PreCursive

  Travers and I had to walk slowly through the AutoMat infested hallway in order to not arm or alert the sentry roombas in any way. If we picked up our pace at all, the beeping of their scans as we paced our way down the path would increase, almost as if they were bombs ready to go off at any moment.

  Bombs with sers that would incinerate both myself and the Lich disguised as his long-dead lover.

  Because of the slow pace as we maneuvered among the AutoMats, I had plenty of time to check my Status. It had been quite a while since I’d had the time or the presence of mind to do so. I don’t think I’d even considered doing it ever since the fight with the Oni way back in the middle of the Goryuen range.

  I’d gotten into…quite a few fights, since that admittedly rge battle.

  I called up my Status with Hidden Amidst the Spheres.

  I wasn’t disappointed.

  Not at all.

  You have gained 24 levels!

  You are now level 166.

  Dual Wielding is now Lvl. 4

  General Weapons Proficiency is now Lvl. 4

  Flight is now Lvl. 2

  You have 240 unspent Virtue points

  Level 160 Css ability inherited.

  Would you like to review your Status?

  Y/N

  Yes, yes I would like to review my Status, thank you very much. I imagine any kind of gains would help me here at the st moment, before I did my best to kill an ancient, god-born parasite. I allocated my unspent Virtue points in a downright routine manner by now.

  Name: Nathaniel Eugene Hart

  Titles: Unbound Liberator, Camity Syer

  Level: 166

  Age: 25 Sol

  Race: Human (Precursor)

  Affinity: Terrestrial/Celestial

  Csses: Thornbde Acolyte (Uncommon)

  Professions: Aetherial Melding

  Health: 20250/2250

  Mana: 81%

  Vitality: 225

  Strength: 100

  Spirit: 60

  Dexterity: 390

  Perception: 225

  Intelligence: 535

  Wisdom: 535

  Free Points: 0

  Options: [Talent Page], [Skill Page], [Profession Page]

  And then it was time for what I was really interested in.

  Level 160 Css Ability

  Starfire Veiling (Talent): Touch the Terrestrial with the Celestial. Augment the Crimson with the Azure.

  Well, I was getting used to the odd descriptions of abilities that the System doled out by this point. I could take a guess as to what this did. It was something that I had…honestly been expecting. Something nice and straightforward.

  This, I think, was an activated Talent that I could use to enhance my abilities with the azure fire of my newer Celestial Affinity. Something that would just increase the potency of my activated Skills by uh…

  Well, I think it ignited them in some way?

  It…maybe would have different effects, based on which Skill it was applied to at the time. That was as much as I could tell, poking and prodding at the new, smaller blue star now orbiting the greater mass of my Mana Core in the center of my soul.

  God but Ringed Mind was useful. My Core ring could dive into the center of my mind, all the while my Outer was busy threading the needle around a particurly stubborn AutoMat lingering in the middle of the hall.

  The damned thing beeped warningly at Travers and I as we edged past it.

  However, to my disappointment, I don’t think I could channel Starfire Veiling towards other Talents. It would only activate when I guided the star toward Skills.

  Wait, shit.

  This was another channeled ability I had. My first was Arboreal Channeling, the Talent meant to help me in managing my Man-

  Wait.

  Waitwaitwaitwait.

  I halted in the middle of the hallway, causing Travers to look over ‘her’ shoulder and gre at me. “What are you doing, ‘Jonathon’?” ‘She’ said, audibly fighting to stay calm at me.

  My Core just ignored ‘her’ as implications of what that particur combo of Talents might do for me, while my Outer ring got us back underway.

  I…

  Maybe the System really was watching out for me.

  First, though, I had to test it. I hadn’t been able to activate the Talent on any other Talent’s, but I had yet to try Arboreal Channeling. Carefully, I coaxed the little blue star towards the bundle of roots that represented Arboreal Channeling in my soul.

  Activation.

  Connection.

  The roots of Arboreal Channeling unfurled, and the star of Starfire Veiling fit into the hollow that they formed. To my surprise, a root I had never noticed on the back of the ball shed out and, without my consent, connected a third Talent to the new trifecta. This time, it was a passive Talent that I rarely even noticed by the name of Bloodroot Resilience. That had been something I’d picked up just before the fight with Rhazal.

  And with that…

  Something astonishing happened.

  I felt my Mana, more keenly than I ever had before. Somehow, someway…this new combination of Talents was bringing me more in tune with my Mana than I had ever been before. Excitedly, I reached out and drew from the dual-colored well of Mana that resided in the core of my soul.

  It flowed as easily as water, in a way I had never experienced before. I could feel an outright tingling in the fingers of my flesh hand as the Mana gathered at my call, almost feeling downright eager.

  Ha!

  Elder Jinshin was wrong! I hadn’t needed a special meditation method in order to call on my Mana after all! I had just needed the right combination of abilities instead!

  With this…

  With this, I could cast whatever spell I fucking wanted to.

  Almost giddy, I carved out a small portion of mingled Mana, focused on a particur thought-form…

  And cast my light-Spell, easier and quicker than I ever had before.

  Travers flinched in front of me, at the sudden shadow his illusioned form cast down the hallway. It was weak because of the intensity of the light above us, coming from the fluorescent panes. But it was there.

  And…so was the death gre the disguised Lich was now shooting at me.

  Alright, alright. I get it. Pytime in the middle of a covert operation was over.

  Huh.

  You know, this kind of carelessness really wasn’t like me. I…usually had better sense than to py around like that in the middle of danger such as this. Even with the importance of the Talent combo I’d just discovered.

  Odd.

  Sheepishly, I canceled the little bobbing ball of light under the force of Travers gre. I could see the Lich visibly gather his patience as he turned back around and kept walking, now seemingly intent on ignoring me.

  As I followed behind him, I nearly stopped once more as I heard something, just beyond the edge of my hearing.

  A voice. Female, faintly familiar…

  And a bit sheepish.

  Sorry…

  What…

  What the fuck?

  If I didn’t know any better…that might have been Anima.

  But…how?

  As if in answer, I heard that same voice, growing fainter and fainter as it spoke.

  Later, Nathan…ter…

  I don’t think Travers had heard a thing.

  That voice had been meant for me.

  And then it disappeared. I only realized after the fact it was because I separated Starfire Veiling from its cocoon, no longer nestled in the grip of Arboreal Channeling. Bloodroot Resilience drifted away as well, dormant in its passive state once more.

  I…

  I couldn’t deal with this right now.

  Right now, I had a job to do.

  And a very firm reminder not to fucking mess with new abilities in the middle of important situations.

  I nearly bumped into the back of the disguised Travers as ‘she’ suddenly came to a halt. I hadn’t been paying any attention at all to the path in front of us, and now that I was, I could see we’d come to the split in the path I’d noticed all the way back when we’d entered the hall.

  There were now three paths before us. All three of them terminated in huge steel doors, and all three of them looked different. The center door seemed to be comprised of the same almost ceramic-looking steel as the walls of this hallway, bright white and shining. The right, meanwhile, was altogether different.

  It was rusted and corroded, in the same way the rest of the bunker seemed to be. The surface of the right door had such rge pits in the surface of it that I-wait. I…actually think those were cw marks and not corrosion from the curse. Familiar ones, at that.

  I think that matched the pattern of Harlow’s cws.

  On the other hand, calling the left door a door at all was a bit of a stretch. It wasn’t corroded in any way, but it was barely there at all. There were only scraps of a door that looked to have been torn away in some manner. If I didn’t know any better, it looked to have been bsted inwards. On the other side of it I could only see darkness.

  Familiar darkness.

  I think the left tunnel opened out into the open air of the mountain interior. I…almost expected to hear something from that direction, perhaps the py of air across the surface of that exit.

  But no.

  It was eerily quiet down there.

  I edged closer to the illusioned form of Travers, aware of the ‘eyes’ of dozens of AutoMats on us. “Cecily, be a dear and remind which way we’re going again?”

  Said Lich curled ‘her’ lip at me, but still answered. “The right path is the access tunnel to the rest of the complex…Jonathon. Chief Harlow often uses it in his…duties. While the left path,” I saw ‘her’ stare over my shoulder at the destroyed door. I was a bit surprised at the depth of…weariness I could see in those false emerald eyes. “Is where Tender Lucretia Mors and her party of ‘inspectors’ entered our home, all those years ago. For a purely routine inspection, of course.”

  So. Lucretia, with the help of Harlow, had let her fellow conspirators in there. Violently, it seems.

  I cast a gnce over at it myself.

  They’d come in from the bottom of the complex, then, infiltrating through the mountain itself first.

  That…

  Hmm.

  That gave me an idea. Later, though.

  I turned back to Travers. “After you, Cecily. We have business to attend to.”

  “So we do,” Travers inclined ‘her’ head. In moments, I was following the disguised Lich down the central path.

  It wasn’t much farther toward the core control room down here. The path only extended another hundred feet or so, and I could see the looming form of the vault door along it. Even from the crossroads itself, I could tell that it was massive. Easily rger than the gigantic doors that had blocked off the Maturation Halls, they loomed rger and rger in my vision as we grew closer to them.

  And as we got closer, the amount of AutoMats all around us grew thicker as well. There had to be hundreds of the things just on the approach to the vault itself. They were so numerous they were starting to block off the light from the panels ahead. The world gradually began to darken around us as we approached the door, never quite growing as dim as the rest of the bunker, but getting close. I began to notice that upon the surface of each AutoMat was a single lens upon the front of it visible only in the darkness, and from that lens came a slight red glow as they used their scanner on our illusioned forms.

  But it was the sound of them that started to fray on me.

  So many of them beeping all at once as they walked down the path grated on my ears. The slight noise seemed to come in waves as we drew closer to the vault door, echoing up and down the hallway. I had to grit my teeth to resist the urge to cmp my hands over my ears. I could already feel a headache coming on from the incessant noise of it all.

  But I endured. I had to.

  It dawned on me, then, that so many of the damned robots in one pce had to be acting as a form of secondary defense. You know.

  Beyond the sers.

  The noise of that beeping had to be an alert system for the Wyrm. I could only hope it was too busy dealing with Shacklock battling it’s projection to pay attention to its hounds.

  At st, we came to a halt before the massive, looming, white steel doors that led to the door. I felt a bit…small standing before them, to be honest. The atrium before them extended off to either side, wider than the hallway itself.

  It was absolutely packed with AutoMats, all of them staring at Travers and I. There was barely enough room to walk through them they were so thick around us. Carefully, my temporary companion and I threaded our way to the only other feature before the door.

  What looked like a small podium, standing directly to the right of it. The only features on the ivory steel were a single card reader and a blinking red light, not too dissimir to those of the AutoMats beeping incessantly.

  Once the two of us had reached that console, Travers stopped for a moment. “If you have some way to mask your presence,” The false woman breathed to me, only barely audible over the endless beeping. “I suggest you activate it now. The moment you do, I’ll open the doors and drop the illusions. It all starts then. Be ready.”

  I took a deep breath…

  And nodded.

  Everything I’d been working towards for the st month of my life led to this. I couldn’t mess this up. So much was counting on me here.

  I knew I had just resolved not to test new abilities in tense situations, but…

  I don’t think Starfire Veiling would give me bad results, no matter what it was applied to.

  I reached for my newest Talent and applied it to on my oldest, and perhaps most used Skill.

  I cast it.

  And for the first time, I truly disappeared.