Adrenaline Junkie [Book 2 Complete]

The skirmish continued across the stone floor of the cave.

The green centipede clicked with glee, curling into a tight spring and shooting forward with surprising speed. It rammed headfirst into its sibling's side – not hard, but enough to roll the black one a full spin and leave it flailing legs-up for a second.

With incredible determination, the black centipede recovered itself. It scurried in a tight arc, grabbed a small, dried moss flake in its mandibles from the bottom of Archie's boot, and flicked it toward the green one like a makeshift javelin. It bounced harmlessly off the other's plated back.

Unbothered, the green centipede retaliated by spitting a harmless glob of that hazy green mist. It drifted lazily through the air, only to puff into nothing before it even landed.

The black centipede dodged anyway, purely on principle.

Their little war tumbled across Archie's workspace, skittering past a long, scar-like groove left behind by a minor spatial implosion, weaving between cracks scorched into the stone from failed attempts at stabilizing spatial runes and scripts.

Neither of them had any idea what they were fighting for anymore – if they ever had one.

Pride?

Play?

Some ancient law of twin rivalry?

Archie, still seated against the cave wall with his right wrist balanced on his raised, right knee, didn't seem to notice the dust trails and the poison splotches now decorating his gouged and scarred stone flooring. He was mid-paragraph, lips silently mouthing a passage on "emergent behavior among bonded spirit beasts."

Then something tugged at his focus.

He glanced over finally, sensing motion at the edge of his vision. The green centipede was now lying belly-up, legs curled dramatically like it'd been struck down by fate itself, while the black centipede loomed victoriously a few inches away, tiny mandibles twitching in triumph.

Feeling a set of eyes on them both, they both froze and looked up to see their father staring at both of them.

Archie blinked and released a bellowing laugh as he stared at the "destruction" the two of them had caused throughout the cave.

He smirked at the misshapen, quarter-fingernail-sized clumps of dirt clinging to the wall beside him and scattered across their makeshift battlefield, alongside equally tiny splotches of pale green poison with a pH no harsher than tap water.

The green centipede popped upright instantly, suddenly fine. The black centipede backed up a single step, feigning innocence.

He stared at them for a few seconds, then slowly tilted his head.

As he did so, the green centipede released one last burp of poison, to which the face of the black centipede scrunched up for a moment and flung a small dirt clump to the back of its twin's head using its mana.

Smirking at the now sprawled on the floor green centipede, Archie placed his palm in a chopping motion between the two of them.

Alright, I think I've got nicknames for the both of you until I come up with something more official, Archie thought. The green Glenwyn centipede would be Burpy – fitting, given how loud and frequent its burps were. The black Glenwyn centipede? Lazy – because, compared to its twin, it moved with a slow, methodical calmness.

After a few minutes of mild wrestling, playful climbing, and the occasional half-hearted flick between them, the newly christened Burpy and Lazy finally settled down. They crawled slowly across Archie's outstretched arm – Burpy looping around his wrist twice for no reason at all, while Lazy calmly tested the edge of each knuckle like it was mapping the terrain.

Archie watched them with quiet curiosity, occasionally bringing them pieces of what remained of the Spirit Nucleus' shell and watching them eat it until nothing remained of it.

In many of the documentaries he'd watched back on Earth, every egg-dwelling creature always ate the entirety of their egg in order to fill up on their nutrients, so as a new owner of newly born glenwyn centipedes, it was his duty to ensure they would grow up healthy.

He shifted his posture slightly as both centipedes made one final inspection of their surroundings atop his arm.

Then, without warning, the two of them stilled.

They tilted their heads – again, at the same time. And then, in a flash, they dissolved into light. A pair of streaks, one vivid green, the other deep black, shot forward like tiny arrows, zipping through the air and phasing clean into Archie's chest.

Wha-!

Archie flinched back, eyes widening. The lights had disappeared into his chest. There was no pain that came, nor was there any feelings of resistance, just a sudden warmth by his heart, and then… a tug.

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It was subtle at first. Like someone gently pulling on a thread tied deep within him. But it wasn't physical. It was… deeper… And it felt eerily similar to the time he'd accidentally and stupidly used Spirit Link on the molten red and vibrant green orb within his body that signified his connection to Bralmir.

Did they just…? Archie trailed off as he pressed his hand against his sternum, trying to make sense of the sensation.

…Alright. This is new.

The tug grew firmer. Not painful, not alarming – just… insistent.

Archie let out a breath. Screw it.

He followed it.

His consciousness slipped in a way he couldn't explain – like blinking underwater and surfacing in another place entirely. When he opened his eyes again, the cave was gone.

A vast, misted forest stretched out before him – quiet, green, and mountainous. Towering trees that blotted out parts of the sky, their roots drinking from crystal-clear rivers that carved the land like veins. Mountains made of stone with chunks covered in moss loomed far off in the distance, capped in silver and surrounded around white clouds.

The air smelled rich, clean, and faintly sweet, like morning dew.

"What in the…" He turned in a slow circle before suddenly touching his throat in shock. He could speak in here.

The place was peaceful. But not empty.

Near the base of one of the larger trees, something small darted through the grass, then another. The same familiar glints of green and black, weaving between fallen branches and spiraling roots.

Burpy was already halfway up a moss-covered rock, gleefully chittering as it leapt from one ledge to another. Lazy followed behind at a slower pace, carefully choosing each foothold.

After watching them climb for an unknown period of time, Archie's gaze drifted upwards to see a hazy-looking sun, which surprisingly didn't begin to sting his eyes as he continued to gaze upon it.

"Wait," Archie said to himself as his brows furrowed at the massive orb of red and green above him. "Is that, that thing that I found in my chest just before I met with Bralmir?... Am I in my soulscape or something?"

Archie stared at the massive, somewhat hazy, molten red and vibrant green sun-like orb above him in wonder.

After staring at the hazy, dual colored "sun" above the forest for a lengthy period of time, he then turned his focus back toward his spirit beasts.

With a soft exhale, Archie walked toward and leaned against a nearby tree and let himself slide down until he was sitting cross-legged in the soft grass. "Don't do anything stupid," he called out to the two glenwyn centipedes.

The centipedes ignored him, happily continuing their exploration of the soulscape – Burpy launching itself into a patch of moss, and Lazy curling up beneath a fern, already looking half-asleep.

Archie closed his eyes briefly, letting the quiet of this soulscape settle around him. His eyes scouring the trees and ground to locate where the quad-curse that Seeth'four cast on him.

"-chie!" A familiar voice shouted while shaking his body.

The familiar scent of moss and faint traces of spirit residue clung to the cave air as Archie blinked, pulling himself fully back into the waking world. The soulscape's quiet faded like a half-remembered dream, replaced now with the soft crackling of mana lanterns and the warm murmur of voices further inside the cave.

He didn't need to look up to know who they were.

"Archie, you better not have hatched something cursed," Tim called out from atop his head. "I swear, if they try to bite me-"

"They're not cursed," Aoife interrupted smoothly, already halfway across the cave base and peering down at the two centipedes with bright curiosity. "They're adorable."

"Adorable?" Tim arched a brow, but then one of them, Burpy, skittered up the back of Aoife's gloved hand and paused on her wrist, flicking its antennae playfully toward her cheek. The black one, Lazy, curled gently around her other wrist like a brace. "…Okay, I take it back. That's actually kind of cute. They look like wingless hatchlings – ignoring the hundreds of legs attached to them."

Turning his head to Aoife, who now held both Burpy and Lazy, he signed. 'Yeah. Burpy is the one that's on a permanent sugar high, and Lazy's the one that looks half awake.'

Aoife laughed gently, her hands steady as the centipedes coiled in each palm. "That's what you named them?"

'Temporary,' Archie signed with one hand, with the other holding his Runic Scriber and a mana platform holding up a sheet of steel. "Don't make it a thing."

Tim crouched beside him, watching a prototype runic script begin to etch atop the steel sheet. "This for the teleporter you plan on building?"

'Yeah. This one right here is to prevent the spatial rift it will create from sucking all the air around it, and potentially sucking all the air on the planet' he signed plainly, inwardly smirking as Tim's head reeled back and began to float toward Aoife.

"…I am definitely going to be off planet before you activate that," Tim said dryly.

Across the room, Aoife wandered over to the edge of the entrance where the stone walls sloped into the natural rock of the cave – both Burpy and Lazy crawling atop her cybernetic arms. She tapped one knuckle along the ridge. "Your walls are in dire need of reinforcement. Do you want me to do them?"

'That would be great, thanks,' Archie signed, glancing up from another runic script he was etching into a new sheet of steel.

Aoife nodded and activated Reinforcement of the Depths, her right palm pressing flat against the cave wall. Dark grey lines of mana flared outward from her hand in branching patterns, threading into the stone as it restructured and hardened beneath her touch.

The walls of Archie's third base subtly shifted in texture, stabilizing with each pulse of her magic.

Meanwhile, Burpy and Lazy had crawled to the tops of Aoife's shoulders, antennae twitching with curiosity. The moment Aoife leaned forward to focus on a particularly deep gouged-out section of the wall, the twin Glenwyns leapt from her like tiny, coordinated daredevils, aiming directly at Tim's wings as he glided lazily in the open space above the cave floor.

With a startled grunt, Tim twisted midair, catching the two reckless centipedes with a quick flick of magic. A faint shimmer of blue light surrounded them as they floated in place, held up by a simple levitation spell.

"Yeah… good luck, Archie," Tim muttered, his voice laced with dry amusement as he hovered nearby in his smaller winged dragon form – barely the size of a mid-sized dog but still radiating sharp-eyed presence.

Burpy and Lazy floated gleefully in the air, tiny legs flailing in all directions as they marveled at their sudden flight. Burpy burbled with excitement and released a soft puff of green gas that sparkled faintly in the cave's mana lanterns that Tim purchased for Archie.

Lazy twitched its antennae once, then again, and with a resigned air as it rolled its small eyes at its twin and slowly drifted away from both the offending cloud and twin before curling into a floating nap-ball.

Archie paused in his etching, catching the movement out of the corner of his eye.

He shook his head, lips twitching at the chaos. Signing slowly: 'They're going to be a menace once they learn how to work together.'

"Once?" Tim said, watching the two genwyn centipedes as they floated around the cave, letting them slowly descend to the floor. "I'm pretty sure this is them working together."