“Crawler two-oh-seven is halted. Reporting errors with two of the feet.”
“Again? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, that’s the second time this week!”
“Yep. Boss already knows about it. Says we don’t have the spare dock space.”
“This is bullshit. Whatever. I’ll suit up and catch a drone down to it.”
“Think of the silver lining. Time and a half while you’re hooked on.”
Warm, humid air and a gentle breeze brushed over my face once I’d crossed the membrane. Diffuse sunlight filtered through a canopy of countless leaves. A scent greeted me like an old friend, the greenery that Mom carried home on her clothing.
I was in the middle of a hardwood forest, not too dense. Sight lines were farther than they might have been otherwise.
Vael crossed into the portal world behind me. She closed her eyes, held her head back, and took several deep breaths. When she was done enjoying her moment, she made eye contact with me and held it. She had the hint of her usual smile on her face, but there was a different set to her face and shoulders I couldn’t help but notice.
A seriousness that I wasn’t used to seeing or hearing from her.
“Welcome to your first Dive, Kiera. It’s a catalyzing experience for most.”
I nodded once. “First real Dive, at least. But I know what you mean.”
She shook her head. “No, you don’t. Despite the construction of these worlds making it seem like it’s a game, this is life and death. Portals kill two kinds of Divers more than any other: the overconfident and the unwary.”
I dropped my eyes to the tufts of grass, blankets of moss and loose debris decaying on the forest floor. “I know you’re trying to help show me the ropes, and I’m new to being a User, but I’m not stupid, Vael.”
She placed her hand on my shoulder and squeezed firmly. I looked up to face her. “I know you’re not stupid, Kiera, if you were, I wouldn’t be here. Smart, talented, skilled, and experienced people die every single day in portals. The fact I arranged this for you is my vote of confidence.”
She released me and I looked around.
“Just for the sake of my sanity, let’s go over what we talked about, please?”
“Of course,” I said while keeping my eyes watching our surroundings. “This is a first tier repeating portal. The uh… management’s normal dive team is preoccupied with another venture. We’re going to clear and complete this, because it’ll destabilize in two days.”
I spotted what looked like a footpath—places where the grass had been trampled flat and there was exposed, hard-packed dirt. That would be my lead. I rested my hand on the grip of my gun and started moving after verifying Vael was with me.
“Good, what else?”
I paused a moment. I wasn’t entirely sure what she was asking. “Did you want me to go over like… the absolute basics?”
A glance over my shoulder showed me a serious face and a dip of her horns.
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and resumed moving.
“This is a tier one portal world, the easiest kind.”
“Right. Easiest, not easy. Relative terms,” Vael said from behind me. I kept having to glance back to see if she was there, because she was nearly silent as she moved around.
“There will be wildlife, most but not all is hostile. Always assume hostility. Environmental dangers as well, but usually nothing extreme at low tiers. There’s a guardian in each world, and killing it triggers completion. Portals stay open until the guardian is defeated or they destabilize.”
“Right, but remember what I said about overconfidence. Don’t assume environmental challenges and dangers aren’t present or are harmless because of tier.”
I stopped when the path wrapped around a tree trunk wider than I was tall. Curiosity got the better of me, and I reached out and placed my palm against it. Someone cutting this tree down and harvesting the timber from it would be pulling a small fortune. Even if it was basically junk-quality wood, natural materials like this were quite valuable. They were dangerous to try to harvest on Earth.
They were dangerous to harvest here, too, but the danger was slightly more predictable and known. At least with repeating portals, like this one.
“Vael?” I turned to look at her with my hand still planted on the bark.
“Mhm?” She had one eyebrow slightly raised as she observed me.
“I was just thinking about this tree.” I started to feel a little embarrassed with this train of thought.
She looked up and took it in. Then back down, head canting to the side.
“Is it… Real?”
Her lips twitched, but just a little. She cleared her throat. “Well, that depends on what you mean by real. I wasn’t expecting philosophy mid-dive, but I wouldn’t say it’s an unpleasant surprise.”
“Well, I was just thinking, like, if this portal wasn’t running out of time, right? Normally we’d come in and clean out the aggressive monsters, but leave the guardian alive. That way teams could come into the portal world and gather materials, right?”
“Sure,” she replied, nodding along to what I was asking.
“But if this tree was cut down and taken back out, nothing changes. The wood passes through and is used for things. If the tree isn’t cut down, it doesn’t matter. If the tree is cut down, then when the portal world reopens this tree is back again. But the wood you took out before is still there.”
“Ah. You’re asking about materialization. If you’re interested in these things, you should consider attending some classes or enrolling at the University of Daretha. Yes, the tree is real, everything here in this portal world is real, even though the construct itself is clearly artificial in nature.”
I pulled my hand from the tree and resumed moving. I was thankful that this was a tier one portal world, it was the equivalent of the training wheels of portal diving. The only wildlife that we’d encountered so far had been tree rodents that made noise and pelted us with bits of bark, and some insects.
That was about to change, though, because I could hear something bigger moving around up ahead, where there were some fallen trees that created a small clearing. My heart rate picked up and I checked my holster for about the twentieth time so far.
Vael’s voice was lower, and I startled a bit when it came closer than I’d expected. “Seems you’re about to get the chance to get your hands dirty for the first time. Remember what I told you.”
“Just here to observe and give pointers, not to help or bail me out.” I slid the puncher out of the holster.
“Good luck, Kiera. Remember that you’re not what you were before Awakening.”
I turned to give her a thumbs-up, only to find her gone.
Nice trick. Time to find out if thousands of hours in simulated dives counts for anything.
I checked my gun as had been drilled into me.
Magazine, pull the… bullet in the chamber, okay. Point and squeeze.
I crept forward, using one of the larger trunks as cover to try and mask my presence. I peeked around the tree at the makeshift clearing.
Trunks were haphazardly toppled in random directions and stacked up, one on top another, in various stages of decay. There was clear space to move around this massive central pile, a ring of grass that came up to my waist maybe a couple of meters wide.
Snuffling and rooting around in the dirt near the fallen trees was my first portal monster. A meter and a half tall at the highest point, and around an additional meter longer than it was tall. Wide-bodied, rotund, solid, with four short legs nearly as big around as I was at the shoulder. They ended in hooves from what I could see, but with wicked claws sticking out near the foot.
It was dark brown on the lower body, and a rich green on the upper body. The back was covered in moss and lichen, although there was a mohawk of hair that looked more like broom bristles than anything else that ran down the length of the body. Floppy ears flapped and slapped at insects flying around its head.
I took aim at it. It had the same aura I was still getting used to, which I was starting to refer to as a biotic aura. There was a central mass in the chest, and another near its head. I aimed for the head. Hopefully I could get a clean shot off and drop it immediately.
I took a steadying breath and waited for the right moment.
Bang!
The puncher didn’t buck in my hand so much as push backwards. A host of birds screeched and tore out of the tree branches overhead.
Did I miss?
The moss-bear-pig-thing turned its head and looked straight at me. Four mean tusks and six beady black eyes regarded me with what I thought was utter contempt. It bellowed and started trundling straight at me.
Fuck!
Four, five, six shots rang out as it crossed the distance. As it got closer I could see that it wasn’t that I was missing, the rounds were deflecting off the thing’s skull, leaving bloody tracks of damaged flesh in their wake.
I’d successfully given it a headache and royally pissed it off. It dropped its head and came around the tree at me. I turned and booked it. It wasn’t terribly fast, but it cornered better than something that size should have.
I looped around several more trees and took a few more shots, but nothing good; I didn’t have the time to get a good bead on the thing, and the cover was working against me as much as it was for me.
Maybe the clearing area will be better to get some range and cleaner shots off!
Grass parted around me and my pack bounced on my back as I took bounding steps to cross the distance. I didn’t have any idea if there were pits or other uneven terrain under the foliage. I glanced back over my shoulder. I was getting distance on the monster, and I could see its aura through the grass just fine. That was going to be a big advantage for me.
Squeezing off a trio of shots, I was pretty sure I’d hit squarely with all three of them. This thing was big, and it was thick, so I wasn’t surprised that it was soaking up shots.
That’s fine. I might not have the firepower I’m used to, but it’s no different than coming out of character generation. You’re weak, things tend to take a beating with the limited tools you have fresh out of the gate. I’ll grind it down.
The fighting area made conditions where you could get a lead on the monster, but not too much of a lead, otherwise the central pile would block your line of sight. It kept the pressure up.
We did the same dance two more times. I thought the aura was looking thinner and more skeletal as we went. I made a mental note to try and test this on the next encounter.
I’d gotten a good distance from the creature and was about to turn and shoot when my boot knocked into what felt like a rock under the grass. My eyes went wide and I flew wildly off-balance. A moment later I flipped end-over-end, then came to a rolling stop. I was disoriented and dizzy. My gun was still in my hand, and I hadn’t accidentally shot myself in the process of eating shit.
That was good. I got up to my hands and knees.
A bellow sounded over me, and I felt hot, rank breath all over the side of my face and back of my neck.
Oh shit.
I had just enough time to register the thought before I was yanked so hard I thought my head was going to fly off. The monster proceeded to shake me like a ragdoll by my pack, the straps biting into my shoulders and chest, the waist strap crushing the air from my lungs.
My fingers scrabbled for the release, which was clipped to my shoulder.
Just pull the fucking handle, Kiera!
My fingers found purchase on what I was feeling for and yanked. The thrashing stopped instantly, but I had a new problem. I was weightless and cartwheeling through the air like someone flung a sack of soybeans off the back of a truck.
Belatedly, I arrived at a fresh conclusion.
This is going to really suck.
Tree trunks approached from overhead, and I reflexively put my arm out to shield my face.
The impact rattled my skeleton from skull to toes, and I heard the most revolting, downright sickening snap and crunch. Burning heat enveloped my forearm, and I gasped.
Thudding hooves, and close.
I whipped my puncher around, the monster’s body swallowed the outline of my gun and arm. Not quite point blank, but close enough. I rattled off as many shots as I could straight into its ugly mug right up until it swung its head and sent my gun flying.
I was hooked under the armpit by a tusk and hoisted off my feet, the thing was trying to send me flying up and over its back, but I latched onto one of its other tusks with my right hand in a death grip.
Something hot and ugly rose in my chest. Not fear anymore, not at all. The look in its eyes told me the feeling was mutual, and that was fine by me.
The eyes, you idiot!
I hooked one leg around the thing’s barrel-shaped body and dug into its armpit with my boot. My tail whipped around the other side. I was effectively strapped in place for precious few seconds.
I tore the knife from my belt with my one good hand, brought it up, and screamed. Then I attempted to plunge the blade into one of the thing’s eye sockets. It bellowed again and reared up below me.
Miss. Miss.
The third one sank home a few centimeters deep. I angled the blade towards the glowing bit in the middle and shoved. From the reared-up position, the beast wobbled, then tipped to the side. It landed hard enough to toss me off and into a roll that my left arm really didn’t like.
I rolled onto my back to look up at the bright sky and panted. Elation filled me, and I screeched out a laugh. It wasn’t only elation, though. I felt a growing pressure in my chest, in my mana circuit specifically. I was absorbing the mana from the kill. It was a lot, and I felt like it was hard to breathe.
My tail wriggled under my ass. I didn’t care all that much in the moment. The thing had come in clutch; I’d likely have been tossed off the monster’s back before I had the chance to stab it to death if not for the added limb.
I could feel it slithering through the grass. It was a strange sensation. I was barely acclimated to the thing yet. It tensed, then lurched.
What the fuck?
I tried to sit up, it took two attempts. The spiked end of my tail was embedded into the chest of the monster. I gave it a tug, and it stretched, but didn’t come out. I pulled harder. No dice.
A squeezing clench near my butt, and something rushed through the length towards the carcass.
Eugh. Disgusting. I really hope it’s not like… laying eggs, or something.
A burning and throbbing insistent heat was drawing my attention away from my strange appendage. I moved my left arm using my right, and it sucked the breath straight out of me. I arranged it over my lap and gently prodded at it with my fingertips. I could see my own aura with my vision, and the color and… taste? Whatever the sensation was, it was off, I could tell. My eyes roamed around, and I could see-feel other areas on my body that had disturbances as well.
They corresponded with the parts that hurt. That made sense.
The swish of grass near me caused me to jerk my head. Crimson skin, orange eyes, and a smirk greeted me. Vael walked over and took a seat next to me. She had my gun, and offered it to me.
“Thank you,” I told her, already tired, bruised, and starting to really feel this dive in my bones. I took the gun and slid it into my holster, where it clicked into place.
“Not the cleanest kill, Kiera, but I’ll be honest with you. That wasn’t the worst I’ve ever seen, either. Well done.”
I nodded, and her eyes followed the length of my tail to where it was buried in the monster.
“The Tokh place a lot of importance on tradition and ritual for things like this. I enjoy their culture quite a bit, myself,” she commented.
“Yeah?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
She turned to look back at me. “They have a strong tradition of taking trophies. A first monster kill is an important moment to be memorialized. Do you want me to help gather a few things?”
I looked at the bear-pig and swallowed. I wasn’t sure about the whole trophy thing, but if Vael thought it was important enough to bring up, I’d trust her. It had been a brutal fight, if a brief one. Monster parts were valuable, but perhaps she was right. Something to remember this moment might be nice.
“I um. Sure, please. Thanks,” I muttered.
She just smiled, stood up and walked over to grab a few things.
Literally. She used her hands to just pull four tusks and four claws out of the thing as if she were picking flowers or something. Wiping the parts clean with some plucked flora, she got them reasonably cleaned of nasty bits and sealed them into a pouch.
Resuming her previous seat, we sat in relative silence for several long moments. The wind rustled through the trees as if the forest was commenting on our journey.
I tried to circulate my mana through my injured arm. It was being sticky and simple force wasn’t working.
Maybe if I try and draw it through, instead of pushing it…
A trickle started to flow, and as it did, the resistance lessened, along with the pain.
Vael cleared her throat. “You know, when you grew that tail, I thought that it was something you did on accident. A mana-driven mutation.”
I continued to concentrate on my mangled arm. “I thought mutations didn’t happen to Users, only baselines?”
“No. Mutation can and does happen with Users, too. Usually only in more extreme cases. A User with bad control, or one exposed to a significant delta between their current tier and what they’re being exposed to. The further you develop yourself, the more resistant you become to mutation, just because you’re changing the benchmark.”
“Is there a but coming?” I glanced up at her for a moment. Her face was back to the serious look.
“I thought it was a mutation, but it isn’t. It’s too well-constructed and consistent to be a product of mutation. Then that mail you received confirmed my suspicion. It’s biotech, for sure.”
She reached out and lightly touched the side of my tail. It wiggled in response.
My arm crunched loudly and I let out a soft groan. It hurt, but it came with a sense of relief. The aches and pains elsewhere in my body were ebbing away as well. It still needed more work, so I tried to be conscious of what I was doing, even if it was mostly being driven by what did and didn’t feel right.
My stomach rumbled in hunger, and my tail started to pulse, rippling contractions running up the length in a way that made the muscles stand out. A powerful pulling sensation accompanied the pulses, and a bulbous distortion bulged out of the location where my tail met the hide of the monster. It pinched off into a bulb and started to slide up my tail, another one forming right away on the back of the first.
“Wha-wha—” I thought I was going to be sick, feeling like a passenger in my own body while it did whatever the fuck this was.
Vael hummed a note next to me. “I had a feeling something like this might happen,” she commented.
“Something like what!?” I hissed between my teeth.
She didn’t look away from my tail. Absolutely loathsome gurgles and sloshes came from the carcass near my tail.
“You needed to eat. Well, a part of yourself needed to eat. It makes sense, right? You’ve been hungry, despite feeling full after eating. Part of you was full, part wasn’t.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to ignore the sounds and sensations. A low groan escaped my lips.
“Monsters are dense in mana, that’s why monster materials are valuable. You know this. And your tail has been eyeballing mana sources since you grew it.”
“Vael?” I asked quietly. I was grossed out, but I was also mad. My body being hijacked by another organism was one thing, being kept in the dark was another thing entirely.
“Yes?”
My voice was as tight as an electric guitar string. “In the future, if you have ideas like this, I’d really like it if you shared them before I have to… experience them.”
My tail was steadily slurping and gulping away, the monster smoothie or whatever the fuck it was stopped just outside where it joined my body. I could feel it swelling up and pushing against the top of my butt as it gorged itself.
I couldn’t think of it as being a part of me at the moment.
“I’m sorry,” Vael said, and she sounded like she meant it. “I didn’t want to say anything because it was just an educated guess. I’ve seen similar monsters before, although not like this. There’s a bunch of different blood-sucking types out there.”
I opened and closed the fingers of my left hand and rotated my wrist around. Almost back to normal, a little bit of tension and some snagging sensations here and there that weren’t pleasant.
I felt Vael’s hand on my thigh, and she gave me a squeeze that I think was supposed to be comforting. I was pushed so far outside my comfort zone, in so many different layers and ways that I felt a little numb. I took a few deep breaths to try and calm my feelings and clear my head. It helped, but only marginally.
I opened my eyes to see her studying my face. The monster was to the side, looking saggy and deflated. My tail was steadily chugging away still. The entire thing had nearly doubled in diameter. It was eating faster now than before, and there was a constant sensation of its skin stretching.
I didn’t feel that secondary hunger anymore, and what I thought of as my stomach felt queasy.
My brain hung on the last thing she’d told me. Rolling it around and looking at it from different angles.
“Wait. What do you mean by ‘similar monsters?’”
She cocked her head a few degrees to the side and blinked at me. Her tone mirrored the confusion in her face. “What do you think biotech is?”
I looked over at the now rapidly-shriveling carcass, but my eyes were unfocused.
“Are you telling me that high-end Users are, what, grafting chunks of monsters into themselves for performance enhancements?”
“Yes? Did you think it was something else? There’s more to it than that, of course, but that’s a broad and crude generalization of what it is.”
“That is… disgusting,” I said after a beat.
She frowned. “You’re better than that, Kiera.”
“Huh?” Now it was my turn to be bewildered.
She huffed. “It’s a cultural insensitivity that isn’t like you, unless you’ve just been hiding it well. There are some Sul’vari who consider sticking chunks of metal, plastic and silicon in your body crude and barbaric. And yet it’s something your people do enthusiastically, from a young age, even.”
“I…” I was caught off-balance.
That wasn’t what I meant, but… yeah. I’m being an asshole.
“I’m sorry, Vael. I just, I guess I’m just ignorant to a lot of the practices topside. I’ll try to do better about it.”
A wheeze sounded from the dead monster, and I looked over at it. It looked mummified, its skin drained of color and shrink-wrapped around its skeleton in an extreme manner. The end of my tail withdrew and shifted to the side. The entire appendage was blown up like a balloon with the ends pinched.
It rested for a moment, and I took the opportunity to touch it. The skin was tight as a drum and warm to the touch. Some parts along the length squeezed, and it shifted shapes and sloshed. I was basically stuck here attached to one end of it. The sloshing and gurgling intensified.
“Uhh…” I glanced over at Vael, who looked over at me and shrugged with her hands out to her sides.
Glorps and glugs were followed by a rushing sensation in my lower belly that jetted up and into my chest.
“Hoagh!” I clutched my hands to my chest and pressed. A pressure was rapidly building and I leaned forward and wheezed. “Ah-Vael!” A surge, and the pressure went from discomfort to pain in an instant. “It hurts!”
“Breathe, do the exercises I taught you. Distribute the load out into your circuit, your pool is overflowing.”
I was fighting off full-blown panic, but tried like hell to follow her guidance.
I felt like I was going to die, and I fought to divert the flow into my circuit. It fought me, and then, like a stubborn valve, it snapped fully into the other position, and now the rushing pressure wasn’t localized in my chest, but pushing at me from the inside from head to toe.
Tears squeezed out of my eyes when I closed them and ran down my cheeks. Conflicting sensations were coursing through my systems. Discomfort, painful pinpricks, and static shocks everywhere. There was also the rush of endorphins, a barely-contained energy waiting to be unleashed, and a deeply pleasurable tingling running up and down my spine. It radiated out to my extremities and arced across my brain.
“You have to keep breathing, Kiera.” Vael’s voice in my ear, reminding me of basic functions needed for survival. Her arm over my shoulder actually was comforting this time around. My chest heaved with rapid pants.
My whole body was reacting to the juice flowing through me, but in different ways. Bones ached, muscles twitched, and tugged. My innards were twisting, coiling, and writhing. Waves of hot and cold ran over my skin so fast they blurred together. My brain… It felt mushy and soggy with chemicals.
The rushing flow came to an end and left me shivering and trembling. At some point, I’d brought my knees up and had my head resting on the pads. My cap was pushed back on my head.
“What the hell was that?” I panted out.
“You worked your way through tempering!” She shook me by my shoulders, and I groaned and let my sweaty head rest against her shoulder.
“Is being a User just a process of collecting traumatic experiences?” I asked her, still fairly breathless.
She laughed. “Yes and no. You’ll be tempering many, many more times if you continue on this path. It’s a staple of User advancement. It does get easier as you go.”
“That’s… good.” I wasn’t sure I was looking forward to the experience, but maybe the benefits would be worth it.
“We should get moving. And we need to get your pack. There’s much more for you to do on this Dive before you’re done.”
“Okay, okay. Just need a moment to level out,” I agreed. “I do feel…” I trailed off as I stretched and worked my hands.
She waited for me to finish my thought.
“I feel different. Better.”
“Mhm! Trust me, the sensation of growing your capabilities can be quite addictive.” She stood up and offered me a hand, and I took it.
My tail was back to normal. I felt lighter, and the annoying hunger at the back of my mind was gone. For now, at least.
I stretched, which earned me some pops and crunches. “Let’s get going. I want to keep pushing deeper.” I looked around at the clearing where the grass was trampled in places.
“Now, where could my pack have gone off to…”