Chapter 122 - Officially A part Of The Family

(Time skip 2 years)

It's been two years since the restoration of Lorien. After the battle that led to the destruction of Planet Mogador, the members of the Garde, excluding Zeel, decided to try and rescue any survivors of planet Mogador.

However, it took a couple of days to do that since the resulting explosion affected the orbit of Lorien, causing the axis to tilt enough that a threat of cascading into space was birthed.

Zeel and Sam were the ones who readjusted the orbit of planet Lorien.

Zeel quickly became fond of Sam since they had the same Legacy. Sam had the greatest potential for technokinesis that Zeel had ever seen.

When Zeel and the group visited planet Mogador's remains, they were able to discover the remaining Mogadorians. Zeel quickly dispatched those he could before the group could impede him.

However, some managed to escape Zeel's execution and were sent to Earth, or Lorien for rehabilitation.

With all conscience cleared, the group worked hard to select an ideal location to re-establish their civilization. The battlefields had become a location of mass graves and were no longer suitable for building.

John suggested that everyone slowly sort the bodies and identified all fallen Loriens before anything else. Alice and Zeel were supportive of the idea since they had a more profound understanding of the dead than the others.

The Phoenix stones were buried in different locations on Lorien and one year later the planet became vibrant again. The Chimeras brought back were reproducing slowly and new organisms were born the stronger Lorien got.

Zeel knew that Mogador suppressed the power of Lorien, but he didn't understand the extent until after Lorien partially recovered – there were so many resources that were not present before: plants, animals, natural elixirs, energy saturated air.

This was akin to a paradise worthy of gods, and Zeel gave birth to selfish thoughts of taking this planet for himself. Luckily, Alice was there to reign him in whenever he had extreme ideas. Elizabeth had begun to pull away from them once more.

Though nobody mentioned it, deep down inside The Garde were thankful for the burden Zeel had to bear, but Zeel didn't mind killing an entire species at all.

Zeel even joined the expedition to Mogador a few times to salvage Emospectruminum, saying 'It could be used later again'.

Luckily, Alice was the sane one in the relationship, disallowing him from harvesting more than a little amount at a time.

Vishnu no longer considered Zeel as a role model and brother, but Zeel could care less since he was confident that Vishnu would eventually see things his way.

During the two years downtime, Alice and Zeel had been collecting materials from all over Lorien. The metals they collected were not rare, but still very useful for creating tablets that could be consumed to replace the metal of their nanites.

However, these metals were not useful to upgrade the nanites, whose growth had become stagnant.

Using the metals discovered, Zeel was finally able to add a layer of sub-dimensional storage to the Mbeamers. Zeel also collected enough material to build three more Mbeamers in case his own got destroyed or severed from his body for some reason.

The first thing Zeel did with his storage dimension was to store the results of all his projects in his sub-dimension.

Zeel later added storage dimensions to Alice's and Elizabeth's Mbeamers.

Zeel then integrated the Mbeamers into the skin on their index fingers and programmed the Mbeamers to lock themselves if it was ever removed from their fingers.

Should the situation be considered dire, The Mbeamer was to self-destruct with enough power to implode a small continent.

Zeel was eager to work on his projects with all the samples collected so far from the Universes visited, but Alice forced him to restrain the urge.

Zeel and John got closer and closer after Zeel saw John was willing to do what is necessary to save his people. This got both Zeel's approval and help, after all, it takes a real man to murder an entire planet to save his own, even if he didn't do the deed in the end.

Zeel spent the majority of his time alongside Sam building suppressors so that Lorien's energy would not leak out into the Universe, instead remain isolated within certain boundaries.

As the Felian's stated, the reason they were attacked was that Lorien shined too brightly, with this Lorien would still shine but within boundaries.

John got the luckiest of the group, he had begun dating both Sarah and Cindy, the two girls came to a compromise when they realized that Sarah had also become Lorien. Vishnu and Marina were expecting children, as they found repopulating a personal mission of their own.

Ella, in the past year, had begun seeing a Lorien Sam Goode who had a similar legacy as Zeel, though much less effective. Lexa and Henry already had children, while Adeline and Clayton were still in the courting phase of the relationship.

Elizabeth still avoided Zeel over the two years. Alice had tried several times to intervene and get them to talk, but Elizabeth still withheld from doing so.

Zeel, on the other hand, was very pleased with the current state of their relationship. Alice was already baggage for him at this point in time, bringing Elizabeth along would lessen their strength.

Lorien promised answers previously and after two years of scavenging for all he could, Zeel had come to claim it. He felt as if he had given the Cosmic Force enough time to grow in strength, but not enough to destroy his final trump card should everything be a trick

"Alice, bury this someplace before we head to the meeting," Zeel commanded as they were preparing to have a conversation with Lorien.

"What is it?" Alice asked looking at the golden balls in her hands.

"A contingency plan," Zeel replied staring at Alice intently.

Setting foot in the temple, it was their first time inside the temple, the members of the Garde begged them not to enter since it was a sacred place for the Garde.

"You've come," Lorien said, in a flash of light a small girl wearing a white, floral dress, seemingly made out of photon particles, had floated down from the ceiling.

"Yeah, so will you tell us all we need to know?" Zeel asked feeling something inside him resonate with the girl in front of him.

Zeel did not know if he was mistaken, but Lorien looked at him as if she knew everything about him. Zeel thought she probably did since the power they currently held truly belonged to her.

"You seek a method for navigation and all the knowledge I currently possess. Correct? But also you look for me, at first I didn't recognize the energy shackling you, but now I do.

It is the one of the Elder Force," Lorien said, not once removing her gaze from Zeel. It was as if only Zeel was worthy of her attention.

"More or less. As for the Elder Force, you can just grant us that knowledge privately," Alice answered in Zeel's place, not wanting to continue the conversation much longer.

"I can give you the knowledge to find the weaker Gods you seek; however vague it may be. I don't recall a lot as I am still too weak from what I once was," Lorien said and continued "Step up on the altar and I will gift you all the memories I currently have – how much you will be able to retain is up to yourselves,"

Stepping up onto the altar alongside Alice, they both could feel the atmosphere become tense for a moment before returning to normal.

Suddenly, a brain-racking headache overtook them both as they began to inherit Lorien's millions of years of memories. Most memories were blurry and vague, but the feelings that accompanied them was enough to make sense of those memories.

"Now!" John yelled as the Garde members jumped into action, dusting off the floor of the altar.

On the floor, large runes could be seen embedded. John, Vishnu, Ella, Sam, Sarah, Cindy, and Marina each plugged an ancient Loric charm in their respective places as the runes became brighter.

Zeel and Alice were receiving the inheritance from Lorien and could do nothing to stop whatever it was the Garde were trying to do.

"I am sorry guys, I love who I love," Elizabeth said as she hugged Ella to the side and walked into the runic circle alongside Zeel and Alice, hugging them both in her arms.

"We are sorry Zeel, Alice. But I have to be a leader and you're a variable I would not want to account for if not in times of war," John yelled with guilt lacing his voice at having betrayed the very two people who made their return home possible.

Ella, Vishnu, Cindy, Sam, Sarah, and Marina each feeling exceptionally guilty at betraying Alice much more than Zeel. Lucky thing Henri and the others were not included in planning, or Lexa would have disagreed with the plan.

She knew Zeel well enough to know that he always had a contingency – betraying Zeel was the same as throwing yourselves to the sharks.

In a flash of light, the Loric runes activated sending the trio away to a location unknown. All the Lorien group knew was wherever they went, it would be too far to return.

Sadly, they had been looking at the wrong person, the moment Zeel was about to disappear, he whispered something that caused Sarah to freeze for a bit before returning to normal.

*WHHHOOOOOOPPPPP*

Alice, Zeel, and Elizabeth were shot out into the void of space a couple of billion light-years away from Lorien.

"She came along," Alice said a bit smugly as if bragging at the fact Elizabeth had joined them in their exile.

"Yeah, guess I lost that bet," Zeel said as he chuckled bitterly to himself.

Still struggling from the teleportation, Elizabeth struggled to steady herself before asking "You knew we were going to betray you?"

Zeel shrugged "Of course, never leave an unstable element in your ranks. John as the leader should know that. Alice has to go too since she would become an unstable element had it only been me who they sent, but you on the other hand - you could have stayed?"

"I love who I love, you're an ass but you understand me. A man for my period of loneliness is a man deserving of my entire soul, no matter how long it may be," Elizabeth said approaching Zeel and wrapping her hands around his waist for the first time in a long time.

"So what next we die out here?" Elizabeth asked.

"Nope, put on your nano-suit!" Zeel said preparing for a Mjump alongside Alice.

He didn't know where they would end up since the navigation system provided by Lorien was not exactly omniscient – they could only have an idea more or less of where they wanted to go.

"So are we like together, together now?" Elizabeth asked excitedly, internally cheering at the fact she finally received both their approval.

"Consider yourself Elizabeth Crawford," Alice smirked and said "The memories will settle in later, so when you sleep it'll be there,"

"What memories?" Elizabeth asked a bit confused before she suddenly gasped as if awake for the first time.

Zeel had fully activated her Mbeamer since it had only been for show up until now.

If Elizabeth had not joined them before teleportation, the moment Alice and Zeel left the universe, Elizabeth's Mbeamer would have fallen off and turned into dust.