The Retreat

Astrid smiles widely at the sight of her gramps, even if there are quite a few details about him that she doesn’t recognize. Particularly the fact that he’s a hydra.

When he became a hydra, or how long he’s been one, Astrid has absolutely no idea. But in the end she doesn’t really care.

She and Lysandre hug the moment he reaches the ground. Then she leads him into the city through the walls, ignoring the gawking soldiers in the process.

“How have you been?” Her gramps asks, making her glance at him with a smile again.

“Pretty good, but I’m still lagging behind Lexi,” Astrid answers honestly while turning her gaze forwards again. She’s leading them to her home near the council hall, completely uncaring about introducing him to the leaders of the city. Since they don’t particularly matter to her all that much. Other than Aidan and Alara, that is.

Alara in particular she’s gotten closer to than she expected she would.

Astrid generally doesn’t believe in making friends, since most people outside of family are perfectly willing to betray someone for their own benefit anyways. But for some reason Astrid just feels she can trust Alara. And while that has brought up her guard just in and of that fact itself, she hasn’t seen any reason not to trust her yet.

She glances to the side as she and Lysandre continue walking, only to find Alara standing on a roof and looking at them both with an exasperated expression on her face.

Astrid soon hears Alara muttering, “What are we, the gathering place of Class S species or something…? Those twins are going to give me a heart attack one day, I swear…” before she leaves the roof, jumping from one to another until she leaves Astrid’s senses.

Quickly deciding to act like she didn’t hear that, Astrid turns back to Lysandre as he asks, “What’s with that dragon outside of the city?”

“Oh, him?” Astrid utters, glancing at Lysandre for a second before continuing to walk through the city, uncaring of the frightened looks directed at them. “He’s a weird one. Keeps pursuing Lexi without pursuing her.”

It’s rather annoying how often I feel his senses sweeping over the city in search of her. I almost wish Lexi would just tell him to buzz off, but I know she won’t do that.

“Thought so,” her gramps mutters, not sounding too pleased about it either.

The two of them continue walking, now in silence, until they reach Astrid’s house. Or at least, one of her houses. Since the other is located in her sister’s clearing.

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But that one isn’t finished being constructed yet, so Astrid just takes him to the house within the city instead.

Once they enter it, leaving the public eye, Astrid hugs her adopted grandfather again, making him chuckle and pat her on the back. The then the two separate and Astrid takes him to the living room while asking, “So where have you been?”

Astrid remembers that the location someone was sent to after the Reset was based on their location prior to the Reset. Which means that, since her gramps is clearly not from their Dimensional Block, he must’ve been out of the Silvercrest Kingdom at the time of the Reset.

But neither she nor Lexi heard anything about that.

Then there’s the other matter.

Astrid glances at the small snake sticking its head out of her gramps’ collar, almost hugging his neck.

“And since when were you a hydra?” she adds, finally bringing it up.

“Right…” her gramps says while scratching the back of his neck. “About that…”

The two sit on a sofa in Astrid’s comfortable but rather lacking-in-decorations living room as he seems to hesitate for a bit. Then he finally lets out a sigh and answers, “I was hiding from someone. And I couldn’t let either you or your sister meet him.”

Silence fills the room for a while with a maid arriving to drop tea off for the two before leaving again. Then, right as her gramps is beginning to take a sip of the tea, Astrid raises an eyebrow, crosses her arms, and asks, “Is that man our birth father by any chance?”

Her gramps begins coughing on the tea before he exclaims, “How?!” Only to cover his mouth again a second later.

“Thought so,” Astrid says, a frown cresting her face. “The Quantum Architect told Lexi that our parents are both still alive. And that our biological father doesn’t know we exist.”

To her surprise, her grandfather shows extreme surprise at the mention of her parents both being alive as he shouts, “Crystal is alive?! Where is she!? What happened to her?!”

Astrid blinks in her own surprise before shrugging and answering, “No idea. He only said they were alive and nothing else.”

Lysandre leans back in his chair again, quickly calming down as he takes in the information.

Guess he didn’t know our mother was alive. But Crystal is her name? That’s news to me…

Silence fills the room for a little while again until her gramps finally raises his head and says, “Your father did something unforgiveable, so both your mother and I left him while she was pregnant with you two. But we didn’t know she was pregnant until after we had already left. And we weren’t really sure what to do at that point.” He lowers his gaze again, a look of sadness crossing his eyes. “Then we were separated after being found by one of your father’s subordinates.” A dark look replaces the sad one. “I wasn’t able to find her whereabouts after the separation until after she had already gone missing in a dungeon. But no matter how hard I searched through the dungeon, I couldn’t find her. As if she had vanished in the dungeon.”

The silence returns once more.

Astrid reaches forwards and grabs her own teacup before taking a sip herself.

Her gramps finally raises his head to look at Astrid again as he says, “The foster system had already taken you and Lexi in by then, leaving you in the hands of that corrupt orphanage director. So after I finally found you two, I immediately went to the orphanage. And you know the story from there.”

Neither of them say anything for a while, Astrid feeling strange about finally knowing what happened while her gramps no doubt feels guilty.

But Astrid doesn’t blame him. Instead she’s just curious about what her mother is like.

Eventually the silence is broken by her gramps as he, out of nowhere, asks, “Do you, by any chance, want to become a Class S species?”

Astrid’s head shoots up from her tea as she exclaims, “What?!”