Episode 16: Heroes of Karia Vitalus

Twenty four days.

Twenty four days spent hiking through the forest, mile after mile, every waking moment spent with Mokuzai and Kiyoshi glaring at me. Can't they find someone else to glare at? ... Besides High Dive.

At least we've left the jungle behind.
I really hate the jungle.

I could come to like the forest if I weren't having to hike through it for twenty four days straight. Una has taught me enough about how to operate here that I'm reasonably sure I could survive if I were separated from the group.

Still, twenty four days would be enough to make even Doctor Soren cranky. When we come over a rise suddenly and see a hundred meter tall redwood tree towering in the distance with a number of Prill camped out in front of it, my relief is palpable. To me, anyways. It takes me a moment to realize that I'm seeing living things and not fractals. ... the journal is starting to get to me.

We make our way down to them, and Mokuzai takes the lead. The Prill introduce themselves. One of them is Elder Moon. Mokuzai's mate. The thought is a creepy one. I don't have time to dwell on it. Moses introduces himself as a two-tailed digger. High Dive cites clan and family. Una is from the Reikoku nest. And I... am just Rei. The Prill seem confused, and it is awkward.

We are each given an escort. A caregiver. A guard. Male with female. Female with male. Fractals. Binary pairs. Relics. Vestigial. Archaeological. Redundant. Of historical interest only.
... The world snaps back into focus. My guard is named Ramora. Una has already retired to her tent with Maruko, Kiyoshi with Kiko, Moses with Zipporah, High Dive with Sings-Like-Frog. Ramora looks at me questioningly and I ask for soap and water. He brings it. I kick him out of the tent before I wash.

It feels good to be clean again. I tried to keep myself clean as we travel, but usable bathing water is not something we found every day.

Clean and dressed in the cleanest set of clothing in my pack, I come out of the tent in time to hear High-Dive saying very loudly that we need 'God-time,' and insisting that the Prill leave the camp.

It's always nice to know that no matter how rude you think you might be, High Dive is there to show you that you're not so bad after all. I smile faintly. Still, I don't like that word. 'God.' Whatever I may be, I don't think I'm a god, or a goddess, or anything else. They don't create gods and goddesses in laboratories. "I don't think it's wise to embrace the title given to us by such questionable sources," I say.

High Dive looks at me, clearly confused. "Who what now?"

"... Stop calling us gods."

Mokuzai nods faintly. "Thank you, Rei," he says. I can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not. I really wish I could read Karian thoughts, sometimes.

High Dive grabs a handful of some kind of gelatin desert that I'm pretty sure is supposed to be eaten with utensils, chomps it down, and swallows. "I don't know about you, but I glow green, leave trails of fire, and have a big green nine-tailed fox that eats demons for me. I'm a god."

I roll my eyes. I don't bother to tell her that if she were a deity, she would be a goddess, not a god. "Well, don't call me that, then," I say.

She shrugs.

There is some debate. The others don't think it's a good idea to approach the Grand Chantry. I don't see the problem. If the Grand Chantry is a resource we could potentially make use of, an intelligent enemy with the kind of overwhelming power our foe seems to have access to would destroy it even if we didn't go there, just to give us one less potential resource and one fewer place in which we could go to ground. It's basic tactics.

The others don't appreciate my input. Especially not Mokuzai. Did you know that your entire existence is expressed as a fractal, Mokuzai? ... No, I guess you didn't.
I don't say that aloud.

The Prill come back, and we eat. The thoughts of Moses and Kiyoshi are loud, but I ignore them. Even thoughts sound like formulas. Even voices seem like interlocking fractals. Predestined. It feels like everything that is said is said because it was inevitable. I wonder if it's the effect of studying the journal so much as it is Amaterasu? I know she wants me to feel this way. I know she wants me to see this. I don't like it much.

When I retire to my tent, Ramora comes with me. He has questions. "So you are... Rei?" he asks.

I nod.

"Just Rei?"

I shrug. What does he want me to say? That I'm the Empty Void? The Hollow Girl? No, I realize, he just wants to know about my family. So I tell him. I tell him a little bit about Biomade society. I tell him that we don't have fathers or mothers or families. I tell him that I was created in a laboratory. That five other Biomade were cloned from my DNA, each of them variations on the same genetic pattern. That we were unusual in that we were kept together and raised as a kind of family unit. My brothers and sisters. Malicious. Sever. Stitch. Nero. Aimi. Other Biomade aren't raised in family units. They're taken care of for their first two years by someone performing their civic duty and then placed in a school appropriate to their genetic predisposition.

I tell him that Aimi is the one Kiyoshi belongs to, and Ramora says that the Prill don't practice slavery.

I blanch. That's not what I meant. I tell him so.

I tell him about waking up suddenly out of a vast sea of thoughts and feelings and the horrified discovery that I'm not everyone else. I tell him of Mama Pain cutting into my head with knives both physical and psychic, making sure that I was real and not just a more stable gestalt. The pain felt pretty real, but that didn't satisfy her. She was rarely satisfied. I tell him how Mama Pain seared off bits of my awareness with psychic coals until I could only read the minds of people I was looking at. It was better that way: less of a security risk. Otherwise, I'd be reading the minds of everyone in a hundred meters of me all the time. I tell him about Doctor Soren, and about Home.

It's about this time that I realize that Ramora is staring at me in horror.

Why would he be horrified? "Something wrong?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "Maybe... maybe 'family' is a concept you can learn here, while you are with us in the Grand Chantry. Maybe that is what you can take with you when you return to your people."

I don't understand. I tell him so, and now there is pity as well as horror.

It's then that I notice a foul smell, like an open sewer line, or maybe a cadaver that has been left unrefrigerated for a few weeks.

High Dive bursts in a moment later. "Rei!" she says excitedly, "Danger! Enemies!"

I nod, and immediately rush out of the tent. My psychic knife flickers to life.

Outside, Una is flying overhead in her bird form. The smell is much stronger, and there is movement coming from the forest. My eyes narrow slightly. There's movement everywhere. Every... oh my First Minds.

The whole forest floor is writhing with insects. Worms. Beetles. Ants. All rushing away from us. Away from... something. The birds are gone. I can't hear any animal noises. The smell is getting worse. I look at Moses' tent, and immediately the feeling of some wonderfully rough bit of cloth scrubbing and polishing against my metal skin fills my mind, and I speak in his voice before I can stop myself: "Lower."

I shudder. Damnit. I don't have metal skin. *Moses*, I send to his mind.

'Huh?' he thinks.

*Moses, get out here. We're in danger.*

He seems to come back into a state of full awareness. 'Rei?' he thinks.

*Get out here. We need you.*

He comes.

Kiyoshi is easier to draw out of his tent. He emerges clad only in a blanket, Keibatsu in hand, and I wonder why it is that whenever we meet a new type of Karian, Kiyoshi inevitably ends up naked?

We have only a few moments to prepare. The insects are gone now. I make for the branches of the hundred meter tall redwood, as does High Dive. Una concentrates, and a brilliant blue light flares around her, accompanied by fresh, stink-free air.

A moment later, a dark presence crests the rise, and a thick black sludge that stinks even within Una's sphere of clean air pours over the lip of the rise and into the camp below.

Everything goes straight to hell.

My next clear memory is of falling. No, the tree is falling. The hundred meter tall tree I'm STANDING on is falling.

Fuck.

I see that the tree is falling towards the sludge-creature. I see that the sludge-creature is covered not just in sludge but in hundreds and hundreds of Zipsum corpses, and a sudden flash of inspiration comes to me: set the whole thing ablaze. Decomposition produces methane. Methane is flammable. Set the tree on fire as it goes down, leap clear, and watch as the sludge-monster burns itself out. Even as I raise my psychokinetic shield, I reach into myself and call the fire.
...
...
Nothing.

Nothing at all.

I experience a brief moment of panic, and before I even realize what I'm doing, I've leaped from the branches of the hundred meter tall tree and am soaring over the sludge-beast, blasting it with a pulse of psychic energy from my gauntlet. The pulse of pink light sinks into the sludge and disappears with a violent crackle.

The hundred meter tall redwood crashes to the ground with a thunderous roar.

I have a brief glimpse of Moses swamped by black sludge and Kiyoshi somehow freezing a large tendril of sludge solid with a swipe from Keibatsu, but I don't have time to marvel at this: three zipsum corpses connected to the main body of the thing by thick tentacles of ghastly sludge are flying towards me, their eyeless faces seeping with goo and pus and sludge.

I evade the first. I evade the second. The third collides with my psychokinetic shield and bounces off... yet something is wrong. The strength of my shield is diminshed. That shouldn't have happened. No arguing with reality. By this time, my hearing has returned after the crash of the tree.

I land feet-first on the far tree and look down into the seething mass of Zipsum corpses. I see the swirling fractal of their existence, and another flash of inspiration strikes me. I grin. I open my hand and summon a small sphere of golden light. "This could be a bit messy!" I call, and throw the sphere.

It lands in the center of the creature's mass with a sick schlurp. There is a muffled explosion, and then a sickening wet grinding noise, like a wood chipper cutting through a three month old, unpreserved cadaver. A whirlpool forms briefly within the creature, and then it splits in half, the sludge forming into a solid shape, leaving the decomposing Zipsum corpses whirling about within my ten meter sphere of telekinetic woodchipper.

I begin to regret having eaten dinner.

Moses glows now with an intense red light, firing a blast of intense energy into the sludgy mass even as fists of sludge beat fruitlessly against his form.

Kiyoshi fights like a god of war. Whirling, ducking, parrying, cutting, slicing. Keibatsu glows with brilliant silver light, and everywhere it touches, the sludge is sheared away, frozen, shattered, and crumbles to dust. I wonder if he feels it too, the joy of battle? My senses skitter across the surface of his mind, and I am disappointed to find only focus. Only the Void.

I can't see High Dive. I look for Una and Mokuzai, and my heart leaps up into my throat when I see them. Bleeding. Unconscious. Covered in black sludge. ... Old. Impossibly old. Una looks like she's in her forties. Mokuzai looks downright decrepit. I glance to Moses, and I realize that he too looks... old. Ten years. A wave of sludge washes over him. Twenty years. Another wave of sludge washes over him. Even the forest is dying everywhere the creature's ooze touches. Whole trees turn white and brittle and begin to fall apart. Kiyoshi alone seems unaffected.

I don't want to be old. I ignore the rising, terrified thought. There is work to be done. If that thing hits Mokuzai or Una again, they're dead. I call upon the Darkness, and the world dims around me. I leap for them, seize Una in a fireman's carry and Mokuzai in a telekinetic grip, and I run.

One thought echoes over and over in my mind: I can't let them die.

There is a flash of green somewhere behind me and the sound of Inari gekkering somewhere behind me. Gekkering. Una taught me that word.

I run.

There. The Prill. They've made it to safety. They eye me warily as I approach. I deposit Una and High Dive at their feet, and it is only when my darkness flows off of my friends, leaving them revealed there in the moonlight that I realize what I must look like to them: a vast, vaguely humanoid shadowy being with red-glowing eyes depositing a Prill and a Vorax from sheathes of darkness.

I don't care.

"Take care of them," I say. "Make sure they're OK. We might need them before the end." Then I lean down over Una, and a fierce anger mixed with fear rises up in my chest. "Una," I tell her, even though I know she can't hear me, "If you die, I'll... I'll let High-Dive cut off your fingers for souvenirs!" ... That isn't what I meant, but it will do.

I turn and race back to join the battle, but when I arrive, Kiyoshi and Moses have already slain the foe. "Is it...?" I ask.

Kiyoshi nods. His blanket is long gone, and I grimace. He doesn't notice.

It's then that I spot High Dive lying in a puddle of dissolving sludge, her fur bleach-white, her body withered, barely alive. I feel... sad. Angry. Mostly angry. I gesture, and she floats into the air.

She hovers above my palm all the way back to the Prill.

-------------

I awaken with the dawn. I do my stretches, my exercises, all the normal things that need doing to keep a healthy body in top condition. Kiyoshi is already awake, practicing with his sword. And not naked, for a change, which is a pleasant surprise. Moses fixed his Kimono last night. The others teased me for asking that Kiyoshi put on some clothes. They made all sorts of jokes about my reasons. I guess they probably can't know how impossible that is, but I don't tell them because I'm tired of people looking at me with pity in their eyes. But that's neither here nor there. Two hours later, I am settling into a familiar kata designed to upkeep my skills in the fighting arts when Mokuzai pokes his head out of one of the tents. He seems pretty grumpy. Moses and Una are awake a little while after that, and High Dive wakes up around mid-day.

They're all still old.

After I've bathed and eaten, I feel much better. The monster's stink is finally fading away. We pack up our things and set out for the Grand Chantry. It's big. I can't say for sure, but it might be at least half the size of Geneva Prime. Maybe more. The buildings are vast, carved into the huge petrified redwood trees, and it's beautiful. Nevergem formations are everywhere.

We are led to a grand hall where we are introduced to over a dozen elderly Prill. In the middle is an especially old man named Winter, carried on a bed.

Once we are done with introductions, we are each led away to the homes of our guards. Our caregivers. Our hosts. Ramora never looks at me but with pity in his eyes. It's irritating. Still, I'm grateful to be offered a place to stay.

Everything is sung here. There are songs for everything, and songs are everywhere. Even the doors open to song. I've never had much interest in music, but after this, maybe I'll look into it. It makes me think of... I don't know. Something good. Like Amaterasu at the exit to the mines, but without the hunger for blood and the need to destroy. I don't understand it very well. When we arrived, they sang some of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard, but it was very uncomfortable with everyone cheering for us.

The next day, Mokuzai looks really, really satisfied.
I don't ask.

Elder Winter calls for us. He is dying, and he wants to speak with us before he does. His house is small. He was the most honoured of all the Prill, yet he lived in no place of honour. Kiyoshi would have an apoplectic fit if someone did that to him, but Winter seems to like it well enough. He's so old his wrinkles have wrinkles, and he seems to recognize us. He tells us about our Destiny, and as he speaks, I can feel the fractals shifting again. I feel the threads of fate tugging at us. Directing us. I feel Amaterasu hovering over my shoulder, and I love/hate her.

When he has told us what he knows, that the burden of saving this world rests with us, that we will decide whether life continues to be, everywhere (no pressure), he lets us ask a few questions.

Una stares at Winter as if he were a First Mind incarnate, and nearly falls over when he gives us the mask of a thing called a Dusk Sage, which he says he knew before they left. It doesn't seem possible, but he says he's two hundred and seventeen years old.

I ask the question that's been troubling me: I tell him what Amaterasu wants of me. I tell him that I don't like what she's showing me, even though I feel the truth of it. I ask what he thinks I should do. Should I embrace what the Kyo-TeeShee say?

"Tell her to fuck off," he says.

I stare at him for a moment, stunned. I suddenly feel a great lightness, as though a mountain had been lifted off my back.

"Yes, that's definitely what I would tell her. 'Fuck off.'"

I grin. I like this old man.

Kiyoshi asks, "How do you end malice?"

Elder Winter tells him that malice only works if you accept it. "You might get eaten, but it might work to tell it, 'No thank you. Fuck off.'" He thinks about that for a minute, and then says, "No, you should probably just say 'no thank you.' 'Fuck off' would be falling into malice."

High Dive asks Elder Winter if she can have one of his fingers. Winter laughs, and Elder Moon goes pale as a sheet. I can't help but laugh. "Sure," Winter says. "When I'm dead, I won't need them any more."

Una asks about the mark on her arm. Winter tells her it's a part of the Cataclysm. I ask him about White Rock, and he says that looks like Cataclysm, too.

I find this disturbing. If I was made with White Rock, does that make me part of this 'Cataclysm,' whatever that is? When I hear Una talking about whether or not she should cut off her arm to make sure this 'Cataclysm' doesn't spread, I decide that maybe it would be better not to mention having been made with White Rock just now.

Moses asks if there's anything we can do to make sure that the people here at the Grand Chantry won't pay the price that the Gogajin and Zipsum did for helping us. Elder Winter tells him that deciding how the price is paid and by whom is part of our destiny.

I trail off into my own thoughts. Elder Winter continues answering questions. Something about the Stony One, whether the Dusk Sages created the Kyo-TeeShee, and whether we could trust the Kyo-TeeShee. Winter laughs at that last one. "Hah! Trust the Kyo-TeeShee? Never. Well, unless you're trusting them to do something horrible. You can trust them to do that every time."
In the end, our questions are exhausted, and he smiles faintly. "I have one more gift for you," he says. Una thinks the Dusk Sage mask is more than enough, but Winter insists. He begins to sing in a strange language that feels like... I don't know. I can't describe it. It's beautiful, whatever it is. A light comes up around him, and when it fades, Moses, Una, Mokuzai and High Dive have returned to their rightful ages, and Winter seems even older and more decrepit than he was before.

And just like that, it's over. As he shoos us out, I turn back, overcome with a strange, unreasonable affection for the old man, and gratitude for the help he'd given us, and me in particular. "Elder Winter, I'm sorry you're dying," I say.

He laughs. "I'm not. I'll be glad to be gone! Now go away."

I smile, and as we leave the home of Elder Winter, for the first time in nearly a month, I don't see a single fractal anywhere.

And High Dive got her finger after all.