Luca DR
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Edge of apocalypse 74
🕑 Added 2023-06-29 22:48:31 +0000 UTCAlbert arrived at the Lair before noon. He found his mother working on the computers in the newly retrofitted Control Room, connecting a multitude of devices and rearranging the many things in there with the help of the sentient building. As soon as she spotted him coming through the door to check up on what she was doing, however, she rose to her feet from beneath a desk and squared him up, hands on her hips.
“Albert? Where were you? You didn’t return my calls. Did you sleep at the village?” She asked, rapid-fire.
Albert weathered the barrage of questions. “Actually, it’s more likely that I’ve slept in a field.”
Albert’s mother stared at him, her eyes widening then narrowing to the point he got a little bit scared.
“Did you drink?” She asked, but the question was more matter of fact than an actual question.
“I didn’t.” Albert said, hands going up in the most innocent gesture he could make. “Fought dryads to the death, and then fainted.”
Mother narrowed her eyes again. Then her gaze finally settled on his ears. She cocked her head. “What about the ears? You don’t think I haven’t seen them, do you?”
“Yeah, long story… to make it short: I planted the seed to save the valley, some dryads tried to kill me, I defeated them and then I fainted. When I woke up my race had changed to half-elf, I had a sudden liking for forests, a forest guardian spirit of some sort thanked me for saving the valley and… oh, right. Marc texted me that he wants to meet. But I don’t think I’m ready just yet. Besides, I am quite busy so I told him that. Yeah.”
Reasonably, Albert’s mother was not quite content with the brief explanation and saw through her son’s attempt at diverting her attention away from the main topic by mentioning Marc. She demanded a more in-depth explanation, and received one.
By the end of it, she looked (at least looked, but it was hard to tell if she actually was) quite relieved that nothing bad had happened to her son, and was listening to him ramble about random stuff.
“You know, I have been so busy with magic and all that’s happened lately that I’ve lost sight of just how strange and fantastical this whole thing is. Magic, elves, a system! I’m a frickin fantasy race now! Do you ever just stop and think about what it all means? It’s like in the stories.”
“I don’t read stories. This is real, Albert. You changed. We need to see what this change did to you. How it affects your behavior. Your neural patterns. You might change even more, not just like plants. What if you become unrecognizable? What if the changes can’t be reverted?”
Albert hummed. She was right. “I’ll submit to your tests. In exchange, you read some novels I tell you.”
Mother cocked her head. She did it quite a lot. “Why?”
“You know: a system, the impeding doom of an apocalypse, elves, magic… this whole thing kinda follows the tropes. More or less. Less. But still, reading the books might enlighten you.” Also, he thought but didn’t say, it should help to calm her about the race change. While at the same time it would probably add even more sources of worry once she realized what tends to happen to Earth in most of the novels he was going to suggest.
“Fine. I will read the books.” She said. “Speaking of tropes, what are you planning to do today? Get a little training in, maybe?”
“Later.” He waved her off. He could swear that he saw her smile for a fraction of a second, as if she was expecting the answer. “I have a couple of things I want to get done. Something tells me that this is going to be the last period of relative peace for a while before a whole new mess happens. Especially with the other side mentioned in the Psionic quest. I want to ask the system for a new daily quest.”
“Right. You might be right about the period of peace coming to an end. Look.”
She pointed at the screens. There was a map there, with lines and dots and a lot of data being visualized.
“What am I looking at?”
She inhaled, crossing her arms. “New event forming. You might have a couple of days, tops.”
“That’s nice.”
“It’s not. The more time it takes to form, the stronger it will be. And you will have to be the one to deal with it.”
***
Samantha dropped back into her chair, a very comfortable office chair the Lair had provided according to her specifications. Her son was downstairs, playing with his system and hopefully also writing down the notes she asked about the recent changes to his behavior and perception. The thought that her son was no longer just a human troubled her deeply.
Already her head was conjuring up all sorts of machines she wanted to hook up to his brain to study and monitor the changes. Before she quickly dismissed them all for being too inhumane. There was no universe where she subjected her son to that.
What she could do was kidnap an elf and study them. Perhaps not kidnap. Ask nicely?
Despite all that, Albert was still quite himself, and she had to admit that among the many sources of worry this whole matter was towards the bottom of the list. She stared at the screen, a frown forming on her face. The data from the satellites was not very encouraging.
This was going to be the very first Tier Four event.
She sighed. It couldn’t go on like this. Events were growing in power, and while her son was also building an impressive power base for himself, the process was too slow compared to the ramping up of the invasion. Combine it with the dwindling resources of the various Earth forces, it was not looking good.
Besides, even she was aware that asking a single young adult barely out of his teens to single handedly avoid the end of the world at the hands of unknown aliens made of stone was a bit much.
She had thought long and hard about the motivations these aliens had. According to her father it was something along the lines of “they are cunts, Sam. Literal cunts. Not much you can do about it.”
It seemed about right, according to the data she gathered about them from the HDF. They were the ‘hunters in the dark forest’, as the theory went, taking down any and all other signs of life they could sense across space. It was a good thing they were mostly relegated to a pocket dimension that could only access real space through the Alignments, then, and that the Alignments only happened slowly and every few centuries or so.
It was all known literature, just now taking shape and forming an ever-better picture that was still incomplete.
The eggs were still a mystery. Their function. The working theory was that they were used by the Lithoids to speed up the Alignment, widening the fractures between worlds with magic.
In any case, knowing more was nice but was not the priority. What she needed was more muscle, she needed to build a power base that was independent of the presence of her son. Having the Lair was already an incredible boon, as the former Quadrangle Core was much more powerful than what Albert thought of it.
Its capacity to grow, adapt, follow instructions, fabricate tools. The only chokepoints were the portal to her house, access to resources, and manpower. If she could get her hands on the latter two, ask the Lair what it needed to expand and relocate the portal… she would be set.
An idea formed in her mind. A sinister plan. One for which the seeds had already been planted, and only needed harvesting. One that would drag her once again down in the deep depths of the morally bad, of the evil deeds one needs to do if they want to save the world.
She shrugged. Just another day at work.
“Lair, can you fabricate simple magical tools?” She asked.
“Like the Wands? No, can’t do.”
“No, no. Much simpler than that. Really silly ones like better antennae for phones or meta-materials.”
“As long as it’s just better technology with a touch of magic, yes. If you want more, then we will need to build some additional equipment and bring in some minions.”
Good. She had an idea on how to get minions. Not of the monster kind, but just as good.
She teleported down to check on her son before leaving. He was in Analysis Mode, no doubt trying to figure something out. There it was, another worry that had been roaming around her head whenever she didn’t fill it with impending doom and other nice thoughts.
She was worried that Albert would soon encounter a wall in his progress, and that his propensity to fixate on things together with Analysis Mode would only make matters worse. But alas, she had learned from her mistakes and she should let him learn from his mistakes too.
Besides, Lloyd would get mad if she intervened. He was very much an advocate for letting the boy do whatever he wanted as long as it was within some very loose bounds. Her bounds were much stricter. Time will tell if she was right or not, but for now she was going to trust her father to be the wiser of the two.
