Chapter 28: Professor X! More Lobotomy, Please!
Iskander
"Hey Sylvia," I murmured, the words a breathless, internal gasp as I flung myself sideways, the ground where I'd been standing vaporizing in a silent, cataclysmic bloom of force. "I think Brainiac is finally mad at me!"
The understatement of the century. Al-Hazred's "disappointment" had curdled into something far colder, far more efficient. The pretense of a fair fight was gone. The Crucible had shifted from a brutal and nightmarish training ground to the very definition of hell.
If the previous endless cycle of battle had been a hammer trying to shape me, this was a scalpel designed to dissect. There was no more trading blows, no more testing my limits against Gawain's guarded strength. This was pure, unadulterated flight. A desperate, soul-crushing sprint for survival against an opponent who was no longer an obstacle, but an inevitability.
The Djinn didn't shout. He didn't rage. That was the most terrifying part. In all his ancient, genocidal madness, he wasn't irrational. He wasn't even truly mad in the raving sense. He was cold, calculating evil, refined over centuries into a substance of pure, undiluted hate.
His aetheric form hovered high above, a silent, violet star in the smoke-choked sky, a dispassionate observer. He only spoke now to offer a cold critique as I laid broken, or to deliver another chilling lesson in the scale of my insignificance.
His voice was a clinical instrument, devoid of anger, dripping with a loathing so profound it had transcended heat and become absolute zero.
I ran. That was my entire existence. I ran from invisible breaths that erased chunks of the world. I ran from tridents of red lightning that fell from the sky like divine judgment. I ran from the shadow of a diving dragon, a living mountain intent on crushing me into the bedrock.
And worst of all, I ran from the spatial shifts, the gut-wrenching lurches in reality that meant Gawain was simply elsewhere, his blade or his claws already in motion before I could even register his absence.
The Ancient Mages, the Djinn—those poor peaceful people—they never stood a chance. Facing this… this peerless agent of destruction, this embodiment of draconic might perfected by a Djinn's bitter intelligence… it was no wonder they have been erased.
'Child, stop wasting your breath, even in thought, and KEEP RUNNING!' Sylvia's mental voice was a whip-crack of fear and admonishment, sharper than I'd ever heard it. Her light was a constant, frantic pulse within my core, a hummingbird's heart trapped in a hurricane.
She was right. I was practically immortal here, yes. Aether and Creation saw to that and Al-Hazred would never free me from thai inferno. However, I still remained galaxies away from indestructible. In front of Gawain's unleashed power, I was a plush toy in a woodchipper.
And I knew, with a sinking certainty, that this was the point. Al-Hazred wasn't trying to kill me. He was trying to break my regeneration. To find its absolute limit and then push beyond it. To forge a body that could not just survive a dragon's wrath, but ignore it entirely.
And the bastard felt no pleasure in it. No sadistic joy. Only a cold, scientific fascination. A craftsman's pride in the stressing and tempering of his finest steel. I was a weapon to him, just as I had been to Agrona, just as I was a potential tool to Seris.
The realization was a familiar, bitter pill.
Agrona wanted a puppet. Seris wanted a counter-weapon. Al-Hazred wanted a god-killer. Their methods differed, but their view of me was the same: a thing to be used.
Too bad for them this weapon had a mind of its own. And a heart. This body, this power, was for me. For my freedom. For my justice. For Sylvia. For the people of Alacrya out there. For the people of Dicathen so far away.
And maybe, just maybe, for Seris's cause—not out of loyalty, but because the enemy of my enemy was a useful ally, and because I'd seen a flicker of something resembling care in her when she spoke to me.
She was no angel, but standing next to Al-Hazred, she looked like one.
A sensation beyond agony—a sudden, absolute voiding—blossomed from my waist down. No impact. No sound. Just… cessation. My legs were simply gone, vaporized by a perfectly focused burst of pure mana I never saw coming.
A scream was torn from my throat, raw and primal. Al-Hazred had learned. He'd discovered my hideous tolerance for sustained pain, so he'd changed tactics. Now it was infinite, instantaneous bursts of absolute atrocity. A forge of singular, shattering moments.
I hit the ground, my upper body slamming into the rock, my mind white with shock. Instinct, honed to a reflex, took over.
Creation. The thought was a spark in the void. Pale gold light flared from my torso. Two new legs began to unfold from the ruined stump, bones weaving from nothing, muscle spiraling into place, skin stretching over the new flesh.
Sylvia's power surged in tandem, a torrent of life-giving energy that sealed nerve endings, routed aether pathways, and made the new limbs mine in a matter of seconds. The process was seamless now, a well-drilled horror.
How many times had she done this? How many times had I? My body was a patchwork of death and rebirth, and it was adapting, becoming more efficient at being unmade.
Sylvia… I thought, pushing myself up on new, trembling legs and immediately breaking into a run again. I need to strengthen our bond. The aetheric tether. It's the only way.
It was the only path forward I could see. I needed more of her power, a deeper synergy. I needed to tap into the divine wellspring of her being, not just siphon it. I had to get out of this hell before the people I'd left behind—Sevren, my team—became memories, lost to the distorted time of this prison.
Al-Hazred was patient. If he decided I needed a century to be perfected, he would wait a century. I would not.
'How, Child?!' Her voice was desperate. 'If you stop for a single second to focus, he will kill you! There is no time for such intricate work!'
She was right. I was a rat in a cosmic maze with a flamethrower pointed at my tail. Run, jump, duck, sidestep, run. My existence was a frenetic dance of evasion. Creation was a power of will, but will wasn't enough. It required focus, insight, concentration—luxuries this place denied me.
So, the answer, when it came, was as horrifying as it was obvious. A memory surfaced, a ghost from a past life: long conversations with my dear brother Cassian, trying to convince him to quit medicine for his true passion.
I'd absorbed bits of his knowledge, snippets of anatomy and neurology. The brain. The seat of consciousness. The processor of will.
To strengthen my connection to Sylvia, to handle the complexity of deepening our bond while running for my life, I needed a better processor.
I couldn't make my skull bigger, but I could make what was inside it… denser. More efficient. I needed more cerebral matter. More gyri and sulci, more folds to pack in more neurons, more pathways for thought and will and aetheric control.
"Are you done with your futile attempts at offense, Being of Aether and Flesh? I was starting to get interested." Al-Hazred's voice drifted down, cold and inquisitive.
I ignored him, my entire world narrowing to the insane plan forming in my mind. Sylvia, get inside my skull. I need you to guide the aether with surgical precision. And… don't let me destroy my own brain.
The wave of shock and disbelief that radiated from her was a physical force. 'Child, what is this madness?! What are you planning?!'
I couldn't help a grim, internal smirk. Oh, you know. Just a little DIY neurosurgery. I'm gonna put a Magneto's reference on the whole thing and… well, lobotomize myself. Sort of.
It sounds cooler that way and way less psychotic.
'W-what is a lobotomy?!' Her mental voice was a horrified whisper.
I didn't get to answer. The right side of my body—arm, torso, leg—ceased to exist. Another silent, mana-based obliteration. I screamed, hit the ground, and began the frantic process of regeneration even as I rolled, my new limbs forming in mid-motion.
The pain was a lightning bolt, there and then gone, replaced by the burning itch of newness. This was it. The breach in his perfect system. He thought he was breaking me down. He was actually forcing me to evolve in ways he couldn't predict.
As soon as I was whole, I ran. But my hand was already moving. With a thought and a flicker of pale gold light, I used Creation not for a shield, not for a weapon, but for a tool. A long, slender, impossibly sharp pick of solidified aether appeared in my grasp. A surgical instrument born of pure will.
"And what is th—" Al-Hazred began, his curiosity piqued by my sudden stillness.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP, BRAINIAC!" I roared aloud, the words ripping from my throat, fueled by months of pent-up fury and pain. "You're going to wish you never swore vengeance on the Asuras! You're messing with Aetherman here!"
I had to be faster than thought. Faster than Gawain's reaction time. Faster than my own body's insane healing. I needed to remove a section of my own skull and underlying brain matter and replace it with a superior, denser, more complex version before the aether could heal the wound shut or the process killed me.
It was the first self-administered brain transplant in history, using my own improved and asuran cells as the donor.
'Child, you are an absolute idiot!' Sylvia shrieked, but I felt her presence surge, not away from me, but into the confines of my skull. She didn't try to stop me. She obeyed.
Her will merged with mine, her ancient, precise control over energy guiding the aether with a delicacy I could never achieve alone.
I moved.
The aether-pick plunged into my own temple.
The sensation was… indescribable. Not pain in the conventional sense. It was a profound, existential wrongness. A violation of the deepest sanctum of the self. There was pressure, a cracking sensation, and then a sudden, terrifying quiet in one hemisphere of my mind.
A silencing of neural static I'd never known was there.
I felt Sylvia's presence flood into the void, a golden, stabilizing light holding back the tide of unconsciousness and catastrophic biological failure.
Then, Creation flared. To build. In the space where a part of my brain had been, new cerebral matter erupted. Not a copy, but an upgrade. Grey matter folded upon itself in impossible, intricate patterns. White matter pathways branched and connected with hyper-efficient speed.
New neurons flickered to life like stars igniting in the cold cosmos.
It was my brain, my memories, my consciousness—but more. It was like upgrading from a rusty hand-cranked calculator to a quantum supercomputer in the space of a single, shuddering breath.
The aether-pick dissolved. My skull knit itself back together. The entire process took less than two seconds.
I stood there, for a heartbeat, utterly still.
The world… shifted. The rumble of the volcano wasn't just sound; it was a symphony of vibrational data I could parse. The flow of ambient aether wasn't a vague feeling; it was a visible, intricate map of currents and eddies.
Gawain's next teleportation wasn't a surprise; I saw the Spatium energy gather a full half-second before he moved, calculating its probable endpoint with terrifying accuracy.
My own body was an open book—every channel of aether, every thrumming muscle fiber, every spark of synaptic energy.
I turned my head, my movements eerily precise. A trident of red lightning was descending from Gawain's claw, its path a predictable arc through the newly logical world. I was only half-done. I still had the other hemisphere to upgrade.
'Child? Are you… fine?' Sylvia's voice was small, terrified, awestruck.
I never felt better, Sylvia, I thought back, and it was the truth. The world was clear, sharp, manageable. The fear was still there, but it was data now, not a paralyzing force. Now… for the other half. Are you with me?
There was a pause. A moment of pure, stunned silence from the dragon goddess residing in my mind. Then, resolve, hard and bright and filled with a terrifying trust.
'…Yes, Child. I am.'
If this worked, freedom wasn't just a hope. It was an impending reality. The Crucible was about to meet its new master.