Super Genetics
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B2 - Chapter 26: The Heebie-Jeebies
🕑 Added 2024-09-27 22:40:53 +0000 UTCAfter the adrenaline of the fight, the biting cold of the surface, and the sudden exultation of the fire filling his cave, he had to wonder to himself…
What now?
What did the five of them do for months on end, unable to leave their cave, no games or even a shared language between them?
He’d had an idea in his head to make the others wait a week. Let the tension and anger between him and Al’Ruzan drain away before he sought a truce. His initial instinct had been to whisk Juan, Chippy, and Py away immediately—leave Mara-Lin-Jaid and Al’Ruzan to their own devices.
But after more than a minute of thought, he’d realized that would be drawing the line in an irreconcilable way. The Quest was called Stronger Together and he had to imagine there was a reason the six of them had been stranded here.
As much as it galled him, he made the decision to at least try to mend bridges.
So…a week. He’d leave them with Al’Ruzan for a week just to let the giant know that he wasn’t laying claim to anyone, that the six of them could work together to solve this damn Quest.
Then, as he sat before his fire in utter silence, the thought of spending the next week completely alone began to really settle in.
He felt a sudden urge to do something, anything. He walked to the edge of his new home, rounding the corner that was out of sight.
His breath caught at the sight laid out before him.
Stretching farther than he could even see, a vast chasm loomed before him. The edge of his cave abutted against a thin ledge that wrapped along the cliff wall, appearing to extend down into the chasm—though he lost sight after a few hundred feet. Purple crystalline structures lined the walls of the chasm and the ceiling above, providing a dim illumination wherever they perched, but not nearly enough to light up the chasm itself.
An intense feeling of vertigo took him on the edge of that chasm and he stumbled back against his cave wall, peeking out from behind it to take in the sight once more.
Movement flashed across one of the purple crystals—far into the distance, but unsettling regardless.
He instantly retreated back into his cave, then realized just how bright his fire was. Yellow light lit up the entire space, burning bright against the dark of the chasm like a beacon shouting ‘free meal here.’
He’d never reached for Master of Light so fast. With a thought, he reflected all the light back inside the cave, letting none of it extend out into the large space beyond.
The drain on his aura was slight, but constant. He could probably keep it going indefinitely—if he didn’t have to use any other Skills—but keeping it active while he slept was another thing entirely.
Then he imagined actually sleeping in this cave by himself and a shiver traced up his back. Whatever he had seen crawling across that crystal in the distance had suddenly made his new home feel less than inviting.
To distract himself, he sent Juan a message.
[Terry]: You guys okay over there?
[Juan Carlos]: We’re good. Big Al’s fuming by himself in the corner. Mara-Lin-Jaid gave him a scolding that sent him with his tail between his legs. Wouldn’t surprise me if she actually told him to go sit in the corner and think about what he’s done.
Terry smiled at that, imagining the System chat browbeating of a seven-foot-tall warrior preordained to be royalty.
[Juan Carlos]: And what about you? I mean, you fucked him up, bro. I never though a D-ranker could do that to Big Al.
He considered that for a moment. A part of him felt a bit smug at putting Al’Ruzan down. But another part wondered if he hadn’t revealed too much of his powerset in his arrogance.
But at the end of the day, they’d seen enough that he couldn’t just play it off as some fluke. In their eyes, he was a Traveler and a Duelist—at a bare minimum.
[Terry]: I…have a flexible powerset. And good teachers.
A message rolled in from Py, surprising him.
[Py Dar]: What an understatement! Portals, body tempering, AND whatever that was you did to his eyes!
It took Terry a moment, but then he realized that Juan had been relaying their conversation to Py and Chippy. It must have been automatic for the man at this point. He didn’t mind though—the other two had left just as good an impression on him as Juan and he didn’t mind discussing this with the three of them.
[Chialpuncritis]: Obvious manipulation of electromagnetic radiation. Blinded Al’Ruzan during the fight. And your use of portals indicates the influence of a master—and Presence Attributes approaching the Cs, if I’m not mistaken.
Then there’s your Physical Attributes. Clearly in the D3 to D5 range.
Terry read that message with a flush of surprise.
[Terry]: How did you figure out my Attributes?
[Chialpuncritis]: Was I accurate?
[Terry]: Eerily.
[Juan Carlos]: It’s one of Chippy’s Savant Skills.
An immediate need to learn that Skill from Chippy gripped him like a vise. But it was one thing them knowing he had a versatile skillset and entirely another revealing that he could copy their Skills at will.
[Terry]: That’s fascinating.
[Chialpuncritis]: Useless, you mean. All I’m good for is skinning wolves.
[Py Dar]: Stop that talk, Chippy! You’re also good for keeping Juan and I warm at night!
Terry frowned at that message, wondering if there was some subtext there or if he was reading into it.
A moment later, Juan cleared up his confusion.
[Juan Carlos]: Chippy’s people run hot, Terry. He has to eat more than you’d think someone his size would need, but he’s like our own personal space heater at night.
[Terry]: Oh, gotcha.
He didn’t think he was a prude, but something about the four-armed Py, the rodent-looking Chippy, and Juan in a weird alien threesome made his brain hurt.
[Terry]: Speaking of night…
[Juan Carlos]: Yeah?
He took a moment to formulate his words; though he was absolutely terrified of whatever had been crawling out in the large chasm, he’d also sort of portrayed himself as a capable badass. Announcing his fear would definitely put a damper on his image.
It surprised him to realize he cared, but he did.
[Terry]: Is it safe to sleep at night? I found a large cave and I’m gonna need to get some shut eye at some point.
[Py Dar]: We’ve never been attacked inside our cave.
[Juan Carlos]: Not counting the thing that steals our food every couple of days, that is.
That made him feel slightly better. The Underworld didn’t exactly have a reputation as a vacation spot. But the five of them had survived for months—years, in Al’Ruzan’s case—and none of them were fighters other than the Duelist himself.
Put at ease—at least as much as he could be in a foreign realm—he began to pull more roots up from the soil in order to stockpile some fuel for the night. As he worked, he chatted idly with Py, Chippy, and Juan. They talked about home, speculated about their Quests, and the three of them even introduced him to their private made-up game. It was called Dire Wolf Hunt and involved two or more players trying to match their imaginary cards by strategically stealing the others’. Since they didn’t actually have playing cards, one of them had to be a referee and assigned the cards to each player.
Terry had a sinking suspicion this was basically Go Fish and when he heard Juan had come up with it, his suspicion was all but confirmed.
Crappy made up game or not, it was nice to chat with the three of them while he made his new home relatively comfortable.
He changed his Affixations a couple of times as he liquefied his silver bracelet and formed a small palm-sized pot. Opening a portal to the surface, he grabbed some snow and melted it in his homemade pot, creating clean drinking water.
Hunger began to gnaw at his belly and he eyed the mystery roots he’d been using as fuel, but eventually decided that was a bad idea. Who knew if it was digestible to humans or not?
He was tempted to snag some of the now-cooking dire wolf meat from the others, but his pride wouldn’t let him break the impasse between him and Al’Ruzan—not yet. And stealing the food from under his nose would only add fuel to the fire—even if he had every right to the meat as the rest of them.
No, he could wait a night, he decided.
Hours later, his portal to the surface revealed that it was still bright outside—past the whiteout of the blizzard, at least—but his biological clock told him that it was well into the night back on Earth.
As much as he didn’t want to, sleep beckoned.
He toyed with the idea of snuffing his fire before bed. He had never learned to tie off his Master of Light Skill, so it would drop when he went to sleep, revealing the glow of the fire to whatever lay outside his cave.
But the flipside of that was that he was also containing his body heat with Master of Light and if he put out the fire and let his Skill drop in sleep, he’d very likely freeze to death in the night.
So there really was no other option—he had to keep the fire going through the night. Just to be safe, he shifted the soil using his Manipulate Roots Skill and created a hole that extended three or four feet down and about five-by-five feet across.
He moved his fire down into the hole, then shifted his bed of roots he had boiled earlier beside the fire. He hoped that the hole would hide the light of the fire enough so that no curious critters would come looking.
As he lay down on the softened roots, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of uncomfortable familiarity; the hole was eerily similar to the grave he’d crawled into for his Awakening.
He pushed those thoughts aside, staring into the small fire near his head. His eyes felt heavy, but he forced them open, watching the fire flicker and pop. Every time they’d drift shut, he blinked them open, check his surroundings, then stare back at the fire.
He fought sleep as long as he could, but his eyes seemed to grow heavier and heavier with every blink.
He didn’t know when it happened, but at some point, he sunk into sleep.
***
In his dreams, he heard his mother’s voice.
She sung a low lullaby, soothing him, making him feel safe. Her hand rubbed at his back and he melted into that touch.
A part of him was embarrassed to have his mother putting him to bed; he was nearly fifteen. He’d faced off against draugrs, vampires—a seven-foot tall alien Duelist.
Al’Ruzan!
Thoughts of the Duelist brought him back to the present. He suddenly realized how cold he was and resolved to open his eyes, or at least get his Master of Light Skill going to preserve his body heat.
But as he reached for his aura, something felt off. It was slow to respond, moving glacially as he tried to stir it into the right shape. Panic gripped him and he tried to open his eyes and sit up.
His lids were gummed shut, his muscles barely responding.
He might have chalked it up to the cold—he was suffering from hypothermia that was paralyzing his muscles.
But then why did his aura feel so sluggish too?
He fought against the resistance, reaching for the Skill that was the easiest for him to summon. It didn’t matter what or where, he just needed it to work, needed to feel that his magic wasn’t broken.
A portal ripped through the space near his head. Bright light streamed in from high above the surface, illuminating the hole that looked like a grave.
Shrieking cries rang up as the light entered. His heart clenched at the sound, the realization that he wasn’t alone causing a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.
Fighting past the numbness gripping his body, he managed to pull his eyelids open—and wished he hadn’t.
Swarming over him were so many foot-long insects that he couldn’t see his skin under their bodies. They appeared to be centipede-like bugs with far too many legs and black, chitinous bodies.
The horror that washed over him lent his aura strength.
With a strangled cry, he cut through space faster and more forcibly than ever before. The portal whisked him away, depositing him on hard rock with an impact his numb skin didn’t feel.
“Terry!”
Juan’s voice cut through the terror, followed a moment later by Chippy’s loud squeaks.
He tried to speak—no, tried to shout—but his tongue felt thick, the words coming out slow, lazy, garbled.
“Gitthemoff,” he slurred.
He didn’t feel the hands that did it through his numb skin, but he saw the black insects flying through the air; saw all five of them stomping them with boots and bare feet; heard the crunch of their exoskeletons; witnessed the green ichor splashing across the cave floor.
The terrifying display went on for minutes as they turned him over, only to discover more nibbling at his back and legs. The way their feet stomped, their cries of disgust and panicked gasps, created a bizarre tableau that was like some twisted interpretive dance.
He couldn’t help it, as they stomped, found more, and stomped again, he moaned in fear—and relief.
The words please, please, please, were followed by just as terrified thank you, thank you, thank yous—none of them sensical through his swollen throat.
When the stomping stopped and the others reclined in ichor-splashed exhaustion, Terry finally found the wherewithal to send a System chat.
[Terry]: Holy shit, thank you so much!
[Juan Carlos]: That’s gonna haunt my nightmares for a long, LONG time.
[Mara-Lin-Jaid]: Are you okay, Terry?
His limbs were still numb, his aura sluggish to respond. But he could breath, he could see, and if need be, he could teleport away.
[Terry]: No…but I will be.
His eyes traced over the others, found Al’Ruzan. To his surprise, there was just as much disgust—and hidden fear—in the giant’s eyes as there was in the others. It seemed even warrior aliens weren’t immune to a case of the heebie-jeebies.
With the immediate threat taken care of, it seemed like everyone in the cave remembered the tension in the group at the same time. Mara-Lin-Jaid watched Al’Ruzan discreetly from the corner of her eye, Py Dar angled away from the giant—Chippy right behind her—while Juan appeared to be cupping a small ember behind his back.
That filled his heart with a sudden burst of camaraderie, but he sent Juan a message.
[Terry]: Don’t do anything rash, Juan. I can teleport away if it comes to it.
They locked eyes, and he could feel the indecision in Juan’s posture. He shook his head slightly and he saw the man chew his inner cheek.
The tension continued to grow and Terry turned his eyes toward Al’Ruzan in question. The Duelist matched his gaze, neither saying anything. Then, Al’Ruzan took a step forward and a hush came over the cave.
A message came in that seemed to surprise them all.
[Al’Ruzan, third of his name]: Juan, Py, you can put him in my bed while he recovers.
Before anyone could respond, Al’Ruzan trekked to the edge of the cave and crouched alone, turning his back to the rest of them as he stared out past the fur door hanging by the entrance.
Juan and Py shared a confused look, then came over and picked Terry up on either side. They carried him to the back of the cave, laying him gently down on Al’Ruzan’s bed. As they laid the furs over him, he was suddenly struck by just how cold he was.
As the numbing agent of the insects dissipated, the shivers took hold. Juan tucked in the edges of the furs, said something that Terry missed, and without realizing it, he was asleep in moments.
When he awoke, it was dark, only the flickering embers that Juan was magically maintaining lighting up a small corner on the far side of the cave.
He saw the movement at the same time he felt the proximity of an aura. Without even looking, he knew it was Al’Ruzan standing over him.
A part of him thought to cry out, portal away, portal through Al’Ruzan and end the threat. But he realized that the Duelist wasn’t attacking or trying to smother him in his sleep. He was simply standing there, watching Terry.
He seemed to recognize that Terry had awoken; a System chat came in a moment later.
[Al’Ruzan, third of his name]: Why didn’t you kill me? Was it honor or fear?
Comments
Andrew Simpson
Wow I can't even begin to tell you how much I hated this. I guess Terry pretty literally owes his life to the squad. Great chapter!
