Chapter 98: The Eyes of Pulse
Subject: Gire Location: Riventread - Outskirts
The Blightbane Guild's Intelligence Division's second-highest performing Tracer, Gire, was panting with exertion now. The title was a mouthful, but it was his pride and reason for being to be a part of the Guild's "boots on the ground", offensive strategy for combating The Blight. He often went into dangerous places, discovering new horrors to report back to his Guild Branch in Maliscade, but nothing had ever been this boneshakingly deadly. At least in the conventional sense. Perhaps a biological weapon, engineered in the dark recesses of a festerfont somewhere had more destructive potential.
One of Gire’s Burstbow bolts hit the breachworm in a sensitive spot, a vulnerable chink in the beast's natural armor, only revealed through a targeted succession of painstakingly targeted shots. The worm began to flail about, screeching so loud it forced Gire to cover his ears.
When it finally quieted down, he glanced over to the nearby hole.
That freshbane must've fallen to his death, he thought, with momentary pity in his chest.
That pity was a luxury in this moment, and it passed quickly. The beast was crushing the landscape to smithereens. That meant deadly shards of rock flying through the air, it meant the risk of falling to death by impact or suffocation, and it meant fewer places to hide.
If the Initiate had only listened, Gire could have counted on the subjugation squad's rescue. Even if the battle was long and hard-fought, it would have been something to hope for. As it stood, this battle of attrition would likely end in pointless death for him and the first group of unwitting first responders.
Would they send Remeret's squad? Or, maybe that blustering fool Akoshay's lackeys? Even that pulse-forsaken hunk of stupid muscle didn't deserve a death like this.
Feet pounded on soft, uneven gravel as the next section of boulders neared, and with it, the promise of temporary safety. Gire loaded the next bolt into the chamber, prepping the chalk-fueled firing mechanism, and slid the bolt harness around his torso so he could more easily access the remaining supply of ammunition.
This was, by far, the hardest Gire had ever had to fight to survive. Only training came close, and the threat of death was only an artificially-constructed motivation in that instance.
He arrived at the next outcrop and nestled in so the breachworm could no longer see him. He told himself that this shelter needed to last longer than the previous one. But, deep down, he knew it wasn't really up to him.
Strange... I still feel that mage's magic filling my muscles with strength. If he can really cast silent augmentations like a grandmaster Synergist/Lifemage hybrid, shouldn't I know about him? No mere citizen contractor should be able to do that. Then there was that-
At that moment, a gust of sand blew away from the remaining sliver of the hole Caim had fallen into. The presumably-dead mage's winged metal beast emerged, flying full speed toward the breachworm.
That crazy mage is still alive?!
It paused, hovering at a standstill, wings flapping level with the hulking monstrosity's head. Loosing a steady stream of projectiles, it got the beast's attention fast. When the breachworm howled in its direction, it dove down into the breachworm's mouth.
Gire aimed his weapon at the breachworm, not one to let a rookie show him up. Least of all such an irredeemably disobedient one.
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Subject: Caim Location: Riventread - Outskirts
After sending Scion off, Caim continued practicing until he could no longer justify the time expense. Next, he decided he would practice Shiver.
If Caim concentrated, he could sense the sourcetech routine there, ready to be called upon. After a few seconds of anxious hesitance, he reached for Shiver and concentrated on the empty section of underground space closest to the shaft of light coming down from the surface.
Something happened, but it was not what he expected to happen. He was in the dark, so it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. As his head turned this way and that, he sighted the shaft of light. Only, it wasn't anywhere near where he had ended up. It was over a dozen meters away, further than he had started from.
If he were to describe the feeling it would be... disorientating. The nausea hit after a lengthy delay, and he wasn't even oriented in the same direction as before. The skin on his arms and legs were covered in bumps, as chills cascaded through his body. There was also the faint *whoosh* of the air displacing as a result of his passage.
Is it an issue of poor concentration? he wondered.
He could still feel the power, ready and accessible, if somewhat weaker than before. He tried again.
His boots his the ground with an echoing *clap*, as he ended up about ten to twenty centimeters above the ground.
Caim suddenly had a flash memory of Alice describing what happened to mages who used teleportation magic. They were few in number not only because the magic took decades of study to attempt with any reliability, but also because most of them died as a result of their magic at one time or another.
Falling to your death because your transported yourself into the air would be a sad way to go, he mused thoughtfully.
Again, he wound up somewhere different from where he intended to be. The power was still there, so he tried a third time.
Another failure. Or, could he be looking at this the wrong way? Maybe this was the intended use of the sourcetech ability? The description only said "empty space". There was no mention of being able to pick the destination at all.
He tried a fourth time, but he felt nothing. The power was finally inaccessible. Though, he could sense a faint trace of the power returning. This power, like most of the others, reminded him of a vessel slowly filling with esoteric sand or an equally-enigmatic liquid. Use of a power required a set amount of that vessel's contents, a separate vessel for each individual power.
The outlier was Legion. The illegitimate sourcetech routine. Even Vera didn't know how he had obtained it.
Shiver's "vessel" seemed to be able to hold at least three times as much as it took to trigger the effect. Caim waited until he felt that enough of it had returned. He tried twice before getting a better gauge of what that feeling was. It was different with every sourcetech routine, and took a bit of trial-and-error to figure out just "how much" was enough.
Caim didn't even know if his conception of his boons was accurate. It was all too muddy and vague for his tastes.
The fourth attempt gave him a slightly better idea of what could happen when he triggered Shiver. The fifth and sixth attempts helped even more to that end.
All in all, it seemed the routine would only transport him, at most fifteen meters away, and always at least three meters from the origin point. He wasn't in a very large space, however, so it was hard to test. He was really playing with fire here, trusting that the description's "unoccupied space" meant that it wasn't possible to transport himself meters deep in rock wall, to his death.
This planet is messing with my survival instincts.
He was still trying to figure out if he had just acquired an entirely useless ability, or if he could still use it for something. The disorientation was still there, but the nausea aftereffect was greatly diminished. If he could get accustomed to it to the point of eliminating that nasty disadvantage, it was a serviceable "panic spell".
Maybe it's about time to leave?
If he could. Caim looked around. Just when he thought he'd found a set of natural handholds back up, the shudder of the worm's coils clapping against the surface forced the rock to crumble away. Caim backpedalled back to safety.
Then, in the dark, he saw something he couldn't explain.
Chunks of luminescent, abyssal purple stones, glittered beneath the newly exposed chamber. These stones were enormous, and they were gathered in a cluster of around a half dozen at least, though it was hard to guess at what lay hidden behind the exposed cluster.
Temporarily forgetting all caution, Caim walked forward as if in a trance. Something told him that these objects were valuable. He slid a hand down the smooth surface of the rock and felt something inside recoil in fear. No, it wasn't fear. It was revulsion. What about these stones was so inherently repulsive?
What are you?
Caim remembered the Orchestrator objects Vera had sent him to look for. These looked natural. Well, not so much natural to his homeworld, which had been cut off from the arcane, as Vera had explained it, but natural to this magic-enriched world. The stones didn't look like the remnant Orchestrator technology Vera had sent him after.
At once, his vision pulsed like the reverse of an electric strobe light, and he lost motor control. In losing motor control, his legs gave out beneath him, and he fell forward, face pressed against the stones.
The strobing wasn't coming from the lights, as if the reaction was intercepting optic signals.
"Welcome back," he thought, for some untold reason.
Caim's vision blacked out entirely, and when it returned, he felt a familiar presence.
Gone was Riventread Underground. Above, he saw stars, like myriad eyes, staring down at him in quiet contemplation. He stared up at them, sharing in the silence.
He wanted to know how he'd done, but he couldn't remember what this feedback was related to. Did these "eyes" give him something to accomplish, like Vera had? Wouldn't he remember something like that?
Legion Replenishing
The watchers were neither impressed nor dissatisfied. The task wasn't finished. If only he knew what they wanted of him. Was it even a "they", or some singular entity? Altogether different from Vera and, he assumed, Vera's kind.
Caim opened his eyes and he was back in the cave. He didn't remember closing them. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees and looked around.
His surroundings were pure black. The glimmer in the stones was gone, leaving only cold, empty vessels behind.
Legion Ready [12 Shards of Legion Remaining ]
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