NOVEL NEXT 2.26 Job on the Cob
A little over three hours later the trio found Salazar snoring loudly in the new cot, and even he had to admit that the upgrade made a difference. The others had stepped away to buy some food from the PSIkers, all of which was made from their corn harvest — roasted corn, corn chowder with bamboo shoots, corn bread, and bags of popcorn for snacks. After they ate, and everyone mutually complained how any food that wasn't corn required Church membership, Ricky returned to guarding their ride while the rest stood at the edge of the cornfield clearing. The Sun had dipped below the stalks, and their leaves scattered the last rays into dancing points of natural light. It would have looked beautiful, if not for the monk glowering at the party.
Phase Initiate Hadder was either a human with an abnormally large head, or an unnaturally tall amalgam. He showed just as many mutations as the other monks Tapper had seen up close, but unlike the others in his order Hadder did not carry an air of peace. Instead he walked with a hump on one shoulder and a chip on the other, sparse clumps of oily hair hanging limp over facial features that were skewed off-center just enough to appear uncanny. His mouth opened at a diagonal slant, one eye was noticeably larger than the other, and a brace made from cobwood held his left arm in place. He could still use his left arm, but it appeared to lack any bone structure and writhed like a tentacle within the brace.
"Is this everyone working the night shift?" Hadder snarled. Tapper assumed that a speech impediment impacted his tone, because every word he said came out as a snarl. "Whatever, not like you care. You normies are here for some easy cash, but there isn't much corn left at night. You're really here to cut cobwood and keep the field from growing any bigger." Hadder waved his good hand at the cracked tarmac directly behind his feet, and upon closer inspection Tapper could visibly track new shoots working their way up at the edges. "No one ever wants to do this shit more than once, but if you want to get paid then you'll get to work."
Tapper shot up a hand and said, "Excuse me, Mister Hadder, but the job listing mentioned something about a bonus rate for special ears of corn?"
"Jeweled corn and glow corn. You'll know it if you see it, but you won't see it unless you're willing to crawl around inside the cornfield. Now screw off and leave me alone." Hadder stomped off around the perimeter, leaving the other three to their own devices.
"Well, if nothing else I can say that Mister Hadder makes Salazar look downright pleasant in comparison," Tapper chimed.
Salazar gave him a long look and huffed. Tapper couldn't see any of Salazar's face through his gas mask, but the body language was clear. "I'm going to listen to a podcast and ignore you now." He tapped a finger on the side of his mask and walked off in the opposite direction, leaving the other two to their own devices.
"Was that you trying to be funny?" Phanya asked, quirking her head to study the robot. Tapper slouched and admitted that, yes, he was still struggling with the concept of friendly insults, and Phanya patted him on the shoulder. "Don't sweat it Taps, guys like Sal are always grouchy. Though I really wish we could, like, rent an ax or something. What am I supposed to do with this?"
To demonstrate, Phanya grabbed at a corn stalk and pulled. The bamboo-like stalks were nearly as thick as her wrist and bent easily, but refused to break no matter what she tried. Tapper perked up at the opportunity to help and his left hand folded into itself, forming a serrated drill bit. "As you said Phanya, sometimes it is beneficial to be the equipment."
The two quickly fell into a rhythm where Tapper used his drill hand to sever a corn stalk at ground level, which Phanya grabbed and tossed into a pile behind them. Sawing back and forth with just the tip of his cybernetic limb without any magic was slow going against the tough stalks, but Tapper determined that using the Drill spell to speed up the process would not be a sufficient return of mana investment. Spell or no spell, if he plunged his entire drill into the stalk then the fibrous plant tissues would tangle his fingers and slow them down even more. Partially because Tapper kept retching.
A single Drill Spray spell would absolutely work, even at the lowest success level that Tapper could manage, but he feared that would work too well and cut a deep swath into the cornfield. The "field" did not have any manufactured flooring that Tapper could see, and he did not want to find out if the vague mat of knotted vines could support his weight if he needed to venture inside. His deep emotional desire to not enter the cornfield may have also biased Tapper's calculations.
But Phanya didn't complain about the slow work, and the conversation slowly faded into silence. Companionable silence instead of awkward silence, to Tapper's quiet delight, and he focused on cutting in neat 10-meter increments as the wind picked up. Air whistled over the dunes hiding the cornfield from the world, blowing through the stalks and filling the air with a chorus of rustling leaves. Tapper paused midway through a cut, surprised that he found the sound so pleasant. Despite coming from an organic source it sounded almost like crinkling his favorite plastic bag, and the white noise slowly smothered his concerns like a comfortable embrace.
Except, when did Tapper start to desire any sort of embrace?
[Awareness save vs Charm: Success!]
[Status effect lost: Charmed]
Tapper snapped upright, and the chorus quieted to a whisper. He wasn't sure how long he had stood frozen, bent over with this head and shoulders inside the cornfield, but night had fully fallen and floodlights on tall stands bathed the perimeter in harsh tones. The system said he beat the status effect but he still felt a lingering mind fog, and before he could wonder why a shot of adrenaline sharpened his mind against panic's edge.
"Phanya? Phanya, where are you??"
The wind blew harder to drown out Tapper's voice and the cornstalks all swayed as if to grab at him. For a moment the his fear response threatened to overwhelm and Tapper froze himself, willingly, to clamp down on his emotions. In that brief respite Tapper stared straight ahead, and for a split second amid the swaying stalks he saw an unmistakable neon orange elbow pad. Emotions roiled again, this time confusion mixing with panic and a dash of anguish. Why, why would she choose to go in there?
"Hello? I require assistance over here!"
Even at max volume, Tapper doubted that he would be heard over the cacophony of leaves. Tapper also knew he'd get lost if he entered the horrible organic mess of stalks and vines, but if he left for help then he would lose track of Phanya. Then inspiration hit him with an emotional spark of satisfaction: He merely had to keep track!
Tapper tapped his own chest and quietly said, "Track." He felt the mana swell in his chest, looping down his arm before blooming in the same spot. The last time he used this spell was by accident, so he made the spell take the long way to ensure his intention was clear. And he knew it worked, but Tapper still ratcheted his head around and took a few awkward steps to confirm that he was now being tracked. A thick line floated in the air behind him, the same bold green as his system messages. He didn't know if anyone else could see it, but he felt confident that he could hold the spell active for as long as necessary.
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Holding that spell was also the only factor that he felt confident about.
"This is not my desired type of adventure," Tapper mumbled to himself, and he marched forward.
The cornfield closed in on Tapper the instant he crossed the threshold, both physically and emotionally. While the stalks on the border grew straight upwards thanks to the constant pruning, those deep within and out of reach grew out of control. Here they grew in every direction and constantly twisted together, forming both footholds and tripping hazards in equal measure. He stumbled frequently at first but Tapper's ARM feat took over, using all limbs to keep him mostly upright, and it quickly became the only reason Tapper could keep moving at all. Not only was the path treacherous enough to challenge Tapper on a good day, at present he could not think straight about anything.
It was the rustling. Tapper saw through the saccharine siren call of white noise, but once he fully entered the cornfield its rustling leaves became oppressive and numbing. The noise wormed through Tapper's thoughts as an unrelenting, pervasive hiss that sounded almost like whispering voices just beyond his capacity to comprehend. He could feel that something was speaking to him, if only he could listen close enough, but his language module never detected words of any human language. What it did detect was an odd frequency, playing on a constant pattern in the chaos and outside the range of human hearing. Tapper couldn't focus enough to ponder what the signal meant, but he could direct his processor to record and invert the signal.
Tapper started to hum a low, warbling drone to himself, and he instantly felt better. He didn't feel good, and the air still pressed down around him, but instead of a mental downpour Tapper now walked under an acoustic umbrella of his own voice. His mind cleared, freeing him to fully appreciate the mundane terrors of a forest at night. The twisting corn canopy choked out any ambient light, and the tight beams from his eyes threw sharp shadows in every direction.
How long had he been walking? The Track spell still trailed behind him, but Tapper couldn't follow the trail for more than a meter before it vanished into the thicket. No time to double back, in his blind walking Tapper lost track of Phanya! He saw a faint glowing up ahead so he hurried forward against his mounting anxiety, if he had accidentally crossed the entire cornfield then he could reorientate and try again.
Instead, he stumbled into a small clearing. A thick mat of vines formed the floor in rolling mounds, free of any corn or rustling leaves, save for a single stalk growing in the center. The single stalk grew a single ear of corn that glowed a gentle amber of the Harvest Moon, shining in the dark like a streetlight manifest of nature. It was beautiful, it was welcoming, and it had trapped Phanya.
She sat motionless on a mound, propped up as if she had found a seat for a break and then simply never got back up. Tapper rushed to her side and checked for signs of life; he didn't have medical sensors, but as a bartender he at least had programming to determine if someone was passed out drunk or worse. And Phanya was still breathing, shallow and quick but alive. Nothing in Tapper's programming could explain why her eyes were blank, cloudy gray voids, but his witchly instincts knew it meant that she was held in place by a spell.
"Phanya? Phanya, you're under a spell!" No response, even when he shook her. The leaves in her lap rustled and Tapper realized that Phanya wasn't simply sitting on the ground, instead vines had blanketed her legs and crawled up her forearms. The floor was slowly but surely engulfing her, and at seeing his friend threatened Tapper burned away his lingering fear. He tore at the vines but found resistance where some had taken root in Phanya's very flesh, digging under the skin on her arms and legs.
"Unhand her, vile weeds! Worry not Phanya, it'll be quick like a bandage!" Tapper shouted, mostly for his own sake, and yanked a vine off her arm with full force. Phanya's eyes cleared as she screamed in shock, and punched Tapper right in the face. He rolled with the strike and tumbled to the ground, tangling himself in vines that wasted no time in trying to ensnare him.
"Tapper? What's going on?" Phanya asked, her voice bleary as if she had suddenly woken from a deep sleep.
"You're okay, Phanya! You were merely under a spell! Fight against nature's embrace!" Tapper waved his one free back spindle, trying to keep her from panicking while he pulled himself free.
"Nature…?" She looked down, and instantly started to hyperventilate. "Oh god, ow, it's under my skin! Ow, ow, fuck, GET OFF ME!"
Phanya's turquoise markings flared with energy, and bright blue light washed over the clearing. Tapper could always see the elegant designs that swirled down her arms and up her cheekbones, as robots needed to identify members of the elite numan race on sight. But most humanoids couldn't, and Tapper had never seen her swirls emit light on the visible spectrum before. The vines holding her obeyed and immediately let go, receding into a flat carpet with a gentle ripple, and Phanya jumped to her feet. She looked at her arms in horror, and Tapper couldn't tell whether she was regarding her own numan markings or the bloody pinpricks.
"Phanya! Are you injured?" Tapper shouted, and Phanya shook herself back to attention.
"I'm okay, I'm okay," she said, though Tapper still wasn't sure if she was responding to him or reassuring herself. "Just a few points of HP, I'm okay. Oh shit, Taps!" She rushed to his side and helped pull the last few vines off, before giving Tapper a hand up. "I'm sorry Tapper, are you alright?"
"Do not worry about me, my friend. I don't have skin in the first place, so the vines mostly just tickled!" Tapper said, every word radiating joy that Phanya was unharmed. "Now let us depart this clearing posthaste, just follow my track and —"
"Wait." Phanya held up a hand, and pointed it at the glowing ear of corn. "That fucking thing drew me in here somehow. And I bet I'm not the first one. I don't know if those creepy monks know, but I'm not leaving it here."
Tapper started to protest, until he saw her stance squaring up for combat. Normally this meant holding her fists up like a boxer, but now she held one hand out with her fingers pointing together in a rigid wedge. Phanya sliced her fingertips across the thick cornstalk, shouting to put extra effort behind the attack, and tore out a jagged slash of plant matter. It wasn't enough to fell the corn, but she followed up with a second swipe of her other hand to leave a gaping X mark on the bark, and a haymaker punch finished the combo. The cornstalk cracked, groaned, and slowly toppled to the ground.
"Most impressive, Phanya!" Tapper complimented.
"Yeah, thanks. Stupid corn," she responded, and kicked the stump to vent the last remnants of her anger. He stepped over to pick up the lone ear of corn, and noticed that the husk managed to close back up over the vegetable before it fell. He also noticed that the sound of rustling leaves had also returned, louder than before.
"Uh, Phanya? I highly encourage you to follow me out now." A gust of wind sent ripples over the matted carpet and more vines lurched up to grab at Tapper. Unlike the tickling of their first attempt, these vines contained strong branches that pulled with a strangely human-like grip, and dread pooled in Tapper's torso. He slowly looked downwards and the light of his eyes illuminated a bleached skeleton intertwined beneath the vines, its hand holding fast to his ankle. Tapper screamed, Phanya joined in, and together they tore his leg free. The matted ground beneath their feet started to shift and ripple, and Tapper shifted with Phanya behind his back. The green trail to safety floated in front, and Tapper's spritzer whipped around.
"I tire of this calamitous confound cornhole! DRILL SPRAY!"