Full Names

Brekon Joery

Known Relations

Kaboo (partner)

Roserine (partner)

Background

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

Brekon startled to consciousness as the knocking persisted. A small glimmer of the sunrise shone through the wooden blinds of his small hut nestled in the forest adjacent to the Qiaran Cavern. The summer sun brushed the walls of his cottage in a confusion of colors as it mingled with the torchlight within. Brekon trudged through the hut to greet whomever had called so insistently. He swung the door open grumpily and to his surprise found his partner in adventure eagerly awaiting him with a bright smile.

"Little Kaboo!" He grinned from ear to ear. "Good to see you my friend. You’re here early! Here, let me grab my gear." Brekon retreated to the hut. Soon a pickaxe, compass, bag of golden coins, and a stone gauntlet adorned the portly plunderer of caves. He turned to grab his helm adorned with an aeon-powered flashlight, his eyes flicked to a photo nearby. A young man stood outside a cavern entrance with a child on his back. Her legs wrapped around the back of his neck as she rose a pickaxe triumphantly above her head. Brekon reached out and stroked the picture with a longing sigh, then traced his hand rightward, and snatched his helm.

"I'm all ready now. It's a nice breeze today, isn't it?" Brekon roared, mustering energy far beyond his alertness. Kaboo trilled and bound down the path leading south. Their half hour trek lead them through a dense deciduous forest lush with all sorts of wild bamboo. Occasionally a Panbu could be heard munching in the distance but they knew better than to investigate further.

“You leave them alone, they’ll leave you alone.” the old miner reminded like clockwork. Kaboo, who had heard the saying hundreds of times nodded his head and raised his eyebrows feigning intrigue as if this had been the first time he’d ever heard the advice. Kaboo tended to find that nothing was gained from reminding the miner of his old age. True was it that the miner had thus far outlived him by 8-10 times his own age, but they both needed each other’s cooperation for the task at hand. And truth be told, Kaboo had grown to adore the miner and his quirks. Though their languages were incompatible and Kaboo was incapable of speaking common, he was a brilliantly fast learner and had picked up the nuances of the language long ago - or at least enough to understand its intention.

The forest path soon resulted in a clearing surrounded by piles of dirt, rocks and downed trees. Brekon whistled as his eyes fell on a large machine about two meters tall with several drills protruding from its metal hull. "Oh, what a great invention, would you like some help into the cockpit?" Brekon inquired towards Kaboo. The spritely young engineer nodded his head energetically. At just over half a meter tall himself, Kaboo appreciated any help he could get when it came to vertical endeavors. He leapt onto Brekon’s shoulder and springed onto the mech. Kaboo entered a code on the exterior panel of the mech causing its glass dome to open slowly as Aeon powered lights quickly illuminated the interior. Kaboo hopped into the control seat and rapidly began entering inputs as rainbow colored gauges filled the cockpit. Brekon took a step back as the hulking machine powered up and the central drill began to whistle. Brekon admired young Kaboo’s latest invention with pride and took note as it rotated that a prominent label of "TURN.1P" was painted on the exterior of the mech. He scoffed at the implications and made note to ask Kaboo whether a certain Erakosian trader had been to the area recently.

Upon finishing the initialization, Kaboo maneuvered the mech into a launch pose, angling it towards the nearby mineshaft just within eyesight, and revved the TURN.1P mech’s main drill. “Ah be off with ya, I’ll catch up! Show me what it’s got!” Brekon shouted gruffly towards the mech. Out of sight from the miner, Kaboo nodded and thrust the main lever of the beast forward. The mech angled and the drill roared as it shot off towards the mine in the blink of an eye.

Brekon cheered in celebration and strode in the same direction, his gear rattling in the peaceful morning air as the drill faded into the distance.

Upon reaching the caliginous entrance, Brekon saw no sign of Kaboo or his TURN.1P mech beyond a meter wide line of ground limestone descending into the abyss. He hadn’t expected Kaboo to wait, but always held out hope that the young one needed some assistance in his endeavors. The two of them had been working in tandem the past 6 months- ever since the peculiarity of the Qiaran Cavern had been discovered. Kaboo had been sent as a student of the Engineers of Erakos, a group dedicated to the advancement of sciences through, well- engineering. Brekon had a love/hate relationship with them but he adored Kaboo so they tended to land in his good graces as a result. Their leader “1P” was always making crazy new machines to make life ‘easier’. The problem with easy was, everyone had to learn these new machines first, keeping their benefits for the few with the patience and know how to use them. And where did people learn how to use these new machines? 1P’s academies and books of course. Brekon glanced over at the ground limestone to his left as he followed its path with short heavy steps into the misty cavern. He shrugged at his own internal musing. Can’t argue with the results though!

The cavern’s mist swirled around him as he descended, reducing the final rays of morning light to nothing more than a memory. Brekon tapped his helm’s Aeon bulb causing it to flicker to life casting neon purple light into the hollow. He was approaching the peculiarity fork. Up until that fateful day about 7 months ago the path would curve right ahead, leading deep into the mountain’s hollow core. But something odd had happened he couldn’t quite explain. He’d yet to tell tiny Kaboo the truth of its discovery for fear of his sanity being questioned though. One day he’d heard his daughter’s voice. Right there, his eyes flicked to the entrance in the wall, walking through the left side of it as a chill ran up his back. He’d been leaving the cavern for the night when a high pitched cry rang through the wall. He remembered pressing his ear against the smooth stone and listening for another 20 minutes before it cried out again. He couldn’t make out the words, but the pitch was right and that’s all he needed to grab his pick and slam its chisel against the rock formation revealing the path he now walked, less about half a ton of Aeon.

The mist congregated ahead, he was approaching sea level.. and the inversion. Turns out the myriad of unrefined energy crystals known as Aeon wasn’t the most spectacular discovery of that fateful day. For when the cavern approached sea level, for some yet undiscovered reason, gravity inverted. To descend it was suddenly necessary to ascend, which made the work that much more complicated. Thus Brekon and Kaboo’s partnership was born. Brekon needed Kaboo and the Engineers to help build him the infrastructure necessary to ascend the depths of the cavern, allowing him to mine more Aeon. The Engineers in turn, needed Brekon’s expertise and guidance to correctly navigate the region and mine the Aeon which powered their machines. Keeping watch over their youngest prodigy was a perk in his opinion. It lent him a sense of purpose and structure to the otherwise unending blur of work keeping his mind off of things.

The miner cautiously approached the inversion which glimmered like a lake freshly found in twilight as the fog dipped in and out of view. Brekon stood on the edge of the rift, making sure his toes dangled off over it, closed his eyes, and fell forward as rigid as could be. The fog parted and filled the void as his body soundlessly fell through it. Brekon opened his eyes a moment later and reached out for the railing as his body rotated with momentum away from the rift. He snagged it and landed a foot on the second stair of the inversion. His stomach turned, but he managed to keep his composure. He’d never gotten used to the feeling, despite the hundreds of trips. With a snappy shake of his head and a small grimace he looked up and ascended the stairs that led deeper.

The stairs trailed seemingly endlessly above him forking off to the left and right where probing paths were mined in the ever increasing search for new Aeon pockets. An hour of exploration was necessary to find the latest grotto he was set to tap. Brekon wheezed heavily as he finally made it to the latest borehole and turned the corner. An aggregate of crystalline stalagmites flooded his vision. Aeon light from his helm danced across the tunnel as it refracted through the polygonal faces of the fuchsia colored gems. Its beauty was undeniable. Brekon tugged on the pickaxe magnetically suspended to his back plate and began to mine away rhythmically.

CLANK, CLANK, CLANK!

Brekon’s mind began to wander as strike after strike the monotonous labor fell to his lower processes leaving room to dream. It’d been just over two years since his daughter’s accident and he found the busywork enough to keep his mind from wandering and reopening the wound, but in these quiet moments flashes of the event snuck through. Brekon blinked slowly in concentration. A flash of thousands of metal beetles projected itself into his vision, slowly turning deep red as they scurried up the wall. He closed his eyes tightly causing them to water and exhaled sharply. When they reopened, the beetles had vanished.

CLANK, CLANK -

"Oh?" Brekon stopped mid-swing as something caught his attention. The crystal he was about to strike was vibrating, no it was shaking, as if it was scared. He could hear it emitting a sweet sound as small glowing shards fell from its- Brekon dropped the pickaxe and fell to his knees. The crystal had eyes. With a gentle touch he pulled the neon pink crystal from its darker counterparts. The crystal, unable to move outside of the occasional frightened shutter stared upward at Brekon, unblinking and pleading.

Brekon felt as if the weight of all the rocks above him fell on his tired shoulders. The Aeon was... alive? How could he not notice? Had he been murdering others of its kind this entire time? His stomach lurched for a second time today as he scanned the bag of crystals he’d previously mined. Each ranging in hue from purple to nearly pink. He saw no signs of life but the shape was unmistakable. They had matched the one he now held in front of him. Frozen, he remembered each time he had mined the Aeon in the mines with sharp force, he felt the earth begin to shake as the sickness overcame him causing him to lose what contents his stomach contained. The miner abandoned the bag of crystal chunks, hoisted the little living Rollet into his pack and hurriedly rushed out the borehole to began his descent to the inversion rift. However, as he approached the railing, a small insect in the middle of the stairway caught his attention.

"A... a Buckybot, here?" he whispered in horror as he firmly picked up the critter. "They should be in the Giant's Throat this time of year, they've never migrated in summer..." His vision flicked back to the scene of thousands of Buckybots scurrying up a wall, his daughter’s cry echoed. *CLINK* Brekon shook his hand instinctually - remembering these creatures devour all metal in their path. The metallic pillbug fell and scurried away. Brekon’s reflective glasses turned downward towards the tiny hole that now bore clear through to his thumb. He gasped. “Kaboo.”

— —

"KABOO!" He shouted as he now ran up the stairs away from the inversion, following the path of freshly ground limestone. Fearing the worst he imagined the tiny little insects devouring his companion's mech in a matter of seconds. Kaboo wouldn’t stand a chance if they swarmed him. “Not this time.” he stated determinately. The cave trembled causing dust to cloud the central tunnel as Brekon increased the pace, making sure to keep the baby Rollet covered from the debris. The TURN.1P mech’s tread veered left suddenly and Brekon followed.

The path opened wide to a deep dark path, that was until Brekon shifted his focus upward to find a massive subterranean body of water levitating just above head level. Brekon held up a hand and touched the suspended water’s clear surface sending ripples far beyond his helm’s light as the lake stretched out hundreds of meters before him. He marveled at the sight and squinted through the clear water spectacle wondering if the planet’s gravity had won some small part of the battle against the inversion. Deep in the water above him a a glimmer of rainbow light caught his attention illuminating a swirling path upward through the water as it curled around the outside of the room. Brekon’s attention shifted to the floor again and saw the crushed limestone went in that direction in as well. “Kaboo!” Brekon yelled as he snapped back to attention and charged towards the path. He glanced down at the baby Rollet and considered whether it could breathe or not, then whispered while gesturing with his hands as if talking to a baby. “Hold your breath little one.” Brekon held a hand over his mouth and took an exaggerated deep breath. The duo ascended up the spiral path into the veil of the lake and soon from head, to shoulder, belt and shoes they were fully submerged. Brekon’s Aeon helm lit the way as they ascended and no sooner than 30 seconds later hot air hit his face once more. Brekon gasped and checked on the little one. An audible phew escaped him as he noted the crystal seemed unaffected by the walkthrough. Above, the new ceiling was littered with blue and and pink stalactites shimmering various neon hues as his helm’s light hit them. The cavernous opening above the lake had a dome-like appearance with one key difference. At the far end of the hundred meter dome from where Brekon now stood a massive vertical cliff rose towards the core of the planet trailing off into darkness. It was at the base of this cliff that Brekon found Kaboo drilling with his TURN.1P mech, dancing back and forth as it bore ever deeper into the cliff-face. Music blared from his mech, resonating through the dome in an acoustically pleasing manner.

Brekon bound towards the mech, his focus darting throughout the roof as he crossed it. He inspected the different colored crystals above, then shifted attention to the cliff face as he reached the mid-point of the room. There was something unsettling about how quietly it soared above his head. Brekon’s Aeon helm shot bright pink light into the recess but at a certain point the fading darkness won over and he could make out no further details. He traced the cliff-face down with his light, crossing over a dark sprawling crack about halfway down the cliff side, then came to rest on Kaboo’s mech, casting a neon shadow that caught the young student’s attention. The music and drilling stopped as Kaboo spun his mech around to look toward Brekon, a drill arm raised and waved in the miner’s direction. *CLINK* Something metallic hit Kaboo’s mech. Brekon’s reflexes caught up and he flicked back upward to the crack in the wall. To his horror it was wriggling unnaturally in a manner no rock before had done. "Kaboo! Look out!"

*CLINK CLINK*

The cacophony of metal on metal increased in frequency as the dark crack on the cliff-face eerily stretched out away from the wall and then dropped. A red light blared to life as the falling Xenobot roared to life.

Time slowed for Brekon who was now a quarter of the dome from Kaboo, running at full intensity. In an instant the TURN.1P mech angled downward and revved loudly - its drill began to propel away from the cliff face. Inside its glass cockpit Kaboo could be seen intensely roaring as he flung the handles of the mech forward, his eyes staring straight ahead at Brekon. Then in a blink of the eye, he was gone. The Xenobot slammed into the ground where TURN.1P had just been. An avalanche of Buckybots sprayed from the titan’s impact at high velocity and the cavernous dome shuddered. Brekon was thrown off balance and tumbled hard as Buckybots whizzed past him, every once in a while impacting his hard armor. A crystal jostled from the ceiling crashed next to him, then another. The Xenobot redirected its flow of sentient elements until it towered far above the downed Brekon.

RWAAAAARH!

A piercing scream of metal on metal echoed in the domed chamber as crystal after crystal exploded against the ground sending flashes of brilliant magical light into the air with each impact. The strobing effect intensified as the Xenobot raised mechanically swarming arms into the air viciously. Brekon shielded his eyes and frantically scanned the Xenobot’s impact crater for any sign of Kaboo, then back to his pack for any sign of the Rollet he’d been carrying a moment ago. The intensifying lights were too strong however and he buckled under the barrage of sensory overload as bullets of metallic bots impacted against him, flashes of light exploded around him and the cry of the towering Xenobot threatened to burst his eardrums. He screamed out in desperation and covered his ears with his hands as he doubled over and braced for safety.

And then… it stopped. Brekon opened his eyes, now facing away from the Xenobot and saw thousands of crystal shards suspended in mid-air. A long crystalline leg stood next to him. He traced the shape upward finding a long pink and black dress flowing from the creature as it stood defiantly facing the Xenobot. Its slender form appeared to be a woman’s but no- it was transparent in sections and colored like the Rollet he’d been just been protecting. As Brekon’s eyes reached the head of the crystalline goddess he noticed a rich golden crown levitating above her head. The form’s arm shot forward and hundreds of the crystals previously suspended in air zipped towards the Xenobot like a turret.

“CRYSTALS, RISE UP!” a voice echoed in his head as if a fine mead glass had been chimed with a spoon.

The sweet voice echoed in his consciousness as the crystals impacted the Xenobot, exploding in a magical firework show as they exploded through the other side. The Xenobot screamed and crossed its arms over its mass to protect from the volley. The floor began to glow as the broken bits of crystal laying there congregated and rushed towards the Xenobot’s legs, digging under them at the last moment. The Xenobot exploded its arms outward in an X shape sending a wave of shrapnel towards the newly arrived Roserine who blocked the attack with a wall of crystals she summoned from the floor. The Xenobot intensified its attack, sacrificing hundreds of Buckybots from its lower extremities to barrage the crystalline challenger. Soon the broken TURN.1P mech revealed itself from beneath the behemoth. Brekon’s heart sank as he glimpsed its condition making note of the shattered glass dome and eviscerated central drill. The floor crystals swarmed the TURN.1P mech and crept along its surface protecting what was left in a bubble of transparent armor.

The Xenobot roared defiantly as its barrage intensified, cracking the crystal wall Roserine had summoned. It lifted the shielded TURN.1P mech and slammed it into the wall like a great hammer, shattering the defensive ploy. Kaboo’s body ragdolled from the broken shield, landing with a sickening thud next to Roserine.

“LEAVE NOW!” the glass voice rang in Brekon’s head. Brekon scrambled to his feet and made for Kaboo as Roserine constructed two shields of crystal, one on each hand and began to deflect the incoming attacks. Every few deflections she summoned yet more crystals from the ceiling above to rain down and pierce the looming death machine. Brekon reached young Kaboo and hoisted him into his arms. He was badly injured and broken but was still breathing. Brekon turned and ran towards the lake with all his might as clangs of collisions rattled behind him. But just as quickly as they had started, they stopped. Brekon slowed curiously and looked back to see a small string of Buckybots slithering upward from the colossus into the dark void above them. Their color fading to red as they ascended causing his blood to run cold. The bulk of the Xenobot warped up the tether line into the ceiling and Roserine dropped her defenses, bounding for the duo of them in long graceful strides. “HE’S INJURED, THERE IS LITTLE TIME.” her voice rang loudly in his mind. The trio dashed towards the lake. Half way… three quarters… “HURRY!” The Roserine persisted as panic shattered her glass voice. *CLANK* Brekon glanced upward in time to see the ceiling filling with blood-red veins of slithering Buckybots. They leapt for the lake, crystals forming around them as a bubble encased the trio.

*SPLASH*

The shimmering bubble hit the water as a sound that could only be described as cannon fire rang outside the enclosure. Brekon looked upward to find the now glowing Roserine holding her hands out towards the bubble’s edge as hundreds of hot red Buckybots blasted through the shield in chaotic explosion of shrapnel. Brilliant pings of color flashed all over as dozens of the mechanical bullets pierced the miner’s armored body. Brekon’s strength failed and he slouched to one side, staining Roserine’s cloak in the process. His vision blurred harshly and in his final moments, he peered upward through the gored roof where three colossal red Xenobot now towered above them. A deafening screech rippled the water surrounding the raft as a tripodal claw began to form between them. Roserine weakly lifted her hands up to block the incoming attack, but to no avail as it crashed downward through the trio - forcefully plunging them deep into the levitating lake.

The cave stood silent for a moment, then the water vibrated a final time as the Xenobots triumphantly rang out in victory. Buckybots from around the dome were summoned back to the central core as the great Xenobots loomed towards the cliff face, sweeping crystals out of their way as they ascended in long slithering strides back up into the depths of the planet’s recess.

Brekon’s body sank, still holding young Kaboo as his final breath bubbled from him. Roserine’s color began to fade quickly as the central orange gem affixed to her chest drained and the translucent sickness spread outward through her limbs. She rigidly pulled her legs close and slowed to a still as the color drain slowly crept up her neck. Just as the transformation was about to complete, a fitting duo of brilliant tears escaped her eyes as they soon too faded to nothingness.

The water was pitch black save the tears that twirled in the darkness, shimmering with a light of their own. They crashed into each other, a flash of light. Then again. Again even as the tears’ points found each other and blended together forming an inverted heart.

A pulse emanated from it stilling the water adjacent to it as bright cyan wings developed on either side of the crystalline heart. The wings fluttered briefly righting the heart. And so, the first Regemerate had been formed. It began to spin, drilling deeper into the lake as it approached the sinking bodies of the deceased. Its wings angled to increase the velocity of its spin as cracks began to form along its surface and the water around it began to whirlpool.

Brekon approached the lower edge of the lake and dropped out of the body of water with a heavy crash. Sending Kaboo flying from the miner’s arms he slammed to the smooth limestone next to him. Roserine was next as a fetal positioned mass emerged from the dark liquid and too crashed to the terra, her wet cloak slapping wetly against the limestone as her statuesque body situated.

Above them the Regemerate spun increasingly faster as it approached the veil. The whirlpool above it now stretching meters upward as the lake threatened to escape its precarious gravity and flood the hall. The fissures on the Regemerate deepened as its speed increased revealing a blindingly bright interior that exploded with a shockwave of fuchsian glitter the moment it hit the air beneath the lake. A glimmer rained down upon the trio, immediately fusing skin and crystal back together, healing them instantly of their wounds.

*COUGH COUGH*

Kaboo was the first to open his eyes. Dazed and confused he fumbled around for his mech and discovered only Brekon who blinked slowly in his direction. “Little one!” Brekon sobbed. He snap the should clasps on his armor, freeing himself from it and smothered the student with a grateful embrace.

They turned. Roserine was righting herself, wiping the liquid from her smooth cloak and looking fearfully upward into the lake. She towered above the two of them with a posture befitting royalty, then shifted her attention to them and nodded with a clever smile. “We should be going.” she whispered into their minds.

“How did you-?" Brekon started, but Roserine cut him off with a sharp hand forward and a point upward. “Right… come on Kaboo.” he motioned for the boy who hopped up his arm and rested behind the miner’s head, legs wrapped around him as he held the miner’s helm tightly for balance.

— — —

Soon the trio quietly reached the inversion which Roserine effortlessly bound through, performing an expertly timed flip as she sprung to the other side. Brekon followed shortly after, same old stomach lurch but he couldn’t be bothered after what had just transpired. Gravity righted itself as he silently fell through to the other side. Roserine caught his hand and pulled him safely from the veil.

Roserine’s voice at last rang into his mind again. “The things you saw today, they are not of here. You saw the dark shine correct?”

Brekon was having trouble understanding her word choice and shook his head. Roserine projected an image into his mind, it was the cliff face, but this time from her perspective. The colors were different, ones revealed themselves that Brekon had never seen before. The scene panned upward towards the core of the planet and that’s when Brekon saw it. Roserine held her arms up and angled them towards each other forming a large triangular shape in front of her face.

For the briefest of moments the vision in his mind’s eye and her arms intersected as the vision subsided and comprehension sank in. “It was a void portal.” Brekon stated in amazement.

“Void.. Portal.” Roserine chimed the words back, letting them echo and vibrate in their minds as she grasped for its meaning. “Yes.”

She positioned herself back over the inversion veil and continued.

“My sisters and I are many, but we are too weak in our current state to face those terrors again. I alone have been freed from the confines of the world and allowed to flourish, thanks to you. Others will need to be freed as well if we are ever to hold back the intruders from entering this realm.” She gestured around. “I’ll return and rescue as many as I can from their confinement.” She nodded towards Brekon. “Thank you for showing me the compassion of the uplanders. Your story will become legend amongst the crystals beneath this mountain.”

Brekon reached behind him, snapped his pick off its magnetic holster and held it out towards Roserine. “I’m truly sorry for ever hurting your kind. If-” his voice caught. “If I had known.” 

Roserine stopped him with a gesture. “Those sisters were not yet ready. I feel I am the first of our kind to emerge, but our time is short if what we saw is the calamity those… yes.. Void Portals can bring. I will awaken my kin until we outnumber even the largest army of invaders.” She pointed at the two of them. “For your part, I will allocate a number of us to power your machines, but you will no longer mine my sisters as you have. There are other, far less destructive ways we can work together to defeat this evil. Return to me in 30 suns time and I’ll show you the true power of the sisters of the deep.” she concluded proudly.

“I’ll be here with an army of my own.” Brekon promised and raised his extended pickaxe to his forehead. Kaboo must have had the same instructions projected into his mind for he saluted the queen as well. She leaned backwards, and then was gone. The inversion veil’s fog silently succumbing to her presence, then reforming as if nothing had happened.

“Well little Kaboo…” Brekon chimed looking up over his shoulders into the young student’s bright eyes, “It’s time we got to work.”