Feeling like he should sigh deeply followed by briefly wondering what sighing is, he asks the blue boxes to show him more information about the three options he is offered.
[ Lesser arcane skeleton; animated through arcane powers instead of a pact with a deity of death, this race is more akin to a golem than its more traditional necrotic counterpart. Its intricate spell matrix is capable of holding a controlling soul. +Int +Wis ]
[ Lesser soul skeleton; a soul melded with its long decayed corporal form, these beings are revenants that have endured or slumbered until nothing but bones remained. Animated through pure hatred and force of will, they often expire the moment they have accomplished their revenge. ++Str ]
[ Minor skeleton; a more powerful version of the lesser variant, this being is either raised by a more competent necromancer or has evolved. Animated by magic and a pact with a deity of death, these creatures are a combination of arcane and necrotic magic. Still easily controlled, its nexus has a larger mana capacity, allowing for greater strength and solidity. ++Str +Con ]
[ ERROR; DEITY 404, CORRECTING… ]
[ Minor skeleton; a more powerful version of the lesser variant, this being is either raised by a more competent necromancer or has evolved. Animated by magic and a pact with a deity of death, these creatures are a combination of arcane and necrotic magic. Still easily controlled, its nexus has a larger mana capacity, allowing for greater strength and solidity. ]
It takes Douglas a long, long time to fully read through the new pile of information. The small note about being easily controlled makes Douglas think he can actually feel anger for a moment. However, the red haze turns out to be from a rather bright object in the starry sky.
Squinting at the shining interloper, Douglas realizes that it isn’t the big star he had previously seen. This object actually seems to be moving. Nearly imperceptible, the red dot stands out from the rest of the starry multitude. Each time the ship’s slow tumble makes his view perform another turn, the red dot is slightly brighter and larger.
Mentally shrugging at this seemingly inconsequential observation, Douglas goes back to methodically determining what he should do. The thought that maybe changing his race is a bad idea doesn’t even cross his mind. In fact, he feels some faded form of joy each time he thinks about being able to change into a more powerful version of himself.
The minor skeleton upgrade seems the most logical at first glance, it has two things going for it. The number of bonus attributes, strength and constitution are the highest out of all three. This combined with the higher level capacity makes it stand head and shoulders above the other two.
Though, its demerits are also the highest. First, there’s the fact that he will remain easily controlled. The necromancer had an entire army of puppets like Douglas following his every order. Then there is the fact that the attribute bonuses seemed to have disappeared, which even Douglas realizes isn’t a good thing.
That happened after the message about a deity. Normally, Douglas gets a slight hint and feeling of meaning when reading the words in the blue boxes. Nothing in the error message gives him any additional information except for the way these words sound. The few words he had experienced this with are the words ‘NAN’ and ‘UNKNOWN’. It seems very odd to the skull that the word ‘unknown’ does come with context, but the word ‘UNKNOWN’ doesn’t.
He stares out into the stars some more while slowly thinking about these topics. The stars around him make another full rotation and the red dot is larger still when he finishes his ponderous line of thought. The brightest star of them all, a small circle of white illumination, seems to be on the opposite side of the red star.
Going back to his previous activity, Douglas thinks that becoming a lesser soul skeleton sounds like a pretty bad idea. Having to move his bones through pure hatred or force of will seems exhausting. Everything he does now already takes effort; the only positive point would be an increased amount of strength. More strength wouldn’t have helped the bony bloke in any situation he has come across so far.
Douglas thus chooses lesser arcane skeleton, his mind made up. Having more intelligence and wisdom will increase his available mana and his mana regeneration. This will, in turn, speed up his recovery effort.
Douglas has time to think two thoughts before blacking out. The first one is a question about why he knows what intelligence and wisdom actually do for him. The last one, a slightly more panicked thought, is whether it’s a good idea to do this mere centimetres from the void of open space.
Chapter Three – Taking Inventory
[ Lesser arcane skeleton lvl 1 100/100 xp reached ]
[ Lesser arcane skeleton lvl 2 200/200 xp reached ]
[ Lesser arcane skeleton lvl 3 400/400 xp reached ]
[ Lesser arcane skeleton lvl 4 800/800 xp reached ]
[ Lesser arcane skeleton lvl 5 1600/1600 xp reached ]
[ Lesser arcane skeleton lvl 6 3200/3200 xp reached ]
[ Lesser arcane skeleton lvl 7 6400/6400 xp reached ]
These messages await Douglas as he wakes, his sight filled with blue boxes and stars. Slowly turning his neck, he sees that he is still holding onto the edge of the half melted plating. His arm and hand look to be in perfect condition, flawless white bone instead of ragged chunks with glowing cracks.
Studying his arm some more, he sees that his hand shines in the starlight, a smooth gloss giving the interlocking bones a near translucent look. His ulna is perfect and his radius is half done, the places where bone is still missing glowing blue. The large piece of hipbone is gone, and Douglas slowly reasoned that it must have been taken by his radius when his ulna was finished. His humerus is totally perfect, the same for his clavicle and upper right rib.
Douglas feels pretty good, he has to admit. He also suspects that thoughts take less effort, the gears in his mind running a bit smoother. Like a well-oiled machine, Douglas starts recapping what happened.
The blue boxes had given him a lot of these xp - which Douglas knows to be experience points - for discovering things. That had made his race level up. Now he feels smarter, and his arm is healed. His forehead also feels fuller, the flow of power making its way to a few places in his body feels a lot stronger.
It makes absolutely no sense to the skull with a single arm who is still clinging to a piece of a spaceship.
There is one thing that Douglas is oddly certain about, though. The red dot has just spun into view again and it’s getting rather big and bright. It freaks him out a bit, and he feels in his bones that the red thing growing too large is very much not a good thing for him. This is more a feeling in the back of his mind than something he reasoned out himself.
So Douglas decides to postpone messing with the blue boxes until after he has done some exploring. But first, he has a stash of bone fragments to loot.
Slowly floating through the empty space, the skull makes his way back into the long room. Moving from handhold to handhold, he feels that moving around is getting easier and easier. No longer does he need to carefully wait for the right moment to bounce off some random surface. Instead, he grabs hold of whatever is in reach, aims, and shoves himself through space.
In record time, he reaches the wall-mounted webbing. Concentrating on the flow of power, he feels and sees that a few bones are being regrown. His shoulder blade, left upper rib, upper sternum, and radius are all getting a split portion of his enlarged mana flow.
Picking out the stored pieces of bone goes a lot faster now that his hand is whole. Storing them had been an exercise in patience, his movements jerky as sharp fragments scraped against each other with each joint movement. Now, he feels like he could play the piano.
Wondering what a piano might be, he starts putting the shards in his upper rib. The bone is soon filled, and he can actually feel the material warping when he focuses his mana flow on the single bone.
The faint broadcast is actually a bit soothing now that he has some agency over his own direction. Not five minutes later,
his left arm is a mess of glowing fragmented splinters. The mana rushing through his ligaments is a pure pale blue, nearly transparent - a rather large departure from the murky green it was previously.
Seeing that he still has bone leftover and noticing that the amount of mana needed to keep his arm together is but a pittance, he starts filling his shoulder blades, deciding to restore the rest of his spinal column and rib cage at a later point.
He can move his right arm, but some motions take a lot of effort. He can’t apply any strength at all in some directions, and he suspects that his missing shoulder blades play a large role in this.
He manages to fill both scapula, leaving him with enough for half a vertebra. Inspecting both arms, the blue glow from his left illuminating his right, and he smiles again. Grabbing hold of the webbing, he moves back and forth a bit to test his strength and pushes off enthusiastically.
Douglas then vows to never push off with full power again, unless it is his only option. Rubbing the crack running through his cheekbone - gotten from smashing face first into an unyielding metal bench - he gingerly makes his way back to the door.
Now a floating skull and two arms, his speed is much higher even when moving cautiously. He shoves the door open further, and the red glow floods into the room. The source of the red glow is getting really big, so Douglas decides to get a move on.
The first door he encounters turns out to be unlocked. He twists the sunken handle and peers through the partially opened door. A slow-motion dance of pillows greets his glowing eyes.
Closing the door gingerly, he suddenly stops. That broadcast is still going. He slides the door open wide enough to slip through and moves towards the floating rectangle. Grabbing the hated device, he almost starts smashing it. Something stops him, and instead, he looks at it carefully, tapping on the screen.
Tapping on the screen does absolutely nothing, his bony fingers only making a hollow sound reverberate through his joints. He has the odd sensation that touching it should have done something but decides to look at the thing’s edge instead. He finds a small button pretty quickly and pushes it even quicker. Blessed silence greets the skull.
Endlessly relieved, he makes his way outside. Only two pillows have floated into the hallway, along with a couple of dozen balls of fluff. Douglas quickly grabs hold of the railing mounted halfway between ceiling and floor and makes his way over to the next door.
The second door is locked, but a quick smashing of the glass panel and a single pull of the painted handle fixes that problem. He nearly loses his grip when trying to punch the thing, his sudden shift of weight twisting his entire body in an unexpected manner. Opening the door, he nearly loses his balance again, a flurry of dark red flakes and some form of fading vapour blowing the skull and arms backward, nearly making him lose his grip. Fully opening the door, he allows the faint starlight and his left arm to shine a light on a scene out of hell.
Dried tomato soup, that’s the image that floats through Douglas’ skull. He sees white flakes of bone sticking out of a deep, dark red mass. The entire cabin is covered in a red substance, so dark it nearly looks black. He realizes he should have known - dark streaks of the same stuff cover the hallway around the door.
Douglas thinks of going in and picking the bone pieces out of the frozen splashes, but decides not to. He already feels some of the smaller fragments covered in dried goop stuck in his growing vertebra, and the thought of foreign bone inside his own body seems wrong on a very deep level. He stops mana from going to his only active bone and releases the half melded fragments into space. Glancing at the storm of fragments now littering the hall, he channels his mana into his still repairing left arm.
Closing the tomb, he makes his way over to the third door. Finding it locked, a quick smash and pull later, he sees a nearly empty room. The bed is bare and the walls even more so.
Cautiously making his way down the hall, he follows the hallway’s curve and turns to the right. More corridor greets him, a single door on his left and a one metre by one metre gangway making another right at the end. A few small hatches on the left finishes his inspection of potential doors.
The far right end is just gone. The bottom corner of the hallway is ripped apart, splatters of melted metal bordering a patch of stars. A myriad of wires and cables hang suspended in space, clearly ripped loose by the same phenomenon that has carved away a portion of the ship’s interior.
Otherwise, the hall is clear and undecorated. Clutching tightly to the railing, Douglas moves forwards. The door on his left is opened rather easily. Peering inside, he sees three chairs in a triangular formation facing him, the back chair is on a slightly elevated platform. The left wall is made up of large circles, brightly painted markings surrounding the round things visible in the dim light.
Five of the circles are black holes; the other two contain slightly rounded protrusions with circular handles. Pushing off of the door frame, he floats through and sees that the inside of the door is a perfect black. Looking at the inside of the door, he sees that it should form a seamless curve with the wall when closed. The far side of the room is made up out of simple desks and some things that look like the square item that has tormented him with the repeat broadcast for so many hours.
Floating over to the desks, he sees other items. These look like long rectangles and contain dense rows of small squares. Each square has a symbol on it, something Douglas recognizes as letters after staring at them for quite some time.
Tentatively reaching out for one of the objects, he presses it. A rather satisfying clacking sound travels through his finger and into his arm. Holding himself down with his healing left hand, he presses the buttons some more.
A red glow shining through the open door behind him makes him stop pressing the thing. He had lost himself in a daze again, repeatedly satisfying some weird urge by pushing the clicking buttons. The lack of repeating broadcast made it rather easy for the skeleton to get lost in his activities and lose track of time.
He pushes off the desk and floats towards the door. Through the hole in the hallway, he sees red shining brightness, a massive and incandescent glow filling the entire opening. Frozen in shock, he is half blinded by the brilliance lighting up the metal interior. Through the relatively small rip in the ship and even with his bony complexion, he feels heat coming from the shining orb.
His eyes adjust near immediately, plunging his surroundings in darkness but allowing him to see a speckled and textured surface. A surface that is slowly, very slowly coming closer.
A ghost of panic grips his heart. He is on a collision course with the glowing red thing. The passive dread settling in his mind confirms that yes, he is indeed about to smash into the red thing.
Turning around, he continues searching the room. Unfortunately, he finds very little. The front of the room is pitch black, the sides either blank metal or partially empty holes. The black rectangles do nothing even after Douglas has pressed all the buttons he can find.
Then his eyes land on one of the two circles that contain a rounded cap instead of a black hole. Floating over he sees that the black circles are actually hollow cylinders capped by a metal plate three metres deep. The two rounded objects next to the empty tubes are painted with attention-grabbing stripes and have a handle in the middle.
Grabbing the round protrusion, Douglas pulls, smashing his skull against the wall half a second later. Holding onto the wall with his other hand, he tries again and starts pulling. Nothing happens.
He tries turning, and it immediately starts spinning, causing him to lose grip and smash against the wall again. One hand keeping himself steady and the other rotating the handle, he notices that the handle is protruding further from the wall with each twist.
Then the round handle comes loose and the semi-circular cap swings open. Bright red light blasts him in the face, blinding him some more. Now almost feeling the emotion called panic, he starts turning the other handle. He doesn’t dare look in the hole again, the smoke w
afting from his bones enough of a deterrent.
The metre-wide cap comes loose, and Douglas sees a small compartment, one side cushioned and the other containing a black rectangle. A bulbous helmet attached to a thick suit is strapped to the mattress.
‘Emergency escape pod sVital sCape 600S’
Douglas reads the text on the inside of the cap, ignoring the small pictures under it for now. He wonders briefly why this information is only shown on the inside but decides that he should think about more important things first.
‘1 - Enter sVital sCape 600S.’
‘2 - Allow sVital sCape 600S sVital nWear autoSuit to envelop you.’
‘3 - Choose an emergency crash destination on the sCape sCapeScreen’
‘Please come again!’
Douglas stares at the few lines for a long time. It takes at least ten minutes before the meaning of some of those words become apparent to Douglas, the usually quick translation of text to knowledge this time rather delayed.
Douglas casts one last glance at the red glow coming from both the door and the empty tube next to him before entering the escape pod. The interior is a little less than a metre in diameter, allowing him to move across from the black screen with ease, his skull pointing towards the opening. The round door automatically swings back into place when he lets go.
Touching a single button located beneath the rectangle, the screen springs to life.
‘Detecting situation…’
‘Massive damage to parent vehicle. Total loss of control.’
‘Suborbital course…’
‘Destructive atmospheric entry in 1 hour and 24 minutes.’
‘Scanning…’
‘Parent scanning array offline.’
‘Contacting free emergency services…’
‘Free emergency services not reached.’
‘Contacting premium emergency services…’
Histaff Page 4
