An Age of Mysterious Memories

After exiting the aerie, I have to aim myself up through a narrow, angled tunnel in the Worldstorm that’s slightly to one side. If anyone saw it from above, even at the exact right angle to see down through it, they’d only see the bare face of Solace’s mountainside, not a landing prospect. Though anyone seeking to gain entry would probably guess that there’s some way into Solace from here. We do still have defenders on the aerie, and above it in the sky at times, after all.

Alright Reggie, Illy’s out there, somewhere behind enemy lines, skulking about in the dark below the Worldstorm. I can see motion from her goggles occasionally, and flashes of brightness, but they’re mostly looking at dark stone interiors of crevices and caverns. She’s using stealth to prioritize hit and run tactics, which is great and all, but like Yui having been dueling the front lines of Terrorzin’s forces, I worry about how long her luck can hold out. I want to make my debut and cause disarray in Terrorzin’s forces as soon as possible, in order to help provide opportunities Illy can capitalize on, either to exterminate foes, or to escape, depending.

Phooph, y’know what that means pal, right? Yeah, yeah I do. Pushing ourselves beyond our limits, again. As far as speed is concerned anyway. I’ll basically have my brain on autopilot, bunching my legs against TK squares, siphoning off some Worldstorm lightning with the cursed greaves from QCR number four, holding my breath, doffing the cursed greaves, and blasting off as hard as I can, over and over, for the next hour’ish.

Here we go! The first thing that hits me, despite my thermal resistance, is the cold air. Rather, that it feels sharp, stinging, moist-yet-drying against my skin as I aim myself up through the tunnel in the Worldstorm to leave the aerie. Lightning flickers towards me from the storm, through my cursed greaves—little jolts of electrical hell that buzz and nip at my legs like a swarm of angry bees. Come on Reggie. Brain, autopilot. Go.

My legs coil tight against the TK square like pistons at the ready, and with a sharp, silent inhale--in order to get enough breath to hold for the levitation enchantment--I kick off. I’m my own internal combustion engine, erm, externally. Well, internally and externally both, since my electrokinesis generates EMF and even lightning within my—I know, you don’t have to explain it to me, yourself. Erm, right. Lightning explodes behind me in a crackling burst. It's like someone punched a hole in the universe and threw me through it. Focus. Legs. Lightning. Leap. Repeat.

It’s a process that’s weirdly automatic now, like stimming I'd never really noticed myself doing, but more violent. My brain never even comments on how often I'm cracking my ankles, toes, wrists, or finger-knuckles. My body is weightless, just a blur of twitching muscle and burning electricity. There's a high-pitched hum in my ears as I launch again. Is that my tinnitus, or electrokinesis on overload directly from my brain? Speaking of that electrokinesis, I know I can control lightning within a near radius around me, but I never really paid attention to how absolutely wild it can be when I’m not directly controlling it. It’s simultaneously got a mind of its own, yet seems like a mindless beast, wild and rampant.

Every jump feels like ripping duct-tape off a wound—there’s that brief moment where I’m free, nothing around me but air, lightning crackling at my heels. And then, gravity begins to reassert itself as I need to breathe, and impact. My feet hit the next TK square, another solid surface made from nothing but my will and brainpower. Gods, who else has to think this much to move from place to place?

The world outside is just a blur of dark clouds and flashes of the storm—I can feel the static charge clinging to my skin, making my hair stand up on end under my helmet. It’s like the entire sky is alive, writhing around me, daring me to falter, to miscalculate by a millimeter. One wrong move and I’m a Reggie-flavored lightning rod in a sky-borne pool of acid. Or maybe a half-digital smear on the ground far below.

I kick off again—another sharp burst of speed, joints screaming as I push harder than I should. This is fine, this is fine. Right? Nothing I haven’t lived through before. Huh, for some reason, that’s not all that reassuring. Actually, it’s a bit disconcerting that my life—lives—has been filled with so much injury and pain. Still, I persist, even though I can already feel the telltale ache spreading from my knees and hips.

Jeeze Louise my knees ache for realsies. For realsies Reggie, really? Shut up. Speedsters have no idea how easy they have it with their secondary and tertiary or ancillary powers. A few magic items help me bridge the gaps, slightly. But I'm still moving through walls of wind at speeds human--err, changeling--flesh isn't designed for. Not to mention, hyper-inflexing my knees and hips, then uncoiling them at inhuman speeds.

Thank spoot for my Can’Z’aasian blunt pain tolerance. Or blunt damage resistance, whatever you want to call how it applies to things. That brings to mind how hitpoints and resistance skills and such even apply. We’ve puzzled it out before, because hitpoints don’t directly correlate to wounds or broken bones or such, not entirely. You can seem physically whole, but be nearly dead on hitpoint values, or conversely, after recuperating, you can still have broken, ruined limbs, while being back at max health.

Case-in-point, Teuila and me breaking our legs and blowing our limbs to smithereens trying to press faster than our bodies could handle, way back around the time of the Cragbeast Warren, and nearly losing Lil. We’d regenerated to full hitpoints in a single night of rest, but our limbs took much longer to recover. Most people probably don’t recover from basically atomizing the bones in their limbs, or turning their limbs into leaden jelly, or meat-paste. However you want to think about it. I mean, I know they don’t. Here on Rayileklia, it takes magical Latents like Sponge’s or Teuila’s to help distribute enough of the damage of an injury that bodies can conceivably recover from it.

Halfway there, Reggie. Good job pal, keep it up. Really Reggie, a pep-talk mid travel? Shush you, this is exhausting and painful. Ugh, my legs feel all wobbly and springy. I think I’m starting to bicycle-pedal midair between each leap, just because of how rubbery my knees are feeling. How’s the battlefield looking anyway? We’ve been on autopilot for a good few minutes.

Actually, that reminds me of someone else I want to check in on first. How the hell are Littlebit and Nala essentially in the robotics age, when everyone else on Rayileklia is early-to-pre industrial revolution at best? I reach up to my goggles to muffle the sound of the wind as I’m leaping through the sky, and to signal that I need communications opened up.

Before the security center team can even ask, I inquire, “Hey, could you guys patch me through to Littlebit? I’ve got some questions for our artificers.”

An accented voice that uses harder vowel sounds responds, “Roger that Schism, putting you through now.”

Checking my view of the feeds through my goggles, I wait for there to be a slight lull in Littlebit and Nala’s activities and conversation to pipe up, “Hey Littlebit, couple o’ questions for ya.”

Only momentarily surprised, Littlebit beams a bright smile as she speaks with thin air, “Sure thing Tiger! Whacha wanna know?”

How do I phrase this? Well, I start by responding, “How easy or difficult would it be for you and Nala to construct a device, perhaps an elongated barrel of some sort, that could deliver a payload with as many kilojoules of force as we could muster? What sort of damage are we looking at if you can rig it up safely so that there’s no risk until after deployment?”

The adorable goblin inventor blinks a few times, scratches her ears, then her chin, before postulating, “Well, I think a trebuchet could place some barrels of explosives at a fair clip with fairly high accuracy. But if you’re thinking about what I think you’re thinking about, because of our conversation about combustion propulsion earlier, I’m guessing you want a cannon, but with special ammo.”

My nodding won’t translate since Littlebit can’t see my feed, as she’s not wearing the goggles that sit near her in the crafting lab, but I also loose a quiet verbal affirmative to accompany my nod. I really don’t want to be bringing Rayileklia into a nuclear arm’s race. But what if we really break things, really really break them? Like, if we drop a nuke directly on top of Terrorzin, that means Kinzul doesn’t have to face him alone, right? Can we avoid the prophecy that way?

Though, there is the little problem of his Dragonforce-infused Latent. What if it saps all kinetic energy in the area instantly? If he engages it the instant he feels the tiniest hint of a pressure wave from the explosion, could he completely nullify it? Are his reflexes good enough? Is it completely automatic? We don’t have enough information that I’d be willing to drop a nuke into his lap that he could possibly freeze even before it detonates, as it’s falling. Because then he could throw it back at us to let it detonate in our laps.

Also, sure, we might not be talking actual nuclear fission, because who knows what sort of magical approximation Nala and Littlebit might come up with. But that’s hardly the point. The point is, we’d be putting our cards on the table, going all in, with whatever they could concoct. I’m almost ready to suggest abandoning the line of thought, when Littlebit squeaks, which catches me offguard.

Chirping almost with delight, Littlebit continues, “Oh I think I could fasten together a really fun delivery and trigger system! One that guarantees it can’t go off on our side. It won’t be built at all, until it hits its target!”

Now I’m blinking, more than a tad perplexed as to what the heck Littlebit could be talking about. Thankfully, she quickly explains, “If I get one of Nala’s, or my littlelest clankers, into a transport, with the fixings for a big kaboomer, but all in inert states, and let the little pal’o build it after impact, no risk to us! At worst, we deliver some random chemicals that they may or may not even know what to do with, to our foes.”

Huh. I respond, “Well, that certainly alleviates some of the worries I had with this possible project. Don’t bother putting any more time or thought into it just yet though. I need to know if it’s feasible to even bother with it. Is there any way we can get some concrete data on Terrorzin’s Dragonforce-infused Latent? His big magical beyond the laws of physics below sub absolute zero freeze?”

Nala, from the other side of the crafting table affirms, “We could repurpose one of the automatons already sent with you, redirecting its sensory equipment to enable capturing information, with a few rudimentary adjustments. Adjustments I assume you’d be perfectly capable of, friend Reggie. I should hate for you to prove my assumptions wrong.”

My face quirks, and I’m not sure how to parse the thinly veiled threat of being on the receiving end of Nala’s dissatisfaction or condescension upon failure to live up to her expectations. Eh, it’s Nala. Social graces just aren’t her thing. At least not the usual ones most other people are familiar with. While being a veiled threat, it’s also a veiled compliment, that she believes me up to the task.

Before I can ask, Nala tuts and comments, “Those goggles are making an infernal hissing of wind. If you wouldn’t mind disconnecting until you need instructions on how to repurpose one of the automatons, it’d be much appreciated, Schism.”

Grimacing, I nod, and mutter to the security center to remove the audio patch between our scrying sensors. Well, at least there’s a chance we could get some concrete data on Terrorzin’s abilities. Though, only if any of the robobuddies survive long enough, and I work fast enough, in order to repurpose them. I suppose it’s an asset worth attempting to gain, so I shouldn’t discount it.

Let’s see, I still can’t see much of anything where Lil, Lucky, Shiz, and Zelshiz are. I assume that means they’re excavating somewhere in the foothills between Mah’ruke and Vieriss. Alanea and Lu are fine in the infirmary, Luni’s resting up. I gulp back my emotions as I think about Luni being injured. Rattling my skull, I pretend the tears in my eyes are from the stinging air as I launch myself through it. I mean, some of them might be.

I guess nearly each pal of mine, everyone other than Revvy, Greggy, and Atter, are engaged in action or recovering from injury at the moment. It really strikes me, hitting home hard, that these are our final moments—I mean, not like, final final moments, like dead. I just mean, from on on we’ll remain engaged, locked in battle, until the leader of one side of this war dies. Even then, if we slay Terrorzin, his apostles, elites, his buried-in forces, the Damnations, and who knows what else, probably won’t stand down.

I just hope that Terrorzin is the one to die, and that we can find some way to wrap up all this dragon war business. Rayileklia’s still in peril from other sources. That’ll always itch at the back of my mind until we have concrete plans in place in order to stave off the other apocalypses.

Pft, how unreal is that? I’m tense, and annoyed, because there are multiple apocalypses still looming, even beyond the scope of this war. Would it be better for everyone if my Rayileklian adventure was just one last fever dream? Brrr. I shudder. Don’t even think like that Reggie. We’re here, this is real. People we love are in danger, or fighting off danger on behalf of others. Time for us to get back to it, and start doing the same pal o’ mine o’.