Divinity Rescue Corps

So I may have used Psyspeech a few more times than intended after that. I sent several more messages to my mom, telling them about the aspect infection, about the chakras being converted from one aspect to another, and about my plans to try splicing herbs and flowers. Then, I sent her another message explaining that there was a creature here in the swamp with paralyzing toxin powers, and that I was going to try to grab some of that to use as an anesthetic for the fighting aspect cures.

This was stupid, in retrospect. Of course I had no idea if the tentacle creature in the swamp was sapient or not. I hadn’t even considered it. The plan was to give myself Healer’s Resistance, possibly get further Abjuration magic from the Wizards, not get paralyzed by the creature, and milk some of the venom out… somehow.

In none of my plans did that require the use of Psyspeech.

First order of business though was to check on the splices. I chuckled at the thought of Jacoby being weirded out as I headed to the Verdant Rejuvenation garden. Although we were hours away from the full 24 necessary to have mature plants to harvest, I still got the Identify working.

I didn’t have to walk anywhere to check out the bamboo.

It had been spliced with the mana rich plants, and had come out looking just like bamboo, but more purple. I had several stalks of more lavender color from being spliced with henge grass, several stalks from the purple morpheus that shone with a deep violet hue, and the passionflower cross gave the stalks odd stripes that reminded me of coral snakes. Bamboo was such an unmistakable plant normally that seeing it like this was especially bizarre. It had thick bands of purple interspersed with thinner rings of white and yellow. The leaves on all three variants matched the stalks, though the final leaves were thinner, spiky like passionflower petals, and alternated stripes of purple and white. The center of each leaf was a vibrant yellow.

All these had their own name as well: lavender bamboo for the henge grass mix, deep violet bamboo for the morpheus splice, and passion bamboo.

Already they were some ten or twelve feet high and a good two inches thick, with a good half dozen stalks each. They’d grow at least twice that height by late afternoon. Jacoby’s people were almost as entranced and impressed by this as Vellenia. Jacoby herself might be staying away, but Vellenia held to the stalks and spun herself around by one hand like a little girl, giggling the whole time.

“This is wonderful!” she was saying.

It was certainly something. I was astonished to consider the implications. I was just making new species of plants willy nilly. No effort required. Just cut one plant, cut another plant, put them in the soil and add some water. Magic would do the rest.

My thoughts drifted to the administrator, the hatchet faced woman named Jocinda who so casually threw out stupid and funny names for things, who was probably a Druid, and possibly the only Druid on the entire planet. If I could create new species of plants at such a low level, surely she had vast powers to remake the whole world.

On one hand, I did have to plant and tend them. And I could mix two plants together at the same time, but not more.

On the other hand, she could stop time all together, and project an image of herself across potentially hundreds or thousands of miles. Jacoby’s Wizard had had trouble teleporting objects twenty feet.

It certainly made me reconsider what I might end up doing if and when I cured my mother’s cancer, and broke into levels higher than even 50. I was slated to go through another class evolution then, or… if not that, then some other paradigm shift.

I shook the thoughts away. Hoping was great, but there was actual work to be done in the here and now. I was part of the reason that Blake had changed into a Nakamamon, and while I wasn’t to blame for him becoming a fighting aspect, part of the blame rested on my shoulders.

After tending to these bamboo splices, I went to see how the lotus flowers had done. I didn’t think these splices could be any weirder than the bamboo.

Boy was I wrong.

I’d spliced henge grass, purple morpheus and blue passionflower with bamboo, lotus and halo sage, and that gave me 9 possible plants. Hopefully I could use one of these to gently massage an aspect back along the mana channels and out through the crown of the head. The three bamboo types were good, hilarious but good, but I wasn’t certain they were the right tool for the job.

The lotus splices were, if anything, more insane than the bamboo. See, the lotus is a water plant. Like the lily, it grows a circular leaf. Unlike the lily, the lotus leaf is both huge and also extends out of the water like an umbrella. The flower is among the largest of all water plants. They can measure in at a foot across, as big as a dinner plate. Some of these look like they glow from within, with white at the bottom fading up to a purple or magenta tip, and the center of the flower is a circular yellow stamen.

Flowers are just big flashy sex organs and I sometimes struggled to move past that.

The first one was the henge grass variant. It was the least odd, but the large green leaf had thin purple stripes radiating out from the center. Instead of the usual magenta tips, this new lotus had darker purple tips of the petals. Poppy came flitting over and rested on the one I was inspecting, waving at me and probably saying something truly wicked.

Both the other variants were something to behold.

The passionflower had taken over as dominant here, bringing the spiky target-shaped flower to an absurd size. It still had the circular stamen, instead of the passionflower’s bizarre stick-shaped organ, and the spiky petals curled up like a lotus’s petals. It had lost some of the purple, and instead had alternating rings of magenta, purple, and white.

The purple morpheus had also taken over as dominant. The size of the bloom was three times the size of the usually small flower, and it carried on blooming only a single flower instead of the lotus’s usual two or more. Instead of a gigantic circular leaf, the halo morpheus now had small circular leaves. It remained a deep violet color, with a hint of the white at the base of the petals, but radiated a huge amount of mana like the morpheus had.

All three of these would be useless. The three different bamboo splices also. The divine energy coming off them was still higher than I needed. Any of them could probably work for a mana potion, or an even tougher and stronger rejuvenation potion, but I’d be wary about putting this much divine energy into a potion like this. I didn’t want my patients exploding into holy fire or being consumed as an inexplicable choir sang out.

“Halo sage, you’re my best hope,” I breathed. If none of these worked it would be back to the drawing board.

Halo sage had a much lighter divine aura, and you really had a bundle a lot of it in order to start influencing the gods. With the Nakamamon’s chakras only being a tiny, tiny fraction of that, my hope was that the divinity inside of halo sage might be diluted. I could use a tiny droplet of distilled halo sage, but that might still be too much.

Halo sage with henge grass was the weakest of the three, and essentially had created a taller, less lavender colored grass with tiny white flowers. They were still in the tall conical shape, but only about an inch of flowering rather than four or five inches out of normal sage.

The morpheus and the passionflower were both failures straight out of the gate too, merely by looking and extending my Affinity out to get a sense of their power levels. The former was a huge slew of conical lavender colored flowers, and the latter looked identical to the original passionflower, except the white bits flared with divine energy, and the stamen was white instead of yellow. It too had a reservoir of divinity that was too much for our needs.

“This is so amazing, bond mate!” Vellenia was chirping. “I love all these new creations!”

I pursed my lips. “On earth we have a problem of invasive species, where a new creature or plant is introduced and rapidly gets out of control because there aren’t any checks on their growth and reproduction. These are nice and all, but I don’t know if we can allow them to continue growing.” I cocked my thumb. “This henge grass and halo sage might do. We’ll have to get it turned into a treatment to be sure.”

The last thing I wanted to do was break this poor, innocent Vulpetunia by fracking overdose. With that in mind, and with a few hours until all these plants fully matured, I went to the second order of business: our swamp monster.

“Okay!” I announced. “I know I’m not the leader of this expedition, but I do know that this poison Nakamamon will produce a venom that allows for anesthesia, and that’s something I’d like to have.”

There were mutters of annoyance and shock amongst her people.

“Can we, uh… not?” one asked.

“There are tons of poison aspects around here,” one of the Wizards added.

“Great,” I said. “Then I’ll be asking your expedition leader to send out several parties to capture and milk some of them to see what we can do about a paralytic or anesthetic.”

I knew from watching a fair amount of nature documentaries and videos online that poisons, venoms and toxins came in a pretty wide variety. Box jellyfish killed you differently than a Komodo dragon, and neither of those were the same as any number of hemotoxins produced by various snakes. All of those were different than a brown recluse bite. We had a paralytic venom right here, right now, and I wasn’t going to let the tentacles scare me away from getting at it.

Jacoby appeared and began issuing commands, though I noted she didn’t make eye contact with me.

“We’re taking that thing in, and we’re going to… milk it… for venom. That’s what’s happening. If any of you don’t like it, you get to go out into the swamp and find other poison aspects. Use identify, catalogue them, and if any of them have paralytic toxins you’ll make the judgement call on capture. If you’re out, muster at the cook fire.”

Some of them muttered and shuffled their feet, and a fair few of the Wizards immediately went to the cook fire with their heads down.

“Oh, you’ll also be on an increased chore schedule. Volunteers for, uh, Fletcher’s task, you’ll get decreased chores.”

That perked up a handful of Guardians. I knew they hated chores almost as much as they hated guard duty. These were the things they wanted to get away from when they left HQ originally.

Wayne stepped up too. He was a Wizard, thin and wiry but with a genuine smile. He’d been with us at the town, overseeing Blake and acting as liaison between us and Jacoby’s team when it had been necessary during the Glumpdumpkin saga.

“Thanks for coming,” I said.

“I’ll put up a high muckity muck ward,” he said.

I just stared. He stared back, obviously amused by whatever joke he’d just told.

“A… what?”

“You can either have the muckity muck circle of protection, or the muckity muck ward. Either way it’ll boost your resistance and reduce damage taken.”

He was talking about an Abjuration spell. I had that, technically speaking. I’d gained that when I received Transmutation as a magic school, but I hadn’t gotten any practice with anything but Transmutation thus far.

“What kind of tier is the spell?” I asked. Muckity muck was probably a name from Jocinda, and probably would’ve been better on a spell to ward off mud.

“Ward is tier 3, and the circle of protection is tier 4. Both are a lot easier if I have the proper components to channel my mana through.

I nodded, looking at the Verdant Rejuvenation garden. My healing arts were so heavily reliant on that kind of thing… it made complete sense. Watching Trent casually throw stone around was far odder and more difficult.

“I’ll take the ward then. You’ll anchor it to me rather than a protected space?”

He nodded. “It’ll be far less protection, since I can work up a serious ritual and infuse it with a lot more mana. I can only infuse you with so much mana.”

That made sense. Still, I wanted to have a chance at getting the creature to damage me. That way I could use Healer’s Resistance to build up some permanent resistance to poison aspects. None of the Guardians liked this, but none of them hung out with Healers on the regular. They’d also never seen purple bamboo or striped bamboo either, so nyah.

Wayne set to work doing up the ward, and another Wizard got a circle of protection going at the same time. The Guardians all got suited up in actual armor, and they waited by my side to produce their magic shields when the time came.

The Injectacle was one creature unknown to everyone here. The Nakamadex article only had a picture of roiling swamp water with tentacles flailing around. It wasn’t detailed or precise in the slightest. Those tentacles could’ve been attached to a gigantic, bulbous squid thing, or a cutesy pig-looking Nakamamon. The fact that no one knew was another motivating factor in me getting a better look.

Vellenia was the last piece of the puzzle. The bright-eyed Marshin with her pure white skin, her minty-colored hair and her pinkish ears stood nervously while I explained her hopefully unneeded role.

“I don’t want you to use any water skills unless it’s an emergency. I’d like to Dazzle it first before we go on the offensive.”

She fidgeted and shifted her weight back and forth in concern, which caused my heart to swell with affection.

“Hey,” I said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t,” I said, “but I’ve been fine before. I’ll be fine this time. I have Guardians and magical wards, and I have you.”

She whined. “Fletcher, it is a paralyzing attack.”

I turned to the Guardians. “You two are not to attack under any circumstance. Only pull me out if things go sideways. They won’t.”

They shared a look before turning back to me.

“And don’t go secretly confiding in your fellow Guardian either. I’ll send for my own people and use them instead.”

“With respect, Healer,” the first Guardian said, “I don’t think you know what you’re up against, and we handle security concerns. That’s our job.”

This was what I’d been hoping for. It wasn’t an intimidation check, but persuasion.

Likability check:You do not have the associated skill for this check. Your Likability is at level 7. Stalwart has given you the Persuasion skill at rank 7 for this check. This check is made opposed.  Would you like to spend 3 Tokens to lower your target’s Persuasion and Likability by 1 for the purposes of this check? You may not spend a Token to retry this check.

Total Tokens: 7 Likability and 5 Free Tokens.

I dumped 6 Tokens into this, to lower my opponent’s attribute by 2 levels. One effect of my increased level was a higher percentage of my levels generating a success, from about 33% to just under 50%. With my 14 total levels, I’d gotten a nice 6 successes, higher than this Guardian, and much higher than my former self. I couldn’t say what they got, but it was under 6, that was for sure.

Success! You have succeeded in resisting the Persuasion check!

I convinced them I didn’t have to know what I was dealing with. I had the newest level of Healer’s Resistance, which I activated for 5 whole Durability Tokens. Five!

Healer’s Resistance IV

(Special Ability, Uncommon, active)

IV- Spend 5 Durability Tokens to make yourself and all allies within 50 feet immune to a damage source for 10 minutes. Does not cover divine damage inflicted by gods.

I grinned at the explosion of soft, blue green magic that washed over all of us.

“You should’ve led with that,” Jacoby said.

“You coming in with me?” I asked lightly.

She peered into the filthy, stagnant water, then back at me. Finally, after the mental calculation, she glared at me. Drawing close, she said, “Nice try you perv. I’m not giving my team a wet t-shirt show.”

I shrugged and grinned. “Worth a try though, right?”

Then I stopped into the water.

It was warmer than I expected. Nice, too. I was pleased not to be sucked into some kind of mud version of quicksand, or a gigantic maw beneath my feet or something. Instead I felt the unnerving tickling sensation of lots of water plants touching my shoes, and the immediate gross sensation of specks of dirt getting in between my toes. This was not the gorgeous beach where I’d just been with Regina and Vellenia the other day.

I missed Regina something fierce. I missed Tweedle Dee barreling into me when I was on the ground and licking my face, or rolling onto his back to accept belly scratches. Both of them were just the best.

More than that, I missed Chrysta’s unflappable calm and insistence that I didn’t need to sate her sexual urges. I missed Larelle’s stolid good humor. I missed the fat, lazy Magmamander that probably hadn’t walked under its own power more than ten times. I also missed Shakindria’s insistence that we have sex in every psychic location available, and every real location also.

And boy did I miss Tara, Ivy and Isabelle, and Cinzy.

“Let’s move this along,” I said, and walked into the water.

After a certain point, my midsection, being in the water stopped being about discomfort. I luxuriated in the feeling, even if I didn’t like the thought of so many ticklish plants brushing up against me. Something about Vellenia’s water aspect gave me comfort and a feeling of rightness. This was natural and correct.

This is Christopher turning to face a mass of sweeping tentacles some fifteen or twenty feet across.