The rock; a fragmented piece of grey limestone as big as the fist lay harmlessly against the cave wall.
I stared at it. I was no longer panting, but my heart was playing an intricate drum solo against my ribs.I raised a hand, fingers open, and grabbed the memory of the feeling of being squeezed by the gravity of the Wayline, the physical feeling of passing the realities. I clutched to the memory, poured a drop of regenerating Lumen in it, and pushed.
Clack.
The rock skittered an inch across the stone floor.
It wasn’t exactly splitting the Red Sea. It wasn’t even enough to knock a soda can off a fence. But to me in the dead, strained silence of that cave it was the loudest sound in the universe. It was the sound of the rules breaking.
"Telekinesis" I whispered, the word feeling strange and heavy on my tongue. "Honest-to-god, mind-over-matter telekinesis."
II pushed myself against the cold stone wall and my head lay against the rock with a pleasant bang. The first burst of liberation that Kinetic Grasp had brought was wearing out, and in its place came the fatigue I had so long been endeavoring to restrain. Hang on to your hat; the crash is coming, and so are the friends it brings: doubt, fear, and clarity.
The Astrolabe was humming in the background of my mind and it was working out the Remembrance of my survival. It was a weird sensation, like I had a second heart, which was beating to another beat than my own. It was not intrusive, exactly, but it was definitely there, humming in the background, a steady buzz of information and starlight.
I closed my eyes. The cave was as dark as it could be, an experience of sensory deprivation that made my mind roam. And inevitably, it wandered back to where this had all started.
Tuesday.
It felt as though it were a lifetime ago, but my internal clock, or perhaps simply the hollow aching in my stomach, said that it was not more than six hours.
I recalled the smell of London. Not London, as it was to the tourists: wet sidewalks and expensive tea, but my London. The odor of the ozone and recycled air and the stale coffee of the vending machines in the sub-basement of the Straylight data-haven. I recalled the whir of the servers, a white noise that I was accustomed to finding comforting. It was the voice of information, of secrets that flowed through fiber optics like blood through veins.
I had been trying all my life to be a ghost in that machine.
Back home; on Earth, where magic was just a ghost story. I wasn't the weakest person in the room. Far from it. I smiled in the dark, a sharp, self-deprecating expression no one was there to see.
"Weak? No," I whispered to the empty air. "I was incompatible."
I had been the guy who could climb a sheer glass face because I saw the friction points no one else did. I was the one who could enter a secure facility, talk my way through the guard, compromise the air-gap, and exit before the cameras rotated. I was a high-performance engine trapped in a world with a speed limit that was strictly applied.
Physics on Earth was a tyrannical landlord who never allowed me to paint the walls.. Gravity was absolute. Thermodynamics was a bore. I had been living the last two decades with a two-size-too-small suit.
That’s why I touched that server rack. Not because I was clumsy. Not because I was stupid. But because I was bored. I was looking for a ghost because the living world was too grey, too predictable, too damn solid. I wanted to find the edge of the map.
Well, congratulations, Kaelen. You found the edge. You fell off the edge. And now you’re sitting in a cave on a Tier 3 Resonant World where the air is thick with magic, the trees have immune systems, and the local wildlife has a higher credit score with the universe than you do.
Now, the speed limit was gone. And honestly? It was terrifying.
I brought up the Schema. The golden rings were turning slowly in the eye of my mind, a reassuring interface in the disorder. I was concerned with the raw figures, attempting to reason out my relative status in this food chain.
Horizon: 5.
Lumen: 7.
Kensho: 10.
Egress: 12.
I looked at those numbers, and for the first time, I understood what they represented. They were not mere game statistics. They were scales of the density of my soul.
My Egress; 12 was my highest stat. That made sense. I had lived my life running, dodging, moving. That aspect of my soul was refined.
My Kensho; 10 was decent. I was observant. I saw patterns.
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But my Horizon… five.
I wondered of Mr. Peepers; the Canopy Stalker. My Kensho re-experienced the encounter, and examined the density of the creature, the sheer mass of presence. The Astrolabe did not tell me the number of the monster; I had not searched it penetratingly but I could sense the difference. It felt heavy. Dense. As a bag of wet cement to my bag of feathers. If I had to guess, its Horizon was probably triple mine. Had we been in a ring and struck blows at each other I would have been paste before the second round.
Then I thought about the Shepherd.
The flute player. The Node.
The memory of its gaze made my new stars shiver. That thing wasn't just double me. It was an order of magnitude higher. Standing near it had felt like standing next to a gravity well. It was a fortress of soul-stuff. It had looked at me; a creature of Horizon 5 and concluded that I was not even worthy of personal slaughter.
I was a gnat. A bit of dust floating in the cathedral.
"Okay," I whispered, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "So, fighting fair is out. Good thing I never fight fair."
I opened my eyes, staring into the gloom.
Elara.
The other Wayfarer was floating through my head. Her Echo was professional and terrified. She was a pro. She had analyzed the situation, seen the corruption of the Veridian Flow, determined the sickness of the Grove, and made the calculation.
The system is critical. Purge is imminent. Abort.
It was the smart play. It was the logical play. The corruption in this case was intense, and confined to this part of the forest, yet strong enough to distort reality. The only lifeboat: the northern Wayline, she had directed me towards.
"But Elara ran," I muttered, picking up a small pebble and tossing it with my hand. "And Elara didn't see what I saw."
My Kensho, that "hacker's sight" the system prattled on about, flared again in the darkness.
I wasn't looking at a monster. I was looking at a debugging log.
The Grove was not evil, it was diseased. The Shepherd was not a villain, it was an antivirus software with a corrupt heuristic engine running. It was identifying all this as a threat since its definition of safe had been overwritten by the sickness. The conflict was localized, This was a quarantine of this specific sector.
On Earth, when one of the servers misbehaved, you did not set the building on fire. You found the root access. You bypassed the firewall. You patched the code.
And there was one thing in my favor that Elara lacked: The Shepherd had let me go.
It had sent me away as vagrant. As "noise." A Horizon of five was no danger to a being of that power.
Always remember to never ignore the user with root access, I said to myself. And never under rate the Horizon 5 enjoyer.
I sat up straighter, the lethargy vanishing as my mind clicked into gear. II was not going to rush to the Wayline. Not yet.
The Shepherd had pointed me here, to this Dead Spot. It had been merciful, or perhaps even indifferent. That meant that some part of the original programming had been left. The illness had not claimed all. There was a chance to restore the system.
But I couldn't do it as Kaelen, the bored kid from London. I needed to be Kaelen, the Wayfarer. Whatever that meant
I needed to upgrade.
I checked my Lumen. It was refilling, slowly. I checked my Locus; my inventory. It was bare, and only had the metaphysical burden of the Echoes I bore. I needed tools. I needed leverage.
If I was going to hack a forest, I needed a better keyboard.
I considered the issue that Elara had discussed in her log. “It was starting to hear my silence.”
My Veil was Tier 1. Flicker of a Stranger. It was a generic disguise. It suppressed the "alien" signal of my soul, but it didn't replace it with anything convincing. IIt was similar to a generic staff uniform in a high-security facility; it passed a glance test, but once somebody looked at my ID badge I was in trouble.
If I wanted to get close to the Grove, to the root of the corruption, then I needed something better. Something that would assist me escape the "Stranger" status, that could help me become "Native". omething that would assist me in synthesizing a disguise that would not only conceal me, but also make the world believe that this is where I belonged as well.
I replayed Elara’s Echo in my mind, and I sought that certain thing that she had said.
“…augmented it with the pollen of the Sun-Petals; bright gold blooms that grow in the dry earth…”
Sun-Petals. A native plant with properties to dampen my presence. Once, she had used these plants to keep herself alive. I could use them to infiltrate.
The Plan:
- Loot: Locate a patch of Sun-Petals. Upgrade the Veil to Tier 2 using them.
- Recon: Locate the Grove without engaging the Shepherd directly.
- Exploit: Identify the physical location of the corruption. The sickness that Elara was talking about must have had a point of origin.
- Patch or Purge: Fix it, or blow it up.
Simple and Suicidal.
Perfect.
I got on my feet, the gravel crunching under my feet. The cave felt different now. It was my base of operations. It was the server room prior to the heist.
I turned to the small rock I’d moved with my mind. I picked it up. It was cool and smooth. I focused on it, pushing a tiny sliver of my will into it, testing the "Stasis" function of my Locus, the inventory space inside my soul.
The air rippled around the stone. My brain strained, and a tiny, mental opening was created.
Thwip.
The rock vanished.
There was a little grey icon in the visual image of my Locus, within my mind.
[Limestone Shard]
[Grade 1: Inert]
[Mass: Negligible]
It worked. I had an inventory. It was currently filled with garbage, but it was a start.
"Start small," I reminded myself, patting my chest where the thrum of Lumen's heat warmed me. "Build the hammer out of scraps."
I scanned my equipment. My synth-leather coat was scratched but unbroken. My boots were solid. My thoughts were clear.
I made my way to the entrance of the cave. The silence of the Dead Spot was broken at the edge of the entrance. Beyond, the Veridian Flow was buzzing and humming, a cacophhony of sound that was both beautiful and deadly. The forest of Aethelgard was beyond, filled with things that wanted to eat my soul.
I breathed in deeply the cold, dead air that was in the cave, holding it in my lungs for a moment. Then, I focused on my core and I made preparations.
I pushed a stream of Lumen into the Astrolabe. The warm, chameleon-like vibration from the Veil of Native Resonance that settled over my shoulders. It was a little more substantial with my improved Horizon, but I understood how frail a thing it was against a hurricane.
"Alright, world," I said to the glowing trees, popping the collar of my coat. "I’m not leaving until I fix your mess. Try not to kill me while I work."
I stepped out of the silence and into the song.