Chapter 96: Riventread Preperations

Subject: Caim Location: Riventread - Outskirts Gire the Intelligence Division Tracer said the word grimly, with a dire glint in his light brown eyes. His short-curled, dark brown hair was still covered in red sand and rock chalk from his time underground. “Breachworm? What’s that?” Caim asked because the word meant nothing to him. The bewildered seeker stepped away from the edge. Gire was already jogging over, dragging him further to safety. Right now, they stood on a sharply pointed stretch of land where two fractures met. They weren’t quite at the tip, but it was still risky to be here if more land started falling away. The Tracer yelled for him to run and, together, they repositioned themselves. Both prepared in their own way to greet what was lurking below. Gusts of hot air rose from down below, like natural steam vents, but not nearly as hot. It came with a sort of "charred" smell, like when you scraped rocks together on a hot day. "I believe the thing is technically modeled after a hatchling, but a fledgling breachworm is still a breachworm. It can only take form in such a weakly saturated festerfont by absorbing the energy of all the other blightbeasts… Is that the proper explanation? Dekker would probably say something more appropriate. I don’t know. Not the time." Gire was mumbling hurriedly to himself while gesturing for Caim to follow him further away from the precipice. For someone who'd just crawled up from the depths of the collapsed festerfont, the man struck Caim as being remarkable for keeping his thoughts as calm and collected as they were. Yes, but even dying like this is preferable, Caim reminded himself, thinking back on his old life. At least here he was doing something. This world wasn't his original one, but it was real. The people's lives here mattered just as much here as they did back home. Why wouldn't they? Although, here he wasn't sticking his nose where it didn't belong. Not like before, with ARC, the resistance collective that Vera had so generously pushed into unwittingly starting a way. That wasn't exactly fair. Vera only gave them the means, but she knew full well where their ambitions would lead them. She must have suspected that billions could suffer from their meddling, that they were in over their heads. Was that what she was getting on about when she met me? Caim wondered, remembering the first conversation he had with the powerful creature. His head wasn't as muddled since she'd modeled his SLATE control device into a collar around his neck, so he could remember most things. For now. She was essentially ranting about power and control and how different forms of power were also shackles in their own right. It was a load nonsense. You can't shirk responsibility like that. If I had her power, I'd be different. "Hoh!" Gire grunted, realizing Caim had frozen in place. He grabbed Caim to him to pull him back further. Their boots crunched loudly on the uneven ground relative to the eerie quiet. It wasn’t near this world’s evening yet, but the festerfont’s violent thrashing had kicked up opaque clouds of red rock dust. Twisting energy circuits of unknown origin wound their way around the scarred landscape. The resulting atmosphere resembled an eerie sunset. Far away, the scores of diamondback beetles were still engaged with seekers who hadn't yet escaped. Caim silently summoned Scion and targeted the beetles in the distance. "Kill them", he ordered. Scion flew off and set about harassing the closest cluster. It wasn't long before it's quota was met and it dispersed. The attack was over so quick, Gire didn't even notice. “Is it… Is it going to surface?” Caim asked. The Tracer didn’t answer. He was still preparing, tightening ammo bandoliers over his lightweight armor, which was a black leather suit with pale blue accenting. Caim fumbled for the blightseeds in his pack and swallowed them by the handful. He fought through the revolting feeling, and kept shoveling them in by the fistful until they were gone. Gire looked at him in disbelief. Rather than say whatever was on his mind, he just shook his head in disgust. Before Caim could attempt to communicate that his body could actually make use of the accumulation much faster than most, he felt a change. Spellweaving Event Triggered Situational Priorities Detected [ Subject Trapped ] Adjusting Priority Queue

[ Subject in Danger ]

[ Error, No Viable Solution ]

[ Subject in Danger ]

[ Requisite Defensive Measures Beyond Current Growth Stage ]

Reassessing

[ Viable Options: 1 ]

Possible Solution: Mobility

Incubating This felt like something, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Accompanied by a low rumbling, the creature emerged. Had Gire not told Caim what he was looking at, he might have mistook this sight for a natural phenomenon, like tectonic plates scraping against one another. Spellweaving Event Advancing Sourcetech Unlocked [ Warp ] Residual Energy Available Shunting Partial Leftover Energy to Existing Routines Adjusting Priority Queue

Calibrating Catalyst: Flourish Variant

[ Maximum Targets: Increased to Ten ]

Calibrating Catalyst: Safeguard Variant

[ Maximum Targets: Increased to Seven ]

Hibernating An enormous strand of faded red burst from the ground. It was a creature with only the faintest appearance of a worm. The jagged and segmented carapace encasing the Blightbeast moved like living slates of rock. Soaring through the air, the head was adorned by four enormous spikes, jutting unevenly from the very tip and meeting in the middle. These four jaws twitched so rapidly that, together, it had the appearance of the vibrations of a drill bit. The head was travelling around the inner border of the festerfont's layers until it vanished from sight. When the tail end of the beast had completely left the hole it emerged from, the head had begun to curl back around. The length of the creature curled around the circumference of the border, overlapping by approximately a quarter of the way around. It was a very loose approximation. On the way back around, Caim had a better view of the spikes, seeing that they curved inwards around a maw of layer upon layer of rock-splinter teeth. He could only see the teeth between gaps in the spikes. Though small relative to the size of the whole, the gaps were wider than most of the festerfont's surface cracks. The teeth were irregularly sized, with some larger than a human, though it was difficult to tell from this distance, especially while the creature was in motion. Covering the worm from head to tail were scales. It screeched and fired off it's scales as projectiles, in all directions. These were the diamond-backed beetle blightbeasts Caim had seen before. They had been a part of the breachworm! Some of the projectiles embedded themselves in the ground far in the distance, while others hurtled towards the pair. Caim and Gire ran away from the border and dove for cover, only standing when the living scales had flown overhead and landed behind them. The breachworm slammed heartily into the ground, knocking them both over with the shockwave, having already encircled the festerfont’s border with its midsection to blocked them in. “This is why I wanted you to run,” Gire bemoaned. “Now the Guild won’t know what the disturbance is, why it happened, and what I advise them to do about it. Who knows how many more people will die before the festerfont is brought back under our control. Naturally, we will be the first.” Did anyone make it out? Some might have. Caim looked back at the first volley of scales, still advancing from a ways away. He pointed and concentrated. "Go." Scion materialized, immediately targeting the nearest scales. Caim looked back at Gire, who had crushed a pale blue shard, his body "breathing" in the crystalline vessel's expelled energy. Caim didn't know what that color did, but he hoped it was something helpful. I don't know if you care, but the other seekers were killed by a volley of scales, Caim wanted to say, but he bit his tongue. Gire hadn't seen the slaughter, and scurrying scale beetles were the only remnants of the incident. After fumbling with a metal object and strapping it to his torso, Gire bent low to draw twin daggers, long and black. He was whispering to himself, eyes glowing bluish purple with magic. "Void Cleaver." He saw Caim staring and glared back. "Don’t look at me like that. I can’t silent-cast like you. This is a dangerous spell, and it would be irresponsible to risk a rebound." "I wasn’t-" Caim started, but Gire wasn’t listening. He was only trying to figure out what the spell did. Given how it cast a shadowed discoloration on the Tracer's weapons, it must have been a weapon enhancement. "It hasn’t seen us yet. With any luck, it will move and you might be able to get away. I hope you know a mobility spell or two." With an excruciatingly slow speed and a wriggling path upwards, the breachworm's head rose above its segmented body. It stopped, suspended high above, four jaws opening and closing while it looked for targets. The worm’s dense carapace demonstrated its resilience against a multitude of boulders, cracking sharply as it repositioned itself. All the land within its coiled body was within its reach, and nothing on the inside could escape it now. Not without scaling the height of the coil, which was nearly half that of Maliscade's outer wall. Caim’s stomach dropped, and he began to regret staying. Maybe he could have survived the volley of living scales. Scion was ready again, so again Caim sent the metal construct on its way. Gire was still staring fiercely at the head of the beast. For some reason, it could not see Scion. He wondered if it could somehow sense that Scion wasn't alive, or maybe it just didn't care? A kind of mental cue tipped him off to the blightseeds doing their work, unlocking sourcetech power. Branch: Terra Category: Utility Name: Plate Another Utility? I guess it’s back to gaining her slow drip of underpowered superpowers. At least both Catalysts improved. But the description… Shouldn’t I be getting a little more to go on? He couldn't' spend time studying it now, but the information provided by the control collar didn't tell him much. "Have the smaller blightbeasts really stopped spawning? How can you be sure they won’t reappear?" Caim asked, but Gire was nowhere to be found. He was still alive, or Flourish would have reported the loss of a Beacon. The Tracer wouldn’t have fled and left Caim here, right? It wasn’t that he cared whether or not Caim lived, but he seemed to believe the best was locked onto him, and that he was trapped with it as long as that was the case. Wait. It can't leave the festerfont... right? Even if the normal blightbeasts had stopped spawning, they were still left with the beetles. There were just too many of them, and Caim didn't know how many the worm could spawn and how frequently. Even dormant, they were dangerous as missiles. Branch: Warp Category: Utility Name: Shiver Teleport to empty space, limited to a short distance away. Caim concentrated. This was another utility opening up, but the description was promising this time! And it couldn't be a coincidence that this could be considered his first "mobility" routine. But first... "Scion! You’re up!" Caim held out his hand and called his protector from the void, until it was floating above, awaiting a command. "Enemy, dead ahead." Scion acknowledged the target and darted forward. Watching the enormous creature, which was supposedly only a hatchling, Caim was in awe of the strange things he could find in this world. Then he remembered all of the seekers that had just died and he felt the cold grip of reality pulling him back down. In the edge of his visual field, Caim saw a shadow crawl atop the highest point in the immediate area. As it rose to stand on two feet, Caim recognized Gire's figure. The Tracer unclasped a small device from his side and began extending parts until it somewhat resembled a compact crossbow. It had been folded over into an almost unbelievably portable form. Gire turned to look at Scion flying off to kill the advancing horde of beetles, just as he was about to fire at one of them, and he froze in place. It was just for a moment, and he turned back to quickly loose a shot. This shot, however, was aimed at the breachworm's coiled body. The Breachworm is a threat, and he already knows I’m a mage. He adapts quickly. Most people are stunned when they first see Scion, but that was barely a few seconds. The fast projectile, though not nearly as fast as Scion's attacks, embedded itself in the creature’s rough hide, vanishing in the bulk of the target. Anything would seem small when contrasted with the creature that could literally wrap its body around the circumference of Riventread, with length to spare. Unfortunately, the damage was nonexistent. Sourcetech Command Unlocked Name: Queue Queue up a sourcetech's commands. Commands will be executed in the order in which they are entered. At present, commands in the queue cannot be modified once they are entered. If a command is no longer valid by the time is comes up in the queue, it will break the chain. At which point, the queue for the disrupted power will become inaccessible for a short while. Scion dispersed after dispatching it's targets. Caim wondered if the construct could even do any damage to the massive creature. The projectiles it fired were powerful, but they didn't seem like they could compare. Right now, there was still a small horde of creatures to dispatch. Caim crouched behind a nearby boulder and hoped Gire would be alright standing on his own while he took some time to learn what small pities Vera's system had just afforded him. Hopefully, these routines were usable in their current situation. "Sourcetech Command - Queue: Queue up a sourcetech's commands. Commands will be executed in the order in which they are entered. At present, commands in the queue cannot be modified once they are entered. If a command is no longer valid by the time is comes up in the queue, it will break the chain. At which point, the queue for the disrupted power will become inaccessible for a short while." This was complicated! The concept of a queue was not new to him, but he would definitely need to get used to making more than just moderately complex commands to Scion. The other routines didn't really seem like they'd benefit from the queue, but who was he to know what would happen in the future. There might be something to it that he wasn't seeing. Caim quickly queued up a number of identical commands to Scion, based on a rough estimation for how many of the scale beetles remained in the horde. With any luck, he wouldn't have to micromanage the summoning of his metal protector and he could focus more on staying away from the horde. "Sourcetech Routine - Shiver: Teleport to empty space, limited to a short distance away." This was the kind of mobility spell Gire had mentioned. Even so, Caim had no idea whether he could learn to use this routine effectively. "Sourcetech Routine - Plate: Conjure trans-luminous plates of equal size." This routine seemed to be a complete mystery. Maybe it was better to deal with it later. If it’s going to be a battle of attrition, Caim thought, maybe I should tweak Flourish a bit. He added a 10% endurance boon to each of them, reducing regeneration by that amount. The scaling wasn't exactly one-for-one, and higher settings seemed to activate more incredible effects. That said, 90% regeneration should still be able to mend most broken bones, perhaps more slowly and painfully, but just as reliably. The battle continued for quite a while, long enough to all but eliminate the horde of beetles and exhaust one of Gire's bolt bandoliers, to little avail. The creature was formidable, but this was a very visible fact. Halfway through, The Tracer had decided to stop attacking the breachworm and start helping Caim's Scion clear out the remaining beetles. Caim's queue had also ended, uninterrupted. Gire fired another bolt. This one was different somehow, and even managed to chip off a miniscule chunk of the breachworm's exterior. This was significantly more damage than he'd managed to inflict yet, but it was not nearly enough to pierce through to the presumably softer flesh beneath. It was enough for the creature to finally perceive him as a threat, however. The breachworm slowly lowered its head, opened its maw, and screeched with a deafening volume. It was swaying back and forth for a time, until it slammed down sidelong on the ground. Watching its head continue to scrape along the surface, Gire jumped to safely avoid the brunt of the attack. Unfortunately, the entire platform he'd been standing on was swiped out from under him, and he was suddenly tumbling down. On the way to the ground, he skillfully rolled to avoid bodily harm. Caim was not so strategically elevated, and he sprinted as fast as he could to barely get out of range of the wide attack that wasn’t even meant for him. His entire body hurt. He'd been pushing the limits of his fitness ever since he arrived in Shroud, but it hadn't been a long enough period of time to bring about the change he needed. How... How long have I been here, again? Not this again. The fragmented memories were supposed to be resolved by Vera's collar, right? No... It only delayed the inevitable. He'd forgotten that. "Pulse madness", was the overly-concerning label she'd given it. "Sourcetech degeneration" didn't sound much better. Caim felt a piercing pain through his head and neck, and he stumbled, just within range of the worm's aftershock. He slid, looking up at his partner, the Guild Tracer. Gire began aiming for the creature’s exposed head just as the ground began to shatter. That included the surface beneath Caim's body. Caim issued one last command before plummeting into the underbelly of the festerfont. Scion, fire into the mouth. It is more vulnerable there. Repeat this command ten times. Understood, it answered back. And with that Caim fell out of sight of the breachworm, into the depths.