Bonded Summoner

Book 3. Chapter 18: Reptilian Recruitment

Jake looked on in surprise as a majority of the reptile beastkin lined up to initiate into the Framework. He had decided against muddying the waters with bringing up his Guild, for the time being. Apparently, their so-called Goddess along with their Chief made it so that they were ready and willing to join the Framework and fight. Jake was extremely surprised with the mastermind of the presentation: Blood.

She had heard the people talking about their gods, and saw dragons on the mural, pointing them out to Fhesiah. Not only that, but she seemed to believe that their new goddess nudged her forward to go down this path. Of course, they remembered the play that they had just seen about the first tyrant, but it was unclear how these people would react. It had been a thousand years since then, and Jake was a little confused at how they could be living here in secret for so long.

From there, the dragon-touched demoness was more than willing to put on a show where everyone would end up worshiping her. Her plan was simply to move the object of their worship over to the real goddesses, but Jake doubted she would put much effort if they persisted.

Both Ira and Fhesiah had spotted the chameleon beastkin on his approach to the rift, and Jake was very surprised that his [Arcane Eye] was not able to spot him easily enough, until he knew he was already there. Much like the murky void of a soul, the only reason he could see Davonius at all was because it created a similar void of where something should be. With him not moving, this was a challenge for Jake to spot. Fhesiah and Ira both knew he posed no challenge, the man not possessing any weapons other than a small bone knife for harvesting plants, simply wanting to see what he did.

Jake was surprised at his obvious heavy beast blood, him looking like an anthropomorphic chameleon man, with monocular large eyes at each side of his head, and a lizard-like snout. He even had the same odd hands chameleons had, and his body was hunched over a little, with a longer tail than most reptile beastkin had.

From there, Fhesiah watched where he went, and they closed the Rift before heading over. Jake was quite surprised that there were so many, and that they were on average much stronger than the beastkin. There were even three Auril Heroes in the large underground tribe. Jake realized this might be a bit more than he could afford to sponsor. He hoped that a large portion of the cost of initiating Rookard was due to his old age despite Jake purchasing the fixtures in the guild, and not just because he was level 11: because this Chief Vesuvius was much stronger than Rookard.

Not only that, but their awakened ratio appeared to be quite high. Jake wondered the reasons for this, and Fhesiah was already ‘on it’ looking for reasons. This felt like something significant for a number of reasons. Jake’s party appeared to be uniquely suited to meet with these reptile beastkin and put them on a path for joining with their beastkin brethren in the fight. The one woman appeared to be almost antagonistic of beastkin, assured that there was only one result: that they would be enemies with beastkin.

The Chief tried to integrate himself, and he saw the look of confusion on his face. Jake said, “It has a cost due to your strength. Let me see.”

[Integration cost: 15,000 T1 Credits]

Jake sighed in relief and paid the price. He still had some funds thanks to the previous rifts and hoped he had enough for the others, but it was clear the large cost for Rookard was in fact due to his age and needing his Auril Heart restored. Vesuvius was level 15, and Jake thought he was within his prime, though he couldn’t really be sure due to his lizard features. Jake had learned that each stage of awakening would increase their lifespan, which was one of the several reasons awakened females would almost never partner with an unawakened male.

Jake did his best to give the people a rundown for how [The Framework] worked, while Fhesiah chased down the chameleon beastkin and grilled him on what their people ate and did. He appeared to almost fall over himself to do so, believing her to be a Goddess. There were various reptile species here, from snakes to lizards, turtles, and he even saw some frogs, and some that he thought might be based on dinosaurs. Many even had the less human-like features of those with high beast blood in them, and Jake wondered about the reason.

Jake intercepted the other two Auril Heroes and helped them integrate, the three eating heavily into his funds. They had a major fight coming up, and they were happy that they could source many warriors nearby.

Jake almost felt bad for the deception, but at the same time, Fhesiah had the draconic credentials. If they could direct the people’s fervor to accomplishing something good, wasn’t it fine? Jake did worry about the other mural, which showed them killing beastkin instead, and the sky blanketed in dragons.

Did this mean Tartarus would be sending them, and eventually these reptile beastkin would turn on them? Jake didn’t know, but he did know that such was impossible for those that had already joined [The Framework], so Jake should at least be eliminating part of that foretelling, as they called it.

Jake knew that he would want to be placing shrines of Hestia and Echidna soon. He was mostly waiting on taking over this Alliance HQ, and things stabilized a bit. He wondered how they could move the object of their worship over to Hestia or Echidna. Perhaps, Echidna had some draconic features and that would be enough?

Jake walked over to where they had many armaments gathered, and was surprised to find that many were made of bone. On the topside, many of the armaments were made of wood from trees that stored a lot of Auril, but here, it looked like they used large bones from the dinosaurs, or Auril Beasts as they called them.

There were even javelins, which Jake was surprised to find. Jake had heard that before a month ago, they almost didn’t exist, the beastkin people not even making them. There were bows and arrows here as well, made of bones and animal sinews. He realized that they would not have much access to wood while staying as hidden as they were.

Jake watched Ophelia approach the man who appeared to have challenged Fhesiah’s flame, only to kneel during her speech. It turned out that his name was Jarrix. She talked to him for a moment, and then cast what Jake realized was [Renewal], and the man covered himself with Auril once more. Jake had seen that there were some blackish taint before, but it looked like their [Advanced Purifying Flame] was able to remove some or all of it, in his case.

Ophelia then approached the woman, who was closer to an anthropomorphic cobra, with her face like that of a snake and a hood to match, on the back of her head. She struck out with a knife filled with a blackish green auril, which Ophelia easily blocked with her armored fist, filled with holy mana. It was then that the Chief leaped into action, getting between the two.

“Vexana! Don’t you see, things have changed? Our people have a clear path to rejoin the beastkin up above, why do you still want more? You did your best to convince me that our place was up above, and I did what my ancestors required of me in order to keep our people safe. But now is our time! It is just as it was foretold, the golden dragon is before us.”

“No! The beastkin killed all our people, we must have our revenge! For too long, we’ve suffered below, only for us to help them? They killed our gods and forced us into hiding, now is the time for us to reclaim what should have been ours in the first place!”

Vesuvius shook his head. “It was never to be ours alone, nor should it have been. You are showing the hatred and greed of our ancestors. We shouldn’t see ourselves as other people from the beastkin in the first place. It was only due to the love of our gods that caused us to hide and separate ourselves. In the end, we are beastkin too. Please, continue, young miss. My daughter is tainted, can you help her? I’m afraid if she continues feeding her negative emotions, there won’t be any going back.”

Ophelia nodded, and just as she was about to cast her spell, the woman filled herself with her auril and tried to flee. Vesuvius roared and filled himself with his, and Jake felt that the auril in the entire room stirred. He leaped after her, succeeding in grabbing her. She screamed, but held as she was, Ophelia cast [Renewal] on her.

The taint was partially swept away, bringing her to much closer levels to what the man had previously started with. Ophelia continued, but no more would be removed. Their purifying flame could remove certain taint, perhaps those that seeped in from others or gathered over time, or from this supposed curse. But there was a fundamental link to their mind and soul, and to purify that would erase part of their being, Jake guessed. She would have to fix herself.

Vexana shuddered, then frowned. “I…what happened? Why…why was I so angry?”

“Daughter, you… You wanted our people to be happy, to not have to hide. When you were younger, you saw our people’s struggle, and wanted better for them. Over time, that twisted into something terrible. The beastkin didn’t do this to us: we did it to ourselves.

We deserved what happened to us. We were the aggressors, after all. Our people will make amends, finding absolution through retribution and vengeance against the outsiders. These outsiders have killed many beastkin, perhaps more than our gods’ greed. We will help take back that city, and we won’t just do it for ourselves: but all beastkin.”

Vexana looked thoughtful, but confused. Vesuvius spoke once more, “I know it will take some time, but just come with me, daughter. We will fight, and you can take out your anger and pain against those that deserve it. Let’s go.”

She took his hand, and they went over to the prism.

“Well, would you look at that. Looks like we will have a lot of warriors.”

Jake looked over to Fhesiah, who was now floating with a chameleon beastkin absolutely strapped down, with goods following her as she floated lazily through the air. Pots and pans were dangling from ropes with bags and boxes, as he furiously tried to carry far too much.

Jake looked over curiously, “What’s all this?”

“Well, I learned some interesting stuff and realized it would take some time to get all the information from the source. So I took on a worshi–apprentice. This is all his stuff. We’ll take him to Kenwodi with us after we clear rifts for the day. Right Dave?”

Jake saw Dave’s monocular eyes looking at the ground, as if he couldn’t even gaze upon Fhesiah.

“Yes, Goddess. It’s–It’s Davonius… I’m the shaman for the people of–”

“Right, Dave the shaman. Anyway, don’t you think we should get moving, husband? While I would like to stick around and learn more, more Rifts could spawn, and don’t you think the implications of this warrants letting Tanda know?”

Ophelia nodded. “I think this must be how they spawned the rift up north by Tanda, and this is the revelation her clan-mother talked about. There might have been a rift underground! There must be betrayers near Harmony Peaks.”

Jake was shocked. The implications of this were massive. He tried to formulate a plan in his mind, but he knew that Tanda was likely in great danger. An enemy as powerful or more than the Necromancer and Bone Dragon was likely on their way, if that underground rift had been building up for weeks.

He decided that he would head there, sooner, rather than later. Much of the territory was Alliance owned, especially with Tanda having cleared a majority of it on their way up. That meant…

Ophelia chimed in, “Prince carry! But what should we have them do in the meantime?”

Jake wasn’t sure, but he would try to figure it out talking to Vesuvius. “Alright, I’ll talk with the Chief. And Bloodberri is… Of course.”

Jake spotted Bloodberri once again attempting to play with children. Even they were getting integrated, and she had morphed her armor to have the blades hidden and the armor becoming soft. Jake realized that they were playing a strange version of cops and robbers, but the more than a dozen children were the robbers, and Bloodberri was the only cop.

The kids tried to sneak around and grab the ‘loot’, which appeared to be some kind of mushrooms. Jake saw when Bloodberri was focused on others, the kids would sneak out of their safe areas, trying to grab them. But her snake tail would grab one of them without her even looking, surprising them. The kids laughed as they played against the impossible foe, her wrapping them up in her tail and taking them to ‘prison.’

Jake just smiled at her antics. She really loved playing with kids, making friends in just a few minutes. She was all smiles, and some kids merely hung off of her as she moved around, in lieu of even playing the game.josei

Jake spoke with the Chief, and learned that the cavern system underground was quite extensive, and they knew of other tribes in the distance. He saw when looking at the menu, that, to some extent, heading towards some of them might be in the right direction towards Life’s Haven.

“You don’t need the goddess to be present to recruit the other villages?”

Vesuvius shook his head. “We have all witnessed the goddess. We know it in our hearts, and I should have good luck in convincing them. If they’re not convinced…” Vesuvius smiled viciously. Jake sort of understood where he was going with that, and did his best to convince him to do his best to wait before doing anything permanent.

They could just have a visit from the goddess herself if they waited, he supposed. The man nodded at that; it seemed Jake didn’t have to worry about him slaying any opposition, just dueling them. Jake gave Vesuvius a node in case they did find another location people wanted to stay at.

Jake also saw that Rookard was getting close, perhaps, he’d have the two groups meet up. Overall, Jake was quite happy with how he had turned things around in this region. On the conquest map, there were in fact other places where rifts had been opened, other than the main landfall in the area. Some areas were doing poorly, while others appeared to be hanging on. The region Jake was in was one of the most populous, the region temperate and with the largest congregations of plateaus where large numbers could gather.

The beastkin in their wide variety of beast parentage, seemed to enjoy the weather in what would be similar to the southern Midwest of North America. Harmony Peaks was located more towards the North Midwest, where the life force was high but the seasons varied. The beastkin often avoided the shores of the ocean, as that was often where the Naga and other species of creatures might live. The oceans were a difficult challenge, and beastkin had little desire to enter them.

Because of that, it was like Jake was winning the war in a single state or province, the most populous one. But the war was happening all over the country, and beastkin were dying in droves. Thanks to Tanda’s efforts, what was the entire Midwest was now covered in nodes, and people getting the message to rally, to defeat this common foe.

But the east and west coast, and far south and far north, were still not covered, giving Tartarus places to invade nearly unchallenged. There might be some auril heroes still about, but it wouldn’t be long until they too died, getting taken out by Tartarus’ machinations. Because of that, Tanda’s people remained important for the war.

[Tartarus] had clearly gambled that it could cut off Jake from being able to arrive at the [Alliance HQ]. From Jake’s understanding, his Refuge could travel to a world without one, but it would have taken much longer. It was like a beacon for a teleporter, and his ‘ship’ would have had to travel at much lower speeds to reach it, perhaps taking weeks more. By the time he arrived, the enemy’s conquest would have been complete.

Now that Jake had arrived, it was only a matter of time before it changed the game, and Jake felt that Tanda’s defense was only just the beginning of that. Jake quickly sent Tanda and various guild members that should be in that region, and even those outside of the guild, letting them know of this hidden threat. That reptile beastkin are still alive, and only hiding. That they may have betrayers in their midsts, and that they should make an effort to discover their long-lost brethren, in hopes of turning them to Team Alliance, or discovering if they are on Tartarus’ side.

Jake sent Bloodberri, Fhesiah, and Dave the shaman home through their Refuge, temporarily adding Dave to his list of those that could enter. Jake was already North of Kenwodi, closer to Harmony Peaks where he was, after he left the cave.

It would be a long flight, resembling that of flying a helicopter across North America. Jake just hoped that if he was needed, he made it in time.