Axl rubbed his eyes as he sat in a sofa in the break room.
He hadn't told anyone about his latest dream. It was just too bizarre… how could anything like that be true? But it also made a bizarre kind of sense. If "magic" had been stomped out thoroughly to let technology flourish… but no, that didn't work. How could everyone have forgotten something like that?
Maybe humans didn't forget, exactly. There are lots of myths, Axl thought uneasily. Or maybe they were helped to forget. He wouldn't put that past the man he had dreamed of being. He had been good, but… utterly ruthless. It wasn't something X would believe, but when you took good to an absolute extreme it could be just as terrible as evil.
But the simplest explanation was that the dream was just the product of his own imagination. And the things the mirror had said, as well. He had always had a lively imagination.
Comforted by that thought, Axl turned his thoughts to his duties for the day. But he couldn't suppress a nagging uneasiness…
It got worse when he went to see Lifesaver for his daily checkup. There were two strange humans there when he entered, and they both looked over as soon as he entered the room.
One was a very short woman, barely five feet tall. Her features were very delicate, but she was well muscled and gave an impression of strength. Her heritage was Hispanic, and her jet black hair had been worked into French braids. Dark brown eyes regarded him with assessment and curiosity.
The man beside her gave Axl a good-natured grin. He was her opposite in almost every way, very tall, pale, with flame red hair. A sprinkling of freckles crossed a face that was pleasant and friendly. He made Axl think of a good-natured farm boy.
They were both wearing lab coats, and Lifesaver stepped in to introduce them. "Axl, this is Shannon Hernandez and this is Morton MacGuire. Shannon is a specialist in neural net technology and Morton is a general technician. They've expressed an interest in examining you, if you don't mind?" he asked. Axl shrugged.
"That's okay." It didn't matter to him if Lifesaver or someone else ran the tests. Shannon glanced at Lifesaver, and he nodded to her before leaving the room to tend to some more patients.
Leaving him alone with them. Axl was disconcerted as they both regarded him keenly.
"Axl, dear," Shannon said gently. "Don't you think you've been trying to evade the truth long enough?" Axl stiffened, staring at her.
"What are you talking about?" he said, genuinely bewildered. Morton smiled, then laughed.
"You aren't the only one having dreams, kid!" he said merrily. "Except we didn't have mirrors twitching at us, and we didn't go in for CAT scans… and we talked to each other about 'em. Thought it was the water at first."
"You… other people are having dreams like mine?" Axl was stunned by the revelation, then skeptical. "How do you know your dreams are like mine?" Shannon regarded her hand for a moment, and Morton sobered.
"I had a dream where my name was Lucilius, Axl," he said gently. "And Shannon was a harem girl too… the one who got you the arsenic. We're not in all your dreams but we're in some. Have you had dreams about the magic time yet?" Axl stepped back, away from them. He hadn't told anyone about last nights dream. No one at all.
"That can't be real. There's no such thing as magic!" he said sharply. Shannon looked troubled, and Morton shrugged.
"Not now, because you put it away, but nothing stays on a shelf forever. So now's the time to-"
"No!" Axl suffered a spasm of terror. He knew what Morton was going to say, the knowledge was rising in his mind like a leviathan rising from the deeps… and it terrified him. He didn't want to know, didn't want to face it. Once that door was opened, he sensed, there would be no turning back. "I don't want to know!" He stepped back again, towards the door, and Shannon touched Morton's arm.
"He has to remember on his own, or this won't work. Axl… just think about it, please?" she asked softly. He wanted to deny her completely, but couldn't, in the face of that quiet plea.
"I'll… try," he said stiffly, then opened the door. "I have to go." He darted out before they could say anything else. They wouldn't have any scans for Lifesaver, but they could find some explanation for it. Right now, he didn't care.
When nighttime finally came, it found Axl playing hard in the break room. He was dreading sleep and the dreams it would bring, and putting it off as long as possible. Maybe, if he was just exhausted enough, he wouldn't dream.
It was a vain hope, and Axl finally fell asleep in the break room sofa, curled up on the arm like a discarded toy…
Axl bit his lip, tasting his own blood. The Working was finished. All they could do was wait.
The beautiful woman with white skin, red hair and red lips was there. She was wearing the exact same costume as she had when the Maverick had attacked, and Axl stared at her. This dream… memory… was so very old. How could she be here? She smiled at him, green eyes glimmering.
He didn't recognize anyone else in the circle. There were nearly twenty of them, and they were all trying to stay calm. Some were clearly inhuman, like a young girl with butterfly wings. A fairy?
And a huge, ugly man in black and red armor. His eyes were a glowing red, and tusks jutted from his lower jaw. A giant axe was held in one paw of a hand.
Axl gave up examining his companions as green light slowly oozed from the center of the circle. They were receiving an answer, and he tensed in fear and anticipation.
A crushing presence suddenly hit his mind, and he cried out, falling to his knees. The others all reeled in pain.
Through the pain, though, he knew that this was a positive sign. They had attempted to summon Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, for help. If it had been offended they would be dead now, squashed like bugs. As such things went, this touch was gentle.
Knowledge was slammed through them, placed directly into their minds. Axl… Monoxo… fought for balance as he assimilated it.
Magic was based on soul energy, and it could not be ripped out without destroying all life in the world. But Gaia could take the power to her bosom, and keep it out of reach of mortal spellcasters. That would shatter the power of belief as well, destroying the gods.
But it would do no good if people remembered the time of magic and kept the old beliefs. Axl reeled in shock as he realized what Gaia had offered Monoxo.
A false history of the world. A rearrangement of all the sediments, the fossil record, and a wiping away of memories and records. The corpses of the great war beasts of the wizard-kings would be used to help create the false history, a portrayal of the world as an eminently logical, progressive place where species flourished and died naturally.
It would all be a lie. But it would be a comforting, logical lie that would help people lead their lives and eventually create the technology the world would need for the time magic came back.
Gaia also gave him the terms of her agreement. The magic would come back when technology could create a home for souls. Monoxo had no idea how that could come to pass, but Axl, observing, could guess. Gaia meant when Reploids existed.
To deal with that, they would all have to sacrifice. They would be reborn, again and again, until they were needed to bring the magic back. Those who were too magical would be frozen in time, locked in stasis until they were needed. And those who were neither mortal nor magical would simply exist until that time, immortal and protected from harm.
There was a terrible silence as they all digested their fates. Reincarnation was not unknown, but not like this. Not again and again, without cease and pause. But finally, they all gave their assent.
It was far too late to turn back now.
Axl woke up with a start, and glanced around sharply as he sat up. Then he sagged as he remembered his dream.
His gaze fell on the tarnkappa, discarded by the side of his chair. He picked it up, feeling for wires… but there were no wires. He felt almost like crying.
It's not a new cloaking system. It's a tarnkappa, an invisibility cloak… it's magic. He held the cloak to his chest, drinking in the scent of the woman. Washing hadn't taken the scent out at all.
Other memories crossed his mind, and he winced. After he had put X into the capsule, Dr. Light had downloaded himself into a computer to wait for X to wake up. Then he'd helped X… until he'd designed the DNA copying system and built a new Reploid with all the advances he'd made on X's original design. Dr. Light hadn't really thought about the reason he was doing it, but Axl knew why. The soul of Monoxo needed to be mobile for the next stage of its work, and Dr. Light had to die. A terrible power failure just as Axl was being activated had allowed the soul to escape, and find a new home…
Axl sniffed, then suddenly grinned. "X and I really are brothers! He'll freak when he finds out!" And it would be enjoyable to tell him, when he could. But what could he tell them right now?
Axl thought about it a moment, and concluded that the answer was not much. No one would believe the truth about the fossil record, and Axl couldn't blame them. It was insane. No one would believe the truth about magic and the past, either, and to be honest, that was good. Disbelief was also a force, and while it couldn't stop magic entirely, it could diminish it.
So he would have to gather up his followers, and concentrate on helping magic enter the world in a slow, controlled manner. That was why he needed DNA copying. Using too much magic would cause the magic to rise uncontrollably, and they needed to make sure that didn't happen. If it did, it would be a natural disaster to put anything else to shame.
He stood up to go find Morton and Shannon. They might know where to find the others…