Arjun had never been more surprised in his life than when the ground around him split apart.
What came out could only be described as a faceless tentacled monster. Each tentacle in question, however, possessed hundreds of single-eyed facsimiles of faces covered with tiny jaws nestled inside circular apertures. One such face latched onto Arjun’s right thigh and started greedily devouring his blood.
His efforts at Healing himself were interrupted when, within a couple of blinks, three more blood-suckers joined the fray, bringing Arjun to his knees. To make matters worse, the high-pitched noise emitted by the tiny faces made concentrating hard. Gritting his teeth, Arjun persevered, as he simply refused to let himself be beaten by a bunch of plants.
Jabbing his right hand inside the shallow soil, he sensed over two dozen tentacles, as well as the central bulk of the vine, a huge column wider than he was tall. With a squeezing gesture of his hands, the central concentration of kernel, holding the all-important Crown Chakra, was squashed like a melon. The rudimentary earth Manipulation ability of the mini-vine was only enough to delay its death for a few blinks, as it tried, in vain, to resist the pressure exerted by the earth.
More interestingly, following its death, some of the kernel seeped out of its body and was sucked in by the neighboring vine, which grew proportionally stronger in the process, now able to resist Arjun’s Manipulation efforts better than before. But it too eventually lost its struggle and withered, the kernel this time turning into essence of several types, before dissipating into the environment. Or rather, into the ground.
As the inert tentacles on his body dropped to the ground, Arjun frantically glanced around, trying to assess the battle situation.
Kumil, much to his astonishment, still stood strong, body wrapped in a layer of air, with earth replacing air around the feet and hands. A far more mobile version of Arjun’s own tank look, he noted with a hint of jealousy. He rarely used it in combat since it made him slow, a feeling he absolutely detested. All further thoughts fled when the half-stonehorn’s next words registered in his mind.
“Kernel’s behaving oddly after death?” came the shouted question.
“Yeah.”
“Can’t sense where it’s vanishing off to, if no other vine is around.”
Still weak from blood-loss, Arjun gave a nod of acknowledgment and then called out to the Battle Cleric who was busy shoring up the ground so that no more nasty surprises could rear its ugly tentacles. “We can’t kill our way out of this one.”
“What?” Eve was standing off to the side and panning her gaze across the dense patch of deadly mini-vines, her eyes presumably searching for the canines. They hadn’t made an appearance yet, but that was bound to change sooner or later. “Sure we can. Hold steady against the pesky tentacles, find the Crown and,” she squeezed her hand in a gesture not dissimilar to Arjun’s own mere moments ago. “Splat. Easy as pie.”
“I can’t sense more than twenty feet beneath us. The platform should be at least twice that in depth.”
Hearing this, James gave a grave nod. “Spatial Shield connected to a Portal leading to its own dimension. Moreover, the residual kernel is being absorbed either by the neighboring vines, or failing that, something far more nefarious. The mechanism on display here is a lot more efficient than any kernel-attuned parasite I’ve ever seen or heard of.”
“You fear we’ll wake up the mother vine?” Eve asked, her voice suddenly full of caution as she swiveled her head, looking for just such an entity.
The solemnity of James’ voice was answer enough. “We can on take fifty weaker vines, possibly more, even including those shadow creatures, who seem to lean toward Energy and Space as opposed to Matter and Space like the vines. What we cannot risk is birthing,” his eyes sought Eve, “or waking up the monster that lies on the other side of the Portal.”
“You certain it’s not on this side somewhere?” Eve asked.
“Not unless it has better stealth capabilities than a 5th order Cleric.”
“Also, the Shield is acting as bedrock of the platform,” Arjun said, after being prompted by Aisha. She, the best Healer among the group, had been designated a spot in the middle of their formation, and as a result, had come out totally unscathed, though still looking utterly exhausted. “If anything comes through there, it’ll likely destroy the whole platform in the process.”
“Another reason why we should hurry to the next one.” James said, taking the lead.
As they ventured deeper into the platform, more of the mini-vines sprang up closer and closer to the path, cutting off the exit staircase entirely just as it came into view.
Arjun was beginning to despair that there was no leaving this platform without a bloodbath when James bellowed over the shrill chorus of the mini-vines, “Move to the center and focus on negating their Manipulation. Don’t let them get a foothold inside the perimeter.” Arjun gave a nod and fell in beside Aisha, who rewarded him with a nervous smile.
“Kumil and I will take shielding duty, while Eve,” the Battle Cleric turned to the stocky girl, “your job is to mop up any stragglers.”
Eve flexed the fingers of her right hand, a mad glint in her eyes. “About time. I’m itching for a good fight.” One that doesn’t involve locking horns with your parents – Arjun heartily agreed with that clear but unspoken sentiment. Until meeting her, he never truly knew how lucky he was.
“But remember,” James locked eyes with the stocky half-unomynd girl, “dial down your aggression. Don’t become so focused on one target that another slips past to engage Kumil in close-quarter combat. Part of your job is to protect him while he does the same using shields, from a distance.”
Eve gave a firm nod.
“We’ll have to be mobile, so a few are bound to get through. Also, the canines could possibly use a movement skill that uses some form of primitive Teleportation.”
That would certainly explain the weird shift in their location that Arjun had been able to sense even through the intense glare of kernel.
James’ gaze turned to Aisha. “Can your Shields guard against that, at least for a while?”
Seeing Aisha’s uncertain nod, he reiterated, “A very short while. I know it’s tiring.” He then turned toward everyone, pointedly avoiding Arjun’s eyes. “Questions?”
Arjun opened his mouth to voice a concern in the form of a question, when the dark-canines, perhaps sensing their quarry had decided to flee, made a combined attack along with their arch-nemesis – the vines.
In the mad scramble that followed, Arjun lost himself in the simple act of negation and anticipation, two things he excelled at. Standing beside him, Aisha was a glowing presence of calmness as she neatly bisected the occasional tentacles that managed to get through, using momentary unstable slices of Portals – or Tears – an application of Enfolding Arjun had only read about before today.
“Less taxing than a stable Portal?” Arjun asked in between attacks while the group edged toward the safety of the exit stairway.
Aisha gave a tired smile, one that implied it was still plenty taxing.
When they reached the narrow stretch of land leading to the exit, sparse vegetation made defending a lot easier, though the canines seemed to grow almost frenzied and kept on launching attacks using short bursts of Teleportation, which, thanks to Aisha’s Shields, met with limited success.
As soon as Kumil, the rearmost member of the group, set foot on the exit stairway, the attacks ceased, almost abruptly. Even the thus-far belligerent canines lost interest and wandered back into the gloom of the vines, their uneasy truce once more broken as not all the injured canines made it back home in one piece. Some ended up inside what passed for stomachs of the larger vines.
Looking at the perplexed expression on the canines’ faces and reading their signature, Arjun breathed a huge sigh of relief and slumped down onto the weirdly soft floor of air and Space. “They can’t sense us.” A frown crossed his face and he sat up straight. “Why can’t they sense us?”
James took a deep breath, through the nose, keeping his mouth closed. “A foreign essence that I’ve never sensed before,” he said, looking even more alert than usual. “Not until after setting foot onto the first stairway. This one,” he said glancing beneath their feet, “holds even more of the unknown essence.”
This caused the rest of them to concentrate. Eve cocked her head and a great big scowl formed on her face. Kumil simply gave a nod, holding his questions within. Arjun himself was both excited and troubled, only the first of those two emotions coming from within himself, as the last member of the group, Aisha, if anything, looked even more worried than James. Worried but not nearly surprised enough. Quelling his frustration, Arjun swallowed the numerous questions and turned toward the Cleric.
“I can make out no vines on the next platform, only a sort of bamboo-like plant,” Arjun said, looking downward.
Then, his brain caught up, and he remembered none of them could discern any Chakras other than the Crown when they’d first met Aisha. His gut told him the two facts were related without knowing how. Shrouding Vest and Potions, even together, shouldn’t have worked as long and as well as it did, something the Battle Cleric had previously hinted at, though he never probed for more information from Aisha.
There were two possibilities. Either the Potions worked much better than the Cleric believed, or she had other means at her disposal. Could even be both. Arjun shrugged off his analysis, and concentrated on the present. They weren’t out of the woods yet.
Following his eyes, Eve squinted in the direction of the next platform. Although it was nearer to the only source of light in this whole Aimin-forsaken cavern, it looked even darker than the platform they’d just escaped from.
“Mark my words,” she said, “those damned overgrown grasses are going to want to devour us as well.”
This elicited a grunt of agreement from the half-stonehorn, though his eyes were filled with humor. “I say we cut a swath straight through to the exit. From there it’s only a short climb down to the island.”
“As good a plan as any. There are too many unknowns at this point,” James said, “and not enough time to sort through them. But remember,” he said, addressing everyone, but eyes on a certain someone. “Try to avoid killing your enemies. Unless of course, the bamboos are fundamentally different from the vines, which I very much doubt. I can sense the hands of the Creators in every single creature of this cavern. And the Creators loved symmetry.”
Quarter bell later, as they were besieged by a grove of bamboo, Arjun screamed his frustrations aloud. “Why would they even create creatures such as these? This is just…”
“Unnatural,” Eve shouted in agreement, ankle-deep in pulverized bamboo stalks.
The bamboo forest was deceptively dense and full of horizontally protruding stalks that could somehow sense them. Once they did, poison-tipped projectiles were launched from tiny apertures located at regular intervals down its body. Immediately afterward, the stalks themselves rapidly grew in length, and any prey unfortunate enough to be in its path found itself wrapped up by a constricting coil of malleable but extremely strong substance that formed the top third of the stalk’s length. The vertical central column, easily ten times the width of an average bamboo, remained unperturbed throughout all this mayhem, like a general conducting his troops, which might be a fitting metaphor as occasional pulses of essence between neighboring bamboos indicated they could communicate with one another. After one particularly intense bout of communication, a hair-raising howl sounded from deep inside the forest and three creatures stepped out, seemingly materializing out of thin air.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Standing nearest them was Kumil who had been using his air-shields to block the projectiles and earthen hammers to bludgeon the central column from afar. One look at them and he froze up.
Each of the fifteen-foot-long felines looked like a cross between a tiger and lion, and possessed six limbs. Weighing a good thousand pounds, the dark-red stripes on their light blue fur gave them an almost regal appearance.
“By the Balls of Bramka!!! Is that a Silmodin?” Eve asked in a panicked voice. Then, after smashing her way out of a coil, rushed to Kumil’s side, who shook the fear out of his voice, if not his signature. “Melwig’s Spawn!!! Thought they went extinct.”
By some unspoken understanding, the group tightened their formation and slowly crept toward the rear end of the platform, still more than a hundred feet distant.
“An expert Teleporter and ambush predator, existing only inside the Shadow Forest.” James informed them. “They’re also far smarter than they look.”
In the mad dash that followed, the five of them fell into a routine, James’ experience helping them find it within a few blinks.
Arjun disrupted their footing when their feet, any of the six, touched ground. He and James would also shout out occasional warnings and instructions for the others using their anticipation and finely tuned battle-senses. Aisha had the most important job of all – keeping them at bay using Shields, though it quickly became obvious that even small momentary Shields were stretching the limits of her skill. She was far more adept at creating Portals and Tears which she only employed sparingly, as they tended to be far more lethal. The offensive duties were being handled by Kumil and a madly-grinning Eve, bludgeoning the magnificent creatures with earthen spears and hammers.
When the second Silmodin lay in two neatly bisected gory pieces at Arjun’s feet, its blood and viscera flooding the ground, Aisha wobbled for a moment before collapsing in the middle of their broken formation. Quick thinking and reflexes honed by years of rigorous training on Arjun’s part saved her from an equally gory death as the blue blood was highly corrosive.
Two down. One to go.
The first had been taken care of by Eve, though it had almost cost her a hand, as the creature nearly tore it in half. The consequent emergency Healing session by James that had lasted all of ten blinks had left their group vulnerable, sensing which one of the Silmodin’s had pounced.
Unfortunately for it, the target it had chosen happened to be oddly cognizant of his surroundings, and had anticipated and then communicated that feeling to the only Portal user in the group, who had promptly formed a transient circular Tear no larger than three feet right in front of Arjun just as the creature was about to reach him, causing its upper torso to go flying off past his left shoulder, still squirting blood. Thankfully, none of it spilled onto his face. One or two drops did land on his arm which he quickly Healed, then disrupted the footing of the last Silmodin when it looked ready for another jump. Kumil took the opportunity to spear it with a wickedly long spear of reddish-gray earth. The impact launched it backwards more than ten feet, and as it landed James locked it in place using a column, and began squeezing.
It had taken them a few rounds to realize Silmodins, at least these particular Silmodins, couldn’t Teleport when their physical movement was restricted. For four blinks, it squirmed, growling in an oddly deep voice, frustration turning to rage.
Then, with a squishy sound that somehow felt much louder than it actually was, the magnificent creature was no more. Worryingly, the purple kernel still drifted downward, vanishing off into Aimin knew where. Arjun spared a regretful glance at the squashed creature’s direction before moving over to examine Aisha, who was conscious but absolutely spent.
“I’m not built for extended battles,” she said with a tired smile while leaning back against a half-destroyed bamboo thicket.
The little Arjun knew about Enfolding from reading Thurna’s collection seemed to support Aisha’s statement. Pretty much the only weakness they possessed was their lack of stamina and fortitude. He closed his eyes, hands on her shoulder. “Your signature is still too turbulent. Don’t push yourself too hard.”
After James’ warning, she’d removed the Shrouding Vest, and as for Potions, she’d run out the day before. Consequently, even before entering the Shrine, her signature had become apparent to all. A chaotic mess that boasted no less than four primary Awakened Chakras, and just as many secondary, none on her legs.
“I don’t know what came over me earlier. Jealousy has no place in the heart of a true friend.”
“You already apologized. So did I. Let’s move past this, and maybe our friendship,” she said, putting an odd amount of stress on the last word, “can grow into something more.”
A huge grin split Arjun’s face as the emotion behind the emphasized word suddenly became clearer. “To say I would absolutely, genuinely, positively love doing that, would be an understatement.” Then, their immediate surroundings registered in his ecstatic mind. “But first, let’s get you into fighting shape.”
Seeing the look of concern on her perfect face, he put on a reassuring expression, although he needn’t have bothered. She understood his emotions better than he himself did at times. “Without you, we’d all likely be dead, many times over,” Arjun said, placing his hands on her shoulder.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. We’ll need your help before the fat lady sings, as Thurma used to say.”
After Healing her superficial scrapes and bruises, he spared a little to also remove some of the toxic byproducts due to exhaustion, which of course, merely meant that he was the one exhausted now. But he still had more juice in the batteries, as Kumil was fond of saying. Extended battles were his forte.
“What did she say when you asked her about the lady in question?”
“She told me to shut up, and concentrate on my scroll,” Arjun said with a chuckle. “I also asked what sort of songs she liked singing. That seemed to upset her more.”
Their short moment of levity was interrupted when James called out to them. “I can see the exit. Move out before some other monstrosity out of the pages of the Legends decides to show up.”
The exit wasn’t a staircase this time. It was a door, hidden behind a screen of bamboo stalks at the end of the platform, which narrowed to a width of no more than twenty feet. The track through the forest they were following terminated at the door which blocked off the edge completely. Tall as a three-story building, it looked and felt to be made of magma, its glossy reflective surface rippling in odd circular patterns reminiscent of sigils. But they changed too chaotically and too fast to make out anything more. Seeing it, all eyes turned to Aisha, who simply gave a confirming nod, since the question was clear as day.
“Portal, though an unusual one,” Arjun said. Then, turning to the Cleric, he asked, “What makes you certain this is the exit? It could just as easily lead us to one of the two platforms on the other side of the cavern.”
“Symmetry,” James said, without even a hint of doubt. “Didn’t see any Portals here that originated in those two platforms. As I said earlier, the Creators loved symmetry. This is not just an idle conjecture. There’s enough evidence to support that theory,” he said, his hands moving in a sweeping gesture, including everything around them. “From the structure of the Great Vines to Batalyn trees, to your very anatomy, it is everywhere. It is present in creations not of their design as well, but to a lesser degree. Stands to reason that the test designed to make sure only the worthy reach the center of this…shrine would also be symmetrical. Besides,” he gave a smile that encapsulated their current predicament perfectly, “I sense no other means of exit. Do you?”
They’d all sensed the barrier of Space and other mysterious essences all around this platform as well, so leaping off one of the other edges wasn’t an option either. Even Asha’s Portals had proven futile.
“No. But this feels full of fire and earth essence, though Space and a couple of other essences still dominate.” Before Arjun could ask Eve and Kumil their opinion on the matter – especially what they thought the two unknown essences could be – Aisha calmly walked right into the door and vanished from his essence senses, though he could still sense she was somewhere close by, excited but safe.
Without any further thought, Arjun jumped in behind her.
And found himself standing on nothing but solid air that scalded his feet even through his sturdy boots. Silently cursing Allfather for creating such horrendous tests – if He was the creator at all – Arjun sprinted across the fifty-feet-long tube, trying his level best to ignore the fact that there was nothing between him and a fiery death but a thin translucent layer of air and essence. The river of lava, less than two hundred feet under the tube, looked even more frightening from up close. Reaching the end, he leaped and landed on the hard rock of the central island.
To his left stood Aisha, her eyes fixed on the annular metallic structure that encircled the hemispherical bowl. Carved on it was the most intricate network of sigils he had ever been fortunate enough to see. Such was the level of craftsmanship that Arjun doubted he could insert a single strand of hair through the crack where the natural rock floor met the ring of metal. The dome-shaped building beyond, by comparison, looked ordinary, though it still was made of an unknown ceramic substance that felt artificially enhanced through sigils and essences.
“Don’t tell me we’re going in there,” Eve said from behind him, her eyes transfixed on the building in front. “Feels like my Crown itself is vibrating. And we’re still outside.”
Kumil emerged from the tube, dropped the last few feet with carefree abandon, then promptly collapsed, clutching his head in distress. “What in the name of Jukatis is that noise?”
The answer came from the Cleric, who looked absolutely dumbstruck. “Cosmic Node. Never thought I’d be so near one that has pierced the Veil of Eternity.”
Unlike the Manifested Gem Arjun had seen earlier, the Node inside the bowl-shaped ceramic building surrounded by the even stranger annular metallic ring, felt more…real. Felt more like itself. As if the other Node he’d sensed earlier was a silhouette viewed through a screen, or ‘Veil’ – the shield between this Reality and whatever lay beyond, a shield supposedly made up of all seven Aspects of Reality.
“Now I know what that old geezer meant. Couldn’t make heads or tails out of the definition of a Cosmic Node before,” Eve said, eyes sparkling.
Kumil had regained his composure, though he still was more affected by the constant sense of vibration than anyone else. Shaking his head in apprehension and wonder, he mumbled, “A tiny part of the fabric of Reality that has gained the ability to actively alter itself. I thought it was more propaganda concocted by the Keepers of the Lore.”
Both the Lore and the Historica were full of accounts related to these elusive elements that supposedly were the building blocks of the Cosmos, though the stories were far more vague than Arjun would’ve preferred, varying widely even on the exact definition of a Node. He liked rules and laws to be clear, rigid, and well-defined. How else was he going to get around them?
After pestering James for days, Arjun had been crestfallen upon learning that even the Clerics didn’t know much about them, though not for lack of trying.
Only one fact was proven through observation.
Nodes appear when a certain point in Space reaches a critical essence density. They lack any physical substance, can only be sensed through essence and cannot be constructed artificially by any means known to humans, stonehorns or aditarus. How long they linger near the vicinity of that initial point varies greatly, from a few blinks to days, unless they were contained using special constructs like the box James had supplied him with. But even then, Cosmic Nodes rarely lasted longer than a few years. Which is what made the Node they were sensing inside the building before them all the more confusing.
It felt… Eternal.
“What’s this?” Kumil said, hands on a stone pedestal, no more than four feet high.
After his round trip, Arjun had noted four small timeworn pedestals around the perimeter of the ring, all equidistant from one another. Each pad of the pedestal held a distinct sigil on top. Even more curious, instead of complicated sigils created for completing complex tasks, each of these were simple base sigils, representing one of the Artifacts. Mount of Matter, Pools of Power, Fulcrum of Force and lastly, Sphere of Space.
After fiddling with them for a while, Arjun’s eyes widened. “A sigil powered by a particular essence? Didn’t think such a thing existed,” he said, practically jumping with joy.
“Me neither,” said Eve. “Thought all sigils could be powered by any essence.”
“The secrets of the so-called ‘Attuned Sigils’ have been lost since the Age of Creation,” James informed them with glowing eyes that took in every detail of the sigils in question.
At first glance, they had appeared to be identical to the four base sigils, but closer inspection revealed there were minute variations within each. Every one of the four held shadows of all the other six in their design. In comparison, the normal base sigils were….bland, separate. Disconnected from the other six. Or nine, if you take into account Null, Mind, and Soul. Moreover, as a result of that connection, these sigils appeared to be imperfect, as there were tiny deviations in their design – usually one of the minor or major Nodes being slightly out of place.
“If it’s what I fear it is, then we’re stuck here,” Kumil sprinted around the bowl, glancing at the sigils, voice full of concern. “Space and Matter we can easily manage,” he said, eyeing Aisha who was busy studying the sigils on the metallic floor, which were neither simple base sigils nor normal unattuned compound ones. They were both attuned and compound.
“We don’t need to produce the essences ourselves, they’re already here, all around us,” James theorized after studying the pads more closely. “We only need someone potentially capable of producing it. The device will do the rest for us. No active Manipulation or Enfolding needed.”
“But where are we going to scrounge up a Power Cleric, even a clueless Novice?” Eve asked.
Arjun wished he could melt right into the metallic ring, but was denied that relief by the Cleric whose dark eyes were locked onto him.
“Hand of the Dualgods indeed,” James said with a chuckle.
“Didn’t think it was a very good speech,” Arjun said, hoping to distract the others. And himself.
“It wasn’t.” James replied. “So much so that it was a memorable one.”
He then turned to the other two, both of whom were looking at Arjun with wide wondering eyes. Even Aisha looked dumbstruck, as she didn’t know about his dormant Chakra. Arjun had been steadfastly ignoring it, hiding it away in the darkest recesses of his mind. Hiding it from himself.
That road eventually leads to Madness.
“Suffice it to say, we’ve got a perspective Power Cleric in our midst. But we’re still short a potential Augmenter.”
Someone who can alter Reality using the most reviled and taboo Aspect of them all – Force. A being of indescribable power and ferocity, especially when fighting alongside others of his kind. Together they formed such a formidable unit that Allfather, along with Anantika, had to remake two races. Even the exact nature of the Aspect was shrouded in mystery, perhaps deliberately so. More to the point, there haven’t been any Augmenter in all of history, the Creators had made sure of that. As a result, the corresponding Aspect was a dormant one.
Then, with a thought that sent chills down his spine, Arjun remembered his fight with the unomynds, and how each of them had effortlessly broken apart every single material barrier they’d faced.
As had Eve’s father.
Neither the Lore nor the Historica said Augmenters had to be human or aditaru. In fact, their exact nature was left vague, almost intentionally so.
“We aren’t short an Augmenter,” Arjun mumbled, causing Kumil to frown in confusion.
“Are we?” James finished, his intense gaze coming to rest on Eve, who glanced down, then up, eyes hesitant, but only for a moment. In the next, they turned resolute.
“No, we’re not.”