"Thank you for coming down to me," the girl whispered as she curled against his much larger body. "I'm sorry I can't do better, even with your help."
"There's always tomorrow, kid," he petted her head as he saw in some of the socialization vids. Or was that with animals? He always scored far worse on the socialization than on hard skills training.
Regardless, the gesture seemed to work, and the newly produced clone was soon asleep, still gripping the front of his uniform with two tiny hands.
The Pit was deathly quiet, none of the clones at any level daring to make any noise as they settled in for the night. The ones that lived for long all learned various tricks to sleep quietly, as well.
Unfortunately, that was a skill Sprout didn't manage to learn, and soon she started to mutter to herself, her face scrunched up, as if in pain. Axl almost lost track of his poison cycling, looking at the tortured little girl in front of him, and he gently put a hand on her mouth, dampening the sound.
It was a stupid risk, he knew it, but something compelled him to keep going to her as she struggled more and more, relegated closer and closer to the edge of the Pit.
His attention wavered for a bare moment, and she was gone. An empty space was in front of him, his hand still in a cupped motion to cover her mouth.
He sat up in the dim nighttime lighting, wondering if she had gone to the latrines, or accidentally rolled the two meters down onto the step of the first level, but a part of him knew. That was soon confirmed by seeing a streak of blood leading from her sleeping place to the edge of the Pit.
Curled up metal edges that could cut to the bone demarcated civilization from the long, narrow slit of the Pit, and Axl stood at the very threshold, staring into the deep, untouchable darkness within. It was a smirk of a slit, the jagged cut a scar for every vat-grown clone of Ost. Even the family-born of Ost feared the slitting smile of the Pit and spoke of it in hushed tones, if at all. For a moment, he thought he could hear Sprout's mewling again, echoing against the cavernous depths of the darkness below.
The thought of jumping in to save her wasn't considered, not really. But his body still shook as he turned back to the fifth level, to the cushioning and headrest. More importantly, to having more warm bodies between him and the Pit, more likely to be taken instead. He could barely focus on cycling poison as he lay there, unable to sleep, thinking he could hear a distant, faint sobbing from the Pit.
Axl's eyes opened in shock at the threshold of the eighth exit of the tower, tears flowing from his eyes into the murky water. He had completely forgotten about Sprout, about his time around the Pit before he scored his way out. Earlier confidence at improving his soul was shaken by the experience, wondering what use there could possibly be in reliving the long-forgotten pain. This wasn't a tempering, it was an injury, plain and simple.
But then his eyes grew hard, indignation brewing in his mind. This dead place wouldn't break him, no matter what it dredged up, how it tried to kill him. He would secure this big victory to Sol, especially for all the dead left behind, for humanity to cast off the Vikam scum and rebuild. He descended further, into the final floor of the tower.
He pushed aside the cloth partition separating their hallway sector from the two couples sharing the single unit leading into their endcap.
"Bad haul this round, Bryson," Axl bit off a chunk of nutripaste, putting Lilly's cartridge into the socket next to his bed. "I'll start another three-day route tomorrow. There might be a new batch East of Finn's row."
The route was a misdirect, of course, in case somebody was listening in to poach his intel or try to jump him in the off-mines. Getting the hallway endcap was a clear sign of growing wealth, especially on the third floor, and the target on his back only got bigger. But he kept cycling the poison and chewing his nutripaste, enjoying the subtle hints of cinnamon in today's batch.
"Axl," Lilly's synthetic voice sounded worried in his earpiece. "Bryson isn't moving."
Axl grunted and got up, taking the few steps to the very back of their hallway allotment. "How much of the medpatch—"
Axl's words froze in his throat as he pulled back the curtain before his brother's cot, revealing a desiccated face, hands to his neck as if to claw at an invisible wound. Vent-rot, his body at least a day old. He had died choking for air and in pain. His brother was dead.
"I called the medbay, ETA twenty-seven minutes." Lilly's voice felt distant. "I'm so sorry, Axl."
He reached out to him, hoping this was some mistake, but Bryson's hand was eerily stiff and brittle, the slight pressure nearly poking a hole in the skin.
"Aaargh!" Axl stepped back at the thought of having hurt him, the indentation of his touch flaking off.
But as he looked at his dead figure, a sense of calm reached him, a realization that life would be better now. He'd no longer have all these medical expenses, sometimes even having to cover Bryson's nutripaste costs when he couldn't work at all. Better gear for his rig, upgrades for his hand-drills or workbench were all within reach now.
Shit, he'd even be able to afford to splurge on clothing and rec-drugs, get the good life like many of the miners making a fraction of his output easily swung back in the second floor. His mind fuzzed over, poison cycling feeling like just another burden that he could now set aside.
"Axl!" Lilly produced the harsh warning sound of metal grating on metal, and his body reacted, his mind tensing instinctively. What was that about rec-drugs and slitting clothing? He looked back at his dead brother, the fierce loss hitting him like a brick again.
"Something's wrong with my brain," he said. "Call medbay again, pay the expedite fee, tell them it might be a neuro problem."
But Lilly didn't respond, and he turned to her socket on the wall.
He arrived at his hallway, eager to report the unusually good haul to Bryson, even bringing in a premium choco-flavored nutripaste tube to share. At the threshold of the hallway, he saw medtechs in full isolation gear, one holding up a hand to stop him.
"You're the cohabitant with Bryson Leeway, correct?"
Axl looked past her and saw a gurney leading a corpse away, a desiccated hand sticking out from the cover. He didn't need to be told who it was.
Falling to the ground, Axl grew light-headed as his attention on cycling poison slipped, the gravity of losing his brother unknowable. Then a certainty that he would die as well, that his fate was sealed with his. As soon as the thought bore into the pit of his stomach, a harsh ping from Lilly woke him up, and he stared at the medtech.
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"This is not how it happened."
He was on his rig, driving towards a newly formed tranche of lunar fulger, the lightning of its violent birth still lingering in the moon's vacuum. Then he got the message of his brother's death, together with an unusually vivid description of his body, the discordance from how the Ost operators communicated with remote miners comically obvious. Axl redoubled the focus on cycling his poison, aware this was some trick by a competing mining crew or raiders.
The medbay was clean and quiet, a prim woman leading him to Bryson's body, his pained expression contrasting his sheer-white covering under the warm overhead lighting.
"Condolences for your loss," the medtech put a hand on his shoulder.
He shook it off, from the beginning well aware of the lie in this place as he kept cycling poison. His dead brother's face was always the same, a frozen scream with a pair of hands clawing at his throat. Axl knew he could do many things to break this, he could grab the medtech by the neck and snap it with his meaty hands, trash the medbay, even charge at Security. Or just dispel the illusion entirely and finish the trial. All of these were doable.
Axl took a step forward and put his hand gently on the thin sheet over his brother's body, covering his face.
"I'm sorry you died alone."
Axl opened his eyes, and he was sitting cross-legged on a circle of black stone subtly glowing with yellow light, the path before him leading to the opening at the final floor of the tower. He slowly got up, feeling like the trial had barely started and at the same time had gone on forever, his body lurching from countless injuries, even now the poison tearing at him from within.
Clutched in his hand was a stretch of white fabric, drifting in the dense, orange water. He hastily wrapped it around his arm, surprised he had brought this with him and unsure what it meant. But his body wouldn't last much longer in this poisonous environment.
A single step forward and he was within the tower, in a simple room where a flower grew within a bubble of shifting light, a cluster of blue petals on a narrow stem. It flashed a pulse of deep orange, engulfing him in a warm embrace.
He was back at the surface, lying at the center of the trial's platform, the entrance to the underwater tower below him sealed shut. Axl turned to the side and coughed up poisoned water from his throat and gills, hungrily breathing in the untainted air, feeling like the freshest, cleanest anything he had ever tasted in his life.
His wounds were rapidly healing, and he looked up to see the guide elf with an outstretched hand, a dense pattern of glyphs glowing in a tight circle before his palm.
"This is simple healing glyphistry," he said. "Meant to tend to the wounds produced by the Hyacinth's tears. It's a standard courtesy the trial offers at its termination."
Axl put his head back down, letting the elf continue. Instead, he turned to the messages awaiting him.
>>Geas of the Weak triggered: Maximal F-Grade trial result obtained while in the G-Grade.
>>Reward: Two trial-linked Attributes activated.
>>Attributes activated: Bilesong (Poison sense and production) and Limerence (Soul tethering)
Attributes
Strength: 125
Endurance: 125
Agility: 125
Vitality: 125
Bilesong: 125
Mentality: 125
Perception: 125
Intelligence: 125
Wisdom: 125
Limerence: 125
Charisma: 125
Luck: 125
His eyes widened at this result, similar to when he got Vitality and Mentality when combining all his boons, and this was only the result the vale gave him for the trial? This was quite welcome, now having twelve Attributes that his class could keep adding points to each level. He would consider this to be a pretty good reward even alone, but there was more, a pair that seemed to come from the trial itself, the first explaining where he got his large bump in Attributes.
>>Achievement Obtained:
>>One with Fathoms poison (Stable):
>>Reach the final floor of the Reklerian Fathoms meditation tower, tempering body, mind, and soul in the tears of a lesser Seeping Hyacinth. Peak performance in an F-Grade trial.
>>Reward: +54 to Vitality, +27 to choice of Endurance or Mentality, +15% to Vitality
>>Oocile rebalancing activated.
>>Reward: +9 to all Attributes, +3% to all Attributes
>>Achievement Obtained:
>>Tears of the Seeping Hyacinth (Consumable):
>>Fully cycle the tears of a lesser Seeping Hyacinth throughout all nine floors of the Reklerian Fathoms meditation tower.
>>Reward: Poison-absorbing glands attached to breathing gills (bodyplan improvement).
He held off on consuming the second Achievement, wanting to ask his elf guide about that before adding things to his body, even if it was phrased as a reward. Instead, he looked at the small sheet of fabric in front of him. It was plain and unadorned, simple polyester to the touch, and small, barely large enough to be considered a short scarf. It was unusually white and clean-looking, however, despite it just coming out of the turbid, poisoned waters below, in contrast to the borrowed outfit he wore being completely ruined by the orange muck. As he examined the piece of cloth, a system helpfully gave him some info.
>> Filial Deathshroud (F-Grade)
>>A spiritual condensation of a beloved brother's death shroud, testament to the resilience and drive of his kin. It holds the power to attack the soul of any opponent that gazes upon the cloth, and cannot be damaged by F-Grade attacks.
Axl was uneasy about this item, not sure he appreciated a sub-system mining his deepest experiences to make stuff for him to fight with. But he felt a real resonance with the simple shroud, a sense of rightfulness about it, even as he was immediately suspicious of the feeling. Still, he wrapped it around his left arm, finding it stuck in place quite easily.
He then stood up, the healing having finished a good while back, and turned to the elf guide standing politely to the side. An open rift leading back to the vale was next to him.
"Thank you for the healing," Axl said.
"My pleasure entirely," the elf replied, a warm smile on his face. "I should be thanking you, in fact. Rarely does a trial taker reach the final floor, much less while cycling the poison for the entirety of the trial. It shames me to say that most who embark on the trial use hidden methods to avoid the effect of the tears in one way or another, diluting the value of what the Hyacinth is willing to provide."
Axl's eyes narrowed. "I see your advice earlier was quite useful to both of us, then."
"Please, do not misconstrue ill intent on my part. I simply noticed you carried no means of such subterfuge on you—cycling was your only option. You are clearly not from the domains this Rift usually receives visitors from, and thus your ignorance of the details of the trial was quite welcome, the rewards at their intended extent."
"Fine," Axl shrugged, not willing to dwell on the issue anyhow, now that the nock was out of the tube. "I was also offered Poison-absorbing glands. Can you tell me more about that?"
The elf's eyes widened. "In addition to that powerful item? The Heavens must have been quite impressed by your accomplishment. Such an improvement is usually obtained by eating a single petal from the Seeping Hyacinth at the pinnacle of the tower, which takes three thousand years to regrow. Such an endowment offers a poison-based improvement carefully aligned with your body, and I assure you it bears no shortcomings to any F-Grade Lineage, even to most E-Grade ones. I have only heard of a handful of the peak cultivators of my people earning such a reward, all eventually becoming central pillars of our forces."
"May I consume the Achievement here? In case something goes wrong with my body?"
"Of course, and I will provide any necessary healing, but I doubt that will be necessary."
Axl did, and a sense of warmth flowed down his gills, then nothing. He waited for more, but after a few seconds, nothing else happened.
"That's it?" he asked. "That was smoother than I'd have expected."
"The Hyacinth is very good at what it does." The elf's smile took on the slightest hint of pride.
He nodded politely and looked at his Status, finding a modification to his Lineage.
Name: Xel-389b (Roken)
Level: 17
Class: Usurpation of Balance (Rare)
Core: (none)
Spiritual Organs: Gastric Cauldron (root G)
Lineage: Poison-seeped Water Elf, poison-consuming (trunk G)
He figured that the "poison-seeped" addition to his Lineage was because of having done the tempering in general, while the "poison-consuming" bit related to his new bodyplan feature. Still, he didn't feel any different, but he'd have to test out how this new development panned out with some stored centipede poison when he got back. He'd have to cook up some poisons with [Gastric Cauldron] as well, hoping it would synergize with his new Bilesong Attribute and his modified Lineage.
As much as he'd have preferred a modification to his Lineage that made him more human-like, frankly, he didn't feel that going from a water elf to a slightly poisonous water elf was much of a difference on that front. At least it gave him more tools to finish Terrania's quest.
It was also interesting that the grade of his lineage now had an indication that it was at the trunk of G, and going from how his spiritual organ was in the root, Axl figured it was an indication of the different steps of the grade. Frankly, he preferred the numbers from his Skills and Technical Arts, if only to have a single system, not a flowery metaphor of a growing tree. Fitting for the term "cultivator", and all the self-importance these elves bring to it, but the engineer in him found the term a bit too precious.
He gave the elf a polite bow and stepped towards the exit.
The elf bowed back. "I hope your cultivation Path leads you to the Fathoms, the true heart of this firmament."