Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

Griffin Tucker Vasilias, Great House Scion, Reborn Lvl 3

Mount Discovery, Province of Aragonia

Griffin spent the next week resting and recovering from his ordeal in the sub-basement of the lab. The graft he’d gained from consuming the corpse of the Mother faded after twelve hours and he never got to use it because he never wanted to draw the attention of any nearby monsters. He practiced using the new senses granted by his Sensor Suite graft and his brand-new Dread Consumption graft. He didn’t have a huge supply of monster corpses to feed to the demon mouth in his hand, but he did try out the passive benefits by tasting everything in his room and seeing what effects they gave to him, if any. He avoided absorbing the ethershard of the Void he’d looted from the Mother’s corpse until he recovered more.

Bizarrely, it was his Dread Consumption graft that he became most excited about as the days progressed. The passive benefit of the graft had opened up his culinary horizons. It had been with some trepidation that he’d tested out the “traditionally inedible things” part with a bit of paper from a notebook he’d created with his Adaptive Conjuration graft. He shredded the paper into a little pile and took a bite.

At first, it had been as he’d feared: a bunch of wet paper in his mouth. Then something intangible changed: the paper developed a flavor—slightly nutty with a lovely baked taste like toasted rice. When he swallowed the paper, it felt natural and good, like he’d just eaten a healthy and delicious snack.

He devoured the rest of the paper, munching on it like it was so much baked snacks. It tasted really good. Shockingly good. He wondered if he’d be able to eat stuff that was harmful to digest, like granite or microplastics. The graft description said he couldn’t get poisoned, and he could eat stuff that was ‘traditionally inedible’, but there was a lot of leeway there. It wasn’t something Griffin particularly wanted to experiment a lot with. The past few life-threatening injuries he'd recovered from had left him with a burning desire to never experience that again. Still…in the interest of science, he had to test more.

“Griffin, are you about to…eat that hotel?” Kismet asked as Griffin ransacked the Monopol-ish board game he’d created.

Shrugging, Griffin popped the little red plastic hotel into his mouth and tried chewing it. Instead of taking a moment, like it had with the paper, this time his teeth crunched through the plastic like it was made of spun sugar. It tasted like strawberry candy, heavy on the artificial strawberry flavor. Next up was a house, which tasted like sour apple candy.

Kismet watched him with growing amusement as he browsed his way through the board game box, picking up pieces and chewing on them before moving on to the next piece. “Are you setting up another game with variant rules?” She asked lightly as he picked up the thimble, took a deep breath, and put it in his mouth.

Griffin held up a finger as he chewed. This had been the true test. The little metal piece should’ve chipped his teeth or cut up his gums, but none of the plastic pieces had cut his mouth so he remained cautiously optimistic. The thimble succumbed to his bite just like the plastic had. It was chewy, like a piece of over-done steak, but it tasted metallic and minty at the same time, not a flavor combination that he was a big fan of, though it was a new one for him.

“This is so fuckin’ weird,” Griffin remarked. “Why does it taste like mint? Why do the damn hotels taste like strawberry candy?” He shook his head, “It doesn’t make any sense. And that’s not the only thing. As I’ve been gathering these grafts, something’s been bothering me more and more. I don’t understand these powers; they’re so weird. I mean, nothing I’ve picked up fits together! Shouldn’t the grafts, like, work together or create interesting combos or something?”

“Before completing your Stone Gate Quest, all ethershards—save Heirloom shards—will provide a random graft that matches the rarity of the shard absorbed,” Kismet explained. “Most Reborn despise the randomness of these early powers and limit their level as a Reborn to—at the very most—level ten so they can still attain at least fifteen Class powers. The vast majority of Reborn prefer to absorb as many shards as it takes to unlock their Attributes, then train until they go on their Stone Quest.”

“Unlike me,” Griffin said with a smile, “who’s just gonna pretty much take what he can get until we get the hell outta this monster-infested ruin.”

Kismet shook her head, “I have been attempting to follow the Imperial methodology with your training,” she said. “That way, you’ll be able to fit in with other high nobility when you do finally join society.”

Griffin’s eyes shot up. “High nobility? That sounds like a really bad idea. I’m a terminally casual guy. My idea of dressing up is clean sweatpants and a brand-new graphic tee. I would not fit in with the highfalutin types.”

“Regardless of your desire, your name and your Great House Seal will identify you as a member of the Imperial nobility. People will be able to perform a System query for your profile and you don’t have any grafts or racial abilities which might inhibit that access.”

Griffin nodded, thinking about it. The fact that others would be able to access at least part of his identity wasn’t ideal, but he probably should’ve expected it. If he learned as much as he could now, he’d at least be a little prepared and maybe he could use their expectations against them. Assuming he could ever get out of here of course.

Griffin crossed the big room and went to the windowall. He used his anima to put a small portion of his tensa into the windowall and took an involuntary step back as the huge window came to life.

It was raining on the slopes of the mountain he was stuck in (his map called it Mt. Discovery) with a ferocity he hadn’t seen before. Wind and rain tore through the trees on the mountainside, their branches whipping around until the forest looked like an angry ocean. The sky was dark, though branching bolts of golden lightning would occasionally light it up dramatically. The town of Heldon was getting hammered by the storm as well, though he couldn’t see a whole lot of detail even with his precision telescopic vision. The town seemed to be locked up tight, weathering the storm just like him.

Griffin heaved a sigh and blanked the windowall, unable to watch the wild weather play out any longer. “Okay, well if we don’t find the last shard soon, then I’m gonna dynamite our way out of here and then we can climb out of here on a rope or something. I’m really fuckin’ tired of being trapped in here and now that I know my dynamite works…Well, let’s just say I can do some pretty creative redecorating if necessary.”

“I think I may have a line on the next shard,” Kismet said.

Griffin looked up, surprised. He left the blank windowall and plopped down on one of the low couches. “Okay,” he said, “so lay it out for me. Whatcha got?”

Kismet appeared on the table with him, not bothering to animate her hologram crossing the room with him. She was back in the same blue hair that Sarah had when they’d arrived and she was wearing a charcoal-grey one-piece with a long coat. It was an interesting look: kind of slick chic meets futurism. With a gesture, several holographic windows appeared in the air around her.

“As you may recall, while we were exploring in the sub-basement with the undead, I found an isolated computer system. At the time, I thought it was an emergency backup for the facility and I downloaded as much of it as I could. That’s what these are,” she gestured to the windows hanging around her. “I’ve been decrypting them since then and I’ve finally found something useful.”

“Oh yeah, you mentioned something right before I almost got eaten by the Mother,” Griffin said. “So what’d you find?”

Kismet pointed at one of the windows and it grew in size, showing that there were several documents stored together, all seeming to be in the same format. Griffin focused on one of the forms and it flew out from the rest of the documents, growing larger for him to read. The form detailed a test of a thing called “The Light of Liss”, though it wasn’t at all clear what the Light of Liss was or what its intended effects were.

This test had half a dozen test subjects, all of them numbered. There was a dizzying array of measurements called out and filled in on the form, all of them completely opaque to Griffin. The short description of the test said that the test had a negative result and that the six test subjects had been stored in cold storage. Griffin glanced up at that.

“Was that what that place is?” He asked. “Cold storage?”

Kismet nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly what it is. We stumbled onto a storage facility for the test subjects of an ancient weapons testing program.” Kismet gestured and another window grew while the window with the test documents shrank. The new window showed an image of an elaborate silver lamp.

“That’s the weapon? A lamp?” Griffin shook his head. “I know I’m not from here and all that, but this doesn’t seem like a weapon at all. It seems like a…” he thought about it for a moment then shrugged, “Well, it seems like a lamp.”

“The Light of Liss isn’t the lamp, it’s the effect caused by the lamp,” Kismet explained. “From what I’ve been able to gather from the test forms and a few other sources, the Light was meant to turn all those exposed to it into unstoppable undead under the control of the person who used the weapon in the first place.”

“Is it still there?” Griffin asked, suddenly nervous.

Kismet paused as she reviewed her collection of files. A couple of seconds later, she shook her head and said, “No, the Light was developed and completed after fourteen months of prototyping. It was eventually delivered to an Imperial noble House and became one of the foundational projects for this facility.”

Griffin breathed a sigh of relief. “Well I didn’t have ‘turn into an undead’ on my schedule anyway,” he said. “So the Light’s gone, but their test subjects remain behind. How many of them are down there?”

“One thousand, nine hundred and eighty-eight undead test subjects in cold storage,” Kismet reported. “Not that it’s very cold anymore.”

Griffin gulped. “That’s…a lot. I had no idea there were so many down there!”

“That was just one of the storage areas. There were seven more chambers like the one you ran through, each one holding two hundred and fifty storage units.” Kismet displayed a floating map showing two rows of four large rooms, each with tiny representations of the cold storage units. “They used the stored undead for weapon testing mostly, since their bodies are incredibly resilient. “

She displayed several videos showing various undead being burned, frozen, dismembered, and a variety of other equally gruesome fates by an even greater variety of weapons. Griffin winced each time a weapon was tested on a zombie. After one had been burnt to a sooty black skeleton, Griffin turned back to Kismet, his face slightly green.

“I think I get it,” he said. “I don’t need to see anymore. So there’s a basement full of zombies. That sounds like a ticking time bomb. Sounds like Plan Dynamite My Way Out of This Shithole has moved waaaaaaay up in my priority list.”

“I would normally agree, except there’s something down there that’s worth getting.” Kismet pointed to a grainy-looking video feed of a small room.

The room looked pretty unremarkable, though it was crowded with a bunch of bizarre-looking machinery behind a low metal guard rail. Griffin couldn’t figure out what any of the machinery was meant for: it was a mess of crystals, strange metal, and glass objects that glowed and blinked, and other items that could have been plastic or ceramic, all connected with wires, rods, and tubes of different metals. The video had one door in the frame which looked like one of those heavy-duty security doors Griffin had seen in banks or data centers.

Griffin cleared his throat trying to find what Kismet was so excited about. “You found something in that mess?” He asked, one eyebrow cocked skeptically. “What even is all that for?”

“This is the control station for the enchantments in the cold storage area,” she said. “Do you remember when I told you about the tensa batteries? This is where they’re stored and where they supply power to the enchantments and spells that keep the place running. Those batteries will be depleted now, but they’re incredibly valuable and will be useful for you later. But that’s not the only thing in the control room that you want.”

Griffin glanced over at her, “I don’t want to go back and face two thousand zombies, Kismet. Please tell me that there’s an ‘exit’ sign hidden off-frame pointing to the way out of here, because if there isn’t, then there’s no way in hell I’m gonna go back down there for dead batteries.”

“I would normally applaud your sensible caution,” Kismet said. “But there’s also an ethershard in that machinery which you need. It’s a prototype developed by the researchers here in conjunction with the Light of Liss.”

Griffin sighed and groaned, “An ethershard? Come on, Kismet! I almost died for one of those things! Multiple times!”

She stared at Griffin, frowning impatiently. “Stop whining, you’re fine now, and every time you’ve escaped death you’ve gotten stronger for it.” She turned back to the video feed and pulled up several other documents, images, and readouts as well. “The shard stored in this room isn’t one of the ones that August Vasilias sent with you. It’s a prototype designed by top researchers in arcano-technical enchantment design and engineering. If you were to get it, you could claim not only those empty batteries but also finally unlock the last of your Attributes.”

Not convinced but unable to deny his curiosity, Griffin looked at the various images and documents Kismet had found. One image that caught his eye showed a detailed schematic of a suit of powered armor right out of a mecha anime, complete with helmet and weapons systems. He gestured and the image grew larger, more detailed.

“What is that?” Griffin asked. “And where can I find it?”

“That’s what has been encoded into the shard,” Kismet replied. “It’s called a DEEP Suit. According to the design documentation that I recovered, it was developed to allow researchers and Reborn to work in hostile environments—like in an area where the Light of Liss effect was active and ongoing.”

Griffin looked at the variety of weapons on display in the image. “This was for research? That’s enough weaponry to arm a Schwarzenegger movie! Isn’t it all a bit…much?” He thought about the zombies sprinting at him, mouths open and dead eyes staring. Then he thought of the plasma cybercentipedes with their white-hot plasma beams and ripping mandibles. “Then again, maybe I see their point. I just don’t know if it’s worth dying for.”

Kismet rolled her eyes and flew up to him, her dragonfly wings blurring. “This again? Look, Griffin, as you’ve described it, your world was vastly different from this one. For one thing, there were no monsters. You’ve escaped death a few times, yes, but only because you had the personal power to do so. Without your grafts and your Attributes, you would have died each of those times.”

Griffin opened his mouth to object but she had a point. Still, there was something a little off about her argument. “Yeah, okay, granted. I survived because of my powers. But the last few times, the only reason I was in that position in the first place was because I was chasing after power.”

“Griffin, your philosophical hangups are going to get you killed,” Kismet said. “I believe I mentioned those empty tensa batteries, didn’t I?” Griffin nodded. “Griffin, this place is a ruin. It’s running on the last dregs of whatever power used to be here. This place has all the signs of becoming a Dungeon--I wouldn't be surprised to find a core forming somewhere deep down--and once the last maintenance enchantments run out of power, this place will truly become wild. And then the monsters will expand their territories. If you don’t have some kind of attack or defense graft, you will die. That DEEP Suit prototype ethershard is a known element. Even if you find another shard—another Legendary shard, even—there’s no guarantee that you’ll get an attack or defense graft. If you retrieve this one, it’s guaranteed to give you that powered armor.”

Griffin tapped his upper lip, thinking about what Kismet said. Then something occurred to him and he opened his Inventory to double check. Yep, it was still there. He popped out the ethershard he’d retrieved from using his Dread Consumption graft the first time. He checked it in the System.

Legendary Ethershard of Void

Description: This [Legendary] quality Ethershard contains an infusion of [Void]-aspected tensa.

Note: As a [Legendary] ethershard, this shard contains 10 gigasparks of tensa.

Use: Reborn may use ethershards to unlock grafts, increase Attributes, upgrade grafts, and empower grafts, spells, or other effects requiring tensa.

Griffin smiled and held up the ethershard. “Tell you what, if I get an attack or defense graft from this, we’ll skip the dangerous delving into the zombie-infested basement to try to get a prototype ethershard. Don’t think I skipped over that little detail, I just chose not to say anything at the time.”

“I cannot compel your actions in any way,” Kismet said. “I only advise. If that is the course of action you wish to take, then take it.”

Griffin rolled his eyes and nodded. “Fine. Yes. That’s what we’re—what I’m gonna do then.”