AutumnXd
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CHAPTER 66
🕑 Added 2025-06-30 15:39:22 +0000 UTCThe church was a ruin. The quiet sanctuary was now a chaotic mess of splintered pews and shattered stained glass. Moonlight streamed through a new, gaping hole in the roof, illuminating the cracked stone floor and dust-filled air. The acrid smell of ozone and brimstone had replaced the gentle scent of old incense, and the terrifying atmosphere had finally dissipated, leaving only a profound sense of violation.
"So… I assume we won't be needing to compensate them for the damages here," Aidan said, looking at the devastation with a hint of embarrassed guilt.
Kaecilius shook his head, a weary sigh escaping his lips. "You should have considered that before you started swinging that hammer."
"The situation was critical," Aidan shrugged, not sounding particularly apologetic. "I didn't have time to open the Mirror Dimension for isolation."
"It does not matter," a quiet voice said. The priest, his face pale but his eyes clear, emerged from the rectory. "You saved my life. Material possessions are nothing. It is just… a pity. The nuns, the children who came here for choir practice… they were all faithful believers of the Lord." He lowered his head, clutching the cross on his chest as he began to pray for their souls.
Aidan and Kaecilius looked at each other, a shared, silent understanding passing between them. This was a world of pain they could not heal. Kaecilius traced a circle in the air, and the two men stepped through the shimmering orange portal, leaving the grieving priest to his faith.
Back in the quiet halls of the London Sanctum, Aidan couldn't help but admire his new relic. He sat on a stone bench, tossing the pocket-sized bronze hammer in his hand. "Actually," he said to Kaecilius, "this hammer is still very useful."
"Indeed," Kaecilius replied, a strained smile on his face. I have a feeling there will be a great deal of trouble accompanying him in the future, he thought.
In the days and weeks that followed, they fell into a routine. A new mission would come, and they would step through a portal into some dark corner of Britain. Kaecilius, at first, would attempt to use his intricate, elegant spellcraft, weaving complex webs of energy. Then Aidan, clad in his blood-red bio-suit, would arrive, and the situation would be resolved with the brutal, percussive efficiency of his World-Forger's Maul. Kaecilius initially found his new partner's methods to be awkward and graceless, but he soon grew accustomed to it. There was no denying its effectiveness. Aidan was like a demolition crew in the body of a teenager. So violent. But in their quiet moments between battles, Kaecilius found himself relaxing, the two gradually becoming acquainted as they fought side-by-side. Eventually, it was Kaecilius who opened up his heart first, sharing the story of his own profound loss.
One night, after a particularly grueling mission sealing an unstable space-time fissure, the two men sat exhausted in the Sanctum's library, nursing cups of hot tea.
"Aidan," Kaecilius asked suddenly, his voice low and heavy with a pain that had never left him. " You wield technologies that defy belief. Tell me… is there a magic, a science, anything… that can bring back the dead?"
Aidan looked at the older, broken man across from him. "You want to resurrect your family," he stated, not as a question.
"Yes," Kaecilius admitted, his voice cracking. "I have tried everything. Every spell, every ritual. But nothing works." He shook his head in despair.
"Have you considered cloning?" Aidan asked.
Kaecilius's head snapped up, his eyes wide with a sudden, desperate hope. "Cloning? Is it possible?"
"Yes," Aidan confirmed. "I could clone a body. A perfect vessel, physically identical to your wife, your son. But," he added, his voice gentle but firm, "it would require their original genetic material. And even then, it would be an empty shell. A doll made of flesh. It would not be them."
Kaecilius's face fell as the hope vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He fell silent.
"According to all known laws of physics and metaphysics," Aidan continued, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, "their souls are gone. The chance of finding them is infinitesimally small." He paused, letting the weight of that reality settle in the room. "Actually," he said, leaning forward. "There is… another way. A theory."
"How?" Kaecilius breathed, leaning in, his eyes wide.
"The multiverse," Aidan said. "Theory suggests an infinite number of parallel universes. In one of them, a version of your family, identical in every way, still exists. If one could traverse the multiverse, find that exact reality, and use advanced technology to create a complete neural map of their consciousness—every memory, every feeling, their very soul—it might be possible to transfer that data into a cloned vessel." He let the idea hang in the air, a beautiful, terrible temptation. "It could be considered an alternative form of resurrection."
Then came the warning. "But the risks are incalculable," Aidan said, his voice now grave. "You could shatter timelines, create paradoxes that could unravel reality itself. And the person you create… would it truly be your wife? Or just a perfect echo with a stranger's memories?" He had presented the impossible idea, and its terrifying consequences, leaving the choice, and the obsession, to fester in Kaecilius's mind.
After their mission in London concluded, Aidan returned to Kamar-Taj and went directly to the library. With the Ancient One's permission, he was granted access to the forbidden texts. He began with the Book of Cagliostro. The chapter on dark magic and its rituals, the one that had been torn out in another reality, was still intact here. He noted with a dark sense of humor that the dire warnings about linking to malevolent dimensions were all printed at the end of the spells. It's like an end-user license agreement, he thought. No one reads it before clicking 'accept'.
He also delved into the Book of the Vishanti, which recorded the most powerful White Magic known. Its early chapters focused solely on defensive magic, but successive generations of Sorcerers Supreme had added their own knowledge, creating a more comprehensive, and offensive, tome.
His life settled into a new rhythm. He and Kaecilius were assigned to supervise the London area, a hotbed of mystical activity. In the early days, Britain had been home to many powerful wizards, but after the World Wars, they had largely disappeared, leaving behind a legacy of weakening magic circles. Now, a new generation of desperate people—the curious, the bullied, the broken—would stumble upon old rituals and, in their ignorance, summon demons from the Hell Dimension. It was a busier post than most.
But with Aidan's hammer, the efficiency of their work increased by leaps and bounds. After each battle, Kaecilius would find him, his mind returning again and again to the topic of resurrection. Aidan entertained his theories, discussed the possibilities, but never once told him to give up, never once preached about accepting the natural order of things.
Meanwhile, the Ancient One was conspicuously absent, her purposes her own. Mordo, however, would often visit, checking in on Aidan's progress and his state of mind, his concern a constant, grounding presence.
I don't know how long this period of strange stability lasted. But one evening, after he and Kaecilius had dealt with a particularly nasty invading creature, his AI, Ruby, called him.
"Aidan," her calm, clinical voice said in his ear. "There is a situation developing in Japan."
Aidan's eyes narrowed. The Hand. It was time.
Comments
KingSpy25i .
Thank you for the chapter 🙏
Ritesh Jadhav
The tier PLAT is short for platinum
Hersh Jobanputra
What is 'PLAT'?
