Benjamin Vryce

He stood speechless for a moment, just looking out the door. while he was distracted, Nyx and Kali proceeded him out. His two fighters stood to either side of the door, flanking it and providing a little protection from the force standing opposite them. It was comforting to know that he had such devoted followers, but here, there wasn’t much they were going to do against a hundred juggernauts, and whatever the bigger thing was.

“What’s up Vice,” Jade asked. Moving up into the doorway and squeezing in closer to him than she really needed to. “Oh damn, is that a mecha?” She said, forgetting to rub herself against him.

Once again, Benjamin didn’t know how to feel about the knowledge Jade seemed to have about stuff he had always thought reserved for geeks, like him. Again however, now wasn’t the time to ask her about her interests. Mostly, because there was a giant robot, crouched down in the corridor. Mecha, was as good a descriptor as any he supposed.

“Sure, looks that way,” he said. Eyes sweeping the rows upon rows of juggernauts, some humanoid, most not, that filled the corridor to bursting. “Nyx, how did these get so close without you noticing?” he asked the demon woman, who he had placed on guard duty while he worked in his void space.

“My Lord,” she said, knuckles turning from red to pink from blood loss as she gripped her sword hilt. “I have no excuses, I didn’t hear anything, and will accept any punishment you deem necessary.” At her words, Kali also nodded her head. looked like she was volunteering for punishment as well.

“Hmm well, well, Vice.” Jade all but purred from beside him. “I can help you deliver a fitting punishment to these bad, bad girls if you want.”

“Jade, you didn’t hear them either.” He pointed out, refusing to play her games right now.

“Drumstick, what’s the game?” he said to the chicken, not wanting to waste any more time than they had already.

“No game, World Lord Benjamin. Lord Shipwright has done the calculations, if the rift isn’t closed today, a second rift will likely open somewhere else on the station. If that happens the odds of getting it contained are slim indeed.” The golden chicken replied without hesitation.

Well, that wasn’t good. No BS or bureaucratic double talk, he was sure the chicken wasn’t telling him everything, but it had shown up with an army. An army, that hadn’t opened fire on them as soon as they came into view. he didn’t really see how they had much choice here but to go along with this.

“Alright, Drumstick.” He said at last, checking on the condition of his team. He’d hoped for more time to prepare, but that wasn’t in the cards when the universe was falling apart around them. “We’ll do this, but I’m gunna need something from Shipwright in return.” He was going to do it regardless, but no point doing it for free, now that the prick of a World Lord had pushed things this far.

The golden chicken took a few steps backwards, getting closer to the protective bulk of the mecha. Another drone, a P.C.D. moved forward and deposited a small crate onto the floor.

“Lord Shipwright anticipated your gree… your request, Lord Benjamin. He has sent a sampling of three of his most prized patterns, that he has held deeply in his most protected vaults. For you to choose one for yourself.” The bureaucratic shit was starting to get deep.

Benjamin stepped forward and popped the lid on the case, there were indeed three patterns settled into a padded backer. Benjamin snorted when he got a closer look at them, most prized indeed, they were so thick with dust he could barely see their glow. Reaching down he plucked all three from the crate, over the protests of the golden chicken.

“Lord Benjamin, I must insist…”

“Listen Drumstick, I honestly don’t want to do this song and dance again. You know as well as I do that whatever these patterns are, its garbage compared to what Shipwright likely has stored around here. So, shut up already, it’s no loss to your boss and it might help me in saving the universe.” With that he slipped the patterns into his own case.

“Hey, Vice.” Jade started from behind him, “What about me, I want one of those…” she trailed off at his stare.

“Let’s find out what it is before we fight over it, ok Jade. If its too unacceptable, we might need to negotiate with the Shipwright for a better deal.” He cut her off, before staring steadily back at Drumstick.

The chicken looked uncomfortable, moving from one foot to the other. It opened its beak and closed it again a few times. Looking from Jade, to the still glaring Benjamin. Before finally giving in.

“There…might have been…ah yes. There was one more wasn’t there…let me just.” As he sputtered, another P.C.D. approached and dropped a second crate.

Benjamin stepped forward, opening this one as well. The pattern inside wasn’t nearly as dirty as the first three, but it still looked really old. Figuring it was the best they were likely to get without wasting more time he nodded.

“Alright, Sir Drumstick. Thank you for your assistance in this matter. Now, if you would lead the way?” he summoned ice as he spoke, the giant she wolf looming over his shoulder.

“Of course, my lord. I will provide security for the trip, so please rest and prepare yourself for the combat to come.”

Benjamin turned away from the chicken after the conversation, climbing up on the she wolf’s back. Reaching down, he pulled Jade up behind him. Looking back towards the small door he motioned his two fighters to come flank the wolf. They moved into place without question or complaint, taking up protective positions around their master.

“Hi, Ice. Looks like the showdown is coming up soon. Then we can really sit down and discuss the acorn world.” He said patting her neck as he spoke.

“Understood, my rider.” She replied in his head as always, “But I suggest you go check in on it now regardless. You might be surprised at what you find.” He frowned down at her; he knew Ice’s personality pretty well by now. If she was telling him to go look, he had better go look.

“Hey, Jade.” he said over his shoulder, as the procession started moving. “I need to pop into my Void space again really quickly.” He said, hoping she wouldn’t make a big deal out of it right now.

“Already? Damn it, you just spent hours in there.” She whined, not having heard Ice’s words as they had been addressed to him alone. “What could possibly be so important that you got to go check it out now.”

Thinking quickly, Benjamin settled on a plausible excuse. That he honestly wanted to do anyway.

“I’m gunna go check and see, what the Shipwright thought would be a good enough bribe to get us to go save his station.” He replied, knowing Jade was even greedier than he was.

“Oh, well why didn’t you say so? I got some soul space left now too, so you best be giving me at least one of those patterns, Vice.” She said, slapping him lightly on the shoulder.

He smiled at the light slap, before closing his eyes. Ok so maybe she wasn’t quite as bad as he was. At least in the Pattern greed department. Having made sure Ice and Nyx would keep an eye out, he moved into his void space. Trusting Ice, and to a lesser extent, Jade, to keep him in the saddle.

Opening his eyes in his void space, he didn’t immediately notice anything out of the ordinary. The aged copper acorn sat on his metal folding table, but at first glance looked the same as ever. Until he came closer and really looked at it, then he discovered that the seal had finally lifted. Reaching out with his, mind, or will, he didn’t know exactly he grabbed it and examined it. Reaching into his core for some essence to experiment with, he got another surprise.

Shifting his vision into his core space, he found there was another starlike core floating in the black void of the core space. There was the creation/chaos core, and a second one the color of sunlight through thick leaves. It looked much like his original core had, before he had compressed and spun it. Whisps of vapor floated around the outside and a slightly darker green liquid undulated gently underneath.

He pulled at the new core, and a thin thread of the forest green essence moved towards him. He examined it, not finding anything different about it, he pushed it into his body. It acted almost exactly the same as his creation essence did. Only, again he didn’t have the words…lesser? Smaller? That’s when he remembered.

The Erlking had explained once that the World Lords couldn’t access creation essence anymore. They were forced to use their world essence for everything. He flashed his vision over to the aged copper acorn, sure enough there was a thin line of vapor traveling from the world into the new core. did the World Lords have a core for every world they controlled? How much power did that amount to over time?

The feeling he had picked up told him a lot too, like most things the Erlking had explained to him, it didn’t make sense until he experienced it himself. He could do everything with this World essence, except effect things bigger than world level. Not much fit that category in the grand scheme of things, but fixing the rifts in the universe definitely qualified. That’s why they needed the humans, they had great power, but it couldn’t do the one thing that might have saved them.

After playing with his new essence for a little longer, Benjamin had to decide how he was going to use it. The thought of combining it with his creation/chaos core flashed briefly through his mind. he could just see the tricolored braided lines empowering his creations even more. No, world essence and creation essence were nearly the same, it would be a lot of work for little pay off.

For the time being, he settled on partitioning another part of his mind away to spin and compress the core. There had to be a step three and beyond when it came to cultivating essence. He had begun spinning the cores at the Erlking’s hint, then started to compress it down when it looked like it might fly apart.

He really looked at his cores, for the first time in a while. Originally, he had only the creation core. Locked away behind a seal. Until he solved that puzzle. It had been as wispy and undulated as randomly as the forest world core did now. After he began spinning and compressing it however, it was like packing a fluffy snowball down tight. The center had solidified into a stone like core for his overall core. Surrounded by compacted liquid and a thin layer of vapor.

Then the chaos essence invaded his system. Back when the disintegration bolt had hit him, killing most of his creatures and stranding the rest in his, then sealing, world seed. It had tried to eat him from the inside out. he still wasn’t sure how he had done it but instead of being eaten by the essence he had channeled it into his core.

The chaos wasn’t compatible with creation, it was like oil and water. Try as he might he hadn’t been able to combine them. that’s when he got the idea to make two halves of a core and spin them together around the same central point. Thankfully, it had worked, to an extent anyway. They still hadn’t mixed well. That happened later, when he was forced to empty both his cores or die.

The vapors that remained had been under such pressure that they had been forced together. As the cores refilled under the pressure and spinning force, exerted by his partitioned mind they were forced to blend a little better. The core was now, still mostly the glowing lightness of starlight and the darkness one would find in the absence of stars, but the center was a grey mix of the two energies.

The more he used his essence the more they mixed. He didn’t know how long it would take, but eventually he was sure that his braided, candy cane essence would become a uniform grey. He didn’t want to introduce any new forms of essence into that core and upset the balance, it had nearly killed him to achieve.

The spinning motion had the added effect of pulling in ambient essence at a greater rate then the core did naturally. Most of the ambient essence in the air was creation essence, but chaos essence came in abundance from the invaders, and each time he killed something, a small amount of chaos essence was released. He didn’t know what that meant, and chose not to worry about it, but all the chaos essence he generated was consumed by his core.

That brought up another unsettling thought, what would happen if all the rifts were sealed? If his dual essence cores continued to blend into one uniform core. what would he do if he didn’t have access to chaos essence anymore, Nyx at least was a mixed essence creation. She couldn’t survive with creation essence alone; would he be forced to kill things just to get the essence he needed to support his creations?

Moving his attention back to the new forest world core, he saw that it was compressing nicely. More of the vapor wisps were being drawn into the core and being compressed. He couldn’t do anything about the future, but perhaps he should think on how to keep that from becoming a problem. Maybe he needed to focus on learning the secret to making creation cores. Even if chaos essence dried up eventually, he could power at least a few creations with cores.

He sighed, he had been in here an hour at least, and hadn’t even looked at the Shipwright’s cast-off patterns. Taking one final look at his forest core, he turned his attention to the case that held his patterns and cores. He needed to do this quickly, who knew how much time he had before they reached the rift. with the escort they had, he bet they would make good time.