I was dreaming. I knew that I was dreaming, because I found myself standing in front of the ruins of the 4th Chernobyl reactor, screaming at the liquidators not to touch anything metal once they went in. I was there only briefly, to help direct the rescue efforts, but the memory had burned into my mind and haunted me ever since. I was far too important to USSR to be allowed in Chernobyl for more than a few days, but my knowledge of radiation sickness and my proximity to Ukraine had made me... useful.
I looked at the lines of masked Liquidators in front of me. Many of them were wearing paper masks and army coats, as if that could protect them from ionizing radiation that was pouring from the maw of hell that they would soon walk into. From the "radiation exposure" studies conducted in Semipalatinsk decades ago, I knew their future. I knew that many of the men in front of me wouldn't make it alive from this place. I knew that some of them would die from horrific radiation burns in agony over the passing weeks while others would slowly pass into eternal night as their cells became afflicted with growth disorders, replicating without stopping.
Once again, I saw a long line of buses filled with evacuated citizens pass by me with the words "to be disposed" written on them. Contrary to the terrifying label, the people weren't the ones being "disposed", it was the buses. Soon they would fill massive vehicle graveyards on the outskirts of the city, the metal composing them too irradiated to be of use.
The people being evacuated from Chernobyl looked tense. I couldn't look at their faces. They weren't told that they were never coming back to their homes. They had left almost everything behind, including pets, toys, tools, furniture, electronics and clothes...
All of their worldly possessions were now cursed, poisoned for a thousand years.
Their lives were thrown in to chaos by the incompetence of the Soviet atomic engineers running a test on 26 April 1986...
The ruins of the 4th reactor building loomed in front of me, a monstrous megastructure torn asunder by the explosion. It whispered to me of our failures, of the destruction and death we had wrought, unleashed upon ourselves through our foolishness.
When I looked up at the sky above the 4th reactor building, I saw the spire of ions there. A shimmer of deadly blue radiation pierced the heavens. It wasn't there in real life when I stood there that day, but my nightmare had painted this horrific vision. Ashes rained from the sky. A supercell storm spun around the shimmer with a deep, unnerving rumble. I tried not to cry, tried not to inhale the ashes that were once people.
The ruin pulsated, grew in front of me, getting closer and bigger. I realized that I was being rushed towards it on an a ghostly, barely visible, white chariot pulled forward by the 4th horseman of the apocalypse. The white horse beneath its rider whinnied with a screech, sounding like metal grinding on metal. Death turned her pale, sunken face towards me, silver-blue eyes peering into my soul.
"How... interesting. Show me more," Death sang with a chilling, inhuman voice. Her frost-covered arm reached out and touched my hand.
Her hand felt cold. Colder than glacier ice, colder than the void of space, colder than absolute zero. I screamed, unable to break away from the life-consuming chill that rushed towards my heart.
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“He’s not breathing!”
“I’m casting a healing spell!”
“Again! Cast it again!”
A current of magic shot through my heart, restarting it. I screamed. Damn it all. I forgot what it was like to sleep! Forgot that the horrors of Chernobyl haunted my dreams. I sounded like a crying baby.
Ah, I was crying... and a baby. Everything hurt terribly. Not sure what I expected. I thought I had more time, but alas Giovashi's spell-clap had derailed my plans somewhat.
Somehow, the damned Ishira Priestess had not only disabled my Infoscope but also gradually pushed my soul into a deep slumber which only ended now.
Where was I? This wasn’t the womb. This was… I was being held in the air. I was breathing! Had I slept through my own birth when I was pushed deeper into my infant body by Giovashi's magic?
Argh. Two weeks of essential research out the window!
I kept on crying. This was normal. This was totally what babies do. I’m totally an ordinary baby and not a...
“His stats! They’re all over the place! This can’t be right! This… this is impossible!”
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Please ignore that. I'm a perfectly normal baby. Damn that one-eyed woman. If it wasn't for her I might have had a chance to conceal my status. Or maybe not... what is that thing being shoved in my face? Looks like a black basalt rock covered in pale eyes. Weird and gross!
“He’s level six?! Ave Ishira!”
“What?!”
“Your. Child. Is. Level. Six!” The scratchy, female voice punctuated every word. “His System is unlocked! His stats are irregular! This is an abnormality! His body is incredibly underdeveloped, small and weak… but the other stats… how can this be? One hundred and seventy six Intelligence?!”
“Are you screwing with me, midwife Tamara?”
Hey! I know that voice. That’s my father’s voice. I blinked tears out of my eyes, trying to focus. It didn’t work very well. I saw vague, blurry shapes in front of me.
“I’m not! The Evaluation Eye says…” An enormous, blurry woman in what looked to be a white dress was waving the blurry, black sphere covered in eyes in front of my face. Some kind of shimmering blur was moving within the sphere, akin to a spell circle. The vision of a newborn sucked. I tried to activate my Infoscope.
My mana flickered and pulsed through my body like an old computer monitor refusing to turn on. Ah. I didn't even have enough mana in me to make an Infoscope... well that's unfortunate. I guessed that being born drained everything from me and almost killed me... again.
Sigh.
“Maybe you dropped your stupid whale Eye if its showing you this garbage!” My father barked at the midwife. “How could a newborn have unlocked stats?!”
“I have to report this… extreme irregularity to the Church!”
“Please don’t,” my mom tiredly groaned from the bed. I turned my head towards her. Yep, she was just as blurry. I looked back at the white blob that was midwife Tamara.
“I’m not going to break the rules, Cassandra!” Tamara groaned. She sounded just as beat up as my mother. I wondered how many healing spells she had to cast on me. “This... irregularity could threaten the village. What if he’s been cursed or he's... an aberration, an Astral Phantom!”
Damn it. Welp, she got me. Game over.
“My newborn son isn’t a threat to the village! Don’t be ridiculous! Your stupid Eye is broken!” My dad’s voice plowed through the chatter of the old midwife.
“When I scanned your wife nine months ago the Eye told me that you will have just a girl! I even told you that you were going to have a girl! Don’t you remember it, Georgi?”
“So your Eye was broken back then too! My daughter is right there! She's perfectly fine!" My father barked.
"But..."
"For Ishira's sake, Tamara! My wife was never struck by a Phantom! My son is NOT Gods damned abberant! How could my daughter's stats be normal and my son's stats like that of a mage apprentice?! How old is that bloody identification artifact?”
“Uhrm, a hundred and forty six years,” Tamara muttered.
“Exactly!” My dad declared with confidence. “The runes in it probably decayed over the century of use. Tammy, you’re tired. We’re all tired. Go home and get some rest and then order a new Eye from Agamemnon. I’ll even pay for one myself - we can’t have a healer in our village without a proper evaluation artifact! Just don’t send any reports to anyone until then, alright?”
My dad leaned towards the midwife. I guessed that he was likely giving her a very stern look. I knew exactly what his stern look was like - I've seen it before.
“Fine.” The midwife sighed. “Take care of Cassandra and your... twins."
"I will," my father said.
"I won’t submit the report," the midwife continued. "I’ll tell the Equality Overseer that my artifact Eye broke, if he asks about… your son. In the book of Skyisle records your twins are already listed as just a girl. I’ll try to correct the list when there’s nobody at the church. An Overseer might come around to investigate him sooner or later. It might happen tomorrow or in a month or never, it all depends on how diligent the Overseer is. I will put in an order for a new Eye. I will return when it arrives.”
“Thank you.” Dad nodded. “We’ll deal with it when it comes to it.”
I heard the clinks of metal coins being passed to the midwife.
“Now can I have my son, please?” Mom whispered from the bed.
Dad passed me to my mom and I clutched onto her breast. I was starving. I was glad to have such supportive parents.
Oh there's my sister, I think. She's awfully quiet for a newborn. It was a bit hard to see, but I think she had silver-white hair. Odd, but then again our mother has silver-white hair.
“Ishira be with you.” The midwife departed with the sound of a closing door.
"I name my daughter... Destiny," My mother muttered. She turned to my father. "What do you want to name our boy, love?"
“Hrmm.” My father scratched his brown beard. “Perhaps, Dante? Yes. An acceptable name… a strong, enduring boy!”
Mom nodded in agreement. Damn it! Really wish I could speak now… but then again a talking newborn would be very suspect, not that I wasn’t already very suspicious with my highly irregular stats.
[ Full name assigned: Dante Alan Skyisle! ]
The System dinged. I mentally sighed. No name that started with a V for me. Oh well. Dante it is.
I realized that there was another System notification waiting for me to acknowledge it. I now had enough XP to get to Level 7!
Observing the manifestation of Ishira and the dragon was an enriching experience in terms of experience.
Hopefully going up to level 7 would get my mana up to seven instead of what's it at now... 0.1? Argh.
My level being discovered was a big problem. I would have to get cracking on a way to conceal it, asap.
I initiated the level up and settled in for a nap on my mom’s warm chest, the beating pulse of her heart relaxing me.
Just as the ethereal chorus started up I suddenly realized that nobody pointed out that Destiny was Level 3. In fact, nobody even noticed it even though Tamara was waving that identification artifact all around my twin sister too.
Oh oh.