[Suppression 3 > 4]
The night passes and [Suppression] levels up again. With my enhanced senses I can see what changed. The way the mana moves changes a little. In fact, each time I cast it, I manually adjust the flow a bit, just to see what changes.
Now, with another level, it crashes down on the little parasite even harder. It can barely move under my skin anymore. “Get rekt, little fricker,” I whisper.
Eventually, my party members wake up, one after another.
Thatch is the first. A single ray of sunlight comes through the window, hits his face, and he wakes up. Does [Piercing Gaze] let him see through his eyelids? It definitely let him see through my skin. Is it passive or active?
Questions upon questions.
I see him stir, stretch, yawn, and get up. He looks around, and spots me. “Whoa,” he says, first. “Holy fucking shit.”
I tilt my head. “What’s up?”
He looked around. “Holy shit!”
A small smile spreads on my face again. “Thatch. I got no idea what you’re seeing.”
“Right,” he mutters. “Right!” Then he turns to me. “Snow, I-”
“Urrrrgh,” Inu groans. She stirs awake. “It was hard enough to fall asleep, Thatch. Quiet down. Please.”
He flinches a little. “Right. Sorry,” he whispers. “Snow can we…” he gestures for the door.
Smiling softly, I nod. “Of course.”
We head outside so as to not wake the others. As soon as the door snaps shut again behind us, Thatch breaks out into a wide grin. “The world’s so different from yesterday, Snow. I can see everything. I can see… beneath your skin, y’know? I can see that dark blob, I can see your nerve clusters, I can see the way mana flows through you.”
I tilt my head a little. “Thatch? Have you been… peeking?”
“Huh?” he asks, confused. Then, as I move to cover myself, it dawns on him. His face turns bright red. “I- No!! Absolutely not!” he says, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “You know I’d never, I’m not like that!”
Sagely, I nod, stifling a smile. “Right,” I say, putting as much doubt into my voice as possible. “Of course.”
He turns even more red. “You’re such a jerk,” he says, then laughs, quietly. “But… it’s weird. I couldn’t see as much yesterday.”
“Things changed overnight. Adjusted sensory parameters,” I tell him.
“What does that mean?” he asks.
I shrug. “Don’t know much more than you. I can sense mana, though. Not yours. Well, not passively. If I focus… Yeah. I can feel it coursing through you.”
“That’s wild,” Thatch says.
Then, the door opens, and Inu steps out. Her hair is a bit of a mess, and she’s rubbing one eye. “Yeah, no,” she says. “Not sleeping. I can feel your excitement through the walls. Stupid frigging empathy skill.”
Thatch gives her a sheepish grin and scratches the back of his head. “Sorry!”
Inu just rolls her eyes, uncrossing her arms. “It’s fine.” She looks to me. “Snow. Your goals right now are Opal and Sylves, right?”
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I nod.
“Think we could reach them if we like… stormed a radio tower? Deal out a broadcast?”
For a moment, I consider the idea, then shake my head. “I doubt it,” I say. “The eyes seem to be messing with satellite signals, and there was apparently some terraforming during the night.”
“Terraforming?” she asks. “Wait. Did you not sleep?”
“No,” I say. “Hard to when there is something actively eating me from the inside.”
“Oh, fuck,” Inu says, eyeing my side. [Empathy] must be telling her where the pain is coming from.
“Working on it,” I assure her, and she gives a small nod. “But yeah. I was up. During midnight, there were two notifications. First, our senses were changed and our limits removed. I think humans can now grow… well, pretty much infinitely stronger with working out. Same for our minds. Second message was about being fused with a different planet. Maybe multiple.”
“Shit,” Inu says.
“Yeah,” I nod. “It’ll make finding Opal and Syvles hard.”
“Where would they go?” Thatch asks. “If we can get in their heads…”
“Opal would run into a dungeon headfirst, probably,” I say. They look at me with confusion. “Right. Dungeons are a thing, apparently.”
Inu nods. “Like a game.”
“Exactly. Syvles… I think she’d go looking for us.” There weren’t many places for her to go. She’d grown up in an assisted living facility, since her parents were abusive. She was still in contact with the caretakers from back then, but she’d long since moved out.
Thatch hums to himself a little. “Maybe…” he starts, unsure. I give him a look, and he continues. “Maybe if I get to a high place. Somewhere we can see all the city from. I could find them?”
It’s not exactly great odds, but there is a chance. A high point. There are some observation towers nearby. But to really see everything… well, given the terraforming, things might have changed.
I nod at the suggestion. “Alright. We’ll do that.”
With the decision made, we head back inside. Inu wakes up her parents, and Thatch shakes his mom awake. Norman makes sure to complain about his back as he wakes up, even though he’d taken the bed. Bay seems relatively fit, and Jess is quiet, as usual. Inu and Thatch explain what happened during the night.
They take longer to get ready than I’d like. I quickly sling my backpack around myself, suppressing a wince at the movement. As I wait on the others, I play around a little more with mana.
Moving the tiny thing I solidified around, for example. I can control it and the way it moves through the air. I move it around myself, seeing just how fast I can spin it, until we’re ready to move.
Inu signals me with a nod, and I open the door. “We’ll be looking for a point of elevation today,” I tell them. “To find out if Thatch can find Opal or Sylves with one of his skills.”
There is some grumbling at that, namely from Norman. “Another hike,” he complains.
“Yes,” I say, loudly. “Another hike, Norman. The world is ending. There’s probably aliens out there. More monsters, new sapient species. We know nothing about them. Right now, everything is on the table. Mental manipulation, slavery, other species that hunt humans for sport, Norman.”
He flinches, but I don’t let up.
“So, we’re going to go out there. Because right now, our odds are best. This isn’t going to get any easier, alright? People will level. I’m not letting other humans get ahead of me.”
At that, his face firms up. He nods, just once, then looks away. “I get it,” he says. “I get it, okay? Let’s move already.”
Without replying, I turn around, walking down the stairs.
- - -
The world outside has changed.
Buildings and rubble are pushed further apart. Between them there are lakes of emerald water and forests of blueish plants. It looks a little like a patchwork puzzle, half festering into each other.
Pieces of concrete and road work are in between trees. Vines climb up grocery stores and car wrecks. Shattered glass gathers on the shores of the small lakes.
I looked around, for a high point, and there are a few. Observation towers, hills, distant dunes of sand… But one sticks out above all. In the middle of the city, where the botanical garden used to be, there was a hill. It was high, higher than anything around it, and at the very top of that hill, there was a castle.
It was made from grey stone, with walls, ramparts, an enormous gate, the whole works. “That… seems to be the highest point,” I say.
Inu pokes me with her elbow. “You’re smiling again,” she says.
There’s no reason to defend myself, so I don’t bother. Instead, I just nod. “Yeah,” I say.
“It’s a friggen castle!” Thatch says. “You usually only see those in Europe! Even there, most were bombed in the last war!”
Bay furrows her brows. “I don’t know if that’s safe.” Jess nods to agree.
“I’m pretty positive it’s a dungeon,” Inu notes.
Again, I nod. “Let’s go, then.”
People groan, but follow. I’m unsure if the adults know what dungeons mean. I look back at them for a moment. Would all of them survive? My eyes go to Inu, then Thatch.
I’d make sure they lived, at least. And hopefully their parents, too. Wouldn’t want my friends to feel bad.
