05 – Two-sided coin

On the way to see Marcus, Edmund had led Toora down a floor and into basement level -1, an area that was normally used as a storage section. Strategically located between the above ground part of the Pylon, and the other basement levels underground, it used to hold the vital pieces of equipment needed to replace the machines on all floors. With time, however, it had been repurposed to a general holding area, with mostly empty rooms and a couple of offices where noisy affairs required them to be well away from everything else. It was, despite how sleek the tower looked where it poked out of the earth, a huge floor, much bigger than the radius of the tower itself, but even then it was quite small compared to the deeper floors, like the first underwater layer of an iceberg of unknown depth.

Edmund had noticed, already back when he was frantically descending the stairs but now with increasing dread, that something was different in the layout of the floors. He hadn’t really paid it any mind at first, especially because he was busy with descending 100 flights of stairs while trying to avert the end of the world, but now the differences were starting to pile up. Doors that he didn’t remember, hallways that were longer than they should have been, curving and branching into unknown parts of the structure, and entire rooms with machines and tools. Even a vending machine, filled with unknown items, perfectly preserved, that he didn’t dare take out just yet.

It seems like Axiom has done more than just preserving the place, with its reality-bending capabilities, in the last three thousand years. I’ll have to investigate the extent of the changes.

But it was going to be a problem for the future. Like he had told the frightened and understandably confused girl next to him, they had bigger issues. Namely, the screaming and kicking person locked behind the reinforced steel door.

Toora struggled on her tiptoes to look through the small square of glass at the top of the door, and sighed.

“He doesn’t look okay.” She said.

“Nope, he definitely isn’t okay.” He made a popping sound with his lips, “he tried to bite my hand off. Shouldn’t magic, like, not work under the influence of Axiom? You were definitely drained back at the portal room, and he looks completely dry too, save for the bare minimum in order for him not to die. You didn’t ask me how I kept you alive earlier, by the way.”

As soon as he said this last sentence, he frowned, almost wanting to bite his own tongue in frustration. There was something with him and talking too much that he really needed to sort out. Thankfully, Toora was too distracted right now to really acknowledge what he said, instead giving her friend a long, tired look.

“Marcus… why did you do this to yourself?”

“About that…” Edmund alternated between looking at her and at the half-naked, struggling man inside, “what exactly did he do?”

“He used a spell to go berserk,” she said, “honestly I didn’t even think he could do it. I have no idea how he pulled it off.”

“Can we reverse it?” Edmund asked. There was no way he was letting the man out like this, especially not in the tower.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

He looked at her sideways. “Maybe? Can you be a little more specific, please?”

She felt the annoyance in his tone of voice, and her heart beat a bit faster. The blood rushing to her face was definitely visible, but she suppressed her impulse to say sorry, and went straight to the point.

“In order to reverse it, I need to understand what kind of magic he used. His magic system doesn’t… shouldn’t have anything like this in it. However… magic is fickle.” Her voice was low, and unsteady.

“There has to be something we can do!”

He was beginning to feel somewhat guilty about this. Back in the day, he could just wave his hand for theatrical purposes and fix everything with a slight flex of his internal Hume Field reserves, but now… not so much. His tank was almost empty, and barely a trickle was flowing in from the damaged machines in the floor above after Axiom took its rightful cut of the energies. If there was nothing he could do about this Marcus, then he needed to get rid of him real quick, or he would be stuck with so little energy that repairing the tower was going to take hundreds of years, even taking into account exponential growth.

“There’s a person, back at the Academy where I studied my magic. She was one of the greatest experts of magic in the whole kingdom. If there’s anyone who can help, it’s her.”

Toora let herself slide down to the ground, sitting with her back against the door. Inside the little, dark room, as if feeling the presence of someone on the other side, Marcus began banging on the door with all his strength. The door was reinforced steel, made even stronger by Axiom using precious energy to keep it from breaking down, and yet it was shaking dangerously with every hit.

“I- I can’t even tell what he has done!” she yelled, desperately, and streaks of tears wet her cheeks. “I don’t know! Is it innate magic, or a mutation of the magic system? I should know. And yet…” her voice became small, feeble, “am I really worthless?”

Edmund sat beside her. They sat there in silence for a moment, with him racking his brain in search of something to say. He really wanted to cheer her up, but his mind was about to hit the wall he always hit when it came to social skills. Eventually, he remembered something he overheard a long time ago.

“Why though?” he asked, “It’s a great strength to see your limit, and seek help from someone else.”

It was Janet, he was almost sure of it. She had said this, long ago, and he remember hearing her distractedly as he passed by, and turning his head to face her almost on instinct. Before he could look away she had noticed him, and had smiled. She had a nice smile.

“Thank you.” The words shook him out of the memory. “For not killing him. For not killing me.”

Edmund got up. “Come.” He said, and offered her his hand to help her up.

They arrived at a room full of computers, huge screens and holograms, with at the center a large circular device. The path to the room was long and tortuous, and Edmund had taken many wrong turns, growing increasingly flustered and impatient with each mistake. The layout of the tower is definitely different.

He tapped on a screen, and a hologram came up showing a wide assortment of things the Null Field had captured over the years, among which were animals, people, various pieces of equipment, and finally an almost perfect rendition of a woman in armor.

“Lisa!” Toora said enthusiastically.

Edmund smiled. “She can’t hear you.” He said, pointing at the hologram, “this is just an illusion.”

The mage deflated. “Oh…”

“Cheer up. I’ll get you the real Lisa in a moment.”

He spun in his chair and tapped on the console screen. The hologram disappeared from behind him, plunging the room in darkness before their eyes adjusted to the soft lights. They had been set to a minimum in order to avoid unnecessary power consumption, rendering the atmosphere eerie and gloomy.

This is going to cost me the rest of my supply. But it’s worth it, I think.

He felt what little Hume Energy there was in his body disappear, and flow into the tower via the Network. Immediately, the red gauge on the display became green, indicating that there now was enough electrical power stored to rematerialize the selected person, Lisa. Without wasting time, he initiated the procedure, and a bright light appeared inside the plexiglass tube in the middle of the room.

Toora covered her eyes, as a light brighter than her own incantations almost blinded her. As soon as she had recovered from the initial shock, she saw that the light was already dimming and stole a glance through her fingers. From the encompassing glow, a humanoid figure had emerged covered in shiny armor, with flowing blonde hair coming out of her helmet like a river of gold. She was as still and unmoving as a rock, she noticed with horror, like a petrified statue with the semblances of her friend. Already she was about to cry out, when she saw her finally move after the last of the lights subsided.

She ran at her, and hugged the hulking armored figure.

***

“That’s… wild.” Lisa said without much inflection in her voice. “What do you want to do with him, then, boss? It’s clear that… Edmund, here, doesn’t want to deal with him.”

Toora’s eyes widened. “We can’t let him out! He’ll run away or worse, kill us.”

“Then we have to kill him.” She said coldly.

“No!” she turned to Edmund, and pleaded. “Please, I know it’s a burden but I promise you we’ll hurry! I am only asking for some time.”

Edmund hummed. “I guess I can give you some time, and try to figure out what the hell is happening on the other floors in the meantime. How much do you think you will need? Less than a week is fine, any longer and Axiom will start to degenerate from the strain. If that happens, I’ll need way more energy than I can generate to repair it, and if I don’t repair it then you can say goodbye to the world as you know it.”

“…”

He cocked his head. “How… much time?” he had a bad feeling about this.

“I’m with the boss, whatever she chooses to do.” Lisa said after noticing his gaze.

“Even if it means dooming the world?” he asked, as a small pool of sweat was beginning to dampen his shirt where it touched his skin on his back.

Lisa nodded. Edmund felt the vertigo of adrenaline pull at his consciousness, and reached out with his mind to the computer system, using that minuscule amount of energy he had gotten back in the last few minutes. The AI’s response to his query was negative.

Calculate an exit scenario, please.

The AI acknowledged.

Toora looked at the two in silence and shock. To Edmund it felt as if she was somehow privy to what he was thinking and doing, at least to some limited extent.

Lisa was strangely relaxed, letting her weight rest on her gargantuan shield. Maybe, Edmund realized, he shouldn’t have let her rematerialize her amor just yet. He swallowed.

“I know!” Toora’s eyes lit up. “Edmund, can we put Marcus in the same pocket dimension Lisa was trapped in?”

“Oh,” he felt himself return to earth, metaphorically speaking, and the spinning in his vision stopped. “dematerialize him and store him in the buffer until we have a cure. That would work, yeah!”

They rushed back to the room holding Marcus captive inside; and what shocked Edmund was just how impassive Lisa seemed to be, but maybe it was her full plate armor hiding her facial features that made it difficult to read her expression. He was really curious. For a moment, his mind caressed the idea of spending some Hume energy to look at what lied beneath the helmet, just a peek, nothing else, and he went as far as almost doing it before realizing how bad an idea it was. Not just because he had to save up, but also because of magic interfering with Hume energy pretty destructively, which would inevitably expose his actions.

“What do we do?” Toora asked: she was looking at Edmund apprehensively, like a lost puppy, while he got the impression that Lisa was the opposite. If the first was a cute puppy, then she was a snarling hunting hound.

“This Pylon wasn’t built with teleport capabilities. We need to take him outside, into the Null Field.”

He half expected a reaction, but there was only silent agreement. The only thing that followed it was a statement from the mage: “We can take it from here, there’s no need for you to get involved in our own mess.”

“Sure, but I don’t want damages to the tower.” He said.

Toora nodded, and then Edmund witnessed something unexpected happen to her. Her whole demeanor changed: from a scared girl who looked at him for guidance, as if prey to a very bad case of Stockholm syndrome, she became the party leader that Lisa was expecting her to be. She snapped commands, one after the other, telling her subordinate when and what to do.

Then, she turned to him, and stared.

“Dommy mommy, I like it.” Edmund blurted out.

Toora blushed, and once again she seemed to change. Back to how she was before. “W-what?”

Edmund’s face went red. “Nothing. Must have gotten lost in translation.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Three thousand years of language drift…” he shrugged. “Anyway, you wanted to ask?”

Her face morphed back into that of a party leader: strong, stern and unwavering.

“I need to use magic.” She said.

“Sure, I’ll whitelist both you and Lisa on Axiom’s ruleset.” He typed in midair, his fingers reaching into nothing to the girl’s eyes. Despite that, the relief that came with the disappearance of the oppressiveness that Axiom brought with it was tangible. “There. Axiom, Null Field included, will ignore you two now.”

Toora nodded in gratitude. “Thank you. I’ll need a few minutes to recover mana, then we’ll drag him outside. We just need to drag him in the field, right?”

He nodded.

“Once again, you have my thanks.”

“Good. Once you are done, follow the light and come find me.” He said, then walked away.