165 – Epilogue I

Time passed. The city around them crumbled to dust. War, battles, the incessant erosion of existence itself. It all took a toll.

After the first few months, all that could be seen when looking out and through the shimmering shield around Sitea was a wall of solid red light. The world had died, consumed by Doom energy. The Alignment was being held back, first by the power of whatever machine had forestalled its advent for millennia inside Sitea and then, when the machine failed, by Albert himself.

There was nothing else but the city now. And even of the city, not much was left. Outside, the world had died on them, and they all barely even took notice. Soon, the place where most of them had spent their entire lives meant nothing to them. To Albert it had always been just a footnote in his life’s story, a transient phase he had to live through, no matter how long. To the others, it should have been all that they knew of, and yet how could such a thing be when they spent ten times longer inside the shield, fighting, than they did outside living their lives?

Longer than that, but by the time it got to that point, memories of the past only lived in their briefest dreams, forgotten by the time they woke up.

In the blink of an eye, they were left fighting on a barren landscape of death and destruction, smouldering ruins ground to dust by mana and explosions. Countless daily battles had consumed the city. The shielded buildings lasted a bit longer than the rest of the place, but millennia of war eventually got the best of the protections, and they too fell.

The ground became a flat expanse of dirt, peppered with bunkers and shelters.

The two parties were very different. Albert’s team was mobile, hiding, playing guerrilla. The Lair acted much like a dungeon. It could not move, but its immense power meant that it was all but impossible to destroy. It kept sending waves after waves of machines, and then when the machines ran out and its fabricators broke down it started making monsters to hunt Albert and his team.

They survived. Barely, at times. But survive they did.

Albert found a way to unlock Lina’s magic. Scrappy grew powerful. Elle too kept growing, surprising even her boyfriend. But among them all, Albert was the one who kept growing and growing the most. Exerting his power was always a pain, the sole act of changing the universe taking something from him every time he did it, but he always came back a little stronger. Every time he could push a little bit farther.

Even left to his own devices he would have grown. But the Lair was more than just a motivator to push to the extreme. The constant threat of dying, both imposed on Albert and on his teammates pushed him more than anything ever had before.

He didn’t even have time to complain about how long it was taking. And so the years passed.

Albert kept tracking the core fragments outside the shield, but of course by the time the Doom energy became toxic for all life on Earth, they had long stopped moving. In a brief pause of their hostilities, Albert took the time to go on an expedition to retrieve said fragments.

What he found there was upsetting. Corpses. Hundred of desiccated corpses and half-eaten skeletons he could not recognize. He had an idea who they might have belonged to, but he didn’t allow himself to think about them for more than a few moments. He plucked the two core fragments from the dead bodies, wading through Doom energy that was as thick as mud, and made his way back to the city.

Where the now-familiar endless war with the Lair awaited him.

The centuries passed. He combined the cores together, creating the Kirkesis Core he had long been searching for. It led to a discovery, which had been like a revelation at first, but which time also made dull like it made everything else dull.

The Core was actually an Egg from the Lithoids homeworld. A Tier 5 egg, to be precise.

The echo of this revelation persisted at the back of Albert’s mind. Flattened as it was by time, it was still a ripple that he could not ignore. And thus, when he finally pierced the dark, misshapen orb of obsidian that was the Lair itself, putting and end to their timeless war, he felt empty.

Drained.

The team supported him, of course. He felt Elle’s hand on his shoulder. The deed was done. They had what they needed. The four of them, the sole survivors of this broken world. Powerful beyond imagination.

Albert could open a rift in time and go back. He had been able to do so for a while now, but had refused to do it until they managed to defeat what had become their mortal enemy.

Now that it was defeated, so what?

The emptiness was crushing.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I don’t feel excited. I don’t look forward to going back and fixing everything. All these years… so much war and pain and suffering… I don’t feel anything anymore.”

The presence of his teammates, the presence of the love of his life… they had kept him going for so long. Now they barely registered.

A spark of something glimmered in the remains of Lair’s core. Beckoning.

Albert touched it, and his world was swallowed by a vision.

He tried to seize control. The vision was taking him on a voyage through time he couldn’t control.

He saw that time he got a spell he never used, called firelaser. He saw Kainen betraying him.

Albert yanked on the flow of time, the threads of history trembling under his might.

The visions took him to that time he was killed by PsyOps. A timeline that never actually existed.

Blood poured from Albert’s nose.

Then he saw it. A device. Built by his mother, hidden deep within the heart of the city. Inaccessible by even the Lair itself, warded against time and magic. Impossible to locate, steal or destroy.

With a snap of his fingers, the vision broke and both he and his team were in a large room underground. Before them, the device loomed. Unmarred by time, its brass surface shining with polish. It gave a faint hum.

Beside the device was a note.

For Albert.

We did it. We completed the design! Now go, and use it to save us all.

PS: The materials were adapted and repurposed as time went on. This is a demonstration that even without your presence, the system was able to adapt to new situations and change the directives to be more effective.

Our study of the system proved fruitful. A new branch of magic was created, called Intuition magic. However we were never able to fully replicate the system’s power.

It seems that the system, or at least the portion of it accessible to Lair, is powered by a sort of energy I have never encountered before. Able to rewrite reality itself. It proved to be completely resistant to all our probing. But we have collected a massive amount of it, and I will leave it behind for you, hoping you might use it one day.

Without warning, a wave of energy washed into him. A truly massive amount.

Less than one percent of what he already possessed. Perhaps had he discovered this stash in the past, it would have been useful. Still, it made him smile. It was a gift from his mother!

A single tear rolled down his cheek.

Oh, how he wished to see how it all went down. But there was nothing left. Nothing in Sitea that could tell him.

Except, he was powerful now, wasn’t he?

It had taken years, but he had even overwhelmed Lair and killed it. Now, he could do whatever he wanted. So he did. He asked Time itself to reveal what had been lost to it, to him.

And a book appeared. Or was it Jeff that was making it look like a book? With how integrated his AI had become, it was hard to say. It didn’t matter.

Survivor diary of Samantha Cromwell, 2072

…it did more than wreck the planet. It did rid us of the infestation, only for another to take its place.

…spreads like a virus but… it’s not a virus…

…synaptic function in infected individuals declines by two percent a month… No cure…

2088

Observation reveals that the decline ends at… 20 percent of base… which means society will not be able to recover from this. However there is hope…

2112

It’s been shown that magically able bodies are resistant to the plague… such as myself.

2150

…unable to reverse it entirely. However, there is hope for the enclave. The last bastion of civilization… but I fear it will not be enough.

2198

I was right. I came back to destroy this but couldn’t. If you read this, undo what happened. Only you can save the world. It’s too late. The world is dangerous and unruly. The Lithoids are back. Not even I am powerful enough to save us. I will leave instructions.

2412

Why aren’t you here? Where are you? The chronographs told me you would be here, in the future. But you aren’t. Are you lost, my sweet child? I can’t reach you. All alone. I weep for you.

2730

There were downloaded minds here. Of me and your grandfather before he passed away. I destroyed them. I wish not for you to see me like this. When you return to the time before the collapse, there you will meet your mother again. Your real mother. What I am not but a shadow of what I was. I will end myself, before I succumb to darkness.

3561

I… am so sorry. I couldn’t… I was not strong enough. And the world will pay for my weakness…

Albert did not utter a single word. Around him, the faces of his team were full of compassion, understanding, unwavering support. Time had forged bonds between them that were stronger than the fundamental forces of the universe itself.

Scrappy, now an adult, had fallen in love with Lina. She still called her a lady. Lina had resisted at first, but time and isolation meant that she too developed feelings.

Albert and Elle were inseparable.

There was no need for words between the four of them. Albert looked at the gigantic device left behind by his mother to defeat the Lithoids for one last time. He did not need it anymore. He had grown so powerful that he could literally end their whole existence with a snap of his fingers.

In fact, he intended to do just that. The device would remain behind, in this future doomed to disappear, the last relic of his own failure. Meant to be erased, corrected, fixed. It was time he undid all his mistakes, it was time Albert snapped the threads of destiny and took control of his own life for the first time.

There was no need for words.

Which meant that, when Albert snapped his fingers and a portal opened, they all stepped through it without hesitation. Leaving the broken world of the future behind.

I’m sorry Albert, Jeff said to himself, the only one of them able to think even when reduced to nothing but energy traveling through a wormhole, but it pains me to see you like this. I will make your pain go away, and you will thank me for it.

Without anyone knowing, Jeff tweaked their minds. He took their experience of Sitea and made it look like nothing more than a badly remembered dream, quickly fading away. All that was left by the time they arrived on the other side of the portal was their feelings for each other, their bonds, their trust. But none of their pain.

It was too much for anyone to handle.

I hope you will forgive me for tampering, Albert. But you need to understand that a human mind is not made to survive what you went through. Not without damage. I will need to try harder to sell you the idea of transcending your non-digital form.