163 – Sitea
Portal travel was… jarring. Most of the discomfort came from having to punch through what – to most people – amounted to an impenetrable defense: Sitea’s shield. Fortunately for them, Albert was not most people, and he made short work of the defensive dome of energy. Not to say he destroyed it, he simply circumvented it.
“Ah, finally, Sitea.” Said Albert. He had been the first to arrive. “Love to see yet another concrete wall. Nothing better than being underground yet again!”
“Portal travel sucks!” Lina arrived a few moments later, and her complain was valid. She was wiping imaginary dust from her clothes, eliciting a smile from Albert.
“Yeah, sorry,” Albert said. “Had to make it a little bumpier to avoid slamming into Sitea’s shield and getting turned to red paste forever adrift in the space between worlds. Won’t happen again.”
“Mmph,” The woman groaned, “Says you. You look fresher than you were before we entered.”
Beside Albert, the others had fully materialized. Elle, who had listened to the final part of the exchange, shrugged.
“You too?” Lina complained again, making the two smile even wider. “I swear, this is a conspiracy against me.”
“Actually, lady Lina,” a small voice said. “I think they simply were too powerful.”
“Aww!” Lina’s eyes melted at the sight of such cuteness. “Look at you, all ruffled up! Here, let me smooth your hair for you.”
While the banter went on, Albert examined his surroundings. He was inside Sitea proper for the first time ever, and yet…
“We are underground. Again.” Scrappy said it for him.
Yes but! We are here with two dozen weeks of head start! Jeff said, trying to look at the positives. Not that being underground should hinder you at all anymore, Albert.
Right… please don’t try to cheer me up ever again. It’s uncanny.
Bah. Anyway, you will be happy to know that there is absolutely no Doom energy inside the shield.
As predicted. Let’s move out now.
“We’re moving.” He announced, making for the door with purpose. They had appeared in a small room not too dissimilar from the underground complex where they had found the core fragment, as seen by the fact that the architecture was almost identical.
“Can’t you transport us out?” Scrappy asked.
Albert shook his head. “I wouldn’t know where we might end up. Besides, there are rumours about this place. None of you heard them ‘cause you lived in another continent but… Kainen told me that the people claimed this place was cursed by a demon.”
“A demon?” Elle asked, pensive. “Wait, could it be—”
“And you trust the man who betrayed you?” Scrappy said, adamantly cutting her off. There was fire in her eyes.
Albert shrugged. “Fair point but,” he paused. “There might be substance to his claims.”
“Dunno,” Lina said, mock displeasure in her voice. “Sounds like you just want to have us crawl through tunnels yet again.”
Or was that real displeasure in her voice?
***
While the team was still underground, forces stirred in the forest above and around the lost city of Sitea. Following a dire warning from a guild master overseas, a detection network had been set up in a joint effort – never witnessed before – between the elves and the humans. Worried as they were about this new, strange and corrupting energy running rampant, the Elves had teamed up with their mortal enemies thanks to the efforts of two powerful individuals.
Kainen, who knew for a fact that this energy was proof of Albert’s nefarious actions, and Thomas, a new guild master who rose to power after Kainen was exposed as a traitor. The two had somewhat made up considering the recent events, especially after Thomas was made aware of who really Albert was, but there was still tension between them.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Still, when the detection network registered the abnormal release of energy from a spatial transport, all eyes turned in the direction of the city. The fact that the transport landed inside the shield cemented their suspicions: it was Albert.
“It’s time.” Kainen said gravely.
Beside him, the mountain of a man that was Thomas heaved a thunderous sigh. “It is.”
He wasn’t happy to move forward at all. At least, under his command, Albert could be given a way to explain himself.
“Bring them.”
“Are you sure it’s going to work?”
Kainen nodded. “It is. He is arrogant, full of himself. I saw it in his eyes. He thinks himself all powerful, and that’s going to be his downfall.”
Thomas only nodded.
And thus, the two recently discovered core fragments were brought out of the vaults of the guild. In preparation for the ultimate ambush.
***
It seems stronger than before.
Even as they slowly made their way back to the surface, navigating the many kilometers of tunnels below the city, Albert surveyed his surroundings with his active senses. He was much more powerful than the last time he had been underground, and his new power level allowed him to map almost the entirety of the veritable maze of tunnels and find the closer exit.
Once the carrier wave of his scan breached to the surface, it quickly expanded to fill all the space inside the shield, only stopping when it reached the impenetrable wall of energy. This confirmed a lot of theories, while raising many questions.
There are entire buildings I can’t sense inside of.
They are surrounded by a smaller version of the outer shield.
Which is made of Alignment Energy, like we thought.
Yes. We can now see that the mere presence of the shield is suppressing an impending Alignment event. The closer the world gets to Alignment, the more it fills with Doom, and the stronger the shield becomes.
Not a problem, we can just sidestep it into another dimension like we did to get here. How about the two fragments we are missing?
They are moving and are now 12 kilometers west-southwest. Should I make retrieving them a priority?
No. Priority is finding out what the hell happened here.
“Albert,” Elle cut his musings short.
“Yes, dear?”
The elf blushed and looked away. “Not now, silly.”
Albert waved at her apologetically. “I wasn’t even trying.”
She shot him a look. “Weren’t you?”
“Promise.”
“Anyway. About this demon. Is it what I think it is?”
Albert nodded gravely. “Thousands of years of degradation and solitude can do things to an AI. You never actually met it, but I was there when it was created. An unholy blend of an early self-regressing Transformer network embedded within a magical core.”
He shook his head, words trailing off. “I should have never gone through with it.” He said in the end, then grinned. “Spoken like a true old man. I guess I should make my hair white now.”
“I like it black,” Elle replied. “A little caution is never a bad thing, Albert. I’m sure you made the AI with the best intentions in mind.”
Albert made a face. “Sure, smash together a few pieces and hook it up to the Internet. What could go wrong?”
“What should we expect from it, then?”
“Hard to say,” Albert eyed the minimap in his vision. “It’s safe to assume that it’s still got control of all the still-working systems. Which would include, I’d wager, any sort of defensive measures my mother surely had built into the city.”
“Are we strong enough?”
“A fair question.” He said. “I have no idea.”
They fell silent after that, walking until they finally broke to the surface. The mere sight of sunlight was enough to invigorate the whole team, as even Elle had begun to feel the pressure of being underground for so long. She, as an elf had, it especially bad - although the others weren’t too far behind with how many traumatic memories they had about being underground.
The sight was majestic. Even Albert, who was used to sprawling metropolises of steel and glass, couldn’t help but whistle. Towering skyscrapers made of white rock, filled with plants dominated the view, obstructing the rest of the city from sight. Seeing it with his own eyes was different than seeing it with his senses, and Albert had to admit that his mother did a hell of a job with the place.
All the while, as he admired the place, he kept an eye out for danger. Beside him, Elle was doing the same, and Albert was pleased to see that even the rest of his team was on high alert. Nobody was slacking off, which was good.
Scrappy looked at the tall tower in front of them, her eyes tracing the fault lines in the concrete. “Too bad it’s crumbling.”
It was. The buildings were cracked, the cement giving way to the incessant erosion of the elements. The weather had been orderly and controlled under the shield, once upon a time, but now ran completely wild and untamed. On the other side of the dome a tempest was raging, and the distant sound of thunder echoed and shook the shield like a bell. The plants had clearly invaded all spaces, making the city into an urban jungle.
Elle was staring in awe. “The power of nature,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Albert smiled. “Even the strongest magical concrete is doomed to crumble to dust, and with it even the old memory of civilization will fade.”
“It’s sad.” Lina said.
Albert nodded. “Some would say that—”
“It’s poetic, Sir, that it is.” Scrappy said with a melancholic smile.
Elle smiled at her. “Attagirl.”
The girl beamed.
A sound cut through their cheerful atmosphere. In a split second, Lina had sprouted wings, Scrappy was wrought in shadows, a halo of light surrounded Elle and… Albert simply stared in the distance. He inhaled loudly, cracking his neck.
“They are here. We have company.”
“I can see that,” Lina said quickly. “What the fuck are those?”
Her heart was racing. In the distance, she witnessed giants moving. Hulking shapes of jagged metal and plumes of fire, louder than explosions, towered above the massive buildings.
“Defenses. Stronger than I anticipated. Hide, quick!”
Albert wasted no time, running towards the closest abandoned building. In the relative safety of the precarious skyscrapers, they heard the voice. They heard the demon.
“Come oooooout! Let good ol’ Lair take care of you! Are you hungry? Do you need a bed for the night?” Then the voice distorted, turning into a sinister growl. “Do you need your organs torn out of your body?”