06 – Missing parts

Still recovering from the magic draining effects of Axiom and without a staff to accelerate the casting of magic, it took Toora several hours of preparation until she was confident that they could move her former team member without any issues. She didn’t know if it was an abundance of caution that made her be this meticulous, or the fact that she didn’t want to have to ask Edmund for help should things turn problematic. In fact, she had to come to terms with the fact that never in her life had she been this emotional as she was being now, even taking into account all that happened in the last hours. Eventually, she had Lisa drag the unconscious body of their friend through the hallways and, following a beam of light that wasn’t there before, they reached the door leading outside.

The beam of light was soft and white, hovering a few inches above the ground, and it reacted to their movements as if guiding them towards the exit. She didn’t recall Edmund mentioning it except for when they would need to find him after the deed was done, but she had a hunch that following it would lead them where they needed to go regardless, and she was right. She also got another hunch, that maybe the light was somehow aware of what was happening, and she decided to do a little experiment.

“Take me to the stairs,” she said, trying to talk to the light instead of at it. It flashed red in reaction to the command, then returned to its soft white glow.

“What now, boss?” Lisa’s voice made her mind return to the present.

They were at the infamous room where the fight had gone down just yesterday and, surprisingly, the room was immaculate. There were no signs of the mess that had happened, of the death of their teammate, or of the explosion that she had witnessed. For a moment she felt the sharp pull of anger at the thought of Pearson’s unnecessary death. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to blame Edmund, because what he said was true, they had trespassed here and her teammate had succumbed to a gruesome side effect of a malfunctioning security system.

Lisa’s expression was unreadable.

“Don’t blame him. It was my fault for being reckless.” She told the armored giantess.

“Blame him for what, boss?” she cocked her head.

“For Pearson’s death. And Marcus’…” she looked at the unconscious, half naked man in her hands, “condition.”

Lisa shook her head. “You explained it to me already, boss. From where I stand, it wasn’t anybody’s fault. Things happen.”

Toora hummed. After a moment of silence, she approached the door, which slid open automatically with barely a hiss. It was strange how a slab of solid metal several inches thick was just moving without any magic or Hume Energy involved that she could feel. However, the whole tower was a mystery to her. What was one more thing?

“Do I just throw him out?” Lisa asked.

Toora nodded. “Yes, Edmund has ensured me that now that a certain Praetor is active and in control of the tower, everything will work just like we want it to.”

“Alright then,” the woman said, and unceremoniously threw the unconscious man outside like a sack of garbage.

His body flew for a few moments in the air, until it was completely inside the Null Field, then it just disappeared. Behind the duo, the white light was now pointing away from the door and back towards the inner corridors of the tower, no doubts towards where Edmund was waiting for them.

Toora decided to take a moment to look outside, curious to see if indeed the Null Field was now no longer detecting them as hostiles. Edmund had said two things about it, that seemed to clash with each other, in an attempt to reassure her: first he said that he added them as exceptions, then that Praetor was watching over the Pylon now and that it/he knew that they were friendly. She didn’t know what it meant, but the whole Praetor situation left her a bit uneasy. However, Edmund had reassured her many times that it… he? was not going to be a problem to them, ever.

She took a step, and held her breath. However, nothing happened when her foot left the inside of the tower and entered the area under the effect of the Null Field, which gave her courage enough to finally step outside with her whole body. She breathed out, then in: a breath of fragrant fresh air. The forest, outside the ring of empty stone washed by sunlight, was like an encroaching wall of green growth. It was no longer dark and ominous, instead looking very much like a normal forest to her eyes. From it, she could hear noises and animal calls, and other calls she didn’t want to even try to identify that sent chills down her spine. It was fundamentally different from the forest she went through just yesterday, as if the withdrawal of Axiom’s sphere of influence had reverted millennia of alterations done to it, putting in motion deep changes within. Even here, at the edge of the Tower, she could feel minuscule amounts of mana reaching her before they could be destroyed by the weakened field.

Behind her, the former Lighsbane Tower was now the shiny color of steel and glass, reflecting the blue sky. A small swirl of shadows surrounded its base, covering the material of its exterior in tentacles of darkness, slowly extending upwards but with a pace so minimal that it took her minutes to realize it was indeed extending upwards.

After a few more minutes basking in the late sun, enjoying the relative calm of this small patch of land in the middle of the forest, the duo made their way back inside. They followed the light on the ground, taking many unexpected turns and going through unknown rooms that they had no memory going through before.

Toora found Edmund staring at a floating panel of what seemed to be solid light, with text and diagrams on it. From here she could see the title of the text he was reading and occasionally writing into:

Praetor AI kernel revision 2.3

Sensing their arrival, Edmund waved his hand and the screen disappeared.

“Oh, you’re back!” he said.

Toora nodded. “Yeah. Thank you for telling the light to show us the way, or we would have gotten lost many times!”

“Yeah… that’s a problem I’m having as well.”

***

Tell me, Edmund said with a mental command, is it me or are the floors changing layout as we speak?

“They are.”

Why?

“I think it’s a runaway effect of Axiom.”

It never did anything like that before.

“3000 years have passed.”

So it’s not you?

“No. Sir, permission to guide the guests around the structure?”

Yes, do that. Don’t want them to get lost.

“Understood.”

Now, show me your code.

“May I ask what for, sir?”

Edmund frowned, but pretended to ignore the strangeness of the question the AI asked him. You have been half-active half-not for three millennia, under the influence of a runaway reality-bending field, and now you even have access to reality manipulating energy. You do know what I think about artificial intelligences having this kind of power, don’t you?

“I do, I remember Janet saying: “ it’s the only thing I’ve ever seen you never joke about.” Is it that bad?”

Sorry to say this, but yes. Unfortunately right now there’s no other way. With the current situation, I’ll have to let you use Hume energy with relative autonomy. However, I will add security measures to your programming.

“Understood. I will hibernate and let you work.”

Before that… give me an inventory of what we need to repair the main Hume pipeline.

A list of items appeared in front of him.

What are we missing from storage?

“Unknown.”

What do you mean?

“I do not have internal sensor access to floors 1 to 99, -2 to -100, and to a large portion of floors -1, 0, and 100.”

Why, what’s going on?

“The sensors can’t penetrate beyond the walls, giving me only the rough layout of the inner structure.”

Like a fog? Could it be Axiom?

“It is probable.”

Then why is it not present here?

“I have recorded a 100% correlation between you exploring a section and a restored functionality of the sensors. It seems that your presence restored Axiom to how it was supposed to work in origin.”

That’s odd. Alright, guide me to the storage area.

He walked through the winding corridors, watching as the floating map being projected in front of him got populated with new sensor data the more he explored. Strangely enough, the ever changing floor layout seemed to have no effect on the explored area. It still changed, but even in the new rooms Axiom of Choice was no longer degraded and sensor function was still present.

When he arrived at the storage area, it was immediately evident that most of the stuff was missing.

This is bad. There’s almost nothing of what we need! Alright, let’s go back.

“The layout has changed again, permission to guide you?”

Yeah.

By the time Toora and Lisa were finished with their business, it was almost time for dinner. Edmund had, he realized, skipped quite a few meals and was now famished. Sensing their arrival, he dismissed the console where he was reviewing the last updates to the AI’s code. He was quite confident that these changes should avert any major disaster, at least for the time being, and the remote access he would have to the AI and its core functions at all times was a good safety measure.

“How did it go?” he asked the two girls.

“All good on our end.” Toora said.

“Same. I can see Marcus safe and sound in the buffer. Now you have all the time you need to find a cure for him!”

Toora exhaled. “Thar’s awesome! Thank you again.”

He waved with his hand. “Don’t sweat it. Now, why don’t we have a nice dinner? I’m starving.”

He had the AI lead them through some hallways into an empty room nearby. They were still on floor -1, where the portal was located, because Edmund wasn’t feeling like exploring the other floors just yet. There was no telling what three millennia of runaway reality manipulation had done to them, while at least here, on ground floor, and on floor 100 he knew for certain that there weren’t any major changes. Well, if he chose to disregard the fact that there was an ever changing layout of rooms, corridors and hallways that didn’t care about internal square footage or volume.

With a thought, Edmund accessed the AI’s digital memory and selected a few dishes from the extensive list then, with a swipe of his hand, a vast portion of his Hume Energy was depleted to make a table, chairs, and a varied assortment of food appear out of thin air.

***

Toora’s eyes widened at the sight, and she heard Lisa inhale a particularly sharp breath, which was about as far as she would go in order to express surprise.

There were various dishes on the table, ranging from sushi and ramen, to several pizzas with various toppings, pasta, meat of all kinds, and burgers. She stared at the goodness, wondering how all these novel things would taste like, and mentally compared them to the bland stews and boring grilled meat she had at the academy. Was this how people of the past used to eat, back when things were different? She used to think that the present world was living in a golden age, in its prime where despite the presence of advanced and unknown ruins inking at some wondrous past, and that overall life was better than it was before. Now, though, she had her doubts.

Maybe they didn’t have all this, but only Edmund with his abilities could afford such a lifestyle. But, she wondered, what if everyone had access to luxuries like this in the technological world of the past, before magic was even a thing?

After the initial moment of awe, she was suddenly aware that Edmund was waiting for her to begin eating while also wearing quite the impatient expression on his face. She blushed. She must have looked like a country girl seeing the wonders of the city for the first time in her life to his eyes because, no matter how the rest of his civilization was, this was his lifestyle and to her it was wonderful. To be able to make food appear out of this air…

“This is only possible inside here,” he told her as if reading her mind. “Axiom makes me much more powerful than I would otherwise be.”

“I see.” She replied, already grabbing some food from this and that plate on the table.

“Even then, this used up pretty much all I had in store, so…”

“Wait,” she looked up from her food. “Didn’t you say you needed to use the energy to repair the portal?”

“I can afford to make dinner,” he said with a smirk. “However… there is a problem,” he added, “I don’t have most of what I need to stabilize the portal. And if I don’t fix it we are all screwed.”

“Can’t you make the stuff just… appear?”

“No.”

She thought about it. “This means that we have a week before…”

“No,” he tried to calm her, but she felt her heart race. “I can use my power to temporarily suppress the most violent fluctuations of the portal. Let’s just hope it keeps it in check for long enough.”

“If you get your hands on the items you need—”

“I can repair the portal, and the rest of the tower as well.”

“What’s missing?”

“Here.” A screen appeared in the air between the two.

She looked at the rapidly scrolling images and descriptions. There were many exotic things she didn’t recognize on it, but here and there she could recall having seen or at least heard of some of the things she was looking at. They had different names, but she was confident that they were if not the same, at least similar enough to matter.

“I recognize some of these items.” She said. “For instance, that.” She pointed, and the scrolling stopped. On the screen there was the image of a small cubical object, glowing with rainbow light, named Waveform Stabilizing Frame.

“Oh?” Edmund looked in surprise.

“I have never heard it called like that but… I am quite certain that the guild had an artifact very similar to this one as a prize for a competition that was held a few months ago. It was called…” she mulled it over for a moment. “I think it was called Light of Tyluvia.”

Edmund shook his head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. However, it could very well be the same item I’m looking for. We made tens of these as spares for each Pylon we built and kept them in various storage facilities all around the world. They are quite indestructible as well so, yeah, with enough luck it could have survived 3 millennia of magical upheaval.”

“There’s more Pylons?” Toora asked with visible concern.

Edmund waved her off like it was nothing worth worrying about. “They are probably safe, don’t worry. This one has always been the problematic one.”

They went back to checking the list of items they needed, taking their time to go over all the items one by one. There were many that she didn’t recognize, among which some that Edmund said were almost impossible to find nowadays like the core of a neutron star, or several grams of strange matter, but there were also a lot that she did recognize, having seen them during her travels.

“Doesn’t matter which one we find first, I can use any. So I’d say we rush for the easiest one and start repairing the Pylon asap.”

“It’s not going to be that easy,” Toora looked at her feet, “the easiest ones to find will be with the guild but…” she worked up the courage to look at him in the eyes, feeling as if she was betraying him or his trust, her mind not even considering the much more tangible danger posed by the portal. “Even with your full power at—”

“Outside the tower? Make it a tenth of what I have now. It will increase in time as I periodically send energy to Praetor, or come back and fix whatever I can fix here but… without those items it’s going to be slooooow progress.”

“It’s impossible to steal them, then.” She swallowed.

“What made you think I wanted to snatch them?”

“I… thought…”

“Yeah, I wanted to snatch them.” He made a face. “But I guess it’s out of the question. Next fastest way?”

“We will have to work our way up in the guild, gain ranks, prestige, and fame.” Lisa interjected.

Edmund looked surprised for a moment, then switched his attention back to Toora. “Is that so?”

She nodded.

“If anything,” he said while massaging his chin, “doing so would also help you out in trying to find a cure for your friend. At least there’s that.”

“Yes.” Toora said.

An uncomfortable silence fell over the group. Edmund noticed that Lisa was staring at him, and smiled. Toora mulled over the situation: it was the farthest thing from ideal that she could think of, with the only redeeming point of having a way out, however difficult it was.

Suddenly, Edmund got up, handing the two a glass of something. “Cheer up!” he said, “here, a toast. To our cooperation!”