B 3 C 4: THEY STILL BEAR REPEATING?

Thankfully, it seems Luna is happy to see us. Or maybe she isn’t, her usual greeting is the same. When we’ve arrived in her territory, somehow after we wander around in it for a while, she always knows how to find us. She bounds in from whatever direction she was in, and swats me so hard that several of my ribs crack as I go flying dozens of feet away. Then once I’ve landed, she stomps towards me and lays her head on me, claiming me as a pillow for a period of time.

My SAP chuckles a bit nervously. They each know how powerful and dangerous Luna is, but we’ve all had good interactions with her. Good interactions other than the first time when we had to fight her off with fire, so long ago now. Luni has spent the most time with her, and seems to have the most understanding of Luna, but even Luni doesn’t know exactly what Luna is thinking. I think. Lu has never let on if she’s full-on telepathic.

Lil has had the least positive interactions with Luna, since Lil was there the first time when we were attacked. It was just me and Lil way back then. Still, even Lil trusts both Lu and Lu.

I groan, “Urgh, heh, hi to you too Luna. Good to see you. I’m glad the lava didn’t make it all the way down here. Did you know about it? Could you see it or sense it? I’m not sure if you really understand me, but you seem to respond sometimes. I don’t know if it’s going to be safe here. We’re going to be marching a lot of people through your territory, and humans too. I think it would be safer if you were with us, but even if you don’t want that, I worry that the lava might flow again one day.”

Luna, this great, feathered bear, stands back as she lifts her head off of me. She picks me up to my feet. Now normally she would then bat me back down to the ground, and repeat the process several times. Instead there’s a brief pause, and Luna just cocks her head at a ridiculous angle. I think she has the neck and beak of an owl. I mean, she definitely has a predator bird’s beak, that much is obvious. Her neck and shoulders are incredibly flexible though, it’s a bit scary.

Telepathically I send to my inner circle, “Any help here, guys? Luni, you seem to be able to talk to her or understand her sometimes, should I say any more? Is she deciding? What’s going on?”

Everyone telepathically sends back images of their mental avatars shrugging. Sighing, I gaze at Luna ponderously. I cautiously step towards her and slowly spread my arms wide. Luna raises her right forepaw as if to swat me. I try not to wince or cringe, but I’m sure the trepidation shows. She has never really hurt me when swatting me around, nothing lasting anyway. I keep expecting to be swatted away. But for the first time ever, Luna not only lets me walk up to her face to hug her neck, and her forepaw pulls me in closer to complete the hug.

I’m about to question if this is a goodbye hug, since we might never see one another again, when I’m treated to a message in our mental interface. “Luna has joined the party.” Luna becomes Luna Shellcracker. That sound just now is four jaws hitting the floor. I don’t have the power to invite or communicate with people, Lil has always had to do it for me. I glance over at Lil and they’re as floored as I am, so they didn’t do it. Similarly as I look towards Luni and Teuila, it’s plain as day that neither of them had any idea this was going to happen.

Another odd thing that happens is that our party interface begins shuffling around, and Luna leaves the primary Shellcracker party to become the only member of a subparty under Luni. Is Luna able to control the interface herself? Not just that, but in ways that none of us even knew was possible? We’re all glancing around at one another with no answer in sight.

Luna begins her mildly stomping walk to the southeast, her trajectory will take her past the pyramid, to the beaver dam. At least if she continues, and doesn’t stop at the pyramid. I’m still unsure whether or not she’s committed to joining us in the long run, or if this was some symbolic gesture. She doesn’t speak, similarly to Olioli. Also like Oli, she doesn’t have memory logs available to us either.

My SAP continues along behind Luna, and we’re still so confused that none of us can even manage to dive into shared thinkspace. Each of our psychic bonds took near death to form under extremely unique circumstances. When we’re without our bonded party, it’s pure agony. When we’re separate, the loneliness and longing rise over time to immense levels. Without the escape of accelerated thinkspace, we live life in the slow lane, stuck in that loneliness. Or worse, we punish ourselves by sinking into accelerated thinkspace to experience that loneliness for much longer than we would otherwise have to. Imagine you’re going to be apart from your best friend for a year. Now imagine you’re going to put yourself through nearly a thousand years during that year because you have access to a realm of thought that exists at a rate nearly a thousand times our own. It’s as awful as it sounds to go even a single day without any member of our bond.

Will Luna someday, through a horrid near-death experience, join a telepathic bond with one of us? Will that link us together like Teuila’s split bond with me and Lil? Teuila’s bond formed when I’d had a split tether holding them both in their evolved forms for far too long, and the tethers felt as if they were literally sawing my heart in half. I nearly died several times during the excursion, but somehow maintained the tether. I think when I let Lil’s tether drop, so that they could escape the dam, I somehow kept that same tether active and used it to strengthen the tether to Teuila. I think that’s what formed Lil’s bond to Te and vice versa.

I still don’t know how to help others conceptualize energy tethers that reach out to one another. Lil and Teuila can form their own self tethers after my sacrifice. The one I performed shortly after coming back from months of near-catatonia. None of us know how to send tethers to anyone else. If I could have found a way, I’d have had all the fire mages that were on standby send me tethers so that I didn’t need to go into energy debt on the Night of All Burn. Energy debt is truly horrid, it’s like having one’s own guts scraped out, regenerated, and scraped out more. It imposes restrictions on healing from wounds gained before, during, and after the debt is accumulated, for quite some time. Sometimes it reduces your maximum capacity for energy as well. Other times, it does this weird thing that it did to me, where it locks a part of your maximum energy pool. Sometimes all of the above. Oh, and it can cause you to black out for extended periods. My mana pool is mostly locked away again, for the second time in my life, but at least I wasn’t injured around the time I most recently went into energy debt. Well, okay, that’s not true, I was, but somehow a fourth form evolution managed to take the brunt of all of that, and it washed away the injuries as it disappeared.

We’re at the pyramid now, a place connected to events that I can’t think about without breaking down into heartrending terror. Luna’s gaze at it is almost hateful if I could describe it. Luna seems to be staring the pyramid down as if to challenge it. It’s getting pretty late in the evening, so I wonder if Luna is planning on going inside. Luna can walk through walls, specifically the walls of this pyramid, around midnight on a given night. Or maybe it’s not the time so much as darkness or the moonlight or something. Our planet didn’t even have a moon or stars to start with when I first spawned. I’m almost positive it didn’t. Slowly over time though, the sky seems to be further and further populated. No one else believes me, but my only proof is my memory logs. My memory logs are a bit fallible, I’m an unreliable narrator in my own story, because we have proof that I’ve sometimes hallucinated.

It seems witching-hour has struck, or something like that. Luna looks like she’s going to enter the pyramid, which might be goodbye. Luni, My-Anchor, walks abreast Luna and lays a hand on her flank. For a moment, I’m panicking, worried that Luni is going to go into this horrid pyramid again. Teuila and her both have their memory logs redacted from the time or times they’ve been inside this awful place. I can barely imagine how bad it is inside with what little information I have on it. Teuila senses my worry, and comes to wrap her arms around my waist from the rear, hugging me comfortingly.

Lu pulls out her harp, and whispers into it, and oddly, it seems like Luna also whispers towards the harp. Umbral notes with vaguely crescent shapes instead of the flags and noteheads one would normally expect begin to float about the pair. The notes vaguely seem to depict the cycles of the moon, fitting for the two Lus. Luna rears back, and slams her paws on the ground, barely connecting her claws with the pyramid’s base.

It feels like the world begins to crumble at the might of the earthquake that suddenly rocks the landscape. The ancient, majestic trees all begin collapsing inward towards the pyramid from several hundred feet. The pyramid itself begins sinking into the land as the five of us struggle to maintain our footing. Luna backs up, picking up Luni by the scruff of her dress collar with her beak. Lu escapes carrying other Lu, loping away from this pit that’s forming in front of us. Luni scrabbles atop Luna as Luna tries to keep Luni safe from falling trees. I hate seeing the arbor fall when it seems to have been so ancient.

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Something is wrong, we can’t keep losing these trees. Something screams inside me that we can’t afford to keep letting these ancient life forms up and vanish. I’ve always been a little curious as to why I’ve been protective of them at various turns in my life. I still don’t know, but now there’s a tangible urge to save them, and I can do nothing. I sink to my knees in despair, mourning the losses of these primordial plants. Even as they crash down around me, I can’t bring myself to move. Even as the pit’s edge collapses closer and closer in front of me, I find myself struggling to muster any sense of the present.

Teuila trusts me to take care of myself, as does Lil, or they’d have transformed and dragged me away from here by now. I vaguely sense Lil dragging away Teuila out of my danger wrap tactile sensory range. What’s odd is that neither Lil nor Teuila have evolved yet. Life blood, radiance is a limited resource, but it’s currently corrupted somehow. Why do these thoughts suddenly surface? Luni specifically directed me to not guess about that topic. It could alter future events if I come to any conclusions. I manage one conscious effort, I physically sigh as I bury the thoughts once more.

I’m still not moving, the thought of losing this nature, of the ground swallowing up everything from primeval times onwards fills me with terror. Especially the loss of the prehistoric flora. Did Lu and Lu really cause this? I suspect they were more likely trying to close off the pyramid for good, to keep everyone safe from whatever is within. My eyes bulge but my vision tunnels down to the point of a pin, my pulse pounds from my heart to my temples, the sound hammering my eardrums from the inside. My muscles seize and spasm. I feel as if I’m going to vomit as I’m overcome by a layer of sweat. Now, I’m overtaken by the crumbling precipice that has receded to just before me. I’m sent tumbling below as ancient vegetation covers the pit, and the world finally stops convulsing.

Now would be a really good time to stop panicking, so that I can engage my JT to reduce my downward velocity. No dice. I can’t sense anything around me within the fifteen foot range of my danger wraps, so I’m plummeting through empty space in the dark, and the chasm is already covered from above. My vision in darkness is rather decent, which again reminds me that I’m not a human. At the moment, I almost wish my vision wasn’t so good, as the thing propelling itself through the air between chasm faces below looks horrifying. It appears to be, there’s no better way to describe this, an enormous floating mote with a fanged maw and an elongated flagellum, essentially, a toothy spermatozoon. Something literally out of my worst nightmares, and now I’m sent tumbling into a further episode of panic, remembering Day One. My breath catches in my throat, and the pain in my chest feels as if my heart had stopped, even though my pulse is still threatening to blow my eardrums from the inside. My mind is filled with the nightmares of Day One, where my mind had seen everything, the land, the trees, the sphere creatures, open their faces in approximations of fanged maws. The worst of it is, it doesn’t matter what sort of surface, they didn’t actually have to grow teeth, they just split open in sharp jagged edges, as did the first sphere creature I ever encountered. Its front simply opened wide with a jagged line, and something that was a soft sphere like some sort of bouncy ball tore gouges out of my flesh with its fake mouth.

Oh, oh I’m being eaten. By a giant flying, ugh, I don’t want to call this thing a sperm creature. Let’s just call it a floating tailed-seed. Somehow the ridiculousness of the situation is helping to snap me out of my panic. With my much lower mana capacity, do I risk killing this thing and continuing to hurtle downwards? The plunge may not be survivable if it would take too many JTs to break my fall with my low max mana. On the other hand, I’m definitely going to die if it finishes chewing me enough to break through my Valkyrie armor.

I guess I should, as they say, risk it for the biscuit? Ugh, never mind, that was dumb. This thing is pretty enormous, its mouth alone is easily twice the size of Luna, and she’s a massive bear. Luna is larger than any type of bear in my memories. My memories include kodiaks, she’s not much larger than them, but still, absolutely gargantuan compared to me. Stop getting distracted! One of my truly fatal flaws, even more than the panic, is my distractibility. What was I doing? Oh, right, I should probably fight back. Maybe if I freeze this thing, its weird ability to float I could just slowly aim downwards? It’s worth a try.

Having hung around the human mages too long now, I call out, “FFS, Flash Frost Storm!” I suck the kinetic energy out of the atoms in the surrounding area, slowing them to a crawl, freezing everything around. Ow, this flying tailed-seed creature did not like that. It’s fighting back against the freeze to crush me between its horrid teeth one last time. Why haven’t I been using my tattoo tendrils? Ugh, I extend my tattoo tendrils, one below, and one above, gripping its jaw from both sides and prying apart. My tendrils normally only extend fifteen feet, but for some reason, anything within that range, they can wrap around. Well, I haven’t tried it on truly enormous monstrosities like the cragbeast queen, or the roc, not that I would try it on the roc, the roc saved my life. Stop getting distracted! Right, right, so, now that I’ve got a bit of a reprieve, let’s angle this thing to the bottom of this pit, since it can’t seem to fly any higher. I definitely don’t have enough mana to JT my way all the way to the top of the chasm, and claim enough space in the trees to break out.

If I’m lucky, I’ll run into one of the beaver’s tunnel structures near the bottom. If I’m not lucky, I’ll probably have to spend several months tunneling upwards with my inventory magic, by claiming a few inches of soil at a time. I’m nearing the ground, or, well, I’m in the ground, I’m nearing the floor of the pit, and oddly the pyramid isn’t here. Now, do I kill this thing? I don’t want it to burrow its way to the surface and eventually attack my friends, or the human troops. It seems instantly hostile to anything it can get its mouth around. I guess I’ll have to.

Sighing, I unsheathe a Valkyrie dagger, and hand it to one of my tattoo tendril’s tips. I then recoil the tattoo tendrils, essentially pulling a rapid barbed wire laceration. Wow, that was ludicrously effective. I might have to think of a name for that one, and use it again at some point. The gigantic creature begins to derez, and I’m treated to the familiar cacophony, and time dilation of derezzing, it ends with the shattering crash as its final wireframe polygon disappears. I’m not certain if it was any decent sort of threat level, but I’ll claim its drops regardless. Huh, that’s a bunch of eggs. I really don’t enjoy the implications, or the irony. Is the world making fun of me? I’ll sort the rest of this stuff out when I reconvene with my family.

The good news is, or well, several bits of good news are, There’s definitely a connection to one of the beaver’s tunnels down here. I’m also apparently fairly well defended even when distracted. The bad news is, I’m three for three with accidentally assassinating beaverfolk. Several creatures drew weapons on me while I was distracted. My danger wraps had me react in as violent and visceral a manner as one might expect after having just slain a giant, uh, seed creature, filled with eggs as loot.

One of these beavers I recognize as the one I’d scared pantsless with my visage of fatigued psychotic fury long ago now. I’m not certain who I just derezzed, but by the looks of it, this is a meeting place for members of the MCF. I thought I was done with these bozos. I thought they had reformed and joined the sane faction. There are diagrams drawn on bark of a tunnel going up from this room. They were planning to get into the pyramid. They were hoping to resurrect their psychopathic telepathic telekinetic psionic illusionist deity.

I, I can’t, I can’t handle it, I can’t take it. Why do they want to be subjugated and brainwashed? What is the matter with these idiots? Do they not understand that this creature took on the face of the one I loved most dear, to prey on my greatest fear? Do they not understand that that creature would convert every living being into one of its followers, by coercion or force?

My vision both narrows as it tunnels, and floods with red. I let loose another Flash Freeze Storm, and I can’t control myself. My muscles won’t respond. I’m flooded with panic, remembering the events of the dam. My pulse quickens and my palms fill with sweat as I curl my hands into fists. Please me, don’t do this, we should at least get someone to verify this is what it looks like before doing this. Please, don’t be a killer. It’s too late. I’m beside myself in my own mind, struggling with crippling fear and panic in one third, struggling to maintain rationality in another third, and filled with utmost furious wrath in another third. My wrath wins out. My tendrils lash out, shattering three beaverfolk at a time in their icy prisons, my fists take care of two more. In moments I’ve dealt with the rest.

My wrath isn’t finished with me though, I completely lose control of my senses. I alternate between flash freeze storms, and as much fire as I can muster. I hear cracking, similar to the sounds of derezzing. I worry that it’s me for a moment until I realize it’s the lock on my maximum mana.

When I finally regain my senses and come to, I look around at yet another scene of devastation, one that I’ve once again caused. Three times I’ve been to this dam, and every time I’ve ended up murdering someone, and leaving large swathes of it destroyed. Every bit of respawning tree bark or lumber that had coated the walls is nothing more than the merest pile of ash. There are tendril gouges that look like tremendous claw marks on every surface.

Sighing, I begin to explore the tunnel structures leading from this room into the dam proper. At least I can find my way out to Lil, Teuila, Lu, and Lu.