by Isaac Hooke
“Well, I meant in general,” Tane said, stumbling. “You know what I meant...”
Tepethalean raised an eyebrow. “You won’t risk your life for strangers, is that what you’re saying? Even if failing to intervene is to your own detriment?”
Tane didn’t answer.
“You will face the Gravity Heathens,” Tepethalean said, her voice filled with certainty. “You will have no choice if you wish to save the universe you love, and those who live in it.”
“But apparently I could also destroy it,” Tane said.
He bit his lower lip.
Damn it. There I go saying the wrong thing again.
Tepethalean nodded slowly. “Why do you think I tested you when you came? I can’t give these powers to you lightly. I refuse to aide the Gravity Heathens, and their various sycophant species’ like the Malediction. Universes are not meant to be destroyed. They are alive, each and every one of them. You and I are the manifestations of a living universe. Which is why we die when our home universe dies.”
“All right, that’s a bit over my head,” Tane said. “But I’m ready for the powers now. If you still want to give them to me…”
“It would take three hundred years to train you,” Tepethalean said.
“Three hundred years?” Tane said. “Uh.”
“Fortunately for you, we have some experience with your technology,” the woman said. “He Who Came Before introduced us to the concept of your nanotech. We captured some of your kind before leaving our home universe and conducted experiments on them, substituting our own special brand of Essence for nanotech. We—”
“You used humans as guinea pigs?” Tane said, suddenly disgusted.
“It was for a good cause,” Tepethalean said. “They died cleanly. They felt no pain, only bliss: we are masters of illusion.”
“How many humans died so that you could learn to program my mind?” Tane asked.
“Over two hundred,” Tepethalean replied.
Tane couldn’t help the repulsion he felt. “This is wrong. I don’t know if I can accept this training. It’s blood training.”
“The choice is yours,” Tepethalean said. “We can spend three hundred years to share the knowledge, or you can accept the memories and receive it in a heartbeat.”
Tane gazed at Sinive’s body. She was still lying next to her stasis pod where S’Wraathar had dropped her.
He knew that of course he had to accept it. Otherwise, those two hundred humans would have died for nothing. Their deaths would bring new life.
At least that was how he appeased his conscience.
He made a promise to himself then. He would do what he could to atone for what the archaeoceti did to get this knowledge. Maybe even try to save the galaxy, like Tepethalean had asked.
Wait a second. It’s not my fault they killed a bunch of humans to learn how to program our minds. I had no hand in it. I don’t need to atone for anything, damn it.
And besides, he’d already killed at least that many humans on his own. Not to mention all the dwellers whose lives he had taken when he destroyed their invading fleet.
I have blood on my hands myself.
Still, he had had a purpose in taking those lives. At least in regards to the invading dweller fleet. Maybe not so much when he’d lost it after Sinive died, but either way, that was no reason to excuse what the archaeoceti had done.
Yes, he was conflicted.
“I’ll take the memories,” Tane said before he could change his mind. It was best not to dwell too long on matters of morality, given the questionable acts he had committed himself.
“Of course you will,” Tepethalean said. She tilted her head slightly, and the jade sparks connecting the large bone at the center of the square to her plant body began to intensify, becoming brighter, and moving into her more rapidly.
And then the spires, plants, and everything around Tane winked out.
He stood alone at the top of a mountain, gazing out across a snow covered valley. He was dressed in an ermine coat and leggings, and the cold wind bit into his exposed flesh. In his bare hand he held a grayish-yellow staff of gnarled bone.
A glowing form lingered beside him. Tepethalean.
“Greetings, Qumolongmar,” Tepethalean said. “We’ve crafted this landscape from the memories of one of our test subjects. We hope it is to your liking.”
That’s right, go and remind me about the people who died to get me this knowledge.
“It’s fine,” Tane found himself saying between chattering teeth. It was his own voice speaking, not Tiberius’. The archaeoceti had definitely created this memory specifically for him.
“We chose the cold so you would recognize the effects of the Essence immediately,” Tepethalean said.
“Excellent choice,” Tane said, shivering.
“We call the Essence derived from this universe Synthate,” Tepethalean said. “The Emerald Essence.”
“Synthate…” Tane said.
“Yes,” the vine woman told him. “It is not stellar wind, like the White. Nor generated from the friction within geodynamos, like the Dark. It simply exists here, suffusing all things, organic and inorganic. A true aether, for lack of a better word. The Malediction feed upon it, whereas we protect and revere it. Unlike other Essences you may know of, it cannot be Siphoned except through the grazers, at least for beings from our home universe, such as you and I.”
“I thought the grazers were extinct?” Tane said.
“Yes, but their bones still reside in your universe, and our own. Siphoning through them is similar to what the Volur do with Chrysalium. And the Amaranth with Darcanium. We guard the bones in this universe, because the Malediction seek them: they know that without them, we have no ability to Siphon. And to be frank, the grazers aren’t entirely extinct… they do exist in this universe, though merely as energy. Their bones serve to anchor them to this realm.”
Tane stared at the gnarled staff he held. “This is a grazer bone, I’m guessing…”
“Yes,” Tepethalean said. “In order to access the Emerald Essence through it, you will have to break the spirit of the grazer tied to that bone. Each grazer is different, and not all will yield easily. I imagine it is similar to training a horse or other animal among humans. This bone has been broken already, and will acquiesce to your commands.”
“Good to know,” Tane said. Now that he thought about it, he could almost sense an alien intelligence pulsating from the thing. He couldn’t tell if it was benevolent, or malevolent.
“Care must be taken,” Tepethalean said. “You must guard your mind well when you Siphon the pleasure and pain that is Synthate, otherwise the grazer will infiltrate the nooks and crannies of your being and begin to alter your personality, changing it to become more in line with its own. It is a side effect of the intimate connection formed between you during the act of Siphoning. And like most animals, while grazers are neither inherently good nor evil, they have been known to have streaks of cruelty. Similar behavior can be passed on to you, if you’re not careful.”
There’s always a price…
“Also, sometimes when holding the bone, you will feel the thoughts and emotions of the associated grazer. Not actual words, mind you, but feelings and images.”
Tane gazed at the bone. “I’m not getting anything now.” The words coming out of his mouth continued to be scripted, merely parts of the memory.
“Of course not,” Tepethalean said. “This is your training. We’ve designed this particular memory so that you wouldn’t have any distractions. You will have other memories where the grazer’s thoughts are pervasive, and nearly dominate you, so you will be equipped to deal with a situation like that if or when it arises.”
“So what do I do?” Tane said. “How do I Siphon this Synthate?”
“Concentrate on the staff of bone in your hand. Do not step into the Essence through it like you would the White. Do not draw through it as you would the Dark. Instead, see the bone for what it is on t
he microscopic level: a veil of barbed beads, covering the entrance to the true core of all things. You must slide your hand inside and part that veil. It will be painful, maybe even agonizing, as the Essence acts directly upon your nervous system, but once you are through that pain, you will eventually find the pleasure of Synthate.”
“You make it sound like a drug,” Tane said.
“In a sense, it is a drug,” Tepethalean said. “Though instead of altering the perceived reality of the mind alone, it alters reality itself. When parted, the Emerald Essence travels through the conduits of electrical potential energy that are wired throughout the body—you humans call your conduits ‘the nervous system.’ The Essence will piggyback on your ganglia, traveling throughout your body, and when that happens you can begin to wield it.”
“How do you know all of this?” Tane said. “Wouldn’t you have needed a human with the ability to part the veil as you call it so you could confirm everything?” While the words were scripted, he was having the very same thoughts.
“The humans we collected weren’t the only ones we experimented upon,” Tepethalean said. “You may not know this, but He Who Came Before offered himself up for experimentation before he left. We accepted of course. Our experiments didn’t kill him, but nearly so. We learned what we needed.”
Tane continued to be amazed at the things Tiberius had done for him. He must have really thought Tane would be important.
Too bad I’m not the man Tiberius thought I would be. Despite what Tepethalean believes.
What were the vine woman’s words?
You will face the Gravity Heathens.
Tane wouldn’t, if he could help it. He was learning this Essence only to help Sinive. And after that he was done with all Essences. He didn’t trust himself to use the power wisely, not after what he’d done on Xalantas.
He wished he could speak freely, but he was at the mercy of the memory, so he waited for whatever would come next.
His gaze focused on the bone staff. It felt bumpy to the touch, its texture slightly granular.
He realized he was about to Siphon the Emerald for the first time.
Soon the cold around him was forgotten, lost within his intense concentration upon the staff. His memories told him he had stood here on this mountaintop a thousand times before, and a thousand times before he had failed. But this time as he gazed into the osseous, he thought he could almost make out the barbed beads composing the surface at the microscopic level, and he felt something.
His hand slipped inside the gnarled staff. Not literally, of course, but metaphysically.
He parted the veil.
12
Tane staggered.
Tepethalean had been right: the pain he felt in that moment was incredible, like someone applying electricity directly into the nerve endings at the tips of his fingers, some of the the most sensitive pain receptors in the entire body. That electricity passed up into his arm, instantly spreading to the rest of him, searing his entire being. His head pounded with each heart beat, so that it felt like some creature was beating at the inside of the egg his skull had become, trying to get out. Trying to be born.
Green sparks passed across his bare fingers and down into the ermine sleeve that covered his arm. He couldn’t move any part of his body: not a finger, not a toe. His fingers clenched tighter around the staff of their own accord, the knuckles turning white. Wisps of smoke began to arise from the flesh that remained in contact with the staff.
He realized this was what it felt like to be electrocuted. The helplessness. The frying of the neurons. His heart, pounding frantically.
No, the heart was the difference: if he was truly being electrocuted, his heart would have stopped.
He couldn’t surrender to the feeling, like he did with the White. Nor could he fight it, like he did the Dark. From previous training sessions stored in his memories, he knew there was nothing he could do but ride it out.
Thankfully, the pain faded just as quickly as it had come.
And then he began to feel pleasure. It started as a sense of well being in the center of his mind, a feeling that emanated outward, down into his spine and his hips.
All around him ethereal lightning bolts appeared. Green, translucent, sparking things, flashing into and out of existence. He knew they were visible to his eyes alone.
“I feel the pleasure you mentioned,” Tane said.
“Yes, our experiments indicate that is the effect the Synthate has on human nerve tissue,” Tepethalean said. “But it is also slowly killing you while you wield it, like any other Essence.”
“What do you mean?” Tane asked.
“Once you overcome the initial pain and enter the pleasure phase, you will not experience anything else: not weariness, not agony, nothing but the pleasure. And that is the danger, because similar to White and Dark, it also drains your stamina to the core, but unlike the latter two, you simply won’t know it. You could Siphon yourself to death and die with a smile on your face as your neurons fuse.”
If it was true that he could use the Emerald to mask his weariness, that would be useful for wielding the other Essences. But also dangerous, for the very reasons Tepethalean mentioned.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tane said.
“I’m sure you will,” Tepethalean told him.
The mountaintop momentarily winked out of existence before returning. He realized several years had passed, at least in terms of training sessions: he had memories of returning here a thousand times to practice.
He was parting the veil to the Emerald Essence through the bone staff once again. The air around him sparked with translucent, green bolts that were ready to do his bidding. Pleasure suffused his core.
“Begin the Joining,” Tepethalean said.
From previous lessons, he knew he had to interlink those electrical bolts as soon as they appeared, in the split second before they winked out. He imposed his will on two nearby bolts and elongated the tips, causing the ends to touch. When he joined the bolts, the combined pair flashed, becoming smaller, settling in the center of his vision.
He joined two more, and they shrunk, resettling near the other pair before him. He connected the pairs so that all four were interlinked. He continued in that way, adding more electrical links to the creation with each passing microsecond. It was the connections between bolts that would form an effect in this reality when the work was finally completed.
Time slowed around him as he worked—either that or he sped up—and he repeated the joining hundreds of times, thousands, tens of thousands, forming a small, coherent structure. All of the tiny electrical bolts composing it were like the interconnecting neurons of a brain, and in fact the overall shape was vaguely reminiscent of such an organic shape. Perhaps his creation was even intelligent.
When he finished, small electrical sparks traveled across the surface, and the translucent object slowly revolved. He realized it was waiting for him to set it in this reality so that its effect could take place. He felt pleasure through it all, and not a modicum of weariness; but he knew that as soon as he closed the veil on the Emerald Essence, he would collapse with exhaustion.
He began to set the work, but before he could do so, the mountainside winked out, and he was back in the vine-covered square, the spires thrusting into the sky around him, the dwellers, and his friends, bound up nearby. A glance at the clock in the lower right of his vision told him only a few seconds had passed since the memory had begun.
The jade sparks traveling from the large grazer bone at the center of the clearing to the woman in front of him dropped in intensity as he watched.
Some notifications appeared on his HUD.
New skill received.
Emerald Siphoning. Level 1.
All Emerald Siphoning Essenceworks gained.
Attribute up. Intelligence +1. Current Intelligence: 16 (29 with Beam Hilt I, Chrysalium Star Rings, Feral Necklace, Finger of Malevolence, and Nova Bracelet I equipped)
T
ane could hardly contain his excitement when he saw those bolded words.
All Emerald Essenceworks gained!
All? He accessed the skill list on his HUD. There was a new tab: Emerald Essence Specific. He immediately paged over to it and read the following:
Emerald Siphoning Essenceworks
These works are created from the electrical Essence drawn from the universe known as Khaeota. Each work of this Synthate, or “Emerald” Essence, evokes a massive cost on stamina, and as such, it is recommended that only one particular Emerald work be used in a given Siphoning interval. When you have rested fully, then you may create another work.
Also note that the aforementioned stamina drain is apparent only upon the closing of the Essence veil. As such, while it might be tempting to create more works, since you will feel fine, there is a good chance you will destroy yourself.
Higher levels in each Essencework listed below increase the potency of the particular work, but at greater stamina cost.
Emerald Siphoning Level 1 Essenceworks.
Revive. Bring back the dead. A complete body is required: the corpse can be in any state, as long as the requisite pieces are relatively intact. Revive can be used only once per entity, as the spiritual bonds become stretched too thin after the first raising. If a resurrected entity falls again at some later point, their death will be permanent.
This work also opens gateways to multiple higher dimensions, attracting beings that feed on the life forces of the living. These beings, sometimes commensurate in power to the fallen but usually much stronger, will tag along for the ride and attempt to feed on the life force of the reviving entity before his or her energy can be fully bound to the body. You will have to fend them off using all means available to you. Lose, and the death of the one you are trying to revive becomes permanent.
Note that a larger than normal source of the Emerald Essence must be employed. This means you cannot use something like a bone staff—instead, you will likely require a fully intact skeleton.