Chương 84: 2.25 Stalking the Rift

Hector crept along the wet, stony ridge, peering down the long, rain-slick slope. According to Evie, he was five klicks east of the cave where he'd left his companions, and he'd come to the last line of stony outcroppings. Below him, a vast, open plain stretched, stony and almost barren of vegetation. Pools of rain stood in hollows, reflecting the anemic sunlight filtering through the dense clouds. The nearest one, maybe fifty meters down the slope, rippled as something crawled out of it.

The reason Hector was there, the reason he'd been sneaking through the jagged hills, was that he'd felt the distant pull of the rift. He wasn't certain; it could be something less powerful, but closer—a pack of reapers, or maybe a hook titan. Or something else I don't know shit about. //You've experienced most of the biomes on this planet. // Come on, Evie; my total time on this world can be measured in a handful of months. You think I've seen everything it has to offer? //No, of course not.

// The pull felt stronger there, and it still felt distant, so he was hopeful that he was on the right track. Still, as the rain let up, he'd encouraged Paige to use the drone to scout in other directions—just in case. He watched the creature emerge from the pool. It was a quadruped with a long, spined tail and a pointed, fleshy face—spine thrasher. Why the hell was it in the pool?

//When they get separated from the matriarch—the spine-bag—they often build traps to feed; the long snout allows it to lie submerged while it awaits prey. // Hector grunted. He felt like he should know that, but in his old life he'd visited rifts with the Invicti, and his job had been to kill things, not scout—not speculate on rift denizen behavioral patterns. Why wasn't I more curious back then? Evie remained quiet, aware that he was just thinking.

Sometimes, his old life felt strange, almost like a dream, especially the more distant memories. The spine thrasher raised its snout to the sky, and Hector realized it was testing the wind. Was his scent drifting down there? Was that why it had emerged from its pool? Hector didn't hesitate; he channeled aura into his Shadow Stalk ability—the first time he'd had to test it.

His vision tinted toward crimson, and he knew that if someone were watching him, and if he weren't wearing a helmet, they'd see his eyes alight with his aura. He was staring at his hands where they clutched the stony ridge when something strange happened. Darkness gathered around them until, no matter how he strained, he couldn't properly focus on his fingers or arms. It was like trying to stare into a bottomless crevice. He glanced over his shoulder and felt a flicker of alarm when his own body was simply… gone.

Only blackness greeted his gaze. Whatever the aura was doing to "bend" light, it was effective—and not just against human eyes. His helmet's optics cycled automatically through thermal, low-light, ultraviolet, lidar scatter, and motion enhancement, yet none of them could produce a clean outline. The AI kept trying to resolve edges that weren't there, flickering with static and ghost contours before giving up entirely.

As the ability's description promised, the air went still around him too, and when he moved his hands, pulling himself over the scree-covered stone, the rustle of his passage was muted and distant. He doubted he'd have heard it himself from even a meter away. Knowing he had a hard limit on aura, especially if he were going to use his blade, Hector glided down the slope, crouched low, careful to step only on hard stone.

The creature was larger than the one Tacitianus had summoned—probably three meters from tail to snout, and it looked like it weighed something like two-hundred kilograms. Hector wasn't bothered; he was driven by two simple facts: he couldn't hide forever, and he was in the rift to gather potentia, not hide from every creature he saw. He'd never scraped the spine thrasher back in Tacitianus's estate; there'd been no point.

When an aura user with a summoning talent pulled creatures through a temporary rift, it stripped them of potentia, using it to fuel the portal. This one will be different. Despite his care, a tiny rock broke free under his step. It was nearly silent at first, but as it tumbled away from him, it broke free of the still air, and it clattered away down the slope beneath him. The spine thrasher spun, hissing and gnashing its circular maw.

Hector wasn't worried about the mouth, though—the tail was the dangerous part of a thrasher. The creature wove it back and forth, the tip pointing toward the sound of the falling pebble. Hector froze. His adrenaline spiked, but only briefly; the creature didn't look his way; it continued to scan the slope beneath him. Knowing his aura clock was ticking, Hector moved, padding over the stone slope, flanking the creature so he could come at it from the side.

Despite his movement, it didn't look his way; he was a shadow gliding over the dark stone, noiseless and scentless. When Hector had fought the summoned spine thrasher, he'd been caught by surprise, and the creature had come out in a frenzy. He'd relied on his gun to do the work, and it had been an ugly, brutal, almost sloppy fight. This time, Hector was the one with the element of surprise, and he picked his angle of attack with precision. He left his rifle where it was, stowed behind his hip on the gimbal mount.

Then, coming down the slope, just behind the creature's front shoulder, he leaped, bringing his arm up and down, as though he held a weapon in that empty glove. By the time he finished the downward chop, he did. His Aura Blade, now nearly as long as a small sword, hissed through the damp air, crimson steam streaming behind it, then it bit into the spine thrasher's neck, just behind its oblong skull.

Hector felt some resistance, but it wasn't until his blade was already six centimeters deep in the tough, leathery flesh. He'd angled the blade to strike at the seam between two armor plates, but the creature's bones were tough. They had to be near as dense as steel, but as the spine thrasher realized it had been struck and whipped its head toward Hector, he bore down, grunting savagely as he ripped his blade forward and down, sliding it between two vertebrae.

Hot blood sprayed; the creature staggered and fell to the side, and Hector fell back onto the slick, smooth stone outside the deep pool. His shadowy camouflage faded, and he let his Aura Blade go. As it faded into hot red steam, he pushed himself to his feet, scrabbling backward to keep the expanding pool of blood from soaking into the cloth parts of his armor. The creature's blood steamed into the dim light, and Hector knew scavengers would be on the move, looking for the source of the smell.

He hurried to the hindquarters of the dead monster, put his hand on the damp, leathery flesh, and triggered his aura system. //43 potentia gathered. Potentia available: 359. // Despite his recent gains, his body, his corpus vivum, was nearly overwhelmed by the rush. Hector sucked a hissing breath in through his teeth, staggering back from the creature. He forced his mind to stay present, despite the sudden brightness of the world and the lightness in his body.

Buzzing with the afterglow, Hector jogged down the slope, putting some distance between himself and the dead spine thrasher. He avoided the pools of water here and there on the stony slope, and when one of them rippled, and he saw something that might be a spine thrasher snout, he activated Shadow Stalk again and ran full-out for a minute, putting some distance between himself and the creature. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Hector wanted to gather more potentia, but he knew he had to be smart about it. His kill would have drawn other scavengers and predators. Getting into another fight too close or too soon would escalate things. That being the case, he ran, always toward the ever-increasing pull—that feeling like gravity that made his stomach feel like it needed to flip.

When the ground leveled off and he saw a dark shadow on the horizon that might be a forest, he slowed to an easy lope and checked in with Paige, speaking into their open comm channel, "Anything?" Her reply was immediate: "Resources I wish we could harvest—a voidglass outcropping about ten klicks to the south, for instance. No sign of the rift. Please tell me you're having more luck."

"I think I'm onto something—might be a while still. Tell me what's going on in the cave."

"Mathews came to for a minute. I gave her fluids and another dose of pain meds. She didn't seem so angry this time—didn't say anything about Freddy. Um, Bobby's scraping away at his little crevice. The techs are keeping to themselves. Perry and Kristy are watching the tunnel, but hanging back since the rain slowed."

"Freddy?"

"Resting."

"You've been watching Simo? Anything?"

"Just furtive glances. He's weird, but I don't see anything to be alarmed about."

"Keep me posted. I'm gonna pay attention to my surroundings now."

"Okay." Hector's helmet AI filtered out the sounds of Paige's breathing, but he knew the link was still open as it went quiet. A massive shape moved on the northern horizon, and Hector squatted, zooming in with his optics. A bipedal giant lumbered over the stony plains. His HUD said it was nine meters tall, with arms that nearly dragged on the ground as it took its great, shuffling steps. Hector frowned at the creature's shaggy black fur and the enormous tree trunk it dragged behind it. That's not a hook titan.

//I believe it is—just a variant. // Where are the hooks? //Look closely at the hand where it grips that tree. Those aren't fingers. // Hector's eyes widened as he saw what Evie meant; the giant was clutching the tree with not one, but two claw-like appendages. They were shorter than those on the hook titans he'd seen in his old life, but they were there. Imagine the potentia in that creature. //I'm sure it would be significant, but you and the others don't have the firepower to hunt—// I know, Evie.

Hector straightened and began jogging toward the forest again. The range-finder on his HUD said the first of the trees were three kilometers away, so he stretched his legs into his ground-eating lope again. He saw plenty to be worried about out there on the stony plains—distant packs of rift denizens and the occasional, much-larger threat. A spine-bag drifted through the sky, aiming his way at one point, and he ducked down in the lee of a large, angular boulder, waiting for it to pass.

When it was far enough away, he glanced at the forest, and was relieved to see it wasn't like the one he and Freddy had gone into—they weren't acid trees. Just 900 meters. The pull feels stronger. You think the rift could be in that forest? //With the elevation declining, I'd say it's possible there's a valley or ravine in there where the rift could be hidden from view. // Well, let's get going. Hector stood, but before he started moving, Evie spoke again. //Wait, Hector.

Your level advancement is moving more quickly than I anticipated. I believe it's imminent. It might be wise to—// Hunker down, Hector finished for her, scooting back under the boulder. He lay there, listening to the wind scattering pebbles over the stony ground, watching the sporadic raindrops darken the surface of nearby boulders. He set the helmet to sentry-mode, knowing it would alert him to anomalous sounds or visuals, at least in the limited field of view his hiding spot allowed. Meanwhile, his mind drifted.

It was strange to him how his early memories all involved the Guard or, later, the Invicti. Surely those had been formative years, but why didn't he think of his childhood? When he tried, sifting through the layers of his mind, looking deeper and deeper toward his arcology days, the memories were like snatches of dream—vague, dim, and hard to hold on to. The arcology stood out in his mind more than his own parents.

Not surprisingly, where his father was concerned—gone by the time Hector could form words into sentences. Not with his mother, either, considering the hours she'd had to work for the consortium. Company schooling had been the bulk of his days from age four to sixteen, when he'd escaped into the Guard. Was it any wonder he'd let those memories fade? Had he— let them? Sometimes I wonder, Evie, if little pieces of me got lost every time I got a new skin.

//You know how that works; the neuro-deck maps your engram second-to-second. There shouldn't be any gaps. // But the time between—the copies of copies. When I don't think about something for years, does the neurodeck give those memories less priority? //Naturally, over the span of decades, memories can fade. It happens to everyone, though it might feel more pointed to someone who's had so many hard resets. // Hector snorted. Is that what we call it when I die? A hard reset?

Evie recognized his mental note of snark and the rhetorical nature of the question, so she didn't respond, and Hector was left with his thoughts again. For some damn reason, he wouldn't let it go—his dim memories of his mother. It really bothered him when he struggled to picture her face. He could see her dark hair, her tall, slender figure. She was standing in a doorway, cheap plasterboard on either side. He thought maybe she was waving to him, but her face… It was a blur.

He felt sweat break out on his brow as he strained his mind, and apparently Evie could feel his distress. //Try to break it down, Hector. Think of her eyes—her smile. // Almost immediately, it worked, and Hector exhaled as the picture resolved—big, dark eyes, faintly green eyeshadow highlighting the olive tone of her skin. Her brows were arched in amusement, and when he thought about her mouth, he saw her lips curled into a proud smile. There she is, dammit.

The relief was palpable—like a shiver of releasing tension down his spine. He was saved from further examination of his spotty memories when a window flashed on his AUI, and he felt the warm rush of aura coursing through his body. He was already crouching on his elbows and knees, but he fell forward, his helmet pressing into stone, as the world went dark and a fuzzy wave of tingles rushed through his skull.

When it passed, and he rapidly blinked his vision back into focus, he opened the window: //Corpus vivum conditioning complete and level advancement has been applied. Potentia investment resulting in new pathways has opened new corpus vivum enhancement opportunities. Level results are as follows: Strengthened aura pathways, increasing maximum load—use caution when exploring this limit to avoid aura overload Aura Pool increased from 26 to 30 Strength increased from 16. 1 to 17.

1 Speed increased from 20 to 21 Vitality increased from 15. 25 to 16 Perception increased from 14. 55 to 15. 15 Aura Potentia Available: 359 End Report. // Hector inhaled shakily. His limbs were trembling with the rush of potentia, and he could see why. The Reaver archetype had provided massive gains for a single level-up. Sure, it was expensive to level, but he was pleased to see it was worthwhile. And I haven't even looked at the available boosts…

Having read his mind, Evie opened another window for him: //Available Abilities and Boosts: Level Advance 8 -> 9. Cost: 74 aura potentia Enhanced Bone Density 1: Infuse potentia into the skeletal structure of your corpus vivum for a permanent boost to its durability. Repeatable. Cost: 15 aura potentia. Phase Pathways 1: Begin development of specialized aura pathways capable of limited matter-state transition.

This foundational augmentation is required for advanced movement, defensive, and offensive phase techniques. Cost: 50 aura potentia. //Awaiting directive… // Hector stared at the second option, his mind racing. He'd never opened any sort of phasing ability in his previous archetypes—not in any of his "lives." That's a Reaver thing? //Your archetype certainly plays a role, but there are a million factors involved in this sort of thing. You know that.

Part of it is luck; part of it is due to my intuition and how I lay out the connections and pathways in your—// Hector couldn't help interrupting; he was jubilant, excited —something he hadn't really felt in a long, long time. Damn, Evie! You're a genius! He grinned inside his helmet as he said, "Buy it. Buy them all—the level, too."

"What's that?" Paige asked.

"Uh, disregard. Talking to my AI."

"Oh, I see. Congrats!" Hector couldn't even find it in himself to be dismissive of the notion. In fact, his smile grew as he said, "Thanks." //Confirm, please, Hector. You want to spend a total of 139 aura potentia on level nine, Enhanced Bone Density 1, and Phase Pathways 1? // Confirmed. //74 potentia applied. Corpus Vivum conditioning has begun. Approximately 12 hours to complete level advancement. Disorientation, weakness, and even fleeting incapacitation may occur. Extra caloric intake is recommended.

// //Enhanced Bone Density 1 purchased for 15 aura potentia. Initiating aura pathway propagation. This process may cause aches and stiffness that will range from mild to debilitating… Phase Pathways 1 purchased for 50 aura potentia. Initiating aura pathway propagation. This process is likely to result in coordination deficits… Integration of purchased abilities and boosts will be complete in 4 to 5 hours. //