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BII: Chapter Thirty
🕑 Added 2023-04-12 21:33:25 +0000 UTC“I’m so nervous.” Eli stopped himself from flinching as his spatial field caught someone else wandering into the lobby of Pandemonium. He rubbed his palms against his jeans despite the fact that they didn’t really sweat with his improved Body stat.
“You’re nervous? I’m nervous.” Roman muttered while he stirred his tea before he took a sip. “I can’t believe you slept in so long.”
“Give me a break. I hadn’t slept in over a week. Maybe two or three? I don’t really remember anymore.” Eli shook his head as if he could clear out the cobwebs and lack of clarity that had plagued him for so long.
“At least you finally did. I’ve been pretty worried about you.” Roman stirred it again before he tapped his stir stick against the side of his cup for another sip. Vigilant Revelation was a godsend for redirecting unnecessary irritation. “Has Maeve texted you yet?”
“Nope. Mom and Da… sorry, Adelaide and Rick wanted to walk around a bit first, apparently.” Eli scratched his nail into the tabletop idly. Wood flaked under his fingertip as if it were an awl. “I’m really not ready to meet them.”
“Same. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to meet Romulus’s parents here.” Roman tapped his fingers on the table with a metallic clatter. “I doubt I would like them very much.”
“They don’t sound like they’re very good people here.” Eli bit off the extra word either before he widened the rift between them further. Astral Starspace tightened around Roman while he suppressed a frown at the shadow under Roman’s eyes.
“Hardly,” Roman snorted. “I feel bad for Romulus. They seem to have checked out entirely.”
Eli took a long sip of his coffee while he searched for something to say. He didn’t want to play it coy and make a joke or change the topic. Ignoring Roman and his feelings had gone on long enough already. Did he just need to be blunt?
“How has it been going with your family, anyway?” Eli asked carefully. Too cowardly to be more direct, but he was too concerned not to ask either. It had never come up with everything going on since the Initialization.
“Apparently not well.” Roman leaned forward as his head swiveled to survey Pandemonium’s somewhat crowded tables. Few college students were there with finals taking place. “Theo’s gone all crazy creating an army of spawn and Cyrus is preparing an arsenal of weapons like this is a video game.”
“Yeah,” Eli swallowed. “We’ll get back home, I promise.”
“Eventually, but who knows if every day we’ve been here has been another year? Or if traveling itself takes a year? Maybe I’ll be an uncle by the time we come back if enough time passes. Not that it matters right now. Our powers are too weak.”
“I want to go back home too,” Eli said with a wince at every bitter, cutting word that laced his acerbic tone.
“I know, Eli.” Roman leaned back into his chair with a sigh. “Normally, I accept how you shoulder everything yourself. Whenever we had to do group projects together or played a game, you did your best to take on most of the work. Always. But this time, you didn’t even ask for my help or my opinion. You acted like I wasn’t even here. So I tried to solve it myself. But no matter what I tried, I came nowhere near what you could do after what seemed like a couple of hours of work?”
Roman turned to frown at Eli. Frustration scrunched his forehead.
“It’s not fair, and I know things usually aren’t, but after all that time and effort, you figured it out? Maybe not fully, but partially?” Roman shook his head. “I doubt I could do this by myself, and I’d like to think you couldn’t either, but I appreciated and enjoyed working together.”
“I liked it too.” Eli smiled faintly. “I’ve kind of been trying when I could this entire time, but I couldn’t really sense home at all. I have the faintest idea of where it is, but there’s just this wall blocking me out. So I focused on improving all my powers for the best chance possible. Last night was the closest I’ve gotten and I don’t know if I would’ve gotten there without you and Maeve’s help.”
“Okay. We’re working together on this now, right?”
“Yeah. Let’s go back home.” Eli grinned as some sort of inner light or fire that had been missing kindled in Roman’s eyes again. Relief and relaxation threaded through his Celestial Embodiment improved body as he let himself enjoy the moment.
“Hell yeah. I bet we could figure out a tech solution or even try after building you an exosuit of your own.” Roman beamed at him for a second while Eli nodded enthusiastically.
They took a moment to scan Pandemonium’s tables and the door, but Maeve and her parents still weren’t there.
“So, you and Maeve were training while I slept in?” Eli asked to fill the void of conversation. What was taking them so long?
“She helped me use a lot of my powers differently. I got Legion of One up to level evo-1 level four and Gearshift Constitution up to evo-1 level 8.” Roman smirked ever so slightly. “I’m thinking of evolving GC, but I’m going to slot LOO once I max it out.”
Eli paused for a second at the unfamiliar terms before he realized that Roman had shortened his power names into acronyms. “Nice! That’ll help out a ton. I don’t know if it’s still her plan, but Maeve had told me about a special storm dungeon plus a few others near Rockford that she wanted us to delve.”
“Hm, alright.” Roman took a sip of his tea, then nodded. “I’m still not a huge fan of delving for the fun of it, but training with her helped me realize how much I need to push myself and my powers out of my comfort zone.”
“So, what do you think about maybe doing the Tri-Delve Cup, anyway?” Eli leaned forward to whisper. Astral Starspace had already muffled the background noise, but now he cut it out entirely. “If we can make it back home in time and if we can figure out the time discrepancy, I was thinking it could be fun to come back to compete?”
“I don’t know about that. It seems like there’s a lot going on back home to play a delving sport.” Roman frowned at him as if he were crazy to suggest it. “Plus, I still don’t feel comfortable trivializing fighting and killing spawn.”
“Fair enough.” Eli shrugged. “I meant that it could potentially give us some nice rewards to use or share back home to make things better. Who knows how bad it actually is, but it looked pretty apocalyptic.”
Silence stretched between them a bit. Vigilant Revelation went into overdrive while he thought.
Eli wondered whether the tension between them was because of all the baggage they shared. At best, he had been a bad friend for a while now, and nonexistent for more than a while at this point. Did he need to apologize again?
Maybe, but wouldn’t the better apology be actually making a real effort to be better? To stop pushing him away and to get out of his own head for once?
“You said you upgraded your Body of Light to Star Body or something?” Roman interjected awkwardly.
“Stellar Body, but yeah. It’s a huge change and improvement, but I lost my native control of regular light. I need to change a power or two around, but overall, I think this is better.” Eli glanced up wistfully at the shining fluorescent bulbs overhead. He felt nothing from it unless he used Lumencloud Transfiguration. Only starlight or sunlight worked now, but he could do far more with Celestial Embodiment. With both Astral Starspace and Celestial Embodiment, he could create stars and then anything absorbed inside himself.
“Definitely sounds more consistent.” Roman nodded. “Maeve helped me realize that my build has been too streamlined and focused. My powers only work with technology and enchantments. That’s it.”
“What else would you want?”
“Some kind of recovery power could be neat, especially if I could merge it with Legion of One. Heal myself and a lot of others. Create self-repair tech or something self-propagating. Other than that, I kind of thought your Photon Shot and Body of Light were pretty neat too, but I’m unsure. Now that I’ve started thinking outside of my specialized build, I bet I would like a Control power like that or something to do with metal or electricity.”
Three figures headed toward them with drinks in their hands.
“Electricity, huh? I know a thing or two about that,” Dad, no, Rick said as he, Maeve, and Adelaide stood next to their table. Somehow they had heard their conversation despite Eli’s lockdown on the surrounding space. “May said she wanted to take you both to Stormshrine Dungeon, so you could get an electric power there. Do you know of a good place for metal powers, love?”
“Hm, I don’t know. Didn’t Robert say something about a good mine dungeon opening up a few hours away out into Zone 63?” Adelaide asked with a glance at Rick. She turned to Maeve. “Have you heard about it, hon? Full of golems and draconic based spawn.”
“Nope. I’ve been on civ delves for the past few months. They switched me out of the Zones with Bane. He’s been on call ever since his blunder at Brightpeak.” Maeve cast an exasperated glance at her parents while they all sat down. “Anyway, Mom and Dad, this is Roman and Eli.”
“It’s nice to meet you. May has told us a lot about both of you.” Rick smiled amicably at them. Where Dad’s hair was graying and his face had sported a few new wrinkles, this Rick looked no older than thirty. He was in his prime with thick black hair, and his beard was short and exact.
“It’s a shame that so much has happened to both of you. We’ll help you in any way we can.” Adelaide beamed at both of them like they were old friends and she had stumbled onto them here. Her blonde hair cascaded around her shoulders in gentle waves.
It hurt to see them.
Rick, Adelaide, and Maeve sat easily on their side of the booth. They were a family full of casual love and acceptance. Rick and Adelaide tasted each other’s drinks while Maeve sipped her latte. She caught Eli’s glance and smirked with a roll of her eyes at her parents’ antics.
Eli would have broken down crying or had to rush out of the restaurant heedless of the consequences if it weren’t for Vigilant Revelation. He almost left as it was from the sheer turmoil of seeing his parents' doppelgangers. They were too much like his parents.
For a second, he searched for Lyra and Lana. Then he remembered, they didn’t exist here.
Panic and longing clawed at the ironclad grip Vigilant Revelation had on his mind. There were issues with his family, and he had a lot of his own problems that contributed to that, but he missed them.
The Adelaide and Rick across from him were different too. All the fears and regrets had been stripped from them. His parents were normal, but these two were in their prime. Eli wouldn’t have been surprised to see them in a family commercial.
Everything was fine. He calmed himself with an extreme effort of will.
“—taste. You like your blended drinks too much.” Adelaide shook her head wryly as she pushed Rick’s peppermint mocha shake back to him. “I like how this place does her honey lavender lattes though. What did you two get?”
“I got a chai tea, but it’s cold now.” Roman grinned slightly at them, but Eli noticed how Roman looked at him with concern. He nodded with a look that he hoped conveyed he was fine.
“No problem, I got it.” Maeve reached across the table so she could tap her finger against the waxy paper cup. A second later, his tea steamed. “I like my tea piping hot,t so Luxurious Domain might have made it too warm for you.”
“Thank you, May.” Adelaide smiled gratefully at Maeve while she and Rick turned toward Eli. Roman took an appreciative sip after he said his own thanks.
“I got the birthday cake latte.” Eli sipped his own drink for the temporary reprieve. It felt so bizarre to sit through small talk after everything that had happened to him since the Initialization. Would that ever go away? Or would he always struggle to sit through the mundane rituals from life before superpowers?
“Sounds good.” Adelaide nodded as she and Rick opened their mouths to ask something else, but Maeve interrupted.
“I don’t want to rush you, Mom and Dad, but Eli and Roman have had a long couple of months. I bet they’re ready to go?”
Roman seemed like he was about to protest, but Eli had already nodded. He was ready to be out of this city and the facade he’d made of Herbert’s life. Pretending to be him, no matter how badly he did, and having to take his classes and do everything else had been an utter nightmare.
Roman had a few issues with Romulus’s classes, but Eli had struggled with everything except for Power Crafting.
“Of course. I prepared a couple of spare bedrooms for you two. Unless if you wanted your space, then you can stay at one of your guest houses? There’s also the RV hops, but I don’t recommend that. They’re really only meant for easy teleportation access around Rockford.” Adelaide said while she stood up with a gesture for them to follow her.
“I’m fine with whatever. Thank you,” Eli said as he bit off saying Mom.
“Yes, thank you so much, Mrs. Newton!” Roman echoed with a small grimace. Guess he made the same mistake. They were too similar to his parents, even if they had an entirely different weight to them.
“Please call me Adelaide.” She laughed as they exited out of Pandemonium Cafe onto the bustling sidewalk full of people. “Do you want to stop by the university so we can pack your stuff?”
“I have everything packed away already.” Eli tapped his forehead. They had swung by so he could put their stuff and Romulus and Herbert’s stuff in Astral Starspace.
“Great! Let’s head to an alley so we don’t bother or trip anyone.”
“You don’t like being called Addy instead?” Eli blurted out while he effortlessly sidestepped a jogger who almost clipped him. He would’ve been afraid what would happen if someone ran into him, even with his density shifted at a mostly human level. Stellar Body made him so sturdy.
“I’ve always disliked being called anything but my whole first name.” Adelaide chuckled as she led them over the threshold of the first alley they saw. “Why? Does your mom prefer that?”
“Yeah, she’s always felt being called Adelaide was impersonal. She prefers friends and family to use her nickname.”
“Huh, interesting. Hopefully I can meet her someday. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to meet myself.” She chuckled while she turned to Rick and Maeve. “What do you think you’re both like over there?”
“Am I a journalist over there or a painter? I’ve always liked writing essays and reviews, but painting would probably be a close second. I always wondered if I would pursue either of the two if being a Meteromancer didn’t work out,” Rick said.
“Nope. Dad’s a computer programmer, or at least he was.” Eli shrugged. “I don’t think he loved it, but he liked the money and freedom it gave him. I have no idea about the journalism or painting though, that’s new to me.”
“What about Maeve?” Adelaide grinned while golden dust glittered all around her. Billowing clouds of gold clicked together as it solidified a doorway that led to nowhere.
“I don’t think I exist there, right?” Maeve sighed.
“Probably not?” Eli winced as the three of them turned to look at him. “I have two younger twin sisters, Lana and Lyra, but that’s it.”
“Oh! I always planned to use the name Lana if we had decided to have another daughter,” Addy said after a flash of disappointment and hurt crossed her face.
“Twins, huh? I don’t know if I could have handled that.” Rick chuckled. “I like the name Lyra, though. I’d like to hear more about them and you guys sometime after you settle in.”
“Yep. I’m ready whenever you are.” Adelaide reached out to twist the golden doorknob. Space flexed as she pulled it open as the door connected somewhere far away. “This is a part of our main house, but we’ll give you a tour to some of our other properties if you want.”
“Main house?” Eli blinked in confusion while he glanced at Roman. A warm sunroom opened up on the other side of the golden door.
“Yeah, we have a vacation home in the mountains. Herbert wanted us to get one on one of the coasts for his training and for the underwater dungeons, but we haven’t found any good properties yet,” Rick said as he stepped through the doorway.
“I doubt you will. The ocean is full of hostile spawn and dungeons,” Maeve added as she joined Rick.
“So, we just walk through?” Eli asked skeptically as he studied the simple portal.
“Looks like.” Roman walked through before Adelaide or anyone else could respond. Eli joined them.
Astral Starspace sung around him as the seam of space stitched itself shut around the threshold. Faster than a blink, he zipped across the country. He whirled around to study the gaping doorway set in the middle of a room full of other doors.
Adelaide entered in the next moment.
Motes of gold sparkled around her as the alleyway behind her vanished showing another wall studded with doors. She rushed forward to pull both Eli and Roman in a tight hug before she released them.
“We’re so excited you’re here! Let’s get the tour started, but first, could you go to town to pick up some pizza, May?” Adelaide smiled while Rick sidled up next to her.
“Sure. I’ll be back in fifteen to twenty minutes.” Maeve planeshifted away in a whirl of black and white.
“We’ll cover the main part of everything first, then let you explore a bit.” Rick nodded at the sunroom. “This here is what we call the Crossing. Each door is labeled and enchanted with Adelaide’s Dwelling Threshold stat power, so you can use them to travel to any other property we own.”
“Feel free to use them as you want!” Adelaide said as she led them out of the Crossing into a sprawling garden surrounded by an orchard and a gazebo flanked by hedges.
Apparently, Herbert’s parents were even richer than he expected to live here. When they mentioned multiple houses and RVs, he figured they were well off, but this was insane.
The various orchards swayed in what seemed to be an omnipresent breeze. Astral Starspace stretched out as Eli noticed trees laden with fruit from apples, pears, cherries, and even a few oranges.
“How did you manage to grow oranges this far north?” Eli asked as he teleported a ripe orange into his hands. In moments, another one grew in its place.
“Other than my Mind of Hearth, I have Nature’s Provenance and Seasonal Bounty slotted in my stats. That on top of my class power and my love allows us to bend things a bit.” Adelaide smiled at Eli, then Rick. “Feel free to take as many as you like.”
“Can I have one, actually?” Roman asked while Eli teleported another one into his hand and passed it over.
“I love oranges so much.” Rick beamed as the breeze turned firm enough to pluck a pair of oranges for himself and Adelaide. The two oranges tumbled through the air in front of them. “We have a bit of extra land attached to our estate that we let the city of Rockford use for agriculture. Anything further out and it stretches our powers a bit too much to sustain.”
Eli watched everyone else stab their fingers through the skin of the orange to peel it. He teleported it out with a snap of his spatial field so that he held an intact peel one hand and the actual orange in the other.
He ate it all in a fugue state as he devoured wedge after wedge. Citrus exploded across his tongue until there was nothing left.
“That was really good. Thank you.” Eli nodded once he finished nearly at the same time everyone else did.
“To the main house we go!” Rick cheered as he glanced backward at Eli and Roman. Vigilant Revelation helped him notice the micro creases in his furrowed brow. Despite their relative enthusiasm, they were clearly concerned for both of them.
They were so alike, but so different from his parents that Eli wondered how his own homecoming would go. Regardless, for the first time in a while, he relaxed.
At last, he let his guard down. It wasn’t home, but it was close enough.
“Let’s go!” Eli burst forward with a laugh while he raced alongside Rick to the house. He couldn’t wait to see what else they had around here.
Comments
Thanks for the chapter.
weas97
:) TFTC
Jonas
TFTC, can you give any hints as to when they will come back to their own reality?
Corbin
Next chapter Sunday/Monday, I like that as a solid post day, but Wednesday/Thursday and Thursday/Friday will probably be the other main days. Keep burning through my backlog a bit, but it's all good. It's funny since book 1 was more of a two act book but book two is three acts which we're fully into now. Once we get going a bit more, I'm hopeful the backlog will pick up. Let me know what you thought of D-2 Rick and Adelaide! See you all next time!
