Chapter 79: Ligaments and Tendons

Arson stood at the opening to a sewer duct that he unfortunately had to enter soon. His thoughts felt overwhelming, but dark places never allowed for his mind to work correctly. Whispered words from one of his Gestalt forms rippled through the back of his mind only solidified his apprehension.

Welcome the darkness into your heart, for I have been given form, and from your shadow emerges your end and my beginning.

“Ignore him Arson, you're fine but hey, maybe if I’m scared enough I’ll lose this bloody title and be able to move on with my life.” Reaper continued to parade Arson with his love of the eternal dark, and Arson focused on his breathing to push the interruptions aside mentally.

The more stressed he grew, the more Reaper plagued his mind. Arson couldn’t help but worry, the list of immediate issues remaining unsolved on his mental to-do list was getting long.

Troy, could be felt, but not reached. She hadn’t answered a single message sent to her since the start of her climb, but Arson remained calm as every time he thought of her a sensation was felt that pumped through his body like adrenaline and filled him with excitement.

She must be okay if she is having that much fun, right? The young woman’s climb was still ongoing and didn’t seem like it would end soon, the more complex areas of the climbing challenge taking far more time than the simple areas she’d already blown by days prior.

Still Arson worried over a growing weight he’d never felt before on his shoulders. Images of things he’d done as a child, under the assumption that he’d been being tested in a simulation of sorts. The trials nothing more than illusions designed to grind away weaknesses.

Yet one weakness remained within Arson, no matter how many times he’d faced it. Heights had been conquered mentally for Arson, but he knew that was merely because he’d learned to fly. Pure darkness, pitch black nothingness that seemed to invite the birth of evil and more on the other hand, was a fear Arson kept so far down that he knew it would one day cause him potential peril.

“Hey isn’t that the guy who almost completed the chain,” said a nearby student that walked down the side street Arson now stood on.

“No way, that dude looks like he’s about to have a panic attack. And why would that guy be about to crawl into a sewer if he could fight teachers and win? Make it make sense, girl,” said another of her friends, and Arson did his best to ignore their commentary on his actions.

Just breathe and take your time, there is no rush, you can do this.

Arson crawled into the sewer system’s opening, and the intense smell he thought he would be able to push aside mentally, almost took him off his feet.

“Embers of the maiden, why?” Arson’s question went unanswered, and he vomited there on the spot.

Xani: Where the sparks are you, dude? It sucks down here and I want to leave?

Arson: Give me a second, the smell took me out and I puked everywhere.

Xani: You have a rebreather, you idiot What’s the point of having access to tools if you forget to use them?

Arson wiped his mouth, rolled his eyes and equipped the rebreather after pulling it from his watch's interior.

Arson: Sorry, my head's not in the game, a little overwhelmed with all of this. Wondering if I should put off opening our superstore for a time. I don’t know, wish I could talk to Troy about a lot of this but…

Arson closed his eyes and started to run. His shoes unaffected by the muck and grime. A collaboration between Xani and Jasmine that Arson inspired. He felt the simple idea would sell them a lot of clothing.

The problem was that they needed to come up with a completely original design or they’d run into patent issues, but he felt once solved, the idea was going to sell them quite a lot of clothing. He opened his eyes to see his sneakers flare with runes that pushed dirt and muck away from his shoes, before he smiled and closed his eyes once more.

Xani: if your gut is telling you to, I would listen. We are doing a lot kind of fast anyway, don’t you think?

Arson increased his speed as he gained confidence running in the sewer. The trenches that ground the waste into sludge next to him gave off less and less noxious gas as Arson ran deeper into the area. A detail that his Overlay even made note of.

Arson: what do you mean? We could probably be far bigger if I pushed Almarine to recruit more from the orphans.

“Xani: not my point. Rob’s in a cooking death match, Khalif is training another bodyguard, and wants to start classes at the school, we are purging of toxins. I guess, still don’t know what the plan is here, and Troy took the sparks off up a mountainside. Can you maybe admit that the place you went has you a little unbalanced before this conversation continues…

Arson stopped running and thought over his actions since he’d been home, and his stomach stirred once more.

Arson: Always been a little off, Xani. What’s the point?

Xani: Oh, my point, I’m just trying to point things out to you just in case you forget that we are a team, and not your tools you can keep in a spacial inventory like you did with the Pocket Apartment gang.

Arson: bad example, it was only a few days for them and they ended up fine.

Xani: yeah, sure they did. That’s why your new girlfriend is racing up the side of the tallest mountain I’ve ever seen, to catch up in power to a girl so strong you keep her in your bloody pocket so that she doesn’t slice people to bits and end up jailed.

Xani: Why the bloody embers is your dot not moving on my map!!!

Arson started to run again. He felt awful that he hadn’t noticed Micro’s attraction to him, but he wouldn’t change his choice on the matter and had no intention of doing so.

Arson: Hahaha...throw that in my face like everyone else, but again, Xani, just because you don’t know the entire plan, doesn’t mean I don’t have your best intentions at heart.

Arson waited for a bite back, but none came. He continued to run deeper down the declined pathways of the sewer system, and eventually came to a massive open archway that held dim light just beyond the opening into the new space.

When Arson ran inside the area, he looked around and took in the entire space. An exceedingly large expanse was filled from edge to edge with roots, intertwined with mana stones larger than buses.

Arson watched as the dome above him changed and moved. An intricate pattern of intersecting rings could be seen formed by the mana stones above. The largest ring lined the outside of the room, and its opposing edge was currently unable to be seen from where Arson was.

Sections of the rings could be seen melting back into upside down pyramids, hanging like stalactites. The normal formation of mana stones was similar to the pattern above, only a runic formation could be seen the more of the area above him that Arson took in visibly.

The runes pattern was only ever distorted by the movements of the plates of living land above them. Arson watched mesmerized by the mana stones that melted and moved, before another building came and restored the segment of the rune that had only just left to occupy another area.

It wasn’t until he was directly underneath a segment that moved that he saw that even the mana stones once reformed into the shape similar to regular mana stones, they were still lined with runic formations that most likely allowed both the towers flight, collision-less path through the air, and the lack of sensation felt by the occupants of the moving land.

“Now this is impressive,” said Arson. He’d slowed to a jog and did his best to capture as much of the rune as he could.

Xani: I get it it's... beautiful, but hurry up! The workers are getting antsy.

Arson sped back up his run, still trying to capture the giant rune mentally. Feeling it had a connection to life, the potential for change, and mana as well.

Arson: they’ll calm down when they hear what we are building… I hope.

Arson continued to follow the now weaving trenches of sludge toward the center of the open space. The visual changes in the sludge from black to a marble white after being compressed by mana pulses made Arson gag at the thought of what the material could be used for. Not daring to touch anything held in the trenches he ran on until he finally saw Xani and dozens of BlackHole Conglomerate members standing beside even more clusters of students from Adroit.

“Took you long enough,” said Xani. The girl glared at him, and no longer wore a rebreather to Arson’s confusion. He slowly took off his own and took a surprisingly fresh breath of air.

“What’s up with this place, smelled like death up top but down here smells like a fresh forest,” commented Arson. The others around Xani conversed without interruption as Xani and Arson stepped aside.

“Have you noticed it yet?” asked Arson with a gesture toward the massive rune above them. The body of the rune stretched across the entire domed roof.

“What? How this school's sewer system looks like it cost more than our entire home growing up, and Almarine’s wealth might actually be unfathomably large, if you think about it, so that’s saying a lot,” said Xani. Arson tilted his head at her, before he laughed.

“No, and Almarine’s wealth can’t currently be touched by anyone, herself included, as long as she is the Orphan mother, every dollar is saved until she resigns. Remember that before you go and take her position.” Xani gave him a shocked look, but he simply stared at her, the silence longer than he’d expected before he got a response.

“Why would you assume me and not Jasmine?” asked Xani.

“Jasmine loves the orphanage and us, her friends, but not orphans in general. You love the orphans and hate the place they are forced to grow up, feeling that it isn’t good enough for those being raised there. Sound familiar Ms. I’ll-do-anything-to-improve-the-never-renovated-buildings-kept-on-the-land?” said Arson, aware that he wasn’t the only one of his friends trying to help out the orphanage.

“Why wouldn’t I want to follow in her footsteps?” asked Xani, a heat to her voice fierce enough to turn nearby heads.

“Because Almarine spent many lifetimes finding herself before she became a prisoner to her purpose completely. You haven’t even lived one mortal lifetime and want to do the same thing? No, Xani, and no, you're not a tool in my tool belt. You're one of my closest friends, and we have a lot of work to do if we are going to change the realm into a place where even orphans have a chance to do anything they want. Not by fluke of luck or fate or genetics or anything stupid like that, but choice and passion alone,” said Arson as he put a hand on her shoulder and smiled. The young woman rolled her eyes, and slapped his hand away.

“Yeah, yeah, and all that I noticed down here is the cool rune that keeps shifting in my eyes making it so that I can never truly see its depths. Other than that, we are standing in one of many mana based fertilizer plants that feeds the core of the planet. Did I miss anything?” Arson looked around, and then pointed.

“And what do you see over there?” Xani looked where Arson had pointed and not seeing anything but more of the same, she shrugged back at him.

“No, am I supposed to be seeing anything?” Arson in that moment wanted to give her a potion of crystalline recollection as where Arson now pointed were three very obvious holes in the rune above them. Entire towers could be seen having had fallen into the space below the moving plates above. Two larger towers were laid across a network of pipes that could barely be seen beneath the roots that grew between the mana stones above. While a third tower, larger than the other two that had fallen, had fallen straight through a section with less piping. Yet it managed to cause more damage on the way down. The sludge that could be seen as it poured black semi processed materials from the cracked and broken pipes, onto the more purified channels that flowed toward the center of the room, was still Arson’s biggest worry.

From his research, the light from the center of the room was supposed to be a brilliant white, that Arson could see, was now tainted. Arson took a sip of potion and sighed.

“We may need more people…”