Mask of Humanity

After leaving the others, Nicolai headed out through the prisons. He didn’t head straight to the exit, because he had another aim in mind.

His first time in the prisons, he had been far too weak to tangle with one of the Wardens. The most recent time, he’d been busy and hadn’t wanted to spend time doing so.

Now, he had a little time. The Imbued chains each Warden carried were powerful tools, and he could imagine a multitude of uses for them.

As he walked, he was thinking on how the others had managed to hide their Seeds from their captors. He was wondering if people that he’d killed in the past might have hidden their Seeds from him via the same method. He found the thought deeply disturbing, hating the idea that he might have lost out.

After a while he tracked down a Warden, alone in a large, empty stretch of the prison. Secluded enough that no one would hear him shooting. It was slowly moving, the standard patrol they were often engaged in.

Standing some distance away, Nicolai took aim at the creature, sighting down his SMG’s iron-sights. He squeezed the trigger and shot the warden in its long-rotted head, and dried out flesh along with chunks of bone were blown in the air.

The Warden didn’t fall over. Instead it turned and came toward him. Though he’d shot it in the head where its Soul wisp was, the wisp was not departing like normal. Instead it floated around the body.

Nicolai shot again and again, blowing chunks of desiccated flesh out of it, but it kept coming, and the chains were slicing around.

Frowning, Nicolai unshelled his Soul Sense and sent it out. He found the Wardens Soul wisp, which had a very weak Soul Sense of its own, one that was growing weaker all the time.

Immediately he understood. Without its body it was unprotected, and was being damaged by the world, but it had opted to stick around and continue controlling its body anyway. He realised that he could simply run away. In a short time the Soul wisp would have to depart to save itself and the Warden would collapse.

But Nicolai saw no reason to run when he was at an advantage. He launched a spiritual attack. His Soul Tendril snapped at the Warden’s Soul wisp.

The Soul wisp saw him coming and immediately turned and fled, getting away in time to dodge his strike, and the Warden’s form collapsed.

Interesting. Seeing the Soul wisp fleeing Nicolai immediately pursued, darting forward. In general he didn’t bother to destroy the Soul wisps of the dead, because by and large they were all unthinking. But the simple fact that this one behaved with more self-awareness told him it would be wise to make sure it didn’t get away.

He caught up with it in a moment and his Soul Sense tendril lunged, grabbing it tight and tearing into it. It was far weaker than him and in only moments the undead’s Soul wisp was destroyed. He didn’t seem to gain anything from this act, unfortunately.

So far as he’d seen, the dead were listless and uninterested. Everything here was decaying, in more than the literal sense. The dead were just going through the motions, that was his view. Doing whatever they were last told to do, gradually falling apart as they went.

But, where they did show slightly more awareness, he felt it wise to take steps such as he’d just taken.

Nicolai drew closer to the fallen Warden, his eyes on its chains.

His Soul Sense, running over those chains, told him something he already knew. They were Imbued.

Taking a knee beside the dead Warden, he reached out and grasped one of the chains, trying to push his Soul within and seize control of the Imbued. However, his Soul seemed unable to penetrate and get inside. So, he pulled on the chain and the Warden’s body flopped as he started gathering the links up, dragging the mass free from the Warden. Immediately the chains become stuck together due to the dozens of hooks and curved blades throughout them, so he instead started digging around the chains tied around the Warden’s chest.

All these chains had to be connecting somewhere, and he assumed that was the bit he needed to find.

His hunch paid off, as he found the nexus of them after turning the Warden over. In the middle of its back a piece of metal was dug in. All of the chains connected to the end of this metal. It was stuck in tight and Nicolai had to spend some time working with a knife to finally get it free.

Once he got it out, he looked it over. It was a thick metal rod slightly longer than his hand, with all the chains connecting to its end.

Chains Whip

This many-chained Imbued whip can be used in strikes, but is more often utilised to restrain. Tipped with hooked blades, it can rapidly tie itself around an opponent.

These Chains are also useful as a vessel for Soul-type attacks.

Holding the rod, Nicolai was able to successfully send his Soul Sense and Oma into the Imbued. The chains rustled as they came alive.

He observed the chains as he rose to his feet, feeling at how he could control them. The Imbued seemed to have a few easy-use commands, ones which had revealed themselves to him when he took control of it. Using one of them he instructed the chains to free themselves from the Warden.

With a gesture, the chains all sprang free from one another, all extending out straight and separate from the others, branching into the air. He was pleased to find that despite the large number of chains, overall the item was quite light. It seemed to be made of some unusually strong yet light metal.

Another gesture and they all snapped together into a mass, becoming in appearance one thick mass of bundled chain ending in dozens of hooked blades. It looked heavier and better for hitting things.

Nicolai swung it a few times through the air, not just with his arm but also by directing the chains themselves. It was an interesting practise.

Nicolai waved the Imbued toward the Warden’s corpse, and all the chains sprang apart and dove at it, ripping and tearing, wrapping tight around until the corpse was a mass of crawling chain.

He attempted to lift the Warden but it was quite heavy, and the weight of the Warden plus the chains all had to go through his arm. After becoming a Cultivator Nicolai was quite a bit stronger than previously, but it wasn’t enough for him to lift the entire Warden one handed.

Holding the rod in both hands he grunted and flexed his body, and the chains burned Oma as they moved under his will, hefting the Warden from the ground.

He let it go and it fell.

Next, he had the chains come toward him. He had them wrap slowly around his chest, taking care of the hooks and blades, pulling tight until the rod was in the centre of his chest, tucked alongside his tactical vest, the chains acting like a layer of armour on top of it all.

Now there was a little less range, but the ends of the chains were still able to move around him. However, he generally had to move the chains as one mass, and struggled to split them apart into individual control, as he’d have liked to. He’d been interested in trying to have them spread out around his body equally, as a way to grab at anything nearby and as defence. A little like Zero-Twelve’s utility tendrils. But in practise it wasn’t easy; Movement had done most of the controlling of the tendrils. A human brain wasn’t designed to control so many limbs.

Is Movement reachable? he asked Threat Analysis and Cyberwarfare.

Doesn’t seem to be, said Cyberwarfare.

You need more Augmentation, added Threat Analysis.

Then, for now, see if you two can work out a better way to control these things, he said.

The Modules were excited by the challenge, getting quickly to work. As they were both represented in his Soul they were able to meld with him. It was an experience not dissimilar to becoming Zero-Twelve, but in a spiritual manner, though he wasn’t able to manage the seamless fusion that equalled a truly Zero-Twelve state. At least, not yet.

With the two Modules merging into him, Nicolai was able to build something like spiritual code, one designed to work with this new Imbued. His Soul split out tiny parts, each part designed to reach into a chain.

The chains spun and twisted around him, performing a complex dance as Nicolai stretched them and got used to them. After a short time the new method of controlling them had sunk into his mind and Soul, a tiny piece of software he was able to easily utilise. It was far from perfect; he didn’t have the kind of perfect, chain-by-chain control he would have liked. Something to work on.

Good enough. Nicolai got moving again, the chains twining around his body. He needed to get back to the others and make sure there were no issues; the death of Karl might cause further fallout.

###

There was no further fallout, at least that the others were willing to make plain to Nicolai. Elena was put to bed to recover and that was that. Finding no immediate issues, Nicolai turned his focus to breaking in his new Symbiote; that taken from the giant mantis in the jungle.

Grasping Finger Symbiote

Tier: 1

Placement: Hand

This Symbiote is capable of generating a pull between the Cultivator and objects or beings. It must be directed by Soul Sense, and thus its range is limited by the Cultivator’s reach. It easily pulls on inanimate objects, but requires more power to act on living beings.

An opponent’s Soul Sense must be broken before it might be used on them.

After the hour and a half it took him to break the Symbiote in, the Grasping Finger moved through him and took up residence in his heart Node. However, as he’d suspected, Nicolai encountered issue when he tried to make use of it. When he fed Oma into it, it moved to his hand, but didn’t seem able to activate properly.

This was obviously because he had no hand Node, which caused Nicolai significant issue. It would be some time until he was able to build such a Node, as he knew that would be a Major Node, and he needed to finish his entire chest area, first.

Fortunately, Kleos held a solution.

‘You can make a temporary minor Node,’ the head said. ‘It should be possible… even if the points of potential aren’t quite active in your hands, yet.’

‘Temporary Nodes,’ Nicolai murmured. ‘How does that work?’

‘Remember when you made that practise Node outside your body? And then you finalised it in one go? Making a temporary Node is the same process. You just don’t let it finalise naturally and instead finalise it instantly. As a result you skip the time requirement, but the Node won’t work properly. For starters, it won’t be able to store Oma, nor will it do the other functions expected of whichever area you put it in. Like if you made a temporary lung Node, it wouldn’t work to help you draw in Aura faster, like normal. Temporary Nodes only do one thing: they let you use Symbiotes that require a Node in a specific place.’

Nicolai nodded. This sounded kind of… perfect. He had been wondering about the issue of gaining Symbiotes which he was unable to use, and had figured he would have no choice but to just sit on them until he could complete the required Node. It was nice to know he would be able to make use of them earlier. But there was one issue.

‘How do I then go about replacing the temporary Node, later on?’

‘That’s the main issue. You have to take the Node apart but it’s a process that takes some time. About half the time it would take for a Node to finalise, I’d say. You simply pull at it and start it unfurling, then leave it be, and after a few days your major Nodes should gradually take it apart, in a way that won’t lead to any detonations. Or, you can sit there for about half a day focusing intently and manually take the whole thing apart.’

Nicolai sat back, considering. This was all useful to know. He figured he ought to create two temporary Nodes, one in each hand, allowing him easy use of his new Symbiote. If he found any other Symbiotes he was unable to use, he’d build temporary Nodes for them, too.