POV: The Dollens, children of Heath.
Date: Góa 11th, 798 AD. (Alt: 22nd February, 799 AD.) Location: Götaland (Ancient Sweden.)
"It has been 2 'Terran' days since we last saw them." Sterling comments from his pilot's seat in English, drinking a minor lager, feeling himself of the right age by spending aeons in ETERNAL. "Have you set the limit to the maximum energy they can 'consume?'" . . .
"We'd better figure out another scaling to seem not as a hard limit." Valyria asks Rhoyna, who gives a thumbs up. "A-yup, goin' figure out a way to do that, the max value now for'll this set is 9.999. . .e+128, just enough to destroy a minor main sequence yellow star." She grabs her citrus cordial, a flavour that matches her dad's favourite.
"If'un tries to go higher, it'll artificially create the feeling of their excess power escaping through them, as water does through a sieve, and't there's an 'unfathomable rule,' a 'deja'vu' of sorts, feeling't close t'a short goal post, yet t'far to eva'reach and solidify." She raises a small screen, picturing how Leif had also slowed down after his first mass-absorption, currently at ≈ 3.2124e+109.
"Gotta make sure they ain't get there too quickly, I made't cost exponentially." She pretends to look at a watch on her wrist. "Say'bout a million years from now for uncle t'reach it." Rhoyna raises her eyebrows in feeling that strangeness again. "So, just me or't feels like t'ship rocks sometimes?" She senses the *BLBLBLBL* through the floor, a vibration that was gong-like. "*Aw*" Rhoyna signals towards the door, not expecting the person they call their 'Grandma' now to be trying to gain their attention again.
"It is your rotation, brother." Valyria asks Goldie, who gives a mock 'aye-aye' salute before walking off towards the living chamber, through a hallway, up a floor and down a developed glass conservatory wall that blocks 2 inbuilt closed anthropogenic ecologies. He stands between a land-based and an aquatic type.
Goldie waves towards the aquatic-based, soon seeing the tail that had been slapping against the bottom of the cage wave back. "Is. . . Everything alright?" His voice did not sound as rasping metal anymore, closer to a suave melting that was a caramel coating to chocolate. "Come, come in!" Our golem brother obliges her, soon swimming up towards the lovable leviathan with her sat upon the submarine-pillow, its incredible softness helping her feel cosy in the lukewarm waters. "How about some food?" She asks the machine printer to bring out her favourite krill-flavoured poppers, with chocolatey biscuits for her grandson.
"*Aw*Thank you, Grandma." He sped up his talking through vocal acceleration magic, a subset of mind-acceleration magic. "How has it been in your new ocean in real life?" He asks while keeping the plate on his forearm, earning a "*WOOOH*" before a response was given. "It has been great, the people are so much nicer here, you know." Her gigantic tail swished in comfort, a cat under the false sun.
Even if unnecessary, her audio-mentally projected voice was similar to how Elzta (Eldest) Hölga had sounded before being turned young. Both aged and wisened. "Why, I remember when I used to run off the whaling vessels as Heath helped me realise, you have to know this is all new to me." Her eyes closed in comfort. Spending time in this simulation for hundreds of years had helped to reduce her stress by a great margin! "You have not touched your biscuits, Goldie! It is a new recipe I have been figuring out from the 'Cooking' runic injector." Her head, bigger than smaller islands, nodded towards him, hoping for him to try.
"Of course I will." He grabbed a biscuit, taking a bite before tasting a flavour of mixed cacao, fudge and sea salt in mixed chunks that are somehow waterproof. "How did you figure out to make it undissolvable, Grandma?" Goldie asks, enjoying both the flavour and texture.
"A bit of my own magic power, dear. Just a small, invisible membrane to prevent water from passing through. Nothing fancy." She gave a human-like wink, turning around to adjust the music she was listening to that was too far away for the golem to hear. "Are you planning anything nice?" She gives a gentle gaze towards him, happy that he is happy as well. "Well, we were going to surprise Dad during his marriage." The concept, which was new, excited the cetacean with glee. "Oo, what is this surprise?" Her high pitch picked up a notch, the tail swishing even faster now.
"Know not to tell him this time?" Goldie rolled his auric eyes, then blinked to refocus upon her. "We are going to be planning an 'excursion.' To bring back people to live in the Cavern." That was a change of pace. The Lyngbakr (ἀσπιδοχελώνη (Aspidochelone)) had a record-scratching moment. Turning serious upon him, his words imagining how the whaling vessels had tried to 'excurse' her.
"How, will you treat them?" Her eyes were sharper than any 'portal bullet,' but for good reason, as Goldie tried to backtrack what he meant. "The same as everyone else, you have heard the standard of living out in the villages, how they are easily sick and know not of hygiene and warmth. We wish to bring them into our fold, while also reducing the worship of the Æsir. Arfinnr had asked us thrice now to see his family here." His words reduced some of her worst anger, but she disagreed. "Heath would fight this." Solidly stating the obvious.
"We know." Goldie forayed the biscuits, taking another to be eaten whole. A sudden idea behind his thick monobrow. "We were hoping to figure a way to gain his favour on this matter, but now that I see there is no other way, and that you are here. . ." He rubs his hands, like a fly rubbing his forelegs to next taste this possibly flavourful scheme.
"What do you say?" Grandma remarks with cheekiness, a quickly returning forgiveness with seeing those she considers her grandchildren. "Please, Grandma?" He puts his hands up and swims up to her, giving her a careful touch in both love and appreciation. "Alright, but do come around more often, okay?" Her heartbeat was strong through Goldie's ear, a comforting sound when played in full. The next moment, she disappeared, released back into Real-Space to have a mind-link adjunctory flow through to Heath's own, who was snacking on some caramelised apples with Skaði on their bed.
'Seems my kids are at it again, my snærrskina (Shining snow.)' Heath would send a thoughtful note in Norse, describing the situation and their hopes, his slight miffing at this future mass-kidnapping rubbing upon her in the same way. 'What do you suggest?' The tall God would raise an eyebrow, hoping to hear her thoughts.
'I say let them.' The great Huntress would pragmatically vote, seeing the children's viewpoint of the matter. She felt guilty at having been given all of these comforts. Yet, there are so many who have starved, surviving off of religious dogma and a struggler's monomania, unable to better themselves. 'I assume that they will do it in their sleep, under the cover of darkness, using your nano-sight of the robotic fairy flies to watch their moves before teleporting them?' Skaði's instincts were correct on the margin, Heath squeezing her hand as a 'yes.'
'This'll be a strange addition to our groupᵖ~' He drones the last bit of his English sentence on contact, feeling her hand shift onto his leg and leaning closer. '~you,*Shiver*are worse than me.' He would exclaim with a rising tint to his cheeks below his beard, the great Huntress' teeth glistening before moving her head down towards his pelvis.
But that is not what we are focusing on today. With the psychic contact cut off, we are finding the Lyngbakr's antics growing with her sudden reappearance into the digital world, finding the cage empty again to then *SMACK* the ever-metallic scum out of the ship she was on. A few millennia passing just from their contact in real life before this time, it is Rhoyna's turn to talk with Grandma. "Heya Gran-gran, haven't seen ye'for a long time!" She would swim into her enclosure immediately upon arrival, her tomboyish demeanour plain as can be.
"Good to see you too, Rhoyna. The news is that he says yes! And I feel magic coursing through. Is everything alright?" Grandma would look around the enclosure's fibrous caging that kept her digital waters temperately mild to her liking on overdrive, worried it may be an attack on them.
"Nothing bad, jus' entering a newborn star's nursery. Temps will be hot for ya, so keepin' the waters safe." She would show a screen of the proto-condensed nebulaic cloud with the emergence of a rapidly expanding brown dwarf. "Beautiful, ain't it?" Rhoyna would smile at it as if it were their own child, a technical truth with their hands aiding to form the cosmic brume from their collected unused space dust leftover from exploded stellar remnants. You would be surprised at how much waste there was.
"What will you rascals name it?" The faith-mutated whale's incredibly sizable mouth formed a baleen-plated grin, waiting for her response. "I feel t'choice made by sis may be too gaudy a name, but she was thinking o' Ardonum, an Anglicised blend of ardor (Latin for heat / flame) and donum (Latin for gift.) Whad'ya think?" Rhoyna grabbed a 'cookie' that turned to dust.
"*Hah*Forgot about the time difference. Wait a moment, Roy-roy." She filed her nickname out before printing the cookies again, using her tail to swipe the now mouldered food. "And I would say that name sounds perfect as it is. What makes you think it is gaudy?" Grandma asked in confusion, seeing her granddaughter scratch her chin before saying her thoughts. "Usin' Latin in our style feels a bad call, probably better t'make it as 'Ardonatus' or som'thin'." Her usage of still bastardised naming conventions was understood in trying to make it more 'historically accurate.'
"A suggestion, but does not roll off the tongue as well. Stick with Valyria's." That was accepted quite quickly, leaving the newly asterosynthesised construct's once indeterminate fate a named development that will have spiritual consequences in the game.
Sterling came around too, to check on them both. "-how long d'stars take t'form again?" Rhoyna asks her older brother, who would say a few gigayears at the minimum. "Could we short'n t'time?" Her fiery red hair unfurled from her hand, scratching her scalp that coiled weightlessly in the water from her impatience. "There is a way, but it would be some serious micromanagement." He would set up a few outside drones towards a few directed clumps where the expected bodies would emanate new planets down the line, an immanent proposal.
"Have a biscuit too, Sterl, I think you need to unwind a bit." Grandma would say as a jibe, his expression nerdy in a thoroughly nerve-racking passion project, with a dose of happiness tinging the edge of his lip. "Thank you, but not yet, I will fix up th-" A cookie was suddenly lodged into his mouth, his eyes expression annoyed at his irritating sister.
"Jus' have a damn cookie." Her muscled shoulders now shook with levity, swimming away suddenly from a water jet that aimed to do a noogie in tousling her hair from his power. "OI!" She waved a pump towards him with faux-malice. Grabbing the tray with that same hand, a siren-esque humming made a distracting play during her *Zipping* swim around him while he was overwhelmed in doing both the work and in watching her every move. His fastened head movements created a torrent in the water from accelerating his thought process to match her trolling.
"Now, now." The step-maternal cetacian stopped their march to a familial quarrel, asking a new dissecting question. "Is there a way I could help with your plan?" That paused them both in their tracks, looking towards her with non-appliance.
"*Uh. . .*How do ya think on being our watcher with the nano-sight available?" Rhoyna came up with the suggestion of using her higher-spec Uni-pod to control a larger number of the wee little drones at a time. "Set it in a security camera groupin' upon the screen in front o'yas, givin' full view of t'entire village before their sudden disappearance." Her suggestion was accepted, Sterling bidding to her as that was a rather fine addition to helping with their safety. "A 'Big Brother' move, huh?" Her brother's bushy beard was jiggling. "Big Grandma 'is watching you.'" They heard her say in the background, recognising the reference to 1984 with a silenced giggle.
"So, when do you expect to do this?" Grandma asks while turning off her music player, mentally preparing for their action plan. "Tonight?" Rhoyna asks her brother. "Tonight." With Sterling repeating back. The green internal walls of the ship appeared to darken for a moment, before they suddenly saw Adal appearing in the water with them, breath playing out as a reaction even when underwater.
"You all-" He silently huffs. "-were hard to find." He would fringe out with horripilation, his beard prickly, swaying with his snout scrunched from having to self-learn the internal vector parameters of the program to teleport to them. "H-What?!" Sterling would voice out, an impossible amount of magic being spent from this warping.
"Know your program may have too much magic welling within its realmic structure.*Hagh-hah*" He no longer holds his spindled knees, eyes looking towards the Lyngbakr in recognising her from the southern myths. "It is great meeting you, venerable one." He bows, a head-bob in turn from the giant whale in recognising its ancient fineness. "I have come with news. That there have been sudden shouts throughout the Cavern." He would worry with a questioning of his moustache's self-twirling, vanishing again, to then re-hear these cries of unreserved rage.
"Then we had better follow." Sterling turns around, upping towards Grandma and kissing her on her chin. "Love you." He departs in a gentle refilling of water where his body displaced the internal area, the giant slowly turning with presumption towards Rhoyna.
She does the same. "See ya soon, thanks for helpin' us, Gran-gran." With both now leaving her alone, Grandma closes her eyes, near falling asleep in the water. "What lovely kids." She would say to herself, now floating by the air gap up top to breathe while napping. 2 of the 4 Dollens are now back in their two-story apartment rooms, coming down into the hallway and hearing nothing of what had been said. "Now what was the i-" *"!G ᴳ G ᴿ R ᴿ I ᴵ I ꟳ F ꟳ F ꟳ I ᴵ I ᵀ T ᵀ H ᴴ H!"* Dozens of voices were heard shrilling from a communal 'book club' of people who chose to read the same book together at an exact timing, their screams drowning out all noise.
(Spoilers ahead if you did not read Berserk) "*Ah*So they're in that part now." She remembered how the Band of the Hawk were sacrificed by Griffith, once their trusted leader and 'friend,' into creating his dream of a perfect kingdom by demonically marking his loyal followers for their ritualistic murder-fucking by the Apostles of the God-Hand.
At the same point, as a final step to show his loss of humanity, whence becoming the new finger known as FEMTO after his Crimson Beherit's Divinehood. Griffith showfully raped the protagonist's future wife into an amnesic episode right in front of the corpses, and Guts himself, to both humiliate the people he had once internally obsessed with, and to wickedly curse Guts and Casca's baby that was still in her womb. Even when he himself made it her 'womanly duty' to sleep with Guts, which worked to her favour after their sparks grew during the Golden Age: 100 Man Battle arc, where he saved her, and they opened up in her realising he was not the 'Mad Dog' of the group.
"Casca. . ." Asdos was heard muttering from his reading, a pre-Eclipse fan who shipped the budding romance, that was, before it got ripped away by that creature that saw them as a dry forest to their blazing.
Just a few memory readings prior, the entire band was laughing with hopes for their future, still vivid in their minds, Corkus to get out of poverty, Gaston to open up a tailor shop, Judeau to protect his unrequited love with Gut's Casca, and Pippin wanting to protect his friends within their band, failed. Bodies, dreams, their very souls devoured. The essence of Gut's character seeped into the thoughts of Jorg, now punching a wall with enough strength through his CrCoNi gauntlet to crack it, yet also absolutely demolishing his knuckles from the force, now bending his fingers at odd angles, never facially budging, showing his hateful fury.
"ᵂᴱ ˢᴴᴼᵁᴸᴰ ᴴᴬⱽᴱ ᴺᴱⱽᴱᴿ ᵀᴿᵁˢᵀᴱᴰ ᴴᴵᴹ." He whispers, the clenching of his fist seeping out red oozing through his metallic joints. "Rickert." Marja cools her voice, a character who was the third and last surviving member of the Band of the Hawk, beside Casca and Guts.
"Please survive." She hugs her knees, soon feeling her brother Bjorn enfolding her in understanding, as Rickert reminded them of their lover Egill's kind and inquisitive nature. "
Rhoyna came towards them, seeing the self-repair mechanisms of the wall working as intended and then putting her own power into healing his nief. She stayed quiet for a moment, a blipping onyx hue like her sister Valyria's forcing itself away in a blink. "Do you wish for revenge?" Rhoyna asks in Norse, their every neuron snapping up in sequence.
"Finish the story. Once you do, through your Uni-pod, we will give you the chance to enter their world at the start of the book, to right their wrongs." She put her hand upon her hip with relaxed knees, her bicep tightening with its bulging muscles just from that single stance. "As with all stories you read after." She revealed what Heath had cooked up freely, the first to respond being Bori and his biologically enhanced son Bjern, each dipping in the background as to recognise her words and to turn back to their playing imaginative sequences in frontalism, others repeating this action to show their silent mobbing they would contemplate against monsters like Wyald, captain of the Black Dog Knights or the King of Midland, who was part of the major corruptions that their world would suffer from.
Many sit down again in the circle, preparing the next scene into their external memory player of Guts escaping with the Brand of Sacrifice on his neck, to always attract Apostles into consuming his essence.
"Thank you." Jorg rubs his sensitively returning nerves on his hand, sitting down with both of his children by his side and rubbing the left side of his twin beard before starting up the chapter as a trio.