A secure boring job in a museum. With two colleagues who she thought would appreciate the work that her son would offer. They would do the field research and he would translate and decipher any materials found which would, in turn, give new insights into ancient history. The gift of tongues had been one ability that they failed to strip from him during his long time of imprisonment or banishment.

Alexa had never been quite clear on which of the two it was meant to be, either would be a form of punishment but her son failed to hold any resentment or anger towards his captors. He has been lost and forgotten in turn, memories and battles turned into dust and reborn into a new state of curiosity and lack of understanding. He possessed an inner purity and state of innocence free of malice and hate. Closer to a newborn than an adult.

She had planned to let her son find his place in the world, free of the facility, free of the complex paths of the world and work and eat chocolate as he saw fit. Such a funny thing for him to latch onto that caused so much of his benevolence to appear, coco beans mixed with milk and sugar. It wasn’t for the physical enjoyment she thought but then her son had kept so much of himself hidden away and forgotten so much of his past and mind.

Until more radical elements of the facility found an excuse to get involved with all the machinations and factions that an age-old organisation developed over time. Humans had fought wars for less so since the first proto-human had picked up a rock and attacked another.

The wars weren’t the main issue though. The beings that called themselves gods which intervened either directly or indirectly were the cause for concern, technology was one thing while belief in a higher level of being was another.

Mix in a variety of religious beliefs, fear and a dose of self-righteousness and you ended up in a situation where the need to keep a roof of safety above the head of the world overcame specific morals. Some sought to put barbed wire on the ceiling and other traps, some of whom only wanted to make repairs when and if necessary.

An element of uncertainty had appeared more recently according to the information reports that Alexa had read, been small-scale at first and barely noticeable in the wider scheme of events.

The role of the facility was to keep the status quo after all. They had no rights nor enough power or resources and a constant edge was fought between countries and economies. It was enough for them to check the doors and windows were locked but they never owned the house, only passed through it as a real estate agent did during an annual inspection.

When you were dealing with entities that could form tsunamis and storms that would wreak havoc and death across small nations the death of a small band of mercenaries and a small, isolated village in a remote region held little interest. Once it occurred frequently within a medium-sized city it held a far different premise. Power once unleashed and feared would be believed, then it would grow, and further aberrations would appear.

The vicious cycle would continue until stopped. Use of force usually meant that the situation had gotten out of containment protocols and a viable excuse would be used which meant that human casualties were likely. Cover stories were implemented, and cash transactions were followed to ensure that silence was permanently kept. Civilization depended on it.

The cults were the worst ones. When gods became real people began to depend on them. Even minor spirits could create undue influence in times of need, then they would need to be shut down and doors and windows barred before they were able to gain a foothold.

Any country in a state of war or economic chaos allowed for finger holds at best as humans as they often did seek a solution to their immediate problems. Their prayers for an answer or an uncaring being to come and help their situation often went unanswered and for good reason.

Sufficient belief in any spirit or presumed self-proclaimed deity caused a ripple effect. A single prayer would lead to power being exercised which would lead to further belief and it would continue until immediately put to a halt.

Humans ended up as slaves to these creatures, they may develop sufficiently advanced civilisations but remain beholden to their new masters and mistresses.

The awakening of the human consciousness had put a hard stop to that according to the research that she had undertaken. At a roughly determined point in history, humans had changed physically and psychologically. A rational and scientific mindset had replaced the old rules of the world and myths and legends became mere stories.

All of the mythical creatures became known as relics of the past, and conversations and voices from the heavens became dismissed as mass hysteria and hallucinations. Mere phantasms from a brain that had not become physically developed enough to take on the challenges of the world.

Rationalism and scientific interest in the natural world created an entirely new narrative for human beings to follow. Although there remained a degree of spirituality that was still fed according to religious and cultural practice it was no longer on the same scale as in previous aeons.

Alexa hoped that her son Duke would remember the rules he desperately needed to follow. Her power and influence within the facility were far weakened now, in allowing him to escape and find his purpose within the wider world she had reduced the amount of protection that she was able to offer him. It was ironic in a way, that her son would find a curiosity in a world that would fear him if they knew his power.

The part of him that wasn’t human would be interested, as a wolf would bare its fangs when faced with a challenger. Any animal would fight back for its immediate territory, it was humans who scaled up and fought for reasons too diverse to mention.

Laughing lightly to herself despite the pain that came from her lungs Alexa was pleased that she knew at least one thing about her son that the radical elements including that pagan witch with the stolen eye didn’t know.

Her patch might dampen and limit her power from overwhelming her but she was playing with stole fire which would burn her alive if she didn’t keep it in check. The witch knew nothing clearly about her son, he wasn’t a scorpion for them to use in their militant operations.

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Nor was he even a wolf. They had made the wrong classification of his power scales using her developed protocols. He was far worse than they imagined. A copy at best but she’d never wanted to dig deeper than she had done.

Alexa had spent her life researching the past and the myths and legends to know that there were some questions regarding her adopted son that she didn’t want answers to. The world was a stable enough place and she would protect him until her death of old age.

The thought of longevity through magical means or other means crossed her mind but she had seen the true value of so-called immortality. If it meant being trapped inside a locked box for at least ten thousand years trapped with yourself for company and walls of images then she would prefer the end of her natural life.

Her own life had gone on long enough already that she could remember as a young teenager a hundred or so years making the discovery that would involve her with the facility.

The feel of the harsh sands and the heat on the sun on her once soft skin as her parents struggled in the deserted regions of the world, bringing her along, a girl who was becoming a young woman in both body and mind, to their dig sites and places of research.

She had lost both her parents when they had approached a site without precaution, a failure on the place of the facility to properly guard and warn away trespassers. The land had been in more conflict then with warring nations causing chaos and the desire for power and land and blood.

The Facility of Myth Reduction had almost been lost back then then, struggling to deal with outbreaks which were put down to disturbances, pestilences and disease. Outbreaks of myth which meant human imagination was realised and consumed into new forms of power.

She had found her son though shortly after the loss of her parents, they hadn’t seen the sigils in place or the warnings. It made her laugh how her motherly instincts at the tender age of fourteen had been what had saved her life.

Standard operating procedures would be enforced with a severe lockdown penalty in place if they found out that Alexa had falsified his records and readings.

It was a given that it would be a near-impossibility for them to find out the truth mainly because she had given her life to developing and reclassifying cases.

At worst they would consider him to be a tame djinn who was capable of minor reality breaks but had been found in a dusty tomb somewhere locked away for millennia and forgotten until released by a young woman barely out of her teens searching for answers and clues.

For her son, there was little that Alexa wouldn’t do. The pagan witch was aware of some aspects of his powers, she thought that he would act as a kind of wish fulfilment device. The classic story of the djinn who granted your three wishes was a mere myth but the existence of the spirit who wanted freedom after being trapped was not.

The tale of King Solomon's ring that allowed the ruler of a country long ago to control a demon or spirit to obey his commands and bound to his will would perform great feats of magic. In some stories, it was said that an angel had been granted to him by the will of benevolent heaven.

Alexa had met angels in the flesh as it were and had not been impressed. The amount of time that it had taken her to kill or banish them back into memory and superstition had been measured in the number of colleagues who had died. It was her position of authority that had given her enough time to be a family with Duke, to show kindness and support but also to provide him with a semi-moral framework which would guide him once he chose his independence. No ring would be controlling him.

The heavily developed structure would allow him the flexibility to protect himself from harm but also limit his action against innocent or unaware humans.

In any case, a fail-safe had already been built into him, it was not of her devising though. Alexa thought that it might be a safety measure that had both protected him and isolated him from the shift in human consciousness millennia ago when gods, spirits and monsters were no longer believed in and rational thinking took control. The power of prayer had no impact on Duke, not in any real sense. For her, he was simply her son nothing more, nothing less.

Prayers gave spirits energy and power, and emotions built upon that energy. Her son, who had killed the dragon in stories of old. His fascination with magic was an odd one, he was aware that he could affect minor changes in reality, but the scale of his abilities had been limited.

Mainly, through her own intervention or either the sheer length of his captivity and his relative isolation. His memory loss and personality regression had been be a fortunate opportunity and either he had chosen her or she had chosen him. In the end it was the same result, a teenager become a mother and a lost being became a son.

‘The work here begins to sicken me.’

Alexa grew tired of her work in the facility. The conservatives wanted to stick to the old stable methods and the radicals wanted to use fire to fight a fire. She had grown weary of the constant issues and the nights grew longer all she wanted was to be left alone in peace.

Over-preparation, isolation and removal of any traces formed the basis of protocols that she had designed for the facility. She had never even considered forming a standard operation procedure against her son though despite her failings. If you were to turn against your child who you gave love, energy, and attention then you would never be considered a parent but instead a failure.

All she asked for was happiness and the opportunity to live a fulfilled and meaningful life for her only son. Now, interference from internal groups would cause conflict and possibly harm him psychologically. This, she would not forgive but she was too long in the tooth now to continue to protect him from other spirits and beings that called themselves gods.

Animals by name and nature take no other form.

Physically it would take another creature of power which had been long absent from the world to hurt him. She wasn’t aware of the last time that he had experienced pain on that scale, it could have been during his being locked away, but she had never asked, and he had never remembered. Sometimes, scars were buried so deep that new skin just grew over and it would be as though they were never there. She knew that her appearance never gave off the impression of the amount of suffering and loss that she had once experienced as a child, no she was only known as a key scientist and researcher who had once been considered essential to the cause of the facility.

She didn’t know how he would react to a conflict on such a scale. Whether he would still stick to the rules and guidelines that she had spent decades imprinting on him or if he would react accordingly and more in line with his actual nature.

Alexa would need to take the time to remove herself from her research centre. She was not without her power and influence despite her relatively quiet demeanour and passive-seeming personality. You didn’t work hard for a century without developing the necessary tools and experience to take out threats. The witch with the stolen eye would burn if she caused her only son distress or discomfort, her energies were taken not gifted.

It was time she learned that power was earned and not stolen. First, a quick phone call to another old woman who acted as her military counterpart. Then Alexa would have to see what else needed to be fixed in the name of motherly love.