Chapter 486: Mason and the bear

[You have completed Challenge Zone: The Maker’s Great Tree Laboratory. Experience awarded.]

[Title gained: Keeper of Maker Secrets. No identifiable benefit.]

[You have gained enough experience to reach level 23. Increase to all statistics.]

Mason grinned and held the orb in his hand, feeling something like electricity shoot up his arm. It tingled like a battery on the tongue on whatever skin it touched, a surprising warmth flooding his palm. What the hell

was

this thing?

Obviously he wasn’t able to identify it. Not that he was shocked. He lifted the orb and inspected, sensing obvious power radiating all around him. It

smelled

good, too, like the first spring rain. That was a good sign, because most of the corrupt or at least arcane magic radiating from the cave smelled terrible.

So, fine, he needed help figuring out what the orb did. Who exactly did he show it to? Night Eyes might have a thing or two to say, but Mason wasn’t sure he should show it to him. It was in his people’s ‘ancestral home’, after all, even if that belief was quickly becoming unlikely.

Better to keep it hidden from the centaurs in general, he decided, or he might be forced to kill a lot of them if they tried to take it. But it had the awkward problem of preventing him from showing it to the druid above, unless he could somehow get the centaur shaman out of the room…

And a part of him wasn’t sure he should trust the

druid

, either. Sure, these ancient druids were some kind of spiritual ancestors to his class, but he didn’t

know

them—didn’t know what they wanted, or what they’d done. They didn’t seem to be doing exactly great—in fact it seemed like they were all being punished, somehow, whether by roboGod unconsciously, if not exactly by the game world.

So no. Not the centaur, not the druid, and maybe not anyone else except those he trusted most. He’d show it to his own people first. They were the ones whose fate were bound to his, the people he trusted with his life. Whether or not Blake could be trusted was a question he shut down the moment it arrived.

And what the hell were those visions he’d seen in the tree? More and more Mason was growing aware of a kind of ‘meta story’ of the Great Game. Like this whole fictional world was a way for some other being to communicate something it didn’t know how to articulate.

So what was roboGod trying to tell them?

A synthetic being calling something ‘The Makers’ seemed obvious enough. Something must have made

it

. And it was getting more and more obvious these ‘Makers’ weren’t the villains of the piece, but beings more like humans who could do good or evil. Had they made some kind of terrible mistake? Were they destroyed by some foreign enemy?

It was interesting to see the ‘Maker’ talk to that druid—something about gods and not believing in them. Mason thought about his natural magic, the ‘godpaths’, the old languages. Were these Makers trying to replace gods? Trying to stop them? To destroy them?

Mason realized he was trying to do the same. To ‘destroy’ roboGod. He felt suddenly…skewered. Called out. Like this thing had made its worldbuilding knowing how life would react. So what? What was this thing trying to say? That to end ‘the gods’, or maybe to end roboGod, was to destroy everything? Seemed pretty convenient.

On the other hand, it had called these things ‘Makers’ not ‘Destroyers’. Mason sighed and stared at the orb.

‘Another chance’, they’d said. A chance for what? To go back and fix whatever had happened? To succeed where the Makers had failed? This game seemed beyond just trying to understand mankind. Or to toy with them.

RoboGod might be an apathetic, life-destroying monster, but it was also a being of such power it could re-shape the world and the rules of physics. So it had to want something it couldn’t just produce on its own. How could mankind

help

it? Or maybe it was trying to explain something they couldn’t otherwise understand.

It was there, maybe, but he didn’t fucking get it, and he needed Blake. Maybe it was all just madness. But he didn’t think so. He was beginning to accept this machine-god was telling him a story, telling all of them, and that when the story was finished there would be…something

else

.

Even though it annoyed him, Mason wanted to know how the story ended.

With us winning,

said a stubborn piece of himself. A piece that had maybe always been there but was growing stronger in the post-apocalypse, or maybe because of Cerebus.

Fuck this thing and what it wants

, the piece went on.

The people we care about survive. Nothing else matters.

It was pretty hard to argue with.

Mason did his best to tuck the orb away in his ration bag, wishing he could bind it or that he had magic storage like some of the civilians. With all the punishment he took the thing definitely wasn’t safe on his body, and he was going to have to be careful until he got it home.

Which brought up another soon to be problem—did he go back to Nassau right away? He needed to go with Night Eyes and talk to Lila and save those slaves.

You don’t have to do a God damn thing

, said that same practical, Cerebus-inspired side of his brain.

Yet again, it was hard to argue. Mason wasn’t bound by any rules except a very ruthlessly practical system. This artifact seemed a lot more important than a few captured civilians. His dick and maybe his heart were saying go save Lila. But she could wait.

A loud, angry roar interrupted his navel gazing. Mason turned and heard a large beast loping down a far corridor. The sound of claws scraping stone was unmistakable—the panting of a thing that must have been the size of rhino. Apparently Mason had found the druid’s pet.

But he wasn’t at all sure what to do about it. His only real ‘plan’, in so far as it could be called a plan, was to use Speak with Nature and…reason with the thing. Plan B was basically ‘run and keep trying’.

The plan felt a little stupid as Mason waited in the dark cave. The thing came closer and closer, finally entering his sight as a huge mass of pale fur. A huge, shaggy white bear emerged from the opposite side of the cave, teeth exposed and pale eyes wild.

It apparently getting plenty of protein. Mason tried not to think about from where. Its powerful limbs surged forward as the creature sniffed and charged towards the fallen tree, apparently not yet noticing him.

It whined and growled, pawing and nuzzling at fallen branches as if searching for something. Mason wasn’t sure if he should move, or introduce himself, or wait until the bear managed to…

The creature sniffed the air and shot up with a growl. Apparently they smelled each other at about the same moment. Mason winced at the scent of death and rot, hoping it was the thing’s environment and not it. The bear turned and stared right at him, completely still for a long time, as if unsure of what it was seeing. Then it snarled, and charged.

Mason activated Speak with Nature and held out his hands.

I’m not your enemy. I’m a druid, like your master. I’ve come from him. He wants me to…

That was as far as he got. The bear crossed the cave in loping strides, Mason detecting only rage and something like…pride from his spell. Apparently the bear was angry more for territorial reasons than anything. It didn’t seem to have ‘heard’ or at least understood anything he said. But it was time to fight or run.

He chose fight. He had no intention of killing this creature, but it had to learn it wasn’t the top predator anymore. Mason had a new plan: he would let it spend all that anger, let it get out all that aggression, and see what happened when it failed.

He met the thing’s charge head on, ready as the bear rose up enough to swat him with a massive paw. He blocked it on a Sleeve but the force staggered him. The bear roared and tried to grab him, and he seized both of its forelegs to hold them off.

Physics laughed in his face. The very huge, very heavy bear dropped forward and on top of him, pushing so forcefully he toppled backwards without a chance. He hung on, at least, getting his knees up to the bottom of the bear’s body to hold it back from chewing on his face.

It tried and failed, then seemed utterly perplexed as he held it back. Duality of Strength was ticking merrily away, but his ordinary strength seemed nearly a match for the creature. He suspected the power was mostly compensating for the thing’s weight, and the longer it tried to crush him the stronger he was going to get.

He squeezed the bear’s legs in his grip as it thrashed and tried to shake him off. It managed to get its face lowered enough to take a bite, chomping down on Mason’s shoulder as he winced and pushed it harder.

“Don’t you…fucking crush…my orb,” he growled, doing his best to keep the bag safely at his side.

The bear roared in his face, the sound (and smell) so bad he winced and closed his eyes.

“That’s right, get it all out,” he said, letting go of the bear just for a moment to give it a fast, decently forceful slap, right in its big, wet nose.

The bear shook its head and snorted with obvious surprise, and Mason slapped it again before grabbing the same leg and holding on for dear life.

The bear lost it, thrashing him into the ground with wild fury. It pulled back and took Mason off the ground and spun, trying to toss him away before bashing him straight into the ground again. It managed to bite his chest this time before he pushed it back with his legs, taking a sizable chunk out of his armor, a bit of flesh beneath.

Transformation ticked, and Mason stared at the bear and squeezed. It paused a moment as if to look to see the damage, looking at the wound and Mason’s face as if to say ‘this is the part where you start screaming in agony.’

This time Mason gave it a quick punch square in the face.

The bear shook its head, pale eyes glowing with some kind of magic, lips peeled back to show similarly glowing teeth. Some natural spell started shining everywhere and covered the bear’s fur, bathing Mason in white and green light.

“Ah shit.”