Tales of the Old World Demon Lord

Chapter 3 – Mk 7 Gigandoll Power Frame

[Eternum Calendar 1971]

As Morgant tried to fall asleep he found himself unable to as mind numbing white noise continued to obstruct him. A gruesome imagery of a bloodstained operating table with a single powerful light shining into his face kept coming back into his mind. Various people who seemed like medical professionals were gathered around and digging around his body, conducting some unknown experiment.

Fear; that was the only thing Morgant could feel as he burst up from his bed, unable to bear the painful and horrific image any longer. He panted heavily as the white noise dissipated, but the imagery was still very vivid in his mind. He wiped down his face with the sleeves of his clothes and sat unmoving for a period after that. By the time he had finally calmed down enough to regain control over his frozen body it was already well into the cool night.

He glanced to his left to a slightly open windowsill and out to the large blue moon up in the sky. Deciding he needed to cool down his head a little more he got out of his bed to lean by the window. After feeling his body and heart rate all return to normal he slid down to crouch into a fetal position in the corner of the room. He silently wept as he unwittingly recalled the horrific scene; the sensation of it all was real. An ice-like knife thinly pressed up against his throat, the subtle scent of rusted metal and disinfectants.

They were obviously not memories of his own experience; the kind of technology he saw in that dream was far beyond what he knew. Not to mention the body he had in that dream was slightly older than him, thus it couldn’t be him. However, that did not make the painful experience any less. He pressed against his neck to confirm that it really wasn’t his.

Tears continued to silently fall from his eyes and down his face. As he continued to crouch into a ball in the corner, a small creak came from the door of his and Alice’s room. He had already confirmed that Alice was fast asleep so it was not her but he was too afraid to even think clearly. He held onto his head as he covered himself and shut his eyes tightly.

He could feel the sounds and vibrations of leather boots striding across the wooden floors of his room and closer to him. He opened his eyes ever so slightly only to see a large hand coming for him and unable to do anything at that moment he braced himself even more.

However…

“Morgant…? Is everything alright?”

Came a soft and womanly voice. A voice that soothed the eternal aching in his heart as his head was filled with warm familiarity. He slowly opened his eyes to see a soft featured woman with silky golden hair, her bright blue eyes reflecting the light of the pale moon. She, like Miko, wore similar convent-like robes but he had to admit the woman in front of him looked much better in them. Her name was ‘Diana’, the other matron of the orphanage and the person that took him in.

She held a small, dimly lit candle balanced on a white plate as she stroke through his hair trying to calm him down. A few moments later Morgant had once more regained normalcy and opened himself up to her nursing. Placing the candle onto the side she easily picked up the child Morgant and placed him back on the bed. She continued to stroke his darkened hair and wiped the tear and sweat from his face with a soft smile.

She didn’t ask what was wrong, or what had happened. She merely continued to stay with him until he had fallen asleep for the second time. When she had confirmed that Morgan had indeed fallen asleep she gently got off the bed and slowly left the room as she whispered ‘good night’ into his ears.

…

After finding the courage to do so, a few days later Morgant had asked for a consultation session with Diana. He avoided going to Miko as she seemed like the type of person who would not be able to tell him what he wanted to hear. So after making his way down to her office he slowly shut the door behind him as he sat down at a small tea table with Diana seated on the opposite side.

She set down a small cup of tea as she smiled back at him and asked.

“Did you want to talk about what happened the other night?”

He took a moment to collect his thoughts before he spoke. After taking a deep breath he shook his head to deny Diana’s guess.

“No, it isn’t about that but what happened after that.”

“After?”

She repeated after him with a slightly perplexed expression. Morgant nodded.

“Every night since that night I’ve continued getting strange visions. They aren’t the same scary one I saw on the first night so it isn’t really anything that bad. But I don’t know what to do with them.”

Morgant answered as he dropped his head and stared into the dark colored tea on the table. It had already cooled down to the point that it was no longer steaming.

“Hmm~ well dreams are complex so even I’m not sure what they mean. Since you say it’s nothing really scary then if you’re fine with it why don’t you try jotting down the things you see? Perhaps once you have a more solid image you might get an idea on what it is.”

Diana suggested as she took a sip of her tea with a smile.

Morgant thought about the idea and conceded that it was a pretty good one and decided to do so. To be honest he was scared; after the first dream of that violent scene he didn’t really know if he wanted to find out more about those images in his head. However he felt a strange compulsion and obligation to find out.

“Yes, I think I’ll try what you told me. Thank you Diana.”

Morgant replied with an uneasy but determined smile as he left the office.

…

The orphanage usually kept a strict timetable on what kinds of activities the orphans had during the day. Diana and Miko would teach them with a diverse range of subjects from magic, alchemy, math and music to physical combat. During the day the children would choose between the subjects that they wanted to learn about and attend the classes.

Morgant requested that he get a brief hiatus from classes as he worked on sorting out his mind and the strange images. Usually Diana would want the children to be learning during the day but after seeing how torn up Morgant was about these dreams she reluctantly agreed. Even if he were forced to attend classes it was doubtful that he would digest anything he was taught.

Thus Morgant started working on writing down the ideas he had gotten from his dreams. Several days went by and when he finally finished transcribing all of the images in his head to paper it was filled with odd looking gibberish and picture of a detailed stick man with no head.

“What’s that?”

On one of the following afternoons Ren, Alice and Celina had come visited him in his room. A large piece of paper drawn with Morgant’s ideas had been laid on his bed but he couldn’t make out a thing of it.

“I don’t know. I can’t make heads nor tails of it; it’s frustrating me.”

Morgant replied as he shook his head and clenched his fists tightly. Seeing Morgant tearing himself apart his friends wanted to do something for him but didn’t really know how to approach the topic. However as though a flash of inspiration had come to Ren he found something interesting about the scribbles and gibberish that Morgant had written.

“Hey… wait, doesn’t this kind of look like… a diagram of some sort? Or perhaps a schematic?”

At Ren’s words Morgant moved closed and concentrated closer on the scribbles and gibberish. When he thought about it that way Ren’s words certainly had some merit; the picture of the headless stickman resembled some sort of object. The gibberish that was strewn all over the large paper was pointing to each individual part of the picture, perhaps they were some sort of explanation, or so Morgant thought. However he was unable to read his own gibberish so that didn’t help any.

Staring deep onto the paper he felt as though he could start to understand some of the words. Of course whether the translation was correct or not was up for debate.

“Mmm… ark, se…ven. Gigan… doll, po…wer… frame? Mark 7, Gigandoll Power Frame?”

Morgant tried to read the title of the paper.

“Is that what it says?”

Alice asked as she squint her eyes and tried to read it for herself.

“Hmmm, I think ‘Mark 7’ means it’s the seventh type? Or the seventh generation?”

Ren tried to dissect Morgant’s translation to make sense of it.

“Why seventh? What about one through to six?”

Alice asked with her big bubbly eyes full of anticipation. She was as much interested in what this was as Ren and Morgant were but she lacked the technical mindset to interpret what it was. To her this was an interesting adventure that they could work on as a group of friends.

“How should I know?”

Ren retorted.

“Then ‘Gigandoll’, I’m not sure what ‘Gigan’ means but maybe this is some sort of ‘doll’?”

Morgant tried to make sense of the second part.

“So then ‘Power Frame’… what could that mean? Power means strong… and frame is something you put around pictures right?”

Ren finished off the translation but from what they had gathered it wasn’t too coherent. They were all back to square one with Celina innocently watching as the two boys wracking their heads as best they could to figure out this pile of scribbles. It was then that Alice opened her mouth once more.

“Hmm? Doesn’t this kind of look like a skeleton? I remember that in one of my lessons Diana tried to draw one and it ended up looking like that.”

At her words the two boys’ imagination lit up as they hurried to review the drawing once more. They whispered ‘hmm’ as their eyes widened in newfound understanding of the picture.

“Alice, you’re a genius!”

Morgant commended as he promptly ignored the elated Alice after hearing the compliment. Morgant and Ren turned to each other and gave a nod.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

Ren asked.

“Yeah, this picture could be referring to a frame for a person. So this ‘Power Frame’ could be something that makes someone stronger when they wear it.”

After confirming that they were both on the same page the hurriedly took the picture down to the orphanage’s workshop to get started on a little project.

“Ah, hey! Where are you going?!”

Alice shouted out as she tried to follow after them with Celina trailing behind meekly.

…

A further several weeks went by and even Ren had requested some time off from his studies to help Morgant. However when Alice and Celina also asked for the same thing they were promptly rejected as it became obvious that they just wanted to play around. Ren and Morgant further secluded themselves in the workshop as they continued to work on Morgant’s diagrams but they soon reached a dead end only after finishing the right arm portion of the power frame.

“What should we do? We’re out of materials.”

Morgant said as he fell dejected.

“I think we did a good job considering how uncertain the translations are. I’m not even sure I understand what these ‘wires’ are but we somehow made them. Still, this is really quite something.”

Ren replied as he held up the small machine-like skeletal arm. There were wires running through it all and metal railings that formed into a vague outline of a right arm all the way up to the shoulder. Ren tried to put it on his right arm and though it fit perfectly there wasn’t anything that screamed out ‘power’. It wasn’t even fully enclosed so it obviously wasn’t for protection either.

“Haaa~ I don’t know anymore, maybe we interpreted the diagram wrong.”

Ren replied as he took it off and tossed it to Morgant. Curious Morgant placed on his arm and when it did the white noise that Morgant dreaded so much returned to him along with a powerful migraine.

“Ugh…”

This time strange voices in a foreign language also accompanied the white noise.

“[Gigandoll Power Frame Mark VII, online. Error, missing core component].”

The voice was oddly feminine but it did not seem like something that would come from a living being’s mouth. It didn’t appear that Ren could hear the same voice as Morgant could and even if he could there was no way to understand what it was saying.

“Morgant are you alright?”

Ren tried to rush over to him to help him up but Morgant felt something was off and stopped him.

“Wait!”

Morgant tried to stand back up but soon lost his balance from the pain and went flying face first. As he fell, with his right arm, he grabbed onto the nearest thing he could hold onto, which was the workbench, but when he did it made a loud snapping noise as the table was destroyed beyond repair. Not only that but as Morgant’s right arm when through the table and onto the floor it created a small crater along with a small tremor throughout the orphanage.

“Wow… that really is powerful.”

Ren who had witness the whole thing as though it played in slow motion was left completely mesmerized. The loud noise and tremor had alerted everyone to the scene and what followed was a harsh reprimand from the two matrons of the orphanage.

…

That night as Morgant slept a small figure had crawled into his room.

“Psst, hey Morgant. Psst!”

It was Ren who had a devious smile on his face.

“Mmmgh? Ren? What is it so late at night?”

“It’s no time to be sleeping; we need to continue building that power frame.”

“What are you talking about? We got into trouble because of that thing.”

Morgant replied as he rubbed his eyes trying to adjust to the dark.

“Are you kidding? Did you see how powerful that thing was? Just imagine how much stronger it would be if we completed the entire thing? This is definitely something I don’t want to just give up half way on. Please, let’s do this.”

Morgant stared into the young Elven boy’s deep blue eyes and offered a sigh.

“Even if I wanted to continue we don’t even have enough parts.”

As if expecting that reply to come, Ren had already prepared an answer for that conundrum. He spoke, almost with an ecstatic glee.

“Don’t worry I’ve got that covered. There’s a small novice rank dungeon for beginner adventurers near our town called [Ingrid’s Tomb]. We should be able to find the materials we need in there.”

“What are you saying? Even if it’s only novice rank we’re children; how could we even survive in that dungeon?”

“No, what are YOU talking about? We have the right arm piece of the power frame. Didn’t you feel how powerful it was? We can easily defeat those low level monsters with that.”

Morgant took a deep breath and sighed.

“You really want to do this?”

“Yes!”

“Fine…”

After giving into Ren’s demand Morgant took out his outside outfit and slid the power frame’s right arm piece right under it. Because it was only small metal linings and wires it wasn’t too hard to conceal them and if he put on gloves on top of them it was perfectly disguised.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Trying to sneak out they opened the front door only to be met by a distinct high pitched, playful voice. They turned back to see both Alice and Celina all dressed up and ready to follow along with their little late night ‘excavation’ mission.

“You’re bringing us along with you, right?

Alice asked with a determined smile.