by Isaac Hooke
The tree impacted the ground a moment later, splashing into the water. The force of the strike passed through the trunk and into Tane, throwing him a meter into the air. He landed hard on the trunk and nearly slipped into the river formed by the storm, flowing past on either side. The water level only reached halfway up the thick trunk, but it would still be enough to sweep him away if he fell. But it wasn’t deep enough to drag away the heavy tree, apparently. Not yet.
More lightning struck other trees around him. According to his overhead map, his companions clung to all of the stricken trunks.
“What the hell!” Gia said. “What are the chances? It’s like we’re all lightning rods or something!”
With the fall of those trees came the loss of the canopy immediately above, and Tane was exposed to the full force of the rain, as were the others on their own logs, no doubt. At least there was no hail for the moment. But that could change at any time.
The water levels continued to rise, so that in moments his tree was moving down the makeshift river, as were the boles that harbored his companions.
“When you pass near a trunk, try to grab on,” Jed said over the comm.
Tane squinted his eyes, struggling to see through the thick rain. He received a sharing request from Jed and accepted. Three-dimensional wireframes of all the tree trunks waiting up ahead overlaid his vision, thanks to the multi-echo LIDAR Jed had in his suit.
“Get ready,” Tane told Positron; like him, the robot still had the stasis pod attached to its belt. But as Tane prepared to leap at a coming tree, lightning struck near the base, just above the water, and that tree toppled into the river. More lightning came in, felling any other trees in his path, and that of his companions, ensuring that they couldn’t disembark onto any of the passing boles.
“What the hell is this?” Nebb said over the comm from the tree he clung to with Gia.
“Someone doesn’t want us climbing their trees,” Lyra commented.
As he was inexorably dragged down that river, Tane saw something then through the thick rain.
Something... strange.
6
Tane squinted his eyes. A small, greenish flash had penetrated the depths of the thick rain some distance ahead of him. It wasn’t bright enough to be the lightning from the clouds.
Tane gazed at the spot where the flash had occurred, but saw nothing through the thick veil of raindrops, and began to believe he had imagined it. But then it came again. Closer. To his right.
“Did you see that?” Chase said.
“Something’s out here with us,” Nebb said.
“If you figured that out only now,” Jed said. “You’re slower than I thought, Smuggler.”
“Thanks,” Nebb said. “Just what I need. A Volur telling me I’m slow.”
Before Jed or anyone else could offer any retort, Tane saw something else.
A strange, ghostly creature hovered two meters in front of him, just within the reduced visual range enforced by the rain. It wasn’t as bright as the flashes that had appeared moments before, otherwise it would have been more readily visible. Instead, it glowed a dull green, and seemed to be made of electricity. It didn’t appear on the LIDAR. The shape was vaguely humanoid, with two arms and a torso, but no obvious head, and no legs. Okay, maybe it was more like a tadpole with arms than a humanoid...
He tried to ID it, but received no matches. That it was ghostly and translucent like Tane himself made him think it didn’t entirely belong in this universe.
“I’ve got—” Tane began.
Before he could finish, the creature struck him. It went right through his shield, which was still active and in autogating mode, and collided with his chest assembly. He felt a racking pain all across his midsection and couldn’t breathe. When the electrical being pulled away, it hovered above him as he gasped for breath; it was taunting him he thought, promising more pain.
He spared a glance at his overhead map and saw that red dots had appeared next to the indicators of the other team members, on the respective logs they clung to: they were all facing attackers of some sort. Probably the same as his own.
“They’re everywhere!” Gia said.
Tane reached for his beam hilt but the creature was faster and struck again. Tane howled in agony as it impacted his chest assembly and sent electrical waves pulsing into his body. It felt like his blood had turned to acid and was melting away his insides. His lungs ceased to draw air, his respiratory tracks frozen by the pain that wracked them.
Despite his anguish, he managed to step into the Essence, and threw out his Essence Sight lifeline. He saw that Positron was similarly pinned by one of the electrical beings: the robot’s body thrashed about uncontrollably underneath it. Tane couldn’t see anyone else around him, thanks to the rain, so he drew his Essence Sight in close, letting his perspective hover just above and behind himself.
He released one of his Dark reserves—Fingers of Ruin. It passed right through the creature that yet clung to his chest assembly.
Can’t breathe...
He tried an Essence Missile next. Also no effect. As the pain continued unabated, he grew desperate, and tried Air Current... Persistent Flame... Light Glove... nothing worked.
On a whim, he attempted Wound Healing.
It’s not going to work. Why would I want to heal my opponent?
But he planted the work inside the entity anyway.
That did it.
The creature shrieked, and released him, vanishing into the thick rain around him.
Tane slumped, panting so hard his throat burned. He could still feel the lingering aftereffects of the pain, his muscles spasming inside his chest. But at least his blood no longer felt like acid, and as far as he could tell, his insides remained intact—the organ status report on his HUD confirmed as much.
He turned toward Positron and also launched a Healing work at the electrical tadpole that clung to him, and the being fled with a howl.
“Chase, Lyra, use Wound Healing!” Tane transmitted. “They hate it!”
He had an idea. He retrieved his beam hilt and activated the Essence ax. He created a Branchwork of Wound Healing and wound it around the energy from the hilt, as he would when sending the work into a human body to envelop a wound. He allowed it to partially set in this reality, so that he wouldn’t have to further modify the work, and could simply maintain it. It also meant that when he moved his ax, the Healing work followed the haft and twin blades without Tane having to do anything.
Tane unhitched the carbon fiber cord from the stasis pod, allowing it to retract into his belt so that he had complete freedom of motion, and would be ready when the next attack came.
“Stay close to me, Positron!” Tane ordered. He glanced toward the robot. Positron was lying on the log next to the stasis pod, unmoving. Tane checked the robot’s status indicator on his HUD: Positron was offline. The electrical attack must have overloaded his circuitry in some way.
The carbon fiber cord the robot had attached to the stasis pod was severed, and flailed in the wind, occasionally whipping the side of the log. Positron must have accidentally cut through the cord during the attack, when its body had thrashed about uncontrollably.
Tane concentrated his attention on the storm around him. When the next electrical tadpole appeared, Tane swung the Essence ax at his foe and allowed the Healing work to completely set when it struck. The creature shrieked as it split in two; the twin halves rapidly dissipated.
“Wrap your beam hilt in Healing!” Tane said over the comm for Lyra’s benefit.
When she didn’t respond, he had to assume she had already thought of doing the same. Maybe she had even done it before he had, but hadn’t relayed the instructions to him because she thought the ability was beyond him.
Well, whatever the case, he couldn’t let his guard down. He replaced the Healing work with another, partially setting it around the blade.
Lightning continued to strike up ahead, clearing the trees from their paths, a
llowing him and his companions to continue drifting down the rain-fed river. He felt an intense gust of wind, and momentarily ducked low to wrap his hand around a knobby lump in the tree, not wanting to be swept away. He also grabbed onto the handle of the stasis pod.
He glanced at his overhead map and saw that the trees the different party members were clinging to were slowly being drawn together. Lyra’s doing, no doubt, using her high level in Air Current to achieve the task. He remembered a time when he had done something similar, using the boost from a whole roomful of Chrysalium gates. By combining the trunks, Tane and Lyra could help the others, who likely had no ability to defend themselves against the ghostly creatures.
Tane waited for the next attack to come. Since the creatures didn’t appear on LIDAR, he had to rely on his own vision to see them. And because he couldn’t discern anything past two meters in any direction, that meant he had little warning of their attacks. But he would stave them off as best as he was able.
When the next ghostly being appeared, it surprised him, swerving suddenly as he swung down at the thing, and he missed. And instead of striking him, the being hit the stasis pod.
The precious vessel that contained Sinive was knocked right off the trunk.
Tane deactivated his Essence ax and let the Healing work dissipate as he leaped into the water after her. He barely grabbed on to the pod, which quickly sank, drawing him to the forest floor that was now underwater. He could see about the same two meter distance through the murky depths. The flooded undergrowth on the ground still glowed, but the illumination seemed diminished by the water, and wasn’t enough to light the immediate area. Then again, that glow might have been the only thing giving him his current two meters of visual acuity.
He peered past the glass portal on the stasis pod and spotted the electrical ghost inside, attached to Sinive, but before Tane could send it away with a Healing work, it fled, vanishing into the watery murk around him. The being must have realized she was already dead.
He struggled to lift the stasis pod from the depths, but it was too heavy, even with his servomotors maxed out. He tried to access the remote interface for the levitation feature, but the ghostly being must have shorted it out, because he got nothing.
He glanced at his overhead map and watched helplessly as the indicators representing Jed and the others moved away southward, and quickly froze, meaning the logs they resided upon had been swept downriver and out of range.
Now I’m alone.
It was just him, and Sinive, underneath the river formed by the deluge.
He lodged one boot in between the stasis pod and the jungle floor so that the current wouldn’t sweep him away, and also unwound the carbon fiber cable from his belt and attached it to one of the handles, as a lifeline in case he lost his footing. And then he reactivated his beam hilt. The bright white light of the Essence ax exploded into being, further illuminating his underwater surroundings. He partially set a Healing work around the ax in preparation for what was coming. He tested the heft, swinging it through the liquid: the Essence haft and dual blades weren’t impeded by the water and its current, but his arms and torso were, so he pumped up his servomotor outputs. When he sliced his blade through the liquid again, it was almost as if he cut through air. Good enough.
He cast about with his Essence Sight, searching for any attackers, preparing to defend Sinive’s body to the death.
I won’t let them take her.
A new type of ghostly creature appeared in the murk in front of him, moving fast, as it was coming downstream with the current. Because of the tentacles it possessed, Tane had the impression it was water-based, as if it had emerged from some actual river nearby that had overflowed its banks thanks to the storm. Its shimmering energy formed a creature with the tentacled head of a squid and the body of an alligator.
He struck down with the ax and released the Healing work, splitting that squid-like head in two. Then he moved aside as the dissipating body drifted past.
He sheathed his Essence ax in another Healing work, and felt a wave of dizziness pass through him; he momentarily succumbed to the current, allowing it to hurl his body against the stasis pod. He fought it, and pushed himself away from the pod, though of course he left his boot jammed in between the forest floor and the metallic base.
The healing works were taxing him rapidly, he realized, even though they were lower level. He was suddenly very thankful he had been putting all of his attribute points into Endurance. Without it, he wouldn’t have lasted even half this long.
He Siphoned the Dark at the same time, and that helped reduce the intensity of the exhaustion that was threatening to subdue him.
Must fight it.
From nowhere one of the electrical alligator squids struck him, and tore him completely away from the stasis pod. It clamped down on his spacesuit with its sparking maw. The currents passed through into Tane’s chest, and he felt the familiar pain anew.
He managed to form a Healing work and unleashed it, sending the creature away. He was relieved to find that the carbon fiber cable—his lifeline to Sinive—had held, and he used it to reel himself in, returning to the precious stasis pod. He braced himself against the front, bearing the brunt of that storm-swelled current, and prepared for whatever was coming next.
In moments more of the aquatic creatures appeared. They encircled him and the stasis pod, and simply floated in place—these ones didn’t have to fight against the current. It simply didn’t affect them.
He turned about slowly, as much as possible while keeping his boot lodged underneath the stasis pod, in any case, and flourished his bright Essence ax menacingly, unwilling to back down. He knew he wouldn’t be able to take them all, but at least he would die knowing that he had done all he could to save Sinive.
And that was all that mattered to him.
The creatures attacked.
Tane swung at the first, killing it immediately as he set the Healing work, but then the others closed on him. They overlapped one another, and enveloped the torso of his spacesuit in their collective jaws.
He felt agony unlike anything that had come before. He gritted his teeth, feeling the claws of the electricity dig into every ganglia in his nervous system. He felt its talons tear into the gray matter of his skull, and split his brain open neuron by neuron, melting and boiling each one of them away. It was like an energy pistol had fallen into his head and was unleashing plasma bolts in every direction at once.
He was a being of pure pain in that moment. He could not move. He could not speak. He stepped out of the Essence, and released the Dark, and simply surrendered to the overwhelming pain. He simply wanted it all to end. Death wouldn’t be such a bad thing right about now. Any release from this pain would be welcome.
Around him, the world mercifully grew dark.
7
Tane opened his eyes. He was lying on top of the stasis pod, staring up at a clear jade sky through his open faceplate. The heat of the sun beat down on his skin, warming his face.
Something moved away from his cheek, and he felt a coldness on his skin where that something had been in contact only moments before.
Lyra’s gloved hand.
She looked down at him and slumped in relief.
“What—” Tane said.
“Your heart had stopped,” Jed said.
Tane lifted his head. Beside him, Jed was linked with Lyra, along with Chase. Or at least, Tane assumed so, since they were crouched against the stasis pod beside Lyra, hand in hand. Or rather, glove in glove.
Jed released her, and slid back. He splashed into the receding storm water and sat down in the liquid—it reached to his hips—and then propped his back against the stasis pod. Chase joined him.
G’allanthamas, Gia, Nebb and Positron watched nearby.
Lyra meanwhile remained slumped over Tane.
“Uh, do you mind?” Tane asked her. “Personal space...”
“Oh.” Lyra finally slid off Tane, and he sat up. He activated t
he “helmet close” feature on his HUD, but the faceplate refused to seal.
“In case you’re wondering, I had to break your helmet polycarbonate to get access to your face,” Lyra said. “So you can’t seal it anymore.”
“Ah,” Tane said.
He had a sudden worry about alien infections, and imagined himself breathing in a bunch of spores that were irreparably changing his DNA at that very moment.
I’ve played a few too many VR video games in my day.
Then again, there was the threat of whatever microcrillia equivalents this universe harbored, and that was likely very real. He just had to hope he’d escape infection.
He glanced at the glass portal in the pod and saw that Sinive remained inside, features peaceful as ever. He rested a gloved hand on the glass, and the act calmed him.
Even if I do get infected by something, it doesn’t matter. As long as I save her.
He tried to stand but felt extremely weak, and had to sit on the pod once more.
“The dizziness will pass,” Lyra said. “We’ll have to rest here for at least ten minutes, I think. Considering that we’re all exhausted.”
“What happened?” Tane said.
“What do you think, Engineer?” Jed said. “We came back for you.”
“Lyra used Air Current to join our logs together,” Gia said. “We found Positron lying confused on the log where you and the stasis pod were supposed to be.”
“The electrical beings had caused my systems to reboot,” Positron explained.
“You were offline last I saw you,” Tane said.
“Yes,” Positron said. “The reboot took longer than usual—some of my internal circtruiry had to be rerouted around damaged sections.”
“As I was saying, when we realized you were gone,” Gia continued. “G’allanthamas used a distortion tunnel he had in reserve, and he brought us as close to you as he could. We had to dive underwater and swim the rest of the way. We vented oxygen for acceleration, and that helped.”