In a moment, there's a truck - horn blaring, light blinding - pain as it slams into her and her friends, then blissful blank black.
She wakes up in a small steel room, in a body not her own. She is a statue, precisely cut from stone and covered in circular glyphs that channel a blue energy down her limbs. She has sensation, but it is blunt and dull. She can't move.
Nem'rea mamria-SHALDEA mimset, sings a artificial-sounding voice.
Physical-interface remote-ADMIN install, something in her mind translates for her.
The stone melts away, reduces to a generic human bodyplan. Sensation floods in. She still can't move, though.
Nem'rea mamria-SHALDEA-ki mimsai!
Physical-interface remote-ADMIN-Heartsong update!
Cyan hair blossoms on her head and grows to the correct length, and her body shrinks and slightens, going from a generic neuter body to her body, correct in every detail. There's a shiver of cold air across her delicate parts as her sex forms from blank skin.
minri li!
Tutorial Execute!
NAME: Topaz
USERLEVEL: Local Admin (Energy)
HYMN: •••
~Anthem of the World Engine~
Administrative Body v10.7.4
STATUS: •••••
CORE DRAW: ◘◘◘◘◘
Heartsong Analysis:
INT: •••
WIS: ••
CHA: ••••
Heartsong: 『Cherry Gum』
Grants endless endurance as long as excitement / lust continues.
Passion Core: ◘
The voice that was singing continues in what seems to be English.
"Welcome to Heartsong, Remote Administrator. You have been reincarnated here in order to repel the Corruptors, beings of twisted Heartsong that seek to overthrow the Hymn. This is a prerecorded message; I cannot know at what time this will find you or in what place. But you have been called here and given administrative access in order to do what we cannot. There is a manual of Hymnos in your user docs if you sing it. Good luck. Adzi, First Singer of the Hymn."
She blinks a little, and spends a moment catching her breath.
This body is... oddly relaxing? It was hard to describe properly but it was right and she could read it easily enough. She had no idea what was going on but being able to move would help with pretty much anything she wanted to do s-so...~
Jynn!
She incanted one of the most basic spells on the list - just a simple shockwave of energy around her that should hopefully dislodge whatever effect was holding her still.
She blinks a little.
Okay. This isn't some fey bargain thing, they don't need permission, and it wouldn't give me access to a system like this if it meant me ill, probably, and if what it is saying is accurate then... I should really get to work.
An affirmation spills from her lips.
She stands, and paces around the room.
...What even is she supposed to do? It wasn't like she had a home out of here and she didn't know what would be outside this room but well...
She breathed out, and clasped her hands together.
Maybe the Hymnos displays have something for this...?
She queues up the basic console and sees if there's any earmarked resources on what this world is like.
She hums softly.
So they are less organizational administrators and more the sort of system admin that is there for 'debugging', then?
Is there a reason on file for why the summons tend to happen once every thousand years, and maybe a list of files on each of the summonees that she could look through? Finding information on someone with her powers could be useful sometime...
Though that does make her wonder if there's any special ability to detect Corruptors granted directly to ADMINs - if there's a planet full of things happening at any given time, it seems like the scope of it all is to say the least problematic for any investigations...
She fidgets a little.
...Now what is she supposed to do?
She's probably alone, for now, and she doesn't know how she's supposed to get basic food and water and...
Breathe
...hough she suspects that whatever her body has can deal with that and hypothetically she can probably run on whatever power source is used for all of... this without respect to conservation laws and...
Breathe.
She's under-equipped and lonely and feeling helpless and...
Breathe.
She wipes her slightly teary eyes.
She might as well page through her stat sheet's linked man pages - and maybe she supposes try some more general queries...? Even if it doesn't have a basic 'welcome to the planet' package - there's got to be something - some read on the patterns of energy of this world, anything linked on fighting Corruptors or what they are like or some innate system thing that she missed, or at least more information then she got from just learning the song-suite it gave her initially.
Her chest heaves, a little, and leans back against the metal walls.
Status is HP. Int, Wis, and Cha are as expected.
Core Draw is like inverse MP: it measures how much you owe the SYSTEM in spent CPU cycles and energy. If your Core Draw maxes you can no longer cast.
The Passion Core is how you clear your core draw: by falling into a certain flow state, common to sex and artistic work, you can produce mana and repay your debt to the SYSTEM.
A Heartsong is your soul, more or less. When a soul is executed by the system as a program, it gives permanent personality-based magic to the individual whose soul it is.
There is a further entry on how Corruptors break down into four types: Seducers, Destroyers, Tormentors and Infiltrators. Seducers attempt to hack the machine via the intimate lives of users and admins. Destroyers and Tormentors threaten what is dear or seek to gain control of the physical hardware. Infiltrators try to use the system itself to subvert it.
There is a song-suite in the advanced section that allows you to teleport to a designated point.
Oh that's interesting...
If only she had somewhere to teleport to.
She let her face flush, a little, at the idea of the passion core. There's going to be so much fun~ to be had figuring out what works best for that!
There's a lot of ways that you can delve into being artsy and bright and playful, but she's not sure what the depth she needs is and how much it means anything if she spends a few seconds utterly transfixe, or bops occasioanlly in and out of it.
And... the section of the adminstrative body is at least a relief. That's a whole load of things that she can stop worrying about.
Is there any sort of function for detecting mana production at range...? Hopefully she could find the sort of people with power or knowledge that she could try to explain this all to, or even just set up a little camp here with what she was learning about the wonderful things she could do with written Hymnos!
If there isn't, she takes a quick survey of the land around this place, and sees if she can note down the coordinates of this box for later - there might be some 'forensics' to do, or there might be something otherwise usefully special about this spot...
She appears nude in the public square. A passing woman with dark frizzy hair wearing a cotton dress is awed and scandalized. After taking a moment to collect herself, she starts in: "I know you have to charge your Core," she says, "but there are children around! This is a public place! Can you please not just appear naked?"
She flushes hard.
"Oh I'm so sorry. Just a little new here and not entirely sure how to do this and...*
She flushes and covers herself up with her arms as best she can, and looks to see if she can find a more private place to figure something out.
...Please tell me that there's some nice way to at least look like she has clothes in her spellsuite.
She could always teleport back where she came from, but that would mark her Core Draw up to four; she'd be unable to get back out without triggering her Passion Core.
There are some nearby bushes that would at least give her some cover.
A fast skim through her Hymnos manual says she can summon a shirt and pants for two more Core Draw. If she wants shoes, socks and underwear too that'll max her Core Draw at five.
She'll do that, she thinks, as she drags her limp hand up and around her palm, brushing it as she mutters the song.
A simple dress of a darker blue matching her hair forms around her.
...Deep breath.
How can she be productive?
There's got to be something that she can do - if nothing else, she could try working on some inscription thing or poke more at the details...?
She double-checks for any information about detecting corruption and or anything she can find about what this sort of combat looks like...
If there's the written system, there's got to be something that she can do to give herself an edge when the time comes and...
She flushes harder, burying her face in her hands.
If she's going to be needing to recharge her passion core a lot, she might as well make a vibrator for efficiency's sake.
There's a virus scan chant that scans a specified volume for the presence or absence of the virus.
There doesn't seem to be a combat manual.
The Passion Core docs did mention that masturbation was less efficient than sex. Not by how much, though. She'll just have to try it and find out, won't she.
She smiles, and closes it back up with the same command.
Alright so...
Masturbating without lube isn't ideal but she doubts that it will be all too easy to ensure that she has it on hand and she's stressed and that doesn't really help but...
She breathes out.
She can do this.
She gently runs her hands down her hips.
...She wonders what if the 'adminstrative body' has any 'special features' for playing around with this...~
She shudders and trembles, and thinks about what it was like to have her see and scold her like that, about how nice it is to have all of these details there, and how she probably doesn't have to worry about her nails chipping or breaking or otherwise being a problem.
Her fingers glide down across her sex, fingernails gently sliding across the smooth flesh.
Is there any way to get some sort of read out for how close the passion core is to engaging...?
She thinks about how nice it'd be, to be in a place where passion is so rewarded. About how nice it is to have this heat rise up in her chest, about the way that her tongue swirls around in anticipation in her drooling mouth, about how nice it is to rattle off all the reasons that she's warm and getting warmer.
There's more fingers tending to her sex now, stroking the sensitive sweaty skin around it, sliding and reaching down to brush her pussy's walls.
She grins broadly, and starts rubbing more and more firmly, fingers sliding around to let fingernails and fingertips both rub and stroke exquisitvely across her, as she gasps and pants and wobbles in place, moans occasionally interrupting her revery, causing her to back to arch to project a louder moan.
...She knows there's decent odds that it's only going to work when she cums but...~
No reason not to try something else out!
She slams her hand home inside her, thrusting hard into her tight cunt, dripping and clenching and mewling and forcing herself to stand up right as tears of happiness run down her face and she forces herself to the edge.
She can~
She twirls around in place and slams her lubed up hand deep inside her pussy, this time not even bothering to hold back to the edge, screaming out exquisite orgasms again and again and again, indulging in the feeling of her breasts bouncing along as she pistons her hand in and out and in out as she mercilessly fingerfucks herself.
She laughs a little.
"Something like that!"
She smiles despite herself.
"But beyond that..."
Kaldea-anske rel'he'ar rel'he Topaz Area.
And before her, her status screen appears.
NAME: Topaz
USERLEVEL: Local Admin (Energy)
HYMN: •••
~Anthem of the World Engine~
Administrative Body v10.7.4
STATUS: •••••
CORE DRAW: ◘◘◘◘◘
Heartsong Analysis:
INT: •••
WIS: ••
CHA: ••••
Heartsong: 『Cherry Gum』
Grants endless endurance as long as excitement / lust continues.
Passion Core: ◘
They go down a short hallway, and then Clematis opens a door. They come out into a wide common room and kitchen with a few people sitting around working up Hymnos and talking. There's a small stage, and a series of quite beautiful paintings hung on the walls.
Clematis heads for a dark-haired woman sitting by herself. "Hannah!", she calls.
...She deflates, just a little.
"I have a lot of them - really. I was summoned here and I don't have a living arrangement and the guidance that the System gives is both really helpful and really really vague, and I really don't know... anything about tis world, beyond the sort of thing that you might see in the back cover hype introduction of this place. I didn't even know there were humans here until I accidentally teleported near one naked!"
She laughs awkwardly.
...She strains for a moment to speak.
"I don't know. I'm not even entirely sure that I can have food, physically, and I don't know what I can have safely, or if I can even justify ever bothering to spend the time to do this, when I have my heartsong and admin features. I don't know if I should bother thinking about that or eating or tasting or enjoying or even bother checking since I'm sure there's something that I could do to fix that sort of problem with some basic biological manipulation. I don't know what I'm supposed to care about or what it means to be summoned, or just... how I could ever do well enough to protect a whole world from a threat that I really don't have a great way to detect or understand."
...She does a very small nod then starts eating.
"That's the problem. I don't have the capacity to scan more then this town for a core draw - it's free of corruption, as best that can detect, anyways - but I'm really confused about how the summoning system even works. Even assuming that there's no special advantage in age resistance, why wouldn't there just always be one, or why wouldn't I be summoned to set up defenses decades before it happens and-d..."
She breathes out.
"It's just a lot to have dumped on me, in the moment, and there's so much that nothing is stopping from happening, as far as I know."
...She takes the time to eat more now, bites overlapping with each other so she doesn't have to have the time to think about what to say when her mouth is too full to gracefully talk.
She breathes and nods.
..."Okay."
Her shoulders slump down a little as she keeps on eating.
"...Gosh it's kind of hard to even know what to ask - I'd appreciate a room to crash in, or something like that, and it would probably be a good idea to do some sort of diagnostic test for my skills if you have that sort of thing but..."
She shakes her head.
"Need to breathe first, I think."
"Oh I'm sorry..."
She sighs a little downcastedly.
"But why wouldn't you? Practicing a language natively is one of the best ways to learn it, I think I saw that casting required intent and... What does happen if the SYSTEM tries to implement some invalid hymnic code? Like, if I just listed off a grocery list without escaping it, what would happen? I can't figure that most sentences would compile into a valid program."
"Sort of!"
"I don't really know precisely how this all works but I think the very first thing that I need to do is disseminate the virus scan program - if you don't have it already so that we can be prepared. Then..."
She smiles, still a little shaky in her arms.
"There's a lot in my head about how to manipulate energy, and my Heartsong alongside my body, is, under the right conditions, a source of a pretty impressive amount of energy. If I can just... keep recharging my core, there there's probably tons of things that I can do that others just can't, and there's methods in my head for all sorts of enchantments that can help us get more ready. I probably need to train in combat, for practicalities sake, and make some stuff personally due to the core draw requirements and these new instincts. From there... I guess we just see where that goes? I'll try to help with anything that comes up. of course, and there's likely some training I need for things that aren't just dumped into my soul but..."
"Topaz! I... don't really use a last name, though 'Area' works nicely!"
Kaldea-anske rel'he'ar rel'he Topaz Area, she sings, and her status is clear to Hannah.
NAME: Topaz
USERLEVEL: Local Admin (Energy)
HYMN: •••
~Anthem of the World Engine~
Administrative Body v10.7.4
STATUS: •••••
CORE DRAW: ◘◘◘◘◘
Heartsong Analysis:
INT: •••
WIS: ••
CHA: ••••
Heartsong: 『Cherry Gum』
Grants endless endurance as long as excitement / lust continues.
Passion Core: ◘
Satura-anske rel'he'ar rel'he... Hannah Ashford.
NAME: Hannah Ashford
USERLEVEL: Local Admin
HYMN: •••
~Embers Of Light~
STATUS: •••••
CORE DRAW: ••◘◘◘
Heartsong Analysis:
INT: ••••
WIS: ••
CHA: ••••
Heartsong: 『Wild Girl』
When your Passion Core triggers, it triggers the Passion Core of everyone you're touching.
Passion Core: ◘
"...I don't see it? Your ability to trigger other people's Passion Core shouldn't affect my endurance, or really use it? The limiting factor for mine would be the lastingness of the stimulus or my mood, not anything to do with the activating of my own, though it could certainly help with making it faster in some cases."
She tilts her head a little.
"Oh! I suppose that it's a lot easier to get that sort of Passion with masturbating then having someone help you along, so that could be really helpful~"
She pauses for a moment.
"I'm relatively sure that I can help with your endurance, at least eventually? There's a lot of complicated parts of the body that are difficult to fuel nicely on a purely abstract level, but that's not a total wall, at least for me, as best I can tell, and with all that..."
She lets out a small excited laugh.
"...Yeah."
She laughs a little.
"I'm just not super used to... finding a middle ground, you know? And honestly that was just a start for the sort of thing that could plausibly be really really important but well..."
She tilts her head to nuzzle in closer.
"I don't think that persay the details of my heartsong was the sort of thing that was micro-targetted to be nesscary for this, or anything like that? The summon message made it sound more like it was mostly focusing on having someone who would be compatible with administration and do the job rather then being something that needs that so..."
She blushes softly.
"Honestly, at the very least I should get some non-illusory clothes first."
She laughs at herself a little.
She nods along.
"...I can still barely believe that I could have just... made matter. It's probably a bit ridiculous in terms of core draw but there's a lot that could concievably be useful for. Even if it was limited to just fabrics, I bet the ability to instantly make a hymnic design woven into cloth would be really really useful somewhere."
"Yeah - I guess it depends really on the details of that - I'm just not sure what the real... limits on combat effectiveness are, for hymnos users? There's some things in material science from my world that I could try if it's a general fab, and I'm sure there's some things here that are pretty impractical to create but are somewhat better then other options."
"...Gosh. That really does seem like the sort of thing that ought to be too simple to work against people who understand it and develop a countermeasure but... wow. I remember hearing about heat pump systems with 'efficiencies' in the 500% range, but I have no idea how much that would translate to something like this, especially if it's instant, though I suppose monsters wouldn't have that."
"Yeah... I guess that if you were going to expect that you might be able to set-up something that automatically stilled you or dodged it or messed with the targetting but that seems... difficult. I'm just worried about focusing on things like that because well... I wouldn't expect that the system would summon me to help out with a coming crisis if it was the sort of thing that was properly handleable with something that standard? And there's a lot in my head right now that I think could work on that - there's this ritual that can make a piece of material automatically emit heat that I bet could be at least sorta adapted for thermoregulation, a method for teleporting that might change it, and who knows how much the sort of abstract corruption in the system would be affected by just being heated and/or blown up."
"It's not that - it's just..."
She takes her hand.
"You are a local admin, right? I'm not going to pretend that I know in detail what that means, but everything I've ever heard about administrators is that there's always something that can be done to help things be better, that there's more to do, more people to talk to, more things to handle, more projects that you could be doing, and I want to know how you do it or just..."
She trails off and hums.
"Get a chance to focus on something that isn't that. It's okay if it isn't through you of course, though!"
She laughs shyly, and blushes.
"That's an option! It's just that the way that I know to get past stress blocking out horny is... pretty involved? I don't know if I should list off how I do it but..."
She leans in and kisses her cheek.
"But spending sometime with you close would be quite nice."
She shudders, leaning into the touch, breathlessly sighing.
"I know that it'd be easy for there to be differences in the baseline performance here, but the big thing for me is that my skin feels so... alive. It feels like even the lightest touches might as well be full on loving strokes, and everything just gets so amplified and hot and I can tell that I'm there, that it's not just some facismile of the sensation in my head, that I'm really feeling that it's your hand on my body, my pleading nipple against your soft fingers and..."
She warmly sighs.
"It's perfect."
Hannah laughs softly, her breath washing over Topaz's neck. She nibbles at the soft skin through the illusion, her hands still caressing Topaz' breasts as she grinds her thigh in, pinning her down against the cotton sheets. "And this is just the beginning, of course. We're looking for that space where the sex fills you up to overflowing, and then beyond."
She whispers in Topaz' ear: "Do you want to go there with me?~"