Chapter 195: 195: A Matter of Scale

Learner’s notes day 418: On Learner’s Development

Bravery: The quality or state of having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty : the quality or state of being Brave: Courageous.

Brave: Having or showing mental strength to face danger, fear or difficulty. Having or showing Courage.

Courage: Mental or moral strength to venture persevere and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.

Strangely, Kala’s dictionary does not do a good enough job defining this word, as it poorly describes a concept that humans hold in awe, with especially strong moral connotations. People would never call a man who faces great fear and danger in order to perpetrate evil deeds ‘brave’, and they seldom call people who engage in this poorly calculated risk-taking for their own benefit ‘brave’. ‘Foolhardy’ if they fail and ‘enterprising’ or ‘lucky’ if they succeed.

No, the term bravery is strongly linked with altruism, and the fastest way to earn this most distinguished moniker is to face great risk to aid another.

Why do I bring this up?

Because Learner (my human brain), well designed as she is, is turning out rather selfless, altruistic, and ‘brave’. And despite being largely unconscious, she pushed me to volunteer for something that I would normally never consider.

I’m both proud and irritated.

If this behavior gets her killed, I’ll perhaps make a slightly less than perfect human brain.

***Baroke***

Baroke whipped around and put one of his god slayer arrows through the invisible thing making his hair stand on end.

It exploded, just like the previous one, dropping a handful of grey-white slime onto the jungle floor as it faded from his senses.

Hah! Got’cha bitch.

And then the trees began to shake violently around him, as the dark spaces between trees were filled by increasingly inhuman forms, surrounding the genosian camp. The formerly genosian creatures showed various states of mutation, changing into skeletally thin creatures with overwide mouths dripping with cloudy drool.

The further gone ones were over nine feet tall, with patched of pale fur and faces that seemed to be stretched out by some sadistic sculpter.

The fresh ones simply looked like they were about to die of starvation.

It’s just a couple hundred mutants, Baroke thought idly, pulling out another arrow. These bad guys had a glaring weakness that Baroke could exploit: They existed.

Anything with a physical form is my bitch, Baroke thought, putting an arrow between the eyes of one of the ten-footers.

Baroke’s hair stood on end as two more incorporeal things seemingly descended on them, causing either side of his body to cover with goosebumps. He leapt aside as the world snapped into greys. There was no indication he’d dodged anything save the rapidly shifting goosebumps on his arm.

It took him a moment to realize the two invisible baddies were…shifting back and forth to confuse his senses.

That implied a level of intelligence that made Baroke wanna nope right outta there if he could. It was one thing to fight mindless soul-sucking creatures that hunted by sound and made mutant monsters. That was kinda fun.  It was entirely another thing to realize it was some kind of malevolent entity controlling them, patiently and rationally pursuing your destruction.

They don’t pay me enough to think about this kind of shit.

Perhaps a second and third arrow are in order.

Baroke whipped out two more arrows and aimed to pop the offending creatures.

After this, Betty is gonna be down to six Bent. Not really enough to send a message. Oh well, I’ll figure something out. Calvin gets Bent back by boning, maybe it could work for me too…except Maya’s back at home. Damn.

Force Amplification.

Assassinate.

Called Shot.

Penetrating Shot.

Sirfen’s Prey

Pierce the Veil

Godslayer Arrow

4 Bent reclaimed

Betty has 10/22 Bent remaining.

Baroke sucked the Bent out of the bow through his palm and repeated the feat, aiming at the other fluctuating sensation in the distance.

Third shot. At least he’ll know I’m in trouble, I guess.

Baroke loaded the arrow with eight Bent and launched it, hoping to take out the third creature and make its hair-raising sensation vanish like the other ones.

Unfortunately, without a strong indicator of where it was, like when it was sucking on the genosian lady, it was a little difficult to pin down. Baroke might’ve only hit the other one because there were two.

The arrow hissed out, missing the invisible creature by a narrow margin as Baroke was immediately hit in the forehead with a steel marble about the size of his thumb.

The marble exploded into a pair of feet, solidly planted on Baroke’s face and blocking off all of his vision.

The feet pushed off of his face, causing him to rock back slightly, and he spotted a rather buxum young Gadveran woman twirl gracefully in midair before landing lightly in front of him. Her center of balance was pretty low, allowing her to get away with that sort of thing.

“Good afternoon, Baroke,” Learner said, holding a box full of vials in front of her. “Do you need breathable air,” she said, pointing to the first one, then moving on to the next, and the next after that. “Emergency medical intervention, combat assistance, shelter or food? I didn’t think you’d declare an emergency over food over the course of an hour, but Calvin said you might.”

“I need Combat Assistance, duh!” Baroke shouted, kicking a gnawing bastard off of him, desperately trying to keep track of where the prickling goosebumps on his skin were telling him the invisible monster was moving.

“Right,” Learner said, scanning the surrounding mob of inhuman creatures pouring into the camp. “That seems fairly self-evident.”

“Please don’t make fun of me for this afterwards,” Learner said without an ounce of shyness, “My brain is embarrassed by our physical differences, and if you made fun of them, she would just die.”

Before Baroke could wrap his head around that weirdness, Learner’s head sprung open, splitting along jagged lines that wrapped all the way to the back of her skull, revealing something that looked a bit like a starfish lined with teeth.

Watching the man-eating Genosian mutant come to a screeching halt in front of Learner was actually mildly amusing, the creature panicked and flailed as it tried to reverse course and back away from her elongating face.

She leaned forward and bit off the creature’s entire head, her face closing it around it like…well, like nothing Baroke had ever seen before. The creature fell to the ground, limp, as Baroke watched the whole head make its way down Learner’s throat and into her stomach, distending her flesh all the way down. Her stomach rapidly shrank back down to taut ebony flesh as the head in there went…somewhere.

“Ah, I’ve got to admit, having a dedicated stomach is pleasant,” Learner said, rubbing her tummy. “Don’t you agree?”

“Y-“ Baroke hesitated. Must not upset her brain. “Yeah, it’s pretty good. Most people like having one.” Another mutated Genosian leapt at him and he bashed it over the skull with an arrow.

“Baroke, are you afraid of me?” Learner asked, cocking her head as she studied him, the flood of monsters parting around her. “That makes my brain upset.”

“Goddamn it,” Baroke muttered. “Apologies to your brain,” Baroke said, sniping a mutant that was about to get the upper hand on one of the womenfolk.

“It wasn’t exactly something I could control, but how about your brain and I have a nice long heart to heart after this is over? I know I’ve got nothing to be afraid of, and I wanna continue being her friend.”

“Really!?” Learner asked, her ecstatic smile brilliant against her skin. There was no sign of where it had split open moments before. She waded through the field of gnashing monsters and threw her arms around Baroke, squishing herself up against him in a combat-hug.

Friend-zoned myself with the eldritch creature while avoiding her wrath. Exactly where I wanna be. I always was better with girls than Calvin.

“Okay, fight baddies now, hug later,” Baroke said, poking her shoulder.

“Oh, right,” Learner said, whipping around, her arms strangely pale, hands misshapen.

She formed her fingertips into a cone-like formation, and lazily waved her hand.

There was a flicker of warped light, and all the mutants within ten feet of them fell to the ground, severed in two.

You were hugging me with those!?  Baroke bit his tongue and didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to upset Learner’s ‘brain’ any more than he had already.

With Learner mincing the creatures closest to them, Baroke was free to provide support to the struggling circle of Genosians, braining every single mutant he spotted, starting from the ones who were winning and working his way back to the ones hovering around the edge of the battle, waiting for their turn.

Every single one of them had volunteered to get an arrow through the skull.

The hairs on his left arm stood up. Bad touch sucky-monster!

Baroke leapt to the side, but Learner was unresponsive. Maybe she couldn’t feel the creature with the same sensitivity? He yelled a warning, but the eldritch abomination was dragged into the air at practically the same time.

Learner’s human form was dragged into the air, and faint blue mist began being sucked out of her mouth.

“Baroke, this is highly uncomfortable,” She said, squirming in its grasp.

“Don’t let it suck ya!” Baroke said, leveling his arrow at the faint trail of blue. He knew the monster’s throat was right there. “I’ll get ya down from there!”

Learner closed her mouth, but faint blue continued to seep from her nostrils.

She closed her nostrils.

The invisible creature seemed to shudder and redouble its efforts, causing blue mist to leak from Learner’s eyes and skin.

Force Amplification.

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Assassinate.

Called Shot.

Penetrating Shot.

Sirfen’s Prey

Pierce the Veil

Godslayer Arrow.

Betty has 6/22 Bent remaining.

The creature exploded, leaving a splotch of gunk on the jungle floor, and dropping Learner into it.

Learner sat in the center of the clearing, her face covered in the creature’s grey-white fluids, blinking.

She scraped a bit of the thick, milky gunk up with her finger before licking it off, expression pensive.

“I’ll have to come up with countermeasures for the…” she glanced at him.

“Suck-monster,” Baroke supplied.

“For the suck-monster. Its cells should help with that.” She extended an extra long, bright red tongue and began lapping up the fluid on her face and the front of her low-cut shirt. Getting extra thorough as she went, making sure no crevice was uncleaned.

I’m just gonna look over here, Baroke thought, diverting his gaze as his pants began magically shrinking.

“Right, just…be quiet,” Baroke said, dropping his voice to a whisper as the surrounding genosians glared at them. “The invisible ones seem to hunt by sound.”

Once Learner was done, she picked up the box of supplies from where it had fallen and pulled out a pen and paper from the corner.

So, what’s our plan now? She wrote.

***Calvin***

“The plan is, we wait.” Calvin said, holding up his fingers. “Two days. We know the care package got sent through, and there was one more arrow after that. He’s launched six shots. Between Betty and Baroke, the guy is down to 6 Bent. He’ll get another two back in just under forty-eight hours. With Learner’s help, he should be able to make it back to camp with no problem. When it comes to sheer survivability, Learner edges out Baroke by a small margin.”

Calvin was still somewhat taken aback that the eldritch creature had volunteered to get gooped and shot through the hole in space to come to Baroke’s aid. Calvin wasn’t sure if it was bravery or calculated politics intended to win him over. Neither would have particularly surprised him.

Learner sometimes seemed of two minds about things, recently.

“They should realize that their only chance of rescue is to follow the original plan and meet us here.” Calvin said. “In the meantime, let’s make preparations to head toward the south,” Calvin said, pointing as he peered into the ominous woods.

Something about the deep jungle just felt…off. Calvin unconsciously wanted to avoid going that direction. If the creature they were pursuing had a nest, turf, or a point of origin, Calvin was fairly sure it would be there.

There was even the possibility that the constant aversion to going south wasn’t actually Calvin’s sense of self-preservation, but the creature’s desire to prevent people from seizing on it’s weakness.

Visualize.

 Calvin created a non-physical map of the land between Gadvera and Juntai, with the Genosian mountains smack dab in between the two.

From what I’ve heard, these tribes are having disappearing problems. Calvin thought, mentally drawing big red X’s on the tribes Aoehe had told him were also being attacked.

Many of the more northerly tribes weren’t being attacked, but the ones that stretched to the southeast and southwest were, nearly reaching Gadvera and Calvin’s March.

I’d hazard a guess and say the only reason Gadvera isn’t seeing disappearances is because no one in their right mind would wander into these woods anyway.

Calvin took his finger and drew an arc between the affected Genosian tribes, then he continued the arc, describing a circle that dominated the Deep jungle, abutting Gadvera and his own territory.

Calvin scowled as he inspected the circle, putting a dot in the center.

What do you wanna bet that’s where the Siphon is? Calvin thought.

No bet. Elliot dismissed the offer. Wait, which side are you betting?

The circle was not only pressed uncomfortably close to Calvin’s city, it also sat directly over the last leg of his trade route to Gadvera.

Calvin could neither expand his territory west into the deep jungle, nor trade safely with Gadvera without addressing this problem.

It had already proven that it was willing to suck up more than just Genosians, after all.

Knowing Baroke, he’d probably call it a suck-monster.

Calvin glanced up at the sun overhead. “Looks like I’ve got two days to create a reality-warping bridge instead of one.”

Calvin oriented himself on the estimated dot in the center of his map and summoned his Knick-knacks.

Calvinian Summoning.

29/47 Bent remaining.

Is that all the Bent you could get?

Apologies, Ravager, the women of the brothel are tapped out. I could ask for volunteers, but it would likely be only moderately successful while reflecting poorly on us.

It’ll have to do, Calvin thought.

The line of giant knick-knacks began carving a straight path through the jungle, boring deep into the oppressive woods. Calvin’s aversion to going south lightened just a bit as sun began penetrating through the canopy.

“Nadia. By all reports, we’ve got twelve hours until the creature comes back, but you’re going to be spending the whole time watching us to make sure we’re not taken. If anybody needs to take a bathroom break, let everyone know and find yourself a half-bush so we can keep an eye on you.” Calvin pointed at Nadia. “No more respecting people’s privacy, alright?”

“I can do that,” the closest Nadia said with a shrug.

“Ella, see what you and your dad can do to prepare us for a trip through the Deep Jungle, any kind of lore you might have would be helpful.”

“Kala?” Calvin asked.

“Yes?” Kala asked, fiddling with her pipe.

Multi shaping.

28/47 Bent remaining.

Calvin recreated the map he’d Visualized, using a bit of ink and a scrap of paper from his belt.

“Can you use your Seer skill to narrow down where the creature is currently, or where it might be nesting?” Calvin asked, pointing at the Deep jungle they were currently at the edge of.

He left the circle of its suspected range and the dot at the center blank, not wanting to influence Kala’s instincts.

Kala looked at the map for a moment. “Sure, give me a minute and an inkwell.”

He did so, and watched as Kala took a draw from her pipe and closed her eyes, holding the ink and quill over the map.

She slowly exhaled a plume of smoke that curled playfully up her face as her hands seemed to weave above the paper, searching for the right place to make a mark.

A moment later, Kala frowned, dipping the quill in the inkwell before lowering the quill toward the paper.

Her hands started trembling, the quill not quite touching the paper.

With a moan, Kala’s other hand upended the inkwell on the center of the map, creating a massive blot that dominated the deep jungle. The porous nature of the paper allowed the ink to spread further, sucked up to the genosian mountains by capillary action.

The giant blot of ink described the circle Calvin had created, fairly accurately.

Kala, her eyes still closed, leaned forward and began scratching on the map, creating tendrils of ink stretching out beyond the reaches of the deep jungle, reaching outward like vines questing for something to latch onto.

Kala’s brows furrowed, and she picked up the back of the feather and smacked it down into the ink multiple times before flicking it across the paper, making thousands of tiny little dots beyond the primary splotch, mostly leading back toward Gadvera.

Kala went limp with a sigh before she pushed herself back up, blinking her brown eyes groggily.

“Did I get it?” She asked, muffling a yawn.

“Yeah,” Calvin said, studying the map with a sinking heart. “I think you did.”

“Oh my,” Kala said, looking down at the mess. “That doesn’t look good.”

Kinda looks like bacteria taking over a petri dish.

“I think we’re going to have to adjust our strategy,” Calvin said. They weren’t fighting a single creature. Not exactly.

Macronomicon

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