NOVEL NEXT B 2 C 14: There's Some Bad News On the Rise
B 2 C 14: There’s Some Bad News On the Rise
I believe my last telepathic words before passing out echo a sentiment Luni once shared with me, “You got this.” As I come to some time later, I’m laying in what feels like a stone coffin, in a pool of liquid with a coppery taste. I vomit another mouthful of blood into the pool. Ah, right, it’s probably my own blood. I hear a hurried scrabbling at stone above me, as of several creatures frantically trying to move massive amounts of rubble. It seems as if my inner circle are trying to break through to me telepathically. Dense solid matter has always seemed to block our bond, their thoughts occasionally reach me, filled with a familiar snowy static. Hopefully they can hear me as I try to reassure them that I’m okay.
Sighing, confirming I have enough energy before doing so, I claim the rock above me with my left hand. More stone collapses inwards atop me, but as it connects with my upturned palm it falls harmlessly into my inventory. A streak of light peaks through from above. Now that I’ve got an air passageway, avoiding a mistake I’d once made in the past, I let myself double over in pain. Clutching my right side, I loose another stream of internal fluid, coughing and sputtering.
Engaging a forced limit break to rapidly gain skill, and purposely extending it for hours and hours was a massive risk. There’s so much we don’t know about our world’s possible risks and consequences. I feel like limit breaking adds a strain that makes it harder to heal from injuries taken before, during, and shortly afterwards. The months I spent recovering from the Night of High Water back that theory up.
Still, during the weeks spent in our shared thinkspace on the march, those dearest to me agreed that the plan might work. Ah, there’s their voices. Hi everyone, I’m fine, I love you all. As I try to reassure them through our telepathic bond my eyes cross, doubling my vision. Bluh, I could use a break, but I don’t feel like continuing to sit in a pool of my own internal fluids. Painfully sighing, I continue to claim more rubble to my inventory. Something very bright rolls free from a location just above where I’d been situated. A mesmerizing, glassy orb filled with bright, undulating colors falls towards my bloody pool. It’d be a shame to see it shatter, or be soiled. It also might be a danger to free whatever’s inside, so I reflexively claim it to my inventory as if it were a hacky sack. I jut out my right foot, and as the orb connects with the crook of my upper ankle, it passes into my inventory.
Distracted with that, I barely notice myself being hoisted out of my stone mausoleum by my left arm. Teuila embraces me, and noogies me playfully. Lu tenderly embraces me from the other side, my charred, broken right side. Even though Luni is far more gentle than my Te, it’s still a mixture of agonizing, and comforting. Lil wraps the rest of us in their wings. I could swear their wings have been getting larger since the first time I ever saw Lil transform against Luna.
Luni notices the side of my torso that she’s sharing affection with, and begins to fret. It’s okay Lu, but I’d appreciate being helped out of this armor, and cleaned up a bit. I’ll put on a fresh set of gear afterwards.
Lu responds immediately, shoving everyone else away, “Reggie, yeah, um, of course, sure, sure thing. Te, help me out, please. Get Reggie out of this, some of the armor is melted against their skin, this is going to hurt.” Teuila nods and grips the armor melded to my torso, and my eyes shoot wide as I attempt to interrupt. I’m still too dazed from the pain to react all that quickly to anything.
I cry out, a smidge too late, “Wait, wait wait, I’ll re-melt it first, I can Ahhhhhhggghhhh! Fricklefrack that hurts like a beast!” Te and Lu tear the armor from my torso, removing patches of flesh. They both share an expression that can only mean “oops.” As they remove the armor I vomit from the sheer intensity of the epidermal shearing. My head swims a bit from the excruciating pain and my eyes roll randomly in their sockets. While I’m dazed, Luni cleans me up with the soap stone, then asks Lil for some fabric to bind my wounds.
Teuila bears me across her arms, cradling me so that Lu can finish binding me, since I now don’t have the wherewithal to respond or move.
Trying to regain my senses, I playfully admonish my beloved friends, “Ugh, guys? If anything is ever welded, melded, melted, or frozen to something else, I can carefully fix that now. That’s why we did the whole thermal training. Heh.”
Luni looks the most abashed she ever has. She keeps poking her index fingertips together while she looks away. Lu’s blushing actually heats the atmosphere between us. I can literally feel such minor fluctuations in temperature now. Speaking out the side of her mouth while looking away, Lu tries to apologize, “S, so, sorry, I’m sorry Reggie, I just, you asked us to help. And um, and um, we wanted to help, right away, you looked hurt. So um, please don’t be mad at us. Please don’t hate me? For, for, forgive us please?”
Te sets me down gently, walks over to Luni, and lightly cuffs the backside of her head. Teuila then hugs Luni tightly. Te rolls her eyes at Lu’s bashfulness as she replies for me, “Of course Reggie doesn’t hate you, drama queen. My dingledork is teasing us.” Then Teuila actually adopts the same mannerisms as Luni, tapping her fingertips together, speaking out the side of her mouth, “That said, sorry sweetypoot, that seemed like it really hurt. Sorry.” Teuila avoids meeting my gaze, and I chuckle.
Absolving them, I wave it off playfully. “Guys, guys, we’re fine, we’re fine. Te’s right. Besides, it has been a long day. We can make a decent shelter in this rubble. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could go for a nice long nap. By nap I of course mean a full sleep. This hurts like a mother of rustbuckets.”
“Reggie buddy, the rest of us haven’t really done anything today, you’re the one that has taken on so much today, of course we’ll rest if you need a rest. Come on, I’d be mad, mega mega mega mad with any of us if we begrudged you a rest when you needed. None of us would ever do that though, right guys?” Lil asks the others, and they affirm Lil’s assertion.
I chuckle, nodding. Coughing up a spattering of blood, I raise one of my hands to help focus my inventory use. The first thing I do is expel the rubble I’d claimed into as neatly stacked a pile as possible. Next I place some large flat material as an angular plane, making a lean-to shelter as I have so many times in the past. I try to walk towards it, but my legs won’t respond. Seeing my inability, my friends carefully drag me inside to cuddle. I happily succumb to sleep in mere moments.
Whew, a fresh day and a lot less pain. No nightmares, not even any dreams at all! New abilities and massive increases to my skills. Yesterday was. I sigh, remembering reliving Teuila’s death over and over. Yesterday was eventful. I’m currently the littlest spoon in a four spoon set. I can tell Te’s in her base form, but I only see one of her arms. It doesn’t inspire much panic, thankfully. Lu is cuddling up behind Te, and Lil is actually still evolved into Lilagnewt from the previous day’s activities. I’m surprised Lil can keep their form up for so long.
Oh wait, Lil spent most of the entire day burning through energy en masse, their stamina and maximum energy capacity have skyrocketed. Lil’s skills in those areas might have hit a plateau for now, like when I’d first reached two thousand max mana. Yeesh, I’m still getting used to shortening what I call things. In my memory, humans, or whatever I am, didn’t have mental memory logs. Having one that I can refer back to, well, it’s just annoying to read something over and over that’s so long. My internal monologue could do with being a bit less wordy sometimes.
I’m startled from my reverie when Lil asks, “Reggie pal, how did you do the stuff? Like how did you give us our evolutions in the first place? How did you figure out how to keep doing it?” Ah, Lil’s trying to work on Luni’s directions to master their form.
“Do you mean the original tether concept pal? I just kind of pictured a rope of energy going from my heart to yours, it had a lasso on both ends around our hearts. Same with evolving myself, I had to wrap up my own heart. If you mean the very first time, you know it was pure luck. I was crying, nearly drowning in the river, sick with worry about you. I love you all so much, it sucks to see any of you get hurt. I’m sure you’re all annoyed at how often I end up getting myself hurt. Sorry about that. I know I wouldn’t want to see you guys doing what I do. Sorry for putting you through stuff so many times.” Teuila socks me lightly in the shoulder for my response, but she nods all the same. Lu sets a hand on my shoulder, then leans her forehead on my cheek. Lil headbutts me, still in Lilagnewt form, so I’m nearly bowled over.
Trying to determine our course of action, I ask, “So, uh, how far is it to this cragbeast area Lil?”
Lil sticks out their tongue, sniffs the air a bit, and looks into the distance before replying. “Hm, I think it’s about 3, maybe two days that way if we walk in normal forms. Probably a few minutes for your crazy-powerful girlfriend, but I’d take a couple hours to catch up at minimum.”
I blush at the title Lil uses to refer to Teuila. But as I suspected, though we all vaguely know the definition of the word, it’s only my mysterious memories that give it any meaning, or connotations. Aging and romance aren’t real concepts. They only exist in the glitches that are my false memories. We can all transform, change shape, grow rapidly, find new family members spawning or hatching from eggs. Wait, eggs? Looking into my inventory, there’s an object I acquired, an egg I’ve kept since earning it on Day One.
My head throbs as I crumple to the ground. I have to fight for every breath. Even though I’m gasping for air, it feels like I’m using a drinking straw for a snorkel. My head threatens to split open and release my nightmares, to spill them from the past into the present, to give them form. Clutching my head, I want to wail and scream, but no sound escapes. I only silently weep. Even though my loved ones surround and comfort me, it’s still some time yet before I can respond. Worse is the news they have to share when I regain my senses.