The caravan had been stopped for several hours, and wasn’t able to travel as far as they had been hoping. Instead of pushing on until they had to stop Dustin called them to a halt at a small brook. He said that they were unlikely to make it to the next source of clean water so they’d be camping here.
Seras helped with the camp set up, chatting lightly with Petra and Garrett.
“So, you're like a one women fortress?” Seras asked Petra.
The Lioness scratched the back of her head, and Seras wondered if she ever cut herself with those claws. “Something like that. My style is more mobile than most defenders.”
“More trash compacter than barricade then” Seras surmised.
“Trash compactor?”
One thing Seras was having trouble with when talking to the caravan crew were all the refences and metaphors she peppered through her speech. ‘Language adaptation’ had its limits and she was still figuring out were they were. “You ever shoved a bunch of trash into a trash can?”
“Yeah,”
“Its like that, but the size of a whole building. It presses the trash into a tight cube for transport.”
Garrett looked thoughtful “That actually sounds pretty handy, I know a few run down neighborhoods back home that could use one of those.”
“And where’s home for yeah?” Seras asked. She had learned that talking to people about local geography helped add detail to her global map. The more she learned the more detail it added. The exact shape of places was still obscured but she now had a floating title of “Storm Kingdom” over a set of islands to the southeast of where she was. The words “Smolder Kingdom” had similarly appeared to the far north of them.
“A little Elvin Forest kingdom on the west coast. Just above that Draconian Empire. My family are all humans, so we lived in the slums of my hometown. I got really lucky with my Life essence. After I make enough to get a full set I plan to go home and set up a clinic, maybe join the adventurer society.”
On her map along the continents long arcing western coast a marker for an Elvin kingdom appeared along the coast, to the south of that in a massive valley area the words Draconian Empire appeared.
“Draconians and Elves are another two of the races on this world? What do they look like?” Seras asked.
Garrett frowned, “Draconians are big, scaled people, supposedly descended from Dragons.”
“Like actual dragons, are those real?”
Garrett nodded “Yeah, they’re one of the most powerful and intelligent inherently magical beasts. They’re just as smart as us, maybe even smarter, some decide to settle and integrate with our society’s, while others remain ‘wild’ for lack of a better word. You might see them hunting over the desert from time to time, I think Dustin is even friends with a few.”
“Nova, and these Elvins?”
Garett looked confused “Elves, or Elf for a single one.” He cocked his head “You should know what they look like though, you’ve met Flint.”
Seras blinked “Flint’s not human?”
He shook his head “No, he’s an elf. You couldn’t tell?”
“Yeah” Petra agreed with Garett “Its pretty obvious, elves are a lot more delicate looking when compared to humans, or you Celestines. Though all of you look pretty fragile to me.”
Seras frowned “I thought he just had a bone disease or was starved. Also, I’m not a Celestine.”
Petra huffed “Well yeah, you’re an Outworlder now, but you were a Celestine before that.”
“No, I mean that I was never a Celestine. I was human, my hair is just an unnatural color.”
She blinked, “Right, the color changing bugs in your hair.”
Garrett took a step back “You have bugs in your hair? Like mites or lice” he asked alarmed as he began scratching at his his head.
“No, I don’t. They’re tiny machines the size of lice, not bugs.”
He scratched harder “That’s still creepy.”
“Just think of it like sand, sand that changes color and forms long strands.”
“So your hair is either tiny metal bugs, or magic sand?”
“Its none of those things, that’s just the best analogy I can make. And you can stop itching yourself, they don’t spread.” Seras then made a point of pulling out a strand of hair, only for the hair to dissolve it dust on the wind. “They lose power when not attached.”
Now they both took a massive step back.
“You too Petra?” Seras asked in mock outrage.
“Sorry, but hair that turns into dust is creepier than tiny bugs.” She said sympathetically.
“Its no grosser than the dead skin cells and dandruff you meat bags are always shedding.”
“Dead skin?” Garrette asked.
“Yeah, where’d you think household dust comes from?”
“From dust!” he exclaimed.
Seras shrugged “Partially, most of its dead skin. I always thought it was super creepy.”
Someone then called for Seras and Petra to help lift some heavy luggage out of one of the wagons, and their disturbing conversation ended there. They left Garratt with an expression of growing horror, and Seras chuckled evilly to herself.
“Serves you right for calling my hair gross meat bag.” She thought to herself.
~~~*~~~
Night fell, they ate a dinner of beans and meat, told jokes, and then went off to bed as temperatures fell dramatically.
Once again Seras wandered off to sit and watch the sky. One of the moons was waning, while the other had just reached peak luster. Seras once heard that ancient Ruinites once made-up stories about the images the loose scattering of stars seemed to make up. She looked up the word in her head, Constellation. She called up an image of Ruin’s night sky and compared the two.
This one was very different to the one on her world, for one there was no disk of ice and dust around the planet to partially obscure some of it. For another there seemed to be more stars visible in the night sky.
Back home Astronomers had said that the Red Scar galaxy was, but a dwarf galaxy compared to others in the local cluster. If Seras had to guess she’d say that this world was likely in a bigger, more densely packed galaxy.
Seras watched the cloudy white scar in the sky and assumed that it was this worlds version of the Red scar. According to the net entry about the Red scar, it was actually a sidelong view of the stars of the galactic disk, and was supposedly shifted red because a large nebula was distorting the light reaching them. This world must not have had a large nebula interfering with all the light reaching them, or maybe somehow magic changed the way the night sky worked.
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“Can’t sleep?” a baritone voice asked from behind her.
Seras flinched as Flint stepped out the shadows, she hadn’t even heard him coming. Seras tried to hide her brief scare with a small smile “Don’t need to. I only need to sleep once every week, more if I’m pushing it.”
He scowled “That sounds awful. I don’t need to sleep much either, but I still enjoy it when we’re at an inn.”
Seras shrugged “To each their own. I never liked the idea of wasting a whole third of my life just laying there, not thinking, not working. Seemed like a waste.” Seras thought about what he said “You don’t need to either, is that a magic thing?”
“Yeah, having a full set of essences means we aren’t burdened with as many of life’s necessary tasks. We can survive on just spirit coins alone, we can go longer without sleep, and at higher ranks we don’t need to breathe. But sleep is still refreshing, and spirit coins can’t beat a good meal.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you grew up with the food I had. It’s why I try to eat as little as possible.”
He scowled and sat on a rock next to her. “I’ve seen you eat, nothing about that is ‘little’.”
Seras huffed “That’s different. Back home if I’m low on energy I could just tap in for a quick recharge. But here I have no way of getting power like I used to. So to keep my body from entering low power mode I need to eat more to just barely get a small charge.” Even after three meals where she filled her belly as much as she could Seras was only at 12% battery. And being constantly on the verge of low battery was starting to stress her out.
“Can you survive with just a little less? Foods tight right now and the men might get bitter if you're eating up all our rations.” Flint said, his voice accusing.
Seras glanced at her battery bar. “Maybe, it takes a lot to keep me going, especially if we run into more monsters.”
He tapped his foot. “Have you tried a spirit coin?”
“No, I just found out that it was possible to eat money, ‘sides I’ve only got a handful of bronze ones.”
He reached into side pouch and passed her a blue grey crystalline coin.
Iron spirit coin
Seras popped it into her mouth. It dissolved in her mouth and felt like lightning across her tongue.
WARNING. Potent magical energy is surging through your system. Increased strain on your magic matrix has resulted in a disconnect between your magical matrix and biomechanical physiology. Condition Soul/body dichotomy has developed.
Senses reduced.
Movement speed is reduced.
Strength is reduced.
Cognition is hampered.
Time remaining 10min and 34seconds.
Seras felt like she was experiencing all the worst parts of a high with none of the happy side effects. “No” she slurred. “bad, very bad.” The world spun and Seras fell.
Emergency shut down engaged. Energy purge in progress. 10%,37%,58%,89%, 100%.
Iron rank energy successfully purged.
Restart in progress.
Loading…
Loading…
Restart successful. Time elapsed 36 seconds.
Someone was shaking Seras, she opened her eyes and saw Flint above her. “I’m fine. Stop shaking me.”
He stopped “You were having a seizure.” He accused.
“Impossible, I had a cranial implant put in to prevent seizures, strokes, and aneurysms.”
Flint glared at her as she pushed herself back up. “You were on the ground shaking and thrashing. Your aura was even fluctuating like a seizure victim.”
“Aura’s flicker when you’re having a seizure? You can feel my aura? Auras are real?”
He sighed “damn Outworlders, give me a heart attack one minute, and then pepper me with obvious questions after.”
Seras scowled “It was your damn coin, what did you think would happen.”
“Worst case, you’d get a rush of power then feel bad afterwards, best case you regained ‘charge’ and stopped eating all our food. What was that about a ‘cranial implant’?”
“It’s a thing in my skull, my brains still made of meat so I had it put in to prevent shit that could kill me.”
He frowned “Seems paranoid.”
“Life’s short, and there’s no way I’m gonna let some unpredictable illness kill me. Doesn’t it freak you out that one day your body might just fuck up and give you cancer, or that your brain might randomly decide to kill you?”
“No, but I’m bronze rank, those things don’t happen to us. Plenty of people live with those threats though, it’s a part of life.”
“Yeah, well, I had a choice not to live with those threats. If I didn’t die in space then I probably would have lived until I was a hundred and fifty. Or until something else killed me.” Seras said with a shrug.
“And yet you’re concerned with wasting time on sleep. You realize that’s the life span of silver ranker.”
“Really, do higher rankers live longer?”
“Yes” Flint said, as if that should have been obvious.
Seras recalled her conversation with Dustin, he was apparently sixty-six but only looked forty “How long?”
“Depends on the rank. Iron has a minimal effect, mostly just an easier time with aging if they don’t rank up fast enough. Bronze slows things down by ten to twenty years, and we’ll still be hale well into our twilight years. Silver is where the divide becomes pretty stark, if Dustin or I broke through we would de-age twenty to thirty years, and would remain that youthful until we began to approach one hundred. Even then we won’t look over fifty even when we pass away. Gold ranker live for several centuries, and diamond rankers are supposedly immortal.”
“Immortality” Seras said with wonder as she thought about that, to never grow old, or die.
Death loomed large over everyone on Ruin, even with all their advanced medicines and technology their population was slowly declining. Shrinking year by year. Natural deaths were rare and only seen in the ultra-wealthy. For most people they could expect either an accidental death, murder, or good old-fashioned suicide.
Seras knew that she was born to die an early death, and she had always chafed at that idea. It was why she had been so obsessed with becoming the best Merc Ruin had ever seen. Sure the Merc life offered money, power, and respect, but it was the idea of becoming an immortalized legend that really pushed Seras to glide along the edge between life and death. Pushing herself into more and more dangerous jobs so that she could spend her credits replacing her weak flesh with the cold dependability of steel, and then doing it all again.
Flint saw the thoughts behind her eyes, or maybe read her aura which she guessed was a thing she had to worry about. He scoffed at her “Diamond is a long way off, especially for a woman who refuses to accept that she’s in a world of magic.”
Seras scowled at Flint, “Who told you that?”
“Who do you think? I’m his second in command, Dustin tells me everything. You’re too afraid to grasp for power just because its magic and not some metal abomination.”
Seras stood up. “I don’t need magic. I handled that monster pretty well on my own.”
He stood up and met her glare “You surprised it only because it was too distracted trying to eat me, and you only succeeded because I suppressed it’s bronze rank aura. On your own you’ll fail and die.”
Seras crossed her arms “The fucks your problem anyway. I saved your life and you’ve been nothing but hostile to me. A little gratitude would be appreciated.”
“One doesn’t thank a viper for biting his enemies instead of him.”
“You think I’m a viper? Ready to turn on you at the first chance.”
“You were ready to ditch us in the middle of the night because we didn’t immediately trust the metal freak in our midst. You were even going to try and kill Dustin when he confronted you about being an Outworlder. I’ve seen people like you before, you’re a killer, and you’re only out for yourself. Dustin can trust you all he wants, but you’ll never return it, not when it really counts.”
“Freak?” Seras asked incredulously.
“Yes, freak. You take the gifts the Gods gave you and squander them; you replace them with metal and wire and call it better.”
“There are no Gods where I come from, ours are all dead. They killed each other and left us with a ruined war-torn world. I am a killer, and I am callous, but I am not a freak. I’m just the product of my environment. You wouldn’t be any different if you had been born on Ruin.” Seras growled out.
Flint eyes blazed in righteous indignation “no I wouldn’t, I would have tried to change things for the better.”
“Even if it killed you” Seras challenged.
“Nothing worth doing is ever easy.”
Seras scoffed, “It’s been my experience that you can’t put out an inferno by throwing yourself onto it. All you’ll do is burn up and die young.” She sighed “Whatever, I’m not justifying myself to someone who has no idea what he’s talking about. Let me enjoy the night in peace.”
Flint glared at her a moment longer, ready to argue further, before he stormed off. Stomping back towards the camp.
Seras felt her shoulders sag, and she collapsed back into a sitting position. She called up the alerts from when she ate the spirit coin and tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.
Soul/body dichotomy.
Harmful energies have exacerbated the differences between your normal rank magical matrix and your bronze ranked biomechanical physiology has resulted in a disconnect. Continued exposure, or exposure to higher ranked energies could result in your soul permanently being juxtaposed from your body, resulting in death. Potions, spirit coins, and certain rituals will have no effect until the Soul-body dichotomy has been resolved.
Seras felt her heart skip a beat as she read the report over and over again. Was this a result of her body being rebuilt from magic, or was this a preexisting condition that she had never come across. What even was a magical matrix?
~~~*~~~
Flint did not notice Dustin approach and eavesdrop on his argument with the Viper. Dustin had spent years refining his aura control to a level Flint just couldn’t match. Every day that man spent in the saddle he had been pushing his aura to the limit of its rank, while Flint reached a general level of proficiency and stopped. Even if he approached aura training with the same vigor tomorrow, he would never catch up to Dustin’s decades of experience.
He had only noticed Dustin when Dustin wanted him to. He had sent a spike of tightly controlled aura Flint’s way just as Flint was deciding to show the Outworlder the power of a bronze ranker when compared to a metal freak. The spike had pierced his aura and forced Flint to think about what he was about to do.
Flint turned away from the girl and stomped towards Dustin. Flint was about to growl at him for spiking his aura when the Smolder held up a hand and beckoned for silence. Flint knew Dustin well, and knew when the man was being his longtime friend, and when he was acting as his boss. This was Boss Dustin, the Blazing Outrider, the man who had helped Flint storm the stronghold of a silver rank bandit lord.
Flint kept his mouth shut, and Dustin gestured back towards the troublesome Outworlder. Flint saw that ironclad defiance leave her posture and aura as she collapsed onto the ground and stared off into the distance.
Flint had seen Outworlders do this before, it was usually some sort of invisible guide, be it a knowledgeable pixie or a floating tome. They were usually secretive about it so Flint and Dustin didn’t ask.
He felt the turmoil and bubbling panic in her aura, and Flint almost felt bad for pressing her. Almost.
Her aura was an open book to them, and he had felt other things in it that set his nerves on edge.
Dustin then led Flint away from the Outworlder. They stalked off into the night, though the darkness wasn’t an issue to either of them as they both had ocular abilities that let them make their way through the brush.
“Its rude to eavesdrop” Flint muttered as soon as they were out of her earshot.
“I needed to make sure you didn’t do anything you’d regret.” Dustin said smoothly, his burning eyes piercing Flint’s own.
“I wouldn’t regret dealing with a person like her. I can see her aura; I can see all the death in it. The world would be a better place if we just dealt with her right here and now.”
“Or maybe the world would be worse because you never gave her a chance to be better. I can’t see what you do, but I’ve got a good feeling about her.”
“I don’t see it.”
“No? You heard it yourself, she’s the byproduct of a harsh world, one that I think might be more deadly to the weak than ours. If her world shaped her into what she is, then this one might just change her for the better. Plenty of Outworlders take this new life as a chance to be the person they always wished they could be.”
“You think she can change?”
“I do, her heart isn’t inherently evil, just hardened to the world. Self-interested and callous because no one ever cared for her. With the right influence she might just surprise you.”
“I don’t see that happening.”
“Then stop antagonizing her and let me show you.”
Flint scowled “Why bother, she already tried to leave us once, and she plans to ditch us at the next rock. Let her be someone else’s problem. We’ve done enough.”
Dustin frowned “When you find someone in a bad spot and decide to help your responsible for their wellbeing. Whether that’s an elf who was back stabbed by his own possie, or a woman who was buck naked in the desert after being reborn. I didn’t stop at patching your wounds Flint, I helped you bring that bandit to justice and deal with the corrupt Ranger possie, And I won't stop at clothing Seras and escorting her to civilization.”
“Are you deaf, she doesn’t want your help. She wants to leave.”
“She’s not used to generosity, and it makes her uncomfortable. But I’ve got a feeling that when we leave Karstess she’ll be there waiting for us.”
“She’s trouble, more than we can handle.” Flint accused.
Dusitn smiled “Nothing worth doing was ever easy my friend.”
Flint scowled as his own words were thrown back at him. He turned and promptly stomped off for the other side of the camp.
If Dustin wanted to play mentor to an Outworlder then he could do it on his own, he wasn’t getting any help from Flint in this matter.