Vignette- Test of Dreams 3

Torrey stared at himself in the mirror. Where, in the beastial shape he saw was the dashing young Pathfinder, so ready to stride out and make his mark on the world. The well trimmed hair and clean shaven face were long gone. A sacrifice of opportunity. The essence of a bear had given him size, strength and endurance well beyond the human limits, but it had also given him an style that was unfortunately hirsute.

It was hard to be civilized and dapper when you were quite literally bestial. Even his ears were more rounded and had rotated towards the top of his head. His nose was more pronounced and rounded with the nostrils shifted towards the front rather than the bottom. His fingers had claws, not fingernails and his toes were the same.

None of these outward changes were new. He’d made his bed, and slept in it for several years now. But this was the first time that looking at them, looking at the signs of what was once his greatest success, had left him so full of hate.

Self Hate.

Hate or no, it was time.

He straightened up, as much as he could considering his more predatorial forward posture, and stalked out of his quarters, giving a regal nod to the two guards, one sporting a pig's snout and the other a set of whiskers. The route to the meeting room was short, but not so short that the animalistic features he saw at every turn didn’t repeatedly hammer into him like nails. To make it even worse he smiled, nodded regally, or greeted them cheerfully. All the requirements of a leader. You could doubt, you could hate yourself, you could not know what the fuck you were doing! But you could not show less than complete certainty to those who followed. They needed you to be strong, to be confident and in control. That was the only way they could feel safe.

Even when that safety was a lie.

Especially when that safety was a lie.

He had made many mistakes in the last 4 years, but that lesson at least he’d not forgotten, not failed at. Approaching the meeting room's door, he steeled himself, and hoped that another of those old lessons remained with him, enough to see him through the coming moments.

“At ease.” He barked, before the waiting men and women could fully stand. The trapping of power were important beyond just stroking his ego. Everyone knowing their place allowed them to know where they fit in the scheme of things, and what was expected of them. It shored up order and gave confidence in a time when both those things were desperately needed. But today of all days he couldn’t bear to receive their obeisance. With a nod of his head the door was closed and sealed.

He strode to the front of the room, taking his time to look around at the nearly 100 attendees. Every face showed some degree of animalistic influence, from cat ears and whiskers to porcine snouts, wolf-like canines or ursine clawed paws. All of it, his fault.

“It’s just us today, and I need to start by saying something to Bugle.” He looked at the older man, abundant greying hair, both on facial and on top of his head, incapable of hiding the bear like round ears and snout. “I’m sorry. You were right.”

The words hurt. Not just the pain of saying them, but the knowledge of what they meant for the entire hold. They were a death sentence, but perhaps, just perhaps, not for quite some time.

“For the rest of you, 3 years ago when I created the animalism blood pools Bugle begged me not to step into them myself. He told me that I could not be spared if something went wrong and volunteered to be the lab animal himself.”

“I refused. I would not have him or any of you try out a magic I was not willing to try myself.” He sneered with hate. “I felt so noble saying it. But my so-called nobility has become merely self righteousness and we will all have to pay the price. My magic has plateaued. Some of you have been stuck at mid tier 2 for quite some time and I barely made high tier 2. Every experiment I've run tells me there's only one solution. To cleanse myself of the acquired bloodline and start over.”

The silence was painful, a room full of pain he could barely face, and yet could not turn away from. The so-called solution was nothing of the kind.There was a special pool for cleansing problematic bloodlines. Sometimes it didn’t take right or their was a bad reaction. Either way they had a method. But it took months to fully remove the bloodline, and more months to slowly recover from the damage left behind. Months of sitting in an expensive solution of limited availability. All to be ‘cleansed’ back to the very bottom. Powerless and useless. At least 2 years from there to make it back to tier 2, many more to get back to mid or high levels of the tier. For the cream of the crop of the holds defenders to have that kind of power drop, they would not survive it.

“So here we are, far stronger than the beasts that surround us, for now. But as time goes by we will fall farther and farther behind the curve. I gambled on early, quick strength and while we haven't lost the hand yet, it is coming. To all of you, this is my fault, not yours.”

His fists clenched, blood briefly lining his claws to tear through the solid stone lectern as denials rang out across the room. They loved him still, despite everything. And that made this moment so much worse. His failure burned inside him like acid.

“Lord, may I speak?” Bugle stood up, respectfully bowing his head.

Torry quickly gestured for him to continue, he’d earned far more than just the right to speak through these years.

“It may have been the wrong choice, but it wasn’t worthless, the decision you made. We follow you because we know you will always be at the front of the pack. The first into battle and the last out. That doesn’t go away just because it wasn’t the right choice. It bought us loyalty and unity. It was not grandstanding!”

“Hear hear!” Echoed out from the massed men and women before him. It didn’t help though. They absolved him of the crime, but could not forgive him. They could not because it wasn’t just them who would pay the price. The entire hold would. And yet he could not help but take advantage of it.

He had no choice, not if he wanted to give the hold a chance at life.

“Thank you all. But I didn’t call you together for your forgiveness. I neither deserve it, nor can bear the weight of it. What’s worse, I’m here to ask you to give even more. Not for me, but for this hold and the only spot of hope I can see.”

He grit his teeth desperately keeping his eyes dry and upper lip stiff. “We are strong, very strong compared to what is out there right now. But you have all seen the trend. With time everything around us is growing in power. Our current best guess is that we have a year before we see a Tier 3 evolve. And that will be an isolated event. The average in the areas around us is barely low tier 2.”

“Before that changes, while my strength remains above them, I plan to go out into the jungle and slaughter every predator I can find. Every hog, every cat, bird, rat, bear or dinosaur. I’m going to slaughter them and feed the choice bits to the children. Those I haven't yet tainted with a bloodline. Everything else we burn to keep it from the scavengers. And I’m going to keep doing it till those scrubs grow enough to finally get me. In that time, the time only we can buy, the hold might produce a new Pathfinder.” A new hope for the future, and the rest of the children would have to use the bloodpools, turning themselves quickly into mid level enforcers to give that pathfinder time to grow.

And that burned even worse, his failure’s would remain, giving the hold a constant supply of sacrifices with no hope for improvement. A poisoned branch sticking out from the side of a cliff. But they might survive the poison, they would not survive the fall.

“I don’t have the right to ask,” he reiterated, “but I must anyway. Who will join me?”

His stiff upper lip quivered and his dry eyes grew damp as to a man, they stood up and took a step forward.

Chapter 15

The crash of two hogs, weighing in at over a ton apiece, slamming into each other rang out like a Mack truck hitting a brick wall. It wasn’t just loud, it was painfully so. But while it was painful for Timothy, it was much more so for the beasts involved in the collision. It was a myth that hogs were immune to impacts. They were only mostly immune. They could absorb the energy instead of feeling it, but the tank they absorbed it into had a maximum capacity. When that value was exceeded you got what Timothy was tempted to call a hog-more.

The example of that phenomena in front of him was everything he could ask for, the loser of the collision, the one with an even slightly smaller tank, was currently decorating several dozen square yards of forest floor. Not a bad return for a small, cheap illusion.

He grinned even wider as several other beasts around the edges of the passel collapsed without obvious causes. It was a hell of a distraction after all and Timothy was not his brother. He didn’t have the ability to slaughter an entire group by himself. That's why he made sure he wasn’t by himself.

It had taken a bit of finagling, but things were starting to get back on track. The thresholds had been getting a bit spoiled. Understandable really, no one wanted to risk casualties when a safe, easy method existed… But it couldn’t go on. The thresholds were designed to allow guerilla warfare against invaders. Loads of illusions and visual traps to hide the defenders and allow them free shots. It wasn’t perfect, after a few attacks most beasts would stampede, most of the time that was pointless. They couldn’t see their attackers so their stampede was in the wrong direction.

But most was not all. And they only had to get lucky once.

So they started letting Regi deal with it. That worked, though it didn’t teach them anything, while there were only a few thresholds active. Regi could manage the load. This was no longer the case. With 52 currently active, it should have stopped long since.

Thankfully it was a mistake of ignorance, not of laziness. When they were made aware, quietly and to the leadership only, of the strain that was putting Regi under it scared the hell out of them. Knowing Regi was there was a warm security blanket. The thought that he might collapse from overwork was not something they were willing to countenance.

And that led to today's teaching moment. Irony that. He’d thought he’d mostly moved past teaching and it was time for more direct magic. Not so much. None of the spells he was using were from his own private stash. They were the weapons he’d built into the thresholds at their creation. He was just showing the Cardea how to use them creatively, and Arthur (Iron Spine to them) was running the rest of them through a down and dirty course on defensive warfare.

“It slipped through on my watch and I take full responsibility for this failure. And I take full responsibility for making damn sure that it doesn’t continue!” He’d admitted, if you could call standing at attention and barking admitting, to Timothy several weeks ago when these things first started to come to light. Timothy smiled at the memory, it wasn’t often that he didn’t get the short end of the stick with the Older nom-con turned Commander. His pithy common sense had a way of… well, pithing Timothy.

Of course, the grin fell from his face at the thought, the prize for being on the right side of that situation was a massive amount of extra work. Instead of popping a projection into the thresholds currently undersiege and throwing spells out like a spastic sprinkler he was instead traveling down the line of defensive fortifactions with Arthur (and bodyguards) giving lessons, advice and pointed reminders about sticking up for themselves and solving their own problems if possible. At least giving it a solid try before running to daddy for help.

The remaining bit of time while Arthur ran his drills was taken up by making sets of tunneling enchantments. The initial testing for plan Labrinth had come back highly positive. It would still take quite some time for the tunnels to take form even working from both sides towards the middle, but it made sense to make the enchantments while he was here.

“Nicely done!” He clapped the southern Cardea on the back. “Just next time make sure to damp down the claurodionce spell ya? My ears are ringing.” Considering that the other 3 Cardea were currently wincing and rubbing at their ears behind their identical masks he didn’t think they’d be forgetting that bit anytime soon. Pain was an excellent teacher, even better than he was!

The pool of blood in front of them was alive with the beasts and the numerous defenders swarming around them. What it didn’t show very well was the nature of the illusions that hid those defenders. Something he might have to create a hotfix for. It was damn nerve racking seeing your people that close and vulnerable.

Then again, maybe he shouldn’t fix it. A constant reminder for the guys running the show of how fragile life could be. The people out there risking their lives could see the illusions just fine, a simple keyed amulet temporarily allowed them to see what the beast saw as a ghostly overlay of the real world. They were only good for a day as a security measure, but it made for a hell of an ambush.

Timothy winced as one brave bastard snapped a coup stick from ‘inside’ a tree, striping the beasts spirit from his flesh without leaving more than the most minor of bruises (Just because the Cardea couldn’t see the illusions didn’t mean he couldn’t, scrying was a specialty).

“Now how do you plan to end this?” Timothy rubbed at the goosebumps on his arms, the damn coup sticks gave him the willies.

“Get the high tier 2 beast to charge a rock then team attacks to pierce his aura?” The eastern Cardea chimed in.

“Was that a question or a statement?” He’d figured this one out with teanagers. People just needed confidence, right or wrong they had to do it full throttle. And if he gave too much advice, too many suggestions it just delayed the formation of that confidence.

“Statement.” The northern Cardea spoke firmly, then began to organize several of the highest tier teams, instructions and signs were quickly arranged, then sent out with messengers. A bit slow that way, but brotherhood bonds weren't magic… Well actually they were but…

Dammit!

He started the thought over. There were limitations. Without Regi directly involved only groups who worked together regularly and had a great deal of loyalty to each other could merge their magic. That included a bit of emotional feedback but it was a rare group that could manage actual speaking over the bonds. Something to look forward to, Timothy mused. They’d figure it out eventually. That or something like blood brothers might crop up. Either way it was an issue for later. For now reports only went directly to the boss… and he had far too much on his plate already to play messenger. At least not without a damn good reason.

Still, they had the time. The defenses were working as designed and the slow bleeding the passel would take a while longer anyway. He winced as a swirl of illusion took the form of a human between five enraged and highly frustrated hogs. The resulting collision had all the grace of a train wreck. But the distraction also resulted in another dozen hog deaths.

It was a nail biting 30 minutes before the last of the minions went down. 30 minutes and what would have been a death without Arthur’s timely intervention. Timothy, having heard the lecture more times then he could count, spoke the words aloud for the benefit of the Cardea (they’d muted the clairaudio spells). “Concealment is not cover! They can’t see you, but if you were behind a tree or rock, or in a damn trench or up on a damn limb then they can’t reach you! But did you take cover? No! You stood out in the open and begged fate to bugger you! Congratulations, fate agreed!”

The masks unfortunately hid their reactions. A pity that. It was usually good for some outrageous looks. “Sometimes, people get excited. They move juuuust a little bit out to get a better view or a better shot.” He paused and his joking tone turned graveyard grim. “Then they die.”

Still, at last the main event was up. A massive beast remained alive. And it was pissed! But then, it was the enemy and it was losing. You could hardly expect that to make someone happy. He didn’t mention that particular bucket of snakes. Tiered up beasts were someones. Not just something like their smaller, weaker, dumber relatives.

That didn’t make them any less of a threat. No. Intelligence backing powerful magic was the true threat. But even humans could be tricked and trapped. And despite his elevated brain, he wasn’t at that level yet.

He snapped sideways and threw himself forward towards the sudden almost hidden pocket of scent. The bait was snagged, a sweat soaked scarf tossed over a large boulder. And then the hooks set in. Four full groups of between 6 and 10 members each combined their attacks to hit within two inch circles on the momentarily halted boar. And as designed, they punched through his already exhausted aura and into the flesh beneath. Bucket sized wounds erupted behind his forward legs on either side. His rage let him spin for a moment, screaming out his defiance. But shattered internal organs could not be ignored for long. At last it collapsed and the forest descended into silence.

It was over.

All but the cleanup. Timothy grimaced, looking at the blood and viscera strewn grounds that extended for a good quarter of a mile. Cleanup was going to be a doozy.

“Lovely day for a hike, don’t you think?” Timothy looked sideways slyly. Speaking wasn’t a great idea out in the wilds, but the small group of Arthur, Timothy and eight bodyguards were currently situated on a limb some 60 feet above the jungle floor with a sound ward enabled. It still annoyed Arthur though. Which was partly why Timothy did it. There was only so much of hand signs and poker faces that he could take. Sure it was dangerous, but it was also magical.

The twilight splendor spread out before them, well displayed from their elevated perch. Bright colors from a riot of flowers and fungi were somewhat muted in the lack of direct light even as a wispy, ground hugging, morning mist gave the surroundings an ethereal cast. Way back when Timothy had worried that a perennial lack of bright sunlight would cause anxiety and depression for the jungle dwellers.

That was then. He’d been so ignorant. Sure the lack of light could be depressing. But they weren’t living in a dark box. The jungle at night was still far more brilliant and intoxicatingly beautiful than the prairie was at high noon. A common bioluminescent fungus left a glittering glow frocked on the tightly interwoven hanging vines and towering trees. Silver lantern flowers with spreading buds bigger than Timothy’s head caught the glow and reflected it across the grounds. A tight patch of the things was like an escher painting, light reflected from mirror like surface to mirror like surface in a dizzying spray of color that left streaks and lines that lingered in the vision even after looking away. No, even in the darkest part of the night there was light here.

The glow in the dark frosting was beginning to fade out as a sprinkling of morning light fought its way through the ever present canopy. The few remnants shone through the mists in disorienting approximations of life. Like the very stones and trees stared at you with glowing eyes. It made the shinto stories of a god or demon in every bush, forest giant and boulder all the more believable.

“Come on Iron Spine, you can’t tell me this view doesn’t refresh your soul and inspire your spirit? It makes even the tedious humdrum of these training operations worth it. Just for the opportunity to catch a morning like this.”

A resigned snort was all the answer he received. No real surprise there. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Old grind ‘em and gut ‘em might look the part, uninterested and impassive; but underneath that crusty exterior… Everyone enjoyed a bit of beauty. They just didn’t have to wear it on their sleeves.

A tap on the shoulder and a half dozen quick hand signals had Timothy quickly putting away his canteen, tightening the various straps and laces on his gear, then dropping the sound, smell and cat detection wards. The large passel that had forced them to climb a tree so early in the trip had moved on and it was time for them to do the same.

There was a time to poke at Arthur and a time to get in line. It didn’t pay to forget that the fungus that enlivened the night was voracious. Devouring dead bodies in a few weeks and occasionally getting in peoples lungs to eat them from inside. Every threshold in the area had detection and fungicide chambers just to deal with it, but that only worked if you caught it early. Likewise the silver lanterns lived in symbiosis with the fungus, trapping beasts in hundreds of reflections, leading them in circles until they collapsed as yet more plant food.

Lightly jumping down into a motion absorption field they darted off into the gloom, senses on high alert as they watched out for a thousand different ways to commit suicide. From nearly transparent wire grass, a closeline capable of beheading a man if he was moving fast enough, to glue fines and acid ferns. And that was just the more notable deadly plant species. The detection spells repeatedly snapped out as well, looking for the more mobile dangers.

Just another day in the jungle. Death and beauty stepping off to waltz. A barely felt return from his sensing spell had him twitching almost before thought could occur. Snapping up a motion ward mid air as a large cat, only ‘visible’ from the return of his spell, dropped from above. The ward stopped its head mid fall, but not the rest of it. The greenstick snap that followed was worse than fingernails on a chalkboard, but it didn’t slow Timothy’s response. They were fast traveling without luggage dollies to slow them down but for the cat to get so close without detection it wasn’t low tier. He snapped out two rods and a sack, stabbing the first rod into the beast's flank. He got a good sample of flesh and hide and after a quick check for contaminants activated it to remove the bones and organs. The second rod filtered for liquids, quickly draining the remaining blood. The sack was a pre enchanted preservative affectionately called a Baggins after it’s inventor. Then again he was called Baggins because he invented the sacks so that might be putting the cart in front of the horse.

Either way, the much lightened beast was bagged and they were moving again in under 30 seconds. Timothy’s own small adjustment to the Baggins sack had a Hovercroc skin lining on the very bottom. It didn’t reduce the size any like some wuxia space sack, but it did reduce the weight, at least as long as the liner still had a charge. That might be an issue soon, he’d made the damn things back in runehold and they hadn’t been back for charging in weeks. The charge on most of them had long since been expended.

Timothy pushed the thoughts away, the remaining sacks would last as long as they lasted and he didn’t have time for woolgathering now. He snapped a removal field around a patch of wire grass ahead of them, leaving the pulped remains in a pile behind them without slowing down.

Definitely needed to keep his head in the game. In time the run would end and there would be a new threshold to convince. Boring humdrum, that's why they called it work! But in between he had beauty and a chance to see more of the wonders of nature.

All in all, life was good.

He would just need to work to make sure it stayed that way.