Ephlomseestiph begins to flee with my prize, the still-shrinking body of Laombigla. While Lil is still embroiled in a battle with the acid-dragon captain of the Evil Claws. Sadly, I can’t request his help. Similarly, Lu, and Lucky are still duking it out with the Callipygian, though both parties seem to be doing well with their fights. It seems FFS disappeared when I died. Hurp. If I could just stop puking and dry heaving, and even stand straight, I’d help out my friends, or chase down the Damnation fleeing with the dragonforce that’s rightfully mine. Uh oh, speaking of dragonforces, where are mine?
Great, the reincarnation kept the changeling mana residue sickness, but not the aegis that had been preventing it from killing me? Part of the reason I’m horfing up my guts is because I’m having a heart attack in an adamantite body with no heart. Friggin’ hell. I had four dragonforces in here dangit! I mean, in, um, my normal, real body, maybe? Crap I’m confused, and disoriented, and going to lose consciousness soon.
Doffing my psychic brainblast aegis circlet, I telepathically call out, “Guys, I, glp, died again. Some magic brought me back, but I’m dying again, again, because my dragonforces are gone. I don’t have the same reincarnation buff on me again. I lucked out the first time. I—. I’ve got seconds, maybe minutes.”
Sensing the terrible worry that the Triple L Squad has for me, and my current predicament, there’s little I can do to reassure them. Lucky abandons his fight with the Callipygian, and tears off across the battlefield towards Lil, who happens to be closer to me. My son leaps at the distracted Evil Claws captain facing Lil, and grips the obsidian neck of the dragon in his teeth while flipping over to the far side of the captain from his leap, causing him to essentially shoulder toss the captain by its neck, piledriving it into the ground.
During Lucky’s crazy acrobatic attack-maneuver, Lu grips and hangs on to the edges of Lucky’s new armor for dear life as she’s spun about as if she were on a tilt-a-whirl. Lil and Lucky capitalize on the captain’s downed state, diving for its now weakened neck, tearing into it. I stagger towards the swiftly dying Deviltail, a captain of the Evil Claws.
Trying to focus my breathing, and to uncross my eyes, I plead with FFS to return, offering up more SP from Claíomh Solais. Thankfully, he obliges, feeling masculine at the moment. FFS returns to the battlefield, and leaps into the fray to temporarily distract the Callipygian, while Lil pries loose the captain’s chest scales. I stumble, and fall, as my vision begins to fade once more. I’m—. I’m so close. My eyes droop, and sag, as the pain in my chest grows to unbearable levels. My Steely Body spell is the only thing keeping me from succumbing to my current heart attack. I don’t technically need my organs at this exact instant to survive. Of course, preventing my death internally is taxing the spell to its breaking point, and I can feel the aura enabling it begin to flicker.
Staggering another step, I’m still dozens of meters away from the corpse of the ancient black dragon that lays before me. My eyes droop closed, unable to open. I can sense Lucky’s confusion as he nears me. He sniffs me several times, and makes disgusted faces at my scent. I no longer smell like Reggie Shellcracker. I no longer have the body of Reggie Shellcracker. Lil finishes exposing the heart of the ancient dragon, and has to fly to the aid of FFS in facing the Callipygian, to keep us from being blasted by lightning. My eyes feel so heavy, and my jaw feels slack. Everything feels like it’s bobbing at a fast pace. Oh, it is.
The telepathic wavelength I share with Lucky as he swiftly carries me is conveying something like, “Other parent, new smell, bad smell over good smell. Other parent needs bath?”
If I weren’t nearly dead, I’d probably laugh, and roughhouse with Lucky for that comment. More of my muscles sag weakly, no longer responding to me as my Steely Body spell wears off. My muscles are no longer supported by the enchantment that makes them both dense as, and strong as metal. We’re so, so close. Just, just a bit—. More—. My hand struggles, desperately trying to reach forth towards the heart that we’re fast approaching.
Focus Reggie, fo—. Wait, can I even absorb a dragonforce without one of my own? I lose consciousness, toppling free of Lucky’s grip into the chest cavity of the being whose dragonforce could save my life.
“You’re quite lucky that you are who you are you know. Hurry along now. Wake up. We haven’t yet met for the first time. You’ve so much more living, and so much more dying to do, you strange little thing. Our bargain remains inviolate, as ever it shall.” The non ripples and roils in waves as it both speaks to me, yet utters nothing at all.
The presence of the voice is both a part of me, yet external. Somehow it’s simultaneously contradictions, yet truths, yet also neither. I don’t exist here, yet I’m being “am.” I can’t perceive here, because there is neither perception, nor anything to perceive. I’m here both for an eternity, and no time at all, because there is no time here, no concept of such a thing, no concepts at all. That’s when I realize—.
Gasping for air, I flail as strength returns to my limbs. My gaze darts around wildly as I try to stretch away the pain in several locked muscles. How? What? Other mes? Simultaneous, yet never—. I—. Confused, my head lolls weakly to one side before I realize I’m still alive, that I haven’t died yet. Or, well, at least not again since my neck was snapped.
Hah. I had my Honoris Causa active without any dragonforce. It became a vacuum, a void. A ceaseless Schism yearning, needing to be filled. Okay, okay, I’m burning through dragonforce incredibly quickly here to draw this one in. I need to drop my Honoris Causa’s manifestation, and to—. Oh, hi Lu. Mmm. Is now really the time?
Crying over me as she cradles me, Luni releases my lips from hers to grumble, “Shut up. Don’t scare me like that. You bully. You butt. Don’t ever do that again. I thought I lost you. I thought we lost you. Twice! Twice in only a couple of minutes! I hate you!”
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Through sobs, Luni shakes her head, correcting herself, “I’m sorry. I don’t hate you. I hate this. I hate the fighting, the hurting, the risks. The dying. Please, please try to be more careful sweetie. Please. I don’t think my heart could take it. You can’t die. You just can’t. Okay? Just, just don’t.”
Leaning in to kiss Luni softly, I allow her grip to help me up as she stands. Lucky wags his tail incessantly as his parents embrace and share a tender moment, despite us being covered in dragon’s blood inside a chest cavity. When he’s sure I’m not going to abandon Luni, he rushes off to join Lil and FFS in fighting the Callipygian. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Lucky was having too much fun fighting her to want to finish her off. He seems to be screwing around more than going for the kill. I—. I think he likes her callipyginousness.
Sighing, I facepalm while shaking my head. I guess Lucky likes big butts, and since he cannot talk, he cannot lie. We’ll have to get Lucky to focus later. For now, I reach towards the dragon’s heart before me. Thinking better on it, knowing I don’t need to eat the hearts to absorb the dragonforce, I decide to try something else out. Are you still there powers? RS2’s shapeshifting benefits? Can I still call on you? It seems to be working. In a few minutes, I’ll be done with this dragonforce, and by then, I’m sure Lil, Lucky, Lu, and FFS will have the Callipygian downed. Then in a few minutes I’ll be back up to almost two thousand days worth of dragonforce. Well, fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred. I somehow burned up a lot of the ambient dragonforce around me, maintaining my Honoris Causa’s manifestation while having no dragonforce to sustain it.
Hm. I wonder if the Damnations’ dragonforces are worth more than a thousand days apiece. Kissing Luni softly, I pat her on the butt in the direction of the fight. Luni frowns, and sets the portable hole in my lap. Still, she knows they need her, and that I’m not going to go dying on her. Thankfully, Luni loves Lucky and Lil enough that she heads to aid them.
Wow, it just struck me. Lil, my best buddy is technically my adoptive son in law. Lucky is technically my son. My two sons are out there, battling an ancient dragon in the hopes of killing it fast enough to help keep me alive by offering me its dragonforce. Feeling a shock on my arm startle me from my reverie, I take a look at the bangle, and its runic clips. There’s an obnoxious spark every few seconds, flashing about the runic circuitry. Uh oh. Did I go overboard?
The various chaos-magic effects have worn off, but there’s still an occasional flicker and spark from my bangle. Poking it, I get zapped for my efforts. I think we can maybe make replacement bangles, but the clips I’m still not so sure about. Even if we can get replacement bangles, it apparently takes an hour of willpower focused almost entirely on removing a clip in order to remove it without breaking it. Then it requires an hour before the benefits fully apply to a new bangle after being clipped in.
Ugh, It’d take like nine hours for me to transfer all these clips to a new bangle, if they aren’t what’s currently overloaded. I’ve got a few data points, let’s try to slip into the non, a point between points, a time between moments, and figure this out. Inside the lack, the absence of time, I settle in momentarily. I could drop my Honoris Causa from being manifested, since I no longer need it to absorb the dragonforce around me. I’m safe inside a dragon’s chest cavity, my family is relatively safe nearby, battling an ancient lightning dragon. I need to use retrocognition a bit for some answers.
Question one, is it the bangle or are the runic clips currently overloaded? Hm. Not enough data points. Question two, was the number of spells too many applications of the runic clips in total, in a given day, or in just such a rapid brief period? Question three, What are some solutions to question two’s predicament once it’s figured out?
Hm, skipping question one for now, I do have several data points on question number two. Since I didn’t need to engage the embolstering clip anywhere near as frequently as the other clips, and I hadn’t been using the flame or frost clips, there’s some clues available. If I continued using the embolstering clip today, would it continue functioning? Let’s draw up some simulations.
Hm. Mhm. Mhm. Okay. Oof. Okay, sure. Right. Right. Good. Okay. So—. Hm. That means there’s about a ten percent chance that it’d break or backfire. There’s about a ten percent chance that it’d temporarily burn out. But, there’s around an eighty percent chance that, as long as I’m not rapidly casting, that the clip retains its functionality just fine, which gives me data points for question number one, in that it’s almost positively the clips, the more important bits, that are overloaded. Crap.
Right now, it’s the necrotic burst clip, the psionic burst clip, the chaos-magic clip, and the enfeeblement-curse clip that are overloaded, and sparking, if I’m understanding correctly. I probably am understanding correctly. That isn’t bragging, that’s just taking an educated guess based on the percentages. Is it safe to use any of the other clips today, or continue using any of the effects of the bangle at all right now? Retrocognition is saying about at least a seventy percent chance that the answer is no, it’s not entirely safe, that there might be some drawbacks.
Groaning, I roll my eyes at myself, and the disheartening answer. At least retrocognition’s simulations say that there’s an up to eighty percent chance that at least most of the bangle and most of the clips will keep functioning more or less just fine, even if I continue to use other clips today. The chance for most of the clips to recover fine on their own is higher if I use only the non metamagic oriented clips, though I’ve only got two of those, and I don’t really see them being useful in this combat. No one’s summoning stone elementals out here, thankfully.
It seems that allowing the currently sparking clips to proc will very likely either backfire, permanently break the clips, or at least burn them out in a way that I don’t know how to recharge them or fix them from. At least, if I allow them to proc while the bangle is sparking like this. That at least seventy percent could be anywhere from seventy to ninety nine point nine percent, depending on how well my retrocognition is understanding the other data points. Odds are, it’s the latter, because my retrocognition doesn’t have enough data, so it’s better to assume the worse-case. Huff. Heaving a sigh in my paused-time thinkspace, I let myself droop wearily for a short while.
Fine, new question, should I remove the bangle for now, or is keeping it equipped going to help reduce its overload? Hm, opposite percentage. About a thirty percent chance that keeping it equipped is necessary or helpful, while about a seventy percent chance that it either doesn’t matter, or would be detrimental to keep it equipped while it’s sparking like this. Well, maybe I should break that down further. About a thirty percent chance that keeping it equipped is necessary or helpful, about a forty percent chance that it doesn’t matter, and about a thirty percent chance that it’ll backfire spectacularly and nearly literally blow up in my face to continue wearing it. So I’m playing at thirty percent bad odds no matter what I do. If I unequip it, thirty percent chance it was necessary, if I keep it equipped, thirty percent chance I shouldn’t have. Bluh.