Chapter Four

Pablo

The mood was somber when they first returned to camp, to say the least. Eden almost immediately retreated into the women’s tent to be alone. The group shared a round of silent, concern-laden looks before practicalities began to shove aside the horror of their discovery. After the day they’d all had, they needed dinner, even if none of them felt particularly hungry at that moment. It was getting dark fast, and there was plenty still to do.

“I want to document the scene before dark.” Mark knelt to withdraw his camera from his carrying case. “Then get it bagged up and secure for the night.”

“Seriously? You’re going to touch that thing?” Zoe asked.

“As little as possible, trust me.”

“I’ll come with you, Mark,” Zoe said, her arms folded over her middle.

“We need plenty of firewood for tonight,” Mark sighed. “I wasn’t kidding about keeping a fire going.”

“I can handle that,” Pablo said, grateful to have an excuse not to go back over to the gruesome discovery.

“I’ll give you a hand,” Warren offered, then winced as the phrasing hit everyone wrong. “You know what I mean.”

 “You all go handle things,” Sasha said while she set about stoking the fire and boiling some water. “I’ll keep an eye on Eden.”

Together, Mark and Zoe photographed and bagged up the limb in a black trash bag. Then they sealed it with duct tape. Mark never went anywhere without duct tape. Warren and Pablo gathered more firewood, and as they did, they checked the immediate area for any other evidence. Selecting a tree a dozen yards from camp, Mark used a rope to suspend the bagged appendage up high.

“Just in case any hungry critters come looking for it tonight,” Mark said. “There are bears and mountain lions around here.”

By the time they were done and returned, Eden had emerged and was sitting next to Sasha beside the fire, sipping on a camp mug of instant hot chocolate. Mark hadn’t managed to catch any fish before everything went to shit. But as always, he’d come prepared, with Mark’s much hyped Camped-up-Ramen.

Six packs of ramen noodles went into their camp pot along with dried shitake mushrooms, dehydrated vegetables, several packets of chicken, and enough pre-boiled water to cover everything. Hanging the pot from a little tripod over the fire, it returned to a boil and simmered for several minutes until everything was heated through and rehydrated. Then Mark dumped in a little bottle of dark sauce he’d brought along and let everything come together for another few minutes before he dished up the hungry campers. 

“Shit, Mark, this is great,” Warren praised between eager sporkfuls of ramen. They sat in a rough circle around their fire pit.

“Majorly delish,” Zoe agreed.

“Just followed the recipe I found,” Mark demurred, his freckle-dusted cheeks growing bright red at the praise.

“Last time you dragged us out camping, we roasted hot dogs on sticks and burned them,” Pablo recalled with a reminiscent grin. “This is a big upgrade.”

“Oh yeah!” Eden laughed. “I almost forgot about that. It was graduation summer, out on the coast. Where was that again?”

“Stinson Beach, and that was barely camping. We drove right up to the campsite with a stove, a cooler, and store-bought firewood.” Mark shook his head in mock disgust. “Hell, Warren slept in the back of his truck!”

Eden and Pablo both groaned and laughed simultaneously at the recollection, while Warren glowered at Mark.

“What? What’s so funny?” Sasha asked.

“There were a few more of us on that trip,” Eden explained. “A bunch of kids we went to school with.”

“And?”

There was an awkward pause while Pablo, Mark, and Eden glanced at each other. Their reminiscing might have inadvertently tossed Warren and his game under the bus. While they each had their own reasons, none of them were rushing to back it up over him.

“And Warren’s squeaky shocks and a girl named Hannah kept us up all night,” Mark finished with a rueful chuckle.

“Oh, really? All night?” Sasha quirked an eyebrow at Warren, who was trying to smother a shit eating grin on his face while pointedly not looking at Sasha.

Pablo felt his guts twist and churn at the flirtatious glimmer he saw in Sasha’s eyes. His brain whirled for a way to rapidly change the topic, but he couldn’t get any traction.

“Well, for like 30 seconds at a time,” Mark amended.

“Mark, didn’t you pass out on the ground and try to snuggle with the campfire that night?” Warren asked.

“Yes, and I learned my lesson!” Mark held up his forearm and displayed the faded burn scars he still bore. “Which is more than I can say for you and Hannah!”

This earned a fresh round of laughter from the group and general ribbing of Warren with allusions to several other of his fabled exploits of the past. While he’d never turned his back entirely on Pablo and Mark, by the time they had graduated High School, Warren had been a standout member of the football team and quite popular. He certainly hadn’t had any trouble finding a date to Senior Prom, unlike Pablo, who had ended up going with Eden as friends after he’d been shot down by his crush at the time.

“Another improvement over our last camping trip…” Warren cleared his throat and held their slowly dwindling bottle of whiskey. “…We didn’t have to beg Zoe to come along, so that her boyfriend could buy us cheap beer.”

“Shit, Trevor was such a douche about it, too.” Pablo chuckled and shook his head, glad for the pivot. “Bought himself a bunch of craft IPAs and lectured us about them while never letting us touch a drop!”

“I think you mean, Trevor was a douche, period!” Mark corrected, which earned a round of agreements from most of the group. Pablo bumped knuckles with Mark’s outheld first while laughing.

“He wasn’t that bad!” Zoe leveled a withering glare at both of them.

“Not to you! Sis, remember how he flipped out whenever anyone beat him at cornhole?”

“Or Halo,” Pablo said.

“Or poker.” Mark rolled his eyes.

“Or pool,” Eden added.

“Dude brought his own stick and always sucked!” Mark cried.

“Had his own paddle for ping-pong and sucked at that too.” Warren twisted his face into an exaggerated pout and beat at his chest. “And the excuses! This table sucks! It’s too humid! I’m not wearing the right shoes!”

“Sounds like a real winner,” Sasha observed with a grin.

“Okay!” Zoe laughed and held up her hands. “Trevor was a douche!”

After eating, they huddled around the campfire and quietly chatted. No one seemed eager to rush off to their sleeping bags, especially after their grim discovery. They kept feeding wood into the fire, joking and reminiscing about nothing of particular importance while they passed around the final dregs of their cinnamon whiskey. Collectively, the Fellowship seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement that they needed to not be alone that night. They were stronger together.

Pablo couldn’t help but wonder about the owner of the arm they’d found. Had he been alone? Had he been scared? Had he suffered? How long ago had it happened? Had someone found him already? Was his family missing him yet? Was a search underway?

He knew that there wouldn’t be answers to any of his questions that night. Still, Pablo couldn’t help but ask them. While he kept the thoughts to himself, he felt pretty sure that his friends’ thoughts were aimed in a similar direction.

At some point, Warren broke out his guitar, which he’d insisted on hauling along. He strummed short rifts of songs and sang random verses. His attempt to lighten the group’s mood seemed to mostly fall on deaf ears, but it had been a half-hearted attempt at best. Trying to clear his mind, Pablo let out a sigh and let his eyes follow the plume of smoke up from their campfire and into the sky.

“Look at that,” Pablo said with a frown as he peered beyond the firelight up at the sky. “The stars are fading.”

“Yeah, the moon is going too.” Zoe pointed up to the hovering full moon. Barely visible whisps were drifting across its surface, subtly shifting its glow to a sickly green. “Looks really weird. Why is it turning green?”

Pablo had lived through enough fire seasons in California that he’d seen the moon be orange or even red, but never green. The sight filled him with a fresh sense of uneasiness bordering on dread.

“Huh.” Mark stood and moved a dozen feet away from the fire to study the night sky. “Maybe there’s a storm rolling in.”

“Shit, think it’ll rain?” Warren asked as the group came to stand in the gloom near Mark and peer at the sky.

“Wasn’t in the forecast, but who trusts weathermen?” Mark shrugged.

“But, why is it green?” Sasha asked.

“Maybe it’s smoke from a fire?” Mark sounded uncertain for once.

“Green smoke?” Sasha asked dubiously. “That’s gotta be something seriously toxic.”

“I don’t know, it’s just a guess.” Mark held up his hands to ward off further doubters. “I’ve never heard of a green cloud either.”

“Some Eagle Scout you are,” Warren jibed.

“Think it’s close?” Pablo asked with concern and a reflexive glance toward the now invisible lookout tower on the neighboring mountain peak.

“It could be hundreds of miles away,” Mark said. “All I can smell is our campfire at the moment.”

“I knew it was a mistake staying,” Eden said with a dark and forlorn tone. “We should have left.”

“This was the safest choice, Eden. I promise you,” Mark said. As he spoke, the haze continued to roll across the sky, and the moon faded to a glowing green blob in the sky. “I’m sure the clouds are nothing to worry about. We’ll check the news as soon as we’re back in cell phone range tomorrow. Let’s all get some sleep; it’s been a long day.”

After Mark’s pronouncement, it still took over an hour until they were all in their tents. The disappearance of the stars and moon had filled each of them with a deep sense of foreboding. However, in the end, exhaustion won out over their dwindling moods, and they all finally went off to sleep.

Velgrin

The Aetheric Air Core pulsed between Velgrin’s hands like a captured star. Veins of violet light flickered through the multifaceted sphere’s interior, dancing in response to his will. He sat cross-legged in the cavern chamber that once served as a mine entrance. Until only recently, it had been collapsed for many Earth decades, buried under tons of rock until his servants had dug it out. The air was still and dank, muffled by the aetheric layers that Velgrin had been channeling in order to awaken the Core.

Back on his homeworld—after the unchecked aether had twisted it into a dungeon world—the cursed Nexus had condensed the Aetheric Core as the power and control node to a particularly powerful dungeon. Still confined to his original body back then, defeating the dungeon and capturing the Core had been one of his first steps along the path of ascension. It had been one of the first times he’d been able to strike directly against the damnable Paladins of Power. While he had long since grown beyond that flesh and his world, the Core remained one of his most potent weapons in the war against the Paladins.

Lines of coded commands drifted across his field of vision in pale green script. With mental commands, he accessed the Core’s interface and began issuing instructions.

Input: Begin Aetheric Condensation

Protocol Input Accepted...

Status: Local Aetheric Density at 12.44%

Initiating compression...

Commence filtration cycle.

Velgrin exhaled slowly. The Core responded in kind, glowing brighter, sharper. Power flowed from the local aetheric channels—faint, fractured, barely usable—and poured into the device. Normally, Earth’s aetheric current was too feeble for meaningful power, but that was what the Core was for: to condense and refine the local supply.

He willed more power into the connection and let his own stored energies feed the Core and accelerate the process. Black threads of force wrapped around the Core like spider silk on a gemstone. The currents bent to his design, coiling into a dense singularity of purpose. The dim light around him shifted green, then gray, then something darker.

Behind him, deeper in the abandoned mine, the clatter and crunch of effort echoed from the rock walls. Skelter barked commands at the dig crew; a cluster of reanimated giant ants the size of local canines, their carapaces dulled and pitted with rot. The knight had once borne a different name, that of a European crusader whose bones had moldered beneath an Alpine chapel for decades. Shortly after Velgrin’s arrival on Earth, he had unearthed the corpse and laced it with Nexus-infused aetheric energy, reanimating it as a vessel of power. Now, Skelter’s teeth clacked as he drove his insectoid crew deeper into the mountain, following the faded signals of the enemy probe deep into the stone.

Status Update: Aetheric Field Distortion – 73%

Containment Field Generation – In Progress

Radius: 4.08 lahars

Structural Integrity: Stable

Feedback: Suppressing

Warning: Dimensional Stability Falling…

The meat of Velgrin’s mouth curled into a smile that was beginning to feel almost familiar. Some scrap of Harold still responded to the heat of rising triumph, as if part of the creature relished the moment too. Lately, Velgrin had noticed memories surfacing at odd times. Glimpses of trees swaying in the wind, a child's laughter, the taste of smoked meat. None of it was his, just the last vestiges of impulses firing through Harold’s neural structure. It was disgusting to Velgrin and yet oddly compelling. 

The Core pulsed once more as the barrier reached full containment. A faint vibration shivered through the cavern as the boundary settled. A nearly invisible sphere of warped space-time enclosing the lake, the peak, and the foolish locals camping nearby.

Alert: Dimensional Stability at 89.2% and falling.

Effect: Aetheric flow increasing.

“Good,” Velgrin rasped, flexing his dead fingers around the Core as it dimmed into a low, steady hum. “Let it unravel.”

With a flick of his will, the Core's interface faded. Velgrin rose, joints creaking as the meat complained, a stiffness rooted not in decay, but of a man who once stretched his aging muscles after long hikes. Harold's instincts stirred within the motion, subtle and unwanted, but undeniably present. No matter. The meat would hold a while longer.

At the edge of the cavern, four of his revenants awaited their tasking. Three former humans: two male, one female. Torn clothing, cracked lips, eyes aglow with his power. The fourth was larger and hairier. A once-majestic ursine creature, now pulsing with decay and reeking of glorious death. Its head was twisted from the last blow it had taken, but its body obeyed like a loyal beast bred for the hunt.

“Go.” Velgrin extended his hand, fingers splayed. “Try not to slaughter them all.”

The bear turned first, snorting wetly as it lumbered into the darkness. The three humans followed, weapons clutched in their skeletal hands. They shambled into the shadows, green eyes flickering like dying lanterns.

Velgrin stood in the stillness of the chamber, savoring the silence. Beneath it, Harold’s body still thrummed with a low, animal tension, as if expecting something to go wrong. Velgrin scowled, brushing aside the unease. He was in control. Always in control. The meat simply remembered fear.

Soon, the mortals would scream. The probe would awaken, and his long-denied victory would be at hand.

Delta-V

Delta-V Status Update

Alert: Aetheric Corruption Detected!

Proximity: 100 londars. Very near. Precise coordinates unknown. Passive sensor range restricted. Unknown interference. Presume enemy action. 

Corruption Energy Level: Moderate, 64.78% and increasing.

Threat Level: Imminent.

Delta-V Stasis Terminated.

Initiating Replicant Awakening

Delta-V System Check Initialized…

Hull Integrity: 53.62%

Replicant Matrix Status: 91.04%

Power Generation Systems: Suboptimal — Damage Detected

Reserve Power Levels: Critically Low — 42.35%

Sub-light Engines: Offline — Insufficient Power

FTL Engine: Offline — Damage Detected, Insufficient Power

Self-Repair Systems: Offline — Insufficient Resources

Communications: Unavailable — Unknown Interference

Weapon Systems: Suboptimal — Damage Detected

Defensive Systems: Offline — Insufficient Power

Aetheric Nexus Integration System: Online

Paladin Armory Status: Intact. Ready for Deployment

MOUNT Deployment System: Offline — Insufficient Power

Long Range Sensors: Offline — Damage Detected

Short Range Sensors: Operational — Interference Detected — Range and Detail Limited

Awaiting Commands from Onboard Replicant…