You have lost organ; Left Eye.

(3) Flesh of the Beyond have been consumed to create replacement. Eye lost is part of a set, counterpart pieces will need to be replaced to maintain function. Would you like to add any essences?

[Yes] [No]

Grant ignored the window. He couldn’t breathe. The tentacles were blocking his throat. He could feel them moving and searching within him.

Grant bit down on the tentacles. He dug in a bit but couldn’t tear through them; they were rubbery and slippery in a way that he just sort of slid away. He clenched his jaw harder and started thrashing his head back and forth.

He felt the tentacles rush out. Grant got one breath in before retching. He fought the urge and tried to focus on the fight he was in now. He ignored the pain and the retching and coughing.

The terrible beak made its way down to meet his mouth. It crunched into his lower jaw taking his lower front teeth and flesh off of his chin. It scored into the bone there too. Grant could hear the noise, reverberating through his very bone.

Another window appeared in his mind.

You have lost ectodermal organ; teeth.

(4) Flesh of the Beyond have been consumed to create replacement. Teeth lost are part of a set,counterpart pieces will need to be replaced to maintain function. Would you like to add any essences?

[Yes] [No]

Since he had been disarmed, he stopped to read this one. As he read it he felt the beak begin taking more exploratory nibbles from his cheeks. The fernling was apparently satisfied that it had removed the threat. He forced himself to focus and selected yes. Another window popped up with his options.

[Floating Essence]

[Consuming Essence]

[Writhing Essence]

[Propagation Essence]

Looking at the options in his mind, he was aware of how this worked; The Other had (or was currently) imparting the understanding to him. He could add in essences and his teeth would come out changed, more powerful for it.

Grant had no idea what that would mean. Whether they would be ‘better’ or not he could only guess from their names. He selected consuming essence only. He knew he could have added more, but chose not to.

Consuming seemed to fit their purpose as teeth. He didn’t want to imagine what writhing essence would do to his teeth. Propagation and Floating weren’t as disturbing but just not what Grant was looking for in his teeth.

As soon as he made the selection he felt pressure and itching sensations consume his mouth. This was quickly drowned out by bright flaring pain. All of his intact teeth were pushed out. His tongue worked to keep them from falling down his throat. Despite his efforts at least two, maybe more, did just that.

The majority of the displaced teeth dribbled out of his mouth. He screamed, a sound which was muted by the press of the wet fernling against his mouth and the blood pooling in his mouth.

New teeth filled out his mouth. He thrashed his head, trying to get some purchase on the fernling. He managed to get some tentacles in his mouth. He shore through them with ease, the tentacles breaking like overcooked spaghetti in his mouth.

Before he could spit them out, they seemed to dissolve away into nothing.

Consuming Teeth of the Void

Item - Ectodermal Organ

Attacks made with Consuming Teeth of the Void break down matter at an elementary level. Emitted energy and particles are consumed by teeth. Excess is shared with the wielder.

The fernling, in response, came to bite his lower teeth away again. As it clamped down on his lower jaw it met resistance it could not match. Grant tore off the upper part of it’s beak, his teeth passing cleanly through it.

The creature let out a screech. Grant did not let up. He continued to flail, biting at whatever he could, spitting away whatever bit of flesh came away and spitting it to the side.

The fight felt like a mix between making out, and a thumb war for life and death. Each darted in biting at what they could of the other. Its beak grew back just as fast as his teeth had. It was careful to avoid his mouth with the beak after that.

The fernling still had the upper hand in terms of the overall fight. Through the use of its fronds and tentacles it held him neatly pinned to the asphalt. Iit couldn’t pull entirely away though. If it removed itself too much Grant would have enough room to maneuver away from it. In this way his mouth remained in striking range.

Grant carried on, getting the better of their continued exchange. After a dozen or so more bites into the exterior bits, doing superficial damage, Grant felt his teeth close on something that felt more substantial.

He had found the jugular, or the fernling equivalent, he was sure of it. A firm, semi-rigid tube was in his mouth. He severed it neatly, the pieces quickly falling away into nothing inside of his mouth.

The fernling had not given up trying to take its revenge, until Grant had severed this more substantive bit of it. It flailed away from him then. Grant breathed his first free breath since it had clasped onto him.

He rolled off his hands onto his side. His hands were still handcuffed. They had been stuck under his body through the duration of that ordeal.

From his side he made his way awkwardly to his feet. He almost lost his balance as he got up onto his knees. As he got to his feet advanced towards the fernling.

He reached out again with Harbinger of the Beyond. He felt the solid, heavy feel of the link. There was something else there too though, he felt other forces pushing on it, trying to break it. He didn’t stop to wonder what they may be.

He broke the link. It was quite easy relative to the others. The help had had a substantial effect. It was as if he had merely ben tipping over something heavy which had been propped up on the verge of falling over.

The creature screeched again. It was aware that it had lost the link, he realized. He began to wonder how intelligent it was. Unconsciously he reached out with Resonant Mind.

Resonant Mind

Increased Focus and Perception.

Skill: Create, stabilize, or destroy resonant links with other minds.

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Harken ye to the deeper song!

The link was formed and for an instant he felt something familiar inside of that alien mind. He felt fear. Not just fear but dread. That and anger too, anger at the unfairness of its circumstance; it had barely gotten to exist.

A blast from a shotgun cut him off. The Fernling was obliterated. Grant felt that too. The link was mercifully broken in an instant but that bare moment of pain superseded anything Grant had felt before in his life.

He fell to his knees. It was as if the wind had been knocked out of him. Even the memory of that pain wracking his body had him not breathing. All of his muscles were tense and locked up, straining against themselves.

The vaporous substance once more rushed at him. Despite him not breathing it made its way into his lungs. Looking forward he could see Eric and the other police had advanced out of their bunker towards him.

The vaporous substance once more rushed at him.

Fernling 13 of 13 has died.

You and Eric Lee have each received:

* (5) Flesh of the Beyond

* (1) Floating Essence

* (1) Consuming Essence

* (1) Writhing Essence

* (1) Flesh Essence

Eric stood there impassively. Grant looked around to see the other fernlings were all downed on the ground. Grant’s gaze passed over the police car windows. He saw the cultists inside of them. They were staring out of the windows with their empty eye sockets.

It took Grant a moment to realize they were looking at the downed fernlings. He realized they had been the other thing had felt. They had joined him in trying to break the link of the fernling that had eaten much of his face.

They were doing it again now. He watched as the fernlings he could see began to evaporate in little pools of undulating black with vibrant blue, green, and purple tips. The gas flowed into the cars.

Well that’s probably not good, Grant thought.

His voice had fully recovered from earlier. His face was likewise recovering from the many bites that had been taken out of it. He could tell by the itching.

It only occurred to him then that he was missing his eye. How had that slipped by him. He couldn’t help but laugh a little. It all just struck him. It was so absurd. Less than 20 minutes ago it had been a perfectly normal day. New normal anyways.

Now he had magic powers, was missing an eye, and he was handcuffed. He had been handcuffed by Eric Lee nonetheless. This was the first time he had seen Eric since Eric and his Father had roughly escorted him out of Ryan’s memorial.

He had known that Eric had dropped out of college to become a cop, but not that he was working in Berkeley.

Grant laughed again. It was an odd thing to focus on out of all that happened. The rest was just… it didn’t feel real.

Police officers, not Eric and Rick, came over and began dragging him over to their car. His body, still in shock, offered no resistance.

—-

Rick watched as the kid, Grant, was being dragged away. McMillan and Dunn had made the decision to get him into their car. Grant had been laughing. That had creeped him out, almost as much as the Jesus freaks drinking the kid’s blood.

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t that close.

He looked over at his ‘partner’. It was a temporary arrangement. Just three more months. With the overtime they were working during the Andemic, Rick’s pension would take a major boost.

He had expected very little from Eric Lee. He was realizing now that he had maybe been a bit harsh. Eric had a long way to go, he wasn;t a natural. He had accorded himself well though. Rick tried to think he wasn’t like every other old timer. As he was coming up they were busy decrying the youth, the useless next generation.

He realized now that he probably had been just like them. Maybe not as loud-mouthed about it. He resolved to stop giving Eric the cold shoulder quite so much. It was only three more months in any case.

He was broken out of his reverie by the sound of a roaring vehicle approaching them.

A long, matte black armored truck with magenta windows rushed down the street. It was going down the wrong lane, sirens blaring. The red and white lights spun on top. It screeched to a halt and the back door flew open.

AROG had arrived. Rick watched as men in tactical armor filed out of the back. The armored suits and the guns they carried were all one piece of equipment. The suit's legs and arms were power assisted. The suits were entirely enclosed; the men inside were encased in metal, glass, and plastic.

The motorized joints whined ever so slightly as the men got out. They swept their guns around like they were doing a tactical drill. They swept every possible sight line as they marched around.

The soldiers moved like appendages of one body. Each of them was murmuring into their in-built radios. Too bad they were five minutes too late. Rick had a quiet little laugh to himself about the fact that millions of dollars of firepower had arrived too late.

So much for the taxpayer.

“We got 'em all.” Rick said.

The soldiers just ignored him. They kept at it checking under cars and everywhere they could look. One of them spent a good amount of time shining a light down the storm drain. Rick sighed.

“All clear.” one of them said.

He wasn’t speaking to Rick though. He was talking over the radio. Another vehicle approached. This one was much more civilian looking. It was a simple van. It wended its way around the AROG armored vehicle and police cars. It made its way, stopping exactly adjacent to where the Anomaly 9 had been.

A group of scientist’s poured out of the back. They were wearing your typical hazmat suits, except the face masks were tinted magenta. Rick took a step back as one darted towards them.

She lunged past Grant and grabbed on to Eric. She was short and had jet black hair. He couldn’t get a read on her skin tone through the tinted mask. All the same, the family resemblance was evident. Must be that sister he was talking about.

“Eric, oh my god, I was so scared! We were watching it all the way here on the cctv. I thought…” She stopped herself from saying what she had thought.

Rick himself had wondered if he was going to punch his ticket out here. Now that he was thinking about it he was wishing he could have died instead of Ortez. Fuck, she was a fine woman, with three kids.

This was going to fuck up his retirement. Survivor’s guilt was a hell of a thing. He tried to stop thinking about the dead. It wasn’t real yet, he didn’t want to let it be.

“You must be Olivia,” he said.

The scientist looked away from Eric at him. Rick could see a few tears hanging in her eyes, threatening to start flowing.

She stopped hugging her brother and looked at Rick. She nodded as she reached up with her hand to wipe away her tears. Her hand bounced off her face mask. She rolled her eyes at her self.

“Yes! Sorry, I don't know who you are.” She said,

“Rick.” he said. “Your brother was just telling me about you. I guess you got all the brains in the family huh?”

Eric laughed. “Yeah, pretty much, Olivia was always the smart one.”

Olivia for her part just looked embarrassed. They all stood in silence, the emotions of the day hanging heavy over all of them.

“Is Grant okay?” Olivia asked, looking at her brother.

Rick noticed she had none of the animosity her brother had for the man. At least it didn’t come through in her voice.

“Seems like it but…” Eric said.

But he shouldn’t be. Rick finished the sentence in his head. Everyone else who had come that close to greater anomaly was either dead or zombified right up. What’s more, some weird shit had been happening. The dead anomalies had evaporated, not up into the sky, but into him, him and Eric.

Eric had gotten two doses.

And those weird boxes. He could still see them in his head. He had gotten a few different kinds of ‘essences’ and ‘Flesh of the Beyond’.

“Olivia, excuse my French but some weird shit went down today.” Rick said. “We got some of that vapor stuff inside of us.”

Fear showed through on her face for a moment before she took on a flat clinical look. She nodded curtly. He watched as her brain switched gears. She started looking around.

“Right, we're going to need to quarantine all of the subjects. That means you guys too.” She said, “Probably all of the officers.”

Rick watched as she looked around, taking everyone in. She pulled out a tablet from a pocket at her waist and started tabulating a list. Rick noticed that she was including the corpses in her list.

“I’m just here to get samples and help catalog.” She said, “Meera is actually going to take you guys to the off site.”

As she said it she broke eye contact with them and looked at an approaching woman. She was nearly as old as Rick was, if he had to hazard a guess. Her skin was dark, darker than Olivia's, in a way that showed through her mask. Indian he would have bet.

“Ok, enough family reunion Olivia, be professional.” Meera said. “You two, head over to the van.”

She had a slight accent. Rick liked it. He sighed inaudibly, just to himself. He didn’t need to add that into all the shit that had been happening today. He was rarely horny these days, it all still worked but the desperate need of his teenage years was well behind him.

All the same he was lonely. He had been lonely ever since Sadie had left him.

Get it together old man. He walked over to the van and got in.