Chapter 2416: Where?

Sylas ended up remaining on the Milky Way World for much longer than he originally intended, and the single day he had given himself slowly stretched into a full week without him doing much to stop it. By the time he finally decided that today would be the day he left, he had spent enough time with his family that even his mother seemed somewhat satisfied.

Before going, however, there was one place he wanted to check.

The Omnimous had remained in Alex’s possession, though Nathan had long since begun working alongside him, combining the inheritance Archibald left behind with a technological path neither of them had properly understood when they first started. Sylas had mostly left them alone to experiment as they pleased, but after his conversation with Xarvenya, his interest in the Omnimous had shifted slightly.

What if it didn’t come from this world at all?

There wasn’t much weight behind the thought yet, and Sylas had no interest in forcing a theory out of a coincidence, but the Omnimous itself had always treated technology as something strangely foreign to the natural order of reality.

Now that Sylas knew there had once been a time when the Demon and Real Worlds hadn’t even been aware of one another, it was difficult not to wonder whether the Omnimous had originated somewhere even farther removed.

When he arrived, though, the scale of what Alex and Nathan were working on pushed those thoughts aside.

The construction stretched across an enormous section of land, while beneath it a body of water large enough to cover half a province boiled beneath the cooling demands of the project. Entire channels had been redirected through metallic arteries thicker than buildings, yet even that much water barely kept the heat in check as steam rolled upward in great sheets and covered the skies.

Alex and Nathan moved through the structure alongside Old Brama and Megean, all four flashing between massive conduits and half-finished mechanisms with the familiarity of people who had probably workshopped and field tested their coordination dozens of times before.

The temperature would have killed a mortal long before they came close, but none of them seemed to notice as they worked in a rhythm tight enough that Sylas could almost trace the blueprint through their movements alone.

Megean was the first to notice him.

Her movements slowed the moment their eyes met, and color spread down her cheeks until even the skin around her collarbone turned red. Every time she saw Sylas, she seemed incapable of forgetting the embarrassment surrounding their first meeting, the way he had saved her afterward, and everything else that had followed.

Sylas, somewhat unfortunately, found himself remembering his grandfather’s words instead.

That moment of distraction nearly ended poorly for Megean, as a cable thicker than a grown man’s waist tore loose from one of the supports and whipped through the air toward her back. Sylas’ hand lifted without thought, his telekinesis catching the line before it could touch her and redirecting it across the structure until it snapped into the exact connection Megean had been moving toward.

He didn’t need to stop and inspect the design first, and the cable settled into place without disrupting the rhythm of the larger mechanism. It was almost as though Sylas had been following the same blueprint alongside them from the beginning.

Old Brama came flying over immediately, irritation already on his face as he prepared to reprimand his granddaughter, only to slow when he realized who was standing there. Megean lowered her head even farther, while Old Brama’s expression shifted from anger to a tired sort of resignation.

Alex reached them next with a grin, Nathan following close behind.

"Look who finally decided to visit," Alex called out. "Congratulations on getting Cassarae pregnant, by the way, Psycho Syl. I was starting to think you needed instructions."

Sylas ignored him completely and looked toward Nathan instead. "How is the progress?"

Nathan opened his mouth, but Alex beat him to it. "We’re still building garbage, mostly. Extremely expensive garbage, but I think that makes it more respectable."

Nathan rubbed at his forehead before gesturing toward the enormous structure behind them. "It’s a prototype reactor. The goal is to take Aether and convert it into pure potential power, which would let anything we build afterward draw from the same source without needing a separate energy design."

Sylas looked back toward the structure and understood why the cooling demands were so extreme. If they succeeded, then the reactor wouldn’t simply power one machine, it would remove one of the largest inefficiencies in technological development by allowing completely different devices to operate from the same foundation.

Alex folded his arms. "This one will probably explode too."

"The last one was supposed to explode."

"See?" Alex looked toward Sylas. "He says things like that and expects me to feel safe."

Sylas gave a small nod, already satisfied enough with their progress, but just as he was about to turn away his gaze shifted toward the horizon. Several hundred kilometers from the construction site, hidden behind overlapping distortions of space and terrain, someone stood so still that it was obvious she had already realized she had been caught.

Cheri.

She had clearly noticed Sylas’ arrival and considered leaving before deciding that moving now would only draw more attention to herself. Unfortunately for her, staying where she was hadn’t accomplished much either, and when Sylas looked directly toward her hiding place, her shoulders sagged.

It didn’t take long for Cheri to appear before them with her head lowered, the embarrassment on her face far different from Megean’s. "I apologize. I know I wasn’t supposed to be snooping around."

Sylas looked at her for a moment and found that he didn’t particularly care.

Cheri was intelligent, curious, and opportunistic enough to understand that information often mattered more than immediate strength, so her decision wasn’t surprising. If she wanted to hide several hundred kilometers away and watch Alex and Nathan nearly cook a province with their prototype, Sylas saw little reason to waste time pretending to be offended. He had known this would happen from the moment he had left her here. It wouldn’t make much of a difference whether she saw or not, not when he had even more important plans for her to be a part of.

"Keep working," he told the others before turning away. "Cheri, you’re coming with me."

Alex lifted a hand behind him. "Want me to tell you if it blows up?"

Nathan elbowed him hard enough that the sound echoed through the steam.

Cheri hesitated for only a moment before hurrying after Sylas, though she quickly realized that following him wasn’t as simple as walking beside him. His steps looked slow and casual, yet every one carried him across vast stretches of land, forcing her to repeatedly accelerate just to keep herself from falling behind.

After several moments, curiosity finally overcame caution.

"Where are we going?"

Sylas didn’t look back. "Hell."

Cheri nearly missed her next step as the word settled into her mind, and for several seconds she could only stare at Sylas’ back while trying to decide whether he had meant it literally.

Why was Sylas going to Hell, and more importantly, why did he need her to come with him?