by Aer-ki Jyr
As he followed it he realized it wasn’t moving. Normally the scurriers were always roaming, meaning he didn’t have the luxury of tracking down a fixed position. He simply had a range finder based on how loud it was and he had to keep at it or the sound would diminish as the scurrier moved away…and they always seemed to move away. Not one had ever accidentally come towards him, and he’d tried laying in wait until one did. All that resulted with was his passing out on the ground and him waking up in the hallway outside the training area feeling like an idiot.
But this odd chirp was still, so it didn’t take him long to get close, but when he began scanning with his directional Pefbar-like energy cone he couldn’t find anything. The chirp remained, loud and close, but there was nothing here but rock and trees and a nearly constant hot fog covering them all. Puar traveled down several little canyon offshoots, coming to dead ends that led up fairly sheer walls, but the scurriers had never climbed. They always stayed on the ground and ran for little tunnels at their height that would lead them through the rocks and out the other side.
But this chirp was coming from higher up, though he couldn’t find out where. Puar roamed around the approximate area for some 20 minutes before an epiphany hit him and he began to climb one of the thick trunked trees, with his claws pulling off bark as he did so, but he managed to get up one and through the canopy enough to poke his head out the top.
He could see the sun overhead through the thin fog…or rather what looked like a sun. They were indoors and could not see the Temple’s central light source, but this was the wrong color anyway. It was yellow with a hint of green, and far too large. Still, he’d never been able to see it before because the fog never relented enough to get a view of the sky.
Up here it did, and as he took a moment to look up he caught a glimpse of rock to the right that quickly disappeared back into the fog. He waited longer, then saw another bit of view appear as the clouds up here didn’t seem to be as omnipresent…and they were moving. Waiting paid off, for he caught another view of treetops higher than his and a rock wall.
He needed to get higher, and that tree he’d just saw might be enough. Locking it in his memory he climbed/slid back down with his larger mass not well suited for tree climbing, and the tree suffered for it, but his fur slid over the rough bark protecting his skin for the most part, for one hardship of these training challenges was that you had to enter with little or no clothing. Trigorma didn’t usually wear much in casual life, but their traditional armored suits would have been very useful here…which was why he was sure that Star Force had banned any such accoutrements other than the swimming gauntlets that he still wore.
Going off of memory, Puar moved through the underbrush…crossing one trail going the wrong way…and got to the base of a clump of trees. He looked up and used his Fremmav to see which one was tallest, then he began climbing, having to squeeze his body between two of the lower trunks that had actually twisted around each other before splaying out further up.
The tree moved on him higher up, for the trunk was not as thick at the top, but it held enough for him to pull his head up into thin clouds where he could see a great deal more. They were clumping and moving around, but the gaps between them were large and if he waited long enough he could see everything…he just had to remember what it was, for he never got a complete picture.
And the area where he remembered hearing the chirp, which was gone now, showed that the rock walls actually led up to a plateau. It wasn’t very large, and he didn’t know if that was for sure where the chirp had come from, but it was above most of the fog and he wanted to get there just to explore even if it was a waste of time. He’d been in here so many times, and probably would be for months, if not years to come, chasing the damn scurriers who seemed to get faster each time, that he needed to know the terrain as well as possible. So that’s where he was going to, if he could find his way fumbling around in the fog.
His Fremmav couldn’t reach that far through the fog. Somehow it was reducing the range, which he only realized now that he was up this high and had gaps to search through. Water shouldn’t do that, and now he wondered if the fog wasn’t laced with something that interfered with his psionic.
“Clever design,” he said in his native language, not sure if he wanted to meet and congratulate the people responsible for creating this training level or take a swipe at them, for they’d truly created a frustrating challenge to overcome.
Puar was intent on figuring out what this ledge was, so he tracked the base of the rock as close as he could, then he started looking for clawholds with his Fremmav. There wasn’t much available. The walls were pretty sheer, but at a slight angle that should make climbing possible…though his limbs were already heavy from the excessive heat and the tree climbing he’d just done, which would be easy compared to this.
The big cat took his best guess as to which wall to climb and started with a few temporary paw grips until he found one that satisfied him, then he began to slowly climb upwards, hearing the faint chirp again.
On the way up he slipped twice, but neither resulted in a fall. Having four limbs helped greatly on the wet rock, for when one lost grip the other three usually were enough to hold him, but he knew he didn’t have enough grip to actually jump from, so he had to inch his way up and sideways whenever he reached an area that was impassible.
Puar’s tongue lashed against the rock on occasion, a result of him panting heavily as his lungs felt full of heat that he was struggling to get rid of. Humid, hot air interfered with heat dissipation, making it hard for him to control his temperature even with the panting, but he wasn’t going to let this go. If he fell and hurt himself Star Force had the technology to repair his body. Again, it would be him doing it to himself rather than someone knocking him off into fall, but the result would be the same. Yet this was his choice, and his will got a little stronger every time he chose to face the danger, and that was something a victim would never understand.
Suddenly a gust of air blew into his face and he felt instant relief as the fog cleared, but only for a moment. Another wet, grey mass covered his black/white face a moment later, almost making him cough as his panting suddenly worked then was suppressed again…but this meant he was close.
Puar focused on his small clawholds and continued to move up until he hit a ledge above him which stuck out enough that he could go no higher. Rather than give up and go back down, he traveled to the right as far as he could before hitting another wall blocking his path. He reversed course and moved back to where he came up, then on to the left, eventually coming to a crevice between two walls that converged on each other from near angles.
There were no clawholds in there, meaning another dead end…unless he could use double pressure to hold him between the sides of the pinching walls.
That was risky, especially with everything being wet. His fur was very slick, but if the rock had enough irregularity to it then maybe…
Puar got himself over as close as he could, then reached his tail across to the other side to apply a little pressure. He didn’t have much muscle in it, but when balancing every bit helped.
He got as good a hold as he could with three paws, then he leaned across with the other knowing that if it slipped he would go down, but after a 3 inch skid his claws caught on something and saved him from falling. Pushing with that leg he had pressure on both sides of his body, but at an angle. He had to carefully pull another paw up and move it further into the crack and gently add pressure there, for too much would pop him out of the gap due to the angles involved.
He moved only inches over the following few minutes, panting heavily as he went, but eventually he was off all the clawholds and pressing his back against the far wall with a paw wedged into the tightest part of the crack. Once he got into that position he was able to climb faster, from his perspective, but it was still slow from the viewpoint of the trainers watching his progress in the observation center…but Puar didn’t know that, nor did any o
f the other trainees that worked their asses off in this chamber and others day in and day out.
The crack between the two rock walls continued up several meters until the edge of the ledge that had stopped his previous ascension appeared. When Puar got a good clawhold on it he leapt with his back paws against the far wall and pulled with his front pair on the ledge, catapulting him up enough to get his chest on the edge and leave his legs hanging out over nothing.
He clawed at the ground, tearing up soil and grass to get the traction he needed…all the time wondering how there was grass growing up here without sunlight getting through the fog, but when he eventually won out on the tug of war with gravity and slithered his way up and over the edge, he realized that the sky directly overhead was clear, with only a few clouds moving around laterally.
Puar rested on the small ledge, seeing nothing up here but still hearing the odd chirp coming from no particular direction, yet the view was worth it. He could see the tops of several trees poking out of an ocean of clouds, with several roaming grey masses moving around as if they were ships on that sea. Large rock walls were also visible on the far side of the canyon, and for the first time he was able to see the massive waterfall that was producing the creek. It was falling down from a section of rock far off in the distance. It had to be more than a mile away, making him wonder just how big this training level actually was.
He thought he’d explored it all on foot, but from up here it looked like there was a great deal more…but inaccessible by ground?
Puar was getting close to passing out again, both from the effort and the heat and his, but the air up here was less wet and his temperature regulation was starting to work better. He rested for a while as he looked around, putting as much of this to memory as he could…then the chirp sounded again, this time very loud.
He turned to his left, and as if magically deposited there, he saw a scurrier sitting on the ledge next to him and looking up at his exhausted face with its single mechanical eye suspended on a vertical stalk and twisting in place as if to examine him more closely.
“How did you get up here?” he asked without making any move to grab it.
“Easier than you did,” it responded in the Star Force language.
Puar twitched. He had never known the little machines to talk.
“You speak?” he responded in kind.
“Of course.”
“Why have you never done so before? None of you ever have.”
“Have you ever spoke to us?” it countered.
“I suppose not. Are you alive?”
“I am a machine. Machines are not alive.”
“Yet you speak.”
“I am programmed to speak.”
“Why?”
“To see if you will talk.”
Puar froze, feeling that he had just stumbled onto a whole other aspect to Star Force’s design of this level. “Why is talking important?”
“Target analysis verification. Or did you think anything that runs from you is automatically an enemy?”
“You are a machine and this is training.”
“It is practice,” the scurrier said, twisting to the side and moving half a meter to the wall side of the ledge. It shot out a series of red lasers, each of which tracked its way around part of an outline. When finished that section of the rock wall disappeared, revealing a tunnel beyond, into which it walked, leaving Puar’s shocked face behind.
He stood up and very gingerly moved down the ledge and through the gap, seeing a narrow tunnel of rock, all dark except for a bright spot of light on the far end where it opened up on the other side with a few leaves hanging over from above.
“Cal-com, your wisdom continues to humble me,” Puar said as he entered the tunnel.
4
The small scurrier exited ahead of him, then Puar followed behind a ways, coming out into a grassy patch of highland looking down on another canyon, but one not covered with fog. It was just as hot, but the air was dry in comparison and he felt the moisture in his fur begin to peel off him as soon as he passed through the tunnel exit.
“Why build this?” he asked aloud, knowing that the stated purpose of the level was to catch the scurriers and move on to the next. He pondered that question as he walked along the rim of the dropoff…then he spotted something familiar down below. It was an obelisk like those the Temple had in the wilds, only this one was pure white and partially obscured by trees.
Puar looked around for a way down, finding a small trail on the far end. It wasn’t built for his physiology so he had to step carefully on the quarter meter wide ledge, but further down it got wider and soon he was jogging down a dirt ramp to the bottom of the dry canyon…where he was ambushed by a pack of scurriers that were not emitting chirps.
They came up out of the sandy creek bottom and fired tiny stun blasts at him, numbing the spot where they hit but doing little beyond that. Puar reacted by instinct and attacked them, throwing a wave of sand into the air in front of them telekinetically then using an Essence effect to knock it down the creek bed like a wall of tiny ammunition. He might not be able to pick up the scurriers, but the sand wasn’t so protected.
That created a dust storm and sent several stun blasts askew as he pounced on the nearest one, missing at first, but pawing his way towards it as it moved back and forth trying to evade. Eventually he smashed down on top of it, applying enough pressure to deactivate it with a satisfying ‘ping’ sound as the others continued to spin around him and fire little shots that were adding up.
His breathing was much better here, but as little bits of his body stopped obeying his commands he knew the threat was real…and when he saw more of the machines start to swarm out of nearby rocks and join the others he realized he couldn’t win this fight without destroying the machines.
Doing so would immediately disqualify him, so what options did he have left? Retreat back up the canyon? He’d get shot for sure being that exposed…unless they were programmed to let him go. Puar didn’t feel like testing that theory up the canyon wall, so he leapt out of the creek bed and climbed the shallow hillside up through the loose foliage on the other side that would at least catch a few of the stun blasts.
If these things were protecting the Responder then he was probably going to run into even more of them, but once he got within the small circle surrounding the obelisk the firing into his hindside stopped and the scurriers…now some 40 of them…ran loops around his location waiting for him to come out, but seemingly unable or unwilling to come inside the 12 meter perimeter.
Puar growled at them, wondering if the one he had spoken to up top was down here. He couldn’t tell by looking at them, for they were all the same, so he turned his attention to the obelisk that was bathing them all in a muted white light underneath the shade of several tall trees.
“Do you speak, Responder?”
A hologram appeared next to it, showing an image familiar to Puar and virtually everyone within the Temple. It was of Cal-com, with his distinctive blue visor covering some sort of eyes. No one knew what they looked like, for he always wore it, and his race was unfamiliar to them, as were most within Star Force.
“Greetings would-be Varkemma. Your curiosity has served you well and you have now reached the next destination on your journey towards worthiness. Being assigned a mission and accomplishing it is only the most basic task of a Varkemma. Going beyond your orders and adapting to the universe as it presents itself is a higher task, and one that cannot be completely codified, for we do not know everything. Sooner or later you will encounter a task with no instructions, or a task with incorrect instructions. It is your responsibility to determine what must be done and to take whatever action is necessary. I cannot tell you how to do this, for you must learn on your own through trial and error.”
“If you do not learn, you will not become Varkemma. I will not send troops into battle that could end up doing the work of the enemy, attacking us or others that do not deserve it. You must prove you
r worth through practice, and in order to assure that it is legitimate practice, you will retain no memory of it,” the hologram said, gesturing towards the obelisk.
“We call this LITrpg. It is a mental interface for a simulated reality where you can practice things that we cannot build training courses for. You will face unfamiliar situations, and to insure you can practice the unfamiliar, your memory will be wiped each time you reset. However, your skills will not, so as they develop with multiple attempts you will change, though you will not remember how it occurred.”
“This is the last step to becoming a Varkemma, though much will occur afterwards, should you make it through the transition. Be aware, this is not intended to be a short term test. You will try again and again, failing until you finally achieve that which you desire, or until you decide to quit. Once interfaced with the LITrpg you will have approximately 8 hours to make attempts, then you will disconnect and continue on with your training. There are many of these LITrpg interfaces hidden within the training courses, and the more you find, the more practice you will have. In order to begin, make physical contact with the obelisk and speak the word ‘Lightside.’”
The hologram disappeared, leaving Puar encircled by scurriers that were not attacking, but could do so easily if they chose as they patrolled around his position. But if they did, and rendered him unconscious, he’d just awaken in the hallway again, so he ignored them and sat on the dirt before this ‘LITrpg’ and respectfully reached his front left paw out and placed it on the glowing white crystalline structure that rose well above his head.
“Lightside,” he said in the Star Force language.
His body went rigid, held within a forcefield of some kind as gravity disappeared and his mind lost cohesion. He blacked out, but when he woke he found himself in the middle of a war zone.