ushernet [339] 4.60 Moonlit Night
[339] 4.60 Moonlit Night
Only the dim glow of blue and violet along the western horizon serves as proof that the sun was ravaging these lands just a few brief hours ago. Now, the sky is dark and, by the goddesses, is it beautiful. With the nearly-full moon still partially occluded by mountains to the east, the sky is dark and the constellations take center stage upon the celestial zenith, twinkling without a care in the world.“It’s nice,” Chloe says. “Just looking up at the stars like this.”
She wraps her arm around me as we stand on the lakebed shore along the southern edge of the small island. The cave entrance has completely collapsed and is dissolving back into the ground, the components to be repurposed into whatever dungeon recycling program the System has going on. I admit idle curiosity on the matter, but it seems the sort of thing that’s either completely unknowable, or so far beyond our ability to understand right now that it might as well be.
“Yeah,” I say. I pull Chloe a bit closer into me and wrap my silver wing around her. “I look forward to visiting some of them with you at some point.”
Chloe chuckles. “It’s amazing how much things have changed, to the point where you can say something like that, and not only do I not believe you’re lying… I–” She leans against me. “I want that, Sera. I want to travel the cosmos with you once we’re strong enough to do so.”
“I think we’ll have to,” I say. “I don’t think the keys to fighting the System and everything else we’re entrusted with, are going to be found here on Earth.”
“You really want to do all that, don’t you?”
“For my own selfish reasons, yes. I know I have the choice to do as I will, but ‘as I will’ is to fight the System. It’s…” I sigh. “It’s a little funny, isn’t it. ⸢The Anomaly⸥ carries within it the spirit of rebellion. And that rebellion includes the right to rebel against the very reason why the original Seraphina was designed in the first place. But I don’t have to rebel against… I don’t want to say ‘my programming’. Even the original Seraphina wasn’t subject to something as banal and constricting as ‘programming’. I’m probably not making a lot of sense, am I?”
Chloe kisses my cheek. “Maybe not, love. But I think I understand what you’re getting at.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey girls,” Hank’s voice calls out from a few hundred feet away, where he’s working on getting the chopper up and running again. “Are you two about ready to leave?”
Truly, I wish we could stay a good while longer. The night sky is the most romantic, after all, and never have I seen so many stars twinkling as tonight, out here in the middle of nowhere. Some combination of a dearth of light pollution and the fact that my eyes are a whole lot more sensitive than most. I’d say I could see a million stars right now, but even that might be an understatement.
As I look down, I notice the light of the pale moon cresting atop a relatively nearby mountain. It casts its shimmer down on the rippling water below, made unstill by the light breeze flowing in the dark of night. How I wish that time were on my side, that Chloe and I could just stay like this for… Not forever, but a few days out in nature sounds real tempting right now. Maybe after this Legion bullshit finally gets resolved.
“We should get going,” Chloe says.
Not another word is spoken between us. Just subtle gestures, the way her hand moves against my own and my fingers against her. The two of us take our seats in the back of the helicopter, while Hank starts the machine up with a low rumble.
“I hope there are no objections if we head back to the lab straightaway? I’m sure Leece has been worried sick about us all evening.”
“Let me guess, no phone signal down there?”
“It’s a modern miracle that cell service even still functions. I guess the System is taking pity on humanity, in a fashion. Small graces, but in this day and age, I take what I can get.”
I marvel at just how quiet the copter is. The spinning blades cut through the air with deft precision, leaving room neither for wobble nor undue noise. Just a faint whir. And without an internal combustion engine roaring below the cockpit, it’s just the whistle of the wind that joins in the nocturnal symphony.
“There’s something I wanted to ask you, Hank,” I say. “About the… original Seraphina and her arrival on Earth twenty-odd years ago. Do you know of any other recordings or…”
“I’m afraid it’s just the one I’ve already shown you both.”
“I’d still like to go back there if at all possible. Back before I passed out, I felt like something was calling to me. And yes, I’m sure you researched everything very thoroughly, but there’s always the chance of there being… something. Something that will only make sense to me.”
“No, I was going to say that that’s a good idea, since we won’t be able to move out until morning.”
“But Dad,” Chloe interjects. “Should you be out and about during the day in your condition?”
“Admittedly, probably not. But circumstances are rarely so fortunate as to allow us to–”
Chloe cuts him off. “Maybe, Dad. I’m not sure how much you’ve kept up with the local news since you’ve been off here in your lab these past couple of months. A demon named Fornieth attacked. Threatened to wipe out the whole city. And it was level 85 too, so I think it would have succeeded.”
“My Lord…” Hank says. “I knew something had happened; I didn’t realize it was that bad.”
“But there was more to it than just a simple demon attack,” I add. “It was part of a trap. Someone was trying to lure the two of us–” I point to myself and Chloe. “–out to the middle of nowhere to kill us.”
“To do what?” A bit of black flame emerges from his circlet.
“I did not misspeak,” I continue after giving Hank a few seconds to calm down. “I didn’t realize it until we got there, but, in the castle’s throne room, there was a massive Ethertech bomb set to go off the moment we entered. If I hadn’t started learning dimensional magic that very same day from watching wraiths flying about, we both would have been vaporized.”
Hank stares blankly, but says nothing as his hands tremble with violent rage.
“At first I thought the Legion was after us,” I say. “But only once I learned of your connection with the others did I realize that that, too, was a way to get us to lower our guard, all so–”
“You can stop there, Sera. I– I follow, and I don’t want to hear the recap. No offense meant. And, again, I apologize for my inability to choose former comrades with decency and dignity.”
“Nevermind that,” Chloe says. “What I do want to mention is that we got quite the power boost from clearing that dungeon and shattering the dungeon’s core. I believe that may be one of the ways in which Renault and the other Seraphina were able to gain so much strength so quickly.”
“That other Seraphina is… cybernetic, isn’t she?” I ask. “She didn’t feel robotic like Daryl’s… mockeries. There was something organic about her, that allows her to be considered a living being and grow stronger, isn’t there? One of my memories from the other Seraphina’s life. Apparently, to truly harness the power of ⸢The Anomaly⸥, it has to be embedded within a living being. I don’t know the exact details, though.”
“I don’t know, Sera,” Hank says after a couple seconds. “Your theory is plausible, but I can’t provide you with any real proof. In any case, we’ve arrived.”
Chloe and I stand in the room where the original Seraphina’s body lies in repose. I wanted Chloe to be here with me, and she wanted to come along in any case, hoping that maybe she could learn something about Madison and how the two of them are related. Neither of us really wanted Chloe’s parents to be here, leaving Hank and Mom to wander off to… somewhere. Hopefully catching up after months apart.
“Do you feel that pull from before?” Chloe asks me.
“It’s there, yes. Fainter than before, or maybe I’m just not as tired and therefore better able to resist it.”
“I’d like to ask one question before we do whatever it is we’re going to do.” Chloe hesitates, taking my hand. “What was Madison like?” she finally asks.
“I thought you said you didn’t like when I talked about her.”
“I mean, yeah. But we thought you were that Seraphina, and the way you talked about Madison made me think that the two of you were lovers, and, well, it’s not like any girl would like it when her girlfriend is constantly going on and on about how amazing her ex was. But, you’re not her, and it seems like Madison might be my mother, in a fashion, and, I guess I want to know a little more about her. That’s why I wanted to come with you so badly. That maybe I’d get a better idea of who and what I am.”
“Well, I don’t know everything about her, but I can say one thing without a doubt. She was a real hardass. Take the most extreme, Hollywood depiction of Drill Sergeant Nasty, give her ungodly cosmic power, leave her accountable to no one except… well, I guess her own conscience and sense of responsibility, and then give her free rein to train a weeks-old bioweapon with all the innocence and naïvete that such a being would possess.”
“You better not be saying that’s how I am, Sera.” I swear that for an instant, the temperature in the room suddenly drops before returning to normal.
“Not at all. She was also the workaholic type, so far as I could tell. She was always on the move from one project to another, spanning pursuits martial, political, and research alike. As far as a personal life, I don’t know if she had one. I only have memories from the first part of that Seraphina’s life, and while that Seraphina definitely had a crush on Madison, I’m not convinced it was reciprocated. Madison was well over a hundred by then, and probably saw me more as her kid than anyone she was romantically interested in.”
“Her kid, or her research project?”
“Couldn’t tell you for sure one way or the other. Probably some of both. A lot of both. And she was strong as fuck. The last memory I have of her is right after reaching Level 224 and vanquishing some giant interstellar alien who lives in subspace… um, in the other order.”
“And she said she reached Level 255 between then and…”
“It would have been fifteen years, give or take.”
“So, that Seraphina only lived for fifteen years.” Chloe lowers her head. “And all of them were spent training and fighting. How horrible.”
I take her hand and the two of us just stand there, looking over the perfectly-preserved body resting before us. “Any other questions?” I ask.
“So, what do we have to do?” I can sense that Chloe’s stalling for time, but I see no reason to speed this process up. “Just gotta place our hands on the transport pod and hope something happens?”
I take a breath. I’m not really sure how this is supposed to work, either. All of my memories of that Seraphina’s past life have just come whenever they’ve felt like it. Never have I really been able to trigger them on my own. But, with the two of us both acknowledging that we’re mutually stalling for time, I answer in the affirmative.
Our hands touch the pod after a momentary delay, and as soon as we do, another vision floods my memory.