GRIFFIN TUCKER VASILIAS, GREAT HOUSE SCION, REBORN LVL 5
VASILIAS COMPOUND, HELDON
The ‘refresher chamber’ was like the most luxurious spa he’d ever seen. The lighting was low but not too low, illuminating a light wooden floor and walls with thick white rugs arranged. All the amenities were there: a bath that was recessed into the floor and already steaming hot; oils, soaps, and lotions of all varieties and scents; a massage table (though he didn’t see a masseuse anywhere); there were even several sets of workout clothes of all different sizes stored in a cleverly concealed cabinet.
Griffin decided he’d have to come back here and explore more fully when he hadn’t just been taken to the edge of death over and over. Still, he took his time here. He had no desire to go to any doctor or whatever it was Loris had said he needed to do. Besides, he needed to talk to Kismet.
“Kismet, can you come out and talk now?” He asked, feeling a little foolish to be asking just empty air.
A second later, Kismet’s illusory form appeared in midair, dragonfly wings blurred as they appeared to flap to keep her aloft. “Of course, Griffin,” she said. “I can talk any time you want. Call it an overabundance of caution, call it paranoia if you like, but I do not like the idea of House Vasilias monitoring your every move and word.”
Griffin grunted. “I dunno, Kismet. We pretty much had a surveillance state back on Earth and nobody seemed too put out by it. Except for maybe some privacy nerds. Besides, what’re they gonna learn that they don’t already know, anyway?”
Kismet frowned but didn’t argue. “What did you want to talk about?” She asked.
“Attribute stuffing,” Griffin said, a nervous hitch in his voice. “Loris said that I’d be doing something called ‘Attribute stuffing’ soon and it sounds…unpleasant.”
Kismet nodded, flying a little closer so Griffin could more clearly see her serious expression. “It is. Attribute stuffing is not a common practice—not outside of Imperial Great Houses or extremely well-off minor Houses. It’s not practical, especially when the same gains can be made without resorting to such a practice.”
She gestured and two illusory images of Griffin appeared, standing on the marble countertop of the sink. The Griffin on the left was wearing a blue T-shirt while the one on the right was wearing a red T-shirt. Blue waved at Griffin with a cheeky grin and, bemused, Griffin waved back. The red one stuck his middle finger up at him and Griffin burst out laughing. Red grinned up at him and added his other hand to his one-finger salute, which made Griffin laugh even more.
Kismet smiled and continued her explanation. “Blue Griffin is a Reborn who follows his training, and remembers to use his anima at all times,” she glared at Griffin who guiltily configured his anima out of its at-rest state and into a sphere configuration. “Better. Blue Griffin uses his grafts, fights monsters, and absorbs ethershards to gain new powers. Eventually, he goes on his Stone Gate Quest and gains a Class. Along the way, over several weeks and months, he trains and trains and, slowly, his Attributes increase naturally.”
Blue Griffin went through a montage of training. Mesmerized, Griffin watched as the little illusory version of himself fought off waves of monsters, ran through obstacle courses, and fired off bolts and beams of magic. At the end of the little show, Blue Griffin’s physique had noticeably improved. His musculature was more defined and there was an indefinable quality to the little figure that spoke of competence and power. The illusion crossed his arms and smirked up at Griffin, giving him a thumbs-up and a wink.
Kismet continued, “Red Griffin over here…He undergoes Attribute stuffing.”
The Griffin in the red shirt was placed in an illusory chair and his arms and legs were restrained with metal clamps. Another set of clamps went over his chest and his forehead and Red Griffin’s formerly cocky expression had become distinctly nervous. Another figure joined Red Griffin: someone who looked like a doctor to Griffin, but in an oddly cut version of a lab coat that was black with gold trim instead of white.
The chair flattened out and rotated until Red Griffin was lying horizontally and the doctor or whatever it was arranged a complex device over his chest. The device looked somewhat like an engine, complete with pistons, though it was made of chromed silver with runs printed all over it. Then the doctor turned on the device and began siphoning ethershards into it. Red Griffin shuddered as the shards began pumping into him, one after another.
“As you know, there are diminishing returns for absorbing lesser ethershards after the first five. Diminishing, however, does not mean zero.” She shook her head. “Using lesser ethershards is fine for increasing your Attributes, so long as it’s supported by strong anima discipline and a meditation technique. But Attribute stuffing is different.”
They both watched as Red Griffin’s eyes rolled up in the back of his head as the doctor kept feeding ethershards into the device and it kept pumping them into Red Griffin. “It’s possible to increase your Attributes to the maximum in a single day with Attribute stuffing, though it’s insanely expensive and only works on Reborn. It’s why only the richest Imperial noble Houses can do it. Who else would waste the expense when you can simply practice and get the same results?”
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“Kismet,” Griffin interrupted, “is Attribute stuffing just…stuffing me with ethershards until…what, all my Attributes get to their max?”
“Yes.”
Griffin swallowed, looking at Red Griffin as he twitched on the stretcher. The doctor continued shoving ethershards into the device on his chest. “How many shards does it take? And does it hurt as much as it looks like it does?”
Kismet was silent for a long moment as if she were debating telling him or not. Finally, she said, “The precise number depends on a variety of factors, but the average…is ten thousand per Attribute.”
“I’m sorry,” Griffin said, a look of horrified incredulity spreading on his face, “but did you just say ten thousand? Per…?”
Kismet just nodded.
Griffin swallowed in a throat that had suddenly gone dry. “Uh, I think I’ll call in sick,” he said huskily. “I’m feeling pretty shitty so I think maybe we should skip the Attribute stuffing. Y’know. It’s a bad case of the ‘I still wanna live’ fever.”
“I had hoped that you would be able to increase your Attributes sufficiently through training and the exploration of the ruined lab, but…” Kismet shrugged. “It’s useless to dwell on the past. So learn from it.”
Griffin frowned and put his hands on his hips, staring at the frosted glass door of the spa-like room. His eyes shifted over to Kismet and he muttered under his breath, “What if we…y’know? Do an Irish Goodbye?”
“What is an Irish Goodbye?” Kismet asked.
Griffin cleared his throat ostentatiously and muttered, “When you, ah, leave a party without saying goodbye.” He grinned. Then he continued more seriously, “Can’t we just take off? I mean, with my Reality Twine and my DEEP Suit, I could Spider-Man swing out of here in like a half second. We’d be fine for food between my Adaptive Conjuration and Dread Consumption grafts…”
Kismet interrupted him, shaking her head. “There are two problems with that, Griffin.”
He crossed his arms and raised a skeptical eyebrow at her.
“The first problem is that your escape is doomed to fail from the start. House Vasilias has high-rank Reborn and now that you’ve come here, they’ll have fixed you in their tracking systems.” Kismet gestured and the Griffins disappeared. In their place, more illusions came into being.
Griffin couldn’t understand what they were. One looked like a transparent humanoid with odd, amoeba-like blobs of light floating around in its body. One illusion seemed to be an ever-changing block of computer code. A final illusion showed a metallic device that seemed to be a high-tech hockey puck with runes engraved all over it.
“These are just some of the sensing techniques that I’ve been able to ascertain that House Vasilias employs,” Kismet explained. “They’ve got a squad of spirits that resides in the Second World that they use to monitor dreams and spiritual incursions.” As she spoke, the transparent humanoid figure lit up like a spotlight appeared over it.
Griffin grunted. “So these little guys spy on your dreams. That’s creepy as fuck.” He paused and tapped his chin in contemplation. “Are we the bad guys? Are these House Vasilias people assholes?”
“I would imagine that entirely depends upon your perspective,” Kismet replied. “The Eternal Empire has done much that many would consider evil. But their people seem to think they are good.” She shrugged. “The morality of biologicals seems to be largely dependent upon convenience and aggrievement and is rarely consistently applied. The Empire is the Empire. A superpower in this world to be sure, with all the faults that implies.”
Griffin opened his mouth to protest, then thought about what she said and closed his mouth. “Good point,” he said. “But let’s keep an eye on that, okay? I don’t want to turn into a villain.”
“Perhaps you should expand your perspective beyond such binary ends,” Kismet advised. “You’ll find here on Nolm that there are no clear ‘villains’ and those you might consider heroes are imperfect. If you’re looking for the moral choice, that will be as personal for you as for anyone else.”
Griffin sighed, a little exasperated. “I’m not looking for angels and demons here, Kismet! I’m just trying to make sure we’re not siding with complete assholes. Can you assure me of that at least?”
She paused for much longer than Griffin thought his question deserved. Finally, she said, “They have not been assholes to you. Yet.”
Griffin groaned. “That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, Kismet.”
A nervous knock sounded at the doorway and Griffin saw Brion's blurry silhouette through the frosted glass. “Is everything in order in there, Scion? Do you require any assistance?” The young man sounded unsure and nervous.
“All good in here!” Griffin called back. “I’m just finishing up!”
He turned back to Kismet, but she’d disappeared again. “I know you’re still around,” Griffin said, rolling his eyes. She resolutely declined to reappear. “Fine. So it sounds like I’m going to be doing Attribute stuffing whether I want to or not. And until I can figure out how to slip those different watchers or gain some other leverage, I’m on the House Vasilias program.”
In Griffin’s HUD, Kismet’s chibi face gave a sparkling grin and a “thumbs up”. He took a deep breath and then finished getting dressed. His mind was racing with dozens of plans that came to his mind only to be dismissed just as quickly. Why did he want to escape? Because of a bad feeling? Because of the tests?
That just means you’re afraid of a little hard work, Griffin thought. Keep your eyes open, but make sure to keep your mind open too. This isn’t Earth. They don’t have your perspective.
When he was dressed in dry clothes once more, he took one more deep breath and set his shoulders. The hours of tests in the pool had taken their toll on him, but not nearly to the degree he expected. By all rights, he should be a pile of quivering flesh—or maybe just drowned. But he just felt sore and tired, like he’d had a particularly difficult workout today and was only just beginning to feel it.
He reached for the door and stepped back out into the indoor pool room with as much artificial confidence as he could project.
“Lead the way, sir,” Griffin said to Brion. “Let’s do it to it.”