Ernst left the modern, brightly lit command center of the upper castle, descending through a hidden service elevator that bypassed the main living quarters. The architecture shifted as he went deeper.
The clean white panels and holographic displays of the surface gave way to the ancient, damp stone of the original foundation.
He walked through corridors that smelled of history and earth. These were tunnels carved centuries ago, reinforced now with silent, humming technology hidden behind the masonry.
He arrived at a heavy, iron-bound door in the absolute depths of the castle. It was a restricted zone, shielded from all sensors, both technological and magical.
A small house elf guarded the door.
But this was not the cowering, ragged creature typical of the wizarding world.
This particular house elf was smaller than its counterparts, with ears that were slightly more pointed and eyes that held a distinct glint of intelligence and agency absent in others.
She wore a neat, miniature uniform made of grey silk, stamped with Ernst's personal crest.
Upon Ernst's return, the house elf's large eyes widened.
She appeared genuinely joyful, abandoning her post to jump to Ernst's side with a pop of displaced air.
"Master!" she squeaked, grabbing his trench coat.
"You're finally back! Winky has been counting the days. I've diligently cleaned this place as you instructed, scrubbing the moss and polishing the conduit seals. I have not been lazy at all!"
Ernst looked down. The cold, calculating gaze softened.
He squatted down with a smile, reaching out to touch the elf's head.
"Winky did a good job," Ernst said warmly.
"I can see the floor is spotless. Keep it up in the future."
"I will, Master! I will!" Winky beamed, her ears flapping with excitement.
"Having a kind master like you is the happiest thing for Winky. It is my greatest honor to serve you. The others... they do not understand."
Winky wiped away a tear of gratitude.
Despite her diminutive size, Winky was a masterpiece of selective breeding.
She possessed remarkable abilities, particularly in apparition.
Although she did not surpass the Red Devil in raw distance, she couldn't jump continents; she excelled in flexibility.
She could blink through wards that would stop a wizard, and her reaction time was faster than a heartbeat.
During his absence in China, Winky had been the caretaker of the castle.
She had moved between Skull Island and the UK with remarkable speed, utilizing a network of waypoints he had established, maintaining his empire from the shadows.
Her unique lineage, combined with a potion Ernst crafted to enhance magical stamina, made her tireless.
Ernst looked at her kindly, but his mind calculated the tragedy of her existence.
While possessing great strength, enough to throw a grown man across a room, house elves couldn't attack wizards due to the ancient binding curse embedded in their beings.
It was a genetic shackle.
Ernst, aware of this tragedy, had the power to lift it. He had the biological keys. But he refrained.
'A servant who can kill her master is a liability,' Ernst thought, the cold pragmatism returning.
'The curse ensures loyalty where kindness fails.'
He deemed it not worth the cost.
"Stay here, Winky," Ernst said, standing up.
"Guard this place. No one enters."
"Yes, Master."
Ernst opened the heavy door.
— — —
The Antechamber
He entered the mysterious room and closed the door behind him.
Winky and the red-haired ghost, Azazel, who had lingered in the shadows, were left waiting outside, maintaining a tacit understanding that what lay beyond was for Ernst alone.
The room was a sterile airlock.
"Red Queen," Ernst addressed the empty air.
"How is Gaea's growth? What unexpected events have occurred recently?"
The AI's voice filled the room, sounding more resonant here than on the ship.
"The growth rate is excellent, Dr. Ernst. Though the fused mutant genes caused minor cellular degradation last week, the introduction of the Wolverine sequence initiated a rapid recovery. I adjusted the nutrient slurry to compensate for the metabolic spike. Everything is fine."
"Good," Ernst nodded.
"I'm going to check and open the passage."
"Proceeding."
A section of the stone wall split apart with a hiss of hydraulics. It revealed a steel capsule.
Ernst entered. As the wall closed behind him, the Red Queen's voice echoed one last time.
"It's my honor to serve you, Dr. Ernst. Initiating thermal shielding protocols for the facility. Your suit is active."
In this slightly narrow space, Ernst stood still as the elevator began to descend.
It dropped rapidly.
The temperature began to rise.
Ernst didn't sweat. His nanite suit adjusted, but more importantly, he utilized his energy absorption ability.
He drew the heat into his body, metabolizing the thermal energy. He felt charged, his muscles humming with the power of the earth.
This environment made it unsuitable for Red Devil or Winky to follow.
They would cook in minutes. Ernst couldn't endure it forever either; he acted as a battery, but even a battery has a capacity.
He needed to release absorbed heat periodically to prevent an energy explosion that would vaporize the shaft.
The elevator took nearly ten minutes to reach the destination.
When the doors opened, the light was blindingly red.
It was a scene from the underworld.
They were deep in the crust, near a pocket of underground magma.
The heat was oppressive, shimmering in the air.
A massive pipe, made of a dark, nearly indestructible metal, was inserted directly into the magma flow. It glowed cherry-red.
It led to a circular culture tank suspended in the center of the chamber.
Inside the tank, immersed in a golden, glowing amniotic fluid, floated a three or four-year-old girl.
Shockingly, the energy transmission pipes connecting the magma tap to the tank were not made of steel or titanium.
They were made of Vibranium. Only the Wakandan metal could conduct this level of geothermal and telluric energy without melting.
This place was originally a Leyline Node.
It was an energy meridian of the planet, where mineral veins transmitted boundless energy in a radius of thousands of miles.
Ernst had tapped into the nervous system of the world.
The pipeline delved into the earth's core magma to absorb raw heat and magnetic force.
The Vibranium filtered it, refined it, and seamlessly integrated it into the little girl's body.
She absorbed it all without any signs of bursting. It was a remarkable feat of bio-engineering.
Project Gaea
Ernst walked to the glass.
He had crafted this girl using the genes of numerous mutants.
In his past life, he had seen the movies. He knew of Colonel Stryker's "Weapon XI", Deadpool.
Stryker had tried to sew powers together surgically, creating a mute abomination.
Ernst had aimed higher. He didn't want a soldier; he wanted a god.
He aimed to integrate all mutant genes into one being.
Tens of thousands of mutant genes had been collected in Ernst's Rebirth Cradle over the years.
Every sample he took, every drop of blood from the war, ended up here.
Fusing such a multitude of genes was no simple task.
The DNA strands fought each other. Fire clashed with Ice. Telepathy clashed with feral instinct.
Collaborating with the Red Queen, Ernst had devised a stabilizing matrix.
He used Mystique's ever-changing, adaptive gene as the canvas.
He used Darwin's "Instant Evolution" ability as the binding agent.
This combination allowed the subject to adapt to the influx of foreign DNA.
Instead of rejecting the new powers, the Darwin gene forced the body to evolve to accommodate them.
But the energy demands were astronomical.
To grow an embryo that held the potential of an entire species required the energy output of a nuclear reactor.
That was why she was here.
After years of cultivation, the embryo had absorbed endless energy from the Leyline.
She had merged over 10,000 mutant human genes.
Ernst remembered the day she truly formed, the day she transitioned from a cluster of cells to a baby.
The Earth's magnetic field had rioted.
For twenty-four hours, compasses spun wildly across the Northern Hemisphere.
Magnetic fluctuations concentrated around the castle.
Thankfully, no catastrophe occurred, but Ernst's sensors picked up sympathetic earthquakes in several energy nodes worldwide, in Kamar-Taj, in Wakanda, in the Amazon.
The world felt her arrival.
Recognizing her extraordinary nature, Ernst named her Gaea.
She seemed connected to the earth. She breathed with the tides.
Contemplating the implications of creating Gaea, Ernst felt a mix of excitement and profound, primal fear.
He looked at her sleeping face. She looked innocent.
But underneath that skin lay the power of Magneto, the telepathy of Xavier, the healing of Logan, the weather control of Storm.
Gaea exceeded his expectations.
She was becoming a new life form beyond his comprehension. A Mutant Omega.
"Was creating you right or wrong?" Ernst whispered, his hand hovering over the Vibranium glass.
"Will you save us? Or will you destroy the world?"
His eyes narrowed.
"Maybe I should destroy you now."
It was a cold calculation. A preventative measure.
As Ernst muttered these words, the liquid in the tank rippled.
Gaea trembled.
Her eyes didn't open, but a wave of psychic distress emanated from the tank.
She felt his intent. She emanated fear, pure, childlike terror.
Ernst flinched.
Despite his conflicted feelings, despite the monster he often pretended to be, he couldn't bring himself to harm the innocent girl.
"Well," Ernst sighed, withdrawing his hand.
"It's not the first time I've considered it, and it doesn't matter if I do it again. I am a father of monsters."
Though not the first time he contemplated destroying Gaea, Ernst always abandoned the idea.
"Sleep," he commanded softly.
If she ever posed a threat to the world, Ernst would do everything in his power to stop her.
But until then, she was his masterpiece.
After ensuring Gaea's well-being and inspecting the Vibranium conduits, Ernst took the elevator back to the room above.
The heat dissipated as he rose, his suit cooling down.
Instead of leaving the complex, he opened a nearby blast door and entered another room.
This spacious chamber was cooler, lined with white tiles.
It housed two culture tanks suspended from above.
In one, a middle-aged man floated, tubes connected to his spine and brain. He was a sleeper agent, a project for another day.
In the other tank, immersed in a nutrient-rich blue liquid, floated a canine.
But this was no ordinary dog.
The black dog in the culture tank was Ernst's pet, Simba.
But Simba had grown.
He was massive. Even curled up in the fetal position, he was huge. When upright, he stood over one meter three at the shoulder.
His body was robust, rippling with muscle, comparable to a prize bull or a small calf.
He looked less like a dog and more like a mythical wolf.
To delve into how Simba absorbed energy in the culture tank, one had to look at his diet.
As Ernst's pet, Simba received top-notch care.
He didn't eat Kibbles 'n Bits.
He ate steak, nutrient pastes, and occasionally, residues of magical potions Ernst experimented with to enhance his physique.
Simba had resided on Skull Island for an extended period. He had eaten the meat of the Skull Crawlers.
He had drunk water tainted by the radiation of the hollow earth.
Simba underwent an evolution three years ago.
Initially, Ernst noticed only increased strength, speed, and flexibility.
He dismissed it as normal growth for a pampered, chemically enhanced animal.
However, everything changed during a visit to Skull Island.
Ernst had witnessed Simba hunting.
The dog had cornered a Sker Buffalo, a creature three times his size.
Instead of biting it, Simba had opened his mouth.
His jaw unhinged. His throat expanded unnaturally.
And he swallowed the buffalo. In one gulp.
It was physically impossible. The buffalo was larger than the dog.
Ernst had captured him immediately for study.
After conducting research, Ernst discovered that Simba's ability was the Power of Gluttony.
Unlike Ernst, who absorbed energy through his skin, Simba had to consume matter.
Simba's stomach had mutated. It had formed a dimensional pocket, a localized spatial distortion.
When Simba opened his mouth to feed, his stomach space distorted with gas and vacuum pressure, creating immense suction. It was like a black hole.
This allowed Simba to engulf its prey whole, regardless of size. Once inside the dimensional stomach, the prey was digested by super-acids and absorbed to fuel Simba's rapid growth.
Simba's ability reminded Ernst of a legendary creature from the Taotie.
The gluttonous beast, capable of swallowing the sky and devouring the earth.
Ernst looked at the sleeping beast.
"You are hungry, aren't you?" Ernst whispered.
Although Simba's ability was currently weak, he could only swallow a buffalo, not a building. Ernst believed it was just the beginning.
With Simba's ongoing growth in the tank, fed by pure energy and nutrients, its powers would likely strengthen over time.
Ernst placed his hand on the glass.
"Sleep, Simba. One day, you will eat armies for me."
He was cultivating a zoo of gods and monsters. And soon, he would let them out.
-------------
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