NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 79: AN ALLY?
GRIFFIN TUCKER VASILIAS, GREAT HOUSE SCION, REBORN LVL 5
MT DISCOVERY, PROVINCE OF ARAGONIA
Griffin tumbled through the air end over end, unable to tell up from down. The HUD in his vision had gone crazy and was trying to adjust to his constantly changing position. He had crazed views of small trees rapidly getting bigger, then the sky, then a confused view of the cliff face. As he fell through the air, he heard Kismet’s voice screaming in his ear, “Griffin! Your grafts! You have to use your gr--!”
Don’t I have something for this?! He thought desperately. Wait! Yes! It was a…a 3-D movement system! He remembered.
Maybe he could activate the system if he could navigate the menus while falling to his death. But he was still not quite familiar with the menus on his DEEP Suit so he was more likely to kill himself if he tried to use it. Still, he had no other ideas and no other real options.
As he started trying to navigate the menus without hyperventilating, he noticed that he was no longer tumbling through the air end over end. As his dizzy brain began to lurchingly realize, he had been falling for an improbably long amount of time without getting splattered all over the ground.
He felt blood pounding in his ears and looked down. But it wasn’t down toward the ground that he looked but toward his feet, which were pointed toward the sky. Griffin saw that a thick woven rope of living vines had wrapped itself snuggly around his right leg. He felt himself get lifted smoothly and easily back up. He was about a hundred and twenty meters away from the hole he’d been blasted out of but the vine lifted him like he weighed nothing.
Griffin remembered to breathe as he was lifted and made a quick decision. “Kismet,” he said as he was slowly lifted, “What in the hell happened?! What are we walking—or being lifted—into?”
“It was a ginpaari with a rare variety of rapid Plant Growth graft,” Kismet said, “I don’t know what he wants. But it doesn’t bode well for us. We need to get away from him as soon as we can.”
“What? Why?!” Griffin exclaimed, “He saved our—my life! I had planned on giving Mr. Ginpaari up there a big ol’ hug and a kiss on his—wait, what’s a ginpaari?”
Griffin could hear the frustration in Kismet’s voice, “We talked about the different peoples of the Empire before, don’t you remember?”
“Oh for sure,” Griffin said, “I definitely remember. Why don’t you tell me what you remember and I’ll make sure I got all the details right.”
“Ginpaari are a long and storied people who founded—”
“Look, I don’t need to know their whole history!” Griffin hissed. They were only fifty meters from the hole in the cliffside wall. “I just need to know some basic facts!”
Kismet very pointedly didn’t say anything for a good long moment. Then she said, “The ginpaari are a photosynthesizing people whose evolutionary tree was birthed from a sophisticated carnivorous pitcher plant. They have a history. The Emperor is ginpaari.”
“Got it. Ginpaari are plant people.”
“Don’t rush to be so reductive,” Kismet admonished, “it will win you few friends. This ginpaari—just be very careful Griffin. You are too new to your power and you don’t know your political value. There are people here who will absolutely use you until you’re used up and then they will discard you. Don’t forget that.”
Griffin nodded and grimaced. Like I need yet another reminder that this place is all kinds of fucked up, he thought. Let’s see what this ginpaari wants. Not like I have a choice really.
He was pulled into the bed chamber again and set gently down. Standing in front of him was a humanoid plantlike creature. Between its woody, greenish shoulders was a tightly closed canary-yellow flower bud where its head should be. It was wearing armor that looked like gorgeously carved wood or stone plates though its flower bud head was unprotected. The vine appeared to be an extension of the ginpaari’s arm which stretched and retracted into itself letting Griffin’s leg go. Griffin fell to the ground gracelessly, unharmed save for his dignity.
The plant being held a complicated “hand” out to Griffin to help him up. Griffin took the hand, his gauntleted hand feeling the immense strength in the ginpaari’s hand.
“I was a light-seeking river birch when I just blasted my way into your room. I had thought that it was a monster attack that had set fire to the valley floor below. Please accept my apologies; my name is Tolochi.” The bizarre creature’s voice sounded deep, soothing, and pleasant. Like Barry White mixed with James Earl Jones.
Griffin stood up with Tolochi’s help. He tried to take the all-encompassing helmet off, but there was nowhere to take it off. As he was feeling around at his jaw for a seam, he realized he already knew how to remove the helmet. The DEEP Suit graft had placed the knowledge in his mind like a memory. It was weird. All he had to do was will it away and the helmet disappeared, leaving his head exposed, his hair sticking up everywhere.
“Wow, sorry for the impressive entrance.” Griffin smiled awkwardly and held out his hand. “I’m Griffin.” Tolochi’s headflower spun and rotated as it examined Griffin’s hand.
“Is your hand injured, Griffin?” Tolochi took Griffin’s hand in one of the woody stalks that served as his own hands and inspected it minutely. “I’m afraid that my knowledge of human biology is somewhat incomplete. Is it normal for you to have only five of those branch-like…fingers? I didn’t notice any damage to your armor so I had assumed…”
Griffin gently pulled his hand back and laughed uncomfortably, “No! It’s okay—I’m okay. All fingers present and accounted for. So ah, Tol—”
“Tolochi.”
“Tolochi, right, thanks. Um. What uh, are you doing here?”
Tolochi started wandering around the room but his headflower stayed pointed at Griffin like an antenna. The petals were twisted together like a flower bud and there were a couple of little spots on the outside of the bud that seemed to work like eyes. He started digging through the drawers, pulling out various things and setting them in a pile in the floor.
“I’m going to loot as much of this old junk as I can before I catalog the monster that burned through the side of the mountain for the OA’s monster database,” Tolochi said. He kept rifling through closets, taking a few choice bits here and there, leaving the rest. “You’re welcome to join, but we’ll need to work quickly.”
Griffin shrugged and looked at Kismet. She seemed to be very interested in Tolochi: she was staring at him with an intensity that was a little odd. “He’s eighth level,” she said urgently, “two stars… Growth and Arcana. Griffin, even empowered as you are, you’re no match for him.”
“What’s the OA?” Griffin asked. He tried to keep his voice pitched low but it was apparent the ginpaari heard him clearly enough.
Tolochi paused while he was still going through the items in the room. “You do not know the OA?”
“Shit.” Kismet hissed low in Griffin’s ear.
“Uh. Sure. Sure I know the OA,” Griffin said, grinning. “I mean, yeah, everyone knows the OA. Like…” he paused, then shook his head and confessed, “No, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not from here.”
“Clearly.” Tolochi continued, going over to the bed and tossing the mattress aside like it weighed nearly nothing. His headflower swiveled back up to Griffin when he found a book-sized tablet. “Is this your Systablo?”
“Yes, that’s his Systablo,” Kismet said testily.
Tolochi didn’t move, though the spots on the flower seemed to get bigger and deeper black. Eventually, he tossed the tablet to Griffin and went back to his looting. Griffin caught it automatically, miraculously not fumbling it.
Kismet’s training must be paying off, Griffin thought.
It was hard to think clearly right now. The wild circulation of so much tensa from Griffin’s unlocked Attributes was almost intoxicating. It was like everything in the world was just a little bit slower than it had been before and he was just a little bit quicker. Subtle, but very noticeable. He put the Systablo Tolochi had tossed to him into his Inventory and walked over to the hole in the wall, looking down at the dizzying drop, wondering if he’d be able to use his newfound powers to get down there.
Griffin whispered to Kismet, “What do we do? Should we get out of here? I mean, we could just climb out here. I could make a rope or something and then we just go through the woods and into Heldon.”
Kismet just shook her head, “Heldon is an Imperial town filled with unknowns, though it is controlled by House Vasilias.” Griffin froze a little at the mention of the name. “I thought that might get your attention. I would prefer you to remain far away from Imperial entanglements for as long as possible due to the high likelihood of personal danger based on your racial gifts—particularly that Great House Seal. That will cause a great deal of attention to fall on you that you’re not ready for.”
Griffin tried not to be too obvious about it as he hissed, “Why didn’t you tell me!?”
“I just did,” Kismet said. “I did not tell you earlier because you were not ready to leave this place without more training—you still aren’t but there’s no help for it.”
Griffin ground his teeth in frustration, then visibly took hold of himself and breathed in deeply. “Next time, please don’t withhold information about things like that. I’d prefer to make my own decisions.”
Kismet didn’t say anything for a while. Griffin glanced at Tolochi. He was looking through the books now, opening a few of them up and shaking the pages, tossing them when nothing fell out.
Kismet, still speaking in his ear, said, “I understand why you are upset. I will respect your wishes in the future, but trust me when I say that I had your best interests in mind when I withheld the information.”
Griffin bit his lip, glancing over at Tolochi. It was hard not to watch him, even though he’d seen other creatures as bizarre-looking as him on August’s Systablo. It was just wild to see something so alien in person. It almost made him forget to be irritated at Kismet. Almost.
“Well next time, let me make that decision. It’s my damn life after all,” he said. “So…Is there anything you can tell me about our plant buddy over there that I wouldn’t know?”
Kismet answered, “Examine him with the System, Griffin! You have to get used to using it. Your Enhanced Access will provide you with knowledge that most will not have access to and knowledge is power!”
Right, power, Griffin thought. Is this place really so damn dangerous? He remembered the crawling horror of the swarm of plasma cybercentipedes just outside the door and shuddered. Yes, this place really was fucking dangerous. He examined Tolochi as surreptitiously as he could, mentally calling on the System to provide whatever information it could about him. A moment later, a new purple-outlined text box popped up.
System Profile Query: Success
Enhanced System Access – Reborn Profile
Tolochi - ☆☆ Stone Rank Arboremissary Level 8 – ☆ Growth [Life] ; ☆Arcana [Sun]
Member of OA
Recorded Grafts:
Attack Grafts – 2 (Water Cannon, unknown)
Utility Grafts – 4 (unknown, unknown, unknown, Root Traversal)
Defensive Grafts – 2 (Armor of the Ancients)
It didn’t seem like an enhanced amount of information to him, but it wasn’t like he had a point of comparison. He read it over in a few seconds and had a few questions. “So, uh…what’s an ‘Arboremissary’? And what’s the OA?”
“I am an Arboremissary,” Tolochi said from across the room, his deep voice cutting into their conversation. “It is my Class and my calling. And the OA is the Order of Ascensio. ‘To be the dominant force for good against the tide of monsters’.” Tolochi walked back over to Griffin, sounding like he was reciting something from memory while his vinelike arms still sorting through various shelves and drawers. “’To respond quickly and efficiently to earnest requests for help; to explore all System Quests to their end; to wield our power in the right place at the right time and with the right degree of force…’ Have you never heard the Ascendant’s Credo?”
Griffin chuckled and said, “I already told you, I’m not from here. I don’t know about your credos or… or anything. I just want to—”
“Your wants are unimportant right now.” Tolochi interrupted.
“Rude.”
Tolochi pointed at the destroyed doorway. There were conservatively a million plasma cybercentipedes swarming all over the hallway outside the room, but they weren’t at the door yet. And there was the Mother, all the way at the far end of the hall, her enormous, bus-sized body careening toward them.
Griffin felt his mouth go dry and his legs go weak. “Griffin!” Kismet yelled in his ear, “Your suit! The helmet!”
Tolochi was already moving. He dropped the items he’d been looting and charged out of the room, wading into the hallway. He thrust his arms out and they grew ten meters long, covered in thorny protrusions. Tolochi then began thrashing his arms in the hallway, crushing the swarming giant insects with each sweep.
Griffin mentally commanded his helmet to reappear and it did, taking just a few seconds. The complicated HUD cleared save for important targeting information. Desperately, Griffin called up the menu in his suit that listed weapons. He glanced over to Tolochi who was still wading through swarming monstrous insect-things. He grimaced as he read through the menu options:
SELECT WEAPON SYSTEM TYPE
1. Deadly melee<
2. Nonlethal melee
3. Deadly ranged (Requires Targeting System)
4. Nonlethal ranged (Requires Targeting System)
5. Artillery (requires Targeting System)
He didn’t have the confidence to shoot into that mass of bugs without hitting Tolochi and he definitely didn’t want to shoot any explosives down the hall, so artillery was out. That meant melee and he wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea.
“What are you doing?” Kismet asked as Griffin stepped forward, selecting the first option on the menu.
“He’s just one guy!” Griffin said, rushing to the door. “I can’t let him face that thing on his own!”
As he ran, he felt a sharp drain on his tensa pool as the energy poured into the DEEP Suit and powered the weapons system up. A double-edged sword made out of one solid piece of heavy metal with no crossguard appeared in his right hand and the suit’s servomotors activated, closing his gauntleted right hand around the hilt tightly. The edges of the blade glinted with an opalescent light as Griffin dashed down the hall following Tolochi.
This is where I see if my German longsword fencing in HEMA has any value at all, he thought. I wonder what Pete would say if he saw what I’m about to do.
He took a two-handed grip on his sword, the hilt feeling familiar in his hands from not only his hours and hours of training with Kismet but also his years of HEMA and LARP combat. It felt surreal for him to swing the deadly weapon around and for it to feel so right to him, especially using it against these insane cybernetic bug monsters.
The sword was impressive. It cut through centipede chitin like it wasn’t even there. Within moments, he was standing side-by-side with Tolochi, both of them carving their way down the long hall toward the still-oncoming Mother.
“We can’t face it in this hallway!” Griffin yelled to Tolochi, “It’ll roast us alive! We need to lure it to somewhere more open!”
“I’m open to suggestions!” Tolochi called back, lashing out with a thick, ropelike fist, smashing a cybercentipede on the ceiling.
Griffin staggered as one of the monsters got past him and leaped from the wall clinging onto him with dozens of sharp legs. The DEEP suit was effective protection against their scratching claws though, and Griffin was able to rip the thing off of him and chop it in half, splashing the mucus-like blood everywhere. He heard a high-pitched buzzing from behind him and spun to face another cybercentipede with a buzz-saw attached to an articulated arm snaking toward him.
“There’s a hallway about twenty meters down, but big Momma’s going to get there soon. We need to run!” Griffin shouted, parrying the buzzsaw.
The creature screeched and Griffin saw the large cybernetic lens on its head start to glow. He dove aside, hearing the air catch fire as a white-hot beam of plasma nearly took his head off. He crashed into the wall and slipped on monster blood as he tried to get up. Tolochi helped him to his feet having avoided the plasma beam with an expert dodge. The two continued running down the hall.
Tolochi quickly outpaced Griffin, grunting with effort as he invested tensa into his Wood Shield graft and grew a wedge-like shield out of hardened wood from vines that burst from his chest. His arms still whipped out all around, smashing and tossing plasma cybercentipedes everywhere. Flashes of air-boiling heat lanced through the air, badly aimed and lighting the hall on fire as they traced crazy paths over the walls.
Griffin grunted and was thrown forward as one of those wayward plasma beams sliced across his back. Instead of being cut in half and watching as monstrous cybernetically-enhanced centipedes ate his guts, he instead felt a hot breeze on his back and could smell burning metal and cloth as his DEEP Suit’s backplate was blasted away. His HUD lit up red and flashed a warning:
Adaptive Environmental Systems Alert!
Targeting Systems Alert!
The AES and Targeting systems on your DEEP Suit have detected a sharp increase in thermal energy and multiple hostiles in the area. Additional tensa input is needed for Adaptive Combat mode. Invest?
YES / NO
Griffin immediately accepted the tensa investment, laughing crazily as he realized just how much he wanted to train with these crazy new powers. The DEEP Suit made him feel like a Power Ranger or one of those crazed Ultramarines from Warhammer 40k. His tensa pool dipped alarmingly low—below half—and he reconfigured his anima into the Ten Star Vortex gathering technique so he could refill his tensa pool. As the investment completed, the DEEP suit reconfigured itself again, materializing a new backplate and gaining thick, heat-resistant ceramic plates.
His HUD also adjusted, and to Griffin’s perceptions, the whole world seemed to slow down just a little bit. He was able to get up and duck as he saw the path of another plasma beam blasting through where his chest used to be. He slashed out at three different leaping cybercentipedes, marveling at how slowly they seemed to be traveling through the air. As the pieces of monster rained down, Griffin sprinted after Tolochi, and directly toward the Mother.
The Mother Plasma Cybercentipede seemed to recognize him and bellowed an ear-shattering shriek as it redoubled its efforts to haul its body down the hallway. Doors splintered and the wall cracked. Dust and plaster rained down from the ceiling.
I’m not going to make it! Griffin thought.
Even with the additional speed granted from his DEEP Suit’s combat configuration, the Mother had put on another turn of speed and its head was already beginning to light up with half a dozen different plasma-emitting lenses. The rest of its brood continued to boil all around, blasting each other to dust in their excitement with random plasma beams.
Tolochi, just ahead of him, disappeared around the blind turn but the Mother didn’t follow him. It just kept going, straight at Griffin, its mouthparts gaping wide. “Griffin, trust in your suit!” Kismet shouted in his ear, her wings a blur as she flew next to him.
Griffin didn’t have any time to ask what Kismet meant. He had to dodge three different plasma beams from the Mother’s lenses. The creature crawled along the wall and then up onto the ceiling, firing off more plasma beams, disintegrating twenty of its brood with each beam. Griffin was forced to dodge and jump, his forward progress completely halted as the air cooked around him. He tried to swipe at it with his sword, but the Mother’s carapace was too thick for a single cut to break through.
The Mother darted forward and Griffin couldn’t dodge quick enough. He tried jumping to the side, but one of the mouthparts caught his leg and instead of hitting the smoldering carpet, he was lifted into the air by his leg. Dangling upside down with his right leg in the vice-like grip of the Mother’s mouth, Griffin saw Tolochi come back around the corner down the hall, his long, whiplike arms battering at the Mother along with a cannon on his shoulder firing a high-pressure stream of glowing water at the monster, immediately eliciting a pained clicking from it.
The Mother slammed Griffin into the wall as she retreated from Tolochi’s attacks, surging backward down the hall away from Tolochi, dragging Griffin with it. Tolochi advanced, continuing to blast it with his cannon, the high-pressure water slicing into the thick carapace of the mother. The wedge-like shield in front of him absorbed a plasma beam, getting deeply scorched by the attack and lighting briefly on fire before being guttering out. Griffin shouted in pain as his leg was wrenched and the Mother pulled him further into her mouth, crunching on his torso, squeezing the breath out of him.
He couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything except batter at it with his sword and his fist. Tolochi continued his attacks, but the Mother blasted more plasma beams at him and he had to retreat. Griffin screamed a wordless, breathless shout as he was pulled entirely into the Mother’s maw and down into its throat.