GRIFFIN TUCKER VASILIAS, GREAT HOUSE SCION, REBORN LVL 5
PROVINCE OF ARAGONIA WILDERNESS
The first time Griffin had breathed the free air of Nolm, he’d been flying through the exploded-open windowall of his luxurious bed chambers in a secret weapons testing facility. It had been overrun with deadly and disgusting plasma cybercentipedes—one had swallowed Griffin whole—but they’d finally climbed up out of the last tunnel and out into crisp mountain air.
They were standing on a hillside littered with rocky scree at the mouth of a cave. Jessaline and Tolochi had managed to find a tunnel that led directly outside rather than going back the way they had come, back through the ancient facility still crawling with plasma cybercentipedes. The rocks were a nightmare of ankle-breakers, especially in the dark, but they gave way to a forest about a hundred and fifty meters downhill. It was dark now, and Griffin saw something that he hadn’t yet seen because the mountain had always been in the way: the night sky of Nolm.
Thousands of stars painted the sky like the most beautiful color-corrected, ultra-long-exposure photos of the Milky Way back on Earth, but the stars here shone in every color of the rainbow. It was like looking at a broken computer monitor, where most of the screen was dark but there were random pixels on. He felt like he could make out a picture if he could fill in more of those stars.
Then he saw the moons of Nolm. The biggest was a bright violet-white, like mother of pearl, with dark and light grey bands and swirls around it. It was three times the size of Earth’s moon. There was another, smaller moon that was a dusky red color that moved slowly but visibly across the sky. He couldn’t see the third moon that Kismet had told him about, but the two he saw were majestic enough.
Griffin stopped in dumbfounded wonder when he saw them. For some reason, despite the magical powers he’d attained, the impossible AI companion that looked like his fiancée, and the party of super-powered aliens he’d just met, it was the two utterly un-Earthlike moons that made him feel like he was truly far from home. He didn’t know how long he stared at them, but when he looked back down out of the cave mouth, the rest of the team had continued down the mountain.
Griffin started picking his way downhill, being careful of loose rocks. He didn’t think it’d be a great start to his life in a magical world to break his ankle on some rocks. Then again, Culvis would probably be able to fix it up without even thinking about it, he thought, still amazed that his formerly shattered leg was now whole and completely unhurt.
He saw Tolochi and Xander standing together a few meters ahead of him, having a conversation that Griffin didn’t quite catch. It didn’t last long, but when it was over, Tolochi bowed shallowly at the waist and made his way down the mountain.
Griffin turned to Kismet and asked in a low voice, “Where’s he going? I mean, I thought he was part of the group?”
Kismet considered for a moment, eyes going a little vacant as she consulted the System. A moment later, she found what she was looking for and spoke, her voice taking on a lecturing tone, “According to System records, Tolochi is an independent member of the Order of Ascension. No affiliation to any Imperial Houses.”
The rest of the group had gotten further down the mountainside, but Griffin was beginning to catch up. Kismet flew by his head, keeping her voice low as she spoke, “The Order is one of the only worldwide organizations that the System runs. Jobs that fit within the purview of the Order can be posted as contracts and there are hundreds of thousands of contracts in the Order records fulfilled by Imperial Great Houses. I assume Tolochi had one of those contracts, has accepted payment, and is taking his leave.”
“I wonder what his contract was,” Griffin replied.
“It’s hard to say, though I imagine finding you was part of it,” she said.
“Shit, I was afraid of that. This Great House Scion thing is a big deal, isn’t it?”
“It truly is,” Kismet replied. “The heads of the Great Houses form the body of the Imperial Senate, the only governing body allowed to put policy decisions before the Emperor.”
Griffin sighed, thinking, I can’t imagine that politics in a magical world with monsters and cybernetics is going to be any less complicated or dangerous than politics back on Earth. Maybe I should just fucking leave.
Xander made a gesture that the rest of his team responded to immediately, moving into a quick, loose huddle. Culvis waved at Griffin, beckoning him to join them. Griffin and Kismet exchanged a brief look.
“Let’s see what they want,” Griffin muttered, looking longingly down the mountainside after Tolochi. “Maybe they can tell me how to get to that town we saw from the room.”
“Maybe,” Kismet said. “Griffin… I know you want to find Sarah, but don’t try to get away from them too quickly. They’re from your House and you’re a Scion… They will have incredible resources at their disposal and they will be just as interested in finding Sarah as you are.”
“You’re probably right,” he said, making his way over to the group, “but I don’t want to get roped into anything political. If that’s even possible.”
Griffin kept his thoughts to himself as he joined the rest of the group with Kismet flying perimeter. Zahara had put away her djevek and she had a pinched, tight expression on her face that Griffin couldn’t quite understand. Then again why should he? She was an alien musician in a world brimming with magic and monsters: not exactly relatable.
“Griffin, we’re not safe yet.” Xander said, keeping his voice quiet, “This side of Mt. Discovery is well within the Wilderness, even if it’s mostly Class 1 and 2 monsters, the influence of the little moon, Bellis, strengthens them beyond their normal capacity. It’s very dangerous and we’re not ready for another pitched battle so we’ll need to get to town as soon as we can. Jessaline,” he looked over at the Psi-Scout, “can you get us back to the OT?”
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Jessaline rolled her eyes, “I found the Scion in the ass-end of nowhere in the middle of the Wilderness in the deepest, darkest cave at the bottom of a pit filled with monster shit—”
“I had gotten myself out of the pit filled with monster shit, thank you,” Griffin put in quickly.
Jessaline managed to wink sarcastically at him (though Griffin still wasn’t sure how she pulled it off) and continued, “—So don’t ask me ‘can you get us back to the OmniTrans’, just ask how long it’s going to take, okay?”
“Then how long is it going to take?” asked Xander patiently.
“Well, we parked on the other side of the mountain, so probably around four hours—”
“Four hours!” Culvis hissed through his enormous mustache. He looked apologetically over at Griffin and said, “No offense, son, but I just had to reconstruct your leg, ribs, and right lung. I’d rather not have to push my grafts so hard again…Can’t we just hunker down in the caves here and hold off any plasma cybercentipedes?”
“That’s four hours at a pace that won’t get us noticed by every monster between here and Heldon,” Jessaline replied. “If we push it, we can get there quicker but we’ll be making so much noise at that point that we might as well hang dinner bells on our necks.”
“The real concern is not monsters,” Salyyb said, and everyone else fell quiet. The ginpaari’s headflower was pointed at one of his huge bees. It was crawling over his arm, shaking and twitching in a complex dance.
“Why do you say that?” Xander asked after a long moment of waiting.
Salyyb held up one hand, still concentrating on the bee. Its dance continued for another few seconds before it stopped, clearly exhausted. Salyyb lifted the bee, placing it gently on his shoulder where it paused for a moment, then crawled into a little crack in his neck to join the rest of his hive.
“My bees have found evidence that there’s a team of Reborn operating nearby. They’re making efforts to remain unseen, but there are five or six of them and they didn’t have all their tracks covered.”
Salyyb’s news galvanized the group into action. Xander slammed his helmet’s visor down and began striding down the rock-strewn mountainside, issuing hurried orders, “Jess, take us to the OT. Zahara, keep your djevek put away unless we need it: right now, stealth is our best friend. Salyyb, keep intelligence coming in on the other team. Culvis, keep our Scion safe—his life is in your hands. Griffin… things have gotten more complicated; we no longer have the luxury of choice. There’s another team of Reborn out there, and that’s no coincidence. It’s likely Bardouls, though we’ll hopefully give them the slip. We’ll need to move quickly but quietly.” He suited words to actions, speeding up but making surprisingly little noise even in the suit of heavy armor he was strapped into.
Griffin stumbled as he followed Xander and the rest of them down the hill, feeling like things were once again rapidly spinning out of control. He used the mental command to re-form his DEEP Suit’s helmet around his head so if he did fall, he wouldn’t scatter his brains all over the mountain.
“Hang on, I don’t understand what’s going on!” he said, jogging to catch up to Xander. Culvis easily kept pace, not going more than a couple of meters away from his side. “What’s an OT? And don’t tell me it’s an ‘OmniTrans’ because that still doesn’t mean anything to me. And where are we even going? Why are we suddenly running?”
Kismet answered before Xander could, her voice tight with disapproval, “There’s clearly some kind of enmity between House Bardoul and House Vasilias. It’s disgusting, but Reborn in this day and age are not as united as they should be. They contend with one another, killing each other as quickly and efficiently as they would dispatch a monster. This is just oneof the reasons the System does not involve itself in the governments of the people it serves. Reborn killing Reborn… It’s shameful.” She shivered in disgust, then went back on her rounds, keeping an eye out for anything Griffin missed.
Xander watched her fly by, but his face was hidden behind his helm’s visor, so Griffin didn’t get to see his expression. “You have questions and they’re good ones,” he said distractedly, “but we don’t have the time to answer them all, not here in the Wilderness. Once we get back to the OT, I’ll answer whatever questions I can, provided you’ll do the same.”
Griffin considered that while he also concentrated on not twisting his ankle. When he could spare a moment of concentration he said, “Alright, that’s fair—”
Anything else he might’ve said died on his lips as Xander gave a single sharp nod and increased his pace. Griffin got the message and ran with the others as fast as he’d ever run before. He kept his anima in the Sphere configuration to push his senses as far out as possible so that he wouldn’t get surprised by a root or something stupid like that.
Growing up in New Hampshire, Griffin had gone skiing many times. He hadn’t gone in a few years because of an old ankle injury that he was afraid would get worse if he took a spill. It had been long enough that he’d forgotten the rush of going downhill at breakneck speed.
This time, he wasn’t skiing, he was running downhill in the dark, skipping from rock to rock, boulder to boulder, making minute adjustments to his course as Kismet or his On-Board Sensor Suite pointed out obstacles to him—and he wasn’t even winded. He felt like tensa surged through his whole body as he ran and if the entire experience hadn’t been done in utter silence under threat of imminent attack, then he’d have been having the time of his life. They reached the tree line in what felt like mere moments, but their breakneck pace didn’t slow once they got to the trees. Griffin was barely able to keep up with the rest of the group and he had the assistance of his DEEP Suit.
“Do you see now why the movement training was so necessary?” Kismet said in his ear.
Griffin didn’t answer, but he privately agreed wholeheartedly. Without the training she’d been forcing on him, there was no way he’d have been able to keep this up. Of course, the DEEP Suit he now constantly wore was enhancing his abilities even more and it was connected to Kismet, constantly updating its systems based on what she perceived. She was flying around him in acrobatic sweeps and curves that took her high into the air and then back close to him, almost like a swallow’s flight pattern.
The data streaming into Griffin’s HUD made it clear why Kismet had adopted such a strange flight path: she was getting the most out of the way they shared the On-Board Sensors. The HUD had everything mapped out in clear, easy-to-see shapes that didn’t over-saturate his view in confusion and his route was just as clear. It was like running in a virtual reality video game where he could see and react to everything that might trip him up.
The only other person he could consistently see was Culvis, who kept pace with him, helping him miss a branch here or dodge out of a stump there. The big man seemed to have no difficulty maneuvering his way through the woods, sprinting downhill in the dark while wearing a full suit of heavy armor. Trees whipped by Griffin as he continued to run, turning when Culvis pushed him in one direction or another.
The minutes quickly blended for Griffin in a haze of running. He’d long gone past the point where he thought he’d have collapsed from exhaustion, but he kept going. Every time he stumbled, Culvis would be right there, helping him make sure he didn’t break his leg or his neck. The run in the woods turned into one long tortured eternity for Griffin until Culvis suddenly had a hand on his chest, slowing him down, directing him.
“Easy son!” He said, and even he was winded. The big man was sweating so much that the tips of his huge mustache dripped. “We’re stopping for a bit. We’ll need the rest if there are Bardouls out there.”