Histaff

by Andries Louws

  Douglas’ eyes blaze brightly, blue flames licking against the inside of his helmet. The flames fill the visor, blue light shining illumination upon the entire hanger. Then the light winks out, and Douglas keels over slowly, crumbling into a loose heap like a bag filled with bones.

  Chapter Fifteen – Invasive Measures

  [ Name: Douglas ]

  [ Race: Arcane skeleton ]

  [ Level: 1 (0/100) ]

  [ Class: Associate Arcanist 0/6, Craftsman 1/4, Labourer 0/4, Fighter 0/4 ]

  [ HP: 193/193 ][ HP/h: 0.09 ]

  [ MP: 150/150 ][ MP/h: 13 ]

  [ STR: 10 ]

  [ AGI: 7 ]

  [ CON: 23 ]

  [ VIT: 12 ]

  [ INT: 16 ]

  [ WIS: 15 ]

  [ Arcane Skeletal Constitution (Human) ]

  [ Darkvision ]

  [ Universal Language ]

  Douglas shoves the screen away from his vision. For the first time he can remember, a headache pounds through his skull.

  [ Skills: ]

  [ Meditation 2 lvl 10 ]

  [ Mana Control 2 lvl 10 ]

  [ Mana Sense 2 lvl 10 ]

  [ Spell Shaping 2 lvl 10 ]

  [ Mana Stone Production 2 lvl 1 ]

  [ Magical Animation 2 lvl 1 ]

  [ Machine Operation lvl 7 ]

  [ Engraving lvl 10 ]

  [ Regeneration lvl 10 ]

  [ Microgravity Manoeuvring lvl 3 ]

  [ Basic Math lvl 2 ]

  [ Blocking lvl 1 ]

  [ Carving lvl 1 ]

  [ Crafting lvl 1 ]

  [ Dodging lvl 1 ]

  [ Footwork lvl 1 ] [ Gathering lvl 1 ]

  [ Hammering lvl 1 ]

  [ Harvesting lvl 1 ]

  [ Hauling lvl 1 ]

  [ Punching lvl 1 ]

  [ Smithing lvl 1 ]

  The headache is only exacerbated by the bright blue skill overview burning into his visual centre. Somehow, he finds himself lying on the floor, the part of his vision not covered by blue seeing the inside of his helmet. Blank and featureless plastic fills his sight as Douglas tries to get a grip on the situation.

  He clacks his teeth in irritation, finding his entire perspective shifting as he does so. A moment of silence lets Douglas sense his mana, feeling his skull and the ship right next to him.

  [ Mana Sense 2 lvl 11 ]

  He slowly realizes he is only feeling his skull and the ship. The rest of his body is nowhere to be sensed. Douglas clacks his jaw a bit, and his skull rolls around inside his helmet. Some furious jaw snapping and skull bouncing later, he has turned around and is looking into the dark cavity that is his spacesuit. The scattered bones lying on white fabric combined with the dim lighting make it look like a weird postmodern graveyard.

  Douglas does some more jaw-related manoeuvring until he feels a bone get stuck inside the blue outline of his atlas vertebrae. He realizes that it’s his humerus, the flow of mana slowly moulding his arm bone into a completely different shape.

  Douglas decides that he does not feel like waiting for the lengthy process of remodelling to finish and cuts off the mana flow. Instead, he moves around some more, hoping the phantom mana outline of his first vertebrae will catch an adequately sized bone this time.

  His second left rib is the next volunteer who gets stuck at the back of his skull. Douglas tries to move around, trying to make the best of this situation. A short time moving around with a long rib bone stuck to the back of his head later, he realises that this won’t be a short-term fix.

  The hopping skull has long since spotted the first piece of his spine. The slow regrowth process he went through ingrained a map in his memories that allows him to remember every single curve, knob, and crease of bone he possesses. The rather distinct, narrow ring of bone he knows to be his atlas is lying just behind the fold of suit where his left armpit would be.

  Glaring at the so close, yet so far piece of calcium, Douglas suddenly realises that the quickest way to fix this entire issue would consist of moving his own bones back into their previous positions. It only takes the skull fifteen minutes of pondering before this solution emerges in his empty mind, so Douglas decides to try it. The descriptions of the mage and wizard classes were eye-opening to the skeleton. He’d never have thought that magic could be used for more than summoning the four elements or making bodies move until he read those lines.

  Douglas remains a single bone for the next two hours. His entire being reduced to a skull, he ponders the mysteries of mana and how to abuse the mystical energy. In the end, after many failed trials and unsuccessful schemes, Douglas decides to use brute force. He tried every trick he could think of, and they all turned out completely unsuccessful.

  Letting his mana flow from his forehead into the air just made it vanish while producing a bit of blue light. Trying to form shapes inside his skull and moving them outside turned out to be equally useless. The fact that he managed to fill two whole hours with slight variations of these two tricks is indicative that while Douglas made great strides in developing his mental capacities, he's still a rather boneheaded dumbass.

  Then Douglas calls up every single bit of power at his disposal. He consciously wills into existence each droplet of mystical energy he has stored in his forehead and - without thinking about it too much - shoves it forwards. His burning gaze remains locked on his right armhole as he sends the glob of mana towards the small bone. The slice of spine blooms into his consciousness as bright blue light floods the inside of his suit. The outline of the vertebrae is suddenly clear in his mental senses as if it's connected. The wrongness that accompanies the fact that his bones are not where they should be increases greatly. Douglas forgives the section of his spine for its gravity-related misdemeanour and tells it to get the hell back into place.

  [ New spell shape learned; Mana Hand ]

  The bone shoots towards the back of his skull with utmost speed, bouncing off the helmet’s inside and snapping against the back of his skull. Douglas lets out a large, mental sigh of relief, the faint feeling caused by his empty mana pool accompanied by a tinge of satisfaction at a task well done. Then the whispers tell him all he should have done better, and his minuscule mood fluctuation reverts back to slightly fatalistic again. This is accompanied by a new spell shape, one of extreme simplicity. Douglas does not wallow in his current mood, though, too many interesting things exist out there to stand still and reminisce about the emptiness of his skeletal frame and life.

  Instead, Douglas throws his entire being into mastering the art of reassembling his body. He brings the new spell shape - a single line of runes and a crude line drawing of a hand - to the forefront of his thoughts and gets to work. He twists bones, flips ribs, and manoeuvres vertebrae as if his life depends on the task. Each point of regenerated mana is poured into fine-tuning this newly learned application of magic. Douglas totally loses himself in the simple yet paramount task of piecing his own parts back together.

  Moments after sliding the last phalanx bone of his toes in to place, he stands up. Douglas does a quick test that consists out of moving around wildly for a bit. Satisfied that his physical capacities are returned to him, he strides off towards the last place he saw Katare. For reasons largely unknown, he feels quite possessive of the odd being. She might be a major annoyance and large hindrance to anything he does, but she compensates for that by providing valuable information. All in all, Douglas deems her a worthwhile addition to his skeletal unlife.

  The space suited skeleton barges into the workshop. The first thing that registers to the skeleton’s consciousness is the fully formed parts of his skull armour. Images of the GalaxSec brand logo imprinted on his forehead briefly flash through his feeble imagination. Moments later, cold rationality reasserts itself and decides that recognisable imagery is an unneeded and superfluous luxury. Douglas walks over to the printer and starts taking the printed parts out, stacking them on the workbench the woman is lying in front of.

  Each section of skull ar
mour is made from a dull grey material. The outside is an anthracite black metal alloy covered with a shining and perfectly reflective layer of multi bonded diamond. The insides of the plates are covered in an intricate interplay of supporting structures of a varying array of metallic tones. Douglas studies the holographic summary of the printer as he unceremoniously unloads the small printing bay. The entire machine is relatively large in comparison to the printing area, he realises. The conventions enforced by his newly gained smithing skill rebel at the odd dimensions. Then the newly learnt principles imparted by his machine operation skill - which is level seven - rebel against the smithing principles - which is still level one.

  Douglas then goes through a miniature crisis of faith, knowledge, and conscience before he realises that both perspectives have merit. Traditional crafting does indeed put emphasis on the wielder’s skill while having a lesser focus on the support provided by complex tooling. Modern crafting emphasizes advanced ways of producing products while focussing on the wielder’s ability to employ hyper-advanced technologies in the correct and optimal manner. Douglas feels truly relieved when that major problem resolves itself without major conflict.

  [ Machine Operation lvl 8 ]

  [ Crafting lvl 5 ]

  [ Hammering lvl 2 ]

  [ Harvesting lvl 2 ]

  [ Smithing lvl 5 ]

  Douglas splendidly ignores all the blue boxes annoying him with stuff he already knows as he stacks the last plates in a small pile. That done, he turns his helmet covered skull towards the woman lying on the floor.

  “Assemble armour.” His voice explodes through the small space, rattling tools and shaking containers. Bassy undertones stir up dust and Katare’s unmoving heart. Something about the synthetic voice - which honestly is still just Douglas shoving thoughts at the magical spell shape in his forehead - pretty much forces her to obey.

  So Katare moves again. She had lain there for an unknown amount of time; neither she nor the skeleton looming over her have any proper sense of time. Katare’s empty mood and thoughts are filled with the request, and she slowly starts assembling the skull’s armour. She stands up with stiff movements, grabs a section of plating, and puts it against Douglas’ helmet.

  It takes him a mere minute before he starts to undo his nWear helmet. The moment he takes the thing off, the first pieces are slid into place by steady, construction suit covered digits. His smooth, white skull is covered by an angular metal shell piece by piece. Each section slides into place, a rather ingenious puzzle-piece like design keeping everything together as the segments are assembled. Not long after the initial command, the puzzle is complete.

  Gentle fingers guide Douglas’ skeleton to the printer, telling him to put his head inside the printing bay without any uttered words. He follows her guidance, displaying more of his prevalent patience. Katare slowly taps on some buttons, and the red lights indicating that the printing bay door is open flash off. The lighting changes as the molecular sprayer start filling in the seam while hex-bonding the entire things into a nearly indestructible whole. Small tools descend towards the skull, carving out the fine web of holes surrounding the stubby horn in front of his mana core. The hollow sections of bone are filled in with new material before Douglas’ mana gets time to repair the damage. Hours tick by as the nearly invisible gaps in the armour disappear slowly and the middle section of forehead bone is surrounded by a fine maze of practically indestructible alloys.

  Five hours later, the hologram displays green text and the hum of the machine stops. Douglas removes his skull from the small printing bay, his forehead horn bumping against the opening. His entire skull is encased in angular armour, each section of naked cranium bone is covered in a super strong alloy of metals, carbon, and more carbon. Intermolecular bonds are layered thicker than should be theoretically possible; a dedicated laboratory would be needed to destroy the radiation-blocking plating. Holes punched through his forehead surround the core of his being, theoretically guaranteeing the survival of that specific section of forehead bone should all else be destroyed.

  All in all, Douglas feels quite confident in his ability to survive just about anything. This faux feeling of immortality gives the skeleton an immediate trace of self-confidence. Instead of applying this mood boost to productive means, channelling it into promoting his own wellbeing, Douglas turns to the holographic printer interface. Katare has lain down again, her previously mechanical and sulky movements halting as she sinks back into her catatonic state.

  Douglas ignores her unmoving form and starts exploring the printer’s interface some more. Instead of his previous brute force approach to design, he now employs the tips and tricks taught to him by Katare in a slow manner. He makes a few trips between the printer and scanner, paging through the imaging device’s history until he finds Katare’s scan of herself.

  Loading the detailed map of her body into the printer, he starts tinkering with the design interface. Douglas was rather insistent on giving the middle of his forehead the utmost protection when designing his own armour. His empathic ability is not quite up to the task of imagining that other sapients could have different circumstances, so he also prioritizes Katare’s forehead.

  His burgeoning consciousness does realize that Katare would rank outer appearance as a high priority. Just the episode in the beauty salon was enough to cement that in his mind, so Douglas designs an armoured forehead ornament similar to his own instead of replacing her entire face with armour. He interweaves super dense and super hard materials through her cranium, surrounding the middle bit in a protective weave.

  [ New skill generated; Industrial Design lvl 1 ]

  The fact that the emergence of this skill does not supply Douglas with tips, hints, or suggestions registers on some deep level but is otherwise ignored. The skeleton then suddenly drags the woman from the floor and unceremoniously stuffs her head inside the printing bay.

  Katare obviously is going through some complicated form of development herself, and the skeleton has at least enough common sense to mentally stay away from the creature he recognises as the other sex during these unstable periods. The knowledge he seems to lack is that he really should be leaving her physical form alone too.

  “No, stop. What are you do–”

  Her quickly rising anger is halted as multiple tools shoot down, piercing into her forehead and brain. Sections of flesh are destroyed, dark blood splatters against the walls, bone is carved, and the molecular metal mist is sprayed through sections of excavated bone. The safeties preventing the printer from working with its door open also checked for any biologic matter. Katare’s own actions - the disabling of all safeties - now allow Douglas to perform his act of involuntary body modification. Her struggling form halts and goes limp, the dampeners of her construction suit slowly letting her arms drop to the floor.

  Douglas grins the widest he ever has. His skull is safe, the single source of information apart from the otherwise unknown blue boxes is safe, and his method of escaping this place is secured. The white, rune-covered ship will surely be enough to arrive at some form of civilization. From there, who knows what will happen.

  He patiently waits for the printer to finish, staring at the slowly moving process bar. He pulls her head out of the small bay the moment it signals completion. A small, shining, grey horn juts from the middle of her forehead, the raw flesh around it glowing blue as it slowly heals around the stumpy protrusion. He drags her unmoving form along after his brief inspection, her head bouncing off the floor as he hauls her forward while holding one of her feet.

  He struggles a bit with holding the door open as just one of his bony arms lacks the strength needed to move the bulky woman. Instead of pushing the door open while walking backwards, he shoves mana into the mage hand spell shape and opens the workshop door with a spectral blue limb. He hauls her over to the ramp of his ship, spending a relatively large amount of time with the difficult task of moving her up the incline.

  [ Hauling lvl 2 ]


  His burning gaze switches between the exoskeleton suited woman and the narrow door leading into the living room. Douglas then decides that leaving her in the cargo bay is a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

  Douglas walks outside again, looking around while idly tracing the sharp lines of his new skull armour with white fingers. The fact that the weight of his head has multiplied a few times does cause some trouble now and then, his balance feeling off in an annoying manner. Weighing the pro of protecting his life versus the con of walking with care for a while, Douglas decides that the armour is very much worth it.

  He then realizes that he knows absolutely nothing about how to make the ship move. The general information supplied to him by the universal language trait combined with some of the things Katare has said has given him the basics of how starships work. He knows that someone needs to tell the thing where to go, but he has absolutely no idea of how to go about that task. The word ‘pilot’ appears in his thoughts, but he possesses only an extremely rudimentary grasp of the profession’s meaning. Unperturbed at the massive gap in his knowledge, Douglas decides to wander around until he finds what he needs.

  Douglas strides down the ramp and makes a resolute turn to the left. He nearly falls on his armoured face, still unused to his shifted centre of gravity. Not letting the small stumble stop him, he starts looking around as he walks on. The absolute state of destruction some of the vessels are in leave him doubting his own senses for a moment. He is pretty sure that none of those ships used to have large gaping holes in their sides, nor did that ship over there look as bloated and half-melted when he entered the hangar for the first time.

  The empty-headed skeleton keeps absentmindedly running his bare digits across the unfamiliar lines of his skull. He is halfway through the hangar when he realizes that he has forgotten his helmet. He breaks into a half-jog for the first time in his life. The idea of his head being knocked free and flying off, leaving him a mere skull once again does not leave his feeble imagination. The slight agitation in his heart calms down only after locking the partially transparent piece of headwear back into place.