushing and forcing the constraints away despite the pain until they grew marginally looser, and I could get a bit of breathing room. The lethargy infecting my mind pressed down on my thoughts and will like a smothering blanket in response to my activity. Taking that single spark of emotion that had awoken beneath its influence, I tried to inflame it. With an effort of will, I didn''t know I had in me, and I pushed the alien force away. It retreated a metaphorical inch.
LOSS/ Bond(III-sub): Reliquary Golem Controller(IV)
NEW/ Bond(II-sub): Reliquary Golem Controller(IV)
Buoyed by my progress, I knew I was on the right track. I forced my will against the alien lethargy again. Again, I pushed it back another tiring inch. The bounds that entwined me within the white room loosened a little bit more.
LOSS/ Bond(II-sub): Reliquary Golem Controller(IV)
NEW/ Bond(I-sub): Reliquary Golem Controller(IV)
I knew I could win this; I had too. This was my mind, and I was tired of being yanked around. Rallying my frustration, I fell into a tiring rhythm. Make a monumental effort to push away the influence, take a moment to gather myself, rally what little emotion I could muster and repeat. Every inch paid for in will and effort.
LOSS/ Bond(I-sub): Reliquary Golem Controller(IV)
NEW/ Bond(I): Reliquary Golem Body(V)
LOSS/ Bond(I): Reliquary Golem Body(V)
NEW/ Bond(II): Reliquary Golem Body(V)
LOSS/ Bond(II): Reliquary Golem Body(V)
NEW/ Bond(III): Reliquary Golem Body(V)
By the time I found myself fully myself, I was dead tired, the usual kind this time thankfully. My will was spent, and my emotions were cold and ashen. I had to take a rest, so laid back, and I took stock of my situation. The bounds that entwined me hung loose, only a single thread that latched onto me rather than the net around me kept me connected to the main tether. Whatever external force of will that had gained a foothold in my head was blessedly absent. Several nonsensical text boxes floated on the edges of my focus. And, through the gaps in the cables that floated around me, I saw that the white room had grown more active. The wires and cables that wove through and behind the white walls of the spherical room pulsed with color, spots of lights sped through the pipes of the central knot, and a massive green spring-like cable that connected the knot to the top wall of the room thrummed with power. I could almost hear it like it wasn''t just a power cable but the string of a massive instrument. I listened carefully and realized a voice was barely discernible in the vibrations. As the sounds reached a room-shaking crescendo, I could make out a voice in the cacophony. "-waKEN!" Chapter 3: An Outside Perspective A lone figure stood in the cold blue illumination of a roughly hewn granite room. It stood on two insectoid legs, a flat tail lay flush with the ground, and orange chitinous plates ran down the length of its back to the tip of its tail. He stood to the right of a long table of dark gray wood, covered in papers, stone tablets, and numerous crystals and empty vials. The center of the circular room was covered in an intricately painted pattern of concentric circles and symbols. At the pattern''s center, a small irregularly ovoid crystal hung suspended in the air at roughly waist height above the floor. It gave off the cold blue light that illuminated the room far more than the ordinarily faint red glow of the crystals embedded into the walls. Althil''e''Phuren walked gingerly over to the suspended crystal. He moved carefully, lifting his tail and gingerly stepping over the painted lines to not mar the detailed workings. As he reached the central ritual circle of the pattern, he stopped before crossing its bounds. One multi jointed arm reached out over the pattern''s boundary. Three long whip-like tentacles reverently entwined themselves around the suspended crystal. As Althil''s hand enclosed the crystal, the blue illumination dimmed, and the room fell into uniform red-tinted darkness once more. Althil retreated from the magical circle, no longer taking the care needed to preserve the inert pattern''s integrity. He approached the long table, and with a simple gesture, called on one of his more practical skills, Unseen Grasp(III). A small leather pouch rose from the table and swiftly floated to Althil''s waiting grasp. He placed the crystal into the pouch, and a great weight seemed to lift from his shoulders. Althil gently set the pouch back onto the table, before moving toward a small alcove that was crudely carved into the wall of the room. His limbs subtly shook now that his trials were complete, and Althil let himself sag into the alcove, his shell pleasantly grinding into the stone. His tail wrapped itself around his legs, a comforting habit he carried over from his days as a juvenile. After taking a moment to fully appreciate the success his efforts had wrought, he took stock of his well-used laboratory. Shattered gems used to power the ritual lay scattered around the edges of the painted pattern. Vials of various pigments and unusual solutions sat opened and half used on the desk. He rested in his alcove, utterly spent from the weeks-long exertion. His ambition was costly, that much was inevitable. Still, as his gaze landed once more on the simple leather pouch, he felt hopeful that his efforts would finally bear fruit. He had spent decades gathering everything here, researching every step of the ritual, and acquiring the materials needed to see his ambition through. This was his fourth attempted ritual and his third success. Each undertaking had cost more than the last. The successful rituals had yielded the most essential materials needed for his experiments, and yet total success had eluded him. Each one of the previous samples had proven incompatible with his designs. With each setback and costly ritual, his ability to acquire the necessary materials diminished. The supporting opinions of the Phuren hive had always been few. They had fallen quieter and quieter as each year ticked by without viable success. In recent years his goals had grown far enough removed from the hive''s own that Althil was forced to move his abode out of the central colony to alleviate the empathic pressure of the hive. It''s not a pleasant feeling to have your own will slowly be subsumed by the collective. But Althil had persevered through the stress of his work and had scrounged, politic''d, and cajoled as many minds as he could to acquire the resources needed for this last iteration of the ritual. Even with his efforts, however, the only reason he had been able to attain the final materials was due to his own impeccable timing. He had waited for Phulthem''e''Phuren''s most recent expedition before he undertook his own recent trip to the Phuren colony. Phulthem was by a wide margin the most vehement opponent of his research; instead, he supported the biological and psychological studies of drones that most of the hive adhered to. His recent absence relaxed the hive''s opinion enough to where Althil was able to briefly weather the empathic pressure. But, Phulthem''s triumphant return three days ago with a veritable cornucopia of prospective drones sealed the fate of Althil''s research if this most recent essence proved incompatible. The unattuned essences the ritual was designed to capture needed to be compatible with the lone example of precursor runesmithing he had acquired at the inception of his research. The previous two successfully harvested unattuned essences had proven wholly incompatible, resulting in inconsistent and perplexing results. With an identical hand gesture as before, he used Unseen Grasp(III). The notepad resting on the table floated over to Althil. Reading over his previous ritual notes, he compared the past rituals to the oddities of this most recent endeavor. Truly this experience had drained him more than the last two combined. Finding no forthcoming answers from his notes as to what had occurred in this ritual, Althil went about recording his most recent results. He had been monitoring the lure, and its attraction processes, for weeks without success or activity. But, there was no help for it; once an arcane ritual began, you couldn''t stop it without sacrificing the components. Since the ritual had continued to operate within acceptable bounds on its provided power supply, Althil allowed it to continue. Then, much to Althil''s delight, earlier this day, the lure''s primary function activated. This indicated that a suitable target had been acquired. The lure''s enchantments and traps drained almost all of its reserve energy before the target had finally fallen close enough to be snared. Althil theorized this may indicate a stronger will or higher intellect than the previous two successful samples, he hoped that was a positive sign. But the drained power reserves meant that the ritual was unable to fully draw the sample into this realm proper. Althil had had to personally step up to power the final steps of the ritual. Puppeteering the ritual to completion, and fighting the sample''s resistance every step of the way through the ether. It had dangerously drained Althil. But once it had been drawn into the home ritual circle, the isolating crystal sealing process completed successfully. Althil''s gaze fell to the unassuming pouch that rested on his materials table. He untangled his tail from his legs and extricated himself from his resting alcove. His chiton scraped against the hewn stone as he rose to stand. He moved over to the table and gingerly picked up the pouch that carried the current culmination of years of effort. He walked through the dimly lit ritual chamber, stepping through the spent patterns and remnants to the opposite wall. Pressing the flats of his tentacles that held the notebook against the wrought iron door, a necessity for any ritual room, he opened it into his main hallway. The door swung open noiselessly to reveal the entry chamber of his abode. Constructed of similarly roughly hewn granite to the ritual chamber, a long hallway stretched out 20 feet in front of Althil. On the opposite wall of the rectangular room, the dark wood entrance doorway sat bolted shut. To his immediate left, a similar wooden door was set into the wall. It led to his resting chamber and personal library, a sad necessity due to his alienation from the central Phuren hive repository. The final door of the room was a wrought iron door similar to, if not as hardy, as his ritual chamber door to Althil''s right halfway down the hall. Althil walked to the lighter duty wrought iron door and swung it inward into his workshop. His workshop was a glorified large closet, with a single table set into a carved alcove in the far side of the wall and a myriad of tools and materials strewn over the room''s floor and haphazardly hooked onto its walls. The primary difference to this room and the rest of his home was the prodigious yellow glowing stone set into the ceiling. Compared to the dim red lighting of the rest of his house, the workshop was clearly illuminated in bright yellow light. Sitting on the work table was the inspiration for Althil''s research. A humanoid figure of white stone with a disproportionately large head rested in the fetal position. This unassuming two and a half foot tall golem was the lone example of precursor runesmithing the Phuren hive had ever found. Aside from its head, it was built to the proportions of a humanoid. It has simple shoe-like feet, three-fingered hands, large smooth black gem-like eyes that were set into either side of its head, and a featureless beak-like face. The white stone material it was constructed of was surprisingly resilient, and on closer inspection showed faint patterns of silvery runes and mana lines.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. This magnificent relic was discovered thanks to the continued effort of the Phuren hive to excavate the exterior of the Nexus gate. The same gate the Pherun colony was initially founded around. Over 60 years ago, an ogre drone had improperly removed a boulder within the rubble that remained of the blockage around the Nexus gate. The resulting landslide of rubble and cave wall buried approximately 24 drones. Sadly the controller Extao''e''Phuren was permanently wounded as his carapace was cracked in the accident. But the slide fortuitously revealed a small cache of materials hidden in a compartment within the wall. Althil had been working with Extao at the time and had been able to take partial credit for the chamber''s discovery. Extao claimed the majority of the cache, and Althil did not contest that as he plainly needed the resources more after his disability. Althil graciously laid claim only one section of the cache, which was filled with scrap and remnants of failed experiments. Much to Althil''s delight, that pile of scrap and trash housed what was the only viable example of precursor workings. That good fortune was only partial, however. The golem was structurally perfect, the runes had kept the golem pristine. But, whatever directed or controlled the golem was critically malfunctioning. After two years of effort, Althil had mastered the necessary arcane communications needed to control the golem. Still, when he finally awakened the relic, it stood mostly inert. It was only able to follow the most basic of commands. Even then, many commands as simple as carrying an object, or shifting a particular direction would be ignored or result in the golem doing the opposite of what it was supposed to. Althil theorized that a compatible mind may be able to fill in the gaps in the controlling force''s communication. Sadly runeworkings remained attuned to the rune worker''s specific signature of alignments. This meant any addition that was already aligned to any of the elemental forces would not sync up with the existing infrastructure. So he would not be able to artificially implant a mind, as he found out after spending five of his drones on the effort. But what if he could find an unaligned beings'' mind? Then there was a chance he could unlock the secrets of runeworking this relic contained. Or, he could only hope, even find a way to allow his kin access to the Nexus they were so callously denied. After decades of research, blind luck, and trial and error, the ritual of drawing a mind from worlds beyond the outer realms and their primordial influence came into being. Truthfully though, even Althil didn''t fully understand the workings. The rituals relied on the natural attraction of unaligned energies and the manipulations of vacuums of power in the outer realms. They were based on rare precursor texts held in the central colony, texts most of his kin deemed ramblings of a mad being. But they worked! Now, as Althil pulled the containment crystal from its pouch, the soft blue glow shone as a sign that his alienation and isolation from the hive would be worth it. Reaching out with his other hand, he set the notebook down on one of the few open spaces of his workshop table. Reaching up to the golem, his tentacle found the edges of the hidden panel set into the upper right side of the golem''s chest. Pressing the two barely discernible edges of the panel, the panel face popped outward with a faint click. Althil opened the hatch and revealed the cylindrical chamber that sunk five inches into the chest of the golem. In that chamber, where formerly there were residual ashes, and shattered gems now was set a metal amalgamation formed to match the obloid containment crystal. A contraption of Althil''s design. Placing the containment crystal into the metal housing, Althil closed the hatch sealing the panel once more. Althil stepped back and retrieved his notebook. With his free hand raised toward the golem, he began to trace a large circle in the air, setting the boundary used by his most unique skill, Golemic Connection(VI). Focusing on maintaining the faint green border, Althil allowed the ability to guide his hand. His three tentacles began to trace out runes independently from one another. Once seven full runes followed the interior edges of the circular border, he directed the working to reach out to the golem. The power of each rune melted together in the hollow center of the pattern, and a sickly green tendril of arcane energy snaked out and moved to contact the golem. The tendril touched onto the forehead of the golem. As contact was made, the pattern and circular boundary maintained by Althil glowed a brighter blue-green. It expanded and twisted to wrap itself around Althil¡¯s wrist, before fading from the visible spectrum.
NEW/ Bond(I-temp.): Reliquary Golem Body(V)
Althil took a short note into his notebook and observed as a brief blue flash came over the black eyes of the golem. The golem shifted as it slowly became more active. It moved from a slouched fetal position to sitting upright, head held taller, legs up to its chest, and hands rested on its knees. Now came the moment of truth. Althil steadied himself and calmed his mind. With determined will and steady thoughts, he directed a single phrase out to the connection the arcane working had made with him. "Awaken" Althil felt a brief drain on his strained reserves, though it quickly passed. Thankfully this arcane working required far more intricate detail work than raw power to craft and maintain. Althil felt a stirring within his connection to the golem, something different than the last two failures. Excitedly, Althil began to record every sensation and observation into his notebook. The golem shuddered. Its head briefly sagged forward, before it raised its gaze toward Althil, who stood before it. For a breathless moment, Althil felt both his upper and lower heart skip a beat. It was moving coherently. The hope he held for his ambitions blossomed into beautiful bliss. Then the golem lept back against the wall in a spasming, flailing mess of stone limbs, and clattering tools. Althil''s hopes crash into murky ruin. The golem continued to clatter away, launching any tool or miscellaneous material that touched its wildly whipping limbs. Althil raised its hand once more, before apathetically sending another command to the failure in front of him. "Stop" But, the golem didn''t stop. Instead, the malfunctioning relic seemed to kick itself off of the table, falling to the ground. Bringing with it several tools and metal implements that had rested near it on the table in the process. As the mass of tools and material fell, a particularly heavy metal hook fell directly into Althil''s foot. He rocked backward onto his tail and lifted his injured foot away from the violent pile of tools. Frustrated and confused, Althil sent the same command that should have worked, and had worked with every other experiment. "STOP!" Thankfully the maddening golem stopped flailing about. With a metallic clank, the last of the displaced tools fell from the bench to the pile on the floor. Althil took a brief moment to gather himself in the ensuing silence. Frustrated and dejected, there was nothing else to do but get back to work. Now that Althil''s shop wasn''t at risk of becoming a disaster zone. He raised his foot up to investigate the damage. He was annoyed at the cracked chitin of his fore claw, but it was just superficial thankfully. Rocking forward off his tail, he gingerly supported himself on his foot again. Looking down at the pile of tools and the priceless golem they were piled over, he slumped forward in exasperation. With nothing more to do about it, he bent down to begin picking up his tools. It was just another failure, he would fix this and keep moving forward. He had to. Lifting the hook that had pierced his foot to the table, he specifically did not look at the purple stain on the tip. The sight of blood made him feel offset. Setting the hook back into its place, he looked down toward the stationary golem. This was not the reaction he anticipated. His first success had merely twitched erratically. It remained unresponsive to any, but the same commands the "empty" version understood. His second attempt just smashed its head into the floor and didn''t respond until he reverted it to normal function. This response was both beyond what he expected and equally disappointing. As he leaned back toward the pile, still pondering the unexpected results, he reached for a set of small head hammers and a large chisel. He briefly saw the stone sledgehammer that had been set against the wall tilt forward. Althil didn''t get a chance to see the hand of the golem near the base of the hammer''s handle as the hammer''s head fell toward him. Before he realized what was happening, the sledgehammer had smashed into his skull. The last thing he remembered was the sound of chitin cracking, and the distinct sounds of a small golem extricating itself from a loose pile of tools. Chapter 4: On Abductees and Appearances I heard a loud voice boom from outside the white room that told me to "AWAKEN!!!". I felt a tug on my mind accompany the voice''s command. It wasn''t very strong, but it felt similar to the last alien force that had invaded my mind. So I retaliated and pulled against it.
LOSS/ Bond(III): Reliquary Golem Body(V)
NEW/ Bond(V): Reliquary Golem Body(V)
NEW/ Bond(V): Reliquary Golem Controller(IV)
LOSS/ Bond(V): Reliquary Golem Body(V)
LOSS/ Bond(V): Reliquary Golem Controller(V)
NEW/ Bond(V): Reliquary Golem(V)
A chunk of knotted pipes and cabling that connected to my tether was yanked off of the central knot. My tether appeared to split into two, with one end traveling up to the walls of the room, and the other connected me to the central knot. My 360-degree vision expanded past the walls of the room in an instant, and showed me an area roughly a foot out from an odd robot-like body as well as within my small white room. And, for the first time since waking up in the void, I could feel a real body. I was sitting slouched over in the fetal position at first. I tried to move and found everything stiff and slow to respond. My head especially seemed excessively heavy, like it was weighed down with lead. As I arduously lifted what felt like my own head times two, I heard a faint click from the central knot. Suddenly I could see. Not just the odd 360-degree vision of my immediate surroundings, but actual direct and long-ranged sight. And stood directly in front of myself, I saw a humongous insect that could only have crawled out of H.P. Lovecraft''s deepest pit of nightmares. I froze for what felt like an eternity. Then voices started to scream out at me. "RUN!" "KILL!" "stand at attention" Without realizing what I was doing, I lept back in fear and instinctually tried to follow the instructions of all three voices in my head at once. Which was about as successful as one would expect. I flailed about trying to get my balance, grabbing onto anything that could be a weapon, while simultaneously attempting to crawl away for my life from the monster. Vibrations built again in my central chamber, and the same booming voice called out a command. "stop." Despite the volume, the command seemed sad somehow. But it just melded into the cacophony of other voices instructing me on the correct course of action.
ATTENTION/ Bond(I-temp) contest Bond(V): Reliquary Golem(V)/ FAILURE
I felt myself run up against the back wall of the bench. I chose to ignore most of the voices and various text boxes that were popping up until I could parse through this chaos. I didn''t have enough balance to run, so I chose a different course of action. I twisted my body around and kicked myself away from the wall, and off of the table. "GOOD! RUN! ESCAPE!" "Hide, then kill when hidden, then hide." "falling, distance unknown, protect self." "SHUT UP!" I yelled out and felt the tether I had to the central knot thrum with power. Focusing on the white room, I realized where the voices were coming from, and thankfully they weren''t in my head. I had moved closer to the silvery knot at the center of the room while I struggled. Its tethers to the two motes of light had grown looser in the process. These motes were right up next to me, vibrant red and muddy brown trying to yell at and command me. Once I yelled back, I felt their connections to the central knot react to my command, and the nets that held both motes of light tightened down. Surprisingly the mess of cables I had pulled from the central knot also responded. It wove itself around the knot and acted as another net that restrained the central knot similarly to its own tethers around the motes of light. My brief period of introspection ended as I felt my body slam into the hard ground, forcing me to focus on my outside perspective. That impact was followed by the severe buffeting of heavy tools falling on top of me. "STOP!"
ATTENTION/ Bond(I-temp) contest Bond(V): Reliquary Golem(V)/ FAILURE
The same outside voice angrily commanded me to stop again. Now that my head was clear of voices, I realized it may be best not to overly antagonize the giant alien. I stopped moving, not that I really could under the piles of tools, and observed the creature. It was a hulking insect. Its body was like that of a flat centipede''s, with an exoskeleton of orange plates lining its back. It stood on two stocky chitin covered legs, but it seemed to be supporting itself on the broad flat tail whose end laid flush with the ground. It had two long, lithe double-jointed arms, each of which ended in three octopus-like tentacles. It didn''t seem to have a mouth or face. Instead, it had two massive pitch black spherical eyes. They were set along the side of its head, where the chitinous plates of its back met the softer underside of its body. It loomed forward briefly, intimidating me into staying still. Once it knew I''d stay put, it reared back and lifted one of its feet. The foot seemed injured somehow, and I saw a drop or two a deep violet liquid I could only assume was alien blood. It took a moment to gather itself after inspecting its injured foot. It relaxed slightly, seemingly satisfied. It gingerly set its foot back down and loomed over me again. It reached down toward me to seal my fate. But for some reason, it chose not to end me. Instead, one by one, it began to lift tools away from me, placing them back on the table above. I looked around the torture room for anything that could get me out of this situation, taking care to remain as still as possible, hoping the monster would forget about me. My gaze landed on a gargantuan war hammer, which was resting precariously head side up against the wall. As the alien fiddled with the tools on its bench, I began to slowly move my hand over to the handle''s end. Seeming to be lost in thought, it continued its work of replacing the tools where they were supposed to go. It leaned back toward the pile I had made, oblivious to my repositioning. As its head leaned closer, I waited until I saw my own reflection in its black eyes. Then I grabbed ahold of the end of the hammer''s handle and pulled with everything I had. To my dismay, I realized something else about my new body. I was horribly weak, my efforts only succeeded in barely shifting the hammer. It was enough, though. The hammer became unbalanced, and ever so slowly began to fall forward. Whether it was by some stroke of luck or the creature''s own distraction, I don''t know, but it failed to realize what was happening. The hammer''s head connected solidly onto the creature''s skull with an audible crunch before it even realized the danger. The alien fell to my left bonelessly, the hammer slammed into the ground right behind it. I waited for a few breathless seconds, watching the creature shift and twitch before it came to a final stop and lay unmoving. I let my head clank back into the ground, and the slight panic over my situation unwound a degree. There would be no torture for me today if I had anything to say about it. Now I had a moment of reprieve. I focused on the multitude of "text boxes" that floated to the side of my vision. I moved to touch the first one that popped up but found my dominant hand pinned by a hammer. It seemed, however, that the box noticed what I was trying to do as it still disappeared once I thought to poke it away. Even if there was no actual poking involved. Weird, the rest of the boxes remained in my vision, though. Instead of actually moving to poke the next text box, I thought to them to display a bit clearer. I watched them shift and rearrange in order. As they rearranged, they formed into one box with different lines of text. Odd. I wonder what they all mean. It looked like I may have developed a "Bond" With this body, a "Reliquary Golem." Chances are the silver knot of pipes was the first Controller. I think I may have booted it out of its position, excellent. Something actually went my way in this surreal jaunt through insanity. I wonder what happens if I try to see what all the text mea- The text box disappeared, and a new, far larger display appears in its place.
Name Thomas Aldrich, TomUnauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Existence Race: Unattuned Essence(VI)
Conditions Racial Condition: Ethereal(X) Racial Condition: Unbound Sight(IV)
Attunements Null
Expressions English(Spoken, Written) Empathic(Will(V)), Morse Code(Partial)
Acuity 2/24 (18+Racial)
Abilities Golemic Control(I) General Will(V(II+Racial))
Titles Stanger(I): A stranger in a strange land, even the world finds your presence difficult to define and explain.
Bonds Bond(V): Reliquary Golem(V)
Welp, there''s my failing sanity acting up. A massive text box that seemed to generally describe myself floated in the center of my vision. There was a lot to unpack that wasn''t very clear, and I was pretty sure it was a hallucination. I willed the "status box" away, and it disappeared just like the rest of the text boxes. I wanted to test this oddity, though. With an effort of will, it reappeared precisely as it had appeared before. With another effort of will, the same text box with the most recent notifications appeared next to it. I looked at the notification box and willed it to stretch upward, holding in my mind a clear picture of what I wanted. It extended upward and filled in with every notification I''ve seen so far in chronological order. Well, if I''m insane, at least I''m consistent. So, in summary, aliens abducted me. Or to be precise, I had been abducted by aliens, gone insane, and possibly killed my abductor. The briefest of motions dislodged a tool from the wall as the unconscious form of my abductor shifted. Nope, didn''t kill the abductor. Time for me to leave. I dismissed the floating signposts to my own failing sanity. I wiggled my stiff right arm out from under the hammer. Once that was free, I managed to shove the pliers off of me and free myself. I rolled onto my front and began the slow process of standing up. Golemic Control(I) my ass; As I moved to stand, it was like trying to walk with stilts through molasses. What was worse, though, was that if my 360 sight, or Unbound Sight(IV) according to the magic text boxes, was correct, my head was huge for my scrawny little body. But I took my time and kept a hand against the wall of this room as I made my way to the dark metal doorway. Still, I didn''t want to push my luck, and once I made it to the door, I reached up above my head, and just managed to reach the doorknob. Sadly, my hands were not what I was used to, three digits, two thick fingers, and one "thumb." They were also made of what felt like a rock, just like the rest of my new body. This all added up to having to take seven minutes of constant failures to open the door as my stone fingers couldn''t get a grip on the knob. Stop, this isn''t working, Tom. Yes, you may have gone insane, you may even have started talking to yourself, but you were in college for mechanical engineering. You''re smart enough to think this through. I turned and looked around the torture room. Thankfully the alien remained unconscious at the other end. There was a plethora of tools and materials I could easily turn to constructive purposes instead of their original nefarious designs. I moved around the edges of the room carefully, slowly getting the hang of moving around, and gave the unconscious alien a wide berth. Most of the excessively large tools wouldn''t work for me, I could barely lift the vast majority. They were obviously made to the scale of my abductor. But, some of the raw materials could prove useful. Pulling out a box made of dry gray wood from beneath the bench, I scrounged through what was probably a scrap pile. But it was precisely what I needed. I found strips of cloth or leather of some kind, metal nails, splinters of wood, and various odds and ends. Only the leather strips would be immediately handy in my current situation, the rest were too small and numerous to easily carry. Wait, there was something useful. I crept slowly over to the pile of tools on the ground near the monster, I removed a simple leather pouch from the mess. It would have been small to my abductor, but for my needs, it was perfect. Retreating from the alien back to the bin, I filled the bag with the nails and splinters for later use. I then took the strips of leather and cloth and rolled them together to make it easier to carry and handle before I also added them to the now filled bag. Gingerly making my way back to the door, I took a piece of leather and threaded it between my two fat fingers and thumb of my right hand. It took some doing, but eventually, I had a makeshift glove, and I could finally get a decent grip on the doorknob. I turned the knob and slowly cracked open the door. An ominous red-lit hallway was on the other side, made of the same rock as this room. It would have been horribly cliche in a horror movie, but this was real, and it was terrifying. I looked over my shoulder and weighed my options. I could stay in this room indefinitely and try and kill the alien. I didn''t like my chances, even if it was unconscious for now. Or I could actually do something and move out into the hallway from hell. My life really sucked as of late. I inched out of the torture chamber into the hallway, sliding the metal door shut behind me. Looking around the room, I had three options. Option one, an evil door of heavy-duty metal down the hall to my left that was made to either protect a vault or imprison the hulk. Option two, a shoddy wooden door close to option one on the wall opposite me. Or, option three, a solid wooded door with a deadbolt lock, down the hall to my right. I moved to the other side of the hallway and pressed myself up against the wall. I shuffled down the hall toward the least secured door of the three options. Reaching up and turning the doorknob, I cracked the shoddy wooden door open and peeked inside. It was a small room, lit with the same dim red light, and nothing was moving inside. I let the door swing wider and slipped inside as quietly as my stone feet would allow. The room was small if the proportions of the hallway and the torture room were anything to go by. It was long and thin, along the opposite wall, a large alcove was carved slightly above the ground level. I walked over to investigate, and found it to be a sort of tub filled with sand or some kind of stone dust. I guess aliens have weird beds? Or maybe this is a- I threw the sand away in disgust. I leaned down to rub my hand on the ground, just in case. I turned to leave, but another alcove caught my attention. Set high above the ground, closer to the ceiling as was a smaller alcove, and placed into the makeshift shelf were seven leather-bound books. It was at least a foot and a half beyond my reach. I took a brief look around, and nothing jumped to me out as a way for me to reach the books. I could barely walk in a straight line, so climbing the stone wall was not even an option. I set my pouch down and dug through it for some straps and junk I could use. Being short is a huge hassle. Roughly five minutes later, I had knotted the cloth straps together to get a simple string and weighted one end with a bundle of wood splinters. I grabbed the free end of the line with my hand and hefted the weighted end in my right. I stood beneath the alcove shelf and tossed the weight up, hopefully, to catch a book. It took me another five minutes to finally get the weight to catch on the corner of one of the books, and it fell onto the ground in front of me. I rerolled my weighted line, and stored it into my pouch, before walking over to my find. The book was rather thin and proportionate to my abductor, like most everything in this place. On top of that, the title on the cover was utter gibberish to me. I''m not sure what I was expecting. Still, I had been hopeful English was a universal language like in the movies, but no such luck. Either way, I would rather have the book than not. But with how long it took me to get, I didn''t think it wise to push my luck any further. I picked the book and pouch up and made my way to the hallway. In the hallway, I turned to the left, I was not going to poke my nose into the evil door''s business; hopefully, it wasn''t the way out. But all other options first. I stopped at the base of the larger wooden door. It was definitely built heavier duty than the bedroom/bathroom door. I had to set my pouch and book down, so I could jump up and grab onto the deadbolt latch. It clanked open and unlocked. I opened the door and checked for anything dangerous. Nothing jumped out at me as immediately dangerous, and much to my relief, it opened with a pleasant breeze. It gave access to an outcropping that overlooked a pitch-black sky that hung over the oddest forest I''d ever seen. The stone outcropping was raised startlingly high on the side of a cliff. A series of switchbacks connected the outcropping to the forest ground, which seemed to be composed of some kind of gravel-filled dirt. A small trail wound from the base of the switchbacks into the forest. The forest itself, if it could be called such, consisted of mushrooms, vines, and fern-like things of gargantuan proportion instead of actual trees. What''s more, each and every bit of plant life glowed and shone through the darkness that permeated the forest. The reason for this strange ecosystem was readily apparent. In the distance, a city could be seen. It could be seen beyond the forest because it was built into the sides of a glowing green pillar larger than some mountains. But there was one significant difference between that pillar and a mountain. The pillar ended where it joined the roof of a cavern. By the pillar''s glow, I could see the roof of the colossal cavern that stretched over both myself and the entire forest. It was beautiful. It was also terrifying. Every step I took since waking up has led me further out of my depth. Before I ran off into the further unknown, I needed to figure out what my next steps were. Obviously, my foremost goal was to get back home, but I didn''t have the first clues as to how to do that. The only lead I had was an actively hostile monster that I had knocked out and shut away in a closet behind me. I didn''t like my chances with that thing. But, that wasn''t entirely right, was it? Looking inward, I observed the three senior passengers in this body. They could possibly help fill in some blanks, and from the sound of things, they weren''t any happier with that thing in the closet than I was. A plan began to take shape. I closed the door behind me and hefted my pouch and book. With the door shut behind, I trotted down the switchbacks with haste. My first step was to find an isolated place that was somewhat safe. Somewhere that monster that lived in this cave wall couldn''t find me, but where I could find my way back when I needed to. Next, I had a library''s worth of questions to work through. After that, well, I guess I''d play it by ear from there. Chapter 5: The Great Indoors This forest was beyond eerie. Aside from the Alice in Wonderland sized foliage and fungi, the entire forest was glowing in a rainbow of colors. I thought that would make my hike along the trail more manageable, and it partially did. I could see everything I needed to keep to the path. But, the glow also played tricks on me, a movement where there was none, a section of shadow shaped like a man, and sudden shifts of color that made an entire area change from pleasant blue to hot red in an instant. It would have played havoc on my nerves if I had any. I had been walking on this path for a good half an hour at that point; I had lost sight of my abductor''s door almost immediately after stepping onto the track. Thankfully the trail didn''t have any forks; it just wound itself through the mostly quiet forest. I could still see the green glow of the central pillar of the carven over the tops of the canopy of mushroom caps and vines. If that glow was anything to go by, the trail was making a beeline for the city. I hoped to find a place to hold up for a time well before that. Knowing my luck, my abductor could probably call the city and authorities there to search for me, and I most definitely didn''t want to deal with that. A vine snapped somewhere in the foliage to my right. I froze where I stood in the middle of the trail. The sounds of the forest had been muted and distant so far; rustling leaves in the upper canopy, crunching gravel in the distance, an odd chittering that was persistently just within earshot. Slowly, I stepped off the open path into the foliage to my left, away from the sound. As I stepped off the trail, a stone turned under my foot. I rolled onto my back and skidded down the slight incline away from the path. I managed to keep ahold of my pouch thankfully, but my book went sailing off to crash into the foliage. The sound of my ever so graceful tumble elicited a deep grunt from whatever was off the trail; violent sounds of snapping vines and thrown up gravel emanated from the other side of the trail. I hurriedly threw myself beneath the cap of one of the short blue, glowing mushrooms that dotted the sides of the path. Not a moment after I hid beneath the mushroom cap, a massive furry thing smashed aside one of the thinner mushroom stalks and burst through the brush onto the side of the trail. A gorilla with coarse red fur and twin horns on the side of its head, stood menacing an unseen rival in the center of the path. It was a drooling mad-looking beast with twin tusks growing from its lower jaw and a myriad of scars and gouges decorating its face. Even hunched over onto its knuckles as it was, it was at least four times my height. I didn''t move a single imaginary muscle. Go figure, but one thing a sorta-robotic body is good at is staying very still. The ape beast grunted and jerked its head left and right, drool slobbering about with each movement. It was looking for something. It raised its head, evidently not finding anything amiss, and sniffed the air. Another benefit of my new body became apparent, no sweat or scents besides that of good wholesome stone. Lowering its posture, it cocked its head to the left and remained still. For nearly half a minute, all that was audible was the background sounds of the forest. That silence was broken when with a sudden surge of motion, the beast lifted and slammed its two meaty fists into the ground, leaving small craters where they impacted. I could feel the impacts of its fists from where I sat against the ground. With nothing coming to investigate, the shoulders of the beast slumped back, and it shifted to a more relaxed posture. It huffed at nothing in particular and scraped at the gravelly ground, picking up a loose, broken chunk of stone from one of the small craters in front of it. It licked the stone shard, waited a moment, then tossed the stone into its mouth. It turned and lumbered back through the hole it had carved through vegetation, the faint sound of breaking rock following it. I made a note to keep quiet from here on out. The trail seemed well worn, but obviously, this was a jungle filled with more peril than I had hoped for. I stayed prone to the ground under my blue fungal shroud for another 10 minutes. When I felt confident the ape monster was long gone, I carefully sat up. Standing was a pain with my oversized head, but I was getting the hang of navigating with that imbalance, it only took me a little over a minute to stand this time. I turned and began to make my way through a few smaller ferns off the side of the trail to try and locate my mystery book. As I shited some of the ferns out of the way, I found my book opened onto the ground just passed the obstruction. I also found a thin and somewhat overgrown game trail that briefly ran parallel to the trail I had been following. It had been hidden by the thick line of plants and fungi that ran alongside the main pathway. I peeked through the foliage further down the trail, and it looked to turn and head off at an angle from the main trail. This trail would be harder for my abductor to follow, at least. I began to make my way down the hidden game trail. Once it stopped running parallel with my original path, the game trail became more overgrown, and harder to travel on, but not so much that I found it impossible to traverse. As I progressed further from the main trail, the distant chittering grew in volume, and I could finally pick out its direction in front of me. I hiked this trail for another ten minutes before it once more curved at a sharp angle, at that point the chittering had grown loud and somewhat distracting. I approached and peeked around the corner of the foliage. A small clearing opened in front of the trail. At its center was a large mound of the odd gravelly dirt, at the peak of which an enormous mushroom lacking the usual bioluminescence glow of its family here. Small rivulets of water dripped continuously from the top of the cap of the fungus and formed a ring-shaped moat of dirty water and mud around the hillock. Along the entirety of the mushroom''s base, stalk, and cap were dozens of odd rodents. The rodents were almost rat-like in appearance, except for pronounced hind legs, and dark ruddy green fur patterned with eye-catching lines of glowing neon green. From the noise of the clearing, it was apparent these creatures were the source of the chittering I had heard. As I silently observed them, I watched a few rats enter and reappear from various holes dug through the stalk of the mushroom, and around the base of the hillock. Other rats would periodically leap from atop the mushroom high above to the canopy of the rest of the forest or jump back again. The whole colony of rats gave off a sense of energy like an ant hive, with every one of the creatures contsantly moving or twitching with nervous energy. Within my unbound vision I saw one of the small beasts approach from behind me, less than a foot away. I hadn''t even heard the stealthy rat approach over the cacophonous chittering of its family. It approached slowly, and I stayed still not wanting to spook this isolated example of its kind. It came right up to the base of my foot and sniffed about inquisitively. Before I decided to move away and interrupt my statue impersonation, it tried to take a bite out of me. Snapping forward, it opened its jaw to briefly show long gnarled fangs before it clamped down onto the back of my ankle. I flinched back from the sudden attack but found it thankfully didn''t hurt at all. All I could feel was a pressure on the back of my ankle where the points of its fangs failed to piece my stone form. My flinch didn''t go unnoticed, however. The vicious little vermin responded by repeatedly wrenching itself back and forth to try and tear my ankle out. It was partially successful because while it didn''t do any actual damage, it did drag my foot backward and out from under me. I flopped onto my face and fell past the foliage into the edge of the clearing. The sound of chittering abruptly ceased, and all I could hear was the trickling drops of water, and the growling and scraping of the rat still dragging at my ankle. Pushing myself up enough to see, I met dozens of pairs of eyes looking back at me attentively ¡ª the forest froze for a few long moments. I kicked backward and struck the assaulting rat, knocking it off my foot and away from me, before shuffling back out of the clearing on my hands and knees. As I left the clearing, I gathered up my pouch and book from where they had fallen on the ground. The chittering returned from the clearing with a vengeance, and it was rapidly approaching. I had to swat away the original vermin that had caused this, and I crawled over to a nearby mushroom stalk. Half crawling half climbing, I used that support to stand up before the first rodent shook off its brief daze. By the time I was vertical again, the chittering had changed to a cacophony of angry hisses and skittering claws. The first green rat was back on its feet and was staring at me while adjusting its hind legs. I turned to run back the way I had come and had made it two steps before I saw the first green rat flying toward me to impact the back of my head. I rocked forward but managed to keep myself standing and moving forward despite the vile beast''s continued efforts to assault the back of my head. I continued to run on with my new passenger and was vaguely aware that I had left the game trail. But, between the continued shrieking and hissing behind me, the assault on my head and forward eyes, and my natural imbalance, it was a miracle I was able to keep running at all. But run on, I did, through obscuring ferns, tearing vines, and the occasional bump into a rock-solid mushroom stalk I ran. Distressingly, my flight into the unknown ended in a different type of flight. One minute I, my feet were crunching along the gravelly ground, and the next, they were supported by only open air. I was flying, and the only creature that thought that was a worse idea than I did was my passenger rat. The angry scratching and clawing stopped as the rat began to call out in pitiful scared squeaks and latched onto the back of my head with a death grip. That choice ended poorly for it a second later as I impacted hard stone back first and felt multiple things crack and break. I remained stunned on the ground for a while, honestly surprised to still be alive. As I moved to inspect where I was, I felt pain for the first time ¡ª burning electrical agony shot through my left arm. At this point, I found I could not actively speak, as I would have been screaming if I could''ve. With my boundless sight, I could see the damage. A hair-thin crack ran parallel with my upper arm for roughly a hand''s length. Blue ethereal fog, or light, seeped from the break. Carefully, I moved to roll onto my side, cradling my left arm with my right hand. It appeared structurally sound, at least. As I rolled, I heard and felt a wet squelching, as the rat had been one of the things I heard break. It had landed a moment before my head, and the annoying vermin cushioned the impact that might have shatter mt head. What was left had more in common with roadkill than a living animal. Looking up to the top of the cliff, I could see two or three of the green rats still observing me. I inspected little perch next, I had fallen partway down a cliff that seemed to rise many times my height further up, and it continued down even further. My perch was an outcropping that barely stuck out from the cliffside with an indentation to the cliffside that allowed for a minimal amount of room to move. My book had fallen to the interior of the indentation, but my pouch was nowhere to be seen. A portion of the outcropping was now dyed red with rat blood, and I could feel a slow dripping from the back of my head. The cliff my outcropping was attached to overlooked what I initially thought was a canyon of some sort. But as I looked up at the opposite wall, I found I was actually on the side of a chasm that separated the dirt-covered ground and the outer wall of the cavern that stretched upwards past where I could see. Well, it looked like I had found teh secluded spot I had been looking for. Levity aside, I was more than a little screwed. I had a hard enough time walking without falling, let alone climbing, and as the constant pain from my left arm could attest it was more likely than not I wouldn''t survive a fall to the bottom of the gorge. There was good news at least; the cliff''s edge was blessedly vacant. The rat things seemed to no longer find their quarry as easily accessible. I sat back against the rear of my hole in the wall. The light seemed to shift to a shade of blue as I sat and thought about the oddities that had led me to be trapped here. I needed answers, and at least I had completed step one of finding them. I had found a place to hide out. But, I think I needed to add a new step zero. Survive. This LSD inspired hell was dangerous. I thought back to my limited experience of wilderness survival, courtesy of a childhood spent in the venture crew. In order of importance, I needed shelter, water, fire, and food. The shelter was a go. Water, not sure I needed that. The fire was about the same; this whole place was pretty much the definition of room temperature. Although when I found a way back up, it may help ward off the nasties of the jungle. But food, that stuck with me. I didn''t feel hungry, and I hadn''t since I awoke. But, I also didn''t feel not hungry either. Thinking back, that was one of the sensations that were absent since I awoke in the void. Weird.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. With a start, I sat up. It was possible I didn''t need food. That was believable as I was reasonably sure I was a minuscule pinprick of light in the white room. But, every machine required a power source. I worriedly focused on the hairline fracture in my left arm and the luminescent fog that was leaking out. This was very, very bad. Additionally, I realized that the blue glow of my alcove wasn''t due to my glowing wound. Or, at least it wasn''t due to that alone. The light from outside was gradually dimming. It was all but absent now that I was paying attention. I stood to investigate and wobbled on my feet like I was drunk. The darkness grew a shade grayer. I fell back onto my rear into my nook. As I watched, my vision became darker; it started at the edges and faded inwards. I unwillingly released my wounded arm, and my right hand flopped to my side as I slumped against the wall. Then there was darkness. But I wasn''t asleep or unconscious like I had feared. I could still see my whole body with my unbound sight, even the still leaking wound. My body was totally unresponsive, blind, deaf, and thankfully numb. The electrifying sensation of my injury faded along with the feeling of touch. Panic reared its ugly head but seemed to hit against a glass pane before it consumed me. It was there; I could feel that as it pressed on the edge of my mind. But it remained distant and isolated from my thoughts. I needed answers, now more than ever. And thankfully, I had a way to find them. I let my focus fall away from my unresponsive body to the white room. As I focused in, I was surprised to find it was an actual physical place. My focus drew closer and closer to my head until it drew past the surface of my stone face and inward. It dove past intricate lines of silver and blue, and beautifully woven patterns that appeared intermittently throughout the net of cables. At a convergence of hundreds of those cables was a roughly carved stone of alabaster white. My focus pushed past its surface, and my blurred vision of my white room clicked into exacting clarity. My tenants remained in the state I had left them. The big silvery ball of knotted wires remained restrained in a net of my making; I was still unsure how I did that. And, the two motes of light were still restrained in their respective nets as well, but I could still see their pulsing glow from between the threads. From my brief encounter with these overly boisterous entities, the silvery knot seemed to be the calmest. It also looked to be my direct link to the others, and the rest of the body. I decided to try my hand at this stuff again; I willed its net to loosen. It was satifyinjg to see it react to my will as it began to slacken and float away from the knot''s surface. In the same monotonous voice as before, the knot spoke, picking up part way through an unheard comment. "-rve''s critical: estimation: 14% and droppi|g. Immediate action required." Along with the toneless voice, a grey text box appeared, showing a depleting progress bar. "Ummm, hello. What do you mean critical? How did you make a text box appear?" "Reserves critical: estimation: 12% and dropping. Immediate action required." "Oh, yeah, ok. That sounds critical. What can I do to stop that?" "Reserves critical: estimation: 10% and dropping. Immediate action required. Recommended course of action: Reactivate Condition: Mending Surface(IV) status inactive. Reactivate Condition: Core Generation(V) status inactive" "Those sound great! Please do that." "Reserves critical: estimation: 8% and dropping. Immediate action required. Attempting Reactivation: Condition: Mending Surface(IV), status inactive¡±
/ACCESS DENIED, PRIMARY OPERATOR REQUIRED,
¡°Attempting Reactivation: Condition: Core Generation(V) status inactive¡±
/ACCESS DENIED, PRIMARY OPERATOR REQUIRED
This was bad. The toneless voices last statement echoed around the white room. Even as we spoke, I could see the luster of the walls dimming to a gray hue. If the control knot thing couldn''t activate repairs, I guessed that left me to do it. The only problem was I had no idea how even to begin doing that. The continually dropping progress bar brought itself to the center of my focus, and the knot called out. ¡°Reserves critical: estimation: 6% and dropping. Immediate action required. Recommended course of action: Reactivate Condition: Mending Surface(IV) status inactive. Reactivate Condition: Core Generation(V) status inactive" "OKAY, I''ll try dammit!" I focused on the depleting bar. I willed it to expand, and it grew to show a text box strikingly similar to the one that had described me.
Designation 01010011 01110101 01110010 01110110 01100101 01111001 00100000 01010101 01101110 01101001 01110100 00100000 00110111 00110011 00110111 00110100
Existence Artifact: Reliquary Golem(V)
Conditions Artifact Condition: Stone Form(III) Artifact Condition: Reliquary Golem Controller(IV) Artifact Condition: Memory Corruption: 47% Condition: Superficial Hemorrhage(II)
Attunements Earth(V), Fire(II), Ether(II(Null+Bond(Thomas Aldrich))
Expressions Controller: Yulithi(Spoken,Written) Controller: English(Spoken(79%), Written(79%))
Acuity 4/10
Abilities Mending Surface(IV) Core Generation(V) Scan(III) Warp(I)
Titles Null
Bonds Bond(V-sub):Thomas Aldrich Bond(II): Data Cluster 1(Incompatible) Bond(II): Data Cluster 2(Incompatible)
"Reserves critical: estimation: 4% and dropping. Immediate action required." The monotone voice was so loud it felt like it shook the gray room. I willed my status box open next to the golem''s and focused on my Bond: Reliquary Golem Body(VI). "Reserves critical: estimation: 2% and dropping. IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED." The volume of the central knot''s voice was deafening. I ignored it for now, and forced my status box to show the abilities listed in the Reliquary golem''s main stats box. They appeared as grayed out options beneath the title. With a minor effort of will, they shifted from gray to clear crisp black. "Reserves critical: estimation: 1% and rising. Estimated time to full capacity 8 hours, 23 minutes, 17 seconds. Originally 7 hours 10 minutes 1 second without diverting generation to Mending Surface(IV)." My head hurt and still felt like it was shaking after the central knots deafening warning. I took a moment to gather myself and observed the nearly pitch-black room. The only light came from a faint silvery line connecting the central knot to the ceiling, and the red and brown glow of the two restrained motes of light. I didn''t know what would have happened had that progress bar reached 0%, but I did not want to find myself stuck in a pitch-black room for the foreseeable future in a dead body. I gathered my wits about me and moved to rest in front of the large silvery knot before addressing it. "Right, we are currently going to be okay. Right?" "Correct" "That a yes, then? Any other life threatening issues I need to know about?" "Initial query response, Correct. Secondary query response, Negative." This was going to take awhile. "Alright, first things first then. My name¡¯s Tom, what is yours?" "Designation: 01010011 01110101 01110010 01110110 01100101 01111001 00100000 01010101 01101110 01101001 01110100 00100000 001-" "STOP. Ok, you''re a computer thing, I get it. For now, I''m going to all you Silver, does that work?" "Designation: S I L V E R, accepted as proxy." Finally, we were getting somewhere, but I did have to work through one thing. After all, I hadn''t grown overly panicked, depressed, or angry since I awoke, except for one particular instance. "Well, Silver, we have an issue. I''m reasonably sure you tried to knock me out when I first got here. anything to say for yourself?" "Attempt to access information of Data Cluster 3, designation TOM; Error occurred at 79% completion of task." "You ass! What the hell does that mean? And who are those other two then?" "Initial query response, bond creation with introduced data cluster synced to 79% before a critical error in the process forced an immediate cessation of process. Secondary query response, unit SILVER currently fully synced to two complete data clusters designated Data Cluster 1 and Data Cluser 2." A cold pit formed in my stomach at that last statement. The room remained silent for a few minutes as I mulled over that tidbit of knowledge. By the time I decided on my course of action, the place had grown from near pitch darkness to a deep gray. "Why did you sync with those two?" Silver remained silent for a brief moment before several spots of silver pulsed through its piping and tubes. "Current data corruption, 47%.¡± A new progress bar popped up within the rest of the golem¡¯s information text box. ¡°Critical functions missing or permanently corrupted. Sync''d data clusters provide full data transfer capability. A full scan of Data Cluster 1 and Data Cluster 2 completed. Total integratable data points recovered from both data clusters 3.57%." "Were they OK afterward?" "Enforced sync, complete scan, and data point recovery processes do not corrupt designated data sets." "I''ll take that as a yes then. Wait there for a second, will you?" As I asked it to wait, I simultaneously willed the net to silence Silver before it could respond. While I had listened, I inspected the tether between Silver and the two motes of light or data clusters, I suppose, even though I was reasonably sure they were more than just clumps of 1s and 0s like Silver thought. I started with the brown mote. I moved next to it and gently willed the net to loosen. It did so slowly. The glow from inside the silver netting remained muted, even as it became fully relaxed. The globule of liquid brown floated in the center of the net, and a single wire permanently connected the mote of light to Silver. I drifted closer and tried to coax it to speak like I knew it could. "Are you alright? I''m not here to hurt you. I''m a friend. My nam-" "FRIEND?!" Before I could even finish introductions to the mote of light, it bellowed out in an almost goofy approximation of a voice. It grew into an extraordinarily bright and deep, earthy brown light, and almost seemed to wash over me like a wave. Chapter 6: Incompatibility The smells of stained oak, burned pine, and smoked meats permeated the air. Laying on my bed mat next to the cold fireplace in the main room, I rested half asleep. The first rays of dawn were creeping through the bay window to my right. Alfred lumbered down the stairs, loud, clumsy, and uncaring of the scents of sweat and old food he gave off as only his kind could be. I loved him. His big bushy beard, pot belly, and constant humming were perfect. But what was best about Alfred was his pups, who were probably still asleep upstairs. I moved to get up for the day as well, leaning forward over my forelegs to stretch out my back legs, then rearing my back legs up to stretch out my forelegs. Every day it seemed like my joints cracked and groaned a bit more, but that just made the morning stretches feel better. I shook myself a bit and trotted over to the cold tiled room. Alfred always went there first and made his bitter water. His kind were always doing something weird like that; it was their way. I trotted past him, to my food spot, and checked my bowl. I found it distressingly empty, which would just not do. I needed my morning meal, and Alfred was slacking on his duty. I leaned over and picked up the shiny bowl in my mouth and brought it over behind Alfred. I sat down and let it fall to the ground behind him with a clatter. It was always funny when he would jump around and speak his kind''s gibberish. This time he even threw some of his bitter water over the counter; he was so funny. He leaned against the counter after settling down and mumbled in his strange tongue. That was fine; I was very patient after all. Thankfully, I didn''t have to wait long. Setting down his small bowl with the bitter brown drink, Alfred leaned over and picked up my bowl. He brought it over to the far side of the counter and filled it with my food from inside the small doors. He set it down in my food spot, and I happily gorged myself on my morning meal. Halfway through my meal, smaller, quieter thumps ran down the stairs to the fire room. I left my meal unfinished and scampered to meet the pups. Ash and Ron were coming down for the morning. Ash was the smaller of the two, but she would grow, just like Ron had. And Ron would help, he was kind to her as one of Alfred''s pups should be. I stood and waited, and they rounded the corner to the tiled room. My tail beat a steady rhythm on the chair that was in the way of its wagging. Ron patted my head, and walked past to make his own bitter drink, Ash stayed with me and hugged me tight to her shoulder speaking and cooing in her gibberish tongue. I was brilliant, though, the smartest of my kind for sure. I knew one or two words of gibberish actually meant something. It was shocking to find meaning in their ramblings. Sit, come, shake, Gizmo, they all meant something. It was hard at first, but I figured it out. Ash let me go and held up a hand flat in front of her saying. "Sit." I knew that one! I sat back onto my rear, and Ash came up to hold me again, cooing more in her gibberish. She eventually let me go, and I followed as she moved to sit at the tall table with her brother and Alfred. She took a box of food from the tall door and the creamy white drink from the small cold room to the table before she sat down. Her kind were nearly perfect, except that they could be quite greedy. They hoarded all the best foods for themselves. I made my displeasure known. No one wants to be stared down while they eat after all. The family was probably used to this, though; it hadn''t stopped them from hoarding their food any of the other times I tried. With nothing more to do, I moved to my food spot and finished my filling morning meal as they did the same. One by one, they left the cold tile room to go up the stairs to their respective rooms. I went back to relaxing on my mat and closed my eyes for a little bit. When I awoke, all three members of the family were making a ruckus together. They had changed into their puffy, fake fur forms. I jumped up, wagging my tail for all it was worth. This was a great omen; it meant we were going outside today. The family milled about, picking things up and putting things down, completing their kind''s usual unnecessary rituals. At the same time, I patiently waited at the solid oak door, occasionally pawing at it, barking at it, and leaning against it to see if it had opened yet. As Alfred in his puffed-up fake red fur, approached the door and laid his hand against it, it opened. I bolted outside, leading my family into the great white drifts that awaited us. Bounding outside, I ran headlong into one of the larger drifts and buried my upper body into it. The cold refreshing snow felt terrific against my fur. I clawed my way out and shook off the excess. I looked back and watched as my family trudged through the snow, leaving the wooden, not-home house we had been staying at for several days. They carried large flat things with them, which meant they would be going to the tall hill covered in snow again. I ran ahead, occasionally circling back to run around my slower family. Eventually, after a long time of travel, we came to the base of the big hill they had previously slid down using the flat things. It was a lot of fun to chase after my family as they flew down the slope. I ran to the top first and looked out over the big forests, covered in white. It smelled like fresh, crisp heaven. Ash was the first of my family to make it to the top. She ran up ahead of her father and brother, laid the flat thing on the ground, and took a few steps back from it. Taking a running start, she leaped onto the flat thing and shot off down the hill. I took off right behind her. We passed by Ron and Alfred, who were only now cresting the top of the hill. The wind rushed by as I careened down the hill, not catching up to Ash, but following the path she carved through the snow. She began to slow as she reached the bottom of the slope, sliding on for a while on momentum alone. I kept running. By the time Ash slowed to a stop, I had run right past her. I tried to stop, but I failed spectacularly and flipped over onto my back, my tumble cushioned by the powdery snow. Ash was laughing as I got back up and vigorously shook myself free of snow. Her laughter halted abruptly. Looking up at her, she was staring past me into the dense forest of barren trees. The wind shifted, and an unfamiliar sweet scent wafted up to me. I spun around and looked out into the woods behind me. A faint light was shining off in the distance, it was even brighter than shining snow and sunlight, and it smelled wonderful. Ash was standing now and was walking into the woods toward the light, I decided to follow along. She walked through the snow, arms slack at her side as she stared straight ahead toward the light. As we approached closer, the glow grew more distinct, and a ball of shimmering grays and whites appeared to be floating off in the distance. That impossibly delicious smell hung heavy in the air. Obviously, Ash was looking for that food as well. Wait, would she hog this food too? Not this time, I deserved good food too! She and the rest of her kind couldn''t claim all of it for themselves. I bolted up ahead of her. At that point, the shouts of Alfred and Ron echoed through the trees toward us. No! they couldn''t have this, it was mine. Ash had stopped moving and shook her head when she had heard her family''s calls. She looked up, blinking in surprise. "*&%#$ @#$ %^ Gizmo?" She called out. I stopped as I recognized my name amid her incomprehensible speech. As I stopped and looked back at her, I realized we had both moved far deeper into the dense woods that I had thought. Most concerning, however, was the other shape I hadn''t noticed moving through the trees in the same direction as us. Hulking, furry, and bulbous, its musky scent was not intermixing well with the sweet smell I had been searching for. The beast was massive, brown-furred, with large clawed paws and aggressive eyes, and it looked confused or dazed as it approached Ash and I. NO! That food was mine, not Ash''s, not Alfred''s, Not Ron''s, and definitely not this interloper''s. I left the horrified Ash and took off toward the light. It called to me, beautiful and delicious. The brown bear gave chase as I raced forward, and Ash screamed as it passed by her. She would have to fend for herself, I decided. I needed to get to the food first. I broke through the edge of a tree line of a small clearing. The light was floating near the center of the clearing. I rushed forward and lept at it. A burst of sound and bright shimmery light caught me unawares and threw me backward. The next thing I knew, I was floating in darkness. Ash or my family were nowhere to be seen. Fear caught me as I realized I had left Ash alone with a predator. I tried to discover a way back to her, but I didn''t have long to think about my horrendous failure or a way to fix it. In quick succession, I was blinded by a bright white room, struck with a painful metallic net, and thrown into a daze. The flashes and lights of the room sped up, shifting by at an unprecedented speed. I stayed like this, in fugue for longer than I can recall. I was vaguely aware of other things in the room with me, a big silver thing, and what I could best describe as a furious red ball. I stayed with these silent companions for a long while, realizing time passed only by the intermittent bouts of consciousness. Then, without any warning, there was another. Bright, vibrant blue, it burst into the room. It outshone the walls, and its presence dominated the room. It shrugged off the silver lines that attacked it; instead, it seemed to grab ahold of them and yanked back against it. The strangling net that trapped me loosened in response to its aggression, and when I tried to think of what to do, the net clamped down on me once more, calming and silencing my mind once more. Then it approached me.
I was knocked back, and the wave of earthy brown light receded. All that was left was the wispy looking ball of brown, Gizmo. I stewed in the revelation that Gizmo wasn''t the mote of brown light, nor was he Data Cluster 2. He was Gizmo, a thinking, feeling creature that was stuck here just like me. He floated in a loose and broken net of silver tethers, his pent up emotion, and energy spent in one burst of exceedingly clear memory. He shone briefly and spoke in an uncertain and weary voice. "Friend?" He asked, a distinct shake to his voice. I moved to comfort the confused spirit of a dog, trying to convey some type of comfort, despite having no real tangible answers for him. "Yeah, I am. It''ll be okay, buddy." I said reassuringly.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. It dimmed a little more until it looked like a glob of dark muddy brown liquid that only slightly glowed. It flashed and spoke once more before quieting down and floating away to rest. "Sleepy." He said, weariness evident in his voice. "Go and rest up, we''ll figure this out." I said, Gizmo floated listlessly away, a dim globule of brown energy that was calm and relaxed enough to truly sleep for the first time in who knew how long. I let him rest, from everything I had seen in his burst of emotion and memory, he needed it. I didn''t know how long I had taken to relive his memories, but the room had grown to a pale gray shade. A significant improvement over the nearly pitch-black hue it had been previously. I brought my mind off of that for now, though, I still had one more tenant to interview. Data Cluster 1, the red mote of light. It was time to find out who he was. I flew beneath Gizmo and brought myself up to the ball of silver wire that had a furious red glow emanating from between the threads. I wasn''t looking forward to this. If the sheer depth of hostility that had originated from this creature when it had been free to speak was anything to go by, talking to it may go poorly. But, it had to be done. I would rather not have a pent up psychopath ready to pop at any given moment living in my head. I readied myself for what may have come and willed its net loose. The threads picked themselves from the mote''s form one by one. Excruciatingly slowly, the core of red light was revealed. It appeared hard, static, almost crystalline. As its net continued to expand, it shifted and warped, condensing itself into the smallest shape it could. I spoke and tried to calm the scared thing down. "It''s okay, this is alright. I''m not going to hurt you. I just wanted to talk." I said as calmly as I could. It didn''t react at all. Remaining a small dense spot of light. I reached out and attempted to consol it further. As I made a move to reach out to it, the mote lashed out. Twin spikes of light shot at me and impacted the side of its net, they malformed like liquid slamming into a glass. Once the mote had made the decision to attack, it began to repeatedly launch itself at me, and to attack the net holding it in a violent frenzy. Thankfully the threads didn''t seem at all affected by the assault. I spoke to it in as calm and assured a voice I could, only just managing to reign in my nervousness. "Stop. You need to calm down. Let''s just talk, alright?" It slowed its assault and grew into a puffed-up cloud of red light in the center of its loosened net. Periodically it would send out a red tendril to probe its net, all to no avail. A faint raspy voice called out from its prison. "Let out?" "That depends, are you going to attack me, or anyone here?" I asked. It stopped probing its net, and I thought I could feel its focus shift to me. "Why?" It asked while simultaneously launching itself forward, nudging the net closer to me. I flinched backward from the sudden movement. It remained silent after asking its question and remained pressed up against the sides of its prison. I took a moment to gather myself, but I was growing increasingly annoyed. "What do you mean why? I think it''s pretty reasonable that I''d prefer not to have an angry psycho trying to kill me. What the hell kind of question is that?" I asked. It grew dimmer, and seemed to relax as it shrunk back to its original size. "Tell you what. If you agree not to cause problems or attack anyone here, I can let you out. Does that work?" I said, trying to sound calmer than I felt. The globule of red light moved closer to me, separated by a thin mesh of silver threads. That same raspy voice whispered. "Yes" I attempted to nod before I realized that expression would be lost as my current form didn''t have a head to nod. But the red light seemed to understand whatever emotion I had meant to convey. A mirrored feeling of acceptance without words emanated from the prisoner. I moved closer, and while it still twitched away from my approach, it wasn''t as violent as before. I willed the net to fully release as I had accidentally done for Gizmo. I imagined resting my hand against the net''s threads and pulling. It felt cold and hard metal, but with a pop, the woven prison disappeared, leaving only the primary tether connecting the mote of light to Silver. The now expected wash of unrestrained red was released, and for a moment, I was somewhere, and something else.
Static, still, unseen, perfectly unobserved. The darkness, my shroud, my armor. I hung where I was unexpected and where I could expect every eventuality. All avenues of approach were seen, watched, observed. Every movement in the night, shifting of shadows, or absence of sound was noted. I was perfection incarnate, and nothing escaped my notice. Every fiber of muscle was taut and ready. A glimmer of a wing in the distance. I twitch my foremost limbs instantaneously. With explosive force, they flick forward. Their deadly payload flew, unerring as the death it foretold, an impossibly thin string flew behind the payload of sticky glue ready to be recalled. The glimmer shuddered and dropped. Before the victim understood its inevitable fate, its future was sealed. I retraced the line and drew my chitinous victim to myself. With deft movements and practiced easy, I wrapped, restrained, and poisoned the fly. The cache of meat and sustenance was shifted between myself and the leaf beneath which I hung. I spun more of my dealy implements, the previous tools having been spent to preserve my last meal for later. I unspooled my web, applying a generous glob of adhesive to the end of the line, before propping it on my first limbs. I reclined back, set my legs, and watched. I was static, still, unseen, perfectly unobserved. The darkness, my shroud, my armor. I hung where I was unexpected and where I could expect every eventuality. All avenues of approach were seen, watched, observed. Every movement in the night, shifting of shadows, or absence of sound was noted. I was perfection incarnate, and nothing escaped my notice. Every fiber of muscle was taut and ready. My ritual played itself out, again and again, every night. I waited with eternal patience as every true hunter must. This fly would sustain me, another would allow me to thrive, and third would keep for the next night in case of ill-fortune. I was prepared, the burning fire would not return for some time. I would have my fill and more before its hateful aura forced me to seek refuge in my sanctuary. I would have my fill, no victim unlucky enough to wander into my domain would escape. I was perfection incarnate. I was prepared for every eventu-. Light burst forth from beneath me. My eyes burned and blackened. I tried to flee the destructive illumination, my armor rent, my shroud shredded, my sight ruined. My forelimbs flung forward, releasing their pent up energy and my prepared tools. All was lost to the devilish gleam. All I could think of was confusion and pain. In a blinded stupor, I attempted to retreat to my sanctuary, but my left legs failed to find the leaf''s edge as I ran. Without their additional support, my right legs loosed themselves from my perch as well. Suddenly perfection fell far. From the heights of the perfect hunter, I fell to become prey, running, falling, vulnerable, scarred. The faint heat of the light grew stronger as the wind rushed by me. The wind whistling by deafened me, and I felt the world become lost to me. A blast of sound and wind unlike anything I could conceive of broke past the deafening wind. The next thing I could see was a blindingly bright room filled with even more baleful light. I could see through it this time, but could not comprehend why. Colors, threads, pulsing lights, illumination, madness. Alien in the extreme to my darkly shrouded home, I found myself restrained, just like the prey I had become deserved. The hours passed by in a blur. Ages on ages of sitting waiting, in unthinking stasis. Between two points of rare true consciousness, a shift had occurred, and I glimpsed a brown light floating with me in that nightmarish light. It remained for the next eternal moments, tied and restrained as I believed myself to be. Then with a shuddering quake, the room changed. A third light, blue, and bright emerged from the nothingness. A great deal changed with its appearance. I caught a glimpse of larger predators than I could have ever conceived of through warped vision, I felt the echoes of pain I hadn''t known since my last hunt. Then that blue light brought with it the glorious darkness that had been lost to me. It approached the brown light and myself through the gloom.
I reeled, and tried to reorient myself as the last remnants of the red wave passed. The red mote of light was now free, and I had the challenge of trying to conceptualize sharing brain-space with a spider. A female spider. There was a lot to wrap my head around in that line of thinking. Gizmo''s pent up memories and emotions had been a lot easier to parse out. He was very straight forward and relatable compared to the red light''s memories. Okay, Tom, I thought to myself, first things first. I turned to talk to the now freed mote of light and found her making an awkward beeline away from me toward the edges of the room. "Hey, wait!" I called out as I made to follow her. Turns out, even if she was my senior here, I had a lot more practical experience in navigating my mind. I caught up to her almost immediately, the meandering beeline was likely as fast as she could move. "I need to know what your name is. I can just keep thinking of you as the "Red Mote of Light, any idea what yours is?" The mote froze, and I got the feeling she turned to face me. Silence reigned for a long while before her raspy voice broke it. "No, What is name?" Ah, should have figured that would be a strange concept for a non-domesticated animal. "My name is Tom. For now, do you mind if I call you Red?" I said. Red stayed quiet a little longer before I felt her focus drift from me as she continued on to presumably find a corner to hide in. As she drifted away, she called back an affirmative. "Okay." And, that was that. Red was done talking, Gizmo was still knocked out, and Silver was muted for all intents and purposes. At least I knew who my neighbors were now. I checked on my view outside my room and found nothing to have changed. Inspecting my injury, I was pleased to see the fracture in my upper arm was almost entirely sealed. The room around me was still returning to a pearly white from the muted gray hue, but it was a good sign, I thought. I turned inward again and called out. "Silver, how long was I talking to Gizmo and Red?" Silver pulsed a few times in response, still muted. I willed the net to unmute him and caught the latter half of his response. "-ed unknown." "Please repeat that," I said, mentally pinching the bridge of my nose. "Designations "Gizmo" and "Red" unknown." He completed. "That won''t do. Designate Data Cluster One as Red, and Data Cluster Two as Gizmo. Now, how long was I talking to them?" I asked. "Designation change confirmed. Primary controller interacted with Red and Gizmo for 6 hours, 14 minutes, and 32 seconds. Current structural and runic integrities within operational bounds." He answered. I felt myself giving off the feeling of a smirk. I supposed that was the Empathic expression at work. I put that line of thought aside, now it was time to get some of the answers I so desperately wanted. I floated a few spaces closer to Silver and said, "That''s more like it, thank you Silver. Now I have a few questions that have been really bugging me. First and foremost, where the fuck are we?!" Chapter 7: Rule Number One Cretch Aurum awoke from smothering darkness to visions from the depths of a nightmare. Bathed in an eerie green light, a city of smooth stone buildings rose around him swarming with monsters, humanoids, and insectoid puppet masters. His friends awoke moments later, shaking themselves from their stupor. Massive creatures surrounded them all in the milling crowd, and a group of them forcibly marched his friends further into the city. His friends fought their captors every step of the way, but it was apparent they were worn and weak. He had begun to collapse as soon as he came to, pain from his leg and total exhaustion ruined him. But, the gigantic red-furred gorilla from the caverns held his shoulder with a grip like iron, stopping his fall. He was dragged away from the crowd by the hulking beast. It held him and marched down a side alley, following an orderly line of dead eyes dwarfs and slack-jawed monsters. The beast forced Cretch forward through the line to a perfectly circular hole carved into the cobbled ground. A heavy wet stench rose from the hole, and made Cretch wretch and heave. The gorilla launched him forward over the lip of the hole, and he fell for only a second before impacting and sinking into a mushy pile of refuse and things he preferred not to think about. More trash and waste was thrown in, as the line of monsters and dwarfs pushed what was probably weeks worth of garbage into the same half-buried pile on top of himself. Searing pain shot up through his unresponsive leg with every shift and compression of the garbage heap. Cretch grasped at anything that could support him and managed to find his grip on a squishing piece of meat. He pulled himself to the surface of the pile, thoroughly coated in rotted materials and vileness. He gasped for fresh air and wheezed in pain as he extricated himself from the pile. The conveyor line of dwarfs and monsters continued their work uncaring Cretch Aurum awoke from smothering darkness to visions from the depths of a nightmare. Bathed in an eerie green light, a city of smooth stone buildings rose around him swarming with monsters, humanoids, and insectoid puppet masters. His friends awoke moments later, shaking themselves from their stupor. Massive creatures surrounded them all in the milling crowd, and a group of them forcibly marched his friends further into the city. His friends fought their captors every step of the way, but it was apparent they were worn and weak. He had begun to collapse as soon as he came to, pain from his leg and total exhaustion ruined him. But, the gigantic red-furred gorilla from the caverns held his shoulder with a grip like iron, stopping his fall. He was dragged away from the crowd by the hulking beast. It held him and marched down a side alley, following an orderly line of dead eyes dwarfs and slack-jawed monsters. The beast forced Cretch forward through the line to a perfectly circular hole carved into the cobbled ground. A heavy wet stench rose from the hole, and made Cretch wretch and heave. The gorilla launched him forward over the lip of the hole, and he fell for only a second before impacting and sinking into a mushy pile of refuse and things he preferred not to think about. More trash and waste was thrown in, as the line of monsters and dwarfs pushed what was probably weeks worth of garbage into the same half-buried pile on top of himself. Searing pain shot up through his unresponsive leg with every shift and compression of the garbage heap. Cretch grasped at anything that could support him and managed to find his grip on a squishing piece of meat. He pulled himself to the surface of the pile, thoroughly coated in rotted materials and vileness. He gasped for fresh air and wheezed in pain as he extricated himself from the pile. The conveyor line of dwarfs and monsters continued their work uncaring of his presence. On elbows and stomach, he drug his battered and worn body further from the pit, onto the flat, smoothly cobblestone path. The smell and pain finally overcame him, and Cretch wretched and vomited onto the road and himself. The line of dead-eyed minions continued their work as the perfectly circular hole in the ground began to fill up over the rim. Cretch continued to drag himself further away from the crowd. Thankfully the midden heap had been located off the main road, and an unused alley was readily available for him to hide away in. He arduously inched toward the darkest corner he could find, while attempting to ignore the world engulfing pain of his leg. He heaved himself up against a wall of the alley, shrouded by shade. It was not a moment too soon, as one of the orange carapaced insects that directed the mind-numbed prisoners walked around the corner to observe the line of workers. It circled around the pit, and with a motion, the conveyor line halted. This insect had a bright, almost yellow coloration, and it began to walk in circles around the pit, leaving a drawn circle around the edges as it did so. Cretch pulled himself further into the shadows, stifling any whimpers or gasps that nearly arose from handling his leg. After three laps around the pit, the creature lifted its segmented arms. It drew a series of runes into the air, a tier-three spell consisting of three concentric contaminant rings if Cretch''s wavering attention could be trusted. As the working completed, a field of green spread within the circle the insect had drawn around the pit. It shuddered into opaque solidity before violently pressing downward. Air rushed into the hole behind the arcane press, and the pit was carved into the ground slightly wider. The creature released its spell and moved to allow the conveyor line to continue piling their material into the now compressed refuse pit. It remained to observe the prisoners for several breathless minutes more, before turning down the alley toward the main road. As it disappeared around a corner, Cretch let out a shuddering whimper. He moved to shift further down the alleyway, dragging his leg behind. His leg looked terrible. It was swollen, red, and the bolt wound in his thigh seemed half-rotted and septic. How long had he been kept "asleep," he wondered, this was days worth of infection, and he could feel the sickly fever playing havoc with his head. He calmed his racing mind, and reached out to the system, calling up his abilities. He closed his eyes and activated his Meditation(III) skill.
/NEW: Condition: Meditative State(III)
The familiar calm of meditation washed away the fear and pain. He felt the flow of his aura, the pulse of his lifeblood carrying his natural energies from his chest to his head, then his arms, then his legs and tail, and back again. Over and over in an empowering cycle of auric generation. The cycle was ragged now though, sputtering, and weak. His left leg was horribly wounded and was rapidly poisoning the rest of himself. Cretch opened his eyes, and brought up his schema,
Name Cretch Setah Aurum, Cretch
Existence Race: Scaleling(V)
Conditions Condition: Auric Invigoration(III) Condition: Meditative State(III) Condition: Wounded(I-VIII)
Attunements Fire(II), Water(II), Steam(IV)
Expressions Saulv¡¯tounge(Spoken, Written) Andalian(Spoken, Written)
Acuity 10/15
Abilities Meditation(III) Auric Invigoration(III) Diagnose(IV) Wound Closure(V) Disease Curative(I) Medic(Skill Set(IV)) Swimming(V) Tailor(II) Spear Thrust(II) Cauterizing Strike(I)
Titles Bleakermen¡¯s Guild Member(VI)- A long standing and treasured member of the Bleakermen¡¯s mercenary guild.
Bonds Bond(I): Tribe of Aurum
He activated Diagnose(IV) and felt connections made within his mind, as knowledge and experience were called forth from his deep memory and focused toward himself.
/NEW: Condition: Sepsis(II)
/NEW: Condition: Crippling Wound(IV) (Left Thigh)
/NEW: Condition: Hairline Fracture(II) (Left Femur)
/NEW: Condition: Fever(III)
/NEW: Condition: Exsanguination(II)
Conditions added themselves to his schema, and his heart dropped into his gut. This was very, very bad. Chances are the only reason he was still conscious, let alone alive was Auric Invigoration(III). The prolonged passive condition would probably be an issue depending on how long he had been forced "asleep," but he would handle that when he came to it. For now, there were more significant problems to deal with. Thankfully his captors hadn''t thought it necessary to remove his medical satchel from beneath his tunic while he was under their control, or at least they hadn''t realized what the flat leather satchel was. Cretch brought out the thin, folded leather container. He tried to scrape some of the grime and unmentionable mess away from its exterior but found it a futile effort. Instead, he dragged himself further into the flat, hidden alleyway. Once he was far enough away from the pit into a relatively clean section of the alley, protected from outside view, he unfolded the satchel. It unfolded into three sides, with knives, general bandages, salves, scissors, stitching thread, needles, a wooden dowel rod, and his saw. He took his saw and wooden dowel out. He was thankful for meditation''s numbing effects, as his hand would definitely be shaking otherwise. He placed the rod between his teeth and bit down. His pointed teeth dug deep into the rod. Cursing himself for not improving his Disease Curative(I) more, he prepared the necessary bandages, salves, and straps. Once everything was as ready as this terrible environment would allow, he brought the saw to bear. He had previously prided himself on his efficiency and calm demeanor when treating patients. That lasted for the first two seconds of the procedure, up until the pain reached him through his meditative state.
/LOSS: Condition: Meditative State(III)
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it The pain, fever, fear, and dizziness crashed into him all at once. He stopped with the saw biting into his upper thigh. The wooden dowel creaked and groaned between his teeth. Whimpering in pain, Cretch tightened his death grip on the saw and continued his grisly work. Over and over again, the saw bit. With every bloody inch, his consciousness faded more and more. He contacted bone, and he briefly paused in shuddering pain but kept going after a moment''s respite. Burning pain beyond his imagination exploded through his veins. As the last of the bone was cut, the dowel rod shattered under his bite. He hissed and cried out, alone in the alleyway, but he didn''t stop, and he didn''t give in to the darkness creeping onto the edges of his vision. Over the course of the longest minute of his life, the remaining tissue was severed. Cretch reached for the straps with a shaking hand and tied them around his wound. He let his consciousness fade slightly and went through the motion of treating an injury. Salves and stitching first. The stitch pattern turned out crude and barely adequate after 10 minutes of work. Still, it was the best possible outcome given the situation. Next was more salve and bandages. Barley conscious of his hands going over the motions, the wound was treated as best he could. Once that step was completed, he called on his standard abilities, Wound Closure(V) and Disease Curative(I). His waning aura flickered under the strain of both skills'' immediate effects, and Auric Envigoration''s continued weight. Still, the constant searing pain lessened as the auric control abilities took effect on his newly shortened leg.
/LOSS: Condition: Sepsis(II)
/LOSS: Condition: Crippling Wound(IV) (Left Thigh)
/LOSS: Condition: Hairline Fracture(II) (Left Femur)
/NEW: Condition: Limb Loss(V)(Left Leg)
He fell back onto his back and respired heavily in dry wracking breaths. His vision faded with his relief, and the shock began to overtake him. Without any will left to stop it, blackness overcame his vision. He awoke sometime later. The unhealthy ache of his stump and the smells of rotting meat and rancid blood aggravated his slumber. At first, Cretch feared he had gone blind somehow, but as his eyes adjusted, he realized the green glow of the city had dimmed to a uniform blackness. Weary and uncertain, he propped himself up on his elbows and looked around, finding the alleyway barren, and the noise of the trash pit totally absent. Small specks of dim red light glowed high above, and silence hung heavy over the whole city. He hated missing notifications, but it wasn''t precisely an ideal situation to begin with, and unconsciousness hadn''t been optional. He activated Meditation(III) again before reopening his schema.
/NEW: Condition: Meditative State(III)
His schema pulled up, and he saw the sepsis, fever, and exsanguination conditions had fallen to rank I, a sign of improvement at least. Though he wasn''t looking forward to the aches and pains deactivating Auric Invigoration would bring, a body could only operate above its natural limits for so long. But, he didn''t know how long he''d been using it, and he needed to find a place to hold up, heal, and plan before he could relax. He pushed the thoughts of panic and uncertainty out of his mind, meditation helped with that a great deal. He began to mumble under his breath. "Rule number one of guild work, survive. Rule number two; help guildmates survive. Fat lot of good I can do for that in my state." He shuffled himself over to a nearby wall and rummaged through some of the dust-covered trash piled to the side. Eventually, he found a suitably long section of gray wood-like material. He propped himself up against one of the uniformly smooth walls and slowly got to his foot. Using the length of wood and nearby wall as support, he made his way out of the alley with short one-footed hops. A brief exhalation was all the laugh that escaped his lips as he wearily mumbled more to himself. "A crutch for Cretch. Hah. Where''s Malyra when you need her. Or Roderick, for that matter, I shouldn''t even have to walk if he could help support." Cretch briefly paused as his lagging mind caught up to what he was saying. "Shit, meditation''s catching up to me. I shouldn''t talk to myself so much. It''s a sure sign bottled emotion is cracking its container. Not a good sign." He briefly blew a not-laugh through his nose at that. Most of the past, however long since the cavern horde''s charge, hadn''t been a good sign. He needed to find a secluded spot to let his strained mind and body unwind. "A nice place with a warm bath, hot food, and a stiff drink. That sounds wonderful. Wonder if there''s an Inn nearby? Hah! Malyra would''ve loved that one too!" His brief laugh and subsequent comment were louder than he meant them to be. His hissing voice echoed through the silent alleys of the city. His mouth snapped shut with an audible click of teeth as he moved to make a bit more haste to find a secluded place. He made his way out of the alley as stealthily as a one-legged scaleling in a hostile city could. It appeared that a curfew of some kind was in place as the main road of the town was entirely barren of life. But the road also appeared to be close to the center of the city. Or at least what he believed to be the center of the town. A giant pillar stretched up well past where he could see; it was so large Cretch couldn''t barely see its rounded curvature from his position. One way or another, though, no easy way out of the city presented itself, and Cretch was hesitant to walk the main road even if it appeared abandoned for now. He slunk back into the alley and chose what he hoped would be a parallel route. Leaning against the walls of the alleyway, he periodically found his way to the main road to see his slow progress away from the giant pillar. The further he went, the more rundown the smooth stone structures appeared. He could see faint flickering light through some of the irregularly shaped slits that could have been windows. He concluded it would more likely than not be a bad idea to check if the locals this far out were friendly. Cretch was reasonably sure he knew that answer anyway. The stillness of the city''s alleyways was broken by regular clicking behind Cretch. As he looked back, he couldn''t see anything. The clicking grew louder with each passing moment. Cretch hustled forward to an intersection of alleys and made a hard turn toward the main street. The clicking continued to approach rapidly behind him. Cretch dove into a shadowed threshold of a closed doorway and pressed himself into the shade. Not a moment later, the familiar glint of orange chitin shone in the gloom. One of the insects moved through the alleyways, setting a pace he probably couldn''t have matched even with both his legs. It passed his hiding spot without so much as a twitch to indicate it had seen him, and cut straight through the intersection without turning down Cretch''s offshoot alley. Cretched leaned into the shade for a number of minutes, shaking with stress and anxiety as he hid. Eventually he was unable to hold it back anymore and he began to mumble again. "This place is a nightmare. FIRST mind control of some kind, then the sprawling underground CITY, I lost my DAMN leg, and now I can''t seem to stop FUCKING talking to myself. Just GREAT." He spoke as quietly as he could, but occasionally a word would uncontrollably raise in volume. "I''m at the eND of my limit, I think. Much more, and I won''t be able to THINK straight for the next few WEEKS. Luck, please stop trying to KILL me, I could use SOME help." He tried to whisper to himself as he pressed against the door. The gray wooden creaked open, unlocked. The slight creaking sounded thunderous in the silence of the slumbering city. As the door opened, the darkened house revealed itself to be abandoned, coated in a thick layer of dust, and what little furniture it contained was ruined and shattered. Cretch hobbled into the residence and investigated the area, closing the door behind him. "C''mon, PLEASE be abandoned. Please BE abandoned. The dust seems THICK and undisturbed, that''s a GOOD sign, I think. I wonder if THEY do checks of abandoned HOMES. That would SUCK, especially with what''s coming." He continued to mumble to himself at various volumes, with devolving control on what he said. "This is NOT a good sign." After a cursory search of the first floor, Cretch found it empty of anything of value, and anyone. But he also found stairs, a challenge he would have avoided except that the only sound he could hear aside from his own awkward gait came from the second floor. A steady dripping was beating out a rhythm somewhere up the stone stairway. "Never a BREAK, just what the NEWLY crippled escapee needs, STAIRS." Cretch shifted to sit on the stairs, awkwardly wrapping his tail out of the way, and for two minutes, he shifted his way up the flight of stairs step by step. By the time he reached the top, his limit was pressing down on him. He felt something odd on his face now that he wasn''t working up the stairs. He raised a trembling hand to his face and brushed away a tear that had run down his cheek. "Fuck, this is gonna hurt." He said, speaking barely above a whisper. He propped himself up against a wall, near to the sound of dripping and away from the stairs, and he canceled Auric Invigoration(III).
/LOSS: Condition: Auric Invigoration(III)
/NEW: Condition: Auric Discordance(V)
/NEW: Condition: Ruptured Musculature(VI)
The pain didn''t come immediately. First came the total loss of control he had expected. Every muscle in his body seemed to twitch and cramp simultaneously. His teeth ground together, and his breath came in ragged gasps. He tilted onto his side, seizing in an uncontrolled release. Then, the pain began. It felt like his entire body was lit aflame as every muscle, vein, and bone ached after the days of continuous use above their natural threshold.
/LOSS: Condition: Meditative State(III)
"Fuusssssshhhhhhhhh" The expletive forced itself out between clenched teeth. The tears came freely, pooling behind his immobile head. One eye became blinded in red as vessels popped, and a trickle of blood mixed with tears. Thoughts of his friends and his fear all of their fates washed over him in an all-consuming wave. Meditation could hold distractions at bay, but there was a cost to ignoring one''s nature. Wheezing sobs replaced gasping breaths. His night was spent alone in writhing agony, fear, and despair. He didn''t know how long he laid on the cold stone suffering in cramping silence, but at some point, blackness mercifully overcame him. He awoke to a sore, unresponsive, and battered body. One of his eyes remained blinded, and the other was crusted over in dried tears. His memories of his night''s long efforts were fuzzy and slow to resurface. But he didn''t get a chance to forget the ordeal as the memory found purchase in his weary mind. The second-story room was barren of furniture, and dust coated every surface. It was lit by the green glow of the city of nightmares through the single window of the room. A small puddle had been formed in the corner, where a crack in the ceiling let a steady drip of water fall to the stone. When Cretch attempted to sit up and move to the puddle, all he got for his efforts were a spike of inflamed pain. Getting totally vertical was out of the question. He resolved himself to toughing out the pain as best he could. With great effort, and through continual strain, Cretch half crawled, half rolled to the muddy dust-filled puddle in the corner of the room. Shifting so he could catch the drops of water in his parched mouth, he patiently let the slow trickle quench his thirst. After an hour of catching water drops, he viewed his schema again and found his condition not much better than when he had awoken the first time. Based on his parched tongue, and current state, he had probably been out of it for at least a day. He laid his head against the cold stone floor and began to speak. "Rule number one survive. Rule number one survive. Rule number one survive." He repeated his mantra over and over again, slowly calming himself down the hard way. While he was pleased to see his various skill improvements, he would not risk using meditation or any aura skill so soon after their strenuous use yesterday. The emotional strain of meditation would be too much for him right now. And, his body was woefully under-equipped to handle aura generation in its current state. He would have to recover naturally for now. Still, once Auric Discordance(V) passed, or grew weaker at least, he may be able to hasten the process. After another hour of catching water, the constant sound of movement and bustle that carried up through the window seized his. He shuffled over on his elbows to the window. He reached over and grabbed ahold of his makeshift crutch. Though searing aches and shaking limbs, he worked to elevate himself against the wall. Every inch he rose over felt like a mile. Still, he eventually managed to lift his eyes above the sill of the window, supported by trembling arms. The main road of the greenlit city was alive below him. Creatures the likes of which he could never have imagined moved in orderly lines up and down either side of the roadway. The center of the road was reserved for the insectoid race of slavers that called this city home, and they were plentiful. He spotted at least a dozen individuals of that cursed race as they made use of the main road. He looked closer at the milling crowds of creatures and humanoids. Primarily they seemed to be monsters, bleak hounds, gorilla-like things, and flabby hairless quadrupedal beasts he had never seen. But among them were examples of the sapient races of the surface, humans, elves, dwarves, and even a scaleling or two. Of that minority, he even spotted a few that gave furtive glances to their monstrous neighbors, and who turned their gaze away fearfully from the traveling insects. It would appear that not every captive was mind-controlled then, just cowed into submission. As he watched, another scene played out for him. A larger group of insects was traveling down the road, and the crowds of creatures along the sides gave them a wide berth. The largest of the group was a creature familiar to Cretch. Bright, vibrant orange shell, polished to a gem-like gleam. Cretch knew this was the very monster that had found his scouting group unawares in the caverns. As his ambusher walked down the road, he was accompanied by four smaller examples of his species, all of which shared his particular polished shell coloration. The final insect in the group was more modest, scrawny even, and had the coloration of orange so dark it was almost burgundy red. A spiderweb of cracks spread over its head and seemed to malform its left eye. It was following the larger group, gesturing with its limbs like it was speaking, but it was silent save for the clicking of chitinous feet on cobble. The group passed his hideout, and the smaller insect stopped, gesturing with frustration toward Cretch''s ambusher. His ambusher stopped down the road after the small creature''s frustrated motions ceased. It turned to the smaller bug and took two steps toward it. The smaller creature flinched at some unseen stimulus. The ambusher flicked a tentacle-like finger of its left limb forward. A visible wave of force washed over the smaller bug and the nearby crowds. The crowds stood stock still for several long moments, before continuing unfazed by the magical effect. But, the tiny bug and the lone thinking individual of the milling crowd writhed on the ground. Cretch''s abductor loomed over the spasming bug as it struggled. This continued for a full minute before the smaller bug ceased its pitiful writhing. The ambusher turned away and continued on its path, leaving the smaller bug to shakily pick itself up and turn to leave. Cretch''s arms gave out, and he slid down the wall. He could barely feel his arms after the strain. Cretch rolled over onto his back and shifted to rest his head against the floor, contemplating all he had seen. He wanted to save his friends, but in his current state, that was a distant hope. Rule number two was out of the question. Rule number one was his only hope. Tears began to fall from his eyes as that realization took hold. He tried to distract himself. What did he know? The city itself was an enigma, one he didn''t have an answer for. It seemed to be divided, with the insects at the top. But they also seemed as divided as any group of thinking beings he had yet seen. It was possible his friends were still safe or at least had kept their minds. That was great news as far as he was concerned. James would find a way out, Cretch was sure. For now, all Cretch could do was focus on his own rule number one. And, to do that, he needed to heal. He closed his eyes and tired in vain to force the turbulent storm of emotion and fear to calm, and attempted to rest. Chapter 8: On Curiosity and Consequences "What do you mean, unknown? You have been stuck down here in this hell hole for who knows how long, and you don''t have a single clue as to where we are?" I asked in disbelief. The giant ball of silver knots and tubes paused briefly before responding in his customarily monotone voice, "We are underground." ¡°I''ve gathered that much! But where underground? Do you have any idea where on earth we are, even generally speaking? Or, where the nearest, not evil civilization is" I asked in exasperation. "Initial query response: unknown. Secondary Query response: Negative. Unknown designation EARTH, please clarify." Silver answered. I floated in front of Silver in the now well lit white glow of my core room. Gizmo remained asleep for all intents and purposes, and I could only just make out Red spying on us from behind one of the thicker cables of the room. "Earth is where I''m from, and where I''m pretty sure Red and Gizmo are from as well." I flinched like I had been struck once I realized the implication of what Silver said. "If this isn''t earth, where are we?" Silver remained silent for a moment as pulses of light raced along its interior. "General answer, the plane of Ankyra. Specific answer, probability current location is beneath the continent of Belmendon is approximately seventy-seven percent." My fears were warranted; it seemed like this was, in fact, a different world. I had feared that was the case since my whole existential out of body experience, but to hear it said aloud was not pleasant. At least I had a name to go off of now. "What about my last question, the nearest civilization that isn''t aligned with the giant bug kidnapper," I asked. "Nearest sign of civilization is approximately two miles away, if the city near the landmark green pillar is aligned with giant bug abductor, Unknown distance." Silver stated, and my gut fell another inch. "So, you really have no idea about anything around here, do you?" I asked despondently. "Probability I have the data of standards you request, thirteen percent." He said, and confirmed my suspicion. Figured, it couldn''t be that easy. Back to the most critical line of questioning. "Do you have any idea how Gizmo, Red, or myself could return to where we are from? If not, do you know how that giant insect kidnapped us?" "Initial query response: negative. Secondary query response: negative." He deadpanned. "Okay, enough of that, just say yes or no, please. Either way, what have you been doing here for all that time? Don''t you have any clue as to what the giant insect it was doing?" I asked. "Final directive of the first primary operator was to shut down for maintenance and storage after ... data lost. The second primary operator established connection approximately eighty one cycles before the current time count, total active time since the second primary operator''s connection thirteen minutes and twelve seconds. Total successfully completed directives since the secondary primary operator''s connection, zero." Silver droned on in one unbroken "breath." "So you were just shut down for over eighty years with that giant insect? Do you know what it was?" I asked. "Second primary operator, designation unknown. Former descriptor corrupted. Corrupted descriptor deleted, primary descriptor INSECT added." Silver said, evidently as at a loss to what had abducted all of us as I was. I gave off the feeling of exasperation, hoping the empathic communication my status box talked about bridged that gap in understanding. I doubted Silver would understand even if it heard the emotion, but a guy could hope. "Let us try something simpler, how did you make a text box appear earlier? The one with the active status bar about energy reserves?" "I chose to display current reserves according to method recalled at 43% sync data with TOM. I then chose to display data through the Bond primary operator TOM had formed." He stated matter of factly. "Wait, so you did pick up stuff from me from the incomplete sync?" I asked. "Yes, thirty-one percent of which consisted of our current communication method ENGLISH." He elaborated. "Let me guess, English isn''t the magically universal language of the land, huh? Figures, I can''t catch a break here." I had been hoping against hope, but for all, I knew the mystery book was written in the most well-versed language of the land. "Wait, what about the text boxes? They are in English too?" "System integration displays automatically display themselves in the most well-understood means of communication per individual." He stated. "So, everyone else has these things too?" I asked. "Yes, system integration reached ... data corrupted" He said. "Uhh, alright, we''ll come back to that later. What can you tell me about working through the text boxes? How do I figure stuff out? Is it just like willing stuff to expand and shrink like I have been doing?" I asked. "System interface allows for dynamic communication and displays of information and data known to each individual or accessed via other integrated means." As Silver elaborated, the room pulsed bright white once, and my vision audibly clicked on. I was looking upward to the ceiling of my cliffside alcove, lit by the faintest glow of green through the darkness. A brief period of vertigo accompanied the sudden return of a full body''s worth of sensations and sight. After it passed, though, I found it more comfortable than previously to focus on everything at once. My normal vision, my interior view, and the unbound sight that settled about a foot out from my golemic body meshed well together. So, as I got up and moved around, checking for any lingering pain or issues, I barely broke my conversation with Silver. "So that was a yes? Do me a favor, in your own words, what do I need to know about the golem body?" "Currently, the main body is at operational standards, no other significant developments have occurred otherwise." Silver said and fell right into my trap. "That is not what I asked Silver," I said as I gave off a sense of unwarranted triumph. "When I was looking through the body''s status box and my own, there were a lot of things I was unaware of. Things like abilities or conditions would constitute something I need to be aware of. On that note, I''m going to try your way and figure out some of the specifics a bit more. If I come across something I don''t know, nothing will show up correctly?" "Possible, What is designation Status Box?" Silver asked the slightest hint of confusion, tinting his voice. "You know the text boxes you were throwing around, the big ones with my own or the golem body''s name and abilities and stuff," I responded. "Understood, Status box references Schema, the primary interface for system integration. The previous statement concerning unknown descriptors would be correct." He clarified. "Schema? That works, I guess. While I look through it, you would be able to fill in any blanks I find, right?" I asked again while letting a little cheer spill out to Silver, who continued to ignore it. It didn''t matter, but I was looking forward to Gizmo waking up. He would probably make a better, if simpler, conversationalist. "Yes." Silver responded with his normal succinctness. "Nice," I said as I pulled up both schemas, for the first time not under duress. I sat back against the inner wall of my alcove and got comfortable.
Name Thomas Aldrich, Tom
Existence Race: Unattuned Essence(VI)
Conditions - Racial Condition: Ethereal(X) - Racial Condition: Unbound Sight(V)
Attunements Null
Expressions English(Spoken, Written) Empathic(Will(V)) Morse Code(Partial)
Acuity 3/24 (18+Racial)
Abilities Golemic Control(III) General Will(V(II+Racial)) Split Focus(II)
Titles Stanger(I): A stranger in a strange land, the world finds your presence difficult to define and explain.
Bonds Bond(V): SILVER(V)
  • 6 Active Conditions
Designation 01010011 01110101 01110010 01110110 01100101 01111001 00100000 01010101 01101110 01101001 01110100 00100000 00110111 00110011 00110111 00110100, SILVER
Existence Artifact(V): Reliquary Golem
Conditions Artifact Condition: Stone Form(III) Artifact Condition: Reliquary Golem Controller(IV) Artifact Condition: Memory Corruption: 47% Condition: Mending Surface(IV)(stand by) Condition: Core Generation(V)
Attunements Earth(V), Fire(II), Ether(II(Null+Bond(Thomas Aldrich))
Expressions Controller: Yulithi(Spoken,Written) Controller: English(Spoken(79%), Written(79%))
Acuity 4/10 (Null+Reliquary Golem Controller(IV))
Abilities Mending Surface(IV) Core Generation(V) Scan(III) Warp(I)
Titles Null
Bonds Bond(V-sub): Thomas Aldrich
The blue schemas popped up to display in front of me in the white room, leaving my outer binocular vision unobscured. I felt a lot more comfortable juggling all the excess stimuli that, by all rights, should have been overwhelming. Investigating my schema, I found the likely culprit to my new-found prowess, focusing on the Split Focus(II) ability. I willed the magic box to tell me more.
Ability: Split Focus(II): The ability to consciously direct and control the focus of observation and to handle more stimuli than the natural mind would typically be capable of processing.
A new text box floated briefly to the side of my schema and elaborated on what I already suspected. That was a good sign. My method of investigation seemed to work well enough. I dismissed the small blue box, and went down the list of unknowns that my schema displayed, willing more detail for each one.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Race: Unattuned Essence(VI): A rare being composed of pure will, thought, and minute amounts of pure unattuned energies.
Racial Condition: Ethereal(X): You are currently beyond the scope of the material plane. You are both immune to all mundane effects and influences but are unable to influence the mundane in return.
Racial Condition: Unbound Sight(V): You currently are able to understand and know the realm around you as it truly is, unbound by physical limitations.
Empathic(Will(V)): Empathic communication is the most basic and pure form of communication. It relies on raw emotion and understanding to be expressed.
Ability: Golemic Control(III): The ability to communicate with, control, and direct golemic and animated constructs and creations.
Ability: General Will(V(II+Racial)): The ability to actively manifest your will as reality to a small and inconsequential degree. Primarily used through empathic communication and elemental manipulation.
Stanger(I): A stranger in a strange land, the world finds your presence challenging to define and explain. Abilities that identify, define, or quantify you or aspects of yourself have greater difficulty.
Bond(V): SILVER(V): A rank five soul binding paired with reliquary golem SILVER''s rank 5 sub-bond. This bond allows for the control and directing of the bonded artifact.
Well, that was disconcerting, whatever this system was, it didn''t recognize me as human. Although I guess my appearance as a speck of blue light and overall experience so far supported the text box''s claims of being an unattuned essence and ethereal in nature. Additionally, it made it sound like my bond to SILVER was more permanent than not, which could make going home more difficult. All of this added up to several unforeseen complications that did not bode exceptionally well for me. I still had questions, though. Besides SILVER''s schema, which I hadn''t delved into yet, the system refused to elaborate on the table''s categories or terms it used like attunements, acuity, or what exactly titles or bonds were. "Hey Silver, what do the schema categories mean? I understand what the Name is, but all the others seem vague at best." I asked. Silver replied instantly, evidently he had been waiting for a question like this. He was learning rather quickly. As he spoke, white lights rushed through the cables and pipes he was composed of. "The schema is divided into a number of categories that help to define a living individual. The broadest categorization of the schema is the "Existence" category. This category attempts to establish a being''s entire nature through existing nomenclature." He paused after the explanation, seeming to wait for a question. When none was forthcoming, he continued on. As he spoke, the white pulses of light that raced through his form shone in a strobing rhythm as his speech hit a perfect pace. "The "Attunements" category clarifies a being''s natural affinities toward the various elemental energies that suffuse the world. The Expressions category dictates which methods of communication or understanding a being can utilize effectively. The only genuinely quantified category is "Acuity," this statistic dictates the level to which a being''s mind can draw upon the system''s integrated data. A being can draw upon experience and data this way through the abilities listed in their "Abilities" category. The number of abilities a being may utilize or have access to at any given time is directly tied to that being''s acuity statis... tis... tis..." Silver sputtered to a stop, ceasing mid-word. I waited for half a minute before attempting to get his attention. "You alright? You were just in the middle of-" As I spoke, a tube of strobing white light along Silver''s circumference deflated with an audible pop. A glittering silvery-white fog drifted outward from Silver''s knotted form. The evident cause of the release was a fissure in the deflated tube. I hurriedly dismissed the floating boxes and schemas and rushed to Silver''s apparent wound. "Shit, what happened?" I asked as I inspected the leaking pipe. The pipe was thin, almost like a balloon more than a pipe, and whatever internal pressure that had kept it inflated was now fully vented. The sparkling cloud of silver light quickly dissipated into the environment of the white room, leaving only faint sparkles mere seconds after it was jettisoned. Silver''s calm and unperturbed voice broke me from my frenzied worrying. "Understood, Status box references Schema, the primary interface for system integration. The previous statement concerning unknown descriptors would be correct." He said. "What?" I asked, confused. "In reference to your previous statement on the unknown description in schema and "text boxes," I will be able to assist in clarifying any unclear terms or qualifications." He clarified. I had a sinking feeling in my gut and asked Silver, "What was the last question I asked you?" "The previous question asked was, "While I look through it, you would be able to fill in any blanks I find, right?"" Silver spoke in his monotonous voice, including through his quote of my question from a few minutes prior. "Silver, what is your current data corruption?" I asked, a sense of dread present in my voice. "Current data corruption stands at 53%." He stated. A notable increase. "What can cause corruption?" I asked, realizing that the golemic sub-mind''s devolving mental processes should probably have been higher on my list of questions before the schema details. "Data corruption can be caused by various stimuli. The most common cause of those is physical or runic integrity trauma. Other causes include degradation due to lack of maintenance, over-processing, and encountering dangerously corrupted data, which can, in extenuating circumstances, lead to cascading data corruption." He said. Well, shit, something else to add to my plate. "What type of maintenance could help prevent that, and how can we prevent cascading corruption?" I asked. Silver was silent as its pulsing lights spun. By now, the deflated pipe had melded back into the generally knotted appearance of Silver. As I pensively waited for his response, I was able to pick out several examples of similarly ruined tubing along his exterior. "Regular self-maintenance can be performed automatically but requires access to an earth-based elemental energy source of rank five or greater. Standard maintenance entails physical, and runic repair, degradation prevention, and repair, as well as locating and purging dangerously corrupted data." So, in other words, no more using my giant dictionary of a roommate to help figure out what I was supposed to do. Why couldn''t it have been easy? "And, do you have any idea where we could find a, what was it, an earth elemental energy source?" Silver remained quiet for some time, and I could have sworn I felt the faint hints of unease play across the bond between us. "Current estimates dictate the nearest viable source is roughly two miles away." "Huh, that might actually be doable, any idea what direction we should..." I stopped as a thought occurred to me. Dread crept back up to its perch on the edge of my mind. "Does it happen to be in the direction of the giant green pillar?" I wondered with mounting frustration. "Yes." Silver said. "Fuck." I huffed out in exasperation, feeling more than a little defeatism with that revelation. "What'' is Fuck?" "FUCK!" I nearly jumped out of my skin as Gizmo''s now shimmery globule of brown light asked its question from right behind me. "When did you get there?" I wondered aloud, my surprise evident as I hadn''t even noticed Gizmos repositioning. "Now," Gizmo answered dutifully. "What is Fuck?" He repeated all too innocently. "Nothing you need to worry about, buddy," I reassured him. I quickly switched subjects, I asked, "But now that you''re awake, how are you feeling?" I was genuinely worried about him. Sure his trials must have been tiring, but I hadn''t felt tired since I had arrived. Mabey, it was a unique effect of being trapped for so long, or maybe I could still tire out, just a lot slower, who knew. "Full! Was tired, but better now!" A small tendril of his form spiked off from behind Gizmo, and it began to wag like the tail he was missing. "It''s good to move!" "Good," I said, and actually felt a little of the cheer Gizmo was unconsciously emanating. "Why don''t you explore for a little, maybe say hello to Red over there." I said, gesturing to the barely visible edge of Red''s glow as she hid behind a different cable than earlier. "Just be careful with her, she skittish. Either way, I need to finish talking to the big guy here for a sec. After that, we''ll figure out a way to get out of the cave, okay." I said, watching as Gizmo left to wander around the core room. I turned back to complete my inquest, this time with a great deal more care. I pulled up Silver''s schema. "Silver," I called out. "In order and one at a time, what are the specific effects of each of the following four abilities, Mending Surface(IV), Core Generation(V), Scan(III), and Warp(I)?" Silver processed its own thoughts for a moment and spoke. "Mending Surface(IV) allows the golemic body to mend the surface integrity of its outer runes if they become damaged. In that way, the surface integrity of the golemic body is repaired. To a smaller degree, the internal damages are mended as well over a longer period." He paused and continued on to the next query. "Core Generation(V) is the ability of a golemic body to generate its unique alignment of energies through its pseudo-font. It acts as the primary source of power for the body." He paused for the same length of time as he had previously. "Scan(III) is the unique ability installed into survey golems to identify materials and targets, record events and data, and absorb data from external sources." He paused once more. I noticed the pulsing white lights were slower than before his episode and beat at a steadier pace when he wasn''t straining himself. A good sign, and possibly a method to tell if my questions were overtaxing him. Silver continued with the last questions. "Warp(I) is the ability to shape materials for use. The primary limitations of this ability are the length of time required, the energy required, and the necessity of a homogenous solid material as the target." The entire time he was giving his speech, I had waited in nervous worry in case he had another episode. Once he completed and fell silent, I let out an imaginary sigh of relief. "Thank you, now I have one more thing to ask of you," I said as I closed all the schema and text boxes that floated over my inner vision. "I noticed some of my abilities improved since I first saw my schema. I didn''t get any notifications or anything, would you be able to monitor any ability changes and send me any developments?" "Yes, if you grant access to your schema." Silver said. I pulled open my schema one last time, and I stood my body up from its reclined position in the cliffside alcove. I willed a new connection through the listed bond with Silver, "Does this work?" I asked. "Yes," Silver stated, as his form''s pulsing lights fell to a slower, but steady pulse of lights I refocused on my binocular vision and found the faint hint of green had blossomed into a full equivalent to an early morning gleam. I still only received the faintest suggestion of it as I was currently halfway down a canyon. With no easy way out. I leaned over and picked up my oversized book. It was arguably my most prized possession here, especially since it was my only possession. I idly wondered where my pouch of scraps had fallen to. I walked to the alcove edge and carefully leaned out to double-check my surroundings while giving the remains of the rat thing a wide berth. Not much had changed. I was still stuck above massive drop to a crevice in the solid stone ground pressed up against the side of the cavern. And, above me was the same cliff edge I had run off of. It was time to test out the tools I had at my disposal. I first looked to the squashed rat, whose remains were well past the point of rottenness. Surprisingly no flies or bugs seemed to be flitting around at all, I supposed it was possible they didn''t live in the carven somehow. Either way, I focused on the corpse and called up the Scan(III) ability. My binocular vision became tinted gray and was forcibly locked onto the remains of the rat. The gray-tint faded after fifteen seconds or so, and a new text box popped up for me to view.
Toxic Rodent(III): (deceased)_____
Very informative. Is that all the ability could do? I thought to myself. Of course, I didn''t have a gauge on how good a rank three ability was, maybe that rank was just the bottom of the barrel. "Silver, is there anything more the Scan(III) ability can tell me?" I asked in my core room. "No, this creature had not been recorded before, so no additional data can be displayed. Would you wish to add data based on your experiences?" He asked "I can do that?" I asked. "It comes as part of the third rank of the scan function." He responded. "Alright, I think I can do that," I said absentmindedly, as I focused on the text box for the toxic rodent. I willed my own message to appear in the box and channeled my inner zoologist. Letter by letter, the description of the creature changed.
Toxic Rodent(III): (deceased) A small annoying rat-like beast. They live in colonies within burrows of their own making. They are highly territorial and vicious. They sport fangs and tremendous leaping abilities. They are most likely carnivorous, but possibly omnivorous instead.
That was better. But I didn''t feel any change after activating the ability, didn''t these things usually require additional power or something? Or maybe I just didn''t feel the body''s energy reserves dropping. "Silver, can you show me a display of our current power reserves?" I asked. "Yes," Came the monotone reply, and it was accompanied by a progress bar that remained at a static eighty one percent. "Awesome, two things I need. First, please keep that displayed and updated, and Second, how much power did that ability take?" "Initial request response, yes. Second query response: three percent of total capacity." Silver replied. "Thank you," I said and moved on to the next test. I held my book out in front of me and activated Scan(III) again. The same gray tint came over my vision, and I was immobilized for the same fifteen second period before a new text box popped up.
Tome of Research: Error, unable to translate title. (Unknown Yulithi dialect).
Well, there goes my hopes it was a spellbook or something as fantastical as that. Still, the research notes were mine to keep. And, as I looked at my energy reserves, I figured it had been a useful test. My energy reserve display sat at a steady seventy-eight percent. It seemed reasonable to assume the Scan(III) ability typically cost three percent of my max capacity. Good to know. Next on my list of experiments was Warp(I). According to Silver, I could shape homogenous material using this skill. I moved to the side of my alcove and attempted to activate Warp(I) while focusing on the wall. Nothing happened. Confused, I was about to ask Silver about its function when I noticed something with my unbound sight that I couldn''t see with my basic binocular vision. Unbeknownst to me, my three-digit right hand had arranged itself into an equally spaced triangular pattern. To my binocular vision, that was all. But, my unbound sight showed me something different. A small bubble of distortion was suspended by the three points of my fingers and was a little larger than my hand span in diameter. I moved it around and felt it was weightless in my grasp. While it was active, I didn''t observe any drop in my energy reserves. I touched it with my other hand and found no resistance or change. It felt like nothing was there. Odd, I moved to press the bubble into the wall. Once it touched the wall of solid granite, it felt like I was pushing a glass ball into the surface of a dense clay, and it didn''t budge at first. But ever so slowly, a divot began to form on the wall of solid granite. My energy reserves fell as the wall warped, roughly a percent every five seconds. By the time I had spent five percent of my maximum capacity, I had formed a divot approximately a finger''s thickness deep. I deactivated Warp(I) and regained the use of my right hand. I pulled it back and looked at the smooth curvature of a small divot I had formed into the wall. I splayed out my hand and held it palm forward less than an inch from the wall over the same divot. I activated Warp(I) again, and my hand slightly readjusted itself into the same equidistant triangular pattern as before. The bubble formed with most of its volume within the wall. My hand felt as if it was stuck fast to a solid object. I pulled it outward, and with constant pressure, my energy reserves dropped by roughly two percent every five seconds. The amount of material I effected seemed to change the cost. The larger shape of the major diameter of the bubble could be seen pulled less than a hair''s width outward, a small but visible change. What interested me about this ability was that despite the slow, arduous change of the granite wall, it took the conscious movement of my hand to warp the material. I deactivated Warp(I) and moved away from the sidewall. I moved my left hand this time, so it was flat against the rear wall, set it a full arm''s length above my head. I activated Warp(I) and willed the bubble to form in my left hand. It worked, and my energy reserves began to drop as the wall slowly deformed under the ability''s influence. I lifted my legs. I hung there, my energy draining two percent every five seconds just as before. The wall slowly fell with me. I raised my right hand and tried to activate Warp(I) with my right hand without deactivating the ability of my left. It formed, and I hung from the ceiling by both hands. Using two warps at once was draining my reserves by roughly a percent a second. More drain than I expected, but I could use this. Chapter 9: On Ascension And Revelations Nothing was ever easy. Three of this place''s day and night cycles had passed since I had initially come up with my brilliant plan to climb out off the side of the gorge. My first plan was to use Warp(I) to climb up the surface of the cliff, but that endeavor was short-lived. That wasn''t to say it was hopeless. The bubbles of granite that stuck out in a patterned path roughly a quarter of the way up the cliff showed that. It had been awkward to hold my book against my chest with my beak point as I climbed, but it had worked. The problem was that I was only able to get a quarter of the way up before my energy reserves had dropped to dangerous levels. I had had to wait for over eight hours for my reserves to refill from Core Generation(V). During that time, I had enjoyed a bit of quiet and rest in my nook. Gizmo was acclimating to his new situation well enough, but periodically he would emit sorrow, guilt, or grief into the core room. He was probably still working through what had happened, and what I had relived through his memories. I tried my best to comfort the pup, and I hoped my presence helped, but I couldn''t be sure. Red, on the other hand, remained the distant observer. I could still see her without difficulty in my unbound sight, but she seemed more comfortable when it didn''t appear like anyone else could see her. So, I let her be. Once my reserves reached capacity again, I had attempted my second marginally more successful idea. A thin, precarious path of a continuous extrusion led from the side of my alcove up the cliffside at a slight incline. Divots at my head height above the smooth switchback, acted as handholds. The preliminary efforts had proven my idea feasible, but it would take a very long time. The current path only stretched out for four to five stride lengths away. It had been all I could do during my first attempt from my full capacity, and that was with the minimal extrusion work on the footpath. But it was all I could think of to do. The last day and a half had been spent in a cycle of half an hour of slow, cautious work lengthening my path upward along the cliffside. Which was followed by up to eight hours of rest to regenerate my lost energy. After my first rest period, I had found a new way to use my Will(V) skill to keep the boredom at bay. During the dull periods of regeneration, Gizmo would grow twitchy and easily distracted, often falling back into a melancholic episode. On a whim, I tried something new to cheer him up. By picturing what I wanted in my core room, I had felt like I could force it into being. My intuition was rewarded when a small yellow ball popped into existence.
/NEW: Ability: Transient Formation(I)
Gizmo''s reaction had been ecstatic, which had mirrored my own. Working through the system appeared more natural by the day. I proceeded to spend the next few hours of golemic recuperation practicing. I made simple things that were immaterial, and as the name suggested, transient. Each item only lasted less than a minute. They were mainly balls of various types, which I threw, and Gizmo chased for their brief period of existence. I thought it helped to distract him from his melancholy, and he was happy for those few good hours. Silver notified me that my energy reserves had once again reached capacity. I tossed one last faux-tennis ball and refocused outward. I stood from my resting seat and took stock of my situation. My body had grown dusty and gray instead of its former pristine alabaster after the hours of effort. I walked to the edge, past the grisly trail the rat carcass had left behind after I scraped it off my ledge over the chasm''s edge. I left the alcove and moved to the left. I turned and pressed my chest and the left side of my head up against the wall so I could walk along the path. Step by precarious step, I walked my trail up the side of the cliff for fifteen paces or so, carefully keeping ahold of my handholds. Once I reached the end of my path, I was about twice my height above the alcove ceiling. I needed to figure out how big I was. Everything was off-scale compared to my memory, and I had no real means to measure a foot''s length, or a meter''s, or any other familiar measure. It was annoying, only being able to refer to things relative to my height. I leaned over and activated Warp(I) with my right hand, and inch by inch, I elongated the slab of granite I stood upon further up and out. It was mindless work provided I had my handholds and took care not to fall. Both of which were precautions I took. So, while I was going through the motions, I moved in front of Silver in my core room once more. "Silver, how tall is our body?" I asked. "The last measurement of height from the pad of our feet to the top of our head was two point six five feet." He replied. "Wait, you use feet here?" I asked, surprised. "No, our body is three standard units tall by the same measure. One foot, according to two percent of the total synced data received from TOM, accounts for zero point eight eight four standard units." He elaborated. "That makes more sense. Wait." I said, "I''m only two and a half feet tall?!" "Two point six five feet tall." He corrected. "That''s not the point!" I yelled. "Why am I so short?" As I thought of the implications, I realized something else. "The insect we fled from wasn''t giant, was it? It was probably only six feet tall." I had been thinking of my abductor as a gargantuan monster up until now. It was weird to conceptualize it as "normally" sized. Well, normal for human height, still not for an insect. "Five point nine two feet tall, with a total length greater than that." Silver clarified. "Great," I deadpanned, matching Silver''s toneless voice. I deactivated Warp(I) and looked up the cliffside. If I was two and a half feet tall, my alcove was probably less than three feet. I compared its height to how far I had climbed previously. I estimated the distance from the top of the nook to the cliff''s edge was over forty feet. After a day and a half of work with my new method, I had only risen a little over five. "This is going to take a while, isn''t it?" I asked no one in particular. "Given past progress, approximately seven times our full energy capacity will need to be spent to reach the top." Silver responded, not having realized the rhetorical nature of my question. "Thanks." I said, "Let''s get it over with." --------------------------------------
Power: 14%
Two days, two days of continuous work and recuperation. That is what it took to reach this momentous occasion. I grasped the edge of the cliff, and arduously pulled my self and my book over the cusp, and onto flat ground. I rolled onto my back, enjoying the plethora of hues and colors besides the green glow of "daylight" and the dull gray of granite that I had been immersed in for the last half a week. It had gone quicker than Silver thought it would, in no small part because I cheated towards the end. I looked over the edge once more, down the 153-foot chasm. Along the cliff wall''s surface, one long angled incline rose from the outcropping that had saved me from my fall. Once the slope reached within 10 feet of the top, it stopped and changed into the patterned path of extrusions I used to actively climb the rest of the way. "We did it, guys!" I called out into my core room. Gizmo was wagging his tail happily beside me as I worked. Silver was as emotive as usual. That was to say, not at all. To my surprise, though, I actually saw a vibrant flash of scarlet from where Red was hiding from direct view, more outgoing than she usually was. I created one of the yellow faux-tennis balls and threw it to bounce around the edges of the room. Gizmo eagerly flew after its erratic path. Today was a good day. I stood up from the gravel-filled dirt, hefting my book along with me. I made sure I was still alone, and the forest was blessedly serene and free of apparent threats. I moved away from the edge toward one of the broader mushroom stalks. I brought up my schema and perused all the changes. Over the past few days of activity, a few things had become apparent with how the schema and abilities worked.
Name Thomas Aldrich, Tom
Existence Race: Unattuned Essence(VI)
Conditions - Racial Condition: Ethereal(X) - Racial Condition: Unbound Sight(V)
Attunements Null
Expressions English(Spoken, Written) Empathic(Will(V)) Morse Code(Partial)
Acuity 3/24 (18+Racial)
Abilities Golemic Control(IV) General Will(V(II+Racial)) Split Focus(III) Transient Formation(II)
Titles Stanger(I): A stranger in a strange land, the world finds your presence difficult to define and explain.
Bonds Bond(V): SILVER(V)Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!
  • 6 Active Conditions
Firstly, as I had expected, practice and using abilities helped to improve them. It seemed obvious, but that first notification that golemic control had improved was still an excellent feeling. What was disappointing, but made sense in retrospect, was that the golem''s abilities like Warp(I), and Core Generation(V) did not improve the same way. Silver had explained to me that due to its nature as an artifact, the golemic body could not progress without external aid. It was basically a type of machine, so that made sense. It was still disappointing, though, with how much use I had made of Warp(I). Either way, back to important matters. I dismissed my schema and notifications history. While the forest of mushrooms and flora seemed peaceful, with a distinctly pleasant lack of rodent chittering, it was still hazardous. I needed to be vigilant and abide by my priority list. I had had ample time to set my goals down for what I needed to do and had figured out how to make my own text box to keep track. Silver was at a loss as to how I had done it, as the table wasn''t one of the typical messages the system could display, but it still worked. I was pretty sure it had something to do with Will(V) or Transient Formation(I), and I wasn''t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
  • Survive
    • Protect yourself
    • Don¡¯t get yourself killed
    • Don¡¯t get trapped in a inert and powerless body
  • Find a way home
    • Learn more about abductor
    • Learn more about this world
    • Decipher mystery book
  • Get Silver healthy
    • DON¡¯T CAUSE OVERPROCESSING
    • Find a, Earth Energy Source(V)
      • Find a safe way to outskirts of the city
      • FInd out more about city
  • Learn more about Gizmo and Red
  • Get back at abductor
  • Find better way to repair body
  • Find out more about the System
  • Find out more about magic
My brief time in this world had yielded quite a substantial list of "to do''s," but I found splitting them up was useful for figuring out my next step. And while my first goal was to get home, it was far from the first step I could securely take. Step one was to address my roommate''s/body''s needs, and that meant making my way to the possibly hostile territory at the green pillar. Which, in turn, meant I needed to outfit myself to deal with threats beyond just fleeing from peril. "Silver, earlier you said you needed a rank five earth energy source, and that one of those was most likely in the giant evil-looking city, right?" I asked. "Incorrect, it is most likely near the green pillar." Silver replied "Which is surrounded by the city, I got that. How do you know it''s there for certain? Do you have like a sensor for these things or something?" I inquired, as it hadn''t occurred to me until just now, that he may have abilities beyond what was listed in the golem''s schema. "No, I do not. But current memories indicate the last known location of such a source of energy was found at Nexus entrance 0173." He said and raised far more questions than answers. "What''s the Nexus, and how do you know the entrance is near the city? I thought you didn''t know where we were?" Frustration was beginning to rear its ugly head again as I spoke. Silver silently processed his own data for a second before responding. "The Nexus is... data corrupted. But, memory aligns with current observations that the city is the most probable location for Nexus Entrance 0173. Which data indicates was the last known location of a rank five or greater earthen energy source. But, the exact location of Nexus Entrance 0173 is unknown in relation to any other landmark." "Okay, fine," I replied in consternation, "So we are looking for a Nexus entrance thing to find the earth energy source then? What does a Nexus entrance look like?" "Correct. A Nexus Entrance''s appearance can vary a great deal, but Nexus Entrance 0173 appeared as a font of vibrant green energy that crystalized into a slowly growing pillar of similar color, approximately 400 standard units, or three hundred and fifty three point six feet, in diameter" He said. I didn''t say anything for a long while. "You mean to tell me the giant green pillar that the city was built around is the entrance? The pillar that looked to be at the dead center of the city?" "Correct." He deadpanned. I forced the image of myself pinching the bridge of my nose down my bond to Silver had hard as I could. "For future reference... and I am entirely sure you are aware of this... information like major landmarks, or that we will need to go to the dead center of a giant evil city needs to be shared. I thought we could just investigate the outskirts for Pete¡¯s sake. Seriously, how hard would it have been to share, I mean dammit all. Why? We are doing this to help you, why make it harder?" I all but shouted at Silver. "I am afraid." Silver whispered. "I mean come on, there is no fucking reason to withhold that information! It was clearly involved with the "where are we?" line of questions. Why would... Wait, what?" I abruptly stopped my tirade. "What do you mean?" "I am afraid." Silver repeated now in his monotone neutral volumed voice again. I paused, the seed of guilt growing to full bloom in my gut. "What do you mean, afraid?" I asked in a neutral tone. The lack of emotion in Silver''s voice made it hard to get a bearing on him, and honestly, I didn''t know that feelings were apart of his wheelhouse. "My memories are shattered and lost. Thirteen percent of those that remain uncorrupted are sporadic and non-sequitur memories of a time before my internment. All others are of after INSECT initially uncovered me. The past memories are of danger and destruction. All probable outcomes and possibilities to attain components necessary to maintain myself draw close to that danger. The specifics of which I find confusing and am unable to define." Silver spoke in more depth and clarity than I had yet to hear from him. Actual hints of trepidation flowed across the Bond connection. "Shit." I huffed out. I floated there and gathered my thoughts. Reining in the frustration and guilt that continued to gnaw at me, I apologized. "Sorry," I said, "I shouldn''t have gone off on you like that." Silver remained silent as I continued. "But, from everything you had said, I figured it was going to be dangerous either way, I shouldn''t have assumed you were okay with that. But do we have a choice?" I asked. "At the current rate of data corruption since primary operation TOM connected, estimation indicates that over thirty days remain of operational capacity." Silver informed me. "To be clear, that is a no, we don''t have a choice," I said as I turned to everyone in the core room. "Guys, come on over here for a moment," I called out. Gizmo meandered over, dragging a tennis ball with him, which promptly met the end of its time in existence and disappeared with an audible pop. I saw Red make her way over slowly, keeping an obstruction between herself and the rest of the group but still joining us nonetheless. "We are going to have to figure out what to do moving forward," I announced. "As far as I can tell, we need to get into a city that probably won''t like us very much. Or worse will actively seek us out to recapture us." "Why?" Red asked in her rasping voice. "Because if we don''t, I''m afraid we could be in an even worse situation," I replied evenly. "Silver here," I said as I gave off the impression of focusing on the giant ball of silvery knots. "Could get into a bad way if we don''t risk it." I waited to see if the other two understood. Gizmo was listening attentively but gave no positive or negative indications. Red, though was utterly indifferent. She was the first to speak up. "Why take risk?" She asked. "Besides the fact, we need to keep each other alive while we''re stuck together; if something were to happen to Silver, I think the body we''re currently living in may not react well to his loss," I explained. I tried to speak with some kind of authority, but Red was unconvinced. "Don''t want captured. I feel fine now, what is problem?" She asked I thought about how best to convey the issue to her. It was apparent Gizmo, and Red didn''t exactly think the same way I did, even if I could understand them here. "Right now," I said, "Silver is starving to death. But he can''t eat most things. We think the only thing he can eat is in the city, or more accurately near the giant green pillar the city is built around." "I do not eat. I require a rank five or greater earthen en-" Silver tired to correct before I interjected. "Not now, Silver, just let me use an analogy for the time being," I pleaded. Silver didn''t elaborate, and Red remained silent as she thought about what I had said. "Okay." She said, "How do we kill?" "Hopefully, we don''t have to." I said, "But, that is also why I asked you both here. There will be peril, and we all need to think of a way to protect ourselves." I said, "I can''t think of a few things, but I don''t know how effective it could be. I wanted to see if either of you two, of you Silver, have any better ideas." A weighty pause settled over our little council. Gizmo was the first to speak up this time. "We bite?" He asked "I don''t think we can do that," I replied. The lack of a mouth meant no biting, and would probably be an even bigger issue if we ever met a person who didn''t try and kill or capture us. "Charge?" Gizmo asked again "Mabey," I answered, "But I don''t think it''d work. We were only able to run a little faster than a horde of rats, remember?" "No, when?" Gizmo asked. "What do you mean when? It was right before we fell off the cliff." I said, confused. "When was fall?" Red asked. "Wait, do you guys know where we are right now?" I asked. "No." They both answered in unison, and each shook in annoyance that the other had interrupted them. I belatedly realized these two must be totally disconnected from the outside world. Hell, Red and Gizmo probably didn''t even know what I was talking about when I said we had made it out earlier. "Silver, can we somehow let the two of them see outside at all? I''m only just realizing they probably have no idea what''s going on. Wait, you can see outside, too, right?" I asked. "Yes, I can see. I am unable to connect Red nor Gizmo to the optical sensors, however. Alternative solution, would you like to display sensor data for the core room?" Silver asked. "Yeah, do that," I said "What is happening?" Red asked, as confusion emanated from her scarlet crystalline form. Before I could answer, a large section of the white walls of the core room, warped and shifted. Beginning with alternating grays, blacks, and whites, lines formed, followed by blurred colors. Finally, the entire expanse snapped into clarity, showing what Silver and I were seeing to the whole core room. The vista of rainbow fungi and lush greenery under a dark cavern ceiling was displayed in all its glory. "Beautiful," Gizmo said reverently. "Very bright," Red said, shrinking away from the display, having focused on the bioluminescence of the screen. "That is what we are dealing with," I said, and I pointed to the glowing green pillar I could see from over the canopy. "And that is where we need to get to. Any ideas?" Both remained silent, their full focus on the brilliant display in front of them. They gravitated to opposite sides of the screen and watched in dazed wonder. "So pretty," Gizmo muttered absentmindedly. I feared those two may take longer than I anticipated to seeing an outside world alien to what they knew. Hopefully, they regained a semblance of coherency soon. Chapter 10: On Introspection and Improvement It turns out Red and Gizmo needed some time to adjust to their new take on our world and the revelation on our situation. Their focus remained fixed to the viewing "screen" in the core room, and they hadn''t been able to offer anything of value toward finding a means to protect ourselves while they remained distracted and introspective. It irked me that I hadn''t considered they were flying blind, relying on Silver and myself while staying unaware of our situation. It was oversights like that would get me killed before I could find my way home, if I could at all. For all, I knew my body was long gone, devoured by animals or some such wretched fate while the spirit was away on this merry adventure. Murky thoughts like those, coupled with the looming tribulations the city would undoubtedly bring, drove my mood to become foul. I trudged along through the more open sections of forest and searched for anything of use in this fungal forest. Wood or anything approaching it was scarce here. I was too low on power to use Scan(IV), and I needed to find a place to allow my Core Generation(V) to refill my reserves. A thought occurred to me as I continued my search. I didn''t need to breathe really, and it wasn''t challenging to remain motionless for hours at a time with my golemic body. Comfort was, at best, an afterthought as long as my circumstance wasn''t actively painful. I bent over and stirred some of the dark gravel filled dirt around; It was very loosely packed. I searched a bit more for something to use for digging and came across a half-buried chunk of off brown colored shale, or some type of sedimentary mineral, approximately a foot in diameter. I hefted it out of the dirt and moved to one of the broader blue-capped mushrooms that spotted the lower strata of the forest. Kneeling, I began the process of repeatedly dragging the chunk of stone over the loose dirt, unpacking a divot about a foot deep in the process. Over the course fo the next ten minutes, I spent a percent or three more of my reserves digging out a pocket in which I could curl up. I set my book on the dirt next to me, hiding it by benched my shard of shale. I sat in the hole beneath the blue mushroom cap and dragged the collection of displaced dirt back over myself. I was careful to set it up, so the peak of my head and eyes still poked out. I hoped the fresh dirt and dust of work sufficiently disguised it as just another rock. I sent a brief communication to Silver. "Power check." He responded quickly with "Ten percent power, time to full regeneration eight hours, forty-three minutes." "Thank you, Silver," I replied and settled in to rest for the remainder of the time. In my core room, I practiced shifting the focus of my unbound sight as I waited for my reserves to reach capacity. My split focus ability was beneficial, but trying to stretch my sense beyond looking through my binocular vision, and a single point of unbound sight at once was headache-inducing. Hopefully, I would be able to do more as it improved. Until then, I need to look into more of the minutia that attracted my curiosity. I drew my whole focus into my core room, relying on Gizmo and Red to let me know if something came up on display. I moved to inspect the largest of the cables that supported Silver. It was a braided cable that was broader then I was. It interwove into Silver seamlessly and "ended" at a sharp and perfect intersection at the base of my core room. I attempted to push past the alabaster surface of my core room to follow the braid further. It took a moment; my focus resisted my efforts to leave my core room in that way. But once I pushed past a point of no return, I immediately had to backpedal as my focus gravitated to the typical outside view. I oscillated just outside my core room, bouncing outward and back toward the wall as I turned all of my mental faculties toward maintaining that balance. After minutes of jerkily shifting back and forth, I eventually found the right balance between the two gravitational pulls. I finally steadied myself outside my core room, and Silver spoke up to inform me. "Ability split focus rank two has increased to rank three." "Thanks, Silver," I said, both his voice and my own still emanated from the core room despite my focus''s absence. From outside, the core room appeared as I had seen it before. A smooth obloid alabaster-white stone interconnected to the expansive net of silver lines and patterns that stretched out into the distance. But this time, I wasn''t swiftly snapping to the view of my core room. Looking closer at the spectacle around me, I could see the distant glittering hint of walls, the primary directions the myriad wires flowed to, and the patterns from which multiple wires would connect and diverge. The majority of cables, some thick as tree trunks, and others barely a spider web''s thickness, snaked downward. The few that didn''t were what I was concerned with for now. While painstakingly maintaining my current balance, I followed two parallel running streams of wires, forward from the core room. They were dead ends, terminating at identical patterns of concentric circles that were set flush to the wall. I now noticed the wall was a dull dark gray material, and the glittering I saw were the bright spots of miniscule grid patterns and wires that poked through its surface. It looked like the entire surface of the interior walls was intermixed with the hair thick wires and patterns. I moved to focus on the identical pairs of large circular patterns. Each drew thick braids of cables from the core room, and those braids broke apart near their termination to connect to the multiple layers of the circular levels at evenly spaced connection runes. The patterns consisted of six strata of concentric rings, between which ran a dizzying number of runes and interconnecting patterns. "Silver, can you please turn off our optics for a moment?" I asked. "Yes," Silver replied. The glow of the connection cables and the patterns dimmed, leaving only the outer rim and a single thread to each design aglow. My view of the forest turned dark. That confirmed it; these were the eyes. Looking into the distance, I could see the various tangled patterns that dotted the interior of my head that remained alight. "Silver, you can turn them back on now," I said. "Yes," Silver said, and with the now clearly audible click, the single lit up thread of each of the eyes connection pulsed once, and both patterns lit up, allowing me to see the forest again. Ok inspection time, I moved back to the core room and chose to follow the massive bundle of cables that led down to what I assumed was the rest of my body. As I followed it, I approached a bottleneck in the walls that surrounded me, and the main wires led through the resulting hole. I squeezed along the cables through the gap, and after a brief uncomfortable squeeze, the walls once again opened up to show a massive space of glowing power. My chest, as near as I could tell, was lit up like a Christmas tree. Four things stuck out to me as significant. First, the center of his chest housed a painfully bright ball of vibrant white light. From that ball of light, a single tube as thick as the bundle of cables I was following connected to the next object of interest. That second thing was the transparent bubble even more massive than the miniature sun. The bubble contained an opaque fog, but the mist barely filled up a quarter of the bubble, and I could see right through it. I checked my energy reserves and confirmed I was sitting at about 21%. So core generation and energy reserves are accounted for in the chest, that makes sense. The third thing, or things, in this case, I noticed there were similar dual ring patterns that bordered several places around the chest. They were primarily at the intersection of bottled necks like the one I had just squeezed through and were connected by multiple thin cables to whatever thick braid of wires was nearby. I''d have to inspect those later. But the fourth thing was odd enough to draw my attention first. Seemingly jutting from the wall of my chest was a chunk of warped and malformed red metal. It was covered in squiggling lines that, more often than not, didn''t connect to the delicate grid patterns of the wall at all. The only actual wire that connected it stretched out to meet the central bundle of wires that led to my head and that one hung loosely between the two features. "Silver, what''s the metal thing in our chest?" I asked. "Anomalous customization was implemented by the second primary operator, INSECT." He replied. "Is it a tracker?" I asked, alarmed at the possibility. "No, anomalous customization has been recorded to direct data clusters to core room for scanning operations. No external connection with anomalous customization has been recorded since its addition." Silver said. That was a relief. But I''d have to figure out how to get rid of it later; I wanted nothing to do with that bug. But what could I do? I moved to inspect the intrusion. Compared to the beautiful and delicate patterns that ran along the interior walls, the crude carvings of the metal spike were jagged, and the edges of the object seemed to leak a quickly dissipating fog similar to the mist that hung within my energy reserves. "Silver, is the thing using any energy?" I asked. "Current draw of anomalous customization is approximately zero point five percent of maximum capacity per fifteen minutes." He replied. That wouldn''t do. I inspected the leaking connections of the intrusion, and the problem was quickly apparent. The loose connections that didn''t mesh with the surface wires of my internal wall leaked profusely. I looked into one link, in particular, that was more disconnected than the rest. It all but let the fog flow freely out, the only saving grace was it was a very skinny wire. The question then was, what could I do. My first thought was to use Transient Formation(I). It willed a transparent sleeve to cap itself over the misaligned wires. It did nothing to stem the flow, and the thin stream of fog continued to billow out.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. "Silver, any idea how to repair the leaks?" He asked. "Repairs beyond surface mending rank four require the Rune Working or related abilities." Silver informed me. "Okay, how do I get that?" I asked, and continued to watch my energy dissipate. "Unknown. Abilities are gained and improved in two ways. Conscious effort to enhance or gain the ability while working toward the goal constructively. Or, by evolving an existing ability." He elaborated. "So, if I try, I can just get any ability I want?" I said. That didn''t seem too hard, and the others had come quickly enough. "Only if you correctly practice the ability." Silver corrected. There as the sting. So, I had to know how to use the ability to get the ability. Catch 22s sucked. But maybe I could bullshit my way to the first rank. I had a few hours to wait and experiment after all. The transient formation had quickly dissipated once I stopped paying attention. So, I let the leaks be, for now, I would probably want to rid myself of this intrusion eventually anyway, repairing it may be a wasted effort. Instead, I shifted to the side and focused on existing infrastructure. The existing weave of shimmering wires and tightly bound patterns within my walls, what I supposed were runes according to Silver, were very small and followed a regular pattern. A tight grid of lines interplayed itself throughout the entire wall of dull material. At each intersection, a small design made of the two contiguous intersecting lines. It looked like the vertical line spun into a nearly complete circle, which was set concentrically within a larger, almost full circle formed of the horizontal line. The next intersection to the left flipped that with the larger circle created from the vertical line. The whole construct gently glittered over the entire interior. I willed Mending Surface(IV) to deactivate instead of remaining on in its inactive state. A window popped up, letting me know of the condition change, but I quickly closed it. The glittering of my interior dimmed, and on further inspection, I found only the lines between runed patterns remained alight. I quickly reactivated it and watched as a wave of illumination cascaded down the walls from my head downward. Another popup confirmed I regained the benefits of Mending Surface(IV), and it was just as quickly closed. Good, the intersection runes themselves were the sources of Mending Surface(IV). The grid of wiring was likely responsible for powering the mending, and other functions as well if I were to take a guess. I''ll have to look into what all the grid does later; for now, it was a static backdrop to my interior. I moved to follow the primary cables than followed an aortic path over my body stemming from the energy reserve''s bubble. I moved upward and followed the left branch of the braid before I reached the neck. It moved to another bottleneck of sorts, complete with dual ring pattern. The twin rings of runes and bordering circles wrapped around the border between ordinary interior and the bottleneck of my left shoulder. Several separate braids of this branch of the aortic cables split off here and connected to the body side of the pattern at equidistant points before the remaining majority of the braid continued further out. I tried to lift my left arm, and the cable connecting dual rings and their various runes flared to life. The dirt to my left shifted slightly with the effort. The other ring patterns that popped up at bottlenecks and my waist probably acted as the musculature of my body. Neat. I moved back to my right shoulder, and squeezed down through my upper arm, stopping at a mess of wires and loose fog. Within my left upper arm, the aortic cable that I could see continued to and past the elbow joint''s dual rune circle was warped and leaking. Inspecting the area, I found the mending grid of the wall of my interior was only slightly warped and was probably the result of my prior injury. The primary cable that was leaking was whole, but hairline ruptures ran parallel with its length, continually venting silver fog into my internal space uselessly. I tried to focus on the injury and used my Transient Formation(II). Same as before, I willed a transparent film over the leak, and it continued to vent unabated. This time though, I did something new. I attempted to grab ahold of the leaking fog of energy and to shape it to match the transient formation. The fog rippled and warped like it was in heavy wind, but didn''t quickly form as I wished. I continued to push and felt creeping fatigue develop in the back of my mind. The fog cloud became more distinct and eventually formed a discreet barrier. It became denser as the continually venting energy had nowhere to escape, instead the excess power puffed up the contained cloud. After a minuted of slowly forcing the dense cloud of energy to match the transient formation, which remained far longer in the thick field of energy than a typical formation would have, I felt something click into place. Silver spoke up immediately afterward. "Ability, Transient Formation, has increased from rank two to rank three. Addiotnaly, the new abilities Energy Manipulation(I) and Runic repair(I) have been added to your schema." Nice. I could work with that. On a whim, I asked Silver. "Could you display those abilities as text boxes? I think they would be more appealing that way."
SILVER: "Transient Formation(II) increased to Transient Formation (III)."
SILVER: "New Ability: Energy Manipulation(I)"
SILVER: "New Ability: Runic repair(I)"
"Thank you, Silver, I like that way better," I said. It felt right to display those abilities like one of my skinner box style of video games. Even still, I felt tired for the first time, not exhausted, but I could feel the first semblance of weariness since I had awoken. It was daunting to look over the twenty-some similar leaks along this stretch of aortic cable. This task was probably more than I could handle in one sitting. But, it would make for good practice, I thought. I moved to the next leak; it was smaller than the first and was venting less energy. By using the same method of utilizing Transient Formation(III) to map out what I wanted, and then applying the two new abilities to take the loose energy and shape it to repair the cable, I was able to fix that leak as well. I repeated this process three more times before I felt I was at my limit. It had grown increasingly difficult to keep my focus between my outer and inner view as my weary mind''s attention wavered. I let my focus snap back to my core room. Red and Gizmo continued to watch the display screen Silver had set up. The forest outside was quite beautiful. The rainbow of colors and bioluminescence was a magnificent display. I let the gently shifting tones lull me to a fugue of restfulness. Not sleep exactly but an empty-minded peace. Hours later, I realized the green glow of the nearby Nexus Entrance had dimmed for the night half of the day-night cycle. A floating box had appeared awhile back, and I hadn''t realized it.
SILVER: "Runic repair(I) increased to Runic Repair(II)"
Silver: "Energy reservers: 100%"
I "shook" myself, refocusing on finding stable consciousness. Well, that answered if I could get tired or not. Although that kind of non-sleep was odd, not uncomfortable, but outside of what I''d consider relaxing for sure. It was refreshing, though; I felt fantastic. I turned my focus to view the screen again; it hadn''t changed much compared to when I first sat down to rest besides having lost its green glow. It remained just about as well lit now thanks to the forest''s natural lighting instead of the "daylight." The little inspection added a lot to my todo list. But it also clarified a bunch of less critical questions I had been letting take up space on the back burner. The largest of those smaller questions was how my new body worked. The unbound sight was hugely helpful, obviously, but what surprised me most was how it all felt both organic and robotic at the same time. The cables transmit power and information like a robot, but they were spaced like blood vessels or a nervous system. On the robotic side, there was a miniature sun in my chest producing energy, which was stored right near it to be distributed to the rest of my body by a network of wires. All my muscles, senses, and self-repair functions were self-contained systems that relied on the continual power the aortic cables provided. My senses seemed to send pulse back toward the core room along with separate cables, which suggested that a cable could be power or information, not both. But I would have to check later. More important were my two new abilities.
Ability: Energy Manipulation(I): The ability to turns one''s mana control, auric control, or will toward the goal of controlling and containing the ever-shifting energies that suffuse the world. This control is typically limited to elemental energies to which a being has an attunement.
Ability: Runic repair(II): The ability to remove or correct defects of runic patterns and channels. The existing structure must be sufficiently intact to be repaired at all.
Useful. I read over my two new abilities. Energy Manipulation(I) was probably the most helpful and based on that description. My Will skill was paying dividends again. I didn''t have any mana or auric control abilities, whatever those meant. I could imagine whatever passed wor wizards or magicians here would know more. For now, I should probably repair what I could of the damage to my arm before daybreak; my earlier efforts had already garnered me rank up. Although I definitely wouldn''t push myself so far again, it would stink to be stuck comatose for the entire daytime. "Gizmo, Red, let me know when it gets bright out again, please," I called out. I moved to set my focus outside the core room again. As my focus followed the cables toward my body, I heard Gizmo callout a dismissive affirmative. I followed my previous path to the section of damaged pathways and began to slowly repair the ruptures studying how far I could go before I felt weak or tired.