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Long ago, an incident had removed the Yggdrasil system from the galaxy. There were very few survivors, all spread out in space, and while they survived the destruction, they did not escape unscathed. Harboring effects of the contact from the beings that destroyed the system, those who escaped, found themselves in a very difficult situation.
One such survivor was Lyfrassir Edda. The ex-inspector second class, who warned the people of the system of the coming end. Many things had happened to them since their escape, they joined a certain group of immortal space pirates, became a parent, and they found out they had remnants of the eldritch powers.
———
No, no, no! Get back here! Jonny was running as fast as he could. This was supposed to be a normal kidnapping, one where the Mechanisms would play with their “kidnappers” before turning it into a blood bath! But no, this time, the kidnappers decided to try a new tactic, a hostage, they took Jon. So this was how the first mate of the Aurora and one Lyfrassir Edda found themselves chasing against a group of people with their son in tow.
“Let him go! This is between us and you! No need to involve our child!” Lyfrassir yelled out and the kidnappers stopped once they hit a dead end. Turning to face Lyfrassir and Jonny, the kidnappers said, “Tell us your secret to immortality, and maybe we’ll let the kid go.”
“Maybe!? We’re going to need a yes!” Jonny yelled back.
The kidnapper holding Jon hostage reached into his pocket and pulled out a pistol.
“Tell us now or your precious child gets killed.”
Now, no one knows how it happened, how the left over power of the Bifrost got transferred to the blade, but one thing’s for certain, for the first time since the incident, Lyfrassir channeled the Bifrost.
The blade they held shined rainbow lights, and sliced the kidnapper with startling precision, leaving only two pieces of what was once a man, slowly melting away.
Jon already knew what to do. He ran towards Jonny, but before he could reach him, he was grabbed by another one of the men.
Lyfrassir and Jonny made a move to pounce on the man. Jonny would rip them apart and Lyfrassir would get Jon to safety. But that’s not what happened.
Before Lyfrassir could stop themself, they threw the blade at the guy, who deflected it with ease. But that wasn’t the issue, the issue was that when the man parried the Bifrost-infested blade, an explosion happened, a big, bright rainbow came out from the clashing of the blades. The man holding Jon evaporated in a fog of pain, while Jon got launched by the explosion.
Jonny and Lyfrassir immediately ran towards Jon, once they reached the kid, Lyfrassir grabbed him, and with Jonny following just behind, ran in the direction of the space shuttle.
Once they reached the Aurora, they immediately put Jon to rest in their medical bay.
“What happened to him!? What did they do to you, kiddo?” Marius immediately asked, seeing Jon’s state.
“We-we don’t know what happened…I think I’ll have to explain it to Ivy. She might know what happened!” Jonny said.
“Already here, Jonny, Lyf, what happened?”
Jonny started to rapidly explain the story, “Okay…so we were fighting the bastards who took Jon, then Edda threw their blade,” “Which shone an unusual amount of rainbow light.” Lyfrassir added.
“Yeah, that too, and the guy deflected it with his own blade. But when they made contact, an explosion happened. The guy holding Jon got vaporized, and Jon got launched a few feet.”
“What!?” Shouted Ivy, “Oh dear, this is so bad! Lyfrassir, do you understand what just happened!? The contact between your blade, which had a 97.36% chance to have been infused with the remnants of the Bifrost that’s still within you, and with Jon, may have given him Bifrost poisoning!”
“What!? Will he be okay!? Is he going to survive this!?” Jonny asked, but he seemed to get brushed off by Ivy yelling out some orders for the crew.
“Raphaella, Marius, get to checking on Jon’s condition. T.S, prepare a hospital bed. Nastya, Brian, get us out of here. Jonny, Lyf, I’ll treat your wounds for now. Tim, Ashes, keep an eye out for any more of the bastards!”
All of the Mechanisms went to go and do their respective tasks. They finished quickly, and soon all the Mechanisms surrounded Jon, who was placed in a hospital bed, unconscious. Many of them sat on a big couch in the room, while some decided to lean on the walls close to where Jon was.
“I- I didn’t mean to- if I knew this would’ve happened, I-” Lyfrassir cried, head in their hands.
“Shh… we know, we all make mistakes like that. I found out that you shouldn’t try using any of the chemicals in Raph’s lab the hard way. That resulted in a few green octokittens for a few weeks.” Marius said, trying to comfort Lyfrassir.
“At least they were only green! Jon, our son, mind you, might die because of me!”
“Edda! Calm down, Ivy already did the calculations, he’ll live!” Ashes added.
Raphaella chimed in with, “He may experience symptoms of radiation poisoning though…But I’m sure it’ll only be for a week! He’s a strong kid!”
Lyfrassir looked at Raphaella with a mixed expression, unsure if they should feel scared, calm down, or trust that Jon will make it.
Jonny was pacing around the room, occasionally stopping to check up on Jon’s temperature, he has a high fever…
Soon, after a few more hours of hanging around Jon, he finally woke up, by coughing his lungs out, figuratively speaking.
“Wh-What happened?” Jon asked, as soon as he had a glass of water.
“Bifrost poisoning. But don’t worry, you’ll make it!” The Toy Soldier responded, refilling the now empty glass.
“B-Bifrost poisoning!? What does that even mean!?”
“Ah…You see, when my possibly Bifrost infested blade made contact with another blade, it…sort of exploded…Launching you for a few feet…And you may have absorbed some of the remnants.” Lyfrassir quietly said, trying their hardest not to think about it.
“What? Wait, what’s gonna happen to me now? I listened to your stories, I know what the Bifrost is. What do you mean your blade was infested by it!?”
“Okay…” Ivy said, “Remember how I said that the Bifrost mainly deals with chaos, confusion and slaughter?”
Jon nods, slowly, or else he’ll get a worse headache.
“So, when you were taken hostage, your ren, was quite angry at them, and when they saw you with a pistol against your head, they couldn’t control the anger anymore and accidentally transferred some of the energy from the remnants of the explosion of the portal into the blade. It was the first time all of us are hearing about this too, but we are positive that you’ll be fine. According to my calculations, you should be expected to experience light symptoms of radiation poisoning, but after a week you should be good to go.”
“R-radiation poisoning? That doesn’t sound good at all.”
“You’re a strong kid. You’ll be fine.”
“Do you think this would have a lasting effect on me?”
“Most likely, luckily it won't be much, since I don’t have high levels of Bifrost radiation myself, so you would have even less.” Lyfrassir said, trying to both comfort themself and the young boy.
“You’ll most likely only feel dizzy and tired. Maybe a bit nauseous, but that’s something we’re not completely sure of yet.” Marius chimed in.
“Anyway,” Jonny interrupted, pushing the rest of the Mechs out of the room, “You should get your rest, and call us if you feel any of the symptoms. It’s late anyway, and Aurora is about to call lights out. Goodnight, kiddo, goodnight.”
“G’night…”
The following month was spent taking care of Jon and researching his new…condition. According to Ivy, the worst parts or most intense parts of illness last for one week, after that Jon’s body would spend the rest of the month recovering. He should be able to move like a normal person during this time, but his parents don't recommend that he do that yet.
——
Luckily, Ivy was right. Jon seemed to go through a week of the worst dehydration, fever, nausea, vomiting blood and rainbow secretions, rainbow bruises, and fainting. It was a horrible week.
But the symptoms eventually lightened up to a light fever and a bit of a headache for the next two weeks, then the symptoms disappeared completely by the third week.
Jon was up and about, bouncing around like a spring chicken as soon as the Mechs decided that he should be well enough to leave the medical bay.
Hopefully this’ll never happen again…
——
Jonah thought Jon would be easy, he really did. The man was marked by the web, showed some eye tendencies, and he was the perfect amount of both antisocial and caring, perfect for sowing distrust in and around him.
But somehow, Jonah managed to miss Knowing that Jonathan knew how to (somewhat) properly archive, despite not having an archival degree. He can’t take another one of Jonathan’s spiels about him not knowing what an archivist does. As if, Jonathan would know (he does).
But, other than that, something about him was very, very wrong. Jonah tried to consult the Eye for some insight to the man’s background, and everything came inconclusive, he was orphaned and then raised by his grandmother, and those are the only things he Knew.
He Knows that something happened after that that made the web loosen its strings. Something must be the reason why he can’t simply look into his head. Something must be the reason behind the wall of ripping, rending, tearing, blood, screaming, and music surrounding the man’s mind. Could he have been marked by the Spiral? No, Jonah would Know if he was. This is something else…
He tried looking into Jonathan’s mind once, and soon after he was waking up in the infirmary, because he suddenly passed out, nose bleeding…
He tried consulting the Eye about this many, many times. But not even it Knows what’s behind the wall.
No matter. He’s going to figure Jonathan out, one way or another. This is a temporary setback, a momentary loss, it’s nothing he can’t handle, he’ll just wait for the statements to do their thing and Jonathan would be caught, hook, line, and sinker.
Surely…
——
Jon was having a normal day. He had just finished recording a statement about a…quote, “Weird necklace”, until he realized that he forgot to double check his temperature for the week.
You see, while Lyfrassir Edda had dreams occurring in the same 5 month time period of the happenings of the Bifrost Incident every few years due to their exposure to its radiation, Jon has had a similar experience since the explosion.
Every year, Jon has to check for light radiation symptoms for a few weeks, or else he’ll collapse on the ground and be sent straight to a hospital. He was lucky that he managed to cover up what happened originally to the doctors the first time, but forging documents is so hard and there’s no way any human doctors could help with this condition! So, it was decided that every year, he would go back on mama Aurora for family and recovery time.
But, due to the stress and the abysmal state of the archives, he forgot to check. Maybe he could wait when he got back to his flat. From what he remembers, he was feeling fine at the start of today. And the flashes of sickness sometimes come late, maybe it’s one of those times?
But, since it’s “sickness” week (papa Marius started calling it that, after it happened for the third year in a row), Jon decided he should go and get an actual lunch today, he’s been living off some small snacks (by the suggestion of renny TS) in his office for a while, but that’s not sustaining anyone for long. So Jon decides to try to make the perilous journey to the nearby cafe. He hasn’t been feeling much of the usual symptoms, so it must be fine.
Maybe he should’ve paid more attention to his symptoms before he got up from his chair and promptly fell on the floor, with a loud thump. Luckily the others aren’t here to see or hear this…
Slowly getting up, back into his chair, Jon decides to start writing his excuse letter to Elias, as well as listing down the tasks that the others have to work on in his absence. He reached into his bag and grabbed a small tin container filled with different tiny snacks, all from different sectors of space, and papa GPTim approved.
He heard the door to the archive entrance open soon after he finished typing out his absence notice to Elias. He quickly sent the email, and tried his best to grab the papers (without falling from either the oncoming headache or the nausea) that his assistants would need to work on in the following weeks.
The archival assistants immediately came rushing in Jon’s office when they heard the thump of someone hitting the floor.
“Jon! Are you alright!? What was that noise we just heard?” Martin said, worry clear on his face.
“I’m fine.” Jon said, sitting himself up, “And that noise you heard was me…” Jon fixed the hair that fell on his face, and said, “I wanted to call all of you here anyway.”
“Okay, let’s talk about it when we get you to your seat first, old man.” Tim said, helping Jon get back to his chair.
Once they settled, Jon began to speak, “I will be absent for the next week, so I expect you all to do these following tasks in my absence.” Jon then began handing out the files.
“Got it, Jon! Also, are you feeling well today? You’re looking a bit pale?” Sasha asked.
“Ah, that’s one of the reasons why I'll be absent for next week. It’s an…illness. I’ll leave work early today for this same reason.” While Jon was telling the truth, another reason why he decided to go home early was because he knew that if his parents thought that he would be staying overtime during his illness week, they would probably explode the door to the archives, pick him up and head back into the Aurora, granted that mama Aurora doesn’t drag him back herself, using the wires.
“Oh, I see…Hope you get well soon!” Martin said.
“Alright. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just pack up my things and go.” Jon said, trying to get up, before he was hit with another wave of headaches. Luckily, Martin caught him before he fell.
Tim chucked at the sight of this, he definitely wished that he had his phone with him to capture this moment.
“Okay, maybe we can help you with packing up, bossman.”
“Oh! Thank you all, but-“
“No “but’s”! We’ve been here for less than 5 minutes and you nearly collapsed like two times!”
“Hm. Fine.”
—
Apparently, once Jonah received an email from Jonathan telling him that he was going to be absent for the next week, he assumed that it was because of the statement.
Apparently, once he found out that Jon truly didn’t care much for the statement, saying that it was a “classic cursed object story” that really wasn’t disturbing.
“It’s not really a big deal Mr. Bouchard, Mr. Taraschi can just leave the necklace with artifact storage. I believe the whispers will stop after a month. I recommended that he live with his parents for a while during that period. I believe they’ll keep him in check, nothing much to be concerned about, other than the lingering effects on the man. But I’m sure he can pull through,” Jon said. I survived an explosion involving the Bifrost when I was younger…other than the sickness and rainbows, I’m still somewhat normal, he thought then he walked off and went home.
Jonah was stumped, he seemed to be too casual about the statement…
Well…back to the drawing board…