White box

Ancient matters

Marcus moved his knocked out parents into the bed and then picked up Stephanie and carried her to the room she had picked, putting her down as well. For some reason, August had taken this place over making it into his domain and so there was charged fog flickering around.

Marcus peeked into the core of Hades and saw that this planet had no Hadeans left, meaning Tiamat had eaten them. That was one thing dragons could do, which made them a horrid thing for Hadeans. Marcus kept looking around the core of Hades and it didn't look like any wars had started or anything of that sort - the count of people was around the same.

Stephanie shifted and opened her eyes. "What was that?" She asked, then seemed to think and come to some conclusions, but rather than asking about it now -

"Tiamat," Marcus replied. "That's how her presence affects people."

Stephanie pursed her lips. "I want to wash my face," she said and got up and walked out of the room, Marcus didn't know what to do, so he followed a bit behind.

Only to spot a bunch of people downstairs and a shirtless August whose hair had gotten even longer. It wasn't Tiamat's level of presence, but those three girls with red hair were strong.

"Uh-- hello, again," Stephanie's eyes stopped on Albus and then curiously slid over all the people around, she didn't seem to mind the lack of reply, though.

"What do you see?" Leum asked August.

And Marcus could guess that they were talking about another domain-- this charged fog could serve as a sensing organ for dryads. August was shirtless because he had gone away in a rush.

"It looks like a randomly forming gate, but there's something wrong with it," August replied with a frown.

"Is it glitching?" Marcus asked that was a type of gate that did look wrong.

"Yes," August replied, now looking towards him.

"It's a space-time gate, then," Marcus replied. "Something from either past or future is trying to come through." It wasn't common and he had never seen one himself, but he knew records of them. There had been eighteen recorded cases of those in Hades, all about something essential.

"A barrier with people in it came through, the gate broke," August said.

"I'd go see them in your place," Marcus said. "Time-leapers tend to be unstable, they often disintegrate soon. They might have a message for one of you." Back in Hades, it had often been about some explosion, some technology lacking, an extremely bad invasion. Hades had time-traveling technology, but it was highly restricted to only cases like that and came at the cost of living for the traveler.

"Thanks," August said and disappeared and moments after everyone else did as well.

"Time travel?" Stephanie asked with shiny eyes and Marcus told her some stuff about it. Not going too deeply into technology, though. They went back upstairs and split up for now-- Marcus was starting to get hungry but figured he might as well wait for parents to wake up and meanwhile--

Not like anything would attack him here, right? He figured he might as well take a look around in his astral body, but right as he went out he felt heavy-- huh?

He had materialized. He still felt some connection to the body, but touching it only led to him touching a squishy warm cheek. He touched his own cheeks - squishy and warm. Even his clothes had materialized. Knowing some stuff about Urea now he realized he looked like someone from a science fiction fantasy space opera. Uh-- Marcus left the room only to hear Parents talking about something-- they were up. Stephanie's room was empty-- a lot of voices downstairs.