It was an otherworldly sight and a peaceful one. The air was warm, and the people Drew watched moved calmly about their tasks. For a moment, the weight of his life back home and struggles melted away.
Then he remembered the message, and another system prompt surfaced in his vision.
Biostatus Interface: ACTIVE]
Subject: Drew Wilson Location: Skyridge Hollow (Arawinaya Territory) State: Post-Trauma Stabilization
Critical Notice: Incomplete Graft Detected
Foreign vascular entity identified.
Vine Designation: Lúmivolt Root Classification: Hybrid / Uncatalogued Bond Status: Partial (25% Synchronization) Integration Method: Non ritual, lightning-mediated contact
Condition Acquired: Aether Scar Your nervous system retains memory of extreme aether discharge. (Some sensations may persist under stress or storm conditions.)
Temporary Effects Unlocked
(These effects will decay without proper graft-bonding)
- Residual Charge (Active) Release a short-range kinetic discharge (10 ft radius). Effect: Non-lethal disruption, nerve shock, tool interference. Cooldown: 1 hour
- Stormsense (Passive) Detect nearby aether pressure shifts, unstable wind lanes, and charged weather pockets. (Accuracy reduced during calm conditions.)
Warnings
- Improper use may result in neural burn, vascular feedback, or graft rejection.
- Hybrid vines are poorly understood and often targeted for extraction.
- Concealment is advised.
Next Recommended Action: Seek certified Vinecrafter OR complete a sanctioned bonding ritual.
Note: The Lúmivolt Root is responding to you. Whether it adapts, or consumes depends on future alignment.
Drew felt a tap on his shoulder, startled, he almost fell off the ledge. Fray Hernando looked down on him. “You need to learn not to block your entire vision with the messages. Think about opening them to the side. Come with me.”
Drew followed Fray Hernando back into the observatory. Inside a chair had been placed inside a circle. Ametzu rummaged around pulling out vines and a glass sphere from a cabinet.
Hernando’s gaze lingered on Drew’s chest. “Your graft is unstable. We need to act.”
“Act how?” Drew asked.
“By finishing what the storm began,” Hernando replied.
Ametzu interrupted “Don’t let him fool you with his words he is one who binds without belonging. El Venado is the best at grafts but the church excommunicated him.”
The friar gave Ametzu an evil glare “Listen carefully Drew you are still in a precarious state. Your graft is incomplete if we do not finish it your body will reject the graft.”
Drew looked from one man to the other.
For a fleeting moment, he wondered how many fatalities had begun with those exact words.
“Wait…what?”
Fray Hernando pressed on “ We will do the ritual now for the only alternative is death.”
Drew’s stomach dropped. “That is not reassuring.”
Drew did not sit.
“Before you touch me again,” he said, “tell me what the failure looks like.”
Hernando’s eyes narrowed. “The failure looks like you dead.”
“That is an outcome. Not a description.” Drew swallowed. His throat was dry. “Do I seize. Do I bleed. Do I burn from the inside out. Tell me what you have seen.”
Ametzu hesitated, then spoke as if it tasted bad. “Cold first. Then the veins darken. Then the tissue around the vine dies.”
Drew nodded once. That was the nod he used in meetings when a timeline was impossible but everyone wanted to pretend it was not.
“Fine. We do it,” he said. “But we cap the surge. Slower synchronization. More pain if that is the price. I want control.”
Hernando’s jaw tightened. “You want to bargain while you bleed.”
“I want to live,” Drew said. “Rushing a system is how you get cascade failures. You should know that.”
Silence.
Ametzu exhaled sharply. “It does both,” he admitted. “At first.”
Drew swallowed. “Then slow it down. If the synchronization rate is adjustable, I want it capped. Lower yield. Longer time.”
Hernando’s jaw tightened. “This is not a machine you’re tuning.”
“No,” Drew said quietly. “It’s a system. And systems fail when you rush them.”
For a long moment, Hernando said nothing.
Then he shook his head once. “You don’t understand what you’re asking.”
“I understand enough,” Drew said. “I’m not refusing. I’m choosing how this fails if it does.”
Ametzu looked between them. “He’s right about one thing,” he said reluctantly. “We can dampen the initial surge. It will hurt more. And it will take longer.”
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“And?” Drew asked.
“And if the vine resists,” Hernando said, “you may lose consciousness before stabilization.”
Drew nodded. “That’s a risk I’ll take.”
Hernando studied him. Really studied him, for the first time.
"…Very well," the friar said at last. "But know this: if the graft destabilizes, I will not stop the ritual to spare you."
Drew met his gaze. "I wouldn't want you to."
He looked at the chair. At the chalked circle. At the glass sphere with its glowing seams.
"So this is it," he said quietly.
Hernando nodded once. "If we do nothing, your body will reject the graft in three days. Maybe four. First the cold. Then the darkening veins. Then the rot." His voice did not change. "You will beg for death before it ends."
Drew exhaled. The choice was already made when he'd touched that vine in the cave. This was just finishing what he'd started.
He sat.
His hands gripped the armrests. If he was going to do this, he needed to understand it.
“How does this ritual work?” Drew asked.
Hernando cleared his throat and responded “Grafting a vine into a person grants them immense power but a person as a vessel can only hold so much. The vines implanted are not of your flesh and if your blood and body are not treated to accept the vines your flesh rots around the vine. Or you succumb to a slow poisoning of your blood.”
Drew was acutely aware of the stitches on his chest and the vine beneath. His heart rate increased just thinking about and he clutched his chest.
“You are fine it's just your imagination. You are a fresh graft it’s early for your body to reject it. The vine implanted in you has an affinity for lightning, we need to ground it to you and moderate the flow of lightning through you.”
Ametzu draped thin vines with copper beads loosely over Drew wrapping them once around head wrist and ran the vines to the edge of the chalky circle. “Try not to move the vines need to stay in contact with edge of the circle.”
Fray Hernando approached with a glass sphere filled with a yellowish gas, with a green vine sticking out of each pole of the sphere. He also had a glass bottle filled with a clear liquid “Ametzu do you have any leather?” Ametzu handed Hernando a large piece of leather. Cradling the bottom of the sphere with the leather Hernando handed it to Drew “Here hold this in your lap.”
Uncorking the bottle the strong scent of ethanol assaulted Drew’s nose “What is that stuff?”
“Spirit of Maize, alcohol. It's a high proof spirit it's not for drinking.” Fray Hernando stated pouring the spirit over the ends of both vines that led to the sphere. He also poured a liberal amount over a small aquamarine vine that pulsed gently with a neon light.
It was a piece of the Lúmivolt vine from the cave!
Inserting the glowing piece of Lúmivolt vine into the end of the hose that led to the sphere Hernando held it like a stylus. “This next part won’t hurt but it will be very uncomfortable. Once the process starts you will see a divine message. You will need to agree. And once the blood flows into the glass you need to hold it at chest level."
Fray Hernando held the glowing tip of the vine directly above Drew’s heart. Drew could feel his arteries and the vine inside him reacting and pulsing. Slowly Fray Hernando traced up from Drew’s heart towards his left collarbone. Drew could feel the vine inside him slowly expanding up his artery. It was incredibly uncomfortable he could feel the vine creeping inside of him shoving deeper into too small of a space. Drew grimaced.
A splash of alcohol sanitized his collarbone then Fray Hernando delicately inserted the blue green tipped vine into his skin. He then poured the alcohol in the the crook of the elbow on Drew’s left arm and inserted the opposing end of the vine leading out from the sphere.
System Message — Ritual Acceptance
[SYSTEM PROMPT — SANCTION REQUIRED]
Procedure Identified: Vascular Synchronization Ritual (External)
Target Entity: Lúmivolt Root (Hybrid / Uncatalogued)
Ritual Function:
- Stabilize graft-host interface
- Increase synchronization toward survivable threshold
- Reduce probability of acute graft rejection
Estimated Outcome (If Successful):
- Bond Status: STABLE
- Neural Load: REDUCED
- Aether Flow: REGULATED
Estimated Outcome (If Declined):
- Progressive graft rejection
- Cardiac failure probable
- Survival likelihood: LOW
- Hybrid equilibrium failure possible
(Excess aether may accumulate or dissipate erratically. Discharge intensity and frequency cannot be predicted.)
WARNING: This procedure involves external blood circulation and forced aether regulation. Unexpected variables detected. (System confidence: INSUFFICIENT DATA)
Hybrid entities may respond unpredictably to ritual constraints.
Consent Required: Proceeding will temporarily suspend automated safeguards.
Do you consent to initiate the Synchronization Ritual?
[ACCEPT]??[DECLINE]
Cardiac failure probable? He had been unemployed for three weeks and still wasn’t ready to die.
What crazy person connects a vine to a person’s heart? Mentally Drew clicked accept. Upon accepting Drew’s blood squirted into the glass sphere in bursts. Upon each new jet of his blood into the sphere small six sided crystals formed on sides of the sphere. Each new jet of blood caused them to glow a vibrant blue green and ever so slightly stretch towards the center of the sphere.
The vine leading out of the glass sphere began to pulse a light aquamarine color slowly leading up the vine into his arm. A small progress bar appeared in Drew’s vision
0.5/100%
Drew began feeling light headed watching his blood squirt in the glass sphere.
“Here, eat this” Ametzu handed Drew a small yellow tortilla. Taking a small bite Drew savored the slightly sweet corn tortilla.
Fray Herando’s gruff voice spoke “It will take time for the ritual to stabilize you. How long I am unsure during all my time with the La Orden del Vínculo Divino (The Order of the Divine Bond) I have never seen a vine like yours.”
The aquamarine light crept higher along the vine. Drew swallowed, suddenly very aware of how hollow his head felt.
“How long is time?” he asked.
Hernando did not answer immediately.
“You will say you are a privateer, lost and stranded,” Hernando said. “They haunt the lanes between islands, fast ships, light hulls, crews that know when to fight and when to wait.”
“Pirates” Drew said.
A thin, humorless smile crossed Hernando’s face. “They are corsarios,” he said. “Legal thieves, as long as their papers remain valid.”
The glass sphere gave a faint hum as Drew’s blood swirled inside it.
“They fly differently than the Order,” Hernando continued. “Where Nueva Trujillo grows a few great stones and builds it's ships around them, the privateers grow many small ones. Dozens of buoyant buds, tied in nets. Their ships are fragile but quicker. Easier to replace.”
“They pretend not to see,” Hernando said. “The vines are holy, but convenience is holier still. The privateers trade. They carry goods. They kill spiders and Tzoma Kai where the Order prefers not to be seen.”
Hernando’s eyes flicked briefly toward the open sky beyond the observatory windows.
“If they appear,” he said quietly, “it will not be by accident.”
Drew felt another wave of lightheadedness wash through him as the progress bar crept upward.
The trio sat in silence. From time to time, Ametzu rose to work the cartography table behind Drew, it's vine-latticed surface creaking softly as it shifted. Drew couldn’t turn to see what he was doing without tugging at the vines binding him to the circle. As the shadows lengthened across the windows, Ametzu finally stepped away.
The progress bar hovered at 72%. Drew felt nauseous. His mind fogged. He focused on shallow breaths, anything to keep the room from spinning.
Then the quiet broke.
Drums thundered outside, layered with shouts and screams. Blearily Drew looked at Fray Hernando who drew a knife and peered out the windows taking care to quickly peek out the window.
“Don’t move a muscle” he hissed. Hernando cracked the door open, Ametzu running in to the table behind Drew. “Tzoma Kai raid!” Drew could hear the vines that made up the cartography table behind him creak as it operated. “No.. more than a raid. Multiple bands” Ametzu lamented.
Hernando crossed the room taking care to step over the chalk line without disturbing it. He put a crude bronze knife into Drew's trembling hand “Do not move and do not surrender,” he said quietly. “They will kill you real bad.”
“Shit what do I do?” Drew asked his head spinning from the blood in the pulsing sphere and from the situation.
“You stand. You resist. And if God permits you to fall, you fall without yielding.” Hernando looked Drew deep into his eyes.
Drew’s blinking progress bar was at 74%
The door exploded inward, shards spraying across the floor. Glass behind Drew shattered. Ametzu rushed towards the door holding a hatchet but caught several arrows struck him mid step and he collapsed forward without a sound.
Hernando threw his knife behind Drew landing with a wet thud.
A pale yellow shield flared into existence in front of Hernando, arrows clattering harmlessly against it.
A thick red vine whipped from the doorway snapping tight around Hernando’s throat and lifted him straight up into a rafter.
Several men ran into the room. Something inside him snapped. The charge surged. The glass sphere in front of him detonated in a burst of light and shards. The men around him dropped to the ground convulsing. Drew’s vision tunneled and narrowed until everything went black.