Luca DR
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36 – Disastrous Circumstances
🕑 Added 2023-05-23 14:17:50 +0000 UTC[Time nexus event triggered by Subject: Albert Grassman.]
[Regressive timeline detected.]
[Aborting emergency quest…]
[Restructuring…]
[New Quest: Leviathan Sleeps.]
- Quest: Avoid the trigger event for Leviathan Stirs.
- Reward:
[Recursive timeline detected.]
[Forcing events along main branch…]
[Analyzing psychological profile of Subject: Albert Grassman.]
[Separation point will happen in 3 hours, 23 minutes.]
[Engaging advanced heuristics…]
***
Text. Lots of text. Some disappearing, other taking its place.
What was going on?
Albert blinked, trying to rid himself of the effects of the strobing lights the system was using to display text, with the strong fear that during the time his eyes were closed the text might disappear again. Not only did the quest, the big red warning kind he received upon waking up before the rewind indeed pull the disappearing act and disappear without a trace, but a new one that was taking its place followed suit, sharing the same fate and disappearing. A third one took the place of the previous two, and this time it seemed like the system was done being indecisive and had settled on the definitive version of the quest.
[New Quest: Leviathan Unveiled.]
- Quest: investigate the forces behind what is known as the HDF. Begin by attempting to reach Elvenhome via forced out-of-range teleportation. NOTE: this quest, unlike the previous iterations, does not have a time limit. It is however strongly advised that you begin immediately.
- Reward: Autocompletion of one quest of choice.
- Reward: Leviathan Quest chain begins.
Something was wrong. Very wrong. The system has never tried to force me to do anything before. And what’s with the passive aggressiveness?
There was not much to do here. It seemed that whatever he did by rewinding time, whatever unforeseen consequence meddling with the timeline yet again had caused, it erased the urgency with which the previous quests were being dispatched. Or perhaps heightened it somewhat, only delaying the inevitable by a few hours in virtue of a new timeline coming to life with the rewind.
Albert thought about the video in Aubrey’s possession, and about what Marc told him before leaving, ruminating about it while in some sort of latent panic mode. The two of them had tried to steer clear of the topic for as long as they could, keeping themselves busy with video games and ordering food, but after a while they sort of had to talk about it again. Albert was not even close to lucid, and neither Marc was at that point. Both of had tried to conceal their inner states of mind, but failed.
They were aware of the potential latent risk the information getting to the wrong people posed, and Marc eventually started talking about all sorts of conspiracy theories he had collected in his mind like a repository of knowledge over the years he spent roaming obscure forums on the internet. What Albert would have usually dismissed as ramblings of someone who spent too much time online, this time managed to create vivid imagery of torture chambers and secret laboratories in his head.
He was sweating now, the memory of such talks reigniting the panic and fear. His mind spun with ever-more improbable scenarios that each had the weight of finality to them. He should heed the warning of the Leviathan quest and begin working immediately as to avoid potentially (surely, but he refused to at the very least admit finality with words, even if his mind was certain) nefarious consequences.
Finding himself alone in his room, in the middle of the night, Albert focused on trying to force teleportation to do the very thing it did not want him to do. Force it to reach places that were out of range for the skill. He remained in a deep state of contemplative, almost manic meditation fueled by fear, panic, curiosity and a sense of impending doom for the majority of the night. Surrounded by a thick vortex of swirling space attuned mana.
A vortex that was easily detectable form space.
A vortex that appeared on the instrument that someone else, who he did not know was his mother just yet, happened to be checking while under the effect of her own version of controlled lucid panic. While in the previous timeline Temalas City had lit up like a Christmas tree with magic, be it space, time or psionic energies all either leftovers from the past days or the consequence of PsyOps coercing SpaceOps into kidnapping Albert’s friend Marc, this time there was one single region of the map that lit up so much as to overshadow everything else.
Albert drew upon his stash of mana crystals, depleting them one by one, unaware of the disturbance in the flow of magic he was causing.
Samantha stared at the screen, unwilling to believe that what her eyes were seeing was true. There was a vortex of magic, of a similar signature as what she could expect SpaceOps to produce yet orders of magnitude stronger, swirling around her own house.
The words PsyOps uttered while facing away from her, restrained in his cell in the CARF, echoed in her mind. He knew who her son was and where he lived.
He was there right now, wasn’t he?
Without even thinking twice about it, she retrieved the Artifact hidden in the Quadrangle. The thing only she knew even existed that allowed her to teleport wherever she desired instantaneously. She opened the case without even waiting for the room to clear, and then she was gone.
She appeared without a sound directly in her son’s room. There she saw him, cross-legged on his bed, with his eyes closed, in a trance. Surrounded by magic so thick it was palpable. Noticeable even to her human senses. He was unaware of her presence.
She found herself unable to perform even the basic motion of breathing. The only thing going on in her body was the erratic and loud beating of her own heart, thumping in her chest like a great war drum.
And as she opened her mouth to speak, only a squeak of voice left her too-dry throat.
Albert’s eyes shot open.
His face twisted as recognition dawned. His eyes locked with hers.
A surge of adrenaline shot through his body, sending the mounting wave of magic that had been gathering all this time smashing through an unseen threshold, shattering the barrier that was preventing the skill from reaching the next level.
[Teleportation I] -> [Teleportation II]
- Can teleport outside of range once per hour, after a windup time of 2 minutes spent in total stillness.
By the time Albert’s brain had finally had time to process what had happened, he was no longer in his room. He was in the central square of the village of Elvenhome, sitting on the soft grass dressed in his PJs, on the planet of Erebus.
He was stuck for the next hour an unknown distance away from Earth, away from his room where his mother was staring at the empty bed he was occupying mere moments ago.
