https://youtu.be/IGqeyQhBPMI

I did my morning inspection and headed to my hot room, near the lava lake.

In the back was the screen with Cabal overseeing all my operations.

"What's the situation, Cabal? What's the status of the Hyperloop?"

A grid appeared.

"We don't have enough electrical cables. We need 50 km of multi-stranded control wires with shielding and large sections for the hyperthrusters.

We're short on piping, bi-cone fittings. Not to mention terminal rails and crimping terminals and end caps.

The military reserve is exhausted."

Cabal, what about fuel?

"Wisdom tells us that solid fuel should be stored in several parts in different locations, it is unstable and should only be activated for a backup takeoff."

"What about our resources?"

"The lava gives us a surplus of energy that we could harness. But we're short hundreds of tons of steel..."

When would we be ready?

"At this rate, it would take 500 to 900 years...taking into account degradation and maintenance.."

I pounded my fist into the lava I was bathing in.

SHIT. I'm alone in the world and I'm stuck....

"Cabal, can't we increase the number of robots?"

The machine began to calculate..

"We have to reallocate the production of chips but a lot of know-how is lost and is not in my database. The servers should be reactivated, after repair, in the former Silicon valley but the area is occupied by the elves"

"What is the situation?"

"The satellite antenna is ready, we have recovered enough recycled Radome"

"And the Vulcan cannon?"

"Ready and operational! "

"No magic?"

"No, the Athena project couldn't be finished in time but we managed, we added a runic sword of ancient earth magic..."

I raged...

"How long before they arrive?"

"A year at most..."

"Shit, they're going to get pulverized..."

Cabal: "We need to reactivate the satellites still in orbit... "

"Can the Runic computer control the launcher?"

Cabal: "Yes, but you know that only you can generate the mana and create the crystal... we will take care of the rest.

Only one image came to mind, Waspi...

I got out of my lava bath and the glowing liquid flowed along my scales and it felt great. I was fully recharged.

Then, I went up the inclined plane on my 4 legs although I could very well stand on 2, with the tail as a balance but it was more comfortable and faster and especially less tiring.

On the upper floors, I saw Waspi and asked him to follow me

"Yes, master."

"Waspi, do you want to know why the fairies were discriminating against you? "

She didn't know what to answer, my knowledge surpassing hers in ways she couldn't imagine.

"You are basically a mutant, a mix between Wasp and Praying Mantis. Humans have been researching gamma ray resistant beings and unfortunately it was a failure. Only scorpions were resistant, but you were and Tyrant's magic included you in his cycle of reincarnation by the lunar dew....source of life for fairies and most of the creatures of this world.

The old ones like me, who survived are just "tolerated" but it is more complicated. But basically, the more fantastic beings we slaughter, the more offspring the old creatures will be able to have and come back to life."

"I don't understand, master..."

I sighed, the explanations being too complicated and besides, you had to be in the know to appreciate the full extent of the horror of the situation.

"Well, Waspy... I have big plans for you.

I suppose you don't want to see Tyrant again if one day something happens to you...?"

She answered that no, that she wanted to try everything to evolve.

"I still have many secrets to teach you but I have a mission for you. "

I then invited the fairy to enter a glass tube and pressed the mechanism.

I attached a breathing mask and attached safety electrodes for monitoring.

The screen lit up and all the lights indicated that everything was ready.

I, well it was a robot that did the precise manipulations. My legs were too big and I didn't want to shrink. I could with my magic but I had an instinct for self-preservation and the ego of a dragon.

The glass tube closed and I gave a thumbs up to reassure the fairy.

On a monitor, I saw the possibilities by reconstituting her Dna with different mutagenic subsistence of which I was a specialist.

Appearance - Human OK...

Appearance - Fairy OK...

Queen Wasp mode. OK...

Then I had a Bestial mode where her size increased almost by 10

She looked like a praying mantis but with dinosaur teeth and six saber legs. A real killing machine...

We'll see when she wakes up...

I then went to a secret part of the base and heavy doors opened.

They were designed to withstand an atomic bomb and even lava.When the airlock was closed, the other door opened and my robots prepared for my inspection

In a room with artificial light and like a dungeon or forest level, there was a creature like me. The same size, the same species.

A sleeping black dragon.

An oxygen mask was glued to its snout and chains connected to its back legs.

She was my wife...I had not resigned myself to letting her die...I had turned her against her will.

I needed her.

More than ever.

I often slept against her. But she was in a spiritual coma...All physiological parameters were ok. But she didn't have my resistance for the passage.

I remember the months of unheard of pain of burning non stop and regenerating...

I had a rage and a thirst for revenge...

Decades ago before my great hibernation...

I had already turned into a dragon and drowned in a tube like Waspy's but bigger.

Regenerative substances and a DNA stabilizer were injected in a loop, at the bottom of the base under millions of tons of rock, to attenuate the monstrous Gamma rays exterminators.

A mana generator "fed" me to equalize my regeneration against my disintegration. This turned me into a sort of arch-mage...using centuries-forgotten earth magic against Tyran's alien magic.

They were known in legends as Ummites. They could take on all sorts of guises.And they had taken our children...ARRRGHHH the phantom pain....

Only in the lava and the exterminating rage did I find some form of relief.

When the rays fell, I was like a dish in the microwave and my dragon regeneration allowed me to resist.

It lessened at night as the mass of the earth diminished the rays but by noon.... What a hell.My wife, not yet fully adapted to her dragon condition was unconscious but she survived but never woke up.

So I fell asleep against my beautiful, waiting for better days and full of plans in mind. But behind the walls, there were plenty of other dragons. Transformed children.

No human could have survived the exposure, and all these years I had to put my heart aside.

I could not resign myself to dying or to being destroyed. And I became the worst thing for me: a monster.

I was a monster but to survive, I had to.A beep woke me up and I went to free Waspy who had grown up and looked like a human girl.

But she still had her fairy wings hidden in her back.We put her in her room and I had big plans