An Age of Mysterious Memories

Turning to Lil, I blush as I ask, “I hate to ask this, but, Lil, are you willing to stay up all night, pulling an all nighter with me, to head into the swamps, find a lot of clay, and I mean a lot, a lot of clay, and help me bake it, so that we can have enough material to build some walls when the family is ready to move in the morning, in case we get into trouble?”

“Of course pal, no worries!” Lil’s response is chipper, and pretty much what I’d expect from my best buddy.

“What, you think you two brats are going anywhere without me protecting your sorry hides?” Teuila chimes in from atop me, and basically straddles me, pinning me to the ground, as if to also say ‘you’re not going anywhere.’ Which, okay, she actually did just say.

“You know I’m going anywhere Lil does.” I’m kind of surprised at Luni, I don’t know how much time, if any, Luni and Lil have spent apart since our shared bond formed, but I had thought she’d at least want to rest.

Wait, that's all four of us. Huh. I bumble about forming an answer, “Ah, oh, uh, I guess that’s all of us then, it’s going to make tomorrow extra hard, since we won’t be getting any sleep, are you all sure you’re okay with that? Te, you might want to be rested to be able to protect us tomorrow in case something happens.”

Te butts in, exclaiming, “Look, if I have to push a little harder, go beyond, give a hundred and ten plus ten plus ten, I dunno, plus, ultra, percent, whatever it takes, I’ll do it. I’m not letting you go through what you went through, ever again. I’ll knock you out myself before seeing you ever get so badly hurt, ever again.”

“Oh, uh, I’m, well, flattered? I guess? Sorry, thank you. Sorry.” I’m so touched by Te’s sentiment that I can barely form words to express my feelings. Obviously I don’t want to end up in crispy fried catatonic states. I probably won’t admit it to her, but I’d do it again if it even saved her from a little harm, Luni and Lil and Laomati and Agwai and Manaia and Manamea and Mataali as well of course.

“It’s okay. I, you know, those words.” Teuila almost stammers, which is so unusual, as she’s generally so confident. She’s usually so exceedingly confident that she can play off as being cocky and it’s hard to tell when she’s joking.

“What words? Oh, oh I see, I love you too Te.” I get socked in the shoulder for my sappiness, apparently, as I assume what Te had meant to convey.

“Yeah, whatever, sure, that. You know.” She hides her face in the crook of my neck. It’s somewhat astonishing to me, she plays off being so brave, brash, bold, even jokingly full of herself, yet on things like this she’s bashful, demure even. Teuila downplays her own emotions, I just hope that we’re all being honest with ourselves about what our emotions mean to each of us. I try to shove Teuila off of me so that I can get up and we can start our trek into the swamp, but it’s like she has some sort of density altering power. It feels like I’m trying to lift a boulder off of me. I know Teuila is light as all get-out, but her muscles are stiff, locked in place, pinning me down. I hear her whisper, “Nuh uh, just a little more snuggles, please?” I chuckle, and give her the slightest nod, so she knows I won’t tell anyone what she asked for. Though Lil and Luni snicker across our shared mental wavelength, they promise not to tease her about it.

Eventually we all stand up, dust ourselves off, and use the soapstone to clean up. Noticing Luni’s new dress has pockets, I offer her the soapstone to hold onto, since she has a really pretty new dress to keep clean. Luni says “I’ve got even better than pockets, secret pockets!” She takes the soapstone and shoves it into her wristband, which apparently has internal flaps that act like a pocket.

“Huh, fashionable, and functional, handy that. Cute too.” I comment on Luni’s wrist pocket, which earns me a hip-check from Teuila. I chuckle and throw an arm over Te’s shoulders as we walk along the riverside into the swamp proper. We once again scour for ‘special clean mud’ as Lil called it previously. I scoop and claim virtually a metric ton of claylike mud that I’m hoping has enough lime content to work like mortar, or spackle, or whatever the stuff is that seals bricks together.

Te takes the opportunity to swim upriver against the current, intentionally shoulder-bashing and tail-slamming rocks and boulders in her path, an excuse to get some training in I suppose. We continue onwards for hours, when my extra sensory perception, well, not that kind of ESP, the kind from my wraps, warns me of danger incoming. On the way inbound is a dart, well, three darts. The problem is, Lil and Luni are right in front of me, and if I dodge out of the way, they’ll get hit. Sighing exasperatedly, I warn them of what’s incoming in our shared mental link, while spinning to try to grab the darts out of the air. I manage to catch two darts with my hands, and slam my palms together around the third dart, stopping it right in front of my sternum. However, caught up with these three darts, I don’t notice the other three until their trajectories have placed them too close to either dodge or catch, another dart for each of us.

The best I can manage is flailing myself into harms way, taking all three darts across my right bicep. As I face south towards our attackers, my left arm points towards the river, and I try to make the tendrils splash to get Teuila’s attention without alerting our adversaries that my Te is nearby. I don’t feel any toxin entering my bloodstream, but I still feel sluggish. Checking my mind’s eye, my energy and energy capacity hit zero somehow. My senses begins to distort and blur, while Lil bounces around frantically spitting gouts and plumes of flame. Our assailants haven’t yet revealed themselves.

As I drop to my knees, I sense more darts heading towards Lil. Lil thankfully is spry enough to blast the ones out of the air that came from the front, but, oh no, that sound. Luni dropped to her knees and then crumpled over, she must have been hit. The sound puts panic into Lil as they spin around to check on Luni, dropping their guard, ending with them taking half a dozen darts in the rear. Lil barely plops forward far enough to faceroll next to Luni as their energy bottoms out.

Half a dozen creatures, about the size of the bully frog things, similarly scaly, encircle and approach us. Underneath their hoods are glowing eyes according to Lil’s vision. Oddly enough, they just grab the various needles and darts that hit us, and begin to scamper, running away, leaving us to our fate. Suddenly it clicks, they just wanted to steal our energy.

“No, please no, you can’t, that’s mine, I’ve been struggling so hard to get it back, you can’t take it!” I manage to somehow yell, despite being nearly paralyzed. My left arm barely manages to lift slightly off the ground, and I try to focus on using the tendrils to grasp my way forward, towards the escaping creatures. Thinking numerically, each of those darts had to be able to steal about a hundred energy capacity, minimum, for the three that hit me, and five or six that hit Lil, to bottom us both out. If Te shows up, she can’t afford to let a single one hit her. Lil is actually rolling slowly in my direction on their face, I remember them telling me that they could roll or slither without energy, though I’m not sure they’ll be anything more than a target if we manage to corner our assailants. If Lil can move without energy, why can’t I? I try to focus on my breathing, trying to imagine how much energy I might have had on Day… One… Fart, bad timing. My mind spins out of control, I imagine these creatures have faces that open to indiscernible maws beneath their hoods, that the trees around me reach out for me as their trunks open up into jagged faces and try to shove me down their gullets, shredding my flesh on their jagged smiles on the way down. My breathing is halting, stuttered, staccato. I don’t have vision and yet it feels like my senses narrow to a pinpoint tunnel, throwing off my balance. All that whilst my hearing is filled with that ever-present shrieking ringing noise that is so incredibly loud when I remember it and notice it.

I feel a soft furred paw against my chest and another at my back. I’m being shoved into a seated position, but I can’t respond. I try to struggle with my tattoo tendrils for a moment to keep moving, but I hear Te whisper, “Stay put, your stats pages all went to zero energy, I’ll follow their footprints.” I worry that Te going off on her own means we might all end up like this, and my mind drifts to dark thoughts of losing everyone, the family not being able to find us as we slowly starve, unable to muster the energy to take care of ourselves. I’m tempted to beg the system for energy debt to go along with Te, but I also want to show that I trust her, so I settle down, and just try to focus on what I can do while out of energy. I can sense Teuila scamper off, though she makes almost no noise, I do however feel her leave the thirty foot range of my wrap’s danger senses. Sighing, I lay awake, mostly paralyzed, propped against a tree. My sweet warrior heading off to reclaim what was taken from us leaves me with little to do save think. Even my hearing left me in the last few moments, probably from exerting myself while at zero energy. I realize that I can’t even reach out into Lil’s senses anymore, apparently that took energy, so now I can’t hear or see from either my own or Lil’s perspective.

Speaking of, Lil can move, and Lil has finally caught up, slithering into my range, and back out of it. I think they’re torn on whether or not to leave Luni defenseless near the shore. Oh no, that thought hadn’t even occurred to me, we’re basically sitting ducks, or uh, frogs, or otters, or people, basically trapped, if something even more deadly should happen by. Maybe I should have told Te to try to drag us back to camp. I need to get to Lil and Luni, Luni should be able to move without energy, and so should I, since Lil can do it. I can’t leave us in such danger. I stare at my still locked maximum energy capacity, now a couple hundred lower than the two thousand or so it was at previously, and I mentally shriek at it in rage. I imagine myself in my inventory, pounding on my stats panel in my mind’s eye. I slam into everything related to mobility, stamina, energy, anything that might help this situation, but nothing seems to happen. There’s a tiny cracking, crackling sound after a while of this though, and I panic momentarily, worried that I’m hearing myself, Lil, or Luni derezzing, but it doesn’t end with the loud shattering one would expect from a derezzing. My knuckles hurt though, but how?

Feeling outward with my senses, at some point I had to have gotten to my knees and faced the tree, and I must have been bashing into it subconsciously this entire time. I throw another punch as a test, and sure enough, it hurts like heck. I have to be imagining things, right? I stand fully upright, and punch again, and again. I can’t see through Lil’s eyes, but as I walk towards where I last felt Lil’s presence, they’re slithering back and forth exceedingly slowly, as if pacing, trying to keep Luni and myself within range. I can’t seem to talk, or hear anymore, I’m in some kind of blind and deafened rage, doubly blind I guess. Leaning down I scoop up Lil who feels like they’re reacting with shock, and like they’re probably talking at me with concern. Every step I take, I feel a fire burning deep within exploding outward with force, burning away my muscles from the inside. I don’t think I’m in energy debt, but I don’t care right now, I keep marching towards the river, where I remember Luni falling. As I arrive close enough to sense her through the wraps, I rush, or plod towards her, as quickly as I can. I can’t honestly tell how quickly I’m moving, everything is distorted and dizzying, relying on the movement of the external senses to judge everything. I pat my hood flap, trying to indicate for Lil to jump in, and they seem to comply.

Leaning down, I pick up Luni in both arms. I expected it to be fairly difficult, as we all know I’m fairly scrawny, my physical attributes, strength especially, aren’t spectacular. Luni however fairly flies up into my arms. All I know is that I have to get Te and get out of here, whether or not we get our energy back, it’s not safe. All I can think about is shouting “We have to leave, right, now!” The fire exploding inside of me feels like it’s trying to escape from my shoulderblades, like at any moment I’ll grow a massive pair of fiery wings.

I carefully set Luni’s prone form over my right shoulder, she stirs only slightly, seemingly starting to be able to move regardless of lacking energy, but only just barely. I wish I could communicate with Lil and Luni. Being cut off from our shared mental bond is torture. I vent my frustration by using my tattoo tendrils to help yoink me from tree to tree heading westwards in the direction Te was tracking the creatures, stopping occasionally to loudly pound against a tree with my left fist.

I’m met with a surprise, as another dart enters my danger sense range, I let my tendrils slap it out of the air and rush the direction it came from. At the same time, the creatures seem to have returned, they’re running from something, that’s probably my Teuila, at least I hope so. I focus on making Luni and Lil as small of targets as possible, not daring to find out what happens if they’re siphoned even further. My tendrils grip one of the creatures, strangely enough, the grip almost immediately disappears, as if my tendrils crushed it into derezzing in a single motion, or like the creature was able to become intangible reactively. I reach out again and again for these creatures wielding their little pipes that serve as blowguns, my tendrils seem to be either passing through them, or ripping them asunder. Several more bodies join the fray, which is surprising, because none of them seem to be Teuila. I grab the nearest thieving figure and this time the tendrils stay connected, for a moment at least, long enough to slam it into a nearby figure, both of which seem to disappear from my senses afterwards.

All of a sudden I sense Teuila’s presence, and she’s waving frantically, as if to yell “Go, go! Run!” Teuila is probably the bravest amongst us, and if she’s ordering a retreat, I’d better listen. She seems to be stooping to scoop things up in passing, which might be items dropped by the thieves, if we’re lucky, they’re the ones that contain our energy. Luni stirs, and like me, she seems to finally be able to move without energy, she slumps off of my shoulder onto her own feet, and begins slowly plodding into a jog. As light as she felt, it is certainly easier to move around now without her on my shoulder, especially since she’s my size now, rather than Lil’s size. With her boots, Luni’s the tallest amongst us, well, other than Ag and Lao of course. Teuila runs past me, and seemingly slings an arm under Luni’s shoulder to help speed her along, good.

In this moment, I feel the swamp floor vibrate in a sickening serpentine pattern. There’s an undulation of something massive slithering along the swamp, and I know why Teuila was running. I’m not fast enough to outpace it, it’s already upon me and the remaining thieves, but as the thieves die around me, disappearing from my danger sense, the serpent pauses. I’m fairly certain it’s trying to lock eyes with me, but tough luck you rotten jerk, I can’t see anything. The serpent tests a single head lunging at me, but I won’t react like I did last time. I wrap the incoming snout in tendrils and scream my heart out, pouring all of my fears and hate into just buying Teuila and Luni a few more moments. Suddenly I can hear again, and I can sense my inventory energy, everything save the couple hundred that was stolen is unlocked again.

“Lil, get Luni and get the hell out of here!” I scream, crying in fear as I pour my heart and energy into shifting Lil into Lilagnewt, creating the tether that links my energy to Lil to provide them a limitless source as long as I remain standing, at the same time I spin and launch Lil like a discus in the direction of Teuila. Just then, I’m struck seven times in the back by snapping maws, well, seven times in the back of my left arm as my danger wraps directed my it to intercept the blows. My left arm swung rearward to bap each snout in the face with each bite, the fangs did rake along my arm repeatedly though. Through Lil’s senses, I can tell the transformation was a success, as they’re flying swiftly, low above the swamp floor, and about to swoop in to take Luni to the skies. Teuila lets out a whoop of pride, or gratitude, or awe, and immediately spins around back towards me.

“No Te, no please, go while you have time.” I whisper, muttering to myself, but she’ll be back in the fray any second now. “Lil, when you get far enough, I’m going to drop the connection, I’m sorry buddy, find a cubbyhole and hunker down.”

Lil's telepathic response is affirmative, and contains an underlying concern, “You betcha Reggie, why weren’t you talking til now?”

Since our telepathy happens faster than conscious thought, in the moments between moments, I can afford to respond, “Something was messed up when I hit zero energy, I couldn’t hear or see our shared information or anything.”

Lil's reply is even further concerned yet, “Oh that’s awful. Reggie come on, get out of there pal? Please?”

Lil's beyond the range of our usual bond of telepathy, my tether being the only thing keeping us mentally linked, and the distance is beginning to strain even that mental connection as I respond, “Sorry Lil, Te turned around, I have to get her out of here, she just joined the fight, I have to drop the connection, stay safe, I love you.”

I turn to Te as she’s arriving, as I do small somersaults and cartwheels between serpent snaps. “You shouldn’t be here Te, I love you, I was trying to buy you time.”

Te shouts excitedly, “Reggie, you’re as powerful as I’ve ever seen you, I think you can do this, I think we can do this!”

“Te, no, this is still nothing. My danger wraps tell me things about creatures that I hit, I punched it in the snout, I found out what some of its numbers mean, it has a threshold of one thousand. Do you know what a threshold is? I can’t even harm it with a strike that’s numerically worth less than a thousand, well, damage I guess.” I can tell Teuila’s expression droops, a mixture of realization, terror, and defeat.

As I gulp to keep sadness back from reaching my voice, I’m momentarily distracted by trying to convince Teuila to leave. I try to leap out of the way of an incoming serpent bite, but the serpent wised up to my moves and spun its heads sideways so that I basically leapt against the roof of its mouth. “Te, Te run, go, run, GO! I’m finished, I love you, please, go!” I struggle against the serpent’s jaws, but one of its fangs has run through my entire left ankle. Even if I could break free of its maw, I’d still be stuck on its tooth. Even if I could get out of here now, I’d be in no condition to run away. “I hope this helps you, I love you, here’s everything I have left.”

I dump most of my inventory out, which confuses the serpent momentarily, buying Te a few precious seconds, and the rest of my energy I pour into Teuila, hoping to maybe offer her a temporary evolution. I feel a connection form, similar to when I help Lil evolve into their Agnewt form, but the strain is a bit different, we don’t share quite the same wavelengths, instead I get feedback from Teuila. I feel her fears and dreams, her hopes for what awakening her powers could mean. She really isn’t as confident as she pretends.

Teuila is screaming inside, railing against losing me right now. Her form elongates somewhat, becoming even more humanoid, a spear forms in her hands, armor adorns her shoulders, knees, and chest. A shield materializes as a buckler on her left arm, a winged bow materializes between wings of a cloak of massive feathers that materialize on her back, a helmet adorns her face, also winged, her greaves are similarly winged. I don’t know the color scheme since I can’t see, but I’m sensing a theme here. She seems like some kind of armored angel, or Valkyrie maybe.

Teuila screams while crying as she begins leaping so far into the air that she passes out of my sensory range, and seemingly out of earshot. I guess that means she’s safe, she jumped so hard she virtually flew away. I guess I’d better focus on surviving for as many seconds as it might take for her to get away so the connection isn’t severed while she’s in the air. I begin hammering at the inside of the serpent’s mouth, using tendrils to try to pry its jaw upwards, holding it from closing down. I start grabbing random odds and ends that I dropped out of my inventory and jamming it into this beast’s throat, honestly this is probably the best location to fight it from, only having to deal with the one head I’m inside of, rather than all eight. Wait, what’s that sound?