Chapter 56: Pentagonal Edifice

-Alexander POV-

Dark stone collapsed in on itself, forced into an impossibly singular point. The matter was crushed, contorted, and flattened to form an impossibly small singularity. There was a flash of light and heat as Hawking Radiation bled from the black hole, like blood from an open wound. It existed for barely a millisecond, arguably less, but it was enough.

The dark, glassy, material that made up the pillar he was creating shifted. Superposition rendering the material distinctly different. Within the pillar he saw a darkness that went on forever, an unnatural shadow that seemed to sprout from the ground in defiance of the blazing sun above.

Any human who glanced upon it would be incapable of properly understanding it with their eyes alone, the darkness of the pillar so absolute that it would appear as if it was a 2D object imprinted upon the world. They would stop and stare in fear as they wondered what nefarious purpose it served.

The truth: vibes.

It was the entire reason he was making five of these pillars, despite how stupidly expensive they were to make in terms of matter. It was the reason he had made them 55 meters tall, 5 meters wide exactly.

No, it wasn’t for any magical effects. I simply knew that some Thinker was going to drive themselves up a wall trying to understand the significance when there was none.

‘Take that Lisa’.

I cackled slightly, calcium weaving into being before my eyes. The white substance quickly calcified to form human skeletons, complete with fabricated evidence of ritual sacrifice being performed. Rags and chains covered their forms as they were dragged to cover the circumference of the massive spire.

Again, five of them. The agenda had to be maintained.

Want to know the best part of being a known Endbringer?

Well, want to know the only good part about being a known Endbringer?

It was that my reputation couldn’t get lower than it already was. So the idea that I may have ritualistically sacrificed twenty five people didn’t even add a drop to the bucket next to the metaphorical sea of resentment that Earth Bet held towards me.

I stepped back a dozen feet, or so – bringing a hand to my chin as I inspected my work.

Ugh. Well, to a human it would appear appropriately scary at least. However, to someone who had glimpsed the barest workings of the Entities? It looked like a third grade science project, like one of those shitty baking soda volcanoes.

The materials I had crafted were…subpar at best. With my matter manipulation I could feel the faint flaws in my work, the miniscule fracture lines that could see my work undone in a few thousand years.

It was unfortunate, but it would have to do. There were only so much time I could devote to what was basically exterior decorating.

Not to say it had been a complete waste of time, I had figured out that I could make short lived black holes with my power, after all.

Initially I had wanted to utilise the properties of a black hole in my building process by constructing a Kugelblitz generator. Essentially a series of lasers that focused on a singular point to create a microscopic black hole.

Unfortunately, that apparently wasn’t possible. Quantum effects would ensure the energy would be dissipated by generating electron-positron pairs before a black hole could be formed. Which was a bummer, I had always enjoyed the idea of Kugelblitz black holes.

“Oi, Renji! Come see what I’ve made!” I jump up and down, waving in the direction of a distant red haired figure as I yell.

He disappears, and a sudden explosion of snow is kicked up where he had been as he reappears by my side.

“Alexander? What is it? Do you need – OH, HOLY FUCK!” Renji suddenly screams, jumping five feet in the air in fright.

I blink, startled by Renji’s bout of yelling. What the hell had caused that? I swivel my head from side to side, attempting to locate what had caused my friend’s distress.

“Alexander!” My head swiftly turns back as Renji’s disapproving voice causes me to flinch slightly.

What?! What had I done?!

“I LEFT YOU ALONE FOR FIVE MINUTES!” Renji’s face was a mix of disappointment and genuine amazement as he spoke. “HOW DID THIS HAPPEN,” Renji yells, face covered by his hands in exasperation.

My head turns once again, turning to where Renji had been looking and – oh.

A chuckle escapes my throat.

 “Don’t worry Renji, I made those. Honestly I’m surprised you’re freaking out so much, haven’t you seen worse?”

Renji’s face twisted into a flabbergasted expression, had I said something wrong?

“Alexander, this is literally the first time I’ve seen a dead body.”

I froze.

“What?! Nah, surely yu would have seen it in…uhh…huh.” My expression became equally poleaxed as I realised he was telling the truth. I had mostly seen the horrors of China through drone footage while Renji had helped make new arrivals, delivered by teleport, more comfortable. He had seen people in dire situations there, but no dead bodies.

Then, in Hyderabad, I had sent him away before the killing started in earnest. By the time he had made his way back the fighting had ended, and most of the dead capes had either been eaten or vaporised.

Wow, Renji seriously hasn’t seen a dead body yet.

Wait, why was I viewing that as a weird thing?

“Uhh, well technically you still haven’t these are just very-” one of the skeleton’s jaws detached as I spoke, and I ignored Renji’s look of disgust as I powered on “-lifelike. But they’re still not actual corpses, so I guess you haven’t popped that cherry just yet!”

Oh god, why the fuck did I end my sentence like that!

I coughed and turned around. Definitely not to ignore whatever face Renji is showing right now, no siree!

“Back on topic, what do you think!”

“It’s…scary?”

I nodded enthusiastically, waiting for more praise.

Renji glanced away, biting his lip nervously.

I’m waiting Renji!

“I…don’t think it’ll do wonders for you reputation?” The samurai offered weakly.

“Fuck ‘em,” I responded brightly – well and truly sick and tired over worrying about the opinions of others. This was my home, dammit! If I wanted to make it scary I was going to make it scary.

“I’m actually thinking of placing a curse over the area, make low level auditory and visual hallucinations – I think it would make the whole thing come together quite well!”

I spent the next hour chatting to Renji regarding my plans. He didn’t seem too enthused though, so I eventually let him run off to go play with a polar bear that had been stalking him for a while.

Fun fact, those things were only scary as a baseline human. Watching one attempt to maul Renji while he gave it head pats was just hilarious.

Meanwhile I got started on the tunnels linking the surface to what would eventually become the main hideout. To an outside observer they’d make absolutely no sense, the physical tunnels themselves were elaborate winding pathways that constantly doubled back and ran through one another. It would likely take a whole team of explorers weeks to fully map them out, so extensive was the work I put into them.

Then I added portals, and what was once a simply hard to navigate series of tunnels became a nightmare that made absolutely no sense.

I mean, it’s not like I’d be using those tunnels, I have teleportation.

Honestly I wonder how long it’ll take for the rest of the world to realise how little sense the whole thing made, it’s not like I could even fit in those dark and cramped enclosures.

Once that was done I started littering those tunnels with secret rooms, letters written In a made up language, traps, symbols carved in blood, more human corpses, biotinkered abomination cadavers and a whole plethora of hidden (and very fake) lore.

It’s just kind of a shame no one was ever going to see it. I briefly considered letting Renji spelunk in my magical tunnels of horror but thought better of it. If he was scared by my work earlier then he really wouldn’t enjoy what I had done down there.

Creating the pillars and tunnels had taken approximately a day, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the next part took a week or more to make. I would be craving out a massive underground cave and then spatially expanding the insides to fit all of the junk I wanted to cram into it.

Sure, a decent portion of the base would be set aside for research and accommodations, but the rest I would reserve for my very own haunted mansion. It would be great!

I whistled an upbeat tune as I tunnelled back to the surface, angling myself in the direction I could feel Renji was currently at.

Feeling a mischievous smile dart across my face I slowed down, my momentum slowing as I felt out the world using my power. Renji had found an outcrop of stone that stubbornly stuck out of the surrounding environment. My friend had clearly brushed the snow of off it in order to sit upon it and meditate.

Mapping Renji’s body to that of a human’s wasn’t an exact science, there were entire parts of Renji’s psyche that would be absent in a normal human – and vice versa. Because of that I couldn’t tell how ‘in the zone’ he was, but going by the deep breaths, and minimal energy usage, I was willing to bet he had been at this for a while now.

Sure would be a shame to surprise him~

My form broke through the snow with a burst of speed, showering Renji in snow and rock. “OOGIDIE BOOGIDIE BOOGIDIE!” The outpouring of nonsense from my mouth made Renji’s eyes burst open in surprise.

He only had a moment to gape in shock before he was covered in the snow, making me burst out into laughter.

The sodden, and covered in white, form of Renji sagged slightly – accepting his fate as I continued to bely out my laughter.

“…Really?”

I snickered, even the stare of disappointment Renji gave me couldn’t dampen my spirits.

“Really! Weren’t you the one who said you should always be prepared?”

“Don’t use my own words against me, please.” Renji’s frown deepened, his mood only blackening further.

My giggles abruptly stopped. The words that left his mouth had a touch of bitterness to them that was unlike how Renji normally acted. His posture was withdrawn and sullen, something wasn’t right.

I frowned, concern beginning to fill me as I sat down next to him.

“You okay, Renji?”

The crimson clad man said nothing for a time, his face a mix of emotions not easily discernible. Then, with gingerly care, he withdrew his sword from his scabbard.

His very broken sword.

Was that what it was?

I looked at Renji’s face once again. There was anger there, flashing across his face intermittently – like a thunderbolt. There was a dash of shock too, as if he was still unable to understand the sight of the broken blade before him.

But it was guilt that pulled at his brow and made his eyes occasionally dart to me.

So Renji was guilty about what happened at Hyderabad? That didn’t sound right, he wasn’t even there for the most part. Heck, I was the one who sent him away, it wasn’t even his fault he couldn’t help.

My eyes returned to that sword, the metal warped at the end by the grip of a single woman.

Except that wasn’t totally true. There had been a moment, before I had sent Renji away, where he had treated with the Protectorate. Where Alexandria had taken him by the throat and broken his sword.

“Are you not happy with how that went?” My finger pointed towards his sword, my words causing him to stiffen slightly.

He sighed, deeply and wearily. Clearly he wasn’t pleased with it at all, still inspecting the shard of metal with an uncomprehending gaze.

One of my fists clenched. It wasn’t enough for that group to hurt me was it? They just had to do this to Renji too.

The temptation to rage was strong, a siren call to rend this snowy bastion of tranquillity into a battered -molten- crater. I resisted it. There was something more important than my own petty wants right in front of me.

“Why exactly do you feel that way? You’re not the reason it came down to a fight. That was Alexandria’s fault, my fault.”

He mumbled something under his breath, and I scooched over to get closer.

“Yes?”

“I’m not mad about that,” Renji sighed – still looking despondent before turning to me.

“I wanted them to start a fight, you know? I was even excited for it. There I was, an immortal ideal of battle, given a sword and a duty to protect you facing enemies that clearly wished you ill. I was elated. I thought it would be my chance to show you…” Renji trailed off, looking away in shame.

Ah. So he wasn’t ashamed that talks went south, he was ashamed he was beaten so easily – and why wouldn’t he be? Renji wasn’t wrong to call himself an ‘ideal’. I had drawn his very essence from the abstracta of a warrior, a peerless blade to defend and kill at my command.

In truth I felt guilt regarding that decision now. While he had a great deal of personal freedom, and the ability to choose, Renji would always end up wielding a blade in hand – unable to truly let it go.

It just wasn’t in his nature. His nature was to fight and kill and win.

Then came along Alexandria. An individual against which perfect skill didn’t matter. She was too strong, too fast and absolutely impossible for Renji to hurt in any meaningful way.

No wonder he was thinking of this, he had likely been doing so in the back of his mind since Hyderabad.

I bit my lip, rolling it against my teeth as I contemplated a solution.

There was absolutely no way he would ever view this defeat as anything other than a failure, no matter how I tried to reframe it. I could explain the nature of Alexandria’s power, explain to him that it was completely improbable that he could have won. I could have told him that expecting to beat not just Alexandria, but all the parahumans that had accompanied her was beyond optimistic – it was foolhardy.

Yet, this was Renji. Mr ‘fuck the odds, we’re going to kill Scion’ himself. Low likelihood of victory was no excuse to him.

So instead…

“Well, I guess that blade was getting a bit old anyway,” I say – completely ignoring the fact that the blade was barely a month old. “You should get a new one, and while we’re at it if I’m already upgrading your sword I may as well go all the way.”

Renji jolted, as if hit by a lightning bolt. He looked up at me in wonder, dark thoughts banished by my words.

“So…you mean you’ll make me stronger?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I’ve gotten a lot more knowledgeable since I created you Renji, by the time I’m done you’ll be able to fight an Endbringer and come out swinging!”

I swear, just looking at Renji’s expression you’d assume I had told him he was getting a hundred puppies and a swimming pool full of ice cream on his birthday. His face brightened like the rising sun, and his smile could have given diabetes.

-Lim Kun, CUI Soldier POV-

“Repeat that, over.” The voice coming out of the radio in his shaking hand seemed incredulous.

Not that he could blame the operator.

The area before him was foreboding. Dark, and unsettlingly quiet for a place that had once held an entire city. The wind picked up, the howling gale blowing dust across the barren rock. It felt oppressive and clawing, it reminded him too much of the few correction camps he had seen before.

Desolate, and lacking in hope, but for a very different reason.

He, and the battalion that had accompanied him, had arrived in good cheer. Full of songs and bluster, for why would they not? They had just received word that the miserable artifice of Eris was gone, blotted out and never to return.

But any cheer that had once been present was now gone, sucked out by this atmosphere devoid of anything but the whipping wind and abyssal dark. They had, nevertheless pressed on, now suddenly all the more eager to finish this reconnaissance and return home.

They had crested the hill blocking their sight of the, now vanished, city and looked upon what remained for the first time. The land sported scars, that was the first thing they had seen – yet these were no ordinary marks of a battle gone. They were jagged cuts, taken to the world itself and opened into a yawning abyss that was haunting in its emptiness.

Yet even these wounds in reality paled before the spectacle that was at the centre of the empty bowl of land that had once been so populous.

Protrusions of red crystals, as wide as entire buildings in some cases, wormed their way through the land and air. They twisted and split in patterns that seemed incomprehensible until you looked closer, and saw the pattern repeating again and again.

Even the lines, the scars in the air, were not implacable before these strange burrowing things, as the crystals inexorably cut through even them. It reminded him, horribly, of Huǐhuài, an ‘annihilator cape’ as the American’s would call him.

He had been present for the man’s capture, and that day still haunted him. What the official briefings wouldn’t tell you was just how many people went down in order to capture him alive. Those fractal blasts had cut through buildings, people, tinkertech and powers with the exact same ease, an irreverence to any laws that Lim Kun knew.

The crystals were still moving, flowing outwards from the gaping void they had originated from. Light was refracted oddly by the crystals, first appearing black, then red, then a colour he had no words to describe and then back. Over and over.

The void itself was…he didn’t know. Nobody from his squad liked to look at it, despite all swearing they saw nothing within the darkness they could feel a gaze upon them. Atavistic instincts clawing at the back of their minds, urging them away.

Yet this void, these crystals or the scarring on space itself wasn’t what caused him to lock up – to tremble as he called the situation in. It was a familiar golden figure staring down into the void, consideringly.

“It’s Scion, Ma’am. He’s here, over.”

The radio was silent at that, and Lim Kun was right there with her – for what was there to say.

The man, the first parahuman, hung in the air, suspended by nothing but his own power as he stared contemplatively down. His expression didn’t change, yet he could tell the man was curious.

The aura of sadness he had heard so much about was shockingly absent, in it’s place was a deep desire to understand – Lim Kun could feel it projected onto him.

Why was he here? Lim Kun had never been interested in the Golden Man, never been an expert, but he knew Scion was constantly moving – heading from disaster to disaster without a single break. Sure, his idea of what constituted a disaster could be a little off but he had never just stopped like this.

Lim Kun had the briefest idea of trying to communicate with the man, but quickly dismissed the idea. Scion didn’t talk to anybody, he wasn’t going to start with some no name soldier.

The man was eerily still, like some perfect statue crafted by a renowned sculpture. The only imperfection to this stillness was the slight movements of his head, as if he was tracking something unable to be seen by Lim Kun’s own eyes.

“Sergeant Lim Kun! Do you copy?!”

The voice shook him out of his musings, the operator clearly having been trying to catch his attention for a while now.

“Present, over.”

A sigh, perhaps of relief or weariness, was transmitted from the radio.

“What is the current status of Scion, over?”

“Present over the anomaly, ma’am. About-“ He ran some quick calculations in his head. “-forty meters above it. He appears to be observing it, over.”

“…Your mission remains the same Sergeant. Keep a lookout on the anomaly, and keep an eye on our visitor too, over.”

Lim Kum wanted to roll his eyes, but didn’t dare – not even over radio.

“Yes ma’am, over.”

With that he strapped his radio back onto his belt and looked back up at Scion. Still there, still hauntingly beautiful.

But, if he looked closely, did he look almost frustrated?

AN: Here’s another chapter. Woooo! Back to building, I know some of you have missed that and it will be continued in the next chapter too. Yeah, Alexander genuinely doesn’t give a fuck how his Antarctica base is seen at this point. He’s just choosing to flex his horror writing chops.

Renji is frustrated, mostly because he got owned by Alexandria in about two seconds. He’ll be getting an upgrade courtesy of Alexander.

Finally that opening to Shardspace, that wasn’t taken with the city, is coming into play again. Scion had noticed and is investigating. I’m not going to spoil what he’s thinking, but it’s probably not what you think!

Thanks for reading, please leave a comment below!