Energy Unbound
The Arrow of Love Falls
Chapter Summary:
Nico and Ari are taking a walk through the woods together. Nico tells Ari about what Cupid did to him when she figures out he is hiding something. Ari is furious, and almost blows her cover by manifesting some of her true form in the forest, causing 20 feet around them to be charred. Realizing what she has done, Ari teleports them to her room in the cabin. She also teleports in Rachel, Percy and Annabeth.
She tells them to explain everything to Nico, then teleport across the world.
The perspective changes to Cupid, who is tormenting another mortal at his temple. Suddenly the sky darkens, and a vortex of silver clouds and orange fire surges out of nowhere. The wind picks up, flames flare from the ground, and a category seven hurricane spawns out of nowhere overhead. The mortal is teleported away before Cupid's eyes, and then the swirling vortex of fire and silver at the eye off the hurricane spits out a burst of silver light. This light rockets towards the ground, hitting it without slowing down. The marble of the temple fractures, a shock wave traveling silver light recedes slowly, ending with Ari, on one knee, head down and eyes closed. Her right hand grasps her staff, her left curled into a fist and planted into the ground.
"Who are you?" Cupid demands of the girl.
For several moments, no reply comes. When she does speak, her head lifts up and she stares straight at him, with eyes that aren't eyes, but twin orange stars burning with raw power. Her voice is thick, deep, and instills a deep feeling of fear in the god of love.
Proper Story:
"Cupid," she began, scowling at his name, "how dare you."
Cupid was taken aback at this. "How dare I what?" he asked hesitantly.
The girl stood up, shoulders spread. "You, of all the custodians of this world, are the least inexcusable. You're meant to guide mortals in relationships, help them along. Be the great stabilizer your mother failed to be. How dare you use that power to bully, to destroy?" The girl asks, no, demands.
Cupid, like most other Greek or Roman gods, didn't take disrespect well. "How dare you? Commanding me as if you are a goddess above my station. I know not how you got here, little demigod, nor what is wrong with your eyes. Nevertheless, you'd best leave the way you came, lest you test my patience."
The girl glanced up at the maelstrom above their heads, then leveled her gaze on Cupid again. "I am no mortal, Cupid. It was I who created the storm above us," she said, earning a snort from the god of love. She raised her eyebrows, increasing the offputting look of her eyes. "You'd better not continue to try my patience, god," she warned.
Cupid scoffed, summoning his bow and drawing an arrow. He aimed at her forehead, a red laser guide flashing into existence along the path the arrow would take. "If you are not a demigod, then announce your identity. I wish to finish this quickly, then go on with my day," he said lazily.
"You truly wish to attack me?" the girl asked, tilting her head to the side. She seemed puzzled.
"It won't be much of a fight," Cupid said with a smirk.
"No, I suppose it won't," she agreed, though the way she said it sent a chill down the god of love's spine. "Very well. Cupid, by breaking The Oath, you have opened yourself to judgement. As upholder of The Oath, and direct ancestor of the most recent complainant, it is my duty and sincere pleasure to reassign your position elsewhere."
Cupid didn't know what half of that meant, nor what this oath was. But he understood 'reassign your position' perfectly well. I'll show her.
"Enough talk. What is your name, weakling?" Cupid yelled across the square.
The girl smiled, somehow looking more sinister than Hades himself. "My name is Ari, Force of Progress. And I am no weakling."
The second Ari finished speaking, silver light began to glow around her form. A wave of pressure and heat blasted outwards nearly suffocating Cupid with raw power. His eyes began to burn, mind screaming in pain from the energy ripping through his form. The glow around Ari lashed out, expanding to cover the entirety of the temple. Despite the overwhelming brightness somehow Cupid could still see their surroundings. A torrent of fire and steam extended from the maelstrom above to entwine around Ari's body bringing with it howling wind. The ground near her feet began to bubble, the rock and marble passing the heat threshold of a solid in an instant. What didn't liquify fractured even more with geysers of flame jetting upwards. Cupid's mouth dropped open at the sheer presence of this being before him.
"What are you?" he cried over the stinging whirlwind.
"I am the Force of Progress," Ari coolly stated again. "For your crimes against humanity in general, and specifically for targeting Nico di Angelo, I hereby strip you of your powers, titles, and domains." The being raised her left hand and beckoned. Cupid's bow exploded into a cloud of golden particles, which approached Ari at immense speed. When they reached her, they swirled around her body for a few moments, finally disappearing into her raised palm. A second later, Cupid felt his strength drain out of him, manifesting as a similar particle cloud. The connection with his domain shattered, causing a red particle cloud to leave his form. At this point, he was too weak to stand, so he collapsed. His body landed sideways, head angled just right so he could see the clouds absorb into Ari's hand. His energy levels were critically low, and his eyes began to close. Just as he slipped into unconsciousness, he heard her speak.
"Be glad I'm leaving you immortal," she hissed, and vanished with a loud hum.
The maelstrom overhead similarly dissipated, and Cupid knew no more.
-LB-
Ari arrived back at the Hermes cabin shortly afterward. With the usual loud hum, she materialized in the center of the cabin's entry room, and took a second to brush the frost off her hair. Noticing her staff was still present, she let go of the shaft. The star momentarily flashed blue, emitting a hum. Then it vanished, leaving Ari to walk down the hall towards her room.
She never liked using her reassignment ability.The feeling of euphoria was far too powerful, intoxicating; it was to this her previous self fell victim. The power was unique, only two beings capable of it. Herself and her mother. It always seemed like her mother was so vast, so immensely powerful, that she could never fall prey to such vices. But myself, on the other hand? she thought, troubled.
Despite what she tried to be, the facts were that she was half god. Not only that, but directly descended from a triple lineup of the most power hungry beings Terra had ever known. What's more, the old Progress wasn't born of Terra, much less those three, but somehow it was her, not Ari who had fallen. True, she had not yet had a long enough existence to truly fall so far, but she'd not even begun. Why is that?
Ari had been lost in her own head so thoroughly that she was oblivious. So much, in fact, that her body had managed to walk down the main hall, through her automatically receding door, and into the wall on the other side of her room. Becoming aware of this, she also noticed three voices yelling at each other.
She was surprised at this. Aren't Nico, Percy, Annabeth, and Rachel friends? Apparently not, given how three of the four were shouting at each other.
"Will you lot shut up?" Ari asked, projecting her voice above the already loud clamor.
Annabeth immediately closed her mouth, nodding. Rachel breathed a sigh of relief, placing a hand on her forehead and closing her eyes. The boys continued arguing until Annabeth pulled them apart.
"She's back," the daughter of Athena said, indicating Ari's presence with a nod.
"Good, then I can finally get some real answers," Nico growled, pushing past Annabeth. He drew his Stygian Iron sword and pointed it at Ari, a dangerous look in his eyes.
"Nico, that's not a good idea," Percy warned.
"Tell me the truth or I run you through," Nico threatened, clearly not listening.
Hmmph. So this is how he handles unexpected situations. Sure he's an Angelus? Ari's always helpful side scoffed.
I'm not entirely positive, but it's likely, she responded.
Very well.
Ari smirked, grabbing the sword in one hand. Nico gasped, and he let go of the sword, obviously trying to drop it. Ari didn't have much patience left, so she simply vaporized the entire blade. Only the hilt remained, dropping to the floor.
This time, Nico's jaw dropped open and he looked at her warily. "What are you?" he asked.
"I'm powerful, Nico di Angelo," Ari responded, chuckling. "And I don't have the patience to deal with squabbling children at the moment. So," she continued, walking close enough to him that their faces were inches apart, "Knock. It. Off."
Nico gulped. "Yes ma'am."
Ari rolled her eyes. "Alright, provided these three managed to get it right, everything they've told you is true," she gestured to the trio.
Nico gulped again, eyeing his friends warily. "So, they're all gods?" he asked carefully.
"Rachel is a Primordial, with the lovebirds being a new kind of being I've never seen before. They're as powerful as Titans, though," Ari explained.
Nico looked positively freaked out. "I've been yelling at two Titans and a Primordial?" he asked.
"If it makes you feel any better, we're not angry," Annabeth assured him.
"Much," Percy added with a smirk. This lead to him receiving a light punch on the arm from his girlfriend. "Hey!" he protested.
"Stop scaring him, Fish Breath," Rachel said, rolling her eyes.
Nico turned back to Ari, eyes wide in fear. "So if they're that powerful, but follow you, what exactly are you?"
"I'm a Force, Nico. One of the most powerful beings in the universe," Ari replied.
"Force? What, like magnetism and gravity?" Nico asked, looking confused.
Ari shook her head, crossing her arms. "They are my cousins, known as Physical Forces. I'm the Force of Progress, a Conceptual," she corrected.
"I thought there were only four forces, though?" Nico said, looking at Annabeth pointedly.
"Apparently not," she responded, shrugging.
"Indeed not," Ari confirmed. "We number in the hundreds, at least."
Nico shook his head, shock evident on his face. "Okay, let's say I even believe this. What are you doing on Earth?"
"I'm here to clean house. Restore order. Fix the broken systems and governments, both mortal and immortal," Ari explained, "plus Terra is a dear friend of mine."
Nico blinked, a worried look on his face. "You know we killed her, right?"
"You killed my daughter, not me," a sixth voice said from behind him. Nico jumped about three feet in the air and spun around, meeting Terra face to face.
"Your daughter?" he asked, panting.
Terra nodded. "I am Terra, though your civilization knows me as The Earth," she explained. "I'm the actual Planet, mother of the primordial deities. Gaia included, who is only the ground upon me."
"So… you're not the Roman aspect of Gaia?" Nico clarified.
"No," she replied, shaking her head.
Ari expanded upon that. "The Greeks didn't have most of the real structure of the divine beings of Terra straight to begin with, much less the Romans who copied them."
"Heh," Nico said nervously. "Uh… it's nice to meet you," he offered.
"Likewise," Terra responded.
Nico turned back to Ari, a confused look in his face. "Where did you go, earlier?"
Terra added on with sweet sarcasm. "Yes, Ari, what outraged you so that you unleashed your power upon my surface?"
Ari looked apologetically at Terra. "Sorry about that. I hope you weren't gravely injured," she said.
"It will heal. But what made you lose control like that?" the Planet asked again.
Ari's expression grew dark, her eyes glowing. "Cupid," she spat.
"Ah. That brat," Terra replied, knowingly.
Nico's eyes grew wide. "What did you do to him?"
"He's alive. I even left him immortal," Ari growled.
"Impressive restraint, given how angry you were," Terra complemented.
"But…?" Nico pressed.
Ari merely held her hand out, grabbing onto thin air. A burst of red light flowed outwards from her clenched fist, coalescing into a red and black bow. "I stripped him," she said.
"Is that…?" Nico asked in awe.
"Yes. Cupid's bow," Ari confirmed. Then to Nico's obvious surprise, she tossed it at him. "It's all yours."
The son of Hades barely caught the weapon. The second his hand closed around the body, a surge of energy rushed into him, up through his arm. He cried out in pain as his body vaporized, replaced by a roughly humanoid being of darkness. The bow became incorporeal as well, revealing a reddish-pink energy rushing up the arm of the darkness, blending with it in a wave. What the wave left behind was a dark red color.
"What are you doing to him?" Percy demanded of Ari, looking upon what used to be Nico in horror.
"Giving him his first missed birthday present," Ari responded.
Annabeth and Percy both looked confused. "What?" they asked incredulously.
"I am his grandmother after all," she replied.
Now Terra turned her gaze on Ari, joining Percy and Annabeth in jaw dropped, eyes wide shock. "Say what?" she asked in disbelief.
Ari just smiled, crossed her arms, and spoke in Latin. "Angelus, excitant!"
Nico's screaming doubled in volume, sounding like pure agony. Suddenly, in front of his chest, the trademark orange swirl flashed into existence, except joined by a pair of orange wings that unfurled, splaying outward. A similar pair of wings unfurled out of Nico's back, colored orange and just as abstract as Nico's body and bow. Then the bow finished turning his dark form to dark red, and an orange tint began to spread from the wings. This took much less time, bringing the overall shade of incorporeal Nico to a dark orange-red. Suddenly, his screaming stopped, and Nico's cloudy body seemed to suck in on itself, leaving behind a shaking, but otherwise perfectly fine son of Hades.
Well, almost perfectly fine.
-LB-
"What…" Nico tried to ask, but he was shaking too much. He began to fall sideways to the ground, before a large, soft, gray structure cushioned his fall. He lay on the floor, grateful for whoever had thrown a pillow under him to catch his fall.
Trying again, he cleared his throat. "What… what was that?" Nico asked, but got no reply.
He groaned, turning his head to look up at the others in the room. He promptly noticed Percy, Annabeth, and Rachel staring at him in awe.
Nico scrunched up his nose. "Is there something on my face?" he joked.
Percy gulped. "Dude…" he was all he managed to say.
"Well? So? What?" Nico asked, very worried.
"Nico… you've got wings," Annabeth said, almost a whisper.
Nico blinked twice. "Say again? Because I'm positive I didn't hear you correctly."
"You have giant, grey with orange at the tips, freaking wings," Rachel repeated.
"What? That's impossi-" Nico began, turning his head to look over his shoulder. His vision was met with a giant grey structure, tinted orange at the tips. He suddenly became aware of the left one underneath his body, cradling him on the floor. It was with shock he realized it was a wing, his wing, that had cushioned his fall. Now that he was conscious of their existence, he could feel the spot between his shoulder blades where they connected to his body and the breath of his friends on the feathers.
"This is new," he stated.
"Actually, it's not," Ari said, kneeling on the floor in front of his fallen body.
"It's not?" Annabeth and Rachel said.
"I've never had wings before!" Nico protested, noticing how the wings moved slightly to emphasize his words.
"Wrong. They just weren't activated," Ari corrected him.
Nico squinted at her in disbelief. "I'm pretty sure my father would have noticed if I had wings, even unactivated ones," he deadpanned.
"Not even I knew for sure whether you had them," Ari said.
Nico was aghast. "So you just guessed!?"
"Nothing would have happened had I been wrong," she defended herself.
Nico blinked his eyes drearily, all of this far too much to take in. His breathing increased rapidly, panic setting in. Just as he was about to lose it, he felt a warm, soft, and tight embrace envelop him. Looking down, it seemed his wings had completely wrapped around him, offering a safe space of comfort. His anxiety attack left just as fast as it had arrived, and he let out a breath of relief.
"Hey, now you can hug yourself all the time!" Percy joked.
"Percy!" Annabeth scolded, whacking him on the arm again.
"This is actually… kinda nice," Nico said.
Ari raised an eyebrow. "So you're not mad at me?"
Nico half-heartedly glared at her. "Oh no, I'm still pissed. That was a lot of pain. But I'm too comfy to get angry right now," he said, snuggling deeper into his own personal feather bed.
"Oh," Ari said, crestfallen.
"Is anyone going to talk about the grandmother thing?" Terra asked.
Nico looked at her in confusion. "Grandmother thing?" he asked sleepily.
"Yes, Ari, please explain how you're Nico's grandmother. I'm sure it's interesting," Rachel said, crossing her arms.
Ari glared at her.
Nico looked at Ari in bewilderment. "You're Lady Rhea?"
She turned back to look at him, guilt plain upon her face. "Wrong side of the family, Nico."
Nico blinked again. "What."
"Nico di Angelo. Di Angelo," Ari said.
"That's my last name. What of it?"
"What's it mean in English?" Ari asked, a spectacularly shit-eating grin on her face.
"The Angel…" Annabeth translated immediately, before realization dawned. "You've got to be kidding me."
"No way," Percy and Rachel both said.
"A little on the nose, don't you think, Ari?" Terra asked, smirking.
She just shrugged. "I was bored. Sue me."
"Wait, wait, wait… you're my mom's mother?" Nico asked, seeking clarification.
"Aye."
"But she was mortal!" Nico protested.
"You sure about that?" Ari teased.
Nico thought about it for a few moments. "I was sure," he finally admitted.
"Your mother, and by extension you, aren't remotely mortal, Nico," Ari said, smiling. "You are my bloodline."
"So the wings?" Nico asked, gesturing to his new appendages.
Ari nodded slowly. "Yes. All Angelus have them."
Nico tilted his head. "Angelus? Isn't that Latin?"
"Yes. It simply means Angel," Ari said.
"Wait, you're saying that I'm an angel?" Nico gasped.
"Aye. It's what happens when a Force and a mortal have a child. Gods get demigods, Forces get demiforces, or what most know as angels," Ari explained. "Unlike demigods, though, there's no way for a mortal form to contain the raw power of a Force, even at a fourth the strength. Thus, it manifests as extensions of your body."
"That explains the wings, I guess. But why didn't I have them before?" Nico asked.
"You weren't activated. For all intents and purposes, you were completely mortal," Ari said.
"And I wasn't activated because?" Nico pressed.
Ari sighed. "It was a request of your mother's. She wished that if she ever had children, they could grow up normally, experience what other children would. I thought it was a good idea, thus created the system that would disable the link to your Force-given appearance and abilities. It was so she could tell you, and activate you, when you were old enough," she explained.
Nico's face fell. "But that never happened," he said solemnly.
"It seems not. I'm going to have to find her and give her a piece of my mind," Ari groaned.
"Check Elysium," Nico said.
Ari blinked in confusion. "What?"
Nico was on the edge of tears, so Percy stepped in. "Nico's mom is dead, Ari."
Ari looked at him in disbelief. "How?"
"Zeus struck her with a direct hit from his master bolt," Rachel supplied.
"And that killed her?" Ari scoffed. "Shouldn't have even given her a paper cut."
"What?" Nico asked, his confusion growing.
"Maria is half Force, Nico," she repeated, glancing over at him. "And not just any Force, she's half me. She has the power to destroy entire planets with a snap of her fingers. You can do the same to a large moon. The Master Bolt would be like a pop gun to you, much less her."
"But she's in Elysium. I've seen her… talked with her," Nico protested.
"Then she's hiding out for some reason," Ari said. "There's no way she's actually dead."
Suddenly something important occurred to Nico. "What about my sister?"
"Hazel?" Ari inquired.
"No. My full sister, Bianca di Angelo," Nico said.
"There is another Angelus?" Ari asked, looking extremely happy.
Nico became crestfallen. "There was," he said, looking to Percy to explain.
"Bianca… died, on a quest with me," Percy said, solemnly.
Ari looked around, seeing the sad look on everyone's faces. "She wasn't activated, was she?"
"She didn't have any wings," Percy said.
"They can be hidden," Ari said, clearly trying to stay hopeful.
"How could she have been activated? My mother never did, and you had to turn mine on," Nico said.
Ari looked down, pondering for a few moments. Nico was the only one who could see her face from his position on the floor, and it flew through a myriad of emotions. Grief, shock, and amazingly even fear were among them. Rachel ended that streak quickly.
"One will be lost in the land without rain," she recited absentmindedly and full of sorrow, as if at a funeral. Speaking prophecy seemed odd when she wasn't spitting green smoke.
Ari perked her head up at this. "That was a prophecy. Her prophecy, right?" she asked.
Rachel nodded slowly. "Spoken by the Oracle that was before me."
Ari's expression brightened at that, her smile breaking out once more. "Lost, not killed. One shall be lost," she said, almost vibrating with energy.
Nico looked at her suspiciously. "So? She obviously died. We've talked with her ghost before," he protested.
"Ah ah, nope nope nope!" Ari exclaimed, her smile almost infectious at this point. "Tell me exactly how she 'died'," she demanded, using air quotes.
"We were in the Junkyard of the Gods. She saved our lives by going inside a prototype of Talos and destroying him," Percy explained.
"So there is still hope," Ari sighed, elated. Now that Nico looked closer, she was actually vibrating.
"How?" Nico asked, hoping to bring her down from the biggest sugar rush he'd ever seen anyone in, even if she was a Force.
"It's a failsafe I implemented, without Maria's knowledge. I may have thought her idea had merit, but there's no way I would allow a descendant of mine to die via supernatural interference. If her children were ever killed by anything not of the mortal world, they would be placed in a sort of stasis, I guess you could call it. Sort of like a ghost, but fully aware of what's going on and capable of interacting with the world, unlike those in Asphodel," Ari explained rapidly, barely pausing between each word.
Percy realized something right then, given how his face lit up. "Nico, remember back when we found you on that ranch? With Minos?"
Nico nodded.
"Bianca sent us Iris messages of you summoning the dead," Annabeth stated. "It's the only reason we knew where to look."
Nico's jaw dropped open. "The dead can't do that," he realized.
"She also looked different from the others. Instead of a gray mist, she was more like… uh… help me out here, Annabeth," Percy trailed off, looking to his girlfriend for aid.
"A flare of bright blue light," she finished for him.
Percy clapped his hands and pointed them at her. "Yes, exactly. Just like that."
Ari snapped her fingers. "Bingo! That sounds exactly like the stasis system."
"So neither my sister or my mom are dead?" Nico asked hopefully.
"That seems to be the case," Terra offered.
Nico brought his hand to his forehead and relaxed. "Thank you," he said to Ari.
"What for?" Ari asked.
"For bringing my family back," Nico responded.
Ari snorted, her body finally ceasing its rapid vibration. "They never left you. Plus, you've got us, too. You're directly related to me, and your friends are also your family. Never forget that, Nico. You're not alone."
The Son of Hades looked up at his grandmother almost reverently. His eyes had unshed tears in them. At her hesitant, yet kind smile, he jumped up and embraced Ari in a tight hug. His wings enveloped them both on their own.
"Oof," Ari grunted from the impact of a young man plus wings. "You're heavy," she joked.
"Don't ruin the moment, grandma," Nico sniffed.
Ari screwed up her face. "Yeesh. For existence's sake, call me Ari. 'Grandma' makes me feel old."
"You are old," Terra chided.
"Shut up, miss four point five billion," Ari shot back.
"You are far older than I, Progress," Terra responded, smirking. "Even Sol is but a child to you."
Ari stuck her tongue out at the Planet.
After a few moments, Nico broke the embrace. He stood up, dusting off his pants. He extended a hand to help Ari up, but she shook her head and dissipated, reappearing in a standing position. Both actions were accompanied by that familiar hum.
"You've got to show me how you do that," Nico said.
Ari dusted off her own pants, before tapping a small screen on her arm. "Personal quantum teleportation device," she said.
"Oh right, I forgot. You use technology to cheat," he teased.
Ari looked offended. "I do not cheat!" she protested.
"Whatever you say, grandma," Nico shot back, turning to Terra to avoid the backlash. "You're really four and a half billion years old?"
Terra gestured to the floor, shrugging. "I am the Planet, after all."
"Good point," Nico conceded, before something else occurred to him. "Hey, where did Cupid's bow go?"
In response, he felt a moderately heavy weight settle in his left hand. He looked down, and sure enough, there the bow rested.
"Oh," he said.
"Pretty sweet bow," Percy complemented, gaining nods of agreement from the two women next to him.
"You wouldn't think that if Cupid was firing it at you," Nico complained.
"That won't ever happen again," Ari said, placing a hand on Nico's. "This bow, plus the domain and powers of Cupid, are now yours."
Nico blinked in confusion. "Say again?"
"You're the Angel of Love, Nico," Ari said. Her shit-eating grin was back in full force, the perfect revenge for his grandma cracks.
Nico grimaced. "Fantastic."
"I'm going to get so much mileage out of this," Percy grinned.
Annabeth whacked him again.
"Hey!"
-LB-
Far away and yet relatively close, as far as the scale of Terra's surface was concerned, a warning siren was wailing in a massive underground complex. A computerized voice kept repeating a single message, monotone timbre erasing any thoughts of the voice's owner being human. That message?
"WARNING. EXTREME ENERGY SURGE DETECTED."
The commander of the base quickly moved from his office to the control room, where he asked a simple question.
"Alright, which one of them was it this time?" he sighed, sounding almost bored as he sipped his coffee.
One of the monitoring technicians spun around on a chair, addressing his commanding officer with a salute.
"At ease, Lieutenant," the commander sighed again, motioning with two fingers of his coffee hand for the officer to report.
"Yes sir. Uhm..," the tech acknowledged, trailing off with a nervous glance to the monitor beside him.
"What's the problem?"
He gulped, shaking his head to ward off his shock. "None of them, sir. This was a new one," he reported nervously.
The commander raised his eyebrows at this, but merely took another sip of his coffee with a shrug. "Not like new ones don't appear every now and then," he reasoned.
Wide eyed, the tech turned around and gestured to his left. "Yes, but… this one overloaded our sensor net," he said, indicating the flashing warning sign on the tracking monitor.
The commander only managed to contain his mouthful of coffee by sheer force of will. "Excuse me?! This system was just upgraded!"
His subordinate nodded, fear evident on his face. "That's what freaks me out. The upgrade was supposed to give us a maximum theoretical reading of L15 entities."
"And you say this new one fried the thing?!"
"Not only that," the tech continued, indicating the completely filled graph on his monitor, "in the single second before the system was maxed out, it recorded a resonance depth we've never seen before."
The commander was almost paralyzed by fear. But it would do no good for the base to see him, their one constant grounding rod, panicking. So he shoved it down and continued with the questions.
"Where did it manifest?"
"Italy, sir. Right around the city of Rome. We got satellite footage of the area only a couple minutes after manifestation. Think a class seven hurricane crossed with Mount Doom. Thankfully the actual city wasn't hit, and it appears there were no casualties."
The commander sucked in a deep breath and cursed. It was not good news if they were starting to show up at the places their myths came from once more. The human race had experienced what happened the few times they did in recent history, and it was never pretty. At least nobody got hurt.
This time.
"What was it doing there?"
"I'm not sure, sir. But our sensors detected the entity called Cupid in close proximity before the new one appeared."
A pensive look overtook the commander, and he swirled his coffee around. "Is it possible they were at odds?"
"Hard to tell, though it's likely. These things do tend to fight a lot, after all. The terrain damage is enormous. We'll know more once the system is back online," the tech responded unhelpfully.
The commander sighed, rubbing his forehead to chase off his sudden headache. "Speaking candidly, Lieutenant, what do you think we're dealing with here?"
"Frankly, sir? Even with that business last fall, the most powerful of them barely even breached L8, and we saw firsthand what it could do. This thing? It instantly overloaded our sensors, and has a very distinct energy signature," the tech mused.
"Ah ah ah! Lay it out for me, in simple terms!" the commander interrupted him. He was not interested in a science lesson at the moment.
The tech gulped, but nodded slowly. "I'm of the opinion that this thing is not of our Earth," he admitted.
Blinking, the commander stared at him in surprise. "Aliens, Lieutenant?"
"Unless we've overlooked a hidden section of much higher level entities on this planet, then yes sir," the tech responded.
"For God's sake," the commander complained, looking up at the stars he couldn't see. "Think it's got anything to do with our new asset?"
"Doubt it. We've got no idea where it came from, but it definitely wasn't space. And honestly, sir, if this new one had manifested inside the base, we wouldn't be having this conversation. The energy output must have been equivalent to a supernova detonating every second," the tech explained. "I have no idea how the planet is still here."
The commander groaned. "What have we gotten ourselves into if beings exist that make a Primordial look tame?"
"Not a clue, sir. But it can't be good."
The commander sighed. "I'd better call the President," he lamented.
"EXTREME ENERGY SURGE DETECTED."
As he was walking back to his office, the base commander turned back to the tech once more. "And shut off that damn alarm!"
"Yes sir," the tech sighed. He typed a short command into his terminal, the siren shutting off with a sad wail. Clenching his fists, he began the system reboot, gazing wistfully at the unknown stone ring beyond the glass.
