Chapter 3

???

A dark place, somewhere between the worlds.

A shape was hanging in the void, trapped by innumerable chains, her gaze drifting softly through the universe. She was smiling lightly as she contemplated the newbies struggling with the Labyrinth, giving them vague advice as per the request of her master. Her eyes drove away from the young lady stranded in this empty shell of a hive, now taking an interest into another of the toys her master dropped here…

???

Beautiful. It was the best way to describe him. Soft skin the colour of caramel, tanned by the sun. Cheekbones made to smile. Deep and quiet eyes reflecting light like ponds of holy water, as black as his thick curled half-long hairs. This angel was quietly sleeping on a pile of trash, in a little back alley, appearing undisturbed by the cold and the smell, a peaceful expression on his face. Until…

“SPLASH !” Someone had emptied a bucket of water on his head, startling him.

“Yah get up, quickly !” She roared, prompting him to do it.

“Good, now go fuck yahrself elsewhere ! No homeless near mah house !” She kept going with the same tone, menacing him with her bucket.

What the fuck ?

The young man raised his hands above his head, showing that he wasn’t a threat before asking her something.

“Sorry madam, could you tell me where I am ?” He asked politely.

“Where yah are ? Yah are behind mah house and yah will fuck of !” She kept threatening him.

“No, i meant, what city is this ? What country ? Those kind of things…” He specified.

“What ? You’re in Kalastol mah boy…” She frowned heavily, looking at him more thoroughly.

“Mhhh, yah don’t really looks like a homeless and I don't recognise yah, yah’re not from here. Who are yah ?”

“Who am I ?” It was his turn to frown, trying to respond by digging deeper and deeper in his mind…

Mikael

“I’m named Mikael, madam.”

“Mikael, what’s that for a name ? Never heard before. Where do yah come from ?”

“I come froARGHHHH !” Mikael was suddenly interrupted by an humongous pain suddenly flooding his mind, giving him the impression that he was annihilated during an infinite time. A voice then resounded in his head.

Names. Significants symbols, evidences of some self-mastery. We name to understand, to stop being afraid, to be able to sort things. You know your name, Mikael, and for this I offer you your first fragment.

He fainted as soon as the voice finished speaking, catched up in extremis by the woman who had thrown her bucket.

***

Rays of sun where dancing softly on his face, disturbing him in his sleep, He turned around in his bed, adjusting the pillow his head was on.

He was so happy to be on vacation...

Wait.

He got up so quickly that he banged his head into the superior bunk bed, laying back down nearly as quickly, holding his head between his hands.

“Fuck !” He sweared powerfully.

“Well well, you’re always so spirited as soon as you wake up ?” Asked him a young lady with a singing voice.

What’s going on ? He asked himself, before remembering the quarrel he had had before fainting.

Kalastol ?

“Woohoo, do you understand me ?” The voice took him back in the real world. He turned his head to look at his interlocutor. She was sitting on a chair in a corner of the room, playing with a brain teaser in one hand, holding a book in the other. She was a redhead with long curled hair and freckles on her face like a starry sky. She had big round glasses from which she stared at him while timidly smiling.

“Ho yes, hello, sorr-ouch ! Sorry to not have responded to you.” He said, still holding his head with one hand.

“I am a little confused and not in my best state, I apologize.” As he kept speaking, her eyebrows started raising higher and higher.

“Woh, you really talk light a knight you know ? Apology accepted ! And banging your head while waking up shouldn’t have helped too, hahaha !”

“Thank you… What am I doing here ?”

“Ha ! When she saw you on the pile of trash, mom had thought that you were a homeless and she went to remove you from there, but she saw that you were strangely dressed and all and bam ! You fainted in her hands. So mom took you. She was concerned about the fact that you could dirty the home but you weren’t even dirty, so she put you in a bed and we called a priest to see if you were ok or not. The old Roger came in like a devil when he realized that mom had taken in a stranger from the street, and he auscultated you. By the way he auscultated you fully clothed because man, I don’t know what your clothes are made of, but we couldn’t undress you even after we tried for ten minutes !”

Mikael took two second to recover, dazed by those flurry of words which the young lady strafed him with.

“Priest ?”

“Heee, yes ? A priest ? You don’t know what a priest is ?”

“I do know what a priest is, but why not calling a doctor ?”

She looked back at him, trying to see if he was joking before realising that he was serious.

“Everybody know that doctors are dirty conman ! Well, nearly all of them, even if there is account of competent doctor for the wealthy, but here they’re all swindler with there strange science that kill more patient that it save ! At least Roger really heal with is theurgy !”

Mikael was as confused as he was skeptical.

“Priest use theurgy to heal people ?”

“Where do you come from ? Of course priest use theurgy to heal people, and not only that. It’s like asking if mage could create a fireball. Of course they can !” She responded passionately, raising her harms high up.

Mikael frowned slightly, sitting on the bed with his back bent, thoughtful. He stayed like that a minute, staring into the distance. After five minutes, the young lady had enough of it.

“Yo, you became mute or what ?”

“No, i was thinking.” He responded rightly, refocusing his gaze on her.

“So… magic is a thing, and so is theurgy ?”

“Yes ! It is this awkward for you ?”

“How to put it… I come from a place where those things does not exist…”

“What ? How is this even possible ?"

“I do not know, but it is true.”

She shacked her head lightly, not believing him

“How do you heal yourself ? And how do you do to have quick journey or to communicate ?”

“It will be odd for you, but we do those things with the help of science.”

She was going to retort when the door was heavily opened.

“I see yah’re awake in there, and not since two minutes ago, hé ?” Said the woman loudly while entering the room.

“I asked yah to tip me off when he would woke up.” She kept going while glaring dagger at the girl.

“No no, i assure you he just woke up mom !”

“He, well, yah’ve always been a curious one. Yah, come with me.” She said while pointing at Mikael.

“The old Roger want to see yah.”

“The priest ?”

“Yes. Chop chop, I don't have all the day yah know !”

Eleonor

She opened her eyes in the middle of the little room, in a fashion that started to become quite familiar, and got up to inspect her changes. She raised her hands, admiring the way that the bone armor plates overlapped, sliding and encasing perfectly into each others, not impeding the mobility of her hands in any ways while still protecting them efficiently. The bone structure was so beautiful that it could have been displayed in an art museum without anyone questioning it. Moreover, her breast had decreased in size and were now covered by some kind of chitin corset composed by the same material than her hands. She touched the ground, checking that her hands didn't lose any tactile sensitivity, which they had not, making her marvel at the fact that she did not feel any difference between her new and old hands. She then touched her head, trying to check the changes.

…?

She spread her hands along her hair, or what was now taking place of it. The feeling was closer of bony tentacles than hair, each one ended by a barbed tip.

Ok… this one is an odd modification but whatever…

She then tried to reach her back, feeling a long chitinous shell along her spine, with little outgrowths akin to shark fins, just tinier, bulkier and a lot more sharp. She smiled lightly, all in all happy with the changes of her body, even the ones of her head and breasts.

She then suddenly stopped moving, a little ball of dread gathering itself in her guts.

Why am I so calm ? I’ve freaking armored bone plate all over my body and I just find it nice ? What’s going on with me ?

She started to slightly panic but, as always, the world didn’t took long to take her back to her senses.

No, stop. It is true that you should worry, but you need to put first things first ! You need to stay alive to have the luxury of worry, and this goes by drinking and eating !

She had put herself together but, before leaving to explore a bit, she put her arm into the genesis pond, enjoying the pleasant feeling of the tar on her skin.

Genèse ?

YES MISTRESS ?

So, you can build objects or upgrade myself if i give you biomass, isn’t it ?

AFFIRMATIVE.

Good, but can you do other things with biomass ?

YES. WITH A SUFFICIENT AMOUNT OF BIOMASS, I COULD PUT SOME OF MY SYSTEMS BACK ONLINE.

Like what ?

TO BEGIN WITH, THE GENETIC DATA BANK, TO BE ABLE TO ACCESS OTHER MODIFICATIONS AND STRUCTURES, AND TO START RECOVERING INTERESTING GENETIC STRAINS.

Genetic strains ?

AFFIRMATIVE. THE SWARM AMASS USEFUL DNA STRAND SINCE THE BEGINNING OF ITS EXISTENCE. WITH A SUFFICIENT SUPPLY OF BIOMASS, IT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE TO RECONSTRUCT THEM AND TO APPLY THEM TO YOURSELF.

Not bad. We will see it in due time, for now I'll already try to not starve to death. See you.

GOODBYE MISTRESS.

She then took her arm out of the pool and started walking towards the door, not really steady, but not terrified either.

***

She was gritting her teeth, trying to contain the pain of her bleeding shoulder, putting all her might into squeezing herself through this tiny crack, her only hope of escaping the chase of the monster scratching the walls in an attempt to eat her.

“UARGHHH !” The creature roared madly, frustrated that her prey was so close yet so far of its grasp.

Please-please-please make that this crack keep going deeper ! She thought as her blood was pulsating strongly in her ears, her system so saturated by adrenaline that only one thought subsisted in her mind : to survive.

***

Arrived on the balcony, the young woman took some time to inspect the location. The platform she was on was bigger than what you could see at first glance because the walls weren’t regular and that they hid some part of it. As she was expecting, there weren’t any easy path to exit the platform, but she had spotted a wall of liana that went down to another ,very big this time, balcony, one with a little lake around which some local flora and fauna had developed. She tried to climb the liana down after having verified that no animals were close to her position, wanting to drink for the first time since she didn’t even know when. The start went great but, half way, she realized that the lianas were covered by sharp thorns which, interestingly, she didn’t spot until one of her arms got injured, her hand armor already sufficient to not even being bothered by those kind of things.

It took twenty more minutes of struggles before she finally arrived on the big platform, grateful to not have vertigo. There was no apparent animals around for the time being, but she still decided to squat down, disturbed for the first time by her nudity, mainly the fact that she didn’t have any shoes, big mistake because, unlike the first platform, this one wasn’t covered with flesh, making her feet hurt from the direct contact with rough stone and other unglamorous things.

Bah, i should have asked Genèse to put some armor on my feet. Well, no use crying over spilled milk, i will ask him next time, for now i need to stay focused.

Still squatting, she slowly approached the red water, before finally reaching it and starting to greedily drink. It had a taste of iron...no, of blood. Not unpleasant, all in all, but she would have preferred good old mineral spring water.

|You have ingested the corrupted red water. You metabolism is reacting favorably to it. Your natural regeneration is augmented for the next eight hours.|

Hé ?

A notification had appeared in front of her the same way her character sheet did. Character sheet that she was on the verge of checking when the voice started talking again.

Waters of this place always had a special charm to me, i must confess, even if they are a vicious and mortal poison for pretty much everything that is alive, including myself, and even death and inanimate things. Only creature derived from the Sauriot swarm and some other extremophiles can consume them without problems. The red water is the host of an interesting microbiota whose source can be tracked to the healing glands of Warnests, and grant an accelerated healing power, for those that can drink it.

Eleonor listened carefully to the information the voice was giving before trying to use this opportunity to make contact with her, in vain.

A pity. At least the info she’s giving aren’t half-bad. She thought before shrugging.

The sound of water tearing up, and a meteoric pain in her shoulder.

Her reflexes had saved her, avoiding her the destiny of having her head drilled side to side by making her raise herself just on time to not fully take the strike coming from the lake. Adrenaline poured like a flood in her veins, her instinct of survival taking the lead. she swept her vicinity in one look. Liana were nearby, but climbing them would let her too exposed for too long. She therefore started to run towards a crack in the wall she had seen from the corner of her eyes, not even looking back to jauge her assailant.

***

Which put us back in this situation, Eleonor contorting herself to progress in the crack and putting as much distance as she could with the predator chasing her. She pushed, pulled, bent herself.

Come on, let me move forwaoooow !

She felt in the hole the crack was leading to.

“Splash !” And painfully rammed into water, starting to swim frantically, making her head exit the water the sooner she could, then going to the little island sitting in the middle of the underground lake. This cave had arches worthy of a cathedral, with red water dripping everywhere, creating ripple through the surface of the lake. Arrived on the black sand, Eleonor took five minute to catch her breath. Her shoulder injury was already closed, maybe thanks to the red water. She stayed on guard for a full then minutes, staring intensely at the crack she came in, before finally starting to relax when she didn’t hear any more sound from the predator chasing her. She then took notice of the reason why she could see : the little island she was on had a lightsource. Well, the island was more a shoal than anything else, but that wasn’t the important stuff here. Some kind of shrine was erected on it, composed by an odd organic black material, and some kind of yellow-orange luminous gems was stuck in it, shining as if it was trying to banish darkness.

Ho ? Already ? I think you just pulverized the speed record to find a mnemohedron my dear. This one really is beautiful, I wonder what new capacity it will give you. Touch it, take it, hug it, put it against your head or whatever part of your body is meaningful to you, and absorb what one of your predecessor deemed worthy to left behind when he died.

Hypnotized by the voice, fascinated by the stone, she moved her hand forward without thinking. The small fragment felt into her palm as if it had its own free will. She took it and hugged it against her heart, the most natural option. She sensed some kind of will rubbing against her, like a paternal spirit teaching something to his only girl.

{The Hunt. Movement and Vision. Spotting your prey and swoop it in one decisive move, piercing it’s head or heart, twisting its neck, cutting of one of its legs or wings. See, Move, Harvest Essence.}

She felt the mass of matter formerly composing the shrine starting to melt, contorting itself to become a viscous blob that grabbed her hand, ascending her body, covering her yes and penetrating her superiors limbs. This process only took an handful of seconds before winding up, letting the place as if nothing happened.

Wow, what just happened ? Asked herself the young lady, only snapping out of her trance now.

What did i just do ?

|New abilities acquired : Abyss Eyes ; Black Hook.|

Wait what ?