Southern California, Fall, 2050
Legendary pop-rock front woman Casey Cool sat on a high stool in the middle of a tiny stage inside a cozy bar.
Smokers smoked their vice of choice, but bothered no one thanks to the owner’s Skill. The smoke and odor vanished before they could spread more than a foot away from every table, booth and barstool.
Casey was dressed for comfort.
T-shirt, light jacket, jeans.
Stylish simplicity.
Her blond hair hung loose to her shoulders, framing her round face.
No make up.
Glasses.
No band.
One microphone.
An acoustic guitar.
She took requests from the small, intimate crowd.
It wasn’t small by the people’s choice.
A huge crowd had gathered outside the bar as soon as those lucky enough to be on the inside spread the word when she had taken the stage.
Like many things in modern life, the music scene had been fundamentally changed by the spires.
Musicians had always played and sang for the art.
The need for money in the old world had always clashed with that purity of purpose and performance.
Only a few managed it and they, in time, burned out when commercial forces subsumed their art.
The many that failed had been forced to give it up for the mundane just to afford a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs only having rare snatches of time in which to pick up their instrument or raise their voices.
Dreams.
An old song.
Alin was familiar with it thanks to his parents’ musical tastes.
A random request from a random old man at the bar.
Casey strummed and sang.
Haunting.
Serendipitous.
For Alin’s dreams were why he sat in the small booth with Kat.
She pressed tightly against his side, holding his hand underneath the table.
“Oh my god!” She grinned. “We’re so lucky!”
The top artists performed for Universal Points and levels.
Their Quests were along those lines.
Some rewarded them for their ranking in the charts as voted on by the people.
Others rewarded them for simply eliciting true emotion from 30 people inside a bar.
Many did what Casey was doing.
They slipped into small venues or sometimes even set up on the side of a busy street or in a park filled with families enjoying the sunshine.
Often unannounced.
“Yeah, lucky...” He nodded.
It was certainly lucky that he had dad that could find out when and where Casey was going to do one of her pop-up performances.
Serendipitous that this one coincided with his and Kat’s four year anniversary.
“Best anniversary ever!”
It was a shame that he was going to ruin it.
Dreams.
The song.
His.
He placed a magic gem on the table to create a bubble of silence against physical and magical means.
Then, he placed a tiny speaker-like device. Of Threnosh make, it manipulated sound waves by rendering them null after a short distance.
For anyone other than him and Kat there would be nothing to hear.
“Um, I have something to tell you.”
Kat’s eyes narrowed.
“Not ask?”
“No. It’s, uh, something about me and… please, just hear me out.”
“Always.”
“I just want you to know that I love you and whatever you decide won’t change that.” He took a deep breath. “I, uh, I should show you first. Before, um… well…”
He had practiced his words, but his hammering heart knotted his tongue.
Heat rushed to his head.
To not know how she’d react felt like having a sword tip pressed into his throat.
Thrust or withdraw.
Death and life.
To stand on the precipice of that cliff was the hardest thing he had ever faced.
He turned the hand not holding hers palm up on the table.
A thought.
An expression of near-unconscious will, like breathing or the blinking of his eye lids.
Gray fog appeared, drifting from his palm connected by a barely-perceptible wisp.
“Oh. My. God. You’ve got your powers!” She squealed like a child on Christmas morning.
Her arms wrapped tightly around him as she planted a deep kiss on his lips.
“So cool! What does it do?”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
He couldn’t look her in the eyes.
Casey’s voice crooned.
“I swear. I didn’t know. I, um, dreamed…”
----------------------------------------
Two Weeks Earlier
Excitement morphed to dread as he showed his parents his newly-emerged power.
Sure it was a small puff of gray smoke, but better than nothing, right?
His mom’s smile was frozen on her face.
His dad’s face was neutral.
Not worried or excited.
It was familiar look.
The kind his dad always had when fighting monsters, no matter how terrible.
“Um, guys…”
“Come over here, Boy.” His mom’s superhuman strength didn’t brook protest as she gently and firmly led him to the couch where she promptly threw her arms around him in a vise-like hug.
“Well… now is the time.”
His dad sighed and a pit suddenly formed in Alin’s stomach.
The neutral expression had cracked a fraction, which was equivalent to a fissure in the earth.
His dad looked scared, sad and any number of emotions.
“Computer. Open folder A. Display in living room. Thank you,” his dad said.
The holographic projection appeared in front of them.
“Where to start…”
His mom rubbed Alin’s back. It was distracting, but she ignored his attempts to shrug her off.
“Here. What do you see?”
His dad directed his attention to the projection.
“Folders, files… my medical history?”
“That’s right. Pick a file, randomly.”
“I don’t understand— fine, third row, fifth column.”
His dad opened it with a gesture.
“What do you see?”
“Results of one of my physicals, obviously.”
“And.”
“I dunno. Good, healthy stats for a human being, excuse me, Earthian.” He rolled his eyes. “Tests once a quarter. All my life. Normal and healthy.”
“Okay, now pick another one.”
“Fine,” he sighed.
They went through several more files.
All the same, except for that one time when he was a child after a summer in Manila with his grandparents. Too much sugar and fatty foods had done a number on his vitals.
He lost patience after the thirtieth random file.
“Dad, c’mon. Can you just, like, get to the point.” He glanced at the clock down in the corner of the projection. “I have things to do. I was hoping you could help me get started working on my power.” He helped up a hand and created a tiny, cloud-like fluff of gray mist.
His dad’s face twitched, while his mom held him even tighter.
“Okay, okay. So, do you accept that 21 years of scientific medical tests have determined that you are biologically Earthian.”
“Yeah…”
“Magical test results next.”
“Hey? I always wondered why none of my other friends were doing the same magical tests that I was?”
“Please, pick a file.”
He did at random.
The video played with a voice over.
It was him as a chubby toddler, sitting in the middle of a magic circle.
He didn’t remember that particular instance.
Ms. Teacher’s sonorous voice spoke as the circle on the floor glowed.
“Human. Earth. No anomalous foreign entities detected. No hidden essences. Spiritual signature consistent with local world standards. Affirmed by my name as Archwizard of the High.”
His dad made him pick another one.
He was older. A teenager. He remembered this test.
The magus stood nearby as she directed several of her eyes to scrutinize him where he sat.
She hadn’t said anything.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true.
She had said he looked good and healthy.
At the time he hadn’t thought anything about it.
Her voice over was obviously recorded after.
“This is the Magus of the Twelve Eyes. My scans confirm that Alin Cruces is one hundred percent a human being.”
More recorded tests.
Various mage-types, science-types, even the Threnosh.
“Earthian. Genetic signature consistent with Honor.”
His dad brought up a 3D image of two DNA helixes.
“The one on the left is mine and the one on the right is yours.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
It wasn’t like he understood what he was looking at.
“You’ll note the people that did the tests. Like the rest, they signed their names to it. Staked their expertise on the results being accurate. There are hundreds of these signed affidavits all done under multiple truth spells, Skills and other irrefutable ways.”
“Yeah, sure, but I’m kinda starting to freak out now, so, can you just get to the point!”
“It’s okay, Boy. Context is important,” his mom said.
“Before we continue I need you to acknowledge all this data,” his dad said. “I mean really internalize it. Not just nod your head because you want to move ahead.”
“Fine… there… internalized.”
His dad raised a brow.
Alin let out a breath before actively focusing on what they had just covered.
“Okay, all tests, science and magic, performed by the highest leveled, most expert people in the world say that I’m a normal human— Earthian!” He held up the gray mist. “Except they were wrong.”
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“You studied the Manila Fog Quest?”
“Yeah, broadly in kid school and in depth from a strategic and tactical perspective in Ranger school.”
“Your mom and I never told you this before because, well, we thought it would be the best for you. Especially, if you remained a ‘normal’ human. The truth would’ve only served to make things more difficult for you in that case.”
“Boy, we love you regardless of any thing. No matter what happens,” his mom said.
“You weren’t, uh, born, in a traditional sense.” His dad continued. “I found you.”
Facts clicked into place in Alin’s mind, like pieces of a puzzle he hadn’t known he was picking up.
His age coincided with the Manila Fog Quest.
His physical appearance. Though much taller than his dad, they could’ve been twins at the same age. His grandmother had tons of pictures of his dad growing up and he remembered the his uncanny resemblance at those same ages. Especially, now that he was approaching his prime, while his dad had seemingly been fixed in his.
And most of all… the dreams.
Years of it.
He hadn’t been dreaming a made up scenario plumbed from the depths of his subconscious.
He had been remembering deeply buried memories.
It was why Lilah had always seemed so familiar to him from his earliest memory.
Why her sigils simultaneously filled him with warmth and dread.
His dad told the entire tale unflinchingly.
He tried to listen actively.
The gray mist— the fog in his hand— he clenched his fist killing it.
He tried, but couldn’t deny the truth in his dad’s words.
Would that it had been a practical joke.
He’d much prefer that cruelty than the truth.
Not human.
He had never been one of them.
----------------------------------------
Kat touched the gray fog hovering over his palm.
No hesitation.
Stuck a finger right in it and wiggled it around.
“It’s cool! So, what else can you do with it?”
“Huh?”
“C’mon, dude. Share the details of your new powers!”
“Um… just to be clear… you do understand that I’m the fog monster?”
“No. That’s not what you said. Your dad and mom said the fog disappeared and left a human baby. One hundred percent human according to thousands of tests. Magic and science agreed.”
“Yeah, but…” he nodded at the gray fog.
“So? Residual powers. What did your dad say again? You said they ran new tests?”
“Yeah.”
“And? Are you fog on the inside?”
“No…”
“Okay, then what’s the problem.”
“How about the whole subsuming people and turning them into— so many people. Most of my relatives… are they even my relatives?”
“Again, you said you’ve got your dad’s genetics, right? Like, you’re his son, not a clone. Honestly, that’d be weirder, being a clone.”
“Yeah, but not my mom’s…”
In one way that had been a harder blow than anything else.
Even though she had assured him that it didn’t matter to her he still couldn’t help but feel devastated about it.
“I know your mom, she loves you, loved you this whole time. Unconditional and stuff.”
“Still…” he sighed. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Um… I don’t know… I, uh, I’d understand if you didn’t want to be together anymore…”
His eyes never left the table.
Fine-looking grain in the wood.
“Look at me, Boy.”
He did.
“It’s a lot to take in, but I don’t care.”
“But—”
“Wait, let me finish. I already know what you’re going to say.” She rolled her eyes. “I could say so many things, but ultimately I don’t care. So, you were a fog baby, so what? There’s worst things. Remember Chrome’s boyfriend?” She laced her fingers with his and squeezed. “You look and feel fine. I trust you completely.”
“Don’t you at least want to take a few days to think about it. I don’t want to ruin your life. What if I turn into—” he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“I said I trust you. So, why don’t you trust the people that care about you?”
He had said the same thing to his parents.
They had said the same thing as Kat.
He had pressed them and forced them to promise that they’d do whatever it took to protect everyone else if it came down to it.
He hadn’t quite believed in the sincerity of their words.
“The dangers—”
“Are everywhere around us anyways.” She shrugged. “But, if you insist.”
“Yes, please. Just, really think about it. I’ll completely understand if you don’t want to be with me anymore.”
“This kind of talk isn’t exactly a happy one on our anniversary. Here, I thought you were going to—” she gave him a wry smile. “Never mind. Fine. I’ll think about it, but I’m not going to change my answer. We’re halves of a whole. It just turns out you’ve got a fog superpower. I hope it’s good at least.”
“Please be serious.”
“Oh my god! You look like my sister’s puppy when his blanket gets taken away for washing.” She laughed.
“Not funny.”
“It really is!”
“C’mon…”
“Fine. I guess this was why you’ve been so down over the last few weeks.” She sighed, rubbing his back.
What was with the back rubs from the women in his life whenever he was sad?
“So, how many days will I have to ‘think’ about this?”
He frowned.
“Listen, Boy, I’ll really think about it, promise, but I can’t pretend I’ll change my mind. So, how many days will you accept?”
“I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take. A week? Two?”
“Okay. A week it is. Now, you try to not think about it. I want us to enjoy our anniversary date. Like I said, as far as I’m concerned there’s nothing for me to worry about. I hear and acknowledge that you feel differently. And I wish I could ease your mind with my words.”
“No, no, it does. They did. I just— I’m happy you didn’t run out of here screaming.” He gave her a sad smile.
“Jeez, you just have to accept that I love you and that you love me.”
“I do love you. It’s why—”
“Nuh uh.” She wagged a finger. “I already said I’ll ‘think’ about it.”
“Thank you.”
“Okay, good.”
She kissed him.
“Now, drop the silence stuff. I can’t believe Casey happened to be performing here at the same time—” her eyes narrowed up at him. “It’s not a coincidence.”
A statement, not a question.
“I asked my dad… to ask her…”
“Wait— what?” Her jaw dropped. “Your dad knows Casey Cool!”
“Sort of, not really, more like an acquaintance. He, uh, took her application to move here from Old Florida or something like that. I don’t know why he was taking applications.”
“Oh. My. God! Do you think you could introduce me?”
“I don’t know her.”
“Yeah, but your dad.”
“I can’t just walk up to her and say she knows my dad. It’d be weird and why would she believe me?”
“You do look like your dad, you know?” She batted her eyes up at him. “Please…”
He folded like a cheap chair.
It turned out that Casey Cool accepted his identity based solely on the father-son resemblance.
He didn’t know how to feel about the highlight of the night for Kat being the chance to talk with her favorite singer and getting a picture and an autograph.
He decided that if she was happy then he was happy.
So what if his big secret revelation sort of just washed over her?
Sure he came from a monster and might turn into it again, but no big deal.
Everyone had been way too calm about it.
At least Kat hadn’t dropped him instantly. Honestly, he wouldn’t have blamed her. It was the most rational choice.
Still, the weight lifted a bit.
A week to wait for her final decision.
Which left just one more difficult conversation to have.
----------------------------------------
Alin stood on the roof of his hotel and casino home.
He was clad in his full power armor even though he wasn’t on any sort of duty.
His dad’s doing.
Pulled him out of his ranger squad too.
New powers meant practice.
It made sense.
The dark night sky lit up like a fireworks show. It was much the same down on the street.
Human fought monsters.
The Bountiful Decade, so named by the spires.
If anything it had been undersold.
More monsters.
Turnover times on encounter challenges and spawn zones already cut in half and still steadily dwindling.
Estimates based on the rate said that in around six months that would be down to a few hours.
He zoomed in on one of the distant walls.
Solid iron 10 meters high.
Uncle Remy’s work.
His uncle had encircled an area with about a 2 kilometer radius from the hotel casino in less than a day. He had done the same down south. The work would’ve taken years without his uncle’s powers.
Automatic turrets spat bullets at the tide of monsters.
Tracers briefly illuminated the fearsome, twisted forms.
Farther out, he watched a mixed force of Earthian and Threnosh fighters pushing against the tides toward some kind of miniboss monster perched on top of a large building’s ruins.
Primal led the charge. The old Threnosh sprayed death with more firepower than a modern pre-spires era army.
The hulking power armor crushed monsters with each step of its thick legs.
A tank-sized gun on one shoulder boomed. The explosive shell blew apart a monster-packed street.
The rotary autocannon on the other buzzed down a side street, painting the road and building walls with monster blood and chunks.
A flame thrower under one arm cooked the monsters that managed to get close.
The industrial-sized chainsaw under the other carved through a thickly-furred hide that appeared to be made out of metal judging by the sparks scattered over everything.
The huge monster scored grooves into Primal’s thick chest armor before dying with a booming roar.
Primal thudded forward.
The rest followed, firing spells and projectiles as they moved.
Alin’s gaze turned to the sky.
A bright flash had drawn his attention.
Tracers stitched dozens of tracks.
Anti-air defensive systems at work.
Colin, the Emerald Raptor, weaved through them on his flying wing.
Machine guns spat alongside streaking micromissiles.
A small, bright blue orb shot forth. 200 meters out it exploded, expanding into a huge sphere of crackling lighting.
The readout in Alin’s faceplate marked a hundred small flying monsters instantly fried.
Threnosh in Interceptor-type power armor zipped around like tiny birds. They fired thin beams of bright force from their arms. They launched micromissiles and dropped bombs from an attached frame, discarding it when empty.
Wyverns and drakes were grounded.
Too much ordinance flying around and they lacked the automated coordination systems of Colin and the Threnosh.
The chatter over the comms was calm and measured.
Suddenly, an entire quadrant of sky blazed bright setting off a high temperature warning.
From cold to a few thousand degrees.
He silenced the beeping with a cybernetic thought.
It was his Uncle Eron.
He raised a hand and waved.
His uncle had probably already seen him.
Sure enough, Uncle Eron landed a short distance away.
“Hey, Boy. I would’ve come sooner, but there was this whole thing… and…”
“I know. It’s cool. Thanks for coming. I know you’re always busy.”
“Yeah, so, I’m not going to bullshit you. I did try to kill you when you were a baby. I’m not going to make excuses.”
“You could try?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to minimize my actions. So, now that you know, I apologize. It was wrong of me. You’ve proved that by being fine, young man you’ve become.”
“Seriously, I wouldn’t mind some excuses.”
“Eh, your dad showed you what happened, right? That’s the best, most accurate explanation you can get… most.”
“Maybe it’d help me, like, understand?”
“Alright. Just for you cause I do feel that I owe you more than I could ever give. Right, so, you were a fog baby and I was scared that you’d do the fog thing one day. That whole time was me at the lowest. Stripped of my powers, down to just the physicals. People kept getting taken and I couldn’t stop it. Worse, they kept coming back. Relatives I knew, ones I didn’t, got subsumed and made to fight me. Over and over again. Close to a year where I lost hope everyday. It was tougher cause they seemed like they were still themselves, you know?”
Alin knew.
He had no memories of a pre-baby existence, but his dad had shared.
“So, there you were. I didn’t know it was you or the you you became. Couldn’t look ahead. I was just so tired even with the powers coming back. Even kicked your dad’s ass.”
“He’d say otherwise.”
“No way. I totally beat him up. Ripped his Threnosh armor open.”
“Is that why he kept the surface tear even though the rest of it got fixed?”
“Probably? I figured it was a passive aggressive reminder of what I did.”
“You know, thinking back. I realize that you kept your distance from me when I was growing up. Until like I was, like, 12.”
“Yup. Two reasons. Looking at you reminded me of the fog stuff and I didn’t want to think otherwise in case I had to… well, you know, prevent a repeat. As time went on, you kept proving that you were just a normal little boy. I felt pretty fucked up for waiting on you to go evil monster.”
“What changed?”
“Time. All those tests they did to you. And I got tired of waiting. Most importantly, you’re not a fog monster. You’re just not. You’re family. My nephew. A good kid. Totally not annoying. Lera loves you. I love you.”
“But what if you were right? About the monster?”
“Yeah, no. I was wrong. You’re in control. You make the choices.”
“But what if?”
“We’ll deal with it together. Everyone.”
“I’m scared of losing control. Forgetting everyone. My dad won’t put mental blocks.”
“Yeah, I’d go with him on that.”
“Why?”
“Dude, locking it behind a door or hiding from it means you can’t see it coming. Better that you grab it by the throat straight from the beginning, you know? Own it. Control it. Don’t treat it like some monster inside to be scared of. It’d be like subconscious predestination something. You keep seeing yourself as the monster and you become it sort of thing. Don’t see it as a monster and it’s not. So, just really dial down on it in your training. Maybe your dad can do some mind tricks, but not to suppress and imprison, but more along the lines of control?”
“That’s what he suggested. But, not right away.”
“Probably not a good idea to get you reliant on outside help right away. Easy mode would build bad habits. Like if you were on crutches and someone took them away you’d fall, right?”
“I guess.” Alin gazed at the dark sky and the flashes of orange as missiles blew monsters away. “You said you owed me?”
“Uh… yeah, I guess, but you’re family. I’d pretty much do whatever for family anyways.”
“If I lose control—”
“I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you get it back.”
“That’s not—”
“I know. I made a mistake 21 years ago. I’d die first before I repeat it.”
“But—”
“C’mon, Boy! That was like my biggest mistake. If the same situation happens again there’s no way I’m making it twice. So, get that self-sacrificing shit out of your head. What’d I tell you about that manifesting shit?”
“You said it yourself. I studied the history. Ten thousand people died. Subsumed by the fog. Turned into slaves. Almost all our—”
Did he really have the right to call them relatives?
“I— it killed rangers and Watch. It took away brothers, sisters from people I know. This whole time I never knew. How can I make it up to them?”
His uncle laid a hand on his shoulder.
“You don’t. Cause it wasn’t you. And if you don’t like that answer, then how about this? The one with the most control over your future is you. Do everything you can to prevent what you’re afraid of from happening. The fog entity is gone. I was wrong that day. It died when you were born. Alin Cruces. That’s it no more no less. And you’re gonna do what you’re gonna do.”
“I, uh…”
He sort of understood some of what his uncle was saying.
His uncle’s gaze snapped to the east. “Awww, man… lame,” he muttered. “I was hoping we could share a drink.” He pulled a stoppered animal horn from a small bag of holding on his belt and handed it over. “Mead from magical honey. Troll recipe. Maybe just try a little sip first, yeah? Listen, I want to stay and talk more, but there’s a giant storm-bringing bird heading this way. And the beeping in my ear piece is telling me that the satellites are picking up problems elsewhere, so…” He shrugged.
“Thanks for making the time, uncle. I’m not mad about the baby killing attempt.”
“I don’t know about that. I think I’d feel a bit better if you were.”
“I don’t remember it, so it’s not like I formed emotions about it. Seeing my dad’s memories was like watching a movie. Like it was happening to someone else really.”
“Well, it’s cool if you change your mind about that.” His uncle slowly floated off the roof. “Keep me posted on how the power learning goes. Some of my favorite times were testing mine out. Discovering new things I could on a daily basis. Finding limits or not. It was almost like a real life game, you know, minus the real life consequences. Maybe I can share tips and ideas.”
“Yeah, that’ll be good for me. And an outside perspective would be more likely to catch things going wrong that I can’t from mine.”
“Nah, I trust you to handle it. Remember, don’t be scared of your powers, be aware… or something like that. It’s the tiger you don’t see that gets you.”
“Um… what?”
“A hunter woman in India said that to me once. Thought it was fitting. Maybe ask your dad what it means.” His uncle shrugged. “I’ll keep in touch. Oh, Lera says ‘hi’ and that she’s looking forward to visiting when your other cousins finally come back.”
His uncle zipped away with a wave.
Loud booms shook the air as he disappeared into the night sky.
Alin wished he had as much confidence in himself as his uncle.
Although, he supposed it was a positive thing that the man that tried to kill him as a baby was so sure that things would turn out okay.