“Lilly, if you can teleport anywhere you want, why do you walk everywhere?”

“If you can simply lay down and order your ‘delivery’, why do you cook? ‘The journey is just as important as the destination’, yes? If you simply have everything given to you, without putting any effort into anything you will become slow and negligent, and negligence is a greater sin than you can understand.”

------------------------------------

These mortals are so… base.

She had wandered the small city for hours, from the slums to the homes of the aristocrats who ran it. While there wasn’t much that impressed her magically, the wealth of mundane creations they had at the very least amused.

While she had been bothered by her kin's rather brash nature, and the audacity he had to raise his voice at her, the real reason she had left on her own to observe the city was simply because she didn’t want to risk being found out.

She was very good at infiltration and observation, even amongst the higher beings, but dragging around a lump of meat that only had the talent for bashing its fists against things would be counterproductive for doing anything requiring finesse. Such as gathering information from the owners of the towers the city was littered with.

The towers seemed to serve multiple uses, most of them were simply for housing, while many others were for administration or research. She had found the housing towers the most interesting, usually homes for mortals didn’t go above a few dozen meters off the dirt they were built on, but these mortals had encased the entirety of their city in cement and metal.

While it did nothing for the beauty of the city, it did wonders for its efficiency.

Where you would once require miles of sprawling slums, overcrowded far past the point of acceptance, they could store hundreds of people, if not thousands, in the tallest of these towers, each one fully fit to provide a comfortable living experience. If she wasn’t so depressed that a world of savages had solved such a massive issue so cheaply, with a vast majority of the towers not even using magic to run, she would have been ecstatic at the prospect of the new inventions.

How many Magi have spent their lives attempting to solve the issue of housing an overpopulated world, only to fail… and these mortals have done that and so much more.

While magic made it relatively simple to house large populations, the biggest and most dangerous flaw was the same thing that made it possible.

Magic.

A mage could charge an entire city if they were powerful enough, but what happened if that mage died? The city itself would die along with them.

Under wartime it was common enough, if not the rule, to target the most powerful of mages to both weaken their military power and render as much of the city defenseless as possible. This also caused issues when it came to mundane's, as they couldn’t even charge their own devices let alone defend themselves, however the mortals here had circumvented mages entirely. The lightning they harvested in enormous quantities and utilized to power the vast amounts of their technology made everything from industrialization to militarization practically run by itself.

No workshops with magi pouring their entire mana pools into shards.

No tall spires transferring vast amounts of mana across the city to charge it from the ground up.

No magi or bound nature spirits constantly observing, watering, fertilizing and maintaining crops.

Just wires, and pieces of wood and metal lining the streets. Efficient, useful, and most importantly, genius. If she had a decade or two to transfer all the knowledge the world held to her own she would begin the process in less than a heartbeat.

How could a dead world have so much knowledge? How could a dead world be so full of life?

A dead world, covered in life. The irony was palpable.

With these inventions we could render outer rings entirely obsolete, no more disparity between the magi and the mortals. Regardless of what the greedy and the wanton desire, who could argue against the improvement of life for all?

Her excitement, as tempered as it was, to this new world took a fast downward spiral when she began investigating some of the larger towers however.

Covering the city she had begun inspecting the administrators and merchants of the city, or corporations, as they were known here, and she wasn’t impressed by what she’d found.

Men, women, children, chained up in various residences, either for research or for pleasure.

The thought of such crude experiments being done on mortals by mortals barely capable of understanding magic let alone using it was disgusting enough that she nearly flattened one of the towers in a fit of rage. The things she’d seen some of the aristocrats of the city do to their slaves however had nearly pushed her over the edge, almost causing her to flatten the entire street she had been on.

Using a blackheart criminal who had committed unforgivable atrocities to test the effects of an enemy's magic was one thing, it could be reasoned away as making the best of a horrible situation, but committing heinous acts against your own people for your own sick pleasure was another.

One way or the other, her new brother and her were going to purge this city top to bottom, and she knew that for once she may find herself enjoying it.

Sometimes children must be punished for the wrongs they do.

Hopefully the boy is ready for the atrocities to come.

---------------------------------------

Thankfully upon arriving at his apartment she was gone, he didn’t care and honestly he was happy she was gone.

He took all of seven seconds looking around for her before he crashed onto his couch, finally free of annoying roommates, painful evolutions, and magic seemingly made to fuck with him in particular. By the time he’d placed his head on the cushions he fell asleep.

And thankfully, this time his sleep was dreamless.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Until a few hours later when he felt someone slap him awake.

Opening his eyes he was met with the face of the woman, having returned from wherever she had left. She had the expression of irritation, seemingly her resting face as far as he’d known her, or just the face she made whenever she was forced to interact with him.

Surprising him, she actually spoke for the first time since he had met her. “Get up, we have work to do.” He did his best to keep his face neutral in front of her, even sleep deprived the memory of the puppeteering she’d done on him was still in the front of his mind.

I almost thought she was a mute.

As he began to sit the woman backed up and began to move towards the door, this time he didn’t require any persuasion to follow her. Quickly jumping from the couch he followed her out of the apartment, this time locking the door behind him.

I knew becoming her champion would require me to train or fight, but I figured I'd at least have a few weeks to get my issues settled first, but I guess now is better than later when I am in the middle of something important. I also need to start working a real job soon, I figured one of the factories, but with how fast things seem to be progressing, and how strong this woman seems, I might be able to pull something else off instead.

While there were plenty of jobs that strong Altereds excelled at, few were able to pull the amount of money he needed for his mothers treatment, without tying himself down unnecessarily, on even shorter notice now that he’d become a ‘Guardian’. They also wouldn’t gain him enough respect in the world's eyes that he could do his job unimpeded. No one wants a walking bomb trudging through their cities that could go off and flatten thousands of people in an instant, even if they are stable and nonaggressive.

Either way, that would have to be something for later, because right now he had to focus on not getting ragdolled by the short tempered mage he was following down the hall.

Following the woman to the stairs again he was half tempted to point out the elevator, but didn’t want her turning him into a puppet, again, out of annoyance. He was surprised however, when she began ascending the stairs towards the roof instead of going downstairs towards the streets like they had a few hours before.

I hope this isn’t some stupid test, “hey you’ve evolved, now it’s time to learn how to fly! NOW JUMP!”

They continued up the stairs, the only thing stopping his anxiety from taking over at this point was the knowledge that the fall probably wouldn’t even hurt him anymore. His anxiety dampened, and then disappeared when they finally reached the door to the roof.

At least the fall will probably only annoy me now, not looking forward to paying for the pavement I will inevitably shatter.

Regardless of how comical someone might find him jumping off the building a dozen times to learn how to fly, he wasn’t looking forward to possibly having to pay for any damages he caused.

He figured she would simply break the door open, or maybe teleport them to the other side, instead she waved her hand over it and it clicked before opening on its own. With the door swinging open he was met with a clear sky and the knowledge that he could have been enjoying the small amount of freedom he had, but instead he was working.

He always seemed to be working these days, and for once he wasn’t irritated by it.

Maybe religion did that to you? Maybe it was simply because he had the knowledge that he had to do this, not that he should, like most people had with their faiths. Even people who truly believed in their God toiled because they wanted to be the person they believed their God wanted them to be, or because they simply wanted to avoid their God’s wrath. He was doing it because he was asked.

The feeling gave him an understanding of schizophrenics who swore their god spoke to them directly, the weight was something he couldn’t simply shrug off.

I wonder if any of those crazies were actually telling the truth now. Wouldn’t that be a shock…

Regardless of faith, regardless of belief, he was here. And he had work to do.

They walked out onto the rooftop, most of the city had begun to stir by now. His hearing had evidently improved more than he first realized because he could hear more than the regular vehicles moving, people yelling or even the occasional boom from either gun or magic. He could hear the rats in the alleyways, the birds in the rooftops or flying in the sky. It was almost peaceful, before his skin prickled and his hairs began to stand on end from the feeling of something washing over him, like a cold breeze.

It felt like someone had walked over his grave.

Almost like someone had flicked a switch his hearts began beating heavily. He could feel all three of them pounding like he’d just ran a marathon, followed by the subtle sound of leather tightening inside his body, which he could identify as his muscles having tensed. He began looking around him as he felt a predator gazing at him, looking to attack. He’d nearly begun yelling for whoever it was to come out and stop hiding before the woman who had led him up here clapped her hands together with enough force that it sounded closer to a gunshot than a clap, almost painful to his new hearing.

Looking directly towards her he instinctively lowered his body to a slight hunch, bringing his shoulders up and his hands ready in front of him, waiting for an incoming attack that never came.

She gazed at him, appraising him like someone would appraise an antique at an auction.

Quickly realizing that any fight that came would be over before he even had a chance to join it he gave up his panicked stance, before the feeling of being watched faded away completely.

She must have done that somehow. Was it magic? Maybe some kind of spell or ability that causes fear?

She must have been pleased by his revelation, because she smiled. Turning her head towards the city around her she spread her hands out, gesturing towards the glow of lights and sounds of city life. “Do you realize just how much suffering you stand before?”

The question wasn’t the one he expected, and he recoiled mentally at it.

Suffering?

“In this city there are millions of mortals, each one with their own trials and tribulations. Each one of them works, toils, suffers, and dies, each one unique, each one identical.”

Looking towards him to make sure he was still listening she raised her hand towards one of the largest skyscrapers in the city, Bronco Corp, before she continued speaking.

“In that one building alone I found over a dozen mortals addicted to illicit substances, powders or injections. Within the holdings of the masters themselves I found evidence of corruption, bribery, treachery, and illegal experimentation. Everyone responsible spouting hypocrisies of duty and integrity when they had none, each one as guilty as any sinner you’d find in the Liefs.”

Oh shit, so the reports from the whistleblower were true then?

A few years ago there had been some minor chatter on the internet about someone who had uploaded files to practically every chatroom and website they could find containing evidence of some rather shady shit going on in the Bronco labs. Some crazy stuff about using Magi-Tech implants in invasive ways far too dangerous for any agencies to give them the go ahead for human trials, however they’d done them anyway. While it wasn’t anything new, it had been rather big that a reputable corporation like the Bronco Corp had done something like that.

And while saying the words corporation and ethical in the same sentence would get a laugh out of practically anyone, press conference or pub, the fact that documents with proof had leaked had been a rather big deal.

Until the documents, and the person leaking them, had all disappeared in less than an hour.

While the internet was forever, and plenty of people had downloaded the documents, the fact that the main leaker had gone missing and none of the main media sites had even aired the information had done a number on the spread. However the internet never forgets and certainly never forgives, so the documents would regularly get uploaded to websites, before getting removed in less than a few minutes every time.

Over time people had simply gotten bored of the controversy, and while a lot of people and the government knew they’d done it, with the amount of power the Corp had they simply had to ignore anyone talking about it, and anyone investigating it either stopped or made like the person who leaked it, never being seen again. Coupled with the fact that the government wasn’t going to go after a massive Corp due to the power they held and the fact that any judge stupid enough to issue a subpoena would most likely never be seen again the issue quickly became irrelevant.

Fuckers are committing people to gruesome deaths to progress their damn research, just so they can release something slightly better and make a few more billion dollars to stash in their vaults, only to turn around and immediately do it again when a competitor does the same thing. Fucking Corps.

The anger he felt must have reached his face, or she simply felt it, because she laughed mockingly before continuing.

“Your city is choking child, it is choking on itself, on its own greed and gluttony. It will die long before it reaches any semblance of greatness.” She scoffed before looking towards the city disdainfully.“Of course, this is assuming it survives long enough to even become habitable for criminals, let alone the innocent.”

Her little monologue was going somewhere, and he had an idea where. “Why are you telling me this?”

Because we are going to stop it.

“Child, you are the Guardian of this world, and no world we control will suffer such indignities.”

His blackened arm thrummed to life, shaking along with his intent.

Different wording, same meaning.

There was always work to do.

-------------------

Somewhere far away, someone Watched.

Somewhere far away, something Planned.

Somewhere far away, Someone Screamed.

The tide retreated, only to return far more violent than before.

For The Tide Always Was.

Always Is.

Hunger.