B3-31 - Mother's Touch (Patreon)

Black Horizon stood in the darkness of the rainbow sky hellscape. He raised his arms to the black sky, he tried to extend his senses, pushing it to sense any kind of mana in the world. No mana existed in the black spaces between the Motherland and the ship that the heretic Bad Blood had escaped to. He could feel the mana there, a glow on the horizon that was a beacon in the maneless world.

Tesseracts, black goo, rogue AIs and system tech. The Merchant Sullivan had them all. A mountain of wealth that would raise the Tarvana even higher in the ranks of those that existed in the RSH.  If the mission succeeded.

Black Horizon turned his head, sensing a change in the air. He could feel the sudden expenditure of mana, like an intense light in the darkness is shone to his eyes. The Mother’s Blade had burned herself, igniting the last bit of mana in her body to not be captured.

Death before betrayal.

But not all things stayed dead, especially when it came to Mother’s Blades.

“Has she succeeded?” a voice asked from the darkness.

Black Horizon turned to see the High General Deathblade standing before a squad of high leveled guards. He had a short spear with a long blade attached to it at his side, armored in quality gear given to him by the Mother. Such extravagance and such trust.

“The Blade was burned,” he said.

“The Mother’s Blade never dulls,” the High General responded.

A Tarvana soldier, low leveled and small was dragged forward. The Tarvana wasn’t bound or gagged, instead two massive hands sat on their shoulder, steadying them and preventing them from fleeing. Not that they would flee.

The soldier dropped to the dirt before Black Horizon, their eyes staring up at him in eagerness and devotion.

“The Mother’s Blade never dulls,” the soldier said, their voice low.

Mana built up in Dark Horizon’s hands, glowing in the darkness of the RSH. He gripped the side of the soldier’s head and felt the skin begin to melt and shape under his hands. The soldiers gurgled and cried out softly in pain, but didn’t scream. That was good. Mana flowed and surged, the soldier twitched, spasmed, and the sounds of cracking bones, ripping skin, and flowing blood filled the silence around the Mage.

A figure lay in the gray dirt, naked and gasping for breath.

Bone Blade looked up from the ground, bits of flesh and blood of the soldier still clinging to her naked body.

“Arise, Bone Blade,” Dark Horizon said. “Mother’s Blade never dulls.”

“And my duty will be eternal,” Bone Blade responded, rolling to her knees and bowing before the Mage. “I have succeeded, the blade drew blood.”

Dark Horizon set a hand upon the woman’s head and grinned a sharp smile. “Then we wait.”

***

When she had overused her abilities and first merged with the Cage after defeating the Hiveship, Maya thought she had known absolute pain. Sure, she hadn’t been fully conscious most of the time, but of what she could remember, it was painful.

Maya groaned as her body shuddered and her muscles clenched. Pain spiked from her head to her toes and every cell seemed to be screaming in agony. What the hell had she been poisoned with?

“I don’t know what they used on you,” Tender said. There might have been concern in his voice, but the ant drone couldn’t do inflection and the voice came out in a simple monotone manner.

“I can’t open the threshold,” Maya said. Her body clenched again, as if every muscle were straining, “I can’t seem to focus… No, I can’t summon the threshold itself.”

Maya extended her hand and focused. Nothing happened.

“Well, hell,” she muttered. “I can’t use my dimensional inventory also.”

“I can use my dimensional bag,” Tender replied.

Maya leaned against a bulkhead, wincing as her body spasmed again. The pain in her head was fading, along with the pain in her body. She still felt sick, but much better than she had moments before.

“I think I’m getting better,” Maya said. She tried opening her Inventory window, but nothing came up. She opened a window with her computer and that appeared. She tried again, trying to focus on the dimensional bag she carried, but nothing happened.

A sliver of panic began to well within her. She closed her eyes and tried concentrating. The echoes of the pain in her head still reverberated in her head, but she could ignore it. She focused on her dimensional abilities, trying to feel the warp and changing of dimensional space that was all around them. She felt nothing.

“Shit,” she muttered. This was bad, this was very bad. “Are there poisons that can block Skills?”

“I believe so, although they require a high level to create.”

“A Tier 3 Flesh Mother?” Maya asked.

Tender was quiet for a moment. “It could be.”

Maya grabbed hold of the Tender ant drone and pulled her self to her feet. She wobbled a bit and steadied herself. Her right arm was covered in a purple and yellow bruise, but it wasn’t pulsing or moving as it had before. The poison had done it’s work.

She had her dimensional abilities blocked.

***

“You should rest, boss,” Tender said.

“You know the answer to that, buddy,” Maya said as she exited the Hanganathorie.

“Yes. ‘When you’re dead’,” Tender replied. “At least allow me to release the combat drones to protect you.”

“I’m just suffering from an intense lack of dimensional skills, pal. I’m not a wilting flower.”

Maya looked back at the airlock she had exited from. The twisted metal was all that remained, the charred remains of the dead Tarvana had been removed. In fact, the Tarvana seemed very efficient in repairing and getting things sorted after a major calamity. They moved with determination and focus, only occasionally greeting Maya as they passed her by.

She wasn’t immune from the slight worry that plagued her about the Tarvana’s loyalties. Sure, Bad Blood claimed all the infiltrators had been killed and everyone was on her side, but Tarvana were a weird species. She brushed aside the worry, there was much more things that needed doing. Her lack of dimensional skills was only the iceberg of the shitstorm coming their way.

Bad Blood had seen better days. The small Tarvana woman was a mass of twisted flesh and healed scars. She was on her feet and moving around, but the sight still gave Maya a twinge of emotion. If she could, she and all the wounded would be transferred to the Cage. But as it was, she still had over an hour before Yosi connected back to the RSH.

One of the Tender’s drones and a comm device that connected to Scotty were in attendance. Maya flopped down on a crate that had been pushed in the center of a small table under an industrial light. The harsh white light of the lamps cast everyone in ghoulish shadows, highlighting everyone’s injuries and exhaustion.

“I hear you are poisoned,” Bad Blood said to Maya.

“Yeah, that blade wielding asshat that blew themselves up. She got me good, some kind of poison that’s preventing my use of dimensional skills.”

“Mother’s Touch,” Bad Blood said. “She’s created a poison to counteract your greatest strength.”

“Yeah, I wonder how that bitch found that out,” Maya muttered. Bad Blood bared her teeth, but then nodded to her in apology.

“I thought we were going to work well together, but I was a naive fool. There needs to be something each party wants before they can work as equals. The Mother is too strong and she does not lack for anything.”

Maya shrugged, not wanting to debate the finer details of Bad Blood’s idiocy. The woman already knew what she had done was a mistake, rubbing her fuckups in her face wasn’t going to win the war they were involved in.

“You know a cure?” Maya asked.

Bad Blood shook her head. Maya figured she wouldn’t know, but it didn’t hurt to ask. Her only hope lay with Nan and possibly Bell’s people. If anyone knew how to counteract a poison, it was them. The previous Momma’s Bad Touch, Nan was able to heal Bad Blood from it, but something that actively blocked a Skill? That sounded more like crafting mana stuff and not system tech medicine.

“Beyond not being able to summon anything, I’m fine,” Maya remarked. “I can still kick ass and take names, but less efficiently.”

“We are outnumbered twelve to one, thankfully only fifteen turned out to be infiltrators, all Mother’s Claws. They are an elite unit of warriors, known for their dedication to the Mother.”

“You have to be pretty high leveled and with some big power for the System to create their own special name for your killers,” Maya said. “How many other Mother’s This or That are there?”

“Several,” Bad Blood replied. “The Tarvana are not a combative species, we rarely leave the Motherland as it is. So special offense named abilities are rare. Mother’s Blades, Mother’s Claws, and Mother’s Undying are the main three. The other Mother classified abilities are for organization and defense.”

“What’s the Undying?”

“Massive brutes,” Ironwatcher said. “They’re specially grown by the Mother to be battering rams and line breakers, they have a high defensive ratings and heal nearly instantly.”

“Bullet sponges,” Maya said. “They’ll need a lot of mana to do all that healing.”

“They’ve got biological storage that holds mana until its needed,” Bad Blood said. “Plus they can consume flesh and regrow their own in that manner.”

“Gross.” Maya sighed and glanced to the dark horizon, picturing a massive horde of cannibal giant wrecking balls. “I was going to use the same method I did in destroying the Hiveship on your bros out there,” she said. “I can’t do that now, not until after I see Nan or maybe even getting Bell to tug on his fam’s heartstrings for a possible cure. Without the dimensional thresholds, we’re going to need to rework the plan to fight that army.”

“Do you have a new plan?” Bad Blood asked.

“Nope.”

“Well you have one soon?” Bad Blood asked.

“Finish the defenses and get ready to retreat into the Hangy if it all goes to hell,” Maya said. “If it comes to it, we can retreat into the Cage and possibly relocate everyone somewhere else after that.”

“We are not leaving this place,” Bad Blood said. “This is our home.”

“Don’t you want blue skies and all you can eat planets?” Maya asked.

A few of the gathered Tarvana murmured to one another.

“Only the Mother can grant such a thing,” one of the gathered said. “Only she can give us the Blue Skies, once we have pleased her and died in her honor.”

“The System’s given me a pass to allow anyone SIL to head on out of the RSH when they want to. They can’t ever come back, but they can leave,” Maya said. “That was my initial plan, to just have all of you go somewhere else, but I can’t abandon the Hangy. The Cage is rooted here and if we lose that connection, the Cage can be collapsed and everything I’ve built will be destroyed.”

“Therefore we must defend this place,” Ironwatcher said. “The Mother has already cast us out of the Motherland, but if the Mistress of Time and Space says there are worlds out there that we can live on, with blue skies and with flora and fauna that can be eaten. Then we must do our best to defend this place.”

Maya nodded to Ironwatcher. Ever since she had gained the Engineering knowledge cubes, she had become more articulate and pretty smart in her own right. She was also an ardent supporter of Maya, which from what she could see, rubbed Bad Blood the wrong way.

“The lizard, Yosi, claims she can control the thresholds like you,” Bad Blood said. “Cannot she use them in the same manner as you would have or is she too weak?”

“She’s still low leveled in Dimensional Awareness and Threshold,” Maya said. “She can only open one door and it wipes her out if she does it too much, as it did for me when I first began this. She can’t open a door as wide as I can, therefore that nixes the ships we were going to use to launch missiles at the army.”

“Then we are going to be defeated,” Bad Blood stated. “Unless you have more weapons and more soldiers to defend this place. The rogue AI servant you have doesn’t have many drones to fight with. The mana purge makes it difficult to use system tech.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Maya said. “I’ll need to discuss this with the others and we’ll figure something out. For now, focus on the defenses around here. Get everyone ready to fight and hopefully we’ll have some deus ex machina on our side before its over. We also still have supplies and weapons incoming from the Cage. The Flesh Army over there doesn’t seem to be moving, they might be waiting for something. Right now should have been the moment they pushed forward, they’d get here in less than half a day.”

“Yes, they appear to be waiting for someone or something to happen,” Bad Blood agreed. “We should be wary of that. There are many high leveled mages and warriors at the Mother’s disposal.”

Maya nodded, feeling a sudden weariness hit her. She yawned and looked at the others. They all bore some wounds, cuts, burns, and other injuries that weren’t bad enough to require potion use as their own healing powers slowly patched them up. Everyone looked tired and tense, the upcoming battle and the assassin attack only heightened their worries.

“We’ll get through this,” Maya said. “We have to and we will.” She stood up, looking at the Tarvana. “I gave my word that I would protect you and defend you, I’m not going against that. I will stand by your sides and I will fight alongside you all. I do not go back on deals.”

***

“Fuck, I should just pack up all my junk and flee,” Maya muttered as she re-entered the Hangy. She glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone was near or watching. “We could just toss that black altar into one of the trucks out there and drive off into the sunset.”

“I understand you are only venting,” Tender said, “but that is not a terrible idea.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Maya sighed. “I’m the honest Merchant. I need to stand by my words or no one will stand by theirs.”

“The threshold is opening,” Tender said.

Yosi was to open the Threshold within the manufacturing room, as she would be delivering some manufactured parts and resources. Maya doubted she would be expecting to see the trashed room.

“What in the System’s name!” Yosi screeched, looking at the destruction of the Manufacturing Room. She stood at the threshold and stared into the room, her head shaking back and forth and occasionally emitting high pitches screeches and baring her teeth.

“Yeah, things went down hill real fast when you left,” Maya said, dusting off her ship suit. It had been clean and new, but the trek through the ship had left it marked with char and other things Maya didn’t want to know. Tender strode into the Cage beside her, nodding his head to Roci who stood by the Threshold without saying anything.

“I’m not cleaning that up,” Roci said and turned away.

“No hugs? No ‘how are you’?” Maya asked the retreating girl. “Rude.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll give you the deets as we walk. I need to see Nan about some personal dimensional issues,” Maya said. “Also, how are you Dimensional Threshold and Awareness doing?”

“I’m surprised you’re not dead?”

“I don’t have time to die,” Maya said.

Marcus groaned at the bad joke. “You could have died!”

“Been there, done that, it’s no big deal.”

“She has nearly died a fair amount of times in the last year,” Tender said. “I’m surprised she’s lasted this long with all the risks she’s taken.”

Marcus folded his arms and stared at her.

“We’ve got bigger issues to discuss. Go get the Privy Council rounded up. We got war problems and my lack of Dimensional Skill is only one part of that.” Maya winced as Nan injected her with something green and glowing.

“This Mother’s Touch you’ve been poisoned with is beyond my capabilities,” Nan stated. “I cannot remedy it.”

“Great,” Maya sighed. “Where’s Bell?”

“Teaching your recruits,” Marcus said. “He’s been showing them, along with some of Asoltolia’s troops, on how to fight with crafted and system tech weapons.”

“Totally forgot about them,” Maya said, rising to her feet. “Gather him up too, maybe even Asoltolia, if she’s still here.”

“Who are you giving orders to?” Marcus asked. “I don’t work for you and you ain’t my boss.”

“I’m on it, boss,” Tender said and left.

“You should be more like him,” Maya said.

“Like a robot?”

“I resemble that comment,” Nan said.

“So do I,’ Roci said as she entered a side door.

Marcus reddened. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Your brother’s a jerk,” Roci said.

“I know. I know. It’s a wonder he’s got a girlfriend with the way he shoves his giant ass foot in his mouth.”