Wizard with a Mutation : Chapter 22 : Scott's Inheritance pt.2

Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP. 

Beneath Winters Manor, Magical Britain [31st October, 1980]

–Scott Winters–

He blinked as the vision changed, the view changing from the crash to that of a woman standing in the same living room setup he was sitting in. 

"That is me, Athena, the designated Artificial Intelligence responsible for manning this ship." The same woman's body flickered before it turned into a streak of light that shot into the ceiling of the living room. 

"These are the moments that I was able to record. Ms.Jean, your mother was unable to record a message for you but I was able to piece together multiple video feeds to create a timeline for you so that you know where you came from." Athena's voice spoke as yet another video feed appeared in front of him.

He took a deep breath and continued to watch, refraining from asking any more questions because he had a hunch that he would get a chance to ask them later on.

The video feed showed a blurry scene but he could still recognise his mother, and he grimaced as he saw the hole in her abdomen, copious amounts of blood leaking from her body that dyed the white landscape red.

The video became even more blurry by the second but before it all shut down, he could see a pair of boots that had just come into view.

"That was your father, Nathan Winters, the younger stepbrother of Nathaniel WInters, the Lord of Winters family." The last he saw of his father in that video was a pair of winter pants, and nothing more.

The video changed once more, showing an entirely different landscape. Jean-his mother was in the ship's living room, with his father as they read, apparently lounging in the ship.

"It has been over a year since your father nursed your mother back to health. The time they spent together birthed a beautiful relationship that, unfortunately, I was unable to capture simply because it all occurred away from the ship."

The scenes changed once more. The two of them laughing, dancing, watching television, and eating food on the ship warmed his heart. Even though it was a video feed, he could feel that they were both happy. Even if they were doing their individual reading, he smiled at the small amount of physical touch that they both enjoyed.

His mother's foot was always in his father's lap when they read, maintaining that little bit of contact. It just…made him feel fuzzy inside.

However, as the videos changed, he noticed one thing. "She's pregnant?"

Athena materialised right in front of him, a blurry blue humanoid shape that spoke, "Yes. Jean here is with child. It is you,"

He smiled at that, yet couldn't help the unease that formed within him. As far as he knew, he was an orphan and he didn't know what he would feel like if that turned out to be untrue. Would he be glad that he still had parents? Would he be sad because his parents all but abandoned him?

Still, he kept his thoughts to himself as the videos changed over the years, with his mother and father spending more and more time on the ship, with Mother's belly becoming bigger and bigger until the video feed flickered and it stopped at a particular scene, with his mother crying in the ship, with his father nowhere to be seen.

His heart sank as he saw the tear lines on her face as she looked lifelessly at the ceiling.

He couldn't help but blurt out, "What has happened? Is something wrong with her? Where is father?"

"This was a very difficult time for Jean. At that point, I was just a Virtual Intelligence, a rigid program incapable of feeling anything. It took me years of living constantly in a magic rich environment to become a fully sentient benign and only then when I looked back, could I form emotions. Your mother…she had just realised some very devastating news. Something that would have broken her, without a shadow of doubt." Athena's humanoid form, though without a face, definitely looked sad.

"Jean has just realised that her child, her almost fully grown child, did not have a soul of his own. No mind of her own." Athena delivered the news and it rang like thunder in his ears.

"Wh-what?" His throat ran dry as he asked her. Was this not him? Did he have a previously unknown sibling? Someone who wasn't fortunate enough to live in this world?

That single piece of information tore at him, even as he continued to look into the hollow gaze of his mother. His eyes then widened as some life somehow returned to her eyes, both of her eyes turning orange and red somehow.

"What is that?" He asked, shocked at the change. It was just like him. Whenever he used the full force of his lasers, his eyes would then turn into twin red dots, that would signify high level usage of his unique powers. Was mom the same?

But what was she going to do with her powers?

The video paused as Athena appeared in front of it once more, "Scott, you must understand that your mother, she was a very high level being, capable of rewriting reality as she saw fit before she came to your universe."

"What? But that would mean that the blue–"

"Yes. That foe was someone strong enough to force even Jean, a high level reality warper to flee with severe injuries. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, Jean tore a hole through the fabric of the multiverse and arrived in this universe, where the laws of reality were much much stronger than her home universe. That meant that while Jean was swiftly healed, she was also shackled."

"Shackled? You mean she couldn't use her reality warping powers? But isn't magic also reality warping? What was the difference between the strongest magic users and my mother?" He couldn't help but ask skeptically.

Athena scoffed at that, "Scott. Let me make one thing very clear. Jean was someone capable of wiping out all of the wizards on this planet with a single snap of her fingers. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, she has already carried out similar activities. It was just that once she was bound by this universe, she became incapable of accessing her full powers and could only use her base abilities, which were telepathy and telekinesis."

He had difficulty understanding someone of that power level being human but he didn't stop her from further explaining the powers of his mother who was supposedly so overpowered that the universe, the consciousness of the universe itself had to intervene and restrict her powers.

"Even at the reduced level, she was capable of reducing entire cities to rubble if she so wished but she didn't do that. She just stayed with your father, who loved her so much in return."

"And that last visual? That was of, what? Is she getting her reality warping powers back?" 

Athena sighed and her blurry faceless humanoid sagged as she replied, "No. See, the trauma of giving birth to a child with no soul would have killed your mother. So, she took a risk, she gambled and tried to forcefully reactivate her powers.

"To do what? To breathe life into me? Is that why I am such an anomaly? Because I am…artificial?" He whispered the last part, horrified that he was not a human but some automaton, created by someone vastly more powerful than him. Was he even human? Was his mind even his own?

"No!" Athena's voice brought him back as the video began playing once more.

His mother, her eyes glowed as she stood up, and then, with a soundless scream, activated her powers, a deluge of fire bursting out of her. The video feed cracked at that but even then, through the cracks, he could see her, in a corona of red and orange, cracking the very space she was standing in.

The video then blacked out, making Athena reappear in front of him.

"That was her forcefully activating her powers and looking for a solution to her problem. There was no soul in her child's body, no mind, no way it could think, feel, and live in the real world. So, she snatched a soul. She reached out into the wider multiverse and then snatched a compatible soul, someone who had died recently."

"That…was me? This is not my first life?" He whispered, feeling numb to all the shocks even as he felt some part of him rebelling at the mere thought of what he was seeing.

"No, this is not your first life. The powers that brought your soul back also cleansed your soul, meaning all your memories were stripped away, leaving a pure soul behind that had been affected by reality warping powers, making your soul much stronger as a result.

You must know that the stronger the soul, the—"

"The easier it gets to wield more powerful magic, yes, I am aware. So, this is why I can use magic so fluidly and why any kind of magic, be it from conflicting affinities, comes so easily to me," He muttered to himself.

"Yes, that is why. But fear not, while her powers wished to strip you of your memories, Jean thought it to be too cruel so…"

His neck snapped as he looked at her through blurry eyes, desperately wishing for her to finish that sentence.

"..So, she preserved your memories, as much as she could."

"So, that is my inheritance?" He couldn't help but ask, feeling…he didn't know what to feel at that moment.

"Part of it, Yes."

"Part of it? What more is there?"

"Just watch," The video feed changed, it was of the very same chamber that he had been in earlier today, beneath the Winters Manor.

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