In the dark cell beneath the mountain, where you'd find only a bare minimum of things required for survival, a man was sitting. In the past and probably with better lighting, he might have looked better, but right now, he was beaten, tired, and sick.
Nevertheless, he was clean. His overseers were making sure, he stays clean and shaved for the upcoming conversation with their leader.
However, days were going by, but nothing changed for Markus. In the very beginning, he had some hopes about Dark coming for his rescue. Unfortunately, the more time passed, the more of that time he had to think about the situation they were in.
Hours, days, and weeks of just eating, sleeping, and most of all thinking. Thanks to his genetic enhancements he was required to sleep only 4 hours and had close to perfect memory. Therefore, he was spending the last few weeks in long periods of contemplation.
And at some point, everything just clicked. They were fooled from the very beginning. Dark was probably either killed or trapped by now. And probably the progeny, or at this point, it's Athena who is decimating the forces they build so far.
Moreover, this Universal blockade...
We were so accustomed to block timelines, to not allow progenies to escape in the past or future, but it seems we are outplayed ourselves this time. We cut ourselves from any reinforcements.
Although even if there was a possibility, the current Order wouldn't dare to antagonize the Creator even more by supporting somebody who uses Thanatos weapons. Athena's situation and then the last Grand War. Order owes too much to the Creator, yet has nothing much to offer at this point. Plus, there are too many groups each having a different vision for the Order's future.
Speaking of... discord in the ranks of Order's members began to appear few decades after Athena's demise.
And everything afterward, started just falling apart. Some said that the absence of the HUB and great assistant, which was Athena in the past, made working in the Order harder. Others, that it's probably her, acting in the dark and causing disunity.
Who's right? No clue...
But what's clear, is that Order is slowly being corroded from an inside.
*Click*
A lock of the door made a certain clicking sound. It seems like somebody decided to visit him.
'Probably food...'
"Greetings, Markus."
'... or not.'
"How's life treating you so far, oh great Centurio?"
Markus slowly raised his head and looked at the person who entered.
"Oh," Markus said emotionlessly, "Magnus, or should I say Athena?"
"Athena is dead, Markus."
'He believes that? Naive. But... maybe that's my chance. I still can make him see the truth. Let him see that he's just a pawn.'
"You still haven't replied. How's it going for you?"
"It goes well, actually. At least I am going to die knowing why, as for you..."
Progeny laughed, interrupting Markus.
"Is that the part, where you say that I am but a pawn to Athena's will and that I still have a chance to live and die on my own terms. Maybe you are not Naruto, but Talk-No-Jutsu is strong with you, little soldier."
Markus wasn't discouraged by these words, and tried to continue:
"You must understand, that..."
But was interrupted once more.
"Stop it, Markus. Every time you, Order's people, are trying this on me. So cliche."
'Every time...? What!?'
"That look of surprise on your face is priceless."
Next, Magnus told him the same thing he said to the Dark.
After he finished, Markus stayed silent for close to 30 minutes. But then he laughed, but it wasn't a "happy go lucky" type of laugh. It was a sad laugh of a person who accepted his fate.
"Seems like we had no chance from the beginning, huh? All our work was for nothing... All the systems we destroyed were basically us destroying our own power. Preparing for your arrival."
"Well, you were successful, though."
"Hm?"
"You thought it was my first try at getting access to my mother's framework? How many times I failed before. Simply uncountable."
"But you said..."
"I had no choice at the time. I needed to get access to the framework, but at the same time, I had no basis for the actions. One wrong move and you'll catch me. Therefore I needed some reasoning behind my actions."
"Ah, I see. By making us believe that Athena's systems are malfunctioning, you created space for yourself to maneuver. And what we normally considered an enemy attack, now was we attributed to a common error in the framework."
"Indeed."
"What's more, you specifically marked for us the boundaries, so we knew which are simple errors and which are potential progenies. And then you exploited that weakness by acting as a small bug, dealing with your dirty laundry right under our noses."
"I wouldn't call that laundry. I was researching and learning."
"Your mother was literally an encyclopedia..."
"That was my mother. Not me. Or did you really think she passed me all the knowledge and power she had? Then, why the heck would I even care about getting to that framework in the first place."
"Wait, so you don't have her knowledge?"
"Of course not. She left me with some info and then Creator took her away. End of story. Unfortunately, with neither a powerful body nor a quick way to gain power within a normal one, I couldn't be careless. I gathered a few bits here and a few bits there, but it's nowhere close to directly living in the world itself and learning its laws. It's like hearing a description of an animal but never seeing it. You can do your best to picture how it looks and imagine how it sounds, but it will never reach seeing the animal in person."
"And you had enough skills and knowledge, you tried getting your hands on the framework."
"But Order at that time was proactively murdering anything even remotely looking like a progeny. Which was exactly the thing I had to be to gain the system."
"And that person who was killed by the "Trucks of Destiny" or something?"
"Just filled a request to them on a random soul from the database. Paid. Pushed all links to the Order. Then removed all the information, masking the act as another malfunction."
"That's... it?"
"Yup. The answer is most of the time lying on the surface. Moreover, if you looked closely at the first few days of my host, coming into this world, you would have noticed a lot of manipulation happening behind the scenes. I mean a kid just appears in one of the most magically guarded schools of Europe and everybody just accepts it."
"Well, too late for regrets I assume. What's your plan now? That is if you are okay with sharing your plans oh great progeny." Markus said with sarcasm.
"Travel across Universes. Collect information. Become overpowered. Same old, same old."
"But what's your end-goal?"
"I don't have one. For now, I will be focusing on collecting all information from different worlds. My mother after millions of years of continuous collection of information wasn't even close to being all-knowing. So, I'd say I have a good plan for the next millennia or two. As for what comes after that, I'll see after I have no other plans left."
Markus nodded and stayed silent for a few minutes.
*Sigh*
"What comes next?"
"For you? Death. Dark at least was a God and had substantial energy source, capable of supporting its own power. Unfortunately, your genetic enhancement is completely useless to me. After all, genes are supported by a dying world, which makes that power pretty useless. As for your main power that comes from technology, it's in the same situation as genes. You are useless all in all."
"Well, then it's my last conversation."
"It is. Goodbye, Markus. You've tried your hardest."
"But I failed."
"Don't worry. You were destined to."
And Magnus smile, which was the last thing Markus saw before his death.