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Undersea Reincarnation - 3.07: Noticed
🕑 Added 2025-04-23 02:10:21 +0000 UTCAfter taking back control of the pathfinding skill from his Octominds and pulling all the free assistants to help out, Henry started with a simple cast of the skill with a simple request as he touched both shells: To point him toward one living turtle from this species.
The magic activated, and in Henry’s eyes, a haze of golden light surrounded the empty shell. It tried to do the same to Maurice’s shell, but it was as if it was encountering some sort of resistance, which made sense as the shell Maurice was wearing wasn’t really an inanimate object anymore and instead, it was part of him. Still, a few threads made contact, which was hopefully enough. Next, the spell began building up in his chest, drawing on his mana as it tried to reach out into the world and find his quarry and there, it winked out.
Well, it’s not as if I expected to work the first time, Henry thought, leaning back. Still, he frowned. That had been too fast for a regular failure, but also not abrupt enough for anti-divination magic.
Interesting…
For the next attempt, Henry began drawing on Thaumaturgy of the Trickster, intent on using the closest and most fitting Aspect he had at his disposal to boost the spell, but as the first motes of essence moved out of his spirit and toward the spell construct in his chest, Zerathstra interrupted him. “Wait. The first one failed, but if you’re using Aspects, let’s make sure it’s not wasted. I’ll add my own to yours. Arisia, did you cover spell-linking?”
Henry glanced behind and found the instructor standing behind them, with a glass filled with a yellow cocktail that had an orange looking-wedge on its rim. “We haven’t covered that just yet,” she said, looking down at Henry before she took a sip. “But you can remote-cast, so if you take it step by step it shouldn’t be too difficult. Especially if you’re using your subminds. I’ll guide you. As for you two, do you have anything to amplify the shell’s signature?”
The ape hummed. “Life might help, but it’s not ideal. Velistraine? Got anything we can use?”
“Maybe… I can use my Amplification Aspect, but it will interfere with Zerathstra’s Life.”
Arisia seemed to think for a moment, then nodded. “Amplification would work on both the shell and the spell, but Life will only work on the shell so Zer, use Life on the shell and give it more presence. Velistraine,” Arisia said with an amused smile, though her eyes shone dangerously in Henry’s opinion. The captain refused to meet the woman’s eyes, but that didn’t affect Arisia, and the instructor continued. “Spell-link with Henry. Henry, you want to cast remotely. Use whatever Aspect you planned on using as you would normally, but what Velistraine will do is that she’ll surround the spell nexus with the Amplification concept. Don’t interact with it. It’s too much for you to handle directly, but don’t prevent it from seeping into the spell, either. Just let the magic pull from the conceptual energies on its own. And hold on tight. It might be rough.”
Henry took in everything being said, then nodded as a thrill of worry coursed through him. If Arisia said it was rough, how bad could it really get?
He shook his head, then took a deep breath. They needed answers. And as long as it wasn’t going to kill him, he’d recover. “Alright. Here goes.”
Pushing the spell-nexus out of his body with a practiced manner, Henry waited for a few moments while the two A-ranks did their parts. Without even touching it, a haze of verdant green light surrounded the shell, bathing the whole area in a reinvigorating green light that made Henry feel that he’d just woken up from the most restful sleep he could imagine, and to his sight he almost felt like some of the scuff marks on the shell were being smoothed out.
So that’s an A-rank Aspect?
The intensity of the energy made his own Aspects feel like candles compared to a bonfire, and he wasn’t the only one thinking so. Even Maurice was shivering, eyes wide, but Henry couldn’t focus on the crab as he could feel more conceptual energies come into play.
Velistraine had started on her part, and her Aspect, while not as intense as Zerathstra, was still blinding to Henry’s senses. Tuning them out, he focused on his skill, feeding it Thaumaturgy to empower the process, then activated it.
The magic sprang to life once more, reaching for the shells to use as a catalyst and this time, the connection he felt to the empty shell was almost a physical thing. Mana rushed into the spell-nexus, empowering the spell as the construct pondered over his request while tendrils of Velistraine’s concepts seeped through. Every time one of them touched the intricate machinery that was his spell, it pulsed with power, making him grit his beak as he strained to hold control over the spell. The Octominds helped alleviate the weight, but there was no helping the taste of blood in his mouth. Nor was there much he could do about the pressure building up behind his eyes, aside from a bit of Arcane Regeneration that wasn’t doing much.
Still, there was no denying the involvement of both A-ranks had significantly changed things up. For the first time in his experience, Henry could actually see the floating symbols as they urgently flitted around the otherworldly orb of blue and gold that hovered a few inches out of his chest. Around it, motes of crimson, amplifying concepts were snatched out of the air by his magic, spiking the speed and intensity whenever they became part of the skill. Henry felt a sharp pain pierce through one of his eyes and for a moment, he lost vision until a comforting flow of Arcane Regeneration patched him up.
Henry couldn’t tell how long he held on to the spell. He just tuned out everything else. The noise of the crowd, the people standing near him, he even disconnected his clones. Everything. Until all of his attention revolved around keeping the spell alive and feeding it as much mana as it required.
The energies kept building up, more and more, until finally, something broke through, and a lance of golden light flew out of the skill like a shooting star, heading east, and Henry’s knees buckled, his control over his mimicked form lapsing for the first time in a while.
He vaguely heard someone speak, but all of his attention was on the golden line connecting him to his destination, and he couldn’t help the smile that spread across his lips.
So there was one of the mysterious turtles alive in this world.
Unfortunately, before he could bask in the success, the path manifested by his skill shook and snapped to the side, like a fishing line suddenly being challenged, and Henry’s stomach dropped. It had been hard enough to get a connection to the living turtle, so how was he supposed to hold on to it when the creature was actively trying to elude him?
Henry scrambled, pushing more mana into the spell, but just as he feared, after a couple more snaps that he believed were sudden teleports, the path to the being broke and faded away.
“No… no no come on…”
“Henry! Henry, focus,” he heard. The voice seemed terse, and he felt a strong arm pull him up to his feet. As he turned his attention back to his own environment, he expected to find waiting faces and questions. But there were none.
Even Arisia, once she made sure he could stand, had gone off and joined the others as they hunched over the bench, and Henry’s stomach twisted as the pieces began to click together, especially when he realized the green light backlighting Zerathstra meant he was healing someone.
“What’s happening?” Henry asked, but as soon as the words left his mouth, he knew. As soon as he regained control of his hidden clones, he realized something was very wrong.
Maurice was unresponsive, arms and eyes hanging limply as he lay still on the bench, occasionally twitching. Even Zerathstra’s healing wasn’t enough to wake him up.
“Maurice?”
Henry reached over to channel some healing into the crab, even though he knew the ape was already doing the same, but a furry arm gently stopped him.
“He’s not injured. And I think he’ll be fine in a few moment. But something happened with the shell…”
The shell?
Henry gazed down at the multi-colored shell and at the shiny scutes whose shape had changed the day Maurice had taken it over. Then his eyes drifted to the second one. The one they had just empowered so it would work better with Pathfinding.
The first time they had found the second shell, Maurice had reported a reaction from his own shell, but even though they’d re-tested it, it had never reacted badly. It only felt slightly odd, Maurice had said.
Empowering the shell to act as a catalyst for Pathfinding might have triggered something in Maurice’s shell. But what?
***
One moment Maurice had been watching as Henry channeled the divination, aided by not just one, but two A-ranks as the crab tried to shake off the intensifying sensation coming out of his shell and the next, he looked down to find his claws shaking. Rippling and undulating, even, as if he was looking at them through a screen of water that was slowly growing darker as he felt his consciousness drift away from his body.
Uh-oh… was something wrong… with the jam?
Even his usually lightning fast thoughts had slowed down, and Maurice, barely still hanging on to his consciousness, drifted. An odd state he could only compare to those few seconds where one just woke up, where you weren’t sure of what was real, what was and wasn’t, and whether you were even you. He didn’t know how long he’d been in this… inbetween state, but he did know, at this moment, that some thoughts weren’t his own. Curiously, he tried to peer into them, and it was more work than he expected.
Hehe, he chuckled inwardly. Maurice might have had a fault or two, but being a quitter was not one of them.
Pulling on all of his mental strength–or whatever this odd state had left him with–Maurice latched on to the feelings and memories. He knew they were not his own. Because while Maurice had been scared many times in the past, he had never experienced this level of dread and desperation. This sense of loneliness and finality.
Of someone ready for death. And knowing it was coming.
Thoughts that weren’t his own were floated in and out of his consciousness. Half-formed ideas, barely held together, but bit by bit, he managed to slot them together, until slowly, an image began to form.
Well, not exactly an image. Just a series of thoughts and feelings that made sense. A continuity. And it was all permeated by fear. Fear, from something pursuing him. Fear from where he found himself.
Herself?
She should have never come here. She had swam through the cosmic current toward the distress signal. But if she had known this was where it would have taken her, she would have brought more of her siblings. Many more. And she would have ended up damning them all.
How many had listened? How many can’t leave?
She had felt the way close behind her. She had been noticed. She would die here.
Should she call for aid? Would she condemn more to her fate?
His fate?
Maurice jerked to consciousness, and the sensation of his limbs came back to him like an explosion of light and noise. Blearily, he looked up to find a handful of concerned faces staring down at him.
He ignored them.
He sensed the memories trying to slip away from him. Fragmenting away, now that his attention was elsewhere, like a half dream. So Maurice clamped down on them and committed them to memory. Every detail. Every sensation. He couldn’t see anything really, but the knowledge… he knew it was valuable.
Once he was sure the memory hadn’t gone anywhere, he looked back up at Henry and rubbed his arms as he reached for a piece of bread. “What did I miss?”
Comments
Thomas V.
I actually feel like these memories were from the previous, now-dead, owner of his shell - the one found in the corpse of the leviathan. Wherever it was those two came from, I feel like it has something to do with what happens to people trying to ascend past A-rank too.
Cha0sniper
.... Ok, so something's hunting the turtles, which we kinda already suspected, but it seems like it's trapped one of them. That one then accidentally mind-melded with Maurice .......awesome. :D
