PreCursive

  Travers barely cast the four of us more than a single disinterested gnce as we cleaned ourselves up after the battle at the base of Gorenzan. As Venix reequipped himself with all of the gear he’d been stripped of, I tried to talk to the Lich.

  “So, where-”

  He cut me off, waving me away. “Somewhere in the actual compound, this time,” Travers said irritably. “It’s good that you found two at once. The next one is firmly in Akhoroth’s territory. You’ll need the help.”

  As I saw Azarus mouth the word ‘Akhoroth’, I frowned and nodded firmly. “Alright, when can we-”

  Travers cut me off again. “Now,” He said bluntly, pointing toward the door. We turned to look at it, and as if prompted by the disguised Lich, it slid back open. This time, I could make out the corroded walls of the bunker on the other side, lit by familiar puck lights set into the ceiling. Thankfully, it wasn't red light this time, and instead a flickering fluorescent white. Travers literally shooed us away with one hand. “Go on, get going. The sooner you find this one, the sooner you can find the st. Then you can deal with this mess once and for all.”

  I was startled to feel a faint wave of pressure pushing me towards the door with each wag of his hand. I stumbled, and that just let the apparent telekinetic push shove me out the door quicker. To my complete unsurprise, I noticed that the rest of my companions were being herded out the same wave.

  I was…a little surprised, though, that Travers had the strength to do the same thing to even Venix.

  I caught my feet under me and tried to reason with the Lich. “Look, can’t we just-”

  “No,” Travers said bluntly. The door slid shut with finality in the middle of the wide hallway we found ourselves in. In seconds, it had somehow disappeared as well, leaving the four of us to stand around awkwardly.

  Kazuma broke the silence. “I don’t think I care for that man.”

  Yeah, you and me both.

  Azarus, Kazuma, and I exchanged nods, but it was Venix who spoke next. The Antium let out a mildly annoyed sigh, drawing my attention. “Could someone perhaps tell me what exactly is going on?”

  Ah.

  That’s right. Azarus may have been filled in by Tarus, but Venix was still in the dark when it came to the circumstances here in the ancient Netherim bunker. I took the time to expin everything what was happening down here to him, what we had to do, and what I’d found down here. The whole time, Kazuma and Azarus were wandering around and inspecting our environs.

  Venix blinked his fractal eyes at me when I was finished. “You found a child down here? A living one?” Azarus had paused in his exploration to raise an eyebrow at me as well.

  A little self-conscious under their stares, I nodded. “Ah…yeah. That guy back there, the Lich I told you about? He’s keeping watch on Aveline for now. But we are going to get her out of here.”

  Azarus and Kazuma rejoined us, and I noticed that my Dwarven friend had a frown hidden under his bushy, now slightly metallic beard. “Can ya trust him, Nate? The dead ain’t exactly known fer their magnanimous nature.”

  “Hell no,” I said, shaking my head and finally giving voice to my suspicions. Being back around nearly all of my companions…it gave me more confidence in our survival down here. “That guy…I get the impression he really doesn’t like me. He’s definitely no Tzo, that’s for sure.”

  Even then, Tzo had been an incredibly callous, self-centered person. I was starting to get the impression that the dead, even the cooperative dead, had little regard for the living.

  What a shocker.

  Kazuma fingered the hilt of his katana restlessly. “Then should we not track down this Lich’s ir and rescue the child?”

  Again, I shook my head, to the surprise of the others. “No…I don’t think so. He may not give a crap about us, but I think he does care about Aveline. At least a little. He…kind of implied the only reason he’s still around after…possibly millennia is to keep an eye on her. For now, I think she’s safe with the bag of bones. If he’s going to try and pull a fast one on us, it’s going to be at the st minute, when her safety is assured.”

  Venix crossed his arms but nonetheless nodded in agreement. “Very well, Hart. I shall trust your judgment. It has gotten us this far,” I nodded back in appreciation but still paused at his next words. “However…something else the Lich said gave me pause. He mentioned that there is one more person stuck down here that we must rescue. The only person still unaccounted for is the Healer, however.”

  To my surprise, Azarus spoke up before I could. “I know what that’s about,” He sighed, reaching up to massage his brow. “The Ol’ Gas Bag filled me on why he was so desperate to pick up an Envoy. Ya turned him down, Nate, and so he went fer the only other person among us that suited him. Me. Apparently, one of the cats was followin’ us, and now he wants me to save ‘em.”

  I almost started to ugh at how Azarus referred to the Great Spirit of the Sun, but sobered up when he finished speaking. “Wait. One of the Shurengans? Or…Shurenga herself?”

  I...

  Hmm. I do recall a few instances on the trek to Gorenzan itself, shortly after leaving the volcano, where it had felt like we were being watched. More than usual, that is. More than that, I suddenly remembered the odd taunting that Shacklock had sometimes done off into the empty air after the fight with the Oni.

  Had he known? What was I thinking.

  Of course he did.

  Venix narrowed his eyes. “The Spirit did say she had ways to move unseen among the isnd…”

  “No, not the ol’ girl herself,” Azaru shook his head. “Furnace Face couldn’t tell which one o’ them exactly that was…doggin’ us, but he said his daughter is still back at the volcano. Whoever was followin’ us was careful ta stay out of sight of their granpappy. But he was real insistent on rescuin’ them. My endowment was kinda predicated on the fact we can get them out. The new transformation Skill,” He eborated, seeing the lost expressions on our faces at the word ‘endowment’. “It’s what I asked for, to sign up with him. A powerful Skill that would let me fight above my weight css. Ya know. Like you can, Nate.”

  Huh.

  I’m not so sure about that. If I was being honest, Azarus’s transformation Skill was maybe…a bit stronger than mine.

  At least, it looked like that to me.

  “Out of curiosity,” I said slowly. “What’s it called?”

  Azarus scratched his beard. “What, the Skill? It’s called Vis Soris Incarnata.”

  Why, that sounded downright noble compared to mine. I wasn’t jealous at all.

  Not a bit.

  I shook it off though. “Alright, enough standing around and chatting. Travers said this entire area was the territory of the Big Bad Wolf down here in the bunker,” I said, internally amused by the confused expression on Kazuma’s face at that term. Azarus and Venix knew me well enough by now to just ignore it, but not him. “So, weapons free, people. We don’t know if that thing could be around the next corner. Let’s get to searching. We have a fox and a cat to find.”

  The ringing of steel upon steel answered me, as my friends and companions drew their instruments.

  Time to get to work.

  …………………………………..

  The four of us were careful as we crept down the halls of this section of the bunker. Although the flickering of the puck lights was enough to see by, in these corroded corridors, all of us still called on our own lighting abilities to help light the way.

  Funny enough, I had never seen Venix use one before. I had expected it would be another bar of light like I had seen from other Cultivators. But instead, the tips of his antennae lit up like the hanging bulbs of a ceiling fan. It was useful, sure. The Antium man was never far from the source of his own light.

  But it was also funny. I didn’t tell him that, though.

  I don’t think he’d care, honestly.

  As we explored the section of the bunker Travers had dropped us into, I started to get an inkling as to the purpose of this area. However, I’m not sure if the others did. It was fairly obvious to me, but then again, I had grown up on Earth, an entirely separate culture from anything the Veredenese were used to. What seemed obvious to me, was likely alien to them.

  These, I think, were the crew quarters.

  A bit small, honestly.

  Considering the massive size of the hall I had first encountered Akhoroth in and found Aveline in an offshoot of, I would have expected the accompanying crew quarters to be beyond massive. There had probably been over a hundred thousand dead souls in there.

  In comparison, I think there might have been enough room down here for barely a couple hundred people.

  All through the halls, we found the trappings of life that I would expect from a culture that just might be descended from Earth. Corroded dining rooms with broken tables and chairs, with what almost looked like dipidated vending machines along the walls. Recreation rooms holding cabinets and ft screens, little boxes and discs simir to the one Aveline had asked me to recover for her. Small, unusable washrooms filled with broken gss and shattered ceramics, cracked pipes showing through the walls.

  And more than a few bedrooms. To my eyes, these were meant to be very utilitarian. Maybe once upon a time, they had been decorated to the owner's personal taste. But time and the corrosion of the curse had reduced them to being downright skeletal. To a one, no matter how much we searched them, we found nothing more than rubble. Eerily, we didn’t find the remains of a single person inside any of the rooms. We were certainly looking, too.

  Nothing.

  The entire living area of this complex was filled with nothing but rubble and broken, useless devices. I could hazard a guess for some of them…but not everything.

  If these people were descended from Earth in some way, it had to come from far, far, far after I had left it. That thought caused an unexpected pang of pain to echo through my rings.

  I…had long since accepted that I was never going back to Earth. I actually believe all the old monsters and relics I’d stumbled upon, when they said it was impossible for Precursors to return to their origin. I knew that. I was…okay with it, no matter what I’d left behind.

  Too much time had passed, by now, for me to expect anything important to have survived. But...

  The implication of this bunker and these people put the concept of time into question again, in a much different way.

  When was I, if the Netherim were connected to Earth in some way? Had I instead been flung through time when I was stranded upon Vereden, rather than merely transmigrated? Was this the distant path, and Earth's history was far more mystical than I thought it was? Or was this instead the far future, long after the apex of humanity had been reached? I couldn't know, and frankly, it was all just specution.

  All of that merely reaffirmed my iron-cd belief that Earth was lost to me.

  And so, this entire expedition hadn’t been about searching for a way back to my home pnet. It had been about the search for answers. Both to whatever the hell was truly going on with Precursors, and this pnet in general.

  I’d gotten some of those answers from Travers, but I still didn’t have the full story. There were still massive, gring holes in the mystery.

  Ha.

  Listen to me. I was thinking about my life as if it was a dolr mystery novel from back on Earth.

  The reality was a bit more dour, though. More pain, and blood, and death.

  But I’ll admit it. I’d come to enjoy this life. As much as the expedition had been for answers, it had also been about the adventure of it. The endless quest for strength and growth that threaded its way through all of Veredenese culture had long since infected me, and now I was one of them.

  I had gone native.

  This was my home, now.

  And I wanted to know more about it.

  I was snapped out of my musings by the sound of Kazuma and Venix speaking from behind me, as we searched. Our group had almost naturally fallen into a version of the formation we’d used back out in the jungles of Goryuen. I was out in front, while Azarus had taken up the rear. The two samurai were in the center, and although they were trying to be quiet, they were chatting to each other as they scoured rooms together. Their voices easily carried my way, both from the acoustics of the halls and because of my Perception.

  “…did that actually happen?” I heard Kazuma ask Venix quietly.

  Venix didn’t answer for a moment. “My…‘trial’, as Hart termed it?” He went quiet for a moment more, as I heard the two of them rifle through the dipidated remains of a bedroom. “…yes, in a fashion. I was, indeed, an underperforming drone. Number Seventy-Six of Clutch-Pod Four-Thirty-Two. However…I was also a coward. When it was noticed that I was a substandard drone, I was tasked with the felling of a barrow-spire, to procure more weapons-grade Threnalyte for a neighboring colony. I would either succeed in my task or be exiled. Somewhat understandably…I cowered before the fate set before me and was thus cast from the Hive unto the shores of Vereden. Once here, however…” Now I could hear a faint smile in his voice. “I was found by my Master, and it was he who forged me into who I have become. The rest, you know. Apparently.”

  I was a bit surprised at the teasing tone he took with the other samurai, as they chuckled together. I’m not sure I had ever heard the Antium samurai sound so…free.

  I suppose the guilt of his Master’s death had weighed heavier on Venix than I’d thought.

  “And you, young Lord?” I heard Venix ask Kazuma. “What was your own ‘Trial’? I assume Hart found you first and freed you from the grasp of this curse.”

  Kazuma went quiet, then. As I examined what I thought was…probably an infomedia panel of some kind, for a moment it didn’t seem like he was going to answer. However, when I gave up on the screen and exited that room, I heard his answer from a neighboring one. “No, I…I free myself, actually. We met up ter. I…my trial was…”

  I frowned, concerned for the man despite myself. It sounded like Kazuma was having trouble speaking about his own experiences.

  Luckily, it turned out he didn’t need to.

  A shout from down the corridor alerted Venix, Kazuma and I to the fact that Azarus had ventured on ahead of us. I exited the room I was in while the two samurai emerged from another, just in time for the dwarf to wave his hands at us from the far end of the hallway.

  “This way!” I heard him shout. “I think I found ‘im! I found Renauld!”

  My eyes widened, and I exchanged a quick gnce with the other two before all three of us burst into a sprint down the corridor.

  Hang on, Renauld.

  We’re coming.