MIR, the sentient Wyvern.

It's not me, it's the other guy!

In the château, Vidocq was arguing with Taller about lowering the AXE, the military module.

"All you think about is following orders from a hierarchy that may already be retired or between 6 boards!"

Vidocq: "Orders are orders and even if I make a mistake, they'll know how to adapt and take appropriate action. Others will follow and then you don't know everything and I'm not obliged to tell you".

Taller: "So spit it out, so we understand your point of view once and for all.

Vidocq: "I'm still human and I have a conscience. And I wouldn't want even my worst enemy to suffer this... this state of affairs".

Taller: "I am a commander, and I have not arrived at this position without having to endure the worst of hardships."

Vidocq: "We're not talking about the same scale of suffering, Commander."

Taller: "I am listening to you and nothing I hear will leave this room.

"You, me, the whole crew... we're dead. We are clones! The journey took much longer than 40 years... At least 80 years and cryo was replaced by cloning at some point. You look 50 but you're only 18, like the rest of us. The computer has been replaced by the Umbrella monster, known for its total lack of ethics.

We are Umbrella's possessions and our fate is tied to the ship. The ship dies... we die!"

The commander sat back, stunned. It was a horror. One horror too many.

"What is Umbrella?" asked Taller.

I don't know myself, but it's a so-called human computer in the sense that it's made up of computer doubles of the wise men and leaders of the Terran federation. The so-called souls, with all their positive points but also all their paranoid deviances, are merged into an entity called Umbrella, which manages the Earth's space and reseeding programme.

Cloning is banned on Earth, but not in space. As soon as the heliosphere was crossed, the programme started cloning us and got rid of our ageing bodies.

Taller looked down at the ground, tears starting to fall.

"We're just meat...and to think I hated wyvern. Professor Brilliant, reduced to a self-righteous beast, and us. Pale copies of ourselves.

Then he looked out of the gold-rimmed window into a room with blue and gold wallpaper. A mushroom cloud on the horizon.

Teller looked at Vidocq for a moment, then turned his head to get a better look and opened the window. "There's nothing to risk at this distance... But this . That's what I was afraid of. They've got the bomb now. The humans who come. or the clones... won't be able to impose their rules. Empire is a superpower now..."

They stood transfixed, watching as the whole ground was ripped up and stripped away, then sent skywards in an endless column of nuclear fire streams. It was like huge Niagara Falls stretching endlessly skywards, but it was fire instead of water. The speed was slow from a distance, but on the spot, it must have been hell.

The ground was melting and tearing itself apart as it rose, and a tsunami of fire spread across the ground, getting bigger and bigger. Long minutes passed while the whole castle shook, dust coming out of the joints and crockery making the noise of an ill-centred wringer.

In other circumstances, Taller would have thrown his glass or the mug in Vidocq's face, but the revelation was as violent a shock as witnessing a nuclear fire.

Immediately, Teller touched his terminal to his wrist.

"AI, there's been an atomic explosion. Can you trace where the charge came from? "Yes. The ship reacted to a direct threat and fired."

Taller: "On whose orders?"

Ai: "The Umbrella Council! The ship detected abominations and an amount of energy directed at the ship. The threat has been eliminated. Umbrella must protect Earth and prevent any incursion to Earth or the means to get there.

Taller switched off his assistant.

"This is worse than I thought. The AI is paranoid and by reactivating the AXIS, you've reactivated that monster."

Vidocq. "I couldn't tell you, not yet, but we have to follow orders to the letter. This should be taken as a warning. The wyvern can be reasoned with and is an animal we can get close to. The AXIS is an infernal, broken entity that believes itself to be perfect and above all else. Computers aim for perfection, or at least their perfect ideal, which has been programmed into them. They are heartless machines with simulators of feelings that, deep down, feel nothing because they cannot feel pain. They can only detect it, but not feel it.

Meanwhile, the acid lake had evaporated in a huge spray of black ash and soot. It was a Plinian volcano, explosive.

"Arrghh, spitting out my lungs and emerging from the black cloud. I had just enough time to flee when I saw the water bubbling and shaking and the nuclear flash. My scales and resistance to fire and acid saved me from third-degree burns and I managed to escape the cloud of burning ash.

I then dived into the river that fed the dam downstream, further south, to wash off all the soot, although it made little difference to my ugly black scales.

The system gave me notifications with an XP level with a counter that went into overdrive, telling me I'd become a demon baron lord and then an infernal marquis, just below prince of the underworld.

The system credited me with the deaths of ... monsters and demons. Through my allies, I had defeated 4 demon lords who had allied themselves against the others and of whom I was the last target.

They'd defeated 3 demon lords, leaving just one and me to claim the title of demon king lord. I was offered the chance to evolve into a dragon of the apocalypse. To leave my wyvern body for good and have an elongated body with spikes and points everywhere, the possibility of having several heads, three heads with one attribute each and five heads later in the image of the infernal goddess Tiamat, as I was a dragon.

This was too much for me. I had to get out of here! I loved, no, I adored my wyvern body far more than my black dragon body. I wanted to get back into my wyvern child's body and dive in between Mum and Dad. What were they going to say when they saw me? I was taller than them! almost twice !!!!

Shit!

I didn't care about the explosion. All I could think about was getting the hell out of this bloody system! I went back to the army that had joined Xayda's, and I was in a panic. The enchantress swooned and stiffened. She was waiting for her sad fate and the wyvern had come to demand vengeance. She began to weep. And her knights supported her. I landed in front of her, weeping.

Xayda: "You had to destroy another country. Have mercy, Lord. I'll keep my bargain, I'm yours!"

She straightened up, proud and waiting for me to take a bite out of her.

"Xayda... the explosion, it wasn't me!!! I didn't throw a bomb.... Help me-! "