Time Since Reckless Self-Endangerment: 4 Days 16 Hours

Goal: Save Tarquin

After a brief dive into the oasis to remove the grit from his skin, Nic returned to his underground lair. He had work to do.

Nic pulled out the sand-snake’s corpse from his bag, taking his knife and beginning to skin it. As he peeled away the golden scales he hung them in banners across his walls, and filled his mouth with choice cuts of the scrawny meat. The bones, gristle, and organs were all useful, so he stored about half of them away again while throwing the rest out a ways away from his hiding spot.

For the rest of the day, Nic’s work was drilling holes through the alligator teeth he’d collected; he added them to a leather cord and attached a small glyph, Attul, that served as a battery for aura. It was a purely supportive design that offered a passive benefit - but one that cost an intense price to manufacture.

With the amount he’d collected and the speed at which he could work, Nic quickly spent upwards of three thousand Essence to expand his aura capacity by one-half. With his current attachment to the Ring of Day-into-Night, that equated to one more use of his Poison Mist.

And the more he thought about it the more the ring was actually an ideal treasure, at least in its daytime form. He only had a single ability that cost a significant aura - his poison - and without the ring, he’d actually struggled to use all of his reserves in a single battle.

Now that he could actually burn through his aura efficiently, the batteries would help him not run into the opposite problem. The result was a necklace that glowed with golden patterns across a band of sharp teeth.

By then the ring on his finger had turned half-way silver. It was twilight, and soon night would fall. Nic wiped the slimy sweat from his face and carried on.

Replacing his broken shield was a high priority - but with his ascension to E-Class coming up, he might as well wait until he could harvest better materials and make a weapon that would keep up with him.

Instead, he let Sunfire slip from his skin. The tiny Pyrewarden scrambled onto his shoulder and Nic set out a grinding bowl. “Here. Fill this up.”

The frill-headed lizard paused, and then spat out a crystal of warped red amber. Then another and another, until the bowl was half-filled with sticky amber nodules.

At that point Sunfire looked utterly exhausted, so Nic sighed, reaching over to pet his spiny eyebrows. “That’ll do.”

It was enough explosive to start experimenting.

He needed something to serve as a casing. Eventually, searching through the oasis and its various little rockpools, he settled on a set of small turtle shells he found buried in the sand. Taking them back to his lair he settled down, lifting a makeshift workstation out of the sand and beginning to fill them up with ground explosive and shards of crushed glass from Lavhin’s flasks. Redjaw emerged from his arm, and again he instructed his companion to fill a bowl with venom - this would soak the fragmented bits of glass to form a poison shrapnel.

He fed them both a golden beetle, sending them scuttling off to explore the oasis.

With his ingredients collected, Nic used sealing wax from Lavhin and bits of cut palm leaf to seal the entrances of the turtleshells. Pulling out the Theoretical Quill he began to trace patterns of runes across the surface. Rather than use a simple Lakash as a detonator, he chose a more complex rune, Kuvatt, which had a stronger explosive effect on its own and could be detonated on a delay. Anchored to that he sketched out a glyph for strengthening the poison, and a fiery, powerful rune to augment the blast and trigger the explosive powders.

Compared to his first efforts it was a masterpiece. The quill allowed him to practice, perfect, and experiment with his designs, interlocking them in ways that eliminated inefficiency. The result was being able to add an additional symbol to each set.

Set against the years he’d spent practicing in d23, this last week had given him unstoppable forward momentum. A week here - a year there - the difference was massive. It was only the value of the strong fundamental skills he’d earned over those years that kept him from mourning them as a total loss.

In the end, his work spoke for itself.

Toxic Pyre-Lob (F)

Rune of Detonation

(100% Charged)

Glyph of Poison Cultivation

(100% Charged)

Rune of Flame Bottling

(100% Charged)

Containing a medley of deadly powders and venoms, this compact explosive is packed with glass shards to serve as teeth for the poisons within. It grows more effective over time, the flame and bile within slowly soaking in ambient Essence to achieve greater potency.

They were nasty little things, and the application of Redjaw’s venom meant they’d slow down enemies they couldn’t outright kill. The shrapnel would add to their reach. The explosive gave them raw force against enemies his poisons wouldn’t affect.

Nic tossed one from hand to hand, getting a feel for the weight.

These were going to be fun.

---

Sealing the entrance to his home and concealing the signs of his presence, Nic sand-sailed most of the way towards the human camp, but made the final approach on foot for stealth’s sake. With the ring in its night form, he had the advantage of his skin turning half-translucent. Anyone who saw him would only see a blur like smoke moving across the ground.

He’d made himself a cloak of palm leaves, coated it in adhesive, and rolled it in sand. With the cloak cast over his shoulders his pink skin was less eye-catching against the red and black of the strange desert’s sands.

The human camp was a sight to see.

The whole camp was built around the enormous stone face of the Tutelary Spirit. She gazed up at the moon, her gold-covered eyes reflecting the pale light. By day she must have been dazzling, but by night, Nic could see cracks running down her stone cheeks like tears.

Huge and squared stone pillars rose out of the ground like spears, clustered together to make walls. They ringed all the way around the human camp with only two entrances. One led onto the tracks of the caravans that were coming from the distant entrance to the Dungeon. The other led out onto a small oasis, where they were cutting down desert trees to make their ships.

There was a shipyard, full of half-constructed masts. Nic couldn’t see the details yet, but his first thought was that this must have something to do with the quest he’d received on entering the Dungeon.

‘Rise to the heavens. Guide your ship to the Hall of the Sun. Slay the Master of the Hall.’

The rest of the camp was all low, palm-leaf tents. Nic could only catch glimpses through the open gates.

But he could see the guards.

Two men in heavy armor - chestpieces of iron plates joined together with chains over a leather jacket, and low, swooping helms - stood at the gates. One was itching constantly, leaning against the walls in exhaustion and drinking heavily from a canteen.

The other simply stood there. Barely moving. Nic’s focus immediately zeroed in on that one, watching as minutes crawled into hours without a twitch or a sign of life.

Glenn Jakobi. F-Class (Peak) // Sapient (Native). Formerly a high school athlete, Jakobi showed promise in the earliest days of Integration. His talents with defensive Shards were immense and he thrived in team combat situations. However. He has since come under the thrall of a powerful curse, and his mind is no longer his own.

The other guard seemed fully unaware of his companion’s condition. He tried to make conversation a few times, only for the cursed man to respond with total silence and empty stares. Nic watched the two for a moment, trying to puzzle out what was going on here.

Something was wrong in the human camp.

He touched the Sandrider Blade and dug into the dune. He carved a tunnel just wide enough to crawl through, dipping under the foundation of the stone walls. His threat sense prickled, picking up more and more humans as he burrowed under the camp, until the combined sense of danger was actually oppressive.

But he continued. Most of them weren’t moving at all - sleeping the night away. Nic found a quiet place without any immediate dangers and tunneled up, emerging in an alley formed by the back walls of several tents. He covered over the entrance and curled his cloak around his shoulders as he crept deeper into the human camp.

Everything was calm. The air stirred with buzzing insects that fed on the sleeping bodies of the humans, and in the distance, a few sparse chords strummed from a guitar as a sleepless group sat around a fire. None of them were aware of the Invader in their midst.

A few guards patrolled the paths between the tents. Nic could clock in an instant which ones were suffering under the same curse as Glenn - they had an odd, rigid way of walking. He wondered if the humans knew what was happening, or if they were simply too distracted by all the other strange things happening as their world dissolved around them.

He slipped past.

Some of the humans probably had detection skills, but his ring was protecting him as Nic dipped into the small, closed-off grove where the Tutelary Statue waited, ringed by palm trees and expansive green fronds. He waited for the next patrol to pass before he stepped before the statue’s gaze.

“Hello?” He whispered.

A glow saturated the air. Dozens of fiery blue motes lifted from the ground, and the response was spoken directly into his mind.

Welcome, little one.

I am the Tutelary Spirit. Here to guide you as the worlds collide and a new realm is born from their Integration.

You have slain a great many foes, and earned great merit within the System. These are your spoils.

(43) G-Class Opponents x 10 Credits each.

(16) G-Class Aberrations x 50 Credits each.

(29) F-Class Opponents x 200 Credits.

(1) F-Class Aberration x 1,000 Credits.

All in all, you have earned 8,030 First Wave Credits.

The number was huge. Ridiculous. It actually made Nic feel like someone had kicked the wind out of his belly, and for a moment, every other thought left his head as he struggled to grasp the simple fact he was rich.

A hundred credits was more than enough to buy a small mansion. A thousand? He could’ve bought up a city block.

But the next message brought him back to reality.

Tarquin Winterhome has left you a message in our care.

“Hit me with it."

Hey Nic. I uh, damn, I have no clue- things have been crazy since you left. The news keeps going from bad to good to back again. I’m not sure how it’ll all land; but I want you to know I made the best of the shot you gave me. Tomb. I uh- When I think about you lying there, covered in blood, beat to shit- You’re a crazy bastard, and you’ll always be my brother.

Look. The good thing is, I used that Shard you got me. I got the other kids their Shards too. We’re a pretty decent gang these days, we’ve got our pride.

And not everyone likes that.

The governor’s son doesn’t.

Uh, I know- I found out what he did. From Markus.

And it’s looking like he knows we’re friends, because he’s challenged me to a duel. I’m saying this…

I guess because, if I die I don’t want you to get here thinking I’ll be around to greet you. Don’t want you to find out from some stranger that I’ve been dead for ages. And I know you’ll come back, eventually. You’re too damn crazy to die. Honestly, I need to figure out what your trick is. I…

I’m rambling.

Look I’ve got two weeks to train up. I’m gonna try my best to at least leave a mark on the bastard, y’know? And if you happen to have a miracle up your sleeve- hey, you never know. You were always full of surprises.

The words hit him in the gut like a sledgehammer. Tarquin was terrified, and worse, he was trying to hide it and put on a brave face. The sound of him trying to cover up his fear was like a nail scratching against Nic’s soul.

Anger wasn’t half of it. Nic was actually shivering in rage.

“How do I go home?”