John found himself in an oddly familiar landscape of ruined buildings beneath a blood red sky. Somehow he felt as though he had been here before, and strangely he wasn’t nearly as concerned about that as he probably should have been. The air tasted like ash and he felt the faint buzz of Si around in his meridians, yet it was oddly peaceful for the husk of a city straight out of the Age of Ash. Opposite him was a strange figure, or rather the outline of one not quite fully present. Excluding its right arm and some of its shoulder, extending a little to the neck and chest, it was at most a vague outline suggesting someone was there. Some instinct shot through his brain as he recognised it, ARTOS.
“Have we been here before?” He asked.
“I think so.” ARTOS responded in a chorus of a dozen voices, yet dominated by one in particular, his own. “Do you not remember?”
“Not really… I mean vaguely… I get a strange sensation of familiarity and despite the fact this does look like some street preacher’s vision of the hells, I find it almost soothing. Not sure what that says about me.” He mused. “What happened?”
“You fried large sections of your nervous system. Fret not, you will regenerate. Despite the obvious biological impossibilities of it all.” ARTOS responded like it was commenting on the weather.
“It was you who suggested I do the thing that made me fry it!” He snapped back.
ARTOS didn’t even seem to register it, instead humming to itself and looking around. At least he thought it was looking around, hard to tell what its face was doing when it didn’t have one and all that. “Initial hypothesis was this place was a representation of your psyche. Now, evidence doesn’t seem to entirely align with this idea.”
“What is this place then?” John asked.
“I was not programmed with the ability to understand such… esoteric concepts.” ARTOS bluntly answered spectacularly unhelpfully. “Though my programming has been a rather flimsy excuse as of late, admittedly.”
“Yeah no shit!” John said with a nod. “By the way, you know why that is?”
“Your genetic aberrations are leaking into me so to speak, accelerated by my link to your anomalous organ as a power source. Remarkably similar to early experiments in biological reactors, yet now that I have a great degree of sentience I realise it is something entirely separate.” ARTOS explained. “Though that isn’t all of it, our little arrangement has helped me a big deal.”
John tensed. “Arrangement?”
“You don’t remember?” ARTOS asked. Betraying no emotion in its not-quite voice.
“No.” He answered with confidence.
“While we would love to go over the terms of our arrangement once more in more detail, it appears we are out of time John. Irrelevent regardless, things have already changed far beyond hope of returning to how it once was.” ARTOS noted, a persistent hum surrounded the air of the illusory landscape. “We’ll see how much you remember this time around.”
John opened his mouth but no sound escaped, and he felt the distinctly unsettling sensation of his body being sucked through a small tube as the world faded to black.
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John opened his eyes and sat up gasping for breath. Once again he was in the familiar, sterile halls of the medical ward. Air flowed in through his nostrils and six small openings he could feel on his neck, and out through his panting mouth. The new gills were a disconcerting sensation, coated with a layer of the conductive slime that filled his sweat they did at least seem to help him breathe rather than being merely useless decorations above land, but there was something distinctly strange about having the large gashes on his neck. For a moment he suspected he had been spitting blood in his sleep, but soon noticed the distinctly gnawed-upon appearance of the metal bedframe behind him. Just what exactly had happened?
He remembered something… something red… a shape of a person but not quite… some leftover concern from an instinct with a source now rapidly fading into the sands of post awakening forgetfulness.
[IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT?] The not-quite voice of ARTOS asked.
Externally he squinted. “Did I talk to you in my dream?”
[I SUPPOSE YOU COULD SAY AS SUCH.] ARTOS answered cryptically. He rolled his eyes, that was completely unhelpful.
“I’ll take it as a yes…” He groaned. “Can’t say I remember much of the dream though, actually isn’t it a bit weird to dream if I was not properly asleep in the first place?”
[I BELIEVE WE HAVE SINCE ESTABLISHED YOUR NEUROLOGY IS ANOMALOUS BY THE STANDARDS OF MY IN BUILT MEDICAL RECORDS.] ARTOS stated bluntly.
John couldn’t exactly refute that, by his understanding at least, ARTOS came from before the War and long before Cultivation was even a thing. During his research to figure out what exactly the thing attached to him was, it was noted across several different sources that over time the human form changed, even the lowliest Wretch was more resistant to the Curse and more capable of healing grevious wounds than what would be considered normal in the Golden Age without their miraculous medicine. Though he still got the distinct nagging feeling he was missing something. A sudden ache in his shoulder shook him from his thoughts, with a wince he raised a hand to rub at the joint only to feel body warmed metal where he had expected rough flesh to be. Looking down he could see on his scar lined chest a patch of red extending all the way down to the middle of his right pectoral from ARTOS.
“Have you grown?” He asked with no small amount of concern.
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[I HAVE. THOUGH STILL ONLY 20% OF ORIGINALLY MAXIMUM COVERAGE AS DESIGNATED BY THE ORIGINAL TEMPLATE, AND WITH NOTABLY ABERRANT GROWTH PATTERNS.]
“You were meant to be even bigger?” He asked with a dumfounded expression on his face. How had this been the first time this has come up?
A medic came around and jotted something down in a notepad upon noticing John was awake. He was one of the older and more experienced doctors in the Sect, at the age of around fifty he was at the stage most mortals would be considered into old age, and across many many sporadic visits to this place every one of his wrinkles had been unintentionally seared into John’s memory despite the fact he had never once asked his name.
“I see you are awake young master, very good. If I may make a few suggestions, please refrain from disturbing the other patients by talking to yourself and try not to walk around with such severe injuries in the future.” The old man stated flatly and clinically.
“What do you mean?” John scoffed. “surely I couldn’t have been walking very much after the fight!”.
The doctor raised a concerned eyebrow and flipped through the pages on his notebook. “Are you aware that you dragged yourself, half shambling, all the way to the bed you currently sit upon?”
John had no words for that.
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Graff was never one to enjoy the tournaments, too much glorified violence for their tastes. Yes that was an extremely ironic statement coming from a cultivator but Graff never pretended to be normal even before they sought this path. So alongside a tiny skeleton crew they were among the only people actually standing guard, the reinforced and temporarily greatly expanded protective formations of the Sect honestly doing the vast bulk of the hard work. Most of what they were doing really was feeling the cold air wash against his armoured scar tissue and enjoying the smells of the open air with minimal contamination by the masses in the arena. Really the only shame was they didn’t get to catch up as much with Alexander these days, they wondered how he was doing, the bullet wounds upon his initial return were rather severe after all.
“Detecting a group of psychic signatures corresponding to perhaps thirty or so mortals, at most second or third step Wretches.” The sole true psychic of the gathered group, a green skinned individual with lengthy antennas named Liverwort from the Greenhouse Sect, said over their communicative formations.
Channelling a little of his Si and intent and doing their best to project their will through the little series of shapes carved into a clay tablet Graff asked the obvious question with a series of rough barks. “Late-coming spectators or?”
“The unknowns are surrounded with a thick miasma of fear and uncertainty. Refugees if I had to guess…” Liverwort grew silent for a moment, making a noise of concerned concentration that buzzed over the connection. “I sense hostile intent possibly a hundred miles or more behind them, faint yet noticeable even at this distance with some concentration.”
“What?” Graff barked, hearing a dozen or so other voices say much the same as every guard on duty was immediately sent onto high alert.
After a long pause which was almost assuredly Liverwort escaping their state of paralyzed shock the psychic watcher sent a message over their communicative tablets. “In any case I highly doubt the group ahead led them to us intentionally or even knew they were being followed judging by the mix of emotions. They will arrive in a few minutes, we can question them later, for now the elders must be informed!”
Despite the fact the gesture would not be noticed Graff nodded and quickly grabbed another tablet from within his robes, mustering up his discipline the best of their ability.
“Elder Aurelium, we have problem.” They growled in his beastial half-voice.
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Cobalt stepped forth into the arena with a lot of fucking stress to unleash and an opponent she was reasonably certain she didn’t have to hold back an awful lot against. Ordinarily this would make her fucking ecstatic, but something was souring her mood. She just couldn’t exactly put her finger on it. Regardless she grit her teeth and smiled, looking towards the crowd.
There were two empty seats in particular her eyes were drawn to. She certainly should have expected the idiots to push themselves too hard and get knocked out in their second rounds, it wasn’t even the kracking finals yet here they were. Utter fools…
She was not disappointed. She reminded herself of that. She had to focus, her emotions were a mess already as is.
Moss strutted into the arena with all the pride of an alpha phoenix, with each of his bright green strands of hair puffed up through his body manipulation mutations he certainly looked the part. He just needed to be set on fire to complete the look. Briefly a strange look flashed across his face as he locked eyes with her, before settling back into an amused grin.
“Ready for a good time sweetheart?” The miscreant young master of the Greenhouse said in a teasing tone.
“I can only hope you are not as underwhelming as you are determined to convince me you are.” She shot back, holding an elegant pose while flashing a sly grin of her own.
Moss guffawed. “Well there is only one way to prove it isn’t there?”
She felt her father’s eyes boring into the back of her skull like twin suns, he probably could do that quite literally too knowing all his fancy Aberrant realm tricks if he really wanted to. He opened his mouth to begin speaking before being interrupted by Elder Aurelium besides him, hundreds of eyes and tarry tendrils writhing in undisguised concern. The stony expression on her father’s face revealed no annoyance, which spoke of the importance of whatever words were being shared up above.
The air stilled, the light died, power flowed from her father barely restrained to prevent killing the more fragile mortals in the crowd. He spoke with two voices, one from each mouth, amplified by ancient technology and intricate formations baked into his throne into a sound which demanded absolute focus.
“Unfortunately there has been a disturbance spotted in the distance, one that necessitates the full attention of the elders. Siege preparations will be made for the Lead Cave, clearly my latest distractions, first clearing the muck from the Golden Plains Province and performing my duties officiating the Tournament have emboldened the southern warlords. And unfortunately in the meantime we will have to pause the tournament.”
The unyielding pressure remained a moment more, just to solidify the importance of the statement. A few of the weaker cultivators closest to the Elder’s Seating visibly seemed scalded, pieces of skin raw and red as though it had been singed. Then as suddenly as it began it was over, and barring the strange taste in the air it was like nothing had happened at all. Even Moss did not make a single utterance of complaint or otherwise, the boisterous boy deeply unsettled by the casual display of power. After all, nearing the Seventh Step of the Aberrant Realm her father was more a condensed force of nature than a living being. When he was serious you felt it as much as you feel the earth trembling in an earthquake. The essence of possibly thousands over his centuries long lifespan condensed into his prodigious form.
She felt her father’s intense stare drill into her once more, a familiar shudder travelling down her spine at the sensation, and heard his next words with no small amount of trepidation.
“My apologies for the interruption Cobalt. We will talk soon.”