Super Genetics
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B2 - Chapter 25: Bringer of Fire
🕑 Added 2024-09-19 16:53:47 +0000 UTCDespite the advantage of Terry’s first strike, Al’Ruzan was clearly well trained.
As Terry rained down blows on the blinded giant, Al’Ruzan got his guard up, absorbing the next couple strikes on his forearms. When one of Terry’s punches connected, Al’Ruzan used the timing to slip the next shot, causing him to overextend. Al’Ruzan blindly reached up and snagged his vicious talons on Terry’s shirt. As he tried to pull him in close, the cloth ripped and Terry stumbled back a step.
Al’Ruzan was on his feet with a desperate scramble, his arms swiping forward with deadly speed.
The others cried out and backed away from the flailing giant, crowding to the back of the cave as Al’Ruzan stumbled forward.
Mara-Lin-Jaid tried yelling to get their attention, then sent System messages demanding they stop. But the die was cast and Terry knew that someone of Al’Ruzan’s upbringing wouldn’t surrender unless in the face of overwhelming force.
So that’s what he did.
With a burst of speed, he shot forward, ducking under Al’Ruzan’s wild swings. His fist smashed into the giant’s gut and he was pleased to hear the explosive grunt from Al’Ruzan’s mouth at the impact. Without missing a beat, he launched an uppercut from under Al’Ruzan’s guard, snapping his head back with a crunching sound.
Al’Ruzan fought through the pain and surprise, reaching down to bear hug Terry. If the giant alien got a grip on him, he was dead.
He activated his trump card, dropping Master of Light and switching his focus to Metal Telekinesis. With a violent tug, he ripped backward on the metal beads intertwined in Al’Ruzan’s braids, yanking the giant’s head back and throwing him off balance.
And right over the leg Terry had extended behind him.
He toppled backward—a far fall for someone so large. While he fell, Terry switched his target, pulling on the metal he sensed from across the cave.
Al’Ruzan’s knife flew from Mara-Lin-Jaid’s belt right into his waiting hand. A moment later, he had it pressed to the giant’s throat. Al’Ruzan went suddenly still.
A silence blanketed the cave, only Terry’s ragged breaths echoing out.
A part of him—a small part—urged him to press down, put his weight into the blade and take this piece off the board once and for all.
Whipvine’s words played in his mind.
Machievelli said, ‘Men ought either to be well treated or crushed…that one does not stand in fear of revenge.’
As he looked into Al’Ruzan’s yellow eyes, he couldn’t help but feel in his gut that this was an enemy who would seek revenge.
And yet, his body wouldn’t lean forward, wouldn’t shove the blade into his enemy’s throat. Though that voice inside him whispered to do it, crush Al’Ruzan entirely, the other voice spoke in his mother’s tone.
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
Turn the other cheek.
An eye for an eye would leave the whole world blind.
And the list of platitudes went on and on—because that’s what they were, platitudes. Turning the other cheek wasn’t an option against a creature bred for fighting. The moment he lifted his blade from Al’Ruzan’s neck and offered his hand, the Duelist would go for his throat—he just felt the truth of that, deep in his bones.
His eyes flicked toward the others crowding together in the back of the cave.
They were scared, yes, but he spotted something in their eyes—their fear was directed at him. And more than the others, Mara-Lin-Jaid had a desperate, wild-eyed look as her eyes cut to the blade, then back to him.
He saw it then, clear as day; killing Al’Ruzan in cold blood after winning the fight handily would have ripples effects on the dynamic of the team. He realized how it must have looked to them. He’d only been here for a few hours—Al’Ruzan had been providing their every meal for months. And on top of all of that, he’d demonstrated the power of a Traveler, Duelist, and an Elementalist, all in one go. He knew as well as anyone that just wasn’t possible.
The fear of the unknown often trumped the fear of the hand clenched around your very throat.
He couldn’t do it. It galled him after all of that, but he just couldn’t. Killing Al’Ruzan while he was defenseless on the ground would alienate him from the group, creating a schism that he could never fully heal. Maybe in the heat of the fight, if they’d been evenly matched, he would have been able to strike the killing blow and deal with the ramifications later.
But not like this.
That wasn’t to say he would give Al’Ruzan the chance to do the same to him. No, there was another quote of Whipvine’s that felt particularly relevant.
Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.
If he wasn’t going to kill Al’Ruzan, he’d give him a way out.
He kept his blade tight to the Duelist’s throat and split his attention to his aura, coaxing the unfamiliar space apart with a thought. A portal cut across the air right next to them, eight feet tall, shimmering blue, burning across their eyes after the dim light of the cave.
[Terry]: Two choices, Al’Ruzan. Take the portal on faith—I don’t know what lays on the other side. Perhaps death, perhaps a second chance.
He pressed his body down on the knife, drawing blood from Al’Ruzan’s neck.
[Terry]: Your second choice…certain death.
He studied Al’Ruzan’s face, waiting for the alien to choose. There was no doubt in Terry’s heart, if the Duelist chose to fight, he’d defend himself—to the death.
But he was hoping Al’Ruzan was smarter than that, braver than that. A quick suicide at Terry’s knife was the coward’s way out. Jumping into the unknown might have seemed like fleeing, but the unknown was always more terrifying than the certain.
A hand touched his shoulder and he would have known who it was even if her aura didn’t give her away. He didn’t even blink as a System notification appeared in his vision.
Mara-Lin-Jaid has requested a private System chat. Accept?
He allowed it to come through, not surprised in the least by her message.
[Mara-Lin-Jaid]: Please, Terry. He never would have killed you. This was just how he was raised. We can teach him a different way.
Terry watched Al’Ruzan’s eyes flick toward Mara-Lin-Jaid. There was something in that gaze that he couldn’t parse, some unreadable emotion that the adrenaline of the fight, of his blade held in limbo over a person’s life, that prevented him from being able to analyze what passed between them.
It was only after the fact—in the long, cold hours alone—that he realized the emotion he had seen pass between them.
Love.
A sudden shove took him from the side—not overly strong, not even close to what a D-ranked Duelist should have been capable of performing, even prone on the ground.
He stumbled, tripping over Al’Ruzan’s body, falling headlong through his own portal with a strangled cry.
The surprise, more than anything, kept him from reacting quick enough. He fell pathetically into a bank of snow, his bare skin suddenly numb from the cold. The wind bit at him worse than any dire wolf, stabbing at his ears, his eyes, even the inside of his throat.
His mind caught up in a flash, processing what had happened instinctively.
Mara-Lin-Jaid shoved me!
He shot to his feet, fighting through the biting cold, and turned to face his portal. If Al’Ruzan came through to finish him off, he’d be ready. The knife in his hand felt like an extension of his own arm, calling to him, pleading to be used—finally.
When Al’Ruzan didn’t shoot through the portal to attack, Terry flipped a mental switch, reconfiguring the portal to let the light from the other side pass through.
The opaque blue portal shimmered, then revealed the view of the cave beyond.
He could see them, but they couldn’t see him.
Al’Ruzan was on his feet, staring after the portal with a conflicted expression—part rage, part confusion, as if he couldn’t understand why Terry had spared him. Mara-Lin-Jaid was in between Al’Ruzan and the portal, her hands pushing against his chest lightly. The Duelist could have easily brushed past her, but for some reason, was letting her stop him.
[Mara-Lin-Jaid]: Please forgive me, Terry. You’re a Traveler and a Duelist, so I know you can survive the cold until he calms down. Just…give him some time and we can coexist! I promise.
She had sent the message privately, but Terry was feeling less than charitable towards the woman. While he activated Master of Light to confine his infrared heat and preserve his body temperature, he crafted his own message for the Team Chat.
[Terry]: Mara-Lin-Jaid has made her choice. Juan, Py, Chippy. I will find shelter. I will complete this Quest.
And I WILL make it back home.
If you want to come with me, send me private chats and I promise to portal you out as soon as I find somewhere safe.
If not…well, good luck.
He watched Al’Ruzan and Mara-Lin-Jaid’s faces for their reactions. Al’Ruzan glanced toward the other three with a hint of threat that tempted Terry to just open up a return portal and finish what he started.
On Mara-Lin-Jaid’s face, he noted her check to make sure Al’Ruzan wasn’t watching, then looked toward the portal with a hopeful expression.
He dropped the portal, finally taking in his surroundings for the first time.
Well…shit. Now what?
***
The first thing he did was catalog his available Affixations. He also noted that he still had an unspent Talent point from his Deny the Omega Quest, but he tabled that for now; nothing it offered would fix the immediate problem of sheltering from the cold.
Other than his portal, telekinesis, and light Skills, he also had his water and earth skills he’d learned from his Feed Wichita team during their brief rebellious stint in Topeka. He hadn’t learned anything from Vlad before his death—a Stone-based Skill would have been really handy right about now. But he did have Alan’s Draw Water, which was a D-grade Skill that when activated, allowed him to use his aura to find and direct water.
He’d been hoping to use it for whatever fuel Juan had squirreled away. If he could’ve extracted the water and ice, it would’ve been a lot easier for the Fire Elementalist to get it burning.
As for the Earth-based Skills he’d learned from Katie and Peter, they had been more about practicing his analysis abilities more than anything. Katie had let him copy a Skill that could find and shift nutrients in soil and loose earth. Peter had been more in tune with plants, so Terry had copied a Skill that let him sense plant life and manipulate their root structures through the ground.
None of it had seemed particularly useful at the time—not in the way Metal Telekinesis had instantly elevated his offensive powerset—but now, he was thanking whatever gods were listening that he had bothered to learn them.
The first thing he did was prepare his aura to Affix both the Draw Water and Manipulate Roots Skills. He wasn’t willing to drop his portal or light Skill—they were too immediately relevant to his survival—but he needed to free up space for the other D-grade Skills.
His third D-slot that he’d received from completing his Feed Wichita Quest had been occupied with his D-grade Body Tempering Skill he’d learned from Silver ages ago. That could be swapped for one of the other Skills.
For the second Skill, he would lean on his Versatile talent. With that, he could use two E-slots for one D-grade Skill or mix and match two F-slots with a single E-slot to give him the necessary free aura.
One E-slot was already empty—there was nothing valuable in his catalog other than Metal Telekinesis. Likewise for his F-slots, as his only useful Skill was Liquefy Metal. So he needed to drop Liquefy Metal to free up two F-slots and a single E-slot.
He prepped the swap over, then accepted the prompts. His aura rippled as it rewrote itself, shifting Draw Water into his free D-slot, and swapping a single E and two F-slots for Manipulate Roots.
After a few minutes, his aura finally settled into place and he took a heavy breath of relief. Then, he activated Draw Water and pulled all the surface water from his clothes, hair, and skin. It was a delicate process as he had to be careful not to pull the water from his own body and inadvertently dehydrate himself. But with a bit of meticulous aura control, he was finally dry with a couple minutes work.
The next step was to find shelter. While Master of Light could theoretically keep his body in equilibrium for a long time, he needed to get out of this biting wind and start making a plan.
He had meant what he’d said—he was finishing this damned Quest.
His aura extended into the earth, passing through multiple feet of snow before reaching the solid ground beneath. Manipulate Roots allowed him to feel the composition of the soil and stone wherever the roots touched. He had to dive deeper than anticipated but he eventually found a network of plants that intertwined beneath the surface. They felt hardy, naturally tough to exist in a desolate environment like the Underworld.
He followed them with his aura, felt the intricate branching as the roots worked deeper, connected to other plants, slowly inching their way through the stone and soil.
Time passed as he continued to follow the various networks and he eventually found what he had been looking for.
A quarter mile or so away, he’d found roots that had punched through the earth and now dangled in the air. There was a disorienting sensation, like face planting into a deep snow well, just your feet exposed to the air.
He marked the location with his aura, then dropped the Manipulate Roots Skill and began reaching forward in space. It wasn’t as practical to just search space for a large enough area to shelter—there was a lot of ground to cover and his aura projection wasn’t up to that task just yet.
But now that he’d found it through the root network, it was trivial to locate it with his spatial senses.
He ran his aura over the location, mapping out the space with his mind.
It would do.
With a flex of aura, he opened a portal to that location, feeling that there was no resistance from soil or stone. Sliding his head through, he began to survey his potential new home.
The light from the portal lit up the space, showing him a roughly ten foot by twenty five foot natural cave formation. At the far end of the cave, it twisted out of view, possibly extending into an entire cavern system.
Before he stepped through to his new home, there was some housekeeping to do. He reached out to the roots that extended above into what would be his new roof. They served as natural anchors, creating a decent structure to the loose soil above.
But he could do better.
With a thought, he began to shift their formation, forming a latticework of roots that reinforced the dirt above. He was no engineer by any means, but he could feel the surrounding soil pack tighter, shift less, as he changed the root structure.
When he was fairly confident the cave roof wouldn’t collapse on him, he stepped through the portal into his new shelter.
The dirt roof was eight feet high, feeling slightly cramped but not so much that he had to duck. A soft drip, drip, drip echoed through the cave, creating an ominous backdrop to the wind moaning from somewhere deeper in the system.
At least he wouldn’t have to worry about suffocating in the shelter—there were obvious access points to the surface that were feeding the shifting wind throughout the cave.
With the immediate concern of exposure on the surface dealt with, he began to work on his next priority. For months—years, even—the others had possessed no fire, forced to slow cook their meat with Juan’s arrival.
He meant to change that.
Diving beneath his feet, he found more roots crisscrossing through the earth. With a pull, he shifted them up, watched them worm through the soil until they deposited themselves at his feet like offerings from Mother Earth herself.
When he was done, he had a pile of gnarled brown roots resting on the soil, just waiting to be fuel for his fire.
And now, for the easiest part.
He reached up through the earth with his aura, extending to the surface, up through the storm and high into the sky. Once he had reached as far as his senses could go, he opened a small portal, drawing the exit at eye level in his cave.
Diffused light passed through, illuminating the dim cave. With a flex of Master of Light, he refined the light, sharpening it until it became a focused beam shining onto the pile of roots. The beam intensified, helped along by his Skill, and the roots quickly began to smoke.
Within a handful of seconds, a small spark burst forth, which caught on the surrounding roots. A flame flickered into life and Terry smiled.
He’d been ignoring the chats coming in, and specifically the Team Chat where the others were talking to each other and to him.
But now, he crafted his own message.
[Terry]: I told you all I was gonna finish this Quest. But first, I give you fire. Use it well, Juan.
Then he cut a portal through space back to their camp, scooped up a handful of soil to shield his hands, then dug under the fire to pick up a burning root. Carefully, he shoved it through the portal, preserving the flame so that Juan could take charge.
He dropped the portal a moment later and created a second pinhole portal to observe them in secret.
The others were paralyzed by the sudden arrival of the embers, but not Juan. Finally reconnected with his element, he latched on with the desperation of a starving man who hadn’t seen real food in weeks.
Through the portal, Terry heard Juan shout excitedly. His aura snapped out like a viper, snatching the fire with a joyful exuberance. It danced toward him, flickering dimly as its fuel began to burn up.
[Juan Carlos]: Chippy! Get the timber we found! Hurry!
Chippy squeaked in surprise, then raced to the back of the cave where Al’Ruzan’s bed was. Terry watched as the rodent alien rooted through the giant’s bed without a care in the world, coming up with a small piece of half-frozen wood a moment later.
He waited to see if Al’Ruzan would intercede, impose his dictatorship in Terry’s absence, perhaps even quench the fire out of some misguided pettiness.
He was both pleased and disappointed to see Al’Ruzan simply stunned silent. A part of him—a small part—had secretly hoped the giant would prove that Mara-Lin-Jaid had made the wrong choice.
But for the most part, he was happy to see that Al’Ruzan wasn’t as bad as he had feared. With fire, they could warm up, cook their meat, and finally—finally—start thinking about working on this damned Quest.
Juan took the small piece of frozen wood from Chippy and transfered the flame from the roots. There was a risk when igniting frozen wood that the steam from the melting ice would explode, but Juan was a Fire Elementalist; Terry assumed the man could handle it.
As the fire began to bloom bright, Chippy, Py, and Juan danced happily around it—for once breaking the Al’Ruzan imposed silence to cheer and whoop. As for the giant himself, he stared at the fire with a conflicted expression, his eyes lost in the flame.
And Mara-Lin-Jaid…her eyes roamed the cavern, looking for something, it seemed. After a moment, she looked up, traced her gaze across the cave roof until she locked onto something.
With a start, Terry realized she was looking directly at him.
A private message came through.
[Mara-Lin-Jaid]: Thank you, Terry.
There were a lot of responses that popped into his head—fuck you, being somewhere in the list. But his memory flashed back to that look in her eyes when he’d been perched over Al’Ruzan, his dagger prepared to bleed him out once and for all. The anger drained away, replaced with an ironclad surety that mending their team’s relationship was the first step toward completing this Quest; there was a reason the Weaver had put him with these five people.
[Terry]: You’re welcome, Mara-Lin-Jaid. Enjoy the warmth for now. But don’t get complacent. We still have a Quest to complete.
-----
Thanks for reading! Shooting for next chapter on Monday.
Comments
White Rose
I see your point. I liked the line and had intended for a lengthy beatdown. But as I started writing it, it hit me really hard that Al'Ruzan is a DUELIST from a warrior culture raised to be a preeminent fighter. He has to give a bit of a showing or it takes away from his own character in a fundamental way. Not sure what the best middle ground is but I'll give it a think to see if I want to change how this chapter starts or not. To be fair, Terry does kick his ass lol.
Andrew Simpson
I think that's fair. It was a great line but it also felt like the conclusion to that thought. Especially because Al'Ruzan briefly fights back in this chapter, feels like the tension curve doesn't line up. That being said I DO like both that line, and the ass kicking that occured in this chapter.
Monadologist
The last line from the last chapter > Then, he really started kicking Al’Ruzan’s ass. feels like it was ret-conned a bit too quickly. It feels like it promised one form of resolution, and this chapter zigged off in a completely different direction.
White Rose
Yeah good point
Andrew Simpson
It wasn't mentioned last chapter either. Considering last chapter only encompassed like fifteen minutes or something it wasn't that surprising, but I was expecting him to reflect on it when he got ousted. Maybe conclude this bit from two chapters ago with a mention of Terry getting the cube and storing it on his person? -- “Hey! That’s mine!” He moved to grab the cube that he assumed contained the Singularity, but his limbs betrayed him, a splash of new fire washing across his chest. The girl pulled away instinctively, glanced down at the cube, then held it out silently. -- I didn't conclude that this was Terry reobtaining the cube, and we never circle back to it. I actually thought it was her offering it to Terry, and then him getting sidetracked meeting Juan.
White Rose
Thanks for reminding me. I forgot to track in the chapter but he DOES have it on him still. I'll update the chapter to reflect that.
Andrew Simpson
What ever happened to the singularity? I know it was put in the filter and then when Terry woke up he was like "hey that's mine!" But then what? Does he have it with him?
