NOVEL NEXT B 2 C 15: Not Such Bad News After All
B 2 C 15: Not Such Bad News After All
Luni looks questioningly at Teuila, as if asking for permission, before she steels herself to speak. Te nods, so Lu begins, “So, there was a facial feature on that lava beast thing. That facial feature, um, when it died, that facial feature went away. I don’t mean like faded out. I mean more like the glow that was in them escaped. Plus, I mean, nothing derezzed, it’s like we didn’t actually defeat the creature, like there has to be some part of it out there still that can regrow. I don’t know, a heart or something. Between the red glow of the eyes zooming away, and the rocks sticking around to keep you buried, I don’t know if we actually beat this thing. We knew you needed to sleep though, no matter what. With those ribs, we didn’t want to move you until you recovered at least a bit, so we stayed ready to escape, mostly. Basically we wanted to give you every last second of recovery we could until or unless it was absolutely necessary to move you.”
As I’m already recovering from a wave of panic, I barely recognize that Luni is talking about the red eyes. Somehow I can think about them for this briefest of moments. The eyes signify some sort of possession, or control, or mutation. I’m certain of that now. As far as hearts go, I’m pretty sure we’ve got that covered. Checking my inventory, the orb I picked up is sitting at about five hundred thirty seven degrees celsius, or one thousand fahrenheit. My new thermal related powers allow me some fairly keen intuition on things like that. I also think that’s within the limits of my current thermal resistance, barely. Since it’s not quite as hot as the molten rock that made up the rest of its form, oddly enough, I should be able to hold it without suffering any ill effects.
Summoning the orb from my inventory to my already charred right hand, my friends gasp and stagger backwards a step. I don’t feel any discomfort in my right hand, so I respond to Luni, “I think we’ve got Vesuviform handled, for now. I have a feeling that if this touched the ground, or shattered, or something, that VF would regrow. Not sure how it would feel about us when it did, so I’ll just hold onto it for now, til we can figure out what to do with it. Hopefully it isn’t awake while it’s stuck in the void of my inventory. I’d rather not drive it legitimately crazy. As far as the red eyes, we’re finally making some progress on that mystery. I, I can just barely manage to think about it with clarity right now, for a moment. Which direction did they fly?”
As I ask for a bit more clarification, I send the orb back to my inventory. I’m fairly certain it’s some sort of heart, or core, or mind. When it was no longer in contact with any lava, and couldn’t reach ground, it basically became inert. My three closest friends gulp before they answer my latest question. That’s confirmation enough for me. I ramble on, “So, we’re headed the same way, that’s fine. Lil, do you think Vesuviform here was the reason you needed to mark the land with red aura? Could there be more of them? Or was VF maybe the only one of its kind?”
Apprehensively, Lil responds, “I dunno buddy, it’d be a mega bad risk, mega mega mega bad, if there was more than one of them. I think we should still walk the slow way. I think those eyes were the only reason my aura didn’t work, but, well, I don’t want to lose Te. Or you! Or Lu! Of course, none of you. Just, just knowing what you went through. I wish we could all forget it. But, but since we can’t, we just gotta make sure it doesn’t happen. Right?”
I comfort Lil by wrapping my arms around their head that’s still about half my size. Wait, Lil’s Lilagnewt form is definitely bigger. They’ve got to be four times my height in length at this point, not counting tail. “Lil buddy, has this form been growing steadily every time we used it? Or did you just hit a growth spurt?”
Lil shrugs their shoulders. Hm, even their shoulders and other musculature areas are more pronounced. Lil’s scales look ever so slightly less soft. Still, their scales are more like a pliable skin than what I imagine Lil’s scales will eventually become. I’m certain that someday Lil will have scales as tough as the best equipment we have. You’ll get there buddy. I rest my head against Lil’s for a bit while hugging them before agreeing, “Yeah, alright, you’re right. Slow it is. I could probably use a few more days to heal anyway. Has it really only been a day since we set out? I’d better let Lao know we’re okay.”
Pulling the communication stone from my inventory, I whisper into it, hoping that Lao has the stone near enough that she can answer. “Hey Laomati, we’re all doing fairly well so far, sorry we didn’t check in before now. There was, uh, a need to rest that was fairly urgent.”
The sound that comes from the stone is laughter, the Mana twin’s laughter, and splashing. It takes a moment before Lao replies, “It’s so wonderful to hear from you, please have everyone share a round of hugs from me. As for the family, Mataalii was gone for a while yesterday, but had returned by morning. I fretted over whether or not to contact you about it, but all is well after all. I’m currently taking a swim with our beautiful twins as they fish.” Lao continues to speak, but the magic of the stone seems to wear off from my side for the day. Lao will have to reach out if she wants, or needs, to talk again today. Each stone opens the lines of communication only once per day after all.
As requested by Lao, I gather everyone for a group embrace before we set out. I had better ask Teuila to hold onto the comm stone in her pouch. I don’t know if it can let me know that Lao has reached out, while it’s in my inventory. I should have asked her to test it while we were still at home. Still, we have our course, or is it heading? You know what? Let’s not bother getting caught in a reverie right now. I’d much rather be in our quad thinkspace.
I check in with everyone in our telepathic bond, and I marvel at how much more life we have to live together. Every day of travel is several years of new happy memories formed with one another. A thousand days per day, well, more like six hundred or so days per day, since we do sleep after all. Still, it’s remarkable. No wonder Lu and Lil are so unbelievably close. No wonder Teuila wanted that for us.
Lu and Lil say that thinkspace’s time wasn’t originally quite this compressed. Originally it might have only been ten, twenty, fifty times as fast as the reality around it. Is our bond evolving? The more time I spend with them in our bond, the more it’s like a minor sub reality of its own. When I started joining them, it was like a subvocal internal monologue that was sort of like reading thought logs at light speed. Now though? It’s like we’re sitting on a grassy hill in the shade of a tree, talking, playing together. There’s entire lifetimes taking place for all of us. My mental log actually seems to have hyperlinks to a set of sub documents for the time spent in thinkspace, as if there’s just too much to record at once. It definitely makes it easier to remember where we’re at in reality for someone as introspective as myself.
We arrive near the base of the volcano on the second day of travel, but have to skirt around its foothills to the far side. Every day, we contact Lao to let the family know we’re okay. When sleeping, I practice setting up a frigid barrier beneath us. The girls sleep atop Lil, since Lil is immune, and I sleep below Lil, working to maintain an icy barrier all night whilst asleep. With two layers of defenses, I’m fairly sure if we’re attacked again, Lil could get Lu and Te out in time, and I’d survive just fine. A side benefit to sleeping against a barrier of subzero temperature air is that my thermal resistance continues to climb even higher. At some point, I might be able to stand in lava with Lil, though that point is a long ways off unless I decide to force skill based limit breaks again. I really don’t want to do that ever again if I can help it. Hm, I guess I could technically stand in lava with Lil right now, my stamina has continued to rise, and my thermokinesis seems to cost almost zero energy, at least for cooling. It appears to cost more mana for heating things up. I suppose that makes sense, cooling is basically reducing the kinetic energy, possibly using the atomic energy to fuel the ability, heating requires that I expend my own to stimulate the atoms.
Having now spent nearly five years with Lu, Lil, and Te, I finally feel ready to confront another skill I’ve had redacted this entire time, since the dam. I take a deep, ragged breath, steeling myself as I remove my own mental block. There it is, Psi Resist. It’s only at one, of course. The only thing that ever used psionics or psychic attacks against me was in the dam. I gulp back some fear as I force myself to puzzle this through. Psionic resistance would likely be the brain’s own electrical impulses forming an electromagnetic wave barrier. Something like pinpoint EM shielding to protect areas of the brain from specific kinds of psi assaults. I think those same waves would also be the basis for gaining either psionics or psychokinesis. Though I might be able to learn telekinesis just from thermokinesis.
Stroking my chin, I ponder whether or not it’s worth pursuing this course of action, and how best to tackle it, if it is. I’d first need to meet someone who has an offensive psychic skill. That person would need to be willing to use it on me constantly for a long time, without intending to kill me. I don’t want to have to do a skill limit break to acquire the necessary resistance. If I don’t find someone who is peaceful, or amenable, and I only run into more hostile psychic creatures, then I might have to limit break to gain resistance fast enough to even survive.
I begin to pant as my breath turns into gasps. My head starts to pound, and my pulse slowly speeds up. The panic is far, far more tolerable, and takes much longer to begin. At least this panic, since I’ve been able to face it every day for the last five years. When our thinkspace started to seem more and more realistic, our own bodies seemed to appear there, so I had to face Teuila constantly. She never hurt me, she never lost her patience. Between her playful, rough love, and her patience with my terror, we’ve made a lot of progress in what has only been about two days of marching. Lu and Lil were of course just as instrumental in helping comfort me and keep me calm.
It feels like I close another chapter in my life, as we finally arrive within a short climb of the area where we’ll start our hunt. Above us, there’s a small terrace that leads to a cavern structure. Lil assures us that it’s separate from the volcano itself, since we’re at one of its rear foothills. In those caves are a series of spawn points for cragbeasts. Apparently they look like bulky, top-heavy hounds with no eyes, and four-fold mouths. They can breathe fire, but only shortly after consuming phosphorus, or brimstone. Brimstone I guess is just what we call sulfur. This means cragbeast flames will be blue, or bluish green. Lil’s fire has gone from red to white hot over the last few days, but I think blue is generally even hotter. Even I might need to be careful with blue flames. I’m able to stand in Lil’s hottest flames now. The fire barely tickles, without even engaging a barrier of cold air.
Lu and Te have been able to stand near enough to Lil’s flames that they’ve made significant progress in thermal resist as well. I may have been wrong about convection not existing, but it definitely doesn’t work the way my memories say it should. There’s a sort of runoff of heat that’s less intense, it diminishes ridiculously quickly.
We prepare to bed down for another night, contacting Lao to share our love, reporting that we’re okay, checking that all the family is doing well. It’s hard to catch the family up on five years of new life experiences in the smattering of seconds that the comm stones work, but we try our best. One day I hope we find a source of paper, so that I can risk disassembling any scrolls I have, or get, to hopefully be able to reproduce them. I’d like to use the identification scrolls to know if there’s any other secret properties of things that I haven’t divined yet.
We bed down once more, steeling ourselves for what might be a multi-day grindfest against hostile creatures. I’m once again the littlest spoon in a four spoon set. We have to sleep with me on the bottom, projecting my cold air barrier downwards, with Lil atop me. I’m grateful for all three of my beloved inner circle. Hm, if we’re an adventuring party, then we’re the inner circle party, but for some reason, I don’t like the acronym, maybe I’ll think up a better name after the upcoming battle.