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Nero Walker, Book 3 Ch.11 (126)
🕑 Added 2024-03-07 23:30:01 +0000 UTCKendra Sterling was not cut out for this sort of thing. She was meant to be in a lab, studying data and moving up the political ladder of Center-Research. If she wanted to waste her days walking around in filth, she would have never left the farm.
Reaching out a hand to steady herself against the wall, she angled her chest-lamp toward her feet and lifted up a boot to see what she had just stepped in. The gesture was futile, because in the dimly lit corridor she couldn’t tell much more than whatever it was smelled awful and was extremely sticky. Grimacing in irritation, she angrily scraped her boot across the floor, trying to remove what she had decided to pretend was glue.
“Researcher Sterling, what’s the problem?” asked her team leader, Sergeant Fornton. The woman’s voice was harsher than usual, and there was an undertone that implied she was running out of patience with Kendra.
Quickly attempting to imitate a soldier standing attention, Kendra replied, “Nothing, Sergeant. No problems here.”
Kendra met the sergeant’s glare with the smile she had perfected over years, honed in conference rooms, labs, and politically charged parties. Unfortunately, the sergeant seemed immune to her tactics, and only replied with a grunt, before turning around and returning to the front of the party heading down the expansive underground hallway.
The lights from the soldier’s chest-lamps and the civil engineer’s shoulder mounted essence bulbs made the shadows dance across the walls, hopefully hiding her face as her smile fell.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and she turned to see David attempting to smile reassuringly. “We’re almost at the power room. We’ll be out of here in no time,” he said cheerily, or at least as cheerily as he could. The overly serious man wasn’t exactly known for his personality.
She nodded in thanks, and together they took up their positions in the large formation. She and David were the only researchers on the team, and they were told to stick close to the engineers.
“Why are we even here?” she griped quietly. “The first three levels are still within the city’s wards, there shouldn’t be any essence disturbances to examine until we hit at least level four.”
David replied simply, without any judgment or heat in his voice. “Because we were ordered to be. It’s a great honor to represent the Center. The general requested the best, and we’re it.”
Both David and Kendra had worked directly under Researcher Nicholas Salvatore, now known as Lord Salvatore-Verena, when he was still the head of Dorchester’s Center-Research for gate 15. If that wasn’t enough, they were also credited for the discovery of the density shift happening outside the walls. Granted, it was Lord Salvatore-Verena who actually discovered it, but they were the ones entrusted to do the mathematical projections. Their work on essence flow tracking had been the foundation for the paper.
Out of all the researchers in Dorchester, they were the ones with the strongest background in essence flow analysis. It’s why Nick had chosen them for his lab, or at least that’s what everyone believed. In reality, Nick chose them because Kendra was good at handling politics which he was terrible at, and David was good at dealing with detail oriented tasks which he constantly ignored.
After Lord Salvatore-Verena left the Center to found his new house, they’d been pushed to the forefront of the density shift preparations. Over the past few weeks they’ve been bounced around Dorchester, briefing army command centers, providing threat analysis to the nobles and trade guilds. And now, they were assigned to ‘Mountain Team #5’ in order to provide on-site evaluations of the mountain city currently being reopened.
Kendra shot David a glare, and said, “The only reason we’re here is because no one knows what to do with us. Nick leaving so abruptly, after having discovered the density shift, has Center-Research scrambling. The general wants answers, and they figure since we no longer have a department head, we won’t have any current research projects to interrupt. They pawned us off on the military, and the military doesn’t know how to make use of us. So now we’re here, in the dark, with backpacks full of testing equipment we don’t know how to use, heading into a sealed off section of the city to see if there is anything waiting for us on the other side of those doors.” Her voice was full of sarcasm and mockery, letting David know exactly how she felt about the current situation.
David looked around to see grinning civil engineers pretending not to listen in on their conversation. He wasn’t oblivious to their complicated professional status, but there wasn’t much he could do about it either.
His eyes wandered along the massive hallway. It was probably 50ft wide, and the intricately carved stone walls and doors lining the walls were probably very beautiful at one point in time. Despite the low-light conditions, David could see the deactivated essence globes hanging from the decorative ceiling.
“Well, do you regret not taking Vera up on her offer? You could be sitting in an office right now, helping her do paperwork for whatever scheme she is currently hatching. Where is your sense of adventure? Your a researcher for heaven’s sake. This part of the city hasn’t seen a human presence for hundreds of years. Who knows what we’ll find when we turn the power back on,” he said without any enthusiasm in his voice. For him, that was as rousing as he could be.
Kendra sniffed at his words, deciding to ignore him. There was no point talking to the man. Ever since Nick had left, he’d been even duller than usual. Complaining to him was completely unsatisfying.
From the front of the large party they heard, “This is it. Engineers, get up here and get these doors open.”
The 10 engineers which had been surrounding them all hopped to it, and quickly moved toward Sergeant Fornton’s voice.
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He could see the surrounding essence filled with the mob’s psychic presence. But he could tell that it was shrinking rapidly. As the edges collapsed, the center of the mob became much easier to see. Unsurprisingly, it was exactly on top of the sergeant, who was ignoring the mob’s pathetically ineffective attacks against his armored legs. There must have been 10 dogs fighting in a pile at his feet, gnawing fruitlessly on his steel clad calves and thighs.
The entire fight had only been going for about two minutes from the first sighting, and Nero could tell the mob’s essence field had already shrunk by more than half. Wesker’s massacre in the middle was almost a little sad. The poor mob had no defense against him, and he exploited that fact ruthlessly. Every swing of his axes ripped through multiple dogs, and the sounds were as awful as you’d expect them to be.
Behind their walls, Nero and the others were perfectly safe as the mob’s dogs weren’t capable of a 4ft vertical leap. So, as Nero had nothing to do, he just watched the mob’s psychic field shrink while wondering what had been going on with his brain for the past … hour? 30 minutes? However long it took for them to find the mob again.
Before he came to any conclusions, Nero saw the mob’s essence field change abruptly. One second, it was distributed and omnipresent, the next, it converged on its center gaining mass as it collapsed.
Nero heard Nick shout, “It’s manifesting! Wall’s coming down, get ready.”
The next second, the earthen wall blocking his view collapsed into rubble, and Nero got his first clear look at his surroundings. The forest floor around where the wall used to be was ripped apart by mob’s paws, but there were no bodies anywhere. Looking up, he saw the remaining dogs evaporating like smoke. And for the first time, Nero got to see what a spawning monster looked like.
Wesker took a few steps back toward the group while switching out one of his axes for a shield. Nero was impressed at the demonstration of his proficiency at controlling his personal space.
Nero watched with both his psychic senses and his eyes as essence gathered around the mob’s center and a giant version of the mob’s dog appeared like one of those toy sponges that got bigger when you put them in water. It started out so small it couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, then exploded into existence mid-snarl. Had it not been so disturbing, it would have been trippy.
As if a starting gun had gone off, everyone exploded into action. Sergeant Wesker rushed forward slamming his shield into the face of the 6 ft tall overgrown dog, knocking its head to the side and interrupting the surprisingly baritone yapping. One of Cathleen’s spears launched from over Nero’s shoulder, and he could only assume the woman was behind him. A fresh stream of arrows from Rose started embedding themselves into the beasts side, while globs of burning magma from Nick launched toward the rear legs.
The psychic presence of the mob had changed to what Nero considered standard for a monster in the wilds. It wasn’t overly large, or dense. If anything, it looked a little undersized considering the height of the dog currently yelping in pain.
Deciding to finally contribute something, Nero lifted his off hand and stamped one of his go-to spells into existence. The ‘stone spike’ spell fired, and Nero had no problems imbuing his center into the constructs. Holding the spell-form together, he launched spikes one after another, slowly increasing how much center with each cast. By the third launch, his spikes began making contact with the giant chihuahua. They hammered into its side like railroad spikes, making the beast stumble. Four launches later, the monster collapsed in a heap.
‘Well, the mob’s ‘final form’ was pretty pathetic. Damn thing didn’t even have time to do anything other than growl a bit,’ Nero thought with some confusion.
“Um… that’s it?” Nero asked.
The group walked over to the monster, while Sergeant Wesker pulled out his collection rod to harvest the essence crystal from the corpse.
Nero felt Cathleen walk past him to collect her spears. As she reached down to rip her spear from the monster, she said, “Mobs like this really aren’t that hard to deal with if you are prepared for them. The problem is when you don’t have a heavy. Without full plate, no one could get close enough to the mob’s center to disrupt it enough to cause it to manifest. Remember that every victory is earned through preparation. No obstacle exists without a path to conquer it.”
Nero stared at Cathleen, not bothering to respond. He’d gotten used to her turning everything into a spiritual lesson. Turning to the rest of the group, he looked at Nick and asked, “Okay, after that enlightening response, I’m going to change my question. Nick, what the hell happened with my head? Not that I don’t appreciate the opportunity to experience life through the lens of stupidity, but seriously man, what the hell?”
Nick smiled at Nero with a mouth full of teeth, clearly enjoying the moment. “Not so easy keeping a shield up, is it? You just experienced what it feels like to overdraw your mind. To put it another way, you were trying to pay attention to too many things at once, and as a result, your cognitive functions suffered a reduction in scope. You need to learn to partition your mind better in order to let one part of your mind focus all its efforts on a task, while the majority of your mind can continue to function normally.”
Rose was keeping an eye on the surrounding forest, but didn’t hesitate to chime in. “I thought you had to be in the 30’s before you could learn mental automation?”
Nero looked at Nick in confusion, so much of what the man just said sounded like gibberish to him. Nick met Nero’s eyes, and sent out a connection request. Nero accepted and immediately heard Nick’s voice in his head say, “Nero, don’t ask about this right now. We really can’t get into this if you want your secrets to stay secret.” Then Nick closed the connection as abruptly as he’d opened it.
Answering Rose, Nick said, “Mental partitioning is a complicated subject. There are many facets to it, and there are countless uses and ranges of techniques. Nero’s essence shield is held together by his mind, and when he puts too much focus on it, there can be some annoying issues he has to deal with. It’s not that large a concern.”
Rose nodded, but clearly realized she was missing something.
Nero didn’t mind putting off the conversation, as he had plenty of other questions he wanted answered at the moment. “Let’s talk about the mob then. I saw its essence field change completely, how the hell is that possible? I thought identities were powered by a soul. Aren’t souls and identities like… hard to change?”
Wesker stood up from the corpse, which by this point had begun to break down in earnest. “Come over here and take a look. You’ll understand what happened after you take a look at the crystals,” he said loudly.
Curious, Nero walked over to the sergeant and looked where the man was pointing. On the ground, there was a small pile of essence crystals. Each of them were small, almost the size of tiny marbles. They weren’t round, or gem-like, if anything, they looked like little puzzle pieces with edges that stuck out randomly.
Nero looked at the sergeant and said, “I don’t get it. What am I supposed to be seeing? All of those came out of that big ass dog? How does that work?”
Sergeant Wesker smiled a little. Even though the young lord in front of him was a pain in the ass, he couldn’t stop himself from liking his straight-forward attitude sometimes.
“Here, take a closer look,” said the sergeant, while bending back down and waving Nero over.
Nero bent down next to the man and watched what he was doing. The sergeant removed his armored gloves and started fitting the little essence crystals together. It took a few minutes, and Nero’s attention didn’t waver in the slightest. It was incredibly interesting to see the man quickly putting together what looked like one of those interlocking 3d puzzles for mental training. By the time he was done, the little crystals had come together to make a large essence crystal.
Nero reached out carefully, taking the completed crystal from the sergeant’s hands. While he looked closely at it, he said, “So these are all the little bits of potential from the individual dogs that got caught up in the mob. They came together to become this big dog when the mob lost enough juice to keep going. That’s pretty damn cool,” he said in appreciation.
The moment he finished speaking, he fumbled the essence crystal, and the little pieces all fell apart, slipping through his fingers. Frowning at the broken puzzle, he said, “So, is there a point to putting it back together? Or was that just an interesting thing about mob crystals that I got to see?”
After putting his armored gauntlets back on, the sergeant stood up with a chuckle. “No, there’s no need to keep it together. Just store the crystals however you want. It’s just an interesting visual representation of how mobs become mobs.”
Nero collected the little essence crystals, throwing them into his bag. He met the sergeant’s eyes and said, “Thanks for showing me. I tend to learn better when I have something to look at. Without seeing this, I don’t think I’d understand the explanation I’m sure Nick is dying to tell me,” he said with some gratitude in his voice.
“Hey!” Nick said from a few feet away. He had been standing next to Cathleen, chatting with the woman while keeping watch on the forest.
Nero looked up at his friend and asked, “Am I wrong? Tell me you weren’t waiting for me to ask about what the sarge was showing me?”
Nick rolled his eyes and replied, “You know, you ask a lot of questions for someone who doesn’t want answers.”
Nero stood up, and dusted off his pants. He started to scowl a little while saying, “Nick, stop talking to her. She’s going to infect you with her riddles.” Looking over at Cathleen, he continued, “And Cathleen, please be careful with him. He’s very impressionable. I don’t think Vera will like it if he returns to Dorchester and starts talking like he’s been in a monastery studying zen koans or whatever.”
Cathleen took a step forward, uncharacteristically interested in what Nero was saying. “That word, ‘zen’, I like it. It feels like oneness, or meditative intuition. What language is that?”
Nero looked at her with some surprise. Taking a second to choose his words carefully, he replied, “It’s from the east… the far east. I can tell you all about it later. For now, we should get going. We have places to be after all. And if I’m not mistaken, we should be near the spawn point that birthed the mob we just wasted half the morning dealing with.”
Cathleen’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t pursue the subject any further.
Sergeant Wesker was holding his direction finder, and said, “It shouldn’t be far now. I’m guessing there might be more mobs around, so keep an eye out. Verena, make sure you get some crowd control up as soon as possible. Let’s get moving.”
Nero watched the sergeant return his direction finder to a pouch on his belt. He still found it weird to see a man in full plate armor wearing a backpack suited for hiking.
Soon enough, they were well on their way again, heading toward Nero’s first opportunity to see a spawn-point. After seeing how easily they dealt with the mob after knowing what they were dealing with, Nero was excited knock this one out quickly before heading off to their next target.
Stumbling over his feet at the thought, his brows furrowed. ‘A group that heads off into danger, expecting an easy fight. Yeah, this is going to turn out just fine,’ he told himself sarcastically.
As he walked, he tentatively started rebuilding his mage-armor. ‘What was that Nick said about partitioning my mind? That sounded important.’ he wondered.
Comments
Leetle Sheet
I want people to imagine who they want when they envision the characters. It's just more fun that way.
HereForHFY
I really like your characterizations, just a few lines of text and my brain just see the individual, filling out the rest.
