The Gamer Chapter 1680 – Tathnuachan (Patreon)

Two days of searching later, they found Tathnuachan.

They had been following the strategy and kept following the grid as mapped onto their search area. Still, they were surprised when the pinging Barrier Sense brought them not to some isolated tribe or Abyssal retreat, but to the actual settlement they had been searching for.

Momo was sparkling. Literally, her inexplicable (even by magical standards) reality bending fae BS caused the air around her to glitter as if someone had launched a confetti cannon. Her insect-like wings spread out and she was zapping rapidly from building to building.

John leaned against the invisible wall of the Illusion Barrier to get a broad view. The force wall was surprisingly uncomfortable. Rather than conform to the points of pressure, it went through ebbs and flows of pushback, constantly attempting to shove away what was in contact with it. John tolerated it for the time being.

Before him was a weathered time capsule. Since wind and animals never or rarely affected the insides of Illusion Barriers, the only effects on the stone came from rain and time. By consequence, the entire barrier was filled with the stench of stagnant water. Somewhere out of plain sight, vast amounts of it had been gathered and turned foul.

What John looked at were stone buildings separated into four districts. By instinct, the Gamer knew that the central crossroads was as closely aligned to the cardinal directions as one could achieve without computer guided precision tools. At the centre of it all was a large, natural hole.

Momo was entirely fascinated by the walls. Before John’s very eyes, the fairy maid multiplied. Three to four at a time, her Fireflies scattered out and turned into extensions of herself. Soon the barrier was filled with chatter, as Momo externalized the hivemind of thoughts. There was too much input to keep it all straight in one mind alone; instead she talked to herself about it, corrected and challenged her assumptions, while groups of the archaeologists photographed, transcribed, and translated the etchings in the stone walls. A couple of herself even got out the fine tools of the trade to carefully remove layers of moss on segments of the walls.

“Look at her go,” Rave joked.

“Look at her go indeed,” John answered, while opening the Harem Comms. He sent a message to the other girls to come over. He wanted Lee to reinforce the barrier and Velka to potentially scout out anything of value. He also made sure to mark the location they were at with modern satellite coordinates. They would not lose this finding again.

“Could deal without the swamp smell though,” Rave complained.

The Gamer nodded and advanced towards the likely source of the stink. Judging by the last tribe they visited, that hole in the middle was an opening to a cenote. Around the hole, John spotted the remains of eight polished and lacquered sticks lying in the dirt. They laid about in a seemingly random assortment. Very careful not to touch them, he bowed over the edge of the cenote.

The stench rose to a whole other level. The Gamer beheld a murky brown soup, just barely translucent enough that he could see the bones littering the water. Entire skeletons laid there in an orderly pattern that suggested ritualistic mass suicide.

“Do not come closer!” John shouted at Rave.

“What’s down there?”

“It’s not about what’s down there, it’s about what is coming up.”

Since bowing over the hole, John had been losing miniscule amounts of mana. Occasionally, a spark of silver flashed around him. Particle Skin was keeping something out, something small and barely threatening, but something.

John retreated from the hole as he explained, “Radiation, poison, some kind of lingering magic, I don’t know what it is but there’s a malevolent influence down there.”

“That must be how the barrier stayed up,” Momo theorized, her true self landing next to him. “Something is alive in here.”

John nodded and reached into his inventory, retrieving a basic version of the Mandala Sphere. Possession cast, he had the sphere fly into the cenote.

The dome-shaped curve of the natural cavity was coloured a limestone brown. Dripstones had formed under the ceiling at many spots. Right under the opening, at the centre of the circular pool underneath, lay a stone disk. It seemed that the same kind of platform the crone had sat on had been left above the hole. The sticks holding it in place had rotted, the disk had dropped, the backlash from the snap had scattered about the pieces of wood left above ground.

A tunnel attached to the room with the stagnant pool, but John was focused on scanning what he saw first. What hands he could see were still clutching obsidian knives. The patterns on the floor reminded him of Nazca lines. A reminiscence that, given the cultural proximity, could not have been coincidental.

John threw Observe at the skeletons, the knives, and the water. There were some interesting facts to be gleaned from the descriptions, but no outright revelations. “They went through a ritual here to invoke the memory of the Stinking Corpse. Does that ring any bells?”

“An Aztec myth regarding the Toltecs, who they regarded as their predecessors,” Momo reported. “The Toltecs slew a giant, whose decaying carcass released such a noxious stench that all those that smelled it died.” Somewhere behind them, the extra body with the notebook was scribbling new revelations down furiously. “This could mean that the Stinking Corpse really happened in some variety… which would make it the top contender for the calamity that befell the pantheon.”

“A poison released from a corpse?” John asked.

“Poison, disease, or it could be metaphorical in the sense that the giant, whatever it was, left behind such spoils that the gods started infighting because of it.”

The Mandala Sphere explored the adjacent tunnel. For the most part, he found nothing. Half-rotten ceremonial tools had been damaged by the repeated rise and fall of the water level of the cenote through rain and vaporization.

A pictograph on the wall had survived. The paint still looked fresh, implying magical reinforcement. It had been drawn with haste, judging by the sloppy linework. The style made it difficult for John to immediately realize what was going on. A blue warrior holding a serpent staff, his head tilted back, spewing purple fumes into the air. The head of some kind of bird took the place of an extended tongue.

“Stay right there,” Momo instructed John, copying the image into her notebook through the mental connection. If they had been down there themselves, they could have just taken an image via the Harem Comms, but this was the best they could get right now. “Is something emerging from him or…” she wondered, “…hiding inside?”

“The use of purple is very interesting,” John pointed out.

“The previous god vacated the throne because of the purple… mhm.”

“We should seal up that hole then have Sylph run an air refreshment before we let Velka in.” Rave pointed out. “Whatever is in the air ain’t harmful to us at the concentration outside the hole, but she’s not as strong.”

“Good thought,” John agreed. “I think we also should send someone back to the Ichor Rod tribe. I want to have a look at their cenote. Maybe they sealed it up because a similar ritual has been conducted there.”

 “Think we could take a sample of the water before they seal it all up?” Momo asked.

“Should be doable. I do have an empty vial.” He reached into his inventory. “We’ll just have to rinse it out first, there may be some remains of health potion insi-“

An intense crawl of silver made John’s attention snap to the hand now holding the empty vial. The assault on his skin went up to his shoulder, continuing even after he had dropped the glass object, and stopped only at his collar. “John, is that-“

The Gamer was too busy pulling his phone out of his inventory next. Another wave of futile assault rippled up his arm. ‘My entire inventory is infected?!’ he thought. The implications were dire. Rave and Momo wisely backed away after realizing what was going on, even if the former was confused about the details.

Prioritizing one crisis over the other, the Gamer punched in a number he was not supposed to call. He hadn’t even saved it in his phone, just knew it by heart. The phone rang several times before someone picked up. “Hello?” an unfamiliar voice answered in Spanish. “Do you know the owner of this phone?”

The Gamer’s heart beat hard in his chest. “Yes, I am her brother, why? Who are you?” he mimicked the tone of a confused relative.

“We’re from the Merida hospital. The owner of this phone was brought to us yesterday after she collapsed on the street. She has a high fever.”

“What?” John did not have to fake his shocked tone. “My mother will be there tonight!” With that, he hung up, before the nurse, or whoever it was, could ask for details he did not have. “A disease,” he spoke in a hollow tone. “Whoever we are looking for is using a disease. Fianna had it when we first met.” He stared at the vial on the ground. “Depending on how contagious and lasting it is, we may all have been exposed. If this is Hutzi’s work, then we’re dealing with biomancy of the absolute highest level.” He stared at Rave and Momo. “If it’s the bacteria that kept this barrier open, then the disease is aware enough to count as sapient. It’ll have a rudimentary knowledge of when to lie low and when to strike. It’s prudent to assume that everyone is infected, especially the humans.”

The behaviour of the disease was an assumption, but they were already in a worst case scenario. All previous plans were now discontinued. The body back in the plane was sharing the same intel with those still in it.

“Why did it try to attack you now, then?” Rave asked.

“Probably because we’re currently steeped in the stuff,” John answered and looked at his hand. “Since it counts as malicious, there is a mind behind it. We can somewhat reasonably assume that I am clear… shit… I could have gotten a window warning me if I had gotten infected earlier… Not that it would have changed anything.”

John considered getting himself infected on purpose just to learn what the disease was capable of. A terrible plan, he decided. It was best someone remained able to move, if this sickness turned out to be debilitating.

“What’s our next move?” Rave wanted to know.

“Claire will have to mimic Fianna’s disguise to take the role of mother and extract her before her transmutation wears off within mundane space,” John stated. “We’ll continue our search as before. We have no choice now, we have to see this through until we have a cure. I am not bringing this back home.”

“If we have a disease, should Claire really go back to Merida? What if she spreads the stuff?”

“Fianna did not get it in a vacuum. Granted, these could be two different diseases, but that’ll be for Delicia to determine. We’ve already been going about the place for days. It is already in circulation.”

______________________________________________________________________

“It has a will,” Lorelei confirmed.

The seer had entered the Illusion Barrier and her verdict eliminated any chances that John was off the mark in his analysis. Not far from where they stood, Salamander was torching everything that John had in his inventory.

After having thrown everything out, what had happened was clear. The disease had spread through his inventory, found the stored foodstuff, and gorged itself on it. Everything in John’s inventory had been coated in the stuff since. Every item removed from the inventory had cost him 500 mana worth of damage from the assault the bacteria launched on him.

The good news was that this was barely a dent in his defences. He had over thirty thousand MP, which put into perspective that, at least initially, even high concentrations of the disease were not so invasive to overcome their hyper-advanced immune systems.

Just to be sure, John was getting everything disinfected by apocalyptic fire, though. The air in the barrier had been cleansed by Sylph, the cenote sealed up by Gnome, and the entirety of the expedition was, for the moment, gathered up in the outskirts of the barrier. The Creator Puppet was back in the airplane.

Was this the sanitary way to go about this? No. It did not matter. Delicia and Lorelei had immediately started to run whatever diagnostics they could and confirmed that some kind of magical pathogen was present in trace amounts on the plane. A pathogen that Lorelei could now confirm was the same as the one below them.

“To use biomancy for such a wicked purpose… the Lady’s justice shall befall those that engineer such a plague,” the seer mumbled, her voice quivering with rage. “Be it warlock or witch, we must see to the demise of the originator of this blight upon her sacred creation!”

It was rare to see Lorelei animated by anger, but if there was ever a cause that justified it, this was it. “Is it possible that the Grim Reaper is part of this?” Metra asked. “You called one of his riders Pestilence, after all.”

“A rider that was notably missing when Claire ran into them.” John gestured at the vampire under her parasol. The situation was such that she had to be out in the sun, much as it displeased her. “The chance is there, although I do not know what the odds are. Delicia, how are you progressing?”

“I am not exactly working with the best equipment here!” the shortstack shouted through the dimensional doorway. Utilizing her Mobile Laboratory Skill, she had managed to get access to a number of alchemic tools. Vials filled with the blood and spit of each of the expedition members, including Velka, were getting checked one after another. “And this isn’t my area of expertise either! You’re lucky I’m a genius or I would have no idea where to even start testing.”

Some instrument beeped and she looked over, to then enter more numbers into a table.

“Alright, here you go,” Salamander took John’s attention, her arms full with all the items that had survived the purge by fire. For the most part, that was the part of John’s battle regalia he did not always have on his body. Beyond a few sturdy containers and metals, everything else had melted together into charred clumps.

“Alright, I got the first bit of good news!” Delicia shouted out from the laboratory. “The disease is biological in nature! Looks like it can mutate to survive and move in magical spaces, somehow including John’s stasis inventory, but it needs organic matter to replicate! Whenever I drop samples into elemental essence, the stuff forms a spore!”

That was some good news.

“More good news, I’ve found it getting bullied by white blood cells in Lee’s sample!”

John immediately breathed lighter. Lee was among the people with lesser Endurance in the group, so if her physical systems were good enough to take care of it, then that meant they were good by and large.

“Now for the bad news.” Delicia stepped out of the mobile laboratory, her face devoid of any smile. “I think this is a vanguard disease.”

“A what now?” Hailey asked.

“Again, not my area of expertise, but I did take a class on biomancy during alchemy university so… from memory. Bacteria manipulation has its limitation in how much information you can write into the nucleus of a lifeform that small. That expands with skill, it’s similar to enchantment that way, but it is limited.”

“And to work around that, people design bacteria without specialized purposes,” John realized.

Delicia nodded. “As it says on the label, a vanguard disease is sent in first. It’s either more subtle or just better at widespread infection. After that comes either the mass disease, which takes advantage of the weakened immune system to induce a comparatively high complexity of effects on the host’s body, or the core disease, which functions like a general that takes control of the vanguard disease and coordinates its effectiveness.”

“In other words, we’re in the clear now but whoever let this loose is likely to have ways to make this harmful to even us?”

Delicia nodded slowly. “That’s my best guess. Gimme the testing rod.”

John reached into his inventory and handed it over. Ten minutes later, Delicia came back. “No traces on it, so the disease isn’t just swimming about in your inventory now.”

“Bunch of silver linings at the moment.” Relieved, John threw his items back into his inventory. “Still, we have confirmation that the disease is out and about on our airplane and in…”

“Lee’s, Lorelei’s and Scarlett’s bloodstreams. Jane and Hailey are clear, for now. Oh, and so is Velka.”

“Nia, can you try and ‘disinfect’ them?” John asked.

The pariah had been staring at the floor this entire time, her visor of non-matter over her human eye. “Even for me, operating at this level of detail is difficult. Separating the magic in your bloodstream from such miniscule invaders is possible, but not worth the effort. It’ll replicate faster than I can kill it, should it take hold, and I will stress your system unnecessarily while your immune system does its work.” The pariah took several steps forwards. “I found it.”

The party was confused, but went after the blonde. They moved from the western street, where they had arrived, to the southern one. Once there, Nia took off her blindfold. “No, no, no, what are you doing!” Momo cried.

A row of ancient stone slabs disintegrated into magical particles. At first, the archaeologist looked like she would collapse from the loss of prehistoric pavement, then she snapped back to reality as she, along with everyone else, beheld what had been under the stone.

Woven together, thousands of pieces of crimson wood formed a continuous carpet. It went from the base of the drop to the cenote all the way to the edge of the barrier. “What vile obscenity is this,” Lorelei muttered.

“What do you mean?” Rave asked.

“It’s all black,” Lorelei answered. “This is the source of my darkened sight. It’s an anchor on the future, dragging down choice and possibility like an ever-devouring black hole in the fabric of the Lady’s design.”

“What does Observe say?” Rave asked.

“Observe agrees with Lorelei,” John said so drily he wasn’t even sure if he was joking or not.


“Hutzi was the lord of the south, correct?” he asked.

“Yes… and this is directed south… and the hole in the map is south…”

“Coincidences are mounting too fast to ignore,” John said. “I want a few of you to accompany Claire to get Fianna. We’ll keep her with us. Not happy to compromise her cover on her first mission with us, but I won’t have her die either. Delicia, you’ll try to cure her.”

“Again, not my area of expertise…”

“Try anyway,” John requested and she nodded. “That’s all I can ask of you…” He let out a long sigh. The disease had given him quite the shock and the implications were dire, but at least his harem was safe for now. That made everything else more bearable. “As for the rest of us, we’ll…” His phone buzzed in his breast pocket. Groaning, he checked the message.

“Lemme guess, the Lorylim just attacked,” Rave suggested.

“…Don’t joke about that, today is just that kind of day…” John wrote a reply to the message, then got an immediate answer back. “We’ll split into three more groups. One will keep looking over the airplane, the second will continue the expedition and the third will meet with Norahnon tomorrow. He wants to talk about the disease.” John put the phone away and rubbed his forehead. “Seven days into the expedition and the amount of shit that already happened…”

A soft rub on his leg distracted him from his headache. Looking down, he spotted Velka offering him something. She dropped it into his extended hand. Interested, he raised it up. It was a medallion, crafted from a rich purple amethyst. The frilled head of an axolotl was carved into the uneven surface. On the back, Aztec pictographs suggested a phrase.

“The purple fears the monster of the spring water,” he translated.

“Can I see?” Momo asked, her enthusiasm unbroken by recent events.

John handed it over with a chuckle. He wouldn’t have had it any other way. He beat his own chest, to drive back any sense of impending doom. “We faced the Father of Arcane, we’ll get through this,” he said to everyone else as much as himself. “We’ll live, we’ll learn, and we’ll move on.”

“Ya got it, tiger! Come here, everyone!” Rave drummed everyone up into a circle. Arms around the shoulders of their neighbours, they stuck their heads together. It wasn’t quite clear who smiled first, probably Sylph, but it spread across everyone rapidly. “Ancient mysteries, danger, and a bunch of competition! What more could we ask for in an adventure, right?”

“Ya said it, sis’,” Hailey agreed.

“Then let’s shout in the most cliché fashion ever in 3-2-1!”

A unified cheer prepared them all for what was to come.