ALL NOVEL 72 - Somebody knew
They had been sure that pushing through the swamp to the distant foothills would only take a day, considering the distance they had traveled from Riverport to Redfield in a similar amount of time. They had failed to take into account the fact they had been traveling along a highway, over mostly flat ground, through unclaimed territory. By the time they finally emerged into the forest at the foot of the mountain almost three days had passed, and the pair of them were thoroughly sick of the wetland. As Claire finally stomped into the shade of the towering trees she positively sagged with relief at the solid footing, taking long moments to use the thick bark of the closest specimen to scratch her neck.
David nimbly dodged a storm of falling pine cones before finally sprinting out of range, “Holy shit, chill! That last one actually did a damage!"
“A damage?" Claire paused mid scratch as she leaned heavily on the tree, "A whole damage? Better bust out Moonsong, how will you ever survive. Stuff it, this has been itchy for like an entire day and I can't reach it at all, I've tried."
“I offered to scratch it for you." David chittered as he happily climbed into the branches of an unmolested tree nearby, “Also, fuck swamps."
Claire made an extremely inappropriate noise as she continued to use the trunk as a neck scratcher, the bark slowly peeling away under her tough scales and grinding down beneath her heavy armor plates. David hooted suggestively from his perch and Claire shot him an evil look for his trouble, snapping her jaws aggressively in his general direction. He wisely relocated to just out of thumping range as he turned to gaze down the hill they had climbed to escape the marsh, his hackles raising angrily at the mere sight of it. David then spit in its general direction and extended his tongue rudely before returning his attention to Claire when she finally stepped away from the thoroughly sanded tree with a satisfied rumble.
“Once again, you have poison knives for ‘fingers’, no thanks." Claire sighed before shaking the sawdust off, “But yeah, fuck swamps.
“We did get those two Quests done, at least." David growled as he fluttered down to land on her back, “Lucky us right?"
“No, fuck you. I don't know how you pissed all those dragonfly things off so bad, but I know it was you somehow. ‘Escape the Swarm’ was the absolute worst Event Quest I've ever done." Claire snarled as she snapped a look at him again. They both shuddered involuntarily at the memory of that particular wakeup call, and their subsequent mad sprint through the swamp.
It had taken almost four hours to finally outrun the apocalyptic cloud of insects, and the pair of them had learned a hard lesson about statistics. Even if only one in a dozen insects made it through David's frantic Screeches, and only one in a hundred of those managed to actually land a sting on them, the odds were still stacked against them when the swarm was effectively endless. The harder they fought back the more they seemed to pull in, and it had been Claire who finally realized it was the smell of the dead bugs themselves luring more to them. They'd eventually broken free and frantically dunked themselves in the waters, even rolling in mud to mask the scent before they bolted.
That one sucked. The System isn't just fucking around when it tells you the objective is ‘escape’, that was not a suggestion. 250xp, 2Pts, and a random ability token for that. Not worth it. At all. I'm never going to admit that was probably my target practice pissing them off…
“Wasn't that the only Event Quest you've done?" David replied with his best poker face, his ears not even twitching to betray his guilt.
Claire growled suspiciously before swinging her head around and stomping uphill with David still perched on her armored back.
“Yeah, still the worst one though.” Claire admitted before sniffing the air and continuing to plow ahead into the forest, "The other one was basically a free Token though. Tasty, too.”
David nodded before he ducked a large branch that came whipping back over Claire's shoulder with a snap. He quickly shimmied down to her shoulder before flinging himself free like a cat off a counter, landing lightly and loping alongside her in the sparse undergrowth at the base of the rocky mountain.
“Yeah, those Manatee things were basically free food. Wish I had their Regen boost ability thing though, you could literally watch them heal up. Brought me up to two random ability tokens, too.” David agreed, reminiscing briefly about how he'd been unable to resist gorging himself again. He smiled dreamily as the memory of Claire literally rolling him away from the remains with her snout surfaced full force.
“Agreed, next time we Evolve I'm looking through every ability in Restorative for that." Claire hissed while obliterating a thick stand of saplings while David hung back patiently.
“Did you ever complain so you can have the Advanced Status?" David chattered loudly, “Selling shitty Abilities or Mutagens is an actual, you know, stupidly huge advantage?"
“Oh my god, yes! Forever ago! Like two days!" Claire flung her tiny arms up in exasperation, “I was polite though, so I got a jukebox instead of a Tomogatchi pet."
“What?!" David yowled in outrage as he darted after her through the flattened gap between the trees, “That's bullshit! You're fucking with me, right?”
Claire began to hum loudly, peeking at him every few moments but never fumbling her tune. David recognized it as a popular pop song he'd never really listened to and flattened his ears in a sulk, feeling like he'd been ripped off as her snout began to bounce along with the tune.
“Yeah, I'm fucking with you." Claire cackled after a few songs worth of humming, “You should have seen your face, you looked like a sad ugly dog! We're still not even for the bug incident though."
You bitch! I was about to ask for a jukebox too, I was mentally rehearsing it and everything!
“Oh. My god." David sighed dramatically as he flared his wings out, “Mean. You're a mean girl. I'm gonna go check for a good way up, I'll be right back."
Claire's snickering had all the charm of a lawnmower failing to start, and the sound followed him a surprising distance into the air as he rose above the treetops. He wasted no time pointing himself into the wind and climbing even higher before he began to look around, the forest blanketing the slopes below him growing patchy the higher up the mountain he looked. Evidence of rock slides were everywhere, and the highest reaches seemed to be dominated by scree slopes and boulders, tapering to bare blocky stone at the summit.
This doesn't really look like somewhere you build an Observatory. This looks like somewhere you build something so people will leave you the fuck alone. I can't even tell where the road was, it's just gone or I’d point Claire toward it. I refuse to believe they ever had tours of the place, there's just no way anybody would ever bother driving like 5 hours out…Dad would have, he totally would have. He'd have thrown us into the truck and made us come too, and probably refused to leave before he spent an hour staring down the mountain smoking a cigar and bullshitting with someone he just met.
David shook his head and added that to the list of things he'd try not to think about, wrestling down a painful wave of nostalgia as Spooky observed curiously through his eyes. Its interest in the peak of the mountain led David to shrug slightly and angle himself into a column of warm air that pulled him higher at a rapid clip. The forest plunged into the distance below him, individual trees melting slowly into a patchwork of colors and topography that he largely ignored in favor of howling like an idiot just because he could. David wasn't sure if it was his new body, or just the fact he never got tired of flying, but the fact his freshly reinforced wings could easily cut through the wind at this height was a thrill.
As he soared higher on the mountain updrafts, his sharp eyes caught an unnatural glint from the peak looming ahead in the distance. Wheeling about, he oriented himself toward the source, an enormous metallic structure perched atop a distant rocky peak. Even from over a score of miles away, the immense curved dish stood out starkly against the mountainous backdrop, its once-polished steel faded to a dull gunmetal gray by what was surely decades of exposure. Squinting, David just barely made out the crumbling buildings flanking the central telescope.
This doesn't look like any observatory I've ever seen online or anything. What is this place?
What truly caught his eye were the husks of abandoned military vehicles littering the derelict site far below. Rusting hulls of armored carriers, dusty tarp covered trucks, and huge heavy-lift helicopters all sat in orderly lines around the compound like forgotten toys scattered by a careless child. David even saw what he guessed had been more temporary structures, now devoured by dust and dirt, laying collapsed on their sides away from the wind.
Why'd the military come stomping all over this place? I know there was that curfew, and a shelter thingy, but they'd have to have known hours before that to get all of this here, it was like…almost 11pm by the time that went out. What the fuck? I didn't even know we had any big bases anywhere near here, this shit would have all had to have come from...a long way, anyway.
Sun-bleached outbuildings huddled haphazardly around the main installation, and to David's unprofessional eye they still looked roughly built compared to the rest of the ruins. Caved-in roofs, glittering shattered glass, buckled siding, all torn free by the strong winds and littering the area like molted shells. Yet the colossal central dish still remained stubbornly intact, an ominous steel behemoth clinging to the barren summit, huge even from the distance he was ironically observing the Observatory from.
David felt an unreasonable prickle of trepidation studying the militarized boneyard surrounding the eerie structure, but a part of him still wanted to dig around in it.
Okay, that's super fucking weird. Somebody did know something, there's no other explanation for all that. That shit looks like something straight out of a movie about the end of the world…Maybe there actually is somebody down there with some answers. Spooky you shut up, we're not going to check it out alone just because you want to.
David slowly began to descend back towards Claire’s position, torn between excitement and a bit of nervousness at the unexpected presence of the heavy equipment and everything it implied.