Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

Griffin Tucker Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 2

Mount Discovery, Province of Aragonia

Griffin got out of the shower a nice hour and a half later. He’d fallen asleep under the steaming water and awakened a long time later with muscles feeling like melted butter. When he finally got out, he dried off and created a luxuriously thick terrycloth robe with Adaptive Conjuration and sat on one of the big comfortable reading chairs that were scattered throughout the room. He plucked his Systablo from his Inventory and connected to it.

“Hey Kismet, where’d we put those files I nabbed from that Sys-a-whatever-it-was?” He asked as he flipped through the menus. “I thought I stuck it in a folder called ‘Downloads’?”

Kismet appeared floating in the air next to him. She had decided to appear in a half-tucked button-down shirt with a tie that had been pulled out so the knot was loose. Her hair had once been in a neat bun but now it was coming loose and she had a peevish expression on her face.

“While you were in the shower taking a nap,” she said, patting her hair back into shape, “I’ve been working on the files you ‘nabbed’. There wasn’t much, but I’ve been able to piece together one or two interesting tidbits.”

Griffin tossed the Systablo back into his Inventory, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry for the long shower. That hike was the fucking worst, though! Whoever thought walking through an office building could be such a damn workout?” Something occurred to him and he asked, “Hang on a second, I had the Systablo in my Inventory the whole time I was in the shower, how’d you get access to the files?”

Kismet rolled her eyes and suddenly her outfit was pristine without a hair out of place. “I’m a System Eidolon. Your System Eidolon. I have access to your Inventory so that I can identify items and help with investigations just like this!”

“Huh, that’s really convenient,” Griffin said. He conjured a glass of what he hoped would be fruit punch and took a sip. He spat it out immediately. “Oh god, that version had salt in it! Fuck, I think I’m getting worse.”

Kismet ignored him, reforming her hologram into a TED Talk-style ensemble of black, high-waisted pants with a black blouse, complete with wireframe glasses. She gestured and several images appeared in midair. “These are some video recordings that you recovered,” she said, pointing at the images. “I’ve gone through as much of them as remained, made educated guesses where I had to, and trashed the rest. There’s some text files too, but they don’t provide much more context.”

Griffin nodded, “So I just select one of these and a video starts playing?” Griffin pointed at one of the frozen scenes Kismet had displayed in front of her.

“Yes, it’s meant to be simple and easy to use,” Kismet replied. “I’ve arranged them so that the earliest is on the furthest left since you seem to process best left-to-right.”

“You’d be surprised how rare it is to find any software that’s both simple and easy to use,” Griffin said. “But I guess there’s magic involved so maybe that makes things easier.” He selected the first video and it started playing.

The other videos shrank away and the one he selected blew up until it was life-size. It was in perfect audio and visual fidelity and three dimensions, looking like a slightly transparent version of reality. The video was projecting what he presumed to be the room where he’d found the obsidian device, though it was brightly lit and full of people.

Griffin was entranced. He could walk around the hologram-like he was there, listening to conversations and even reading what was on the screens of the various devices everyone used. The people were of a variety of different kinds—humans mostly, but he also saw two different kinds of reptilian people—one larger variety that had prominent scales and another kind with salamander-like skin, and a few of the plant-adjacent ginpaari with their odd but beautifully-colored flower-heads. They all wore similar-looking black jumpsuits with gold accents.

Griffin’s attention was caught by a strikingly beautiful woman with rich brown hair, cinnamon-colored skin, and facial features that reminded him of people from India or Pakistan on Earth. Most startling of all were her bright orange eyes: eyes like the afternoon sun, bright and intense. She was in earnest discussion with a tall, pale, bald man with extensive geometric facial tattoos who was in a slightly different jumpsuit with more stripes on the sleeves. They were both gesturing towards the obsidian device that Griffin had seen in the wrecked room, though it looked different than it had.

The obsidian device was in the same place, but it looked like it was in the middle of being worked on. A confusing tangle of cables and tubes connected complicated-looking pieces of machinery to the device that Griffin hadn’t seen when he had been there earlier that day. He still had no idea what the thing was meant to do. To him it looked like a three meter tall, three meter wide lump of natural obsidian with a small opening near the bottom. It dominated the room and was the clear focus of the efforts of the group of people working at the desks.

The beautiful woman with the orange eyes and the tall bald man seemed to be in an argument, the woman was angry and the bald man appeared coldly dismissive. The rest of the people in the room were studiously quiet or in private conversations with many a glance towards the two arguing.

Before Griffin could focus on what they were saying, the hologram froze. “That’s all that’s useable of that recording,” Kismet said. “But there’s more than enough here to be valuable,” she pointed out each of the thirty-seven people milling around in the large room. “These are all members of various minor noble Houses in the Eternal Empire,” more than half of the people were highlighted with a golden hue. “But interestingly, they’re all old vassals of House Vasilias from when it was a Great House. The two that caught your attention are the most interesting of the bunch given their high noble status at the time this was recorded. That’s Rikael Vasilias,” she pointed at the beautiful woman, “and today, she’s Jade-Rank with a powerful datamancer Class that she’s evolved half a dozen times. At the time of the recording, though, the man she’s arguing with was the head of House Vasilias.”

“The bald guy?” Griffin asked. “What happened to him?”

“That is Ichuta Vasilias, and according to the most recent House Vasilias histories that I was able to access—without your Great House Seal and your Enhanced Access, I’d never have been able to get any of this,” Kismet said. “He is who House Vasilias held responsible for their fall from Great House status, though that is not well-known outside of House Vasilias.”

Griffin cocked an eyebrow and rubbed his chin. “What’d he do? Get with the Emperor’s daughter?” He looked at the tall, bald man for another few moments before he said, “Nah…He looks more like the kind of guy who’d be more likely to scheme and plot his way into some shadowy conspiracy.”

Kismet shook her head and brought up several reports with highlighted sections of text. At a glance, the reports seemed to be about a land deal in the mountains or maybe a series of treaties. “Those are the full contents of publicly redacted reports on what was known, two hundred and sixty-seven years ago, as the Kildari Conflict. It’s called the Cataclysm War by the Empire today though. According to these reports, it was Ichuta Vasilias who led several projects that created weapons of devastating destructive power,” she gestured and a series of images showing devastated landscapes popped up, slowly cycling through each image. The scale of the destruction in the images was horrifying.

Kismet continued, “The use of those weapons during the war caused such widespread damage that it prompted the Emperor to revoke House Vasilias’ Great House status by personally taking Ichuta’s Great House Seal.”

Griffin thought about that for a moment. “Well great. Apparently, the noble House that the guy who said it was his fault the Earth got destroyed belonged to also has genocide and mass destruction in its recent past. For fuck’s sake… I thought for half a second that maybe the world wouldn’t be awful if you could have magic.” Something new occurred to him. “Hang on, you said the Emperor took his Great House Seal but isn’t the Great House Seal, like, encoded in your etherheart?” He asked, feeling uneasy.

“It is indeed,” Kismet replied grimly. She pulled up a video file that she’d set to the side and set it playing.

The video showed the tall bald man with the tattoos, Ichuta Vasilias, Griffin now knew, surrounded by armed and armored soldiers and standing on the stage of a large, richly appointed auditorium. The soldiers’ armor was intimidating: it was a deep purple, almost black, heavy armor that bore little resemblance to a knight’s full plate, and looked more like a suit of powered armor from a science fiction anime. They had golden facemasks that made them look identical, each one well over two meters tall and built like tanks.

Ichuta looked terrified, Griffin noticed. Not that I blame him, he thought, shuddering at the huge soldiers who surrounded him, those guys look fucking terrifying. There was none of the pompous and cold assurance he’d seen in his face in the earlier video. He glared out at the audience—a large crowd of extremely well-dressed people (though there were far fewer humans than Griffin had expected to see)— doing his best to appear like he didn’t care about being surrounded by soldiers, but Griffin could see the way his hands were trembling and the beading sweat on his temples.

Kismet continued, “The Emperor called Ichuta Vasilias in front of the entire Imperial Senate and removed his etherheart while turning all of Ichuta’s ethershards into Heirloom shards—a very generous gesture and impressive display of power—which he then gave to Rikael Vasilias, commanding her to lead her now Minor House into a brighter future.”

The video showed Ichuta’s chest exploding in a spray of blood and bone as his etherheart was ripped out of it in an instant by the Emperor’s power. Griffin winced as it happened, turning a little green and focusing on the Emperor to take his mind off the gore.

The Emperor wasn’t human, he was one of the plant-people, a ginpaari. He was three and a half meters tall and powerfully-built, his headflower a brilliant and ever-shifting opalescent royal purple with a pure golden center. He wore resplendent midnight robes and a snow-white cape with fur trimming. He held forth one vine-wrapped wooden arm as thick as a tree trunk with Ichuta’s blood-soaked etherheart clutched in his hand, looking like a toy. It glowed with bright, multicolored lights in the Emperor’s hand and Griffin could see just inside the etherheart were dozens of tightly-packed ethershards, each one of them glowing brightly.

The Emperor held the dripping metallic heart out to Rikael Vasilias, who Griffin only now noticed was on the stage with the Emperor and the corpse of Ichuta. She didn’t look at Ichuta as she stepped over his corpse, her eye on the etherheart as she went to one knee, bowing her head.

The video ended and the auditoreum with its gruesome scene faded away. Griffin shivered. The inhuman gaze from the Emperor had frozen him to the spot, even though Griffin knew he wasn’t really there. The huge figure had a forceful presence that demanded attention even beyond the savage execution he’d just performed.

“Ugh,” Griffin said, feeling queasy. “That was fucking awful. He just…ripped it out. There was blood everywhere.” He shook his head, “I think I need a minute.”

Kismet stayed quiet as Griffin collected himself. He took a few shaky breaths and wiped away some of the clammy sweat at his temples. He conjured a glass of ice water and took a sip, grimacing slightly at the cold but grateful for the distraction.

“I’ve never been able to stand the sight of blood,” Griffin muttered. “Sarah once sliced her finger open cutting an onion with a shitty knife,” he gulped. “She yelled for me to help. She needed me to bring a towel—to wrap her finger in, right—so I came running into the kitchen ready to be the hero.” He chuckled weakly. “I get there in record time, with like ten towels at least and I see her standing there, hunched over the sink with a trail of blood leading from the cutting board over the counter and on the floor up to the sink. There was blood everywhere. You’d have thought she’d cut the finger off with all the blood. I think I said something like, ‘here’s your urk’.”

“Your ‘urk’?” Kismet asked.

Griffin laughed again and took another sip of ice water. “I fainted dead away in the middle of the sentence. When I came to, she’d already wrapped her finger up and was getting ready to drive herself to the doctor to get stitches. She brought that up for months afterwards.”

Kismet sounded businesslike as she said, “You’ll need to strengthen your stomach, Griffin. Recorded blood is not the only blood you’ll see and you won’t have the luxury of being able to faint and recover your nerve. That is a kind of weakness that will kill you.”

Griffin nodded grimly, “Yeah, I’m getting that now.” He glanced at the other videos waiting to be watched and grimaced. “Is there no, like, forensic accounting in Nolm? Or maybe work as a nice librarian? Somewhere in a building with thick walls and lots of quiet would be ideal.”

“With the grafts you have?” Kismet shrugged, “Anything is possible I suppose, but I think that your political status is going to cause you more problems than you think.”

Griffin remembered the Great House Seal in his etherheart. It made him a “Great House Scion”, whatever that meant. He doubted it meant he could find a nice office somewhere to play computer games and practice conjuring cool stuff with his magical powers. Then again, he wasn’t even sure he really wanted that. He definitely hated the terror the plasma cybercentipedes made him feel, but he couldn’t deny the thrill of exploring the facility. Did that really mean he had to desensitize himself to blood and gore and violence?

Kismet cleared her throat and the gesture was odd enough that it broke Griffin out of his introspection. “Did you just clear your throat?” He asked disbelievingly.

“Obviously not,” she said. “Are you ready to continue?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes, not missing the subtle mockery in her question. “Yeah, let’s keep going. It doesn’t look like there’s a whole lot of these videos left anyway. But the more I see, the more I’m getting villainous villain vibes. These Vasilias assholes are not good guys.”