The village had changed in the thousands of years since Albert had last seen it. Now it was more like a sprawling metropolis, with no trace of the squat buildings that even in Albert’s time were already remnants from the past. Instead it had grown organically around a singular point of origin, spreading radially from where the imposing base of the Iperborea tree was so thick it was almost impossible to see it as a round object anymore. As if growing in tandem with the plant, and with a look to match, the elven capital was a city as big as the valley.

Without the threat of monsters – the planet was devoid of all life save for what the elves managed to bring back – there was no need of defences, and bridges spanned the length of the valley connecting the city to the far away cliffs and rivers.

It was a majestic sight, Albert had to admit to himself that despite them being racist assholes the elves really knew how to impress. With all that said and done, seeing how much the city had grown didn’t bode well for the presence of the Lair buildings. In fact, the tree itself had become big enough that it was probably encroaching upon the closest lair buildings with its massive trunk. Assuming they were still there.

Hoping the buildings were not embedded in the wood, Albert broke away from the elves escorting him and walked confidently towards where he remembered the main Lair building was supposed to be located. He wore a pensive expression on his face, without much care for the fact that the Elves could probably see it.

Finding the buildings should give us enough data to really understand what happened after my disappearance.

However, his AI rebutted, you must prepare for the eventuality that they might no longer be there.

I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. We came this far already.

The rest of his team followed him, Scrappy lost in thought and Lina watching the elves with distrust.

She had looked less worried after she saw how Albert dealt with the elves and his current thoughtful appearance didn’t really seem to faze her too much, which was good. When they had reached the city gates there had been a huge commotion, to which Albert had simply responded by raising a shield around him, his party and their escorts. The shield blocked all sound and was completely impenetrable, and it only took a mild threat to convince the elven escorts to keep walking in complete disregard of the many elves attacking the dome of energy from the outside.

When Albert changed direction, he reshaped the protective bubble and let the elves go, which resulted in them being immediately taken away for questioning by many armed soldiers. Beside that, not much changed. He kept the bubble up and blocking all sound, and walked without a care. Either the crowd parted or they were forcibly displaced by the moving wall of force approaching them.

This was another thing about wielding absolute power. It was much different than how it was portrayed in the book, with the struggles and the monologues. With even the powerful beings being full of holes in their defenses for the underdog hero to exploit.

No, reality was different. He was so powerful that he could do whatever he wanted, without having to explain himself. He could afford himself the luxury to completely pretend the elves were not even there, and if they had a problem with it he could just… not care about it. He had his goals.

All around the bubble the elven soldiers still tried to attack, hoping they could penetrate the barrier, but after a while they relented. Even their greatest magics failed to even so much as scratch the shield, after all. Again, Albert could have made them all stop, perhaps emptying the whole city so that he could walk around undisturbed but he just… didn’t care. All they were accomplishing was a lot of friendly fire and damage to their own buildings, not his problem.

Shit, to think that absolute power did not corrupt me absolutely but… made me lazy.

I would argue that absolute power does indeed not corrupt absolutely, Albert. It simply shows us who we really are.

You are saying that I’m a lazy ass… woah!

His eyes widened.

“Damn,” he gasped. “It’s still there!”

Before them, entombed under a thick layer of vines, roots and wooden thorns, was the Lair. Perfectly preserved, it was like an old industrial warehouse district marring a fairy forest land. Something had prevented the elves from destroying it, perhaps fear of retribution or perhaps something else, and so they had buried the whole compound with literal meters of plant matter in the shape of a dome.

Hidden away from view. Out of sight out of mind.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

All the better for him. Albert could see the buildings as if the dome wasn’t even there, and with a snap of his fingers the plants parted to make him pass through. Inside there was almost no sunlight, but again it wasn’t a problem for someone with the kind of Power Albert wielded. In an instant, night was day.

“What is this place?” Asked Lina.

“My old base.” Albert replied. “Amazing how it resisted the passage of time almost perfectly. Then again, time magic tends to do that.”

“What?” Scrappy perked up. “Was that what I saw?”

Albert nodded.

“Can someone explain?”

“Of course, Lina. The dome was apparently more than just a physical wall preventing anything from entering or leaving the place. It was a huge magic circle, projecting a powerful time magic onto the volume of space it contained. Basically freezing time inside of it so that nothing could come out of the dome. Pretty handy for our purposes. Almost like they preserved it just for us!”

He gave her a wry smile, to which she rolled her eyes. Ever since his power-up he had become insufferable.

“Lair?”

“What are you doing now?”

“Trying to see if the fledgling AI running the place is still here. Jeff, can you feel its presence?”

No. There is nothing.

“Too bad, they must have moved it.”

“Does it mean that we can proceed?” Lina asked, only to be stopped by a very excited Scrappy.

“Look Sir Albert! There chief of the elves is here!”

“What?”

With a frown, Albert turned around to face the opening he had carved into the ring of wood. As he did so, his frown morphed into an unreadable expression of surprise, awe and a pang of regret. Then an inexorable sadness washed over his mind.

“Oh.” He said in a low voice.

The shield around them disappeared. All at once, the sounds of the bustling city rushed back to their ears, deafening and alive compared to the sterile silence created by the bubble. Suddenly they were defenseless. Albert’s gaze swept across the many guards with their bows trained onto him, as if daring them to move.

No guards rushed at them. None of the bows trained on them fired their arrows.

The soldiers and the guards had followed them inside the ring of plants as soon as the shield had receded far enough and were now surrounding them. They watched the team warily, their bodies coiled springs waiting to release their tension but held back by a single gesture.

Standing alone, still lit by the light coming in from the hole Albert punched through the defensive ring stood alone a single elf.

A woman, beautiful beyond words. An air of calm surrounded her, and even as she stood still, face full of shock mirroring Albert’s own, her features exuded grace and an ageless wisdom could be found in her wide eyes. Beneath the graceful surface, a level of power that could easily rival Albert’s was hidden, still as a calm lake, yet fathomless in its depths.

“Albert.” The woman muttered, low enough that perhaps only Albert managed to make out the words.

There was no emotion in her voice.

“Elle.” He responded in kind.

For a moment, everything was still. Albert didn’t even realize how he tapped into his Power without thinking. She too, sensing this change, had tapped into hers.

He walked slowly towards the elf woman. She too took shy, tentative steps towards him.

And then, twin smiles bloomed on their faces.

They both broke into a run.

They met halfway, throwing themselves into each other’s arms. Elle slammed into Albert like a physical force, despite her being very light she felt present, real. Powerful.

“Elle! You’re alive!”

The elf smiled. “I should be the one surprised to see you alive! But,” she shook her head, “somehow I’m not!”

Albert smiled. And he looked into her smile that was warm just like the golden sunlight. “Look at you, all grown up.”

Elle sniffled, wiping a tear from her face. “You look the same as ever.”

“Do you mean ugly? I do remember you calling me ugly.”

Elle’s face suddenly turned pink and then red. The tips of her ears seemed to want to catch on fire.

“Of course not, silly.” She said with a smile and a shake of her head. Even like this, she was gorgeous. “I was merely a child!”

Albert did not expect the elven princess to punch him in the shoulder with enough strength to cause a sonic boom. It tickled.

The explosion was enough to shake the others out of their daze, it seemed. People came running at them.

They were all stopped in their tracks.

Scrappy and Lina by a single, minuscule shake of Albert’s head. It was weird to see, but Scrappy was the one who got the point and literally dragged Lina to a stop.

The elven forces were stopped by a raised hand. Some of them didn’t seem to want to comply, with a particularly rude guard even shouting curses against humans. Elle turned him into paste even quicker than Albert had done back in the forest.

The sole proof it was her who did it was that she had to wipe the blood from her closed fist. Nobody, not even Albert had seen her move.

“Allow me,” Albert offered, acting smooth but failing to suppress the playful grin from his face. He produced a silk handkerchief out of thin air and offered it to her with an exaggerated bow. “While what you did was very hot, we can’t have you all bloodied in public!”

She blushed, giggled and took the handkerchief to wipe her hand. The blood came away as if by its own will, sucked into the fabric.

“How did you make it do that!” Elle gasped. “It’s so cool!”

“Well,” Albert laughed at her outburst, “shocked by a party trick? Where did the dignified elf queen go? I think I see some of the old you surfacing back.”

Elle looked at the ground for a moment. “You know,” she began, but her eyes didn’t meet his. Instead, she looked here and there, to and fro.

“Yeah?” Albert asked, taking her hands and looking at her.

She turned to look away, but a hand pulled her face back to staring at him.

“I…” she said, but her heart was thumping and her cheeks were flushed. His fingers were icy cold against her burning skin. His gaze was like a deep chasm, inscrutable and fathomless. She could lose herself in those eyes.

She realized she had been staring for more than she should have.

Steeling herself, she sighed and let go of his hand. She hadn’t even realized she had taken it into her own.

“Fuck it,” she said suddenly, and took a deep breath.

Without warning Albert felt her arms wrap around him, and with much more strength than he expected she pulled him into a kiss.