Normally, I wouldn’t suggest my little family unit making outside of the Bastion when it was so close to Aveline’s normal bedtime. But in the grip of the Skyfall, time was ephemeral. With a constantly unchanging sky, it didn’t really matter when we went out, as long as we had the energy for it. And it’s not like Aveline actually had anything to do tomorrow, anyway, even though Sylvia and I were sure to be busy. School for the children of Blutstein had been suspended for the duration of the crisis. Some of the teachers were too scared and preoccupied with mere survival in our little apocalypse to think about instruction. While others, well…

  Many of them had died in the initial press. Aveline’s main teacher at her school was, unfortunately, one of those.

  It had been a…rough thing, telling her that.

  With how familiar I was with those guards who watched the middle layer lift, it didn’t take my little troupe of five to reach the gates of the Academy. These days, the decision had been made to keep them open, although classes had been cancelled for us as well. The Academy campus was still being used quite a bit as a hub of activity for those of us striving to fight back against a world now hostile to all life. Even now, there were people out and about. Although the attitude of those people was different.

  In the time before the Skyfall, I’d really appreciated the sense of almost relief and camaraderie that was common on campus. Everyone was so, so…happy. The war had been over, life had resumed its regular rigors, and the people were relieved that they no longer had to fear for both their lives and the lives of their families.

  That was gone now. Now there was a grim, businesslike pall to those who stalked across the lanes and plazas of the Academy of Mystic Arts. Terse nods greeted me from people whom I had once exchanged smiles with. Silence greeted me on every navigated street corner, such a departure from the carefree chatter I’d once experienced. Statue still soldiers, willingly invited by the staff, stood guard before important buildings where research teams were, even at this hour, likely still grinding away.

  I’d been told by more than one person that this was what it had been like during the war.

  I didn’t want to live the rest of my life living in a world where it felt like joy was smothered by dread. I didn’t want Aveline to grow up in such a world.

  This had to change.

  Long used to the sight of Sylvia and me, the guards posted at the main building of the Academy waved us through. They didn’t even blink to see our guests. The two of us were trusted figures at this point. They likely thought that if we had brought them along, then there was a good reason for it.

  Heh.

  When we reached the entrance to the lower labs, I felt an unexpected pang at the sight of Angela’s vacant desk. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be changing any time soon.

  The kindly older woman…hadn’t made it.

  I kept my feelings from bringing down the enthusiasm I could see on Aveline’s face. Even Rachel was interested in where we were going, though Fade didn’t really seem to care. Neither of them had ever been inside Grey’s personal lab, here at the Academy. Rachel, because she frankly wasn’t a student. Fade just had little interest in two-legged pursuits in general. And Aveline because, well. She was a child. There just hadn’t been a reason to take her on a tour of such a serious place before.

  It would be nice if the controlled chaos of Grey’s lab could bring my adopted daughter the slightest amount of joy in these dark days.

  Considering just how in use the lower labs were by the research team, the door had been left open. As I led my family through the long hall that led to Grey’s lab, I could see muffled conversation through every single closed door within it. I had never seen this area as busy as it was now, frankly. There were more than a few open doors, too, and people poked their heads out as they saw us walk by. Considering I held a position of general authority over the entire research project in regards to the Skyfall, I think many of them were expecting an inspection. I had to wave them off pretty often, but it was nice to see everyone so hard at work.

  Finally, though, we reached the large, vault-like door that led to Grey’s lab, after more than one brief stop along the way. Once there, I laid my hand on the enchanted scanner, and the massive iron edifice swept open.

  Aveline gasped as the mana lights flickered on within. “Cool…”.

  I hid a smile at the slang she had picked up from me. ‘Cool’ wasn’t something either the Veredenese or, apparently, the Netherim had used. That was entirely my influence.

  Rachel tried to hide how impressed she was, but with long exposure to the woman, I was able to see through her mask.

  Sylvia, Fade, and I were well used to the sights within, though, so we carefully herded them inside, the door swinging closed behind us. I think Rachel was most impressed by the orrery spinning away overhead, while my daughter was more interested in all the doodads strewn about the tables. Aveline raced ahead of me with Fade trailing close behind, and while I could have stopped them, I wasn’t too worried. Anything actually dangerous was very meticulously kept under lock and key in here. The worst she could do was break a glass jar or something.

  Wait.

  There were some pretty caustic potions in some of those, now that I thought about it…

  “Aveline, wait a second!” I hurried after her, leaving behind a bemused Sylvia and Rachel in my wake. Thankfully, it wasn’t hard to find the little girl.

  All I had to do was follow the sound of honking.

  As I’d expected, Aveline had stopped in front of the stuffed duck standing proudly on one of the workbenches, its wings spread wide as if it were about to take off into flight. Fade, though, was standing on his hind legs with his paws resting on the desk, with a strange look on his furry face. At my arrival, the strange thing honked once more, the sound of a short trumpet blast echoing forth.

  I eyed the statue almost fondly. It was a strange display piece, that’s for sure, which wasn’t even counting the enchantment. But long exposure to the statue had rendered it…familiar.

  I’d never asked Grey about it, and honestly, I didn’t want the origin.

  Aveline stared at it blankly for a moment before she shrugged it off with childish ease. I had to shoot Fade a sharp glance to keep him from doing anything rash, at the considering look he was giving the stuffed fowl. He affected a brief chagrined look and slipped back down to the floor. This time, I was able to grab Aveline’s hand before she could run off again. In return, I was greeted with a brief pout.

  I just smiled down at her. “Hey, do you want to see something cool? An old friend of yours is down here.”

  “What?” Aveline tilted her head and blinked at me. Eventually, she nodded in childish curiosity. “Okay.”

  I led Aveline and Fade through the small maze of laden workbenches to reach the back of the lab, where Grey and I’s main workspace lay. Behind us, I could hear the honking of a trumpet once more, followed by a brief, startled curse from Rachel, as the girls passed the duck as well. I let a smile cross my face as Aveline caught sight of what I’d told her about, connected to the sizable charging apparatus my mentor and I had spent so long trying to build.

  She lit up immediately. “Glee!” She said happily, letting go of my hand to race forward. I let her, and approached at a more sedate pace as my daughter stood on her tiptoes to get a better look at the GLEAM her biological Father had left us. Aveline craned her head in confused, and yet happy excitement, trying to get a better look at the all important repository. “He looks just like how I remember him!”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  ‘Glee’, as Aveline referred to it, had changed in the intervening months since she’d seen the little floating disc. Millennia spent in a rotting hole in the ground had left it a bit corroded from the Bunker’s curse. Painstakingly, as part of our experiments, Grey and I had restored the device to a more well-kept appearance. Now it literally gleamed silver in the bright, magical lights of the lab, etched with green and blue highlights glowing ever so slightly from the power it had been successfully charged with.

  I felt it as Sylvia and Rachel came to a stop at my side, each of us just watching the excited Aveline for a moment. A cool Mithril hand slipped into mine, and my partner spoke in a soft tone. “I must say...it’s quite nice to see someone who isn’t dwelling so deeply on…present circumstances.”

  Rachel snorted off to my other side, and through my peripherals, I could see it as the woman folded her arms. “Children have always been stronger than people give ‘em credit for,” She said in a blunt, fond tone. “If they weren’t, we never woulda crawled up outta the mud and built nations. Everythin’ we do, it ain’t fer us. It’s fer them. Ain’ no other reason to keep goin’, sometimes, if it’s not fer the kids.”

  I snorted softly, pondering that. I’m not sure I totally agreed, but I understood the sentiment. More so now that I’d become a Father myself. I just…Personally, I thought there was more to the human experience than merely building for subsequent generations. There had to be something more intrinsic, more profound than mere continuation of the species to the foundation of our existence. At times, when I was chasing the bounds of Mysticality with Grey, I even thought I was touching on the barest edges of it. But I get why a woman like Rachel, who had grown up in a small farming settlement, would think so. Such things had quite literally been a matter of life or death for her growing up.

  Sylvia hummed softly to herself next to me. “I didn’t see your circle anywhere else in here, Nathan,” She said, not commenting on Rachel’s words. “Where is it?”

  I smirked at her as Aveline oohed and awed in front of us. “You didn’t think I led you guys here for no reason, did you?” I asked playfully, before pointing over Aveline’s head. “It’s behind the desk.”

  Both Sylvia and Rachel followed my finger to the space that lay just beyond the massive desk we stood in front of.

  Which was…maybe only big enough for one person to fit in, lying down. After all, Grey was very efficient with his space, and the desk was nearly against the far wall of the lab.

  I walked around the other side with Rachel, Fade, and Sylvia following me. At our movement, Aveline finally snapped out of her GLEAM based excitement and followed after us to find…

  A single circle carved into the floor behind the desk, maybe six feet in diameter and filled with shining Mithril. Innumerable tiny runic markings lay around both the rim of the circle, as well as the eight minor, half-circles within it. The entire engraving was barely big enough for me to fit the whole of my body within, without standing on any of the smaller circles within.

  It was very, very different from my first Ascension circle.

  But there was a reason for that.

  Fade perked up at the sight of it, which I was kind of gratified at. “Oh!” He exclaimed across the bond. “I get it.”

  Of course he would. After all, he’d seen the inspiration plenty of times.

  Sylvia, though, just tilted her head. “It’s very…compact,” She said politely. I almost drooped from how she couldn’t recognize the shape. Some memories of hers had just never returned, and I hadn’t thought to ask after that particular one.

  That was a shame. I was very fond of that moment.

  “Compact my butt,” Rachel said with a frown, putting her hands on her hips. “It’s small. I thought Magi circles were supposed ta be these huge sprawling things. That looks kinda…boring.”

  Unexpectedly, Aveline spoke up in my defense. “It kind of looks like a tree?” She said, tilting her head.

  A broad smile stole across my lips, then, and I bent down to ruffle her hair. “That’s exactly what it looks like,” I said proudly.

  Aveline beamed up at me, even though I doubted she knew the reason why.

  “But…where’s the…oh!” Sylvia said in confusion, edging past us to get a better look.

  Something I think neither Sylvia nor Rachel had seen yet was the wires. Embedded into the rim of each of the eight half-circles were a similar number of Crystal Flex wires, trailing down through the center of the circle to twist together. They traveled down the center of the pictogram, eventually leaving the far rim and traveling out of it. They crawled along the stone, and up one of the nearby legs of the work desk and along the surface…

  Until they terminated into a strange, mechanical enclosure, sitting on the edge of the bench.

  Aveline was right. The bottom portion of the circle was constructed into the rough likeness of a tree. The symbology was important to my existence.

  After all, my soul presented itself as a giant crystal tree.

  “What…what is all this?” Sylvia whispered. “I’ve never heard of a circle quite like it.”

  “Because it’s new,” I said confidently, stepping forward into the center of the pictogram. “Grey and I were working on it for months, way before I even got close to the second breakpoint. You see, we’ve been dealing with a problem for a long, long time now. Just what is it that Aveline’s people were using to charge their technology? What is it that was being used to power creations like her Glee?” I said, nodding across the table to the other construction we’d worked on. “We didn’t know, and even though we found something to use for it, that doesn’t mean we understood it. The Flux Cores…what’s in them, if not Aether? This entire circle…it’s meant to find out.”

  Even though all four people gathered around me were starting to look incredibly confused, I didn’t let that bother me. After all, it’s not like Grey and I had talked in length about our experiments involving the GLEAM to literally anyone. Grey hadn’t told Sylvia, and I hadn’t even told Fade.

  This was as much for me as it was for them.

  “We found something strange in our examination of the GLEAM,” I said, reaching for the apparatus on the table and removing something from it. At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a small leather skull cap. But closer examination revealed it to be chain-link.

  Oninite chain-link, made from literally thousands of small circles. This, too, had several Crystal Flex wires trailing from its brim and connecting it to the main device on the table.

  I placed it on my head and secured it under my chin, with an attached strap. “In quite literally every single piece of technology that the Netherim had built, there was one small component in all of them. About the size of a single gold coin, you could find one somewhere on each design as an addition. For a long time, we didn’t know what it was. It was completely black-boxed. It wasn’t until one lucky day that Grey came upon the design for what it was in the repository, just by chance. They called it an ‘Aether Scrubber’. But that was it. That was the only description of whatever these devices were. Just a name, and a set of instructions on how to build one. Grey and I…we think they were just so ubiquitous in Netherim science that they felt no need to. It wasn’t even hard to make one, in truth. But we had no way to power it until we stumbled on the Flux Cores. When we powered one up, it did something strange. In a brief instant, before the Core was instantly consumed, we felt something. In a flash…it was like we destroyed a measure of environmental Aether. Something tried to coalesce in that instance, but the input wasn’t quite right.”

  I was really rambling now, enough that Sylvia had grown a frown. “Nathan…” She said slowly. “Are you sure…you should be doing this alone? Maybe we should wait for Father to return.”

  I shook my head wildly, a massive smile rolling across my face. If it was a bit unhinged, I tried to shield Aveline from the sight of it. “No. I’m sure this will be fine. After all…I think it wasn’t…quite…right. It needed an Aether byproduct instead of Aether itself! Something other than Mana or Ki, but still derived from them! And this...is our best guess on what it might be.”

  Before either Sylvia or Rachel could stop me, I reached out…

  And pressed the small button on the surface of the Aether Scrubber enclosure that Grey and I had attached to the Ascension Circle.

  Instantly, the circle beneath my feet activated, and I froze in place. Pale white light shone from the Mithril of the tree Grey, and I had wrought so painstakingly, and the adjacent ‘leaves’ began to simmer with a scintillant light of their own.

  And I felt it working.

  Slowly, a measure of grime I hadn’t even been aware of, resting just against my Soul…lessened. The Circle and the Scrubber were working together, and they were drawing away that which contaminated myself.

  The mental impurities that the Magi Mind collected just from existing in Aether-rich environments.

  As they were drawn away, my eyes rested unblinkingly on the open center of the Scrubber on the desk. Ever so slowly, in that space…

  I saw a dark mass of energy begin to form. Even from here, I could feel the difference from the surrounding Aether. It wasn’t…wrong per se. It didn’t cause my skin to crawl or even give me an ominous feeling. It was, instead, like the difference between oil and water.

  Just different.

  I barely noticed when the Circle completed its task, and my Mind and Soul opened further to the power of the System. I had broken through the Second Breakpoint, but that wasn’t the most important thing to me right now.

  Instead, it was the small, dark crystal that now lay inside the enclosure.

  Almost lovingly, I reached out and picked it up, allowing the Mana light above to shine through. In this new, and not degraded example, I could see strange hues of crimson and gold coursing through the center. They swirled in endless eddies within the gem, and as they did, I couldn’t stop the joyous laughter I felt from escaping. It echoed around me in the lab, and I was only peripherally aware of the worried looks I was getting from Rachel and Sylvia.

  At least Aveline was laughing with me, even though she didn’t know why.

  “Behold…” I breathed, twisting the brand new Flux Core back and forth.

  “The future.”