An Age of Mysterious Memories

B 2 C 29: No Rest For the Wicked

I gaze about another area where I’ve yet left more destruction in my wake. SIghing, I limply amble about, mostly hopping on my left leg. I committed a horrible act. I did apparently rescue a naga person because of it, but I don’t think that can make up for just taking matters into my own hands and, well, ugh. What I did would have been so gruesome if the world worked the way my memories say it should. My vision is so blurry, I’d better eat if I don’t want to pass out. If I let myself fall asleep, I might die before waking up. Hm, cragbeast meat or fish for my meal?

Why not both? Both? Both is good. Heh, por qué no los dos. More weirdness. Everyone I’ve run into speaks the same language, even if I can’t understand all of them, yet I supposedly have fragments of knowledge from other languages. Regardless, yes, both is good. I summon a sashimi platter and a hunk of cragbeast meat from my inventory and begin chowing down. What I wouldn’t give for some pasta, or potatoes, or toast, or oh heavens forbid some chocolate. I probably shouldn’t be letting myself drool, I probably need all the fluids I can get to stay alive at the moment.

Still, how do I know about food types, and have contextual memories of tastes and activities involved in making or eating them? Pasta probably comes from some noodle monster in some wheat field looking biome. Instead, my memories say it’s created by grinding something like wheat into flour, making dough, cutting it into certain pasta shape types, and so on. I might be wrong on that, that might be bread. Maybe it’s both. I’m a cryptozoologist, not a baker, remember? Okay, I’m neither of those things. I’m a scrawny little adventurer who tackled a sociopolitical issue way out of my depth.

What was it Dehlia said about the potion? She called it induplicable. If that’s what it sounds like, it can’t be duplicated. At least I’m pretty sure that’s how she was using it, even if that’s not the right definition. Maybe naga people have their own portmanteaus and idioms and such. I wonder if there’s a people out there that speak in spoonerisms? I am a bloody mess, and my mind is a train wreck.

As much as I don’t want to, I need to strip and let the river clean me, it should be fairly clean at the falls. It’s going to hurt so much climbing in there. I can’t believe I’m still conscious with the agony these wounds should be placing on me. Maybe it’s my FFS, maybe my nerve endings are shot. Still, time to clean up.

I unequip everything, and carefully lower myself into the river with my tendrils. I can’t risk being swept over the cliff, so I keep them anchored. Ah, yeah, there’s the pain, I should have been facing the opposite direction. I hurl, upstream, and it immediately splashes over, through, and past me. Well, now I have two reasons to let the river keep cleaning me. Ugh, so much for dinner.

Oh, oh, nope, nope, no, hold on, don’t lose grip, come on tendrils, you’ve never needed energy before. I must have started to pass out in the water, I probably sat in place far longer than I intended to. I clamber out of the river, using the only limbs that aren’t destroyed at the moment, my left leg and tattoo tendrils. Wow, how did I finish a fight in this state? Oh, right, blapper. Blaster scrapper. I’m still not regenerating energy, I think every ounce of regeneration is barely prolonging my life. Te would be so pissed if I died right now. Lu would be upset, I think she’s looking forward to letting me in on her big secrets some day.

Lil, my, my buddy, Lil, they’re probably. I gulp, unable to finish the thought as I break down, sobbing and dry heaving on the now shattered stone. Lil, I hope you can forgive me. I’m not sure what my lesson in this was. Do I just not take a stance on situations? Or do I just start with murder so that none of my family gets hurt. If I treated killing like a business, just an action that needed to be done, none of this would have happened. I’d have gone in, done the deed, and left. That phrase again, killing’s bloody business, but it’s my business. Maybe I really was that assassin? But that sounded like a fantasy land full of magic, like our world, this world, the real world. If I was that assassin, then where do the technological memories come from?

Lu would probably tell me to stop guessing and following this train of thought. Urp. Oh gods. I thought I didn’t have anything more to throw up. Oh that burns the umpteenth time around. As I lean over the edge of the rock, gazing at the cliff face below, praying for sweet mercy, I spy something curious. Very carefully, I lower myself over the edge via my tattoo tendrils. There’s a small alcove here. For some reason, I feel like it’s something a gnome may have lived in, in some age long past. It’s a tiny domicile carved into the rock that was sealed over time due to the sedimentary striations. It doesn’t make sense, my memories say geology works that way, but everything I’ve noticed about Fire Biome is to the contrary. The world kind of just is. It doesn’t really decay, or shift.

Still, here it is, a now vacant tiny cavern home opened due to my earth shattering crack of the thunder stick. Something inside has been glowing and flickering all this time, a tiny sconce with a gem that appears to forever glow. One of my tendrils reaches for it as I notice another object in the domicile. There’s a large tome that looks exceedingly familiar, and I could swear the object it’s on is also special. The tome seems to vaguely indicate the roman numerals VI out of VI on it. Sixth book in a set? Checking my tome, it says IV out of VI. I don’t know how I never noticed it before. My second tendril reaches for the tome, and my third tendril reaches for the last object.

Oh, oops. Of course since I was hanging over the edge of the cliff face by my tendrils, and have effectively no working limbs, I’m now crashing through the sky towards the bottom of the falls. Sighing I use some careful JT movements to cushion my impact. Once again, it’s like falling through dozens of awnings to brake my fall. This is very much an oof, ow, oaf, ugh, whuff, oof, eek, agh, ow, kind of moment. I claim the three objects held by my tendrils to my inventory. I’ll have to look over them, and the other serpent drops later, because I think even if I slowed down enough, I’m probably going to black out from impacting the ground. I doubt I’ll actually gain much benefit from any sleep at the moment. After all, they say there’s no rest for the wicked.

My survival instincts, or maybe the voice that sometimes gives me advice, scream at me to freeze myself, so I do, knowing that this time, Lil might not be around to ever thaw me out again. My last thought as I lose consciousness is how much I regret that I might never see Lil again due to my own stupidity, carelessness, and rage.

Oh neato, another out of body experience, this time I get to look at myself as a block of ice. Hm, I wonder if I can explore. Nope, can’t seem to do much of anything. Other than some really screwed up limbs, it looks like that body of mine is going to be mostly okay, with time. It’s definitely going to be quite a few months before I’m ready for adventuring again. If anyone else had these injuries, I’d try to remain kind and cognizant of how I react to them. However, they’re my injuries, and I feel like even this spiritual out of body avatar is going to horf from viewing them.

I guess I should just stop looking. Maybe I should get introspective. What was the right choice today? Those MCF’ed beavers weren’t MC at all, they were just F’ed. That is, they weren’t mind controlled, they were just factioned, maybe fascisted. They made up a religion to worship the stupid Mind Blower thing, and wanted everyone else under thumb, everyone under their power. I’m not even sure they believed their own spiel, but they were sticking to it. They weren’t going to be satisfied with just a few extra suits of armor, and taking over the entire dam. They’d have come for more and more armor, eventually ransoming my family like they originally planned.

Could it maybe have been the right thing to do? Or as close to the right thing as it was possible to do? There’s that dream of being an assassin. Was that character a bad person? They were trying to free a subjugated peoples. Do I just have buggy morals and ethics because of the glitchy way I spawned? The glitchy memories that say the world should be like something else, with vague notions that it should be full of humans and technology.

Is it really might makes right here? Hm, no, I don’t think that’s it. That’s not what I did. I was somewhat prideful, but what I did was out of the defense of my loved ones due to the fear of what I absolutely knew they were going to do. Hm, looking at my inventory, if that’s what I think it is, I’d like to hurl even more. The Mind Blower brain pod thing. The elder of the MCF must have been carrying it somewhere. Somehow I snagged it when I claimed everything left in the room. I don’t even know how to destroy one of these things without that green glow from the pyramid. Please don’t tell me I’m going to have to keep this disgusting creepy thing in my inventory for the rest of my life to keep it from being used on someone. I’m guessing she was one of the beaverfolk in the south wing, and she got far enough away that the green light didn’t derez this thing. Ugh, what if that’s the only way to get rid of it safely?

If I wasn’t in a sort of icy coma near death’s door, I’d use thermokinesis on it in my inventory to try to turn it to ash. Doing anything with my inventory costs energy that I might not be able to afford at the moment. Wait, has it already been a day? I saw the light grow brighter then dimmer. Do I dare risk dropping my FFS? My energy is looking topped off somehow, though my injuries are still pretty gruesome. Yeah, I want to get back to Teuila as soon as possible, she’s in no condition to travel. I, I. Gulping, I can’t finish my thought at first. Finally I get it out. I want to see Lil, I want to know what happened. Wait, their stats page, that’s right, I can just look at.

No, oh no. It’s not gone, which is good, but everything, every single thing is at zero. When someone derezzes, does it go to zero for a while? No, no their whole page is just deleted. I have to get back, fast!

I drop my FFS and launch myself into the air with my tendrils first, flitting back and forth between trees and cliff face, trying to conserve my energy for what’s to come. Teuila’s Valkyrie form, or its semblance, was able to go at least half mach speeds, maybe greater. I should be able to reach that velocity as well with JT impulse, but to do so, I’d be striking myself at mach speed, over and over. My legs would crumple and probably just fly off. About the only surface area on my body that I can imagine withstanding the blows right now is my back. That’s a pretty dangerous game though, if I snap my spine, it might be over for me.

Still, Lil needs me, somehow I know it. Somehow I know Lu and Te need me even more. Hm, it’s actually the same day, those sorts of snails would have moved to at least a different tree if a day or more had passed already. They seem to sort of just migrate in a single direction, and they’re facing east, on the first tree on the east side of the river. I didn’t even log down that I noticed them on the way into the swamp, everything was blurring by so fast, but I’m certain they were on that very same tree. I have to steel myself, this is a bit of a stupid risk. I’ll probably make some mega wicked blunt pain tolerance/resistance progress from doing this. I try to gulp back tears as I think that Lil would then emphasize mega mega mega wicked.

Summoning up my FFS, I JT at a familiar pace to start with, I don’t try to immediately hit max acceleration, I do not have any ancillary powers that would keep me from snapping my neck, or burning my face off in the wind due to friction. I’ll just keep ratcheting up the velocity of my jettison power, more and more. If I time it just right, I barely lose any energy still, while covering a massive distance.

It took me about half an hour, but I believe I’m now going about the speed Teuila was, at least somewhere between half her speed, and her speed. By a few minutes ago, every impact felt like it was shattering my spine, but I keep reinforcing my spine with as strong of an FFS as I can muster. I’ve been making my back and spine as dense as possible, drawing in the atomic movement, energy, and atoms of the surrounding air to coalesce where needed.

I can’t even tell how long it has been so far, but I’m making incredible time. Still, I never want to do this again. I thought my injuries were excruciating, but this is pure torture. I’ll leave speed to the speedsters from here on out, my body can’t handle the physics without the ancillary powers. I’m going to need months of recovery. I’m pulverizing the flesh of my back, and the bone of my rear rib cage. Even though I’m wearing full Valkyrie gear, and it absorbs a ton of shock and impact, it’s still not enough.

I’m almost to the dam, but is that Dehlia standing outside way up there? I stop using JT and let myself coast into a glide that ends with me skidding hundreds of meters on my face. I barely manage to stop before plowing into Dehlia. She doesn’t even look surprised at my mode of travel, or method of braking.

I’d say she looks amused, but she doesn’t. Still, I feel like we’re almost on good terms at the moment. I worry that anything I say or think might change that though.