Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

Sarah Avery Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 1

Tutorial Realm

She felt Gammon’s presence behind her and sighed, wiping away the tears before she growled, “I got distracted.”

“I could tell,” Gammon replied.

Sarah didn’t elaborate and Gammon didn’t push. She just got up and walked out of the Training Hall. Sweat still soaked her skin and she felt sore and gross. She was a jumble of emotions and exhaustion. The gathering clouds had brought a stiff wind with them. Sarah closed her eyes, feeling her Training Tunic and Sturdy Pants wicking away her sweat as the breeze cooled her.

She heard the door to the training room open and Gammon’s light footsteps on the asphalt as he joined her in the parking lot. He looked up at her, a worried frown on his face, before he said, “You are doing better than you think you are.”

Sarah remained silent. She didn’t need for him to patronize her or be a shoulder to cry on. Her shoulder still throbbed with dull pain and she winced as she rotated it. The realization she’d had still resounded through her and she suddenly felt very trapped by the Tutorial Realm, by Gammon, and by her entire situation. Endless days of training and training and using magic and training…For what?!

“Why did your concentration break?” Gammon asked.

Sarah glanced over at the shorter, muscular man and sighed, not knowing where to start. “I just couldn’t do it. My foot slipped…but that’s not the thing.”

Gammon didn’t respond, waiting for her to continue. Eventually, she did starting slowly as she sorted through her thoughts. “At first…at first that’s what it was. My foot slipped, and I couldn’t react fast enough. But as I fell…” she shook her head. “It just flashed through me like, no matter what I do, I’m not good enough. And then…when I dislocated my shoulder because I messed up the timing of my chain throw, that pain made me realize that all this…” she gestured at the impossible redgrass fields and the floating skyland above them, “was real. Whatever that means. I’m still coming to grips with it.”

“You thought I was a figment of your imagination?” Gammon asked with an amused note in his rough voice.

“I…I don’t know. But I know you’re not.” She took a deep breath and looked around at the empty parking lot in the shadow of the skyland with Gammon’s house on the hill nearby and it was like she was seeing it with new eyes. She rolled her head on her neck and squared her shoulders. “I can deal with that,” she muttered to herself.

To Gammon, she said, “I have to keep coming to terms with it. Nothing in my life has ever prepared me for this. Just when I think I’ve accepted it again, something new and absurd or insane and difficult derails me and I have to do it all over again.” She shook out her limbs and looked over to the redgrass fields. “You keep saying I’m supposed to fight monsters with my powers. Okay. I guess that’s a thing I’ll have to do. But maybe you can clear something up for me that’s really been making it hard to accept any of this: I keep seeing these text boxes pop up giving me helpful information. What in the hell is up with that?”

Gammon laughed out loud at that. “The System messages are meant to help Reborn discover more about the world around them and track their progression. Its messages are sent directly to your consciousness by an incredibly powerful Ascendant AI put in place by the Witheld sixty-five million years ago. It is one of the few racial gifts that all races have, even those who choose to ignore the System.

“You’re going to need to learn how to fight monsters more than other Reborn,” Gammon continued. “And you’ll need to be able to use the System when you do. Always use the System to examine your enemies and your allies. Even when the System has no information on something, that’s valuable information in itself.”

Sarah shook her head, trying to break free of her melancholy, “The System will just give me all the Monster Manual secrets? Isn’t that like cheating?”

Gammon laughed, “You’re going to need all the advantages you can get, especially with that form of yours—you need to practice. Simply concentrate on a person, monster, place, or item and see what pops up. Not everything will have a System entry—especially mundane things—but any infused item will be certain to have a System entry, as will every Reborn. Your Enhanced Access to the System should provide you with even more information than most Reborn have access to. Here, try it on me now.”

Sarah shrugged and obeyed, concentrating on her teacher. Sure enough, a context box popped up showing her a rather paltry amount of information about her instructor:

Gammon, Tutorial Realm Instructor

Public Profile

Rank/Level: Hidden; Sapphire level 13 estimated

Class: Weaponmaster

Tensa Pool: 40 ks estimated

Known Grafts: Hidden

“What’s up with all these hidden fields and estimates?” Sarah asked. “I thought this was supposed to show me information! And you’re level 13? I thought you were way higher level than that.”

“Most Reborn choose to keep their public profile very light on details,” Gammon said, “They don’t want to give anyone else any advantage over them. The estimates are System-generated based on observations made through your perceptive abilities. It’s not a great idea to depend on those estimates.”

“Great, this seems super useful,” Sarah said sarcastically.

“Don’t be obtuse,” Gammon scolded. “The System is incredibly important. It’s a part of Reborn's day-to-day life so you’re going to need to learn to use it and even rely on it. Even if you don’t get a lot of information about a Reborn from the System, that’s more than made up for in monster information that the System can supply. That can be the difference between life and death. Don’t discount the other services Reborn have added to the System over the millennia. A thriving market for ethershards of all rarities, infused items, Quest guides, Class discussions, message forums, and more; all geared towards the Reborn of Nolm.

“You’d said you had expected me to be higher level and that revealed that you have some incorrect assumptions about what levels are. They are a direct reflection of the grafts you have. The level and rank are based on the number of grafts a Reborn has upgraded to their current rank. So you could have all twenty-five of your grafts unlocked, but still be a level 0 Jade-rank Reborn until you upgrade your grafts to Jade-rank.”

Sarah sighed and nodded, putting her hands up in mock surrender, “Okay, okay. Sorry, forget I asked! But that stuff about the monster entries does seem both useful and cool,” she admitted. “So when can I practice on a monster?”

“Now, if you wish it,” Gammon replied.

Sarah straightened her back and nodded. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

Gammon considered Sarah for a long moment before he nodded. “I don’t know if you’re ready for this, but this is a Tutorial Realm and you’ll need to fight monsters eventually.” He turned and led her from the walkway by the strip mall over the empty parking lot to the edge of the redgrass field. He said, “You’ve seen them in there. They won’t show themselves while I’m here, so I’ll be leaving in a moment. Prepare yourself. They’ll attack when you least expect it.”

Sarah glanced nervously at the grass, but it revealed nothing. Still, she nodded firmly and Gammon clapped her on the shoulder and gave her an approving nod. He strode away quickly and Sarah was left alone. She tried not to be too nervous, but it was impossible. She felt like the goat tied up for the T-Rex in Jurassic Park and that made her need to move kick in.

She paced around, doing her best to get rid of her nervous energy, trying to keep cool and collected. She watched the redgrass field, but the grass only swayed in the wind. Nothing jumped out at her or tried to eat her. After a few minutes of this, Sarah’s attention began to waver. She was just looking over her shoulder back at the strip mall and wondering if Gammon was right about the monsters here when she heard a slight scrape on the ground and a surge of energized alertness from her anima made everything seem to slow down a little bit.

The training she’d endured took over. She dove forward and rolled to her feet and exerted her anima, pouring tensa into a new weapon: a spear with a long blade that glinted in the grey light of the oncoming storm. Stalking out of the redgrass was a horse-sized wolflike creature that looked like it had been skinned alive. Its exposed musculature blended perfectly into the redgrass. A long, whiplike tail snaked behind it. The creature’s head was an exposed mass of bone and muscle with eight eyes peering out in clusters all around it.

Shit! Examine it with the System, Sarah thought. Gammon said to examine everything with the System!

Deathshead Stalker

Description

Deathshead stalkers are native to the redgrass plains of Emberlin. They are common monsters that prefer to use stealth and numbers to ambush and overwhelm their prey.

Rarity

Common

Class/Level

0/4

Type

Arcane Beast

Size

Medium (2-3 meters)

Defenses

Unarmored; Agile Defense

Attacks

Tail whip – Physical damage. Bludgeoning.

Pounce – Physical damage. Slashing.

Claw – Physical damage. Slashing.

Bite – Physical damage. Bludgeoning/Piercing.

The monster stalked forward, low to the ground, claws digging into the asphalt and crunching into it like it was made of gravel. Sarah circled to the left, concentrating and forming a shield in her left hand. The shield had blades on either end—her power wouldn’t let her form something that wasn’t a weapon—and she stalked the creature just as much as it stalked her. The Grippy Slippers lived up to their name giving her sure footing.

The creature paused in its circling and raised its head. Three eyes under its lower jaw blinked at Sarah. The monster’s mouth opened, splitting into four segments, all full of spine-like teeth and dripping with thick saliva. Sarah didn’t feel even a bit of fear at the enormous creature. She only felt a cool determination.

She felt its pounce right before it happened, and though it moved too fast for her to see, it wasn’t too fast for her to react. Her instincts took over and she dodged to the side covering her exposed side with the shield and stabbing out with her long spear at the same time. She was slammed to the side, continuing her roll as one of the monster’s arms shot out with its claws raking. The shield held though and Sarah rolled to her feet. Sarah had grown barbs on the spearhead and snapped it off in the creature's side while she’d been in the middle of her dive and she was able to reform the blade now.

The monster bled freely from the deep wound in its side, its blood a disturbing color of neon green and smelling strangely like kettle corn. It didn’t seem to be favoring its side at all, though it had backed off several meters to reassess. The Deathshead stalker resumed its circling and Sarah reformed the blade on her spear, shortening it at the same time as she dashed in, feeling a rush of adrenaline as she stabbed at the creature.

Once again, the monster was too fast for her to see it move but she’d correctly anticipated where it would dodge—away from her spear—and had extended the spear another two meters with her anima at the same time as she stabbed. The spear punched through the monster’s side and it shrieked with two distinct voices at different octaves. She nimbly threw herself backward, still angling the shield toward the monster as its whiplike tail slammed into it sending her sprawling onto the asphalt again, scraping her knees even through the rough training pants.

The breath was knocked out of her as she rolled, slamming into a concrete divider between parking spaces. She didn’t give herself time to gasp and choke though, she just took the pain in and slammed the butt of her spear into the ground, extending it at the same time and flinging herself skyward. The move came not a moment too soon as the monster crashed into where she’d been a moment before. It cut itself on the heavy spear blade that Sarah manifested at the bottom of the shaft, but Sarah was knocked off-balance and slammed to the ground, still with the wind knocked out of her.

She gritted her teeth through the nearly-crippling pain, cycling her tensa through her body as instinctively as breathing. The power rushing through her kept her moving even though the pain was more intense than anything she’d experienced before. She scrambled away, allowing her weapon to dissolve into nothingness as she quickly formed a new sword, running her finger along the edge and enacting her one graft: The Edge That Cuts Anything.

Her tensa pool was dangerously low and she was feeling the effects of severe tensa depletion. Sarah’s head was pounding and she felt a burgeoning weakness as the consequences of her rapid weapon shifting and summoning became apparent. Still, the edge of her summoned anima sword—a dual-edged weapon that looked like the Master Sword from The Legend of Zelda—glowed with argent light as she kept running, feeling gravel sting her skin where the monster’s whiplike tail continued to snap at her and try to entangle her feet.

The monster charged after her, disturbing four-part mouth opening wide once more. It sensed Sarah’s worsening condition and was closing for the kill as she appeared to desperately run away. Suddenly, Sarah stopped, feeling something in her left ankle pop as she did so and screaming. Still, the maneuver took the monster completely by surprise and she managed to get a clean cut as she ducked and the monster sailed over her. Blood and viscera rained down on her as her sword barely even tugged while the creature’s momentum neatly bisected it.

Sarah crumpled, dropping her bloody sword with her stomach heaving. She coughed and retched, wiping blood and guts out of her face while she struggled to breathe and deal with the staggering amount of pain in her ankle and pretty much everywhere else. As she heaved and cried with shock and pain, a sound caused her to break out of her reverie. Another of the monsters had stepped out of the redgrass and was stalking toward her, its head down low as it snarled. Then another one. And one more.

They fanned out all around her and Sarah just closed her eyes; she had nothing left. The expected attack never came. Sarah just sat there and breathed heavily, hurting and waiting. Eventually, she opened her eyes and looked around. The monsters were gone. Gammon stood next to her, his huge sword resting casually on his shoulder. He reached a hand down and Sarah took it, letting him help her to her feet.

She couldn’t put any weight on her left ankle and her breath was coming in short, painful gasps. It felt like at least a few ribs were cracked or broken and she was scraped and bruised all over. Sarah concentrated, manifesting a blue crystalline staff. She pushed Gammon’s hand off her and hobbled to the house, not looking back.