“Cebisi, what have y'all been doing to me for the last four days, and why can’t I remember any of it?” Andrew asked the moment the elf appeared.
It came out more desperate and far angrier than Andrew had wanted, but after hours of stewing on the fact that he had a four-day gap in his memory, he was a pot ready to boil over.
He had become aware of the missing time when he was going through his daily ritual where he calculated the number of earth days since his capture.
******
Ziggy please verify 135 earth days, 10hrs and 48mins have passed since we have been captured
[That is incorrect, 139 earth days, 16hrs and 22mins have passed since your capture]
Ziggy that can’t be right. Please reverify how many earth days have passed since my capture.
[139 earth days, 16hrs and 23 mins have passed. Mr. Lather, I believe your calculations to account for the 4days, 5hours, 34mins that you slept since we last spoke.]
******
“Mr. Lather, I can assure you that nothing untoward has been done to you. Your mind and your soul just needed a rest so you could consolidate the power granted to you by our most generous benefactor. It should be of little surprise that you slept for days after receiving such an immense blessing. I would suspect you can feel the increased magical potential in your body. Can you not?”
Andrew was about to angrily retort, but he could feel something was different and his curiosity won. He checked his character sheet. He was surprised to see that in fact yes, his mana pool had increased by 50% while he slept. It was now sitting at a whopping 30 points! His anger gave way to excitement, and he found he couldn’t wait for Cebisi to leave. Once the elf did, he could test not only his new power but also his new mana pool.
He was unsure of what reaction points were, but he found that they had also increased from 130 to 150. From his time playing tabletop and video game RPGs he felt that they likely had something to do with combat, but as he hadn’t monitored them he wasn’t really sure of their purpose. An oversight he decided need to be fix.
Ziggy please set up displays for mana and reaction points so I might monitor them in real time.
[Affirmative]
Two bars appeared at the top of his screen, just to the left of his damage silhouette, one labeled Reaction points and one right below it labeled Mana. Both bars were currently full.
It was then he looked through the overlayed character sheet onto the face of the elf patiently awaiting a response.
“It appears there have been some improvements, yes,” Andrew said in curt tone, hoping to dissuade the Elf from probing further.
“While I am personally unversed in this method of human improvement. I would have expected no less when you receive a direct blessing from none other than Geald himself and suspect you might be understating your gains. It matters not if you are, just know as your Soul harmonizes once more you will likely see smaller improvements over the next few days and yet again in a month or so as your soul and body find an equilibrium once more.”
“Well, that’s something to look forward to, I guess. Thought I doubt he’ll give me enough power to use my abilities to get out of here, would he?”
“Little chance of that. While you are one of the rare humans to catch his eye, no human possesses the potential needed to get out of this place. Especially while the Geald himself is on planet. I mean I myself would not be able to escape the very cell we sit in, if I was not allowed to. Let us not dwell on captivity and instead get back to more exciting subjects, my Geald informed me that you are one of the rare humans able to weld Cinetica, is this true?”
“It would seem so.”
“That’s most impressive, your race has so few Cinetica wielders, two in fact. Well, two in our previous captive stock that is, three including yourself. To be clear that is three out of the millions of humans currently residing in Human research facilities across Chennon. In fact this facility is envied by the research teams of the other Getl as we have the only humans capable of Cinetica. My hypothesis is that it has to do with how we grant power to humans,” Cebisi continued unabated despite having seen Andrew's expression continue to get increasingly dower as he had been talking about their “captive stock” as if they were animals he was researching.
“Let me guess, you bred them together to see if you could create more?” Andrew said in a flat tone.
“Precisely, we were lucky that one was a male and one a female, but no matter how many babies they made, or that we incubated for them, not a single Cinetica user was found. We tried breeding them to each other and back to their parents to see if a genetic link could be established. They…”
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“What happened to those offspring?” Andrew interjected displeasure plain on his face.
“Oh, nothing like that Mr. Lather. They are now part of our larger genetic pool for research.”
“Oh, how lucky for them!” Andrew said coolly and with a mock smile.
“Quite s….,”Cebisi having realized Andrew was not genuine in his smile continued in a matter-of-fact tone. His voice lost any science geek excitement it once contained, ”Whatever you might think, they have a great life here. They have been released from the burdens of ‘Freedom’. Here they get a life free of starvation, sickness, work, or injury stresses and their genetics are getting passed on further than if the test subjects had been left to their own decisions. This release has had the expected outcome as well, their lifespans have increased by almost 50% from base.”
Andrew put his hand to his head and spoke with a womanly southern drawl as if he were Scarlett O’Hara herself, “Oh, if only I could be so lucky as to be stuck in an isolation room to be studied by elves and my only human contact is occasionally being forced to breed another mind-controlled slave. “
Andrew continued, the warm southern accent quickly froze until his voice had an icy sheen,” Oh, wait that pretty much is my life minus the non-consensual breeding part.”
“Do not worry that will be arranged,” Cebisi said with an uncharacteristically cold a mocking smile.
“Try it! I won’t be part of your weird breeding program, even if I weren’t married. While you people seem to not understand consent matters, I haven’t, and unless you forgot you can’t enthrall me.”
Andrew’s body tensed as if it was a ballista string ready to fire, clearly ready to fight once more. Cebisi replied only with a smile that felt to Andrew like a virtual pat on the head. Andrew noted a few purple pulses enter the elven’s head before Cebisi relaxed and then without preamble, then started into the day’s propaganda lesson.
“Today we shall cover the second major dwarven betrayal. This event occurred millennia later when we found our lost cousins once more. Our reunion happened on the near-mythical planet of Adyam. At the time it was one of those rare worlds where life magic welled and made every living thing on it nearly immortal. Yet that was not what made it trule stand apart nor what made it such an advantageous spot for our reunion. It was the first world we had found without an alignment to magic or tech energies. As such both magic and tech energies were able to flow freely without impacting each other. To give you an idea of what that matters, normally our two energies are opposites. No worse than that. On most worlds they are antithetical to each other at best and at worst they can be active antagonist to each other. Causing large explosions as they negate one another. To date, millennia later, we have only recorded three additional worlds which share this trait. One unfortunately is a barren rock where we and the dwarves now how negotiations so as to not put either side at a disadvantage, but let us get back to the story.
There was some initial unpleasantness one might expect when aliens suddenly appeared in their skies, but once we were allowed to land we were amazed! The dwarves had exceeded our expectations of what they could accomplish on their own. Not only had their technology advanced but had done so through a breakthrough that allowed them to harness anti-magical energies to enhance their machines. We were also astonished to find that while we remembered them clearly, they no longer worshipped us and to them, we had become little more than what your species might call the boogeyman.
ou
Their ancestors, it seemed, embittered from being exiled from Chennon, our galaxy, told their offspring vial lies about their creators. Tell them myths and untruths about how we were cruel and treated them as slaves instead of the truth of how they were brothers and sisters to us. These myths and untruths would eventually grow to bear fruit which came in the form of the greatest loss of life our cluster has ever seen. Though, as I am prone to do, I have deviated from the story.
During our early exploration of the area we now call the blight, the area between the barrier and the fence, we stumbled upon the then Dwarven world of Adaym. After some initial non-violent unpleasantries, our two races agreed upon a mutual peace and formed prosperous trade deals for almost a century. Trade deals that would spread out to include multiple systems ( both in Chennon and Volundr alike), Ikoli, clans, and guilds. These deals made both races more prosperous and happier than they were alone.
That was until one fortuitous day an adolescent Mashegi,” at a look from Andrew Cebisi started to explain,” They are a six legged Behemirati which resemble an ant from your home planet. Ah, behemirati is our term for viruli which serves as a pack animal. So, a mashegi, was left to graze and happened to eat one of the leaves of the Valarcca plant before it was stopped. The next morning, its master was astonished to find that overnight it had fully grown. Further tests revealed that this plant could increase the growth rate of all viruli 10-fold. When we discussed this with our Dwarven brothers, they revealed to us that they ate it to increase their short lifespans. After a bit of negotiation, we were allowed to experiment with this botanical miracle and found that even a single bite of this plant increased our power levels to unseen heights. Overnight the power dynamics in the universe changed as the trade of valarcca found its way to all corners of Chennon. While that power shift had its share of issues. Ultimately, both sides prospered from the trade. The Dwarves gained the riches they desired, and the elves gained abilities they had only dreamed of. This was until Biaobel himself visited Adaym to see the great Valarcca fields for himself. He was amazed when he witnessed just how quickly it propagated and grew on this planet. As this plant had resisted cultivation on any other planet.
To their credit, the dwarves treated our Geald as the god that he is. Showering him with gifts, parades, feasts, and parties fit for his station. This went on for days until they once again betrayed our generosity and attempted to kill Biaobel with bombs large enough to cause tectonic shifts. The dwarves soon learned that it would take more than some technological death machine to harm our Geald. They and everyliving thing on Adaym regretted this act of betrayal. As to everyone’s great horror, Biaobel’s defensive magic unleashed a wave of Moti the likes of which the Universe had never seen before nor has seen since. Biaobel stared in wonderment and horror as he realized his mistake. The valarcca had increased his defensive magic past what he thought possible and even passed the point of belief. When he left Adaym that day he was the only living thing left on that planet. Dwarves, elves, planets and animals all lay dead………….”
It was at this point that even though Andrew was curiously listening sleep took him and when he awoke he was alone.
Ziggy what day is it?
[Would you like to know the earth day?]
Yes……..no is it the same day as I went to sleep?
[Affirmative]
He looked at the skylight for confirmation. Which had indeed darkened as if it were night outside, as had the lights in his room. While staring up to the sky he remembered his character sheet said he could bind two objects with a certain amount of force.
Ziggy remind me of what the description of my binding power said.
[
Akeo Cinetica
Common
Basic implementation of Cinetic power. With this, you can move objects up to Willpower * 4 in kilograms of mass per limb used. Speed of objects moved is determined by Willpower. Speed will be up to 2ft/ willpower point per second or bind two objects with Willpower * 50 newtons of force per limb used.
2 mana/limb/minute
]
Andrew smiled, a plan starting to form in his head
How many newtons would I need to climb that wall?
[On this planet, you would need 772newtons of force to achieve a vertical momentum]
Andrew excitedly rushed to the wall and put his hand flat on it. He tried pushing his will into the wall as he had done when he wanted to move something and he saw a pale tan light from around his palm and felt himself being pushed away from the wall. He tried many iterations of this before he had an epiphany. Instead of pushing his will into the wall, he tried to pull the wall into his hand with his will. Again, he saw a pale tan glow emanate from behind his hand, but instead of feeling pushed from the wall he felt pulled to it.
“YES!!!!” Andrew exclaimed before awkwardly looking around to ensure nobody was watching.
After a bit more testing Andrew was slowly crawling up the wall on his hands and knees while watching his mana counter slowly tick down as the minutes went by. When he was about halfway through his mana pool, he looked down to see he had made his way just about halfway to the skylight.
So, should we go for it or should we descend safely?
Andrew asked himself.
Come on Lather, the floor is a bounce house and there will be a healing wave coming through in a few minutes.
“SAFETY THIRD!!!!!”