It took Jack a long time to figure out why he was in a shit mood. The wet, humid, static environment; the fact that the AI disk was near burning a hole in his chest and had him tasting and hearing static; or the circular non-answers of the old man. The repeating lines of ‘the goddess - this’ and ‘the goddess - that’ didn’t help.
Maybe the environment was the worst. There was a strange interaction he had with his bare feet on the metal sand. It created a stagnant static-field that continuously built as it continuously distributed and drained into the water. It was a cycle of the entire beach and the entire body of water. Whether it was the scale or the subtly of the large movements’ interactions he had no ability to affect it at all with his Affinity.
That made it a battle between his regeneration, which was slow, and the constant trickle being sucked out from being caught in the static cycle of the sand.
They walked a long time before they stopped. He no longer had any patience for the old man.
Leanne, limping much more than before, took an opportunity to catch something off the coast, “a ship.” Her eyes searched as her mind shuffled, “No, a boat. Many boats.”
Jack turned towards the old man, Hostage #1.
“What do you say? Friends of yours?” Jack now really scanned him with his Affinity and hid the shock from his face. Nothing. A complete dead spot. The old man was as good as not there at all. Jack took a step towards him.
Wait, there was something. It was a faint square dot of incredibly dense electrical patterns. Switching between and layering his perception it should be at the nape of the geezer’s neck.
The old man turned to him, looked up to meet Jack’s eyes straight on. It was definitely a ‘him’, Jack didn’t take the opportunity to really notice it before but his eyes were massive. They must have taken up nearly half of his face. Thin lips, patchy grey growth from his cheeks and chin. His pupils nearly as massive as his eyes. His were white, foggy and rheumy.
“They go - for the- bounty — you brought. They - are - from- my village —— fishermen.”
Jack relaxed some and followed the old man who was moving again.
“Why did they send you?”
The old man stopped again and turned towards him.
“Because - I - was told.”
Neither Jack nor the old man tried to continue the conversation from that point on. Jack ignored Leanne’s renewed questioning.
Sure, let’s waste more time talking to him. Jack looked at her leg, maybe she needs the break.
Where was Tule? Jack looked around, saw him staring out at where Leanne indicated she saw the fishermen.
He walked over to Tule and place a hand on his shoulder. It was the Gauntleted hand. Tule didn’t react so Jack kept his hand on his shoulder. Jack’s free hand dropped towards the knife at his belt. Jack shook him a bit.
Nothing. Jack stepped back and deployed the buckler from his gauntlet.
Tule whirled, Toothpick cutting a horizontal arc towards Jack’s midsection.
His Gauntlet up, he caught it square on the buckler. A sloppily thrown swing from a master was still a swing from a master.
He felt a pulse of frustration? No, it was vibration. It came from the Toothpick. The Toothpick started to vibrate, not visibly, but he could feel it. It started as a digging irritation felt through his gauntlet. At first it started as irritation but steadily grew into a splitting ache that felt distant. But then, quickly, it was right here. Emanating from the Toothpick a ripple flowed over the surface of the gauntlet. He saw it start to tear. In a burst of desperation he pushed a bucket of electricity into his gauntlet. GreatShield.
It deployed open from the back of the gauntlet and it forced the Toothpick back. The whining frequency of the Toothpick, somehow not perceived before, hit a jagged off-key note and became irritatingly present. Tule and the Toothpick were flung away. Leanne and Jonah had raised their weapons but not aimed, they both looked like they were not entirely sure what had just happened.
Jack looked at the GreatShield and it cut out as the electricity he had thrown to it had run its course. It took a lot of juice to keep it deployed. He wouldn’t be able to throw that out anytime soon, especially not here.
Damn he was really wanted some juice.
GORUN MORAB NFELZI: 15%
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Some progress on the Gauntlet, finally. Was it based on his usage of it or something else? He would ask the AI next time he got to a Terminal. For now, he would have to remember to think about that. Or would he? When he said that, a faint feeling of deja vu sparked an odd repetitious electrical signal in his brain.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
On a whim he looked into his brain through his Affinity and felt the electrical pulse that fired when he reflected on the feeling of deja vu. He thought more about the deja vu and new electrical signals flowed, reinforcing the connection to that thought.
He followed it to the memory itself. He had told himself that he would remember to think about that later a lot of times. He hadn’t remembered even a quarter as much as he had said he would. He tried to pull together more neurons through electrical stimulation and then through selective thought stimulation.
The effort was easier thought than done. Jack felt like his brain was sweating. Tule was moving now. Jack scolded himself for losing focus. He should really be paying attention for a follow up attack.
Tule was picking himself up now, head sunk low.
“I apologize. I don’t know what came over me. I was startled.”
Jack looked at him, Tule had been acting differently. Tule raised his head and stood completely. Their eyes met. He looked more like Tule than before. Regardless, he needed to get to a Terminal.
“It’s fine. Let’s just keep going.”
Jack noticed that standing in the water actually somewhat mitigated the electrical loss, but he had to be nearly knee height to do so. Anything less and the drain was higher than just walking on the sand. Still, he wasn’t about to walk through knee height water for however much longer they would be traveling.
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He had even asked Jonah how long they had been walking. When Jonah stopped fiddling with his goggles to check his portable he nearly had a meltdown. Apparently the strange static field that had been wrecking havoc with his goggles was doing the same to his other devices as well. Jack wasn’t sure if it was from touching his AI disk to it or not, he didn’t mention it.
Jack checked out of Jonah’s newest rant before catching Leanne’s raised voice, “I see something, sharp angles, smooth too. They, are structures.”
“My — village.”
It looked like crap. Well-built crap. Still crap though. Their homes were made from the the granulated metal of the beach. Jack traced a wall of one of the huts, it felt damp. The stagnant electricity was stronger in the walls, it’s sluggish movement and the formation of the building itself did something to bond the metal together.
He pulled some of the static into his body to sample it and felt the surface of the entire building light up in his Affinity. The other buildings were still dark so he repeated the process with another. The electricity felt damp and slow inside of him, sluggish, no matter which building he sampled. He stopped after the third building. The build up was unpleasant. It was the first time he’d ever had a negative reaction from absorbing electricity. He spit to get some of the taste out of his mouth.
Interesting. Well, sort of interesting, Jack continued to look around. Metal-sand houses, all of them.
From the doors and windows peeked out groups of natives. They all had massive eyes and huge dark pupils. Faint red lights were attached to buildings around the town. The difference in visibility was marginal but Jack imagined for the people here with big eyes it was probably more illuminated than the Labs had been for him.
The Elder talked a bit to the surrounding people in a dialect of English that was far removed from baseline. Jack could only make out “the,” “here,” and “home.” Jack amended “goddess” to that list once he heard it. He stopped listening and looked around.
The villagers looked… not sickly but, lesser. Improvised Surgeon kicked in as Jack wondered if they looked different on the inside too. Now his nose was picking up scents and it was not what he was expecting, sterile. Not quite the same as the Labs, but not completely different either.
They had some visible markings, healed lesions, rough patches, small seemingly-random odd swells, thin and sagging skin. Visible bones. It wasn’t that they were starving it looked like their bodies’ vital force was, lesser? No, well, maybe. It was hard to say. Jack definitely wouldn’t call them healthy. Their Endurance must be awful. But then, how did the old man manage to walk that far to meet them? So if not their Endurance, then what?
There was something Jack was missing but once he laid eyes on the Terminal, those thoughts washed away.
It sat unsupported in the middle of the village square. It faced out, away from the massive building on the other side. The base of it extended upwards, somewhere between a square and a rectangle. It just came directly out of the sand. Villagers lined up, waiting patiently.
A few, coughing blood or with other visible symptoms of illness were given precedence and allowed to skip. Their left hand covered their heart and their right hand depressed on the HandPad panel that lay on an extended panel parallel to the screen. They would keep their hand on the Pad as a wash of aquamarine light flowed through them, followed by a wash of soft blue that flushed out the remaining aquamarine light.
“Kind of reminds me of the spear the Cryo-SI was throwing. Same color.”
Apparently this was interesting enough for Jonah to pay attention.
“I haven’t figured out what that energy javelin was yet.”
Jack said, “It felt, evil. No, that doesn’t make sense. It felt wrong, on a deep level. A little hungry too odd enough. That’s all I got.”
Now that Jack was talking about it, he had gotten that impression when he had deflected the spear with the gauntlet.
He looked at his gauntlet again. His middle finger’s size seems to have stabilized once he put it into the gauntlet, Jack was ok with that but the enlarged finger was pretty useful. He tried to move his other fingers and was surprised by his thumb wiggling slightly. No luck with the others.
Tule had gotten in line, behind a villager.
Jack walked up to Tule, “What are you going to do? Put your hand on it?”
Tule turned towards him, stare blank. He then coughed up a quantity of blood, some slopped onto Jack’s feet.
Jack looked back up at him, Tule dropped the Toothpick and was seizing, slamming his teeth into each other over and over again.
Jack looked at Jonah while he slipped one of Tule’s arms around his shoulder. Two of the closest, fairly healthy looking villagers helped pull themselves through the line. The villagers had spread onto either side opening a human tunnel to the front, all the way to the Terminal.
Jack finally caught Leanne’s eye then flashed towards the Toothpick. She got the point and gingerly, and quietly, picked it up.
Jack and the villagers moved the shaking and twitching Tule to the Terminal. Jack hesitated then pulled the green AI disk from his pants pocket and tried to place it on top of the Terminal. In response, the Terminal fired off errant energy that somehow hit no-one and started to slag. It melted and warped into the sand until there was nothing in front of them.
Jack’s eyes were wide and the villagers pulled out an extensive collection of rusted and makeshift weapons. Jack felt the pull of Tule’s entire weight as the villagers helping him released their support. Others that had surrounded them had raised their hands; orbs, strings, coiling streams of water rotating around themselves and their hands.
Jack lowered Tule to the ground and pulled out his knife. Leanne was dragging Jonah towards them. The villagers opened a path to connect the group together.
Leanne’s voice was sharp and tight, “What did you do?”