NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 82: ECHOES IN THE DARK
XANDER VASILIAS, ☆☆GRAVITON KNIGHT, STONE LVL 14
MT DISCOVERY, PROVINCE OF ARAGONIA
Xander Vasilias
Race
Human
Rank/Level
☆☆ Stone Rank Gravity Knight Level 14
House
House Vasilias
Racial Gifts
[Enhanced] System Access, [Great] House Seal, [Un]Limited Inventory, Incredibly Strong, Enhance Damage
Attributes
Dominion
30 [Gravity] / 30 ☆
Speed
19 [Hammer] / 30
Precision
25 [Strength] / 30
Growth
22 [Adventure] / 30
Arcana
30 [Black Hole] / 30 ☆
Tensa Pool
29.3 ks
Gear
Vasilias Heavy Armor, Singularity Hammer, House Vasilias Seal, Infused Polyalloy Shield, Jump Jets, Legendary BOTI Bag
Core Grafts
Increase Mass [Gravity], Meteor Blow [Hammer], Crushing Blow [Strength], Call Weapon [Adventure], GravQuake [Black Hole]
Class Powers
Attack
Final Collapse [Black Hole]
Whirling Strike [Hammer]
Defense
Bulwark [Adventure]
Utility
Devour Light [Black Hole]
Gravitic Sight [Gravity]
Decrease Mass [Gravity]
Movement
Summon Steed [Adventure]
Slingshot Maneuver [Gravity]
Support
Lend Strength [Strength]
“Griffin Vasilias is dead,” Jessaline Braedes reported, glancing back at the ginpaari still standing in the middle of the ransacked chamber, “The Arboremissary, Tolochi, reports that he was eaten by a Mother Plasma Cybercentipede. It sounds like it was at least a Class 2, level 7 entity, though there was no active power use in evidence.”
Xander Vasilias looked over the Scout’s shoulder at the ginpaari at the same time and he frowned. Mother won’t accept his word that the Scion is dead, he thought. I’m going to need proof.
“Thank you Jessaline,” he said briskly, “anything else?” He’d caught the look in her eye that meant she’d found something else.
She looked around the room. Tolochi was engaged in fervent conversation with Salyyb, the ginpaari Botanimeister who kept his precious bees in a hive in his chest. The entire room was covered in decades’ worth of plant growth. Pollen and the lazy buzzing of bees were thick in the air. Salyyb had told them there was a great deal of botanimancy used recently on their approach up the desolate mountainside.
Jessaline leaned in close and whispered in Xander’s ear, “He doesn’t believe that Griffin Vasilias is dead.”
She gave a significant nod and winked her Third Eye at him as she gently brushed a fat bumblebee off her shoulder—Salyyb would not allow anyone to crush one of his bees. Xander shuddered a little: it was still so weird that she could do that—most Psychic-based Classes that got a Third Eye graft couldn’t control the things so…biologically. It was gross.
She grinned as she leaned back, knowing how much he hated it when she winked at him like that. This was one of the hundreds of little tricks she liked to play on him to goad him. The most galling thing for Xander was that he couldn’t even reprimand her properly since she was only fulfilling the role his mother had placed Braedes on his team to fulfill: not just as a Scout, but also as insurance against hubris.
Still, he thought, if Jessaline says that the Arboremissary doesn’t believe that the Scion is dead, then he doesn’t believe it. Her Third Eye skills are reliable at least.
“Even if he’s dead,” he said, “we’ll need to find his body. Jessaline, find him. Zahara, Culvis, Salyyb, and I will follow with the Arboremissary once we’ve finished up here. Stay in touch for as long as you can.” Jessaline smiled and gave him a textbook-perfect salute that nonetheless somehow managed to be sarcastic.
Xander examined the surroundings with a practiced eye. The place had been tossed expertly and thoroughly. There was a Oneness Chamber here, though it was an old design—ancient really. He walked over and looked in at the pool. He reached out with his anima in a Questing configuration, saturating the FocusGel with his tensa and observing the etheric spectrum that flashed through the FocusGel.
The spectral readout was just as powerful now as it would have been when it was manufactured… he narrowed his eyes, then widened them as he finished measuring the spikes of color and realized it had been at least ten millennia. How it had been preserved here—along with everything else—was a testament to the incredible skill and power the family—his family—had once held. Will hold again, if I have any say in it, he thought grimly. He rose from his inspection of the Oneness Chamber and strode over to the rubble where the door to the rest of the complex used to be.
Culvis followed, narrowing his eyes at his bio-scanner. “Xander, all these plants are…connected somehow. They’re in some kind of symbiotic relationship with one another. I don’t like it. I think there’s some aggressive potential here.” The man was short and stout, with an impressive handlebar mustache that he waxed impeccably every day. He was otherwise completely bald, though his bushy eyebrows almost made up for his lack of hair otherwise. Culvis was also one of the rarest Classes conventionally available in the Imperium: a True Healer. He didn’t like to think about what his mother had bid to have him on his team, but he was grateful for the True Healer’s presence.
Xander nodded absently and called out to Tolochi, “Arboremmisary, as a representative of House Vasilias, let me be the first to thank you for your prompt report.” He gestured down the hallway, “My Scout has passed on your assessment of the status here—”
“Your Scout preferred to jump to conclusions that I did not voice,” Tolochi cut in, his deep voice reverberating through the room.
Xander saw that the ginpaari’s headflower was much smaller than it should be. That suggested that it had regrown recently, which in turn suggested that Tolochi had been in a tussle not too long ago.
“The Scion you seek is not dead. He had a graft that granted him a kind of adaptable powered armor. The Scion was swallowed by the Mother, but I doubt very much that he is dead. Your Scout is heading in the right direction and we can follow her if you wish.”
Xander started a bit at that. Jessaline Braedes was good. If she wanted to ghost, there were very few who could match her skill and this Arboremissary just casually said he could follow her… This he had to see. “If you can track Braedes, please take us to her,” he smiled and nudged Culvis with his elbow, “if he manages it, it’ll give us something to hold over her head.”
Salyyb laughed loudly then, a cloud of bees flying up around him and then settling back in their hive in his chest. His voice was a reedy, scholarly tone that he had cultivated over the past several years in service to the family first as the majordomo to the House, then as Botanimeister when he’d finally gotten his Class.
“Braedes has happened upon a rather unique individual this time, my Lord.” His headflower opened and closed rapidly in amusement, flashing bright red and pink in a visual expression of his mirth. “Tolochi is well-known to me. He is a talented Arboremissary with an impressive array of grafts. His Union profile—which I urged you to study on our way over here indicates that he has grafts that are more associated with the Botanimeister Class than a true Arboremissary. These plants growing everywhere, for instance, are creations of Tolochi’s and serve as sensory extensions. Braedes won’t be able to avoid him.”
Xander grinned and gestured through the doorway, “Let’s go then!”
Tolochi turned and left the room, going back down the hallway with Xander and the rest of the team following closely behind. Salyyb used his Hive Mind graft and called the bees back into his chest hive as the rest of the team filed out of the room and out into the halls. Tolochi set a fast pace and the team moved quickly through the abandoned complex.
Zahara played a soft, upbeat tune on her djevek using her Travel Song graft as she played. The subtle tensa effect ensured they didn’t expend unnecessary energy moving through the ruin and gave the entire group a wide variety of other bonuses and boosts. The entire team had become accustomed to Zahara’s subtle but powerful Bardic grafts and Class abilities and Xander hoped she’d consider retiring from her club in Aragon and becoming a full-time team member.
The place was large and contained a dizzying number of rooms and doorways. Now that Tolochi had been here, the hallways that served as the arteries of the complex were now completely enclosed in verdant greenery, but Xander could catch glimpses here and there of conference rooms, research labs, storage rooms, and other more obscure rooms whose functions he couldn’t guess.
“I can’t believe there’s been a secret Vasilias complex in Mt. Discovery this whole time,” Xander said. They had reached the end of the hall and had come to the top of a stairwell that stretched down into darkness. “It’s been amazingly preserved, though the tensa batteries powering the maintenance spells must have died out a while ago. There’s not even enough power to get the lights on.”
Culvis smiled and pulled out a glowdisc, cracking it to light it, then tossing it into the air to float next to him; he handed out glowdiscs to each of the others on the team, though Tolochi refused one saying he didn’t need it. The glowdiscs provided dim red illumination and lasted for four hours. They were reliable and low-cost, so that made them one of Culvis’ picks for the team’s supplies.
With eerie red light illuminating the concrete steps under their feet, they descended deep into the complex, following Tolochi’s lead as they tracked the circuitous route the Mother had taken to get to her lair. Oddly enough, they encountered none of the juvenile brood of plasma cybercentipedes on their way, not even any crushed carapaces or malfunctioning cyber parts that were the usual hallmark of a plasma cybercentipede infestation; everything was just covered in that carpet of greenery.
Salyyb’s bees buzzed contentedly and the Botanimeister seemed unusually cheerful in the underground confines. Culvis clomped along behind, his heavy ceramaplate armor somehow managing to make just as much noise on the soft carpet of greenery on the floor as if he were clattering through the marble halls of the palace back home. Through it all, Zahara’s music played, speeding their steps so they moved quickly through the complex at a strangely sedate speed: it was the quickest pace that a team of Reborn exploring an unknown ruin moved, though admittedly there wasn’t much to see here. Tolochi’s guidance was unwavering, always deeper into the mountain, deeper into the complex’s belly.
The nature of the complex changed as they went deeper. The halls grew slightly wider and the ceiling lower. Their glowdiscs only showed a green tunnel filled with strange flowers and vines, all the hard lines of the complex softened by plant life, but they smelled a foulness in the air. The smell grew stronger as they delved deeper until they arrived at a final hallway covered in plants but instead of another branching hallway, there was a ragged hole in the wall into utter blackness.
“My plants will not grow beyond this point,” Tolochi said, pausing at the threshold, “there is a…field of some sort that prevents it. Arm yourselves… there are monsters beyond this point.”
Culvis looked at Salyyb and Xander skeptically, “There haven’t been any monsters before now, why do you think they’ll be through there?”
Salyyb leaned forward and Xander felt a pulse of tensa from the Botanimeister. The bees in his chesthive began buzzing rhythmically, and then a swarm of them left his chest. These weren’t the fat little bumblebees that he had released earlier. These were from a different hive. The titanium exoskeletons of the Infinibees flashed with rainbow colors as they buzzed past the light of the glowdiscs and into the darkness of the tunnel beyond.
Salyyb joined Tolochi at the ragged opening. The smell was worse through the hole. It was an acrid, chemical smell like burning plastic. “My bees will find the Scion,” Salyyb said confidently.
“I did not say I did not know where your Scion is,” Tolochi said patiently. “I said that my plants would not grow beyond this point. Beyond here the ruin your ancestors built transitions into a natural cave system.” The Arboremissary continued through the ragged hole and into the rough tunnel.
“Let’s hope this Scion of yours is still alive,” Zahara muttered to Xander, “because if we’re trekking into a monster-infested ruin for a corpse, I will write a deeply unflattering song about you and release it on the System.”
Xander grinned, though it wasn’t entirely clear that Zahara was joking. The Songmaster just rolled her eyes and shook her head before brushing past him and into the tunnel. She kept playing her djevek, filling them with vigor and motivation even after all this hiking around.
The tunnels they now traversed were made of rock that had been worn smooth over the eons. Their boots splashed in muddy puddles made from constant trickles of water that came down the walls and dripped from toothlike stalactites that nearly brushed Xander’s head at some points. The tunnel was wide, however, and it showed far more evidence of the Mother’s passage than the complex had. The rock was gouged and pummelled all along the walls and the ceiling. Many of the stalactites had been crushed or knocked free. The trail was unmistakable now and Tolochi led them on, keeping his senses attuned to the slightest hint of danger.
“Where’s Braedes?” Xander muttered. “It’s not like her to leave us this long without reporting in.”
“Do you think she’s got herself into trouble?” Zahara asked.
Xander frowned but shook his head. They continued down the wide tunnel being careful of their footing on the slick rock. Distant echoes of dripping water reached them from far down the tunnel and large shadows played along the tunnel walls cast from their glowdiscs. Eventually, the tunnel opened into a large chamber that opened out like an enormous gallery. Their meager lights couldn’t reach either the ceiling or the far walls.
The darkness was oppressive. Each member of the team felt it. They made sure of their weapons before continuing, every one of them feeling exposed in the sudden openness. They heard odd clackings and scratchings mixing with the endless echoes of dripping water and Tolochi grew his Water Cannon from his shoulder, configuring his eyespots to be arranged radially around his headflower, trying to look everywhere at once.
Xander hefted his favored weapon, a hammer made from the material from the heart of a collapsing star that had been in the process of becoming a black hole. It was called the Singularity Hammer and it focused his gravitic grafts incredibly well. Though it weighed almost a metric ton, to his hands, the Singularity Hammer felt like a feather. It had been a true triumph of etheric engineering from conception to completion—he’d ordered it made as his reward to himself when he had decided to join the Order of Ascension.
They started making their way through the gallery more slowly than they had moved through the complex. They were acutely aware of malevolent presences with them in the cavern. Xander had put together a team of competent Stone rank Reborn and they moved like a well-trained machine. Tolochi was even accounted for in their new formation and the Arboremissary was an experienced enough Reborn that he was able to fit in without a hitch. Tolochi took the point position, still tracking the Mother through the gallery but also keeping an eye out for favorable terrain to make their stand against whatever out there was stalking them.
They were almost halfway through the chamber, everyone feeling like the axe was going to fall at any moment; even Salyyb’s bees were muted and he’d withdrawn his colorful headflower into a thorny protective cover. Zahara moved up next to Xander, placing a hand on his shoulder and leaning in to speak quietly in Xander’s ear, “Xander, I think I’ve calculated where those echoes are coming from. I’ve been using my Babble graft along with some mapping software and I… well. It’s bad news.”
Xander felt a lead weight fall into his stomach. It was going too smoothly, he thought. “What is it, Zahara?” He muttered just as quietly.
“We’re surrounded. Those aren’t echoes, there’s just that many of them. Need me to make a defensible area?”
He was spared from answering by the appearance around them of hundreds of pairs of red glowing eyes. The missing plasma cybercentipedes, it seemed, had gathered here. Xander gripped his Singularity Hammer in a sure grip. They had trained for an entire year together and Zahara was Ivory rank, he didn’t feel afraid.
He grinned and got ready to unleash a Gravitational Whirlwind attack that would tear into them over a wide area. He configured his anima to his Gravity Well combat configuration, feeling tensa start filling his pool even as he spent more and more tensa to maintain some ongoing grafts of his that he thought would be useful for him in a combat situation and had been dying to try out.
Culvis activated his Defensive Field while Salyyb produced more of the Infinibees, their buzzing filling the gallery with echoes that drowned out the clicking of the monsters. Zahara positioned herself nearby, djevek slung low as she began constructing a combat-focused Divine Chord to support the party. Then, all the red glowing eyes winked out, leaving the cavern completely empty.
“We scared them off,” Culvis chuckled, brushing dust off the armor plates on his legs. “They have more survival instinct than I’d normally credit them… for…” Culvis trailed off as something large moved in the shadows.
They couldn’t see it properly, but they could hear its heavy footfalls and the crack of stone as whatever it was shifted. The sounds bounced around the cavern until it sounded like they were surrounded by enormous monsters. “I have a bad feeling about this,” Xander muttered. “Where’s Jessaline? We could use her about now.”
“Xander, look over there on the wall!” Salyyb shouted.
Another set of red eyes had turned their attention on them. These were much bigger. “Ready yourselves!” Xander shouted, whipping his head around, seeing three more sets of spotlight-like red eyes fixed on them with predatory focus. “They’ll attack at any moment!”