Chapter 28- Getting Power

Citadel Basement- Main Stairs, Date unknown (Early Evening)

Nath’aniel-

As he climbed down the last few steps, Nath'aniel remembered the last time he came to the basement. It was after they had found Faraji. They had already removed the body, but Nath'aniel had never seen death firsthand, he had seen images and experienced the dreams of others through the dream-stones they left behind. But he had never seen it personally. He didn't know why he was surprised by how much blood there still was down here.

As he stopped atop the landing, which was the last artificial portion of the Citadel, before natural cave took over the basement. There was only a trio of steps till he was in the basement proper. Nath'aniel scanned the open chamber before him. He looked everywhere, but where he needed to. As the mage didn’t want the past to overlay with his present.

“Wow, your basement is actually a giant ass cave?”

Nath’aniel jumped in surprise at the unexpected voice. He turned at the offender as he began to chuckle. Pyro, or John, was holding his belly as he laughed at the mage’s surprise.

"I didn't think anything scared you," John said in between laughs. He was wearing the white shirt and trousers of the Citadel staff instead of his odd tech augmented suit.

“I wasn’t scared, I was startled. There is a difference.” That statement caused the laughter to begin anew. When the other man was done laughing, Nath’aniel asked. “Can I help you with something?”

"Nah, just pumped out four chapters in your study, and I felt I needed to stretch the old legs, don’t know what is about this place but man can I work." John said as he crossed his arm. "But what are you doing down here?"

While still looking at John, Nath’aniel pointed off to his left and said. “I am here to retrieve a power cell from the Energy Storage room. It will be used as a backup till I can find a more permanent solution to my generator problem.”

John rubbed his eyes, and then his chin, before muttering. “The guy says, as if everyone just has an Energy Storage room, is there anything this place doesn’t have?”

Nath'aniel started to descend the landing, while he answered. "I don't think my father ever put in that torture chamber my mother had asked for."

Nath'aniel only glanced at the glass structure on his right. Despite the foggy nature of the glass, various plants could see be seen inside the Greenhouse. The mage did pause, a step, at the sight of the dry bed. Between the two structures there used to be a pond, back before he had been put into the sarcophagus.

“Geez I keep forgetting just how big this place is, I mean I shouldn’t. I mean your cafeteria is more than twice the size of the one in my high school.” John muttered as he tried to catch up. Once he did he asked. “What’s supposed to be down that tunnel? And why are there two levels to it?”

Nath'aniel gazed at the tunnel in question, explaining as he did. "The underground river used to flow down…" He paused as his vision became quite bright at the sight of the tunnel, so much so that he had to squint. The amount of auras he saw was hard to comprehend let alone describe, so he asked "What do you see halfway up the tunnel?"

“I don’t know, balls of yellow light, I guess?” John’s voice was laced with a lot of confusion.

‘Lots of aura, visual light, unstable power in the Citadel, plus unexpected power drain.’ Nath'aniel pondered what information he had. "Is it possible the sub-generators aren't offline? But are instead damaged? Citadel!”

“Online.”

"Wow, she even reaches down here." John muttered.

“I need you to warn everyone to be extra careful of the basement. I think the sub-generators are working. But they are pumping their power straight into the air, rather than into the Citadel.” Nath’aniel ordered the thought engine.

“Understood.”

“You sure that’s not just a bunch of Christmas lights?” John asked seriously.

“What’s Christmas? And why would he need special lights?” the mage asked back, seeing the stunned expression on John, but not hearing an answer to his question. Nath’aniel shrugged before continuing on his errand.

He made it halfway to the large black stone structure when John ran up and tapped him on his shoulder. So the mage stopped and waited. The other man gasped twice to catch his breath before asking. "You don't know what Christmas is?"

Nath’aniel didn’t respond and just continued to stare at the other man.

“It’s the day of the birth of our lord and shit.” John waved his arms as if this was the simplest thing in the world.

The mage continued to stare at John. Once it was clear the other man's explanation was over, Nath'aniel stated. "First. This does not explain his requirement for special lights. Second, nor have you stated why I should serve this man. After all the Magi did not have a social caste system; we did not have Lords or Kings. Our people decided things as a group."

John stared at the ground in defeat, muttering. “This is why we keep Betsy around, she can explain this stuff. Well at least better than I can.”

Seeing the topic conclude, Nath'aniel continued to walk to his destination. He walked past the first set of doors of the large black stone building. Once at the building's second set of double doors, he pressed his hand against the door's gap. He willed the correct pattern of auras into the door.

“Why don’t the doors have knobs?” John asked once he caught back up.

Once enough magical aura was instilled into the door, the clamps around the frame began to retract. First the ones at waist level, then at the head, and finally at the top of the door. And finally, the right door slid into the room before rising back and to the right, and the left door did the same but only to the left. Once the two doors crunched against the ceiling did Nath'aniel answer.

“Security, only a mage can open these doors, and they must know the right sequence of magical energy to use to unlock them.” Nath’aniel answers flatly, before stepping into the newly opened room. Once inside, he noticed that the purple aura was completely being consumed by something in the room. Looking around he saw, that another Water Engine was in the process of being assembled.

Causing the mage to wonder why, after all the Citadel had more than enough power. At least it did before his long nap in the sarcophagus. ‘Unless someone did survive the war, but didn’t know about him.’ Nath’aniel pondered.

Feeling that this discovery was a problem for future Nath’aniel, the mage walked past the Engine Maintenance room, towards his true destination, the Energy Storage room. But halfway in the room, he heard John ask.

“Did you hear that?”

Other than their footsteps in the cave outside, and their conversation during their walk. The mage hadn't heard much of anything. After all this building, and the dungeon next door, was built completely out of Void Stone. And that material absorbed sound, like cloth absorbed water. Nath'aniel listened for a moment wondering if he had missed something like the half-assembled Water Engine before him.

“I hear nothing.” He finally answered, rather flatly.

“You didn’t hear her?” John asked rather worried. “She asked, ‘are you real?’.”

The mage tried to hear what the other man claimed was in the air, but he heard nothing. Though that didn't surprise him, since the vision was the gift of his people, and with all the ambient magical energy in the air he was having a hard time looking back the way that they had come.

Nath'aniel wasn't sure exactly how John's X gene worked, so he wondered if there was something the rest of them didn't know about him. The file the Citadel showed him, claimed that he could 'control fire', but what if it was more than that. Like how one girl, Gypsy, claimed to only a have diverse power set. Meanwhile, Nath'aniel could see that she drew on energies from the outer planes of the Abyss, whose energies by their nature would be wild and diverse.

'Do I crush his understanding, by saying no? Or do I say I did, and lie?' the mage pondered. After a couple of seconds of pondering, Nath’aniel decided to say. “I’ll admit that I was distracted by the noise of the door. Is she still speaking to you?”

John hesitated but eventually said. "No, it was just for a second. I guess I was imagining things."

John began to walk further into the room, but Nath’aniel’s words stopped him. “Please, do not do that.”

"Huh," John muttered, before turning back towards him.

"Do not doubt yourself. You are what you are, you have what you have." The mage said as he walked to the other side of the room. Before unlocking the next chamber he stopped to say. "You X geners, have a gift. Do not ignore it." Unlike the outside door, this one only had a three-clamp lock, which took only a couple seconds to power. And the room's door swung inside and to the left. Unlike the exterior door, it didn't connect with either the walls or ceiling. It just stopped once open enough. But long before, the slow-moving door moved enough to allow the mage to see inside the room. And that his goal was across from him. There on a void stone shelf were six glowing cubes of yellow light.

Nath’aniel walked towards the other side of the room, where the storage racks waited. He pulled the first cube to him. Golden vapor drifted off the item from the friction. The mage looked the cube over in his hand, twisting this way and that.

"Is that it; is that what we came for?" John asked from the doorway. As the room didn't have much light. Not that a mage would need light in here.

Nath’aniel just nodded looking at the cube.

“Good, let’s get out of here. Creep voice lady is making me worry about stuff.”

“Want a half glass of Rual’stock when we get back?” The mage asked with a grin.

John waved his hands like a shield before answering. “Bloody hell no. I saw what that stuff did to you and Bass. But if you got that glow wine stuff, I'll take some of that." John had a smile as he remembered drinking the Heavenly wine from the night before.

With the cube in hand, Nath'aniel left the room. Only having to gesture once, for John to step back and get out of the way. The mage wasn't sure why the other man was so quiet on their walk back upstairs, but he was.

As the two climbed several stairs up to the Entry Hall. Nath'aniel hope that he had done the right thing, subtly supporting the man in his powers. But all those thoughts vanished as they entered the Hall.

As the mage saw Basilisk fall to her knees as soon as she entered the Hall from outside. In her upper arms was a struggling Magneto. Him crying that she had 'gone too far', while she was dragging into the Citadel, in her lower left arm was an oversized wolf-man, who was jerked and spasmed from the surges of thundering energy the collar around her neck was generating.

When she spoke, Nath'aniel noticed that her right eye was missing, as was part of her nose. "Help them. They deserve better." She said before falling face-first into the ground.

 

Antarctica Special Region-

Benjamin ‘Slice’ Smith-

Slice felt the pain, more than he felt the person shaking him. “Just let me die.” He muttered.

“No boss we need you.”

Recognizing the voice as one of the men from his squad he woke up. Snapping awake he asked, "Where are they?"

“They took off, a while ago. The big lizard lady kicked you and smashed the remote. Which caused our freak to start convulsing, from her collar I think. As it was kind of electrocuting her. Then the big lady grabbed both the target and our beasty, and ran off further south.” Someone outside his line of sight answered.

“Casualties?” Slice asked next.

The man in front of him swallowed his spit but answered. "Three, Pearl fell to his death, and Smoke and Gladius bought it to the tree landing on top of them.”

Slice sighed at the news. Then grabbed his headset from around his neck. Seeing that it was too stretched and ruined. He unplugged it from his walkie-talkie and grabbed that instead before he pressed it. "Scalpel come in." he ordered into it.

“Scalpel here, we are about ten minutes from the coordinates that you gave us.” he heard her voice in his ear. Slice took a breath, not sure if it was to rejoice that she was still alive, or that he was. “What happened? Over.”

"Our ambush failed, we have three KIA's, and they took our Ace." He answered back into the handheld.

There was a pause, probably them processing his report. But then another voice came over the line. “Want us to terminate the Ace?”

Slice was surprised by the request, but more so that it came from Tech-box. He quickly spoke into his coms before they acted. "Negative, this is a blessing." He took a breath before continuing. "You can use the Ace's collar to pinpoint their base camp. Over.”

There was a pause, probably Tech and Scalpel arguing. But finally, she asked, "Orders?"

Slice took a breath before answering. “Continue on mission, my unit will rejoin in route. Case, I know you’re listening. Have the Bus gather up all stragglers and join us. After your low alty drop. The wounded are then to be shipped back to the Daisy. Forget their plane, it’s all a distraction. We are hitting their base and we are hitting it hard. Over.”

Another pause to his statement, as his fellow officers decided whether or not to obey his order. Slice rose to his feet while they decided. One of his men brought him his laser gun. He personally debated replacing the barrel but decided to wait since he only fired a signal shot.

Then the callbacks came in.

“Roger that on the move.” Scalpel called back on the radio.

“Gathering up our extras and then moving in. On your six boss.” Hard-cases also answered.

Then the remaining men of his squad gathered around, Slice found it ironic that they were standing in the path their enemy used to escape. Slice clipped the coms to the back of his belt, and then met the four men in the eye, before saying. “If we win, we come back for them. If we die, then what difference does it make?”

The survivors nodded and started to re-ready their gear. And in less than the time it took to call his fellow officers to heel, they were off.