Chapter 58: Renovations

-Alexander POV-

With the inclusion of plasma wiring -should I think of a better name for that?- I had finalised my work and set down the current dimensions of the main chamber.

To call it massive would be underselling it, the chamber made any sight I had previously seen -in either dimensions- seem quaint by comparison. The ceiling stretched upwards into a cavernous darkness, the height so vast I couldn’t even see the top.

The same was true in any direction I looked, regardless of how well lit the chamber was.

Scale was an odd thing, things tended to work differently at certain extremes of them. For example, at the furthest reach of my power I could feel harsh winds being whipped up and the faintest hint of condensation.

‘A storm. There’s a storm happening within my base.’

A giddy smile was upon my face. Despite the vast knowledge of climatic sciences endowed to me by both SolarPunk and TeslaPunk I hadn’t expected such a thing, yet it was a happy accident.

Already I was musing on ways to incorporate this weather into my future designs of this place.

Yet, there was something missing.

I glanced upwards and frowned.

‘Weather with no sky is just plain weird’.

With a grin I lifted myself skywards, shooting up at terrifying speeds. Despite my sheer acceleration the time it took to reach the top made my ascent seem almost ponderous, so vast was the scale of my creation.

When I reached the top I looked around, nothing but basaltic grey as far as the eyes could see. Bit boring that.

A drone was spun into existence, then another, then another and constantly more until my little corner was buzzing with drones, the clicks and chirps becoming thunderous under their sheer mass.

A flipped switch here, a change in programming there, and they took off. Some remained where they were, beginning to etch angular runes into the ceiling. I watched them for a time, admiring their inhuman precision, before beginning to descend back down – pinging Renji with a notification to head into the chamber.

Given how far he is from the chamber it should take him about four minutes to get here, if he walks so there should be-

Wait, was Renji the type to walk if I called him.

A second later I realised the answer was an emphatic no, and decided to once more message him with an addendum - telling him to take his time.

My feet touched the floor, the ceiling above once more indistinguishable to the naked eye and far out of the range of my power. Yet I knew my drones were once more doing as they had done in Jinzhou.

The decision to use magic, despite being unknowing of it’s origin, was not one I had made without some deep thinking.

Firstly, Jinzhou was already a wellspring of magic by this point.

So, regarding the Shards, the cat was already out of the bag. Despite that, I wasn’t too worried. Could the Shards learn to manipulate magic? Sure, I wouldn’t be surprised. But, the thing is, it would take time – especially the magic of Jinzhou. All of the magic used there was from the SilkPunk specialty after all, a type of magic that was capricious, focused and laughably illogical at the best of times.

Normal magic would have taken them a while to figure out. That type of magic will definitely take at least a decade, if they devoted all of their processing power to it.

To top it all of them attempting to figure out SilkPunk’s brand of bullshit would likely slow down any attempt to figure out normal magic, because other than running on mana they do not behave similarly at all. So a bunch of bad assumptions would likely poison their attempts until they figure that out, if they ever do.

Secondly, at this point it was too late. Even assuming magic had some hidden drawback, I could no longer pull the plug.

Why?

Because Renji ran on the stuff.

The man was literally forged with magic and metal to be the perfect ideal of what people imagined a samurai to be. Taking out the magic would be like ripping out a piece of Renji’s soul, he wouldn’t be able to exist without it.

So yeah, not killing my friend.

Finally, I just plain needed it. And not just ‘in the future’, or some other tripe. I needed it in a pretty immediate sense.

Because I couldn’t block the vision of the Shards without it.

According to the information in my head, woefully out of date information at that, A Shard’s scan wasn’t any one thing. It was a series of waves that constantly bombarded the planet, scouring for information. Gravity waves, neutrinos, higher dimensional mapping, quantum fluctuations, and a dozen other methods were employed.

So, that method I used to talk with Renji before? It probably wouldn’t have worked without a certain factor.

The magical reactor within Renji’s chest.

According to the, very rough, calculations I’ve done the introduction of magic into the mix should have scrambled their attempts to see through my veil. Rendering our talk into meaningless gibberish to them.

Once again, Renji had come in clutch. This time without even meaning to.

So, yeah, needed to add concealment wards before doing any dangerous research into killing Entities.

“You said you needed me?” Renji walked into the room, before stopping to stare at the daunting size of the room he was in. “Well you don’t see that every day,” he muttered quietly.

Oh, Renji!” I greet him with mock surprise, pretending I couldn’t track his location from hundreds of meters away with my matter manipulation. “You’re just in time, come watch the stars with me!”

I pat the ground next to me in excitement, gesturing for him to sit beside me.

One of Renji’s eyebrows rose, likely questioning why we were attempting stargazing underground, nut didn’t protest – taking the seat next to me.

He sat in a perfect seiza, eyeing the rock beneath him in mild disdain -likely for its lack of fanciness- before looking up.

“Okay. In three…two…one…and now!” My finger extends, pointing upwards in dramatic fashion.

Nothing happens.

“And now!”

Renji stifles a quiet chuckle as nothing continues to happen.

“Okay, did one of them somehow break up there?” I glance away from the concealed ceiling and down at Renji. “Hold on I’ll just go-“

Naturally, the drones chose that exact moment to activate the runic sequence.

Lights begin to flicker on. One, then two before dozens and hundreds more join them. Stars twinkled in a place that had long forgotten them.

It wasn’t just stars either, the magical illusion was not blocked by pollution or an atmosphere – so even the smallest details of it could be clearly seen. Nebulas drifted silently upon the colourful vistas, lit by the countless suns they had nurtured.

Even the black background of space had subtle gradients, lighter in some areas where distant galactic arms dwelt.

I glanced back over at Renji, whose jaw had almost imperceptibly dropped. In his eyes I could see the wonder of the cosmos in full, the same wonder I had felt when my father took me stargazing under a cloudless winter night.

I could remember the wonder I had felt, glancing through my telescope and seeing wonders I had only ever seen on television.

Absentmindedly, one of my many arms reached up to brush a tear that had gathered in the corner of my eye. The liquid sat perched upon my hand like a dazzling jewel, gazed upon by a being who hadn’t even known they could cry.

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Runes had been spread across the outer layer of my newfound home. Those on the outside covered the pillars, their magic designed to misdirect perception and warp information.

Both AetherPunk and SilkPunk had been utilised to the greatest extent possible. The five pillars now oozed crimson, the arcane words written upon them seemed to weep red energy outwards like a sickness.

If a normal human crossed the boundary that these pillars created they would begin to hallucinate. It would be subtle enough, at first. Whispers, figures in the corner of your eye, phantoms touches but would quickly escalate the longer you remained present. Soon they would be unable to tell fantasy apart from reality, and would be left as little more than babbling wrecks.

Precognition, and other forms of Shard information gathering, would be similarly affected. The data returned would quickly become nonsensical, and while I had no delusions of driving a Shard to madness with this it would certainly be frustrating for them.

It was a defence mechanism half chosen out of pragmatism and half out of spite towards those crystalline voyeurs. Also it fit well with the Lovecraftian aesthetic this place had going on.

It was only the most obvious form of protection we had.

The interior bore minuscule icons and sigils relating to gods of trickery, great acts of deceit and secrets never uncovered.

These were more subtle, on the occasion the pillars were destroyed these magical protections would not completely hide what was within my sanctum. Instead they would make a few choice edits to the information acquired.

Which changes were made would depend entirely on the intent of whoever was attempting to plunder my secrets, and how it might benefit me. A Shard assessing if I was a threat would find only non-threatening technology present, or perhaps attempts to kill an entity so laughably off the mark that I couldn’t even be considered a threat.

With those protections set up, the last of my preparations had been completed. Now it was time to begin work on the interior of my new home.

I wiped my brow, wiping off imaginary sweat as I stared at the last of my pillars to undergo a magical makeover, the faint screams of the damned I’d added to the matrix was a particularly inspired choice!

I looked upon my creations proudly, the dark ominous pillars scraping at the sky contrasted wonderfully with the wide and open plain of snow. There was just one problem…

“Should I add something to the centre? There’s nothing there.”

Indeed, most of the infrastructure of our new base was underground. So, besides the pillars and a few cave entrances, there wasn’t much present. Perhaps it could be considered beautiful in a minimalist sense, but when there was enough space between the pillars to fit an entire city then it was going a bit far.

Perhaps I could add a pentagram? Lines of magical force reaching between the edifices? Then again, wouldn’t that give off a more satanic flair? There wasn’t anything wrong with that, of course, it just wasn’t what I was going for.

A ritual circle still held some merit, however. But, combined with the red of the pillars it would definitely give off a demonic feel. Maybe if I changed the colours I had given the pillars? Green was definitely gave off a more eldritch vibe, so I could use that.

“But I already used green on black when I made Jinzhou’s walls,” I moaned – not wanting to be derivative. God, what other colour would be better? Purple? Eh. Blue? Nah, not scary enough. Pure white? No, that’s stupid. There’s already way too much white in our surroundings.

Yellow?

Yellow!

How could I forget yellow! Very eldritch! Much Hastur!

Maybe I could add some tentacles around the base of each spire?

Oh, the possibilities are endless!

I am in such a good mood right now, nothing could ruin this!

The universe, as it tends to do, chose that exact moment to shit on my day.

My head jerks sharply upwards, sensing immense pressure building within the intersection of the five pillars, atoms moving erratically and a static charge beginning to build.

I froze, mind racing.

‘Oh fuck that’s not natural, what the hell did I do this time?! Oh shit did I actually summon an Elder God just by thinking of them? Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!’

As I began breaking the fuck down analysing the situation, I noticed an odd reaction in the magic present in the area.

This reaction, whatever it was, was drawing in the ambient magic in order to fuel something.

‘AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH, WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?!’

The world slowed to a crawl, as my mind sped up to deal with the problem before me. Okay. This was clearly magic, magic was being used to facilitate whatever was going on, so what could be causing it.

My mind came up with zilch.

None of the Paragons should be capable of teleportation. Renji definitely isn’t.

Shit, was it Wukong?

Well, that wasn’t something I could dismiss out of hand but it didn’t seem like his style.

So, someone I didn’t know?

Why would they be coming here?

My eyes flew to the pillars, to the sigils that invited misdirection.

Could that be it? Did they mistakenly think this was their destination because I had sent up the magical equivalent of a signal flare laced with LSD?

I cursed, the expletives particularly foul as I began breaking the sigils with my matter manipulation.

The pressure did not relent, clouds beginning to form – black and thunderous.

Okay, so that didn’t work.

Was this actually their destination?

Or could it no longer be stopped?

Should I reapply the misdirection sigils? Let them taste madness the moment they arrive?

Did I have anything to stop them?

Wiznock’s Ward might help, if it wasn’t so time consuming to apply. A Void Barrier would require exotic material that I don’t have. A Sky Skipper required extensive preparation.

Time! The one thing I didn’t have!

Calm down! If you can’t prevent them from appearing then do the next best thing! Prepare a surprise that will make them regret coming!

Missile launchers began appearing by the dozens, and then by the hundreds. Fusion missiles, fission missiles, cobalt bombs, gamma burst missiles, bomb pumped lasers. I was truly applying my AtomPunk specialty well as I began preparing my opening salvo.

Light began to bloom outwards, a pale blue that seemed to swallow everything. Silence broke as wind began to howl outwards, fleeing away from the centre point. The pressure wave met a wall of still atoms, the force completely negated by a single use of my power.

I readied myself, the machines around me beginning to rumble to life as V.I’s began to seek out a target amidst the blinding light.

Finally the light broke apart, scattering upwards into faint motes as the invading force arrived. Snow buckled and heaved as an enormous structure suddenly manifested above it, sinking deep into the frosty substance.

Black was the first thing I saw, a bulwark clearly designed to protect against my first attack. No matter I would-

-I stopped, blinking for a second.

Hold on, was that…

Above the walls, rising higher than even the five black spires I had constructed around the new foreign objects suddenly occupying where I was building my new home, were massive chrome towers.

Familiar chrome towers.

I blink in surprise, my mind trying, and failing, to comprehend the sheer unlikeliness of what was in front of me.

“It’s yà lì shān dà!”

My disbelieving form flinches slightly, as I look upwards to see figures gazing down from the walls of New Jinzhou.

“PRAISE BE! PRAISE BE!”

‘What? What the hell are you guys doing here?!

As I stared dumbly at the distant figures singing my glory, all I could feel -beyond a sense of bafflement- was a strange assuredness that the universe was laughing at me.

AN: Yeah, that’s right. The place Jinzhou got teleported to was Antarctica. Alexander, for his part, is massively shocked. He didn’t forget about the emergency teleport he gave the city but the odds of them showing up right in front of him is miniscule. There is, however, a reason for it. There should be enough information within this chapter, and others, to piece it together.

Though, needless to say, this isn’t going to help with his reputation as a 5D chess master.

In other news, the main room is done. All it needs is some actual stuff to go in said room. That may be on hold until Alexander figures out the whole Jinzhou situation. Taizong interlude is next.

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment.