Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

Griffin Tucker Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 1

Mount Discovery, Province of Aragonia

Griffin breathed deeply and pushed his anima out around him. He felt Kismet’s presence nearby as a kind of fluttery sort of pressure. Like holding a butterfly cupped in your hand. He gently pushed his anima further, feeling his tenuous grasp of it shivering and fumbling. It was like trying to stretch out a bubble with just your hands: every time he pushed one part out, his focus wandered and his array field resembled less a perfect sphere—as Kismet was trying to teach him to create—and more a deflated kickball.

He concentrated, trying to shore up the rapidly collapsing areas but it was too late. The entire anima array field collapsed and retracted back into himself with a weird sort of queasy slurpy feeling. He opened his eyes, fighting the urge to gag. He was back in the opulent bedroom.

Breathlessly, he gasped out, “I…I pushed it a little further…this time.”

“You’re pushing too hard, Griffin.” Kismet, still just about as tall as Griffin’s hand, zipped in front of him.

Her form had altered somewhat. She now no longer looked exactly like Sarah. There were little differences that Griffin could spot, but likely no one else could. Differences like the way she tilted her head when she was listening or the way Kismet’s mouth went straight in a line when she was irritated. There were more obvious differences, too. Kismet’s hair was green now and she’d sprouted dragonfly wings on her back this morning (days were thirty-four hours long here and Griffin was having a hard time adjusting to when one day started and the next day began) and she had only said that her form would adjust as time went on.

“You told me to push out my anima. What else am I supposed to—look, this is getting us nowhere. How long have we been at this now? A month?” He had managed to push his Arcana Attribute up another 3 whole points to 10 with the constant grinding practice which had increased his tensa pool up to 1.1 kilosparks of tensa. Despite the increase, Griffin was bored and exhausted. The anima exercises were difficult in a way he’d never experienced before. It was like studying for calculus finals at the same time as doing a full cross-fit workout.

Griffin stood up. He had been sitting in a cross-legged meditation position on the little platform above the pool in what Kismet called the Oneness Chamber. The pool wasn’t filled with water, but with a strange gel-like substance Kismet had called FocusGel. It glowed softly and was a bright bluish-purple color; it gave off a slight minty-floral smell. Orange lights occasionally flickered in its depths and Griffin had never been able to see the bottom.

He’d finally found some clothes he could wear in one of the big wardrobes in the main living area. They were in an unfamiliar style and made of strange fabrics he couldn’t identify. He was wearing some silky black pants and a very soft long-sleeved white shirt that came down to his knees and had delicate embroidery in shimmery white thread along the collar and cuffs.

Kismet flew around the room, her iridescent dragonfly wings buzzing slightly with her speed. “You’ve tried it your way twice now. You agreed you’d try mine and you’re doing well, but you need more practice. Your anima should fill this entire chamber, Griffin! The sphere array configuration is meant to—”

“To fill an area with your diffuse anima so that you can perceive the normally imperceptible.” Griffin stretched out his legs, careful not to dip them into the oily substance filling the pool. He’d done that once a couple of—days? He wasn’t sure—ago and had been given an object lesson in the increased healing of his Attribute-enhanced body as the liquid had chewed through his flesh like strong, caustic acid. He was still amazed he didn’t have a scar—he’d practically seen his flesh knit together in front of him.

He stood up from his sitting position and walked carefully along the little stone bridges that held the meditation platform directly over the center of the pool. He exited the Oneness Chamber and went into the main living area. He touched the windowall and it went transparent, showing him the stunning vista that awaited him if he could ever get out of this place.

Griffin stared out at the landscape spread out in front of him. He was high up, on a mountain or a tall cliff somewhere. He was looking down at a sheer rock face of dark gray stone covered in dense greenery. Far below, so far as to appear tiny and insignificant, was a town or village. Griffin watched that town almost obsessively. He couldn’t make out any individuals or even vehicles, but the buildings were tantalizing.

“Explain again why we don’t just find an exit and make our way down to that town below. What did you say it was called?” Griffin didn’t take his eyes off the town. He knew that it was called Heldon. Kismet had told him the first time he’d been able to activate the windowall, but he didn’t want to talk about anima anymore.

Kismet buzzed over to him and alighted on his shoulder. It was odd to be able to feel her metaphysically, but not physically at all. She looked down at the town and shook her tiny head. “You tried that already. Besides, you’re not ready for Heldon, Griffin. You’re too new, too weak. You know the plan—you came up with the plan.”

“It’s taking forever.” He chose to ignore her reference to the disastrous attempt he’d made to ‘just find an exit’. The plasma cybercentipedes had been waiting. Griffin turned away from the windowall and paced the large room, feeling like a caged animal. He felt like moving. All this energy in his body and he’d been confined to these two rooms for almost a month! Longer if you take into account the longer days on Nolm. He threw himself onto one of the divans in the little sitting area and sighed heavily. “I just want to get out of here! This is worse than the pandemic! At least then, I could get out with a mask.”

Kismet gestured and Griffin’s character sheet floated in front of him, almost accusatorily. It hadn’t changed other than his Arcana going up since he’d gotten here.

Griffin Tucker Vasilias

Race

Human

Rank/Level

Reborn - level 1

House

House Vasilias

Racial Gifts

Great House Seal, Enhanced System Access, Unlimited Inventory, Monster Rendering, DEMI Port, Overcharge

Attributes

Dominion

?? / 20

Speed

?? / 20

Precision

?? / 20

Growth

?? / 20

Arcana

10 [Mind] /20

Tensa Pool

2.0 kilosparks

Gear

Grafts

Adaptive Conjuration [Mind]

“What are all these empty Attributes? Why am I not increasing any of them? What do they even do?!” Griffin knew game systems. He planned them. He could recognize a character sheet when he saw one, but he had no real concept of how these numbers connected to him. “I’ve been practicing for weeks now!”

“Your Attributes are etheric resonances to your physical abilities which are refined and improved through constant practice,” Kismet hovered next to the Arcana entry, pointing at the 10. “When you absorb an ethershard, you unlock that Attribute, and your tensa can flow and circulate and empower you. In your case, you absorbed an ethershard of the Mind, unlocking your Arcana attribute. As you practice with your Adaptive Conjuration graft, you’ll exercise your Arcana Attribute and improve it.”

“So more practice,” Griffin said, feeling defeated. “Always more practice.”

Kismet zipped in a little frustrated circle, flying right up to his face to make her point, “Get used to that! Advancing your rank requires constant practice. You’ll need to keep increasing your Attributes so you can evolve and upgrade your grafts and have a body and anima that can stand up to the incredible forces you’ll subject it to!”

“Okay! I get it! So I need to practice!” Griffin rolled his eyes, turning away from the windowall, and stared blankly into the opulent prison these chambers had become. The character sheet followed his eyes, not giving him any peace. He just felt so powerless sometimes! “How about my level? How do I get to level 2?”

“Your level is a direct reflection of how many grafts you have, so you increase your level by absorbing more ethershards,” Kismet explained, “The maximum level for any rank is 25, representing the twenty-five grafts that is the maximum number of grafts a Reborn can absorb: five grafts per attribute. Right now, you’re level 1 because you have absorbed one graft.”

Griffin scratched his head, thinking through that, “Hang on, but what if you’re a higher rank like, uh… Diamond?” He couldn’t remember the weird ranking system Kismet had told him about, but he thought the point still stood. “If you’re a level 4 Diamond rank whatever, but like a level 25…lower rank?”

“It’s a shorthand. As grafts are upgraded, they become much more flexible and much more powerful. It becomes more valuable to know how many grafts they’ve upgraded to their current rank at a glance, but your level can be a fairly complex topic.” Kismet flew onto Griffin’s knee and waved her hand, creating a new series of holograms. These were getting to be familiar to Griffin because Kismet kept showing them to him. It was a hologram of the Five Gates: a gray stone gate; a white ivory or bone gate; a blue sapphire gate; a green jade gate; and finally a royal purple amethyst gate.

He sighed. He didn’t know why he wasn’t more stoked to learn about all this stuff. After all, this was right up his wheelhouse, and not only that, it was real-life fucking magic. He could conjure just about anything he could imagine, just by concentrating and using tensa. On a whim, Griffin used his Adaptive Conjuration graft to make actual physical representations of each of the holographic gates and Kismet smiled encouragingly as he did so.

She said, “These are the gates that each Reborn must pass through to attain their higher Rank. The conditions for each Gate’s passage are different for every Reborn, but the Quest Reward is a higher rank, which unlocks increased Attributes and the ability to upgrade your grafts into their next tier of power.

“The Stone Gate is the first one,” she flitted around Griffin’s miniature Stone Gate as he set it on the divan like a little chess piece.

He’d modeled it after Rodin’s Gates of Hell, but he couldn’t remember what all the figures looked like so he’d kind of fudged it and made them all characters from Marvel movies. It didn’t have quite the same emotional impact, but he liked it.

“It’s your first goal,” Kismet continued, “Once you unlock all your Attributes by absorbing more ethershards, you’ll become eligible for your Stone Gate Quest. You’ll need to get comfortable with your grafts because it’s very rare for anyone to get their Stone Gate Quest before they’ve starred at least one Attribute, but once you do finish your Quest, you’ll be able to increase at least two of your Attributes past their current limit of twenty all the way to thirty. Depending on your Class, you may be able to star more of your Attributes.”

“Oh my Goooooooooood!” Griffin groaned. “How the hell do you ‘star an Attribute’?!”

“You increase your Attribute to the maximum it can be for your rank and then pass a difficult System Quest. The Quest Reward for starring an Attribute always provides some kind of unique increase to your abilities so it’s vital to star whatever Attributes you can. Once you get your Class, though, unless you select a Unique Class, you won’t be able to star every Attribute. Most Classes, the Common ones, only allow you to star two Attributes. We’ll need to do a lot of work to ensure your Class is one which allows you the maximum survivability, which means…”

“More practice!” Griffin gave a mock cheer. ”That’s just what I wanted to hear…”

“It means you’ll have a choice: constant practice with your grafts and your Attributes to improve them slowly over time and become used to them and thereby master them,” Kismet said leadingly, “or follow the more modern practice of absorbing ethershards to boost your Attributes, then meditate before the boost wears off in an attempt to solidify your gains.”

“And how do I do the least amount of practicing?” Griffin asked.

“Some might say the second way, but since the only way you have of gaining ethershards is by killing monsters and harvesting them, practice is going to be your best chance by any metric.” Kismet shrugged. “Besides, absorbing ethershards has vastly diminishing returns. At first, it increases your Attributes incredibly quickly, but then it takes more and more to raise them even a single point.”

“Okay, all this stuff about Reborn and superpowers and magic that you shouldn’t call magic… Where are the regular people?” Griffin asked. He’d turned back to the windowall, unable to keep from looking at the town way below. “How do they fit into all this?”

“The regular people?” Kismet asked. “I’m sorry Griffin, but as a System Eidolon, my priorities lie in Reborn culture. I don’t know anything about these ‘regular’ people.” Kismet looked down at Heldon as well. “In many ways, I’m as new to the world as you are because I didn’t exist as a separate entity from the System before you arrived. So although my mind is full of things like graft convergences, Class optimization, graft upgrade paths, and Attribute training routines, I have the same blind spots as the System does.”

“I can’t even imagine what that’s like,” Griffin said, turning away from Heldon and looking at Kismet.

She wasn’t facing him now, just staring down at the town like he had been. Her green hair was caught up in a messy bun just like Sarah liked to wear when she was in ‘work mode’. He was seized by a sudden homesickness. It was seeing Sarah standing there in miniature. Griffin didn’t think he’d ever really get used to it, but he didn’t think he could ever tell Kismet to change her form; it’d feel too much like Sarah was dead.

“The real key for you right now,” Kismet said, breaking the moment, “is Attribute training, anima training, and graft training. We’ll need you to be at your peak before we try to escape again.”

“And if I increase my Attributes… what? I get stronger, faster, smarter?”

“In a word?” Kismet paused for dramatic effect, “Yes. Tensa circulation and saturation allow your etheric Attributes to become more and more integrated with your own physical body. So a Reborn with a Speed Attribute of twenty is much faster than one with a Speed Attribute of ten.”

“My character sheet says I have a 10 in Arcana,” Griffin pointed out. “How come it’s not a one…or a zero? And how does that even affect me really?”

“Stop circulating your tensa,” Kismet said, instead of answering.

Griffin hesitated. Kismet had said he should never stop circulating his tensa. She waited, an expectant look on her face. Shrugging, he took a deep breath and then looked within himself. He saw the brilliant, whirling rush of tensa going through his pathways and it looked like an incredibly complex, glowing map of his whole body. Very slowly, and with far more effort than he’d thought it would take, Griffin began to slow, then stop the circulating energy. As soon as it started to slow, he felt a curious lassitude come over his mind, almost like a fog. He kept at it until finally, in his mind’s eye, his entire body was a grey nothing with a furiously glowing tensa pool at the center.

He felt…it was hard to describe satisfactorily. It was like he had a bad cold, but it was stopping up his brain. He tried to conjure something, but to his shock, he realized that without his Arcana Attribute activated by his circulating tensa, his pool’s size had dwindled until it was no longer enough for him to conjure anything. The Adaptive Conjuration graft cost a whole 500 sparks of tensa per kilogram of conjured material—almost half of what he had as a maximum tensa pool when his Arcana Attribute was active, but now?

“Wha—What’s happened?” He asked, shocked, “I only have like a hundred sparks of tensa in my pool!”

“When you stop circulating your tensa, you lose your Attributes,” Kismet flew around him pointing unerringly at where his vastly diminished tensa pool lay, right next to his heart. “Your Arcana Attribute is one of the Attributes which controls the maximum size of your tensa pool—the other one is Growth, but that’s an entirely different topic—and without Arcana, as you can see, you are pretty much powerless.” Kismet flitted back over to the little Gate replicas Griffin had created on the divan.

She perched on the stone gate, swinging her legs over the edge. She said, “Now start circulating your tensa again—yes, even that hundred sparks is enough to get it going again—and use your Ten Star Vortex gathering technique to refill your tensa pool.”