The dark skinned woman was relaxing on the sofa, her eyes moving like a pendulum as she tracked the nervous back and forth of the older man pacing around the room. He was stroking his beard, readjusting his glasses, and mumbling among himself.

Below, the street was busy but not a sound reached the elevated room through the open windows. The woman took a moment to study the protective spell, disassembling it in her mind, and nodded to herself.

“Retrograde peasant society. You can’t even make decent protection spells.”

The man hummed. “But it works.”

She rolled her eyes. “Bah. Only brutes use brute force.”

“And your plan? Isn’t it the opposite? So many risks, predictions, moving parts that need to fall in place just right…”

“None of which is your concern.” She said.

He frowned, and his eyebrows were like thick branches of a snow covered tree. She scoffed, and got up.

“All you did was flex your muscles a little, show him who’s boss. You don’t need to concern yourself with anything else. He has been now put on a collision course with an inevitable crisis, and eventually an ethical dilemma he will not get out of unscathed. Regardless of the outcome, you will find that aiding him will be much more rewarding than opposing him. Let what’s about to unfold with that C rank team be a lesson. About that… he is going to ask you something, and you will say yes to that.”

***

The carriage came to a halt, and she heard a cacophony of voices coming from outside. The protective spell had been lifted, and they had arrived at their destination. A quick glance at her party members confirmed what they had decided earlier: they would not attempt to escape.

She sighed. She could still feel the reassuring presence of her staff close by, and it was getting closer. Lisa too was following the presence of her hammer with her mind.

“We are here.” Said the big man, throwing the weapons at the party. “Make yourselves presentable, chief’s orders.”

The walled city loomed. It was built right in the middle of the plains, among low hills verdant with vegetation. The vibrant colors of nature, reddened by the sunset, blended in a twist of reds and purples with the dark shadows cast by the walls and towers of the imposing fortifications. Torchback was, even to Edmund’s eyes, and impressive place and to hers, it was simply breath-taking.

Spoiler :

Vytryat, the elf who was actually a god in disguise, fell from grace, inched closer to Edmund. He looked around, wary of his own party members, and did not speak. Edmund, tired after all the discomfort he had to endure, decided to cut to the chase.

“Sup, Vyt.”

The little guy almost yelped. “Edmund?”

Edmund raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“No, I mean Edmund Edmund?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“You as in that Edmund. Edmund Hume the inventor of Hume energy and such?”

He nodded. “Who else would I be?” he said, and there was some annoyance in the voice.

Vytryat waved his hands apologetically. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that you look more… male? I don’t know, I seem to remember you differently than you actually are right now. But it’s been a long time.”

Edmund shook his head slowly, his gaze going to his hands and then to the ground.

“No, you are quite right. No need to tell me, I look at this body every fucking day and think… who the hell is this? Doesn’t feel like me at all. Luckily the nanite conversion is almost done. Once the whole body is converted, I can finally reshape it.”

Toora listened intently.

Vyt nodded slowly. “So it’s true.”

“What is?”

“That something really bad happened. I mean, for you to be in this state…”

Edmund sighed. “It all went to shit, that’s what happened. But you survived just fine, didn’t you?” he smiled, and slapped the elf’s back with some force. Toora saw that the big guy behind him snorted, but he ignored it. In fact, he wasn’t only ignoring the gaze, but also the elf now, staring as he was into the distance.

She didn’t know, nor did she have any idea, but Edmund had just received some unsettling messages from Praetor.

+0.001H/hour

+0.001H/hour

+0.001H/hour

+0.001H/hour

…

It went on seemingly forever. He squinted, as if to put the text into focus, then with a thought reorganized it all into one single line.

+1008H/hour

“What?” he blurted out.

The others turned to look at him, but he didn’t have any attention to spare them.

Praetor? What the fuck?

The AI was quick to reply. Edmund listened in silence, walking towards the city gates completely on autopilot, and the more he heard, the darker his face became. Eventually, his eyes were completely unfocused, his gaze distant and vacant, and his pace erratic. He was sweating.

What did you do?? He said incredulous. Give me teleport Humes. Now.

With that, he disappeared in a flash of blinding lightning, leaving behind only a smouldering crater of glassified rock.

For a moment there was absolute silence, with the four members of Shiningstars eyeing Toora and Lisa, and the girls in a state of confusion. Everyone wondered about something, from asking how did he do that? to what now? everyone was worried about different things. The first to act was Lisa. Then, all hell broke loose.

***

Days passed. Torchback stood still, the walls hiding all that happened within, like a cocoon of protection and mystery. People died, children were born, countless deals went down in some forgotten dark alley, or under the light of day, in the city hall.

The walls watched, their imposing bricks immutable for centuries until suddenly the sky was split by a deafening boom, and the rock was seared by the hellish temperatures of runaway lightning, and out of that lightning that shook the city came out a man.

He was not the same man he was when he left. There was something different, something missing.

Something had broken inside, but none of the people who came to witness the strange event noticed because they suddenly felt themselves be lifted up in the air, then violently hit the ground. The man grabbed one of the people who were still alive, moving him with his mind and punched him in the face. He lifted another and sent him flying against the city walls. A third, he skewered with a spear of stone.

Then he looked around. More guards were coming, alerted by the noise. He didn’t care about that, only pulling up his status, while lazily slumping against the air. A barely visible forcefield of light blue came to be, and he rested upon it while he read his status.

Spoiler :

Current Hume production

1198H/hour

Pylon upkeep

-20H/hour

Axiom Of Choice upkeep

-79H/hour

Total

1091H/hour

Task

Progress

Reward

Axiom outside influence

0% (0/50kH)

Axiom field can be extended to cover outside area. Range will extend up to total coverage of the crater al 100% progress

Axiom awareness (8/10)

0% (0/9200H)

Axiom field will act like a sensor, making its contents available to conscious awareness through Praetor. Molecular accuracy.

Heisenberg override

0% (0/100kH)

Axiom can duplicate electromagnetic particles. The duplicates will be used to gain information about the external world without revealing the presence of the Axiom field.

Hume production pipeline streamlining

Every H unit will increase generation by 0.001%

FORMULA: Initial*pow(1 + 0.001 / 100, Humes spent)

Acquire Plagiarism Tensor (Hume Manifold Resonator)

0/1

Hume generation +500H/hour

Spoiler :

Completed tasks

Internal sensors repair

--

Access to full data on explored areas and layout data on unexplored areas

Axiom preliminary repairs

(7/7)

--

Portal stability +100%

Power of reality-bending increased by 150% when inside the field

Axiom field can manipulate matter

Axiom field can manipulate energy

Axiom awareness (7/10)

--

Axiom field will act like a sensor, making its contents available to conscious awareness through Praetor. Very high accuracy.

Axiom sensors

--

The field will act like a sensor. WARNING: using this will make the field appear as an opaque dome, revealing its presence. Complete Heisenberg override to avoid detection.

Internal energy generation

--

Fusion reactor activation.

Nanites upgrade

--

Body nanites acquire weak reality-bending capabilities

By the time he was done he was surrounded by a large group or armoured men. The dead bodies had vanished, replaced by a phalanx of steel and swords. Some other guards, more on the back, were training their crossbows on him.

He frowned, lifting his hand up so that his palm faced them. He then closed it into a fist.

Every single guard felt their armour shift and warp around them, and before they could even realize what was happening the pain was so much that they were incapable of coherent thought. They all died in a moment, crushed to death by their own defensive gear, crumpled like a discarded note thrown out in the trash.

Edmund leisurely walked towards the still open city gates. The bodies all around dissolved like a mirage, evaporating in the wind as the Hume energy flowed out of their killer and into them, taking them away.

“Stop!”

Edmund stopped to look at the source of the voice. He saw a man, clad in silver armour with a little gem embedded on the helm. He was brandishing a flaming sword, stance ready to fight.

“No.” Edmund said.

“I command you.” More soldiers had arrived at the scene, creating a wide ring around the two.

Edmund kept going. He eyed the new soldiers around him, wondering what to do with them. He was about to kill them all when he heard the other one yell at him again in an attempt to make him stop.

“You can still surrender. Don’t make me kill you!”

“Kill me? You take my friends away and then want to kill me?” Edmund laughed. “Say, kill me with what exactly?”

“This is the sword of--” suddenly the soldier gasped, and fell to the ground with a thud. The sword, still flaming, was poking from his back, and it wobbled twice before falling to the ground.

“Cool, yeah.”

The sword flew up, hovering in the air before Edmund’s face. He spun it around for a while, studying it. When he was satisfied, he discarded it. It fell to the ground with a clang.

Then it rose back up in the air and shot at the still staring soldiers with incredible speed. In a fluid horizontal motion, it mowed through the crowd, slicing people and armor alike until all there was was silence, death and blood.

Edmund pointed his palm at the still flaming metal and the flames died down immediately, then the steel began to rust and wither, until all that was left was a small pile of fine brown sand. He puckered his lips, and studied the crowd atop the walls. “Anyone else?”

A couple of soldiers ran away, the others stood perfectly still. He could tell that they were waiting for reinforcements, but he didn’t care. Found ya.

He disappeared.

Minus 1300H, 160kH left.

He reappeared in a dark, damp room. With a wave of his hand, however, the room suddenly became bright and the stale air was replaced by fresh and chill mountain air. He took a deep breath, satisfied.

Lisa counted the hours in her mind, one after the other. They were beginning to blur, the lines between waking and dreaming confused by all the drugs in her system. A while ago she had counted 70-something hours, but she could swear she was at more than 90 now. She didn’t know. All she knew was that in those brief moments when she could see, the times when they came to bring her something to eat, she had made sure to memorize the room perfectly.

Next time, she kept repeating herself, she would attempt her escape.

And yet, even this time as the torchlight approached she felt that her legs were weak, her bound body unresponsive as it laid slumped against the heavy barrel in this damp cellar. There was a trickle of rotting water dripping from the ceiling, and her captor placed the plate with the two slices of stale bread right underneath it.

He kicked her, and she felt her cracked ribs dig deeper into her lung. She grit her teeth, letting no sound escape her mouth. He turned around, and he was gone.

She rolled on the floor, and crawled on her wounds until she could plant her face into the plate of damp break. The smell was enough to make her puke, but her stomach growled and complained and so she opened her mouth and chewed, and paid no mind to the tears falling down her face.

She pushed the food down. Thinking only about the day she could see her again. And, sometimes, thinking of the revenge she would take against those who did this to her.