GRIFFIN TUCKER VASILIAS, GREAT HOUSE SCION, REBORN LVL 5
VASILIAS COMPOUND, HELDON
The House Vasilias compound where Griffin was allowed to roam freely was arranged like a corporate business park. There were several large, functional buildings filled with House Vasilias staff doing…stuff. Griffin had no idea what they did. His SONAR perception allowed him to easily see through the one-way mirrored glass in shades of ghostly blue, but even so, he couldn’t figure out what they were doing.
Brion, the uniformed servant Loris had left him with led him across the immaculately landscaped grounds, and Griffin took a nice long few moments to marvel at everything. It had been laid out like a luxury resort, complete with sparkling fountains, beautiful architecture, and meandering garden paths. There were brilliant, beautiful flowers everywhere lending their soft perfume to the air in subtle and delightful ways. He half expected someone in a straw hat to hand him a colorful drink with an umbrella and a fruit salad in it.
Instead, he was led quickly through the long and winding pathways that connected the various buildings until they were at the edge of the compound where several bungalow-style buildings had been arranged in a small semi-circle. These were the guest residences. They all had fantastic views over the town as well as the huge, looming Mt. Discovery and the nearby forest.
The mountain loomed over everything here. It was hard to get used to it just being there. Its bigness and closeness were intimidating. Griffin tried to ignore it for now as he approached the building that had been designated as his. Brion opened the door and then stood there as if he were waiting for something.
Griffin stood there awkwardly for a minute, not sure what the guy was waiting for, when it occurred to him that he was probably waiting for a tip. Hadn’t he seen a movie or eight where the bellhop stood at the door to the hotel room, awkwardly waiting for a tip while the clueless guests gush about the room and ignore him? But what could he give him that would be a good tip? He scanned his Inventory for a minute, trying to decide what would work when he finally settled on something he considered invaluable.
A boxed-up pizza appeared in his hand, still hot and steaming and smelling heavenly. He’d made it (and a dozen more just like it) with his Adaptive Conjuration graft not too long after he’d started experimenting with the power and saved the best pizzas in his Inventory. He had created hundreds of pizzas, but the vast majority of them were disgusting in one way or another. The plasma cybercentipedes had seemed to like them well enough anyway.
Brion looked quizzically at Griffin, who held the pizza box out to him, a big grin plastered on his face. Slowly, he reached out and took the pizza, then looked back over at Griffin.
“Who would you like me to…deliver this to?” He asked.
Griffin looked at him, nonplussed. “Nobody, man! It’s for you!” He tried to make his grin even wider, but he couldn’t. “It’s a pizza.”
Brion shot him another confused look before tucking the pizza box under his arm and bowing. “I’ll do my best to keep your peet-sa safe, Scion.”
“No! You can’t hold it like that!” Griffin shouted, lunging for the pizza box.
Brion’s face went white and he bowed ninety degrees at the waist, holding out the pizza box to Griffin. “I apologize profoundly for my lapse, Scion! I did not know that there was an appropriate way to hold the pizza; have I destroyed it?”
Griffin sputtered, “Y—I mean, uh, no, it’s gonna be just fine!” He tried to smile convincingly and helped Brion right the box.
Brion looked both terrified and apologetic like he expected Griffin to yell at him or something. Griffin didn’t want to think about that 'or something' right now. He didn’t like what it implied about House Vasilias. He took a peek inside the pizza box and tried not to react: the pizza was crushed to one side of the box, gooey cheese stuck to the lid, and sauce spread everywhere.
No tip for you, he thought suddenly, trying not to laugh. Dominos would not be pleased with your driver performance review.
He said, “Uh, while this one is just fine and great, I uh, forgot that I didn’t wanna give you pepperoni. It’s my favorite topping.” He reached for the box and Brion handed it back to him, his face regaining some color.
Griffin tossed the ruined pizza back into his Inventory and pulled another one out. This was a “supreme” pizza he’d managed. Not all the toppings were strictly traditional (the bacon tasted more like baked beans, no matter what he did scrambled eggs always became a topping, and the cheese was an off-putting shade of chartreuse), but he’d developed a taste for this one and he wasn’t thrilled to let it go. Still. Anything for diplomacy.
Brion held onto the pizza box like his life depended upon him keeping it absolutely level. He gave Griffin a sickly smile and asked, “What shall I do with this peet-sa, Scion?”
“Dude. You eat it. Uh. Bon appetit! Now, if you don’t mind…” Griffin said, forcing a smile. He scooched past Brion and shut the door behind him, sighing in relief.
Kismet appeared hovering in the air next to him, a worried look on her face. Griffin kept walking into the luxurious architectural marvel they called “his quarters”. He hurried past the incredible statue of August Vasilias and into his enormous bedroom, throwing himself into the party-sized bed with a relieved sigh.
“Griffin, you should—”
“No,” Griffin interrupted, holding a hand up. His face was still buried in the silky sheets, muffling his voice. He lifted his head, glaring up at Kismet. “No. No more ‘should’. Holy shit, I’m tired of being told what to do! I thought I’d finally made a move on my own but nope. I just played right into the hands of the people who wanted me the most!” He flopped back onto the bed. “The irony of my choice to go with Jessaline and fight against the Mothers, thereby landing us in this mess isn’t lost on me. I’m just choosing to ignore it so I can feel properly superior.”
Kismet appeared above his head, a serious look on her face. “Griffin, I’m not joking or being hyperbolic right now. Please listen for a little bit.” When he didn’t interrupt, she continued. “I agree with you. House Vasilias is not the ideal place for you to be if what you value is your personal freedom. As a Great House Scion, the most valuable aspect of your existence is that it continues. That leaves a lot of leeway for how they treat you. One method is the way they’re handling you now; another might be similar to that movie you keep describing to me…”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“Ghostbusters?” Griffin asked. “I don’t see the resemblance. Unless Loris is Walter Peck…?”
Kismet rolled her eyes and shook her head. “No, not Ghostbusters. The one where the vastly superior entities locked humanity in a dreamworld created by technology and magic?”
Griffin thought a moment, then his eyes lit up. “The Matrix! That’s…wait, that’s fucking terrifying. Are you saying these guys’ll plug me into the goddamn Matrix?!” He thought for a moment. “Would the virtual world they lock me in be a virtual world of Nolm or Earth? Cuz if it was Earth, well… Maybe I wouldn’t wanna come back. Maybe I’d blue pill it. Like Cypher in The Matrix.”
Silence stretched between them for a long time. Before either one could break the silence, a knock that managed to sound both diffident and peremptory sounded at his bedroom door. Before he could say anything, the door opened and Culvis Thoroneld, the guy who had healed him and saved his life back in the caves under Mt. Discovery, walked in followed by two ginpaari in House Vasilias colors of black and gold. One of them was carrying a big, bulky case.
“Ah, Griffin, I see that you cleaned up already,” Culvis’ gruff voice sounded vaguely regretful. “You’ll have to do that again. Your first round of Attribute stuffing has been ordered for this afternoon.”
Griffin gulped and felt a little lightheaded. “Uh,” he said eloquently. “Wasn’t there supposed to be a, uh. Personal examination?”
Culvis nodded absently, a Systablo already in hand. He tapped the screen a couple of times, frowned at whatever the screen said, then looked back up at Griffin and smiled. The Systablo disappeared from his hand, presumably back to Culvis’ Inventory, and he adopted the air of a professional doctor: friendly, slightly bored, with an undeniable attitude of absolute authority. Griffin was impressed at the sudden shift.
“Now, I’ve already got a full scan of you from when I healed your arm, but I’d like to run an Analysis on you now that you’re here,” he lifted his left arm and a gauntlet of light appeared around it, different components spinning and rotating around each other. “It’ll help to verify that you’re not carrying any nasty passengers from your fight against those monsters. Jessaline gave us her report on where she found you—if you didn’t pick up a parasite from swimming around in that muck, I’ll be shocked.”
Griffin shrugged awkwardly and nodded. “Uh, sure, Doc. Just tell me where you want me.”
“On the bed is fine. There. Just sit down and try to be still for a few seconds. This won’t hurt.”
Griffin nervously crossed the room and sat down on the enormous bed, sinking only a little into the firm mattress. The two ginpaari that had accompanied Culvis hadn’t said anything as they were engrossed in putting together something with a lot of complicated-looking black pieces that they were pulling out of the big case they’d brought with them. Culvis caught his glance and smiled again.
“Oh don’t worry about them,” he said lightly. “They’re just getting things ready for us for the next step. Now, let’s take a look at you.” He held his light-gauntleted hand up and splayed his fingers out.
Griffin suddenly felt Culvis’ anima inveigle its way into his body, probing deep into his internal organs and right through his bones. In one way, it was completely harmless and painless. But because of Griffin’s tensa senses, the experience was…unnerving. The flows of tensa poured through Culvis, suffusing his anima and disappearing within Griffin as Culvis’ anima enveloped him.
After a few moments of consideration, Culvis shook his head, gesturing to the screen Griffin couldn’t see on his Systablo. “I’ve never examined an alien-human before,” he said, perplexed. “Your DNA is…exceedingly strange. There are so many vestigial genes in it—useless genetic material and outright harmful stuff. It’s almost like it’s all evolutionary… Like your people never discovered genetic engineering!” He chuckled to himself, still scanning through the results. “You’ve been developing a case of arthritis that will be crippling in a short forty or fifty years. Then there’s a burgeoning patch of cancerous cells in your brain—that would have taken care of you in just a few more years, likely less than a decade.” He glanced up and saw Griffin’s expression. “Oh, that’s right, you don’t know… Well, you’ll be happy to learn that, now that you’ve been Reborn, you are immune to those mundane diseases and conditions. You won’t be getting any arthritis or brain cancer, but don’t get complacent! There are tensa-infused microorganisms that can ruin your day, though I’ll be applying a broad spectrum of whole-body improvements that’ll protect you from anything that isn’t weaponized.”
He started pulling out equipment and devices from his Inventory, arranging them on the bed near Griffin. The equipment looked futuristic and arcane at the same time. He could swear that one of his medical tools was just an incense burner made of some smooth ceramic with runes that flashed up on an embedded screen. Culvis picked up something that looked like a tricorder from Star Trek, attaching it to his Systablo with a cord that appeared to be made of pulsing green light.
Griffin shifted nervously on the bed, causing the items to jostle and shift a little bit. “Uh. Can we, like, talk about this first? The last medical procedure I went through, some old guy with dreadlocks ripped out my heart and replaced it with abstract statuary.”
Culvis shrugged as he worked, not looking up from the Systablo. He deftly maneuvered the controls and more tensa flowed from him into the Systablo. Then, it did something odd and complicated, folding in on itself in bizarre geometries Griffin couldn’t make heads or tales of. When he took his hand away, the complex tensa balls remained behind and then crystallized into tiny little pills, which Culvis handed to him.
Griffin stared at them—six jewel-like pills created from tensa—and grimaced. Kismet’s chibi avatar appeared in his HUD, a white lab coat and large, oversized glasses completing her scientist wardrobe.
“My initial analysis shows these are 98.34% to be harmless and 69.78% percent likely to be beneficial,” her avatar said in a little comic-book-style dialog bubble. “It’s good to be suspicious, that instinct will keep you alive!” She winked and gave him a thumbs-up, then disappeared from his HUD.
“Huh,” Griffin said, nonplussed. “Guess I’ll give it a chance.”
A moment later, he shrugged and tossed the pills into his mouth. He used a surge of tensa to create a can of Dr. Pepper with his Adaptive Conjuration graft, then popped the top and drank down the pills. He grimaced as he swallowed, hating the taste of the lukewarm soda. He hadn’t figured out yet how to make them cold when he created them, but a warm Dr. Pepper was better than no Dr. Pepper.
He finished the whole can, burping with echoing force as he swallowed the last drop. Culvis slowly lowered the Systablo, a look of horrified incredulity on his face. Griffin just shrugged and smiled with forced bravado. In truth, he was feeling more than a little anxious about the pills and about the growing pile of equipment, the draakan assistants had brought.
“Griffin,” Culvis said, “you didn’t swallow those pills did you?”
Face paling, Griffin hesitated before he nodded. “Uh, maybe. Why? It’s not…bad is it?” His heart was beating so hard he felt like it would burst from his chest.
Culvis’ expression suddenly melted into a good-natured grin as he burst out laughing. “Just a little joke! Calm yourself, Griffin. Please!” He chuckled as he patted the air with his palms. “The pills will do what I said earlier. I also included a couple that will prep you for the Pre-Stone Attribute Maximization procedure—that’s what it’s really called, but it’s not as evocative as ‘Attribute stuffing’ so nobody but us Healers call it that.” He gestured, indicating the device Griffin had been watching for the past several minutes. “Go on and get in the chair my assistants assembled,” he said. “The drugs will kick in about four or five minutes from now and then you’ll be more awkward to maneuver when you’re limp, dead weight.”
“That’s so reassuring,” Griffin muttered as he got up from the bed and went over to the chair.