111-112-113 version 2

SPOILERS FOR THESE THREE CHAPTERS: only read this bold text if you already read the chapters. If you didn't, skip it.

Changes: reworked the timeline. Removed the time-skip to reach Sitea. Added some foreshadowing: getting hit by the shield was Albert's plan all along. He didn't know it was Alignment Energy until he got close enough to sense it, and when he did he got overwhelmed by greed and decided to take a leap of faith, eventually resulting in his arriving in the black space. 

Overall these are big changes done in a minor way, reworking some dialogue and descriptions. If you already read the chapters, there's no need to read further.

*111 – A long time

Albert sat contemplating what he saw when he leveled up. Close to him, Kainen kept watch, walking in a circle around the crackling fire. Often times he stopped, peering into the darkness, as if to try and sense something nearby. But there seemed to be nothing, and Albert was too focused on his own machinations to take notice.

A spark had been on Albert’s mind since he arrived in this world and had to develop a leveling system for himself. A desire to change things. After the level up, the spark had ignited into a flame. Lately, he had grown ever more dissatisfied with his magic and with the system, wishing he had a simpler way to handle everything. Every insight counted, and he needed to take his time understanding magic and how it worked, but his patience was running out.

His mind had devised several experiments, and he wanted to test them out. For now, however, he simply watched what happened inside his own body. Perhaps, once he formed a Core, everything would be clear.

Time passed. Sitea was drawing close. There were days of travel, hunting for food and searching for paths through dangerous terrain. Albert and his reluctant guide crossed rivers, waded marshes, and shared many meals together in their search for the ancient city.

Slowly, however, as they got closer to their mark a creeping sense of dread began to make itself manifest. Something was not right. Kainen was acting strangely. Sure, already Albert knew that the former guild master was not to be trusted, but he also knew that his allegiance was out of convenience and had a simple goal. People were easy to predict when they acted with a goal in mind.

Perhaps there was the fact that Kainen was aware that Albert could mind control him at any time. It didn’t matter how many times Albert repeated that he would never mind control him, that what he did to the elf had to be done out of pure necessity and that there was no other way.

Kainen did not trust him.

And, thing was, Albert knew that the man was right not to. He wouldn’t either, if he were in his shoes. Some days the guilt of what he did was almost unbearable, and in moments of weakness Albert tried to open up to Kainen. The man listened, but said little. Albert slowly came to the realization that, once they learned of his power to control minds, nobody would fully trust him anymore, because they would always second guess themselves, wondering whether what they did was due to their own choices or Albert’s.

Mind control magic did not work like that, Albert thought many times. If he wanted to control Kainen, the man would never know. But it didn’t matter. Not even he believed it, in the end. All he could do was be a good team member, slowly earning Kainen’s trust. Perhaps one day he would see.

As the days passed Albert experimented with the system, learned what he could about magic. A plan about what to do hatched in his mind, but it was still too early and the risks were too great. Besides, he lacked a crucial element he could only find inside Sitea.

Once he had it… Albert could finally change the way his magic worked. Overhaul the system. Make it better. He knew that he and his magic were incomplete. Once he learned enough, he would make the leap. And then he would return home and Kainen and his secrets would not matter anymore.  One day he would apply all the knowledge he gained to make the leap, to go from his current incomplete and overly complex magic to something qualitatively better. More versatile. Stronger.

True Reality Bending.

It was not the time yet.

Albert shared his progress with Kainen. He told the man of what he wanted to accomplish with magic, and Kainen slowly shared more information about how magic worked in this strange world.

One night, Albert decided to devote some time to another thing that had been on his mind for a long time. The itch had intensified as night after night Albert looked up at the sky and thought he recognized what he saw. It was hard to tell.

The moon wasn’t right. The stars weren’t right.

But they were, somehow, familiar.

So he built a telescope. With Solid-State manifestation, he could make one. He had reached the necessary proficiency after many hours of failed attempts.

He didn’t see what he was looking for at first. But the itch remained, and magic could do what normal optics and telescopes could not. Eventually, magnifications stronger than any telescope ever built were reached.

And what he saw when he looked through the illusory but very real lenses of the telescope he made sent a shock through his system.

But he recovered. He said nothing, and Kainen did not ask. In fact, Kainen made fun of the boy’s childish attempts at piercing the heavens, saying that mankind belonged on the Earth. A strange thing to say, but Albert could not think about it.

All he could think about, for days on end, was what he saw when he looked up at the moon.

A white cloth, on a pole, next to the wreckage of a lander. It didn’t take long to understand what it was.

The moon landing site.

This was not another planet. It was home.

He had been gone for far too long.

The fabric of the flag had gone white after centuries or even millennia of radiation. Moving the lens, Albert observed the scars on the moon, and understood that nothing short of a mighty battle could have damaged Earth’s only satellite to that extent. Entire sections of the moon were no longer recognizable, changed forever. Rivers of lava had solidified, and new craters had yet to form.

Eventually, they arrived at their destination. Or, at least, close to it.

*112 – Betrayal

“The central spire of Sitea, ancestral home of the Scarlet Sorceress.” Kainen said.

“Yep.” Albert replied, looking at the small gleaming tip of black metal, barely visible behind a tall hill. “What remains of it, at least.”

“You know it?” Kainen asked, chuckling. From their position deep in a valley between the two hills, it was not evident that the central spire was broken.

“I mean, where would the Scarlet Witch live if not in the central spire, Kainen?” Albert said, with a smile that did not reach his eyes.

Kainen cringed at the name, it was wrong on purpose.

“Come on.” Albert said. “It’s not like she can hurt you. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

Kainen hummed, and broke eye contact. Suddenly, he was feeling quite uneasy. Something had changed, but he could not figure out what. It didn’t matter, not this close to being free from Albert’s very presence. He was immune to his mind control, he had been for a while now, but Albert remained far too powerful to be left alive.

And killing him would propel Kainen to such heights of power that his younger self could not even dream about them. Just imagining what he could do with the powers Albert wielded made his mouth salivate. He could barely contain his impatience.

But he needed to be careful. He could not afford to slip up. Not this close to executing his plan. Doing what he wanted to do required carefully crafted conditions.

“There is still a long way until we reach the city.” He said as he walked ahead. The sound of the rushing river to their left masked some of the words, but neither of the two had any trouble understanding even muttered speech.

Albert did not reply. Glancing behind his back, Kainen noticed that the kid was looking up the slopes of a nearby mountain, where small black dots were moving about in the snow near its peak. Muttering things about Lithoids, voice full of wonder.

For a moment, the former guild master wondered if the uneasiness he had felt when talking to the kid had been a figment of his own imagination. Seeing him look around like a child in wonder, he realized that indeed there was nothing to fear from the boy, even though Albert was no longer a boy. Sometimes, there was a coldness to Albert’s eyes that put Kainen on edge. It didn’t matter. Soon it would all be over.

Slowly, Kainen let Albert take the lead. The path was clear, following the river until they left the valley and the city came into full view.

“I need to take a piss.” Kainen said, shrugging. “I’ll catch up. Don’t wait for me.”

Albert grunted. “Fine.” He said. He stopped for a moment, looking ahead. Kainen felt his breath catch in his throat.

“Is everything okay?” He asked. The kid was staring at empty air in front of his, except, Kainen knew… the shield was there.

“Of course.” Albert said. “You go on, don’t worry about me.”

Seeing the kid flash him a smile, Kainen approached the river. As soon as he was out of sight he changed course, no longer making for the water but carefully shadowing the kid without giving himself away.

The shield that protected Sitea lay only a few meters in front of Albert. Had Hyvrlat’s not told him the exact location of the invisible wall of energy, he was sure he would have dived headfirst into it, fooling his plan. But now, there was no such risk.

Albert walked onwards. His steps were careless and quick, as if he could not wait to reach the city in the distance. It made sense. It was his goal all along, his ticket back home. Except, Kainen knew, it would also be the doom of all he knew. The end of his world. He could not allow that.

Albert glanced at the glimmering black shard in the sky, what remained of the tower at the center of the city. Kainen too had only seen the sight for the first time today, but it took more than a pretty tower to impress him. He had seen things in his travels, after all.

Then, almost anticlimactically, it happened. Kainen was still musing about his travels when Albert hit the wall and dropped to the ground, like a sack of potatoes. His body convulsed, and Kainen wasted no time before he leapt out of his cover and crossed the distance between the two in the blink of an eye.

When he reached the body of the kid, still ravaged by the energies of the shield, he did not hesitate. He produced a knife, and plunged it in the kid’s chest, piercing his heart, searching for his core. Then, for good measure, he also stabbed Albert in the eye, making sure the blade reached the brain, and twisted.

Silence.

Nothing seemed to move. Even the rush of water of the river was far away. Kainen’s heartbeat was in his throat. He had done it. The shield crippled Albert, and he took the chance to kill the kid. It all happened so quickly, so effortlessly.

So… easy. Now, all he needed to do was extract the core and consume it himself.

A slow clap reverberated through the whole valley. The source, his senses told Kainen, was right behind him. He jumped to his feet at the first clap, rotating in the air and facing the threat from behind his tower shield.

“Congratulations, you are a shithead.” The figure said. It had Albert’s voice.

But— Kainen wasted a fraction of a second looking down, and where the dead body of the kid should have been, only pristine mountain grass could be seen. Not a trace of the pool of blood that had stained it remained.

“An illusion.” Kainen grunted. “Clever. You sensed the shield, somehow. But that doesn’t change anything.”

The kid walked a few paces towards him, but did not hurry. After all, Kainen was very keenly aware of the power Albert possessed, and even though the kid used it like an idiot, power was still power.

A faint reflection of sunlight only visible to Kainen almost made him look away. He smiled. Power was power, yes. However, so confident in his own power as he was, Albert would fail. Kainen had come prepared.

“Just surrender.” The kid said. “What can you do? If you take even just one step, I’m going to brainwash you so hard you won’t even remember your name.”

Kainen was sure it was true. Albert would do it. It would not work, but he would do it. He did not take a step. “I guess I did underestimate you.” He said.

“You did, in fact—”

Kainen dashed. The incredible power he produced allowed him to close the distance in a heartbeat. Albert’s eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to speak in a panic.

“Stop.”

Kainen stilled.

The kid breathed in relief. He shook his head. “It’s no use.”

Albert’s eyes went wide in shock when, too late, he realized what Kainen’s own eyes were tracking. A shadow appeared from behind a boulder, moving impossibly fast, and it shot towards him. In a fluid motion, the shadow stabbed him in the back, shot an arrow and turned to flee.

Albert turned, thinking that the former guild master was immobilized by his mental command and raised a hand. The shadow stumbled, and resolved itself in the shape of a forest high elf. He was lifted off the ground and brought centimeters from Albert’s face.

Albert looked at Hyvrlat’r in disgust. “I should have known.” He spat.

But Kainen had never been under the influence of the command, having consumed the miraculous root Hyvrlat’r had stolen from his village. He had merely pretended to be immobilized, waiting for the opportune moment to strike. The moment had arrived. He dashed.

Albert locked eyes with him, seemingly having sensed his approach behind his back. “Sto—”

Albert did not finish his sentence. The elf had freed himself from Albert’s grasp and an arrow sprouted from the boy’s throat, strangling the words before they could be spoken, and a fountain of blood erupted where the arteries had been cut.

Suddenly Albert started to move incredibly quickly, but it didn’t matter. Kainen knew of his time abilities and was onto him. With his superior power he did not allow the kid to heal himself. In fact, he did not allow the kid to even remove the arrow sticking out of his neck, immediately pressuring him.

His sword fell like a judgement blade. Hyvrlat’r had freed himself and struck from behind, shooting arrow after arrow at the boy, scoring hit after hit.

Albert fell to the ground, immobile. This time, Kainen did not risk approaching until he was sure it was not an illusion. But both his senses and his magic seemed to confirm that it was not.

“Is he dead?” Kainen asked.

“He’s not.” Hyvrlat’s, suddenly standing next to him, crouched down. “One of my arrows severed his spine. He can’t move. And unless he pulls it out, he can’t heal the damage either.”

Indeed, Albert was glowing green every few seconds, but his condition did not seem to improve. Gargling sounds escaped his lips, but no words formed. The coordinated attack had rendered him useless and harmless.

“That’s good.” Kainen grinned. “Now, let’s kill him for good and get out of here.”

Kainen crouched down. A manic grin spread through his face, contorting his features until his face was barely recognizable.

“Well,” he said, mockery and hate dripping from his voice. “You really made me work up a sweat for this. But I can’t say it wasn’t worth it. You were my ticket back to power, after all. And now, with you dead, the world will finally be rid of this shit mind magic once and for all.”

Kainen grasped his dagger. Shadows coated its surface, and the pulsed and swirled around the edge of the blade like they were alive.

“Stay down this time, kid.” Kainen said. “The world is cruel, and what I am doing is mercy.”

*113 – Inner world

Albert felt the ravaging Alignment Energy sear his mind and his body. He convulsed on the ground, whimpering in pain.

His mind felt like liquid fire. A distant part of himself was vaguely aware that he only had a few seconds before Kainen and Hyvrlat’r realized he was fooling them.

The plan, so far, had yet to go off the rails. The version of Albert that hit the shield had been an illusion, yes, but not in the way he made the two attackers believe. It had been a double illusion. Albert had really hit the shield, managing to cast one last magic to hide himself before the pain and the runaway energies disabled him completely.

Meanwhile, a clone created with Solid-State Manifestation revealed itself, pretending to be the real Albert.

It was a dirty plan, but it had to be done this way because there was no way he could have cast two illusions, the magic too complex for his brain to handle. So far, it was going well. He had a solid plan, at least as far as the first part was concerned.

Ever since he sensed Hyvrlat’r following him three days ago, he had been quite aware that something wasn’t right. He understood, there and then, that he had fucked up. By sharing too much, now Kainen viewed him as the enemy. And why shouldn’t he?

Albert had cursed himself when the realization hit him, for being too trusty of someone like Kainen. Although… he could see why Kainen was acting the way he was. Albert had told him of his plans to change the past, an action which would put an end to Kainen’s existence in a way so total and complete that not even the idea of him ever being real would remain.

No, even though Albert made a mistake by sharing his goal, the true oversight had been sharing too much about his powers.

In his attempt to befriend the man, he had shared almost everything about his powers with him. A part of his mind also realized that perhaps Kainen had manipulated him into telling him about his powers as well, but Albert knew that he could not hide behind excuses anymore. It had been his own failing, and nobody but himself was there to save him.

It had been a mistake to trust someone who could not be trusted, especially after giving him all the reason to betray him, and that was that. No more.

In the three days that followed, he devised what later became the final plan to deal with the situation. His opponents had had much longer to plan, while he only had a few days. He knew his time was almost up when he finally could see the shield in the distance, shimmering with latent Alignment Energy.

The last piece of his puzzle was there, hiding in plain sight. As soon as he saw it he knew that his foolish plan wasn’t all that foolish anymore.

The call of power colonized Albert’s mind like the glint of gold to a miner. He changed his plans accordingly, becoming so reckless he couldn’t recognize himself at times. The gains that were to be had should he succeed blinded him.

The shimmering shield called to him.

Kainen didn’t seem to be able to see it, and even though the mystery of why the shield even used Alignment energy burned in Albert’s mind, he knew he had other things to think about first. Namely: survival. And power. Perhaps not in that order. Perhaps it wasn’t even strictly necessary to survive.

Figuring out his opponents’ plan was easy. The shield would fry him if he let it touch him, and since it was supposed to be invisible, all Kainen needed to do was lead him to it without warning him about its existence.

They would spring into action once he was incapacitated by the shield.

He chose to let them lead him to it.

Albert couldn’t deviate from what they expected him to do. They were better prepared, and they could overpower him even without the incapacitating effect of the shield. His only hope was to surprise them when they thought they had won, leveraging their surprise before they could react.

It wouldn’t be enough. They were surely prepared to handle him. He could feel wards against teleportation, and he knew that the elf wore protection against mind magic. Kainen did not have any that Albert could see, but it was too risky to assume he was unprotected.

The closer the duo got to the shield, the less options Albert had.

Another sharp spike of pain threatened to split Albert’s mind, yanking his consciousness from reminiscing about the past and into the present. Realizing that time was working against him, Albert forced open his eyes.

Through immense pain, Albert watched Kainen kneel over his body-double from afar. It was by far the solidest, the realest illusion Albert had ever created.

Albert grit his teeth. Unless he supplied the illusion with more mana, it was going to unravel itself in less than five seconds. But he couldn’t.

WARNING!

System overloaded. All skills are   unavailable.

It wasn’t hard to find the source of the disruption.

It was the same energy that was making Albert almost unable to think straight. The pain was so severe, that his mind felt almost blank. Or rather, black. Compared to what he had to endure in the past, this was orders of magnitude worse.

He knew that seconds were ticking away. He had tried to do this in Bullet Time, but whatever had disabled the system had also canceled the skill. At the same time, his opportunity was slipping away from him.

The ticket to real power was being expended trying to kill him instead of making him stronger.

No. He couldn’t accept it.

A metallic taste exploded in Albert’s mouth as a warm liquid flooded it. Albert winced, seeing that he was drooling blood, and a dull ache spread to his teeth. Then another spike of pain pierced his mind. His eyes rolled into his head.

Albert found himself in a black space.

“Finally.” He found himself saying, a calmness to his voice that felt utterly out of place.

For a moment, he wondered if he even was the same person as he was a moment ago. All of a sudden, all that was left was a desire to move along with the main plan, all thoughts of survival be damned.

The pain was gone. All sensations were gone. He was standing, but it felt like nothing at all.

Slowly, as a part of his mind threatened to descend into panic from the sensory deprivation, another rejoiced in utter happiness. He was finally here, in the space of his soul. Where reality was yet to be written.

The panic surged anew. Now without the system to protect him, he was vulnerable, nothing more than a shallow human, frail and weak.

Then a wave of bullheaded confidence. He had meant to get here, and now he was here and he had a job to do.

He couldn’t tell how much time was passing, devoid of all sensations as he was. In the distance, he thought he saw light, but when he tried to walk towards it nothing changed.

Albert forced himself to calm down. This was all part of the plan. Still, there was a good portion of his mind that refused to calm itself down, threatening in its panic to drag the whole of his consciousness down into the abyss. This was like an abyss of sorts, perhaps the soul space, perhaps the fabric of reality itself.

If Alignment Energy was what triggered it, and the energy allowed to traverse the boundary of a universe, it made sense to think that he was nowhere at all. But the sense of panic that this thought brought was almost too much to bear. He would need to do something about it, and soon. Before he returned to the real world, or he would not survive.

Albert idly thought of the pattern demons. A story he read a long time ago, about a wound in the side of the world where nothing existed. And when a human mind peered into the wound, unable to comprehend the nothingness, it put things there.

Like looking at static and seeing shapes, the mind filled in the gaps with things.

He felt he was seeing those things. The generative model at the base of how a brain perceived the world simply made things up when it had no sensations to work with.

What was time when there was nothing at all? Space? Existence?

Then something changed. Albert vaguely remembered there being an outside to all this. He vaguely remembered fighting.

He remembered the pain. He remembered the plan.

Seizing the sensation of pain, brandishing it like a sword, he struck. Lightning split the dark, featureless heavens of whatever place Albert had found himself trapped in. In the light of the strikes, white and blinding yet familiar in some sort of way, he saw something.

Then darkness came again.

Albert hummed, perhaps taking an instant, perhaps ten thousand years to form a thought. Was he alive or dead? He shook his head. He really needed to remove this place from his memory once he reemerged into the real world, or he was going to lose all sanity. It didn’t matter here, there was no sense of time and he could spend literal ages lost in madness, but it mattered out there.

Pain helped him retain a sense of himself. And just as he thought of it, lightning struck again.

This time he saw it. A ball, dark like a core of iron, hovering in the air. The blackness surrounded this ball, denser the closer Albert looked to the solid core. Was it his core?

He thought about the pain of the Alignment Energy. Suddenly, lightning like he had never seen before struck. It lit the whole space, electric and brilliant, blinding him.

It struck the core, and the darkness shook. Albert took the first step outside the safety of his plan. He didn’t know what to do. He could not have predicted what he was going to see here. From now on, he was on his own. None of his preparations could help him anymore.

The light died, but darkness was no longer complete. On the surface of the core, Albert could see streaks of light and color. From them, tendrils of light extended into the darkness around the core, extending out and disappearing an infinite distance away.

Albert touched one of them.

The demons that filled his vision due to a lack of anything disappeared. What took their place was a blue box.

An empty one.

Albert removed his finger from the line he was touching, and the box was gone. The tendrils were all lines, all angles and segments, like logic pathways of a computer chip.

Albert touched another.

[QUEST INSTRUCTIONS]

Albert thought that perhaps he could take them, and fold them into a cube. He didn’t know why he thought that, but it seemed such a great idea.

The demons were back as soon as the lines dimmed, but thinking of pain made them visible again. The energy coursing through his body was there still, and he tapped into it every time lightning struck. Now, he could use it as a hammer to remake his own inner power into the shape he wanted.

Another lightning. This time, he was not thinking about pain himself. And this time, the energy was different. It was not bright. It was not electric and powerful. It felt cold, like metal. Did someone stab him? It meant that time still flowed, despite his earlier assumptions. Which also meant that he didn’t have much time.

He refocused on his current efforts.

After an unknown amount of time, Albert locked all the memories away forever and opened his eyes to a world of pain. The energies coursing through him were gone, but the pain they left behind was not. A cold sensation spread out from his abdomen, and his reflex to take a deep breath to replenish his starving body of oxygen was met with resistance. He coughed blood as his eyes slowly focused on the outside world.

Albert blinked away the blue boxes crowding his vision. The blurry world slowly sharpened.

Albert gasped, trying to crawl away, but his arms were made of lead. He couldn’t breathe properly, despite or perhaps because of the sensation of panic rising in his chest. Kainen loomed over him, taking most of his field of vision. A dagger protruded from his chest.

How? What was happening?

Memories slowly snapped into place. Too slowly. He felt his strength fade. He tried to summon magic, but there was none. He couldn’t feel his feet. Any sensation below a certain point he could not pinpoint was gone. They had crippled him.

The plan came to his mind.

He had failed, hadn’t he? He had underestimated the damage of the Alignment Energy and had been transported… where?

Albert was flooded with memories. Not all of them, and none of them coherent. They no longer came to him slowly, but in a fraction of a second thousand of images burst into his mind. There were years there. Decades of life and work.

All towards one goal. What goal?

“You are still alive?” Kainen laughed. “You almost did it. But we found you.”

Albert tried to speak, but his throat was pure pain. Pain, yes, but nothing like what he felt all those years stuck… where?

No words came, though. And with no power to back them up, they would have been useless anyway. Why did he not have power?

“Now die.”

Kainen slammed the knife down.

“No.” Albert said.